#I have two different ideas for a fatal fury tag

[inventors-fair]

Team Spirit - The Power of Friendship Runners-Up

Ken the Eagle by @sparkyyoungupstart - Tatsunoko vs. Capcom

A few minor formatting issues aside (why hybrid frame), this card is a really cool way to show off fighting game characters and mechanics in Magic. Obviously having combat-viable creatures is a must, but making them also be combat tricks is a really cool way to invoke that flavor of switchups, super moves, and just generally turning the tables on your opponent in dramatic, violent ways. The reminder text for tag-in is a bit hefty, but the safety nozzles do seem to be necessary. I assume special rulings would be made to remember the tag-in restriction even as the commander becomes a new object, but seems simple enough. It is interesting that tag-in is instant speed, but you chose a representative character with an ability you only ever use on your turn- it would have been neat to see something that could be useful to tag in on either your or an opponent’s turn.

Terry Bogard, Wild Wolf by @dabudder - Fatal Fury

Fighting game number 2 of the runners up! Terry is intense, but in a good way. That rummaging buff can certainly get out of hand if your opponents let it, especially since you can do it after blockers, but the lack of any built in evasion helps even it out. Lineup is... ambitious, for sure, but cool as hell. It makes for a lot more bookkeeping, but at least commander tax will be easy to track than if you just had three unrestricted commanders. I do like the idea of caring about where a card was in your starting lineup, but I do feel like there’s enough memory issues with that that it could start an argument on turn 10 about who was where. In addition, Terry seems to be pulling in a few different directions, since he’s cheapish, aggressive creature that also wants to be last? Ie you have to cast and kill two other commanders in order to get to him. Admittedly, that payoff is worth it, being able to nuke creatures, planeswalkers, and battles from orbit is very nice. A lot of really cool ideas here, and they came together pretty nicely.

The Future Devil by @real-aspen-hours - Chainsaw Man

I think devil’s bargain might be my absolute favorite mechanic of this week. I love “power at a cost” mechanics, and this is just my dream. Opening the pool to every legendary human (and changeling) ever printed seems very intense (especially since this means you can easily have a 4 or 5 color deck), but I guess that’s why you pay a price. Gushing aside, I don’t think this is the best example of the mechanic. Hand revealing is a lot of mental upkeep for both you and your opponents, and it makes for a lot of logistical issues, and slows gameplay down. The downside is super flavorful, and plays well with the other abilities - surveiling means you’ll know what you topdeck next turn and can plan around it, but your opponents won’t until it’s too late- but I don’t know if that makes the headache of this card worth it.

See you in a few days for general commentary! Holiday Monday, so might take a bit longer.

~judge @naban-dean-of-irritation

[rainbowwing251]

Hey I just found your blog but I must say, you’re very talented😁. I’d like to make a request tho. Maybe some headcanons for Terry from fatal fury? It’s optional of corse.

I’m sorry for making you wait all this time, but I have finally finished my list of headcanons for Terry!

I haven’t played any of the games in the Fatal Fury series, nor have I played any of the games in the King of Fighters series. Nonetheless, I’m going to do my best. I think I have some good headcanons for Terry.

Terry is a ler-leaning switch that is on the border between a ler-leaning switch and a pure ler. Given this information, and his appearance, most people would assume that he hates being tickled. However, this isn’t entirely true. It all depends on who his ler is, and whether or not he is in the mood.

His worst spots are his knees and his underarms. Terry does a very good job with protecting these spots, but if you can get around his defenses and tickle him in either one of these two spots, he’ll quickly crumble under your hands.

Even so, you will likely struggle with keeping him down on the ground. No matter who his ler is, he will try to fight them back. Sometimes, this is due to genuine discomfort, and he’ll try to get his ler to stop tickling him. This is only the case if you  are a complete stranger to him. If he knows you, you better watch out. He’ll try to turn the tables on you while you are tickling him.

After he recovers from a tickle attack, he will occasionally feel a sudden twinge of sadness. Don’t blame yourself for that, though. You didn’t do anything wrong. Sometimes, tickling makes him think about his adoptive father, Jeff Bogard, and how he would tickle him and his brother, Andy Bogard, on rare occasions. This wouldn’t be a bad memory for Terry... if his father hadn’t been murdered right in front of him while he was 10.

How does this memory not resurface every time you tickle him? I don’t know for sure, but it can happen from time to time. If it does happen, don’t try to tickle him again. He might get upset with you (though he’ll never get mad at you. He’s knows that you are not trying to hurt him on purpose).

Terry only has two lers in his world: Andy and Rock Howard. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get tickled by them all that often. Andy’s spends most of time in Japan, and Rock doesn’t really care about tickling. In Smash, it’s a different story. Ken, Little Mac, Ryu, and Pit are Terry’s main lers, and they all target him on a regular basis. Unfortunately for Pit, Terry can easily turn the tables on him.

As a ler, Terry is rather fatherly! Perhaps that is a weird way to describe Terry’s ler side, but the upcoming headcanons will explain this a little bit better. At least, I hope they will.

Similar to Mario, Terry will target those who want or need to be cheered up. Instead of targeting the sides and the bottom of the ribcage like Mario does, Terry will lightly tickle the lee’s stomach instead.

If no one needs cheering up in his world, then he might go and target Rock. As his adoptive father, Terry wants to give Rock the love that he deserves, not wanting him to suffer from the same kind of loneliness that he and Andy once suffered from.

If he is in Smash, then he will target the younger fighters of Smash. These fighters won him over rather quickly, as he is very protective towards children and young teenagers. He doesn’t want the younger fighters to suffer like he did (though for fighters like Ness and Lucas, it’s a little too late for that), and he definitely doesn’t want them to feel unloved. If any one of them needs a reminder that they are loved, Terry will drill that message into their heads by tickling them silly.

He does target the adult fighters of Smash as well, but he isn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of tickling them. There are a few exceptions, but I’m not going to go over that now. I’ll talk about in Terry’s list of lees.

He prefers to use lighter tickles, knowing that heavier tickles could potentially result in injury if he is the one doing the tickling. He’ll only use heavier tickles if his lee asks for them.

He’ll give you plenty of breaks so you won’t be at risk for passing out due to a lack of oxygen. You don’t have to ask for a break, he’ll make that decision himself.

Despite his looks, he’s a bit of a silly guy on the inside, and this is demonstrated by the way that he teases his lees. He teases his lee like a father would tease their child (I know Terry doesn’t have a biological son, but in my opinion, adoptive fathers can be just as good as a biological father). The only other person who could compete with his ability to turn a lee into a giggly mess via teasing is Chrom.

In his world, Rock is his main lee. Andy is another one of Terry’s lees too, but he doesn’t get the chance to tickle him all that often, since Andy spends the majority of his life in Japan.

In Smash, he will go after the younger fighters, as I have previously stated. Out of all of them, Lucas, Toon Link, and Young Link are his main targets. These three have all gone through some horrible shit, and Terry wants them to know that they are safe and secure in Smash. If they ever feel scared, he’ll be there for them. And this doesn’t just apply to them, it applies to all of the young fighters.

As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, Terry isn’t entirely comfortable with tickling the adult fighters. However, there are a few exceptions. Those exceptions are Marth, Chrom, Little Mac, and Shulk.

Terry has a bigger soft spot for Shulk than he does for the rest of the adult fighters. Don’t get me wrong, he has a soft spot for everyone, but Shulk is a bit more special to him than anyone else.

When he first got into Smash, he somehow mistook the young Homs for Rock. Upon realizing that he wasn’t his adoptive son, he got slightly embarrassed, and apologized to him for the mix-up. Shulk didn’t see anything wrong with that mix-up, so he quickly forgave him. After a few days had passed, Terry realized that he had developed a soft spot for the guy. He reminded him of his adopted son.

When someone told him that Shulk was ticklish, he immediately wanted to test his ticklishness. He talked to him about this, and he eventually got the okay to tickle him. Needless to say, Shulk quickly became one of Terry’s favorite lees.

That’s all I got for Terry! Once again, I apologize for making you wait for these headcanons. I got nervous about the quality of these headcanons once I got towards the end of the list. That wasn’t going to stop me, though.

P.S Me? Talented? Of course I’m going to take that as a complement, but wow. I was not expecting that at all.

[damienthepious]

no lizard this tuesday. have some pre-canon rilla/damien smoochin and discussion of [checks notes] uh death!!! it’s fun!!! im stress’d

No Aching Necessary

[ao3]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Sir Damien/Rilla

Characters: Sir Damien, Rilla

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Tuesday, Established Relationship, (im POSTING this for LKT but i won't put it in the tag because arum ain't here.), (maybe if i ever pin down a follow up for this feat. the lizard? perhaps.), self-sacrificing idiot vibes, Mild Suicidal Ideation, Pre-Canon, Communication, discussions of uhhhh death

Summary: Sir Damien feels love like self-immolation. Rilla feels a little bit differently about it.

Notes: I've had this idea for a while, because Sir Damien is nothing if not dramatic, and sir "self sacrifice is a knightly virtue!" seemed like the type to say this particular phrase on repeat. Basically just wanted to unpack all that I guess?? anywayyyy no thoughts brain scrampled egg. also this may have a part two someday? maybe? idk. there's potential.

~

Love, for Sir Damien, feels...

Eternal, and holy, and sacrificial. As in, it sounds of yet another litany in his mind, alongside the song of prayer to Saint Damien, alongside pleas for Tranquility, alongside fear and doubt and fortitude. I love you becomes too big for itself, it transforms, rather quickly, into-

"I would die for you."

Rilla stares at him the first time he says it, furrowing her brow, her dark eyes filled with concern. He kisses her frowning lips, gentle and aching, and when she kisses back her grip is possessive, firm, sturdy, and Damien melts against her as easy as wax beneath the flame.

The second time it bubbles out of him in helpless delight. She rolls her eyes and squeezes his hand almost too hard as she pulls him along to the next booth at the festival, distracting him with games and laughter until the throbbing of his heart eases into something more like joy.

The third time she only says I'll see you tomorrow, Damien, and glares hard at his back as he returns to the Citadel.

The fourth time he presses their bodies together and breathes it against her lips and-

She rolls him onto his back, sinking her teeth into his bottom lip and making him squeak and gasp, and when she pulls back she presses one hand to each of his shoulders, and the fury on her face is nearly thunderous.

"What's that thing you keep calling me, Damien?" she asks, inarguable and stern.

Damien blinks, panting as he stares up at her in confusion and desire and, suddenly, rising worry.

"Wh-what?"

"What is it that you call me? That romantic, poetic little name you have," she repeats, moving one hand from his shoulder to his neck, thumbing at his pulse.

"I…" Damien swallows, feeling her hand against the column of his throat. "M-my- my forever-flower?" he tries, his voice weak and wavering, and Rilla's eyes flash as the hand on his shoulder squeezes.

"If I'm yours," she says, her dark eyes utterly serious, her gaze inescapable, "your flower, then you're mine, Damien."

"Always," Damien breathes, and she blinks for half a heartbeat, apparently not expecting his easy (eager) acquiescence.

She shifts even closer, her voice lowering in both volume and tone. "You're mine," she says again. "And I intend to keep you, for as long as I am physically capable."

"A-ah." Damien's heart thuds, some delicious thrill at the idea of being kept. That she would- that she does want him, that she wants him enough to say things like that-

"Which means," she continues, her palm still warm against his throat as her other hand sinks into his hair, her nails tickling his scalp, "you need to stick around to be mine. I don't wanna hear you say anything like that to me. Understand?"

"But... but it's true, my love. I would die for-"

"You'd better not," she growls - growls, her eyes flashing, and a delicious shiver runs down Damien's spine - and her grip on his hair tightens, carefully angling his face up so that he looks her in the eye. "I want you, I love you, and I don't want anything to do with you dying."

"Rilla..." Damien swallows, looking down and away for a moment before he meets Rilla's eye again, hesitant. "You know, of course... I am a knight, my love, my flower. Each day, each mission is a risk. I take those risks willingly, knowing that I face potential fatality for the sake of my Saint and my Citadel. And, now... for you."

