#AND he was the reason i created the bpd comic in the first place!

[arrgh-whatever]

I've seen a few people remembering me from my BPD comic, makes me so happy

yeah, it's me, hi :]

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

just because you’re afraid it doesn’t mean you’re broken.

Titans 3.05

once more into the cold dark void of the internet with my stream-of-consciousness take on a superhero tv show...

spoilers ahead.

1. i cannot believe that among the first things i get to hear in this episode with my own two ears is the line 'eluded our overdudes'. why must you give me such pain along with so much joy, show?

1.5. scarecrow stringing jason along on this path to red-hood-dom is not something i would’ve ever expected, but does kind of make sense. 

1.55. i don’t know all the details of the original resurrection arc in the comics but i like that jason, weirdly, has a greater role to play in his own demise and rebirth? i think it makes it easier to draw a line between his past trauma, the demonstrably shitty and terrifying responsibility of being robin, the ways bruce and the titans wronged him, his responses to that, the reasons he turns to scarecrow, and his final evolution to red hood. it makes for a smoother character arc rather than a one that was interrupted for two decades before somebody went oh hey let’s resurrect that kid that the audience once voted to kill and make him an anti-hero!

1.75. what’s crane giving him? anti fear toxin? anyway, crane is a fucking creep and i’m not sure i want to see a whole lot of him on my screen.

2. oh, um, heads up: there’s a long sequence of unsteady cam + flickering lights right after the title card upto the 3:16 mark. it’s a bit headache-inducing so if you want to skip, you can go ahead and do that. 

2.45. that’s... weird... why would he dream about... donna...

ok, who am i kidding. i’m going to jump right into my theory about Why Titans Makes Sense Actually because the show itself is apparently not interested in explaining itself:

a) it makes no sense for jason to be conjuring up donna--who famously did not care much for him!--in his dreams. (he wasn’t even there when she died.) or for her to be telling him don’t go or there’s still time.

b) this leads me to think that that’s actually donna, in some sort of limbo between life and death, the kind of place where jericho used to be

c) rachel has demonstrated that she has the power to link the minds of the titans across great distances--she called jason and hank/dawn for help in 2.01, she linked up everybody later in the season, projected dick’s hallucination of his father into their brains without even realising she was doing it, and in the finale, she managed to get dick into conner’s brain. she’s in themyscira now. is this how she gets donna back to life? but reaching out to her in that non-space between life and death?

d) the next obvious question is: why isn’t donna appearing in the dreams of the other titans? she probably is, but they have better reason to be dreaming about her since they were actually close to her, unlike jason.

e) but why would she warn jason in particular? does she foresee jason entering the afterlife--however briefly? does she have an idea of what jason plans to do and what he will become?

f) anyway, more trippy mindscapes and weird psychic powers, yay!

2.5. my heart clenched when bruce comforted jason post-nightmare: clearly i’ve been reading way too much batfam fic. this is a side of bruce we haven’t really been told to expect by all the characters on the show calling him a ‘psychopath’ (*cough*unreliablenarrators*cough*) and him getting jason to speak to a professional speaks volumes about the kind of self-reflection he’s done post dick’s departure, and maybe some of the regrets he has with regards to how he dealt with dick’s traumas.

i mean, just look at him when jason dismisses his concerns! BRUCE IS TRYING JASON

anyway, i have a whole lot more i want to say about this, but i’ll save it for later. 

also: LESLIE THOMPKINS!!!!

3. i really like molly--and i love that she’s a friend from before jason got taken in by bruce, the implication that they meet up regularly and that she’s a grounding influence on him (tho clearly not grounding enough to not go along with his dumbass idea about confronting a child trafficker alone). 

3.5. aw, jason. robin was his armour against everything in the world that would throw him down and chew him to bits, but san francisco proved that even robin wasn’t enough to protect him. it’s really interesting how ‘disillusionment with the idea of robin’ is so integral to the traumas of both dick and jason but in such different ways. 

4. LESLIE!!!!!!! i even forgive her office being so goddamn blue because leslie! 

4.5. it makes so much sense for titans!verse leslie to be a therapist, because this show is so inward looking anyway, and therapist sessions are a useful tool to showcase this character work in a story. besides, at least in fanfic, leslie often seems to double up as a counsellor anyway. 

4.6. oh man. i’m not terribly convinced by walters’ red hood (tho i think that may be the point--argh. i’ll come back to this thought later. have to stop getting distracted!) but he plays the asshole kid that’s trying not to let any real emotion seep through really well.

“you’d like me to punch you, wouldn’t you”

5. not sure what to think of batman’s little trophy case other than the show winking unsubtly at us and going look look - catwoman! the riddler! two face! you excited yet?! it’s like the scene from the end of amazing spiderman 2 when they were trying to drum up excitement for a sinister six spinoff by having harry osborne walk by a bunch of display cases with stuff from iconic villains in them.

