#as frustrating as The Illness saga this year was I got a bit better about phone anxiety so I can do aaaaaaanythiiiiiinggg

[doedipus]

I've been slightly stuck with the zine project for a bit

like I got the layout and stuff *done* as far as I can tell. it looks good on the computer, works as intended when printed out normally... but I'm hitting two mental blocks right now

the first is just like, the content itself. it feels weird publishing and presumably selling an advertisement for like, a pirate anime broadcast lol. part of me is paranoid I could get in trouble for that somehow, though idk who would be looking. and also I'm gonna be publishing this from within the cleo watkins persona, which is sort of awkward to let slip into the real world, and makes it something I wouldn't necessarily want to include in a portfolio, which is half the point of this whole exercise (although there's also a bunch of mildly dirty jokes in the word games anyway)

the other thing is that printing is gonna be a hassle. the local kinko's print shop doesn't do full bleed printing, and print shops that *do* tend to predictably charge a lot more, or I gotta like actually get on the phone with people to get quotes, or both. I also only need the full edge to edge print on the cover spread, so it seems like something I really should try to get a deal on, but it'll be a hassle going around getting quotes. and handing the material over is kind of embarrassing for previously described reasons

[butterflyinthewell]

To trans folks who are trying to set trolls straight about Chris-Chan’s gender: Your hearts are in the right place, but the trolls do not care. They will keep misgendering Chris to piss you off and screenshot your reaction.

Yes, I’m talking about THE Chris-Chan. CWC, creator of Sonichu.

(TW: this post will mention rape and incest.)

I know, I know… “But if we let people misgender Chris, what’s stopping them from doing it to other trans people?”

Nothing.

There’s nothing you can do, unfortunately. The thing with trolls is they aren’t here to learn, they’re here to frustrate, annoy and anger you. They throw out all kinds of little hooks by saying offensive things, or things that trick you, and it’s all a game to them when somebody bites the bait.

It wouldn’t surprise me if trolls are saying horrible things about autism, too. That’s more my lane and partly why I don’t dig too deep in the tags about this situation. Again, I stress not engaging with that to correct trolls. They don’t care, they want to offend you.

As frustrating as it is, take note of the people who use Chris’ current pronouns and recognize that there are people who make an effort to get them right. I’m sure the trans people reading what you say will see that and know you care to gender them correctly.

It’s possible Chris transitioned believing she can get with lesbians. It’s entirely possible she’s exactly the stereotype that TERFs rant about and her shitty behavior might be used in the future to argue their views. TERFs will be TERFs. Some of Chris’ trolls may be trans themselves.

As it stands, Chris presents as a woman, so I’ll use she/her pronouns unless she decides to present as non-binary or a man again. You’re welcome to do the same when talking about her. Don’t waste your time trying to correct trolls, just use Chris’ current pronouns and leave it at that.

It sucks, but that’s how trolls troll.

Moving on…

I wonder if Chris would’ve been a weird, harmless nobody if Mimms never took her photo in The Game Place.

This all started because her photo was taken without her knowledge or consent and posted on a forum, which ended up spreading to the wider web and…yeah.

Would she have been an internet sensation? Would she have transitioned? Would she be a known name on the web?

Maybe everything would’ve gone down the same, but without an audience to bear witness.

Regardless, Chris is a trainwreck of a person. I don’t say that lightly. She didn’t deserve the trolling and abuse she got, yet she isn’t innocent in this either.

I felt sorry for her at first because I’m autistic too and was bullied severely in high school, some of it included physical assault and attempted murder. I reacted to the constant name calling and mockery irl a lot like Chris reacted to her online trolls. I’m thankful that my most volatile years happened before I had internet access. I’m two years older than Chris. I had my own drama with trolls that lasted a few years, but I grew up a bit more.

But I digress…

Chris didn’t get the internet safety talk that I got before getting let loose online, and people took advantage of her gullibility, her autism, whatever mental illnesses she might have and her obsession with getting laid. She ignored warnings to the contrary and in some instances her mom enabled her while her dad tried (and failed) to reign her in.

At the same time, Chris has a history of being racist, ableist, homophobic and misogynistic. She ignores people’s boundaries even when they were clearly stated. She’s entitled and thinks everything bad is a conspiracy against her. She acts like the world operates on cartoon rules and can’t handle it when situations don’t turn out in her favor like she believes they should. It’s a strange view of “Anything I do is good because I did it, and anybody who tells me it’s bad or treats me badly is evil or a troll.”

How she comes across to others and how she thinks she comes across are incongruent with each other, and she refuses to take any correction. An example is the claw hand she used to do while railing at trolls. It’s clear she’s imitating stuff she saw in cartoons, but doesn’t grasp that it looks silly in real life. It leaves me wondering if she ever watched her videos back to see how she really looks before uploading them.

Chris did a lot of disgusting things of her own volition, like not leaving people alone, uploading that sexual drawing featuring Megan, using pepper spray without provocation and trying to hit someone with her car.

Trolls tricked her into humiliating herself and shared the results, like hacking into her email, sharing chats where she gave out embarrassing details about herself, prank calling her house and posting the infamous blowup doll video.

If you know “Christory”, you know what I’m talking about.

If you don’t know, it’s something that’s gone on longer than some people have been alive.

No side is innocent here. I don’t blame Chris for attracting trolls, they chose to go and harass her because she jumped when they poked her.

I’ve followed Chris’ story off and on since 2008, back when she was making her Sonichu comics and being awkward. I never participated in trolling her. I’ve only ever seen the aftermath of troll operations, but the things she endured were cruel. (The Miyamoto saga and the BlueSpike saga come to mind.) I looked her up to see if she was alive and okay. I sent her my AFBV message a couple years ago, but never got a response.

I wonder if this could’ve been avoided if Chris never got trolled and was supervised better while online. That’s where her parents failed her. I felt bad for her; she didn’t know how to conduct herself and kept falling for trolling schemes because she was so desperate to get a girlfriend. It’s like she ignored that little gut warning that says “hey, this feels like a trick” and it was like watching someone fall down the same hillside over and over.

But after what she did to her mom, I lost any sympathy I had for her. Yes, trolls have traumatized her and messed with her head for over a decade and that’s gross, but what she did to her mom was unconscionable. It’s indefensible. It’s morally abhorrent.