Rilla frowns hard, and then she kisses him harder, her hands firm and inarguable in his hair and on his neck for one long, searing moment before she pulls away again, and some of that righteousness on her face fades, her brow creased with distress.

"There's a difference between understanding the mortality rate of your career and you, apropos of nothing, claiming that you wanna throw your dead body at my feet, Damien. It's not romantic, it's not comforting, and I don't want to hear you say it. Why would you think that I would want to hear you say that? No one is asking you to die for me. I want you. I love you. And I can't fucking love you if you're dead, and especially not if you're dead for no goddamn reason."

"I never said-" Damien pants, his words slipping from his mind like trying to snatch a ribbon from the current of a river. "Not for no reason, it isn't as if-"

"Would you want me to say that?" she says, her voice almost- almost keening, beneath her frustration. "Do you want me to be eager to die for you?"

Damien lifts his hands, gripping Rilla's sides as if to keep her there.

"There is no reason whatsoever for you to even consider-"

"You can't know that for sure. Neither of us can. It isn't just your job that's dangerous Damien, it's the whole damn world. So, what if I do? What if I want to die for you, too? Does that make you feel good about our relationship?"

"I- well, I-"

"Does it make you feel good to think about me dying for you, or does it make you feel terrified?"

Terrified. Needless to say.

Needless, of course; Rilla's glare eases at the look on his face, at the way he freezes beneath her hands like startled prey.

"Exactly," she says, muted and gentle, and then she draws her hand through his hair, her other raising enough to cup his jaw. "I know... I know that being a knight is dangerous. I know because of how many times I've had to put one back together. Even just by how many times I've had to put you back together, even. I know- I know, intellectually, that losing you-"

She pauses, her breath doing something strange, her dark eyes too bright, suddenly.

"Rilla..."

She scowls as he wraps his arms around her middle. "I know it's a possibility. I know it's- likely, even," she says more fiercely. "But that doesn't mean I want to hear you say it, and it doesn't mean I want you to sound so goddamn eager to die. Got it?"

"I'm- I'm not- I don't-"

Eagerness does not come into it. Damien knows, though-

Damien knows what Rilla knows. As she has just quietly, sadly confirmed. The life of a knight is risk, inherent. More accurately, the life of a knight is sacrifice: his own safety in exchange for the protection of the citizens of the Citadel. The same exchange Sir Damien promised, in his heart, so many years ago to his Saint. It is likely, extremely likely, that Sir Damien will die in the service of his Saint and his Citadel.

And Rilla-

Rilla. Kneeling above him, curled down to place her forehead against his own, holding his face in her hands.

He would die for her. His heart aches for her, resounds like a bell in his chest, and he would die for her just as readily as he would die for his Saint, or his Queen. That is what she means to him, her equivalent place in his heart, what she does to him. He-

She bites his collarbone, sharp and sudden, and Damien yelps.

"Rilla!"

"You were thinking it again," she mutters, darkly, and then she kisses that same spot, feather light. "I just- I love you too much to hear you care so little about yourself." She lifts her face towards his, then, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "Please. If you love me-"

"I do. My love for you burns like a wildfire, races like a waterfall, it fills me like-"

"Then you have to look out for yourself too, because I love you. And- and I can't always be there to watch your back and patch you back up. It's important to me that you're not- not trying to destroy yourself to prove a point about how much you-"

"Never," Damien breathes. He holds her a little tighter, then reaches to draw his hand through her hair. "No, that isn't... that isn't what I meant. I acknowledge the- the mortality rate, as you called it, but- but I hope, at least, to die nobly in my purpose. There would be no such end in reckless inattention to my safety. I swear."

Rilla frowns - nearly pouts, perhaps - and then she sighs as she bumps the tip of her nose into his cheek. "Alright. Okay. Thank you for... for listening. I know how- how much you feel, it's just- I can't do that. I can't hear you say that, especially not- not like you're saying it instead of... I just can't. Okay?"

"I understand," Damien says. "I will try to... to find more agreeable - less distressing, rather - ways in which to express my adoration."

Uncertain, whether or not he will be able to banish the thought from his mind, however. Occasionally it blinds him, when he looks at her, the breathlessness of his love, the need to protect and worship and bend himself to her merest desire-

But-

She desires, in no mere way, for him to be safe and whole, and holding her.

It still roils within him like a tempest, like waves and rocks and thunder, love like roaring and electricity.

But for her-

(Tranquility)

Sir Damien kisses her brow, kisses her neck, kisses her nose to make her wrinkle it and laugh.

Rilla loves him: miracle. Rilla loves him, like blankets and safety and hearth. Like sunshine, and laughing wind.

The soldier sings of death, as it walks ever by his side, but home- home will not abide such talk while the soldier rests inside.

He purses his lips. Unpolished, not without potential-

"I guess that's one way to think about it," Rilla murmurs, her cheeks a little dark, and Damien starts with the realization that he spoke aloud.

"Er- ah, well-"

"You really think of me as-" she pauses, bites her lip, then meets his eye again. "As... home?"

Damien exhales, overwhelmed by the strangely shy pleasure on Rilla's face, and then he tips his face up to capture her lips in another kiss.

"I do," he breathes, and then he kisses her again. "My forever-flower, my love... my home. Of course, my home."

"It- I think of you that way too," she whispers, and then she closes her eyes. "That's... why, I think. That's why it's hard for me to hear you say things like that. I know bad things happen, I know that homes- I know that things break. I just... don't like the reminder, I guess. I don't need it. I already learned that lesson too many times, y'know?"

Amaryllis of Exile looks down at him with a hesitant smile, her hand on his cheek scented vaguely of mint and smoke. Damien knows, yes. He knows what she has lost. He kisses her again, gentle and precious.

He loves her, and he knows that she loves him. So brave a love, in fact, that she will hold him and know she may lose him, and she will love him all the more fiercely in response.

[lostsummerdayz]

Lost Summer Deep Dive - Christie Monteiro Part 1

An In-Depth Look At A Capoeirista Forgotten By Lore

by Nay Holland

When one thinks of capoeira, it is impossible to mention the impact video games had in bringing the art into the public eye. Sure, there have been movies, books, and capoeira schools for as long as the art existed, but video games were arguably the form of media which made the art popular. The same could be said for its representation in video games.

While you had capoeiristas like Richard Meyer and Bob Wilson in the Fatal Fury series, it wouldn’t be until years later that a rich Brazilian capoeirista known as Eddy Gordo would set the bar. No, he wouldn’t just set the bar, he would be the bar himself.

In arcades during the year of 1997 and home consoles the following year, many a player felt rage from a single man. A man whose flips, spins, handstands, and kicks, would bring awe to those who played him, and frustration to those who fought against it. He was both famous for moves never seen before in a 3D fighter, and infamous for being the definition of “cheap.”

Regardless how you felt about him, there was no denying that Eddy was different from the rest of the cast. In a game where homages to Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Tiger Mask were evident, there was nothing who was comparable to Eddy at the time. His unique, yet slightly exaggerated, homage to capoeira brought new fans into the art. Capoeira became a popular buzz word for fighting enthusiasts almost overnight.

But was Eddy always considered to be the face of capoeira?

After Tekken Tag Tournament, Eddy was noticeably absent from the main roster. In place of him was a young Brazilian woman by the name of Christie Monteiro. A fresh face for a game that represented a new era in Tekken, her moves were very similar to Eddy’s.

In fact, apart from her normal throws, her movelist were identical to Eddy’s in every way. Eddy being a palette swap for her in Tekken 4 and Tekken 5 brought the “Christie is Eddy” angle to its head. At the time, although Eddy was included in these two games, Bandai Namco was trying to push Christie as the new face.

At the very least, they were trying to push a woman as the capoeira representative from the very beginning.

In a 1998 CVG interview, following the release of Tekken 3, the development team discussed how the concept of Eddy came about. When asked how the team went about designing its roster of characters, the team replied with the following.

“A good example is Eddy, since he wasn't planned to be the character you see at first. The development team wanted to include a character who used Capoeira, so the idea was passed on to the artist team. Mr Kimoto requested the artist to make a female character for Capoeira. However the artist said it was too difficult to design a female character who used Capoeria, so there came Eddy.” 

It wouldn’t be until Dark Resurrection that Eddy had his own slot on the roster for the first time since Tekken Tag Tournament.

With the separation of the two characters at last, Christie’s push would be put on the backburner in lieu of Eddy’s importance to the story. Christie’s relevance came to a screeching halt in Tekken 7 as Eddy was one of the final main roster characters revealed without a Brazilian woman in sight.

NO!!!

Anyways, Christie wouldn’t make another official appearance until the mobile Tekken game, but considering the mobile Tekken game is literally a dump of old characters that didn’t make the cut in Tekken 7, that’s hardly a victory.

I started writing this back in early 2018, and since then, we’ve gotten Marduk back from the graveyard!

However, I’ve long since stopped holding out for hope. If she shows up, she shows up. If she doesn’t, well. It still won’t dilute the amount of love I have for this girl. Hopefully by the end of this I can shed some light on what makes Christie amazing to me.

So, what happened? How did the one who was pushed to be the babyface of capoeira after Eddy’s origin ended up becoming the queen of the indies known as mobile Tekken? What is it about Christie that makes me admire her as a character? Well, let’s start with her design.

Appearance

So, imagine the year 2001. You’re in the arcades and you see Tekken 4 for the first time. The attract video plays and you’re in wow at the graphics. Especially considering this is the first Tekken on a new engine in the arcade at least. Then suddenly you see this mami twirling and making sensual poses, flashing the biggest grin.

It was at this point you dumped quarters in the machine. Don’t lie. This totally didn’t happen to me at an arcade while I was in the Poconos. Nope.

I remember the rumors at the time. Everyone thought the designers took inspiration from Tyra Banks and Harada himself de-confirmed this.

Wearing a low-cut green floral blouse that cuts above her midriff, black leather hotpants with frills at the end, black fingerless gloves, and Spartan-style sandals, Christie’s primary outfit was made to turn heads and accentuate her features. As with most outfits and hair designs in this game, Christie’s design was also made to show off the new graphics engine for Tekken. Christie’s long brunette hair, coupled with her loose-fitting clothing, flows with the wind with every kick and acrobatic motion. Her design was made for comfort in mind as well as ease of movement.

Christie’s competitor’s outfit is a brassiere-style top with silk training pants and green fingerless gloves. Wrapped around her waist is a capoeira belt, much like Eddy’s competitor’s outfit. Whether this is an actual representation of her rank, or just a design choice, is up in the air. I’d like to say it’s the latter, though I believe a purple belt is a high ranking in capoeira.

Comparing Christie and Eddy’s competitor’s outfit, they aren’t too different from each other. In fact, side by side they appear like partners rather than a radical difference.

Following her debut, her primary outfit changes from a green to a light purple top and black to white colored hotpants. The top of her competitive gear is more confined and stylish while retaining the same effect as it did before. As the series progressed, her butterfly motif became more prevalent in her clothing.

With such a dynamic taste in style, one would think that her personality is just as bubbly, and you’d be correct to think so.

Personality

Pointing at her opponent with finger guns and firing off in their direction, Christie enters her ginga stance with a declaration…

“Here we go!”

Oozing with confidence no matter who she is fighting against, Christie never backs down from an opportunity to show off her studies in Capoeira arts.

Christie makes it clear to her competitors that if they take her lightly, they will pay for it in a loss.

Perhaps one of my favorite exchanges with another character is when she fights Bruce in Tekken 5. Bruce exclaims that the “competition has gotten easier on the eyes,” in which Christie taunts him in return. When Bruce questions if her capoeira can stand up to [his Muay Thai], she replies with a sultry tone of confidence.

Ultimately, Christie would win the bout and she toys with him, saying that his lack of rhythm will be the reason why he will never defeat her.

It’s exchanges like this, as well as her other intro pose where she blows her opponent a kiss and declares them to “go easy on her,” that she uses her looks to her advantage. It’s almost as a form of intimidation, being caught off guard by swift kicks coming at you at every direction while she emerges the victor, leaving the battle almost unscathed.

There is a depth to this. When things get serious, Christie has a sense of justice within the confines of her own capability. This is commonly brought up whenever Eddy runs off headfirst into danger.

