#'i know the last time we talked was in the aughts but my character actually had a huge crush on your character and never said anything!'

[swildy]

more canine cuddling

[thepastisalreadywritten]

It was always going to end this way. The truth about Catherine Middleton’s absence is far less funny, whimsical, or salacious than the endless memes and conspiracy theories suggested.

In a video recorded and broadcast by the BBC, the princess says she has cancer and that she had retreated from the public eye to deal with her condition, while attempting to shield her children from the spotlight.

Instead, she had to contend with the internet giggling about whether she’d had a Brazilian butt lift.

My colleague Helen Lewis summed it up succinctly this afternoon: “I Hope You All Feel Terrible Now.”

What is there to learn from such a sad situation? The internet is made up of people, yet its architecture abstracts this basic truth.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, at the center of this months-long story was essentially “a sea of people having fun online because it is unclear whether a famous person is well or not.”

Underneath the memes was always something a little bit gross and indefensible.

Perhaps humans are just wired this way — to gawk and gossip.

There’s nothing new about hounding a member of the royal family or invading the privacy of a celebrity to sell tabloids or go viral.

You don’t even have to be a scold about it: Famous people are wealthy and beloved at least in part because they’re fun to talk about.

Exactly what we do and don’t know about their internal lives is part of the allure — the discourse comes with the territory to a degree.

But Catherine Middleton, of course, is a human too.

During this saga, I kept thinking about the reappraisal of Britney Spears in 2021, as well as the backlash toward past media and tabloid coverage of her rise.

A New York Times documentary dredged up old coverage of Spears from the mid-aughts, showing a young woman clearly in distress, being picked apart by glossy magazines.

Her suffering became entertainment. The response to this film was swift.

Some of the people and institutions that had shamelessly delighted in her pain backtracked: Glamour publicly apologized to the pop star on its Instagram account, noting, “We are all to blame for what happened to Britney Spears.”

Contrast the Spears reckoning with the Middleton drama and, if you’re being generous, you can see some of that newfound attitude in the media.

I was struck by Lewis’s observation that “Britain’s tabloid papers have shown remarkable restraint” throughout this mess.

Progress, perhaps, but what’s also telling is that they didn’t really need to do the dirty work: Random people on the internet were doing it for them.

They recklessly speculated, memed, and used their amateur sleuthing and networked faux expertise to concoct elaborate, semi-plausible explanations for her absence.

Was Catherine’s face actually Photoshopped from a Vogue spread? It wasn’t, but the conspiratorial tweet got 51.1 million views anyhow.

Missing from much of the discourse was the idea that its main character was a person who was likely struggling.

In essence, the internet democratized the tabloid experience, turning the rest of us into paparazzi and addled editors workshopping headlines and cover images — not to sell magazines but to amass some kind of fleeting online popularity.

In my least charitable moments, I see this toxic dynamic as the lasting legacy of social media — a giant, metrics-infused experiment in connectivity that has had a flattening, pernicious effect.

In 2021, I interviewed Elle Hunt, a journalist who’d tweeted an innocuous opinion about horror movies one evening and woke up to find she was trending on Twitter, her feeds choked with thousands of furious replies and threats.

When I asked her to describe the experience of becoming Twitter’s main character for the day, she summed it up thusly:

“You’re repurposed as fodder for content generation in a way that’s just so dehumanizing.”

Three years later, these words resonate even stronger.

What Hunt described to me then as “a platform failure,” feels to me now like a learned behavior of the internet, where people, famous and not, are repurposed as fodder for content generation. The cycle repeats itself endlessly.

This afternoon, the memes about Middleton shifted — from jokes about her whereabouts to jokes about how awful it was that everyone had been making fun of a cancer patient.

Feeling bad about the memes tweets immediately became a meme unto themselves.

Despite the tone shift, the reason for these posts is the same: They’re a way to take a person and repurpose their life for entertainment and engagement.

If this sounds exhausting and depressing, it’s because it is.

But the internet is also too big to be one thing. Clicking through social media this afternoon, I saw dozens of heartfelt testimonials, apologies, and well-wishes for the princess.

For a moment, from my perspective, it felt like watching a collective of people come to their senses.

A recognition, perhaps, of the humanity of the person at the center of the maelstrom.

Then, only a few seconds later, I saw a different post. It was a screenshot from the blockchain platform Solana, where users can create their own cryptographic tokens for others to invest in.

The name of the token in the screenshot is “kate wif cancer,” and its logo is a still of the princess sitting on a bench, taken from this afternoon’s video.

The coin’s market cap briefly surpassed $120,000. Only six minutes later, the price had cratered — the result of a standard memecoin sell off.

An awful thing happened. Some people made a joke about it. Other people made some money. And then everyone moved on.

NOTE: Edited

[shiftycryptid]

Thinking about Dungeon Meshi, Mob Psycho 100, and Autism coding.

Light spoilers for Dungeon Meshi, but nothing too crazy or in-depth.

Disclaimer: I have never been diagnosed with autism and I while I don’t personally believe I have it, I’ve found that a lot of my own neurodivergent traits – both from having ADHD and from being socially isolated for a solid chunk of my formative years – overlap with autistic people. I’m not claiming to be an expert on the subject or anything, so if I make a mistake, please let me know.

Been keeping up with the Dungeon Meshi anime after having binged most of the manga around this time last year and then following along till the end. I personally had a great time with it, and while the ending felt a little rushed, it was otherwise satisfying. I think its really cool that the Touden siblings (and especially Laios) are so heavily autistic coded, yeah?

Dunmeshi is in a similar camp as Mob Psycho 100 in the camp of being really good anime/manga with main characters who are all but outright stated to be autistic, and their autistic character traits being significant enough to meaningfully impact the course of their stories, you know? There’s actually a lot of similarities between the sibling dynamics of Mob/Ritsu and Laios/Falin (platonically, obvs) now that I think about it. Both stories are centered around the socially inept older sibling, and while the stories differ in the details, their bond is strong, but complex and nuanced.

(I love you Edward and Alphonse Elric my beautiful perfect baby boys, but peak aughts shonen is still aughts shonen, and best leaving most of its character and relationship exploration to extrapolation amongst gays on the internet a decade later.)

If we want to go even deeper, we can talk about how one of the siblings has been supernaturally gifted from a young age, the ways in which that might alter the course of their lives and relationships, how that intersects with their autistic traits, and the back and forth action-reaction-etc. that would happen as these characters interact with each other and the world around them. Again, the details differ, because they are, at the end of the day, very different stories. Mob and Ritsu’s dynamic is shaped by the inherent volatility of adolesence, while Laios and Falin are young adults, both fully capable of living independently, but who choose to stay by each other’s side anyway.

In conclusion:

[getvalentined]

Oh wise and ancient elder of Veld fandom, I have a question for you. Do you know where the last name Dragoon came from? (I want to post a picture of Veld and that's his last name to me, but I don't want to be using it publicly if the OG inventor wants to keep it for themselves.)

AHAHAHA UHH YEAH ACTUALLY I DO

I DEFINITELY DO

I don't know precisely which of us it was, but it's from my first online RP group. I think Liz (crankyoldman on AO3) was the first to use it, as I'm like 99.999% sure she's the first person in western fandom to write him at all, but it might have been Drak (drakonlily on AO3), who is now Liz's spouse but was not at the time we were initially RPing together. Neither of them are really in the fandom anymore (they both fell out of public fandom in general for quite a while during college/university/grad school, came back to jump into FF15 with both feet, and are now pretty exclusively in the FF14 scene), but none of us ever really cared about the proliferation of that particular headcanon.

What's funny is that I actually use a different surname for Veld (Augustine!) to differentiate between work relating back to that group and work that's strictly my own, but at this point it's kind of irrelevant because the "Dragoon" surname is so ubiquitous. I tend to tag my work featuring the character with "Veld of the Turks" at this point.

You're absolutely welcome to use it, and people will presumably know what you're talking about, but it is utterly and completely nonexistent in the source material! It came entirely from a bunch of queer folks in their late teens and early twenties RPing/writing/drawing a sad old man online in the mid-aughts, but because we were the only ones doing anything with the character it just kinda became accepted as "correct."

(tmk Drak is also largely responsible for "Sinclair" being Reno's accepted fanon surname, but there's no canon on that either and she kinda regrets its proliferation; I originally used it as Zack's surname in like 2003, before I even knew Drak, but when Zack got a canon surname she fleetingly snagged it for use on Reno and it just...spread through the fandom from there by vectors unknown.)

[stellardeer]

I had this awesome dream last night, I will attempt to describe it, but I might fill in some parts to make it make more sense, I just don't want to forget about it.

So it started with like these 3 friends, it was like classic teen rom com setup, a guy, his guy best friend, and his girl best friend, who had a crush on him but he never noticed or whatever, you know, typical mid aughts dynamic.

I don't remember if they were humans initially or not, that part is kind of nebulous. But the girl sees a poster for this contest to like.. I don't really remember what it was initially, it almost seemed like some kind of music competition or something, but what it became was a contest to like.. crown a new princess or something??

But they have to go to this like.. remote forest?.. island? to do it?

So anyway, the boys tag along cause they want to support their friend.

I don't know if this is what my dream brain initially had in mind, but it turns out there is no real like... contest as in "perform tasks and whoever wins is the best" it's more like, "one of you is destined to become the next princess and you will perform these tasks to awaken your potential and we will know who the princess is when they start changing"

It's at this point that if they were humans at all in the beginning of the dream, they have now become like.. mlp ponies I think? I don't actually know if they were ponies or wolves or what, but they were on all fours and part of the process of turning into the "princess" was like.. sprouting feathers and growing taller so it sounds very ponylike because that's just alicorn behavior lol. So I'm going to call them ponies from here on out!

I don't really remember a lot of specifics about the "tasks" that they performed, so I'll leave a lot of that to the imagination, but after a bit it became kind of clear that the main guy's (I am following this story from this dude's perspective) girl best friend is starting to show signs of being the next princess. Her two friends are very happy for her and still just kind of along for the ride.

Meanwhile, there is like... dark forces at play. I guess every story needs conflict. But there seems to be some kind of dark energy involved in turning someone into the princess, and if they are not careful, the prospective princess can become corrupted and they'll get like.. an evil princess instead of something? There are several large, beastly figures who seem to be on the "dark side" and they are trying to sabotage things so that they can, I guess, turn the princess dark and I guess this would mean she would allow the "evil" creatures to rule instead?? Idk?? It was kind of unclear, because the "dark" beasts also seemed to be like.. working for the former princess? Idk, it was a dream, it didn't really make sense so I'm just kinda telling it in a way that might be coherent.

So anyway, it turns out that the reason this competition was held was because the former princess died, but there is also a KING. Dont ask me why the king is a king but the princess isnt a queen, I think it's running on pony logic idk. But the king is just kinda flying around, and he keeps showing up to talk to our main character guy. It seems at first like he is just kinda bored or just an old man trying to pass on wisdom to the youth, idk. This happens a few times, but I can't remember anything specific that happens.

So on one of these occasions, they get jumped by one of the dark beasties, and the king tells main guy to run, but king ends up dying, I think cause he is distracted by making sure home boy is safe. Also as far as I know idk if they really have powers or anything, I decided they were ponies, but they don't really use a lot of magic in this dream, mostly just flying.

So now the king is ALSO dead. Which MEANS.. that a new king will arise as well!!!

(P.S. the king was really cool looking, his name was like Silverwing or something and he was very beautiful like an ethereal wisp of silver wind, idk, you gotta imagine him as pretty)

Well, the next parts are kinda fuzzy so I'll just skip to the part that makes sense. As you might predict, our main guy starts to show signs of BEING KING. His neck starts getting a little thicker and his wings a little longer. I remember there being like a flashback sequence to all the times the former king visited him and he has an epiphany that the king KNEW he was his successor (or that he chose him? not totally sure)

HOWEVER. He is not exactly thrilled about this. He didn't really sign up to be in this contest for royalty, he just wanted to support his friend. He also makes the realization that if she's the princess and he's the king, that means they are essentially like soulmates or whatever, so he starts having a crisis about having to be in love with one of his friends. Also he doesn't really know if he wants the responsibility of being royalty. He is saying all of this to his other guy best friend, btw, who is still there but does almost nothing important. So I guess that guy is the only person who knows.

So then it kinda felt like a montage of like.. him doing things and trying to hide the fact that he is becoming kingly. Meanwhile, his princess friend has now like.. started to transition to becoming royalty, she isn't fully evolved or whatever yet, but she has attendants and her own guarded area and I guess like they just have to keep her safe and happy so she doesn't "go dark" or whatever?

Well, at one point, main guy goes to visit her, and they almost don't let him in cause he isn't part of the upper crust, so to speak. But they recognize him as one of the princess's little friends so they let him in.

He wants to just speak to her, I don't really remember if there was a reason he went there. But he manages to get her alone. And they are talking and I can't remember if he tells her the truth about himself or if she just like.. notices he is different, but she gets excited when she realizes he is the next king! Cause remember, she had a crush on him from the beginning, so she starts talking about how awesome it is that they'll get to be together. But main guy shows obvious hesitance at this. I don't think he dislikes her, but I think he just wasn't prepared for any of this.

Well, his less-than-enthusiastic reaction hurts her feelings a lot. But instead of being cool about it, she gets upset and decides to oust him as the next king! So then everybody starts like.. clamoring over him and shit, they start treating him differently immediately!

Well, I feel like something else happens after this but I don't really remember, but I do remember there being another montage type sequence where it's just dude man getting like.. pampered and attended to at first he is nervous about it but then he's just like.. livin it up! He is treated like royalty now, quite literally, and he is relishing in it now!

And I feel like the dream was heading in the direction of some kind of moral about hubris or something, but I ended up waking up around this part.

I wanted to know how it ended so I tried to go back to sleep and keep having the same dream, but everything was a little different after I fell back asleep.

It was like the premise was the same, but they were closer to humans that ponies, and there were like.. dragons or something, and the new king guy was like.. using an umbrella to fly instead of wings? And his mom was there? And he was about to fight something? Idk, it got all messed up and wasn't quite the same story anymore so I just gave up.

But! I think it's a really fun concept and would be fun to write out in full, at least short story form, and come up with a satisfying ending lol. I don't think I would make them ponies, though, it didn't really feel like a pony society even if my brain thought that's what it was doing lol.

If anyone reads this, feel free to leave comments expanding on this idea, I would love to know how this story ends! O:

[oddygaul]

Fallout

Fallout was a surprisingly loving and accurate recreation of the source material’s tone, but it didn’t do much for me overall.

I really dug all the references and the pretty spot-on portrayal of the Fallout setting, though - it’s a confident example of… what I’d call postmodern adaptations. Let me explain.

When I was growing up (so, late 90s / early aughts), general-audience adaptations of weird source material were stricken with a sort of plague. It seemed that the producers would recognize that a given IP was popular and could be spun up into a major production, but, simultaneously, felt there was no way to leave the brand as-is without alienating the general populace. Now, I understand that change is a necessary part of any adaptation. Movies adapted from books, for example, inherently require significant writing changes due to how much less time you have to tell the story. The era I’m talking about was not defined by writing changes, though - it was defined by changes to the core tone, worldbuilding, and aesthetic of properties which often bastardized them nearly beyond recognition.

Typically, these changes seemed to be about attaining a level of ‘realism’. They were willing to adapt a story about a teenager without radioactive spider powers fighting a flying green man, but god forbid they present it in a way that doesn’t seem realistic! This is most evident in the visual design for adaptations from this era - they’re desaturated, normalized, and dour to a one, no matter how vibrant the source material was. Think Dragonball Evolution, think The Last Airbender - works with distinct, idiosyncratic visual identities mushed into a samey, gritty look to serve some notion of conforming to an audience’s expectations.

The other place this striving for ‘realism’ reared its head was in the nuts and bolts of worldbuilding itself - the idea that the audience needs everything to be explained. Typically in original settings, you take the fantastical as a given. It doesn’t need to have some deep logic behind it, it doesn’t need to make proper scientific sense in our reality - it makes sense in their reality, so roll with it. That’s the point of creating your own setting!

Adaptations in that era seemed to be afraid of this, and had a tendency to overexplain things, and justify how they could exist in The Real World. Look, it’s not magic, see, they’re actually drawing on the quazium particles in the air to fuel their powers! And their cool magic amulet glows when they cast a spell because, uh, it’s reacting to the local buildup of quazium particles! …or whatever. This dogged desire to justify the very quirks that make a property unique ends up feeling clunky and draining the life out of it, and often calls attention to those differences in a way that confuses folks more than if you’d just left it alone in the first place!

So, if we call that the modernist approach, the current, ‘postmodern’ approach to adaptation is to simply trust the audience. Like, look, we’re in the internet age - maybe you don’t know the ins and outs of this particular franchise, but we know you’re a little freak for some fandom. Sure, maybe you don’t know about X particular detail of this setting, but through osmosis you know that it’s primarily about Y, and you know that everyone online really wants B and C to fuck each other - so we’re just gonna get on with it. Because of this trust in the audience, movies like Into the Spider-Verse can happen: an overwhelming smorgasbord of color, characters and lore that would give someone from the 60s a panic attack, which we, the attention-deficit dopamine junkies of the 2020s, take in stride.

And my favorite facet of this trust is an understanding that they don’t have to rub your face in the reference - it’s fine to just have it happen and move on. The people that get it will love it, and the people that don’t, well, they won’t even know they’re missing anything. The recent D&D movie, Honor Among Thieves, has many great examples of this. Rather than overt namedrops, its references tend to be situational - they’re subtle little moments that every D&D player has dealt with around the table:

-The players relentlessly bullying the DMPC for no particular reason -All but one of the players succeeding on a history check and proceeding to spout off their suddenly recalled knowledge -The party coming to an obstacle, looking through their inventory on their character sheet, then sheepishly saying “Uhh… we could tie this axe to a rope?”

