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nights-at-crystarium · 10 months ago

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Fragments - episodes 31-35 author notes

You can find similar breakdown posts on older episodes in my pinned!

The chasm in their understanding of what makes Vivi tick.

The stakes in this scene seem low and the twins are just overdramatizing the danger for the sake of unwinding and being silly, right? Yesn't. One wrong move or word, and they join those leafmen scattered all over the place.

Finding the line between bad actor and caring sister.

Of course Alisaie wants to hang out with Vivi. She doesn't want to admit that to herself, let alone risk looking desperate in her brother's eyes. Tsundere moment. It's been a while since they've. Had a rest. Between rescuing Minfilia from Laxan Loft and making their way to Il Mheg. Alphinaud, at least in my hc, isn't as physically durable, but definitely as stubborn and proud as Alisaie, so he wouldn't simply agree to chill out for a moment. Alisaie makes him tunnel-vision her bad (?) acting and openly throwing the game for supposedly selfish reasons, while she gets what she wanted, AND forces Alphi to sit his ass down.

I’m sorry but I really need to point out that her ahoge did, in fact, launch into the stratosphere.

More under the cut~

....Can you blame her tho.

Vivi’s shirt’s a bit more plain than usual, he needed to wear something practical under his crystarium guard disguise in Laxan Loft.

The flashback in episodes 32-33 has no dialogue per se, only monologues, to emphasize how disconnected they are.

Technically both vivis are real, but Exarch’s memories are definitely heavily skewed. He’d only known Vivi during the CT quests, in this story it’s a month or two in summer, during which literally nothing bad happens, sans the finale. Alisaie, however, got lucky to experience Vivi during Stormblood, his absolute low.

Exarch and Alisaie sit on opposing sides of the bias, one wears pink glasses, delusional and bluepilled, the other one’s (heh) redpilled, perhaps a bit too much. Hence Alisaie feels the whiplash when her jerkass woobie friend suddenly acts mellow (back in the present), still she has the expertise to tell that he’s not affected by a fae spell or anything.

Full page because I’m so proud of the paneling here, simple as this trick is, these speech bubbles blocking Vivi from sight neatly illustrate that Alisaie just babbles away, paying no heed to his state.

With the power of flashbacks and stories told by one character to another, I’m able to revisit any moment in their past whenever I please. I didn’t commit to a linear story because there was no story! Well, just the outlines. Vivi as a character began in ShB because I really needed to fuck that old man, I started writing down the lil scenes loosely connected by the canon plot, and that’s how the whole concept of Fragments came to be.

It may not work for everyone, but my secret sauce’s that you don’t have to begin at the beginning. Make a guy, put him in a situation, then ask a lot of whys and hows to expand his story backward and forward.

Keeping the past events for later allows me to flesh things out at a leisurely pace. This Alisaie flashback is actually an iteration, originally I’d planned to have Vivi stand alone and just think the broody thoughts, and that was supposed to be the transition between ARR and ShB arcs. I grow more writing muscle as I go, and I’m infinitely happy that I avoided that angsty infodump.

Okay this’s becoming a big fat tangent, but I wanted to acknowledge another pitfall: overusing a character as a mere exposition tool. I wouldn’t do this for, say, Tataru or Y’shtola. Being THE flashback haver makes sense for Alisaie because a) they’re close with Vivi, b) her worldview and opinion on Vivi are changing in ShB, she’s a smart lil thing who would slow down and reflect when appropriate, c) she has a distinct arc in my comic, and knowing what’s going on inside that elf brain will give you the most entertainment out of her actions in the present moment.

I’m new to writing and very excited about the story that comes together as we speak, so I like to show around my kitchen. Please lemme know if you enjoy this. I don’t know if I’m parroting the boring 101s, or if this’s actually useful to someone.

“Meals made for me” YEA HE CAN’T COOK. Well, barely.

New sharp outfit, procured by our most magnanimous branch. The “tail” will help me draw the upcoming Titania fight, it adds fluidity to his movements.

*presses the upgrade button*

There's a lot happening in his head that's not being shown. I hope at least some readers wonder who or what he leaves behind in his mind's eye in this moment. What we know for sure is that he doesn’t take too long to make a decision.

Not sure if subtle, but I did try the breadcrumbing:

Unfortunately for everyone, including himself :’>

I love this one especially because, instead of telling that about himself, Vivi asks Ardbert, kinda gauging his wol experience against the other wol’s.

Episode 34 really shook people awake and reminded that we’re off the msq rails with this story. I loved the response it evoked in the tags, lots of thoughtful rambling about being a hero.

Fae temptation jokes and all, but Feo Ul really says what Vivi needs to say out loud to himself.

Normalize prioritizing self-care over world-saving.

Vivi genuinely cares about Feo Ul. That’s unusual. It might be my storytelling mistake that I didn’t show much of his typical indifference before this scene, unless you count the episodes where he does this

instead of hurrying the fuck up with the msq. Or, perhaps, it’s okay, since this gets plenty of attention later on. You won’t miss the fact that he isn’t eager to set himself on fire to keep others warm. Feo Ul just lucked their way into his heart, and, as a result, he approaches the Titania fight with unusual consideration.

/srs mode on ^

Remember how I just talked about developing this story in all directions at once? I planned Vivi to have this demeanor during the early days of writing Fragments. Like, most of the time. He’d be a broody bitch, get slowly thawed by Exarch’s kindness, and... That’d be it. In veeeeeery broad strokes, this’s still the case, but the current iteration has much more nuance.

Vivi and Titania’s likeness has no deep meaning, take it or leave it. Vivi cares about appearances, he was bound to notice this. Feo Ul can see souls, visuals are secondary to them. But Vivi, being himself, must doubt and question everything.

He moves fast and thinks a lot as the adrenaline speeds him up.

Notice how he lets Titania speak and remains quiet. This’s common in most fights: he doesn’t indulge with chats or banter those who he sees as mere targets to destroy. There’s like a point of no return, if an enemy poses no threat and can be talked out of dying, Vivi will speak, sadly he enters this fight knowing that Titania has to die no matter what.

Once he’s familiarized himself with the situation, and realized that Titania’s more than just a mindless husk, things change up a bit. But for now, he just runs in circles, analyzes the situation, and overthinks about their visual resemblance :’>

Sorry not sorry but unintentional reference x’DD

To be fair Vivi IS being a magical boy in this miniarc so this works lmao.

Wrapping up on this note, thanks for sticking with me and reading till the end~

#ffxiv #ffxiv: fragments #fragment ii: new world old friend #fragments talk

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whoreviewswho · 8 months ago

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A Finely Tuned Response - Frontios, 1984

An analysis of Doctor Who of the early to mid 1980s is, somewhat inevitably, an examination of wasted potential and this is a particularly pertinent point to consider when embarking on a critical look at Frontios. To some extent, Frontios is business as usual for the Peter Davison era. Along with The Awakening, it stands-out for being one of only two stories in the season that is not carrying the weight of an enormous event. It is four episodes long, features a typical Doctor Who monster, slots itself effortlessly into the action-packed militaristic flavour of the Davison era and repurposes the trappings of past base-under-siege serials for good measure. This is probably why it gets such little attention from the fandom on the whole; Frontios is a story conceived to slip under the radar.

But I think that Frontios does anything but be unnoticeable. It is screaming to be noticed because I think that this story, more than any other of the Davison era, is the story of untapped potential. Frontios takes everything that we know about the Davison era, every aspect of it that was working, and offers us a glimpse into an alternate reality where everything else also works just a little bit better still. This is thanks to former script editor Christopher H. Bidmead, one of a handful of writers who could comfortably stake the claim of one of the most underrated in the series' history. Bidmead script edited the show from 1980-1981, the entirety of season eighteen, and is notable for following through with John Nathan-Turner's intention to shift the style of storytelling in Doctor Who away from the high-concept, camp adventure series of the previous regime toward more serious-minded stories that had a basis in real-world science. In Bidmead's own words, "[Doctor Who] exemplified for young viewers the power of scientific thinking to solve problems. Science stretched into fantastic future shapes, yes, but the show had a serious social purpose. It must never be silly, never be mere magic....we tried to build our stories on solid, if fancifully extended, scientific ideas."

It is worth stating the obvious here; this philosophy returns the show to its 1963 roots of being educational as well as entertaining. The result of Bidmead and JNT's collaboration was a run of seven stories that had an entirely unique flavour for the franchise. Stories that were rich in theme and subtext, revelling in the unknown possibilities of bleeding edge theories. Take Warrior's Gate, for example. Taking place in the theoretical zero point between positive and negative space, that serial watches like a surreal, poetic and atmospheric novel that meditates on I-Ching philosophy, exploring notions of action, free-will and entropy. Warrior's Gate is a dense and thoughtful production whose characters and setting all interlink to form a greater thematic whole. A bit over twelve months later, Doctor Who was broadcasting stories like Earthshock.

That sounds a little bit more disingenuous than perhaps it should because Earthshock is not a bad story in and of itself but it is a very different story. The tumultuous production of Warrior's Gate and the overall difficulties of Bidmead's position lead to his resignation at the end of season eighteen. The post would eventually be filled by Eric Saward whose conception of what made for a good Doctor Who story wildly contrasted with Bidmead's. Earthshock proved to be the template, the definitive statement for what his ambitions were with Doctor Who; a thrilling, action-packed adventure with a confident blend of character drama and sci-fi serial antics. To use a low-hanging and easy shorthand example, if Bidmead's Doctor Who could be compared to say a Christopher Nolan film then Saward is somewhat of a Zack Snyder.

But this brings us back to the accusation of wasted potential because I would argue that the Fifth Doctor's era is marked by inconsistency more than it is by abject failure. I find it rather interesting that both JNT/Bidmead Who and JNT/Saward Who make a concerted effort to return the programme to something resembling the original conception of the show but in polar opposite ways. In the latter case, it was a more superficial attempt with the turn back toward an ensemble cast and the attempt at tighter stitching from one serial to the next. Most episodes of the Davison era connect in some direct way to the previous one, even if that connection usually little more than a couple of lines at the top of the episode addressing something from the previous one.

The approach that JNT and Saward were aiming for in these three years together, that of an explosive science-fiction soap-opera, is a perfectly valid take on the programme. It was even an effective one on occasion. The problems with Saward's tenure as script-editor are myriad and deserving of dissecting in a piece more dedicated to him but suffice it to say that what Frontios accomplishes is a case of a serial coming together in spite of its circumstances instead of coming out of them. When Bidmead was invited back as a freelancer for Davison’s third, and final, season, he incidentally offered a tantalising glimpse into the era that might have been if he had stuck around with the show. If nothing else, he reaffirms one thing; wildly creative and conceptual science-fiction stories can work hand-in-hand with serialised, evolving character drama.

In contrast to what one might expect, Frontios can perhaps best be described as Bidmead’s most traditional Doctor Who story. Saward invited him to contribute a pitch for a serial in season twenty-one but on the condition that he was to craft something in the mould of a traditional Doctor-Who-monster-plot. As Bidmead recalled in a 1988 interview for Doctor Who Magazine; "Eric Saward phoned me up and asked me to do ‘Frontios’. They wanted the monster element, which was a struggle because I always hated ‘Doctor Who’ monsters – partly because they tend to look cheap and mainly because they are so limited on dialogue. Dialogue is so important in a low budget show – it creates the whole effect". In so far as being a typical monster story for Doctor Who, the broad strokes of Frontios appear to offer little in the way of innovation. Our trio unexpectedly find themselves among colony of humans in the far future only to quickly discover that an unknown, alien threat is causing colonists to disappear into the planet itself. On one level, perhaps this is disappointing for the staunch season eighteen fans (god forbid those nerds ever out themselves) that Bidmead’s final effort on-screen is such traditional fare but, make no mistake, this is Bidmead all over. Where else would one find a story that revels so much in making the setting a character unto itself, or an active threat in this case. There is an almost primal irrational fear underpinning the horror of Frontios which is that of the Earth dropping from beneath you, consuming you without a trace. It is a great idea and legitimately terrifying at a conceptual level. Frontios is the last hope for humanity, the final place that they can run to and this here is the horror at the end of human existence; what comes for us all when there is nowhere left to run?

Frontios is a story about people being where they shouldn’t which is about as clued-in to the central premise of Doctor Who as one could possibly be; the entire franchise is a story of things being where they shouldn't. I love the Doctor’s initial flat refusal to explore Frontios in any way because “knowledge has its limits”. It is an interesting slice of lore, that never really gets picked up on again, that the Time Lords have a limited scope of the arc of history. Perhaps because pulling on this thread could lend too much credence to the theory that Time Lords are future human beings. After all, is there any particular reason why the Time Lords knowledge has a cut off point that coincides with the near end of humanity? It is an effective shorthand to illustrate the stakes at play here and set the scene for the audience but remains an oddly intriguing nugget of lore too. I would not be surprised if this story directly influenced Russell T Davies when he came to writing Utopia since that story also presents the Doctor as going further than ever before and having the immediate reaction of wanting to leave. In this case, I adore that as soon as the Doctor does land, he immediately launches into helping the humans despite what his rational mind has concluded. It is also a little bit weird that the Doctor’s behaviour ultimately leads to no consequences from the Time Lords. We are told repeatedly that he is forbidden to interfere here and that the time laws do not permit his actions. If Saward were a bit more on his ball, perhaps this could have been the inciting incident that puts the Doctor back on trial two seasons from now as opposed to just…well, nothing really.

Bidmead does not write small scale stories. Even this one, which is relatively small fry in the narrative of this season, is as high stakes as actually destroying the TARDIS. Bidmead claims to have done this to give the Doctor no form of security, have him just as desperate and endangered as the humans. Everything is against the Doctor here which makes for a nice unintentional parallel to The Caves of Androzani (also penned by a former script editor) where the same can be said but he’s just a lot less lucky. What is frustrating is that the script makes really no attempt to explain exactly why or how the TARDIS is destroyed. The Gravis does not even know it is there. The Doctor does have one line about it toward the climax; "It's, er it's been spatially distributed to optimise the, er, the packing efficiency of, er, the real time envelope" which sounds dreadfully like he is making it up. Is he suggesting that the TARDIS folded in on itself in an effort to protect itself from the meteor strike? Or was the meteor strike actually supposed to have splintered it? Surely not that second thing since Tegan and Turlough found it to be largely closed off just moments after landing, I have no idea what is really going on here and have yet to find a clear answer in the text but it is a lovely way to visually illustrate the consequences of the Doctor going behind where he even feels he is permitted to travel.

If there is anything that significantly hurts Frontios then it is the production. While not necessarily cheap, the horrific cliffhanger to part three is realised about as well as it could be, this story is hampered by shoddy direction from Ron Jones and some generally poor design. A lot of the horror that ought to be here is nearly squandered by the way the thing is assembled and that is truly frustrating. There is some god awful acting attempting to ‘lift’ some rubble in episode one. How that made it to screen I will never know. In concept, the Tractators are a deeply disturbing villainous creature with their inhuman features and mental powers to ensnare any victim they choose no matter how hard they run. Their plot to chop up human beings to ensure their machinery works was so freaky that Steven Moffat likely stole it to be much scarier in 2006. Bidmead based the monsters on woodlice and, while that intention extended into the design, the Tractators are the textbook definition of a lumbering “Doctor Who monster”. Practically every moment of action they have in the entire story falls completely flat and the monsters are not even remotely scary. They just look like crap. Apparently Jones hired dancers as he imagined the Tractators to curl up like woodlice, something that Bidmead intended in the script. Visual effects designer Dave Harvard did not get this memo it seems. There is a distinct lack of menace and thrill displayed onscreen here despite what are, really, a perfectly strong set of scripts to work from. It is a real shame.

Thankfully, the production can deliver on Bidmead's well-developed supporting cast and he provides a compelling far-future colony for the TARDIS team to get entangled up with. Range is a much an endearing scientist figure to pair the Doctor up with as Plantagenet and Brazen make an irritating opposing force. It is a decidedly bleak vision of the future; a fascist, totalitarian state. In her analysis of the serial, Elizabeth Sandifer makes the suggestion that Bidmead’s more cerebral, world-building story is constantly under jeopardy by Eric Saward’s stock-standard military story, invading the scenes as an opposing force that tries to stop the story from happening. Whether Bidmead was deliberately poking at Saward's tendencies as a writer remains to be seen but it is a very fun read regardless. Bidmead has cited the 1982 Lebanon War as an influence on his scripts which, as of time of writing this article in March 2024, is an interesting situation to cite. The Lebanon War took place between June 6 1982 and June 5 1985 between the Israel Defence Forces and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The inspiration from the war can certainly be identified in what Frontios would become though it would be absurd too suggest that the story is analogous for the conflict itself. Certainly, the broad strokes of the situation informed the plot but the most significant contribution was an aesthetic one with the serial's war-torn landscape that is clearly suffering from a near constant bombardment that has slowly increased in frequency and intensity over several decades. Indeed, as Range and the Doctor state;

RANGE: Captain Revere assumed that the barrage was some sort of softening up process. Heralding an invasion, he said. DOCTOR: Hmm, someone else thinks this is their territory.

Revere is half-right. Frontios is an invasion story; the humans are the invaders. This flavour of anti-colonial storytelling is not particularly new ground for Doctor Who to tread and would certainly continue to be well-walked although the allegory becomes a little bit murky in this case with the suggestion that the Tractators are not indigenous to Frontios either. Perhaps the situation of two invading forces staking claim to a land that rightfully belongs to neither was ripped straight from the headlines but the absence of a third party makes it a rather more simplistic and less challenging situation to depict. Again, the influence is purely aesthetic. Cutting edge political satire doesn’t seem to be something Bidmead is particularly interested in anyway, regardless of his effectiveness in writing it.

So, we can conclude that the Tractators are likely not indigenous from pretty early on in the story thanks to Turlough who is awarded one of his strongest roles in any story pos-Enlightenment. Following his failed plot to murder the Doctor, the shifty and morally ambiguous nature of Turlough became an aspect of his character that was largely cast aside. Turlough was introduced as an untrustworthy and selfish survivalist whose past life before exile on Earth were primed to make him a greatly compelling member of the TARDIS team moving forward. However, instead of gradually unravelling this mystery and pushing Turlough’s relationship with his “friends” to their furthest extent, the character spent most of his stories was just separated from the Doctor for about half of the runtime to simply complain and look a bit suss from time to time. A lot of potential character work seemed to be abandoned and relegated to these four scripts and his final story, Planet of Fire. This is yet another example of Saward's limits as a script editor and really the most damning one considering part of this period's mission statement was to be a quasi soap-opera.

After laying eyes on the Tractators, we see a new side to Turlough; pure, genuine fear. Our first glimpses at his origins are finally awarded to us when a race memory is unlocked within him that sees him recoil from the action in a catatonic state. He has a primal reaction to the creatures below the surface. Being the only person with knowledge of the monsters, he gradually pulls himself together and returns to help the Doctor. While not especially interesting an arc in itself, this is a rewarding series of events to put Turlough through if you have been following his story since Mawdryn Undead since it seems that only now he has truly embraced being a force for good with the Doctor and not just a traveller in it only for himself. This is all really solid stuff and Mark Strickson does a decent enough job with it. Turlough lamenting that nobody expects anything heroic of him is a really lovely character moment and this story marks a significant turning point for the character that comes too late. This is the kind of on-going melodrama that should have been present in this era the entire time and this particular development for Turlough needed to happen at, at the latest, the end of the last season. Not two stories before his departure. For his active role as a companion to be claimed eight stories into his run (effectively after twenty-eight episodes on the show) is ludicrous. Even more frustratingly, Turlough takes a backseat again in the next story leaving Planet of Fire to race his character to the finish line and it proves once more that the potential for greatness is all there but this was too little too late.

Tegan is the most sidelined of the three which is irritating not only because this would prove to be her penultimate appearance on the show but also because it officially becomes a pattern of the third story now to give her no kind of active role in narrative. The next serial would do that too though it could be argued by design which is a weak defence in the face of a whole season awarding her next to no material. Given where her character was set to go in Resurrection of the Daleks this and the nature of her departing the TARDIS, this would have been a great time to highlight the brutality of the Doctor’s travels and drop her in the midst of some truly awful acts. Long-form story was really not Eric Saward’s strongest skill.

And then we have the Doctor. Three stories away from his own dramatic exit and finally he feels like he has fully come into his own. This is perhaps the most frustrating realisation to grapple with in regards to Bidmead’s leaving the show; the man knows how to write the Doctor. His take on the character sees the frustratingly underdeveloped Fifth Doctor in a fully authoritative role; barking out orders and opinions to whoever he pleases and commanding presence as much as he needs to. This is a character I would have loved to see for three seasons and it pains me that he is only really found here and in Androzani. At the heart of Frontios is a very simple story that about leadership in a decidedly anti-militaristic sort of way. The humans are being driven by the military but lacking in unity as their leadership in Brazen and Plantagenet is a self, arrogant and narrow-minded leadership that dismisses their scientists and the Doctor when he arrives. As we learn about the Tractators, their leadership is flawed too as the creatures are revealed to be naturally passive without the command, being enslaved, by the Gravis. So, we have the Doctor who is driven but understanding. He listens to the facts, he makes measured judgements and he considers the breadth of his actions. The Doctor is the shining example of good leadership in this colony. It is a very simple moral but who ever said that simplicity was a bad thing?

