#and sadly the horrors nuked my memory

[lorelune]

biggest L of lorelune is for sure the diluc fic 😔 oh beloved one day i'll work on you again

[spyno41-2]

Tropical Heaven: Florida's Boogaloo

Prologue

They're in Cassandra's bedroom, which is surprisingly clean for Victor. He thought it would be less organized due to her...chaotic nature. He sits on the chair. Raymond is reading doujinshi of a woman being in a harem, while Cassandra is watching the television upside down on her bed next to him.

Cassandra is wearing a black and green shirt that has Jotaro and Jolyne posing with the text "To Daze or to Dawa? That is the question." She is wearing a brown skirt that reaches down to her knees.

Raymond is king of pussy slaying. If he ever called any number that he was given. See, he's a very attractive Asian-American. Black short hair and wears glasses. For some reason, he wears a tuxedo everywhere he goes.

As for Victor, he's a normal Hispanic. He wears his Miami Dolphins shirt and jeans.

"Rayyyyy." He ignores her. She places her foot on his face. He doesn't react. "I'm boooooooored."

"What do you want me to do about it?" He says without breaking away from his cellphone. She places her toes up his nose. This does not deter him.

"Help me not get booooooored." She whines still keeping her stone face.

"Are you both dating?" Victor asks.

"Nah. We're sadly soulmates." Ray replies, removing her foot. Victor is more confused. Then again, he can barely understand these two with how eccentric they are. He doesn't pry further and uses his phone to look up urban legends.

"What are you doing, Vicky?" She asks him.

"I'm researching urban legends of Florida for my project. I decided to do Robert the Doll since it's one of the well known ones." Cassandra sits straight.

"Where is this Robert?"

"He is currently in East Martello Museum down at the Keys." She quickly puts on her black stockings with white stars and crocs.

"Let's go."

"Woah woah. That's a three hour drive."

"Don't worry. I can pitch in for gas."

"That's not the is-"

"Get the car ready, Ray."

"All right." He gets up. She runs out of the room. "Don't bother trying to talk her out of it. Once she has her mind on something, not even the Goddess herself can stop her nonsense." He sighs and leaves. Victor hesitates, but figures this is a good opportunity for his research.

Way down in The Keys

"Woooooah. Stuff." Cassandra stares at the antiques. "You think if I become famous, they'll display my panties and stockings here?"

"Perhaps. Maybe once civilization falls because evangelicals are still in power and unleash nukes to the world out of greed, then the only thing left in the rubble would indeed be your panties and stockings. The aliens will preserve them as evidence of humanity." Raymond says with a straight face while watching porn of tentacles sodomizing legal femboys.

"Far fuckin out, man." She says.

"Uh guys? We're here for Robert, remember?" Victor reminds them.

"You cannot rush history, Vicky. We must appreciate and acknowledge their achievements to grant us the life we are currently living from their sacrifice." Cassandra stares intently. "Which is shit."

"Yes. One must wonder how much actual progress they made, considering things aren't any better about five decades ago. Then again, at least we're socially progressing with every generation. At a rate of a sloth, but progress nonetheless." Ray adds.

"I can see why you both get along." Victor sighs. He moves to the room where the doll is in.

Robert is encased in a glass. Sitting on a wooden chair looking up. He wears a sailor suit of his era and has beady black eyes. Victor wonders why any children would own such a creepy doll. Especially when it's life sized to be a four year old. It's no mystery why Robert sprouted much history. It was designed to be an inspiration for many horror movies to come.

"Hey Robert. I'm Victor. Do you mind if I take a picture? It's for my school project." He asks. The doll doesn't respond. "I'll take that as a yes." He pulls out his phone and starts taking pictures.

"Were you asking a doll for consent? That's pretty cringe, not gonna lie." Cassandra enters the room.

"You have to. People who have taken photos of him, had misfortunes fall upon them. It's why there are letters asking for an apology to lift the curse." Victor points at the many letters in the wall next to the doll.

"Ooooh? That's a bunch of bullshit. Curses don't exist." She pats his head and takes a quick selfie with Robert.

"What are you doing!?"

"Testing the theory, thus hath speaketh Cassandrath." She does the crucifixion pose.