In the same game, when she runs into Eddy, she doesn’t back down from fighting Eddy to save her grandfather’s life. Win or lose, she will fight her hardest for those who she loves, even if it means fighting the one person, she loves the most.

She’s also highly emotional as an individual as evident when she shows her disappointment at the end of her winning the 4th Iron Fist Tournament. This changes to a complete 180 as she sees the one person who she has been looking for all tournament, immediately returning to her bubbly cheerful self. A dark version of this trait shows when she is overburdened with emotion to the point of tears upon discovering that her grandfather passed away.

This combination of a flirtatious happy-go-lucky capoeirista who revels in her fights and a woman who is bound to protect those who she holds dear comes into full force in Tekken 6. Although in the overall canon she takes a backseat, controlling her in Scenario mode reveals hidden layers about her character.

One of the hypothetical scenarios that is brought up is when Christie and Eddy do cross paths in Scenario mode. If the former approaches Eddy, he will exclaim that she shouldn’t be here in high concern. If the latter approaches Christie, she will appear angry that he has, once again, decided to be inconsiderate in being brash for considering working with “Public Enemy #1.”

Both Eddy and Christie wish to protect each other, yet they do so by ironically placing themselves into harms way. While on a larger scale, they are two small fish in the giant ocean that is the Mishima bloodline story. If one zooms in on the microscope, you see two troubled young adults who wish to live in peace. One is bound by vengeance while the other is bound by duty.

Story

While Tekken 4 is the first time we see and hear of Christie, that game is not the first time we hear of her story. In Tekken 3’s prologue, Eddy was incarcerated after being framed for the murder of his father. During his sentence, he learns the art of capoeira from an elderly master. Up until his release, Eddy perfected the art of capoeira and entered the third King of Iron Fist tournament to exact

That elderly man was none other than…

Well…

The old man never had an official name. The Tekken wiki has his name as

DENSETSU NO KAPOEIRA MASUTAA

or the “Legendary Capoeira Master.”

For a while, the urban legend regarding his name was “Ho Chi Myong,” but unlike the Tara Banks inspiration, this wasn’t ever confirmed by Bandai Namco. I don’t think it ever will.

The one thing that was confirmed, however, was that the

DENSETSU NO KAPOEI---I’m sorry.

The elderly capoeira master was Christie’s grandfather. How did Christie herself know capoeira? Through Eddy, as a form of mutual respect for her grandfather teaching him the art. Suddenly Christie and Eddy having identical moves isn’t farfetched.

However, I always wondered why Christie’s grandfather never taught her capoeira himself? The obvious answer would be because he, too, was imprisoned. Still, you’d consider that maybe he would have taught her when she was a child or began to teach her. Who knows?

At the end of the King of Iron Fist Tournament 3, Eddy finds out that it was Kazuya Mishima who orchestrated the events which led to his father’s murder and his own imprisonment. Since then, he has sought out to find Kazuya and settle the score on his own terms.

Enter Tekken 4, where a concerned Christie realizes Eddy has gone missing. In her response, she spends the 4th Iron Fist Tournament looking for Eddy, sensing trouble brewing on the horizon.

Honestly this was Eddy’s fault to begin with. Had Eddy not told Christie that he was going to avenge his father’s death, she wouldn’t have bothered to put herself in harm’s way. However, Christie’s story had to start somewhere yeah?

In the end, Eddy doesn’t find Kazuya, but, if we take Christie’s ending in Tekken 4 as canon, we can deduce some details.

Christie wins the iron fist tournament, incredibly bemused, as she failed at her original goal in locating Eddy. However, seeing a familiar face in the crowd, she runs over to Eddy in a full embrace. Eddy appears in this ending with a cast on his arm, so it is assumed that his progress in finding his father’s murderer ended prematurely. Even so, despite his lack of success, he still shows up to his girl’s victory match in support. What a romantic.

Several months later, tragedy strikes. Christie’s grandfather is inflicted with an illness and the race to find enough money to pay for the operation begins. In the end, no matter who wins the tournament, they use their prize money to pay for the operation which turns out to be a success. Christie, Eddy, and her grandfather are all seen at a park practicing capoeira and everyone lives happily ever after, right!?

Unfortunately, not.

Several years later and the climate is different. Jin Kazama wages war against the world and it turns out that neither Christie nor Eddy was able to win the tournament after all.

Running out of time and resources, Jin makes a deal with Eddy. If Eddy works for him and helps exact Jin’s vengeance against Kazuya, then Jin will help pay for the operation. Considering this as an opportunity to become in direct contact with Kazuya, the murderer of his father, it’s a win win for Eddy.

He didn’t want to be a part of this war, but for the safety of the one person who was a father figure for him and the chance to kill the one who has caused him years of torment, he will take up a gun for Jin.

So, where does this leave Christie? Back to where we once were in Tekken 4, on the lookout for Eddy and her grandfather.

Do you see where I’m getting at now? “As the series progressed, Christie’s role became diluted?”

The sad part is that Christie is not the only character to suffer through this “character dilution.” The4thSnake’s video on Asuka Kazama goes over the same points that I could ever make, so please give that video a watch when you can. In Tekken 6, if it wasn’t Mishima related, it was on the backburner.

Once again, both parties are unsuccessful. Christie never finds a cure for her grandfather’s illness and he succumbs. Eddy is deceived by Jin, refusing to hold his end of the bargain, and is unable to save his master’s life. While visiting his grandfather’s grave, Christie discovers Eddy.

Instead of a warming reunion, Christie, in a fit of rage and sadness, slaps him while demanding where he was. In response, Eddy stands there, motionless, as he throws his Mishima Zaibatsu pin to the ground.

This is where Christie’s story ends. Officially.

What began as a bright young capoeira student ended a grieving shell of a person, thanks to the dishonesty of Mishimas and Eddy for pulling a Knuckles and believing Eggman---Jin Kazama.

If we look at the Tag 2 endings and assume, they take place after 6, Eddy takes a page out of King’s book and opens up a capoeira school for orphaned children. After some time passes, he embarks on a trip to become the world greatest stuntman the Mishima Zaibatsu has ever seen!

No of course not he’s going to confront his father and master’s murderers of course! What else would Eddy POSSIBLY do at this point!?

In Christie’s ending, as a continuation, she catches wind of this and chases Eddy, but, as history tends to repeat itself, she’s too late. Eddy is already on the train.

Some. Things. Never. Change.

At least she was spared a grim fate, unlike our friend here.

Conclusion

So. Where do we go from here? From the beginning, we know that Eddy is an integral part of Christie’s story. However, there are signs in her design that shows she can hold her own, both in a fight and in her sense of justice.

I recommend anyone to play through Scenario mode with all of the available roster and not just Lars, but in Scenario mode, Christie has a sense of justice that almost felt refreshing. It wasn’t just simply “where’s Eddy,” but it was also “I have to stop the messed up things from going on in the world”

Earlier I posted a photo where she confronts Eddy for working with the Mishimas and she has no qualms in defeating him to knock sense into him. I also mentioned the confrontation between Bruce and Christie, which is just about non-canon as far as Tekken 6 is confirmed. They treat their encounter as if it was the first time they’ve ever met. Bummer.

But there are signs of life for this character and when it shows, it’s refreshing to see. Christie is not the only character who suffers from this, but she is the one who is marred by the reputation of “always being in Eddy’s shadow.”

When discussion is brought up on why she shouldn’t be in the game? “Eddy is already in there.”

When the game throws her into a repeat storyline for the third straight game in the series? “Eddy is already there.”

Why is Christie out and about? “Her grandfather, but Eddy is there as well.”

Part of the reason why I considered myself a Christie main is because Christie is an underdog in the Tekken universe as well as within the competitive scene.

The irony here is that Christie was meant to replace Eddy, but the inverse happened.

One day, Christie can exist without having to worry about being in Eddy’s shadow. A fan can dream. Until then, I’ll always consider her my favorite fighting game character so there’s no replacing that at least.

There will be a Part 2 to this as there’s one key game that she’s a part of where she does regain some of that luster I wish she had in the main series. A game that is largely underrated but a game where Christie has had her moment in the sun.

Stay tuned for Part 2 soon! If you weren’t sick of me talking about Christie and made it this far, congrats! Stick around for the follow-up!

[austennerdita2533]

Summary: Bad blood and violence seem to pop up for the Mikaelsons everywhere, but this time it shows up in the form of unhinged!amnesiac Elijah. Caroline tries to hold him off while Hayley disbands of Greta, and Klaus ushers Hope to safety. Madness ensues in the fight to keep the Nazi vampires from procuring who, and what, they desire.

Can Caroline keep a morally-corrupted Original at bay? Will Klaus be able to protect everyone he cares about? What will they gain; what may they lose? (TO 5x06 AU + Amnesiac!Villain Elijah vs. Klaroline + Angst)

**WARNING: Hayley still dies. Threats. Mild Violence**

A/N:  Tagging @arrenemris​ and @childoftimeandmagic​, because you lovelies were interested in a part 2. Here is the whole 5.2k word (edited) enchilada if you want to read it. (No pressure!)

Honestly, idk what I’ve created here...

Enjoy!

(A03) (FFnet)

xx Ashlee Bree

Everybody Bursts Into Mad Flames Sometimes

Before her stands a stranger—a stranger she once knew.

Dark hair, shaved chin. Aviator sunglasses tucked into a scooped white collar. Rugged blue jeans. Terse lips curled in impatient distaste. Two whittled fence posts peeking out from underneath too-long sleeves. A leather jacket - simple, black, no designer or brand name anything. It hangs loose from his shoulders to offset two cold, umber eyes which used to pierce the world with such sagacity, with such innate sophistication and reasonability, but now appraise everything around him with something worse than hate, or scorn, or disapproval too marked to miss: apathy.

It’s the last thing Caroline expects to see right now; he, the last person. (Especially in freaking jeans, are you kidding?) And she barely chokes down her surprise fast enough to block his path to the house which perches on a small hill behind them.

“Can I help you?” she says in half-chirp. Tilting her head to the side, she side-steps in front of him, warning him back with a sharp smile. “You look a little lost and I’m a concerned citizen willing to turn you back around.”

“Move,” the man growls.

“Now, now,” she raises her hands half in defense, half in taunting, “I know your memory’s been swiped, Elijah, (along with your entire history of familial and platonic feeling), but I thought you of all people would still bother with civilities in any diseased incarnation of yourself? There aren’t any dangling on your lips now, though, huh? Shame. A true shame.”

“I said move!”

“Wow, really? No Miss Forbes? No ‘it’s nice to see you again,’ Caroline?” She wags her finger and tuts, still shuffling her feet; still refusing to let him pass. Determined to give them more time to escape to safety. “I know my face jars something in you, faint and faded though the recollection may be given the circumstances.”

“You talk too much.”

“Hey! That’s rude,” she says tartly and pouts. “I’ve always considered you to be the only Mikaelson with any manners, but man, oh man! What a disappointment you are today, I’ve got to say.”

“Stop. Tell me where he is, where he’s taken them,” Elijah says while his knuckles whiten and his jaw ticks. His fingers curl into fists around one of the stakes, itching to strike. Stab. Silence. And he’d do it, too - oh, he wants to do it - to know how her fire and sugared spice will bubble against his teeth after a fatal bite - but he resists because she holds the missing pieces. She’s the only one here who knows how to procure what he and Antoinette still need.

“Pfft, yeah, like I’d tell you anything in your state.” Caroline laughs like the idea is preposterous. Insane. Like it’s the funniest joke in the history of the world. “I mean, I deserve at least a please for that kind of information, don’t you think? For old time’s sake and everything.”

“I’ve had enough of these idle games, Little Miss Sunshine. Where is he?” Elijah snarls again. This time with patience fraying into vein-pulsed rage and fangs descending. “WHERE!?”

Caroline’s shoulders straighten here, and her eyes burn so hot they almost hiss at him when she digs her heels into the grass to offer him a pert quirk of her mouth in opposition; her voice swapping out joviality for severity in the smoothest of transitions.

“As I said already, Señor Impolite,” she says with a click of her tongue, “I won’t reveal a single damn thing to you about your brother’s next location. Not here, not when you’re like this. Nor will I won’t inconvenience the other people you still love somewhere in that thick, muddled skull of yours by making this mission easy for you. Whatever it is. So put that on a discarded daylight ring and smoke it!” she adds with a huff and a cock of the hip.  

