#want so badly to write another of these specifically set after when saxon war and even are in a car driving towards certain death

[quietwingsinthesky]

MASTERFUL [+ even] SCENE ???

[Saxon groaning pathetically.]

EVEN (shouting) Master!

SAXON Present.

EVEN (curt) I don't belong to you. (shouting again) Missy!

SAXON Well, she's not here.

[An expectant silence followed by Saxon getting to his feet on his own noisily. Another expectant silence, this time followed by footsteps drawing closer. Another pair interrupts them, Even's, taking only two steps before they both stop.]

Please, don't look too happy to see me.

EVEN I'm not.

SAXON (lying) The feeling's mutual. (singsong) She's not coming back for you, (regular) so you're stuck with me. Doesn't that make you nostalgic?

[Even doesn't respond for long enough to disrupt the flow of the conversation.]

EVEN You would have come back.

[Even sighs.]

SAXON Obviously I would have. You're my pack mule.

EVEN Don't call me that.

SAXON Would you prefer guard dog? You do still have that gun somewhere?

EVEN (ignoring him) Eight.

SAXON What?

EVEN Eight versions of you. I had an equal chance to end up with any of them. Or alone. Or with… Um. (frustrated) She, um. The woman who wasn't you. (eureka) Miss Grant.

SAXON One of the Doctor's other pets. A very old model.

EVEN (audibly restraining themself from repeating him in any way) Or I could have gotten the one who sounded like Jack. I liked him.

SAXON Who?

EVEN Sunglasses.

SAXON You want Agent Smith? You can't complain that I'm mistreating you and then ask for him. Do you want to know how he got that accent?

EVEN Not really.

SAXON He took it when he took that body. It's human. It had a life, a wife, a-

EVEN You did that.

SAXON (annoyed) He did it more recently. The sunglasses cover up its eyes. Dead give away otherwise. He crawled inside it, made himself at home, and failed to make it count for anything.

EVEN You failed.

SAXON (angry) I won! You'll believe Missy, like she's done anything with her own life-

EVEN (matching his volume) It's your life!

SAXON Exactly! I'm not throwing it away for her to waste! I deserve this!

[Silence. Wind.]

What are you doing with your face? Stop it.

EVEN (upset) I'm not doing anything.

SAXON (disgusted, mostly with his own reaction) Close your eyes. Stop looking at me like that.

[He huffs. Even sniffs. He shifts, as though looking away and back again.]

I told you to close them. Now, look what you've done.

EVEN (crying) I'm not doing! Anything!

SAXON Do I have to hit you?

EVEN (no hesitation) Yes.

[Silence.]

[A slap.]

[Even squeaks. Then they let out a harsh breath.]

SAXON Done?

[Even sniffles and breathes in with just as much effort.]

EVEN Done.

[They breathe in again. In the distance, there's the rumble of a car. Saxon turns to watch it as Even exhales.]

Why didn't you say you could do that?

SAXON You asked for it. Don't act all 'woe is me' because I left a bruise.

EVEN (pleased) Left a-? (stops themself) No. About bodies. About. You said you-

SAXON He.

EVEN You got inside another person.

SAXON (innuendo) Every other day, if I can help it.

[Even sniffs again. They don't get it.]

EVEN (whispering, mimicking Saxon) If I can help it. Help. (regular) You should have told me what I was there for. If you wanted me around because I'm human and you can- However you do it. Why didn't you?

SAXON (the answer is because I wasn't going to, or because I was and I decided not to later and then I'd have to come up with a reason why that both of us would believe, or because I still would have if I had to in order to live, and then I would have eaten you all up until there was nothing left, and you'd be gone, do you understand that, you'd be gone.) I had enough trouble keeping you on a leash when you were waiting for me to kill you. You really think I would have let it slip that I wanted to wear you to stay alive. You'd have shot me. I've had enough of that for one regeneration.

[Two pairs of footsteps. One moves back. The other advances.]

[Even hums.]

EVEN I don't look good in sunglasses.

SAXON I don't look good in human. We all have to make sacrifices.

EVEN (tiredly) Sacrifices. Because you deserve it.

SAXON See? That wasn't so hard. You always come around to my way of thinking. (realizing something) So stay close to me. And… if we run into me again, don't listen to what I have to say. What they have to say. Especially her.

EVEN (half a laugh) Heh.

