#then again they had a five-person design team and a SEVEN-person marketing team

[tlaquetzqui]

Anyone care to place bets that the 6th or 7th Edition of D&D, in a decade or two, is just a lot of fluff to disguise the fact the game has become “I shot you, fall down!” “Nuh-uh!” and the DM just sides with whichever they like better? For the last five years or so Wizards has been getting closer and closer to “there is no rule except Rule Zero (‘GM has final say’)”.

[vicious-vixxxen]

Could I request older, pro-hero Deku with a chubby male s/o who gets ridiculed because people don't think someone of his size is good enough for the Number One hero

((Ah I may have gotten a little too deep with this one, so apologies nonnie in advance for the angst. Topics like this relate a lot to me personally. So here ya go.))

Izuku Midoriya x Chubby!Male!Reader

“That’s...such /bullshit/,” You huffed, fist clenched into the folds of the magazine, before flicking it across the kitchen with a huff- tears already stinging at the corner of your eyes as it landed split open- your face plastered over the centerfold article. ‘Is #1 Pro Hero Deku’s Husband /TOO/ big?’ The article practically shouted up at you- big, bold red letters smeared over your face, hiding the smile you’d had that night. You’d managed to secure a spot at one of Izuku’s favorite restaurants- mostly by promising the owner you’d be in and out of there within half an hour- he wasn’t the type to fawn too heavily over Pro Hero work, so ‘Deku’ being your husband didn’t hold much weight with him. But you’d been excellent patrons of his since they’d opened, in your second year of high school together. So you managed with what seniority you held. And seeing as how Izuku had only been able to snag thirty minutes between patrols, it was the perfect opportunity to scarf down a quick bite, and chat in- what you thought had been- the privacy of one of the uppermost floors of the establishment. But of course, sleazy as they were, the paparazzi had found a way to catch the both of you eating. A little too fast, a little too messily, just to be able to enjoy the atmosphere together, and have ample room to chat with one another before Izuku had to get back to his patrols. Which was fine, for Pro Hero Deku- six foot seven inches tall, two hundred and ten pounds of pure, lean machine muscle. The epitome of health and wellness, and what it meant to be strong. Able. And then there was you. A little too soft around the sides, cheeks /too/ plump/. Stomach /too/ pudgy. Thighs /too/ thick. God, you looked like a pig, food smeared on your chin, a bowl between you and your husband. ‘I guess we know where his priorities really lie’ the magazine quoted, from some random asshole on the street no doubt. Jesus Christ. “Bunch of fucking assholes.” You were angry. Of course you were angry. Fists held over your eyes to keep the tears at bay. But you were sad too. So, so fucking sad that this shit kept happening. Izuku’s management tried and failed countless times to keep shit like this from spreading. But people loved a good slam piece, as much as they adored seeing Deku’s latest accomplishments splashed across every newspaper, and TV report. Sick fucks. Whatever. Water under the bridge, you told yourself. Throat feeling tight, eyes burning with unshed tears, as you took a few deep breaths, and headed back towards your bedroom. Turning out lights in the house as you went, before stripping and crawling into bed. Thoughts running a mile a minute, as you stared up at the ceiling in silence. The only real noise the quiet sound of a car or two passing the house every now and again. You couldn’t help the way your open palms slid against your chest. Pressing, and kneading at the soft, pillowy flesh of your sides, and stomach. Grimacing at yourself, you recalled how fit you used to be during your high school days. What a dynamic you and Izuku had. Fresh on the scene after high school, no one could compare to the two of you. Kiri and Katsuki came close, but never quite managed the spark you and Izuku had. Professionally speaking. But Izuku just kept climbing higher, and higher- your quirk was good, but limited in its capabilities, which meant a halt in your hero placement a year or two after graduation. But you did what you could. You helped people because you wanted to help people, ratings be damned. But the harder Izuku worked, the more help he needed managing the world that came with climbing to number one. So you patrolled less and less, in favor of working with his design team on costume upgrades. Merchandise. Izuku trusting you and Inko to work directly with his management team, as he knew you all shared a hive mind of sorts when it came to design, and marketing. Pro Hero life for Deku was saving people. Kissing babies, and countless interviews. It was grueling, and tiresome, and he needed a team behind him to take care of everything else. So that’s what you did. Long hours spent at home alone, working through the night on various Deku projects. Meant less patrols, less gym time. You had no need for those things when you were kept busy with Izuku’s team, and you did good work! Fuck, you did great work, and Izuku praised you nonstop. Sure you’d gained a little weight at first, but it looked good on you. At least you thought so. And so did Izuku, if the way he drooled all over the expanse of your thighs the first time you’d gotten a night alone in nearly a month was any indication.   But as time progressed, you cared a little less about your appearance each day. You took care of yourself, and you were far from unhealthy. But there was no denying you had filled out substantially. You didn’t care, and Izuku didn’t seem to care either...but the media sure did. Closing your eyes suddenly, you took a deep breath. Holding it in for several seconds, before letting it out shakily. Tears finally falling as you did so, and you rolled over to snuggle into Izuku’s side of the bed- face smushed into the other man’s pillow, to breath in the soft scent of his cologne. His musk. Drifting off to sleep sniffling, dreaming of the glory days the two of you held together. Izuku hadn’t planned on coming home tonight at all, it wasn’t in his schedule to. But when he’d taken five to break for a snack, he’d ran into Kirishima at the agency. Chatting quickly, recalling rather suddenly that it had been several days since he’d seen Y/N. Scratching at the nape of his neck awkwardly, hunched over slightly muttering excuses to himself. He may have been big, and strong, but to his friends, Midoriya still held fast to those traits that made him who he was. Even back at UA. One call to Bakugou from Kirishima later, and the two of them were taking Deku’s shift, sending him hurrying home- a smile as bright as the sun on his face as he charged up, and bolted from the agency as fast as he could. Fingers crossed that you weren’t asleep yet. His dreams were dashed, but not unpleasantly so, when he landed outside however, and found all the lights in the house were off. It was late, and he appreciated you getting your rest. Knowing all too well how often you’d stay awake working on things for him. Izuku’s heart overflowed with love for you when he recalled all you did for him. For the both of you. He couldn’t imagine being as cemented in the top spot, as capable of doing what he did, without you there. You and his mother were his whole world, keeping him afloat at even the hardest of times. He...he was nothing, without you. So knowing you were in bed, getting your rest, made him smile. A smile that was soon replaced with a recoiled snarl as he entered the house- beelining to the kitchen for a glass of water, wherein he found the magazine spread out, as though left for him on the kitchen floor. Another one. Another article attacking you. Shaming you. Making fun of you. The kitchen was alight with green sparks as Izuku picked up the magazine, sneering at it when it came clearly into focus, before promptly stomping over and throwing it into the trash. Chest heaving as he sat with the knowledge that you’d probably been worrying over this again all evening. While he was out. Combing the city for villains, while you were here, dealing with...god. Hero suit boots already at the front door, Deku removed his socks as he made his way back to your bedroom quietly- leaving them in the hall- a nasty habit of his he’d never been able to break. Letting himself into your room, his heart breaking at the site before him. He wasn’t sure how long you’d been crying, but it was long enough to leave the salty, humid scent of tears in the air as he entered. And there you were, huddled up with his pillows, breathing softly- face smeared with tears, their tracks glinting back at Izuku as he rounded the bed, and just stood there. Feeling so powerless. Too big. Normally he’d clean up first, but being sure he couldn’t wait one more second, let alone the twenty minutes it would take to shower, Midoriya acted quickly. Removing his Hero suit silently, left in nothing but a pair of fitted boxer briefs- before sliding into bed next to you. Pulling his pillow gently from your grasp, to settle behind his own head, before gathering you up and into his arms. Shifting you almost entirely onto his front, before you stirred. Izuku’s stopped breathing when your eyes fluttered open, and your nose wrinkled- wanting to smile as you noticed the heat beneath you, the strong scent of Izuku’s skin filling your senses. Glancing up at him, your sleep idled mind offered only one clear thought. ‘He’s home’. Try as you might, however, the pressure from earlier in the evening boiled over again- mixing with the overwhelming sense of love you felt at being able to see him. Feel him. Smell him. Just /be/ with him. Everything was still, and quiet, a pin drop could be heard. Until you hiccupped, once, twice, before choking on a sob as you pressed your face flush against Izuku’s chest, and cried. You cried, and cried, and cried. Trying to recall the last time you’d seen him, your sleep clouded mind coming up blank. All you could see was that stupid fucking picture in the magazine. Izuku held firm to you as you cried, eyes shut tight, tears threatening to spill right alongside yours. Old habits die hard, he thought idly. He didn’t shush you, or try and quiet you down. Offer words of encouragement, nor did he berate the magazines, or spew on about how much hell he was going to put them through for this. He simply held you, stroked your back, and kissed the top of your head over and over, as you covered his chest in tears. Finally settling down after a few minutes, and simply breathing together. Your ears pressed against Deku’s wet chest, listening to your husband's heartbeat. Allowing it to calm you. Arms finding their way under Izuku’s body, holding each other now. Tight, almost too much. But neither of you complained. “I love you,” Izuku finally whispered, though it was so full of sentiment- of meaning, almost harshly so, it caught you off guard. “I love you more than the world will ever know, or understand, and I’d drop off the face of the planet tomorrow, and leave them to fend for themselves, if it meant proving to you how wonderfully, beautifully, exquisitely perfect you are to me.” Fucking…”I wanted to /stop/ crying, you fucking jerk,” You laughed wetly, fresh tears spilling down your cheeks as you lifted a hand to swat at the side of Deku’s head- both of you snickering wetly now, as you began to card your fingers through his hair with the same hand. Snuggling impossibly deeper into the man’s chest, as his words rang in your ears. He meant it too, the voice in your head whispered. Your chest tight as you imagined him giving up all he’d ever worked for, just so you’d understand. You never held any doubt that he loved you. As you were, as you had been- however you’d be tomorrow, or the day after. But you struggled a lot, internally. You always had. It would be a struggle you’d live with till the day you died, you were sure of it. But even so, you reasoned, then and there, that if even then, you knew how deeply, and unequivocally Izuku cared for you- loved you. That thing’s would always be okay. No matter what. “I love you too,” you sighed back finally, clearing your throat, and closing your eyes as you felt yourself quickly drifting again. “So so much, ‘zuku.” Peppering Deku’s chest with kisses till you fell asleep, Izuku was sure if his heart swelled any more, it would burst. Waiting till you had fallen back asleep fully, he rolled the two of you over. Caging you into the mattress beneath him, and falling asleep that way. Guarding you even as the two of you slept. Keeping you safe from everyone, and everything.  Midoriya’s only other thought, besides you, before he slipped into unconsciousness, was to call into the agency the next day, because he wasn’t going to going in for a while. ((Really enjoyed writing this one, got me in my feels, and made me feel all warm, imagining Deku holding me at the end of a  long day, when I could care less about feeling good about myself. Thanks for the opportunity nonnie, hope you enjoy.))

[sanstropfremir]

by request, the first post-kingdom stage roundup! this one is a best to worst by group!

some introductory notes:

i’m not going to be ranking the 100sec stages in here because they are too different of a scale. but i will be talking about them as a part of the process. i’m not going to be including the team stages here either, since i talked about them in my episode seven and eight reviews and i do think they stand separately from the individual group stages, because we don’t know who the creative teams were behind them. this is not meant to be an overall best of all the performances, i’m intending this more to be a look each of the groups’ stages overall; seeing how they adapted and improved and how effective the trajectory of their journey as a whole was. also, a very important definition to make right at the start so i don't have to explain it every time: by ‘worst’ i do not mean the stage was actually bad. by ‘worst’ i literally mean ‘not the best.’ if i break it down, i’m ranking these by ‘most amount of successful components’ to ‘least amount of successful components.’ there were no stages that were actually bad or unwatchable; they were all successful in one way or another, but some of them more so. i’m ordering these in my own personal ranking of reverse who did the best overall, which obviously is not how the actual show rankings went down, but we all know my thoughts on the official rankings.

in case you want to catch up and read my more in depth thoughts, here’s all of my episode reviews: one, two (with added tbz costume breakdown), three, four, five, seven, eight, nine, ten! oh and also here’s my very first review of the dance solo performance film, since i’m also going to be referencing this a bit.

tbz

monster - the least involved with their overarching story concept and it’s stylistically the most interesting because it’s a departure from the glittery royalty concept we have primarily seen them in. it also helps that it’s a great song that they did a relatively good cover of.

kingdom come - the solidity of the choreo is the thing that puts this stage up here, because it’s some of their best. and it’s not as explicitly reliant on the game of thrones theme as their other stages.

o sole mio - this has real potential as a good small concept vaudeville themed stage; it starts off really strong and then they blow it by shoehorning in the unnecessary lore.

no air - they tried to start off with a big conceptual bang in the first round with a semi-explicit narrative, but it relies entirely too much on the viewers knowing the references for it to make any sense.

to be honest, i’m not that surprised about how tbz constructed their stages and how they turned out. i know a lot of people have been disappointed with how lackluster their stages have felt in comparison to their rtk ones, and i think that’s fair because i agree, i don’t think they ever captured the same energy they did for danger or for shangri-la. if you’ve been following along (or have just read all my reviews now) than you know most of my complaints about how tbz have been working with their lore and concepts, so i won’t rehash them here. but i do think it’s warranted to point out that theoretically, being first in rtk would logistically put you at the bottom of the initial ranking for kingdom. i know they’re not technically the youngest group, but in the execution of their stages in comparison, it does make sense to me that they come out looking as the most inexperienced group. even though they were intending to have a similar overarching story like they did on rtk, it was not at all very fleshed out and there wasn’t a strong enough connection between that story, the themes of their stages, and the narrative shapes of those stages. which is a shame because they are not unskilled performers, and they have the most members of all of the groups on the show, so they had a lot of opportunity to be doing interesting choreo and blocking work that never seemed to materialize. i also think they never truly got used to the size of the stage in comparison to the rtk stage, and they were always struggling to fill it in an intentional way. they tried valiantly to recoup their ground and bring everything together in a full circle for their last stage, and even though they somehow came in second, i think by the finale they had been worn down and lost a lot of their steam. it also doesn’t help that they lost a member to injury right near the end, which can be very demotivating, especially for a young group.

skz

god’s ddu du ddu du - the most stylistically different and interesting of the bunch, with a lot of interesting elements and well designed movement, even if the overall arc was half baked and lackluster

i’ll be your man - this was an actual attempt at a departure from their normal bluster and even though it never makes it all the way there and they don’t do that great of a cover, it’s different enough.

wolfgang - although watchable for hilarity and/or cringe value, nothing about this stage demonstrates a significant amount of growth from the first one. it fact it just feels like they injected a load more money and time into the premise of their 100sec stage, without any of the reflection that this kind of circular final stage concept should have. it’s exactly the stage of a group that’s been propelled to first in every round through an artificially inflated system.

god’s menu/side effects - the most scattered of all their stages. there’s not quite enough material to tie everything together and it feels underformed.

we all knew what the outcome of the show was going to be the moment that very first round of fan voting came in. now i don’t actually care about final outcome of the show, because the most valuable experience of a show like this is learning from what your competitors around you are doing and how to improve your work for further rounds. if the ranking system had been solely expert + judges based, all of the weekly rankings would have looked a lot different and skz would have actually had a chance to grow from this experience. but because they have the biggest and most aggressive fandom, their stages constantly ended up in first place and they never actually had the opportunity to sit back and reflect on their performances to figure out how they can do better. because the truth of the matter is that they did not have the best performances on the show. they consistently made stylistically stagnant stages and never managed to correct any of the issues that have been plaguing them since the 100sec round. the closest they got was god’s ddu du ddu du, which was aesthetically the most different and had the most interesting subversions of the stage format, even if it ultimately fell flat because they still missed the mark on managing the shape of the narrative. if you watch all their stages back to back you’ll see that there’s an overreliance on the same types of stylistic decisions and thematic elements, including in the sound and feel of the work. this is a bit hard to explain, but even though the stages all look different, they don’t convey any nuanced emotion or intention other than ‘stray kids world domination.’ now nuanced intention is not necessary for a kpop song performance, but skz took it upon themselves to try and tackle some fairly complex thematic ideas, which is commendable, but they fall flat because the members themselves don’t know how to act. and acting is supremely important when you are doing themed stages. i talked about this same principle in this response about orange caramel and wjsn chocome, but most newer idols don’t approach performing as a character, they approach performing as themselves, and skz are big victims of this. that’s why even i’ll be your man, where they do actually attempt to be a bit more nuanced in their delivery, still comes off like all their other stages. they don’t ever push themselves beyond their performance boundaries (physically yes, obviously. i mean mentally) and so every stage has a little checklist of skz-specific personality traits that round out in the bigger picture to the same general feel. this kind of strategy works great for music shows and for general promotion because it’s super marketable, but in this particular setting, where we spend an extended amount of time with all the groups, it doesn’t facilitate the same amount of growth that letting those of personas go would.

ikon

at ease - really clear cumulation of their performance, group colour, and design elements over the entire show.

classy savage - well designed and decorated with an interesting concept, but has a few flaws that keep it from being their best work.

inception - again, very well designed; the set is so inventive and features a lot of carefully blocked movement, plus the colour palette is tight and used effectively, it just doesn’t reach the same scale as the latter two stages.

love scenario/killing me - it’s the first stage and it clearly suffers from a bit of underd evelopment as they were getting used to the format of the show. it’s still an interesting and well performed stage with the start of elements that we can see them develop further in the next rounds.

ikon had the most lackadaisical attitude toward the whole show, which i think was the best way to approach it, but also they didn’t really push much beyond their boundaries as performers. i’m not faulting them for not wanting to, they’re a very well established group and honestly don’t really need improve on anything. they did however, do a really great job of improving on their design quality and intergration after the first round, which is the one thing that this program definitely facilitates for. they’re also the only group where their finale stage was demonstrably their best stage, so they really did nail that slow improvement progression. they got what they wanted out of the show, which was new friends and a chance to make some fun stages that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to. like i think i’ve said in every other review, there’s not that much to say about them as a whole because they just put their noses to the grindstone and did the work while maintaining a chill and fun demeanour, and those efforts paid off even if they didn’t end up ranking very high.

sf9

the stealer - great integration of theme into narrative and design, small scale concept with big impact.

believer - smart use of camera work and choreography in conjunction with the design elements. although not very narrative focused, it’s a clear and thoughtful elaboration on their intro stage that’s very well executed.

move - a risky choice that pays off fairly well for them, even if it doesn’t capture all the depth that it could have.

jealous - it’s their first stage of the competition and the first time they had worked on something of this scale before, so it only makes sense that it’s the weakest of their run. despite that, it shows a strong understanding of an unusual concept and it still holds up.

sf9 were the clear underdogs of everyone and the rankings pretty clearly reflected that. but as a group they really put in the work to improve their skills and i think they showed the most dramatic improvement of everyone, especially between the first and second rounds. they repeatedly made comments about how they were focused on creating good stages and it paid off. their stages were all conceptually and visually interesting without relying on much external lore or overly dense themes, even if some of them were more effective than others. they had a lot of strong emphasis on costume in particular and they were very well styled. their finale stage was a very clear synthesis of all of the experience and knowledge they gained over the course of the show and it wraps a neat aesthetic and thematic bow on their journey. they absolutely did not deserve last place; they were the ones hardest hit by the fan voting system and i hope that the group doesn’t internalize the official outcome too much, because they did a lot of good work that they should be proud of and deserves a higher due than it was given.

ateez

rhythm ta - simple concept with a clear narrative that uses a lot of visual referencing as exposition without being cluttered and too reliant on the source material. impeccable use of limited design elements to create atmosphere and it’s a strong reinvention of the song.

wonderland - an absolute banger of a first stage that does all the same things as rhythm ta just to a slightly less polished scale.

ode to joy - both stylistically and tonally a departure, this stage relies a lot on group lore but also has a very clear message that was surprising for its maturity and temerity.

the real - purposefully pulled back in scale and ambition as a pointed critique of the competition as a whole. looser in design aesthetic synthesis but has more freedom for the members to show more dynamism in the group’s abilities and colour.

the youngest of the six groups, i don’t think anyone was expecting ateez to come out swinging in the way that they did. oh, we were all expecting them to put up a fight, but i know that i wasn’t expecting much beyond the capabilities of what we’d seen from skz and tbz, since they all share the dubious honour of being similar aesthetic performance based fourth gen groups. but oh baby did they prove us all wrong. the fact that they have incredible performance abilities and stage presence is what carried them half of the way, but they also proved to have a top notch creative team working behind them that knew how to visually craft a great performance. wonderland and rhythm ta are two of the smartest designed stages, and i’d put rhythm ta as the best designed stage, because it does so much in such a small amount of time. this ranking was tough because all of their stages intentionally prove a point and i dont think there are any that are demonstrably weaker. wonderland and rhythm ta served to prove that they had the capacity to keep up with their seniors, and that they were ambitious and hungry and had a solid team foundation. both stages ranked them first in non-fan judging and once they saw how the fan judging skews the final results, they smartly and ambitiously made a choice in the round BEFORE the finale to make a stage that rebuffs the laurels of the competition show they were at the pinnacle of, specifically for their fans. there is so much care and thought put into the ode to joy stage that it feels wrong to rank it as their third best, especially when it also contains one of the greatest 40 seconds of acting i’ve ever seen on a kpop stage. just the dichotomy of the stage’s melancholy feel with the choice of song is so compelling, and in its context as a part of the whole now the show is over.... i’m out of words. the brain on the person who came up with this, i would LOVE to talk to them. and having the real as a followup stage? where they have the freedom to have fun and be stylistically themselves while thumbing their noses at the show? a perfect follow up and rounding out of the expression of their abilities.

