#and threatened to call the police literally within one (1) minute of this interaction

[marsixm]

had someone threaten to call the cops on me for something i didnt do and proved i didnt do. gotta love retail

[badass-at-fandoming]

Just Little Ventrue Things ~

I finished a Camarilla Ventrue run of VTMB. Mostly, the only thing Ventrue these days know how to do is Dominate, run screaming, eat hot chip, and lie, and [high falsetto voice] here’s a list of other nonsense I discovered:

PC’s name is Christina; she’s a Dominatrix because I’m bi. Her sire was one of her clients, and she’s actually very, very angry about his death. She doesn’t mind being a vampire. She’s Wiccan and part of a coven

In this Camarilla run, I decided I would only do quests given by Camarilla members. My justification was that, while Christina is intelligent and curious about lore, she focuses on tasks that immediately relate to her and her goals. She’s not curious about others; won’t go out of her way to talk to them. She’s not a bleeding heart, like my other PCs, and she believes in the Camarilla’s laws. She just hates LaCroix for killing her sire. Her plan during the game is to curry as much favor within the Cam as possible and cozy up to LaCroix so she can stab him.

Enough backstory

Nonsense time

Smiling Jack laughs at you if you don’t eat a rat in the tutorial. LOL. The Ventrue dialog is like “I could barely choke down the homeless man: please don’t make me eat a rat!”

The blood in the Santa Monica haven’s fridge is now blue blood. Does regular blood make Ventrue sick? I was too scared to experiment.

[spots Mercurio] I am going to steal that ghoul

Rosa: The people you’re looking for are up there. Christina, assuming Rosa is a Cam agent: Okay, thanks, bye

Never spoke to the Thin-Bloods again (sorry Lily baby ;-;)

Everyone except Julius still leaves when the PC reaches Hollywood

If you try to feed on Julius, he WILL kick you in the head and you WILL glitch into the fire, be on fire; run away screaming in Prada

You can skip the whole basement of the Ocean House Hotel if you manage to jump over the hole in the staircase???? Like?? You mean the spookiest fucking level has been optional this whole time I”M

[ghost appears] [Christina smacks it with an axe] None of that.

Club girls speak to Christina and I’m on the FLOOR

Therese “kills” Jeanette, even though I had enough oompa to make that not happen.

Therese joins the Camarilla and says she’s in good position to be the next Prince??? Hello??? Where is our Prince Voerman ending????

Went straight to LaCroix, called him “sir,” and he name-dropped Napoleon.

LaCroix tells Christina to go visit the Anarchs. She blows the Anarchs off (Nines made a growly face, Damsel dialog yowl-exited out after I asked if she wanted to join the Cam; Skelter threatened to murder me twice). When LaCroix told Christina that, while he admired her Cam loyalty, she must listen to her enemies to understand what they wanted, it felt like he was actually being a good sire and mentor.

That’s weird.

When Christina asked for his history, he very carefully explained his lineage, like the important part of Ventrue culture it is.

Overall, I found LaCroix-being-nice-to-me extremely unsettling.

Sir. Stop smiling at me, sir. Stop being impressed I don’t ask for money. STOP MAKING ME UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE LIKE YOU, SIR.

In contrast, LaCroix sounded genuinely betrayed at the end

Also made it more obvious when he started to lose track of his marbles

Ventrue PC seems juuuuuuust tall enough for her forehead to glitch into the ceiling of literally any confined space

The dirty Elizabeth Dane policeman didn’t psspspspsp at Christina so the whole ship was 15 white-knuckled minutes of making police dance and scuttling about

There is!!! A lot less!!! Talking in this game!!! Than I remember!!! She is only good at talking and ordering people around i am bEGGING

All EXP goes to Dominate and making Christina extremely charismatic and buff.

Ventrue himbo????

Beckett un-himbo-ifies her

She insults Beckett on their first meeting, spitting out “What do you want, wolfie?!” I thought this was appropriate because she died like, 4 times on that warehouse mission and was Extremely Stressed And Under Duress

Beckett’s response of “Oh, you’re too young to have mouthed off to the truly old ones yet.” makes his later snide remark of “the young ones are so temperamental” 900% funnier. Yeah, LaCroix! Beckett thinks I’ve grown and am now more mature than you! XD

Missions involving sex workers hit different when you’re a sex worker.

Christina was incandescent with rage at the Brotherhood

Grout’s mansion mission was a lot of “I have no interest in this nonsense.”

For the first time ever, I didn’t kill anyone during the Museum quest! This is because Christina ran very fast and Dominated every guard as quickly as possible. Every single fucking guard knew she was there, but could do nothing about it, because they were dancing. The door to the sarcophagus locked (it will do this if too many guards are agro), but locked doors are no match for noclip hack.

Entertaining image of a tall woman absolutely blasting into this museum room and Beckett tackling her to the floor like wait! I must snark at you! You are legally obligated to speak with me!

Isaac is still somehow a pretty chill guy to work with if you’re Camarilla.

Christina didn’t visit VV or Ash. Interestingly, Ash didn’t show up at the hunter monastery later. Did he just die in his club? Is he still there, waiting, deciding?

Christina @ Andrei: what the fuck is this shit

“I don’t care. It’s ugly. Clean it up.”

SEWERS.

