#The new trailers have been helping me get all of my writing skills activated!!

[ourladyoflight]

(( As far as affection and love languages go, it isn't difficult to tell when Angel cares about something or someone! She's very much a touch oriented kind of carer- and if she knows someone's comfortable with it, she'll do small things like resting her hand on someone's shoulder, pushing stray strands of their hair back into place, or letting them lean against her if they need to.

It's one of the reasons why she hugs Kazuya back in the time of the second tournament- to her, hugs are a way of expressing care and protection. Hugging someone means that she can keep them safe in her own arms- and it's the notion of holding those dear to her that makes her feel truly able to protect them.

If she's watching over someone that doesn't appreciate or isn't open to physical touch, that same expression of care doesn't go away! It just takes different forms, like in the way that crows leave behind small gifts. There are always some aspects of human culture that she's still learning to understand- but leaving trinkets behind, especially one that a person might've mentioned liking, are another way to know that she cares.

(And- of course- she's been known to have food sent too. Whether she brings it herself, or has it delivered from a mysterious unknown benefactor, she'll never say!)

[maxwell-grant]

Ask Round-Up: May

Phew, okay, let’s try this again. A couple of notes to start off

-I’m not sure if I’m gonna be able to really make this a monthly thing because, I hardly have much time to post at all, and besides I ended up starting an actual personal diary which, has been actually very useful, for my mental health, definitely would recommend it. 

-Music theater’s taking a lot, a LOT, more out of me than I expected, it’s the biggest reason why I can’t post the way I’d like to given how time-consuming it’s been. But, I took up the course first and foremost because I needed an excuse to get out of home on the regular and put work into something that lets me build skills as a performer and connect with people and I’m definitely not dropping it now. It’s been particularly stressful the past weeks since they’ve been giving us tests and we’re being graded and, God, I did not miss this shit at all. But, fine, so be it. 

-I really do like some of the assignments I get and I think they’ve been helping me overcome my creative blocks, it’s another reason why I keep going. I like to prove to myself I still have that energy and passion even if I can’t yet apply it where I really want to. At least, not yet. 

-Don’t know why but, in some of my lurkings in the hearts of Twitter, I’ve been seeing a bit of an increase of people getting into The Shadow, people I follow at least, and that makes me happy. I even got to see people linking my blog in conversations where people ask about Shadow recommendations. I know in theory I’m supposed to play it cool about stuff like that but, I can’t, it fills me with too much joy for me to not share it with you.

(I’m not active on Twitter, nor do I particularly want to be. I mostly go in there for talking to friends and acquaintances and networking, and also because I needed to snatch up an account under my project’s name before anyone else did)

-I also don’t know why, but Mortal Kombat’s been doing circles around my brain again for the past weeks so, I guess if any of you want to ask me about my thoughts on MK-related stuff, be my guest. 

Anyway, on with some of the asks

Anonymous asked:  Did the trailer for PREHISTORIC PLANET leave you screaming with the raw ecstasy of "WALKING WITH DINOSAURS ... as narrated by Sir David Attenborough" the way it did me? (Or at least the PROMISE of same - hopefully a promise that will be delivered on!).

Not quite, but you can chalk that up to me being used to dissappointment when people say “the new Walking With Dinosaurs” to promote documentaries that absolutely cannot, and even shouldn’t, live up to that, and also, I’m not terribly interested in having a new WWD anyway, I rewatch the Walking With trilogy every year anyway. BUT, I will say that, the trailer I saw did look absolutely lovely and I’ve been yearning somewhat to rewatch this kind of stuff, and also, I deeply adore just how receptive people have been to the T-Rex family and I do not get tired of all the jokes about this take on T-Rex being the Hank Hill of T-Rexes. I also love that it’s gotten some people talking about other non-WWD docs I really enjoyed growing up, like Dinosaur Planet. So, yeah, very happy for this one, happy to see the love it’s been getting too, even before release.

(Art by ColinM_Art)

@mirrorfalls​ asked:  Could you write - has there already been - a pulp story that contains no crime or death (not even the threat of it) whatsoever?

By sheer statistic probability, yes, but if we’re getting into specifics, you could actually argue that the most popular kinds of pulp magazines - those being the romance magazines, the railroad magazines, and the sports magazines - actually consisted largely of stories that didn’t have much to do with crime or death, at least not the way those are a constant in the kinds of pulps most people are familiar with. Pulp stories tend to be described nowadays as a genre, but pulp magazines were really a medium for whatever they could sell stories in. Unsurprisingly, the romance and sports pulps were easily the best selling ones and the ones that most endured even into the 1950s, and The Railroad Man’s Magazine lasted from 1906 to 1979, making it the longest-running and most successful American pulp of them all. 

The railroad magazines absolutely did have tons of stories about crime and death, some even ludicrous and horrific to an extent that dwarfed the crime and horror magazines, but those were a part of what they were about, not the entirety of it. The railroad magazines were primarily focused on, well, railroads and trains, and the kinds of stories that you could tell about, or with, them. In a similar way as to how the development of airplanes in the 1910s (starting with Santos Dumont’s 14-Bis flight in 1906, eat shit gringos) led to the Air Aces / aviation genre, and the uprising in sci-fi following the debut of space travel, the development of trains and railroad was an exciting new technology and career choice, and this was reflected in fiction:

The focus on the railroad as the subject of fiction became genuinely intense, with an almost obsessive devotion to railroading techniques, equipment, problems and dangers.

Writers like Bedwell, L.Packard and Spearman developed a stable of characters that the regular reader could look forward to enjoying like old friends (In this respect, early rail-road fiction is reminiscent of long-running television series employing characters who do not appear in every episode, but whom viewers welcome back on their return)

One finds the railroad and its attendant phenomena - depots, diners, hoboes, boom-towns, ghost towns, strikes, speed, and sundry other matters - in prominent position. Whether the issue is the ugliest face of American racism, the most heroic actions of those who dreamed and accomplished some of the greatest feats of the industrial age, or the manner in which the railroad infiltrated and affected the American experience at almost every level, these writers have embraced the railroad in their work.

D.J Smith characterizes the railroad, in the era before automobile travel enabled easy escape to somewhere else, as a "glamorous" and "mystical force that represented a route out of the constricting boundaries of rural and small-town life: "The train, although it could be used to represent more sinister forces, was an almost spiritual symbol of life to many fluttering souls caged." -  The Railroad in American Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography, by Grant Burns

There’s gotta be other examples, mind you, but these three are the biggest ones that come to mind. So, yeah, there absolutely were lots of pulp stories with no crime and death. Hard to tell how exciting they were because their records are very much neglected by historians and considerably more sparse even by pulp standards but, they had vastly bigger readerships than pretty much all of the others even after the others had all ended, so evidently they were doing fine. 

Anonymous asked:  Is there any brazillian character in american comics that you think is a good representation of Brazil?

Not really, no. I really did try looking for the sake of this post but came up short. But I don’t want to leave this question unanswered, so instead I’m gonna talk about a character who did come to mind when I thought of a Brazilian character in media that I do think of as pretty great representation: Theo from Celeste. I’ve been playing it recently and this game has made a tremendous impression on me, I cleared the first 7 chapters on one night following one of the absolute worst sick days of my life and I’ve been waiting for my controller to get fixed so I can keep playing because hoooly shit do these B-Side chapters grate my nerves to try and play with using a broken controller, but nevermind that, I wanna talk a bit about Theo. And I don’t think Theo “represents Brazil”, whatever that means (which doesn’t necessarily mean a positive thing), so much as I think he’s a great representation of a Brazilian character.

Obviously a big part of why Theo is so unlike the overwhelming majority of latino / Brazilian characters in videogames has a lot to do with the fact that he was designed by a Brazilian artist, a major portion of Celeste’s main development team (including it’s character designs, 2D animation, concept and promo art, marketing, script editing, etc) is comprised of a Brazilian team named MiniBoss. And it shows because, and I know this word gets tossed around a lot but, Theo is authentic. Theo’s design and personality are unmistakably authentic. He’s an extremely positive character integral to Madeline’s journey, the feather exercise the game teaches through him is genuinely something that’s helped me and my sister deal with crisis a little better, he’s a pretty fun character too, he has really excellent conversations with Madeline, he’s a really great guy and a great friend, but the main thing that sticks out to me about Theo is that he’s real in a way I don’t think I’ve quite seen before, at least in games (but, really, anywhere on non-Brazilian media, to be honest). 

Much of Madeline’s design and character draw from her creator Maddy Thorson and she said as much, but looking at Theo’s character art in the Instagram profile made for the character gives me every bit the impression that Amora Bettany was drawing from somewhere close to heart when designing Theo and his own history. The character was apparently not born in Brazil outright (as he’s said to be American-Brazilian and dev Pedro Medeiros says he descends from a Brazilian family, which explains his English name) and apparently there was some confusion outright at first as to what kind of Latin-American he was but, no, even if the fact that he’s wearing the colors of the Brazilian flag didn’t tip you off, there’s no mistaking it. I honestly get a bit emotional looking at some of the art and dialogue for this game made for Theo, particularly when it involves his grandpa and sister.

I haven’t finished the game and I don’t know what happens in Chapter 9: Farewell as of yet, but Theo left such an impression on me, and such a positive one too. A character who is not a stereotype, not even really trying to consciously subvert stereotypes, he’s just a good character, a good person, and I never use that term lightly but I do think of him as great representation. There’s something very intimate, very warm-hearted and personal about Theo that’s worlds apart from the well-meaning-but-ignorant cartoons that tend to be Brazilian characters at best.   Theo is not defined by his nationality, the game never even mentions it and it doesn’t have to. Would I have liked it to be more obvious? Not really, and not just because it’s not his story, but also because, I like having it be low-key. Theo is Theo and being Brazilian is part of who he is.

Theo went to the mountain following the steps of his vovô, not even really knowing why he was going and worried he’d never figure it out where he was going, where he needed to go, worried he’d never find it. And he ends up being right where he needed to be, to help Madeline, and to be helped by her in return. They save each other’s lives, yeah, but more importantly, they lend each other space to talk, to open up, to lean on each other for support, and to offer help, and we learn that post-game Theo decided to go home and be there for his sister while still keeping in touch with Madeline. Like Madeline, his journey continues past the mountain, but now he finds himself closer to where he needs to be. Where he wants to be.

Obviously not saying I’d want all Brazilian characters to be like Theo but, it’s just, so nice, so refreshing, to have such a positive character like this. He’s not even my favorite part of the game but he made a tremendously big impression on me. Even if he’s not from the medium you mentioned, I couldn’t really think of another character to answer your question.

[platoniclokiimagines]

Alternately imagine Loki messing up and turning the reader into a kid and being so conflicted bc ew kids but aw ur so nice and sweet

Hello, I’m not dead, and the Loki trailer has breathed new life into me, and I’m taking Advantage of that by trying to write more this year! Go easy on me, I’m rusty. I hope you enjoy this little prompt!

Rating: G

W/C: 1561

TW: none

A/N: Watch Wandavision if you haven’t already!

When Loki had asked you to help them work on some spells,you’d expected you’d be mostly providing commentary. Deciding if the outcomewas what Loki had intended, suggesting what to do to make the spells moreeffective, that sort of thing.

And to be fair, it hadstarted out that way.

And then Loki had misread a spell, and the next thing youknew, Loki was towering over you, and you were all but two, a little dazed andvery confused.

Naturally, you did the only thing your newly re-toddleredbrain could do.

You started to cry.

Loki, it seemed, did notappreciate this new turn of events, and the longer they stared at you inblatant disbelief and uncertainty, the more upset it made you, and the nextthing either of you knew, you were absolutely wailing.

The sound alone was enough to have everyone who wascurrently home run into the training room.

“….is that Y/N?” Steve asked, after a long moment of silenceas everyone tried to piece together what happened.

“…yes,” Loki admitted, defeat evident in their voice.

“…Y/N’s a baby?” Nat sounded just as bewildered as Stevelooked, and Loki could only pinch the bridge of their nose.

“Yes, very well spotted, Romanoff. We were practicingspells. I was practicing spells, andI must have said something the wrong way. Asgardian spells are very particular.”

“Make Y/N stop crying!”

“Me?!”

“You did it!”

“Not on purpose!”

While Nat and Loki bickered, it made you only the morefussy, and you continued to wail, as you no longer had the skill set, or thevocabulary, to try and help or figure out what happened and how to help.

Steve picked up on this easily, and was quick to shut theboth of them down. “Arguing isn’t going to help matters, and you’re making Y/Nmore upset. Loki, do you have a way to fix this?”

“If I did, don’t you’d think I’d have done it already?”

Steve opted not to take the bait, and instead heaved a sigh.“Will it wear off?”

“…theoretically. But I don’t know how long until it will.”

“Alright. So in the meantime, Y/N’s a baby. Babies don’ttake care of themselves, so… someone else has to.”

“Not it,” Natasha was quick to respond, already headed forthe door, leaving only Steve, Bruce, and Wanda to stare at you.

“…I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to look after Y/N, given…” Bruce waved his hands in a vaguegesture, but it got the point across.

“Well, I think Loki should do it. Loki caused it, after all.”

Steve looked at Loki, who only glowered in response. “…Notto take sides, but Wanda does have apoint.”

“…fine. But you should know that children and I do not mix, and if anything else happens toY/N, it’s on you.”

“Sure, but if anything happens to Y/N, it’ll be when the skyturns purple, because everyone in this compound knows you’d never do a thing tohurt Y/N.”

You and Loki both knew Steve had a point, and as everyoneleft the room again, so that it was just the two of you, and by now, you’dcalmed down enough that you were no longer wailing, but instead having a nice,pouty little sniffle.

Loki didn’t look any happier at this improvement, andhesitantly approached you, lowering themself to sit down in front of you asthey watched you.

“…I mean it. I’m not good with kids.”

You only pouted more, crossing your arms over your chest asyou kept watching Loki.

“…stop that.”

“Top dat,” you shot back, unable to stop yourself frommocking them.

“Y/N, really.”

“Y/N, weawy.”

“…if you’re trying to make me think you’re cute, it isn’tgoing to work.” All the same, you could see the slightest little smile on theirface.

“I am coot.”

“….you aren’t going to make this any easier for me, are you.”

“Mmmmmmmno.” And you grinned, a cheeky little grin that,despite the change in age, was enough like the old you to make Loki laugh abit.

“Let’s get one thing straight, though, I don’t change ragsor whatever it is human babies wear here, so you’ll be doing all of that onyour own.”

“I’m two!”

“….then we’ll have Steve do it.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

The both of you settled into a long, somewhere comfortablesilence, broken only when you spoke up in your tiny little toddler voice. “How wongam I gonna be wike this?”

Loki’s face fell a bit, making it obvious that they weretruly a little out of their depth this time. “…I don’t know. It could be hours,or days, or even weeks.”

“Weeks?!” Youshrieked, which sounded much funnier in a two-year-old voice than you hadintended it to.

“…It won’t take weeks. If it’s not worn off by tomorrowmorning, I’ll start looking through my texts and seeing if I can’t findsomething to reverse it.”

“………..otay.”

You fell into another long silence, and you took theopportunity to push yourself up onto your feet, trying to gain your bearingsand figure out how to maneuver yourself now. Eventually, you got the hang ofit, and you took to walking circles around Loki, just trying to pass the time,as though it might help the spell fix itself if you were being more active.

“What are you doing, Y/N?” Loki asked, watching you withjust your eyes every time you came into their line of vision.

“Passing da time.”

“…right.” Loki fell silent again, and pulled their phone outof their pocket, fiddling around with it for a bit, and you saw anotheropportunity to be annoying, and took it without a second thought.

“Yoo got games on yoow phone?”

As you erupted into laughter, Loki, unappreciative of thehumor, only looked at you as they deadpanned. “You know I don’t.”

“Ya, cebause yoow bowing.”

“I’m not boring, Ijust don’t see the point.”

“It’s fun.”

“You can have fun without playing games on your phone.”

“Yeah, so?”

Loki, clearly wanting to change the subject so they would nolonger be grilled by a two-year-old, put their phone away and stood. “How aboutlunch? Are you hungry?”

That gave you pause, and you stopped, thinking for a moment.“…I could eat.”

“Perfect. Let’s go.” Without thinking about it, Loki startedto walk off, and you stared after them, offended that they didn’t remember youwere now much smaller and therefore walked much more unsteadily.

“Hey!”

Loki turned around to look at you. “What now, Y/N?” You could tell Loki wasn’treally as annoyed as they were trying to act like they were, given the slightedge of concern in their voice.

“Tha’s a long wawk!”

“…and?”

“I’m two!” Youwere starting to wonder how many times you’d have to remind Loki of this.

“…what, do you want me to carry you?”

“Ya!”

Loki narrowed their eyes as they considered you, and youlooked back, smiling innocently as you held your arms out. There was no way you were going to make any bit ofthis easy for Loki; a small bit of payback for being turned into a toddler.

Loki heaved a sigh that was dramatic, even for them, andwent back to you, picking you up and settling you on their hip rather easily,for someone who claimed not to be fond of children. “Not a word of this to the others, are we understood?”

“Mm…. Maybe,” was your only response, and Loki was smartenough to realize that that was the best they were going to get.

Twenty minutes later, and you were happily munching your waythrough your favorite sandwich, feet kicking in the space between the chair andthe ground, as your feet no longer reached.

“Are you happier now?” Loki asked, once you’d finished yoursandwich, and loudly finished the last of the juice box Loki had found for youin the fridge.

“Yah! Tank oo.”

“…you’re welcome.” Loki kept watching you as you set theempty juice box down, and rubbed at your eyes, yawning a bit. “….naptime?”

“….fow someone who doesn’t wike kids, yoo seem to know whatyoow doin’…”

“Yes, well. I do read a lot.”

You allowed Loki to pick you up and carry you over to thecouch, but when they tried to set you down, you whined.

“Nooooooo!”

“What do you mean ‘no’?”

“Noooooo!” youinsisted, and Loki heaved what had to have been the hundredth sigh since you’dbeen toddlerized.

“Y/N, you know I don’t do cuddling, even when we’re bothnormal.”

You gave your absolute, very best puppy dog eyes, hoping youwould be able to sway Loki, and much to your amusement, it seemed to work, asthey gave their hundred-and-first sigh.

“…you’re spoiled,”Loki grumped, with very little actual grumpiness in their voice, and they letyou settled comfortably against their shoulder, watching as you relaxed. “Not aword to the others.”

“Ya, ya, I know…”you mumbled, already halfway to sleep.

Loki said nothing else, only patted your back gently as youdrifted off to sleep.

And a half hour later, when the rest of the team came in tofind the both of you nodded off together, they didn’t have the heart to wakeeither of you.

[solalunar-eclipse]

Scars You Can’t See - Chapter 8

Chapter title: Countdown

Word count: about 3500 words

Author’s Note: I tried to make this one slightly more light-hearted, but we’ll see if that worked out! Also writing fight scenes is difficult.

First | Previous | Next

...

At this rate, it was honestly a miracle that Tails hadn’t had to buy a new carpet yet.

Thankfully for Sonic’s sanity, his little brother’s determination to preserve their house meant that he’d been given lots of free rein to run around outside whenever he felt like leaving. He’d also been given fewer chores lately, as Tails knew from experience that Sonic did not thrive on order and routine like he did.

It had been three days since their visit from G.U.N. and their last contact from Omega- and Team Dark in general. Though he never said as much, Sonic was really having an issue with the fact that Tails had gotten to contact his friend twice by now, while he hadn’t heard from Shadow in ages. He tried his best not to worry, but it had just been such a long time since he’d spoken with the other hedgehog.

And Omega had said that Shadow was struggling...had practically had to relive one of his most traumatic memories….

Sonic decided that he didn’t care about any of the hybrid’s usual thoughts about expressing emotions or vulnerability- the second he got to see Shadow for real, that guy wouldn’t be able to escape the hug he had coming. The hero was practically determined to drag his friend (because they were friends, no matter what Shadow might say) to a therapist, too, since Chaos knew the guy needed it.

The blue hedgehog slowed down considerably and began to stalk through the forest instead, trying to get the majority of his anger out through his legs and movement. It wouldn’t do for Tails to see him like this…

Sonic’s thoughts circled back to how his hands were tied by what he’d promised Shadow- the hybrid had been so insistent, but now Sonic regretted agreeing not to go after G.U.N. Truthfully, the only reason he hadn’t broken his promise already was because while Tails was an incredibly clever and talented person, he could never forgive himself if the young fox got hurt. Otherwise, he would absolutely have long since blasted into G.U.N.’s headquarters, grabbed the commander by the front of his military uniform and told him in no uncertain terms that he had better stop hunting Team Dark and he’d better do it immediately. The hero had had enough of his friends suffering while he was forced to sit safe at home and wait.

His phone buzzed then, pulling him out of his tangled web of thoughts. Tugging it out of his windswept mess of quills, he saw that it was Tails calling and of course picked up immediately.

“Yeah, lil’ bro, what’s up?” he asked, hoping that most of the frustration had left his voice by now.

“Uh, Sonic?” the fox said, sounding pretty tense himself. “Since those agents came to our house a couple of days ago, I managed to hack into G.U.N.’s main server and now I can see some of what they’re doing- mostly where the organisation's sending people and all that.”

“Epic!” Sonic cheered. He began to wonder- could they use this to help their fugitive friends?

“Well, yeah, it would be...except that they’re sending an entire squad to our house. Like, right now.”

His grin froze in place. A squad of soldiers? The hero almost felt a grim sort of delight in that- finally, he’d be able to vent some of his frustration on the organization that had caused this whole mess. He hoped the house would remain standing, though. Tails had built it around a tree from scratch and was really proud of it. 

Sonic decided he’d work that out once he got home, and just a moment later, a sonic boom exploded across the landscape as he took off. 

…

Once the hero arrived at home, the duo began to set up the house’s various defense mechanisms- since they were a) very famous, b) hated by one of the most powerful supervillains in the world and c) one of them was an engineer, it was only natural that the house would be at least as well defended as a high-security bank vault. Sonic practically bounced around the house as he helped activate certain parts of their machinery, nervous tension running high. G.U.N. wasn’t going to be pulling any punches this time, he was sure of it.

Tails, by contrast, was absolutely calm. The fox was ridiculously mature for his age, and Sonic suspected that he instinctively knew by now when he needed to counteract his elder brother’s wild energy. Once everything was set up, the two built a makeshift barricade as a last resort at the front door, and waited.

Thankfully for Tails’s sanity, it didn’t take long for the trucks to arrive. 

As the three trailer trucks parked outside his house, ten soldiers poured out of each one, while several technicians began to set up some sort of weird-looking prototype laser device. The fox laughed for a second at the sight of it in a way that sent a few chills down Sonic’s spine. His brother could be downright terrifying at times.

Tails scoffed. “Please. That laser doesn’t have the power output to break my shields….wait.

