#what's annoying is that this is also patronizing to hippies and what they are

[fallloverfic]

Thoughts on the live-action adaptation of The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, Episode 3: Risk Assessment:

(It's really critical this week, folks; please, if you have any interest in this show, read the books, they're so much better)

I am somehow less impressed with this episode than the previous two. My primary comfort at this point is that there are 7 more episodes and also the episodes are extremely short, so it's not a major time investment.

I know part of this is book accurate to a degree, but I dislike that the story is focusing more on Murderbot's disgust with humans - particularly from a sex angle - than it is on Murderbot's paranoia about safety and its criticisms of the company it works for and its relatively nonchalant attitude about how shit everything is. The line, "Equipment failures aren't unknown" is almost an afterthought, without any clarification on why that's a thing, and focus is more heavily emphasized on Murderbot as a danger than the company in general as a danger. Compare this to the scene in Chapter Three of All Systems Red:

“Pin-Lee was calling up specs for the beacons. “Aren’t the emergency beacons designed to trigger even if the rest of the comm equipment is destroyed?”

The other good thing about my hacked governor module is that I could ignore the governor’s instructions to defend the stupid company. “They’re supposed to be able to, but equipment failures aren’t unknown.”"

Just... tonally. Completely different.

Yes, Murderbot is potentially a threat, and it notes that, and wants PreservationAux to be aware of that, purely from the sense that it isn't made well, has gone rogue in the past, SecUnits are dangerous, and the company is not looking out for PreservationAux, but rather their own interest. There's just, again, this heavy emphasis on PreservationAux being weird hippies and Murderbot's primary issues being human grossness rather than, you know, it's company property and humans treat it that way. Again, the show has one character say, "It's slavery" and then that's it for the episode, basically. Mensah is overbearing (I love her but she is), Ratthi is tactless in a way that's infantile, Pin-Lee and Arada (though mostly Arada) are being guided (like Ratthi) by their sex drives rather than, you know, their scientific focus (like wtf with that "first" line? Yes, I'm glad it's openly queer, but with everyone acting like sex-driven children and the focus on PreservationAux as free-loving hippies, it's just... ugh), and Gurathin is just fucking weird, and that, generally, is the focus of the episode. 1968-100a was right on the money when they said everyone is far less emotionally intelligent in the show. And understanding that's likely because they're going to get development arcs is not encouraging because they've been so screwed up that it's not enjoyable to watch.

I would say maybe I'm being too picky about the tone, but also around when episodes 1 and 2 aired, articles popped up indicating the showrunners stated they handled Murderbot's tone by ignoring it. This was not reassuring last week, and it's less reassuring now that episode 3 is out, and I'm less than enthused about what is to come in the rest of this series.

Again, I appreciate the focus on the fake soap operas. It's cute. I'm less enthused that it's so dominating the story when other important things - like the evils of capitalism - are sidelined. For instance, there's really no interrogation of why Murderbot is getting ideas from the soap operas it's watching, e.g., that it wasn't trained in a lot of ways that would help keep humans alive, because of cut costs and the company being focused on its own assets and money rather than actual safety, and the company has an agenda in not necessarily keeping people alive all the time. Also that SecUnit is security, not a medical unit of some kind. The specific role of agenda and who has one and what it is and how that conflicts with ethics and personal safety is an important one in Murderbot. It's somewhat gone in the show, and warped for... whatever Mensah talks about with the Company hoping they'll fail or whatever.

About Ratthi asking the awkward questions: he doesn't frame it the way he does in the show. He doesn't say, "Wooow... Does that mean you have like, human feelings, too?"

This is the scene in Chapter Four of All Systems Red:

“We heard—we were given to understand, that Imitative Human Bot Units are . . . partially constructed from cloned material.”

Warily, I stopped the show I was watching. I didn’t like where this might go. All of that information is in the common knowledge database, plus in the brochure the company provides with the specifics of the types of units they use. Which he knew, being a scientist and whatever. And he wasn’t the kind of human who asked about things when he could look them up himself through a feed. “That’s true,” I said, very careful to make my voice sound just as neutral as always. "That's true," I said, very careful to make my voice sound just as neutral as always.

Ratthi’s expression was troubled. “But surely . . . It’s clear you have feelings—”

I flinched. I couldn’t help it.

Overse had been working in the feed, analyzing data from the assessments. She looked up, frowning. “Ratthi, what are you doing?”

Ratthi shifted guiltily. “I know Mensah asked us not to, but—” He waved a hand. “You saw it."

There's such a leap of relative respect in the difference here. Ratthi in the show is like a hyperactive child driven by his dick with a bit of progressive flavoring. Ratthi in the book is a scientist trying to figure out how to engage with a new team member he doesn't quite know how to handle, who is considered property by most of society. It's awkward, it's still got issues, but it's way more emotionally mature than he is in the show.

The whole thing with Gurathin at this point is just... why? I like that he reached out to Bharadwaj. That's nice. But the rest is just... why? The funniest thing about Gurathin doesn't even feature Gurathin: it's when Murderbot insists it's more of a machine than Gurathin is as a point of pride. That actually made me chuckle.

The crabs were neat. Random, but sure, if you've got a CGI budget, go for it. However, why is Ratthi acting like a child? Why is everyone on this show acting like a child? Why did PreservationAux bring... gifts on their check-up to see if DeltFall needed help? (I know it's for the stupid hippie shit). Why is Murderbot lying to Mensah about the status of the residents of DeltFall? Mensah is supposed to be watching its feed, she knows what Murderbot is seeing, and also it's a way to get Mensah to leave when it explains??? Also, why are they using hand communicators? The impression I always had was that everyone has coms in their heads, similar to what Mars Express and Ghost in the Shell do.

Where. Are. Murderbot's. Drones??????

The end fight was fine. It's partly why I'm more annoyed with the soap operas at this point, though because less focus was given to Murderbot's competence as a security unit - or where it wasn't competent because the company was cheap and didn't care to train it in certain things - and more to the soap opera stuff. We did at least see more of Murderbot's competence this episode with guiding and insisting the humans stay behind, as well as its competence in the fight. But it's treated less like someone who's cagey and more like someone who struggles with basic moment-to-moment existence for things it should be better able to hide/mask, particularly in relation to its job. Yes, Murderbot is awkward and struggles to relate to humans and figure out what it wants, in a way that is frequently obvious when its helmet is down and even in conversation. It is however, not as obvious as it is on the show. I get that seeing its face is going to be a different experience to being in its head, particularly when Murderbot is an unreliable narrator, and exaggeration is normal for visual media. I understand that. But given how much dialogue they're rewriting and adding and how they're modifying things, and how much of the tone and themes they're modifying, this just doesn't work. It feels too clueless. Too caught out. Too... incompetent.

One thing that really got through to me, though, is how much better this series would be as a video game. Certainly, imagining that was far more interesting than watching episode 3.

From a broader standpoint, and I know there's not really dodging around this because it's a book point (and it was always uncomfortable in the books): it's uncomfortable to know this is a U.S.-made show with a central plotline about a character wearing a face covering being strongly asked to keep the face covering off so other people can see their face. Racism against various groups wearing headcoverings which specifically target head coverings in the U.S. is old hat, and that's on top of the whole anti-mask thing a lot of people have been pushing throughout COVID. It's just... It's uncomfortable to see. And it makes me far less kind to Mensah than I have been.

I don't know what to think. I'll probably still watch episode 4, though I'm not exactly looking forward to it. The end fight was at least fine. Please read the books. They're so much better. Kobo sells DRM-free copies, too.

Other thoughts:

Episodes 1-2, Episode 3 (You are here), Episode 4, Episode 5

(Reply)

[bluefirewrites]

Sky High Mall!AU

Hey, this is an excerpt of something I started for Sky High a while ago but never got around to finishing. I’ve been thinking about this particular work because I might rework it for Julie and the Phantoms one day because it has so much potential. Thought it would be cool to share. 

So this is an AU where the kids don’t have powers and they all work at the Sky Shopping Center. It’s a Zach/ Magenta centered story with side Warren/Layla.

It would be Rated T and there is use of language in here. Enjoy! 

Magenta didn’t hate her job. But she could admit that it gets pretty tedious at times.

She really shouldn’t complain. It was a huge step up from working at the pet store. At least, here she didn’t have to clean up after guinea pigs and trying to stop kids from eating dog treats.

But it was a summer afternoon and here she was rearranging the wacky greeting cards at the mall book shop when she would rather be at home, maybe catch whatever’s on TV- really anything to keep her mind off of a certain someone...

“Why the long face, Maj?” The purple haired girl snapped out of whatever daze she was in when all of the sudden her best friend, Layla, bounced into the shop, donning her signature pigtails and wide smile.

“Did you scare a customer again?”

“No,” Magenta scrunched her face, taking the excess cards in the box and moving it to the register, “Why does that happen often anyway?”

Layla trailed behind her, maneuvering through the shelves and a couple of customers, “Maybe it’s because you just creep up behind them before you ask if they needed help.”

“Oh good, I thought it’s because I dress like this,” She gestured to her combat boots, ripped stockings, and well of course her half-dyed hair. Magenta knew her outfit didn’t scream, ‘Customer Service’, but she was always down to help a customer find a book. She had pretty much devoured half the books in there, and had reccs from her fellow book-nik friends in case she encountered the other half.

“You’re lucky though. At least, you’re not forced to wear a uniform,” Layla worked at this organic juice bar in the mall food court so of course they would have made her wear something to prepare whatever smoothies they make. The redhead did a little twirl to show off her all green attire, from the shirt, to the pants, and even her blueberry-stained apron tied at her waist.

“But you look so cute,” Magenta  tilted her head and pinched her friend’s cheeks, “Like happy broccoli.”

Layla gently brushed away her hand, pouting, “If I wanted to be patronized, I should have stayed at school. But come on, I’m off now. I just wanted to see when you’re on break,”

“Got another hour,” Magenta normally would have been off by now, but she ended up taking the evening shift this week. She wanted to change it up, for reasons that may or may involve avoiding someone who she knew worked the mornings.

“I’ll wait,” Layla leaned against the counter for a second before jumping up, eyes wide, “Oh, did it come in yet?”

Layla was referring to a gardening book that she had put in a request for some weeks ago. That girl had a green thumb through and through. Ever since they were younger, Magenta had the pleasure of sharing her strawberries that her family had grown in their backyard garden. Always the freshest, sweetest thing she had ever tasted and Magenta refused to eat any other strawberry to this day.

“Oh yeah. I think Warren got them in this morning,” She threw her head back to yell at her coworker who was stationed on the opposite side of the register, “Yo, Peace?”

If Magenta scared the customers, then Warren Peace straight up terrified them. The older guy was somehow wearing a long sleeve red shirt, slashed at the elbows, and leather, fingerless gloves on this June afternoon and seemed to glower over at everyone who would dare interrupt him from his latest reading.

At least, Magenta would smile at the patrons and actively tried to assist them. He mainly stayed behind the counter and rang people up and would occasionally restock the shelves that were a little too high for either Magenta or their manager, Jeannie, to reach.

She liked working with Warren. He knew just as much about books as her and it was fun to go on and on about their favorite authors, which of the classics were just over-glorified insights of the white man’s mind- stuff like that. Also, she was pretty sure that Warren had her beat with snarky remarks and could keep up with her sick sense of humor.

The long haired dude looked up from the book he was reading, eyes squinting at the two girls. “Purple. Hippie,” he addressed, annoyed to be ripped away from George Orwell.

Layla waved, dismissing his souriness, “Where’s the stuff from this morning?” Magenta asked.

“In the back. Where it’s supposed to be,”

Magenta pursed her lips, “Oh sorry, I mean, can you be a doll and get it for us?”