All of these moments work at face value without game knowledge. But for anyone who’s been in those situations, they’re fun nods - and bely a deeper understanding by the creators of not just the brass tacks worldbuilding of D&D, but of what it's like to play D&D.

i fuckin love Zach Cherry man

So anyway, Fallout has a lot of this type of reference, especially in the Vault. Lucy’s post-marriage sequence feels straight out a game intro - all I have in my inventory is this wedding dress, so I guess that’s what I’m wearing for this combat tutorial! Also, the consummation / assault scene is filmed in such a dark, hopeless way after she gets stabbed - in most shows this wound would be a death sentence. But it’s Fallout, so she opens her pause screen, jabs a stimpak in there, it heals up instantly and she’s good to go!

Similarly, her little presentation at the beginning of the show might as well be a character creation screen - Repair, Science, Speech, Melee Weapons, Unarmed, Small Guns, a pretty good skill spread. Later on, we even get Disney Channel’s own Moisés Arias investigating what happened in the neighboring vault by walking around and seeing the skeletons posed in certain ways - Bethesda’s famous ~✩ e n v i r o n m e n t a l s t o r y t e l l i n g ✩~, baybee.

'10 years of cousin stuff' was probably my favorite single line (pic unrelated) (but is it though?)

That unnecessarily long tangent aside, though, as a whole the show didn’t hit for me. And even after quite a bit of thought, I don’t really have a succinct reason, either. By all means the character work is pretty solid - the contrasting ‘playthroughs’ shown by our 3 leads is a neat approach, and Fallout uses it to touch on some interesting themes about the breakdown of the social contract as we watch the slow testing of Lucy’s morals. The show also pretty well nails the tone of the games, which is an achievement given how fucking weird that tone is.

And yet - meh. Partly due to the inherent camp and satirical tone, I never felt totally immersed in the setting - it was hard for me to see the camps and towns as anything but hastily built sets. I also quickly grew tired of the hyperviolence that defines Fallout. It was mostly played for laughs, and maybe it’s just where I’m at in life, but it was hard for me to find the humor in gratuitous slow-motion footage of entire communities being brutally murdered. There’s a point where it just feels like the show gets off on watching the bright-eyed ingénue suffer - by the time we got to the finger-cutting scene I was pretty checked out.

From a plotting perspective, it also felt like it was trying just a bit too hard to be prestige TV. There’s absolutely stories where the slow burn of a series-wide conspiracy coming together is deeply satisfying - Severance is one of the best shows this decade imo - but it felt contrived in Fallout. I thought the loss of innocence and contrast between the sheltered Vault dwellers and the hardened survivors out in the wasteland was compelling enough; does it really benefit that story when, actually, turns out, all of these characters are connected, and three of the major characters all knew each other 200 years ago before the bombs even dropped? Does every loose end really have to tie up so neatly?

The Vault-Tec twist was dodgy, too. As far as I’m concerned, the twist that the Vaults are actually big fucked-up science experiments and not some safe bastion of humanity is one of the more compelling bits of Fallout’s lore, and I think that reveal was handled pretty well for first-time viewers. Do we really have to immediately one-up that by implying Vault-Tec are actually the ones responsible for kicking off the war? Tell me it’s not definitive all you want, even the implication sours me on the story - again, we’re reducing the scope of this entire, centuries-long story to the actions of like, a handful of people who all end up in the same room together.

Also, huge tease to include Matt Berry and only have him in one scene. Unforgivable.

[smokeybrandreviews]

Smokey brand Retrospective: The Gift and the Curse

Brendan Fraser has seen a resurgence lately and i love every bit of that. Dude has been one of my favorite actors for decades. I’m an Eighties kid who grew up during the Nineties so i was right there when he came onto the scene. I was a massive fan f all of his early work; Bedazzled, George of the Jungle, Encino Man, Airheads, Blast from the Past, and even Monkeybone. Dude hit his stride right around the Aughts and then completely disappeared. We found out later it was because of some really f*cked up sh*t but he made it through and proved he still had with Robot Man on Doom Patrol. I’m so glad this guy got another shot at this movie star sh*t but i wanted to revisit the franchise that put him on the map: The Mummy.

The Mummy

I love this campy ass flick, man. I saw this one in the theaters because, at the time, i was super into CG. It had only been a few years since Jurassic Park blew that sh*t out the water and only a few months after The Matrix made everyone sh*t the bed. The Mummy just missed that window but it was still incredibly enjoyable. This was my Indiana Jones because i didn’t care about Indy for a long time. It’s not that they were bad movies, i was just too young to appreciate them. The Mummy came out right at the time i started to really understand why i liked cinema, what a good permanence truly was, and how beautiful a film could be. The Mummy covered almost all of those bases. Fraser did an excellent job as Rick O’Connor and Rachel Weisz stunned as Evelyn Carnahan. F*cking Evie, man. I was already a fan of Fraser but this movie made me really pay attention to Weisz and she became one of my favorite actresses. It helps tremendously that she is f*cking gorgeous! Rounding out the cast is John Hannah as Evie’s brother, Johnathan and Arnold Vosloo as the titular mummy, Imhotep. Also, i can’t not mention the scummiest of scumbags, Benny, portrayed so effortlessly by Kevin J. O'Connor.

I absolutely adore this film. It’s a not the best example of Nineties cinema, how can it be, and it’s a terrible remake of the original Universal Mummy but it does what it wants to do very well. I love the ideas and the world they built with this campy clusterf*ck. It shouldn’t work, it should be terrible, but it’s one of the funnest films i have ever seen. It has it’s issues, absolutely, but they are minor compared the non-stop action, the incredible cinematography, the dated but ambitious CG effects ,and solid performances from every principal actor. They really let Fraser do his thing and that energy carried over to the rest of the cast. Evie is every bit the bad ass as Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley but is still a very girly-girl; Something that seems to be frowned upon nowadays. Imhotep id an unrelenting, vicious antagonist who controls powers from long ago, literally willing the seven plagues of Egypt into modern times. This movie is all over the f*cking place but it worse so well and every time i see it, i have as much fun as i did way back when i was a ripened fourteen years old.

The Mummy Returns

Boy, this one suffers terrible from Sequelitis. It does nothing new and is an almost exact retread of the first film but we have new characters and a new villain in the guise of... The Scorpion King! Yes, this is the first film that titular Arachno-Monarch makes his first appearance portrayed by a very young, very beefy, and later, very poorly rendered, Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson! That’s right, long before he was Franchise Viagra, way before he was punching out Dom into a stalemate in them god awful Fast flicks, The Rock got his start here, in the sequel to The Mummy and he’s f*cking terrible! Oh my god, is he bad but it works. His awful, awful, performance fits right in with the utter camp of this ridiculous franchise ans, to no one’s surprise, i loved every second of it. Now, as much as i love The Rock in this thing, i have to absolutely give it to Patricia Velasquez as Meela Nais, the physical reincarnation of Imhotep’s regicide partner and f*ck-buddy, Anck-Su-Namun. I didn’t talk about her much in the entry about The Mummy but that as mostly because she was more a plot device rather than a character. She isn’t much else in this one either but at least we got to actually see her for more than ten minutes. Plus, that fight between her and Nefertiri was f*cking glorious. Sixteen year old Smokey appreciated the f*ck out of that.

The returning cast hits their points perfectly. That chemistry never falters. Fraser, Weisz, and Hannah are exceptional together and Vosloo is, somehow, both far more menacing and hilarious at the same time. There’s this scene toward the end where he is utterly defeated and it’s the funniest sh*t i have ever seen. I also really enjoy both Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bay far more in this one than the last because he gets to do sh*t finally. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was also a welcome surprise as  the muscle, Lock-Nah. Dude just kinds of stands around and i think he gets into a fight with Fehr that was pretty cool but a little trite. Obviously, as a film from the early Aughts, it has it;s problems. There’s a ton of culturally insensitive sh*t that Zoomers would probably be upset about but, you know, f*ck em. It’s like a sense f humor is illegal nowadays. That said, having Rachel Weisz, as gorgeous and half-naked as she is and was, portray an Egyptian is a little much nowadays. At least Patricia Velasquez is a type of Brown? An attempt was made. This thing is a mess and i enjoy every second of it. The Mummy Returns is substantially worse that the first but, at the same time, just so batsh*t that it is equally as entertaining. But f*ck that kid, though. Every time he’s onscreen all of the good times are thrown right out the goddamn window!

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

I gave this one the hard pass for years. It looked like trash. Like straight up dog sh*t. This thing came out seven years after Returns and i just didn’t care. I was one hundred percent in my hipster film snob era and couldn’t be bothered. For a full f*cking decade and some change. Seriously, i just watched this thing the day before yesterday. For the first time. It was the inspiration for this retrospective because, after seeing this train wreck, i went back to check out the first two just to get the taste of dogsh*t out of my mouth. There are several changes made to the formula that immediately take me out of this film. First, and most egregiously, no more Rachel Weisz! She didn’t come back for the third. The reason behind her absence has run the gambit from vanity, to scheduling conflicts, to literally never getting a script. I don;t really care why, all i know is that her absence was felt. Maria Bello did her best but she isn’t MY Evie. Another “choice” was to age up that awful f*cking kid into an awful f*cking adult. That’s right, this is a “passing of the torch flick” and Luke Ford’s Alex O'Connell was supposed to take over the franchise going forward. That didn’t happen because this is Rick’s franchise. The Mummy would be nothing without Fraser and the at was proven when this thing tanked. It wasn’t all bad though. I really liked the new mummy, Han. They did some really fin things with his abilities and Jet Li never once phoned in an action scene. Unfortunately, even with the strength of the brand and outstanding lead performances, this thing still sucks.

I had a time with Tomb but it wasn’t like the time i had with it’s predecessors. I don’t know if it’s because I'm so much older and hardened by life but all i see is the flaws in this one. It doesn’t have the nostalgia goggles like the first two so i can’t enjoy it like i enjoy those. I just see plot holes instead of camp. Bad CG instead of rustic attempt. Poor set pieces instead of Nineties jank. Bad character writing instead of unfortunately hilarious dialogue. Tomb isn’t terrible but it ain’t good wither. It;s mediocre and i know the first two aren’t great but they’re better than whatever this wanted to be. It’s weird to see because there are a lot of great ideas here. I can see the vision that lays outside the margins and it’s frustrating. Fraser does is in his element as Rick and Li’s Han is a physical powerhouse but that’s not enough. As awesome as this movie gets when those two are on screen, literally everything around them is dismissible and i don’t understand how or why. I think a lot of the chemistry was lost when the focus was shifted to Alex from Rick and the recasting of Eve really didn’t do this film any favors. However, even with all of my frustrations, i can’t say i had a terrible time with this thing. It was entertaining, if a little bogus.

[smolbeandrabbles]

One Heart To Another - Vince Kovac x Reader (Tangle)

Main Series: The Honey / Back on Love (Also see: Chaser / Want to Want Me / Middle Distance Runner / Love The Way You Love Me )

Author’s Note: Yooooooooo! Starting the writing year here off with Vince? You betcha! This is a direct continuation of ‘Back on Love’. Literally, we gonna pick up where we left off. 

Disclaimer: Tangle & all associated characters nothing to do with me / lyrics not mine / you’ll see I put my banner back at the top so no gif disclaimers-! 

Premise: After two chance encounters leave you with questions and doubts, the only thing left to do is confront Vince about his past.

Words: 4247

Warnings: Tangle season 2/3 spoilers ahead! / swearing / mentions of sex

______ You can't keep a secret in a tell-all town this size I figured I'd see you around I didn't know what I'd do 'til now And I don't wanna impose or cause a scene But I'm gonna tell you what the last one told me

From one heart to another From one ex to the next lover I've felt that spell you're under That kiss underneath those covers When it's good, it don't get better He'll make it feel like it's forever But from one ex to the next lover He goes from one heart to another

Some take to drinkin' and some take to the words in red Some lay low, some get high Everybody's got their way to get by To fix what's broken inside And for him, it's goodbyes and taillights

You can't fix it (you can't fix it) You're gonna see it (you're gonna see it) He's addicted to the leaving

---

Ally blinked at you a couple of times, almost surprised that you knew her name – that he might even have told you that much. Seemed you were both as worried about this eventual conversation as each other. You swallowed hard, turning fully towards her, neither of you sure of what exactly to say next. Although she had called upon you, so clearly she had something to say… She took a breath and smiled gently, “I wondered if he might say anything.” In truth Vince hadn’t told you much about Ally other than she existed; but you knew enough about his two kids, Romeo and Gigi, even if you had yet to meet them. She’d barely said two sentences to you and yet you were instantly warming to her, “Vince said a little. I can’t say I ever expected to… meet you like this.” You took a step forward, smiling back, “It’s a pleasure.” Then stopped yourself, “Can I… say that?” She only laughed herself, “I suppose so. You’ve kinda been the talk of my neighbourhood for a little while… and not just because you’re an amazing architect.” Ally said it more because she’d clearly found out that’s who you were, not because she’d admired your work. You flushed; seemed like you were going to become Melbourne gossip. But with Vince’s reputation could you really be so surprised? “Oh- I-” “I just… It sounds like the two of you are happy. And I don’t want… I don’t want to mess that up for you. That’s not why I’m seeking you out, but… I saw you over here and I just… I have some things to say.” Happy? You thought for a moment. Were you? Were you happy with him? You supposed that may well have been one word for the way he made you feel, but it might not have been the one you chose. You would prefer comfortable… or hopeful, that you could perhaps build some kind of future together. You nodded slowly, “I guess I might have expected you would if we ever did meet. I’ll hear you out!” Afterall, you could take ex-wife spite with a pinch of salt if that’s what this was going to be. Only Ally didn’t look like the type, and she’d just said that wasn’t what this was. You believed her, you trusted her. Her next smile was a little awkward, “Maybe… maybe we shouldn’t do this here. Do you have time for a coffee?” Your eyebrow shot up, okay, that wasn’t just a few things to say – this was a whole conversation she wanted to have! You glanced at your watch, your call wasn’t until this evening, you still had plenty of time to kill, “Yeah, sure! That would actually be really nice..!” *** She threw her coat over the back of her chair as she sat opposite you, “Sorry, I don’t know how much you know of Melbourne, but this one is one of my favourite places to go. I hope it’s not out of your way?” You laughed, waving away Ally’s worry, “I’m still learning, it’s nice to add somewhere different to my list.” You also understood her wishes to be somewhere she found comfortable. This wasn’t going to be the easiest thing to talk about, even without the factor of you being Vince’s new girlfriend.

Ally didn’t have to do this. She didn’t have to subject herself to these thoughts ever again if she didn’t want to – sure, they could be intrusive, you understood that. But she didn’t have to bring them to you. It made you understand all at once the kind of person she was; doing this for you out of the goodness of her own heart. It gave you a sudden sense of tranquillity. Happiness for her – Vince didn’t deserve a heart like hers; you were almost glad that she was out of it. You knew about strings of messy love affairs and ‘love them and leave thems’ - you’d done enough of that in your life; whatever she had to tell you about Vince, you figured you could handle it.

She started with small talk, allowing yourselves to warm to each other as you talked about your work and your interests. You found it odd for Ally to start a conversation as if meeting a new friend, then wondered – almost aloud – if that was what you might become. You supposed in the back of your mind you’d always thought that you and her would have to become something if Vince was ever going to see his kids again. When Ally began to touch on Vince, however, her smile didn’t even falter, not once. And she shared with you good memories. Everything about her ex-husband she truly loved – and you could see that in her eyes. How much joy this reminiscing brought her – you damned him yourself for breaking her heart, for ever cheating on her in the first place. Even if without that, there wouldn’t be a you and him.

Then she paused, swallowing hard, faltering as she stared down at her empty coffee cup and fiddled with the sleeve of her cardigan. And you knew what was coming – everything Ally had really pulled you here to tell you. The warning. The Ex to the Next Girl. She started with Emily. Em. How she’d found out, how it ended. How Em broke it off with him first. How Ally had thought about fixing everything, about staying with him, for the kids as much as everything. But she couldn’t. It was all a little too much for her. And as you thought, many told her she deserved better. But Vince had been her everything for a very long time, and you could only imagine how difficult it had all been for her. By Ally’s smile, though, you could tell things were getting better. She went on to explain a few other aspects of Vince’s personality; flaws and quirks she thought you aught to be mindful of. But that not all of them were bad – not everything about Vince was bad. Once again affirming that she wasn’t here to tell you to run miles; because maybe he’d changed, maybe he would try this time. But she was here to make you aware, so that whatever the decision was, it was your own. So that you were never on the back foot in the relationship. Plain and simple, Ally wanted you to have all the knowledge, so that you had all the power.

Then she paused again, and it was all there in her hesitation that she had so much more to say. Something was stopping her – but you leant forward, needing to know it. Ally had come this far; you needed her to go the whole way. She could only shake her head: Ally knew about one affair, but she had found things that indicated Vince’d had others when clearing his stuff out. You raised an eyebrow; you weren’t sure Vince ever really gave a number before… he said he’d ‘cheated’, he hadn’t expressed this might have been multiple accounts. But looking at the way he was with you, you wouldn’t be surprised. They wouldn’t all have rejected his advances, they wouldn’t all have been given the ‘I have to earn you’ spiel in the same way as he’d given it to you. Amicable of him to keep chasing you, if he’d known it so easy, was your only thought. Ally bit her lips together; “Some of it I can’t talk about. It’s not my place. It’s his. But if he loves you. If he really means it and he loves you, Vince will come clean. You should give him that opportunity, because if he’s serious he’ll do it. I can’t promise that it’ll be easy. But if he does then it’s all down to you. But that honesty alone, trust me, is worth so much. Because that isn’t him. So, if he does it, it’s for you.”

