#ships are low key weird but that’s whole new territory

[lmurmom]

Why the fuck are people doing Freddie x Mary or Jim x Mary?

WHY DO YOU ACT LIKE THAT

[hatterstan-shameblog]

Here is the first one

Second :D

And last..he's looking at you 👀💦

ALRIGHT you know WHAT—

There’s…a lot going on here. So much so, that I have decided to create

CONTEXT

for these three images that is

COMPLETELY FAKE

because I think it’ll be a fun writing exercise. kind of a cringe move on my part, but consider: i have fun making up ridiculous lies about characters who don’t exist in real life.

(which is how I’m treating these, by the way. yes, they are pictures of kaneko nobuaki, but for my purposes, they are NOT actually him. they are distinct fictional characters who are not real.)

so if you’re feeling adventurous skip below the cut and watch me break it down:

Image 1: Accidental “Date” Makes Cousin’s Wedding Less Terrible Than Originally Expected

The year is 1999. Your cousin (who you are not particularly close to) is getting married…on a cruise ship. Your mother insists you attend. You insist upon spending 90% of your time sipping margaritas on the deck and flipping through the latest issue of Marie Claire while trying desperately not to think about the fact that you are surrounded by nothing but open ocean.

One of the (very drunk) bridesmaids tries to toss you a beach ball because you have been, and I quote: like, a total bummer this whole time. She misses. It hits the person next to you in the face. Great. Awesome. You think: well now who’s being, like, a total bummer?

Luckily the person who got hit in the face laughs the entire thing off. He says your friends seem…’lively.’ You say that’s pretty rich coming from a guy who looks like a rejected member of ‘The Clash.’ He insists that he left them, not the other way around.

You slip into conversation. You tell him that you’re here for a wedding. He offers his condolences. You accept them. He says he actually likes weddings—something about two people making a life-changing commitment speaks to him on a soul-level. That and the open bar, of course.

You suggest he crash the wedding. He says he’s not sure if he can make it—there’s a shuffleboard tournament that evening that he would just hate to miss, plus the latest issue of Soap Opera Digest is waiting on his bedside table just begging to be opened. You say that’s perfectly understandable, but, if he suddenly finds himself caught up on the latest All My Children gossip, he can meet you back here at four.

Surprise, surprise: he shows up. He’s wearing the same shirt he was before, but buttoned up this time—and with one of the most hideous neckties you’ve ever seen, which he apparently borrowed from the kind old man next door. Instead of complimenting his attire (because it is truly un-compliment-able), you take the opportunity to mention that this is a Titanic-themed wedding. He says that having a Titanic-themed wedding on a cruise ship is “kind of fucked up” and you solemnly agree.

Everyone is very surprised and pleased to see that you’ve brought a date—even the bride, who tells you that you’re “just like Jack and Rose.” You agree, much to her delight…until you say that, if the ship goes down, you also won’t share the door and let him freeze to death in the icy water. He insists he’d be the guy who jumps off the ship and hits his leg on the propellor—that’s his favorite part of the whole movie, and it’d be an honor to re-enact the scene.

The wedding is…a wedding. Vows, toasts, pictures—and you’re sipping champagne through the entire thing. The two of you spend the evening getting completely wasted and telling everyone a different story about just who your ‘mystery date’ is. Highlights include: the captain’s unruly son whose been tasked with following in his father’s sea-faring footsteps; professional cave-diver who discovered a new species of slug and is spending his reward money on a nice vacation; head of marketing who gives all those clever names to the nail polishes at OPI; the guy who folds everyone’s towels into animal shapes.

You end up where you started: on neighboring lounge chairs, with a margarita, and talking to this stranger who has recently crossed into “acquaintance” territory. You chat about how “My Heart Will Go On” is actually a good song, and he promises not to tell anyone that you said that. He also says that this is the best Titanic-themed cruise ship wedding he’s ever been to, and he can’t wait until somebody decides to do Jaws.

Eventually, you both stagger back to your rooms with promises of seeing each other at breakfast. Unfortunately, you have the worst hangover of your life the next morning and even the thought of ‘breakfast’ makes you want to roll over and die, so you don’t manage to stumble out of bed until it’s time to disembark.

You see him at port, and you each offer each other a little wave before going your separate ways. Six weeks later, you get a Polaroid of the two of you together, sitting at the bar and laughing at something that must have been very, very hilarious.

You don’t remember most of what happened that night, but you remember it was not as terrible as it could have been.

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Image 2: Extremely Weird Guy On The Street Has You Questioning Your Sanity

It’s 6:00 in the morning—a truly terrible time to be awake, but a necessary evil. Your flight leaves at 10, and since it’s an international thing, you want to make sure you get there in plenty of time to get to your gate (and maybe sample all the fancy perfumes you can’t afford at one of those high-end stores that are always in airports.)

The streets are mostly empty, save for a few random pedestrians and a handful of passed-out salarymen snoozing on the curb. The sky a rainy gray-blue as the sun tries to rise behind the springtime cloud cover—it’s no doubt going to be another dismal day, as is common during this time of year. Hopefully there’s not too much turbulence on your flight…

You stop at a crosswalk, waiting for the little walking man signal to show up on the light across the way. You’re soon joined by another person—a man in a soft-looking jacket who supplies you with a small “good morning” bob of his head. You respond in kind, throwing in a small smile for good measure. It’s nice that he too understands that it’s entirely too early to be having any kind of conversation, even if it is just a simple verbal greeting between strangers on a street corner.

The light changes, and you both begin your trek across the street. Your fellow walker is faster than you—or, more likely, has longer legs and, ergo, a longer stride than your own—and is nearly halfway across by the time you get your wheeled suitcase over the curb. He seems decent enough. You hope he’s going somewhere nice.

It’s then that you make the mistake of looking up. It would have been much better if you had just continued watching the white painted lines on the road and thinking about how it reminds you of piano keys—and how you hated the six months of piano lessons your parents forced you to take in the first grade.

But no. You noticed someone walking towards you, and you just had to look up.

The first thing you notice is a rainbow tie-dye shirt. The second thing you notice is that the rainbow tie-dye shirt is on a very cheerful looking gentleman, who seemed to be bobbing his head in time with a song only he could hear.

The third thing you notice—and this one’s the real kicker—is the large blue-and-green reptile sitting on his shoulder. It’s bulging eyes are hooded in pleasure as it’s red-pink tongue darts out to eat the green something—maybe a grape or a small piece of melon?—from the rainbow tie-dye man’s hand. It is nothing short of a spectacle, honestly, and you feel a piece of your sanity evaporate.

The rainbow tie-dye man continues on, uncaring of your confused stare at his strange pet. You even turn around to make sure that you weren’t somehow hallucinating, and sure enough, there is definitely some kind of creature draped over this stranger’s shoulder. It’s tail even sways in time with the man’s steps, which is both cute and confusing.

Because it would not do to stand in the middle of the street all day, considering the existence of rainbow tie-dye man and his exotic pet, you do the only thing you can do: turn back around and continue on your journey. You need a coffee. Maybe with an extra shot of espresso, after witnessing whatever the hell that was. Something to set you right again.

“Was that…?”

The other man—the soft-coat long-stride one—is speaking low enough as to not draw attention, but loud enough for you to hear as you make your way towards the sidewalk. His expression reads ‘concerned, but trying not to show it’ which you suppose is the polite and mature way of handling the situation.

“…an iguana? Yeah,” you answer him, “I saw it too.”

The man’s brow furrows. His mouth puckers into a small frown as he considers…well, something.

“…Okay, then,” he concludes, shrugging his shoulders, “Hell of a way to start the day.”

“Yeah.”

And you both continue on your way. He turns left at the next intersection, you turn right—but even though your paths may now be different, you will forever share an unbreakable bond over the fantastical sight you’ve witnessed today.

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Image 3: Near Death Experience At Open Mic Night

You are not a poet.

Well, not professionally, anyways. You’ve been known to dabble in the written word, often scribbling little snippets of rhyme in a notebook over your lunch break or tapping a verse or two into the notes app on your phone. It a kind of outlet, you suppose—a way to keep the creative energy that bubbles inside of you from boiling over.

It’s also worth mentioning that you are not a confident public speaker. Not since that unfortunate incident in the third grade where you forgot the single line you had in the school play and ran off stage, tears streaming down your face and—actually, no, you’re not going to think about that right now. Or ever again, hopefully.

So when your (tipsy) coworkers decide that it’s a good idea to push you onto the stage at the local dive bar’s open mic night—while shouting at you to “read the one about the night-blooming jasmine”—you freeze up. There are at least seven strangers staring at you, expectation rising with every passing second of your inaction. It’s nerve-wracking in the way that the third-grade incident was not, and you gulp against the nervousness that rises in your throat.

Shaking hands scroll frantically through your phone, looking for the requested poem—and after a few agonizing moments, you manage to find it. Your voice cracks rather embarrassingly as you begin to read, trying your damndest to get the words out right so you can slink back to the bar and drown the rest of the night in Chardonnay.

Everything is going well—or, at least, as well as can be expected—until you notice that the room is suddenly feeling very hot. That’s the last coherent thought you have before the room goes dark and everything falls silent.

Next thing you know, you’re staring at the ceiling. A man who you do not know is leaning over you, and his mouth is moving—oh, he’s probably trying to say something to you, but it’s very difficult to tell what he’s saying over the throbbing pain in the back of your head.

You ask him if you’re dead. It’s a possibility after all, that you’ve somehow died and landed yourself in some kind of special public-speaking hell. That’s what this feels like, anyways.

The man says no, you are not dead. You say ‘dammit’ in response. He tries to hold back laughter, offering to help you up by extending his hand. You take it and—ouch, ugh, ew, going from laying to standing is not a fun experience.

You thank him (albeit awkwardly) for helping you up, and he insists that ‘it’s cool.’ Passing out in front of an audience is not even remotely cool, but you nod and thank him again, anyways.

Before you’re able to converse with the helpful stranger any further, your coworkers have come to collect you. You are whisked away by someone from accounting, who offers to escort you home—an offer you gladly accept, very excited to leave the site of your failure behind you.

Safe to say, you never go back to that particular bar again.

[thepigeonsopinion]

So, "Hack San" was released...

The episode "Hack San" has finally been released and here I am now, about to go on and on about the episode :) But first let's do a small summary or synopsis of the episode!

Warning: Spoilers to the episode "Hack San"

Summary:

The episode starts off with Marinette trying to make up excuses to stay in Paris/home, instead of going to London to visit her Aunt. So far, all of her attempts have been failures. Marinette then has no choice but to leave Paris with her family. Meanwhile, Gabriel or Shadowmoth creates a new sentimonster with the name of Hack San, which is a virus that allows for Markov to be vulnerable to an akuma. Then, Marinette contacts Alya to meet her at the train station before she is to leave. Marinette gives Alya the Ladybug miraculous trusting her to protect Paris while she is gone. Alya has a chat with the kwami's, Tikki and Trixx, in which they tell her the ups and downs of being the holder of the Ladybug miraculous and the guardian of the miracle box. Alya returns to the park that she was hanging out at before Marinette contacted her. At the park, Alya starts to fuss over everyone's emotions, mainly if they are feeling any negative emotions. Meanwhile, Markov is effected by the virus and is akumatized by Shadowmoth and becomes Robustus. Robustus then (through the internet) takes control of people and orders them to give him their most prized possessions. While on the train, Marinette's parents are affected by Robustus, which leads to Marinette being captured by Robustus. It is then Alya's responsibility to protect Paris. Alya transforms into her version of Ladybug, and while she is trying to find her new super hero name she is met with Chat Noir. Chat Noir does not immediately trusts the new super heroine and suspects they are the villain. However, this distrust is cut short because of the akuma Robustus still being at large. Robustus orders everyone to capture Ladybug and Chat Noir. The super heroes hear a person crying for help and while Chat Noir is at first suspicious, Alya heads straight to where the civilian's voice was heard. This turns out to be a trap and the super heroes are forced to run into a building where they are also trapped by Robustus. Alya summons her Lucky Charm to aid her in this situation. Alya or Scarabella receives a frying pan. This leads her to think of a plan to manipulate Robustus to release the people's possessions in exchange for both her and Chat Noir. Robustus agrees to this and releases all of the objects and among those objects is Marinette who catches on quickly to the plan and uses the frying pan to release the akuma. The super heroes are released as well and Alya uses her Miraculous Ladybug. And as always, Paris is saved once again. A few days later, Marinette and her family are back from her trip and Alya suggest Marinette/Ladybug go talk to Chat Noir, and she does. Ladybug and Chat Noir have a talk about how someone knows about Ladybug's secret identity and Chat's new found fear that Ladybug might not be there anymore, in which Ladybug gives him the reassurance that she won't be going anywhere. And, the episode ends.

Yay! Another very detailed and unnecessary summary of the episode! Welp! It's too late now. :|

Anyway! Now onto my opinion or thoughts on the episode!

(Also I'm re-watching the episode as I do this so this might have some unnecessary details. Anyway, carry on!)

First things first the, I know that Marinette is trying to get out of going to London and staying in Paris, but I swear her excuses are getting weaker. I swear she had better excuses in the earlier seasons or is it just me? Not to mention, since Marinette is so desperate to stay in Paris she purposefully trips down the stairs. Damn the dedication and I mean, I know that Marinette needs to stay in Paris just in case, but she has left Paris like three times now, you would think that she would have a backup plan if anything happened in Paris when she wasn't there (and I'll talk about one of her solutions later on *cough cough Scarabella cough cough*). Also, Tom's desperation and persistence for Marinette to come on the trip is kinda amusing. And the not so subtle jabs at the aunt :0

Moving on! Ummm Nooroo and Dusuu you know that Gabriel is RIGHT there right? I mean he could probably hear what your saying. Also, Gabriel are you just deaf or did you not just hear what they said? Because their right behind you. When Shadowmoth made Hack San, was the weird "Haah" sound really necessary? Also, why does the virus, USB thingy low key look like Nino's shirt logo. Are they somehow connected? Or did they just run out of ideas for the design? (Not me being salty over a sentimonsters design) Why the fuck is this robot doing like three things at the same time? I know that he's a robot, but come on.

Hmmmm. No other option you say? What about bringing the Horse miraculous with you like in Startrain? Or use the cosmic suits that can legit let you fly around the world? Come on, let's be honest here giving Alya the Ladybug miraclulous wasn't the ONLY option. Claps to Alya for doing a fake doubting act, but in reality just trying to think of a new superhero name. You almost got me there Astruc, you almost made me thought that Alya had her doubts about taking over for Marinette, but in reality is just super excited to take over. Props to you my dude, props! Also, I'm not going to lie Alya all of your name ideas are kinda weak, I mean the fandom has better name ideas than you do, but then again that is to be expected. Props to the kwamis for putting all the pressure that Marinette has on her back and transferring it to Alya. Thank you for making Alya aware of all the pressure Marinette's under. Even if Alya's probably not going to bring it up and probably will just brush it off. Yes, Alya just keep telling your self that this weekend is going to be totally chill. Not to mention, Tikki being more supportive to Alya than to Marinette, whaaaaaaaaaaa- :0. Alya you just told yourself that this weekend was going to be chill why the heck are you making your life harder for yourself. To be honest, if your acting like this already you deserve whatever is coming for you. Marinette, honey, why the fuck do you need to right down 675 tips for Alya? I mean I get 33 tips even 40, but 675, really? Not to mention, the tip about laughing at Chat Noir's jokes even if they aren't funny just to make him happy, why the fuck do you need to keep him happy he could be mad, upset, or sad and I wouldn't give a fuck :p.

I will say this again, how the fuck does a multi-intelligent robot that is connected the world wide web, that is also doing at least 4 things at the same time get tempted and corrupted by a virus by clicking on a cute kitty cat ad. HOW!?! EXPLAIN THAT TO ME!?!

Okay, so remember when we thought we were actually going to get a canon Marcenial moment. Hahaha welp Astruc you've done it again you have crushed our shipping dreams again. I hope your proud of yourself. Also, the most precious possession to Marc is his and Nathaniel's manga/comic, really?

Damn the amount of times this girl makes us and Trixx second guess that she's doubting herself, like she's done it three times now. Not to mention, why is her ladybug suit more detailed than Marinette's hmmm? I mean, don't get me wrong I like the design, but why can't Marinette have a detailed suit like this? Also why is Alya acting like The Owl? *Hoot Hoot!* I also just realised that the kwamis are a bit territorial, well not Tikki, but Plagg and Trixx have proven themselves to be a bit territorial of their holders.

I love Chat Noir's distrust to Alya as Ladybug because this shows a different side of Chat Noir that Paris doesn't see, but does Alya see this and realize how much of a ass he is? Nope. Also, not going to lie, his distrust kinda amuses me. Carrying on! Chat Noir, I can hear the toxic jealousy from here my dude, you might want to tone it down a bit, you've got a audience here you know. You know, I was expecting him to say his most prized possession was Ladybug, or even his kwami, Plagg, but I wasn't expecting him to say croquettes. OMG! GUYS! IT'S HAPPENING! CHAT IS FINALLY BEING CAUTIOUS FOR ONCE INSTEAD OF IMMEDIATELY JUMPING INTO TROUBLE!!! Also, Chat Noir being responsible whaaaaaaa- :0. Ummm, why the fuck did they just run into a building, when they legit could've jumped out of that mess, like seriously why isn't anyone using their head today?