btob

back door - perfect. simple concept and simple narrative extremely well executed. excellent attention to detail and atmosphere.

show and prove - perfect reflection of their journey on the show as a whole.

blue moon - same as back door, just with a slightly larger scale.

missing you - only last because it doesn’t have the same strength of narrative and design concept as the other three stages. it’s still a better stage than 80% of the stages on the show.

we all know this, but btob are the real kings. all of their stages were phenomenal and they all hit my personal top ten, so this ranking is more of a ‘which stage was the best of the best.’ they did an incredible job of playing to their strengths and they knew exactly what they needed to do in order to craft the best performance. this was actually very difficult for me to decide because they never fucking missed. watching missing you for the first time in like two months smacked me right upside the head because that stage is beautiful. the intro in the forest with changsub and eunkwang is fucking gorgeous; the lighting and atmospherics are so effective and the trees do an incredible job of obscuring the stage architecture. and their costumes. this stage screams elegance in a way that no other stage managed to capture and this was the first round. and i’m putting last on this list, which should be telling about the quality of their work. and honestly it only goes up from here. they took that one maybe valid expert critique that they got of utilizing more narrative and they RAN with it. i put back door as first because it juuuuust inches out blue moon and show and prove for smart camera work, but honestly all three of these stages could take top spot, they’re of equal rank.

btob came into this show at a pretty distinct disadvantage: they’re old, and there’s only four of them. and as we know, thanks to rtk and the fourth gen groups, this show has a reputation for big acrobatic blowout spectacles, which is just not something they can do. but they also had a distinct advantage: they’re old and there’s only four of them. they very smartly foresaw that they wouldn’t be able to compete with the fourth gen groups in athletic ability, so they specifically chose to highlight the areas they were the strongest in, which you can see right from the start. their intro stage specifically highlights their vocals, and even in minhyuk’s dance solo the design is music show themed, as a gentle reminder that they know how to work a stage. and as the show progressed they started to solidify that assumption. they used narrative extremely well to give their stages an element of emotional investment that kept the audience engaged without banking on individual idols’ popularity to keep them afloat, and spent their time on the show being gracious and generous competitors, intent on being as watchable offstage as they were on. and it worked. by the time the finale rolled around, we knew who these men were and we had seen them be individuals, so they were able to cast off the need to play to narrative and to character and instead they were able to loop back around to that very first stage; simple, clean, emphasis on vocals, with a very important addition of uniformity. the current trend in kpop costuming is to have group members dressed similarly, but not exactly the same, partially in order to be able to everyone apart, but also because the ‘sameness’ of the boy band model has fallen by the wayside. btob took all their previous stages where they had clearly been individuals and as the culmination of their journey they chose to look exactly the same, to clearly send a message that they are a singular unit and they are proud of that. and they absolutely stuck the landing. this was a perfect run for btob, they should be really fucking proud of the work they did.

[chaoswillfallrpg]

LYRA BURKE is TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD and an UNSPEAKABLE in THE LOVE CHAMBER at THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC. She looks remarkably like MADISON ISEMAN and considers herself NEUTRAL. She is currently TAKEN.  

→ OVERVIEW:

Wealthy and advanced are two words that KRATISTA FLINT would want to eventually use to describe her daughter, and Lyra herself would also want to use those words, but sadly not in the same way. The youngest child of Kratista and EELIS BURKE Lyra was the apple of her fathers eye and the perfect pawn for her mothers schemes. Once a Flint her mother had aspirations for the Burke name to hold the same weight as that of her maiden one and to her the way to do it was through advantageous marriages for both Lyra and her older brother CAIUS. By the age of six Lyra was fluent in French and Latin, knew how to play both the piano and the harp and had a collection of custom designs so large she needed a separate room in their Bloomsbury townhouse to house them all. Although Lyra was happy to better herself and understood her privilege well and accepted it she felt as though she was born for the sole purpose of advancing the family name, almost like a pig for slaughter, the slaughterhouse being the alter with a Pure-Blood prince. Much to her mothers dismay Lyra had an infinity for the Burke side of the family over the Flint side, and although Lyra did want to better the Burke name she saw the path to do so through hard work and excellent job prospects rather than marriage. Kratista blamed this element of her otherwise perfect daughter's personality on her husband's father CARATACUS BURKE. When Lyra and Caius are not having a multitude of lessons they spend their time with their grandfather in his shop, a weird and dark place Borgin and Burkes would frighten most children but the pair loved spending hours amongst the dark artifacts the shop contained, asking their grandfather about each one and the stories behind them. 

It was at Borgin and Burkes the siblings first met ERIK BORGIN, the great nephew of the shop's co-owner CALLISTHENES BORGIN and an intriguing boy the same age as Caius. The trio quickly became inseparable, gawking over each new piece brought in to the shop and Lyra found another older brother in Erik, however, much to her dismay the pair headed off to school together leaving her behind with her mother and her schemes. After Caius and Erik had left for Hogwarts Kratista’s plans for Lyra’s life started to fall in to place when they began visiting the Black family as often as they were invited. Karista’s determination to move up in the world once again meant that she had her sights set on a marriage between Lyra and a member of the most noble house of Black, so much so that she had actually named Lyra after a constellation, as was the Black tradition, in the hopes it would give her a leg up in the race for their hand. Although Karista initially had planned for REGULUS, the jewel in the Black family crown, as Lyra’s name was in fact Burke rather than Flint she was instead offered the hand of SIRIUS BLACK who was the eldest Black brother but had alas already been marked as the black sheep of the family. On these visits the once friendly boy would keep his distance, Sirius would often escape to his room or fly on his broom in the garden of his townhouse. Thinking that Sirius was avoiding her because he thought he was too good to marry a lowly Burke, Lyra would instead spend her time with Regulus, teaching him French or listening intently to the stories he had read much to her mothers delight. Kratista thought she was rubbing off on her youngest child and that Lyra was in fact setting her sights on the more sought after Black, which of course was not the case. 

Leaving for Hogwarts was one of the happiest days of Lyra’s life, no more did she have to keep her mother happy and could instead explore her own interests. Finding her cousin ROSALIE FLINT on the train the pair clung to one another for support and only hoped that they would follow in the family tradition and be sorted into Slytherin together. Watching Rosalie get sorted immediately into the correct house had Lyra nervous for her turn and correctly so, the hat took what felt like hours choosing between Slytherin and Ravenclaw but ended up deciding her determination to prove her mother wrong was a very Slytherin trait to possess. Dorming with Rosalie the pair fell into a friendship group with their roommates ANDROMEDA BLACK, ADRASTEIA GREENGRASS and AALIYAH GOSFORTH and found a home with them for the next seven years. Determined to explore all she could of life whilst away from her mother Lyra threw herself into her school work, her curiosity often getting the better of her the girl would spend hours after curfew reading and researching in order to get answers. Lyra particularly shone in Herbology and Potions, spending a lot of her free time in the greenhouses and potions classrooms creating concoctions well beyond the capabilities of a normal student in her year. Her intellect being a well known fact amongst her house led to her brother's friend RABASTAN LESTRANGE asking for help in subjects he struggled in and Lyra being as kind as she were, potentially too kind for her house, agreed happily. Rabastan was far more clever than he believed and if only he spent half as much time studying than he did having mood swings he would be top of his class which Lyra openly told him. Rabastan helped Lyra as much as she helped him, he brought out a more humorous and adventurous side to her that she was happy to see, instead of tutoring him in the library or common room instead he would persuade the girl out after curfew to study by the lake or astronomy tower. 

Spending a lot of time with Rabastan opened her eyes to lots of new things, one being the world of Quidditch which she enjoyed immensely. He taught her the rules and how to play and soon enough she tried out for the position of Keeper and was accepted, making new friends in her teammates such as LUCINDA TALKALOT, EMMA VANITY and her own cousin DECIUS FLINT. Also amongst her teammates was Regulus, reigniting their friendship from childhood she spent a lot of her time with him and his friend SEVERUS SNAPE who shared her passion for potions. On the occasions where she would have the unfortunate luck to bump into Regulus when he was with his other close friend, NARCISSA BLACK Lyra would quickly end the meeting. A girl who clearly didn't have the time of day for Lyra although she couldn't for the life of you say why Narcissa served as a reminder of all the things she hated about what her mother wanted her to become so wasn't that interested in befriending the girl anyway. Her later years of Hogwarts saw Lyra’s more fun and playful side come into view, already being established as an academic and an excellent Quidditch player it was also time to assert herself into the funner side of life and she had the perfect friendship group to help her. On many occasions you would find the group of Slytherin girls sneaking in the Marauders parties in the Gryffindor tower and partying with all sorts of students. It was at these parties that Lyra started to hold a candle for her ex-betrothed Sirius, who had indeed been the black sheep and defied his family. Now with the freedom it allowed Lyra noticed how Sirous had come into himself and decided to admire him from afar, never being brave enough to approach him as she would only serve as a reminder of the life he left behind. 

Using her academic success in potions to hers and other peoples advantage Lyra teamed up with Adrasteia who was also gifted in the subject to create concoctions perfect for these Gryffindor parties. Being personal favourites of the Potions master PROFESSOR SLUGHORN allowed the girls to use the potions labs whenever they wanted and so spent much of their free time creating drinks that could do almost anything. They made butterbeers that could sober you up, cocktails that gave you the courage to dance to the songs being played and even dabbled with shots that could get you to the right level of drunk in one gulp. It was however with this very drink that one of Lyra’s worst memories had been made, she had entered one of the many parties with a first draft of the shot in hand when she offered one to Rabastan - at his own risk - and had one to herself. The shot worked perfectly for her, and seemingly worked for him too, the pair having enough dutch courage in them to actually share a kiss. However it all turned south when the shot must have reacted to something Rabastan had already drank and he became so drunk he couldn't stand, the next day she apologised profusely and it became quite obvious, much to her dismay that the boy didn't remember anything from the night before. Hiding her new found feelings for the boy in the same place within her heart as she did with those for Sirius Lyra graduated Hogwarts at the top of many of her classes and was flooded with Job offers. 

Deciding that a job as an Unspeakable in the love chamber was an excellent way to show her mother advancing did not necessarily mean marriage and to also fix the wounds of unrequited feelings Lyra moved away from her mothers clutches and in to a flat in Carkitt Market above the Hopping Pot with Andromeda and Adrasteia. Being extremely proud of her job Lyra spent a lot of time there, becoming close with ANNABETH PEBWORTH who was a Muggle-Born witch with the same kind-heartedness Lyra herself possessed. The pair got on swimmingly at work despite the difference in blood status, Annabeth never once expecting Lyra to be cruel for her blood and Lyra never once expecting Annabeth to be below her for hers. With blood status becoming increasingly more apparent in their society Lyra is becoming more and more aware of the people around her to all intents and purposes choosing sides. Not yet ready to admit that she will likely have to choose herself, she has buried her head in the sand looking for anything to distract her. The perfect opportunity came along however in the most terrible way, her cousin Rosalie went missing at the Yule ball just gone and popped up again two weeks later with no recollection of what happened. Caring wholeheartedly for Rosalie and not wanting to see her like this Lyra has made it her mission to use her researching skills to their advantage and is working with Rosalie to figure out what has happened to her. 

→ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Blood Status → Pure-Blood

Pronouns  → She/Her

Identification  → Cis Female

Sexuality  → Up To Roleplayer

Relationship Status → Single

Previous Education →  Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Slytherin)

Societies → Pura Sorores

Family →  Eelis Burke (father), Kratista Burke (mother), Lyra Burke (sister), Caratacus Burke (grandfather/boss), Dionysus Flint (uncle), Lotte Flint (aunt), Decius Flint (cousin), Rosalie Flint (cousin), Elijah Yaxley (uncle), Ismena Yaxley (aunt), Eleanor Yaxley (cousin), Victor Yaxley (cousin)

Connections  → Andromeda Black (housemate/best friend), Adrasteia Greengrass (housemate/best friend), Aaliyah Gosforth (best friend), Regulus Black (close friend), Rabastan Lestrange (close friend/potential love interest), Erik Borgin (close friend), Annabeth Pebworth (colleague/close friend), Sirius Black (friend/potential love interest), Lucinda Talkalot (friend), Emma Vanity (friend), Severus Snape (friend), Narcissa Black (advesary)

Future Information → N/A

LYRA BURKE IS A LEVEL 6 WITCH.

[generaldisdainn]

Four of a Kind

AO3 link

Rating: MA

Summary: After accepting a job as the head of marketing for a local animal shelter, Anna finds herself in a new city in need of a place to live. Luckily, 3 guys know just the place.

Previous chapter

Chapter 6 (another reminder of the fic rating for this chapter!!!)

This whole fic has been written in collaboration with my friend happycap77 on ao3, and this is another one of his amazing chapters! <3 

“I think we make a pretty damn good team,” Ryder boasted.

Ryder and Anna both stepped back from the banner they had spent the better part of the afternoon on. The words “Adoption Day” were written in huge multicolored letters, followed by enough exclamation marks for a short novel. Several large and small illustrations of dogs and cats were dotted around and between the letters; Ryder was particularly proud of the one he drew poking out through the “O” of “Adoption.”

“Yeah, we do,” Anna agreed, holding up her hand for a high-five. Ryder obliged, making a satisfying slap that rang through the apartment’s common area.

“Thank you for helping me with this, Ryder. It really means a lot.”

“It’s no trouble at all. I’m happy to help you with creative stuff.”

“Yeah, but really. It wouldn’t have looked even half as good if it was just me doing this.”

“Don’t say that, the design was your idea!”

“Yeah, but actually being good at arts and crafts was yours.”

“Agree to disagree, then?”

“Sure, let’s go with that.”

They stood and admired their work for a bit in comfortable silence.

“It really does look good, though,” Ryder said.

“I can’t wait to show it to Kristoff,” Anna said eagerly. Ryder gave her a sideways look. “...And Sven,” Anna continued. “It’s just that...that Kristoff has visited me at work and Sven hasn’t yet, so...I don’t know, I think he might appreciate it more.”

Ryder turned his head back slowly, then checked the time on his phone. 4:30 PM. He looked back at Anna, and a shadow of a smirk appeared on his face. “Well, it’s a good thing he’ll be home soon.”

Anna shot a puzzled look Ryder’s way. “No, he...he always gets home a few minutes after 6:30 on Fridays.”

Ryder smiled. “Thought so.” He decided to take the scheme one step further. “It’s too bad Sven has to stay at the school late today, though.”

“Oh...yeah,” Anna said absent-mindedly, lost in the hope that Kristoff will show her his adorable, boyish smile when he sees the banner. She almost didn’t notice Sven walk through the door.

“Oh, wow, hi Sven!” Anna spun around to greet him. “I thought you-”

“Can’t talk, must eat,” Sven interrupted and headed straight for the fridge. “Y’all better not have eaten the last slice of pizza. Someone will die if-” He opened the door to find the slice still there in a plastic bag. He offered the two of them a sweet smile. “I never doubted you.”

“Bon appetit,” Ryder said. He turned to Anna, unable to contain his mischievous grin.

“What?” Anna asked, a nervous smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Oh, nothing,” Ryder answered. “I just really think the shelter will love the banner.” He started to walk away. He paused, as a thought occurred to him. “Hey Sven, can we break into the liquor tonight?”

“Fine,” Sven said, a morsel of chewed pizza erupting from his mouth. “Leave me in peace.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Ryder said, and he walked off.

Anna remained perplexed by their interaction. First, he said Kristoff was coming home early, which she was certain he wasn’t. Then Sven walked through the door seconds after Ryder said he had to stay late. Was he really that unaware of his roommates’ schedules? The people he’d been living with for well over a year now? And why did he say “thought so”? Anna knew he was the most reserved of the four of them, but he seemed to be good friends with the two of them; she imagined he would at least know when they usually get home. Then again, she didn’t know when Sven was off work today--

Then it hit her like a bag of ice. Of course Ryder knew when the two of them were supposed to get home today. He wanted to see if she knew. That sneaky little bastard, Anna thought. She strode over to Ryder’s door and quickly rapped on it. “Ryder, can we talk?”

The door swung open a few moments later. “Yeah, of course. Come on in.”

She walked right past him, making sure to avoid Carlos the cactus, and sat down on his bed. The instant Ryder closed the door, she started talking.

“Look, Ryder, I don’t know what you think you know about how I feel about Kristoff, or why I knew when he was supposed to get home and not Sven or whatever, but it really felt like you were testing me out there and...well, I didn’t appreciate that.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about that. I’m sorry, I was just trying to have a little fun.”

“Okay. Apology accepted. But still, I want you to know that there’s nothing between Kristoff and me because that would be weird.”

“Anna, it’s-”

“And I really don’t want to make things weird, I mean I just got here—well, I didn’t just get here, but compared to you guys I’ve barely been living here at all and to just show up and start dating one of you would be, like, overstepping boundaries or something.”

“Okay, can I-”

“And also me knowing when he gets home doesn’t prove I’m into him, FYI, it just means I pay attention to people’s schedules, like you always water the bathroom plants every three days in the afternoon.”

“Anna, can I say something?”

“Yes, sorry, go ahead.”

“It’s okay if you’re into Kristoff.”

Anna’s eyebrows shot up before furrowing just above her nose. “I...um-”

“And I’ll let you in on a secret.” He leaned in a bit and spoke in softer tones. “I’m pretty sure Kristoff’s into you too.”

Anna wanted to smile from ear to ear, but she didn’t want to seem overexcited at hearing the news. Still, despite her best efforts, the corners of her mouth lifted ever so slightly upward. “...Oh.”

“Kristoff...he just acts differently around you. I don’t know about Sven, but I’ve certainly noticed that his whole demeanor changes from…” He paused, as though trying to find the right word. “...sulky and...and standoffish to uncharacteristically cheerful. You just have that effect on him. And I’ve never seen him get that way before, even with-” He cut himself off.

“With who?” Anna asked.

“Never mind, it doesn’t matter,” Ryder responded. “What does matter is that you’re bringing out a side of him that we haven’t seen in a while.”

Anna’s face reddened against her will. Did she actually have a chance to realize her fantasies? All of a sudden getting there seemed so easy. She swelled with anticipation.

“...Really?”

“Here’s my advice to you,” Ryder continued. “Show him that it’s working. I’m not going to give you details, but he’s had it rough. Sven and I, we do the best we can, but...to me at least, it seems like you’re exactly the kind of person he needs in his life right now.”

Every word Ryder said gave Anna a rush. She had no idea she meant that much to Kristoff. That, or he was scheming again, Anna thought. But he sounded sincere in everything that he said. She knew Ryder fairly well at this point, and she knew that he wouldn’t want to embarrass her.

“That, um...yeah, I’ll...I guess I’ll try,” Anna said.

“No pressure, Anna. If you don’t want to, you shouldn’t have to. But I just want to see you and Kristoff be happy, and I really think the best way to do that is for you to be together.”

“No, yeah, that definitely makes sense,” Anna murmured. “We’ll see what happens.”

“I guess we will.”

Anna stood up and turned to leave, but stopped to say one more thing. “Ryder, I’m...I’m actually kinda excited for tonight.” A smile touched her face.

Ryder laughed and returned her smile. “Me too. Now get outta here,” he teased.

Anna scurried out of Ryder’s room and shut the door behind her. She really was excited for tonight, but the excitement was bogged down by uncertainty. She knew almost for certain that Kristoff was a big softie underneath his stoic exterior, but she didn’t know if it was actually because of her or if it was just because she was getting to know him better.

There’s history you don’t know, Anna, she thought to herself. Don’t assume anything.

***

“Drink, bitches!” Sven shouted.

Drinking socially wasn’t something that Anma did often, but she was determined to venture beyond her comfort zone. It was already paying off; tonight, she discovered she had a taste for rum and coke.

Anna growled in protest. Sven never told her he was so good at quarters. Of the twenty-five turns they’d taken, he’d landed twelve quarters in the glass that sat in the center of the four of them. Ryder, who was on his team, had scored four times. Kristoff, who was on Anna’s team, had fared slightly better with a score of seven, and Anna had a score of...zero. Not to mention aiming at the glass was getting harder and harder with every swig she took.

Anna tried to stay as sober as possible by remembering how the evening started. She spent almost half an hour trying to pick out an outfit that she hoped Kristoff would think was cute. She settled on a floral-print tube top that exposed her midriff and the freckles on her shoulders, and a pair of denim cutoffs that were the tiniest bit too short. She checked herself out in the mirror and decided she looked hot, but also couldn’t help but feel self-conscious. Was she showing too much skin? Would it seem like she’s trying too hard? Would Kristoff even pay attention to her? What would Sven and Ryder think?

All the questions flew out of her head as she heard the front door slam. She opened her bedroom door to find Kristoff working his boots off of his feet.

“Welcome home, good sir,” Anna jokingly announced in a posh British accent.