“…I don’t know if I’m ready for what the answer could be…” You knotted your fingers together and stared at your hands for a moment; shaken a little at the anxiousness that was starting to set in across your shoulders. Ally reached across the table, and her hand upon yours squeezing gently had you raising your eyes back to her, “If he doesn’t then there’s only one thing to do, Y/N,” her smile was sympathetic, but her tone serious, “take this warning and run.” *** Vince didn’t return home for a few days. That was fine, sometimes it was like that. He still had his own place and, as this technically wasn’t really his house, there were days that he didn’t live here. It had never bothered you before; only now you had Ally’s words echoing in your head. Not that you thought he was cheating, but you could feel that whisper deep in the back of your head. At the same time, you were glad he wasn’t around so you could gather your thoughts, think about how exactly you were supposed to ask him about it. You figured you were going to have to mention Ally, but also weren’t sure what reaction that would get. And you weren’t sure that you wanted to leap at him with something as blunt as “So, how many times did you cheat on her?!”

You had picked up your phone a couple of time and hovered over the call button, and every time it lit up with a text from him you would thinking about it and stop yourself. No. This wasn’t a call, and certainly wasn’t a text conversation, this had to be a face-to-face confrontation. So you didn’t call him… you simply awaited his return to you.

 Meanwhile, you were still working around the city, and got pulled into a meeting with a property developer. Although work had come from your architect company, she had asked for you specifically and had your design in mind for the development. That was no problem, as you were free, your boss didn’t see the harm in sending you out. Manuel had called out to you before you left the office and asked if you needed back up, you simply shook your head and rolled your eyes at him, “I’ll phone if I need you to bail me though!” “Alright! I’ll be right here-!” He was a little blessing sometimes; you weren’t about to admit that to his face though. You thought he already probably knew.

When you met Nicky Barnham she was about what you expected, all business and fast paced talking about how many investors she had that had brought her this piece of land, and exactly what she wanted, and a budget she’d constructed. You nodded along, listening to what she was thinking. Seemed very ‘out of the box’… you wondered what the pièce de résistance was… Why she would bother asking for you specifically. You came with a price tag, even without it being a direct commission. Just so she could say it was designed by you? Right now it wasn’t the most exciting thing you’d ever heard of, and you could just as easy pass it on to an assistant or someone else in the firm if it didn’t pique your interest. You weren’t about to tell her that, of course.

She seemed to hold this air of confidence over you that you didn’t like. The way she watched you a little too closely, as if she was scrutinising everything about you: from the words you used and the way you spoke, to your attire, your drawing, your portfolio of experience on similar projects… your body. You found that one most odd. Because it wasn’t in a ‘I’m checking you out’ way – which you might find flattering, but a little inappropriate for a business meeting. But as if she were sizing you up, seeing what exactly you were working with. You tried your best to ignore it with a neutral expression; all you had to do was your job, then you could get out of here. Then eventually, she spoke up. Because finally she couldn’t resist the urge to ask the question. And you realised exactly why she was staring at you in such a way as it burst from her. “You’re the architect that’s with Vince Kovac, right?” Your stare back was very measured, and you chewed the inside of your lip for a second. Was that how she knew your name? Did this have nothing to do with your actual prowess as an architect? She was asking for none of your signatures because she didn’t know who you were. Not really. ‘Damn being the fucking talk of this town-!’ You placed your pencil down slowly, wondering exactly where this was about to head. “Yes.” You didn’t offer anything else than that. Your relationship wasn’t up for discussion. She wasn’t a friend. She wasn’t even an acquaintance. This was her first consultation with you; the personal details of your life were just that. Nicky leant forward, smirk forming on her lips, “Oh, the sex is just so great isn’t it? Now there is a man who knows what he’s doing… especially in the back of a car. And I saw the one you pulled up in; must be quite a thrill… or in that truck of his. And you’re tiny, so you must fit in the bed, or the back seat so easily… Someone tells me he practically lives with you. I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t let him out of that bed once I got him in it.” She tucked her hair behind her ear with a far-off look of remembrance, “Of course, it was just the once but… mmm… I could do that again.” You weren’t exactly sure what the correct response was – although 20 that were obviously highly inappropriate for the situation screamed their way across your head. You hoped that your face wasn’t reading all of them at once. You blinked, taking a breath to calm them all down. Personal is personal. But also, she could stop thinking about whatever mind blowing sex she got from Vince once, because he was yours now. And it was none of her business what you got up to with him – between the sheets or in the back seat. Your voice wasn’t exactly controlled though, and the anger boiled beneath the surface: “We haven’t had sex yet.” “Really?!” She was shocked, and obviously hadn’t read you at all, “You need to get on it girl, he’s not the kind of man to wait around forever, if you know what I mean. When he gets bored it’ll be onto the next one.” You very nearly snapped the pencil in two. Ally had said she knew about more affairs. And you got the feeling that one was now sitting across from you spilling details to lord over you that ‘yes, I’ve had sex with your boyfriend too!’… although now it was just ‘I’VE actually had sex with him. You haven’t.’ What did she expect, you to lean across the table, eyes bright, and start spilling every intimate detail with her? This wasn’t some girl gossip. This wasn’t you and your best friend in college where you used to lament about all the boys you were both chasing. She was barely even a client right now. What the hell is wrong with some people? You simply opted to nod, with your eyebrows raised. Yeah. So you’d heard.

The rest of the session passed with very little words, and when you’d gave the rough designs to Nicky, she smiled and shook your hand, and said she was looking forward to working with you, with a very pointed smirk. As soon as the door closed behind you you wiped your hands on your clothing and threw the file onto the seat beside you. Forgetting it almost immediately. You drove back blind, and were still barely seeing when you reached the office. Manuel craned his neck in curiosity as you entered. Anytime anyone asked for you, everyone always wanted to know where they’d heard of you and what signature twist they wanted, and what it was that meant your usual services were out of budget. He needn’t have bothered, you made a bee line for his desk. “How’d it go?” You dumped the folder, still staring off at nothing in particular, “She’s all yours.” “That bad, huh?” Manuel pulled it towards him, “Not gonna pass up a commission or a daft sketch from you though, I love working with your designs!” You barely managed a sarcastic laugh over your shoulder as you stalked back to your own space; “Knock yourself out!”

***

You were still working when Vince arrived home, glass of wine balanced on the arm of the couch as you stared at your laptop screen and the CAD design in front of you. Something still seemed off about it. Maybe you weren’t in the right mood for it… and you were about 3 or 4 glasses in… But you just wanted the thing done so you could actually get on with the evening you had planned. DVD lying forgotten on the coffee table in front of you. “BAAAABE?” Vince’s voice cut through your thoughts and you raised your eyes from your screen to the room, realising you now had another problem on your hands. Vince hadn’t been back since Nicky… hadn’t been back since Ally. You’d talked but… you wanted to talk. You looked back to the design and sighed in frustration; well, this wasn’t getting finished tonight. “Oh-! Here you are. How you doing? You been okay?” He swept through your living room, disappearing into the kitchen – whereupon you heard the fridge door open and a beer cracked. He ambled back through, pausing, eyebrow raised at your lack of answer, “Babe?” “Yeah, what?” “You… not talking to me or something?” It made you incredulous that he was able to stand there with a smug little smirk on his lips. But you had to keep level. If you lost it with him immediately then Vince would have already won. Your eyes trailed back to your laptop screen and you inclined your head towards it. You chewed your lip for a second, passing your fingers between each other, in an attempt to channel your thoughts. To him you were quite clearly upset, even if he didn’t understand why. You had let this man into your life, he practically lived with you. Vince had said, in earnest, looking at you like you were the only person in the world, so quiet and sincere that he had to earn you. And yet… all this? Did he simply say that to every woman he met? It was so easy to sit here and just believe that to be true. In the end you didn’t even choose your words as carefully as you wanted to. Perhaps needed to. You’d been given days to think, and instead you’d over thought it too much. “How many other woman are gonna tell me what a great lay you are?!” Vince lowered the bottle from his lips very slowly, eyebrow cocked, “…What?” You lowered the screen of your laptop just as slow, and turned to him; “You have ONE chance to come clean with me, now.” “Y/N, you’re not making sense…” He started towards you, “ONE chance Vince-! And I want the truth, I don’t-” He sat beside you taking your hands, “Who? Who have you been talking to?” “…Well, Em I knew about from you. A couple of days ago I got accosted by Nicky Barnham… I hope the list ends there. But I need to know. Who else is gonna come at me from the shadows? Vince if this is going to be a real relationship. If you want me to trust you, if you want to earn that trust. Then I need to know everything. Right now.” There was a pause of significance as his fingers repeatedly laced and unlaced with yours. Vince couldn’t meet your eyes even though you’d somewhere, somehow, found the strength to look at him. His eyes remained on his beer bottle for countless minutes before he sighed, almost in resignation. This was his moment – and his only moment – to come clean. Or the wrath that might be coming if he didn’t was what he’d have to face. Vince could only imagine how unforgiving you’d be. “There was one other.” “One?” “One. I promise.” You weren’t sure how much you could really count on his promises, but you would hear him out at least. “But it’s not… It’s not like Em or Nicky that… that was easy.” Your eyes narrowed at him, anything but impressed at his choice of language. But his blue eyes held yours, almost pleading you to see his side of the situation; whatever that was. “Her name is Tanya… but.” He delayed it again. The inevitable truth. “God, Y/N. It’s-” You almost wanted to scream at him to get on with it, but you stilled, and you held your tongue for a punchline you almost couldn’t imagine. “We have a daughter together. Her name is Ophelia.” Your eyes widened, and your hands pulled from his as you visibly recoiled from him across the couch. You knew the gasp was loud, you knew what your body language was saying. Vince hadn’t just had affairs; he’d had a child with someone else. Was this what Ally was referring to!? You could only imagine that it was. And that, by the way he was talking, Vince even had something to do with her life. Your throat burned and tears pricked at your eyes and fell before you’d even noticed their presence. After all he’d said. When he’d come clean before Vince had barely scratched the surface. Did he not trust you enough? Did he not want this enough? Did he not love you enough…? Was this the person he was always going to be? Was there simply no hope for your relationship, no matter what he told you and how sincerely he told you he’d work for you. Were you just gonna be another ‘great lay’ on Vince’s ever-growing list? Fuck that. You weren’t down to be chased and won like some trophy at the end of a game. Used for sex and excitement until that spark was just gone; another picked up after you just as easily. He’d never gotten you naked, but you had let him into your life. Parts of you you hadn’t let anyone see for a very long time, not since you’d last seriously dated. You weren’t just upset with him, you were hurting. And all you were measuring up was his lies. How much of what he’d told you could easily have been lies. You were deep into over thinking now. And you couldn’t handle it. You stood, hands to your head for a moment as you moved away from him. “I want you to go.”

It hung in the air even as he stood quickly, his attempt to rush to your side countered by your steps back and away from him, and this time you refused to look at his face. “What?” “Vince. Please, I need you to leave.” “Y/N.” His next attempt to take your hand had you yanking away from him, this time looking at his face as you pointed to your front door. “Please, if you care about me even a little you’ll go, right now. I need time, Vince. I can’t... this hurts! Can’t you see how much this hurts?!” “Please. We can talk about this.”

No. No. You need to go. “I can’t. I need you to leave.” “Y/N.” Your advance on him to shove him down the hallway was met with steps backwards, hands raised. Alright, I get it. But Vince kept looking at you even as you stalked him down the corridor; “Babe, we can fix this. You know that. We can talk about it.” “I’m not ready to talk about it. You need to wait for that.” YOU can’t fix this. He opened the door and took one step back onto the porch. You almost found it amicable that he was listening – that Vince wasn’t attempting to push you up against the wall, sweet talk you and kiss this all away. He knew it wouldn’t work. That would result in you screaming at him, clawing at his face and him losing you forever. Vince Kovac still couldn’t afford that.

But his blue eyes still begged you to let him back in, even as you shut the door in his face. You slid down the other side – head pounding from thinking, whooshing slightly from the glasses of wine. He didn’t call back, but you knew he didn’t leave right away either. Maybe Vince thought you’d change your mind, throw your door open and run to him and drag him back inside.

It didn’t happen, and eventually you heard his truck roll off the drive way. Only then did you stand, allowing yourself one sob before you wiped your eyes and trudged back through into the living room.

Your eyes fell upon the bottle of wine on the side, your half-finished glass. You couldn’t be sure, but you thought your heart might just be broken. You balanced your glass between your fingers and poured it full again.

Nothing good wine couldn’t fix…

---

Thank you for reading! First (published) fic of 2021! I’m not going to promise any consistency this year at all, but I’ll try my damnedest. 

[boylebingo]

fic writers tag

@montygreen​ tagged me in this ages ago but I have been having the nuttiest couple of weeks so it took me a hot sec to get to this, but I do appreciate it and if you somehow don’t already follow leila on here, you should go do that rn

now down to business :) 

1) How many works do you have on AO3? only 3 at the moment! 

2) What’s your total AO3 word count? 45238 as of today 

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? just never have i ever! although i’m sure there are a few unfinished, never-published, years-old stories from assorted fandoms from when I was younger floating around in the void somewhere

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

haha well I’ve only got 3 published, but the number one spot goes to vanilla ice cream, which makes sense since it’s the only one i’ve actually finished so far 🙈

5) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

none of them? i feel like the reason i often read fic is because there is some unresolved canon-angst that i want someone else to resolve so while i definitely have points of tension, all of my stories tend to end (or are planned to end) happy  

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

i think vanilla ice cream will still probably be the fluffiest bc of that epilogue i decided to write last minute, even once i finish all the others. but they’re all pretty happy 🥰

7) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

not so far, though i try to make it a habit to never say never. I think its one of those things that’s really difficult to write well and I’m just not sure it’s in my skillset to do so. but who knows? maybe one day! 

8) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

see above haha. it’s pretty much the exact same answer :) 

9) Do you respond to comments, why or why not? 

I really try to answer all of them, although I know I missed a bunch while I was on a sorta unplanned writing hiatus. It’s only been a year of me posting anything I’ve written and it still genuinely baffles me that people not only read but also enjoy the things I put out there into the world, so every “thank you for reading” is from the heart for me and it’s so worth taking the two seconds to make my appreciation known. 

10. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

no, thankfully! i think part of that is just i haven’t been around that long haha

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i don’t... think so? 

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

no but how cool is that? i wasn’t even really aware that was a thing that could happen! 

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

no! but if anyone wants to feel free to hmu 👀 i am super busy rn but i would love to eventually cuz so many of the folks who write for this show are so talented

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

oh gosh. all time is really, really hard. obvi for NHIE i’ve fully boarded the ben/devi train, but some other all time TV faves of mine are ben/leslie from parks&rec, david/patrick from schitts creek, and josh/donna from the west wing. you might be able to tell i love a rivals to lovers moment from some of these lol 💀 but there are so many that i love for different reasons it’s like picking a favorite child lmao

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I do have plans to finish the 2 remaining fics up on ao3, but I will admit, the rosy dot over the i of loving was... ambitious, and not exactly well thought out when I started it. so it may be a while. i haven’t started much else new since those 3 went up, since i’ve been trying to finish what i’ve started. but i have had this ben/devi idea rattling around in my brain ever since i read the book “the unhoneymooners” that I am just not sure i’ll ever quite get around to. 

16) What are your writing strengths?

i like to think i’m pretty good at writing dialogue! in college, i took a creative writing class for playwriting, where it was drilled into our head that you want to get as much of the story as humanly possible out through words, rather than actions. basically my professors argument was that any stage direction could be ignored by a director if the action/object/setting/etc. wasn’t directly referred to in lines said by a character. so if it was important to you, we should make someone talk about it! i think because of that my narration tends to be a little sparser (but hopefully that’s to the benefit of the dialogue!!)

oh, and i also took a class in humor writing and got an A, so.... 👀

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

i think i could be a lot better at coming up with themes/symbols/metaphors/etc. Having not really planned out the WIPs on AO3 now, this was hard to do, so I guess that also goes hand in hand with my time management haha. But yeah I find it a little difficult to have those sorts of literary devices in longer works (i used to write a lot more poetry and it was a little easier for me in that format so i have faith that i can get better).

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

i only fluently speak english and you do not want to see me butcher french or german, let alone a language I’ve never taken courses in. so it’s a hard no for me personally haha. that said if you know more than another language, first of all i’m jealous, and second of all, go for it! 

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

i don’t really know! like i said i used to write things without publishing them anywhere, so it’s hard to remember. maybe harry potter, when I was like 10? i feel like i probably wrote the same self-insert hogwarts moment that literally every 10 year old in the late-aughts was writing haha

i know for sure there was a b99 fic that was almost published on ao3 back in like season 2 or 3? that’s why my username is what it is 😊

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

i’m really proud of finishing vanilla ice cream. buuuut i am also really proud of the poems in the rosy dot over the i of loving and i think if i ever finish that one, it will be my favorite for pushing me out of my writing comfort zone.  

Tagging: fellow benvi advocate and @gross-vishwakumar and anyone else who would like to answer that hasn’t already been tagged by someone else cuz i know i got to this a bit late lol 🙈

[lifeonashelf]

COLDPLAY

Let’s get this straight right off the bat: Coldplay is fucking terrible.

We all know this. Designating Coldplay as terrible isn’t a statement of personal opinion, it is an easily demonstrable fact. Just listen to them; Coldplay’s music proves the existence of Coldplay’s terribleness the same way that breathing proves the existence of oxygen. Surely, even the band’s staunchest supporters understand that their songs are pretentious, monotonous, and unimaginative—they’d kind of have to; I assume these people have listened to Coldplay, too. If you like music as superfluous as Coldplay’s, that’s totally fine. I’m not here to tell you that you shouldn’t, nor to convince you to stop listening to Coldplay (you can’t stop listening to them, anyway; no matter how hard you try to escape, wherever you go, Coldplay will find you). But they are unequivocally fucking awful, and I need to make that clear before we continue in case I end up saying anything courteous about them later. And, who knows? I may indeed find something positive to say about Coldplay—I mean, nothing comes to mind right now, but it’s going to take me a few hours to write this piece so it’s possible something will at some point.  

Okay, so we’re all clear on Coldplay being fucking terrible, right? Great. But that isn’t the main reason I hate them. I appreciate plenty of terrible bands just as I appreciate plenty of terrible movies. Listening to a really shitty group is sort of like watching a cast of really shitty actors—though they clearly suck at what they do, there’s something oddly appealing about the charming naiveté they demonstrate by giving it the best go they can anyway.

