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(OOC: Bad news (again).  Basically, I've got a lot of research I intend to get done by the end of the summer, not to mention writing to do, and I need to work on that absurd obsession of the civilized world, money and the making of it.  And when I get back to college, I'll have more work to do: classwork, socializing, library work, personal studies, etc.  In all honesty, I don't have the time to run an RP blog, not when I'm engaged in that great RP we call life; I haven't really had the time necessary to spend making this thing work at all.  I have a nasty habit of doing too many things at once; at the moment I'm working on shedding that habit, which unfortunately means not doing some things.  Given that there hasn't been all that much activity on this blog anyway, I feel that this makes as good a candidate as any for dropping projects.  I'll leave the blog up as an archive, but... that's it.  Sorry if you'll miss it; I will be posting still on my personal blog, so feel free to follow me there.)

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Sunday in the Park with the Master

This review is about a book I recently picked up entitled Villains, Scoundrels, and Rogues: Incredible True Tales of Mischief and Mayhem by Paul Martin; it came recommended as being "a must for anyone with an interest in the varieties of human misbehavior." Sadly, I must disagree.

While the book does indeed discuss a wide variety of characters, it is not meant for those interested in immorality, but rather as a tool for teaching morality. All but one or two chapters ends with a discussion on the morality on the person in question, inevitably concluding that one should not be like them. The terms "villain," "scoundrel," and "rogue" are not used as they are commonly used; in this book, villains are the most depraved rather than the most grandiose individuals, scoundrels are charismatic and charming rather than vile ruffians, and rogues are vile ruffians rather than charismatic and charming people.

Furthermore, I take issue with the selection. The very first chapter is rather more concerned about the evils of the American Slave Trade rather than the evils of the individual - one Mr. James DeWolf - in question. He is singled out as the face of the trade, but this is hardly fair or villainous material, is it? An ordinary businessman is no villain, but merely an immoral man. Furthermore, I question whether it is fair to the individual in question to lay all the evils of slavery at his feet. He was no innovator in the field; surely a man like Christoforo Columbo, who began the trade in America, or perhaps some exceptionally cruel slave trader would suit, but I see nothing remarkable about James DeWolf, and so I must question the author's judgement. Likewise, Samuel Dickstein is used to represent the House Un-American Activities Committee, which spot should surely go to Joseph McCarthy; the author, it seems, does not so much care which individual is put on the spot, so long as somebody is blamed for the actions of the group.

There is also another question: is it truly necessary to discuss whether the individuals are moral? It seems the chapters are half short biographies, half discussions of morality. But the discussions are not necessary; any individual featured in a book entitled Villains, Scoundrels, and Rogues really ought to be assumed to be immoral by anybody who knows how to read. It is simply not necessary to argue the point. A woman who murders all her suitors for financial gain will be seen as immoral by the reader; it is not necessary to tell us that Don Lapre should not have sold the modern equivalent of snake oil. It is my opinion that more space should have been devoted to discussing the lives of the characters, and letting the readers ponder morality on their own.

And speaking of people who failed to live up to their promises, this book fails to live up to its promise, mentioned in the first paragraph. I would not recommend this book to somebody interested "in the varieties of human misbehavior"; the book does not consider the varieties of human misbehaviour, for the simple reason that it never truly questions the edges of misbehaviour. Might it not have been a good choice to include King John of England, whose demand for money started a civil war - and yet who had to demand the money, as his more beloved brother Richard had depleted the treasury entirely to pursue his warmongering interests? Could it not be worthwhile to discuss whether Qin Shi Huang was a power-hungry megalomaniac or a strong leader who turned a collection of warring states into an empire that would last to the present day? But this brings us to the final problem with the book: it only discusses individuals from the past two centuries, and the majority of those selected are American. They are clearly in the moral wrong; there is no question about it. This is not variety; this is mainstream, mundane evil, and I am very disappointed in this book and its author.

If you have any comments or suggestions to send in, feel free to do so! I am certainly all ears.

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Master: Ah, what a glorious morning!  Greetings to all and sundry; I am the Master, Lord of Time, and inevitable overlord of the universe.  But you have no reason to fear; so long as you behave, that is.  I'm just here to relax a bit, perhaps talk about some aspects of your civilization's culture, and perhaps engage in a bit of conquest, yes.  In fact, I believe I already have something to review right here.