“Thanks,” Kristoff responded absentmindedly. “Have you talked to Sven recently? He told me he wanted to get wasted tonight and I don’t think that’s a, um...uh…” His words trailed off as he looked up at Anna. A few more seconds, and he completely forgot what he wanted to say.

Anna relaxed. Her reservations about her outfit dissipated as she smiled and bit her lower lip. “Yeah, it was actually Ryder’s idea. I haven’t gotten drunk with you guys before and I think it would be fun!”

“Uh...yeah,” Kristoff forced out.

“Awesome!” Anna said. She turned around to walk back to her room. She could feel his eyes on her as she walked, but it didn’t seem creepy; rather, she had cast a line and he had taken the bait. “Let us know when you’re ready!”

“Uh...I gotta-” Kristoff was cut off by the slam of Anna’s bedroom door.

Anna never found out what he was thinking, but it must have been good because they were now sharing the large papasan chair, the curved sides of it encouraging the two occupants to be pressed up against each other. Though Kristoff hadn’t tried as hard with his outfit as she had; he wore a black V-neck tee that was a size too small and, Anna noticed, the same jeans he wore when he helped her with her dresser.

Maybe he did try , Anna thought. He does look sexy.

Kristoff looked at Anna every chance he got, though he tried to be discreet about it. Throughout the entire night his nose was inundated with the scent of her shampoo, the sweet strawberries-and-cream aroma to which he developed a Pavlovian response. His heart lifted and his blood rushed whenever he smelled it.

He watched her turn the quarter over in her fingers, trying to find the right angle, or the right technique, or the right whatever she was looking for to score her first point.

“Hurry it up, honey,” Sven said.

“Don’t listen to him, Anna, you got this,” Kristoff said. “I believe in you.”

Anna shot him a dirty look that couldn’t contain the smile behind it. “Don’t patronize me,” she said, enunciating clearly in an attempt to keep from slurring her words, mostly effectively.

“I’m not!” Kristoff’s smile broadened. “I really do believe in you!”

Getting a few drinks in him loosened Kristoff up without making him too loopy. He found himself feeling really happy having fun with friends, but mostly being this close to Anna. He couldn’t remember why he never let himself get this close before.

Anna squinted her eyes and curled her tongue up to her nose as she aimed and aimed again, before finally letting the quarter loose. It bounced off the table, spun in the air, seemed to hover there for a second or two...and landed in the cup with a satisfying clink .

“FUCK YES!!” Anna shouted as she shot her hands up in the air.

“Ah, Christ, Anna,” Kristoff said as he clapped his hand over his ear. Anna’s elation immediately turned to concern as she turned to lay her hands on Kristoff’s arm.

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god, I’m so sorry, I was just really excited,” Anna said, tripping over the words. “Are you okay? Do you want me to kiss it?”

“Kiss the inside of my ear?” Kristoff laughed, causing Anna to burst into laughter. Her laugh wasn’t reserved or bubbly like the ones Kristoff couldn’t stand; it was loud and irregular, full of snorts and gasps. He loved it.

“Yeah, just limme git in ther-r-re,” Anna giggled, pursing her lips into a tight ring. Anna talking into and breathing on his ear sent a euphoric chill through his body.

“No, no, come on, Anna,” Kristoff said. “Let’s keep playing. Ryder, it’s your turn.”

“Um, uh, I’m actually out of quarters,” Ryder said. “I’m pretty sure that was all twenty-five.”

“Looks like we win!” Sven said. “Victory, Team...uh...Svyder? Ryden? Ren?”

“Aw, fuck you guys,” Kristoff said. “We’ll get you next time, right, Anna?”

“Pfffffft, no we won’t,” Anna said, laughing and flopping over onto Kristoff’s lap.

“Anna, come on,” Kristoff protested, trying to lift her off of him. “God, how are you…” No matter how he tried, she kept falling out of his hands and back onto his lap. “You’re like liquid! Stop!”

“I’m just happy-y-y-y,” Anna said, almost melodically. “I’m so glad I moved here, I love you guys.” She looked up at Kristoff, her eyes half-open and dreamy. “Even you, grumpy man,” she said, pitching her voice down as she spoke.

Kristoff didn’t know what to do. Here was Anna, inebriated and uninhibited, in the cutest outfit he’d ever seen her in, literally throwing herself at him. He knew what he wanted to do, but he didn’t think now was the right time.

“Anna, seriously, you’re drunk.”

“No I’m not!” Anna shouted as she sat up. “Watch! Z, Y, X, uh, V-”

“You couldn’t even make it three letters in!”

“No no no no no hold on hold on hold on, uh, Z, Y, X, W ,” she said, pointing a finger at Kristoff. “V, U, T...um…”

“Okay, Anna-”

“ S!! ” she shouted.

“Alright, we get it,” Kristoff responded. “You’re not that drunk.”

“Hey Sven, wanna try playing Halo drunk?” Ryder asked all of a sudden.

“What? Ryder, we’re-” Sven cut himself off when he turned to look at Ryder’s face. His head was cocked at a slight angle, eyes wide and lips pressed into a fine line. He shot a quick sideways glance at Kristoff and Anna before looking back at Sven.

“Oh. Uh, sure thing. I have to get another drink, though,” Sven answered.

“Okay, great, I’ll get it set up,” Ryder said and scurried off to his room. Sven followed shortly after, an unopened beer can in his hand. They were gone before either Anna or Kristoff had time to respond.

“Oh, alright, bye guys,” Kristoff said to no one in particular.

For a moment the two of them sat in silence. It was a comfortable silence, just as it usually was with them, but this silence in particular was charged with potential. Anything could happen from this moment, and it all depended on the two of them.

“So…” Anna finally broke the silence, “...what do you wanna do?”

Get you out of that adorable outfit, Kristoff thought. “Umm…” is what he said.

“We could...keep drinking, we could watch something, we could-”

“Oh, yeah, what’s that show you’re into right now? ‘Throne Games?’ ‘Throne...Battle?’ ‘Throne…’”

“‘Gilmore Girls?’”

“Yeah, that. We could watch that.” Kristoff started to stand up. “I’ll turn the-”

Anna grabbed his arm. “Kristoff...wait,” she said. He turned to look at her and saw her eyes, wide and heavy with emotion.

Kristoff sat back down. “...Yeah?”

“I just...I’m sorry if I come off strong sometimes, I know I can be overbearing, and our personalities are so different, I just, I don’t know, I just kept trying to get to know you better and I try to be nice around you, but I’m also loud a lot and I don’t know if you’re okay with that-”

“Anna.”

She looked up at his face. His bright, hazel eyes that bored into her own eyes. His gentle, soft smile that imprinted directly on her heart. Kristoff, she thought. She couldn’t think of anything else. Kristoff.

He opened his mouth to speak. “It’s oka-”

Before she could stop herself or even realize what she was doing, her mouth was pressed against his. He recoiled, pulling away from her.

“Anna!” he shouted, seemingly upset. In an instant, Anna sobered up.

“Oh my god, I didn’t--I don’t know--I’m so sorry-”

“Stop.” The world froze for the two of them.

This time, Kristoff couldn’t resist. I want this, he convinced himself. He laid his hands on the sides of her face, stroking the softness of her cheek and brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. He leaned in and kissed her. Anna tensed for a second, then relaxed, wrapping her arms around his neck. Pants and moans escaped their mouths as they kissed, tongues moving in to explore. They whispered each other’s names. Hands roamed to unexplored places. They couldn’t stop themselves.

Anna climbed on top of Kristoff, straddling his broad frame with her legs. She could feel the bulge in his pants straining against the denim. She pressed herself up against him and he moaned into her lips. His arms tightened their grip on her. She laid a hand on his arm and guided it down her back until his hand was on her ass, which he took a firm hold of. His mouth and tongue left trails of hot breath and gentle kisses on her neck and cheeks. She threw her head back and shuddered as he worked.

Without warning, Kristoff placed his other hand on Anna’s ass and lifted her into the air. A small cry escaped her lips as she wrapped her legs around his waist and giggled. “I’ve waited so long,” she breathed, before pressing her mouth to his again. Kristoff chuckled as he carried her into his bedroom and shut the door behind them.

 “Put me down,” Anna said, and Kristoff obeyed.

She wasted no time in pulling her top off, revealing her black strapless bra. Kristoff’s mouth went dry as he marveled at her.

“Take off your shirt,” Anna demanded, the deep, uncharacteristic rumble of her voice breaking him out of his trance.

Kristoff wordlessly complied, revealing his large and slightly chubby, but ultimately finely sculpted form that Anna had been dying to see. She ran eager hands up his sides, placing kisses on his firm chest.

She rushed to undo the button on Kristoff’s pants as he struggled to unlatch her bra. The two worked at each other, hands and fingers feverishly trying to get each other out of their clothes to reveal all they had been fantasizing about. As Anna’s bra fell away to reveal her perky, freckled breasts, a quiet “holy shit” escaped through Kristoff’s lips.

“Do you like them?” Anna asked, a twinge of self-consciousness in her voice.

“I love them,” Kristoff responded as he filled his hands with them. She moaned softly at the contact.

Anna tugged his pants down past his bulge, pulling his underwear with them, revealing his completely hard cock. “Oh my god,” she said. “This is really happening.”

“Should we-” Kristoff started to say.

“Don’t think,” Anna said, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. Kristoff sucked air through his teeth as she wrapped her hand around his shaft and began stroking it. Kristoff responded by reaching down to her pussy and trailing a finger through her folds. He smiled into her lips as he heard the hitch of her breath when he touched her. She was sopping and eager.

“I need you inside me,” Anna said breathlessly after a moment. She couldn’t wait any longer.

“Turn around,” Kristoff directed. It was Anna’s turn to obey. She turned, braced herself against the wall, and presented herself to him.

Kristoff couldn’t believe what he was looking at. The freckles dotting her smooth and otherwise flawless skin, her orange hair seeming to glow in the otherwise dimly-lit room, her slim waist, her wide hips, her incredible ass, the lusty expression on her face as she looked back, impatiently awaiting him to enter her. There was no doubt in Kristoff’s mind anymore. She wanted him, and he wanted her.

Tonight, he would give himself to her.

Anna let out a gasp and Kristoff grunted as he slipped his cock inside of her. Anna’s head dropped as she pushed back against his cock, taking his entire length and pressing her ass to his hips. Kristoff threw his head back.

Kristoff’s rough, strong hands wrapped around Anna’s waist, gripping her tightly. He threw his hips forward and back, pulling her onto him with his hands. His pace was slow at first, but quickly became rapid as his lust grew exponentially stronger.

Anna reached between her legs with one hand to massage her clit. She felt victorious. This was the culmination of well over a month of waiting and turning hopes into actions. With every one of Kristoff's thrusts, she became more and more pleased with herself.

Kristoff grabbed Anna’s idle arm and pulled, forcing her upright and pressing more of her ass against his pelvis. “Fuck, you feel so good,” Kristoff breathed into her ear.

Anna moaned through a smile as a response to Kristoff. “Pull my hair,” she begged. Her head jerked back as he grabbed a handful of her wavy locks and tugged, forcing a moan out of her. With his other hand he cupped and massaged one of her breasts, pinching and caressing the nipple. Her moans arced and soared as Kristoff’s own moans deepened and lengthened.

Anna threw herself back against him, a satisfying slap ringing out every time their skin made contact. She felt him building up inside her, approaching his peak. The pulsing of his cock within her brought her closer to her own.

“Fuck, Anna, I’m gonna cum,” Kristoff moaned. “Where can I-”

“I’m on the pill. Cum inside me,” Anna said between breaths. “I’m almost there too.”

Anna’s legs began to shake. Kristoff’s vice-like grip grew tighter. Their moans grew more frequent and fiery, full of desire for each other, their unspoken promises becoming fulfilled. Kristoff called out her name and she shuddered against him.

She pressed herself up against Kristoff as much as she was able as she felt him release inside of her, the warm fluid erupting from his cock and filling her. Her walls closed and constricted around him, forcing out every last drop.

They fell in a heap on a pile of unwashed clothes. They were huffing and panting, content with each other, sitting in the glowing aftermath of their orgasms.

“Holy fuck,” Anna said.

“Yeah,” Kristoff responded. “I can’t believe we did that.”

“I can,” Anna said, climbing on top of him to offer a kiss.

Kristoff chuckled and kissed her back. He couldn’t lie to himself; he was happy. But there was still that speck of doubt, that modicum of guilt.

I’ll worry about it tomorrow, he thought. I’m happy now. I don’t want to ruin that.

They stayed with each other that night. They both remembered how wonderful it was to fall asleep next to someone.

[presumenothing]

(AO3)

These days Ed’s journals are actual proper travelogues, no coded shit or anything.

…okay, no, there’s still some coded shit because alchemy is an inseparable part of travelling for him and that’s just too damn dangerous to leave out in plain sight. Especially since he can’t just transmute the covers shut anymore.

Besides, old habits are hard to break. Though at least he’s trained himself (with Winry’s enthusiastic “encouragement”) out of accidentally writing shopping lists and stuff in code too, just because half his mind’s still occupied with figuring out a transmutation or three dozen.

But anyway. Somehow he keeps finding that there’s so much to write about these days whenever he arrives in a new place, or even when he visits those they’ve been in before.

(Fine, yes, probably that does say something about how much of a one-track mind he’d had, before – but getting his and Al’s bodies back had been really fucking important, okay? 

That was putting it mildly, even, and he’d always consider it a worthy exchange even if it did make him wonder sometimes if there were other things he’d missed back then.)

He doesn’t mail out excitedly longwinded accounts of his journeys like Al does, complete with local recipes, pressed dried flowers, and photos or meticulously-labelled illustrations in place of them. Or that’s what he hears from Winry, at least – when Al sends Ed letters it runs more along the lines of alchemical notes that are thoroughly annotated (and even more thoroughly coded), though sometimes dried flowers still find their way into the envelope because his brother is a ridiculous sensory-addicted dork and Ed loves him to pieces despite the constant risk of pollen allergy.

Luckily the flowers are usually flat enough to double as bookmarks for his journals, which is also a convenient way of marking the progress of his journey against Al’s. So there’s that.

Though letters between them don’t happen very often, what with how very very frequently they change towns (or even countries) entirely.

He’s pretty sure there’s now an urban legend about that time Al’s letter had to be redirected a whole fifteen times before it reached him, and he’s definitely certain the postal system of Amestris and beyond actively hates them both by now. 

(Which is seriously uncalled for, since Al always puts more than enough postage to account for the inevitable redirections? But by this point Ed will personally vouch that people everywhere can be unreasonable about the weirdest stuff. Turns out Amestris doesn’t have a monopoly on that. Possibly not even the biggest market share.)

And of course it’s almost always Al doing the sending. Contrary to what Mustang believes Ed is actually capable of semi-tidy handwriting when he needs to be – how the hell else would he draw transmutation circles and not have them blow up in his face?

But one time Ed had just gotten so immediately carried away that he’d written his reply on whatever he’d had on hand right then, which amounted to three crumpled-then-flattened-again receipts, a map from the last town, and the back of the envelope that Al had sent his letter in.

(Al’s answering letter had come with five crisply-folded sheets of blank paper; Ed could practically hear the sigh coming from it.)

So now that they’ve acknowledged that letter-writing isn’t Ed’s strong point even when it’s about alchemy, and since Al’s all for being super-organised about everything – the resemblance the Hawkeye is really starting to get terrifying – and makes plans in advance far more than Ed does (which is to say not at all), Al now includes also-coded lists of telephone numbers in his letters, along with the dates when he expects to be contactable at each place.

This way Al can continue taking however long he likes to compose each letter (and he definitely adds to them over different days, Ed can tell by the writing) while Ed can call right back to discuss seven different theories at once, and woe betide anyone who tries to bug their phone calls without at least a university library’s worth of theoretical alchemy to back it up.

It’s a great arrangement, and Ed doesn’t have to write any letters. His brother is a genius.

The resounding success of this arrangement also reminds Ed that there are more ways to say hi, still not dead! than just letters (because, once again: impossible), since so many people have insisted on expressing completely unnecessary worry over his decision to travel alone.

(Hawkeye had only expressed an offer to teach him self-defence via firearm, and when he turned that down she’d instead produced a wallet of alarmingly convincing fake documents under a half-dozen not-Edward-Elric names. “Just in case,” she’d said, which still hadn’t explained why there’d been a pass from Xing proclaiming him to be a diplomat and thus immune to Amestrisan law.

Hawkeye is the best, hands down.)

For Winry he scribbles down the compositions of metal alloys and composites by region alongside rough sketches of interesting-looking designs, and most of the time he even remembers to record all this through an engineering lens rather than an alchemical one. He collects the scraps of notes and mails them once he’s gathered enough, which he usually does every few weeks, though he saves the actual material samples for when they meet in-person because they’re just too damned troublesome to mail. (He doesn’t really send anything separate for Granny Pinako, except for that one magazine clipping from Creta that had dedicated one full-page spread to Rockbell Automail’s advances, along with a hastily-done translation on the back.)

Mustang’s team gets the occasional joke souvenir; Ed knows that Breda and Havoc have a betting pool going (because of course they do) on who can most accurately guess where he’ll go next, so he always makes sure to get things that aren’t obviously tied to any place, and addresses the parcels to Hawkeye directly because he trusts her to thoroughly destroy the postmarked evidence.

(During their last phone call Al had pretty much admitted to dropping red herrings about Ed’s plans in his letters back to the team, and Ed had laughed so hard he’d needed to sit down.)

But that’s pretty much the most regular of it – Al, Winry, and sowing chaos in Mustang’s office from afar – and no one’s complained yet, so Ed figures this is good enough. Maybe someday when they’re all back together again they can borrow some of his journals to read if they want to; he knows that Winry does enjoy reading about Al’s travels, and if nothing else Al will certainly have fun spotting which parts are actually about alchemy and cracking them. 

That’s still some time off anyway.

Right now, though, he’s got a new idea about that alkahestry fusion that Al had written about, and – how the hell do you even dial from Aerugo to Xing? 

Ed has no idea, but there’d better be a way or he’s gonna make one, see if he doesn’t.

.

.

.

(more fics here)

[dailyexo]

[INTERVIEW] Baekhyun, Kai - 191217 Vice: “SuperM are the Avengers of K-pop”

"It’s a November evening at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Even though the house lights are still on, the excitement is palpable in the voices of twenty thousand fans singing along to every background track as though it were the main attraction. The reason for that enthusiasm is currently underneath the stage: in a few moments, K-pop supergroup SuperM will rise, veiled in smoke and clad in black and silver, to finish the first leg of their sold out We Are The Future Live tour.

Formed by SM Entertainment (one of the ‘Big 3’ record labels in K-pop) in partnership with Capitol Records, the group -- quickly dubbed ‘the Avengers of K-pop’ -- is made up of seven members from four other already wildly successful groups SHINee, EXO, NCT 127 and WayV. SuperM’s eponymous debut EP, with its lead single “Jopping”, dropped on October 4th, followed by a Los Angeles showcase that shut down Hollywood streets and was live streamed worldwide. Just a week later, they celebrated a historical no.1 on the Billboard 200 -- making them the first ever K-pop artists to hit the top spot with a debut release.

It’s worth noting that SM has experimented with supergroups and ‘special units’ before, but these are typically temporary and Korea-centric -- a live performance here, a special single there. SuperM, as you’ll likely have noticed, has been aimed directly at the international market since the very beginning. In harnessing their individual strengths and fandoms -- all members maintain their roles in their original groups as well as their solo careers -- SM have formed a group with effectively 14 million collective albums sales and almost four billion music video views to its name before it even started. United in this way, the artists bring a new kind of energy that fans are lapping up. Just two months on from release, the video for "Jopping" already has over 47 million views.

So who are these seven members?

Taemin, the 26-year-old industry veteran among them, debuted in 2008 with SHINee. Fans watched on as he grew from a shy teenager to a fearless artist who is now famously looked up to by his peers. Baekhyun, the eldest and designated leader of the team at 27, is one of EXO's lead vocalists, known for his cheekiness. Then there’s Kai, also from EXO, who happens to be spellbinding, ballet-trained performer. Taeyong, one of NCT's main rappers and lyricists, is something of an enigma. His full-time bandmate Mark, the youngest of the supergroup at 20 years old, also helps out on the rap front. Completing the line-up are two NCT members who are also part of their Chinese subunit, WayV: Ten, a multitalented Thai artist, and Lucas, a Hong-Kong born heartthrob.

We caught up with the group to discuss how they deal with nerves, feeling like rookies again, and the new releases they've got planned for 2020.

Hi SuperM! During your debut showcase back in October you mentioned being nervous. Has the US tour been less nerve-wracking?

Taeyong: First off, it’s been so great to be back as SuperM to perform in front of all our US fans! We’re having so much fun. It was less nerve-wracking because now we’re a lot more comfortable with each other and had much more time to practice and perform together than we did for the debut showcase.

How was the process of connecting with each other, since you come from different groups but have known each other for years?

Kai: I think all of us were very open to each other, wanting to get closer. Despite already having a senior-junior relationship, we were all open to teaching each other and we had a lot of great conversations. I personally tried to connect to the rest of the guys like an older brother from the neighbourhood. We joke around a lot and have fun together.

What's one thing you learned from each other so far?

Ten: We’ve been learning so much from each other in many different aspects, but if I had to choose one thing, it’s probably music. We all come from distinct music styles, so it’s cool to learn from each other when we’re together. It makes me look forward to every day.