[The sound of another car passing in the distance. They're both quiet.]

SAXON So, do you have that gun?

EVEN Yes. (pause) I'm not going to kill anyone for you, Master.

[Two pairs of footsteps, heading away together. Their voices get similarly distant, slowly trailing off and leaving the wind behind.]

SAXON No, I'm sure they'll be very helpful and give us the car if you show it off.

EVEN And if they don't?

SAXON Then, I'll kill them. Spare you the trouble. (muttering) I don't know why you care. The Doctor's gone. You can't impress her anymore.

EVEN I still don't believe you.

SAXON I threw her into a star!

EVEN (mimicking him, mockingly this time) Into a star! You don't believe you, either. You're still waiting for her to show up.

SAXON Why don't we just walk the rest of the way in silence?

[Silence and further shuffling of footsteps]

EVEN (very faintly, far away) You're right. This is nostalgic.

[pretchatta]

@cameoamalthea made a post about Bo-Katan and I have Many Thoughts, but for ease of reading I’ve put my response here under the read more! (warning: spoilers for the whole of season 2 of The Mandalorian)

Why Ahsoka still supports Bo-Katan is a GREAT question (that I actually started thinking about earlier today), but first, I want to talk about the rest of Bo's past - she is NOT a good person. She's definitely a Yasha Greyjoy, believing in the conquering, predatory supremacy of the Mandalorians, and something I'm exploring in a fic series I'm currently writing is how she came to be that way.

I think it was mentioned somewhere that Satine's father was Duke of Mandalore before she was Duchess, and it was him who started the pacifist New Mandalorian government. I don't know if this is a hereditary-monarchy kinda situation or more democratic, but my interpretation is "there are sort of royal families and even though there technically are elections, it's always Clan Kryze or Vizsla or similar who get elected". My headcanon is that Satine was the eldest child and so groomed to take the throne, while Bo was sort of pushed to the side in very typical second-child fashion. So she grew up with a fair amount of internalised resentment towards her family, and then at some point fell in with some more traditional Mandalorians, and from there it was all too easy to oppose her father and sister and everything they stood for.

So, she believes Mandalorians are top-of-the-food-chain warriors, and that it's perfectly okay to burn villages, kill helpless people, and smack the butt of any skinny torgruta kid who shows up unannounced. She's a Bad Person. She’s also so committed to this ideology that she’s willing to team up with a former Sith and a bunch of criminals to get what she wants. But then Maul kills Vizsla, and declares himself leader of Death Watch and Mandalore, and this is her limit - as you said, not because he's bad, but because he's not Mandalorian. (It was at this point that I, as an audience member, really started to like her - the cool female lieutennant is standing up to a bad guy! And it's for a reason that isn't "this is morally wrong and I have developed a conscience"! I love that, because after a while that does get a bit boring.) So now she's fighting Maul, and we know the Jedi are also fighting Maul, so it makes perfect sense for them to team up against their common enemy who is far stronger than each of them.

I then think that during the Siege of Mandalore she has a bit of an internal crisis. Before, when the Shadow Collective were pretending to invade so Death Watch could save the day, yes there were Mandalorians being hurt, but it was all under control, it was just a pretend invasion, after all. Now, however, everything is much more real - the war is now on Mandalore, her home, and it's hurting her people, and there's nothing she can do to stop it without more fighting. It's actually partly her fault, because she was part of Death Watch, and they set this whole thing in motion. So she then sees Ahsoka, who is committed to peace, take out Maul with no casualties (up until this point, most if not all of the Maul fights she's seen either involve decapitation or lots of explosions - if she'd tried to take him, a lot of people would have died in the fight, both soldiers and innocents). She's also been part of the desperate fighting in the streets, and I think she's finally starting to realise that maybe Satine was right - their people can't take much more of this, because they're going to destroy themselves. Maybe they should think about less combative ways to rule themselves? She says “I wish I was good at something other than war” and then “My sister tried that. I never understood her idealism” and I always thought there was an unsaid “until now” at the end of that second one - she wants to be what Mandalore needs, and she’s realising that might not be a warrior.