For instance, since I was still filing most of my Warped Tour emo discs in my punk section when I began this venture, I never got around to writing about a band called Adair. If you’re not familiar with them, don’t worry about it; they only existed for a few years in the mid-aughts and their diminutive discography merely consists of a self-released EP and one full-length album, The Destruction Of Everything Is The Beginning Of Something New. Sonically, Adair were so amusingly prototypical of every baby t-shirt screamo band that was thriving at the time, they essentially sounded like they were parodying the style of music they played (although, to be fair, a lot of those squads did). But, Adair were absolutely serious, regardless of what stridently nasal heights the vocals reached, regardless of how faithfully their compositions adhered to their genre’s textbook page by page, and regardless of the sublimely ridiculous realms some of their allegorical angst lamentations ventured into (the line “lock me up in Guantanamo Bay and throw away the key” from the song “I Buried My Heart In Cosmo Park” may very well be the lyrical apex of their entire genus).

Adair’s music is so inane that it makes me laugh out loud when I sing along to it—but here’s the thing: I do sing along to it. I have probably played The Destruction Of Everything Is The Beginning Of Something New a hundred times from start to finish since my copy was sent to me to review for some website back in 2006, and I have cued up individual high(low?)points like “The Diamond Ring” and “Folding and Unfolding” even more times than that. As silly as they sound—and trust me, they sound very fucking silly—I still sincerely enjoy their tunes and have spent enough hours listening to TDOEITBOSN for it to possibly qualify as one of my favorite records ever. Shit, even writing about it right now makes me feel like hearing the disc, so I’ll probably end up blasting it in my truck tomorrow (ed. note: I actually did). If they ever decided to do a reunion tour, I would absolutely go see them, and if vocalist Rob Tweedie did that whole “hold the microphone out toward the crowd so they can finish the lyric” thing which every frontman in every band that sounds like Adair does at least a dozen times per show, I would totally be able to fill in each of those blanks and enthusiastically do so.

Sorry, we were talking about Coldplay. To recap, they’re fucking terrible.

Unlike a frivolous whimper-core ensemble like Adair, the most off-putting thing about Coldplay isn’t their music. They’ve actually managed to excrete a few tracks that I grudgingly enjoy over the years. However, sporadically releasing songs which don’t sound like they were specifically written for Gap commercials actually works against Coldplay in this instance. Sure, most of their output is noxious twaddle, but since they occasionally come across as a marginally decent band, their work isn’t awful enough to at least ironically appreciate it for being awful.

In fact, there’s absolutely nothing ironic about Coldplay—other than U2 and Radiohead (more on them in a minute), I can’t think of another band that seems to take itself as dreadfully seriously as Coldplay does. There isn’t a single lighthearted number in their entire catalog, and the demeanor of their music is so staid and cheerless that it’s hard to imagine the dudes ever cracking a smile while they’re making it. Their approach to songwriting is rigidly Pavlovian—when the music gets louder, ring ring ring, that signals the listener the *really* poignant part of the tune has arrived and cues them to emotionally salivate in kind—yet despite their calculated use of sonic dynamics to manufacture sentiment, the vapid and unspontaneous nature of the delivery saps their tunes of anything resembling genuine soul or passion. Even when thrusting through the more energetic tracks in their litany, the musicians in Coldplay always sound like they’re actively striving to not play their instruments too hard. The result is that they consistently deliver some of the safest and least edgy rock ever created, shaping their ethos around a formula so willfully tepid and cuddly that they barely qualify as a rock band at all. Coldplay aren’t quite the musical equivalent of plain yogurt (that would be Jack Johnson, an artist so comprehensively flavorless that even his name is fucking boring) but the granola in their mixture is always judiciously distributed so as not to agitate anyone’s tastebuds.

And at the center of this slow-motion kaleidoscope, you have Chris fucking Martin (I find it difficult to cite his name without including the “fucking” in there; he’s just one of those guys—like Jason fucking Mraz, Blake fucking Shelton, or fucking Bono). Coldplay’s music may be stagnant, but you’d never know it from beholding the practiced arsenal of slinky paroxysms their vocalist bursts into while that music is playing. In performance and in their videos, Martin’s appendages are incessantly in motion, his hands ever-swaying gently through the air like he’s waving a pair of invisible cigarette lighters or finger painting on the goddamn sky, ostensibly so deeply lost in his band’s reverie of sound that he simply can’t help himself from moving his body in a cadenced pantomime of the way their music is meant to superficially move your spirit.

For the three non-ballads the group has written in their career, Chris usually switches things up by crouching in an incongruous bobbing panther-stance like a battle rapper delivering a diss track about fucking his opponent’s mama in the mouth, until it’s time to freeze in the tried and true messiah-statue pose as the number’s final notes chime into the ether. But it is in the quiet moments when Martin truly shines—which makes perfect sense given that he’s the leader of a group so systematically anodyne they probably should have actually named themselves Quiet Moments. These are the obligatory interims where the frontman takes the stage on his own to sit down at the piano, resplendent in the spotlight, and perform an intimate solo rendition of one of his most tender hits to show everyone in the audience that Chris fucking Martin is a bonafide fucking musician who, if he really felt like it, could totally do the whole Coldplay thing without the other three dudes whose names no one knows. His soaring falsetto croon is custom-feigned for the arenas the band was destined to coldplay from the moment they dropped their breakthrough single “Yellow” and caused a nation of book-sensitive sociology majors eagerly anticipating the arrival of their generation’s U2 to cream their Dockers in unison. When Martin opens his pipes to summon those indelibly contrived choruses about birds and stars and other monosyllabic nouns, it hardly even matters what words he’s singing—the leitmotifs in most of the tunes are basically interchangeable anyway. What matters is that Chris sounds like he really, really, really means it when he says he will try to fix you.

That analysis probably makes it seem like I hate Chris fucking Martin as much as I hate his band. I actually don’t—he’s too benign a character to elicit such a fervid response; hating Chris Martin is like hating turtleneck sweaters, or actual turtles. In fact, I suspect he’s probably a really nice dude.  At least, I’ve never heard any creepy stories about him showing his penis to under-aged fans on Skype or anything like that.

Regardless, while I don’t specifically despise either Martin, Dude Who Plays Guitar, or the other two anonymous members of Coldplay, I do gauge their collective as the fourth or fifth worst band of all time. And the reason I loathe them more than any of their neighbors on that list is because they aren’t the kind of prodigiously abysmal group you can just ignore until their moment in the spotlight inevitably passes—which is how I dealt with Five For Fighting from September 2001 through February 2002 and how I’ve been dealing with Twenty-One Pilots for the last four years (seriously, are you fuckers done yet?). Coldplay is a far cagier nuisance because they are massively popular and have been for a ludicrously long time. I’ve been patiently waiting for them to go away for two decades now, yet they continue to pop up every third summer or so to drop a new album and remind us that, yes, they’re still here assiduously mining the middle of the road for new ways to write more tunes about clouds being pretty.

Even worse, I can’t disregard their music because it’s everywhere. I hear “The Scientist” while I’m shopping for cereal at the grocery store, I hear “Talk” when I sit down to eat at any chain restaurant, and I imagine I’ll be viewing that idiotic video for “Adventure of a Lifetime” with the posse of animated dancing monkeys on an infinite Clockwork-Orange-eyes-gaping loop for the rest of eternity when my mortal essence exits this world and I am cast into the fiery pits of Hell. I can’t even watch football without encountering Coldplay, as I discovered with horror in 2016 when they took part in the most fatuous jumbled fucking mess of a Super Bowl halftime show the NFL had ever presented (a zenith of suckery which seemed impossible to eclipse until this past February, when Adam Levine showed up covered with prison tattoos and said, “hold my beer”).

The pervasive level of esteem Coldplay has reached dumbfounds me. This is a group that has sold millions and millions of albums worldwide, even though I have never once heard a single person utter the phrase, “man, that new Coldplay song kicks ass.” I’m sure their most dedicated fans have favorite hits, tracks that are significant to them in some way, etc. But their remarkable success is patently disproportionate to how patently unremarkable the work which garnered that success really is. Nobody ever describes the band’s music as “awesome”, just as nobody ever describes a glass of pinot gris as awesome—the term simply does not apply to their province; actually, in this case, describing the mouthfeel of Coldplay tunes and recommending cheeses they best pair with is probably more relevant than discussing how they sound. Coldplay is as universally popular as they are precisely because they aren’t awesome. They’re not beloved because they’re extraordinary; most people love them because they’re innocuous, functional, and suitable for almost any occasion—Coldplay is akin to a pair of cargo shorts, and no one thinks cargo shorts kick ass. Coldplay isn’t an alternative band (on the contrary, almost every good band is an alternative to Coldplay); they are a lowest common denominator band, undemanding and ubiquitous and safe to like because everyone else likes them. Their work is specifically geared toward people who think appreciating music demonstrates sophistication, but don’t ultimately give enough of a shit about the artform to put any effort into finding music that is actually sophisticated or appreciable. You may assume Coldplay is erudite because they’re British and they cite books you’ve never read when discussing the lyrical themes in their work, but they’re merely recycling the same emotional territory as every other pop act that writes tunes about finding love, losing love, missing love, and the 18th Century French peasantry.

The best thing about being a Coldplay fan is that it’s easy. You don’t have to buy their records, go see them live, or make any concerted effort at all to receive their music. If you listen to the radio for any extended period of time (or eat at an Applebee’s), you will eventually hear one of their songs; all you have to do is not hate it and, voila, you’re officially a Coldplay fan. There, don’t you just love the security of venerating a critically and commercially acclaimed band that will never challenge you or be unpopular?

Okay, I do strive to be fair—even in this arena where I can say whatever I want and no one can argue with me. I gave this a lot of thought, so here are four things about Coldplay that are not terrible:

 1)      “Clocks”: I resisted it for many years, but I finally had to concede that it’s kind of a pretty song. Notes of red currant and blackberries, and it goes superbly with a nice aged brie.

2)      “God Put A Smile On Your Face”: It doesn’t put a smile on mine, but that’s why I enjoy it. Most Coldplay songs sound like they’re aiming to evoke what being hugged by a koala bear feels like, so I appreciate Chris fucking Martin delivering a darker number that seems intent on making me feel depressed instead. Well played, sir.

3)      Viva La Vida, Or Death And All His Friends: I sincerely respect their effort to broaden their palate a bit by working with Brian Eno and making Dude Who Plays Guitar buy a distortion pedal to use on one song. This is still an archetypal shitty Coldplay record, but at least it sounds a little different than all of the other archetypal shitty Coldplay records.

4)      Nah. They’re still fucking terrible; they were lucky to get three things.

 There is one additional facet of the group’s career which has fascinated me over these past several years, even though it relates more to bands that are not Coldplay rather than the band that is Coldplay. Earlier I dubbed them the U2 of their generation, and recent events in particular have coalesced to underscore that comparison. See, when Coldplay came out, the tributes to their Irish brethren in choreographed affectation were far from subtle. Chris fucking Martin’s warbling was plainly modeled after fucking Bono’s, Dude Who Plays Guitar served up an endless cycle of repetitive but hooky high-register licks that were striking similar to the distinctive methodology of The Edge, and both bands’ workmanlike rhythm sections held things down with competent yet discreet backing tracks which militantly fulfilled each song’s basic requirements rather than showcasing the musicians’ dexterity. I don’t think anyone ever disputed the collective homage in Coldplay’s dogma, and no one was terribly bothered by it either; at the time there were a lot of people craving a band that sounded just like U2, because U2 didn’t sound like U2 anymore.

When Coldplay’s debut album Parachutes was released in July 2000, fucking Bono and company’s career was on a downward arc after they largely vacated their signature approach to instead craft a couple poorly-received discs dominated by insipid rave-lite tunes that not even the members of U2 listen to anymore. Though they would temporarily rebound later that year with “Beautiful Day”, the last honestly excellent song they would ever record, U2 had left a gap that needed filling. And the most obvious inheritors of their kingdom, Radiohead, had grown tired of anthemic guitar rock; they were hunkered down creating their demanding but exceptional opus Kid A, which sounded nothing like U2, nothing like Radiohead, and indeed nothing like any other music being made on planet Earth. Kid A still had some anthems, still had some guitar, and still had a little rock, but its oblique delivery clearly demonstrated that Radiohead was chasing a far different muse and had little interest in claiming the crown (of course, this would be abundantly clarified in hindsight when they subsequently slid further down their rabbit-hole, gradually abandoning the anthems and guitars and rock altogether, until finally settling upon their current songwriting formula, which seems to mostly involve Thom Yorke masturbating on his laptop, naming ten of his climaxes, and calling it an album).

So while U2 were busy trying to figure out why they weren’t relevant anymore and Radiohead were busy doing whatever the fuck they were doing, the lads in Coldplay stepped up and said, hey, why not us? They seized the ersatz-earnest arena rock mantle with A Rush Of Blood To The Head and never looked back. Now, 17 years and seven multi-platinum albums later, they can ruin the Super Bowl, collaborate with the Chainsmokers, and even make the same kind of lameass dance music that essentially buried U2’s career with impunity. Even more significant, they have come full circle. A group that started out playing second-rate U2 facsimiles under the moniker Pectoralz (this is absolutely true, by the way) is now one of the hugest pop institutions in the universe, beloved by millions of music and wine connoisseurs across the globe. And the student has eclipsed the teacher; U2’s desperate efforts to play catchup have made their modern work sound unmistakably like second-rate Coldplay facsimiles. Chris fucking Martin and those other three guys are no longer pretenders to the throne—they are Coldplay, and this is their empire now, bitches.

These days, U2 has to reprise their old records in their entirety on nostalgia tours to get anyone to come to their concerts, and Radiohead continues to release unlistenable albums which their fans claim to love while sheepishly casting them aside to listen to OK Computer for the thousandth time instead. But Coldplay has strategically situated themselves for an eternity as the undisputed emperors of rock mediocrity. I think they’ve got another two decades in them, too; I have no doubt that long after Twenty-One Pilots is (finally) relegated to the county fair circuit where they belong, Chris fucking Martin will still be promising sold-out crowds that lights will lead them home and having a series of polite, gently-articulated seizures while he sings “Speed Of Sound”.

It seems I respect Coldplay a little more than I suspected. You know what? I’m going to amend my original valuation right here and now. As of this moment, I am formally designating Coldplay the sixth worst band of all time.

Your move, Godsmack.

 May 15, 2019

[ask-de-writer]

SEA DRAGON’S GIFT : Part 34 of 83 : World of Sea

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to World of Sea

SEA DRAGON’S GIFT

Part 34 of 83

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

140406 words

copyright 2020

written 2007

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

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Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users   of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may   reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information   remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in   my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical   compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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New to the story?  Read from the beginning.  PART 1 is here

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Chapter 11: Selection

Captain Mord, Kurin and a delegation of the Longin’s Craft Masters set out for the Council Pavilion several hours after sunrise.  Their large gig was overtaken by Captain Sula and Captain Huld in a long, narrow, very fast rowing boat.  Sula was pulling her own oars, and Huld was steering.

In a disgustingly cheerful voice, she called out to them, “What ho, Longin!  Have you decided what to do?  Is there aught that I can do for you?”

“Be with us as a voice of reason,” replied Captain Mord.  “At least you have been able to talk the Council into sanity.”

“Will do!” she answered cheerily, and bent her back to the oars.  Her boat quickly disappeared into the throng about the market platforms.

Shortly, the Longin’s delegation was standing before a packed Council, Sula and Huld at their side.  The news that the Longin might be opening up Ship’s Business had spread.  There was a loud babble of voices that slowly settled down, when Captain Mord raised his hand for attention.

“Yesterday, I said that I would counsel my crew to open up some of our Ship’s Business.  They have agreed to do so.”

There was a loud murmur of delight among the assembled Captains.

Mord held up his hands for silence again.  “We find the fish by means of special charts, prepared by the Dragon’s Daughter, in connection with our past fishing catch records.  She will make charts for your waters, too.”  He was interrupted by a loud rumble of approval. Once again he sought silence so that he could proceed.  “Her skilled services are not instant, nor are they free.  You may inquire of the Craft Masters with me about the cost.”  This was met with outright hostility.

“Your charts didn’t cost you anything!  Why should we pay?” was about the gentlest reaction.  Some were much ruder.

Captain Sula raised her hands for silence, and when she didn’t get it, she picked up a Council bench, dumping Captain Barad unceremoniously to the floor.  She ripped a leg off the stool and smashed it against the seat with a loud report.  Seeing what she had done, and knowing that few of them had the strength to do it, the rambunctious Captains quieted.  

“Their charts were most certainly not free!” she exclaimed.  “What would you charge for the completely dedicated use of any of your ships, from one full Wohan to the next?  Come, come, give me a reasonable figure.  Assume that your ship does nothing in all those weeks but sail under the direction of the cartographer?”

That put a different light on things, and gave them something actual to work with.  They began figuring.  Discussion ran rampant, and Sula let it.  This was constructive work going on.

They answered at last, through Sarfin, Captain of the Dorton, and present leader of the Council, “We are agreed on the value of such a voyage.  It comes to 2,600 Strong Skins.”

“Now,” smiled Sula, “you yourselves have set the value of such charts for three home waters.  That is how long it took the Longin to make her charts.  Expensive?  Yes.  Paid off?  In the Longin’s case, nearly, and in only half a Gathering.  Some may take longer, some may be quicker.  It will depend on what the charts reveal.  I would call it a good risk.  Talk to the Longin’s Masters.  They have more to say.”

Mord took over again, with a serious face.  “We intend to reveal the next part, which is connected to the charts and the exploiting of them.  It is a skill of accurate dead reckoning navigation that works in fog or cloudy weather, day or night.  This will require an act of the Council.  We mean to set up a school for such navigation and certify the navigators through the Council.

“Before any Captain offers debate, we will give a demonstration.  Take Bron, one of our cabin boys, and a good pupil, by Kurin’s account, one day’s sail in a small boat, in any direction from here.  Let him be blindfolded from before he leaves here, until he gets back.  To be sure, follow him in another boat and observe him at all times.”