"This is serious, Cass! Legends like those don't spring out of nowhere. In fact, there's a chance that all those supernatural events could explain one thing."

"Are you saying th-"

"Yes. Robert might be an Estado User."

"...CHAJAJAJAJAJA!" She cackles. Victor is disturbed by such display. He is so used to her stoicism, that this comes out of the left field for him. "Vicky, Vicky. My bubula~! Objects can't have Estados. Only living beings can achieve such a feat." She pinches his cheeks. She has her usual creepy smile. Her coffee brown eyes are wide open so that it lets him see the slits. She is grinning to show off her sharp canines.

"It's only a theory." He says. She goes back to her stoicness.

"You are right, though. We can't disregard that possibility." She examines Robert and presses her face against the glass. "Hmmmm. Looks like a normal doll to me." She goes to the corner of the room and crouches. "Oooooh. This looks cool." Victor sighs and looks back at Robert.

"Maybe I'm just being too paranoid."

Beaches with bitches

The group is walking along the sands in Smathers Beach.

"Plenty of estrogen. Not enough testosterone." Raymond sighs.

"That's fine. Feminity is superior anyways." Cassandra looks out at the sea.

"Wow! This is very beautiful!" Victor takes a picture of the scenery. He is focused on his phone, that he bumps against a woman. "Ooof! I'm sorry about that, ma'am."

"It's okay. Though I'm not old enough to be considered a ma'am." She laughs. "Actually, me and my friends are playing volleyball, but we're short by one. Would you like to join us?" She leans forward, making Victor get a nice view of her cleavage.

"S-Sure. I'll play for a bit." She smiles and they both go.

"Look at that. Our son is going to get gangbanged by a bunch of hot MILFs. Almost makes me cry." Cass sniffles stoically.

"Proud of him." Ray goes back to his phone, watching a man being hypnotized to think it's a child and the woman around him having sex with him. "Seriously, who the fuck is into this?"

"We don't kinkshame fellow comrades."

"I know. The art is good though. Why must great artists divulge their talents into degeneracy?"

"Cause it's what they wanna do or get paid for. Who cares?" Cass shrugs. She takes a step and falls into a pitfall.

"The Pillows!" Raymond summons his Estado. She has pink hair and cat ears. She has a television for a head and a feminine mechanical body with an organic pink tail. She extends her arms in the pit to grab Cassandra and pull her out.

"I already accepted my death but thanks TP." Cass says, unfazed by her certain doom.

"NYAAA~!" A cat face appears on the screen and she does the Tokyo Mew Mew pose before disappearing behind her User.

"Try to be careful next time. Beaches are known to have pitfalls." Ray goes back to his cellphone.

"How peculiar? I remember there not being one a moment ago." Cassandra examines the hole, when a football hits her face. Hard.

"Oh my goodness! I'm so sorry!" A hunk with blonde hair and blue eyes helps her up. "Are you okay?"

"Other than possibly having a concussion, I'm functionally fine." Cass is starting to have a headache.

"I have some ice that can help your bump, if you like? We also have water if you need." Cassandra gets very close to him and caresses his chiseled chest.

"Tell me, you think I didn't notice? When I first arrived, your other boys pulled the same stunt to other girls earlier. I also caught them putting something in the water bottles before passing it to the beautiful maidens that fell to your trap." The man is sweating profusely. "But your worst mistake was targeting me."

"Get off of me, you crazy bitch!" He pushes her.

"BOOM BOOM SATELLITES!" A being materializes behind her. She has a black and green jumpsuit with a motorcycle helmet covering her head. Devil wings adorn her back and has a tail with the tip being heart shaped. She punches the man's gut with such force, that it sends him flying and crashing against his cooler.

"What the fuck!?" The boys check up on him as he's convulsing in pain and pleasure. Then he ejaculates a heavy volume of semen. The police finally arrived.

"What's going on?" Victor runs up to Raymond.

"I called the police for the crimes that fill this beach. Seems Cass found another scandal in progress." He faces Victor. "I mainly called them because the woman you were with fits the description of an active serial rapist."

"You son of a bitch! And you guys let me go with her!?"

