#Fabulous Disaster era

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔈𝔵𝔬𝔡𝔲𝔰 "𝔉𝔞𝔟𝔲𝔩𝔬𝔲𝔰 𝔇𝔦𝔰𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯", յգՑգ

[verdemoun]

BOO!!! Did I scare you? What's Halloween like in timewarp au? What's the gangs first experiences with it, and do others help the ones experiencing it for the first time navigate the holidays? Also sorry for being the insane Micah bell fan in your asks but does Micah get a Scrooge moment for each Holiday

yes you terrified me silly

Bessie is so careful to explain Halloween because children in costume approaching house full of gang of outlaws that are used to shooting people who come on their camp 'territory' on sight is a recipe for a goddamned disaster. Like sit down conversation breaking down the concept and answering all their questions and begging them not to eat all the candy because it's socially acceptable to egg the houses of people who do not provide candy and various other tricks.

The 1899 gang are all together for their first Halloween and do end up loving it. Lenny forces Sean and Jenny to dress up in matching Dorothy, tinman and scarecrow costumes and go out clubbing. Hosea and Bessie go out for a fancy Halloween dinner party dressed to the nines like 19th century aristocracy.

Arthur gets to take Isaac trick or treating just wearing his actual timewarped clothes complete with replacement gunslinger hat (rip he never gets His hat back).

Kieran contently watches horror movies alone snickering to himself about how fake the effects look only to still scream in terror and need to be talked through a panic attack when Bessie and Hosea got home.

--

The whole gang come around to the idea of Halloween, only because 90% of them see it as a chance to wear their pre-timewarp clothes and get drunk.

John dresses as a pinkerton one year because Abigail Jr insisted on dressing up as her daddy the rancher and wearing John's timewarp clothes. His justification was it was the scariest thing he could think of, which still did not save him from nearly getting his nose broken when he went up behind Arthur and shouted 'this is the pinkerton detective agency!'.

At Abigail Jr's insistence Abigail is almost always dressed as some variation of princess goddess fairy queen angel. She then blank stared at John and said he had to be dressed as the frog prince but still as an ugly frog no one knows is a prince. She wanted to dress as a witch.

They usually do some sort of get together for Halloween, because there's something really innocent and fun (read: cathartically traumatizing) about being able to see each other in their canon era clothing. Of course, some still insist on dressing up but that's just as fun.

With the additions of Karen and their daughter Maeve, the MacSummers quartet+child finally complete Lenny's vision of a full wizard of oz group costume. Before anyone could poke fun of them for making Maeve dress as Toto they realized she absolutely insisted on dressing as Toto as an excuse to bite people. Sean is very proud of her. Karen also insists on being a sexy cowardly lion.

Arthur and Charles going on modern era dates in their canon era clothes making up for all the time they didn't get to have being in a relationship in canon era. Big scary outlaws having milkshakes at a 24 hour diner.

Between Abigail Jr being a witch and Maeve being Toto no one was save from bitten or whacked with a magic wand as Abigail Jr cursed them.

Micah in the club in outlaw garb getting offended when he boasts his costume is the famed gunslinger Micah Bell III only to be met with blank stares and 'who??'.

Isaac and Jack, who of course dressed as the fabulous killjoys, also go hang out with Isaac's gang and will absolutely be arrested for graffiti and trespass that is escalated to destruction of property when it is discovered they mixed sugar into the still-wet concrete slab of a commercial site being built on what should have been protected land.

At least once someone dressed as an O'Driscoll. Fuck it it was probably Micah and Sadie almost sent him to the next life before she realized it was Micah and was still contemplating using it as an excuse to kill Micah when Kieran, to everyone's surprise and slight pride, absolutely walloped him with a two by four and Micah spent the rest of Halloween in emergency with a concussion.

[ssaalexblake]

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the Ghost Monument. I know some people feel the stakes aren’t high enough, and that maybe if the racers were pitted against each other more it could be a more ‘interesting’ episode I guess, but I find the dynamics of the 2 guest cast to be interesting because they aren’t enemies, they’re not friends either but there’s not a desire to kill each other, because they are their out of necessity and to me that’s more then just being there out of ego or a prize. That surrounded by the history of the Stenza on the planet, it’s fascinating and one where I don’t think I’m fully across yet, so would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Honestly, I was mostly just shocked that people thought this episode was bad? It wouldn't make my favourites list but there's literally nothing wrong with it either in plot or the execution of it imo. I enjoy it in a rewatch! It builds important dynamics and sets up important arcs. The foundation for the main characters are more firmly set.

Also, like, whatever peoples feelings on the stakes in this episode, it should be noted that The Ghost Monument as an episode has a dark twin. Its name is Ascension of the Cybermen. Narratively they function as a pair and the second one is supposed to be a lot darker with more stakes that shows the development of the characters, so you can't really do that if the first one is absolutely Go Go Go GO high stakes all the whole way through? The tonal difference belays the seriousness of the second episode. The contrast shows to demonstrate both how far the fam have come in AotC and how far 13 has fallen from TGM.

Not to say the sitch they're in in TGM isn't serious, it is, but this is not super stressful to the doctor, she's not, till the very end, scared she can't return them home or that they'll die (well. anymore than the doctor apparently normally is. The monologue in Once, Upon Time was fabulous but very sad). The fam are mostly just following 13's lead to get through this all figuring it's their best chance. In the second episode, they show their own initiative. In effect TGM is their training wheel episode that allows them to survive when the stakes get high.

The links between 11x01 & 2 and 12x09 & 10 give me Life. Such brilliant arching plot threads. Great bookends to Ryan and Graham's time on the show.

And really? This is a personal opinion, but disaster apocalyptic scenarios (which this is applicable to even if our group aren't natives of the place) where everybody lives in hell but just fight and try and kill each other as well as the environment trying to off them are just Bad. And belays an absolutely twisted view of us as a species. I feel like them all banding together when it gets tough and forming a community, if a very terse one where not everybody gets along, is actually an accurate portrayal of people in general. Even whatshisface Enzo or whatever joined the group he hated for safety because he was a lousy person, yeah, but he was Not stupid. I cannot stand grimdark crap like those zombie shows where people just kill each other en masse in their warring factions or whatever like the whole of human history isn't us forming societies and working together.

But speaking of whatever his name is, I feel like his contributions to the dialogue of the episode played an important part in delivering the themes they were going for, so making them fight instead would just have damaged the episode's core aims.

Mr 'I love my mum she taught me people are awful and selfish and horrible by breaking my trust and allowing me to get badly injured' is, congrats, the first person in this era to talk about his terrible mother whom 13 Immediately says sucks (gee i wonder why they did that. he even got hurt because he fell and his mum didn't save him). This is also the first time the cycle of abuse is mentioned because uh, the loser in the mother of the year competition did it specifically so it'd perpetuate itself in her son. This is the episode the timeless child is first mentioned. Considering the cornerstone of the arc is that this child in the end Broke that chain of abuse I do not consider this a coincidence. I'd bet him and his mother would think that Tecteun made that child Strong by what they did to them. 13 did Not like this man and she wouldn't, he's a dark mirror but also the victim of a really shitty mother.