Can you tell us how you prepared for this tour?

Mark: Our preparation time was more limited than we would have liked, so we were very committed those sparse days we got together. We rehearsed in various ways: for example, we built a replica of the stage at a gym to rehearse, and of course we rehearsed at the actual venue as well. The energy was always really good.

What was your first impression of "Jopping", both as a track and as a word?

Mark: The strong SMP [SM's signature genre, a blend of pop, rock, R&B and hip-hop with bold choreography] vibe struck me the most. I could feel how vast the track was just by listening to it, including the depth it held. I honestly believed that it was the right song for SuperM's debut. As for the word, I thought it was a good idea. It fits the energy we wanted to deliver as a message and it felt cool to be introducing the world to a new word of our own.

You all perform solo stages at the concert. Which is your favourite and why?

Ten: Everyone is obviously so amazing, so it’s hard to choose one. But if I really just had to choose, I’d choose Taemin’s solo stage. In just five minutes, he showcases his vocal abilities through “Danger”, then kills it for the choreography and overall performance aspect during “Goodbye”. As I watch him perform, I can’t help but to think that he is one of the most impressive all-around artists out there. I hope to be an artist like that someday.

You guys have clearly launched with a unique strategy. What other innovations do you want to make in the industry?

Taeyong: It’s been really cool to be given the opportunity to be part of something new and innovative like this. As a team and as individuals, we all want to showcase new and innovative stages and performances to our fans. It’s been a fun journey working together and figuring out how to showcase our styles within our performances on this tour, both as a group and individuals. We hope to continue to bring fresh new ideas as artists who perform on stage.

You all have years of experience behind you, but with SuperM you are technically rookies again. What advice would you give to your younger selves?

Baekhyun: I do think of us as rookies again as SuperM. And the synergy we’re able to create with this specific combination of members makes for a whole new set of charms. If I were able to give advice to my younger self, I’d definitely tell him to continue to work hard, because people will notice you as long as you try your best.

Can fans expect another official release from SuperM soon?

Mark: I don't want to give out any spoilers, but we did perform two new songs during the tour already. Fans may already be expecting another comeback and I want to assure them that we are currently working on new things to show our fans. We are trying our best to create something that will meet or maybe even exceed our fans' expectations. Hope they like it.

What are your expectations for 2020?

Taemin: Because we’ll be back in the U.S. promoting for the tour, I’m excited about experiencing all the different cultures and famous spots at the different regions we’re headed. And of course I’m so excited to see all our fans there!

Mark, in NCT 127's recent interview you jokingly said that you came from the future. Now SuperM's tour name is We Are the Future. What does this mean to you?

Mark: I believe that "future" is and has always been the motto and the mindset of everyone at our label. Whatever it may be, we all try to focus on the next step and make plans for what's ahead of us. Our aspiration is to lead the generation through our music and art.

SuperM have just announced their European 2020 tour, stopping off in Paris on 26 February and London on 28 February."

Credit: Vice.

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Declining Western birth rates (Nikkei Asian Review) Births in many developed countries are poised to crater next year amid the economic turmoil caused by the pandemic and, in many cases, the botched response. Japan is projected to see births drop 10 percent in 2021, accelerating a decline. Last year there were 860,000 births in Japan, the first time the level dipped below 900,000 since tracking began. Babies in the U.S. could decline by 300,000 to 500,000 next year, a 10 percent drop in the 3.7 million average annual births. According to the International Labor Organization, 17.1 percent of people aged 18 to 29 around the world have not worked since the pandemic began, and those who did saw their hours shrink an average of 23 percent.

Mean streets (Bloomberg) Mean streets are getting meaner, and more than 700 cities have said they may cut infrastructure spending due to budget shortfalls. Potholes caused $15 billion in damages to cars over five years, and some states are in a particularly rough stretch of road: in Rhode Island, 48 percent of urban streets are in poor condition according to the Federal Highway Administration, followed by California (46 percent), New Jersey (42 percent), and South Dakota and Hawaii (36 percent each). In some metropolitan areas in particular, most roads are bad: San Francisco-Oakland (71 percent of streets are poor), San Jose (63 percent) and Los Angeles (63 percent).

Big California wildfires burn on as death toll reaches 7 (AP) Firefighters battling three massive wildfires in Northern California got a break from the weather early Monday as humidity rose and there was no return of the onslaught of lightning strikes that ignited the infernos a week earlier. The region surrounding San Francisco Bay remained under extreme fire danger until late afternoon amid the possibility of lightning and gusty winds, but fire commanders said the weather had aided their efforts so far. The three big fires around the Bay Area and many others burning across the state have put nearly 250,000 people under evacuation orders and warnings and authorities renewed warnings for anxious homeowners to stay away from the evacuation zones.

National Guard called out after police shoot Black man (AP) Wisconsin’s governor summoned the National Guard for fear of another round of violent protests Monday after the police shooting of a Black man under murky circumstances turned Kenosha into the nation’s latest flashpoint city in a summer of racial unrest. The move came after protesters set cars on fire, smashed windows and clashed with officers in riot gear Sunday night over the wounding of 29-year-old Jacob Blake, who was hospitalized in serious condition. In a widely seen cellphone video made by an onlooker, he was shot [by police seven times] in the back, as he leaned into his SUV while his three children sat in the vehicle. The shooting happened around 5 p.m. Sunday and was captured from across the street on video that was posted online. In the footage, Blake walks from the sidewalk around the front of his SUV to his driver-side door as officers follow him with their guns pointed and shout at him. As Blake opens the door and leans into the SUV, an officer grabs his shirt from behind and opens fire while Blake has his back turned.

Marco collapses, sets stage for Laura to hit US as hurricane (AP) Tropical Storm Marco began falling apart Monday, easing one threat to the Gulf Coast but setting the stage for the arrival of Laura as a potentially supercharged Category 3 hurricane with winds topping 110 mph (177 kph). While Marco weakened, Laura’s potential got stronger, and forecasters raised the possibility of a major hurricane that would pummel western Louisiana and eastern Texas from late Wednesday into Thursday. The two-storm combination could bring a history-making onslaught of wind and coastal flooding from Texas to Alabama, forecasters said. State emergencies were declared in Louisiana and Mississippi, and shelters were being opened with cots set farther apart, among other measures designed to curb infections.

In Mexico's televised 'return to classes,' parents turn to state schools (Reuters) Millions of students return to classes virtually in Mexico on Monday after a hiatus lasting months caused by the coronavirus pandemic that has sparked an exodus from private schools. Mexico has yet to publish official data, but private-school bodies consulted by Reuters said almost 2 million students at all levels were expected to quit private schools because of the crisis to join an already overcrowded public system. The lack of both in-person teaching and access to facilities has left many parents unwilling to shoulder private-school costs. Supporters of private schools worry the turmoil could stretch the education system, especially after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador last year canceled a reform that the previous government said would improve teaching standards in Mexico, one of the worst-performing countries in the 37-nation Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). As state schools reopen, students will start the new academic year with a home-learning program broadcast by major television networks until infection rates are deemed sufficiently low.

Mexico’s coronavirus toll (Financial Times) Mexico has surpassed its “catastrophic” worst-case scenario of 60,000 Covid-19 deaths and is shaping up as one of the worst health and economic casualties of the global pandemic. Latin America’s second-biggest economy, which has the world’s third highest overall coronavirus death toll, hit the grim milestone on Saturday, when the health ministry reported 60,254 and 556,216 confirmed cases. But officials have long acknowledged that the government’s data is an underrepresentation and the health ministry and private studies say the real death tally could be some three times higher.

Sweden’s success in fighting the coronavirus (London Times) Sweden is beating many European countries in the fight against new coronavirus infections, possibly because of its decision not to implement tough lockdown measures. As cases surge across Europe, leading to new restrictions such as the mandatory wearing of masks in many public areas, the infection rate in Sweden is falling. “Sweden is doing fine,” Arne Elofsson, a professor in biometrics at Stockholm University, said. “Strict rules do not work as people seem to break them.” Figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control show that the infection rate in France is more than 60 per cent higher than that of Sweden. France implemented a strict lockdown in the spring and requires masks to be worn in many public areas but has a fortnightly infection rate of 60 cases per 100,000 people. Sweden, which decided not to implement compulsory measures at that time and which rejected the use of masks, has a rate of 37 cases per 100,000 people. The government is recording between 200 and 300 new cases a day, with deaths down to three last Friday.

German doctors say tests indicate Kremlin critic Navalny was poisoned (Reuters) German doctors said on Monday that medical examinations indicated that Russia opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who is in a Berlin hospital after collapsing on a plane in Russia last week, had been poisoned. The specific substance was not yet known, German doctors said. The outcome remains uncertain but long-term effects, especially to the nervous system, could not be ruled out, it said.

European job cuts coming (The New York Times, McKinsey) A tsunami of job cuts is about to hit Europe as companies prepare to carry out sweeping downsizing plans to offset a collapse in business from the new coronavirus outbreak. Government-backed furlough schemes that have helped keep around a third of Europe’s work force financially secure are set to unwind in the coming months. As many as 59 million jobs are at risk of cuts in hours or pay, temporary furloughs, or permanent layoffs, especially in industries like transportation and retail, according to a study by McKinsey & Company.

At least 100 feared trapped in building collapse south of Mumbai (Reuters) At least 100 people are feared trapped in the debris of a five-storey building that collapsed on Monday in an industrial town in western India, a lawmaker said. Not all the roughly 200 residents of the building in Mahad, about 165 km (100 miles) south of India’s financial capital Mumbai, were at home when it crumbled in the evening, Bharatshet Maruti Gogawale, the local lawmaker, told Reuters. Authorities have yet to ascertain the cause of the collapse and the number of casualties, but about 30 people were pulled out by rescue teams and local residents. Old creaky structures and illegal constructions in India often lead to collapses, typically during torrential rain.

In China, Where the Pandemic Began, Life Is Starting to Look … Normal (NYT) In Shanghai, restaurants and bars in many neighborhoods are teeming with crowds. In Beijing, thousands of students are heading back to campus for the fall semester. In Wuhan, where the coronavirus emerged eight months ago, water parks and night markets are packed elbow to elbow, buzzing like before. While the United States and much of the world are still struggling to contain the coronavirus pandemic, life in many parts of China has in recent weeks become strikingly normal. Cities have relaxed social-distancing rules and mask mandates, and crowds are again filling tourist sites, movie theaters and gyms. The return to normalcy has made China an outlier in the global economy. The United States is facing a potentially long and painful recession, as some places have reimposed restrictions to contend with a surge in cases this summer. Several countries in Europe have been experiencing fresh outbreaks, putting additional pressure on an already weak economy. By contrast, China has been slowly recovering in recent months and its factories are humming again, although its growth is still weaker than before the pandemic and job losses are significant.

COVID-19 scary? Japan group offers coffins, chainsaws for stress relief (Reuters) Finding the pandemic scary? A Japanese group is trying to take people’s minds off COVID-19—by putting them in coffins surrounded by chainsaw-wielding zombies. Customers this weekend in Tokyo can lie in a 2-metre (6 1/2-foot) windowed box, listening to a horror story, watching actors perform and getting poked with fake hands and squirted with water. “The pandemic is stressful, and we hope people can get a bit of relief by having a good scream,” said Kenta Iwana, coordinator of production company Kowagarasetai—“Scare Squad”—which is putting on the 15-minute shows.

With Delay in Afghan Peace Talks, a Creeping Sense of ‘Siege’ Around Kabul (NYT) Mornings in the city begin with “sticky bombs,” explosives slapped onto vehicles that go up in flames. With night comes the dread of hit-and-run assassinations in the nearby suburbs—government employees shot dead by motorcycle-riding insurgents who roam free. As peace talks to end Afghanistan’s long war face delays, the Taliban may be sparing Kabul, the capital, from mass-casualty attacks as part of an understanding with the United States. But the insurgents have instead shifted to a tactic that is eroding the Afghan government’s standing with each passing day: frequent targeted assaults that the country’s security forces seem unable to control. The city has taken on an air of slow-creeping siege. At least 17 small explosions and assassinations have been carried out in Kabul in the past week, according to a tally by The New York Times. Three magnetic bombs went off within one hour on Saturday morning, and at least two more targeted attacks followed before the end of the day.

More U.S. troops pull out of Iraq (Foreign Policy) U.S.-led coalition troops withdrew from Iraq’s Taji base located north of Baghdad on Sunday and transferred control of the facility to the Iraqi security forces, part of a larger drawdown of U.S. troops in the country. The base has held up to 2,000 troops in the past, but most of those stationed there have departed this summer. The final troops are due to leave in the coming days. Sunday’s withdrawal comes as the Trump administration has been working with the Iraqi government to coordinate the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country. On Friday, after a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Trump reiterated his desire to pull out of Iraq. “Frankly, I didn’t think (the Iraq War) was a good idea,” he said. “Now we’re getting out, we’ll be leaving shortly.” The handover of Camp Taji is the eighth such transfer of an Iraqi base to Iraqi security forces.

Beirut faces mental health crisis after blast (Reuters) More than two weeks after a massive explosion tore through Beirut killing 181 people and leaving entire neighbourhoods in ruins, Sandra Abinader still jumps at the slightest sound. “The other day, I was trying to open a jar and the popping sound made me jump back and scream. I felt for a second I needed to run away.” The blast caught Lebanon at an extremely vulnerable point following months of severe economic crisis compounded by the coronavirus pandemic. Now practitioners are warning of a national mental health emergency as people begin to show signs of trauma from the explosion, including nightmares, flashbacks, crying, anxiety, anger and exhaustion. Psychologists say this is being exacerbated by the constant stream of images on Lebanese TV and social media showing the blast and its bloody aftermath. “Every time we say it can’t get worse in Lebanon, it somehow does,” said Jad Daou, a volunteer with Lebanese mental health NGO Embrace, who mans the phones at its crisis clinic. “A lot of people are feeling hopeless about the entire situation here in Lebanon.”

[strandedhaze]

ONE : MEET CHLOÉ

FULL NAME: chloé isabeau blackwood. PREFERRED NAME: chloé. NICKNAME(S): clo. DATE OF BIRTH: july 7th, 1998. GENDER: cis female. PREFERRED PRONOUNS: she/her/hers. ORIENTATION: heterosexual. RELATIONSHIP STATUS: single in main verse. RELIGION: she doesn’t have a settled religion, she takes from various religions and has her own beliefs. OCCUPATION: full time university student. CURRENT RESIDENCE: new york city, new york ; she resides in a penthouse in tribeca.

TWO : CHLOÉ'S BACKGROUND

HOMETOWN: los altos hills, california. NATIONALITY: american. ETHNIC BACKGROUND: american. LINGUISTICS: english is her native languages and she speaks french fluently. she has a passion for asian languages and is currently learning korean. EDUCATION: she studies english literature with a special concentration in creative writing at nyu. CRIMINAL RECORD: clean. BIRTH ORDER: second. FATHER: john blackwood was born on february 2nd, 1973 in washington d.c.. he is a tech entrepeneur and investor, who helps launching companies and works within sillicon valley. he resides in los altos hills, california. MOTHER: ariadne richards-blackwood was born on june 10th, 1975 in san francisco, california. she is the owner of one of the most sucessful marketing and public relations companies in the world, a television personality and author. she resides in los altos hills, california. SISTER(S): mabel blackwood was born on august 11th, 2003 in los altos hills, california. BROTHER(S): laurens blackwood was born on september 25th, 1994 in los altos hills, california ; seven blackwood was born on april 14th, 2001 in los altos hills, california. OTHER RELEVANT FAMILY: elodie blackwood, niece. SIGNIFICANT OTHER: chloé is single. CHILDREN: none so far. FRIENDS: lillian atkinson, gérard lorente, thomas knight. EXES: bradley anderson and colin turner. PETS: kobe, a persian cat.

THREE : GET UP CLOSE & PERSONAL

HEIGHT: 5′8″ ( 177 cm ). WEIGHT: her weight oscillates between 138 lbs ( 62.5 kg ) 143 lbs ( 65 kg ). BODY TYPE AND BUILD: she’s slim, has what some would deem as the classic model shape, if you will. she’s not particularly curvy, doesn’t have the most accentuated waist or a big bust (she’s shy of a 32B) but it was never something that bothered her — even if, yes, she did suffer from a bit of bullying for being to tall and too skinny in her high school years — and she’s fine with the body she has. she still holds a feminine shape and she’s in good shape because she’s very passionate about fitness and wellness. EYE COLOR: brown, tend to shift to dark brown during the winter and hazel during the summer. EYESIGHT: she has perfect eyesight, though you’ll catch her wearing glasses every now and again, when the work load is increasing and she needs to give her eyes a little break. HAIR COLOR: brown. HAIR STYLE: she likes to keep her hair long, it’s sort of her safety-blanket and even when she needs to chop it, she won’t ever cut it shorter than perhaps past-shoulder length ( when she goes that extreme is when her hair has grown a lot and she can donate it to cancer institutions ). it’s also naturally straight so it’s not very high-maintenance. for the most part, chloé will wear it down and tousled, straight but with loads of volume and texture because that’s how she likes it. on the rare, she’ll curl it or leave it in beach-y waves.  DOMINANT HAND: right. NOTABLE PHYSICAL TRAITS: her round eyes, almost deer-like, her plump lips and thick eyebrows. SCARS AND MARKS: she has a tiny, little mole above the right corner of her upper lip which is the most notable. besides it, she has a few scars and marks here and there but none is particularly remarkable.  TATTOOS: none so far.  PIERCINGS: regular lobes. VOICECLAIM: elizabeth sawatzky. ACCENT AND INTENSITY: you can take the girl out of the west coast, but you can’t take the west coast out of her. her accent gives away she’s not from new york, even if it’s not as intense as it used to be. ALLERGIES: roses, bees and pollen. PHOBIAS AND FEARS: extreme heights, complete darkness and snakes. MENTAL ILLNESSES: none so far. PHYSICAL ILLNESSES: none so far. SCENT THEY WEAR: replica flower market by maison martin margiela and replica beach walk also by maison martin margiela. ALCOHOL USE: socially, she does. SMOKING: in situations of extreme stress, she will reach out for a cigarette. however, it’s rare it happens and if it does, generally, it means bad news. OTHER NARCOTICS USE: no. INDULGENT FOOD: soul food, as she calls it, happens every now and again when she’s going home to visit her parents or when she needs a little ‘pick me up’. SPLURGE SPENDING: sometimes, she’s not denying it happens once or twice a year. GAMBLING: no. ADDICTIONS AND VICES: none.

FOUR : DIG DEEPER

CAN THEY DRIVE? yes, she can drive. CAN THEY COOK AND BAKE? yes and yes. CAN THEY CHANGE A FLAT TIRE? yes. CAN THEY TIE A TIE? yes. CAN THEY SWIM? yes. CAN THEY RIDE A BICYCLE? yes. CAN THEY JUMP START A CAR? no. CAN THEY BRAID HAIR? yes. CAN THEY PICK A LOCK? no. EXTROVERTED OR INTROVERTED? extroverted through and through. DISORGANIZED OR ORGANIZED? extremely organized when it comes to her stuff, tends to be ridiculously messy when studying or doing school work. CLOSE OR OPEN MINDED? open minded. CALM OR ANXIOUS? calm. PATIENT OR IMPATIENT? patient. OUTSPOKEN OR RESERVED? outspoken, sometimes too much. LEADER OR FOLLOWER? she doesn’t like to lead but she also doesn’t like to follow. OPTIMISTIC OR PESSIMISTIC? optimistic but above all, realistic. TRADITIONAL OR MODERN? modern with a love for some traditions. HARD-WORKING OR LAZY? hard-working. CULTURED OR UNCULTURED? cultured. LOYAL OR DISLOYAL? loyal. FAITHFUL OR UNFAITHFUL? faithful. NIGHT OWL OR EARLY BIRD? early bird. she can go to bed at 4 am or at 10 pm that she will still rise up and early with the brightest smile on her face. HEAVY OR LIGHT SLEEPER? light sleeper. COFFEE OR TEA? both. DAY OR NIGHT? day. TAKING BATHS OR SHOWERS? baths. COCA COLA OR PEPSI? coca cola. CATS OR DOGS? dogs. NETFLIX OR CINEMA? both. SHOWS OR MOVIES? both. LAPTOP OR GAMING CONSOLE? laptop. HEALTHY OR JUNK FOOD? healthy. ICE CREAM OR FROZEN YOGURT? ice cream. PIZZA OR HAMBURGER? hamburger. LOLLIPOPS OR GUMMY WORMS? lollipops. BEACH OR POOL? beach. SNOWBALLS FIGHTING OR ICESKATING? snowballs fighting. LITERATURE OR SCIENCE? literature. HISTORY OR ART? both. CHOCOLATE BARS OR COTTON CANDY? chocolate bars. XBOX OR PLAYSTATION? playstation. FACE-TO-FACE OR PHONE INTERACTIONS? face-to-face interactions. DRAMA OR SCI-FI? drama. HORROR OR COMEDY? comedy.