... but then again, bruce does like to display a lot of shit in his batcave, including his dead robin’s bloodstained costume, so.

5.5. bruce is so soft with jason it’s killing me. beyond just trying to learn from his mistakes with dick, it speaks to his own genuine desire to balance his dedication to gotham with doing the best by his sons, although he’s often not successful with that. 

i love that titans is really playing the long game with bruce wayne, with each season and character-perspective sliding in fresh pieces of a bigger puzzle. titans’ bruce has always been a phantom of other peoples’ making, but now we’re getting the idea that he’s a whole lot more complicated than other people make it seem.

5.75. it really recontextualises some of his actions from previous seasons: the fact that he locked dick out of his security systems in 1.06 is likely his way of respecting dick’s independence and his desire not to be associated with batman/gotham anymore. jason knowing about bruce’s tracker while dick doesn’t is probably bruce trying to be more honest and upfront with his charges. bruce sending jason packing off to sanfran to spend time with the titans is probably not him passing on a big responsibility to dick (as i first uncharitably thought) but him trying to get jason out of the toxic influence of gotham for a while and a sign of his trust in dick as a leader and a mentor,

5.8. i mean, bruce is a prick, but he’s also human.

6. i think leslie is doing some good work with jason here, though she may have overstepped the line with her line about robin as a construct being projected by a man with BPD. her speculations about bruce’s diagnosis have no place in her session with jason, and if bruce confides in her, an egregious violation of patient-therapist confidentiality. 

(about the diagnosis itself... i don’t know. i can’t really confirm or refute this without a whole lot more information, and i’m not sure if the writer of this episode means BPD in the same way an actual professional might.)

6.5. i think a huge thing that gets missed out in a lot of recent comics as well as movies/shows is that bruce didn’t create the robin persona out of whole cloth. dick did. he’s the starting point of that legacy and to call it entirely bruce’s creation is blatant erasure of that. in fact, i’m surprised that dick doesn’t feature more in the conversations they’re having about the pressures of being robin. after all, the guy had been robin--bruce’s partner--for such a long time before jason. 

6.8. (and here’s the primal part of me that resonates the deepest with dick grayson--the Eldest Daughter part--that’s sort of resentful: that jason gets the therapy and softness and the learning from mistakes when it took years and years for bruce to reach out in any meaningful way to dick.)

7. oooh that was a great scene!

it’s fun to do these stream-of-consciousness live reactions, because the moment you step down from your soapbox, the episode goes right into tackling what you were just complaining about. bruce means well, he’s learning, but he goes about exactly the wrong way to help jason: taking away robin now can’t be read by jason as anything but a devastating judgment call from bruce. and iain glen really sells the moment that bruce realises this--too late--and his helplessness in trying to get jason to see that it isn’t jason’s fault that he’s trying to do this. he loves jason enough that jason is enough. 

7.5. aaaah so jason brings up the elephant in the room at last. dick got everything makes sense from his perspective, where getting to put on a costume and fight crime means approval, means being something stronger and better than you are. dick got to be robin, then nightwing, and a leader of a whole team of other costume-clad heroes. 

8. ... how did jason just walk into arkham????? this is ridiculous.

8.3. i mean, clearly jason’s not thinking straight, but betraying batman like this puts his possibilities of being robin again even further away. 

8.5. watching that chemistry experiment montage was strangely funny. this guy is looking for an antidote to fear? well, constantly mixing up and inhaling gases concocted by a mad-scientist supervillain is something only the very fearless--reckless to the point of foolishness!--would do. what’s to say crane’s not given you a formula for a drug that will keep you tethered to his every will and whim? hmmmm?

8.7. so he sought out the joker to... test the formula??? 

9. wow the “loud and clear... boss” hits different after a whole episode of them referring to each other as father and son.

9.3. waitwaitwait HOLD UP. wait a DANG MINUTE. you’re telling me that scarecrow had enough resources that he could not only have folks on the outside steal jason away and dunk him in a lazarus pit (i TOLD you that this show would bring up and dismiss ra’s al ghul in a ten second aside! I TOLD YOU) but also have his own little chemistry lab in the basement, AND have enough resources for jason to build his red hood persona???????? all of this in barely twenty four hours?

well there goes my ‘jason orchestrated his death’ theory. it was nice while it lasted. *cups hands to the sky* fly away, my baby.

