#and the results are full of people with the same fucking problem with NO answers.

[rocketbirdie]

.

[weaselle]

it was too much i had to make my own post

line cook here. ACCURATE

if you don't get the hate, here's what you don't understand.

it takes up to 2 hours to close down the kitchen.

The last 60-90 minutes before closing time you do almost no cooking because the restaurant doesn't have many people in it and you've already cooked most of their diners.

So if someone walks in during, like, the last hour, the cook is in the middle of an industrial deep clean of the kitchen.

(these numbers can vary quite a bit from place to place but i have worked several restaurants with these actual times and the concept remains the same)

Say the place closes at 10. If you wait til the restaurant is already closed to start all your cleaning duties, you'll be there until at least midnight.

More than that your boss knows that on an average night you can start your clean up as soon as the last rush ends and get out of there around 10:45, even 10:15 on a slow night if you get lucky. That means there are plenty of restaurants where if you do take until midnight the manager is going to come up to you at some point that week and ask you what went wrong that night, and you'd better have an answer.

So this example restaurant closes at 10 pm. The dinner rush ends around 8:30, and shortly after that the cook is going to start getting every single dish possible over to the dishwasher because the dishwasher always gets hit hard and late, and the machine runs for 2 full minutes and only holds so many dishes, so the way that works out is if you wait an extra 30 minutes to give the dishwasher all your stuff it can mean adding like 60 minutes to the end of his shift. And you're gonna KEEP finding shit to send to the dishpit right up until you leave probably.

all these little square and rectangle containers in this cold table have to be pulled out and changed over into new containers, replaced by new full ones, or in some cases filled from larger containers in the back, which can result in even more empty containers to send to the dishwasher.

while it's all pulled apart to do this, you have to clean up all the spilled food and sauce and juices and stuff from the joints and ledges and shelves and drip trays

Once you get your line changed over in this way, and fully stocked, anytime someone orders something that makes use of a bunch of that stuff, you have to restock and re-clean it some. It might already be covered in plastic. Some of it might already be stuck in the back to make room to take apart your cutting board counter to clean. To cook a dish isn't TOO much of a problem at this point, but you're really hoping for zero orders because you still have so much other cleaning to do.

Meanwhile the salad bar and appetizer section and server station and everybody are all doing the same thing. Even the bartenders are stocking olives and lemons and sending back whisks and stir spoons and shakers and empty 4quart storage containers that used to hold the back-up lemons and olives and things. Every section is dumping their must-be-cleaneds to the dishpit as fast as possible because early and fast is the only thing they can do to to help that dishpit not absolutely drown into overtime.

The poor dishwasher is always the last to clock out, soaking wet and exhausted.

Around this time you probably scrub the flat top, which has turned black from cooked on grease and is still about 500 degrees. Line cooks are divided in opinion on water-based or oil based cleaning methods for this, but they all involve scrubbing with (usually) a brick of pumice stone using every ounce of your strength while you try not to burn yourself

you scrub it from fully blackened to gleaming silver and now if somebody orders something that needs the flat top to cook, you can either fuck up your cleaning job or fake it in a couple frying pans and pass that tiny fuck you down to your dishwasher (who usually understands, especially if you help them take the garbage out or clean your own floor drain later)

If there's deep fried stuff on the menu then the fryers have to be cleaned out, which includes straining the oil out into enormous and super-heavy pots full of oil so hot that if you spill on yourself then it's probably a hospital visit and if you slip and fall face first into it it'll be the last thing you ever do.

Then you gotta scrub out the fryer. Like you gotta take the (hot) screen out and reach your arm down into the weird rounded pipes and curved areas (so hot, burn you if you brush against them hot) and scrub off whatever is down there

Depending on your kitchen you might have to do up to four of these. Then you'll have to pour the (dangerously hot) oil back in

oh, and if you didn't dry the pipes and get ALL the water out of the trap and tank?

water reacts with hot oil in a sort of mentos and coke way that can send a tidal wave of oil past the open flame of the pilot light ...HUGE dangerous mess and/or burn down the kitchen if the oil lights up.

Unless! If the oil has been used too hard and needs to be changed, it's time to carry those open topped super heavy pots full of will-kill-you-hot oil and dump them in the barrel outside by the dumpsters so you can put room temp fresh oil in the fryers. whew!

The clean up is not just some light wiping down that can be easily interrupted, is what i'm saying.

You might have to do some kind of walk-in duty (moving around 50lb cases of lettuce and 50lb bags of onions to get to the stacks of five gallon buckets full of salad dressings and sauces to move so you can reach the giant metal pots and bus tubs full of prep and get it all organized and make sure it's all labeled and i have to stop now i'm having flashbacks)

THE POINT IS

by 15 or however many minutes to close, the line cook is doing an intense deep clean and probably has the whole stove taken apart to detail.

For some industrial stoves this means lifting off large cast iron plates that weigh like 20 lbs each and are still quite hot. Whatever metal burners are on there, you gotta take off and clean, you can see here the lines that indicate the large thick cast iron rectangles that sit on top of the burners to allow heavy pots to rest on. Those five (each has one front burner hole and one back burner hole, see?) have to be lifted off and cleaned with soap and a wire brush usually, and then the underneath area also has to be cleaned because a lot of shit falls through the burner holes on a busy night.

if you didn't do it when you did the flat top you have to do the grease trap (which can be like a full five minutes and is always disgusting).. You gotta clean out all the little gas jets in each burner with a wire or something so the burners all flame evenly, and sometimes you have to remove some of the natural gas piping that connects the burners to access where you have to clean.

you gotta clean out the bottom of the oven and the wire racks, and, oh gods, you gotta take down the filter vents from the hood fans above the stove.

See all the lined parts along the top of the wall?

those are hood vents, and as they pull air up they also pull a lot of grease and they have to be taken down and cleaned, then you gotta climb up there and scrub where they go before you put them back...

And then there's the mopping and floor drains and...

Anyway, that's what the line cook is doing when you walk in fifteen minutes before closing and order something that needs to be cooked on that stove. They are doing an entire industrial cleaning of a professional kitchen.

In some restaurants maybe one or two of these jobs will be every other night or even only twice a week, but in many, possibly most kitchens, ALL of these things happen EVERY night. You don't want to leave any food mess that might attract insects or rodents for one thing, so a really good kitchen is as close to brand new as you can get it every night.

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ORDER SOMETHING ANYWAY, HERE IS WHAT TO DO

open with an apology and ask the server to go ask what the cook would prefer you to order.

Any good server will already know what the cook is hoping for and what will make their line cook go into the walk in and scream. If it's significantly less than an hour to close and they say some variant of "oh anything is fine" they are either telling the lie their boss wants them to say, or they actually do not know what their line cook wants, and you can either use human connection and a conspiratorial just-between-us tone to get them to drop the customer-is-always-right act, or get them to actually go ask the cook.

It might be as specific as "the lasagna is easiest on the kitchen" or it might be a simple guideline like "nothing that requires the flat top" or "any of the sautés are easy" but a good line cook will probably have a system for if they have to make a couple of the most popular items after they start their close, so the answer is likely to include something most people like and you should be good to order that.

but for the love of all that's holy, please only do so at great need. Leave that last 30-60 minutes to the truly desperate and the crew's duties.

[bibibbon]

something that i can’t stand when it comes to this fandom is that basically no one can wrap their head around the fact that a victim can also be an abuser.

yes, rei was physically and emotionally abused by endeavor. yes, she was literally sold to him.

but she also just completely checked out and left fuyumi to pick up the slack.

yes, it’s not her fault that the abuse caused her to shut down, but as a result of that she neglected her children.

after she left fuyumi had to raise her brothers and become the woman of the house.

again, at the end of the day the root cause of the abuse is endeavor, but rei had checked out even before dabi's death.

it’s not victim blaming to point out the fact that rei neglected her kids. victim blaming would be saying that the abuse she suffered was her fault.

sometimes this fandom can be so fucking braindead. it’s always black and white, good or bad, hero or villain.

there is not a soul on this earth who is 100% a pure and good person.

all might, knowing full well what one for all contained and the massive responsibility that came with it. including an old wrinkly guy who will stop at nothing to take it, to a child and then proceed to not tell the aforementioned child what he was getting himself into. he with held crucial information because he knew that if he told izuku everything there was a chance he wouldn’t take it.

on the flip side, no one is 100% evil.

dabi cares deeply for the league, even though he doesn’t show it. shigaraki is literally the only person he will take orders from. some people may think he showed everyone hawks killing twice just for more ammo against the hero's. but thats not true at all. he cared about twice, and he wanted the world to know who he was. he wanted the hero’s to know that twice was human.

again i’m fucking rambling but i just hate how this fandom can be allergic to nuance and critical thinking.

I do think that many people do want a simple answer because at the end of the day it's easy to root for the good guys and boo the bad guys. There's also the fact that the narrative itself does sometimes struggle in creating a proper grey space morally.

Take for example the abuse victims in MHA. A lot of them are straight up innocent perfect heroes victims like izuku (who can never feel resentment in the narrative) and shoto while the others are straight up villains like Dabi and shigaraki. There's no in between with these characters and it's annoying. I remember talking with @mikeellee she has her saying of Shigaraki being the dark deku which honestly after that chapter where izuku comes into contact with a evil version of himself makes more sense.

I do agree with you in the sense that no one is 100% good or evil and in a way almost everyone is a victim to hero society. All might did willingly give a quirk that has a big responsibility to a naive quirkless child and all might is a bad mentor. However, at the same time all might is also a victim to a society he contributed to creating which is honestly so ironic and I wish horikoshi would explore these aspects of all mights character yet he doesn't and just gave us iron might (I dont like iron might tbh).

Also I love the fact that you brought up Rei himura and honestly Iam a big advocate for giving rei a redemption arc since it would of been more interesting and it would actually make sense to give her one than giving enji todoroki one. Rei was a victim and yes motherhood is difficult especially with the fact that she was abused and stripped of autonomy or agency but she also wasn't the best mother and that's something she does recognise in the narrative. My main problem however, is that the narrative doesn't allow her to fully engage with the family and she doesn't do much about it. Yes she apologises to both shoto and touya but what about her other children?!?! What about fuyumi who had to take on the role of a mother and shoulder a huge family burden? What about natsou who was also neglected?!?!. I say by giving rei himura a redemption arc the series can do so much that being actually involving the entire todoroki family into this, having more introduction to the hospital arc that may connect both touya and Rei and you can also have Rei make a connection with genten as @nyc3 suggested.