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(OOC: And here's Jo Grant!  I also had to change her outfit; her original outfit was plaid, which I can't do in GIMP.  Maybe Photoshop - it's been ages since I've had access to that, but it was rather the better of two.  Instead, I used a gradient to create something appropriately groovy, then used a few filters to cover up the use of a gradient.  Then I ruined that cover-up by talking about it here.

(Anyway, this will be the last character portrait for now; over the next few weeks, I'll get the whole UNIT crew done; but for now, it's good night, everybody.)

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(OOC: And here's the Doctor!  This goes much quicker when I know what I'm doing.  I did wind up changing things a bit in this picture - the Doctor's original outfit featured a black jacket with a red border around the lapels, and a red bow tie.  But as I'd already got a line around the lapels, I couldn't do it over, and so I changed the colour scheme.  If this doesn't work as well, well, it's the Doctor.  He's famous for his bad fashion sense.  If it does, good.  That's just what I intended.

(Another interesting point is that his hair is actually very slightly off-white.  Jon Pertwee's hair, when he played the Doctor, could actually fluctuate from clearly blonde to clearly white, depending on the lighting, so I made the Doctor's hair here just a little bit yellow.)

(EDIT: It also goes much quicker when I forget to do the post-colourization work.  Oops.)

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(OOC: The first of the portraits is now finished; the Master himself, in all his 70s glory.  Actually, although I did intend the border to resemble an old computer (hence the lines on the portrait), if this resembles any computer screen ever, it's one more advanced than anything available in 1973.  GUIs had just been invented that year, turns out.  Anyway, I think the Master turned out decently enough; and here's another little fun fact: while the Master's background is green, the Doctor's is going to be red and Jo's will be yellow.  Tell you what - guess why I'm going for those colours, and I'll make a portrait for you.)

(Oh, and don't worry - when I'm posting in character, the portraits will be much smaller (150 x 150).  The large version is just to show off.)

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(OOC: 50 followers, and so soon before the reboot!  That's a good sign.  So!  Here's a preview of what's in store: character portraits!  That's right, everything except the Sundays in the Park with the Master and any finished (i.e., written up) RPs are going to feature portraits of any characters speaking; which may lead to a bit of delay if new characters are added, but we'll erect that bridge when we get to it.  These are just the sketches for the Master, the Doctor, and Jo Grant; this evening, I'm going to give them a bit of colour, do some digital editing, and see if I can't make a border to go around the picture; you know, adventure game style.  I may have drawn some inspiration also from dungeonmasterbonbon's use of portraits, but I am not going to actually link to that blog at present, for fear of distracting bonmod from her studies.  But the actual final design is going to be very King's Quest-y, so it's different!

On that note, may I just point out that noses are hard?  They really are.)

(EDIT: Bonmod having returned, I'm adding in the links.  Credit where credit is due; even though the end product looks... rather more Space Quest-ish than King's Quest-y, if I'm honest, I mightn't have thought about using character portraits if she hadn't first.)

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(OOC: I'm back! So, I'll be doing a bit of maintenance on this blog; complete revamp; the Sundays (and that one Wednesday) in the Park with the Master will remain, but the comic reading and most of the past continuity will be deleted. The two completed RP stories will remain, but everything else plot-wise (such as the Equestrian invasion, which was rather becoming a curbstomp battle anyway) will be wiped out. Feel free to blame the Time War if you like. The Doctor is going to start reading a different comic; and finally, the first new post will appear on Sunday.)

Well, after a few days spent offline in the evenings, I’ve got internet back, which is good. I’ve been doing some thinking and planning, yes, and I’m going to make an effort to be much more social online. This is also good, because I never quite had the knack for it. Well, actually, I’m quite good...

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Sunday in the Park with the Master

Today's review is about a book, famed worldwide for its commitment to accuracy and the realism of its plot.  I speak, of course, of Dan Brown's literary thriller, The Da Vinci Code.

