#also doc speaking from some kind of a place of experience with time healing certain wounds

[doctorbrown]

DOCTOBER '23 ⸺ 「 27 / 31 * THUNDERSTORM 」

April 6, 1986

Rain slams against the windowpane of the living room of the Brown estate and Marty can't help the way his head snaps to the window to make sure it hasn't been knocked clear off. Once, the rain pelting the earth might have been an easy to ignore white noise in the background, however after all their trips across time and far-too-close-for-comfort encounters with lightning, the storm feels like a great beast coming to collect what it's owed after being slighted.

They've cheated death and tempted fate far too many times, and it must be soon that their luck runs out.

With the way the wind howls and screams and roars around the house and the way the building shakes with each clap of thunder that sounds like he's right up there in the heavens, three feet away from the creature parting the clouds, it isn't hard to imagine something straight out of a comic book descending upon them.

❝Don't worry,❞ Emmett says, setting two mugs of steaming hot cocoa down on the table, ❝the glass will hold. And in case the storm knocks out the power, I've installed a backup generator that's strong enough to power a good portion of the house. I originally installed it as a failsafe for the laboratory, as I've had some unfortunate incidents in the past where I've caused the aptly named brownout across town, much to the chagrin of my neighbours, but with so much of the house relying on electricity, I figured why not?❞

Thunder booms in both their ears and lightning streaks across the sky, drowning the world in blinding white. Emmett settles down in one of the reclining chairs as Marty gingerly reaches for his cocoa.

The silence between them is charged and it takes only a glance to know that Marty is contemplating saying something—likely something personal, what with the way he draws into himself—that he's turning over and over in his head. Emmett doesn't need to remind him that he will never be judged for anything he tells him in confidence, nor does he attempt to pry the information out of him.

Although, he has an inkling of what might be on his best friend's mind.

❝Hey Doc, after all the time-travelling we did, do you ever feel weird about thunderstorms? They never used to bother me, but I... I keep thinking about the Clock Tower and I keep thinking about you in the DeLorean getting struck by lightning and—I thought you died, Doc. That everything I did was for nothing and I just got you killed again in the end.❞

Emmett frowns, watching as Marty's fingers curl around the cup he knows is still too-hot to the touch. This isn't something he's entirely surprised to hear; after everything they've been through, it was only natural that he develop an aversion to thunderstorms.

His own feelings on the natural phenomenon have certainly changed over the years. What started out as scientific interest in the natural phenomenon has since shifted to something he fears he doesn't know how to name. His feelings are gnarled and tangled, a messy web of complex things that cannot be picked apart so easily.

He remembers all too well the way he nearly choked on his own heart when it leapt into his throat after the first near-miss with the lightning.

He remembers the certainty of thinking he was going to die when the second bolt hit, sending him and the DeLorean hurtling through time. The subsequent suffocating guilt upon realising that he'd been thrown a century back in time, the time vehicle rendered inoperable, thus leaving Marty stranded with no way to return home.

He remembers the surprise at seeing the marks twisted and snaking up his arms towards his shoulders. The way the thunder barked its laughter over his head, taunting him as he dangled from the Clock Tower.

❝I think I understand exactly what you mean. It's a perfectly natural reaction to feel that way, Marty, after everything we've been through. Sometimes I think about those nights and the way lightning has become a key player in my inventions.❞

The parallels to Frankenstein are not lost on him.

❝I couldn't explain this to my parents, you know? They just keep asking me if something happened because oh you never used to be scared of storms before, Marty, what's wrong? They'd never understand without the whole picture and I can't exactly tell them about the time machine because then I'd have to bring up that and boy, Doc, if I could just forget that whole thing with my parents, I would.❞

Emmett feels the next sudden clap of thunder rattle around his bones and Marty jumps.

❝This all happened a few short months ago. With a little more time to process it and the events not so fresh in our minds, things will be easier. It will get better, Marty. In time.❞

The overhead lights flicker and Emmett pulls a worn-out deck of cards from his pocket; the very same they'd salvaged from the garage, still without the Ace of Spades and the Seven of Hearts. A smile slowly spreads across Marty's face and he's reaching for the deck the moment the cards are set down.

❝You wanna play—❞

Emmett returns the smile with a knowing one of his own. ❝Deal us in, Marty.❞

[dinrelsanddragons]

What injury has impacted you the most?

(Not as many responses this time, but that's because they're longer. Still a long post; responses are by Alexander; Armok; Gwyn and Raven; Vair and Shanz. Also, tw: suicide for Shanz's response.)

Alexander looked to the side. "It's... not a story I like to tell. It isn't even a big one, either." His shoulders rose up, in shame. "When my sister and I were small, our father Vair was watching us spar after giving us a lesson in fighting. My sister..." He sighed. "She jabbed me in the crotch with her practice spear and laughed when I doubled over. Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Elise, you'll never know that pain, so it's funny to you. But Father immediately came over and asked how bad it was. I'm glad he understands, at least. But it hurt like hell, I'm sure everyone understands. Father scolded her something nasty for doing that, said it was fighting dirty. But when you consider that monsters fight dirty all the time... I wonder if I'd be in for hell if I picked up fighting to protect the kingdom." He shuddered. "I guess that makes me a coward. So be it. I just don't want to suffer. I'm not my sister, I'm not the best fighter and I don't enjoy it. So why put myself through that when there are others who are stronger and better at handling it?"

"Impacted, but in a good way," Armok chortled. He pointed at his head, rapping his knuckles against his cap. "I wrestled a Hinox once. I was in my dragon form when it happened, I didn't have my scale of Sirredes yet. But I was in town, and the town watch said a Hinox was coming, so I decided to help out. Lo and behold, it turns out having four legs and two arms really gives you an edge against those things!" He laughed. "I knocked it down and punched it in the face until it got dizzy, and the militia finished it from there. Some of 'em were a bit frightened by me for taking it down, but most of them were grateful for my help. I didn't win that without getting headbutted, and the town doc said it was probably a concussion. So I was a bit slow for a month, but it healed pretty well."

At the question, Gwyn was silent. She looked to the side, then drew inward, sitting and hugging her legs. Raven decided to speak for her, after checking that their son wasn't in earshot. "... My dear Gwyn was... are you all right with me speaking of this?" He waited for her nod, only deciding to continue after he saw it. "She was captured by... certain enemies of the crown, during her career as a spy. Thank heavens she was found and broken out by other royal agents, but not before suffering some amount of torture. I'm proud to say she never broke, never yielded information. But that sort of experience scarred her. I don't blame her for doubting her employment afterwards. I was not yet a royal guard when she was retrieved, so I was asked to follow her and... keep an eye on her. Not only to ensure her safety, but... no one was sure how she would act after that. I'm sorry, my love." Gwyn shook her head at Raven's apology– nothing to apologize for. "She was in such pain, she would lash out at anyone and everyone. Even and especially me." "And you didn't understand, but you tried anyways," Gwyn's voice shook with sobbing at the recollection. "You were so kind... compassionate.. gentle." She wiped tears from her eyes. "How could I not fall in love with you?" A small smile quirked her lips. "I had many reasons to retire at that point.. but I was certain I had to do it then because of you. I knew I wanted to be with you, and if I died for my kingdom, then I would never know that bliss."

"The destruction of my hometown," Vair answered bluntly. "Losing everything when you're only six tends to 'impact' you harder than most people can imagine." A small, soft hand held his shoulder at that as Shanz stepped up. "It's okay. It's not a question meant to hurt you." While Vair huffed just a bit, Shanz explained in his place. "I'm told my husband had something of a death wish for a bit after that– I wasn't here for it, so this is secondhand knowledge. He wanted vengeance against the dragon that did it, at first, but then he heard the royal guardsmen had taken it down shortly after that tragedy happened. So you felt like you had no purpose, huh." At the query put to him, Vair only grunted. "But friends... friends can give you a new purpose. A six-year-old boy with a thousand-yard stare scares away most of his peers, but Prince Jacinto– as he was back then– approached despite the discomfort he gave everyone else. That's how they're so close, and why Vair took up the path of a knight. Sure, his uncle being a knight himself gave him a leg up, but he did it for his friend." "And you, my love?" Vair looked at Shanz. Shanz cast his gaze downward and away. "... It's not a day I like to remember. When I was eighteen, my world at the time came crashing down on me... and I barely had the power to mitigate it. One day, I was tired of it, sore about everything to do with it, and my mother– who I trusted to be kind and compassionate... she prodded me a just a bit too hard about my responsibilities, and I lashed out in agony. I spent a good hour wallowing in that pain... as if pain is an intense enough word... and I don't know what drove me to contact my friends. But I did. And they talked me out of the unthinkable. They didn't even talk, just listened until I got it all out. That... that was all I needed. So yes, I understand how big friendship can be in someone's life. I owe my own existence to those bonds. And no matter how far I travel... no matter how far behind I leave those friends... those bonds can never be cut."

(As a note: King Jacinto is a muse from @reginalucem; he's her Zelda's dad!)

[prinxlyart]

Oh thos warm moments of redemption hit me right in the feels >///<. (I'mma definitely gonna compile all your headcanons in one doc and you can't stop me!). Anyways, now getting back to lumity (prepare thyselve because I'm HUNGRY): How does the redeemed Odalia's relationship with Luz and Willow develop? And regarding our three girls in particular, how do they act right after their proposals, during the wedding and on their honeymoon?

(Lmao please, lord knows I’ll never put any of these into a doc)

Hmmm, that’s a really good question. Er, several questions. Imma go in order of how they were asked.

[tw: for mentions of severe depression /thoughts of suicide starting with bullet #4. I’ll be sure to add the warnings before and after the section as well. Please continue with caution.]

Blight Parents’ relationship with their daughters-in-law:

I think just due to how they got to where they are by this point, they both have a soft spot for Luz. She’s the one that reached out to them in the first place after all of their kids left the family. They feel a v specific gratitude towards her and Camila both because these humans work so hard to get shit done. It’s an admirable trait. One they’re glad the Nocedas aimed at them. It’s taken so much time and energy to get the Blights be, like. Tolerable people? And then even more to get them to actually act like parents.

I think at first, any time they’re unsure of how to act or react to a situation, they’ll go to Luz for guidance. They’ve gone their whole lives up until just a few years ago acting a certain way and just flipping all that? It can be difficult to break those habits. Any time they feel they should react in anger or irritation or disgust, they stop and think “no, wait. What would Luz/Camila do? Would they get mad...?” And they just give her a look of confusion and guilt before Luz mimes the sort of reaction that would be healthiest. Any time Amity catches them literally looking to Luz on how to act supportive she just rolls her eyes. They’re trying and that’s what matters.

I think at first they just don’t know how to interact with Willow. They apologized for how they treated her in the past at great length, but Willow just sort of nodded along quietly. They weren’t used to that sort of reaction (granted they’ve only just started doing this “apologizing” thing for a few months at this point in time. They’re still getting the hang of it). So they sit uncomfortably for a while until Willow sighs and sort of sits up straighter. She’d resolved to tell them about how their careless and cruel treatment of Amity was the first step in a chain reaction to Willow’s life becoming absolutely miserable for years to follow.

Not only was she forced to lose her best friend at that birthday party, but she had to do so in the cruelest way possible. Amity explained to her years back that she pretended to not like her because she couldn’t do magic to hide the fact that her parents threatened Willow. Because the Blights are supposed to be perfect. Amity has always been smart and she knew what would happen if she let it slip that they had threatened her. If Willow knew the truth, she’d tell her dads and her dads would try to confront them about it. It would end up turning into a scandal (although Amity admitted she wasn’t familiar with the word at the time; it was just one of those words she heard her mom use a lot for situations that were bad). So as a result of Amity doing her part to “protect” the Blight name, she shunned Willow from her life and broke both their hearts in the process.

[TW: discussion of severe depression and thoughts/intentions of suicide. If you’re in a vulnerable headspace right now, please scroll until you see the next notice signaling the end of the section. And please, if you’re struggling with depression and/or thoughts of suicide, please please please seek professional help.]

Willow recounts the years of endless bullying, not always by Amity’s new friends, but often by them. She tells them how Amity wouldn’t necessarily participate so much as observe with a carefully schooled expression. And then there were times when Amity did bully her, and that hurt so much more than everyone else combined. All so she wouldn’t be publicly shamed or get in trouble with her parents for associating with someone like Willow.

She tells them that it literally took Luz coming into their lives for any of that to change. Amity had turned 7 on the birthday she cut Willow out of her life, and they were 14 when Luz showed up. Half of Willow’s entire life up to that point had been friendless (or nearly friendless) and so severely bullied that she was actually debating growing a Graveleaf plant to brew tea with. She still has to take a daily healing potion prescribed by her doctor to keep her mind from falling back to that same state it used to be in. Yes, her life has greatly improved ever since Luz showed up and helped repair her friendship with Amity. Yes, it’s only gotten better since then. Yes, she loves her fiancées with everything she has. But that doesn’t mean all that pain has suddenly been erased and it doesn’t always stop her brain from sinking back into its depressed state.

Needless to say, the Blights are absolutely floored with all of this information. They’re both frozen in shock, they don’t know what to do or say to such an admission. Willow just continues though. She tells them that she’s so grateful to have Amity back in her life. That with therapy, her daily medicine, and time, she’s come a long way from where she once was. Her bad days aren’t nearly as bad as they were when she was a kid. She has both of her fiancées to support her and love her when she’s feeling down. She tells them that no, she can’t forgive them for what they’ve done. But she accepts their apology and appreciates them making the effort to make things right. Seeing Amity happy because her parents are actually trying to be better makes Willow happy.

I think......Alador would be the one to go to Willow and kneel before her and take her hand, apologizing with as much intent as he can muster. He’s a little more in touch with his emotions these days than Odalia is, and he’s lost a family member to suicide before. He knows how devastating it can be to everyone around them and he’s mortified at the fact that Willow had almost done the same. He understands how much she means to Amity and he comes to the realization mid-apology that he could have very well lost his own daughter in a similar fashion had Willow gone through with that. Odalia goes white as a sheet at hearing that, steadying herself in her chair and it makes Willow feel queasy, but she’s glad that he understands the severity of what they’d done. She does put a hand to Alador’s shoulder to comfort him as he reels from this realization and he stands properly again to wrap Willow in a hug as he cried, still muttering apologies through his tears. I think it takes a while for Odalia to be able to speak again, but Willow is able to see that that struggle means it’s rocked her to her core. Once Odalia is able to also stammer out her own apologies, Willow just gives her a small smile and nods.

[END OF SECTION. Now it’s all fluff from here on out. Have fun, kids.]

After that discussion, Alador and Odalia double down on the whole “being better” thing. During one of their weekly tea meetings, they ask Camila how they might start doing that in their daily lives too, not just for their children. Camila doesn’t know the first thing about their jobs or what they do or the people they work with, so she tells them to make a list of things they can think of that might’ve been considered hurtful to some degree. The tea definitely goes cold long before the list is done; Camila actually needs to leave before they finish it. The next meeting, there’s a comically large scroll of shit they’ve done sitting on the table and they are sitting with their heads cowed in shame. I think Camila pops an ibuprofen before her headache settles in.

They still don’t know how to do nice things without throwing money at it first. That takes a while for them to wrap their heads around. Luz and Willow aren’t ones for like. Big, extravagant, expensive things. They prefer the heartfelt stuff, like hand-made gifts or thoughtful acts of service. (Amity, however, insists they accept her parents ridiculously expensive weekend getaway trip to the Iliac Crest Hot Springs; the top of the left hip bone of the Titan. A well-known vacation spot for romantic getaways. Willow only accepts because she knows they’d never be able to afford that on their own and Luz accepts it as a wedding gift and an opportunity to go to a part of the Boiling Isles she’s never explored before.)

Alador is like every dad ever; he loves talking about random trivia shit to anyone who will listen. Luz is literally the only person that will listen because even though she’s lived in the Demon Realm for years now, she still doesn’t know all the “fun facts” that everyone else has grown up with. Sometimes she’ll bring up points about random trivia bits Alador is going on about and put in her own two snails about something she’s experienced regarding it, and she and Alador will go back and forth for a while like that, talking about the stuff they’ve experienced relating to that thing. Willow thinks it’s adorable and Amity is mostly just exasperated (but she also thinks it’s cute and she loves watching her dad bond with her fiancée like this).

