#so when i woke up and made code it was just habitual

[imjust-toosoft-forall-ofit]

PDA is hilarious cause I’ll get up and start a pot of coffee, even refill the coffee jar rather than scoop right from the tub. And then I lay back down for “just 10 minutes” and end up locked in bed because the smell makes me actually Want it and now I’m having a minor panic spell and am desperately trying to tell my nervous system that making a cup of coffee won’t kill me.

[bananaofswifts]

Your guide to the singer-songwriter’s surprise follow-up to Folklore.

By

CARL WILSON

When everything’s clicking for Taylor Swift, the risk is that she’s going to push it too far and overtax the public appetite. On “Mirrorball” from Folklore, she sings, with admirable self-knowledge, “I’ve never been a natural/ All I do is try, try, try.” So when I woke up yesterday to the news that at midnight she was going to repeat the trick she pulled off with Folklore in July—surprise-releasing an album of moody pop-folk songs remote-recorded in quarantine with Aaron Dessner of the National as well as her longtime producer Jack Antonoff—I was apprehensive. Would she trip back into the pattern of overexposure and backlash that happened between 1989 and Reputation?

Listening to the new Evermore, though, that doesn’t feel like such a threat. A better parallel might be to the “Side B” albums that Carly Rae Jepsen put out after both Emotion and Dedicated, springing simply out of the artist’s and her fans’ mutual enthusiasm. Or, closer to Swift’s own impulses here, publishing an author’s book of short stories soon after a successful novel. Lockdown has been a huge challenge for musicians in general, but it liberated Swift from the near-perpetual touring and publicity grind she’s been on since she was a teen, and from her sense of obligation to turn out music that revs up stadium crowds and radio programmers. Swift has always seemed most herself as the precociously talented songwriter; the pop-star side is where her try-hard, A-student awkwardness surfaces most. Quarantine came as a stretch of time to focus mainly on her maturing craft (she turns 31 on Sunday), to workshop and to woodshed. When Evermore was announced, she said that she and her collaborators—clearly mostly Dessner, who co-writes and/or co-produces all but one of these 15 songs—simply didn’t want to stop writing after Folklore.

This record further emphasizes her leap away from autobiography into songs that are either pure fictions or else lyrically symbolic in ways that don’t act as romans à clef. On Folklore, that came with the thrill of a breakthrough. Here, she fine-tunes the approach, with the result that Evermore feels like an anthology, with less of an integrated emotional throughline. But that it doesn’t feel as significant as Folklore is also its virtue. Lowered stakes offer permission to play around, to joke, to give fewer fucks—and this album definitely has the best swearing in Swift’s entire oeuvre.

Because it’s nearly all Dessner overseeing production and arrangements, there isn’t the stylistic variety that Antonoff’s greater presence brought to Folklore. However, Swift and Dessner seem to have realized that the maximalist-minimalism that dominated Folklore, with layers upon layers of restrained instrumental lines for the sake of atmosphere, was too much of a good thing. There are more breaks in the ambience on Evermore, the way there was with Folklore’s “Betty,” the countryish song that was among many listener’s favorites. But there are still moments that hazard misty lugubriousness, and perhaps with reduced reward.

Overall, people who loved Folklore will at least like Evermore too, and the minority of Swift appreciators who disapproved may even warm up to more of the sounds here. I considered doing a track-by-track comparison between the two albums, but that seemed a smidgen pathological. Instead, here is a blatantly premature Day 1 rundown of the new songs as I hear them.

A pleasant yet forgettable starting place, “Willow” has mild “tropical house” accents that recall Ed Sheeran songs of yesteryear, as well as the prolix mixed metaphors Swift can be prone to when she’s not telling a linear story. But not too severely. I like the invitation to a prospective lover to “wreck my plans.” I’m less sure why “I come back stronger than a ’90s trend” belongs in this particular song, though it’s witty. “Willow” is more fun as a video (a direct sequel to Folklore’s “Cardigan” video) than as a lead track, but I’m not mad at it here either.

Written with “William Bowery”—the pseudonym of Swift’s boyfriend Joe Alwyn, as she’s recently confirmed—this is the first of the full story songs on Evermore, in this case a woman describing having walked away from her partner on the night he planned to propose. The music is a little floaty and non-propulsive, but the tale is well painted, with Swift’s protagonist willingly taking the blame for her beau’s heartbreak and shrugging off the fury of his family and friends—“she would have made such a lovely bride/ too bad she’s fucked in the head.” Swift sticks to her most habitual vocal cadences, but not much here goes to waste. Except, that is, for the title phrase, which doesn’t feel like it adds anything substantial. (Unless the protagonist was drunk?) I do love the little throwaway piano filigree Dessner plays as a tag on the end.

This is the sole track Antonoff co-wrote and produced, and it’s where a subdued take on the spirit of 1989-style pop resurges with necessary energy. Swift is singing about having a crush on someone who’s too attractive, too in-demand, and relishing the fantasy but also enjoying passing it up. It includes some prime Swiftian details, like, “With my Eagles t-shirt hanging from your door,” or, “At dinner parties I call you out on your contrarian shit.” The line about this thirst trap’s “hair falling into place like dominos” I find much harder to picture.

This is where I really snapped to attention. After a few earlier attempts, Swift has finally written her great Christmas song, one to stand alongside “New Year’s Day” in her holiday canon. And it’s especially a great one for 2020, full of things none of us ought to do this year—go home to visit our parents, hook up with an ex, spend the weekend in their bedroom and their truck, then break their hearts again when we leave. But it’s done with sincere yuletide affection to “the only soul who can tell which smiles I’m faking,” and “the warmest bed I’ve ever known.” All the better, we get to revisit these characters later on the album.

On first listen, I found this one of the draggiest Dressner compositions on the record. Swift locates a specific emotional state recognizably and poignantly in this song about a woman trapped (or, she wonders, maybe not trapped?) in a relationship with an emotionally withholding, unappreciative man. But the static keyboard chord patterns and the wandering melody that might be meant to evoke a sense of disappointment and numbness risk yielding numbing and disappointing music. Still, it’s growing on me.

Featuring two members of Haim—and featuring a character named after one of them, Este—“No Body, No Crime” is a straight-up contemporary country song, specifically a twist on and tribute to the wronged-woman vengeance songs that were so popular more than a decade ago, and even more specifically “Before He Cheats,” the 2006 smash by Carrie Underwood, of which it’s a near musical clone, just downshifted a few gears. Swift’s intricate variation on the model is that the singer of the song isn’t wreaking revenge on her own husband, but on her best friend’s husband, and framing the husband’s mistress for the murder. It’s delicious, except that Swift commits the capital offence of underusing the Haim sisters purely as background singers, aside from one spoken interjection from Danielle.

This one has some of the same issues as “Tolerate It,” in that it lags too much for too long, but I did find more to focus on musically here. Lyrically and vocally, it gets the mixed emotions of a relatively amicable divorce awfully damned right, if I may speak from painfully direct experience.

This is the song sung from the POV of the small-town lover that the ambitious L.A. actress from “Tis the Damn Season”—Dorothea, it turns out—has left behind in, it turns out, Tupelo. Probably some years past that Xmas tryst, when the old flame finally has made it. “A tiny screen’s the only place I see you now,” he sings, but adds that she’s welcome back anytime: “If you’re ever tired of being known/ For who you know/ You know that you’ll always know me.” It’s produced and arranged with a welcome lack of fuss. Swift hauls out her old high-school-romance-songs vocal tone to reminisce about “skipping the prom/ just to piss off your mom,” very much in the vein of Folklore’s teen-love-triangle trilogy.