The Da Vinci Code is a difficult subject to approach, given its subject matter and humanity's violent reaction to matters of philosophy.  The very premise upon which it rests - that there is an order, known as the Priory of Sion, which keeps documents relating to the descendants of the carpenter-philosopher Jesus of Nazareth - is an outright fabrication; the man who created the hoax admitted it, years before this book was even written.

Indeed, I fail to see the point of this Priory.  If the documents were never to be revealed, why go to all the bother of hiding them?  Surely it would be far easier to destroy them; sacrilegious as it may be, that would merely make everything easier.  As for the suggestion that the corpse of the wife of a philosopher unimportant in his own time, with only the usual embalming rituals to aid its preservation, would last to be buried by the Priory at the termination of the book; after all the travels it would have gone through over two millennia, that corpse would have ceased to exist before half that time was through.

So The Da Vinci Code is wildly, laughably flawed, in the very premise of its plot.  However, if one is willing to consider it, divorced of the context of the world in which it was written, one can see an excellent example of its genre.  The puzzles are complex enough to be difficult for the average person, yet still possible to solve.  Dan Brown does know how to write an excellent turn of phrase, and does a very good job of keeping tension high.

His Robert Langdon novels have sometimes been panned for being formulaic - they do tend to go along the same lines: an ancient secret, guarded by a mysterious and ancient order, is facing a new threat, which only Robert Langdon can defeat by solving riddles, which he will only do just fast enough to stay one step behind the villain, who is ultimately revealed to be somebody he trusted, and in the end the villain's plan was pointless anyway - and as this was only the second in that series, it must be considered as a flaw in this book.  However, Dan Brown is skilled enough with words to make up for it; though I fear he did allow fame to go to his head somewhat after the publication of The Da Vinci Code.  The Lost Symbol is rather trite, and not up to the standard of its predecessors; and although I have not read Inferno as of yet - it sits unread on my bookshelf, even now - I do hope that he stepped up his game, as the common saying goes.

All in all, if the suggestions I dismissed at the beginning of this review are not too terribly offensive to you, then The Da Vinci Code can be considered as a good book, when considered by itself.

That's this week's review; send in any asks or comments you may have, please.

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Sunday in the Park with the Master: The Industrial Revolution

Today's offering, as promised, is another song by Aurelio Voltaire, "The Industrial Revolution".  This song, as you can clearly see, is about the Industrial Revolution, and its negative impact.

The song is certainly regretful about the Industrial Revolution, and it is interesting to note that it is, at the same time, understanding of how the current state of affairs came to pass.  Many times, when rampant consumerism and large corporations are attacked, they are treated as pure villains, but as the very first verse indicates, the point was not greed in the start, but progress.

As well, it is refreshing that Voltaire does not seem truly bothered by the greed.  His problem is the conformity of the modern world; everything is uniform and exactly the same, and so one does not have so many free choices as there first appears.  Clothes that once would have been tailored are now mass produced, to the point where an actual tailor's is both rare and expensive.  There is, as many modern philosophers will point out, an illusion of choice; especially given how many competing products are truly made by the same company, and are entirely indistinguishable.

And of course, as the last verse indicates, there's quality to think of.  After the Revolution, a dangerously flawed product means millions of products taken down worldwide after several months; is there even a remote chance, I ask you, of that happening before mass production?  Indeed, in the comments of this song, he points out how many people died due to flawed products before safety rules were common; and even now, those rules are only a reaction to flaws, as they appear.

Of course, the Industrial Revolution did have its benefits; all the good that has only appeared on modern Earth since the revolution is a result.  Why, I could hardly be communicating with you now without it.  But it is important to keep in mind: There was a cost, a price to be paid, for those good things.

That's this week's review; feel free to send in any comments or suggestions you have.

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Sunday in the Park with the Master: When You're Evil

Today, I'm reviewing a song for the first time in a while; namely, Voltaire's When You're Evil. Voltaire, for those of you who do not know, is a rather famous "goth" musician, who surprisingly enough is indeed named Voltaire; Aurelio Voltaire Hernández, to be precise. Even so, there are occasional songs of his which are written to support a philosophical point, and other bands have named themselves Voltaire, so it is often assumed that this is a stage name, taken from the great French philosopher; a fact which has alternately caused him a certain amount of chagrin, and yet he does consider himself to be doing something similar to what Voltaire did.