“No,”

Layla leaned over to rest her chin on the counter, “Please, Warren?” she batted her eyelashes for good measure.

Warren looked into her brown eyes and Magenta knew it was over. The boy growled before uttering out a “Fine!”, slamming his book on the table and stalking off to the back room.

Magenta whistled, impressed, “How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Get him to do stuff,” This hadn’t been the first time Warren did something un-Warren like for Layla’s sake. Magenta could count with one hand how many times Warren would actually do what was asked of him, and most of those times involved Layla in some way.

“I ask nicely. You should try it,”

“I didn’t think Hothead over there responds to nice,” Magenta noted a customer waiting to pay for their books and hopped over the counter to reach the register, 

 “...Has a stick so far up his butt that if you’d lip lock with him, you’ll get splinters,” she winked in Layla’s direction, “And I’m pretty sure you wanna do that regardless,”

Her friend flushed instantly at the insinuation, “Shut up.”  

“Make me, Broccoli,” 

She took the books from the customer and began ringing them up. The man looked to be a regular so she knew he was used to her weird antics around the store. Magenta thought for sure the stick up the ass comment would have repulsed any other old man. He merely chuckled at their interaction.

Magenta was beginning to catch on that Layla was crushing on her coworker, but figured that what was stopping her from pursuing it had been the fact that Warren is friends with her ex, Will. Her and Will were on good terms, of course, having known each other longer than Magenta had known Layla. But like, Bro Code and everything- she didn’t want to make it weird.

“Okay, someone has a bit of an attitude today. Something’s up,”

“Have a nice day” Magenta bid the customer a goodbye and handed him his bag of books before turning to Layla, “and no, I’m fine.” She shut the drawer till harder than intended which earned a side eye from the red head.

Warren emerged from the back room with a big book, sliding it over to Layla on the counter, “Here you go, Hippie. One, Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition.”

“Thank you so much,” Layla sent a grateful expression his way and Magenta swore that the brooding boy’s lips almost quirked into a small smile… like a real one.

Layla pulled out her wallet and handed the money over to Magenta, rattling off ecstatically about this book she was dying to get, “Been trying to get a hold of this forever. Trying to do a more polyculture type of gardening because I learned it would soon develop an environment where there’s no need for pesticides,” she glanced at Magenta, “You know how I feel about pesticides.” At which, the purple-haired girl nodded.  

“I heard the whole, line by line, neat way of laying down crops is just Euro-centric, colonizer bullshit anyway,” Warren remarked which made Magenta raise an eyebrow.

“Since when do you know shit about gardening?”

Her co-worker waved her off. Layla appeared to be surprised and a bit impressed that Warren knew something about her field of interest, “Warren is right though. The whole polyculture gardening is much more sustainable and we do look to Indigenous cultures for that technique.”

Then, Magenta watched as her two friends were engaged in some sort of awkward stare-off, with one of them breaking the gaze to either tuck a hair back or just to switch between looking at the other or looking at the floor. It was cute.

It made her sick.

She groaned out loud, “Do you guys have to do that here?”

That brought them out of that, Warren hurried off to his side of the counter, back to his book and Layla turned to her friend, exasperated, “But seriously though, Maj- what’s up with you today?”

“Nothing,” she gave Layla her change and the receipt for the book, making a move to get away from the register.

“Maybe it’s because she just saw her ex walking around with a new girl,” Warren casually remarked as he turned a page.

Traitor!

Magenta whipped around to glare at him, but alas he was too preoccupied with Big Brother at the moment.

Layla’s eyes widened, mouth gaping, “No,” she turned to Warren, “Where?”

“Food Court,” he replied, sounding disinterested but Magenta knew he was taking some sick pleasure from this.

“Are they still there?”

“Jesus, Layla. I don’t know!” Magenta threw her hands up in the air. 

Thankfully, the store was clear for now. They honestly didn’t get a lot of traffic around this time. She wouldn’t be too stoked for everyone in the store to know her relationship woes. 

 “I’m fine though. It’s no big deal.” she tried to assure Layla, but her friend was not having it.

She placed her hands on Magenta’s shoulders, “I know it’s been months, but you don’t have to be over it just yet. It’s gonna be hard seeing him with someone else, of course,”

“It’s not hard seeing him. Just annoying,”

“When Will and I had ended things, of course it was good and it was for the best, but like seeing him with his girlfriend was weird at first. But I got used to it,”

Magenta sighed, getting where Layla was coming from but it was different, “Yeah, but you and Will played out differently. Lash and I… we crashed and burned.”

She had dated Lash for a good while, like around 5 months. It had been the longest relationship she had been in, and it had started off so well. They had even met here at the mall when she had first started working at the book shop and he started at the skate shop. 

They had a lot in common back then, never minding getting up to mischief and always doing spontaneous things with him. Things that she certainly was not proud of and had earned her a certain reputation at school.

But Magenta could admit that she had been a different person back then when she was with him. Someone she didn’t want to be again. But still, seeing him again after the breakup, with another girl still stung. Even though it was her who broke it off.

She should have known what it was gonna be like, dating an older guy- an incoming senior now- but she thought it meant he was gonna be more mature and that he was gonna be more upfront with her. It unfortunately had meant the exact opposite.

“You can’t help it. You like bad boys. Been that way ever since I met you,”

“I just like people who don’t take shit from people. They just happened to be wearing chains on their jeans and maybe sporting a juvie record,”

Magenta seemed to have a preference, but all for good reason. If she ended up with some goodie two shoes, it was gonna be this morality contest where he would end up judging all the shit she had done, like her own couple stints with the law. She’d rather hang with people who didn’t judge her, and that meant those who have done things just as bad or even worse than her.

“Then how come you haven’t hit up Warren yet?” Layla asked, with mild curiosity.

“He reads Hemmingway, And likes it,” Magenta’s face scrunched up in disgust, “Also, there’s a thing as being too on brand. I just know that it’s not gonna work. We’re too much alike.”

“Nah. Warren’s so much nicer,” Layla’s hands were still on her shoulder and she playfully swatted them away, “You know what? I’ll catch you later. I don’t wanna sit in here for an hour in my own stickiness.” she gestured to all the fruit stains all over her clothes just as a family came in to browse the store.

“Ew, Layla. There are children in here,”

The redhead gave an unamused grin at the innuendo before walking out of the store, calling out to Warren,“Make sure she doesn’t do anything reckless while I’m gone!”

“Not my job,” The long haired boy called from his seat, “Not like I can stop her.”

‘Fuck you,’ she mouthed at her coworker before going off to see if Jeannie needed her to do anything else around the shop. It was only 4 o clock but she knew it was gonna be a long rest of her shift.

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales (Comic) Reviews!: Happy Happy Valley!/Fight! (Issue #4)

My first look at the IDW Ducktales Comics! And for a comission by @weirdkev27​! Seriously he’s basically my boss at this point. If you’d like to comission your own comic or animation review just pm me or shoot me an ask to get my discord. Single stories for a comic are 3 bucks, single comic issues and single episodes of a show are 5 bucks with deals on multiple issues or episodes of a show. With my shameless plugging out of the way the stories themselves are:

Happy Happy Valley! (The Comissioned Story): The Main Cast sans Beakly end up stranded at a resort where everyone’s forced to be happy all the time. A classic trope with a twist ending you can’t predict.. mainly because it���s.. 

Fight!: The boys have a garage sale with stuff from the broom closet to raise money for Huey’s woodchuck trip. Naturally this quickly snowballs into a samurai fight to the death. 

Wonders, a full recap with spoilers, and extreme stupidity await bellow the cut. 

After a quick commission break for this week’s episode I’m back in the saddle and back into comics no less! It’s been exactly a year since I’ve done a single issue comic review. Oh sure I looked back on house of x, and will again next year, and I do want to cover Empyre at some point and some other comics, but I haven’t done a full recap of a single comic book in some time. But the first story of this issue  really, REALLY confused and infuriated Kev, and rightfully so, so I got the commission call, and of my own volition I’m doing the second story entirely for free. I just wanted to do both for completion’s sake and because when I did read this comic I remembered the stories not being very long so it gives me more to write anyway. And if your curious yes I would gladly review classic Don Rosa, Carl Barks or really any duck writer’s work on a story by story basis, it just works easier to do the Ducktales issues all in one since their both more recent and I don’t have to go back and do it later if, once i finish seasons 1 and 2 at some point in the distant future, I decide to do this series too as well as the Sound and Fury mini that was clearly used to offload stories they had left over. 

As for my experience with these comics I DID read them when they started out. .but quickly petered off and never even got around to this story, I remember reading page one but never read the rest of it. Part of it is I tend to flitter in and out of comics and part of it was the stories just weren’t that gripping, with the characters often feeling like flatter versions of the far more multi-layered one’s in the show proper and the stories being a bit too short to properly flesh things out like the show, especially since for some weird reason each issue has two stories instead of having one big story on occasion. They weren’t bad and there is a story or two I want to go back to like Lena and Webby being spies together, Fethry and Fenton have a story together apparently, we get an early look at Della, and there’s one where Bradford hints at them plotting against scrooge long before the show revealed it. There’s some interesting stuff I might look at eventually, I just have a LOT of show to get through too, and i’m not going to pidgenhole the entire series as bad or lackluster based on a few early issues.. or one story in this issue. But yeah i’ve held it off long enough.. let’s talk about 

Happy Happy Valley!

First off the titles for these are .. pretty lack luster. Their basically just what the stories are about.. Happy Happy Valley and a Fight, that’s.. about it. I didn’t realize just HOW awesome the show is at titles, making each sound like a thrilling and unique adventure which they usually are, until I got to here. It feels like IDW, and by extentsion disney, didn’t care what the stories were called and just wanted a comic out to tie into the show. Which bothers me when they put this on IDW, clearly having a release platform for disney works.. but didn’t bother to use it for their Darkwing Duck comic continuing from the original, the reprint of the BOOM! Studios comic, or the short lived Star VS Comic Deep Trouble, which I will be covering at some point as it was pretty good. Same with the Boom! Studio’s darkwing, I just want to watch more episodes before revisiting it. Point is the title isn’t great. The story is even less than that. 

We open properly with our heroes.. all woken up from their beds in the middle of the night for an adventure. It’s not a bad start, though Louie weirdly starts in constantly about how Scrooge’s rich and can do this and that and Subtley dosen’t exist in this story does it?  Anyways, later, far away from Louie’s bed.. that’s the caption they go with and I love it, the Sunchaser suddenly stops working and Launchpad’s crashing skills come in handy, 

This isn’t a bad scene as Donald brings up good points and likely has his own “times he’s been nearly sacrificed tally” like Louie.. and Della likely also said “Della’s coming out on top!” when her total went into triple digits. Also  “When your rich you can even buy luck launchpad”

It just.. dosen’t fit Scrooge at all.. granted this issue hasn’t BEGUN to not fit Scrooge at all but let’s save that for the end. Anyways rather than hostile locals they find Gladys Seeya, good pun, an overly smiley woman whose eager to please and just wants everyone to be happy and has them carried because tired people aren’t happy. Yeah it’s suspcious as heck and a well worn trope, really nice place with a dark secret, to the point the series proper would parody it in the Mervana episode, and subvert it by having them turn out to just be very nice hippies who i’m still convinced had a three way with Donald... I mean he could use it, they were really nice, and Donald is probably very generous. That’s something you didn’t want to think about but now you have to and it’s there. If you GENUINELY think that’s bad, then you should hear about Goofy’s sex life. 