“What the heck?”

The four technicians had begun to hook up the laser to- of all things- one of Eggman’s old power cores that he usually used in his bases. 

The young engineer tugged at his tails in frustration. “That’s so dumb! Sure, it might boost the laser’s strength, but there’s at least a twenty percent chance it’ll blow up in their faces! A small machine like that wasn’t made to withstand the amount of power it takes to charge an entire Eggman base!”

Sonic blinked and looked at his brother. “Those aren’t bad odds….”

“They aren’t good ones, either! I’d never let someone use a creation of mine with a one in five chance of failure. It’s just embarrassing! And it shows how far behind their engineers are!” Tails’s fur was fluffed up in outrage and irritation.

The hero almost laughed. “That’s what you complain about first? Not the fact that they’re gonna try and blow up our house?” he asked, his tone light. He snatched up the fox and rushed them both away from the front door as a precaution- that was definitely going to be their first target.

Sonic pushed Tails into the highest room in the house, before launching himself out the window and curling up into a deadly sphere of razor-sharp spikes. He vaguely heard one soldier yell something in a panicked voice, but didn’t pay much attention to it. He slammed into the ground, still in a ball, and tore off towards the laser cannon at top speed, leaving a cloud of dust behind him as he went. 

Irritatingly, the soldiers’ gunfire spattered all around the cannon, making it impossible to tear the thing apart. Sparks flew across the ground as Sonic careened around it before jumping up into a running stance and taking off in their direction. The air snapped around him as he broke the sound barrier and landed a furious kick on one of the trucks, denting the heavy steel and flipping it onto its side.

Sonic stumbled as a loud explosion rocked the ground, but kept sprinting after a glance assured him that Tails’s shields had held against the blast. The hedgehog smacked one man’s rifle out of his hand, the sheer speed of the blow bending it in half (and was almost certain he heard a distinct ‘why do we keep fighting this guy with guns?’) before he moved on. 

A dozen soldiers were on the ground either unconscious or groaning in pain by the time someone thought to radio for reinforcements- which they’d apparently had on standby ready to be helicoptered in. The blue blur wasn’t sure whether this high estimation of his fighting skills was something he should be proud of...or not.

The fur prickled on the back of Sonic’s neck as a humming noise filled the air.

A moment later, he threw himself to the ground as a red-hot laser carved a wide arc above him, slicing through the area where his midriff was a few seconds ago. He heard a faint yell of outrage from inside the house above all the noise, and stuck out his arm for a quick thumbs-up to Tails. 

A couple of seconds later, one very familiar and well-used earpiece landed in the dirt next to him as the laser swung back across the battlefield to refocus on their shields. Sonic shoved it into one blue ear before running up the side of the second truck and backflipping to land behind several soldiers. “Miss me, guys?” he asked smugly, before smirking and delivering several well-placed blows to said soldiers’ kneecaps that left all three doubled over on the ground. None of them had even seen him as he moved, which was really a testament to Sonic’s skill.

Tails’s voice crackled to life in his ear as he sent another person flying. “Awesome job! By the way, they’ve already fired the cannon three times, so either their luck is going to be great with this next one, or else…”

The cannon’s shot breached the shields, but Sonic noticed as he ran that its casing was burning red-hot, and- 

A shockwave blasted out from the cannon, making all four of its attendants fly into the air, yet in the seconds before they hit the ground, Sonic had time to:

Heave a lengthy sigh at their overestimation of the cannon.

Decide that even if they were working for G.U.N., a life was still a life.

Run around and safely place all four of them inside of a truck...

And avoid the explosion as it tore up the ground within a ten-foot radius of the machine.

(The hero had known for quite some time that being the fastest thing alive meant that he could do some really cool tricks.)

Dirt exploded in all directions, leaving a crater and a smoking lump of metal on the ground. Unfortunately, though, the house’s main defenses were down, and any second now, the helicopter would be there with enough soldiers to take out the rest. And his little brother was still inside...

As though he’d heard the hedgehog’s thoughts, Tails’s voice crackled to life through the speaker. “Sonic! The reinforcements are almost here- we can’t take them all, even if I come out there!”

“Not happening, pal, not unless you’ve got your mech.” Sonic insisted, putting on his ‘big brother’ voice. “Hey, wait- where’re they going?” he asked suddenly, watching as the remaining soldiers retreated to take cover behind one of their trucks. That wouldn’t really help them, but Sonic knew that they knew he couldn’t take the whole organization on by himself.

“They’re waiting it out until the rest arrive...but we won’t be here by then.” Tails said, sounding confident.

“And why’s that, pal?” He folded his arms, keeping one eye on the soldiers.

“Because-” and here Sonic suddenly heard a loud roaring noise coming from the back of the house, “-we’re going to get out of here!”

That was when the Tornado soared directly over their heads.

The G.U.N. soldiers certainly tried to shoot the plane down, but of course, they couldn’t keep up with Tails’s expert flying. Bullets embedded themselves into nothing but trees as it flew away into the forest, a blue streak taking off after it at top speed. Sonic kept up with the red biplane easily, just waiting for the right moment to...there!

He launched himself off a particularly well-placed branch, flinging himself high into the air before landing perfectly on the wing of the plane. “Alright, Tails,” he yelled, trying to make himself heard over the roar of the engine, “where to now?”

The kitsune winced and tapped his ear. “Earpiece, remember?” he asked, and Sonic cringed, realizing that he had forgotten what it was like to wear the little speaker while on the Tornado.

“Ahah, gotcha.” he said sheepishly. “So?”

Tails sighed, but not in an irritated manner. “Angel Island- nobody can find it if Knuckles wants to stay hidden. I called him up while you were out front and he said we could crash there.”

“Oh, sweet!” Sonic said happily. “It’ll be like a sleep...over…”

He trailed off weakly, suddenly remembering their home. “Sorry about the house, pal...I know ya worked hard on it.” The hero ran a hand through his quills, unwilling to meet the other’s eyes.

“It’s okay.” Tails said bravely. “I brought a few things-” he gestured to the backseat- “including all my blueprints, so I can always build us another. And besides…” here he leaned forward, catching Sonic’s eye, “home is wherever we are, so long as we’re together.”

The blue blur quickly nodded before looking down pointedly at the biplane’s wing, hoping strongly that Tails didn’t notice that his eyes had begun to glisten just a little more than usual.

(He did, though.)

…

Knuckles was happy to see them, of course, if a little less obviously so than usual due to the circumstances that had forced the two into this situation. The guardian immediately began to move the island to a new area where it would be hidden from view, while Sonic and Tails just relaxed and looked through the various items that the latter had thought to bring: a spare pair of shoes for Sonic, a toolbox and the aforementioned blueprints for Tails, plenty of food for the three of them, and of course lots of important technology.

As Tails left to go check on Knuckles, the blue hedgehog stretched out on the grass and heaved a deep sigh. What he’d give to know how Team Dark was doing right now…

…

Two days later, he found out.

The very moment that the team released the video, all three inhabitants of Angel Island sat down to watch it on Tails’s screen. The fox had been constantly monitoring the Internet for anything about the other team, especially their social media, so of course he was alerted the second anything came up.

Before they started the video, the hero had been vibrating with energy. 

By the end of the section about the ARK, he was completely still, his eyes as wide as they could go.

Tails paused the video there, as the massive wave of responses was already starting to flow. Sonic blinked back to reality to discover that his nails had nearly torn holes through his gloves- that was how tightly he was clenching his fists. He rolled his shoulders, trying to get the tension to leave his body, but he couldn’t stop thinking.

How in the name of Chaos did Shadow watch that?

They agreed that Tails would watch the rest while the other two stepped up to support their friends, and support they certainly did. Both of their tempers were running hot, and more than once the fox, glancing over their shoulders, had to remind them that caps lock was not going to be helpful right now.

Not long after Team Dark had stopped responding to questions, Sonic and Knuckles sat back down to view the other part of the video. They watched in shock as the peace and power of that meeting was violated, people arrested just like that, and yet neither of them had heard anything about this event.

Immediately afterwards, the latter got right back onto his phone and started typing out absolutely vicious responses to some of the more ridiculous conspiracy theorists. His violet eyes were narrowed in anger as he tore into their ideas- while he might not be able to convince the people themselves, he could hopefully stop more from being sucked in.

Sonic, meanwhile, just lay half on his side in the grass for a minute, trying to restrain the urge to scream. Why hadn’t he done more damage to G.U.N. when he’d had the chance? Why hadn’t he been able to see that this ran so deep?

Sonic turned his head to the side to look at his brother. “Tails?” he asked, trying to keep his voice under control. “Where’s Team Dark gonna go next, d’ya think?”

The kitsune frowned. “I don’t know...but if I had to guess, they’re probably trying to figure out how deep this whole problem goes. That’s what I think we’d do if we were in that situation, at any rate. To find that kind of stuff, though, they’d have to head straight to Central City and hack directly into G.U.N.’s mainframe...which would be incredibly risky on a good day.”

Sonic shot upright. “What if they are gonna do that next?”

Tails shook his head vehemently. “After running away from the entire organization for so long? That’d practically be a suicide mission! Even if they somehow managed to escape with the information, G.U.N. would be able to hunt them down in no time!”

The two brothers stared at each other. “But that sounds like them….doesn’t it.” Tails sighed, looking down at the grass.

“Knux!” Sonic yelled, rushing over to where the guardian sat. “We have to hang around Central City, man. If the team’s gonna head anywhere, it’ll be there. And if they’ll be in that much trouble by the time they get out of there, we have to be there to pick them up.”

Knuckles leveled him with a stare so flat it put sheets of paper to shame. “Sonic. Literally three days ago, I helped you guys escape G.U.N. and we have been hiding ever since. And now you want me to move my island, with the last ruins of my tribe’s temple and my Master Emerald, within reach of an organization that would give anything to be able to take it all for their scientists to look at.

“No. Way.”

The hedgehog widened his stance. “Knuckles.” he began, stabbing a finger at the ground for emphasis. “Literally ten days ago, Team Dark escaped G.U.N. all by themselves and have been on their own ever since. And now you want us to leave our friends, and remember, your girlfriend at the mercy of that organization, for the sake of a giant rock.

“Yes way. Absolutely.”

Knuckles scowled and blushed, avoiding Sonic’s stare after that mention of Rouge. “I guess….if we stayed away from the city itself and out of sight….”

Tails decided that this was a slightly safer moment to chime in. “I’ll try and monitor the airwaves in the area- we can move away if we think they’ve noticed us!”

“All of this is assuming that they’re even actually there.” the echidna replied, seeming slightly irritated at being outnumbered. 

“It isn’t the most logical place for them to go.” Tails agreed. “It’s ridiculously dangerous, and G.U.N. probably knows that. But, it’s also their most powerful building, which means that it’s going to have all of the more recent files there.

“While this video is some damaging evidence, it’s not nearly enough to permanently damage their standing overall...they definitely have the cash to sneak out of this level of bad press. A bigger release- now that we know this isn’t a one-time event- is definitely the best way to deal with them. And what better way to do it than to find all their super-secret files at the source?”

Sonic sighed. “Plus, I’ve got a feeling G.U.N.’s gonna underestimate that team’s habit of suffering to save others.” His shoulders sagged slightly at the thought, but he felt a little bit of the weight lift off of them when Tails leaned against him slightly with an understanding look.

The echidna watched them sympathetically for a moment before remembering that he was supposed to be arguing against them. “Well, why don’t they just go back to whatever place they busted first? That sure wasn’t in Central City.”

Sonic rolled his eyes. “It’s ‘cause they’d be expecting them there, knucklehead. Never return to the scene of the crime. That’s what they say in all the TV shows, right, Tails?”

“Well, while this is not a TV show, Sonic, you’re right.” the kitsune said, sighing. “That’s another reason for them to go to Central City.

Knuckles gave a mixture of a sigh and a growl, stalking back to the altar where the Master Emerald floated. “Fine. But if this goes south, I am blaming your-” he pointed a vicious finger at Sonic- “spiky butt for all of it.”

The hero grinned at his friend in a way he knew got under his spines, and was rewarded with a huff and another grumble. Yet the island still began to move, shifting eastward from the center of the country towards Central City. 

Hold on, guys. Sonic thought, feeling properly hopeful for the first time in over a week. We’re on our way.

[the-resurrection-3d]

@fanboysstillexsist

youre really cool, i have no idea how you write so much! how do you do all that? youre so productive its inspirational!

Before I get into actual practical advice (because you activated my writing tutor trap card), I should note that I include all discursive types in my big ole wordcount spreadsheet— so essays for class, feedback letters for work (just passed 22k on that!), all that goes in alongside “proper” creative writing. The real bespoke take is that the hard lines we’ve constructed around these different genres of writing actually make us worse writers because it inhibits us from understanding how our skills can transfer from one genre to the next (even though getting traditionally published does require you to write in multiple genres— not just the book itself, but the cover letter, the query letter, the synopsis, the proposal, the pitch tweet…) 

A lot of my spike in productivity has been caused not only by getting more comfortable with failure, but getting more comfortable with all my discursive types. Sometimes it’s hard to feel like anything but the actual act of writing new prose is productive, you know? But that’s not true.

Sitting down and writing some reflections on my writing process or on a story or even just a character I like is productive and meaningful work, and so is sitting down and writing bullshit one-offs with my characters that I know aren’t going to make it into the final product, and so is sitting down and writing a shitty vent poem in my Notes app that no one else will ever read. I know I talk about The Channel Quote a lot but it’s just so fucking true. 

Failure, too, ties into this. You write more when you’re comfortable with sucking. It’s just facts. I’m not going to act like I never feel anxiety about my work’s quality on a first draft, or I never cringe while I’m writing, or I never avoid a project because I feel bad about it (kicks my mermaid story under a rug), but overall, once you give yourself permission to write bullshit, the world is your oyster. 

This is where we get into more actionable tips: 

Zero drafting is a good method for this—I don’t even use quotation marks in most of my drafts anymore because it slows me down, and if I have two different ways I want to phrase a sentence, I’ll literally just use slashes and parentheses to include both rather than spend time mulling over which one I like better. 

Summarizing an idea you’re having and then letting that naturally transition (or not!) into actual actions, descriptions, and dialogue is also a good way to get yourself started— a lot of my brainstorming sessions begin with “thinking of [short sentence of two describing the scene]” before spiraling out into an actual outline/zero draft of the scene.

Alternatively, I’ll just focus on whatever it is I find interesting— a lot of my drafts are pretty much exclusively dialogue (“dialogue spines,” as I’ve seen them called), with maybe a few tags or gestures thrown in here and there so help me visualize the scene later. 

The other method I use, if I’m having a block, is to just write out something that could never be “good.” “Penis Inspection Day” and “Why The Fuck Can’t I Drink In The Hospital?” are two recent examples of this — I mean let’s be fucking real, no one actually expects a fic about sea monsters having weird spiked vacuum girlcocks or Ricky from Trailer Park Boys causing someone to miscarry because he drank her amniotic fluid to be “well-written.” The concepts are so weird and extreme that the actual quality of the content becomes secondary, allowing me to focus on having fun with the dialogue and character interactions. If I can’t be a good writer, I can at least be an amazingly bad one. 

The point of all these tips is to make yourself as comfortable coming to the page as possible. Even if you’re never as “productive” as me (again, keeping in mind that my ‘creative’ output is just one fraction of my actual writing), if you’re having fun and being gentle with yourself when you start writing, then writing will get a lot easier. It’s like a muscle; you’ve gotta exercise it. (This is where that “write every day” advice can be useful, if you’re someone who needs help just building up the habit of sitting down to write, although I much prefer the “I won’t go [x] days without writing” method.) 

The only other thing I want to mention here is freeing yourself from the idea of “completion.” @bettsfic has a good write-up of reframing the idea of a creative “project” over here on her newsletter, and it gave me some vocab to what I’ve been seeing in my own writing over the last couple of years. As betts writes,

i used to see publication as the birth of the project, and writing it akin to a long gestation period. then i saw publication as the death of the project, and its life was lived in its drafting. now, publication seems irrelevant to the project. the confines of a story and its many revisions are also irrelevant to the project. the beginning of a story is not the start of the project and the end of the story is not the end of the project. the project is larger than the story, its revisions, its publication, and its eventual readership.

So as an example, my “grammar of violence” series of Luca fics fit into a larger project about intrusive thoughts, about how to handle these intense, obsessive thoughts about hurting the ones we love, about what, if anything, these thoughts say about us as people. This project, of course, is a direct continuation of the themes of “but I am home,” and BIAH itself fits into a larger project about how the narratives I’ve grown up using to try and make sense of my reality have continuously failed me, and how I find myself deeply troubled by my own ways of writing pain. 

The EddTord fic I mentioned in my Ao3 tag game is the final work in the trilogy that “but I a home” is the second part to, and that fic took me three years to write— it began as a response to the “beach” prompt for BaconCola Week 2018, spiraledspiraledspiraled into a 16k monstrosity I never finished even as I finished the rest of Eddtord Finale, and then in the last weeks of 2020 I had a fucking meltdown and cranked out a 3k hybrid memoir-fanfiction all in one night. Every sentence that wasn’t a direct quotation from another author needed some kind of revision. There are still sentences in it that I think are kinda iffy. It’s still one of the best things I’ve ever written. 

To return to betts,

[. . .] now that i know what the project is, i have more patience with myself. it doesn’t bother me to rewrite a novel from the beginning, or to scrap novels altogether, because the story isn’t the project. the project cannot be diminished by cutting words, sentences, paragraphs, entire chapters. the project does not have a product. the project cannot be published. the project is in the practice, in dragging the impossibly large into clear, acute existence, so you can see it. so you can see the very center of what you thought was an unknowable thing.

I hope that’s helpful! 

[thesoul0fwit]

All of the soft asks. Let’s hear it.

1. your favourite playlist (made by yourself or someone else)

Trouch and Traylor's Tangy Tunes (pronounced truck and trailer)

2. how many houseplants in your room, and what kinds are they?

Two. Devil's Ivy and a Spider Plant.

3. your favourite “grounding” activity (anything that involves using the hands/doesn’t involve “spacing out” or escapism - something like gardening, knitting, dancing, cooking)

My go-to is identifying things I can see around me, but typically, I have to say them out loud. Talking to someone while I do it helps a lot mid-flashback.

4. an account on social media whose posts make you smile

I love @weratedogs on Instagram. 15/10 recommend.

5. 5 tv shows that cheer you up

Schitt's Creek

Criminal Minds (somehow?)

Castle

Parks and Recreation

Avatar: the Last Airbender

6. how you get relaxed when you’re struggling to sleep

Does my Trazodone prescription count?

7. your favourite board game

Scrabble. If we count cards, I'm a sucker for CAH.

8. if you were going to write a non-fiction book on any topic, what would it be?

Trauma treatment or the effect of social media on adolescent development.

9. a quote that you would consider getting tattooed or putting in a frame

"Just eat." No joke, I want it as a side-underboob tattoo.

10. something you’ve created in the last year that you’re proud of (a playlist, a piece of art, some writing, a craft hobby, a social media account, etc)

I made an art account that I will not post the handle of publicly. Good luck finding that shit.

11. a tip or hack you’ve learned that makes cleaning or tidying easier

I got nothing, man.

12. if you could make a candle that smelt like anything, what would you pick?

It already exists, but I love the smell of campfires and charcoal grills.

13. the last so-bad-it’s-good joke you heard

Not last, but certainly my favorite (I'm biased because it's mine). I was reading through a restaurant menu and said, "Wait, if they have vegetable pho, where's vegetable PHRIEND." I laughed to myself for a solid five minutes.

14. an artist (of any kind) whose work you look forward to seeing

Ashleigh Balls' music.

15. the last tv episode that made you laugh out loud

I don't know what episode, but it was probably Schitt's Creek.

16. how you wake your body up when it’s feeling tired, achy or needs a stretch

Hot shower.

17. a bath, shower, beauty or toiletry product that makes you feel revived, or that you always re-order when it’s running out

Hello charcoal fluoride toothpaste.

18. a book series you can always escape in

Harry Potter

19. the sport or exercise you enjoy the most, and what’s helped you get better at it

Trampoline. You just gotta keep bouncing.

20. a skill you’ve picked up in the past few years

Resin casting (though it's been a minute since I last did it).

21. a youtube video you find useful, entertaining or relaxing

"Sarah Help Me" is one of my all-time favorite videos. I also like "Baby Sees Cat For First Time."

22. if you were going to dye your hair any colour of the rainbow, what would you choose?

I would take the dive and go for the light denim blue look.

23. the book you just finished and what you thought (no spoilers!)

I think the last book I finished was Hank Green's "An Absolutely Remarkable Thing." Oddly captivating, modern, very interesting take on the way social/mainstream media shapes identity and interpersonal connection.

24. describe the most wacky, weird and wonderful at-home outfit you’ve put together

I love my harem pants. My favorites are red striped, I'll usually have some weird sports bra on with them plus a giant blanket/sweater thing.

25. a game you’re playing that takes your mind off things

Don't play games much anymore.

26. the film you watched most recently that you could watch again and again

I can watch Short Term 12 over and over again.

27. your favourite flavour and brand of tea

Not a tea person, but I tolerate Bigelow's lemon ginger.

28. a good-will story you’ve heard on the news that’s made you feel hopeful

Our Mars rover, Perseverance, is doing well up there.

29. a favourite easy recipe: 5 ingredients or less, or takes less than 30 min to make

Vegan caesar salad. Baby butter lettuce, cherry tomatoes, Daiya shredded cheese, Sweet Earth Mindful Chick'n, and Follow Your Heart caesar dressing.

30. a song that makes you want to have a boogie round your bedroom

Dancing Queen. That being said, I'll just sing it to myself and dance in public. Hell, I'll dance without the music, too.

[matildainmotion]

Extreme Times, Transitions and Your Extreme Powers for 2021

This time last year I wrote a piece entitled ‘An Encouraging Blog about Despair’ – this was in early January, before the pandemic. My son loves that moment in a story when someone says, “Well, at least things can’t get any worse,” and then, right on cue, a whole lot of worse-ness happens. This year I am not going to attempt to be encouraging – I think we need something else, to match the gravity and uncertainty of the times, that recognises all the worse-ness that has happened. But what? Right now I am not sure. Let me see if I can write my way to find it.

The thing that has saved my sanity through the year has been the working on and writing of a novel. It has kept me sane but also driven me mad, but at least it has been my madness, of my own making as opposed to the world’s. It has been astonishingly difficult. Often, I have felt more articulate about the toughness of the process, than about the story I am trying to tell. The images I have used to describe it have included marathon running, mountaineering, white-water rafting and tightrope walking. I am struck by the extremity of these metaphors. I have done none of these things in real life, and yet I have had a visceral sense of their accuracy. Most of my writing has taken place where I am now, crouched on the children’s bedroom floor. I do not look like I am engaged in anything wild or dangerous, but I like the idea that both my making and my mothering – activities that are often seen as domestic, docile – are in fact extreme sports. 