There are other things i take note of in this episode. It's the first time out of post regeneration weirdness we see 13 really hit her stride. It's the first time we see her eschew pacifism as Her Thing despite the fact that she's already demonstrated her willingness to use violence with a few bombs the ep previous. Contextual morality. Reoccurring theme. It Wasn't a good idea to use violence in the situation she was in in TGM. Still doesn't make her a pacifist though bc lol, the bomb thing. So it's Kind of the first blatant portrayal of 13's private actions contrasting ones witnessed by the fam which are used to make her look better in their eyes. This will continue all season.

The stenza are now explicitly portrayed as violent colonizers as opposed to weird guys with the universe's most messed up election system. The lady is going through a race from hell is here to buy her loved ones out of the hell of their society. It's the first time the theme Properly pops up in the era. The first of many times. 13 continues to be a support to Ryan here, deepening their relationship. She's dad-ing him. She's not mad, she's disappointed! (she's also mad). She's also supportive of him.

I also think that 13 totally running out of ideas and thinking they're all gonna die at the end when the others disappear and the tardis does Not appear sets up something interesting. The fam, the ones who have been sceptical about her ability to save them this ep but still figure her as their best chance Immediately bolster her confidence and try and prop her up. They continue with the 'you've got this doc, we have faith in you!!' for a while after that, i assume they think she needs the morale boost? But I think it just leaves her with this terrifying pressure in the end?

She tries to let them know later on that this travelling is Dangerous and that they could get hurt but i think they have kind of started to buy into their own hype about her by then and aren't as worried as they should be. They think tim shaw is the worst of the worst the whole of s11 and 13 doesn't barely deign to acknowledge him bc he's so beneath her. So by the time the real bad guys pop out of the woodwork that Actually scare her the fam are overconfident in her ability to save them, which in turn eventually leaves them in the AOTC situation where they have to save themselves because she Cannot save them herself. She gave them an out before then and they didn't take it because they were not worried. I think the journey to that overconfidence starts right here.

I guess if i had to gripe it'd be that the scene where the two racers decide to take the prize together was Way too easy and more of a footnote in the story? There wasn't really another way this was going to end, but still. That seemed a little weakly done to me. I'd like a little bit more time devoted to it because it's not like i can't think of a few different scenarios to get here, it's just they'd have taken more screen time. In the end, I think that the episode had more important plot threads to go into so they just rushed it a bit. Maybe that's where people wanted more conflict? I don't want more conflict as much as a deeper discussion. They Didn't have a gripe with each other beyond that they were competing against each other and wanted to win and it didn't seem to occur to them that they could just share. But also, i've not watched this for a while. Maybe i'm misremembering, but i remember it feeling short to me.

idk, in the end it reminds me, weirdly, of Jurassic park where they're working their way across the park to the guest centre when all the dinos are escaped. Yes they're in danger and at times it's severe, but they have time to talk and bond and work together using their own skills as a group. The stakes Are high, there be monsters out to kill them and they want to go home, but it's also not 100% dire at all times. It hits the same mood for me.

This episode wasn't grim but it wasn't trying to be either so i guess if you Like grim it'd be a disappointment, but it did what it wanted to pretty well with setting stuff up and having a reasonable compelling episode plot.

Also... It's Super pretty. The bright sun. Glorious.

[swallowtailed]

palisade 20:

i'm not gonna lie, jack getting introduced at the top jumpscared me as bad as anything in fatt literally ever has

loved that "the blood is in the grip" got brought back. also "they say she makes her staff practice dying" is such a fantastic, horrifying line. sticking in my head.

(would just like to note that my episode 1 prediction that the cause would get thrown into the spotlight within 20 eps was correct)

i really wonder whether broadcasting this message all across palisade isn't gonna be a massive pr disaster for the bilats. eager to see the fallout--with the right maneuvering, it seems like the cause could gain a pretty serious advantage with this one.

(i have come pretty firmly down on the side of "it will not get blown up". it's fun to have the threat on the table, though! also, after listening to six-ish other seasons of fatt, this strikes me as a pretty typical structure for them--massive worldstate shift after act 1.)

need a clip of austin saying "the fiction does determine how the rolls work in this game". also, with cori and figure's gravity clock filling, i loved that austin called out that one use of that clock could be to bank a win for an attack on the stargrave. armor astir is built for this kind of thing!! this is what i am saying!!

"how do you fix a cracked foundation" strikes me as a very essential question for figure.

also, on rhyming with partizan--valence also got an inset blue gemstone, from the hypha in their second mission. (theirs was alexandrite.)

fabulous episode for cori. i lost my shit laughing at "you can't spell "we must slaughter the enemies of devotion" without "laughter"", but i love the direction she's gone instead. cursing era!

love the reveal that elle is working for arbitrage! it's a fun twist and helps open up that plotline--i imagine we'll see more arbitrage in the back half of the season. it's also a super interesting way to position a foil to cori--setting arbitrage's rampant capitalist individualism against the cult of devotion.

also cori decking elle and knocking over her glass of lemonade and then getting picked up by brnine for a feelings talk was incredible radio. (i have thoughts about that. they're going in a fic. watch this space.)

this was a great episode for reckonings--phrygian talking to saffron, figure taking a burden, cori dealing with her father's death, the ultimatum--really feels like we're entering a stage of consequences. questions like: what happens when you start to push back against the control on you and your life? when you encounter resistance, because of course you will, how do you move forward?

[quill-of-thoth]

Letters From Watson, Catching Up

The Musgrave Ritual part 3: fun bits! - I didn’t point it out in the last part, but I love how Musgrave immediately catches on to the scavenger hunt and starts helping. Especially because he knows the ins and outs of the house.

- Obviously there is immediately a corpse. And a crime scene reconstruction. I do like that Holmes admits that he has no idea whether it was an accident or on purpose that Brunton was trapped in the treasure chamber: contrary to many pastiches and modern adaptations he does not always have, or need, every single fact of the case.  - Also, the treasure. The absolute lack of fabulousness of the treasure! I admit that the first time I read this story with not a lot of historical knowledge (my known English monarchs skipped from allegedly King Arthur to Queen Elizabeth to Queen Victoria) the shabby condition of the artifacts made me think they were much more than two hundred odd years old. As an adult who has been to two archaeology digs I appreciate the realism: important things are seldom shiny! Granted, my best two finds were a left-handed pot sherd and a shred of china.  - On the subject of archaeology: every aspect of this discovery is a disaster and it makes me itch. First you remove the artifacts from their context with zero documentation, then you chuck them into a lake. Zero of ten stars all around. 

- Honestly, thousands of stolen artifacts filling the British museum and things that actually belong there thrown away in a pond. I have a grudge against Victorian era archaeologists that only starts with Heinrich Schliemann. - It’s currently VERY hard to quickly google information about Queen Elizabeth 1 or King Charles 1 and get answers, so I’m not going to do a deep dive (tonight) on whether this “ancient crown of the kings of England” (which didn’t exactly make me think that Charles 1 wasn’t some time in the 10th century) directly contradicts any knowledge of actual Elizabethan and immediately post-Elizabethan crowns. Hey British royal family, could you make it easier on historians and pick a new name, ever?

