#Ben: when will my sanity return from the war | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

therenlover · 4 years ago

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Therenlover’s Official Fanfic Glossary!

Hey hey hey! This is the place where you can find all my up-to-date fanfics linked nicely, read about what projects I have upcoming, and learn what requests I’m taking at the moment! Cheers!

This post is massive so, for the sake of your dash, everything is under the cut

A NOTE ABOUT REQUESTS!

I will do my best to fulfill any requests I get while my ask box/requests are open! That being said, I cannot promise every request will get done, and that if they do, they’ll be done in a timely manner. I’m currently working on a long-form project that needs a lot of time and energy to come out consistently, so unless I’m doing a writing event most of my writing juice will be focused on that. That being said, if you want something ask! The worst I can possibly do is direct you towards someone else who might be able to write what you want if I cant.

If I choose not to do your request based on personal preference (it makes me uncomfy/I don’t write for the character at that time/I don’t feel I can write what you want/etc.) I will do my best to contact you and let you know! That being said, if you think your ask got buried/forgotten, feel free to message me again and let me know, but please tell me when you message me if I should be looking for a prior request.

Characters/Fandoms I will write for currently

💙 = I’m Currently Super Inspired To Write For This Character

Marvel/X-Men

Bucky Barnes

Loki

Peter Maximoff 💙

Pietro Maximoff

Helmut Zemo 💙

Hank McCoy

Ralph Bohner 💙

Vision

American Horror Story

Tate Langdon

Kit Walker 💙

Kyle Spencer (Pre- and Post- Death)

Jimmy Darling 💙

James Patrick March 💙

Kai Anderson

Fallout 4

Nick Valentine

Hancock

Star Wars

Poe Dameron

Armitage Hux 💙

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo

Finn

Han Solo

Assorted/Random

Diarmuid Ua Duibhne - FGO

Cu Chulainn/Cu Alter - FGO

Warren Lipka - American Animals 💙

Enjolras - Les Miserables

Grantaire - Les Miserables

Gabriel - Supernatural

Imagines - REQUESTS CLOSED

Songs From Musicals Y/N Would Sing To The Evans

Characters: Tate Langdon, Kit Walker, Kyle Spencer, Jimmy Darling, James Patrick March, Kai Anderson, Peter Maximoff

Rating: T

How The Evans (+ Quicksilver) Would React To Yoplait’s New Gushers Yogurt

Characters: Tate Langdon, Kit Walker, Kyle Spencer, Jimmy Darling, James Patrick March, Rory Monahan, Kai Anderson, Peter Maximoff

Rating: T

Would The Danny Bunch Survive A Holiday With My Family?

Characters: Laszlo Kreizler, Alex Kerner, Niki Lauda, Andrea Marowski, Ernst Schmidt, Helmut Zemo

Rating: T

Headcanons - REQUESTS CLOSED

Modern! AU Armitage Hux Boyfriend Headcanons

Zemo With A Well Dress S/O Headcanons

Zemo Getting Jealous Headcanons

Oneshots - REQUESTS CLOSED

Marvel/X-Men

Helmut Zemo

One Last Night In Madripoor

Synopsis: Baron Helmut Zemo is a lonely, wanted man looking for some fun, you’re a piss-poor bounty hunter in search of a connection before leaving your life of crime behind, and fate has brought you together at a party the likes of which has never been seen before. You only have one night left in Madripoor, so why not take a chance?

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 4200~

Still Some Catching Up To Do

Synopsis: As a member of the criminal underworld, people walk out of your life all the time. Some are killed, others kill themselves, most get caught and only a couple get out of the life unscathed, disappearing into the world never to be seen again. Very few walk back in. So when your supposedly incarcerated ex-lover, the Winter Soldier, and the Falcon waltzed through your door and made you murder your boss, needless to say, you were surprised and more than a little bit pissed.

Rating: 16+

Word Count: 6800~

Nine Years Starved

Synopsis: It had been a little over nine years since Helmut Zemo lost his family, his country, and his sanity. Nine years since his last kiss. Nine years since he felt like a human man. Finally, he was ready to start over again, but first, he had to pay his penance back where it all began; Novi Grad. That’s when, by the grace of the fates, he met you.

Rating: G

Word Count: 7000~

Daddy Dearest

Synopsis: Not everyone gets lucky enough to go from being a broke college student in New York to being the sugar baby to literal royalty, but not everyone is you. Most people would be worried about messing things up or losing him to someone else, but you knew he would never find another baby just like you. Besides, you knew exactly what to do to keep him wrapped around your little finger. He may have been the daddy, but you pulled the reins.

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 8000~

In Fleeting Touches & Airy Sighs

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four

Synopsis: As a wanted man, Helmut Zemo spends most of his time jumping from place to place in the hopes of avoiding a trip back to prison. Unfortunately, that means he can’t always be home in your arms. When he is, though, in the rare moments of calm, you’re reminded of just how worth it it’s been to wait, even if that wait was only shortened by the arrival of your enemies.

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 35,700~

Two Bodies In The Rain

Synopsis: It was raining the day you finally had to admit your feelings to Helmut. You hated to tell him the way you did, under the grey skies as your blood pooled below you, but at least you knew, in the end, he had seen the real you, even just once. That was enough.

Rating: T

Word Count: 5600~

Rest

Synopsis: Living life on the lam with your escaped super-villain lover means things rarely slow down enough for a real rest. When the exhaustion starts to take its toll on you, though, he knows exactly what to do to ease the pain. He may not be a good man, but he’s a good husband when it counts.

Rating: T

Word Count: 3200~

American Horror Story

Jimmy Darling

Red Nights In Jupiter

Synopsis: At the end of another long day, you fall into bed with Jimmy Darling. The men you served throughout the day don’t matter then, nor do the coins in the mason jar by the door, or the women scheduled to attend Jimmy’s next Tupperware party. No, in that quiet darkness it’s just you and the man you love, bone-tired and happy to be home. Who could ask for more?

Rating: 16+

Word Count: 3000~

James Patrick March

Heartsick

Synopsis: When you fall ill, James is given a forceful awakening about how he’s been neglecting your needs and what he must do to prevent harm from befalling you again.

Rating: 16+

Word Count: 3700~

In Sickness And In Health

Synopsis: Normally people don’t have their wedding and funeral on the same day, but you and James don’t quite have a normal relationship, do you? Besides, you wouldn’t wanna go any other way.

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 5500~

Fallout 4

Currently Empty

Star Wars

Currently Empty

Assorted/Random

Currently Empty

Long Form Works/Series

Young Artist!Zemo AU

Chapter One: The Boy With The Easel

Synopsis: About a month into your first semester at Novi Grad’s top university, you finally meet the strange young man that you’ve taken to calling “easel boy” in the back of a bookshop. From a distance, he always seemed cold and aloof. As you get to know him, though, you realize things aren’t always what they seem.

Rating: T

Word Count: 7000~

Till Forever Falls Apart (A Peter Maximoff/Reader Series)

Chapter One: Welcome Home

Synopsis: As if getting thrown through the multiverse, trapped in an attic (albeit a cool one), mind-controlled to manipulate his grieving sister, and subsequently dragged out of Westview “for his own safety” by the FBI wasn’t enough, Peter Maximoff has now been shipped off to New York to live with a glorified baby sitter like some tragic orphan in a comic book until they find a way to get him back home. Things are not always as they seem, though, and this change might just be for the better.

Rating: T

Word Count: 2400~

Chapter Two: The Doctor Is In

Synopsis: Peter’s first few days in his new home are mostly uneventful, so he decides it’s the perfect time to dust off his running goggles and steal some shit. The building with the massive circular stained glass window seems like a great place to start! People with buildings that lavish are usually rich and weak, so what could possibly go wrong?

Rating: T

Word Count: 2800~

Chapter Three: It’s Always Been You

Synopsis: After a month of adapting to his new universe, Peter Maximoff can confidently say that he likes his new life more than his old one. Sure, he misses home sometimes, but he’s been far too busy flirting with his new roommate to spend time crying over the things he’s lost. Everything is smooth sailing until a strange journal in his roommate’s study leaves him with more questions than he knows what to do with. Now he’s on a mission to discover who he’s really living with before she has the chance to turn against him.

Rating: T

Word Count: 8600~

Chapter Four: Before You Go

Synopsis: Peter, after days of contemplation, has realized that part of him loves Y/N no matter what she is or what she’s been through. Unfortunately, he can’t find her anywhere. When she finally returns home with the intention of leaving again, Peter realizes it’s his last chance to tell her how he really feels. Will he succeed, or will he fail to be fast enough once again?

Rating: T

Word Count: 4000~

Chapter Four And A Half: Gimme Swayze

Synopsis: Now that the issue of Y/N leaving is out of the way, and Peter has finally kissed her, he falls into the motions of learning how to love someone for the first time. It’s easier than he thought it would be.

Rating: T

Word Count; 2600~

Cakes For The Evans: A Blogging And Baking Adventure!

Kai Anderson’s Disaster Cake

Hey you! If you’ve made it this far down the list, thanks for supporting me as an author! I’ll be linking my AO3 here. I post everything there shortly before I post it here, and there are some older fics there you might enjoy along the way! It’s also easier to drop comments over there and I keep them open for non-members, so give me a shout if you liked what I wrote!

I love you all, you make me so happy, and without you support I would never be motivated to write! Cheers!

485 notes · View notes

damn-stark · 4 years ago

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All That’s Left ch.8

Star Wars Au

A/N- I really liked how this came out :) leave your thoughts??

Warning- deals with a panic attack, swearing, light fluff, angst, long chapter

Pairing- Poe Dameron x reader

(Let me know if you want to be tagged)

————

Quietly you look down at your trembling hands with a numb expression, your eyes meeting Ben’s from across from you and gasping out in a shaking voice, “Ben...I-I just...oh god.”

Ben stands up to his given height, his eyes still wide in surprise, his lips parting but not knowing exactly what to say to your seemingly panicked person. After all, only Poe knew of your now broken moral. He right now was the only person your eyes searched for through the thick of the dark forest, coming up empty through each sweep and even more overwhelmed by the minute.

Ben seemed like a mere hallucination, the sound of your name coming out of his lips in a highly worried tone as you began to walk back was tuned out by your racing heart thumping in your ears. It was cold but your body was covered in hot sweat, all you could see was your trembling hands that were in a more metaphorical sense covered in blood of the man you had killed. All you wanted was one person, but he wasn’t here.

“Wh-where’s Poe? I need—” you muttered, whilst you kept walking away from Ben. “I need Poe, please.”

Everything around you began to spin in circles, what was once reality around you, felt as if it was all some fake alternate world, everything felt out of this world, it felt like your body was beginning to lose gravity and you were floating up into the void of space, only holding on to the earth by a thread. Ben was trying to help, but he was clueless on what to do, he began to hear you hyperventilate as you fell to the floor, but he was frozen, caught like a deer in headlights. He knew and you knew that what you were having a panic attack, only he didn’t know why. That or his mind just wasn’t grasping the idea with everything that was going on. Maybe he needed the help of the man you had called out to too.

“Hey, y/n, listen to me,” Ben tried to assure you, as he crouched down in front of you, pulling your hands away from your face as he noticed that you seemed to look at nothing else but that. “Listen to me.”

His voice was again, distant, felt like he was calling you from millions of miles away. You managed to shake your head and make the mistake to let your eyes fall on Ren splayed on the ground a couple feet away, the inside of your mind spinning more and your chest rising and falling down in a rhythm that wasn’t normal.

“Y/N!” Immediately at the shout of your name coming from Ben’s, your eyes snap away from Ren and you focus on Ben; who’s face by the way was inches from your eyes, his hands carefully and hesitantly cupping your cheeks. “Listen to me. Talk to me about your sister, okay? Describe her to me.”

You shook your head and swallowed thickly, feeling hot tears still streaming down your cheeks, still hearing the loud thumping of your heart and feeling as if everything was just going to come to a sudden and violent end.

“Please, just describe her to me, you talk about her all the time, tell me how she’s like.” Ben repeated, tilting your head so you continued to focus on nothing else but him. “Please.”

“Sh-she had red hair,” you panted, “she was my-my step sister. Her eyes were a mixture of the earth, brown and green,” it was slow at first, but his attempts to calm you down seemed to be working; only talking about your sister made your mind focus on what happened last. The event that left you somewhat the way you are now. “I left her to turn,” Ben freezes at your words, realizing that your breathing had calmed down, but the emotions had remained the same or even just worsened.

He just did the opposite of what he was trying to reach.

You sniffle and feel Ben wipe the tears off your cheeks, the panic that had overcome your mind, now drifting into nothing as you continued, “I left her to die, I loved her and left her to turn into one of those things because I couldn’t do it. I-I couldn’t end her life, so I left her to turn.” You sigh and feel tears once again cloud your eyesight, “it’s true what Armitage said about me isn’t it?” You blink to meet his gaze, your frown a permanent residence on your face, “I’m-I’m weak.”

Ben lips parted, his brown irises searching your face for the right answer to give you, to try and not say something dumb to ruin the moment, or make you more upset. Because he knew that right now it’s like you were made out of glass, one wrong move and you would break.

“You—” Ben’s comment was cut off the moment your eyes drifted to catch the movement behind him, a soft smile tugging at your lips signifying that it was no one dangerous.

“Poe,” instantly you ripped Ben’s hands away and quickly got up, noticing that Poe’s once clean face, now had a red marking that would soon fade into a purple bruise. Whatever had gone down with the knight, Poe came out the winner, even if he got hurt. Which was good in some ways. Regardless you were content at finally seeing him approach, the frown that once heavily decorated your features making a quick return when you saw Poe’s eyes flicker to Ren's dead body by his feet. His own gaze apologetic as he came to the realization of what happened.

Poe’s lips parted to pronounce the nickname that had quickly gotten accustomed to his tongue, but as he saw Ben stand too close to you he had to go by your name. “Y/N.”

Maybe you should have been more discreet, hidden more your enthusiasm to see him, but after what you did, he’s all you needed. So quickly you ran up to wrap him in a hug, letting out a shaky breath of air at the comfort of his arms wrapping around you. “I’m sorry,” you whispered into his chest, not having a care in the world if this singular moment was going to give away your relationship; “I-I didn’t mean to kill him. I’m sorry.”

Poe parted away only far enough to cup your cheeks, his usual gestures of affection forced to be nothing more than imaginary for the time being. His words were the only thing for comfort, even if those were guarded too. “It’s okay, you saved Ben’s life, that’s all that matters.”

Your eyebrows knot together and you shake your head, “but,”

“It’s okay, remember what I told you before...it doesn’t matter. Okay?”

You hesitate, but nod nonetheless. “Okay.”

Poe fully broke away, looking to Ben nervously and hoping he saw your interaction as nothing more but platonic. Just friends that weren’t really friends, finding comfort in each other because they had spent a day full of bonding….but Ben wasn’t stupid either. Shit.

Let’s hope he was clueless at this instant.

Poe swallowed thickly, “where’s Finn? And chewbacca? And BB8?”

Ben sighed and his eyes shifted to the ground, signifying nothing good was going to come out of his response. “We don’t know. Rey was hoping to have found them by now, but nothing. I don’t know where they are or if they’re together, all we know is that we got separated after the attack at the camp.”

Poe’s face fell, and his eyes glistened with tears once again, responding with a simple nod and nothing more in regard to that matter. “Well, Rey is in the car, we can take it, I doubt they’ll miss it. We just have to leave before they want a rematch. Or revenge for their dead master here.”

Your face falls and your eyes drift once more to Ren. A chill running through your body at the flashing memory, feeling your gaze get lost on the harsh dark crimson color that impurified the white snow. Only reacting to the real world as Poe’s whisper startled you. “Hey, come on.”

His eyes were set on you, his worry for your well being undivided. He wanted to talk, you could read that off his body language, the way he kept his eyes trained on you, a hands on your shoulder with his lips parted to add hundreds of things to comfort you. But with Ben around now, it was impossible. Maybe the truth was he needed you as much as he saw you needed him. But again impossible, all either of you could do was dance around your words.

“Are you okay?” You manage to ask, your eyes moving away from Ren to focus on Poe, your hand lifting to give his shoulder a comforting squeeze before you slowly slid it down to hold his hand for a short second, his hand squeezing yours for a moment before you pulled away from his grasp.

Poe nodded, one corner of his lips tugging into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yeah, I will be.” He sighed before guiding you to the car he was going to take as a parting gift from the Knights of Ren, “now come on, before they wake up.”

You sigh and nod, leaving Ren behind physically, but feeling his torturous presence now cling to your mind; “Okay.”

——

The rest of the night was enveloped in an equally quiet car ride, albeit the only noise that occupied your space was the sound of the car's tires on the asphalt that was slowly being swallowed by greenery that was overcoming every inch of man made things. Surprisingly Ben and Poe kept their talking to a minimum, no arguing at all, just simple directions, and maybe that fact had to be due to Rey, who was still passed out in the seat by yours. Her chest slowly rising up and falling down in a gentle rhythm, the only indication that she was alive and not actually dead.

Good, as much neither of you have gotten along, even thinking of losing someone else hurt your soul.

Thinking about those crew members that you were still missing was aching at your heart to the point where you were going to bawl your eyes out if it wasn’t for, Ren’s body haunting your mind. Keeping you from fully drifting off to the peacefulness that was sleeping, watching as the sun pushed the stars off the horizon to introduce a new even colder day. Any moment you closed your eyes, two scenes vividly played in your mind, both equally as traumatizing and draining to your sanity.

One, was seeing his scared body laying on the floor with the blood staining the snow.

Two, and the most prominent one was when you impaled Ren's torso with Ben's lightsaber. The sound of the blue blade bursting out buzzed in your ears, a sound so vivid it felt like if someone was now taunting and torturing you by repeatedly activating the saber right by your ear. It was deafening and horrible, but when you thought it was all over and felt like your mind could get some ease and drift to sleep, the vivid image of the same saber going through Ren’s torso startled you awake; sometimes the scene would play different, but nothing ever nice. At times your mind played games and mixed the truth, leaving you in a haze unable to tell the difference between the lies and truth of what was real or not after a while. Sometimes your hands were covered in blood, or your whole body; sometimes you would see him rise from the dead and kill you instead. Overall whatever horror trance you were under kept you awake, the only connection to your sanity and reality was Poe.

Who quietly sat in the passenger seat, his eyes often drifting over his shoulder to watch you numbly look out the window, or actually meet your exhausted gaze. A faint smile on each other’s lips when your eyes did meet. Feeling grateful that you had chosen the seat behind Ben’s driver's seat to get a good view of your equally as exhausted boyfriend. At least that went according to plan.

“Okay, I got some good pilot jokes, okay?” Poe voiced out loud, making Ben express a loud sigh, only causing Poe to get a rather prideful and happier grin, his eyes drifting up to notice your attention was only partly in this car. The feeling of his hand pulling yours to rest it on his chest grabbing your still divided attention. Sneaky bastard. He practically almost threw Rey passenger seat after she woke up, with the excuse that “it's better to sit in the back. That way I can stretch my legs to sleep better.” While he had his head on your lap, making another excuse that “the seat's headrests are too hard, and the car ride is too bumpy to rest my head on the window. I could get a concussion.” To Ben and Rey, he was being whiny, while to you, it was all excuses to just be close you without raising suspicion. You'd say he was smart, if he wasn’t talking everyone's ears off.

So much for sleeping.

Before he could reveal his joke, you tried to pull your hand away from his chest, knowing that Rey or Ben were going to look over their shoulder to shoot Poe, a rather unamused glare at his jokes, but as you tried, he reacted faster and began to wrestle for your own hand. A teasing smirk on his lips as he saw you now fully give him your attention. And if no one was around, you knew deep in your soul that he would have either pulled you down for a kiss, or he would have lifted his head to press his lips on your own, gently and playfully biting your bottom lip before he would return to his previous position on your lap—well now, that’s all you wanted. Ugh.

“Okay here it goes,” he grinned, finally deciding to let your hand go before he continued, “what’s one thing a pilot can’t say in a job interview?”

Rey sighed, “what?”

Poe chuckled, his eyes crinkling at the pure enjoyment of his own joke as he tried to say it in between laughs. “I’m down to earth!” Poe laughed even harder. At least he was finding time to enjoy himself..that or what Zorii said, “Keep his mind from overthinking.” Nonetheless you giggled at his joke, even if it was forced due to the fact that neither Rey or Ben laughed, and well you were simply not in the mood to laugh or do anything at all.

But he was trying. Not only to keep everyone’s mood up, but your own. He was great that way…..

Poe shifted himself to now rest his head and shoulders on your lap, his warm brown eyes again shifting to your face, a frown threatening to show when he saw your smile fade away; “one more,” he continued, “I saw a ghost pilot once, guess what he was flying on?” You hum softly as a response, the only answer he needed to finish his joke, “he was on an ethereal plane.”

Ben this time expressed an amused huff of air, a very, very faint smile tugging on his lips that was only visible through the rear view mirror. Your own smile barely pulled through—at least he got Ben to smile.

Rey shifted in her seat, looking over her shoulder to change the subject and direct her painful question at Poe. “How about, Zorii? Have you come across her or know where she is? We lost sight of her after the attack. She was looking for the both of you.”

Poe’s whole face dropped at the mention of the woman’s name, his whole body stiffening at the memory you both witnessed. The guilt you barely managed to shove away, crashing back into your mind. Just piling on to your already overwhelmed headspace.