Sandifer made the acute observation in her Warrior's Gate article that "The Doctor that Bidmead wants are the Doctors that [David] Whitaker wrote for – the small and seemingly harmless men who skulked and observed and learned to understand the system before making a single decisive move within it. Not the Doctors of the 70s – big, starring leading men who were the centre of attention and whose charisma and likability drove the entire story". Here we have found ourselves with, frankly, the biggest victim of wasted potential in Peter Davison's run which, obviously is Peter Davison. It is well-documented that part of JNT's strategy in casting Davison was to provide a stark contrast to the scene-stealing Tom Baker. The Fifth Doctor was a less commanding and intrusive presence by design which is all well and good if your target is a more Whitaker-style take on the character. The problem is simply that they missed.

To this day, the Fifth Doctor comes under fire for being a bland incarnation but that is only half of the truth. What fans criticise as blandness is what I would sooner articulate as a lack of definition. The Fifth Doctor as a character was primarily defined by the things that he was not in comparison to the previous four actors instead of the things that he actually was. This Doctor was not old, he was not commanding, he was not infallible, he was not funny, he was not flippant, he was not cruel, he was not Tom Baker – he was not a lot of things and the things that he was varied greatly from one story to the next. Perhaps this is a little unfair since there was at least an intention of who the Fifth Doctor was supposed to be, even if it was not fully realised onscreen. It is at this point that I feel compelled to clarify also that Davison was not at all the problem here. He is an excellent actor who had very strong and compelling instincts of how to play the part, some of which he and JNT agreed on. In 1981, Davison conducted an interview with Radio Times where he made an attempt to outline his vision for the role;

"I’ll be a much younger Dr. Who, and I’ll be wearing a kind of Victorian cricketing outfit to accentuate my youth. I’d like my Doctor to be heroic and resourceful. I feel that, over the years, ‘Doctor Who’ has become less vital, no longer struggling for survival, depending on instant, miraculous solutions to problems. The suspense of ‘Now how’s he going to get out of this tight corner?’ has been missing. I want to restore that. My Doctor will be flawed. He’ll have the best intentions and he will in the end win through, but he will not always act for the best. Sometimes, he’ll even endanger his companions. But I want him to have a sort of reckless innocence."

This is not quite a description of who the Fifth Doctor is not but in terms of being a definitive statement on what he is it is still somewhat lacking. “Heroic and resourceful" are satisfactory descriptors and the suggestion that he has a “reckless innocence” seems to indicate that he is perhaps simply naive. To say that he is flawed is not particularly revealing without actually delving into what the flaws are but this is certainly a start. There is a blueprint here with which to construct a fully-realised character but the one that made it to screen oscillated wildly from seeming compelling to inoffensive to, yes, bland.

Given the revolving door of script-editors during season nineteen's production, it is perhaps not surprising that, despite having some strong stories on the whole, it was not a definitive opening statement for the Fifth Doctor. Castrovalva took the Doctor out of action for most of its runtime and then had him in the post-regenerative non-character state that left him open to hopefully be defined later on down the track. The larger part of season nineteen fails to define him particularly well with Four to Doomsday, Kinda and Black Orchid each shooting for the unassuming observer type but fail to give him any truly distinct character traits nor a particularly engaging role in the narrative. It shows a near complete misunderstanding of the Whitaker-style Doctor depicting him not as a mercurial learner but a passive observer. The Visitation and Time-Flight shift gears from this to am extent presenting something in the mould of Jon Pertwee's Doctor on paper. The former, however, leaves him still largely sidelined by its comedy supporting character and the latter makes the unfortunate misstep of being Time-Flight.

The Fifth Doctor in season nineteen is a character whose role in the story is dictated by the narrative conventions of Doctor Who. His name is in the title, he is a heroic character therefore he will heroically save the day even if the plot could have happily rolled on much the same without his involvement at all. Black Orchid even takes this to the extreme when it, upon stumbling upon an opportunity for some drama when the Doctor comes under suspicion for murder, he gets away with it by taking the supporting cast into the TARDIS and going "See? I'm Doctor Who so I must be innocent". The only story to offer any glimmer of the characterisation and subversion that was promised is Earthshock but even that immature, emotionally unregulated character would never really come back onscreen.

Season twenty seems to bring little else to the table besides his being generally nice but a bit exasperated at times (and it is worth noting that the subpar quality of the scriptwriting in season twenty is what ensured Davison would not sign on beyond his three year contract). The Fifth Doctor's lack of authority too often came as a failing in the storytelling instead of a failing in the character. Take how he fails to command a scene with the Brigadier in Mawdryn Undead or the lack of interest anybody has in him during Warriors of the Deep. Snakedance is really the only serial that took this idea and ran when Christopher Bailey had to the good sense to present a realistic reaction to the Doctor showing up prophesying doom for all and made that escalation most of his role in the story. The problem hit its peak by the time The Five Doctors made it to screen which, of course, made an embarrassing show of what little characterisation the Fifth Doctor was awarded. Standing next to Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee would be difficult for anyone but the Fifth Doctor managed to make it seem impossible.

Part of the problem with the Doctor's lack of definition, of course, stemmed from the approach, or rather the production team's inability to scale the mountain that they had raised for themselves. Having a leading cast as big as four and small as three for all but one of his stories often left the Doctor struggling to command the narrative in any way. It became easy to lean on an archetypical idea of who 'the Doctor' is to make the stories work. This is symptomatic of the broader issue that this production team was not up to the task that they set themselves of introducing a larger cast for a soap-opera style. Darren Mooney, for the m0vie blog, articulated the issue well in his article “Doctor Who?” The Deconstructed Davison Doctor;

"[T]he Fifth Doctor’s era offered a weird funhouse mirror of the [soap-opera] genre. The companions were all given strong archetypal personalities that were designed to play off one another, but without any detail or humanity to round out those archetypes into characterisation. More than that, there was no real sense of progression or character development. None of the companions grew or evolved."

Consequently, this left the most valuable asset for character definition, his relationships to everybody else, severely under-utilised. Again, this was not Eric Saward's strength but, further to that, it was not even his interest. Saward often claimed that the aspect of Doctor Who that compelled him the most were the worlds and characters explored rather than our main ensemble. A perfectly fine stance but not a particularly good focus to take in the most serialised version of the show since it first began.

Something always worth considering when engaging in any form of art criticism is the relationship between artistic intention and audience interpretation. Obviously, the former informs the latter; an artistic work presents evidence and information that is collected and interpreted by the audience. There are a number of ways with which to use this relationship as the basis of a critique. One option is the focus primarily on intention; the artist means for the piece to accomplish X thing and I have assessed the evidence provided to form a conclusion as to why I think it is or is not successful in that endeavour. This option is only viable if that intention has been made clear in some context outside of the actual work itself. Another way to engage is to ignore intention entirely, the death of the author approach; I gathered evidence from the text and interpreted it in this way which I did or did not enjoy for X reasons. Generally speaking, I find that the most insightful and compelling criticism comes from a mixture of both approaches. I find it equally as valuable to glean the context of which the work is made and what the artist is intending to do as I do being able to allow the work to speak to me and take on a life of its own.

In the case of the character of the Doctor between 1982 and 1984, there is a lot to engage with here. As established above, the artistic intention of the Fifth Doctor was deeply confused and underdeveloped. So let us turn to an interpretive reading, the most popular one that has developed among fans over time which is that the story of the Fifth Doctor is tragedy. This reading suggests that this Doctor is a victim of a circumstance, a moral crusader and conventional hero who becomes worn down and killed by the cruel and ruthless universe around him. It is a really compelling take and there is a good amount of evidence to substantiate it. Earthshock is the earliest example where the Doctor’s role in the climax consists primarily of him failing to negotiate with the Cyber-Leader with no option left but to just murder him as he watches his young friend die in an act of heroism he inspired. Then we have Snakedance where his walking into the story doing his typical Doctor thing sees him vilified and antagonised for the larger part of the runtime. Season twenty-one is where the evidence really ramps up. Warriors of the Deep attempts a similar outcome to Earthshock with the Doctor’s lack of authority leading to him enabling a massacre. Frontios sees him literally drawn into a place he shouldn’t be despite his best intentions. Resurrection of the Daleks is such a clusterfuck that it causes Tegan to leave the Doctor altogether and then his simply being on Androzani places him squarely in the middle of events so devastating that everybody there except for Peri winds up dead.

As a reading on his era, this interpretation holds up very well. It is exactly the kind of character development that should have been the crux of Davison's time on the show and is the kind of thing suggested by the publicity and discussions of his character back in 1981. What makes it so frustrating is how much this was not really present in the artistic intent. Yes, the Fifth Doctor was fallible and one of his companions died but this was little more than an aesthetic choice for the larger part of the era. As Sandifer articulated perfectly in her Earthshock analysis;

"What we get [with Adric's death] isn’t drama. It’s the hollow shell of drama – a major character death, a silent credit sequence, a few minutes of horrified and morose main characters at the tail end of this and the start of Time-Flight, and then everybody – the audience included – moves on. It’s not one of the most dramatic sequences of the 1980s. It’s a cheap sham designed to look like drama. It’s a sequence designed to rile up controversy – the exact sort of death scene that would be created by an executive who believes that art should 'soothe, not distract'".

Earthshock was the most important story of the JNT/Saward administration and it makes it also emblematic of a number of things it fails to get right. Adric's death was wasted potential. If the overall arc of the Fifth Doctor's story is a man who has the best intentions but gets beaten down by everything around him, that needs to be in any way at the forefront of his character and his actions in the stories. Eric Saward thought it important to depict violence in a visceral and impactful way which serves the interpretation but was not a calculated move to develop an actual arc.

By the time season twenty-one came around, Davison had hit breaking point with the bland material and an actual character began to emerge. Beginning with this serial, his Doctor finally showed signs of some consistent characterisation. His Doctor had become snarkier and wittier, his occasional emotional outbursts in season nineteen filtering through as a genuine resentment for authority and pig-headedness. As Davison himself stated;

"Frontios was excellent, an extremely well-rounded script that got hold of the way I saw the part of the Doctor, and made his dialogue and actions fit in with this. I enjoyed it because there was really something there to latch onto in rehearsal and make your own. If you like, it had enough there without the actors having to try to embellish a weak storyline."

Thus, this is why Frontios shines so brightly. With some stronger material to play as well in this story through to his final appearance, Davison gets the best chance of his era to actually act. The Doctor is no longer a passive afterthought in the narrative and the season gains a genuine momentum with escalation from one story to the next until the entire narrative structure of Doctor Who breaks down in The Caves of Androzani. Frontios marks the beginning of the Davison era finally starting to land on what really works. We have a Doctor that is genuinely compelling, a very compelling and unique companion in Turlough and a genuinely interesting story that nails the Eric Saward approach to thrilling, action-packed Doctor Who (if only really in the script than actually on-screen). Frontios is really spearheading this last leg of the Davison era and not by mistake.This is a highpoint of season twenty-one and, indeed, of all ‘80s Who. While this is probably Bidmead's weakest script technically (I'd probably watch this over Castrovalva), it demonstrates that old ideas done well still undeniably make for a story that is done really well but it is no surprise that this solid story is consistently overshadowed by the more obviously ambitious milestones of the Davison era. This is the story the Davison era needed but it is a story that just came too late to save it altogether.

A final word: I had no other place to mention this but the Doctor’s line about being a hat person is a little amusing at this point in his life since he hasn’t been seen wearing one for three stories now – he last donned it in The King’s Demons and won’t again until the story after this

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thegreatyin · 2 years ago

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is4 concepts:

surtr memory adventure (and perhaps even... lore...?)

goofy silly fish dilf and his three kids getting up to Hijinks

the entire history of terra but explicitly and exclusively told in the style of a bad low-budget highschool play

the forbidden rhode's island sports movie

bunny australia encounters an actual real-life ostrich that snuck in during the r6 crossover and loses to it in a war

passenger war crimes cringe compilation

the dog gets high again

dramatic wartime story about pre-amnesia doctor and all the various things they did, have done, and would do had they not been knocked the fuck out and put in a box

all the Normal Guys™ in rhode's island decide to go on vacation together and end up spiraling into an adventure of increasingly hilarious scale and stakes until they're all quite literally about to fight god and the whole time every single one of them insists they're the World's Most Average Gang Of Dudes™

every single previous event but told from the point of view of elysium

#yin-thoughts #arknights

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yesterdanereviews · 2 years ago

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Marching Out of Time (1993)

Film review #552

Director: Anton Vassil

SYNOPSIS: Fred Johnson is constantly hearing noises from his neighbour’s house, and is determined to find out the cause of them, much to his family’s annoyance. It turns out his neighbour is conducting experiments in teleportation. However, his experiments seem to interfere with a similar Nazi experiment in 1942 to transport troops to England, and instead they emerge in the teleportation device in suburban U.S. Fred and his neighbour must stop the Nazis from returning to 1942 with all the information they have gathered about all the mistakes that cost them the war, and rewriting history to make themselves the victors...

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Marching Out of Time (also known by the debatably better title, Back to the Fuehrer) is a 1993 sci-fi comedy film. The film is set in the suburbs of the U.S., where Fred Johnson is becoming obsessed with noises coming from his neighbours house, much to his family’s annoyance. He breaks into his neighbour’s house and discovers Dr. Memo, his neighbour, is working on a teleportation device made from a pair of fridges. Unfortunately, the experiment goes wrong, and interferes with a similar experiment from 1942, which involved attempting to transport Nazi troops from France to England. The result being that the Nazis, led by von Konst, arrive not in England, but in Dr. Memo’s basement in the 1993 U.S. learning about this, they change their mission, and gather historical information about all the mistakes the Nazis made that cost them the war, and aim to return to 1942 with that information to ensure that they are not made again, ultimately winning the war. The stakes are raised and Frank, Dr. Memo, and a low-level cop must fight to prevent the Nazis changing the course of history. The film is a comedy film so everything is all a bit slapstick and silly. It definitely feels like Back to the Future, but instead of Biff Tannen trying to change history, it’s Nazis. The story is fairly linear and doesn’t really build up to anything, so it’s just an excuse for a bunch of silly scenarios and slapstick violence. There is one scene in the middle of the film in which the serious repercussions of the films events are highlighted, but that’s the only one. There’s other typical scenes like the Nazis “disguising” themselves in tie dye shirts and exploring the local area to “blend in,” but that doesn’t really go anywhere, or provide any funny situations. There’s not much laugh-out-loud comedic moments, I think it’s humour is more situated in the whole ridiculous scenario, and Fred being the last person on earth who should be stopping a Nazi invasion. Also, I guess this is technically a Christmas movie, as Fred is supposed to be going away with his family for the holidays, but stays behind to deal with his neighbour. However, this is the only real reference to Christmas in the film.

In terms of the characters, Fred Johnson is a typical suburban Dad, and a typical comedic lead: one which you’ll feel like you’ve seen in a movie before (but definitely haven’t, because the actor didn’t appear in any films before or after this). His family are tormented by his nosiness and whining, and you do wonder why they put up with him. Dr. Memo is the typical “mad scientist,” and von Konst is portrayed like every nearly every Nazi officer you’ve seen on film before. the acting isn’t bad at all, and the stereotypical characters have a familiarity to them that allows viewers to focus more on the comedic aspect of the film, rather than the characters.

The film, perhaps surprisingly, is made fairly well: it has the look and feel of a low budget film, but actually probably wasn’t: the locations are fairly detailed and full of props and things, and the camerawork is pretty good. There’s even a few stunts and explosions that, while not overly impressive, would still have taken effort to set up. It’s clear the film wants to situate itself in that low-budget parody genre of films, but it has a bit of budget and expertise to make it properly, without making it seem like the film is trying too hard to be a bad film. Marching Out of Time is mostly forgettable, but is made fairly well, and maintains its energy throughout, while exploring the premise of the film well enough. It definitely feels like a film of its time, riffing on Back to The Future a little, with it’s typical characters that are familiar enough so as to not need to dedicate a large amount of time to introducing and developing them. Predictable, but silly and fun enough to not be a waste of time.

#movie #movie review #marching out of time #sci-fi #time travel #film #film review #1993 film

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cipheress-to-k-pop · 4 years ago

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Hi, I absolutely adore your writing and it’s quite inspiring and making my imagination go WEEWOO!

Could I request something for YJ With Dick? So like a headcanon or one shot (which ever you prefer queen) where the reader is quite reserved, snarky and can get angry real fast. They have feelings for Rob and they are especially snarky to him to hide their feelings, but they eventually start to open up more and during the events of episode 24 (you know, the one at haly’s circus), they open up to him and they confess? And he does the same?

Flower Language

Pairing: Dick Grayson as Robin x Reader

Warnings: Blood and injuries and plant death.

Word Count: 3.8k words

A/N: This is kind of my take on the Hanahaki disease, kind of. This was so much fun to write honestly, I didn't realize I like all this floral stuff so much. It also reminded me of another 'True Love's Kiss' trope I wrote for Dick Grayson as well. Also I changed the episode this was based on because I’ve already done something based on the episode with Haly’s circus @hanbedumbaf I really really really hope you enjoy it! Sorry it was so late, I finished it a month back but it was in my queue.

Adrenaline was a common feeling to you. A little too familiar. The life of a superhero puts you in peril more times than you would like but it was the only life you had known. You knew the familiar feeling of sweat forming on your skin and your heart pounding so loudly that you could hear it in every step you took.

However, when you heard the pounding, it was because there was a supervillain, usually hairy, chasing after you and determined to get your head on a stake.

Although, feeling your heart jump to your throat was becoming more familiar whenever you were around a certain someone. Robin annoyed you to no end, whenever he was around you couldn't help your face from growing warm and your lips from tingling to form a permanent smile on your face.

Having a crush was irritating, you couldn't think or even function without thinking of him. It was frankly humiliating, you were always so gung-ho about being bold and to the point and yet whenever you were around Boy Wonder, you couldn't help but bend your personality to something you felt like would appeal to him more.

Sometimes, you couldn't even stand yourself.

And so, as a pathetic act of rebellion, and maybe as a clear-cut sign that you had no idea how to handle emotions or anything similar to it, every time your heart got just a little soft, your tongue got a whole lot sharper. Probably not the best way to win a boy’s heart. But you weren't here for a romance story.

It was also a true sign that you had no idea how to flirt, thinking that borderline insulting witty banter was the way to go. Or perhaps it was a way of controlling your emotions, since being bitter and snarky was the thing that came easiest to you.

You seriously needed better tactics.

It was also your oblivious mistake thinking that Robin only saw what you wanted him to see. He was raised to be a detective, of course he was more observant than that. Papa (or let's be real, Alfred) didn't raise no fool.

You made the mistake of thinking Robin saw you as strong and independent and bold, just as the rest of them did. But he saw much more than that.

Robin was distressed by the number of crying faces around him, the kids were inconsolable which was understandable because of just how many things went wrong in the past couple of hours. To be quite frank, Robin was a couple seconds away from having a fit himself.

"Shh, little one," He heard distantly and his neck practically snapped. You were crouching in front of the few who were crying, with a small nurturing smile. It was the first time he had seen you out of uniform, usually referring to you as Antheia, named after the goddess of flowers, but this wasn't she.

"I know you're scared, my flowers, but I promise, we will find your parents." You soothed, gently wiping away their tears. They still looked up at you apprehensively and with uncertainty.

"I'll show you a magic trick." You began, grinning as the kids began to smile back at you. You pulled a seed out of your pocket and held it between closed hands, using a bit of your powers and felt it grow in your palms. When you revealed what you were holding, they collectively gasped.

A bud of a flower now rested in your hand. You smiled at their innocent eyes and held it to them, "Now I'm going to need your help for the next part. Everyone has to blow on the flower."

They nodded eagerly, crawling around you and on the count of three, everyone followed your instructions. And low and behold, the bud bloomed into a beautiful blossom right between your fingers.

One of the girls clamoured into your lap to hold the flower herself and you chuckled, wrapping your arms tightly around her, "You know what this flower means?"

They shook their heads, "It means faith, and hope. If you have faith and hope in us, then you'll get something beautiful in return."

For once, they look contemplatively and you chuckled, feeling pride at the fact that you managed to sow some wisdom in their minds. The girl that had been sitting in your lap turned in your grasp, with the flower in her hand and then reached up to tuck it behind your ear.

"For me?" She nodded happily and you smiled widely, kissing her cheek, "Thank you, petal."

Satisfied that you were able to calm them down, you gently placed the girl back on the floor before moving away from the group. Just as you were about to join the others, you ran into Robin. You didn't know he had just seen the whole thing.

Pulling the flower from behind your ear, you handed it to him, "You know in some cultures, this flower means to pick up the slack and stop looking like a confused chicken." You snapped.