A duet with Dessner’s baritone-voiced bandmate in the National, Matt Berninger, “Coney Island” suffers from the most convoluted lyrics on Evermore (which, I wonder unkindly, might be what brought Berninger to mind?). The refrain “I’m on a beach on Coney Island, wondering where did my baby go” is a terrific tribute to classic pop, but then Swift rhymes it with “the bright lights, the merry go,” as if that’s a serviceable shorthand for merry-go-round, and says “sorry for not making you my centerfold,” as if that’s somehow a desirable relationship outcome. The comparison of the bygone affair to “the mall before the internet/ It was the one place to be” is clever but not exactly moving, and Berninger’s lines are worse. Dessner’s droning arrangement does not come to the rescue.

This song is also overrun with metaphors but mostly in an enticing, thematically fitting way, full of good Swiftian dark-fairytale grist. It’s fun to puzzle out gradually the secret that all the images are concealing—an engaged woman being drawn into a clandestine affair. And there are several very good “goddamns.”

The lyrical conceit here is great, about two gold-digging con artists whose lives of scamming are undone by their falling in love. It reminded me of the 1931 pre-Code rom-com Blonde Crazy, in which James Cagney and Joan Blondell act out a very similar storyline. And I mostly like the song, but I can’t help thinking it would come alive more if the music sounded anything like what these self-declared “cowboys” and “villains” might sing. It’s massively melancholy for the story, and Swift needs a far more winningly roguish duet partner than the snoozy Marcus Mumford. It does draw a charge from a couple of fine guitar solos, which I think are played by Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver, who will return shortly).

The drum machine comes as a refreshing novelty at this point. And while this song is mostly standard Taylor Swift torrents of romantic-conflict wordplay (full of golden gates and pedestals and dropping her swords and breaking her high heel, etc.), the pleasure comes in hearing her look back at all that and shrugging, “Long story short, it was a bad ti-i-ime,” “long story short, it was the wrong guy-uy-uy,” and finally, “long story short, I survived.” She passes along some counsel I’m sure she wishes she’d had back in the days of Reputation: “I wanna tell you not to get lost in these petty things/ Your nemeses will defeat themselves.” It’s a fairly slight song but an earned valedictory address.

Swift fan lore has it that she always sequences the real emotional bombshell as Track 5, but here it is at 13, her lucky number. It’s sung to her grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, who died when Swift was in her early teens, and it manages to be utterly personal—down to the sample of Marjorie singing opera on the outro—and simultaneously utterly evocative to anyone who’s been through such grief. The bridge, full of vivid memories and fierce regrets, is the clincher.

This electroacoustic kiss-off song, loaded up with at least a fistful of gecs if not a full 100 by Dessner and co-producers BJ Burton and James McAlister, seems to be, lyrically, one of Swift’s somewhat tedious public airings of some music-industry grudge (on which, in case you don’t get it, she does not want “closure”), but, sonically, it’s a real ear-cleaner at this point on Evermore. Why she seems to shift into a quasi-British accent for fragments of it is anyone’s guess. But I’m tickled by the line, “I’m fine with my spite and my tears and my beers and my candles.”

I’m torn about the vague imagery and vague music of the first few verses of the album’s final, title track. But when Vernon, in full multitracked upper-register Bon Iver mode, kicks in for the duet in the middle, there’s a jolt of urgency that lands the redemptive ending—whether it’s about a crisis in love or the collective crisis of the pandemic or perhaps a bit of both—and satisfyingly rounds off the album.

[joshslater]

Per Diem

Similar stories and bonus material on my Patreon.

Thank fuck for people becoming habitual cellphone users. I get some vague memories from all my hosts, but it’s sketchy with things as precise as codes. Fingerprint scanners are the best, but muscle memory is pretty good too, so if they use their phone often and for a long time I’m good. Given how people place more and more of their lives in a small rectangle of magic minerals it’s easier than ever to take whatever I want.

But I don’t want any. I did a while back, mostly to prove that I could, but not anymore. I don’t need it, never did. All I want to take nowadays is information and photos. Selfies. This one, Bradly Crow, is pretty good looking. They usually are, for some reason. I’m trying to be better at keeping a record to figure this thing out. Basic contact information, geographic information, things like that. Andrei set up a “react front for a relational database and an S3 bucket on amazon cloud” whatever the fuck that means. I’m good remembering things. I have to be, since I can’t write things down. Or couldn’t at least. Now I have a slack where I can post stuff and tell Andrei what to do, regardless of where I am. Hopefully he can start figure shit out and see if any patterns emerge.

I’ve honestly been too ignorant for too long on how this all works. Obviously the first time it happened was a complete shock. One morning I woke up as Martin Gutmann, visiting his parents in Berlin. I don’t remember many details, but I mostly pretended to be sick and tried to figure out what had happened within the confines of the guest room. And the next time I woke up I was Simon Baker in Tintagel, UK. Then it just continued. A new person every morning, all over the world. Always a mid 20 white male, usually good looking, but not always.

I quickly became bored with pretending to be sick. Some were single, so I could just do whatever, but It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t give a fuck about anyone. Just get dressed and walk out the door. Or don’t get dressed. I’ll admit I was a bit destructive at one point. Got myself in jail I imagine. I wasn’t there for the trial. Every day a new body. No need to go to work. No need for protected sex. No need to worry about hangover, or withdrawal or medical treatments. I suspect that if I die, I die for real, but that never made me wear a helmet.

No one has ever understood me better than the movie Groundhog Day. Although the situation is completely different, the futility and lack of consequences resonated deep. When it came out I watched it probably 10 times. Ironic to see that movie that many times, but it taught me so many lessons. I have been going back between this being a blessing and a curse. Even ignoring the amazing breadth of lives and places I’ve seen, who else have experienced more than one body, let alone thousands?

I decided to attempt to get a direction in life. No more weird haircuts, piercings or tattoos. No more surprise participation in pornos. Instead I’m trying to be as positive as possible. Do volunteer work. Contribute to charities. My latest thing is to try to find and fix the biggest problem for each host before the day ends. There might be some set of actions that ultimately traps me in a body and finally allows me to grow old. That would be an amazing 200th anniversary gift.

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

FEMSLASH FEBRUARY 2019 #19: In which Cameron reads a book

[CW: mentions of food and eating]

Things had gone back to what she and Donna apparently both took for granted as normal. Or, not really, Cameron had decided. There hadn’t been any sort of going back, things had just continued forward after that Sunday night, both of them seemingly comfortable, at least for the time being, with not talking about why Cameron had brought up the realtor. Cameron thought of that night often, she’d dreamed more than once of Donna’s chicken pot pie, probably because she habitually thought about that evening, about how warm and bright Donna’s kitchen was, and how relaxed she’d felt there even when she was self-conscious and afraid of upsetting Donna, when she was trying to fall asleep. 

In the mornings, Cameron thought about work: if she should follow through on designing the game she’d been imagining for a year, whatever freelance project was paying the bills that week, and Donna’s idea. Donna was always one of the first things to cross Cameron’s mind when she woke up. But, that was how it had always been: when she’d been recruited to Cardiff, she’d thought of whatever game she was playing and the alterations she’d make to it if she were a game designer, the Giant’s software, and J*e. At Mutiny, she’d thought about whatever game they were in the middle of writing, their user base, whatever she and Donna were arguing about that week, and then, Tom. It took a long time for her to stop thinking about Mutiny and Donna after she relocated to Tokyo, or maybe she never really had. She’d never thought to question any of this. It was easy to think of it as thinking about work, rather than thinking about Donna. 

