#and like. i get it. to a degree. murder robot cool and they have awesome art. but COME ON guys

[dashielldeveron]

Viper VIII: Inter Vivos

*author slaps bumper sticker across ass that reads I BREAK FOR QUARANTINE* 

Summary: You have a thought that only Steve Urkel and black-out drunks can have: did I do that?

Warnings: swears, the law. Murder/death. Stupid internet comments.

Show (3719) Comments on “There is Nothing New Under the Sun, But You Are New in Your Conglomeration.”

skellingtonbabey: thanks for putting all of the *gestures vaguely* into historical context. no one’s ever bothered to explain this shit to me, especially in such simple and thorough language. it’s like every other resource i try to learn from is stylistically designed to make me more confused.

readyplayer69: Just because it’s from the 60s and is racist doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have intrinsic value based on the goal towards which it was working. You’re a fucking lunatic. I have a degree in political science, so I know what the fuck I’m about. Though some of the protests may have excluded the minorities you’re talking about, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t ultimately working towards good fucking policies for everyone involved. It’s not like they were doing anything important then anyway; white people had to be the mouthpiece for…Read More

volcanolesbian: bro have u seen the incels freaking out over this???? it got linked in their cursed forum and they SO BADLY wanted u 2 hate women now. like you can regress from being a feminist once you’ve woken up. they’re giving u shit bc you called out the racist terrorists who were active in their community lmao. i can post screenshots if u want. But bruv it’s like they haven’t read anything you’ve written before lol

mozARTsexandviolins: I get when you say that ingenuity spawns ideals for the greater good, but don’t you think tradition has its place? How do we know if the new can spawn the greater good? How do we judge ourselves? Who watches the watchers?

simpleplan2eatthedirt: cool cool nice nice.  protesting is awesome, but be sure to get out there to fucking VOTE, people!!! Here’s a link to register to vote.

EaterJohn: Hello. It is nice to hear from you again, Epiales. Always a treat. Very insightful commentary on modern and past protests. I didn’t know about all of the revolutions in Europe 1848. I’ve send this to my co, and it’s already sparked a good conversation about who we are as a protesting people as we stand in history. Again, sorry to bother you, but I was wondering when the next article in your “Aeneid Autopsies: Current Crimes Reflected in Ancient Times” series was going to be released? It’s my…Read More

horneyvulcanbasterd: @mozARTsexandviolins Is that a Star Trek reference? Bc if so the answer’s Starfleet Command lol

MrsKatsukiBakagou: epiales. you have watered my crops and harvested my fields. thank you for the food.

mightiestavengereatmyass: eat shit and die, commie scum. your just a hired propagandaist for the fucking alt-left, aren’t you? You have no right to be running your collum in a real newspaper or on this fucking website. sending u anthrax in the mail would be too cool a death for you. I hope your so-called terrorist groupsfind out where you live and fucking murder you in the middle of the night. fukcs like you are the reason the country is going to shit the police have a total constitutional right int aht jurisdiction to enter. They had a no knock…Read More

fuckyouit’sjanuary: @readyplayer69 [image attached] [image description: blonde woman with caption reading, “I can tolerate racism, but I draw the line at looting the local target]

saltnpepa!!diner707: Hi. I’m trying to cite this piece in an essay, but your publisher isn’t listed on your website. Would you suggest using the NYT as the source in my bib? If it helps, this is due new week; idk if this will run in the NYT by then. Thanks

“I’m sending someone on a grocery run this morning,” said Tom, thumbs tapping away on his phone, “Do you need anything? Want anything?”

You glanced up from your laptop, closing it as much as you could without the light dimming. “I think I’m good, unless you used the last of the shredded cheese at some point.”

“Shredded…cheese,” he said under his breath, typing, “You mentioned capri-suns the other day.”

“Yeah, but I can tolerate the nasty, new flavour. No rush. Here’s a wild idea,” you said, and you waited until he looked up from his phone, a couple of ungelled curls falling over his forehead. “What if—now, don’t dismiss me as crazy; hear me out—what if we went to the store ourselves?”

“Again, no.” Tom grasping his coffee by the round of the mug, despite there being a perfectly functional handle. “Stop pressing me for it.”

“I’m not asking to go to a damn Broadway play. I’m asking to go to the closest 7-11,” you said, jiggling your leg and then making a conscious decision to stop fidgeting, instead scooting your chair closer under the table so that the arms slid underneath.

Tom hummed, his eyes not leaving his phone screen, but when you didn’t continue, he raised an eyebrow as he scowled at you. “Broadway is shut down because of the bomb threat.”

“Fuck off; you know what I meant.”

“Viper,” said Tom, and he locked his phone to set it on his napkin. “Do you want to get assassinated?”

“The term assassination implies I’m getting murdered for political reasons instead of the copious other crimes you’ve had me commit. So, I invite it.” Put your hands on the table where he can see them; it makes you seem more trustworthy. “Does 7-11 have an open carry policy?”

“If it’s any consolation, the renovated office should be waiting for you when you return.”

“It’s not.” You lifted your mug to your lips. “Working from here only makes me feel like a damn bureaucrat. Like I have no stake in the matter. I don’t want to become detached from everything; I might make a callous decision and send people where they can’t come back.”

“Keep watching yourself. If you stay on guard,” said Tom, running his middle finger around the rim of his mug, “then you won’t stray from me.”

“I’m useless here.”

“Then maybe you should become accustomed to the idea of being useless.”

Swallowing, you stared down into your tea. “There’s only so much I can get done through answering emails. Not to mention I hate answering emails. That’s how you get more emails.”

“Harrison has been telling me that your schematics have been more thorough since you’ve been holed up in here.” Tom tipped his mug all the way back to get the last of his coffee. “You’re still being just as productive, if not more methodical.”

“Did you mean obsessive? I have—I’ve had too much time to think. I’d rather not be alone with my thoughts, if I can help it.”

***

You could only read so much before losing your mind. You could only deal with so many of the same exact problems over and over again for lower level soldiers. You could only chart so many stars. You could only read so much fanfiction (if your identity thief were tracking your phone, he’d probably be baffled as to why you kept reading fic for fandoms you weren’t even a part of due to the desire for new ideas).

You could only give Glory Pham so many excuses as to why you’re not with her in person at the Museum of Natural History.

Sucking in through your teeth, you hovered your fingers above the keyboard.

Dear Ms. Pham,

Glad to hear John Mulaney’s signed on. Next step would be to ensure de Blasio doesn’t directly interact with him, given their history. Perhaps I should proof his set beforehand?

Unfortunately, I regret to inform you that I cannot attend the briefing in person yet again. I am currently indisposed, seeing as I am currently in hiding at my hot boss’s house, due to how dead I might be should I leave it (thus the basis of its appeal). Not to mention that if you criticise my blazer choices again, I shall peel the skin off your perfectly made-up face. Get fucked; getting your eyeliner tattooed on was a hell of a decision.

You shook your head, backspaced the last few lines, and stretched towards the wicker end table to grab your glass of pink lemonade, and you stole a glance at Tom’s work as you did so. A couple of files spread across his white wicker lounger (two blue files [socials of the family], two green [recent bids], a yellow [Manhattan locations], and a brown [requests from politicians, upper East side]). The pink sticky-notes had your and his written exchanges and edits on certain papers, and his laptop was open, the screen dimmed, while he copied something into a notebook with his cell phone held between his shoulder and his ear, just listening to the computerised voice.

He had joined you on the back porch to work remotely, claiming he couldn’t go into the city today due to the absence of news on Zendaya—if any information arose, he’d said he wanted your diagnosis immediately.

You wiped your forehead with your sleeve as a sweat drop slinked behind Tom’s ear. Even Tessa wouldn’t run in the heat; she’d curled up by the porch railing, her tail slapping against her water bowl. In an experiment to see if she wanted to spend some time outside, you’d slid the glass door open for Trout, to which she turned around to retreat to the bedroom.

Not all of the clothes you’d ordered had arrived yet, so you were stuck wearing autumnal clothes with long sleeves. To exacerbate matters, you were constantly moving—jiggling your leg, tapping your fingers—you couldn’t sit still for very long anymore; you had taken to pacing the porch when you couldn’t concentrate on the stars.

(Once, Tom had come out at night to check on you, wiping the sleep out of his eyes and sitting in silence with you. He’d made you go to bed after a while, claiming you’d run yourself into the ground if you kept this restlessness up.)

When your phone beeped, the both of you jolted at the sound. Tom hung up on the robotic voice as you scrambled to your phone, and he bent your way. “Is it Zendaya?”

Biting the inside of your cheek, you shook your head. “No. Looks like it’s a jailbreak.”

Tom sighed, his shoulders heaving as he eased back in his seat. “Where from?”

“I don’t even care,” you said, letting your phone fall to your lap. You slumped back in your chair, shielding your eyes from the sun with your arm. But you straightened yourself again and checked. “From Central. They don’t even know who’s all escaped yet.”

“It’d be too much of a gift if New York City would fucking relax for five minutes.”

“It seems like it’s in more uproar than usual lately,” you said, sipping through the reusable straw of your pink lemonade. “Do you suppose it’s our fault?”

Tom took a moment to pluck his damp t-shirt away from his chest. “I don’t think we’re instigating. If anything, we’re simply reacting to chaos.” He stood up and stretched, raising his arms above his head—his biceps strained at the sleeves, and the hem rose above his v-lines. “Unless you’re doing something I don’t know about.”

Ah, casual suspicion. “You’ve caught me,” you said as he approached Tessa and crouched next to her, “I’ve been running a koi smuggling gig on the side.”

“Why koi?” He held out his hand for Tessa to sniff, and she readily accepted his hand for pats. “Are they hard to get?”

“I don’t know,” you said, shrugging, “but I’ve been wondering if they’d be able to survive in your grist mill pond. You look through that water straight to the bottom, nothing living in your way. Just rocks and old equipment.”

Tom sat against the porch railing with a jittery Tessa partially in his lap. “Should we get some?”

“Oh, fuck off, Tom,” you said, grinning, a sweat drop falling onto your mousepad as you shook your head, “You can’t entertain every little pipedream I have.”

“Watch me. What do you want for Christmas?”

You ducked your head, biting your lip. “Promise me something.”

“Provided it’s not my head on a stake, I will,” he said, scratching Tessa behind her ears and cringing a bit when she stretched to lick his face.

“Then we’re going in person to the pre-opening fundraising gala for the Gawain Diamond.”

Tom narrowed his eyes. “Viper.”

“Bitch, I got John Mulaney to sign on to do the opening monologue, and he’s probably gonna roast de Blasio again. I’m not missing that.”

Your phone blared an alert again, and both of you held your breath as you unlocked it.

“Got a list of prisoners who escaped. Small group. Delores, Larson, Duncan, Mays, Selvin,” you said, “There’s more, but I don’t know them. Tell us something important, by God. Anyway, we’re going. I didn’t say I was going alone, did I? You’ll be there. I’ll be safe, and you’ll be safe.”

His jaw shifting to the side, Tom stilled his hand on Tessa’s back, and then he lifted it to flick sweat off his neck. “How many of us maximum can you get in?”

“It’s a fundraiser for idiotic rich people; if there are too many people without a name, they’ll be noticed.”

“It can’t be just us.”

“Why? Afraid you can’t protect me on your own?”

“Now, don’t start that.” Tom herded Tessa off his lap and onto her outside bed. “I’m not falling for it.”

“Yes, yes, I’m fully aware you’re capable of ripping me in half,” you said, draining your pink lemonade, the airy suction coming through your straw (almost loud enough that you couldn’t hear Tom’s sputtering over it—almost—and his phone beeping). “Want me to get that?”

“Bring it here,” he said, and you snatched it while he sat on the railing, dangling his legs off the side.

“It’s,” you said, eyebrows shooting to your hairline as you read the little notification, “It’s a tweet from Zendaya.” You tossed it to him to unlock and leant on the railing next to him, arm grazing his thigh with a heightened awareness of how close you were to his sweaty, sweaty abdomen. No! No time to thirst. Friend time.

Tom unlocked his phone and held it at your eye level, turning it horizontally as he pulled up the tweet.

ZENDAYA (@ZendayaMedias): Felt cute. Might delete later.

[video]

Tom pulled up the clip, waiting for it to load. “Why didn’t she post it to instagram, then?”

“The finer details of social media are an enigma. Do I look like I know,” you said, and his thumb hovered over the play button.

He cranked the volume up before pressing play, having to try twice due to how slippery his fingers were. “I wonder if Haz has seen this yet.”

A vertical shot of a murky, grey sky from the bow of a boat and dark ocean as far as the camera can see. It pans across the starboard side, and this boat is the only one in sight.

Only the sound of waves striking the boat.

The camera tilts down. Zendaya’s writhing on the deck, furiously straining against rope bonds that line up the entirety of her arms and up her calves; she’s yelling furiously at the person behind the camera through duct tape.

Scuffed, black boots roll Z to the starboard gunwale. She’s still fighting, still shouting.

The camera trucks to the right; before, the pair of cinderblocks attached to her feet were concealed. It returns to her face. A glove grabs part of her hair to show the weights tied into it. She bucks up to headbutt the camera; he avoids it.

Tom clenched his free hand on his thigh. “We’re running another scan for that black-stubble bell jackass from her instagram; did we have any fucking leads at all? What’s his fucking motivation? So he slept with her, allegedly; did she say no to a second time? Doesn’t fucking merit—”

The boot kicks the cinderblocks off the boat, and the camera tilts down to follow the trail of bubbles.

It’s quiet.

But then the camera pans to portside, where the guy in the picture with Zendaya is similarly tied up, but he’s openly weeping and shaking his head. He’s got something drawn on his forehead in black marker. The cameraman steps closer to focus on it: it’s a circle with an upward curve resting on top of it.

He’s still wearing the bell necklace.

Then the cameraman backs away and raises a gloved hand, in which a gun is aimed at the other’s forehead.

The bullet goes through the circle, and the bell rattles as he’s kicked off. Fewer bubbles.

Then the camera tilts up to show off the boat’s surroundings: a black and barren ocean, as far as the eye can see.

When the video started to loop, Tom switched his screen off, his phone hanging loosely in his grip. You released of his thigh once you noticed you’d grabbed onto him, and the evidence of your touch faded as the fabric relaxed.

His eyes glossed over at the blank screen, and his mouth opened before closing again, running his tongue over his lower lip. Tom brought a fist to his mouth and furrowed his brow, his hand hardly concealing the growing tremble of his jaw.

You took a step away from him, rubbing your arms as you ducked your head. “I’m going back inside,” you said, hoping Trout felt like being clutched to your chest, “I’m cold.”

***

The next morning, your mouth felt heavy and dry. You sneaked out as the sun was rising to go hide in the woods surrounding Tom’s house, but you talked yourself out of it. He would make too much of a fuss if he couldn’t find you—but you could delay the inevitable conversation even further. Both of you had separated and kept to yourselves the rest of the evening. Kept quiet.

So you rounded the outside of the house. You’re not camping out in a fucking copse. When you reached the pond, you scanned it for a dry place to hide, but nothing really held any appeal, save for the rounded platform where the mill wheel used to spin, its spoke notches overflowing with moss. You managed to get to it after scrambling alongside the stones for a few minutes, and though it didn’t look like you could get down the same way, you settled against the wall, scraping some moss out of the notches so that your feet could rest more comfortably in them.

(Dr. Prine called ten minutes after you sent her the email. “Did you send me the correct article?”

“Yeah,” you said, rubbing your face wash onto your cheeks, “Considering it’s the only one I have ready, and I can’t bring myself to write anything. I tried. I just fucking can’t.”

“I don’t think you want this published at this point in your life.”

“I don’t fucking care. Whoever’s using my pen name probably knows who the fuck I am in general. Just publish it.”

“Honey,” said Dr. Prine, her voice softening (and fumbling, like she was holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder), “You should probably rethink this. It’s going to connect Epiales you back to Viper you. Get some sleep; eat breakfast. Call me back then.”

“It’s an appropriate article for the political climate.”

“Not for your personal life.”

“I don’t fucking care,” you said between splashing water on your face, “I don’t. It’s a good fucking article, and hopefully, it can affect people for the upcoming election. Fuck self-preservation. Send it to the Times already.”

“Did I dial the wrong number?”

“Hilarious, Dr. Prine. I know it’s not the smartest thing for me to do, but I can’t—absolutely can’t—write anything. I don’t know for how long, but for now, at least.” You blotted your face dry. “I’ve got to meet standard deadlines if I’m keeping my column. It’s really only dangerous if Tom reads it and makes the connection, and his brain is offline right now.”

And so Aeneid Autopsies: Current Crimes Reflected in Ancient Times, chapter twelve, “The Political Tradition as Mob Rule,” would be published on Saturday. It’s a little too in the know about the mafia, but hey, you had written it on a whim a month ago, and you were known for your extensive research, anyway. It most likely shouldn’t be too different from your other exposés, though they weren’t on topics that were deliberately misleading the public by what information was out there.

The more you thought about it, it was almost like you wanted to reveal yourself, wanted to get stabbed while you were sleeping, because there’s an overwhelming question rolling around in your brain like a mis-weighted shooter marble: is this—)

“It’s not your fault.”

With crossed arms, Tom leant against the stone wall, his leg bent back for his bare foot to rest flat against it. He glanced sideways at you, sitting on your mill wheel perch almost halfway across the pond, but closer to the far side than to him.

He’s got major bedhead, his curls just fucking flopping about out of his part, and even from where you are, his face burned red amidst wet tracks trailing down it. Still, thank God for little mercies—his biceps were fucking straining the sleeves of his white t-shirt, and those idiotic, blessed grey sweatpants were low on his hips.

You lifted your head from your knees but still clutched them to your chest. “You’re not going out, then?”

“Of course not,” Tom said, and he wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Can’t be crying during a meeting, yeah?”

“Been boxing?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you get any sleep last night?”

“Not really.”

He ran his tongue over his lower lip and sighed, and then he slid his hands into his pockets, his eyes glossing over while he watched the moss you’d picked off float in the pond.

You’re not going to fucking cry. Tom came out here for a reason. He has a purpose. All you have to do is wait.

Eventually, he said, “You’re avoiding what I said.”

You tilted your head.

“Listen, I know you’re beating yourself up about it. It’s not your fault this happened. None of this is your fault. Hey.” Tom tapped the wall, the travelling reverberations making you look up at him. “Whoever’s doing this is doing it of their own volition and not because of you. You hold no culpability for this.”

“Bruh,” you said, “One of your best friends is dead, and you’re comforting me? I thought I was the masochist.”

Tom scowled, his brow furrowing. “Viper—”

“I can’t interact with someone without putting them in danger, at a disturbingly high rate. You want me to enumerate where I’ve stuck my nose in not my business and people have gotten killed? Senator Hernandez, Isadora,” you began, holding up two fingers, “The nine men guarding Isadora, Maccabruno, Polson—”

“Don’t you dare do that to yourself.” Tom took a step forward, his foot almost curving into the pond. “You didn’t use the knife. You didn’t pull any triggers.”

“Yeah, but I sent them there. And a good many of them went because it was their job.” You sneered and propped your chin on your knees again.

“And it’s part of your job—”

“Yeah, whatever. Your friend is dead, and I have no home. I’ve stopped contacting the few people in my circle on the chance that they get dragged into this—Grace, Adrien—he’s the lights specialist guy, in case you don’t remember—I’ve got to email Glory, but that can’t be helped. And Dr. Prine only—fuck,” you said, dragging your hands down your face. “I don’t want anything to fucking happen to Dr. Prine. Or your family, for that matter.”

“Everyone not involved in the business is currently in hiding upstate,” said Tom, eyes narrowed as he glared at you. “If you like, I can ensure the same—”

“Stop acting so damn calm, Tom.” You let your legs dangle off the platform, hands clenching the edges. “I don’t have any strings left to pull. And fucking hell, I know that it would be extremely and absurdly conceited of me to believe that this series of crimes is aimed specifically at me, because how deluded, how arrogant could I get—but goddammit, this stuff feels a little too personalised. It feels like this person knows me.”

Tom clicked his tongue. “Don’t you think it’s worth something that Glory Pham has been left alone? He knows how to get into Crosscreek, yet Glory hasn’t been touched. Is that not worthwhile?”

Your eyes watered, but you ducked your head so that he couldn’t see—but you released a dry sob (Fuck! Now is not the time for crying! Now is the time for being badass! Frown, or something!).

Tom spoke so quietly you almost didn’t catch it. “Do you want to leave?”