Photo credit: Viola Depcik, as part of the online exhibition: Portraits in Motherhood and Making during lockdown.

For now, I have come off the mountain of the book. Come January I will set about editing it – an attempt to turn the manuscript into something someone might actually want to read. This morning, I am in a moment of transition. What to write in the dark bedroom, before the children wake? Christmas wish lists and new year’s resolutions are the traditional seasonal texts, but I notice I have two counter impulses to these – two very different lists I want to write. 

The first is not a wish list, but a list of the unwished-for. A backwards-looking list of some of the worse-ness of the year, not as a plea for sympathy, empathy, not out of a need to confess, or because I am looking for advice, but because it feels important to name it. In these last months, on those precious trips out of the house, I have had many two-metres-apart exchanges of the “How are you doing?” kind. “Okay. We’re surviving,” I reply, and then come away, with my groceries in hand, my mask hanging round my neck, feeling desolate, surprised that I should feel it so deeply, when I was not expecting any more from the exchange. I think it is because I want to lay bare the utter ugliness of the year, like when you pull the fridge out and expose the amazing accumulation of dirt underneath. I know that we have been lucky, so when I list some of our un-wished for times, I do it in full recognition that others have had it worse, much worse. 

Here is a selection of my unwished-for list:

Easter – everyone in the house either shouting or crying or both. Still ill. My husband and son red in the face. My mother and daughter, white. 

Then the times – more than one -when my son, who is on the autistic spectrum, needed a play fight, to channel the aggression he displays when he feels threatened (and a threat may be as slight as a joke he did not understand, a small change of plan). I offer to fight him, and as I face him, hold his wrists, the energy in his body, but also in mine, is far from playful. 

A recent one - a double meltdown – my daughter screaming whilst we are Xmas shopping because she and I cannot remember something I said three days ago about her and a bauble she was hanging on the tree. Meanwhile it is raining. She is refusing to wear a coat. She runs away from me, up the pavement, beside a busy road, whilst my son, who cannot bear loud noise, lays down on the concrete and puts his hands over his ears. I am caught between the two of them – one on the run, the other on the ground. Masked people watching me, the rain coming down, the dark coming on. 

Three in the morning and no one is screaming or sobbing but me – the children are sleeping peacefully, and I am not. 

There is an edge to this – it is allowed to be hard, but it feels dangerous to expose the difficult details. It has not all been like this, but I do not want to sweep these times aside and hurry on. So I set them down, one by one, on the page. Then I can begin list number two. 

This is a list not of changes I resolve to make in the new year, but ones that came on their own, and are ongoing, unresolved. A list of the transitions already underway. Because these arrive unbidden, this is a list of the moments when I understood that change is happening:

When I find I cannot read the instructions on the side of the ‘stuffing mix’ and I realise I need reading glasses. 

When my period is two weeks late one month, and two weeks early the next. The skin on my eyelids grows dry. I read this too can be a symptom of the perimenopause.

When my daughter is at last weening (shhhh, don’t tell her, or she will object) and her favourite game is to play at being a ‘dumb baby’ who cannot remember where its mummy’s boobies are. She runs about the room, looking behind bookshelves and under covers, until eventually the baby realises that the boobies and the milk are on its mother’s chest. She does not want the milk now, she wants to play at being the silly baby, because she is turning into such a competent ‘medium big girl’ (her current definition of her size).

When my mother (granny) no longer wants to cook meals for us, but would rather that I cook for her. 

When my son starts to grow a greater awareness of his separateness to me and I find him in tears one night because earlier in the day he heard The Beatles song “She’s Leaving Home” and grew afraid that this might happen to him – that he would leave one day, leaving only a note behind.

When my husband and I realise we are going to need to move again, find somewhere we both want to be, to settle, where we can grow older.

When the children wait for snow, go out keen to find the ice on top of puddles to crack and splinter, but the winter stays mild, wet. 

And then there is the ‘transition period’ the whole of the UK is supposed to be undergoing, moving out of the EU, whether we like it or not. Lorries, stationary, but in long lines of transit, waiting to cross the border. And then there are the transitions- endless- from one tier to another to try to control the virus. 

I think of others’ transitions too, of friends, and friends of friends: people waiting for a baby to be born; waiting for a loved one to recover, or die; transitions of age, gender, status. 

What to do in response to these unchosen changes? I almost admire my daughter’s wish to fight them. Her maxim is not ‘to keep calm and carry on,’ but rather to keep screaming, whilst being carried. I am impressed by the volume of rage in her four-year-old frame as she attempts to stop things:

“You have to stop the car now,” she cries from the back seat, when we are in the middle of the road, “Right now. You have to do it. You have to, you have to, you have to…Mummy stop! Now! You have to stop!” It is a work-out of the will that can go on for hours and which leaves us both exhausted. It is extreme, and it makes me think back to the extreme metaphors for which I found myself reaching in trying to describe my writing process with the novel. 

I counsel her in acceptance, but I recognise my own desire to scream against the times, to stop the world. Perhaps I need to flip things round - to harness the power of the scream, even as I accept the ways things are. Often I think of acceptance as passive, equanimity as cool and quiet. But I am not sure balance, as figured in this way, is the right metaphor for our times. The feat of balancing required now is that done by the tightrope walker, cliff face climber, white-water rafter – an athletic equanimity, a muscular form of acceptance that takes all our might, all our will. 

Maybe it is time to reclaim the male image of the superhero. I like the way in the film of The Incredibles, the superheroic is recognised as a form of divergence from the norm, a daring difference, how the super ability can become a disability if the surrounding culture judges it as such. The image helps me to see my differences as potential superpowers. 

A third and final list then comes to mind, a forwards-looking one, that might support me through the transitions of this time, and on into 2021 – a list of my extreme powers. If it comes to needing to grow food, hunt, light fires – wilderness survival skills – I will be useless, but I can do the following:

I can survive on little sleep. 

I can hold onto the thread of a creative project or conversation through multiple interupptions and across many days.

I can imagine disaster, very fast, in almost any situation.

I can mother two intense children, both often awake till midnight.

I can name the elephant in any room. 

I can write a novel in the hour per day when my children are watching TV (this is a slight exaggeration - when school was happening I had a little more time, but on a list like this you are allowed to exaggerate). 

That’s it for now. I do not think we need to know or understand how our superpowers, our athletic abilities, can be put to good use. I do not think it is our job to calculate this, but rather only to keep in training. Ready. Skills honed. And also to notice, name and honour one another’s skills. I think I should write a list of my children’s superpowers too. As I write this, the children have woken and my husband is now showing my daughter the trailer for the latest Wonder Woman movie. My daughter likes her outfits, especially the golden bracelets. A glittering dress sense will be on my daughter’s list of wondrous powers. 

The other day my husband shared with me a quote, from a Hopi leader in the year 2000, which seems relevant to my three lists as 2021 begins:

“There is a river flowing now very fast.  It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.  They will try to hold on to the shore…..The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above water.  And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate.”

Writing a novel has felt like white water rafting, but actually being alive right now feels like that too. This year I offer, not encouragement amidst despair, but something more extreme - a call to arms, to your arms, my arms, arms that can carry children, stir soups, make stories - superhero arms strong enough, not to grip, but to let go of the shore. Mid river as we are, I want to celebrate each other’s extreme, extraordinary abilities. So, tell me your lists: the list of things you did not wish for, the list of changes underway, unresolved, and then the list of the superpowers you are hiding, honing, as we are swept along. What powers, however ordinary, bizarre, or seemingly superfluous, do you have to offer?

[theangriestpea]

In the Shadows : Ten

Summary: Jughead Jones, resident werewolf, just wants to protect his family and his pack from the incoming doom of The Red Circle. Sweet Pea and Lily join him to help keep the Southside safe from human tyranny. Meanwhile a demon princess named Myra and succubus named Lavender had a plan to bring on the apocalypse. <ao3> <masterlist> <playlist>

Rating: Mature // Explicit

Pairings: Jughead Jones x OC, Sweet Pea x OC, Kurtz x OC

Warnings: Violence, Torture

Word Count: 5k+

A/N:  ahhhhhhhh, I'm so sorry this took me four days to write. I feel so terrible but I've been very busy this week. One of my pets needed surgery and another needed a vet visit in which a lot of tests were done (she'll need surgery too, ugh) so I haven't had as much time as I'd like to sit down and write. Hopefully the action of this chapter makes up for it?

Chapter Ten : Wrong Moon

A week before the next full moon, Jughead and Lavender finally made amends. Lily had forced the two to sit down and talk out their problems, as everyone was getting along beautifully except for the two of them. Lavender explained to him what her plan was, and he agreed that it would more than likely work. Archie wasn’t particularly smart and didn’t know anything about demon magic or shapeshifters beyond werewolves. So when she proposed that she disguise herself as Reggie, he thought the idea was rather brilliant in and of itself.

Today was the big day. Seven days until the three would need to perform another protection spell. There was not much room for error. Luckily Lavender had stolen some of Reggie’s clothes before she left his house, having already foreseen herself needing to do this. Sweet Pea had been adamant about going with her, watching her dress into Reggie’s clothes looking like the man himself. It was very strange to see his partner as a man. “You need to let me go with you.” He said for the hundredth time. “It’s not safe.”

“Sweet Pea,” She said, her voice deep and masculine. “I’m a powerful sex demon. Mortals are of no threat to me.”

His eyes narrowed, the phrase throwing him back to their first night at the Wyrm when they met. She had said it multiple times. It seemed as if she thought no one was a threat to her and the fact that she was pregnant didn’t change that. “You’re a hybrid with a soul. Your magic isn’t as strong as it used to be.” He argued and watched as she shrugged her now broad shoulders.

She continued to primp herself in the mirror, “my demon magic is weaker, yes. But my witch magic isn’t. It’s stronger since our souls have bonded. It evens out. Plus I have the baby’s magic on top of that. Just wait here. I can take care of myself.”

Sweet Pea let out a sigh of defeat, knowing he would be unable to convince her to change her mind. She was stubborn as a fucking bull when she wanted to be. At least the form she had taken was very convincing. “Fine. Call me when you’re done.”

Lav walked over and kissed him on the cheek. A disgusted look crossed Sweet Pea’s face, making her laugh. “Sorry, habit. I’ll call you, don’t worry.” She turned and left, leaving the house they now shared and getting into a car to go over to Archie Andrews’ house that he had inherited from his father some years ago.

She parked her car a few blocks away and walked up to the house, hoping that the redhead didn’t see her exit the vehicle. She couldn’t get her hands on Reggie’s beloved car, so she hoped the sight of him walking up without it wouldn’t look too suspicious.

She rang the doorbell and a few minutes later, Archie opened the door. “Reg?” He asked, his jaw slack with disbelief. “Come in! Dude, where have you been?”

Lavender walked in, glancing around the house for any signs of imminent danger. There were none that she saw. “You know that chick I helped out last full moon?”

“Yeah…” Archie said, not following.

“She needed help getting back to her family in Centerville and I told her I’d help. It was kind of a wild ride and it’s a long story but...there’s a lot of shit going down there and I think I’m going to help her through it. We really connected that night.” Reggie said, plopping down on the couch in the living room. “I’ve never felt this close to another human being before.”

The redhead stared, his eyes calculating as he scanned over the man on his couch. “And you couldn’t call or text me?”

“It’s so weird, the whole town has like no cell service.” Reggie said casually. “I think they might need our help more than Riverdale. The killings seemed to have stopped. There’s been no new activity lately, right?”

Archie’s eyes narrowed, “You would know if you had been around. There hasn’t been a new body, Reg, but there’s been plenty of other signs of foul play. Men disappearing without a trace. I got a tip that there was some...demonic activity going on here. I think that might be even worse than a rabid wolf.”

Lav stiffened, “demonic activity? Bro, there’s no such thing as demons.” She watched as he pulled out a thin blade, something dripping off the end. The smell was clear as day - myrrh, sweet cinnamon, olive, and a few other scents mixed. It could only be one thing: holy oil.

“Dude, what do you have that for?” She asked, pretending as if she didn’t understand why Archie was slowly coming towards her with the silver dagger. She tried to mutter a quick spell but found that her magic was not working. It was as if he had warded the house against it. Her heart dropped and terror rose as she stood quickly, ready to dart. Archie was faster, the blade sinking deep into Lavender’s right shoulder.

Her form shifted back to the one she took more often than not. Her human face, hair purple and eyes black. While oil wasn’t as harmful to her than it might be on a regular demon, it made it impossible for her to heal her own wounds. She needed to get out and fast.

When she tried to pull away, Archie grabbed her roughly by the arms. “You killed him, didn’t you.” He asked, his voice sounding deadly in her ears. “And you thought I wouldn’t notice a cheap knockoff. You were wrong.”

Lav tried to grab the blade but even the handle burned her skin. She hissed in pain, trying to fight the angry tears that threatened to fall. She willed her magic, her baby’s magic, anything to help her out of this situation. Nothing worked. That’s when she noticed the glowing runes on the walls. Her eyes looked around, wide with terror. Both black magic and demon magic were barred here. The only thing that appeared permitted was white magic and Lav had no actual skill in it. She used her demonic energy to heal herself normally and she couldn’t even tap into that.

As the demoness screamed out in pain at trying to get the knife out of her, a black cat ran in. She had entered from the doggy door on the backdoor. The cat quickly transformed back into the white witch who pried Lavender from Archie’s hands.

“A witch?” He asked, his mind reeling. “There’s witches here too?!”

Lily ignored him as she wrenched out the knife, earning a pained sob from her friend. Lily did her best to soothe her as the front door was kicked in. Archie readied himself, trying to find a nearby weapon. The only thing he could easily grab his hands on was an old brass table lamp.

Sweet Pea was in the room in an instant, having also felt Lavender’s distress due to their newfound connection. He tried to cast a spell but immediately noticed that his magic wouldn’t work here.

Archie swung the lamp in the dark witch’s direction, hoping to hit him. Sweet Pea merely grabbed the end, wrenching it from the redhead’s grasp and tossing it behind him without a care. He brought up a large fist and punched the mortal man hard enough to crack both of their bones.

“Sweet Pea!” Lily called out to him, “We need to get her out, even my magic is being choked here!”

Sweet Pea abandoned Archie and picked Lavender up in his arms, much like he did when she nearly fainted after getting her soul back. She was on the edge of consciousness, her adrenaline keeping her awake but it wouldn’t hold out much longer if the shock got any worse.

He darted out of the house, Lily right at his heels as Archie struggled to stand from being hit such a heavy blow. Blood poured from his nose as he reached for a phone to call for backup.

Once outside, the two witches crammed themselves and their demon’s car. Sweet Pea quickly found her keys and started it up, driving fast to their home in Sunnyside. Lily was in the backseat, doing her best to heal her with magic alone. She knew that she’d need some kind of potion to counteract the oil burns.

“How is she?” Sweet Pea asked, his voice shaking, “The baby?”

“The baby is fine,” Lily said, panting as sweat collected on her brow. “I put a white magic protection spell on it weeks ago. The runes didn’t affect it. She’ll only die if her mother dies.”

“Is she going to die?!” Sweet Pea asked much more frantically as he chanced a look back at them. His girlfriend looked incredibly pale.

“No, Pea, She’s not going to die. Watch the road!” Lily snapped at him as she pressed against the stab wound. Lav groaned in pain. Sweet Pea pushed the gas pedal down further and the car jerked forward under the increased power. They were back in the trailer park in hardly no time at all.

Sweet Pea carried Lavender inside. “I need to work on a neutralizer for the burns. Don’t stop. Shanna, don’t go to sleep.”

“Don’t...call me...that,” She huffed at him between staggered breaths. Sweet Pea had taken to calling her by what had been her human name when he learned it from Myra. It drove her crazy and he knew it.

He put her on the couch so Lily could continue working as he ran to the room he had set up a makeshift potions lab in. He quickly began to work, going through his ingredients and checking his grimoire for his ratios list.

Lily’s energy was fading fast. The wound wouldn’t heal fully due to the holy oil. Every time she nearly had it mended, it seemed to rip back open with some kind of magical energy. She had to figure out how to counteract it and fast. She was praying to her matrons for some kind of guidance and praying that Sweet Pea could find a solution quickly.

Lavender struggled to breathe, her lung kept collapsing and as soon as Lily would heal it, it would just collapse again. She was wheezing, holding onto her stomach as if that would somehow protect her child. How could this have happened? How did Archie know?

Ten minutes later (only it felt like ten hours), Sweet Pea came in with a potion for Lavender to drink. She looked at him, the light in her eyes fading fast as he forced her to sit up and drink.

Lav nearly threw up at the horrid taste in her mouth. The potion was gritty against her teeth and tongue. When she finished drinking she coughed as hard as she could with one functioning lung. Lily placed her hands back on the demon’s chest and muttered spells under her breath.

The wound finally remained healed as Lily collapsed onto the floor, feeling as if she may pass out at any moment. Sweet Pea was looking between the two of them, trying to figure out who to help first. In the end he crouched down and pulled Lily against him while brushing hair out of Lavender’s face. “I have to call Jughead.” He told his soulmate, who could only half hear him as she began to drift into the unconscious. “I’ll be right back.”

Sweet Pea carried Lily to one of the spare bedrooms and laid her down on the bed that Daisy slept on when she stayed over. He took out his phone and quickly called Jughead, bringing him up to speed on what had happened. Jughead told him he’d be over with Daisy as soon as he possibly could.

Once satisfied with that answer, he checked Lily’s pulse. It was still strong. Good, he thought to himself. Healing magic could be dangerous if overused. The user could bring the damage onto themselves if they weren't careful. Luckily it seemed that Lily would be alright with some rest.

He returned to the living room to pick up his sleeping soulmate to take her into their shared bedroom. He laid her down onto her plush duvet and began to take off the clothing that was soiled in blood so he could try to clean her up and access any permanent damage.

The jeans she was wearing were falling off of her hips due to the difference in sizes.  He went ahead and pulled them off as well, noticing she wasn’t wearing any underwear underneath...not that that should have really surprised him.

He looked over her chest, noticing a now jagged scar over her right breast. He traced it with his finger, the raised line was hot to the touch. Sweet Pea let out a sigh before grabbing her favorite plush blanket and covering her body with it so that she wouldn’t get cold. He didn’t want to risk waking her up by redressing her at the moment.

His hand traveled to her stomach, hovering over it through the blanket. He could just barely sense the new source of magical energy. Another little girl that he prayed night and day wouldn’t get taken from him. Daisy was his world. He could only imagine how much he’d love her little sister.

Sweet Pea didn’t hear the window in the other room opening. He didn’t notice the shuffling of feet as he was much too concentrated on his new lover and unborn child. The feeling of possibly losing them today distracting him from his duty to protect both women. While he should have been tending to both Lily and Lavender, he focused more on the demon. It wasn’t on purpose, he simply got lost within the depths of his mind when he questioned the safety of Riverdale for the thousandth time that week.

In fact, he didn’t snap back into reality until Jughead arrived, pounding on the front door. Sweet Pea opened it and took Daisy as she was shoved into his arms. Jughead followed his nose but found what he thought may be true as soon as he pulled up. He couldn’t feel her anywhere and her scent trail was decimated by the sudden onslaught of icy sleet outside.

“Where is she?!” He cried out, panicking as he retraced his steps to go back to Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea looked at him with confusion before going into the room where Lily had been. The bed was empty, the window open. Lily was gone.

“She was right here!” Sweet Pea yelled, setting Daisy down so he could maneuver around easier. “There’s no way she could have gotten out on her own! She was too weak!”

Jughead stared out the window solemnly. “They took her.” He mumbled, mostly to himself. “The Red Circle has her. Look.”

Sweet Pea joined him at the window and saw a sloppily painted red circle on the grass, the paint smearing from the new sheet of frozen rain. His frown only deepened. “Fuck, I was right across the hall. How did I not hear them?”

Jughead wanted to snap at Sweet Pea for just leaving her, but knew that Lavender had been hurt badly. He didn’t blame him for having his attention focused more on his pregnant girlfriend than his ex. Still, it was careless to not have tried to watch both at the same time. “I have to find her. I have to do...it.”

“No.” Sweet Pea said firmly. “You can’t change on the wrong moon. You know what you’re risking doing that? You could lose yourself and be stuck. Think about it, Jones. We can use magic to find her.”

“I’m weak in this body, Sweet Pea!” He shouted back, finally losing his temper. “I can’t fight them off like this! I can as a wolf, I can tear them all apart! Give me the potion, I know you know how to make it! I’ve seen it in your book!”

“No.” The dark witch repeated himself. “I’m not doing that to you. Lily would murder me if I ever let you do that to yourself. We will find her, we just-”

“Can Lavie move? Is she still hurt?” Jughead asked, pleading. “She can help, I know she can.”

“She’s out cold, Jones.” Sweet Pea said, his voice sympathetic. “I can do a locating spell. I just need some of Daisy’s hair and I can do it. She’s got enough Lily in her that it’ll work.”

The wolf tried to take a deep breath but failed miserably. “Can you do it now?”

“Yes. Look, Shanna will have to be in bed for at least a few days. We can’t depend on her for this and I can’t leave her. If Myra comes while she’s weak then she could take her soul back or worse. You have to do this, Jones, and you can’t do it by turning.”

Jughead swallowed down a ball of anxiety that threatened to explode out of him. He nodded his head, not trusting his voice in that particular moment.

Sweet Pea noticed Daisy had left them and had found her way to Lavender. She had managed to climb on the bed and was sitting next to her, playing with her cat. “Lavie nap time!” She said with a toothy grin.

He smiled at her and approached, “Daisy, I need to pluck a hair from your head okay? To find mommy. It might hurt.”

Daisy just shrugged before going back to playing, pretending that the cat was licking Lavender’s shoulder. Sweet Pea shook his head and plucked out one of her hairs as painlessly as possible. The littlest witch didn’t even flinch.

He went into his workroom, knowing that Daisy would alert him if something happened, and began the spell. It should have been quick and easy. It was one of the simplest ones in the book. As long as you had some DNA or a treasured item, it was foolproof.

Unless there was outside magic that canceled it out. Sweet Pea, cursed, the pendulum swinging circle upon circle over the map of Riverdale. It wasn’t working. Lily was being kept in a place that was strictly stripped of magic. There was no way to locate her this way. It would be impossible.

He cursed under his breath as Jughead came in, eyes dark as if he already knew the bad news. “It is the only way. I can find her as a wolf. I can save her. This one time won’t make me sick. One time won’t hurt…”

“There’s no guarantee that you’ll even change back.” Sweet Pea warned, the need for the mother of his first born to be found alive and well was quickly outweighing his need to keep Jughead from doing something incredibly stupid. “You could be stuck as a wolf for the rest of your life.”