However, this also applies to the flip side. Characters like twice, shigaraki and Dabi aren't completely evil. Yes they have done bad things, yes they are bad people but they are also victims of the hero system and hero society. I do think that the leauge is a bit underdeveloped and I did definitely want more development between Dabi and shigaraki's while frenemies fiasco going on.

In the end I do think that almost every fandom may be allergic to nuance in one way or another. I do actually mean this because I remember seeing people try and say that Eren Yeager is completely good while some tried saying that he is completely evil but in reality he is complex and layered. You really can't put a definitive label on the aot characters because they all did their fair share of good and bad things and that's what makes them well written and enjoyable.

[merryslilhobbit]

There are so many things about the Daniel Ricciardo situation that frustrate and anger me, so I'm getting them off my chest before I lose the plot. I'm sure other people have said the same things, but here we go.

Horner made a whole big show of picking Daniel up after the McLaren debacle, bringing him back into "the family". Made himself out to be some sort of saviour. Rebuilding Daniel's confidence, his physical and mental health. Got a dig in at Zak in a press conference about "feeding Daniel up" because he was skinny. Invited DTS to see his return at Silverstone 2023. So to kick Daniel to the curb just a few races before the end of the season? Because they have "a lot of data on Daniel" and need to see other options for the future? Hypocritical c*nt.

Next, replacing him with someone they're not confident enough in to give a contract to straight away? Yes, Liam did a good job in Daniel's absence last year. This is absolutely not me shitting on Liam - I like him, and I think he and Yuki will be good teammates. But he's been out of full time racing for a while. Allegedly RB weren't overly excited about his testing times in the summer. While it will be interesting to see how he compares to Yuki, why are RB hanging onto Liam when they don't seem confident enough to give him a full time seat? Why are they so determined to keep pushing this one? (Yes I know the answer is probably contracts, but still.)

Then there's the fact that Daniel has actually outperformed Yuki in 6 of the last 9 races (since the start of the European leg). In the same period, they've scored the same number of points. Daniel has also been more consistent in his finishing position than Yuki. In terms of form, Singapore excluded (but I think we can forgive him that one, given the media shitstorm), he's been the better of the two and isn't it meant to be that the first person you need to beat is your teammate? There's only so much you can achieve in a tractor.

And we can't forget the Checo situation. Following the first six races he's bombed in comparison to Max. He's probably cost Red Bull the Constructors'. He was given a few races to improve, didn't and then was kept anyway (probably because of money and the Mexican GP). He often qualifies further behind (in time) Max than Daniel does Yuki. I know Red Bull are coming out now and saying they found a problem with their design from Barcelona last year, when Checo first started reporting issues but frankly I'm calling bullshit on that. As mentioned, Checo had six very good races and results at the start of 2024. And some decent ones at the end of 2023. At one point there was speculation that Daniel might even replace Checo mid-season (some reports say it was a done deal), so in the space of a few weeks to go from that to being dropped himself? I have whiplash.

And I think that's the hardest part. A lot of people were probably aware that it could be difficult for Daniel to get a seat for next year. But at no point was there any suggestion that he might get replaced mid-season. Not even in the middle, six races before the end. When Red Bull confirmed in the summer break that both Checo and Daniel would see out the seasons in their current seats.

Red Bull have created an absolute PR disaster and they deserve it. Driver of the Day, amongst many other things in the last 48 hours, reflects the love and respect so many people have for Daniel. People who see how emotional he was, who see that he didn't have an opportunity to say goodbye properly (fuck, even McLaren did that - remember the Monza 2021 photo on his steering wheel?). People who recognise that dumping him so close to the end of the season is ridiculous.

In the end, I hope that Daniel really is at peace with it all and is in better shape than he left McLaren; that he can be proud of all of his achievements in the sport. Drivers come and go, but very few make their mark in the way Daniel has done. He may not have broken records or won championships, but the fact that he will still be remembered for a very long time despite those things is a testament to his character, to the sort of person we all know and love.

[godkillerbrigade]

Do you have any tips for people who want to create games?

hello! yes! i'm a full-time indie dev who mostly works on small-team projects or solo projects, so most of my advice is geared towards Doing That. if you wanna work in a major studio, or wear only one hat, my advice will be significantly less useful

spend some time fucking around in an engine. literally any engine. fucking around is a key component of actually getting a working knowledge of how game development works

DON'T start with your big huge exciting game idea. that idea is the culmination of your training arc, not the start. it'll be waiting for you once you know how to do it justice.

make something small. no, smaller, no, even smaller. finish it as fast as possible. put it on itch for free. get three downloads and one comment. read that comment. note what they think is wrong, but don't pay attention to their proposed fix. then set your sights on something slightly bigger and go again.

more game isn't better game. if a game isn't fun to play for three minutes, it won't be fun to play for three hours. just like you wouldn't build a house on sand, make sure you have a very good foundation before you start building content on top. a bad game cannot be fixed by adding extra costumes.

decide what you're making games for. you don't have to decide this immediately, but when you embark on a mid-large-sized project you need to have definite goals for what you want out of its release. "i want to make money" is an acceptable answer (more on that later); "i want to express myself" is an acceptable answer; "i want to fuck around" is an acceptable answer; "i want to make money and express myself by fucking around" is Objectively More Difficult. if you make a game of significant scale without planning for success in a particular direction, you're more likely to be disappointed by the result

making money as an indie dev is fucking difficult. and not difficult as in "it's hard work," difficult as in "there are a ton of external factors that will determine your success, and while making a good game helps, there's literally no way to be certain a project will make any money." the vast majority of indie games are monetary flops. if you do decide to go pro, figure out a very robust system to keep your bills paid in case your big dream project is a flop, because there's even odds that it will be and there's nothing you can do about it. contract work can be good for this, as can Just Having Money, but that's easier said than done

find other developers on the same journey as you and make friends with them. do jams with them. talk about your projects. get better together.

if you run into a problem, google it and look at each of the top 3-5 results. every problem can be solved in a number of ways, and sometimes the best method for your use case is non-obvious

good luck!

i'll leave you with my favorite smbc, which resonates very deeply with my own experience with gamedev:

[dekusleftsock]

Waking up in a cold sweat thinking about all the parallels in MHA and how everything comes around full circle; and we’re seeing it especially prominently right now in the Togachako plotline, where Ochako and Uraraka are both doing the same things for each other that they’ve done for Deku, but with positive outcomes. (One example: Uraraka grabbing Deku to calm him did not work, but it worked with Toga). Realizing that the one thing that hasn’t come around yet is Himiko asking Ochako to be her girlfriend, like she asked Deku to be her boyfriend. Despite her clear and known feelings, she’s never actually straight up asked. And if the pattern continues as Himiko and Ochako having better results with each other than they ever had with Deku; than the only possible outcome is for Ochako to say yes….Hori what are you doing

ITS SO

It’s

ITS SO SO BAOSBSISKSIHAHSBBSBBSBDHHDH

I’m so excited to see togas reply, I’m so excited to see deku vs shigaraki’s fight, I’m so excited to see how bakugou is resurrected, im so excited for everything.

Regardless of everything, I know it in my heart Himiko is gonna ask her to be her girlfriend, will you accept her Ochako? Will you become selfish in the face of a society that expects you to be on a constant performance?

I live in a very pessimistic view of the world, I try NOT to have it and it’s the reason why this account has always tried to stay hopeful. It’s why I try to constantly convince the people around me. All so that I can ask the question, “Do you really think this will happen?” And the answer has more recently been “Yes”. It feeds me into a cycle I created in order to become a more positive person. I think being pessimistic and angry at the world is common for people of my age group, hell, even people into their 20’s, maybe even 30’s. It can fester deep into adulthood, possibly the rest of your life. Negativity and hopelessness thrive in the absence of support and love.

It’s that same lesson mha tries to teach us. Pessimism and ego are the root to the problem, whatever that problem may be. From controlling human emotion, being overly, even unnecessarily sacrificial, holding your power back, not being able to see your own limits, being in love, all of it has always been something solvable through love and support.

I think all of the problems I’ve listed, along with all the characters they’re tied to, are in one way or another tied to ego or pessimism.

And it’s THIS that I keep on loop in my head. The selfishness, parallels, evidence, whatever the fuck doesn’t matter half as much to me as trying to control what power I have over the story—which is how I react to it. It doesn’t matter if I’m right or wrong, it doesn’t matter if this all tears down in a wonderful hellscape of a fire and I get my ego burned for a few weeks, what matters is that I let myself be HAPPY about something, even if that something is not guaranteed. This whole thought process hits so much closer to me right now. It’s something I’ve thought for… basically the entire time I’ve been on tumblr, but it’s been on the back burner because for the first time I’ve realized there’s no more time left. Mha doesn’t have a billion chapters leading up to this fight at all, Toga and Ochako are having their ending story right now. No matter how much I find, no matter how much I theorize, it ultimately doesn’t MATTER ANYMORE.

And yet, I still don’t care. It all comes back in an infinite circle, back to the original ideas the story has always tried to keep within itself. Just like I have kept my ideas on the back burner until now, mha has kept its romantic ideas on the back burner too; this is the true cross roads, this is the final answer. All eyes are on you horikoshi, you have all the power right now to make or break everything.

Break the internet, Horikoshi.

[deservedgrace]

Am I being petty? My dad is always saying stuff like “I’m praying for you to be successful” or “god made you perfect”. I know he means well but it’s so uncomfortable whenever he does those things. I don’t want you to pray for me, I need real help. You don’t know the real me and you probably wouldn’t be as proud if you did. He still thinks I’m the perfect Christian boy instead of an atheist who’s figuring out their gender. He claims to love and support whatever I want, but he always leaves out being a girl when listing off topics, and has questioned me at random times about trans athletes when I’m too tired to think of an answer.

In my opinion, absolutely not.

I was actually just talking about the prayer thing with my friend last night. So many christians use prayer as almost a silencing method, whether intentionally or unintentionally. When I left the church I realized just how abysmal my comforting/supporting methods were because while I was in the church, I and everyone around me relied on cutting uncomfortable topics short with "well I'll be praying for you" or ask to pray with you about it, and offer literally NO other support while also expecting prayer to, just fix it magically. Hilariously, the same people that are always like, "god's not a genie, you're praying wrong if you're expecting him to answer every prayer you have" seem to ask for and expect genie-like responses from him while doing NO work of their own to support the people they're praying for. Prayer is Very Very often used as a substitute for support. Even when I was deep in the church it never felt sufficient, but I couldn't say anything because it was supposed to be sufficient and if it wasn't sufficient that was a problem with me and my "sinful nature". Churches and christians that focus on prayer over actually being the hands and feet of jesus (fucking doing something about it) aren't fostering proper community and support. They're fostering a culture of not being able to talk about difficult things, of suffering in silence, and of relying on a silent and unprovable god which often results in being taught to rely solely on yourself.