See way more horrifying. Now everyone’s miserable! Horay! Moving on, point is Donald had a mer-three way and this is a well worn trope, but it is used in an interesting way.. that’s entirely ruined by the stupid ending, but we’ll get to that.  Point is everyone is soon happy, given a buffet, all the food they can eat, and whatever they want. They just want you to be happy.. no secret plot here.. wink. Louie continues his annoying “Every rich person gets X” schtick which feels forced as hell and gets worse with every line and more obvious. It’s one of the weaknesses with this story. It’s basically the writers constantly elbowing you and saying GET IT.. YOU GET IT.. BEING HANDED EVERYTHING YOU WANT IS ANNOYING GET IT. YOU GET IT.  The problem is.. the Island’s moral dosen’t fit that. Kev  helped here as we discussed the issue once I finished it, as I hadn’t thought of it yet, but the valley isn’t about giving you everything you want.. it’s about just FORCING you to enjoy things. Sure you can be happy off some things like the food but when Donald politley declines to dance because he can’t, which tracks with his life in general, they basically all glare at him to do so. Later they basically force acvitites on them with the ducks only agreeing because clealry they worry about what might happen if they DON’T. Telling someone to smile or enjoy something dosen’t make them enjoy it it just makes them miserable. Problems are 1, the issue very clearly WANTS to have the other moral and 2) the series would do this kind of story MUCH better with “Mystery at McDuck Manor!”. That’s not on the writers fault, as this comic started right before the show premiered and this issue came out before said episode, but it really doesn’t help the show came along with the same exact moral of not forcing your idea of fun on someone else and did it WAY better. It’s the same message, the ducks being forced to endure something only one person thinks is fun, but delivered right and wrapped into a very clever and fun mystery. Honestly I might cover that one this week or sometime soon because it both fits the Halloween season and this issue if nothing else reminded me how good THAT episode is. 

But I’m stuck doing this issue. Naturally, and in one of the issues few clever moments, the Ducks try booking it out of there as soon as they can but find their raft gone, and a ring of sharks suddenly there that weren’t before, and Donald understandably doesn’t want to risk the kids lives with that. Thankfully Webby soon comes up with a plan using the activities, and uses a napkin to get it around. This bit.. is actually clever as they use the various bits to get a plan and even Huey has a really clever bit where he just leaves his hat and shirt behind to go looking for the generator, likely on Webby’s request, knowing his brothers can just play him once in a while to draw suspicion. Also apparently Huey wears a tank top under his shirt, which looks weird on him, as he’s not the sporty type, but does fit his “always prepared” mindset well so I like it.  Using Basket weaving and balloon decorating, they create a way out, and Webby ties up their host while everyone escapes. They nearly don’t fit out but luckily Donald contributes. And again i’ll give the story this: Donald does more in this one story than he got to do in the vast majority of season one.  So our heroes escape with other patrons begging them to take them with them and the stories apparently wrapped up. The generator Huey found was to show the sharks were just holograms which given the science in this world makes sense, as does it jamming the sunchaser. What doesn’t make sense, and what got me my three bucks for this review in the first place is this. I”m putting the full picture there both so you can let it sink in and to let you know, since most of you probably haven’t read this comic, that i’m not making this shit up, nor is it one of my jokes. This .. this is the actual twist for the comic. 

...................................................................................................

 This is probably the thrird dumbest line in comic book history. Before you ask the other two are

And why yes those are both from the series. And why no I will not be covering All Star Batman and Robin unless someone forces me too.  My point is WHAT THE FLYING HELL IS THIS.  I mean this makes NO sense on any level. For STARTERS one of Scrooge’s most well known traits, that’s part of his character in every version is that he doesn’t like to spend money. He will to MAKE MONEY and sometimes grumble about it but if he doesn’t. Even if season 1 had it dialed way back, he still reused his old teabags, charged extra on his in house vending machines and tried to get out of buying burritos for recently freed slaves. Being cheap is an iconic part of his character. Granted the series took out things from the comics and original like underpaying employees, barely paying Donald even though in the comics he supports three children, as well as barely paying those children, and refusing to donate to orphans, but still it’s not THAT so far removed that THIS is remotely in character! He had to either buy this old resort or have it renovated to keep up the ruse, pay for the creepy lady running it, pay for the other guests as actors because otherwise his hired minion KIDNAPPED people who were begging for escape, pay for the activities/escape supplies, and pay gyro to build the GIANT GENERATOR THAT BOTH PROJECTS SHARKS AND MAKES TECHNLOGY NOT WORK. While I do think Scrooge would gladly want to teach Louie a lesson, this is a lesson that at best costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not at least a million to pull off.  And that’s not even getting into how he forced everyone else to go with it, denied them a good night’s sleep and clearly told NONE of them. Beakly not being there actually makes more sense as she would’ve noped out of this horrible horrible idea and bonked him on the head for this. It makes no sense and it’s GROSSLY out of character. And while I’m used ot that from comics, writers often don’t give a shit about the characters their writing, I expect better from DISNEY when it comes to lisencing shit. They’ve done better. I’ve mentioned better and even SINCE this they’ve done better: Christos Gage’s Incredible’s Comics are excellent and I want to read more of them. And the previous run by mark waid is also suitably incredible, if now sadly no longer canon.  And even in this very ISSUE there’s a much better, if not amazing, story we’ll get to in a moment. I get disney’s greenlit weak tie in material before but this is ridiculously bad and shoddy. Shame on them, shame on the writer, and shame on this INCREDIBLY stupid story. We get an everybody laughs ending, who cares. we’re out. 

Final Thoughts for Happy Happy Valley: 

I don’t have much less to say about this story. This about sums it up. 

Fight! 

We open with a samurai.. though it quickly turns out to be Dewey with a mop on his head hitting Louie with a broom while saying Two Damage! Two Damage! and already in one scene this is so much better and feels so much more natural. Naturally this story has a different writer. The artist is different for both too, and the art is good on both though I do prefer the art for “Fight!” more as it’s a bit more expressive. Though it also benefits from having less characters to juggle so that probably helps.  The boys are having a Garage Sale, or Yard Sale as some call it. As a huge fan of Garage Sales, I’ve gotten tons of stuff from them over the years and good shit too like my G1 Snarl, or even just recently a three in one of the first three loud house Graphic Novels for a freaking quarter. You REALLY can’t beat that. It’s why I love these things. So this story already had my money. As for why, Huey needs money for the Junior Woodchuck Camping trip. How else is he going to hold hands iwth Violet and Boyd under a tree. Wait neither of them existed yet.  Damn. Well i’m retconning that in anyway. If they can retcon the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver not to be mutants, which If eel is getting undone VERY soon, or if not Hickman will use that well, I can retcon this to taking place in season 3. Plus i’ts all very wholesome and innocent... their only eleven. 

But yeah Scrooge in a nice moment if an off-screen one gave them the contents of the broom closet.. which is really just a bunch of old used up brooms, some buckets and other cleaning supplies. Probably stuff Beakly rarely uses or has long replaced and if not.. well he’ll have to pay for them himself won’t he. Unlike the above clusterfuck this.. feels entirely in character. Scrooge likely apricates that Huey is working hard to EARN the money for his trip and that his brothers are helping, especially Louie since he gets nothing out of this unless they go over what Huey needs. But also being Scrooge he still only gives them some old Junk.  But Louie, being louie easily scams a guy into paying 15 bucks for a broom. Still this is slow progress and if Huey wants to be with his poly relationship he’s gotta step it up. Luckily, and naturally given this is Scrooge’s closet, they find an old Samurai helmet, which Huey feels could be worth millions. granted...

But eh it’s going to a good cause, tiny children holding hands by campfires, and when has common decency EVER stopped Louie? Dewey though, wants to start a collection of war stuff.. starting with this. It’s part of why I LIKE the story better: not only does it have much better dialouge but it’s actually rooted in the characters instead of “One trait of Louie’s cranked up to 50 and drilled into our heads”. Huey is trying to earn money for the woodchucks, Dewey only wants something for petty reasons and Louie wants money. It feels like the actual characters and not just cutouts and makes me wnat to read more stories in the hopes of finding more like this.  Anyways naturally nothing Scrooge has in any of his storage areas of the mansion tha’ts ancient isn’t cursed, magical or really neat to look at, and the helmet comes to life as they fight over it, and the helmet clints to Dewey, who talks in a deep red voice calling himself Ronnith of the Twin Samurai. The name.. isn’t great but the concept is. Thankfully Huey knows what it is thanks to the guidebook. and just like the Donald bit last episode this one story gets the guidebook better than season 1 did a lot.  Turns out the twin samurai were two brothers who hated each other and always competed for their mothers affection.. their mother was also forced to sell her beautiful sculptures for next to nothing after their father left. Instead of going after him though they both blamed each other as teens when invaders struck and burned everything including their mom I guess down, and fought the rest of their days, and while Ronnith never settled things due to growing too old, his spirit, and his intense hate, went into his helmet which now curses any brothers who fight over it to fight with the looser turning into a statue. 

Naturally no one wants this but Dewey can’t get the helmet off and Ronnith possess him to destroy the guidebook.. though Huey explains it’s his “third backup copy” which.. yeah again like the tank top thing tracks. Ronnith then manifests armor on Louie and we get the image above.. which is really neat. With Ronnith forcing the two to fight each other, Huey searches for a way to stop it. And while he can’t find it he does figure it out and the solution is REALLY clever: Just as Ronnith’s about to kill Louie, with Dewey apologizing.. Huey blocks. And Ronnith is naturally confused and upon finding out there’s a THIRD brother, the curse dissipates and thus everything’s back to normal. And wrapping things up nicely a guy shows up to buy the helmet and while Dewey tries to just give it away Louie says it’s free with purchase of a bucket for 50 bucks so Huey has his money to go on his romantic camping trip.. though he does ask if hte guy has a brother.. best be safe.  Final thoughts on Fight!: It’s like night and day. While the previous story is stilted, has one of the worst endings in duck history and overall is just kind of bland outside of one or two moments this .. is really good. It doesn’t add much to the world or anything, but it’s a fun side story with a clever monster of the week and resolution, some great lines and some good art. This is what should’ve lead the issue, as the main story is again just dreadful. Overall i’d recommend checking this story out.. though maybe get in in trade instead as the A-Story here is really bad, but you can find both on comixology and this issues on comixlogy unlimited if you want to check it out along with a ton of other great comics. 

That does it for this review, if you liked this I do regular coverage of ducktales every week, I JUST COVERED THIS WEEK’S EPISODE YESTERDAY.  So check that out and until next time vote if you can and check your house for Gary Busey!

[chiseler]

ONCE UPON A TIME AT THE DRIVE-IN: The Testament of Al Adamson

It was 50 years ago last year that the cheap and peculiarly patchwork films of Al Adamson first began to assert themselves on drive-in and grindhouse screens across America. Initially recognized for his horror films (Blood of Dracula’s Castle, Horror of the Blood Monsters, Brain of Blood, and especially Dracula vs. Frankenstein), he went on to add biker, action, blaxploitation, sexploitation, and even family fare to his rickety roster before retiring from his director’s chair sometime in the 1980s and vanishing into private life. The rise of Adamson’s unpretentious output happened to coincide with the decline of the Hollywood studio system as well as such old guard avatars as American International Pictures, Britain’s Hammer Films and Amicus Productions, whose imprints always guaranteed a certain level of production value and class. Adamson’s work was something of a throwback to the gore films of Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!), but whereas Lewis’ work in horror was a taboo-breaking branching-out from his earlier nudie-cutie fare, Adamson’s pictures were endearing for their sentimental casting of veteran character actors well past their prime; technically, they didn’t bear comparing even to the old Monogram or PRC titles where Bela Lugosi was often found slumming during the 1940s, but the average drive-in patron could look at them and think, after his third or fourth beer of the night, “Damn, I could do better than this!” And sure enough, Adamson’s rough-and-ready example and his impressive earnings played a part in encouraging the powderkeg of DIY horror breakthroughs that went epidemic around the turn of the decade. Just to name the Americans, these feral young newcomers included George A. Romero, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, Bob Kelljan, David Durston, Andy Milligan, S.F. Brownrigg, even Oliver Stone, not to mention the many young and international filmmakers associated with Roger Corman’s New World Pictures.