9.6. a part of me is gleeful at the rushed nature of such an iconic transformation though, especially when compared to all the character work that went before it. we’re so used to getting the opposite that it’s fucking delightful to have a show that’s more interested in exploring its characters’ minds rather than battle scenes or recreating transformations from the comics. that’s taken such bold and exciting steps to fully convey all the nuances of its most recognisable character, bruce wayne, from casting an older actor to play him to unflinchingly showing just how damaging the vigilante lifestyle has been to him and the people he loves. BRILLIANT

*sporfle*

10. again, heads up: a whole lot of flashing lights between 40:28 and 42:00. 

10.3. i guess it’s the super-compressed timeline that’s really throwing me off. where did he have the time to get/develop the mind control thing from? or is it something that he got from the cabal of villains that he intimidated at the beginning of 3.02? very messy.

10.5. i love molly, i hope she shows up again this season.

11. aaaand that’s it! that was a solid episode as flashback episodes go, but now i can’t wait to return to the present.

[toflyandfall]

I just saw a photo of "What persona. Dick Grayson isn't a mask. Not like Bruce Wayne is" from Detective Comics #725 and I find it interesting that Dick and the rest of the bats, with the exception of Bruce, don't wear "masks" per se. They are who they are with or without the domino mask/helmet. The only time I can really think of Dick faking things is when he pretended to be an incompetent BPD cop. How was he able to avoid creating and living, half the time, through a "persona" like "Brucie"?

Oooh, this is a lovely, meaty question.  There’s a lot more analysis of Bruce than I planned because let’s be real, it’s kinda weirder for a guy to run around with half a dozen personas than for someone else to run around as himself.  I hope you still find it interesting, but if you want to skip straight to the more Dick-centric stuff, head under the readmore.

A simple but significant factor is that Dick thrives on the company of people in a way that Bruce does not.  I suspect if you talk honestly to many introverts, you will find they too have an extroverted ‘mask’ they put on to the larger world, though probably not quite so extreme.

Another factor is that the civilian social circles Dick and Bruce travel in are vastly different.  Though they each have a reason for being in those circles, that difference itself enables Dick to escape much of the scrutiny that Bruce’s public identity undergoes, because he doesn’t frequently associate with the much more media-hounded elite.

An interesting thing here is that the large difference in social circles between their civilian lives is actually caused by their own personal similarities: they are 100% committed work-a-holics.  It’s just that they have differing civilian approaches to their goals.

I want to start with Bruce because as you point out, his use of persona is distinct among the bats and his reasons for using them in part explain why Dick and the other bats do not.

Bruce is a child of privilege, he has always lived a lifestyle of privilege, regardless of the tragedies that have occurred during it, and his default view of the world, through no fault of his own, is natively that of the extreme upper class.  This drastically influences his perspective and approach to change, and changing the world is his perpetual goal, the reason he put on the suit in the first place.

Bruce works a top-down society approach toward systemic change, and he works it all the time.  This is actually my favorite but woefully under-emphasized part of him: he is not just someone who punches people on the street ‘for justice’, he uses his company, his money, and his social position toward substantial systemic change. This post does a wonderful job covering the ways he does this through his corporations and personal wealth, as does this one.  I cannot recommend either enough because I constantly want to push even the most casual Batman fans to understand: Bruce Wayne is not just a violent punchy puncher man.  He is a traumatized person genuinely trying to use all his resources including himself to make the world safer.

Detective Comics #725

Bruce has many personas he maintains, and he uses all of them according to what suits his need--Batman for places the law can’t go, Bruce Wayne the CEO pushing for systemic changes, Matches Malone for street information, and Brucie the society high roller for society information and social influencing.  He is rarely ever not in a persona and simply ‘Bruce’.

His top-down perspective of enacting change are what dictated the usage and necessity of these personas. He has the means and capacity to basically disappear from society if he so chose--he in fact does so to train during his younger years so successfully they don’t even know how long he was actually gone. 

The Batman Files

So he doesn’t need the personas.  Not Bruce Wayne, CEO, or Brucie, or any of them really, to protect his identity.  That tells us that Brucie is a deliberate choice he made at some point.  He could have been a recluse billionaire Batman indefinitely.  Even though he fully has the status and means to not maintain a job or a persona or, let’s be frank, a life outside the mask at all, it’s his own work-a-holicness that led to the creation of his public personas.  He’s an obsessive strategist, so if Brucie is a choice, that leads us to why?

Bruce does many philanthropic things with his money, but he isn’t the only rich person around, especially not in a city as old and corrupt as Gotham.   But he’s one of the very few ones doing good with it.

The comic you mentioned has a very beautiful moment where Bruce touches on that, and in full context you can feel how consumed he is by this goal of creating the Gotham his parents would have wanted.  Batman mentions he never sees himself in that place, and the morbid interpretation is that the city kills him before he reaches it, but the hopeful interpretation is that in that shining city, Bruce Wayne and Batman and Brucie and all his masks will no longer be needed.