I really feel for you with the gender thing. I don't know the full context of your specific situation but I see "god made you perfect" used to silence any notion of being trans far, far too often. The implication being, being cis is the default, being trans is going against who "god made you to be", etc. I've noticed this especially of christians who believe in complementarianism (men and women have different roles to fulfill), many of them tend to "love and support whoever you are"........ so long as it falls into their tiny box of what they deem acceptable. I don't want to turn this into a whole thing about gender but even in a worldview that doesn't recognize the existence of trans people, there isn't a definition of womanhood that includes every woman and excludes every non-woman and vice versa for men ("a woman is someone who can have babies" excludes those with infertility issues, something that affects up to 20% of women, "a woman is someone who has XX chromosomes" excludes intersex women, "a woman is someone who has a uterus" excludes women who have had hysterectomies, "a woman is someone who has had a uterus at SOME point" excludes women that simply born without one, which happens to about 1 in 5000 based on a quick google, etc etc). My point being, they're trying to draw these confining and limiting boxes where they can't. Humans don't work like that. Their idea of perfection is something that is simply biologically and sociologically and historically unsupported. Gender is complicated because humans are complicated. It's disappointing that some people can't see the beauty in that and it's devastating that it often causes so much pain and suffering to those around them.

I really hope you're able to find proper support. If possible, I encourage you to (safely!!!) continue exploring your gender. And it makes complete sense that you'd feel uncomfortable about these things. Prayer without proper support is skirting responsibility at best. Tearing down trans athletes and doing the christian "god made you perfect" thing with the implication of cis being the default is not a supportive environment to be around. I'm not going to be able to remember the quote verbatim but one of my favorite god/trans quotes is something along the lines of "god made trans people for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and grapes but not wine; so humanity may share in the act of creation". I'm not necessarily encouraging this as a "gotcha" statement, I can hear in my head exactly how my church would respond to that. But outside the church I think it's a beautiful reframe despite me not believing in god anymore. And if you would prefer something less religiously related: I'm deeply sorry you're not in a supportive environment. There's nothing wrong with you. As far as I can tell you're having a very normal reaction to the shit you're having to put up with and the situation you're in.

[doloresstarfish]

BROKE YOUR OWN HEART

(Can't Finish What You Start)

Remus Lupin & Original Male Character

cw: graphic despictions of violence, angst, blood.

Summary

CHAPTER O4

At first it looked like a normal pub. When they got inside, Mouth and Elliot greeted the busy man behind the bar while going straight to the back, like they were co owners of the place. Remus followed close behind them as they opened the door to the basement, being inmediately attacked by the screams and chants of what sounded like a full quidditch stadium.

It was an old room with tall ceilings and concrete walls, so large it could probably fit two of Elliot's houses, if it weren't for the massive crowd of sweaty men inside.

On the way there Remus learned that they were heading to a fight club. A bloody fight club. And he thought that maybe Mouth was right about getting hurt burn.

At least it now made sense as to why Elliot never hesitated to throw a mean right hook if he found it necessary. He was certain no prissy motherfucker in Hogwarts had any chance against him. And they didn't.

They got just in time before they closed the doors, so they paid the entrance fee -five pounds each- and a bearded guy asked if any of them were fighting tonight. Mouth and Elliot had said yes. 'Oslo' seemed to know them well since they greeted eachother by name and handed both boys two ribbons to tie on their wrists. Elliot got red and Mouth blue.

The fights seemed to have started earlier than usual since they were already pulling a manic guy on top of another bloody face. They dragged the passed out person away from the man-made circle on the middle of the basement and a bald man raised the winners hand in the air, who offered the chanting crowd a crooked smile as he got handed a red plastic bag filled with money.

This was not how Remus imagined spending his summer.

He couldn't wait to see James and Sirius and tell them everything.

The same man held two empty bags -one red and one blue- in each hand and walked around as everyone streched to get their money in before two different men got in the circle and start wrestling.

Remus kept watching as the bald man handed the two bags to a couple of guys in the stairs. They started couting the contents of each bag and splitted both at the middle, waiting for the results.

"If you win you get half of the money the people against you betted, the other half goes to the winner's crowd" Elliot leaned on a concrete pillar, hands on his pockets in a relaxed way "So if fifty people are against you, you get two hundred and fifty pounds"

"Since the stablished amount is ten pounds each" Mouth added "Only rich assholes come see us getting fucked up. They get off on it or something" Elliot laughed "But last saturday of the month means double bets. That's five hundred, baby"

They watched in silence as they dragged another guy out of the floor. This time Blue won. They repeated the whole thing.

"What will happen if no one is against you?" Remus asked Elliot. Mouth snorted at the question while moving his limbs around, trying to warm up.

"That's not a problem Elliot particulary has" he answered.

"Let's just say I'm easy to hate" A knowing smile crept on his face but Remus didn't dare ask anything else.

Soon after it was Mouth's turn to go in. They wished him good luck and the fight begun. He wasn't either too tall or too short, but his beefy muscles were undeniable, so a lot of people betted on him. His opponent was on the shorter side, but was agile and looked experienced.

At first it was pretty even between the two of them, a lot of dodging and not much contact. Then Mouth got the upper hand with a strong kick right on the chest. Until he got swiped by his left knee and fell down to the floor.

"Fuck. That's his bad knee. Broke it one time and never fully healed" Elliot said, worried for his friend.

At the end nothing too serious happened to Mouth. But he did lose after a punch on the side of his head that nearly knocked him fully out, so they called it quits.

Elliot was next.

"You know the rules, gentleman! No shirts and no weapons!" The bald man exclaimed.

As Elliot started walking Remus was suddenly filled with an inmense sense of dread. What if he got seriously injured? Fuck, what if he died? He should've never let him do this shit.

"Merlin fuck, Elliot" his voice wavered, face as white as a sheet "Please be careful" the boy just turned around without stopping and grinned at him.

Fucking wanker.

He watched as Elliot slipped off his shirt and threw it to the ground while opening his way through the crowd of people, that started shamelessly booing at the sight of the familiar boy.

When Elliot finally arrived to the center of the circle he found Remus worried eyes again, but smiled and looked at him as to saying "See?"

Fucking wanker.

His opponent was a white guy with his torso and neck covered in ugly tattoos. He looked like a rabid dog, saizing up a relaxed looking Elliot with muttered growls.

Almost everyone got their hands inside the blue bag. They fucking loathed him. Remus watched the barely half filled red bag as baldie handed both of them to the crew.

The fight was up. Tattoo guy inmediately launched forward to grab Elliot but he dodged him easily, keeping his fists in front of his face. They walked around in circules, both challenging the other to approach them. Tattoo guy finally gave in and threw a fist at Elliot, who managed to move to the side and sucker punch him square in the jaw, making him back down with a groan of pain.

Elliot was lean but strong, well defined muscles danced around his body thanks to the demanding job at the factory. He could be Michelangelo's fucking David, Remus thought. Although having absolute baby-like features, his permanent poker face made up for any problem he could have from lack of intimidation.The other guy looked more like a junkie psycho chihuahua than a real competition. And that might just be more dangerous.

The younger boy leaped forward and got another hit, this time on the eye. But Tattoo guy trashed his arms around, making it impossible to predict where were they going to end up, so Elliot got hit in the nose and the crowd cheered louder as blood started to pour.

Remus could feel his heart trying to thump out of place and had to close his eyes after a couple minutes. He couldn't see this.

The crowd started booing and Remus inmediately thought the worst, and quickly opened his eyes, expecting to see the beautiful face that belonged to Elliot all fucked up on the floor, getting dragged.

But then he remebered they hated him, so they were booing because of Elliot's red ribbon swaying high in the air around his wrist. He had won. The biggest shit eating grin Remus had ever seen on his crimson lips as he admired the crowd that insulted him.

"We've got the winner, gentleman!" The bald man pushed the red bag close to Elliot's chest as the noise got louder "Hold this tight in your way out, kid" he told him.

So Elliot took off running through the crowd, grabbing Remus by the hand and making him pick up his speed as they ran up the stairs and closed the door. He couldn't risk getting the bag snatched by a pissed off asshole, so he dragged Remus out of the pub all the way back to the basketball court, where Elliot dropped his hand to rest them on his knees, trying to catch a breath. Remus did the same as they looked at eachother.

"Fuck"

"Yeah, fuck" They started laughing.

"I can't believe I just got out of a fight club" said Remus, calming down.

"I can't believe I just got out alive of that fight" retorted Elliot jokingly, indicating Remus to follow him, so they started walking home.

"The bloke was mad" Remus sizzed "I couldn't even watch after he started spinning like an helicopter and hit you in the nose" At the injuries mention, Elliot tried to wipe some of the blood that got on his mouth, but the nose had stopped bleeding "Shit, it's not broken, is it?"

"Nah, it would hurt like a bitch if it was. I'm actually pretty okay. Definitely got worse than this" Elliot said, actually surprised. "Maybe you're my lucky charm" He sent a flirty smile to Remus, who wanted to murder him for it.

"Lucky charm or not, I'm not ever going back to that place" Elliot snorted.

"Fair enough"

It was already fully dark out, the stars shining dimly -nothing like Remus sky back in Wales-. The sandy haired blonde had catched the pubs clock before leaving the place. By his suprise, it was just eight thirty, the whole day had felt so much shorter.

They arrived at the front lawn. Elliot's eyes went straight to the driveway, checking for a beated up grey car, but it was empty, as always.

"Fuck. They can't see me like this" he stopped Remus before he could get any further. Elliot pulled off his pants -again- and grabbed the hose -that they never used-, letting water pour as hard as it could without risking getting caught by the noise.

"Merlin. Can you stop getting undressed in public? You can get arrested for nudity, you know?" Elliot laughed as an old lady walked down the street, eyeing Elliot without holding back. Remus rolled his eyes at the boy for waving a hand up to the woman teasingly.