The demonstration was agreed to.  Bron was taken out and put adrift in a small boat, with rations and water, and followed by another small boat, also under sail.  At some points, Bron took turnings that mystified his followers until they got caught in the tidal currents that he was avoiding or taking advantage of.  He brought both boats unerringly back to the Gathering.

Kurin spent that night and all of the free time that she could staying with Captain Sula aboard the Dark Dragon.  Together they visited and talked with many of the Dark Dragon’s Craft Masters in their shops. Everywhere that Kurin looked she saw the vertical lines of what she now realized were a form of writing.  Aboard the ship, almost no person went unhooded and those few were all newly recruited and being educated in the Dark Dragon’s ways.  Everyone communicated with a sign language unless they had both hands full or there was some other reason.

She even saw the ship’s children, all hooded like their parents carrying daggers and axes.  When they sat, using big cushions instead of chairs, they often read from books with the same odd writing in them. Many of the children’s books also had pictures.

The Dark Dragon’s many shops held Kurin spellbound.

The next morning, Barad descended the gang-way to the temporary floating dock beside the Grandalor.  He smiled to Tanlin and said, “First Officer Tanlin, on the shelf in our quarters is a sail-sewing kit. We have done with assessing the changes to it.  Would you take care of it, please?”

“At once, Ca’tain,” she replied, glad of the duty to destroy the noxious thing.

Barad went to the Captain’s Council.  Now I can begin to splice the cables between Grandalor and Longin, he thought as he was rowed to the rafts of the Gathering.

Tanlin descended the companion-ladder near the cabin that she shared with Barad.  In the passageway, she met Silor.

“‘Ello, Lad.  Oi ‘ope t’at ye donnae mind t’ muckle t’at ye are an errand boy, for now,” she said pleasantly.

“No Ma’am, I don’t mind doing errands,” he answered seriously.  “It gives me the chance to meet the Masters and officers as well as learn the layout of the Grandalor.  Also, I know that I have to be kept out of sight for the present.”

“T’at’s good.  Ca’tain Barad wa’ right about ye bein’ quick.  Many wad chafe at t’e necessity.  W’at errand are ye about, now?”  Silor visibly stood straighter at her praise.

“Mister Morgu sent for me.  I’ve an errand for his office.  It’s just down here, isn’t it?”  He pointed further down the passage.

“Tis, t’ird door t’ t’e left.  Oi’ll nae hold ye, t’en.  Good morning t’ ye.”

“And to you, Lady Tanlin.”

She slid aside her door and went into the Captain’s cabin.  As she got the kit, she noticed, Barad must ‘ave been lookin’ at ‘t. Tis nae square on t’e shelf.  Tucking it under her arm, she went the familiar way to the sickbay.

Doctor Corin was busy at the apothecary cabinet when she arrived.  The sickbay was otherwise empty, so Tanlin raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

The Doctor gestured at the dozen parchment packages that he was preparing and explained, “Stomach cures for the crew who over do it at the food booths.”

“Oi see.  Just bein’ prepared.  Wise.  Take care o’ t’is for us, will ye?”  She handed him the kit.

“Is the spine that the Captain mentioned in the Standing Orders in here?” he asked.

“We t’ink t'is, Doctor.  We just found ‘t,” she said easily.

“I’ll dispose of it properly as soon as I have these powders done,” he said, relieved to see the kit unused.  “That thing is a danger to us all, so long as it exists.”

“Oi leave ‘t t’ ye, Doctor.  M’ t’anks — — for evert’ing. Oi’ll be in t’e mess.  ‘Elmsmon’s meeting.  Let m’ know w’en tis dune.”

“I’ll do that,” he replied, turning back to his powders.

In the mess, Tanlin handed out tallow-slates and copies of a small book to the assembled helmsmen.  It appeared to have been hastily produced.

“What’s this?” asked Kreul.

“Ye’re ‘elmsmon, Secund Day Wotch, Kreul, aren’t ye?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Well, Kreul,” she said in the tone of a lecturer, “yer quest’n’s a valid ane.  Tis an intellectual exercise.  T’e Forst Officers are going t’ study t’is manual as well.  Ye all know t’at t’e Ca’tain ‘as an interest in t’e Boren Current Wars.  We got t’is manual from t’e Soaring Bird’s boot’.  T’ey an’ t’e Dark Dragon fought in t’ose wars.  T'is knowledge t’at naebody else in t’e Naral fleet ‘as ever studied.  Wit’ luck, nane will ever need ‘t ‘ere.  So, wye study ‘t?  T’e Ca’tain wants us t’. Good enow?”

It was.  The four helmsmen and two helmswomen bent over the book and read the title page.

The Strategy and Tactics of War

by

Sula Corin Dark Dragon

Commissioned by order of the Combined

Councils of Captains and Masters of the Corliss fleet.

“Ma’am, I’m Darkistry, Third Night Watch.  We’ll study this if the Captain wants us to but Dragons grant that we never need something like this.”

“Darkistry, ye are curiously close t’ t’e opening paragraph o’ t’is book.”  Tanlin picked it up and opened it, reading aloud.

“T’e necessity o’ t’e knowledge t’at t’e Councils ‘ave ordered m’ t’ write ‘as been proven by t’e attacks o’ t’e Boren fleet upon us.  Dragons grant t’at t’is, o’ all knowledge, be left on dry land for lack o’ necessity in t’e future.”  

She laid the book aside and said seriously, “T’e date places t’is book at t’e end o’ t’e Forst Boren Current War.  T’e knowledge ‘ere,” she laid her hand on the book, “preserved t’e Corliss fleet in t’e next twa wars.”

“Did ye know,” her eyes swept the six, “t’at t’ere are times wen t’e ‘elmsmon’s orders override anybody but t’e Ca’tain ‘imsel’?  We’ll skip t’e strategy section.  Read ‘t on yer ane, i’ ye find ‘t interesting.

“Macoul, read t’ us from t’e start o’ part twa, Tactical Considerations.”

Macoul picked up his copy and leafed through to the place indicated.  He began, “The helmsman’s duty is defined by the Maximum/Minimum Rule.  Cause Maximum damage to enemy craft while allowing Minimum damage to his own ship.  This may be accomplished by …”

Doctor Corin interrupted, “I’m sorry, Lady Tanlin.  I must speak to you privately.”

“O’ course, Doctor.”  Turning to her left, she handed her underlined copy of Strategy and Tactics of War and her tallow-slates of notes to the startled woman there.  “Darkistry, will ye take over t’e meeting for m’?  Somet’ing ‘as come up t’at demands m’ attention elsew’ere.”

After her initial surprise, Darkistry simply said, “Continue, Macoul.”

Macoul’s soft voice followed the Doctor and Tanlin into the passage way.  As soon as they were private, she asked urgently, “W’at’s t’e alarm, Doctor?” though she had a sinking feeling that she knew.

Wordless, he held out the awl from the kit that she had given him.  The red test paste on its shaft reveled that it was not Ord.

“T’e case?” she asked quietly.

“Also uncontaminated,” he replied grimly.

“T’ey’ve been switched!”  She exclaimed in outrage.  Putting her hand to her forehead, she thought, Silor in t’e passage by t’e Ca’tain’s door.  Morgu … She looked up, terrible in her rage.  “Tis mutiny!  Bot’ Standin’ an’ General Orders’re bein’ violated!

TO BE CONTINUED

<==PREVIOUS   NEXT==>

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[occasionalfics]

hi so i haven’t made any real posts in a while bc i haven’t really been writing that much but i wanted to just post SOMETHING for y’all to interact with

anyway, if you don’t know, i have a youtube channel and i’ve been watching (almost) every movie that chris evans is in because i love him and reviewing them for my channel and i thought i’d give a rundown of the movies i’ve seen so far (including ones i haven’t rewatched for the channel yet because i’m not gonna link to the videos - if you really want to watch, message me) so maybe you could decide which ones are worth your time and/or money 😂

for this, i’ll give a brief description, my general thoughts, and a score from 1-10 (1 being unwatchable and 10 being PEAK cinema)

i’m keeping things very light on spoilers, meaning there might be one or two overall but not for every movie.

so here we go:

The Newcomers (2000) - some indie movie with no theatrical release about a family that moves from boston to vermont because of money troubles. chris is in it for like 5 minutes and he’s honestly the second best part (second to a dog only). 3/10, mostly boring but not offensive.

Not Another Teen Movie (2001) - i feel like everyone has seen this. it’s a spoof of 80′s and 90′s teen movies (namely she’s all that and cruel intentions). chris plays the main love interest and he’s definitely funny enough to pull off the part but it’s not really my thing. 4/10.

The Perfect Score (2004) - this is the first time chris and sc*rj* worked together. 6 high school kids fail the SATs so instead of retaking them, they sneak into a government building and steal the answers. it’s an mtv movie and it’s...fine? not great, not special, but...very early aughts mtv for sure. 4/10

Cellular (2004) - an action flick where chris plays a regular dude who gets a call from a woman who’s been kidnapped, and then has to keep communications up with her in order to save her and take down some corrupt cops. surprisingly funny, i had a great time watching, would recommend! 7/10

Fierce People (2005) - i think this was another indie movie without a theatrical release. based on a book that, from the reviews of both, is identical, i think because the author of the book was also the screenplay writer. and that’s probably why this movie sucked. bby anton yelchin (rip) gets caught scoring drugs for his mom, and because she has connections to this super rich dude, they end up going to live in new jersey with his weirdass family instead of bby anton going to jail. chris’s character is not who you think he is. content warnings for drugs, rape, and murder. overall boring, not what it thinks it is, 4/10

Fantastic Four (2005) - okay everyone’s seen these. i actually hate both of these FF movies, but chris as johnny storm is the only shinning light in either. reed is the WORST and sue is treated like eye candy. 4/10 for johnny storm alone.

London (2005) - literally the worst movie i have ever seen. i hate london. also an indie movie, very misogynistic, very pretentious and self-important. lonely emo boy does drugs with random people in a bathroom at a party he was not invited to INTENTIONALLY, in the hopes that he will win over his ex girlfriend, who he repeatedly emotionally abused while they were together, even though the party is literally in honor of her moving across the country. and she didn’t want him there. please never, ever bother watching london and talking about it online - fuckbois will attempt to tell you that you know nothing repeatedly. 1/10, worst film ever made.

TMNT (2007) - does this need an introduction? chris plays casey, but the movie’s really about the turtles. honestly the writing kind of relies on you knowing a lot about the turtle lore and overall it’s a boring but ultimately harmless film. it’s just really not worth your time. 2/10

Sunshine (2007) - ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES I HAVE EVER SEEN, I HAVE NOT  STOPPED THINKING ABOUT SUNSHINE IN OVER A YEAR. 8 astronauts are on a mission to ignite a nuclear bomb into the dying heart of our sun. but it’s a space film so shit goes wrong and, one by one, they start dying. very tense, very sad. the biggest complaint all around is that the first 2/3s of the movie are one genre and the last 3rd is a completely different movie, and yet it’s STILL amazing. please watch (if you can handle a space thriller)! 8/10

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) - a very bad follow up to a very bad origin movie. not even andre braugher could save this one. reed is really mean to johnny for no reason and i hate his guts. 3/10

The Nanny Diaries (2007) - second time appearing alongside sc*rj*. she’s the main character. an anthropology student takes on a nannying job for an upperclass family in new york, but the job ends up being more than she bargained for. chris plays harvard hottie, her upstairs neighbor who is THE BEST BOY. i loved this movie. 8/10

Battle for Terra (2007) - a very weird but very good animated movie about humans attempting to colonize an alien planet because we were stupid enough to destroy earth, venus, and mars. lots of big names on the cast list for a movie that not many people saw, but it goes ham in the “fuck colonizers” theme. overall, a surprising joy. 6.5/10

Street Kings (2008) - well this was directed by david ayer so my friend and i went into this with very low expectations and it didn’t even meet that bar. keanu reeves plays a sad and angry corrupt cop who almost kind of gets framed for killing another cop, and then spends a good chunk of the runtime just hunting down other corrupt cops without doing anything about his own corruption. it’s copaganda, but very bad copaganda. also chris dies. fuck this movie, don’t waste your time. this is another one where the fanboys will come for you if you say a bad thing about it on the internet, 2/10

The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (2008) - another indie that apparently caught the eye of kevin fiege? i don’t really know why because chris’s character is very bland and the movie overall is nothing special. tennessee williams wrote the screenplay before he died in the 80′s and then this was made and nothing about it was changed. it’s basically straight people in the 20′s in the south being weird and rude. a rich girl pays a hot poor boy to escort her to parties after a huge scandal was caused by her father. she loves the poor boy but he doesn’t return the feelings and everyone’s sad, dying, or mean. skip it, honestly. 4/10

Push (2009) - honestly, an underrated movie that so often gets shit on because of x-men. push is so good! a telekinetic man meets a young girl who can see the future, who tells him that if he helps her find her mom, they’ll also come into $6 million. they run into his ex and the government department trying to control people with powers, and shit ensues. chris’s chemistry with dakota fanning as big brother/little sister is adorable and i need more people to talk about it. 8/10, very worth your time.

The Losers (2010) - apparently went up against some other star-studded action flick with a similar plot at the time of release and suffered for it, but other than that, this is a fun romp with lots of character. a team of militiamen are framed for an international scandal and forced to go underground until a mysterious woman helps them exact revenge on the billionaire who framed them so they can go back to their families. chris plays one of the secondary characters and he’s PERFECT. best character in the whole movie! you’ve probably seen the “don’t stop believing”/”lethal killing machine” scene around tumblr before - that’s just how his character is the whole movie and it’s great. definitely recommend! 7/10

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010) - we��ve all seen it. lucas lee is the best. there are lots of problems in the word choice and some of the moral quandaries but overall, an enjoyable ode to videogames and comic books. 6.5/10

Puncture (2011) - once again, an indie film with very little theatrical release. WHOOOH though. this movie. SO GOOD! two personal injury lawyers take on a case when a nurse is accidentally pricked on the job and contracts AIDS. they take on a huge pharmaceutical supply company in the hopes of manufacturing and creating a legal standard for using safety needles to protect frontline medical workers, all while chris’s character is dealing with being an addict. based on a true story, honestly   one of chris’s best performances (and that’s across the board). you can  rent it cheap from youtube and it’s totally worth it. 7.5/10

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) - i mean. it’s cap. honestly this movie feels a little long even though it’s not. overall it’s a good, enjoyable movie and watching it all the way through reminded me of why bucky was so important. 7/10

What's Your Number? (2011) - okay honestly i love this movie? a woman is slutshamed by her sister’s friends and then embarks on a journey through her past relationships to find her soulmate, only to realize that it doesn’t matter how many men she’s slept with because the right one really won’t give a damn and neither should she. everyone’s seen naked collin around tumblr. he’s a good boy. mostly. 7/10

The Avengers (2012) - so i can appreciate that this was like THE event movie of the summer of 2012 but it is LONG and there’s still so much spy shit i don’t understand. my friends and i also think that j*ss wh*d*n oversimplifies most of the characters, and ultimately the writing isn’t super strong. the performances are, for sure, but it’s still not as great of a movie as i thought it was when i was a senior in high school. 7/10

The Iceman (2012) - also an indie? based on a true story. a man (played by michael shannon) is recruited by the mob to be a hitman, and then something happens where they don’t want to pay him or something, so he starts doing a shady job with another hitman (played by chris) to support his family. overall it’s a boring film but michael and chris were both really good! watch it if you like dark mob movies, michael shannon, or winona ryder. 3/10

Snowpiercer (2013) - this movie, no pun intended, is a RIDE. poor people at the back of a train containing the last living human beings revolt against the bourgeoise. everyone’s dirty and tired and hungry. weird shit happens, but ultimately, this was SO worth the watch (and the money i spent on the blu-ray)!  7/10

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) - still my favorite cap movie. excellent characterization, maybe the only time i cared about natasha. the plot should be an avengers movie given that shield is a team concern, but i will stand by the winter soldier aspect of this movie til i die. 8/10

Before We Go (2014) - an indie movie that chris directed (his directorial debut)! it’s...cute, i guess. it’s not harmful in any way, but also not special in any way. flustered woman misses her train, cute musician in the station offers to help her navigate NYC. they talk about feelings and their pasts and what they’re running from and toward. it’s fine. 6/10

Playing It Cool (2014) - indie? i don’t know?? screenplay writer (chris) wants to write action films but keeps getting hired to write romcoms, then he finds himself IN a romcom. it’s okay. some people think it’s terribly misogynistic which i didn’t find it to be, but it’s also just...kinda bland. 4/10

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) - my least favorite avengers movie. i genuinely hate how ultron was handled and this movie has never once made me sympathize with the maximoffs. except for when steve defends their choice to allow experimentation to be done so they could defend their country. uh the party at the beginning is the best part, full stop. 3/10

Captain America: Civil War (2016) - this isn’t a cap film. he has no character growth. this is an avengers film at best. i also take issue with how much of this movie is really just two movies forced into one. bucky gets the short end of the deal in the overall mcu and this is really where that starts. 5/10

Gifted (2017) - PLEASE. WATCH. GIFTED. a former philosophy professor gives up his career to raise his niece, but when his mother attempts to gain custody, he has to fight for the person he loves most in the world. one of the most heartfelt, genuine movies ever. chris and mckenna grace have SUCH good chemistry. bonus octavia spencer (also in snowpiercer). 10/10

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) - probably my favorite avengers movie. great stakes. amazing acting. THE BEARD!!! 8/10

Knives Out (2019) - WHOOO BITCH. TOP TIER. ransom drysdale could do whatever he wants to me and normally, i don’t “date” villains. 9/10

Endgame (2019) - the lesser infinity war. i’m not a fan of time jumps and also hate fatphobia. thor was mistreated and i can’t forgive that.