1969’s Golden Anniversary honors were largely drawn to Quentin Tarantino’s behind-the-scenes movie fantasy Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood, which was much praised for its magical extrication of the beautiful and talented actress Sharon Tate from her hideous murder on August 9th of that year. For some of us, Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood links directly to thoughts of Al Adamson; in early 1969, he shot parts of his biker thriller Satan’s Sadists at the notorious Spahn Movie Ranch in Los Angeles’ Ventura County, where thwarted songwriter Charles Manson lived with his “family” members, inculcating in them a blood-lusting resentment for the established Hollywood order that would not invite him in. When Satan’s Sadists was first released in June 1969 (its trailer promising “A Rebellion of Human Garbage!” led by West Side Story star Russ Tamblyn), it quickly disappeared… but in the wake of the Tate/La Bianca murders just a few months later, its distributor Independent-International shipped it back out with a new, sleazier publicity campaign that actually emphasized its prophetic Manson Family associations. “See the Shocking Story Behind the Headlines… Wild Hippies on a Murder Spree!,” crowed the ads; “Actually Filmed Where the Tate Suspects Lived Their Wild Experiences!”And just in case this wasn’t enough, the film was frequently co-billed with Tate’s 1968 British film Eye of the Devil, now being sold with the tagline “Weird, mystic cult slaughters innocent victims!”

As irony would have it, almost thirty years after so grossly pandering to the public’s prurient interest in the murder, the director of Satan’s Sadists got the biggest headlines of his career when Al Adamson was named as the murder victim in a crime story nationally broken in August 1995, a couple of months after his mysterious disappearance.

This story is now the subject matter of a feature-length documentary by filmmaker David Gregory: Blood and Flesh: The Reel Life and Ghastly Death of Al Adamson, which premiered late last year at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal and at the UK Fright Fest.

The son of 1930s western star Denver Dixon (in truth, transplanted New Zealand native Victor Adamson), Al had been kicking around the exploitation film business his entire life. In 1960, working under the alias “Lyle Felice”, he took the lead role in a Western entitled Halfway To Hell, which he ended up co-directing with his father. The film was never released and the young Adamson wasn’t able to put another film together until 1965, when he wore all the various hats needed to make his first official feature Echo of Terror, a jewel heist programmer somehow given the breath of life on a mere $2,000 investment.

Low on thrills and boasting no stars, Echo of Terror followed in the footsteps of Halfway To Hell by never finding a distributor. It remained on the shelf until Adamson made the fateful acquaintance of Samuel M. Sherman, then working in the publicity department at Hemisphere Pictures, designing campaigns for the likes of Filipino imports like Eddie Romero’s war drama The Ravagers and Gerardo de Leon’s vampire opus The Blood Drinkers. Sherman had just finished a two-year stint as the editor of the Warren Publications magazine Screen Thrills Illustrated, devoted to the movie serials of the 1930s and ‘40s – so he was familiar with the name Denver Dixon and formed a fast friendship with his son. He screened Edge of Terror and, while agreeing it was unviable in its present shape, he was impressed by what Adamson had accomplished with so little money. They didn’t yet have the means to produce an entirely new picture, so they made a reel’s worth of changes to what they had, and that’s how Echo of Terror – with a modicum of new footage featuring some go-go dancers - became Psycho A Go Go.

Through Hemisphere, this jarring concoction was shipped out in support of The Ravagers in Rochester, New York at the end of 1965, and it remained in circulation in New England and Midwestern states through 1967, first playing with another Gerardo de Leon picture, Curse of the Vampires (retitled Blood Creatures) and later appearing at the bottom of triple – and even quadruple - bills with Hammer’s Dracula Prince of Darkness (1965) and Plague of the Zombies (1966).

Even as Psycho A Go Go was tempting sullen motorists to stick around for the free donuts and coffee being served to anyone who lasted till the fourth feature, Sherman and Adamson could see that the clock was ticking against the timeliness of its title. So yet another scheme was hatched to squeeze maximum earnings out of a minimal further investment. Sherman knew more about the film business than Adamson did, so it was likely he who suggested they write some additional mad scientist gobbledegook, hire John Carradine for a day or two, and ship out their brand new picture with a more exploitable title like Fiend With the Electronic Brain – pretty much exactly what producer Jerry Warren had done some years earlier with the reels of unmarketable Swedish and Chilean footage that he sold to unsuspecting patrons as Invasion of the Animal People (1959) and Curse of the Stone Hand (1965), starring John Carradine!

They followed through on the plan and did indeed secure a distribution deal (or at least an arrangement) with David L. Hewitt’s American General Pictures, who got Fiend With the Electronic Brain into a couple of drive-ins in Corpus Christie and Austin, Texas in late 1967 and early 1968 as a co-feature to Jack Hill’s as-yet-unrecognized classic Spider Baby. On the books, it gave them credit for having produced and released a new picture that year, which made their new partnership the beneficiary of a much-needed tax break and a foundation from which they were able to produce their first real joint effort. This was Blood of Dracula’s Castle (1969, also starring Carradine), made in partnership with Paragon International Pictures, as was its co-feature, Bud Townsend’s Nightmare In Wax starring Cameron Mitchell. Released through Crown International, the double bill premiered in May 1969 and Blood of Dracula’s Castle in particular was never out of theatrical circulation for the next two years.

You might think they would have moved on to more important things, but the Frankensteinian efforts to make a bigger, better Fiend With the Electronic Brain continued to occupy Sherman and Adamson. Sherman’s success with Blood-titled campaigns – ranging from 1970s Mad Doctor of Blood Island to 1971’s Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror – had convinced him that “Blood” was the most commercially vital word in horror terminology. His theory was subsequently bourne out by the success of his 1972 “Chiller Carnival of Blood” – a drive-in festival composed of old, decomposing Hemisphere titles (1959’s Terror Is A Man retitled Blood Creature, Mad Doctor of Blood Island retitled Blood Doctor, Theater of Death retitled Blood Fiend, and Brides of Blood retitled Blood Brides). Sherman’s “good luck noun” was prominently applied to their old warhorse the next time it surfaced, this time with new footage featuring Kent Taylor and Adamson’s wife Regina Carroll, who had become a fixture of his work since Satan’s Sadists. The rechristened Blood of Ghastly Horror actually headed drive-in triple bills upon its release in January 1973 – and some ticket buyers may have been understandably annoyed to discover that it was the same film that had been playing on television stations across the country as early as April 1972 under the title Man With the Synthetic Brain.

This is but one of numerous stories of patchwork reinventions and retitlings attending the filmography of Al Adamson, which will receive the fullest possible examination when Severin Films releases the mind-staggering tributary box set Al Adamson – The Masterpiece Collection, on April 21st. Compiling all 32 of Adamson’s surviving feature films and variants on 14 Blu-ray discs (all Region A, except for Discs 1, 12, and 14, which are region free), a 128-page book, as well as the David Gregory documentary, this Matterhorn of home video retrospectives will be limited to only 2,000 copies and supply is dwindling fast. The dwindling is faster still for two variants packed with additional incentives: you’ve already missed the “Bundle of Ghastly Horror” (limited to 200 copies and containing posters signed by Adamson stars John “Bud” Cardos and Zandor Vorkov), but the limited 300-copy “Bundle A Go Go” retains most of the contents - a T-shirt, dimestore vampire fangs, 7” soundtrack single of music from The Female Bunch, and Adamson patch and enamel pin - while substituting a signed postcard for the posters. Pick your poison at severin-films.com.

If you’re wondering, “Do I need this?,” only you can answer that question reliably. However, should you be open to further temptation, I can whole-heartedly recommend the documentary Blood and Flesh: The Reel Life and Ghastly Death of Al Adamson, which is available for purchase separately and now streaming on such outlets as Amazon Prime, Vudu, and Google Play.

by Tim Lucas

[ask-prime-starscream]

Basically what happens in Cyberverse is Megatron being a live streamer, Shockwave and Soundwave being bitter rivals, magic cats running around, Lockdown and Clobber being THE BEST DECEPTICONS, Wheeljack creating junk and Starscream owning an army of evil children. So yeah... fun times :)

Okay, so I watched through it and I must say, it’s true what people say, this season is waaaaay better than season 1. I guess, it’s because it’s less Bumble Bee and more everyone, though, some characters are still pretty underutilized.

Spoilers!

I like how this show doesn’t care at all about humans. x’D Seriously, screw them.I have a big problem with the “only the government knows about robot aliens” and “normal people aren’t allowed to know because too dumb” attitude (looking at you, Rescue Bots!) I’m not an anarchist, but, you know... governments screw us over all the time. Ain’t having my favorite robots only belong to them! The whole military glorification is a thing about this franchise that’s still making me uncomfortable.

So, “Robots in Disguise” isn’t something I need to have in a show. I rather see humans and robots try to co-exist. (Guess I’m more of a hippie, heh!)

Anyway. I thought, I would dislike Cheetor because Furryformer, but he was okay. Not just another fast guy who is another annoying, cocky car guy. But also not stuck up with the Allspark shoved up his aft and patronizing everyone. Like I said, he was okay.I still can’t stand Grimlock. If he is the focus, I’ll yawn throughout the episode. Yeah, I hate the Dinobots. And Sharkticons. Everything that looks like a shark. Right, Skybite? Yeah. Not into animal transformations. Not at all.

Skyfire showed up (not calling him Jetfire) and Starscream seemed to have been his friend in this show, too. But they don’t do anything interesting with it.

I like that Starscream did his own thing and became the third force next to Autobots and Decepticons... but to what price? Got yellow scrap stuck on him? Created his “children” and they are... scraplets...? *facepalm* And he wants to end the war by killing everyone? Okay... that’s... a... solution...

But hey, I rather follow someone who has their own (stupid) agenda instead suck-ups like Soundwave and Shockwave. They can appear as competent and menacing and whatever as they want... in the end they are just lackeys.

Megatron’s video. That’s the kind of humor I can dig! And the Outer Gods commenting, rofl. Nice!

...

So, I actually WANT to watch the next season instead of forcing myself through it. Wowie! 

[lurafita]

Obsession - Chapter 1

Read the prologue here: https://lurafita.tumblr.com/post/184483191964/obsession-prologe

Somebody please tell me how to properly embed the previous part here, please? I’m such a noob.

Thanks everyone who liked and reblogged the prologue, it really got me writing the first chapter way quick! Also, please tell me if this is missing specific tags.

Somebody also tell me how to tag people for the update? Do I just go like this: @itfeelssogoodmrstark @the-neon-demon ?

Obsession

Chapter 1

//Tony, this isn't a joke! You can't just slip away from the tower without any security! If you don't call me or Happy in the next ten minutes, I'm sending Natasha after you!//

Tony smirked as he read the text message Pepper, his personal assistant, had sent him. It wasn't so much that he enjoyed being hunted down by his head bodyguard and former Russian spy, Natasha Romanoff, but he simply wasn't the kind of person to organize a team of stiff security goons around him, just to get out of his tower for a bit.