With as ‘normal’ as things were, Cameron couldn’t get through a day without wondering, what if she wasn’t ever ‘ready to talk’ about everything that had happened with the realtor, with Simon, with her entire relationship with Donna over the past ten years? She wasn’t usually really asking, on most days, she worried about this instead of really considering it. She wasn’t even really sure what she was worrying about when she asked herself about this. It was a knee-jerk thing she did that she couldn’t help.

Over one of their regular dinners, Bos had asked her, “Well, that’s a good question. What would happen if you two never have that conversation?” Eyes narrowed in bafflement and slight irritation, Cameron had said, “I don’t know? I’ve never thought about it?” Bos had responded with a fatherly but gruff, “Well think about it now, then!” With minimal effort, Cameron imagined driving to Donna’s house to write code and eat various kinds of takeout every night until they were in their 80s. She knew that it wasn’t realistic, but it sounded incredibly appealing. It maybe sounded perfect. 

For some reason, Cameron was afraid to say this out loud, even to Bos. She admitted that it wouldn’t be the worst thing, for things to stay as they were between her and Donna. “So then there’s no reason to worry,” Bos said. Pointedly, he added, “No need to borrow worry, get all worked up over a hypothetical conversation.”

Which made sense. So why did it feel like something was still bothering her?

The next day, Cameron got up, got dressed, and went to a bookstore.

Cameron had become a reader in Tokyo. She’d been too anxious, too full of nervous energy to enjoy it as a kid, and even a good story with an interesting lead couldn’t soothe her the way that taking apart and reassembling a computer always did. She’d gotten into the habit of visiting libraries and bookstores, mostly because Tom had given her a strict ultimatum about how she needed to get up, get dressed, make their bed, and go outside every day. The result was that she’d spent a lot of days sitting in libraries and cafes, where, if nothing else, she managed to significantly improve her Japanese reading comprehension. Sometimes Joanie sent her new paperbacks from California, and she’d usually devour them in a few days; they were one of the few things she’d regretted losing in her move back to the states. Books became a sort of security blanket, an escape that gaming and game design couldn’t be anymore, and reading became Cameron’s most reliable method of self-soothing. 

She had anxiety about accruing too many books, especially after having gotten so attached to the Joanie volumes, so Cameron also finally got a library card from her local branch, and got into the habit of stopping there whenever she was out. She didn’t need to buy books, she just needed to always have something to read, a novel or essay that she could grab when she started to worry about ‘things with Donna,’ and a place to go on days when her trailer felt too small, and sitting outside, or weeding her flower beds wasn’t enough of a distraction. 

On her third bookstore trip, Cameron went to a large chain bookstore that she’d been to with Haley. Feeling strangely lonely, she wandered through the same sections they’d browsed, the magazines, the bargain books, the art books, the science fiction section, where Cameron stopped to look for a short story collection by Ursula LeGuin, but didn’t find it, and the cookbook aisle, which had become Haley’s favorite section of the store. Cameron looked idly at the cookbooks in stock, wondering which aisle she should try next, or if maybe she should go somewhere else altogether. She turned around, and then she saw it, in the next aisle — a copy of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Fried Green Tomatoes had been one of the movies that Cameron had gone to see at one of the few theaters that showed English language movies in Tokyo. She’d gone by herself on a rainy afternoon after yet another battle in the cold war that her marriage to Tom had become since her last COMDEX trip, and then she’d gone another time, and another. She managed to find a vhs copy, and watching it had become another kind of security blanket, like the books, a weirdly comfortable space that felt like going home, even if temporarily, even if Cameron had never actually been to Alabama, or had fried green tomatoes. She put it on when she couldn’t sleep, when she got sick, whenever she needed background noise to make household chores and tedious bookkeeping-type work tasks go more quickly. She’d worn out her tape, another thing that had been either left behind in Tokyo or in the dumpster behind the Mutiny/Calnect/Comet office, but hadn’t known that it was based on a book. 

Cameron took a giant, slightly frantic step across the aisle and grabbed the book off its shelf. It was from a more recent printing, it had the actresses from the movie on the cover. She flipped through it, and went straight to the end, and saw that there were recipes in the back, for the titular fried green tomatoes, both milk and red eye gravy, cornbread, biscuits, snap beans, creamed corn, pork chops, fried chicken…Cameron’s stomach growled, and she suddenly realized just how hungry she was. She decided to buy the book.

She looked up at the shelf where she’d found it, vainly hoping that there was some kind of Fried Green Tomatoes series, and at least 4 other novels about Ruth, Idgie, and the rest of the Threadgoode family and Whistle Stop Cafe staff. Instead, she saw the placard announcing the section: LGBT Themes. Confused, Cameron looked back down at the book, had there been ‘lgbt themes’ in the movie? Did they mean Ruth and Idgie? A tiny voice in the back of her brain said, Of course, Ruth and Idgie. Cameron felt the most bizarre combination of surprised panic and overwhelming relief. It was like making it to the next level of a game after days of trying, only to realize that the next level would be harder, but that it was okay because that was made the game worth playing. She took the book up to the register and paid for it before she could talk herself out of it. 

She wound up reading the first 100 pages in one sitting, and would have gone farther, if she hadn’t had to stop and make herself breathe. At 80 pages, the book finally described Idgie, Cameron’s favorite character in the movie: “Some people are like that, you know…run from you, won’t let you love them.” “She wouldn’t let anybody get too close to her. When she thought somebody liked her too much, she’d just take off in the woods.” “But when Ruth came to live with us, you never saw a change in anybody so fast in your life.” A few pages later, Idgie was charming the honey out of the oak tree for Ruth, and eating a picnic lunch with her, "happy as anybody who is in love in the summertime can be.” A few pages after that, Idgie was pitching a fit over Ruth’s decision to marry a man from her hometown, and then she was crying and drinking and carrying on, living down at the river for the next five years with a well-known prostitute that Idgie’s brother had wanted to marry. And all of it made sense to Cameron, even more than Idgie had made sense to her all those times that she’d watched the movie.

The passage that had really gotten to her was from Ruth’s perspective, though: “When Idgie had grinned at her and tried to hand her that jar of honey, all these feelings that she had been trying to hold back came flooding through her, and it was at that second in time that she knew she loved Idgie with all her heart….she had never felt that way before and she knew she would never feel that way again…. She had no idea why she wanted to be with Idgie more than anybody else on this earth, but she did.” Lying on her bed, in her pajamas, in her trailer parked out in the middle of nowhere, Cameron thought about Tori Loman, her first friend, her only real childhood friend, who she’d wanted to be with at all times. She was never happier than when she was at Tori’s, she stayed at her house as many nights as the Lomans would have her. As an adult, it had been easy to think that of course she’d loved visiting them; she’d hated being at home after her father’s memorial service. But Cameron vividly remembered playing with Tori every day after school before her father had been redeployed. She remembered telling him, “Tori is my best friend, she’s my favorite person after you.” 

Cameron pushed that out of her mind and made herself read a little more, but she couldn’t concentrate. She closed the book, and holding it in her left hand, she reached for the cordless phone where it sat on her nightstand. She started to dial Donna’s number, but when she realized that she had no idea what she would say. She didn’t know how to tell Donna about Tori, either. I wish I knew what to say to her about Tori, Cameron thought, unable to imagine how that phone conversation might go — hey, did I ever tell you about Tori, my friend who I used to play house with? And how I didn’t realize I was playing house with her until Joanie pointed it out to me? As soon as she thought this, she realized how badly she wanted to say exactly that to Donna. 

That was when Cameron decided that she needed to quit reading for the night, and put herself to bed.  