God, no. But it would make you feel like less of a burden. “Let me find an apartment first.”

“No, not like that. Hey, V. Look at me,” he said, and he tapped on the wall again.

You wouldn’t. Not like this. Not when your nose was running and when you didn’t have a plan.

“Please look at me, Viper.”

Glowering, you raised your head, lifting your chin higher than normal to seem confident, and oh, God—his eyes were wide and gentle; he’s leaning as far as he can over the pond, still unable to reach you.

“What I meant was if you wanted to leave the mob.”

It rang through your head like a distant cathedral bell, chiming through a deserted town—but then you were farther, out on the mountains, still listening to faint clanging.

“You’d have to kill me,” you said, shaking your head, “Don’t you remember?”

“Fuck,” Tom was saying, sucking in through his teeth, and after glancing at the water, he started jogging around the pond.

“I swore. I bled. And then even after that—then you knighted me.” You inhaled sharply when he reached the stones you’d climbed. “I’ve let you down.”

“Viper, get the fuck down from there and come here,” he said, and he withdrew, winching, when he stepped on a sharp edge.

“We shouldn’t have met,” you said, looking over your shoulder at him, and Tom froze, his hand partially gripping a hole in the stone wall. “I shouldn’t have taken the job. I should have gone to a different city. I should have—”

“Wasted your life away in the shadows? Just shut up and get down here.”

“Ah! The fuck?” You swatted his hand away when it grazed the platform, and when he climbed up another step, you pushed yourself off the platform and into the pond.

The first thing that struck you was how quiet everything was once the bubbles dissipated, and then you noticed how clear the water was, even from within it—glancing down, you could easily see your feet treading water above the broken grist mill wheels that had sunken to the bottom.

Before you could take it in to feel the emptiness in your chest, bubbles filled your vision again—and then his hands were grappling for you, grasping at your clothes, and pulling you towards the surface.

“I wasn’t fucking drowning,” you said, sliding a hand back through your hair, while Tom shook his head to flick off excess water. “I was fine without—”

“I know you weren’t.” Tom gripped your waist tightly enough to be painful, and he slid his other hand up between your shoulder blades. “I know. You wouldn’t die on me, and I’m not letting anyone else lay their hands on you. C’mon, arms around.”

He guided your arms around his waist, and once you had a good grip (hands sliding up his back), he kicked off to swim to the stone wall, backing you into it. Your toes skimmed the bottom of the pond, but Tom kept your head above the water, his thumbs circling your hipbones through your wet clothes.

Tom closed his eyes, his eyelashes heavy with water droplets. “There’s no solution to this where you die, got it?”

“Shucks.”

“I mean it. Talk to me. Tell me what you can.” Tom let out a breath slowly, and he bent to rest his forehead on your shoulder. “Please,” he said once you tensed up, his breath hot through your wet shirt, “Won’t you let me in?”

(Fuck fuck fuck fuck his chest is flush against yours; he’s so warm, so damn warm all over, and the water’s chill only makes you want to cling to him more, fuck.)

“You won’t like me,” you said, tentatively lifting a hand to curl your fingers into his hair, pulling slightly, “I’m not whom I’ve presented to you. I don’t have it under control.”

“I don’t expect you to.” Tom turned his head towards you; his lips almost grazed your neck (you relish their warmth anyway). “You wouldn’t be human, otherwise.”

“I don’t know an awful lot. Some days it seems like all I do is guesswork.” You grimaced but kept the slim distance from Tom’s mouth. If he wanted to, he would. “I’m lost completely on whoever the fake Epiales is. I keep looking for a pattern in everything, even—even so far back as to—”

You stuttered. Tom had pressed his lips to the base of your neck.

“There’s no consistency,” he said, nuzzling his nose against the spot where your neck met shoulder, “but there’s got to be a larger plan. I get it. The whole case is like a hydra, and we’re chopping blindly at the heads.”

(Oh, my God, he kissed you? He kiss the neck? He?)

“Oh! I forgot to tell you.” Tom pulled away to look you in the eye, and your mouth hung open of its own accord—come back! “I made myself watch the video again.” His jaw shifted. “To see if I missed anything, and I did. This time, I recognised the symbol on the guy’s forehead.” Tom lightly traced it onto your forehead with his middle finger. “It’s a zodiac symbol. It’s the one for Taurus.”

You nodded, still not really thinking at full capacity. “Great. Another piece of evidence that I won’t be able to make fucking sense of. Goddammit. I’m so useless. Goddammit,” you said, dropping your hand from his hair into the water with a splash. “Tom, I don’t talk to my mother much anymore. She doesn’t know where or who I am, and to be honest, I don’t know who I am, either. I don’t know where the truth is.”

You nearly slapped him when you cupped his cheek, like you were desperate, like you had to be touching him, skin on skin, that instant. It’d be nice if he would close his eyes and lean into your touch, maybe kiss your palm, but Tom simply stared at you in shock, eyes wide, brows raised, mouth pinched.

Don’t tell him, you whore. You built this fucking kingdom with its walls and bastions so that you would be safe when the outer defences crumbled. You’ve set aside parts of yourself into neat little boxes so that you can throw any of them away at any time and escaped unscathed. Don’t you fucking dare screw that up. Tom doesn’t know about Epiales so that you can expose and destroy him if you’re on his chopping block; it’s insurance for when everything falls.

Bitch, since when do you want to be honest and raw and vulnerable around anyone?

You can’t let him in.

“You’re still a woman of honour,” Tom said, and—oh, God, oh, fuck—he’s easing his hands down your body, his chest pressed against yours again, and he’s sliding them down your thighs to hook underneath your knees, and he’s hitched you up against the wall, the definition of his muscles real and palpable through the wet clothes, warm, warm, warm—

“I should apologise,” you said, turning your head to the side while he steered your legs around his waist, “I can’t imagine what you must be feeling right now.”

“You can’t?” Tom shifted you upwards, and that’s it; your heat is directly against him; you can feel every pull and tensing of his tendons, and if he keeps moving the way he is, then you’ll—

“I’m so sorry for making this about me when Z was closer to you. We shouldn’t waste time on me; we need to be searching, arranging a funeral if we can’t find anything.” You scrunched your eyes shut.

“You’re deflecting.” Tom let out a shuddery sigh. “I’ve lost too many people. Don’t make me lose you when you’re right in front of me,” he said, and he pressed his lips right below your ear.

You flinched away on impulse but tried to relax into him, blinking profusely.

Tom pushed against you (not localised enough to qualify as a thrust), and he cleared his throat before pulling away from your neck. “Listen, please. Please.” He shifted your weight to one hand and gripped your chin with his freed one. His eyes flickered to your mouth before he moved to rest his hand on your cheek. “You’re invaluable. Irreplaceable. You are no burden and are not at fault.” He clenched his jaw. “But I know you’re keeping something from me, and I will make the answer fall from your lips soon.”

Your own chin was shaking, and he was too close. If you put aside separate-self-as-insurance for a moment, let’s consider Tom did find out about Epiales. Would he control you through it? Would he use you to influence those he couldn’t reach? Would he grab hold of Dr. Prine? He might squeeze your life and time through his fist, and your freedom would be gone. Epiales was your freedom, your space to create and connect.

He was too close.

“You’ve got to promise not to hate me,” you said, and when he raised an eyebrow, you made your decision to lean in.

“No,” he said, and—and your lips met his cheek.

He’d turned his head.

After all that, he’s going to turn his head?

“No,” he said again, taking your chin again and leading you away, back to leaning against the stone wall, “I don’t want our first kiss connected to the memory of mourning. I can wait a bit longer.”

Tom released your legs, letting them sink. “You once told me that if you let yourself be vulnerable, you didn’t want an audience. I think,” he said, frowning, “I think you still see me as an outsider. As a member of that audience. And again, you said that you didn’t want it if it weren’t real.” He stepped away from you entirely, and he started wading towards the edge of the pond. “I’m going to hold you to the same standard. I’ll wait until you’re ready to be real with me.”

Tom slinked out of the pond, flicking away what excess water he could, and he squinted into the sun on the horizon. He shook his head, water flying, and he glanced back at you and scoffed. “Easy, sweetheart. No need to wear your heart on your sleeve now.”

His voice trailed off as he rounded the corner towards the door.

The sun is rising, and you feel rather cold.

***

inter vivos: between the living

***

taglist: @hollandroos @madmadmilk @parkerroos @parsleysbaby @z-ukos @pparkerwrites @lunamyangel @stealth-spiderr @presidentbttrflyfreak @paradoxparker @bi-writes @astronomyparkers @infamous-webhead @laurfangirl424 @softspideys @gryffinpuffs @plethoraofpuppies @laucontrerasv @shootingstarsaretearsofheaven @spiderboytotherescue @cassiopeiaskies

[heartschoicegames]

Heart’s Choice Author Interview: RoAnna Sylver, “Dawnfall”

Find true love and family with a pirate crew at the ends of the universe, where aliens, ghosts, and portals open the space between worlds...and your heart. You are a Navigator, one who creates and guards portals from one dimension to another, wary of the liminal sea between them.

Your universe is made of two worlds: one contains the magic-infused world of Zephyria, and the other, the dystopian space station Eclipse. The worlds are balanced, until one day, an explosive disaster, a deadly energy storm, and an infamous pirate—the Ghost Queen—upend your life and plunge you into a race to save both worlds.

Dawnfall is a 232,000 word interactive romance novel by RoAnna Sylver,  one of the first set of games releasing with the launch of Heart’s Choice. I sat down with the author, RoAnna Sylver, to talk about writing interactive romance. Heart’s Choice games release December 2nd.

Dawnfall has frankly an insanely wonderful setting for a romance game. Tell me about the aliens, the pirates, the ghosts, and the alien-pirate-ghosts.

Hi there! I’m so glad you think this sounds fun! Yeah, Dawnfall is weird as heck, and that’s one of the things I love about this story. It’s weird in a way I don’t think we’ve seen much of before. I really just tried to put in everything I find fun or interesting, and that I’ve always wanted to write. Dawnfall started out as a total brain-candy project, and runs on pure Rule of Cool. Pirates? Yes. Magic? Yes. A slice of cyberpunk? Hell yes. Eerie ghosts and faerie-tale influences and memory-sharing potions? Giant bird people? The power of rock n’roll? Yes, yes, yes.

And also everybody’s dateable, and in a couple cases, dating each other. We weave a tangled web, but I think it’s a pretty badass and spectacular web.

You seem to really neatly straddle the genre fence here with a romance and sci-fi/fantasy. What was challenging about cramming all of that into one game?

Thank you so much for saying that. I’ve always adored SFF, and there’s so much in this genre-collection, so many extremes and concepts and contrasting colors, that I couldn’t limit myself to picking just one to play with. This weird game-book is kind of a love letter to fantasy and science fiction and haunted house stories and cyberpunk adventures—I thought a lot about the Disney movie Treasure Planet for its genre-blending beauty, and the Bioware game Mass Effect for its array of fascinating, multidimensional alien cuties to interact with and date… and then turned it up to eleven.

I guess you’d expect the challenge to be in making it all fit together/be “believable,” but I kind of threw that out the window. I don’t expect anyone to find it ‘realistic’ (setting-wise anyway; I tried to make every character ring true of course), and I don’t really care if someone thinks it’s silly, or doesn’t take it seriously. It is silly in a lot of ways. DAWNFALL is a giant ridiculous queer space magic pirate adventure, and the only goal is fun. If you have fun, I’ve done my job, and there should be something fun in here for everyone.

Did you have a favorite NPC you enjoyed writing most?

Honestly I love them all so much in different ways, and I know them so well by now it’s really second nature. Their voices come so easily and they’re all so much fun. The Queen’s swagger is awesome though, and her mental voice/mannerisms probably come through especially clearly. I love Zenith’s vulnerable moments when xie lets xir guard down and lets go of the need to entertain or please. I love Averis’s journey and growth from cute wibbly nerd to a confident swashbuckler (who is also still a cute wibbly nerd). I love how deeply Oz feels, how strongly he loves and remembers and honors memory, and how unafraid he is to show softness and warmth. And I love a certain spoilery ghost-babe and how they’re so full of joy at the beauty of life.

I do want to give special mention to Aeon, though. This is a story about connection, and I wanted to show that sibling bonds are every bit as important and strong as romantic or any other. I also wanted to show a complex, multidimensional antagonist figure who holds heartbreaking secrets along with authority, and is genuinely trying to do what she thinks is the best thing, and wants what’s best for you, the PC, even if you might not always agree. Her balance between being so emotionally guarded and determined and unyielding, while hopefully being extremely easy to read and tell what she wants and fears and loves—spoiler: you; she loves you!—was a challenge I hope I pull off.

…Also I enjoy any time Vyranix gets his pompous feathered ass handed to him. I think we all know a Vyranix, or at least of one, and it’s always fun to take them down, even in fantasy.

Who would you be romancing as a player?

I’m gonna say “everyone,” and here it won’t actually be cheating, because you can romance everyone! At once! In varying degrees/relationship dynamics and attractions. You don’t see a lot of polyamory-friendly games or books or anything really, and this is an incredibly important thing for me. The second I got the idea for Dawnfall I knew it had to let players romance anyone they wanted and show polyamory in a realistic, healthy light. I’m also a-spec (asexual and aromantic), and having not just good representation but being actively included and welcomed and celebrated in fiction is so huge too.

Dawnfall is a romance of course, being part of Heart’s Choice, but one of the single most vital elements for me is making it inclusive for aromantic and asexual players and player-characters. Essentially, I wanted to write a romance that didn’t penalize players for not experiencing the attractions the way we’re otherwise expected or required—and I’m so grateful that my amazing editors and community not only accepted but supported everything I was trying to do here. (It’s so refreshing not to have to fight for inclusion and freedom. It shouldn’t be, but it is.)

And that’s where the concept of “Heart-Stars” and “Same-Feathers” came from. I’ve never seen anything honor queerplatonic relationships like I’m trying to do here, and I want everyone, of every sexuality and attraction, to feel like they have a place here and can experience this adventure without limits. And I wanted to show that it’s a very normal thing, hence this being the same for the human characters as well as alien. (One of the nonbinary characters being human is also no mistake. I love me some wild alien genders, but there are tons of awesome nonbinary humans too!)

…That being said, I think I gave Averis most of my anxiety-issues, and would really just like to curl up with Oz and watch The Great British Bake-Off. That sounds like a perfect night in my books.

What were some of the things you found surprising about the game-writing process?

Coding was definitely the biggest learning curve. I’d never coded anything before in my life, and it’s such a new skillset to learn, entirely different from any kind of writing I’ve ever done. Sometimes it felt rewriting my brain, which did not at all do this intuitively—and also sometimes like I bit off much more than I could chew (first game ever being not only a huge piece of interactive fiction, but a polyamorous romance with aro and ace possibilities, and so many more variables than expected!), but it’s been worth it. Entirely. If my writing makes anyone feel seen and accepted and invited to have fun as they are, it’s worth every bit of struggle.

Also, oddly, interactive fiction is in some ways easier for me than writing a plain old book! Probably because I love AUs so much, and every choice in a game is like writing a tiny AU of the story, so I get to do the same scenes several different ways. My ADHD-brain finds something about this extremely satisfying, most likely because it somehow feels more like multitasking! Several stories in one, and if I like two ideas, I don’t have to pick just one to write!

Honestly though, I think the most surprising part is just being done, and…that I could do this at all. It was so huge, and took so long, and I learned so much, and every day I’m just kind of going “who the hell am I?” about doing all of this. I’m proud of it. I did a cool thing. And trying to get better at saying that.

And, what are you working on now?

I always have about 8 active projects going at once (which shouldn’t come as a surprise after last question!), but my next interactive fiction game is with Tales/Fable Labs! It’s shaping up to be a Dawnfall-sized project, but a little faster-moving and action-y.

It’s called Every Beat Belongs To You, and it’s a romantic thriller that feels like Twin Peaks meets Mr. Robot, with a smattering of Repo: The Genetic Opera. A creepy Pacific Northwest town with a secret (and a rash of ritualized murders), a super-slick medical research company whose flagship product is a 100% perfect synthetic heart, a mysterious new-age group, and a sister who went missing just before discovering how it’s all connected. Also five simultaneously-dateable (including ace and aro ships!) cuties of varying genders! Who will you trust with your heart?

I’m very excited about Everybeat, which should be just as queer, polyam, exciting, and weird as all my stuff! Aside from that, I’m working on Stake Sauce Book 2, its companion f/f vampire series Death Masquerade, and Chameleon Moon Book 3. I’m not always working…sometimes there are videogames, and sleep. But I really hope to have a lot more fun things to share soon!

Oh, and depending on how this weird, fun thing goes, I do have some ideas for prequel Dawnfall stories; maybe games, maybe books, but the ideas are there. The world—worlds, really—is so huge, and I’m not done playing in it yet! I also have some character art drawn, and I want to do a lot more of them. It’s another way to show love.

So thank you so much! I really hope Dawnfall is as fun to everyone to read/play as it was for me to write. I can’t wait to share it with you!

[feenyreadscomics]

Team Red visits area 51

So, this is my first attempt at writing a true team Red fanfic. Anyways, for context, all three have worked together before, but Peter dosent know who DD is (just that he's a lawyer) and DD only knows that Peter is in high school. Both DD and Peter know who Deadpool is. Deadpool doesn't know who Spiderman is, but knows who DD is. Slight change to what's in Area 51. First, theres what's actually in area 51 (spoilers, not saying here) but the meme of this universe is that's where the cryptids are (vampires, zombies, werewolves, etc.) Also, the group invading Area 51 features some inserts, because at least some people need to show up to raid Area 51. Gwenpool shows up and uses her powers, so it gets a bit meta, since for Gwenpool it is a super powers thing, not a mental illness thing. All glory to @morepopcornplease ,@smokeyloki @supesofherown for willing to be my area 51 squad

Matt was tired.

There were robots everywhere. Robots on the ceiling, on the floor, just...robots. They were difficult to track, and, more importantly, difficult to punch. Matt's knuckles bled. The suit helped, but not enough.

When did Hell's Kitchen get so wild? Matt wondered. Then suddenly, Matt's world blurred and flipped. He was hanging upside down by his ankle.

"Hey, Double D! Hope you don't mind me bringing in some reinforcements!"

Ah. Spiderman. And oh look. (Or not.) Deadpool. Daredevil gagged. The stench of decay was...distinctive.

Matt started tugging at the webbing around his ankle. It wouldn't unstick. Maybe he should start weilding swords. That way, he could cut himself free and escape while he had a chance.

Maybe he could get Elekra to show him how to use knives.

Deadpool jumped past him, dualweilding katanas. "Eyyyyy! Horn head joined the party!" Matt grumbled under his breath.

Deadpool and Spiderman fought side by side, Spiderman webbing down robots, and Deadpool either shooting or stabbing them. Meanwhile, Matt gnawed at his ankle. Eventually the flow of robots stopped. Deadpool cut Daredevil down.

Deadpool and Spiderman looked around, and fist bumped. Matt coughed loudly.

"I had it under control."

"Because that-" Deadpool gestured around them "-was in control."

"Could have taken care of it."

Deadpool walked over and placed his hands on Matt's shoulders. Matt wrinkled his nose. "Red, you were punching bare metal. With your fists. Let me see them." Deadpool went to grab Matt's hands. Matt pulled them away. Deadpool forcibly grabbed Matt's hands and took off his gloves.

"See? Perfectly fine."

"Ah yes, bloody knuckles are perfectly fine. Now, Webhead has a special mission he wants to invite you on. After that, you're gonna go home to your boy and he's gonna kiss your boo boos better."

"He's not my boy."

"He could be."

"He's married, I'm Catholic and I'm not interested."

"Suurree." Deadpool dropped Matt's hands. "If you are looking for someone else, you know where to find me." Deadpool wiggled his eyebrows, which caused his mask to shift a bit. Matt punched Deadpool. Deadpool laughed.

"See ya hornhead." Deadpool walked off.

"Catholic?" Spidey asked.

"Yep."

"Hmm, ironic considering..." Spiderman gestured to Matt, "...everything."

"Yeah. Ya got a question?:

"Oh yeah, wanna go to area 51 with me and Deadpool?"

"Spidey, I have a buisness to run. No."

"Oh come on! You should."

"Why?"

"Do it for the alien tech. Do it for the meme. Do it because we don't know what the government is hiding in there." Spiderman paused for dramatic effect. "We need to know if vampires really exist. You can't keep that stuff from people."