Not as bad as I was expecting

Did take shortcut, run away from fights, ducked out in the middle for a snack, and bring 7 blue blood packs tho

Gary threatened to shred her face with a cheese grater, which I thought was Toreador only dialog?? It must be connected to the Appearance Stat. Which Christina has maxed out.

When Heather became Christina’s ghoul, I was delighted because I thought this meant Christina would always have fresh blood.

No

If you ask to feed on her too soon after the last time, Heather says she feels light headed and wants to lie down. The dialog exits out

I love you, Heather bb

Perfected the art of nudging NPCs into corners

Mitnick’s quests now feature Enforced Nap Time for all guards

Seriously, Dominate is ridiculously powerful, hooooly shit. I get why people like it. I also like it when people do things I ask them to do.

Christina can’t sneak, but she CAN strongly encourage everyone to choke on their own tongues.

Very high contrast in the beginning of the game: 2 punches would knock her over, but anyone she spoke to would obey immediately and without question

Chinatown goes by ridiculously fast if you can’t sneak and don’t do any sidequests besides Mitnick’s.

For the first time ever, Zhao survived! This is because Christina made him take a nap.

He just told her to leave

You’re welcome, my good dude

IDK if it’s a game glitch, but Christina would vocalize? In battle, she grunts with effort and pain.

Got to the point where I kept expecting Dominate dialog in every interaction and would get disappointed if it didn’t show up. What do you mean I have to actually convince people? That’s lame.

Christina was polite and charming to Ming Xiao, who also conveyed a deeper betrayal than normal at the end. ;-;

I promise to give you a Ventrue boy toy soon, Xiao

Finale arc quests went by VERY FAST because Christina can’t sneak for shit. Just run in, Dominate blazing

You can skip the outside bit of the Hallowbrook Hotel if you find the open door on the top level what the fuuuuuuuuuCK

[“A Little Party Never Killed Nobody” plays while Christina wipes out the Sabbat in 10 minutes]

Andrei disappeared mid-fight and didn’t come back until I complained that only I was allowed to run away from boss fights

I’m categorizing “triggering the interaction to save Heather” as something quite difficult to do. The timing has to be just right. I’ve missed it twice now. BUT hacking into the game to save her is easy.

I love you, Heather bb

Final Beckett talk had the vibe of “You’re a very different person than me, but you’re also High Humanity and trying to do good. You don’t deserve to die.”

Damsel threatens to kick the shit out of Christina and is extremely reluctant to tell her where Nines is

“Out of all people, they send you? All right, let’s just talk terms.” - Nines because Christina was short with him one (1) time

WEREWOLF HARD

You can just?? Walk out of your haven?? Without speaking to Jack at all???

I didn’t do that

But I could have

[”Dust in the Wind” plays while Christina kills entire Camarilla hit squad in 3 minutes]

You can visit Mercurio and Trip on your way out of Santa Monica??

Mercurio makes no comment on the blood hunt. Business as usual with him. This is fine.

Christina: I’m SO going to adopt that ghoul. And perhaps Isaac can be convinced to part with Romero...

(For the first time ever, my PC boinked Romero. Twice, to receive the break up email)

This is definitely a glitch, but Christina brushed up against Caine, and a worried voice said, “Are you all right?” It sounded like the same voice actor, but a higher pitch?

Always nice to think about Caine demonstrating care

Christina asked Caine who he is, and Caine replied that he “gets people where they’re going. [He’s] a driver,”  which is a nice nod (lol) to both his literal job as a driver and as a shepherd/creator/god to Kindred. Caine creates and makes fate.

Caine triple checks with Christina that she’s sure Strauss won’t betray her. Thanks, Vampire Dad. :’D

For some reason, only other Ventrue guarded LaCroix’s tower. I wonder if this is intentional. Like all the other Camarilla Clans backed Strauss and left? So only LaCroix’s Ventrue lackeys remain? Anyway, it created some weird moments where Christina fought her double.

KILL YOUR DOUBLE

Sheriff laughed in haughty joy that he was to kill Christina. I don’t remember him laughing in other playthroughs.

Christina ruining Caine and Jack’s prank oh noes

[nerdy-bits]

XCOM: Chimera Squad Review

XCOM Chimera Squad is my definition of a pleasant surprise. Just soldiering through quarantine on a lazy April Tuesday afternoon, across my news feed comes the improbable: a new XCOM game getting shadow dropped. Just a short ten days away, Chimera Squad would be releasing. What’s more? If you preordered, or purchased before May first, the game was only ten dollars.

 Now I fully recognize, it may be the trying times we’re enduring, but that lazy tuesday suddenly felt like Christmas.

 I’ve been a huge fan of XCOM since the reboot, Enemy Unknown, was released in 2012. I remember doing my research and discovering XCOM had first launched in 1994, but I never had the chance to play those games. Regardless, ten minutes into Enemy Unknown I knew I was sold.

Where Chimera Squad differs from its predecessors is, well, in a lot of places. Where XCOM 1 and 2 finds you operating as the Commander of XCOM, at first an international force assembled to fight back alien invasion, then as a resistance seeking to overthrow alien overlords, Chimera Squad is the result of an XCOM initiative called the Reclamation Project. With the war against the occupying aliens won, XCOM tasks an interspecies team of operatives to support the police of City 31. The former hub of Advent control, City 31 has become the world’s model city for human and alien integration. 