Business as usual.

Robin looked back to the flower you had slipped into his hands, you had said it meant faith and hope, and you had given it to him. He looked back up to see you shuffling away from him quickly, a blush on your face. He smiled.

You were more nurturing and kinder than you let on, it was like it was programmed into your personality and yet you never showed it when you knew they were watching. That wasn't the only part of yourself that you were hesitant to show them.

And the more Robin observed you, the more he realized that you used flower language to depict a lot of your emotions. It was a silent way of letting them out, without having to tell other people what's really in your heart.

You thought you were sly about it, but nothing went under Robin's radar.

Everyone was watching a movie on the flat screen in the rec room. You hadn't realized you were so tired, the movie was boring, something that M'Gann had picked and you hadn't slept the night before, busy patrolling your city.

Your eyelids began to droop before you could even understand what was going on, your head lolling as you drifted in and out of consciousness.

Robin hadn't realized that he was napping through the movie until he felt a weight on his shoulder. He nearly jumped awake and glanced to his side to see you sound asleep, breathing gently. He nearly chuckled, was this what you looked like when you weren't scowling at everybody?

His heart skipped a beat, god, were you beautiful. The smell of flowers vaguely hit his nose and he noticed the red gardenia plant growing steadily in the corner of the room.

'Red Gardenias means a secret love,' Robin recalled from a book he had read, 'It's a secret way for someone to say I love you.'

He glanced back at you still sleeping peacefully, face completely relaxed and briefly wondered if your powers were taking the lead on your emotions and making gardenias grow around the cave. Or were you dreaming about something?

Something in his heart grew, here you were sleeping against his shoulder, making symbols of a secret love grow around the room. This had to be a sign of something, right?

Before he could contemplate it any further, you squirmed and then began to stir. Your eyes fluttered open, hazily taking in your surroundings before they landed on the boy beside you and widened in size, skin darkening with a blush.

"Why the fuck didn't you wake me up?" You snapped and turned on your heel to stomp out of the room without even waiting for a response from him. The others who noticed the way he was just staring at the place you were in surprise. You always do such a 180 when you're around him and conscious.

"Wow, sunshine's crabby in the morning." Wally commented from beside him. When he didn't get any response, he looked over to see Robin with a silly smile on his face.

Dick couldn't stop himself from grinning. The gardenias were still blooming.

***

"Antheia, do you think you will be able to stop the plants from growing any further?" Batman turned to face you, only to find you staring at him with a hazy, blank expression.

"Antheia?" Robin called but you didn't even flinch, your eyes were locked onto the holo-computer, seeing the thick vines that were twisting and turning. Their call was overwhelming, you could feel them grow even beneath your feet. It was like a siren was blearing through your head.

You couldn't tell what they were trying to say, it was like they were muffled. It was confused and lost, following Ivy and it was happy listening to her. And yet, it was feeling pain, the Justice League was busy pruning her as we speak. It was scared, crying out for someone to help them and you felt obligated to help. Your mind was getting heavy, throbbing with an oncoming migraine.

"(Y/N)!" Your eyes snapped open and focused onto the boy in front of you. Everyone was staring at you in concern and you blinked, suddenly not able to remember what the hell was going on. You were just trying to focus on something other than the screams and cries of the plant.

"......What?" You asked a little dumbly, noticing the concern on Robin's face. The plants were still crying. You couldn't get the painful sound of their screams out of your mind. You felt like curling up into a ball and crying.

"Batman asked if you would be able to stop the plants?"

"Oh, um, no." You answered in a distracted way that made his face pinch with worry. His hands were still grasping your shoulders tightly, keeping his face in close proximity to yours. You didn't even realize, too out of it to even notice.

Robin on the other hand felt his cheeks get uncomfortably hot the more you stared at him with those innocent, beautiful eyes of yours. If Batman hadn't been breathing down his neck, he was sure he would've kissed you in the moment.

Unfortunately for him, his dad always knew how to ruin the moment. And he would continue to for the rest of his life. Until death do them part. Even after the two of you grow up and live together, the Batman would find some way to interrupt your fun.

"Robin?"

"Huh?"

"The mission."

Oh. Right.

***

"Robin!" You screamed when one of Ivy's plants wrapped around his neck and slammed him against the trees. They didn't let up curling tighter around his throat. Fear struck you as he began choking from breath and you knew you had to do something.

Suddenly murderous intent took over you and you glared at Ivy who returned it with a smug smirk of her own. Oh, how you'd rip that smirk off her face.

"Okay Ivy, you wanna play? Let's play." You ground out, slamming your hands against the vine around Robin's neck and it began disintegrating beneath your fingers. He fell to the ground, gasping for breath and you tuned out the sound of the plant crying as it died beside him.

Ivy heard it just as loudly as you had, she screamed and more plants lunged towards the both of you.

"Go help the others! I'm about to snap this twig." You spat at Robin, using your powers to kill the roots as it reached you. It was working slowly, your powers weak to the pain of the plants around you. Even as every cell of your body told you not to, you clenched your fingers into fists and watched as the creeper feel to the marsh, dead.

You engaged in battle with Ivy. Plants were screaming for mercy all around you but you couldn't stop for even a second. Life around you was trembling but you had to keep fighting the villain in front of you because if you hesitated for even a second, many more would die.

Thorns scratched your skin, drawing blood and curled around Ivy, sinking barbs into her skin.

"Face it girlie! You're never going to overpower me!"

"Oh, I'm not trying to overpower you, just distract you long enough for Robin to get rid of the control system." You replied, just as smug as she had been at the start of the fight. Now you got to see her face melt into one of panic just as Robin jumped over her head and to your side with a grin identical to yours.

"Cover your ears!" He sang, wrapping an arm around your shoulder and ducking, covering your body with his own. You were grateful for it; you weren't sure you could even keep your body upright at the moment.

Then you heard the explosion and your heart stopped. Every single fibre of your body burned red hot fire as you heard screams and cries around you. Bile was crawling up your throat and your breathing got thin. They were sobbing a heart-broken wail and your eyes misted at the mere sound.

Without realizing it, you were gripping onto Robin's hand, brows furrowed together. The sound of the explosion cleared, the Injustice League was captured and he pulled you up to stand with the others.

It was silent for a moment. You had won.

And then the consequences of your actions hit you.

Everyone's necks snapped towards you when you let out a heart-wrenching sob. Robin, who was standing right next to you caught you just in time before your body hit the ground. Pain exploded in your chest as you began wailing against him.

"(Y/N)? (Y/N)! What's wrong?!" He panicked but you didn't respond, crying into his chest as you gripped his cape in an iron fist. Everything hurt and all you could feel was sorrow and guilt.

The other heroes crowded around you but your eyes were screwed shut, tears making your eyes sting. Robin held onto you tightly, pulling your body against his as you continued to cry.

"What's happening?" Artemis murmured, looking around to see the environment change before her eyes. Everyone else followed her lead to see how leaves began rotting, then the trees. The smell was pungent. Thorns and weeds were crawling up the dying trees, pulling them into the swamp.

"(Y/N) please, what's wrong?" Robin whispered in your ear but you couldn't hear him. The sounds of plants screaming and wailing was echoing through your mind. How they begged you to save them. How they begged you to stop.

And then it got hard to breathe, your chest constricted and you were wheezing. Robin had to watch in horror when petals and blood poured from your mouth. You were choking, throwing up and sobbing in his arms, and he was unable to do anything to help you.

"Flash get her to the Batcave." Batman said gruffly, he was shocked and worried for you but didn't say anything, not wanting to scare his son more, "Sending you the coordinates now."

"Alfred prepare the med-bay."

Dick watched with a sinking heart as he handed you into Flash's arms. It took him a few seconds for his mind to stop whirring, he was still kneeling in the swampy marsh when the team huddled around him.

"It's gonna be okay." Wally murmured, wrapping an arm around his shaking body.

"We just have to hope for the best."

***

When the others had gotten back to the Cave, you had just been moved there, after being looked over by Alfred. He joined you in the med-bay, wanting to keep an eye on you. But as of yet, you still had to wake up.

Dick wasn't supposed to be listening to the adult’s conversation, but he couldn't help himself, he had to know if you were going to be okay.

"The situation is undeterminable, sir. But as of now, the flowers that are clogging her respiratory system keep growing. If we don't find a cure for this, it's inevitable that she will suffocate and pass."

His heart stopped. Die? You couldn't die, not when he still had so many things to tell you. For so long, he hadn't told you of his feelings, wanting to keep the relationship between the two of you professional. But now more than anything, he wished he had said something.

There were so many things he didn't get to do with you yet. You had yet to give him a bouquet on your first date. He wanted to lay in bed with you, smelling fresh flowers as you told him what different plants symbolized. He had yet to see moments where you can't control your powers and make plants grow around the cave.

He hadn't even given you a flower yet.

"Rob listen, I did some research on this 'disease'." Wally said, falling into step with him, "It's called the Hanahaki disease."

"That's fiction Wal—"

"But that's the best we've got right now." Came his curt reply and Dick's heart clenched.

"Hanahaki disease is a fictional sickness that only occurs when someone is suffering from unrequited love. The victim will cough up flower petals that symbolize their love. This disease is only cured when the victim's feelings are romantically returned." Wally read off his phone before turning to Dick with a smile.

He raised a brow, "What?"

"You have to kiss (Y/N)!"

"What!?"

"Yep! You have to return her unrequired love!"

"Wally that's ridiculous, kissing someone doesn't cute anything."

"Well, it's the only thing we have. And for (Y/N), we need to try anything." He said, pushing him towards the med-bay. His voice was tight and tense, like he was holding onto his as his last hope and Dick prayed that it would work when the door of your room came into his sight.

You were asleep and if he hadn't known any better, he would've thought you were healthy. Wally closed the door behind him, leaving Dick alone with you. The only sound in was the beeping from your heart monitor and your light wheezing. It was getting harder to breathe.

Dick inched his way closer to you, watching as your eyelashes fluttered gently in your sleep. Leaning over the bed you were lying in; he pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead before moving his head in line with yours.

"God, please let this work." He whispered and your bottom lip was caught between his. It was feather-light but yet, electricity was buzzing through his veins and fireworks went off in his mind.

For a minute, nothing happened and his heart clenched in his chest before he kissed you a little harder. This had to work because they didn't have any other lead. Dick felt you exhale feebly against him and he almost gave up hope.

But then you took a deep breath, stealing the breath from his lungs and he pulled away quickly to see your eyelids fluttering open. The colour was returning to your cheeks and your eyes were sparkling up at him. You smiled gently and he blinked away tears of relief. Thank goodness.

'His eyes are blue' You thought, staring deeply into them. They were beautiful, alluring. You didn't know why but just looking into his eyes was addicting. Was this what it felt like to be so deep in love? That even his eyes were enough to captivate you?

"I'm so glad you're awake." He muttered, cupping your cheeks firmly and planting another kiss on your lips. You giggled lightly, heart overjoyed to find the boy you had been in love with for so long had returned your feelings and you responded to the kiss eagerly, placing your palms over his hands and leaning into him.

With your regaining strength, you felt a flower materialize in your hands. The stem between your fingers brought you comfort just as the scent of the flower brought you back life.

When Dick pulled away, you delicately slipped it into his hands and he turned his attention to it, blue eyes softening when he recognized this particular flower in his hands.

"It's an Aster." You whispered quietly, lips brushing against his and he chuckled. It was the only flower you thought of when he came to your mind, "Get it?"

Dick turned his eyes away from the blossom and looked at you again. Your heart jumped, noticing just how much love he held in them. Eyes you could swim in, overflowing with love for you. Suddenly you were overwhelmed, feeling adoration and attraction. You needed to be closer to him, even though he was pressed against you.

Your fingers curled into his collar and pulled him closer to you, slanting your lips over his in an open-mouthed kiss. Dick gasped against your lips, startled for no longer than a second before sinking against you and wrapping an arm around your waist to pull you closer.

Your lips moved gently against his, the blushing flower trapped between both your bodies. The smell of fresh flowers clouded Dick's mind with everything that was you. Your hair, your smile, your lips. If you kept kissing him like that, he was certain he'd forget his own name.

And then you pulled away and Dick noted that you were as beautiful as a fresh flower. Your skin was glowing with life and your tired eyes were twinkling. You smiled sleepily at him, eyes closing shut and he lowered you back to the bed. Immediately, you slipped back into slumber, exhausted from the day's events.

He watched for a couple seconds, making sure you were able to breathe without any problems before realizing he should tell the others that you were okay.

He slipped out of the room quietly, stealing a final glance of you sleeping peacefully in the bed and a huge smile grew on his face, "She's awake."

It was only then he noticed just how colourful the room had gotten in the few minutes he was with you.

The walls were covered with vines and roses of different colours, camelias and carnations of different shades. It littered the room, not leaving a single inch of the wall untouched and scattered petals all over the floor like confetti.

Different creepers hung from the ceiling, dusting all the superheroes with sparkling pollen and colourful petals. Not to mention there were stems crawling up the Justice League members, flowers hugging their ankles lovingly.

Batman looked a lot less intimidating with petals in his cape and a rose stuck behind his ear. Robin blushed at the sight of everyone giving him knowing smiles.

"We noticed."

Aster: This flower became a symbol of love when in Greek mythology it was placed on the altars for the gods. So now, when you send a bouquet featuring this vibrant bloom, the message of "Take Care Of Yourself For Me" is implied. It conveys deep emotional love and affection for someone.

Forever Taglist:

@simonsbluee

DC Taglist:

@emmacata

@p--e--a--c--h--e--s

@sometimeseverythingsucks

@sokkas-honour

@unstable1902

@lostgirlheart

@missdisapear

@tadpole-san

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tainbocuailnge · 4 years ago

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fgo criticisms have been flaring up in the wake of dw’s sakura wars mobile game quitting after only half a year but I have a disease that makes me get defensive when people try to rip fgo apart as this uniquely terrible game with uniquely terrible devs so i’m going to complain about people who are complaining for a bit.

i hadn’t heard of the sakura wars game before it shut down but from what i’ve been able to find it suffered from a lot of the same problems as (launch) fgo, terrible gacha rates with no pity, slow ap recovery rates, barebones repetitive gameplay. so i guess seeing how fast sakura wars was shut down people feel like it’s only the fate name holding up fgo and in the early launch days of barely playable fgo that was definitely the case but I don’t think it’s fair to fgo to act like people only continue to play it because it’s fate, and “being like fgo” wasn’t the only problem with sakura wars either. sakura wars is a vn/dating sim series that attempted to revive the series with a mobile game that featured none of the original cast that fans cared about while fate was already a series with new characters and a new setting every instalment and the thing that stood out in this new game was actually that it DID have characters from previous fates available. hell, it’s not fair to sakura wars to claim that its series name is simply weaker than fate’s when there were other factors involved in its failure beyond “being a delightworks game”

fgo DOES improve, launch fgo is unrecognisable compared to current fgo in a good way. events have become more streamlined (events have mid- to lategame enemy hp scaling but feature damage ce’s to let newer players keep up, mission events are set up so that they basically clear themselves just by farming the most recently unlocked node), they experiment with new game modes and gameplay mechanics on the regular, they’re taking more care to make viable permanent servants and buff the older ones, and the past few months there’s also been a noticeable effort to throw out random banners for minor things as an excuse to rerun old limited servants more often. I’ll admit the bar is on the low side (strengthening quests are a ridiculous model, there shouldn’t be this many limiteds to need reruns in the first place, etc) and progress is slower than many people are willing to put up with, and I’m not saying anyone Has to put up with it or they’re a fake fan or whatever, but like, granblue fantasy is seven years old and still doesn’t have the ability to uncap a weapon multiple stages at a time when its entire gameplay loop centers around farming and uncapping weapons and they’ve buffed heles like 7 times but she’s still shit, none of fgo’s problems are exclusive to fgo.

i LIKE playing fgo. i like tapping the cards and watching my little guys go and coming up with different teams to make them go harder or just look good together or even lean into the Themes. and this is going a little bit on a tangent but i have this post window open anyway i was talking with friends earlier that one problem that a lot of mobile games seem to have is that they use “making the game play itself” as substitute for “making the game fun to play”. the only game with autobattle functionality (out of the ones I play, i don’t know everything that’s out there of course) that I feel DOESN’T do this is arknights, where you solve the puzzle that the stage presents in order to earn the right to not have to solve the puzzle every single time you play the stage and coming up with different efficient or perhaps ridiculous ways to solve the puzzle is part of playing the game. the worst case I know is dragalia lost which upon realizing that playing it sucks implemented an item to just let you skip playing stages altogether. “this game is good because you don’t have to play it” is not the selling point some people (and devs) think it is, and fgo refuses to fall into that trap - something I believe is an intentional decision because of their explicit refusal to implement NP skip.

one big advantage that fgo has over the other mobile games i’ve played is that it’s entirely turn based with no real time elements beyond start and end times of events. fgo doesn’t NEED to continue playing itself when you look away because looking away has no bearing whatsoever on your ability to clear the quest, fgo doesn’t give a shit if you look away for six hours and then close the game and only reopen it another ten hours later, you can continue right where you left off. the problem is not that you have to manually play the quest, because as far as the system is concerned you can take as much time as you like to clear that quest, it’s that the greater structure of the game wants you to repeatedly manually clear the same low-stakes quest for disproportionately small rewards. this one’s easy enough to solve by just increasing material droprates across the board. repeat clearing a low level quest is much less frustrating if you actually get drops every other clear.

but that’s a bandaid solution, because related to the issue of having to manually farm low-stakes quests is the lack of high-stakes quests to do when you want to do something a little more engaging than routine farming. outside of event challenge quests with their time limited availability, certain main story chapters that you can’t replay, and recently on JP the permanently available kiara challenge quest in the main interlude, there simply isn’t any difficult content to play. you could argue about fgo’s merit as strategy rpg in the first place i suppose but if you ask me it does have that merit and there is a clear effort from dw’s part to improve the depth of fgo’s strategy elements, the issue is that there is simply not that much content available to unleash those strategies on. of course you’re gonna get bored if all there is to do is either brainlessly repeat the same quest for minimal rewards or play the specific challenge quest that the game hands you right this moment regardless of whether that’s the kind of challenge you feel like facing right now. the solution to this one, although it’s likely going to take some significant effort on dw’s side to implement, is to make main story quests replayable.

you want to flex your brain muscles but there’s no challenge event right now? you stomped on a boss by using overpowered servants the first time but want to challenge yourself with some 3* this time? or the other way around, you beat a boss by the skin of your teeth the first time but want to stomp all over them now that you rolled some bitching 5*? you rolled a servant that’s not that suitable for day to day farming but would really shine in more difficult content and you want to try them out? you have a silly strategy in mind that would only work against certain story enemies? you’re like me and just really crave the shimosa duels? all of this involves content that already exists and is available in the game, dw would just have to figure out a way to let you access it again after clearing the chapter. and of course ideally this extends to event story quests once they’re added to the main interlude

i guess another way to put it is that i think the reason a lot of people say fgo has bad gameplay is not that its gameplay system is actually bad, in fact it has the potential to be very engaging, but rather that it’s a system that is set up to respect your time through the ability to put down the game absolutely whenever you want without being penalised, only for the game around it to go and penalise you for putting it down anyway. if you don’t diligently spend all your ap farming this quest you won’t get single damn material drop, and if you don’t play the event while it‘s happening you’re going to miss out because you can’t be sure when if ever it’ll return. so the number one way to solve the problem of fgo’s “bad gameplay” is not to make the game play itself whenever it tells you to play, but rather to make content more easily available so you don’t have to play if you don’t want to and CAN play if you do want to. thank you for coming to my ted talk i suppose

#anyway i love cuchulainn

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81scorp · 3 years ago

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21 tips for writing humor

This was not written by me. It was written and uploaded to deviantart Jan 13, 2017 by DesdemonaDeBlake.

All credit goes to her. I just copied and pasted it here.

There are many theories as to the nature, science, and reason for humor. It's an element of human behavior that seems objective in the skill that is required to execute it successfully, and yet just as subjective for how unpredictably it can hit every individual audience member. Today, I'm going to talk about the various forms that humor takes, and give you some tips for making your humorous story a success. To start with, lets look at what I will call the “five scales of comedy”. (Please note that the following is not intended as definitive list of the only sources and scales of humor in the world, only the ones that I have been able to identify within my own life, time, limited understanding, and culture. Also note that I will use the word “Humor” instead of the word “Comedy,” simply because I do not want this discussion on genres to be confused for the type of story that is opposite of Tragedy.)

The Five Scales of Comedy

A story or other source of humor can usually be found along the lines of five different scales. These are: High Humor vs Low Humor, Sweet Humor vs Acidic Humor, Distanced Humor vs Close Humor, Predatory Humor vs Reflective Humor, and Clever vs Ridiculous Humor. These scales stand apart from the sub-genres of humor (dark, slapstick, dry, etc...), and have to do with how the humor affects the audience. Note that there is no “best” type of humor; there is only humor that works in different ways and which impacts different sorts of people. So wherever you find your story in the scales, know that there is no need to change it unless you want to. Also, the names of the scales are just that—names. Just because your story falls into the category of “low” humor, doesn't mean that it is any less valuable than “high” humor.