“That is the risk I am willing to take.” Jughead growled, he knew all the possibly horrible outcomes. He knew how this could end. However, despite all that, he also knew that his chances of finding and saving Lily were astronomically higher as a wolf than as a human. He was much more attuned to her very essence as a beast. He didn’t need a scent to find her.

Sweet Pea caved. He stood from his spot on the floor and went to his work table to start the potion. “This shift is going to be the most painful thing you’ve ever experienced.” He said. “Turning back...will be even worse.”

Even working at the fastest possible pace, it still took him twenty minutes to finish the brew. Jughead paced impatiently the entire time, his mind reeling with all of the possible things Archie and the others could be doing to Lily. She was too weak to use her magic, and even if she could then where she was being held was guarded against it. He didn’t even hesitate when Sweet Pea announced that it was done. He immediately ran to him, took the cup and drank it down in one wolfish gulp….

Lily let out a pained groan as her eyes fluttered open. Wherever she was, it was pitch dark. She attempted to move, only to find that she was tied in place. Her struggling stopped when she felt the cold flat side of a knife press against her throat. “One witch set to burn at midnight.” A voice said, warm breath fanning against her cheek. “One last thing to plague Riverdale.”

She tried to speak but her mouth and throat were far too dry. She noticed a light flicker on and multiple torches began to illuminate the room. Lily’s eyes swept the room, pupils shrinking to adjust to the new light. Her heart stilled in terror as she realized she was surrounded by members of The Red Circle, their leader the one holding the knife to her jugular. “But first, we have to make sure she is of the devil, as my source says.”

Her brow furrowed, having no idea what he was talking about. Who was his source? There were witches that got their power from worshiping Satan, however she wasn’t one. There was no way to actually test that though, so what was he even proposing that they do to her?

It started off slow, simple tests of her reflexes and sensitivity to temperature changes and even small amounts of pain. None of her totally normal reactions seemed to pacify the hatred looming in the room. Archie seemed more and more enraged at the end of every test. It didn’t take long for him to resort to violence, hitting her when she didn’t respond in the way he wanted.

Eventually the waterboarding began. Over and over Lily thought that she might give in to the horrid drowning sensation. She pleaded with them, begged them, cried to them, however it all fell on deaf ears. There was no one on her side in that room. No one that wanted her to see the light of day. She couldn’t use her magic, she couldn’t sense anything outside of the room.

When there was nothing left for her to say to her captors, she began to scream for Jughead in hopes that he’d somehow be able to hear her, to feel her. Maybe...just maybe he could locate her and break her from this nightmare.

A large black wolf was racing through the ice, crossing the railroad tracks and sprinting as fast as he possibly could. The change had been just as Sweet Pea has said it would be. It hurt so bad that he couldn’t even think of what the return trip would feel like. That was, if he could ever return. He would happily live the rest of his life in this cursed form if it only meant that Lily would be safe.

He could sense her agony, it pulsed in his mind like a beacon that he immediately honed into. He forced himself to move faster, feeling muscles pull and tendons strain. He didn’t feel the pain, couldn’t think about the pain. His needs didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting her home safe.

He had so many questions as to how this all went wrong. What happened at the Andrews’ house that led to this unfortunately set of events. Sweet Pea had told him the bare minimum, only that Lily had used up too much of her strength and he needed help getting her back to normal. Jughead had sensed her weakness then and knew that he had to come fast. Still, he was not quite fast enough. Archie and his league of human filth had gotten to her first.

Jughead stopped and howled loudly to signal members of his pack to come to him. He wouldn’t make them turn but he could use the help. Luckily for him, a spry young boxer came to his call.

Charlie had been out running, and while it seemed ridiculous to be running in this kind of weather, she thought it to be good endurance training. She crossed paths with her future alpha in no time at all. He had already begun to run again when she joined him.

She didn’t comment on his form, choosing to save it for later. Certainly he already knew of the hazards of changing at a time like this. It must have been for a very good reason. “What’s wrong?” She asked instead, “Is it Lily?”

Charlie knew all about the soulmates, having learned it all from a certain demon that acted as her friend with benefits. She also knew that Jughead only did irrational things when it came to her. He was not his usually thoughtful self and threw danger to the wind. Case and point was fighting the vargulf on his own without any backup during the last full moon.

“Yes,” He said and she could only understand him without the use of touch because she the language was embedded deep within her. “The Red Circle has her.”

The female wolf let out a low growl of detest. No wonder Jughead took the plunge and donned his suit of fur. She’d do the same if they had a hold of her loved one, a vampire by the name of Fangs Fogarty. He was asleep right now otherwise she’d call him in for help too.

Charlie kept pace with him, not having any issue despite him having four legs to her two. She had an extremely athletic build, having to keep in shape for fights. Still, it would have been nice if she could change too although she wasn’t entirely sure if she could handle the thought of possibly never changing back. But her loyalty to her pack made the uncertainty nearly waiver in her heart. If it had been asked of her, then she would have done it in a heartbeat.

She asked no more questions. She didn’t need to. She’d fight tooth and nail for Lily just as she would have for Jughead. Her importance to her pack was just as great as his. She had saved all of them once already by protecting the forest. Charlie felt as if it were now her turn to return the favor.

The two wolves arrived at an abandoned warehouse on the very edge of the Northside. They paused long enough to catch their breaths and formulate an attack. “No offense, Jug, but you don’t have any hands right now.” Charlie said between pants. “Let me break in so you don’t hurt yourself. Then we can divide and conquer. Are you sure she’s in there?”

“Yes,” He growled lowly. “She is. It’s protected against Magic, she won’t be able to help us.”

Charlie nodded and jimmied the lock on the door before opening it slowly. The two crept inside, giving silent looks to one another in order to communicate non-verbally. The group was located down in the basement, but they could hear Lily’s cries for help. It took all of Jughead’s will not to go down there without any sort of plan.

His pack-mate noticed his impatience. “I don’t have claws and teeth, but you know my right hook can knock out a grown human man. I’ll get her out while you fight them off. I think that’s the best way if she’s too weak to move on her own.”

He let out a huff before nodding. Charlie opened the door on the floor of the first level that led downwards. They hesitated for a split second before Jughead sprang down the stairs, letting out a howl so loud that the windows rattled in their frames.

There were loud curses and shouts of fright as Jughead attacked without any sort of restraint. Blood filled his mouth as he teeth tore into anyone that came within reach of his jaws. He took out as many as he possibly could, downing one mortal before leaping onto another.

Charlie made several take a hard seat with one hit of her fist as she made her way to the table that Lily was strapped to. The witch was in a daze, clearly confused about what was happening in the uproar. Charlie untied her, helping her up with an arm around her waist. Lily grabbed onto her shoulder for support. “We’re leaving, Jughead! Hold them off until we’re outside!”

She heard a strange mixture of bark and growl which was definite affirmative. Charlie dragged Lily up the stairs and outside, the chaos down on the inside of the warehouse growing louder and louder, hitting a crescendo before falling abruptly. Jughead leapt from down below and raced out to meet the two. Charlie had not stopped, she kept moving to try and get Lily as far as she possibly could. She only stopped when Jughead finally joined them.

“Jug,” Lily said, still breathless from the water being poured intermittently over her face. “What have you done?”

They heard shouts behind them, and the three knew that there was no time to stand and talk. This would all need to be discussed once they were safe.

As soon as they crossed the tracks, Jughead let out another howl for help. The sleet had ceased for the time being. Various members of the pack ran to meet him, the first being his father.

FP Jones picked Lily up so that they could run. While they had a decent lead, it was still poor judgement to not try and create more distance. He ran with her laying uncomfortably in his arms while a few wolves stayed behind, armed with various blunt force objects just in case. Charlie stayed behind with them, ready for more bloodshed.

They didn’t stop until they were inside of the Jones’ trailer. FP set Lily down on the couch before turning to Jughead, face red with anger. “Boy, what in hell’s name have you done to yourself?!” He roared as Jughead jumped onto the couch to rest his head in Lily’s lap. He let out a low whine, the only answer he could muster.

Tag List: @the-gargoyle-queen​, @lilhemmo​, @wayward-river​, @southside-vixen, @princesweetpea​, @redhairdontcare732​  (comment/ask/message if you want to be added or subscribe to AO3)

Enjoy my work? You can leave a tip or like/reblog/follow!

[serpentupemotions-blog]

New Blood - Sweet Pea x Reader | Part One |

“Had to cut a man down to get where I am // But someone had to tumble, and someone had to stand”

Summary: As the Serpents face a new threat, you’re tasked with being the one on the inside. As if being a new Serpent wasn’t difficult enough, you find yourself constantly having to prove yourself to one Serpent in particular. 

Warnings (warnings listed are for the entire fic, warnings in bold are included in this part): Drinking, drug use, gambling, criminal gang activity, smut, assault, murder. 

Word Count: 4,500+

Thank you to @steve-harringtonnn for all the help with editing and writing the summary!

“We need to get in on the inside; we don’t know enough about them. They’re too quiet. We need to figure out what they’re up to. Whatever it is, they’re bringing in much more than we are. I got word that they’ve started buying local businesses. At this rate we’re running the risk of being run out of Riverdale,” Jughead says, standing at the head of the table in the back room of the Serpent headquarters. The table was large and filled up most of the small room, covered in scratches, most intentional, initials and names engraved into the dark wood. Jughead was speaking of the gang that had swooped in within the past couple weeks and was already causing issues for the Serpents. But, unlike the Serpents or the Pretty Poisons, they were quiet. If you didn’t know to look, you would miss them even being there. They didn’t wear patches and if they had a name even that was kept quiet. “Getting into one of the poker nights their leader, Dominick, hosts will be the easiest way to get what we need on them without starting an all out war.”

You lean back in the office chair you were sitting in, swaying absentmindedly side to side. “I’ll do it,” Sweet Pea speaks up from a couple seat down the table from where you were sitting.

“Sweet Pea,” Jug says, shaking his head as he shuffles his body to face Sweet Pea. “You have many skills and if this were a purely physical take down, I would send you in without hesitation. But poker...you’re not even going to get an invite to the game with the skills you’ve got.”

There’s a moment of silence in the room, tension sweeping across the table as the hand that Sweet Pea was resting onto the table clenches into a fist.

“I’ll do it,” you speak up for the first time since the meeting had started. You were one of the newer members of the Serpents. They had been rebuilding after a rough patch, making it easier than ever to become a member. It wasn’t that you weren’t as loyal as any other member, but there was still a lingering distrust towards you and from one Serpent in particular; Sweet Pea. You haven't proven yourself yet, hadn’t been given the chance.

“No,” Sweet Pea says quickly, spinning his office chair away from being angled towards the front of the room, leaning his elbow on the table to look past the couple people separating you from him. “We need someone who is guaranteed to win.”

You raise your eyebrows slightly. “Like you?” you ask sharply. He had just been shut down by Jones, why was he questioning you like he was the authority on poker?

“Y/N,” Jughead says, drawing your attention from where you were staring intently at Sweet Pea. “These are serious players. This isn’t after school poker games on your bedroom floor.”

You can’t help but roll your eyes. “Hey, whatever,” you comment, holding up your hands in relent. “Pick whoever you want to do this, Jones. I know I can do it, but I’m not about to beg for you to let me help.”

“Anyone else think they can do it?” Jughead asks, eliciting a sigh from you. Bringing your arms across your chest you glance around the group of silent people sitting at the table. “Okay, I guess it’s you, Y/N.”

“No,” Sweet Pea says again and you audibly groan, sitting up straighter in your chair and placing your palms forcefully onto the table, leaning past the people sitting beside you to look at him.

“What now?” you ask in exasperation.

“It’s dangerous. You’ve never done anything with us. We don’t know if you can handle yourself. What if you get into one of their private games and things go south? You’ll panic, expose the plan and get all the Serpents involved.”

“What the fuck is your problem, Sweet Pea? You’ve doubted me since the second I joined. What did I do that makes you so certain I can’t do this? I haven’t done anything with the Serpents because nobody has given me a goddamn chance. I’m trying to prove myself, trying to show all of you that I can handle myself,” you exclaim, your voice louder than you had meant.

“I’m just looking out for everyone...including you,” Sweet Pea says and some of your resolve softens. “If you mess this up it’s going to look really bad for you.” he adds, rebuilding your resolve. He was looking out for you, not for your safety, but so you didn’t look bad in front of the other Serpents for failing. Not exactly the epitome of empathy.

“Both of you shut up,” Jughead states, his palms landing on the surface of the table as he leans into it. “Nobody else seems to be willing to do this,” Jughead says, attention on Sweet Pea. “So you’re getting your chance,” he adds, turning his attention to you now.

You can’t help the smug smile that spreads on your lips when Sweet Pea dramatically collapses back in his chair, shaking his head. “So, what’s the plan?” you ask.

“Dominick frequents La Bonne Nuit. Likes to play with the commoners every once in awhile. The games we really want you in on, they don’t happen in public, they’re invite only. So, we need you to get an invite. The Serpents aren’t exactly opened with welcome arms at La Bonne Nuit with the Pretty Poisons being under the employ of Veronica Lodge. However, it is a public business and you are only vaguely associated with the Serpents at this point. Take off your jacket and hangout at La Bonne Nuit until Dominick shows, get on his good side, play some poker with him. Play well, but not too well. Don’t threaten him, but make yourself known as a strong player. It’s a fine line, walk it carefully.  From what we’ve heard the games take place every Friday, that gives us almost a full week to get this invite. Any questions, Y/N?”

You listen carefully to Jughead explain the plan. “Any idea when Dominick will be at La Bonne Nuit?”

“He doesn’t seem to have a regular schedule. I want you there tonight, and every other night until he shows.”

“And for the bet?”

“La Bonne Nuit is pretty low buy in,” Jughead tells you. “I’ll get you some money.”

“Better not lose it,” Sweet Pea mutters, loud enough for you to very clearly hear him.

“I’ll double it,” you state confidently, pushing your chair back away from the table. “I’ll double it tonight and if I don’t, I’ll give back double out of my own pocket.”

Sweet Pea seems to take some pleasure in this, the slightest smirk on his face. “Well, at least we’ll be bringing in money for the Serpents one way or another.”

You clench your jaw at the way he refers to ‘the Serpents’, as if you weren’t part of them. Standing up from your chair you head towards the door, your eyes meeting with Sweet Pea as you walk by him. “I’m going to get ready for tonight. I’ll stop and get the money from you on the way to La Bonne Nuit,” you tell Jughead.

“You sure you’re good with all this? You don’t want anyone to go with you?”

“Yeah,” you say with a reassuring smile, pulling the door to the room open. “I’ll be fine...alone. I can handle myself,” you tell him before walking out through the door, shutting it behind you.

Pulling your car into the driveway of Jughead’s trailer you shut your car off, pushing the door open and hopping out of your car. You walk up the short driveway, packed gravel shifting under your feet. You hurry up the couple stairs, knocking on the door and waiting till it’s opened, Jughead standing in front of you. “Hey, Y/N, still sure about this?” Jughead asks, reaching over and picking up an envelope from the table by the door. “It’s two hundred dollars,” he tells you.

“It’s a poker game, Jones.” You reach over, taking the envelope from him with a smile. “Just remember, the worst thing that happens is I’m on the hook for four hundred dollars.”

“I can talk to Sweet Pea if you want me to, tell him to back off. You’re a Serpent just as much as he is now,” Jughead says suddenly.

“No,” you tell him quickly, taking a step away from the door. “That’s the last thing I need after I’ve made it such a point that I can handle things myself,” you add with a quiet laugh, turning and walking down the stairs. “I’ll keep in touch,” you call, walking back to your car and heading to La Bonne Nuit.

“I’m not here to cause problems,” you tell Toni as she stands in front of you, blocking the entrance to La Bonne Nuit, her arms folded over her chest. “I’m just here to have some drinks, play some poker. I mean, where else am I going to do that in this town?”

She stares at you for a second longer before stepping aside. “You better be telling me the truth.”

“I am,” you assure her, a lie, though you tell it convincingly. Walking into La Bonne Nuit your eyes scan over the room, a few people sitting around tables drinking, a couple people much too young to be gambling hanging around the slot machines along the back wall. Your eyes linger on the poker tables in the back corner of the room, taking in the emptiness of them. Making your way to the bar you come to a stop with your forearms resting on the cool surface.

“Hi,” the man behind the bar says, setting down the towel in his hand. “What can I get you?”

“A Manhattan, please,” you tell him, glancing around the room.

“Coming right up,” he tells you. La Bonne Nuit, establishment of not only underage gambling but drinking as well.

“Thank you,” you tell him when he places the glass down in front of you.

“Waiting for someone?” he asks, leaning against the opposite side of the bar.

You hum softly, eyes fixated on the door, contemplating your answer. “Not really,” you tell him, eyes flicking over to look at him. “Been busy today?”

He shrugs, shaking his head slightly. “No, not really. I’m sure it’ll pick up soon.”

“Hopefully,” you comment with a slight smile, paying for your drink before making your way to a table. Sitting down you sip your drink while watching for any new arrivals.

You manage to pass a couple hours, downing a couple drinks and playing a few games of blackjack. You couldn’t sit around and wait all night for Dominick to show up and jump into the game the second he showed up. It would look too suspicious. So you played a few games. Spaced them out to make it seem like you had spent more time at the tables than you really had. You won a bit of money from them, already up from the original amount Jughead had given you. Sure, Sweet Pea probably wouldn’t have approved of you gambling the money outside of games with Dominick. But he didn’t need to know, never would know.

Eventually you notice him. Tall, thin frame covered by impeccably well-fitting clothes. Tattoos peeking out from underneath the collar of his black dress shirt, the ink creeping across his neck in a way that seemed to suit him so well it was almost like he was born with the tattoos. Dark hair buzzed incredibly short. Older than you for sure, but younger than you had been expecting. You knew it was him though, had been shown a picture, given a description and he matched it with an air of confidence that told you he was important and he knew it. As he walks through the building towards the poker tables your eyes follow him discreetly, planning your next move. For a moment his eyes meet yours, dark and piercing. A tiny smirk graces his lips as he lifts his chin, a nod of recognition.

Pushing back the chair you were sitting in, you get to your feet. No point in playing it casual now. Not when he was playing that game. You hang back a couple paces, watching as Dominick has a brief conversation with the dealer. Following suit, you’re quickly in the game, the dealer directing you to the seat beside Dominick. Couldn’t have been easier if you had outright requested it.

“Expected to see you at the slots,” Dominick says quietly, glancing over at you with the same smirk he had given you when he walked into the room.

“I don’t gamble carelessly, I play what I know I’ll win,” you reply, confidence spilling out of you as you smile over at him. You had to play nice, it didn’t matter that his comment made your blood boil. Nobody seemed to be taking you seriously. Though perhaps that was only going to work in your favour.

He chuckles quietly, his tongue running quickly over his bottom lip, eyes lingering on you for a moment longer. He rests his forearms on the edge of the poker table, clasping his hands together in front of him. “What’s your name, doll?”

“Y/N,” you tell him, the use of the pet name sending a shiver up your spine, though you weren’t entirely sure why. You weren’t attracted to him. You couldn’t be. Your eyes are drawn to his hands, also covered in tattoos. Your mind wanders out of your control, wondering just how much of his body was covered in tattoos. Taking a deep breath you turn your focus away from him, shaking the thoughts from your mind, knowing you needed to be focused.

“Nice to meet you, Y/N,” he says lowly, leaning a little closer to you. “I’m Dominick. You can just call me Dom though. Or call me whatever you want, darling,” he adds and you can smell the scent of his cologne, not overpowering, intoxicating.

The game starts and slips by quite quickly, the table being made up of Dominick, a few of his men and you. There was certainly a little bit of intimidation to it, but you had to admit you were enjoying yourself more than you thought you would have been, especially as you watched your stacks of chips grow. Play well, but not too well. Don’t threaten him. Jughead’s words echo in your head as you fold on a mediocre hand, not a bad hand, had you not been there for the Serpents you would have called. You can feel Dominick’s gaze on you through much of the game, but you make a point not to look at him often. You wanted him to think that you had no interest in him, as a player or as a person.

Your hands quickly stack the fairly large amount of chips the dealer pushes in your direction, a smug feeling growing inside of you. With one elbow on the table you look over at Dominick, your eyes landing on his quickly as he was already looking at you. You smile softly at him, trying to come across as non-threatening as you could. You watch his eyes linger on you for a second longer before turning back to the table with a smirk on his lips.

You hang around for a couple more hands, not wanting to hit and run. It didn’t seem like Dominick was planning to leave any time soon. You were pretty sure he wasn’t going to leave first. So you needed to make the move, hope he would follow. Standing up from the poker table you rack up to leave, pretending not to notice how carefully Dominick was watching you.

“Leaving so soon?” Dominick drawls, leaning back in his chair. “Have somewhere to be?”

“The bar,” you tell him, feigning that it’s a casual statement and not you telling him exactly where you’ll be. You give him one last look before walking away from the table, heading to the cage and cashing-out.

Veronica counts the cash as she hands it to you, looking up at you suspiciously once you had taken the six hundred dollars from her. Clearly she was uncertain about having a Serpent hanging around her establishment now that she was in so tight with the Pretty Poisons. But you hadn’t caused any problems, weren’t planning to. Nothing you were doing impacted her, or La Bonne Nuit, you just needed a playing field to get what you wanted from Dominick.

“Another Manhattan?” the man behind the bar asks as you approach. The night hadn’t picked up much, Dominick had showed up with his cronies, but aside from that La Bonne Nuit remained rather empty.

“That would be great, thanks,” you tell him with a smile, watching him quickly make the drink for you. After paying for the drink you head to a table not far from the bar, sitting down and sipping your drink.

“You’re a pretty good player,” Dominick states, walking up to the table you were at with a glass of some unidentifiable dark liquor on the rocks. “How long have you been playing, darlin’?”

You watch him slide into the seat across the small table from you, taking a drink from his glass.

Shrugging casually you fiddle with the stem of your cocktail glass. “Since I was a kid, playing for gummy bears at the kitchen table with my family.”

He smirks, body moving with the slightest of chuckles. He taps his glass against the table, fingers running over his jaw as he seems to be contemplating something. Hopefully the invite you had been seeking this entire time. “Play often?” He brings his glass to his lips, taking another drink while maintaining eye contact with you.

“Not as often as I would like to...perhaps if I had better competition. Tonight though, tonight was good,” you tell him, lifting your glass to him and watching him bring his glass to clink against yours before you take a sip of the liquid.

“Well,” he tells you, leaning closer to you across the surface of the table. “I host poker nights on occasion, we have room at the table for...qualified players. It’s higher stakes than,” he pauses, glancing around La Bonne Nuit, “this. We’re playing twenty-five/fifty, no limit. Minimum buy-in is five.”