But for now, they need to get through this, and that means fighting off the crime syndicates that are literally in their streets, that means accepting the help of the Republic and its soldiers, and it eventually means Bo-Katan herself taking up the position of ruler of Mandalore. We know that doesn’t last long, because Saxon and the Empire rise up to take it from her, but then Sabine finds the Darksaber and unifies the clans. Bo says “I had my chance to rule, and I failed. I am not my sister. I am not the leader you seek” - she’s definitely done some reflecting on maybe-Satine-was-right-after-all, and starting to realise how badly she’s messed up. But as you say, Sabine and the other clans push her into accepting the Darksaber and the throne.

Now I (finally) come to Ahsoka. Ahsoka saw Death Watch Bo - she directly saw her burning the village, and she also saw the effects Death Watch’s attempts at taking over had on Mandalore when she went to help weed out corruption in Sundari. Yes, a lot of it was due to the war, but a lot of those problems were definitely exacerbated by Death Watch’s actions and presence. Ahsoka then teamed up with her to fight Maul - ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ - and on my first watch I didn’t think much of her saying “I’ve learned from the best, including you.” I was too busy thinking “yeah, Bo-Katan IS the best!” but on my second watch - why does Ahsoka think she’s ‘the best’? Did she see something that we, the audience, did not? The Clone Wars didn’t show us any scenes with just Ahsoka and Bo before the fighting started - perhaps they had a conversation where Ahsoka confronted Bo about the terrible things in her past, and Bo explained that she was misguided and regretted it and was trying to do what was best for her people now. That would make sense.

Because then, in The Mandalorian, Bo directs Din to Ahsoka (edit: and she does it very specifically, too - usually in Star Wars you get a system, maybe a planet, but Bo knows the exact city). Why would she even know where Ahsoka is? They didn’t interact in the Rebels arc. From what we see of Ahsoka, Tython Corvus isn’t even her permanent residence, she’s just there to help one village tiny city and get information out of someone. So why does Bo have very recent information on her location? The only answer is that they must be allies who share that information willingly. And since the character of Ahsoka is Good, her allies must also be - unless they’ve made another temporary arrangement to team up and defeat a common enemy. But Bo is hunting Gideon and Ahsoka is hunting Thrawn (I am unbelievably excited) so they’re apparently on different quests. Which means... they must be friends.

In the episode The Heiress, Bo acts pretty okay. Yeah, she calls Din’s way of life a cult and is kinda rude about it, but it’s in response to him literally telling her she’s not a Mandalorian as, like, the first thing he says to her, and there are a lot of people out there who are rude and dismissive of someone’s way of life/upbringing without being Inherently Evil and Bad. Her motivations in that episode are: save a fellow Mandalorian, who might also be able to help her find and fight Gideon, and find and fight Gideon. She’s not interested in helping Din on his side-quest to reunite a child with his people - she feels the struggle for Mandalore is more important than one child. 

In the episode The Rescue, however, she definitely goes out of her way to insult Boba and Jango completely unneccessary. Maybe she has a valid reason to dislike clones? I don’t think it would have anything to do with the Republic/Empire’s takeover of Mandalore - that wasn’t the clones’ fault*. She asked for Republic help, and then it was Palpatine and Saxon who kept them there. However, other than that, I don’t think she did much wrong? She still has the single-minded determination to duel Gideon and retake the Darksaber, which she might feel a need to do this time around because she has to prove - to herself, to Mandalore, to everyone - that she’s worthy of it. But for her, even though she’s accepted that maybe pacifism is okay, Mandalore is still pretty high up on her priority list, so it comes ahead of Din, Grogu and the New Republic.

So future seasons have a lot to answer for:

Why is Ahsoka willingly allied with Bo-Katan, given that Bo has never done anything objectively good/anything that wasn’t motivated by a need to see Mandalore ruled by Mandalorians wearing beskar?

Why does Bo hate the Fetts so much?

How will Bo handle Din having possession of the Darksaber now?

(edit: the below was added after posting)

* Why I don’t think it’s the clones’ fault: Bo knew what she was doing when she invited the Republic to help her retake Mandalore. Obi-Wan specifically asked her about it, and she said she would deal with it later. She knew that by using Republic gunships and clones the Senate would take an interest in Mandalore, and it would be seen as Mandalore allying itself with the Republic. When the Republic then became the Empire, the clones would either have simply continued serving the Senate - formerly Republic, now Imperial - or been decommissioned, in which case the Senate would have sent an alternative force to represent its interests. Unless there’s a specific mention of this in canon that I’m missing, the clones would only have been following orders from the Senate, and that would have been very clear to the Mandalorians. Any betrayal of Mandalore came from the Empire not leaving after Maul was defeated, not the clones spontaneously deciding that now the Republic was gone, they’re free men, they can choose between Mandalore and the Empire, and they choose the Empire.