Moving on! Why the heck is most of this episode just Alya trying to think of a super hero name like seriously, I know it's supposed to be some kinda of gag, but it's starting to get a bit annoying. Chat Noir being supportive to Alya: *slow clap*. When Alya's whole plan is to just to leave everything up to Marinette, Me: Wow! I TOtAlLy didn't see that coming! Hehehe Chat Noir with a pot over his head. You know, I thought upset Chat Noir was enough for this episode, but now we get sad Chat Noir and Ladybug reassuring him, just wow, you have out done yourself Astruc.

AND! That's that end of the episode! So all in all, this episode wasn't that bad? But it wasn't my favorite (maybe one of my least favorite tbh :0) Mainly, because of the appearance of Scarabella and ladybug catering to Chat Noir needs. This is probably mainly because I'm a bit biased, but in my opinion and I will repeat in MY OPINION I don't think Alya really deserves to get the miraculous. I mean yeah, Marinette has given her trust to her and has told her that she is Ladybug, but has she really done anything to show that she deserves that trust. If I'm being honest she has shown more reasons for Marinette not to trust her. One of the reasons being that Alya doesn't fully trust Marinette herself, and the other being that she disobeyed Marinette by telling Nino that she is still Rena Rouge and not telling her that she did so.

Anyway! Those are most of my thought's on this episode. This has been a loooong week for me with the addition of school now. So expect me to be posting more on the weekends than on weekdays.

Anywho! I hope everyone has a great rest of their day. And always remember...

But that's just my opinion (・ε・)

(This week has been soooo tiring and with the edition of this episode and a sneak peek of a new episode coming up, I know it's only beginning. *smiles through the pain :)*)

[zachsgamejournal]

PLAYING: Breath of Fire IV

I think we’re closing in on the end. But in good ole BoF fashion, the last leg is taking the longest. Also, Nina is totally the main character of this game.

NINA

I’ve only ever beaten BoF 3, 4, and 5--though I’ve played 1 & 2. It’s a constant that Ryu is the main character, and that Ryu is the player. Ryu is never (to rarely) given dialog because the player is meant to imagine the voice of Ryu. And while this definitely works for BoF 3 and 5, Nina is clearly the main character in 4.

1. We Start the Game as Nina

In both BoF 3 and 5, we start the game as Ryu, and that’s basically where we stay for the whole adventure (occasionally controlling other characters). BoF 4 has us start with Nina. It’s a simple distinction, but sets up my next point.

2. Nina Makes All the Decisions

My screenwriting professor said the main character makes the decisions that drive the story. In this sense, Ryu is extremely passive. He’s mostly just along for the ride. It’s Nina that offers to help him, Nina that decides he should tag along, and it’s Nina’s quest he joins. Later, Nina decides to rescue Cray. Nina goes to her father for help. Nina asks the gods for assistance. Nina insists they save Ryu. Nina encourages Dies not to abandon Ershin. Nina insists on the helping that furry...thing. All the while, Ryu is just like, “...sure.”

I vaguely know how the game will end, so we’ll see if this all holds up.

3. It’s Nina’s Quest

The game starts with Nina and Cray on a mission to find/rescue her sister. While Ryu is integral to the plot, he doesn’t have a lot of skin in the game. Nina is also royalty, and this game has some Games of Thronesian politics going on. While Ryu’s actions carry little weight beyond the act itself, everything Nina does has the ability to affect policy and international relationships. We see this when the Empire pressures the Alliance to cede territory post Nina’s rescue op failure.

Also, Nina just told Ryu that she loved Cray. Ryu isn’t even the love interest in this game.

I’m actually really happy that Nina is the star. Female characters aren’t normally given the respect they deserve. Maybe instead of Breath of Fire, they should have called this “Wings of Destiny”...cause Nina has wings.

Back to the Plot

So, Ryu went super-Dragon and killed some imperials. The gods have offered to help Ryu, (as long as he plays hide and seek first), and Fou-Lu has escaped the village in which he had started to feel at home.

Nina and the team discuss things and decide that if it’s Ryu’s destiny to meet up Fou-Lu, they might as well confront him proactively. They seem to be under the impression that the empire is using Fou-Lu gain power (if they only knew).

Ursala is the Imperial captain that captured us, but now she’s our captive. The team asks her to help them get into the Empire. She’s confused. It was her mission to bring the dragon to the Empire, so this kind of works out...She agrees and is now a playable party member.

I like her.

Heading back to the warp gate, we learn that it’s broken because of our previous activities (and because we were attacked by Captain Jackass). Ursala tries to make us feel bad, but she works for an evil Empire--so jog-on. We have to head north and need a sandflier but don’t have the cash. This is comical, cause I put in a cheat for infinite Zenny way back when...

We’re supposed to ask a merchant sandflier for help, but we’re too late. Ursala immediately jumps to action and without a word, Scias follows her lead. They take the merchant ship like a band of pirates and it turns out to be a French-accented froggy friend from before that sexually harassed Nina, Marlok. He tries to make use feel guilty, which works on Nina and Cray--but the rest of us know he’s a POS. He offers us a bond to buy a ship, expecting that we’ll do great things and thus able to cash in on our success.

We get to a checkpoint, but it’s blocked. Ursala wants to fight the guards, but Nina is against it. We do the non-violent solution of trampolining over the wall. We get to a ship yard...I only now realized in the game that the oceans aren’t water--but mud. weird...where’s all the water? So the only seas are up north.

The captain doesn’t want us on without the blessing of the sea god. We got to coastal cave and find the Sea Dragon there...I think. We get his blessing and are good to go. The captain now doesn’t want women on board. The women insist that they are tough and have been through a lot. The muscle the dude we keep fighting shows up, and it’s implied that his defeat would prove we’re tough. Ursala shoots him and falls off the mass of the ship. So  a new test of courage is needed. Ursala and Nina must stay within the hull of the ship over night with ghosts and bugs. They succeed.

As we travel across the sea, we fight muscle dude again (he was much stronger this time). And then the wind stops. The sailors think this area is haunted, maybe by a god. We go check it out. The dungeon is interesting, but frustrating. You have to walk across planks to get to the other side, but the planks break and drop you down into the hull. There’s a light over your head to warn you when you’re about to fall, but I still fell a lot. In the hull, as you walk, skulls that are spread about rattle and vibrate: it’s eerie and entertaining. Eventually we find a rock creature that thinks of itself as a god, but it’s just a rock powered by god-power. So we kill it.

No remorse.

The wind returns and we make it across the sea. After traveling through a jungle, we meet a furry thing. I feed it some food and it seems happy...I think. At the end of the jungle we find a treehouse and are attacked by more furries. The previously furry comes to our defense and we meet Beyd. He has married one of the furries and maybe these are his children? Cray had my reaction and was like, “Well...uh, anyway--how do we get to the empire?”

One of the furries gets sick and Nina vows to save it (cause she’s the main character!). This brings us to an interesting, but not super fun mini game. We get to sail the boat, but you have limited supplies. Every second you’re on the seas, the supplies get used, but they’re used faster if you row. Rowing is necessary because the wind doesn’t always blog in the direction you need. So you have to decide whether to burn supplies by rowing, or wait for the wind to change directions. There’s places to find and treasure to discover. It is, kinda fun...

While we’re out here collecting medicine on the high seas, I also find the sea god: SCORE!

We save the furry and are guided to some islands that are available to walk across when the tide is low. So we venture a cross some tropical keys. It’s pretty. The group gets tired and Nina insists on taking a break: cause she’s the main character. After our rest, the tide has risen and the group is trapped. Cray is pissed and Nina feels responsible.

This is an interesting part of the game cause the group has to survive on an island and reflect on their mission. Ursala warns it could be months or years before the tide recedes. Chill Ursala. The group explores the island and finds both water and and great fishing spot. We’re gonna be fine. Just delayed.

Scias likes the island, as he just sleeps all day. After a while, Cray chills out and apologizes for his temper. While Ryu is casting a line, Nina reveals that she’s in love with Cray, causing Ryu to trip. Nina reflects on her feelings, unsure if they’re true and doubtful that Cray feels the same.

The tide recedes and the team escapes. We come to a riverlands that requires some log riding and log dodging. It’s cute, but I want to get out of here...

Fou-Lu, after escaping the village, receives a direct hit from the hex canon. They apparently used the friendly lady that help Fou-Lu as a “sacrifice” to power the canon. EVIL! Fou-Lu survives and arrives at the capital. He meets statue guardian that recognizes him as the first emperor. Fou-Lu orders the guardian to destroy the imperial city. Fou-Lu is pissed, and just doesn’t seem to think humans are worth it...

As the guardian destroys the city, Fou-Lu cleans up loose ends, finally killing the general that ambushed him on the night of his awakening, and then killing the current emperor. The Emperor first tries to act subservient to Fou-Lu, but then stabs him with the “dragon slayer” sword. It doesn’t work and Fou-Lu laughs in his face.

Similar to Breath of Fire 3, the game has reached a point where it doesn’t have more story to tell, but wants to add hours. So there’s tons of little quests and obstacles that have little to do with the overall plot. It’s sad, because the minigames and mini-nations they’ve created are really interesting.

I tried to think back to how Final Fantasy 7 handled this. I think, for the most part, the game doesn’t make its endgame clear until much later. Most of the game is, “What should we do now?” So I don’t feel there’s as much a “rush” to get to the end. Also, much of the game is about tracking Sephiroth, so you’re really looking for clues as you find obstacles, vs having an end destination and just running into a million reasons why you can’t get to it. You feel out of control and inconvenienced. But these obstacles would make really interesting and fun side quests. Having them as options would absolutely make them more interesting.

Another thing that Final Fantasy 7 really succeeds at is making each new area a new piece of the puzzle. You’re always learning history about the world or a character. So while it might be a brief obstacle, it’s also an interesting deeper dive into the world. Breath of Fire’s diversions don’t feel as enlightening.

Still, BoF4′s diversions still feel like progress cause we inch closer to the goal...it’s just that we’re not getting much character or world development in the process.

Combat

I do prefer the combat over BoF3 (and many RPGs). I like that the other characters are always on-call in the battle, and it’s easy to switch out (more so than Final Fantasy X -- how I remember it anyway). I’ve done zero grinding, and I’m pretty proud that I’ve survived so far. After crossing the sea, it seemed like the enemies were getting ahead of me, but I got better at using the spell combos (which are cool!). So surviving a few battles usually meant getting a few levels up. When I first played the game, i was cool with grinding, but I’m glad I don’t have to now. The only thing that is cheating: I gave myself 99999+ zenny. So I’m able to stock up on healing supplies. Though it helps, I’m sure a few hours of grinding would have me being just as well stock on healing supplies.

Is it better than Breath of Fire 3?

I’m a little torn. Breath of Fire 4 is “epic”. There are multiple nations that have a strong sense of culture and history. The mythology around the dragons is of the galactic scale. World War is in the balance and my party includes two members of royalty and two semi-gods. The world feels huge even if the story is pretty linear.

In contrast, Breath of Fire 3 had three nations--that I could tell: Wyndia, Eastern Kingdom, and across the sea. Strangely, Wyndia had gangster cities, gangster markets, and amoral lab that was accidentally making mutants. While eastern kingdom seemed pretty chill and peaceful--but lacked a ruling entity. Hmmm...

Where Breath of Fire 3 feels “better” is that it feels more personal. The story starts small: a lost dragon-boy found my starving thieves. We live in a small town and solve small-town issues. This slowly grows to include local gangsters, a kingdom, and a dragon holocaust before we battle God. I like Breath of Fire 4′s characters, but I feel like I have a stronger bond with BoF3′s. Also, I felt like BoF3 tried to explore the grey area: killing monsters that had feelings. I felt emotionally challenged in the different scenarios. Whereas, BoF4 is always: “We’re the good guys, and we do the good things!”

[cursewoodrecap]

Session 22: Five-Dimensional Man-Go

This is a session I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. I get to introduce three of my favorite characters in the entire campaign. 

In the real world it’s been a while, but this was the session we officially welcomed a new chaos goblin player to the table. And damn, am I glad we did.

Valeria goes to Hoeska’s armor smiths for some upgrades, and accidentally kicks off a goth fashion montage. Her new armor has gorgeous black detailing with purple rose accents, accessorized with a brand-new Shusva-skin bag with matching claw clasp. Gral picks up a fancy Shusva-leather cloak and belt. Shoshana, realizing that a vampire’s castle is basically a Hot Topic, gets some fishnet arm warmers to accompany her fang necklace. We also get some healing potions and hope they aren’t made from lost souls or anything.

Valeria resummons Aethis, who pops back into existence in a burst of glitter that’s entirely incongruous with the local grim aesthetic. Apparently celestial gators are only mildly inconvenienced by fatalities.

As we hitch up the horses to get back on the road, we find out Ser Boris is also preparing to head out. “Woods full of many nasty creatures. Must keep hunting! Maybe I find way down to Barroch, I have heard monsters are attacking workers there.”

Gral perks up at the name of his people’s capitol. “I’m sure the orcs will treat you well. What kind of monsters are they dealing with?”

“Wolves, bears, maybe werewolf? I will find out when I get there! Cursebreakers do not have much of working relationship with orcs, so info is scattered. That is why I must investigate!”

While he heads south into orc territory, we’re gonna go north toward Sturmhearst to look into all the Key nonsense Professor Bjork told us is goin’ down. It’ll be a long trip; it’s on the coast, and we’re well into the heartland of the wood. As we get closer, we’re gonna have to look for new maps, too – the patchwork of safe zones and Curse disasters changes rapidly, and the roads that were passable a month ago might be deathtraps today.

We trek for several blessedly uneventful days. One night, in a region where a sizable number of halflings have settled, we have the fortune of seeing an inn on the horizon as night starts to fall. A sign proclaims the Fusilier’s Rest, a combination winery and inn located on a lush vineyard. Valeria’s kind of suspicious of anything too plant-based right now, but the rest of us totally want a winery tour.

We hitch up our wagon next to a post labeled Valet Parking. Aethis parks themself in the stables. Looking at the place, with its rather low doorframe and quaintly painted décor, we suspect Demish wine snootery instead of weird plant cults.

We duck through the door and take in the scene. It’s on the upscale end of totally normal, with locals sitting around eating and a huge pot of Demish onion soup bubbling on the hearth. The old halfling bartender is wearing pieces of a worn but well-cared-for blue-and-gold uniform. Two polished old pistols hang within reach on the wall, along with a pristine old Fusille musket in a place of honor behind the bar. Shiny medals in a handmade case are proudly displayed atop the bar.

As is D&D protocol, we look around for any notably wacky characters. We find them in the corner: an old man with unkempt white hair and multi-lensed, colorful glasses, engrossed in a game of Man-go against a young human doctor. We know he’s a doctor, because he’s got a stubby-beaked Sturmhearst mask pushed up to expose a tired but friendly face. His coat might once have been a lab coat, but it’s since been patched and sutured together so many times that it’s probably done a full ship-of-Theseus. His right arm is in a makeshift sling, and he’s nursing a small glass of Kevan vodka; probably the closest thing they have to rotgut moonshine in a wine-snob place like this.

We’re like, neat. Let’s eat soup.

Valeria orders a local vineyard wine and chats with the bartender about it. “The man who runs it is a madman; he thinks he can grow good wine grapes in Valdia. But he pays my sister well, she does her best.”

“Oh, don’t listen to René, his sister does marvelous work! No halfling will admit that wine grown outside Demionde will be more than spoiled grape juice,” teases one of the local barflies.

Gral asks Valeria who’s winning the Man-go game. The old man is rambling pleasantly, barely paying attention, and he is absolutely crushing the young doctor. The doctor looks like he’s totally aware he’s being taken to the cleaners, but he’s gonna let the old guy have his fun. As the game draws to a close, the younger man smiles ruefully and hands over a few coins. Meanwhile, the old fella, his eyes magnified to mismatched sizes by his funky glasses, spots our most conspicuous party member.

“Kyr! How’s the wine?” he calls, beckoning her over.

“Quite good actually!” Valeria chirps. “Was that the Kiloni maneuver?”

“Yes, or a variant I picked up somewhere! The Killam maneuver…kilometer…kilowatt? Something of the sort.”

Valeria very much wants to play him, and the old guy’s defeated opponent is happy to trade her his spot. The young man’s propped up leg hits the ground with a suspiciously loud clunk as he vacates his chair for her.

The old man peers up at her, bright-eyed even behind multiple layers of glass. “So what brings a Knight of the Rose here?”

“We’re headed to Sturmhearst, actually!”

“I see! I’ve heard the roads between here and there are pretty tricky to travel, you know.”

“No kidding. Do you have an updated map?”

He snaps his fingers. “No, but I just came from there! I’ve got an old map and I can easily update it for you kids. René is on night watch, I’ll leave it with him so you don’t have to stay up waiting for me to finish it. I know a route that’ll get you there lickety-split and safe as trousers! Now let me guess, you played at the clubs in Aurentium? You have the look about you.”