"Don't worry. I would've tailed you if you both left the perimeter. Plus, I trust in your ability to defend yourself." He goes back to his phone as the officers apprehended the woman and the group of boys. The police had to call paramedics as the hunk is completely dehydrated. "Cass! Let's get out here." Him and Victor walk back to the car.

"..." Cassandra witnesses the arrest and then back to the hole. "I'm coming!" She catches up to them. When they reach the car, the tires have been slashed.

"Victor." Raymond says.

"Yeah?" He looks at him and steps back. Despite still having a neutral expression, he can sense anger coming from him.

"I hope you find the perpetrator that did this. Because if I find them, there will be a memorial for their tragic accident. And everytime I come here, I will visit the site to remind them of their place."

"Raymond. Let's not get carried away." Victor tries to calm him down.

"There's no need to look for them. I already know who did it." They turn to Cassandra. "I've been thinking for a while now. All these misfortunes that have been happening in such a short span of time, while mathematically plausible, is improbable." She pulls out her phone. "I secretly installed a hidden camera in the room that Robert resides, while pretending to give a damn about the antiques."

"Are you implying the curse is real?" Victor says.

"As I said before, curses don't exist. Estados are another story. But that will only matter if my theory is true." She opens the app for the live feed. The group huddles together. The glass case that's supposed to keep Robert is empty.

"He's gone!" Victor reacts.

"I can see that, Vicky. No need to state the obvious. This is a clear indication that the doll is sentient." Cassandra puts away her phone.

"A Living Doll. Energy of deceased females that are trapped inside a doll. Most of the time, it's victims that are placed inside an object. Other times, the person who lost their loved ones projects it on the doll, giving it life." Raymond explains. "Or in this case, a legend that gave it sentience."

"I guess you were somewhat right, Vicky. Though no one would imagine Robert to be a Monster Girl due to his assigned gender. The question now is, how did it follow us and does it have an Estado?" Cassandra examines the car and finds scratches on the trunk. Raymond opens it and they find Robert inside holding a box cutter.

"Oh shit! It's Ro-!" Cass covers Victor's mouth.

"So you were hiding in my trunk. I don't care if you're a relic of history, I will ravage you for your crimes!" Raymond summons The Pillows. Robert lunges at him with the weapon.

"NYAYAYAYAYAYA!" TP punches him repeatedly. With the final strike sending him flying against the hood. Robert quickly gets up with no problems and scurries away.

"Get that mothafucka!" Cassandra commands. The crowd are focused on the arrest, that they fail to notice the Three Stooges chasing after a doll. They chase him all the way to a warehouse. Robert quickly gets in through an open door and shuts it. "Like that'll stop us." She summons BBS.

"Wait! Let me check something. Veltpunch!" Victor calls out his Estado. She is a humanoid bottlenose dolphin with a VR headset both on her head and where the tail should be. She wears the Miami Heat jerseys.

"OAO~!" She screeches. He puts on the headset and she places her hand on the wall. Using her echolocation, he can see the inside in white outlines from the darkness.

"That guy is fast. I can't see him. He must be hiding somewhere already." Victor says.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Cassandra commands BBS to bust the door open. They enter the building. The place is dark. She switches the lights on and they see stacks of inventory on the shelves. They walk around with caution, while Victor is echo locating. She notices a big box from the top shelf falling above Victor. She tackles him out of the way.

"There he is!" Raymond points him out as Robert runs away. He pushes more boxes. Raymond uses TP to punch the objects, but doing so causes the kitchen knives to fall on him. He luckily covers his head with arms as it slashes his hands.

"Kahahahaha!" Robert laughs and then goes deeper inside.

"Are you both fine?" Cassandra checks on Raymond.

"I'll live. Won't be much use anymore though." He rips part of his tuxedo to bandage his hands.

"Take care of him, Vicky." She says before chasing after Robert. He keeps pushing objects off, but she evades it. The entire shelf on her right is falling towards her. She runs faster and dives out of the way before it hits the ground. "You want to play that game, huh?" She summons BBS to push the shelf where Robert stands. He jumps to another, but she keeps toppling over the shelves. This process keeps repeating, until they reach the end of the room. Robert dives at her, ready to stab her with the box cutter. BBS repeatedly punches him in the air.