You swallow nervously, forcing a smile onto your lips. “Thousand?” you whisper, feeling your hands grow clammy. Taking 200 dollars from the Serpents to play poker at La Bonne Nuit was one thing. Asking for a minimum 5,000 dollars was something else entirely.

A smirk crosses his lips as he glances down at the table for a second, eyes returning to you. “I’ve seen you play, darlin’. You’ll be able to hold your own,” he says, one hand sliding across the table, his fingers toying with yours. “If you need a loan upfront though, well, I think we can work something out.”

“No,” you say quickly, but quietly, keeping your tone calm. “I can get the money.”

“You already got a sugar daddy I don’t know about?” he questions, his fingers remaining on top of yours.

You feign a smile and a casual giggle, shaking your head. “Don’t need one,” you tell him, bringing your glass to your lips and taking a quick sip.

He nods, pulling a phone from his pocket. Tapping at it quickly he turns the screen to face you. “Give me your number, doll. I’ll be in touch.”

You take the phone in your hands, typing out your name and number into the appropriate fields. “About the game?” You glance up from the phone at him, a tiny smirk playing on your lips.

He chuckles, not responding as he takes the phone back from you, sliding it into his pants pocket as he stands up. “I’ll be in touch,” he repeats. “Buy yourself another drink,” he tells you, tossing down a hundred dollar bill onto the surface of the table, his fingers running over your shoulder on his way towards the door.

“I don’t need your-,” you start to protest the money, realizing he was already too far gone to hear you and tapering off. You stay in your spot, fiddling with the money he had put in front of you, mind racing at a hundred miles an hour. What did this mean? Was the invite to the poker game really about poker at all? Eventually you finish your drink alone, eyes remaining fixed on the table in front of you, the money, the half empty drink that Dominick had left across from you.

Walking into the Serpent HQ the next day you see Fangs and Sweet Pea sitting around a table. Fangs says something, though you’re too far away to know what, to which Sweet Pea laughs loudly. You walk across the room till you’re standing over them, tossing the envelope of cash onto the table. “Tripled.”

Sweet Pea turns his attention to you, raising his eyebrows for a second as he comprehends what you said. “You tripled the money?” he asks, reaching for the envelope and leafing through it for physical evidence as if he didn’t trust that you weren’t lying about it.

You nod simply, glancing around the room. “Jones here?”

“Not right now,” Fangs tells you. Fangs had been much more accepting of you joining the Serpents than Sweet Pea had. “He should be here soon, though.”

Nodding you glance around again, sighing as you shift nervously, stepping back away from the table. “Well are you going to tell us about what happened?” Fangs asks.

Turning your focus back to them you bite down on the inside of your lip in contemplation. Perhaps you should wait for Jones, let him be the first one to know about what happened. “I got invited,” you finally say, simply, not elaborating as you pull your phone from your pocket. Unlocking it you pull up the text messages Dominick had sent much later that night, turning your phone around and sliding it across the table towards Sweet Pea and Fangs.

Dominick: ‘Still interested, doll? Not too late to back out.’

You: ‘I’m not the type to back out.’’

Dominick: ‘Not surprising. Friday night. 7:00PM. Fairview Crest, Penthouse. Your name will be on the list. Minimum buy-in is $5,000.’

Dominick: ‘Remember what I said. I can help you get the money if you don’t have it.’

You: ‘I’ll get it and I’ll be there.’

You watch them read over the text messages before looking back up to you.

“Five-thousand dollars?” Fangs asks, each word being punctuated with a pause for emphasis as he stares at you in surprise.

Sweet Pea shifts in his seat, sitting up straighter as he drops his fist slowly to the table, seeming nervous about something as he absentmindedly taps his hand against the surface. “What does he mean he’ll help you get the money?”

“Yes, five-thousand. I need to talk to Jones about it,” you tell Fangs, eyes drifting to Sweet Pea. “Don’t worry about that. It doesn’t mean anything because I’m not going to do it.”

“Do what?” Sweet Pea presses, clearly not willing to drop the subject.

Sighing you hesitate, your arms pulling tighter to your body. “Sleep with him.”

You watch Sweet Pea’s jaw clench, fist tighten on the surface of the table as he stares harshly up at you. “You were going to fuck him for money?”

“No,” you exclaim, flabbergasted as you step back from the table. “I just said I wasn’t going to do it.”

“Do what?” Jughead asks, walking up from behind you.

“Screw the guy who’s trying to take out the Serpents,” Sweet Pea proclaims without hesitation.

You bite the inside of your lip, holding back the urge to just scream. Nothing you could do was good enough, nothing you did was right for him. You triple the money Sweet Pea was sure you were going to lose. You got the invite, on the first night. You had done everything right, yet he was making it seem like you were in the wrong about something.

“What?” Jughead asks in confusion, turning his attention to you as his eyebrows furrow. “Dominick?”

“Yes, Dom. But no, I’m not going to have sex with him. I never planned on having sex with him,” you state defensively, feeling backed into a corner.

“Dom,” Sweet Pea mutters and you glance over at him, realizing quickly that you should not have shortened his name. It implied something. Some level of intimacy that you shared with him, to be on a basis of shortening his name.

“Did you get the invite?” Jughead asks, trying to keep the conversation on what was relevant.

Fangs picks up your phone from the table and hands it to Jughead who take the phone reluctantly, reading over the messages. “That’s a higher buy-in than I thought it was going to be.”

“I don’t know what to say about that, I can’t change it. Getting into this game was your idea.”

Jughead nods, setting the phone back onto the table, where you quickly swipe it off the surface and slip it into the pocket of your jacket. “He wants you to hook up with him to cover the buy-in?”

You hesitate for a second, unsure by the look on Jughead’s face and the tone of his voice if what you were hearing was correct. Did he want you to do it? “Yeah,” you finally mutter.

Jughead crosses his arms, stepping back and looking across the room as he contemplates something. “Would you do-”

Jughead isn’t able to finish his question before Sweet Pea’s voice echoes through the room. “What the fuck?” Sweet Pea snaps. “Are you fucking serious, Jones? No, she’s not fucking some guy to get into a goddamn poker game.”

“I’ll do it,” you say quietly, avoiding everyone’s eyes. You were still so desperate to prove yourself, to prove your commitment to the Serpents, to the task at hand.

“No,” Sweet Pea says again, standing up abruptly. “This is so fucking stupid. He’s dangerous. We’ll figure out another way.”

“You’re right,” Jughead relents, nodding in agreement with Sweet Pea, even though the simple act of admitting he was wrong seemed to physically pain him. “You’re right. It was stupid for me to even suggest it,” Jughead says, running his hands anxiously through his hair before pressing his hands into the surface of the table, leaning over it. His eyes land on the envelope sitting in the center of the table. “How much is that?”

“Six hundred,” you tell him, pulling a chair out from the table and dropping down into it, your arms resting on the table.

“You won four hundred last night?” Jughead inquires.

Nodding you stare over at him as he reaches for the envelope, sliding it back across the table towards you. “Take it,” he tells you and you hesitantly reach for the envelope, pulling it closer to you. “You’re clearly good at this, go back to La Bonne Nuit and make as much as you can from that. It’s no secret that the Serpents aren’t exactly rolling in money right now. But we do have some cash. We have six days. I’ll see what I can gather. In the meantime, make as much as you can out of that,” Jughead instructs, pointing towards the envelope.

“And if we get the money?” Sweet Pea chimes in. “We’re just going to send her alone to this guy’s penthouse?”

Jughead sighs loudly, clearly on the edge of defeat. “You can go with her.”

“What?” you exclaim, shaking your head. “No, I’m going alone. It’ll be fine.”

“He’s right,” Jughead says, almost visibly wincing at the words. “It’s too dangerous for you to go alone.”

“It’s invite only,” you remind them.

“And you’re invited. He’ll be your plus one,” Jughead says, straightening up as he steps away from the table, showing that the conversation was very quickly coming to a close.

“I don’t think this is a plus one kind of event,” you mutter, watching Jughead walk away anyway.

Part two coming soon! 

[calliecat93]

Are we ready for a good ol’ fashioned Grimm fight readers? I hope you are! So this is the final chapter to contain footage from the trailer, and all that’s left from that are the outfits and the fights in the mines. So… this should be an interesting one. The past two chapters have been pretty strong, so can this one continue the streak? Well, let’s take a look~!

Overview

We actually get multiple perspectives in the beginning, so let’s go in chronological order. First is Clover briefing Ruby, Jaune, and Qrow on the upcoming mission, which is to clear the launch site for Amity Colosseum. The plan is to use an abandoned Dust Mine… but it’s Grimm infested, so they gotta get rid of those nasty buggers first. I really like seeing Ruby and Jaune there and being respected as the respective leaders of their teams. They feel like actual Huntsmen now… which if one zooms in on the holo-screen, we see that they’re labeled as active Huntsmen now! Yay~! Anyways, after the briefing, Pietro gives everyone containers containing their upgraded weapons, modified by both requests and based on what he saw in Vytal Festival footage, and new outfits! Everyone preps, including Ruby… but then Oscar approaches her. We’ll go into that one in a bit. For now though, everyone is ready to go, but Oscar remains behind in Atlas. Still, we see everyone use landing strategies, including Jaune. The boy has grown~! Also, new song~! Love it~!!! 

So it’s Team RWBY with Marrow and Harriet, JNR with Elm and Vine, and finally Qrow and Clover. We get a cute Bumblebee moment as Ruby feels cold, likely from the very brief amount of Aura she depleted when landing. Which we saw on Blake’s Scroll, which all of those were also updated! But when Blake mentions leaving Oscar behind, Yang stops Ruby to question about her lying to Ironwood. Ruby is clearly uncomfortable with this, but justifies it by bringing up the current state of Atlas and Mantle. Blake and Weiss back her up and agree that for now, they should hold back on revealing everything about Jinn, Oz, and Salem. Ruby even says that she /will/ tell Ironwood eventually… but she goes quiet when Yang asks about how Oscar took it. We flashback to Ruby handing Oscar the Lamp since… well, she’s about to go on a mission and having a Relic/Grimm Magnet out in the open could be a bad thing. But Oscar then asks the million-dollar question; isn’t Ruby doing to Ironwood what Oz did to them? We see Ruby look conflicted… but we don’t see her response.

For now, the mission is underway with all the groups going through different sections of the Mines. We get a few bits like Clover asking Qrow about being on a team before, but Qrow responding that working alone tends to be easier. Ouch. We have Nora trying to compliment Ren’s new look… but he dodges the topic. Because we haven’t seen that kind of scene in everything in existence ever. Over with RWBY, they run into a cave-in… which causes Blake to recognize the Mine that they are in. One where an explosion happened, and while no one says it, likely killed several Faunus. Hmm… could this be the same accident that killed Ilia’s parents perhaps? Anyways, this makes Weiss feel guilty for her father’s horrible actions as well as how complacent about it she used to be. Marrow, who is also a Faunus, even pipes in about how due to Atlas’ system/society, humans always stand back and allow his kind to be mistreated despite benefiting from them while they have to do nothing. Plus there are those who still willingly abuse them, like the Schnee Dust Company. After all, again it isn’t said, but remember what we found out was under Adam’s mask…

Anyways, they’ve found a way through via a gap and send Blake in since she can fit through/see in the dark. At first, it all looks clear and with no Dust around they can just blast their way through. But things quickly change as Blake encounters the Geist Grimm. As such, Harriet breaks the wall with her weapon, which seems to give her cybernetic armor. Nice! Before they can give chase, however, they are confronted by some kind of... ugh… bug Grimm. Centipedes maybe? Evil caterpillars? IDK, but they’re creepy as Hell and with my fear of bugs, you can only imagine how much of a joy this was for me.

Cue the action sequence! We get to see some of the upgrades as Yang can now attach miniature bombs to the Grimm that she punches, while Ruby can turn her scythe blade around which increases her trajectory. JNR, Elm, and Vine also get into a fight and we see that the blades on Ren’s guns now have grappling abilities. But we also get to see what the Ace-Ops can do. Marrow has a boomerang/sword/gun hybrid and seems to be able to freeze things… not like with ice, just stop them from moving. Elm can root herself in place while Vine is more or less Mr. Fantastic from Fantastic Four, but it looks like only with his arms. Harriet has a Speed Semblance, something that Ruby excitedly points out since she too has a Speed Semblance. Make a note of that for the end kids!

Back with Qrow and Clover, they’re facing the Geist as Clover tells everyone to head for his location. Unfortunately, it’s able to possess a boulder-sized chunk of ice and begins to have more form the body. Qrow sees that a metal grate is going to collapse due to this and just barely warns Clover, but the Geist is able to go down further into the mines. Qrow reveals his Bad Luck Semblance as to why he was able to warn Clover as well as how he can’t 100% control it. But Clover reveals his own Semblance, which as we all guessed, is Good Fortune. To say that Qrow looks less than happy about it, well… no, that seems pretty accurate. Less than happy. 

Everyone reaches the location, but the Geist has already proceeded to add what I assume is Gravity Dust to its body. So they can’t just smash it the way that RNJR did in V4 since… well… I imagine that exploding Gravity Dust would NOT end well. Before RWBY or JNR can do anything, Ace-Ops is already on the move. It’s a really cool sequence! We get to see how well Ace-Ops works together, seeming to know each others strengths and able to coordinate ad improvise very well off of each other. It’s like with Team RWBY when they coordinate attacks, but there’s this more… professional, higher-skilled atmosphere when watching them in action. They also are able to coordinate knocking off the Dust Crystals and catching them before they hit the ground. It’s an awesome display that clearly has RWBY and JNR awed, and I imagine it’s going to inspire them for later on.

The battle ends with Clover using his fishing line to rip the Grimm straight out of its ice body and Harriet delivering the killing blow. Daaaamn. With the Geist gone though, Dust Crystals start to fall and Ace-Ops starts to round them up. Before Harriet can grab the last one, Ruby beats her to it with the usage of her Petal Burst. But this brings up something… interesting. Harriet helps Ruby up, but she also points out that compared to other Speed Semblances she’s seen, Ruby’s Semblance… doesn’t appear to be Speed Based. Or at least, it’s not the main thing. There may just be something more to it. We don’t get a lot of time to ponder it though as Clover reports the mission as accomplished. But we don’t end on a happy note. We see Forest dropped off back in Mantle… where he runs into Tyrian. Our episode ends with Tyrian striking with his tail, and I think you can figure out Forest’s fate without me needing to say it.

Review

So far… this is my least favorite chapter. But that’s not saying much when we’re only three chapters in. And even then, I really enjoyed this one!

Let’s go over the outfits and upgrades first. It… was a little underwhelming. I was hoping for some more character stuff like Blake debating on cutting her hair and thinking about where she is now compared to back then. Instead… we just have her looking into a mirror. Jaune we at least saw tracing his fingers over his Pyrrha sash. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the sequences fine and I LOVE the results! Everyone looks so good! Even Jaune, who’s new hair I hated the most looks great! I just wanted… well, a little bit more. Still, very least nothing drags like they’d run the risk of if they did extend it, so it is what it is. The upgrades are all fantastic as well! Not sure if we’ve seen all of them, but Ruby, Yang, Jaune, and Ren’s? Love ‘em~!

I also wish that we had more follow-up after the last episode regarding Ruby. I’m happy that Yang and Oscar did question it and I liked Blake and Weiss voicing their support for Ruby. But we don’t get to hear from Ruby about how she feels about her own choices. We can tell that she isn’t happy, but we don’t get to hear her talk about it. I know, that’s kind of her thing and it’s gonna be a matter of when the floodgates finally break open. Still, I just wish that we could hear her perspective about it, but I guess we have to wait. But I did like it being brought up and Oscar asking about it being like what Oz did to them. Take that people who called it bad writing!

Those nitpicks aside, this episode was great! We get to truly see the Ace-Ops in action and they are fantastic! Especially at the end! All of them come off as very likable and have this sense of comradery between them. They work together incredibly well, feeling very coordinated and in tandem with each other. Might be because they’re a military unit, but still. My favorite one so far is probably Harriet since imo she has the most personality with her competitiveness, but has this older sister kind of vibe. Marrow is probably a close second though, especially with how he points out how Faunus are put down by Atlas’ system. It might have been his weird way of making Weiss feel better and not put all the blame about her complacency on her since it’s very much a society issue. It was nice to see someone who seems to be on top despite his status recognize the problem is still very much existent.

Speaking of, there’s a lot of good subtle things in this episode regarding the SDC. We see Weiss push snow off a crate, and her face when she sees the company initials just screams guilt. We see her express this regarding how she used to be and how her father treated the Faunus as she recalls his anger when the accident happens. Speaking of, the possibility of it being where Ilia’s parents died? Nice! Blake’s unnerved reaction as she recognizes where they are and how she clearly feels sad about the lives lost shows how dedicated to Faunus Rights she still is and how much better her and Weiss’ relationship is. We’re likely gonna see the true darkness of the SDC this volume especially after seeing Adam’s scar/brand, and it ain’t gonna be pretty for either girl, so it’s good to have that solidarity between them.

The Mines looked like… well, a mine. So not much to say on the design work, but it was good. The fights were great, especially with Ace-Ops. Music was good, both the score and the new vocal track that played, as brief as it was. I know it's WAAAAY too early, but… SOUNDTRACK NOW PLEASE! The pacing was good. Some nice bits like Bumblebee flirting, Jaune and Nora pouting at Elm’s comment about them not dying, Ruby fangirling over Harriet’s Semblance, Qrow’s still lingering self-loathing about Team STRQ and then meeting a guy who has Good Luck powers. There are just so many good things in this episode. I still have my nitpicks like what I mentioned above, and the ‘Nora compliments Ren and gets mad when he changes the subject’ scene because it’s just so… predictable and not funny, cute, or insightful. I’d have cut it personally. But nothing in this episode was badly done. It was standard RWBY quality, which is great~

Last thing that I can think to note is Ruby’s Semblance. As we learn from Harriet, there’s more to it going on than Ruby may have believed. And… I am all for this! It’s been said multiple times how Semblances constantly grow and evolve over time, and we’ve seen that with people like Weiss. It’s been debated a lot about how it doesn’t seem like Ruby’s Semblance is simple speed with rose petals trailing her since at least Volume 4. What is the true extent of her Semblance? I don’t have an exact idea, but I do believe that the rose petals play a part in it. Especially since my headcanon for a long time is that Summer’s Semblance is being able to turn/scatter into rose petals. Which… has me concerned considering the “Thus Kindly She Scatters” inscription on Summer’s grave. Does Ruby have a similar ability? IDK, but I’m excited to find out~!

Chapter Four Predictions

So as it turns out, the thumbnail/description for this episode came out the same day as the premiere. So I have a good idea of what’s likely going to happen. Going off the title, ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ I think that this is going to mark the return of Jaques Schnee. I know, I hate it too, but it was gonna happen sooner or later. Makes sense since he’s likely going to launch some kind of campaign in Mantle and stir up trouble there that’s likely gonna effect RWBY’s efforts to help the city. Especially for poor Weiss cause as Chapter 2 demonstrated, Mantle does not have a happy view of the Schnee Family. Not sure if we’ll see Mama Schnee or Whitley, though the latter has a good chance, but yeah, asshole dad may very well be making his return. I hope that Weiss kicks him.

But on the upside, due to that and them being in Mantle, I think that we might have a very good chance of Robyn finally appearing. Chapter 4 feels like a very good place to bring her in and let her counter Jaques efforts, as well as letting us see what she and her allies can really do. She is Robin Hood after all, so she’s probably up for some thievery and mischief! We also might hear about Tyrian’s murder spree cause that’s probably gonna cause some tension between Mantle and Atlas. It’s gonna be Beacon all over again kids!

Episode Stats

Favorite Character: Harriet Bree and Marrow Armin Favorite Scene: Ace-Ops vs Geist Least Favorite Scene: Nora and Ren scene in the mines Favorite Voice Actor: Anairis Quinones (Harriet Bree) Favorite Animation: Harriet activating her Semblance against the Grimm Bug things Rating: 7.5/10

Final Thoughts

Overall, competent episode. Not my favorite since I felt it was lacking a lot of the tension and drama of Chapter 2 and the draw-in power of Chapter 1. But by no means is it a bad chapter. It accomplishes all that it set out to do and did it well. It fleshed out the Ace-Ops and made them more interesting characters that you want to see more of. It’s a fun episode that may not progress much in the way of plot or drama outside some minor bits, but it was an enjoyable watch. Which at the end of the day, is all that I could ask for~

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

im gonna just keep punching thru my WIPs so here’s some ~ign gun stuff~. i know everyone wants to talk about the new trailer and calypso stuff, i mean i do at least, but `checks list` i still have a lot of old stuff to get thru 😵

god i’ve been working on this for *three days* (yes! im not dead!)

tl;dr: i mostly just wanted to talk about how the CoV is using slag to power their guns to give them infinite magazines and ended up getting more proof for my ‘the calypsos are using eridium/slag to quickly mutate their followers and give them special powers’ theory. Also some interesting stuff about troy’s sword and his tattoos and his lil necklace things at the very bottom, if you’re interested. mostly ties it all into the new Eridian glowing stuff we’ve been seeing. they’ve moved on from purple -> red. which brings up some interesting questions...

So first I’m going over the individual IGN weapon videos, which you can find on their site here and on youtube here through HayderHype (doing god’s work). i recommend checking out this version because the ign player is not spectacular.

now to be honest im here to talk about three things from this particular vid: the areas we see in the gameplay, the new funky alien parts, and the CoV guns. the manufacturer perks are cool and all, but we already know most of that stuff. so I won’t be showcasing every gun from the video, but instead the more interesting/important bits I’ve noticed as I watched it

cool? cool!

the first area we get is definitely space rocks, im imagining this is similar to the area we see Zane in on that one promo sheet, 

(this one)

and, more importantly, the area where we will find that bigass space laser gun thing. i do believe that giant-ass gun is somewhere within Promethea’s asteroid belt.