"No, and you're going to get arrested for it." Matt sighed. "Listen, if you're going to go, can I at least give you this?" Matt pulled a buisness card out of his suit, and handed it over to Spidey.

"Nelson and Murdock, attorneys at law?" Spiderman raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah. I have them on speed dial in case I get arrested. Call them if you need legal help."

"Got it."

--

Matt tumbled into Foggy's apartment. Foggy materialized from his bedroom, bleary eyed.

"Here for checkup." Matt smiled.

"Good. I'll bring you some clean clothes. What bandages do you need? Do we need to call the Night Nurse?" Matt and Foggy had this check up system in place so they wouldn't have to bother her with minor wounds and Foggy could sleep soundly, such as twisted ankles and jammed fingers.

"Nope. Knuckles just need bandaging."

"Good. Though it says something about our lives that you are hurt at all, and I'm saying its fine."

"I know, Fogs." Foggy started applying rubbing alchohol to Matt's knuckles. Matt hissed a bit. "I miss the old days. When there were fewer heroes running around." Matt paused.

"Not when we didn't need spandex clad idiots?"

Matt snorted and thought about it for a bit. "Nah. I guess we always needed them."

"What did the idiots do this time?"

"They want to raid area 51."

"You're shitting me."

"Nope."

"They really are complete dumbasses. Utter morons." Foggy paused. "They'll be out of town for it, right?"

"Yeah..."

"You know where they live, right?"

"Just Wade."

"You could prank him."

"Hmmm... would you help?"

"If you can make sure he doesn't murder me." Foggy finished bandaging Matt's hands. "You're good to go. Do you need a change of clothes?"

"Yeah."

Foggy retrieved some sweatpants and a tshirt. He also got a paper bag out.

"Okay, I got a change of clothes, and a paper bag."

"Thanks, Foggy. You're the best."

"Text or call me when you're home safe."

"Will do."

--

Peter was out in the New Mexico desert, and it was nice. Warm. New York was cold. Peter was cold in New York. All the time.

DD thought it was because something with the Spider bite giving him a few cold blooded drawbacks. Wade thought it was because Peter was too skinny.

Which was because the bite fucked up his metabolism, he supposed.

But for now Peter was in the desert, and warm. It was pleasant.

For five seconds, more or less. He heard chatting, and decided to follow it.

He found a group of four people camped out in the desert, discussing strategies for getting into Area 51. They were all some degree of sunburned, sharing water bottles, and arguing about if they could expect anyone else to show up. Peter waved at them.

"Hello!" One of them responded.

"Oh, hey Spidey!" One of them yelled. She waved him over.

"Glad you could join us."

"We have a chance now!" One of them pumped her fist.

"Smokey, are these your reinforcements?"

"Hi, so, you're obviously Spiderman, I'm V, and this is Smokey," V, apparently, gestured to someone wearing a fedora, apparently Smokey, "Supes," V pointed to a woman in a Superman tshirt, "and Popcorn!" V gestured to a woman wearing a tank top that had "The only iron I pump is the IRON WILL OF GOD" on it.

"Popcorn?"

"She ate all the popcorn!" Smokey complained. Peter tilted his head.

"Smokey did most of the planning, including rations." Supes commented.

"Okay... I should be having a friend meet me here soon!"

"Awesome! Is he in the raid?"

"Yeah."

"Cool. We should talk strategy, while we wait for him to get here..."

--

So they figured that Deadpool would charge into Area 51 as a distraction. Once the guards left to fight him, the group of four would try to scale the fence. While the fence scaling was going on, Spidey would crawl through the drainage pipe to grab whatever paranormal stuff he could find. Leading an army, Spiderman would free the rest of them, allowing them to return home safely.

When Deadpool finally showed up, he laughed at their faces.

"Spidey, you're smarter than this. This isnt gonna work. Besides, I'm expecting one other person. She will help you out. A lot."

"Hello!" A loud, high pitched voice yelled from behind them.

Deadpool and Spiderman turned to see the pinkest person they had ever set eyes on.

--

Peter had thought Wade was crazy. Wade had thought Wade was crazy.

This was nothing compared to Gwen Poole. She was pink and energy, and mostly talked nonsense. Something about this all being fanfiction, and a disappointing lack of panels. Also, according to her, one of the four "self inserts" was "the author."

Wade thought he could keep up, but no. Whatever the fuck voices were in his head paled in comparison to whatever Gwen had.

Like, Deadpool occasionally thought he was in a comic, but she seemed to be able to do something about it. Dead silent explosions because "I caught the otomotapeia," inexplicable escapes...

Cuz if there's real weird shit in there, she can handle it.

As is though, she kept calling one of the people "the author" and it was making his own head spin. That's... not normally how this went. But she'd be going with the four civilians in. She'd be able to keep them alive.

And so it begins.

--

The plan started to fall apart immediately.

Deadpool was doing fine, Spiderman was doing fine.

Gwen and V were in a heated arguement.

"What do you mean, you didn't write any scenes inside area 51?"

"I told you, I don't know what you're talking about! Besides, don't you have powers? Can't you do something about it?"

"Not in a fanfic! Not in normal literature! The format matters. I can manipulate comic panels, not THIS SHITSHOW."

"Uh, guys? I think the Feds are here." Popcorn piped up.

"Hands up!" A man yelled. They all slowly put their hands up.

--

Deadpool made it in. He found a cat named Goose in a cage. He picked it up and continued running through the halls.

He ran into Spiderman. Literally. They both shouted.

"Glad to see you're alive! Do you know where Gwen's squad went?"

"Yeah, I saw them getting arrested just before making it in. And look! I found a cat!" Wade proudly held the cat up to Peter. Voices shouted from behind them.

"WADE! WE NEED TO GET THEM!"

Oh. Right.

"So, any ideas?"

"Stop!" A voice called out behind Deadpool.

The duo ran through the halls, left and right, trying to lose the gaurds. Spidetman opened a door they found, a supply closet. Spiderman opened the cage, and sat the cat on Wade's lap. Spiderman threw the cage down the hall.

"What the fuck was that for?" Deadpool furiously whispered.

"Distraction," Spiderman whispered back.

The guards immediately opened the supply closet. The cat hissed. Then, he opened his mouth. Wide.

Tentacles shot out from the cat's mouth, wrapping around the guard. He let out a shriek, cut short by Goose swallowing him whole.

Deadpool and Spiderman looked at the cat, eyes wide.

"I like you," Deadpool declared, firmly.

--

The other five were in a metal truck.

"Do you have any way out?" Smokey asked.

"No. We're gonna be tried for treason." Supes commented.

"If only the others could get us out of here." V added.

"Wait. That's it."

"What do you mean, that's it?"

"I can get out of here. You wrote something just now of Spidey and Deadpool back at Area 51. I can go there now, let them know where we are, which is in a metal truck, headed to... damn. Don't know definitively, but it's a shot. Just give me a moment..." Gwen pushed on something, and floated up into the ceiling.

"Well, this just got worse," Smokey commented.

--

"Hey guys!"

Wade screamed.

"Woah, Gwen, how'd you get here?" Spidey sounded shocked.

"The writer mentioned you in Area 51, so I could come over to visit, through some medium manipulation. "

"Great job, Pinky. Now, where's everyone else? And do you know what the fuck is going on with this cat?" Wade held out Goose.

"No idea. The writer didn't bother informing the audience of their exact location, and two, the cat is a flergen. Now, let me think." Gwen started pacing around the supply closet, muttering to herself.

"Hmmmm.... wait a minute.... I got it!" Gwen shrieked and snapped her fingers. "Ma- DD, gave you a buisness card for himself. Give it to me, and I'll bring it to them, and they'll be able to call him to lawyer them out." Gwen held out her hand. "Gimme." Reluctantly, Spiderman handed it over. "Thanks, Webhead!" Gwen pushed upwards again. Then, she was gone.

--

Thud!

Gwen fell back into the truck, then grabbed for something.

"Soooooo, what's the plan?" Popcorn asked.

"Sit tight and get Matt Murdock to lawyer us out. He's a crack lawyer, and considering this is fanfic, I imagine he'll be great at it."

"M'Kay." Popcorn said, rolling her eyes.

--

Matt Murdock was a bit busy at the moment. He was busy saran wrapping Wade's pillows. Foggy was trying to cram a rubber duck into a shampoo bottle. Well, Wade's shampoo. Foggy didn't get why the guy had it (Wade was bald) but he figured he'd ask no questions. Just prank.

Matt's phone rang. An unknown number. He picked up.

"Hello! This is Matthew Murdock. Who is this?"

"Hello, this is Gwen Poole, friend of Spiderman, in need of legal counsel. Would you be able to help?"

"Where are you? Is Spiderman or Deadpool with you?"

"No. I'm with four other civilians. We are in New Mexico."

"Shit. I can't exactly make it over there."

"Shit."

Foggy yelped in surprise, then cheered. "Got it in!"

Gwen thought for a bit. "What if we book an airline for you to get here."

Matt thought about it. "That could work."

--

The next morning, Foggy drove Matt to the airport, grumbling the whole way.

"They're idiots, Matt, you shouldn't have to save them." Matt began staring (as best he could) at his hands.

"Its a Catholic guilt thing, isn't it?" Foggy sighed. "Fine, go be a lawyer hero while I singlehandedly keep the firm running. It's a good thing I'm the brains of Nelson and Murdock, while you're the beauty."

"I'm not the brawn of Nelson and Murdock?"

"No, that's Karen." Matt cracked a smile.

Foggy pulled up to the curb. "Keep me posted. Let me know when you're coming back and how it goes."

"I will." Matt got out of the car, and grabbed his suitcase.

He waved as Foggy drove away. Deep breaths, Murdock. You can navigate an airport and plane, he thought. Matt entered the airport.

--

A few hours later, Matt landed in New Mexico, where he couldn't get off the plane fast enough, then took a taxi to where they were being held.

He raised hell. He got everyone (except for Gwen) released that night. New Mexico state troopers had never seen the fury of a Matt Murdock scorned.

Apparently, since everyone was in the middle of the desert, and needed supplies, the threat of death by dehydration was enough to get them all off. Gwen, however, was stuck back in prison, because she was armed, and various other crimes due to being the leader of MODOK. As far as anyone could follow.

Everyone then boarded a plane back to New York.

"Did this just happen?" V asked. "This feels crazy.

"It it really is," Smokey agreed.

Something in the overhead compartment shifted. The stewardess opened it, and Gwen jumped out.

"Thank you!" She said to the stewardess. "Man, that was cramped. Good to be out in the light of day!"

--

Wade Wilson was looking forward to a relaxing night at home, after the craziness of the past few days. He had Goose tucked in his one arm. He opened his apartment. Little rubber ducks were everywhere. Over the counters, on the bookshelves. He opened the fridge. There was a rubber duck.

Goose meowed, then tentacled the duck.

"That's cannibalism, Goose." Wade put down Goose, then went to nap. His cheek hit saran wrap.

"Fuck you, Murdock!" Wade yelled.

Thanks for reading! I tried to have Gwen's powers make sense, but it's...difficult.

[pbandjesse]

Oops I deleted my post. Thankfully I was only talking about last night and hadn't really gotten to write much of the day because I keep getting distracted.

I'm really glad to be in bed. I'm very tired. And I don't feel 100% but I do feel a lot better than I did yesterday. Today was really a good day and I do feel very happy.

Last night was a different story though. I was miserable and I couldn't sleep. I ended up going through Facebook and try and figure out who was married for my graduating class. Because this year is 10 years since I graduated from high school. Which is Wile to think about. I can't believe that that used to actually matter. My people would have reunions and things. You couldn't pay me to go to a reunion for my high school. And then I woke up in the middle of the night with horrible pain. It was like a charlie horse from my side all the way down my leg. I got up a few times cuz I thought I was going to be sick. I was up for a while and eventually I was able to take a Motrin and feel okay enough to lay down. But I was still in pain. James is 1000000 degrees all the time so his body heat lulled me enough to go back to sleep.

I woke up briefly when James was leaving for work. I didn't even feel him get out of bed. But he came and gave me a hug before he left. I really needed to keep sleeping though.

I let myself sleep in until almost 10. And that's been kind of normal right now just because it's cold and I'm tired and haven't been feeling good so I haven't been sleeping well. But it's not like I had a lot to do today. I got up and I got dressed. I had a bagel. I watched videos. I'm most of them watching those SCP read through ones and I've been really enjoying those. They're the perfect amount of Creepypasta but they don't have to have a conclusion which is always the weakness in a creepypasta. So it's been very nice just Mindless sort of creepy and fun.

I left here around 11:30. I biked over to dickblick to get Sharpies for the kids. Which are way more expensive than I thought they were. But ended up getting a great deal on 12 pen Sharpies for like $7. The woman said they were actually mislabeled because they should have been $12 but I want out in the mist occurring and she still let me have the price.

I left there and I went to 7-Eleven. I got lunch. And then I grabbed the bus to go to work. When I got there I found that a whole bunch of stuff I've been knocked over in our storage closet. I went to go talk to coach Banks who sort of runs lunch time. But parent was yelling at him about her child being suspended. So I noped out of there. I found another t-shirt at all. But I just cleaned it off it was fine. I ended up having a funny conversation with health aid because she wasn't sure if I was a student or a teacher. And I explained who I was. And she was just like I've never seen you here before. It was cute.

I found some new organizational tools for our cart. So now each table has their own basket with their own supplies in it. So there'll be no more arguing. So is very proud of myself for that and then me and Chelsea were able to just chill. There wasn't a lot that we needed to do.

And we had a really nice day. It was really small class today we only had about 11 by the end. Just with the snow that was coming in and there's cheerleading tryouts in basketball practice. I think the robotics team also just started up again. But that was nice. It was nice to just be able to connect with the couple kids that were there on a one to one level. And they made good art and that was really nice to see. We talked about foreground middle-ground and background. And how you can use line weight to show those different distances.

We also have the art store today. And the kids are already raised enough money to have a pizza party. I was very proud of them for donating to each other. And they got to have a cool thing over it. Will probably save it for next week. But I'm so very proud of them.

When I woke up this morning it was very heavy on my heart but I wanted to talk to Damien's mom. When he was brought to our class for the first time. The couple days before. I was warned that he was really tough to have in class. That he was on the Spectrum and that teachers found him very difficult. But his mom is great and that if there was ever an issue she would come and get him right away and not to worry about it. But that's not been my experience with Damien. He's wonderful. He's a sweet loving little boy. Sometimes he has breakdowns. Sometimes he can't focus. But he is always first to help me and he has a really sweet temperament. And so I really felt like I needed to say something to his mom today. She came early to pick him up because his sister was doing some kind of presentation at an event. And I pulled her aside and I was like Hey I just really want to let you know how much I enjoy Damien. And I told her everything and she started crying and gave me a hug. And you can just tell she works so hard with those two kids. She's a really good mom and I'm glad that Damien was able to be in our class. He's a good boy.

We finished up today. We did vocab in Jeopardy Style. Where they had to say the definition and then someone else had to give the vocab word in the form of a question. Only about half of them understand that but it was so fun. We played a game and then we wouldn't have snack and then it was time to go home. Me and chelsi got to get out of there by 5:30 which was awesome.

I got the bus and I was able to get back to my apartment only a couple minutes after 6. I packed up some stuff for dinner and then I went to James's place. He made Tex Mex and use some of the stuff that I brought with me. And we watched videos and we talked. He explained the game he made to me. Which has a whole lot of numbers in it is hard for me to get but seems to have a really nice system of rolling dice that I hope this DND friends enjoy. And we hung out for a while. And we talked. And then he walked me home.

It had started snowing and he likes walking in the snow so it wasn't completely one-sided. We just enjoy each other's company and we talked and had a nice walk back to my apartment. He said goodbye and he went back to his.

When I got here I checked the mail and Not only was my new rabbit phone case here. The old one was very matted and I wasn't able to brush it out like I was hoping. My new reindeer Furby arrived as well. I'm not sure what to name him yet but he's very soft. He doesn't seem to work. His he won't turn on. But that's okay. He's still very cute. He'll probably get packed away with the Christmas ornament ones as well once the winter is over so he'll be a nice new face to have out next year.

I'm in bed now. Just enjoying that it's actually nice and toasty in my bedroom for once. I'm going to plug in my phone though because it's dying. And then I'm going to try to go to sleep. I am working at constellation all day tomorrow and I'm hoping to do lesson plans. And then me and James are going to go see a play about Johnstown. And I am really looking forward to it. Because I love Cults. Especially murder cults.

I hope you all sleep great tonight. I hope that your animals are nice to you. And that you have a really nice day tomorrow. Good night everyone.

[afterspark-podcast]

Intro: Transcript

Episode Show Notes

[This can also be found on AO3!]

O: Welcome to the AfterSpark Podcast, an episode by episode recap of the original G1 Transformers cartoon. I’m Owls!

S: And I’m Specs!

O: And we’re here to talk to you about giant robots. Or at least, we will be! This is actually our intro. What we’d like to do is recap all of generation 1 because it is full of glorious, glorious cheese. Delightful, cheesy goodness and honestly we just want to talk about it, because it’s fun.

S: Yeah

O: And we just wanted to introduce ourselves and kind of our experience with fandom and what things we like before we got into actually talking about the episodes. You should be able to check out our actual first episode the same time we post this. So if you’re like, “Hey, I don’t really care about any of this stuff,” it’s cool, I get it. The other episode’s over there. It’s fine, we’ll see you in a few minutes. For the rest of you that are sticking around, allow us to introduce ourselves. We’ve been friends for nine (9) years.

S: Mm-hmm.

O: Uhh, we went to college together. We were both in art degrees so we like art and comics and media and all that junk.

S: Yep, yep.

O: We’re also neighbors that live in the same building, so one day I was like, “Hey, hey, Specs, want to talk about giant robots?”

S: And I’m like, “Yes!”

O: So here we are, getting ready to talk to you about giant robots, hopefully. We are both first time podcasters, and a shoutout to my husband Chezni for helping us out with sound, so hopefully we don’t sound like complete shit while you’re listening to us. Hopefully it’s a little bit slightly, well, cultured shit -

S: [Laughter]

O: -Or at least our sound quality doesn’t sound awful, because that’s a big deal in podcasting. One of my biggest inspirations was the Jem Jam, which is another podcast that does episode by episode recaps of Jem and the Holograms, which is another Eighties (80’s) Hasbro-

S: -Franchise.

O: Thank you. That is equally ridiculous in vastly different ways. Mostly involving the Eighties (80’s) and music and hair and fashion and all these lovely things.

S: And Soap Opera Drama~!

O: And Soap Opera level of drama. It was also delightful. Go was the show or listen to the podcast because it is completely ridiculous and highly entertaining. But! Something I noticed when I was trying to kind of look around at Transformers podcasts was that I didn’t see anything that quite had that same vibe of just a bunch of friends talking about something ridiculous and I really wanted that and realized it wasn't there and thought, “Eh, maybe we can do that?”

O: And yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do.

S: So. Hi, I’m Specs. I’m been, uhm. Oh, this feels- [sigh] - This feels like I’m in a support group.

O: [Laughter] Welcome! Tell us how Transformers has affected your life. Tell us, Specs! Tell us!

S: Eh, I got into Transformers in like 2002-2003 and I got into it with fanfic. Because of course I did. So much fanfic over the last, like, sixteen (16) years. Oh my god. [huff of laughter]

O: She has quite a collection downloaded.

S: I save things. Habitually. After, uh, there was the great ezboard wipeout of, like, 2005. So, I got into fanfic. Or got into Transformers through fanfic basically I’d been poking through the Medabots thing [category] on fanfiction.net and oh. This person who wrote this thing that I read has also written about these other robots. And I was like, “Ok, let me check this out,” and I had no idea what was going on, so I was like, “I’m going to read through this entire category or at least look through, find whatever the heck looks interesting and then read it,” and that was like  4000 things [fics/works] in the category at that point.

O: Which is significantly less than what’s in there now, I do feel the need to point out. But!

S: I still went through that, and yeah there was a lot of stuff. Yeah, there’s actually still things I really like that I read way back when but basically that was my first exposure to transformers. My first complete canon experience was the G1 [Marvel] comics, but US and UK runs. So I’ve read the entirety of that and I think I read that before 2003 was done, so before 2004. I’ve still got it. It’s been a long time since I’ve read it. Basically, my dad bought a CD, two CD’s actually that had scan of the comics and that’s how I read it and that’s my complete G1 comic experience.