This song in particular is written from the point of view of a truly evil character, who takes pride in being a monster. The music, from what my uneducated ears can tell, has three main instruments; a violin, some sort of tambourine or drum, and a horn of some description. It has a certain martial tune to it, which falls in perfectly with certain of the lines, and which in general makes it easier to consider the character evil. The tune resembles a dance in a way; one could easily imagine the villain dancing a wicked waltz while singing the song; or perhaps a horrid habanera, or a cruel Charleston?

The lyrics are actually quite interesting; they are generic, in that any villain could sing them and they would be accurate; and yet they are quite specific. This character is more than simply a generic villain; they are the generic villain, the quintessence of wickedness and counterpoint to the Eternal Champion, the Hero with a Thousand Faces, and other such heroic conglomerations. This is something rather rarely seen; people may recognize that there are villainous archetypes, but as the focus is always on the hero, very few bother to pursue it to the same logical conclusion.

And there is indeed what we shall for the sake of argument refer to as the Villain with a Thousand Faces; the Platonic ideal of a villain that must always oppose the Hero with a Thousand Faces. Villains share these traits; an evil person is one who takes delight in tormenting others. The Villain of a Thousand Faces cares not for the virtues that drive the hero; what use has he - or she, of course, but I use the male pronoun in light of the singer's gender - for smiles and laughter? Tears are all the company he needs.

When You're Evil is one of the few works to realize that the ideal of the Villain with a Thousand Faces exists, and for that, I applaud Voltaire. The song well deserves its fame, as do his other works; perhaps I might discuss a more light-hearted song of his next week, unless anybody has another suggestion?

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Sunday in the Park with the Master: Beat to Quarters, Part 2

And to compound my control, I return to the original format of Sunday in the Park with the Master!  This week, I discuss Beat to Quarters as I did last time, only rather than simply summarizing it, I'll be analyzing it, of course.

An important note about the Horatio Hornblower series is that, like most modern novels, it's written from a third-person limited perspective.  Unlike most modern novels, the character whose perspective we follow, Captain Hornblower himself, has one solid, unwavering opinion about himself: he's not good enough.  The greatest victories are tarnished by this idea, but it has its benefits for him: he doesn't give up once he's started, since it's always a lost cause from the start.  This, combined with his great genius in the matter of tactics, makes him one of the most formidable captains in the Royal Navy.

He is also intelligent when it comes to socializing, and knows precisely how to make his men love him without being soft on them.  Quite admirable, really, especially when this involves denying his garrulous nature to the utmost in order not to weaken his command.

And I must say, I almost - I stress almost - sympathize with El Supremo.  A bloodthirsty maniac, much like my future self, only much more delusional.  Yet the Spanish are no better, parading him in chains, mocking his madness - perhaps some of his madness was merely a response to the brutality of his Spanish overlords?

The third most important character in this novel is Lady Barbara Wellesley.  My compliments to Mr. Forester; she is the prime example of how to reconcile the social mores of the author's time with the social mores of the setting.  She doesn't act like a modern, liberated woman; she is a product of her times.  Yet she is no simpering lady; she does what she can to help Hornblower's wounded men, because the job was being poorly done and nobody could do it better than her.  She is no mere love interest to Hornblower, either; the added complexity from their differing social classes makes their budding romance so much more interesting, and so much more painful when it is nipped in the bud, if you'll pardon the joke.

I must also compliment Mr. Forester on his setting; do you know, there were a few points while I was reading that I truly thought I was on the HMS Lydia.  There is a reason the Hornblower series has proven to be so very influential upon later naval stories, especially science fiction naval stories, and Forester's ability to draw the reader in is it.  Here, read this: 

There were ship-noises all round him as he ate.  Every time the Lydia rolled and pitched a trifle as she reached the crest of the swell which was lifting her, the woodwork all creaked gently in unison.  Overhead came the sound of Gerard's shod feet as he paced the quarter-deck, and sometimes the pattering of horny bare feet as some member of the crew trotted by.  From forward came a monotonous steady clanking as the pumps were put to the daily task of pumping out the ship's bilge.  But these noises were all transient and interrupted; there was one sound which went on all the time so steadily that the ear grew accustomed to it and only noticed it when the attention was specially directed to it - the sound of the breeze in the innumerable ropes of the rigging.  It was just the faintest singing, a harmony of a thousand high-pitched tones and overtones, but it could be heard in every part of the ship, transmitted from the chains through the timbers along with the slow, periodic creaking.