[byneddiedingo]

Martine Carol and Peter Ustinov in Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955)

Cast: Martine Carol, Peter Ustinov, Anton Walbrook, Henri Guisol, Lise Delamare, Paulette Dubost, Oskar Werner, Jean Galland, Will Quadflieg, Héléna Manson. Screenplay: Max Ophüls, Annette Waldemant, Jacques Natanson. Cinematography: Christian Matras. Production design: Jean d’Aubonne. Film editing: Madeleine Gug. Music: Georges Auric. 

A commercial disaster when it was released, Max Ophüls's opulent and expensive last film was heavily cut in a effort to salvage it, and after the director's death -- a little more than a year after its premiere -- it suffered from neglect. But it had hugely influential admirers among the Cahiers du cinéma set, French New Wave directors such as François Truffaut, and American auteur theorists like Andrew Sarris. The persistence of the cult of Lola Montès has resulted in a restoration of the film to something like what audiences once saw (and rejected): a giddy, dreamlike tale of the rise and fall of a fabulous 19th-century courtesan, mistress to Franz Liszt (Will Quadflieg) and King Ludwig I of Bavaria (Anton Walbrook), among perhaps many others. Martine Carol is Lola, and her story is told by the ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) of a circus in which she is the principal attraction. Ophüls pulled out all the stops, including rather garish Eastmancolor and an unusually restless use of CinemaScope. The camera, supervised by cinematographer Christian Matras, rarely stands still, meandering among the many layers of the sets designed by Jean d'Eaubonne -- every building, from the humblest inn to the most baroque castle, seems to have endless flights of stairs connecting its many stories. There is a kind of feverish fun to the whole thing, as long as you're not interested in the real Lola Montez, who didn't wind up in a cage as a long queue of circus-going men waited to kiss her. You can say it's a kind of meditation on the nature of celebrity or on the double standard that judges women's sexuality in a different way than men's. You can see Lola as a precursor of Marilyn Monroe -- the goddess of the era in which the movie was made. Or you can just sit back and experience the astonishing flow of images that Ophuls directs past us. Is it a great film? I'd be content with just calling it unique, which in an artistic medium like the movies, so dependent on the tried and true, is perhaps greatness enough.

[z34l0t]

"In the 20th century, the label “rock star” was the ultimate statement of individuality, a license for generations of swaggering, staggering musical geniuses to trash greenrooms and hurl televisions off balconies. In this century, the term has an extra meaning. This new usage came from the workplace, and originally implied virtuosity, like “ninja” or “guru.” By the 2020s, however, the term seems to have further devolved into something closer to “productive.” In many offices around America, telling someone they’re a “rock star” is now the same thing as telling them they did a really good job, a verbal downgrade so widespread it’s rendered the term meaningless. A quick search on my local Craigslist jobs board found “rock star” applied to a dental sterilization technician, a Jimmy Johns delivery driver, and a commissary kitchen prep cook in Canoga Park. One board management software company markets itself with a web banner reading “Become a Compliance Rock Star.”

[...]

"Most rich rockers aren’t this publicly egregious. Does it matter? For the vast majority of us, the doings of the ultrawealthy are like the internal workings of a casino (or crypto markets), seemingly designed to keep average folks ignorant of how they’re being fleeced. With every ultrarich performer, there will always be a public suspicion that sooner or later, their real id will pop out. It took 15 years and Jared Kushner’s memoir to learn that Bono privately serenaded Rupert Murdoch, on the French Riviera, to celebrate the purchase of The Wall Street Journal."

[...]

"With the collapse of a recordings sale structure, music tours may eventually be the realm of the independently wealthy. Is this really a surprise? In a world where Christian punk and Nazi rap are real things, billionaire rock bands feel inevitable. It’s their audience that’s the question mark. As capital consolidates into fewer and fewer hands, as essential services are defunded to ensure privatization and inflation outstrips wages already stripped bare by wage theft, as infrastructure fails due to ever-larger climatic disasters and GoFundMe becomes less and less viable as a national health care service, and as the wealthy escape to locations so fabulous and remote that we can’t even peek at them on Zillow, the rest of us stuck here in a rapidly warming meatspace may not be so friendly to the spectacle of billionaires rocking out."

[...]

"There's another way to look at this. We've been living in a Post-Poser Era for some time now. Every song or band, no matter how obscure, can be found instantly and anywhere. “Authenticity” is losing cohesion as a concept; it’s a speed bump to brand building, an abstraction in the distance. But posers were once essential roles in American music. They let the rest of us feel secure in our coolness. Could billionaire dad-band rockers be the new posers? I find the thought oddly comforting. Someone needs to take up the mantle again, and all the better if it’s people we never, ever have to feel sorry for."

[whatsonyourfyp]

Under Pressure: Capitalist System Versus Ideas for put off the End of the World 

And who am I? 

That’s a secret I’ll never tell…

I know you love me.

XOXO

- Gossip Girl

Hi guys! 

Who here never wishes to be as our dear S or the queen B? And I’m not saying about the queen Beyoncé (although all of us wish to be as she too). I’m talking about our little sweets of the Upper East Side, their lifeStyle, clothes, and influence. I know “without money, bro”. About it I scream #metoo. But a thing can make us have a little taste of this “fabulous life”. Yes, I’m talking about social media. 

We have entered into a new era. The digital era, where – How the Capitalism system wants us to believe – anybody can get a winner’s life which includes getting  and spending a lot of money, has the power to influence other people. As our dear S and B did. However, becoming an influence digital can be a two-way street. You acquire some fame, get gifts and money, receive invites to parties, know new places, new people. But to catch up to an influence digital you also need to keep your content engaged, constantly creating content in a frequency more and more fast to keep up inside the trends. All of this in the same frequency that you need to give feedback to your commerce partners, influence other peoples to try to buy the products that you’re trying to sell, just to get a taste of your lifeStyle. As a result of this fast demand as influencers as users keep under capitalism pressure.

Now you must be asking “what’s the problem with that?” Let me tell you, we’re 8 billion people in the world, living in an era where many people try to influence somebody, some more, others less. Social media allows world engagement. As a World wide web. In contrast, the World recourse is finite, and I don’t want to be here when it finishes. How about you? Let's go, we can’t be selfish. How about our children? How about the future of other people? Doesn't matter? Sorry b, Sorry S but your lifeStyles are against  life.

Let me tell you something. As the text above said,  Social media “brought on a new era of over-consumption”. There's a connection to Overproduction. This match adds to the already-high levels of pollution and toxic gasses that contribute to global warming. The main industries that contribute to disaster effects of overconsumption and over production include: Fashion, Agriculture, Manufacturing and automobile industries.  That remind you of something? we’re talking about all sides of your life, our whole life captured and influenced by social media. I leave this reflection here, as the text above author, do you’ve been trying to change ways? As I said “I really believe that the example drags. So, change the ways, step for step, can be possible even with the impact of social media” and create ideas to put off the End of the World. 