As Chimera Squad, as directed by the Reclamation Project, you are tasked with seeking out and pacifying rogue groups in the city hoping to hamper its lofty goals, and simultaneously track down and reclaim scattered wartime technologies. But, of course, things don’t go specifically to plan. In the first moments of the game you are tasked with saving the life of Mayor Nightingale. Taken hostage by dissidents, 31PD is at a standstill and calls in the cavalry. With Chimera Squad so newly formed, Verge, your Sectoid Psionic teammate has to take a cab and catch up with the team on site. 

That is the other way that Chimera Squad breaks the mold. Where other XCOM games give you a force of editable, backstory-less characters, this title has twelve operatives with names, backstories, voice actors, and personality. I wasn’t sure how I would like this change at first. Part of my love of the series is the stories that I can attach to the characters as I grow familiar with each of their abilities. And losing those soldiers becomes so much more personal when they fall in battle. 

In Chimera Squad there is no such thing as losing a character. In fact, character death results in a game over screen and a “Load Checkpoint” prompt. Gravely wounded soldiers have an increased chance at earning a scar, a semipermanent debuff that can only be cleared by sending them to rehabilitative training. At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about these changes. I have moments from previous games that have stuck with me for years, based on the deaths or retrieval of lost characters. Chimera Squad axes that in the interest of telling a story with its characters, and for such a radical change, it really pays off.

Dialogue in-mission feels largely the same. Conversations back at base however, really lend to the depth of the characters. I found myself constantly bemused by the tidbits of information I could glean from these operatives interacting with each other. It only takes a couple of lines to understand where Godmother gets her callsign. In one instance, Cherub - the affectionate mascot of the squad - asks Godmother to sign off on paperwork allowing the soldier and scientist who found him to adopt him. See Cherub is a clone soldier. Created by Advent for war, but woken after the Ethereal mind control had been lifted. He explains that the two people who found him, set him free, had gotten married a few years later and now they wanted to adopt him.

I truly had no expectation that I would be charmed this much by an XCOM title. But it didn’t end there.

Later in the game, given the opportunity to recruit another unit to Chimera’s ranks, I chose Zephyr, a Hybrid bruiser whose only wield-able weapons were her fists. I rarely choose melee characters, but because Chimera Squad is so unique, I figured I would try something new. In her first mission she was a blast to use. Her attack rooted enemies, meaning they can’t move on their next turn, and after her attack she is granted an additional action point so that she can distance herself from enemies that would take advantage of her close range to shoot her. I was convinced. Then we went back to base.

In her one and only base-dialogue I heard, she asked Cherub to be her training dummy. Except, she didn’t call him by his name, she called him Knock-Off. When confronted by Terminal (another agent) that he has a name Zephyr waved them away and called for Knock-Off to come along. Always the team morale agent, he complied, telling his defender that it was ok. 

I never used Zephyr again. She literally developed workshop projects for the next 20 hours of my campaign.

Again, I never expected that an XCOM game would make me feel like this about my soldiers. And quite frankly, I absolutely fell in love with this game because of it. 

Chimera Squad is clearly built on the XCOM 2 engine. As one would assume, with that fact comes the realization that a lot of the combat mechanics for this iteration of the game are immediately familiar. This lends to Chimera Squad feeling like an expansion in a way that few stand-alones achieve. After learning the non-complex intricacies of the Breach phase, a shock and awe stage that starts every encounter, combat falls into a rhythm that fans of the series will be comfortable with. With one major adjustment.

Rather than the “I go, you go” turn-based nature of games previous, this title takes an approach that feels far more like an initiative roll in a game of Dungeons & Dragons. The devs at Firaxis re-appropriate the term “Interleaved” here. Traditionally meaning to place blank pages between printed pages of a book, here it simply means that your enemy will take turns with you, within a timeline displayed on the right side of the screen. 

This forces players, otherwise familiar with the privilege of running through all of their characters before the enemy gets a chance to act, to plan more carefully. You may only have one agent in line at the start of a fight before hostiles get to retaliate. This leads to an increase in the importance of finding the most synergistic combination of agent abilities. Who can manipulate that timeline? Who can debuff, incapacitate, or eliminate targets the fastest and with the most cascading effect?

I found myself, at the halfway point of my playthrough (about 15 hours), settling into my squad. Godmother, a mobile, agile, hard hitting, shotgun wielding enforcer. Verge, a Sectoid psionic, with the ability to disable, berserk, and mind control assailants. Patchwork, a techie drone pilot whose drone shock can arc between enemies with a chance of debuffing every target zapped. And Finally, Blueblood a gunslinger with two pistols, one that ignores cover, and the ability to fire multiple times per turn. 

In any situation, I could finagle my way into disabling or dispatching two targets fully or up to eight targets partially within my first four actions. Add to this the few odds and ends you can nab from the Scavenger Market, a transient market that visits every week, or side mission rewards, and you can find yourself with a few epic weapons, specialized buff grenades like the Motile Inducer. Two free actions, immediately, to whomever you throw it at. 

Finding these synergies and supplements, is at the core of Chimera Squad, and while the process isn’t entirely unique to this title, it certainly feels more important when the turns are interleaved, the quarters are close, and your innate advantage lasts a single, Rainbow Six-esque, breaching action. 