"Why? Jelous, Lupin?" Elliot said, going back to rinsing his chest and face out of any trace for blood. Without it Elliot looked mostly normal, he still had some time before the bruises develope, so he can make up an excuse tomorrow. "Good enough, right?" Remus nodded sheepishly as Elliot slipped the jeans up again, they were dirty but the dark color helped to diguise it a little.

They passed the door and saw Elliot's mom cooking something in the kitchen as they greeted everyone inside. Lupe and Eric where running around in the living room, Dominic was struggling to catch up to them, but happily. Gia was probably studying in her bedroom.

"Hey, guys! Dinner will be ready soon, okay?" She said "Why are you shirtless... and wet?" Elliot looked down to his body as if that was the first time he saw it too. Keeping the red bag of money behind his back.

"We went swimming down the lake. Must have left it there" she looked suspiciously at him but didn't say anything else, going back to the cutting board.

They both took showers -separated- and changed into some clean, sweat-free, clothes. They sat together on Elliot's bed. The window was open, letting a summer breeze refresh them even more, thanks to the thin layer of cold water still on their skin.

Remus watched, almost hipnotized, as Elliot tended to a small cut under his right eye that he was glad Marian hadn't noticed yet and as he spreaded over his face some antinflamatory cream he kept on the dresser.

After Elliot finished he grabbed the red bag and let all the money out on the bed, crumpled up in a high mountain between the two boys.

"Wanna help me count?" Elliot asked, making Remus snap out of his daze and nod quickly.

They counted in silence, scrunching their face in disgust when handling some of the bills that had specks of blood on them.

"Do you do this often?" Remus murmured, without looking up from the task, but could sense Elliot gazing up at him.

"Not anymore. Only for double bets" he shrugged.

"Why?"

"Why do I fight or why I don't do it often anymore?" Elliot snickered, raising a mocking brow to try and alivate the intimate vibe that made him a little too uncomfortable.

"The latter" Remus serious tone made contrast with his friends nochalant attitude.

"I can't afford dying, Rem" he shook his head jokingly, althought it was a sincere explanation. Remus had to stop himself from literally gulping at the nickname.

"Why did you even start fighting, then?"

Elliot sighed exasperated, as to let Remus know that this wasn't a conversation he wanted to have. What he didn't know was that the taller boy had stopped caring enough to keep walking on eggshells around him, and decided that if he wanted to get in, maybe he had to break the door down.

But Elliot didn't let him.

The sardonic grin returned to his face as he raised the neat stack of money in his hand " 'Cause of seven hundred and sixty pounds, baby"

Remus let him have this one.

[ewingstan]

Finished Twig

Alright, some thoughts. Whew.

This will be mostly on the epilogues, because that’s what I have on my mind and that’s what I have the most to say about. But I have a lot to say on the whole thing, so please ask me anything about the story, its end, and its characters, because I’d love the chance to put my thoughts down. I know I have some character asks I need to get to, feel free to keep sending those in. 

I feel confident in saying I love at least three of the epilogues. There’s a triptych in Red, Shirley, and Emily’s stories about finding a way to live in a wasteland world. The devastated, lonely woman in the devastated, lonely landscape, wondering what they were even fighting for after so much was lost, and finding the bit of green that answers her. Shirely and Pierre getting their swansong scenes, flexing the problem-solving muscle they’ve built up as Sy and Jessie’s go-to competent people, showing that it will be difficult for the old order of things to reestablish itself. Emily getting to live and to love and to be loved, to rub impropriety in propriety’s personified faces, to start living the type of life we’d all hope to be living if Twig’s technology was made available (that is, taking full advantage of body modification with our partners and then going at it like rabbits).

I am not sure at how I feel at the proposed ending Sy- sorry, Simon- gives the king. It fits with the world that Sy wanted when he was discussing that with Jamie and Helen, way back when. Constant conflict, no room for stagnation. But I worry about how much of a break from the order of things it will truly be. Was the problem really that the academies were stagnant? A lack of challenges wasn’t what led to the use of their population as experiment-fodder. Conflict would only make them less likely to hold back, as we saw since the start of civil war breaking out in the Crown States.

But maybe I’m being too short-sighted on this, and should be paying more attention to the promised end-state. Maybe the stagnation being prevented was the slate-wiping the Infante and his ilk seemed to desire, the plan to choke the world and come back in a few centuries to repopulate it with loyal lab-grown subjects. By contrast, the endstate Simon promises has the Nobles killed, the academies curtailed. The world not choked by power wedded to control. Red, Shirley and Emily’s chapters becoming prophesies, an example of what could come in a world where people don’t need to fear idle lesser nobles making their towns into play-places, or the academy forcing itself to be necessary for everyone’s survival.

I don’t know. Perhaps it’s all just the framing of things that was needed to convince Adam (which yes, I do love the full-circle detail of the king being fucking Frankenstein’s Monster, absolutely terrific as the final tidbit of worldbuilding we get). Or maybe I’m wrong to try and find something resembling a happy ending resulting from this plan. Lord Simon’s narration certainly seemed to suggest that he had left all semblances of morality to his past self. But I don’t really think Simon should be considered separate from Sy. This was a story about growing up. “The poisonous child wasn’t a child anymore.” “Lambs grow up, and then they aren’t lambs anymore.” Simon is Sy, grown up, in the most circuitous way possible but the only way his fucked-up psyche could really allow. His conversation with Duncan confirmed it for me: what if I’m different from the person I was, when I became attached to these people? What if I’m just putting in new hooks? Simon framed it in his head as manipulation, because that’s what he is, but really that just describes any group that stays together over time. No one stays the same, and if we stay together its because we’ve found things to like in the people we’ve become.

At the end of things, all Simon’s done is given himself the biggest bug-box to shake yet, with his friends at his side grown into Nobles and Doctors. Crown and academy wedded together in a way the originals couldn’t be. I can see why Lord King Adam took the deal—sure, he’s at the head, but its of a beast he can’t even really steer at this point. Like professor Lawrence seeing the Infante as something he needed to flow with until he was given a good argument for taking a fucking harpoon gun to the bastard, Adam helms a system whose momentum seems predestined to take it to a place no one would actually want, but whose avoidance would mean the Crown and Academy giving up power and control. The Lambs are offering to force that avoidance for him.

Alright this got a bit meandering. Final thoughts: I still think this is the best of the three wildbow works I’ve read so far. Worm finished stronger for me, but then, Worm had one of the best endings I’ve gotten the pleasure of experiencing in any medium. I might prefer being in the headspace of Taylor over Sy, at least marginally. But the character interactions, the worldbuilding, the struggle with how to have meaningful relationships when you’re a perfect manipulator, the fact that we get to see such a large cast change and mature— its truly amazing writing. Thanks, WB. This one has been a ride.

...

Now, do I have the willpower to go even a day before starting the Glow-worm chapters?

[avaantares]

More on that pirated fanfic thing...

@spamatron3000 wrote: #i doubt they have any of mine #primarily because only like two of them have ever been finished

I notified a few other authors whose works were listed along with mine (there are TONS but I just ran out of time today), and some of the fics that company had pirated were not even finished on AO3, so incomplete status does not appear to be any protection from piracy.

@littlebluewraith wrote: #i'm super curious about how much--if anything--they might have changed #did they at least ctrl+f and replace names or was it left fully intact?? lmao holy shit

NOPE. Not only did they not change anything, they didn't even do the logical thing and download the auto-generated ebook format from AO3! Instead, they appear to have copied the HTML version directly and dropped it into a (bad) ebook file generator, because it's full of formatting errors like underlined text and single-line paragraph breaks that wouldn't be present in a properly-formatted epub like the ones AO3 generates. (I read downloaded fics on my Kindle, so I know what the formatting looks like.) I looked at some other pirated books in their lineup, and it's the same thing in all of them. It makes me think the fics may have been scraped by a poorly-programmed bot, rather than manually copied.

Didn't even make a fake author name, holy shit. Is the lazily pirated fanfic genre really lucrative enough to make this worth it?? Who the fuck is buying these???

As for how lucrative it is... Sadly, the answer is very, which is why it's a huge problem throughout the publishing world. One common tactic is for pirates to steal and reupload ebooks from legitimate small-press or self-published authors, and then turn around and DMCA the authors to get the legitimate copies of their books kicked off of Amazon! Since Amazon gives the benefit of the doubt to the first person to file notice, this often results in the real authors' accounts being shut down, leaving the pirated copies without any sales competition for those titles.

In the case of fanfiction, since there's no cost for the material they're selling and very little risk of legal reprisal from fanfic authors (who tend to avoid legal entanglements over IP, given the fuzzy gray area fanfiction occupies), any revenue from the pirated books is pure profit for the pirates. Hundreds of millions of people shop on Amazon, so if even 0.000001% of them buy a $2.99 ebook, they still stand to make thousands of dollars from the scheme. It's a numbers game.

As for who is buying them... The pirate company is grouping them into series and dumping them into the same keyword pool as a bunch of other genre ebooks, so given the way Amazon's algorithms work, the pirated titles have a high chance of showing up in recommendations for people reading (for example) genre supernatural romance, or mecha war stories, or whatever. Thanks to One-Click purchasing and Kindle reward promotions, the buyer may not even realize it's fanfiction until after they've bought it!

And the sad truth is, a lot of people don't care if it's pirated, as long as it's cheap and/or convenient. Look how many people shop on sites like Redbubble without verifying that the seller is the original artist, even though a massive percentage of the content there is stolen.

[ntaras]

"i wouldn’t say she answered to no one in the og timeline. she did answer to “the elders”, as she was the one commanded by them to destroy datusha but i do think it’s not the same as the misguided loyalty she shows in the new timeline. she is very submissive to the coven in the new timeline which is a trait that doesn’t suit her." - exactly ! They've made her come off so.......helpless. Meek, almost,which is very much not her. OG Nitara didn't have a singular fuck to give about anyone that wasn't her or Vaterneus. Did she answer to the elders? Yes. Did she do as she pleased regardless? Also yes.

" like would she obey them? yeah, she has and does. but she’s very blindsided and that utter loyalty seems to by why she’s not manipulative and clever anymore- she’s *just* really desperate due to that loyalty. which once again, don’t like. og nitara would never" - that's the other thing. The way that she seems to have no self-reliance at all........it's one thing to answer to a council,but it's another to be a spineless enabler as you do so. I know she grew up under the system and all, but they could have played with that a bit.

She should be more........self-aware,I guess. Maybe a case where she knows that the Coven is slowly destroying her home,but at the same time,it benefits her to play by their rules. She's loyal to her home and people,but she's also not willing to lose whatever favour and status she has with the Coven as their seeming chosen one. Let her be selfish.