(this one)

i am curious why the planet below doesn’t appear to have any asteroids surrounding it. maybe the giant space laser destroyed them. which i do discuss in this post here, if you’re interested in a very long read.

it could be that we’re simply on the side of the asteroids. which then makes me wonder, why are they all clustered there? it’s probably because the fuckin moon was destroyed. maybe by the giant space laser. which is also discussed in the post above 👀

it could also be elpis! the rocks are definitely gray enough lol and we don't exactly have a very good frame of reference for ‘asteroid’ vs ‘moon’. the giant space gun is out of shot, afterall.

ah. alien guns. 

i don’t think these are related to the bl1 eridian guns- not the kind we’ve seen that look similar to the Guardians in-game

that is:

this is all the same sort material as the Guardians, with their bug bits and armor and shit and these new alien barrels are all organic and squishy. (oh also take note of that purple thing on the eridian lightning, im going to bring it back later)

these new ones are definitely fuckin creepy looking, but not very bug-like at all. if they are related to eridians, it’s not through the Guardians. (as for the ACTUAL Vault Guardians/Monsters, yeah, it’s possible. i’ll get to that in a secco)

for the tentacle stuff, i know the Destroyer (not a Vault Guardian- it was imprisoned) is all ‘tentacles and disappointment’, but tbh i don’t see the asphalt lookin chunks being part of the Destroyer. and i especially don’t see manufacturers themselves harvesting the Destroyer for gun parts (Hyperion aside lol)

i could see them tying it in with the Rampagers (both fleshy with the black armor bits) but also... they’re not very tentacle-y. and how would manufacturers be getting the rampager stuff anyway? i suppose if that really is a teleportation network, then they would be on all the planets we visit. making them more available for farming. but still.

and yeah, the rocks probably have some sort of relation to Eridians, i mean we’ve seen rocks like these at Eridian dig sites and we know of a Vault Monster made out of similar-looking rocks

plus

this shloot gun, which i will get to later, appears to be made out of the same rock. 

so wtf are these tentacle things? made by eridians specifically for weaponry? a different version of the eridian guns we find on Pandora? did the manufacturers find a whole stash of these things and start making their own? instructions on how to build them? we know eridian writing is stashed across the universe, afterall.

maybe they are meant to be something different...

i honestly don’t know, and im getting off topic here, so let’s move on.

not a crashed ship. i haven’t seen ALL the eden-6 gameplay, but i’ve seen a few and they had only gone through the ship AI quest with ice-t and the very uncomfortably long jabber section. seriously, tf was that? 

also i still don’t trust wainwright. that fucker is totally gonna betray us for the key once we get him the pieces. also did you know one piece of the promethean key is on Athenas? wildin’. wait this game is just One Piece in space... fairy vearth i am coming for you... oh god, do i have a type? i think i have a type when it comes to media. ... hm.

oh, but the facility. i wouldn’t be surprised if it were Atlas. the red stripes also got me like ‘old Hyperion’, but again tf would Hyperion be doing on Eden-6? plus that one shot with Hammerlock in the new Eden-6 video makes me think it is, in fact, Atlas. 

(side note, i love when i search my blog for a post with the word ‘eden-6′ in it and i get literally everything EXCEPT the post where the hyperlink is literally eden-6. tumblr! you suck! your search function is terrible!  https://cruddyborderlandstheories.tumblr.com/post/186858618497/eden-6. but yeah this is where that hammerlock shot is, if you’re interested)

specifically this little thing here

reminds me of this labeling system that we see on Promethea, which marks different parts of the city (red and blue are the 2 i’ve seen so far)

which then begs the question: what was ATLAS doing on eden-6? back when i thought this planet was promethea, that was fine. but... it’s not. so wtf are they doing here? 

personally, i think they were researching whatever Typhon Deleon found here (or thought he would find here). We see he has historical markers across the planet, so i would not be surprised if he found something. 

to add to that, we know there’s eridian things on planet, because a. we see a eridian log in the moze gameplay. 

and b, which is new info from the recent community Q&A: those purple crystals we see contain eridian writing, and we use a “special tool” to dig them out

so glad we finally know wtf these are for lol

“There’s Eridian Writing, and you need a certain tool to get the Eridian writing and once you do, you find this across there (the planets i assume) and this Eridian Writing opens up certain things for players”. which has certainly gotten me INTERESTED AS FUCK

i know i mentioned in my post about these crystals that maybe these were parts of eridian artifacts and stuff that tannis would help us with and turn into gear. but honestly given how vague he is by saying ‘opens up certain... things’... i almost want to say skill upgrades. 

i’ve mentioned before (and actually it’s come back recently in an ask) that I really, really, REALLY want our VHs to get bonus skill trees due to Siren powers being unlocked (cause like if we do graduate to Vault Guardian then who is to say... we won’t?) and, like, sure, if they can’t break the ‘6 Sirens in the universe at a time’ rule, then mayhaps we will get some sweet Eridian upgrades through these writings to our already available skills. maybe new standalone action skills, since they’ve made it very clear you can equip any action skill you want. lorewise, it could be like how Fl4k’s skag becomes an Eridian Skag (cough LostLegionEternal cough)

or, maybe, they actually are schematics and Tannis will help us build them and we’ll get cool gear out of it. maybe vehicle upgrades or something. maybe even something pertaining to Guardian Rank (which I still think is us graduating from Vault Hunter to Vault Guardian and if thats the case then i really hope siren = vault guardian becau- okay i’ll stop sorry.). I don’t think it will be something that we MUST do for the plot, so it can’t be THAT important to the lore. Like i said in the old post, we probably will break one or two for the main story after getting the stabby brass knuckles, then we will be let loose to collect the others on our own free time. 

but yeah, the wording of “opens up” is doing me a big thonk because... well, he’s making it sound like an entirely new aspect of the game we have yet to hear about. of course he could just be using a very literal sense of the word in that we are literally opening up the crystals by smashing them open and freeing whatever is locked inside. especially because he says that specifically the Eridian writing, which we acquire with the tool, is what opens up those certain things. 

also guessing we get this glowly stabby tool from Athenas now, instead of from Atlas. I’ll explain in the Athenas post!! I promise. we have LOTS of stuff to discuss there, i’m very excited to work on it.

jesus i got off topic.

but yeah. i imagine Atlas would be researching whatever Eridian stuff Typhon Deleon found here. there’s clearly writing all over the place, with lots of eridian logs

it could also be that this is like Supamax MFG or some other production facility that was shut down and abandoned. doesn’t always have to tie back into the deep lore, as much as i want it to lol

but moving on. because good lord im not even like 2 minutes in on the first video and i have 2 more to go after this.

this area feels like the inside of the asteroid base.

there’s nothing but rocks floating outside! so i guess the theory about this being on the side of the asteroids was correct! huzzah!

poor promethea. they didn’t deserve it. also may just be some way to link up the promethea teleport system (because yeah im still standing by that theory) to the rest of the planets. or this is some way to activate a temple, or a Vault, or something Rhys wants exploded like Maliwan HQ... so many possibilities. Maybe it’s just that Maliwan was sky-bombing Atlas-held areas and he sends us up here to stop it.

so many possibilities. so little time.

moving on

looks like the place amara visits in her character trailer. given we’ve also seen the area Fl4k visits, im excited to see if we’ll also be visiting the areas from Moze and Zane’s trailers.

eyy more looks at that facility. definitely feeling like this is Atlas.

also, this appears to be similar to the window brick, mordecai, and tina stand in front of in that one shot. i know i already mention this in that VERY old post where i organized all the areas of the dev and reveal trailers, but still. good to see it’s standing up

also, if you’re wondering why i have yet to mention or show any of the athenas clips, it’s because im saving those for my next post. athenas all day babey (i am trying to use self-restraint, it’s very hard for me to not just blather on about stuff i want to talk about lol)

this appears to be the tink stripper area lol

thanks gearbox i hate it

why

big varkid!! with what looks like the HBC in the background. possibly some named badass enemy we kill for hammerlock? i can’t imagine this is big enough to be vermi.

the area with the ferris wheel!! i hope we can ride it. also that rollercoaster in the claptrap presents pandora video? omg i want to ride it sooooo badly

ah this is the jakobs family thing. part of the ship from the eden-6 demo

iirc this was where Moze is using Iron Bear during the We Are Mayhem trailer. I wonder if that’s Rhys’s office in the back or smth. very fancy

okay. finally.

the Children of the Vault Weapons. I’m actually going to showcase a few of these, because I think it’s important.

remember, the CoV weapons have infinite magazines (not infinite ammo)

so if you’ve noticed the similarities between these weapons: they all seem to be powered by eridium/slag. some have the purple piping (and with the fire/corrosive/shock elements, i have to wonder if this is similar to how slag mutated enemies will get elemental affinities) and shards of eridium sticking out of the detailing. 

given the piping will change colors depending on the element used, i definitely don’t think the glowing purple is just for aesthetic purposes and i 100% believe this plays into their infinite magazine size. i think this is somewhat similar to the Eridian weapons, in which they have infinite magazines and rechargeable ammo

(using the eridian thunder storm as reference here)

the CoV weapons don’t have rechargeable ammo, but they definitely have infinite magazines, which i imagine is a step in the right direction to recreating these eridian weapons with slag/eridium

so is this the reason that slag pool we see is ‘Holy Holy Holy’?

^ this is a glimpse at the structure below in-game spewing out eridium/slag, so we know what the full version looks like

and below is a version without slag/eridium:

i mean, it’s not like there hasn’t already been a precedent for worshipping guns and what provides them. just take a look at the bloodshot ramparts, the bloodshots worshipping Marcus as a god for providing guns to them.

i mean, even the eyeball symbolism is pretty familiar here.

and yes, this could 100% replace my other theory that the twins are mutating their cultists with eridium/slag. but tbh, i think it proves it even further.

remember this?

that piping looks really familiar, doesn’t it?

and we know goliaths in bl2 were mutated by slag/eridium/ruin exposure- it’s explained that a lot of the bandits teetering on the verge on non-human were mutated because of eridian ruins/tech (the key in sledge’s mine). so why would it be hard to believe that the twins are accelerating or activating this process using their own store of eridium/slag?

i won’t go full theory on this, because you’ve already heard me rave about it, but i think this is very nice evidence, so long as our previous assumption about the slag/eridium powering the CoV guns is true. which i believe it is

(From the Eden-6 teaser trailer)

(from the We Are Mayhem trailer)

very similar

so what the hell is in those vials?

looking at them, it’s clear the first matches up with the slag gun and the second with the fire gun. all well and good. maybe they’re bottling up that elemental goodness as sort of an ‘oh shit’ button, or just as a way to stand out in the cult, show off your allegiance to them by mimicking Troy’s vials (which i suppose i’ll have to touch on in another post, because iit will derail everything)

so i imagine this is provided by the cult- maybe because they are powering up their cultists using slag, in a very similar way to how they’re powering up their guns. forcibly mutating them and all that- speeding up the process that normally happens somewhat slowly on Pandora. afterall, isn’t that what the cultists are being promised? ‘special powers’.

but there is more

we know Tyreen’s power is to absorb the powers of people. Phaseleech or something. and when she does it to lilith in the new cutscene, lilith simply has her Siren powers taken away and is left in a near-death state. 

which is all well and good, but when Tyreen does it to her cultists... hell, even the Sun Smashers, something different happens:

we’re even allowed to watch the process take place

even before he’s fully dead, this psycho is turning to stone, which doesn’t happen to lilith. there’s a few reasons this could happen

1. Tyreen didn’t have intent to kill. she wanted to leave Lilith for the dogs- the Eridium-tier cultists

2. Lilith’s Siren powers are sort of like a shield- instead of immediately turning to stone under the effects of Tyreen’s powers, she instead loses her abilities

3. the bandits are different from Lilith, and that is because of her abilities as a Siren.

im going to go for the 3rd option.

we know bandits on Pandora are mutated by the slag/eridium/eridian ruins surrounding them. Krieg, an off-worlder, is taken into a hyperion testing facility and tested on with slag, which turns him into the badass psycho we know today. that gives him the exposure to slag/eridium/eridian ruins/tech. you get the deal. (im just going to call it eridium in reference to all eridian ruins/tech/slag/eridium.) and like Krieg, we see badass psychos roaming the wastes, even before Hyperion slag testing began to take place. this is because of their exposure to eridian ruins/technology across pandora- eridium hadn’t appeared until after the first Vault opened. 

so i dont think it hard to believe that these bandits are still being affected by exposure, to the point that eridium had begun to build up in their bodies, leading to these physical mutations and new elemental powers. this happens to the wildlife of Pandora, too. Badass elemental skags, fire spiderants, even bloodwing shows (a speedrun version of) this in the WEP. some muted bandits include badass psychos, goliaths, burning psychos, slagged psychos. etc, etc.

i think Lilith, being a Siren, is protected from the effects of ‘background radiation’ of eridium. she’s able to process eridium without any byproduct, and we can assume she’s converting it fully into energy/power (as Sirens are able to charge Vault Keys with it). we could argue that her Siren skill gain in borderlands 1 is explained by her being near eridian ruins for a majority of the game (slow buildup of background ‘radiation’), then in bl2 her skills skyrocket to an entirely new level (teleportation) because of her direct contact with pure eridium. and since she’s able to convert eridium into power, she doesn’t turn to stone when Tyreen absorbs her lifeforce- she has no buildup in her body.

unlike her, the bandits who spent a long enough time (7 years is long enough for the Sun Smashers, I would imagine. also probably long enough for Vaughn to start losing it- just a little bit) on Pandora to continuously absorb this eridium have a significant build-up in their bodies, so when Tyreen absorbs their life forces, the eridium already inside them is drawn out, or reacts with her powers, and turns them to stone/eridium crystals.

anyway.

moving on to more gun stuff

Borderlands 3: Every Gun Maker and Their Perks

like the last vid, im just going to be going over some interesting areas and guns if i see any.

>hold down the trigger to charge the gun and release a powerful pulse shot

did they fix Maliwan guns??? iirc from the demo you had to charge them to shoot at all! that’s wonderful!

also

looks like Zane might have an ECHO log somewhere in the Meridian Metroplex, if the VHs don’t have ECHOs in their inventory as starting gear (im curious if the ones on Sanc-III are supposed to replace that, or if they’ve only been put there for the demo...)

the reason im assuming this is an ECHO is because ur character’s icon will only appear if ur coop player is speaking and they’re far away from you (no coop partner in this clip), or if you’ve activated an ECHO log. there may be a as-of-yet unrevealed option, like maybe the twins playing back a recording, but we’ll see.

so, ahhh if ur in this general location, be on the lookout for anything glowing like a quest item

also also im surprised there are players who are using Zane and not playing with 2 action skills. that’s like... sort of his biggest thing.

ah well, that’s literally the only interesting thing outta this video, so moving on

5 of the Craziest and Awesome Guns in BL3

yeah this is the one gun i wanna talk about- i said i was going to be bringing it back later on and i wasn’t joking

so it should be pretty obvious by now this thing is Eridian. if the symbol on the top didn’t convince you, and the rocks didn’t either, then the diamond should, bc apparently that’s just, like, an Eridian thing now. apparently. no im not salty this shape just started appearing only in the 3rd game. that’s ridiculous.

... okay, only a little, i guess.

personally, i think this gun exists to explain why the Vaults and Vault Monsters drop loot that is... from our world/time period. Feed it Eridium, get guns out. how does it actually make gun? iunno. looks like it’s powered by fire, though. or whatever is in Troy’s sword/the cool knife knuckles

this stuff

orrrr

this stuff.

which... makes me think Troy doesn’t use his sword in the intro fight because he doesn’t have it yet. he might be waiting to get it back (upgrade?) or until he’s strong enough to hold it- or he just hasn’t found it yet. 

i mean, the boy can’t even pick himself up off the ground and suddenly I’m supposed to believe he can wield a sword that’s probably heavier than he is? he’s probably waiting to be full strength to use the damn thing.

and if he doesn’t have it yet, i would imagine they find it on Athenas or in one of the other temples while using the teleportation network (i will die for this theory until im proven wrong) and yoink that shit. i mean, who wouldn’t?

which also is making me wonder if the stuff around his neck is the new (old? before/after eridium?) Eridian energy/power. which i guess means we’re looping all the way back around to theory #1: wtf are those things around troy’s neck lol

it would be interesting if he’s gotta hold onto this for his powers or something. double interesting if Tyreen is making him use it because he’s useful, even though it’s killing him- if he’s useful somehow (like thru distributing the powers Tyreen holds, like i’ve been saying with my input/output twins theory for quite some time now) then Tyreen NEEDS him to do this for the cult.

i mean, his tattoos do glow the same color as the Eridian tech when they’re transferring what i assume is energy between the two of them

so it's not too hard to believe that his tattoos are somehow tied to this eridian tech mess. 

i almost wonder if this is like... a new version of Siren we haven’t seen yet. one not linked to Eridium like the other Sirens are. maybe created before/after the eridians had access to eridium (before they discovered it/locked it away in the Vault of the Destroyer), or an artificial one produced by the red-based eridian tech- and that’s why his tattoos are the same color as all the new eridian stuff we’ve been seeing.

but, eh. it’s whatever. this is a gun post, not a Calypso post. i’ll go in depth in a later post :^) (i am trying to stay on topic now. we’ll see how long this lasts lol)

[jacobmybeloved]

Far Cry 5/FCND Superhero AU Pt. 2

Can’t say when I’ll actually start writing for this if at all. If you are interested please let me know! Anyway, below the cut: Thomas Rush, Sharky, and my FC OC’s.

[Part 1 Here - Seed Family]

Name: Mai Alias: Athenia Species: Meta human Abilities: Agility, superhuman strength, superhuman durability, unarmed combat, swordsmanship, healing factor, retractable claws

Mai has been on her own for as long as she could remember, not that she remembers much. Suffering from amnesia at a young age, and jumping from foster home, after foster home, Mai set out on her own after incidentally crippling a classmate during an after-school bout. At sixteen she was taken in by philanthropist John Seed, making her a part of his superhero task force initiative. Given the code name Athenia, Mai became a trademark figure. It did not last long, however. By eighteen she left the group leaving little to no trace behind and began to participate as a “small-time fighter” in illegal meta human arenas. She worked her way up to work as a bodyguard for one of the States lead traffickers, Ramona King, also known as The Raven. After a chance meeting with one of Raven’s newest “merchandise”, Mai devises a plan to get herself and this particular child out of the state. As fate would have it, the well-meaning police officer turned vigilante, Thomas Rush, inadvertently disrupts her means of escape, causing the trio to go on the run. With Raven’s forces after them, and the perplexing villain, The Father taking a keen interest in the child, Mai is led down a road that unexpectedly leads her on the path to finding out who her birth parents are.

Name: Thomas Rush Alias: N/A Species: Human Abilities: Agility, criminology, hand-to-hand combat, weaponry, military protocol, marksmanship, stealth, computer hacking

Thomas Rush grew up reading about Superheros and wanted nothing more than to be one himself. The closest approximation he could achieve was joining the military straight out of high school. After two tours, he returned to the states, marrying his high school sweetheart, eventually having a daughter named Mila. Life was good for a time for the former soldier. With his prior service in the military, he felt right at home, cruising through the ranks up to sergeant. To celebrate his new promotion, the Rush family took an outing to the local mall, celebrating not only his new position but also Mila’s birthday. Tragedy struck quick and swiftly, however. With meta human trafficking on the rise, children became the ultimate target and the criminal underworld’s newest currency. Mila was snatched right under her parent’s noses while at the mall, sending Thomas’ life spiraling out of control. After three months of searching, all of Thomas’ leads ended up cold, leaving the father grieving and putting immense stress on his marriage. His wife eventually left, unable to deal with the loss of their daughter. Thomas Rush, however, could not give up so easily. Using his resources at the police precinct, he uses each waking moment searching for any lead that may lead him to find his daughter. Eventually, he adopts his own vigilante moniker, allowing him access to places that would have been inaccessible by wearing his badge. His investigation leads him down a rabbit hole, leading him to the heart of the meta human trafficking ring, meanwhile leading him to team up with the enigmatic and extremely powerful meta human Mai.

Name: Vittoria Arya-Giordano Alias: Scarlett Banshee Species: Meta human Abilities: Sound immunity, multilingualism, boxing, sound manipulation, sonic scream, charisma, durability.

The daughter of Italian immigrants, Vittoria Arya-Giordano has had only one dream: becoming a superstar. Discovering a love for music and singing at a young age, her parents facilitated her passion by hiring instructors and saving up every penny to send her to the most renowned schools of performance arts. During her senior year for her final recital, Vittoria’s lament meta human abilities came to manifest. Vittoria leveled the theater in which hundreds had come to watch her performance, killing everyone, her parents included. Vittoria survived miraculously, the mass body count attributed to a structural error. Vittoria spent the next ten years honing her abilities, though her dreams of performing were now dead. Her talent, however, did not go unseen. Vittoria was recruited by entrepreneur and philanthropist John Seed as part of his “marketable” superhero division, the United State's answer to National Security against the threats of international meta humans. Vittoria served dutifully, becoming a high profile figure, achieving the fame she had always dreamed of. Though, as always with fame, there was a darker side to it she could not have anticipated.

Name: Nayeli Lamb Alias: The Judge Species: Human Abilities: Archery, acrobatics, martial arts, tracking, weaponry, swordsmanship, gadgetry, hand-to-hand-combat, firearms

Nayeli and her older brother Takoda were born to Ciaran and Sokanon Lamb. Her father hailed from a prestigious family while her mother came from an impoverished background, their union causing unparalleled drama. As Nayeli grew older, she became aware of her father’s shady business practices following the death of her mother, the result of a business deal with the citie’s many mob leaders gone wrong. Idolizing the rise in meta human news, Nayeli Lamb and her brother took up their own mantles, taking on the persona of The Judge and SabreWulf. The teens took down many a villain and mob boss, particularly after Takoda began to manifest meta human powers himself. They continued their work well into their twenties until Nayeli was kidnapped, abused and tortured by the notorious villains, The Father and The Mindbender. By pure luck, she had struck a romantic bond with The Father’s henchman-brother, known simply as The Wolf of Sparta who helped her escape. Nayeli hung up her mantle after discovering she was pregnant with The Wolf’s child. The child however was stolen from her, a devastating loss the Lamb never really got over. Nayeli ended up having a second child with The Wolf years later after encountering one another again. Nayeli kept the children a secret from the Wolf till this very day. The Lamb eventually established herself as a successful psychologist and living a semi-normal life with her son. She grew estranged from her brother who continued to carry on with his alter-ego, feeling this was his true self. After his death at the hands of The Mindbender, she debated taking up her mantle as The Judge once more. It wasn’t until the disappearance of her son that she donned her cape and mask once more in an effort to find him.

Name: Charlemagne Victor Boshaw IV Alias: Sharky, Warden Awesome Species: Metahuman Abilities: Pyrokinesis, firearms, no filter

Charlemagne Boshaw did not have a happy childhood, but from his outward behavior, one may never know or find out. Birthed in a gas station bathroom and left in the toilet, Sharky as he likes to be called, led quite the tumultuous childhood and adolescence. While many would define him as a serial arsonist, the Boshaw man would prefer the term "fire enthusiast". What many didn’t know was that these many fire incidents were the result of Sharky being a pyrokinesis. After burning down his family’s trailer park three times, Sharky was forced on the run. His path eventually led him to Nayeli Lamb, with whom he became close friends with. Together, they lead the charge in finding her missing son, Malik.