Over the course of your game you will investigate three factions in City 31: The Progeny, Grey Phoenix, and Sacred Coil. Each faction has different units, abilities, and motivations, and as you take out each faction, the surviving factions will scale up in response. It is your job to root out their goals, foil their plans, and neutralize the threatening potential they hold. As illustrated by the comic book-styled cutscenes, Chimera Squad is against the wall and the clock, as unrest in the city rises you have to manage threats based on their cost to your levels of unrest in the nine districts of the city. You will forgo missions that have good rewards to manage the unrest in an unruly district. Spend your investigation points to deploy Security, Technology, or Financial teams in each district to access buffs that give you the ability to stave off increased unrest, decrease unrest in specific districts, or in the city overall. 

At its core Chimera Squad is truly an XCOM game, forcing its players to train their soldiers, research projects in the workshop, manage unrest across a map, and manage resources, all while fielding an active combat team in harrowing and varied encounters. Is it XCOM 3? No, not at all, but one shouldn’t conflate the two. Chimera squad is a $20 exploration into the ways that XCOM can, and I believe will, evolve. Expect to see hero characters in the future, with backstories and voice acting. Expect to see multiple paths in the campaign, with escalative properties as the game progresses. But more than anything, expect to feel right at home with Chimera Squad, despite the ways it alters the formula. You’ve simply moved on from Sazerac to Vieux Carre. Your rye whiskey is still there, just this time you have some sweet vermouth. Enjoy.

[rainygalaxynerd]

Brave New World - Chapter 59

Warnings: Canon typical violence. Severe injuries. Cliff hanger.

Summary: It’s D-day, and Team Slay Dick are ready. They have plenty of tricks up their sleeves so it should be easy. Right?

A/N: No one answered my question about whether or not I should post this before I know when I’ll be able to post the next chapter so now I’ll post it anyway. I’ve had it up to here (stretching hand as far as it goes and jumping as high as I can) with moving and I need virtual interaction. Feed me feedback, please.

This is part of a chapter story. Link to mobile friendly master list here.

Tagging: @jencharlan @jotink78 @kbrand0 @twenty-onepages @winchesterprincessbride @vibou25 @deandoesthingstome @littlegreenplasticsoldier @mrsjohnsmith @fangirling-instead-of-working

Sam cut through their argument, his voice doing the weird echo thing. “We have to go. If she wants to come, let her come.”

Dean clenched his fists and jaws and swallowed against the horde of swear words threatening to escape his mouth.

Cas placed a gentle hand on Dean’s shoulder, a silent calming gesture as they filed out to the parking lot. “If Sam says she should come, it will be alright.”

Chapter 59 - End Game

Dean glanced in the rear view mirror and scowled at Caitlin in the backseat. She stuck her tongue out at him. For the next few miles he kept his eyes on the road. Another glance, another scowl, an arched eyebrow and a lopsided smirk before Caitlin stuck her tongue out again.

Cas watched the interaction with fascination. “Is there something wrong with your tongue? Do you require help?”

Caitlin snorted. “Why don’t you ask Dean if he needs an iron to smooth out his forehead?”

Cas’ reply was cut short by the sound of Caitlin’s phone.

DICK PICKS FROM SPACE ARRIVED. EN ROUTE TO SUGAR LAND. -C&G.

“Roman took the bait, he’s headed to SucroCorp,” Caitlin told Cas, loud enough for Dean to hear her. Then she showed Sam the screen and he gave her a thumbs up.

Ten minutes later, the Impala pulled to a stop in the emergency track inside a long, curved tunnel.

Hands shaking, Caitlin texted Charlie back: WE’RE HERE. -C&CO

Less than a minute later another message ticked in. CAM CONTROLLED. CRASH IN 10…

Caitlin closed her eyes and swallowed, Dean’s stricken expression when they had showed him the fake video, fresh in her mind.

“Where did you get that?”

“Oh my gosh, was this really your car? We found some photos on a website with car wreck pictures and then manip’ed them into this.”

“That’s baby, alright.”

“Holy shit. How did you survive?”

Dean had turned his back and stomped out of the room.

Sam had come over and sighed at the sight of the wrecked Impala on the screen. “I was driving when the truck hit us out of nowhere. Dad had a bullet in his leg, Dean was barely breathing as it was. They told us, at the hospital, he wouldn’t make it. Dad wouldn’t hear of it. One minute my brother’s dying and I’m screaming at my Dad to fix things, to do better. The next minute, Dean’s okay and Dad’s dead.” Sam had shaken his head. “Did a hell of a number on Dean.”

Now, the cameras in the tunnel stored Charlie and Garcia’s manufactured footage real-time. Within the next few minutes, a traceable 911 call from the scene would alert authorities and three ambulances and a police car would be dispatched to the scene. They would be redirected elsewhere through scrambled radio communications before arriving.

Dean picked the lock to the dusty storage room for “CREW ONLY” and soon both ends of the tunnel were blocked by yellow and black striped barriers and signs saying “BLOCKED” and “ACCIDENT.”

Sam set up a bunch of flashing blue lights, so the reflections of what would seem like a bunch of emergency vehicles were visible when entering the tunnel.

Caitlin and Cas spread caltrops across a fifty yard section just ahead of the bend.