I do have some complaints, of course; the man described Hornblower as he saw himself in the mirror, and while that shows him according to his own pessimistic perspective, I cannot help but prefer to have the description come about more naturally, rather than given to us in one long paragraph.

As well, Hornblower's adversaries can come of as one-dimensional.  El Supremo is a murderous madman; Crespo is supremely loyal to El Supremo; the Spanish are lazy and treacherous.  They simply don't seem to have been given the same amount of thought as the protagonists, and they suffer for it.

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Sunday in the Park with the Master: Blackadder Back and Forth

Once upon a time, in the distant past of 1999, there lived a British lord named Edmund Blackadder.  He was a great prankster, and upon the ending of that year, he had come up with his greatest prank yet.  He informed his friends that he had invented a time machine, and made a bet with them that he would recover certain specific odds and ends from the past, suggested by said friends: the helmet of a Roman centurion; the Duke of Wellington's wellingtons, and some particularly disgusting undergarments.  Of course, he had filled his attic with items likely to be part of the bet, and intended to con them out of a good 40,000 pounds, as the time machine was merely a model built by his incompetent servant Baldrick - who also supplied the undergarments - after plans by Leonardo da Vinci.

But Leonardo was a genius, even if Baldrick was not, and the time machine took the two of them back to the Cretaceous period.  They were immediately attacked by a rather large dinosaur, and were forced to sacrificed all of the fakes to get rid of it, the undergarments ultimately being the cause of the dinosaurs' extinction.

Unfortunately, they still had a problem, for Baldrick was an incompetent buffoon, even if Leonardo was not, and none of the controls were labelled.  The time machine arrived in Elizabethan England, when Blackadder's mansion was occupied by Good Queen Bess herself.  Mistaking him for his ancestor, and insulted by his accidental rudeness, she threatened to behead him if she wasn't presented with a present.  The gift of a breath mint - certainly something much in need in that time - was more than enough to appease her, and she presented him with her crown and ordered him to go forth and bring more mints back on pain of death.  On the way out, Blackadder literally ran into William Shakespeare, having just written the script for MacBeth.  He had the Bard sign it, then punched him in the face and ranted about his plays and the misery they would cause to schoolchildren for centuries to come.

The next trip took Blackadder and Baldrick into the midst of a battle in space, and they quickly departed.  But not for home; they arrived in Sherwood Forest and were ambushed by Robin Hood and his Merry Men.  Blackadder quickly convinced the outlaws to turn on Robin, and took the slain hero's hat as a trophy.

Blackadder's next two trips were brief, and also fortunate enough to take him to the Battle of Waterloo, where he landed upon Wellesley and stole his boots, and to Hadrian's Wall in Roman Britain, where he stole his ancestor's helmet and escaped shortly before a battle with the Scots began.  Still, he was downcast about his chances of ever going home, until Baldrick came up with a cunning plan.

Baldrick's plan was that, as people tend to have their life flash before their eyes when they almost die, they should dunk Blackadder in the toilet and almost drown him so that he would remember the correct settings for the machine.  Blackadder, of course, made the obvious correction to this plan, and Baldrick soon remembered the settings and took them home.

Unfortunately, it was home no longer, for Blackadder had altered history so that William Shakespeare quit playwriting, Robin Hood was never heard of, and the French won the Battle of Waterloo.  Upon this last, Blackadder declared that he and Baldrick had to save Britain, and in an uncharacteristically altruistic move, restored history to its proper course.  This generous spirit soon died, when one of his friends remarked, "Think what damage an unscrupulous person could do!"