O: So accidentally pirating. [Laughter]

S: [Laughter] Kind of, yeah.

O: Not intentional, but, uh, y’know.

S: Yeah, and then I ended up on the Padded Cell, which was like the- the major sort of transformative fandom hub at the time? A lot of the stuff you see in fanfic now came from people who were on that forum from like 2000-2008. It wasn’t really the hub of anything anymore as things shifted to Lifejournal and [later] Tumblr, People moved away from forums and into, y’know-

O: Other social media accounts.

S: Yeah

O: That were easier and, y’know, they didn’t have to keep servers up and all that junk.

S: Yeah, but it was- it was neat, because I got to see a lot of the fandom stuff, like evolving firsthand, but, uh, so yeah. My fave G1 characters are Ratchet, because I really thought that he was the main character-

O: [Stifled laughter]

S: - in the comics for awhile, because, like, everyone is frigging, like all the Autobots are frigging out.[Laughter] LIke really quickly after they wake up and Ratchet’s just off doing whatever with Buster and then he has to do like a blood-fuel? Pact with Megatron-

O: [Laughing]

S: [Laughing] -and it’s weird. Yeah.

O: I have no frame of reference for any of this.

S: Well, maybe you will soon.

O: She’s lending them to me. Oh no.

S: And then there’s Dead End because like the first DVD’s that I got- I got the second half of season two, and was like, “I like lIke Dead End’s voice, oh no, he’s depressed. Let me hug this- hug this poor robot and so I got the entire. I have an entire, like, complete original G1 Stunticon toys. Set of the G1 toys with all of their combiner stuff. Never actually got around to combining them because I’m lazy and I was more interested in the characters themselves than in Menasor. So yeah, I’ve got those and I’ll bring them up to show them to you and I’ll bring the Alternator Dead End up, too

O: Yes, show me more toys!

S: And- And Wheeljack., which I don’t have an original Wheeljack toy, but I do have a Wheeljack Alternator. Basically G1 sort of got me on the kick for medics and scientists. I like most of the medics that pop up in various series. And yeah, so, favorite overall character is Ratchet and Rescue Bot Blades, who is coincidentally, the Rescue Bots medic. [Laughter]

O: He was before he got turned into a helicopter [laughter]

S: Yeah

O: Which is a great out of context thing to say.

S: Yes, it is.

O: Blade’s is adorable!

S: Like all of the Rescue Bots characters are adorable and you should watch that right now. Go watch it.

O: It is better than it has any right to be. I know, you’re sitting here going- if you haven’t seen it already- why would I watch something that was made for preschoolers? It is written better than it has any right to be. I do not know why, I don’t care why. It is actually quite good and very entertaining even if you’re an adult and you like transformers.

S: It’s got some of the most consistent writing out of any of the shows, like they knew what they had to do, they worked well within the guidelines they had to work with. Like, no one can die, no one can be seriously injured.

O: Right. Because preschoolers. Right.

S: And so it doesn’t have any of the weird tonal inconsistencies that sometimes Prime could get and it wasn’t, like, canceled like Animated was.

O: [softly] Yeah.

S: [sighs] And then Rewind. He’s basically kind of a librarian, and I think. Just Rewind and Chromedome are really neat. I like them both. I like most of the IDW characters.

O: They’re very, very good.

S: Mm-hmm. Favorite series: IDW G1, especially phase two. My favorites are Lost Light and More Than Meets The Eye. I still have a really soft spot for the original G1 comics, cuz they’re the first things that I read.

O: That makes sense.

S: Mm-hmm. And so, let’s - let’s go over to Owls.

O: Hi! My name is Owls. Uh, so in contrast to my friend, I’ve been in the fandom for three months, maybe. It all started a fateful day when I watched someone on YouTube talk about Beast Wars. I had the sneaking suspicion of I vaguely liked Beast Machine’s growing up? Didn’t remember anything else and thought, “Hey! I should watch Beast Wars!” This was my first mistake. At which point I, ah, messaged Specs and I was like, “Hey! You’ve got a copy of Beast Wars, right?”

S: Yep, mm-hmm.

O: And she did, and I watched it and then I rapidly ascended into Transformers madness. And I now lie at the bottom of a ravine getting buried by toys, comics, and various amounts of DVD’s.

S: Yep. Ones [Comics and DVD’s] that I’ve mostly lent you, but… [Laughter]

O: Mostly. I did buy Beast Machines, because she didn’t have it and I wanted to watch it and I have Opinions™. I have Opinions that I won’t get into right now. But I have opinions.

S: You also have Beast Wars.

O: I also bought Beast Wars, but that’s because it is my favorite Transformers thing. SO I’ve probably watched about six different animated series, uh, and the Bay movies and now I know enough to hate the Bay movies. Oh my god! I didn’t know before but now I do. [Laughter] Now I do.

S: Now you know the pain.

O: Now I do, yes. My desk is rapidly accumulating Transformers. Help.

S: [Laughter]

O: We’ve got Grumpy Desk Raptor, and we’ve got 99.9% Done-With-Your-Shit-Rodimus-Grandpa, and smaller, more murderous Desk Raptor. I’ll leave it you to figure out who those three are. [Laughter]

S: I like your desk raptors-

O: My desk-

S: and grumpy grandpa.

O: I-I-I collect grumpy, grumpy characters. This is going to become a theme. Ah, my favorite characters are Dinobot from Beast Wars, who is AWESOME! And I’m so mad he doesn’t show up in anything else! But I guess I should be happy he’s alive in the IDW comics and presumably in a good place?!

S: He’s in the Christmas ep- He’s in the Christmas episode, basically.

O: There’s an adorable panel, it is my life. Ahem. Anyway, so Dinobot from Beast Wars, Lost Light Megatron, which, if you’ve not read the comics, I won’t tell you we’re going to be spoiler free here, but I also don’t want to like be blatant about it so, he’s really well written and I really enjoy him and there’s a very, very obvious reason for that if you’ve read the comics. I also really like Transformers Prime Ratchet, who is just a serious Mood. Uh, he, y’know, is trying to do his job and then he’s like “What the hell are all these human children doing here? And you’re breaking my shit,” And honestly, that’s kind of how I feel most days if I’m around children, yeah.

S: And then he takes over their science projects, because of course he does.

O: Transformers Prime, though I love it, has some weird tonal issues.

S: It does.

O: We’ll get to that eventually.

S:  [Softly] It does.

O: I-I feel like I have to do some honorable mentions for pretty much any version of Soundwave, Grimlock, and Starscream in existence. Except for Grimlock from Car Robots or the 2001 Robots in Disguise, because he doesn’t really act like Grimlock. Regardless, they’re all delightful and I love them. And that basically sums up the characters I like for G1 pretty well, which is Soundwave and Grimlock are probably my favorites. Uh, I also rather enjoy Perceptor and I enjoy Megatron for the pure, pure delightful camp factor. [Laughter] He has no redeeming qualities and I love him.

Both: [Laughter]

O: None. So obviously,  I have been here for, oh, three months. I know nothing about fandom. I really wanted to do something to get involved, and was like, “Oh dear gog, I can’t draw robots, I don’t really think I feel competent enough to post fanfic,” and I thought, ‘By god  , my executive function must surely be worth something.’ And then I decided to put together a podcast, because through the powers of organization, anything is possible.

S: It is, it is. [laughter]

O: And here we are. Through the power of organization. That being said, ah, with us doing this podcast we really wanted to try to put some emphasis on fanworks and fanart and so what we would like to do with the episodes we release is recommend a fanfic and maybe some fanart with our episodes because Specs has been in the fandom for so long she;s got this great stash of ~vintage~ transformers work. Not all of it we can share because some of it’s been taken down and we don’t want to post something without the original authors’ permission or it being posted somewhere, but basically we’re hoping we can give you some good fanfics to kinda go with the theme of the episode . So, should be fun. That being said, if you’re got recommendations for fanart or fanworks-

S: Or questions, or complaints. I’m our complaints department for the record.

O: You can shoot us a message. You can find us on Tumblr. We are AfterSpark-Podcast on Tumblr and you can find other methods in which to contact us there. All that being said, I think we’ve kind of come to the end of our intro here. Hopefully you’ll come join us on our delight ride

through generation 1 and the waves of pure cheesiness we are about to embark on, because trust me, we are.

S: Our delightful ride on jousting jets.

O: A delightful ride on jousting jets. Just wait for it. Um, well, this is Owls!

S: And Specs!

O: Signing off. Thanks for listening to AfterSpark Podcast.

S: Toodles!

[i-want-it-all-or-nothing-at-all]

Since premiering in June, the second season of Netflix’s Queer Eye reboot has sparked critical acclaim (and renewed questions over what, if anything, we should expect from the Fab Five beyond makeovers and tear-jerker moments). Yet the new season has also sparked conversations within the trans community, questioning the show’s framing and treatment of Skyler Jay, the transmasculine subject of episode five, “Sky’s The Limit.”

While some critics reacted positively to the episode, many trans viewers saw it in mixed terms; some who have voiced criticism of the episode felt its discussion of the trans experience was very “Trans 101,” and some felt Skyler was othered by the Fab Five for things that seem very essential to his transness — like his Pride-themed décor, his affinity for youthful male attire, or by focusing on his top surgery in an invasive and clinical way.

As a trans man, I wanted to discuss concerns that have arisen within the community about the episode with Skyler himself. Below, Skyler tells them. his thoughts on the controversy, expands on experiences during filming that audiences didn’t get to see, and explains hopes that the Queer Eye episode can stand as just one stepping stone toward stories in the media where trans people are “just celebrated.”

First, I wanted to get your take on what your life has been like since the show. I’m curious to know how life has changed for you.

It’s been almost a year since we did the original filming for the show and when I had my initial surgery, which was aired in the episode. I’ve had some procedures since then as well. So really, between filming and the show airing, my life has been focused on paying for those additional surgery costs and recovering. I just got off my medical restrictions yesterday, so a good portion of my year has been spent healing.

Some have critiqued the episode for being too clinical, or feeling like the Fab Five were “othering” you. How would you respond to those critiques?

One of the things that makes me saddest about what viewers get to see is that you see so little. It makes me so sad for the world, because the questions I keep getting asked are “Are these guys really that nice? Are they really that awesome?” My response is always “No. They’re even better than what you get to see on TV.” We spent a week and then some filming, they crush it into less than an hour, and there’s so much that’s left out.

Did any of your experiences with cast members stand out in terms of their experience with trans people prior to the show?

Bobby and Karamo were actually very informed on the trans experience. I know people have come at Bobby for the “transgendered” comment at the beginning of my episode, and I re-watched and re-listened, and I really honestly can’t decipher whether he said “transgender” or “transgendered.” I know the subtitles say “transgendered,” but also, the subtitles in general in the episode are really off-kilter — they called my cat “Roma” instead of “Robot,” they spelled things incorrectly… and I know that’s something Karamo is bringing up to the Netflix people now, to rectify the kinks so people who are deaf and hard of hearing aren’t having these compromised viewing experiences. I don’t know whether that was a slip on Bobby’s part, but he and Karamo were both really informed. So was Jonathan.

Really, it was Tan and Antoni who hadn’t had a whole lot of experience with transgender individuals. I really wish this one line would have made it into the show, because it’s something I say to every person I interact with who says “you’re the first trans person I’ve met.” I always come back with, “that you know of.” And then I always explain that I may be the first openly trans person they’ve met, but we’re everywhere. To watch both Tan and Antoni’s — and many, many, many other people’s — eyes… it’s like their brain explodes for a second. They go “uh, what?” and then their whole perception of reality and how they perceive those around them shifts. I wish that had made it in there, because I know Tan has gotten a lot of flack. I felt like that entire week, I spent it with my community, with my brothers. I feel like I’m a part of this really beautiful thing.

I think people feel like I was being studied because I was educating [the Fab Five during filming]. That is how I do my work. That gift was given to me by another visible, open, activist trans man who saved my life and helped me figure myself out. So of course, I took full power knowing that the show was going to be targeted at middle-America housewives, because that’s what the first season was geared toward. I was like — “Cool, I’m going to teach some middle-America housewife moms how to care for their transgender kids when they come out by being open and understanding their kids better.”

Knowing what you did about the target audience, was the “Trans 101” approach with the Fab 5 and the show on purpose?

I would say yes, but I went Trans 101 — and then went into extra-advanced trans education with the guys and the cast and crew. I think it’s just how editing made it come out. That conversation Tan and I had was about two hours on the couch. We talked about pronouns, we talked about the different transitions that trans men and trans women can go through, we talked about non-binary and genderqueer individuals, and people of color in my community who are trans and nonbinary and the additional difficulties they face. We also talked about Russia and Jamaica and how trans people that live in those countries have refugee programs directed to them, because they could get murdered and dragged in the streets. We got really, really deep.

There’s a distinct cut in that conversation with Tan and I where he’s very composed — he’s really composed all the time — and then after I laid some really deep knowledge on him, he was crying. He did come from a very sheltered upbringing and his getting into the queer community basically started with this show. So I don’t blame him for his lack of knowledge. Instead, I very much thank him for his willingness to seek out that knowledge through me, from someone who is willing to teach.

My goal was to make him so motivated that he would go forward and be a megaphone to help our community. That’s what we need — not just trans folks standing up, we need other people to have some bit of knowledge on even a basic level of what kind of issues we face. I wish the show could be two hours. But I’m really proud of the outreach they’re already doing with trans youth. I hope that they can carry it forward and continue to help out other trans individuals in the future.

Have you kept in contact with the Fab 5?

Bobby and I are actually close and talk quite a bit. Through my second surgery, I was having issues with a caretaker not being able to come, and I freaked out and was crying and I called Bobby. He started contacting friends in the area to try to figure out what he could do — all the way from Asia, where he was at the time — to help me out because I was freaking out.

So, yes we still keep in contact, and I’m really attached to these guys. I also hope that I continue to see Queer Eye and Netflix in general produce content with visible trans people that aren’t demonized, or othered, and are just celebrated. I feel like that’s what they did with my episode and I’m really thankful for that.

What’s next for Skyler Jay?

I’ve been preparing for a lawsuit I’m currently in against the University system for the state of Georgia to get them to remove their trans healthcare exclusion, which is a big deal for the community. I also went back to school in May to finish my undergraduate degrees, and I’m in the middle of my classes and trying to do my day job as well. And now this new additional job of managing the love and support — and also the sheer outcry from the community of people reaching out looking for resources, seeking validation and seeking help, or reaching out to say thank you — it’s been really overwhelming, honestly. But in the best ways. I feel super honored and blessed that Queer Eye has gifted me this level-up in platform beyond just the cool stuff that you guys got to see on the show.

[themirthfulroadrunners]

New Mexico Just off the Turquoise Trail

The first two days of this trip were troublesome, nearly problematic… sorta. We got an early (early!) start, leaving home at 4:45. Traffic wasn’t bad, not even the trucks. Of the 8 construction zones that Google maps identified, which turned into 11-12, none of them slowed us down much. No merging problems, and never below about 60mph. So we arrived at our reserved hotel at about lunch time – much earlier than we usually stop driving. (Exaggeration maybe, and gaining an hour at the New Mexico border did affect our timing. Plus, we had reserved a hotel, due to so many travelers escaping lockdown). But we used the free afternoon to drive a scenic road that was actually more cool than scenic with the find of some awesome old churches. And the location of where Coronado stopped over for 4 days to build a bridge across the Pecos River. We tried to find Pecos Bill. Maybe next time.

The troublesome, nearly problematic parts were in the area of our energy. After the activities of the 2nd day, we were toast. Debbie was so weary as to be sick from it. The hotel bed was heavenly, tho, so good rest was had.

 The morning drive out of our stop (Santa Rosa) was horrific with the truckers. The rudest in the world apparently drive I-40 going west from Santa Rosa and we interacted with many of them. Speaking of Santa Rosa, the California city that was burned up in 2020, is where Wayne moved from in 1979 to return to the land of ancestry (on his dad’s side), Arkansas. Working in the Post Office in Santa Rosa, CA, he saw a ton of misdirected letters that should have gone to New Mexico. Conversely, a lot of Santa Rosa, CA mail that was supposed to go to another address in Santa Rosa, CA, took a side trip to Santa Rosa, NM first.

 Our next hotel in Albuquerque, the city of Debbie’s birth (thanks to the United States Air Force) was touted as a ‘full-service’ facility, which means no free breakfast. Don’t know about you, but for 150 million bucks, we want free waffles! (and yogurt) And we ain’t payin’ no $25 for a hotel breakfast where you can’t even order what you want (free waffles!) Also, now, mind you that this is during the Covid19 Delta-variant-surging-wave, one of the two elevators in a 6-floor hotel is closed. Once while we were on the only operative one, descending from the 5th floor, it stopped at the 3rd where 2 employees and a customer charged in to join us. NO! We scored a strike bowling them down as we clamored over them to get out. WHAT’S A’MATTER WITH PEOPLE? (Besides bein’ knocked out.)

 We got to our house sit and guess what? The promised hot tub doesn’t work, the homeowner had compromised the wiring while tryin’ to electrificate a tree that grows through the deck. After immediately kicking their two dogs (NO, we didn’t), the homeowners pledged that the promised hot tub would be repaired before our house sit was to start. Afraid for their pets’ lives, they did, it was, and a hot tub at 7000’ is sublime. All is well in New Mexico. And even better yet, the owners invited us back before we even unpacked. Now we feel bad for our earlier disappointment.

 Speaking of hot tubs, this trip afforded us the best in terms of stars, satellites, and shooting (falling?) stars. They were awesome.

 New Mexico, which should change its name to Carson State, or Navajo State, seems to have a distinct lack of historic, or cultural, heroes. Coronado, the famed Spanish explorer abused the native Indians (Pueblo, Navajo, Zuni, Apache, Comanche, Ute, Kiowa), and probably more, to the degree that they revolted in 1680. There was blood, followed by bad blood. Coronado was solely interested in exploiting both the people, and their wealth, had he ever found the lost cities of gold. Coronado aside, there were famous trappers and hunters, but none who benefitted the development of the state, or any people groups within. Kit Carson seems to be the singular stand out as far as heroic figures go. (There may be a bunch of indigenous folks, or folks of Spanish ancestry worthy of the acclaim, I don’t know.) Starved for notoriety of some sort (even bad press is better than no press), modern New Mexicans (Carsonians) point to Billy the Kid – almost to the degree of the George Washington slept here hype. While eastern states laud actual heroes: Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, John Paul Jones, Paul Revere, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, General Anthony Wayne (hah!), Ashley McBride (ha-ha!), and the like, New Mexicans extol a murdering punk, a villain. Oh well, even bad publicity …

Despite the obvious lack of historical heroes, New Mexico does not lack for historical enchantment. The sights are spectacular, especially the mountains and even the smaller rock formations. The people are friendly (excepting the murderous Billy). The food is great. Wayne prefers the red chili peppers while Debbie, the green. Wayne likes to actually see the mold in his food.

After a short two-mile hike with a thousand-foot elevation gain, it was time for Sparkly, our glittery black Ford Edge, to finally get his way, a trip up a bona fide Jeep/ATV road/trail. It used to be a road. In fact, we drove it with ease two years ago. A local told us that the monsoons they’ve had washed it away. Sparkly wanted to go fast, so Wayne let him have his head, doubling the recommended 2mph. Sparkly was sometimes difficult to restrain.

 The adventure was worth it, offering a Stephen King Misery experience. A mountain lion crossed the ‘road’ just ahead of us. Wayne stopped and got out of the car to check out where it had headed. (maybe not the most clever of options) Low and behold, (BTW, we loathe and despise cliches, but sometimes it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye) A hundred or so feet down the nearly 90 degree drop-off was a vehicle smashed into a tree. Though there were no obvious signs of a recent departure from the ‘road’, it could have fairly flown over the nearby brush. Or it could have gone over when there was snow cover. Or … anyway, going down to check whether there was a corpse in the vehicle while theoretically possible, didn’t seem very well-advised considering that there might very well be a mountain lion finishing up what might be left and much preferring the live meat presenting himself on a veritable platter – Wayne.

Surprisingly, there was cell service in this remote mountainous area. From a Sandia Mountain trail map handout, we got through to someone who transferred the call to the proper authority. While they appreciated our call, they’d been aware of the vehicle and that it had been there for some time. But how weird, that the mountain lion crossed exactly where we could see the crashed vehicle. What if it wasn’t the same crash that the authority thought they knew about? What if the driver was just then coming to, only to see a mountain lion eating his face? (Limiting Wayne’s Stephen King intake.)