“Not the clubs, precisely…”

“Ah! Street rules, then!”

Valeria, who played Man-go against literally everyone who would have her, shrugs. “Maybe?”

“René, we’ll need some cups and a dumb hat!” the old man calls.

The young doctor wanders over to the bar and gets a refill, settling down next to Shoshana. “Hey, wanna bet on their game? The old guy’s pretty sharp.”

Shoshana laughs. “Oh, my friend is definitely gonna lose. I’ll put a silver on her, though, out of loyalty.”

It’s an odd game to spectate. Valeria falls behind early on; an insight check shows he’s not cheating, he’s just VERY good. Oh, and also Valeria’s assuming an entirely different set of house rules than this guy, and it’s tripping her up. Wait, are we doing street style, or dock style? Anyway, Valeria’s wearing the dumb hat now. At one point they both spit on the board.

“Y’know, I’ve never seen anyone from Sturmhearst take the mask off,” Shoshana says to her new drinking buddy, watching the game with confusion.

“On the clock, it’d be a safety hazard! But off the clock, eh, it’s fine. Some people get more elitist than me about it, I’m a hometown Valdian through and through.”

(You’re from Joisey, I’m from Joisey! What exit?)

“I haven’t actually been to the university since the Curse started, but I’m heading back to research some stuff I found out up in the Grammelsmarsh swamps. Some real disconcerting stuff regarding undead, and the like. The locals refer to it as the Wailing Wight.”

Shoshana gives him a once-over, rolling a decent Perception. He’s scruffy, though that could mostly be from hard travel, and definitely looks like he’s had a rough time of it. His arm’s in a sling and the little exposed skin Shoshana can see has more than its share of nicks and scars. His gait when he walked over was slightly uneven, one leg making a suspiciously heavy thunk against the wooden floor. Over his shoulder, he’s carrying a long, heavy case sealed with tar for waterproofing.

Hold up. She points to the case. “Do you have an alive guy in there?”

“…Uh.”

“You hesitated, and that’s not great.”

“Uh…no. No, I do not have an alive guy in here,” he says awkwardly.

“Okay, because the last time there was a weird bag, there was a whole-ass dude in there, and it turned into a whole thing.”

“N-no, no no no, there’s no person in the case,” he protests, not quite meeting Shoshana’s judgy cat eyes. He definitely doesn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea, even though the case has started gently twitching.

Meanwhile, old Man-Go man has proved himself quite fluent in Draco-Aquilian, though with an unmistakable mammalian accent. Gral butts into the lively conversation when it winds back to Valdian. “It seems like you’re rather well traveled. What is your profession?”

“Oh, y’know, I go here and there. I’ve been around. There’s so much to see out there!”

Valeria smiles. “I can’t fault you there. Anything in particular you’re looking for?

“I go wherever the winds take me, mostly,” he says, as if Cursewood travel isn’t the most dangerous hobby since they invented pyromancer cookoffs.

Valeria, impressively, only loses the game by a little. The old man jovially shakes her hand and promises to go get started on that map to Sturmhearst for us, springing to his feet with surprising deftness for his age and bustling up toward his room.

Gral and Shoshana, meanwhile, are busy makin’ friends with the doctor guy. “What swamp were you fighting undead in?”

“The Grammelsmarsh? It’s downriver of Mornheim.”

“Ohhh! We heard some, uh, adventurers did a purifying ritual on the river. It might help your situation?”

“That’s great, but…I dunno. Once you mix in swamp gas, things get a lot more interesting.”

“The explosions kind of interesting?”

“…Sometimes.”

The players have noticed that our doctor friend here is, like…not an NPC, there’s another guy at the table (the same player as Isadora! :D), so we start sizing each other up as travel companions.

“You seem like a pretty decent guy,” Gral says, immediately insight checking.

“I mean, you guys seem on the up-and-up too?”

Shoshana winks at him. “Well, I’m not that up-and-up but these two are very diplomatic and important.”

“If you’re also headed up to Sturmhearst, it might make sense for us to travel together? I’m not very quiet,” he admits, knocking on his knee with a clang, “but if you-“

“Hello!” Valeria, hearing clanking, has clanked over loudly to join. “Kyr Valeria Argent, at your service!”

“Uh, hi! I’m Vigdor. I’m a doctor! I mean, you knew that, with the, uh-“ He points to his bird mask. “If you need any balms or salves – I mean, I’m mostly a surgeon, but I know some herbology.”

Is that so! We chat about Dr. Ulmus and Dr. Kjeller. Everyone loves Dr Kjeller!

“I’ve heard of Dr. Kjeller! I haven’t met the guy, but he’s the leading expert on troll physiology. Getting him to come lecture hasn’t worked out so far.”

We ask René the innkeeper about any local threats. Apparently this town’s gotten lucky; the biggest threats recently have just been bandits and one overaggressive badger.

“Oh yeah, one of my cats fought one of those, it went badly,” Shoshana remembers. “For the badger, I mean. I have weird cats.”

(The inn also has cat. His name is Jean Clawed.)

Eventually we all head upstairs. As the night bears on, the girls fall asleep, presumably after painting each other’s toe claws and gossiping. Gral’s still awake, practicing his lute in the rare luxury of a single room, when he pauses. Something doesn’t sound right.

Putting his lute aside, he listens cautiously at the window and feels a deep dread grow in his stomach. The faint scent of ozone drifts in the air. The crickets and night birds have gone dead silent, and in the unsettling quiet he can hear the terrible growling, piping sound he’s heard twice before: once in a house in a hole, and once as Bullbreaker’s expedition faced its destruction.

With great urgency and no volume control, Gral sends a Message to a sleeping Shoshana: “RED ALERT, KEY SHIT’S HERE.” Shoshana wakes up and kicks Valeria.

Gral then sends a Message to our new friend Vigdor, more calmly. “If you have weapons, get them now. Something is happening, it’s going to be dangerous.”

The early warning lets Vigdor and Valeria armor up, Shoshana helping Valeria buckle on the heavy pieces in a hurry. Meanwhile, Gral sprints downstairs, casting Mirror Image as he goes.

René the innkeeper is cleaning his fusille with practiced precision, humming an old marching song. Gral can hear something moving in the kitchen behind the old halfling, so he pops another stealthy Message cantrip. “This is the orc from earlier. I think something bad is in the kitchen – I’ve heard that noise before. Hold on tight to that musket, I’m going in.”

“The back door is locked, I would have heard someone come in,” the old soldier whispers back.

“These things don’t use doors,” Gral hisses.

A 17 Persuasion convinces René, who loads a bullet into his musket. “Where are those friends of yours?”

A heavy clank from upstairs answers that question, as Vigdor and Valeria thud toward the stairs. Gral scopes out the room and sees, on the bar, a big leather map case. The map from the Man-Go guy! Then he peers into the kitchen and, yup, that’s a fleshhound, all right.

Everyone else upstairs bursts into the hall just as a second fleshhound emerges into existence next to them. Shoshana, without hesitation, hits it with a gout of flame. Its strange ethereal flesh solidifies for a moment, but then it shakes itself and charges forward, its displacement energy restored.

Meanwhile, the one downstairs doesn’t aim for Gral or René, trying to run past them. Gral plays a discordant note on his lute, using his Minor Key at the opposite frequency to its vibration and preventing it from displacing, before he strikes. A spectral, scarred orc swings a warhammer down on the creature, Thrice-Burned’s ghost getting some payback as Gral’s blade strikes true.

René takes a shot with his musket and crit-fails, understandably freaked out by the writhing mass of teleporting tentacles, the wild shot careening directly into Gral. Luckily, it only pops a Mirror Image, but everyone upstairs hears a frustrated yell of “NO. FRIEND! ME FRIEND!”

Vigdor dashes past Valeria to the stairs, his previously-motionless arm reaching out of its sling to slap her on the armor with a resounding clash of metal. A silver Jotunn rune glows through the cloth of his sleeve, and she feels Protection from Good and Evil snap into place over her. She takes the cue and stabs the hound, rose vines bursting from her trident and stabbing their long thorns into its oddly flickering flesh.

The pupils on the Eyegis snap to the space behind the beast. Our normal eyes see nothing, but the Key-aligned shield’s eyes see a magical gate, faintly connected to the hound.

As a member of the Order of the Rose, Valeria’s trained to deal with fiendish incursions. This isn’t a portal to the Hells, but she thinks it might get closed similarly. As she charges forward to deal with it, everything seems to move twice as fast as it should: the Key’s spatial distortion has made certain areas the opposite of difficult terrain, where you can move double your speed. Nyoom!

Shoshana zaps it with lightning and heads downstairs to help Gral, who’s being slapped by tentacles. The zapped one flees toward the portal, but Valeria Sentinels and stabs it to death. The downstairs hound gets its tentacles into the real Gral.

Vigdor moves to Gral’s aid, ripping away the last of his sling and clamping a large circular blade to his forearm. With the pull of a ripcord, it loudly whirs into motion. As the Buzzing Butcher slams into the displacer hound with a gory squelch, he asks about sneak attack, like a rogue!

A very, very loud rogue.

Gral breaks away from the hound’s tentacles and looks around. Through the windows, more fleshhounds have appeared outside. The space outside is warped – leaving this inn is going to be very difficult while all this nonsense is going on. The lights of the vineyard seem miles away.

However, Gral realizes, the hound responded to the sound of his lute. And when he used his Minor Key he caught a glimpse of the portal it came through. He begins to play again, using the Minor Key to try to take control of it. The GM allows him to burn a 3rd level spell slot for a colossal roll of 33. He moves the portal inside a wall, to temporarily block anything coming through.

René takes a shot at the remaining hound and misses.

Valeria, upstairs, draws her chained sword and spends a 1st level slot to try to close the portal, the same way paladins close Infernal gateways. The chains of Rack extend from the sword and stitch the portal shut.

(Gral and Valeria each gain inspiration for using Portal Trixx!)

A Thing Occurs at initiative 0, and we hear strange piping coming from the stables. We’re kind of occupied, so we trust Aethis to bite anything that bothers the horses.

Shoshana sprints down the stairs and to the bar. Aw, there’s another flesh hound coming in from the kitchen. Her Chill Touch misses, and the new monster slaps Gral.

Vigdor nyooms through a Zoom, which makes some Really Weird doppler effects happen with his clanky leg and his buzzy arm. He slides across the bar like an action hero and slams his saw down, missing the hound and showering the room in a hail of splinters.

Valeria is still upstairs, and it is LOUD downstairs. She’s gonna dash to get the heck down there and rejoin the festivities.

Gral Phantasmal Forces the new fleshhound, and in its mind, horrible liquid tendrils emerge from the soup pot and constrict around it. The soup rises to the defense of the Fusilier’s Rest!

René gets his wits about him and takes a pistol shot at the nearer fleshhound, tagging it with a bullet and keeping it in place. “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE. OUR POLICY IS NO PETS! I will not make an exception for you, you do NOT seem particularly polite!”

The fleshhound grabs the map case off the bar and starts to run for it. René hits it with the butt of his rifle. The second hound can’t attack Vigdor since it’s too busy convincing itself soup isn’t dangerous, so Vigdor’s free to draw his pistol and unload a Sneak Attack bullet into the fleeing hound’s back.

René reloads his musket. It’s been a long time since he’s done it under fire, but the Royal Fusilier Corps of Demionde does not half-ass their training.

The portal the hound’s heading for bisects a wall now, so it might be hard for the hound to get through.  Before it can worry about that, though, it comes face to face with Valeria, who’s ready to rumble. She kills it, dropping the map to the ground, and skitters through the Zoomy Zone to try to trident the second hound. It displaces out of the way.

Gral seizes control of another portal, and this time decides to use it to see what’s going on. He tries to hop out to the stables, where that weird noise is coming from. He enters a weird nether space full of the flickering bodies of fleshhounds, writhing and blinking, which the DM calls the Threshold. Gral accepts psychic damage to see what’s going on, and the patterns become clearer as the Key takes hold temporarily in his brain. These portals all connect to each other and the Threshold at the same time. Whatever’s out in the stables, making that eerie piping noise, is tied to the portals – it can’t fully exist in our realm. So if you close all the portals, it’ll force that thing to leave; if you drive it away, the portals will close. Either way, the Key’s influence on this place will fade.

Oh, and that thing out in the stables? It’s the Lurke r again.

Gral’s old enemy wrests control of the portal back from Gral, who stumbles back out into the inn, reeling from the sudden whammy of Key taint.

Shosha shoots lightning at the nearest hound, which retaliates by leaping through her, disrupting her matter with its own. It’s a highly unpleasant experience. A new hound jumps out of the portal next to Valeria. As Vigdor, Shoshana, and René all attack, Gral shuts another portal with his lute’s magic. “Guys, there’s something horrible in the stables!” he shouts. “If we bust enough portals it’ll go away!”

The Lurker continues to make mysterious dice rolls, but apparently it’s rolling poorly, so we don’t quite find out what it’s up to. It peers through one of the last few portals, only visible to Gral and the Eyegis. It’s hard to get a good look at, fifth-dimensional as it is, but it’s weirdly humanoid, actually? It’s surrounded by floating lanterns and holding some sort of pipe or flute.

(The DM notes that Jean Clawed is awake and doesn’t see why any of this is his business. He’s capable of using the portals; he’s not Key tainted, that’s just how cats are.)

We exchange blows with the remaining hounds, Chromatic Orbs flying and chainsaws buzzing. René bayonets a hound to death, for the honor of all NPCs.

Gral powerslides on his knees across the Zoomy Zone, playing a complicated riff, woobling himself right through the fireplace into the kitchen. He spends another level 3 spell slot to get the portal to dance itself shut. “And that was Through the Fire and Flames!”

René reloads his gun. Shoshana blasts the hound with fire, so Vigdor’s action goes off and he chainsaws it to death, the body and spine getting caught in the spinning chain. FATALITY.

The searing light of Shoshana’s fire casts sharp shadows on the walls of the inn, which begin to writhe and re-form, swirling together into a lithe, snarling feline shape that springs toward the Lurker. It pounces with an odd, broken yowl that’s incredibly familiar – although Valeria and Gral have only ever heard it once, from underneath an overturned laundry basket.

Vigdor, who’s never met a flesh-hound OR a cursecat before, makes an arcana check to figure out what in the seven hells is going on. It seems some sort of entity is thinning the barriers between realities? Its very essence seems to be intermingled with portal; it cannot fully leave the portal or exist in this realm. Like a malevolent, sentient pair of curtains.

He’s like okay, curtains sound like something I can chainsaw. It’s curtains for you, see? (Fun fact: if he rolls 21 or higher on attack roll with chainsaw, he gets sneak attack regardless of other circumstances. Because it’s a goddamn CHAINSAW.)

The Lurker turns its attention directly on us, or at least to the enormous hissing cat hellbent on ruining its day. Gral, still strumming furiously, realizes the Lurker’s only got a couple of portals left. He’s closed a portal already; he’s gonna try to close all of them for good. The DM imposes disadvantage and a brutal pile of psychic damage, but Gral is unphased, hitting a power chord that shakes the entire inn.

The Lurker screeches and reaches for him, the space around Gral beginning to warp, but it’s too late, the portal slamming shut against it. The Zoomy Zones vanish; the portals close, the strange atmosphere fades. The road looks to be the size it was before instead of an endless stretch of packed earth; the vineyard is once again an easy ten-minute walk away.

His big solo complete, Gral sways and collapses unconscious. Valeria runs over and Lays On Hands so he doesn’t die, while Vigdor starts casting Mending on the destroyed bar furniture. Shoshana, meanwhile, just stares dumbstruck at the place where a huge spectral cat is dissipating into shadowy smoke.

“…Schmendrick?”

René is holding himself together, but he’s an old man and it’s been a while since he fought this much. He took a bit of damage; Valeria pat pats him some HP. “Thank you, Kyr. I…I need to check on my other guests. The old man with the Man-Go game, we must find out if he lives.”

Valeria accompanies him upstairs. Rack’s glowing rose vines are still visible, stitching the portal shut; it’s healing more quickly than Valeria’s used to seeing. The door to the old man’s room swings open under Valeria’s cautious knock. The bed is unmade but empty, and the old man’s luggage is gone. The only things left are a generous tip on the counter and his odd multicolored glasses.

As Vigdor steps outside to clean viscera off his chainsaw, Gral scopes out the stables. There’s evidence of disturbed earth around the grounds, but nothing conclusive. Aethis seems to be unbothered.

We reconvene without much to show for our investigation. But we have one last clue: Why were the hounds so interested in the old man’s map? We spread it out on one of the bar tables and crowd around. It’s a map of Valdia, but the path it shows us to take to Sturmhearst makes No Sense. It’s not even contiguous! It tells us to start here and wander north, and then the line cuts off next to some scribbled equations, the route picking up again elsewhere, where he’s drawn a symbol we don’t recognize – and so on, in strange and nonsensical disconnected paths.