“She-she.” Poe fumbled with his words, his eyes looking to the car's ceiling to avoid his tears from rolling down, while he also let out a shaky breath of air. “She—”

“We...lost her,” you explained for Poe, “she found us the day of the attack and,” you pause and sigh, “we traveled together, until we found out she had gotten bit during the attack.” Tears roll down your cheeks, but you somehow manage to finish your explanation. “Without her, we would have died. She saved us before she…” You swallow thickly, “...died.”

Rey’s mouth is left agape, a sadness replacing her curiosity. “I’m-im sorry, Poe. I know you two knew each for a long time...I’m sorry.”

Poe expresses a soft thank you that barely passes as a whisper, the tears he wanted to keep away, rolling down regardless. The deafening silence from before covering the little space with added tension. You moved your hand to wipe Poe’s tears off his cheeks, making his saddened gaze drift to you, a small wince leaving his lips at the sting felt after your finger passed over his bruise. “Sorry.” You mouthed, looking up the rearview mirror to quickly glance at Ben, before looking at Rey, double checking that they both weren’t looking, to move your hands to wipe the curls off his forehead and show him a soft smile before mouthing your concern “are you okay?”

Poe nodded and returned your question, “are you okay?”

You hesitate, but answer with a feigned smile and a short nod, your eyes drifting beyond the tree lines as Ben rolled to a stop in an old camp ground. The vivid figure of Ren bleeding out appearing where your gaze fixated, causing an inaudible hitch in your breathing once you caught sight of his blood covered finger accusingly pointed at you, his husky voice sounding off loudly in your head. Almost feeling as if he were next to you. “You killed me.”

——

“You killed me.” Ren pointed at you again, only this time with the crimson red lightsaber humming in his hand, the raging tip threatening you from where he stood outside the foggy window standing between him and you. His white hair blended with the white color the background behind him, while his red blade stood out, his blood that dripped from the deadly wound you made sizzled on the snow. A sound your mind created to torture you that much more. You tried to rub your eyes in attempts for his ghost to go away, but when your eyes were given their visibility again, there he was, his boots buried in the snow with this lightsaber still threatening you. “You killed me.”

You gulp and firmly shut your eyes, whispering your wishes for him to disappear under your breath; only to be surprised that he stood before you now, a scowl painted on his face that soon transformed into a worried look.

What the fuck?

Again you shut your eyes for a second before they flutter open, the image of Poe standing in front of you taking Ren's place. His eyebrows furrowing at your reaction, while his eyes followed your line of sight as your eyes snapped back to the window; now seeing nothing but the falling snow. “Is there something over there?” He questioned in a highly worried tone.

Your eyes drift back to him, noticing the concern in his eyes when they met with yours. Letting you shake your head and whisper. “No.”

Poe hummed, his eyes drifting for a second to what you had been focused on moments ago to see nothing. Again. “Okay, well,” he scratched the back of his head, his voice lowering in volume, “Ben and I are going to scour the area just to make sure there's no infected lurking around, okay?”

You blink and look behind his shoulder to see Rey outside talking with Ben, letting you fully express your doubt for this “patrol”, “Poe, no. Please don’t leave me here with Rey.”

Poe chuckled, his hand stroking his beard. “You’ll be fine. We’re not going to be gone long.” He smirked, “just try to get along, alright?”

You shook your head, “no. Not alright.”

Poe rolled his eyes before crouching down to match your height as you sat on an old bunk bed. “Try to get some sleep. I know that you haven’t, so for me, please sleep.”

What you wouldn’t give to sleep in his arms again. Sneak off and find some dark cave to just sleep in the security of his arm again. You wouldn’t have to do anything else….well maybe just some kissing, but nothing else beside that. You just wanted to feel safe in the world of insanity that now had you by its grasp, feel warm in the cold season that had everything covered in a snow white blanket. Only that blanket was made out of small particles of cold ice. Stupid winter.

For someone born on Ilum, a literal ice planet, you hated anything that had to associate with snow or ice. It was a stupid cursed thing that did nothing but get you cold. It was beautiful to see, but it was cursed. There's no good memories associated with snow. Nothing.....well maybe Poe. But everything that happened with him, like him asking you to be his girlfriend happened before the first flake of snow hit the ground. The sex happened before too. So nothing good ever associated with this white tortures snow.

You sigh, “maybe. But that’s why you should stay too. You haven’t slept either, I don’t want you passing out in the middle of the forest. Plus you’re wounded.”

Poe looked over his shoulder, his eyes focused on the talking pair outside the window before he turned back around, his hand going on your knee and not on your thigh for precautionary reasons. “Baby, it’s just a little bruise.”

“And?”

A faint smile pulled on his lips, “I’ll be fine. I’ve also gone longer without sleeping. I’m more worried about you. Are you sure you’re fine? What you did took a toll, I know it wasn’t easy.”

You sigh and look to the ground for a brief moment before you meet his gaze to assure him. “I’ll be fine. It’s just going to take time, you know? To fully grasp what I did. But...I will be fine.”

He smiles, unconvinced but he does, his fingers aching to stroke your cheek, “you’ll tell me if anything’s wrong, right? You know you can trust me with anything, right?”

You nod, forcing a smile to really convince him. “yeah I know.” You wanted to tell him of what you’ve been seeing, but, it was just passing trauma. Nothing to worry about….nothing to worry about.

He hesitates to say what he wanted to say next, wanting to stay on the subject, but knowing that it wouldn’t go far with the people around. So instead he had to move on. “I want you to get some sleep, baby, for me, okay?”

You groan, “fine.”

Poe smiles, the exhaustion behind his eyes disappearing for a moment as he showed the little bit of joy when you answered. “We’ll be back shortly.”

You smirk, “no kiss goodbye?”

Poe scoffed, “You know if I could, I would.” He smirked, “don’t be a tease.” Poe followed by standing up, offering you one last smile before taking your hand in his, bringing it up to his lips to place a light kiss on your scar. Making you genuinely smile. Before you could say anything on the regard he discreetly placed something hard and small on your palm, securing it by forming your hand into a fist. His gaze lingering on you for a moment before leaving out the door, that panic and hold to reality that was shoved away at his presence returning as he left. Leaving you paranoid and scared again. Just before Rey could come in, you turned your back to the door...for just in case and opened your fist, seeing a silver chain (not the one with the ring on it...good.) that had dog tags hanging from it, ‘Poe Dameron’ neatly stamped on the metal, with the symbol of the resistance logo stamped under the words. You smiled. A genuine and happy smile that even showed on your eyes at the sentiment, the neatly folded piece of paper catching your attention before you could hang the chain around your neck.

When you unfolded it, there wasn’t a lot written and the words were obviously written in a hurry due to how messy it all looked. But the thought still made your heart swell. If your sister were to see you, she would instantly call you out and tease you on how big your smile was and the effects this man had on you. But alas she wasn’t. Maybe it was a good thing, since her jokes would be endless and irritating….but then again you’d rather have that then what was the reality. Damn.

You sigh and choose to read the letter instead of wallowing. The smile you had returned in an instant as your eyes read the words.

I want you to wear these, a part of me, with you. So every time I have to leave you’re reminded that I’m there with you and that I’ll be back. No matter how short my leave is. I’ll be back. Everytime. I...

The letter ‘I’ was very messily scribbled out, whatever he wanted to write, chosen to be nothing but a mistake. Whatever it was.

...also please SLEEP! I mean it! I’ll be back.Try not to fight with Rey.

Your best boyfriend ever, Poe.

And he called you a dork—your smile widened and you neatly tucked the letter in your backpack. Quickly hanging the chain around your neck and hiding the dog tags under your shirt, unable to hide the smile that showed as the warmth from Poe’s body was still on the metal. You felt like a happy child after receiving a candy or a prize. Now you felt closer with Poe. What you wouldn’t give to kiss him.

You couldn’t, shame. Maybe if you actually slept he would be back faster and you would get to avoid Rey. That’s a good idea. Let’s do that. You shrug your backpack off your shoulders and drop it on the wooden floor, not even bothering to look back at Rey as you heard the mattress of the bed she was on, swoop down. The sound of her lips parting, making you bite the inside of your cheek in hopes she wasn’t trying to do what you thought she wanted to do.

But alas it happened…

“So,” she started, forcing you to turn to face her. “Poe and you....”

If you could see your own face. You knew it would be shocked beyond belief. Your eyes would be and are widened in horror and surprise. Your heart stopped beating. All the blood on your face disappeared.

“...were there when Zorii died?” She finished with a long face.

You finally exhale and relax, proceeding to offer her a short nod. “Uhh, yeah….well not really because we had to leave before she died, but there wasn’t much time left for her, she sacrificed the remainder of her time...so..yeah.”

What you wouldn’t give to have her here.

Rey hummed, her eyes lifting from the floor to you, the action making your heart race inside your chest; “look, I just want to say that whatever hostile we had with each other, I’m sorry. I was just...jealous I guess with the relationship you had with Ben.”

Your nose scrunches and you laugh out loud. Making her eyebrows knot in confusion. “Look,” You breath with a grin, “I’ll tell you what I told him. It’s not going to happen. Ben is like a walking reminder of my brother, I could never have a relationship with that man. Plus he’s rude, so, no.”

Rey smiles shyly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Yeah you’ve got that right.”

“Did you have the chance to, uh,” you try not to laugh again, hiding your smile with your hand, “did you try making a move on him? Or?”

Rey shook her head, her smile softening. “No, no. He’s intimidating to say the least, at first I did find him attractive but, I don’t think he’s fully here. His mind always seems to be somewhere else. It’s weird.”

You hum as a response, knowing that his father mostly likely had to with his odd behavior.

“I’ve meaning to ask,” Rey paused, fidgeting with her fingers like if whatever she wanted to ask scared her. “Why did you leave the first order? I understand that General Hux is your brother. Why did you leave and not him.”

You swallow thickly, and hesitate to speak up as you thought of your answer. It wasn’t difficult to explain the reasoning. It was just hard to talk about; “he’s my step brother.” You correct her, meeting her gaze to continue, “uhh, he traveled with the group my sister and I were with after the outbreak, but he chose to return after a year. He decided that his precious order mattered more than his own family.” Tears don’t threaten to show like you thought they would, instead you were swallowed in a burning anger. “My sister and I left the order. A group of us actually. All before everything happened, because we knew that what the first order was doing was wrong. It was never us. My sister always said we were meant for greater things than to be part of a murdereous group.” A small warm smile makes it on your lips at the thought of your sister, a moment that was short lived as the memory of her passing makes your frown have a comeback.

“I’m sorry,” Rey sighs.

You quirk your eyebrow and quickly press on her comment. “What for?”

“It wasn’t easy, losing the only people you have in the whole galaxy. It’s hard and devastating. I understand.” Tears roll down her cheeks, the action and her words catching you by total surprise.

“I—” you exhale deeply and nod, “it’s shattering, but the loneliness after they’re all gone is the worst part.” And it was. You were left alone for a year after Amaras death. A year without having people watch your back or talk to, just feel safe. Not until someone came along. This guy named Enzo, he had these soft, pretty brown eyes that you could just get lost in. He had some soft brown hair and a pretty face, and his accent was amazing. He well, he could also pull off a beard. But that’s all. Well. All beside the point. Because just like everyone else he died...or at least that’s what you tell yourself. You were separated by a horde, one thing led to another and then you found Ben and his father. Or they found you. Whatever. The point is, you haven’t thought of Enzo since Ben found you. It would have been painful either way. Plus, he was part of the past. You weren’t alone anymore.

Focusing back on the person in front of you, you notice as Rey wipes her tears and offers you a kind smile, “you have us now. You know that, right?”

For however long that will be. Right?

You nod and wipe off your own tears, “right.”

“I know you’re scared that what you’re going to do is going to kill you, but I promise that General Organa will do everything in her power to make sure it doesn’t. I have faith you’ll get to see what your immunity brings to this galaxy too.”

You frown and gulp, blinking away tears to show a more feigned smile. All you wanted was for her to be right. But you couldn’t get your hopes up. “I’m-“ you excuse yourself. Changing the subject completely. “I’m going to try and get some sleep before the guys come back, okay?” Without another word, you look away and lay on the blanket you had over the bed with your back facing her. It was a little rude to leave her out in the cold like that after she was trying to be nice, but the topic she brought up isn’t easy. You couldn’t let your mind come up with the ‘what if’ scenarios. As nice as that would be. You just couldn’t….so instead let’s just get sleep. Or else your boyfriend would skin you alive for not at least sleeping for a couple minutes.

If that was even possible.

You closed your eyes and all could see was Ren. You wanted to picture Poe, imagine that he was pressed up behind you, or maybe even anything else but what came to mind. Stupid Ren. You sigh and pull out the dog tags that Poe had given you. A small smile pulling at the corner of your lips at the feeling of the metal in your hand. Knowing that he once had them around his own neck, had it against his smooth skin. Knowing that he thought of you when he chose to depart from something so meaningful as his war tags. This man truly managed to just mean everything to you in a matter of days. What was it? Maybe the way he didn’t see you like a broken toy. He didn’t treat you like a child, he was gentle, strong and brave. He cared for you and the thought of leaving you bothered him to his very core. And you knew your leave was inevitable, but he knew the risks and didn’t care. Maybe you were nothing else but a warm body to him...but if that were true, he wouldn’t bother to leave notes or small gifts. He would be uncaring and cold. But he wasn’t. He truly wasn’t.

Stars.

——

“Y/N.”

The afternoons bright light stings your eyes the moment you peel them open, a cold breeze rushes in and makes you pull your (Poe’s) jacket closer to your body. The exhaustion you had been trying to get rid of still there. Lingering. Pleading for you to shut your eyes again to continue with what your body ached for. Only you wouldn’t. It’s a surprise you even got to sleep. For however long that was.

“Y/N.”

You sigh and turn around at the sound of Ben calling you—when had they came back?

“Y/N.”

You groan, “yeah, yeah I heard you the first time.” You roll your eyes and flip around, keeping your eyes focused on the ground as you swung your feet over the bed, dreading even meeting Ben’s gaze. You were still mad at him. You might’ve saved his life, but he hasn't apologized for his very unkind words. He might think he’s off the hook but he wasn’t. Yet.

“Ben, look.” You sigh and as you’re tugging your boots on, the blood dripping from his body makes you stop mid sentence and for your brows to pinch together. Slowly and hesitantly following the leaking blood up to...No.No. Ren. “No. No I-I killed you. You’re supposed to be dead.”

Ren’s head tilted to the side, one of his burnt hands trying to stop his wound from bleeding while with his other he pulled his lightsaber off his side. “Right, because you killed me. Because you’re just like them. You had no mercy.”

You shake your head and stand up from the bed, slowly slipping past him and beginning to walk back. “No. I’m not. You-you were going to kill my friend.” A small whimper leaves your lips at the sound of his lightsaber igniting in his hand. The crimson color, basking the whole room in its red glow.

Ren walks towards you, the tip of his saber pointing to you, with every step he took forward you took one back, feeling the heat of the lightsaber on your own torso as it came mere inches from impacting it as your back hit the closed door. You tried to turn the knob to open the door, but your hand kept slipping, a small yelp escaping from you as Ren closed the remainder of the gap by pressing the burning blade on your body, the tip of the blade easily burning through your clothes and burning your skin in a blinding pain.

“You’re just like the people you ran away from. You’re no different from your brother. You’re just like him. Both weak. Both killers.”

“Rey?! Rey?!” Where the hell was she! “Rey!”

Ren suddenly thrusts his arm forward, the blade fully coming in contact and penturating through your skin. Making you express a loud scream from the agony. Having felt no pain like this one ever. His words only add to your pain. “Now we’ll die together.” Again he thrusts forward and you let out another scream.

“I’m sorry!”

Just when you thought everything was going to end, your eyes fly open and your upper body flies up until you’re in a sitting position with your hand where your wound was supposed to be. Feeling a blanket of sweat cover your body. It takes you a moment to fully recuperate from your nightmare, but once you do you turn your head to see that Rey was not in her previous position. The room was empty. “Rey?” You swing your legs over the bed and quickly tug your shoes on, ignoring how sticky your whole body felt from the sweat. “Rey?”

Quickly you push yourself off the bed and instantly head to the door, finally catching the sound of a woman's voice talking outside. A voice you didn’t recognize as Rey’s at all; “...we must be getting lucky, recently we’ve been able to save two lost wanderers and a little robot. Cute little thing. And now the three of you.”

You press your ear on the door and let your hand hover over the doorknob as you heard Ben’s voice. They’re back? “Yeah, lucky. Now those three you found recently, was one tall and hairy? They’re in your camp?”

“Yeah and yes!” The woman chuckles, more people chiming in and joining her, “sound interesting now?”

They found Finn? What the hell is going on?

A silence takes over, making you finally twist the knob to open the door, instantly recognizing Poe’s back blocking the door, his head along with the six newcomers turning to see you walk out.

“Another emerges!” The woman addresses with a warm grin. “I’m sorry for the intrusion. You must be so confused.”

You nod and stay by Poe, feeling his gaze on you as his hand hovers over the small of your back. He looks away after a moment, letting your eyes then meet with Rey, who’s by Ben. Who looked more or less as concerned as her as he awkwardly stood across from you and by the blond woman, her green eyes burning into you.

“We were just trying to convince your friends here, about joining us in our camp. Get you guys cleaned up and fed. A storm is coming. It’s better to be somewhere...warmer than these falling cabins.”

“Hmm, well, I do whatever my friend says, so. If he says no. Then, what can I do?”

The woman chuckles again, before shoving her hands in her winter jacket. “I like you.”

And you seem weird.

“Well the offer is on the table take it or leave it.”

Something felt off? No? Just paranoia?

From the corner of your eye, you meet Poe’s gaze, his eyebrow lifting to silently ask for your opinion. Receiving a very hesitant and simple shrug from you, both of you then looking to Ben and Rey to communicate the same. All of it concluding to Ben.

“The man’s name. The one picked up recently, what was his name?” Poe asked.

The woman pressed her lips together and let her eyes wander the white ground before locking eyes with the man next to her. “Uhh, I’m not sure. I didn’t have time to really introduce myself. Why? You looking for someone?”

Ben stepped up, “you could say that.” Ben’s eyes then drifted to meet your own, the battle of choosing the right choice obviously painted on his face. He just you like you knew that it was a risk. Because after all his own father did warn you about strangers. You just never know. But then there was the other choice. If he didn’t risk at least just going to check if Finn, Chewie and BB8 were in the camp, you weren’t the only one going to be mad at him for choosing to deny their invitation.

Ben sighs and clenches his jaw, his answer going unheard as Poe speaks up. Obviously impatient to wait for Ben to answer, and desperate to know if his best friend and his droid were actually there. “We’ll go, but we can’t stay long.”

The blond woman grins and claps her hands, “great! Now I won’t feel bad that I had to leave y’all behind when a storm is heading our way. I promise you all it’s going to be great.”

You offer her a feigned smile and swallow thickly, thinking to yourself as you feel Poe’s warmth finally come in contact with your back as he began to follow the blond woman and her group.

Was this really going to be safe?

Was it the correct choice?

Were Finn, Chewie and BB8 actually there?

Maker.

Hopefully, a yes, to all.

Hopefully.

Tagged- @thescarletknight2014 , @lanatheawesome, @yodaboo , @geo-winchester r @ginger-swag-rapunzel , @mamanoota5 , @peachdameron , @roserrys , @too-lit-for-fanfic , @jimpyknees , @softly-sad , @kit-jpg

Permanent taglist- @ms-dont-care , @commondazy , @paintballkid711

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collectorscorner · 4 years ago

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CC Blogger - New Arrivals @ Collectors Corner : Wednesday 1/27/21

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walriding · 5 years ago

Note

“It’s time to tip the odds back in our favor.”

uncharted starters || accepting

He’d been away for… a while. Not terribly long – there had been lengthier stints of absence in the past – but long enough. Leaving Lynn had hurt, undeniably, but such was Miles’ way. He coped through distance, because it was easier to isolate himself than to let anyone else see him falling apart. At first he’d had half a mind to fall back on bad habits. The numbing power of any number of drugs was preferable to facing the knowledge he now carried.

His son was alive, but finding him to be dead might have been preferable.

It was that very knowledge that kept him in his right mind, somehow. He couldn’t give up, not knowing the position that the kid was in. They had to get to him, somehow. And so his wallowing turned to focus – there was a trail to follow, if only he could pick up at the start of it. First he’d have to figure out where Lynn’s adoptive parents had taken the boy. Then somehow he’d have to get his hands on First Order records, discern when they’d gotten their hands on him. And from there it was a matter of dealing with the present, trying to determine where the fabled Knights of Ren were going, not just where they’d already been.

A tall task that he’d only just begun to scratch the surface of when Miles decided to take a pause. To return home – to Lynn. Synonymous concepts these days.

But so much had happened while Miles was away, and of course none of it was good. He’d checked in with Lynn only to find her in rough shape. She, too, was dealing with the aftermath of Korriban, and now more recently the loss of one of her crew members. Miles had never been particularly close with Lynn’s rebel family, but he still knew them. News of Jax’s death felt particularly jarring in the wake of everything else, yet another unnecessary blow when things already felt so fragile.

She needed his support and his presence now more than ever, and Miles was more than willing to provide whatever comfort he could offer her. Still, though, sometimes he needed a moment to keep his own sanity in check. She’d been resting in her apartment, and before she fell asleep he told her where he was planning to go. Not far, just to one of the parks on Coruscant’s upper levels. The manicured green spaces were the only real sign of life on the planet-sized city, and they were some of the only places that brought Miles a vague sense of calm among the never ending movement around him.