FIVE : CHLOÉ’S LIKES & DISLIKES

FAVORITE ACTIVITY: boxing. FAVORITE ANIMAL: jelly fish. FAVORITE BOOK: the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid. FAVORITE QUOTE: ❝ when i dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether i am afraid. ❞ — audre lorde. FAVORITE COLOR(S): grey, pale mint and soft lavender. FAVORITE DESIGNER: oscar de la renta and, as a brand, chloé. FAVORITE CUISINE: she doesn’t have a favorite cuisine, she likes to try various things from different cultures. FAVORITE DISH(ES): anything with avocado, caesar salad, tacos and californian sushi in general. FAVORITE DRINK: yuzu tea and hibiscus tea.  FAVORITE FLOWER(S): hibiscus. FAVORITE GEM: amethyst. FAVORITE HOLIDAY: a battle in between 4th of july and christmas. FAVORITE MOVIE: kill bill, probably. FAVORITE MUSIC GENRE: she listens to a little bit of everything — from mainstream bubblegum to cheer her up and have a laugh to hip-hop and hardcore rap to train and slow r&b and soul songs to wind down. FAVORITE SONG(S): games by SONIA. GO TO KARAOKE SONG: wannabe by spice girls. FAVORITE SCENT(S): the scent of fresh coffee, vanilla and mango. FAVORITE TELEVISION SHOW(S): plan coeur, insecure, how to get away with murder, when they see us and this is us. FAVORITE SPORTS: basketball, american football, volleyball and surf. SPORTS TEAM THEY SUPPORT: golden state warriors and oakland raiders. FAVORITE EMOJI: it must be something like 🤩 or 🤯 to be honest. FAVORITE WEATHER: she likes the hot days, when it’s almost unbearable and all you wanna do is sit by the pool or go to the beach. she also likes the pouring rain, not when it’s cold or windy, but the rain showers steadily falling, especially if she gets to see it from home. she’s a girl of extremes. FAVORITE SEASON OF THE YEAR: summer. FAVORITE PLACE(S): home. when she gets to be surrounded by nature and all the green, away from the concrete jungle and polluted air. she loves her parents’ house, she loves everything about los altos hills really. SUPERPOWER THEY WISH THEY HAD: time manipulation. VACATION DESTINATION: seoul, south korea.

[eabaloriosblog-blog]

Why Infant Boomers Should really Consider On the net Marketing

Little one Boomers should contemplate on the net promoting for various motives. Take into consideration the next: Retirement nest eggs are not what they at the time had been Elder care marketplaces are about to go by way of the roof Newborn Boomers are a large development market Boomers embrace new items and technologies and On the internet advertising and marketing can be a goldmine. Retirement nest eggs usually are not what they the moment. Let's just get the ugly out of the way. Boomers invested their whole profession creating up their nest egg via financial savings, inventory portfolios, 401Ks, pension accounts, and household equity. Having said that, on the eve of retirement for the initially wave of retirement qualified Boomers the nation expert its worst recession given that 1929. We will not go into all the particulars of the economic downturn but a several highlights are of fascination. Unemployment has been between eight and ten% nationwide. Property owners are obtaining them selves with mortgages higher than the worth of their properties. Foreclosures and bankruptcies are at all time highs. It just goes on and on. All of a sudden these golden nest eggs turned into goose eggs for quite a few. Elder treatment marketplaces are about to go through the roof. With 77 million individuals born amongst 1946 and 1964 (U.S. Census Bureau), which is outlined as the child boomer period, elder treatment is about to acquire off. In point, U.S.   If you have any inquiries pertaining to where and how to use http://eabalorios.com/, you can call us at our site. Census Bureau knowledge demonstrates that the 50+ age adults will be the only development demographic (calculated by age) in between now and 2015. There will be a great market for solutions and solutions, the likes of which this region has not seen. Child Boomers are a remarkable advancement current market. The selection of U.S. grownups in excess of age fifty will soar around the up coming ten decades. According to the American Affiliation of Retired Folks, all those aged fifty and more mature will stand for 45% of the U.S. populace by 2015. They will proceed to use their buying power, designed in excess of the past forty yrs, since that is what they are utilised to performing. And why not, they currently control sixty seven% of the nation's wealth in accordance to the U.S. Census and Federal Reserve. According to the U.S. Client Expenditure Survey, sixty five% of the combination net well worth of all U.S. households is owned by older people 50 and more mature. This is a staggering statistic that demonstrates just how large this industry is: folks in the fifty-64 age team experienced a median web well worth of $777,517 in 2009 - almost 13 occasions the $sixty one,173 claimed for the below 35 age team (NetworthIQ). Boomers embrace new goods and systems. When it arrives to embracing new products and solutions and systems Boomers often have been at the forefront. In point, new items and technologies may possibly effectively outline the Little one Boomer era. In the course of the program of their grownup lives, Boomers have developed, made, invented, and spearheaded the enhancement of most of the merchandise and technologies in use right now. Examples include electric blankets, electrical toothbrushes, microwave ovens, electric razors, safer automobiles and airplanes, personalized computer systems, cell telephones, PDAs, e-mail, and voicemail, the world-wide-web alone, and a extensive assortment of other merchandise. They use electronics at get the job done, and at residence. You may well say their whole life have been about adjust. On the net internet marketing can be a goldmine. Most retirees will have numerous resources of revenue in their retirement a long time. For those people Boomers looking at article-retirement employment as yet another resource of cash flow, the online advertising and marketing can be a really practical and practical alternative. Consumers like procuring on the online for its benefit and immediate or practically so obtain to products. With about two billion people today on the online, on the web marketing and advertising gives one an rapid international presence. Once again, Boomers signify a huge current market to enterprising on the internet business owners. In this article are a couple of positive aspects of internet or on the web advertising:    Promotion- rapid higher high quality, cost-helpful, and lengthy-phrase exposure when compared to other forms of marketing.    Return on investment- day-to-day insight of how significantly website traffic you might be having, what your sales conversions are, and which solutions market the most effective.    Minimum amount head aches- no personnel required though some pick to outsource aspect of the function. Most on-line business owners function out of their residences.    No obtaining or stocking a enormous stock. Quite a few products are digital or warehoused and delivered by third parties.    Reduced possibility expense with significant prospective returns.    Significant targeted traffic median- as of this crafting there are more than forty nine million listings on Google just for the phrase "on-line marketing." That exhibits you there is a ton of interest.    Simplicity of entry into the market through an on line existence. You can practically be on-line in a make a difference of a few of hours with countless numbers of products accessible to you.    Teaching methods and advancement are conveniently obtainable. You have to investigate this a single for the reason that there are a lot of resources and a lot of price tag stages. Seem for one particular that provides a tremendous coaching library with negligible ongoing bills.    Tremendous earnings prospective- working with the suitable folks (profitable on the internet marketers) and emulating their strategies will end result in some incredibly excellent cash flow.  

[brainbuffering]

Not epilepsy related, I know, but please bare with me. I made a joke on Twitter about how I could probably write a 2 page essay on the title page for Grayson #8. 

The tweet was liked by Grayson Creatives: Jackson Lanzing, Tim Seeley and  Mikel Janín. I intended to leave it just there, however, I couldn’t get it out of my mind, and apparently I have no self control because 3 days later I had written a five page essay on it, and well once you’ve written 2894 words on a subject you may as well publish it somewhere. And because I might as well say it here, if you ever want to read more essays like this, let me know, and you can support me on Ko-Fi if you’re feeling extra generous <3 

So after a quick shout out to my sister Ruth for reading it over and providing invaluable feedback, and the wonderful Wednesday Club discord for helping me brainstorm titles and providing general encouragements, I present:

Climbing the Eiffel Tower: Dick Grayson as a feminist sex icon

Tim Seeley and Tom King’s 2014-2016 DC Comics series Grayson follows the story of Dick Grayson as he infiltrates the spy network known as Spyral and travels across the world chasing one adventure after another. Making his first appearance in 1940 as Batman’s sidekick and protégé, Robin, he became just as famous in popular media as the Batman himself. Unlike most comic book characters, Dick Grayson was allowed to age, going from the eager child circus acrobat to a teenage superhero leading his own team. He later went on to find a day job as a cop, whilst still moonlighting as a superhero under the new name Nightwing. For a short time he even picked up the cowl and became Batman following Bruce Wayne’s apparent (nobody stays dead in comics for very long) death and adopted Bruce’s son Damian as his own Robin. In 2014, following his own apparent death, he was granted the new moniker Agent 37.

Although Seeley and King’s Grayson series was very much grounded in the DC Universe, (where Super-powered humans saves the day by running backwards through time and green shape shifting aliens attend high school) the series had just as much in common with 60s Spy films. Nazis were punched, skimpy swimsuits were worn, and the day was saved again and again thanks to a handsome man with a dashing smile. Yet one of the distinguishing features of the much applauded series was the presentation of Dick Grayson as a sex icon. In an industry berated for its sexualisation of female characters, where a teenage girl is put into a purple metal bikini and it is called liberation, Grayson brought a rare respite for female fans. Suddenly the object of affection was male.

It is a running joke amongst DC fans that Dick Grayson is the sexiest man in all comics (at least from an American perspective). In 2013 Dick Grayson even gained the number one spot in Comics Alliance’s list of 50 Sexiest Guys in Comics, beating fellow former Robin Jason Todd (Ranked No. 23) and the Batman himself (ranked No. 46). It was in the 1980- 1984 New Teen Titans series that Dick Grayson was able to step out from the shadow of the Bat, and start to become the sex symbol he is known as today. Along with starting to appear shirtless, he was also shown to be in a sexually active relationship with his girlfriend, Starfire: a teenage alien princess clad in, yes, a purple metal bikini. Perhaps when created in 1940 he was meant to stay the eager young boy, that is not the character we see today, as one internet commentator described him, he’s “that kid at thirteen who’s hot at twenty-one” (Jaffe, 2017). Dick Grayson is now one of the few male comic book heroes who is deliberately designed to be a sex icon aimed at women. He’s the heir to a fortune, he’s charming, he respects women and he’s got an amazing arse. He’s the sort of non-threatening pin-up model you’d be happy to take home to meet your mother. That is, if you weren’t concerned your mother might not try and take him for herself.

This side to his character is demonstrated in Mikel Janín’s illustration for title page of Grayson #8: “Cross my heart and hope to die” published in 2014. The image depicts Dick Grayson demonstrating a gymnastic maneuver to seven teenage school girls during their gym class. He wears form fitting leggings and a sleeveless shirt, displaying his muscular physique. Meanwhile, the students wear a standard uniform for British Private School Girls: a red rugby shirt and white gym shorts. This helps depict both their social class and their social position. There is a text box at the top of the page which reads “...That doesn’t stop me from wanting to climb up on its Eiffel Tower.” Lower down on the page, a speech bubble depicts Dick saying “Ladies? Are you even paying attention? I swear.”

Janín’s layout is deliberately designed to draw attention to Dick’s butt. The support beams of the wall follow from the text box at the start of the top left of the panel, along to the right of the page and then straight down to the buttocks. The viewer then follows Dick’s legs down to take in the school girls whose attention is firmly set upon said buttocks. It is then their gaze that visually leads you down the rest of his body. The entire set up of the image is for the viewer to see Dick Grayson in the same sexual light as the teenagers do. It enforces Dick’s role within the DC Universe as a teenage heartthrob by showing just that, a line of teenaged girl whose hearts (and other parts) throb at the sight of him.

The fact that Dick’s legs lead you down along the line of students demonstrates that they have just as much importance within the image as Dick. Some would argue that this is an example of fan-service, that is to say, images simply put in place to titulate the consumer. However Janín has not drawn Dick with just the viewer in mind. He wants you to take in the school girls too, and see Dick from their point of view. Whilst this is still asking you to see him as a sexual figure, by having the overall view point be from above, the viewer is able to take step back from the scene, and allow us to also side with Dick. The viewer is meant to see the whole situation from a third-party perspective, yet still asks us to sympathise with the teenage girls crushing on their attractive gym teacher. If the purpose of the piece was for the viewer to sexualise Dick for themselves, his body would have a far more prominent feature, blocking out the girls entirely from view and posing in a more deliberately sexualised fashion, as opposed to the actual image where Dick is just going about his job in a conventional fashion, meaning there are no purple bikinis or broken spines in sight. Dick’s ignorance to the girls attraction towards him adds humour to the image, where his frustrations at their lack of attention are juxtaposed with their very real fascination with his body.

This use of humour helps to set a tone for the comic, wherein the reader is made to feel relaxed and amused by the content before it swiftly changes to something more serious. In the case of Grayson #8 it is one of the girls’ other mentors, a middle aged woman, screaming for help. While some might argue that the clear focus on Dick’s buttocks is purely for fan service, and so is an act of objectification on par with that shown towards female characters, the fact that the image genuinely helps progress the story suggests otherwise. The panel of Dick Grayson teaching gymnastics provides the reader with further insight into the characters’ personalities and roles within their society, whilst the general page layout sets up the pace and rhythm for the plot of the book. If it were just for fan service, it would have been easily removed from the story with no consequence.

However, it is true that one of the selling points of Dick Grayson is his sex appeal. Writers Gail Simone and Devin Grayson have both spoken about how they deliberately write Dick Grayson to have sex appeal. Simmone, who is probably most academically sited for her her women in refrigerators campaign (in which she points out the distressing prevalence for female characters to be brutally murdered in order to progress a male character’s story) as a comic book writer has often included sexualised male characters in her work, Dick Grayson being one of them. She argues that since there are enough female characters who are sexualised in the media, she therefore has said she needs “to have sexy characters who might appeal to more people” she wants “there to be characters for everyone” (Simone, 2014). It is important to note, that Simone does not specify that only women are sexually attracted towards these men, nor indeed that all women would be, simply that there in order to diversify audience, one needs to diversify character appeal. Whereas Simone’s approach may stem from a socio-political form of feminism, Grayson has a more capitalist approach. In an interview discussing Dick Grayson as a sex symbol, she suggested that not using the character as such is a serious marketing failure: “It’s astonishing to me that sexy male superheroes aren’t marketed as aggressively as sexy male vampires or sexy male boy bands. There’s obviously tons of money to be made there. There is no one on the planet that will devote more energy, social media advocacy, and money to a favoured cause than a smitten teenage girl.” (Grayson, 2015). Indeed, in editor Kate Kubert’s original pitch for Grayson, she described it as “a cool, slick, sexy spy book starring Dick Grayson” (Seeley, 2015). Dick Grayson’s sex appeal was always meant to be integral to the story.  

Therefore, it is not really a surprise that it is the the title page for Grayson #8 that draws such attention to Dick Grayson’s sexy arse. This could be interpreted as male objectification, since it is Dick’s highly attractive body that is being used to draw in readers to the series. Indeed, the bottom panel in particular is designed to make the reader turn the page and find out what is happening. The viewer is only shown a hint of what the woman is possibly holding, and that she is in complete distress. She is asking for help, and the reader assumes that Dick Grayson is going to be the one to provide it, though one would have to buy the book to find out more. It would naturally appeal to a female heterosexual audience to have an attractive male hero go and rescue a woman in need of aid. It is important to note, that whilst other comic series (and indeed spy films) also have attractive men saving women, what makes Dick Grayson stand out here is his more nurturing role. He is in the middle of teaching a class, not sipping a martini in a cassino. Furthermore it is the female gaze depicted here (almost literally in this case since the audience is partially sees Dick through the eyes of teenage girls) and not the male gaze. This is not a power fantasy where a strong dashing man jumps in and saves the simpering young blonde woman, this is a fantasy in which you witness the nice, handsome teacher come to the aid of a grey haired middle-aged woman. The first fantasy is decidedly that of a heterosexual man, the second of a heterosexual woman. Therefore, if the fantasy that is being presented revolves around Dick’s personality and abilities, it cannot be objectification, since you cannot objectify someone who has personhood.

Yet, even if this image is an example of objectification, the question arises of whether it is harmful objectification, or whether it is acceptable given the context. The sexual objectification of a character takes away their agency, their personality and treats them as nothing better than a particularly life like sex toy. The prevalence of this in female characters reflects upon a society that does not value women, or even consider them as people. Therefore, if Dick Grayson is being objectified, is it as dangerous as when female characters, such as Starfire, are objectified? Dick Grayson already has an established character that goes back over 75 years, and as a rich white-passing (Grayson confirms him to be Romani in decent) cis-man has been granted narrative privileges that other characters have not been. Dick Grayson has always been empowered and valued by readers and creators, so objectifying him every now and then is not going to do too much harm to his overall characterisation, nor help maintain an existing real life precedent for a social inequality.

Dick Grayson’s sexualisation in Grayson #8 is a satirical commentary based upon just that. The book came out in an environment where criticism of female objectification and sexualisation in comic books was starting to become a more publicly discussed issue. 2012 saw the beginning of The Hawkeye Initiative which looked at how female characters were drawn in comics and parodied them by drawing Marvel’s Clint Barton (A.K.A Hawkeye) in the same pose. The campaign was widely celebrated across the internet, though many creators (predominantly male) were insulted by the disrespect shown to the original creators. Of course, part of the project was to disrespect the original creators by displaying how sexist their original drawings were, so to that extent, their reaction was incredibly valid. However, the spirit of the initiative was always to encourage conversation in a light hearted, humourous fashion that did not single out any one creator. Grayson #8 demonstrates the exact same humorous approach. The image does not speak to how Dick Grayson is purely a sex object, or oppressed in any way, it speaks of an understanding that it’s about time the playing field was evened out; that heterosexual women and gay men should have someone they too can fantasise about. It welcomes you to join the teenagers in admiring Dick, and let’s you understand that doing so is harmless and fun. This also helps to subvert a classic spy movie trope, where the male protagonist treats the female heroine as nothing but an object of desire, and she is shot from angles that only accentuate those elements. It is clear that when Kubert asked Seeley to create her a “sexy spy book” (Seeley, 2015) it was Dick Grayson who would be providing the sexy, and not his female co-stars.

As discussed in Camille Bacon-Smith’s seminal 1992 work on Fan Studies Enterprising Women, fandom has often been used as a tool for female sexual exploration, and though Bacon-Smith views this from a slightly more critical outsider’s perspective, more recent studies that have come from within fandom itself, and have shown the way it can help people develop an understanding of their sexuality in a safe manner. This has become particularly true for teenage fans, who often use fan-works to explore these parts of themselves. It is especially important to have these spaces celebrated, since teenage girls’ sexuality is often ridiculed elsewhere in popular media. From Stephanie Meyer to Ringo Starr, actors, musicians and writers have all been pushed to the side as irrelevant just because they’re popular amongst teenage girls, and the quality of their work is assumed straight away to be nonsense just based upon their fanbase. Yet, as Grayson said, it is these same fans who will show the utmost dedication and passion (Grayson, 2015) for works that speak to them, and treat them with respect. That is exactly what is being shown in Grayson #8, teenage girls who have sexualised fantasies about non-threatening men, where it is not presented as a set up to a Lolita-esc story of peodophillia. Dick Grayson is not interested in these girls sexually, the girls understand that they will not be entering into sexual relations with him, but that does not stop them from enjoying looking at him and fantasising about him in a safe manner.  Even if their attention is unwanted, the girls cannot harm Dick Grayson and Dick Grayson will not harm them. It could be argued, that the humourous feel to the piece is mocking the girls for their sexuality, and asking the reader to laugh at them, not with them. However, the fact that the layout of the work has such a focus on Dick Grayson’s bottom, and that the page begins with one of the girl’s own comment of sexual innuendo about him as a sexy Eiffel Tower she wishes to climb (King, 2014), it is clear that the viewer is being asked to side with these teenagers and agree, that yes, if Dick Grayson was the Eiffel Tower, you too would gladly climb up it and enjoy that glorious view.

To conclude, Grayson #8’s Title Page is an example of how female sexuality (in particularly, that of teenage girls) can be celebrated in comic books in a fun and safe manner. The title page treats the character with respect and dignity, whilst still nodding to an fan base that have dedicated entire blogs to pictures of his butt. The image is tongue-in-cheek about it’s approach to the celebration of Dick Grayson’s bottom, however it is done with respect to both character and reader. Whilst some might argue that this is objectification, the existing social and historical structures within the industry and western society as whole negate this. It has now become an important act of feminist action to have such characters within comic books. Equal opportunity between the sexes, requires equal opportunity to celebrate sexuality. Dick Grayson’s butt in tight lycra is not going to change the world over night, but it is certainly a very good place to start. Grayson is not the first series to celebrate Dick Grayson’s bottom and share it in all it’s peach like glory, and it is unlikely to be the last, yet, much like Dick Grayson, it is still a beautiful piece of work that shall no doubt be cherished for the ages.

References:

Holy Robin Batman! The Wednesday Club, 9th August 2017 (Available on Geek and Sundry’s Twitch and Projectalpha.com)

http://comicsalliance.com/tim-seeley-grayson-nightwings-dc-comics-interview/

http://comicsalliance.com/why-is-nightwing-hot/

http://comicsalliance.com/comics-sexiest-male-characters/

https://www.themarysue.com/gail-simone-nightwing-butt/

https://www.cbr.com/seeley-king-enter-the-dcus-espionage-world-in-grayson/

https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/460/384

http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/77.html

[gumnut-logic]

Gentle Rain (Part Eighteen)

Title: Gentle Rain

Warm Rain Series

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Part Ten | Part Eleven | Part Twelve | Part Thirteen | Part Fourteen | Part Fifteen | Part Sixteen | Part Seventeen | Part Eighteen

Author: Gumnut

28 Feb – 1 Mar 2019

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: Sometimes it is so gentle, you don’t realise it is happening.