Detective Comics #725

Back in the old days they’d call it noblesse oblige: the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged. Thomas and Martha Wayne ingrained this feeling of responsibility into Bruce by example, and as all things related to them, he obsesses over it.  It urges him to fulfill expectations within segments of society he finds onorous for the betterment of society as a whole in order to carry out their unfinished works.

Enter Brucie.

Brucie serves a two-fold purpose.  Since Bruce has chosen to maintain personas among society, it becomes a false face to justify any oddities Batman might bring into the life of Bruce Wayne by setting himself up as a eccentric, popular social scion.  But that persona itself also allows him to manipulate the upper crust of society.

I have some insider perspective on the kind of society events Brucie attends.  They’re all about the who’s who of making connections, name-dropping and networking, and unspoken class-based elitism.  Charity events among the upper class have these things at the forefront and the cause is the background.  You don’t get your hands dirty, you don’t go out and make change yourself, you pay money to be socially seen and sometimes it happens to go towards a philanthropic cause.  If you want to raise money from the rich and keep people with deep pockets coming in the door, you have to have social currency yourself. This is where, and why, Brucie comes in.  I believe Brucie ws crafted to maintain Batman’s cover but still attempt to carry on his parents’ legacy to grease the wheels of the rich in the directions he chooses: one of generosity towards those less privileged. 

Superman/Batman #51

The inevitable flaw of Bruce’s approach to his personas and their philanthropy is that in a city rife with corruption, money distributed from the top has many opportunities to disappear well before it reaches the bottom.  As in many of ways they are complements to each other, Dick’s approach balances that out, because his approach to helping his fellow man starts out at the street level...literally.

Nightwing #153 (Nightwing: The Great Leap)

Dick, we know, does not come from privilege.  His mother was from a middle class family before she joined the circus, and despite being world famous athletes, most circus workers are lower to middle class.  The people he grew up with, was comfortable with, were all working folk who expected everyone to pull their weight right alongside each other.  He enacts this everyone-together approach in almost all aspects and phases of his life. 

Batman #615

Even once he had settled into being Robin and adapted to living at the manor, he didn’t feel belonging to a culture of privilege, materialism, or high society. He preferred shotgun in the limo to chat with the driver to riding fancy in the back.  Once he was able to start making his own decisions about where and how he lived, despite having both Bruce’s money and then later inheriting a substantial amount of his own, he chose mostly lower-class communal places.

Batman Black and White #6

Dick also doesn’t see the value of throwing money at a problem when there is an option to fix it with his own hands.  We see this frequently, from building his own car instead of buying a finished one or outsourcing the work, to deciding the best way to clean out the BPD was to start at the bottom and work his way up (literally), to quitting college because his classes never got prioritized over crimesolving.  Most of his day jobs ended for similar reasons. 

Nightwing #153 (Nightwing: The Great Leap)

Despite the showmanship training, he gravitates away from spotlight on the rich and wealthy, who are notoriously the kind of people who do not get their hands dirty or go out and take care of things themselves, and prefers to find or build communities around the kind of people who do.

Finally, Dick is an extrovert.  He doesn’t need to act extroverted as Brucie does because he is extroverted.  He likes people and likes being around people.  Whether by conscious choice or not, he tends to put himself in situations where he is surrounded by people in nearly all aspects of his life.  He chooses apartment buildings whose occupants frequently pass each other on the stairs; jobs that involve interacting with many co-workers, patrons, or students; and collects superhero teammates like Boy Scout badges.  And all of these behaviors come very naturally to him.  

He doesn’t need a mask or a role or a persona for those kind of interactions; his mask is pre-supplied as “neighbor” or “co-worker” or “teacher” by the situations he puts himself in.  It helps make him an exemplary leader, because just by acting authentically to himself, he automatically builds up little communities around him any time he arrives somewhere.

Bruce, on the other hand, is an introvert.  For him, interacting with people isn’t easy, automatic, or comfortable unless it has a purpose, but as a strategist, he knows the necessity of human interaction as a catalyst to achieving dynamic change. So he adapts personas to suit people’s expectations.  Extroverts have more social currency; the life of the party can generate more resources than a brooding wallflower.  

So, it boils down to just a few elements: Dick believes in living and interacting at the street level to accomplish the things that he wants to, and he is extroverted enough that the level of social interaction that entails is not a burden to him.  He surrounds himself with the types of people he is more familiar or perhaps more comfortable with, which happens to keep him further out from the media’s eye than associating with the upper crust does. The lower profile is more incidental than intentional, but it lessens his need to have a cover story for every single bruise and lets him get away with even less of a ‘persona’.

Bruce, on the other hand, is introverted and follows a more classist view that systemic change needs to be effected from the top down.   His personas are more of a self-assumed duty than a necessity, as a way of trying to carry out his parents’ legacy.  Any of his children could have chosen to follow his path in business or the high society limelight, but the sense of obligation toward it is something personal to him that most of them don’t share.