They were imperfect recreations of nature, still. Miles leaned on a railing overlooking a vast urban vista, with trees at his back and over his head. It was a like a strange reversal of the place where he’d grown up – pockets of settlements surrounded on all sides by untamed jungle. For a moment he closed his eyes and inhaled, nose wrinkling at the acrid smell of city underpinning the faint whisper of the trees. In some ways he felt like Korriban had heightened his senses, made him even more aware of the thrum of life in everything �� and it had forced him to work on tuning it out, filtering it down to what was really important. It took effort, a slightly creased brow, but for a moment he was able to narrow it to just himself, just his own thoughts and existence and heartbeat. The weapon concealed in his jacket pulsed faintly, too, with a kyber crystal’s latent energy. He hadn’t told Lynn about the fact that he’d worked on it during his brief travels. That he’d removed the crystal and felt it, felt down to the core of it, began untangling the filaments of its essence that seemed right and wrong. And he’d started to wonder how difficult it might be to do the same for–

Awareness spiked as another presence registered beside him, and Miles opened his eyes. The brief flare of panic was mitigated slightly when he saw who it was. Just Ben. Just Ben, even though the unease creeping up Miles’ spine was hard to tamp down.

For a moment, just a moment before he opened his eyes, it felt like he was back in that tomb on Korriban.

It was a typically abrupt start to one of their conversations, with Ben leading with an almost demanding proposition. Miles didn’t respond right away, just pushed back from the railing and turned around to lean his back against it so that he could at least look at the trees instead of the sprawling cityscape.

“You’re talking about Crimson Dawn,” Miles sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “Not exactly high on my priority list at the moment.” That world had always been Lynn’s – gangs and battles and wars. He was involved by association, but striking back against the crime syndicate felt leagues beyond his realm of expertise. “And I think you should leave Lynn out of it for a little bit. I know she’s going to want revenge, but…”

“I have to look out for her right now. Even if that means keeping you away from her.”

/ @tenebrescxnce

#tenebrescxnce #(ɪɴᴠᴇsᴛɪɢᴀᴛɪᴠᴇ ᴊᴏᴜʀɴᴀʟɪsᴍ) ;;; ᴀsᴋs #(ᴡᴇ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ғᴀɪᴛʜ ɪɴ ᴀʟʟ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡʀᴏɴɢ ᴛʜɪɴɢs) ;;; Vᴇʀsᴇ: Sᴛᴀʀ Wᴀʀs

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reylofanfictionanthology · 6 years ago

Photo

After the Blazing Fire Dies: the 2019 Reylo Fanfiction Anthology Gift Fic Master Post Part One

The After the Blazing Fire Dies Collection on AO3 | Gift Fic Masterpost Part Two | Treats Masterpost

Flowers for Alderaan by Anonymous for addictedtoacertainlifestyle

Ben Solo is impulsive. He impulsively joined the military and he impulsively opened a flower shop when he was honorably discharged. When a pretty girl named Rey wanders into his shop asking for daisies, that impulsiveness drives him to arrange a second bouquet for her. Every blossom is imbued with a wish, and every wish is to see Rey again.

Someplace Green by Anonymous for agirlfromniima

Keen to test his powers, young padawan Ben Solo Force Projects himself across the galaxy, searching for someone outside his uncle's temple.

Kisses From You In The Flames of December's Boudoir by Anonymous for aionimica

It's Christmas Eve, Ben's on a business trip and Rey is the best at giving presents.

Hidden Moments by Anonymous for apisa_b

Prompt 1: Post TLJ Rey and Kylo / Ben find a way to meet in person and sort out their feelings and differences without the danger of being cut off mid-sentence (or mid kiss), like it has frequently happened during their Force bond sessions. Prompt 2: Post TLJ – a chance meeting at an unexpected place. This story combines these two prompts.

Reverie by Anonymous for ArdeaJestin

Reverie: a state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts; a daydream. "You—you are inspired by your students. The women, or… one in particular. That's what they say." A low hum sounded from behind her, alerting at his sudden proximity as a large hand reached past her shoulder, brushing at her jaw—long fingers pushing lightly to urge her neck to the right. With a loud exhale, she followed the motion, taking in the haze of blue; illuminated by the ever-bright moon, skimming at the lake's surface with a breathtaking shimmer. "See that? There is my inspiration." His lips were gentle at her ear in contrast to the warm hands at her shoulders, gripping tight to manoeuvre her body around swiftly, suddenly confronted with the image of herself. Flushed cheeks, hair unravelled, body shapeless and thin. "And this too." One hand drifted from her shoulder, down her arm to wrap around her own, guiding it up and across to her opposite side, tugging her back flush to his front as his head dropped to the exposed expanse of her neck. "Never listen to what they say—I'll tell you all you need to know, my sweet." With Mr. Benjamin Solo, Rey always felt stuck in a nightmare. Or maybe it was a daydream.

all true lovers are by Anonymous for asimbelmyne

She might seem lonely, but Ben can sense that this forest is her faithful audience, and she is nothing but alone. The birds chirp a symphony to her, and the greenery around her bows, grateful to be blessed by her beauty. She truly is beautiful, but that’s not the entire reason he is so drawn to her. It’s her Magic.

lightning through my teeth by Anonymous for below_the_starry_clusters_bright

“Always running, little Jedi?” he panted hot in her ear, the leather of his glove creaking under her jaw. She froze, lips parting with her hitched breath. His thumb swiped down her cheek, wiping away a drop of sweat, and she squirmed in his arms until his fingers dug in deeper. “I finally have you,” he said, equal parts smug and awestruck. A few steps forward to the wall, and she had to throw out her palms to brace herself on the cold stone. His firm heat behind her shifted, thighs pushing into the back of hers as he held her tight. She took a side step for balance, and he took advantage, slipping a firm thigh between her legs to wedge them open.“You like to run,” he whispered as his long nose brushed through her hair, “but maybe you also like to be caught.” What do you call a game of chase when both people are the hunters? When deep down, both want to get caught?

Diyari by Anonymous for Biekewieke

“You stay on your side of this line,” she instructed her towering traveling companion and the stick jabbed the ground. It was a warning jab. Ben knew the next one could take his eye out.“But the shade is on your side.”“But the shade is on your side,” Rey mimicked in a whine. “Deal with it Princess, you can pick another rock. I don’t want you near me right now,” she added angrily and walked away leaving him with arms tightly folded.

Her smile, in the light of the dawn of the menacing sky. by Anonymous for bitterbones

Kylo stands, still clutching one of his boots, as Rey covers her face and coughs. She is on her side, under a threadbare blanket, and Kylo feels a useless wish to drape her in silks. Her hair is matted, and he regrets never brushing and braiding it for her. Her eyes are dim, and he remembers watching them sparkle up at him in the flickering lights of a turbolift.

Elements of Control by Anonymous for bittersnake

In a world where men wield magic and women wield power, the advent of an Earth witch holds the key to victory of Fire and Air over Water. But when Fire mage Kylo Ren finds that the new witch is female, his hunger for power is set against his instinct to submit.

Caffa and Crystals by Anonymous for Bombastique

Kylo's off not doing his job *again*- Why is the ever important Master of the Knights of Ren heading to a planet like Gatalenta? It couldn't have anything to do with the cute barista from that one time... In which Kylo and Rey have a long distance relationship

Talking Solo by Anonymous for briony_larkin

After always having been a wallflower, Rey suddenly starts getting attention from one of the school's most popular guys: Kylo Ren. At least, if that's what you can call his repeated insults. By the Force, what does he want from her?

All Tangled Up In Obligations by Anonymous for CadomirBane

Senator Ben Organa falls ill and his Jedi bodyguard Rey has to take care of him, becoming his nurse. When he feels better again, she helps bring to life on of his most secret fantasies.

A soft epilogue by Anonymous for CajunSpice714

The return of the Duke of Alderaan incited all manner of gossip and speculation.

Reckless by Anonymous for Cataclyzmic

There was something about Kylo Ren that made Rey feel reckless. or Who knew that hating the person you were sleeping with wasn't an effective birth control?

In Our Silence, Volumes by Anonymous for Ceallaigh

When Rey senses through their Force Bond that Ben is in trouble, she'll stop at nothing to get to him. But what if he's not ready to be rescued from himself? Post-TLJ.

First Contact by Anonymous for Chthonia

So Rey had crash landed on the very first world she’d been posted to. Finn would laugh himself sick when she told him—if she ever saw him again. This was not how her first mission was supposed to go. Something about this planet felt strangely familiar, though, and so did the mysterious alien in a dark cloak who found her...

Call Me By Her Name by Anonymous for crossingwinter

Rey hooks up with a guy on Tinder. He calls her by his ex’s name when they have sex. Then she meets his parents.

cause i'm gonna make this place your home by Anonymous for crunchy

“I promise you, one day, when this war is over, I will take you to see the most beautiful planets in the galaxy.” Two years later, Kylo makes good on his promise to Rey. Together, they take a holiday journeying planets all around the galaxy.

Deprived by Anonymous for Crysania

Kylo Ren is projecting and Rey, too exhausted to keep their bond shut, has to find a way to get some sleep. Comforting the Supreme Leader of the First Order was never in her plans but little of her interactions with Ben Solo are ever planned.

lay then the axe to the root by Anonymous for crystanagahori

“And you? Are you beholden to the estate?” It is an insolent question for a governess to ask a Duke. “I—” He considers it. “I am the heir. I cannot be anything else.” “I believe Mr Burke has strong views on inheritance.” Miss Nima smooths her palm across the book binding, thinks a moment. “You sound beholden.”

A Vision of You by Anonymous for cuddlesome

Rey feels what he feels. The monster in the mask. Until he's not a monster anymore.

The Paradox of Not Giving In by Anonymous for Dalzo

Rey is being brought under the care of Doctor Solo for a broken wrist and mild concussion. Being half-conscious most of the time during the treatment, she accidentally scents her doctor. Since then, she can't stop thinking about him. But does he experience the same thing?

laugh! by Anonymous for dancingpenguin57

Rey realizes she’s never heard Ben laugh and tries to make it happen

The Set-up by Anonymous for dearly

Ben Solo has aways been socially awkward, but when he sets his sights on his brother Poe's fiance Finn's bestfriend Rey during an engagment party Poe decided that he and Finn need to divise a plan to set the two of them up if not for the sake of his and Finn's future wedding then for the sake of their own sanity.

Yes, To All Of It by Anonymous for Elywyngirlie

After Crait, Rey and Kylo each struggle to forget the love they let slip through their fingers. Their Force Bond has other plans.

And I wish that you were here by Anonymous for emiliavioletta

Feeling torn she wishes her stupid car hadn’t broke down. She wishes the snow hadn’t been so bad, but mostly she wishes Ben would stop smiling at her like that.

through the burning night by Anonymous for flypaper_brain

Rey takes a wrong turn on the way back from Yule celebrations and ends up somewhere she doesn't expect with a stranger. Snow falls hard around them, and she's not sure of the way home. Allow there was never known before such a love as mine for her there lives not, never did, nor will, one who more gravely stole my love Do not torment me, lady Let our purposes agree You are my spouse on this Fair Plain so let us embrace

Matchless by Anonymous for Greyrey-lo

Rey and Ben are sweet on each other, but they are hopeless. Luckily their friends Steve and Bucky are there to help.

Stay by Anonymous for hipgrab

Ben opens his mouth to tell her goodnight, but before he can get out the words, Rey says, very quickly: “You should come with us.” His heart stops beating. “Um.” He runs a hand through his hair. He can’t have heard her right. “What?” “A... bunch of us are going.” She smiles at him; he can feel that smile all the way down to his toes. “From work. It should be fun.” (In which Ben comes along on a weekend trip, only to find out there aren't enough hotel rooms. Or beds.)

Crawling Across the Great Divide by Anonymous for Hormonal_Trashbag

Ben had barely reached the last syllable of the phrase when someone pounded on the back door of the apartment. All the tension of the spell dissipated in an instant, rushing away from him like a receding tide and taking both the candle flames and the kitchen lights with it. "Fuck!" Ben stomped over, flicking on the exterior light and unlocking the door without looking outside. "Dad, I told you, I don't want your-" His embarrassingly petulant whine ground to a halt when he realized who was on the other side of the screen door. "You're not Dad." The woman standing on his tiny porch-slash-balcony smiled, dimples popping in her cheeks. "No."

Garden of Light and Darkness by Anonymous for incognitajones

When Lord Mellowyn of Birren dies without an heir, the governorship passes on to his closest relative, Leia Organa. Yet she decides to cede it to her own son instead, in the hopes that it will give him the political acumen he so desperately needs. Determined to prove himself and bring young blood to the tranquil, aging planet, Ben Solo decides to recruit members for his new guard on Jakku, where his father fell in battle years before...

When You're Ready by Anonymous for inthegrayworld

What do they have to offer each other, now that they're no longer at war?

A Song of Darkness and Light by Anonymous for invisibleworld

The events of the Last Jedi, except in a Game of Thrones world. So, more fucking.

perfect hallucination by Anonymous for ishie

A year had almost passed since 'The Great Self-Destruct' that lay waste to the First Order and with it, the likely death of Kylo Ren. As far as Ben was concerned, the galaxy could continue to believe he was dead. Besides, it was only a matter of time before it came true. The icy curse placed upon him would slowly take his heart and with it, his life. It was the price he had to pay to end the First Order. He didn't care. In fact, he deserved it. After banishing himself to the furthest corner of the galaxy, he patiently waited to see his final days. However, after his bond with Rey flared to life at the most inopportune time, waiting for his end on a deserted planet was no longer as simple as it seemed...

it's a date by Anonymous for Jeeno2

It takes Rey approximately half an hour to realize that they’re on a date.

Silver and Gold by Anonymous for kathime

She thought she could show him a thing or two, Kylo Ren, general editor and general terror of Haute Couture. She didn't realize that he would show her his heart.

The Repatriationists by Anonymous for kereia

Rey has become involved with an underground group that returns cultural objects to their peoples of origin. She pulls in Ben Solo, her on again / off again lover, to help with their latest job.

The Burning Ritual by Anonymous for kuresoto

Luke Skywalker has two main rules for his coven: 1) keep magic secret, and 2) no mortal/witch relations. When modern witch, Rey Niima, performs magic in the presence of her mortal neighbor Kylo Ren, she worries she’s broken the first rule and put the whole coven at risk. The second rule, she’s been daydreaming about breaking for months. She can’t help it when Kylo is so hot and nerdy and utterly endearing. With one rule potentially broke, what’s one more?

The Tale of Blue Ben by Anonymous for La_Catrina

Some escaped goats and a chance encounter land Rey in the middle of a fairy tale. She is the happy ending. And she is not alone.

Fabula by Anonymous for leoba

For a school report, Rey and Ben are assigned to dissect the myth of the youngest Sky Walkers.

Angel of Mercy by Anonymous for Like_A_Dove

Rey’s stubborn denial about how sick she is leaved her stranded in her apartment with no food, no medicine, no available friends. After breaking up with Ben Solo, she’d sworn she would never speak to him again. She’s only calling him because she has no one else to turn to. Kylo Ren has more important things to do than moon over lost love. He’s fighting to reform the mission and recover the reputation of the think tank his grandfather once headed. So when he answers Rey’s call, he’s only indulging idle curiosity. And when he rushes to Rey’s side, he’s just helping a fellow human being and maybe anticipating some light gloating. Just normal stuff, really.

Love in the Language of Sweaters by Anonymous for LilibethSonar

Corporate executive Ben Solo is a consummate professional and is always concerned about maintaining the reputation of himself and his company. Never in a million years would he even consider participating in the ridiculous holiday abomination that is Ugly Sweater Month, no matter how much nagging he gets from his coworker Poe. That is, until he runs into his building’s charming, intelligent and eye-meltingly beautiful delivery girl, who also happens to wear the most revolting holiday sweaters he's ever seen.

Temporary Allies by Anonymous for Lizardbeth

After an intense battle, Rey and Kylo end up stranded on an uncharted planet in the outer rim. While they wait to be rescued, they must survive together.

The unfamiliar language of your silent glances by Anonymous for LueurdeLaube

Her memories of their last conversation, such as it was, were blurry, details drained from her brain along with adrenalin. How did Ben sound when he asked her…? Was his fear for her a figment of her imagination — or was it real? “I expected to find your body,” Ben complained, voice like the frozen ground under their feet. Nevermind.

Met You in the Falling Rain by Anonymous for Lulubellisima

While Rey is backpacking through Spain, she gets caught in torrential rain. Ben offers her shelter.

Scrooged at Crossroads by Anonymous for MeadowHayle

Kylo Ren is workaholic Grinch with anger management issues - until his life is changed by falling in love and being visited by a ghost.

#reylo #reylo fanfiction anthology #after the blazing fire dies #rffa writers #master post #mod post #moodboard

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lurkingcrow · 7 years ago

Text

Some of the posts on my dash have reminded me of certain facts. Which of course set of the little cogs within my brain turning with new crack possibilities…

It is the middle of the Clone Wars, and Asajj Ventress has sworn vengeance upon Count Dooku for the way he betrayed her. Her attempt to use Savage Oppress to obtain her revenge has failed, and the assault on Dathomir has taken a horrendous toll on her Nightsister brethren. And yet, Mother Talzin has shown that Dooku’s defences are not impenetrable. As she kneels amid the barren ruins of her ancestral village, Asajj calls upon the ghostly matron for advice.

The spectre reveals that the method she used is not available to Ventress - not only is she not trained in the deeper Nightsister mysteries but she does not have access to a convenient lock of Dooku’s hair, and have I mentioned how desperately I want the story about that? I mean, how the hell did Talzin manage to get it - what self respecting Sith doesn’t take care not to leave pieces of themselves where practitioners of Dark Magics can get them?

Anyway, that’s obviously not an option here, but Ventress needs to find a way to get past Dooku’s not inconsiderable defences. Mother Talzin points out that while she may not be able to target him directly, even a mighty Sith Lord cannot rid himself of all his connections. It is a longshot, but it is possible that a spell targeted at another might still be able to affect Dooku tangentially. All they need is a piece of something tightly linked to one who Dooku is still connected to…

The Jedi Temple has upped security since the incident with the Holocron Vault - patrols around the archives in particular have been increased, and the computer systems themselves not carry some rather impressive surprises for those attempting to infiltrate them. Security measures around the Jedi’s personal quarters however is not tight - oh the creche is well protected, but most of the Jedi are spending greater and greater periods on deployment and there is little need to guard empty quarters.

Which is why no one can work out exactly what Ventress was after - her infiltrating the Temple was not completely unexpected, even if she does seem to be running freelance these days, but she didn’t seem to leave with anything of value! No military systems were breached, the archives are intact, and while some initiates report seeing a strange “Knight” wandering the halls there were no attempts at kidnapping (in fact if anything Ventress appeared to be taken aback by the appearance of children in the halls - they will never know the parade of might-have-beens that filled her mind in that moment). Ventress is just glad no-one caught her raiding certain people’s freshers. It was traumatic enough as it was without having to explain why she was raiding hairbrushes.

So having acquired the necessary materials Ventress returns to Dathomir and within a one of its many sacred caverns begins the ritual, using all her skills to call upon the Darkness to bring “Yoda’s last Padawan” (or “Most powerful” depending on whatever canon has decided regarding certain apprenticeships) to her for the purposes of vengeance.

She’s not sure what exactly she’s expecting (the tie between Dooku and his former Master may not be strong enough to do anything, and who knows exactly how the spell will achieve it ) but it’s certainly not the flash of light followed by the sudden appearance of a young, blonde, human male who is most definitely NOT Count Dooku.

Luke Skywalker is having a very strange day. One moment he’s communing with the Force Ghosts about where best to start rebuilding the Jedi and the next there’s a massive shift in the Force as he finds himself falling in front of a rather intimidating woman standing in the middle of what looks suspiciously like some kind of ritual circle.

He wishes he were more surprised.

But according to Ben’s stories this is exactly the kind of thing that happens to Skywalkers, so he brushes himself off and puts on his best smile to greet the strange Force user. Something doesn’t quite feel right about the atmosphere, the Force isn’t responding the same way as he’s used to, but with any luck this is NOT yet another Imperial loyalist looking to avenge the Emperor's death by torturing the galaxy’s most infamous rebel cum Jedi Knight. “Hello there! I’m afraid I appear to be rather lost. I don't suppose you could tell me where exactly I am? Or why I’ve been brought here?”

Now Ventress is something of an expert in appearing unruffled in the face of unexpected circumstances (usually related to the appearance of Skywalker and Kenobi). So on being faced by a remarkably calm apparition politely enquiring about what's going on, she simply cocks her hip, raises an eyebrow and archly responds; “And who exactly are you?”

This of course leaves Luke somewhat taken aback since, A) his face has featured heavily on wanted posters across the galaxy for the last few years, B) his role as “The Last Jedi” is widely known and he is currently carrying his lightsaber openly on his belt, and C) one would assume that the person performing the Dark ritual would have some idea about who they were targeting. So he keeps it simple.

"I'm Luke." He says, smile never dimming.

Great, thinks Ventress - yet another man who thinks he's so clever. Time to show him she’s not a woman to be take lightly.