Yer, maybe I could tell the secret

XOXO

- A

[graffitibible]

dont ask me for the context for this there isnt any

[harrowscore]

sooooo, yesterday i watched hotd s1 finale. here are my (semi-coherent) thoughts:

i've had one (1) day to simmer down my instinctive "wtf??" reaction and ponder on some writing choices - actually, two notable writing choices. first, this is no got s8 levels of disaster, but i'd already noticed a couple of red flags in ep9 and so i was - i am - guarded, though my emotional investment is nowhere near as high as my peak asoiaf/got era. i'm way more detached, and if i came off as pissed in some prev posts it was more of a general 🤷🤷 feeling concerning old disappointments in correlated or different media. (having said that, the larys/alicent feet thing is atrocious.)

i see they're still going strong with the childbirth from hell saga - i've already written about it in an older post, and i quite liked it, however gory and heartbreaking it was.

i don't buy the daemyra choking (not in a kinky way) scene. there's nowhere near enough build up for that. yes, daemon killed his first wife (which btw wasn't in the book) but they hated each other and she wasn't a targ. from d. pov's that's quite an important detail. (not that i’m excusing it, you know.) i don't even buy that "he's grieving that's why he acts (more) irrationally and with 0 impulse control (than usual)" because while he's ready for war and legitimately angry at the thought of his brother being murdered (tho viserys had been rotting away for years, last time they saw each other he could barely stand/talk, it was only a matter of weeks, maybe a couple of months at best before he died, they should have been prepared for this & the greens response) he doesn't act that out of control. let's be honest here: daemyra was always problematic and people shouting ~grooming! weren't completely wrong, but the writers also sold it as High Romance. the Stupid Fangirls weren't that blinded by their silly girly brains: d&r were framed as being genuinely in love despite the painfully obvious problematic elements. (& the incest is the least problematic thing here, since this is westeros and they're targs.) i think one of the directors even compared their love to what she feels for her own husband. so no, we weren't dreaming it up, they just couldn't find a balance between Toxic Incest Couple & Soulmates Being Soulmates, and obv they had to put a ~Bad Man is Very Bad, Girlies, Don't Try At Home~ bs Morality Play that seems so damn popular in this day and age. mind you, we all knew shit was going to hit the fan with nettles' appearance (i'm still worried about her portrayal, she's just a young girl and daemon is so much older than her, and i have no idea how they’re going to develop/frame their relationship) but somehow i had not foreseen him being physically abusive to his wife (who just gave birth to their stillborn daughter and lost her father btw). i was expecting him to lash out but... not like this. after their (fabulous ngl) wedding i haven't been much invested in daemyra anyway (i thought their decades long budding romance was much more appealing) but despite what i said above, one thing d/r fans were wrong about was expecting that hbo could actually make a medieval fantasy wuthering heights 2.0 and deliver lmao. no mainstream media would do that, not in the current ~think of the girls!!! climate. this is like believing that the star wars sequels were a gothic female-gazey romance that featured rey's sexual awakening + happy ending with the local parricidal ex darksider - the romance was there, don't get me wrong, but no hollywood-made pop culture piece of media could ever deliver. we also know d/r history from f&b, it's not all sunshine and rainbows... tho it's not comparable to jaime&cersei either. this is no valonqar situation - if and when that happens in asoiaf, motives and characters can't be compared only because d. and jaime share a love for poor impulse control and incest; the framing for their ~love affair and the choking act is also radically different. this feels like a punishment for the girls who tend to romanticize daemon and his feelings for his niece, as a "sharp reminder" of who he is and what is capable of (and that women, even dragon queens who are more than mere consorts and childbearers, can be victimized and have shitty husbands ig). except that however awful and poor little meow meow he may be, he didn't do any of this marital abuse bs in the book as far as we know. which brings me to:

i have a small problem with the people who say "f&b is no real account of the dance, these characters can't be written as ooc because we basically don't know them! it's all headcanons and bias!". theoretically i agree: there are at least 3 different versions of any major event, and what intrigued me the most about this show was the premise of Unreliable Narrator Extraordinaire. which path would these writers follow? because logically one should also say: "is this what really happened in the dance?" like, aren't these people (hired by hbo, paid a shitton of money, apparently asoiaf fans themselves) also writing down their own interpretations? unless grrm himself is behind everything (foot fetish and wife-choking included) who are these people to say this is what actually happened? they didn't create the characters and the plot etc., we're seeing them through their eyes and bias as well. why are the Poor Naive Girls who romanticized the Bad Dark Prince (aka they knew he was a big asshole but didn't think he had it in him to actually assault the woman he loves) the ones to be so awfully biased and affected by media illiteracy, to the point i’ve already seen the usual crowd online gloating over it like “ha ha the bitches had it coming”? one could say this is just another version of the dance... which would actually be more compelling imo. this also brings me to:

grandma vhagar being nostalgic of her war crimes era and gnam gnam lucerys to the oblivion. i have... very mixed feelings about this. i agree that making aemond more than an evil cackling anime villain is a good choice but idk about this tbh. idk how they could have spin it differently either tho, so i give up. people say "at least he doesn't actively seek war out so he doesn't look like an idiot" except he looks like an even bigger idiot because no one in their right mind would chase down their four-and-ten nephew and his dragon (said to be “five times smaller” than vhagar) through the sky while they're riding a huge ass fucking beast that could dwarf a mountain and actually fought in the conquest just to pick out his eye, and not expect it to horribly escalate. like, if you make two dragons face each other (especially if one of them is as powerful and ancient as vhagar is) what do you think is going to happen? realistically, i mean? maybe aemond didn't want to go that far but omg he should have foreseen this from a mile. like, sweetie maybe you didn't study your history and lore so well. and for the "he's just a teenager he doesn't know what he's doing" crowd: in a short span of time this ~poor baby~ is going to burn down the riverlands, hundreds of people will die. the incident that sparks the dance being an actual accident, tho... lmao sorry but that sounds like a joke. like, no matter how you spin it, if you like or love or hate it, it still robs the character of his agency, and therefore the story of poignancy. and i'm not even 100% sold on ~the dragons randomly eating people alive even when their riders strictly forbid them too~ because yeah, i can see that, a dragon is no slave and of course they're not mindless beasts but actually quite intelligent etc. but on the other hand i for one can't wait for drogon to fire up kl of his own free will - maybe he'll just hate that fugly city, who knows - so that ~dany (aka an actual 16 year old victim of rape and abuse who liberated thousands of slaves in a continent she was exiled to as an infant) is going to burn children alive and be put down like a mad bitch because that's somehow comparable to lotr shire chapter!!1~ disk horse can finally die its miserable death.

so, yeah, mixed feelings about these two (2) plot points, particularly the ~daemon is physically abusive now~ thing. also dk about whitewashing the blacks anymore, rhaenys killed a fuck ton of civilians in ep9 for no conceivable reason (something that in the books and in peaceful times only the worst of the worst are willing to do, no matter how much these elite assholes don’t care about the smallfolk) and now daemon is even more evil than he was in the book. aegon ii may be... well, aegon ii, but with aemond being somehow more humane and whatever they're doing to alicent the blacks are the ones that actually wreak more havoc - and i’m not even touching the blood and cheese thing. at least aemond's fuck-up kinslaying was accidental lol. jokes aside i overall liked this ep more than i did ep9 and while it’s not bad bad... no mistake, this is no high television either. i’ve seen what great tv can do (it’s exceptionally rare tho, more than people think) and this doesn’t look like it except for some acting choices + scenes.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

MTV Headbanger’s Ball Tour, Exodus, Helloween and Anthrax

[glamgoblin]

Get to know me

Tagged by the fabulous @soyellowcurtainsthen thanks for the tag!