"A Crow is White!" He summons a white harpy with a head of crow. She has a sailor outfit like the User. She repeatedly scratches BBS with her sharp talons, causing damage on their arms and chest. Cassandra backs away.

"Hmph. It seems attacking you directly does nothing to you." She removes her shirt to prevent it from getting more damaged. Showing off her sports bra and fit body. "Now it's starting to make sense. The curse that the story tells is because you use your Estado to cause misfortune."

"Aren't you a sharp one? While I knew you had potential, I didn't expect your servants to have one too!" He flails around like a child.

"Servants? Are you talking about my friends?"

"Friends? You can't fool me, Succubus! I've been around way before I became a legend and I know for a fact your kind don't care about human relationships. It makes me sick! All that moaning, meat slapping against each other, exchanging each other's bodily fluids...IT'S DISGUSTING!!"

"Ugh. I'm developing a tumor by you speaking."

"Whatever! I'll make sure you and your boy toys are dead!" He pulls out a revolver. Cassandra hides behind the shelf, while Crow and BBS are fighting. Robert keeps shooting at her until the gun runs out of bullets. He quickly tries to reload, but only manages to put one bullet when Cassandra throws a vase at him, making him drop the weapon.

"Grab the gun!" She commands BBS. She has her hand on the cylinder, before Robert snatches it away and quickly points at Cassandra. He pulls the trigger, but the bullet explodes, causing his arm to be blown off.

"Aaaah!" He screams in pain. One of Crow's wing is detached.

"BBS can make anything it touches to overdrive." She walks towards him menacingly

"W-WAIT! You can't destroy me! I'm an important part of history. I'm the reason people go into the museum in the first place! Not to mention you buffoons are caught on cameras." He points at the security cam.

"I'm not worried about that. Ray is already altering the footage so we don't appear. As for you!" She stomps on him. "I'm sure they'll replace you with the many replicas. You think the staff will admit they lost their famous doll?" BBS starts rapidly punching Crow, dealing massive damage to both of them.

"FLY OOOOOOOUT!" BBS battle cries, finishing off by detaching Crow's head with an uppercut. Robert's head detaches as well and hits the ceiling. She catches the head.

"Que la Diabla te joda en el infierno."

Robert the Doll is out of commission

She collects his remains in a plastic bag and dumps it in a trashcan. They are at Raymond's car waiting for someone to fix his tires.

"I can't believe you actually destroyed him." Victor says.

"He had it coming for hurting my baby. I wish I was there to witness his demise." Raymond says.

"Overall, it was a fun day!" Cassandra stoically cheers.

"There's never a boring day with you guys." Victor sighs.

"All that excitement has made me hungry. When we get back home Vicky, I need your semen for my shake." She sits on the hood.

"I think I need to sleep before that." She stares at him intensely. "...Fine fine. Raymond, you got any good material for me?"

"As a matter of fact, I found a hentai about a Japanese man fucking his brother's foreign wife. I don't condone cheating, but the animation is sadly good." They talk amongst each other, while Cassandra put on her headphones to listen to her jam.

Kokomo - The Beach Boys

Everybody knows a little place like Kokomo

Now if you want to go and get away from it all

Go down to Kokomo

Aruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take you to

Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama

Key Largo, Montego, baby why don't we go

Oh I want to take you down to

Kokomo, we'll get there fast and then we'll take it slow

That's where we want to go, way down in Kokomo

[the-desolated-quill]

Cold War - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Here we go again with another Mark Gatiss episode and it always pains me whenever I have to slag him off. I’m a big League of Gentlemen fan and Gatiss has done sterling work with them over the years, but the sad fact of the matter is the stuff he does outside of the League just isn’t very good. His first Doctor Who episode, The Unquiet Dead, was decent but flawed, The Idiot’s Lantern was a ripoff of Little Shop Of Horrors except with none of the charm, Victory of The Daleks was utter crap, and Night Terrors just bored the pants off me. Now here we are with Cold War, and I wish I could say this was the episode where Gatiss finally pulls out all the stops to give us the magnificent Doctor Who story we’ve all been waiting for, but sadly it’s yet another dud I’m afraid.