Range 1: High Humor

Within the range of High vs Low humor, what we are discussing is the how large an audience we are trying to reach. High humor involves jokes and comical situations that are only understood by a very select group of people. An example might be a comedy series that focuses its humor on the experience of working in a corporate office (like … The Office), or perhaps political commentary. These are only funny to those people who have shared the experience or the political knowledge of the person generating the humor. Basically, the higher the humor, the more the entire set-up begins to resemble an inside joke. This type of humor is excellent for gaining the interest of select demographics who you may want to address. For example, if you only want to talk to nerds (I say non-insultingly because I am one and am proud of it), you might have lots of references to science fiction and fantasy.

Range 1: Low Humor

On the opposite side of the range, you have Low Humor. Low Humor deals with topics, jokes, and situations that are more universal to the human experience. An easy example of this is a fart joke. Everyone in the world farts, and most people are in touch enough with their inner child to think that it is funny if the joke is skillfully set up. Again, there is nothing wrong with low humor; and in certain situations it is even preferable. The lower your humor, the larger your potential audience can be. Other examples of low humor might be family life, slapstick, and situational comedy based on everyday experience. Shows like Spongebob Squarepants, for example, involve such a low degree of comedy that people of all ages, demographics, and locations across the world are able to find delight in it.

Range 2: Sweet Humor

The next range of humor, Sweet vs Acidic, deals with the intensity of the humor itself. Sweet Humor involves jokes, situations, and characters that require less pain and cynicism to appreciate. For example, a story that involves simple characters bumbling around, making mistakes, overcoming, and becoming better people for it would generally fall into the range of Sweet. We don't laugh at their misfortune (or if we do, its lighthearted and with limited consequences, like slipping on a banana peel), we laugh because their situations are joyfully amusing.

An example of this are the sort of jokes and humor found in Youtube “Lets Plays,” like those of Markiplier and Jacksepticeye. We don't laugh because of anything bad happening to these people (or the characters that they play); we laugh because they are eccentric, silly, and joyful in a way that also makes us feel joyful. This form of humor can be tremendously encouraging and uplifting to the types of readers who enjoy it.

Range 2: Acidic Humor

On the other hand, we have Acidic humor. Much like with food, most people have strong preferences and limits to how acidic (spicy, sour, or bitter) they like their humor. Acidic humor deals with laughing at topics that are increasingly serious or even tragic, such as death, illness, social injustice, etc... A popular example of acidic humor is South Park. Those of us who enjoy acidic humor will find ourselves laughing at topics that would otherwise likely bring us to tears. The power of acidic humor is that it helps its appreciators to cope with the difficult truths of life, and also to acknowledge problems that we are otherwise tempted to ignore because they are too hard to think about.

An example of an issue addressed in South Park is the elderly, their treatment, and our fear that we will face the same. Sure, when we watch an episode we laugh when the younger characters mistreat and abuse the elderly in the community. However, a conscientious viewer will then begin the chew on the issue, once the episode is over. We'll look at our own actions, and begin to wonder if our treatment of the elderly is just as bad. Because of the acidic humor, these difficult truths come to the forefront of our minds, we gain the courage to actually think about them, and we can even bring them up in discussion with others. This discussion can then lead to people changing the world for the better.

Range 3: Distanced Humor

This range has to deal with the necessary emotional distance we need in order to be able to appreciate a certain level of humor. Even with lighthearted humor like slapstick, which has very low acidity, the audience needs to be distanced in order to laugh. For example, if I watch Bugs Bunny wallop Elmer Fudd on the head with a mallet, it's generally pretty damn funny. I know that these characters are both flat cartoons with limited depth to their character, and that as non-beings they don't really feel pain. Therefore, I don't have empathy to Elmer's pain (because it is really non-existent), and I can laugh. However, if the show were to show me Elmer's life, how he's been a vegan but famine has caused him to need to find meat to feed his family, and how he struggles to even shoot at a rabbit because it makes him feel like he's betraying himself; then I'm not going to laugh if Bugs hit him with a hammer. I'm too close, and need emotional distance in order for my empathy to not get in the way of my humor.

Range 3: Close Humor

We do not need distance in order to find something funny. With close humor, the jokes and situations actually rely on how well we know the characters and how much we empathize with them. An example of Close Humor is Scrubs. In the show actually find ourselves within the mind of the protagonist, JD, and seeing the entire world through his eyes. He tells us about his insecurities, his genuine pain, his fears, and we actually really care about him as a character. Yet, we find humor in his minor misfortunes and even in his silly victories. The closeness of our perspective amplifies the events that happen in his life in a way that distanced humor cannot achieve. For example, when he stutters and says something embarrassing in front of someone he idolizes, we find ourselves giggling. If Elmer Fudd were to stutter in front of someone he idolized, we wouldn't laugh nearly so hard because we can't possibly understand the stakes of the moment or why meeting this person is so important to him. We need to be close to a character for Close Humor to work.

Range 4: Predatory Humor

With the range of Predatory Humor vs Reflective humor, we are discussing who will be the “butt” or target of the joke. (Note that a joke does not necessarily need a butt, as we will discuss later.) While often used in a negative way, in order to bully and shame others, predatory humor is not a bad thing in and of itself. Predatory humor can be used to tackle and harm negative constructs and ideas in our society. For example, Fairly Odd Parents used to frequently attack neglectful and abusive parenting. Note that the while Timmy's (the protagonist of the show) Parents were frequently the butt of jokes, they were also not the real target (just like parents in general were not the target). The targets were their selfish and non-reflective actions that had damaging effects on their son. We can use predatory humor to attack ideas, and point out the evils that are so often overlooked in society. The trick is to always keep vigilance of your own mind, actions, and motives to makes sure that you do not become a bully who targets the people themselves. Because even if someone acts in an evil way, bullying them will never cause that to change.

Range 4: Reflective Humor

On the other side of this range we have Reflective Humor, which serves to make fun of itself. Again using South Park as an example, the creators would often make their own beliefs and ideals the target of their ridicule. For example, it's fairly clear that the show speaks in favor of LGBT rights and for their being accepted as equals in society. However, they also go as far as to mock people who are so over-enthusiastic and pro-LGBT (to the point of hypocrisy). Another example is when the show begins to teach a moral lesson, the writers will often make fun of themselves through the character of Kyle for being so preachy. The effect of the show making fun of itself is two-fold. First, those of us whose beliefs South Park mocks feel like the show is being fair. Thus, we continue to listen to and respect the views of the creators, even if we don't always agree. Second, we trust the messages of a story more when it has the integrity to point out its own failings. Note that unlike with other scales, Reflective and Predatory Humor can actually be interwoven so that a joke or story makes fun of itself just as much as its target.

Range 5: Clever Humor

The last range of humor that we'll discuss is that of Clever vs Ridiculous. This range is fairly self-explanatory, but the core of its nature is what sort of punchline is delivered at the end of a humorous situation. Clever humor takes the audience expectation and amplifies or twists it to an unexpected place. You can see this in the work of comedians such as Louis CK and Demetri Martin. Martin, for example, has a humorous bit about doorways that say “Exit Only.” The joke then involves his compulsive desire to tell store workers that they underestimate the potential of those doors by about 50%. The delivery of the punchline is true and logical, but it such a way that it humorously exceeds audience expectation.

Range 5: Ridiculous Humor

Opposite of Clever Humor, we have ridiculous humor. This is when the punchline of a humorous situation is so absurd that we can't help but laugh. And example of this is the Spongebob Squarepants episode where he and Squidward get lost while delivering a pizza. They become lost in the wilderness and spend the episode becoming more and more so. Then, right at the end, Spongebob exclaims that they are saved because he's found a big beautiful boulder, the likes of which the pioneers used to ride for miles. And, to make matters even more ridiculous, the boulder works—driving just like a car. We find humor because the punchline is simply so grandiosely absurd that we can't help but enjoy it. Note that both Clever and Ridiculous humor require a great amount of skill and thought to pull off successfully, it's just a matter of your preference and your target audience.

The Five Sources of Humor

Once we identify what type of humor we are employing by using the scales, the next thing to consider is what makes our stories funny. This is something of a challenge, because we don't generally put much thought into why humor makes us feel the way it does. The humor either hits or misses, and we laugh or we don't. Making matters even more complicated is that there are so many theories as to why and how humor works—with everyone from Aristotle to Freud interjecting an opinion. But if we look at the particular sorts of things that make people laugh, we can improve how we use humor in our stories.

Source 1: Misfortune

Whether a cartoon character is slipping on a banana peel, or a character in a romantic comedy finds themselves in an embarrassing situation, the misfortune of others seems to be the most popular form of humor. This is why slapstick and funny home videos have been so prevalent in modern humor. Plato and Aristotle seemed to believe that this was because such humor made the audience feel superior to the characters being ridiculed (Superiority Theory). This seems especially true when we see unlikable characters (like the villain in a children's cartoon) experience misfortune in a comical way.

Though Superiority Theory has its place, I would assert that there is an alternative way that people enjoy misfortune. Perhaps the experience of slipping on a banana peel or being in an embarrassing situation is funny because of our own memories of experiencing the same thing or something similar. Freud and others theorized that humor was a release of energy (Relief Theory). Maybe our camaraderie with the character, mixed with emotional distance from the scene we are watching, creates a safe space to release our own stored feelings of pain or embarrassment. Thus laughter really does become a healing force.

Source 2: Absurdity

In his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus”, Albert Camus defines and explains the absurd.

“It's absurd” means “It's impossible” but also “It's contradictory.” If I see a man armed with only a sword attack a group of machine guns, I shall consider his act to be absurd. But it is so solely by virtue of the disproportion between his interaction and the reality he will encounter. […] Likewise we shall deem a verdict absurd when we contrast it with the verdict the facts apparently dictated. (29)

Though Camus is not talking about humor (rather the existentialist question), I think that the absurd is a source of humor. Audiences are often entertained by the absurdity of a situation. And by looking at Camus' explanation, we can hypothesize that this form of humor comes from the disproportionate contrast of action and situation. An example of this might be one of the last battle-scenes in Braveheart. In this scene, victory looks unlikely, the dramatic tension is high, and it seems to be the most serious moment imaginable. Then, upon being signaled, the protagonist's soldiers pull up their kilts and reveal their bare asses to the enemy. It's so unexpected and so absurd, that many people cannot help but to keel over laughing.

This scene is completely disproportionate to what we would expect to see in this dramatic a moment. The action does not suit the situation, but in a strange way it also kind of does—with the action juxtaposing itself against the situation. Perhaps, just like with misfortune, absurd humor creates a needed release of energy, connected to our own sense of existentialist absurdism. The absurd could then serve to release our feelings of despair in a positive light. The show, Rick and Morty, seems to be built on this connection between absurd humor blended with existentialism and nihilism. Of course, this is just a theory. What you'll want to focus on when writing absurd humor is the relationship of your characters' actions to the situations that they find themselves in. Are they lost in the desert? Have them climb a boulder and ride it home. The stronger the contrast between action and situation, the higher you'll make the potential for absurdity.

Source 3: Wit

Wit is the essence of Clever Humor; its the pithy intelligence that makes us laugh because of all the thought put into a situation. When we hear a witty joke or are part of a witty situation, we find ourselves moving in a forward humorous momentum, instead of the backwards and diagonal momentum of the absurd. But we don't stop at the expected location. For example my mother called me a few months ago, asking me if I was going to wish my brother a happy birthday. The expected response for this sort of set-up/situation is to answer “Yes” or “No”. But I went forward and beyond “No” by asking why she wanted me to congratulate my brother for being one year closer to death (I have an acidic sense of humor sometimes). This reply was much more thoughtful than what my mother expected, and pointlessly taken beyond the realm of reason. Therefore, she found it funny.

Perhaps there is an element of the absurd in any given amount of witty humor. It's as if we are taking extra steps to be as intelligent and rational as possible—ending with us standing somewhere close to the absurd. Using Camus' illustration of absurdity, the soldier with a sword wouldn't necessarily attack the machine guns, but instead go home, refusing to sacrifice his life to be a metaphor. You can see this sort of humor in Youtube series such as How it Should Have Ended. In this series, animators take a closer look at popular movies and then make efforts to enforce logic in worlds and characters that didn't have them. This includes having Severus Snape use his time-travel gizmo to go back in time and kill Voldemort before he became a problem—an action that is so logical that it erases the need for any of the Harry Potter stories to even happen. So when you create witty humor, look to take things beyond the realm of expectation—aiming for the absurdly reasonable.

Source 4: Anti-humor

Anti-humor is when something is so unfunny that it becomes funny, sort of like puns. As we find delight in the absurd and the unexpected, humor and jokes can begin to feel predictable. We begin to look for the solution in jokes, and we're usually smart enough to begin to be able to predict it. In this case, the expected becomes surprising. An example is the classic: “Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.” If you haven't heard it before, this anti-humor joke is actually kind of funny. A great example of this are the great collection anti-jokes found online.

You can take anti-jokes to the next level using extremely acidic humor. This is where you take serious, grievous, or tragic topics and use them as the punchline for your joke. For example, a joke about a fatal illness is not funny because the person making the joke finds that topic amusing (otherwise that person needs some counseling). A joke about fatal illness can be funny to some people for the exact opposite reason—because of how dark and unfunny it is. Again, I believe this ties into a release of negative energy while in a safe space, and the processing of difficult emotions. If you plan to use the extreme form of anti-humor, please note that many people have very legitimate reasons for not enjoying it. So be careful, and give your audience some sort of forewarning so that you do not spring something so emotionally charged on them without their consent.

Source 5: Familiarity and Value

When I was taking university writing classes, I had an extremely eccentric professor who had all sorts of mannerisms that were unique to him. In the moments when he was particularly eccentric and acting out of his true nature (which he was quite comfortable with), I would find myself laughing, even if the situation wasn't funny. I think others can relate to this, as we all love to talk about fun people that we used to know, and find ourselves laughing even when what we are remembering isn't particularly funny. We laugh because those people acting happily out of their own nature gave us joy, and so anything they do creates a laughter that feels akin to humor.

This mirth through familiarity can be accomplished in stories as well. In Bob's Burgers, for example, we really don't even begin to understand the humor until we develop an attachment and feelings for each individual character. Sure the situations are mildly amusing, but true laughter and humor doesn't begin until we know the characters, their likes, their dislikes, and who they are deep down inside. Once we know that, we laugh as each character acts out of their nature. When we see Louise (one of the protagonists) act with mischievous intent, we laugh even before we know what she's doing because we are happy that she is about to act out of who she really is. Note that this is a rather difficult sort of humor to pull off because you have to create a relationship between the characters and the audience before the humor will be possible.

General Tips for Humor

Tip 1: Create a patterned and uniform blend of humor for your story.

When you choose what sort of humor you plan to use in your story, the best way of maintaining audience enjoyment is to keep it constant. Just like when we watch a stand-up comedian, we begin to develop a taste and sense of expectation for whatever we are watching or reading. Over time, your audience will begin to really appreciate the flavor of your humor, and that appreciation will make your jokes increasingly funny (so long as they are creative and continue to be intelligently crafted). The pattern will also make all of your jokes seem, feel, and become purposeful. Your audience will enjoy this much more than if you seem like you are desperately trying to milk the humor from anything you can get your hands on (you perv).

I recommend you begin by analyzing the origins of humor in your story's world. Is the world simply absurd, with unseen gods of chaos just dropping coconuts on people's heads for pure amusement? Does the humor come from a specific character? A group of funny people living in a serious world that they must learn to cope with through humor? A funny narrator with a unique perspective on life? Once you figure out the origins, determine where your humor will fit on the scales (it doesn't have to be on any extreme, you can stay in the middle of the scales and still be hilarious); and then figure out the source.

Tip 2: Create a genuine story with genuine characters, in order for humor to gain the most power.

If we value stories in terms of how much people enjoy and remember them, the best humor stories are those with good plots and characters. This may seem counter-intuitive when your intent is to make your audience laugh, but think of it this way. If an audience wants just concentrated jokes, they will read a joke-book. Your audience is choosing to dredge through the murky waters of story in order to find the humor with more difficulty because they want a blend of story and humor.

An example of this is the movie,“Austin Powers.” Many people, myself included, watched these movies before we ever watched the James Bond movies that they were making fun of. And we enjoyed them greatly, and laughed the entire way through. Why? Because the characters and story, ridiculous as they were, were good enough that we actually invested our interest and emotions into them. As an added bonus, the story has become timeless and respected in its own right. Even if we face a future where nobody knows who James Bond is, the Austin Powers movies will be able to stand on their own merit because they are more than just jokes.

Tip 3: Be careful about dating yourself.

Speaking of parody and humor losing its ability to be funny, let's talk about references that date our stories. Humor at the expense of popular culture (movies, politicians, celebrities) is a fun ploy of high-humor. It's especially useful for nighttime comedy shows that will be lost to time anyways, within a couple years. When you are writing a novel, however, you are trying to create something that will last a bit longer than that. Additionally, novels take a lot longer to write than an episode of a late night comedy show. This means that by the time you publish and people begin to discover your book, they may not know who the vapid pop star you're making fun of is. Your humor will be lost to time, and your book quite possibly forgotten. Of course, I'm not telling you that you can't use this sort of humor, just that you should be aware of the risks it holds.

Tip 4: Mark every line that is supposed to be funny, and make sure that it is.

Nothing detracts from a story or from a spirit of jovial humor so much as an obvious joke that falls flat. It's like watching an acrobatics show. If the acrobat falls on their face too many times you'll either be embarrassed for them or you'll empathize and start worrying for their safety. Either way, you won't find the situation amusing. In your own personal copy of the manuscript, mark every joke for analysis of whether it actually succeeds and whether it serves to empower the story. Then, ask your editors, test-readers, and writing partner to circle every point that they genuinely found funny. Be sure to pick test-readers who fall into the niche you are writing for, as well as those who do not. If nobody but you marked a specific joke, then you need to either get feedback for how to make it funnier, or else cut it.

Tip 5: Write within your own expertise and authority.

This does not mean that you can't laugh at things, and poke fun at things that are outside your realm of expertise, so long as you have done your research. But consider the power of an insider making a joke about something that you are a part of vs an outsider doing the same. It would be like the difference between me calling most writers narcissists (as I am one, and know that it is pretty true in most instances) and a politician making a joke and calling writers narcissists. I mean, what right does that asshole have to judge us, even if it is true? The point is that your jokes gain power when you can tell them with the confidence of an insider. Not only that, but your audience who is a part of the group at the butt of the joke, will be much more gracious and feel far less attacked when the joke comes from one of their own.

Tip 6: Humor is personal

Humor is something that is highly individual to specific groups and people. For example, I do not understand, nor am I really able to appreciate most British or Spanish comedies. This is not because they aren't funny; they are just as valid and hilarious as every form of comedy that I do enjoy. The reason is simply that because of either how I was raised, my life experiences or because of who I am by nature, I can't enjoy them any more than I can enjoy olives on my pizza (seriously, I hate them). It doesn't matter how artfully these types of humor are composed, there is simply no effect akin to joy, amusement, or laughter when I come across them. In other words, the problem is me and not them.

All this is to make three points. First, it may be more difficult to find test-readers and worthwhile criticism for humorous work. Even if I'm really good at critiquing stories, I will not be able to give you any helpful feedback if your humor doesn't match with mine. And that isn't your fault any more than it's my fault. It's just a difference in taste. Second, humor is as personal and close to the heart as any other story or craft. When you create a joke, you are channeling whatever emotions and mixes of experiences have led you to the type of humor you have. So recognize the emotional bond between yourself and your humor.

The third piece of advice is for those on the other end of the spectrum, those experiencing the humor of others and perhaps trying to give advice. Please recognize that others' sense of humor is just as valid as yours. Whether their sense of humor is simple, complex, dry, witty, dark, acidic, sweet, or anything in between, it is their sense of humor and not yours. Be careful in how you voice any attempts at criticism, as there are few ways to break your friends' trust and confidence as completely as when you tell them, “That's not funny.” You might as well be telling them that their heart sucks, and they are a sucky person.

Instead, acknowledge the differences in people's humor, value it even if that humor makes you uncomfortable, and voice your criticisms accordingly. Try: “This joke wasn't successful with me, and might be perceived as racist/bullying/insensitive to some readers; so seek other feedback to see if it's just me.” You will voicing just as honest an opinion, without formulating a direct attack against the person who has trusted you with something so delicate to them.

Weekly Recommended Watching: Doraleous and Associates by Hank and Jed. (A free animated fantasy Youtube series that manages to successfully mesh several humor types with an over-arching plot. Examine how even there are plot elements that are serious and even sad, the series maintains its humor through well-balanced distance and wit. And if this form of humor does not amuse you, that is perfectly valid and your own unique sense of humor is still a valuable thing.)