Or maybe bring family dynamics into her story. What was it like for Nitara being raised by a military general like her mother? What expectations were put on her as a result of her mother being so accomplished and illustrious? Why does the Coven have such a vested interest in her? Is that due to her mother's prestige or Nitara's own achievements?

I think my main problem with this version of Nitara is the way she was bludgeoned by Dominic. At least give the woman something to do. That's all she needed. Give her a mission or purpose. Hell,bringing back the beef between her and Ashrah would have done wonders for them both in terms of development. One little scuffle in story mode is not enough. They can't stand each other as a rule,so let them fight.

i agree with pretty much everything you said. i want to believe that if nitara returns in future games they’ll perhaps delve somewhat into her growth/her character, but it’s clear she’s just some vampire lady to dominic so hopes are low.

i would actually be interested in a plot line for her where she has to battle between being champion of the people or champion of the coven- and to actually choose between survival of the people which would mean going against the coven and eventually seeking full dependence from them or staying loyal to the coven in the comfort of their rule. like there’s some path for a story for her but like i said, chances are low of doing something with her. it took reptile like 30 years to not get his ass continuously kicked + kung lao still isn’t anything but the second best. nitara isn’t getting anything for a while lol

the beef between ashrah and nitara was so minuscule and we actually SAW them interact compared to armageddon where their beef was confined to written form and yet still gave soooooo many interesting concepts. like a couple paragraphs of text told us so much about them versus getting so little with them actually speaking to each other in the new game.

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

gods sometimes I hate that I can't think about Palestine, about everything going on in the world, 24/7.

I ask myself "well why not? why not just think about that stuff and school and chores? why does fUCKING FANDOM and special interests eat your life and personality like this? don't you have any empathy?"

and I know the answer. I know its because there have been MANY times in my life where I've taken my own advice and tried to think about "the issues" 24/7. I became a total asshole. angry, stupid, often self-destructive. I didn't make any change or contribution besides starting fights with strangers online, and any effort I DID make to contribute irl just led to so many messes that the people who were actually helping then had to step aside and clean up.

the times I'm most capable of help are when I'm able to keep a balance between awareness of the problems in the world, with other stuff (both fandom and just like... homework n shit). it feels SO wrong and SO un-natural to actively prioritize fandom, but I've tried the "right" way so much and been such a dick and done a good bit of harm.

and I've tried the "wrong" way this past year and done more good/participated more than ever.

results speak for themselves.

and ik everyone does activism differently.

I'm obviously not gonna break any boycotts, holy shit no. I'm still attending protests and making posters/art for local activist movements and doing what I can when I can.

its just so tempting to put 99.99999% of myself into REALLY feeling that grief and rage and helplessness... but again. I know, yknow?

I know how that ends. I may feel righteous and empathetic and, honestly, Cool(tm), but I'm not doing shit for anyone

if mainlining destiel into my brainstem lets me show up for protests and make art and do all of that while NOT being a total bag of dicks...

ugh. it just feels fucking weird

(& yes, I did try the "really feel it, no self-anesthetizing with fandom and no distancing myself from it on purpose" approach as recently as this fall. after physically forcing myself to not send threats to kill strangers' pets, exposing my unmasked face to cameras while chalking a govt building, being kinda socially inappropriate and considering vandalism, i realized that it does in fact still make me an asshole.)

like I feel guilty about purposefully distancing myself for these issues, but also simultaneously understand from past experience that this is the best way for me to make actual, meaningful contributions. its weird.

if i go full-in on Understanding(tm) it, I FEEL morally/spiritually superior, and sure, it MIGHT make me a better activist, but years of experience tell me that, despite how I'm perceiving myself in that moment, it wont.

if I keep distancing myself, ie LITERALLY PURPOSEFULLY seeking out fandom/yt brainrot/Shiny Happy Things to AVOID thinking about it, I do more. I'm involved more, go to more protests, meetings, talk to friends about it.

...that is the reverse of how those things should work.

I think this may be the same kind of reason I don't do existentialism or organized religion. there are some things, really deep or emotional things, that if I think abt them too hard I get stuck EXTREMELY far up my own ass in how I can "only" think of these things or else I'm "awful"

but that's it. its all just thinking. and feeling. and not acting.

...I guess I'll go back to obsessing over my little shows and ships, making actual contributions to anti-genocide, anti-colonialism, pro-palestine efforts

and wondering why the FUCK I'm like this.

...also ok tbh my desire for some kind of moral or spiritual depth/fulfillment/righteousness/forgiveness???? via immersing myself in the experience of VICTIMS OF ONGOING GENOCIDE to try to understand their experience is uhhh

creepy.

especially given that its at the direct detriment of my actual activism and to the emotional harm of peers and fellow activists.

yeah hm actually that is just kind of creepy. and not helpful.

[didnt-hear-cold-as-you-live]

Describing your life as unseasoned chicken sounds like you’re trying to be in love with him because it’s what you always wanted, but you’re actually not so in love. You just think you should be. You’re in your “the way I loved you” era except it’s about the same guy. Do you love him or what you thought he would be?

I’m sorry I guess I’m surmising a totally different and more complicated problem for the sake of the one we’re talking about, the further explanation of which is that I am content. I feel safe. That’s how you’re supposed to feel! Once believed love would be burning red but it’s golden like daylight and all that; I saw a quote once that was like “I didn’t realize how boring love would be. I was so used to war I didn’t know how to recognize that it was good when I finally felt peace”. It’s everything it should be. I am safe and I am loved and he is a wonderful partner.

However. The minds of damaged people in particular operate via, like, solving problems. My brain is so used to chaos and issues it is like. Addicted to finding issues and dissecting them and over analyzing them from every angle and I like telling my friends and gossiping and acting out and being chaotic and fucking everything up and the cycle starts over as a result. My whole life my brain has been solving problems because I came from a fucked up hostile family. I don’t know how to handle when there aren’t active problems to solve. So, when there aren’t, when everything is just “good”; not great, there’s struggles in my career, I don’t have many friends. I’m not exctatic. But there are no active PROBLEMS going on and my relationship is safe, my brain goes fucking HAYWIRE and just starts like. Literally self destructing because I don’t know how to live in an existence where I am not picking apart and analyzing issues in my life and it starts to peel back the layers of a DEEEP unhappiness with my career and friends and family and every facet of my life that is lurking under the surface that all the little side quests mask and are fun to fuck around with and get in the way of focusing on all that. And I can’t really actively FIX any of those bigger things so I yearn for the chaos and it’s actually terrifying that the only way I could regenerate the chaos IS by being single and losing the one safe thing I actually have ever given a fuck about. It’s like playing with little zaps of static electricity 24/7 to mask the fact that I have a deep full body ache that will never go away. And like. Self harming is not the answer??? But I miss the fun little zaps of static electricity bc now everything just aches.

[catboyolli]

sunday morning rambling/vent about creativity and other stuff

i have been trying so hard to enter a creative mode again but it's just.... not working at all

i don't remember when was the last time i grabbed a pencil and made something on paper, and i have my drawing tablet in front of me but everytime i think about finally doing something it feels like a waste of time and the fact that i have been looking at art that's clearly out of my skill range doesn't help much

(the solution of course would be practice and study and practice and study but i feel like the results of said practice would be devastating and i don't know if i'm in the mental headspace to accept that the stuff i create is basically trash (i know it is but knowing and having concrete proof are two different things))

then there's the 10 year anniversary event in a few months and i really want to participate and i fucking know i should've started earlier but now not even the deadline is making me react to get up and do something because what's the point if it's going to be trash? what's the fucking point of doing something you love about someones you also love when all i will see are the thousands of mistakes? what's the point of creating and delivering something that's not good enough for my standards that i won't allow myself to lower? what's the point when a lot of people can create better stuff than mine?

and i go back to uni classes in mid august so that + my full time job + the amount of studying that is needed for this course will leave me with barely any time to live, so naturally i won't have time to sit and draw

btw i have been trying to craft a sort of fantasy au since mid 2021 and i settled on the final classes this month but now there's a bigger problem: the character sheets and the setting

the tabletop rpg i chose isn't an easy one, it has tons of ruling and and unnecesary long list of spells, so building the character sheets is driving me crazy but i don't want to change to an easier one because it doesn't have the flavor i need (if i can't have my blorbo olli finding answers in the stars then what's the purpose? 5e doesn't have what i need) but at the same time i find the setting of this ttrpg a bit weak (to which the easier answer would be just build upon it, but how much? do i have enough imagination to fill the cities with npcs for my blorbos to interact with? answer: no i fucking don't)

so who knows? if something so easy as picking the class took me 2 years, by 2034 i will probably have the designs ready and bc will be long disbanded by then so again, what's the fucking point of it?

i hate how perfectionism kills the best part of me

[soul-dwelling]

One thing that is a bit funny is how a lot of charachters/plot elements/plot points I before only read about from second hand sources were actually a lot less impresive or significant once I actually read fire force. Like the whole chinese island with talking animals felt kinda like a nothing burger, or Amaterasu being trapped in a reactor or Iris being a doppelganger or Benimaru causing the moon to apear, or Shinra being possed, even Joker and Lichts antihero shtick etc...

I’m going to go in a number of directions, so let me summarize some points to quickly answer your questions, before going into more detail below: 

Ohkubo is better at just making visually appealing art than actually progressing character development and making a good plot. 

The Chinese peninsula arc is harmed by the stupidity of firefighters, whose job is to literally wear masks to not breathe in dangerous fumes, instead going maskless and breathing in dangerous fumes. It’s not even treated as irony, it’s just dumb. 

The talking animals thing was to set up Fire Force as a prequel for why Blair exists in Soul Eater. 

The doppelganger shit makes no sense. It is just Ohkubo’s immature response to how religious beliefs are full of paradoxes (“Can God make a rock so big even They can’t lift ti? Yes--then they lift it”)...

…Which is why we have Benimaru and the Moon thing: it’s Ohkubo writing his own creation story, in other words, his own religion. 

Viktor needed a stronger back story--and the headcanon is right there, he was a grad student, it writes itself, no wonder he turned out like this. 

It’s almost like Ohkubo’s original art posts on the shitty bird app get attention for being innovative designs, while the plotting falls apart. 

(This is one reason enough readers have wondered what it would be like if he just did the art for someone else’s story…and now we get what looks like a lackluster anime doing just that, so, monkey’s paw problem.) 