[hows-it-holed-up]

Perfunctory Photo Recap: The O.C. 2x14

Up until now I’ve only been doing these recaps for pilots, but getting stuck watching only pilots – which are usually the absolute worst episodes – of series I love sounds pretty grim. So as of now, any iconic episodes of any show are fair game. ERGO, despite the fact that The O.C. has what I’m fairly sure is a phenomenal pilot, I’m skipping ahead to the February sweeps episode of the show’s second season: “The Rainy Day Women.” If I remember correctly, it’s extremely emotionally satisfying and I will probably spend the last 15 minutes just pressing my hand to my own sternum and sighing. 

My Disclaimer: None of these posts will be in any way comprehensive, because I’m lazy. All of them are probably going to have spoilers of some sort for the entire series…or at least what I remember of it from when I last watched it an eon ago. Exactly what you want in a recap!

California, Here We Come: Kirsten and Sandy (aka Mom and Dad) have been fighting because the former love of his life needed some PRETTY INTENSE legal help, and he jumped at the chance. Kirsten understandably doesn’t love this! Meanwhile, Summer is about to jet off to Italy for her BF Zach’s sister’s wedding, because somehow we’re still pretending like this is a thing. Plus some other stuff is going on with some other characters blah blah who cares. Welcome to The O.C., bitch!

I read somewhere that Josh Schwartz always hated this title sequence – that he could never find something he was super satisfied with and just kind of acquiesced to this. Meanwhile the rest of us are screaming the words to “California” while we head bang and strum our air guitars, every episode.

In the first big scene, we catch up with Mom and Dad, who have been struggling for a few episodes because an old flame came back into his life asking for help, and he dove in head first. 

Kirsten is not pleased. This Rebecca situation was so heartbreaking. Sandy Cohen’s whole thing is that he always does what’s right. This was one of the only times in the series it felt like he had other viable options and he was obviously misstepping. I’m with Kiki here. 

Oh hello Olivia Wilde! I forgot you were in this show! She’s insanely beautiful, obviously, but those mid-aughts pencil-thin eyebrows didn’t do anyone any favors. Not that I would know anything about this personally, of course.   

And not doing the show itself any favors 15 years out: this “Marissa is a lesbian but it’s definitely just a phase” storyline. I remember thinking it was a little gratuitous and questionable even back in ‘05. 

Speaking of questionable plots: We’ve been strung along for half a season watching Seth trying to win Summer back and her rebuffing him. And Summer’s right – it WAS pretty annoying! Seth’s still at it, heading over to her place as she’s packing for Zach’s sister’s wedding in Italy, but...not really having anything to say! (i.e. still not there to advance the plot.) 

We get a brief interlude to watch Julie Cooper think about how she could snip the tip off her husband’s penis. 

And then we’re back to the real story. Although I’d honestly rather stick with Julie because:

SANDY. NO. THIS IS NOT APPROPRIATE! You cannot spend the night in a hotel room with your ex. You also cannot drink wine on the floor of said hotel room with said ex! Stop it! 

Seriously. You know what could happen. 

Anyway, Seth thinks he’s figured out how he might actually be able to move the needle with Summer. He’s bought his boat back and is going to take her...sailing in the pool? Sure! Foolproof!

I had a literature professor in college who would bring this show up in class every week, linking it to whatever we were reading at the time. He didn’t do this because he thought he was bridging some kind of gap between us and the material – only about 1/4 of the class even watched this show. He just did it because it made him happy. This “objective correlative” reference really made me think about him and chuckle.  

At the airport on her way to Italy, Summer sees a little boy playing with a horse on top of some comic books. I guess she’s like, “Even though I’m only supposed to be 17 my biological clock is already ticking,” and she ditches Zach and heads to Seth’s. 

Checking in with our other couple, Sandy has finally (sort of) come to his senses and headed home – after Rebecca straight up ran away from him because she was about to get caught by the cops. Helps when the universe just makes decisions for you, I guess!

Ehhhhh I mean it started a little! 

Anyway, they kiss, and it’s very sweet. And we’re all breathing a sigh of relief.  And we won’t sic Julie on him just yet.

Meanwhile, their son is on the roof attempting to adjust the satellite. He’s put on a Spiderman mask because it’s all he’s got to protect his head from the rain, somehow, and he’s decided the only safety precaution he needs is A ROPE TIED AROUND HIS MIDSECTION. Things, predictably, go awry. 

HOW did Seth not get literally sliced in half by this? He must have slid like 30-40 feet from the top of the roof to where he’s dangling. I have no interest in doing the calculations to verify this statement, but I’m pretty sure we’re at least looking at some internal bleeding here.  

Anyway, Summer arrives, finds Seth dangling in the back, and:

The emotional payoff for this arc, now that it’s FINALLY concluded, is excellent. And what a delightful way to anchor it for this character. 

It’s hard not to love this scene – it’s heartwarming. But with the benefit of 15 years and a rewatch, it also seems like this must have been VERY uncomfortable to film. Like apart from having to hang upside down for who knows how long, how was there not water dripping down Adam Brody’s (or more likely, this stunt person’s) nose the entire time?? Somebody call OSHA!

Musings from the Poolhouse:

- This show is disguised as a teen soap, but it’s so much more than that. Between its overarching commentary on privilege and the status quo and its own self-awareness (exemplified by winks at the audience like show-within-a-show-cum-commentary-on-itself-AND-reality-television, The Valley), The O.C. is one of the cleverest series ever to grace network television. Despite a few things not aging particularly well, it’s still a really fun experience to watch it. Except for season 3. Skip season 3. 

- Julie. Cooper. JUST. YES. YES YES YES.  

- Marissa’s face when Alex is talking to her about having to do things like take out garbage and pay rent made me LOL. 

- I may have been projecting a little bit about the kid with the horse at the airport. He was very cute. And I think my own ovaries have kicked into high gear.   

- There was an entire (C? D? E?) plot in this episode about Lindsay’s paternity and moving to Chicago and some other stuff I can’t bring myself to care about. Ben McKenzie and Shannon Lucio had like negative chemistry, so despite the show’s best efforts to make us invested in that relationship, it just wasn’t landing. I remember caring way more about her storyline with her mom, Caleb, Kirsten, even Seth. So, shrug, she’s moving to Chicago I guess! 

- Josh Schwartz is so good at music! Apart from Phantom Planet (obviously), I clocked Blind Melon, Louis XIV, Boyz II Men, Bell X1 and Matt Pond PA (covering Oasis) in this episode. A real auditory journey down memory lane. Did I miss any?

[idairsauthor]

This Fcking Emergency: Stupid Racist Magic

PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of This Fucking Emergency, an intermittent imaginary cable talk show where I sit down with some of the many imaginary characters I have created or befriended over the years and discuss vital issues of the day. Please welcome back to the program everyone’s favorite imaginary diplomat, legislator, and former sheep dealer, Conn mac Emer...

CONN: Why are there so many chairs on set today?

PLAIDDER: Because there were two mass shootings within 24 hours last weekend. 

CONN: I don’t see the...

PLAIDDER: OK. I wrote Redemption for a lot of reasons. One of them was that I was trying to understand and maybe imagine a solution for school shootings. This was in 2005, I would just like to remind our viewers. Aught fucking five. Fourteen years ago I finished this novel and I was already, at that point, permanently appalled by this country’s tolerance for mass shootings in schools. 

CONN: So what happened to Daphie at Decalon High--

PLAIDDER: Yes. That happens in my country. OFTENER and OFTENER. Now you didn’t have a lot to do with that storyline because you were caught up in the other horror of life in the aughts, viz., the War On Terror. But anyway, my point is: because I wrote that novel, when something like this happens...I mean I don’t even call them. Your fellow-characters just...show up.

DAPHIE: Hello?

PLAIDDER: Hi, Daphie. If you want to know what you’re doing here--

DAPHIE: Because of the baby and the mother and the father.

PLAIDDER: Exactly. Only in this case, only the baby survived. Because in my world, evidently, we only have one kind of magic.

CONN: I thought your world didn’t have shri.

PLAIDDER: We definitely don’t. 

CONN: Then what kind of magic do you--

PLAIDDER: Chandra knows.

CHANDRA: Hi.

CONN: Where the hell did you come from all of a--

PLAIDDER: Chandra, can you just say it? That line of yours that’s been in my head since El Paso.

CHANDRA: Found a church on stupid racist doctrine, you get stupid racist magic.

PLAIDDER: Yes. And you know how you get even MORE stupid racist magic? You choose, as the person to lead your nation, a stupid racist mage.

CONN: Nothing about your president seems magical to me.

PLAIDDER: Yes, well, that’s the Ideiren point of view. But what Chandra’s talking about is National. It is in fact the only kind of magic in your universe that originated in the Nation.

CHANDRA: I always thought it was all bullshit. I mean...my family definitely tried to annihilate me with it, and here I still am--

PLAIDDER: All right, let me explain what I mean by ‘magic’ in this context. 

AINE: This should be interesting.

CONN: Shriia! I didn’t know you’d be here.

AINE: Neither did I.

PLAIDDER: Like I said. I don’t even call them; they just come. Anyway. I had an old friend over for dinner the other day who was talking about what we call “the magic of the theater.” Now, when I say that I’m usually being ironic, but he seems to really believe in it and to be honest I’m not totally sure that I don’t. A lot of contemporary performance theory is based at some distance on the idea of theater as a ritual which at some point in the distant past was efficacious.

SONNIA: Effiwhatnow?

PLAIDDER: And welcome to you too, Sonnia. 

AINE: “Efficacious” means that it actually makes something happen. So, take haons linn.

SONNIA: You mean that weird thing you do at five in the morning.

AINE: To you it’s a weird thing I do at five in the morning. To me and to the rest of my people it’s how we help create the world. To you it’s a ritual the same way, I don’t know, brushing your teeth is a ritual. To us, it’s efficacious. It keeps the world together. I can skip it under extraordinary circumstances once in a while and things will be all right, but that’s only because other shriias will be doing haons linn somewhere else. If we all stopped doing haons linn...the sun wouldn’t rise. The whole world would just stay dark, forever.

SONNIA: Really?

AINE: Yes, really.

SONNIA: So what explains the fact the sun rises in the Nation?

AINE: It rises in the Nation because we’re all on the same island.

SONNIA: What about Dubhinis? There’s no shriias in Dubhinis.

TYRNA: Don’t you wish.

PLAIDDER: Hello, Tyrna, thanks for joining us.

AINE: Don’t be hard on her, Tyrna, she was raised to believe--

TYRNA: I know what she was raised to believe in.

SONNIA: So you do haons linn.

TYRNA: I don’t. That’s an Ideiren thing. But we do other things to keep our world together. Despite what you hear from Chandra’s people--

CHANDRA: They’re not my people any more--

TYRNA: --the Nation is not the center of the universe. The Nation only continues to exist because the rest of us are building the world around it. 

SONNIA: That’s nuts. The world is real, whether--

TYRNA: Nobody’s saying it’s not.

PLAIDDER: Well, I kind of am. I mean, your world isn’t actually real. It’s created. It’s created by me, you know, with the support of the people who read it. And that means Tyrna’s absolutely right. I wouldn’t have created this world just to write about the Nation. On the other hand, I couldn’t, or at least I didn’t, create Ideire or Dubhinis or Plenana or any of the other islands without also creating the Nation.

TYRNA: Why the hell not? 

AINE: Tyrna!

PLAIDDER: No, she’s right to ask. Of all the places in your universe, the Nation is the one most like the place where I come from.

CHANDRA: That’s...really depressing.

PLAIDDER: You’re telling me. 

CONN: Weren’t we talking about the magic of the theater?

PLAIDDER: Yes. Yes we were. Anyway, so my friend’s idea of the magic of the theater is this: You have a vision of something you want to make happen. The thing does not come into existence at that moment. You have to work to make it happen. You find other people and you share the vision with them, and you find a place, and you find a lot of other stuff, and eventually the thing that you imagined becomes real--so real that other people can see it. This is an ordinary process that goes on all over the place all the time. But when you think about it, this is actually kind of what magic is. You imagine something, and that makes it real.

SONNIA: I’m not getting any of this.

AINE: I think we’d better move on. I spent months trying to move Sonnia past this stage and it never happened.

PLAIDDER: And then what I said was--and this was before all of THIS happened--there’s a passage in one of the Little House books where Pa explains the railroad the same way. The engineers imagine a railroad, and then everybody goes out west and works 24/7 and digs dirt and pounds steel and eats pancackes and gets paid because of something that’s just an idea, that doesn’t exist at all. It’s a really interesting passage--it’s in By the Shores of Silver Lake, I think. 

CHANDRA: Of course the real magic there is--

PLAIDDER: Imperialism and capitalism, yes. But that’s my point. This having a vision and making it real thing is a lot of fun and I think, mostly, good for people in the theater, as long as the Vision-Haver is, you know, a clueful and compassionate person who cares about the human consequences of their magic. But there’s nothing inherently good about this process of making a vision real. It can be bad. It can be really bad. It can be REALLY. FUCKING. BAD.

DAPHIE: Like...

PLAIDDER: Yes. Exactly.

SONNIA: I don’t know what she’s--

PLAIDDER: Daphie’s whole novel is about me trying to understand one particular kind of very bad magic. I was trying to understand how a thing like the shooting at Decalon High is imagined and then how it is made real. Over and over, oftener and oftener. It seemed to me as if every evil vision, every malicious imagination in my world had collaborated to create this thing. I wrote...I don’t even know how many hundred thousand words went into that novel. Let’s just say the problem and the solution in Redemption are about three times as complicated as they are in any of the earlier novels. And when I look back on it, I can only see one thing about that explanation that I think is really true, that I think is still true now.

CONN: Which is what?

CHANDRA: Stupid racist magic.

PLAIDDER: Bingo.

CHANDRA: “Bingo”?!

PLAIDDER: It’s...oh, never mind. Look, about fifty years ago Jerome Bixby was trying to understand the magic of war and he wrote a script for a show called Star Trek called “Day of the Dove.” And in that episode, there are these energy beings that feed off aggression. So they try to bait all the people on this one ship into fighting each other, so they can feed. The individual Starfleet or Klingon people think they want war but there’s actually some force out there making them want it, making them do things, imagining a war and then making it happen. And it’s remarkable how durable this idea is. I mean you could link it back to Tolstoy and War And Peace, where he tries to understand a thing like the war of 1812 and takes all those thousands of pages to prove that none of the historical explanations for it matter worth a damn. The war happened because Providence wanted to move people from west to east and this was the way Providence found of making that real. Or in season 2 of Stranger Things, they start calling the monster the Mind-Flayer and everything gets tentacly and it is weird, it is REALLY weird for me, how much that damn thing looks like an arani--like the biggest fucking arani ever--

AINE: I hate arani.

PLAIDDER: Yes! I hate them too! They are the nastiest fucking things in the ether apart from the kraikk, and as with the Mind-Flayer and those pumpkin patch death vines and all of these things are metaphors for whatever it is out there that keeps making humans hurt and kill each other when clearly, clearly, that is not what most individual human beings want or what most of them would do if they were free.

TYRNA: Says you.

PLAIDDER: All right. Says me. 

TYRNA: You want to know what I think?

PLAIDDER: Sure.

TYRNA: Put whatever metaphors you want on it. Under the costume it’s always greed. Just people grabbing what they can get and then trying to kill anyone who looks like they might take it from them. Throwing the whole world out of balance. I keep trying to right the balance and it’s like water in a sieve. A hundred women like me couldn’t do it. A thousand couldn’t do it.

CHANDRA: All right, greed, definitely, but like...I mean...the cruelty. The cruelty isn’t just about greed. Sometimes the cruelty actually interferes with the greed. People have a choice between them and they choose cruelty. 

TYRNA: I never said your magic was efficient. It’s been pretty efficacious, all the same.

CHANDRA: But why the cruelty? I mean that’s the question that’s kept a dozen of my therapists up at night. Cruelty beyond monetary gain, cruelty beyond utility. Cruelty as...as, like, a god unto itself.

TYRNA: Cruelty and greed are both lusts and they’re limbs of the same tree grown from the same rotten root.

PLAIDDER: So anyway...what I said was, if theater is magic, then, fascism is magic too. Someone has a vision. He calls out to other people. Other people share that vision. Then they make it real. And it’s hideous. That’s what--I mean, Rhinoceros.

CONN: I beg your pardon?

PLAIDDER: This old French play where everyone turns into rhinoceroses. No reason, they just do it. Because something’s making it happen. It’s not called magic, it’s called absurdism. But it’s the same thing: why the fuck is this hideous transformation taking place? Why can’t anyone stop it? I mean I think the arani and all those metaphors Tyrna is quite rightly impatient with--it’s our way of representing the just--fucking--irrationality of it all. It starts to seem at some point as if nobody really WANTS this, it’s just happening because the thing that’s making it happen is too powerful to stop. Like, an arani doesn’t have an agenda. It just grows. That’s all it does. It has no brain and no intelligence, it’s just an empty bag of guts with filaments hooked into a hundred different heads. It can be manipulated by an intelligent and powerful human...to a point. And after that it just...feeds. This image that we have of this monstrous indefinable thing that makes us do horrible things to each other--I mean--we made it real. We MADE IT REAL. We keep making it. First it’s newspapers then it’s phones then it’s radio then it’s television now it’s the internet. And THAT MAN goes out there and fills up this arani with his--he goes out there and does his--

CHANDRA: Stupid racist magic.

PLAIDDER: People in my country mostly don’t believe that curses are efficacious. But they are. If you’re powerful enough, you can curse people. If you’re the president of the united states, you can call down evil on someone, and the evil will materialize. He says the words--and they’re stupid, stupid words--but they still have power. They suggest images to people who hear them. And then people go and make them real. And then he can say it had nothing to do with him. Because there is no material, no evidentiary, no objective chain of causation. But everyone knows he’s doing it. Everyone knows. Regardless of what they admit. They know that his stupid racist magic is killing people. In El Paso. In Dayton. In Gilroy. He’s imagined a world in which white men are omnipotent and he’s making it real.

AINE: Trying to make it real.