Blackadder did indeed think of that, and went back into the time machine once more, assuring his friends that he would be back shortly.  In the meantime, they went to the television to watch the royal family's New Years Festivities being broadcast, and by the time they reached it, King Edmund III and his Prime Minister Baldrick were now in complete control of Britain, and were "universally loved."  And they lived happily ever after.  

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Sunday in the Park with the Master: The Happy Return

Our story for today began at sea during the Napoleonic Wars, with one Captain Horatio Hornblower of His Majesty's Royal Navy.  He was on a secret mission to help destabilize one of Napoleon's allies.  You see, France at this time was allied with Spain, and the British, being "Old Boney's" mortal foes, were rather intent on ruining that alliance.  A landowner in Nicaragua had begun a revolution, and in the usual manner was executing his political foes, fighting with the Spanish loyalists, etc., etc.  Captain Hornblower's mission was to supply him with any aid he required, starting with a delivery of muskets and related goods.

Of course, this delivery did not quite go smoothly; the landowner in question was a madman who called himself "El Supremo," who went about butchering anyone who did not believe that he was a god descended from both Montezuma and the conquistador Alvarado.  Hornblower was horrified to see the men bound to stakes, suspended above the earth and left to die a slow death from dehydration; but to the military mindset, orders are orders, and so he went onwards to El Supremo.  An unremarkable little man, this; but with a stereotypically psychopathic mind, and the arrogance befitting a would-be god, and one whose servants trembled with fear in his presence.

In addition to supplying El Supremo with weaponry - and getting victuals for his frigate, the Lydia, in return, of course - Hornblower had to deal with a much more powerful warship, the Natividad, which was supposed to be in the area.  When he knew where his foe was, he sailed close to the Spanish ship at night - for her crew was distracted by their own conversations, and failed to keep an eye out for foes - and blasted her with grapeshot before boarding her deck.  At the same time, he sent two small boats to board her inner decks, and so the ship fell with but a single cannonade.

Hornblower soon presented the Natividad to El Supremo - keeping her officers from his depraved attentions with the excuse that he had killed them himself, for there are some things even duty cannot bind a man to, and the dishonourable murder of surrendered foes was one of them.  Shortly upon sailing back for England, however, Hornblower came upon a Spanish lugger, with the now unwelcome news that, as Napoleon had dethroned Ferdinand, the King of Spain, and replaced him with his own brother Joseph, Spain had switched sides, and Captain Hornblower was now presented with incontrovertible proof of this.

What could Hornblower do?  He gave the Spanish their officers back, pledged to capture the Natividad again, and, with much disapproval, took on Lady Barbara Wellesley and her maid, to return them to England.  Lady Barbara soon began to ease her way into his heart; for she was no mere lady, but was tough enough to please him, without being either "cold or masculine," to use C. S. Forester's phrasing.  As an example of her personality, when the Lydia and Natividad met once more, she served as nurse for Hornblower's men, at that time a dishonourable profession, despite his admonitions.  His admiration for her only deepened after this, of course

With the Natividad sunk, the Spanish, with extreme gratitude, insisted that Captain Hornblower was to stay out of any and all Spanish-American ports, before proceeding to parade the now-captured El Supremo around in chains, mocking him for his madness.  Fortunately for El Supremo, he no longer had enough knowledge of reality to realize this, so at least he was happy in the end.  But Hornblower sailed back to England, and, to end the story, he parted from Lady Barbara, now as desirious to be his lover as he was to be hers - and yet how could they be so, for in the social mores of the time, a ship captain simply did not measure up to a noble lady - with much regret.  After all, now he had to go back to his wife.

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Sunday in the Park with the Master: A Canterlot Wedding

It was a beautiful day in Canterlot, and Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings, was very happy with it.  For one thing, she was going to get married soon; for another, she had taken Princess Mi Amore Cadenza's place and would soon conquer all of Equestria from the inside; and for a third, there were going to be those little sandwiches on a stick she liked so much at the wedding.  Unfortunately, as she was going to see her stolen husband-to-be - Shining Armour, the captain of the Royal Guard - she found that his sister, the famous hero Twilight Sparkle, had found out about the wedding.

Celestia herself had told Twilight, and invited her and all of her friends to help with the preparations.  This was a disaster, as they were too close to the magical devices they used to fight monsters while they were in Canterlot, where the wedding would take place.  Chrysalis knew that the only way to stop them before her Changelings invaded was to separate the group, and she focused on Twilight herself.