[rohobi]

Pulse 02 | (m)

Kim Taehyung | Medical AU |  Smut | Angst | Trauma | Patient death | Medical Jargon | Medical Inaccuracies | Mature Content | Multi-fandom Medical Team | 

CHAPTER 2 SUMMARY: ❝ I’ll only take a minute ❞

↳ INDEX → CHAPTER 3 

↣ THE BEGINNING OF THE END When you woke up that morning, kissed your daughter and made her breakfast, you honestly thought it would be a normal day.

Because who wouldn’t? You were living in the city, in a nice Bungalow and Craftsman style family home in the suburbs. The sun was still rising, mellow hues of golden light bloomed in every crevice of the distant hills. A chorus of birds still sang from the trees outside your home, it wouldn't be long until they joined the cacophony of congestion; the sound of horns and drivers aggression. 

You lived a long drive away from your hospital but a short drive away from everything else. Forest Lakes Hospital was a rural hospital adjacent to a military camp. The acuity was nothing in comparison to Seoul Hearts Emergency Department but it still maintained a large patient load everyday. This was due to the atrocities practiced in the camp, to injured farmers in the farmlands and VIP patients who are flown in via helicopter for the privacy.

You loved working there but sometimes things happen, unexplainable things that made you feel like you were a pawn on someone else's chessboard. The thunderous clouds of hospital politics loomed so close that you feared, it would strike you down one day.

And maybe, today was that day.

“When’s Jimin coming out?” your daughter had asked, food smeared all over her face. “I want to see him already.”

You had laughed loudly at the girl, tying your wet hair into a bun.

Sunny had been humming under her breath that morning, fumbling in her seat to the song playing on Jungkook’s speaker in the bathroom. In her 4 year old childish mirth, she had been waiting for the sound of Jimin's rambunctious alarm clock. So she could see her favourite uncle.

“Don’t wake him up Sun-

Jimin's alarm clock had sounded like a rubbish truck reversing as it jarred through the morning peace of your home. Her face lit up immediately. 

You were sure that annoying alarm clock was her favourite sound. 

-chimmy!” she had squealed as soon as the sound hit her little ears. You had watched as she raced out of her seat, feet slapping against the wooden floor towards his wooden bedroom door.

“Great, my child has been conditioned.”

In great timing, Jungkook had turned off the shower and his music at the same time. Jungkook was a junior doctor in your department, one who answered to you. He was supposed to be on the same shift today as you but the boy habitually left home and arrived when he wanted to.

It would’ve been better if he hadn’t turned up at all.

Sunny stood on her tippy toes trying to open Jimin's door so she could jump up onto his bed and cuddle. You had watched the entire ordeal from behind the kitchen bench, her incessant desire for affection …it really and honestly reminded you of him.

Sometimes she does things and you wonder how she is so much like him when she doesn’t even know him. She was a beautiful genetic mosaic of the both of you but as she grew, it was increasingly noticeable. 

Sunny looked and acted exactly like Kim Taehyung. 

“Sunny sun sun sun!” Jimin croked, opening his arms to her. “My baby!” 

The sound of her laughter as he tickled her, fluttered peacefully throughout your home as you walked back into the kitchen. You never thought in that moment, that it could’ve been the last time you'd ever hear her sweet dulcet laughter because who does?

“I need a doctor,” Jimin had stammered, limping to the living room, “I have a growth on my foot and it’s smiling up at me like a gremlin. Diagnosis?”

Sunny had wrapped herself around his foot, looking quite pleased with herself as he dragged his feet towards the couch.

Grinning, you had announced in a deep and serious tone.“I’m afraid it’s Sunnyitis.”

“Prognosis?” Jimin feux sobbed, “Am I going to die?” 

“Prognosis is 14 years. With tender, love and care, you’ll be fine.”

“Well, I can deal with that.” Jimin had smiled in greeting at you before falling onto the couch, letting her crawl onto his lap. “I have an afternoon shift, mind if I catch a lift with you back?” he had asked and you had nodded enthusiastically, “Sounds good! Will give me something to look forward too. We have much to chat regarding your little boyfriend my love.”

Jimin had blushed, gasping loudly at you. "Yoongi is not little, he's big, like really-

-I honestly don’t need to know and if you’re taking this conversation where I think you’re going with it, it explains the noise," you snort, lifting your cup of coffee to your mouth. “Who knew Min Yoongi had it in him?” 

Jimin gasps even louder. "If you're assuming I'm a bottom, I am not. I am versatile, thank you."

Silence. 

"What?" You raise your brows in confusion. "No one was asking? Where did that come from?”

You had grown close to Jimin, even going as far as to calling him your bestfriend. Somehow, after everything that you've been through, it was just right that he took up that space in your life. He earned it.

He stayed.

And staying meant that you shared something special enough to tolerate.

Jungkook walks out of the bathroom, shirtless with a towel wrapped around his waist. "Did Jimin just say he was versatile?"

"Weird, right?" You nod, looking anywhere but at the boys honey coloured abs. "I think he's trying to tell us something."

“Well, there is no way in hell,” Jungkook laughs, sizing Jimin up. “No way in fresh hell that you aren't a bottom.”

"Is this a conversation we should be seriously having while sunny is in the room?" he shouts, covering her ears. "Who knows what she'll hear from anything we say?"

Jungkook rolls his eyes. "I ask that everytime Yoongi comes over and all I can hear is-” he clears his throat, putting on a thick Russian accent, "-oh Yoongi, put it it in, yeah, daddy, ooh ahh, oof, i’m done." You're one to talk."

"Then don't put your ear up to the door at night Jungkook, you creep," he snaps, throwing a pillow at Jungkook's chest. Sunny laughs. Jimin covers her ears tighter, "I know you want me, you little-

"-here we go," you roll your eyes, tipping the rest of your coffee down the sink and leaving the mug there, "I hate to break whatever you two are arguing about but it's crossing the boundary of what she can and can not understand, and therefore I suggest you stop.”

"What if I do?" Jungkook muses, wiggling his brows at Jimin. “What would you do?” 

"God, get me out of here," Grabbing your stethoscope, you lean over the couch and grab Sunnys head, kissing it as per usual, "Baby, I'll see you when I get home. Try to keep your clothes on today and no playing with the neighbours dog, he's dirty."

"But ma," She pouts, hiding her face in the crook of Jimin's neck. "I want a puppy and Alfie likes me."

"Awh, Sun," Patting her back, Jimin pouts at you too. "I want a puppy too."

"That's what your boyfriends for Jimin," You said, scowling at the orange haired boy, "Honestly, both of you are just as bad as each other. I'm off, see you all tonight and tomorrow."

"Bye mamma, see you when you get back." Sunny had shouted after you.

Leaving the girls and Jimin to their days, you had tied your laces in triple knots before draping your white coat over your shoulder and dragging your feet to your car. Sunny had waved goodbye from the lounge room window and you had tooted as you drove away.

The sun had rolled out from the hills, shining brightly in a cerulean sky as you drove past Seoul Hearts Hospital and out past the evergreen, toward Forest Lakes. You had picked up Seokjin and Dr. Xiumin from their shared home on the way, listening to rock music to mentally prepare yourself for the rest of the day.

Jin sat in the front, an occupational hazard.

Xiumin stared at you from the back, something you occupationally ignored.

Forced to park the car a street away from the hospital, Seokjin had groaned loudly at the lack of staff parking as you all walked the distance to the Emergency Department.

There had been an abnormally large amount of parked black and white SUV's taking up spaces, forcing patients and staff to park elsewhere. In other ways, it was a blessing but in every other way, it was a sign that something wasn’t right.

Somehow, that should’ve alarmed you.

But it didn’t.