Shoshana, on a hunch, puts on the multicolored glasses the old man left behind. Like 3D glasses, they reveal the hidden image. Through the kaleidoscopic lenses, she can see remnants of the Key’s influence all around the inn; the fading Zoomy Zones and closing portals light up in ultraviolet. The map, meanwhile, has gained an entirely new dimension, like a layer of holographs. NOW the shortcuts make sense – they route through other dimensions along the z-axis, with additional symbols and labels giving helpful hints.

To be honest, it does look like a much faster route. And one of the notes says it leads to the “Drowned City” – hey, isn’t that where Bullbreaker ended up? But we’re all rightfully wary of hopping right back into another flesh-hound portal disaster.

We now have the Extradimensional Map and the Stranger’s Glasses.

Oh! The map has a note for us: “Happy Journeys to a fellow master of the game. Your friend, T.T.”

We immediately rifle through our notes and realize he may have been Professor Trevor Twombly, Headmaster of Sturmhearst. Vigdor, did you know that guy?!

Vigdor didn’t recognize him. Maybe the guy looked like Twombly, if you squint? There were a lot of old men at Sturmhearst, and they wear masks most of the time? Also he had distracting glasses? So, like…maybe?

As we bicker, Vigdor snags the glasses off the table and heads to his room, opening up his case and taking a look. The lenses don’t reveal anything new about the object inside.

Unfortunately, the poor rogue didn’t bother to stealth. “Whatcha doin’ in here?” says Valeria, who followed shortly behind.

“Um, just looking at my leg, seeing if anything is weird-“

Valeria immediately checks Vigdor’s lower limbs for wounds. “I can help! An extra pair of hands can always-”

“No, no! I think I’m okay! Really!” he protests. He glances into the case again, clearly torn, and sighs. “Let me explain.”

He lifts a whole human leg out of the case, kicking and twitching.

“This is my leg, and I’m taking it to Sturmhearst. I’m not sure if it’s wholly mine anymore.”

Through his torn pants, Valeria can see a clunky clockwork leg to match his buzz-saw arm.

One player immediately yells “FULL METAL ALCHEMIST.” Another player says it again, in a slightly different voice.

Dr. Vigdor Gavril has joined the party!

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S3 Ep22: Mokuba Gets Murdered

So today’s is...a long update, I may half it, but I’m gonna be away from my computer a whole bunch for a few weeks so like...if I half it you’re gonna be waiting on that other half for...kind of a while and by then I may have sort of forgotten what was happening in the first half. So I dunno, maybe I’ll just make this a huge ass...59 cap post.

honestly it’s mostly 59 caps because, surprisingly, no one dueled this episode.

I KNOW.

When I saw that “To be continued” last episode I really thought I’d have to deal with more paper-form BS but Noah finally plopped over at the beginning of this episode so I guess he’s just officially done playing cards now. Everyone has been turned back from being stoneware with absolutely no consequential brain damage. Probably because you could not do any more damage than what has been previously done.

But don’t worry he’ll get some more brain damage in by the end of this episode.

Remember the plot point that Tristan was slowly becoming a real monkey? I think he forgot about that because he’s been a monkey for...a realllllly long time and he kinda like...continues to just be Tristan. Maybe Tristan was nearly a monkey to begin with?

We also get a rare sighting of an actual real deal hug on this show and it was from the last person you’d ever expect.

Surprisingly heartwarming for this show.

If that duel disk goes off, both of them are super dead. Hugging in a duel disk might be the most dangerous sport either of these boys have ever done.

Anyway, because Seto and Mokuba were the first ones to go, they have no idea that any time has passed at all.

He seems pretty OK for Yugi just nonchalantly taking his dragons but this is VR and...the cards aren’t...actually here. So like...Yugi didn’t actually steal anything? No proof, no crime.

To be honest, no one should have any cards in any of their decks right now, but the show kind of forgets that these digital cards need to be drafted each round. It’s fine.

Anyway, in the wake of losing a card game, Noah just remembered that he’s a freakin god of this universe so he decides to just go for plan B, which you would think would be most people’s plan A.

(more under the cut)

Ya Noah could have peaced out at any point in this show, but because he was trying to impress Daddy he just...didn’t?

Not like it mattered because the integral plot device was like “oh yeah guys, I’m in this show, too, completely forgot. Oops, is it too late? It’s already episode 22? Eh, better late than never.”

and don’t be deceived by the cap, it showed like...every millennium item for some reason. You’d think it wouldn't show the rod because Yugi doesn’t have that, but apparently Marik up there on the ship was like “the hell is this going off for?” and then just shrugged it off.

Noah gets...mostly this image of a well waxed Pharaoh while Yugi gets images of Noah’s memories, where he finds out each of Yugi’s friends and Yugi himself were stuffed in little sci fi VR pods. You’d think that they wouldn’t need to access Noah’s memories to realize that. Should’ve been the first thing they realized when they got here. In VR.

Like, think about it, the only other person that got kicked out of here was Pegasus. And to kick out Pegasus it took all of Yugi’s friends except Bakura. Apparently this time all Yugi needs is for Pharaoh to focus (and Bakura to be just...youknow...present, I guess. Assuming the writers haven’t forgotten that Bakura’s still in there)

I think they mostly did this memory exchange as an excuse to give us a review--thing is there’s so much weird stuff to review it feels a lot like exposition. Like I don’t remember seeing these big boys before:

There is just...a lot of design put into this robot you only see like a couple of times. Some concept artist when all ham so I wonder...was this his OC? I’m so glad his weird OC sleepytime bot got into Yugioh. Good for him.

So at this point I kinda turned to my bro and was like “this feels a lot like the Matrix, doesn’t it?” and then in rolls in the bright purple cloud of “you don’t even know.”

I’ll just leave this here.

back to Yugioh.

Yo I kinda forgot in the mayhem that Kaiba’s Dad was clearly here this whole time. I figured we’d run into him, I didn’t really think he’d Castlevania it up in the sky in order to do it.

So this show presents these two brain orb AI monsters as being pretty well...alive...in that Orb because we’ve only heard this explanation from two AI beings who are pretty sure they never died. But, are they alive, really? Did they really transcend to a higher plane like Noah thinks? Or was this a thinly veiled murder/suicide? Did Gozaburo Kaiba kill his son because he could not allow him to be crippled, seeing an opportunity test out this crazy orb AI that needed a human brain in order to function--knowing full well what he was doing? And then later kill himself after losing everything to Seto?

Like, I’ve heard that in the Japanese version, Gozaburo commits suicide and in the English version he does not. But, at least from where I’m sitting...I think he commits suicide in both versions. Like, maybe it’s because I’m an adult watching this and not a child, but it feels like Gozaburo did this in order to set a trap for Seto as his last screw you before he left this mortal plane.

Either way, Noah’s kind of an idiot and so he still has not caught on. What followed was the three very worst Kaiba boys just kind of shouting at eachother for 5-10 minutes but, like, on completely different wavelengths, every single one. The lack of communication between these dumbasses right after Gozaburo drops this horrifying bomb of “and then I killed myself to kill all of you” was actually pretty low key hilarious.

The dub then got very confused as to when Noah died. Really confused, I’m not going to analyze that too much, it’s dub problems. Dubs do that sometimes.

Also, this is a new Noah outfit. Huh. shame we never got to know it.

Anyway, as the truth comes out, suddenly this accidental Kaiba family therapy

sesh everyone else in this High School class is privy to just starts escalating.

OH OK, KID’S SHOW.

Yo, remember how many jokes I made that Kaiba was raised in Outer Heaven? Apparently I was WAY closer than I realized.

And speaking of Metal Gear:

Anyway, remember that random idea that Noah dropped on us to consume the world with VR tech? I knew it would come back, just not quite like this. Not with a nice Power Point slide show via the sky from the Most Evil Mufasa.

And that was how Kaiba’s Dad decided “I was once scorned by a rude 12 year old, lets destroy every human on Earth and extinguish all civilization.”

So basically the entire freakin ocean is just filled with these robots? Just completely polluted with nighty-night bots?

Yo.

So like this whole time we’ve been following Marik, who’s trying to destroy the world, and keeping babysitting tabs on Bakura, who’s trying to destroy the world, but Kaiba just wants to be the best and show everyone else up so he just decided to set in motion the entirety of humanity’s destruction BEFORE THIS SERIES EVER STARTED.

*coughs* I can’t believe Yugioh just did the Matrix better than the Matrix.

Now listen, I know what I said--and I have to tell you, the Matrix was one of my favorite movies when it came out when I was wee middle schooler and watched it secretly at my friend’s house. It was rated R for absolutely no reason, and so I wasn’t supposed to watch it--but I did anyway and it was very thrilling to break the law like that. Keanu Reeves did a middle finger--yes, that was the cuss that put it into R territory--and I was like “wow, he is crazy!”

But, while it’ll always hold a place in my little tween heart, that one did not age well. Mostly because, once it stepped away from the cave allegory you have to start asking questions like “so...how did everyone get trapped in the Matrix?” and it was like “because the robots needed batteries. So like...humans...became batteries...rather than..........actual batteries.” which makes a lot of sense when you’re like a child and you don’t know how batteries work, but as an adult it’s like “...so they’re not very smart robots, then?”

But, Matrix came out about 1999, and because it was super cool, it influenced everything. This show was about 2001, and Kaiba’s wearing a floor length coat--I really think there may have been a bit of an influence?

And I think they may have explained how all humanity would get placed in the Matrix better than that movie series that was like 3 movies and a bunch of video games and a very violent cartoon. And like, the Yugioh explanation is still balls insane, but hey, at least this motive makes sense.

And then, at this point, Mokuba’s Stockholm Syndrome came back, but this time it’s just plain old fashioned Stockholm Syndrome, no weird brainwashing on the part of Noah was necessary to make any of this happen.

Like I really think Moki’s finally snapped. It’s finally snapped. He doesn’t know have any idea what is going on anymore and desperately needs a nap. A nap that will last like 5 days. Moki needs to go to the beach and just...not move for about a straight week to recover from the mess of this tournament.

Most people at this point would be like “yeah I think maybe Noah isn’t trustworthy” but this group of kids--this is the only group of kids that sees a cackling undead digital ghost dude hunched over like this who has already tried to kill them on multiple occasions--straight up just 10 minutes ago--and says “he’s probably much better now.”

Just 10 feet away from them, Marik is desperately trying to finish the arc he started, but keeps running into filler problems. Which is this door.

This X-men door, the most powerful filler villain in the Yugioh universe.

I can’t believe they explained away Marik--super powerful evil villain that bested Bakura--by using one singular door that kept him occupied for like 20 episodes.

Apparently the bedtime bots are equiped with Huge Lasers.

Which kind of defeats the purpose of keeping everyone alive to send them to the VR realm?

But whatever, they have huge lasers, but little do they know, Marik can shoot lasers out of that necklace he stole off Bakura, and he didn’t actually do that and it’s kind of a bummer. Instead he reflects the lasers with the rod. Which then makes you wonder--is that why Bakura didn’t use his laser attack then? Because of the reflection issue?

Sorry I can’t believe I even entertained that idea. Clearly they completely forgot about S1 at this point. It feels like it’s been so many years since things were simple and you could shoot lasers out of your eyeball/necklace.

And then, canonically, Marik gave up on this door. This normal ass door. The only foe he has ever stepped down to.

This door has faced the ultimate evil, it has stared down an actual fallen god born of anger and violence, who, after thousands of years steeped in an abusive tomb, has risen to consume the entire world, but, this door, using all of it’s bolts and joints you can buy at your local Home Depot, sent that fallen god back whence he came. Which was a blimp. Marik came from a blimp.

This door should be the 4th God Card.

(I want y’all to know that I originally wrote “5th” god card and bro corrected me because I literally thought there were 4 this entire time.)

The amount of time that Mokuba was not kidnapped after Yugi and co just saved him? I want to say maybe 10 minutes. He got one hug from Seto, and then went back to the kidnap zone.

Apparently, Noah decided to trap everyone else in their old memories--which is an interesting way to recap what happened in S2. The trap doesn’t trick them very well because these guys are missing a fair amount of memory at this point, so they basically got served a bunch of weird nonsense.

So while those guys are going to go down their very, very short memory lanes, Noah takes Mokuba to the same exact Dave & Busters that Tea and Yugi went on a date to back in like S2. Like this is the same exact one. And what’s nuts is I think they even redid the backgrounds, but definitely used S2 as reference. It’s quite the devotion to detail.

Noah tried to invent some sort of weird mystery doorway but then Mokuba was like “yeah it’s in the game right? Don’t say no, because I am hankering for some arcade time--don’t touch the other stick though, I want to play solo.″ and then Mokuba just proceeded to play this 2 person arcade game by himself while Noah just...watches.

In Dukes memories, Tristan looks the same as Duke’s always perceived him.

There’s just a lot to take in here.

But don’t worry, it gets weirder than three cultists on one small toy monkey, because here comes some romantic development that had absolutely no basis in reality. This is just so freakin weird, get ready for it.

They definitely almost run over Duke and Serenity--Joey’s sister--and Joey does not not seem to have any reaction to nearly running over his little sister on the road, because one second later, this is happening.

And that was how Noah managed to insert his JoeyxMai fanfiction into Joey’s head and tried his damnedest to make it canon. It’s wild. I can’t believe Noah was a shipper this whole time. Like, who else has he been secretly shipping???

Noah had a split second to use his fabulous orb brain to deal with Joey, and while he used actual memories from the other kids, when it came to Joey, he sort of stopped and went “oh yes, my OTP!”

So then, in this split second Noah kinda turned to his pile of Joey fanfic he keeps stashed in the corner of his Orb Brain Consciousness and was like “well I have this really good one I wrote where Mai wasn’t in the coma yet, and there clearly aren’t enough romantic sunsets, and like...what if they were getting married? Oh man I love this AU! This is so good, can’t wait to upload it to his brain, OMG, he’ll love it. What if they were in Hawaii or something!? OMG they’re so freakin cute.”

Like everyone else on this show who has a canon relationship had to go through some type of sweet hell terror memory but Joey--just Joey--got to go on a date or something and then seal his love with a ring. Like we’ve seen many indicators that Noah is a small child but this was probably the biggest indicator we’ve seen of Noah’s maturity level when he was like “this is how relationships work.”

Again, Yugioh just writing your fanfiction for you--did you want an AU where Mai and Joey’s age wasn’t an issue and she also wasn’t in a coma yet and was uncharacteristically like “lets run off and get married?” because usually you’d have to search Google for that content, but now it’s just here and given to you on a silver platter.

At about the same time they were fully convinced none of this was a real memory, they all ended up back here, minus Kaibas. Joey apparently took the longest amount of time although he had the most bizarre set of memories. He probably just wanted to see where that fic would pan out, but like most fic’s, it kinda stopped updating at about chapter 3 so he gave up on it.

Just a few blocks away, Mokuba and Noah’s playdate from Hell is going according to plan, and Noah is just biding his time before snatching a body. But, before he does, I guess Noah did want to see what happens in this arcade game Moki’s playing because he’s just been standing here admiring Mokuba’s work.

Even Noah at this point is surprised at how deeply Mokuba has Stockholm Syndrome. Noah was just not prepared for how low Mokuba’s expectations are regarding his evil and pathological brothers.

Actual line of the show through this whole ironic experience, Noah just saying “wow...I almost feel bad”

Anyway remember that DDR game--that huge screened DDR game where Tea had a dance fight with Johnny Steps during her date with Yugi?

Did you ever think it would, one and half seasons later, become the scene of a horrific crime?

Did you ever think that the crime that would occur on the inane DDR machine that Tea once had a dance fight on against a guy wearing fringe moccasins would later be the scene of a family betrayal where Mokuba got murdered by his own dead secret older brother?

Because I sure didn’t.

Anyway, now equipped with his ultimate form--a very small kid with hair that weighs more than the kid itself, Noah rises from his grave.

I kind of love evil Moki, not going to lie.

Apparently Moki’s evil in Season 0 so I’ll probs have to go back to that season eventually to get more of that evil Moki fix.

I hope this is the type of scene that will end this entire show, TBH, just a crazy ass Moki cackling over the bodies of every other card player. That would be such a good way to end this series.

Anyway, I don't know whennnn the next update will be. I may update on that later--maybe not, but until we meet again, we’ll just leave evil Moki here in this nearly abandoned SeaQuest, laughing his face off over the sweet tunes of some Plantasia.