Chrysalis made certain to act as unlike Cadence as possible when near Miss Sparkle, and also made certain to allay anybody else's suspicions.  Miss Sparkle attempted to warn her friends, but none of them believed her, of course; Chrysalis had seen to that.  So Twlight took the only path she could: she confronted Chrysalis at the wedding rehearsal.

Of course, Chrysalis was easily able to get everyone - Celestia and Twilight's brother included, which was a real stroke of luck - angry at Twilight for being paranoid and over-protective of her brother, and when Twilight was left on her own, sobbing over how all of them hated her, Chrysalis struck.  She transported Twilight to the ancient mines beneath Canterlot and left her there to rot, as she had done with the real Cadence.

From there, everything went according to plan: but when they were standing before Celestia, about to finish the ceremony, Twilight again interrupted, this time with the real Princess Mi Amore Cadenza as proof of her allegations.  Chrysalis quickly forced Shining Armour to take down Canterlot's defenses, and her Changelings invaded.  Twilight and her friends fought well, but they simply could not make it to the Elements of Harmony, and were brought before Chrysalis as her prisoners.

Chrysalis, naturally, began to gloat, and while she was doing so, Twilight freed Princess Cadence.  Cadence then friend Shining Armour from his hypnosis, and they combined their special talents - love magic and shield magic - to throw the Changeling army out of Canterlot in true Equestrian style.  And so Chrysalis' happiest day was ruined by the ponies.

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Sunday in the Park with the Master: The Conscience of the King

During the time of the First Great and Bountiful Human Empire (known at the time as the United Federation, but I know the truth as well as dear Servalan does), there was a famine on the colony world of Tarsus IV.  Its governor, Kodos, found that their food stocks were depleted so greatly that there was no hope for survival, not for all of the colonists.  So he made the decision to execute some four thousand of the colony's people, and save the rest; even if he had to live in infamy for the rest of his days, at least they would be alive to hate him.  Of course, no sooner had he done this than relief ships arrived with more than enough food for everyone; you would think, wouldn't you, that they would warn him ahead of time, but that's bureaucracy for you.

He fled, of course, and faked his death so that none would know it.  For the next twenty years, he wandered the universe as the great actor Anton Karidian, and even had a daughter, the beautiful Lenore.  But in the end, his new life came crumbling down, as one of the very few people who had seen Kodos in person saw Karidian perform, and realized who he was.  He called in the Federation's golden boy, Captain James Tiberius Kirk, with the starship Enterprise, and attempted to convince him of the truth.  Kirk, who had also seen Kodos when he was a lad, was not certain; but he came to believe the man when, while walking with Lenore, they came upon his corpse.

He arranged for Karidian and his troupe to be stranded on that planet, and then kindly offered them a ride to their next destination.  He enlisted the help of one Lieutenant Kevin Riley, another survivor of the Tarsus event and a crewman aboard the Enterprise, to trap the old man, while he began to romance Karidian's daughter.  Meanwhile, Kirk's right-hand "man", the half-Vulcan Spock, found that of those few who had seen Kodos, all had died mysterious, save Kirk and Riley, and while Kodos was near, too.

Soon enough, Riley was poisoned, and very nearly died; had it not been for chance, he would surely have died then and there.  Kirk, too, was the victim of an assassination attempt; an explosive device was placed in his quarters and Kirk only barely managed to dispose of it in time.

Finally, Kirk confronted Kodos, and though Kodos did not admit the truth, he explains his motivations in attempting to save the rest of Tarsus from starvation.  During a performance by the actors, Riley, having realized the truth, attempted to kill Kodos, only to be talked out of it by Kirk; Lenore then revealed to them that she was the one who has killed the survivors, in order to protect her father; after a brief struggle, she wound up killing him herself, and therefore went completely and utterly insane.  Thus fell Kodos, the executioner of Tarsus IV.

[themasterreads-discontinued]

Ain't I a Stinger?

Featuring robots, laughter, and sudden, yet inevitable, betrayal.

Part 1

Part 2