“Fine.” A stake loosens from his sleeve. He brandishes it in his hand; twirls it like a baton on his palm. The movement is slow and practiced because whether or not he’s aware of his Original history, he’s wielded weapons like this one for centuries. “If that’s how you wish to play it.”

“Likewise.”

Elijah pauses to scratch a thumb across his jaw. Then he sniffs before he raises harsh lashes to her face,

“Take it from a man who’s wasted centuries: you will not triumph,” he says. “That man - my so-called brother - will bleed you of any goodness you possess; he’ll stifle any happiness you find, so do yourself a favor and free yourself from his tyranny now. He is not worth an ounce of your time or protection. And he never will be.”

“You’re wrong. You don’t truly believe that,” she shakes her head and sighs. “You’re so wrong I just—I don’t know how you’ll recover from all the regret and guilt that’s bound to follow once you regain your old attachments again.”

He remains impassive. Unmoved.

“Let me by, Caroline. He must pay for his crimes.”

“I said -” her teeth clench; her features darken, “- no!” A blur against the sky, she vamps across the yard to block each and every one of his advances. She shoves against his chest, swipes at his athletic kicks with her boot heels, and snaps out with her fangs like a guard dog to keep him back. Away.

“His worth is mine, and mine alone, to decide. You got that, E?” she says in an obnoxious way that mocks his new nickname pointedly, unapologetically; her veins rippling across her cheekbones for extra measure. “It’d be best for you not to forget it. You know - like, ever.”

“Well, then—” He takes a step back, his forehead pinched in mounting irritation. “I guess we have nothing further to discuss, do we?”

“Nope.”

After a shrug and a look of pity, “I’m afraid this pretty little blonde of yours has left me no choice here, Hybrid,” he announces in a loud, reverberating voice.

Elijah speaks to the air, to the clouds forming shapes over their heads, but his eyes sweep across the property. His ears prick as if they wait for his brother’s howled outcry to sound on the wind in the seething, murderous way he’d once been so accustomed to hearing, and also to preventing. There is no movement anywhere except where the sun crests over the hill, however. All the purples and oranges dancing with shadows to tint the land like a bruise. There’s no sound besides the screeching tires of a Camaro on the highway ten miles distant. There’s nothing else around besides a dirt road, a decrepit house, and a stubborn, sassy girl poised between them.

Thirty more seconds pass before Elijah’s gaze settles back over on Caroline. It’s another thirty-five seconds after that before he’s rife enough with detached predation, hunger, and resolve to act.

He levels his chin once he decides. And as he charges forward with a stake positioned for the spot where two rings dangle against her chest, above her heart, the next words to leave his throat burst forth in grave monotone,

“Time to die,” he says.

Bad blood and violence follow Klaus everywhere.

It’s a foul shadow chomping at the base of his achilles heel hoping to munch its way through to destroy all he cherishes because he’s a man forged from sin, dark magic, and bones of adaptability. A combination which shouldn’t be allowed to exist in this world unless it’s broken - purged - from the outside in with all the dominion he possesses slit from his tendons by his foes in fury. Greed. Fear. Hate. Or envy. It’s a javelined spear which spills his loved ones’ blood onto cobblestone paths or fried country grasses in red river rain because he somehow arrives too late to keep the bolt from striking, the lightning.

His worst fears flood the land as a result. Thunder rumbles overhead to plunge everyone’s lives into peril at once, pellets of hail dropping like canons. Erupting the earth to widen the crossable distance between them. The sky is a jaw full of teeth which drools something about abominations, or about purity that must crunch all twisty tornados dead in their tracks.

A storm of hell descends while he’s distracted and struggling against his enemies’ vengeance, limbs extended in four different directions; his arms flying while eyes hybridize with focus, anger, so that someone who matters is always left exposed. Vulnerable. Like a flapping thread which spools from the corner of a whirlpool.

It’s simple math for him, truth be told. It’s even simpler science. There are too many holes, and Klaus cannot defend them all on his own. It doesn’t matter how hard he tries because somebody always slips over a ledge and falls flat into physics’ grasp. Gravity claiming what he’s dropped, who he’s lost. And it’s all his fault.

His fault, his fault, his fault.

The rising tide of everyone’s screams and taken or deflected blows creates a wave of horror Klaus cannot climb over with blood-drenched hands, with slippery soles, and it makes it impossible for him to catch every person he cares for before they sink, before they drown to the bottom of a gorge he’ll never be able to breach with one arm extended. He needs more time, more time, more time. He needs more bloody time! Please.

But what happens if there isn’t any? What comes after the world fissures open with the intent to swallow up the good in everything? What then, what does one do next?

Klaus clamors, he claws his way over to them.

He packs his unconscious daughter into a car seat next to Roman and Marcel then watches the SUV disappear down the lane, its wheels screeching as it ushers two people he loves toward home and security. He turns back to the house afterwards to collect the two women he’s left idling on the estate five miles away, who each scan for more threats in his absence as they wait, only for the back door to splinter wider the closer he roams. It chips next. Before, finally, it busts open with a loud crack to shoot wood and body parts loose.

Debris launches forward with such force that his arms shield his head in reflex while he rolls to the left to avoid a collision with an airborne Hayley. A fate Klaus escapes, but barely.

He pushes up onto his elbows. When he does, the heat from her near-miss manages to singe some hairs on the back of his neck, chafing them down to stubs of red. A hammer thuds loud in his ears as he blinks in the nightmare which unfolds before him: the mother of his child sailing through the backyard tangled in rods of fire. And Greta. And a self-sacrifice too awful to believe.

It’s bloody horrifying to behold, truly.

The sunlight pours over Hayley’s skin like gasoline, and she’s suddenly a molting phoenix: red fades to orange, and orange dwindles to gray which then darkens to black. All of her life’s color draining in seconds until she’s gone. Dust. Dead.

And there Klaus is left to witness it all.

There, on a frayed patch of yard, beneath the stark midday sun, Klaus lies agape in the filth of his own making yet again. A Father of Cinders. An Usher of Ruin. The smell of Hayley's charred flesh quickly becoming another orange stink he must learn how to breathe in and out of his nostrils like flame, like ash—the crispest of all things he’s failed to save for his family’s sake.

Sure, why not add another disaster to the ever-multiplying list, he thinks? Why not shoulder all the responsibility for a tragedy from which Hope will never recover? Elijah, either, if he returns to himself someday. How can he not assume the blame for this?

His fault, his fault, his fault.

The temptation to remain crumpled on his knees right now is as potent as the bourbon Klaus needs to slick his throat, to numb the ache in his head, but a faint voice gusts into the clearing at that moment which is equal parts sonorous and soft when it chokes out defiance, strength, and fortitude into the air; and the sound causes him to scrabble to his feet with the speed of a cheetah to pursue the last hope here he knows he can’t bear to lose. Let alone whom.

Fifty paces hence takes mere seconds, but they feel like decades.

Her still-ticking pulse becomes the drumbeat each of his strides produces as he dashes to the front of the house in a blur of alarm. It’s what keeps him breathing. She’s what keeps him moving when his panic thumps so strong he grinds the enamel on his molars off clean.

The world collapses and narrows until her loudening voice is all Klaus hears, until her golden head snaps in his direction again because she’s the only thing he wants to see. She’s the balm to all his monstrosity, to his debilities, and he needs her. He needs her alive more than anything.

Still, a roar from the wolf deep in his chest is not enough to convey all the emotion he feels. There’s no lid to quiet the pain. There’s no coffin to smother it…all of that rage.

Caroline will not be torn from him, too. No, no, no. Never. Not today she won’t, not in a hundred million more lifetimes if he can prevent it. And he bloody will—

Even if it’s the last thing in this life he’s meant to do.

Dust and blood coat her slacks after some minutes of vampire vs. vampire tousling. Prone on her back with gravel stuck in her hair, Caroline fends off her attacker with another boot kick to the groin followed by a swift clonk to the jaw.

“You know, I should be pissed about how many of you asshole Mikaelsons have tried to kill me over the years, but do you know what? I’m no damsel,” she says, tumbling into a squat. “I’m not too dainty to fight back. So go on—” Her words are clipped, her breath heavy with exertion. “Go on and hit me with your best shot, you Wrangler-wearing amnesiac!”

“Interesting choice of last words.”

A stake gripped firmly in each of his fists, Elijah swings down with the right one. It rips off a small patch of her skin with her black sleeve. Since she evaded the more direct hit by wheeling to the right, however, the wound heals quickly.

Caroline laughs. It’s a taunting, corrosive sound.

“You wish those were my last words, buddy.”

“Chatter all you want, girl. But know this,” he says in a tone as equally dispassionate as it is menacing,“I’ll still kill you to help my family dispose of the Mikaelsons’ mixed blood. We will rid the world of their plague one way or another.”

“God, will you listen to yourself right now!?”

Using her shoulders as leverage, Caroline pushes up to slug him across the face for a second time. Elijah spits blood from the corner of his mouth after the blow knocks him backwards. Still standing, however, his jaw taut, he looms forward again in seconds.

“Those people are not your family,” she says. “You’re freaking brainwashed!”

“No. What I am is free.”

“Great. So you’re deluded, too, apparently. That’s freaking fantastic,” Caroline grumbles. Scooting upwards onto her elbows, she strikes out at his ankle with her heel but misses it by inches.

“Luckily for me, your family’s long range psychosis (your real family, I mean) is well-worn and likely to flare every now and again, so I’m used to this kind of thing. I’m stronger because of it. Smarter, too,” she adds as her fingers coil beneath her. Looking up, her lips twitch before she hurls a handful of gravel into Elijah’s face without warning.

Even though he blocks most of it with his forearms, some of the rubble stings his eyes long enough for her to lurch for one of his weapons, which she promptly deposits into his gut. The action drops him to his knees in momentary agony, cursing.

“That may be so,” he grunts, his tongue licking over his mouth roughly, “but I’m afraid even with all that expertise, and despite all of your self-proclaimed Mikaelson experience—”

Elijah’s quicker to recover than Caroline anticipates. He grabs her by the hair before she can flash away, throwing her against the porch railing with a loud smash.

“You’ll never be able to beat me.” It’s whispered almost like a caress. “You can’t win this fight,” he says.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to die trying, won’t I?” Caroline fires back.

“Die?” Elijah snickers. Blood - his blood - drips from the spike he’s dislodged from his ribs. He angles it at her chest again. “Oh, die you will.”

With him towering above her once more, his fangs out, sharpened with fatal purpose, he sneers as Caroline crab walks backward to the first step, which she then uses as a ledge to erect herself back onto her feet with fluid grace.

“Pardon the intrusion,” a voice cuts in at that moment with a low growl, not sorry at all, “but I wouldn’t underestimate that one if I were you. She’s made of the sweetest flames."

“And I’ll roast you for one false move, pal,” Caroline pipes in with a huff.

Squinting, Elijah regards her like she’s a cockroach.

“Death would suit you rather nicely, I think. Yes,” he hisses, “imagine the silence I’ll achieve with it soon.”

She raises her chin to fix him with a look of incredulity at this. It’s a look that, for all its azure ferocity and resistance, would impale his eyeballs to the nearest fence post if it could; but also would like to bludgeon open his head with the plume of a feather to reinstate all his emotional memories first.

“Enough!” the intruder exclaims. He grabs the Original by the shoulder at the same time Caroline rips a spoke free of the railing. “Threatening her life would be ill-advised for anyone under normal circumstances, but this…why - this is—are you bloody insane?"

“Come, come, why not watch while I suck the last visage of light from her veins? A few slurps is all it’d take to silence her forever,” Elijah says in the voice of a stranger, in the voice of an adversary. His lips curl in sinister delight. “What a lovely thought that is.”

“I said enough!” the trespasser growls again. Louder this time. Zooming closer, he’s a ball of temper and anxiety as he clutches the other man by the leather lapels.

“There are limits to the wrath I am able to contain even for you…” he draws out the last bit for emphasis, the vein in his forehead throbbing as Caroline tucks the weapon into her jacket, “brother.”