She had sex with (or possibly raped via coercion) her elderly mom, who may have dementia.

Chris’ autism was taken advantage of for years, and now she might’ve taken advantage of her mom’s dementia to harm her for the past month.

Think about that. There is no defending that. She finally did something she can’t just wave away or pay her way out of.

Trolls didn’t put Chris up to that, she did it all by herself.

Now she’s under arrest.

Time and again Chris has had run-ins with the law and got away with slaps on the wrist, but I don’t think she’s going to walk away from this so easily.

I hope this situation finally gets Chris the help she desperately needs. I don’t know if her dimensional merge stuff is a delusion from undiagnosed and untreated mental illness or if it’s a paracosm she’s chosen to live in and act out because she can’t handle how cruel the real world is. Please note that I don’t say mental illness lightly either, because I’m aware of the stigma.

At this point I think she needs a caregiver who will supervise her online activities and help her manage her finances. (She will likely resist this…)

Chris’ autism and whatever else she has going on appears to make it very difficult for her to see things from any perspective besides her own. I’m autistic too, so I understand this— sometimes I get this way and have to walk myself back to see other perspectives, or I ask people to give me their side of it to help me understand how they see it even if I don’t agree with their view.

Chris needed more guidance and reality checks growing up, but didn’t get them, and now she needs both more than ever as she faces the results of her behavior. If she is delusional, she needs help to navigate it and I hope she can do that away from trolls. She needs to face consequences for (possibly) raping someone.

I wonder what the legal system will do with her, and I hate that her life has come to this. It was so avoidable. 😞

Sorry, Chris…I hope you’ll get help now, and I hope Barb is okay.

[duhragonball]

Gohan for the character ask!

Give me a character and I will answer:

Why I like them: I think the main appeal of Gohan is that he’s constantly being pulled in two directions.   You can interpret those two opposing forces however you please: Saiyan vs. Earthling, Chi-Chi vs. Goku, fighter vs. scholar, etc.   But I think it’s a pretty relatable dilemma.  

What’s also relatable is that Gohan tries to blaze his own trail, even as he works hard to satisfy everyone’s expectations of him.   The moral of his story is that it’s not always easy to find your own path.  It sounds liberating, but it also means you’re on your own.  

Why I don’t: Very early on, I was frustrated with Gohan being such a major player in DBZ when it didn’t seem like he was qualified for the role.    It took me a while to recognize how important his “hidden” power was to the story.   That, and the fact that the good guys usually only ever involved him in a battle because they had no other options.   I think it’s interesting that Gohan maintains such a low profile during the Androids/Cell arc, so when he finally gets tapped to fight Cell at the end, it’s treated like a huge plot twist.   It’s ironic, because Gohan was so instrumental in defeating Vegeta, and if he had beaten Frieza on Namek, I don’t think anyone would have been shocked.   As it is, he was built up to be the guy who would beat Majin Buu, and everyone’s still mad that he lost. 

For a time, I was frustrated that Gohan was technically the strongest character at the end of the Buu Saga, even though Goku was the main guy.    It just felt wrong somehow, and I’ve seen enough “Mystic Gohan vs. SSJ3 Goku” threads on the internet to know that a lot of people used denial to cope with it.  

None of this really made me dislike the character, though.   I think most of the hand-wringing about Gohan is just a side-effect of that tug-of-war he’s been in his whole life.  Some fans want to see him kick ass, some want to see him settle down and be a student/family man/scholar.    Super tried to play it both ways by having Gohan be out of shape and then suddenly get good after a crash course with Piccolo.   It seemed like half the fans were happy to see that and half were upset.    Personally, I liked that approach better than how they handled him in GT, where he dressed like a nerd in church but could still throw down with Vegeta.   He used SSJ1 the whole time, so what happened to the Elder Kai power up?    GT just shrugged and hoped no one would care.   

For my part, I think it makes sense for Gohan to try to balance fighting and academia and family life.   Team Four Star made a lot of hay out of the idea that Gohan hates fighting, full stop, but I don’t totally buy that.  Gohan may not enjoy fighting for his life, or killing people, but I think he’s cool sparring with his family, for example.  But he can’t just throw himself into it like the others, so he’s got to train hard to keep up, and then he has to work hard at his ill-defined job, and then he has to be a good parent.   That’s the character.   Goku can be carefree, but Gohan has a lot of responsibilities. 

I do sort of wish they would focus on that balancing act, since that’s what Gohan’s all about.  Super only did it long enough to spackle over a plot hole.   “Frieza beat him in one hit, so how’s he going to do any good in the Tournament of Power?   Oh, Piccolo worked him over for a while, so he’s back in shape now.”    It’s not enough, and I think this is why some fans argue over the dilemma instead of appreciating the dilemma.   It’s a feature, not a bug.

Favorite episode (scene if movie):

Gohan just dismantling Cell is the standard by which I judge all wrestling grudges.    The reason WWE sucks is that they’ll have the bad guy Perfect Cell all over the place for months, and then they fuck up the part where the good guy is supposed to turn SSJ2 and dole out sweet, sweet consequences.    If all you know how to do is the first half of the formula, then... well, I’m cancelling my WWE Network subscription, I guess.  I forgot where this analogy was heading.  

Point is, Gohan’s an awesome moment factory.   Take a look.

You can’t go wrong.

Favorite season/movie: Cell Games, let’s be honest.  

Favorite line: When he calls Super Buu a r-- hahaha, no.   I’m actually thinking of the part in the Funimation dub when Cell starts to panic.    In Japan, the narrator explains Cell’s fear, and in Latin America it was meme fuel, but in the U.S., Gohan reminds Cell that he warned him about this. 

“What are you so afraid of Cell? Isn't this what you wanted? I warned you! I told you what would happen if you pushed me too far! But you didn't listen! You forced me to awaken my hidden power! And now that you've seen it, you're afraid...because you know that I'm going to destroy you!” 

It’s a brilliant bit of work, because you can’t see Gohan’s face in the shot, so he can be the one to point out what the narrator says in all the other versions.   They all compliment each other so well.    I cannot emphasize enough how grateful I am for Brickshitting Cell.  