"Well then, Luke, I'm afraid this seems like a case of badly mistaken identity.” she says, slowly circling her captive. “ Here I was, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the illustrious Count Dooku so that I can brutally and painfully extract my vengeance, and instead the Force gives me you…” with a quick flick of her wrists her blades are at the ready “...a weak and worthless Jedi.”

Oooh, Luke thinks as his surroundings are bathed in red light, Darksider then. Still - at least she's not actively trying to kill him at the moment, so negotiations might still be possible.

He holds out one hand, palm open, while the other remains in reach of his lightsaber.

“I'm sorry I'm not this, what did you say his name was? Dooku? I don't know the name, I’m afraid. But I have no quarrel with you. If you’ll just let me contact my friends I promise I’ll be out of your way as soon as possible.”

Asajj feels her draw drop.

“What do you mean you don't know the name?!” she hisses. “Are you a complete imbecile?”

The Jedi’s mouth opens as if to respond but one look and his jaw clicks shut.

“Good boy. Now I know you Jedi aren't exactly the brightest of sorts, but I’d at least think you’d be able to recognise the leader of the Separatists, the man responsible for starting the war and your precious Order’s own sworn enemy. Which means…” she presses closer, raising her sabers in a swift movement to frame his throat, only to be intercepted by the Jedi’s own green blade. “

... there's more to you than it appears.”

For all his quick reaction to her threat the Jedi looks rather shellshocked. Something in her words had left him off balance, and that was very interesting.

She takes a step back, gesturing magnanimously with one hand. “Go on then. Explain. My patience is not infinite.”

Luke takes a deep breath and takes a moment to compose himself. And when he speaks, blue eyes locked with her own, Asajj feels compelled to believe him.

“I don't know the name because by my count the Clone Wars ended decades ago, and the Empire was never exactly keen on acknowledging it's defeated foes.”

Well then.

The discovery that time travel appears possible is somewhat overshadowed by Ventress’ amusement that Dooku was apparently betrayed by his own Master and his memory reduced to little more than a historical footnote. Luke doesn't quite see what's so funny, but makes a point to mention that said Master was himself eventually thrown down a reactor shaft by his apprentice and that just sets off a chain reaction of laughter and they end up sitting against the wall or the cavern exchanging stories about the folly of the Sith.

It turns out to be highly cathartic for them both.

When her laughter clears Ventress admits that she has no idea why Luke ended up in the middle of her spell, and she has no clue how to get him back to wherever he belongs and wait… her spell called for Yoda’s apprentice. Does he know the insufferable little troll?

Yes, Luke sighs, yes he does, did, why does time travel make tenses so hard? But no, before she asks, he can't just go to the Jedi. Not without alerting the Sith Lord and…

Luke looks at Asajj. She looks back. He begins to grin widely as he notes that while it's not exactly what she was looking for, how would she like to join forces for a worthy cause? That being of course the abject humiliation of the Sith and the complete ruination of all their plans for galactic conquest.

“Oh my dear Jeci” she purrs in response “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!”

And so begins the buddy cop movie we never knew we needed, where Ventress and her time travelling partner set out to foil both Palpatine and Dooku's plans, arguing all the while. Highlights include:

The moment Ventress realises she has voluntarily allied herself with a SKYWALKER and seriously questions her sanity

Luke discovering that apparently it is indeed possible for his sister to yell at him for being an idiot across both space and time, and he will never admit how relieved he is to feel Leia’s presence across their bond. Her knowledge of pre-imperial political history is a secondary benefit.

The time they both end up as impromptu bounty hunters and Luke just cannot get over how tiny Boba Fett is. As it turns out they make a remarkably good team - Luke's raw Force abilities and Asajj’s dueling skills making double crosses an exceedingly bad idea.

Ventress needing to rescue Luke from a dangerous and predatory woman whose intentions he seems not to notice.

Luke getting outraged at the plight of the clones, Ventress getting him drunk, and both of them ranting about slavery while plotting revolution. He wakes up to Leia laughing uproariously in his head which hurts so so much.

Ventress calling Luke “Flyboy” “Kid” “Banthabrain” and just about anything except his actual name.

Luke picking up on the sexual tension between Ventress and Vos and doing everything in his power to encourage it. Ventress would kill him if his foreknowledge wasn't so useful.

Ventress wanting to know who the glowing blue figure that Luke's always talking to is and why he keeps calling her “little sister”

Luke watching his father and Ben in action and being uncomfortably reminded of Han and Leia. Luke watching his father and mother trying to be stealthy and realising why Wedge claims he can't lie for shit. Luke seeing all of them interact and coming to the conclusion that he was meant to have three parents and an older sister and becoming determined to make that a reality in this timeline.

Ventress deciding the kid’s not so bad following a close call with republic authorities and Luke creating an impressively explosive diversion.

Luke hugging Ventress in the ruins of Dathomir and promising they won't be forgotten.

Palpatine wondering why none of his schemes seem to be going as planned and assigning Dooku to find out.

A confrontation in Separatist space where the Jedi become aware that Ventress and her unknown partner are on some kind of secretive quest, and Luke faces Dooku and, much to Ventress’ dismay, decides that he should try to sway his brother-padawan back to the light!

Maul and Savage vs Obi-Wan, Ventress and a very flustered Luke. Could people please stop flirting with his young mentor/uncle/not-father now already?

Luke and Ventress getting caught up in a hostage situation on Coruscant along with several senators and Luke learns why Bail Organa and Padmé Amidala are near legends in the Rebellion - and also that there's no way Mon Mothma hasn't guessed his heritage by now.

Anakin getting irritated that there seems to be someone that he can't outfly and why do they have to be allied with VENTRESS of all people.

And much, much more! 😉

#star wars #crack

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Doctor Who: Ranking Every Single Companion Departure

https://ift.tt/35el4vd

Graham and Ryan have left Doctor Who, and it was sad/joyous/on telly (delete as applicable), but where do their departures rank on the all-time list?

The question of “Who counts as a companion?” is a tricky one. Overall it’s an ad hoc combination of different criteria, with allowances made for the exceptions that are intended to fulfil the companion role on a one-off basis. The ranking system is based on whether the departure makes sense for that character, how well it’s built up to, and what it says about Doctor Who in a larger sense. The article only covers TV stories because I value what remains of my sanity.

That’s all the exposition. Please enjoy this non-linear history of production compromises.

47. Peri

Peri spends almost her entire time on Doctor Who being miserable, scared and under threat (even Big Finish doing a timey-wimey farce with Peri has abuse as a plot point), but there’s no compassionate release for her. Her mind is erased so her body can host another. She dies scared and alone, and it’s unlikely the Doctor could have saved her. While this is horrible, it could function, very bluntly, as an indictment of the Doctor and his treatment of Peri, but then it is revealed that this didn’t happen.

Peri is instead married with a pink love-heart around the flashback (the Matrix is corny AF apparently). This is because producer John Nathan-Turner changed his mind about killing Peri after they’d filmed her death.

On one hand: yay, someone not dying. On the other: she only goes to a slightly better place, and when companions return from the dead it tends to require some cost to the Doctor. Here, any previous suggestion that the Doctor mistreated his companion is abandoned. Peri’s happy ending, rather than death, is that the Doctor abandons her without explanation and her new husband is an angry warlord who doesn’t seem the type to understand PTSD.

46. Leela

Producer Graeme Williams hoped that Louise Jameson would stay on in the role of Leela, despite Jameson insisting that she was leaving, and so didn’t write the character out. Leela was a warrior, intelligent but steeped in tribal superstition, and the investment in making a potentially problematic character work in her earlier stories gave way to more generic writing, hence Jameson’s departure. At the end of ‘Invasion of Time’ Leela abruptly announces that she wants to marry the Captain of the Time Lords’ Guards.

To borrow a term from critical theory: this is total f****** dogs***.

Jameson was happy for the character to be killed off but instead she ended up married on Gallifrey. We never see her again. It’s a lazy piece of writing; disrespectful to the actress, the character and the viewer.

45. Dodo

Poor Dodo never really stood a chance. Originally intended to be from Sixteenth Century France, producer John Wiles and script editor Donald Tosh remembered that previous historical companions had been deemed unworkable and so another was probably a bad idea. Instead, Dodo started off Cockney until the BBC told the Doctor Who team that she had to speak in Received Pronunciation English.

A happy-go-lucky soul, the production team never warmed to their creation and Dodo is sent away to recover from hypnosis halfway through ‘The War Machines’, and we never see her again. Polly tells the Doctor “she’d like to stay here in London and sends you her love” two episodes after her final appearance.

44. Sergeant Benton & 43. Harry Sullivan

Sergeant Benton and Harry Sullivan appear in ‘The Android Invasion’ as if it’s just another story for them. Benton last appears as an android duplicate and Harry says nothing during the final fight scene. They never appear again. For all of the strengths of early Tom Baker stories, emotional resonance is not one of them.

42. Katarina

Katarina was brought in for the final episode of ‘The Myth Makers’as a replacement for Vicki, and then sacrificed herself in ‘The Dalek Master Plan’. The production team had decided that, as a Trojan handmaiden, Katarina’s ignorance of modern and future technology meant she’d be hard to write for. This makes sense to an extent, except that her death involves her activating an airlock. So we have a production team creating a problem but solving it by suggesting that it wasn’t insurmountable anyway. As the Doctor says at the end of ‘Dalek Master Plan’: “What a waste.”

41. Sara Kingdom

Having killed off Katarina, the production team needed a new companion to fill her role for the rest of ‘The Dalek Master Plan’, so Terry Nation wrote in a Space Security Agent inspired by The Avengers’ Cathy Gale. After killing her own brother, believing him to be a traitor, Sara Kingdom joined the Doctor and Steven’s attempts to stop the Daleks from using the Time Destructor. Ultimately Sara is killed by the device, ageing to death. As the planet around them turns to dust, Sara’s body does likewise and is blown away by the wind.

It’s a horrific fate, to the extent that cuts were made to the sequence. Sara Kingdom was always designed as a short-term companion, and actor Jean Marsh wasn’t interested in joining the show permanently.

Companion deaths aren’t intrinsically a bad idea, it’s just that they can’t be regular, expected events or else the show becomes ‘Come with me for an adventure, you’ll probably die. Yes I’m a psychopath’. They’re usually short-term solutions to mistakes but the momentum of the Doctor’s failures here could have gone somewhere. Instead, the show casually resets itself to the status quo on a flimsy pretext, so these deaths mean little. If Doctor Who doesn’t care about their impact, why should the audience?

40. Liz Shaw

New producer Barry Letts had decided that Liz Shaw was too intelligent to be a Doctor Who companion, and the interpretation most generous to Letts here is that Liz wanted to continue her own work rather than be drafted by UNIT as an assistant. While I hope this was the intention, it’s still a move that implies a reductive take on the role of the companion (that they’re a function rather than a character) and reinforces the paternalism of the Doctor: fatherly, yes, but also dominating and controlling.

39. Polly and Ben

Polly and Ben follow the Doctor into the TARDIS in ‘The War Machines’ and discover at the end of ‘The Faceless Ones’ that they’re back in London just when they left. They ask the Doctor his permission to leave, saying they’ll stay if he needs them. The Doctor is sad to see them go but doesn’t stand in their way, although he does suggest that Ben can go back to the Navy to become an admiral and Polly can… look after Ben.

It’s a pat, patronising little scene that comes and goes suddenly, especially as Polly and Ben haven’t actually been in the story since Episode Two. Polly and Ben leave and the Doctor and Jamie immediately start talking about their next adventure. The production team had decided the characters weren’t working, and the best you can say is that they were given slightly more ceremony than Dodo.

38. Astrid Peth

The thing about Astrid’s death is that it’s impossible to type ‘She pushes a mugging gold-toothed businessman down a ravine using a fork-lift truck (in slow motion)’ in a way that conveys any sense of pathos. People talk about Andrew Cartmel’s time on Doctor Who influencing Russell T. Davies’ approach, and while they’re wrong (RTD would have written it like that anyway, even if the Cartmel era didn’t exist, but fair play to Cartmel for being on that wavelength) few ever mention ‘Time and the Rani’as an influence. Russell T. Davies’ writing sometimes feels like he’s gleefully trying to combine the tone of Sylvester-McCoy-playing-the-spoons-on-Kate-O’Mara-while-Kate-O’Mara-is-dressed-as-Bonnie-Langford, with the opening ten minutes of Up. Sometimes he actually does it! This was not one of those times.

37. Adric

The Davison companions tend to get good leaving stories that are apparently based on some unbroadcast version of Doctor Who in which they’re completely different people.

So on one hand obviously the death of Adric was a memorable piece of television that affected people deeply on broadcast, but on the other hand it’s a glorified jump-scare. Adric is on board a space freighter about to crash onto prehistoric Earth and cause the extinction of the dinosaurs. He doesn’t know about that last bit, so instead of getting into the escape pod he attempts to solve a logic puzzle that is stopping him from controlling the ship. His bravery in going back to the ship doesn’t achieve anything. In fact if he had succeeded it would have changed history dramatically, so he dooms himself for nothing.

It’s brutal, in comparison with earlier companion deaths the emotional fallout is poorly handled, and it doesn’t pay off anything we’ve seen earlier. Consider Adric’s character up until his final story – a reckless know-it-all who keeps joining the bad guys – and it doesn’t join up with his final story and fate. The initial setup of Adric feeling like an outsider is swiftly resolved rather than used as motivation for his death. There’s no redemption, just a cruel and unlucky moment of bravery for the sake of a semblance of drama.

36. Amy and Rory

Steven Moffat’s first companion departures are not his best work. Initially Amy and Rory broke a trend: companions leaving as they get married off. Only then Moffat wrote a poorly handled pregnancy storyline where the characters’ emotional responses felt implausible, and unlike his softening of the Twelfth Doctor’s character the attempts to address this were bumpy. Then for Amy and Rory’s departure he has River Song, the Doctor’s wife who he rarely meets in chronological order, tell them that he doesn’t like endings and “never let him see you age”.

This reminds you that the Doctor isn’t only manipulative and scheming on an epic scale, and the fact that he tries to convince Amy not to try to go after Rory continues is more in-your-face selfishness (another example of the Seventh Doctor era being on similar wavelengths to the post-2005 show), rather than feeling like a genuine concern for her safety.

Now, I love Doctor Who, I like that the hero is flawed but that they try to be hopeful (and Moffat addresses this successfully elsewhere). The issues with giving the Doctor flaws are whether they’re dealbreakers for people watching, and whether or not they’re deliberately done. This feels like it’s aiming for a commentary on the Doctor but goes too far, and I can understand people finding this hard to watch.

As with many of Moffat’s ideas, just because it didn’t fully work here doesn’t mean it won’t crop up again later.

35. Kamelion

There are a lot of cases of a companion leaving because the production team can’t make them work, but this is a bit on the nose.

Like Adric’s death, Kamelion begging the Doctor to destroy him would have much more impact if it followed through more substantially on previous stories. Unfortunately Kamelion’s character was that of a shape-shifting robot where the robot prop didn’t work, and rather than have him just assume a human guise they simply never wrote him back into the series until his final story. As a result, there’s no real relationship in play when the Doctor grants Kamelion’s wish. On the other hand the robot’s plight is consistent with what little we know of him.

While it’s never fun to watch someone beg for death, it’s more of a testament to Gerald Flood’s acting and Peter Grimwade’s script for ‘Planet of Fire’ that his death scene works.

34. Donna Noble

Everyone remembers the sequence in ‘Journey’s End’ where the companions pilot the TARDIS and drag the Earth back to the right place while “Song for Freedom” builds and Freema Agyeman looks directly at the camera. It’s joyous. It’s huge. It’s wonderful.

The 10 minutes that follow are bleak.

Rose gets her compromised happy ending, then it’s the fate of Donna. She gets given some of the Doctor’s mind, becomes even more brilliant, but then comes the turn: this will kill her. She can’t be this brilliant, she can’t have any more adventures with the Doctor. As she shouts “No” the Doctor wipes her memories of their time together.

33. Lady Christina de Souza

Flying off in a knackered double-decker bus to further adventures is a really good way to go. This would rank higher if it weren’t for the fact that the character is hard to warm to. Unlike Donna Noble’s first appearance in the show, Christina’s role in ‘Planet of the Dead’ doesn’t allow for much pathos or depth, and the character never returned on television to show these. As it is we’re left with a bored member of the aristocracy flying away in some very British iconography, but without the promise of a Barbara Wright figure puncturing their ego.

Doctor Who: Why Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Needs an ‘Everybody Lives!’ Moment

By Andrew Blair

Doctor Who: how Ace set the template for modern companions

By Andrew Younger

32. Mel

It’s worth stressing that any critique of Mel as a character has to firmly centre on the inadequacy of her creation. She was devised as a computer programmer from Pease Pottage who was into keep-fit, and that’s her entire character. It seems churlish to criticise Bonnie Langford for playing the part as “Bonnie Langford in Doctor Who” because there was nothing else for her to go on.

Mel leaves the series because she decides to travel with Glitz, a mercenary. Does this follow on logically from her character? All we know about Mel is that she’s wholesome and enthusiastic and seems extremely unlikely to go off with a violent intergalactic Del Boy.

However, she gets another leaving scene that would be wonderful if it reflected a recognisable character. We get a sense of the Doctor’s affection for Mel and a series of wonderful melancholy moments: the Doctor shutting the conversation down so he doesn’t have to deal with human emotion, his obvious sadness at another friend leaving because that’s what his life is. Mel’s last line about putting a message in a bottle and throwing it into space (“It’ll reach you. In time”) is brilliant.

This scene bears comparison with Sarah Jane’s leaving scene, specifically because it wasn’t in the original script but the lead actor insisted it be added in its place. It was the scene Sylvester McCoy read when he auditioned for the role.

31. Adam Mitchell

Adam joins at the end of ‘Dalek’ and leaves at the end of ‘The Long Game’, the next story, and has a piece of future technology in his forehead so whenever someone clicks their fingers a little door opens up and you can see his brain.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things this is unfair. Other companions have done stupid things and the Doctor has helped them. The Brigadier flat out murdered people. But Adam was deliberately rubbish and this is reminder that the Ninth Doctor is a damaged man who lashes out. When he says ‘I only take the best’ it seems more like an excuse to get rid of Adam than anything factual, but then the Doctor starts acting like it’s true.

30. Vicki

Vicki left the series because producer John Wiles heard actress Maureen O’Brien complain about her dialogue in ‘Galaxy 4’, so decided to let her go when her contract expired one story later. This led to her being paired off with Troilus at the end of ‘The Myth Makers’, set during the fall of Troy. A late decision requiring rewrites, this is quite an enigmatic fate. We see Vicki fleeing Troy after its fall with Troilus, the Doctor hopeful that she’s safe, but we never see her again. Given the TARDIS’ translation gifts, one imagines she suddenly has to learn Luwian.

29. Nyssa

Nyssa, a scientist/fairy princess mash-up whose entire family and planet was destroyed by the Master (who took over her father’s body) could be a great character. Her innately calm, generous and curious nature contrasted with all the horrors of her past is full of potential, and indeed her choice to stay behind at what is essentially a space leper colony is consistent with this. However, because none of this is ever seriously addressed in the show, the potential pathos of her leaving is greatly reduced. As is often the case we have to make do with a sad leaving scene, where Tegan flat out says to her “You’ll die here” to which she replies “Not easily. Like you I’m indestructible.”

As with Adric’s death, there’s the vague shape of something weighty and dramatic there but without the substance to fill it. John Nathan-Turner hated soaps, but actually using their techniques might have given us a stronger sense of Nyssa and Tegan’s relationship, meaning the audience wasn’t left to fill the gaps.

28. Jackson Lake

Considering during the course of ‘The Next Doctor’ Jackson Lake is in a fugue state, has a breakdown, remembers the death of his wife and the abduction of his child… he seems quite well adjusted by the end of the story. Reunited with his son and suggesting a Christmas dinner honouring the people they’ve lost, Lake seems to be in a better place than the Doctor.

27. Steven Taylor

Steven went through a lot: Wounded in Troy, witnessing the deaths of Katarina, Sara, and the Huguenots of Paris. Initially conceived as a replacement for Ian, meaning he took on most of the action sequences, he leaves in ‘The Savages’ to mediate between two societal factions after a story designed as a more cerebral alternative to biffing. It’s a good place to leave for a character who had stagnated (which, as you can see, happened a lot).

26. Graham and 25. Ryan

Ryan didn’t get killed or converted by Cybermen, so that’s progress. What did happen is that the Doctor accidentally returned to Sheffield ten months late. Yaz is hurt and Ryan returns more comfortably to his old life. Graham is also there.

The returning character of Robertson, an American tycoon with interests in becoming President functions as both a Doctor Who villain and a Donald Trump analogue (in a story universe containing Donald Trump) and this version of Doctor Who isn’t currently capable of dealing with that. Ryan watches Robertson on telly, unpunished by the Doctor and resolves to do something. This is a good reason to go, especially given the concerns of the Chibnall era (at its best focussing on the impact on well-drawn individuals, at its worst expositing over abstractions and sketches).

Graham decides that he will stay with his grandson after Ryan’s sudden announcement. This pays off their development in Series 11, where they had the main character arc of that series.

So far so good, but we also see Graham and Ryan deciding that, actually no, they’re not going to deal with real world problems, just Doctor Who-style adventures instead. It’s a useful microcosm of the era: good ideas present but not followed through on, being not shown Ryan’s reasons for leaving, and not successfully tethering the characters to either the forced whimsy of Doctor Who or the contemporary societal issues it wants to highlight.