Word count: 3119

Spoilers & warnings: Virgil/Kayo, Scott/OC, Gordon/Penelope, spoilers for Warm Rain up to this point in the timeline.

Timeline: Six months after ‘The Proposal’, almost a sequel.

Author’s note: For @scribbles97 ​ Oh, this was fun to write. It may be called a trope, but I don’t care, it was fun :D Nutty got to blow something up, mwhahahahaha! I hope you enjoy it.

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

She eased herself slowly back into her life. She worked through a list of shocked friends, the necessary sympathy regarding her latest injury, questions about where she had been, how she was and what she was going to do next.

There were catch up lunches, new clients and Uncle Crispin.

He cornered her as soon as he could, which considering the state of the Siberian gas fields, wasn’t anywhere as soon as he would have preferred. He finally made it to her house two weeks after her month of seclusion.

The fact he actually visited the house was an indication of how worried he was. He hated the place, given all the memories of the family he had lost echoing through the hallways. His relationship with her deceased grandparents probably didn’t help either.

He hugged her the moment he saw her.

“How are you, honey?” He was the only person she would allow to call her ‘honey’.

“I’m getting there.” She smiled.

“What about the Tracy boy?” Sure enough, straight to the point.

“What about him?”

“You seemed pretty set on him at Christmas.”

“Yeah, well, that was Christmas and a lot has happened since.”

“Sally says Virgil is doing well.”

It took her a moment to connect the dots. Sally was Grandma Tracy. “As long as he gives himself the time to recover, he should be fine. It was close.” She shifted in her ‘scoot. “So, what’s the deal with you and...Sally?”

She couldn’t help but grin at the shy smile that spread over his face. That was the thing about Uncle Crispin. He was all tough adventurer on the outside, tough as nails, but on the inside, he was really just a soft, goofball.

Life had been as hard on him as it had been on her and his demeanour reflected that.

Sally had obviously wormed her way under his leathery defence system.

“She and I...Em, she makes me happy.” He grinned. “And I like to think I make her happy too. I can’t really ask for more than that.”

That sparked off a little self-reflection. “No, that’s exactly how it should be.”

Her uncle frowned. “Do I need to go park some dynamite under his ass?”

“You and your bloody dynamite.” An exasperated sigh. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

“Sally says he’s pretty messed up.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Some big effort to decentralise International Rescue, expand the service somewhat and take the strain off the Tracy family. He’s not sleeping and not talking. She’s worried about him.”

A stare. “He took my advice?”

“Your advice? No idea. But the man is obsessed. Sally reckons you should check on him.”

“She does, does she?” She eyed her uncle. “What do you think?”

“Em, I’m with you. Whatever makes you happy.”

Whatever makes her happy? She had a list, but only a few of those listed things were entirely in her power, so she would focus on those.

“I’m going to give it time.” The words were said quietly and slowly.

His hand landed on her shoulder and squeezed.

Uncle Crispin inevitably couldn’t stay long. It was a reminder of how close his job was to that of International Rescue as he was called out to Siberia yet again. She missed him, but it was necessary. Besides, she had her own life to get back to.

She closed up the house in Margaret River, moved back to Perth and back to work.

It was a lunch date with a colleague that saw her on the pedestrian bridge right at the moment it exploded.

-o-o-o-

Scott hit the comms room at a run. “Report!”

John’s hologram was in the centre of the room. He had only returned to TB5 three days earlier after an extended training session with his extremely small team. Gordon had snorted loudly when Scott commented on the personnel involved. He must remember to ask him about that.

“There has been an explosion on a pedestrian bridge across the Swan River. Em is on the bridge.”

“Explosion? How do you know that Em is involved?” He felt like grabbing his brother and shaking him.

“Kayo, put a tracker in her hoverscoot.”

“What?!” This came from both himself and Virgil behind him.

“Regardless, the bridge has been destabilised at one end. We’re needed.”

Scott didn’t hesitate, heading towards his chute. Virgil didn’t either and that was enough to bring him to a halt. “Virgil!”

“You’re going, I’m going.” And he didn’t stop moving.

Damnit! “John, get Alan and Gordon to Thunderbird Two.”

“Already on their way.”

He yanked the fake light fittings down just that bit harder than usual just as Virgil tipped up backwards on his painting and disappeared.

Fear churned in his gut.

Em.

-o-o-o-

Virgil’s chute, by the nature of its design was rough on his body. It had been at least a couple of months since he’d flown down it, so along with the adrenalin that always accompanied the ride there was a pleasant sense of accomplishment when it didn’t actually hurt.

His feet hit his ‘bird’s deck with a reassuring thump and no pain ricocheted anywhere. His heart was thudding and his breathing had spiked, but that could be considered normal.

Slipping into his seat, he automatically started pre-flight, the sequence so familiar, he didn’t even have to think.

The selector trundled out the modules and TB2 settled on the familiar Four. Moments later he heard Alan and Gordon rise up into the cockpit.

Kay sat down beside him in the co-pilot’s seat. What?

“Before you say anything, my presence is non-negotiable.”

Her eyes pinned him. “Okay.”

And his attention was taken with the launch. Thunderbird Two rolled out of her hanger and he opened the runway to let her through. Her familiar rumble vibrated through his bones, the adrenalin still pumping, his heart-rate matched her thrum.

Loaded onto her ramp, he pointed her towards the sky.

The clunk of external machinery.

An indrawn breath.

He fired her thrusters and she leapt off the platform, clawing her way into the blue.

-o-o-o-

There was a flash of light and a wall of sound hit her.

Her ‘scoot slid sideways and the people around her screamed as the bridge beneath her suddenly tilted sideways towards the water below.

At the far end of the metal and concrete structure a cloud of smoke was rising into the air.

Dust and debris rained down around her. Time froze in shock.

It started again as a woman to her right suddenly went down with a scream, clutching her arm. More screams erupted as the walkway wobbled again.

The only escape route was the other end of the bridge.

“Move! Move!” And she was grabbing people and pushing them in the direction of land. Em lowered herself to the woman who had fallen. There was blood pouring down the sleeve of her dress and she was terrified, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it. She got her to her feet and hurried her across the paving. “Run!”

The bridge shook again and there was an almighty screech of stressed metal as one of the spans arching over the structure broke off at its base. The sharp ping of support wires snapping and the massive arm of steel pendulumed, swinging down and along the edge of the walkway. The concrete groaned and cracked under her ‘scoot.

“Move!”

They ran.

It was a busy bridge in the middle of the day, even more so because a local market had been set up along the length of it. There would have been at least a hundred people walking across or browsing the stalls. As the walkway tilted further, craft items and marquees began to slide across the paving. Em used her ‘scoot to her advantage. It had grip where feet may not have had and her arms were strong.

She sped up, darting to grab a child falling towards the railing. She hustled people along, supporting them if they fell. As a whole the crowd moved at a frantic pace down the length of the bridge.

Until the other end of the bridge exploded.

She couldn’t help it, she screamed.

The whole structure shuddered and a large portion holding many of those fleeing people collapsed into the river below.

“No!”

She struggled to keep her ‘scoot steady as the walkway shuddered and tilted even further. She looked behind her. Both ends of the bridge had been destroyed. There was no way off the structure.

A man not far from her slipped and fell, the tilt of the bridge saw him slide all the way to the railing. He screamed as his foot caught in the grill and twisted, taking his weight.

Her hoverjets whined, struggling with the heavily angled surface.

Only to be joined by the sudden roar of rocket engines.

Thunderbird One tore up the Swan River, screaming to a halt above the bridge. Her underbelly opened and a grapple shot down and caught the walkway as it teetered further. VTOL roared.

And she heard his voice.

“Please keep calm. International Rescue is here to assist.”

-o-o-o-

His heart leapt into his throat.

The bridge had been decimated. Two explosions, one at each of the main pylons had mangled the steel spans that supported the bridge. The pylons themselves were fairly secure, but the walkway was swinging loose, its structure never designed to take its own weight without the support spans.

Wires were snapping and springing apart.

Human figures were falling into the water below.

“John, tell me what caused this.”

“Initial results still coming in.” A pause. “Incendiary. Likely a bomb or a series.”

“Shit.” A breath. “Tell me there are no more.”

“In depth scan in progress.”

“I need that information now.”

“Working on it.”

He bit his lip as numbers spun across the space between the bridge and the Thunderbird in orbit.

“No further explosives detected. Eos is repeating the scan as we speak.”

“Thank you, John. Advise the GDF. Thunderbird two, we need you here now.”

“On approach.”

And she was. The great green behemoth swooping low over the river, her VTOL churning the surface below. She came to an abrupt halt and released her module. She waited long enough for Thunderbird Four to dart into the river, before gathering the module back to her belly once again. She was going to need it. A flare of VTOL and she rose up and over the bridge.

“Virgil, deploy rescue rafts and stabilise the walkway. Gordon, you’re on victim retrieval. Watch for falling debris. Alan and Kayo, send down TB2’s grabs and start picking people off the bridge. I’ll be doing the same once you have the walkway stable.”

Virgil’s baritone followed by the rest of his family’s voices were a chorus of FABs.

Thunderbird Two quickly dropped a series of large self-inflatable support rafts onto the surface of the river on both sides of the bridge, before deploying her grapples to secure the walkway. The whole structure straightened under the strength of the Thunderbird.

“Scott, it’s too heavy for Two. We lose much more structural support, it’s going to drop.”

“FAB, Thunderbird Two.” Time was crucial.

The green ‘bird lowered her nosecone grapples geared with her rescue rig. The small figures of Alan and Kayo leapt off and started gathering people.

Scott disengaged his grapple and began deploying harnesses. As he was working, he couldn’t help but ask. “Where is she?”

John answered without hesitation. “On the main walkway, near the centre. She appears unharmed.” A hologram flashed up and there she was, her ‘scoot shooting back and forth gathering people and ushering them towards Two’s rescue rig. Something in his gut clenched. “Keep an eye on her.” And he resisted the urge to swoop down and grab her immediately.

“FAB.”

And the rescue effort began in earnest. Fly down grab a victim, reassure them, assess for urgent injury, harness them, transport them to one of the rafts, make sure they are secure, grab the next one. It was simple pick and grab. Thunderbird Two was filling Module Four with rescuees, Alan and Kayo darting across broken concrete and gathering people to the rig.

Gordon had the hardest job. The majority of persons who had fallen off the bridge were injured, and there were a lot of injured.

Fortunately, some more help arrived.

“International Rescue Australasia Oceania reporting for duty.” They arrived in a GDF flyer, but they had their uniforms and suddenly there were more hands to help. Gordon was joined by several of the aquanauts he had been training on the other side of the continent just the previous week. Figures supported by jetpacks not unlike his own darted out from the carrier’s underbelly and began snatching survivors alongside him. Field Commander Davis flickered up on his holographic display. “Commander, thought you could use a hand.” She didn’t smile, she was too professional for that. “IR AO is supplemented by several of our other recruits so we have more hands. Your orders?” The grey of her baldric sash shone dully in the holographic light.

Scott, however, couldn’t help but smile. “Pick and grab, Lauren. We’re on a time limit, so make it fast. Thunderbird Two can’t hold the bridge forever.”

“FAB.”

It was odd hearing that response from a voice outside his family.

The rescue sped up after that.

But not enough.

“Scott, we just lost a crucial support! It’s going to go!” Virgil’s voice wasn’t panicked, but it was damn close. Far above him Thunderbird Two’s VTOL screamed as his brother desperately attempted hold so many tonnes of bridge.

“Slave TB1, use her grapples.”

“FAB.” It would give them a few more minutes at least.

They almost had it. As John called the final evac, the rafts had been dragged to a safe distance, there were only a handful of people left on the bridge, several of them IR personnel attending to victims with life threatening injuries...

Em.

He caught sight of her just as Virgil swore over comms and Two plummeted several metres, the bridge sagging.

One of the support wires near her snapped under the sudden strain and whipped around... “Em!”

He was moving before thought, but still it played in slow motion just out of his reach. The wire slashed through the air, missing her, but catching her hoverscoot. A spray of sparks and she was flung sideways and over the edge.

-o-o-o-

It became a blur of terrified people.

When the rescue rig landed on the tilting deck, she took only a moment to acknowledge Kayo and Alan. Both attempted to evacuate her, but she knew she was useful where she was and refused. There were others who needed help more than she.

That didn’t stop them from trying several more times, each person she delivered to that rescue rig was accompanied by a visual plea from Kayo. Perhaps she had suspicions why, but this wasn’t the time to think about it.

The Thunderbirds above were joined by a GDF flyer and suddenly there were more IR personnel on that bridge. Her heart leapt as a man in blue swooped in to land, but it wasn’t Scott. He wasn’t even a Tracy and she realised that this was the embodiment of Scott’s strategic plan.

She handed him a baby along with the boy’s mother and she darted off to grab another child clinging to a crumpled market stall.

More and more terrified people were airlifted away. Soon it was down to the critically injured, those who couldn’t be moved without further injury. She and another IR operative had a teenage girl showing all the signs of a spinal injury when Kayo called out for final evac. Far above, even Em could hear the sudden strain of Thunderbird Two’s VTOL as the bridge trembled.

The concrete beneath her shifted and fell and her ‘scoot lost traction for a split second. She grabbed for purchase, but her fingernails scraped useless across the pavement. A screech of metal, movement, and she was thrown sideways. A blur of bridge railing, the world spun...

And she was falling.

Fast.

She may have screamed, but the rush of air stole it from her throat.

Her hands clawed at nothing. There was nothing, nothing-

She was surrounded by blue fabric. Warm, strong, breathing and, oh god, so familiar. It enveloped her, slowing her plummet, saving her.

She gasped and it came out a sob.

“It’s okay…okay, I’ve got you.”

She looked up and there were those eyes. Those gorgeous blue eyes that haunted her dreams.

Furrowed in fear.

“Scott?”

He didn’t answer, just pulling her in closer as if he was clinging to her as much as she was to him.

-o-o-o-

He caught her mid-air, his arms wrapping around her, pulling her close, slowing her spin and her fall. Oh god, he had caught her.

His breath hitched as she let out a frightened sob. “It’s okay...okay, I’ve got you.”

As he shifted into a hover, she looked up, ice blue eyes fixing on him. “Scott?”

Such hope and fear in his name.

He didn’t answer, just pulled her closer, holding on so tight, he felt he may never let go.

“Scott! Get out of there! It’s collapsing and I can’t stop it!” Virgil’s voice in his ear was drowned out by a roar and the shadow of the bridge above fell towards them.

Shit!

Holding Em close, he accelerated away from the tangle of falling steel and concrete. The shift in air pressure threatened to drag them in as the mass gained speed as it fell. Scott spun, darting to avoid the steel span that was following the walkway into the river. Em clung to him and he wished he’d had chance to harness her to himself.

He had never held anyone so tight.

Thunderbird One loomed, no longer attached to the falling bridge, her hover unaffected by the now churning river below. Flying through her open hatch, he was finally able to draw in a breath as it closed behind him.

He lowered her gently to the passenger seat. “Are you okay? Are you injured?”

Em didn’t answer and he realised she was trembling. He crouched down, his gloved hand reaching for her.

She stared at him for a moment, but still didn’t say anything, her hands going to the harness holding her to the ‘scoot.

Her fingers fumbled with the buckles until he reached in to help. Without a word, she slid herself free and he lifted the dead piece of equipment away.

Something dark glistened in the empty seat.

He spun back to find her staring at a spreading red stain on her skirt.

-o-o-o-

End Part Eighteen.

[zombiescantfly]

Words About Games: Unreal Tournament (Epic Megagames, 1999)

In 2291, in an attempt to control violence among deep-space miners, the New Earth Government legalized no-holds-barred fighting.

291 years earlier, I heard that for the first time.  Unreal Tournament begins with a narrated flythrough explaining two very simple things:  there is a Tournament, and you are going to win it.  After the lonely melancholy of Unreal, that's a pretty abrupt pivot.  Why, after getting through most of the 90s with platformers, pinball, and fighting games, did Epic Megagames barrel in headfirst to the multiplayer arena shooter market, a playground run exclusively by industry already-giant id Software?

Because they wanted to.

As I mentioned in the Unreal essay, that game's multiplayer was a fun shell filled with horrible, horrible problems.  Epic set to fixing it, but realized that beyond some quick and dirty surface-level patches, there wasn't a lot they could do within the same scope.  So they broke away from a simple expansion pack and landed on creating a full separate release by the name of Unreal Tournament.

Unreal Tournament, UT99 from now on, was released on November 23, 1999, to an almost absurd level of praise.  Quake 3 Arena, id’s latest offering in the Quake franchise and first multiplayer-only title, would come out just over a week later on December 2, pitching the two games into a deathmatch of their own which still rages to this day almost 20 years later.

Let's talk about Quake a bit.  Shooters, up until around the time the first Quake came out and probably still after that, were commonly referred to as ‘Doom clones’ because, well, many were.  Any unambitious dev could buy an engine license, whip up some sprites on a lunchbreak, and ship a game.  There's a parallel to be drawn between that era and the current ongoing avalanche of Unity and Unreal asset flips, but you can turn to others for opinions on all that.

Quake was, famously, id Software’s followup to Doom 2, and an early frontrunner of fully-3d shooters.  It was so popular and noteworthy that it even caused the term Doom Clone to fall away in favor of Quake Clone.  Quake expanded the popularity of online play, and saw the creation of the some of the first AI bots made exclusively for deathmatch.  Quake 2 came along not too far after and pulled in even more interest.  If you remember from my Unreal essay, that was when it grabbed my own interest, and I became a frequent over-the-shoulder spectator of many a Quake 2 deathmatch.

But then, UT99.  When I first played Unreal Tournament, I was blown away.  By the bots.  Meaning that they killed me a lot.  I was very bad at it.  I didn't even strafe back then, just ran forward and turned with the mouse.  But I learned.

UT99 is actually quite an accommodating game.  Bots have 9 skill levels ranging from drooling idiot to a fittingly-named godlike, and I remember bumping them up a level at a time over the years.  UT’s bots were one of its largest selling points back then, and the cornerstone of the Tournament part of its name.

The titular Tournament in Unreal Tournament is a series of botmatches of increasing difficulty over the game’s five primary gamemodes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Domination, and Assault.  A final series of three 1v1 matches caps off the Tournament, the third of which pits you against the Big Bad Reigning Champ, a robot named Xan Kriegor.  

There were a handful of firsts in that short bit, so let's take a look.

As stated, Quake 2 was the de facto king of online shooters at the time.  But Quake 2, for all its fame, only had three gamemodes available: deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag.  Unreal had dabbled with alternative styles of deathmatch and team deathmatch, but all of them were, more or less, the same gamemode, save one.  In a unique take on King of the Hill, the first player to score a kill got a permanent damage boost until they were killed, at which point that buff was transferred to their killer.  Killing the King awarded more points, matches were first to X points, you get the idea.  RtNP added Cloak Match, a take on this KotH concept where instead of a damage boost, players fought for permanent partial invisibility and infinite jump boots.

Unreal Tournament was a little more ambitious than just reflavoring deathmatch, however.  Domination used its own unique rotation of maps centered around controlling three points.  Your team scores one point per every couple of seconds, per point held.  Touching a point is enough to flip control of it to your side, and the result is a fun, frantic match with enough additional focus to guide it away from just another deathmatch.  Map control becomes something more than just controlling various weapon spawns, and demands you keep your attention between the three points.  Random respawns instead of near your team’s current territory and the instant capture of points meant the game never ground down to just being spawncamped, and helped reduce the prevalence of one-sided victories.  Domination was great, the extra effort put in to creating its own category of maps was great, and games today still use the gamemode.  That said, Destiny 2 really needs to make capture instant and not have you sit around for 5 seconds in a tiny room, like come on.

Domination may have been new for the time, and DM, TDM, and CTF made their own waves that I'll get into later, but Assault is what really caught people's attention.  Assault was an attack and defense mode where one team was tasked with completing a series of varied objectives, while the defenders tried to stop them.  The most similar thing we get in games now is pushing a cart down a predetermined path in TF2 or Overwatch.  Payload gamemodes in those games are similar in the sense that one team must progress down a path to get to a specific location, and I suppose it might come across as a streamlining of the idea, but Assault is just more interesting.  

UT99 shipped with seven Assault maps, and each one presented a different scenario.  Assault was not just replacing the objective on an existing map, the same as Domination had its own maps.  Each one had a little story it presented, from the attempted hijacking of a supersonic train, assaulting an ancient fortress on an alien planet, sabotaging an underwater research facility, stealing a Navy battleship, escaping a medieval castle, destroying an experimental battle tank, and even a recreation of the D-Day landing.  Assault maps varied in how linear they were, with maps like Guardia, HiSpeed, and Overlord being fairly straightforward, to the more open-ended OceanFloor and Rook.  It was, by design, an asymmetrical experience, but that design went so far as to change in-level as the attackers pushed further and further in.  On HiSpeed, for example, the attackers start in a helicopter hovering over the rear of the train, and drop down largely uncontested.  There's a full car where they can grab weapons and powerups, and then they reach where the defenders have spawned.  