Favorite outfit:

It’s a tough call, but Casual Friday Great Saiyaman is a killer look, and one of the few Gohan outfits that isn’t based on some other thing.   Let’s be real because I am keeping it real: Videl only wanted to unmask Great Saiyaman because she saw his outfit and could not stop thinking about how hot he’d look if he ditched the helmet and cape and wore sunglasses instead.   

OTP: Videl.   Well, Gohan and Videl.    Godel?   Vihan?   None of these sound right.   He should stick with the lady he made a baby with, is what I’m saying.

Brotp: Krillin literally calls him bro throughout the Namek arc, so I think this one wins by default.   On the other hand, Goten is literally Gohan’s brother, so I guess that can’t be ignored.  

Personally, I think of Piccolo more as a brother figure to Gohan than a father figure, since he’s only a few years older than him, so maybe that’s my answer, but whatever. 

Head Canon: I think Gohan is disillusioned with outer space after having traveled to another planet and finding only death and horror.   It’s kind of tragic that this is a kid who should be totally into space and spaceships and he should be telling space facts to everyone who will listen, but that probably stopped being fun after Namek.  

Unpopular opinion: He was never going to be the main character of DBZ.   I think even Toei was hoping for some sort of torch-passing thing, but it never materialized, and Gohan only took the reins because Goku was too dead or Vegeta was too evil to do it instead.   And Gohan never really wanted to be the main character anyway.    I look at him and see a guy who’s totally happy to be the overlooked son of this pop culture phenomenon.    He sees his dad’s parade float and he’s just super-thrilled to see his dad in baloon form.    There’s no sense of “If only I was better at this, and then I could have my own parade baloon!”  That’s Vegeta.   

A wish: Pay Bruce Faulconer whatever he wants and use “Gohan Fights Frieza” in the next anime where Gohan kicks somebody’s ass.    Also, make a new anime where Gohan kicks somebody’s ass.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: You know, one of these years, some official DBZ story is going to be made where they decide to “get serious” and have Gohan say a bunch of “cathartic” stuff to Goku, calling him a terrible father or some other horseshit.    Like how DC brought back Jason Todd just to have him bitch at what a crappy parent Batman is.    Again, I hope I’m safely cremated before that happens, but so many pompous dopes are gonna gush about a hacky moment like that, and go on their YouTube vlogs to say “it’s about time!”    

5 words to best describe them: Gohan Fights Frieza Dot mp3.

My nickname for them: I... don’t really have one?   Do people nickname fictional characters?   I didn’t know that was a thing.

[falkenscreen]

Star Trek: Voyager

Yes this show ended some time ago; that doesn’t mean that it’s not still underrated.

A relative late convert to Star Trek, this author committed to traversing the Delta Quadrant having finished The Original Series, The Next Generation, Discovery & Picard to date. Deep Space Nine is next; like the Doctor I don’t know anything about this ‘Dominion’ but they seem important and we’ll get there.

Having now finished Voyager, here’s the (spoiler-filled) thoughts of someone who came to the bridge afresh and savoured the light-hearted nature of the show. Yes TNG demanded more attention and the episodes herein that do are generally better, but for relaxed, semi-serialised adventure Voyager is a high point.

We’ll start with the negative and get to the fun stuff.

From the get-go there was a jarring disconnect between the premise and goals of the show. If a ship more advanced than any in the region is travelling really fast in one direction they’re not going to keep running into the same people; better begetting a saga poised for episodic rather than serialised fiction. The writers and audience were evidently a little tired at this point of TNG’s slavish devotion to wrapping everything up in 40-odd minutes so wanted to try variations on a theme; it was the right approach for the time accompanied by a smart premise that didn’t match.

And a stellar premise it was only set to be buoyed by the Federation-Marquis dynamic. Also partly squandered, corresponding grounds for strong tension and stories were left by the wayside – characterised by Chakotay’s ill-established, apparently immediate and seemingly endless trust in Janeway; together major failings of the show.

On continuity, and just so it’s out of the way; no they don’t show it but it’s clear the crew just manufactured more photon torpedoes like they did so much else.

Commencing with one of the best episodes, there is rarely a subsequent moment as character-defining as Janeway destroying the array. Don’t get me wrong, Kate Mulgrew is great, but she alike Kirk and Picard are, as fleshed out as they become, for stretches bare variations on a tired theme; young headstrong hotshot dedicates their life to the stars to become a reasoned, seasoned Commander. ‘Tapestry’ did it best and there was no need to explore this further.

Voyager had a general problem with characters that took several seasons to grow; it was a long time before Neelix stopped being grating and his earnestness became endearing. There is too very little you can relay about Tuvak beyond his being a Vulcan and a little sardonic, or Harry besides his yearning for advancement or Chakotay aside his membership of the Marquis and focus on his cultural background.

The stand-out worst episode of the entire show was Chakotay finding out that the Sky Spirits central to his people’s religion were actually from the Delta Quadrant; you can garner Robert Beltran’s clear ambivalence (at best) to such material. This author is aware of the significant tension between the actor and others on set; I can understand the frustration at a lead cast member belittling the series in public but the directions and emphasis the character took in later seasons was something else, as were the music cues whenever his or some others’ cultures came up.

Star Trek, and notably The Original Series, is often (but not always) shrewd for both telling stories addressing the place of culture, religion and community in people’s lives while not overly if at all drawing attention to particular characters’ backgrounds. To Beltran’s credit, he only made the disaffection perceptible on screen in the episodes that were of poor taste, as opposed to the ones that were just bad. There are many lousy episodes of The Original Series but what near always makes it enjoyable is Shatner et al’s absolute commitment to the bit. One of the very worst episodes of Voyager is the one where Harry is lead to believe that he’s actually from a planet in the Delta Quadrant full of attractive women; yet no one in Star Trek ever needs to look bored reading their lines. There are good ones and bad ones and we’re along for the whole ride.

There’s also that one where Tom and the Captain turn into salamanders, start life on a random planet and somehow transform back into their usual selves with these shenanigans never brought up again. Yeah that was awful but it was preceded by a generally decent few acts centred on exceeding warp limits; reputation aside it wasn’t quite down there.