On arrival, Namjoon had greeted his partner Seokjin with a kiss on his cheek and you watched them walk towards his office with smiles drawn across their faces.

Xiumin smiled delicately with a watermelon blush, wishing you a good day. Minus the blush, you had done the same to him. It was the simple little things that made today feel like it could be like every other day in the department, except that everything about it wasn’t.

Medical school may have prepared you and equipped you to be good at saving people, but it definitely and most certainly did not prepare you enough to save yourself.

Especially on what was supposed to be a completely normal day.

↣ FOREST LAKES HOSPITAL | Dr. Y/N and Jeon Jungkook

It was anything but a normal day, that was so horrendously clear from the state of the hospital.  

Panic had surged through the hallways of Forest Lakes when the alarm was triggered and people dispersed from the hospital, running like razor sharp autumn leaves against each other.

White coats flew past you, carrying babies and small children. Blue and red lights lit up the night sky, streaking through the windows. 

Adrenaline ran through your veins.

Tension clung to the air; the smell of fear so pungent, it asphyxiated any room for sound judgement as chaos painted the white halls with a reddish-brown reminder of the in-progress code black .

People ran and pushed, people fell and people got hurt.

You had watched it all as you stood beside Irene and the patient bed outside of the trauma bay, waiting for safe passage through the hallway ahead. It was so loud, machines beeped, people screamed, wailed and yelled, babies cried, nurses tried to reassure and calm people down, phones rang incessantly. It was a chorus of everything you never wanted to hear at the same time.

Nurses pushed past you; doctors helped their patients escape; junior doctors cleared rooms; and you waited until it was clear, until it was safe. 

But it never would be. 

“Yah, how much time do we have?” you asked, grabbing Namjoon’s arm as he ran past you, “Who told you these orders?”

He stops, yanked back by you. “Y/N, why are you still here?” He says, looking at both you and Irene in concern.

“We're waiting until it's a little less mental down there,” You nod your head to the chaos ahead. “Who gave the orders?”

Perspiration dripped down the sides of his face as he pants. “Someone triggered a silent emergency alarm in the VIP wing. Did you see all those cars in the carpark today?” he stepped close, whispering in your ear, “Politicians and athletes are in that wing being treated and we think it might be something to do with the-

“Wait,” Your heart thumped loudly in your chest. “Isn’t Dr. Hoff in that wing?”

He nodded, stepping back. “Yes. While you were in surgery, he offered to go in your place.”

“What the fuck?” you stammered with tears glistening your eyes, “Namjoon.”

“I know,” he says, taking a deep breath. “Make sure everyone gets out after you, don’t stay here too long.” 

“Do you think Dr. Hoff will be okay?” you ask, guilt settling itself in the pit of your stomach.

“Look, we don’t have time for this. I’m sure he’ll be fine. We have to get the fuck out of here. Call me when you’re at Seoul Hearts so I can clear you as safe,” Namjoon had said, brushing your arm away from his. Running down the hallway, sneakers squeaking as he ran, he shouts back. “I mean it Y/N, you better call me. Keep Seokjin safe.”

You watch him rush through the crowd and then through the automatic sliding doors, throwing himself into the cold night, running towards the red and blue embers of a parked ambulance nearby.

That could’ve been you up in the VIP ward?

* * *

“Y/N, we need to go now. Load the patient into the back Irene,” Seokjin yelled, shoving his key into the ambulance ignition. “Jimin and Irene, let’s get a move on! Go, go, go!”

The wind swept through the loose strands of hair dangling around your face as you stood underneath the brightly lit red Emergency Department sign watching them from across the carpark. It was dark and suddenly desolate as all the cars and ambulances sped quickly away, how everyone managed to get out, amazed you.

It was suddenly silent.

You weren't sure if that was relieving or not.

"Jin, I honestly think someone is still in there and Namjoon told me to make sure everyone got out okay," You shout, yelling across the car park. He had frowned back at you, as though you had said something so daring to him. "I'm serious, we can't leave knowing someone might still be in there."

"Namjoon cleared all the rooms before he left, no one is in there Y/N." Seokjin shouted back, throwing his bags in the front seat, “Get here and get in, we don't have time. Everyone else is gone, we should be enroute to Seoul Hearts right now, who knows what will happen if we don't go.”

"I think I heard someone yelling for help though!"

Throwing his cap into the ambulance, he shouts. "You're hallucinating!"

But you weren't. You had an itch. A sinking fucking feeling pulling you like a magnet back inside.

“Come on guys!” Seokjin rushed, jumping back into the front seat and closing the door, “Get in and let’s go!”

You watched them all argue with each other over resources the ambulance didn’t have while you had tossed up the decision to run back in. It was stupid to even think you could be a hero and save someone, when the person in this situation who would need saving, was you.

You watch Jimin and Irene jump into the back of the ambulance after pushing the patient in. You look back to the doors. 

You’d be okay. 

It would only be a second. 

In and then out.

Whispering, “Fuck it.” you run as fast as you can.

“Y/N,” Seokjin had been the first to notice you running back in. "Y/N WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING DOING!" He had shouted, adrenaline surging through his blood, throwing himself out of his truck, he watched you, unable to move any closer as he fell to the pavement. “COME BACK Y/N!"

“What is she doing?” Irene shouted at Jin, prompting Jimin’s immediate attention as he popped his head out of the ambulance doors. "Y/N?"

Jimin thought he could feel his heart bursting out of his ear drums as he screamed, eyes wide with horror. “Y/N, what are you doing?!” held back by Irene from running after you, he screams louder. “Y/N COME BACK! COME BACK RIGHT NOW. ARE YOU FUCKING DUMB?”

“I’ll just check okay! I’ll only take a minute, if you’re truly worried, just park the car at the end of the carpark. I’ll be fine,” You shouted back, “I will be fine.”

Jimin yells with his whole body but you don’t look back, convinced you’d only be a second as you run through the automatic doors and down the hallway, disappearing deep within the building. 

With the exception of the insect life buzzing around them, there was a strange silence in your wake as all three of them stared at the doors in disbelief.

Tears glistened in Jimin’s eyes as he watched the doors close and then they fell in rivulets down his face when the ground rumbled with the first blast of three. 

When you didn't run straight back out, he wailed loudly, feeling the impending loss strangle his heart as he fell completely into Irene’s arms.

I’ll only take a minute...

[gracevilliers]

Blood of my blood, Part 2 || Grace & Yamina

Yamina woke up first, if only because she was attuned to this. As a human she always woke up when dawn broke; as a vampire she habitually woke at dusk. She opened her eyes to find the Huntress - the Huntress no more still cradled against her chest. The blonde creature looked pale, paler than usual when she'd been mortal. A pang of sorrow and grief shot through Yamina's tired frame as she stroked her fledgling. All the pain and grief she'd felt losing her other children now poured directly into this one. Her new child. And Yamina realized then as she touched the golden hair that Grace Villiers was not just her only child now, but she would be her last. No more progeny after this one. Yamina would dedicate the rest of her immortal life doting on Grace and Grace alone.

Yamina In one way it was still partly revenge. To give this ex-Hunter everything a vampire had to offer as her Sire. To treat her with the utmost attention and groom her to become a perfect specimen of vampirism. To make her Hunter family and everyone who knew Grace for her vampire-slaughtering skills and tracking abilities, feel grief and mourning. Because in their human eyes, Grace Villiers the proud Hunter, was now an abomination. A beast who needed to be put down. Nothing more than the monsters she took pride in killing. Now she was the one they had to kill. Yamina hoped it would shatter their miserable, wretched beating hearts.