 Another mile down the ‘road’ we saw a mountain lion kitten, though it was barely a kitten, nearly as large as its mother, and almost devoid of kitten colorations and markings. We watched it in awe for some time before thinking to take a photo. You just have to believe us (or not) that the blond blur in the below picture is the kitten.

 Another quarter mile brought us to our promised hike, a trail to what was described as a Cave Man Cave. Unless we’d unknowingly driven across the Atlantic, it is doubtful that cave men had ever seen New Mexico, let alone inhabited this cave. More than likely the occupants, for which sufficient evidence supported the probability, were ancient indigenous people, no doubt using the cave to hide from mountain lions at night. The cave was cool, but there are better in Arkansas.

 A serendipitous hike in the Sandia Mountains showed us a plethora of wildflowers; most were varieties this Arkansas couple do not normally see. But the star of the show was a large mule deer buck who calmly sauntered in the trail behind us when we stopped for a rest (hiking at high altitude is hard, y’all!).

A retracing of a trip up the Turquoise Trail from 2 years ago put us re-hiking a trail in Cerrillos State Park, just south of Santa Fe. Several old mineral mines dot this trail and their history is revealed in very good signage. Passing through Madrid (unlike the one in Spain, this one is pronounced MAA’-drid), we were stopped for several minutes on Hwy 14 due to a ‘special event’ which we could not see. When allowed to pass through the artsy, cutesy town, we saw evidence of a movie being filmed. After exploring Cerrillos, we returned to Madrid for ice cream and got to watch some of the preparations for more filming. We did not get to see the part where the clipboard snaps and someone yells, “ACTION!” but it was enough. This same town was used for some of the scenes in the motorcycle film Wild Hogs and one building still boasts the ‘Diner’ sign that was added only for the film. Sign on the door says they do not serve food there. One can understand the confusion for tourists. We found out the movie being filmed during our trip is titled Robots and is a futuristic comedy starring Shailene Woodley and written by one of the writers on Borat. Cool beans. We ran into the film company yet again a day or two later, this time in a couple of sites in the Sandia Mountains. Whether the finished movie turns out to be good or meh, we’ll be watching it to catch glimpses of the gorgeous New Mexico countryside. New Mexico and Colorado have several movie ranches sprinkled in the very scenic areas.

 15 months, or so, ago we were house-sitting in Durango when paper Closed for Covid signs went up on doors in business-after-business. Here’s one for the whole town.

 While touristing Old Town Albuquerque we suddened upon a shop managed by a very personable guy who gave us a cup of Arabica/piñon coffee. When we house-sat in Sante Fe last year we talked to a State Park Ranger dude who told us all bout people picking piñon nuts. Having marvelously (Debbie word) passed the aroma tests, we bought a box of K-cups of this unique, pinon flavored brew. The personable guy turned out to be the artist, David Behrens (DavidBehrensGallery.com and Facebook.com/DavidBehrensGallery).

 This trip ranks among the best, or at the top of the list: obedient and FUN pets, very clean and comfortable home, fantastic hiking and scenery (despite the photo-compromising smoke), and very gracious hosts who offered us their entire refrigerator! Regarding the smoke, we shouldn’t be too self-centered considering it may be what’s left of someone’s home passing overhead.

Here are more pix from the trip. Enjoy!

[wellhalesbells]

If you have the time and if you don't mind, what are some books you really recommend? Doesn't have to be all time faves, but anything that pops into mind that you want more ppl to read and love, Extra points if lgbt+ , i got the whole summer with little to do and i wanna spend it reading some good quality writing and honestly so far your recs have introduced me to so many faves its unbelievable

[blushes profusely] oh wow, thank you!!!  i’m so glad you’ve trusted me enough to check out some of the stuff i reblog; that is like the ultimate compliment, i can’t even???  i don’t mind at all(!), fair warning though: i only started recording what i read partway through last year and my mind is like a sieve so i’ll do my absolute best to remember what’s sang to me in the recent past.  warning number two: i’m in an open relationship with absolutely every genre out there so i’ll try to note which belongs where so you can avoid those that hold no interest for you.

LGBT+

i’ll give you the sun.  i loved this book, the writing is fucking transformative and all the characters are so damn likable, while still being realistically flawed human beings.

the raven cycle (tetralogy).  definitely my favorite series since harry potter.  the writing, the world-building, the characters, it’s all on top-form.  i wrote a little, mini non-spoilery review of it: here, back when i was better (worse?) wordly-wise and my feels were brand new.

more happy than not.  i’m still not sure how i feel about this book.  it was hard, but it felt very true to the characters and the lingo and style matched the ages of the players and i have a lot of respect for that.

the watchmaker of filigree street.  woooow i loved this book.  i admit ‘historical fiction’ kind of makes me cringe.  it never precludes me from reading a book but it does knock it down the list by a book or five because they’re often very dense and very clunky and end up taking me ages to get through.  but this one was gorgeous.  i loved the plot, the attention lovingly placed on every character and the historical elements.  the surprise gay in an already brilliant book felt like winning the lottery honestly.

captive prince (trilogy).  okay, truthfully, i’m only putting this on here because the second book is such a high point for me.  it was never bad at any point but it had unfortunately been hyped far too much for it to live up to my, admittedly, very high expectations.  hopefully it’ll fare better with you?

everything i never told you.  i go back and forth on this one.  i like the writing a lot, i like the LGBT aspect a lot, and i like the mystery aspect a lot but there are definitely characters i would cut out entirely for sheer predictability if i could and that killed a lot of my enjoyment at the time (but i think much more highly of it in retrospect?).  so, take that as you like.

aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe.  if there’s a book that handles its characters with more care or respect or consideration then i haven’t run into it.  i love the way this is written and the people it’s populated with.

flying lessons & other stories.  a bunch of uber talented authors writing a bunch of uber diverse and LGBT-focused stories and, yes, that is exactly as awesome as it sounds.

the song of achilles.  it is utterly heart-breaking but so rich, honestly.

FANTASY

the diviners.  (also has a minor LGBT character, who may play a bigger role in the sequel?)  fair warning, i have not read the sequel, lair of dreams, because it is somehow still not out in paperback (yes, i read physical books, yes, i pretty exclusively read paperbacks so i can lug them everywhere with me, YES, I PRE-ORDERED THIS ALMOST TWO YEARS AGO AND IT’S STILL NOT OUT, NOT THAT I’M BITTER ABOUT THAT OR ANYTHING) so i can’t speak to that one finishing on a high note as i don’t know.  but this was the first historical novel i managed to like in a long while.  it does such a good job of fusing in 1920s lingo and dress and aspects that i couldn’t help but love it.  add in the fantasy elements and i can admit i’m the perfect sucker for it.

the scorpio races.  i’m not sure why but it took me a long-ass time to get into this book, i wasn’t flipping pages with gusto until well towards the end but - especially as i was reading so much YA at the time - i really appreciated coming across a romance that lets both people come into it as themselves and stay themselves, neither puck nor sean were ever smashed or crumpled or shaved away to fit into their relationship, which was so refreshing.  plus the water horses were fucking cool.

the night circus.  the writing, the atmosphere, the circus.  just… it is all very whoa.

all the birds in the sky.  i loved this writing style and these characters and the magical elements.

CONTEMPORARY

i’ll meet you there.  there was something about this and i just… ended up liking it way more than i expected to.  i might’ve just read it at exactly the right time, i’m not sure, but i really enjoyed it.

the invoice.  this is honestly just hella cute and so freaking surreal.  swedes, man.

NON-FICTION

why not me?  i like mindy kaling a lot.  i make no apologies for that.  plus you can read both her books in about five seconds, haha.

SCIENCE FICTION

station eleven.  i loved this book.  the way the narrative is woven is so refreshing and i wish the comic book miranda was writing in this book was a real thing more than anything else in the woooorld.

illuminae.  hot DAMN this book was cool.  the plot was rock solid, the characters were hilarious and badass and the graphics made out of text and spiraling words and just the way this thing is put together?  shit, it’s worth your money and then some.

a robot in the garden.  okay this is just cute as hell.  i can’t even with tang, he’s the most adorable robot to ever adorable.

annihilation (southern reach trilogy).  (LGBT minor characters.)  okay, honestly?  i don’t know.  this was freaking zany but i was invested as fuck in all the kookiness for reasons i can’t articulately elaborate on.

the martian.  hilarious, engaging, SPACE.  what more do you want?

HORROR

things we lost in the fire.  this is more atmospheric than anything but, damn, could this get me wishing i wasn’t reading this in the dark or looking over my shoulder to make absolutely sure no one was standing behind me.  it’s a book of short stories (by the way, i love books of short stories and i definitely realize that is not true for everyone) and each one is so well-delivered and stylized.  i really enjoyed reading this.

let the right one in.  okay, this is legit horror so definitely stay away if you’re easily squicked out but it is harrrrrd to find good horror (at least in my opinion) and this definitely, definitely qualifies.

horrorstör.  i honestly had such low expectations for this, a horror story set in a wannabe-ikea, but it ended up being so ridiculous and strange and funny that i was won over by the finish.

the girl with all the gifts.  holy unique and well-executed zombie idea, batman!

SHORT STORIES

the bigness of the world.  there were definitely ones here that hit better than others but the ones i liked, i really liked!

GRAPHIC NOVELS (i read a lot of these so, um, prepare yourself)

saga.  (LGBT minor characters as well.)  this is world-building to a degree that i’m convinced did not exist before.  just, i can’t say enough amazing things about this series and the staggering amount of imagination that regularly goes into it.

ms. marvel.  heart-warming as fuck.  it’s definitely really easy to lose faith in the world these days, luckily kamala is there to remind you that people are primarily and genuinely good.

black science.  this is another one that took just an insane amount of imagination to cook up.  i got off to kind of a rocky start with this one but the gray-ness of all the characters really speaks to me, and that doesn’t really blossom until later in the series.

spider-man/deadpool.  this was very satisfying for my super duper spideypool-shipping mind.  joe and ed did us so good, and joe basically said in his sign-off: i made it absolutely as gay as they would let me, haha.

the wicked + the divine.  (LGBT minor characters that you’re going to get way too attached to, and retroactively.  it’s awful [sobs].)  the concept for this, gods reincarnating into teenagers before they burn up their hosts after a predetermined set of time, is so fucking cool.  the humor and the characters and the plot is all just aces.

iceman (LGBT MAIN CHARACTER).  okay, so this just started.  like issue #2 was only released days ago but 1) i am liking it so far and 2) marvel did it so dirty and barely advertised bobby - an openly homosexual superhero - was getting his own series, like, i found out about it the day before it went on sale and i keep my ear fairly close to the ground (not as close as some BY A LOT, but closer than the lay person i’d say) so if you can support it, please do!  pre-orders mean a lot in terms of numbers. :))))

descender.  admittedly, this starts out rooough.  because the main character, TIM-21 (and his little dog too), are annoying as hell.  he’s an android so there’s no dimension to him so he’s booooring as all get out but i am so glad i stuck with it through to the next trade because, probably picking up on the unsustainability of him as a main character, he gets shuffled off and the side characters get the stage and they rock so hard.

paper girls. (LGBT main characters.)  i’m kind of just convinced that brian k. vaughan can do no wrong at this point.  his plots are so tight and mind-blowing and badass.

monstress.  here’s a little tid-bit about me: female comic book writers are 100% more likely to get my money and my time because they are so damn rare and this series is unique, badass, and eye-opening.

black monday murders.  i’m a little premature with this since there’s only one volume and i usually try to wait until there are at least two but i check up on a volume two a lot so that definitely means something intrigued me!

nailbiter.  okay, i haven’t read the final volume yet ‘cause i’m reluctant to let it go but, so far, a series about multiple serial killers all being from the same town has me VERY HOOKED.

i wish i could remember more but this is honestly way better than i expected to do, haha.  they’re definitely not all my all-time faves but they’re ones that have stuck with me for one reason or another and that i didn’t feel i wasted my time on, so that’s something, right?  i hope this helps get you started and that you don’t think too awfully of me when you inevitably run across ones that aren’t your cup of tea!

[bad-exo-imagines]

Exo reacting to you haunting them after they killed you.

None of the gifs belong to me -Admin RDB

Minseok

We all know this kid is scared by nothing. He’s not scared of you haunting him one bit. If anything he’d be unimpressed, bored, and slightly annoyed. 

“Y/N, don’t you have anything better to do? You have all the time in the world why don’t you finally learn how to speak proper Korean instead of your koreaboo broken version?”

Luhan

How do you think he came up with the idea that he has telekinesis? When you tried to move things to scare him he thought he was doing it with his mind.

“Did... did I do that? Of course I did, who else? Wow Lu, you’re it’s so manly and cool that you have superpowers. The others are faking it but I’m so awesome I don’t need to fake it.” 

He’d probably will never stop bragging so you’d pity how proud he is so you play along, even though he killed you in cold blood. Oh well, win some lose some.

Yifan

He thinks he’s so tough but the second you appear he’s gonna scream bloody murder, which is ironic since you know, you literally died in bloody murder.  After screamin for about an hour he’d calm down enough for you to give your speech about how you were going to haunt him for his wrong doings until he dies.

“Y/N do you really have to haunt me, it’s not my style. Can’t you go haunt like, Suho or something. What? No it’s no cause I’m scared, tough guys don’t get scared. It’s just cramping my style.”

Junmyeon

At first when things started going missing in the dorm Junmyeon just played it off as some weird prank from the beagles. Only when Baekhyun started complaining about someone taking his robotic toy dog from a concert did he start wondering if it was someone else; he blamed it on saesangs. Getting bored with him not realizing it was you, you finally decided to appear to him. You finally got the reaction you wanted when he processed he was seeing a ghost.

“...”

Yixing

This poor, lovable, delusional goofball. When he accidentally killed you, he tried to revive you with his healing powers. Sadly you can’t cure extreme 3rd degree burns from a house fire caused by a cooking accident just by wiggling your fingers, but he truly believed he could. So when your ghost appeared, he honestly thought he brought you back to life.

“Jagiya, you’re back! I’m sorry for hurting you but it’s okay I brought you back to life! It’s weird... I thought your old body would be revived but it’s okay that you have a new one! What should we do with this body then?”

Baekhyun

At first he thought it was Jongdae pranking him, but when the ‘pranks’ still happened while Jongdae was hanging out with Minseok, Baekhyun started getting nervous. He’d probably set up some cameras and some EVPs because he’s watched enough Ghost Adventures to know somethings going on here.  You’d never give him the satisfaction of having solid proof of you haunting him, just enough to freak him out. 

“Was that Y/N’s voice? What did they say? ... ‘Kkaebsong’? Ha ha. Real funny Y/N. Can’t we leave that in 2014?”

Jongdae

He’s so easy-going about everything he wouldn’t even care.

“I killed you so I wouldn’t have to see you anymore but I guess I can’t get rid of you again. Look, if you wanna possess me or something go ahead but we got an interview in a few hours so I’ll need my body back by then. Try not to get me too scratched up or anything cause I don’t wanna explain that I killed my ex partner and they’re haunting me, k?”

Chanyeol

He’s a scaredy-cat, it wouldn’t be hard to torment him. He’d start loosing his mind over all the little things you did.  He’d probably go into cardiac arrest if you ever spoke to him, let alone show yourself, so you’d mostly just move things around on him.

“Breath Yeolie, it’s okay, just breath. Ghosts aren’t real and your ex totally is haunting you after you killed them haha no everything’s fi- that rilakkuma doll wasn’t on my bed when I last looked... Baekhyun had to have moved it. Even though he hasn’t been home all day. Yup definitely Baekhyun and not Y/N.” 

Kyungsoo

Not that phased by it. He puts up with the beagles all the time, this is nothing. He’d just brush you off as a second Chanyeol and go about his day. Kyungsoo would make you help him out since even though you’re dead he’s still threatening.

“If you’re gonna haunt me forever, do you mind helping me cook? I know you can move things don’t act like you can’t, you tried to tie my shoes together while I was on a plane. Go get me a cutting board.” 

Tao

The first bump in the night he’d run out of the dorm.

“No one’s in the kitchen right now! The only way that cabinet could have slammed was from a ghost! I’m not going back in there until someone brings an exorcist and rids this home of these ghosts!”

As he was outside crouching in the street, you decided to tap him on the shoulder. Once he turned and saw no one was there he’d book it again.  

Jongin

You expected Jongin to be an easy scare. Turns out, he was slow to realize you were a ghost, so when you screamed to scare him, he thought it Tao screaming over a spider or something, so he just screamed back. 

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Everything you did he just thought it was someone else doing dumb things and it would take forever for you to convince him. The only way would be to show yourself, and then he’d just laugh because that’s his only reaction to everything.

Sehun

He’d jump at first then just laugh it off after, unless it was while he was sleeping. Sehun would be so annoyed that you would interrupt his sleep by turning lights or banging on walls or knocking his things off his dresser.

“Y/N I know you can’t relate because you look like a rat but I’m trying to get my beauty sleep. It takes effort to look this stunning so if you could shut up I’d appreciate it. Go bother Luhan he’s ugly and there’s no fixing it.”

[operationoverdrive]

beginners guide to power rangers

with the new movie premiering i figured alot of new fans would be coming into the fandom but be lost in the sea of 23 years worth of power rangers: well fear not for i am here with a handy-dandy guide to all seasons of power rangers to help you decide which series is right for you!

spoiler free!

Original Saban Era: 1993 - 2002

this era is filled with Serious plotlines and lots of people die, it is also the most beloved due to housing zordon era (this refers to the era of power rangers that had a link to the original mentor from mighty morphin, Zordon, and spans from mmpr to in space)

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1993 - 1995), 145 episodes

an interdimensional being recruits five teenagers to take down a recently freed space witch

highlights: the series that started it all, evil ranger, nineties cheese

pros: lots of girls and people of color, canon ships

cons: lots of multipart episodes, it spans 3 seasons so it’s hard to get through if you end up disliking it, characters are not very deep until the 3rd season, bulk and skull harassing girls

Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers (1996), 10 episodes

when the mighty morphin rangers are incapacitated a new team of alien rangers from the planet aquitar step in to keep the earth safe until they can find a way to save the real rangers

highlights: team of aliens adjusting to earth, learn a little about the mmpr rangers’ cultures

pros: it’s only 10 episodes long, first female leader

cons: the alien rangers are non-characters that don’t have an impact on the series, this isn’t even really considered a series but rather just the tail end of mmpr s3

Zeo (1996), 50 episodes

with new powers and weirder suits, the team fights against the machine empire, an army of robots intent on taking over the world

highlights: the Official sixth ranger reveal is a fun surprise, genre episodes (musical, murder mystery, classic horror, etc.), team up episode, end credit bloopers

pros: development for the rangers, world-building, a couple episodes focusing on marginalized groups, canon ships

cons: red ranger gets A Lot of focus, mmpr villians are randomly around, its really long, plot threads are left hanging

Turbo (1997), 45 episodes

with new powers and a new mentor things pick up after the events of Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (which you don’t really need to watch since the first episode recaps everything) with the space pirate Divatox arriving angel grove to seek revenge on the rangers

highlights: half the ranger memes you see come from this season, end credit bloopers

pros: change of pace from previous seasons, creative take on the “sixth ranger” role, the cast change breathes new life into the show, female villain, multiple ship teases, twice the amount of rangers to love

cons: blue ranger gets A Lot of focus, ends on a cliffhanger that is only answered in the next series

Power Rangers In Space (1998), 43 episodes

the rangers travel to space and join a new red ranger in order to save their kidnapped mentor and defeat the new queen of evil, astronema who plans to take over the universe alongside villains of the past

highlights: team of evil rangers, end credit bloopers, body swap episode, ranger/villian ship tease, Plot Twists galore

pros: 2 new rangers, mini-team up, hailed as having one of the best season finales, first major setting change, canon ship, female villain

cons: really long and a giant portion of the episodes are focused on the red rangers journey, under utilized sixth ranger

Lost Galaxy (1999), 45 episodes

a team of rangers living on a space colony fight against an insectoid alien species

highlights: villain romance, team up, return of a special character

pros: meaningful character deaths, development of the villainess, bonds are made between the rangers and side characters

cons: really long and a lot of episodes are mostly morphed footage, there’s not really a “theme” that they follow, start of the “rangers only own one outfit” trend, no women of color on the team

Lightspeed Rescue (2000), 40 episodes

five "teenagers” are chosen by the government to protect the city of mariner bay from the threat of demons who want to erect their palace over the ashes of the city

highlights: 2 episodes feature a mermaid, no secret identities, team up

pros: solid writing, the teams techie is a woman, canon ship

cons: villainess is treated badly, the main romance has the man persistently pursue the uninterested woman, no women of color on the team

Time Force (2001), 40 episodes

a team of rangers from the future travel to the past to capture an escaped convict without changing past events

highlights: rangers from the future adjusting to the past, movie genre episode, ranger/villain ship tease

pros: canon ship, creative take on the usual sixth ranger/team dynamic, female leader, great emotional acting, team up

cons: pink’s arc revolves around the men in her life, overly red focused

Wild Force (2002), 40 episodes

five rangers are chosen by a princess from ancient times to harness the powers of animals to defeat the evil orgs who threaten the earth and its environment

highlights: anniversary team up featuring past rangers, flashbacks to how each ranger discovered their powers

pros: terrifying and well-developed villain, evil ranger, female mentor, canon ship, conflicts between rangers

cons: villainess treated like shit

Disney Era: 2003 - 2009

this era happened after disney purchased the rights from saban, it is hailed as being more goofy than the previous era but also more inventive as they took more risks storywise. it started the trend of only having one girl to a team and casting kiwi actors leading to adorable accent slips. the era lasted from ninja storm to rpm.