#81scorp #21 tips for writing humor #comedy

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andmaybegayer · 4 years ago

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Last Monday of the Week: 2021-03-01

First Monday of the Month. My boss just quit at work which means I'm now the only formally trained engineer left who has any particular specialization in embedded systems. This week is going to be a doozy.

I also wrote a Very Long set of media updates because I’ve been consuming some stuff that makes me think a lot. Never a good sign.

Listening: I spent all of Saturday playing Minecraft after talking with some friends about it during the week on IRC. Practicing what I preach with regards to my Large Biome Supermacy policy, which does involve a lot of walking. Hence, I started catching up on The Adventure Zone: Graduation again, I'm like ten episodes behind.

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/adventure-zone/the-adventure-zone-graduation-ep-32-by-a-haircut/

I don't really enjoy Travis' DM'ing style. It's very loose and he has a tendency to let players run wild without much structure which is a tricky thing to handle. He does a lot of worldbuilding and character design but doesn't seem to plan much in the way of arcs. That pays off sometimes (returning to the school to realize they broke a promise they made a few sessions earlier and had to deal with consequences, for example) and when it does, it’s really good, but it's finnicky. I know DM's who can do that, but, well, actually I know One Single DM who can do that well and she's absurdly smart.

Reading: Still on Worm, I just got past chapter 8 or so now. It lives in my phone browser so I've mostly been reading it whenever I get some spare time, which is a good sign. If a book doesn't grab me I need to really settle down in a quiet space to avoid getting distracted, but I can read Worm while someone else is on the phone in the same room.

It is a story with a lot of very well-conveyed feelings and events. It's very easy to imagine yourself in it. Characters actually act like they care about what they're doing, I feel like writing this took a lot of care to keep everyone on model.

There's also a certain care given to the superpowers that you'd usually only see in forum posts arguing about an actual superhero story. Everyone always likes to argue about how far you can push a superpower: can you use teleporting to fly? What prevents a speedster from catching fire in the air? Where does the energy for a pyrokinetic ability come from? Worm takes these and runs with them as a way to make absolutely any fight become a series of gambits relying on whether a power can or cannot be used to perform some high-stakes trick.

The world certainly has some underpinning contrivances to explain why no one gets killed very often but I've always considered nitpicking the base contrivances of a setting silly, because that's precisely what they are: contrived, in order to allow the rest of the story to flow from there. Like arguing about Omega’s abilities in the famous thought experi-*I am dragged off stage by the ratblr police for making a by now extremely stale joke*

Watching: I came and edited this section in like an hour before this posts because I keep on forgetting to put it in. I don’t really like watching TV and with my parents stuck at home in Pandemic Times it’s how they pass the time.

I did finish S3 of the Good Place. It’s very funny. I’m glad I’m watching it and I’m going to have to go find S4 because ZA Netflix doesn’t have it for whatever reason. It feels a little like it was written by Phillip Pullman if Phillip Pullman was a comedy TV writer.

I also really enjoyed the PBS Spacetime video about how time causes gravity. Love when an explanation of concepts is good enough that you drawn the conclusion on your own.

youtube

Playing: Visual Novel Hell plus Minecraft.

I spent approximately seven hours in Minecraft over two days. I tend to hop in and out of games for 1-2 hours at a time but there's a handful that can suck me in for an entire day. Minecraft, Warframe, Horizon Zero Dawn, Night in the Woods. Bastion, to a lesser extent. I end up avoiding them because I don't like loosing entire days, but I wasn't really planning on doing anything this weekend anyways.

Minecraft was mostly a long-ass trek to find a saddle, because as previously mentioned, I enjoy playing it with Large Biomes for the sense of scale.

I also completed Act 3 of Psycholonials and Eliza.

Psycholonials is odd. It is doing the thing that Hussie does where it dances around what's ostensibly the story to carry out the actual story. You get used to the trope after your first encounter but it still makes you wonder when the other shoe will drop, and of course, there's no reason it ever has to. The story may remain in suspended animation behind the every growing mess of narrative red tape tying the B-plot together.

Stories about Social Media have no well established norms. I think I might pick up Feed by M. T. Anderson and also perhaps Hank Green's books sometime. See what context they set that in.

Eliza is frustrating to me. It's a game for programmers, by programmers, about programmers. I'm friends with a lot of Capital P Programmers, the types who go to university and get sniped for developer positions at Seattle or Silicon Valley tech companies and who make great and terrible things and then warn you about the deep problems that underpin the slowly rolling ball of venture capital and bloated technology that is the tech industry. But at the same time, it makes me feel like I've burnt out on that conceptually before I even went in. It’s a whole other world that I’m familiar with but very distant from. In fact, that’s kinda how I feel about Psycholonials too. I’m familiar with the social media rat race but I also don’t go there. Parallels!

My cousins (who are halfway to Capital P Programmers, only so much you can do halfway around the world from silicon valley) warned me not to go into CS, because it would bore me, and that's a non-trivial part of why I'm in Engineering. They gave the same advice about Biology and Physics, without that I may have ended up in Microbiology. it’s not my domain, but because of how Engineering is going, you end up a lot closer to programmers than you think. I found out the other day that most of the software developers on my team have no formal tertiary qualifications, which is accepted in CS but of course, right out when it comes to engineering. It’s a whole other world that I kinda expected to skip around. I might go into this another time, since this post is already getting long.

Making: I haven’t done any engineering scicomm posts on here in a while so I started a few blank drafts and finally got one off the ground. With some luck I’ll have that ready this week. What’s it about? Not saying! It might change!

I’ve been doing layout for a custom keyboard, I need to call a laser cutting place and find out what their kerf requirements are so I can adjust the path accordingly. Wouldn’t do to burn a couple hundred rand on an oversized part, I’m paying for this, not my employer like the other times I’ve done laser cutting, so I’m probably not going to spring for getting one of their designers to check my design. At some point I should CAD up a chassis, but at the same time I might just buy some wood and go ham with a router once I get the plates cut.

Computers Slot: I got WeeChat set up properly on my desktop, which technically was just a matter of getting my SSH keys moved over. It’s taking me forever to move in to Cinnabar, in part because Stibnite lost her boot partition and I haven’t bothered to fix it.

So here’s a pitch for WeeChat as a good quality Terminal UI IRC Client. Many of my closest friends live there and it has a good set of tools to help me keep in touch.

WeeChat is very configurable but with perfectly sane defaults, I didn’t configure it for years. The UI is smarter and less arcane than something like irssi, and if you enable mouse support it can be downright modern. Running it remotely like this limits some features but as long as you don’t mind jumping through a few hoops to do filesharing, IRC is really great like this.

One of the big ones is the ability to do that double-pane thing, I can keep an eye on two channels at once (really as many as I can cram on my screen, but usually two) which is great when you want to browse channels while talking in your home channel.

It also has a good array of remote access tools, from what I’m running up there, just weechat running on my server inside tmux connected over mosh for low-latency SSH, to weechat-relay, a relay protocol built in to weechat. At the moment relay only supports android phones and the glowingbear web client, but I’ve never really looked around since both of those cover all my needs. Easily one of the best ways to get IRC on a modern mobile device, barring maybe IRCCloud.

#last monday of the week #galena

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raywritesthings · 4 years ago

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Bird in a Storm, 10/17

My Writing Fandom: Arrow Characters: Laurel Lance, Oliver Queen, Quentin Lance, John Diggle, Helena Bertinelli, Raisa, Joanna de la Vega, Ted Grant, Female OCs, Male OCs Pairing: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen Summary: The confrontation between the Hood and SWAT on the roof of the Winick Building goes differently, altering the course of Laurel’s career, relationships and efforts to save her city forever, the shockwaves of such an altered path making themselves felt throughout her family and friends. *Can be read on my AO3, link is in bio*

So far, so good, Laurel kept telling herself over the next week. Mr. Khan and his shop remained unharmed, those thugs hadn’t made any reprisals or found her out, and the police hadn’t come knocking on her door. She was in the clear.

But the clear wasn’t good enough. One night wasn’t good enough. If she was going to make any real difference in the Glades, she was going to have to keep on with it.

Time to get serious.

It was hard knowing what to do or how to proceed outside of just saying she would to herself, though. After all, even if she didn’t really want to imitate the Hood in all matters, she had to admit Ollie’s vaunted list gave him an itinerary. The best she could hope for would be to wander around and wait for crime to happen. Not that that was a far-fetched prospect in the Glades.

But she couldn’t just stand around at night in a ski mask, either. That would give people the opposite idea of what she was going for. So then, maybe some updates to her look were in order.

She reflected on this as she entered the thrift store. Ostensibly, she was grabbing some things for the approaching warmer weather, but she wasn’t above browsing around for ideas. Was a scarf too Western? Would it fall off too easily?

Beside the clearance racks where she’d picked out a new shirt was a small bin labeled “free”. Maybe she wasn’t absolutely destitute, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a look through.

Most of it was clothes that were completely out of season, not to mention fashion. A toy car that was missing one wheel and a few ugly patterned scarves were also in amongst the clutter.

Her thumb snagged an elastic band and she pulled out a black domino mask. Probably discarded from some Halloween costume. Laurel studied it for a moment, then slowly lifted it towards her face.

It’d be less sweaty, and easier to breathe in. Cheap as this one was. Maybe it’d be better to save up and make her own. She’d continued practicing hand-sewing during the slow hours at work, in the event that she might develop small holes or tears in her clothes that could be patched up instead of thrown away. And hand-stitching had other uses considering what she was planning.

Laurel left the mask in the bin and took her other purchases up to the register, mind still racing with ideas.

She’d need more than a mask to conceal her identity. But she didn’t want a hood. If she was doing this, she didn’t want to be seen as only some lackey of Oliver’s. This was her own mission, her own way.

A head covering in general would limit her visibility plus make her stand out pretty readily. She needed something discreet. Laurel didn’t have fancy arrows with lines attached that could pull her up the side of a building in moments. She had to be able to make a getaway, even in a crowd.

She needed to look like a woman.

It was so simple when it hit her. So long as she could be any woman — just some woman, with great hair and a body — they would never bother to see past the mask. She just had to not look like herself too much, that was the key. Dye was too permanent; a wig would disguise her hair better.

Over the next week she made the necessary purchases, each at a different shop and in cash. The important thing was not to let it be traced back to her.

As for weapons, she looked into something she could carry on her person. A baseball bat was way too conspicuous for a woman in her twenties to be walking around with. Eventually, she was drawn to a collapsible bo staff. She’d seen staffs hanging on the wall at the Wildcat Gym and knew Oliver used them for sparring practice with Mr. Diggle. It was a weapon she felt comfortable using with some practice, which she nudged a reluctant Ted into.

“I just want to try different things, you know?” She’d said with a casual shrug. “No point getting pigeon-holed.” Losing her job as a lawyer and realizing she had no real backup plan had taught her that the hard way.

She went out the first night she got all her gear together, knowing if she hesitated that she would find a way to talk herself out of it. The long hair of the wig swishing around her shoulders was a familiar weight. With her hands shoved in her jacket pockets — one hand over the staff and one hand over the mask, she walked around, watching and waiting.

Only she didn’t really find anything, other than a few catcalls. The next day, she saw there had been a reported mugging halfway across the Glades from where she’d staked out.

It was like this over the next few nights. She wasn’t where she needed to be or she’d get there just after she was needed. It occurred to her that this was probably why Oliver tended to stick to his list; it was full of ongoing problems he could investigate and then decide to attack in his own time.

She didn’t have the luxury of a base of operations or the ability to get into and out of high rises safely, though. And she wanted to be on the ground, handling the problems Jerome and Mrs. Ross had talked about. The problems she saw every day. She’d just have to get lucky.

The next night, she did.

The only gas station in the Glades was hit up for a robbery just as she was passing by. Laurel caught the flash of a gun out of the corner of her eye through the store window and quickly ran to the wall, flattening herself against it to get a better look. Two men, one pointing the gun and the other shoveling money from the register into a bag. They weren’t even bothering with ski masks, just hats pulled over their hair and jacket collars popped.

She glanced up at the security camera pointed at the front door. Its light was off. It wasn’t on, or perhaps it had never been plugged in.

Laurel got out her mask and extended the staff.

The door banged open as she stood and landed a hit low on the first man’s legs just as he ran out. He toppled over, his face smacking into the pavement. His partner in crime stumbled over him right into her fist, falling back against the wall. Laurel wrenched the gun out of his fingers and took note of the safety. Still on. The clip was empty. She shook her head.

“Who the fuck are you?” The guy on the ground spat. There was blood on his lip.

“Just someone in the neighborhood.”

With two hits of her staff, they were both knocked unconscious. She picked up the bag of cash, opened the door again, and tossed it towards the counter at the clerk, who was watching with wide eyes. Laurel didn’t wait for a response, knowing her priority was now to get as far away from the scene as possible.

Her heart pumped with adrenaline as she fled several streets away, a wide grin stretched over her lips. She had done it, and it still felt great. What did a few boring nights matter if every so often she could manage something like this?

Of course, it began to take a toll on her schedule. She woke up later, didn’t have near as much time before work to get her day started. She saw the few friends she had less.

Joanna took it the hardest. “I’m not gonna see you at work when I go back, Laurel. And sorry, but you don’t have the excuse of being too busy to have a social life anymore. So do you just not want to be friends?”

“It’s not that, Jo. Never. I’m just… trying to work out some things. Figure out where my life’s going.”

Her friend had scoffed over the line. “Well let me know if I’m still in it.” She’d hung up shortly after.

It was easier now to see things from Oliver’s point of view; how he’d tried to maintain relationships without letting slip what was really going on in his life. It made her miss him fiercely.

They hadn’t talked much since after Mr. Merlyn’s hospitalization. Ostensibly, they still weren’t supposed to be friends, after all. And Laurel hesitated to reach out to him about her new nighttime activities; something told her he wouldn’t approve.

Well, that wasn’t Ollie’s job to approve or not, so it was simply better for the both of them if she kept it to herself. He had enough on his plate seeing as the Hood was still going out at nights, taking on the elites in this city.

She was just doing her part where she could, making sure the people he was trying to help got that help sooner rather than later. It was his upbringing, she knew, that caused him to see things the way he did. The big picture instead of the small.

Laurel would aim to improve things from the bottom up while he continued to work from the top down. Maybe they’d meet somewhere in the middle someday.

She did her best to brush aside that sort of wishful thinking. It would be silly to think after everything that there was any sort of future for them. She didn’t even know what future there was for herself.

But as long as she could do something good, she would keep going.

---

Anita was starting to wonder if her Avó had been right about coming to live in Brazil. These past few months in Starling had been crazy.

It wasn’t as if she hated it at Avó’s either. She loved the cooking, loved the weather, loved the language. The only trouble would be, as always, money. Jerome wasn’t near fluent enough in Portuguese to find good work, and she couldn’t be too sure of it herself. They were just getting by in the States, and as long as that was enough for them she’d be happy to stay.

She’d gotten lucky. While other girls had been chasing after gangbangers and potheads in school, her Jerome had gotten a job to support him and his grandma. He’d always been the responsible type.

His grandma had passed three years ago, and the medical bills and funeral arrangements had put a strain on their finances, enough to convince them to sell the old house to a developer and start renting. A real estate agent had assured them the Glades was going to start gentrifying and that they’d be able to get a good price.

Only the sale hadn’t yielded as much as they’d hoped, so they’d remained stuck in the Glades instead of moving to a better, safer neighborhood. It didn’t bother her so much right now. But in a few years when they might have kids on the way? She wanted them going to good schools, not the poor excuse for school she and Jerome had attended.

They did their best to save, but there was always something coming down the pipe they weren’t expecting. At least they didn’t have a car. The repairs would be killer.

There was always crazy stuff going on in Starling City these days, too. Ever since some guy had decided to become a souped up Robin Hood last fall and take out his anger issues on a bunch of rich folks. As long as he kept it to them, Anita didn’t mind so much. For the first several weeks or so, it had created a buzz of conversation through the neighborhood. This guy was trying to change things, maybe. And in some cases he did. Here or there, people got their money back.

But the wealthy were good at consolidating what they had. Companies transferred from corrupt CEOs to corrupt board rooms, money disappeared before it could be returned to the right owners. And this guy liked to drop bodies. That part, Anita wasn’t so keen on.

Because there were people getting more violent in the Glades now, too. Drug dealers, young and angry men unsupervised by the old mob hierarchy. This Hood didn’t seem to have a backup plan for any of that.

Jerome was frustrated by it far more than she was. “I mean, did we ask this guy to come here and fight for us? Stir up trouble? Did he come talk to any of us, see what we wanted?”

“No, he didn’t,” she dutifully agreed before bringing out both their dinners. She kissed him on the cheek as she went around him. “But it’d be hard for him to ask around without giving the game away, huh?”

“Yeah.” Jerome dug into his food and there was quiet from his end of the table for a while. “You know, the guys are saying there’s some woman out there now.”

“A woman?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Well, good for her.”

He grinned. “You like that? They’re saying she’s a real, how’s it go — right, gata.”

Anita arched an eyebrow. “You gonna leave me for her?”

He kept grinning. “Never, baby, you know me better than that.”

“Then she can be as good-looking as she wants.” Anita pushed her plate aside and came over to him, her arms wrapping around his shoulders. “I don’t mind.”

At work, she started hearing the rumors, too, over the next few days. “Nobody knows where she came from,” said Lanh in hushed excitement as they stood one sink apart. “But she gave a man following my roommate home a black eye the other night.”

“No kidding?”

“Yeah. It’s cool, isn’t it?”

No killing, dealing with stuff in the neighborhood. It was like someone had come in and asked around or sat in on their talks, then decided to make all their wishes and hopes come true in the form of a lady in black leather. Seemed crazy, but that was life now.

She stopped by next door to see Laurel, wanting to get her opinion. After all, wasn’t she here because of her support for vigilantism in the first place?

Only when her neighbor answered the door, it was clear she’d only just finished stitching up a nasty cut on her arm.

“Ooh, honey, what happened?”

“Just a work accident. Shears, you know?” Laurel let her in and hurriedly cleared up some bloodied napkins. “What’s up?”

Anita decided to leave her questioning behind. “Just wanted to see if you were free. We should have a night out, you know?”

“Okay, your place or mine?”

Anita waved a hand. “I was thinking a little more exciting than that. They’re saying the Verdant’s finally opening.”

Laurel raised both eyebrows. “Are they?”

“Mm-hm. Wanna check it out?”

“I don’t know…”

She leaned over the counter towards her friend. “Come on. Nights in only feel better if you go out sometimes, too. Variety’s the spice of life.”

“It’s going to be packed,” Laurel pointed out. “We’d be lucky to wait in line for three hours before getting in.”

“Couple of good looking girls like us?” Anita grinned. “Besides, you know the owner.”

Her friend shook her head. “Oliver and I aren’t that close anymore.”

“Right, which is why you call him Oliver and not ‘Queen’ or ‘my cheating bastard of an ex’,” said Anita. “Come on, billionaire boy owes you a million favors, so why not call one in? It’ll be fun. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

She watched Laurel debate it for a few minutes. “Alright. But if he says no, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He said yes, clearly, because Laurel sent her a text that afternoon saying what time they should be there. No mention of a cover fee either, which was interesting. She’d have to meet billionaire boy herself to be sure, but if Anita’s intuition was any good, she’d say Oliver Queen was still pining away for her neighbor despite his cheating past. So Anita would be happy to drink his booze and help her friend kick him to the curb if need be.

They walked to the Verdant together, skipping the line entirely by going through a back door Laurel had been told about. A man just about shorter than Jerome but beefier greeted them inside. “Laurel.”

“Mr. Diggle. This is my neighbor, Anita.”

He nodded to her. “Pleasure to meet you, miss.”

“You too. Swanky place,” she said, getting a good look around as she took steps further in. The bass was already vibrating in her bones.

“Um, if you could pass on our thanks to Oliver. I’m sure he’s very busy tonight,” Laurel was saying.

“I’m sure once he’s finished showing his family the place that he’ll be making the time. Mr. Queen’s been doing some re-evaluating lately. But I’ll let you enjoy your evening.”

“Re-evaluating?” Anita asked as they left the man to head out onto the main floor.

Laurel shook her head. “Let’s not get into that. I think our first drinks are on the house.”

The drinks were excellent, it turned out. Here and there they met a scant few familiar faces, and Anita introduced Laurel to them. She couldn’t help noticing that most of the patrons clearly weren’t from around here; too many Rolexes and real jewels on wrists. Looked like the gentrification had finally begun.

“I’m going to get us another round,” she spoke loudly into Laurel’s ear. Tonight wasn’t for thinking those kinds of things. It was for just letting loose and pretending life wasn’t so crap sometimes.

As Anita returned with the drinks, her pace slowed. There was a woman with dark hair standing behind her friend and gripping Laurel’s arm tightly. Anita ducked around a couple chattering away to get closer without drawing attention to herself.

To her surprise, Laurel seemed to recognize this stranger. “Helena?”