On Alpha Quadrant folks being in the Delta Quadrant, as much as I missed the Klingons they did not need to rock up latently and near the very end; there were plenty of better ways to give B’Elanna an arc. One of the more interesting characters, she offered a variation on Worf’s overwhelming pride as a Klingon, though she barely got enough episodes to shine and these were predominantly featured much later on. And when the show stopped pretending Tom was the cocky pilot we’ve seen dozens of times before he too managed to get a whole lot more interesting.

It would have made a lot more sense for McNeill to just directly continue his character from TNG’s ‘The First Duty;’ alas.

Also welcome were the insights into the Borg; even if they became a lot less eerie it was great to learn that much more about them, though nothing, save the introduction of Seven, bettered the recuperating drones who were the ship’s first Borg encounter. The Borg children were also very funny (the related Voyager pick-ups in Picard were excellent) and should have stayed on the ship longer so Seven could say more things like “fun will now commence;” she can only say “Naomi Wildman” deadpan, as good as it was, so many times.

Heralded by such a superb actress, Seven and the Doctor thrillingly shared dual arcs akin but distinct to Data’s and each other’s, permitting us to relish their gradual growth and revel in their leaps forward. Seven’s narrowing down of eligible crewmen, unlike Chakotay’s later courting, was a particular highlight, as was her month of isolation when the crew were in stasis and the one where the Doctor overtook her node.

The Doctor however emerges the best character, far and above all others save the near as interesting Seven. Picardo’s charisma and stage presence, well-befitting an exaggeratedly humanistic, bombastic piece of programming, only propelled the most relatable arcs in the series; his desire to fit in and, as any, make a contribution. The Doctor’s opening number in ‘Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy,’ but one occasion where Picardo’s vocal abilities were graciously integrated into the series, by this author’s judgement is the funniest sequence in seven seasons.

‘Message in a Bottle’ with the Doctor centre was too among the very best of the series. Mining any opportunity for comedy we can nonetheless be grateful, alike TNG, that they kept the bald jokes to about one per season.

As asides, it was lovely to see Reginald Barclay return and realise his aspirations in one of the best and most heart-warming episodes of the saga, while the singular and very obvious inspiration one episode draws from Predator proved amusing for just being so unabashed.  

‘Scorpion’ was amazing as was anything to do with Species 8472. Captain Proton, acknowledging the entire franchise’s schlocky roots, was a definite recurring highlight, with Mulgrew in one installment clearly having no end of fun alike the cast’s enjoyable turns in late 90’s Los Angeles alongside Sarah Silverman. Speaking of guest stars, seeing The Rock was a nice surprise though with hindsight they may never have cast him given Star Trek shrewdly chose to not have celebrity appearances overshadow the show. But hey, they can’t see the future; at least cleverly opting to obscure Jason Alexander in piles of costuming.

‘Year of Hell’ is good, but the premise befitted an entire season and alike the lacklustre finale nothing really matters (with some well-executed exceptions) if you can just go back in or erase time. There were many, many episodes that shouldn’t have been contained within forty minutes and deserved longer-form devotion, ala ‘30 Days.’ ‘Timeless’was a much better (and unusually technically-focused) variation on the aforementioned themes and it was fun to catch Geordi, as it was Deanna and especially Sulu. ‘The Omega Directive’ was cool; ‘The Thaw’ was great.

The fable-esque nature of the franchise has always been enjoyable and digestible given the show is partially aimed at kids, though there are episodes where it’s just a little too direct, and characters take a little too much pause. ‘Alice,’ the one where Tom almost cheats with his ship as an overly obvious parallel about why you shouldn’t have sex with other people if you have a girlfriend, if a good lesson, in execution was a tad much.

On reflection this author was surprised to discover some of the least generally favoured episodes, among them the Fairhaven double. It may be my great personal affection for Ireland but it makes perfect sense that given the time available this sort of world would be created and characters might pursue holo-relationships, a theme underexplored in Voyager yet still covered to great effect. The established technical deficiencies of holo-technology in such regular use should not come as a surprise when they recur.  

The one where Kes comes back was actually a later highlight; her character was never very well handled and no it wasn’t that blast off into the sunset but sometimes old friends lose their way and it’s the job of old friends to set them on the right path.

Most surprising was the dislike directed at ‘Tuvix.’ The difference between Voyager and much heavier sci-fi is that herein characters make a lot of decisions that are hard, not ones that are difficult. The destruction of the array was devastating but not morally questionable within the confines of the show. As a tangent, you could argue that had Janeway made the decision to return to the Alpha Quadrant at the beginning of the series that it would have been the morally correct decision given that, as we see in ‘Hope and Fear,’ another highlight, the ship would not otherwise have been a factor in much disorder and destruction. The show was not however so expansive philosophically as to greatly tread such ground as the franchise otherwise managed in the likes of ‘City on the Edge of Forever.’

In ‘Tuvix’ Janeway, a figure, like Chakotay, who often shifted characterisation to fit the requirements of any given story, was faced with a difficult decision with no easy moral out nor ethically unquestionable approach. It was a refreshing change and correspondingly dark denouement to boot apparent in the likes of ‘Latent Image,’ another fine instalment with the Doctor.

‘Eye of the Needle,’ the only episode this author has watched twice to date and a deeply empathetic early high point, save ‘Balance of Terror’ is the best treatment of the guarded but necessarily relatable Romulans (I haven’t seen all the movies!). ‘The Void’ bookends the show as a later stand out while the in respects not dissimilar ‘Night’ bears one of the darkest challenges and finest, most resonant endings.

This brings us to the ‘best episode;’ one featured regularly in top ten lists but seemingly not a very favourite.

‘Blink of an Eye’ is everything that is exceptional and aspirational about Star Trek. Stranded in the stratosphere of a planet where time passes with greater rapidity, the curious presence of Voyager in the skies begins to influence the society to the point where the inhabitants develop space travel to face the spectre.

A commentary on the Prime Directive as deft as any and a relatively novel variation on both the time travel and petri dish tropes resplendent throughout sci-fi and Star Trek, the episode is also a fabulous meta-commentary on the place of the franchise in popular culture much less crude than Janeway bemoaning the Doctor’s fleeting interplanetary fans’ obsession with every aspect of his personal life. Incorporating a fair bit more science than is typically par, the astronaut’s moving decision to help them, as with his staring into the heavens as Voyager finally departs, speaks to the selfless ethos and sense of overwhelming curiosity so intrinsic to the most basic lore of Star Trek, the most beloved episodes and all that Gene Roddenberry best achieved.