PLAIDDER: Aine, it *is* real, don’t you understand, it’s real in a way that much as I love you you can never be.

CONN: If that gleachinai is doing magic then he’s not the only one. There are other visions in your country. There are better visions. People share them and work at them and some of them come true some of the time. You know that. I don’t understand why you say that this is the only kind of magic your world has. It isn’t.

PLAIDDER: But stupid racist magic just keeps killing people and I don’t understand why it just keeps getting stronger and more powerful and--

TYRNA: BECAUSE IT HAS GUNS.

PLAIDDER: OK, I get that, but--

TYRNA: Do you though? I don’t think you do. There’s nothing magical about any of this. Yeah, words have power, even when idiots use them. Because the idiots HAVE THE GUNS. All of this nonsense keeps happening in your country because nobody has taken the guns away from the idiots.

PLAIDDER: It’s very hard to take a gun away from an idiot.

TYRNA: Honey, what about me or my backstory would ever make you think that I do NOT know that?

PLAIDDER: Nothing.

TYRNA: Damn right. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard watching idiots ruin the world. It’s a crime and a shame. It’s unfair. But none of that is a new thing for me, all right? I’ve been fighting stupid racist magic all my life and I will tell you this. You want the balance restored, you have to take some guns away from some idiots. Now when is that going to happen, in your world?

PLAIDDER: Well, Tyrna, it could be said that your whole universe is the result of the fact that it is easier for me to imagine demons and monsters and devils and people shooting fire out of their hands than it is to imagine the government of my actual  country actually taking guns away from idiots.

TYRNA: Wow.

PLAIDDER: Yeah.

DAPHIE: It isn’t always idiots.

PLAIDDER: Daphie...

DAPHIE: Jarad wasn’t an idiot.

PLAIDDER: I know. But some idiot made it easy for Jarad to get a RAF. I mean I never even explained how that happened, because in my own world that’s not an extrarordinary event. Like, of course he could find a RAF when he wanted one, that’s how things just are. I was...when I wrote your book, I was...not interested in that part of it. I was chasing all these other explanations, because that was what we all did, back in the aughts.

CHANDRA: So...I mean...what. You...regret the whole...our whole story?

PLAIDDER: No, no no. I just feel like...well, it took me a long time to accept the fact that actual problems are sometimes less interesting than fictional ones. Like, the fact that a problem is hard to solve doesn’t mean that its solution is fiendishly complicated. Sometimes the solution is really fucking simple. Too simple to entertain people. Too simple for narrative.

CONN: Is this, like, a two-hour special or something? It’s already gone on way longer than normal.

PLAIDDER: I know. I can never resolve these things, I just have to...end them. So I am. Thanks for coming, everyone. I hope it’s a long time before I see you again.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

you said random number so.. gimme 5, 17, 24, 26, 38, and 43

#epic thank you!!!! sorry this is so long, gang, but you know me. press J if you have that keyboard shortcut option

5)favorite fics?

soph nothingunrealistic’s!! click the link & peruse any of the dozen gifts to this world on ao3. also just go right to her writing tag

17)a fandom you wish more people were in/you had more people to talk to about?

well i don’t Really have an answer for this one, but just yesterday it was once again time to talk abt how jaclyn moriarty’s 4-book ashbury/brookfield YA series is a lot of fun and unusual in good ways, but like, i guess what with being published throughout the aughts and like, not being super obscure but also not being explosively popular, and idk maybe they were also more Known in australia than the US, and, idk, but there’s not exactly what you’d call a Fandom online, or even very many traces of one. and i just like to mention the series as Fun To Read because they are very lively and focus on girls and have a real variety of Girl Characters (and also some boy characters who are also varied and fun but that’s just a bonus) and in particular i like to talk about how the third book has a really Unusual Choice Of Protagonist (the unfun unpopular Best Grades by-the-book overachiever etc etc etc nerd girl, kinda having the personality that ppl misinterpret alana beck’s personality to be lol, like something of a killjoy goody-two-shoes lol, but also with that earnestness and drivenness that alana has as well)......and the format of each book is Epistolary, but in different and creative ways each time, and it’s fun how like, the characters who are telling the story (the ones whose letters are used and etc) rotate with each book [tho emily and lydia are Storytellers in the 2nd And 4th books] and it’s very neat how like, you do get that sense that just b/c someone’s not being Focused On as much from different people’s perspectives doesn’t mean they aren’t still existing and present and doing stuff and having their own story, even when that’s not being mentioned by whoever’s writing down the events that we’re reading. we love that sentiment. anyways i just like to always Promote them.

24)who are you at the end of this decade?

hmmm!! i mean in many ways i am who i have been the whole time but yknow, 2009 - 2019 was a tumultuous period. i was always furiously trying to think through Who Am I As A Person for various reasons, even though like, when you’re in ur mid-teens that’s always In Progress rather than there being a really set answer to be discovered, and for a while it was a lot of frustration with myself all “why are you like [this], why can’t you do [that] right,” etc etc. but eventually i had like, a better frame of reference for a lot of what was going on, and even why i never quite felt like i had a great sense of Who I Am and What I Like and etc in the first place, and more understanding and respect for myself lol. even now it’s like, yknow i’m ~self-consious~ in ways often lol and i’ll sometimes Use that to be like, okay try to improve [this thing] about yourself!! and yknow on the one hand i feel like stuff i’ve been Working On for years Has paid off in ways, but then recently it’s like......okay hang on but like, it’s not a bad thing to like, have some traits that maybe aren’t gonna be seen as “perfect” or might be annoying or yknow, your Demeanor and Vibe isn’t always like, the most important thing to focus on lol or something where like, oh being sweet & saintly & coming across as utterly pleasant to everyone always gets to be The Objective Ideal. like, i’m opinionated and can be argumentative and sometimes impatient?? like, there’s a balance here between “good to be trying to Improve Yourself always or whatever lol” and “but also everyone is People with Traits and Different Personalities and everyone doesn’t have to just sand themselves down into an edgeless smooth sphere” and like, sure it’s like “haha i’m a bit more temperamental than i’d like still” but also i sure sympathize w/ the fact that like, oof, depression makes it tricky sometimes! and i do pretty okay at like, being Aware of when my mood is cursed and trying to be as chill about it as poss! or like, “haha wish i was better at conversation lmao” but yknow also understanding that like.....i’m just kinda Not great at it and that’s what’s Natural for me and like, again, a balance between “trying to be easier to talk to, lol” and “being okay with the fact that i’m not super easy to talk to and most ppl aren’t very easy for me to talk to either, lol”

im trying to be a bit less cagey lol which i guess might not be the first word someone might use to describe me for a variety of reasons, But......and but then also, i just like, for me there is no simple Be Yourself, Just Talk Naturally As U Would conversation mode lol, but you know. it’s hardly a pressing issue, and at the same time, like, sometimes when i find it hard to talk to people it’s like “well this is just you needing to Be Nicer” or whatever, or like, well you’re just not used talking to Anyone so like, push through it, and then it takes me a while to realize like, well no you just don’t love talking to them, lmao......and at the same time i’m Really slow to realize when people *do* actually enjoy talking to me, lmao, i am just not used to it And used to people like, not really being super interested in interacting with me even if they think i’m alright lol. lord! so i’m still slightly surprised whenever Anyone likes me, but also like, then again there’s sort of always these repeated scenarios where it’s like [Glum Trombone Noise] i’m also the recipient of various ppl’s various contempt for various reasons........which like, i sure don’t Absorb that as like “way 2 go, you deserve that” but also like, sure also never is the most fun experience of your life. but i have a way more solid sense of the fact that like, i don’t inherently deserve that, and an understanding of Why people will be Like That sometimes, and that’s all been acquired knowledge from the whole journey of this decade lol

also like, i have always been and continue to be like, Basically A Cat lol.....cats-sonas for everyone, ___ the ___ cat, But Seriously Folks........like, oh, there’s a lot of ppl and/or noise around?? unless i have chosen to put myself in that situation for fun, i’m probably gonna be finding whatever quiet / distant corner to hide out in and try to remain as undetected as possible.......kinda wary about interacting with people sometimes, though then also, i like to be friendly w/ strangers (if they’re friendly with me) and won’t necessarily mind spontaneous interactions but only if it’s Plausibly Expected in the situation, and even then, i might just prefer that Nobody Talk To Me......and i’ve yet to be Really comfortable in a group of ppl if i’m there *with* that group lmao, like, i don’t like to take the lead or compete for attention or anything and just kinda will try to do my own thing on the outskirts, whereas if i’m by myself it’s just like, i feel a lot more comfortable and like i can just do whatever lmao..........and also i don’t like to make noise lol. unless again, it’s deliberate, and it’s Fun. like at a concert? i will be the death of whatever nerd like, wants it to be like a solemn “listening to a record” occasion or wants everyone to yell out complete sentences if a performer asks an Arena full of people How Are You Doing 2nite or whatever. i’m gonna yell!!! anyways. idk. i am always like “oh i am Very Much [this way], except for all the times i am totally [the would-be Opposite way]”........i can’t really opt out of having Anxious Qualities and that’s alright, even though it does get in the way of things sometimes for sure. like, c’est la vie!!! i understand why i am like this, and that like, while for my own sake i can try to hold my own hand here and encourage myself to be a little bolder, it’s totally fine that like, i have Problems and Difficulties. 

i’m also at like, maybe the lowest levels of Impending Dread that i’ve had since i was like, 8 or some shit lmao............like again kind of a Wild Decade and one where like, it was totally all like “wow am i even gonna make it to [a few yrs in the future] -> [a year in the future] -> [half a year from now]” aaand it hasn’t been a full year yet since i was last thinking like “lmfao oof i might not be alive by __, who knows!!” but even while that was going on it was at least an improvement from the times i thought i might like, hmm hope i don’t off myself. and like, this is probably the first Start Of A Year in like. well possibly the past decade lmao, where yknow, it hasn’t felt quite as dire. i mean im not really out here a cockeyed optimist about anything, and like, i’m aware that things are always a little tenuous and there’s other factors i’m always nervous about, but That’s nothing new, and i’m kinda more like, neutral about the future rn lol? feeling less Dread and Doom is new-ish lmao and like, allowing that yknow, despite how crappy the past decade has been re: how i felt in my Outlook, there’s been a bunch of surprising Good Things to come along, and i totally allow for the fact that that could easily continue to happen. having Less(ened) Bad Feelings about Things might not = Absolutely Thriving but i appreciate it!! i also try to be appreciative lmao. like, what with the dread and doom & (hope i don’t die this year, i guess,) feelings, it’s wildly hard nowadays for me to like, anticipate stuff in a ~fun~ way or at all, but yknow when anything nice, even a really small / unspectacular / ordinary moment and/or detail, is being experienced by me, i try to enjoy that. i like to be Appreciative. and i think i’m also sort of like, sharing more of myself than i’ve probably gotten to or felt capable of doing in the past, and i appreciate that a lot too. like, it can be really Depressing for sure to think of like, hmm i haven’t had the chance to like, feel in control of things and like things are Totally Fine and i feel Totally Okay & like i’m enjoying everything, and i can choose to pursue [things i might enjoy], and maybe i Won’t have that chance? [another glum trombone noise] but like. i appreciate the good experiences that i Do and Have gotten so far. and the fact i’ve ever been in situations to connect with people and enjoy things the ways that i can and like, it’s really nice that My Presence in other ppl’s lives, even as just like Some Online Rando re: some ppl lmao, has had some positive effect for them or even just been enjoyed is like, wow, this is pretty great lol.........not sure where i was taking this tangent but like, i am someone who appreciates this a lot.

hmm i am also a passionate person at the end of this decade lmao!!!! that has definitely always been true. i am Of That Temperament. it is funny b/c like, the fact that i am A Motormouth Actually But Often Not Saying Anything In The Least To People, they think i’m like, of this very mild disposition and Not someone with strong opinions that they will launch into, or else i would have been doing that already........but you know!!! here i am online, fully able to just dive into things and start talking about whatever for one million years. and i sure latch onto stuff in a Big Way sometimes, which is why anyone follows me at all lol, b/c if you like [whatever particular content] and i am just all about that too, it’s a beneficial situation for us both i guess lmao. i can get really excited and focused about stuff, obviously, and i sure Also Obviously like to explore the emotional aspects of things. which is a vague thing to say lmfao but you all know what i mean!!! it continues to be the only reason i draw lmaooo like i draw so much and like, Making Fanart And Sharing It Online has i think also been a journey of this decade for me, and i really only draw a) exactly that fanart that i feel like making, and b) what i feel like making is always also probably abt Feelings somehow, like the Three Emotions: kissing (aka gay), crying (sad), and angry (angry)........great news if you want to see the stuff i already happen to be drawing lol!!! bad news i guess if you were hoping i’d draw anything but whatever i end up wanting to draw. i cannot be diverted. and i don’t even draw for its own sake lol like, i’ve always doodled for fun and all that, but like, ive never been a “wow i want to make my own __ someday” or whatever, and if i’m trying to draw something which is anything other than [the exact thing i might feel like drawing] it is Such a chore that like, i just don’t do it except for like, total Exceptions. except exceptions lol. don’t ask!! anyways why did i get on that drawing tangent there........yeah it’s definitely lucky that i’ve been giving myself that Drawing Experience so that i can connect w/ ppl that way, cuz i’m godawful at like, necessarily providing other stuff lol Or at being the one to Make Connections Happen otherwise......and also of course sometimes it is easier to convey/communicate something via drawing. woohoo!!

anyways yeah i’m a bit excitable lol and i sure guess i’ve got that Chaotique energy at times, for better or worse lol........like sometimes my Contribution can be like, just an absolute wild card thrown into the pile, or just like, maybe adding some Boost to a situation that other people can run with if they so choose. just throw things out there sometimes and enjoy when other ppl find that fun lmao

what else is there about me??? lol.......oh yeah i’m always sort of an Office Goofaround (not actually in an office ever, though). like, when ppl Don’t have that sense of Collaborative Humor where like, if someone does something a bit silly u just roll with that bit, or if god forbid they have Exhausting Cishet Guy humor where they think everything is about Dry, “Intelligent” Sarcasm and that being “funny” is about making yourself look like the coolest or cleverest person there who Wins the Center Of Attention spot?? it’s like, eff that, where are my Get Silly gang. also puns are funny but also only b/c they are silly. you have to really lean into it lol. 

well anyways!!!! and when i am asked to talk about myself i can be very extensive and yet not necessarily cover everything. here we are

26)favorite look you had?

my look hasn’t changed too much! Tees n Jeans (or shorts? or jorts? lol) are pretty much my thing altho you Know i have at times added in A Layer, or even accessories.......as always, part of the first few years of the decade for me was the whole “aha, yeah okay i’m trans” process, but before that i wasn’t ever really trying to be more “””””””””fashionable”””””””””” than the tees n jeans type of look anyway lmao, and even nowadays like, i have some Wardrobe Items that like, ppl might consider ”androgynous” or whatever when cis dudes wear them, like leggings or a v-neck sweater........really some of the only significant Changes was getting binder/s eventually (by 2012?? ugh idk) and also like, by 2011 i cut my hair relatively short, and from there on i just like, every year went “ugh god i need it to be shorter” and even now i’m like, hmm, do i want it shorter or is this fine?? but also i’m somewhat limited styling-wise b/c i just continually cut it myself in a bathroom mirror, true chaotic. and! i’ve been like, god i wish i had a baseball cap that’s just like, solid [my fave blue] or yknow, black or something, or idk. one that i like. and also someday it would be nice to like, not only have an updated prescription of lenses but also Multiple Glasses Frames to choose from, even though my current ones are alright still lol.......this is me just talking abt my past looks and how i’d like to potentially update my look lmao i did Not answer the question but, as usual, i also don’t have a great direct answer lol

38)a prediction you had for this decade that came true?

lol this was not a decade where i was ever looking ahead to 2020 and making any assumptions about this Block Of Time as a whole.......i mean like, i was Really starting to suspect byyyy 2012 for sure that like, i could not like, be able to exist And have my parents be in my life at all lol and by 2013 it was just like. increasing confirmation of that. and i last saw / spoke to them prior to me just effing out of there at the end of 2015. snaps for me

43)an important relationship (of any kind) you had?