Name: Ramona King

Species: Meta human

Alias: Raven

Abilities: Animal control, animal driven abilities, enhanced speed, agility, enhanced vision, combat skill, animal telepathy

Born on the east coast and raised by a single father, Ramona King was brought up with strict discipline and a need to succeed no matter the cost. Her father groomed her to be the perfect candidate for the Boston police force. By the time of her induction into the police academy however, her dormant meta-genes began to surface. Her abilities gave her an edge over her other officers. Her animal like abilities gave her a sixth sense rivaled only by those in the animal kingdom themselves. With her hardworking being relayed in flimsy promotions and measly raises, she began to sing a different tune. Leaving the police force, Ramona struck out as a small time cat-thief before eventually becoming a kingpin herself. Ramona ended up taking her underworld business out west, using a nightclub as a front to hide her extracurricular activities: money laundering, drug production, and more importantly, meta human trafficking.

Name: Malik Lamb

Species: Metahuman

Alias: N/A, referred to as The Asset

Abilities: chlorokinesis, toxic immunity, bio-fission, metamorphosis, accelerated healing, ability to heal others

Malik may only be six years old but he has had a whirlwind of a life so far. The second born child, created out of the union between The Judge and The Soldier, Malik knows nothing about his family’s complicated history, only that he was born with a target on his back. Since the day was born, he exhibited meta human capabilities though his family did their best to keep it a secret. After his Uncle Takoda’s death revealed that the Lamb family is a carrier of the meta-human gene, the family was thrust into the spotlight by news media outlets and criminal organizations. Despite being put under twenty-four hour surveillance by his grandfather, that did not stop those closest to the Lamb family to seize the boy for themselves in return for a quick buck. As the newest addition to Ramon King’s collection and hundreds of miles away from home, Malik saw no happy ending in sight, at least until a fateful meeting with another meta human and a vigilante police officer lead him on an unexpected journey.

Name: Dayana King

Species: Human (Cyborg)

Alias: Dove

Abilities: Flight, Electronics expert, speed, superhuman strength, cybernetic implants/enhancements, endurance, technopathy, invulnerability, cloaking abilities

As a fellow member of philanthropist John Seed’s superhero initiative, Dove is one of the most respected public faces of the meta human community. After a tragic accident left her father dead and herself in a near-death state, Dove underwent extensive life-saving surgeries with cybernetic enhancements at the request of her mother. Dove was, shortly after being discharged, inducted into the superhero initiative. While her co-hort Vittoria appeals to the more lavish side of the superhero community, Dove is seen as the public face of selflessness and social justice, though behind the scenes, that could not be more further from the truth. When not in front of the news camera, the cybernetic hero acts as a hired thug to Mr. Seed, taking out those who would oppose the use of meta humans overseas. Dove, having become disillusioned with her employer Mr. Seed and the antics of her criminal mother, Ramona King, Dove has debated hanging up her mantle once and for all. A chance meeting with an old friend though leads her to question whether she is doing more harm than good.

[theinquisitivej]

A Trio of Reviews – Catching up on Bumblebots, Peppy Maries, and the (Oscar) Favourite

I don’t go out to the cinema much in late December. I don’t drive, and I always visit family in a part of the country where a cinema isn’t exactly in walking distance. This hasn’t been much of a problem over the last few years, as there’s usually only one film out that I’m aching to see, and that’s often the one movie we all go out to see together. This most recent December though? It was nuts! All four of the big blockbusters that were playing were films I was interested in and excited to check out. Once the holidays were over, I had a lot of catching up to do. I’ve since seen all but one of the December releases (ironically enough the one I didn’t see was the one that, judging from its box office, everyone else went to go see – Aquaman), plus one other film that was weird, fascinating, and has been well received as a critical darling. So, here’s this week’s trio of reviews for The Favourite, Mary Poppins Returns, and Bumblebee, in the order I saw them in.

The Favourite

Artistically impressive but deliberately unpleasant.

         The Favourite caught my attention when I first saw the trailer because it was a period drama that revelled in the fashion, the art, and the general finery of the early 18th Century, and yet the camera angles were strikingly different from what I’ve seen in other period dramas. The genre can be hit-of-miss for me, but every shot I saw in that trailer was doing something that interested me.

         There’s a lot to chew on when it comes to the visual presentation of the film. Characters are often shot from low angles, and while this can make some characters seem confident and of noble stature, it also creates an uneasy feeling when we see people showing their vulnerability and flaws. Shooting people from this angle frames them as if they’re towering over the camera, and when you combine this with the magnificent attire on display, the visuals should, in theory, present the subject in their best light. But Queen Anne, played by the immeasurably skilled Olivia Colman, is often shown to be feeble and susceptible to manipulation from such angles, and we see many others be vulgar, cruel, and inhuman in ugly ways. The film shows a familiarity with the beautiful elegance of the film’s setting and other examples of the period drama, and it subverts your expectations time and time again by gradually turning your sympathies around on the characters you expect to like and expect to hate. It points the camera directly at the most horrible aspects of this world and its people, and there’s a strangely captivating quality to that. It’s ugly, but it’s magnetic as well.

         The three performances at the heart of the film are what sustain your interest throughout The Favourite, because all three of the actresses are on top form. Emma Stone plays Abigail in a way that has her act very differently depending on who she’s talking with, showing just how hard she’s working to stay afloat in this world of politics where she’s at a disadvantage, giving a performance that keeps you guessing what her true nature is for much of the runtime. Rachel Weisz evokes such commanding authority and confidence as Lady Sarah, wearing each of her impressive outfits better than anyone else in the film because you believe that she deserves the station she’s acquired for herself, even if she is ruthless. Olivia Colman has taken a lot of the focus as Queen Anne, being the one to snag the ‘Best Actress in a Leading Role’ category while Stone and Weisz have been relegated to ‘Supporting Role’ nominations. All three of them equally deserve to be called leads, and to tell the truth, I’m pretty sure Queen Anne has less screen time than either of the other two protagonists. Nevertheless, all three of these actresses deserve praise for their performances in these leading roles, and Colman is no different; she expresses a wide range of emotions with sharp sincerity, always making her scenes uncomfortable to watch because you really feel like you’re in the room with someone having an emotional breakdown and you have no idea how to help them. These actresses are excellent and make The Favourite worth watching even without all the other impressive features the film has to offer on top of this.

         The flipside of The Favourite doing so much to emphasise the rotten nature of this world and its characters is that, while the visuals and all the formal features of the film are praiseworthy, the final shape of the narrative has so little warmth to it that it leaves me feeling a little cold towards it. The film is a hundred percent committed to its vision of unflinchingly showing you the harsh ugliness underneath the elegant surface of this point in history, but because of this I felt disengaged with many of the character’s journeys because they would do awful things to other people for selfish reasons, and they did so with such little humanity that I simply didn’t want to see them succeed, nor were any of them appealing enough to make seeing them succeed feel satisfying. The only character I had any sympathy for by the end was Queen Anne, as she’s a woman in desperate need of help surrounded by people who’re only interested in her as a means of furthering themselves. There is some dramatic meat to that, and the bleakness of it is presented with enough purpose to make me think about the film for a long time after I was finished watching it. After all, history isn’t always satisfying, and it’s filled with people who did terrible things to get ahead, so this film would probably be compromised in its vision if it did try to make this unflinching look at this particular point in history and then deliver a narrative where good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. But there’s only so far that a film with as little compassion in it as this can go before my spirit gets tired of seeing mistreatment and hopelessness. The Favourite’s technical qualities are a treat for the mind, but its general outlook is draining on my soul.

Final Ranking: Silver.

The Favourite is coarse, and the emphasis of selfish people being terrible does wear on me and get in the way of me engaging with the motivations of several characters. But the technical skill on display in the cinematography, the lighting and colour coordination, and the three central performances come together to make an impressive piece that, even with my reservations about the story, results in a fascinating and distinct film.

 Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Poppins Returns is a sequel to a classic film that follows the framework of its predecessor so closely it’s almost beat-for-beat. And yet even with this deliberate mimicking of Mary Poppins, it also somehow tells a different story and doesn’t come across as if it’s resting on its laurels. At the point in the film where the original would be playing ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’, Returns has a song about putting an imaginative and fun spin on everyday activities. When you’re thinking that it’s time for a trip to an idyllic 2D animated landscape, Returns obliges. If you’re realising that we’re scheduled for a ‘Step in Time’ music number, Returns gives you one with lamp-lighters instead of chimney sweeps.

         But if you think that reprises of ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ or ‘Feed the Birds’ would be an easy slam-dunk of nostalgic ecstasy that the film would be foolish not to go for, you’d be surprised. Apart from the odd line of music here or there that’s snuck in at just the right moment to make you remember the original film, none of the original songs are to be found, and that works immensely well in Returns favour. The movie is already lifting the structure of the original film wholesale; if it took anything else from it we’d be approaching live-action remake levels of similarity. Instead, the new songs are there to stand on their own, and they mimic the sound of the Sherman Brothers’ music closely enough that you feel elated when the film wants you to be having a good time, and deeply moved when it wants you to sob your eyes out. But they’re also different enough and of unique enough subject matter that the new songs by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman (whose previous song writing work includes the Hairspray musical) feel totally distinct, even if they do have a familiar sound to them. Some of my favourites include Emily Blunt’s playful performance of ‘Can You Imagine That’, the amazing choreography of ‘Trip a Little Light Fantastic’, and of course the tender bittersweetness of ‘The Place Where Lost Things Go’.

         The casting also holds up across the board. Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, and Joel Dawson play Annabel, John, and Georgie, the three children of the now adult Michael Banks. They strike the right tone for the central child characters in a Mary Poppins story, demonstrating a decent balance between being impossibly sweet-natured but also strong-headed enough to say what they feel as they feel it and sometimes cause trouble because of that. It’s difficult for me to think of many distinguishing characteristics which mark each of them out, but in all honesty I could say the same about the original Banks children, even after all those viewings. Plus, having three children rather than two does shift the dynamic enough to make the experience feel different. Ben Whishaw plays the adult Michael Banks, who grew up to be an artist who’s struggling to make end’s meet through his work at the bank, so while he did pursue a creative life that marks him out as a different man to his father, he also resembles him in many ways, and clearly risks making the same mistakes that he did. But the thing that resonates the most about his character is the set-up that his wife passed away not too long ago, and the whole family is still coming to terms with the hole this has left in their lives. Whishaw’s performance stabs at your heart, conveying how helpless Michael feels without her, but also how hard he’s trying to not show this to the rest of the family. His resolve to soldier on reminds me of the long walk Mr. Banks takes at the end of the original, knowing he is most likely going to be fired, but moving on anyway. The connection between the two characters is well thought out, and Whishaw impresses immensely. There’s not as much time dedicated to the grown-up Jane Banks played by Emily Mortimer, which is a shame, but it does feel right to see her be inspired by her mother’s activism as a suffragette and campaign for worker’s rights. Lin-Manuel Miranda fills in the Bert role of the lovable guide who’s savvy to Mary’s unknowable nature as Jack, an apprentice that Bert seems to have more-or-less raised himself. Miranda sings his songs with such cheery charm that they instantly transport you back to the world of Mary Poppins, demonstrating his golden touch when it comes to musicals, surprising none of the fans of his previous work, including Hamilton and the songs from Moana. Finally, Emily Blunt is another transcendent Mary Poppins. Yes, we now have two cinematic portrayals of the same character which are different, but both stunning. She accentuates some of the aspects I most enjoy about the character, namely the prim, immaculate composure that oozes authoritative control, but can instantly, effortlessly transform into cheeky playfulness before your eyes. She nails it, and as far as I’m concerned, we now have two Mary Poppins performances that are practically perfect in every way.

         This review is already running long, so I’ll get through this quickly, but… my God, did seeing traditional 2D animation in the style of Disney’s original hand-drawn pictures on the big screen again in 2019 move me beyond words. There’s plenty of quality 2D, non-CGI animation out there in different forms, whether its in television, short films, the labour of love that animators are putting out there on the internet, or anime, but we really do need more of this mode of animation out there. There have been some truly beautiful 2D animated films over the last decade, but I want to see more of this kind of genuine effort from Disney, the company that put this cinematic hand-drawn animation on the map for western audiences. This beautiful artform needs to be preserved and cultivated, and I hope this is a step towards Disney doing more to help with that.

         I will admit that Returns following Mary Poppins’ structure so closely did take me out of the film to a degree, as it makes me more aware that I’m watching a sequel that’s very deliberately aping the film that came before it, which makes it feel less organic than it could have been. To be fair, I’m not sure what else you could have done to make it have as strong a connection as it does to the first film. There’s also an unnecessary sequence here or there which are intended to be thrilling but I never felt like there was much tension to them, such as the race against the clock at the end. It doesn’t reach the heights of the original, but wasn’t that always going to be the case? In every other respect, this film is a delight and a satisfying emotional journey.

Final Ranking: Silver.

You can’t watch Mary Poppins for the first time again. But this film nevertheless gives you a taste of what you felt, whether it’s that joyous exuberance of having a jolly holiday with Mary, or the bittersweet reflection of an adult acknowledging that time keeps pressing on, the seasons change, but you can still find the magic in today.

 Bumblebee

The director of Kubo and the Two Strings directed a Transformers movie.

I’m currently doing academic research into the history of American stop-motion animation. I plan for one of my chapters to be on Laika and their four (five by the time I finish, though I hope there’ll be even more than that) excellently crafted films, including Kubo. Watching Bumblebee, I noted a few similarities between it and Kubo, such as a young main character going on an emotional journey as they struggle to come to terms with the death of one or more of their parents, and a celebration of the emotive powers of music that enable us to express our inner feelings, as well as Travis Knight’s general appreciation for certain specific older songs in general. So yes, watching Bumblebee did make me reflect on the approach to filmmaking of a director I’m deeply invested in for my work at the moment. What I’m saying is that watching a Transformers movie was a productive part of my ongoing academic research, and that is a bizarre place to find myself in.

But what’s even weirder than that is that one of these Transformers movies turned out to be a legitimately great film that I kinda love.

         Everything that muddied the waters of past Transformers films that Michael Bay was involved in has been stripped away, and the simple narrative framework that exists underneath all of that has been strengthened by a script and style of presentation that knows how to make the most with very little. The majority of the film can be summarised as “a girl and her pet car”, and while the sceptical might call that inane, the people involved in making Bumblebee work hard enough with that premise to make it work for a full film.

         Charlie, a teenage girl and the human protagonist of the film, has lost her father and is upset that the rest of her family has moved on (her mother remarried). Her dad was very supportive of her, and now that he’s no longer around, Charlie is deeply dissatisfied with the person she’s become since her father died, and she doesn’t believe she can complete certain tasks that mean a great deal to her without her father being there to help. Charlie feels she hasn’t turned out to be the amazing person her dad believed she could become, and it’s possible that she’s afraid that she’s letting not only herself down, but the memory of her father as well. Meanwhile, Bumblebee is a Transformer that was tasked with going ahead of the rest of the Autobots to safeguard Earth and be ready for when the rest of his comrades arrive on the planet to continue the fight against the Decepticons. But soon after he lands, he gets involved in a fight to the death that he almost loses. Gravely wounded, he uses the last of his strength to disguise himself as a yellow 1967 Volkswagen Beetle. Some time later, Charlie finds him, and what she thinks is a broken-down abandoned car comes into her possession. Charlie fixes him up in the hopes of having a working car that she can use to get away from things, but in the process, Bumblebee instinctively transforms and reveals himself. Bumblebee’s injuries have destroyed his capacity to speak and have left him with no memories of his past. After cementing the connection between these two individuals who each need help in order to heal from the trauma they’ve gone through, the rest of the film takes its time to reinforce this bond, resulting in a touching family sci-fi film with a friendship that I believe will be just as enduring as its various sources of inspiration, from E.T. to The Iron Giant.

         Without being overstuffed, the film’s pacing benefits immeasurably, putting all its energy into making this friendship as sweet and fun to watch as possible. Hailee Steinfeld is fully engaged as Charlie, putting 110% into her interactions with the digital creation of Bumblebee. The emotions she displays at the different points of her relationship with the adorable Autobot are charmingly heartfelt. Whether she’s anxious about Bumblebee being discovered, jubilant at this chance of newfound freedom and a friend to experience it with, or angry and defensive when parts of her past with her father get unearthed, Steinfeld is always putting everything into this, even when her main acting partner isn’t there on the set alongside her. Which brings us to why having a director with a history in animation can do wonders for a film centring on a digital creation, because the Bumblebee in this movie is precious, lovable, and so captivating to watch. The design is streamlined so that every moving part serves a purpose, and that purpose is always to convey the inner thoughts and feelings of this robot. His expressions are dripping with soulful looks of his timidness, compassion, or mischievous side that never veers too far away from his well-meaning nature.  He may be made of metal, but this CGI creature is so full of life. Both the arcs and the performances of these characters are relatively simple, but they’re executed with such consideration that they hit home in a remarkable way for me.

         I could go on about how much I enjoyed the measured action that’s presented through restrained camera movements that clearly frame the subjects of the shot, or how I engaged with the action as much as I did because it consistently featured characters I was invested in or interested by, or how the actions characters took within these sequences offer insight into their general outlook, but I’ll leave it at that barely veiled summary. Bumblebee draws inspiration from several well received family sci-fi films with a lot of heart to them, and some of the positive parts of the action and general aesthetic of this live-action Transformers world are owed to the groundwork provided by Michael Bay’s films. But even if Bumblebee owes some credit to other films that have preceded it, it understands the deeper reasons for why the aspects that worked in these other properties were as successful as they were, and it weaves that informed technical prowess of storytelling and filmmaking with genuine love. Love for the idea of Transformers, love for coming of age classics with a fun twist to them, and a beautiful friendship between two characters who each heal from the love they show each other.

Final Ranking: Gold.

The film is a delight for its simplicity and earnestness, but that doesn’t mean there’s a lot of technical skill on display in the performances, the animation, or its use of colour and camerawork. It warms the soul, and my mind comes back to it more often than I’d ever expected. It’s got the touch.

[chloeywoey]

hi everyone! i’m jay (24, est, she / her) and i’m so excited to be here! this is chloe, my social media obsessed darling who’s faker than a three dollar bill but a good person at heart. underneath the cut is an obnoxiously long intro. i’ll be around tonight to plot, and i’ve got a three day weekend so i’m super pumped to get some good connections going and get active on the dash :))) 

BASICS

full name: chloe ann lautsch age: twenty-one birthday & star sign: february 6th, aquarius birthplace: festus, missouri  sexuality: heterosexual gender identity & pronouns: cis female, she / her    housing: audax  occupation: social media influencer  + traits: progressive, business-savvy, independent, imaginative, go-getting, determined, kind-hearted, take-charge - traits: inauthentic, dishonest, ashamed of her past, perfectionist, performative, untruthful, closed-off  song: sampaguita by navvi

BACKGROUND

— chloe was born in missouri to a mother that was pretty much useless as a parent. her mother, deb, was a bar fly who would go home with almost any man who’d so much as buy her a drink. she inevitably ended up pregnant with chloe, but was woefully unprepared for motherhood. this led to chloe growing up without much structure, forced to be independent. the home was dysfunctional, as the only thing worse than deb’s parenting skills was her taste in men. chloe often found herself having to bandage up her mother’s wounds or with wounds of her own after drunken altercations.  — all things considered, chloe did well in school. though socially, she struggled. it was hard making friends when she couldn’t invite them over without fear they’d walk in and find her mother passed out on the couch. or when people made fun of her due to rumors about her mother. chloe never had much money or nice things in general. and though this made it harder to fit in, it also instilled a fiery work ethic in her. by sixteen she was working two jobs, trying to study for her algebra tests while manning a mcdonald’s drive through or babysitting local kids.  — with everything going on in her life, chloe barely had time to breathe, let alone eat or sleep. with exhaustion taking its toll and SATs coming up, she began buying adderall to help her get through long days and nights. later, her mother began dating a scummy dealer and chloe would steal from his stash, developing a cocaine habit. but chloe was always good at making herself and her life look like something it wasn’t. she mostly did it on social media, after finally saving up enough to buy an iphone.  — at age seventeen, chloe petitioned for early graduation. and with her teachers basically clamouring over themselves to write her letters of recommendation, she was set for college. however, she had no idea what she wanted to do. her instagram had developed a surprisingly decent following for a girl from bumfuck missouri, mostly due to her seemingly “perfect” life. she loved the internet. her instagram followers didn’t know that she lived in a trailer or that her mom was a falling-down drunk. unlike her small town where reputation preceded people, on the internet, people only knew what she wanted them to know. she could make her life be anything. she could reinvent herself. so she’d put together cute outfits, not letting her followers know everything she wore she scoured for at goodwill. or take a carefree selfie, everyone unaware that just an hour before she’d been sobbing due to being pushed over an end table by her mother’s boyfriend. or she’d post food pictures, not saying how she had to drive 45 minutes just to get to the local whole foods and spent her entire paycheck on five items. she was incredibly talented at polishing the turd that was her life and making herself seem like a cool “it-girl” that others would want to be.    — in two years, chloe capitalized on her love for social media by starting a YouTube channel and turning her instagram into an aesthetic wet dream. currently, she has 375k instagram followers, 120k YouTube subscribers and an ebook published. she’s reinvented herself as a vegan lifestyle blogger. her aesthetic is cute cafes and green juices, smoothie bowls, selfies, bikini shots, sponsored outfit posts...the usual cringe.  — she moved to new york at eighteen. and with the city at her disposal, it became easier to live the lifestyle she had to try so hard to fake back in rural missouri. her pages grew to what they are today during her stay in new york, after which she applied to lockwood at age nineteen to study social media marketing.   — however, all that glitters is not gold. chloe isn’t exactly honest with her followers. for example, her skinny body - which she attributes to yoga and veganism - is mostly due to her cocaine addiction which got worse while in new york. she rarely eats. she’s promoting a healthy lifestyle, posting self love quotes and publishing a vegan recipe ebook yet snorting cocaine and stress smoking cigarettes. she’s practically telling people “if you follow my diet, you can look like me”, meanwhile she doesn’t even follow her own diet. she often pretends to use products just to get ad revenue. or buys something, does something or goes somewhere just for a picture opportunity. like posing with a plate of pasta just to throw it away after. so even though she portrays herself as perfect, she’s far from it. 

PERSONALITY

— chloe is obsessed with portraying her life as perfection. she’s borderline neurotic about it. she barely sees herself as a person anymore, but instead as a brand...as something to be marketed and for public consumption. social media is her career and it’s what pulled her out of poverty. it’s her only source of income, and the fear of going back to working retail and struggling between multiple jobs is always one hanging over chloe’s head. she’s absolutely not a rich kid who had everything handed to her, though you’d never know it because she refuses to talk about her past, going so far as to say her parents are dead and lie about where she’s from.  — she’s definitely fraudulent, and there’s no excusing that. she perpetuates an unattainable perfect life to her followers, which is one of the biggest issues with social media. however, she doesn’t do it out of spite or a desire to deceive, but rather she almost feels as though if her life looks perfect, her real problems don’t exist.   — chloe is a go-getter and takes initiative in her endeavors. she’s very business savvy, though that doesn’t mean she’s always been. when first coming to new york and growing her brand, she did do some things that made her uncomfortable. she took advice from predatory people under the guise of caring and only through that, she learned to advocate for herself. it also put another nail in the coffin of her ability to trust others. she’s busy and has little time for bullshit. that coupled with her trust issues lead to most of her relationships not working out well. she also fears abandonment and opening up to people, as she’s ashamed of her past and her imperfections.  — if she had a reputation around campus, it’d probably be as little miss perfect, which is a persona that can be grating. she’s generally sweet, though can be blunt and bold. she’s definitely outspoken about things she believes in and can be found handing out flyers to get more vegan options in the dining hall or standing up to a misogynistic frat boy at a kegger. but she’s also performative, not feeling real unless people are watching. doing things to be perceived a certain way instead of just being authentic. 