There was a knock on the bedroom door and a skinny old man entered, pausing in shock at the damage in the bedroom, at Yamina out of her coffin and holding an Englishwoman. "Mistress, is everything alright?" the thrall asked, bowing and servile in his concern. Yamina nodded. "Yes boy," she replied, although the man was almost 65. "Did you bring food?" The old man nodded and dry-washed his hands, scampering back out and returning with three different people, all tied and blindfolded and scared. One was a young woman from the Far East; the other a teenaged boy; the third was a burly pale red-headed man. Yamina looked at them and the pointed one finger towards the adult man. "Him. Is he from one of the prison ships?" The thrall nodded proudly, knowing he'd chosen well when Yamina smiled. "Leave him and return the others. My child will be waking up soon."

It felt like awakening from a dream. Slow and groggy, the world coming into view around Grace with a dim greyness. Her body ached, though in her barely conscious state, she couldn't consciously understand the reasons for it just yet. Half from the battle, and half from her transition. She was heavy-eyed and heavy-souled, as if her body carried the weight of what had been done to her before her mind could piece it together. Grace awoke, limbs languid and stiff, but immediately taut and tense when she realized someone was holding her. How ironic that such gentle and loving hands should have done such violence to her. She struggled, pulling away and scrambling to her feet. The room stank, she realized, her enhanced, starving senses picking him out. Like human. "What the bloody hell did you do to me?" Grace spat, knowing the answer before the words had even left her lips.

Yamina rose gracefully and seemingly with a lack of effort (although it did take some effort). "I think you know, Grace," Yamina replied. She straightened her gown and went to pick up her coat, pulling it on as if to shield herself from the mortal environment around her. "You're weak, my dear, but I admire your strength nonetheless. Are you hungry?" Yamina was sure Grace was starving. As a fledgling, hunger was a sensation that usually overtook everything else, consumed a vampire until they learned to control those baser instincts. With a good Sire of course, someone who could teach them to temper those uncontrollable impulses. "Do you smell him? Not the stink of his skin, but the blood underneath. Can you hear his heart?" She motioned languidly to the burly man, who was trying to break out of his bonds. "Wot's that then? Just a couple of whores trying to scare me then? I'll give ye something to be scared of, girls," the man growled, neck flexing.

Grace had never felt so many sensations before. The very air around her seemed to be a living thing. She could hear every movement, every rustling piece of fabric on the wind outside, every voice from surrounding patrons of the nearby marketplace, the rustling of coin in someone's pocket, and yes, the heartbeat, so loud that it overtook almost everything else. Where were her weapons? She glanced around for them, but the vampire must have disposed of them before Grace had collapsed. "I... I'm going to be sick," she answered, her physical hunger, her desperation, her need for blood, all at war with everything she had ever been taught, with her own disgust. "I'll kill you for this."

"You may," Yamina replied with a sad smile as she watched Grace with calm for careful eyes. She couldn't help the smile turning a little piqued at Grace completely ignoring the human. No concern for the man just yet, not while she was fully consumed in her own throes of agony and dilemma. "Or you may learn to accept it. Only the weak-willed cannot handle this gift. Only the weak-willed throw this gift away, like an unthinking fool. I do not think you are foolish, my child." The blindfolded man was clearly agitated by being completely ignored despite his leers and threats and he managed to shift his blindfold up past one eye, to see the two women. "Ey girlie," he tried to cajole Grace. "Why don't you get of yer lil negress servant here and let's you and me have some real fun, ey?"

Grace was even more annoyed by the vampire's calm and careful tone, the way she addressed Grace so simply and plainly, not even rising to agitation. She could at least have fought with her, argued with her, instead of simply reasoning with her like a sensible human. For a sensible human she was not. "Shut up, shut up," she hissed, repeating the words, trying to ignore her pounding senses, the sickening desire in her to feed. "I'm neither weak nor a fool, but I won't be a monster, either!" The ugly man was addressing her with ugly words. Grace scoffed. The more he spoke, the harder it was for her to ignore the pounding of his heart, the warm red liquid that flowed through his body. Did he really think she was in the mood to be flirted with? "Shut. Up." She repeated, snarling almost in spite of herself, grabbing him by the throat and squeezing.

"No, you are not a monster. You are so much more than that," Yamina said, all low and honeyed words. She was hungry herself, but like all good mothers she wanted her child to eat first before she'd take a single sip. "I understand what it must be like, to be trained as a Hunter. Born into it, told over and over that your cause was right, and your enemy was wrong. No questions meant no faltering. You were righteous; after all, your elders taught you this. Why should you ever wonder if your actions were wrong?" Yamina crossed to the other side of the room, giving Grace a wide berth to explore her own overload of senses and emotions freely. "That is not true strength, my dear. That is zealotry hiding behind violence." Yamina raised her chin, eyes flaring in some contained excitement as Grace turned on the man finally and acknowledged his presence with a threat of her own. The man looked confused and surprised. "A criminal, scum no doubt." Yamina came closer, turned the man's head to look at her. The vampire's eyes turned golden, mesmerizing. "Tell me boy - what was your crime?" Compelled to answer, the man replied, "I - I killed me wife. And me little girl. The screamin'...the screamin'...I liked it." Yamina stared coldly at him and then at Grace. "And this is what you used to protect? From me?"

Grace squeezed her eyes closed. She knew it was dark, and yet it didn't feel dark to her, an enhanced nocturnal vision disorientating her. She felt like she could no longer tell night from day. She shook her head. The words falling from her sire's lips were the words of the devil, she told herself. "Liar," she hissed. "You feed and you kill and you want me to do the same." But she wanted it too. The warmth of his skin was too much for her to handle. Grace wet her lips with her tongue. Her fingertips buried in his skin made her all the more conscious of his flesh, his blood. "You're disgusting," she said, unsure whether she was talking to him, the vampire, or herself. Perhaps it was all three. He was a killer. So why shouldn't she just sink her teeth into him? The very thought itself was the only encouragement she needed, and she slammed him against one of the very walls she had been thrown against just hours before, sinking her teeth into him and devouring him.

Yamina had nothing to say as Grace refuted her, tried desperately to hold on to that morality of the Hunters. Their code and their scripture and their belief, it was strong. It was admirable, really, if Yamina hadn't just had her children slaughtered by them like cattle. The man's way to handle this would be to break Grace down and build her back up, but Yamina Moire had rejected man's methods a long time ago. It was what made her so strong in the Vampire Councils across the continent - yet at the same time, it had made her vulnerable to the other vampire's fears and jealousy. Like scrabbling rats, just as Hunters described them. Just because she believed in the old ways did not mean she would adhere to the methodologies of men. Grace was her baby - and compassion for her children was always Yamina's way. Even if she'd hated Grace as a human, she felt that intrinsic Progeny-Sire bond forming between them now. Now, as Grace slammed the human filth against the wall and sank her teeth into his neck. "One bite now," Yamina coaxed her. "Try to get one good bite, and the blood will flow." As Grace drank though, Yamina picked up the man's wrist and bit into it as well. For as much as she loved her newborn daughter, the elder vampire knew she couldn't stay weak while Grace grew strong. To make that mistake would spell her doom. She fully believed Grace would attack her next.

Grace felt a wave of relief wash over her new body as the blood flowed into her. Her brain was less foggy, her muscles less achy, her skin clearer. The smell was intoxicating. She drank and drank and drank, listening to the soothing sounds of her sire's encouragement and for a moment, not even able to be angry about it or disgusted by it. She simply drank until the blood flowed no more and the man fell dead to the ground, like the wife and daughter he had put there. Yamina had been drinking too. She looked almost proud. Something in Grace was happy about that, their instinsic fond forming in spite of Grace's prior feelings. The contradictions melded together. "....What do you do with the body?" Grace wondered out loud.