well a couple i appreciated that might not be obvious were pretty brief and fairly impersonal lol. so in 2015 i had this Nightmare Job for five whole months which was obviously miserable in most ways, but there was this other guy who wasn’t even a Coworker, we just had the same job and had similar routes of Stores to go to, so we would run into each other a lot of mornings, and he would talk to me and i’d talk to him and he was totally good-humored about everything and that was helpful lmao b/c it’s great to have Someone you enjoy seeing. i also struck up a rapport with a baked-goods stocker at one particular store, and that could be an enjoyable 14 seconds. it was a godawful job lmao and like, Any pleasantness at all / decent treatment from other people was very helpful

also at this other job the next year which was a lot less hellish, there was this customer lady who like, i can’t remember at what point she started talking to me but yknow it got to be that if we’d run into each other she’d kind of update me on her life. and she would be like “sorry i’m talking to you, a stranger, about all this stuff all the time, but my life is a mess and i don’t really have anyone to talk to” and i would be like, lmfao mood, do not even worry about it, and yknow this was someone i only ran into usually once every few weeks at my job, and could only listen to for however long, but she was Going Tf Through It all the time and as much as i am a chatterbox who will go on for a century about myself b/c i can’t be concise abt anything ever, i’m also decent at being in Listening Mode lmao or yknow, i was like No Truly i don’t mind you venting, and also yknow, i’m like well i know how much it sucks to have Nobody to talk to about Big Problems. and i am this random restaurant worker and if i’m one of the only people this lady can talk to, you can bet i’m going to listen lol.......and she was really goin through it all One Thing After Another and yknow i’d catch her two weeks later and she’d be all like, well [this situation] has gotten worse, or This One Problem is over but now New Problem has replaced it, etc, and a whole issue that i got updated on was like lol. she had this boyfriend who she’d kinda mention early on when she was talking abt trying to find a job, or losing a new-but-terrible job and once again being back in that Job Hunt Stress, and idk like. i just sort of have decent Relationship Instincts lmfao of like “hmm this doesn’t sound great” but like, a month or two later she’s straightup Married to this dude, and i’m like oh congrats :) and then when a month or two after That she’s talking about how like, she’s maybe having Job Probs again and her now-husband is really giving her shit for like, not having found a new one yet, i’m like internally all [ :)))))) Not Surprised :))))))) ] but i’m like. yknow you Sympathize n Validate but if you just up and tell someone who’s being treated real bad like “you are being treated terribly, this person is acting terribly” then they might just want to defend them like oh it’s not That bad, or minimize it, and blame themselves for making their terrible partner “look bad”.......and by extension when she once was in our restaurant With said husband and introduced us i was like, just getting further confirmation abt this dude’s shittiness from his Immediate Vibe lmao like....whenever i feel uncomfortable enough in someone’s presence in a [not just universal level of Anxiety] way, it’s like, that instinct is pretty reliable & accurate lol.....but i had to pretend Not to hate him or act too standoffish towards him lmao cuz like!!! i figured i could “get away with it” but yknow, this lady had already said how isolated she was and the husband sure seemed Controlling and like, yknow, if you act like you don’t Like the shitty partner or said shitty partner catches wind of you maybe telling this person that “hey your partner is being shitty” then it’s all, them telling their partner “don’t go around that person who is so obviously Against me >:(” and like. yknow i figured as Random Restaurant Employee this dude wasn’t about to be super on guard about me but i still was not wanting to risk it but luckily i only met him the one time and only had to casually pretend i didn’t think he was shit that one time. and anyhow! soon enough the lady is talking to me about how she thinks getting married to him was a mistake but like, again, she was real isolated and didnt have family or friends or ppl in the area to talk to, and like, yknow she would be pretty sure her husband was cheating on her but of course He was the one all like, wanting to be controlling and invade her privacy and accuse Her of cheating on him, and i’m like, internally screaming but again yknow, i’m just letting her vent to Anyone (me) and sympathizing. and iirc her talking about her “uh oh my husband sucks” was like, i had come back from this delivery so we were in the parking lot lol and she was so upset about all of it and like, “sorry i’m just this random person talking to you for twenty minutes in a parking lot and crying lol” and i’m like. i mean yknow if the only person you can vent to about this terrible situation is me, this random person in a parking lot, absolutely i am glad to do it, even though i would’ve done it anyways lol...........and i was so mad at our General Manager this one time lmao b/c. yknow it’s a couple weeks later and wouldn’t you know it, The Lady is really stressed b/c her husband was yelling at her and broke a window in their apartment, and the Cost Of Repairs added to their monthly rent meant they might not be able to make that rent, and she was in that crappy situation that gets pulled on Tenants Who Probably Don’t Have Much Money, where you’re supposed to get 5 Days Notice or whatever when they’re like “get out b/c your rent is overdue” but you get that Notice on like, friday afternoon when your Last Day is supposed to be the following monday, and nobody is at the office all weekend, so obviously that’s not five days and it’s really only One Day and that Last Day that you’d even have a chance to talk to anyone, which is also a monday when you’d probably have work, and yknow, good luck finding help over the weekend, when probably ppl will just want to spend that time rushing to just pack their shit up and leave anyways.....ANYHOW it’s just some particular heinous bullshit and it was like, the saturday after it had happened to her, and i sympathized entirely b/c that had happened to me and i now lived in my car but i figured i wouldn’t bring that up lmfao.......and anyways i was sitting down with her to listen to her b/c it’s an Insanely Stressful Situation and again like, whenever she’d show up i’d let her talk to me abt her Problems for however long she felt like. and anyways of course eventually the one By-The-Books manager gives me shit all like “what are you doing daring to Sit Down and Not be doing restaurantly actions, ugh” and i’m like. i mean, unsurprising lecture to get lol, of course, but i was just so impatient like. well this person was having a crisis so i prioritized that above keeping the coffee stirrers fully stocked at all times, bite me. ENNYHOW and i didn’t see her for a minute after that and i Was a bit worried b/c like. of course i had every reason to be and she was just always looking so completely exhausted but then like, actually the last time i saw her she was actually more upbeat than ever b/c like! turns out that during an argument her husband had assaulted her and had been arrested. which is of course like. i was like oh i am completely sorry about that trauma but congratulations at this person being separated from you!!! and like, i wish i could have kept up with her beyond that, but i couldn’t, but like, that was the first Improvement in her life that i’d heard since i met her, and it was a way better last-thing-to-hear-from-her than her stressing out abt eviction thanks to her abusive husband breaking shit. and like, weird relationship lmao but!! idk i did feel lucky that i could be The One Person This Lady Gets To Talk With b/c like, god forbid she have absolutely nobody to talk to about this shit or treat her with any sympathy, even if it was just me, the rando she only got to see on occasion. and i hope she’s doing okay still! wish i knew for sure of course, but i’m glad i at least got to be there for her in a tiny way for a period of time and did eventually like, Know that she both knew that this was a bad person to be with, and got that Reason to be separated from him.

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 115 Review

nickyoung_confused.gif edition

Point in favor of Levi being alive: Note how he was found. He was lying on the banks of the river perpendicular to the shore. Remember, the last panel in the last chapter seemed to indicate he was going to land in the river. This implies he survived the explosion and was able to swim to shore. That means Hange was lying about him dying instantaneously from the blast, and from there we can infer she’s also lying about his current condition.

Point against Levi being alive: note how Isayama draws his eyes. They’re blackened out, like they’ve been removed completely. This is exactly the same way he drew Zeke’s eyes when he was dead.

My best guess is that Levi survived the explosion and was able to make it ashore, but lost consciousness shortly before Hange found him. If he isn’t dead now, he will be soon. I’m not holding my breath.

But if Levi IS alive right now, he definitely should be. Drowning is traditionally not helpful treatment for the severely wounded.

Last chapter was about Zeke’s origins, but in hindsight, it plays a lot like the first part of a two part special. 114 and 115 are basically a double length chapter as far as I’m concerned. Together, they tell Zeke’s story.

And it’s very enlightening about Zeke’s character.

Perhaps the most interesting new element to Zeke’s character is his loneliness. Zeke…is lonely. It’s a lonely place at the top (of Mount Psychopath). His father never loved him and he knew it. He loved and trusted Mr. Xaver more than his own flesh and blood. After biting Mr. Xaver’s head off, Zeke calls him father, as he should.

The relationship between these two people is quite something. They gave each other the loving relationship they weren’t able to have on their own, and together, with full faith and conviction, they concocted a truly despicable plan. They’re bound together in sickness and in health.

Suicide and euthanasia are touchy subjects, so I won’t go into them here, but I will say this:

Euthanasia without consent. Is. Murder.

They call this the “euthanasia plan” but that’s just good branding. Their plan is to murder the Eldian race. It doesn’t matter if this is an act of mercy, as the word euthanasia implies, if it is done without the approval of the subject, it’s murder. The Eldian people, of course, cannot consent to this because there is no one body or individual with that authority.

The only two people who could conceivably make that call are Historia, the reigning Eldian monarch, or Eren, as bearer of the Founding Titan. Zeke is just some rando who took it upon himself to genocide a whole swathe of the population. He clearly has grandiose delusions.

This plan also reveals a very odd facet of Zeke’s thinking. He seems to view the Eldian people as a singular entity. And I mean, yeah, they are all connected to each other through the Founding Titan, but it still says a lot about Zeke that he describes his goal as a “euthanasia” (a thing that is done to individuals) instead of as a “genocide” (a thing that is done to groups and what his plan actually is). He seems to have taken it to heart that the Eldians are just an extension of the Founding Titan.

This truly is a deranged plan. The way of thinking that underlies the euthanasia plan is basically a kind of anti-hedonism. Anti-hedonism would be the idea that painful events are inherently bad and that there is no such thing as an inherently good event. No such thing as an inherently good event.

Zeke doesn’t believe in inherently good events.  

There are only things that cause us pain, like having a shitty dad, and things that serve to diminish that pain, like playing catch, but those events are not good in themselves. Thus, the only intrinsically valuable things to gain from living are things that have intrinsically negative value, so we’re all better off dead.

If that sounds stupid, that’s because it is. This is a really fucking stupid idea. Believing in this means believing that pain now for the sake of happiness in the future is nonsensical.

Because happiness has no value in itself, but pain does have value in itself (negative value, that is) the concept of sacrifice does not compute. This is probably why Zeke couldn’t understand the sacrifice the Survey Corps made at Shighanshina, or for that matter why Levi was willing to sacrifice his fellow soldiers.

Enduring pain for the sake of happiness makes no sense when pain is inherently meaningful and happiness isn’t.

But the idea that there is never any reason to make sacrifices is ridiculous.

And another thing: why doesn’t Zeke bring his plan to its natural conclusion? If death is preferable to living, then why not use the power of the Founding Titan to just kill all the Eldians up front? 

It would be easy. He could alter Eldian biology so that oxygen was poisonous to them. 

Why not? If non-existence is the best state of being, why not just kill them all?

But that’s the biggest indictment of Zeke’s plan. The logic behind Zeke’s plan leads you to one unavoidably dumb conclusion:

Murder is cool.

Killing people is cool because life is suffering. Zeke is what you get when you take edgelord teen philosophy to its logical extreme.

Except that’s obviously not true. Happiness/pleasure/fulfillment/what have you are clearly inherently worthwhile, and so long as that is true, living will always be preferable to death. The reason why is because of opportunity cost.

Opportunity cost refers to the benefits you miss out on by choosing to do one thing over another. If you die, then you miss out on the happiness you would have enjoyed had you lived. If the opportunity cost of dying is greater than the cost of living, then living is preferable to death.

But in the end, all this talk of preferring death over life is beside the point because that’s not even what Zeke’s plan involves. Zeke’s plan is not to literally euthanize all Eldians, it is to sterilize them so their race dies out in 100-aught years.

That’s genocide.

The enforced sterilization of a whole people is genocide. Not just colloquially, but even legally. The crime of genocide was first defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which entered into force in 1951.

Article 2(d) is very clear:

“[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: […] Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

The idea that destroying a whole group of people is immoral is based on the notion that life is inherently worth protecting. But of course, Zeke doesn’t believe in this. See: all the bodies he leaves in his wake.

Yes, Zeke’s logic is that life has more pain than pleasure, but this logic only works if you also assume the positive aspects of life have no intrinsic value. The euthanasia plan is just as much a product of Zeke’s psychopathy as it is a product of his ideology.

It’s not that Zeke is a psychopath because he thinks death > living, it’s that he thinks death > living because he’s a psychopath.

Speaking of dumb things Zeke believes, I looooove the meeting between him and Eren.

Eren feeds Zeke this obviously dumb line poo-pooing the Eldians for making them kill innocent people by existing and Zeke is in tears because yes, finally, someone gets it!

Eldians never should have been born; because they were, I have to kill innocent people in furtherance of my ideology that Eldians never should have been born.

...

Wait.

Eren’s statement makes no sense at all, but Zeke “11/10 intelligence” Jeager has his head so far up his ass he doesn’t even see it. Dude is so overjoyed that someone is finally stupid enough to see things his way he starts crying.

And I’m crying too. Because of how sad this is.

Eren obviously doesn’t believe what he’s saying. Zeke just wants someone in his life who understands him and he thinks he’s finally found that someone. But he truly is alone. I might actually feel bad for him when it all falls apart for him.

Eren is almost certainly playing him. Eren fights for freedom. I think the kind of freedom he supports is shallow, but ultimately freedom to Eren entails living, so there is no way he’s actually on board with this plan.

Eren siding with Zeke essentially makes him a proponent of the King Fritz School of sinful atonement, and unless a substantial flashback is in the offing, there’s no way such a drastic change in his character would happen off screen.

Another interesting new element is Zeke’s view of the titans. He seems to believe that titans aren’t the problem, it’s the people who abuse them. It’s a take on the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” line you see sometimes. It’s not the tool, but the people who use it.

But it also seems Zeke has no faith in people (what a surprise) and that the only way forward is to deprive them of those tools completely. He sees humans in puerile terms, as hopelessly immature. And as far as the story is concerned, he’s right.

Yelena makes the point that power invites temptation for abuse. Having titans at your disposal gives you power over others and people have abused that power throughout history.

But Yelena is a hypocrite. She was known for abusing people she took captive. And now, having won power over Pixis and his men, she has decided to impose a caste system on them.

Paradisians must now wear armbands that denote when they swore allegiance to Zeren. And because the time of your swearing determines your station, these armbands are also a status symbol. They indicate your status in the new social order. For the people who surrendered last, it is a form of public humiliation. It’s cruelty.

It’s also what the Marleyans did to the Eldians, and Yelena thinks this was a good policy. Reminding the lower classes of their place is a good thing to her.

I think the point of this anecdote is to show how hopeless humanity is. I don’t know where the story is going with this. My sense is that Isayama is going for an absurdist moral to the story.

Such a moral would look something like this: life is a grueling struggle that you will ultimately lose. But you should keep struggling because that is the only way to rebel against the cruelty of the world.

Isayama did say in an interview that certain philosophies have influenced him, and Albert Camus’ absurdism is one of the more well-known philosophies.

During their meeting, Eren mentioned how Grish killed children. And Eren killed children too, so let’s delve back into this in light of what Eren said.

It’s awful whenever anyone dies, but not all killings are immoral. There are exceptions, and those exceptions depend on your ethical framework.

The one that SNK appeals to the most is a form of consequentialism. Consequentialism, to put it simply, is the idea that actions are moral if they make the world a better place. By what measure depends on the specific kind of consequentialist theory you believe in. And ONLY the consequences matter. Nothing else.

There is nothing wrong with having a consequentialist worldview. If those children had to die to save those people, then killing them was not wrong, provided Grisha didn’t act with any malice.

But there are other ways to judge. One of them is by applying the Principle of Double Effect.

The double effect principle states that actions are not immoral even if a bad result comes of it if the bad result is a side effect of the action. (In the past, “double effect” referred to what we now call a side effect)

The principle of double effect is often misunderstood, so I want to be clear here: it is not the idea that it is ok to do a bad thing if it will lead to a good outcome. The bad result must be incidental to the action, not a direct result of it.

The exact criteria varies, but it usually goes something like this:

The action must be inherently good or at least morally neutral.

The person committing the act must merely permit the bad result to occur. It cannot be intended.

The bad result must not be a direct result of the action. It can only be incidental.

The good result must adequately compensate for the bad result.

If these criteria are met, the Principle states the action was a moral one.

For example, when confronting the Female Titan during the expedition, Erwin kept many soldiers in the dark about his true plans, and many died because they didn’t know what they’d be dealing with. Was that wrong?

No, it wasn’t. Many soldiers died, yes, and Erwin certainly foresaw that would happen, but that was incidental to his decision. Erwin Smith bears no burden for their deaths.

Now think about what Grish did.

He killed children because they were royalty and he wanted to eliminate the possibility that the Founding Titan could be reclaimed by them.

By the criteria of double effect, this is clearly immoral. Grish intended for them to die. He wanted it to happen. And their deaths were not incidental to Grish’s decision to kill them. 

Needless to say, people die when they are killed. 

Grish killed them for a good cause, but committing a bad act in pursuit of a good goal is impermissible under double effect.

Now what about Eren?

Eren wanted to launch an attack on the Marleyan government and he did it from the basement of a building. He did it by transforming into a titan while in the basement. He knew there were people in the building and he foresaw they would die if he transformed. He did it anyway. During the attack, people in the crowd were also killed. Was that wrong?

Yes, it obviously is.

Killing people and provoking the world’s militaries was the entire point of the attack.

Eren wanted them to die.

And it’s not like these people were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Never forget that Eren used the people in the building as shields first. By threatening to transform and kill them if provoked.

Eren intended for them to be in a position to die if he transformed, which he was planning to do anyway all along. They died when he transformed because Eren wanted it to be that way.

Honestly, I’m not even sure Eren’s actions were ok even from a consequentialist perspective. Yeah, his plan may make the world better off, but there’s something to be said about necessity.

Did those children really have to die to make this plan work? Why is it necessary to gather a coalition of the world’s militaries at Paradis? That’s the only part of Zeren’s plan that remains to be revealed.

I don’t like how the series implies a choice between Grish being right and Zeke being wrong and Grish being wrong and Zeke being right.

Grish’s actions are controversial. At. Best.

This series tries to push the line that people need to do bad things to bring about a good ending. I still have flashbacks to Armin’s “Erwin is a bad person for doing what needs to be done” speech in the Female Titan Arc. It’s dumb and it makes no sense.

You can’t be a bad person for doing the right thing. You just can’t. It’s impossible. I don’t have to explain why, do I?

No?

Okay, good.

So in other news.

Congratulations everyone! If you had “Zeke dies but comes back in a reference mashup of Star Wars and Jesus’ Resurrection,” come on down to collect your winnings! Now I wonder if Luke emerged naked from the taun taun 🤔

Seriously wtf?

What’s great about this chapter is how well it does subtle comedy.

Zeke emerges from that titan and the rain stops. The clouds part and a naked Zeke is bathed in rays of light as he emerges from his titan incubator. :D

Zeke is asked what happened and he straight up has no idea. Hard cut to him looking on in bewilderment as a girl molds his body out of dirt. :DD

Eren says he wants Gabi to help him flush out the Marleyans who’ve infiltrated the walls. Pieck is standing right behind him. XDDD

It’s disturbing how Eren apparently can’t be bothered to learn Gabi’s name. To him, she’s just the brat who killed Sasha.

Sasha is dead and Eren was her friend. He has every right to be upset. To be upset at Gabi. But that’s no license to disrespect her person by refusing to learn her name. Mr. Braun has shown that.

Eren has only ever called Gabi “that girl who killed Sasha.” That sends a clear signal. That signal is that this is all she is to him. It’s dehumanizing and it’s why I hope that through it all, Eren will not be elevated by the story by being made into the ultimate hero of it.

He is just such an asshole.