It’s also an amazing meditation on first contact principles and pitfalls which unlike many episodes doesn’t borrow story bones from TNG.

A more than welcome reprieve from a pandemic, I didn’t spend as long in the Delta Quadrant as the crew but for what I did I was glad to relish with them.

Star Trek: Voyager is now streaming on Netflix

[aseriesofvariousevents]

The Legend Series

The Legend Series is yet another series I received for Christmas years ago and never finished. This break, though, I finished it in what quite possibly could be a PR for time it took me to read a series. I started the books on a Friday evening and was done with the series by Sunday afternoon. Marie Lu wrote a riveting saga of strength with characters wholly unafraid to stand for what they believe in. 

*SPOILERS*

The first book in the series, Legend, is a strong start, though not perfect. I’ve technically read this book twice before, once as a physical book and the other as an audiobook during a long car ride, so I may be overly critical of my reading this time around, since I don’t typically re-read books, but I found parts of the story to be unnecessary. This may just be coming from my perspective as an “older reader” instead of a young teen, but I found Marie Lu did the characters a disservice by making them 15. The age itself is fine hypothetically, but the emphasis on the romance at times, especially toward the end, felt forced between the two characters and I think, at this point in the series, it would’ve made more sense for them to be just friends. I thought the author wrote June’s loss of innocence surrounding the world she grew up in very well and I truly felt for the girl who had to watch her world crumble around her, bit by bit. I did appreciate the Les Miserables analogy throughout the story, with the June realizing that there may be more to Day than she thought. I also enjoyed Tess’s characters and, briefly, Metias’s, though I found Tess to be a bit one-dimensional at times. Overall, I found the book enjoyable and thought it was a good start to an interesting series. 

Favorite Quote: Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.

I found Prodigy to be an improvement overall from the first book (not that the first book was inherently bad in any way), but I still had some gripes with some of the plots Lu chose to explore. I really enjoyed the politics aspect of this book, with Anden’s utter desperateness to succeed as a ruler and the double crossing of the Patriots by Razor, lying about who is funding this assassination. I had a feeling Razor was not the character he was believed to be for a while, but I never put two and two together that it was the Republic behind the scheme, but when Kaede explained everything, it all made sense, which I found to be a really cool plot point. Once again, the romance in this book frustrated me to no end. The romance between the deceased Metias and Thomas seemed more like a throwaway gay couple than anything of significance, especially since Lu did not explore their relationship as anything other than friendship in the first book, with Thomas even flirting with June (though it was implied that that was all a ruse to keep her safe, but I found that a feeble excuse). It was intended to make us feel worse for Thomas and the “sacrifice” he made for duty, but it instead just made me more sad for Metias. Tess’s sudden love for Day seemed super random as well, especially since they were basically surrogate siblings for each other for years, and, at the end, June’s and Day’s break-up of sorts seemed overly formal for being fifteen-year-olds who had only known each other for a month or so. Prodigy was definitely a page turner, but aspects were still frustrating to get through as a reader.

Favorite Quote: My heart is ripped open, shredded, leaking blood. I can't let him leave like this. We've been through to much to turn into strangers.

Champion was a satisfying conclusion to the series (though I haven’t read Rebel yet, the newest book in the series). Eden’s character was sweet and it was exciting to see him as an actual character for the first time, and not just a sick child that Day constantly thought about. I appreciated that the Tess romance thing got resolved in this book, but Anden’s love of June was creepy to me, considering the age difference, and in the epilogue, I found it weird, but not unexpected, that the two of them dated, though I was glad they broke it off. Day’s illness throughout this story seemed out of place as a plot point for me, especially since it took five years for it to really develop, but I was glad he wasn’t “perfectly cured”, after getting shot. I’m not sure if Lu meant one of those last few chapters as an homage to Les Miserables, but June’s repeated pleads of “let him live” are in the song “Bring Him Home”, which I found to be a nice Easter egg in the story, whether intended or not. June being the cure made sense in a way, but I don’t understand how she got better completely. It’s implied that the colonies gave her some sort of cure and took the virus to spread, but how they got hold of a cure seems fishy to me. In the epilogue, when June sees Metias’s grave and says that they’re finally the same age, I teared up a bit. I can’t imagine having to come to terms with effectively outgrowing someone lost far too young, and I thought the author described her grief really beautifully here.

Favorite Quote: That's why I'm sorry. I'm sorry because you shouldn't have to be everything to me. I had you, but I'd forgotten that I had myself too. It's a new feeling, something I'm getting used to.

Okay, I know this is an unpopular opinion but this was my favorite book in the series. Although I found June and Day more compelling characters than Eden and Day in this book, I thought this story was so much more poignant and had a much more complicated and interesting villain. Ross City was fascinating and the class divide present there held such poignant implications about technology and so much more that I thought it was a much more interesting and complex setting than the original trilogy. Eden and Daniel's (still weird to refer to him by that name) bickering was tiring at times, but their relationship as siblings was really touching and I thought it brought out an interesting perspective of both of the characters. I didn't love Pressa at the beginning, but toward the end, she was such an interesting character and I loved her and Eden's dynamic. The very ending of the book was so so so good and definitely made me tear up a bit. I was wary coming into the book that I would just find it a totally unnecessary addition to the series but I actually really enjoyed it and I thought it added to the overall story (though I did miss June's narrations).

Favorite Quote: There is nothing to figure out, there is no how or why. Sometimes things just happen.

*END OF SPOILERS*

The Legend Series started out as an interesting, updated take on Les Miserables, but quickly evolved into something much more. Though not my favorite series in the whole world, there was never a dull moment and I’m really looking forward to reading some of Lu’s other works, hopefully finding them as immersive as the world of the Republic!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Books in Series: Legend; Prodigy; Champion; Rebel

Author: Marie Lu

BONUS REVIEWS

Life Before Legend is a duology of two short stories surrounding June and Day prior to the events in the Legend series. I much preferred June’s story to Day’s and found that her story had more heart to me and was more interesting. It was cute, but I found largely unnecessary, but still enjoyable nonetheless. Fun for lovers of the series!

Favorite Quote: Someday, someone out there will see you for the girl you really are. Someday, you’ll find someone who understands you.