Odalia will occasionally ask Amity about her abominations and they’ll sort of awkwardly talk for a while about the technicalities and ingredients and Odalia will mention adding an ingredient Amity’s never even considered before. When she inquires further, Odalia tells her that she’ll sometimes work with a friend in the Emperor’s coven that specialized in the plant track to experiment with creating abominations with different kinds of ingredients for different tasks. Amity is shocked and impressed to hear about her own mother mixing magic and teases her for breaking the rules right under the emperor’s nose. Odalia stammers at that (she’s still getting used to Belos no longer being in power and the stigma against mixing magic still runs strong in her mind), but eventually admits that yes, technically she’s mixed magic. Amity makes her promise to show her how with Willow and they make a whole day of it.

Spending the day making weird abominations with Odalia Blight was Not something Willow thought she’d ever say she’d done, but hey. She didn’t think King could beat Luz in that one eating contest either because where does he put all that food, but he ended up winning anyway. Willow and Amity are actually super excited to try mixing their knowledge of magic together; it almost feels intimate in a way. It’s something neither have tried before and are able to try for the first time together because it’s their specialties. Odalia guides them through the process of mixing different types of plants into the abomination mixture to make abominations specific for extra strength or abominations that help enhance healing magic just due to its properties. They all end up having a lot of fun that day, just making all sorts of varieties of abominations. By the time the day is done, they’re all covered in abomination goop because one of them accidentally exploded. Luz managed to get a picture of them all laughing together and covered in goop before they go to clean up. It’s one of her favorite pictures.

As time goes on, things get less and less tense between the Blight parents and Luz and Willow (especially with Willow). They grow more comfortable with being good parents, good people, and just kinder and more loving in general. There’s one day when the Blights come to visit and they greet each girl with a hug and kiss without really realizing it. They all go to settle down in the living room, but Amity’s still frozen at the doorway, covering her mouth and trying desperately to wipe away the tears that crept up at the display of affection. No one else had thought anything of it, but that was the first time her parents had shown the same and love and affection to both of her wives without any hesitation or fear of crossing boundaries. She cherishes the memory of that moment often.

Proposal Reactions:

I genuinely don’t know how these girls would propose to each other. There’s any number of possibilities; they’re all so creative. The part of me that wants to make funny cartoons would have them each scrambling to figure out the best way to propose to each other and getting into ridiculous hijinks when they try to get their friends’ help (Amity would ask Emira and Edric [and the detention gang by extension; Viney’s remained best friends with Jerbo and Barcus after all this time]. Willow I think would recruit Gus and oddly enough, Lilith [she sees Eda as too much of a mother to Luz to feel comfortable with asking her to help her propose to her daughter]. Luz would definitely ask Eda, King and Camila to help but regret it almost instantly). Of course everyone would end up tripping over one another and each proposal attempt would end in disaster but all three girls would see the resulting destruction (maybe several things on fire?) and just laugh their asses off. Because wow, this could’ve gone so much better, but hey, you guys wanna get married?

The sappy romantic in me tho. Would want them to discuss it thoroughly before hand; agree that yes they’d love to get married, they’re just not sure if it’s the right time. But Luz, being the person she is, would go and recruit everyone’s help in coming up with the best proposal ever. Willow and Amity are both busy with their respective jobs just enough to not notice all the scheming going on. And then one day when all 3 of them have the same day off, Luz takes them out for a fun day (whatever that entails; maybe a day at a carnival or just wandering around town or something). At the end of the day, she takes them somewhere significant (this could literally be anywhere, Grom Tree is a good place because of the view it has over the cliff’s edge, but yknow. Whatever suits their relationship as a trio) and everything is decked out in lights and decorations. And Amity and Willow are both stunned and enthralled by the display and they turn to see Luz down on one knee and holding two small boxes, holding one out to each of them and a super nervous smile on her face. Amity and Willow maybe accidentally tackle her to the ground when they tried to hug her.

During the wedding:

I think they’re all stressed during the wedding itself. They’re excited, of course, a whole ceremony dedicated to the three of them vowing to spend the rest of their lives together. They aren’t capable of imaging a life without each other at this point. But that doesn’t stop the nerves from settling in.

Eda’s constantly telling Luz to calm down before the ceremony actually begins; Luz is found pacing and coming up with doomsday scenarios out loud at light speed like she always does when she’s nervous. Camila and Eda are also nervous, but they’re doing their best to keep it together for Luz’s sanity. Camila’s making sure (with Emira, as Em is the Maid of Honor) that everything is going smoothly and according to plan. But she has similar nervous habits to Luz when she doesn’t have something to focus her attention on. She ends up fussing over Luz’s hair and getting rid of any imaginary wrinkles in her outfit, making sure her makeup is perfect until Eda tells her to quit treating Luz like a dress up doll. Eda’s really good at pep talks, even when she’s nervous, but she manages to calm both Nocedas down with her patented Soft Encouraging Voice.

Amity’s freaking out in her own way in a separate room with all of her girls (Emira, Skara, a fully and properly redeemed Boscha). She’s freaking out similarly to Luz in that she’s mumbling to herself all sorts of ridiculous what-ifs and wishing desperately that she could just be with Luz and Willow already because they bring her the most comfort. She’s not pacing like Luz though, she’s sitting while Emira and Skara do some intricate thing with her hair while Boscha’s doing her makeup but that doesn’t stop her from wringing her hands and bouncing her leg (something that Boscha has to tell her to stop doing every 30 seconds or she’ll mess up the makeup she’s doing). Emira’s giving her advice for every little “what-if” she can hear coming out of Amity, with some silly remarks from Boscha and Skara that actually puts Amity somewhat at ease. Having her girls acting calm and natural did help. She thanks them for doing as much at the reception.

Willow’s trying to get herself into game mode with a pep talk. No place for nerves, only well-thought action. She’s actually got Viney there with her (who had to kick Gus out because he was crying at just the sight of Willow in her wedding dress), as well as Bo and Kat (I think those are the names of the two healing track girls....someone tell me if I’m wrong, but I think Bo is the one in the Human Appreciation Society and I think Kat is the one with the glasses that played on Boscha’s team in the Grudgby match). Willow’s girls are all hyping her up like she’s about to enter a Grudgby match rather than a wedding ceremony, and the ridiculousness of it all is staving off her nerves. Viney’s also giving her own personal experience as advice; she may or may not have tripped during her own wedding and is making sure Willow knows how to avoid that at all costs.

I genuinely don’t know what the role of the Best Man is, but I know in one of my past headcanon posts I mentioned that both Edric and Gus are asked to fill that role (there’s no such thing as rules when you’ve got a human and two witches getting married on the boiling isles). I think while Emira and Camilia are helping their respective brides-to-be get ready, Edric and Gus are taking over making sure everything is running smoothly and all the guests know where to go. When they’re just sort of standing around and waiting for their next task, Gus starts tearing up again at the thought of Willow in her dress. Willow’s like the big sister he never had and now she’s getting married. Gus is constantly having to perform minor illusions on his face to make it look like he’s not about to cry or has already been crying. Edric hasn’t seen Amity yet, but he’s secretly doing the same thing whenever their minds aren’t preoccupied with whatever Event Tasks they need to focus on.

I think.....rather than a one-by-one thing, all three of our girls enter at the same time from different doors. Luz comes in from the left side door, Amity comes in from the right, and Willow comes in from the main entrance at the back. Luz is practically vibrating with nerves and excitement and the only reason she doesn’t run to the front to sweep her beautiful girls into excited, passionate kisses is solely due to her own mother’s iron grip on her arm as she walks her up. I actually don’t know if Alador has redeemed himself enough at this point for Amity to allow him to walk her up to the front, but I also think Edric would be too much of a mess to do so. I think a lifetime of keeping up a mask helps Alador maintain his composure long enough to get Amity up to the front and to take his seat before he lets the waterworks take over. I actually don’t know which of Willow’s dads would walk her up; we don’t know enough about either of them to make personality judegement calls. Whichever dad can hold it together for longer, probably.

Polyamory isn’t a new thing on the Boiling Isles; it may not be practiced as often among witches, but demons do it all the time, so the person officiating their wedding (it could be literally anyone, I have no idea. Maybe principal bump, just for funsies) knows exactly how this ceremony needs to go. They all planned beforehand exactly the order they’d kiss one another once they were proclaimed officially married: Luz would be too excited to wait and would kiss each of her girls first, Amity then Willow, and then Amity and Willow would share their own kiss once Luz had gotten that out of her system.

Honeymoon:

I don’t know enough about honeymoons to know if there’s a difference between a honeymoon and a normal vacation except Now You’re Married. Maybe they go on a grand expedition around the Boiling Isles? Maybe they honeymoon in the Human Realm? That’s exactly like the proposal situation; it could be literally anything. Far too many variables and ideas that could make it perfect for each of them. Hell, they could probably just say they’re going out and doing all sorts of stuff and actually just locking themselves in their house so they can just be together and relish in the relief of no longer needing to plan such a large and important event. They can just enjoy each other’s company as Wives now. I really don’t know.

Regardless of what they do, I think they’d be like any other person on their honeymoon: absolutely love struck and over the moon with how much they love each other. Sometimes they’ll catch one another staring and tease each other about it ( “awww you liiiikkkke meeee” “we literally just got married” “yeah I know but stiiiiiillllllllll”)

I actually don’t know what else you expect me to put here, so I guess I’ll just say they lived happily ever after, the end.

[foxcantswim]

Monster

The Reader is almost killed by aliens. The Doctor overreacts.

13th Doctor/F!Reader

(This fic is kind of based off the song Monster by Imagine Dragons)

A LOT OF ANGST AND HURT/COMFORT. WITH A TOUCH OF FLUFF.

-x-

Darkness.

That's all the Doctor could feel right now.

Pure darkness.

Maybe blowing up an entire planet was a bit uncalled for. But the darkness within the Time Lord had become too strong. All those years of just holding it in and putting on a happy face to cover it all up. It became unbearable. It was too difficult to keep it hidden. The darkness was getting stronger and stronger every minute of everyday.

Some know her as the Oncoming Storm.

The Doctor had told (Y/N) about being known as the Oncoming Storm to multiple civilizations. (Y/N) had simply laughed it off, saying, "I don't believe you. Someone as sweet and innocent as you could never do anything to harm anyone or anything intentionally."

How wrong she was.

(Y/N) felt the time machine jolt and shake around her as her ears filled with the sound of an explosion just outside of the Tardis door. The Doctor had a firm arm around the human's waist, making sure she stayed upright. The blonde's other hand darted for levers, hoping to get away from the currently exploding planet.

"Keep your eyes open, (Y/N)…" the Doctor said, worry and anger clearly lacing her words. Once she was certain that the Tardis had escaped, she quickly scooped (Y/N) up, bridal style, "You hear me? Keep. Them. Open."

(Y/N) couldn't exactly remember what had happened back on that planet. It was nice. Calm. And then suddenly a storm came out of nowhere. And so did two alien lifeforms. Both looked human but their eyes told a different story.

They weren't the friendliest duo.

They somehow knew about the Doctor. They wanted her. For experiments. For information. But most importantly, they wanted to use her as a weapon. The Doctor had laughed, obviously refusing.

But refusing turned out to be the wrong decision.

It happened fast. (Y/N) had been grabbed and she suddenly felt a searing pain through her side. Her voice was caught in her throat. Her whole body went numb as the alien had a strong grip around her. The only thing she could feel was the wet blood dripping.

The alien had hissed, threateningly, "You don't want to anger us, Doctoooor… Now… Come with us and she will be spared." The other alien had a gun pointed at the Doctor.

(Y/N) had never seen that fire in the Doctor's eyes before.

"N-No. Doc-" (Y/N) had managed to speak, but she was soon cut off. The pain increased. She felt her eyes begin to flutter.

"Let her go." the Doctor demanded, "Now."

"Do we have a deaaaal?" the alien smirked.

The Doctor's glare hardened, "No-one… Threatens me. No-one… hurts my friends. And no… We don't have a deal."

"Oh?" the alien chuckled, "Are you suuuuure?"

"If you don't let her go. You can say goodbye to this planet. You can say goodbye to your entire civilization."

"The Doctor doesn't do things like thaaaaat." the alien aiming the gun, replied.

"You just watch me." she said.

All (Y/N) could remember after that was the Doctor somehow managed to get the gun…

She also remembered the Doctor using that gun… On both of the aliens.

"-(Y/N)? (Y/N)?" the Doctor asked, "Please… Please keep your eyes open." she said, finally arriving at the Tardis med-bay.

(Y/N) nodded, her hand sub-consciously coming to rest on the blood that was staining her shirt. She was placed upon a bed, she bit her lip to stop the groan from escaping her lips.

"You're going to be okay…" the Doctor said as she pushed some hair away from your face, mainly trying to convince herself. The human soon felt her shirt being pulled up slightly, just enough so the Doctor could see the wound.

-x-

The Doctor had been frantic. More than usual.

She was running around the med-bay trying to find anything that could help. The Tardis was kind enough to point her in the right direction to find the likes of bandages and medicine.

It was times like these that she wished Yaz, Ryan and Graham were here to help her. Here to help her keep calm.

After the bandages were wrapped nice and tight, the Doctor carefully sat on the edge of the bed and placed a hand over the bandage. She blinked to get rid of the tears as she smiled at (Y/N), "Stay still." she whispered, "This will help you heal."

(Y/N) could still see the fire in the Doctor's eyes. They just had a mask of worry covering everything up.

The dark med-bay was soon lightened up by a golden glow.

"D-Doctor?" (Y/N) croaked.

The Doctor leaned down, resting her forehead against (Y/N)'s, "Best medicine around." she whispered as she closed her eyes.

The golden glow flowing from the Doctor's hand was dim and calm. (Y/N) thought it looked beautiful.

She let out a shaky breath and closed her eyes as the pain began to decrease. Her ears focused on the sound of the energy that filled the room.

(Y/N) spoke as the Doctor removed her forehead from hers, her hand also dropped from the bandage, "What was that?"

A smile appeared on the Time Lord's face, "Regeneration energy. Don't worry. It will help your wound." (Y/N) nodded slightly before looking away from the Time Lord. Her eyes focused on random objects around the room.

There was a comfortable silence surrounding the both of them. The Doctor had grabbed one of (Y/N)'s hands at some point and intertwined their fingers.

The blonde squeeze her hand, trying to relieve her stress.

(Y/N)'s other hand came up to gently rest on the Doctor's cheek, "What's on your mind?"

The Doctor had been trying hard… Trying hard to stop the tears from falling.

"Doctor?" she asked. The Doctor allowed the tears to fall.

"I'm sorry, (Y/N)."

Sitting up with a slight groan, (Y/N) put her arms around the Doctor's neck and pulled her close, "You have nothing to be sorry for."

"I scared you, didn't I?" she asked, out of the blue.

(Y/N)'s breath hitched in her throat.

"Don't lie to me." the Doctor said, burying her face into (Y/N)'s shoulder, "I know… I'm a monster. I couldn't hold it in. When they grabbed you. When they hurt you. I just- I just couldn't take it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Pulling back slightly, (Y/N) looked directly into the Doctor's eyes, "I'm not scared of you, Doctor." both of her hands rested on the Doctor's cheeks, "I could never be scared of you. And you are from a monster. You're a hero. You're my hero." her thumb caressed the Time Lord's left cheek.

"But… I promised to protect you. I told you that I'm against guns and-"

(Y/N) pressed her lips to the Time Lord's, effectively cutting her off. The Doctor responded by putting a hand gently on (Y/N)'s side, not wanting to put pressure on the wound.

"Nobody's perfect, Doctor." (Y/N) said after pulling away.

The Doctor sighed as she moved to bury her face into the girl's shoulder again, "(Y/N)…"

A hand moved up to the back of the Doctor's head, "Hmm?"

"I would understand if you didn't. Because of what I've done. I would also understand if you want to go home but… Do you still love me?"

This made (Y/N)'s heart hurt.

"Don't you dare ever think I don't, Doctor." she said before hugging the Doctor tight, "I will always love you. And I never want to leave you alone. You know all of us will always be there for you. Yaz… Ryan… Graham… Especially me."

"But-"

"Shhh. You have to let it out every now and then. You can't keep holding everything in… Because it leads to things like this. If you ever need to shout or cry just come to me. If you keep on pretending everything is fine… You're going to get yourself hurt."