As objectives are met and various places in the map are reached by the attackers, spawn points start to change.  On the same map, attackers spawn with a serviceable loadout of shock rifles and pulse guns (we'll get to the weapons later), both good options for the mixed-distance encounter they'll be facing as they move towards the next car.  The defenders, however, spawn with access to flak cannons and rippers, which in the close quarters of the car’s interior are absolutely brutal.  Once the attackers push far enough in to it, though, that car becomes their spawn point and the defenders are moved further back, thus giving the attackers access to those weapons for the next part of the map.  

The same sort of design echoes throughout all seven Assault maps, and it creates a varied and frantic experience that was new at the time and still hasn't really been copied.  The feeling of actually taking part in an event in the game’s world added so much to even the relatively sparse setting, and it remains a great example of an excellent piece of very quiet but highly effective worldbuilding.

The other gamemodes were again, team and free-for-all deathmatch, and as standard as that was at the time, UT99 made some weighty impressions on the genre.  At the time of Quake 2’s release, it was common practice to just repurpose singleplayer campaign levels as the multiplayer maps.  Quake 2 would get its own suite of maps designed explicitly for multiplayer later in its life, and Unreal shipped with 14 multiplayer-only maps, with a further 9 added later as free updates.  UT99 shipped with multiple dozens of maps, each one presenting a different take on design and execution.  You have a standard collection of flat-ish arenas, some truly impressive vertical design, maps with stage hazards, big maps, small maps, maps with areas of low gravity, and maps with secret passages leading to hidden weapon spawns.  A handful of Unreal’s maps were even remade for UT99, and two in particular became series mainstays - Deck 16 and Curse.  Both are still thought of as iconic maps, and for very good reason.  They're well-balanced and play to the strengths of the game they're in while also, going back to Unreal’s bit here, feeling like they're a real space.

Because while UT99 may be a multiplayer-only fragfest with no real story, it has lore.  

The opening narration is just a small bit of fluff, but it sets up a whole lot that the various designers had a ton of fun expanding on.  Official weapon descriptions in the manual talk about the (in-game) real-world applications of each, and even set some up as not even being explicitly for combat.  The Translocator, a personal teleporter by way of launching tiny disks, is a repurposed tool given to miners to help escape cave-ins.  The GES Biorifle is a vacuum cleaner for toxic sludge instead of dust.  The Impact Hammer is a jackhammer but sideways.  The in-universe justification for those few weapons doesn't mean anything to the gameplay, but given that the Tournament was set up by Liandri Mining Corporation, it adds a bit of fun sense-making to the whole thing.

Maps, too, are part of that lore package.  Each map throughout the Tournament ladder has a short description, and it's almost always about what this particular arena’s place in the world is.  Most boil down to “this is a site built for the Tournament” or “Liandri bought this and made it a Tournament arena,” but it's about the tiny details hidden in the lines.  Deck 16 is a toxic sludge refinery, but it's also a single deck of the spaceship Gaetano, rented out to Liandri whenever it's in drydock.  Curse is an ancient temple that was an archaeological site until Liandri bought it after funding ran out.  Arcane Temple is a Nali worship site on Na Pali left abandoned after the Skaarj invaded.  Oblivion is a Liandri passenger ship that tricks Tournament entrants by being their first arena.  Hyperblast, the final stage of the Tournament, is Xan Kriegor’s personal spaceship made specifically to be an arena.  

The whole thing paints the Liandri Mining Corporation as this quirky half-malicious corporate giant, as big and influential as any sci-fi megacorp but out of an innocent love for their decidedly not-innocent game.  It's a world where humanity spent seven days on the brink of destruction at the hands of the Skaarj, where the Corporation Wars tore entire planets apart, and where despite that everyone can get over it, crack some beers, and watch people blow each other away on live television, kept safe by technology that respawns them within seconds.

Character backgrounds, too, drop hints in their two to three sentence lengths.  The bots you fight against or with all have tiny snippets of who they are, making reference to revolts, arrests, rebellions, other worlds, secret government experiments, and revenge.  

The important thing to take away from this is that all of this was put in but none of it had to be.  It doesn't affect the game and it's not even immediately noticeable unless you let every map and character description load before entering a Tournament match.  Just going to map select for a practice session/instant action game doesn't show the same descriptions, so you have to go through the singleplayer ladder.  It's work put in that shows a genuine and earnest excitement for the world the devs had created, and I still get a smile thinking about it.  Unreal Tournament is such a weird celebration of every gritty science fiction trope, but turns them all on their heads to create a world for this game that feels exactly as expansive as it isn't.  Because Unreal Tournament doesn't have anything to do with the lore it hides in all these corners, it's just a multiplayer shooter with no story beyond “kill better than the other guys.”  And boy do they ever make that part feel great.

For better or worse, Wolfenstein 3D cemented FPS weapon progression.  Ever since and with only a few minor alterations here and there, the loadout progression is melee weapon, bad pistol, automatic weapon, shotgun (though those sometimes switch position), a better version of one or both of those, some kind of explosive option, sniper rifle (that was a later addition), and then a superweapon of some kind.  From Doom to Quake to our old nemesis Half-Life to our slightly newer nemesis Halo to Call of Duty, you get those weapons in roughly that order.

So let's talk about Unreal again for a second.  I didn't mention that game's weapons because I wanted to bring the whole discussion in at once, but it does require me to go back in time a year and talk about where the series landed on its own weapons.  The first thing to know about Unreal is that it was not immune to the Holy Progression of Gun, but it did make some incredibly noticeable changes.  Unreal saw a videogame gun, famous for being a thing you can left click on men with, and asked “what if you could also right click on men?”

I'm moving a rough sort of progression, so be aware that this is only the general order you get these guns in.  In Unreal, the first weapon you pick up is the Dispersion Pistol, a projectile-firing semi-auto gun that doesn't do a whole lot of damage.  One fun thing about it is that its projectiles cast a real-time light on the environment so you can use it as a way to peek into dark areas before going in them with your vulnerable body.  But another thing about the Dispersion Pistol is its alt fire, where you hold down the right mouse button to charge up a shot which then acts essentially as a rocket launcher shot - it deals better damage, it deals splash damage, and it can gib enemies.  In-universe, the Dispersion Pistol is a Skaarj weapon, and you can also find hidden upgrades for it that boost the damage of both firemodes at the cost of taking more ammo per shot.  Luckily, as your holdout weapon, the Dispersion Pistol recharges its ammo passively.  

The second weapon you get is the automag, a basic hitscan pistol.  Primary fire shoots a fairly accurate shot, alt fire has you hold the gun sideways to increase the fire rate at the cost of accuracy.  It's dumb and I love it to this day.

Third up, the Tarydium Stinger, a projectile-based minigun with an alt fire that acts as a projectile shotgun.  Here's where the lines start to get a bit blurred, but we're not totally out of the usual progression just yet.  

After the Stinger you get the ASMD Shock Rifle, a famously curious gun that, as its primary fire, shoots a hitscan beam, and shoots a fast-moving projectile orb as its alt fire, trading perfect precision and speed for a little bit of splash damage.  The thing about it is that if you shoot the orb with the beam you get a giant explosion that does an absolute ton of damage.

Moving from that piece of sweet hardware brings us to the GES Biorifle, a rapid-fire goop-throwing mine layer with a charged shot as its alt fire.  

Then, the Eightball Launcher, a rocket launcher that has not two but four firemodes.  Click primary fire to shoot a rocket, fast moving and with splash damage.  Hold primary fire to charge up to six rockets that fire in a spread pattern, or click alt fire while charging to shoot them in a spiral formation.  Also, you can get a mild lock-on effect by holding your mouse cursor over an enemy for about half a second.  Alt fire is the same as primary but with grenades - click alt fire once to lob one, hold to charge up to six.  The grenades bounce around for a set period of time, and also blow up on contact with an enemy.  

Then possibly the series’ most famous weapon, the Flak Cannon.  Primary fire is a projectile-based shotgun that fires individual shards that bounce around the environment for a bit, allowing you to fire around corners or even up at the ceiling to bank a shot over cover.  Alt fire is another grenade launcher, though this one fires its shells at a shallower angle, a higher velocity, has a smaller up-front splash radius, and still creates little bits of flak that bounce around for a short time.  This gun is my and many other people’s favorite gun in videogames.

The Razorjack is a strange gun that fires disks that bounce around the environment at scarily high velocities, and even have the ability to decapitate enemies if you hit their head, a useful feature in the Skaarj-infested levels where you first find it.  Alt fire is a tricky system that lets you influence the path the disk takes, though its high velocity, bad turning radius, and small size makes “influence” a more appropriate word than “guide.”

Next is the Rifle, a high-powered hitscan primary fire with an alt fire that zooms in.  Headshotting enemies decapitates them but other than that it's just a sniper rifle, let's move on.

Finally, Unreal has the Minigun, a hitscan bullet-spewing beast that shows up near the end of the game, leaving you with just barely too little time to get to use it as much as you want and also to realize that hey, it's just a minigun.  Primary fire shoots with a short spool-up time, alt fire shoots faster but less accurately.  Unfortunately this does not make you hold the Minigun sideways like the Automag.

So that was Unreal’s loadout, and it made some big waves at the time.  Physics-based projectiles?  Well sure, Quake had the bouncy grenade launcher, but the Flak Cannon and Razorjack made being aware of and using the environment second nature to players.  The ASMD’s ability to produce a BFG shot on demand if you could combo properly was amazing.  And the upgradeable nature of the Dispersion pistol made what was usually a loadout slot reserved for being sad about having to use a legitimate late-game complement to your arsenal.

So it stands to reason that Unreal Tournament barely changed it.

UT99’s arsenal did change a little bit, but not too drastically.  Most changes were to damage or fire rate, and every weapon got a new model.  Some weapons were slightly renamed, like the Automag becoming the Enforcer or the ASMD receiving its full title of ASMD Shock Rifle, the Eightball Launcher was just called the Rocket Launcher, the Rifle became the Sniper Rifle, and the Razorjack was renamed the Ripper.

The next level of changes was tweaking some alt fires.  The biggest change here was the new Ripper losing its guided blade in favor of an alt fire that shot an explosive disk.  Unlike the primary fire, it didn't bounce, and while it had only about half the splash radius of the Rocket Launcher proper, its fire rate and projectile speed were both much faster.  Other than that, the only change to another gun was the Sniper Rifle getting a thematically appropriate overlay when you zoomed in, instead of Unreal’s Rifle not displaying anything.  Additionally, because it seems to fit here more than the next bit, if you manage to find another Enforcer lying on the ground, you can pick it up and dual wield.  It's pretty rad.

Larger changes came in the removal of both the Stinger and the Dispersion Pistol, and the addition of the Impact Hammer, Pulse Gun, and the series’ first superweapon, the Redeemer.

I'm personally a bit conflicted about trading the Stinger out for the Minigun.  On one hand, UT99’s Minigun is a great piece of visual design - massive, chunky, and bold, with the added flair of seeing your arm holding onto a forward grip to really sell the vibe of that one scene in Predator.  On the other hand, there's something to be said about a projectile weapon over a hitscan one, especially since so many high-powered hitscan weapons exist in the game already.  But at the same time, UT99 does have an answer to the automatic projectile weapon, the Pulse Gun.

The Pulse Gun should be instantly familiar to anyone with a passing understanding of id Software’s early titles.  Primary fire is just the Pulse Rifle from Doom, and alt fire is the Thunderbolt from Quake.  But put together, married in this suitcase-sized brick of green polygons?  A thing of beauty.  

Let me at least address the Impact Hammer before moving on: it's a melee weapon you can charge up.  It'll kill someone pretty good if you charge it up and manage to make contact.  It has a pretty fun and inspired visual design but ultimately the only reason it's there is because you can run out of ammo with the Enforcer you spawn with.  The end.

Alright, the Redeemer.  The Redeemer is a man-portal nuclear warhead launcher, kind of like the Fat Man from Fallout 3 except way, way cooler.  Primary fire launches a relatively slow-moving projectile that, on contact with anything, explodes in a shockwave that does enough damage to instantly gib anyone without 199 health and a Shield Belt powerup.  It goes through walls, too.  It's a very good superweapon.  Making it better is its alt fire, where you take personal control of the missile as it travels, allowing you to guide it around the map with a surprising degree of maneuverability.  The BFG may have a classic flair, but the Redeemer took the idea of a superweapon to a whole other level.

So how did all of these weapons actually play together?  How did an arsenal designed for and balanced around a singleplayer game with fixed enemy spawns translate to a multiplayer arena?  Quite well, in fact.  Epic didn't design the game in a vacuum, and as Quake 2 was the reigning champ at the time, they didn't have to look far to see what worked and what could be changed for the better.

UT99 plays fast, hard, and unrelenting.  People load into a map and immediately start running around picking up weapons and letting the lead fly.  Now, it's time for my bias to show a bit.  I only ever watched Quake 2 multiplayer, but I have in fact played Quake 3 and Quake Live, as well as a handful of hours of Quake Champions which I know isn't really comparable but it uses the same weapons so I'm still mentioning it.  UT is my series, I have a preference for it, and this next bit is all my own opinion and observation.

Quake only has three weapons.  

Quake is a game where movement is fast, projectiles are fast, and time to kill is fast.  It's a fast game.  But it's so fast that only three weapons end up mattering - the rocket launcher, railgun, and thunderbolt.  They're the three highest-damage weapons in the game and they make up pretty much the entirety of its arsenal.  Quake matches inevitably all play out as taking potshots at each other with rockets as everyone strafejumps around like crazy, switching to the railgun if someone manages to be in the open for more than half a second, and swapping to the thunderbolt if you manage to get close enough that another character model takes up more than a handful of pixels on your screen.  

Quake is a very fast and chaotic game, and I'm not saying that this kind of play isn't skillful, it's just so fast that actual duels never really happen, and people just kind of end up taking damage from one end of the map when they're on the other.  Quake’s other weapons just may as well not exist, because if you find yourself using your starting shotgun, the nailgun, or any other weapon you want to be close for, you're likely doing so in range of someone's Thunderbolt and that's not a race you're going to win.

It's a difficult point to make, so let me move back to UT and why I prefer it.  UT is a small but noticeable bit slower than Quake in a way that I feel greatly benefits it.  Overall, it comes down to bringing the action in a little closer, really making the fights seem more personal, and really giving players more of a chance to dance around each other rather than hopping around the level on their own accord until they find each other by chance.  Projectiles are both slightly slower and much more visible than in Quake, so trying to slam a rocket into someone's face from three hundred meters isn't really going to happen.  So, from further away, you'll want to use a hitscan weapon, but since your target will be smaller they'll be harder to hit.  Unless you want to zoom in with the Sniper Rifle, but then you lose a bit of awareness of your immediate surroundings.  Close up, the Flak Cannon is king, but its range is short enough to matter.  The Pulse Gun’s alt fire is just the Thunderbolt, and it'll tear someone apart pretty handily, to say nothing of putting the Minigun into overdrive with its own alt fire.  Even flipping your Enforcer sideways will get bullets into someone quickly, and with fancy enough footwork you can save yourself from a gruesome fate with the starting gun.  Or, if you're trying to keep someone away, quickly laying down a gooey minefield with the Biorifle works just as well as filling a hallway with a dozen bouncing Ripper blades.

Every gun in UT99 can kill someone, and not just in theory.  The game balances each of its weapons almost perfectly, and nothing ever feels totally useless or has an obvious better version (I am not counting the Impact Hammer or Enforcer in this statement).  Jumping over or dodging away from rockets to close with the Pulse Gun’s alt fire is just as reasonable as forcing someone to switch away from their Flak Cannon by retreating backwards as your Biorifle makes it impossible for them to safely advance.  Lobbing a Flak alt fire over that minefield is alway an option though, so be ready to get out of the way, and maybe pull out your Shock Rifle to push them backwards.  A fully stocked Minigun can keep an approach locked off, but a quick sniper bullet right to the face will put an end to it.  

Alright, admittedly the Biorifle is historically a bit ignored, and the Ripper didn't even show up in subsequent games, but both still had a purpose.  I, personally, am a staunch defender of the Biorifle’s utility as an area denial tool, and the ability to charge its alt fire will instantly kill someone no matter their health and shield level, if you can hit them.  It's certainly better in team gamemodes like Assault or CTF, though.  But just shooting at people with the weapons does not an arena shooter make.  For there to be the proper levels of frantic action, movement needs to have a strong focus.  

As in Quake, you'll want to get familiar with your spacebar.  Strafe jumping isn't a thing as far as constantly upping your own speed, but it sure does make you harder to hit, and getting decent at dodging rockets always helps.  Double tap a movement key to do a quick dodge in that direction, useful not just for avoiding projectiles but for snaking down corridors.  On an elevator?  Jump just before it reaches the top to get a massive boost and go flying.  The Impact Hammer isn't ideal as a weapon, but a quick blast downward makes a decent stand-in for a rocket jump, if at the cost of significantly more self-damage.  Capping it all off is the Translocator, the aforementioned teleporting-disk-thrower.  Primary fire to shoot a disk in a pretty generous arc, alt fire to teleport to it.  Disks emit light and can be destroyed, if you teleport while carrying a flag you drop it, and yes, you do fall faster than the disk travels upward.  Truth be told, I usually play with the Translocator turned off, but that's mainly because the bots, as good as they are at the rest of the game, are less than stellar at putting those disks where they want, often leading to a cluster of them bouncing their shot off a wall just inches under the ledge they want up to, and not taking any action until they get it.  I think it has to do with the accuracy modifiers based on bot skill level, but I'm not sure.

The bots are great in every other respect, though.  Sure, they'll never actually replace a human player, but they're more than good enough for a few hundred hours of offline play.  All the tricks the Skaarj demonstrated in Unreal are on display again, and tuned up to use every weapon.  Bots jump and dodge, retreat if they're low on health, make decisions about what weapon to use based on their proximity to you as well as their own inventories, switch between firemodes when it makes sense, and plenty else.  Upping the bot difficulty doesn't just make them do more damage or give them more health (it doesn't even do that in the first place), it makes them smarter.  Or ‘smarter’ if you really care - it changes their reaction times and how accurate they are, how aggressively they'll act, and even how good they are at using the weapons beyond just aiming.  A low-level bot might not get close enough to hit you with the Pulse Gun’s alt fire, or will use a Rocket Launcher in close quarters with all the risks of splash damage and self-death that entails.  Higher difficulty bots will bank Flak shots off walls and bounce grenades around corners, lay fields of Biorifle goop, or be deadly-accurate with a sniper rifle from above.  

The bots are what really put UT99 firmly on the ‘classic’ shelf, because its contemporaries just didn't offer the same thing.  Again, Quake 2 had bots, but they served the purpose of being moving targets and not much else.  Driving UT’s bots was a dead-simple, if tedious to implement, system.  If you'll indulge me, I'm gonna pull back the hood and reveal the not-at-all-secret ways Unreal Tournament made all of its bots so good at playing each map.

All over a map, there are invisible waypoints hand-placed by the designer.  The goal is to make a rough trail of waypoints to each part of the map.  Bots see each waypoint and have the ability to travel in a wide radius around each.  Weapons, ammo, health, armor, and special powerups all act as special waypoints that a bot will see and travel to if they don't already have what that pickup is.  Players and other bots are considered waypoints as well, and when all that comes together, a bot will very intuitively move around the level.  Placing a waypoint higher in the air will make a bot jump to reach it, so having them move over obstacles is simple.  Like I said,  it only requires a loose sort of web across the level, as the world geometry itself is also something a bot sees.  Going around a corner or a box in the middle of a room is no issue provided the waypoints are good enough.

So now that you know how the sausage is made, what does that mean for the game?  Well, quite a lot.  Bot support is built into every single one of the maps UT99 shipped with, which is no small feat considering the base game came with 53 maps across four gamemodes (deathmatch and team deathmatch use the same maps), with a further 30 maps added for every gamemode but Assault over the course of four free downloadable bonus packs.

Every single one of those is playable, to this day, offline with a complement of bots just as ready to rock as they were almost twenty years ago.  And that's not event counting the thousands of user-made maps still available for download, but we'll talk about modding in a bit.  Because right now, it's time to talk about another excellent thing present on each map - the music.

Returning from Unreal are indisputable gods of music Alexander Brandon and Michiel van den Bos, who trade the previous game's subdued alien score for a soundtrack full of some of the boppin’est, crunchiest, hypest EDM tracks of the late 90s.  (Can you tell I don't know anything about music?)

Run, GoDown, and Organic provide the upbeat bleeps and bloops to murder by; Save Me, Razorback, and Superfist let you rock out with your shock (rifle) out; while Forgone Destruction, Skyward Fire, and The Course chill things out a bit so you can focus on getting sick headshots.  The quality of the music in Unreal Tournament is impossible to overstate, just as it was in Unreal.  Brandon and van den Bos are unrelentingly good at their jobs, and the mishmash of styles all grinds together across UT99’s broad palette of maps like butter full of shrapnel.  It's good, is what I'm saying.  The music's really good.  Listen to it.  Please.  

Stage music is something I personally miss from shooters, if you'll indulge another tangent.  I love hearing the gameworld as interpreted by the composers, it adds so much to the whole package, and we just don't really get it anymore.  The rise of the modern military shooter in 2007 with the runaway success of Call of Duty 4 kind of slammed the door on stage music with a tactical-lite focus on identifying footsteps and directional fire, but even Halo’s deathmatches were filled with a blank silence.  Or Halo 2, I suppose, since Halo 1 didn't have online play, except for the PC version, which did.  No stage music though, that's the main takeaway.  