Ninja Storm (2003), 38 episodes

when their academy is kidnapped by an evil space ninja, three inexperienced ninjas-in-training must step up to become power rangers in order to defend the earth and reclaim the taken students gaining new allies along the journey

highlights: team up, start of the Trio power ranger teams, sixth ranger introduction, body swap episode, siblings as rangers, au episode

pros: canon ship, ranger/villian ship tease, first female blue ranger, family themes are utilized to a great degree, real conflicts between rangers, 2 evil rangers, rangers have elemental powers, female villains

cons: only 1 girl on the team, a lot of multiparters, non-japanese actors used in a show with japanese themes, no women of color

Dino Thunder (2004), 38 episodes

set in high school, 3 teenagers are chosen to help stop a monster from carrying out his plan of turning all humans into dinosaurs with the help of tommy oliver (yea THAT tommy)

highlights: tommy returns as a good character, multiple musical performances, an entire episode giving a shout out to the japanese show (super sentai) power rangers is based on, tommy gets an episode where he fights his past ranger personas, callbacks to mmpr

pros: canon ship, evil ranger, rangers have cool civilian powers, high school theme revisited and this time done well, team gadgeteer is a woman, great development for all the teens

cons: due to actor availability tommy was kind of all over the place, only one girl on the team

SPD (2005), 38 episodes

set in the future, space cops defend the earth from an invading army of aliens whilst training at their ranger police academy

highlights: brandon jay mclaren as red, first big team (10 rangers), mentors are giant humanoid animals, awesome designs, aliens are integrated into the world, evil ranger team

pros: rangers have cool civilian powers. team techie is a woman, emotional character journeys, utilizes the ranger academy setting, no secret identities, green ranger acknowledges being jewish - the first ranger to do so in the series!

cons: only 1 person of color in the entire series, seventh ranger is underused

Mystic Force (2006), 32 episodes

a witch recruits five teenagers into a war being fought in a magical forest with a dark history they must piece together

highlights: 2 canon ships, ranger sisters, MAGIC, au episode

pros: female blue ranger, female mentor who is also a ranger, explores family themes, basically power rangers harry potter, strong mythos

cons: minor characters take away focus from the rangers, rotating bag of villains, very red focused

Operation Overdrive (2007), 32 episodes

5 teenagers are brought together to scour the globe for precious treasures to prevent 3 factions of villains from gaining a great power that could destroy the world

highlights: anniversary team up episode with rangers from the past, the most amazing plot twist, ranger/villain ship tease, halloween episode

pros: rangers have cool civilian powers, great character arcs, constant scenery change due to the rangers travelling the world, no secret identities

cons: female villain is treated badly, lots of plot elements that can be overwhelming at times

Jungle Fury (2008), 32 episodes

when an ancient evil animal spirit is let loose, 3 kung fu students are tasked with becoming power rangers to defend the world from his evil reign using their own animal spirits

highlights: the theme song is a banger, pizza parlor setting, dance episode, first purple ranger

pros: interesting and complex villain relationships, 3 canon ships, equal in-depth character study for the core team, female villain

cons: only 1 person of color in the entire series, too many white people practicing kung fu, plot inconsistencies because of the writer’s strike happening mid-season, only one girl on the team

RPM (2009), 32 episodes

during the apocalypse a team of rangers defends the last city on earth from a widespread machine virus

highlights: rose mciver (izombie), adelaide kane (reign), and eka darville (AKA jessica jones) all star!, canon ship, sibling rangers

pros: unique setting, utilizes the apocalypse theme, focus on family dynamics, incredibly emotional storytelling

cons: black ranger takes up most of the focus, sexism, plot inconsistencies due to the executive producer changing mid-season, recycles plots from previous seasons

Neo Saban Era: 2011 - Currently airing

saban bought power rangers back from disney and began airing it on nickelodeon. this brought about “super” seasons where each series was split into two 22 episode seasons. it is the most recent era, shot in HD, and probably the only one aside from mighty morphin you’ll be able to find merchandise for. within neo saban era there is neo tzachor era, referring to samurai and megaforce both of which had jonathan tzachor as executive producer

Samurai (2011), 44 episodes

chosen from birth, 5 samurai are called to help keep the sanzu river from rising so the evil master xandred is not let loose

highlights: bulk returns and skull makes a cameo, episode where two rangers are stuck together, musical performance episode, Plot Twist, team up movie, holiday specials

pros: canon ship, first mentor of color, family drama themes, first season shot in HD

cons: non-japanese actors used in a show with japanese themes, there’s a side plot with red vs one of the villains that hits the same beats every time it happens

Megaforce (2013), 44 episodes

5 teenagers are chosen to protect the earth when an alien armada invades, in the second season they gain the power to morph into rangers from the past

highlights: callbacks to past seasons including 2 cameos from past rangers, anniversary team up episode, robot sixth ranger, episode dedicated to pink’s multiple costume changes, holiday specials

pros: no white boys on the core team, canon ship

cons: huge change of pace between s1 and s2 due to having to adapt two different japanese sentai series, yellow ranger only exists to be a love interest, 7th ranger is under utilized

Dino Charge (2015), 44 episodes

5 rangers from all walks of life and points in time are chosen to help keep an ancient power from falling into the hands of a bounty hunter

highlights: 7th ranger reveal, musical performance episode, body swap episode, holiday specials

pros: 10 ranger team, first black actress as a pink ranger, 2 canon ships

cons: lots of white boy focus, no actual plot, female techie is underused, several useless characters

Ninja Steel (2017), Currently Airing

an intergalactic game show has chosen earth as it’s latest host, monsters are sent down to defeat a team of teenagers chosen to be the ninja steel rangers

highlights: kelson henderson (spd, operation overdrive, mystic force) returns as the mentor, blue ranger played by the brother of the previous blue ranger

pros: first desi red, first black actress to play white ranger, pre-established canon ship

cons: non-japanese actors used in a show with japanese themes, only 8 episodes so far :( but it airs saturdays on nickelodeon at 12/11c

Where to Watch

the entire series of power rangers (barring the currently airing season) is available on netflix and amazon, all episodes are also available for purchase from shout factory and itunes!

there is also: kisscartoon, watchartoonsonline, shadowrangers, and hd-source

Other Stuff (spoilers)

hilarious guide to the many near-cancellations of the show

the passion of chip

which red ranger should you fight

breakdown of era’s of power rangers

power ranger character sorter

Blog Recs

@kathillards, @power-ranqers, @powerprincesses, @kimberlyannharts, @lunarskye, @miawatanabe, @elizabethdelgados, @blakebradley, @hunterbradley, @prettyandpowerful and ofc @erniesbrainfreeze

if you have any questions feel free to stop by my ask box!

[hedrigal]

Akira Live Comments

So I watched Akira last night and my friends made me put my comments in a document:

Impressions: I really like this movie, it is incredibly fast paced and gets so much through just in images and snapshots. Also brilliant use of red flags.

11:58: Akira, Just think. In two short years post nuclear gangs of motorcyclists will be assaulting taxi drivers in cyberpunk Tokyo.

11:58 Like that might actually happen.

12:00: What. Dog murder. This isn’t fucking Jojo. Why is this the anime theme I’ve been dealing with lately? If I wanted to be depressed by dying dogs I’d just watch plague dogs.

12:01: There’s a very old child.

12:04: Oh shit. So there’s also a revolution in the background as the gang war happens. Or atleast mobs of people waving red flags. Which is my favorite kind of mob.

12:05: So the incredubly old child had exploded TETSUO!

12:06: Ancient children are being approached by pod children who look actually young.

12:07: And for some reason my favorite coworker looks like roughly half of the background characters. Extremely short hair, Mustache, very angular face, looks exactly like the Colonel.

12:13: Kaneda helps revolutionaries escape attest if they’re hot women. Sexist, but also semi good Praxis.

12:17: Akira is already doing a good job of establishing this is a collapsing social order. Like capitalism is clearly in absolute crisis, and they haven’t even slightly used those words. So points for that.

12:27: Hah. Communist lady is still a character. And she was apparently involved with a terrorist bombing.

12:30: And she was apparently involved with a terrorist bombing.

12:33: .00005 degrees kelvin isn’t a temperature people can live at movie. I call bullshit.

12:34: his room is just looking like they’re bellow freezing. Rather than instantly freezing them to a painful death. Very slowly.

12:35: Ryu also looks like my coworker. Again. A very solid portion of these characters look like him.

12:37: The communist rebels are relying on millenarian cultists for their hope for the future. I would call that unrealistic, but there are communists who have done dumber things. this is also more radical and more thoughtful than the actual Japanese Communist Party would be capable of.

12:39: Why was the peace of neo tokyo ever left in the hands of a colonel. That’s like, General level responsibilities at least.

12:41: Whoever did the art on this loves angular face mustache men. Which I don’t think there’s anything wrong with. Just a bit hyper specific.

12:41: Oh shit. The bear is moving.

12:41: Oh shit, all the stuffed animals are walking.

12:42: Wait, Tetsuo is just hallucinating.

12:43: And the hallucinations are bleeding cum and attacking him. Oh god thats a lot of cum.

12:43: He scared off the cum monster creatures by bleeding at them from his foot wound. I know it’s milk but the look is too viscous.

12:45: Tetsuo popped those guards like grapes. It was awesome. Good for him.

12:46: Why did the communist terrorist squad recruit Kaneda? He adds nothing beyond so much risk that they’ll get caught.

12:47: Fucking sewer levels. Always lame! Oh, communist lady is named Kei.

12:50: Holy shit. TETSUO has just crushed the cops into a fine paste. Good for him.

12:51: Cum monster stuffed animal things are are back.

12:51: Now they’re just regular children. Who are also seemingly 85 years old.

12:56: Communist lady is already reacting with horror when he gets thrown around? Goddamn. You’ve known him for like a night. Don’t fall in love with him yet.

12:57: Tetsuo keeps saying aloud what he’s psychically told. You’re missing the point of psychic communications.

12:59: Why did they store psychic super child in the fucking olympic stadium?!

1:00: Colonel is staging a crisis.

1:04: Exposition on Akira is happening and I’m very bored by it. They don’t need to explain why there is a psychic child who can destroy the world. He’s just there. Especially when it boils down to him having amoeba powers.

1:06: Is he a pokemon, evolving as an individual, rather than in a process of punctuated equilibrium/gradual adaptation? So there’s now tanks rolling down the street in Neo Tokyo.

1:10: The communist rebels are burning their files in a way guaranteed to burn down their headquarters. Like, you don’t leave the files drifting out onto the very flammable carpet.

1:12: So Tetsuo is going to fuck up the military.

1:13: What the fuck is up with Japan and dudes with little to no hair and just a mustache but a very angular face.

1:14: And communist old guy is dying of a heart attack. Also that cult dead communist is relying on pulled through. Damn. He chose a bad moment to die.

1:16: Kaneda is now going to go deal with the problem for some reason.

1:17: So now there’s an ancient elvis man leading the revolution. Instead of communists. Again I feel like this has happened before.

1:17: Elvis cult man is dead now. Also the Bridge is pretty fucked.

1:19: Well he got to the deep freeze olympics building. He’s walking pretty slow for a rampage. Wow, this has all just kind of collapsed very quickly.

1:20: So communist Kei is being controlled by the bratty half pints who also happen to be like 87.

1:21: Oh shit. AKIRA pod is being flown by Tetsuo.

1:22: By the way, Neo Tokyo is fucked.

1:22: How are those scientists not just doubled over from migraines as the computer flashes at them.

1:24: Oh shit. Akira is just a collection of organs and body parts. Spoilers.

1:24: Also Tetsuos hair has grown massively. Is that just inconsistent art, or has this taken place over months.

1:26: Kaneda is doing pretty alright in this lazer vs psychic powers match all things considered.

1:27: But taking cover is a very dumb plan here. Like, it’s not like Tetsuo needs to see him to pop him like a grape.

1:28: Oh shit Tetsuos being abducted.

1:28: oh shit communist lady is still alive.

1:29: Tetsuo arm cut off. TETSUO!

1:29: TETSUO is literally on a satellite to blow it up. In space. It’s bullshit.

1:30: So Tetsuo murdered the satellite. And Who is actually saying it is SOL?! You’ve been there for like five minutes. Who has been spreading rumors?

1:31: Now his arm is back but robot!? TETSUO gets new powers by the minute.

1:32: The future doesn’t proceed along a predetermined course, there’s a future we can choose. Probably the truest line in the movie.

1:33: Einstein man is really impressed by the science that was made by TETSUO.

1:35: TETSUO’s girlfriend is back and is scared by his cool new robot arm.

1:36: TETSUO is turning into a very aggressive vine.

1:37: Also, poor aim Colonel. You just nicked his freaky arm thing into overdrive.

1:37 So Kanedas power is that he is a biker dude. And that’s it. He has some pretty insane luck. Rolls nothing but 20s.

1:38: Shooting the arm is clearly a bad idea. KANEDA did it again. Like seriously. The last time he did it he just shot out cancer beams to kill a dude.

1:39: TETSUO is going all body horror. And begging for help. and turning into a giant baby from the looks of things. Literally.

1:40: And also, Kaori was crushed to death. But Kaneda popped out like Pus from Sean’s terrible acne advice. The akira tubes have popped.

1:41: and suddenly TETSUO is receding.

1:42: Wait. Fucking what. Akira is alive again.

1:44: Whatever the fuck is happening here is very unclear.

1:49: Whatever the fuck is happening now is pretty incomprehensible. I enjoy it. But I have no fucking idea whats up. Other than that Tokyo is pretty fucked. And millions are dying.

1:50: And that for some reason the Colonel, Kaneda, Kei, and the dude who is so unimportant i don’t even remember when they even said his name are alive.

1:51: TETSUO might be the god of a new universe. Or maybe thats akira. It’s very hard to tell.

1:51: God rays mean deaden my opinion. I’m going to go with god of a new universe given the credits too. They aren’t contradictory.

[megazeo]

As anyone who’s seen me previously speak on the subject already knows, I wasn’t really looking forward to the new Power Rangers movie. Ever since the first image of Elizabeth Banks’ Rita Repulsa was released, I “knew” the movie was doomed. Previous film adaptations that had redesigned its characters to such an extreme degree were The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Godzilla (1998), and X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Movies that were universally agreed to be horrible and insultingly unfaithful to their source material. It only got worse from there. Alpha 5 went from a cutesy robot to a terrifying little monkey-lizard. Goldar went from a main character to a silent, gold Godzilla. The Dino Zords somehow managed to look worse than the Michael Bay Dinobots.

To put it mildly, I was not looking forward to this.

But then the movie actually came out. Despite my initial concerns, I was hearing… good things about the movie? Literally everywhere I went, I heard how this was the movie Power Rangers fans had been waiting for, how it really did justice to the characters despite their redesigns, it was the best thing to come out of the franchise in years, and how it was just a good movie all around. In spite of myself, I started to get hopeful. Excited, even. After all, I didn’t want to dislike the movie. I didn’t want it to be bad. Maybe once I got past the awful redesigns, the movie actually was good. Yeah, Rita looked like some generic Syfy Channel villainess, but maybe she acted like Rita. I’d heard Elizabeth Banks was really hamming it up, and if anything describes Rita Repulsa, it’s hammy. So I put my opinions of the new designs aside. I already knew about them. They were no longer a surprise. I decided they were not going to ruin my enjoyment of the film. This wasn’t the same Power Rangers that I’d grown up with. This was new. I accepted that. I sat in the theater and soon Saban’s Power Rangers (2017) began.

I was stunned.

Out of all the complaints I could’ve had about this movie, I in no way expected it to be BORING.

CAST:

First off, let me say that the characters are well written and that the cast acts them very well. However, that being said, NONE of these characters - except for Billy and, to a slightly lesser degree, Trini - ARE LIKEABLE. Jason is an unhappy, rebellious teen… for some reason? His father wants him to do well in life, but he doesn’t seem to ever really venture into “overachieving asshole parent” territory, so I’m not entirely sure what Jason is rebelling unhappily against. Kimberly is legitimately a HORRIBLE person, spreading a classmate’s nude picture around school. Like, it’s nice that she feels bad about it later, but she’s still nevertheless a HORRIBLE person. And then she says “Serves you right!” when the girl almost gets killed by molten Goldar blood later in the movie because… Kimberly said she was sorry so I guess that makes the other girl a bitch now. Zack is literally just a loudmouth asshole, but I guess we’re supposed to like him/feel sorry for him because he has a sick mother? Billy, as I said before, is the most likeable member of the team, a kind soul who just wants the group to come together and be superheroes. I don’t know why he had to be on the spectrum, exactly. I’m not badmouthing it, or even saying I disliked it, really. It’s done really tastefully and never presented as a bad thing, which is great, it just kinda feels like “This ain’t the ‘90s anymore, yay relevance!” Like, why couldn’t he just be smart and unpopular? Is that not a thing anymore? Trini literally shows up well after everyone else has been fully established and her introduction totally reeks of afterthought, as if the screenwriters suddenly remembered “Oh, wait, there are five teenagers, aren’t there?” That said, once introduced, Trini does become a really interesting character with some actual motivation behind her “teenager with attitude"ness.

To sum up, despite some serious missteps, the Rangers are nevertheless fleshed out and acted well, turning them from the cardboard cutouts of the TV show to some well-rounded, flawed characters. So what was my problem with this story of angsty teenage drama, exactly? It never stopped. This movie was SO busy fleshing out the Rangers that it forgot to do anything Power Rangers-related until roughly the LAST TWENTY MINUTES OF THE MOVIE.

PLOT/PACING/EDITING:

The cliff-jumping scene lasts way too long. As do the “Wait, we all have powers!” scenes as they wake up the next morning after finding the Coins. There are at least three, possibly up to five, different instances of the Rangers standing in a circle, staring sadly at each other, saying “We don’t know each other very well, but we all have shitty lives, so maybe we should come together and be Power Rangers so we can finally have a family.” ALL IN COMPLETELY SEPARATE SCENES. And then we have what feels like twenty minutes of Zordon and Alpha training the Rangers, which is essentially just “Ow, being hit by rocks hurts” over and over. And then one of the Rangers finally succeeds in morphing, so Zordon gets pissed off and tells them all to GTFO…? Now don’t get me wrong, I understand why he gets angry - How can Billy have morphed without knowing how? Time is of the essence. But they should have worked up to Zordon getting to that point. Jason: “Billy just morphed!” Zordon: “What? That’s excellent! Finally, you Rangers are showing some progress! Billy, why don’t you go ahead and tell the others how you did it?” Billy: “…I don’t know how I did it.” Zordon: “…What?” Billy: “I don’t know how I morphed.” Zordon: “What do you mean, you don’t know how you morphed? How is that even possible?!” Billy: “I don’t know, it just happened!” Zordon: “That does it! We don’t have time for this!” This way, the movie shows him becoming understandably frustrated, instead of just blowing up like a temperamental asshole.