I forgot to bring this up: I think the talking animals thing was more foreshadowing of this being a Soul Eater prequel, reinforcing my assumption that the earliest Ohkubo would have decided on the “prequel route” was this Chinese peninsula arc. Shinra and the others are shocked to see talking animals--so by the time of Soul Eater, Blair is just yet another one of these talking animals running around… 

…But that has its own problems. First, Schop and the others were mostly not that cartoonish. Second, it’s just as likely talking animals became more of a thing because Shinra had zero knowledge of world history and just made shit up. Finally, even Soul, Maka, and Lord Death were surprised to see a talking cat, and Blair was the only talking animal in the series. (Yes, witches had talking animal forms, but canon didn’t really emphasize that Arachne was indeed a spider, Eruka was indeed a frog, Kim was indeed a tanuki, and so on.) 

The Chinese peninsula arc also just pissed me off in general: for the sake of dumb gags, even a teacher like Pan refuses to listen to wear a mask to avoid getting the effects of what he breathed in. I’m not saying that lets the students off the hook, but Viktor warned these dumbasses, and for zero reason given, none of them believe him. THEY ARE FIREFIGHTERS, they know breathing in fumes is a bad thing, yet they didn’t wear a mask? 

(No wonder the United States and so much of the world has a COVID problem: no one in this real world wears a fucking mask, none of these fictional characters wears a fucking mask.) 

As for the doppelganger crap: it made no sense. 

A doppelganger is how the world views a person--those are the rules within Fire Force. Someone is a pyrokinetic in full control of their faculties and flame abilities if they and their doppel are one in the same, e.g. they merge and the result is a non-Infernal, all because who they are and how people look at them is exactly the same…

…But we know that isn’t the case. Shinra is nothing like what people thought of him--yet he is not only a pyrokinetic, and not only a Pillar, but is freaking Fire Jesus. (Unless Sho is Fire Jesus--and even that makes no sense, since no one knows Sho outside of the Clads, so how would there be a popular conception of him to begin with?) 

The excuse the story goes with is that, once the physics are getting weirder and weirder, that is when the rules bend enough to allow for the doppel rule to no longer apply, hence why pyrokinetics like Joker and Kurono now have to fight their own doppels--because rule of cool, this is the final arc, break the rules, just make some action scenes. 

I get the argument that, if a better explanation doesn’t make you enjoy it more, then any explanation won’t matter, and that seems to be Ohkubo’s rationale: if I’m complaining that it doesn’t make sense, then I’m just the Yuu of this story and can be ignored, like ignoring how Arthur’s family stuff makes no sense. But that weak explanation doesn’t excuse bad writing--and this is just bad, and it distracts from any cool factor to the fights or the art. 

See also the problem of Mari and Iris’s existence: how can Mari be the doppel of the Evangelist when the Evangelist existed for so long already, and how can Iris be the doppel of Amaterasu? What, Iris existed in Adora, then was chucked out into the “real” world? And if that’s the case, then how could Mari exist as an Infernal, and Iris get pryokinetic abilities, unless their others--the Evangelist and Amaterasu--merged with them, but they didn’t, because they never did merge?!

And that leads to the Moon and Benimaru problem: the doppel thing is just a paradox, as a lot of religions have them, and you are to shrug and just ignore it. That is Ohkubo’s excuse for shit that fails in his story: he is doing a satire of religion, and fuck you for poking holes in his story, it’s all satire, he doesn’t have to answer for bad storytelling, because even my agnostic ass am tired of his anti-religion shtick. 

Hence why Benimaru doing that to the Moon just is the thing that happens: it happened because it is a creation story. Maybe it’s my perspective as a white person in the United States, as I’m not in the context of certain belief systems to give an insider’s point of view about them--but usually, when I read a creation narrative, I can understand enough about how they got to that idea (Egyptian stories about the dung beetle’s association with the sun, because it pushes a big ball of dung; stories of animals diving down into the water to scoop up mud to form the first islands on the planet; and so on). 

What is there to “Benimaru kicked the Moon really hard and it turned into that face”? Does it resemble his adoptive dad? There’s nothing here to solidify why this creation story should work--so, it just comes off as a crass attempt to link this to Soul Eater and disrupt much better headcanon most fans probably had. 

(Spoiler for something a friend and I are working on, but if it was me, re-writing this? You don’t have Benimaru kick the Moon. You have a Mirko-like character kick the Moon. Give me a character with flame-powered leg hops, powerful kicks, and a rabbit motif--boom, rabbit, Japan, Moon, that works. What the hell does Benimaru have to do with the Moon? And no, naming his moves after the Moon doesn’t count.) 

Some of this is headcanon on my part in discussions with a friend, but why not give some back story to Viktor? He was a grad student, he was pursuing research: maybe it’s my own experiences, but that is fraught with story potential. Viktor goes to work at Haijima to keep funding his research--even as he suspects their part in spontaneous human combustion. Maybe he lost parents and wanted to figure out what killed them--or, to avoid more and more “dead family” tropes, maybe he isn’t close to family, not helped by running off to do research instead of a “real job.” 

I really enjoyed Joker--by the time we got his back story. When it’s “the Joker but he’s also Batman,” that is the best characterization he got. Too bad his post-story life is hanging out with a boring sod like Burns.

[anchanted-one]

Legend of Lightning Chapter 42: Problems on Tatooine

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43208574/chapters/111451216

In Orbit, Tatooine

“General, we’ve reached Tatooine.”

“Good. I can’t tell you how worried I am right now. While you were busy on other worlds, Master Kiwiiks secured our weapons facility and all subsidiary facilities. She was in the process of reviewing footage, looking for any breaches, when she sent out an urgent communique saying they were under attack. That was minutes before I called you.”

“Tell me about the Tatooine project.”

“It was codenamed the Shock Drum,” Godera cut in. “The weapon discharges massive ultrasonic vibrations into the ground, damaging enemy fortifications at a microscopic level. Literally softening them up.”

“That could be a major environmental hazard too,” Vajra said, eyes narrowing.

<Sustained electronic damage = highly destructive to droid parts.>

“But that’s not all. The Shock Drum eventually disrupts the planetary core. At critical mass, the core explodes.”

“Which is why I banned further testing,” Var Suthra cut back in. “We only recently discovered its full capabilities. However, there’s a fully operational Shock Drum prototype in the facility. If Darth Angral captured it, the results will be catastrophic. There’s little help for you down there. A few soldiers, a few SIS bases. But they’re critically understaffed thanks to the planet’s insignificance. I’ll send you the coordinates to the facility. Good luck.”

“Wait,” Kira said. “I had one question. How long can an organic hold up when exposed to the vibrations for too long? I can Sense Master Kiwiiks. She’s in great pain. This is just a hunch, but I think she’s been left to die near the Shock Drum.”

“Which means it’s been activated?!” Var Suthra sounded alarmed. “You’ve got to get started immediately!”

“Ordinary people would be killed within an hour,” Doctor Godera answered the question. “I’m sorry.”

But Var Suthra wasn’t done. “But I’ve seen Jedi who could enter trances that allowed them to endure even radioactive environments. Not to give you false hope, but if you hurry, you just might save her.”

“Let’s get ready for landing then,” Vajra said. “Come on. Let’s get the speeders and kits ready.”

*

Anchorhead Spaceport

The problems started the moment the ramp opened up to the outside world. The heat caused by Tatooine’s famous binary suns instantly started to make itself known. Stepping out into the open was torture. The sun’s rays immediately started to irritate his skin. Even the air he breathed felt hot in his lungs, to the point that breathing became difficult. His vision began to swim. He instantly had to grit his teeth to keep from screaming or cursing. He began to sweat profusely at once.

“Phew!”

“That’s fucking hot!” Kira groaned. “And not the good kind!”

“Are you okay?” He shook his head, but he couldn’t shake the haze that was descending over his mind.

“Yeah. Damn, I think we’ll need to stop somewhere—aha! There’s a shop right here! Guess they know they’ll get business from unsuspecting off-worlders. Cmon, let’s buy some more protective clothing!”

“I’ll manage.” He had to suppress a yelp as flashes of light reflected off of windowpanes brought back unwanted memories.

“But—”

“It’s fine. Pick out whatever you need.”

She gave him an uncertain look. “Okay, whatever you say, boss.”

Vajra barely paid attention as Kira picked out several thick overcoats and scarves for herself. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, taking another swig of water. “The thing I need is water. At this rate, I’ll drain all of my canteens before we reach the outskirts.”

Kira looked at him for a moment before turning back to the shopkeeper. “Yeah, we’ll take two more. Can you make them both orange? Same color as his robes. And three more scarves. Thanks.” She tossed one set at him. “Put it on. It’ll help you conserve water better.”

“Fine,” he said grudgingly. “But we still need more water.”

“I hate to be the one to tell you about the drought,” the shopkeeper interrupted. “But there’s a fucking drought. Water cans are a hundred credits per bottle. For the moment. It’ll only get worse the longer you’re here.”

“Damn.”

“Hold on, I have a call incoming.”

“Jedi? Please tell me you haven’t left Anchorhead yet.”

“We’ve barely left the docking bay. Who is this?”

“My name’s Fauler. I’m a representative of the Republic. I need your help, son.”

“I’m sorry, sir. But I have an important mission.”

“Oh, I know how you’re helping Var Suthra clean up his mess—”

“Then—”

“Please, Jedi. I know, and I’m asking for help anyway. Does that tell you anything? There were others who passed through recently. Captain Stede, Captain Roban Queens. Heck, Devel Nirol from your own Order passed through forty minutes ago. Everyone’s busy… but this is important, and I’m getting desperate. Please, give me ten minutes to explain myself. I promise, you’ll agree that this is even more important than whatever project Var Suthra has locked away, or a missing Jedi Master.”

“More important than—I really wanna deck this guy,” Kira whispered. “But what do you think?”

“Ten minutes,” Vajra agreed. “But if you exaggerated or lied, I promise we’ll be angry.”

“Terrific. Come to the embassy. It’s a quick run from your location.”

*

The ‘embassy’ was more like an underground warehouse. They needed to take an elevator almost twenty meters beneath the surface to get to it.

Still, Kira was relieved to be out of those suns.

They were put on their guard when they saw the hole in the door. They entered cautiously, and came upon thirteen people in green and yellow uniform. Twelve of them held the last at gunpoint.