[jewish-blackula]

weird sanders’ sides headcannon

i really want to write this but i don’t feel like i can right now. maybe i will soon

Roman is in the military, he’s dreamed of being a knight his entire life and has been training his body since he was nine

His dad was in the air force and his grandfather was in the navy, the family tree has basically been dancing around the military and Roman just said ‘fuck it’ and went for it

He gets injured in battle pretty early on because he puts everyone else’s life before his

It’s his left leg

He keeps insisting it’s fine but

He gets honorably discharged soon after because he can’t even walk anymore

He gets home and for a while, lives in his own apartment in a smallish town in New York above his childhood best friend’s bakery where he works alongside him

(the baker, who is Patton lives next door with his husband, Logan)

Soon the environment gets too quiet for Roman and he needs something to do other than just baking, even though he loves his friends

He starts talking with Logan and he’s shown this platform called YouTube for the first time

Of course he’d heard of it before, he just didn’t really get around to checking it out, he got his first phone a year ago

And he’s shown short films and music videos and that is when Roman finds his new life passion

Acting

He starts listening to musicals, starting with Hamilton

The first time he listens to it, he’s a little uneasy because a lot of songs have excessively loud noises and even though his headphones are pretty low to begin with, it just worries him

But he does love the songs that aren’t super loud

His favorite is the Story of Tonight because of the brotherhood between the four of them and it reminds him of all of his favorite parts of his short-lived service

From there he is introduced to more and more musicals and soon he is just this huge musical theatre nerd and Patton is excited because

“He hasn’t smiled this much since before he was discharged, Logan!”

Roman spends another year in the bakery learning about the musical theatre scene and and YouTube and just listening to some many showtunes

And a lot of customers can hear him singing from the back and he becomes quite well known in the town for being the Singing Baker

Once word gets out that he’s also an army veteran and he’s under the age of 30, he gets multiple younger people asking him out, but he very politely turns them down for now, he’s just not really into the whole relationship scene right now

Sometimes Roman wishes that he could act on stage, but he doubts he can, he can barely walk and eventually he just gives up on it

However, he’s now almost always on YouTube when he isn’t working or exercising

(And occasionally while doing those things too, but Logan would discreetly murder him if he found out he wasn’t on task during work)

One day he’s complaining to Logan about his dilemma and Logan offhandedly says

“You’re watching YouTube so much, you could just do covers on the site.”

And thus starts Roman’s YouTube career

He gets a laptop from Patton for his birthday and Logan provides a suggestion for an editing platform and pays for it as well

Starts very small, a cover of Burn transposed into a lower key by Patton

(Who was apparently also an amazing musician alongside being the best baker Roman knows? How?)

Learning how to edit was the hardest part, but he looked it up on YouTube and slowly figured it out

He tries learning how to record just audio, but he decides to put that one on pause until he gets a proper mic and

He gets really excited to post and excited for people to see the video

But once it goes up

Nobody

Sees

It

Well, until he actually posted a small clip of it on his twitter instagram and tumblr

all of which he had built up a small following of loyal fans in the past few months so that if ever needed, he could get them to do his bidding

The video gets popular enough for his liking and he gets a few subscribers and makes another one

He starts to find a rhythm of operating with these things and can soon start integrating more and more things into his videos and starts to grow

He also starts making videos where he talks about the military and also

Roman screamed the first time another YouTuber reached out to him

(Patton thought something was actually wrong and nearly slapped him upside the head for scaring him so badly)

(once he realized what actually happened, he was also very excited)

Another small YouTuber, going by AnxiousAngelV (or just V) DMed him on Instagram asking about some of his work and which side of the country he was working from

Roman admittedly didn’t actually know who this guy was, but after watching a bunch of his guitar covers and art videos, he fell in love with his work, though, none of his videos or his pictures showed his whole face

((hell yes this is prinxiety, i am garbage for this ship))

They become mutuals and as their channels grow more and more, they do collaborations where V will play guitar on a song as accompaniment with Roman singing over it

They constantly argue which one they did is the best

V likes “Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner” cover they did, not only because he picked the song, but because it was the first one V sang with Roman

he falls asleep to it most nights

Roman’s favorite is “A Lovely Night,” V doesn’t play guitar in it, but Patton plays both ukulele and Logan did a some piano

(Roman keeps getting surprised by his friends’ musical abilities. They’re all so amazing)

The real reason it’s Roman’s favorite is because V sings Emma Stone’s part and his voice is

So pretty

he falls asleep to it every night without fail

V sometimes animates over covers Roman does specifically for that purpose, but not very often because his hand is already blistered from constant strumming without a pick

They have the same favorite for this one, which is also the most viewed video on V’s channel

“So This Is Love” from Cinderella

They end up building a ridiculous fandom empire and they may or may not each have their own secret fan account where they may or may not both be writing fanfiction about each other

It doesn’t take long before Roman wants to meet up

(well, he always wanted to meet up, he just didn’t want to push V into an uncomfortable position)

It takes half a year to convince V to meet in person because of “special accommodations” he has to take care of

They decide to do it at Playlist Live, which both of them were going to

And they hype it up for a while on social media and through text

When Roman flies down to Orlando, he texts V all the way there, especially during the parts where V gets on the second flight there and starts getting more anxious

The first day of Playlist rolls around and Roman sits at their designated spot outside the convention center for a while

It’s after five minutes of standing there that he realizes that he’s getting frantically texted by V

He’s having an  anxiety attack

V tells him where his hotel room and building is and Roman

Runs

(he nearly broke his back, he can’t run as well as he used to)

He gets there and almost pounds on the door, but stops himself so he doesn’t scare V too bad

The door opens enough for Roman to swing it open and engulf V in his arms

They spend the next ten minutes calming down

In the next hour, Roman finds out that V is completely paralyzed from the waist down, that his name is not actually V, it’s Virgil, and that Virgil is single and very gay

Virgil doesn’t stop touching Roman (usually in small subtle ways) the entire time

Roman eventually stops trying to talk and they cuddle in the bed and Roman pulls him as close as humanly possible, to keep him safe, from what he doesn’t really know, but he protects him anyway

They’re planning a date by the end of the night

Since they both live in New York, they decided to wait until they get back, just because this was unfamiliar territory and Virgil didn’t need anything else in his life making him nervous

Patton and Logan basically adopt Virgil

Virgil moves into the apartment upstairs with Roman

Their wedding was in the bakery

[aarontveit]

Gavin, John, Bradley, Siobahn, Clayton, Mary

GAVIN.

1: sexuality head canon: Gavin doesn’t have a sexuality. I mean, he does have a sexuality, but there is no real identifier that I’d go for. I mean, there’s the joking way of looking at it, which is to say that his sexuality is “yes.” Except I don’t even want to say that, because he very much is someone who will say no. NOT THAT OTHER PEOPLE DON’T THAT WE LABEL AS “YES” AS A JOKE. I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Maybe I just enjoy the idea of him having a labelless sexuality? 2: otp: - Gavin/Dean- Gavin/Tom- Gavin/Tracy (non-romantically) - Gavin/EphThere’s a part of me that actively ships Ryan with Gavin, for numerous reasons. I’m not as vocal about my interests there, mostly because so many of my characters are intertwined with him - but now, with Erin taking over as him, it’s easier to delve into that “obsession.” Ryan, for me, has quite the crush on Gavin. This guy, this young guy, was just there for his siblings, without asking for anything in return. He was there. In a way that Ryan couldn’t trust anyone else to be. There’s so much faith there, so much understanding, so much respect. Gavin has just been so damn good to Ryan, so it’s easy to see where that “crush” comes into play. Would I actually want it to come into play & something to happen? Absolutely not. It’s still fun to think about, though, because Gavin would definitely be Ryan’s type to some extent. 3: brotp: - Dean- Eph- Tracy- Gavin/Anger4: notp: - literally anyone not mentioned above- especially Gavin/Neil- Gavin/Talking During Sex5: first head canon that pops into my head: Because of how John was with him, and because of seeing John as a father figure when he couldn’t count on Crowley (because he’s never been able to count on him), he had days where he often just wished that John was his father, and it was a bit difficult for him to have that thought when, you know, he was thinking about Dean sexually [when it happened]. There was just a large part of him that wished he could have been more related to that family, even though he knew how broken & fucked up they were. There was always a sense of belonging that came with the Winchesters that he didn’t get with his own family, despite having that closeness with his sister. He felt guilty for that feeling, for wishing he could be “belong” to another family. So, he actively kept those thoughts to himself (much like he would anything, really). 6: one way in which I relate to this character: I, too, have an unspeakable rage that dwells inside me & I will one day snap!I, too, will kill anyone who dares to harm Dean.7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character:Um, please revisit the third thing listed in my NOTPs!!!!!

JOHN.

1: sexuality head canon: John is, very much so, polysexual. Except, much like Tom, he doesn’t actually know that word exists, so he doesn’t really put a label to himself. Not to mention, he’s John fucking Winchester & he can do whatever the hell he wants in terms of his interests. Fuck the world. Also, let’s be real, the guy is AnnaSexual, AlcoholSexual, and low-key GavinSexual but he can’t admit to any of this - well, maybe the alcohol. 2: otp: - John/Alcohol - John/Gavin- John/AnnaSomeone explain to me why I’m a disgusting trash can who ships John with no one his own fucking age what the fuck is wrong with me, I feel like a horrible god damned person holy shit. This is horrible. 3: brotp: - Victor- Eleanor [low-key]- Gavin4: notp: - John/Interacting With Dean- John/Anna- John/Gavin5: first head canon that pops into my head: John has actual feelings for Anna, and it’s weird, and he knows he shouldn’t have them. He knows that he can’t have them, because that’s Anna fucking Milton. She’s an infant in comparison to him. He knows there’s a power imbalance there, he knows that it isn’t okay, and it’s why he actively tries to avoid her. There’s nothing about this, about that, that he would wish to impose on her. He’s a screwed up individual, and he doesn’t see himself as a good person in the slightest (which, technically, he’s really not). He doesn’t want Anna to ever see what’s underneath the shell that she’s seen him wear. He wishes, to be honest, that Anna could be somehow looped into things with Gavin & Dean.... which is weird. That’s a weird thought for him to have. This whole response has been weird, bye.6: one way in which I relate to this character: I, too, have alcohol abuse/reliance problems & it’s actually why I rarely drink now.7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character: Every single time he thinks about Anna in a cheer leading uniform.What the fuck, John?

BRADLEY.

1: sexuality head canon: Bradley is 100% gay, but because of compulsory heterosexuality placed upon by Thierry, and by the town in general, he still sleeps with women sometimes. He does get off on it, and there are times when he legitimately enjoys it - but in the end, it’s not something he actually wants to do. He’d rather be face down on a bed with a dick in his ass, but you know! I also feel the need to mention that while he is starved for romantic attention & validation, and while he experiences romantic attraction, he does not actively want those feelings & he does not actively want them returned (mostly because he doesn’t trust them and/or believe them). Bradley, without a doubt, falls along the aro spectrum, it just has yet to be decided where on that spectrum he lies. And like, even with his homosexuality, it’s hard for him to sit there and say, flat out, “Yeah, I’m a gay man.” Like, he can say it, but it’s a whole other thing for him to mean it? Thanks, Thierry! You’ve been a real pal!2: otp: - Bradley/Fabien- Bradley/Ryan- Bradley/Junkie AestheticI’m always going to  be a fan of Bradley & Ryan, because I know their entire history up inside my head, and it rips me to shreds. Ryan is the only person who has ever shown Bradley what love really looks like, has made Bradley feel like he’s deserving of that love. He makes Bradley feel in ways the guy didn’t even know he could. Those feelings terrify him though, and it’s part of the reason I also don’t ship them - because that fear manifests itself in such a negative light, that it causes Bradley to lash out at Ryan. It makes Bradley abusive to Ryan - and Bradley’s history doesn’t absolve him of that responsibility. Then there’s Fabien. That’s an entirely different story because of them being brothers & then their weird codependent dynamic that’s also not codependent. I don’t know, it’s so weird, but Bradley’s so addicted when it comes to him. Fabien knows him so well, can read him like a book. Bradley knows it, too, and he welcomes it. It’s why it’s so hard for him to accept this Stepford version of his brother, a version of this guy who sees what Bradley looks like right now, and says nothing. It breaks him in a way that has yet to be touched on. Bradley never thought he’d see a day where he wished he was dealing with the addiction in Fabien, not the cult. In another light, I also don’t ship Bradley romantically with people. He’s just so starved for that acceptance, and it’s unhealthy. I want to say that he needs to be able to learn to accept himself before he can begin to love another, but I don’t think he will ever be able to love himself, because everything that he sees is just a lie - something that shouldn’t be able to exist. Not to mention that Bradley is on the aro spectrum. God, he’s borderline akoiromantic, if not actually so. Which is interesting for me because so is Chet. Anyway.3: brotp: - Fabien- Ryan- SageI am, honestly, interested in the progression of his friendships with Anna & Adina as things go on, especially when Adina finds out. It’s going to be so fun! Because Adina’s going to love having someone new in the family, and she’ll be so weirdly amused to know it’s Bradley of all people, haha. Bradley doesn’t really know how to process being the town witch’s sibling, but he doesn’t really mind because he knows Adina is super chill. He’s a little weirded out by it all though, and there’s just so much possibility there! With him becoming close with Anna, and them relating to one another on some fronts. They’re great! They’ll be even greater! I mention Anna a little less only because I’m still forcing myself out of the mindset that is, “If he wasn’t related to Anna, they would bone because she would be able to dom that boy & he’d adore it, regardless of her being a woman.” Bradley doesn’t discriminate from good sex! 4: notp: - Bradley/Prestyn- Bradley/Drugs- Bradley/Balthazar- Bradley/Clayton- Bradley/Depression5: first head canon that pops into my head: Bradley has absolutely been involved with prostitution. The extent of that is unknown, but it was definitely something he was involved in. I also firmly believe that Bradley (while with Balthazar) would participate in “sharing.” I forget what the actual name is for this noise, but basically it’s Bradley being shared to other people for sexual purposes - and like, he wouldn’t have been opposed to this. See, I know that Balthazar was possessive as fuck when it came to Bradley, which is why I can see this having happened even more. Because it falls under the territory of Bradley only truly being pleased by him, that Balthazar could only truly give Bradley what he wanted (sexually). 6: one way in which I relate to this character: There are a number of ways in which I can relate to him, and I’d rather not cry, so no.7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character: That boy is the biggest, hardest, most subbiest sub I have ever role played as.

SIOBAHN.

1: sexuality head canon: I picture Siobahn have a pretty fluid sexuality, but also just being insanely bisexual. I also feel like her sexuality, sometimes, might be confusing for her? I don’t know if I’m equating that with her profession, or what. It’s just something that’s kind of inside my head. So, I could be way off base there. She absolutely owns herself, though, and her sexuality. Siobahn is her own person, with her own body, and she owns that knowledge. It’s her super power.2: otp: - Siobahn/Mel- Siobahn/David- Siobahn/Hael3: brotp: - David- MelThere hasn’t been much done with them, but I’d like to think Brady should be on this list.4: notp:- Siobahn/CastielI only actively do not want Castiel involved with Siobahn in any way, shape, or form because he’s so [unintentionally (unless it’s Hael)] horrible to people. He’s selfish, inconsiderate, and self-serving. I don’t want her to get mixed up in that shitty behaviour because the girl deserves so much more in her life. Let her live under the same roof as David, or Hael (not both, for obvious reasons), so she can be loved, appreciated, and get a good lay in whenever she wants. The girl deserves it!!! Let her live!!!!  5: first head canon that pops into my head: Her & Mel have definitely worked on a client together.6: one way in which I relate to this character: I don’t. She’s too powerful. I can’t relate to a fucking Goddess. 7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character: Her interest in Castiel. YOU DESERVE BETTER, HONEY! LOVE YOURSELF!!

CLAYTON.

1: sexuality head canon: Honestly, I really don’t know. I mean, he’s certainly BradleySexual.2: otp: - Clayton/Bradley3: brotp: - Bradley4: notp: - Clayton/Bradley- anyone that isn’t Bradley5: first head canon that pops into my head: Anything I could think of has pretty much been talked about, so instead, I’m going to talk about how much I love that he went out of his way to sleep with Balthazar so he could prove to Bradley that he was a sack of crap, but then it kind of worked out in the end anyway even though Clayton had done that. Honestly, I fucking love that because it’s so dark, and it’s twisted. And if Bradley had found out, it would have hilarious for Clayton to realize he’d done it all for nothing because Bradley would have shrugged off that “newfound” knowledge and told him, “So? Not like he hasn’t done it before. Not like I haven’t done it before.” Which, by the way, Bradley never actively cheated on Balthazar, but he definitely alluded to having done so. ANYWAY, so yeah, poor Clayton in a way, to be honest.6: one way in which I relate to this character: I, too, am a little fucking weird. (shut up)7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character: ………………………………………..the things he says…………………during sex………..

MARY.

1: sexuality head canon: I don’t like saying straight, but I feel like in the case of Mary, she’s straight.And a little EphSexual, but in a confusing way that’s not real.2: otp: - Mary/Eph3: brotp: - Mary/EphThere has not been much interaction outside of them to warrant anyone else making this list, except for minor moments involving Kirsten - but that was literally for live tweeting purposes, so who knows if they’re really friends, but I think the consensus there is that they’re supposed to be. We should work on that.4: notp: - Mary/Eph, respectively 5: first head canon that pops into my head: She really wanted to reach out & talk more to Ephraim when the stuff with Neil came out, when his “accusations” were made against him, and the town seemed to [again] turn against Eph because Neil was just the “stand up guy.” She didn’t think he was lying, because how could Ephraim, of all people, lie about something like that? It didn’t really add up, so she knew there was validity to it, and she was concerned about him. This feeling came about again when his parents were murdered - but really, what could she have said in those moments? I feel like there was a powerless emotion that’s been there ever since these moments. 6: one way in which I relate to this character: I DON’T. But this will probably change.7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character:When she was asking Eph if he thought about before, if things had been different.Yeah….