Which was not to say that he didn't understand Pepper's worry. He was an important, powerful and influential man, who had rivals and enemies practically around every corner. While he certainly wasn't helpless, it wouldn't be the first time he had been kidnapped. And ever since Obadiah's betrayal... well, as stated before, Tony did understand Pepper's worry. Didn't change the fact that he didn't like having a fucking battalion of suits following his every movement, or telling him where he could or couldn't go. He had already fired a bunch of those who had tried. No one told Tony Stark what he could or couldn't do. It was possibly one of the reasons why he had promoted Natasha to the head position. The woman was terrifying in every way, but she never tried to limit Tony. She simply adapted to his whims. And today one of those whims had prompted him to put on a rather atrocious outfit, a wig that made it look like he was some kind of hippie, a cap and sunglasses, all of which combined made up the perfect disguise for him to roam the streets of New York undetected.

He hadn't actually planned to stay out too long, just find some hole in the wall, unobtrusive little diner and drink a cup of coffee (which in hindsight was a really bad idea, because clearly whatever this brown sludge was couldn't hold a candle to the high quality beans used in the coffee makers in his tower), when the conversation between the three people sat at the table on his right had drifted over to him.

At first he had felt annoyed; after all, he had chosen this pitiful little diner because it's unappealing location in a narrow alley way and over all unimpressive decor, was supposed to guarantee very few patrons. And therefore, a quiet little space for Tony to relax for a few minutes, before he had to go back to people shoving papers and contracts under his nose for him to read and sign and his phone ringing every damn five minutes. He had been about to leave, when he decided to at least take a quick glance at the people daring to disturb his little break.

They seemed to be around the same age, which Tony guessed to be early twenties. One rather heavyset young man, black hair, slightly darker skin tone, if pressed, the billionaire would put him down as part Filipino. A young black woman, curly hair, a serious expression on her face that kind of reminded Tony of Pepper. And then his eyes drifted to the third person at that table and he felt... something... shoot through him.

Pale skin peeked out from under a too big sweater, allowing just a glimpse at the collarbones leading up to the slender neck. Light pink lips that, while not overly plumb, looked invitingly lush. Short brown hair that was clearly unstyled, but just seemed to beg you to run your fingers through it's curls.

Soft brown eyes. Deep and bright. And so expressive, as the young man recounted what must have been a fascinating lecture by one of his professors to his two friends.

“Professor Conners studies of cross species genetics and their possible applications in modern medicine are mind blowing, guys. I'm so deliriously happy that I got into his class! He even said that there ...” And Tony couldn't look away. At only a first glance, the brunette looked plain. Unassuming. To someone like Tony Stark, who had bedded more super models than most people even allowed themselves to fantasize about, there should be nothing particularly outstanding about the younger man. And yet...

He was cute. Slightly boyish features, a bit of a baby face. But clearly an adult. Must be. Had to be.

He spoke with such enthusiasm, such passion. His voice just that side of a little higher pitched, but smooth, pleasant.

“...which is why we could possibly be lucky enough to get Doctor Octavious as a guest lecturer sometime this semester and...”

Intelligence and eagerness was pouring off the brunette. So excited by the prospect of learning more, widening his horizons, that his cheeks had taken on a light rosy hue. It was adorable.

“...and just think about what this could mean for trauma patients, or people waiting for a transplant...”

And so Tony ordered another cup of watered down mud, kept on ignoring the messages blowing up his phone, angled his body in a way that kept the younger man in his sight, without outright staring at him, and continued to listen.

The three covered a wide variety of topics, and Tony learned not only the brunettes name (Peter, the other man had called him at one point, and what a delightfully fitting name for the cute creature), but also that beside the sharp intellect, Peter possessed a snarky kind of humor, that had almost caused Tony to snort loudly a few times.

The disguised celebrity was on his third cup of what passed for coffee in the world of the pitiful, when the three were discussing a book that the woman – he hadn't bothered to memorize her name – was reading for her literature course.

“I'm not saying that I like Richard. I just don't think that he is the personification of evil that the book is painting him as.”

And even though Tony had no idea what the books plot even was about, he felt inclined to agree with Peter. Just on principle. The woman shook her head.

“Every oracle they have come across has pointed out the darkness residing in him. He clearly can't be trusted.”

Ah, so it was some kind of fantasy book? He hadn't known that colleges even used those. Then again, his education at MIT had mostly circled around all kinds of mechanical engineering and business, with a side of physics and a bit of chemistry. He had never really been into the liberal arts and the like, so what did he know?

“But that's just it! All they ever say about him is that he carries darkness in his soul. But does this automatically make him a bad man? I mean, if the darkness can be used and manipulated, then isn't it simply a matter of the person who wields it? Like, think of the darkness like a weapon. A gun in the hands of... a robber or something, could kill you. But a gun in the hands of a good guy, like a police officer or someone, could save your life.”

What a profound thing to say. Cute, smart, funny and thoughtful.

“And, is darkness even all that bad? I know it gets linked to evil a lot in stories, but really, I mean, how do I put this? Sometimes darkness can be.. comforting? Like, have you ever tried to sleep in a fully lit room? And sure, you are more likely to get robbed when it's dark out, but it's also a lot easier to hide or escape from someone if they can't see you. Know what I mean?”

It was like Peter was speaking directly to him. Because there had been a time, almost five years ago now, when Tony had thought that maybe, he could find love with Pepper. She had been with him for years. She was loyal, she was beautiful, she was his friend, and he trusted her. The attraction was reciprocated, and they had tried. Tony Stark’s first real relationship. The media had been in a frenzy over them, had hounded him more than usual, hoping that they would catch him straying. Wetting themselves over the chance that they might be the one to get the scoop of the playboy who couldn't stay faithful. Nothing sold better than a scandal.

But Tony hadn't cheated on Pepper, and it wasn't an act of betrayal that ended their relationship. “I'm sorry, Tony. But I can't do this anymore. It's not something you did, it's just... Remember that article a few months ago, - after we brought out the new military weapon series, - that questioned whether or not you had a heart? That article was bullshit and the person who wrote it is an ignorant fool. I believe you have a great capacity for love. But I don't think that I'm the one that... Sometimes, it feels like there is this darkness inside of you. And that scares me. I'm so sorry.”

They had stayed friends, and Tony knew, even if Pepper hadn't ended it that day, it wouldn't have worked out between them. But her words had stuck with him. 'There is this darkness inside you. And it scares me.'

He hadn't denied it. How could he, when it was nothing but the truth?

How many people had called him a warlord, because of Stark Industries weapons manufacturing? How often had he been accused of profiting off people dying? How often had he had to defend himself from his would be assailants, or his would be kidnappers, and not felt an ounce of mercy or regret, when he broke their bones or put bullets into their limbs? He knew well of the darkness he carried, and he had accepted (resigned himself) that this made him a bad man. 

But now Peter, bright, enthusiastic, adorable Peter, was offering him an alternative. A second chance.

Darkness didn't have to be evil.

Yes, Stark Industries had made millions by designing and building weapons to use in wars. But it was those weapons that enabled their soldiers to protect and fight for the ideals of their country and the freedom of all.

It might be scary, but it could be comforting.

He had felt like a demon, avenging and ruthless, when he had finally hunted down Obadiah and ended him; but after that, he had held Pepper and been held by her, knowing that he had done what needed to be done, and that because of that, they were now safe.

It might harbor monsters inside itself, but it could also hide you from them.

He could remember running through the endless halls in his childhood home, his angry and drunk father screaming somewhere behind him, and slipping into a room, any room. Killing all the lights and crawling into a niche, or under a bed, or a couch, or a table. And his father, too drunk to find the light switch with his fumbling, unable to see him in the dark.

“I doubt Professor Wilson expects us to be this philosophical about it, Parker.”

The woman's voice so rudely interrupted Tony's introspection, and he wanted to yell at her to shut up. But he didn't. He wouldn't. She was Peter's friend. And while Tony carried darkness inside him, he was not a bad man.

He watched as Peter shrugged.

“You never know, MJ. Can't hurt to be-” That's when the young man caught a glance at the clock that hung on the opposite wall and his eyes widened in panic. “Shoot! It's almost six already?! I'm gonna be late!” He frantically grabbed his jacked and backpack and stood from the table. His Filipino friend shot him a concerned look.

“Think you gonna make it? Wasn't your boss really angry that last time you were late?”

Peter was rummaging in his jacket pocket and having found the few dollars in it,  quickly laid them on the table to cover his tap. He nodded.

“Yeah, I will have to run, but it's not far. I should just make it. Skype later?”

His two friends nodded, and then Peter was off like a shot.

No. No no no no no. This was too fast. Peter couldn't just leave like this. He couldn't- his phone vibrated with what was undoubtedly another angry text from Pepper about bringing in Natasha. It helped clear Tony's head, though.

This wasn't a problem. Nothing was lost. Tony had listened to the three undergrad students long enough to deduce that they attended Berkeley College. He knew that Peter had signed up for all of Doctor Conners lectures. 

And he now knew that Peter's last name was Parker.

He could find him now. It would be easy, with all the resources available to him. Child's-play.

So he breathed in deeply, and finished the last of his sludge. He laid some money on the table and stood. He had left a generous tip, because even though the coffee had been miserable, the company had been exquisite.

He took his phone out and finally answered Pepper's numerous messages, as he left the diner.

Tony Stark didn't believe in love at first sight.

He thought back to his escape from the tower, now almost 2 hours ago, and the time spent in the diner. He felt lighter than he had in a long time.

But he did believe in true love.

He remembered every detail of Peter that he had been able to gather. And he remembered that something that he had felt, when he first looked into his eyes.

And he did believe that sometimes, true love started with a something.

[slothgiirl]

Gold Dust Woman part 2

pjo x mcu fusion: annabeth is iron man

crossposted on a03

Katie Gardner is waiting for her when they land, pot of flowers in hand looking better than any bouquet ever could, eyes rimmed red from crying.

Annabeth feels like crying to, at the sight of Katie in her loose slacks and earth toned blouses, in a look that was all her, bohemian corporate as Grover had put it, easily making her short frame appear smaller. Trying for some normalcy she desperately craves she utters, “Tears Gardner? Really? I expected you to have tied yourself to a tree in the amazon by now.” 

Katie snorts, the edges of her lips turning up as she studies Annabeth, “you know I hate job hunting since unfortunately we live in this capitalist hellscape.”

They both snort at that. 

It was still crazy to think that Katie, her assistant slash nanny slash everything Annabeth could ever want, was a diehard hippie who Grover had met through his girlfriend. A botanist who railed against corporate farming. 

“Speaking of capitalism let’s go get a Cheeseburger,” she orders grinning a Grover, in his frayed tweed suit, the only kind of suit he could stand, who’s always down for food. 

He grins, resigned to her tyrannical whims once more. Who needed ubereats when she had him. Annabeth had even missed Grover’s stupid goatee he always sported. 

“We can do that,” Katie responds, sliding into the car next to her, seating her plant and buckling it in as well, “after we go to the hospital.” Her tone carries the careful patience that parents have when talking to their kids. Normally Annabeth would be annoyed to be patronized like this, but she’s too relieved to be here, mind turning over all she has to do, all she should do now. 

This time, she’ll do better. 

She won’t let death be her legacy.

“Grover,” Annabeth states, a cold edge to her voice, “drive through in-and-out then  to Chase Industries.” Her mind running over all she wants to say and what’s the best way to say it. There’ll no doubt be accusations of PTSD, which might be true if she’s being honest about it, but not about this. This is what she wants, what she has to do. If she survived for any reason when Hephaestus did not, it was for this reason.  

Annabeth won’t design anymore weapons. And if that’s the end of Chase Industries so be it. She can do better. “And call a press meeting,” she adds to Katie, the right words evading her, mind still jumbled from jet lag and months as a captive. 

“We’re supposed to meet up with Ms. Stane at the hospital,” Katie responds with a sigh, “and you need to go to the hospital.”

“I’m fine,” Annabeth snaps, “they already looked me over. What I need is a burger and to call a press meeting, in that order. Grover?”