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: E. C. Tubb, Bernie Wrightson, The Professionals

Horror (Skulls in the Stars): I would draw some attention to my friends at Valancourt Books, who have been doing such an amazing job reprinting classic works of horror. In particular, I thought I would mention the great job they’ve done in bringing some of the best haunted house books back into circulation!  When I first started blogging about horror, I wondered why there seemed to be so few “classic” haunted house books around.

  RPG (Walker’s Retreat): Wizards of the Coast wants to turn D&D–and, by extension, all tabletop RPGs–into lifestyle brand extensions. To that end, they have to change how D&D is perceived, and that’s what all the changes with 5th Edition is about. The rule changes correspond to changes in the game’s brand narrative; Critical Role and other well-publicized Let’s Play series such as every single one on the Official D&D Channel are as much a part of this scheme as the rules changes themselves.

  RPG (Empire Must Fall): This small corporation has had an outsized influence on both gaming and fantasy fiction since it acquired TSR Inc. in the late 1990s. Because its fiction publishing and its games publishing, Wizards of the Coast has had a massive influence on what is considered “fantasy” in most of the world- and especially so in gaming. Tropes that it, or TSR, originated are memes that both employees and customers spread globally and are now prominent in properties such as World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy.

  Fiction (Pulp Rev): There was nothing routine about Goshawks over Babylon. Fast, stealthy, armored, each dropship could ferry a platoon of troops. It was the military’s heavy-lift aircraft of choice. The STS used them for long-range deployments, or to transport vehicles and armor. BPD most assuredly did not have any in their inventory. These specimens had to be here for the Black Watch. The only question was which organization they belonged to: the military, the STS, or the New Gods. Regardless of the answer, Fox did not want to fight them.

    Games (Niche Gamer): Following the pro-Hong Kong protest statements from professional Hearthstone player Chung “blitzchung” Ng Wai and Blizzard Entertainment’s suspension of the player, many have wondered how much influence Chinese investors or profits from the region have influenced such a decision. The truth is, very little. According to both The Daily Beast and PC Gamer cite that Chinese tech giant Tencent own a mere 5% of shares. As stated on PC Gamer.

Games (Jon Mollison): The game so nice, it’s already been banned by OrcaCon despite not being funded, printed, or on the market.  Thus proving the point of the game in the first place. What can I say?  As I type this, the campaign is just over $30K at the post.  The world is hangry for this kind of satirical take at the scolds and schoolmarms who patrol our thought places for badthink.  My guess is that the “Alt Right” expansion set will be received by its targets with the opposite reaction as the core game.

Pulp (DMR Books): Such tales are characterized by sword-swinging action focused on personal battles rather than world-shaking events, with an element of magic or the supernatural and sometimes one of romance as well.  Tros of Samothrace has all those ingredients and was serialized a number of years before REH’s work; doesn’t that mean that it is Sword & Sorcery too? Well, not quite but the distance that separates the two is much shorter that you might think.

Horror (Thomas McNulty): Joseph Payne Brennan fans will be pleased to learn that Dover Publications have reprinted Brennan’s quintessential anthology, The Shapes of Midnight, originally published by Berkley in October 1980. That Berkley paperback, with Stephen King’s introduction, is a now a highly sought-after collector’s item. However, there is a caveat to this Dover edition. This edition does not faithfully reproduce all of the stories from the Berkley edition.

Fiction (Karavansara): In the recent evenings, I’ve had a lot of fun with Heroes of Atlantis & Lemuria, recently published by DMR Books. The volume collects the five stories of Kardios of Atlantis, originally written by Manly Wade Wellman in the 1970s, and that we meet at the opening of the book as he’s washed ashore after Atlantis sank. Kardios, lone (maybe) survivor of the lost continent, is actually the one that caused the sinking of Atlantis (or so he says), and he takes it from there, exploring the world beyond and generally getting into a whole lot of trouble.

Science Fiction (DMR Books): Earl Dumarest is one, grim, deadly space-traveller. He’s seen a lot of hard light-years as he’s followed the star-roads and he’s been burned by many an outworld sun. According to Michael Moorcock—who knew Tubb and described the Dumarest series as “excellent”—Earl Dumarest was a “conscious and acknowledged imitation” of Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark.

Sword & Sorcery (Adventures Fantastic): Wagner considered himself more of a horror writer than a writer of fantasy or sword-and-sorcery (a term he hated).  As a fiction writer, he was all of that and more. His work, if you can find it, and if you can afford it, is worth reading.  He’s out of print and getting harder to find (and more expensive) all the time. He was also an editor to the top rank.  He edited DAW’s Year’s Best Horror anthologies for years.  They are worth seeking out for the introductions and essays alone, never mind the great stories.