Fun to see the epilogue of Champion from Day's perspective. Not a ton of new info but definitely a cute little story that fans of Legend will enjoy.

Favorite Quote: I loved you. I love you still. I want to be with you.

Really short but sweet nonetheless! It's nice to see June and Day together again with his memory mostly intact. Like the other Life After Legend story, didn't offer really any new info but it was exciting to see the duo interact once more, however briefly.

Favorite Quote: Your past is forever part of you, just as it is a part of me. And I loved that person, just as I love you.

Bonus Books: Life Before Legend; Life After Legend; Life After Legend II

[horseluvr00-ff]

A Place to Call Home | Chapter 34

Masterlist Here

Rating: T+

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Genre/Warnings: action/adventure/family | kidnapping, violence, strong language.

Story summary: It’s been a few months since the Battle of New York. Steve Rogers is acclimating to life when he crosses paths with teenager Katelyn Sanders, a SHIELD recruit and highly valued asset with a dark past. Follow Kate’s adventure from SHIELD asset to Avenger to wanted fugitive over the course of her youth and into adulthood with her Avenging family. Follows Infinity Saga and beyond.

Words: 7,208

Disclaimer: Majority of properties within this fanfic are owned by Marvel/Disney. My OC Katelyn Sanders, as well as a few other unaffiliated things within this fanfic are of my own creation.

Author Note: Relogs are welcome and appreciated :) Please no plagiarism or reposts on other platforms. Updates occur weekly on Fridays, however posts on Tumblr usually occur Saturdays.

Full story available on FFN and A03 here and here

Chapter 34 can be found here on FFN and here on AO3 in full.

Check out a portion of Chapter 34 below:

It's late in the evening, and Kate is out wandering the streets.

While one could argue it was more dangerous than walking around during the day when people were out and about - for Kate - the desertedness of the city made it easier to spot threats. The overwhelming nature of the day, when hundreds of thousands of people roamed the streets, it was difficult for Kate to focus. Walking around late at night however, with fewer people present, brought about a certain clarity.

While Kate's ability granted her many talents, it also made her hyper aware of a whole magnitude of things. Things most people didn't notice or perhaps didn't even have the courage to confront.

Picking up dinner with Clint earlier that day - Kate hadn't planned on doing anything out of the ordinary. Waiting for the agent to return from the restaurant with their takeout was the plan… Until she heard it.

An individual yelling out, proclaiming someone had taken their backpack. Attention already peaked; Kate had found herself pushing off the wall, heading down the sidewalk towards the closest alley before feeling her senses heighten. The sound bounced off walls and channeled her way. As if she had a sort of psychic map in her mind, Kate picked up a jog, making her way through the small maze of alleys until she heard the sound of heavy breathing pick up.

Breaking into a short run, Kate made her way around the corner, gauging her point of impact before running round the corner, left arm extended out she slammed it into an individual's chest, causing their feet to fly out before they hit the ground with a pained grunt-like yell.

Picking up the backpack, Kate had watched as the individual, looking only a few years older than herself, had quickly gotten up and ran away, more fearful than she had originally anticipated.

The whole ordeal had been over as quickly as it had started. The individual that had called out regarding their stolen property eventually ran up to her and Kate returned the property, mentioning that the one who had taken it had dropped it. No need to gloat.

Kate had made her way back to the restaurant quickly, hoping she hadn't been missed, only to see Clint on the phone and looking somewhat nervous.

Yeah, that hadn't been the greatest moment. Especially after Steve's reaction when they got back to the Tower.

Hands deep in her hoodie pockets, Kate continues to walk down the mostly empty sidewalk dimly lit by streetlights. There weren't many people out. The majority of them didn't look all that menacing, but her senses made clear which people projected ill-intent and which didn't. Raised heart rates and tense muscles were prominent in most of the individuals she passed, as if they thought they'd get caught any moment.

While her better judgment told her this wasn't smart, she also couldn't really remember a time when she did something like this. The last time she was "normal" she was probably seven years old. The amount of freedom people her age had- she didn't know… However she felt capable enough to be out here… looking for trouble to stop.

She tried not to dwell on that fact too much - the fact that she was out here late at night looking for trouble - some kind of bad to stop.

Turning down a different block, Kate keeps her eyes ahead but somewhat low on the sidewalk. She could feel eyes turn towards her as she passed people here and there. Pulling her hood over her head, Kate continues on her way.

Aside from the thundercloud over her head telling her she was asking for trouble, the city was somewhat comforting at night. It might be her subconscious understanding that she could handle any individual who may approach her with ill intent, but regardless of the fact, she felt a sense of ease walking down the street, the cold air soothing her.

A string of angered curses suddenly pulls Kate from her thoughts and her eyes snap upwards. Coming to a corner, she looks down the sidewalk seeing two people disappear into one of the alleyways.

"I- said no," A female voice; agitated.

Clenching and unclenching her hands in her pockets, Kate begins making her way down the sidewalk before slowing at the corner of the alleyway where the two people now where.

"You don't seem to understand that me telling you no at work, and me telling you no now, hasn't changed anything-" The woman's fist was curled up tightly, the man in front of her holding her wrist tight enough that she couldn't pull it away, but loose enough that he wasn't trying to fully restrain her.

"I paid you double, you owe me more than a private sh- Can I help you?"

Kate tilts her head lightly, the man now looking over his shoulder expectantly while eyeing her impatiently.

Kate's eyes move between him and the woman momentarily before the woman rips her wrist from his grasp and begins walking towards Kate, and then out onto the sidewalk. Her expression was one of annoyance and frustration but her heart rate gave away how fearful she was as she picked up a quick pace down the sidewalk.

The man was stationary momentarily, the tenseness to his body obvious - ability or not.

Cursing under his breath, he begins walking in the same direction the woman had, going to pass Kate and head down the sidewalk. He intentionally knocks her shoulder with his own as he passes her, causing her to step back a hair before turning to look over her shoulder.

There were certain aspects to her ability that made things not usually visible, known to her. Certain factors helped her to anticipate behavior. Muscle tension, walking pace, expression, even smell by means of odor changes. Fear, anger, and happiness can cause chemical changes related that give off different odors. For example, when someone is afraid, they may sweat, which gives off a distinct odor she can associate accordingly.