Sam and Dean set up a row of cardboard boxes containing crystallized borax and C4, working quickly and efficiently.

Caitlin’s phone startled them all. NEAT TRICK. DICK 1 STILL SUGARBOUND, DICK 2 COMING UR WAY, 3 CARS, 7 GOONS.

“Fuck,” Dean spat. “Why didn’t we think of that? How do we know we get the right Dick?”

Sam read the text and Dean’s expression. “Because the real Roman will be the one coming here. Trust me.”

Dean patted Sam’s shoulder and nodded. As he walked away he muttered to himself: “I fucking hope you’re right.”

Caitlin and Cas dragged a four gallon tank of borax over to the storage room and Dean figured out how to connect it to the sprinkler system.

They armed themselves with shotguns, extra shells and a machete each and nodded at each other in silence.

Dean handed Caitlin the detonator for the C4, his hand shaking bad enough that he almost dropped it. She caught it and he grabbed her wrists. “There’s an emergency exit inside the storage room. If things go south, you leave, promise?”

Caitlin frowned, the idea of leaving her friends behind and running from man eating monsters on her own every bit as horrible as staying in the killzone.

“I need you to live, please?” Dean’s grip on her tightened.

“Okay,” she said, shaking her head. As he let go of her, she reached out and stopped him. “But Dean, don’t make me do that. Don’t let things go south, okay?”

Dean leaned down and brushed his lips over hers. “Okay,” he said hoarsely.

They took their positions, Caitlin in the store room, Sam and Dean by the fake emergency lights, Cas invisible somewhere in between.

They waited.

XOXOX

Charlie and Garcia watched their screens rigidly, whatever cameras they could access along Roman’s route to ensure that nothing unforeseen happened, keeping an eye on the Winchesters standing in the tunnel, faces grim, guns ready.

A knock on the motel door startled them both, Garcia letting out a squeak.

Morgan pulled his gun and went to stand behind the door. “Who’s there,” he yelled.

“Me. What the hell are you two doing here?” Hotchner’s annoyance went through the door with perfect clarity.

Morgan put his gun away and opened the door. “Sorry, man. We’re working this ca…”

Someone kicked the door hard from the other side and it banged into Morgan’s left cheek bone. His teeth bit down hard on his tongue at the impact, flooding his mouth with the metallic, stale taste of his own blood. He shot out his arm to stop anyone from entering the room. Too warm, too strong fingers wrapped around his wrist and snapped it like a twig. Morgan yelled and pulled against from the iron grip around his wrist. The pressure simply increased.

Hotchner stepped into the room, keeping Morgan’s wrist in a grid lock, a cruel sneer on his lips. He aimed a gun at Charlie and Garcia.

Garcia stared at her friend and coworker with wide eyes. “Hotch, what are you doing?”

“That isn’t Hotch,” Morgan gasped, failing to loosen the fingers around his wrist with his other hand.

The Leviathan impersonating Hotchner moved the gun from Garcia to Charlie. “Don’t even think about it.”

Pouting, Charlie drew her hand away from the bottle of soap on the table.

“Shouldn’t they have been here by now?” Dean waved a hand in front of Sam’s face and repeated himself.

Sam shrugged. “Depends. They could have detoured for backup but I guess the girls would have told us.”

Just then, the sound of cars sounded down the other end of the tunnel.

“Woah, here they come,” Dean warned Sam.

With a nod, Sam turned to face the incoming threat.

The sound of popping tires never came. Instead, the cars slowed before entering the caltrop zone.

“Something’s gone wrong,” Dean muttered, exchanging a dark glance with Sam.

“Sam and Dean Winchester!”

There was no mistaking Dick Roman’s smooth, arrogant tone.

“I know you’re waiting around the bend, ready to fire everything you’ve got at us. Before you do, you should know that we have your friends at the King’s Rest Motel. They’re alive and relatively unharmed. If you cooperate with us, they might stay that way.”

“You’re bluffing!” Dean’s shoulders slumped in defeat, despite the defiant words. Of course, they weren’t bluffing.

“You’re welcome to come closer and watch the livefeed. So far that just means the real time video recording but if you don’t comply, it might become more literal than that.” The words carried an audible smirk.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean muttered and shrugged at Sam.

Together they walked forward, feet scraping the asphalt to avoid stepping on their own useless caltrops.

Three black continentals blocked the road, eight men waiting in front of them. Roman stood his ground in the middle, the closest goon to his right holding a laptop turned to face Sam and Dean. It showed the unmistakable images of Morgan, Charlie, and Garcia tied up in Sam’s room.

“What do you want,” said Sam, arms crossed in front of him, back straight enough to make him tower over everyone.

“What you stole, of course. Your guarantee that you’ll stop fighting us. In other words, the tablet and your lives.”

Dean scoffed. “You’ll eat our friends as soon as we’re gone anyway. No reason for us not to fight you right now.”

“With what?” Roman smiled. “You rigged the sprinklers to drench us in borax?” He reached behind him and brought an umbrella up. “You can’t harm us.”

“Yeah?” Dean mimicked Sam’s crossed arms. “What are you gonna do? Shoot us?” He winced at his own words as they left his mouth.

Roman laughed. “What a novel idea.” Seven guns left their holsters and aimed at the brothers as their wielders clicked the safeties off.