Comic Books (Tentaclii): I’m pleased to see that Marvel are producing beautiful crisp reprint print-books of their black-and-white Savage Sword of Conan magazines and its precursors. The first 1000-page volume is out now, with Vol. 2 due in mid November, and Vol. 3 in January 2020. According to the reviews Marvel have done an excellent job here, apparently marred only by some copyright trolls who are preventing the reprinting of stories featuring certain of R.E. Howard’s supporting characters.

H. P. Lovecraft (The Westerly Sun): The life and work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Providence’s best-known fantasy and horror author, will again be at the center of a popular walking tour and film series conducted by the Rhode Island Historical Society and presented as part of the Flickers’ Vortex Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror Film Festival known as “Vortex.” The festival continues this year from October 19-27, with the Lovecraft Tour returning for four very special days.

Arthur Machen (Wormwoodiana): In Arthur Machen’s 1915 wonder-tale “The Great Return” we hear of marvelous lights, odors, bell-sounds, Welsh saints, the Rich Fisherman, and healings, as the Holy Graal is manifest, briefly, in Wales in the 20th century. The story needs no detection of “sources” to be reasonably well understood and enjoyed. However, our enjoyment of it may be enhanced if we see it – or recognize it – as a “sequel” to one of the great medieval Arthurian works.

Comic Books (Broadswords and Blasters): I first encountered the works of Bernie Wrightson as a kid decades ago in the 1980’s. Back in those days, before I had access to a proper comic shop, my local supermarket carried shrink wrapped bundles of comics, usually (if I remember correctly) four to a pack. There was no rhyme or reason to the packaging of these bundles, it was purely luck of the draw; you could just as easily land an issue of Simonson’s Thor as you could Moench’s Aztec Ace.

History (The Lost Fort): Archbishopric, seat of the Teutonic Knighs, and member of the Hanseatic League – Riga’s Old Town has plenty of churches, a castle, and lanes and squares with pretty old houses. I spent a day there and managed to snatch a nice collection of photos to go with a post about Riga’s Mediaeval history. Settlement at a natural harbour 15 kilometres upriver from the mouth of the Daugava river (also known as Dvina; in Old Norse as Dúna ) dates back to the 2nd century AD.

Science Fiction (M. Porcius): In his essay in praise of Leigh Brackett, “Queen of the Martian Mysteries,” Michael Moorcock tells us that E.C. Tubb’s Dumarest books are “excellent,” and were inspired by Brackett’s own planetary romances about Eric John Stark.  So when I saw Tubb’s Derai at a used bookstore (the 1968 Ace Double, combined with Juanita Coulson’s The Singing Stones) I picked it up.

Science Fiction (Matthew Constantine): Way, way, way back when I was first scoping out tabletop role-playing games at a local shop, I remember flipping through some Tekumel book or another.  Along with Skyrealms of Jorune and a few others, it really stuck in the back of my brain.  As I went on to create my Conquest of the Sphere setting, elements of those games (mixed with countless other things) informed me.

Westerns (Paul Bishop): The Professionals is second only to The Magnificent Seven as my favorite Western film. Watching Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster relish chewing the scenery together while trying to out macho each other in The Professionals is sheer late night viewing entertainment. The movie led me to the book, and to the discovery of the sheer Western storytelling power of Frank O’Rourke.

Sensor Sweep: E. C. Tubb, Bernie Wrightson, The Professionals published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[spiritrot-a]

hey here’s the about under read more bc it’s really long

General Information

NAME: Raleigh James Ravenson.

NICKNAME: Lee.

AGE: Twenty three. 

BIRTHDAY: June 26th, 1995.

ZODIAC: Cancer. 

BIRTH PLACE: Victorville, California.

CURRENT LOCATION: L.A, California. 

GENDER: Trans man. 

PRONOUNS: He/him.

SEXUALITY: Bisexual, biromantic.

SPECIES: Medium.

POWERS: Can speak to spirits. It's an ability he can't turn off and he sees them constantly. He's dabbled a bit in summoning spirits and if he tried he would be able to manipulate spirits, force them to move on, or touch spirits. He also has the power of necromancy, however he doesn't use it often, afraid to throw the universe out of balance. 

RELIGION: Raised in a Christian household, however he doesn't believe in anything specific anymore. He realizes there's a higher power or something else beyond death due to his powers, but he doesn't have any idea of what exactly. 

OCCUPATION: Actor, namely known for his horror roles. 

LANGUAGES KNOWN: English is the only one he's fluent in. He does however know some Spanish, ASL, and German.  

ACCENT: American. 

VOICE CLAIM: Leigh Whannell.

Appearance

FACE CLAIM: Leigh Whannell.