Name: Snowy

Sign: Aquarius

Height: 5’3” 5’4” ish I wanna be tall 😭😭

Time: here it’s like 11 pm, but it’s always time to take a little break and have a snack

Birthday: January 31st

Favorite Artist/Band: Only one? Jail! Atm Nightwish (always), Avicii, Motionless in White, Joel Corry, and (very important) Nekrogoblikon ( they are comedy goblin metal how can I NOT love them )

Last Movie: The Batman, I was craving bat content

Last show: I watched the Rebelde reboot but I would /not/ recommend it. The first season is okay but the second season took characters I tolerated and destroyed them. Other than that, last finished show I watched was Kinnporsche. Currently watching Vice Versa and The Eclipse

When I created this blog: I think 2013? My first year of university. I had another blog before this one I think. Permanent Hellsite Resident

What I post: Mostly whatever I’m watching/playing at the moment but it’s mostly Final Fantasy (in this house we believe in Genesis supremacy!) and bl (🥰 I’ve been a bl fan for years but mostly lurked until the bad buddy era)

Other blogs: Nope! Actually that’s a lie I have a sideblog called combat-mode because I wanted the url and wasn’t sure if I should separate my final fantasy and bl stuff (look there’s a ff to bl pipeline it’s called being dramatic and gay)

Do I get asks: No 😭😭 I sometimes get asks from my lovely mutuals/followers if I do an ask game but mostly no. Send me asks peeps I’m always happy to talk…I’m also too nervous to start conversations. It’s complicated

Average hours of sleep: Usually 8 unless work messes with my sleep schedule in which case its anywhere from 1 to 4 (and then like 20 when my schedule gets back to normal)

What I’m wearing: Workout gear. Do I work out? No. but it’s COMFY

Dream Job: I would love to be a writer but I also stopped writing for years so idk if I can say that. I want to go back and be a hospice worker when I’m older but I can’t afford to do that and live in my city at the moment. So aside from that anything with a good work-life balance

Dream Trip: ooh I don’t know. Iceland would be and I’ve always wanted to go to Japan too (I want to go to Akihabara so badly) I don’t travel much but there’s so much of the world I want to see. But I like looking at historical places when I travel if that helps. Also like just visiting grocery stores in other countries, it’s like my favorite thing to do.

Favorite songs: (at the moment) (quiet songs bc bedtime)

Beauty Remains - Paloma Faith

Stardust - Delain

Love me More - Sam Smith

Hard Place: H.E.R.

Rats / Black Spider - Sunday Driver (you can’t make me pick only one Sunday Driver song, everyone go listen)

Tagging (but literally no pressure!!) @lemonkookies @wintercrushes @disaster-j and @kangarew-7 also anyone who sees this and wants to do it please consider yourself tagged by me 😀

[yamayuandadu]

300 followers special: debunking Arahabaki

Arahabaki is a mythical figure with a relatively large popculture footprint, mostly thanks to Shin Megami Tensei, but little to no source material to go with it. For this reason, especially in english-speaking spheres, many claims rooted in pseudohistory and hoaxes, such as the image above, circulate uninterrupted. Under the cut, I will attempt to debunk their source. If stories about dogu, piss bottles and improbable journeys to Ecuador interest you, you found the right place.

The claims of Arahabaki's antiquity and in particular associating this obscure deity with dogu – specifically the shakoki dogu -  all go back to Tsugaru Soto Sangunshi (I will refer to it as TSS in the rest of this article) and other associated writings, so called ”Wada family documents,” all of them written by a certain Kihachiro Wada. It's a series of forgeries created in the 1970s (with additional works produced through the rest of Wada's life – he passed away in 1999), which in addition to presenting a fictional history of the Tohoku region, centered around a fictional local kingdom, also mention Mayan prophecies, Nostradamus, Mu, and various scientific concepts, usually misunderstood by the author. To my knowledge, TSS is only covered in one english language source, which is horrid and basically unusable - The Sacred Science of Ancient Japan: Lost Chronicles of the Age of the Gods by Avery Morrow, which does present the truth - eg. that it's a forgery - but then the author gets caught up in some sort of Evola-influenced spiritual doctrine which makes him claim that perhaps it's an echo of some "spiritual truth" or something along these lines, which is obviously not a sound argument from the perspective of anyone with even just a passing interest in history. Social sciences are still sciences, not religions. TSS claims shakoki dogu represent an “outlawed” god formerly worshiped by people inhabiting Tohoku, whose name was also their endonym. It doesn't delve deeper into the history of Jomon art, and doesn't acknowledge dogu other than shakoki – considering not all dogu found in the Tohoku region (or even further north) belong to this category, it potentially makes it possible Wada was simply familiar with von Daniken’s confabulations and had no other exposure to jomon art; I have not seen this possibility in any japanese debunking articles, though. It's additionally worth noting here that while the exact purpose of dogu remains unknown up to this day, they're neither a taboo (indeed, many towns use peculiar locally excavated dogu as mascots nowadays, like Ravi from Minami Alps), nor particularly rare – estimatesof the number known today vary between 15000 (National Museum of Japanese History estimate) - 18000 (estimate from this article). The majority are of course not shakoki dogu; the difference between various estimates likely comes from different approach to counting figures only known from fragments.

Wada claimed that he merely discovered TSS, rather than wrote it – according to his account, a case of old documents fell from the ceiling while his  house was being renovated in 1948. Supposedly, the discovery – so called “Kansei original” - was compiled between 1789 to 1822, and then copied between 1870 and 1910. Wada later claimed he lost the original, but based on gathered evidence it seems obvious it never existed. Various pages known to researchers, purported to come from the original, the Taisho copy, and writing Wada confirmed to be his own, are written in the same style, and with the same mistakes. Additionally, as a visit made in the house by a debunker at the request of Wada's cousin, who appears to be its owner currently, confirmed it's virtually impossible that a large number of documents could have been stored above the ceiling; it has also been called into question if the house existed before 1950. What the visit did reveal was a large number of plastic bottles containing human urine, left undistrubed since the 1990s. A relatively unsophisticated way to make paper appear older than it is requires soaking it in urine, and this rather offputting find has proven that this was Wada's preferred method of making his writing appear older than it is to onlookers, especially these lacking formal experience with antiquities.