“…ly tracked you down, Kamus. You stole important documents. Czerka doesn’t take industrial sabotage lightly. We’ve come to… terminate your services.”

Two of his comrades laughed stupidly, but Kira saw one roll his eyes.

The threat was enough for the boss. He rushed in at once, Lightsaber igniting with a snap-hiss that echoed in this cramped facility. He placed himself between the shooters and their target, with a growled “Oh, I don’t think so!”

“JEDI!” someone screamed, and all twelve thugs grew much more wary.

“You know the policy,” the leader with the lame sense of humor said. “No survivo—I mean witnesses. Open fire!”

“Blasters?” The boss scoffed as a wall of blue plasma reflected his attackers’ blaster bolts right back at them. “Seriously, guys?”

“Oah…” the last one whimpered softly as he went down.

“I mean, it has to be common knowledge by now that we can do this trick, so why does everyone still think blasters are a good idea?” Kira asked the young man cowering behind the boss.

“I don’t know, ma’am!”

“Oh well. Not that we’re complaining. We’re sort of in a hurry.”

“We’re looking for one Mister Fauler.”

“Here’s Fauler!” the man himself came running into the room. “Someone called? Ugh! Come on, Kamus! You know how I feel about corpses in my workspace!”

The man called Kamus looked at him incredulously. “You—you were supposed to be here! I was supposed to be under your protection!”

“Sorry, Kamus. As an ‘official Republic representative, I have to at least look like I’m being diplomatic with the locals!”

The boss looked at his chrono. “You’ve got seven more minutes.”

“What? Oh, come on!”

“Time is life. We have a bomb about to go off nearby—”

“A bomb!?” Kamus squeaked.

“—but you said your job is way more important. Tell me why. Six-forty.”

“Okay, okay!” Fauler began to speak in a hurried tone, dropping his salesman persona at once. “Point one. I’m not a diplomat, I’m with the SIS. And my current headache… oh, sod it! Kamus, cliff notes, fast!”

“I’m an employee for Czerka corp, and I found a bunch of documents describing a billion-credit research facility for the study of a ‘type-seven device.’”

“That’s Czerka shorthand for planet-killers,” Fauler finished.

The boss and Kira looked at each other. “So what you’re saying is that Czerka has designed a superweapon?”

“No, they found one here,” Kamus replied. “On Tatooine. It’s beyond ancient, according to the documents.”

“They actually dug it up decades ago, but abandoned it for reasons we’re not clear on. Not entirely, at least. It sounds like the device went haywire, and Czerka bailed rather than clean it up.”

“I think we’re sold,” the boss said defeatedly. Kira knew how he felt. There was no way they could ignore this one now. “What do you need us to do?”

“Oh, thank you so much!” Fauler seized one of the boss’ hands and shook it hard. “You’re a lifesaver! Oh. Time. Mission. Right. So, we need you to search Czerka’s old compound. It’s close to the place where Var Suthra’s facility’s at. About a klick and a half away, as a matter of fact. If you each take one objective, you should be done in—oh, four hours, tops?”

“Four hours?”

“Both of them. You should be done with both of them in four hours. Here, take this comm. It’s a secure line back to me. And only to me.”

“Master,” Kira whispered as they made their way out. “Maybe we should split up.”

The boss hesitated, then shook his head. “I know why you’d say that, but we can’t.”

“But why not? Both objectives are critical. We need to find the Shock Drum before it destroys the planet, but we also need to thwart Czerka. And Master Kiwiiks might not have hours, even the planet does.”

The boss fumbled for a bit before getting his answer straight. “This world… it’s different from Nar Shaddaa or Coruscant. Different from Taris, even. The heat and terrain are so disorienting, and we haven’t even left town yet. I almost lost my head twice getting here from the spaceport. If anything goes wrong, the closest help will be kilometers away.”

“I guess that makes sense…”

He nodded, looking apprehensive. “I understand how you feel, though. This situation… why do we have to be the ones to deal with this? Is Havoc Squad’s mission so much more important than ours? Is Juun’s? Master Nirol’s? Why is it that we get stuck with so many ‘superweapons?’ It wasn’t cool the first time around!” He clammed up after that. Kira couldn’t help but agree.

The boss stumbled and cursed when he stepped out into the sun, reminding Kira to brace herself.

*

No one spoke on the ride out. The suns beat down on them like sledgehammers despite this model of speeder coming with a roof. As the boss predicted, they ran through two bottles before their first hour was out. Kira began to feel dizzy and nauseous despite that medicine she’d taken earlier. At least it kept her from throwing up. She really didn’t want to lose any more water than she had to right now.

“I think that’s it,” the boss said after three hours at top speed. “How strange… I Sense people down there, but can’t see anything except those large woolly beasts...”

<Beast nomenclature = bantha.> T7 informed them. <Their presence = indicates || Tuskens = also present. Tuskens = Sand People = natives: hostile, nomadic, territorial.>

Kira squinted. “I see… I think… yes, I can see movement down there! They’re well camouflaged!"

“I see a few blasters pointed at us. T7, set us down on high ground. We don’t want to lose our ride out here.”

<Affirmative.>

“Kira?”

“Yes, Master?”

“Does the language implant cover their language?”

“I… I don’t think so.”

“I feel bad attacking them. All those guns trained on us, and not one shot fired yet. Let’s try diplomatic first.”

*

The two Jedi approached the closest Tusken slowly, arms outstretched. Vajra felt his head swimming. The air was scorching his throat as he breathed, and the blur of mirage made the air shimmer a mere ten feet away. His head ached so badly, it felt like there was someone trying to break his way out with a hammer and chisel. He had to draw on every iota of his will to keep from stumbling or slipping.

As he walked, he kept an eye on the natives. They regarded him with open hostility, but did not fire. “Do you speak basic?” he asked. “I’d like to talk first.”

The Tuskens did not move for a second, then one stood up. He barked several phrases in an unknown language.

“Can you wait a second?” Vajra asked before reaching for his comm. Five guns refocused on him as he moved. “C2? I need a translator here. I’m speaking to the Tuskens. Do you know their language?”

“Why, of course, Master!” The droid cried out in delight. “I would be delighted to be of service to you!”

“Tell them that I don’t want to fight. Tell them that I request safe passage on their lands.” He coughed, the effort of speaking burning his throat.

C2 complied, replying in the same barks and trumpets that the Tusken had used. The Tusken considered the droid, then responded.

“He wants to know our reason for… ah, visiting.”

Vajra licked his chapped lips. The Tuskens seemed to multiply before his eyes. “Tell them that... that there’s two bombs on this planet which can destroy everything for miles.”

The Tusken’s reply was curt.

“He finds that answer unconvincing, Master.”

“What can we do to persuade him? What if we’re not lying?” He had to take another long draught of water as he waited for the translation.

“He allows that the invaders—offworlders—have brought many dangerous weapons onto these sands. What we say might be true. But he is not happy. He says that this proves that we’re not to be trusted. We’re always coming up with new ways to kill.”

“The Jedi protect. We do not build such weapons.”

There was a stir among the Tuskens for a moment.

“He asks us to wait. They are going to call their chief. He says to not move.”

“Can you tell him we’re not used to this heat? We need a place out of the suns.”

“They agree, but they will not share their black melons with you. I gather that’s where they get their water from.”

“Thank you. And thank you too, C2. Please stand by.”

Shade was difficult to find out here, since rays from two suns covered more ground, literally. In addition, the sands reflected a lot of those rays right back into the air. In the end, one of the Tuskens reluctantly invited them into their tents.

Just as reluctantly, Vajra offered him one of his bottles as thanks. The Tusken looked at him for a moment, then accepted.

“While I like the idea of repaying courtesy with courtesy, this leaves us with just four and a half more bottles each.” Vajra looked at Kira wordlessly, fighting for words. “Are you okay, Master? You look—”

“Better now that we’re out of the sun,” he rasped. “But I’m starting to hate this world. If Master Kiwiiks wasn’t trapped here, I might be willing to just leave this dustball.” He considered his own words for a moment. “After evacuating the people, of course. I’m sure there’s any number of worlds which are better than this one.”

“Yeah. Binary suns… what a riot!” Kira coughed hard into her fist.

*

The chief arrived several minutes later. He conversed with the Tusken on guard for several seconds, looked over the water bottle Vajra had given them, then entered to speak.

“He says that they will give us permission to walk their sands,” C2 translated. “But in exchange, they want this lab in two weeks, including the moisture vaporators.”

“Tell them they have a deal.”

The Tuskens gave Vajra and Kira each a gaffi stick.

“These staves are proof of our deal today. Do not betray it.”

“Thank you for your kindness. We will not forget it.”

The Sand people escorted Vajra inside the lab.

Ah, finally! Shade at last!

The Tuskens had already occupied most of the facility, except for several rooms on the top floor which they were busily trying to crack open.

The chieftain spoke, and the warriors stood aside for the Jedi. Vajra approached the door and pressed the intercom. “Hello? Is anyone inside?”

“Y…y…y…y…”

“My name is Vajra, and I have my Padawan Kira with me. We’re Jedi.”

“Oh… ohh thank goodness! Give us a minute, we’ll get the door open for you!”

“You should know, the Tuskens are still here. We basically came to an arrangement.”

There was silence for a minute. Like the rest of Tatooine, it was a hot one. The bad pun made Vajra want to hit himself. Also… Why did it have to be about the heat!?

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I offered terms, they accepted. No one else dies right now.”

There was a sigh. “I’ll take what I can get. At least they haven’t killed any of us yet.”

The door opened to reveal several beings inside. One—probably the one who’d spoken up earlier—was an older human woman with dark skin. The rest were small creatures in hooded brown robes. The only thing he could see was their bright yellow eyes.

“Come on in, Jedi. My name is Hare’en. I’m a seismologist. And these adorable little rascals are my family.”

One of the short aliens spoke in a rapid language.

“I’ll… need translation,” Vajra sighed.

“His name is Brikk. This is his crew. What’s left of them after the Tuskens got the rest.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Don’t be. Jawas tend to be light-fingered. Brikk’s crew tried to steal from the Tuskens, so the attack wasn’t completely unwarranted.”

Brikk said something else.

“He’s glad the Tuskens aren’t fighting this time, however. Fewer dead people.”

“You’re in charge of the Shock Drum Project?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Where are the other scientists?”

“They were shipped off-world before the Sith came.”

“Why? I thought they’d be needed to make sure all the documents had been gathered up!”

“Well, that’s what the droids are for.” She pointed at the dozen or so droids still at work in the room.