“Does this girl mean so much to you, Hybrid?” Elijah says.

In answer, Klaus hurls him like a dart at the barn doors across the yard, “Do. Not. Test. Me,” he howls.

Dropping over top of him in a flurry of color, and darkness, and fury that’s hardened his eyes into an inferno of hybrid gold, he kicks through the wreckage until he reaches Elijah’s prone  form beneath a heap of crumpled lumber. He lifts him up by the throat. Then he slams his head hard against a lone standing beam, thrusting a finger into his face.

“There has been enough blood spilt here today, Elijah. Too much.”

“Tell me,” he answers with a strangled cough and a blink, “am I supposed to care?”  

“Klaus, stop, you can’t talk to him. He’s wily and unhinged like this. A morally skewed prick. Just look at his dragging hems, for crying out loud!” Caroline says as she approaches from behind. “That’s proof enough he’s been mentally and magically corrupted by them.”

“Our family has been fractured beyond repair,” Klaus continues without hearing her. He looks a little crazed as he shakes his brother in place like it’ll somehow refasten those loose screws in his brain. “Hayley’s gone - the mother of my child, the woman you loved…is dead. Dead! You let her fall straight into our enemy’s lap!”

“But so help me, I will wring your wretched neck—“ His voice grows thick; heavy, and it hurts to swallow, “I will chain you inside a box (which is something I swore I’d never do to someone in this family again) before I allow you to take Caroline away, too.”

It’s in that moment, just as the sun eclipses behind a cloud to dim the atmosphere like an omen, the wind punting flower petals through the air like knives which sting when they kiss a piece of exposed skin, that Elijah’s features contort into something worse than inscrutable. They refashion, instead, into something aggressive and deranged.

“Her shrieks will sound so much more delicious to me when you fail to save her now, Hybrid,” he says. “I admit I can hardly wait for the symphony.”

“Screw you!” Caroline shouts back.

That’s when he lurches forward to grab Klaus by the elbow. With unimaginable force, he yanks. Fracturing it with a violent twist.

The action frees his two legs, which had been dangling in the air where he was tacked only seconds ago, so that he’s able to kick out at his foe’s knees. Unbalancing him enough to bite his shoulder and push backwards against his chest. Elijah nearly shirks the arm which is swinging back at him in retaliation, but not quite.

Hybrid claws catch his face even though he ducks. Like hooks, they dig and pry into his skin because he’s still within range and Klaus is livid, monstrous beyond legend; leaving cursive track marks from Elijah’s eyebrow all the way down through the white of his collarbone.

Still, the other man’s wide-arced punches leave Elijah with an advantage in the end. One carries too far to the left and exposes his side. Before Klaus can stop him, therefore, and before he can recover in time to parry the attack, he upends him with a knee that breaks his nose and reduces his vision to black dots and sprouting stars. It gives him ample time and opportunity to pin him to the ground with the loose barn beam at his feet. Piercing it through his kidney.

That’s how Elijah leaves him, too: sprawled, writhing, raging, helpless.

It’s why he turns his attentions back to Caroline with keener insight. There’s a patient but exacting grin on his lips as he lays chase again because it’s her vs. him for a moment, and there’s a fierceness blooming across her face that says ‘you’ll pay for that dearly, jerk face.’ It feeds his muscles with adrenaline; it plies his mind with rigor. He craves the rush like heroin.

For it’s here, after everything, that he truly understands Caroline won’t leave Klaus under any circumstances. For, no matter how damning the danger grows, and no matter how stacked-against the odds are in her favor, he sees she’ll leap straight into hell itself if it’ll offer her the slightest chance to reach him again.

How could he have missed this? How could he not have noticed the jewel she’s concealed behind her incessant prattle?

His worth is mine to decide, she’d said to him earlier. Mine.

Her words reverberate with too strong a connotation to demarcate their connection into anything less significant than lovers. Lovers. It makes Elijah feel like an imperceptive fool.

That’s why it doesn’t matter how her death happens now, he’s decided.

He’s realized it’s not important whether he skewers her pink flesh into shoelace peels with his teeth, or detaches her bouncing blonde head from her shoulders with the branch of a tree. It matters not if he cuts through her innards, roasts her in the sun, sucks out her sweet flames through her carotid artery, or wraps her wagging tongue around a heart that no longer beats. All that’s necessary is for her life to end here. Today. All that’s required is for Klaus to be parked in a front row seat, powerless and wretched because he’s piked through the torso, watching—

Watching as Elijah wrenches this girl away from him irrevocably.

The thought makes the elder Original smile.

What is better retribution, after all? What could be better justice for the man who’s already tried to snuff out the love which exists between he and Antoinette? The selfish, sabotaging man. How much easier will it be to extract what they need from him afterwards? Once she’s dead.

Ah, the glory of it! The honor! Punishment for both the Hybrid’s meddling and his impurity will be much more satisfactory to achieve now that he knows the best way to inflict it—personally.

“Listen for the crescendo, will you? I believe it’s my favorite cadence of killing,” he says, glancing at Klaus over his shoulder to add drolly, “brother.”

“No more of this! No more of this, damn you!” he replies as his fingernails bruise the land where he’s still impaled.

“Klaus! Listen to me, please!”

Like a whip, Caroline’s voice cracks at the same moment gray rain begins to spit on top of them from stratus mouths. The wind gusts so hard it vibrates with staffs of yellow and blue and shatters all the remaining windows in the house. The space around them transforms into a whistling hellmouth of tension and grief, of anger and estrangement, and of terror too palpable to bear, in seconds.

And what’s worse, is that the worst of it all feels tragically possible now because Elijah’s all coup de force with shards of wood flying everywhere as his skewed morality and loyalty to the wrong family helps to move his feet like a rabid beast’s. Meanwhile, Caroline’s zooming forward through a fang-bared maze and cycloning storm with eyes that scream out, then pour into the beam stuck in Klaus’ back almost in elegy.

The inflamed blue of her eyes drenches his soul in any number of ways, because what if he can’t shatter this obstacle soon? What if he doesn’t…what if she…how can he not save her? How?

Leaping over Klaus’ arms at that moment, she flashes away with Elijah on her haunches. Then, without breaking stride, she reaches into her jacket pocket before she glances back at the prone Original long enough to demand for him to understand. Pleading for him to place faith and trust in what her words mean, “The jeans, Klaus! The freaking jeans!” she yells as she jets in front of him one last time.

“So wasteful,” Elijah says as he nearly hooks an arm around her neck in victory, “since those truly will be your last words this—”

Trip

Stab

Snap

He’s unconscious and face-first on the ground in seconds. A railing spoke from the porch jabbed between his two shoulder blades.

“I think not as much as you’ll regret being brought down by your own poor fashion choices. Compel yourself a tailor next time. I mean, really,” Caroline says over his body with a triumphant hum, cuffing up his baggy pant legs. She pops up from a crouch to take Klaus’ offered hand with a weak smile afterwards.

“That was inspired thinking on your part,” he says.

“Nah, not really. Legally Blonde obsession simply served me well today is all.”

“Elle Woods has nothing on you, love. Believe me.”

“Yeah, well, no way was your brother getting away with saying I talk too much. No man would. Besides,” she continues with a snort, “you did warn him not to underestimate me.”

“That I did.”

After they tie Elijah to a tree out of sight with the vervain chains in her trunk, intent on keeping him subdued until their non-Hollow’d reinforcements arrived to take him away, they amble back toward the house.

“Thanks for the tripping assist, by the way,” Caroline says.

Shrugging, Klaus slinks an arm around her waist like it belongs there, “It was the least I could do.”

“Come on, teamwork suits us. Don’t deny it,” she says with a bump of her hip.

“I’m not.”

“What’s wrong?” she asks suspiciously, her heightened senses on red alert again because of his abstract demeanor. “Is there another—”

“No,” he cuts in, his thumb hooking more firmly into her belt loop, “it’s nothing.”

Caroline rolls her eyes at his flat, disgruntled tone, at the way he sighs before disappearing into the enigmatic labyrinth of his mind where she can’t follow, so she stops them on a seared patch of sidewalk. Then crosses her arms.

“Look, I know me being the one to stab him wasn’t ideal,” she says, feeling his growing intensity, “but with the beam already starting to splinter in your back like that, I knew if I ran him close enough you’d be able to topple him so I could—”

Klaus shuts her up with a kiss.

The timing of it is bad. (Couldn’t be worse, really.) It’s totally inappropriate considering how fraught the past twenty minutes have been with the threat of magic and wolf-binding, with a rescue of innocents that’s succeeded but still reeks of flesh and bloodshed, of muck, and of family wreckage that will never be able to be repaired because it’s been ripped off the hinges. It’s burnt to shreds with a house and a barn that’s no longer standing upright.

There’s so much to discuss, too. There are so many decisions to be made about what to do next…

Hayley? Hope? Elijah? New Orleans?

Do they collect the girl’s ashes before they leave; and if so, in what? How will Hope react once she awakes? What all did Roman know about this? Can they find a witch/Marcel team to fix Elijah’s mind, or is it hopeless to try now that so much of him has been magically reconditioned? Should she call Bonnie, or would that cross some kind of line? And, like, could the sky stop weeping blood already because - Mikaelson curse or not - who the hell needs all this staining and stickiness on their designer clothes?

…And on and on and on the questions flow!

The biggest problem now, though, is that Klaus’ kiss is so hot and crushing with feeling that it’s halted the million-and-a-half thoughts buzzing through Caroline’s head which still need solving. She’s too distracted, too lost to the sweet but scraping taste of his tongue in her mouth.

He makes love to her lips in a way no one but an artist knows how. There’s an array of color, meticulousness, delicacy, and swooping claim to be laid down on her wherever she allows him to paint with his kisses. And before she knows it, before she can locate her sense of rationality long enough to steady her pulse again and stop this, her fingers are burying themselves into the curls at the nape of his neck to draw him closer, and closer; the giant butterfly flip in her stomach telling her only one thing:

Screw it. Let the questions wait for awhile.

So she does.

They do.

[2whatcom-blog]