And a final issue, which may be resolved: why is this the break-up of The Fam?

This ending doesn’t preclude the Doctor coming back to visit them in any way. In this respect it’s a classic companion departure: practically speaking actors aren’t always free for a cameo or a return visit (for example William Russell wasn’t ultimately available to play Ian Chesterton for ‘Mawdryn Undead’, so the Brigadier was written into the role of a school teacher instead), which means the Doctor not returning for their friends becomes a feature of the character. So while Ryan and Graham are choosing to leave, rather than being drastically and permanently separated, is the Doctor is still making the decision to cut them out of her life?

24. Mickey Smith

Mickey is given, in ‘The Age of Steel’, a proper old-fashioned companion exit, by which I mean some plot points are introduced at the start of his final story and by the end they’ve caused him to leave. Here it’s based on the Doctor and Rose’s behaviour and Mickey’s worth being dismissed until he does something heroic. He’s finally able to say to Rose that she doesn’t need him anymore and move on. Broad brushstrokes stuff in a busy episode, but it continues the idea that the Doctor makes people better that was emphasised from 2005 onwards.

Sure, he does it by being a bit of a prick here but the point stands.

23. The Brigadier

What is the Brigadier’s final story? I’m looking for a story that is written as a final departure, ideally after sustained involvement in the show. For the Brigadier that means ‘Terror of the Zygons’ doesn’t quite work, it wasn’t meant to be his final story (he was unavailable for ‘The Android Invasion’). ‘Battlefield’might have been his final bow, but writer Ben Aaronovitch set up the Brigadier’s death then found he simply couldn’t kill him off. The episode the Brigadier is initially written out of the show in is ‘The Wedding of River Song’ – where the Doctor receives news of his death by phone – and this is swiftly retconned with the divisive Cyber-Brig from ‘Death in Heaven’.

These two were written after Nicholas Courtney’s death, and the first one is used for dramatic weight but is over with too quickly. The latter does show the Brigadier, even in death and converted, saving the life of his daughter and helping the Doctor before going on to possibly eternal life – as seems right and proper – but as it involves the Brigadier’s buried body being reanimated there’s an invasive element connected to a beloved figure. As with many of Steven Moffat’s ideas, just because it didn’t fully work here doesn’t mean it won’t crop up again later.

22. Turlough

Peter Grimwade deserves credit again. Given the job of writing out Turlough, Kamelion and potentially the Master while also writing in the new companion Peri, Grimwade actually makes the brief for ‘Planet of Fire’ work. Here Turlough realises early on that his home planet is involved, and by involving his family Grimwade makes the stakes personal. Turlough also gets to use his brains here, rather than just wander around with a gun looking scared.

Turlough’s departure is developed through this story, and the farewell scene is a low-key goodbye as he admits that travelling with the Doctor has made him a better person. Again, it doesn’t follow from previous episodes, as Turlough isn’t developed as a character after ‘Enlightenment’, but in the context of this story it works well.

21. Mike Yates

An example of Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks addressing how being a regular Doctor Who character might make you feel, Captain Mike Yates is shaken by his hypnosis when undercover at a petrochemical company and becomes concerned about the environment. He falls in with a plot to reduce overpopulation and restore Earth to a golden age by time scooping dinosaurs into central London, because Doctor Who, and is discharged from UNIT. He goes to a meditation centre to recover, and uncovers a sinister plot – because Doctor Who– and ultimately gets better. Yates gets an arc and closure, especially in comparison to his fellow UNIT soldiers.

20. Nardole

Nardole, chiefly a comic relief character with moments of depth, is entrusted with the task of evading the Cybermen for as long as possible while keeping a group of humans alive (a continuation from his assigned role of monitoring the Doctor). It seems likely they will eventually fall, and though this is de-emphasised to stop an already tragic episode from overloading, it’s quietly harrowing. Adric’s death shook up the children watching, Nardole’s affects the parents: the feeling of being a guardian to children in an uncertain, dangerous world is all too familiar right now.

19. Sarah Jane Smith

Sarah Jane’s departure in ‘The Hand of Fear’(written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin) comes out of the blue. An early outline for the story involved the Brigadier’s death, sacrificing himself to save the world. This was lost in development, and the story delayed while it was simplified. In the meantime Elisabeth Sladen asked to leave and for Sarah not to be the focus, married or killed off. Sarah was going to be killed off though, in a story called ‘The Lost Legion’. Script Editor Robert Holmes disliked the story, so a simplified version of ‘The Hand of Fear’returned to replace it with Holmes writing Sarah’s leaving scene. This was rewritten by Sladen and Tom Baker, with Holmes unavailable to do further rewrites. This is why Sarah’s departure is sudden. There’s no huge focus on her and then unrelated to the rest of the story the Doctor receives a summons to Gallifey where humans are not allowed (and given what happened last time he went he probably doesn’t want to take Sarah). What the scene does have is a strong sense of the unsaid to it, a sense of wistfulness akin to seeing someone else living in your childhood home.

Doctor Who Series 13: What To Expect

By Louisa Mellor

10 Doctor Who companions that might have been

By Alex Westthorp

18. Wilf

Essentially, if Bernard Cribbins is crying then I’m going to cry. It’s Bernard Cribbins, for god’s sake. He’s so lovable its actually weaponised against the audience, and while ‘The End of Time’ might not be to everyone’s tastes, Cribbins makes every scene he’s in work, so you’re thoroughly invested in Wilf and his responses. However, this is harks back to Susan’s departure. It’s undeniably moving that the Doctor is making this man cry with happiness… after lying to him (no mention of the safeguards he put in Donna’s mind, or that Donna didn’t want her memories wiped anyway) and who he emphasises is “not remotely important” before saying it would “be my honour” to save him. It’s said of the Doctor “words are his weapons” in ‘Hell Bent’, and the pattern emerging here is that they’re weapons he uses on his friends; when the Doctor says “I only take the best” this is not only another weapon, it’s asking the question: the best for what?

17. Bill Potts

Potentially eternal life you say? A walking dead person? Maybe keep the dead body aspect of it and this idea has legs. Bill follows the Brigadier in becoming a Cyberman, and Clara in returning from the dead to travel the universe. The images of Cyber-Bill carrying the Doctor, the reaffirmation of who Bill is, the arrival of Heather: all of these are great.

Steven Moffat was right that the show hadn’t been diverse enough in its casting, but presumably no one behind the scenes understood that there are unintended connotations to a white man telling a black woman that she can’t be angry if she wants to be accepted – as happens to Bill in ‘The Doctor Falls’ – or that Clara got a gore-free death compared to the lingering shots of Bill’s gunshot wound. There’s also ambiguity in ‘Twice Upon a Time’as to when Bill dies – in that episode she is represented by an avatar taken from a moment near death, but given everything that’s happened to Bill this could be tomorrow or in a million years’ time – so overall this one has some extreme highs and lows.

16. Romana and K9

After Mary Tamm left the show, feeling similarly to Louise Jameson that despite a strong start her character was reverting to the stock companion figure (a damsel in distress, tripping ankles, screaming for help to advance the plot that’s being explained to them) Romana regenerated with Lalla Ward taking over the role. Ward left the show as new producer John Nathan-Turner came on board, and while Romana’s departure was foreshadowed well in advance, Nathan-Turner didn’t want any soap opera elements creeping into Doctor Who, and so Romana’s farewell scene was understated and rushed against Ward’s wishes. Otherwise it’s a good exit for Romana, who refuses a summons to Gallifrey and, finding herself in another dimension, decides to go off on her own journey after her travels with the Doctor.

K9 goes with her because John Nathan-Turner hated K9. Compared to ‘School Reunion’ this is just completely dismissive, but there is at least a coda: another scene at the end of ‘Warriors’ Gate’ where K9 and Romana face their future together with optimism, and Adric asks the Doctor if Romana will be alright: “Alright? She’ll be superb.”

15. Susan Foreman

The first companion departure, and something of a template. Susan falls in love and stays behind. Actress Carole Ann Ford left as she was unsatisfied by Susan’s lack of development.

It’s the Doctor’s decision to leave Susan, his granddaughter, behind. He locks the doors on her, believing that she stands a better chance of happiness staying on Earth rebuilding after a Dalek invasion. William Hartnell didn’t want Ford to leave and channels that into his performance. A clip of this scene was used to represent Hartnell at the beginning of the twentieth anniversary special ‘The Five Doctors’, and with Susan’s fate unconfirmed after The Time War his line ‘One day I shall come back’ lands even heavier: we know he never did.

No wonder he never comes back for anybody else.

14. Captain Jack

‘The Parting of the Ways’ is Jack’s departure story as it’s his last as a regular companion before moving to Torchwood.

Torchwood was not announced until after Series 1 of Doctor Who, and so when it became clear that Jack – with his cheesy grin and action hero posturing – was going to die, it was unexpected. There’s a sense of inevitability about the Daleks killing him when everyone else is dead but, because this was a new series, it was never clear how far it would go. Maybe there’d be a last-minute reprieve. Ultimately there was, but as far as self-contained character arcs go Jack’s journey from con-man to sacrificial hero works, and if it had ended there, it’d have been on a high.

13. Adelaide Brooke

In Base Under Siege stories we have the stock character of a distrusting commander who doesn’t get along with the Doctor. A fun idea in ‘The Waters of Mars’ is ‘Hey, what if they were the companion for one episode?’

One of the less fun but still powerful ideas is also that the Doctor’s behaviour be so unnerving that this stock character would kill themselves in response. So here we have someone standing up to the Doctor as he states the laws of time “are mine, and they will obey me!” What’s interesting is that this is not dissimilar to the standard companion departure, but operating in the epic register rather than a more intimate one. The Doctor has previous on saying that companions have to leave and not giving them a choice, but here the controlling behaviour is scaled upwards to time itself. Possibly the show was not ready to explore this explicitly in a smaller scale just yet.

12. Grace Holloway

Sneaking in unnoticed is the fact that Grace Holloway, the one-off companion for the 1996 TV Movie, ends the film by kissing the Doctor at midnight under the fireworks but refusing to go with him because her experiences have given her renewed self-confidence. Grace is that rarest of things – a Doctor Who companion who gets to leave on her own terms without the Doctor being a dick about it.

11. Ian Chesterton

Ian and Barbara are the first humans in Doctor Who to explore the universe in the TARDIS, taken away by force when the Doctor kidnaps them. Initially they want to return home, but this desire fades. However, when they’re presented with a chance they take it. As a contrast to Susan’s departure, Ian and Barbara’s departure is joyful as it turns out that you cantravel with the Doctor and leave on your own terms as richer, fuller people.

10. Rose Tyler

Rose and the Doctor. The Doctor and Rose. It’s easy to lose track – amidst the melodrama, epic gestures and various tensions – of the way Series 2 sets up Rose and the Doctor being torn apart almost straight away. They’re so wrapped up in how much fun they’re having that it stops them from noticing other people’s feelings. It becomes clear that had the Doctor and Rose done this, the Torchwood Institute wouldn’t exist, so Harriet Jones wouldn’t have had a weapon to fire at the Sycorax in the preceding Christmas episode. However, the show is also telling you that Rose and the Doctor being split up is a colossal tragedy; performances, visuals and music tell you this is incredibly sad while the stories are reminding you they’ve contributed to their own downfall.

This is a companion departure with the heartbreak turned up to 11, to the point where the pretty loud “Brought this on themselves” track can get lost in the mix. Here’s the beginnings of companions burning out rather than fading away.

There’s also the unfortunate business where Rose Tyler, the beloved character who helped bring Doctor Who back as a critical and popular success, rips holes in the universe to find the man she loves.

Said man takes her back to the place she had the worst time of her life, gives her a genocidal sex clone and then quietly leaves when she’s making out with it.

9. Ace

Bearing in mind that Ace has left Doctor Who in so many different canons over the years, it’s specifically her departure in ‘Survival’ that I’m taking as her final story. I’m heavily indebted to Una McCormack’s book on ‘The Curse of Fenric’ here, as it makes the very good point that for everything that could happen to Ace – whatever fates spin-off media has in store for her – there’s nothing quite as perfect for where Ace has reached at the end of Season 26 as the promise of further adventures, the possibility of joy rather than darkness, an ellipsis rather than a full stop.

8. Barbara

Why is Barbara’s departure better than Ian’s? Because:

In ‘An Unearthly Child’ the Doctor asks them “What is going to happen to you?”, the single most important question in the entire series. Firstly because that is half the format of Doctor Who, and secondly because the other half is the same question in reverse. If Barbara Wright doesn’t happen to Doctor Who, then Doctor Who is a short lived 1960s sci-fi show about a cantankerous old git who kidnapped some school teachers (Missing presumed wiped).

7. Zoe and 6. Jamie

Zoe and Jamie both leave suddenly at the end of ‘The War Games’. Patrick Troughton was leaving and the actors decided to go with him, and that sense of an era ending bled into the fiction.

At the end of ‘The War Games’ the Time Lords are named and appear for the first time, represented by a group of solemn men in robes who wield immense and ineffable power. The Doctor is put on trial for stealing the TARDIS and interfering on other worlds. His companions are returned to a time after their first meeting with the Doctor, their memories of their travels erased. This isn’t built up to, but there’s a general sense of unease in the final few episodes and the Time Lords seem aloof enough to mete out this sort of punishment.

Jamie and Zoe try to escape with the Doctor, but when they’re recaptured he gives up. With Patrick Troughton’s Doctor this is especially shocking, and it’s only his melancholy resignation that convinces them to give up too. Zoe ends up back on a space station, and knows there’s something she can’t quite remember, but with Jamie – who has been with the Second Doctor for almost the entire incarnation – he ends up back at the aftermath of Culloden, charging a redcoat. In a kind touch, the redcoat turns and flees, suggesting Jamie might be alright in the aftermath of the battle.

Doctor Who wasn’t really huge on tearjerkers until 2005, but it was very, very good at quiet melancholy.

5. Martha Jones

Martha is in love with the Doctor. The Doctor spends the entire series pining for Rose and being oblivious to this fact.

Martha Jones puts up with a lot, looking after the Doctor while in his human John Smith guise and having to restrain herself while being continually patronised, racially abused and treated like an idiot. She then spends a year travelling the Earth avoiding capture as the Master enslaves and murders the population, holding Martha’s family captive while she does this.

So frankly when Martha says she’s leaving and the Doctor still doesn’t understand why (“Is this going anywhere?”) it’s hugely cathartic for the audience and for someone who deserved better. Some people do get to choose when being with the Doctor stops, and it’s usually great when they do.

4. Jo Grant

However muddled the reasoning behind Jo Grant’s existence, the casting was inspired. Essentially a remix of Jamie (which suggests that Jo and Liz could have worked if Jamie and Zoe did), Jo Grant wasn’t the brightest but wasn’t stupid, and was incredibly loyal and brave.

With the Doctor’s paternal streak fully activated, the production team decided that Jo falling in love and telling the Doctor “he reminds me of a sort of younger you” would be exactly what the Doctor didn’t want to hear. In contrast to Victoria’s departure and the Doctor’s selflessness there, the Doctor doesn’t do what Mike Yates does when marriage is announced (looks upset and does his best to mask it) but instead quietly slips out and drives away by himself. The fact that he leaves in a way that suggests jealousy or loneliness is a huge change; now we see the Doctor closer to Susan’s position and he does not like it.

3. Tegan

Coming at the end of ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’, where she’s seen a lot of people killed and the Doctor pick up a gun and announce that he’s going to kill Davros (who Tegan presumably hasn’t heard of), Tegan’s leaving scene is very close to being perfect.

Firstly there’s the line “It’s stopped being fun”, which begs the question of when it started being fun for her, but that’s ignorable. Secondly, and this is more about personal taste than an inconsistency in characterisation, there’s a case to be made for Less is More here. Tegan runs from the Doctor and Turlough as he begs her not to leave “like this”, which causes the Doctor to consider his actions before he and Turlough leave in the TARDIS. As it’s dematerialising, Tegan runs back in has one final line. For me it’s just a line too far, and Tegan being unable to say anything at all would have been more powerful, especially for the self-described “mouth on legs”.

However, that’s more window dressing rather than substance: the reasons for Tegan leaving are excellent: it’s a commentary on the stories and Doctor we’ve seen recently, and a plausible emotional response to them. It sets the Doctor on his way to ‘The Caves of Androzani’ where the show comes even closer than ever to paying off a sustained period of grimdark storytelling. Adric’s death might be more famous, but Tegan’s departure is much better writing from Eric Saward and deserves more plaudits for it.

2. Victoria

Actor Deborah Watling wanted to leave, and so Victoria goes in ‘Fury from the Deep’. Here the character has a plausible response to screaming at monsters and getting into trouble: she leaves. She says that she’s having a miserable time screaming and getting into trouble, but isn’t sure if she can go: her father died saving the Doctor, she’s an orphan out of her own time. The Doctor intervenes and suggests a family she can stay with.

Most importantly, the Doctor and Jamie stay an extra day to give her time to think it over, and the Doctor stresses that it must be her decision. On top of this, the final scene of the episode is the Doctor quietly trying to make Jamie feel better about her leaving. Rather than the usual one scene and gone deal we have something drawn out, stemming from character, full of warmth and empathy.

1. Clara Oswald

Potentially eternal life you say? A walking dead person? Maybe lose the dead body aspect of it and this idea has legs. ‘Hell Bent’ is a divisive episode (referential meta-commentary on Doctor Who isn’t what everyone was looking for from a season finale) and the ideas in it are incredibly pointed: the grieving Doctor overthrows Rassilon, shooting a potential ally to retrieve Clara from a moment before her death, and tries to wipe her mind to save her life, addressing the long-term trends of companion departures head on.

Rather than a Gallifreyan epic, this is focussed on one relationship and the shade it casts on the Doctor’s behaviour, all the while dancing in and around threads from other plotlines. The Doctor wanted Gallifrey back so badly, but now it’s simply a means to an end for him to bring Clara back.

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Clara’s final story is often compared to Donna’s departure because of the mindwipe element and the idea of Clara being a Doctor-like figure in her own right – here realised rather than excised – but looking at this list you can see how it harks back all the way to Susan: the Doctor thinks he knows what is best and often gets it wrong, and what seems like extreme behaviour in this story is actually pretty standard. Here he gets properly called out on this behaviour, the show finally able to address this in an intimate rather than epic setting.

The post Doctor Who: Ranking Every Single Companion Departure appeared first on Den of Geek.

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WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND October 11, 2019 - THE KING, GEMINI MAN, PARASITE and More!

Having barely recovered from this past weekend’s double whammy of New York Comic-Con and New York Film Festival, I’m starting to question whether I should continue doing this column… again. It’s a lot of work putting it together each week, and it’s really tough to balance this with my paying writing work.

It certainly doesn’t help matters that I never got around to finishing last week’s column, because I got too busy with other stuff, but this week, I haven’t seen any of the three wide releases for various reasons, so there might not be as much to write about. Since I’ve already reviews Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite for The Beat, I want to talk about another amazing film getting a limited theatrical release.

That movie is David Michôd’s THE KING, which Netflix is giving a limited theatrical release before its streaming debut on the service starting November 1.

Set in the 15th Century, the movie is loosely adapted on Shakespeare’s King Henry IV and Henry V but it’s handled in a lot less stodgy way than other Shakespeare films like Michael Fassbender’s recent turn as Hamlet. Henry IV is played by Michôd regular Ben Mendelson, but Henry V is played by Timothée Chalamet who has zero interest in being king even after his father dies. But the performance that really grabbed my attention was that of Joel Edgerton (who co-wrote the screenplay with Michôd) who I didn’t even recognize as the younger king’s trusty colleague Falstaff until about an hour into the movie. Robert Pattinson (who appeared in Michôd’s The Rover) plays a smaller but absolutely hilarious role that I won’t reveal, although it’s hard to forget it since it’s such a different character for Pattinson. Much of the film deals with how Henry handles becoming King of England, especially when he’s pushed to go to war with France. I don’t have a lot more to say about this movie is that it surpassed all my expectations, especially in the battle sequence in the last half of the movie which is on par with anything in Gladiator or Braveheart, but then there’s an equally terrific epilogue that really shows Chalamet to be at the top of his game. I also should mention the amazing turns by Sean Harris from Mission: Impossible - Fallout, Lily Rose-Depp and Thomasin McKenzie as Henry’s sister.

This is just a great film that I hope people will make an effort to go see in theaters, even though Netflix really isn’t giving it as big a theatrical or awards push as some of their other movies. I know it’s playing at the Landmark 57thStreet in New York, but that’s the only theater I could find.

That aside, the big movie of the weekend is Ang Lee’s GEMINI MAN (Paramount), starring Will Smith and Will Smith. You may already know the general premise that it involves an older hitman played by Smith being hunted by a younger Smith, or maybe it’s vice versa. I don’t know since I had to miss the New York press screening due to illness, but I’ll probably try to see this when it opens this weekend. I might even give it a look in 3D at 128 FS, as maybe the third time’s the charm in that format.

U.A. Releasing is attempting their second animated release of the year with THE ADDAMS FAMILY, which I’ll be seeing on Wednesday night and reviewing over at The Beat. It has a pretty amazing voice cast, and I’ve been a fan of the comic strips and TV show, enough to hope that the filmmakers behind Sausage Party can do it justice and still be funny with a PG rating.

I’m a little bit dubious of CBS Films’ JEXI, starring Adam Devine, since the studio decided not to screen in advance for critics, and that’s VERY rare for a populist comedy like this one, which basically has Devine falling for his Siri-like smartphone assistant, or maybe it’s vice versa. If I can find the time, I might check this out, but I don’t expect it to do very well with so little advance promotion.