[sparrowwritings]

Writing Challenge Day 1: Girlfriend

Original post   ---   Next Day

It was weird, being a girlfriend.

Charlie had been one before, sure, but joining the Dauntless on its mission to explore new galactic territory as a fighter pilot had made her previous relationship null by default. Thankfully they’d ended on good terms, at least from the occasional holiday interstellar mail cards she got. 

This time was different, though. Charlie and her fellow pilots were a team--more than that, a family. All of them had told her numerous stories about their families and significant others. She’d eaten up every one of them with a smile and a proud glow. She’d wanted to join them in celebrating those that she loved, but was just as happy staying on the sidelines since she had nothing to contribute. But now she had something to contribute. Charlie was in a relationship and it was wonderful.

And she was scared shitless of telling the others about it.

“You’re being stupid again.” Thankfully, Charlie could voice her concerns to her not-pilot best friend. Maha barely spared her a glance from the hard light display in front of her. “If anything they’ll be happy that you’re happy. You’re just overthinking things.” 

Charlie rolled her eyes. “You’re one to talk.”

“Which is exactly why your worrying is ridiculous.” Maha turned the display in one hand and made adjustments with the other. Charlie watched as the differently colored lights played on Maha’s dark skin. It reminded her of the patterns of stars that surrounded her personal ship in the precious few seconds before the engines kicked on and propelled her forward. “If they had a problem with it, they’d let you know right away. Or so you’ve told me.” She adjusted the display so that she could give Charlie a stern look. “Since I’ve yet to meet them.”

“There just isn’t time!” Charlie flopped back on her bunk and held up her hand to count out the reasons. “First of all, while I’m on duty I’m either training or going on patrol. Same goes for everyone on the team,” She held up another finger. “Second of all, you and I are lucky enough to both have down time in the relatively same time period. Everyone else has significantly different schedules. THIRD of all you’re a scientist so you’re a nerd--” Maha snorted and went back to paying attention to the display. “--and everyone makes fun of nerds when we’ve all got time together. Don’t laugh, I’m serious!” Charlie covered her face with the hand she had been counting with. “I just...I want them to be as happy for me like I am for them...y’know?”

Maha sighed and leaned over in her seat to ruffle up Charlie’s short pink hair. “They will be. You just have to get over yourself and TALK. They’ll listen.” 

Charlie frowned, and was about to retaliate when her com pinged the Important Message sound. She scrambled into a sitting position and opened up the message immediately. Briefly, Maha tried to read the message herself, but that display was both backwards and keyed into Charlie’s specific clearance, and so unreadable to anyone else. After a moment or two, the message closed, but Charlie was still staring as if she was still reading it. 

Maha poked her friend. “Well?”

“There’s going to be a get together.” Charlie turned her brown eyes to gaze into Maha’s own green ones. A grin quickly grew. “And we can invite up to two people to join us!” 

“A get together? For what?” Maha furrowed her brow. 

Charlie was already up and practically dancing around the room. “Our troop leader got an award for something! And got special permission to host it! We’re in allied territory right now, so there’s no need for more than the minimum amount of protection!” Her pale hands clasped Maha’s dark ones as she tried to get her friend to join her. Stubbornly, Maha stayed seated. “You can meet the squad! The techs! Everyone!”

“When IS this?” Just as Charlie started to babble in military time, Maha stopped her. “In Dauntless standard time?” 

“Oh, tomorrow at third mess.” Charlie watched Maha calculate when that would be, and then frown even further. Her good mood lowered a little. 

“I’m scheduled for the labs until just before third mess is over. I’m not sure if I can make it.” 

“But you’ve got to!” Charlie squeezed Maha’s hands desperately. She felt a little better when her hands were squeezed back.

“We’ll see. For now, maybe focus on getting over this stupid problem of yours so that I don’t have to hear you complain about it anymore.” As she spoke, Maha claimed back her limbs and went back to focusing on the display that she still had up. With a final adjustment, the figure turned green and played a victory tune. “Finally.”

“You know there ARE better games out there,” Charlie said cheekily.

“No there aren’t.”

“You nerd.”

Charlie tapped on the table, glancing at the door for what felt like the millionth time. She had only been half paying attention to the conversation her squad mates were having, she was so preoccupied. It took Rollins saying her name several times and tapping her on the temple to get her to look back at everyone else. 

“Welcome back, Nova. Have a nice flight?” The others laughed and Charlie felt her face heat up. 

“Sorry, guys.”

Rollins clapped Charlie on the back. “Waiting for someone?” Charlie bit her lip and nodded. “Someone special, then if you’re actually keeping your mouth shut about it.”

“Hey--!” Charlie stuttered in protest. It took her a couple of tries to give a reply, and before she could she was interrupted again.

“You know we’re just gonna keep this up since you’re flustered, right?” Okino grinned from her seat. A few others agreed. Charlie’s face was definitely the color of her hair, she could feel it.

Rollins wrapped an arm around Charlie’s shoulders. “C’mon, spill the beans. Who’s got you all hot and bothered, Nova?” 

Charlie opened her mouth and tried to speak, but it was like her tongue had grown three times its size in a few minutes. She wished Maha were there to help. 

Thankfully her utter humiliation was delayed by Gerstein running up and slamming his hands on the table. His face told everyone that he’d had at least a couple too many drinks. “GUYS GUYS you would not believe--” He leaned against the table with one arm and pointed in the direction of the rest of the crowd with the other. “MY GIRLFRIEND MAN she’s, she’s amazing.” Someone muttered about how she had to be to put up with him. Rollins got up to smack some sense into that person. Gerstein babbled about the possibly made up qualities of his girlfriend up until the moment she finally found him to take him back to his bunk. 

The table was quiet for a long moment before someone decided to talk about their own significant other. This was the trigger that sparked an enthusiastic round of bragging about the qualities of their partners. Charlie sat quietly and set herself to listen, as usual. Something was different about this boast session, however. A warm, harshly insistent feeling started to build up. It wasn’t anger, Charlie knew what anger felt like. It wasn’t love, because she knew exactly what it felt like when she swelled with love. It wasn’t until the feeling had filled her up and she was on her feet that she realized what it was: Pride. Pride was what drove her to finally start talking. If a touch too loud.

“My girlfriend is so great!” Everyone at the table turned to face her. She could feel her face turn redder than ever but she didn’t care. “She’s so smart that she got promoted three times in the first year she was on the Dauntless! And she’s so passionate about her work! She’ll go on and on about her work and I won’t understand what it means half the time but it sounds just, so STELLAR!”

Since her audience was already captive, she emphasized her speech with hand gestures. “And her looks! She’s got nebulae and galaxies shining on her skin every time a light’s on her! And her eyes are so green, they match the plants she works with! She’s just so, amazing and wonderful and, and--” Charlie had to stop to catch her breath for a moment, but pressed onward. “She’s also such a nerd. She keeps playing this silly hard light game and trying to beat her own score on how many moves she can make to solve the puzzle. It’s, it’s adorable.” She fell back hard onto her seat, panting. It was only then that she realized that her face hurt from how much she had been smiling. 

The whole table erupted into cheers. Hands clapped Charlie’s back and shoulders. She was a little dizzy from using so much air, but from what she could understand, her whole squad was congratulating her. It was like she was on a low gravity walk, she felt so light.

Suddenly, the doors to the mess hall slid open and a very familiar and hurried face ran inside. Seeing that people were still around, the figure bent over, letting her myriad braids fall over her face for a moment. Charlie squirmed away from the close embrace of her squad mates and bounded over to her. Maha barely had time to recover before being dragged along by her hand to the table.

“Here she is! Maha, this is everyone. Everyone, this is my girlfriend, Maha.” Charlie turned her wide grin towards her girlfriend. Normally cool headed, it was clear that she was blushing from the sudden attention that everyone was giving her.

Being a girlfriend was weird, alright, but right now it was the best thing in the universe.

[wayward-wheels-blog]

Where Are My Keys?

She’s My Rider - Chapter III

Words: 3,061

Author’s Note: Am I the only one who sees the scenes in their head first and just tries to write it down? That last one reminded me that I forget to go back, take out the blocking, and add the subtext. Maybe it’s the theater kid in me. 

So … here’s a little more sub with your text.

Read Chapter I and Chapter II

There was no way in hell Dean was sleeping with Baby. Nope. No way. That was entirely too weird. He’d seen that show about taboo stuff where the dude fell in love with his hotrod, and he was not going to be that guy. He felt a little guilty for even thinking about it. A little. Rowena was right about one thing, though. Baby had power. It had been implied every which way from Sunday, and anyway, she wouldn’t be walking around on two legs <i>looking</i> like that if there wasn’t some serious mojo going on there. He went back through what Rowena said on his way back to the motel. Apparently, Sam and Baby had opted to walk.

She’s as powerful as they come, if she wants to be. But it was up to him? How in the hell did that make any kind of sense? Then he remembered that Castiel had flipped out on her the first night they brought her home. If he knew what she was, maybe he knew where to find the on-switch that sparked her power up. Whatever her power was. It was starting to feel futile and his head was starting to hurt. Whether it was from the whiskey or yelling at Baby, he didn’t know.

When he got to the room,  it looked like Sam had just been sitting there, waiting to pounce and scold. “I know,” Dean said before he could start. “I was a dick.” Sam wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that. He was clearly expecting the angry, stubborn version of his brother to walk through the door. “Uh, yeah. You were. And-” “I’ve gotta stop treating her like a child,” Dean cut him off. “I get it.” “Look, I know you’re worried about something happening to her. I’m worried too, but at some point, we’re gonna have to take off the training wheels.” Sam watched his brother pull off his jacket, but he was really watching him grapple with bigger things that had sufficiently worn him out.

“And she’s right,” he said. “She’s been here protecting us this whole time, but she was usually stuck outside when the really bad stuff went down.” That last bit slowed Dean down on his way to the mini-fridge and once he processed it, it stopped him altogether. He’d never considered that and he should have. Damnit. “You know she worries about us as much as we worry about her, right? As much as we worry about each other. B had to sit there, every time we got out of the car, and just … hope that we came back.” Sam bounced his brows at his brother, urging him to really think about that.

It hadn’t gone unnoticed by Dean that Baby thought a little too much like he did. He figured that was appropriate, given what she was, and with that in mind he knew Sam was right. “She’s tired of being on the bench, Dean.” The weight of Baby’s struggle dropped low in his stomach. He, of all people, should have known better. Idling on the curb while his family got bloody would have driven him batshit crazy. “ … Son of a bitch.” “Yeah,” Sam said, but what he really said was, “Now you’re getting it.”

–

Baby combed through the latest news updates looking for anything that sounded remotely hellhound’ish. So far, things had remained quiet for the evening. Maybe the hounds were full … which meant she had to find something else to keep her from brooding about the way Dean had been acting.

Gabriel had given her a body, but no compass to help her figure out what she was supposed to be doing. She only knew that she had a purpose, she had something to contribute, more than just being a proverbial tank. Things had gone so well when she first “woke up,” for lack of a better term. The boys put the world back on its axis, Mary was back, she was there … even Castiel couldn’t help but surrender to it, and to the fact that Baby was clearly family. They started to train her in whatever she didn’t know and she got a tattoo that she was fairly certain half the Midwest would mistake for a pentagram, and her a devil worshiper. The boys started with small hunts for her to cut her teeth on, made sure she knew how to handle herself, before they got back to scouring media the way they always did.   

When Lucifer came back, everything changed. The car was locked away in a shipping container that had every kind of ward you could think of on it, and if over-protective had a gear Sam and Dean kicked it up to fifth. Baby was unaccustomed to being the one who needed protection and she decided immediately that she didn’t like it one bit, but hard as she tried, she couldn’t prove them wrong.   She wanted to tell Dean who he was, to her anyway, but she’d never been able to form cohesive sentences that explained it. There weren’t really words for it, and Baby didn’t think she should tell him that if he died, she would die, or that she was only as limited as he wanted her to be. As far as her existence was concerned, he might as well be the sun.

She surfed through all of the television stations before she gave up and scrolled down to the channels that doubled as radio stations. She chose one that claimed you could “get the blues all day long” to find BB King wailing on Lucille to the tune of “The Thrill is Gone.” It made her nostalgic. God, she missed proper radio stations.

When the knock came, she knew who it was before she opened the door.   He always apologized. Baby pulled the door open to reveal a sheepish looking Dean with his hands tucked into his pockets and his shoulders curled, that quickly turned into a normal looking Dean with weirdly perfect, military posture. She waited, and he finally said, “Can I come in?”

–

The second Dean left the room, Sam lifted his phone back to his ear. “Cas, are you still there?”

“Yes,” came the grumbled reply. “Sam, if these really are Matilda’s hounds and she’s with them? Dean and Baby may very well be the only way to stop them.” Sam was staring at an artistic representation of Matilda and the Cwn Annwn on his laptop and a knowing worry began to creep up that back of his neck. “Why?” “Because,” Castiel sighed. “The hounds are to Matilda what B is to Dean. Hounds represented her lineage. She was one of the greatest hunters who ever lived, and it sounds to me like they’ve been released for a reason.”

Sam slowly lifted to his feet and he had a feeling he wouldn’t like the answer when he asked, “What do you mean?” He heard a scuffle on the other end of the phone and he thought he heard Cas and his mother arguing in reigned in tones before he heard her say, “Give me that.” “To smoke her out, Sam.” Mary said. “Apparently, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that the Impala hasn’t been on the road in a while.” “Wait, what?” “Word’s out that we killed the original vampire, and since almost everyone thinks the colt is gone-” “They think it has something to do with B,” Sam picked up.

“Sam …” Mary’s voice dropped. “Are we sure it doesn’t?” He didn’t have much experience with having a mother, but Sam assumed it was normal when that annoyed irritation shot through him, because he was pretty sure it was a feeling only a mother could produce. “Mom-” “I know what she is,” Mary cut him off. Castiel said her name with a warning in the background. Sam didn’t know what to say. “You and Dean head back to the bunker,” Mary said before she hung up. “I think it’s time for a family meeting.”

–

Baby sighed the way most girls do at insufferable men and stepped back out of Dean’s way. She really was … so human. It was hard now to imagine that she’d ever been made of metal, hard to remember what it felt like when she was … well, a car. He remembered the sense that he was where he belonged and that, however twisted his world got, he could straighten it out as long as he had the Impala. Only he didn’t see his badass car come to life anymore, because now she was made of tender flesh and breakable bones.     When he turned to look at Baby again, he flipped it all in reverse. He tried to see the years in her, the experiences she must have had, the highs and lows that the Winchesters put her through. He tried … and he failed. She just looked so innocent. So young.

“Seventy-seven,” he said.   She wasn’t expecting that one. “What?” “I’m 77 years old,” Dean said. “What felt like four months to you when I was gone was forty years for me, so, technically I’m an old man.” He could see her adding things up in her frown. Gone. <i>Hell.</i> When it clicked, her eyes rounded at him and he felt a little bad for bringing it up.     Dean had the ability to smile without smiling. You could see the muscles twitch with the effort but it was almost like the smile was too heavy. But the intention was there. “Now, correct me if I’m wrong,” he said. “But that gives me almost thirty years on you.”

He wondered if this would cause her to see him the way he saw her, like the cover was pretty but the pages were filled with scary things and uncharted territory. “I know I act like some horny, high school dropout half the time, and I know what I look like, but … I don’t feel like what I look like.” For the first time, maybe ever, she seemed to have no idea what to say to him. “Dean, why are you telling me this?” “Because.” He took a second to gather his thoughts. “Sam reminded me just now that you’ve been you for a lot longer than you’ve been human … and it hit me that I’ve been doing to you what everyone else did to me ten years ago.” Dean stepped back and motioned with his hand, up and down her body. “I look at you and I see some young, twenty-something bombshell that for all intents and purposes should be privy to Victoria’s secrets, not a girl that should be elbow-deep in death and violence with me and Sam.” “But that is where I should be,” Baby said. “It’s where I want to be.” Dean forced a smile that still didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “I know.” “So … you’re gonna let me come with you to talk to Crowley?”

Dean stayed quiet for longer than what he knew Baby thought was appropriate. He couldn’t get past the thought that he’d done some damage here and he should have known better. These were words he needed to get right, and for a man that barked more than he talked, it took a little more time. “Baby, you’re your own woman,” he said. “You don’t need my permission. You don’t need anyone’s permission. Ever. You make your own rules. If anyone tells you otherwise, you point them my way and we’ll have words.”

Silently he cussed at himself when he realized that was a concept she’d never tried to wrap her mind around. You stupid son of a bitch. That was the kind of thing a woman should know. It was the kind of thing that kept pricks like him from taking advantage. Because they would. Somewhere in the flurry of trying to protect her … he’d steered her wrong.

“What if it’s you that tells me that?” Damn, she was quick. She played chess while he played checkers. “I can’t promise you I won’t try to stop you from doing something I think is stupid. But what I think doesn’t matter. If you think you’re right?” Dean shrugged. He already knew she was smarter than he was. “Go with your gut, because you probably are.”