How the World’s First Dengue Vaccination Drive Led to Catastrophe

In December 2015 then president Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines and others negotiated a cope with pharmaceutical firm Sanofi to buy three million doses of Dengvaxia, the primary vaccine ever licensed for dengue. The plan was to present one million schoolchildren, 9 years of age, three doses of the vaccine every, sparing them from the worst outcomes of dengue: shock, organ failure and dying. The virus is available in 4 varieties. All are unfold by feminine Aedes mosquitoes, primarily Aedes aegypti, with a penchant for sucking blood throughout the day, when people are unprotected by mattress nets. Up to now 5 many years these viruses, that are associated to people who trigger West Nile fever, yellow fever and Zika, have unfold in waves throughout the tropical and subtropical world, rising dengue incidence 30-fold and affecting upward of 390 million individuals every year. Not everybody contaminated with a dengue virus will get sick: three out of 4 who get bitten may have no signs. The remainder might undergo one in every of three units of signs: a fever that mimics many different viral sicknesses; "dengue fever," which is accompanied by headache, ache behind the eyes, aching joints and bones, and, in uncommon circumstances, inner bleeding; and extreme illness encompassing dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome. In extreme circumstances, plasma seeps out of capillaries, liquid swimming pools round organs, large inner bleeding ensues, and the mind, kidneys and liver start to fail. Though swift hospitalization and cautious case administration can and do save lives, greater than 20,000 individuals die of dengue yearly. Many are kids. Dengue is frightening sufficient that well being practitioners in growing nations have been eagerly awaiting a vaccine for many years. But when internist Antonio Dans and pediatrician Leonila Dans, each scientific epidemiologists on the College of the Philippines Manila School of Medication, examine Aquino's vaccination marketing campaign within the Philippine Star, the very first thing that struck them was the worth tag. At three billion pisos ($57.5 million) for procurement alone, the Dengvaxia marketing campaign would value greater than all the nationwide vaccination program for 2015, which coated pneumonia, tuberculosis, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps and rubella. It could attain lower than 1 % of the nation's roughly 105 million residents. And though dengue was reported to kill a mean of 750 individuals yearly within the Philippines, it was not even among the many high 10 causes of mortality. Amongst infectious ailments, pneumonia and tuberculosis took a far heavier toll. Perusing an interim report from researchers at Sanofi Pasteur--the vaccine division of Sanofi--on Dengvaxia's scientific trials, Dans and Dans discovered additional trigger for concern. Amongst Asian kids two to 5 years previous, those that had obtained the vaccine had been seven instances extra probably than unvaccinated kids to have been hospitalized for severe dengue within the third yr after vaccination. Shut examination of the info revealed that though the vaccine was on common safer for older kids, it was statistically inconceivable to rule out the likelihood that for some youngsters, Dengvaxia made issues worse. In March 2016 Dans and Dans and different medical professionals wrote to then secretary of well being Janette Garin, warning that the vaccine might be dangerous for some kids and that the Philippines might not possess sufficient skilled well being care employees to watch so lots of them for doable opposed results. A doubtlessly safer vaccine was within the pipeline and doubtless price ready for, they reasoned. The identical month, nonetheless, the extremely revered advisory group on vaccines on the World Well being Group--which supplies steerage to nations on immunization policy--stated in a briefing paper on Dengvaxia that the hospitalizations of younger vaccinated kids, when noticed over a number of years, weren't statistically vital. "No other safety signals have been identified in any age group" older than 5, it said. A "theoretical possibility" existed that the vaccine might be dangerous for some kids, and additional analysis was crucial lest the difficulty "compromise public confidence" within the vaccine. It nonetheless "should be introduced as part of a routine immunization program in appropriate settings." These included areas the place 70 % or extra of a inhabitants had already had dengue, the place immunization of early adolescents may scale back hospitalizations by as much as 30 % over a interval of 30 years. A subsequent place paper from the identical group said that the vaccine was protected for kids age 9 and older, for whom it was advisable. On reflection, it didn't shock Dans and Dans that the authorities selected to disregard their considerations. "It was either believe us or believe the WHO," says Antonio Dans. "If I were them, I'd believe the WHO. I mean, who were we? We were just teachers in a small medical school." Filipino authorities had been apparently so assured about Dengvaxia's security that they didn't oblige Sanofi Pasteur to submit outcomes from so-called pharmacovigilance trials that will often check the protection of a brand new drug or vaccine in native circumstances. The induction of a brand new pharmaceutical product into the nationwide program usually took three to 5 years, says Anthony Leachon, a former president of the Philippine School of Physicians, however the dengue vaccination program started instantly, in April 2016. Days later got here the primary report of a postvaccination fatality, of a boy with congenital coronary heart illness. Garin defined in a press briefing that the boy's dying was unrelated to Dengvaxia. Dans and Dans persevered for months, nonetheless, chatting with the press and posting a short video on Fb that warned--on the idea of a decades-old, extremely contested principle referred to as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE)--that if a toddler had by no means had dengue earlier than, the vaccine may really make a dengue an infection deadlier than it usually would have been. Garin responded together with her personal warning: medical practitioners who engaged in "misinformation" on Dengvaxia could be answerable for each dying from dengue that would have been prevented by the vaccine. There the matter rested till November 2017, when Sanofi Pasteur issued its personal advisory: those that had by no means skilled a dengue an infection mustn't get Dengvaxia. A month later the WHO issued recent tips, recommending the vaccine just for these with a "documented past dengue infection." The Philippines halted the vaccination program that December at the same time as dad and mom and the press responded with fury, recriminations and additional reviews of youngsters's deaths. Greater than 830,000 schoolchildren had been vaccinated. In accordance with the Division of Well being (DOH), as of September 2018, 154 of the vaccinated kids had died of assorted sicknesses. The overwhelming majority of those fatalities had been unrelated to the vaccine, however scientific observations or blood checks confirmed that 19 of them had been brought on by dengue. Sanofi Pasteur contends that the deaths within the Philippines may have arisen from a failure of the vaccine to guard a small fraction of these vaccinated. In distinction, some specialists argue, as Dans and Dans did, that Dengvaxia mimics a previous encounter with dengue--which can prime a affected person's physique to reply in a harmful technique to a second dengue an infection. The controversy has not slowed down the rollout of Dengvaxia, which is at the moment licensed in additional than 20 nations. In October 2018 the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration introduced that it might prioritize evaluation of Sanofi Pasteur's software to approve Dengvaxia. Meaning it might be accepted within the U.S., to be used in dengue-endemic areas similar to Puerto Rico, earlier than the Philippines completes its investigation into the deaths of vaccinated children--and earlier than Sanofi Pasteur publishes its remaining report from the six-year-long scientific trials. Credit score: Tami Tolpa A baffling illness For many viruses, similar to measles, the second bout, if it happens in any respect, is way milder than the primary. For dengue, a second bout is much extra prone to kill. Scientists and medical doctors have struggled for years to grasp why that is so. Within the 1950s and 1960s, when epidemics of extreme dengue started to rise in Asia, they puzzled in the event that they had been coping with an altogether new an infection. The dengue they had been conversant in saved sufferers bedridden and fatigued, however this new manifestation despatched them to the hospital or the morgue. Had the virus mutated? Or was the immune system accountable? A younger scientist recent out of medical faculty was in search of a solution. Scott B. Halstead started to check mosquito-borne viruses in 1957, whereas working for the U.S. Military in Japan. He confronted his first main dengue outbreak 4 years later, when stationed at a navy laboratory subsequent door to the Bangkok Youngsters's Hospital. Docs thought the kids who had been carried into the hospital had been poisoned; virtually 1 / 4 of them died. Halstead led the crew that recognized dengue as the reason for the outbreak. He went on to make a second, extra baffling, discovery. Youngsters who had been contaminated with dengue for a second time--each time with a unique dengue virus--and infants born to moms who had been proof against dengue had been most in danger for extreme dengue and dying. Nobody may clarify why. In 1964 R. A. Hawkes, then a researcher at Australian Nationwide College in Canberra, discovered that cell cultures contaminated with Murray Valley encephalitis, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis or Getah viruses contaminated extra cells when the virus was blended with antibodies in contrast with the virus alone. Hawkes proposed that the antibodies had been stabilizing the virus and rising their potential to connect to cells. Independently, Halstead was questioning if a lot the identical was taking place with dengue. To grasp why two totally different dengue infections had been wanted to make the second deadly, Halstead contaminated 118 monkeys with totally different combos of the 4 dengue viruses and measured the quantity of virus of their blood. In 1973 he revealed his outcomes: some monkeys, which had been contaminated a second time and with a unique dengue virus, had a lot larger viral hundreds. 4 years later he offered a doable clarification, calling it antibody-dependent enhancement. Say your first an infection is with the dengue virus referred to as DENV-1. Antibodies towards that virus can linger in your blood for many years, even your whole life. When you're contaminated a second time with a unique dengue virus, say DENV-2, Three or 4, the antibodies towards DENV-1 may paradoxically speed up the replication of the brand new virus inside contaminated cells, precipitating a doubtlessly deadly dengue an infection. Since refined by Halstead and different researchers, the ADE mechanism goes as follows: A dengue virus is a string of ribonucleic acid enclosed in a protein capsule, which options an array of attribute protuberances on its floor. Throughout a primary an infection with dengue, the immune system's B cells make an antibody referred to as immunoglobulin G, or IgG, which latches onto a number of of those irregularities. On attachment, the antibodies can ship the virus to immune system cells similar to macrophages. The phrase "phage" derives from the Greek phrase which means "to eat": macrophages are actually "big eaters." They engulf the virus and digest it with enzymes. Thus, as soon as it's certain to antibodies, the dengue virus is generally trapped and destroyed inside macrophages. When an an infection is over, some antibody-making B cells turn out to be dormant. Within the occasion of a second an infection with a unique dengue virus, these cells get up to churn out the very same antibodies as earlier than. Halstead postulated that a few of these antibodies can nonetheless persist with the floor of the unfamiliar virus however usually fail to dam its most deadly protrusions--its weapons, so to talk. The antibodies nonetheless ship the intruder to macrophages however with out having disarmed it. That permits the virus to immobilize the macrophage's personal protection system and take over the cell, whose sources it then makes use of to churn out extra copies of itself. The antibody's unwitting help helps the brand new dengue selection produce 1,000 instances extra copies of itself than if it had been appearing alone. Halstead's reward for arising with the ADE speculation was a mixture of indifference or disbelief from his friends, he remembers. Right now, at 89 years previous, he's an adjunct professor on the Uniformed Providers College of the Well being Sciences in Bethesda, Md., the place he continues to argue his case. Many dengue specialists describe him because the Godfather of ADE. "Back then, I was thinking I've made a discovery that's very important," he says. "Except nobody wanted to believe ADE was real." Greater than 4 many years later Eva Harris, a dengue skilled on the College of California, Berkeley, discovered robust proof that ADE was not solely actual however that it contributed to extreme dengue illness in kids. Harris had not got down to show or disprove ADE: she was initially skeptical of the phenomenon and never all that eager on participating within the decades-long debate. As a substitute her crew, together with statistical modeler Leah Katzelnick, was finding out the methods during which dengue sickens kids. That purpose then led the researchers to assist set up a lab in Nicaragua and to start one of many more difficult kinds of scientific tasks: a long-term pediatric cohort examine. Harris and her associates in Managua, Nicaragua's capital metropolis, had the not really easy activity of following 1000's of youngsters. For greater than 15 years the scientists engaged on the Nicaraguan Pediatric Dengue Cohort Examine cared for the kids in the event that they received sick and went to their houses to gather information and blood samples. Out of 6,684 topics, the researchers discovered 618 who had been sick with dengue and almost 4 dozen who developed extreme illness. Scouring greater than 41,000 blood samples, taken over greater than a dozen years, they made a placing discovery. Youngsters with a selected focus of antibodies--not low sufficient to be ineffective, not excessive sufficient to supply safety, however a focus of antibodies in a middling range--were at an almost eight instances larger danger of buying dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome. Credit score: Amanda Montanez; Supply: "Effect of Dengue Serostatus on Dengue Vaccine Safety and Efficacy," by Saranya Sridhar et al., in New England Journal of Medication, Vol. 379, No. 4; July 26, 2018 ADE handily explains this discovering. If the antibodies should not there to start with or are current at very low densities, they can't improve a subsequent dengue an infection to trigger severe illness. If antibodies are current at excessive densities (as occurs shortly after an preliminary an infection), they in some way handle to cowl any new dengue virus sufficiently to disable it, enabling macrophages to kill it. If, nonetheless, the antibody concentrations are in what Harris describes as a "danger zone"--not low and never high--they might facilitate the virus's entry into the macrophages with out disarming it, thereby accelerating virus manufacturing. Harris's Science paper describing these outcomes was, within the phrases of Jean Lim, a virologist on the Icahn Faculty of Medication at Mount Sinai, a "rock star study" that swayed a number of the staunchest naysayers of ADE. Her sudden findings can also have hit on the answer to the dengue vaccine thriller. A purple flag Coincidentally, days after Harris's paper was revealed in November 2017, Sanofi Pasteur made the announcement that enraged Filipino dad and mom: don't get Dengvaxia you probably have not had dengue. A month later the WHO adopted swimsuit, stating that solely people who had been proved to have already got had dengue ought to be given the vaccine. That was precisely what Halstead had been saying since March 2016, when he revealed an evaluation in Vaccine arguing that Dengvaxia may trigger hurt. Maybe in individuals who had by no means had dengue, the vaccine was appearing like a primary dengue an infection, priming the physique with simply the fitting amount of Trojan-horse antibodies to assist an actual an infection flip extreme. Younger kids had been much less prone to have already encountered dengue, and for them, the vaccine was extra prone to act as a primary an infection. They had been additionally extra probably than adults to develop extreme dengue after a second an infection (as Halstead and others noticed when a second dengue virus invaded Cuba in 1981). The issue was, there was no easy technique to inform which kids had been dengue-negative earlier than they obtained Dengvaxia--because Sanofi Pasteur had not collected these information for all of them earlier than vaccinating them. "I hate to say I told you so," Harris says. "But we saw this coming." At conferences and over lengthy convention calls, she had knowledgeable Sanofi Pasteur researchers that they weren't amassing the sort of information that would gauge the vaccine's potential to place lives in danger. As a substitute of testing all kids for prior dengue an infection earlier than they obtained Dengvaxia, Sanofi Pasteur examined solely 10 to 20 % of them. The corporate argues that it was forging via unchartered territory utilizing the very best protocols recognized to vaccine science. "It's routine in many vaccine trials to bleed only 10 to 20 percent of participants," says Su-Peing Ng, international medical head at Sanofi Pasteur. After the disturbing hospitalization price got here to gentle, the researchers couldn't return and bleed the 1000's of youngsters within the scientific trials to examine their dengue standing previous to vaccination. It was too late--they had already been vaccinated. Sanofi Pasteur labored with scientists on the College of Pittsburgh to develop a novel assay that would check the vaccinated kids for proof of prior dengue an infection. That reassessment was the idea for the corporate's November 2017 warning that solely those that had had dengue earlier than ought to obtain Dengvaxia. The sooner suggestions had been primarily based on the preliminary findings from the scientific trials, which confirmed that Dengvaxia was safer for older kids. As the brand new checks revealed, nonetheless, age served partially as a proxy for prior dengue an infection. 