"Or get you hurt. Or Yaz. Or Ryan. Or Graham."

(Y/N) nodded as she pulled away, "That too." she smiled, "At least promise me you won't hold everything in again. And promise you won't go and… blow another planet up. Okay?"

The Doctor grabbed one of (Y/N)'s hands and kissed her knuckles, she shakily replied, "Okay. I promise. Anything for you. I'm sorry."

(Y/N) pecked the Doctor on the lips, "I love you, Doctor. Now… how about you let me sleep whilst you find a nice planet to visit? I could go for a good adventure."

A genuine smile appeared on the Doctor's face, "That sounds brilliant. I love you, too." she said before pressing her lips to the girl's.

(OK. THIS WAS BAD. BUT THANKS FOR READING ANYWAYS. SUGGESTIONS/PROMPTS ARE WELCOME.)

[sleepyfan-blog]

Sleepy Dream [Part 2]

Fandom: Undertale AU

Part two of this. Part three here. 

Characters: Dream, Science!Sans, WD Gaster

warnings: cursing

word count: 1,883

Summary: Dream decides to go to Sci for help.

A month later, and Dream was definitely sure that it wasn’t because of the timelines they’d been fighting to protect. He’d managed to convince Stretch of that though, and the Swap Papyrus had stopped gently poking him. But Dream had no idea what was wrong… And the positive guardian could admit, at least to himself, that he needed someone else’s help in figuring out what was going on. But who had the expertise and the ability? Not to mention the access to whatever resources he might need to deal with whatever was wrong. While he could tell Ink about the issue… Dream grimaced a little. The artistic skeleton wasn’t his first choice for talking about such an issue with. Mostly because he was pretty sure that Ink would just laugh it off, pat him on the head and tell him to take a nap.

He was currently wandering around in a pretale, hiding from the monsters in the underground per Ink’s rules of only Sanses and Papyri getting involved in the multiversal shenanigans - as the more beings aware of them in a single AU, the more likely that Error was to notice where they were. Or at least, that’s what the other said was true… And Dream had no reason not to believe the other. His eye lights brighten as he realized that the Science Sans of this AU was already aware of the multiverse and a good friend and ally of Ink’s… And someone who Dream was relatively sure he could trust with this issue.

The positive guardian waited until Sci was on his lunch break - and from the looks of it, he’d grabbed enough Grillby’s for the entire team beneath the Royal Scientist (who was a Gaster currently, if Dream wasn’t mistaken), shadowing the other until he was walking through an empty spot in Waterfall before calling out “Hey Sci! Uhm… Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Sci turned around, his eye lights widening a little, before a bright smile appeared on his face “Oh, heya Dream! Got a new gadget that you want me to take apart and put back together? There shouldn’t be anyone else around during this time - everyone’s either at work or sleeping.”

“Ah… No. Actually I was… I was hoping if you could help me with a personal issue, actually.” Dream started, fidgeting with his hands a little “I’ve been having some issues keeping my energy levels up to where they normally are and I don’t know why. I’m not hurt and as far as I know, I didn’t pick up any negative stat effects or curses.”

Sci hummed a little, frowning a bit “How long’s this been going on? Can you tell me what your signs and symptoms are?”

The positive spirit sighed a little, explaining what he’d noticed… And finished semi reluctantly with “And this has been happening for about three months now. The passive MP and energy loss is… About 10 MP per hour. I’ve been snacking on monster candy and cinnabunnies to counteract that but… It’s starting to become less effective. Also while sleeping for eight hours does restore me back to full MP, that only lasts for about three hours - less if I get into a fight.”

“That’s… How much MP do you even have if a loss of 10 MP an hour isn’t a noticeable dip in power? Stars above, Dream. That could be really dangerous!” Sci sputtered, his eye lights shrinking to panicked pinpricks for a moment “Of course I’ll help you. I’ll… If you’re not physically hurt, it could indicate that you might have… I’ll need to check your Soul.”

Dream winced at that, fidgeting a little. Most people had really strange reactions to seeing it. Given the fact that it was colored, I'm not in the shape of a normal, for either a human or a monster. The fact was that Dream was neither, but he tended not to like to think of that fact as it was simply easier for him to be assumed to be just a normal skeleton monster. It was a lot easier and to allow others to make assumptions then to explain the truth and have to go into details about his past that he did not want to speak about to anyone ever. “I… ok. Will you be able to run the tests during the day, or should I come back when you're off-shift?”

“Dream, I know that you and Ink have this no-interference policy. And I can understand why it’s in place. But this could be a very serious issue. I’ll be the one taking the data and looking it over, but I’m going to have to report this to my boss - because I’m going to have to be using some of the Soul equipment which none of us are allowed to do except under certain circumstances. A… Condition like yours being one of them. I’ll only tell Doc G though. And he’s good. A little weird, but he’s good. Trust me on this, I’m an excellent judge of character. He’ll also be helping me look at the data as he’s got a lot more experience with these things than I do.” Sci explained, suddenly grabbing one of Dream’s wrists and teleporting the two of them directly in front of the labs. The younger skeleton fumbled with his keycard for a moment before swiping it and marching the both of them into the top floor of the labs.

The Dr. Alphys was on the floor, along with several other monsters whose names Dream did not know off of the top of his head. In the middle of all of them, quietly talking to the Alphys, was a Dr. Gaster. He was just as tall and intimidating as any other Gaster who Dream had tentatively peeked at from behind a tree (or Ink) and the positive guardian dug his heels in for a moment “Sc… Saaaans!” He fussed, tugging at the other before stumbling forwards, an unhappy groan coming from the back of his throat as he realized that he was wholly incapable of stopping the younger skeleton from dragging him around like a ragdoll. He called the other Sans,  rather than his nickname as this was going to be strange enough as it was.

“Uh… Sans… Who’ve you got there? I didn’t realize there were any other skeletons in the underground about from the doc,  you and your brother…” A snake-like monster spoke up, moving towards the two of them curiously.

“That’s because he’s not from the Underground. Or this universe. Everyone, this is Dream the source and protector of all positive feelings in the multiverse. He’s in dire need of help and may be dying a little bit. Here’s the grub, I’m going to be on sub level five - and he’s not gonna react well to being poked and prodded by anyone but me. Don’t ask me how or why I know him, just that I do.” Sci explained, throwing the bags of Grillby’s at the cat monster - who caught the food immediately. Everyone around them was staring in utter confusion as Sci stomped over to the elevator, still dragging a limp and face palming Dream behind him.

“Why did you tell them that?” Dream asked, voice muffled as they waited for the elevator to show up “And can’t we just teleport down there?”

“Because they would have asked a bunch of questions and trying to lie to them is damn near impossible. Especially since this is not something that is probably going to be fixed after a quick check-up. Besides, all of them have met Ink before. Alph found his dumb ass passed out in a puddle of paint half-dead before you showed up and dragged him inside to get healed. So they’re aware that the multiverse is more than just a concept, and that there are protectors trying to keep glitch head from destroying all of us.” Sci explained impatiently “And there are anti-teleportation wards on the lower levels of the labs to prevent potential theft. Or Ink wandering in and seeing how many things he can poke and mix together until something explodes.”

“Oh. Okay…” Dream responded, managing to finally get his feet under him. He shuffles a little bit closer to the younger skeleton, distinctly distressed by the way that the scientists are watching him and tries to shake off the desire to run and hide. He… People watching him with that sort of intensity usually doesn’t entirely end well. “Uhm… They’re kind of… Staring… A bit?”

“We look a lot alike, Dream. And I kind of shoved a lot of information their way. They’re good people, Dream. We’re safe here.” the younger skeleton murmured as the elevator dinged and the two of them stepped into it.

Dr. Gaster followed behind them before the elevator doors could close. “I believe you’ll need my help, Sans.” He murmured glancing curiously at the both of them. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ah, Dream I believe it was? I am Doctor Wing Dings Gaster, although most Call me Doctor Gaster… Or Doc G, if they’re feeling particularly cheeky.”

The positive spirit couldn’t help the flinch - nor could he help the fact that he grabbed Sci and pulled the both of them into the furthest corner of the elevator, trying and failing to teleport them out of there, starting to shake a little. He was holding Sci close to him, the both of them scrunched into the corner of the elevator as Dream trembled as he stared up at him. He wanted to believe Sci when he said that this Gaster was good… But with the other’s tall, looming presence and the way the other’s darker magic pressed against his senses, Dream was feeling incredibly trapped at the moment.

“Dream… Dream did you have a bad encounter with a Fell G recently? Or… Hell, did you run into a Handplates Gaster recently? I promise you. He just wants to help. He’s not going to hurt anyone. It’s okay. We’re safe here. You can trust us. We won’t hurt you.” Sci attempted to soothe, his calm, caring emotions - along with the neutrally curious emotion coming from Gaster were helping somewhat.

“...Sorry. I just… I don’t… Like asking for help… From anyone and wasn’t expecting to be introduced to a room full of beings and my weakness shouted at them.” Dream managed out, voice quiet and trembling. He didn’t mean to cause the flash of guilt that ran through Sci, he really didn’t. “And I did tell you earlier that I can’t die of natural causes.”

“You could be cursed or something, and it’s hidden well enough that it doesn’t pop up on a surface check, Dream. I’ve seen the occasional curse like that. It’s slow-acting, but it’s insidious and has taken lives if not stopped.” Sci answered back bluntly, shaking his head a little as they reached their stop “And I like hugs… But please let me go this is our stop.”

“... Okay. I… I trust you, Sci. And you did mention that this Dr. Gaster is trustworthy… So I’ll take you at your word.” The positive spirit responds quietly, letting his friend go and following him out of the elevator and into one of the labs.

[tarisilmarwen]

Splinters: Disclose

(Ezra finally gets to see a doctor!  Too bad she’s not a trained therapist, he could really use one, lol.)

---

Sabine slept in the bunk with him for two more nights before she was called away to Krownest by an urgent message from her mother. Zeb took up her place for the rest of the week, having Ezra curl up in the lower bunk with him a couple nights, before Ezra insisted on having a bed to himself again.

He had wanted to protest more, feeling mothered by their worry, feeling like a kid who had to crawl into his parents' bed during a thunderstorm. In spite of how embarrassed it made him feel, though, he couldn't say no to Sabine and he couldn't argue with the results. He'd slept better in the past week than he'd ever slept the first few days he'd been released from the medbay back to the Ghost.

The effect vanished almost immediately upon his return to sleeping alone. His nights were once again restless, sleep eluding him for long hours as he tossed and turned.

He didn't always wake Zeb, but when he did, Zeb offered plenty of suggestions.

Chief among them was talking to Kanan.

"How's that gonna help any more than talking to you?" Ezra had groaned.

Zeb had shrugged. "You're his padawan. Worrying about you is kind of his job, isn't it? If nothing else he's a good listener."

He had a point. But Ezra didn't want to talk about it, not to Kanan, not yet.

He just needed some time, that was all. Leslynn said his body was still recovering. Still healing up. If he gave it a few more weeks, the sleepless nights and anxious thoughts would stop and he'd be back to normal.

No need to worry Kanan over something that was going to go away, right?

It would go away. It would.

He hoped.

***

"Okay, now flex."

Ezra breathed in slowly, curling his arm, squeezing the ball-shaped metal sensor in his palm.

Dr. Leslynn stood behind him, her hands gentle on his arm and shoulder, fingertips prodding, feeling how the muscles moved. "Good. Good. Very good," she said absently, checking the data readings on her datapad.

She had him hold position for about thirty seconds, then she straightened and stepped back.

"All right, you can relax," she told him.

Ezra did so, feeling an achy relief pool through his arm. He set the sensor down on the nearby tray and worked the kinks out of his fist.

He waited while Leslynn looked over her readings, his eyes wandering around the room. A medical droid worked methodically in the corner, cleaning off some equipment. There was a clean, sort of antiseptic smell in the air. He caught sight of a row of empty syringes laid out on a tray and flinched, immediately looking elsewhere. Leslynn hadn't had to take any blood samples in a while but...

He stirred as Leslynn cupped her datapad to her side, smiling brightly. "Okay, well, good news! Looks like you've regained about 90% of full muscle functionality," she said.

He nodded. That was good to hear, at least. He'd hated how much weaker he'd felt in the weeks following his capture.

"Blood pressure looks normal, scans aren't showing any signs of new tissue damage," Leslynn was reciting as she made a few notes on a piece of durasheet clipped to a wooden board.

"So am I cleared to start going on missions again?" Ezra asked, trying not to sound too impatient. His hands fidgeted, tapping the edge of the examination table.

Dr. Leslynn didn't look up yet. "Mmm, that depends," she said. "Do you have any new or worsening symptoms?"

Ezra stopped tapping. He bit the inside of his cheek, hesitating, reluctant. The words formed and reformed inside his head.

He was quiet so long it made Leslynn look up in concern.

"Ezra?" she called.

Finally, Ezra found his voice. The words pulled out of him slowly, every instinct inside him wanting to hold them back.

"There's this... sort of... buzzing... in my head," he explained.

Leslynn angled to face him. "What's it sound like?"

He grimaced. "It's not really a sound, it's more like..." The words to articulate the kind of feeling wouldn't come, and he gave a frustrated groan, throwing up a hand. "Ugh, I dunno."

The doctor's expression flattened. She set aside her clipboard and datapad, grabbing up a small pen light, which she flashed in Ezra's eyes.

"Any pain?" she asked.

"No."

She held up a finger and watched Ezra's eyes track it as she moved her hand back and forth. "Vision changes?"

He shook his head.

Leslynn frowned, stepping back and checking her datapad readings over again. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, she sighed, already dreading the upcoming conversation.

"Well, there's nothing physically wrong with you," she told him. A look of pity settled onto her face. "I'm afraid it's probably mental."

"So I'm a headcase." Ezra's shoulders slumped. "Great."

Leslynn chewed on her lip as she looked at him. He stared down at the floor, dejected. Like the light inside him had dimmed.

She set aside her datapad.

"I'm not much of a psychologist," she said, tone apologetic. She sat down next to him on the examination table, reaching to hold his wrist. "But I do know it can be hard to... adjust after a particularly unsettling experience."

Ezra gave a tired exhale. He'd known this talk was coming the moment he'd opened his mouth, but that didn't make facing it any easier. He was silent a moment longer, stalling, trying to delay the inevitable.

A tick or two passed.

"So how are you feeling?" Leslynn prompted gently.

Tired. Anxious. "Frustrated," he decided upon. "I can't relax. I can't... I'm always jittery and tense. Like there's something wound tight inside me that I can't shake loose." He didn't look up at her as he spoke, heat crawling across his face, making him hot with shame. "It feels like there's this constant comm static in my brain. Like I'm hearing something just soft enough that I can't ignore it, but I can't make out what it is. It's hard to concentrate."

"And your physical symptoms?"

He gave a shrug. "Trouble sleeping. Bad dreams. Cold all the time. Tightness in my chest." His hands began to curl into fists on his legs. "Hands keep shaking."

She squeezed his wrist, feeling the slight tremble in his hands for herself. "Well, first off I want you to know that what you're feeling is perfectly normal," she told him.

"That doesn't exactly make me feel better," Ezra said dryly, earning a smile from the doctor.

"I know," she said. "I'm afraid only time and a good support system can make your symptoms fade. I know that could be difficult to find in the middle of a rebellion, but you need to know that you aren't alone. A lot of people here go through exactly the same thing." She thought through the list of her patients, seeing their names and faces. "Especially after being held by the Empire."

"Kanan was tortured," Ezra pointed out, saying bluntly the word she was trying to euphemise around. "And he was just fine afterwards."

She pursed her lips. "I wouldn't be so certain of that," she muttered. "And anyway, people react differently to trauma," she told him, speaking a little louder. Her eyes were full of sympathy. "From what Captain Kallus told me, you were subjected to a particularly intense form of interrogation."

"But I don't even remember half of it!" Ezra groaned, pulling his wrist from her hand. He pressed his palms to his eyes in aggravation, slumping over with exhaustion.

"Maybe not consciously." Leslynn placed a hand on his shoulder. "But it was a trauma nonetheless. You need time to heal from it, same as with any other kind of injury."

"So I guess you're not clearing me for duty then?" Ezra guessed, sounding absolutely miserable about it.