Sam’s eyes widened and he turned to Dean. “Dude! What did you just say?”

Dean threw his arms out: “Duck and cover.” He pushed Sam hard, back toward the line of explosives.

Caitlin listened from her hidden position. Things had gone south. When Dean yelled duck, she hit the switch and turned on the sprinklers, crossing her fingers that it would buy him and Sam a little time.

The Leviathans had the others. Her heart thumped against her chest. They might die.

Cas. Castiel. You can save them. You’re the only one who can.

Roman cursed as the sprinklers came on, bullets flying everywhere, his sizzling underlings firing blind. He held out the umbrella, allowing at least one of them to aim.

“Cease fire and take cover! No, not you, you idiot,” he hissed at the flustered dimwit at his side. As soon as everyone was protected he pointed ahead where the Winchesters had just disappeared out of sight. “Let’s do it right this time.”

Roman brought out his own gun as they advanced across the treacherous ground. The completely borax-free caltrops were a nuisance, nothing more, and they soon had the Winchesters back in their sight.

The tallest were limping. leaning on his brother. Roman took aim and fired a two deliberate shots. He watched with satisfaction as the two of them went down in a heap.

“Seriously?” Leviathan Hotch gave Morgan an incredulous stare. “You two do nothing but flirt outrageously day in and day out and you’ve never done the dirty? Not even that weird biting each other’s lips thing you humans find so entertaining?” He looked between Morgan and Garcia, momentarily stunned into silence. “You should’ve gotten it out of your system. Then maybe you’d spend more time working and less time frustrating everyone with your oh-so-clever banter.” A roll of the eyes made it clear how clever the Leviathan thought their banter was.

Morgan met Garcia’s eyes and she gave him a small nod. His lips curled up as he leaned his head back to sneer at their captor. “I thought your kind were an ancient race, akin to a natural disaster on a cosmic scale. And yet, here you are spewing the same ignorant, barely concealed misogyny humans with below average intelligence tends to hide their insecurities behind. What are you afraid of?”

The Leviathan narrowed its eyes [Hotch’s eyes, dammit] at him. With a huff it turned to Charlie. “I’m surprised you‘re still here, little turncoat. Don’t you think your new friends here know about all the crimes you’ve committed? Don’t you think they’re just waiting for the right moment to snap a set of handcuffs around your wrists?”

Charlie shifted in her seat. “Plenty of nice jobs for me in the White Collar division. I was never really a black-hat. More of a grey-ish kinda pink hat.”

The Leviathan smiled, teeth showing. “You’ve been planning to get caught, haven’t you? Hoping to get access to their old-fashioned paper archives to find out who fucked up the case against your parents’ killer?” It chuckled. “You’re delusional. Accidents happen. You just don’t want to carry the guilt alone.”

Charlie’s face was white as a sheet except for two red spots high on her cheeks. She kept her lips pressed together, hands clenched in their bonds.

Garcia nudged Charlie’s leg with her knee, her ankle protesting against the rope. She caught Charlie’s attention and smiled, shifted her eyes to the Leviathan and back before rolling her eyes vigorously.

Charlie’s breath hitched on an aborted giggle. Her head snapped back when the Leviathan backhanded her.

“Do you think this is a joke? Do you find your situation funny?” Another slap hit her other cheek. “What do you think is gonna happen when my boss gets the Word? You’ll get to mosey on out of here, no harm, no foul?”

Charlie spat a mixture of spit and blood on the floor, breathing hard. She swallowed and met the Leviathan’s eyes dead on. “I think we’ll be dead before the sun sets no matter what and I’m not gonna waste my last hours crying about my past to satisfy your sick sense of humor.” Her eyes widened and the corners of her mouth quirked upward. She focused on Garcia. “That sounded totally badass, didn’t it? We’re going to die trying to save the world and I’m mouthing off to the bad guys. Penny, we’re HEROES.”

Garcia scoffed. “Martyrs, more like it. But, your enthusiasm is admirable.”

Charlie’s face fell.

Castiel materialized behind the Leviathan and swung his machete in a wide arc. The severed head slid off its neck and rolled across the floor.

Charlie stared at the gorish spectacle, mouth hanging open. “Dude! Telefrag!”

Cas caught the monster’s head by the hair and carried it to the bathtub.

The head opened its mouth. “Think you’re a hero now, Castiel? Do all your friends know what you’ve been up to? We remember. Changing sides now won’t wash you clean, nothing will.”

Cas glared at the thing as he let go and turned the tap, cold water trickling into the tub. “My Father disagrees.”

The head rolled its eyes. “You’d think I failed psychological warfare 101,” it sighed.

Cas tilted his head, confused. He shrugged and paused. A small smile grazed his lips. “Why don’t you get clean?” Cas threw a bar of soap into the water and left. It only took half a minute for the water to rise high enough to drown the agonized screams.

Cas loosened the first knot on the ropes tying Morgan’s hands behind his back. There was a strange pull inside him, growing. The world tilted sideways, his surroundings blurring and fading. The carpet was scratchy against his cheek and smelled like onions. He blinked furiously as another Leviathan stepped through the door.

“Hello old friend. You look unwell. I guess the sigils I just activated are working.” The Leviathan kicked Cas hard in the stomach. “No flying, no powers.” It bent down and easily trapped Cas’ hands behind his back. “The combination of the inverted Solomon’s key keeping you here and the extensive angel warding might turn out to be deadly,” it said, tying a rope around Cas’ wrists.