9-year-olds are extra probably than toddlers to have already had a dengue an infection, particularly in locations the place dengue is endemic, so giving the vaccine to them ought to be, on common, protected. However neither age nor endemicity is a surefire means of understanding whether or not a toddler has had dengue: the one technique to know for sure is thru a blood check. "Mixed in with a group of nine-year-olds will always be some kids who have never had dengue," Halstead says. Halstead had very publicly let the WHO find out about his considerations. In a December 2016 paper within the Journal of Infectious Ailments, he said that a declare made by the WHO's principal advisory group on vaccines was flawed. The group had stated that the danger of hospitalization for teenagers aged two to 5 peaks within the third yr after vaccination after which "dissipates." Halstead argued that longer-term outcomes from Sanofi Pasteur's scientific trials refuted this assertion. Independently analyzing the scientific trial information, Dans, Dans and others argued in a paper within the Journal of Medical Epidemiology that there was "no biological basis for a threshold age of 9 years" past which Dengvaxia might be assumed to be protected. The WHO stands by its choice to suggest the vaccine for older kids who stay in nations hardest hit by dengue, nonetheless. "The review done was extremely thorough, transparent and according to our published procedures," says Joachim Hombach, senior well being adviser within the WHO's division of immunization, vaccines and biologicals. "Different options of possible recommendations were discussed, and the one published in 2016 was the consensus position of the advisory committee." Ongoing controversy In July 2018 Sanofi Pasteur revealed its reanalysis of scientific trial information utilizing the Pittsburgh check within the New England Journal of Medication. The evaluation confirmed the next danger of extreme illness and hospitalization in "seronegative" kids (those that had no proof of prior dengue an infection of their blood) who had obtained the vaccine, in contrast with those that had not. The "vaccine partially mimics primary infection and increases the risk of severe dengue during subsequent infection," the researchers wrote. Though ADE advocates had predicted this discovering, the paper stated that the "immunopathogenic mechanisms underlying these findings remain unknown." Halstead contends that Sanofi Pasteur researchers are in "denial" concerning the proof from their very own trials. Ng counters that precisely how ADE boosts an infection has but to be demonstrated in people. "ADE is more of a lab observation, an in vitro observation. We've not seen it clinically proven in humans," she says. "We don't know if the underlying mechanism is ADE or not." The general influence of Dengvaxia on public well being stays useful, Ng asserts. In kids who're age 9 and older and who already had dengue, Dengvaxia reduces the speed of extreme illness and hospitalization by round 80 %, in line with Sanofi Pasteur. (For causes that stay unclear, two bouts of dengue seem to confer lifelong immunity to the illness. Strictly talking, the vaccine is beneficial solely for many who have had one bout however not two.) Ng will not be the one one who disputes that ADE is the principle mechanism behind life-threatening dengue illness. Duane Gubler, founding chief of the dengue department on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention and an emeritus professor within the Rising Infectious Ailments Program at Duke-NUS Medical Faculty in Singapore, argues that DENV-2 and DENV-Three have traditionally been related to outbreaks of extreme illness. As such, the kind of virus might be at the very least as vital as ADE in figuring out the course of an an infection. Alan Rothman, a professor of cell and molecular biology on the College of Rhode Island, says T cells, which recruit and activate macrophages and secrete inflammatory chemical compounds, are extra straight concerned in inflicting extreme dengue than are antibodies. Halstead, then again, regards T cells primarily as saviors. They kill dengue-infested macrophages, he says, at which period the viruses might launch a protein that damages blood vessels. Docs nonetheless can save a affected person by sustaining his or her fluid ranges, shopping for the T cells time to wash out the virus. Vaccinated kids and their dad and mom protest the Philippines' 2016-2017 dengue immunization program. Credit score: Bullit Marquez AP Photograph Towards a safer vaccine With dengue infecting round one million individuals day by day and popping up in locations it has by no means been seen earlier than, the necessity for a protected vaccine is changing into ever extra pressing. Armed with the brand new data from Sanofi Pasteur, novel dengue vaccine makers are fast to say they're doing issues in a different way. "We've designed our trial in such a way to ask the most important question--how does it perform in dengue naives?" says Rajeev Venkayya, president of the World Vaccine Enterprise Unit at Takeda Pharmaceutical Firm. Takeda is at the moment testing its dengue vaccine in kids ages 4 to 16 years in Latin America and Asia. "When we started this trial in 2016, we were well aware of the concern about this issue in naives," Venkayya says. "So we made sure to have naives in our trial and collect baseline blood samples from 100 percent of participants." In January 2019 Takeda introduced preliminary outcomes from its scientific trials: the vaccine was efficient. Totally assessing security will probably take extra time, nonetheless. At the least two different dengue vaccines are being developed, one by the Nationwide Institutes of Well being and one by GlaxoSmithKline. They're years from being licensed--if they're discovered to be protected and efficient. Gubler says that any vaccine will probably shield properly towards a few dengue viruses however not so properly towards the others. "And that being the case, there's always a risk of ADE," he continues. "So do we use those vaccines, or do we shelve them and wait another 50 years for a perfect vaccine?" Halstead is much extra optimistic. "There's a really good vaccine out there," he says--the NIH vaccine, which, he wrote in a paper, "has met virtually all of the goals needed to demonstrate preclinical efficacy and safety for humans," even when it has but to endure intensive scientific trials. The FDA's October 2018 announcement that it might expedite evaluation of Dengvaxia has added recent urgency to this debate. The burden of dengue illness within the U.S. is in territories similar to Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Samoa and Puerto Rico, the place Gubler was primarily based as chief of the CDC's dengue department. He helps using the vaccine in locations similar to Puerto Rico, the place, he says, the dengue surveillance system is much extra strong than within the Philippines. That's, medical practitioners there ought to be capable of maintain tabs on vaccinees and guarantee immediate hospitalization in the event that they develop indicators of great illness. "I'm in favor of using it in highly endemic areas without pretesting because I think with good disease surveillance and case management, the risk of ADE is minimal," Gubler says. Halstead disagrees: "This is a harmful product unless administered only to proven seropositive individuals." However proving earlier dengue an infection requires lab testing, which isn't all the time out there in lots of components of the world with dengue epidemics. Controversially, the WHO suggested in September 2018 that though prior screening for dengue an infection was preferable, when such testing was not possible, nations may nonetheless contemplate administering Dengvaxia in populations with 80 % or larger dengue endemicity for these age 9 and older. Requested to clarify the moral rationale for this suggestion, Hombach said that the WHO had rigorously weighed the professionals and cons; it had additionally famous that such a marketing campaign ought to be accompanied by "full disclosure of the risks of vaccination of persons with unknown serostatus." Successfully explaining such advanced points in ethnically numerous nations, the place many individuals might not comprehend the languages that well being officers communicate or be capable of learn data sheets may, nonetheless, be a problem. Sanofi Pasteur takes a extra cautious view. Spokesperson Karen Batoosingh says that "the vaccine should be available for people with a prior infection to prevent against subsequent infections" and that the corporate is striving to develop "a new rapid dengue test to ensure broader access to the vaccine for all those who could benefit from its protective value." Lack of belief The repercussions from the vaccination program are nonetheless reverberating throughout the Philippines. Talking earlier than a senate inquiry panel, Aquino defined that dengue incidence within the nation had been rising at an alarming price, and he had hoped that Dengvaxia may stop the virus from invading densely populated city areas. By this previous February, nonetheless, each the senate and the home of representatives had advisable that Aquino, Garin and different senior officers be charged beneath an antigraft regulation for irregularities within the procurement and administration of the vaccine. The households of almost three dozen useless kids have introduced prison circumstances towards Garin and different Filipino officers, accusing them of reckless imprudence amounting to murder and torture. (Requested to touch upon the circumstances during which the vaccination marketing campaign was rolled out, Undersecretary of Well being Enrique Domingo said that he had stepped into the place in December 2017, after the uproar started, and had no private data of what had taken place.) Amid the concern and suspicion, a number of outbreaks of measles have crept throughout the Philippines. In February, the nation reported that greater than 8,400 have turn out to be sick and greater than 130 have died. Mother and father had been too frightened to vaccinate their youngsters. In accordance with a examine by the London-based Vaccine Confidence Mission, in 2018 fewer than a 3rd of Filipinos strongly agreed that vaccines are vital, down from 93 % in 2015. In that examine, revealed in Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, Heidi Larson, the undertaking's director, and her co-authors argued that "biased media hype"--in specific, "false narratives aiming to vilify authorities, scientists and regulators" and "senate and congress inquiries that resembled the inquisition"--had prompted public panic and lack of belief in vaccines. Dans, Dans, Halstead and others teamed as much as reply that a number of components had contributed to the decline in public confidence, not least Sanofi's "exaggerated" claims of the protection of Dengvaxia: "The outrage was a result of the loss of trust rather than its cause." Requested by Scientific American if he was giving ammunition to antivaxxers, Halstead responded that he had co-founded the Youngsters's Vaccine Initiative within the 1990s, which later morphed into Gavi, a worldwide public-private partnership that strives to enhance vaccine entry for kids in poor nations. "I have very strong bona fides as a supporter of vaccines and vaccination," he says. Even because the scientists battle it out, the dad and mom of the vaccinated kids are struggling sleepless nights, in line with Antonio Dans. "The mothers are really distressed about, Was my child seronegative when he was vaccinated? Why weren't we told it could be harmful? They call us and say, My child has a cough, should we rush him to the hospital? He seems to me slightly febrile, should he go to school?" he relates. "And how do you monitor a cold and a fever in a million kids and find out if it's dengue or not? That's a logistical nightmare, and that's what we were warning DOH about." Just about each dying within the vaccinated group was being blamed on Dengvaxia, even when it was clearly unrelated, he adds--and a lot of this rage and turmoil may have been prevented by correct and well timed scientific recommendation from trusted authorities. "So that's the sad thing here--that the WHO added to the confusion," Dans concludes. Halstead worries that as antibody ranges within the vaccinated seronegative wane with time, to an intermediate stage the place ADE turns into extra probably, they'll turn out to be more and more predisposed to growing extreme dengue after they do expertise an precise an infection. Utilizing Sanofi Pasteur's figures from the scientific trials--that 5 out of each 1,000 seronegative vaccinated kids had been hospitalized for dengue, of whom two had extreme dengue--he calculated that greater than 4,000 kids might be hospitalized for vaccine-enhanced dengue illness within the Philippines. "I rub my eyes at what's happening," he says. "Why isn't Sanofi spending a lot of time thinking, 'Okay, now that we've sensitized so many people , how are we going to protect them?'" Requested this query, Ng responded that it was unclear whether or not the circumstances of extreme dengue within the vaccinated group arose from vaccine failure or ADE. All sufferers, no matter whether or not they had dengue earlier than or had been vaccinated or not, ought to guard towards mosquito bites, be monitored for early indicators of dengue illness, and search immediate therapy on indications of extra extreme illness. Requested when the ultimate report from the scientific trials could be revealed, Sanofi Pasteur responded that the outcomes had been displayed on a poster at a gathering of the American Society of Tropical Medication and Hygiene in late 2018. Vaccines have saved uncountable lives. Naturally occurring smallpox has been wiped off the face of the planet, and polio has virtually been vanquished; tetanus and rabies now not encourage terror. Regardless of these achievements, public concern of vaccines has been rising, inserting tens of millions of youngsters vulnerable to avoidable illness. The rising skepticism about vaccines is sort of totally the results of misinformation. Even so, the twists and turns of the Dengvaxia story complicate the standard narrative of valiant scientists battling public ignorance and prejudice within the quest to maintain everybody protected. The dengue saga additionally raises troublesome questions on how pharmaceutical corporations and regulators ought to proceed within the context of evolving scientific data and imperfect vaccines. Is it moral to hazard a minority within the curiosity of defending a majority, because the WHO's September 2018 advisory on Dengvaxia implies? Who ought to be making these troublesome choices: international our bodies of specialists, nationwide well being authorities, totally knowledgeable dad and mom and medical doctors, or some mixture of those? And who ought to be held accountable when issues go flawed? Read the full article