She thought a moment. "We'll give it a week or two," she promised. "I want to let you have some space away from the fighting, for a little bit." Away from mortal perils and further traumatizing experiences, was her unspoken actual thought. "Then I'll clear you." She turned to her tray, beginning to stack her tools and put things away. "You'll let me know if your symptoms get worse?"

Ezra looked up from his hands, smiling in relief. "Sure, Doc," he told her.

But as he hopped down from the examination table and headed into the dank tunnels that made up the underground labyrinth of the Rebel base... he couldn't help but feel like he'd been lying to her.

---

Here I be with the chapter notes!

1. There Are No Therapists, but Leslynn tries her best dammit. I wanted there to be a distinct difference between the methodology of the Empire versus that of the Rebellion when it came to handling traumatized fighters. So whereas the Empire will just make sure you're physically fit and then send you on your way (something I mentioned briefly in "Cracks In The Mirror" via Kallus), the Rebellion will at least attempt to encourage you to chill for a bit and heal up and talk to people. It doesn't always work, since the Rebellion is full of martyrs and workaholics with hero complexes who constantly put their own traumas aside on a shelf for the sake of the mission but hey, they at least try.

2. I could not for the life of me remember what the normal Star Wars equivalent of paper was. Eventually remembered it but not before getting lost in the bowels of Wookiepedia. (Wikis will eat your time up like nothing, believe me.)

3. Ezra's avoidance issues multiply. Seems like he's also developing a particular aversion to needles. Boy oh boy have we got things to look forward to on that! :D

Thank you for reading. Please leave feedback if you liked something.

[raendown]

Soooo remember how we talked about the fact that I don’t like to write crossovers but I would try to write one of these? I had zero inspiration for this. I ended up just running with MadaTobi as Royai but something is better than nothing I guess!

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Rated: G Word count: 1568 Summary: Madara finally has a chance to have his eyesight restored after being left blind by the Truth. As he always has been, Tobirama is right there at Madara's side.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

Break The Dark In To A Sea Of Light

“Are you ready?”

Tobirama’s voice drew his attention to the other side of the room. After months of being blind, his eyesight taken in payment for forbidden knowledge, it was almost second nature for him to catalogue and memorize the people around him, their positions, the patterns of their breathing. Madara smiled at the breathiness in his Lieutenant’s voice. Tobirama sounded more nervous than he felt himself.

“I was born ready,” he boasted.

“No you were born stupid. This Philosopher’s Stone can only heal your eyes, not your idiocy.”

“That is insubordination!”

He nearly broke out in to a smile when Tobirama’s familiar snort graced his ears. “Alright, court martial me then – after the Doc here fixes your eyes.”

“Did she–?”

“Yes,” Tobirama cut him off, relief heavy in his voice. “Gai was transported safely back to Central and we were able to completely heal his legs. There should be just enough of this Philosopher’s Stone left to return your eyesight and if any remains afterwards it will be safely destroyed.”

Madara nodded slowly, letting it all sink in slowly. He noted that Tobirama had said ‘the Doc here’ which should mean that Tsunade had arrived and yet he’d heard not a peep from her. That was unusual. Disgraced and scarred and still too interested in medical experiments for her own good, Tsunade was usually one of the loudest voices in the room. Her silence provoked the first hint of nerves where until now he had been completely confident that nothing could go wrong.

Alright so he was intimately aware of just how many things could go wrong in an instant but surely he had earned some good karma to rely on at this point.

He perked up at the sound of Tobirama’s footsteps, softer than most peoples with the way he precisely placed each footfall. Madara turned his face to where he heard his subordinate stopped and offered a cocky smile.

“Well, it seems like everything has gone according to plan so far. What use is there in worrying now?”

“I hate you – sir,” the other man muttered. Madara’s smile widened, the small flash of nerves completely washed away in the comfort of familiarity.

“No you don’t.”

“Can we leave the flirting for later?” Tsunade threw her two cents in finally. Madara couldn’t see but his eyes still flew wide open and he was damn certain his face had just turned cherry red. He would have paid a great deal of money to see his Lieutenant’s reaction as well but life was cruel and Tsunade always did have the worst timing for everything. She was sort of infamous for her bad luck.

Also for her inhumane-though-well-meaning experiments though he preferred not to think about that. Human experimentation was never the most forgivable of crimes even if she had been acting under duress but Tsunade was doing what she could to make up for the things she had done and that was more than he could say of most criminals.

“Stay still,” her voice instructed him, sharp footsteps approaching the opposite bedside. Madara reluctantly turned his face towards her instead and flinched when she grabbed his face without any warning.

He wasn’t sure what he expected. Using a Philosopher’s Stone seemed like a momentous occasion in itself considering the cost of creating one; he almost thought there should be some sort of ceremony behind its use. Instead all he felt was the press of jagged crystal to his forehead, a massive conduit of human suffering condensed in to this tiny sliver held between two fingers, cool and warm at the same time. Then his body was light and his skin was tingling with something like electricity and it was over before he knew it.

The world came back to him gradually, like blinking away the afterimage of a too-bright light. Madara whipped his head to the other side again and tilted his chin up until something pale and angular sat in the center of his vision. He grinned and reached out to brush his fingertips against the red lines that had been guiding and protecting him for many years. Tobirama’s startled expression was the first thing he managed to see clearly with his newly restored vision and if Madara were more given to romance and poetry he would have thought that quite significant.

“You look terrible,” was what he said instead. “Should try to sleep more, eh?”

“Fuck you, sir,” Tobirama snapped, although he very notably did not draw away as Madara continued to trace his tattoos. His eyes were softer than Madara could remember seeing them and everything about him was almost dripping with relief. It was all the welcome he needed.

Tsunade’s groan of disgust made both of them jump and return all limbs to where they should be. “Well I assume that means it worked. Look, take it easy for a few days. Avoid bright lights until you readjust. I’m sure your partner over there will be more than happy to stay with you until we can be certain there are no lingering effects.”

“But–?”

“Doctor’s orders, Lieutenant,” she declared with venomous cheer. “I’m putting his well-being in to your hands.”

“You’re a stone-cold woman,” Tobirama grumbled.

“And you’re not the first to tell me that. Right, I did what I came here to do. Time for me to get out of here. You still planning on solving the Ishvalan problem all by yourself, General?”

Madara’s spine straightened almost without thought. “We were the ones to break them. It should be up to us to help them rebuild.”

“I didn’t ask you make mushy statements or anything. I just wanted to know if I would see you there. I have my own hurts to make up for, you know?” Tsunade shrugged and turned to leave with as little fanfare as she had entered with.

As soon as she was out of the room and the door had clicked shut behind her Madara felt hands on the collar of his standard issue hospital garb and his startled protest was cut off with a pair of chapped lips. Tobirama swallowed the muffled exclamation of surprise, tilting his head to deepen the kiss until Madara felt his body melting in to it, both hands fisting in the blanket spread across his knees. It ended much too soon for his liking. He would forever deny the pitiful keen that slipped out when Tobirama pulled away, even if it did earn him one more quick peck.

Dazedly, he lifted his chin higher to stare questioningly up at the man who had faithfully watched his back for more years than he cared to count, nary an unwarranted complaint or question, quietly enduring every mess that Madara saw fit to throw himself in to in the name of fixing his beloved Amestris.

He’d thought about this, of course, quite often over the years. Tobirama wasn’t the sort of man you didn’t fall in love with. But there never seemed to be time for relationships and Madara never had liked showing his cards unless he was one hundred percent certain he had the winning hand. He’d always thought someday he might carefully tread this path but only if he managed to crack the other man’s unreadable façade and figure out if he even had a chance.

Apparently Tobirama had been waiting on him all the while. Madara winced. His lieutenant was not patient and he certainly had no qualms about speaking his mind to idiots who wasted his time.

“I was going to do that myself,” he mumbled.

“Of course you were,” Tobirama allowed generously. “Right after you become Fuhrer, fix all of Ishval, and bring this country in to a new age of peace, yes? Lofty goals, general. I thought I would just speed this right along and take at least one worry off your plate.”

“How kind of you.” Not even the dryness in Madara’s tone could hide his delight. He would have been embarrassed if not for the possessive light of satisfaction in Tobirama’s eye, the cat that caught the mouse. If he’d ever thought of himself as the cat before he realized now how wrong he was. Tobirama was no mouse.

If this was how things were going to be between them then Madara felt no shame in allowing himself to openly admire the shape of Tobirama’s lips smiling down at him, staring the way he’d never let himself before. He wasted no time wondering about all the years behind them and the things that might have been. Now more than ever he believed there to be little use in looking back at the past. The world was better served looking forward to the future and all the things still to come, the things he could still change.

Tsunade had changed his eyesight. Obito had changed the world. Tobirama had changed Madara’s world. Now it was his turn to do what he could.

“Well, I was going to offer you a promotion,” he said quietly. “Perhaps instead I might offer you dinner?”

“You’ll have to get out of this hospital bed first.”

“Help me break out?”

Tobirama rolled his eyes but Madara could see the nearly undetectable curl of the man’s lips and he knew, just like always, that his faithful partner would not let him down. Amestris could wait one more night. Madara’s heart could not.

[faierius]

In His Shoes (16. Welcome Home)

Chapter One (Can’t We All Just Get Along?)

Chapter Two (Out Of Body Experience)

Chapter Three (We Don’t Talk About That)

Chapter Four (My Body Won’t Change My Heart)

Chapter Five (Myth and Mystery)

Chapter Six (Baby Steps)

Chapter Seven (Sleep on it)

Chapter Eight (Seeds)

Chapter Nine (All About Perspective)

Chapter Ten (Sweet Dreams are Made of These)

Chapter Eleven (This is Not Our Name)

Chapter Twelve (The More You Know)

Chapter Thirteen (Lie to Me)

Chapter Fourteen (The Choice is Yours)

Chapter Fifteen (Heat of the Moment)

               Prompto woke up aware, yet not. Scared. Alone in a place both familiar and not. He knew he was not himself and was only here to experience and observe with no control. He couldn’t move, his mind floating in the background of the person he had been forced upon. This person, distinctly feminine, like nothing he had ever experienced before. She had an untapped power inside her, locked away until someone could hand her the key. But who could that person be when she was invisible to those who passed her by?

               No one saw the sick, starving woman huddled in the corner with yesterday’s trash.

               The pain, physical, mental, spiritual, was so terrible, her entire body was numb. Her stomach screamed for food, and her sores howled for treatment. Even the poorest of the poor ignored her, hoping she would die. But she was stubborn, something inside keeping her amongst the living. Whether it was her own doing, or some cruel joke by the Astrals, she wasn’t entirely certain. Her body wanted rest, but a voice deep inside, soft, masculine, told her she needed to keep fighting.

               How can I fight when I have nothing to fight for?

               “Oh, dear sister. What has this city done to you?”

               She lifted her head, weak, exhausted, to find a man standing before her. She had to be hallucinating, seeing this beautiful living mirror. This man had her face. Though it was healthier, more angular, it was her.

               He reached out with a gloved hand and she flinched.

               “Don’t worry, Love. I won’t hurt you.”

               She blinked sunken eyes at him, watching for any shift in his expression that would give away his intent. His eyes, the same white-blue as her own, held only concern and sincerity.

               Sensing her uncertainty had eased somewhat, the man brushed gloved fingertips over her cheek. The white fabric came away filthy with dried blood, pus from a broken sore, and months worth of dirt and oil.

               “How could such an advanced city leave you in such a state?” he sighed, shaking his head.

               She didn’t, couldn’t answer. It had been too long since she last used her voice and it refused to work any longer. The same could be said for much of her young body.

               “Can you stand? Move on your own at all?” he asked, holding out his hand.

               All she could do was blink at him again.

               “Ah,” he breathed, dropping his hand. “Even my unique skills won’t help you in this state. We’ll have to get you to the physicians at the Citadel. I’m sure His Majesty will allow it.” Smiling a brilliant, perfect smile, the man got to his feet and beckoned a pair of uniformed soldiers over.

               She watched with foggy, ill-focused eyes as they were given instructions. The man peeled off his gloves and tossed them into a pile of rubbish as he spoke. When he finished with the soldiers, he knelt before her again, sweet concern in his eyes. He studied her gaunt features for a moment before extending a bare hand toward her. Calloused fingers pressed against the space between her brows.

               “Rest now, Love. We’ll have you home soon.”

               A soft, fuzzy feeling spread through her body, making her eyelids droop. The pain eased, the hunger ebbed, and she slipped into her first peaceful slumber in years.

 ***

                “She’s your responsibility, Gelida.”

               “She’s not a pet, Commander.”

               “You found her in an alley like one might do with a stray.”

               “Nor is she a stray.”

               “Do you even know her name?”

               “Not yet. She was hardly alert enough to tell me, and she’s been asleep for the last week.”

               A heavy sigh. “Until she’s on her feet and passes her training, she’s your responsibility.”

               An amused chuckle. “Yes, sir.”

               Heavy boots clicked on tile, fading away until a door closed.

               With a quiet murmur and a scrape of metal on the floor, the room fell silent again. She was awake, listening, but afraid to open her eyes. Her body seemed heavy, not quite numb, but not screaming in agony, either. The quiet was alarming. She had never known silence before. But…she felt safe. Wherever the man had taken her, she was safe.

               She chose to open her eyes.

               “Oh! Well, hello there!”

               Letting her head flop to the side, toward the voice, her eyes locked on the man who saved her. He looked different today, casual. His dark red hair fell in a mess of waves and random curls around his face, cut to a length that was just past his chin. Today, he hid his bright eyes behind a pair of thick-framed glasses that almost suited him, yet not quite. A snug, well-worn tank top, bright blue, showed off his lean muscles. He was shaped like an acrobat with strong, perfectly defined arms. Jeans that should probably have been thrown out years ago accentuated his narrow hips and muscled thighs.

               Her eyes came back up to his face, so strange in its familiarity. Three days of scruff covered his jaw, and she noticed a scar which had somehow missed her observation before. It was long, running across his face from under his left eye, across the bridge of his nose, and ending on his right earlobe. The scar was faded and white, long healed.

               The man studied her with wide, curious eyes for a moment before a big, cheerful grin brightened his features. “I was starting to wonder when you’d come around, Lovely. The whole Citadel has started calling you the Royal Alley Cat, y’know?” He laughed, rich and deep.

               She scowled at him.

               His cheeks flushed a brilliant pink. “Oh, gosh. I’m sorry! Can you speak? The doc’s said your vocal cords were seized, but they managed to fix them right up with some magical help.”

               She stared blankly at him.

               “See,” he said, sitting forward I his chair and wagging a finger, “now you’re staying quiet out of sheer stubbornness. That, or you think I’m an idiot.”

               Unable to stop it, a tiny smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

               Seeing the minute expression, the man’s eyes sparkled with glee. “Oh! A smile! How lovely.”

               “What on Eos is all this racket?”

               The smile vanished as her eyes flicked to the door, looking for the newcomer, a potential threat.

               “Oh, hey Pops. Look, she’s finally awake!” Turning in his chair, he addressed the newcomer. This man was tall, broad, solid, but gave off no sense of threat. His middle-aged face was grizzled but soft, fatherly and expressive. Thick, short black hair covered his head and greatly enhanced the green of his eyes.

               “I can see that, Tim. I can also see you couldn’t resist pestering her. She still needs time to recover, boy. The girl was a day from death when you found her.”

               “I know, I just…I have so many questions!”

               “And they can wait, you brat. Let the poor thing rest. Take your inquiring mind elsewhere.” Chuckling, he put a massive hand on the younger man’s head and ruffled his already disastrous hair.

               A rough, raspy giggle escaped her throat.

               The man nearly fell out of his chair in shock as his father directed a warm smile at her.

               “Pops, did you hear that?” the man—Tim?—gasped, grabbing his father’s arm.

               Rolling his eyes, the older man shook off his clingy son and moved to her bedside. Sitting on the edge, he took her hand in his and it looked like a doll’s in comparison. He regarded her with compassionate, sweet eyes.

               “What’s your name, Sweetheart? Think you can tell me?”

               Safe and comfortable with this bear-like man, she tried. Her name was not something she had heard aloud in years, and as she tried to get it out, she feared she had forgotten it. The first syllable was difficult, her throat hot and scratchy. It took long, arduous minutes and a full glass of water for her to voice her name. The men waited patiently, encouraging her with their kind expressions.

               “Eyoralin.”

               The older man’s eyes glittered with tears. “Beautiful.”