EYE COLOR: Green, with a small mix of brown.

HAIR COLOR: Brown. 

STYLE: Short, just kind of a mess.

HEIGHT: 5'8"

TATTOOS: Most of them are actually covered by his clothes, but he has quite a few of them so far. A heart grenade on his upper right arm, billy from dead silence on his lower left leg, star-lord between his shoulder blades, ghostface on his right leg, the words "'cause I won't let go til we both see the light" on his left shoulder to match Haley's, a fast forward / rewind / pause / play button on his stomach below his belly button, and a rainbow outline of a heart that looks spray painted on his wrist to match Haley's.

PIERCINGS: He has a tongue piercing, a helix on his right ear, and an eyebrow piercing on his left eyebrow.  

SCARS: Top surgery scars which are healed very well and barely visible compared to some of the others he has. A gash on his arm and a long scar going down his chest and stomach from a stunt gone wrong. 

CLOTHES: Thrift store punk is the best way to name it. Leather jackets and combat boots, worn out band t-shirts or horror movie shirts ( a lot of nightmare on elm street and scream ), plenty of patches on his jacket, ripped jeans, and occasionally he'll break out the band bracelets.

DISTINGUISHING LOOKS: Piercings and eyeliner for days. Tattoos if his skin is shown.

Interests

LABEL: The artist, the rebel.

POSITIVE TRAITS: Adventurous, adaptable, humourous, creative, easygoing, passionate, neat, understanding.

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Careless, impatient, impulsive, numb, obsessive, sarcastic, stubborn.

GOALS: To further his career even more so and make more of a name for himself, even outside of the horror community. He wants to make people in his life happy and build a family.

FEARS: Becoming like his mother, ghosts ( surprisingly ), abandonment.

HOBBIES: Reading comics, film ( analyzing and making ), skating, going to parties, graffiti, drawing, chilling at graveyards. 

HABITS: Smokes heavily, bites his nails, bounces his legs, and picks the skin at his fingers during stressful situations.

FAVORITE WEATHER: Cold. 

FAVORITE MUSIC: He can listen to just about anything. He enjoys a lot of punk and his favorite band is Dead Kennedys. 

FAVORITE COLOR: Purple.

FAVORITE MOVIES: Horror is his favorite genre, it's the genre he works in most for a reason, but he does enjoy cinema as a whole. His favorite movie is It Follows and he makes pretty much everybody watch it. 

FAVORITE SPORTS: He likes hockey well enough but he doesn't watch it regularly. He'll just occasionally watch some stuff on youtube or catch a game on a TV while he's out and about.  

FAVORITE DRINKS: Pepsi or redbull. Good rule of thumb is to not talk to him before he's had a chance to drink some caffeine. 

FAVORITE FOODS: Snow crab legs, but only eats them when he wants to treat himself.

HEALTH

PHYSICAL: Bad eyesight, but other than that he's perfectly healthy. He has contacts to correct his vision.

MENTAL: ADHD, BPD, and OCD. He has a good handle on his BPD and OCD with the help of medications and coping mechanisms, however he tends to forget or not want to take anything for his ADHD because he feels like it dulls him as a person. Which is not at all true, but it's a thought that's stuck in his mind. 

ALLERGIES: Dogs, chickens. Just the feathers on chickens though. 

SLEEPING HABITS: Awful! Spirits constantly try to bug him during his sleeping hours so it can be difficult to get any sleep when he avoids it. Gets a few hours and is often exhausted. 

EXERCISE HABITS: Decent work out schedule. Works out three times a week and regularly walks. 

EATING HABITS: He's trying to be more mindful about what he puts in his body and is currently trying to eat healthier, however he does still love his junk food. It can be hard. 

SOCIAL: Extroverted. Loves being around people and meeting new people, it puts a lot of pep in his step. 

BODY: Scrawny, but has some muscle. Stronger than he looks, his body is just naturally small framed. 

ADDICTIONS: Caffeine and nicotine. He's trying to quit smoking, but it's not going great. 

DRUG USE: None ever. 

ALCOHOL: Very rarely. He gets very nervous around alcohol so if he does drink, he watches himself very carefully.

FAMILY

MOTHER: Karen McDermott.

FATHER: William "Billy" McDermott.

SIBLINGS: Only child.

PETS: A teddy bear guinea pig named Josh. 

PARTNER: faolán mackenzie ( fiancee )

Biography

Lee is a teenage runaway, his story contains mentions of child abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse, and ghosts...Obviously.

When someone walks the very thin line between life and death, things can happen. So even after the doctors said to expect the worse, after Lee's technical two deaths, and after fighting for weeks----he makes it out alive. He shatters the unseen barrier between the living and the dead. Some people might say communicating with the dead is a GIFT, but he prefers the term ANNOYING BURDEN.