By far the biggest problem with Cold War is its total lack of originality. An Ice Warrior gets loose aboard a Russian submarine and it’s a fight for survival as the Doctor tries to reason with the alien and save the crew. Yep, this is yet another base under siege story, and it goes through all the cliches. The Doctor meekly trying to persuade the villain to show mercy, the crew splitting up to search for a solution, the monster picking them off one by one, and so on. I’ve seen this kind of story done so many times in Doctor Who now that I was practically nodding off halfway through it. 

Cold War also borrows liberally from other sci-fi stories, the most obvious being Alien, but there’s also elements from other Doctor Who stories too, such as the multiple Silurian stories where the Doctor tries to persuade two sides to play nice, and Dalek where the last surviving member of a warrior race threatens to destroy all of humanity out of desperation and rage. The problem is the reason Dalek worked so well was because of the Doctor’s long history with the Daleks. A relationship he simply doesn’t have with the Ice Warriors. Plus Cold War shares the same problem as The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood where neither side are given any sort of nuance or depth, and therefore it’s hard to empathise with anyone.

Of course Cold War is significant in that it features the long awaited return of classic series monsters the Ice Warriors. Having heard all of my rants about the Cybermen, the Sontarans and the Silurians, you’re no doubt wondering what I, a veteran Whovian, thought about the Ice Warriors during their heyday.

Yeah, I’ve never really been a fan. Not that they’re bad villains, mind. They’ve had some decent stories in their time. I’ve just never found them to be particularly interesting. The only time I felt the Ice Warriors really came into their own was in the Jon Pertwee era story The Curse Of Peladon. It was a sort of murder mystery plot where an alliance between the Galactic Federation and Peladon was in peril due to someone killing off the delegates. Naturally the Doctor and his companion Jo suspected the Ice Warriors due to their reputation, but then the story pulls the rug out from under us by revealing the true culprit to be the High Priest Hepesh and the realisation that the Ice Warriors really had changed their ways after all. It was a genuinely good twist and opened up a lot of creative possibilities for the Ice Warriors. We’d seen heartless zealots like the Daleks, altruistic foes like the Cybermen and one note pantomime villains like the Master, but we had never seen a monster in Doctor Who that starts out as evil only to realise over the course of the show that what they were doing was wrong and try to make amends. This put the Ice Warriors in an incredibly unique position I feel. One that sadly was never fully capitalised on because in their next and last story, The Monster Of Peladon, the Ice Warriors reverted back to being baddies again.

So what direction does Gatiss take the new, revived Ice Warriors? Are they a morally complex race of warriors trying to make up for past mistakes or boring alien invaders hellbent on world domination?

...

Boring alien invaders hellbent on world domination.

Great! Yeah! God forbid we should do anything interesting with them!

To the episode’s credit, the new Ice Warriors look really cool. Much more high tech and imposing than the classic series ones. And Gatiss does try to address a few discrepancies in Ice Warrior lore, for example how did a race of cold blooded reptiles survive on a cold planet like Mars? But it’s the characterisation that severely lets this episode down. The Ice Warrior just isn’t a very interesting character. They try to make you feel an emotional connection to him by wheeling out the cliched dead daughter, but the character is just too extreme for us to empathise with. One human zaps him with a cattle prod and suddenly he wants to destroy the world, and the only explanation we’re given as to what justifies such an overreaction is some bollocks about Martian code of ethics. Also, didn’t he attack them first? And I had to let out a hollow laugh when the Doctor said the Ice Warrior would have left them alone if they didn’t zap him. Bit naive, wouldn’t you say? The Ice Warriors are many things, but merciful is not one of them.

And it just gets worse when they then commit the cardinal sin of getting the Ice Warrior to come out of its shell. So instead of the tall, imposing Ice Warrior we were promised, we instead get a pair of green rubber gloves gripping people’s faces and the worst CGI face I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s hard to imagine an Ice Warrior being that fast and nimble out of the suit, (not to mention that spindly looking), not just because I’m so used to the Ice Warriors being slow, sluggish brutes, but also because Earth’s gravity is much stronger than Mars’. Shouldn’t the Ice Warrior be a quivering puddle of slime on the floor? And what was the point of the Ice Warrior ‘disassembling’ people to learn human weaknesses. It never comes into play at any point in the episode. Everything about the naked Ice Warrior just feels utterly divorced from anything I’d associate with them to the point where I question why Mark Gatiss would even call it an Ice Warrior. Why not come up with your own alien? Why bring back the Ice Warriors? And I’d prefer a better reason other than ‘it’s the 50th anniversary.’