Truth to be told, even without the grand urine discovery, TSS was not difficult to discard as a forgery. As I mentioned above, its particular weakness are bizarre references to scientific concepts and discoveries, revealing a low level of historical awareness of the author – for example, references are made to quasars, continental drift theory and Pluto – discoveries not yet made in the suggested eras; to make it more embarrassing, TSS claims it was based on foreign sources which weren't yet published at the listed dates. It also references natural disasters which never happened, and urban legends and folklore which only developed recently, like the claims about Jesus' grave being located in Aomori prefecture, which only date back to the 1930s (Wada's documents claimed it was a story already known in the Kansei period, in the 1790s...). On top of all of this, a number of purported authentic illustrations were simply traced from contemporary sources:

It's worth noting that TSS wasn't the only fraud Wada was involved in, as we can learn from his wikipedia biography he fraudulently claimed to be a former Imperial Palace escort officer before embarking on his adventure with crafting false chronicles soaked in urine. Tragically, TSS found supporters not only among the expected crowd of various wannabe occultists, frauds and naive teenagers, but also among a number of genuine historians, most notably Takehiko Furuta. It would appear that he became interested in it in hopes of finding support for his theories about Japan originally having more than one ruling family, but with time he fully embraced it, and actively advocated the bizarre visions it contained. A particularly outlandish claim of his was insisting that Meiji era educator and political activist Fukuzawa Yukichi quoted TSS in his work (the quote in mention appears to be a paraphrase from american declaration of independence). It's worth noting that while Furuta seemingly was a genuinely accomplished scholar of Shinran doctrine, supporting TSS was far from his only adventure with pseudohistory. He was also a staunch believer in the long discredited claims about links between japanese Jomon culture and the Valvidia culture of Ecuador, claiming that various references to fantastical lands lying between China and Japan or beyond Japan prove that the Japanese reached America in ancient times (you can torment yourself with one of such articles here). This theory was briefly advocated by a number of American scholars before him, but obviously has no support today. It's nothing but a new take on XVIIIth century French claims about present day British Columbia being the Fusang described in some Chinese texts. Sometimes strange lands and creatures at the edge of the map are nothing more but fantasy. Furuta's particularly shameful contribution to TSS discourse was declaring that undermining its authenticity is rooted in historical prejudice against the inhabitants of Tohoku and Hokkaido. Personally I'm under the impression that discarding an entire region's real, very complex history in favor of fanciful hoaxes is much more likely to be rooted in such prejudice. The claim Arahabaki was an Ainu kamuy, common online, appears to come from a similar place – I will not examine it here, but I find attempts to shield forgeries from criticism by attaching them to poorly documented and historically suppressed beliefs of historically persecuted groups to be even more disgusting than regular fraud of this sort.   What Arahabaki actually is? This is difficult for me to tell for sure, but certainly nothing out of ordinary - not a dogu, and not the main figure of some lost fabulous country. There is a number of mundane temples enshrining Arahabaki, for example here. This article also mentions a number of mundane locations enshrining Arahabaki today; curiously, many of them are located outside Tohoku. A number of theories exist, linking Arahabaki to the usual suspects: religious beliefs of the Emishi people, who originally inhabited Tohoku, and may or may not be one and the same as ancestors of present day Ainu; snake worship; ironworking traditions; marebito beliefs; gods enshrined in freshly established fortresses... Whatever the truth is, it will inevitably turn out to be more interesting than hoaxes, as study of history generally proves.

[cherry-interlude]

Lana Del Rey Unreleased Ranking (4)

This is a re-ranking of Lana's unreleased songs, after making a first a few years ago. This is all my opinion, which I don't mind anyone disagreeing with but don't come for me for it - honestly, I like every song, despite any criticism, and this ranking is very vague. It's based on objective and subjective opinion.

This is the fourth of five posts, nearing my favourites.

Backfire

Like Velvet Crowbar, Lana is struggling with her criminal lover in Backfire – pissed off, hurt yet devoted. Lana’s voice is lush and growling in this track, the lyrics work well and it’s one of her most concise unreleased tracks.

JFK

A romantic track through and through, Lana dedicates this to her beloved. She compares him to the dashing figure of her favourite era, letting her voice climb, soothe and whisper her amazement at such an incredible man. It’s a song that just feels rich and warm, only loving with none of the toxicity that creeps into some of her other romances.

Damn You

Damn You’s clean instrumentals and direct story make for easy listening, not to mention the relaxed feel of the music. Yet it’s still a song that is about the breakdown of Lana’s relationship, perhaps a follow up to some of her ditzy teenage love stories where the kids run away together without thought. There is still nostalgia, regret and a distinctly pissed off feel, making the emotion of the song complex and all the more compelling.

Hundred Dollar Bill

Lana may be pre-Ultraviolence in this track but Jimmy and his ultra-violent swing are very much present. Rather than being a sad and grungy song, this is pop about a prostitute (or a stripper) who loves money and her man, the construction king who doesn’t mind his lover doing what she can for the green too.

Jealous Girl

Spiky cheerleader chanting, heavy trap pop and Lana’s near-bored drawl paired with manic warnings make this song a blast to listen to. Lana goes pure pop with a dangerous edge, as much as the song itself could do with a bit of a production clean-up. Definitely one of my favourites.

BBM Baby

Cutesy and practically bubble-gum pink, Lana plays the girlish teen in lust, sexting her man to a noughties-feeling innocent-sounding track. It’s frothy and frilly but in the best way possible.

Tired of Singing the Blues

Lana is pissed in this song, frustrated and shrieking about being stuck with bad men, bad love and bad break-up songs. She really vents in this track, which feels like a furious and storming Hollywood’s Dead, and it has that live-feel that wouldn’t be unmissed as a performance on stage.

Hey Blue Baby

Lana frees her voice as she lets frustration and country inspirations take over on this upbeat, live track. It, like I Must Be Stupid, would be even better with studio versions, but the live version feels raw and real.

Last Girl On Earth

This song surprised me the first time I heard it. It was a thoughtful track that didn’t feel quite like a Lana song, yet it was perfectly her from the images of the lyrics to the on-point vocals. It’s the right amount of sadness, ironic pride and self-reflection as Lana muses over her life now that she is famous.

Disco

Deviously sexual, Lana poses erotically as a model in this track, owning herself as her “only god” (and presumably her body too as she flashes her “prostitute stare”). It has plenty of versions, each as unflinching as the last, that showcase how well Lana can write a song that only contains herself and a guitar.

Roller Derby

Lana paints a picture of pin-up girls, roller derbies, streamers and a frightening screaming crowd that is a mixture of tranquil and unnerving. Slow paced and peppered with fabulous imagery, Lana could tie Roller Derby to Disco easily as she “becomes someone not of this world” much like how she is her “only god”, yet in this song she is less seductive and more destructive from the overwhelming position she has been put in.