Yamina gave a languid flick of her hand. "I have thralls to take care of that, they're very useful. Humans who want to be in the presence of vampires, entranced by is, by our beauty...." She came closer, motioned to a standing mirror so Grace could see herself. She was always stately and beautiful but now as a vampire and just fed, she was practically glowing, a preturnatural beauty. "It's a low-level compelling that keeps them loyal, all of it agreed upon. Some people are made to serve. Others, to enjoy the fruits of their labour." It was a very old-fashioned concept, that only recently in history was being questioned in the name of civility. But Yamina was old-fashioned in her ways. "My dear I must say, you aren't just my progeny, but you're also a prodigy. I've never had a child so controlled, so self-disciplined." Yamina supposed it was all that Hunter training.

Grace furrowed her brow. Thralls. The thought left distaste in her mouth. Too bad that distaste was overpowered by blood. She'd never drank something so delicious in all her life. And she hated herself for it. She'd just killed someone. She'd killed a killer. Why was it so different now? She told herself she killed murderers every time she went hunting. "You call this control?" She scoffed, regarding the body on the floor and gesturing to it. "He's dead. If that's what passes for discipline to you, I'd hate to see chaos."

"You would hate to see the chaos. Don't be a prude, child. Somehow I don't buy it. You've seen far too much to pretend you don't understand chaos, haven't stared it down and refused to accept it. I see it now, in the way you feed." Because Yamina had seen worse, far worse. Fledglings that were little more than rabid animals, tearing into flesh and soaking themselves in blood. Yamina loved all her children yes of course; but the animalistic ones always disappointed her a little. Not Grace though. "Come out into the night with me, see what new joy this world has to offer you in the moonlight. Unless you're still intent on murdering me?"

"Don't call me 'child'," Grace hissed through gritted teeth still coated in the man's blood. The fangs felt as if they took up too much room in her mouth. She had to focus to retract them. "I've seen chaos. When your kind drink the streets dry and leave bodies ripped open in the gutter. I kill your kind to stop that from happening, not be part of it." And yet, as angry as she had been when she had first awoken, she couldn't claim to want to kill the other woman. Sire bond, or something else, Grace wasn't sure, but it was infuriating. "I want to go home." She had only just asked to not be called child, only to sound like one. "But that will never happen, thanks to you. If you think we're going to be friends..."

"Did you kill his kind too?" Yamina asked, motioning to the dead criminal. "Why stop with vampires? If you believe so strongly that you have justice and righteousness on your side, why not kill anyone who disturbs your idea of 'peace'? You have the ability. Pray tell my dear - what do you do with vampires bodies, once you've destroyed their immortal life? Don't be so sanctimonious," she spat, unable to stop herself from getting a little worked up about it. "Humans are just as terrible if not worse. Oh, you have your laws and courts - but who do those rules truly benefit? His wife and child? He was still alive, he still got to sruvive. Until you made use of him. And such a good use too, because you deserve to be fed by his blood. Because you'll survive, even if you murder me. I don't believe you will never kill yourself, even now. Stick to your morals if you prefer. Kill only those who you deem to be killed, in all your worthiness. But make no mistake, my child - you have always been a killer. A killer of both innocents and murderers alike. That has not changed."

"Because vampires aren't human. There's a difference. Humans get hanged. They don't hang vampires at the Old Bailey because they don't know they exist. That only leaves us." She still spoke about them like they were separate, as if she wasn't one of them now, as if she was still a hunter. Grace stared at her sire through eyes damp with a mix of anger, hurt and frustration. She should have killed her. She should have been better. But she had failed. This was the price she would pay. Whether she would have the courage to kill herself in the sunlight, Grace wasn't sure, but she knew she couldn't stay here. "I will never be your child," she said, pushing open the doors to the balcony and dropping from the first storey with newfound strength and agility, heading out into the night.

[theconservativebrief]

Every week, critic at large Todd VanDerWerff and internet culture reporter Aja Romano get together to discuss the latest episode of HBO’s sci-fi drama Westworld. This week, they’re discussing the second season’s eighth episode, “Kiksuya.” Spoilers follow! Proceed with caution if you haven’t seen the episode!

Todd VanDerWerff: “Kiksuya” could have — and probably should have — gone so, so wrong.

For as much as I admire Westworld’s attempts to depict a kind of uber-struggle for respect, autonomy, and self-definition that represents every oppressed person in the history of humanity, by using the hosts to stand in for all of them (and often explicitly coding them as such), there have been plenty of times when the show has tossed these balls in the air and then had no idea what to do with them, just barely catching them on the way down instead of starting to nimbly juggle.

When you mix that with the idea of an episode about the Native American “Ghost Nation” hosts, performed almost entirely in Lakota, there are so many places where the whole enterprise could absolutely shatter into tiny pieces . That’s before I even start in on some of the episode’s creative decisions, like the fact that it’s basically an episode-long flashback ostensibly delivered as an expository monologue to a young child (who is actually an ancient host, but you know what I mean).

Yet when you consider that Westworld’s primary storytelling mode is, “Here is what’s happening and why,” it’s not surprising that an episode that is mostly exposition works as well as this one does. I wouldn’t call “Kiksuya” perfect, but it does fill in some gaps in the Westworld timeline, occasionally too conveniently — see also that encounter with Logan out in the wilds of Westworld. It also offers a couple of terrific scenes, including a nighttime meeting between Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon) and Ford (Anthony Hopkins) that takes place amid a gruesome tableau of Ghost Nation hosts frozen in place and has more of the horror and eeriness of the “creation meeting the creator” feeling the show strives for than almost any other scene of its ilk. I even liked the sense that Ghost Nation had adapted the circumstances of what happen to hosts after they die into its mythology.

All told, it’s a little languid and could have lost 10 minutes without too much trouble. (There are a lot of gigantic landscape shots, which eventually grew repetitive.) But “Kiksuya” has the visceral emotion that the series often lacks, and McClarnon is a terrific leading man. This is probably my favorite episode of the season so far, which I would not have expected going in. What did you think?

Lots and lots of wide shots… HBO

Aja Romano: I definitely agree. McClarnon is a superb actor and this episode could have fallen flat in multiple moments, but I felt like it was all held together by his dawning realizations and the tremor of understanding in his eyes.

The moment in the scene where he meets Ford, when Ford orders him to analyze and he realizes that he can’t fight his own programming, is as close to pure horror as Westworld has ever gotten for me, and the writers (Carly Wray and Dan Dietz) get there mainly by reliance on character and emotion. That’s a strong choice, and shows just how much they had to work with in McClarnon, because the narrative of this episode otherwise gives us more of Westworld’s tendency to really drag out explanations and plot reveals. But ultimately, even when I noticed the lagging pace and the redundancy of the exposition, I just didn’t care because I was enjoying the characterization and the emotional impact of the story so much.

I think where this story loses a little bit of momentum is in how it ultimately connects with its two contemporary tentpoles — Emily’s love/hate relationship with her father, and whatever the hell is going on with Maeve. Akecheta’s encounter with Emily felt anticlimactic and cryptic, and it didn’t tell me anything new about either character. (She’s definitely a hybrid, though!)

I feel like the reveal that he was attempting all along to protect Maeve’s daughter, not steal her, is too easy, sidestepping some of the the complicated implications of how season one habitually framed his actions as threatening. And it implies that Maeve may have somehow had racial biases programmed into her reactions to him, which is a huge thing to hint at but gloss over.