Pain lashed through Sam’s left side when he hit the ground, twisting to spare Dean’s suddenly limp body as much as possible.

Dean stayed silent, heavy and motionless as he landed halfway on Sam.

“Dean? Dean? Where are you hurt? Dean!”

Sam padded down Dean’s back, feeling the warm, sticky wet blood. He shifted, gently rolling Dean off him.

Dean’s eyes were open, brimming with terror and pain. His mouth worked furiously but Sam couldn’t hear a single sound. Dean’s lips had a bluish tinge that seemed to worsen quickly.

Sam put a shaking hand to Dean’s back, following his spine up, up. There. Slightly to the left but still on point, just below the base of Dean’s skull. The entry wound. Dean was paralyzed from the neck down

Sam slowly maneuvered Dean onto his wounded back side. “Dean, the bullet hit your spine. You’re not breathing right now, so I’m gonna do it for you, okay? Cas will fix you in sec, so hang in there, Dee.”

[clutchcollective]

Aishla Manning | Soft Verges

Words by Nicola Scott

In 2015, performing live in Seattle, stand-up comedian Tig Notaro ditched her planned set for several minutes of inexplicably funny impromptu prop comedy. Slightly moving a stool onstage, the strange noise produced made the audience collectively laugh. “So I just kept pushing the stool, and they kept laughing…So I just kept pushing the stool, and they stopped laughing…So I kept pushing the stool, and they started laughing again…And it just kept going like that for a while.”1

It is similarly difficult to articulate precisely why and how the humour works in Aishla Manning’s art. Something is hard to reconcile. Some things are literally hard: bricks, graters, a fork, wooden poles, rigid plastic, the metal of a kettle. Others are soft: underwear, rubber gloves, balloons, a cooked sweet potato, indeterminate goop. Often a sensually anthropomorphic creation strokes a familiar home appliance, or vice versa. Sometimes existing tools are taped together to make impractical inventions, or useless versions of ordinary objects are constructed out of flimsier materials, ridiculously not to-scale.

This stuff is deliberately disparate, suggestive of various sensations and connotations when brought together within the unremarkable domestic/urban spaces of Manning’s videos and occasional exhibiting of objects. Traces of minimalist art historical lineages and the whiff of industry or the inorganic meet with the intimate, the eaten, the everyday, the amorphous. Contact occurs through repetitive movements with no clear purpose: bouncing, lifting, falling, stroking, smacking, scraping, puncturing, grating, rolling into, tugging at…Manning likes to keep shifting the stool around. These repeated, even ritualistic, motions harness chance, but are not robotic or random. Controlled by the artist’s hands just out of frame, they appear animate, and as a result seem to express frustration, desire, and exhaustion – especially where there is a lack, or loss, of comportment (or the promise of this loss) entailed in objects falling, slipping, and otherwise yielding to gravity or missing the mark.

These are encounters between spaces, objects, and materials in which the human body becomes paradoxical, everywhere and nowhere, particularly through this study of comportment via non-human actors. Comportment is about social observation and self-policing. It encompasses gesture and posture, how one routinely holds and moves ones’ body in space and in relation to other bodies, objects, and materials, including tools, clothing, furniture, architecture etc. Somewhat like the movements of Notaro’s stool and Manning’s objects, elements of comportment are (must be) repeated over and over. This necessity entails tension in the “subtle ruse of power”: the ever-present threat, or guarantee, of inevitable faltering, of “trouble”2. The bodies of the audience watch and listen. The body on-stage moves. This is not the script. For a moment there is silence…

A failure of comportment or its deliberate subversion troubles norms, produces anxiety, threatens order. This can incite punishment, but when framed or contextualised as unthreatening, it can also be deeply funny, especially when this ‘bit’ involves repetition: the slapstick of Charlie Chaplin; the verging-on-horrific accidents on Funniest Home Videos; Eddie Murphy as the Nutty Professor; the unguarded female bodies on Lena Dunham’s Girls. Like these onscreen bodies, Manning’s objects are ‘set up’ to fail, to look awkward, come a cropper, fudge their landing, run in place. They have a touch of the brazen air of a stunt man manoeuvring towards organised disaster, but the more quotidian clutz of TV infomercials is there too, in the domestic materials and spaces, Manning’s

entrepreneurial constructions, minor challenges theatrically presented, and an implied exasperation at the barely confined chaos of everyday life. So I just kept pushing the stool, and they kept laughing…

Manning’s pathetic Sisyphean motions both playfully produce or locate absurdity in the everyday, and hold a mirror to this part of the absurdity of every day, filled with the promised rewards and repercussions of maintaining composure in various socio-culturally enforced roles as a hard worker, a healthy and desirable body, a happy psychological subject, a binary gender, among others. In pursuit of “that moral-intimate-economic thing called “the good life””, sooner or later we are bound to flail/fail.3 We, like Manning’s objects, have been set up. This is the darker edge of Manning’s love of repetition, and the chaos and absurdity it wreaks. Repetition can be a comedic device, but in this light it can also be disturbing. It can signify an absence of freedom, of possibility, of alternatives. A sign of things gone wrong, of breakdown, of madness. Repetition itself, in the creation and reinforming of beliefs and expectations, can be a more effective mechanism for control than physical violence. So I just kept pushing the stool, and they stopped laughing…