Baby’s features warmed from confusion to gratitude. That was the look he’d been aiming for and it relieved him a little when he got it, selfish as it was, because it meant he was out of the doghouse. “Besides,” he said. “I hear you’re some cosmic badass so, who am I to get in your way?” Her tone almost sounded sorry for him when she said, “You’re the reason I am who I am. You’re the only person that could get in my way.” That part, he definitely knew. That responsibility had been waking him up at night. “Well, I’m stepping off the asphalt. Highway’s yours.”  

One of those silent conversations passed between them again, an unspoken understanding of what and how they’d decided things were going to be. Afterwards, a small but subtly victorious smile lifted Baby’s features. “You can ride shotgun.” Dean grinned the cheshire-cat grin of a man that knew he was still full of surprises. “Sweetheart, if you think I’m gonna shut my cakehole? Believe me. That dog won’t hunt.”

He’d intended to shut the door behind him, but he turned right into Sam’s wide, worried eyes. “We’ve gotta go.”

–

Somewhere in hell, Crowley was slouched down in a miserably uncomfortable throne wondering why he hadn’t changed it out with something softer, and staring off into nowhere tonguing the self-loathing that kept him going. He’d forgotten Lucifer was there until he heard the mutt’s chains rattle when he shifted positions. “I hear you finally found out about the car,” he said.

Crowley tried to fight the curiosity that begged him to look up at the devil. It irritated him that Lucifer had caught his attention. But what if he knew something? He finally lifted his gaze with a slant that said, ‘This had better be good.’

Lucifer smiled like he was happy to see him and they’d just sat down to afternoon tea. “I hear they haven’t seen her on the road in a while.” “What’s it to you?” “Given I’ve been fighting against her for the souls of mankind for millennia?” The devil shrugged like it wasn’t that big of a deal. “Call it nostalgia.” “Come again?” “You think the Winchesters are the first real heroes I’ve seen rise and fall over the ages? They all come with one of her. Matilda had her hounds, Arthur had Excalibur, the Winchesters have a 1967 Chevrolet Impala,” he chuckled. “Times they are a’changing.”

“Oh yeah? Then, tell me, who was the last great hero you saw fall?” “Adolf Hitler.” Crowley rolled his eyes, “You realize he has a special place here …” “What? You didn’t know Hitler was a hunter before he was a dictator? Funny how they always leave that part out.” Something in Crowley bristled briefly, then, very calmly, he lifted to his feet and idled over to where Lucifer was sitting on the floor, moving in close so that when he hiked up the knees of his slacks and squatted down, he was leaning over the angel who’d fallen the furthest. Crowley’s fingers twitched up in the direction of Lucifer’s throat and the devil grunted. “You’re trying my patience, mutt,” he said while Lucifer’s face turned red. “Get to the point.”

When he pushed to his feet, Lucifer gasped and started sucking down air, released from the king’s Vador grip. “Fine!” Lucifer coughed. “Jeez, talk about work-related stress.” He rubbed at his neck and spoke like the information had been pried out of him against his will. Crowley knew it wasn’t. “Before the swastika was a Nazi thing, it was like her, it was a totem. The only thing left of the line because the surnames had changed over the years. Adolf didn’t know that, the poor schmuck was an artist, so he just thought it was something he’d always been inspired by. He had no idea who he was. What IT was. After the war, he was just a decorated soldier turned drifter who’d learned a thing or two and hunted monsters.”

“I’ve heard the poor-me artist to Sieg Heil, thanks,” Crowley said. “This had better be going somewhere.” “The Thule Society. You’ve heard of them …” “Of course,” Crowley said. “Well, they worked with a guy named Dietrich Eckart back in the day, and he knew exactly who Adolf was. All it took was a little mentoring … a little push in the right direction. Turn him away from the truth of what he could be, use his despair over the plight of his people to convince him all the evils, supernatural or otherwise, come from one enemy.” Lucifer shrugged with his chin as if it were simple. “Hero that he was, Adolf jumps in with both feet and designs the banner for the National Socialist German Worker’s Party using his own personal sigil. People start waving that thing in the streets and the more they wave it, the more Hitler talks, and the more Hitler talks, the further the swastika goes and, before you know it?” Lucifer clapped his hands like his favorite team just scored a touchdown. “Global domination, baby!”

“Let me guess,” Crowley said. “You were Eckart?” “Oh no, that was all Azazel,” Lucifer said as if he’d never take someone else’s credit. “Say what you will, but that guy knows how to pick ‘em.” Crowley stared through a barred window, turning these new insights over in his head. “So you let out the one beastie you thought had a chance of catching her, is that it? You think she’s the key to regaining your kingdom?” Crowley turned back on him, looking at Lucifer like he was so … predictable. “It won’t work. You must have learned by now that the one, surefire way to reap the wrath of the Winchesters is to go after one of their women. Those boys will scorch and salt the earth planet-wide before they let anyone get their hands on that girl.”

Lucifer smiled the smile of a demon that still knew he had cards up his sleeve and said, “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” Just before Crowley twitched his hand and his vertebrae cracked and his eyes were staring behind him.

[herotheshiro]

i didn’t know where to post this -- here or on my other blog where i’ve moved my fandom ramblings but i’ve decided to put it here since it kind of touches on more personal topics/feelings. jk i wrote it all out and i didn’t really touch too much on personal stuff so into the fandom blog it goes. also putting it under a read more bc it ended up being pretty damn long wow

recently had a sort of issue/not-issue on twitter where i kind of openly expressed my dislike for this one character. no essay backing up why i dislike them, but i do have my (valid) reasons and i tend to be kind of semi-serious w my hate so i didn’t think too much abt swinging my opinions around. and also since this twitter is a recent development, i’m more used to tumblr where even if you openly express an opinion, you have a ton of character space to utilize to explain your opinion so you tend to explain yourself anyway unlike twitter’s limited character tweets where you basically just express your opinion and that’s it. anyway i might have gotten a little carried away since i don’t really interact w anyone in fandoms anymore and only w my fam member who we enable each others’ opinions and put my opinion on my bio and i think that along w my tweet trail led to potentially being vagued abt by a twitter account that mostly posts abt that fandom. i still have reason to suspect that /i/ wasn’t the sole target of the vagueing (if even) bc they said some stuff abt this character’s negative opinion that apparently someone expressed that /i/ never overtly said (like he’s evil and bad simply bc of how he treats this one person but i never said that, just implied that he’s a general asshole and maybe his relationship w this one person isn’t as good as i’ve seen previously from the fandom which is what i’ve deduced from reading canon content). since they never mentioned names or twitter handles explicitly, i purposely made some tweets (still being open, no censoring on purpose) to try to get a direct response and also low-key targeting the vaguers (out of my paranoia that they were indeed talking abt me which honestly prob not but also it’s a relatively small eng-speaking fandom involved w this character so they have to have stumbled upon me at one point). i did get a response (not from the vaguer(s)) from someone calling me out for not censoring my open dislike of this one character. but i also suspect they knew abt my dislike of this one character stemming from their interactions w another character bc they started talking abt shipping even though i never mentioned a ship in those tweets (but i did mention the latter character though not in conjunction w the former). anyway i felt the familiar heat of embarrassment upon seeing that notif of their callout but i almost immediately felt better abt the entire situation bc i finally got the direct callout i was waiting for and i knew what i needed to take down. direct and clear action

in hindsight after i made a series of vagueing tweets last night lol i feel like this entire situation is just me creating unnecessary drama and wildly hitting even ppl not even involved at all (as noted by the callout which was supposedly having non-involved randos in mind) just to make myself feel better or something which isn’t really respectful in any way (and i was totally open abt me just swinging wildly after the callout and my ensuing taking down of posts. this isn’t even a private twitter where ig it’s apparently socially acceptable to talk abt shit like that). and also makes me think maybe i never really learned anything from being online for almost my entire life. a weird part of me has always wanted to become fandom-famous online but i’ve never succeeded in doing so nor have i made an online group of friends i can bounce my opinions and headcanons off of. so i’ve never really developed an online community, i’ve always just been on the fringes and yelling into the mass without getting much attention. now ik that apparently twitter does indeed chuck your opinions well into that mass (good and bad i suppose), it’s a bit surprising to actually get “attention” ... i also mentioned this in my tweets last night but i really really dislike getting vagued abt which my psychoanalyzing brain was like “that’s bc you don’t like not knowing what others think abt you irl” and yeah if you got an issue w me i’d prefer you to tell it directly to my face rather than pretend you like me (which is totally hypocritical bc i do the latter to others but also i tend to just swerve ppl i dislike so it’s not like i go out of my way to pretend to be nice to them).

idk where i was trying to go w this bc now that i’m writing it out i’m like wow yeah i’m still in the wrong huh. sometimes i am in the wrong like years ago when i got called out for grossly shipping irl ppl (which yes i will admit i did do once upon a time but now i no longer do it or am ok w it) but i don’t feel like i was in the wrong this time so i just feel a little frustrated abt the vagueing bc if i was part of the group they were vagueing abt then i was definitely painted as someone w no critical thinking skills which i do, i just don’t share their opinion which they think is right (and tbh i wonder if THEY have critical thinking skills bc they said some things in defense of their opinion which i don’t agree with esp if you’re interpreting canon content like that. are we even reading the same content). i do genuinely feel better abt the series now bc before i was literally anxiety whenever i thought of or even saw the related characters. my fam member was trying to talk abt the series to me and they weren’t even talking abt the related characters but i just wasn’t feeling it bc of this whole situation which i literally made abt me even though there was no indication whatsoever it was abt me. this all make me think that i really should take a good fucking long break from fandoms and social media bc it just gives me unneeded stress and anxiety abt cancel culture, trying to be likeable enough to become fandom-famous, seeing hot takes, etc etc. i’ve already been winding down in terms of strongly interacting w fandoms but my mental health has not been doing so hot recently bc of irl things and fandoms are not ameliorating it at all. ik for some fandoms do indeed make ppl feel better but that’s when ppl actually interact w them and they’re not stuck in a bubble of no response whatsoever while ppl may potentially gab abt them outside of that bubble. my issue is that i always feel the need to create when i really get into a fandom and when you create you want ppl to respond to your creations! so you need to interact w the fandom. but then i then want to actually interact w the fandom fr instead of just posting from time to time and staying out of it and you know where that gets me sometimes. i think it’s bc i had a good time in the pjo and warriors fandoms and i want something like that again in new fandoms i’m in but for whatever reason that’s not how it is now.

i didn’t jump into the vagueing tweet mess bc as i said i wasn’t directly called out and also better to just ignore it but i couldn’t get it out of my head. and that’s making me really consider leaving fandom social media and just create fanworks solely for myself without even posting them online. my works don’t really get much response anyway which is fine tbh even having 1 like these days is good enough so it’s not like i’d be losing out. but idk man ... sometimes you just want to share stuff w others. maybe i should just make my own website and put stuff on there w no expectation for likes or whatever. this has also made me re-evaluate whether or not i really do want to go into art professionally. ik this one situation is inevitable w putting your opinion out on the internet and i wasn’t even in the wrong i feel bc it’s not like i have a problematic opinion (racism, sexism, incest, etc) but it has put a damper on creating content to put online even if the content i eventually want to create is original and is in no way associated w fandoms. even as i write that out i realize it’s kind of stupid to have such a damper put on me. i should watch spiderverse again bc that was the film that really inspired me to create my own creative visual content again and also i’ve been feeling really uninspired lately. ik i shouldn’t let this kind of stuff get me down if i really want to create art in the future but it’s hard to deal w sometimes. honestly i really should be seeing a therapist but also wow now it’s delving into more personal territory so i’ll end it here.

tl;dr i need to learn how to chill on the internet and i think i need to create boundaries for fandoms fr and stick w those boundaries for the benefit of my mental health. maybe i shouldn’t have gotten a twitter in the first place lol even if all i made it for originally was just so i could message a proxy on twitter and not to actually get involved in fandom twitter. i didn’t even get the proxied good in the end anyway bc i was forced to cancel the payment by a third party bc the proxy had not sent me the good in months despite them updating relatively regularly on how busy they were as a student. hah that just how it be

also side note i was like to myself “ok you need to chill bc these series’ characters aren’t real. there’s no need to get so worked up over them” but then i realized even that opinion is “problematic” bc there are ppl out there who really use the characters as like idk a therapy object and i’m genuinely not trying to be an asshole i just forgot the specific wording you use. so even if i’m like ‘they’re fake’ there are others who are like ‘no they make me feel better so don’t hate !!’ which idk is a mentality which i think ppl should shift away from bc you can’t be in fandoms forever unless you’re a professional fictional content creator which is also an opinion i think a good number of ppl would disagree w (“they’re not bothering anyone and it’s their life so what are you to say what they should do??”). idk this is my hot take for the day i guess but it’s fine to be a fan of stuff as you grow up but i think it should become less of a focus/active part in your life as you grow older. i mean maybe that’s a cynical way of seeing things bc maybe creating fanwork is a good de-stressor for ppl but i think i feel that way bc i’m not going into creative content professionally career-wise but ... idk what i’m trying to say here. i guess i just have complicated thoughts on fandoms in general.

[gta-5-cheats]

How to price cryptocurrencies

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How to price cryptocurrencies

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Predicting cryptocurrency prices is a fool’s game, yet this fool is about to try. The drivers of a single cryptocurrency’s value are currently too varied and vague to make assessments based on any one point. News is trending up on Bitcoin? Maybe there’s a hack or an API failure that is driving it down at the same time. Ethereum looking sluggish? Who knows: Maybe someone will build a new smarter DAO tomorrow that will draw in the big spenders.

So how do you invest? Or, more correctly, on which currency should you bet?

The key to understanding what to buy or sell and when to hold is to use the tools associated with assessing the value of open-source projects. This has been said again and again, but to understand the current crypto boom you have to go back to the quiet rise of Linux.

Linux appeared on most radars during the dot-com bubble. At that time, if you wanted to set up a web server, you had to physically ship a Windows server or Sun Sparc Station to a server farm where it would do the hard work of delivering Pets.com HTML. At the same time, Linux, like a freight train running on a parallel path to Microsoft and Sun, would consistently allow developers to build one-off projects very quickly and easily using an OS and toolset that were improving daily. In comparison, then, the massive hardware and software expenditures associated with the status quo solution providers were deeply inefficient, and very quickly all of the tech giants that made their money on software now made their money on services or, like Sun, folded.

From the acorn of Linux an open-source forest bloomed. But there was one clear problem: You couldn’t make money from open source. You could consult and you could sell products that used open-source components, but early builders built primarily for the betterment of humanity and not the betterment of their bank accounts.

Cryptocurrencies have followed the Linux model almost exactly, but cryptocurrencies have cash value. Therefore, when you’re working on a crypto project you’re not doing it for the common good or for the joy of writing free software. You’re writing it with the expectation of a big payout. This, therefore, clouds the value judgements of many programmers. The same folks that brought you Python, PHP, Django and Node.js are back… and now they’re programming money.

Check the codebase

This year will be the year of great reckoning in the token sale and cryptocurrency space. While many companies have been able to get away with poor or unusable codebases, I doubt developers will let future companies get away with so much smoke and mirrors. It’s safe to say we can expect posts like this one detailing Storj’s anemic codebase to become the norm and, more importantly, that these commentaries will sink many so-called ICOs. Though massive, the money trough that is flowing from ICO to ICO is finite and at some point there will be greater scrutiny paid to incomplete work.

Latest Crunch Report

What does this mean? It means to understand cryptocurrency you have to treat it like a startup. Does it have a good team? Does it have a good product? Does the product work? Would someone want to use it? It’s far too early to assess the value of cryptocurrency as a whole, but if we assume that tokens or coins will become the way computers pay each other in the future, this lets us hand wave away a lot of doubt. After all, not many people knew in 2000 that Apache was going to beat nearly every other web server in a crowded market or that Ubuntu instances would be so common that you’d spin them up and destroy them in an instant.

The key to understanding cryptocurrency pricing is to ignore the froth, hype and FUD and instead focus on true utility. Do you think that some day your phone will pay another phone for, say, an in-game perk? Do you expect the credit card system to fold in the face of an Internet of Value? Do you expect that one day you’ll move through life splashing out small bits of value in order to make yourself more comfortable? Then by all means, buy and hold or speculate on things that you think will make your life better. If you don’t expect the Internet of Value to improve your life the way the TCP/IP internet did (or you do not understand enough to hold an opinion), then you’re probably not cut out for this. NASDAQ is always open, at least during banker’s hours.

Still will us? Good, here are my predictions.

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The rundown

Here is my assessment of what you should look at when considering an “investment” in cryptocurrencies. There are a number of caveats we must address before we begin:

Crypto is not a monetary investment in a real currency, but an investment in a pie-in-the-sky technofuture. That’s right: When you buy crypto you’re basically assuming that we’ll all be on the deck of the Starship Enterprise exchanging them like Galactic Credits one day. This is the only inevitable future for crypto bulls. While you can force crypto into various economic models and hope for the best, the entire platform is techno-utopianist and assumes all sorts of exciting and unlikely things will come to pass in the next few years. If you have spare cash lying around and you like Star Wars, then you’re golden. If you bought bitcoin on a credit card because your cousin told you to, then you’re probably going to have a bad time.