Turning on her heel, Kate picks up her walking pace to follow the man.

~0~

A Few Hours Later…

For Tony, sleeping was something becoming harder and harder to come by. It wasn't that he had… trouble. He just had a lot of energy. And ideas and random thoughts would also hit him at odd hours of the night, thoughts he had to act on in case he forgot them in the morning.

He had promised Pepper to give the workshop a break. While he was doing that- she never said he couldn't hangout on the communal floor doing what he most likely would've done in the workshop.

"Jarvis, how's it looking?" Tony questions, the only light in the area coming off the tablet in his hands.

"Diagnostics have been run, sir. Trials are ready whenever you see fit." The AI responds.

Tony chews on his bottom lip lightly for a moment, eyes searching the screen as he looks over the image present.

It was something he had been working on as a side project. Something for Kate. With the kid being around for the foreseeable future, he figured finding something they can work on aside from her ability would be beneficial.

She was an interesting character, Tony had to admit. He usually didn't let much visibly surprise him, but she was a curious individual and he was looking forward to getting her out of her shell. There were certain moments or situations where Kate would surprise him, give someone sass or show a confidence he suspected lurked just beneath the surface - something she didn't reveal very often.

"Sir, Katelyn Sanders is about to get off the elevator."

Tony's brow knits as he looks over his shoulder, eyes meeting the closed elevator doors before he swipes the images on his tablet aside.

"Where's she coming from?"

"The lobby, sir."

"... Uh huh." Tony's lips part slightly as he processes the statement.

This wasn't the first time Jarvis had informed him. Whatever it was the kid was doing - going out at night, she seemed to be coming back alright. It wasn't his place to necessarily scold her for her actions.

The ding of the elevator finally opens and Tony doesn't acknowledge the movement of someone walking out of the space before stopping. In the following seconds, Kate goes to disappear back into the elevator.

"Goin so soon?" Tony speaks up, tapping about on the tablet screen. "You're out kind of late, kid… Three a.m.? Good thing I was down here and not your pops."

A gentle scold… a suggestive scold; not a full on scold.

"I was jus-... I wanted to get some air" Kate responds. She sounded a bit closer.

"Could've gotten some on the balcony," Tony turns and eyes the teen with an amused smirk. She appeared anxious but accepting of the situation.

"Regardless of whatever this is I am now a part of; just make sure you don't do anything rash on these little adventures you're taking." Voice laced with a hint of concern, Tony continues to eye the teen, seeing her gaze elsewhere.

"Adventures? Plural?" Despite her controlled expression, Tony can hear the amusement in her voice and gives a little chuckle before nodding to the side.

"Well you looked like a zombie this morning, and we only watched that show til around ten," Tony offers.

At his comment, Kate clenches her jaw and takes a couple steps to the side, blocking his view of her face as she crosses her arms.

Alright, m'probably pushing her a little too much.

"I won't pester you, go get some rest Kenai."

Tony may or may not have a small list of nickname ideas for the kid. Nicknames for her weren't coming as easily to him. T-1000 was the next one that came to mind but… Calling the kid a terminator wasn't appropriate. Especially now that he knows more about her. Those details… Made his skin crawl. When he looked at Katelyn, he didn't see someone capable of racking up a body count greater than two dozen.

Hearing the teen question the nickname, Tony blinks his thoughts away quickly before giving her an amused smile and a shrug - brow knitting seconds later.

"You haven't seen Brother Bear? Bah- we'll get you caught up, don't worry. For now I gotta keep thinking of some nicknames for you." Tony mumbles, eyes still on the tablet.

Preferably ones that don't label you a killing machine… Unfortunately something I don't think it too far off from what that Doctor Gordon was trying to turn you into.

Kate is silent following Tony's words, but doesn't wait too long to head towards the stairwell.

Once the door closes, Tony lets the tablet fall into his lap, brow knitting gently.

"Jarvis, I need you to scope security cameras within a five block radius. I wanna know where's she's been going and what she's been doing,"

"Will do, sir."

The rest of chapter 34 can be found here on FFN and here on AO3. Take a peak to keep reading!

Stay healthy, stay safe, sending lots of love. <3

Masterlist Here

[purplesurveys]

851

How have you been feeling lately? Have you been doing ok? Uncomfortable because of period cramps and the heat WHICH IS STILL HERE, even though it’s supposed to be gone right about now and it’s supposed to be raining at this point. I wish I was kidding saying this but we literally have three electric fans turned on just for the living and dining rooms. It’s crazy and stupid and it shouldn’t be this hot anymore. I’m doing better mentally and emotionally, so at least that balances things out lol.

Are you currently in quarantine? Still am. While all countries are slowly going back to normal, our Covid cases continue to get higher and higher everyday because our government hasn’t done anything except to make us stay home for three months. No mass testing, no alternate public transport plans, and for some reason Duterte keeps borrowing billions of dollars’ worth of loans from the World Bank nearly every week, and we have no idea where the stupid fucking money goes. Our government is convinced they’ve been doing everything right so they’ve loosened up quarantine protocols, so with malls and restaurants being open again we’ve done nothing but reach record high cases almost every day.

Do you wear a mask when you go to the store? I’ve gone outside a total of three times since March and I wore a mask for two of those times. The first time I went out I just genuinely forgot to bring a mask, but in the end it was fine because I only had to stay in the car.

Does your state require people to wear masks in stores? As far as I know it’s not a requirement per se, but fortunately everyone follows the safety precautions anyway.

Do you know anyone who’s had the coronavirus? Yeah, my mom’s former boss. This is a bit of a stretch but I also know someone personally who had immediate family members that tested positive.

What was the last sweet treat you ate? I had a peanut butter doughnut from J.CO! Soooooooo good.

Was it a nice day out today? No, it’s too hot. Even if life was normal rn I’d prefer to be indoors with air conditioning, like a mall.

Is the weather nice where you live usually? Fuck no. It is disgustingly hot, sticky, and humid 3/4 of the year.

What was the last thing you ordered online? I don’t do a lot of online shopping. When I get something online it’s usually to get food delivered, and the last time I did that it was me and Andrew getting Hong Kong noodles.

Are you expecting a package right now? Nopes.