“Fair enough, I suppose. Now, we need to know what happened here.”

“Well… I don’t know where to start,” Hare’en looked around at the Jawas. “I guess I can start right before things started going south. About three months ago, we finished building the Shock Drum Prototype and used it to level a large block of reinforced ferrocrete. It was then we realized that the Shock Drum’s true potential. Var Suthra, General back then, ordered us to stop developing the weapon and instead look for ways to combat its effects. Shortly after, the Planet Prison incident began.

“Master Kiwiiks showed up, openly annoyed about the weapons projects. But she kept things civil, and helped us wind up our work properly, as opposed to just demanding it all be over with a snap of her fingers. Things were going smoothly until we got invaded by a small army of Imperials. We had defenses, but the Sith in charge tore through them like a wave through a sand castle—”

“Please don’t say sand!”

“Sorry. Anyway. He overwhelmed our defenses and entered the facility. Master Kiwiiks tried to fight him, but he defeated her after a short fight. Took her alive. He left with the Shock Drum. That was… when was that again?” The Jawa chittered. “About five hours ago. No more than six.”

“So it hasn’t been too long yet!” Kira burst out. “We can still save her!”

“And the Sith spared you?” Vajra asked.

“Well… yes. I found it odd, now that you think about it. I lost five brothers, three sisters and an adopted son to marauding Sith. Strange that this one let us go… he seemed almost… disgusted by the idea. He all but ignored us.”

The Jawa interjected, but Hare’en shook her head. “No, he may have destroyed your droids, but he didn’t harm us. He said we were no threat, and didn’t deserve to die!”

“Never known a Sith that could show mercy,” Kira snorted.

“He wasn’t kind, but I certainly wouldn’t call him cruel.”

“So he’s taken my old master, and left with the Shock Drum. Which is about to destroy the planet. Where does that leave us?”

“Brikk, his crew and I were attempting to restore power so we could triangulate the Drum’s location, but the Sand People attacked. Now, if we could just connect the generators…”

“I’ll help. I’m not bad with machines.”

“Since you don’t seem to understand Jawaese, I’d rather you didn’t. You could just get in each other’s way.”

“Alright.”

“Master, we can look into that old Jerka base while we’re waiting.”

“Good call. Let’s go.”

“Wait, what’s this about the Czerka base?”

“Turns out, there’s more than one superweapon on this planet,” Vajra replied, feeling exhausted. He massaged his throbbing temples. “And no one else is ever available.” He had to clam his jaw to keep from ranting again. “Hey, I don’t suppose you have any more water cannisters in here? We’re going through our supply at a dangerous pace.”

“New to this kind of clime? Shame. It takes years and years to get used to it. We have a few tanks of water in the basement, and the vaporators around the facility, but please don’t take too much. We have a lot of mouths to feed. Especially since—” she looked at the Tuskens. “It looks like there will be more people than expected.”

“Come on then. Sooner we get this done, the better.”

*

The Czerka facility was overrun by Gamorreans, who weren’t happy to see two Jedi waltz right in. They put up quite a fight.

The boss allowed Kira to take this one solo, which pleased her. It allowed her to better test where she was at, skills-wise. Her Master was a good Lightsaber instructor and a better friend, but way too good a fighter. Whenever he charged ahead, it was an exercise in futility trying to get in on the action.

And then there were times like Nar Shaddaa, where the boss was just extra kind to Kira.

So today was special. It was the first time since Ord Mantell where he let her fight alone.

The Gamorreans weren’t Jedi or Sith, but they were two meters of raw power. Faster than they looked too. And in such numbers, a threat to any overconfident Jedi.

Kira flipped elegantly over the trio of charging brutes with their vibroaxes, then riposted the blow from a vibrosword. The Saberstaff spun in her hand, throwing the swordsman’s center of gravity into empty space. He collided with two of the Gams behind her. The third joined two others in a combined attack as a fourth held back, waiting for the trio to give him an opening. Which was when she finally noticed the pattern.

Nice job, genius. Only took you five quartets to see through their plan. Guess learning the Lightsaber isn’t the same as learning to be a warrior. Still, I did take down five quartets!

She parried two more axes, then sidestepped the third, which broke on contact with the floor. The power behind the blow surprised her… either that, or the axehead had grown weak from use.

“That’s it,” she nodded approvingly. “Use the force!” She stabbed the shocked Gamorrean through the chest. His comrades attacked with loud squeals, but by now she was used to their attack pattern. It was a simple matter of dodging one, parrying the other, then using momentum to turn her blade into his face. She then speared the stumbling Gamorrean with a downward thrust.

The three stunned Gams stood up and tried again. This time she killed the point man, kicked his dying body into the next one in line, sheared off the third one’s neck, and finally slew the one on the floor.

All seven who still stood squealed and trembled… but they did not break ranks. Family and bonds were everything to these porcine humanoids. Loyalty. It was something Kira could truly respect them for.

They eventually got their morale back and charged. After facing wave after wave of four-Gamorrean teams, the team of seven looked a little daunting. But she managed it.

Dodge, swing. Flip, cut. Parry, stab. Spin kick, cut. Triple cut. Duck, upward jab. She ended with a spinning slash.

“What do you think?” she gasped happily.

“Nice work!” the boss clapped. “Your Lightsaber skills are superb now. But you need to work on things like tactical and situational awareness.”

“Yeah, it took me way too long to realize they were coming at me in groups of four.”

“In addition, you worked up quite a sweat. Bad on this world.”

“Oh, shit,” Kira cursed, finally noticing that her clothes were soaked through.

He handed her a water bottle. “Drink it all,” he instructed her. “And don’t worry about our rations. We can take some from their stores afterwards. He nodded at the downed Gamorreans. “Now stay back. Catch your breath. Cool down. The last thing we need is for you to go all out like that again.”

Kira sat down on a nearby crate, trying to ignore the smell of burnt flesh. She started to feel a little guilty about what she’d just done. She had killed almost forty of these poor guys. They may have been low-level bandits, but did they really deserve to die like this?

She finally understood why her poor friend had almost crumpled after each fight with the Khrayii. He had killed just over two and a half thousand of those savages. Each encounter had left him looking like he had been forced to bite his own heart out. And then there were the Power Guards…

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit! She hadn’t realized it until now! Well, she had, but never truly appreciated it! She felt a dizziness totally unrelated to the heat of Tatooine.

I owe him a few big favors, she realized. More than I thought I did.

As she watched, T7 unlocked the blast door into the next room. There were a pair of humans inside, along with four more Gamorreans. There was also a man on holo.

“So, what do you say? Do we have a deal?” the man on the holo asked.

The lead Gamorrean—who was dressed in heavy ceremonial armor, marking him as a warlord—grunted assent.

“Marvelous! I have absolutely no idea what you just said, my indelicate friend, but marvelous!"

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the boss poked his head in. “But I can’t let Czerka claim what’s in that base.”

“Silly Jedi,” the caller scoffed. “What’s inside already belongs to Czerka. You don’t have the authority to take it.”

“It was yours until you abandoned it. Tatooine laws, not mine. And why is Czerka after such a dangerous machine, anyway?”

“I see that rat Kamus hasn’t squeaked about everything just yet. Don’t worry, you won’t live long enough for your lack of insight to matter. Boys, kill him if you will.”

Kira was quite interested in how the boss would approach this fight.

Normally he played a game of attrition, teasing enemies by jumping from one to the next, overwhelming them with his skill and mobility. Today, he went with economy.

One hit, one kill. Minimum movement. He slid out of one attack vector after another, his Lightsaber moving in one, continuous arc to slay each enemy as they reached him. The Czerka mercenaries, predictably, fell to their own reflected blaster fire, though the leader—the one who had held the holocomm—attacked in melee. He fell with the Gams.

Master Vajra crushed the comm beneath his heel as, unprompted, T7 casually rolled up to the computer beyond and began downloading the files.

“Real smooth, Master,” Kira grinned as she walked up to him. She frowned. “Hey, you alright? Not torn up about killing Czerka goons, are you?”

“No…” he said in a small voice. “The exertion was a bit much.”

“I’m sorry?” Kira didn’t quite hear that, but he didn’t repeat his words.

“Hey, can you look for the clan’s water reserves while we wait? I’ll stay and guard T7.”

“Of course, Master. Mind if I just bring it here?”

“Go on.”

Luckily, Gamorreans were not the smartest people. Nor did they have the best short-term memories. Hiding things was difficult for them, as it wasn’t uncommon for them to forget where they left things. The more important something was, the more obvious its location.

The water cans were left lying all over the base. In fact, Kira had rested her ass on one of them. She hummed a merry tune as she filled the empty bottles—the Force was so convenient, allowing her to lift up a twenty-kilo tank like it was nothing—then returned to the adjoining room.

“Our stores are full!” she said brightly, handing over a bottle. “We can even load up a few onto our speeders just in case.”

“Good,” he said after draining it in one go. “We sent the data, we’re just waiting on—ah, perfect.”

His holo started chiming right on cue.

“Hey there, Jedi. We finished looking through some of the data. We also got a call from one ‘Gayem Leksende.’ He was gloating about how he killed you, and promised he’d come for us next.”

“I have no idea who that is.”

“He’s a rich-boy cyborg with a love for dirty work. His dad’s an executive, so he’s enjoyed a life of virtual immunity from consequences.”

“Oh. Sounds like Tarnis, actually.”

“Anyway, he said he was filing an official complaint with the Republic that we’re disputing Czerka’s property rights.”

“Including their ‘rights’ to me,” Kamus interjected sourly. “I read my contract thoroughly! There’s no indenture clause in there! They must have inserted it afterwards if they’re claiming it's there!"

“Don’t worry, my friend! Since you’ve got your original contract with you, we can easily dispute their claims. Still, their representatives in the Senate can excuse any ‘incidents.’”

“Give me their names. I’ll deal with them.”

“Whoa there, boss! That sounded a little dark!”

“Sorry. So what have you found out?”

“One of the files was a personnel listing!” Kamus said excitedly. “It named everyone who worked for the facility!”

“Most of the employees are long gone, but there’s still one out there. He can help us find the facility. His name’s Grommik Kurthson. He was a drifter for a while, until he bought a moisture farm. And the sweet part? It’s close to where you are. Right next door in fact. Just a twenty-minute drive.”

“Great. Let’s get started then.”

Kira noticed her Master freeze and clench his teeth, but neither of them mentioned it. It was just the heat, that’s all.

*