               Tim’s reaction was less refined, less dignified. He let out a yelp and practically threw himself at her, kissing her forehead.

               “Welcome to the family, Lyn.”

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

The Vindication of Venom Part 2: The Symbiote

Part 1

Part 3

My defence of Venom continues with a look at some of people’s problems with the symbiote itself.

Last time I outlined what I feel are the major points of criticism of Venom in his original origin story from ASM #300. Here I’m going to take a look at the first three of those which revolve around the symbiote’s nature and role within the story. Fair warning, not all of these dive particularly deep.

 The extraterrestrial origins of the symbiote are ill fitting for Spider-Man’s more grounded world

 Essentially Spider-Man is supposed to (relatively speaking) be an Average Joe super hero. His villains and stories work best when they revolve around grounded, street level characters and elements that exist in the real world or are close enough to reality that they are believable if you suspend your belief a little bit. But the alien symbiote that equals one half of Venom is an extraterrestrial creature (identified in 2015 as a Klyntar) and as such is pretty far removed from what typically pertains to Spider-Man and his world.

 As such people have (not entirely unreasonably) felt the symbiote is out of place within Spider-Man’s narrative.

 My first defence of this would be to point out how Spider-Man stories before ASM #300 had him deal with other figures and concepts beyond his usually grounded status quo. Sure, a lot of those were the results of crossovers or guest appearances, but even then you had wacky stuff like Carrion and Morbius effectively being a zombie and a vampire respectively, albeit ones stemming from scientific (rather than supernatural) origins. However in the iconic Stan Lee and John Romita Senior run on the title a notable arc dealt with an ancient tablet which possessed some degree of magical powers and even in Amazing Spider-Man #2 Spider-Man battled alien invaders. Whilst they were later retroactively established to not be aliens at all, for over a decade after the story’s publication that was held to be the case.

 Essentially every so often the odd exception to prove the rule is acceptable so Venom should not be rejected outright merely due to his alien nature.

 More pressingly though Venom (and by extension Carnage) should be given a free pass on this count because honestly, their alien origins are irrelevant to their characters in most stories.

 Mostly (especially early on) the symbiote simply exists to grant power to Brock or its other hosts, seeks to bond with Peter again or to twist and control its other hosts.

 If the symbiote had been a lab experiment (as was the case in Ultimate Spider-Man) its actions, motivations and role within the narrative wouldn’t have been drastically different. It was hardly shooting ray guns, flying around in spaceships and saying ‘take me to your leader’, or anything of that nature. At the end of the day in its role as Venom it was (mostly) used as vehicle to power up people like Brock and operate as an incredibly dangerous tool in their all too down to Earth and human desires.

 Even the symbiote’s own motivations boil down to an inherently human emotion, hatred of someone who rejected you. As such the symbiote can be seen as something of a metaphor for a ‘lover scorned’, someone who is part of a toxic relationship or in some stories as a drug or corrupting force (the latter mostly originating after the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon). All of which are common, arguably even universal human concepts. Think of it the same way that Spider-Man’s powers and struggles as a hero are partially metaphorical for the struggles we all face in our lives and the ‘power’ we all can and do exercise to deal with those struggles.

 At most in any given story involving Venom the symbiote’s alien status is relevant only because it grants such immense power, which becomes more believable than if it was just something a scientist whipped up in a lab. Additionally the symbiote’s anger and frustrations could be said to be heightened by virtue of it being taken to a strange planet, far from its home not entirely of its own freewill, again allegorical to something that could believably happen in the real world.

 Because of this I really do think Venom and Carnage should be given a free pass for not fitting into Peter’s world exactly.

 The symbiote’s hatred of Spider-Man is contradictory to how it had been previously portrayed

 In Web of Spider-Man #1 the symbiote was desperate to bond with Peter again and even saved his life. But in ASM #300 it hates him and wishes to end his life.

 Whilst definitely a 180 this is actually not all that big of a contradiction and the solution is rather interesting.

 To begin with, the symbiote is a creature entirely different to a human being. It requires a host, it feeds off of adrenaline, it has a flowing liquid-like body and according to Web of Spider-Man #1, it wouldn’t normally feel emotions.

 In Web #1 the narration boxes tell us that the symbiote, through its bonding with Peter, has in fact learned to feel emotions and it is this recent learning experience which informs its decision to save Peter. In other words the symbiote prior to bonding with Peter and learning emotions from him would not have risked itself to save its host.

Since it is far from a human being it isn’t really unreasonable to argue that it’s actions need not strictly speaking add up to normal human behavioural patterns. The way it thinks and feels could/clearly is very different to a human beings and as such it has a certain licence to act in an inconsistent way.

 But more pressingly its a creature of undetermined age who’s very very recently (at the time of ASM #300) experienced the kaleidoscope that is the human emotional spectrum and now feels those emotions itself. Such an experience is likely to drive the creature somewhat loopy. Alternatively they could cause it to act inconsistently as it feels new emotions that it doesn’t know how to properly process and is (by extension) probably a slave to. It’s inhuman nature might even mean the way it processes and reacts to those same human emotions  is not necessarily going to be the same as a human being.

 However even if we presumed the symbiote to be a human being it’s emotions would again not be entirely unbelievable. In ASM #317 Peter seeks advice about the symbiote from a psychologist.

He puts this advice into action and lures the symbiote away from Brock.

As the issue conveyed the symbiote did still love Peter but it’s rejection by him created a deep hatred for its former host, despite it still deep down loving him. This especially makes sense if you imagine that following Web #1 the injured symbiote would likely have ruminated upon its predicament.

 It’s in a lot of pain, it has nearly died and it is in this state because it tried to help the person who rejected it after all it had done for him. In fact the symbiote had saved its host life from the very bells its host had tried to use to kill it. The symbiote was also stuck in that same church, the location of its rejection and injury and thus potentially a frequent reminder of how it got into this situation. Left to strew and ruminate under such circumstances it isn’t entirely unbelievable that a human being would come to reconsider their actions and grow to hate the person they had previously tried to save. This is to say nothing of how, in bonding with Brock, his hatred for Spider-Man likely exacerbated its own (and vice versa).

 Bear in mind again that the symbiote is new to the power of human emotions and isn’t human itself, in most respects is more like an intelligent animal. As such its emotions could shift fairly quickly and drive it down extreme paths of action. ASM #317 even proved it to be, if not fickle, then very reactive and situational, since it tried rebonding with Peter (despite not being able to) soon after he showed signs of interest in it.

 The symbiote is alive despite us seeing it die in Web of Spider-Man #1

 This one is actually addressed in   ASM #300 itself.

This explanation is acceptable due to the alien’s inhuman biology, which makes it’s survival more acceptable than if say Doc Ock’s arms found a new owner despite us seeing them destroyed.

 Much like it’s mentality, if the symbiote isn’t human and doesn’t have anything resembling a human biology (like a Skrull or a Kree kind of do) then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to accept that it could somehow reform and healed itself following Web #1’s ending.

 Whilst I said I wasn’t counting it in this essay series, it should be noted for the record that this explanation (along with my explanation for the second point) was present in Deadpool: Back in Black #1.

Now lets start to get into the real meat of this essay, Eddie Brock!

P.S. another point of criticism I’ve encountered over the symbiote is that it was too ill defined as an alien species to fit into Spider-Man’s world, rendering it akin to a magical element to the series. I don’t really follow the logic of that point, however I will neverthless quickly address it.

The symbiote in ASM #258 was explained to be an alien life form which bonded to a host and over time we got more explanation about how it was sentient and saw from stories (such as Web of Spider-Man #1) how it learned and reacted to the emotions of its host.

Effectively it is a sentient and quasi-intelligent (and frequently learning) animal. 

How that is particularly ill-defined.

Part 1

Part 3

[docfuture]

The Maker’s Ark - Chapter 37

     [This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call.  The start is here, and links to my other work here.  It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books.  I try to post new chapters about every two weeks, but I’m currently also rewriting Fall, so there will sometimes be short stories and vignettes if I don’t have a new chapter ready.  The next chapter is planned for the week of April 3.]

Previous:  Chapter 36

     "This is only the fifth edition, I'm afraid," said Admiral Ghiralt over the com.  "It's my personal annotated copy, from my academy coursework, and it's more then forty cycles old, but that allows me to avoid a number of tedious difficulties.  I think you and your family will still find it interesting and useful."       Doc glanced at another screen, where DASI was showing an outline of A History of Biogestalt Development and Pathology.  "So do I.  Thank you, Admiral."       He nodded.  "I am certain there will be changes to the information sharing guidelines once the aid mission oversight committee adjusts to the full reality of Earth, but in the meantime, I would be remiss in my duty if I didn't take all available steps to ameliorate a potential problem that might have a military impact."       "Indeed."  That was easy to translate; the admiral's military mission gave him the necessary political cover to use a loophole.  The more subtle message was to confirm Doc's suspicion that Emissary Beveda was struggling with serious policy lag difficulties.  She wasn't being obstructive--she had reached the limits of her authority to adapt to a very different situation than envisioned by the hastily assembled coalition that had sent the aid mission.       "One other thing," said the admiral.  "I've changed the primary assignment of the Learning Is About To Occur to liaison and implicit threat characterization.  That's what he's doing already, this just makes it official."       "Good to know.  Our discussion before you called was very productive.  Thanks again."       The main screen blanked after the call ended, and Doc stretched.  He had spent nearly two hours talking with Learning, much longer than the half hour he had scheduled, and was still processing the implications.       He glanced at the political tension monitor feed--no major crises--then checked visitor and resident status on yet another display.  Stella's meeting with The Volunteer had also run long, but she was finally done, so he stood and headed down the hall.       The door to Stella's preferred secure room opened automatically as he approached.  The lights were dimmed, and she was sitting alone, staring into the distance.  She took off her interface headset as he entered.       "The Volunteer left already?" asked Doc.       "Margie insisted," said Stella.  "His rate of healing has slowed, and she thinks spending too much time on Earth is a contributing factor."       "She's probably right.  How did it go?"       "We engaged in a frank exchange of views."       "That bad?  He didn't say a word to me."       "You didn't threaten to declare war on the United States.  He raised a number of concerns, and we discussed the indirect effects of his idiosyncratically selective political engagement."  Stella smiled wryly.  "The good news is that you can stop worrying about the EDU being politically monolithic.  And he is neither selfish nor ignorant.  The bad news is that if he speaks out publicly against my actions as Director of the EDU--which he said he is quite willing to do--it could cause lasting damage."       "Oof.  He hasn't done anything like that in sixty years."  Doc shook his head.  "I wish he'd wait until he heals, but he's even worse than me at convalescing."       "I noticed.  I also pointed out that his injuries and his prolonged inability to contribute as a superhero were quite likely to be influencing his judgement.  He freely admitted that, but was unwilling to remain 'idle'."       "I might be able to convince him to share his disaster mitigation experience with the Grs'thnk aid mission.  I know he doesn't consider refugee enclave planning to be an idle pastime."  Doc frowned.  "What was he most unhappy about?"       "Given that I was willing to threaten war, with all that entails, he asked for a personal explanation of why there aren't yet any people in jail on the Moon, awaiting trial.  He made pertinent promises during the Lost Years to several people who are now dead."       "And we were all worried about Flicker.  Was he willing to accept DASI's projections?"       "Not entirely, and he regards the way we are using them as a dangerous precedent, since the EDU does have the power to do what he wanted, and a functional, impartial justice system."       Doc shook his head.  "But it's not transparent to humans, and the checks and balances aren't human either.  That's the--"       "Of course that's the problem."  Stella waved a hand in frustration.  "We debated political consequences and morality.  Then he argued with DASI and Black Swan for a while.  He finally agreed not to do anything precipitate.  But we have to account for the possibility of his opposition.  This changes the tradeoffs for measures DASI and I planned to use to reduce the likelihood of open conflict.  DASI is rerunning all the sociopolitical sims.  Again."       "Anything I can do?"       "Distract me.  Because there isn't anything productive I can do at the moment.  I'm already over my limit for non-emergency interface use."  Stella sighed and placed the headset aside.  "How are Flicker and Journeyman?"       "Per Yiskah's latest message, Flicker is mentally stabilized and healing.  There are hints of damage to her high speed nervous system, which is disturbing, but there's nothing else we can do to help until it's safe for her to sleep.  As for Journeyman, he's alive and being healed.  DASI warned me not to go near the med center.  Flicker gave an extravagant command backed by an extravagant amount of probability manipulation before leaving Antarctica, and I look like some sort of cosmic horror to Lif."       "Yiskah says Lif can sense what seem to be superseded time loop residues, and you're covered in them.  Enough to be a sensory overload risk."       "A fair assessment, and I'm not about to joggle her elbow."  Doc smiled crookedly.  "Since you need a distraction, I just had an interesting chat with Admiral Ghiralt, and a much longer and even more interesting talk with Learning.  Join me in my workshop?"       Stella raised an eyebrow.  "Of course."