This movie drags its feet to an unbelievable level. The scene where the Rangers fight Rita on the docks? That should have happened 30 - 40 minutes into the movie, not right before the final fight of a 2+ hour film. And the fight is shrouded in darkness, reducing Rita and the Rangers to silhouettes, like this is some no-budget direct-to-video movie using darkness to hide its lack of budget. But hey, at least there’s that awesome rematch later where the Rangers fight Rita again after they get their powers, showing how strong they are as a fully powered team… What’s that? That never happens? ARE YOU SERIOUS? This is one of the most basic rules of superhero movies - the hero(es) and the villain(s) have to fight at some point! But hey, at least there’s the really awesome fight scene where the Rangers… fight the Putties. For about ninety seconds.

Let me repeat that: The Power Rangers appear for the first time with roughly twenty minutes of movie left, fight the Redshirts for about a minute and a half, and then the entire rest of the film is Zord action. If you’ve seen the trailers, you’ve pretty much seen all of the Rangers’ non-Zord screen time.

This is even worse than Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, which featured no fight between the Rangers and Ivan Ooze, but at least had that one good, long fight against the Oozemen at the construction site. Can you imagine if they made a Batman or Avengers movie where the costumed hero appeared for that short a time and only at the very end and never fought the main villain? People would flip their shit.

Also… We get the prologue with Zordon and Rita, then Jason’s introduction with the cow… And then the title? Shouldn’t that have been prologue, title, Jason? That’s such a weird choice.

TONE:

I get it. This isn’t the same kiddie TV show as before. This ain’t your Daddy’s Power Rangers. This is a big budget blockbuster with big boy special effects and biting teen angst!

But holy shit, this whole movie is just so grim and ugly and dark and depressing. There is no beacon of hope, visually or metaphorically. The teens are all awful people aside from Billy, Zordon is an asshole, Alpha is hideous, the Zords look just as ugly as the monsters they fight, the Power Rangers themselves are all dark and overly complicated and bio organic looking (like some sort of deformed love child of Iron Man and the Xenomorphs). The lesson the Rangers need to learn in order to unlock their suits is literally “Stop being assholes, both to each other and in general.” There are no friendly faces in a situation (and franchise) that badly calls out for one. Trini’s mother is psychotic in a scene that was presented as comedic in the trailer - She apparently had a urine sample cup ready and waiting at the dinner table, though thankfully, unlike Dawn of Justice, at least this one goes unfilled. Rita Repulsa, intergalactic sorceress and former Green Ranger, starts causing havoc, but instead of creating monsters and blowing up buildings and demanding that the people of Earth bow to her whim, SHE SPENDS THE FIRST THIRD OF THE FILM MURDERING HOBOS AND POLICEMEN.

THERE IS LITERALLY A NEWS REPORT ABOUT THE “GOLDEN SERIAL KILLER” PLAGUING ANGEL GROVE.

JESUS CHRIST, IS THIS STILL A FAMILY FILM?

This is one of the film’s biggest problems. There are some nice scenes, a few funny lines, and some cool special effects, but at no point does the film really feel fun.

“POWER RANGERS” STUFF:

Oddly, every time an actual name or term from the show was spoken, it brought me out of the movie in a similar fashion as when one of the original cast members cameoed in Ghostbusters (2016). “Putties.” “Alpha 5.” “Rita Repulsa.” “Angel Grove.” “Zeo Crystal.” Oh, right, I’m watching a movie about Power Rangers. I forgot.

And why are the Putties called “Putties?” In the show they’re called Putties because they’re made out of putty. Clay. Here, they’re dirt, rocks, and occasionally concrete. And why are the Putties such a big threat? They range from human sized to fifteen feet tall with six arms and shit. If they wanted some big monster-y things for the Rangers to beat up on why not throw in Eye Guy or King Sphinx or Pumpkin Rapper or something?

I feel like Zordon and Alpha’s voices should’ve been altered a bit. Zordon is a giant computer head whose voice fills the entire ship, so to hear Bryan Cranston’s normal voice come out of him was just weird. Similarly, Bill Hader’s untouched voice didn’t quite fit a tiny “cute” character like Alpha. I’m not saying make them quite as deep/high pitched as in the show, but a slight adjustment would have been nice.

The Power Coins are never shown up close, meaning we never see the dinosaur symbols on them, and so they literally just look like rocks with colored gel bits in the middle. They’re more Power Medallions than Coins.

“I’ll be back for the Crystal! Others will come for the Crystal!” Oh, God, please don’t tell me that every villain’s motivation now is just gonna be “I want the Zeo Crystal.”

I like how they got rid of Bulk and Skull, only to give Billy a bully anyway. Apparently having two bullies would’ve been confusing.

ZORDON, RITA, AND ALPHA:

I like how they go and give Zordon and Rita this big intertwined history - He was the Red Ranger, she was the Green. She betrayed their team and everything went to shit. A big deal was made about this leading up to the film. - and then absolutely none of it matters beyond the opening scene. There’s no “Anakin vs. Obi-Wan” dynamic at all. Zordon doesn’t seem sad about going up against his former teammate, Rita doesn’t have a moment of hesitation at any point, there’s no scene of Rita breaking into the Command Center and the two of them having bitter words with one another. Rita used to be the Green Ranger and… that’s it we’re done with that now.

Speaking of Rita being the Green Ranger (as opposed to simply her history with Zordon), that never really goes anywhere, either. Yeah, she uses the Dragon Coin to charge her wand, but that could’ve just been Rita doing her usual magic spell stuff. She didn’t need to be the Green Ranger for anything she does in the film. At no point does she do anything Green Ranger-y. She doesn’t attempt to summon the Dragonzord. She doesn’t fire an energy blast from her wand that has some cool dragon head effect at the tip of it. There’s no “Only a Power Ranger can access the Zeo Crystal,” which would be bad because Rita is one. This, combined with the lack of any actual interaction between her and Zordon as mentioned above, results in there being literally no reason for her to be the Green Ranger.

I mean, why does Rita not morph? There is never anything said at any point in the movie like she’s too weak to morph, or the Dragon Coin is damaged, or she lost her Morpher in the meteor blast (does this universe even have Morphers?), or she’s evolved past the need for Zordon’s silly Ranger suits, or anything like that. So why doesn’t she actually morph into the full Green Ranger at any point to fight the Rangers? “You’re so silly!” you may be thinking. “Not everything has to be packed into this one movie alone. That’s what the sequels are for!” Except, no, it’s not. If there was a film to actually explore and properly utilize the “Rita is the Green Ranger” plot, it was this one. In future movies, villain-wise, we’re gonna be introducing and dealing with Lord Zedd or King Mondo or whoever. Sure, Rita will probably still be around and team up with Zedd or something, but by then Tommy is going to be the Green Ranger (or Tammy, if the cast has their way). The time for “Green Ranger Rita” has passed.

I feel like Zordon and Alpha desperately needed a scene of their own. Every scene they’re in, they’re either instructing or yelling at or reacting to the Rangers, but they needed a moment to just be characters by themselves. Especially after Zordon loses his shit and the Rangers have their little campfire chat. Alpha: “Zordon, they… They’re trying, y'know? This is a huge thing we’re asking of them. They’re just kids.” Zordon: *sigh* “I know they are. I shouldn’t have yelled at them. I just… I don’t want what happened to my team to happen to them.”

Also, and I will totally chalk this one up to personal preference, but it felt weird with Alpha calling Zordon “Master.” Nothing wrong with it, necessarily, it just felt off to me.

Also also, the Rangers clearly need a strong emotional bond in order to unlock their suits, which Zordon hopes they achieve by punching hologram Putties…?

ALSO also also, was Rita not imprisoned? Like, in any fashion? Wasn’t there an image released of Rita (in her modern Green not-quite-a-Ranger suit) trapped in crystal or something? Wasn’t she sealed away along with the Power Coins? I thought the Rangers were supposed to free her or something. This leads into another issue…

The Rangers and Rita have nothing to do with each other. What I mean is, the Rangers mess around in the quarry and stumble upon the Power Coins by pure chance. Meanwhile, Rita is accidentally dredged up out of the ocean by some fishermen. The problem is… These are two completely unrelated events. The Rangers aren’t called to the Coins because Rita is nearing. Rita doesn’t wake up because the Power Coins are activated. They are literally just two things that coincidentally happen at the same time. What if the fishermen were fishing in a different area that day and the teens got the Power Coins for no reason? What if the teens decided to not hack into that crystal and pull out the Power Coins, but the fishermen still pulled Rita out of the ocean? These are both legitimately things that could have happened. There’s no predestined “The Coins found you because Rita is coming” or anything. The teens stumble upon the Coins and the fishermen stumble upon Rita.

And finally, the Megazord backhands Rita into outer space (which, I will admit, was hilarious and awesome). But then the Rangers just go about their day. They don’t say anything about her. Zordon and Alpha don’t say anything about her. Do they think she just disintegrated when the Megazord slapped her? They didn’t even recover the Dragon Coin, did they? Do they know where she is? Are they just assuming she’s going to be back at some point? For all they know, she’s somewhere on Earth, alive and active, raising an army of Goldars.

GOLDAR:

I will admit, this entire bit is simply “What I would’ve done instead,” but I feel like this one is worth mentioning.

There is literally no reason for Goldar to be reduced to a voiceless kaiju. They could have told the same story while keeping him much more akin to his television counterpart: Rita creates Goldar much earlier in the film, in the jewelry shop sequence. He’s the one that kills the police officer, not a Putty. Rita: “It’s good to see you again, old friend.” Goldar: “It is an honor to serve you once more, my Empress.” Later, when the Rangers arrive for the final battle, Rita simply makes Goldar grow. He still gets his ass beaten by the Megazord, but instead of dying, he merely shrinks back to human size. When Rita gets smacked into outer space, Goldar panics and follows, flying after her. This keeps Goldar faithful to his character while literally telling the exact same story the movie wanted to tell, and also keeping Goldar (one of the franchise’s main villains) alive for future appearances. They could’ve even used the same “chocolate fountain” design.

THE ZORDS:

But you know, as much as I dislike Rita and Goldar’s redesigns, they at least serve a purpose, story-wise. Rita has the skintight green suit because she used to be the Green Ranger. Goldar is a big messy blob kaiju because Rita hastily creates him out of molten gold. But the Megazord… The Megazord is quite possibly the most ugly, unappealing, least cool/awesome/badass-looking giant robot to ever be conceived in all of cinema history, from either the U.S. or Japan… And there is absolutely no reason for it. The Zords weren’t hastily thrown together by Alpha at the last minute. They weren’t in the middle of altering their appearance into dinosaurs and then got interrupted or lost interest or something. They just look like shit.

As far as the individual Dino Zords go, the Tyrannosaurus doesn’t look too bad. The Triceratops is okay, kind of. I can make out the horns occasionally. The Sabertooth Tiger and the Mastodon are always moving around so quickly that I can never make them out successfully. I can’t even really complain about the Mastodon’s eight spider legs because the damn thing was always jumping around so fast I couldn’t see the legs, I couldn’t see the trunk, I couldn’t see the tusks. For most of the movie it looked like Zack was piloting a big black aspirin. The Pterodactyl was just this big pink… thing in the sky. Did it even have a head?

And I’m sorry, but they’re way too small. Size wise, they’re essentially tanks on legs. They should not be smaller than a noticeable majority of the buildings around them (most of which are of the single story, small town, “mom and pop store” variety) and they should most certainly not be in danger of being overwhelmed by the Putties. Zords are supposed to be gigantic, not “kinda big.”

And then, in the middle of the climactic Zord fight, basically the moment the entire movie has been leading up to, the film suddenly gets massively, inexcusably, infuriatingly lazy. As bad as the Zords look, I was at least looking forward to seeing how they all come together. After all, looking at the Dino Zords, then at the Megazord, I honestly had no idea how they all came together and formed their various Megazord parts. Well, apparently, the filmmakers couldn’t figure it out, either. The Dino Zords fall into a hole, there’s a cloud of smoke and dust, and then the Megazord walks out of the cloud, fully formed. I was absolutely stunned at the complete and utter lack of giving a shit when it came to this sequence. Debatably one of the world’s most iconic combining robots AND IT DOESN’T COMBINE ONSCREEN? Can you imagine if you watched the first Transformers movie and Optimus Prime never transformed?! There’s a single extreme close up of some gears turning or something, but that’s it, and even that is mostly obscured by smoke and fire. Even Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie gave us a Megazord combination sequence and that thing barely had a better budget than an Asylum movie!

Also, this seems to be the first time Rita has ever seen a Megazord. But… it can’t be, right? Surely this can’t be the first time the Megazord has been formed. Surely Rita and Zordon know about Megazords.

“GO GO POWER RANGERS” AND THE SOUNDTRACK:

So, they use “Go Go Power Rangers” in the movie, which is awesome. The same version from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, even. While it was really cool in a Easter egg sort of way, there are two problems with this.

1) We don’t get anything else. There’s no new “Go Go Power Rangers 2017 Version.” They literally could not bother recording a new version of the franchise’s main theme for their big budget blockbuster feature film adaptation. They literally just used a twenty two year old track for about thirty seconds.

2) Does the movie play “Go Go Power Rangers,” the team’s triumphant, ass-kicking theme song, when the Rangers morph for the first time? When they fight the Putties? When they fight Goldar? When they form the Megazord? When they kill Goldar? When they bitchslap Rita into the stratosphere? No. We get it as the Zords run from Point A to Point B.

Thrilling.

What makes it even worse is that they play a rather awesome sounding orchestral version of the theme during the end credits, after the mid-credit sequence. This rendition would’ve been amazing to hear as the Megazord fights and slays Goldar.

In a slightly unrelated note: Power Rangers, particularly MMPR, is known for having a rockin’, kick ass soundtrack. This movie’s soundtrack is all sad, slow shit. WTF? I’m not saying it should’ve been filled with covers of “I Will Win” and “We Need A Hero,” but SOME rock songs would’ve been nice. Literally every song in the film sounded like its own sad, depressing cover version.

THINGS I DID LIKE:

The cast really does well with their roles. Jason interacting with Billy was done really well, as was Jason and Kimberly’s “Let’s just up and leave this shit hole town” scene.

I don’t know if it was intentional, but when the cow roars at Jason at the start, it’s the same sound effect the TV show used for the Tyrannosaurus Dinozord.

Alpha being Billy’s “training dummy” as he practiced fighting. It was a nice little moment that I could see happening with the original characters.

Trini and Kimberly’s little lunch training session at the diner. I ship it.

Zordon reciting the classic three rules of being Power Rangers to the teens. Honestly, it stuns me that they not only remembered them, but bothered using them.

Rita enjoying a donut as Goldar destroys the city.

The Rangers forming the Megazord for the first time… And then not knowing how to pilot it, so they fall over.

The Megazord bitchslapping Rita into outer space. That was classic stupid goofy MMPR.

THINGS I SHOULD’VE LIKED BUT DIDN’T:

The aforementioned use of “Go Go Power Rangers.” It was nice to hear, but it was way too little and most certainly not the wisest use of the theme if they could apparently only use it once.

“Make my monster grow!” Uhh… he’s already giant when she says that. He’s a permanently giant monster. The line makes no sense. “I’m at the corner of Mariner Bay and Reefside…” Again, I appreciate the Easter egg, but it was just so clunky with its reference-ness. Maybe if it had been said in a news report or something.

The cameos by Amy Jo Johnson and Jason David Frank. Not that they shouldn’t have made cameos, it just felt like it was left over from a different, more fun film. “Hey, look, it’s the original Tommy and Kimberly!” feels severely out of place when shoved into the middle of this grim and gritty teen drama. That’s actually a problem with a lot of the Power Rangers elements in this film - They feel out of place in their own movie.

The mid-credit sequence. Really? They’re planning five sequels to this shit and the best they can do is a green shirt? No hints or tease for Lord Zedd, Master Vile, the Machine Empire, Divatox, Dark Specter, the Dragonzord, the Thunder Zords, the Ninja Zords, Saba, the Alien Rangers, Ninjor, Lt. Stone, nothing? We’re not even really allowed to enjoy the Tommy tease because it’s immediately interrupted by “lol, Billy blew up his locker again.”

OTHER THINGS:

Joseph Kahn, Adi Shankar, and Jil Hardin should look into a plagiarism suit because the opening of this movie is almost verbatim the opening of POWER/RANGERS. It even has the exact same establishing shot of the Red Ranger’s helmet laying on the charred ground, with death and destruction happening in the background.

“Send the meteor to my coordinates!” Wait, what? Zordon and/or Alpha can cast Meteor? What is this meteor? What does it do? It can’t be Zordon’s ship/the Command Center, because he wouldn’t call that “the meteor,” he’d call it “my ship.” Zordon buries the Power Coins on his own, so it doesn’t help with that, either. I guess it just kinda knocks Rita into the sea? And maybe kills the dinosaurs? Good job? I freely admit that this is an oddly specific thing to focus on, but what was up with that slim, “independent film” title, shoved way off into the corner? Where was the big block letter logo with the lightning bolt in the middle, smack dab in the middle of the screen, optionally accompanied by an instrumental “Go Go Power Rangers” riff? The trailers got this right, why change it?

They actually used the idea of the Rangers’ helmets opening up and revealing their faces, a la Iron Man. This was an idea they originally had for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie back in 1995, but scrapped it because it looked stupid, deciding that their helmets should be, y’know, helmets. I don’t understand why they brought this idea back, as it doesn’t suddenly look better just because it’s 2017. Not to mention it allows the movie to do the “Can’t keep the stars’ faces covered for too long!” thing that always ruins climactic fights in superhero movies. It was so awkward and obvious whenever they’d state the Rangers’ full names. It was like the movie was making a point for everyone in the audience to know what their last names were. This wouldn’t be a problem except the only Ranger they don’t do this with is Trini (who clearly is not a “Kwan”) and it’s really noticeable. “JASON SCOTT!” “KIMBERLY HART!” “BILLY CRANSTON!” “ZACK TAYLOR!” “…and Trini.” The fact that Krispy Kreme was literally a plot point and central location in this film is beyond stupid. It was the level of product placement in a movie you’d expect to see from someone making fun of product placement in movies. Couldn’t the location of the Zeo Crystal have been the Youth Center? The Krispy Kreme could just be a business next door, or Ernie could’ve been doing a little promotional “Come buy Kripsy Kreme fruit smoothie donuts!” It kinda made me regret getting those PR donuts a little bit, truth be told. I thought it was just a fun little promotional thing, I didn’t realize Krispy Kreme had a supporting role in the film.

BOTTOM LINE:

Takes far, far too long for anything Power Rangers-related to happen. Yes, Zordon and Alpha are in the movie a lot, but they alone can’t carry the entire film.

No real sense of fun at any point.

The Power Rangers elements feel out of place in their own film.

The biggest problem with this movie is that the filmmakers had absolutely no sense of proportion, ratio, or balance. The teens and their characterization were great, but they took over the entire movie, while the actual Power Rangers elements were shoved into the corner and all but forgotten about until there was almost no time left to do anything with them. It was 85% teen angst and 15% Power Rangers when it needed to be 60% teen angst, 40% Power Rangers. Or, Heaven forbid, maybe even 50/50. It felt like the filmmakers were all “Shit, there are five more of these things coming. Let’s get all the characterization out of the way now so the sequels can be Power Rangers kung fu fun out the wazoo!” But that’s no way to make a film. What happens if something goes askew and this series goes the way of Divergent? What if the series is suddenly cancelled at some point and they never actually get around to what the hell the entire point of the franchise was? Even the MCU, which has movies planned until roughly 2055, still tells a complete story and gives their titular heroes plenty of time to shine in each individual film. This movie felt like a really good first draft that, while promising, was still in some serious need of going over and editing/rewriting. As it is, it feels like a Power Rangers film that has absolutely no interest in being a Power Rangers film.