Bo specifically has it out for Jango and Boba for some reason. I think she knows who Boba is, and that he’s not just any clone - I’ve seen several posts on this but the most obvious is that Boba was a pretty high-profile bounty hunter in the OT who she must have heard of. I think it’s something around how she percieves Jango’s Mandalorian-ness, his status as Boba’s father and the process of cloning in general, and therefore Boba’s claim to any Mandalorian armour, heritage and identity.

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: Skullsplitter Dice, Fantasy divisions, Future Firearms, Samson Pollen

Fiction (DMR Books): I have a real attachment to the supernatural tales that appeared in what is often called the golden age of the English ghost story.  Ranging from around 1880 to somewhere in the 1920s its boundaries are as vague as its achievements are remarkable.  For a time, in that difficult to imagine world in which fiction had yet to solidify into specific genres, any author might try his or her hand at a tale of the supernatural, writing primarily motivated by the desire, as M.R. James put it, to make the reader feel “pleasantly uncomfortable.”  While dozens of authors who would later distinguish themselves

  Genre (Perilous Worlds): Sometimes it seems like the myriad sub-divisions of the fantasy genre cause more confusion than clarity. Terms like Epic and High Fantasy are often used interchangeably, labels like Sword-and-Sorcery and Dark Fantasy are commonly applied indiscriminately, and books with seemingly nothing in common can be found right next to one another in the fantasy section. A novel set in modern times featuring a heroic, magic-wielding protagonist and one set in a medieval-flavored secondary world devoid of the supernatural and concerned with the selfish adventures of an amoral rogue are both works of fantasy – but if only one of those sounds like a book you’d want to read, it helps to be familiar with the broad categories of contemporary fantasy.

  Weapons (Future War Stories): Any leap forward in design, fashion, and/or technology can be greeted as the harbinger of the future or a laughing stock by the masses. While this can be applied to personal electronics, clothing, and architecture; it can also be applied to firearms. During the 1980’s, the western nations invested heavily in advancing weapons technology to overcome the numerical superior of the Warsaw Pact. This was the time of cutting edge weapon system like the Apache attack helicopter, the M1 Abrams, the Steyr AUG, night vision, laser sights, and the H&K G11.

  Weapons (DMR Books): Hank Reinhardt would have turned eighty-five today. Though I never knew him personally, Hank affected my life in some unique ways and he shall receive due honor from me for that. If you don’t know who Hank Reinhardt was, check out the hyperlink above or read on.

I first learned of Mr. Reinhardt when I bought the DAW sword and sorcery anthology–quite possibly the greatest ever published–Heroic Fantasy. Hank was co-editor of that book along with Gerald W. Page.

  Art (CBC News): Semi-nude women, sadistic soldiers, and animal attacks aren’t exactly high art.

Yet those were themes that appealed to the millions of men who read “sweat magazines” — adventure digests sold across North America from the 1940s to the 1970s​.

Publications like Man’s Story, World of Men, and Man’s Epic weren’t exactly pornographic — but were the opposite of politically correct.

  Authors (Socialist Jazz): Theodore Sturgeon was by all accounts a confounding personality, genial, personally irresponsible, questioning many of the more basic matters of human relations, perception and emotion, and a man who could certainly write a sentence…and then be hung up by how badly he’d done so for years-long writer’s blocks. And yet managed to be very prolific over a long if troubled career.

          Art (Mens Pulp Mags): Simply put, Samson Pollen was one of the greatest of the many artists who provided illustrations for the men’s adventure magazines (MAMs) that flourished from the early 1950s to the late 1970s.

My publishing partner Wyatt Doyle and I had the good fortune and the honor of working with Sam on two books featuring his artwork before he passed away in December of 2018.

The first, POLLEN’S WOMEN: THE ART OF SAMSON POLLENwas published last year. It quickly became one of the best-selling books in our Men’s Adventure Library series, which features classic MAM stories and artwork.

  Fiction (Perilous Worlds): If you love The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ringsand want to follow the third road of the J. R. R. Tolkien fantasy triad, these first words of The Silmarillion might trick you into putting the book back on the “May Read … Someday” shelf, right beside War and Peace and Les Misérables.