The human characters are just as bad. Whenever I’ve seen Cold War related stories, it’s usually from the perspective of the Americans. Hardly ever from the Russians. This is an opportunity for Doctor Who to cover new ground here, but they don’t really. The Russians aren’t actually characters. None of them are given any real development, arc or personality of their own. You have the captain who’s... well... the captain, some douchebag who is obsessed with war and gets promptly killed off, and then you’ve got David Warner’s character who we learn absolutely nothing about other than he’s obsessed with Duran Duran. The rest are just pointless redshirts that I don’t give a single shit about. If you’re going to give me a base under siege story, the least you can do is give me interesting characters that I actually care about, otherwise it’s going to be a bit hard to work up any kind of shock or sadness when they do kick the bucket. There’s no tension because I don’t care who lives or dies.

And speaking of tension, that’s another missed opportunity. It’s the Cold War. The world’s on a knife edge. Any spark or conflict could trigger nuclear armageddon. Combine that with the claustrophobic submarine setting and this episode should be brimming with paranoia and nervous tension. But you never get a sense of that, not only because I don’t give a shit about any of the characters, but also because at no point did I feel the weight or scale of what’s happening. Oh sure the Doctor keeps reminding us about the threat of a nuclear apocalypse, but it never feels imminent because none of the characters seem to take the prospect seriously. For one thing, the Russians are very quick to trust the Doctor and Clara despite them mysteriously appearing out of nowhere and could very well be working for the enemy for all they know, and whenever they do talk about the Cold War, it’s very quickly brushed to the side. Well if the characters are’t bothered by the prospect of a nuclear holocaust, why the fuck should I be? Even the finale with the Doctor praying that the Ice Warrior won’t launch the nukes is undermined by Clara randomly singing Hungry Like The Wolf. Strip all the tension out, why don’t you?

The Doctor is at his most ineffectual sadly, reduced to spouting his usual ‘show mercy’ claptrap and waving his sonic screwdriver around, but what annoys me even more is Clara. Not only is she back to her smug self, reducing the potential threat considerably because if she’s not taking it seriously, why should I, but also there’s an opportunity for a good character arc here that Gatiss botches spectacularly. At one point Clara wonders whether she could have handled her first encounter with the Ice Warrior better and at the end is able to use the memory of the Ice Warrior’s daughter to persuade him to leave. This could have been an effective moment had Clara been allowed to speak to the Ice Warrior freely the first time around instead of being reduced to a mouthpiece for the Doctor (why couldn’t the Doctor just talk to the Ice Warrior himself? They never properly explain that). Clara isn’t given any real agency of her own or licence to screw up, so rather than the ending feeling like a personal triumph for Clara as she grows and develops as a character, she’s instead just a convenient out for Gatiss.

And don’t get me started on all the stuff that just didn’t make sense. How can the Russians mistake a frozen humanoid for a mammoth? Why did that guy thaw the Ice Warrior out other than for the sake of plot convenience? Why would a submarine that was only sent on an Arctic expedition be carrying nuclear weapons? Why would the Russians have automatic weapons on a submarine? How is the Ice Warrior able to hide inside the walls of a submarine? How does the Ice Warrior expect to launch a successful nuclear attack from a submarine that’s stranded 700 meters down below sea level? Oh and the Doctor just happened to have been fiddling with the TARDIS off screen, which just happened to make it disappear to the South Pole, leaving them stranded in the submarine? That’s fucking convenient, isn’t it?

I suppose I don’t hate Cold War. It’s competently made and if you’re someone who can’t get enough base under siege stories in Doctor Who, I’m sure it’s possible to enjoy this one provided you switch your brain off beforehand. The only crime this episode commits is that it’s just really, really dull. The story is cliched, the characters are one dimensional, and the potential of the setting is completely wasted. The only noteworthy thing about Cold War is the Ice Warrior and they don’t even do that very well. Overall it’s a very bland and forgettable episode. Maybe one day the Ice Warriors will get an episode that finally realises their full potential, but it isn’t this one.