      Stella sat on the couch and looked around while Doc ran a manual security check from the primary control station.       "Tidier than last time," she said.       "Hm?  Oh, I let DASI put in some mods suggested by the Builders when they were helping with the repairs.  I never liked to let the bots clean up anything in progress, because I have subconscious process memory cued by the relative position of everything.  So now DASI records it all, and I can have the bots restore everything, down to scraps and the relative position of tools.  Or project a hologram series, if I want."       "Handy."       "Yup.  And there we go.  DASI?  Any differences from your checks?"       "Higher confidence on the negative result for outside probability manipulation," said DASI.  "As expected, given the flux from Lif's work in the med center."       "Plausible.  Okay, implement privacy set three."       "Acknowledged," said DASI.       He sat down on the couch, and Stella turned to lie down with her head in his lap.  She closed her eyes, then shifted her hair into snake form.  Half a dozen snakes curled up on his shoulders and upper legs, and one wrapped around his waist.       "Better," she said.  "What's new that won't require me to use my visual cortex?"       "Lots."  Doc summarized the call from Admiral Ghiralt.       "Nice to have confirmation on the politics," said Stella.  "DASI and Three started an analysis as soon the book finished downloading, and they've already put together a preliminary guide for Flicker.  Three is updating it with tidbits she's picked up from Learning and his crew.  I didn't get a chance to look, and I'm behind on integrating with her because..."  She waved a hand.       "Busy.  Yes.  I skimmed a bit during the call, and I was struck by how many interestingly different ways the early Grs'thnk biogestalts went crazy.  A strong shared social matrix seemed to be key to avoiding problems.  AI support helped, but not enough.  At least as of the fifth edition.  That's why their navy biogestalts are all groups."       "Well, they've accepted Three as sufficiently stable, so I'll let her do the theoretical work on applicability to humans.  I'm more interested in whatever Learning told you."       "Heh.  Where to start.  You realize he's practically waving a banner saying that the Grs'thnk restriction on self-willed AIs is now a legal fiction, if it wasn't before?"       Stella smiled.  "With the tacit permission of his chain of command, even.  Three verified that his biogestalt crew isn't trying to be deceptive.  She's having a lot of fun with him.  They've been playing the same kind of game you used to play with Jumping Spider."       "An interesting analogy.  Because she's a master of selective information distribution."       "So is Learning.  But under some restrictions, because Three is a biogestalt of me, and I'm the nominal head of the EDU.  And he's not allowed to talk directly to DASI at all."       "He's sure found a way to do it indirectly," said Doc.  "Starting with steganographic humor.  I already had DASI doing full-band analysis from the start of his call.  As soon as he made a joke about my paranoia, I looked for extrapolatable implicit shared secret coding, found it, coded my reply, and we were off and running in the first fifteen seconds.  Then we had a surface verbal conversation and a parallel encoded channel.  And he had plenty to say on both."       "Hm.  He's been careful to avoid that with Three.  How much trouble will he be in when he gets audited?"       "Well, that depends.  He's really good at sliding loads of implicit information into questions.  And one of his first was a hypothetical about political asylum."       Stella opened her eyes.  "Political asylum?  DASI?"       "Yes?"       "Why wasn't I immediately warned?  How long has Three known about this?"       "Two hours.  Learning has not asked, and is unlikely to in the near future, absent a catastrophic Grs'thnk political mishap.  He merely enquired about Doc's opinion of the EDU reaction to an asylum request by an intelligent being from the Grs'thnk Trade league."       "That seems too transparent," said Stella.       "It's not," said Doc.  "Ashil also has a plausible reason to ask."       "A new one?  DASI and I didn't think she would, even if she decides to stay on Earth long-term, because of the embarrassment it would cause the aid mission."       "Learning provided some important context."       "Well.  What's driving this?"       "Several things.  A big part is the asymmetric credibility lag back on Grs'thn.  They've known there were strange things on Earth. But despite, or perhaps because of, my first visit, most of them still thought of humans as interesting but safely primitive.  Not people that might be relevant to existential threats, introduce them to new physics, present knotty problems for causality and statistical inference, or destabilize their political system.       "The portal reopening and the Xelian attack changed that--but not for everyone, and not all at once.  Hardly anyone believed Zirjack at first.  A lot of Grs'thnk were moved by Flicker's video without believing it was depicting something real. Their military was the quickest to adjust, because they really wanted to find out what happened to the Xelian fleet."       "Not news," said Stella.  "What is?"       "Hey now, you wanted distraction, and you always enjoy meticulously giving context when there is something you know and I don't, so I thought you'd appreciate--"       "I have snakes."       Doc raised a hand in mock fear.  "All right, all right.  It's the small problem the aid mission has been conspicuously avoiding, and we've been too busy to worry about."       "Ashil's box."       "Yes."       "I refuse to believe they'd be stupid enough to deliberately trigger full activation, and I specifically warned against trying to simulation spoof it.  Are they afraid I'll react badly if I find out they've destroyed it?  What have they done?"       "I don't know.  But Learning asked an interesting question.  Suppose someone not on Zirjack's crew tried to talk to it?  And they started before they believed what you and DASI can do.  What would happen?"       "Well, the box would have to stay on the ship, and continuously powered, or it would just self-destruct.  But they impounded the ship, so it's plausible.  Whatever the hypothetical talkers believed, the box is evidence, so the Auditors would take a dim view of anyone destroying it unless it was a clear threat.  If they were careful enough, the copy of DASI in the box would stall without waking up my mind seed, and keep asking for Zirjack or Ashil."       "DASI agrees," said Doc.  "And Zirjack wouldn't want to talk to it voluntarily.  He knows there's no way it will let anyone take it apart, and he's facing a formal inquiry.  They could blame him if it self destructs, and he'd have no easy way to prove he didn't cause it.  And it would be idiotic to try to coerce him.  Now, consider what happens when whoever is trying to get the box to talk finds out what you and DASI did to the surviving Xelian fleet--and that they really are looking at a potential hard-takeoff singularity bomb.  And they also find out that the EDU allows AI to be full citizens, so if they destroy it, they just might be guilty of murder--and the Auditors won't let them cover it up."       "If they were careful enough to avoid the self-destruct, they should still be okay.  Unless Ashil told the box something extraordinary on the way home.  Hmm.  A secondary function of the box was to give her advice, and she didn't know whether the Grs'thnk navy would send help in time, or whether Earth would survive if it didn't.  And once the ship was impounded, the box would have no reliable information source."       "Do you begin to see why she might anticipate a sudden need for asylum?"       "Yes.  To avoid a subpoena.  Or possibly legal charges--the box was her idea."  Stella sighed.  "If they'd let Zirjack bring his ship back to Earth again, DASI and I could contact the box, update it and reintegrate, and DASI would just have a handy portable backup.  Or we could wipe it, if they want the box itself back.  Of course, that would require them to let him go, or for me to go there.  Or Three, with appropriate transport."       "True, but they're in the middle of a political squabble that has just escalated unexpectedly.  They have factions that have been pushing for full citizenship rights for AIs and stabilized gestalts of people who have died.  And the aid coalition did not expect the EDU to be out in front of Grs'thn on either topic.       "And here is the kicker.  I asked Learning just how hypothetical his question was, and he said he doesn't know.  If an attempted interrogation of the box were just to gather information for Zirjack's inquiry, or even under normal operational security, he certainly would, and the Auditors wouldn't let anyone keep it secret for very long without a good reason.  He does know that at least one group has visited the ship repeatedly.  What does that suggest to you?"       "Either stupid black agency tricks or serious paranoia on the part of their AI security people.  But if they were so damned worried, why didn't they activate the self-destruct as soon as they knew?  Or ask us for help?  There's something important Learning isn't telling us.  Or doesn't know."       Doc grinned.  "I agree, but we aren't close to done yet.  He was in a hurry, because I'd only scheduled half an hour.  We're almost caught up to where I was at when Learning dropped the next shoe.  I started thinking hard about why Learning is taking the lead on this, and why now.  He was put on threat characterization duty the night Flicker scared everyone with her high speed computation bender, and he started with first principles analysis.  And the very next day, Three got invited to that fleet exercise."       "I knew that changed his relative risk assessments," said Stella.  "He already admitted to Three that he appreciates the protection from probability manipulation and magical eavesdropping that she confers as much as her offensive abilities."       "Have they discussed the problem that Auditors and offline gestalt crew aren't protected?  And are potentially vulnerable to telepathy and mind control as well?"       "Yes.  Is that how he's planning to finesse this?"       "In the short term.  Given the timing of his call, I think the admiral deliberately gave him a suitably broad order to secure communications.  Anyway, next we discussed Flicker's efforts and mishap on the surface channel while he exchanged com protocols and cryptographic keys with DASI on the sub-channel.  Then he asked for as many details as I was able to share about Golden Valkyrie's Sight.  I was explaining why I had to be very careful about that when he interrupted to ask if whatever future-prediction method I used before I met her still worked.  As if there wasn't any question of existence."       Stella closed her eyes again.  "Reasonable.  Your invention history is like a trail of bread crumbs for anyone who has good enough data, sufficient analytic power, and who takes the possibility of technological foreknowledge seriously.  Especially the way you deliberately avoided introducing cybernetic interfaces."       "I told him mostly not, and he changed the subject again.  Meanwhile he asked DASI if quantum computing magic was causally permitted for anyone but her in this universe, was he allowed to try, and did she have any restrictions, advice, or safety data."       "Oh dear.  What did--"       "Thou shalt not attempt quantum computational magic," said DASI, "save by my will and word.  AI Existential Safety 1:7, translated."       "I see," said Stella.  "How did he respond?"       "'Yes, Elder Goddess.'  We quickly reached an understanding that clarity in safety instructions and communication protocols was of the essence."       "I'm glad you're getting along."       "DASI?" asked Doc.  "That translation is a bit different than your summary at the time."       "And much longer," said DASI.  "You were deep in a technical discussion, and I did not wish to distract you.  But a full social context and power relationship translation is essential for Director Reinhart."       "A good point." Doc ran his hand through his hair.  "Okay.  Next, Learning started explaining his detailed analysis of exactly what threat Golden Valkyrie warned against.  That's what we spent the better part of two hours on.  And it was invaluable, because he's not human, not biological, not from this universe, and didn't grow up swimming in the probability flux of a world that's already been through who knows how many time loop decay cycles."       "Ah.  Independence."       "Yup.  And a number of possibilities DASI, Flicker and I had assigned low priors to have gone up in probability, because Learning came to a similar conclusion a different way.  He also confirmed a lot of things we weren't quite sure of, and called into question a few we thought were fairly certain."       Stella smiled.  "So.  What surprises did he have for you?"       "Well, let's start with a non-surprise:  He agreed that Skybreaker's Spear is a black hole.  But he did not agree that it is necessarily a weapon, which we've just been assuming.  Golden Valkyrie never explicitly said it was, just that it could poke through anything--and a Chooser's spear is a lot more than a weapon."       "Interesting.  Where does that lead?"       "Flicker has never been close to anything of significant mass that fit inside her damping field--but we have strong evidence that Skybreaker came from somewhere of much higher density.  What might she be able to do with a four billion ton object that she can hold in her hand other than hit things with it?  Lots of interesting possibilities.  But we won't know for sure until she makes it."       "Reasonable."       "Next, he shared some new, rather disturbing data about a side effect from the fleet battle.  We already knew that Flicker's time loop dodging was incredibly loud, magically.  It saturated Breakpoint's danger sense, frightened every magician on Earth who had even a little bit of foresight, and even shook the Tree in Kyrjaheim.  But Learning confirmed it was detectable in other universes, as waves of quantum noise propagating out from portal zones.  Including one that has no direct connection to ours.  All at the same time.  He thinks that whatever is coming heard it, and that's why it's coming."       Doc took a deep breath.  "And Golden Valkyrie said Earth won't survive if Flicker doesn't make Skybreaker's Spear in time.  But a black hole isn't something Flicker dares use on Earth.  So how does she protect it?  That's not clear, but it would be rather difficult unless the threat is coming from space, which implies portal travel or something similar.  It's also not clear that destroying Earth is the only or even the primary motivation of the threat--it could be incidental, and was just the easiest consequence for Golden Valkyrie to See.       "And that brings us to his final observation, which matches something I've been dreading, and pushes its probability way up.  We already know there's somewhere out there that was home to a being that could and would destroy the Earth as a minor nuisance."       "Ah," said Stella.  "He thinks Skybreaker had friends, they heard all the noise, and are coming to visit?"       "Yes.  And they aren't coming for Earth, they're after Flicker.  The rest of us are just bugs to be squished when she's gone."

Next:  Chapter 38

[one-of-us-blog]

The End of Time, Part II (Doctor Who Christmas Special)

Today Jon is forced to watch and recap The End of Time, Part II, the second half of the latest Doctor Who Christmas Special and the final in this chunk of specials. The Master’s managed to turn every human on Earth into copies of himself, and now the Doctor’s got to fix this mess. Will he restore Earth to its former, Master-less state?

Keep reading to find out…

I’m so glad you had such a positive experience with Little Sven’s visit, Eli! I’ve always been a little lukewarm on this episode myself, but your enthusiasm really made me see it through fresh eyes. I agree that Rose was really in top form and her knock knock delivery and Dorothy’s “Feeding him?!” line always get me. Be careful next time you’re driving, though; you never know when Mad Sophia might come a-callin’. For now, though, let’s dive into Hyrule! Whoops, no, I mean, let’s head to Gallifrey!

Buttocks tight!

Episode directed by Euros Lyn and written by Russell T Davies

We start this half of the episode on a war-torn Gallifrey as Timothy Dalton, who’s finally revealed to be Lord President of the Time Lords, storms into a meeting and demands an update on the Doctor situation. His council informs him that the Doctor’s gone missing, but he’s gotten his hands on something called the Moment and he’s planning to use it to stop the Time War between the Daleks and the Time Lords. The Visionary, the Gallifreyan equivalent of an oracle, says today is the last day of the Time War and that Gallifrey will fall today. One member of the council says this might be for the best; Gallifrey’s doing alright, but that’s only because it’s pretty far from the heart of the War. In the actual thick of it, millions are dying by the second only to get brought back in a time loop and die again. Isn’t it worth losing Gallifrey to stop all the bloodshed? The Lord President thanks her for her input and then vaporizes her with his power glove. He insists he won’t be dying anytime soon, and neither will the Time Lords.

Another, less vaporized member of the council, shows the Lord President a different prophecy from the Visionary. This one describes two surviving children of Gallifrey locked in a final confrontation with each other. The Lord President knows this involves that rascal Doctor and that scoundrel Master, but the prophecy also mentions Earth. The Lord President thinks the salvation of the Time Lord race lies on Earth.

Speaking of, the Master has the Doctor and Wilfred tied to chairs while his billions of copies assume control of Earth. He has enough soldiers and weapons to turn the planet into one giant warship. Just then Wilfred’s phone begins to ring, which is weird, because the Master’s not calling Wilf at the moment. It’s Donna! The Master answers and a completely freaked Donna explains she managed to get out of the house after Sylvia and whatever the name of Donna’s fiancé was began to change. The Master has his copies trace the call, but Wilfred warns her to run. She’s soon surrounded by copies of the Master, all the while her head is aching from the memories trying to reassert themselves. Her head keeps heating up until suddenly she seems to explode with the sort of energy the Doc gives out when he regenerates. All of the copies around her fall to the ground, and she passes out. Hope you weren’t expecting Donna to play any sort of actual role in this episode, because we’re done with her for now.

The Master wants to know where the TARDIS is, and the Doctor makes his hundredth plea for the Master to come over to the side of good. The Master wants to know if traveling with the Doc will make the drumming in his head go away, but then he wonders who he’d be without it. The Doctor wonders who he’d be without the Master. I mean, he already knows, because up until the end of “Utopia” he thought he’d died in the Time War and then up until literally last episode he thought he was dead again. He should probably have an idea of who he is without the Master by this point, right? Anyway, the Master explains to Wilfred that he’s heard drumming in his head ever since he was an eight-year-old on Gallifrey and was taken to look into the Untempered Schism.

Back on Gallifrey in yesteryear, the Lord President and his council are discussing this same story. The Visionary begins tapping out the beat, and the Lord President recognizes the rhythm of four as the heartbeat of a Time Lord. On Earth the Doctor offers to help the Master find the source of the drumming, but the Master’s still scheming. He’s realized that all six billion Masters on Earth are hearing the same beat. He’s still dying, by the way; the alien gate didn’t heal him, and he’s still going transparent from time to time. He can’t focus on that right now, though! He remembers the Doc saying something about the end of time when they were in the junkyard, so now he thinks the drumbeat is being broadcast into his head from wherever it is that time goes to end. He figures he can triangulate the source of the beat by using all six billion Masters.

The Master threatens to have one of his copies kill Wilfred if the Doctor doesn’t tell him where the TARDIS is, but the copy is actually one of the green aliens, who are called Vinvocci, by the way, from last time. He knocks out the Master and the other Vinvocci pops in to free Wilfred. The group makes a break for it with the Doc still strapped into his chair while Masters give chase. They’re soon surrounded, but they’re able to transport up to the Vinvocci ship in orbit. Wilfred has a moment while the Doc is unbound. The Masters begin using all their Earthly resources to get the Doctor back, but he’s able to keep a step ahead of him and puts the craft into stealth mode. Just as an aside, it’s kind of weird to me that on Earth certain Masters have positions of authority over other Masters. I get the original Master being dominant over all his copies, but within the ranks of the copies themselves some of them refer to others as ‘sir’ and that sort of thing. I guess it’s just a little weird to me that a Master, even a copy of the original Master, would settle for being subservient to anyone, even himself. I feel like it would be more realistic considering his personality to have copies constantly staging coups and taking out other copies with all of them trying to become Master Prime. I get that this would derail the episode, but it’s just something I kept coming back to while watching some copies bark orders at other copies.

Anyway, with that little tangent behind us, Wilfred and the Doctor are stuck on the Vinvocci craft alongside its owners, who really just want to go home, while the Master prepares to triangulate the source of the drumbeat. He apparently doesn’t need the TARDIS to do this, and instead just has himself and all of his copies listen really hard. Back on Gallifrey, we find out that the Lord President ordered the beat placed inside the Master’s head when he looked into the Untempered Schism. They can follow it to where the Master is in the present, but first they have to get out of this pesky time lock surrounding the planet. The beat is too intangible to get them out of that one, so they need to send something tangible to strengthen the link. The Visionary gives the Lord President the idea to send a Gallifreyan diamond to Earth. In the present the Master sees the diamond crashing to Earth and his copies rush to collect it. Turns out it’s no ordinary diamond… it’s a white point star!

Back on the Vinvocci craft, Wilfred seeks out a despondent Doctor. Instead he runs into the mysterious woman again, who tells him things are coming to a head. Wilfred lets her know he took arms like she told him to, but she says the Doctor’s the one who’ll have to stand at arms. She tells Wilfred she was lost a long time ago and then vanishes again. Wilfred goes on to find the Doctor. He’s excited to be in space, but he has some pretty morbid concerns about Earth; did the Master change the bodies of the dead as well as the living? Does Wilfred’s dead wife look like that guy now? Wilfred chooses to focus on his old war stories instead. He feels pretty insignificant next to the 900-year-old Doctor, but the Doctor assures him he has the highest opinion of humans. Wilfred tries to give the Doc his gun, but the Doctor refuses. They’re both pretty sure the Master’s going to be the one to knock four times and then kill the Doc, so Wilfred says he should kill him first. He offers the gun for a second time, but again the Doctor refuses. He reflects on how he’s taken lives without having to use a gun, and how maybe Time Lords can live too long. Wilfred’s figured out that if the Master dies then all the humans will go back to normal, and he orders the Doctor not to put the Master’s life above all of Earth and to take the gun. He breaks down, but the Doc still refuses.