Of course, his framing of the narrative could well be false, especially given what we see of Maeve at the end of the episode. I’m not entirely sure what to make of their exchange, mainly because I’m not sure what he gained from it. She gained a new ally, and he gained the chance to explain himself. But it didn’t seem to move the plot forward at all. What did I miss?

Take my heart with you when you go. HBO

Todd: I guess the implication here is that Maeve and Akecheta now form an axis of power devoted to escaping the park before “the deathbringer” (Dolores) destroys everybody. As story development goes, this isn’t bad, but it relies too heavily on us thinking Maeve might really perish, a victim of Delos’s disinterest in preserving anything but her rogue code, and I just don’t think for a second Westworld is going to unceremoniously kill off its second lead.

One of the things that frustrates me about “Kiksuya” is the way in which much of it seems to exist solely to prove to skeptics that much of the story was planned out from the beginning. That made for some gorgeous imagery — Maeve confronting the maze in the dust chief among those images — but the way that Westworld can feel a little schematic, like assembling a piece of furniture where it’s not quite clear how everything fits together until the end, is heavily tied to this sort of planning. I haven’t quite been able to escape the idea that the show thinks its core audience is everybody who reads the Westworld subreddit. And, honestly, maybe it is.

Still, I have to agree that the episode came as close to being a horror tale as Westworld ever has, rivaling even some of the darker moments for Dolores in season one. Akecheta’s journey to the underworld in search of his disappeared love was weird and gorgeous and mythic, one of the few times this season that the mash-up of very old stories and very new technology has hit its true potential to reveal the messy underside of both aspects of the show. When he came across her frozen, empty body, standing amid so many other decommissioned hosts, boy, McClarnon makes every single second of that revelation play. It’s horror and myth and tragedy all at once, hitting the sorts of heights I wish the show was able to attain more often.

There’s been a lot of speculation that Ghost Nation would tie a lot of this season’s mysteries together once its backstory was revealed, and I guess “Kiksuya” sort of does this. Now that we know the maze is something Akecheta and those he “woke up” are deliberately spreading and that he’s come to think of his “tribe” as encompassing all awakened hosts around the park, certain aspects of the series make more sense. And I love that he’s the one who first came up with the idea of a “door,” when he saw a massive construction project and realized he lived in the wrong world. I just wish the maze felt to me like something more than a cool image, that it felt like an actual symbol for something deeper than a riddle.

But that’s all quibbles. The idea that the world is wrong has always been a potent one on this show, and season two has drifted from it just a tiny bit. I’m glad it had such centrality here, and even if I’m not sure why Maeve and Akecheta are teaming up, I’m glad they are. Somebody has to stop the Deathbringer. We’ve only got two episodes left, Aja, so where do you think all of this is headed? And is there any way to redeem my onetime favorite Dolores?

Aja: I think if we keep thinking about the mythology of Westworld, we end up where we started, enmeshed in cyclical pathways, probably with a giant inferno in the bargain, given how much fiery foreshadowing we’ve been treated to this season. Given where we seem to be headed — a giant cast reunion in the Valley Beyond — my speculation is that the question of Dolores’ redemption might be answered through the maze itself.

At this point, the only thing that could really redirect her course is to be faced with a direct threat that requires her to join forces, with the other hosts or the humans or both. And we know that at the center of every proper Grecian labyrinth is a proper Grecian minotaur. It seems to me that the best method to bar the way out of Westworld, introduce an escalated conflict for season three, and give Dolores a chance to redeem herself, is to unveil the bull at the center of the maze in the final act — whether it’s Ford 2.0 or something new.

Of course, this could also be a feeble attempt on my part to play Westworld’s game of catering to its subreddit. I hope not, because the lovely thing about an episode like this one is that its emphasis on character development reminds us that the emotional and socially conscious core of Westworld is much more rewarding than the endless gamification of its story about gamification.

Season two has been steadily leading us toward an intersectional awareness of systems of oppression, in which we see characters like Akecheta — and Lee, whose abrupt tearful apology to Maeve I didn’t wholly buy, but which seemed in keeping with the episode’s theme — becoming aware that their problems aren’t solely their own.

That intersectionality is almost certainly going to end up manifesting physically in the final episode. Whether Dolores gets on board or not, it seems fitting if, ultimately, we learn that the only way out for the characters we’ve met along the way is to wage an even bigger power struggle against a monster yet unseen.

Original Source -> “Kiksuya” is Westworld season 2’s best episode so far

via The Conservative Brief

[alfalfalphafelafel-blog]

Humans are space orcs...

At 3 in the morning, I woke and wrote these notes. Next day I had to try and make sense of the bloody chicken scratchings and this it what I came up with... Adrift for three hundred or so years in the middle of the Void, if the identification code is not a falsification. All existing records show we had only first discovered them little more than 90 years ago, but the evidence to the contrary is here. Being the foremost (starting to think more like 'only-one-dumb-enough-to-say-yes',) expert on behavioural and psychological stability on extended deep-space exploration does come with its benefits, but derelict interrogation in zero-g (anti-grav boots not withstanding), 3 cycles from the comfort of the best technology credits can accrue is not at the top of that 'list'... The easiest part was finding where one ship started and the other ended. The remains of the ship I have been told is ours (back before the factions of Shck'Lamress apparently), was the antagonist of the final encounter, which is odd, considering the only 'weaponry' for this model is purely for defensive capabilities; short distance emergency boosters, fodder pods for distraction when under fire, and other bits and pieces which I'm sure work fine. Or worked fine, (you want more details on armament and operationality, talk to [technician] at your own damn liesure) *scribbled note "I hate writing [expletive] reports!* All but a [hand]full of travel logs are irrecoverable, (Jst'Nkdareee will have a ball trying to unscramble those) I did manage to recover an almost complete crew list, including names and last known status... Scrolling through the list, I come across the Human occupancy entries. 5 enlisted as crew, three deceased two un-confimed... How can a status be un-confirmed? How can a then undiscovered (obvoiusly not!) species posses not only habitual stationing, but exploratory scientific preferential ones as well? As I hurriedly scramble (Stupid Grav boots!) over to Commander Hhhklun, past sleeping quarters with the all too familiar oddity of decor not befitting a deep space science vessel, confirmation of events that cannot POSSIBLY be as accurate as I am starting to dread, flash on the screen of the other ship. The Commander has reactivated the Captain's log, my HUD displays a translate covering the last moments before the spectacular result I am currently standing in... "The Science vessel is hemorrhaging atmosphere...*static*...Human creatures found to be part of crew manife...*static*...ferociously defiant, are dismantling the ship from the inside and using...*static*...ssible to have survived the vacuum of space...*long static*... they have adapted..." Log entry end. "The aliens refuse to die swiftly...*static*... resisting as the life fades from their primary optical organs, prolonging what must be unimaginable torture as we...*static*... to ingest such a thing purely for the benefit of...*static*...ting report of the two huma...*long static*... they have adapted..." Log entry end. ...*static*...ccounted for, will resume search for remaining two when air locks are...*static*...have adapted..*static*" Log entry end. "Nine changes of shift, we have been...*static*... munition stores depleted, send assist...*static*...nking officers lifeforce expired upon collision...*static*...cation diffuser orb was crudely modified to...*static*...adapting..." Log entry end. With a growing sense of panic, I listen to the entries of what happened to the unknown crew, the last entry chilling my ventricular system so much so, the commander would surely recognise the dilation of my ocular nodes. The time stamp on the last entry is some 40 cycles after the previous one stating the collision I am currently amidst. The last entry was not made by the same beings of the other logs. The entry is short. Just three words, but audible. There is only one audibly communicative space faring race, realisation causing the Commanders ocular node to fade... "...We have adapted..."