“Laurel, good to see you. Almost didn’t recognize you,” said the woman.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing personal, but I heard about your fall from grace. Must’ve stung when you realized Oliver wasn’t really there for you. He never is.”

“Let me go, Helena.”

“Sorry, but you’re my insurance policy. We’re going downstairs to wait for Oliver, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll come quietly.”

Anita had just about heard enough. She looked around frantically for the security — they were either at the doors or far against the walls and couldn’t see them out here in the throng of people. So she did the next thing she thought of.

“Hey!”

The woman turned towards her direction just in time for Anita’s drink to splash in her face. She staggered back, gasping in shock.

And that was when Laurel sprang into action.

Anita had been planning to take her friend’s arm and run for it, but Laurel’s arms were moving and the woman was down on the floor in seconds, her arms pinned behind her back. She kicked out with both feet, heel gouging Laurel’s leg. Laurel gave a grunt that was only barely heard over the music, sitting on the woman’s thigh hard.

“Hey!”

“What the—”

“Is it a fight?”

“Yeah! Awesome!”

There was a small crowd growing around them, and Anita felt herself pressed between people on either side. Laurel’s arm bore long scratches while she held the woman’s head in a lock Anita could swear she’d never seen outside WWE.

“Excuse me! What’s going on here?”

Anita’s eyes bugged out as suddenly Oliver Queen cut through the crowd on her right. His eyes widened for a moment before he plunged in and grabbed Laurel around the waist, pulling her off the woman. Once she was set down behind him he yanked the other woman up as well, pulling her towards the exit.

The man who let them in before took Laurel’s arm and guided her after them. “Come on, Laurel,” she thought she read off his lips.

Anita rushed after them.

Oliver Queen was shouting at the woman named Helena when they all got outside. “If you ever come after someone I care about again—”

“My father—”

“Is no longer your concern! You do not have any business in Starling, Helena, and you will stay far away from here. Or else.”

Helena’s eyes flashed with anger, but she stalked off into the night.

“Wow,” Anita breathed in the silence. Oliver Queen looked a little surprised and discomforted to find he had an audience.

“Um…”

“Figured it was better for appearance’s sake if both parties caught fighting were escorted out,” Mr. Diggle said.

“And she’s my friend, so I’m sticking with her,” Anita added in explanation.

Oliver Queen nodded before turning to Laurel, one hand touching her arm. “Are you okay?”

Laurel shrugged. “Just fine.”

“What were you thinking?” He asked next. “Helena is dangerous—”

“So I was supposed to let her take me hostage?” Laurel finished for him, eyes narrowing.

“She’s a killer, Laurel.”

Anita’s eyebrows rose at that.

“And I had it taken care of. She was hardly going to kill me if she wanted to take me somewhere.”

The two of them were in each other’s faces, close enough to share the same air. She doubted either of them noticed.

“If something had happened—”

“It didn’t. Can’t you focus on that?”

“But it could have!”

“There’s no point to wondering what could have been, Ollie! Believe me, I’ve tried!” Laurel turned around and started marching away from him, the effect ruined somewhat by a slight limp.

Oliver Queen sighed. “Laurel, wait. Let Digg look at your leg.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Then let me call you a cab. Please.”

Laurel paused, and Anita took the opening. “We’ll take a cab, yeah.”

Laurel fixed her with a frown.

“Honey, you’re bleeding.”

A few minutes later, they were bundled into a cab and leaving the Verdant. What a night out. Jerome was never going to believe this. She’d heard the odd thing here or there since Laurel had moved in and knew of her gym classes, but damn, her friend was a brawler when she wanted to be!

They were halfway home when it hit her. “Shit, that was mob girl, wasn’t it? Huntress or something? She was the one going around whacking her dad’s people.”

Laurel sighed. “Yeah.”

“Okay, then billionaire boy might have a point. Cause they were saying that girl was nuts, you know? Not somebody to get mixed up with.”

“Wasn’t trying to, believe me. But I’m not going to go along and let things happen to me anymore, Anita. That’s not who I am.”

“Probably a good attitude to have in this town. Maybe I should pick Capoeira back up,” she mused.

“Capoeira?”

“Afro-Brazilian fighting style. I took classes after school for a bit, like the Irish girls that do line dancing, you know? There was a place down by our old laundromat. Wonder if it’s still open.”

“We could take a look together. If it’s okay for others to learn,” Laurel added after a moment.

“Sure, but aren’t you busy as it is at that gym?”

Laurel shrugged. “I could make time. And anyway, we’d get to see each other.”

Anita smiled. “Alright, we’ll check it out. But after that leg of yours is better. You’re gonna need it in good condition, believe me.”

They got out in front of Laurel’s and Anita helped her into the house, insisting she help get the leg cleaned up at the least. “You got something to numb that?”

“Not really.”

“Tell me you don’t have work first thing tomorrow.”

“I can manage.”

Anita pushed her hair back. “I mean, what did that bitch want anyway? Why’d she try to take you somewhere?”

Laurel shrugged, her eyes on the floor. “She dated Ollie a few months back.”

“Oh.” Jealous ex to the extreme, then. “You need anything else?”

“No, you should get home.”

“Okay, well just text me, alright? Get plenty of sleep.”

“I will, Anita.” Laurel stiffened when Anita leaned in to hug her. It took a moment for her friend to relax in her arms. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Anita let herself out so Laurel wouldn’t have to get up right away. The younger woman still seemed a little stunned; she suspected Laurel had been the big sister and minder to so many people over the years that she’d forgotten what it was like to have someone looking out for her for a change.

She and Laurel signed up for an intermediate class after they both tested into it; her because of her prior experience and Laurel because she was already quick on her feet. Anita could tell the class was going to kick her butt and complained to Jerome about it for hours as he rubbed her feet after the first lesson.

“Guess someone was a little jealous of that woman in black after all,” he teased.

“Yeah, just you wait. My legs are gonna look fantastic. You’ll be picking your jaw off the floor.”

As the days went on and there were more growing rumors of this woman in the Glades, she felt herself newly inspired. When women looked out for each other, it made the neighborhood all the better.

Though the more she heard and the more she watched Laurel’s determined look in their classes, the more the mysterious woman seemed less like a stranger, and more like someone she knew. Crazy as that sounded.

---

Quentin had taken to keeping an ear out for crimes in the Glades. It both increased his blood pressure and soothed his nerves, because the amount of criminal activity coming out of there was unheard of. But so far, his daughter hadn’t been mixed up in any of it.

Statistically, he worried it wouldn’t last. But what could he do? He’d raised her to be fiercely independent, and his initial bad reaction when Laurel had perhaps been at her most vulnerable ensured she would never take his charity. He was lucky enough that she was still speaking to him, especially after he’d brought her mother over for a truly appalling attempt at reconnecting.

He still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He couldn’t blame his estranged wife entirely for what had happened to Sara; it wasn’t as if she could have known what would happen out at sea. Bitterly, it occurred to him that by the same token, he couldn’t blame Queen then, either. Even if the man himself believed it, he hadn’t killed Quentin’s daughter.

Even more distressing, perhaps, was how much and how little Queen and Dinah had done to try and make amends with Laurel respectively. Where Queen had been nothing but repentant, Dinah had given excuses. She hadn’t even seemed to truly grasp what she had done wrong until Laurel had spelled it out to her.

She’d left a couple weeks ago, shaken and doubly discouraged when Laurel’s old friend at the Chinese embassy had confirmed the girl in the picture with the Rockets cap wasn’t their baby girl. Just another young woman who had bought a baseball cap on any ordinary day. He hadn’t given Laurel that news yet; he suspected she’d already guessed.

He picked up and then set aside the photo on his desk with his two girls. In some ways, he felt equally distant to them these days, though he knew he was kidding himself. The damage he’d done to his and Laurel’s relationship was entirely his own doing, not a random act of nature. He should stop wasting the time and make amends.

“Got a situation on 7th and Shane Street,” an officer announced to the bullpen, snapping Quentin out of his reverie. “Might need a couple detectives, cause we’ve got witnesses.”

Quentin stood. “I’ll go.” 7th and Shane was right in the heart of the Glades. He didn’t think it was all that far from that flower shop, come to think of it.

He drove over to find a bus pulled to the side of the road. It didn’t look to be damaged any. The driver and a few passengers stood around, the latter group all waiting for rides. A few men lay on the ground, welts on their faces and black eyes starting to turn into ugly bruises as they were cuffed by the officers. He ducked under the police tape and walked over to the group of witnesses.

“Alright, can anyone tell me how this whole thing started?”

“It was the hijackers,” a man near the back mumbled.

“The what?”

“The hijackers, man.” He was nudged by a woman at his left, probably a girlfriend or wife. She eyed the gun at Quentin’s belt warily. He carefully reached for a notepad and pencil to keep his hands occupied with that.

“And who are these hijackers?”

“They’ve been hitting the buses, usually on payday, sir,” the girlfriend spoke up. “Part of a newer gang.”

“Uh-huh. Was the SCPD informed of this?”

There were murmurings. Everyone too afraid to say yes. He frowned.

“How long ago did this start?”

“Little after the Bertinelli mob fell, sir.”

“It’s been horrible. They take everything you got. Money, jewelry, smartphones. We’re sitting ducks the whole route home!”

There were a bunch of voices shouting at him now, all wanting to be heard. One woman’s voice in particular stuck out amongst the group thanks to its heavy accent; an older woman in a housemaid’s uniform under her coat.

“They wanted my chotki,” she said, showing them all a black rope with many knots and beads in a few places, tied in a cross at the end. “It is wool and wood, what could they want with that? They were brutes. But she saved us.”

“She?” Quentin asked, stepping towards her. He thought he recognized this woman. Wasn’t she one of the Queens’ people?

Scarcely had he thought it before Oliver Queen himself came running up to the yellow tape. “Raisa!”

“Mr. Oliver!”

Just his luck. Quentin headed over as Queen lifted the tape to let Ms. Raisa out. “Just a minute,” he called.

Queen turned back to him. “Detective Lance, I came here to make sure Raisa got home safely. She’s been through enough for one night.”

“She’s not in trouble. I just need her to finish her statement. Now, who is ‘she’?”

Ms. Raisa shrugged. “No one really knows. They call her ‘the woman’.” She smiled warmly. “I believe tonight she was an angel.”

“Right,” he said.

“Was that everything, Detective Lance?” Queen asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, alright. Get her home.”

The two of them left, Queen leaning down to ask his housemaid a question Quentin couldn’t hear. He turned back to the group which was gradually starting to disperse. There were no useful additions other than someone saying a woman showed up a few minutes after the hijackers forced the bus to pull over.

The Hood. Now the Woman. Just great. Why had this city all of a sudden decided to go nuts?

He swung by Laurel’s place on his way back to the station and knocked. No one answered after a minute, but the light was on. He knocked again, louder.

“Just a second!” His daughter called out. She wrenched the door open in leggings and a blue tank top. “Dad! What are you doing here?”

“Can’t I visit my daughter?” His bravado covered his nerves, but relief was his primary emotion as she stepped back to let him inside.

“Were you on a call somewhere?”

“Yeah. There’s been some trouble with the bus routes. You don’t ride those often, do you?”

“Just to visit Joanna at her mom’s. Or to get downtown if I needed to.”

“Yeah, well stay off them at night, alright? There’s been gangs hitting them.”

“I know.”

That drew him up short. It occurred to him that these days, Laurel perhaps had an even more advance warning on crime in the Glades than he did. All the more reason to hate this arrangement.

He watched with narrowed eyes as she lowered herself onto her couch with a wince.

“What’s wrong with your back?”

She stiffened and winced again. “Oh, just work. I was lifting a lot of mulch bags today.”

Quentin shook his head. His poor girl had always had a willowy build. She was delicate, even if he’d made sure she knew how to defend herself in a tight spot. “You’re not meant for this kind of work, Laurel. We gotta find you something else.”

“This is doing me fine. Besides, I’m pretty sure to get law work, I’d have to leave Starling.”

“Shouldn’t have discouraged you from taking that corporate job in San Francisco,” he muttered.

“Well, I’m glad you did,” she told him. “I’m glad for the help I was able to give people at CNRI and for the help I can hopefully still give people here.”

He sighed. “Hopefully. You know, you can do anything you set your mind to, honey. I really do believe that. But what’s your plan here?”

She smiled. “I’m figuring it out, dad. I promise.”

He left soon after, since he was technically still on the clock at the precinct. Laurel told him she would head to bed shortly to rest up, and he made a note to grab some of those icy hot packs for her at the store. He thought he could play it off like an overdue Christmas present to get her to accept them. Hell, he owed her enough Christmases and birthdays from the last five years he could probably supply her through next March. If she was still breaking her back doing this work by then.

Laurel wasn’t the only one who needed a plan. Quentin had been keeping an eye on Daily in the close to two months since he’d been back on the force. There were no obvious slip ups, but he could just tell there was something off about the man. Call it his gut. Now with this bus hijacking situation having been swept under the rug for as long as it had been, he was starting to wonder just how many of his own people he could trust.

Was it genuine malice or just apathy for a neighborhood that saw enough hard times already? He wasn’t sure which was worse at the end of the day. But it was causing unrest, causing more and more people to turn to alternate means to seek justice.

By the end of the week, they saw an example of the worst of it; some guy in the subway tunnels committing extrajudicial killings and calling himself the Savior. The Hood had been forced to put him down to save the likes of that kid Harper. The Hood at least seemed to understand that vigilantes couldn’t be allowed free reign of this city, even if he continued to operate in it.

So he finally made the call.

Quentin stood out back behind his apartment building, the vigilante phone in his hand. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the precinct when he made this call. Just thinking about if someone caught him in the act — maybe Daily, maybe Hall with her earnest regard for the law — had his hands shaking.

“Detective?”

“Yeah, listen, we gotta talk. With everything going on in this city, with the force, I’m having trouble deciding who to trust. Now I don’t trust you,” he wanted to make clear. “But you’re a known quantity. I know what you want, what you’re willing to do.”

“And how does that help you?”

“It helps me because I think there’s some people on the force I can’t trust, and I don’t know what they want either.” Could be money, could be they felt threatened, could be they were always rotten. “Now I know you’ve figured out how to spy on us. I need you to tell me who’s on the take.”

“It’s not something I was concerning myself with.”

“Well start concerning yourself with it. You want people to stop popping up like this Savior or this Woman, it starts with law enforcement being a trusted and respected institution. You can’t tell me you expect things to magically stay better whenever you finally decide to hang that hood up?”

There was a long pause. “I’ll look into it, Detective. Keep the phone on you. I’ll call.”

Then the line went dead. Quentin breathed in and out once and headed back into his building. He hadn’t exactly done anything wrong. He’d simply pointed out an issue the Hood had likely been tangentially aware of and asked him to direct his attention towards it. Whatever happened after… well, maybe he was partly to blame.

Would Laurel ever call him a hypocrite if she found out about this or what?

#lauriver #laurel x oliver #laurel lance #oliver queen #arrow #green arrow #black canary #my writing #bird in a storm

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kensboytoy · 5 years ago

Text

Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!

Title: Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! Fandom: Smile For Me Pairings: Dr. Boris Habit/Reader (Gender Neutral) Ratings: Explicit

Flower Child.

The name was almost an insult at this point when you heard that poor excuse for a Muppet turn to the camera and speak directly into your soullike it had been watching you night and day. You knew from day one that Dr. Habit wasn’t the goody-goody-gumdrops man filled with rainbows and sunshine - hell, most folks in the Habitat knew it too and were unsettled. So why did you all stay? Were so many people rooted in place from crippling depression?

Or maybe something intoxicating was in the air.

Either way, your campaign to brighten up these people’s lives wouldn’t stop with a few measly puppety threats. Simple requests led to big smiles. And wasn’t that the entire reason that you were there?

But a King sat on the ivory throne of pearly white teeth, scowling at how his kingdom was unraveling. How you were becoming the Flower Hero and he nothing more than a knave. A bubbling jealousy was brewing within the scorned man. He wanted to make everyone smile! They didn’t deservethe free-wheeling right to do so unless he commanded! The Big Event was almost here and you were ruining it.

[Continue Reading or Read on AO3!]

Oh, he could get rid of you easily. However, suspicion would grow if he didn’t plan it right. If you vanished without a trace? Well, he could say that you went back home. Although the people in Habitat were naive, there was no way they’d fall for that. You were too involved here - you had some sort of stake in Habitat now. Like a tick on a dog’s back. Sucking the life out of Dr. Habit and making his patience wear thin.

As night fell upon The Habitat, you sauntered your way through the halls to get to your room. You let out a languished yawn, your eyes growing heavy. The sun had only just started to hide behind the hills when you started to feel funny. Not the usual tiredness from a long day. You felt woozy. Steadying yourself on the guardrail leading up to your room, your free had clutched at your head. There was no one around to help you up the tedious flights of stairs that now felt like climbing a tall mountain.

Slowly, you crumpled, defeated by the sudden crushing weight of gravity. You called out. But nobody came.

”It’s so very totally rude to keep sleebing.”

The darkness that clouded your mind was starting to come back. A voice that sounded like TV static started to trickle into your ears. You swore that you were drowning in the abyss before your lungs finally reacted to inhale much needed oxygen. A few shaky breaths and you finally started to come to. The stinging smell of copper filled your nostrils as you took in long, greedy breaths as if they would be your last. What was that smell?

”Ignoring me! You’re ignoring me! May-be… I oughta wake you up, up, up!”

The voice was louder. Mocking you. A deep, mocking voice laced with an accent your dizzy brain couldn’t place at the moment.

Before you could find the strength or the voice to reply to the voice, you felt something sharp against your cheeks. They felt like daggers against your flesh but you weren’t quite convinced they had cut you. No, they were prodding you. Fishing around and then - then something was on your mouth. Pulling. Pulling your mouth open tight.

That was when your eyes snapped open with a sudden bolt of adrenaline. Panicked, your breathing quickened as you scanned the inquisitive face peering at you now. Green. Green…

“Ah, there you is! Wakey-wakey!” the madman giggled. It was his hands that were on your face. Sharp fingers that felt like claws were still adjusting whatever was holding your mouth open.

“Doctor?” you croaked, voice breaking apart from how dry your throat was. It felt like sandpaper just trying to rattle out that word alone.

Dr. Habit was smiling at you, though it wasn’t exactly sincere like all of the posters of him had been. There was menace behind it - a threat.

“Ah, look-y who the smarty-er-pants is!” Dr. Habit cooed mockingly. “Oh, so very smart for guessing who I am. But I bet you still don’t know where you are~!”

With your heart still racing and the new stinging of your face, you let your eyes frantically glance around as your vision came back to you. Sterile. Weirdly cramped. An office? Glancing down, you noticed your immobile form all strapped up to what looked to be an examination chair. Oh. You knew where you were now.

“Your-”

“Thaaaaat’s righty-right, Flower Brat! You’re in my office! A very special appointment for a very special little Flower.”

You heard a swift kick of his foot against the metal pedal of the chair’s release that sent your seat in an uncomfortable backwards position. A yelp of surprise left you as well as an alarming amount of saliva down your chin that your mouth was finally producing again. Dr. Habit was laughing at the sight of how pathetic you looked. He was circling around you now - almost prancing - like a shark to a minnow.

“How dee-sgusting! This is the freak that all the Habitians are smiling about? But look at you! You’re a mess.” He was brought to more laughter with a series of titters that he tried his best to keep inside. “And we haven’t even started the actual procedure!”

“Procedure?” you parroted.

Dr. Habit scowled at that, jolly facade slipping as his voice dropped to a low register.

“It ees not polite to talk with your mouth full.”

You were about to question him when he shoved dampened cotton balls into your mouth. The numbing effect of whatever they were soaked with hit you pretty quickly. It wasn’t like you were feeling any better from being drugged up previously. You had finally pieced together that the copper smell was laughing gas. Though, that was what you were hoping for.

A whimper pushed through all the cotton, filling the air. It was like music to him.

“Bettur? Just let your body realize your natural place, Flower Brat. I can see that it wants to let go of aaaaall those sill-ee thoughts you have! All those terrible worries. How preoccupied you’ve been with other people’s problems.”

Dr. Habit was closer to you now, one hand reaching down to cup your cheek. He rubbed you gingerly, pretending that he was filled with concern for the one that he had drugged up and tied down. You could see that he played stupid very well.

“Even after I told you not to interfere,” he growled, claws clenching against your skin. You whimpered, afraid of the power that he had. “You just don’t lee-ssen! What do you hope to prove, hm? That you are better than me?”

You shook your head frantically.

His eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring. It was clear he didn’t believe you.

“You do! You think you are better-er than me!”

Huffing like an impudent child, you felt his fingers back on you. They slipped into your open mouth eagerly and he bent down to examine. Dr. Habit frowned several times and made small ‘hmm’s’ and ‘oh’s!’ as he explored. The sudden focus on your dental hygiene was making you squirm under him. Though, perhaps it was also the intimate nature of a deranged man on top of you, prodding and poking your mouth with sharp fingers. You felt like one wrong move and he’d cut you open.