“Yes Mam,” he says, voice dripping sarcasm, but takes the freeway that’ll lead to Chase Industries building. 

“Annie, you have to go to the hospital!”

“I don’t have to do anything. I’ve been in captivity for three months. Let me have these two things Katie and then you can have as many doctors look me over as you want.” 

Besides her, Katie sighs, pulling out her phone to call for the press meeting. 

Arachne will understand once Annabeth explains herself. She hopes as she watches the scenery of San Fransisco go by from behind her tinted windows. Nothings changed. 

It all still looks the same, people carrying on with their lives as always. For some reason, she expected everything to be different, but she supposes the world stops for no one. 

Arachne will understand. She’s known the woman for years, her mother’s right hand woman, more business then R&D, the perfect foil to Annabeth’s constant R&D, and she’s always been in her corner, always been there for Annabeth even when the board tried to ice her out. 

It’ll all work out. 

*

All the junior executives are waiting on the driveway along with Arachne, hair streaked with grey and donning a classic channel tweed skirt suit. The sharpness in her eyes and lips ever-present despite the years. 

Annabeth doesn’t hesitate to hug her as soon as the car pulls to a stop and she gets out, leaving Katie to trail behind her. She grips the older woman tightly, soaking in her crisp clean scent, worlds away from the cave. Arachne who’d always sent her christmas presents to her school, who’d made sure Annabeth didn’t spend her birthday alone after her parents had died in a car accident when she was eighteen. She’d whispered everything she needed to know about the other board members into Annabeth’s ear, who was cheating not their wives, who had dug themselves into a money pit and together they’d ensured the success of her mother’s company. Her mother’s favorite child. 

“We were supposed to meet at the hospital silly girl,” Arachne says exasperatedly, but her grip is tight around Annabeth, despite the press and workers surrounding them. “Not here. You don’t have to worry about the company, just rest and recover my darling.”

“Oh you know me,” Annabeth replies, smiling brightly, “Ever the workaholic. Burger?”

“How thoughtful,” Arachne says with a shake of her head, reaching for the burger bag Grover offers her, already falling into place to flank her. “Still, you don’t need a board meeting so soon. Let me handle it.”

“I’m fine really,” Annabeth waves off as she struts towards the press conference room, “besides, everyone will be reassured once they see me in person. It’ll strengthen our position in the market.” All true, but that was besides the point. Their stocks were about to plummet. 

“Will you at least tell me what this is about,” Arachne asks her, smiling and waving to the press, “I can’t help you if you don’t let me.”

Annabeth replies with a small fond smile, “you’ll see in a second,” then she steps up , looking out into the crowd of reporters, all hungry for something, for their pulitzer prize winning article. They lean forward, awaiting her words. 

There’s a certain twisted pleasure at having this much power over people. 

Thalia stands in the back, already in her nice air force suit, all her ranks pinned to her jacket like a girl scout. She hopes Thalia will understand too, even if she is military. 

“Is it okay if everyone sits down,” Annabeth finds herself saying, letting her ice queen person slide away, already sitting down, back to the podium. “A little less formal.”

Theres a stunned silence, as they all look around at each other, chickens with their heads cut off, before following her example, lights flashing, documenting her every move. Nothing she isn’t used to dealing with. 

Taking a deep breathe she starts, hands trembling, “I never got to say goodbye to mother. I never got to goodbye to my mother.” She looks out into the crowd, eyes unfocused, they all bleed together into the press. Not reporters, not people, but the press. That’s what money and power do, keeps you from seeing people. 

Hoe did it take her so long to figure it out?

“There’s questions that I would ask her. I would’ve asked her about how she felt about what this company did-what it does-if she was conflicted. If she ever had doubts.” Try as she might, Annabeth can’t imagine Athena having doubts, a strong relentless woman. But maybe she just didn’t voice them to Annabeth. Maybe if they’d had about twenty more years they would’ve mended their relationship. 

“Or maybe she was every inch the woman we all remember from the news,” Annabeth continues, thinking back on all the times she’d seen her mother on the news, in history class. The hard imposing woman who’d seemed less a woman and more a living legend. 

Her lips are drawn, hands closing into fists in her lap, “I saw young americans-civilians killed, by the very weapons I designed to defend them and protect them.” The image of Chase Industries in her minds eye, over and over again, a second to read it before it blows up. “And I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability.”  Her hands looking down at her kevlar clad chest as blood welled up, 

Someone in her company had been dealing under the table. Maybe more than one. And there was really only one way to stop her part in all this. 

“Miss Chase! Miss Chase!”

She motions to one of the reporters sitting close by her, “Miss Chase? What happened over there?”

There. 

Afghanistan. 

Like she was too soft to here where there was. Like she hadn’t been there. 

What hadn’t happened?

“Ah-I had my eyes open,” she answers, standing up, resting lightly against the podium. “I came to realize that I had more to offer this world than just making things that blow up.” She had shelved renewable energy, her arc reactor hidden by the blouse and blazer she had on, in exchange for missiles and-there was a whole department dedicated to medical research she had only the most tangential knowledge of. “And that is why,” she continues, “Effective Immediately, I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Chase Industries.”

Chaos. 

They all rush at her like sharks, smelling blood in the water. Arachne looks at her wildly, grey eyes widened with surprise, the full weight of Annabeth’s statement still ringing through her mind. 

Fine. They’ll talk later. 

Cameras flashing. 

Taking a deep breathe she continues, “-Until such a time that I can decide what the future of this company will be. What direction we’ll take. One that I am comfortable with and that is consistent with the highest good for this country as well.”

“Okay,” Arachne says cutting her off, “press conference over.” 

Annabeth slips aways, away from the stage, the noise of the cameras and people an erie echo to gunshots and soldiers younger than her dying. 

She moves, walking towards Grover and her security detail, Katie smiling at her, shaking her head slightly. She must be pleased, the hippie that she is, but she’s also her assistant and she must know how insane it is. 

What this could cost Annabeth. 

So be it. 

*

The arc reactor in her chest flickers as they drive to her mansion, the car deathly silent. She was expecting more outrage on Katie’s part. About how she should’ve gone to the hospital first. 

But there’s only silence. 

Her chest tightens and she knows she needs an upgrade. 

Funny, now she’s just another machine now. She’s always been good with machines. 

Fucking irony.  

In her lab she’ll be able to mock up something better, with all the best tools and materials that money could by before the stocks tanked. 

Katie asks tentatively, sounding unsure for the first time since Annabeth had hired her ten years ago, “scotch?” She looks at Annabeth like she doesn’t know her. Eyes wide as she studies her. 

Annabeth meets her searching gaze evenly, “No thank you.” She needs a clear head and now she has a heart condition. She’ll need a purer palladium for the system, none of those scraps she’d had to used in the cave. That’s a start. 

“Are we really doing this,” she asks annoyed, realizing Katie’s still waiting for some explanation, wanting to get it over with. If they have questions they might as well shoot.

Katie, who’s spent the last ten years by her side, anticipating her every need, making her life run smoothly, voices, “I-You know that the weapons manufacturing division of Chase Industries is where the majority of the earnings come from. It’s basically the taproot of the company.”

“I know what my company does,” Annabeth utters sourly, “I thought you’d be ecstatic. You’re all for disarmament. Against the Iraq war and everything.”

Katie scowls and Annabeth knows she's in for it. “Don’t make this about me. You’re right, I want nothing more than world peace, but not like this Annabeth. I mean, you can’t say you’re okay after being held captive for so long. “

“I know what I’m doing.”

With a sigh, Katie adds, “I just hope you’re doing this the best way you can. That you’ve thought things through Annabeth. Because for once, I don’t think you have.”

*

Her first night back home, and she doesn’t sleep in her own bed. 

Figures. 

*

“You have nice hands right,” Annabeth says via intercom to Katie, chest open, halfway through heart surgery, if her heart still worked. “Small dainty?”

“What,” is Katie’s reply, more amused then confused after all of Annabeth’s strange requests over the years. 

“Just get down to my lab.” she hangs up, looking over the second generation arc reactor, steadier, more efficient. There’s still room for improvement, but it will do the job for now. No more flickering. 

She’s going to need it while she figures out what to do with Chase Industries. What to say to Arachne when she gets back from New York. 

Arachne had left her to go handle the board, telling her to keep a low profile while she wrestled with the finance suits.

It’s only ten and the stocks have dropped twenty points so far. 

“What is going on,” Katie voices as she makes her way to Annabeth’s side. “Forget it, just tell me what to do.”

Annabeth laughs, “I’m upgrading my heart.”

“Jesus is that’s what’s keeping you alive?” There’s a mix of horror and fascination on Katie’s features, eye’s widening in curiosity, her rich tanned skin blanching as she sees the opened up wall socket in Annabeth’s chest.

“Was, it is now an antique,” Annabeth explains, holding up the Mark II model, “now this will, once you plug it in.”

“Are you sure-I don’t think I’m qualified for this.”

“Of course you are,” she assures Katie, she’ll start to work on the Mach II suit once this is done, “I need your help,” she admits begrudgingly, “And you are the most capable and qualified and trustworthy person I’ve ever met.” 

Katie looks over her work station, Annabeth sitting back, braless, a hole punched through her chest, old arc reactor half out. She’d tried to do it herself and quickly realized that it just wasn’t going to happen. 

She needed a second pair of hands. 

Hands she could trust. 

“Okay,” Katie nods, “just tell me what to do.”

“Okay,” Annabeth states, and she finishes pulling out the old reactor, hearing the snap of the wires underneath, the exposed wire causing an unpleasant mummer as her heart beats. “Just toss this over there and then reach in and gently pull the loose wire out, make sure not to touch the  socket wall.”

“Like in operation?” Katie says, nose scrunching in disgust as she reaches her hand into Annabeth’s chest. This coming from the same girl that didn’t scream at the sight of bugs and worms, happy to dig about in the terrace garden. 

“Yeah,” Annabeth, says, black spots appearing in her vision. “Just be careful not to lift the magnet attached to-okay to late.”

Katie looks horrified, sickly green rising to her tan skin, “should I put it back in?”

“No,” Annabeth says, hearing the monitor beeping like crazy, there was that cardiac arrest. It could be worse, “just plug it in now.” “Okay,” Katie says, voice cracking as she tosses the magnet and wire and reaches in again, the wires clicking into place and Annabeth can breath again. 

Well shit. 

“Thank you,” she says with a sigh. Closing her eyes, letting her heartbeat stabilize. Annabeth twists it the rest of the way into place. 

“Are you going to be okay,” Katie asks, looking down at her with murder in her eyes.

Annabeth just laughs, relieved. She’s been feeling that a lot lately. With a titanium alloy she can make the suit sleeker, more energy efficient, able to withstand handheld missiles. And with this new mach II she’ll have sustained flight. She’s streamline the design. It’ll give her more speed, more maneuverability. 

“Don’t ever, ever, ever ask me to do something like that again.”

“Who else am I going to ask,” Annabeth replies softly, “I don’t have anyone but you.” She can’t imagine asking Grover to help her with this. It’s a little sad, that her closest friend is her assistant. 

Maybe that’s why so many men cheat on their wives with their assistant. 

“What should I do with the old one?”

“Destroy it,” Annabeth waves off, already heading back to her work station, looking over the files and opening a new private folder, “Festus,” she calls out to her A.I. “keep this on my servers only.”

“Gladly Miss,” Festus’ voice rings out through the room.

“You don’t want to keep it?”

“Katie, I’ve been called many things but nostalgic is not one of them. I never look back.”

*

Thalia is mentoring a new crop of air force pilots when Annabeth walks up to her, giving her space to finish and wave them off. Her inky black hair pulled back into a loose pony tail, wearing her jumpsuit with the same ease she wore leather jackets; the Keith Richards of the skies. 