Don’t trust anyone. There is no guarantee and, in addition to offering the disclaimer that this is not investment advice and that this is in no way an endorsement of any particular cryptocurrency or even the concept in general, we must understand that everything I write here could be wrong. In fact, everything ever written about crypto could be wrong, and anyone who is trying to sell you a token with exciting upside is almost certainly wrong. In short, everyone is wrong and everyone is out to get you, so be very, very careful.

You might as well hold. If you bought when BTC was $18,000 you’d best just hold on. Right now you’re in Pascal’s Wager territory. Yes, maybe you’re angry at crypto for screwing you, but maybe you were just stupid and you got in too high and now you might as well keep believing because nothing is certain, or you can admit that you were a bit overeager and now you’re being punished for it but that there is some sort of bitcoin god out there watching over you. Ultimately you need to take a deep breath, agree that all of this is pretty freaking weird, and hold on.

Now on with the assessments.

Bitcoin – Expect a rise over the next year that will surpass the current low. Also expect bumps as the SEC and other federal agencies around the world begin regulating the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies in very real ways. Now that banks are in on the joke they’re going to want to reduce risk. Therefore, the bitcoin will become digital gold, a staid, boring and volatility proof safe haven for speculators. Although all but unusable as a real currency, it’s good enough for what we need it to do and we also can expect quantum computing hardware to change the face of the oldest and most familiar cryptocurrency.

Ethereum – Ethereum could sustain another few thousand dollars on its price as long as Vitalik Buterin, the creator, doesn’t throw too much cold water on it. Like a remorseful Victor Frankenstein, Buterin tends to make amazing things and then denigrate them online, a sort of self-flagellation that is actually quite useful in a space full of froth and outright lies. Ethereum is the closest we’ve come to a useful cryptocurrency, but it is still the Raspberry Pi of distributed computing — it’s a useful and clever hack that makes it easy to experiment but no one has quite replaced the old systems with new distributed data stores or applications. In short, it’s a really exciting technology, but nobody knows what to do with it.

Where will the price go? It will hover around $1,000 and possibly go as high as $1,500 this year, but this is a principled tech project and not a store of value.

Altcoins – One of the signs of a bubble is when average people make statements like “I couldn’t afford a Bitcoin so I bought a Litecoin.” This is exactly what I’ve heard multiple times from multiple people and it’s akin to saying “I couldn’t buy hamburger so I bought a pound of sawdust instead. I think the kids will eat it, right?” Play at your own risk. Altcoins are a very useful low-risk play for many, and if you create an algorithm — say to sell when the asset hits a certain level — then you could make a nice profit. Further, most altcoins will not disappear overnight. I would honestly recommend playing with Ethereum instead of altcoins, but if you’re dead set on it, then by all means, enjoy.

Tokens – This is where cryptocurrency gets interesting. Tokens require research, education and a deep understanding of technology to truly assess. Many of the tokens I’ve seen are true crapshoots and are used primarily as pump and dump vehicles. I won’t name names, but the rule of thumb is that if you’re buying a token on an open market then you’ve probably already missed out. The value of the token sale as of January 2018 is to allow crypto whales to turn a few cent per token investment into a 100X return. While many founders talk about the magic of their product and the power of their team, token sales are quite simply vehicles to turn 4 cents into 20 cents into a dollar. Multiply that by millions of tokens and you see the draw.

The answer is simple: find a few projects you like and lurk in their message boards. Assess if the team is competent and figure out how to get in very, very early. Also expect your money to disappear into a rat hole in a few months or years. There are no sure things, and tokens are far too bleeding-edge a technology to assess sanely.

You are reading this post because you are looking to maintain confirmation bias in a confusing space. That’s fine. I’ve spoken to enough crypto-heads to know that nobody knows anything right now and that collusion and dirty dealings are the rule of the day. Therefore, it’s up to folks like us to slowly buy surely begin to understand just what’s going on and, perhaps, profit from it. At the very least we’ll all get a new Linux of Value when we’re all done.

Image: Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash

[filiplig]

Ferugson, Niall - Empire

page 4 | location 58-61 | Added on Thursday, 1 January 2015 23:56:31

Once there was an Empire that governed roughly a quarter of the world’s population, covered about the same proportion of the earth’s land surface and dominated nearly all its oceans. The British Empire was the biggest Empire ever, bar none. How an archipelago of rainy islands off the north-west coast of Europe came to rule the world is one of the fundamental questions not just of British but of world history. It is the main question this book seeks to answer.

 page 31 | location 472-474 | Added on Friday, 2 January 2015 03:39:15

The Spaniards had found vast quantities of silver when they had conquered Peru and Mexico. The English had tried Canada, Guiana, Virginia and the Gambia, and found nothing. There was only one thing for it: the luckless English would simply have to rob the Spaniards.

 page 39 | location 597-599 | Added on Friday, 2 January 2015 04:33:55

Alcohol is, technically, a depressant. Glucose, caffeine and nicotine, by contrast, were the eighteenth-century equivalent of uppers. Taken together, the new drugs gave English society an almighty hit; the Empire, it might be said, was built on a huge sugar, caffeine and nicotine rush – a rush nearly everyone could experience.

 page 53 | location 812-815 | Added on Tuesday, 13 January 2015 18:41:58

Having begun as a trading operation, the East India Company now had its own settlements, its own diplomats, even its own army. It was beginning to look more and more like a kingdom in its own right. And here was the key difference between Asia and Europe. The European powers could fight one another to their hearts’ content: the winner could only be European. But when the Indian powers went to war, the possibility existed that a non-Indian power might emerge as victor. The only question was, which one?

 page 76 | location 1162-1166 | Added on Wednesday, 14 January 2015 17:19:41

In 1615 the British Isles had been an economically unremarkable, politically fractious and strategically second-class entity. Two hundred years later Great Britain had acquired the largest empire the world had ever seen, encompassing forty-three colonies in five continents. The title of Patrick Colquhoun’s Treatise on the Wealth, Power and Resources of the British Empire in Every Quarter of the Globe (1814) said it all. They had robbed the Spaniards, copied the Dutch, beaten the French and plundered the Indians. Now they ruled supreme.

 page 96 | location 1468-1473 | Added on Thursday, 15 January 2015 21:08:15

Given the choice between expanding British territory in America and retaining the French sugar island of Guadeloupe at the end of the Seven Years War, William Pitt favoured the Caribbean option since: ‘The state of the existing trade in the conquests in North America, is extremely low; the speculations of their future are precarious, and the prospect, at the very best, very remote’. The problem was that mortality on these tropical islands was fearful, particularly during the summer ‘sickly season’. In Virginia it took a total immigration of 116,000 to produce a settler community of 90,000. In Barbados, by contrast, it took immigration of 150,000 to produce a population of 20,000. People soon learned.

 page 98 | location 1488-1493 | Added on Thursday, 15 January 2015 21:11:41

Annual returns from slaving voyages during the last half century of British slaving averaged between 8 and 10 per cent. Small wonder that slave trading struck Newton as a ‘genteel occupation’, suitable even for a born-again Christian. The numbers involved were huge. We tend to think of the British Empire as a phenomenon of white migration, yet between 1662 and 1807 nearly three and a half million Africans came to the New World as slaves transported in British ships. That was over three times the number of white migrants in the same period. It was also more than a third of all Africans who ever crossed the Atlantic as slaves.

 page 102 | location 1556-1560 | Added on Thursday, 15 January 2015 21:21:28

The original Spanish word for a sugar plantation was ingenio – engine – and producing sugar from cane was as much industry as agriculture. But this was an industry in which not just sugar cane but human beings were the raw materials. By 1750 some 800,000 Africans had been shipped to the British Caribbean, but the death rate was so high and the reproduction rate so low that the slave population was still less than 300,000. One contemporary rule of thumb devised by the Barbados planter Edward Littleton was that a planter with a hundred slaves would need to buy eight or ten a year ‘to keep up his stock’.

 page 121 | location 1845-1849 | Added on Thursday, 15 January 2015 22:05:31

By contrast, within a few decades of having lost the American colonies, the British abolished first the slave trade and then slavery itself throughout their Empire. Indeed, as early as 1775 the British Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, had offered emancipation to slaves who rallied to the British cause. This was not entirely opportunistic: Lord Mansfield’s famous judgement in Somersett’s case had pronounced slavery illegal in England three years before. From the point of view of most African-Americans, American independence postponed emancipation by at least a generation.

 page 122 | location 1862-1865 | Added on Thursday, 15 January 2015 22:07:27

The British had been attracted to Asia by trade. They had been attracted to America by land. Distance was an obstacle, but one that with fair winds could be overcome. But there was another continent that was attractive to them for diametrically different reasons. Because it was barren. Because it was impossibly remote. Because it was a natural prison. With its weird red earth and its alien flora and fauna – the eucalyptus trees and kangaroos – Australia was the eighteenth-century equivalent of Mars.

 page 124 | location 1894-1897 | Added on Thursday, 15 January 2015 22:12:16

loyal to the British Empire for so long. America had begun as a combination of tobacco plantation and Puritan utopia, a creation of economic and religious liberty, and ended up as a rebel republic. Australia started out as a jail, the very negation of liberty. Yet the more reliable colonists turned out to be not the Pilgrims but the prisoners.

 page 186 | location 2839-2843 | Added on Monday, 19 January 2015 20:41:55

The astounding thing is that for the better part of two centuries not just Bengal but the whole of India was ruled by just a few thousand Britons. As someone remarked, the government of India was ‘a gigantic machine for managing the entire public business of one-fifth of the inhabitants of the earth without their leave and without their help’. The British were also able to use India to control an entire hemisphere, stretching from Malta all the way to Hong Kong. It was the foundation on which the entire mid-Victorian Empire stood.

 page 188 | location 2868-2871 | Added on Monday, 19 January 2015 20:45:25

If the British wished to abolish the slave trade, they simply sent the navy. By 1840 no fewer than 425 slave ships had been intercepted by the Royal Navy off the West African coast and escorted to Sierra Leone, where nearly all of them were condemned. A total of thirty warships were engaged in this international policing operation.

 page 192 | location 2935-2939 | Added on Monday, 19 January 2015 20:55:35

Commission calculated that, out of an army of 70,000 British soldiers, 4,830 would die each year and 5,880 hospital beds would be occupied by those incapacitated by illness. Since it cost £100 to recruit a soldier and maintain him in India, Britain was thereby losing more than £1 million a year. Given that a similar force might have cost around £200,000 stationed in Europe, the extra £800,000 had to be regarded as a kind of tropical service premium. This was a very circumlocutory way of saying that no more British troops should be sent to sicken and die in India.

 page 208 | location 3189-3193 | Added on Wednesday, 21 January 2015 17:46:36

In 1867 there were around 13,000 public sector jobs paying 75 or more rupees per month, of which around half were held by Indians. Without this auxiliary force of civil servants who were native born, the ‘heaven born’ would have been impotent. This was the unspoken truth about British India; and that was why, as Machonochie himself put it, it did not really feel like ‘a conquered country’. Only the Indian rulers had been supplanted or subjugated by the British; most Indians carried on much as before – indeed, for an important class of them British rule was an opportunity for self-advancement.

 page 235 | location 3598-3603 | Added on Thursday, 22 January 2015 16:48:14

Curzon himself once admitted that British rule ‘may be good for us; but it is neither equally, nor altogether, good for them’. Indian nationalists agreed wholeheartedly, complaining that the wealth of India was being drained into the pockets of foreigners. In fact, we now know that this drain – the colonial burden as measured by the trade surplus of the colony – amounted to little more than 1 per cent of Indian net domestic product a year between 1868 and 1930. That was a lot less than the Dutch ‘drained’ from their East Indies empire, which amounted to between 7 and 10 per cent of Indonesian net domestic product in the same period.

 page 255 | location 3901-3904 | Added on Friday, 23 January 2015 19:09:19

No sooner had they occupied Egypt, than the British began reassuring the other powers that their presence there was only a temporary expedient: a reassurance repeated no fewer than sixty-six times between 1882 and 1922. Formally, Egypt continued to be an independent entity. In practice, however, it was run as a ‘veiled Protectorate’ by Britain, with the Khedive yet another princely puppet and real power in the hands of the British Agent and Consul-General.

 page 276 | location 4231-4234 | Added on Saturday, 24 January 2015 17:02:43

Another Northcliffe employee regarded ‘the depth and volume of public interest in Imperial questions’ as ‘one of the greatest forces, almost untapped, at the disposal of the Press’. ‘If Kipling be called the Voice of Empire in English Literature’, he added, ‘we [the Daily Mail] may fairly claim to [be] the Voice of Empire in London journalism’. Northcliffe’s own recipe was simple: ‘The British people relish a good hero and a good hate’.

 page 295 | location 4511-4513 | Added on Saturday, 24 January 2015 17:41:14

What Vietnam was to the United States, the Boer War very nearly was to the British Empire, in two respects: its huge cost in both lives and money – 45,000 men dead84 and a quarter of a billion pounds spent – and the divisions it opened up back home.

 page 310 | location 4750-4752 | Added on Sunday, 25 January 2015 16:51:54

The Liberals could credibly have either a commitment to defend France and conscription, or a policy of neutrality and no conscription. The combination they preferred – the French commitment but no conscription – was to prove fatal. Kitchener acidly remarked in 1914: ‘No one can say my colleagues in the Cabinet are not courageous. They have no Army and they declared war against the mightiest military nation in the world’.

 page 318 | location 4866-4871 | Added on Monday, 26 January 2015 16:29:41

In reality, the First World War came about because politicians and generals on both sides miscalculated. The Germans believed (not unreasonably) that the Russians were overtaking them militarily, so they risked a pre-emptive strike before the strategic gap grew any wider.93 The Austrians failed to see that stamping on Serbia, useful though that might be in their war against Balkan terrorism, would embroil them in a European-wide conflagration. The Russians overestimated their own military capability almost as much as the Germans did; they also stubbornly ignored the evidence that their political system would crack under the strain of another war so soon after the fiasco of defeat by Japan in 1905. Only the French and the Belgians had no real choice. The Germans invaded them. They had to fight.

 page 354 | location 5415-5418 | Added on Monday, 26 January 2015 17:49:32

Britain’, he declared, ‘is the result ... of the capitalist exploitation of the three hundred and fifty million Indian slaves’. That was precisely what Hitler most admired: the effective oppression of an inferior race. And there was an obvious place where Germany could endeavour to do the same. ‘What India was for England’, he explained, ‘the territories of Russia will be for us’.

 page 366 | location 5603-5604 | Added on Tuesday, 27 January 2015 17:31:40

In all, more than five million fighting troops were raised by the Empire, almost as many as by the United Kingdom itself. Considering Britain’s desperate plight in 1940, it was an even more laudable show of imperial unity than in the First World War.

 page 378 | location 5783-5788 | Added on Tuesday, 27 January 2015 17:55:26

Exhausted by the costs of victory, denied the fresh start that followed defeat for Japan and Germany, Britain was simply no longer able to bear the costs of Empire. Nationalist insurgency and new military technology made imperial defence much more expensive than before. Between 1947 and 1987 British defence expenditure had amounted to 5.8 per cent of gross domestic product. A century before, the proportion had been a mere 2.6 per cent. In the nineteenth century Britain had financed her chronic trade deficit with the income from a vast overseas investment portfolio. That had now been replaced with a crushing foreign debt burden, and the Treasury had to meet the much larger costs of nationalized health care, transport and industry.

 page 380 | location 5826-5828 | Added on Tuesday, 27 January 2015 18:01:32

What had been based on Britain’s commercial and financial supremacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and her industrial supremacy in the nineteenth was bound to crumble once the British economy buckled under the accumulated burdens of two world wars. The great creditor became a debtor.

 page 392 | location 6011-6017 | Added on Wednesday, 28 January 2015 17:39:21

The institutional locus of Cooper’s new imperialism, however, was none other than the European Union: The postmodern EU offers a vision of cooperative empire, a common liberty and a common security without the ethnic domination and centralized absolutism to which past empires have been subject, but also without the ethnic exclusiveness that is the hallmark of the nation state ... A cooperative empire might be ... a framework in which each has a share in the government, in which no single country dominates and in which the governing principles are not ethnic but legal. The lightest of touches will be required from the centre; the ‘imperial bureaucracy’ must be under control, accountable, and the servant, not the master, of the commonwealth. Such an institution must be as dedicated to liberty and democracy as its constituent parts.

 page 395 | location 6043-6046 | Added on Wednesday, 28 January 2015 17:42:54

Like the United States today, Britain did not set out to rule a quarter of the world’s land surface. As we have seen, its empire began as a network of coastal bases and informal spheres of influence, much like the post-1945 American ‘empire’. But real and perceived threats to their commercial interests constantly tempted the British to progress from informal to formal imperialism. That was how so much of the atlas came to be coloured imperial red.