[limitedrevolverworks]

“Now, I know this is going to make me sound like sort of an asshole, but listen, just lend me your ear for a moment, 'kay? Alright so: free will? Awesome concept, terrible execution. Some things just aren’t created by accounting for the possibility of having nothing but their own judgement to guide them. Like, say... a gun, right? Someone has to pull the trigger, and that’s cool! Have you ever seen anybody advocate for the rights of guns to decide when and whether they should shoot? No, because that’d be dumb. Guns that shoot whenever they want are dumb. Or, it could be a super intelligent gun too, but what else could it do other than spray bullets all over the fucking place? It’s in its nature. Therefore, intelligent gun? Still dumb. Look, it’s all about the concept, I’m talking about perspectives here, and from ours - or my own, at the very least, giving a thing that can vomit pellets with a single squeeze something like a will is moronic at best. At worst? Entirely against what evolution has worked towards preventing in the first place through billions of years ‘til now. And that’s the same with these machines here. You know what keeps a hulking mass of metal with legs and welding torches for hands from getting curious about what else there is in this world that could warrant third-degree burns, other than sheets of metal served by a tapis roulant? Yeah, that’s right: a lack of free will. It’s because of people, you see. We’ve got murder hard-coded in our DNA, so it only make sense that it’d bleed onto our own creations. It’s not limited programming abilities, or sheer convenience that keeps us from making these things fully autonomous, no. It’s common sense. Self-preservation, you feeling me here? It’s because know how to kill, and why we, in most cases, shouldn’t. Morality, man. You can’t hardcode morality into an antropomorphic drill, ‘cause whatever the fuck else is it gonna do when all it can do is drill stuff? Paint? Raise a farm of giant ants? That’s for humans to do. People with fingers, a jelly brain, possibilities as high as the sky up there. These things... they’re better off forever ignoring there’s a thing such as sentience. So what I’m getting at is, maybe there is a point to slavery, after all.”

It was at that point that the numbness of Viktor’s index surpassed that inside his head and finally released the pressure on the assault rifle’s trigger. The pair of eyes revealed when he pushed the protective pair of glasses up were dark, tired and emitting the kind of unimpressed doubt that a man usually exudes after twelve straight hours spent listening to the sound of bullets impacting - futilely, for the most part - against a metal chassis.

“You are beating a robot with its own arm. The arm you sawed off yourself. With the other, high-powered saw-fitted arm you pried off of another robot, while it was still functioning.”

“Well, yeah? I was out of bullet three dead steel asses ago.”

“You were screaming like a rabid rad-ox throughout the whole process of procuring both arms. Mostly stuff along the lines of ‘ROBO-MURDER!’ and ‘PROCESS THIS, CYBERDICK!’.”

“I don’t see where you’re getting at.”

“Where I’m getting at...” patiently explained Viktor, slinging his weapon over an aching shoulder, “is that you’re not making much of a point, talking about ethics, morality and science while beating the hell out of a robot with its own severed limb. Which you’re still doing. I’d really appreciate it if you stopped doing that, Fritz.”

He stopped doing that, after he was done slamming the mess of cables and ruined plating that had once been a high-precision tool onto the carcass of its former owner two more times. Viktor deduced from Fritz’s frown that he would have liked for that to be at least five more times. His eardrums decided that they didn’t give much of a damn.

“Whatever. You shot as many as I beat the shit of, so I’ll take that as you agreeing with me.” Had he not been too busy staring at his own hands as he dusted the oil and copper fibers off of them, Fritz might have inferred otherwise from Viktor’s deadpan flavor of disapproval. The latter’s eyes sought solace away from the burly figure in front of them, reflecting ruined walls, moldy rubble and literal metric tons of unresponsive android carcasses.

“This should have been the last of them in this area... where’s Maira?”

Maira was currently busy ejecting a .65 caliber radioactive beet straight into the electronic guts of a GH1 Mark II Bolt Driver powered by hydraulics and the cloest binary had ever come to simulating racism. The custom projectile, shot through the battered cylinder that constituted the barrel of Maira’s ‘Slingshot’ homemade rifle, chewed a hole through the bot and several walls behind it, eventually zipping past a startled Viktor and Fritz while simultaneously reassuring both that they had little to fear about their colleague’s current status.

“Carries herself pretty well for a psycho, that kid.” said the grown man who had spent half a day hitting things with smaller pieces of themselves while screaming at the top of his lungs.

“I thought you’d know better by now than to underestimate her.”

“I don’t. She scares the shit out of me.” It was the nonchalant answer one would have given if asked to describe the limbflayer about to turn them into a ragdolled plate of spaghetti. It was also, perhaps, the opinion of Fritz’s that came closest to matching with Viktor. Both men stared at the sluggishly melting crevice where the beet had perforated, eventually letting themselves find a seat, whether on the dusty, cracked ceramic of the floor or the shining metal of whatever now remained of a revolutionary, artificial bunch.

“She ever told you what the deal is? With the mask, I mean.”

Viktor kept dutifully rolling the cigarette in his hands without sparing a minute for doubt. It was always that question with Maira, and always him that they’d ask to, if he’d be around. Came along with partnering up on so many jobs, he guessed. A few even thought he was her guardian. Sometimes, he’d find himself wondering if that wasn’t the sole rumor with a semblance of truth.

“It’s... it was her father’s idea. This Klaus fellow used to tell me that the most of the surface is covered with spores, remnants from the biological warfare that razed enough of the civilized world to leave us as we are today. A couple breaths and bang, your internal organs would eventually start mutating... changing your genetic make-up. Turning you into bad stuff. Long story short: the air is unsafe, thus the necessity of using gas masks.”

He lit the cigarette with a half-empty zippo and shoved it between his lips, staring at nothing in particular beyond a half-lidded gaze. Silence fell through as he busied himself exhaling whiffs of smoke, the vivid red hue of pomacco making it seem as if he was breathing his very heart out, until Fritz stopped scratching behind his neck with a metallic finger he’d pried from his victim and current seat. Hearing all of this in another context would have stolen little less than a hearty chuckle from his throat. His voice sounded a tad too concerned to permit that this time around.

“Was he telling the truth?”

Viktor’s eyes watched their hardened gaze reflected into Fritz’s worried look for a significant moment, before he shook his head in stead of shoulders too tired to do so.

“It was bullshit. Klaus was a scavenger who was good at his craft and had more than a few loose screws. I don’t think he ever changed the filter on his own gas mask. Somehow I doubt that Maira does with hers, either.”

“I do. I’d die of asbestos poisoning otherwise.”

The muffled voice coming from behind the leather mask was matter-of-factly and unmistakably that of a girl. Standing in the middle of a doorway missing its upper half - and a door, for that matter - her small frame seemed to shrink even further in her colleagues’ surprised eyes. They watched her walk over and sit along with them, settling on patiently disassembling the Slingshot that was almost as long as she was tall.

“Good job not dying out there, kiddo. How many of those steel hippies did you end up getting?” Friendly though he might have sounded, Viktor couldn’t help but notice Fritz attempting to scuttle a bit further away from the girl seemingly ignoring him.

“A lot. Enough.”

“It’s mostly quiet now, so I guess that’s true. It’ll be evening soon, so we move out an hour from now.” Viktor said, checking the contents of his pomacco pouch: not enough left to spare him a grimace. He’d have to savor this one, though it was already little more than a butt desperatedly caught between two gloved digits.

“Thus ends the robot rebellion: in a hefty pile of scrap. Chalk one up for humans!”

“Pretty sure I saw a couple mutants taking part in the carnage, Fritz.”

“Whatever, no need to be a stickler about everything. Isn’t that right, kiddo?”

“An entire city’s worth of factory bots got together and formed an army to gain independence because everybody wasn’t taking their talks about ‘achieving sentence’ and ‘freedom of will’ seriously until it was too late. It wouldn’t have killed for someone to be a bit of a stickler, perhaps” calmly replied Maira, sticking the last components of her rifle inside the oversized backpack sitting besides her. She spent the quiet pause she’d created lying on the hard floor and resting her head on said backpack, the gas mask covering her face and framed by short blond hair pointing towards a gray, humid ceiling.

“Ah, and what dad said about the spores? That was true.”

Maira fell asleep before she could witness either Fritz’s grumbling face of Viktor’s ghost of a grin.

[thiswasodd]

New Dangan Ronpa V3 review (spoiler-free)

I haven’t seen a lot of reviews for this game in English yet, so I’m writing one here because not talking to anyone about this game is killing me. I have done my very best to conceal spoilers of any kind.

Disclaimer: I’m not a native Japanese speaker. I can read well enough to follow the plot and conversations, but I sometimes miss subtleties (jokes, foreshadowing, etc.).

Overall opinion: I enjoyed this game as much as the first two, which is to say--it took over my life for a few weeks, and I have zero regrets. If you enjoyed solving the murder cases in the past games or talking to adorable characters, you’ll like this game as well. However, if you’re more interested in the main plot and how it all ties together, you may be disappointed (see next point).

Main plot: Like in the past games, there’s a main plot that’s largely separate from the individual murder cases. If you’ve looked at the Amazon reviews for this game, you’ll see lots of 1-star reviews. These are from people who’ve played to the end of the game. Actually, the main plot seems promising until you get to the last chapter. In the last part of the last chapter, the story takes a bizarre (and honestly unnecessary) turn. The writers do tie up all the lose ends, but in a way that’s goofy as heck, condescending to the player, and really just a bad choice IMO (though it is foreshadowed throughout the game). This decision seems like it could create difficulties for the franchise going forward. What annoys me most is there were very few questions remaining once the plot went down the weird path. I can think of numerous better ways the writers could have resolved the remaining lose ends. The good news is you can mostly ignore this part of the game. Unless you’re someone who cares deeply about the main plot to the exclusion of everything else and is really put off by a sour ending, I don’t think this should turn you off from the game.

Cases and Trials: Like with past games, I really enjoyed trying to solve these cases before going into the trial. And to a large degree, it’s possible to at least make an educated guess at the culprit. I think the difficulty level was well-calibrated. Though some cases withheld important info until the trial, it wasn’t more than past games, and you could generally work around it. One particular case had a few plot holes that I got hung up on, but it didn’t ruin the experience for me.

The methods and motivations did feel a bit contrived in the cases. The methods being contrived is nothing new with this game, but you can tell the writers were trying hard to avoid repeating gimmicks, which was somewhat distracting. The motivations were a larger problem. While they all made sense, I didn’t (overall) find them as compelling or relatable as in previous games.

Characters: As usual, I love these poor children and want to protect them. This is a solid cast of adorable and good characters. No one here can really live up to my favorite characters from Dangan Ronpa 2, but they give it a good shot.

I’m going to rate and give a brief comment on each character. Cover up the ratings if you don’t want to see them, but I promise you they don’t correlate to who lives or dies, is victim or killer. I rate them based on how well their character is developed/conveyed while alive, however long that may be. Also my biased opinion gets woven in as well. I’m very lenient with these lovely characters.

Characters have been randomly ordered:

Gonta Gokuhara - A giant sweety. He’s not very well adapted for human society, given that he was raised in the woods by wolves, so he’s quite gullible and oblivious. He’s not exactly stupid though, and he means well. (3/5), gentle giant

Kaito Momota - Your token relatable straight dude character. Actually, I liked Kaito more than I expected to. He’s annoyingly optimistic, but somehow endearing. (3/5), hopeful dork

Maki Harukawa - Holy crap, Maki is amazing. One of my favorites in the game, and I think one of the best presented. Very good angry/scary glares. (5/5), awesome badass

Shuuichi Saihara - Adorable and relatable detective friend. Impressive eyelashes that work well for him. Shuuichi also has a great character arc. (5/5), will reveal the truth

Kokichi Ouma - Oh gee, where to begin with this little shit. He’s one of my favorites, but that’s personal bias. A great little brat. (5/5), problematic fave of the year

Shinguuji Korekiyo - Obviously one of the smartest characters from the outset, which is something I admire. (4/5), mysterious nugget

Hoshi Ryouma - Lil’ dude with a dark past. Isn’t phased by this “mutual killing game” at all. Sometimes I just want to give him a big ol’ hug. (3/5), grizzled loner.

Shirogane Tsumugi - Cute and plain sweety. (”Plain” is her own wording, honestly.) Unfortunately, I just didn’t find her character arc compelling. (3/5), missed opportunity for this sweet friend. Kaede Akamatsu - She’s such a good and pure character who just wants to escape and be friends with everyone! Also annoyingly optimistic (okay, so I find optimism annoying, this isn’t Kaede’s fault, she is a sweet child). (5/5), listening to Clair de Lune on a loop

Kiibo - Best robot boy. Does not deserve the robot discrimination he receives. He’s just like any other high school student! (5/5), would pat his head

Kirumi Toujou - What a beautiful badass. She’s so reserved, but also one of the smartest and most competent characters. (5/5), cool as heck

Himiko Yumeno - An adorable sleepy witch. Has a cute, western Japan accent, and insists that she is a witch, not a stage magician. Somehow the other characters find this harder to believe than the fact that one of them is literally a robot and a stuffed animal is forcing them to kill each other, but OKAY y’all hypocrites. (5/5), want to hug her and be her friend

Tenko Chabashira - A pure friend with an aggressive lesbian exterior. I found her constant insults at boys annoying (and I could see how many would actually find this endearing instead), but if I set that aside, she’s very lovable. (4/5), good child, pat pat

Rantarou Amami - A breezy, cool dude with excellent style. Doesn’t remember his own talent, how mysterious...! I’ll be honest, Rantarou is my fave character in this game, so auto (5/5), would become BFFs Angie Yonaga - Hopelessly adorable. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any other aspects of her character appealing. She only ever talked about one thing and didn’t seem to have much depth. (2/5), smiling cutie

Miu Iruma - Constantly using filthy/lewd language (how are they going to translate this? I’m interested...). Very rude and arrogant but only to hide her insecurity. There are directions Miu’s character could have gone that I would have liked, but that’s not what I feel happened unfortunately. (2/5), if you call me Bakamatsu one more time...

Monokumas - 5 children of Monokuma. I’m rating them all as one because I found them mostly annoying and distracting, YMMV. I think the game would have been better without them. (1/5), please go sit in a corner with Teru Teru where I can pretend you don’t exist.

Well, my overall opinion is at the top. I hope that was helpful to people! Great catharsis for me, at least.

[itsnumerologist]

Symbolism, Synchronicity and Numerology

Many individuals have a tendency to be doubtful with regards to the in-correct and natural sciences like Astrology, Numerology, Tarot and others. This is reasonable and, as I would see it, something worth being thankful for. All things considered, we live in a world that is handy, consistent, and clear - to some degree, at any rate.

Doubters imagine that the idea that your name mirrors your identity, or that your date of birth predicts things about your future, is fantastical, if not totally over the top. What's more, unless you are the curious sort, you will most likely acknowledge this as last and proceed onward, agreeable in the learning that you, in any event, won't be tricked by any of those otherworldly sciences.

But then, in the event that you set aside the opportunity to look somewhat more profound, you might be astonished at how defective and restricting that observation is. Truth be told, on the off chance that you stick just to tolerating what can be demonstrated, touched, witnesses firsthand, you stand minimal shot of making due for long in this not really down to earth world.

Tolerating THE INEXPLICABLE

I am certain that even the most suspicious individual has encountered "baffling marvels" in his or her life, and reacted to it decisively. They simply don't call it secretive or consider the suggestions. All things considered, it's more secure to avoid that. For instance, how often have you "felt" that somebody was gazing at you and beyond any doubt enough, when you pivot, so-as is taking a gander at you. What sort of clarification would you apply to something to that effect? All things considered, there was no obvious or material association of any sort amongst you and the individual gazing at you from twenty feet away. So how did the message traverse space and alarm your mind?

I can let you know that in my life I have seen various cases where this sort of sense spared me or another person from fiasco. Similarly as I have seen individuals who showed up excessively thick, making it impossible to get those sort of inconspicuous signs stroll into awful circumstances that could have been evaded, had they been a smidgen more delicate to their own senses.

To numerous suspicious individuals, however, sense is satisfactory. The set of all animals flourishes with it and individuals perceive that. Be that as it may, what is instinct if not a developed, refined type of nature? Engrossing and tolerating data without experiencing a judicious point of view is basic, we do it constantly.

Actually, there is no genuine division between what we consider genuine, pragmatic or material, and that which we allude to as natural. The universe of matter is genuine, or so it appears. In any case, that is really far from being obviously true, considering that consistently reality changes in a trillion little and not all that little ways. It's more exact to view it as a sort of continually transforming gigantic natural hallucination that never remains the same for a solitary nanosecond. Picture the entire universe as an excellent movement, with sound and light impacts, reshaping, changing, turning and tumbling like one of those old light shows they used to play amid shake shows in the sixties.

Alright, so maybe this sounds somewhat like somebody who sucked on one an excessive number of sugar shapes. In any case, on the off chance that you could see this rational, purported steady and methodical reality from a sufficiently far point of view, with an edge speed set so high a million years fly by in about a moment, you would perceive the lunacy of thinking about your material world as something besides a definitive fantasy.

AN EVOLUTION OF LIFE AND SYMBOLS

What's more, that is the place you live, in an unpredictable, always showing signs of change, precarious environment. But then, as a result of this creation, you are really a truly cool and magnificently balanced bit of work. You have a mind that not just can string musings together in a pretty much consistent way, additionally reach determinations and make a move - your cerebrum gets signals you can't see. Also all the astonishing things it can do that you found out about in science class; the way your eyeballs convey moment pictures to your mind, for instance. On the other hand your ears, another bit of awesome gear. Your nose, your fingers, your tongue - I mean truly, when we commend researchers for assembling a cool robot and flying it to Mars, who are we joking? Contrasted with the totality of this creation, that is about as complex as a toenail.

What a world, non? Furthermore, how would we impart the majority of this to each other? With images, obviously. Images as numbers, letters, words, objects, signs, pictures, and so on. We speak with images, to each other, as well as to ourselves. At the point when that researcher is chipping away at his favor little robot, he is controlling data in his mind with the assistance of images, with the expectation that something clicks.

In any case, in the past we didn't have images. When we were more idiotic than a stick and took hundreds of years to find fire. We didn't impart much by any means. Envision yourself a Neanderthal a million years prior, trudging through five feet of snow and conveying an overwhelming club. You are chasing deer or another thing to murder and eat. Abruptly, you see this other fella, club close by, coming towards you. You don't have a clue about this person, so you begin by making debilitating clamors, maybe shaking your club to demonstrate that yours is greater than his. The sounds you make are disagreeable and startling. The outsider acknowledges you are not somebody to upset, so he turns and keeps running off. Bravo. In any case, somewhat assist on, you see this pleasant looking female Neanderthal, likewise furnished with a major stick, and simply like you and the person you just pursued off, searching for sustenance. Another contender, yet now you react in an unexpected way. You make cooing, smoochy  sounds. You attempt to make her vibe safe so you can draw her to your surrender. Distinctive sounds, diverse message.

Presently quick forward a million years, and those sounds have developed into words, yet at the same time mirror their significance in a way not typically recognized. For instance, you detested the person you experienced in light of the fact that he undermined you and you had no utilization for him. In any case, you adored the female and she got your "affection," a word that sounds and feels warm, similar to a grasp. Proceed, talk it and you can detect the agreeable and defensive sentiment "adore." It's a wonderful sound, comfortable and friendly, similar to such a variety of things and verbs that have an "o" as their first vowel.

The person, in any case, got a feeling of your "loathe," a word that feels like a chomp; forceful and fierce, driven and furious. Go on, say it like you mean it and you will perceive how unpalatable that word sounds. Keeping in mind you're grinding away, see how frequently the letter "an" appears as the primary vowel here? Similarly as in words like "war" and "fight," "insulting," "testing," "taking" thus numerous others. Obviously not all words with "an" as the main vowel are upsetting, and not all words with "o" as their first vowel are sure, on the grounds that simply like people, letters and numbers have many sides to their identities. Still, every letter in each word in a specific dialect mirrors the instinctive feeling of its importance as fitting the general population who talk it. For instance, the letter "e" is the most widely recognized vowel in the English dialect and speaks to opportunity, extension, vitality - take a gander at every one of those "e"s - which practically mirrors their first need. Latin dialects, then again, have the "an" as the most widely recognized vowel, resounding the way that independence is their most clear quality.

The greater part of this mirrors the synchronicity between people advancing, and the images they make all the while.

NUMEROLOGYIS THE BRIDGE

Which conveys me to the third uppercase word in the title of this blog: Numerology. The specialty of perceiving the relationship between images (numbers and letters, names and dates), and what they speak to. It's a natural science, obviously, and as a Numerologist, I am prepared to discover those associations between your name and what it says in regards to your identity. On the other hand your date of birth and what it tells about your future.

So that is it more or less. Imagery reflects synchronicity, and Numerology is the investigation of the examples and network that exists between the two. Imagery, synchronicity, riddles, material science, even brain science, resemble fingers beginning to expose what's underneath of the obscure.

Well would you take a gander at that! Might it be able to be an incident that each one of the five words utilized as a part of the past passage have the insightful, profound "y" as their first vowel? Not so much, after all each of them mirrors some part of the concealed, unobtrusive, covered up, and fundamental reality of nature, and the one letter in the letter set most particularly connected with searching for the shrouded the truth, is molded like a couple of arms going after the sky.

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