Amongst the sea of cameo green jumpsuits, she looks out of place in her jeans and Barbour blue jacket. Too casual. 

“Hey Chase, feeling better yet?” There’s an edge to Thalia’s voice, reminding her that they’d never really talked after the press conference. She must think Annabeth’s lost her goddamn mind. 

“Shut up Thalia,” Annabeth says, voice full of annoyance, “I've gotten through so many medical evaluations I'm pretty sure Katie called up every doctor in the bay area.” 

“She's a great friend that one.” 

“Well I do pay her for it,” Annabeth jokes. 

Thalia clasps her around her shoulders, “it's good to see you man, it really is.” 

“It's good to be here.” Annabeth sides out of her hold, smiling nonetheless. “Thanks for not giving up on me.” 

“Of course not! Are you crazy! I love you too much bitch!” Her grin widens, offsetting her prominent crooked nose well. There’s lines around her eyes now when she smiles.

God, when did they both grow up?

“I know you do,” Annabeth states carefully, “I'm happy it was your dumb face I saw first. Wouldn't have wanted it any other way.” 

Thalia snorts easily, shoulders shaking with laughter. 

“Which is why I wanted to tell you about something I've been working on Thalia, something big,” She goes on carefully, voice low. She's stabilized the thrusters, flying even at 1% power. Once the suit was finished, she'd be really able to fly, finally live in to her nickname, the modern day Da Vinci, if she ever told the public about it. “I want you to be a part of it.” She knew no better pilot than her friend.

“Oh shit,” Thalia says looking over appraisingly at Annabeth, “You're about to make a lot of people very happy Annabeth!”

Dread pools in her stomach. That wasn't what she wanted at all. Not even close. 

“No-I'm not-,” Annabeth rushes to explain. “This is not for the military. It’s something different. I’m not, It’s different.”

Her friend’s smile drop, serious for once. “Look Annabeth. You've just been through an incredibly traumatic situation. You need some time to process and think before you go about making any crazy decisions.” Says the same girl who'd joined the air force fresh out of high school while wearing fuck the man pins.

“What happened to the girl who ranted about the school to prison pipeline. Who hated Bush?”

“She grew up.” 

For the first time, Annabeth had to wonder if Thalia even cared about the civilian casualties. Or if she was so blinded by the bigger picture. 

“Annie, I want peace as much as anyone else but that's just not the world we live in. Go home, get some rest and we can talk about it all later.” 

“Yeah,” Annabeth replies numbly, already running through the calculations for height and trajectory. She might break a world record if she took ice freeze into account. 

*

“Festus are you up,” she calls out to her A.I.

“For you Miss, always,” the comforting voice of her interface calls out as Annabeth powers on all the lab. Looking over the plans one last time. 

The suit was laid out on the table, her robotic assistants had wielded the components together while she’d been out. It gleamed silver in all its glory. Sleek, it should run like a dream. “Time to bolt me in, run the video, test run # 1.”

“I thought we were on flight test seventy-three Miss,” Festus informs her of all the thruster testing she’d gone through, receiving more than a few blasts of fire extinguisher from butterfingers.

“Maybe I should tone down the sarcasm,” Annabeth teases. 

“My system is merely a reflection of your programing,” the little shit responds. Good old Festus.

Opting for a compression bodysuit and leggings she lets the robots screw her in, the suit coming to life around her, powered by the same reactor that now powers her heart. 

A problem arises when they get to her long hair, loose strands getting in the way. She sighs, annoyed, reaching for a pair of scissors, “Festus, you wouldn’t mind projecting where I should cut for a pass-ible pixie cut?”

“Of course Miss.”

Her dad had often helped Annabeth braid her long blonde hair, always turning slightly green after a summer of swimming. She’d never really learned what to do with her hair other than toss it in a bun to keep it out of her eyes.

Her golden locks fall to the floor after a few cuts. 

“Give it to me straight Festus.”

“You look fine Miss.”

“Robots,” she says with a smile and the rest of the armor fall into place, locking her into her titanium alloy flight suit, equipped with state of the arts defense and weaponry system. Nothing but the best for her. Just in case. 

She still wasn’t sure where she was going with this. What she planned to do when she was finished. 

“Systems check,” Annabeth says, moving about as Festus analysis’ the systems one last time, getting a feel for the suit. She has nearly all her mobility, heavier, feeling strange as she peers through a screen instead of her eyes only, body sequestered from the world around her. 

“Everything seems to be in working order Miss. May I suggest a one percent preliminary flight test?”

Annabeth scoffs, a giddiness taking over her as she realizes how close she is to flight. Real fucking flight none of that airplane bullshit. “Engage Heads up display.” 

“Check.” Festus almost sounds annoyed, as much as a robot can. 

“Import all preferences from home interface.”

“Will do Miss.”

She looks around the room, overlay informing her of all her options, all the tech specs. It’s a heady way to look at the world. 

“All right let’s take her for a little flight.” There’s a buzzing down to her fingertips that not tequila could reach. All the possibilities, all the math and plans coming together at last. Annabeth is giddy with excitement. 

“I would advise caution Miss.”

“Festus,” she says with a smile, hidden underneath her helmet, “Sometimes you’ve got to run before you can crawl.”

“The calibration is complete and I have been uploaded Miss.”

“Alright them,” Annabeth grins, “Pull up the ATC and weather.” And then the thrusters come online and she’s flying like a rocket out of her garage and into the bay like a shooting star. 

The speed makes precision hard to achieve but she knows she’ll get better with practice. It handles like a dream. Banking curves up, down, side to side, as she weaves into the city, passing over the lights of her city. 

With her optics she can zoom in on people, singling them out from far below her, before turning up to the stars. 

“Okay Festus lets see how much this baby can handle,” Annabeth says, heading up into the sky, passing by clouds that promise rain later. Spring in San Francisco is just as rainy as winter. 

“Tread carefully Miss,” Festus says, “we have not field tested the antifreeze measures.”

“Just let me know Festus,” Annabeth snipes back, watching as the height climbs hundreds of feet a second, the suit growing cold around her. “Make a note to improve Insulation.”

“Yes Miss.”

Ice forms on her helmet as they push seventy thousand feet.

“Miss,” Festus warns. 

“I got it. Reduce power to one percent,” Annabeth mutters, and then she’s falling, gravity doing the majority of the work, her thrusters only serving to give her some measure of maneuverability. The feeling of falling races through her body like a live wire, fear and adrenaline mixing together. 

She laughs breathlessly. 

“Miss!”

“Deploy flaps Festus.”

“Got it Miss.”

She slows down, moving to point her thrusters to the ground, to the water beneath her, still high enough to escape the sea breeze. She yells with excitement!

“Fuck it Festus let’s head home,” she calls out, powering back up to flight mode and shooting home like a rocket. 

With this suit, she’ll never be helpless again.

[guillemelgat]

Catalan Folk Music

As per request​, your favorite old person is here to give you some Catalan folk recommendations! (Actually I am neither old nor do I listen to large amounts of Catalan folk, but whatever, I’ll take any opportunity I get to talk about Catalan music.)

To begin with, the idea of “folk music” is kind of hard to define, since “folk” basically just means people and people are behind music most of the time. I’m not sure what Catalan folk Spotify thinks I’m listening to, but I’ll break down what I consider to be folk music from Catalunya and y’all can decide which one you think most accurately describes the style you like. 

(this is officially Too Long so will continue under the cut)

Real Folk (aka Weird Songs Your Avis Would Sing About Jesus and Other Such Topics)

Beldà + Sanjosex - This is probably why Spotify thinks I enjoy Catalan folk, but this album is really cool for me because as the child of an ethnomusicologist one of my favorite things in the world are the original songs that people used to sing in different places aka Real Folk Music™, and this album is the epitome of that. Neither Carles Beldà nor Sanjosex are explicitly folk artists, so don’t listen to any of their other albums expecting them to be the same, but this one is basically them reviving traditional Catalan folk songs (including samples from original recordings) and I think it’s super cool. If you speak Catalan, there’s a website (called Càntut like the album) dedicated to preserving these sorts of songs, with a wealth of songs, lyrics, and recordings.

“El divino vull cantar” - Token Jesus song with one of the people who taught them the song featured at the beginning and end (and at the end he sings a verse that Sanjosex comments is one he had never heard before). 

“El pomeró” - A cute song about a little apple tree of the sort that you would sing as a child except in a pretty polished version.

“Serrallonga” - A song about everyone’s favorite Catalan folk hero, this one has a bit more of an edge to it because Serrallonga was an edgy man.

Pep Gimeno “Botifarra” - I don’t know if Pep Botifarra should be here because he kind of transcends categories, but this was the best I could do. Basically, he’s a traditional singer in the Valencian cantaor style, and he makes a lot of traditional but also fun and modern music! In other words, the style he sings in is always traditional, and generally he’s accompanied by a traditional ensemble, but he also appears in collaboration with a range of groups from the País Valencià and the Països Catalans in general, especially groups like Obrint Pas. Also, a lot of his songs have more modern lyrics, and he’s generally just amazing.

“Malaguenya de Barxeta” - A rousing hymn to “el meu País Valencià” and honestly just The Best. Obrint Pas also have a version of this, which is also great, but less traditional.

“Jota de Xàtiva” - Feliu Ventura wrote at least some of the lyrics to this, but the music is old, which makes for a fun mix between modern and traditional.  

“Cant de batre” - Just because it’s absolutely gorgeous, not because it’s famous or important.

Nova Cançó (aka The Kind of Folk That Came From the 60s and Was Mostly For Hippies but in Catalunya It Was a Bit More Rooted In Actual Tradition)

Lluís Llach - I actually don’t listen to much Llach, but how can I not include him on this list? I don’t know if I would consider him 100% folk, but he’s definitely a leader of the Nova Cançó movement and a Catalan musician who you just can’t not know.

“L’estaca” - THE song by Lluís Llach, also probably a good example of him singing in a more folk-y style.

Maria del Mar Bonet - I've only listened to a bit of Maria del Mar Bonet, but she was another leader of Nova Cançó and her songs are really pretty and a lot more folksy. She’s also from Mallorca, which is always fun.

“Merhaba” - A song about the unity of Mediterranean cultures and their shared history as seafarers. This version sounds like it came from a movie soundtrack but it’s great.

“Què volen aquesta gent?” - A song about political repression and persecution during the dictatorship. It’s pretty famous and very moving.

“Carta a l’exili” - A song about writing to people from exile, making a definite reference to all the Catalans exiled after the Spanish Civil War and during the dictatorship.

Al Tall - Al Tall are THE folk band from the País Valencià, even though they kind of don’t count as Nova Cançó. They sing a lot of really traditional Valencian songs, but as with a lot of these groups, some of them have a definitively anti-Spain and anti-Bourbon flavor (I’m looking at you, “Cant dels Maulets”). Also they use a lot of dolçaina, so if that annoys you then you’re probably not going to like them. Still, if you want folk from a certain era from Valencia, they are your go-to people.

“El cant dels Maulets” - I can’t not mention this song, sorry if you like the Bourbons but this is a legend and it deserves to be here.

“Cançó de la llum” - A good song about a town where the mayor is supposed to switch to electricity but siphons the funds away for other purpose and proceeds to get absolutely destroyed.

“Tio Canya” - I’m sorry but it’s kind of impossible to find a non-political song by Al Tall, this one is about the loss of the Valencian language and is probably one of their most famous.

Ovidi Montllor- Ovidi is also Nova Cançó and arguably does not count as folk but I don’t care because he’s amazing and y’all should listen to him. He’s very left-leaning and pro-Valencian/Països Catalans, so he’s basically eternally relevant to young Catalans and honestly to young people everywhere, which is why groups like Aspencat, La Gossa, El Diluvi, and even Txarango (see the opening line of “Agafant l’horitzó”) make constant references to him. 