CONNECTIONS

— a genuine friend. someone she can just be herself around.  — ex boyfriend(s). she tends to put herself and her career first. she also is obsessed with perfection and most likely trotted her boyfriend and her relationship out on her social media, wanting him to play along with her little games. most of her relationships, therefore, feel inauthentic. — boyfriend or bff for “clout” (i hate that word asdjkdjdl). basically a fake relationship or friendship just to get insta likes lol. fun spin on a fake dating plot. or a frenemies thing, like they don’t actually like each other but pretend to.  — enemies. i’m sure she gets on people’s nerves by pretending to be little miss “i do pilates and drink celery juice and shove veganism down everyone’s throats”.    — hookups and no strings attached things — her drug dealer, since she’s still very much addicted to cocaine   — anything and everything else! <3

[citruspeel]

to gold be the gory

How Golden Kamuy Outshines Competition

A Review

-

“GORUDEEEEEEN KAMUUUUUUY!”

That’s how I first heard of Golden Kamuy – a male voice screaming its title in around 2-minute intervals. I was busy slurping ramen in the communal eating tent in Odori Park when it blared in my ear. All through the day, they played its trailer on the tent TVs over and over again. It seemed interesting, and it was quite apt to see it being promoted there - after all, we were surrounded by snow, in Hokkaido, where the story was set. I kept seeing it in bookstores and its artwas eye-catching. But as soon as I was back on home soil, my interest was gone.

Life caught right back up with me, so I forgot about Golden Kamuy completely. Not until I saw some artists I follow post amazing fan art of it on Twitter. They were all singing it praises and the official art was beautiful, so I thought, ‘aw heck, why not?’

Let me tell you: there are no reasons not to.  

SUGIMOTO, THIS ISN’T SHOUNEN ANYMORE

I’m what you call a…sporadic manga reader. I’m not up to speed with manga trends and it can take me a while to catch up. I read stuff that get my attention and when they’re recommended by my friends (I still haven’t touched Boku no Hero Academia or Shokugeki no Soma, though). I also don’t limit myself to just one genre. There are months that I devour shoujo/josei manga, like Hana Nochi Hare and Dame na Watashi ni Koi wo Kudasai. Then I’d switch over to read through volumes upon volumes of shounen manga (hi, Gintama, Haikyuu). Then there are periods wherein I just don’t read at all, devoting my time to other activities instead.  

Golden Kamuy, brainchild of artist Noda Satoru, is probably my first real foray into the seinen manga territory. The art, the storyline, the comedy, the stakes – every page told me that I wasn’t reading shounen anymore. Dick jokes weren’t dealt with caution. Gore was done with no shame. Raw Japanese scans didn’t have the hiragana reading aids. Strangely enough, it brought me back to all the titles I used to read when I was young. It made me realize all the stuff I was reading back then were very edgelord-esque and middle-school-syndrome-ish - the stuff of nightmares. Body horror, violence, gore, debauchery – CLAMP and Kaori Yuuki had primed my teenage self for all of them.

But at least, now, the edginess was dealt with a more mature hand.  

Hence it was no surprise that Kamuy ignited a sense of familiarity. I had mellowed down when I grew up (it saddens me that I really am quite a grown-up now) and, in turn, settled for fun, cheerful, romantic manga (to keep the dreariness of everyday life away, I guess haha). I got used to leisurely pacing and lighthearted comedy. Reading Golden Kamuy felt like I skydived into the unforgiving arena I had left – an arena that had been made fresher, better.  

SO FRESH, YOU’RE EATING IT RAW

What makes Kamuy an instant hit is its interesting combination of rarely-used elements. Post-War, Meiji-Era historical, early 1900s, hunting, Hokkaido, Ainu culture: can you really find another title that uses said mix? It’s no wonder people are attracted to the series.  

It also helps that the art is just spectacular. Noda’s artistic skill shines through every page, chapter, and volume cover. His poses are dynamic, his coloring brave. Sometimes the color combinations he uses just scream modern, serving as nice contrasts to the story’s historical, traditional setting. His character designs are unique and fresh – more so their personalities. Sugimoto’s facial scars are refreshing to the eye; Tsurumi’s half-corrupted face paired with a metal plate is a design I’ve never seen before. His art style brings out his designs to life in a way only he can – we’ve all seen cross-dressing men and shaved-bald convicts before, but still he was able to make Ienaga and Shiraishi look striking.

The research that he has done to make the story believable is commendable. He even has his own Ainu and Russian language consultants. Each detail he adds in shows that every page is a product of hard work. He even features real buildings in Hokkaido and Otaru (I’ve also been to Otaru and it was nice to see it in the manga!). The information we learn from Noda’s usage of the Ainu culture, hunting practices, and military details – all of this, weaved in with an intricate, explosive plot, give us a series that feels…whole. Complete.

Kamuy also spreads word about the Ainu culture in a fun and entertaining way. I haven’t heard a lot about them in the series I’ve encountered – I’ve only heard of them through Rurouni Kenshin. Nothing since then. To see them in the spotlight is a breath of fresh air. Even the Ainu themselves feel the same way – apparently they told Noda that they didn’t want to be portrayed as discriminated anymore. They wanted strong Ainu characters, and boy, did Noda deliver.

NO-PARDON PLOTTING

Because of its seinen status, you can tell that Noda has no qualms about plotting and story structure. We’re given heavy-hitting story elements right off the bat: war vet undertakes a legendary treasure hunt to help the (stolen-by-his-friend) love of his life, requiring him to track down 24 of the most dangerous insane criminals to have ever walked Japan. It’s throwing punches right from the get-go. Kamuy doesn’t baby anyone (except for bear cubs). With its pacing, convoluted plot and bevy of interesting characters, it challenges the reader to not just enjoy, but to keep up. It’s unapologetic in everything that it does – character, story, and art.  

CHARACTERS

Immortal War Vet, Morality Pet Minority Action Girl, Escape Sweet-tooth King, and so forth. They somehow fulfill stereotypes but at the same time, Noda manages to twist things to a whole new light. His milieu, too, aids in solidifying the characters he writes – the setting itself makes them unforgettable.  

It is also in his cast that we see how unapologetic Noda is. Considering that Sugimoto is to track 24 of the most dangerous criminals in the country, Noda doesn’t shy away from showcasing every kind of evil that can exist within humans. We tackle lust, greed, wrath, and avarice with a dash more reality compared to the caricatures we often see in shounen manga. Those faint of heart and innocent countenance will have a hard time stomaching Noda’s cast as it unfolds. The more I read, the more I believe Noda probably has a subscription to the Crime Investigation channel (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). Truth be told, humans are very much capable of evil, and I’m not surprised that some of his villains are actually modeled after real-life criminals.

Notable characters:

IENAGA  - a cross between Erszebet Bathory (a countess who was known to kill virgins and bathed in their blood to remain beautiful) and of H.H. Holmes, a real-life owner of an actual murder hotel in the US during the 19th century. Ienaga’s first dungeon appearance made me flashback to some of mangaka Kaori Yuki’s ornate gorefests such as Count Cain, Angel Sanctuary, and Ludwig Revolution. Noda felt no shame when he drew each and every one of Ienaga’s murderscapes. 

HENMI KAZUO – this one really made me blink when I was reading it. Serial killer Henmi Kazuo is an exploration of the depths of human depravity. Imagine, being stimulated by gore and the act of clinging to life the same way his brother did when a bear ate him. Damn, writing that sentence made me realize Noda just straight up doesn’t baby his audience. This is the stuff Netflix series Mindhunter would kill to have. This also would really need some real guts (pardon the pun) to execute.

SHITON – he also made me stop in my tracks. Shiton, a full-on bestiality-practicing scientist, was something I’ve never read about in any other manga at all. I’ve read about murderers and criminals and incestuous personalities (Kaori Yuki and George RR Martin weren’t shy about it at all), but this character was just sick. He’s a special type of crazy (although to be perfectly honest I am sure that somewhere in the world some sick human is partaking in stuff like this), and for Noda to actually use him in his manga just takes courage. He just has the balls to make you think twice, but hey, when you’re in seinen territory, everything seems to be a free-for-all. And let’s be real frank here – there’s just another level of human debauchery in real life that most people won’t even be able to stomach hearing about.  

TSURUMI – Tsurumi is the stuff of legend. He reminds me the most of Col. Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, but with his insanity turned up into eleven. He also has shades of Leonardo’s character in Django Unchained, as well as other manic-type ‘villains’ that we’ve seen in other series. But his impulsiveness and flamboyant nature places him a cut above the rest. Noda also draws him so dynamically (seriously!) that whenever he appears, your eyes are just drawn to him.  

Plus, I have to say that I’m really impressed with the level of real-world research that Noda uses in developing his characters. Tsurumi says that he has lost a part of his frontal lobe, which in turn affects his temper and his violent tendencies. This is actually true in real life, and has been seen in a high-profile murder case involving a famous football player in the United States. Because of the repetitive head injuries that the player received playing the sport, his own personality/temper had changed, and resulted him in killing his girlfriend in cold blood.

Of course we have the holy trinity of Sugimoto (classic lovable romantic badass war vet protagonist), Asirpa (butt-kicking girl-child) and Shiraishi (adorable slinky/comic relief), all gems in their own right. Noda has endeared them to us with the heartwarming dynamic between Sugimoto + Asirpa, plus Shiraishi’s antics. Character-wise, they seem to follow a specific trio formula that works in almost anything. Harry-Hermione-Ron, Gintoki-Kagura-Shinpachi, Naruto-Sakura-Sasuke. While his main character trio wins people over, his supporting cast can also shine bright on their own. Some great examples that come to mind are Ogata, Tanigaki, and Monkey-Scream Guy Otonoshin (even Tsukishima is memorable! He even has the Voldemort nose, doesn't he?).

Noda’s principle of mixing reality with caricature is also evident in his character designs. With every cast member we meet, it’s clear that Noda is far from being a sufferer of the six-faces-only syndrome. His designs do sometimes border on the impossible (Monkey-Scream guy’s eyebrows, really?), but it’s not a bad thing. If anything, it makes the visual experience of reading the comic even more worthwhile.  

THE ART

Noda is a great manga artist. Let’s start with that.  

Just look at these covers!

This coloring + color schemes!

This character design!!

I’ve been raving about his character designs for a few paragraphs now but it’s just really that good. I love his eye for composition and his impeccable framing for action and comedy. I’ve always thought that framing comics need special planning – especially action + comedy ones. You have to ensure that the first thing the reader sees in the next panel will make the action/joke understandable and clear. It takes great skill to decide what the reader sees and doesn’t see. Through Golden Kamuy’s 158 chapters, he makes use of this skill to make us laugh whenever Asirpa’s badgering them to make citatap, or when there’s a new animal part to eat, or when Tanigaki’s out showing nudes of himself to people. If the pages weren’t framed well, the jokes would’ve fallen flat. Let’s also not forget his adeptness in drawing facial expressions. This manga just does faces so well.  

(Just look at Asirpa! collage c/o the Golden Kamuy reddit)

His fight scenes are also top-notch. You just know that Noda, as a mangaka, isn’t knocking about. The flow of action in every page is just downright superb. It also shows his mastery of human anatomy – and his courage when it comes to gore. His use of crisp blacks and whites, solid lineart, thick, expressive color give us pages that are fresh and clean...I’d be a fool to dismiss his technique, because his (and his studio’s, I guess?) skill just shines through every page.

He’s also not shy when it comes to details – which is admirable. After all, it takes some great dedication for someone to give his main character distinct facial scars that will require repeated drawings in almost every single page (and give his heroine a detailed headband). It makes me wonder just how he does it with a weekly schedule. His color pages look like they were done digitally, but I still have doubts whether or not he does his chapters by hand.  

THE HEART

It took me just a few days to wolf down Kamuy. It was a romp right from the start – nail-biting, stomach-clutching, hair-raising. A truly entertaining piece, if you will. But if there’s one thing I’ve noticed with Kamuy, it’s that it somehow lacks heart.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s great! I love it. It’s superbly crafted, beautifully drawn, amazingly detailed. It’s one of the rare titles that I’m actually thinking of collecting. But it’s also a title that seems to drip technique. Like the author made it for the sake of drawing an intense, gripping title, but somehow solely for that purpose. It’s a career-conscious showcase of ability, a manufactured adventure in the truest sense. I couldn’t see the earnestness I found in Sorachi Hideaki’s Gintama, or the relatability of Nakahara Aya’s  Dame na Watashi wo Koishite Kudasai. Full Metal Alchemist showed Arakawa Hiromu’s passion for muscled men, her interest in alchemy, and views on family, while Haruichi Furudate’s love for volleyball, sportsmanship and camaraderie is undeniable in Haikyuu!!. While I do like the backstory that Sugimoto is somehow based on his real-life war-vet grandfather, I find it a bit sad that it seems to lack that personal touch I’ve always liked seeing in other manga.

But it doesn’t mean that it’s not great. I will still recommend it to everyone I know. Awesome story, great art, refreshing comedy. By all means, read it! (Not sure about the anime, but I keep hearing reviews that we’re better off with the manga). Golden Kamuy is a title of both style and substance – whether it’s about the gore or the gold, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.  

Then let me know if you agree with my upcoming post, an analysis of Sugimoto and Asirpa.

Photos c/o reddit + our lovely scanlators + Satoru Noda

[lilacskyent-blog]

Breakfast with Alex Wex

People have a million opinions and false facts about the digital world we live in today, and even more about social media. For a lot of people, they use platforms like Instagram and Twitter to follow celebrities, and some use it to bully celebrities. Most forget that that connection can also be used for good. We live in a world of amazing accessibility and, when used properly, could foster a wonderful connection between people. A prime example of this is the Will Smith Jump event that took the internet by storm, that all started with a video message. It’s incredible what can happen when you reach out to people. That was the main thought in my mind before sitting down with Alex Wex yesterday. Alex Wex is an amazing Twitch streamer, and until recently, was a producer for FBE and REACT on Youtube. As of this interview, Alex Wex has fostered a wonderful community through Twitch and Discord known as the Jank Squad, and recently broke his view count record at 210 viewers for his birthday stream, also hitting close to 600 subscribers. Given that I was in Atlanta and he was in LA we couldn’t actually meet for breakfast like I usually do so we had an amazing video chat instead.

So for starters, I just want to thank you for sitting down with me. I’ve been following your work since I first saw you on FBE and I think you’re an awesome dude so thanks. I wanna start at the very beginning because I’m really interested in your story. So, I know you went to high school in Atlanta, GA. What can you tell me about that?

I was actually born in Manhattan, my family moved to Atlanta around pre-K and I lived there up until I graduated from Riverwood High School. All my friends wanted to go to UGA or Georgia Tech but I was really interested in traveling and branching out, so I went to Ohio for college, and now I live in L.A. I made some truly amazing friends in Atlanta, and having this kind of east coast, south culture mixture has made life pretty interesting.

When did you know you wanted to work in entertainment, and what led to you becoming a producer?

When I was a kid, my family liked to record family videos, and I always wanted to see the recording. I had the eye for production pretty early. Once I started high school I got involved in performing, did Grease, The Wiz, and a few other school plays that got me interested in the performance aspect as well. In college, I majored in video production with a minor in film and sociology so I gained real knowledge of the art that happens behind the camera.

How does one go from school in Atlanta to working at FBE?

As I mentioned before I went to college at Ohio University, what got me was their video production department. I actually still work with the head of the department and speak to the alumni when they come here, advising them on some dos and don'ts. As a graduation gift, my Dad gave me an all expense paid trip to anywhere I wanted to go in the U.S for a few days and I chose L.A. So I was here, hanging out with my current roommate Johnny and we just decided to come out here permanently and live the dream. So I packed up my car and drove from Atlanta to LA and started looking for internships while working at Chipotle.I first joined FBE as an intern, then got hired as a PA and eventually was a writer for some of their scripted shows, and I worked my way up until I was offered the producer position. I loved producing because that involved every aspect of working behind the camera, from writing to filming to editing and seeing the baby from birth to fully grown. Being in front of the camera came back when FBE launched the community team and started streaming on Twitch.

Watching Alex grow on YouTube, putting reactors in hilarious challenges, eat crazy concoctions and brave some insane hot sauces that would make Sean Evans proud, his personality radiates through the screen. His passion for both sides of the camera is clear in the quality of every video he makes. However, taking part in one of his Twitch streams gives you an even more full experience. It’s like the difference between a teaser trailer and a full film.

Freddy or Jason?

Freddy is my favorite in Dead By Daylight but I love Jason, in fact, Friday the 13th was the first game I ever streamed. I’d have to say, Jason.

So, we were in high school in the baby years of YouTube, I mostly used it for music videos and anime, I think back then I only followed Phil Defranco and Timothy Delaghetto consistently. Back then, did you ever look at YouTube and think “this is going to revolutionize the world and turn traditional media on its head?”

Yeah, it’s changed everything. Almost every network has a YouTube channel now. Late night shows and things like SNL upload segments that get massive amounts of views. YouTube is still growing, testing out its premium service and channel enrollment and things like that, but it’s exciting to see where it’s going to end up.

It’s even crazier when you think about how much Twitch has already changed the game.

Definitely, I mean we’ve seen what happens when some of the top YouTube creators come over to Twitch and realize that it’s completely different from what they’re used to. It’s more like an improv radio show, you have to be on for two or three hours and avoid dead air, rather than being able to edit something together. It’s hard to be constantly entertaining when you're used to delivering a finished edit rather than a live audience. For example, Logan Paul had over 100,000 people in his first stream but after that, the numbers dropped just cause that’s not his world. Live Streaming is a constant conversation. It’s the opposite of YouTube.

I remember seeing YouTubers flood to Twitch after the adpocalypse and feeling like it made no sense. A lot of vloggers and creators who never expressed any interest in video games were all suddenly obsessed with Fortnite. However, when people like Alex Wex came to Twitch they brought genuine love of gaming, skill, and a great sense of community.

What insight can you give into the world of a producer? Especially on the internet, how to figure out what videos are gonna get views or go viral?

It’s a case by case basis depending on what you make. With Challenge Chalice, we made it during the high point of internet challenges and we had consistent challenges to make content with constantly, but this past year challenges have kinda quieted down so that got more difficult. We revisited and revised a lot of earlier challenges to make them more interesting, and that has to do with being present during every step of the process. You can’t slack off on anything, from script to editing. Being organized is key, and definitely take on the ideas and criticisms of the people working with you. Be flexible and open-minded. It’s not about balance, it’s about harmony.

3 Breakfast must haves?

Bacon

Grits

Belgian Waffles are incredible

Hack-n-slash? RPG? Or FPS? And why?

That’s complicated. Overwatch is one of my favorite games but it doesn’t play exactly like an FPS. For me, hack-n-slash for games like Dead Cells, Rogue Lights, I love games with massive replay value. I’m playing Diablo 3 on switch right now and I love it.

What games are best for streaming? Does the game you play matter?

A little, but it shouldn’t be everything. You want your audience to gravitate towards your personality. Never play something you don’t enjoy playing. I love Overwatch and it’s not one of the current hot stream games but I love playing it. Story games are complicated. If people miss parts of story mode games they tune it out cause they won’t know what’s going on. More than anything put your own spin on what you’re doing. For example, when I do Dead By Daylight I do stream vs chat where my chat helps the survivors escape if I’m playing the killer. In fact, chatting streams are starting to really blow up. It’s more about the person playing than the game they play.

What game has you hype for 2019?

That’s tough, but probably Kingdom Hearts 3. I’m excited for Smash Bros for my last game of 2018 too.

What led you to Twitch?

I’d seen some of it, but Tom had been doing it for 6 months and kept suggesting it until one day I finally did. I had a decent setup with an ultra-wide monitor and Tom’s old video capture device and I started streaming Dead by Daylight. We actually came into the name Jank Squad because of how janky the streams were in the beginning.

What led you to leave FBE and what are you working on now?

I wanted to focus more on my Twitch, and it was exhausting streaming at work on the days when I’m also streaming at home. I wanted to give my audience the most energy I could and be more involved with them as a community. I’m creating new ways to interact with my audience, more active in my Discord, and after working there for 5 years I felt stuck. There wasn’t any new learning experience and things felt a little sour and monotonous with the new direction things were going in. I’m actually getting a new camera and a green screen to upgrade the stream quality. I’d love to make partner with Twitch.

What’s the dream?

I take things to step by step. I’m definitely in a transition right now. I’m looking for another good full-time job at the moment. I’d love to be a full-time streamer but I’d also love to produce my own stuff and then stream after work. Streaming is probably one of the most consistent things I’ve ever done. Funny enough, that’s part of what got me into it cause Tom knew my leisure activity was video games, and streaming just takes that to another level. It definitely takes work, but the community you foster on this platform is unlike any other with the rating system and how everything is set up.

Alright so the zombie apocalypse is upon us and you can have 1 mortal character, one god tier video game character, and one Reactor in your survival squad, who you got?

Kratos from God of War 2 causes his chain blades would tear through everything, my regular would be Leon from Resident Evil 4 cause his aim is amazing and he’s used to zombies, and my Reactor would be Chelsea cause she knows so much about The Walking Dead. That’s my squad.

East Coast or West Coast

East, it’s where I was born and bred.

Top 10 songs or artists on your playlist right now?

Meek Mill- Intro with the amazing Phil Collins sample

Tyler the Creator’s Grinch is great for the holidays

The Cool-Lupe Fiasco

Chance The Rapper’s new songs

Paramore- Ain’t It Fun

You come from the same city I did with only a two year age difference, and you’re the first brown face I saw in relation to FBE and now you’re killing it on Twitch. Do you know how dope you are?

I appreciate that. I like to think I’m dope in some ways but I also do my best to keep it real, keep myself humble, and not letting the numbers get to my head. I hope everyone thinks they’re fucking awesome, cause they are. I have my good and bad days but I like to look at what has been built and keep grinding. Everyone is on a different time stream. I don’t want to rush things, I’m on my own path, and right now I just wanna build this community.

I for one, am excited to see what comes next from Alex Wex, including his stream later this week. You can find him @ItsMrWex

-Strawberry Smirk of Lilac Sky Entertainment