UT99 had a truly odd mix of contemporaries, from the last days of Quake 2 and the imminent release of Quake 3 a week after UT itself came out, to Half-Life creating a mod scene in its multiplayer, to Halo a year or so later.  The turn of the century would bring with it the generally-accepted death of the arena shooter, but they all went out kicking, and the few hundred people still populating UT99 servers to this day are a testament to its tight, clean design and no-frills focus on gameplay.

Unless, of course, they're playing a mod.

Truth be told, I never actually played much UT99 online.  I was very bad, you see, and when I got better my horrible social anxiety had progressed to the point where the idea of even playing a game with faceless strangers was terrifying.  I was 8.  But anyway, modding!  You may have, in your travels as someone who presumably plays videogames - an assumption I'm making because you're reading this - heard of the Unreal Engine.  In a hidden bit of Trivia, Unreal was the first game on the Unreal Engine, and Unreal Tournament also used it.  Wild!

Along with the game itself, both releases also shipped with the Unreal Editor, or UnrealEd.  UnrealEd is the exact development tool the fine folks at Epic Megagames used to make those games, and they just casually handed them to the players.  The result echoes throughout the game industry to this day, and while Epic was hardly the only developer supporting mods, they were the first to do so on that kind of level.  As a result, there are thousands if not tens of thousands of user-made maps scattered around the web, along with new gamemodes, fan-made expansions for Unreal, new character models, weapons, and mutators.

Ah, mutators.  

Mutators can be thought of as ‘mini-mods,’ if you want.  There's a list of them you can select before each game that all change, or mutate (see?), the gameplay a bit.  Superjump, low gravity, replacing each weapon spawn on a map with another, big head mode, stuff like that.  Mutators are a fun addition that can mix up a usual match, but don't bring with them the sweeping changes of a full mod or total conversion.  They were a way to illustrate how flexible the development options were, and a nifty thing for players to have available to them.  

So, Unreal Tournament had lots of ways to keep the game fresh, either built-in or crafted by other players.  Turn a small map into Explosion Hell with the Rocket Arena mutator, or download a player-made weapon pack filled with weird goodies.  Wondering how Quake’s iconic maps play in UT?  Somebody's made them.  Hell, someone's even made a bunch of UT2004 maps for UT99, complete with de-made character and weapon models.  A lasting legacy of creativity is what UT99 brought above all else, and the fact that so much of what it did can remain as the primary example of how to do something right says more than I can about its impact on videogames as a whole.  

Unreal Tournament is a fast, brutal game balancing all of its various systems on the edge of a spinning razor blade, and it does so with a mastery that I feel was not seen among its peers of the time.  From the weapons, the movement, the maps, and the gamemodes, Unreal Tournament presents you the player with so many options, but it never feels like a generic crowd-pleasing paste has been slathered over everything.  The game's core is simple and well defined, and everything else builds on that.  It has a certain tightly-realized identity that I feel is missing from a lot of games that try to have the same sort of arcady arena vibe - Halo was probably its closest rival as far as small genre shifts go, and looking at Destiny 2 as the latest version of that is a weird mix of procedurally generated weapons, hero abilities, flat maps, and very few projectile weapons.  Skill has been taken out of some areas and added to others, but the design feels looser, less actualized.  Call of Duty is fast, but still has that small desire to be somewhat tactical, so there are recoil patterns and weapon attachments, the rich-get-richer killstreaks, and a progression system that murders any attempt at balancing their arsenal.  Quake Live, from what I understand, has a healthy enough playerbase, but my preference has already been stated.  Quake Champions tries to marry its classic gameplay with that of Overwatch, and the reactions have been mixed.  Team Fortress 2 has been bogged down with more and more weapons that blur the lines between classes, and the official map rotation - already small on launch - has barely been added to in twelve years.  

This isn't a “games are different now and that's bad” sort of thing, my point is just that UT99 had a much cleaner mission statement, if you will, than what we get now.  The industry's gotten bigger, and budgets followed.  Expectations of sales rose, leading developers to want to bring in as many players as they could.  Games can't really be niche anymore.

Or maybe that was true five years ago, but now the indie scene’s getting huge, and you can find a revival of your favorite genre just about anywhere.  Most aren't super well polished, but isn't that what made games like Unreal, Quake, and Half-Life into what we remember?  They all had more ambition than was perhaps warranted, and each made their huge impacts despite a healthy amount of blemishes.  Endless polish makes for a good player experience, but maybe not as much of a memorable one.  

Unreal Tournament all but made me into an FPS fan, and I think it's great that we all have so many types to choose from now.  Public tastes have shifted and evolutions of the genre happened.  I've enjoyed my fair share of Calls of Duty and Battlefields, I plugged hundreds of hours into TF2 throughout highschool, I've ridden the Overwatch hype train, and I love poking holes in walls and getting sneaky kills in Rainbow Six: Siege.  But Unreal Tournament is my oldest bastion, and one I return to every now and then when the whim takes me.  It occupies my top slot, though admittedly in an endless 1v1 with Unreal Tournament 2004.

But there was another Unreal Tournament between the two, one that came and went with mild fanfare while paving the way for what I feel is, hands down, the best game ever crafted by human hands.  Check back at the end of the month for a short look at the odd little Unreal Tournament 2003.

[bennyboy1223]

About Barry

Barry Sheene, Motorcycling's first superstar

​Earlier Life

Born in London, Barry was the second child of parents Frank (resident engineer at the Royal College of Surgeons, himself a former competitive rider who retired in 1956 and an experienced motorcycle mechanic) and Iris. He grew up in Queen Square, Holborn, London. Before entering road racing Sheene found work as a messenger and delivery driver.

Racing Career

Barry first started to race in 1968, winning his first races at Brands Hatch riding father Frank's 125 cc and 250 cc Bultacos. He became the British 125cc champion at age 20 in 1970. In 1971 riding an ex-works 1966 10-speed Suzuki twin, previously ridden by Stuart Graham he finished second in the 125 cc World Championship. His first Grand Prix win coming on that bike at Spa in Belgium, soon followed by a win on a 50 cc Van Veen Kreidler at Brno in Czechoslovakia, where he finished over two and a half minutes ahead.

For 1972 Barry was signed to the works Yamaha team for the 250 cc World Championship. However, at the third round in Austria, after losing a sprint to the finish line to the Australian John Dodds for third place, he voiced his displeasure to team management about the performance of the bike and was dropped from the team with immediate effect. His works Yamaha YZ635 was then given to the Finnish rider, Jarno Saarinen who went on to use the bike to win the World Championship that year.

Barry was signed by Suzuki during the off season 1972–1973 and won the newly formed Formula 750 European championship for them in 1973. As a works Suzuki rider Sheene had two contracts, with the World Championship events taking precedence over his Suzuki GB contract for home and International events, if any race dates clashed.

For 1974 Suzuki introduced the RG500 which Sheene rode to a second, third and a fourth scoring 30 points and finishing sixth in the World Championship.

A spectacular crash at the Daytona 200 in the 1975 season threatened to end his career, breaking his left thigh, right arm, collarbone and two ribs, yet he recovered and was racing again seven weeks afterwards. Again riding the RG500 he scored a memorable first 500 cc win at the Dutch TT.

In the 1976 season, he won five 500cc Grands Prix, bringing him the World Championship. He took the Championship again in the 1977 season with six victories. For the 1977 season Sheene was partnered by Steve Parrish, who rode Barry's 1976 Suzuki 500 cc machine.

Barry's battle with Roberts at the 1979 British Grand Prix at Silverstone has been cited as one of the greatest motorcycle Grand Prix races of the 1970s. After the 1979 season, he left the Heron-Suzuki factory team, believing that he was receiving inferior equipment to his team-mates. He switched to a privateer on a Yamaha machine, but soon started receiving works equipment. In 1981, Kenny Roberts the reigning World 500cc Champion for the third time in succession. Sheene, by now on a competitive Yamaha, was determined to take the championship from him. Ironically, Sheene and Roberts battled all season and let Suzuki riders Marco Lucchinelli of Italy and American Randy Mamola beat them for the top two spots. Roberts finished third and Sheene fourth in the final World Championship standings.

A crash at Silverstone where Sheene, riding his Yamaha, hit the obscured fallen machine of Frenchman Patrick Igoa during practice for the 1982 British Grand Prix largely ended his potential as a title threat, and he retired in 1984. He remains the only rider to win Grand Prix races in the 50cc and 500cc categories.

 Barry was known for being outspoken in his criticism for what he considered to be dangerous race tracks, most notably, the Isle of Man TT course, which he considered too dangerous for world championship competition. He was a colourful, exuberant character who used his good looks, grin and London accent to good effect in self-promotion, and combined with an interest in business was one of the first riders to make a lot of money from endorsements. He is credited with boosting the appeal of motorcycle racing into the realm of the mass marketing media. He also tried his hand as a TV show host, including the ITV series Just Amazing!, where he interviewed people who had, through accident or design, achieved feats of daring and survival (including the former RAF air gunner, Nicholas Alkemade, who survived a fall of 18,000 feet without a parachute from a blazing Avro Lancaster bomber over Germany in March 1944). Sheene and his wife Stephanie also starred in the low-budget film Space Riders.

Personal Life

In 1975 while on crutches, Barry met model Stephanie McLean, the couple married in 1984, having a son Freddie and daughter Sidonie.

Emigration to Australia

The Sheene family moved to Australia in the late 1980s, in the hope that the warmer climate would help relieve some of the pain of Barry's injury-induced arthritis, settling in a property near the Gold Coast. He combined a property development business with a role as a commentator on motor sport. He began on SBS TV then moved to the Nine Network with Darrell Eastlake, and finally followed the TV broadcast rights of the Grand Prix motorcycle series to Network Ten. Further to this, on Network Ten Barry co-hosted the weekly motor sport television show RPM from 1997 to 2002 with journalist Bill Woods, and was involved in Ten's coverage of other motor sport including V8 Supercars for several years.

In the 1990s, Barry appeared in a series of well known and popular television advertisements for Shell, with Australian motor sport icon Dick Johnson. In later years, Barry became involved in historic motorcycle racing, often returning to England to race at Donington Park. He was also chosen to run with the Queen's Baton in the run-up to the 2002 Commonwealth Games held in Manchester, England.

Death

In July 2002, at the age of 52, Barry was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus and stomach. Refusing conventional treatments involving chemotherapy, Barry instead opted for a holistic approach involving a strict diet devised by Austrian healer Rudolf Breuss, intended to starve the cancer of nourishment. He died peacefully surrounded by his family at a hospital on Queensland's Gold Coast in 2003, aged 52, having suffered from the condition for eight months.

Honours and Awards

Following reconstruction of the Brands Hatch Circuit in England for safety concerns after requests by the F.I.M., the Dingle Dell section was changed for safety, and shortly after Barry's death the new section was renamed Sheene's Corner in his honour. The FIM named him a Grand Prix "Legend" in 2001. For the 2003 season, V8 Supercars introduced a medal in honour of Barry, the Barry Sheene Medal, for the 'best and fairest' driver of the season. A memorial ride from Bairnsdale, Victoria to Phillip Island is held by Australian motorcyclists annually, before the MotoGP held at the island.

In Popular Culture

​

On a side note, the obscure Eric Idle song "Mr. Sheene" which describes "Mr. Sheene's riding machine" appears to be about Barry Sheene. It was released as a B-side of the 1978 single "Ging Gang Goolie" and is credited as released by Rutles-offshoot duo "Dirk and Stig." He is also featured on one of Artist Grayson Perry's Vases My Heroes (1994). Barry also featured in a number of Brut adverts alongside boxer Henry Cooper.

​Image ​© Gerard Kampen. All Rights Reserved © Estate of Barry Sheene. Managed by Santara Group

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[architecdura-blog]

The Value of "Shanty" Towns in Urban Planning.

The world known Gehl architects studio tells the story of how they came in to help redesign Villa 31, the most emblematic informal settlement in Buenos Aires, and how they ended up valuing what their residents had already built.

Urban planners and designers often face an uncomfortable paradox: people often prefer neighborhoods that have developed organically, thanks to the contributions of many, over those planned by a small group of experts. Urban planners love using terms like 'organic', 'spontaneous' and 'authentic'; however, they tend to plan and design areas that restrict those same characteristics. We were confronted in a very explicit way with this paradox when Gehl, the company where we work as urban designers, received an invitation from the government of Buenos Aires to provide design advice in an ambitious project, led by the Secretariat of Social and Urban Integration of the city, for the redevelopment of the most emblematic informal settlement in the Argentine capital. The plan seeks to turn Villa 31 -villa, in Argentinean slang, means neighborhood- into a neighborhood, a neighborhood proper.

Villa 31 is one of the most interesting and vibrant neighborhoods in Buenos Aires. It has the granularity and scale of the medieval settlements that tourists flock to in places like Siena, Italy. It has that life on the street, with children running and playing, which cities like New York or Melbourne aspire to achieve through Play Streets initiatives -in which the streets are closed to traffic for defined periods to open them to the community and promote physical activity. With the streets full of cyclists and pedestrians, the town has a modal division more similar to that of Copenhagen and other cities at the forefront in transport than to other neighborhoods of Buenos Aires.

WE MUST BE CAREFUL NOT TO IDEALIZE THESE CHARACTERISTICS

Strategically located next to the most wealthy neighborhood of the capital, Villa 31 is a painful reminder of the deep socio-economic disparity in Argentina. While most of the city is revered as a sophisticated metropolis, 37 percent of the eight thousand households in this informal settlement lack kitchens and a quarter of them do not have toilets.

Some residents carry a pair of extra shoes to wear after walking the muddy streets. Some corridors are so narrow that they do not allow the passage of emergency vehicles, which means that hundreds of families are out of reach of them. The bulk of the houses does not have drinking water or are connected to the sewerage network. Electricity is available through dangerous informal connections, which have resulted in electrocutions and fatal explosions.

Most homes are overcrowded and lack adequate indoor air quality. Although the village is located in the vicinity of a transportation center, none of the transit lines runs through the community and pedestrian access is further limited due to the gangs that control certain access routes.

After 80 years of neglect, the municipal government has decided to face the challenge and expand the scope of services and infrastructure in Villa 31. The goal is to raise standards of quality of life to the same levels as in the rest of the city . At the head of such an extraordinary and complex task is a motivated team of young architects, engineers, sociologists and experts in public policy. Gehl joined them to help them carry out the social mission of the project through to plan...

As part of our work, we are dedicated to studying public life in seven neighborhoods representative of the diversity of Buenos Aires and to learning from the public outreach team that has been working with residents for almost two years. Our findings reveal that, in the key indicators of urban vitality and sustainable mobility, the village exceeds the richest areas of the city.

In the streets and spaces of Villa 31 there are more people walking, cycling, socializing, playing and watching people go by than in the rest of the six neighborhoods we studied.

In addition, we realized that, in comparison with the informal neighborhoods built by the inhabitants themselves after government intervention, most of the social housing projects subsidized by the State during the last century have given worse results (in terms of security and health).

There is no doubt about the urgent need to extend access to public services in this area. For decades, residents of Villa 31 have demanded basic infrastructure and government presence; nevertheless, the more time we spend in the community, the better we have been able to appreciate the urban infrastructure that the people of the neighborhood have already developed.

These families face serious deprivation in many aspects and, nevertheless, in the midst of scarcity, the neighborhood has characteristics -among them, passable streets and a dynamic public life- that some of the most privileged cities aspire to.

Together with a dedicated team -Diego, Lucho, Licho, Nacho and Juani- Gehl has devised strategies to connect the neighborhood, which has been isolated for a long time, with its formal environment.

The objective of making the community physically more accessible is complemented by the complex process of formal integration of the town into the social and economic fabric of the city. We have helped design streets and spaces to interconnect the micro-communities that make up the village and thus reinforce the notion that public space really constitutes the common base and essence of the district.

As our designs have evolved, we have become more aware of the risks involved in redevelopment. In the village, adhering to modern building codes means widening the streets, restricting the entrepreneurial zeal of the residents and, possibly, increasing construction costs. To comply with the rules, the community would be forced to give up some of its most powerful attributes.

Below, we present the five most important design lessons we have learned from Villa 31, illustrated by local artist Fernando Neyra.

PROXIMITY IS IMPORTANT

Built by the residents themselves on publicly owned land near the main transit center of the city, Villa 31 has provided migrants and low-income families with something that neither the market nor most government programs have been able to do. : the opportunity to live in the proximity of the sources of employment, services and other amenities that the city offers.

In Argentina, as in the United States and Europe, there is an unmet demand for affordable housing near work centers. Unfortunately, the supply of affordable housing, including social assistance, is often limited to suburban residential areas, which lack access to affordable housing. public office and appropriate jobs. This restricts opportunities for residents and, by forcing them to move daily to the workplace, condemns them to waste valuable time unnecessarily.

A DISTRICT CAN BE as DENSE as the HUMAN SCALE

In a city marked by skyscrapers and the rapid movement of traffic in eight-lane avenues, the narrow streets and compact form of the villa provide a break from the noise and hustle and bustle of urban life. Although Villa 31 is one of the densest neighborhoods in the city, most buildings are less than five stories high.

The width of the street oscillates between three and 16 meters, generating a network of shared alleyways characterized by a pleasant micro-climate. With dynamic lower floors and open balconies, the narrow buildings that make up the dense blocks, ensure that there are always a pair of eyes watching the street.

Instead of adjusting to a perfect grid, these alleyways curve around the structures, creating a network of undulating passages that discover different views of the district and its surroundings. These irregular passages vary in width, which allows small squares and meeting spaces to arise. The alleys become shortcuts between parallel roads, allowing pedestrians to take shorter, more direct routes than vehicles.

THE STREETS CAN BE cheerful AND SAFE PUBLIC SPACES

Narrow lanes, along with constant activity, force drivers to move slowly through the fabric of the village. The slow pace of traffic generates a safer and quieter social environment than other areas of the city that have been specifically designed for the flow of automobiles.

The streets of the village then become a point of convergence - a space for casual exchanges and frequent encounters. Even from an early age, children gather to play outside the home without supervision, but always at the mere steps of adults.

As you walk through the streets of the village, you can see the families sitting in front of the houses, meeting to talk with neighbors or watch over children. It is possible to see the residents of the third age engage, from the balcony or the window of the living room, conversation with passers-by. In the villa, a small unit on the ground floor allows an older person to live independently and participate in the life of the community.

FLEXIBLE ARCHITECTURE GENERATES ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES

In the village, the house is much more than a home - it is a platform for economic progress. An immigrant family can begin, for example, with a two-room structure on one floor. A door or window facing the street is all that is needed to establish a small store. Business initiatives can be tested without the risks and costs of renting a commercial space. If the business fails, it is possible to transform it and try again with a new and better idea. If the business is successful, it can expand and occupy the first floor, while business income can be used to finance the construction of a second floor for housing. Also, a third floor with independent access can be converted into an apartment to rent to a cousin or a couple of tenants.

The house constantly adapts and adjusts; It can be subdivided when the family grows or is rented when a family member moves. Many of the residents of the village live on the fringes of the formal banking system, so a larger house represents a way to save the same as a source of income.

Over time, a successful company can become a valuable asset to the neighborhood, which allows neighbors to meet their needs around the corner. Currently, one out of every five buildings in the town houses a business. In one of these streets there are a vegetable market, a cybercafé, a hairdresser, a laundry, a sandwich shop and even a dental office. Each of these businesses stands as a testimony to the business impulse of the residents.

THE UNIQUE CHARACTER OF EACH HOUSING CONFIGURES THE SPACE

Traditional public housing projects place the inhabitants in standard regulated modules; they are structures with predictable and uniform shapes, repeated in neat rows. Personalized modifications to the exterior of the dwellings are discouraged or prohibited, since they affect the architectural purity of the vision of the project. Free of strict and monolithic aesthetic ideas, the houses of the village reflect the personality and taste of its inhabitants.

With an attentive look, a walk through the village reveals, through the colors and materials chosen, the pride that people feel for their homes. In a quiet little street, a facade carries a hand-painted tile, indicating the number of the house and the family's last name; the painted house reminds those who pass there to the proud family that inhabits it.

A NEW PARADIGM

For two decades, the residents of the village have demanded changes. Today, many appreciate the improvements the government makes in the neighborhood. But it is essential to emphasize that we should not idealize these conditions, arising from scarcity and need. However, we also need to recognize the values ​​and strengths of the community, in order to preserve them in the neighborhood after redevelopment, and apply the lessons learned there to other urban design projects.

The new investments should be directed to the real needs of the community, respecting the social structures that have allowed it to remain energetic in the face of adversity. We are convinced that the urban form of the village -proximity to the places of employment, flexible and adaptable architecture, compact and passable streets and dynamic lower floors- has not only influenced the strong social bond that unites the residents, but also the extraordinarily resilient structures in which they live.

By studying and learning from self-built communities such as Villa 31, the architects involved in the creation of social housing in Latin America and other places, provide a great contribution to citizenship. Local leaders must accept and adopt the paradox that places like the town symbolize. These urban spaces require public support without excessively regulating the organic life that has already flourished in their absence.

We extend our special thanks to the entire team of Barrio 31 and especially to Diego, Lucho, Licho, Nacho and Juani. We also thank David Sim, who influenced our approach to this project and the ideas in this article.