This tension is apparent but expanded in new ways in Soft Verges, which mingles gestures of intimacy and cruelty. This exhibition emerges through a collaboration between Clutch Collective and another Brisbane-based Artist-Run-Initiative, Outer Space. The videos are projected via the former’s truck, in the loading zone and interior of the latter’s small concrete brick building, a University studio-cum-covert ARI. In these videos a non-descript moving truck meets the body-like stunt doubles of a pillow and its flimsy doppelganger, a pillowcase filled with ambiguous ooze. In one, Manning carefully drives the truck over the pillow in a carpark, slowly circles around to face it from the other direction, and repeats this vaguely violent, almost devoted, metaphorical murder. The pillow, momentarily flattened, springs back quietly to its original shape bearing only a faint tyre mark. In the other, we see a more close-up (money shot?) view of the fluid-filled case bursting under the weight of the slowly rolling truck wheel. With some confusion perhaps, we watch this version shift shape under the pressure, before a white liquid spurts out, pooling somewhat unspectacularly but beautifully incongruent to the solid black tyre and concrete bitumen.

In some ways we’ve shifted mythical scripts here, from the self-induced perpetual punishment of Sisyphus to the unpredictable struggle between David and Goliath. Manning has used the Clutch truck – the interior of which is an alternate version of, or stand-in for, the space of a more conventional gallery - not as a final destination for her finished work as we might expect, but the essential driver of her experimentation and key component of the outcomes in which we see it ‘dominating’ more vulnerable objects. As in Manning’s broader practice, these seemingly pointless interactions speak to absurdity and failure in everyday life, particularly as the truck and accompanying objects come laden with associations that proliferate on contact with each other and these spaces, such as travel, transit, limbo, gender, fatigue, private and public realms, imitation, abjection, agency, and power.

They also exist as a metaphor for the process by which the site of exhibition shapes the artwork, something that happens more and less consciously for contemporary artists seeking an audience. Crushing pressure, stifling rule-maker, caring devotee, force to creatively bounce back against, catalyst for messy, unpredictable outcomes – amidst other layers of signification, Soft Verges reflects the varied, complex, and unstable relationship between spaces of art exhibition and the living bodies of artists. By virtue of existing perhapsnot quite in opposition to, but nonetheless beyond the border of, the more established institutional realm, ARIs too have a varied

relationship in this way. They are at the same time spaces of potential. Like the truck’s parked position in Outer Space’s industrial building, they can work as a ‘loading bay’ for emerging artists seeking the endorsement of more powerful or professional institutions. They can mimic these same institutions and/or initiate a break in the repetition of their conventions, a temporary hijacking of their spaces, a “loss of memory” regarding their criteria for inclusion, a deliberate ‘failure of comportment’ in terms of orthodox display. In theory at least, they promise a “moving sideways” with regard to the limitations of the wider art world.4

Verge means variously: to be very close or similar to; an extreme limit beyond which something specified will happen; an edge or border.5 Manning’s works, like the ARIs collaborating to present them, at the very least verge on or share the border with more traditional or grandiose forms of success within the realm of art making and display. They are self-conscious and deliberate in their ‘failures’. Nonetheless, they offer a degree of breathing room, space to look around, a loosening of the grip of the expectations that shape the way we live, work, move through space, structure time, as well as think about, value, and ‘do’ art. In this sense, Soft Verges evokes the co-opted-for-capitalism Ralph Waldo Emerson misquote, “success is a journey, not a destination”. As in all Manning’s works, things move repetitively, uselessly, on a journey towards collapse, anticlimax or stasis, but it’s not always predictable how. Objects verging on identical in appearance react differently to force, thus achieving different outcomes. Body stand-ins as always, they are alternately resilient, or yield and become fluid, but nowhere are there obvious winners and losers. There is no clear or easily occupied oppositional position to ‘success’ as a human being living in the present moment either, nor as an artist that wants an audience, nor as an art space that wants to make something happen. The show/s must go on. So then, if this kind of trouble is inevitable, “how best to make it, what best way to be in it?”.6

The interactions of Manning’s objects in the spaces of this exhibition suggest we could attempt to traverse the present as they do: with strangeness, via unexpected exchanges, with a lack of purpose, by circling back, trying something else, going nowhere…And it just kept going like that for a while…Perhaps awkwardly moving the stool is the point, a repetitive act made meaningless and meaningful through it’s conscious undertaking. In this there is the makings of a strategy for approaching the verge and softening it, to allow for unspecified experiences and outcomes.

1. Daily Motion 2015, Tig Notaro – Stool Movement [Online Video], https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2z1veq_tig-notaro-stool-movement_fun Accessed: 24 May 2017.

2. Butler, J 2006, Gender Trouble, Routledge, New York.

3. Berlant, L 2011,, Cruel Optimism, Duke University Press, Durhamp.

4. Haberstam, J 2011, The Queer Art of Failure, Duke University Press, Durhamp. 5. “verge.” Merriam-Webster.com 2017. www.merriam-webster.com Accessed: 24 May 2017.

6. Butler, J 2006, Gender Trouble, Routledge, New York.