You can read more about these wide releases and how they might fare over at my weekly Box Office Preview at The Beat.

LIMITED RELEASES

I’ve already reviewed Bong Joon-ho’s new film PARASITE (NEON) over at The Beat, but it’s an intriguing enough film that I certainly could talk more about it. It’s an interesting look at the Korean class system through the interactions between a family living in poverty and the rich family they dupe into letting into their homes. The movie looks incredible and Bong’s cast is top-notch in creating a dark comedy dealing with rather serious issues, and honestly, you should go to see it without knowing too much about it, so that’s all I’ll say. Interestingly, the movie has already sold out about seven preview screenings on Thursday night and a few more Friday at the IFC Centerwhere Director Bong and a few of his stars will be doing QnAs after the shows.

I had been tracking Michael Goy’s MARY (RLJE Films) for some time, mainly because it has an impressive cast including Gary Oldman and Emily Mortimer, but also it mostly takes place on a haunted boat, and I’m generally a fan of boating. Mary is actually the boat’s name, one that’s spotted by Oldman’s working class captain David who wants to make a better life for his family, something he thinks the boat can help with. Once David and his family are out at seas, they begin to turn on one another and lose their sanity as the boat drifts off-course.

Opening in New York and L.A. on Wednesday is Eric Notarnicola’s Mister America (Magnolia), and if you’re in New York, you can try to get tickets for the Metrograph where Notarnicola will be appearing with stars Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington aka “Neil Hamburger” for three shows tonight! It’s a faux political documentary following Heidecker on his campaign to depose the incumbent San Berarndino D.A. who tried him for selling e-cigs at an EDM festival, killing many. If this is even remotely as weird as the last few films I’ve seen with Heidecker and Turkington, it’s probably best that I haven’t seen this, and probably won’t, although the premise sounds intriguing.

There are some interesting docs this weekend including Fantastic Fungi, directed by time-lapse photographer Louie Schwartzberg (Wings of Life and the 3D IMAX film Mysteries of the Unseen Worlds) and “written” by Mark Monroe, who has been involved with some great docs including this year’sThe Biggest Little Farm. As you can tell from the title, this one explores the ground beneath our feet and how the fungi kingdom offers ways to heal and save our planet. It’s opening at New York’s Village East Cinemason Friday and in other theatersdown the road. Oh yeah, it’s also narrated by Brie Larson.

Also opening at the QuadFriday is Robin McKenna’s documentary Gift (Matson Films), based on Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World,” exploring the relationship between art and the “gift economy.”

Opening at the Cinema Village Friday is Killing Zoe writer Roger Avary’s new movie Lucky Day (Lionsgate), starring Luke Bracey, Nina Dobrev, Crispin Glover and Clifton Collins Jr. It’s about a paranoid safe-cracker and his family who have to face a psychotic hitman out for revenge. I’m guessing that Glover is playing the psycho.

As far as sequels, there’s Along Came the Devil 2 (Gravitas Ventures), the sequel to Jason and Heather DeVan’s Along Came the Devil, which I’m honestly not sure I saw. Laura Slade Wiggins plays Jordan who receives an unsettling voice mail and returns home to her estranged father (Bruce Davison) only to learn that a demonic force has attached itself to the town.

Lastly, there’s Broadway star Michael Damian’s High Strung Free Dance (Atlas Distribution), the sequel to his 2016 movie High Strung, which I’ve never seen. It follows Thomas Doherty’s young choreographer Zander Raines as he gives a break to a talented contemporary dancer (Juliet Doherty) and a pianist (Harry Jarvis) by putting them in his Broadway show “Free Dance,” that becomes more complicated by a love triangle between the three. It also stars Jane Seymour, who was also in the previous film.

LOCAL FESTIVALS

The New York Film Festival is finishing up this Friday with Edward Norton’s new ‘50s detective film MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN, which I quite liked and have also reviewed for The Beat. Also playing is Mati Diop’s Cannes prize-winning Atlantics, which will be on Netflix in November.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Before I get to the regular Netflix releases, I do want to draw special attention to Abe Forythe’s LITTLE MONSTERS, which just received a one-night nationwide screening on Tuesday but will debut on Hulu this Friday. It’s a very witty zombie comedy set in Australia starring Alexander England (Alien: Covenant) as Dave, a slacker musician who develops a crush on his nephew’s beguiling kindergarten teacher Miss Caroline (played indelibly by Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o). When he finds out that the class is being taken on a field trip to a petting zoo, Dave volunteers as a chaperone, only for things to get complicated when they get there and a famed child entertainer called Teddy McGiggle (and played by Josh Gad) starts showing interest in Miss Caroline. Oh, yeah, and I also mentioned zombie, didn’t I? The class arrives at the park just as a zombie outbreak begins so Dave and Miss Caroline have to protect the kids.

I generally liked this movie, which I found quite witty and a much stronger zombie-comedy effort than something like last year’s Anna and the Apocalypse. I loved what Lupita does with her characterization in this and I even kind of liked Josh Gad, although he took his character a little too far at times. Either way, if you have Hulu-- as I now do -- this is a fun watch and you can do worse with your time.

Although Vince Gilligan’s EL CAMINO: A BREAKING BAD MOVIE with Aaron Paul reprising his role of Jesse Pinkman is streaming on Netflix starting Friday, it’s also getting a rather limited run in theaters for those who would prefer to see it that way. I personally haven’t seen it yet, but it’s supposed to be a direct continuation from that amazing final episode of Breaking Bad. A few places where you can see it live with other fans including the IFC Center and Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn. Also on Netflix Friday is the psychological thrillerFracturedfrom Brad Anderson, starring Sam Worthington – I wonder where he’d gotten – and Lily Rabe from American Horror Story. Worthington plays Ray, who is driving across country with his wife and daughter when they stop at a rest area where his daughter falls and breaks her arm. Once he gets her to the hospital, Ray passes out from exhaustion and when he wakes up, his wife and daughter are missing with absolutely no record of them having ever been there. I haven’t had a chance to see this but I’m always interested in what Brad Anderson is up to since I’m such a huge fan of his earlier movies like Session 9 and The Machinist.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Shirkers director Sandi Tan returns to the Metrograph to screen Leos Carax’s 1999 film Pola Xin 35mm on Saturday night, and the Metrograph continues its “NYC ’81” series this weekend with Andrew Bergman’s So Fine, a series of New York shorts from 1981, Peter Yates’ Eyewitness, Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andreand more. This Saturday, Welcome To Metrograph: Reduxwill screen Martin Scorsese’s 1974 filmAlice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, starring Ellen Burstyn and Kristopher Kristopherson, which I believe was the inspiration for the TV sitcom “Alice” but I could be wrong. Late Nites at Metrograph has the greatest movie in the series so far, John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, starring Kurt Russell, which is also a part of “NYC ’81.” Playtime: Family Matineeswill screen Miyazaki’s Oscar-nominated 2004 film Howl’s Moving Castle.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN(NYC)

There’s still a few tickets for tonight’s “Weird Wednesday” movie, Lucio Fulci’s The Devil’s Honey. Thursday night the Alamo is showing Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer from 2014 as his new movie Parasite opens (that one’s almost sold out as of this writing). Sunday afternoon, the Alamo is screening a 35mm print of the 1960’s Korean film The Housemaid, which inspired Parasite. Monday night (and already sold out) is a screening of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligariwith a live score (sorry!). Next week’s “Terror Tuesday” is Ti West’s House of the Devil, a fantastic chiller, and next week’s “Weird Wednesday” is the 1987 British film Born of Fire, presented by my good friend and filmmaker Ted Geoghegan.

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

The Dolemite series continues with a double feature of Dolemite is My Name with the Dolemite movie The Human Tornado (1976), then on Thursday night, the Eddie Murphy double features with Disco Godfather (1979). Wednesday’s horror movie is Robert Wise’s 1963 film The Haunting while Friday’s horror matinee is Hello Mary Lou: Pro Night I I(1987) Tarantino’s Death Proof is the Friday night midnight offering, while Dolemite Is My Namewill screen Saturday night at midnight. (Listen, the Eddie Murphy is not really repertory but it’s a great movie to see with an audience, so take advantage of this chance being given to you by the New Bev, and go see it!!!) This weekend’s “Kiddee Matinee” is Jules Bass’ Mad Monster Party? from 1967 and starring the one and only Boris Karloff. There’s also a Halloween Edition of “Cartoon Club” on Saturday AND Sunday, but they’re both sold out online. Monday afternoon, there’s a matinee of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996)

FILM FORUM (NYC):

I’m pretty excited about the Film Forum’s upcoming “Shitamachi” series starting next week, but in the meantime, the Forum will be screening a 50thanniversary 4k restoration of Yôji Yamada’s Tora-San, Our Loveable Tramp (It’s Tough Being a Man), which is part of a long-running series that I personally have never had a chance to see even though I’ve loved Yamada’s Edo-period samurai films from a few years back. This weekend’s “Film Forum Jr.” is A Boy Named Charlie Brown, and the Film Forum is also screening a 4k restoration of Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity, both of them also from 1969 and celebrating their 50thanniversaaries. Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl will end Thursday while the Yves St. Laurent doc Celebration will continue through next Tuesday. The “Shirley Clarke 100” will continue through the rest of the month but only her 1962 doc Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World screens this weekend on Saturday.

AERO (LA):

Looks like a planned James Ivory double features for Thursday and Friday have been cancelled, but they’ll be showing the excellent doc Love, Antosha about the late Anton Yelchin in a double feature with Drake Doremus’ Like Crazy. Saturday begins a “Béla Tarr Revisited” series showing films by the popular Hungarian auteur with The Turin Horse (2011) on Saturday night and the new 4k restoration of Sátántángo on Sunday. Just FYI, the latter is 450 minutes or about 7 and a half hours long. There will be an intermission and an extended break but hopefully, you REALLY love Tarr’s work. (I don’t.) Tuesday’s free “Tuesdays with Lorre” screening is The Beast with Five Fingers from 1946.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

“See It Big! Ghost Stories” continues this weekend with Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice on Saturday and Ti West’s The Inkeepers on Sunday, both worthwhile movies to see on the big screen. MOMI is also starting a new series called “No Joke: Absurd Comedy as Political Reality” kicking off with a Weds. night screening of Mister America (see above) and then Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers on Saturday and “An Evening with the Yes Men” (political documentarians) on Sunday. On Sunday afternoon is the “Sesame Street Short Film Festival” screening a bunch of live action and animated shorts commissioned by the popular PBS show.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Francis Ford Coppola’s restored and remastered Cotton Club Encore, which just premiered at the New York Film Festival a couple weeks back will get a theatrical run at the Quad, as will Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus(1976), starring Jane Birkin as a truck stop waitress who begins a friendship with Joe Dallesandro’s garbage truck driver, making his boyfriend (Hugues Quester) jealous.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Not sure what’s going on with the IFC Center’s ongoing weekend rep series but George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road(2015) will screen just before midnight on Friday and Saturday, and then the Coens’ 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski will screen as part of Late Night Favorites: Summer 2019as will Satoshi Kon’s 2006 film Paprika.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

The Egyptian is pretty busy this weekend with “German Currents 2019” i.e. not repertory, but on Saturday, they’ll show a “Retroformat” screening of the 1928 film The Spielerwith live accompaniment.

BAM CINEMATEK(NYC):

This Sunday’s “Beyond the Canon” is a double feature of Claudia Well’s Girlfriends (1978) with John Cassavetes’ Husbands (1970).

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

Oddly, the Roxy is screening the 2015 horror movie Unfriended on Wednesday and then David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me(1992) on Thursday, but really you should go there to see Lulu Wang’s excellent The Farewell – my #1 movie of 2019 so far – if you haven’t seen it yet.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART (LA):

This Friday’s midnight movie is John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic Halloween.

And great news... MOMA should be back next week!

Next week, Angelina Jolie returns as Maleficent, Mistress of Evil, but the movie I’m really looking forward to is Zombieland Double Tap.

#WhatToWatchThisWeekend Movies Parasite GeminiMan TheKing AddamsFamily Reviews Jexi

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poetrybooksya · 7 years ago

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#EMPTYSHELFIE Spookie Shelfie TBR

Empty Shelfie is a year-long reading challenge to empty your incredibly long TBR list. For the Halloween season this month, here are 7 challenges from 7 hosts: Heather at Zether Books, Taylor at Bookish Taylor, Roya at Unicorn Hunter Books, Britt at Britt, Ali at Hardback Hoarder, and Desi at Libri Labra Twitter. Challenges: Serial Killer POV Read a book involving a spell or curse Supernatural/paranormal elements Freakish characters Read a book with a Mask in title or cover Black and orange cover Concept of a person/place/thing that terrifies you

youtube

I'm not a huge fan of horror or supernatural genre, so my TBR will be pretty small, compared to last month. Challenges:

Serial Killer POV - Because You Love to Hate Me by Ameriie, Renee Ahdieh, Soman Chainani, Susan Dennard, Sarah Enni, Marissa Meyer, Cindy Pon, Victoria Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Adam Silvera, Andrew Smith, April Genevieve Tucholke, Nicola Yoon, Sasha Alsberg, Whitney Atkinson, Tina Burke, Catriona Feeney, Jesse George, Zoë Herdt, Samantha Lane, Sophia Lee, Raeleen Lemay, Regan Perusse, Christine Riccio, Steph Sinclair, Kat Kennedy, Ben Alderson Best-selling authors working with Booktubers on the perspectives of villians? Yes, please!! Summary: Leave it to the heroes to save the world--villains just want to rule the world. In this unique YA anthology, thirteen acclaimed, bestselling authors team up with thirteen influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains' points of view. These fractured, unconventional spins on classics like "Medusa," Sherlock Holmes, and "Jack and the Beanstalk" provide a behind-the-curtain look at villains' acts of vengeance, defiance, and rage--and the pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that spurned them on. No fairy tale will ever seem quite the same again! Featuring writing from . . . Authors: Renée Ahdieh, Ameriie, Soman Chainani, Susan Dennard, Sarah Enni, Marissa Meyer, Cindy Pon, Victoria Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Adam Silvera, Andrew Smith, April Genevieve Tucholke, and Nicola Yoon BookTubers: Benjamin Alderson (Benjaminoftomes), Sasha Alsberg (abookutopia), Whitney Atkinson (WhittyNovels), Tina Burke (ChristinaReadsYA blog and TheLushables), Catriona Feeney (LittleBookOwl), Jesse George (JessetheReader), Zoë Herdt (readbyzoe), Samantha Lane (Thoughts on Tomes), Sophia Lee (thebookbasement), Raeleen Lemay (padfootandprongs07), Regan Perusse (PeruseProject), Christine Riccio (polandbananasBOOKS), and Steph Sinclair & Kat Kennedy (Cuddlebuggery blog and channel).

Read a book involving a spell or curse - One Wish Away by Ingrid Seymour I'm a member of Ingrid's ARC team, but I haven't read her latest works since her first book, Ignite the Shadows back in 2014. So I'm excited to try to get into this one for this challenge. Summary: Faris is a Djinn with a secret and Marielle the first master to give him hope. Will she be the one to break his curse? There is no telling. All he really knows is she's ONE WISH AWAY from breaking his heart. When Marielle was little, she used to believe Grandpa about his wish-granting Djinn. But now that she’s older, her beliefs have changed, and things like lousy ex-boyfriends and alcoholic fathers have become her reality. Life isn’t done shattering her truths, though, and when Grandpa dies and the Djinn he warned her never to trust shows up at her doorstep, the world becomes a dangerous, magical place she never knew existed. Reeling for her once-normal life, Marielle soon realizes there’s no going back—not when she’s become part of a mortal conflict between two spell-bound Djinn. Faris—her handsome slave. And Zet—his vengeance-hungry brother. They both want something from her. One, her love. The other one, her life. Now she’s afraid she will die in love. One Wish Away is a young adult paranormal romance that will appeal to lovers of Hush Hush, Twilight, and the Fallen series.

Supernatural/paranormal elements - Unreality by Ingrid Seymour (blog tour with Marked by Fate box set, where the book is from) Summary: Ever since she helped solve her mother’s gruesome murder twelve years ago, Meadow Bright has kept her psychic abilities locked away. As a five-year-old, the brutal visions of her mother’s death nearly destroyed her. Now, a senior in high school, she still fears her nature and what opening up could do to her. But when a classmate is found viciously tortured and murdered, her powers return with a vengeance, flooding her mind with new visions and opening old wounds. Worst of all, the new victim wears the signature of her mother’s killer, a man who’s still in jail under a life sentence without parole. It seems that, all those years ago, she made a mistake and helped put the wrong man in jail. Now, she must redeem herself before more people die.

Freakish characters - Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older Summary: Cassandra Clare meets Caribbean legend in SHADOWSHAPER, an action-packed urban fantasy from a bold new talent. Sierra Santiago was looking forward to a fun summer of making art, hanging out with her friends, and skating around Brooklyn. But then a weird zombie guy crashes the first party of the season. Sierra's near-comatose abuelo begins to say "Lo siento" over and over. And when the graffiti murals in Bed-Stuy start to weep.... Well, something stranger than the usual New York mayhem is going on. Sierra soon discovers a supernatural order called the Shadowshapers, who connect with spirits via paintings, music, and stories. Her grandfather once shared the order's secrets with an anthropologist, Dr. Jonathan Wick, who turned the Caribbean magic to his own foul ends. Now Wick wants to become the ultimate Shadowshaper by killing all the others, one by one. With the help of her friends and the hot graffiti artist Robbie, Sierra must dodge Wick's supernatural creations, harness her own Shadowshaping abilities, and save her family's past, present, and future. Read a book with a Mask in title or cover - Sadly, I can't think of a book that can fill in this prompt, so I'll skip it.

Black and orange cover - Mexican Whiteboy by Matt de la Pena Summary: Danny's tall and skinny. Even though he’s not built, his arms are long enough to give his pitch a power so fierce any college scout would sign him on the spot. Ninety-five mile an hour fastball, but the boy’s not even on a team. Every time he gets up on the mound he loses it. But at his private school, they don’t expect much else from him. Danny’ s brown. Half-Mexican brown. And growing up in San Diego that close to the border means everyone else knows exactly who he is before he even opens his mouth. Before they find out he can’t speak Spanish, and before they realize his mom has blond hair and blue eyes, they’ve got him pegged. But it works the other way too. And Danny’s convinced it’s his whiteness that sent his father back to Mexico. That’s why he’s spending the summer with his dad’s family. Only, to find himself, he may just have to face the demons he refuses to see--the demons that are right in front of his face. And open up to a friendship he never saw coming. Set in the alleys and on the ball fields of San Diego County, Mexican Whiteboy is a story of friendship, acceptance, and the struggle to find your identity in a world of definitions.

Concept of a person/place/thing that terrifies you - The First Hour I Believed by Wally Lamb Not only does the cover haunt me, but the summary does too. Columbine High School shooting? Trauma? PTSD? Whoa...what an experience. Summary: Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. In The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character. When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues. While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface. As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary -- and American. The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity. What's your TBR list for Empty Shelfie's Spookie Shelfie season? Leave comments below!

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via Blogger http://poemsbyayoungartist.blogspot.com/2017/10/emptyshelfie-spookie-shelfie-tbr.html

#book club #book sets #cassandra clare #Empty Shelfie #ingrid seymour #October 2017 #personal #sabaa

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sulietsexual · 8 years ago

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Supernatural + Swan Song and Buffy + The Gift

Swan Song

Short opinion: If this had been the series finale, it would have rivaled Not Fade Away as my favourite series finale ever.

Long opinion: Much like I believe The Gift should have been the series finale for BtVS I truly believe that Swan Song should have been the end of SPN. Not only has the show continued far past its use-by date, to the point where the characters and plot are essentially going around in circles, but Swan Song is such a perfect, epic, amazing episode that I honestly can’t imagine the show being able to top it when it does come to its eventual conclusion.

Supernatural was initially only supposed to run for five seasons, and it really shows. While the Lucifer arc was obviously a new addition to the already-established arc of Azazel’s special children, the way in which the writers incorporated the Heaven and Hell storyline into the ongoing arc worked beautifully, both narratively and thematically, and Swan Song is the culmination of this, tying almost everything together seamlessly, while also containing some gorgeous characterisation for the boys.

An ongoing theme in the early seasons of Supernatural is Sam’s search for emancipation coupled with Dean’s co-dependency and longing for family. There is a constant tug-of-war between the brothers in regards to this, with Sam often feeling smothered and controlled by Dean, who in turn often feels hurt and rejected by Sam’s need for freedom and search to find himself outside of hunting. Season 5 explores these themes thoroughly, starting with the broken trust between the brothers in the aftermath of Sam’s betrayal in Season 4, paying particular attention to Sam’s reasonings behind going off with Ruby. Over the season, we see both boys acknowledging the wrongs they have done to one another, with Sam seeking redemption for his actions and Dean finally realising that he needs to let Sammy grow up and find independence. This all culminates in Swan Song, with Dean one hundred per cent letting go of Sam, and allowing him to make the decision to take in Lucifer of his own volition.

Themes aside, the episode is just gorgeously sewn together, starting with Chuck’s endearing narration about the Impala, going through to the intense final showdown between Lucifer and Dean. The final fight between Lucifer and Dean only serves to underline how deep and true the brothers’ bond is, as it’s their history and love which allows Sam to regain control over his body and open the gate to return Lucifer to Hell. It’s a true testament to the relationship between the brothers, and no other episode on the show has underlined this so beautifully.