Dr. Habit could see that you were watching him - he smiled when he met your gaze.

“Curiouz creature, hm? Want to know what I’m looking for?”

Slowly, you nodded.

That certainly caused him to guffaw.

“Well, I am a dentist, silly-Billy! So I’m looking for any yucky-ucky cavities. Whiiiich-” He dug his index finger right into a molar.

You cried out, bucking against your restraints. Dr. Habit snorted at that and pushed down harder. Tears stung your eyes.

“Naughty, naughty! Such an ungrateful little Flower Brat, you don’t even bother to take care of your teeth!” His expression shifted again so that he was glowering at you. Practically a snarl. “Such naughty people always get to have their teeth. Why should you be so lucky, hm? You obviously do not care enough to take care of them.”

Another sharp push but, this time, it felt like he was trying to pull it back out. You quickly realized that the fluid in the cotton balls did not actually numb any pain at all. It indeed made it shock your mouth with more of an impact. Crying out, you begged for him to stop. Dr. Habit couldn’t hear you in his mad frenzy.

He reached for his tools resting nearby and produced a rusty pair of pliers. Panicking, you began to thrash. You knew the pain would be unimaginable if he pulled it out.

“Stop squir-erming! It’ll be over quickly…”

The rusted metal was tightened around you tooth and-

Yank!

You screamed. Howled in pain as the molar was plucked from you. With tears down your face, you shook and cried in Dr. Habit’s grip. He looked the molar over and tsked. It indeed had a large cavity in it, making it not perfect and shiny like he enjoyed. He let it clatter to the collection tray before he turned back to you.

“Pleasth!” you begged, mouth still forced open with drool and blood running down your chin. “I’m saw-wee!”

Dr. Habit paused, looking at you with a slight bit of pity. Well, you had thought so. But his finger went straight back into your mouth was the hole was.

You cried out again, screaming until your voice was hoarse. The stinging pain of the new wound quickly began to numb. It might have been your brain trying to process it into something that you could handle.

So neither of you had expected a moan.

Dr. Habit’s eyes widened in surprise, mouth agape and ready to question or belittle you. Curiously, he pressed again. Another loud moan fell from your lips in between your sobs.

“Oh? Whazzis…?”

He let your blood coat his finger and then slowly traced it on the roof of your mouth so you’d be forced to taste the stinging metallic taste. Then, he pulled away and sucked on it. He shivered. This was terribly naughty!

“Do you like this?” he whispered in a sharp, accusatory hiss.

You tried to shake your head.

Dr. Habit carefully cupped your face between his hands and this time let his thumb push into your mouth. You whimpered, body arching up towards him. With his hand clamping your jaw open, he touched the freshly opened hole and watched as you practically danced under him. Well, this was new, wasn’t it?

Never before had Dr. Habit had a patient that liked this. No, usually they screamed their little lungs out and begged for their lives. You would never know if this man spared those who he harvested or that he had more skeletons in his closet.

“Liar, liar, plants in a fire! I can feel your bod-dee twitching when I play.”

That sing-songy voice was enough to make your stomach turn. You wanted to be sick. However, the fire in your loins was far too distracting. You began to pant. Hard, heavy breaths meant you were inhaling more of that godforsaken gas into your lungs. But you couldn’t help it! This was entirely new to you too. You should have been screaming and sobbing and you were letting tears fall down your cheek, you were also leaning into Habit’s sickening touch.

Helpless eyes watched as the man examined you to try an re-calculate what to do. You had already ruined his first set of plans for the Big Event and now you had the audacity to make him change course for torturing you!

However, the morbid curiosity that Dr. Habit had in this precise moment was almost enough to let you off the hook. Almost.

“Even in my ah-tempts to hurb you and make you pay, you still-ee manage to screw it all up, Flower Brat!” he nearly roared with a snarl before that sweet smile came and stretched across his face.

Like nails on a chalkboard, he scraped his pliers against the metal of the dental chair to make you jump. You let out a gasp, dreading what would come next. He loved watching you squirm in anticipation. Your fear was so very palpable that it was yummy in his tummy. The cold metal of the tool that had robbed you of a tooth tapped mockingly against your cheek. He dragged it along your jaw and stopped at your chin.

“We could always see how many more teeth I can pull from your puh-retty leetle mouth to make you orgasm.”

Your eyes were wide open and looking at him in terror. The shock ran through you - or, at least you hoped it was shock and not something else.

“Wh-wha-”

Habit pressed the pliers to your lips to shut you up.

“Oh, leetle Flower Brat! You are having a big se-cer-ret from your dear Doc-tor! I cannot per-scribe the right medi-i-cine if you don’t fess up to all your dirty daydreams~!”

He yanked your mouth open again and carelessly plucked another tooth. You screamed, unable to take this flash of pain ringing in your jaw. Choking back another cry, you felt the blood drip down your lips before you realized that he had taken one of your front teeth. However, instead of shoving his claws back into your mouth, you suddenly felt his warm, stale breath pour over your face.

Now you were staring directly into those bloodshot yellow eyes as he was a hair’s breadth away from you. Body tensing up, you were frozen by that stare. You wanted to pull away. To try and jerk free from his grip. What was he trying to pull - aside from teeth, of course.

Before your anxious thoughts could get too rapt up in the ‘what if’ game, you felt his lips against yours. Startled, you moved to pull away but felt his hand encase the back of your head to hold you steady. Like a panicked animal, you began to fear the worst. Then you felt his tongue slide into where your tooth had been and it finally clicked.

He was trying to turn you on.

Using your own embarrassment was far more fun than just simply robbing you of your teeth. No, he wanted you to feel shame that you were enjoying this. Sweet little Flower Freak was getting off on the mutilation of your own body.

You began to weep freely and tried to ignore the white hot pleasure his tongue was quickly achieving. It slid directly into the fresh wound and pushed its slimy warmth with enough force to produce another lovely moan from you.

All your worries were starting to melt away.

Your body, perhaps from the sheer trauma of it all, was sending signals of pleasure rather than pain. The stinging sensation of the open gash in your mouth was beginning to welcome the sensation of his tongue. Like it was the perfect band-aid for your lil’ whoopsie.

The longer Habit kissed you and let his tongue explore your mouth, the more you finally let your body go limp in his hold. No more struggling. Dr. Habit knew exactly what you wanted and would prescribe the perfect medication.

“Theeeere we go, leetle on,” he cooed encouragingly. “Let your nasty body realize its place, hm? You know-e you cannot fight against such a strong Doc-tor like me! I would crush you easily.”

That dangerous look in his eyes was proof enough of that. But he was right. You couldn’t fight back. You couldn’t win. Trying to convince the mad doctor to let you go was a moot point. So you might as well just enjoy the last moments of your life and let the sick bastard indulge your newfound fetish.

“All you wanted to do was fix the smiles of everyone else… But maybe leetle Flower’s smile looks funnier than everyone else’s! May-bee…”

Habit’s hands pulled your cheeks so you were forced to smile your new broken smile as blood continued to dribble down your chin.

“May-bee Flowers do not smile right because there is something naughty behind those teefs! A perverted little freak who wants big bad Doctors like Habit to be making their smiles less dirty.”

Slowly, he leaned in and licked a stripe against the top row of still intact teeth.

“Habit could fix you,” he suggested, a darker tone slipping in again. “Fix you up-up-up! Make smile less dirty by cleaning it.”

With another push of the pedal connected to the chair, you were flat on your back now. The hulking figure was on top of you, blocking out the small light that had been shining in your face. He looked to be nothing more than a shadow creature now, leering down at you like a piece of meat instead of a ‘patient’.

“Yes, yes! Habit fixy! All smiles! Even naughty-naughties who wanna ruin ever-ree-thing!”

You were barely focusing on what he was saying as he slid your legs open. Fear washed over you again as you started to wonder what ‘fixing’ you meant. The answer was swiftly rubbed against you through the fabric of Habit’s pants, rubbing your inner thigh before he pushed it against your throbbing sex.

Letting out a choked cry, you bucked to try and shove him off you. But he was far too strong and was now pinning a good chunk of his weight to keep you still. The sharp zip! of his pants was enough to alert you to the terror and gravity of the situation.

“Don’t worry, leetle patient. Doc-tor Habit will indulge your icky fantasies with special medicine.”

A mewl left you as your body trembled. However, you found the arousal at the pit of your stomach branching off and seeping into every inch of you. The laughing gas made you feel as light as a feather and so easy to mold like putty.

Habit stared down at you tenderly as he rubbed his cock against your clothed body. The sensation was enough for him to sigh in relief. He wouldn’t have admitted it, but seeing you so fearful and horny really turned him on. And Habit so rarely took care of his own needs. So this was an extra special occasion!

He bent your legs upwards and let your thighs push together. There, he let his cock slip between them and start absentmindedly hotdogging them. The sight sent you further into your own madness. You begged for him to stop but your hips rocked to try and meet his. This was torture. Complete agony!

Deciding that you needed more pleasure, his hands went back to your mouth to play with you. Eager, you reached into his touch and let your face be cupped in the palms of his massive hands. His thumbs parted your lips and pushed in. It only took his sharp fingertips to push against your two new holes for you to greet him with little moans. You were already on the brink! You just needed more of his touch.

More of Habit talking down to you and degrading you. You liked being his nuisance if this is what it meant. You’d make everyone in the Habitat so happy if it meant he would get to reward you with these unwanted advances. The sick part in your twisted brain wanted to see how far you could push him before he’d simply take what he wanted.

You couldn’t tell if this was you or the effects of the gas anymore. With your brain turning into goo, you were helplessly in the hands of Dr. Boris Habit. You wondered where his filthy mind would go with a new pliant little patient underneath him. From how much his cock was throbbing, you guessed he liked this too.

And he was big. Of course he would be from just how tall he was. A towering giant over all of the Habitat. His shadow could have easily swallowed you whole! You dread to think about that creature you had seen in the corner of your room at night. Waiting for you to slip up. And now you had. Fallen right into the spider’s trap.

Small, drunken giggles left you as Habit played with your jaw. He pushed and wiggled the rest of your teeth to see if anymore needed to come out immediately. The force on one of your molars made you moan, realizing that you had another cavity there. Taking this opportunity, he tugged out that tooth too and fingered the new hole. Your blood was a lovely little lube that stained his green fingers nicely.

The adrenaline he got from hurting you like this was enough to make him moan. Habit joined in with your giggles, pleased as punch to see you finally so happy.

“Oh? I am making you smile by doing such naughty things to you? Do you like the Doc-tors special medicine, leetle Flower?” he crooned.

You nodded, eyes half-lidded and your mouth willingly wide open while he played. You were in heaven. The pain was pure pleasure now and making every nerve-ending tingle so delightfully. Having him do this to you was amazing! You were oh so grateful to be his patient.

“Good! Now you know how generous I am! You comin-k in here and ruining all my wonderful plans! I was oh-so mad at you, yes I was! I wanted to stra-ngle the li-iife outta you… But I like your broken smile.”

Habit was starting to drool. Strands of it fell into your mouth as he fucked between your thighs faster. Harder. So hard that it made the unstable dentist chair beneath you too creak and whine noisily.

“Because it is a smile for me! Mine, mine mine~! You are smiling for Habit now! And I hab it aaaaallll to myself foreber and eber!”

His own maniacal giggles surrounded you.

You were smiling at just how happy he was! It was so infectious to see Dr. Habit smile so much. You were finally making him happy too…

Pleased with yourself, you let yourself fully dive into your madness. You giggled and groaned, begging for him to keep you. You wanted to be his! Why waste time in such a silly world like the Habitat when you could stay with Habit forever. That sounded much nicer.

Habit bent down and greedily kissed you, swiping his tongue over your teeth and the holes of the ones he had stolen over and over, increasing his pace the harder he bucked against your warm body. He was close. So achingly close. The noises coming from him were guttural. Needy. He wanted you to cum to fully put you in your place. To overwhelm you with utter shame even after you came back to your senses.

Your arousal was hitting you so hard that it was blinding. All you could see were the rows upon rows of Habit’s teeth curled into a smile and his yellow eyes shifting to a deep red. His hands that grabbed the sides of your face were now letting those sharp nails dig into the soft flesh, poking holes in your skin with sweet new cuts that would punctuate your broken smile.

Then, all at once, as you felt the overwhelming darkness begin to eat you up, you came. You screamed out his name and begged for him to keep you and to fix your smile.

Habit watched in pure childlike wonder as you bucked wildly, gasping for air. The sight of what he had done to you - how he ruined your body all for himself and that you were begging for more sent him well over the edge.

Ropes of cum shot onto your stomach before he moved up, opening your mouth and letting the hot, salty liquid shoot into your mouth. The sting of it hitting the gaps in your smile burned. But your loopy smile was stretched out as you took every drop.

Dr. Habit panted for a moment before tucking himself away and standing at full attention. His hand came to pet your head in a more tender moment, his smile never fading. You had truly made him smile from your depravity.

“Round one of Dr. Habit’s speshul medicine was a sucks-yes!” he cooed proudly. “I think it is beddy-byes for Flowers before phase two…”

You were about to protest when you felt a syringe pierce into the crook of your arm. A warm liquid filled you before you lost your fight to sleep while hearing Habit sing a soft lullaby in his mother tongue:

“Bayu-bayushki-bayu, bayu-bayushki-bayu…”

#Smile34me #Works of Oz

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swagtastic-bougie-pompadour · 1 year ago

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Peeps! I have news on the most earth-shattering event of this year...

It's time for Homecoming, baby!

That's right! All day on Friday, September 15th, we'll be hosting students, teachers, and alums alike for a day of battling, sports, and good dancing! Perhaps even headed by... Homecoming Royalty...?

If you're interested in Homecoming, you gotta be in the know! I've gotten a little help from my tech savvy friend Penny and made a "Gliscord" you can all check out, whether you wanna plan, wanna show up looking #glam, or just chat!

Just remember this is a school function, so don't go too crazy... 'kay?

//OOC: Thank you all so much for the interest in this silly event! Again, the main thing to remember is that it's low-stakes, silly, and a little cross-universal! A decent amount of it will be taking place through the Discord, so if you're at all interested definitely pop in!

//Even if you don't have a character participating in the event, you're welcome to say hi and watch things go down in the Discord. And you're welcome to have characters that aren't directly tied to Naranja-Uva come around, too!

//Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks again! ^^

-Mod Ace

#clivespiration #pkmn irl #pokeblogging #naranja-uva homecoming #event post #ooc below cut

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ohjohnno · 5 years ago

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Outrageous Fortune Reviewcap: S1E08 (”My Dearest Foe”)

Well, now I see why I didn’t remember what happened in this episode. The answer, it turns out, is nothing much. This isn’t technically a filler episode - a couple of important new characters are introduced, and a plot thread is introduced at the end that will continue through just about the whole rest of the show - but the actual events of the episode are mostly inconsequential. Accordingly, I won’t spend too much time on ‘em here.

The first plot concerns Cheryl, who has now taken up a job at an insurance company. Nobody except her is especially happy with this - insurance companies, we’re informed, are “the scum of the Earth” - but Cheryl seems to like it.

Things, alas, are not as they seem. The branch Cheryl works for turns out to be running a neat little scam, the girls there all approving each others’ bogus insurance claims; the boss lady, Penny, has been overseeing it thus far, but is looking to move on and wants Cheryl to be her replacement. She only hired her, it turns out, because of who she was, and Cheryl is quietly exasperated; no matter how she tries, she can’t seem to outrun her past. Penny also suggests that another reason she hired her was because she thinks of her as a kindred spirit in having been victimized by a terrible man; Cheryl’s not overly enthused with that suggestion either.

After a little deliberation, she turns down the offer. Penny didn’t expect that, and now fears that she’s told Cheryl enough to make her a threat; she tries to ship her off to a different branch in a place called “Pakuranga” (apparently way off elsewhere in Auckland). Cheryl, feeling betrayed, indulges in a bit of the old family tradition and steals her car, pawning it off to pay some maintenance bills; Penny fires her, and that, one might think, would be the end of it. But Penny, in a fit of pique, calls the cops on Cheryl over a stolen item she spotted in their house one time, and after an incredibly bored visit from Judd and Hickey (who have much better things to be doing), she pays Penny another visit, telling her in no uncertain terms to leave her the fuck alone before she has her friends rob the pants off her and everyone else in the office. Penny backs down.

“For your information, I’m nobody’s victim,” she tells her. Hmm. No comment.

The other main plot concerns Pascalle, and there’s barely anything there. She gets a call from the modeling agency she got registered at before she left the strip club, and they’re considering her for a charity shoot about animals. While in the waiting room, she bumps into a girl named Chantel Lazenby, a fellow model with the agency who also used to be a schoolmate. She used to be very fat, apparently, but she certainly isn’t anymore, and Van is of the belief that she’s “a dyke” (mostly because she rejected his advances once). What follows is an extremely low-stakes rivalry between the two as they both attempt to get the modelling job, mostly involving Pascalle and Chantel having a couple of glorified drinking contests and a few silly lesbian jokes. Eventually, Chantel is successful, and Pascalle is left in the dust, bitterly assuring herself that “Chantel was fat once, and you can’t escape genetics.”

That’s really it, as far as plots go. Doesn’t sound like enough to fill up an episode, does it? Well, it really isn’t - and it doesn’t. The rest of the episode is filled, mostly, with little things; interactions between various characters that have little plot significance but are fun to watch anyway. They’re the meat of this episode, and they make it a lot more likable than such an inconsequential episode really has any right to be.

For a start, Loretta - perhaps thanks to the success of her atrocity last episode - is in the very best mood we’ve ever seen her in the show so far; she’s bubbly and perky, grinning constantly, cracking jokes at everyone’s expense at the speed of light while making herself a constant nuisance for Cheryl, and, as much as I kinda hate to admit it considering what a monster she’s proven herself to be, she is absolutely delightful. We also learn that she’s one of those film nerds who considers Showgirls to be an underrated masterpiece, although she might just be teasing Van there.

There’s a running joke involving a big wooden cuckoo clock that Van (at Loretta’s behest) bought Cheryl for her birthday; it’s an ugly old thing, and it turns out to be stolen (not surprising, since Van bought it from Eric), and Cheryl hates it, which of course means Loretta completely loves it, repeatedly putting it back up on the wall every time Cheryl takes it down. “It’s a battle of wills,” she says, and it’s both hilarious and kind of oddly adorable. Also, lest we forget, Loretta having the idea to get Cheryl a present in the first place is significant - there’s a heart in there after all, it turns out, even if it behaves very strangely sometimes.

We also learn that she used to be great at Irish dancing, which will eventually be important (though not for a very long time). Elsewhere, we find Ted dealing with the fallout from last episode in his own way: poker, at the Wests’ dining table. He’s joined, over the course of the episode, by Munter (which is significant, since that makes this the first time he’s done anything plot-wise that isn’t related to Van), Eric (who’s still upset over Cheryl leaving the crime business), a new character called Falani (a very large, very crooked Samoan mechanic who will become a major supporting character eventually, and who also fixes Cheryl’s car this episode), and eventually Rochelle (who you may remember from episode four). It’s pretty high-stakes for them - they’re all playing for money - but it’s very low-stakes for the viewer, and it is also, possibly, the best part of the entire episode.

Nothing much happens because nothing much needs to. It’s oddly relaxing to watch, actually; just a bunch of nice, simple jokes about an odd cast of various bogans playing poker against each other, subtly revealing things about themselves in the process. Falani goes on lengthy monologues about his skill at making love to his wife, but proves markedly less skilled at the patient, analytical art of the game; Munter is remarkably laid-back, enjoying softly making fun of Falani’s bad luck perhaps more than the game itself; Eric is perpetually grumpy, except when he disappears into the West bathroom and decides, for some reason, to try on some of Pascalle’s moisturizer (possibly thinking it’s Cheryl’s), which is hilarious; Rochelle is arrogant and remarkably skilled. But none of them are as good as Ted, who cleans them all out with aplomb, rarely speaking or changing his facial expression. “I feel much better now,” he says to Cheryl at one point; Cheryl isn’t so enthused with all these bums lazing around her house, but she can see his point.

Ted, at one point, has a one-on-one chat with Cheryl, noting with neither praise nor condemnation how the Wests “have never been much good at what you might call actual jobs”. We’ll see how that statement ages. Wolf turns up just long enough to justify Grant Bowler’s paycheck, his scene pretty much pointless except for how funny it is; he baked her a birthday cake, apparently, but when a car failure prevented her from arriving at the prison to pick it up “it got eaten”, and now he doesn’t want to talk about it, moping like a teenage boy behind the prison desk.

There’s two sides to this show, basically, and this episode is the lighter one. It’s all very low-stakes and very whimsical, and if that means nothing much of consequence happens, well, that’s okay. We get to see the three West children who still live at home laughing and having fun with each other, their lives all mostly tranquil for once, giving us something of a control group for when things start to go wrong. We see the West household in a moment of peace, nothing particularly awful happening to it, nothing calamitous getting in the way of the atmosphere. It’s nice. I like it.