[recentanimenews]

Snake Fake: How EVO's Biggest Character Non-Reveal Went Horribly Wrong

  For fighting game fans, EVO time is like Christmas. You get to see the best of the best of fighting game players duke it out, meet the creators behind your favorite fighting games, and, of course, hear the latest announcements about upcoming additions and follow-ups to the games you’ve come to love. While the announcements tend to be spread out over the three days the event runs, the biggest are saved for Sunday to be broadcast on Twitch streams and to the eager crowd watching the finals in the Mandalay Bay Arena.

Of course, there are sometimes stumbles along the way, such as the big Street Fighter V Season 3 DLC being leaked just days before the event due to an error on Steam. It sucks a lot for the developers and the PR crew behind these games to have the cat escape from the bag before the time’s ready. Players, on the other hand, drink those leaks up like a thirsty traveler at the only desert oasis for miles. But what happens when a seemingly legitimate leak… isn’t? That’s exactly what happened during Top 8 of Tekken 7 at EVO 2019.

So what exactly went down? Well, first, a bit of an explanation is in order. EVO serves two audiences: the thousands of players who come from around the world to compete in their favorite games, and the many, many more who watch the event streaming live on Twitch. Like any major eSports event, EVO has a lot of sponsors and advertisers who pay good money to have their ads stream during scheduled breaks between bouts. Some of these appear in both the venue and on Twitch, but others are only seen by the Twitch viewership. This means that there’s a lot of empty time between some matches for those spectating live at the venue. 

On day one and two at EVO, finding something to do during downtime for stream ads isn’t hard: there are vendors to visit, other games to watch, casual matches running all day, a dedicated Bring-Your-Own-Console area for people to set up and play their own favorite games, a big Artists’ Alley, and plenty of indie and AAA developers and hardware companies showcasing their upcoming wares. 

When people are inside the Mandalay Bay Arena, however, and there’s only one game running at a time, finding ways to keep folks engaged during long stream commercial stretches and commentary blocks is a bit trickier. In previous years, EVO would show highlights from past tournaments, but for this year, EVO got a bit sillier—and that’s what lead to many broken hearts for the biggest guest character non-reveal ever. 

While Twitch viewers got commentary breakdowns and ads between matches, those watching in the Arena were treated to very different entertainment during the downtime. During BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle and Street Fighter V, for example, we got karaoke of the corny RWBY character themes and the fan-favorite Street Fighter IV theme song, “Indestructible,” which went over quite well.

  Tekken, though? Unless somebody was going to pay Snoop Dogg mad royalties to use “Knocc Em Down,” they didn’t have anything sing-able. So they just went full-on memes and goofiness, which, if you’ve ever seen Tekken tournament commentary, is pretty par for the course. (Shout-outs to legendary Tekken commentator Tasty Steve, who was doing live Arena commentary and working up the crowd to squeal along with the dubstep beat-drop on the Infinite Azure stage.)

The Tekken 7 presentation team had some fun ideas: Playing a clip of Geese Howard’s famous death scene from the Fatal Fury games after he had been beaten in a top 8 match and a “Slowdown Showdown” showing clips of Tekken matches where a dramatic slowdown effect happens and asking the audience to guess which player’s attack will be the one that connections, as examples. One of these fun ideas involved an edited clip of a Metal Gear Solid codec conversation, featuring Snake talking to Tekken creator Katsuhiro Harada and saying, in perfect David Hayter voice, “That was some good-ass Tekken”—a memetic line often said by devoted viewers after a particularly exciting Tekken match.

The David Hayter voice was actually derived from EVO staffer and longtime Tekken fan/commentator Markman23’s Twitch stream: he had hired Hayter to voice his stream notifications. It was a good edit and a funny joke. The problem was, given the Tekken series’ increasingly bizarre roster of guest characters over the years, a good chunk of the audience reacted to that codec-call sound not as a joke, but as an indicator of a potential announcement—something nobody on the production side had anticipated. It wasn’t helped when clips started getting shared almost immediately on Twitter and Youtube. 

  It felt like someone in production realized the audience reaction was different than planned, as they quickly swapped to an awkward-looking image from Heihachi’s Tekken 2 ending—as if to say “Ha ha, memes! Silly things! Get it?” But by then, the damage had already been done. When Harada stepped out on stage to do his own brand of audience trolling, people were expecting a Snake guest character announcement, which was never planned to happen. Despite the introduction of the obscenely cool new character Leroy Smith and the return of Tekken 6’s Zafina, a lot of people were left angry and disappointed, accusing Bandai-Namco and Harada of having lead them on… when that was never the intention. 

The fallout was swift: EVO issued an apology, Harada clarified that the clip had been misinterpreted. The angriest response, however, came from David Hayter, who felt like his trust had been violated:

EVO, You also failed to consult me, or Konami. Please do not use my voice to promote other games. Ever. DH https://t.co/6ZgCEPVddU

— David Hayter (@DavidBHayter) August 5, 2019

  Sadly, what was meant as a fun joke for Tekken fans has turned into a big PR mess for everyone involved. I wouldn’t get hopes up for a future Snake reveal, even with the reaction to this showing that he’s in demand. The fallout from the “fake teaser,” including some very harsh words from people like Hayter (and Konami probably a teensy bit miffed about unauthorized IP use) means that this particular well has likely been poisoned. Sure, Harada could use his clout to maybe work out something, but in the man’s own words, “Don’t ask me for *beep*.”

Did you get excited by the “reveal?” How do you feel about this joke that went too far? Join the discussion!

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Heidi Kemps writes about games, otaku culture, and other odd topics of interest across many different publications. The amount of doujinshi and figures in her living space is either astonishingly awesome or somewhat terrifying, depending on your point of view. She runs the website gaming.moe and can be found on Twitter @zerochan. 

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[closetofanxiety]

Show Review: Shine 40

Coming to you live from (Hold Steady guy voice) YBOR CITY. The bad news: Ivelisse was not medically cleared to wrestle, so not only did the matchup with LuFisto I had been looking forward to all week not happen, but she had to vacate the title. The good news: Shine is one of the most consistently solid indie promotions in the United States. Let’s take a look:

The show starts out with the announcement that Ivelisse can’t wrestle. LuFisto comes out expecting to be crowed Shine champ, but instead gets put into a three-way main event for the belt. 

Fatal Four-Way: Su Yung, Jayme Jameson, Angel Rose, Jesse Bell Smothers

Has any wrestler improved as rapidly as Su Yung over the last 18 months or so? From a directionless NXT castaway miscast as either a SoCal Val knockoff or a Leva Bates knockoff to her current rapid ascent as one of the most compelling US women wrestlers. For that reason, I was mildly bummed she was in the first match, because usually her insane brawls are a reason to stick with the occasionally wobbly early bouts on Shine cards. That said, this was a fine matchup, with Yung bumping like crazy, Jameson throwing everyone around, and Smothers and Rose also impressing. Four-ways are kind of messy at their best, but there were some real high points here, like stereo DDTs on top of the bar (a Su Yung match without a visit to the bar is hardly a Su Yung match at all). Su won with her Michinoku driver finisher, whose name escapes me. Rating: Three and a half absent Ivelisses.

Malia Hosaka vs. Brandi Lauren

With Legendary seemingly on hold, they’ve really started to bring Malia Hosaka up as the embittered veteran looking to brutalize the up and comers. This is a good thing in terms of storyline, but hasn’t really translated yet into a particularly fantastic match. This one is fine, but Lauren is still green, and Hosaka has kind of a Fabulous Moolah-esque repertoire at her disposal, so the whole thing was a little slow, redeemed somewhat by Hosaka’s convincing nastiness. Hosaka wins. Rating: Two absent Ivelisses.

Xandra Bale vs. Aerial Monroe

I had no expectations for this match, but it was a fun sprint of some real roughhousing between these two (Bale is a Queens of Combat regular and Monroe is out of Toronto’s Smash Wrestling scene). Lot of good, dare I say, grapplefuck-esque work from these two, who really worked smoothly together. Bale gets the win with a neckbreaker. A pleasant surprise. Rating: Three and a half absent Ivelisses. 

Candy Cartwright vs. Leva Bates

Leva Bates now seems to be working a video game groove on her cosplay thing, and she came out to the ring dressed like, Joe informs me, a character from “Assassin’s Creed.” Folks, I don’t know much about the video games. Mario, I know him. I know Mario. This is your standard Leva match, in that it’s kind of clunky with a lot of slow transitions, but Cartwright looked fantastic, and to Bates’ credit, she sold the hell out of a bow and arrow submission to the point where I thought she might tap. Cartwright scored the mild upset win, and good for her. Rating: Two and a half absent Ivelisses.

Rachael Ellering vs. Chelsea Green

Lenny Leonard tells us this is the “Lance Storm Special,” because both wrestlers were trained by Mr. Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I have high hopes, because I’ve seen some great matches from Green, who is currently toiling in TNA. Ellering has been turning a lot of heads as well. This one actually starts slower than I’d like, but builds up pretty quickly to some really nice moments, like a strike exchange that actually does something new with the conceit. The normally somnolent Orpheum crowd comes to life for this match, and are hugely behind Ellering, who gets the win with an F5. I would love to see this become a running feud. Rating: Three and a half absent Ivelisses. 

Tag Team Championship Match: Santana Garrett & Raquel (c) vs C4 (Kennadi Brink and Amber O’Neal) vs Las Sicarias (Thea Trinidad and ACR)

I guess it’s not Amber Gallows anymore? And Raquel appears to be back to her given name, Gabi? I don’t know. I can’t keep up. Three-way tags can be messes, but this one has a good arrangement: Garrett and Trinidad are the capable babyfaces, Gabi/Raquel and ACR are the Ricky Morton damsels in distress, and Brink and O’Neal are the thuggish heels. This actually plays to everyone’s strength in a good way, although it’s hard to ignore how much better Santana is than everyone around here. This is a good match, with things breaking down toward the end, when Trinidad accidentally superkicks ACR, allowing Santana to get the pin. Afterward, ACR fusses with Trinidad and then leaves with C4 while Santana seems headed toward a heel turn. Rating: Three absent Ivelisses. 

Triple Threat Match for the Shine Championship: LuFisto vs. Mercedes Martinez vs. Allysin Kay

I like all three of these wrestlers, and they all have kind of a hardass brawler character, but from different angles: Allysin Kay is the girl who beats guys up outside a Puddle of Mudd concert; Mercedes Martinez is the girl who breaks furniture during arguments; and LuFisto is the reckless ball of fury. I will always like Martinez because she’s from Connecticut, but I would be fine with any of them winning. Most of this match is a slugfest, which is wise, eventually moving into the ring for a series of near falls and, ultimately, the first Shinefinish of the night when Martinez broke out of a sleeper hold and looked set to pin (actual MMA fighter) Kay, but then LuFisto somehow got the win. Joe and I were, at this point, talking about how the card had been miraculously free of screwy finishes, and naturally this happened. It was the kind of thing where even though we were watching and paying attention, we had no idea what was supposed to have happened. It’s not the end of the world, and LuFisto certainly deserves to be champ, but it’s one of those Shine quirks I wish they’d work out. Rating: Three absent Ivelisses.