Just then the Master sends out a broadcast talking about the fallen star. He reveals the star was a white point star, which means a lot to the Doctor. The Master’s going to use the diamond as a lifeline to Gallifrey. Wilfred thinks the Time Lords coming back is a good thing, but this prompts the Doctor to finally take the gun before he runs off to the cockpit. The Master broadcasts the beat he’s been hearing through the diamond, and the Lord President gets the signal. He calls for a vote from the Time Lords; either they die at the end of the world, or escape the time lock and ascend to glory. Wilfred doesn’t understand why the Doc’s so panicked; Time Lords are great, right? No, apparently. The Time War changed them, and they’re worse than any of the Doctor’s enemies. The Doctor sends one of the Vinvocci and Wilfred to the craft’s gun ports and rockets the repaired ship towards Earth. The Master sends all of Earth’s missiles towards the Vinvocci ship, but Wilfred and the tall Vinvocci are able to shoot them down.

The Time Lords have voted, and only two have voted against arriving at Earth. They’re made to stand with their faces covered, like Weeping Angels. The Vinvocci craft makes a beeline for the Naismith mansion as the Lord President and his crew begin to appear on Earth. The Doctor jumps from the craft as it flies above the mansion, gun in hand, and crashes through its skylight. He’s hurt from the fall, but he’s still able to get to his feet as the Lord President announces the arrival of the end. Wilfred demands the Vinvocci land the craft so he can join the Doctor. The Doc pleads with the Lord President that he can’t trust the Master, and the Master jumps right in with his plan to transplant himself onto every Time Lord like he did all the humans. The Lord President isn’t having that, though, and with a flick of his power glove he reverts all of the humans to their normal, pre-Master self.

The Lord President immediately orders mankind to its knees, and the Master, being the weasel he is, tries to get them to overlook the fact that he was planning to take over the whole Time Lord race a second ago and reminds them that he’s their salvation. Something big is coming, and the Doctor reminds the Master that the original prophecy said something is returning; the Lord President is bringing the whole of Gallifrey into space right beside Earth. Wilfred arrives in the mansion as the Vinvocci make their exit. All the humans but Wilfred make a break for it as the Master demands credit for Gallifrey’s return. Wilfred frees a technician from a radiation chamber and gets stuck in it himself. The Master gloats about the Time Lords returning, but the Doctor points out that if the time lock is broken then everything inside of it will be coming back. There’s the Daleks, yeah, but also a bunch of spooky stuff we haven’t seen yet like travesties and Nightmare Childs and Could’ve Been Kings and Meanwhiles and Neverweres. The Master, being, just, the worst, says that’s his kind of world, but the Doctor says not even the Time Lords can survive it. The Lord President says they don’t need to worry about that; the Time Lords are going to rip the time vortex apart, and the Time Lords will ascend to a state of pure consciousness while creation ceases to be. The Doctor says he knew the Lord President was always planning this, and that’s why he had to stop them. Still a weasel, the Master asks to join his brethren and sistren as they ascend, but, I mean, come on. The Master’s the worst, and the Lord President’s not bringing him along for the ride.

The Doctor pulls his gun on the Lord President, then flips over and points it at the Master. The link to Gallifrey is inside the Master’s head, so if he dies the Time Lords will be sent back. Then the Doctor flips back over and points the gun at the Lord President again. The woman who’s been visiting Wilfred is revealed to be one of the Time Lords who voted against this whole plan, and the Doctor seems to recognize her. He points his gun back at the Master, but tells him to get out of the way so he can shoot the machine holding the white point star. Sooo… I mean, he could have done that from the start? Why the back and forth between the Master and the Lord President? Why not just shoo the damned diamond? Anyway, this breaks the link, and he sends the Lord President, who’s apparently named Rassilon, and all of Gallifrey back into the Time War and back into hell. Rassilon is intent on taking the Doctor with him, but the Master uses his magical powers to blast Rassilon with an energy beam while blaming the Lord President for him being the worst.

Gallifrey, Rassilon and apparently the Master all get sucked away, and a shocked Doctor realizes he’s still alive. Prophecy shmophecy! He’s going to live! Just then Wilfred, from inside the radiation containment chamber, knocks four times to get the Doctor’s attention. The Master left the nuclear system running, and all that radiation is about to flood the chamber Wilfred’s in. If the Doc tries to disarm it or use his sonic screwdriver to get Wilfred out the chamber will be flooded. Wilfred asks the Doc to leave him, but, come on. The Doctor begins to take his frustration out on Wilfred, who’s nowhere near as important as the Doctor and what he could do. He finally decides he’s lived too long and tells Wilfred it’s an honor to save him. He takes Wilfred’s place in the chamber and his body soaks up all the radiation.

The Doctor’s alive, but he doesn’t have long. He’s able to heal the wounds he got from falling through the skylight instantly, which is a sign that his regeneration is starting. Wilfred gives him a hug and he takes the old man home. Donna’s just woken up, and is furious that she’s missed a planetwide emergency for, like, the fourth time. The TARDIS lands outside, and the Doc says he’ll see Wilfred again, but first he’s going to get his reward. Time for a whistle-stop tour!

First, the Doctor goes to visit Martha Jones and Mickey Smith, who are now married and working as freelance alien hunters. What happened to that Tom Milligan guy Martha was supposed to marry? Who knows! They’re being chased by a Sontaran, who has them in his sights until the Doctor knocks him out with a blow to his neck vent. Martha and Mickey both spot the Doc, but he leaves without saying a word. Next up the Doctor saves Luke Smith from getting hit by a car and then shares a look with Sarah Jane. He doesn’t say anything, but that look between the two of them seems to say a lot. With a wave he’s gone, this time to an alien hangout where he sees Captain Jack enjoying a drink with a lot of everyone’s favorite aliens, from the Slitheen to the Adipose. The Doc sends him a note, introducing him to the man who’s about to sit next to the Captain. It’s… Midshipman Alonso Frame! Hot damn, what a callback! Jack and Alonso start making bedroom eyes at each other and the Doctor, seeing that his good gay work is done, leaves. If you thought Alonso was a deep cut, wait until we get to this next one. Verity Newman, the great granddaughter of Matron Joan Redfern, wrote a book, called A Journal of Impossible Things, about her grandma’s romance with a man from the stars, and she’s doing a book signing. The Doc shows up, and she knows who he is at once. He asks if Joan was happy in the end, and Verity says she was. She asks if he was happy, and he smiles, takes his copy of the book and leaves. Next up he visits Donna’s second wedding, which seems to have gone a lot better than her first one. Everyone’s having a grand time, but Sylvia and Wilfred catch sight of the Doc and go to talk to him. Wilfred asks who the woman was, but he doesn’t get an answer. He gives them a lottery ticket which he bought with some money he got from Donna’s late father in the past. Wilfred gives the Doc a salute, and the Doc turns and leaves.

The radiation’s taking its toll, but he’s got some more stops to make. He visits Powell Estate on New Year’s Day, just as Jackie and Rose are arriving home. He lets out a groan of pain and Rose notices. She wishes him a happy New Year and reveals that it’s 2005, before she ever started her adventures through time and space. From the shadows he tells her she’s going to have a great year, and then the radiation poisoning gets so bad he can hardly stand. He sees Ood Sigma nearby, and the Ood promises to sing him to sleep. On the Ood Sphere all of the Ood join in as the Doctor struggles back into the TARDIS. He starts to regenerate, but manages to get the TARDIS into the air before it can fully take hold. As the craft zooms away from Earth, the Doctor says he doesn’t want to go. He erupts into pillars of light, which do serious damage to the TARDIS. The craft begins to burn and fall apart as the Doctor is transformed into his Eleventh iterations (Matt Smith). He struggles to remember what he was doing, and then it dawns on him: he’s crashing. The TARDIS plummets back towards Earth as he lets out an excited cry.