I’m making a plea for you not to shelve it. Or for you to reach up to the shelf and take down Professor Tolkien’s 1977 volume of the Elder Days of Middle-Earth and try again. Too many people have let The Silmarillion’s reputation for difficulty—and its actual difficulty—keep them away from discovering what may be one of their favorite works of fantasy.

  Fiction (Tellers of Weird Tales): A month ago I wrote about Vikings and other medieval subjects on the cover ofWeird Tales, and out of that I received a couple of comments from readers about Viking fantasy stories. That got me thinking that there may be a missed sub-sub-genre of fantasy and science fiction dealing with those men and women of the north, with their winged and horned helmets, long, braided hair, conical breastplates, and raiments of hide and fur. So here is a first shot at stories of Vikings and Norsemen, with some also of Saxons, Geats, Goths, and other early northern Europeans thrown into the mix.

  History (Men of the West): The Turk has long been known as the “sick man of Europe,” and the story of the Ottoman Empire for a hundred years has been a tale of gradual dismemberment. Thus it is no easy matter for us to realize that for centuries the Ottoman power was the terror of the civilized world.

It was in 1358 that the Ottomans seized Gallipoli, on the Dardanelles, and thus obtained their first footing in Europe. They soon made themselves masters of Philippopolis and Adrianople. A crusading army, gathered to drive the Asiatic horde from Europe, was cut to pieces by the Sultan Bajazet at Nicopolis in 1396. On the day after the battle ten thousand Christian prisoners were massacred before the Sultan, the slaughter going on from daybreak till late in the afternoon. The Turk had become the terror of Europe.

  Authors (A Shiver in the Archives): The legend* has altered in the retelling, from a slip found in Robert E. Howard’s wallet after his suicide in June 1936, to it being the last thing Howard typed on his typewriter before going out to his car where he shot himself in the head. The couplet is now legendary:

All fled, all done, so lift me on the pyre; The feast is over and the lamps expire.

Rusty Burke published an article “All Fled, All Done” in The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies (Winter 2001), in which he identified Howard’s source for the final line of the couplet, a poem titled “The House of Cæsar” by Viola Garvin, which appeared in a poetry anthology Songs of Adventure (1926), edited by Robert Frothingham.  Each of the five stanzas of the poem ends with the line “The Feast is over and the lamps expire!”

  Gaming (Table Top Gaming News): These little gems are one of my favorite things, and so when Skullsplitter Dice asked if I’d like to review one of their sets, and not only that, their first-ever limited edition set, I was like, “(censored) YEAH!!” So, they sent me some dice. I rolled them around a bit, and I’m here to let you know about it.

It’s time for another TGN Review. This time, it’s the Huntress Limited Edition Dice from Skullsplitter Dice.

  Cinema (Kairos): In my work as a freelance editor, I’ve noticed a common tendency among the current crop of science fiction authors to write books as if they’re writing movies. That practice is understandable since most science fiction and fantasy novels published after 1980 suck, and therefore today’s authors are disproportionately influenced by film.

However, writing a novel by playing a little movie in your head and transcribing what you see in your mind’s eye hobbles the final product. Because this generation of authors don’t read as much as their forebears did, few of them realize the storytelling advantages that books have over movies.

  Fiction (Cirsova): Per Michael Tierney, the original fragment that Burroughs wrote was just found this morning.

Apparently, Danton Burroughs had sent it to be transcribed by Bill Hillman of ERBzine.com, who has announced today in a thread on the ERBzine facebook group that it is still in his possession!

Danton sent me this ERB handwritten script. I typed it out and returned the typed copy to him. He offered it to a few writers to see if they would be interested in finishing it. I still have the handwritten copy plus my transcription.

We have updated the copy in the original piece.

Cirsova’s spring issue featuring Young Tarzan and the Mysterious She is available for digital pre-order now and physical pre-order in February.

  Fiction (Glorious Trash): I had a tough time with this third volume of Conan. In fact I read it over a year ago, but at the time I found myself skimming the collected stories, to the point that when I “finished” the book I didn’t have any idea how to review it! So I waited a while until getting back to the series, only to find my interest again sagging at times.

    Sensor Sweep: Skullsplitter Dice, Fantasy divisions, Future Firearms, Samson Pollen published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames