#He had to be drawn terribly in 70% of his appearances and he had to have a silly name and appear in a lot of weird/bad comics | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

therenlover · 4 years ago

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The Boy With The Easel (A Young Artist!Helmut Zemo x Reader Oneshot)

(Hey! If you end up enjoying this fic, it’s the first chronological part of a new fun expanded AU I’ve created with @creme-bruhlee! Their fic Bliss is part of the same timeline and takes place about a year after this one, so you should check it out!!!)

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.

Tags: Meet Cute, College AU, First Meetings, Coffee Date, Artist!Zemo, Embarrassment, Awkward College Kids Falling In Love

Rating: T

Warnings: Very Vague Mention of Sexual Content, Swearing, Zemo Says The Word Daddy In Reference To His Father and The Reader Thinks It’s Kinda Hot

Word Count: 7000~

This fic has been crossposted to my AO3!

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The University of Novi Grad

Fall 1996

Mornings in Novi Grad could be beautiful if you knew what to look for.

Sokovia was… different from America in many ways. From the language to the scenery, you often found yourself adrift in the strangeness of it all. There had been nothing quite as old as the buildings in the historical district of Novi Grad back home, no towering grey behemoths serving as a reminder of a bygone fight against Soviet invasion in the memories of your childhood. Still, though, there was beauty in the strangeness nonetheless.

From your tiny room in the Helena Lyudmila International Scholar’s dorm, for instance, you had a perfect view of a large campus courtyard hosting a statue of the donor by the same name. She was some royal who had invested in education a few hundred years ago, and by the looks of her metal likeness, she had been quite pretty. The sight of her shining in the early morning sun was one of the things that made uprooting your whole life seem worth it in the end, no matter how silly that seemed.

There were other small comforts that you had found beauty in during your first month attending your prestigious university, too.

You found beauty in the way the sunlight streamed over the rooftops like the opening to an Oscar-winning film. In the sound of traffic below and the overcast skies above. Sandwiches from corner stores, wildflowers growing in the median of the road, cups of the worlds best black coffee served steaming by scowling attendants at the cafe; Everywhere there was something small and kind and just familiar enough to relish in, more than able to distract you from the stress of living hand-to-mouth in a country where you didn’t even know the language. It made it all worth it.

That being said there was something else too…

Someone else to be specific.

The campus tended to run like clockwork. The same groups of students would walk past your window to their classes, the same professors would get their coffee and lunch at the little cafe across the square, and every weekday morning at 8 am on the dot, easel boy would set up his palette and canvas and paint the same bustling street.

He was talented, that you couldn’t deny. Even from the 6th floor, which was a considerable distance away, it was possible to admire the detailing and consistency with which he painted. His talent wasn’t when kept you captive at your window in the morning, though. Though you were sure his art was beautiful, he himself was a thousand times more stunning.

All dark eyes and dark hair and dark clothes, he parted crowds with his piercing gaze alone. He was always dressed like the protagonist of some awful artsy film. Massive argyle sweaters, untucked button-ups, corduroy jackets, and flare bottomed pants that must have survived his father’s wardrobe from the ’70s… his style was as close you could get to atrocious while still being impeccable as possible, and that wasn’t even getting started on the smudged black liner always present under his persistent gaze. You had never had the pleasure (or embarrassment for that matter) of meeting him in person, but you were sure that you would have had the same awed and slightly frightened reaction if you ever did. He could have been plucked entirely from the pages of some awful romance novel.

You were well and truly smitten with the idea of him.

If you looked at your morning routine through the eyes of a stranger, you’d consider yourself odd for your strange obsession with him, but you didn’t look at it like that. It wasn’t an obsession. You never overstepped your bounds. He was simply pleasing to look at and so you did. That didn’t constitute as obsessive, right?

Even if it did, you weren’t causing any harm.

Easel boy, as you had come to refer to him, was simply a tool you used to ground yourself in your new and frightening environment. Nothing more. If you ever met him, you would surely hate him from the short interactions you’d seen him have with strangers. They never ended well. He would remain an unattainable, attractive ideal in your mind until he eventually faded away into a funny memory you’d share with your kids one day.

Until then, though, you would watch him from your window before your morning classes and refused to feel guilty about it. So, that was that, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

On the morning in question, you had woken up a little late and in a foul mood. In preparation for a test in your foundations of algebra course you had spent the better part of the night pouring over formulas while your upstairs neighbor’s bed slammed repeatedly into the wall and floor. Though you were sure they were having an excellent time, you were most definitely not. It all culminated in you missing your original alarms and despite the fact that your first class started at 10, you were exhausted, furious, and not looking forward to missing breakfast to finish the assigned reading you had put off the night before. The only thing keeping you from throwing in the towel and just giving up was the promise of seeing the painter.

So, when he arrived for the day at 8 am sharp, you were positioned at the ledge by your window, textbook in hand with a mug of instant coffee at your right. It was like a breath of fresh air.

As usual, he retrieved a small pack of cigarettes from the back of his eternally paint-stained jeans only to bring one to his lips and light it quickly. He always smoked before he worked, and just like always, he took an extra cigarette from the pack to tuck behind his ear for later. Then, he got to work setting up his easel and the small stool where he set his palette.

Pulling tubes of acrylic, brushes, and pencils from his well-worn messenger bag, easel boy flipped out the kickstand without any problem and set his thick, pre-primed canvas on the worn metal. You watched in fascination. Art had always seemed so unattainable to you. Instead, you were drawn to the more academic. The man before you, though, created beauty with an ease that had evaded you all your life, and it had you both jealous and entirely intrigued. Slowly, you reached down to take a sip of your coffee as you let your eyes drift back to your reading.

Learning about ancient Babylon was far less interesting than watching him, though.

When you next looked out the window and away from your work the handsome artist had created his base sketch already. How did he do it so fast? You assumed it was practice. He had been drawing the same 3 buildings every weekday morning for at least a month, so after a while, it must have been second nature to measure out the lines and put things into perspective. You smiled. He tended to have that effect on you.

The process was repeated until a little before 9:30. You would read a few paragraphs then look up to watch the painting progress from a sketch to a full-fledged work of art. It was good today from what you could see. The colors were a bit more muted than usual, but that was only on account of the awful, dreary overcast sky that threatened to dump rain on the city at any time. Overall, you would have considered it a masterpiece. Easel boy didn’t seem to think the same.

He regarded the painting with a sort of begrudging satisfaction that bordered on disappointment before he pulled the second cigarette from behind his ear, lit it, and began the process of packing up his materials. You finished the last of your coffee watching him do so. Smoking, well, smoking tobacco at least, had always been a vice you had avoided and yet you often wondered what it would feel like to take a drag of one of his cigarettes after it had been between his lips. Then, the magic lifted.

He folded up the flimsy easel, tucked it away with his materials back into his messenger bag, hoisted the stool under one arm and the painting under the other before taking off at a brisk clip down the street away from your window. You watched him until he was out of sight.

You were snapped from your concentration by a knock at your door.

“Y/N,” a heavily accented voice called, sending you scrambling for your bag, “If you are not outside in the next 15 seconds I will break down your door,”

Shit.

“Coming, Sasha!” You wailed. It took about 10 of those seconds to grab your backpack and shove your textbook inside, an extra 2 to check your appearance in the mirror- you looked slightly disheveled, but it was the best you were gonna do after the night you’d had. Besides, it wasn’t like you were doing anything important. You didn’t need to be dressed for a date -and you were opening the door for a quick save at the 14th second. Your door was safe for another day.

Out in the hall waited Sasha Balandin, arms crossed and grey eyes piercing in the flickering light of the terrible overhead fluorescents. As a fellow international student, you had become fast friends with Sasha. He was a little rough around the edges, and definitely didn’t take your bullshit, but he was a rare friend. “I have been waiting for 10 minutes,” he griped. You tried your best to look apologetic. “Don’t do that,”

“Do what?” You asked, closing and locking your door behind you as you began walking down the hallway.

Sasha huffed. “Do not pretend you were not too busy ogling that painter in the courtyard to hear me knocking on your door,” His Russian bluntness was on full display now as you shook your head in mock disbelief.

“I can’t believe you’d accuse me of something like that!”

“It is not an accusation if it is true,”

“There’s no way you know for a fact that I was watching him again,”

“But you were. This happens every week,”

You sighed, pausing at the top of the stairs. “I was,”

Taking the stairs in twos, Sasha sighed. “You are too soft, Y/N. Besides, you have said so often that he seems like an asshole. Why do you continue to get all mushy at him out the window if this is the case?”

“Because… well, because…” for a moment, you floundered in search of an answer that wouldn’t make you sound like a complete freak, but you found that there really wasn’t one. It came down the one small factor. “He’s just really hot, okay?”

The look Sasha gave you could have killed. He kept his mouth shut, though, choosing to let his silence shame you more than anything else did. It worked. For the entire trip down the stairs and the mile-long walk to your lecture hall, you felt the weight of shame heavy on your shoulders. Or maybe it was just your backpack. You didn’t know which you’d prefer. He did start speaking again eventually, going on about some party you had missed in favor of studying, but the feeling never left. Even as you sat down for your lecture it was still at the forefront of your mind. In fact, you were so busy thinking about your crush on easel boy and the problems with it that you barely paid attention to the professor’s rehashing of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Your error only hit when the professor flipped the PowerPoint to the final slide.

“Before you go, I want to remind you that you have a paper on the importance of Enkidu in the Epic is due at the beginning of class this Friday. The details and requirements should be listed in your syllabus. Class dismissed,”

Fuck.

Friday was only two days away.

You were so screwed.

The problem was, you didn’t have a spare copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh just lying around your dorm room. Usually that wouldn’t have been an issue, the professor for your current history course used English for her slide because her particular history course was specifically for first-year international students. Unfortunately for you, though, you hadn’t been taking notes. Instead, you had been daydreaming about how it would feel to have easel boy blow his cigarette smoke in your face and then subsequently scolding yourself for having thoughts like that about a total stranger. In a terrible twist of fate, the professor only held office hours after her last classes on Mondays and Fridays, so even getting the information from her then was off the table. Dread began to pool in your stomach.

Any other student would have been able to cut their losses, rent a copy from the library, slog through it in a night, and write the damn essay even without the help of the classroom slides for context. The only problem was all the books in the library were in Sokovian, and you still barely knew how to order a coffee correctly. Reading the language in a full Cyrillic alphabet would just be impossible, especially for a book as stupidly old as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In short, unless you could get your hands on a copy in the next day or so, you were absolutely, well-and-truly fucked.

Sasha was quick to find you as the hall cleared out, waiting near your seat as you packed away your notes. “That was all bullshit, no?” He asked, but the second he took in your slightly panicked expression he stopped short, pinching the bridge of his nose and breathing deeply. You knew what he was going to say before he ever said it.

“Something is wrong. You were not paying attention. Were you thinking-”

“Yes. Okay? Yes, I was thinking about him,”

He shook his head slightly. “I am concerned for you,”

“Who isn’t?”

Despite his usually stoic demeanor, that made Sasha huff out a soft laugh. “You got yourself into this mess, Y/N, you will get yourself out somehow,”

Your jaw dropped as you slung your bag over your shoulder and started making your way towards the door. “You’re not gonna help me?”

“Though I would love to be helpful, you forget that my English is poor. It will do me better to read the book in Sokovian myself than to use the information from class,”

Oh, yeah. You winced. “Sorry, Sash’”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he shrugged as you walked out onto the lawn, chilled to the bone by the wind that whipped in every direction.

A storm was brewing. It might not fully take hold of the city for a few hours yet, but it would make the walk to your evening class absolute hell if the rain fell as hard as it had several weeks prior. You could only hope that it wouldn’t start until after you had walked home. Your odds were looking slim, though, based on the way you could already hear thunder clapping in the distance. After a moment you hit the edge of the sidewalk where your paths would diverge.

“Good luck with the paper,” you offered weakly.

Sasha replied with a sharp, “Good luck with your crush,” and then he was off in the opposite direction without another word. Sasha was blunt like that, never overstaying his welcome or lingering when he didn’t need to. There was something enviable about it. What you wouldn’t give to be able to simply say things as they were without an unnecessary sugar coating to save face and spare feelings. It lingered on your mind for the whole half-mile walk to the campus bookstore. Speaking of which...

There was only one place where you might possibly find an English copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It wasn’t the big student bookstore, most of the textbooks there had been in Sokovian, Russian, or German and you hadn’t even tried to set foot in their actual book section. No, your only hope was the tiny hole-in-the-wall bookstore you had stumbled upon during move-in. It was only about half a mile away from your dorm from any of your lecture halls, so you often found yourself wandering inside when you had time to kill. They were one of the only stores you’d come across that sold anything in English, magazines included, so despite the fact that the young cashiers rarely spoke your language you often found that the back shelves of that tiny shop kept you from going mad.

Now, they might also be keeping you from ruining your GPA.

You could only hope. If anybody could save you, it was them.

Ducking in through the small doorway, you were greeted by the soft ring of the bell above your head. The attendant at the register simply regarded you with a polite nod. You had seen her there before and she knew you barely spoke a lick of Sokovian, so she didn’t attempt a pleasantry. Instead, she simply let you wander through the entrance and into the towering bookshelves, passing a few other faceless shoppers on your way towards the back. You were grateful for her nonchalance.

If there was anything worse than feeling foolish for not knowing Sokovian, it was being talked down to in perfect English by a Sokovian citizen. Most interactions left you wishing you’d actually taken anything away from your high school French class other than emotional trauma from your teacher and a caffeine addiction. Damn America and its terrible public-school language programs…

The path to the English classics section was one you’d walked many times since discovering the book store. It was right in the very back corner of the shop, tucked away where the city natives wouldn’t have to address or see it. You had snagged a copy of Pride and Prejudice a few weeks back, so you knew exactly where to search. The only problem was slogging through every single book on the shelf in search of the one you were looking for.

Your eyes scanned the wall.

Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh…

Gilgamesh!

On the 6th shelf up sat one small copy. Score! You were saved! As you reached up to grab it, though, you were met with yet another roadblock. The shelf it was on was juuuust a little too high for you to reach. Oh, come on…

You hopped a little, extending your hand up as far as it could go, but your fingers just barely brushed the spine. Somewhere behind you, you could hear footsteps. Then someone coughed to suppress laughter. The shame was plain on your face. As your flannel rode up and you stretched up in one last desperate attempt to grab the book when suddenly someone, you assumed the same person who had been laughing at your misfortune, spoke.

“They have stools, you know,” he said, accented voice thick with amusement. The English surprised you, but you assumed they used it for your benefit. You were in front of the English language books after all. Besides, the shame of it all kept your mind from questioning it too much. “For reaching the top shelf,”

Of course they had stools.

If your face hadn’t already been burning with embarrassment it definitely was now.

In a split-second decision, you decided playing dumb was the only way you could walk out of the situation with any dignity left at all, so you plastered on a confused smile and spun around to greet the stranger. “Really? I had no cl-”

You stopped short.

Oh.

Oh no.

You’d know those paint-stained jeans anywhere.

There, with his hands in his pockets and the most self-important, thin-lipped smirk you had ever seen, was easel boy in all of his cocky, intimidating, hot glory. Had you really noticed how hot he truly was before? It didn’t feel like it. Not now that you’d really seen him close up and reveled in the way his dark eyes hypnotized you with their smudged liner that felt borderline obscene. You could smell him too, all charcoal and turpentine and cigarette smoke. If you had it bad before when he was just a blurry ideal out your window, you were completely and utterly smitten now.

He regarded you with a sort of practiced annoyance, and yet there was a strange softness to it that you hadn’t found in many native Sokovians, especially ones that saw you as the stupid, bumbling American wandering blindly around their country.

“Would you like my help?”

“Huh?” You were so lost in his eyes that you couldn’t even focus on his question.

“To reach your book. Would you like my help?”

“Oh!” With a brisk nod, you stepped away from the shelf to make room for easel boy, “yeah, I’m just trying to grab that one there. The, uh, Epic of Gilgamesh,”

In one swift movement, he was stepping right beside you to easily reach up and grab the offending piece of literature. The closeness of it all nearly sent you into a tailspin. That wasn’t even mentioning the way your heart thudded just a little faster when he finally handed the book to you, his calloused fingers brushing against your own. You barely find a grip on your brain strong enough to thank him through the fog of embarrassment and attraction. Eventually, though, you managed to choke out a placation as your eyes explored the cover of the book.

“Thanks for that,”

“It was no problem,” he shrugged. He didn’t move though, still standing just inches away from you. When you looked up from the book you found his eyes were still on you, watching intently as if he expected something from you. The answer to what he actually expected was a mystery but you could tell he wanted something. When you didn’t speak, he spoke for you. “So, The Epic of Gilgamesh? That’s definitely a bold choice,”

You looked up at him sheepishly through heavily lidded eyes. “It’s not a choice at all, actually. I’m only buying it so I can write an essay,”

“Ah,” Something about his tone was almost disappointed as the conversation stalled.

You quickly changed the subject to the first thing you could think of.

“Your hair is really nice!”

“My hair?”

“Yeah… your hair,”

Smooth move, dumbass.

Easel boy’s expression seemed to soften once more as his signature grin crept back onto his face. “Thank you, I grew it myself,” Between his accent and the way he was looking at you like he was going to eat you alive, you weren’t exactly sure how you hadn’t had a heart attack yet. Still, the attention was nice, even if it was bourne out of you repeatedly embarrassing yourself in a never-ending cycle of fuckups. He ran a hand through his loose brown hair. “I like your shirt. Very American,”

Silently, you cursed yourself for not taking a few extra seconds to pick out a better outfit when you woke up. Standing next to him, even while he was dressed in his paint-stained jeans and undone button-up, you looked like a wreck in comparison. He didn’t seem to be speaking from a place of judgment, though.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was being nice, but that couldn’t be the case… could it?

“Maybe it’s just that I haven’t met very many Sokovians that are fond of America, but I’m not sure if that was meant to be a compliment or an insult,” You joked. It was a bit sarcastic, the lilt of your voice masking your deep insecurity, and to your surprise easel boy laughed. He really laughed. From your place beside him, you could almost feel the warmth radiating off of him as he shook his head.

“It was definitely a compliment,”

Oh.

Your heart skipped a beat.

That was a new revelation.

You steeled yourself with a deep breath. Fuck it. It was now or never.

“I, uh… I’m Y/N, and you are?”

He regarded you once again with that strange expression of expectation. “What?”

“I asked for your name,” you repeated, and yet he still stood, slightly dumbfounded, staring down at you with that same expectant expression from earlier. For a moment, you almost thought he expected you to know it already. That fact was quickly glossed over when he moved to rub the back of his neck with his hand, eyes drifting down to the floor.

“Sorry,” he chuckled, “I’m not very good with people. My father thought college might help me finally connect with my peers, but I don’t think he expected that I was the problem, nor do I think he expected me to pick a degree in the arts,” Suddenly, he paused and stuck out his hand to you. “I’m Hel. It’s very nice to meet you Y/N,”

With only a moment of hesitation- because wow, your name had never sounded more right on someone’s lips -you took his large calloused hand in your own and shook it gently. His palm was warm, his fingers lingering on your own for just a moment even as he pulled away. It wasn’t much, just a soft brush against your flesh, but it sent a flash of heat and liquid confidence through your chest.

“Is that short for something?” Your eyes met his in the soft yellow glow of the overhead lamps. Seeing him like this, so up close and personal, he looked a lot more human than he had from your window. Sure, he was imposing. Underneath the initial harsh facade, though, was something softer and almost poetic. You weren’t an artist by any means but if you had been, you had no doubt that he’d be your muse.

“It’s short for Helmut, but only my father calls me that, and only when he’s cross, which, unfortunately, is most of the time,” he chuckled, “Besides, it’s an old man’s name. It doesn’t suit me,”

The words left your mouth before you knew what you were saying.

“Well, it’s better than calling you easel boy,”

Shit.

Today really just wasn’t your day, huh?

In the split second where you were mourning your chances with the most stupidly handsome guy who had ever shown any interest in you, you almost missed the way Helmut’s eyes lit up at the admission.

“Easel boy?” His voice was teasing, but not demeaning. That didn’t do much to ease your mortification, though.

“Is there any chance that I can get you to forget I said anything?”

“If you already have a nickname for me when we’ve barely met, I think you already know the answer to that question,”

His knowing smirk was enough to get you pleading. “You can’t just let me off the hook this once?” you begged, scrubbing a hand across your forehead in a desperate attempt to get away from his piercing gaze. The things those brown eyes did to you could be classified as obscene… “I will genuinely do anything if you don’t make me explain myself right now Hel,”

Hel quirked up an eyebrow. “Anything?” The way your stomach turned at just one word from him was both terrifying and extremely exciting. It felt like a promise. Without hesitation, you nodded. That made him smile. “In that case, get coffee with me today?”

Once again, you were rendered speechless.

“My treat,” he added, “unless you’re not interested…”

“No!” Your answer left your lips embarrassingly fast, “Or- yes? No, no, I think I meant no. No; I am very interested. Yes; I would like to get coffee with you,” There was a hint of shame in your words, but only a hint. After the day you’d had already, there wasn’t very much there to be ashamed of. Still, that same pit of dread began to open up in your stomach as you mulled over your choices.

Thankfully, Helmut continued to take it all in stride. “Wonderful! Is there anything else you’d like to do here before we go? It’s best we leave soon if we want to beat the rain,” He offered up his arm as he spoke like some sort of Disney prince. It was, by far, the cutest gesture you had ever been lucky enough to receive.

You linked your arm with his without hesitation. “As soon as I pay we can get going,” He was warm. It radiated off him in waves just like the warm hints of tobacco and wintermint that seemed to seep from his skin and clothes. With that, you made your way to the front desk as Hel shot you a sly smile.

“Who said anything about letting you pay?”

True to his word, he didn’t let you pay for a single thing for the rest of the afternoon.

The two of you made your way up to the cashier together, and Helmut only separated from your side to grab his wallet before you could grab yours. He then spoke in rapid-fire Sokovian to the lady at the register and pulled what could only be described as a wad of Sokovian koronas while you set the book on the counter, and from the looks of it, she seemed more than pleased with the two of you. Who wouldn’t be, especially when Hel seemed to insist that she keep the excess? In the end, after the book had been wrapped nicely in a paper bag and deposited in your backpack, Helmut held the door open for you like some sort of gentleman and followed you out into the grey afternoon.

Then, you were off down the street on Hel’s arm, pushing through the wind and the biting chill that had settled in the air.

“So, you don’t sound like a big fan of your dad,” you asked, half laughing as you attempted to broach conversation once again.

Helmut groaned beside you. “My father is a menace who is unable to understand that some people want more in life than to sit behind a desk all day making phone calls. In fact, most of my family is the same way. The only reason I haven’t completely cut them off and changed my name is the money,”

“I assume you get a lot of it if it’s worth sticking around someone you hate so much,”

“Never ask a man about his net worth,” he chuckled, gently elbowing you in the ribs, “but yes, I’m very comfortable. I have my own apartment just far enough away to be considered off-campus with my own car and as much money as it takes to keep me happy and getting good grades; Daddy makes sure of that,” The word daddy was a deep sneer, barely there in the wind, but something about it sent butterflies through your stomach. Well, that was never something you thought you were into… “Little does he know, I’m not here to make money. I’m here to find inspiration worth my time while out from under his thumb,”

You snorted softly. “Artistic and rich? You’re just ticking all the boxes, Hel,”

“Good for me. Would offering help on that essay of yours endear you to me further?”

“Absolutely,”

The next 5 minutes you spend discussing the Epic of Gilgamesh. Surprisingly, in one of the first stokes of good luck you’d had all day, Helmut seemed to be one of the only people on earth who knew plenty about Enkidu off the top of his head. When he was the one lecturing you in his smooth, heavily accented timbre it was so much easier to pay attention to something so very tedious than when you heard it from your aging and often monotone professor. In fact, you were so enthralled by his retelling of the tale that you barely noticed you’d made it all the way to the cafe that sat across from the international dorm.

If you didn’t consider Hel to be smart as a whip and twice as clever as he was smart, you would have thought it was a coincidence. It couldn’t be though. No, there was no way anything was a coincidence with Helmut around. You shot him a smile when he opened the door for you and ushered you inside.

“You know Hel,” you muttered, “I’m starting to think you might know more about me than you initially let on,”

He shrugged. “You’re American, so it’s unlikely you live anywhere else and I wanted to make the walk home easy. It’s supposed to rain, you know? Besides, despite the… interesting waitstaff, they make the best pastries in town right here in this cafe,”

“Did you mean it when you said you were paying?”

“Absolutely,”

“Then I can’t wait to try one,”

The two of you were seated quickly (you assumed it had to do with the waitress finding Hel as hot as you did, because you caught her looking at him from behind the counter and whispering excitedly in Sokovian to her coworker at least twice over the course of the meal) and the conversation flowed easily as you waited on your coffees and the deserts Helmut insisted on splitting to let you try. Millefeuille, pear tart tatin, chocolate devil’s food cake, and a towering plate of apricot kołaczki awaited you, and they kept you sitting and talking and snacking for over an hour as you really got to know each other. The more you learned, the more you fell in love with the man across from you.

Over the course of the afternoon, you learned that Helmut was majoring in studio art while minoring in psychology just because it interested him, he hated the Beatles almost as much as he hated Freud’s theories on women, his favorite color was purple, and he spent most of his free time reading or getting high off his ass in his massive studio apartment in what you now knew was one of the most expensive areas in the city. He, in return, sat at rapt attention across the table as you gushed about your life in America, your reasons for going to university in Sokovia, your favorite books, and the ridiculousness that was trying to pass college-level classes in a country that seemed to avoid English at all costs.

Eventually, though, you did touch upon his nickname.

“I just thought it was really interesting that you did the same thing every single day, no matter what,” you explained, grabbing one of the last kołaczki from the plate and ignoring the powdered sugar that stuck to your fingers, “and by watching you… I don’t know, I guess it kind of felt like I had another friend who’d share breakfast with me in the morning if that makes sense,”

Hel nodded, swallowing his last bite of chocolate cake. “I understand completely. It can be lonely, coming to a new place without any friends or connections, but you were brave enough to take the leap. I admire that,” He brought his napkin to his lips before crumpling it and setting it one of the now empty plates before him, “But I can’t say I’m not a little disappointed that you didn’t watch me because I’m attractive,”

You nearly choked on your pastry. “Well, I wouldn’t say your pretty face didn’t help…”

The grin that spread across his face was heartstopping. He grabbed a napkin from the little holder next to the two of you and grabbed a pen from one of his pockets as he spoke. “In that case, you should join me tomorrow morning. Bring coffee if you can, I never have enough hands to bring a cup for myself, but even if you can’t bring some, if you want to come and watch me work I’d be more than happy to have a companion for the morning,” he paused for a moment, flustered, “or every morning, for that matter,”

“That sounds like a deal,” Your cheeks were hot, but not from embarrassment this time. No, it was anything but, because here you were across the table from a kind, attractive, intelligent Sokovian boy with money to spend and time to spare for you. You couldn’t help but feel a little bit proud too. He wanted you back, after all. You could see it in the way his eyes lingered on you just a little longer than he should, and even more plainly in the way he wrote his phone number in bold blue ink on the napkin and signed it with a doodle of a heart before passing it across the table to you.

“I’m going to go pay,” he said quietly while standing, “but I’ll be back in a second to walk you out. Alright?”

“Alright,”

There was something strangely similar to sorrow sitting in your chest when you watched him walk away. The sight of his ass as he went made up for it, though. Once he was obstructed by other patrons, you turned your attention to the napkin in your hands. Hel’s handwriting was neat as far as artists’ handwriting goes, but it still held a sort of looseness in its curves, a freedom in the way the numbers had flowed effortlessly from his pen. You popped the last kołaczki in your mouth as you admired the blue ink before devouring the final bites of pear tart and millefeuille. How had you gotten so lucky to have someone like him giving you his number and buying you pastries? You pondered the bizarre nature of it all until Helmut returned.

You stood quickly, folding the napkin and putting it away in your pocket. “Ready to go?”

“If you are,” he replied. In an instant, you were standing beside him again as he opened the door for you. The wind was even stronger now, strong enough that his loose hair whipped wildly around his forehead from the force of it. You couldn’t help but giggle at his appearance.

He caught you off guard as he walked you across the street. “You have such a pretty laugh,”

It was like you were seeing him again for the first time. You fiddled with the strap of your backpack as you got closer and closer to the door to your dorm. “Thanks. I’m pretty fond of your laugh too,”

Then, you were there, just two college kids standing awkwardly before your first departure.

“So,” you said before you could stop yourself, “when I tell my one friend all about this afternoon after my math class tonight, should I say it was a date?”

Hel’s cheeks flushed pink. “You can call it that, if that’s what you would like it to have been,”

“I think I would,”

“Good, good,” he let out a little chuckle, “I’m glad. Would you… would you consider going on another? I promise I have much more to offer than just small talk and tips on where to buy the best pastries,”

Looking into his brown eyes, so full of uncertainty and hope, you knew you couldn’t have denied him even if you wanted to. Still, you weren’t going to give in to his advances without a little bit of taunting. It made it fun, a game to be played where, hopefully, you both would win big in the end.

“That depends,” you teased, letting your lower lip catch between your teeth, “what do you have in mind?”

Helmut shoved his hands into his pockets as he rocked back and forth on his heels, pensive. “If you want to, we could go to my place and I could actually show you all of the paintings I’ve been working on while you watched me. The view from the rooftop is lovely too. We could have dinner up there while looking out over Novi Grad. I have to warn you, though, it’ll probably be takeout. I’m an atrocious chef,”

Slowly, a brilliant smile spread across your face. “Does Friday work?”

The smile Helmut shot back was as bright as every star in the night sky and even more enthralling. “Friday is perfect. Can I pick you up at 7?”

“As long as you come in that fancy car you were talking about,”

“Then it’s a deal,”

“Well,” you turned away, walking up the steps towards the door before turning back to him, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Hel, and I’ll bring coffee. Have a good night,”

“You too, Y/N. Parting is such sweet sorrow and all that,”

With that, he gave one last short wave before turning on his heel and pulling out a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. You watched him walk away until he turned the corner and disappeared from view. Only then did you enter the punch code and race up the stairs to your room.

Your back was pressed to the door of your dorm room the second you had shut it, your hands clutching at your chest in a desperate attempt to keep your heart from beating right out of your ribs. The second you were in the privacy of your own place, your cool facade had melted away to reveal just how much of a wreck you really were.

He had invited you over to his apartment.

He liked you.

Easel boy really, honestly liked you.

No, not easel boy. Helmut. Hel.

Hel liked you, and he invited you over to his apartment, and you had plans to meet him with coffee as he painted the next morning.

You smiled softly under the fluorescent lights and pulled the book that had brought you together from your backpack. It seemed so unassuming now, just a fresh paperback with an unbroken spine, but in reality, it was so much more than that.

Hel.

It was such a nice name. You liked it a lot.

Now you couldn’t wait to see what else you liked about him too.

------

a/n: I have been so excited to start sharing this AU with you guys, and it’s finally here!!! If you liked this fic, I once again will direct you to Bliss by @creme-bruhlee because that’s technically next in chronological order for this AU. I hope you enjoyed!!!

TAGLIST: @tatestripedsweater , @elaineygrace, @multiyfandomgirl40 , @lovelymischief , @rami-malek-trash , @avgravy , @wh0re-4-techno , @forcebros , @sugarsweetkiss , @grandmuffinsharkbailiff , @killsandthrills , @novasstudy , @thnksfr-ptrkstmp , @inmate-marmalade, @alanathedeer , @your-pixels-are-showing , @shit-post-things , @bbarton , @sux-ubus , @halefirewarrior , @janelongxox , @rax-writes , @mossybank , @simsiddy , @xxspqcebunsxx , @be-cautious-around-bri , @metaphorical-love-for-a-car , @frothonthedaydreams

#zemo #helmut zemo #baron zemo #baron helmut zemo #zemo x reader #helmut zemo x reader #baron zemo x reader #baron helmut zemo x reader #fanfiction

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fauzhee10069 · 3 years ago

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JoJolion chapter 109: Grandma Lucy’s Bizarre Adventure

(Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t read it, I suggest you to read it soon)

JJL chapter 109: The Radio Gaga Incident

After The End of Tooru, we go back to a flashback 70 years ago in Morioh, 1941.

A grannie who just got off the train and arrived in Morioh, meets a chauffeur who would pick her up. The chauffeur is a jerk for refusing to bring the old lady's heavy-looking luggage… typical Morioh’s jerk in JJL.

Thanks for being a jerk, the grannie's belongings are even taken by the thief. What's the point of telling the grannie about the thief if you refuse to help her bring her luggage from the start?

Fortunately, a young Morioh boy stops the thief.

right to left

The grannie offers the boy named Fumi a part-time job to be her local guide. However, the boy refuses, saying he is supposed to meet his girlfriend. He notices her holding a photograph of an orchard (Higashikata’s orchard obviously).

Fumi tells her about 「The Radio Gaga Incident」, a place of bad luck with numerous deaths in the past. One of them was a story of woman who was messing around with her boyfriend near a guard rail, she had followed a strange voice near a guard rail and begun to strip herself. She later disappeared after a farmer's truck passes by, leaving only her clothes and a piece of her bloodied foot behind.

Turns out that this grannie is Lucy Steel all along. She told Fumi about herself and the purpose of her arrival in Morioh. She was 14 in 1891 (Steel Ball Run), so she is supposed to be around 64 years old in 1941 (JJL 109) right now. Seems like she investigates the Locacaca fruit on behalf of the Speedwagon Foundation, as botanist and geomorphologist… that’s cool, though I was originally thinking that she was a secret agent (but that still makes sense).

Fumi, Lucy, and the jerk chauffeur later arrive at Morioh's hunting grounds near the orchard owned by the Higashikata. As Lucy inspects the site and observes the Higashikata house with a telescope, Fumi finds the remains of a bird under his foot. He freaks out after the jerk chauffeur appears behind him, seemingly entranced by a voice only he can hear. He begins to strip down naked and approaches the guard rail, just like the victim girl in the local legend. Panicking, Fumi calls Lucy's attention before a truck passes on the road and the driver disappears.

Fumi inspects the remaining clothes and only finds the chauffeur’s severed hand. One of my favorite moment in JoJo when the jerk cameo gets bitten by the dust.

Fumi’s starting to get scared and tells Lucy to flee as soon as possible but she refuses, explaining that she came to Morioh after discovering that a plant named the "Locacaca" had been growing in the cursed land that was similar to the Devil's Palm in America.

JJL chapter 109 and 99

Wait a minute, if Lucy had been to Morioh 30 years ago, did the flashback of her in chapter 99 happen 30 years ago? Doesn't that mean it was in 1911 instead of 1901? I thought it had happened along with the flashback of Johnny's death (1901), if that’s the case then Lucy's arrival in Morioh 30 years ago happened 10 years after Johnny's death! And she was around 34 years old instead of 24… unless Araki forgot and messed up his timeline again.

The chapter ends with cliffhanger of Lucy’s getting attacked by 「Radio Gaga」 too.

My thought…

So, after the end of the big villain, we go back to a flashback instead of another epilogue. This chapter kinda reminds me of Vento Aureo’s Sleeping Slaves arc, in which after the defeat of the main villain, we got that flashback instead.

It’s nice to have Lucy Steel once again, here she becomes a badass grandma. My favorite part is how Araki designs Lucy in her 60s realistically, instead of being like a lady who had drunk a fountain of youth. I wished Araki would have drawn Caato and Holy more realistically like this, perhaps in his eyes 50 is not old, 60 is. Not surprised though considering how he looks too.

Not only that, if you take a look to the hat Lucy is wearing, the model is after her late husband, Stephen’s. I think it’s not limited to her hat, her fashion sense as well truly resembles Stephen’s in Steel Ball Run.

Then there is a young boy named Fumi in his 17, could he be the grandfather of Josefumi? I think so, I wish it’s true.

Since Lucy and Fumi are near Higashikata’s territory, I hope that they will get any interaction with the Higashikata family. I'm also curious about what Lucy will get from her research on Locacaca fruit.

What kind of Stand is「Radio Gaga」? Who owns it and will it relevant to the event at JJL in the future?

To be honest, I'm a little disappointed with the timeline Lucy told, about 30 years ago, which makes the event of Lucy's arrival in Morioh at that time (1911) will likely be 'unrelated' to the death of Johnny (1901). Either Araki misses the chance or is pretty bad with timeline so, that’s it.

I hope that this flashback chapter will be relevant to those unresolved mysteries that I brought up on my previous chapter review. Perhaps it would have something to do with Tooru and his calamity, but my expectation is quite low regarding this. Tooru and 「Wonder of U」 are probably gone forever.

At least I hope this mini arc will answer the most important mystery in JoJolion, the origin of Higashikata’s family curse! Araki really owes us for that, don’t you agree? Please Araki, don’t let us down!

Next chapter prediction…

The continuation of Radio Gaga arc, perhaps followed by an epilogue considering that the next chapter could be the end of JoJolion. Also, does this mean that Josuke-&-Yasuho will be official/canon?

Personal Note: this is my first time JoJoblogging without my father here, he passed away due to Covid-19. God, this pandemic is terrible, I hope this ends soon and you guys are doing well.

#jojolion spoilers #lucy steel #fumi jojo #radio gaga incident #jjba part 8 #jojo's bizarre adventure #chapter review #radio gaga #jojolion #my thoughts #badass grandma lucy #it's ending bro

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stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale · 4 years ago

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Just curious, do you think the writers were aware that they were putting more favor towards Vi? I've heard Kent say that they're balanced but I don't think they are...

So this is something that gets brought up a lot and we’ve had many discussions about the whole “The Louis and Violet routes are unbalanced” thing, but there’s something I’ve concluded from my latest playthrough of the entire series. The whole Louis/Violet thing isn’t the first instance of routes being unbalanced and the devs potentially not realizing it. And to give credit where credit is due, Louis and Violet are the best handled in the series as far as routes go.

Like, a lot of the things that we point at and go “Hey, that’s not balanced” are usually more minor or even nitpicky. Not all of them, because there are some bigger, more obvious instances that make you question what the intent was and if they really didn’t see how it was affecting this balance.

Y’know... like having Violet take over as the leader and imply that she and Clementine spent two weeks working together while Clementine and Louis barely spoke, yet expecting players to look at that and go “Oh yeah, that’s balanced. Makes sense.”

Or my favorite... the cell scenes. Y’know, the part of episode three where you can possibly get the heartbreaking horror of Louis having his tongue cut out that is such a well-executed scene, or you can get the most garbage scene in the entire game that is Violet’s cell scene. Hmmm.

But again, to be fair, other than the glaring examples, you can work around the different elements and find balance.

The thing that I’ve found interesting, though, is that this series has a history of doing this, of having unbalanced routes and we kind of tend to overlook them because we’re focused on Louis and Violet. When you look at each season, it’s almost inevitable that they’d continue this trend, but they did do much better this time around comparatively. Telltale has always had this issue with balance when it comes to picking between two characters.

Ever since S1 with Carley and Doug because yeah, according to the commentaries, they thought that they did such a good job making Carley and Doug equal aaaaand... No.

Haha, sorry but no. I’m actually baffled that they thought they gave Doug as much as they gave Carley in ep1.

Fun fact- Doug is the only person in ep1 of S1 that you can’t give a candy bar to when in the drugstore. You can give a candy bar to everyone/every little group [Lilly/Larry, Carley, Clementine, Kenny/Katjaa/Duck] and even offer Glenn one, but not Doug. He’s the only one you can’t even offer a candy bar to.

At a glance, that’s a very small, pointless detail. Like, oh Doug doesn’t get a candy bar, but who cares? Nitpicky like I was saying before, but... it kinda says something, y’know?

If I’m supposed to care about Doug and Carley to the point where I’m conflicted on who to save, then why let me feed Carley but not Doug. It’s a minor detail that makes Carley appear more important, like Lee cares about feeding her but not Doug due to not having the option.

Not only that, but you get to talk to Carley way more, mess around with her radio, and learn more about her backstory. She knows about Lee’s past. You take her with you to go save Glenn. You can give her a fucking candy bar.

With Doug you get to go outside and learn very little about him before killing your walker brother and that’s about it. There’s no deeper connection, there’s nothing to imply that he’ll be important to Lee if he’s saved, and while they try to show that he’s great with tech and that kind of stuff, it’s heavily overshadowed by Carley’s use of a gun.

I remember when that episode came out and those percentages were like... 70/30, and that’s what made the writers go “......Oh.”

The only reason they’re as equally picked as they are now is because they backtracked outside of the game [another common thing they do] like “Hey, wait, no! #SaveDoug! Doug’s based on a real person! Please go back and give Doug a chance! He’s really cool! Please!” and people listened. And guess what? Doug’s great, you just failed to show how great he is when it was most important. Oops.

And hey, on top of that, you have the opportunity to come forward and tell the group about Lee’s past if you save Carley. You don’t get that choice with Doug, and a lot of people see that as a downside in picking Doug, myself included.

But the developers themselves said they thought they did a good job of showing off how useful Doug is and how equal he is to Carley and... well, I beg to differ.

Then in s2 we have Kenny vs Jane, which isn’t great. In fact, it’s terrible. And it doesn’t help that ANF pretty much said “Kenny was the right choice” after giving Jane the character assassination treatment and punishing Clementine for going alone by having her lose a finger. And Wellington? Might as well not exist.

And speaking of ANF... you can’t look at me and say that the writers didn’t try and push you into Kate at every possible chance. The writers want you to be with Kate and it feels like they didn’t consider that there’d be a lot of people who don’t want to be in a romantic relationship with their sister-in-law... because she’s married to Javi’s brother... y’know?

It does feel like the game punishes you when you don’t want to romance Kate. She’s really pissy about it, David still gets pissy himself, and even if you save Kate in the end, she wants nothing to do with you so you don’t even get to make amends with her- you lose even more of your family by not romancing her. And you’re gonna tell me that’s balanced? Because it’s not.

So when we get to TFS... it’s not that surprising that they’d do it again, but you’d think that they’d take more notice of it and learn from past games... but hey, maybe they did just a bit and that’s why Louis and Violet are better. Not perfect, but better.

Louis and Violet are both likable, valid options for Clementine, and no matter what you do or think, she cares about both of them and finds them attractive, it’s just up to you as the player to pick who you’re more drawn to.

And the thing is, I don’t know if they are actually aware of the imbalance because they consistently try to reassure everyone that it is balanced... it could go either way- they truly believe it is and don’t get where the players are coming from because they have a different understanding having been the ones to create the game, or they are aware but won’t outright admit to it being as such for a number of reasons.

#asks #twdg clementine #twdg louis #twdg violet #twdg carley #twdg doug #twdg kenny #twdg jane #twdg javi #twdg kate #twdg clouis #twdg violentine #twdg lee

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majingojira · 4 years ago

Text

Brief Review of Every Dinosaur/Prehistoric Documentary/Educational Short I’ve ever seen (1923-1996).

And thanks to a certain project, I’ve seen a LOT!

Evolution (1923) - This is the oldest of the bunch, a silent film. Mostly it uses modern animals to represent ancient forms, with a few statues and brief animated bits to fill things out. The only real highlight? Seeing where some of the “film real” segment from Gigantis the Fire Monster comes from!

Monsters from the Past (1923) - A short documentary with original stop motion (this was pre-The Lost World, so that’s to be expected). Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, and Brontosaurus are the key creatures. Included as an extra on the second DVD release of The Lost World.

Prehistoric Animals (1938) - Reuses footage from The Lost World (1925) for its prehistoric segments. This will not be the last time it happens.

Prehistoric Times: The World Before Man (1952) - This thing is so quintessentially 1950s, it’s highly riff-able. It uses a mix of paintings, sculptures and some live animals to represent prehistoric life.

A World Is Born (1955) - Ya know what Fantasia needed? Overbearing Narration! That’s it. That’s what this documentary is. I saw this thing rebroadcast in the 90s on the Disney Channel, believe it or not.

The Animal World (1956) - Ray Harryhausen. Willis O’Brian. Their stop motion segment is the ONLY notable part of this documentary. This is also the only part that has seen some release in modern times, as a bonus feature on the DVD of The Black Scorpion.

Prehistoric Animals of the Tar Pits (1956) - Black and white, but also quintessentially 50s and riff-able. Aside from the bones, it shows some wooden models to represent the animals.

Journey into Time (1960) - Fantasia this is not, but it TRIES to be. Lord it tries. Or, rather, there’s a Fantasia-adjacent thing elsewhere which does the same thing. Has some unique choices for animals to represent, including showing Permian forms like Scutusaurus and Inostrancevia.

Dem Dry Bones: Archaeology, Paleontology, Identification, and Preservation (1966) - This was a lucky find, it was on Youtube for half a second. And not worth digging out, really. Stuffy, dry, and mildly condescending. It was still interesting looking at the dinosaur hall of the Smithsonian back in the 1950s.

Dinosaurs - The Terrible Lizard (1970) - The stop motion here is pretty neat, if slow and plodding, it’s refreshing after all this crap. The puppets for many of these would later be re-used for The Land of the Lost. Including Grumpy, Alice, and Spot.

NOVA: The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs (1977) - Robert Bakker’s first appearance in a documentary. HE HAS SUCH LONG HAIR! Not bad, a little dry, with National Geographic titles. It reminds me of 1990s documentaries, just so show how long it’s taken for various ideas to filter down. Currently, it’s available on Archive.org.

Dinosaurs: A First Film (1978) - The art style for this half-animated 70s abomination makes identifying various prehistoric animals almost impossible. Almost painful to sit through. Stops with the Dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs: The Age of the Terrible Lizards (1978) - Similar to the above, but available from Rifftrax, so much more watchable. Also, it’s actually animated!

Dinosaur (1980) - Wil Vinton Claymation with Dinosaurs. A few edits of this exist, the latter works a bit better, but the original is interesting to track down. Most of the edits are audio only, so you aren’t missing anything. The dinosaur sin this are top notch for color and design. They even have Corythosaurus and Tyrannosaurus not dragging their tails!

Cosmos (1980) - the animated segment covering Evolution is still wonderful if only for the narration from Carl Sagan.

The Age of Mammals (1981) - A follow up of sorts to Dinosaurs: The Age of Reptiles. Decent stop motion if a little slow. Decent variety for the time.

64,000,000 Years Ago (1981) - A solid stop motion short film. Still worth checking out for stop motion fans. Available on Youtube legally!

Dinosaurs: Fun, Facts, and Fantasy (1981) - Nostalgic for some, but aimed at a rather young audience. Some interesting stop motion bits in here too... if awkward in that way British stop motion can be outside Aardman Studios.

Reading Rainbow “Digging up Dinosaurs” (1983) - Definitely nostalgic for me. Besides, it’s Reading Rainbow! And opens with a clip from One Million Years B.C.! What’s not to love?

Prehistoric Beast (1984) - One of the best stop motion shorts on this list. Included because it INSPIRED a documentary from it. Phil Tippett firing on all cylinders. Well worth watching. And he uploaded it on Youtube himself!

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs (1985), More Dinosaurs (1985), Son of Dinosaur (1988), Prehistoric World (1993) - Gary Owens and Eric Boardman have a series of documentaries on dinosaurs and prehistoric life. The presenters are what really make these work. Colorful, fun, and yes, silly, these still hold a nostalgic gleam for people like me. The last one has Dougal Dixon talk about his After Man speculations. Fun times.

Dinosaur! (1985) - Hosted by Christopher Reeve, this is one of the best documentaries of its time. Reeves loved dinosaurs and was happy to work on this project with Phil Tippet behind the animation. Covers a lot in its hour long format, and well worth watching. Do you know how good this special was? When Reeve died in 2004, the Discovery Channel (or similar station) re-aired this thing as a tribute. It holds up that well!

Tell Me Why: Pre-Historic Animals, Reptiles and Amphibians (1986) - This is something I had when I was a little kid. Dry, straight forward, a “Video Babysitter” at it’s best. It consists of a narrator while looking at pictures of the Invicta Dinosaur Toys that were also on the poster.

Dinosaurs! A Fun-Filled Trip Back in Time (1987) - Wil Vinton’s Dinosaurs! tied with a short setup/framing device with the kid from the Wonder Years involving a low-animation music video (this was the MTV age) and a guide through art from various dinosaur books from the 1950s through the 1980s. Rather meh, but Wil Vinton is why we are here. This was the only way to get Wil Vinton’s short back in the day, and is the version of the short shown in Museums like The Academy of Natural Sciences.

Digging Dinosaurs (PBS-WHYY) (1988) - Something I managed to record of TV back in the day, though not much of it, about the uncovering and preparation of Avaceratops. Bone Dry.

Maia: A Dinosaur Grows Up (1988) - A VHS version of the picture book, with narration and the whole spiel. Actually not to bad for what it is, but it is what it is. The art for that book is rather wonderful.

Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives (1988) - David. Attenburrough. Need I say more? Not one of his best, but still wonderful. Hard to track down.

Dinosaurs (1989) - From the Smithsonian Institute, one of the video followups sold in various museums (I have one from the Royal Tyrell, but haven’t been able to track it down). Not great, but I’ve seen worse.

Infinite Voyage: The Great Dinosaur Hunt (1989) - A rather dry documentary, but one I find extremely relaxing and calming. Very nostalgic for me. But still dry.

Vestie Video Sitter: Dinosaurs (1989) - This is for babies. It hurt to watch.

In November, 1990, Jurassic Park (novel) was released, and thus began the great shift.

In Search of the Dragon: The Great Dinosaur Hunt of the Century (1991) - a.k.a. The Dinosaur Project, The Great Dinosaur Hunt, The Hunt for China’s Dinosaurs. Edited into a 1 hour NOVA special from a nearly two hour documentary, all about the joint Canadian/Chinese Gobi Desert Expedition in the 1980s that gave us Mamenchisaurus among many other species. With another stop in the Arctic for good measure. Some good stop motion and pencil animation for Troodon round this one out.

A&E’s Dinosuar! (1991) - There’s so many things named “Dinosaur” that I have to specify. Hosted by Walter Cronkite, this is rather dry, but still entertaining documentary series has some nightmare-fuel puppet-work. The ‘sad’ music gets caught in my head sometimes when I think about it. It is 4 episodes long. “The Tale of a Tooth”, “The Tale of a Bone”, “The Tale of an Egg”, and “The Tale of a Feather”

T. Rex: Exposed (1991) - a Nova Documentary on T. Rex. Not too bad overall, focusing on the Wrankle Rex unearthing. Parts of it are available on Youtube, but not all of it.

The Case of the Flying Dinosaur (1991) - the third in the “NOVA” 91 trilogy, this covers the bird-dinosaur connection as it was still contentious at the time.

PBS’ The Dinosaurs! (1992) - A gold standard for documentaries on dinosaurs. The hand drawn animation with colored pencil style still hold up today. The narrator has a bit of an accent and pronounces “Dinosaur” oddly, but that is the only complaint I can really give. It has 4 episodes: “The Monsters Emerge”, “Flesh on the Bones”, “The Nature of the Beast”, “Death of the Dinosaurs.”

Muttaburrasaurus: Life in Gondwana (1993) - A half-hour short about dinosuars and mesozoic life in Australia. Solid stop motion animation. Australian Accents makes it fun to listen too.

NOVA: The Real Jurassic Park (1993) - Jeff Goldblum narrates this bit of scientists going on about “But what if we really did it?” Quite fun, lotta fun details the movies and even the books didn’t get into. My favorite bit had Robert Bakker talking to a game keeper at the Rockefeller Refuge in a Louisiana Cypress Swamp about what could happen if they kept a few dinosaur there (Edmontosaurus, Triceratops, and T. Rex). Namely, he talks about housing ‘about a thousand” Edmontosaurs on the 86K acre facility, with 2 or 3 mated pairs of Rexes. It’s fun getting numbers like that.

Bill Nye the Science Guy “Dinosaurs” (1993) - BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL! Not a bad kids entry for documentaries. Available from Netflix.

Paleoworld (1994-1997) - Running originally for 4 years, and being revamps once along the way, this rather dry, “Zoom in on paleoart” style of documentary was a good holdover for bigger things, and covered some pretty niche topics. Much of the later version has been uploaded to youtube.

Dinosaur Digs: A Fossil Finders Tour (1994), Dinosaurs: Next Exit (1994) - These films hurt me. They hurt me so much. I’ve seen some painful things, but these are hour long tour advertisements for road trips with annoyingly earworms. Available on youtube, but I ain’t linking anything!

Eyewitness: Dinosaur (1994) - Not a bad documentary, but I still hold a grudge on it for replacing Wil Vinton’s work at my local museum! Still, it is narrated by Martin Sheen. The clip selection is wide and varied, but we’re still getting The Lost World (1925) footage.

Planet of Life (1995) - This documentary series is rather dry, but boasts some interesting coverage of topics. Though some of it’s conclusions regarding dinosaurs are... not great. Still, the episode “Ancient Oceans” is a favorite of mine.

Once Upon Australia (1995) - The bests stop motion documentary on Australia’s prehistory. Has some humor to is, and Australian fauna that it does cover is solid. Though finding out how one of the animals is spelled, ( Ngapakaldia) drove me nuts for literally decades.

Dinosaurs: Myths and Reality (1995) - Like a little more polished episode of Paleoworld, with a lighter-voiced narration, this covers common myths about dinosaurs. Overall, a Meh. But it has a LOT of movie clips. Which makes sense given it was funded by the Disney Channel!

The Ultimate Guide: T. Rex (1995) - The Ultimate Guide series of docs were overall rather solid, as was the Tyrannosaurus one. Stop Motion animation along with puppets and some minor CG help round out the normal talking heads and skeleton mounts. Along with a solid narrator, it has a real mood to it.

The Magic School Bus “The Busasaurus” (1995) - The original Magic School Bus was a solid series, and their episode on Dinosaurs bucks trends even the reboot didn’t cover. The core thrust here wasn’t just dinosaur information, but the idea that Dinosaurs were not Monsters, but animals. And they conveyed it in a unique way.

I may do more of these mini-reviews, but there are a LOT of documentaries post The Lost World: Jurassic Park that don’t have as much easy access. Like, I’ve seen them, but digging out links/citing places to watch them is a lot harder.

#Dinosaurs #Documentaries #Documentary #Review #Dinosaur #Prehistoric

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boreum-dal · 4 years ago

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cardcaptor sakura: boy band au #1

so, a while back, in the midst of a DEEP dive into BTS, @swingsdown and i brainstormed a stupidly indulgent CCS boy band AU which i’ve written in bits and pieces over the last few months for fun. i don’t plan to do much with it, but i thought it’d be fun to post little bits of it here as it gets written.

below is the rundown:

touya, yukito, eriol, syaoran, and yamazaki make up japan’s hottest boy group, CLOW, a group that has smashed regional and global records, amassed a cult-like legion of fans, and reached new peaks of success with every comeback they stage. beyond good looks, catchy music, and charming personalities, the group captures the hearts of fans with what appears to be genuine brotherhood and love for each other both on- and off-camera. but just when it looks like they can’t fly any higher, yukito, the glue of the group, abruptly leaves, and everything is at risk of falling apart.

these are non-chronological vignettes of the band’s time together, both while yukito is with them and after he leaves as they try to stage a return to the music world.

[see below for descriptions of the boys’ roles in the band, etc. + first vignette]

navigation:

[intro & post-yukito #1] [post-yukito #2] [post-yukito #3]| [during yukito #1]

-touya: rapper/singer, 26, group leader, trainee for longest (6 years--15 to 21) because he didn’t have any proper musical training when he auditioned; wanted to become a musician to help make ends meet for his family. best rapper, ok singer, worst dancer. Is friendly enough for an idol but a little stoic but has lots of fans because he’s very good looking

-yamazaki: rapper/singer, 24, exceptionally good dancer and ok rapper, relatively terrible singer but had to take vocal lessons to improve after yukito left to help fill the gap; never fights with anyone, chaotic energy at almost all times, known for his smiley eyes; known for weirdly high iq

-eriol: singer, 22, classically trained/very good vocalist, TERRIBLE rapper, pretty good dancer, calmest/most polite out of the group, best “face of the group,” known for classic good looks, comes from rich family, bff/roomies with syaoran

-syaoran: singer, 22, second best vocalist behind eriol, not good rapper, pretty good dancer, sometimes gets called “mini touya” because they’re both a little surly and look alike (and is popular despite stoicism/attitude bc he’s cute), hardest on himself and known to be a perfectionist, bff/roomies with eriol, auditioned through global casting in hong kong, had to learn japanese, english, and korean in training

-their fans unironically call themselves “CLOWn.”

-this is modeled much more after kpop boy groups/the kpop system in general, which i know is quite different from the jpop scene.

====

[post-yukito #1]

Syaoran watched, holding his breath, as the cameraman counted down with his fingers from three for their cue. At zero, he bowed in perfect unison with his bandmates, rising back up with a practiced smile. Yukito had taught him that the eyes mattered the most--if they don’t crinkle a little, people won’t think it’s genuine, he’d said. Syaoran squeezed the muscles around his cheeks just a little bit tighter and swallowed back bile. He felt Yamazaki squeeze his elbow to his left, and realizing how tense his shoulders were, he took in a breath and tried to force himself to relax.

“Hello, we’re CLOW,” he chorused with the group, and he threw up a v-sign with his fingers, maintaining the fake-genuine smile. Yukito would have been to his right if he’d been here, and he tried not to think about how painfully naked his right shoulder felt. They’d been preparing for this for months, and even so, everything about this situation suddenly felt horribly wrong.

“Hi, CLOW!” the host, a chipper young woman with bright blue hair and purple contact lenses who’d recently made her solo debut a few months ago, exclaimed, turning briefly to them before facing the camera again.

Syaoran briefly recalled the first time they’d been on this particular concert pre-show; it had been three weeks into their debut, and he’d been so nervous that he could hardly see straight. The interviewer then had been a young man, a fellow idol singer doing a three-month stint as the host for the show, and when the host had held the mic up to Syaoran’s face, he’d been totally speechless, his voice shot from nerves. His whole group--Eriol in particular--had given him hell about it for weeks afterward. Even Yukito, in all his sweet earnestness, had given him some good-natured ribbing about it. Only Touya had refrained, for one reason or another.

“Today is a very exciting day--your first comeback in over six months with your new single, LOVETORN!” the host said, turning towards Touya. “Tell us, how are you feeling?”

Touya leaned into the mic, facing the camera and wearing a convincingly charming grin. “It feels amazing. We are so happy to be able to provide new music for our fans, who have been so loving and wonderful while we’ve been on our break. We only hope that our fans love the single with as much love as we poured into making it.”

“Well, within twenty-four hours of the music video’s release on YouTube, it already hit 70 million views, so I think we can say with certainty that your fans love the single!” the host chirped. “Can you tell us what the meaning behind this song is?”

Syaoran was relieved the mic did not go to him for this question; he’d have had a difficult time not rolling his eyes. The meaning was pretty clear, he thought. It was a song about wanting someone back. Touya and the producers had decided to capitalize off of the most painful moment in the band’s four-year history by writing a fucking song about the departure of the one member that had truly held the team together.

Eriol, predictably, was a little more diplomatic in his response, for better or for worse. “Yes, it’s about the pain of being apart from your loved one for a prolonged period of time and life not being the same without them,” he said into the mic. He pushed up his glasses. “In our case, it’s about us being separated from our beloved CLOWNs for so long and wanting desperately to be reunited. And here we are today.”

The host smiled. “Such a sad song, but you’re all so happy to be here! How are you going to emote something so painful onstage?”

It was Syaoran’s turn to speak. All eyes were on him now, and taking an imperceptible half-second to compose himself, he turned on his megawatt smile once more. “It’s quite simple, really. We’ll just think about the times that inspired us to write this song in the first place. All the hardships, all the heartache--we’ll bring it all back onstage. And to that end,” he said, looking directly into the camera, “we’ve missed you very much.”

He hoped Yukito was watching, even though he knew he wasn’t.

“That is lovely, and we can’t wait to see you perform. Yamazaki, would you like to kick off the performance?”

Yamazaki stuck his face into the camera with a wide grin. “Absolutely. You’re watching Music Centre, and get ready for CLOW’s comeback with our new single, LOVETORN, in three, two, one!”

“Cut!” The director shouted, and the cameras stopped rolling. “Great job, everyone. I love when we get everything we need in one take--after all that time away, you really are true professionals.”

The group bowed, murmuring thanks, and shuffled backstage toward the dressing rooms.

“Good job, everyone,” Yoshiyuki Terada, the group’s manager, called, looking up from an iPad. “Take ten and then we’ll meet back here--you’re due onstage after this next performance.”

Syaoran made it into the dressing room first, and immediately, he grabbed his headphones out of the pocket of his hoodie hanging from the door and shoved them into his ears. The last thing he wanted to do right now was reflect with the band on that painful interview--not right before they had to go outside and bear their souls to the world for a four-minute performance. Just as he sat down on one of the sofas, though, he felt one of the earbuds being plucked out of his ear.

He looked up indignantly to see Touya holding the earbud, who was staring down at him with his lips drawn into a disapproving frown. “Quick team meeting.”

Syaoran scowled, but he turned around and leaned the front of his torso against the back of the sofa to face the rest of the group.

“Okay, guys,” Touya said, leaning against the vanity and crossing his arms. “First live performance of our comeback. How are we feeling?”

“Pretty good, now that the interview’s over,” Eriol said with a sigh. He reached down toward the floor to stretch his legs. “That was the hardest part for me.”

Yamazaki nodded. “Now that we don’t have to talk, I feel fine. It’s just a matter of doing what we’ve been practicing for the last two months now. It’s all muscle memory from here!”

Touya glanced at Syaoran next. Syaoran glared at him for a moment, but then he met Eriol’s softer gaze, and he deflated a little. “I’m--I’ll be fine. I’m not nervous.”

Touya pursed his lips. “You know that’s not what I’m asking.”

“I know.” Syaoran swallowed. “But I don’t know what else I can say.”

Touya regarded him in silence for a moment, and Syaoran knew without looking that Eriol and Yamazaki were watching the exchange with bated breath. Much to Syaoran’s relief, Touya let out a sigh and shrugged his shoulders. “Okay. Let’s do a good job out there tonight. No mistakes. The choreography on this is a little different from what we’re used to, so everyone needs to be in the exact right place at the exact right time.”

Of course it’s different. We’re missing a fifth body.

“How about you, Touya? How are you feeling?” Yamazaki asked, fiddling with the zipper on one of his many pant pockets.

Touya exhaled softly, and for the first time all night, he raised the corners of his lips in a small smile. “I’m okay. This feels right.”

It didn’t, though, Syaoran thought. Nothing felt right. But his bandmates were clearly so excited to be performing again, Yukito or no, and he wasn’t going to ruin that for them just because he didn’t feel ready.

“All right, guys, bring it in,” Touya said, holding out his hand. Eriol, Yamazaki, and Syaoran joined. “On three, CLOW. One, two, three--”

“CLOW!” the four of them chimed, and Syaoran followed Touya out of the dressing room and back toward the stage.

#ccs #boy band au #ccs fanfic

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avelera · 4 years ago

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“Lights Out” Nicky/Joe Timeline

I did this a bit earlier in the fic writing process, but if anyone is curious about the Lights Out “official timeline” of how Nicky and Joe spent their first hundred years as immortals, you can find it below the cut.

- June, 1099 - Nicky and Joe first see each other from the walls of Jerusalem and both are intrigued and drawn to the person they see, hoping they’ll get a chance to encounter the other in battle.

- July, 1099 - Nicky and Joe meet in battle, remaining outside the walls once the Crusaders break through, fighting each other until nightfall. Eventually, after killing each other 3 times, they realize they can’t get the other to stay dead and that the Crusaders have taken and burned the city of Jerusalem. Nicky urges Joe to run but prevents him from entering the city, as his mercy towards Joe does not extend towards allowing an enemy combatant back into the fray. Joe departs and heads for Ascalon to bring word of the fall of Jerusalem to the Fatimid Caliphate.

- Late 1099-1105 - Joe and Nicky encounter one another regularly in military conflicts between the Fatimid Caliphate and the newly founded Christian Kingdoms.

During this time, Nicky realizes that he does not die or age, and learns that his father has had a son with his second wife. He sends word back to Genova that his father’s eldest living son “Nicolo” has died in the Crusades. During this period, Nicky begins to struggle with feelings of guilt and penance over his role in the brutal sacking of Jerusalem. However, the damage is done and there’s no way to undo the conquest, so he sees it as his duty to shepherd the safety of pilgrims and to secure the Christian Kingdoms he fought to establish.

Joe continues to fight on the losing and often disorganized Fatimid side, constantly frustrated by the loss of territory to both Christians and Seljuks, but mostly because Nicky just keeps finding him, even in unlikely places, like while Joe is spying on the Christian defenses in Jaffa while disguised as a merchant.

That said, the two can’t forget each other and there is more than just hatred that exists between them, though they kill one another regularly whenever they meet. They have their first romantic encounter (if it can even be called that) outside Ramla while hiding from a storm that scattered both of their forces in the middle of a battle. Torn between killing each other and admitting that they both need shelter, the mood turns heated as frustrations boil over, and they kiss (and then some) for the first time while grappling in their latest fight. Startled by his own passion, Joe flees into the night back to his side. However, the pattern repeats itself over the next decades, when hatred and passion mingle and neither can get the other out of their mind.

Their second sexual encounter is on another spying mission of Joe’s, this time in Jerusalem. His base of operations was a brothel in the city, where he hid out pretending to be a patron, figuring he’d be safe from the devout Christian knight who seemed to find him everywhere. Of course, Nicky appeared, looking for one of his fellow soldiers who was to be disciplined.

However, Nicky surprised Joe by paying off the sex worker Joe had hired to shelter him that night, but telling Joe that it was late and as long as he left the city when the sun rose, Nicky could be merciful and allow him the comfort and safety of a bed that night. Significant looks were shared and they enjoyed their second encounter in a much more pleasant setting than their first.

- 1105-1120 - The fighting continues. Joe and Nicky age into their 40s and 50s, gaining the military skill of experienced generals while still enjoying the fighting prowess of young men. Both see this supernatural ability as obviously a sign that it is their duty to take part in the military conflicts between their people (though the politics of the time are messy and occasionally alliances do exist between both their sides against the Turks. On these occasions they find more excuses than usual to spend their nights together even while spitting curses at each other the next day).

When an order of monastic knights was founded known as the Knights Templar, Nicky reinvented himself for the first but not the last time to join their ranks. However, the concerns of the Christian kingdoms grew increasingly secular as time wore on, frustrating him as the politics of Jerusalem grew increasingly distant from the initial promise of the Crusades he signed up to participate in as a protector of pilgrims.

- 1122 - Nicky and Joe speak for the first time without once drawing their swords. On the banks of a river on the day before a battle between their people, Joe realizes at age 56 that he is feeling ever more distant from the men he serves beside and that Nicky is the only peer he has who was there at Jerusalem. He and Nicky speak for an hour, getting to know each other, which marks the beginning of a tentative friendship. While their duels and mutual murder of one another do continue to take place regularly (as well as moments stolen away in each other’s beds when the occasion allows) their duels lose their initial hatred and become almost playful at times.

- 1122-1144/1147 - The conflicts between Fatimids and Christians slow somewhat as the Seljuks rise as the more dominant regional Muslim power. Joe and Nicky begin to lose their sense of wonder at their own immortality as they age past their 50s and 60s into their 70s, feeling increasingly alienated from their fellow soldiers as the political landscape shifts and the causes they initially fought for begin to warp beyond recognition as a new generation rises.

It becomes increasingly difficult for them to feel connected to the urgency of the fight, as the Christian kingdoms adapt to the area and begin to be absorbed politically into the conflicts of the Levant region, no longer an ideological enemy but simply another force. Their sense of isolation is exacerbated by their independent realizations that they need to “die” and reinvent themselves every decade or so to hide from suspicion of their lack of aging, which cuts them off from past companions and family members and often bars them from cities and social circles they’d grown to know and love. They become one another’s only constant.

Joe watches the rise of Imad al-Din Zengi with consternation and a trace of envy as the Fatimids wain in effectiveness and the Seljuk warlord takes up the mantel of the champion of Islam to drive the Christians from the region. Zengi eventually succeeds in recapturing the now-Christian kingdom of Edessa, prompting the Pope in Europe to call for a Second Crusade.

Nicky, upon hearing a Second Crusade is to be called and a the cycle of violence will inevitably begin again with a new wave of clueless Europeans charging into a delicate region they don’t understand, inevitably spreading bloodshed and terror, finally gives up on the Templars and the Christian kingdoms now known as Outremer. He came to the Holy Land to protect pilgrims, not to prop up European princes at the expense of the common people. He flees into the wilderness outside Jerusalem to become a hermit, of sorts, protecting pilgrims on the road during these dangerous times, regardless of their faith, as his ultimate act of penance for his role in the brutal sacking of Jerusalem decades before.

Joe around the same time realizes he hasn’t seen Nicky in a while, begins to worry, realizes how much has changed that he does worry. Eventually he tracks Nicky down to his hermit cave and brings him home with him. Their time together as enemies ends officially and their time as friends and lovers begins, never to end.

- 1147- 1171 - While not finding Zengi terribly inspiring, Joe does find his more scholarly son Nur ad-Din a more palatable leader and joins his side as a soldier the next time he needs to “die” and reinvent himself. Nicky, however, abstains from the fighting except as a freelance guard to protect pilgrims. While he has disavowed the politics of the Crusader states, he is not yet at the point of fully turning on them to join the other side.

- 1171-1193 - Fighting for Nur al-Din brings Joe into contact Salah ad-Din (Saladin) who he and eventually Nicky find to be the sort of inspiring leader they’ve been looking for. Nicky and Joe partake in the Third Crusade and the “Fall of Jerusalem”, this time in Nicky’s case from the other side as he becomes a vassal of Saladin’s alongside Joe. However, the brief spark of Saladin’s leadership is the last gasp of their emotional investment of what feels like an endless conflict in the Holy Land that bears little resemblance to the war they first fought in on opposite sides. (Little do they know, this is only the Third of what will be more than Seven Crusades.)

After Saladin’s death from illness in 1193, they lose their last connection to the region and are too heartsick to continue the fight. They travel to Genova to make Nicky’s peace with a homeland he hasn’t seen in almost a century, then pass through Al-Andalus and then decide to try to find the women in their dreams who are currently moving west, shadowing a great horde of horse-riding warriors (the Mongol Invasion). Nicky and Joe in the mid 13th century end up in Baghdad, where they eventually encounter Andy and Quynh when the Mongol army arrives there and the city falls.

Sooo.... as you can see, there’s a lot there @_@ some of it is very sketchy and back of the envelope, I steer clear a bit from Joe’s side because the Fatimids are a bit hard to trace in this era (they keep getting conflated with the Seljuks, who were also their enemies, so I’m hesitant to say exactly when and if Joe would develop sympathy for or join the Seljuk side. It was a messy time, politically). I’m interested in doing some sort of 5+1 E-rated fic about some of their first encounters eventually. But in the meantime, this is the timeline I’ve worked out with my VERY amateur scholarship.

#kaysanova #tog fic #tog meta #my writing

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mysterious-prophetess · 4 years ago

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so, I just finished watching the Snyder Cut of Justice League

And since I did watch the Theatrical Cut or Josstice League (and own that on Blu-Ray) I thought I’d compare and contrast.

From here on out the Theatrical version is Josstice League and Snyder Cut is Snyder Cut

First, the things they have in common: A lot of the plot beats and characters appear in both with the exceptions that are probably obvious.

But the story still is

“Space Invader from beyond the stars is on earth searching for magic macguffins to end life on Earth as we know it forces Bruce and Diana to recruit a team of other metas to stop this and they end up reenacting Re-Animator with Superman/Clark who died in Batman v Superman with the MAcGuffin and the MacGuffin Ship from Man of Steel and in the end, though shit gets weird in Russia, they save the world and resume their lives in slightly better shape than before.”

Now onto the contrasts

I’ll hit the low hanging fruit and go with Tones first.

Josstice League’s tone could flip-flop wildly. Which, since they were trying to mimic the MCU’s tonal flip-flopping (by even hiring the same guy who set it up with Avengers) makes some sense.

Snyder Cut isn’t without levity but it doesn’t do the drastic veers that Josstice League did.

There are some things I liked better about Josstice League, believe it or not.

While the tone shifting like it did was very MCU copy-paste at times, there were character moments of the Flash from Josstice League I enjoyed.

I even liked Diana’s little heart-to-heart with Bruce from Josstice League.

I also liked Bruce being behind bringing Lois into the fray post their attempts at science based necromancy calling her “the big guns” even if that sounded way more like Tony Stark than Bruce Wayne.

One final compliment I can give Josstice League was the soundtrack. I like the music I like and I liked the music they chose.

The scenes that the Snyder cut extended were a 70/30 split of me liking the extensions with a 30% split of them thinking “You know, I get why they cut this” and this being the character set up scenes. Flash’s sequence is ok, and so is Cyborg’s, but the Aquaman one with Bruce and Diana’s foiling of a bank heist felt too drawn out. Aquaman interacting with Atlanteans sequences are mostly needed to establish the other characters and how he got the trident and costume change.

It’s neat to see how things got into place for each scene but.....if this was a book I was editing, those would be the darlings I’d have told Snyder to kill.

The extra characters were folded in seamlessly. It was nice to see Willem DaFoe’s Aquaman character get an appearance since he’s a big player though the change in hair style was jarring.

I was stoked to see Martian Manhunter. So stoked.

I was also pleased by the revised Steppenwolf design. Before, he just seemed like....I can’t quite put it into words eloquently but Josstice Steppenwolf looked liked an early 2000′s CGI cutscene character crossed with a few of the Orcs from Lord of the Rings and an orc from Warcraft the failed movie. Just off and not much of a villain.

This one is a major improvement and it’s pretty clear he’s a grunt the whole time.

Was very excited to see Darkseid in a major movie.

Now all they need to do to make me happy is use Brainiac in a live action movie. Yeah, I know he’s been live action a couple of times but not in a major movie.

For the most part, the action of Snyder Cut just felt better.

The quiet scenes also felt better.

Problem is, the length makes watching this in one go not really a practical thing. I know there are chapter marks, so kudos for that, but this film isn’t perfect.

The Length thing is a nitpick. Since this is a special home-release, I don’t care as much as usual about length but I really have opinions on movie lengths for theatrical stuff partly from being a movie goer back when that was a possible thing to be AND from working in a movie theater. (I’m of the opinion that keep theatrical releases to 150 minutes or you’re just being an over indulgent jerk of a studio)

Now onto actual problems.

First is that I both love and hate Snyder’s Snyder-verse.

So, I hate the Grittier Superman Snyder came up with in Man of Steel wherein Superman is less Paragon and more like a Punisher type. Same goes for Batman in Snyder-verse (since he’s not a fan of guns and the whole doesn’t KILL people rule)

If any come at me with “but that’s because he’s too simple a character otherwise” I’ll direct you to Overly Sarcastic Productions’s better worded video essay about paragons not being boring/simple.

But Snyder does have good ideas for a general shape of his universe, and he also is pulling in more comic book source material into the films, which I love.

but his universe is always darker and grimmer than necessary and sometimes his aesthetics are weird.

Speaking of that-that weird destroyed future timeline wherein Supes is working for Darkseid.

Can’t say I like the aesthetics of it. Can’t say I like how Batman is portrayed in it either and no, not a fan of Mera or Joker’s presence. I’m able to admit that this is due to both of the actors portraying them. Though, I also really don’t like the Suicide Squad Joker.

Superman going evil isn’t unheard of in story arcs. See animated Justice League story arc wherein the Flash was killed by Lex Luthor.

Making Lois the key to his heart also isn’t a bad idea.

It’s just the moment the movie threw that in just before the end, I rolled my eyes at it. I also thought the Lex Luthor bits were a bit superfluous, at first, but hey, it explained Deathstroke the Terminator (and gave a name for the face of his terrible future counterpart).

So, yes, I enjoyed the Snyder Cut for the most part. Should it come to physical media, I’ll probably purchase it.

Comparing the two films isn’t quite fair, but Snyder Cut just looks better over all.

I’ll give the Josstice league credit for being shorter-easier movie to sit through, with some dumb moments enough for fun and maybe even a scmaltzier ending at times but it just looks like the second draft of something next to a final draft with the Snyder Cut.

Snyer’s Cut’s polish is nice, but the length does undermine it.

So, actually both versions are fine but one clearly looks like it had been smashed and glued back together while the other is smooth and seamless with more consistency over all.

Like what you will.

I like both but Snyder Cut is, to my eyes, the better put-together film.

#justice league #snyder cut #josstice league

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mst3kproject · 4 years ago

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Curse of Bigfoot

This is a very bad mummy movie from the 60’s which was re-edited and re-released as an unbelievably bad bigfoot movie in the 70’s. It would belong on the Satellite of Love even if it didn’t have a small part for Jackie Neyman Jones. Remember her? Debbie from Manos: the Hands of Fate? Yeah, as far as I know she’s the only member of the cast ever to do any non-Manos-related film work for the entire rest of her life and it was this.

Once upon a time, somewhere in the American Southwest, Primitive Man was terrorized by Even More Primitive Man. In modern times, a Bigfootology professor is giving a guest lecture to a class of students. First he shows them a clip of a movie just as bad as the one we’re watching, then we get an inaccurate history of bigfoot, including the tale of two idiots in a pickup truck who get a big, hairy ass-whooping. Then, half an hour into the movie, we finally get to what’s supposed to be the main plot. A professor of archaeology takes some of his students into the wilderness to help excavate an ‘ancient Indian campsite’, but along with the expected potsherds and prayer sticks, they find a tomb containing a mummy from a lost prehistoric civilization. It comes to life and shambles off into the forest to kill people, because it’s a movie and mummies do that.

This movie does not waste time. It starts sucking right out of the gate. Almost everything that’s going to be wrong with it is introduced in the first ten minutes, as if the movie wants to prepare us for the ordeal ahead.

The opening sequence is an incredibly drawn-out scene of a woman getting up in the middle of the night to calm her barking dog, only to be killed by a zombie that wanders out of the woods. This scene is around six times longer than it needed to be. We almost have to watch every moment of the dog drinking a bowl of milk she pours for it. The woman’s voice was dubbed in post, and neither the voice nor the physical acting is any good. The sequence is supposed to take place in the middle of the night, but was clearly filmed at high noon, reaching Attack of the The Eye Creatures levels of not giving a shit in having the sun appear in several shots, standing in for the moon! The actual attack happens off screen, because the film-makers could not afford effects.

Then this part ends, and we realize that what we just saw was supposed to be a clip from a horror film that the professor was showing his students. This provides a fleeting moment of hope, as we think perhaps its overwhelming badness was intended as parody. No such luck. We then move into the two loggers getting stalked and killed by bigfoot. The monster costume is different, but this piece is identical in anti-quality to the zombie scene. The film-makers were just morons, and these mistakes continue throughout the entire ninety-minute run time.

It’s actually astonishing that the movie is so consistent in its incompetence, because we are in fact watching two different films here. Curse of Bigfoot has a backstory similar to that of They Saved Hitler’s Brain, in that somebody in the fifties made a short movie and somebody else, years later, added useless filler to expand it into something they could show in a late-night TV slot. They Saved Hitler’s Brain feels very bifurcated, the new material being both narratively and stylistically different from Madmen of Mandoras. But if you didn’t know that Curse of Bigfoot was twenty minutes of extra film sewn onto a 1963 movie called Teenagers Battle the Thing, you might not immediately notice.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you’ll probably remember that I thought Madmen of Mandoras was a significantly better movie than They Saved Hitler’s Brain (even if it still was definitely not a good movie) – the added footage was distracting and pointless. These two films, however, I would say are about equally awful. The footage added to Curse of Bigfoot is still pointless, but it looks exactly like what was originally shot for Teenagers Battle the Thing, the only noticeable difference being a slight change in the film stock! Both are depressingly earth-toned movies in which it takes for-fucking-ever for anything to happen, with night scenes shot in the blazing daylight, and lines dubbed in by bad voice actors over bad physical performances. Both feature shitty monster suits and every possible cost-cutting measure.

This leads me to wonder whether Curse of Bigfoot might be terrible on purpose. The people tasked with turning Teenagers Battle the Thing into a full-length movie got a couple of the actors back to play their older selves in the added footage. Making stuff match was clearly on their minds. Could they have actually thought things like, “we’d better use the wrong filter for this, or it won’t be as bad as the day-for-night in the original footage!” or “we need to pad this attack a bit, to match the pace!”? If so… I don’t know whether to be impressed, or just to crawl under the bed and cry.

On the other hand, Curse of Bigfoot does at least try to do one thing better than Teenagers Battle the Thing – it wants to have something to say. It spells this thesis out for us in the opening narration and in the professor’s speech about horror movies: our society has forgotten about monsters.

We in the twenty-first century don’t spent much time thinking about monsters unless we happen to be film-makers, political commentators, or maybe paleontologists trying to figure out what the fuck this bugger is. It wasn’t so long ago, however, that they were very real to many people. Archaeological evidence suggests that people in New England believed in vampires as recently as the 1820s. Nowadays, monsters have been taking out of the ‘scary’ category and placed in the ‘fun’ one, and so when people report things like bigfoot or a sea serpent, we don’t take them very seriously.

Bigfoot, sea monsters, and vampires don’t really exist, obviously, but in losing our fear of monsters we may have lost a proper respect for nature. Every so often the newspapers in my city carry a story of some tourist who tried to get a better selfie with a grizzly bear and got mauled. We are so used to thinking that we have tamed nature, that there are no monsters left, that we don’t recognize danger when we’re confronted with it. This certainly seems to be a theme of the stories we’re presented with in Curse of Bigfoot: it never occurs to the woman in the opening that her barking dog may be trying to warn her of danger, or to the two loggers that the mysterious figure in the woods might mean them harm.

The party of archaeology students certainly don’t think they’re heading into any danger, despite the fact that they repeatedly do dangerous things. A group of them climb to the top of a cliff to see where a fallen stone came from, and never worry about falling. When they pry open the tomb entrance, the strange smoke that wafts out might be considered a warning sign, but they ignore it. They head right into this dark hole without any worries about rodents, rattlesnakes, or cave collapses. When one character warns the others that the mummy has just moved, they laugh it off. A couple go for a walk through the dark woods at night to get to a vending machine, without a second thought.

Lest you think I’m in any way praising this movie, I’m not – I just like my reviews to be at least a certain length, so sometimes I really dig for material. This was a dig on the level of saying The Incredible Melting Man is about how we treat the elderly. My high school English teacher might buy it, but I doubt anyone else would.

One thing I do wonder is why they chose to reframe this as a bigfoot movie. The footage from Teenagers Battle the Thing makes it very clear that this is a mummy movie, although they couldn’t afford any of the genre’s traditional accessories. Instead of a museum and a treasure, we get one cabin in the woods and… that’s all. When the characters talk about the situation, they always describe the monster as a mummy, and even when they theorize that it’s the product of a lost civilization, the idea that it may not be human never crosses their minds. It is not particularly tall. It is not remarkably hairy. It looks nothing like the bigfoot the two loggers saw, although it does somewhat resemble the zombie from the opening. Why the man telling the story decided this being must be bigfoot is an absolute mystery.

The only thing I can come up with as an explanation is that bigfoot movies were popular in the 1970s. Having seen a number of these, I can’t say I find them particularly inspiring.

Curse of Bigfoot is almost incomprehensibly boring, to the point where I’m not sure MST3K could have done much with it if they had featured it. In the opening sequence it takes forever for the woman to be attacked and then we don’t see it. In the logger sequence it takes forever for the guy to be attacked and then we don’t see it. And in the main plot it takes forever for anyone to be attacked and then we don’t see it! The only attack we see is when the mummy attacks the sheriff at the climax and that really, really wasn’t worth the wait.

Congratulations, Jackie Neyman Jones – you managed to be in a movie worse than Manos.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #curse of bigfoot #teenagers battle the thing #fuck this movie #all these movies have bigfoot in them #70s #we're running out of plots #cryptid cinema

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traincat · 5 years ago

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i don't ask this with intention of being like One is Better that the Other, but more like understanding them better; how would you say peter's relationships are different form each other, in a nutshell? (or just with gwen and mj?)

That’s a valid question because they are very different relationships and while I don’t like talking about them with the view that One Woman Is Better For The Man Than This Other Woman, Therefore Other Woman Is Terrible, I do think it’s important to acknowledge those differences and they’re interesting to talk about.

Here’s the thing: in 616, I think it’s very important that Peter and Mary Jane aren’t each other’s first relationship. We don’t know as much about her relationship history as we do about Peter’s – we know she’s seen other people, including Harry, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that for the majority of her life, since she was fourteen years old in canon, she’s known Peter was Spider-Man and for a long time kept that secret to herself. (We also know as per ASM #259 that serious relationships justifiably scare her – but I’ll get to that in a moment.) But Peter seriously dated Betty Brant when he was in high school, and, though I don’t think it gets talked up enough in discussions about Peter and Gwen, before Gwen’s death she and Peter were very much planning to get married.

(Amazing Spider-Man #103)

Cut for length.

(Peter had also briefly thought about proposing to Betty Brant at the end of high school. He’s a marriage monster.)

If I had to use one word to sum up Peter and Gwen’s relationship it would be “passionate.” And not always in a good way. They have a very fast connection in comics, but initially, they don’t really like each other that much.

(Amazing Spider-Man #35)

They’re on the same wavelength – that wavelength just happens to be “this hot person pisses me off so bad.” But then John Romita sweeps in and things get romantic as opposed to Ditko’s more prickly, vampier Gwen take, and Peter and Gwen start to get closer. That Mary Jane enters the picture and is seeing Peter probably doesn’t hurt Gwen making a more aggressive move on him. One thing I want to clarify that in modern day the word “dating” conjures up, first to mind, a serious image when we talk about fictional relationships, but Peter and MJ were very casually seeing each other after they first finally came face to face, something that seemed to annoy Peter actually:

(Amazing Spider-Man #44) In Webspinners #1′s backup story, The Kiss, Peter describes MJ at this point in time as mercurial and indirect, and says that’s one of the reasons he was more attracted to Gwen at the time. Gwen’s very direct, very passionate, and very open with her emotions, whereas Mary Jane and Peter both have their own secrets. It makes a certain amount of sense that Peter would be drawn to that openness. Peter and Gwen also have a keen interest in the sciences in common, which I also think is a pretty important factor in their early courtship when you consider part of the reason Peter felt isolated in high school was that his classmates didn’t share his interests:

(Amazing Spider-Man #53)

Once Peter and Gwen are together, things get pretty serious pretty quickly, with lots of sappy love declarations and both of them bringing the other around their parents.

(Amazing Spider-Man #68) Like I said, one of the things I often see overlooked in discussions about Peter and Gwen is just how serious the relationship was at the time of Gwen’s death. They were if not officially engaged then definitely pre-engaged and making plans for marriage. Peter had even wrangled his way into a staff position at the Daily Bugle specifically with his future marriage to Gwen in mind.

(Amazing Spider-Man #99) Peter used to be super good at this whole responsibility thing, in both his costumed and uncostumed lives.

This isn’t to say Peter and Gwen didn’t have problems – while people paint an image of the college days before Gwen’s death as being some big MJ/Peter/Gwen love triangle, that’s not really true. MJ had a tendency to flirt with Peter, especially in front of Gwen and also Harry, who MJ was seeing at the time, but it was Peter who was at times irrationally jealous of Flash’s flirting with Gwen.

(Amazing Spider-Man #72)

(ASM #80) Poor Flash really suffered as the least dramatic member of this friend group. It’s a little ironic that Peter got so heated up about Flash of all people because, while Flash does at one point profess more than friendly feelings to Gwen, he’s exceptionally gentle about it and never actually tries to threaten her relationship with Peter.

(Amazing Spider-Man #107)

On Gwen’s side of things, Peter’s frequent disappearances troubled her, and she often begged him to stay with her in times of danger – when he was trying to slip out and discreetly change into his Spider-Man costume – so that Peter would prove to her that he wasn’t a coward. (Look, it was the 60s and 70s in superhero comics and machismo was a big deal.) She could be insecure – Peter’s disappearances sometimes made her think he didn’t love her anymore, a feeling which was compounded when she accidentally lost her temper and yelled at Aunt May about her tendency to coddle Peter, causing May to put some distance between them, and after the death of her father, for which she initially blamed Spider-Man.

(Amazing Spider-Man #91) It was that hatred of Spider-Man that made Peter hesitate proposing to her initially, and she briefly left to stay with her uncle and aunt in England thinking that he didn’t care for her as much as she did for him. All those are, when you get down to it, far more serious issues in the relationship than the notion that Mary Jane and Gwen were constantly fighting over Peter.

I said if I had to pick one word for Peter and Gwen’s relationship it would be “passionate” – but I think that’s in part because Gwen herself is a very passionate character. For all her emotional openness compared to Mary Jane’s at the time party girl facade, Gwen felt very deeply about everything, especially about her relationship with Peter. I don’t doubt that if Gwen had lived, she and Peter would have gotten married – it was the natural progression for their relationship at the time. However, I’m not sure they would have stayed married, and not for any “selling the marriage to the devil” reasons. I’m sure they would both have tried very hard to make it work, and I don’t think separating would be easy for either of them, but I’m just not sure if I see them as a successful long term relationship. (Which, for the record, doesn’t make me ship them less.)

With that in mind, I also don’t know if I think PeterMJ happens without Gwen’s death – at least, not in the specific way it does in comics. While he was definitely initially attracted to her – it’s a running joke before Mary Jane appears on panel that Peter desperately tries to avoid meeting her because he thinks that, because Aunt May approves of her and says she’s a nice girl, that she’ll be ugly, which is where Mary Jane’s famous “face it, tiger” line comes in when she reacts to his surprise at the door – the further in love Peter falls with Gwen, the less intrigue Mary Jane seems to hold for him. Before Gwen’s death, he’s even disapproving of her advances, and dislikes the fact that she hits on him in front of Harry when she and Harry are dating.

(Amazing Spider-Man #97)

(ASM #106)

At the time of Gwen’s death, Peter’s impression of Mary Jane isn’t the most favorable in the world: he thinks she’s a flighty, irresponsible party girl – which, to be fair, is the impression Mary Jane has put some serious effort into cultivating. This changes with Gwen’s death with one very important scene that signifies – not necessarily to Peter, who is lost in his grief at the moment, but to the readers – that that’s not who Mary Jane is at all, and it’s the door scene from Amazing Spider-Man #122.

I’ve noted before that Peter has a tendency to lash out verbally towards the people in his life when he’s in the depths of grief, and he can be very good at hurting people, like here when he accuses Mary Jane of not caring that Gwen’s dead and telling her to get out.

And she doesn’t. If I had to pick a scene that I think is the most pivotal turning point in any Marvel comics relationship, it would be this one.

Peter and Mary Jane have a more complicated build up to their romance than Peter and Gwen did. Unlike Gwen, who was very much a heart on her sleeve girl, Mary Jane has secrets of her own, something Peter doesn’t really seem to realize when they do launch into a romance of their own, and when Mr. Marriage pops the question to her the first time Mary Jane ends up turning him down.

(ASM #183)

Mary Jane’s commitment issues are seated deep-seated. Gwen, as far as we know, had no reason not to believe in true love. Mary Jane has many.

(ASM #259)

I love Amazing Spider-Man #257-259 because they totally recontextualize everything about Mary Jane and throw all her previous actions into a sharp and different new light that just makes the most perfect sense. ASM #257-259 reveals two very important things. The first is that Mary Jane knew the whole time, since before Peter ever laid eyes on her, that he was Spider-Man, and that she��s been walking around the whole time carrying this secret.

(Spider-Man: Parallel Lives)

The second is that, with Mary Jane having told Peter she knows his biggest secret, she makes it an even trade and tells him her own, letting him know the details of her childhood that shaped her into the person she is. It’s really worth reading for yourself if you haven’t already and in my opinion it’s one of the best backstory reveals ever written.

(ASM #259)

Peter and Mary Jane enter into a weird stage in their relationship at this point in time. Mary Jane is, essentially, the only person Peter can confide in once he learns she’s known his secret all along. Mary Jane, on the other hand, finds the nitty-gritty details of Spider-Man’s life difficult to deal with, even as she tries to be there for Peter. One thing I see a lot in Mary Jane vs Gwen discourse is that while Mary Jane loves Spider-Man, Gwen loves Peter, which is a completely movie-based fabrication – in 616, Mary Jane frequently wishes Peter wasn’t Spider-Man and worries about him risking his life. They have a very strong emotional – and physical – connection at this point, but they’re not officially romantically together, and during this point in time Peter is still involved in a tumultuous on-and-off relationship with Felicia Hardy.

(Spectacular Spider-Man #116)

“I’ve just ruined a perfectly good lie.” (Spider-Man vs Wolverine)

They don’t officially get together again until Peter proposes marriage – again. Although Mary Jane initially turns down his offer again, she later calls him from her sister’s home in Pittsburgh asking him to come down and help her.

(ASM #291)

Hearing about Mary Jane’s past is one thing, but Peter’s confronted with it when he finds himself supporting Mary Jane as she tries to figure out what to do when her father’s schemes have landed her estranged sister in jail. It’s a really great lead up to the marriage: Peter has to learn to trust Mary Jane to make decisions, and Mary Jane takes the reigns when she needs to help out in a Spider-Man fight. At the end, in the airport, she agrees to marry him.

(ASM #292)

It’s not magically perfect after that – in ASM Annual #21, the wedding issue, Peter worries about Mary Jane’s more lavish lifestyle and how she’ll handle his more staid one in addition to his fears over what his enemies could do to his new wife, Mary Jane struggles with the concept of committing after so many years of running from that, and the ghost of Gwen still hangs over them both.

They do both end up making it down the aisle, of course, though:

(ASM Annual #21)

One of the things I love about Peter and Mary Jane is that, while I truly do think the characters are soulmates, they’re not perfect – they have relationship problems as big as Mary Jane worrying Peter’s identity as Spider-Man will get him killed or about what effects his irradiated blood might have on any children she might have, to as small as Peter having a crisis over Mary Jane paying his bills for him:

(Web of Spider-Man #37)

And of course Peter and Mary Jane have a much more complicated and complex relationship than Peter and Gwen did, but that’s because Peter and Mary Jane had hundreds of issues over which it develops and deepens, even after their marriage, whereas Gwen Stacy wasn’t even in 100 issues after her first appearance before she died. So I think Peter and Gwen have much more of an instantaneous love connection, which is aided by Gwen’s own emotional openness, whereas Peter and MJ are more of a slow burn, with a lot of stops and starts along the way that end up being the foundation for a very strong love.

#peter parker #mary jane watson #gwen stacy #marvel comics #*replies #long post/#traincat talks comics #petermj #petergwen #this ended up just being gwen and mj because if i tackled everyone it'd be sooooo long

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Headlines

Protests, police and the use of force (NYT) Demonstrations continued across the United States on Sunday amid growing concern that aggressive law enforcement tactics intended to impose order were instead inflaming tensions. Videos showed police officers in recent nights using batons, tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets on protesters, bystanders and journalists, often without warning or seemingly unprovoked. The footage, which has been shared widely online, highlighted the very complaints over police behavior that have drawn protests in at least 75 cities across the United States. In Salt Lake City, officers in riot gear shoved a man with a cane to the ground. In Brooklyn, two police S.U.V.s plowed into a crowd of protesters. In Atlanta, police officers enforcing a curfew stopped two college students in a car, fired Tasers on them and dragged them out of the vehicle. And in Minneapolis, where there have been six consecutive nights of protests and clashes, a video appeared to show officers yelling at people on their porches to get inside and then firing paint canisters at them. “Light them up,” one officer said.

Deadly police raid fuels call to end ‘no knock’ warrants (AP) It’s the stuff of nightmares: Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend were in bed when a trio of armed men smashed through the front door. Gunfire erupted, killing the 26-year-old black woman. The three men turned out to be plainclothes police detectives, one of whom was wounded in the chaos and violence that March night. Taylor’s death led to protests and a review of how Louisville police use “no knock” search warrants, which allow officers to enter a home without announcing their presence, often in drug cases to prevent suspects from getting rid of a stash. Taylor’s name is one of those being chanted during nationwide protests decrying police killings of black people.

SpaceX capsule docks at ISS carrying US astronauts (WSJ) Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Sunday successfully docked a company-owned capsule carrying a pair of NASA astronauts with the International Space Station, capping a weekend of notable accomplishments that opened a new chapter in commercial space endeavors. Nineteen hours after a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Saturday from Florida on a historic voyage featuring the first-ever private spacecraft to attain orbit with people on board, astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken made more history. They monitored the stately, automated rendezvous of their Crew Dragon capsule with the orbiting international laboratory 250 miles above earth, linking up at 10:16 a.m. ET to mark a new industry-government partnership aimed at revitalizing U.S. space ambitions.

Ambassadorships to the highest bidder (Foreign Policy) The United States is quite unique among major democracies in its custom of giving coveted ambassadorships to the highest bidder. Although it’s a bipartisan practice, the Trump administration has set a new record in the proportion of ambassadorial roles going to donors over career diplomats. Roughly 44 percent of Trump administration ambassadors have come from political appointments, versus the historical average of 30 percent, according to the American Foreign Service Association. Under U.S. law, career diplomats must outnumber political appointees in ambassadorial roles. That balance is under threat, with 57 percent of ambassador nominations this year going to political appointees.

The pandemic is making people reconsider city living, trading traffic for chickens (Washington Post) For 49 years, Jinky Demarest de Rivera has lived and thrived in dense, vibrant cities. The nonprofit finance director grew up in Manhattan and for the past 16 years has made a home in Oakland, where they live with their wife, Sara Demarest de Rivera, and dog, Onyx. Now the family is packing everything up for a large house in New York’s rural Hudson River Valley with enough room for chickens. Two months of sheltering in place in their rented two-bedroom apartment gave the pair some unexpected clarity about what was important to them. And new policies letting them work remotely indefinitely at their respective jobs gave them an opportunity to do something about it. They wanted to be closer to their aging parents on the East Coast, and saw no hope of ever owning in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country. They aren’t the only ones making a big move. After months of forced stillness, unable to make many major decisions or follow through on some already planned, people are jumping into one of the biggest life changes there is and moving out of cities. For some, it’s a chance to be closer to family, which feels more urgent in the midst of a global health scare. For a large swath of people in the country’s most expensive cities, it’s a way to get more living space and be closer to nature, something increasingly made possible by the growing trend of remote work. And for many others it’s not really a decision at all, but a necessity in the face of growing job losses and still sky-high rents.

US declares a vaccine war on the world (Asia Times) “The United States and the UK were the only two holdouts in the World Health Assembly from the declaration that vaccines and medicines for Covid-19 should be available as public goods, and not under exclusive patent rights. The United States explicitly dissociated itself from the call for a patent pool, talking instead of ‘the critical role that intellectual property plays”—in other words, patents for vaccines and medicines.

Tropical storm kills 17 in El Salvador and Guatemala (AP) Rains from Tropical Storm Amanda left at least 17 dead and seven missing while causing extensive damage across El Salvador and Guatemala that pushed thousands of people into shelters amid the coronavirus pandemic. EL Salvador Interior Minister Mario Durán said Monday some 7,000 people were scattered across 154 shelters. He said a quarter of the rain that the country normally receives in a year fell in 70 hours. That set off landslides and flooding, especially in the western part of the country. Amanda pounded El Salvador with rain for days before moving ashore as a tropical storm on Sunday and pushing across Guatemala.

Nicaragua Becomes a Place of Midnight Burials (NYT) Just hours after Yamil Acevedo died in a hospital, funeral home workers in hazardous materials suits strapped his coffin to the back of a pickup truck, drove it to a cemetery and buried him in the dark of night. Across Nicaragua, families are being forced to hold these “express burials,” rushed funerals at all hours of the night, without time to call a priest or to buy flowers. The services are happening so fast, and in such a haphazard fashion, that relatives worry terrible mistakes are being made. “The doctor said, ‘If you can bury him as soon as possible, do it,’” said Amani Acevedo, Mr. Acevedo’s daughter. “I don’t know that the person in that coffin was even him.” The signs are everywhere that the coronavirus is raging across Nicaragua. But the Nicaraguan government insists it has the virus firmly under control, with the lowest Covid-19 death toll in Central America.

Grand Bazaar, cafes open and flights resume as Turkey eases up (Reuters) Flights and car travel resumed between Turkey’s big cities on Monday while cafes, restaurants and Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar reopened in the country’s biggest step to ease restrictions taken to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Traffic levels jumped in the commercial hub of Istanbul, with many Turks returning to work as the government sought to revive an economy hit hard by the pandemic. Employees of government offices and public facilities joined the many factory workers who restarted last month.

China and India Brawl at 14,000 Feet Along the Border (NYT) High in the Himalayas, an enormous fistfight erupted in early May between the soldiers of China and India. Brawls at 14,000 feet along their inhospitable and disputed frontier are not terribly unusual, but what happened next was. A few days later, Chinese troops confronted Indian soldiers again, this time at several other remote border points in the Himalayas, some more than 1,000 miles apart. Since then both armies have rushed in thousands of reinforcements. Indian analysts say that China has beefed up its forces with dump trucks, excavators, troop carriers, artillery and armored vehicles and that China is now occupying Indian territory. No shots have been fired, as the de facto border code dictates, but the soldiers have fought fiercely with rocks, wooden clubs and their hands in a handful of clashes. In one melee at the glacial lake Pangong Tso, several Indian troops were hurt badly enough that they had to be evacuated by helicopter, and Indian analysts said Chinese troops were injured as well. Nobody thinks China and India are about to go to war. But the escalating buildup has turned into their most serious confrontation since 2017 and may be a sign of more trouble to come as the world’s two most populous countries increasingly bump up against each other in one of the bleakest and most remote borderlands on earth.

In China, U.S. protests a hot topic on state, social media (Reuters) Chinese state media is giving extensive coverage to violent protests roiling cities across the United States, while the unrest has also featured widely in Chinese social media. CCTV featured reports from one of its reporters running with protesters in Minnesota, as well as short videos shot by Americans depicting police violence against protesters. On China’s social media platform Weibo, at least five news items on the protests were among the top 20 trending topics by midday, led by reports Trump had been temporarily taken to a bunker as protesters surrounded the White House. “The number one thing they want to show is that the Communist Party is doing a better job in terms of fighting the coronavirus and managing society,” said Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. “That’s the main message: the U.S. is not doing good.”

Gantz apologizes for the killing of Palestinian man (Foreign Policy) Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has apologized after Israeli security forces shot and killed Iyad Halak, a Palestinian who was autistic, in Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday. “We are really sorry about the incident in which Iyad Halak was shot to death and we share in the family’s grief,” Gantz said. Israeli police said they opened fire after they saw a suspect with a “suspicious object” who didn’t stop when ordered to. Police later confirmed that they found no weapon. Palestinian officials denounced the killing as a “war crime” and an “execution.” The killing led to demonstrations over the weekend in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, with some participants holding signs tying the killing to that of George Floyd in the United States.

#headlines #news

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anghraine · 5 years ago

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pro patria, chapters 85-91

I knew the danger of the Risen. I’d killed hordes of them. But until that moment, I hadn’t truly grasped the power of Zhaitan, the totality of the threat posed by the dragons. I just—I hadn’t understood. Looking at him now, I did. I would never forget this, as long as I lived.

title: pro patria (85-91/?) stuff that happens: Althea, Logan, Ihan, and Anise confront Kellach and deal with the aftermath, and Althea goes home.

verse: Ascalonian grudgefic characters/relationships: Althea Fairchild, Logan Thackeray, Agent Ihan; Corporal Kellach, Countess Anise, Ailoda Langmar; Althea & Logan, Althea & Ihan chapters: 1-7, 8-14, 15-21, 22-28, 29-35, 36-42, 43-49, 50-56, 57-63, 64-70, 71-77, 78-84

EIGHTY-FIVE 1 The doors to the throne room swung open, and a man with deep red hair and pale, sickly skin staggered through. He still wore the armour of a Seraph, though his surcoat was stained with grime and only the Six knew what else. Logan’s face went blank, which I thought might be his idea of acting, while Ihan, Anise, the illusion behind us on the throne, and I all stared. “Your Majesty!” Kellach cried, and to my very real astonishment, he fell to his knees. But it brought him a little closer. I held myself ready. In clear anguish, he croaked out, “My beloved queen.” 2 He’d brought anguish to a lot more people than himself, but nevertheless, his tormented face chilled me. If not for my knowledge otherwise, I would have thought him like Logan. For one terrible moment, my imagination superimposed the mottling of his flesh on Logan’s, the absolute horror in his expression. I drew a sharp breath, though Kellach didn’t so much as glance in my direction. “Jennah,” he gasped out. “You—you have to listen. I won’t hurt you!” 3 I’d believe that when I saw it. But I paid close attention nonetheless. “I … I just need your blood,” he said, and added desperately, “It will save Kryta!” Blessed Dwayna. He wasn’t thinking only of his own corruption; he’d followed the logic to its proper conclusion—if Jennah’s blood could heal him, it could heal the others who’d fallen under Zhaitan’s corruption. Perhaps all of them, if it were true. But it wasn’t. 4 This poor man, though. “Corporal Kellach!” I snapped out. “Drop your weapons and surrender. You’re not thinking clearly.” “No,” said Kellach, shuddering, his eyes still fixed on the false Jennah; she looked so much like the real one, down to her thoughtful gaze, that even I would never have guessed the difference. “I need her blood! Royal blood.” 5 Damn Alastia Crow. “Don’t you understand?” whispered Kellach, frantic hope in his face. “It can cure the corruption. Make us all free!” Were she not already dead, I would have begged Grenth to strike her down. Kellach, at any rate, had gotten a better vengeance than he knew. Better, perhaps, than he’d ever be capable of knowing. 6 “It’s not true,” I said, forcing my voice into smooth, steady tones, as soothing as I could manage, even while my stomach clenched. “Alastia Crow lied to you, Kellach. She did this just to endanger the queen.” His head shook wildly. “No! No, you’re wrong! There has to be a way!” 7 “Tell me!” he screamed. I knew the danger of the Risen. I’d killed hordes of them. But until that moment, I hadn’t truly grasped the power of Zhaitan, the totality of the threat posed by the dragons. I just—I hadn’t understood. Looking at him now, I did. I would never forget this, as long as I lived. EIGHTY-SIX 1 Logan shook himself out of our collective horror to say, “Kellach. Put away your weapons.” “No,” Kellach whispered, his face going still more bloodless. His gaze flickered around the throne room, his eyes frantically searching each of our faces. In a rougher voice, he insisted, “This can’t be true!” “Kellach—” “I’ll kill you all!” 2 He lunged forward, sword drawn, and through some magic I didn’t care to understand, four large Risen materialized behind him. “For the queen!” shouted Logan, rushing forward to slash at the undead brutes. Ihan and Anise didn’t waste their breath on battle cries; the former darted about, stabbing anyone within reach, while the latter fired aether from three different personas, faster and more powerfully than I could dream of. I had no idea which was the real Anise, while I felt very certain that she knew where I really stood among my own clones. “Grenth take you!” howled Kellach, beating wildly on Logan’s shield. Logan knocked him away with a jerk of his shield hand and neatly decapitated the undead nearest him. Ihan sliced open the spine of another, and chaos magic flashed all around. 3 “I won’t … I won’t give in,” Kellach panted, and I honestly didn’t know whether he spoke to Logan or Zhaitan. Either way, he was doomed. But his breathing grew more ragged, even though he hadn’t taken much damage, and when I held up my sword to block any attacks and drew closer, I could see that his eyes were no longer wild, but pale and staring, except when he blinked rapidly now and then. “Must kill,” he mumbled, steps growing still more uncoordinated. “Need … blood.” My companions had the undead under control; I focused all my will on the magic coursing through my sceptre, intensified the flow of it to all I could bear, and pointed it straight at Kellach. This is for you. 4 My magic lashed out at him. Anise seemed to follow my line of thought, or hers took the same route. Her magic spilled into mine, the deep purple of our joined power throwing his face into unearthly shadow. Perhaps her strength, so much greater than mine, did the rest of the work. Perhaps Ihan’s dagger found its target, or the blue fire flickering about Logan burned some vulnerable flesh in all that armour, or perhaps all our attacks combined into one deadly whole. However it happened, Kellach collapsed to his knees once more. Then, his vacant expression growing desperate one last time, he crumpled the rest of the way to the ground. 5 Kellach’s body sprawled at Logan’s feet. Dismembered undead lay all around him—around us. It made for a revolting scene, and a terrible one. Nobody spoke. Nobody relaxed our guard; for all we knew, the apparent death might be a trick, or some new and poorly understood development of the corruption. Logan methodically cut the straps of Kellach’s armour, kicked off the plates of it, and drove his sword through Kellach’s chest. He bled, sluggishly, but gave no other response. 6 As if released from a curse, we all drew breaths together, the sound so natural and ordinary that it brought some semblance of order to the grotesque scene. “Burn the corpse and scatter the remains,” Anise said, earning a respectful nod from Ihan. Logan flinched. “We don’t want him to suffer any more,” I told him. “I know.” He exhaled, then squared his shoulders, knelt down, and reached out a hand, not quite touching Kellach’s body. The flames of his magic burst out. 7 Logan’s fire ignited Kellach’s clothes first, then flashed over his skin, then engulfed his lifelessly writhing body, the smell of burning flesh filling my nostrils. I couldn’t do Logan’s grisly work for him, and I knew that nothing I might say would help, but I stayed near, near enough to feel the heat of the flames on my own skin. Even Ihan and Anise kept nearly as close; we were all in this together. I only left him once, after Kellach’s corpse and the assorted remnants of the undead had been burned to ash. We needed a broom. Ihan and I swept the ashes into four separate pouches, and each of us took one to dispose of as we saw fit. And that was my initiation into the Order of Whispers. EIGHTY-SEVEN 1 Once we were done, Logan held out his hands, still encased in bright gauntlets, and stared down at them. “Poor Kellach,” I said, wholeheartedly meaning it. “His mistakes were rooted in his love for queen and country.” “So many mistakes,” he said, dropping his hands, “made for all the right reasons.” “Exactly.” I glanced around, checking for signs of what had occurred, but the throne room seemed pristine once more. Its very cleanliness unsettled me; Kellach might have never existed. 2 Logan still looked stricken. “The queen could have been killed by someone who loved her. Even—I mean, it really makes you think.” I bet it did. Not unsympathetic, I touched his vambrace. “It’s all right, Logan. The queen is safe,” I assured him. 3 “Focus on the future, and Kryta will stay safe, too.” Logan nodded, but seemed scarcely aware of it. Meanwhile, Ihan fastened his portion of the remains on his belt, to all appearances unperturbed. Then he grinned at me. “Well done, Initiate! You showed tremendous cunning and nerve. I’m proud you’re a member of the Order of Whispers.” 4 Mixed in with the remnants of horror, I felt a trace of gratification at that. Though not often lacking in pride, I hadn’t ever imagined feeling so over this. I’d fought competently enough, and kept my nerve throughout, but I hadn’t expected Ihan to care. Surely he would expect no less? “Thank you,” I said. This seemed to satisfy him. “Now, for the rest of your initiation.” 5 I swallowed. “Go to Lion’s Arch a week from today,” continued Ihan. “There, you’ll be contacted by an apple merchant.” A what? “Meet with him to get your first formal assignment.” My first assignment! Anticipation sparked in my chest. 6 “I look forward to it,” I said honestly, and thought of Kellach’s face, the creeping power of Zhaitan. “It’s time to be part of a bigger world.” Ihan smiled again, and said nothing more, instead striding over to watch Anise unweave her spell, perhaps hoping to learn something from the process. I returned my attention to Logan, who was looking at his hands again. “Logan, are you all right?” I asked. “You seem rattled.” Not that he didn’t have reason to be. 7 “I’m glad Jennah’s safe,” he said slowly, “but I realize now that her safety is temporary. Everything is temporary, unless the dragons can be stopped.” True, but I didn’t blame him. I’d only just grasped it myself. “The dragons can’t be defeated by one people,” said Logan, lifting his eyes, “or even one nation. There has to be another way.” That’s what the Orders were for—weren’t they? EIGHTY-EIGHT 1 Logan’s brows drew together even as he hung his head a little. “Do you think we can overcome our mistakes, my friend?” he asked. “Make up for the things we’ve done?” I didn’t know what mistake he meant, but I knew it wouldn’t shake my friendship. I gave a firm nod. “I know we can, Logan.” Offering a smile, I added, “Mistakes make us human.” 2 “It’s rising up again that makes us heroes.” I believed that with all my heart. Wasn’t that the story of our people? We’d been weakened by our pointless war with Kryta, vulnerable to the Charr, but we’d risen up again in Lion’s Arch and Divinity’s Reach. Then, while Adelbern wiped out what little remained of human Ascalon after the Searing, Ebonhawke rose in the south under Logan’s own foremother. Logan straightened up. “You’re right.” 3 He didn’t quite return my smile, but the lines of his face smoothed out. “I’ve been too focused on keeping the queen safe.” He drew a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I love being at her side! But maybe that’s not where I can best defend her—or Kryta.” I honestly would never have imagined him saying that. Perhaps he wasn’t wrong. 4 No, he definitely wasn’t wrong. But from Logan, he might as well have said the sky was purple and the Charr our friends. “An old friend named Caithe asked me to meet her in Lion’s Arch next week,” said Logan, leaping by some inexplicable train of thought. “I think I’ll take her up on that.” I really had no idea what that had to do with anything, but I was all for friendship. I smiled up at him again. “I think that’s an excellent idea—I’ll see you in Lion’s Arch!” 5 He told me a little more about Caithe before we parted; she was a sylvari who had been a scout in his old guild, Destiny’s Edge. She’d never accepted the dissolution of the guild. When I asked Logan if he trusted her, he vacillated, before saying that she didn’t understand that the guild was gone forever. “Why does she want to meet you in Lion’s Arch and not in Divinity’s Reach?” I asked, though I could imagine that sylvari might not care for their reception in our home city. “Lion’s Arch is where it all began,” said Logan. “She likely wants to use a familiar place to dredge up sentimental feelings.” Well, that took some nerve, at any rate. 6 I respected nerve. “She’s stubborn,” added Logan. I respected stubbornness, too. “What does Caithe want?” I asked. “It’s likely she’s discovered something new about the dragons,” Logan said, and sighed, but he did look intrigued. “If I can convince her to tell me, it might benefit Kryta—and the queen.” Well, I could imagine why the guild had broken up. 7 “Caithe wanted to meet you in Lion’s Arch,” I said, thinking of my own forthcoming journey. “Anywhere in particular?” Only afterwards did it occur to me that he might not want me present during the actual meeting—likely a fraught one. “The Trader’s Forum,” Logan said easily. “It’s where we first formed Destiny’s Edge.” “I’ll meet you there,” I promised, to his evident relief. “Travel safely.” EIGHTY-NINE 1 We lingered even after that, talking a little of the queen and Logan’s feelings for her. He praised Lyssa for Jennah’s survival, and though we ourselves had carried out the plan, I could believe that Lyssa had aided my magic—both Anise’s and mine. She might not speak to us any more, but she was there, nonetheless. I assured Logan that the gods would watch over us all, and on that note, we parted. Once Logan left, undoubtedly to find Jennah, Ihan walked back over to me. “Your wits are sharp as knives, Initiate,” he said. “The Preceptors were right about you.” 2 The what? “Who are the Preceptors?” I asked. Ihan, with a nod at Anise, placed his hand at my back and gently led me towards the doors out of the throne room. “The Master of Whispers leads the order, but his identity is a secret. Three Preceptors carry out his directives.” When I asked who they were, he told me that their names were Halvora, Valenze, and Doern, and that I’d meet them soon. I certainly didn’t recognize the names. 3 “They were right about me,” I said slowly. “Do you mean that they knew about me before I was appointed Advocate of the Crown?” “Of course.” “And they liked me?” I said, a little incredulous that the flailing hero of Shaemoor would appeal to an organization of spies and manipulators. Ihan inclined his head. “What did you all even know?” At his expression, I paused. “Oh, you can’t tell me.” 4 “Not all, certainly,” said Ihan. “What would you like to hear?” “Oh, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “You were born in Ebonhawke in the year 1304, the second daughter of Lord Edmund Fairchild and the former and future minister Ailoda Langmar. Your ancestry is approximately three-quarters Ascalonian and one-quarter Krytan. In 1310, your family removed to the Rurikton district of Divinity’s Reach, where you were brought up and educated as both an Ascalonian and a subject of Kryta.” 5 It was all true , but— “You performed well academically,” he continued, “but did little with your talents until the apparent death of your sister in 1323, when you took over the bulk of your family’s affairs for a year. As a natural mesmer, you afterwards began training in chaos magic under Countess Anise, and proved gifted, which aided you when you unexpectedly rushed to the aid of the village of Shaemoor early this year.” “Well, yes,” I said, “though I’m not sure—” “You further developed your skills as you investigated a political plot that culminated in a trial by combat and established your close alliance with Logan Thackeray. When not involved in politics, you began performing selfless acts of service around Queensdale and later, Kessex Hills.” “It’s not quite what it sounds like,” I said. 6 “Many of them quite minor,” added Ihan, “but some requiring a great deal of effort on your part, such as a large-scale attack on a massive creature of the Underworld. You proceeded to investigate the questionable ambush that led to your sister’s supposed death in battle, helped Thackeray apprehend the captain who betrayed Lieutenant Fairchild’s company, and discovered the survivors. At that point, you returned to your hobby of refining maps for the Tyrian Explorers Society, until you were recalled to serve as Advocate.” “Well, if that’s not everything, I’m not sure what else there is to know,” I said. “You tend to befriend people unlike yourself,” he answered; I suspected he meant Faren. “You also tend to rely—in both society and battle—on a strong talent for mimicry and for concealing your own thoughts and actions until opportunity arises, when you act quickly and decisively. Both of these qualities interested the Order.” 7 “I suppose I’m an odd creature by way of a hero,” I admitted. “We have long had our eyes on you,” said Ihan, which I took as yes. “And there’s more?” “You possess qualities which I imagine you are not yourself aware of,” he told me. “Qualities and predilections, I should say, which are not all beneficial. Those, you must discover and conquer. Be warned, though: based on our knowledge of you, this first task will test you and your loyalties in ways you do not imagine—and is intended to do so.” NINETY 1 Well, that sounded menacing. It was probably meant to, too. Hadn’t I already passed my initiation? Just not a custom-tailored initiation, I guessed. “I’m very loyal,” I protested. “Yes,” said Ihan, his face giving away nothing. “We know.” 2 I set that aside, since I couldn’t do anything about it. “What’s the next step, now that I’m a member of the Order of Whispers?” I asked. As we stepped out of the hall of the palace into the daylight, Ihan squinted at the sky and said, “The Preceptors arranged a contact for you in Lion’s Arch. His job will be to mentor you in our modus operandi.” Already suspicious, I said, “Who will be my mentor?” “That’s need-to-know information, Initiate,” said Ihan, steering us towards the Salma District. I had no doubts but that he knew exactly where I lived, and probably where I slept, too. 3 “Don’t worry,” he added. “He’ll contact you when you reach Lion’s Arch.” All right. An apple merchant would contact me in Lion’s Arch, when I would receive a task that would test my loyalties in ways I couldn’t imagine. That sounded fine. Perfectly fine. “I’m eager to hear from him,” I said. 4 Before he left me at the gates to the Salma District, Ihan told me to take notes on Logan’s meeting with Caithe; the Order kept detailed information on the members of Logan’s old guild. Destiny’s Edge must have been something. I wondered if this was my test—choosing to betray Logan’s trust for the Order, or the other way around. But I didn’t see Logan’s trust and the Order’s demand for information as quite contradictory, at least not yet. For all I knew, Logan didn’t care one way or another if the Order knew about Caithe, which they clearly did already, and he was all for helping the orders of Tyria fight the dragons, anyway. I’d see what happened, and make my choice then. “I look forward to a long career in the Order,” I said. 5 “That’s a week from now, of course,” said Ihan, glancing down at me. It wasn’t all that far down; if I could get used to anything, it would be not straining to look up at Logan. Maybe my contact would be on the smaller side, too, or a sylvari. Then again, they might be a Norn. “What do you plan to do in the meanwhile?” he asked. I thought about it, though I already knew the answer. 6 “I’m going to Ebonhawke,” I said, setting my jaw. “I want to see it again before—” Before the Order swallows me up, I almost said. Well, not almost, but I thought it. “—I get too busy.” “Ah,” said Ihan. “Yes, it’s natural to be curious about what you come from.” 7 “We have a base of operations there,” he added, “so we’ll stay in touch.” “Good,” I said, though I’d go anyway, unless expressly forbidden. “I’m thinking about going to the Ascalon Settlement afterwards; I always meant to see it, but I wasn’t capable of the journey.” “It’s a challenging one,” said Ihan. “Even for you.” I had no intention of getting myself killed out of curiosity, even curiosity that sprang from my connection to my people and my birthplace. “I’ll take care.” NINETY-ONE 1 Thankfully, Ihan assented to the second plan as well as the first. In fact, he said, “Then you’d better take this.” He dug around in his apparently bottomless bag; it gleamed with pale yellowish light every time he opened it up, and after a few moments, he pulled out a beautiful bronze sceptre, red-jeweled at its base, gradually widening to a little mechanism of some sort, and topped by a group of different-sized circles. The circles all glowed with the same light as that filling the bag, little bolts of lightning crackling across them. I caught my breath as Ihan held it out to me. My fingers did not quite tremble when I took it in my hand. Even without casting a spell, I could feel its strength. 2 The sheer quantity of aether I could pour through this sceptre—I’d never touched a weapon so fine. I lifted astonished eyes to Ihan’s. “Thank you,” I said unsteadily. “I … thank you. I didn’t expect it.” “I’m aware,” said Ihan, his mouth quirking. “But I’d rather not see a promising initiate immediately killed by pirates.” 3 “Then why are you letting me go?” The sceptre hummed pleasantly under my fingers, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to sheathe it with my other weapons. “If you can’t survive Gendarran Fields,” said Ihan, “then you won’t survive the Order. But properly armed, you have the wit and the strength to survive everything on the way to the settlement. And it’s good to test your skills and sharpen them before entering into a new phase of your career.” I looked down at the sceptre, then up at him, then back at the sceptre. “I see.” 4 “Good luck, Althea Fairchild,” Ihan told me, extending his hand. I reached out with my free hand, and took his in a firm grip, shaking it. I couldn’t help wondering if I’d ever do it again, see him again, or if this first mentor—of sorts—would simply vanish into the shadows. I might never know if he lived or died. If the gods willed it, though, I would. Maybe our paths would cross someday. I said, “Good luck, Ihan.” 5 With that, he walked over to a nearby crowd and joined it. When the crowd dispersed, he was gone. I took a deep breath, then turned back to the gate and walked into Salma, where everything was comfortable and familiar. Kormir knew when I’d be back for any significant length of time, and I could hardly tell my mother that I’d joined a continent-spanning organization of spies and assassins. As I made my way to the manor, it felt half-unreal, but for the pouch of ashes at my waist. I shivered. Poor Kellach—and poor Logan. 6 My mother, of course, didn’t like the idea of me going back to Ebonhawke. But then, she didn’t like the idea of me going anywhere outside of Divinity’s Reach, so I reminded her of the cease-fire with the Charr and the treaty in progress, said I’d keep her updated, and promised to take no unnecessary risks. We had different ideas of necessary, Mother and I. After reassuring her, I packed my bags with what went for practical in my wardrobe, tied my hair back, and headed out to Rurikton. I didn’t go immediately to the Ebonhawke gate. Instead, I walked slowly to Langmar Manor—and more importantly, the Langmar cemetery. Kellach was no Langmar, of course, but it was the best I could do for him. 7 I sprinkled Kellach’s ashes in the fresh plot where Deborah’s headstone had rested: my portion of Kellach’s ashes, that was—just thinking of that had me shuddering again. But perhaps he could rest in the Mists peacefully now, free of Zhaitan’s grip; perhaps even the Risen he’d brought with him could, too. We’d done what we could, however grisly the doing of it had been. From there, I made my way to the rear of the district, gazing up at the crackling gate. It had been so long. Handing over a few coins to the Asura by the gate, I straightened up, checked the fit of my weapons and my bag, and then— Then I walked home.

#ascalonian grudgeblog #anghraine's gaming #anghraine's fic #ascalonian grudgefic #althea fairchild #agent ihan #logan thackeray #countess anise #corporal kellach #ailoda langmar #guild wars 2 #pro patria #probably my favourite clump of the entire fic #i didn't plan the fic in groups of seven chapters so there's no pacing logic to where i divide them up #but i was really glad where this one started and ended :)

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natsspammityspamspamham · 5 years ago

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I HAVE FINISHED ALL THE ROUTES OF FE THREE HOUSES (for now) - SPOILERS

There’s DLC saying there will be new content and new characters and all of that starting April 30th 2020. I just thought that “new content”?! DID YOU MEAN NEW ROUTE?! I’m sorry for being dumb.

However, THIS LINK indicates that there will be a “Completely” new story.

This new update (the free one) will offer LUNATIC MODE for all ya crazy people.

https://fireemblem.nintendo.com/three-houses/downloadable-content/

Each takes about 20-25 hours depending on the time you want to spend grinding and/or exploring. If you read through every line and wait for the voice actors to finish every line, maybe it’ll take you 70 or something.

The storyline of this game was such a step up from Fates partially because the Fates storyline was shit, we all knew it, and I still enjoyed it despite having a seemingly bland cast and a terrible story. On the other hand, your weapons don’t run out of ammo. This game was vastly different with no weapon triangle, pair-ups, and all that other stuff from Awakening and Fates. Keep in mind, I’m a filthy casual that’s only played Shadow Dragon, Awakening, and Fates.

This game was so much fun. If you want to enjoy it for yourself, don’t read on because there are plenty of spoilers for the whole family!

This is the game in a nutshell: Which of you likeable people shall I kill? Yes, I find Edelgard likeable.

Church of Seiros (Normal/Casual - Black Eagles then decide not to side with Edelgard)

This route was my first. I made a mistake of not recruiting anyone else. It was a little sad without an overpowered house leader (I’m looking at you, Claude). I didn’t like Rhea. I accidentally chose this route. I wouldn’t mind doing it again, but again, I don’t like Rhea.

I played it on casual to get used to the mechanics. That and I’m a filthy casual.

I feel like this is probably my least favourite route because of the absence of a house leader and because I was so ignorant as to not recruit anyone from the other houses. I played as a male character. I chose Petra at the end. She’s so sweet and nice. She is everything that I stand for.

I would give it a solid 7/10.

Black Eagles (Normal/Classic - Choose to go against the church)

Ah, revolution. Go against the church, side with the people who murdered your father, but then realize it’s too late to go back and that Rhea. Weirdly, it made sense to me at the time considering how I felt a strong sense of betrayal towards Rhea anyway. I recruited everyone I wanted (Ingrid, Felix, Sylvain) except for Annette and Lysithea I think? I’m pretty sure I also got Marianne. I didn’t manage to get Ashe, but after a playthrough of Blue Lions, I now realize I missed out on nothing. I couldn’t use the guy. I just got Bernadetta, and despite being under levelled, she fulfilled his role and better.

Edelgard is the second strongest out of the house leaders I think. This route was fun because it was the one full of revolution. It was what would be considered as “turning evil for the sake of good”. I just remember really enjoying the gameplay and defeating Dimitri. I, however, didn’t appreciate Edelgard just stealing the last moment and killing Dimitri. You have a choice to kill Claude. In the end, Claude can live on pretty much all routes.

Again, I really enjoyed this route. I would definitely play and again, and I will. Married Edelgard with a female avatar.

Golden Deer (Normal/Classic - Fear the Deer - This is about as neutral as you can get for now)

This is arguably as neutral as you can get... for now. Claude is a great unit, a great guy, and Joe is so devoted to this role. I played in both Japanese and English (switched whenever I turned on the system). I did kind of prefer Toshi’s interpretation at times, but Joe had a ton of good moments where I preferred his voice as well. For one, I feel like Toshi has far more experience with confession scenes, so when I chose Claude in the end, Toshi delivered better there, but the localization did wonders for Joe as well. The script changes made sure that Claude became the character that everyone knows and loves.

Gameplay-wise, at this point, I just recruited all my guys and gals from the other houses and ignored A TON of the Golden Deer, and I feel no remorse. They’re alive and kicking... just not on the field. I got a ton of my Black Eagles (Dorothea, Caspar, Linhardt, Petra) and a ton of my Blue Lions (Felix, Ingrid, Sylvain, and probably a few others I’m not remembering).

Overall, I think this was my favourite route because Claude was awesome, so overpowered with his relic, and he’s just an awesome guy that should’ve been bi but the confession end card was drawn with only the female avatar which makes Edelgard the only confirmed bi out of the three.

Blue Lions (Normal/Classic - STRONG OOF)

After being scolded on Tumblr for not understanding Dimitri, I went and did the Blue Lions route!

I called this guy insane and got backlash. Let me put it this way, the Black Eagles route cuts him out to be a real big villain. He’s so fixated on revenge that he’s blinded. He causes the deaths of a lot of his former classmates with little to no remorse.

But on this route? Ah, well, he’s still like that for the first half post-time skip.

This route is rich in backstory. It paints Edelgard is such a bad light which I enjoy so much. Do I like her? Yes. But do I think this is necessary? Absolutely. That last scene was “poetic cinema”. The way the dagger worked and all those broken dreams. All the NPC deaths and things like that. Nice.

I’m still not a huge fan of Dimitri. Gameplay-wise, he was the worst and hardest to use out of the three. I’m also saying that because that person almost ruined this whole route for me.

_____________________

A quick ramble about voice actors for this game:

YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE HOW HAPPY I WAS TO FIND OUT WE GOT TO HEAR THE JAPANESE VOICES!

As a seiyuu fan, I was ecstatic. However, I did kind of miss that Hosoya didn’t appear in this one. He was Morgan in Awakening and Shigure in Fates. I listened to both casts, and besides a few voices (Japanese Bernadetta killed my ears), I loved both sides no matter how different they were. While some delivery was a little weak (nothing major), I found that it was generally very well-done.

Both Ai Kakuma and Tara Platt stood out to me as Edelgard. For one, Tara Platt is immensely talented. I didn’t hear Ai Kakuma around as much (I only heard her make an appearance in Kimetsu no Yaiba).

Both Kaito Ishikawa and Chris Hackney were great as Dimitri, but I think Chris gave him a bit more of a “snobbish king” kind of feel which was probably better for my perception of his character.

Joe Zieja was iconic as Claude but so was Toshiyuki Toyonaga. Toshi was far suaver and flirtatious and pulling off more of that “otome game” kind of vibe while Joe has contributed so much to the fandom outside of the actual game. It’s much harder to choose between the two for this one.

Both sides really bring it their all, and while I do have my preferences, I would be fine either way.

Of course, these lines weren’t really translated perfectly in the dub. From what I hear, there are a ton of nuances and the way that they spoke that didn’t go both ways. In the end, the gist was the same.

I might ramble further in a separate post because I wanna.

#fire emblem three houses #fire emblem #fe3h

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worbuchadu1981 · 5 years ago

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Diet for One? Scientists Stalk the Dream of Personalized Nutrition

A decade prior, prodded by the accomplishment of the Human Genome Project and the reasonableness of hereditary sequencing, researchers started to investigate the guarantee of вђњnutrigenomics.вђќ Could customized nourishment, educated by information of an individualвђ™s DNA, help counteract and even treat diet-related diseases?

The aftereffects of early examinations from Harvard, Stanford and somewhere else were convincing: Genetic contrasts appeared to incline people to lose various measures of weight on various sorts of eating regimens. A multimillion-dollar industry before long jumped up, introduced on advertising DNA-based eating regimens. In any case, resulting exploration has neglected to demonstrate any measurably huge distinction in weight reduction between overweight individuals who вђњeat directly for their genotypeвђќ and the individuals who do not.

In certainty, the impact of qualities on corpulence has been difficult to coax out; different examinations put the figure at somewhere in the range of 35 to 85 percent. Nutritionists have since quite a while ago saw that nobody weight reduction procedure works for everybody, and that people show striking contrasts in their reactions to various eating regimens. What, at that point, clarifies the huge variety in individual metabolism?

Last year, Tim Spector and Sarah Berry, disease transmission experts at Kingвђ™s College, London, and Dr. Andrew Chan, of Harvard Medical School, started an aspiring new quest for the appropriate response. Their new investigation, called Predict, is the worldвђ™s biggest and most far reaching trial to take a gander at individual reactions to food.

Their primer outcomes, introduced on Monday at the American Society for Nutritionвђ™s yearly gathering, reported, just because, considerable and astounding varieties in how well members prepared fats and starches, even among indistinguishable twins. How productively an individual used one macronutrient was no indicator of how that individual may react to another.

вЂњWe are drawing nearer to having the option to give direction to every individual for what their optimal eating regimen ought to be,вђќ said Dr. Eric Topol, a geneticist at the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, Calif., who was not associated with the investigation. вЂњWeвЂ™re not there yet, yet the new investigation is another significant achievement to get us there.вђќ

For decades Dr. Spector has been investigating the reasons for individual variety in ailment hazard, including diet-related afflictions. In 1992, he set up TwinsUK, an examination library that presently incorporates in excess of 13,000 indistinguishable and intimate twins. In view of the twins, he reasoned that qualities contributed 70 percent of an individualвђ™s chance for corpulence, on average.

Intrigued, he started a progression of concentrates to coax out which variables impacted the staying 30 percent. In 2014, he started the British Gut venture, a publicly supported exertion to comprehend the decent variety of gut microorganisms, their reaction to various dietary intercessions and their impact on weight. Among his library of twins, he saw, even indistinguishable sets shared uniquely around 50 percent of their gut bacteria.

Dr. Spector then began Predict to investigate how varieties in individual reactions to fats and starches may add to weight. Eating nourishments that contain fats and starches causes glucose, insulin and triglyceride levels in the blood to rise and fall; spikes that are excessively high, excessively drawn out and too successive are related with aggravation, weight gain, coronary illness and diabetes.

The concentrate included 700 indistinguishable twins, 300 individual British volunteers and 100 subjects from the United States, and accumulated information on nearly everything that can influence digestion: gut microbiota, rest length, work out, muscle to fat ratio sythesis and that's just the beginning. These underlying outcomes, in any case, broke down just the ascent and fall of glucose, insulin and triglyceride levels in the blood after members had eaten institutionalized meals.

Listen to a scene of Gastropod, the digital broadcast that takes a gander at nourishment through the perspective of science and history, as Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley take audience members along on their voyage as members in the Predict study.

The group inferred that qualities assume a constrained job in how an individual procedures fats and starches. Among indistinguishable twins, just about portion of the sum and span of an individualвђ™s post-dinner blood glucose level could be ascribed to hereditary impact вђ" and under 30 percent with respect to insulin and triglyceride reaction. The more significant factors in how our bodies use nourishment, it appears, are ecological: rest, stress, practice and the decent variety and populace of our individual gut microbiome.

вЂњThat is truly energizing for researchers and individuals,вђќ Dr. Berry said. вЂњIt has demonstrated to us what amount isn't hereditary and in this manner modifiable.вђќ

She noticed that the extent of fats and starches in a supper clarified under 40 percent of an individualвђ™s reaction to that nourishment. That discovering вђњreinforces the message that we should concentrate on entire way of life approaches as opposed to singular nourishments and nutrients,вђќ she said.

The full informational index will take Dr. Spector and his all-inclusive group of associates вђ" somewhere in the range of 40 researchers around the globe вђ" years to examine, even with the assistance of AI. Furthermore, they have just started follow-up concentrates to coax out the mind boggling connections among factors.

But it was at that point conceivable to gather singular bits of knowledge, he said. In the wake of eating potato chips, one subject over and over encountered a triglyceride top multiple times higher than that of an indistinguishable twin. That level of mindfulness could help steer the chip-delicate twin toward a lower-fat bite, Dr. Spector said.

вЂњWe are omnivores and we do require a various diet,вђќ he said. вЂњBut on the off chance that you can simply swap a few nourishments around so you have the very same calories and happiness however a lower top either in glucose or in lipids, at that point youвђ™re going to put on less weight and be more advantageous long term.вђќ

Jennie Brand-Miller, a teacher of human sustenance at the University of Sydney in Australia, who was not engaged with Predict, said that individualized sustenance exhortation, instead of standard dietary rules dependent on populace wide midpoints, could fundamentally improve open health.

вЂњI think the one-size-fits-all nourishment rule is antiquated,вђќ Dr. Brand-Miller said. She noticed that one out of three individuals have a poor metabolic reaction to sugar; recognizing those people, and after that showing them how to evade spikes in blood glucose, could lessen their chances of later creating diabetes by as much as 40 percent.

The standard nourishment rules are based on information from surveys that ask individuals how every now and again they ate certain food sources in the previous year. That approach gives helpful information about by and large patterns, however it additionally is imperfect: Respondents are famously terrible at reviewing their nourishment decisions, and the arrived at the midpoint of information can't offer customized guidance.

A increasingly point by point perspective on our metabolic contrasts has come as of late, with the appearance of reasonable AI, wearable sensors and hereditary sequencing. The outcome has been a flood of enthusiasm for the field. In February, another enormous scale, multiyear customized nourishment study was begun at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Lausanne.

вЂњThis research is captivating and itвђ™s important,вђќ said Tim Caulfield, who explores wellbeing law and arrangement at the University of Alberta in Canada. In any case, вђњif history reveals to us anything, it discloses to us that itвђ™s far-fetched this will change nutrition.вђќ

For a certain something, he stated, the essential parameters of a sound eating routine are now outstanding: a lot of entire grains, beats, dull verdant greens and different vegetables, enough solid oils and fish, and almost no red meat or refined starches. The issue isn't that the rules aren't right or inadequately customized, Mr. Caulfield stated, yet that individuals are not following them.

Even the emphasis on a personвђ™s nourishment decisions or individual digestion can divert from other huge supporters of the stoutness scourge, he stated: вЂњIt is an incredibly unpredictable issue that has to do with our fabricated condition, with economics, with our nourishment condition, with promoting, and with our movement levels вђ" such huge numbers of things.вђќ

As an investigation, Predict is still in its initial days; whatever individualized proposals it may give, there is no proof yet that they can improve a personвђ™s wellbeing any superior to anything standard dietary rules can. In any case, its extension and meticulousness are novel.

вЂњIt will require further approval, and doesnвђ™t compare with counteracting coronary illness or disease or other outcomes,вђќ Dr. Topol said. вЂњBut itвђ™s still significant if weвђ™re consistently going to get to the вђfood as medicineвђ™ ideal.вђќ

Participating in the examination can be tiresome. Subjects are first put through a broad battery of tests, including hourly blood draws and sweeps of their muscle versus fat and bone mass, in a medical clinic setting. At that point, for two we

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