Fordham Road

The imagery is gorgeous as Lana debates why she is so drawn in to such a dark place. It’s one of her acoustic best, thoughtful and paced like a breeze as Lana muses and soaks herself in the atmosphere in her carefully-written song.

Kinda Outta Luck

Lana opens the song with a subtle, guitar-and-sparkles driven monologue before diving into a very sixties-feel dance track. Playing a self-destructive murderer, Lana simply enjoys herself as she muses about whether or not her intentions to kill are bad or not – but she certainly embraces the role with flair.

Put The Radio On

Sugary and spicy like the lyrics suggest, Lana keeps the tone sweet with lullaby-style music under a heavier beat, opens with a cute “hello” and essentially wants to refuse belief that she is too much of a bad girl for her bad guy. It’s a smart song that plays into the frequent storyline of delinquents in love, but Lana keeps it fresh with the treacle that feels a little different from such similar songs.

Paris

Lana speaks of her fantasies of a new life in the most romantic city in the world with her lover, opening and closing the song with a soothing lullaby before filling the middle with suggestions to run away and snapshot images of all the things they could do. Much like the doo-wop shaded tracks Puppy Love, Prom Song Gone Wrong and Driving In Cars With Boys, Lana puts herself firmly in the romanticised ideal of teenage love and made it catchy as hell.

Queen of Disaster

Lana goes from the low-voices, disbelieving party girl to the giddy, swooning stage-dominating lover throughout this song, the music box-like plinking the perfect introduction to a cute track about two criminals. Lana praises her gangsta guy whilst embracing being the queen of disaster, calling to the crowd with an echoed “ladies and gentlemen, for the very first time -!” (slightly cringe but honestly a guilty pleasure part of the song).

TV In Black and White

One of her most depressing songs, Lana spins a love letter to her criminal beau, promising to love her locked up lover who is equally devastated by being away from her. It’s too sad to play sometimes, a little too heavy on the optimistic tear-jerker, but that’s what makes it work – she makes a song that is full of clear emotion.

You Can Be The Boss

The daddy kink theme for the 2010s, You Can Be The Boss is a cross between Lana’s older unreleased work and her early records, encapsulating AKA Lizzy Grant and Born To Die eras perfectly. It’s deeply sexy, unashamed and a definite earworm.

Serial Killer

A Lana concert classic, Serial Killer is one of most well-known unreleased tracks – and one of her best. It would be perfect for Born To Die, from the brilliant production to the memorable tune. The bonus points for her iconic moan make it even more enjoyable on a fan scale, but this is one of Lana’s best regardless.

Go Go Dancer

It might not be her best in terms of instrumentals but it’s got the kind of spunkiness that makes it favourable, at least to me. Lana is a sexual performer outright but only for the fun of it, a rich girl doing whatever she wants for attention and the illusion of fame. From the disco-light feel of the music to the undercurrent drums, it’s even better when topped with the breathy confidence in both vocals and lyrics.

[bamfdaddio]

X-Men Abridged: 1964

The X-Men, those wacky mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. Want to unravel the tapestry? Then read the Abridged X-Men!

(X-Men 3 - 8) - by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

Fantastic Four 28

The X-Men’s sophomore year basically serves as a recruitment drive for  Professor Xavier and Magneto: both our heroes and those nefarious villains try to recruit various mutants (The Blob, Namor, Unus the Untouchable), all with absolutely no success.

We also meet Magneto’s home team, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. (Later on, they would drop the ‘evil’, because why would Magneto call himself evil? He believes he’s doing the right thing.) The Brotherhood consists of:

An acrobatic toady;

A white-haired speedster whose entire personality is that he loves his sister;

A fashion victim with nebulously defined disaster powers;

A creepy, sexist illusionist, who is by far the most useful on this squad. He is literally the only reason Magneto briefly conquers a country.

i, too, enjoy towers of mashed potatoes (X-Men 4)

Magneto is fleshed out more: he still remains fabulously extra, but he develops an obsession with owning strongholds and/or land. In this year alone, he owns one island (1), one manor (1) and one asteroid (1). He also briefly takes over the nation of Santo Marco. Magneto also does some astral projection, because magnets can... do... that? (Just go with it.)

he is just so ridiculous <3 (X-Men 7)

magnetic intensity indeed. like toad and rogue, I would fall in love with magneto in a heartbeat (X-Men 5)

While the Toad’s and Mastermind’s loyalty to Magneto is never questioned, Pietro and Wanda, meanwhile, show plenty of reluctance in following the mutant despot. They even help the X-Men once or twice, but ultimately remain loyal to Magneto because he saved Wanda from an angry mob. (The mob is traditionalist rather than racist: They want to burn her because she is a witch, not because she’s a mutant. So it’s fine.) 

However, this year does mark the first appearance of anti-mutants sentiments: a crowd attacks Hank after he saves some kid from a water tower, simply because they suspect he’s a mutant. I always thought it was Claremont who introduced this theme, but apparently, he merely expanded on something Lee started. It also introduces the conflict between Xavier’s views and Magneto’s: the hippie professor believes in peaceful coexistence, the flamboyant villain in the dominance of homo superior.

they were so mean, Warren, they even took my glasses! (X-Men 8)

It’s also the first example of Professor X opening up his home to a villain in an attempt to reform them. The Blob, petty and churlish, refuses, but I have to admit I would read the fuck out of a What If? where the Blob accepts Charles’ offer.

This year also lays a lot ground for the X-Men themselves, fleshing them out. Hank becomes loquacious and smart, Warren reaches peak himbo and Bobby establishes himself as the jokester. Scott, meanwhile, becomes a lot more emo, tormented by his uncontrollable powers and his love for Jean. She also loves him, but neither of them actually does anything about it. In other character development, Jean straightens her hair.

in 2021, I aspire to have the same confidence as Warren goddamn Worthington entering a fucking room (X-Men 4)

Meanwhile, Charles is apparently also crushing hard on Miss Grey. (Which is fortunately dropped and mostly forgotten about, because ick.) That, combined with the fact that almost every male character notes how sexy either Jean or Wanda is, really does show how badly all of this aged. I haven’t really read old Fantastic Four or the Avengers, but I do hope Sue and the Wasp have a trifle more personality than this.

don’t fret, Jean, the only competition you have to worry about is Magneto (X-Men 6)

But! Charles does other weird stuff too! In a shocking display of extreme teaching methods, Professor X pretends to have lost his powers so the X-Men can prove themselves against the Brotherhood in space. Cyclops nearly dies, but despite that, Professor X graduates his X-Men! He then leaves and puts Cyclops in charge. Solid leadership skills all around.

this is just adorable (X-Men 7) 

Oh yeah, the X-Men also fight Namor and the Fantastic Four, and Iceman starts his bromance with the Human Torch. For those keeping track in the future: this is the point where the young X-Men are time-abducted for their All-New X-Men capers. (X-Men #8, to be exact.) Bobby also has an unhealthy obsession with eating icecream.

it’s 1964, do you know where your teen-age mutant hoodlums are? (X-Men 4)

Must reads: X-Men #3, the introduction of the Blob, and X-Men #4, the introduction of the Brotherhood. The rest are all variations on the same themes and... not that great. 