“Perquè vull” - A classic. The ultimate petty song but honestly such a mood. This version featuring Ovidi speaking in French at the beginning.

“Homenatge a Teresa” - Not personally my favorite Ovidi song, but it’s legendary so I can’t not put it. It’s a lot more quiet and gentle than his other songs.

“Tot explota pel cap o per la pota” - This is not the most Communist song by Ovidi, but it’s probably up there. Basically just about how the proletariat is done with the bourgeoisie, is empowered, and is going to rise up. What more could you ask for?

Raimon - Another super important artist from the País Valencià who is a bit more rooted in folk than Ovidi but still a part of Nova Cançó. I haven’t listened to a lot of Raimon but songs like “Al Vent” are classics that you can’t not like.

“Al vent” - A song about fighting despite the darkness of the world we were born into. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

“Jo vinc d’un silenci” - A haunting song about remembering where you come from and not losing sight of your roots.

“D’un temps, d’un país” - A solemnly beautiful song about pushing on and slowly winning the world that we have fought so much to see. Interpret what that world is as you will.

Esquirols - If you have an image of folk from the 1960s, Esquirols are probably what you’re imagining. Basically just a bunch of hippies singing songs about joining together (and also fighting for Catalunya but I mean what else would you expect at this point). In my opinion the best group from the Principat during this era, but that’s entirely personal and I am usually a bad judge of these things.

“Torna, torna, Serrallonga” - It’s ya boy he’s back and also this is literally The Most Legendary Song Ever it’s so epic (and as a heads up it’s also exceedingly political).

“Fent camí” - This is basically the Catalan version of all the songs I grew up with from Rise Up Singing (aka just a book with all the pro-union/grassroots protest songs ever sung in the United States), which is not a thing anyone is going to know but I don’t know how else to describe it.

“Arrels” - I just posted this a week or so ago (albeit a different version) but it’s so pretty and just a really nice positive song about life in general except not in a cheesy way, it’s just gorgeous and you have to listen to it for yourself.

“Folk Calentó” (aka Catalans Are Great and Have Modern Cool Hip Bands Who Play Folk in a Fun Way That Is Enjoyable to Listen to)

Roba Estesa - This band is literally the most undervalued Catalan group in modern music. They are six women who basically sing either feminist adaptations of traditional songs or else original songs with lots of influences from cúmbia or rumba catalana, but still with a definitive folk feel. They are amazing and deserve much more love than they get.

“Una altra ronda” - A lively song about getting really drunk with your friends because screw the rules women don’t care about being well-behaved.

“A la muntanya” - An older song about how girls just wanna have fun screw their husbands.

“Les noies d’Olot” - More girls just being generally badass and too good for the men who are interested in them.

El Diluvi - Of a similar left-leaning, feminist vein to Roba Estesa, this group is also very Catalanist and big fans of Ovidi (see above). They have a lively folk sound, with influences from all around the world, but are definitely rooted in acoustic, with a violin and a bandúrria making up part of their ensemble. They are quite possibly one of my favorite Catalan groups of all time.

“I tu, sols tu” - A feminist hymn but also just a great song, based on a poem by Maria Mercè Marçal.

“Vell record” - More of a folk song, with a somewhat Celtic sound and vivid lyrics.

“Alegria” - A simple, happy song about being happy. (What would expect, given the title?)

Germà Negre - A group which claims they were formed when La Moreneta (patron saint of Catalunya) visited them in a dream and told them to revive traditional Catalan music, which regardless whether it’s true or not, is a good origin story. They mostly sing covers of other artists (including songs by several of the artists listed above), but they have lots of interesting instruments and I really like them.

“L’Hereu Riera” - I am personally a fan of this version of this song, even though I’m pretty sure no one else knows it exists. The video shows the traditional dance that goes along with it as well as the cobla, the traditional Catalan musical ensemble.

“Les noies maques” - A great cover of a Catalan kids’ song that is about 200 times better than the original (even though the video does not match with the music being played, which is annoying).

“Guarda la lluna” -  A more traditional song, but it’s really lively and energetic.

La Troba Kung-fú - Probably a stretch, but rumba catalana is definitely folk music, and La Troba are masters of it. They definitely have a lot of modern influences from reggae and other things, but they do some really fun versions of traditional songs, which is what I’ll put here.

"La cançó del lladre” - The definitive version of this traditional song, very rumbero and very good, albeit perhaps not the most folk-like song.

“El preso de Lleida” (with Sílvia Pérez-Cruz) - A beautiful rumba version of this traditional Catalan song, with Sílvia Pérez-Cruz, who is another amazing folk-ish singer. It’s kind of quiet in the beginning, so turn up the volume.

“Flor de primavera” - Not a traditional song, but a gentle, beautiful rumba that is so dreamy and light you will immediately fall in love with it.

Indie Folk (aka The Acoustic Airy Sound That You Probably Associate With Folk More Than Anything Else on This List)

Mazoni - I haven’t listened to everything by him, but a lot of his music is what I would consider folk in the current sense of the word, especially his latest album. He is very much defined by that acoustic guitar sound, but can also be wildly different, so it’s hard to say with him.

“La collita” - A fun song about the apocalypse that takes a dig at Goldman Sachs, which is always appreciated.

“Pedres” - I personally really enjoy this song, it’s a bit grittier and more intense than the simple melody would seem.

Cesk Freixas - While I would consider Cesk Freixas more singer-songwriter than explicitly folk, he definitely has that specific sound. I haven’t really listened to much by him, but here are a few songs that aren’t “La petita rambla del poble sec” even though I love that song, plus him doing a cover of some of the songs earlier on this list.

“Et dono casa meva” - A mix of singer-songwriter and folk, a love song to Catalunya and the Països Catalans. 

“Que no et falli mai la sort” - A good example of his unique brand of utopianism and hope for the future, which sounds silly but it’s honestly not.

“Al vent / L’estaca / Què volen aquesta gent?” - Cesk’s version of these three classics which you might recognize now :))))

Well, this ended up being more of a list of traditional Catalan music than Catalan folk music, but that’s more of what I listened to. This also turned out way too long, but am I even capable of writing short posts? Anyhow, enjoy!

[quieteating]

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Core

There seems to be something strangely attractive about Notting Hill Gate.  It seems to be running on a different time from the rest of London with stately mansions, high end cars parked on the side of the road and particularly well shod citizens in the street.  Not a place for a person like me.  I just don’t have the presence or goods to make up for lack of such.  Yet a man can dream.

It also seems to attract rather good eateries.  Ledbury, I am looking at you.  So when the patron of this particular restaurant choose to set up her own shop, why not do so near the competition.  Now, it also has managed to gain something restaurants crave and that’s not a sparkly star.  Instead, it is a line.  Not a horribly uncouth line that lines the sidewalk but instead an annoying virtual one.  In order to have the privilege of dining at Core, you need to make a booking almost 3 months in advance.  That was of course not building up my expectations, one little bit.  

Jellied eels with olive oil.  An interesting little bite but perhaps gone too fast to make an impact on my sometimes coarse palate.

Foie gras tart with madare jelly.  Nestled carefully on top of such greenery, these were light but tasteful with the base adding a lovely foundation.

Smoked chicken wings.  The way that these were presented, appearing in a glass container filled with smoke before being whipped up before my eyes to reveal deboned chicken wings seemed fairly familiar to what I had experienced at Royal Hospital Road, Clare Smyth’s previous home.  These were nice but in the end, they were just chicken wings.  Although perhaps the most expensive chicken wings I have ever had.

  Mint pea tart.  Served on its own little pedestal, this reminded me of a pineapple tart.  With flaky outside crust and luscious textured pea inside, this was a nice prelude to the main meal.

Sourdough bread.

Whipped butter.  Together the bread and butter were decent if a bit too earthy in taste for me.  I would have liked there to have been some choice in the bread.  Not everyone (well at least a non-hippy like me) lives on brown nowadays.  I know that the media portrays green and brown as healthy but I’m not particularly convinced.  Even if it was true, sometimes you need to live a little.  

Isle of Mull scallop tartare, sea vegetable consommé.  Delicate taste with sweet flesh, this was a good dish if not particularly hard to prepare.  Perhaps this explains the amount of effort that went into the foliage it arrived on.  If anything, an example of how excellent ingredients can sometimes speak for themselves.

‘Potato and roe’, dulse beurre blanc, herring and trout roe.  Outstanding.  If I was a potato and I could choose how I could go.  This would be near the top of the totem pole.  Texture was firm yet delightfully yielding once you got past the initial layer.  The sauce and roe, when combined with the garden of vegetables on top created something special.  Especially good.

Roasted monkfish, Morecambe bay shrimps, Swiss chard, brown butter.  Carefully cooked, this meaty chunk avoided the dryness of other monkfish I have had.  Again, although decent, I found that particular care was taken in presentation.  

‘Lamb carrot’, braised lamb, sheep’s milk yoghurt.  A lone carrot given the VIP treatment, here it was dressed fastidiously with lamb, herbs and on the side with yoghurt perhaps from its mum.  Apart from the slightly morbid idea of presenting a dish combining elements of mother and child on the same plate, this was interesting.  Clean taste of the carrot with light juice and complementary smoothness of the diary.  

Bread with embedded lamb.  Which was even better with this bread with lamb buried inside.  Yet, it would have been nice to have lamb dressed with carrot rather than carrot dressed with lamb.

Duck and red grapes, thyme, honey, Timut pepper.  This was a timely arrival as my dining companion and I were waiting for signs of the meat.  This was to be the other highlight dish as the duck was carefully pink in the centre, juicy and delightfully soft as my knife easily carved through it.  However, it was the tart on the left which was inspired.  The small pastry filo with carefully carved fruit on top combined with the bird in my mouth to create a symposium of taste.  

  ‘Core apple’.  As a pre-dessert comes this carefully sculptured apple.  Inside, was a custard?  A cream?  Or perhaps I should just say, something that tasted rather good.  It reminded me of a savoury version of the meat fruit from Dinner, shaped as it was to resemble a fruit.

Wild strawberry, lemon verbena.  Delicately arranged and again showing the minutiae of attention to detail, this was a joy to behold.  Just look at those delicately arranged leaves amongst the white and red.  I would have preferred a heavier dessert but this was a clean way to finish.  It left very little lingering taste.  I admit to feeling a bit peckish at the end, much in the same way I did at Royal Hospital Road.  Yet, perhaps this was because I didn’t stuff my face with the bread as I longed (and wished) for much but was ultimately disappointed.

Wine gums.  Presented on a twisted piece of wood, these were nothing special.  Then again, I do not professes to have much taste and discernment for gums.  

Chocolate tart.  Nothing special for the final act of this meal even with the perfunctory sprig of herbs on the side.  Looked a bit sad hanging out as it did all by itself.  

Soon after I had popped this tart into my mouth and so cleared the table, the bill arrived without a word.  Now, I am used to having such a passive aggressive action happen in Chinese restaurants but not so when I am having a meal which costs close to 10x the price.  I would hope that that amount of cash would buy me a little bit of time to tarry.  Yet, when we asked the waiter what the hurry was, we were informed that we would have to leave by 9:15pm, so presumably another patron head over heels with giddy delight at scoring a table at Clare’s could sample the delights.  

Although we left before having to be unseemingly forcibly escorted out past the next eager patrons, if I had passed them I could have saved them the time (and expense) with two whispered words.  “Only once”.  

  A quiet eating 7.5/10.

Dinner (tasting menu) was GBP 125 excluding drinks and service.

  Core

92 Kensington Park Rd, Notting Hill, London W11 2PN