The episode also showcases Jared’s superb acting skills. His performance as Lucifer is at once intriguing, fascinating and wholly unsettling, in particular, the facial twitches which suggest that Lucifer is not completely in control of his new vessel. Jared even alters his voice, speaking in a slightly lower pitch and with a smoothness to his words he doesn’t display as Sam. All up, I’d say Lucifer is probably Jared’s strongest performance of the show.

As said before, this episode is seamlessly put together. Chuck’s narration ties the events and themes of not only the season but the whole show together, and gives the episode an air of finality which would have worked beautifully have it been a series finale. It’s also well-paced and terrifically acted, with not only Jared, but Jensen, Misha and particularly Jacob Able as Michael shining in this episode. The build up to Sam taking in Lucifer is full of tension and anticipation and the final showdown at the graveyard is epic. The beautiful score adds to the feel and emotion of the episode wonderfully, and the seamless narration gives an air of finality. All up, just an amazing episode, one which would have been an incredible end to what was originally a great series.

The Gift

Short opinion: The best episode BtVS has to offer.

Long opinion: As stated on several occasions, including this ask, my personal belief is that The Gift is really where Buffy should have ended. Thematically and narratively it was the perfect place to end the series and would have been a fantastic send-off for the show.

From a strictly narrative point of view, The Gift is a near-perfect episode. It ties together the ongoing arc of the season, with the reveal of how the Key activates and the final showdown between Buffy and Glory, with Glory’s plans coming to fruition. It contains some great action sequences, lets almost every character shine in their own way, and is beautifully scripted and well-paced. But more so than its’ narrative arc, The Gift ties together Buffy’s personal themes of self-discovery and learning what it means for her to be The Slayer.

Buffy’s journey over the course of Season 5 is probably the most personal and in-depth look at her Slayer-ness that we’ve seen on the show. While previous seasons have focused on Buffy’s romantic and personal relationships, this is truly the first season to seriously focus on her own personal journey of self-discovery, starting with the very first scene of the season, which shows her going out on the hunt after being unable to sleep.

Many of the episodes of this season focus on this journey, from the somewhat over-hyped Fool For Love, to the under-appreciated Intervention, Buffy’s determination to discover what being a Slayer truly means lies a the heart of her narrative and thematic arc for this season. We see her renew her training with Giles, as well as researching and delving into the history of the Slayer. The biggest moment for Buffy in this journey is her confrontation with the First Slayer and the cryptic message that death is her gift, which she ultimately comes to understand in the final episode, making the sacrifice to save her sister and the world, as well as finding peace within herself. It’s one of the most beautiful meta moments of the series, as Buffy realises that death is not only her gift to the world, but also a gift to herself, as it allows her to escape from a world of pain and loss, and have her passing mean something.

The other big theme which ties into this episode nicely is the running theme of family and responsibility. The appearance of Dawn in this season coupled with Joyce’s illness turns Buffy into the head of the family, with a lot of responsibility resting on her young shoulders, and we see Buffy really struggling not only with this new responsibility, but with her perceived inability to love, or at the very least, show her love. This episode proves that not only can Buffy love, she loves deeply, richly and to somewhat detrimental degrees. Her refusal to sacrifice Dawn to save the world, while frustrating, is also completely understandable and works into these ongoing themes wonderfully.

Thematic and narrative arcs aside, The Gift is just a great episode in general. It’s a wonderfully scripted episode, from the beautifully understated opening scene which subtly underlines Buffy’s desire to escape her destiny, to the wonderful and heartbreaking climax, the scenes in this episode are some of the best of the show. Every character is given their moment to shine, from Xander taking out Glory with the wrecking ball, to Willow restoring Tara’s sanity, to Giles’ shocking yet completely in-character murder of Ben, no character is overlooked or forgotten. Special mention has to go to Dawn for being willing to sacrifice herself before Buffy decides to take her place.

The direction of the episode is fantastic, as is the pacing and timing, and the score is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking scores heard on BtVS. All up, The Gift really is the pinnacle of BtVS as a show, and it’s such a shame that it wasn’t the series finale, as it would have been an incredibly fitting and perfect place to end the show.

#answered #karaszorelsdanvers #spn meta #buffy the vampire slayer #btvs meta #meta

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the-wolfs-raven · 5 years ago

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♌: what’s your family like?♍: other blogs?♎: would you date your muse?♏: would you and your muse be friends?♐: 3 things that scare you

♌: what’s your family like?

Ooh. Boy. Well, my dad’s pretty chill. He was a hippy and all that. Did a LOT of drugs in his time (which I didn’t learn about til this year. Go figure.). Got a bit of casual racism stuck in his humor, but he doesn’t mean any ill-will to anyone. He’s a good guy overall.

My mother and her family, though. Damn. Like. I’ve never met anyone so hateful and paranoid about the world. Grandma turned me into a fundamentalist Christian psycho in elementary school (thankfully that got nipped in the bud in middle school). Ma always said she’d disown us if we were gay (then did a complete 180 when my brother came out). They’ve mellowed a bit with time, but now Grandma has Alzheimer's and is a complete psycho nut again. Also, again with the casual racism, but they’re far more serious about it. Typical MAGA folk.

So woo for breaking the hate cycle, I guess?

♍: other blogs?

Loads.

@thepalewolfhowls is Tara’s daughter, Taria Fletcher. My little lore bender. Very angry daughter of Lo’Gosh with a fondness for orcs and punching people. She has her own daughter now, Accalia, and a sort-of mate, Grok’tor Ironbite, a grizzled war veteran. Taria underwent chronomantic aging to make her an adult (partially because I fucked up my timelines. Partially because a child is an inconvenient agent and adult Taria can break so many more skulls). She would have been around 7 years old if not for the aging, but she is fully an adult, physically, mentally, and emotionally (though her step-father may argue the latter. lol)

@bluewolfcaravan is Tara’s trading and shop ventures. Lots of fun stuff there when I’m not too dead to run them.

@the-white-lioness is Ishtara Lionstar. A Night Elf whore who originally turned Tara down the path of owning her sexuality. She and her lions are all named for Assyrian (Mesopotamian, whatever) figures since its a good chunk of my heritage. Lovely lion whore, basically.

@wordhobbies is Necrocia Witherwing aka Twitchy formerly known as Sentinel Lyralel Dawnwhisper. After a traumatic blow to the head, the elf became completely unhinged, putting herself in dangerous situations and stitching herself back together. Though she’s never technically died, you wouldn’t know it from looking at her. She also has...Hobbies. Lots of hobbies. “I asked myself, why should a murloc only have two eyes? Why not ten? Or TWENTY THREE?!” …ehem…Her fascination with hobbies was actually pulled from an eccentric character from a children’s cartoon (Grandpapa Thistle from Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom). Occasionally, she has short periods of sanity where her hair returns to its normal state and she becomes terrified of everything that’s happened to her. Twitchy is almost emaciated and has various scribbles, scars, tattoos, etc all over her body from just...various things. Sometimes she needs to remember something and she’ll literally just ink it into her skin. If she can’t find something to tattoo herself with, she’ll just carve it on. She’s extremely difficult to play for a long period of time because she just requires SO much energy.

@obscure-snowdrop is my little Shadow Whisperer bookworm who I made specifically to join the Crows. She began hearing whispers at a young age and they keep her relatively sane despite her horrific life. If wards or any such thing silence the whispers, she goes into a fit as everything that has worn on her over time coalesces in one fell swoop.

@snaythes These were my spook family from many fandoms back. They are hemomancers of sorts with various quirks. The eldest brother builds furniture from human parts. One brother is a butcher who specializes in cannibalistic delicacies. One brother, who had his heart broken, incorporates unused bodies into their home’s décor. His ex-fiancée currently serves as a chandelier in the living room (I realize the irony). The only sister is a painter who works with macabre and lascivious subjects. She and the eldest brother have an...unconventional relationship. The youngest brother is the most tame, and doesn’t really share his family’s penchant for violence and murder.

@korbintavernack aka Nix is a Blacktalon agent who worked closely with Taria in the past. He’s a brawler and a magebreaker with enough wards to silence any magical activity in a 20 foot radius around himself. He’s also responsible for the warding on Taria’s mind making her resistant to mental attacks and manipulation.

@theunkindness is an organization of (traditionally only Kaldorei) assassins and thieves who take morally upright contracts overall (killing bad folk like slavers, abusers, etc). Tara is a part of the Unkindness and still communicates with several of her old contacts.

@winterscalesheir is the original Warhammer 40k Tarvasha. She is the complete opposite of WoW Tara and I have no idea how it happened. The bastard daughter of Rogue Trader Calligos Winterscale, she’s determined to find the Baleful eye of Sebastian Winterscale and cement herself among her father’s bloodline.

♎: would you date your muse?

I mean, if I had to date someone, Tara would be a pretty high reach for me. I think I’d feel way too inferior to actually date someone like her, though I’d shower the poor girl with affection. We’d probably try to outdo each other in gift-giving and kind gestures. However, Tara is more heteroromantic, as am I, so even given the chance, it probably wouldn’t work. lol

♏: would you and your muse be friends?

I think we’d make decent friends. I don’t like the upkeep that comes with friendships and Tara tends to disappear a lot, so I think that would work out just fine in the end.

♐: 3 things that scare you

Someone breaking into my house. Seems kinda specific, but here’s the thing: I have a shit fight or flight response, even when my kids are involved (I once left them in the backyard as I was running away from a wasp). This is partially due to the fact that I was terrified of SIDS, so I didn’t allow myself to bond with my kids when they were born. A lot of people I know are like “Yeah, I’d bust someone’s ass if they ever tried to touch my kids” but honestly, I feel like I’d probably run like a bitch and hate myself forever for it. But who knows? Maybe I’d pick up a floor lamp and fucking wreck someone’s day? I’d rather not find out one way or the other.

Losing my technology. I live through screens. All of my memories are contained in my tech and on the web. I’m terrified that I’d lose those things. I’ve already had a phone run over and lost all of my children’s baby photos and videos. I have very little memory of those times, so losing that was pretty heartbreaking for me.

Apocalypse. Any sort of end-of-the-world bullshit where you’ve gotta figure out how to survive. A lot of my friends have bug out bags and everything else but my oldest is a Type 1 diabetic. If the places producing insulin suddenly stop, I have no way to keep my daughter alive. It’ll be cyanide pills for the lot of us.

Thanks for the ask @latildarommel! Sorry it got so heart-wrenching at the end. lol

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ben-j-man · 6 years ago

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Secret War: A Sanction for Sanity- chapter 3

A prequel to my 40k fanfiction Secret War.

Link to chapter 1- http://ben-j-man.tumblr.com/post/180097372453/secret-war-chapter-1

After his organization is hired to hunt down an influential ganger on the Hive world, Omnartus. Attelus Kaltos is embroiled deeper into the complex world of the Assassin. This is the job which will change him, for better or for worse, forever more.

‘I am not a partier; I am an assassin who kills people for a living. And being the dangerous job it is and that I would quite like to live past my twenties, I spend every waking hour for training. Making sure I have the necessary skills to live to see the next day.’ -Attelus Kaltos Bursting from the seams with action, intrigue, suspense and full of twists and turns. With a character driven narrative which delves deep into the mind torn asunder by war as he tries to find purpose in the grim-dark universe of 40k where there is only war.

A Sanction for Sanity: Chapter 1 link

http://ben-j-man.tumblr.com/post/181441697383/secret-war-a-sanction-for-sanity-chapter-1

Attelus led Estella back to his hideout, holding her hand, only briefly letting go earlier so she could retrieve her Lasgun.

In all honesty, he never wanted to ever let go of her hand ever again. His heart jumped with so much joy it felt close to bursting out his chest and the grin on his face, so big it felt close to tearing his dirty cheeks.

Finally, he had someone to talk to, he had someone to be with! Now, just suddenly, seemed to fill a huge gap in Attelus. He couldn't describe it, he still couldn't completely understand it, he just knew he wasn't lonely anymore.

They came to the entrance of his hideout, and he tore the doors open and walked inside, utterly unaware of Estella's grimace at the smell wafting from its depths.

He turned to her almost smiling from ear to ear then went back to his pack opened it and began to rummage through it.

"D-do you want something to eat?" he asked.

"Sure, thank you Attelus, I have been on the run for hours and haven't had any time to eat, that would indeed be very appreciated," she said, "but it might be a bit easier for you if you let go of my hand."

Attelus immediately stopped his search and turned to her with wide eyes.

"Oh!" he said, distinctly blushing, "sorry," and hesitantly let go.

Estella smiled and began to wander, looking around the small basement.

Finally, Attelus found what he was looking for, tugging from his battered backpack the dried field rations he had lived on for the past few months when she asked.

"Is that your sword over there?"

He froze and turned back to her. "Y-yes."

"You don't mind if I have a look, do you?"

After a few seconds thought he shook his head. "N-no, go ahead."

She smiled and picked up the sword then slid it slightly from its sheath.

"It's a good sword Attelus," she said, "but..."

"It's monomolecular?" he finished; before the war mono enhancements where illegal for blades in Elbyra for a reason Attelus didn't care for and apparently his father didn't care for as well.

Estella nodded and abruptly slid the sword out stepping into an impressive but fanciful flourish and returned it back into its scabbard.

"It is a very, very good blade," she said as she sat across from him, "the balance is perfect and it was masterfully made, it must have cost a fortune. You don't mind if I ask, who gave it to you?"

Attelus handed her one of the ration cans and began to tear into his food with a plasteek utensil.

"Thanks," she said.

"It was my dad he..." Attelus managed through a mouthful, "he gave it to me."

Despite going so long without food, Estella ate with an almost ingrained refined grace.

"Thank you again Attelus, I have more rations in my pack to reimburse you for these."

Attelus paused briefly in his ravenous eating treating her with a happy, wide smile that said; "don't worry about it."

"So who gave you, your sword?" he asked.

"Umm sorry?"

The teenager swallowed his mouthful with a vast animated gulp and asked, "who gave you yours?"

"Oh, this?" Estella looked down at the sheathed blade at her hip, "my father actually gave me mine to, funny that."

"Your good with it too," he commented, "did your father train you?"

"No," she said looking back to him, "it was our family's master of the blade who taught me."

Attelus paused before biting his next mouthful and raised his eyebrows in distinct bemusement, "family's master of the blade...are you?"

"Yes I am," she paused, "or I...was a noble."

"That explains it then."

It was Estella's turn to be bemused, "explains what then?"

"It explains the way you used my sword," he stated, "your technique looked very familiar, looked a lot like the sword style which Velrosian nobles are taught it in, Valisuth"

"You could tell that from just one move?"

"Yep, sometimes I would watch the tournaments you nobles take part in, before the war I mean, to learn the way you fight, that flourish you used was a Tsured am I right?"

"Yes, yes it was."

"It's an advanced move. Not taught until the fifth stage of Falisuth, and you did it almost instinctively which shows you're very skilled."

Estella smiled, "I appreciate the complement Attelus, but actually Tsured is not taught until the sixth level of Falisuth."

Attelus shrugged and began to chew on another mouthful. "Which just further emphasises my statement, you're good. I like Falisuth, it's a good style, even if it's a bit too fanciful for my taste."

"It is the style that king Royd Antares himself created after he returned from Despasia and liberated Velrosia from under the rule of the tyrant of Maranger, Voltarin," said Estella with no small amount of pride.

Attelus shrugged, "yes, but it's a style meant for someone with almost superhuman agility and speed. According to the legends Royd had each in such quantity, he may as well have been one of the Emperor's Primarchs."

Estella smiled widely at that. "He may well have been, you never know Attelus, you never know. Anyway speaking of superhuman speed and agility how did you learn to fight? I saw you kill all those..." she paused as a grimace of disgust came across her attractive face, "...traitor guardsmen I was very much impressed."

Attelus turned away, trying to hide the sudden flush to his cheeks at the compliment, "I-I caught them by surprise that was the only reason why I took them down."

"It was still an impressive feat Attelus, I don't think that many of the scouts of the Velrosian 1st could perform such a feat."

He reddened even worse, "th-thanks."

"W-what happened to your parents?" Attelus blurted out.

Estella raised an eyebrow, not in annoyance but in curiosity. "Why do you ask?"

"Y-you said that you were no longer a noble, what did you mean by that?"

"Oh," she said, and Attelus immediately regretted asking the question as a look of extreme sadness appeared on her face, "I did? Alright, but first can I ask you a question?"

"S-sure."

Tears appeared in her blue eyes. "What happened to you Attelus? Where are your parents? Why are you in these ruins alone? You should not worry about me, I am not the one who has fought such a desperate fight in these ruins for so long."

Attelus stared at her, feeling tears well in his own eyes, "I-I don't know, it j-just happened, one second I'm walking home from my scholam and then the bombs came, and, and..."

He whipped away his tears with his sleeve, "then everything went to hell I don't know I-"

She suddenly took Attelus into her arms, embracing the boy tightly as he cried ragged sobs into her chest.

"It's okay," she cooed, "its okay."

When Attelus finally pulled away his large hazel eyes were red with tears. In all honesty, he felt guilty as well. Estella had seemingly confused his questions as a legitimate concern, but actually, he asked them more from his suspicion than much else.

"Thank you," he managed.

She smiled and nodded back. "It's no problem Attelus," then she sighed, "alright the reason why I am no longer a noble is-."

"You don't need to tell me," he interrupted, "if you don't want to."

"No it's okay Attelus, I want to tell you, you see I am," she paused, 'or I was the youngest daughter of Lord Isaac Erith he was the lord of the small northeastern province of Tasilin, I don't know if you have heard of it."

Attelus nodded confirmation.

"When the bombs struck Attelus, they didn't just ravage Varander but most of north Velrosia including my brother's city..."

"Your brother's city?" asked Attelus.

"Yes my father died a few years ago, so my brother had taken Lordship," she paused, "the city of Foruthian was where my brother sat in power it was also the city the hardest hit, nothing was left standing from what I have heard."

Attelus looked to the floor unsure exactly what to say, "I'm sorry...where were you when the bombardment began?"

She smiled, "I was south, serving with the P.D.F. in Hyrition..."

Her words trailed away as she stared blankly at the wall in what seemed to be reverie.

"A-Are you okay?"

His words brought her abruptly back into reality, "yes, yes I'm okay."

"I'm sorry Estella."

"It's okay Attelus," she smiled sadly and patted him on the thigh, "it's okay."

"I uhm can I, can ask you another question?"

"Sure."

He sighed it was the most obvious question of all, the one which he really should have asked right from the start but hadn't been able to build up the courage until now. "How did you get here?"

Estella grinned and shook her head in amusement, "I knew you would ask this sooner or later and fair enough."

She swallowed before continuing. "My squad and I were sent to scout the ruins of Varander. Our forces had managed to fight a small gap in the enemy line which allowed for my squad and I to sneak through without detection. Everything was going well until we were..."

"Ambushed?" Attelus asked with wide eyes, he could see where this was going from a mile away.

"We were," she said with a nod, "but don't get me wrong, my squad was not ambushed by the foolish ill-disciplined soldiers that you have seen, no these, these attackers they were different."

"How so?"

"For starters Attelus, they did not wear purple flak armour like the rest of the invaders, no they wore red, and..." she paused shivering despite the warmth, " and they wore iron masks with grotesque, horrific visages emblazoned like, like-like snarling daemons and they were good, very, very good disciplined and brutal."

Her tone and body language welled with pride. "There were eighty of them Attelus, eighty! And even though they had the surprise and we were only twenty, by the time we were two they were reduced to twenty. Trooper Herst Vanti and I were the only ones remaining he was badly injured I tried to carry him with me as we ran but..."

She paused, her pride replaced by sudden sadness, "at his insistence he stayed and gave me cover fire while I ran, it was thanks to him I managed to escape."

Estella must have seen the shock in Attelus' eyes, "I did not want to leave him Attelus, but we still had to complete our mission, I still had to complete our mission to scout the ruins of Varander, so here I am with you, my friend."

Suddenly Attelus sighed.

"What's wrong?" she asked concerned.

"You've lost so much," he said shaking his head, "so much more than I have, your brother, your city, your squad and here you are comforting me, I-I..."

Estella's expression turned hard, "Attelus Xanthis Kaltos, how old are you?"

He looked at her incredulous, "what?"

"How old are you?" she demanded again, this time with much more force.

"I don't know, I don't know, I'm sixteen- seventeen maybe, I think."

Estella hugged him tightly again and said in his ear, "Attelus I am thirty-five years old, I have served in the military for seventeen years. It's hard for me but you have to remember that you are still a child, you are skilled at fighting and you have killed but you are still young and nothing, nothing could have prepared you for this hell. So do not think for one second, that I am any worse off than you. Nobody your age should be forced through this, absolutely no one."

Attelus hugged her back but thought as he did, how the hell did she know my middle name?

They talked for another hour or so, but it was soon evident to Attelus just how exhausted Estella was despite her putting on a face.

Finally, he asked, "how long were you on the run?"

She looked at him with weary eyes before replying. "Two days Attelus. The patrol chasing me earlier I stumbled upon when I entered the Varanderian outskirts, just my frigging luck. I was foolish. I didn't think the enemy still patrolled the ruins."

Attelus frowned. "Yeah, I was recently wondering along the same lines. But enough about that I can see that you're exhausted, take some rest."