There’s one more thing. In this episode, we’re introduced to Kacey, an old friend of Cheryl’s with “shit taste in blokes” (her words) and a passion for designing undergarments. She talks, at first, of starting up a business, and eventually, having lost her latest job, Cheryl agrees to join her in her venture. The results from this pairing will last a very long time indeed, and Kacey will end up becoming an extremely significant character. That’s all yet to come, though.

This episode also has possibly my favorite ending to any of the less important Outrageous Fortune episodes ever. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. Man, this show could be funny when it wanted to. And here, for the most part, that’s all it wants to do. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. After the last episode, it’s nice to have a breather. As I recall, actual important stuff kicks in again next episode. I will see you then.

#Antonia Prebble #Siobhan Marshall #antony starr #Robyn Malcolm #grant bowler #television #outrageous fortune #Frank Whitten #rachel lang #Gutter Black #nz

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doodlelolly0910 · 6 years ago

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Once Upon a Christmas Eve

A/N: Merry Christmas @princesswan I was your Secret Santa this year! I hope you like this little piece I've put together for you and I hope it posts correctly (I've never queued anything before lol). Thanks to @cssecretsanta2k18 for putting together such an awesome event!

*This is unbeta'd and any mistakes are my own*

“It started with a kiss.

Well, to be most accurate, it started a bit before that, as many fairytales do.

Let's just start from the beginning, shall we?

Once upon a time, there was a boy. A man, really. And the man, while devilishly handsome, was very lonely.

Now, the man was very fortunate and he had many friends. He had a job he loved working on a great ship, an older brother who he was very close with, but something was missing. Let's call the man Killian.

It was the start of the Christmas season, not so very long ago, and Killian was feeling especially low. He had just broken off his engagement with a woman who he thought he was very much in love with and, in complete honesty, he was feeling quite sorry for himself. So he decided to meet his friend at the local… tavern. Killian had been waiting for his friend to show up for almost an hour that cold winter’s night and he was beginning to get impatient. He had already drank far too much, er, eggnog that night and he was in a mood of sorts. Killian was sure his friend, the idiot Will Scarlett, had blown him off completely. So he sat alone and drank his eggnog in relative peace.

Killian was sure he was broadcasting his ill aura to all around him, souring the Christmas spirit in the air with his grinchiness, but, as it turned out, he was mistaken. He heard a voice from behind him.

‘Buy you another?’ it said and when Killian turned around, there was a beautiful blonde woman standing behind him. Now, Killian was no shy lad, but remember, he was intent on wallowing in his sorrows this particular evening and he was very much not interested in company. Unless, of course, Will bloody Scarlett had deigned to grace the tavern with his presence so Killian could give him a piece of his mind.

So he told the woman, ‘No, thank you, lass. I'm waiting on someone.’ But the woman was persistent, intent on getting Killian's attention.

‘You have an accent! English?’ she asked in her own accent, Australian, perhaps, but that's inconsequential. Killian was trying to be polite, but he had little patience for anyone that evening. Nevertheless, he was a gentleman, and a gentleman mustn't be rude to a fair lady if he can avoid it.

‘Aye,’ he told her, because he had come from England with his brother, Liam, Scarlett, and his former fiancée about ten years before because the ship of his dreams had gone up for sale in a city called Boston, but he didn't have the money to buy the ship and have it brought to England. So he came to it instead.

‘You're cute,’ the woman told him shamelessly, placing her hand on his arm. ‘Are you sure you don't want another drink?’

Killian looked at the woman again. He could feel how fake his smile was but he just couldn't bring himself to be any friendlier to the poor girl in his sorry state.

‘I'm quite sure, love, thank you,’ he said. ‘I'm still working on this one and, as I said, I'm waiting for someone.’

The woman looked undeterred, perhaps having had too much eggnog herself that evening, and she moved closer to him. ‘You've been alone all night, I don't think she's coming,’ she told him and Killian was beginning to get very uncomfortable. He began looking around the tavern for exits he could possibly make his escape through when a hand landed on his opposite arm.

‘There you are,’ a new melodic voice said and when Killian turned, he found himself stunned into speechlessness, for surely he was now in the presence of an angel.

There before him stood the most beautiful creature he had ever encountered. Her long blonde hair fell in golden curls over her shoulders, hiding the buttons of the form fitting red sweater she wore. She had green eyes, the kind that sparkled with mischief, but were also deep and soulful, like she'd lived a much harder life than most but came out a stronger person on the other side. She was cool and confident, exuding a radiant inner beauty that was only matched by her breathtaking external features. Killian had never in his life seen a more lovely lass than she.

‘I've been looking all over for you,’ she said, her hand wandering up Killian's shoulder as she tucked herself into his side. He was absolutely gobsmacked, be it from her presence or the ru- er, eggnog he'd been drinking, he'd never know, but that didn't stop him from racking his fuzzy brain trying to remember why she might have sought him out. ‘Who's this?’ she asked, nodding her dimpled chin to his other side and suddenly Killian remembered the other woman.

She was a pretty, spritely thing, but she couldn't hold a candle to the angel. The first woman, Killian had noticed, was now upset, but refusing to relinquish her hold on his arm, despite the angel's clear claim being staked.

‘I'm the one who kept him company while he was sitting up here all by himself,’ the woman said, quite nastily. The angel was unperturbed, her hand finding the back of his neck, and he was unashamed to say the simple touch gave him goosebumps.

‘Well, thanks for keeping my boyfriend company, I appreciate it. Can we buy you a drink?’ the angel asked and put her arms around Killian's shoulder, clearly staking her claim. He shrugged and played along with his savior. He allowed himself to touch her for the first time and slipped his own arm around her waist. It felt right, having her in his arms. Like she just fit there.

‘He never mentioned a girlfriend,’ the other woman said.

‘Well, here I am,’ the angel replied. ‘And we are going to go find a table, if you didn't need anything else.’ She grasped the hand Killian had on her waist in her own and began to pull him away. The other woman tugged on his other arm and held him in place. The look that came over his savior’s face, one of challenge and dark amusement, was one he would never forget.

Before Killian even knew what was happening, the blonde avenger had seized Killian by the collar of his jacket and her lips met his. He felt like he'd come alive again, months of heartache melting away as she kissed him. He couldn't help but to kiss her back, completely giving in to the spark that had ignited between them. Beneath the kiss itself, which was earth shaking enough as it was, a glimmer of hope rekindled in his soul.

Killian didn't notice, being too enraptured by his savior angel and their kiss, but the other woman had left without another word. The angel pulled away from him and gave him a beautiful smile, then patted him on the shoulder.

‘You looked really uncomfortable,’ she told him. ‘Sorry if I overstepped.’

Killian was surprised by her apology, having thought his gratefulness had been written all over his face. He needed to let the angel know he appreciated her.

So he told her, ‘Not at all. I wasn't amenable to company this evening and she wasn't getting the hint, clearly. I'm just fortunate that you came along to save me.’

She smiled at Killian again, a dazzling smile that lit up her gorgeous green eyes from within. He couldn't believe how beautiful she was and he thought for a moment the eggnog might have had him hallucinating.

‘You're welcome, then,’ the angel replied. ‘I better get back to my friends, but it was nice to meet you…’

‘Killian,’ he filled in for her. ‘Killian Jones.’

She nodded, that lustrous curtain of golden curls moving with her.

‘Well, Killian Jones, I hope you have a good rest of your night.’ And with that, she turned to walk away. Killian wasn't quite ready for her to go yet. In complete honesty, he wouldn't have minded if she never left his side, which was a silly thought to have about someone you've just met, but he couldn't help himself. So he called out to her.

‘Am I worthy to know the name of my savior?’ he asked. The angel looked over her shoulder as she walked away and said but two simple words that would change his life forever.

‘Emma Swan.’

Killian was sure he was grinning like a fool at just the sound of her lovely name as he cashed out his tab with the bar keep, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

That night, he was absently thumbing through his Facebook app when a friend request came through from a name he didn't recognize. Someone called Ruby Lucas. As one should always be wary of these kinds of things, he didn't accept right away. Instead, he went to do some investigating to try and figure out who this strange woman was that sent him a request.

He went to her page and looked at her profile picture to see if he recognized the lass, but he didn't. She was very pretty, long brown hair, a little too much makeup, but Killian couldn't place her. So he swiped through a few more of her pictures. When he got to about the third or fourth picture, he was shocked to see a face he did recognize staring back at him.

There, in the middle of a group picture that seemed to have taken place at some sort of hen party, was Emma, the angel. He could hardly believe his luck. He scrolled back up and selected the accept button on the friend request, and he absolutely did not drop his phone in his haste. Killian Jones is a calm, collected, rational man.

No sooner had he accepted the request did a message come through, an eloquent ‘hey there’’ blinking at him from the screen. He replied with a ‘hello’ of his own. Ruby asked him if he'd been in the tavern that evening and Killian confirmed he had been. Ruby then replied with just one more thing and promptly logged off. The message said: ‘Rabbit Hole, 12/24, 7:00 PM. Emma will be there. You should come.’

Killian was completely taken aback by this turn of events, but he could only jump at the chance to see the angel again, so he made sure his schedule was clear. He wasn't due at his brothers until Christmas Day, fortunately and that left him wide open for whatever it was that Ruby had requested him for.

The night of the Christmas Eve came and Killian was very nervous. He had changed clothes at least a dozen times and checked the clock at least a dozen more. After he was finally satisfied that he had stalled enough, he made it to the tavern in record time. As not to seem too eager, he decided to sit in the car until 7:00 rolled around.

Now, Killian could definitely say he knew his way around a woman, but Emma had thrown him off so completely that he started having doubts about himself, not that he would let her or anyone know that. When Emma kissed him, it had thrown his world off kilter, but what if she didn't feel the same? What if it was just a kiss to her? What if she was upset that he was there again? As he sat contemplating the situation in his car, a soft tap sounded at the window. Killian looked up and was rendered immediately speechless, a novelty for him, to be certain. There staring at him through the thin separation of the window glass, a gorgeous, albeit laughing, smile on her lips, was Emma.

Killian smiled back, opening the car door and getting out of it immediately. He didn't know what to do or say, but that didn't stop an outlandishly flirtatious ‘hello, love’ falling from his lips. From across the car park, a woman that Killian recognized from her Facebook picture as none other than Ruby Lucas called out some slightly inappropriate encouragement to her friend.

‘So, you're the surprise,’ Emma told him and it took Killian a minute longer than he would have liked to admit to catch her meaning. It wasn't his fault that the second he turned back to look at Emma he was lost in her sparkling, jade colored eyes. It was an eventuality that he’d lose his head around her at some point during the evening.

‘I suppose I am,’ he replied when he had gotten his train of thought back on track. ‘It is lovely to see you again, Emma.’

‘It's nice to see you, too, Killian Jones.’

Killian had a very vivid memory of the night he met her, and he may or may not have looked at the pictures on Ruby's page a time or two in the days since her friend request, but Killian was still struck by Emma's beauty. Snow had begun to fall around them, and with the backdrop of the street lights behind her, she truly looked every inch the angel he initially had thought her to be.

‘You look stunning, love,’ he told her.

‘Thanks,’ she replied in her simplistic way. ‘You look…’

‘I know,’ he said cheekily when she fumbled for a compliment of her own. Her eyes narrowed at him but the corner of her mouth was lifted in amusement. Killian took that as a good sign. ‘Did you want to go inside?’ he asked, not wanting her to stand out in the cold longer than necessary. She agreed and they walked in together.

Once they made it through the door, Emma was greeted by a large group of people. The tavern was decorated in reds and greens, twinkling lights strung all around in the festive spirit of the upcoming holiday. Emma quickly introduced Killian to her friends and her brother, who was only just a tad overprotective of her. Killian has grown on him quite a bit since then, but that's another story for another time.

Killian didn't feel out of place once during the whole evening thanks to Emma. She was guarded, to be certain, but there was an underlying level of comfort amongst her friends that extended to Killian as well. He could tell right away that this was not a courtesy that was extended to many, and it made his heart swell with gratitude and he was just that much more enamored of her.

The activity in the tavern had dwindled down close to midnight and Emma's very merry brother, David, should have been cut off several… eggnogs before he was. But that didn't stop him from threatening Killian as his lovely wife tried to wrestle him out the door.

‘She likes you, Jones,’ he said. ‘And I'll admit you've grown on me, too. But if you hurt her I'm gonna have to declare a duel for her honor, sir. Don't you forget it.’ Killian would have been infinitely amused by the man's threats if he wasn't so elated at his revelation. Emma liked him. And it was all he could have wished for. He spotted Emma from across the floor as she stood bidding farewell to the infamous Ruby Lucas. Their eyes locked from across the room and Killian knew he was done for.

She smiled. He smiled back. Ruby laughed out loud and said something to Emma that made her turn several different shades of red. Killian's feet began to carry him across the room of their own volition. He had tunnel vision on Emma, his angel savior, and he vaguely heard something along the lines of ‘go get ‘er, tiger,’ as Ruby walked past. Before he knew it, he was standing in front of her again.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hello, love,’ he said back.

Emma looked up towards the ceiling and Killian followed her gaze. There hanging from an exposed beam was a sprig of mistletoe. Now, if grown men got butterflies, Killian may have had a swarm of them in his stomach, but he would liken what he felt in that moment closer to a school of particularly violent fish swimming in his belly.

‘Merry Christmas, Killian,’ she whispered, her green eyes bright and so full of hope.

‘Merry Christmas, Emma,’ he replied, and took full advantage of the mistletoe tradition. This kiss was much gentler than the first, but no less life changing. The world began and ended with Emma in that moment and he knew that he needed to know her better, wanted her to stay in his life as long as he could keep her. When they broke away from one another, Emma's beautiful eyes fluttered open and Killian couldn't help the smile that was surely plastered all over his face.

‘Do you want to go get some coffee sometime?’ Emma asked. Killian couldn't agree fast enough. Little did either of them know when they walked into the Rabbit Hole that evening that they would be taking the first step towards their happy ever after.”

A soft gurgle and a coo sounded from the small bundle wrapped in Killian's arms. He smiled, his heart full to bursting, and he ran a knuckle over his newborn daughter's ruddy cheek. The babe yawned and squirmed before settling once more.

“A fairytale, huh?” a voice said from behind him. Killian turned to look at his wife with a grin. Emma was propped up on a mountain of pillows in the hospital bed where she lay, tired but happier than he'd ever seen her. Her hair was knotted in a messy bun on top of her head, her body clad in the standard green hospital gown, tubes sticking out of both arms, and she had never looked more radiant. His love for her had seemed to grow unendingly throughout the entire day, and this moment was no exception.

“Aye, love. My favorite fairytale and my second favorite Christmas Eve. I think this one tops it easily, but that day is a very close second,” Killian agreed. Emma hummed a sigh, her eyes fluttering closed once more and a soft smile on her lips.

“‘Snot the 24th anymore, though,” she said on a yawn. Killian glanced at the clock and saw it was after 1:00 in the morning. He chuckled and walked gingerly to her bedside so as not to jostle the infant in his arms and leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead.

“Happy Christmas, my darling. I love you both so very much.”

#captain swan #cs ff #cs ff au #merry christmas #csss2018 #csss 2018

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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Recapture The Thrill of Being on Wheels First came the walks — and then, seemingly all at once, the wheels. Back at the beginning of the pandemic with interminable lockdowns on the horizon, people broke up the monotony of their homestays with short jaunts on foot around the neighborhood just to get some sunlight and fresh air; or, as the writer Ruby Keane put it, “a stupid little daily walk just to feel something.” But with the arrival of warm weather came a collective need for (relatively more) speed, in the form of bicycles, skateboards, roller skates and the like. Global shortages arose as manufacturers struggled to keep up with demand for recreational wheels, and this year is shaping up similarly, with supply chains already feeling the crush of spring sales. Still, snagging these coveted items can be just the first hurdle to overcome. There has been a massive increase in first-time purchases of bikes, boards and skates, so many of the newly minted owners may need a little time to learn how to use the new equipment exactly right. Instagram lit up last summer with videos of beautiful people gliding gracefully around town on two or four wheels — often accompanied by a throwback soundtrack, in the vein of Instagram’s biggest roller-skating phenomenon, Oumi Janta — but simply staying upright is a challenge if you’ve never done it before. So whether you’re 7 or 70, thankfully there are dedicated professionals out there who are passionate about teaching people to be less wobbly on their new wheels. Act younger, feel younger. Tanya Dean, the founder of Skaterobics, a New York City-based skate school, can still remember the first time she laced up a pair of skates as a 20-something at a city roller rink in the ’90s. Packed as the venue was with experienced skaters, “the scariest part was getting on and off the floor without getting killed,” she recalled. Dean eventually figured out how to roll with the regulars, but these days she wants to make sure that her students have it easier than she did. “Learning from people who just knew how to skate, they were showing you from their point of view,” said Dean. “Being an instructor and understanding body rotation, edges, weight transfer, control, balance and coordination is different.” Her adult clientele are a mix of people who skated during their youth but haven’t done it in decades, true first-timers, and those that can get around the rink but want to enhance their footwork. Dean is also a former boxing champion, personal trainer and motorcyclist, but she has a simple reason for personal and professional focus on roller skating: “It makes you feel like a kid.” Even so, recapturing a bit of childlike joy can be a fraught experience once adult anxiety sets in. “We’re all coming into a new environment, we’re nervous, we’ve got preconceived notions — I’m aware of all that,” she said. She advises new students to maintain a positive attitude and refrain from judgment — of themselves or others. Jitters and other concerns notwithstanding, instructors like Dean and O’Neal Ellerbe, a former professional skateboarder, find that adults continue to turn out in large numbers to conquer their fears on wheels. Ellerbe, the founder and lead coach of Skate-Everything School, has skateboarded with students up to age 60. “I think Covid was a big steppingstone for a lot of people,” he said. “It gave them the courage to step out of the box and try new things.�� Ellerbe learned to skateboard as a high schooler in Harlem when he asked a friend to teach him. “The next day, he called me at 6 a.m. and said: ‘I’m outside your house. I have a board for you. You said you wanted to skate, right?’ And I’ve skated every day since.” Skateboarding provided Ellerbe with “an independent challenge” and “a way of being free, in a sense,” but above all else he aims to make the experience fun. Many of his classes end with the group competing in a butt-boarding race to the bottom of a gently sloped hill — a silly, exhilarating and low-stakes way to blow off steam after practicing Tic Tacs and kick pushes. After months of small group classes, Ellerbe is looking forward to bringing even more new skaters into the fold as social distancing measures in New York City loosen up. “I’m excited about bringing demos back, bringing some events to get the community stoked,” he said. Old stereotypes die hard, and Ellerbe knows that many still have a knee-jerk negative reaction to skate culture and its denizens, but he sees an increased interest in skateboarding as a chance to shift the sport’s perception. “Maybe this is the opportunity that’s been long needed,” he said. “This is a hobby to some, a love for some, a form of transportation,” he said. “It’s impacting millions, and I think it’s beautiful.” Just relax and ride. While some instructors contend with unfavorable misconceptions about what their sport represents, Andree Sanders — also known as “Bike Whisperer NYC” — sees her work as more of a mental challenge than anything else. “I talk a lot about the amygdala and the frontal cortex and the different chemical balances of the brain, and how that affects our body and our mind-body connection,” she explained. “You are the eye and the brain of the bike, and the bike becomes your legs. And it’s that partnership and understanding, and that trust, that allows you to really be able to relax and ride.” Sanders was taught the basics of bike riding as a kid and rode throughout her childhood, but “not with the joie de vivre that one would expect.” It wasn’t until her future husband introduced her to mountain biking while they were dating that she rekindled her love of cycling. Over the years, Sanders estimates that she’s taught thousands of people from around the world, but she particularly enjoys working with adults. “Teaching an adult how to ride a bike is like handing over my superpower to them,” she said. “It gives them the sense of freedom and confidence to go places that they would never go before.” If you’ve made the decision to learn to bike, beware of programs that insist you can be taught in a set amount of time. Sanders is adamant about letting each and every client set their own pace when it comes to learning, as missing a predetermined mark can lead to frustration. “It’s a process, and nothing’s instantaneous. And everybody’s process is different.” Last year, Sanders taught her oldest client yet — a 78-year-old woman who was desperate to get out of the house — as well as a number of essential workers who needed to ride to work when commuting via subway wasn’t an option. “It’s the most amazing thing, because it allowed them independence, safety and control, which we didn’t have. Last year was so challenging because we had no control,” she said. Perhaps it’s that much-needed sense of self-determination that leads us to get on wheels, even as children — the feeling of being able to steer one’s own ship when most everything else is out of your hands. Of course, there are other perks that won’t necessarily dissipate once the world gets back to something like normalcy. Dean listed them while describing what her students get out of roller skating, but it could just as easily apply to skateboarding and biking, too. “It builds confidence, it builds community, it’s social networking … it’s exercise … so much stuff that contributes to our well-being,” she said — none of which has an age limit. Source link Orbem News #Recapture #thrill #Wheels

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