Didn’t you take Art History? This era is characterized by cheesy, cheesy writing and the kind of art that seems better suited to a Disney comic than a superhero epic. Stan Lee tends to overexplain everything we see in the art. Despite Kirby’s style not really being my cup of tea, he does effective work and some of his spreads are actually gorgeous. Check this out.

so… daddy longlegs is not a mutant? (X-Men 3)

Best new character: The Blob. Hear me out.  He is a different kind of villain than most of the villains introduced in this era: he is petty and small-minded, rather than megalomaniacal and dramatic, which makes for a nice change of pace. Then there’s the fact that he looks grotesque and that even the X-Men, who should know better, mock him and body-shame him. (Nice going, calling him ‘fatso’ while he probably even couldn’t lose weight if he tried, because, you know, it’s his mutant power). He is like a foil to the Thing: mean and selfish where the Thing tries to be heroic and rise above his circumstances. The Blob is an unhappy man who does unhappy things; some authors have realized that he’s more than just a fat joke: there’s something inherently cruel about his mutant power.

then again, Fred does call Jean a cute tomato, so maybe he deserves everything the X-Men throw at him (X-Men 3)

Most audacious retcon: Nobody seems to have a grasp on how strong Professor X and Marvel Girl are. One issue, Jean can toss around a crowd of women, the next, she can’t pick up Hank.  Charles seems to be just as strong as the plot demands. 

Ugliest Costume: The Scarlet Witch. Pink and red? O honey, no.

wanda, what is that headpiece (X-Men 4)

[strange-destinations]

Hey Kitty, due to your stories I've started to seek out Benny & Brax stories. So far, I've simply picked a few boxsets (Legion and New Frontiers) where I spotted the fabulous Miles Richardson on the cover. I was wondering, is there a better way to go about this? Do you have any recommendations and/or a listening order you would suggest? Thanks in advance and I hope your wrist is getting better :)

Legion is... a bit of a tricky place to start in, all things considered. It’s kind of like throwing yourself in at the deep end, because it somewhat relies on knowledge of the previous few box sets (Epoch and Road Trip) and the characters that were introduced in those. Those, in turn, follow off the end of the Collection stories, but to be honest if you just want to jump in at the box sets that’s perfectly fine - Epoch’s made to kind of be the ‘jumping-on’ point. All you have to know is that at the beginning of Epoch, the universe has been sort of ‘reset’ and Benny’s looking for her son, Peter, who was lost in the resulting chaos. The rest kind of explains itself.

Brax isn’t in Epoch or Road Trip, but Ruth is and Ruth’s a darling, and there’s some pretty good stories in both of them all things considered, so!

EDIT: OH OH GOSH PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS BIT IT’S SO IMPORTANT all of the Benny stories from Epoch to Missing Persons are available for free on Spotify!!! like, completely free, no strings attached and in fact there’s a lot of Big Finish stories legally free to stream via Spotify, here’s a full list

Two alternate points to jump into the Benny stories, since you’re looking for benny-brax dynamics:

1) The Virgin books. There’s plenty of places to find these online (since the original publishers don’t get revenue from it, it’s generally considered Okay to download them, although I’m sure you can find physical copies if you searched for a while).

Benny and Brax first meet in Theatre of War, which is part of the VNA Doctor Who books (Benny’s still Seven’s companion, Ace is also there) and also is honestly a really really great book. There’s also a Big Finish adaptation of this story if you prefer that!! it’s a bit different to the book but still a really good spin on it. This one’s pretty much standalone.

Brax’s next cameo is in Happy Endings, and it’s very very brief although rather sweet. Happy Endings is the Benny Gets Married To Jason book and it’s honestly genuinely just a lot of pointless fluff.

...and then he comes back in the Benny solo books! These are a mixed bag but Dellah!Era Benny is a lot of fun and a particular favorite of mine. All you need to know (if you skipped the rest of the VNAs) is that Benny has retired as the Doctor’s companion, got a depressing divorce with Jason (f in the chat) and is now working as a Professor of Archaeology at St Oscar’s University.

Dragon’s Wrath is where they meet for the first time - good good book! Their dynamic is peak here. 

Brax does show up in a few other books but I can’t for the life of me recall a lot of them. I’ve still got to sit down and read through all of them in order some day, there’s a coherent overarching plot and everything. Where Angels Fear is definitely one where Brax shows up, uh. someone else help. it’s so late

anyway anyway Tears of the Oracle - best book. i first read it way WAY out of context and i still loved it. they’re best friends and it makes me sob every time. ‘she’s like family’

anyway yeah, Bernice Summerfield New Adventures - find a zip file of them somewhere and read them, they’re p good! and this is the era that Sepelio is set in, in case you didn’t realize this (i know at least one person didn’t)

2) The Collection-era audios (and tie-in books). Okay, I’ll be honest, I haven’t listened to this particular era in... nearly five years. And it’s a headache to get your head around, because some of the audios are closely interlinked with the books, and the books are hell to find, and there’s some Very Iffy Content for some of the stories and. I know y’all come to me for Benny Advice a lot but my memory’s so dreadful. half the time when writing i just operate on gut instinct for canon events and rely on the fact that this fandom’s so small nobody’s going to call me out on being ridiculous. Or I can also blame it on timeline shenanigans.

can... can someone jump in and give a guide to the collection-era stories and which ones to listen to/read for Plot Purposes? I know someone with knowledge is out there. it’s honestly an amazing story arc, I just wish I had the time to lay everything out properly.

The following, however, are pretty standalone and feature Brax heavily.

The Extinction Event - first audio ft. Brax. nothing especially special but it does establish some of the basework for some of his later Questionable Stuff.

The Mirror Effect - delightfully creepy, beautifully effective characterization, benny & brax & adrien & jason trapped in a creepy haunted mirror location and trying to get out. 

The Crystal of Cantus - maybe not entirely standalone BUT how can i not put this one down. very funny and very horrifying. benny and jason and brax go on a fun field trip and find out the True Meaning Of Cybermen. benny gains a fuckton of trauma.

...and then after Crystal everything gets plotty and complicated. not that it wasn’t before, but... oh well.

There’s also some books/short story anthologies in this era that are standalone/don’t require much context. Their names all escape me. Once again, help?

BONUS: Many Happy Returns - the Benny anniversary story which is more like a framing device for a fuckton of other stories set within pretty much every era. Cameos from everyone. Delightful and heartwrenching. Really really good, but maybe get some basis in various parts of canon before you check it out. Or maybe check it out and then start jumping around to find bits that interest you? I don’t know. I went through everything in painstaking chronological order from the tender age of 14 and now here I am, writing gory cannibal fanfiction about an emotionally repressed theatre professor and his disaster archaeology best friend.

...anyway, hopefully this helps at least somewhat! It’s past midnight and i’m wracking my brains as I try to remember what bits of an extremely extensive canon I enjoyed the most. let me know if there’s anything you need clarification on, I’m aware this is a bit of a disaster post.