She nodded a slow, tired movement. "Are you sure? Will you be alright?"

He smiled, shaking his head in amusement. "Yeah, I think I'll be alright. I've lived alone for this long I think I can cope now, perhaps. Get some rest, Estella. We're going to move at dark. I've been in the place for too long now and after that battle, we might attract more unwanted attention."

"M-kay," Estella said softly as she began to slip onto her side, her eyes slowly shutting simultaneously, "wake me when it is time."

Attelus nodded although he knew she wouldn't be able to see it.

He sat and watched Estella sleep, trying to remember whether or not he had actually told her his middle name. But after a while he shook away such thoughts, now wasn't the time to dwell on that.

With a sigh, Attelus slowly got to his feet again and started up the stairs to look outside.

He now had a guard duty to perform.

0 notes

thlim2017 · 6 years ago

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The Feds Shamefully Persecute China's Huawei For Being Too Successful

As is well-known now, American authorities asked Canadian officials to arrest Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou last week. The Canadians complied, and that on its own should have readers a bit terrified. Financial commentator Zachary Karabell observed that the arrest was “somewhat like the Chinese arresting the daughter of Steve Jobs if she had helped run Apple.”So while officials in the Trump administration claim President Trump was unaware of the pending arrest when he had dinner recently with Chinese President Xi Jinping, let’s be serious. Of course Trump knew, or was soon to know. He would have had to know simply because the arrest itself was so outlandish, and so outside any reasonable norms.And since the arrest was more than outre, it’s useful to state emphatically that Trump and the Administration he leads is playing with serious fire. Markets reflect this previous truth. Protectionism on its own is boneheaded, and runs counter to the interests of American workers and companies alike. Protectionism combined with the arrest of prominent business leaders in other countries is truly dangerous. Channeling Karabell, imagine the arrest of a prominent U.S. business personage in China (think Apple’s Tim Cook, as an example), particularly given the present occupant of the White House. The Trump administration has crossed a serious line, and yes, the Trump administration should be blamed here. Something like this would never have happened without approval from the highest of the high. Almost as bad as what the Trump administration plainly called for has been the reaction among Republicans who should know better. Normally reliable Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse told the New York Times that “Americans are grateful that our Canadian partners have arrested the chief financial officer of a giant Chinese telecom company for breaking U.S. sanctions against Iran.” So up in arms was Florida Senator Marco Rubio that he promised legislation meant to ban Chinese telecom companies in the U.S. More on Rubio’s desire to vandalize basic economics in a minute.For now, it’s more than worthwhile to focus on Huawei’s alleged flouting of American law through its sale of telecom equipment (equipment that includes American-made components) to countries including Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. This is what has some in the U.S. political class riled up, and it’s a loud reminder of just how microscopic is that same class’s understanding of economics.To put it as plainly as possible, U.S. companies trade all the time with “Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.” They just do so through intermediaries. To understand this simple truth, we need only return to the 1970s and the toothless Arab oil embargo “imposed” on the United States. History books tell us that Arab countries stopped selling us oil, but they did no such thing. “Arab oil” continued to flow into the United States; albeit via producers in countries not embargoed. Going back further in time to World War I, the U.S. placed a trading embargo on Germany. No problem, U.S. exports to Scandinavian countries soared. American producers were still trading with Germany, only through intermediaries in countries near Germany.The above is how so-called U.S. trade controls can be understood. They’re utterly meaningless. So long as American companies are productive, and so long as there is demand from inside countries known to be enemies of the U.S., then U.S. companies will be trading with the enemy. They may not be breaking the law “directly,” but production itself is a signal of trade with everyone simply because there’s no accounting for the final destination of any good. In sports terms, while the San Antonio Spurs made a point to not trade all-world forward Kawhi Leonard to a Western Conference foe, they ultimately can’t block the Toronto Raptors from trading Leonard to one of their Western Conference rivals.Looked at through the prism of Huawei, it’s presently the world’s #2 maker of smartphones, and is the global leader when it comes to telecom equipment. What this tells us is that persecution of the corporation for sales to enemies of the U.S. is for federal officials to make a distinction without a difference. Short of Huawei hoarding all of its production, its smartphones and telecom equipment will ultimately reach Iran et al for the prosaic reason that Huawei sells so much in the way of smartphones and telecom equipment. It can’t be repeated enough that there’s no accounting for the final destination of any good. Translating what is completely mindless, the federal government is ultimately persecuting Huawei for being successful.Which brings us back to Rubio’s proposed legislation. On its own Washington’s blockage of Huawei is notable when we remember how U.S./China trade is framed stateside. Supposedly they block all of our companies from selling there, while we’re fully open to them. Not so with Huawei. One doesn’t find its phones at AT&T stores not because they’re not high quality, but because they’re illegal. The why behind the latter is really and truly suspect.Huawei, a wildly highly successful telecom company can’t place its goods on U.S. shelves because it is viewed as a national security threat. The laughable argument offered up by members of the political class to defend the indefensible is that Huawei’s close ties to the Chinese government mean that American use of its phones and equipment imperil us stateside because we could be spied upon. Crucial here is that vague references to potential spying is all American official have to offer. Even though AT&T saw it perfectly reasonable to enter into a sales deal with Huawei, U.S. officials disallowed the move. "National security" once again, but no concrete explanation. Furthermore, it wouldn't really matter. Huawei phones are sold in 170 countries around the world. If Americans want to use them, they need only transact with individuals residing in locales where they're sold.The real threat here is U.S. telecoms that are close enough to our federal government such that they can convince federal officials to pursue always damaging protectionism. Luckily for U.S. smartphone makers (Apple sells 20% of its iPhones in China), the rules against our best and brightest in China aren’t so stringent.But the main thing is that national security types are wrapping themselves in a false argument that the Chinese will spy on us through our phones. Ok, but what will they do? As President Trump’s endless Tweets about China remind us, we’re a huge market for Chinese companies. So, we’re supposed to believe the Chinese government will spy on us in order to war against the biggest market for companies close to that same Chinese government?The whole Huawei story is a ridiculous one. And a protectionist one. And one rooted in flamboyant confusion about economics within the U.S. political class. But the worst thing about this story is how dangerous it is. When protectionism leads to arrests, it’s not unreasonable to assume that shooting could be next.The above in mind, we’ve heard since Trump entered the White House that he’s surrounded himself with people who understand diplomacy and the importance of trade to world peace. It’s time for those people to stand up in the Administration, and to show a willingness to depart same unless sanity prevails. Because make no mistake about it, the arrest of Meng Wanzhou was truly insane.I'm a speech and op-ed writer, Director of the Center for Economic Freedom at FreedomWorks, editor of RealClearMarkets, and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research & Trading. My new book is The End of Work: Why Your Passion Can Become Your Job. Other books by me.. (Ori. from https://china-observer.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-feds-shamefully-persecute-chinas.html?spref=tw)

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junker-town · 7 years ago

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Aaron Boone doesn’t like Star Wars, and other bad opinions he revealed during his Twitter AMA

[DEEP SIGH]

Aaron Boone was officially introduced as the Yankees’ new manager during a press conference at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday.

The press conference was what you would expect from Boone, with a lot of sucking up to a fan base that is already familiar with him as a player and a baseball community that is collectively side-eyeing this hire with all the offseason energy they can muster.

He expressed his excitement about being given the opportunity to manage, since he couldn’t really talk about his experience or anything. He promised “great relationships with the players” and how the franchise will “get all he’s got” and overall it was a lot of “aw shucks, I’m just so happy to be here trying my best” quotes that could have been delivered by a vanilla cupcake without any icing and still have the same emotional heft attached.

At least he brought up the Red Sox rivalry, which I assume is contractually obligated for any new Yankees skipper. The only reason Aaron isn’t the member of the Boone family it is easiest to eye roll about at this moment in time is because Bret exists.

Besides the press conference, Boone further initiated himself back into the New York fanbase with a Twitter AMA (Ask Me Anything) after his official presser.

Which is where we start to have some real problems. Because some of his opinions are complete garbage.

It started out fine enough, with normal baseball questions about his career. Even if it’s a little weird that besides that time he hit one of the most talked about home runs in the last 30 years, his favorite part of playing was...having breakfast with Don Zimmer?

Hi Nate - toughest pitcher I faced during my playing days was Ben Sheets. Dominated me. #BooneAMA https://t.co/LxZBN8rEJ5

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) December 6, 2017

Hi Derek - my breakfasts on the road with Don Zimmer. I cherish them. #BooneAMA https://t.co/LRoiTo1Jcb

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) December 6, 2017

Pure joy and excitement. Just really humbled. #BooneAMA https://t.co/N14bzDkcgR

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) December 6, 2017

Good question. I think this one: #BooneAMA https://t.co/osux8j3kcf

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) December 6, 2017

Even with that extra dose of twee at the end this is all fine, whatever. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.

He starts getting into the weeds with some questionable opinions about Die Hard and pineapple pizza, but I will also readily accept that these questions can go either way based on your personality.

Despite my personal opinions about both of these things being quite strong this is not the time nor place to litigate which is the correct answer because again, it gets much worse.

Hi Robert - Yes. Die Hard is a Christmas movie. #BooneAMA https://t.co/et6ukeBK6C

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) December 6, 2017

I love pineapple and I would eat it if it's on there, but my preference is just straight pepperoni pizza. #BooneAMA https://t.co/NiFvYhIZPJ

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) December 6, 2017

It gets worse because Aaron Boone is not excited for the new Star Wars movie.

Hi Marc - no, but my kids are. #BooneAMA https://t.co/XVKjbN1v8f

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) December 6, 2017

Reasonably, this should be a fireable offense. This is sociopathic behavior that at the very least should be looked into, and at worst could mean he’s not a human and is in fact a baseball-hating robot sent from outer space to bore us all to death instead of allowing us to enjoy the game.

Now, not everybody has to like Star Wars. That is not at all what I am saying. You should, but if you don’t it’s not the end of the world. Every generation has their own preferences, But in Aaron Boone’s specific situation, I am highly skeptical of this opinion.

Boone was born in 1973, four years before A New Hope was released in theaters. So he definitely didn’t get the chance to see that in a good ol’ fashioned movie house, and it’s also fair to give him the slight benefit of the doubt that he didn’t see The Empire Strikes Back in a theater when he was seven either.

But he was 10 when Return of the Jedi released and at that point we have a problem. Because by the time you’re 10, you are surrounded by fifth graders that are completely wrapped up in whatever pop culture phenomenon is happening at that time. And in 1983 that was Star Wars. I even confirmed with our resident old(er) guy on staff, Grant Brisbee, that this timeline checks out.

So Aaron Boone either was completely impervious to the overwhelming love of Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie happening throughout his age group, or he actively decided to hate what his friends liked. What kind of child was Aaron Boone that he didn’t like Star Wars as a 10 year old?!

Add to this that Bret is four years old than Aaron, old enough to see Empire in theaters and love it and make his brother watch it with him, and this is flabbergasting. Were there no backyard lightsaber fights? Bret forcing Aaron to be Chewie so he could be Han for Halloween? Matching lunch boxes?

This family might have had problems, at least when it comes to pop culture.

Aaron did redeem himself in the end though. Because under no circumstances, EVER, is a hot dog a sandwich.

Hi Blake - A hot is NOT a sandwich. I'm eating an actual sandwich as I type. A hot dog is a hot dog. #BooneAMA https://t.co/KLDFDb3KaM

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) December 6, 2017

Thank god for at least a little sanity in this Twitter AMA.

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thefabulousfulcrum · 7 years ago

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Someone needs to tell you.....

Wake Up, Liberals: There Will be No 2018 'Blue Wave,' No Democratic Majority and No Impeachment

via AlterNet

By Andrew O'Hehir / Salon

May 27, 2017

We received a message from the future this week, directed to the outraged liberals of the so-called anti-Trump resistance. It was delivered by an unlikely intermediary, Greg Gianforte, the Republican who won a special election on Thursday and will soon take his seat in Congress as Montana’s lone representative. (Here’s a trivia question to distract you from the doom and gloom: Without recourse to Google, how many other states can you name that have only one House seat?)

If you found yourself ashen-faced and dismayed on Friday morning, because you really believed the Montana election would bring a sign of hope and mark the beginning of a return to sanity in American politics, then the message encoded in Gianforte’s victory is for you. It goes something like this:

Get over Montana already—and stop trolling yourself with that stupid special election in Georgia too. They don’t mean anything, and anyway — that dude Jon Ossoff? He’s about the lamest excuse for a national progressive hero in the entire history of Democratic Party milquetoast triangulation. Oh, and since we’re on the subject: Forget about the “blue wave” of 2018. Forget about the Democratic majority of 2019. Forget about the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Have you even been paying attention? Because none of that stuff is happening and it’s all a massive distraction.

A distraction from what, you ask? Well, that’s a good question without a clear answer, and the message gets pretty fuzzy after that. I would suggest that rebuilding American politics and indeed all of American public discourse, now that they’ve been Trumpified, is not about the next electoral cycle or the one after that. It’s going to take a while, and I’m not sure how much the Democratic Party will have to do with it, or what it will look like.

No doubt the exaggerated media focus on Montana was inevitable, in the age of the voracious 24/7 news cycle: This was only the second vacant congressional seat to be filled since Trump took office, and the first where the Democratic candidate appeared to have a real shot. But the Big Sky frenzy also spoke to the way American politics has almost entirely become a symbolic rather than ideological struggle — a proxy war between competing signifiers whose actual social meaning is unclear.

Despite their abundant differences, Barack Obama and Donald Trump were both semiotic candidates, who appeared to represent specific worldviews or dispositions (the espresso cosmopolitan; the shameless vulgarian) but presented themselves as a disruption to “normal” politics and were difficult to nail down in left-right ideological terms. Understanding an off-year congressional election in an idiosyncratic and thinly populated Western state, where fewer than 400,000 voters cast ballots, as a referendum on the national mood or the GOP health care bill or much of anything else is patently absurd. But it’s a miniature example of the same reduction to symbolism, in which everything is said to stand for something else and democracy becomes pure spectacle.

As for Gianforte, the inadvertent vehicle for our message, nobody outside Montana had heard of him before this week, and we’re not likely to hear much from him in Washington either, where he will disappear into the chorus of fleshy, pickled-looking, age-indeterminate white millionaires who make up the House Republican caucus. Gianforte found his one moment of fame after allegedly assaulting Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs on the eve of the election, making the GOP candidate a focal point of widespread liberal wish-casting and concern-trolling. Surely the good people of Montana would see the light of reason now that the Republican candidate had been revealed — gasp! — as a thin-skinned, violent bully.

It’s almost hilarious — in the vein of that long-running “Peanuts” gag about Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football — that anyone managed to convince themselves that purportedly decking a representative of the “liberal media” would damage Gianforte. It probably didn’t make much difference; about 70 percent of the votes had already been cast before the Jacobs incident. But I think it’s safe to say that likely Republican voters in Montana, and damn near everywhere else, can be divided into two groups: those who didn’t much care or were inclined to look the other way, and those who were absolutely thrilled.

Gianforte’s decisive victory over Democrat Rob Quist on Thursday has provoked a fresh round of soul-searching from the same people who made too damn much of the Montana election in the first place. We have been told that Democrats must field stronger candidates and commit more resources, that Bernie Sanders does not possess some magic elixir that attracts disgruntled white people and that Donald Trump remains popular in places where people really like him. If that’s not quite enough Captain Obvious, Washington Post columnist Greg Hohmann devoted an impressive amount of research and reporting to the Montana aftermath before arriving at the diagnosis that there is “a growing tribalism that contributes to the polarization of our political system.” You don’t say!

Let me be clear that I’m indicting myself here as well: I edit political coverage at Salon, and I followed the Montana news closely. I knew perfectly well how it was likely to turn out, but one can always be wrong about that (as we discovered last November), and I shared some dim sense that it might be cathartic to experience an insignificant proxy victory in a state I have never even visited. But when I ask myself why I felt that way, even a little, the answers are not edifying.

For many people in, let’s say, the left-center quadrant of the American political spectrum — especially those who are not all that eager to confront the fractured and tormented state of the current Democratic Party — Montana and Georgia and 2018 seem(ed) to represent the opening chapters of a comeback narrative, the beginning of a happy ending. If what happened in 2016 was a nonsensical aberration, then maybe there’s a fix right around the corner, and normal, institutional politics can provide it.

First you chip away at Republican triumphalism, and the House majority, with a couple of special-election victories. Then it’s about organizing, recruiting the right candidates for the right seats, registering voters and ringing doorbells, right? Democrats picked up 31 seats in the George W. Bush midterms of 2006 — and will need 24 or so this time — so, hey, it could happen. For that matter, Republicans gained an astounding 63 seats in the Tea Party election of 2010, and many observers have speculated that Trump-revulsion might create that kind of cohesion on the left. So we sweep away Paul Ryan and his sneering goons, give Nancy Pelosi back her speaker’s gavel after eight long years, introduce the articles of impeachment and begin to set America back on the upward-trending path of political normalcy and niceness.

I suspect it’s pointless to list all the things that are wrong with that scenario, because either you agree with me that it’s a delusional fantasy built on seven different varieties of magical thinking or you don’t, and in the latter case I am not likely to convince you.

My position is that Donald Trump is a symptom of the fundamental brokenness of American politics, not the cause. Electing a Democratic House majority (which is 95 percent unlikely to happen) and impeaching Trump (which is 100 percent not going to happen) might feel good in the moment, but wouldn’t actually fix what is broken. Considered as a whole, the “blue wave” fantasy of November 2018 is a more elaborate and somewhat more realistic version of the “Hamilton elector” fantasy of December 2016: Something will happen soon to make this all go away.

(Let’s throw in the caveat that there are plausible universes in which the Republicans ultimately decide to force Trump out of office for their own reasons. Entirely different scenario.)

If you don’t want to believe me now, I get it. But take a good hard look at Rep.-elect Greg Gianforte, and go through all the excuses you have made to yourself about how and why that happened, and we’ll talk.

It’s worth making two salient structural points that I think are beyond dispute, and then a larger, more contentious one. As my former boss David Daley has documented extensively, both on Salon and in his book “Ratfucked,” the extreme and ingenious gerrymandering of congressional districts locked in by Republican state legislators after the 2010 census virtually guarantees a GOP House majority until the next census and at least the 2022 midterms. Yes, the widely-hated health care law might put a few Republican seats in play that weren’t before. But the number of genuine “swing” districts is vanishingly small, and it would require a Democratic wave of truly historic dimensions to overcome the baked-in GOP advantage.

As for the Senate — well, Democratic campaign strategists will mumble and look away if you bring that up, because the Senate majority is completely out of reach. Of the 33 Senate seats up for election next year, 25 are currently held by Democrats — and 10 of those are in states carried by Donald Trump last year. It’s far more likely that Republicans will gain seats in the Senate, perhaps by knocking off Joe Manchin in West Virginia or Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, than lose any at all.

Those disadvantages could be overcome if we were looking at a major electoral shift, on the order of FDR in 1932 or the post-Watergate midterms of 1974, when Democrats won 49 seats in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. I can only suppose that’s the sort of thing the blue-wave fantasists imagine. That brings us to the final and largest point: Exactly who is kidding themselves that the Democratic Party, in its 2017 state of disarray and dysfunction, is remotely capable of pulling off a history-shaping victory on that scale?

This is a paradoxical situation in many ways, one that reflects the larger decline of partisan politics in general. The Republican Party went through a spectacular meltdown in 2016, but wound up winning full control of the federal government, partly through luck and partly by default. Meanwhile, Democrats hold a demographic advantage that was supposed to guarantee them political hegemony into the indefinite future, and their positions on most social and economic issues are far more popular than Republican positions (except when you get to nebulous concepts like “national security”). Now they face an opposition president who is both widely despised and clownishly incompetent.

That sounds like a prescription for a major renaissance — but not for a party that is so listless, divided and ideologically adrift. Democrats have been virtually wiped out at the state and local level in non-coastal, non-metropolitan areas of the country: They had full control of 27 state legislatures in 2010, and partial control in five more; today they control 14 (with three splits). There was plenty of bad faith and unfair recrimination on both sides of the Bernie-Hillary split of 2016, which there’s no need to rehearse here. But the bitterness has lingered not just because each side blames the other for the election of Donald Trump (and they both could be right) but because it represents a profound underlying identity crisis that ultimately has little to do with Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. (Again, they are the symbols or signifiers.)

I have previously argued that the Democratic Party’s civil war was unavoidable and has been a long time coming. Like most people, I assumed it would play out under President Hillary Clinton, not with the party reeling in defeat and at a historic low ebb. In the face of a national emergency, maybe Democrats will find some medium-term way to bridge the gulf between pro-business liberal coalition politics and a social-democratic vision of major structural reform and economic justice. Whoever the hell they nominate for president in 2020 will have to pretend to do that, at any rate.

But right now the Democratic Party has no clear sense of mission and no coherent national message, except that it is not the party of Donald Trump. I can understand the appeal of that message, the longing for a return to normalcy, calm and order that it embodies. What we learned in Montana this week — and will likely learn in Georgia, and learn again in the 2018 midterms — is that that’s not enough. There is no “normal” state we can return to.

For the Trump resistance to have meaning, it must be more than the handmaiden or enabler of a political party that has lost its power, lost its voice and lost its way. Electoral victories will come (and go), but we should have learned by now that they are never sufficient in themselves. Rebuilding and redeeming American democracy — if that can still be accomplished — is a much bigger job, and there are no shortcuts.

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