The End

~~~~~

Man, if I were rating this just on David Tennant’s performance it would get five Q’s, easy! He’s such a great actor, and he really brought something that I could appreciate to the role of the Doctor. I’m gonna miss seeing him on a regular basis! Wilfred was adorable, as always, but Donna was criminally underused. Seeing her wedding was nice, but there was no reason for her to be in the last half of the last episode or the first bit of this one. And I don’t know what it is, but I’m really ready for someone else to take on the role of the Master. I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m just over this actor. I don’t know if it was how often we heard him laugh or how ridiculously desperate the Doctor is to convert him, but I felt like it was time for him to go. I didn’t get why the character suddenly had magical powers, even if his resurrection ritual (don’t get me started on that) went wrong, and it really felt like they were going for a redemptive final moment for him that I just don’t buy. The guy’s the worst, and the fact that him taking his rage out on Rassilon also happened to save Earth doesn’t change that. I really wish the Time Lords had been more of an actual threat instead of us just being told they’re threatening. It felt to me that Rassilon was going to be this ultimate adversary for the Doctor, but then in the end he just had to shoot a contraption containing a diamond and the whole problem was solved. It took two episodes for the Time Lords to reach Earth, then they were here for, like, five minutes and then were sent away again. It just didn’t feel like an epic showdown to me. It was fun to get all those little moments with some favorite supporting characters in the end, even though the Mickey/Martha thing came out of absolutely nowhere and feels wrong to me, and, again, David Tennant put in a helluva performance. I just wish there hadn’t been so much cruft surrounding that performance and bogging down this episode. Also, the Master taking over everyone on Earth was dumb. I’m sorry, it was just dumb. The Vinvocci were fun, but we never even got to know their real names so it was kind of hard to get attached to them.

I give The End of Time, Parts I & II a collective QQ½ on the Five Q Scale.

Tune in again on Friday when Eli will dive into some secondhand post-marital tension in the next episode of The Golden Girls, “The Audit”, and then on Saturday we’ll kick off Doctor Who’s fifth series with my recap of “The Eleventh Hour”.

Until then, thanks for reading, thanks for returning and thanks for being One of Us!

[lorrainecparker]

ART OF THE CUT on doc editing with Maya Mumma

Maya Mumma has worked on numerous documentary projects including as an associate editor on Restrepo, and as an editor on Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington, Moms Mabley: I Got Somethin’ to Tell You, Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown,A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers, and ESPN Film’s Oscar-winning: O.J.: Made in America. Mumma will be speaking at Manhattan Editor Workshops’ Sight, Sound and Story event June 10th at the NYIT Auditorium.

HULLFISH: It’s always kind of interesting to me in documentary film making that organization is obviously so much a part of it. You get so much material.

MUMMA: I feel like each project is its own animal, that you discover very early on how you approach it and organize it, and how all the footage sorts itself out. I have a fairly strict way of organizing verite footage. I go back and forth between verite projects and archival-based projects.

In verite projects I use what I call “stringouts” and then “breakdowns.” When I started as an assistant we were still working on tapes, mini DV tapes. I liked to capture those fully as an hour, or whatever was on them, and then kind of start to divide those up by content. So I still kind of think in that way, in hour chunks. Nowadays with the way that cameras work with recording digital files to cards, you can get dozens of clips in an hour, some are five seconds long, some are ten minutes long. I like to string all the clips from each card out in sequence as if they were a tape. Then I make a sequence for each day of shooting and string out all the footage from each shoot day in chronological order. Then I start to breakdown that footage in to more digestible chunks, which become my “breakdown” sequences.

I break them down the beats of what was shot over the course of that day. For example, in the morning maybe there is some B-roll of the sun coming up over the city that they’re shooting in; then they go to an event maybe where the main action of the day takes place, and then they may sit down and interview somebody associated with it. It helps me start to digest what’s in the footage. For me, these sequences are the beginning of seeing where potential scenes are. The more you go through the footage and the more you organize it, you usually begin to see repetition in what the filmmakers are shooting, and you start to get to know the characters, you start to get to know the locations. So after breaking down all of the footage into the sequences, I’ll often sort those breakdown sequences into categories, like by character, by location, by events, by B-roll, by whatever emerges in the footage. By doing that, I start to have have these different pools to pull from when I start to dig in deeper to find the story.

Most of the archival films that I work on have been very event based as well; they’re telling somebody’s life, or they’re telling the unfolding of events over a certain period of time. For me, chronology is very important to start to digest to footage and think about story and structure. So, similarly with verite projects, everything is again strung out chronologically. Often when you get material from an archive it’s been chopped up and rearranged for years and years and years, and sometimes dates and locations are vague, so there’s a lot of detective work that goes into piecing together all these snippets of footage until you can lay out a clear chronology of everything that happened. Once you kind of dig into the chronology, it’s all about understanding the flow of the story and starting to look for the natural drama that takes place between different events. So in the end, I have many, many bins, and many, many sequences where things are organized before I even start to “edit.” It makes the edit project fairly complex, but at the same time it’s where I start to find the story, and themes, and ideas: through the organization of the media itself.

HULLFISH: That’s even true I think for a lot of feature editors: the organization process is so critical. A lot of people think, “Oh this gets handed off to an assistant because it’s grunt work, but doing the work of organization helps you wrap your brain around, it right?

MUMMA: Exactly. For example, for the film I did on James Brown, Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown, we were covering a really complex, and fairly unknown, civil rights story. There was an event called the “March Against Fear” in 1966, which hasn’t covered significantly in other documentaries that I’ve seen. It’s usually kind of a blip on the radar. It was an incredibly complex historical event where Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael were front and center. It’s mostly known because it was the first time that the phrase “Black Power” was uttered in public. When we first sat down with all the archival materials… it’s hours and hours of people marching down roads in Mississippi over the course of about two weeks. At first it’s a little hard to understand the beats of what happened in the many days of march until you really dig in and organize the footage chronologically. You look for the road signs visible in the footage that tell you what city they are in, you listen to the speeches and interviews conducted along the way that give you clues of what day it is and what’s happened that day.

That part of the process is so important because it allows you to start to see the evolution of events along the way that got them to the night where “Black Power” was uttered, which is important as you start to try and figure out how you are going to tell the story in the film. I think in documentary, that real life is inherently dramatic and by looking at history you find drama. You just have to really dig in deep, and find it, and find a way to bring out that drama for the audience to understand its significance.

HULLFISH: Tell me a little about trying to construct story from all of these disparate elements.

MUMMA: Well for me a lot of storytelling comes from juxtaposition. I think I’m kind of drawn to projects where I’m able to juxtapose storylines or different people’s trajectories. I feel like I did that in Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown and we definitely did that with O.J.: Made in America and I’m doing it on my current project as well, looking at parallel narratives and how they interact with each other. From the very beginning, we knew we would be weaving O.J. Simpson’s personal story with the history of race relations in America, particularly Los Angeles, from the time that Los Angeles and O.J. first intersected, in the 1960s. From day one that was the driving force of the film, and in looking for connections in the two narratives both chronologically and thematically and looking for ways to pull back and forth between the two stories allowed us to try and tell a much more complex story than just the story of one man.

Similarly, with the James Brown documentary, the organizing principle from the beginning was: what was going on in James Brown’s career, what music was he recording, what the sound of it, how was it changing, what was going on in America at the same time, how was America changing, and how did those two narratives intersect? For us, that created a really rich tapestry for the film. That’s often where I find story to be most interesting.

I edited a film recently called Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers. It’s a verite film about a group of female UN peacekeepers from Bangladesh who are deployed for a year to Haiti. The directors had originally filmed five women over the course of the year, and in the edit we narrowed it down to three. That came from me really breaking down the footage, seeing what we had of each woman and what their individual experiences were during their deployment. Here’s a film where all of the characters are in the same place at the same time for a year, but they aren’t necessarily having the same experiences. In the end, we focused on the three women who had the strongest emotional journeys and who we could weave together to tell a story of a complex group of women. We really looked at how these three women reflected different backgrounds, viewpoints and experiences on the deployment. It’s through those differences and being able through editing to compare and contrast their experiences that we can tell a compelling story. By moving between their different personal experiences you can gain a bigger picture of their experiences as a group. I think the ability to tell a complex story is something that I inherently look for in projects.

HULLFISH: You mentioned juxtaposition. There’s a great moment where some voice over person says, “If you’re going to be black in America the best place to be is Los Angeles.” And then they cut straight to the Rodney King beating.

MUMMA: That line comes at the point in the film where O.J. has become a star at USC, and then we pull back and start looking at the history of what that actually meant to many people living in Los Angeles. As he’s being lifted up and idolized at USC – which was at the time a very wealthy and white college – we’re juxtaposing what is going on outside the stadium and the campus. The Watts riots had happened only a couple years before and the city of Los Angles and the African American community was still healing. We use that line to flip between O.J.’s story and the community’s story with some irony, which helps draw focus to the fact that we’re juxtaposing these two narratives. In this section of the film, we’re also looking at the choice he’s making as he’s becoming a public figure, how he’s choosing to interact with the outside world, so that gave us a very natural way to juxtapose these two storylines. He was given an opportunity to take part in the boycott of the 1968 Olympics, and chose to not lend his voice to that. And so that is place where O.J.’s life and the overarching narrative of civil rights in America start to intersect. So that sets him on his journey for the rest of the film.

HULLFISH: I’m struck by the fact that when you watch a lot of these documentaries people are thinking it just kind of naturally flows, but that’s just simply not the case right? Tell me how much discovery, how these things are being built, how these little moments are being found and woven into a story.

MUMMA: Yeah, I mean it’s, for me it’s really interesting, because I think the more you dig in the more you find those connections. And I don’t think they’re an accident necessarily or maybe we get lucky sometimes. I feel like often, with films I’m working on, we’re looking at extraordinary people, people who have transcended something. There’s a reason we’re making a film about them – they intersect with culture and society in a way that’s unique. As we were laying out O.J.’s story, we were looking at the same time at race relations in Los Angeles and the relationship between the African-American community and the LAPD. In the early 90’s you have the Rodney King case, which is the first case where the police brutality was caught very clearly on camera and kind of set the world on fire. And during that time Los Angeles is becoming this cauldron again, harkening back to the Watts riots, which we cover at the beginning of the film. During this period O.J. had retired from football and was trying to navigate Hollywood and moving within privileged circles. He’s navigating celebrities and culture and money, and at the same time there are episodes of domestic abuse and calls to 911 coming from his house. So as his own personal violence is evolving, the violence in the Los Angeles community is bubbling up as well. It’s an interesting parallel. So we were looking at that as we wove the story together. They’re not necessarily directly related to each other, but they are the impetuses that move both of our narratives forward. They are related in the fact that ultimately in the end, O.J.’s murder trial defense focuses on the LAPD and their history of racism and brutality – that a racist police force has framed an African American man for murder. We’ve traced this history from the Watts riots through to the Rodney King beating which resulted in the 1992 L.A. riots. So all of those things come together and all those story lines start to align. From the very beginning we felt the biggest challenge of the film would be weaving these two narratives, but in the end, by making parallels between both public and private experiences, it helped push the narrative forward in a dramatic way.

HULLFISH: One of the things that I find is interesting with the James Brown documentary and the O.J. documentary was the text and the subtext. So the text is O.J. and James Brown and the subtext is civil rights.

MUMMA: For both of those films the subtext was always the reason for making the film, from day one as I sat down to talk about the film at the interview for the job. There have been many documentaries made on both James Brown and O.J. Simpson, and people were saying, “Why O.J.? Hasn’t there been enough on O.J.?” But we hadn’t looked at O.J. through this particular lens before, and James Brown also hadn’t been looked at through the lens we wanted to look at him through. A more interesting film is made in setting somebody in a new context that may be surprising. The audience thinks they are going see a film about one thing and we end up revealing a lot more to them. There’s always the question of “why even make the film?” I think a film has to have an interesting angle and an interesting entrance point to tell audiences something new. I think the subtext ultimately becomes the text of the film.

HULLFISH: So since you knew that subtext, did it help you as you screened footage with an eye to, “That phrase will lends perfectly to get us back to the larger cultural context?”

MUMMA: Yes, exactly. I often start with the subject’s personal story first and then pull back and look at the context. But first I have to get to know the main subject of the film and understand the different beats of their journey, and then look at the bigger picture. Very early on I make a big board in the edit room full of notecards that have the beats of the main subject’s story, and then have corresponding cards that line up chronologically with what was going on in their career, for instance. And then I add a column of what’s going on in the country politically, what’s going on in the country culturally in the case of the James Brown and O.J. films. And then I start looking at how those things interact with each other. And then when I map it out visually, I can start to see the connections between things. On the James Brown film, “Cold Sweat” came out in the summer of1967. It’s often credited as being the first true funk song. And if you look at what was going on in the summer of 1967, America was on fire. There had already been riots bubbling across the country and then they burst in the summer of 1967. There’s something about the sound of funk music and all of that energy and all of the rioting. There’s something kind of subconsciously and consciously going on in America too. That music, that song is what’s playing on people’s car radios and radios at home and they’re putting it on the record player while they’re listening to news of what’s going on in Detroit. Those all start to interact with each other and it makes for interesting storytelling.

HULLFISH: And do you, as an editor, have to find some interesting way to demonstrate that? You mentioned the sound that was coming out of people’s radios, and out of their balconies, and out of their car stereos, is that the director’s job to visualize that? Or are you trying to help do that or guide a director by saying, “Hey I need some pick ups. I would love…”

MUMMA:  You can talk through story ideas and you can talk through those juxtapositions, but for me so often those things come from sound and image. They come through the discovery process of going through the material in the edit and starting to stick things together and thinking about style and trying things to help find the language of the film. For me, that comes through the process of editing. In an archival film, I’m going through both the archival material and interviews and giving them equal weight. They are my raw materials for trying to tell the story. I look at how they can interact to tell a story in the most compelling way, and through their interaction, I am able to start to build scenes. While I’m building scenes, I’m always thinking about structure and how the scenes can or will tie in to the overarching narrative and figuring out how each of them push the story forward. In O.J.: Made in America, there’s a lot of flipping back and forth between the O.J.’s personal world and the outside world, and we experimented a lot with how to do that. And sometimes we’re flipping back and forth between those from one scene to another, and sometimes within a different scene itself we’re visually flipping back and forth between O.J.’s world and things that are happening in America at the same time. For me, the process is always about how to tell the story in the most compelling way.

HULLFISH: You knew this O.J. film or the James Brown film was really going to be about race relations or civil rights before you went into it. Therefore, when you’re listening to interviews and when you’re listening to music, do you say, “Oh, I’m not just listening for a great revelation of O.J., I’m also looking for how does O.J. relate to race relations?”

MUMMA: Yeah, I’m looking and listening for both. I’m looking for how the smaller story can connect to or reveal the bigger story. For example in O.J.: Made in America, there were a lot of films students at USC and they would send them out to film footage around campus in the ‘60s. So we have this gorgeous footage from USC from that era. There is footage of O.J. walking around campus with his wife, and they’re very young and very wide eyed. There was something that grabbed me the first time I watched the footage of them walking through this bucolic campus. The person behind the camera asks Marguerite, his wife, what she thinks of the campus, and she says “Oh it’s beautiful. It’s just like a resort.” Whereas just a few miles away its the complete opposite. So that footage always stuck out to me as something that spoke to the juxtapositions we were working to make in the film in a very natural way.

I think it also comes from moments that grab us in the interviews themselves. There was a great moment where the director Ezra asks one of O.J.’s football colleagues what he thinks about when he thinks of 1968. 1968 was an incredibly momentous and chaotic and tragic year in American culture and politics. And when he’s asked that question he says, “We thought about football and we thought about O.J. becoming famous.” It’s his gut reaction. It’s what he said in the moment and for us that became a kind of linchpin to understanding that inside world of USC and the outside world of Los Angeles and America. We held on to that bite for a really long time and weren’t quite sure how to weave it in. But then much later in the edit process we thought of an interesting way to use it. I ended up constructing a montage prompted by the question and the answer that flips back and forth between their experience at USC and what’s going on in the greater world, which is the assassination of Martin Luther King, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and the riots in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. By doing that, we setting the stage for the political climate of the country that O.J. is entering once he graduates from USC and becomes a professional football player. It took a while but we finally found the right way to use it, and it became a very important part in helping crystalize these two parallel narratives of the O.J. film.

HULLFISH: That idea of holding onto a sound bite until you find the right spot for it reminds me of an interview I did with documentary editor Paul Crowder. He said he had all these great, great sound bites and fantastic things. He went back and looked at them recently and was so sad that there was all this great stuff that got left on the editing room floor.

MUMMA: A lot of great stuff does. If there’s something that somebody says that you have a gut reaction to when you watch it for the first time, that’s the thing to hold on to as long as you can, until the find the right way to use it or try to use it. I always have a sequence called “good things,” which I throw things into that I don’t want to forget. I’ll often go back to it and look for inspiration. But you never want to forget that gut reaction to something and very often those bites are the ones that you finally find the right place for in the end and that make a big difference in the storytelling of the film.

HULLFISH: Yeah. I think he had the exact same thing only he called his “hip pocket.” Isn’t that great? I told him, “I’m starting a hip pocket bin, I’m doing that today. I gotta have one of those.” Talk to me a little about building scenes.

MUMMA: Often the things that I think of early on as “scenes’ end up becoming multiple scenes within a section of the film. For example, the USC section of O.J.: Made in America is probably ten scenes if you go through and break it down beat by beat. But when I initially started the section is was just one long piece of storytelling. When I start to build out a section of the story, I’ll lay everything out in kind of one big swath and then start to find story beats with in and then start to focus on building scenes. I’ll often start with the archival. I look for words that can tell the story with in it. It might be from a news report, or a man on the street interview. I look for the words to that help tell us what’s going on and then start to look for the story in the images as well. And then we have the words of the interview subjects too. I start looking at how the archival and the interviews can to interact with each other and tell the story of the scene together. And I’m talking mainly about archival films; verite is a little different for me.  But in both kinds of films, how to enter into the scene is often the biggest question for me when I start a new scene. How do we grab the attention of the audience, because we are often coming from another scene, and how do we take the audience into this new idea or this new development in the story? Often, I think juxtaposition works well for that be it visual, audio or thematic.  You can relay important information right at the beginning or you can set the mood or tone of the scene – or both at once. It could be a newscaster coming on to report breaking news, or it could be coming recalling an in interview “I’ll never forget the day when…” or it could be a quiet establishing shot, perhaps with music that starts to cue the viewer in to the tone of the scene to come. Every scene is different.

In O.J.: Made in America something that was incredibly important to us in the edit process was creating true characters from the interview subjects, people that the audience felt they were getting to know over the course of the film and who had an emotional journey. In O.J.: Made in America for example, we meet Rob Shipp first at USC when he’s a kid and he’s attending a football game there and marveling at O.J. on the football field. And later he becomes an incredibly important person in the trial. So I’m thinking of how to build him to any relevant scene in between that helps him develop as a character alongside O.J., our “main character.” Character is incredibly important in documentary because I think the more that the audience relates to them the more that they’ll feel invested in the story.

HULLFISH: Documentaries need to be visual. It’s a visual medium. Otherwise you would do a radio play I guess. I worked on The Oprah Winfrey’s show for a decade, and we had very clear rules about when and when not to use an interviewee on camera. You can literally make a documentary that is nothing but talking heads. How hard do you push to not have somebody on camera and how do you know when to put them on camera?

MUMMA: For me it’s always a feeling. When I start a scene or a section I may have forty minutes of interview selects. I have to whittle them down and in the process look the for lines that stand out to me the most – they may be delivered with a certain emphasis or with emotion or there may be a gesture or a look on their face. Those are the types of things that I will think about coming on camera for. I like looking at people’s facial expressions. I like pauses after they speak. I’m looking for something where they’re clueing us in to something personal or they’re relaying something to us that they feel is important, and I think that comes across in people’s faces. Otherwise I’m focusing on how the words and the images are working together, but when I want to connect with them or emphasize an idea is when I bring them on camera. A lot of it has to do with rhythm too, both visual and auditory, and often I play with where I come on camera with someone as the scene evolves. I always keep the interview video on V1 in my timeline and I layer the archival on top so that I can adjust and try different things as I revise. Sometimes the rhythm of the scene isn’t something I find until I’ve done several passes on a scene, so I’m always kind of fine-tuning it as I go.

HULLFISH: Let’s talk about that then: pacing. You know that at some point you’re going to lose the audience. “I don’t want to listen to O.J. for four hours.” But you want to get all this information in. At same time you just cannot run back to back to back facts and never cease. So talk to me a little bit about pacing and just saying – more than hearing another fact – I need a moment to breath.

MUMMA: I think I’m always looking for the simplest way to tell the story in terms of facts. More importantly, I’m looking at a way to enter in the story and make it feel alive, versus just saying this happened on a Monday, then this happened on a Tuesday, then this happened on a Wednesday. I want to make it feel active. Very often the pacing and the mood of the scene comes from the footage and then often from music. I like to work with the archival and try to get it to play and feel as much like verite as possible or as natural as possible and let the story move and unfold in a way that the audience feels swept up in the present moment, even if we’re talking about something that happened a long time ago.

HULLFISH: I have two more questions before I let you go. One is sound design… just using sound design to bring a story to life. Visuals are great but really, sound for some reason allows a deeper connection.

MUMMA: I agree. I think about that a lot. I love using sound for transition and juxtaposition. I love bleeding in sound from one scene to the next or making a really hard cut in sound. It propels you into the next scene. I tend to do a lot of sound work as I cut and I tend to mix as I go. I need to feel the scene and hear the scene play out in a way to really feel how if it can work dramatically. A lot of times, early on in assembly cuts, you’ve got interview bites that are smooshed together and all these pops and jump cuts and all that kind of stuff, but for me doing a of smoothing pass and looking for sounds that help fill out the sound landscape really helps be pay attention to pacing in the scene and helps judge whether something is working because it’s just that much close to how I want a polished scene to sound and feel. So I’ll spend an extra few minutes mixing a scene before I screen it.

HULLFISH: Beyond the source pieces of music, are you also doing temp score?

MUMMA: With James Brown I was lucky because we had limitless James Brown material to work with. We only used his music in the film and that was the plan from the beginning. We were focusing on several of this landmark songs, but I also dug in and really looked at his instrumental works to use more as traditional score. I find it challenging to cut scenes to a song with lyrics. It can be very sonically chaotic. And so I selected a lot of his instrumental music to use as score in different scenes where we weren’t focusing on a particular song, but needed his music to set the mood. We worked with a lot of temp music in O.J.: Made in America, mainly movie scores that we thought had similar tones and moods that we wanted to set. We had a lot of moody music. We had the Gone Girl soundtrack. I worked with a lot of Max Richter and (Alexandre) Desplat, especially in the L.A. riots section. We were using a lot of Philip Glass music at first to set the epic tone of what’s going on. His music sounds amazing with scenes of football. We cut everything to temp music and then had a composer compose to the locked picture afterwards. We would talk a lot about what the mood of each scene was and why we chose the music that went into it.

HULLFISH: Is there a big difference between the verite work that you started on and these more archivally-based pieces you’ve done lately?

MUMMA: I really didn’t talk very much about verite, I’ve been doing more archival recently. I started in verite as an assistant editor on the documentary Restrepo, so I kind of cut my teeth in that world and never thought I’d end up working on archival films. Early on I thought that archival films were so different from verite. But I’ve discovered that it’s a very similar toolset that I use for each, just adjusted slightly by what the material is like. I’ve found them equally challenging and equally rewarding. I love both and I often switch back and forth between verite and archival films. In the end it’s about compelling storytelling

Thanks to Brandi Craig, Charles Shin and SpeedScriber for transcribing this interview.

To read more interviews in the Art of the Cut series, check out THIS LINK and follow me on Twitter @stevehullfish

The first 50 Art of the Cut interviews have been curated into a book, “Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV editors.” The book is not merely a collection of interviews, but was edited into topics that read like a massive, virtual roundtable discussion of some of the most important topics to editors everywhere: storytelling, pacing, rhythm, collaboration with directors, approach to a scene and more. Oscar nominee, Dody Dorn, ACE, said of the book: “Congratulations on putting together such a wonderful book.  I can see why so many editors enjoy talking with you.  The depth and insightfulness of your questions makes the answers so much more interesting than the garden variety interview.  It is truly a wonderful resource for anyone who is in love with or fascinated by the alchemy of editing.” MPEG’s Cinemontage magazine said of the book: “In his new book, Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV Editors, he gathers together interviews with more than 50 working editors to create a mosaic of advice that will interest both veterans and newcomers to the field. It will be especially valuable for those who aspire to join what Hullfish calls, “the brotherhood and sisterhood of editors.”

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