Adults passed off the hushed whispers to seemingly no one and the quick glances towards nothing in particular as a sign that Lee held a very ACTIVE imagination. He certainly did, but this certain aspect in his life WASN'T the imagination running wild. Kids were harder to handle, they were brutal towards the weird kid who talked to himself. As Lee grew older, the more he learned how to keep it all in. He didn't converse with the dead in public, he learned to keep his focus on the living----he learned how to act like he wasn't special.

He's six when his dad first shows him his first HORROR movie and it sparks something in him. Who knew KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE would create an OBSESSION for the dark and gritty world of horror. It was easier to relate to characters because of his abilities and as he'd get older he'd find it as a coping mechanism. No matter how HORRIFYING his own life would seem, there was no way it was GETTING KIDNAPPED BY A SERIAL KILLER AND CUTTING OFF YOUR OWN FOOT horrifying.

His parents get divorced when he's young, their marriage just isn't working out. They spend more time screaming and clawing at each other's throats than anything else. Their YOUNG LOVE spark is gone and it's just devolving into hate at this point. He doesn't quite get it, but he has other things to worry about. He has his grades to focus on and the dead to actively ignore ( it's a full time job ). His mom gets full custody of him, she has a better job and can support the two of them while his dad crashes on his friend's couch until he can save up enough from his shitty job to get his own place.

His mom starts dating. He's fine with it at first, as long as she's happy. He doesn't even realize his mom is drunk, just that she comes home acting weird. It starts a pattern. His mom starts seeing terrible, abusive men and her drinking habits become more and more apparent. He tries his best to help her, but he's a CHILD and she won't accept his help. Her focus on him lessens with time and soon he's just a kid that lives with them rather than her son. His dad gets a new girlfriend and she's jealous of him---he takes up too much of his dad's attention when he's there. She starts to hate him and eventually his dad begins to fade out of the picture. He starts to learn he needs to survive on his own.

Fourteen and things begin to spiral. Ghosts start to become more violent towards him and SCREAM when they can't get him to help. He's just a kid The abuse from his mom worsens as she lashes out at him and he's neglected more often than not. He starts stealing just to eat. Which attracts a VERY BAD group of people his way. They want someone fast and good with their hands to steal for them and Lee was desperate for a friend and was already one of the fastest kids on his track team. So he goes from a good kid with good intentions to doing terrible things just to make sure someone stays for him. He has to be useful for them. The comfort from watching horrors aren't doing it anymore. He's either too numb or too scared to keep going.

Sixteen and a lot happens in a year. He comes out as transgender and his family doesn't approve, he expected that. They mark it off as a phase and go out of their way to remind him he's supposed to be a GIRL. He meets his best friend that year. Haley, someone who managed to see more than some terribly troubled kid. They reminded him he was someone and he was actually WORTH something. It didn't stop him from dropping out of high school when things got TOO overwhelming, but it did help him try and focus on his end goal. Get the fuck out of this horrible town.

Seventeen and the guy he's been off and on with loses his temper. He hits him and Lee snaps. He's not going to let what happened with his mom happen to him. He's not going to be pushed around by some cowardly guy with an out of control anger. So he packs his things and asks Haley to run off to L.A with him. It's hard at first. They're homeless teenagers, finding a job is hard, and there are more ghosts in a big city than there is a small town. He attracted them, they lashed out, he got scared, but it wasn't going to make him run back home. Not yet, not when he knows he can make it. He's a talented kid. They get jobs and eventually raise enough money to get a shitty, cheap ( cheap in L.A standards anyway ) apartment. They barely scrape by some months, going some weeks without power or water. It was a lot more difficult than he imagined it being.

He starts to transition and he lands a part in some small films, lands a few decent roles in some indie movies. It's a dream come true, but it's not enough to live off of. He's struggling and he wishes he would have thought everything out more than he actually did. He's happier, though. He's not in a toxic environment and he can finally be himself. It's still not EASY for a mentally ill kid, but it's better.

Then at the age of nineteen, he gets an audition for a BIG, ANTICIPATED HORROR. The director's well known and is pretty trust worthy with the genre so the chance has Lee's stomach in flips. Then his power finally comes in handy----a nice ghost girl makes a deal with him. She'll take notes of the auditions and the comments their reactions and report back to him, if he got the part he would have to help her move on. Sure enough, he lands it! It's a big part, one of the leads. He still DIES in the end, but it's more than he could have hoped for.

It's his big break. The movie is successful for a horror and the reviews weren't nearly as harsh as he had expected. Some critics even praised his performance! Thank God for that sweet ghost who helped him get what he wanted. He starts to get more offers, land more roles, get more recognized---his dream's coming true. Things are still DIFFICULT for him, but it's BETTER.