Have you ever ordered anything from Wish? If so, what did you buy, and did you feel it was worth it? No, though I remember Good Mythical Morning featuring it in a couple of episodes. I don’t feel comfortable buying from stores or sellers that sell things for a lot cheaper because they could always be fake, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable buying from that site.

Are you a youtuber? If so, are you consistent with uploads? and how many subscribers do you have? I’m not, but I do have my own channel. I just use it to like videos and subscribe to my favorites, though.

What is one thing you hate about summer? The weather. Honest to goodness I’d really rather live somewhere that gave me -40C weather everyday.

Did you go outside today? No. My dad wanted to bring Cooper to my grandma’s place and I planned to come along, but at the last minute he changed his mind and did just the errands he was supposed to do.

What is the name of your youtube channel, if you have one? It’s just my full name because my YouTube is linked to my Google account.

What was the name of the last store or restaurant that overcharged you? I don’t know any instances where that would happen. I don’t find service charge inconvenient because I know that directly goes to the servers anyway so I don’t mind how high it gets most of the time. Is your room more often messy or clean? It’s clean most of the time but sometimes when I’m busy I won’t be able to keep it clean and it’ll be clean-messy? Like I’ll leave stuff around but I’ll still know where everything is lol.

Who is someone you miss? ALL MY FRIENDS BRUH

What is something you miss? Being able to go out and freely do activities. Life Pre-COVID < Life pre-COVID, perfectly put. I miss getting an allowance, being out until midnight, having dates with my girlfriend thhe most.

Do you feel like your emotions are often haywire? Not necessarily, but they can get pretty unstable sometimes.

Have you ever received a misdiagnosis from a doctor? Nah but I’ve been given a prescription that didn’t work. We went to our family doctor who made me take a certain medicine for three days, and I started getting worried when three days had passed and I still had my fever. I went to Angela’s mom and she was super quick to tell me that that medicine wasn’t the right one to take for a UTI and prescribed me with something else; and that second one ended up working like magic.

Have you ever been “diagnosed” with a mental illness from an online friend? who is not a doctor? If yes, isn’t that frustrating? That’s never happened before, but if it did I wouldn’t let my frustration get the best of me. I’d just tell them that they should avoid doing that if they’re not a professional because they could very much end up seriously harming people.

Do you have any friends that you can trust and tell everything to? All of them.

What was the name of your favorite roommate you’ve had? Kimi :)

Do you have a favorite book that you’ve read multiple times? Yeah when I was a kid I would reread this book that an aunt had given me for Christmas as much as I could. For many years I forgot the title but after painstakingly Googling the few keywords I could remember I finally found out it again – it’s a series called Three Girls in the City by Jeanne Betancourt, but I only ever read the first book because it was the only gift I got. It’s not my favorite book, but I’d be so happy if I got to be reunited with it again because I don’t think we got to keep it around when we moved houses.

What’s one book or book series that you’ve read multiple times? ^ That, multiple wrestling memoirs, and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. I’ve also reread the Twilight Saga once.

What was the name of the funniest kid you’ve ever babysat? I never babysat anyone other than younger relatives, but the one I enjoyed taking care of the most was my cousin Lucas. He was the smartest kid I babysat so it was fun talking to him, plus his yaya was always nice to me, they had a playground and sandbox at home, and all I had to do was keep him company while he watched Thomas and Friends over and over.

Do you enjoy babysitting? Just the younger relatives that were smarter and more behaved. I didn’t like the kids who thought kicking and being rowdy were fun.

Do you have any big regrets? One big one.

Are there things about your past that bother you? Of course. My entire childhood is one.

What was the last thing you saw or read on social media that made you angry? OMG get ready for this one. Our dumb as a rock presidential spokesperson was talking about how happy he is that the country beat UP’s (my school, which the government hates because we always talk shit about them lol) prediction of 40,000 Covid cases by the end of June if the government doesn’t do anything to prevent more cases. How many cases do we have? Fucking 36,000. Our government is happy because they finally beat our school over something for the very first time and they are technically happy that we got 36,000 cases, which if you round up will give you 40,000 anyway. My school had a fucking FIELD DAY over it and now he is a national meme.

Do you often post about controversial topics on facebook? At first I didn’t but that’s because I wasn’t active on Facebook in the past anyway. After I realized that I had a bigger friends list on Facebook I decided to put it to good use and post about controversial topics to educate others. It’s made a bunch of conservative family members uncomfortable and that’s the goal, son. 

Do you think it’s a good idea to post about serious topics on social media? or do you think that it’s better to discuss serious topics in person? It definitely is. In person is good too but you don’t always get that opportunity, so sharing stuff through social media doesn’t hurt too as long as information is accurate. For instance most of my relatives life far from me, so if I want them to get a piece of my mind about Trump or BLM or abortion, sharing informative graphics and tables is always convenient.

What was your favorite book you had to read for school? Without Seeing the Dawn by Stevan Javellana is my absolute favorite. It’s probably the closest thing to being my favorite book. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry is a good runner-up. On the other hand, Dekada ‘70 by Lualhati Bautista is my favorite that was written in Filipino.

Have you ever failed a class and had to repeat it? Nope. I really believe I was meant to fail algebra in my freshman year in high school because I failed every exam, but I think my teacher just took pity on me and gave me a barely-passing mark at the end of the year so that I didn’t have to go to summer school. As for college, I’ve never failed a class.

What class in school did you hate the most? In college I hated my economics elective. I still don’t know why that’s mandatory for us journ students... I also dreaded a couple of journalism classes, but it was more because of the teachers than the classes’ topics.

Have you ever wanted to be a teacher? I don’t think so.

What’s one childhood dream that has stuck with you, and one that has not? Having a big house; becoming a firefighter.

Would you want to re-live your childhood over again if you could? I’ve already said it on this survey, but: fuck no. I’m ok where I am now, even if I am a clumsy adult.

Which do you like more: being an adult or being a kid? Being an adult. Being a kid meant having to stomach the smell of hard alcohol and cigarettes from morning to evening everyday; being caught in the middle of screaming matches between drunk relatives; and being cramped in a single-floor home with 12 people. Like I said, I love where I am now. The amount of independence I gained in college was freeing and felt so nice and I’m glad my parents never tried holding me back. I’m also glad that I didn’t fall into the same alcohol trap, and that I know how to deal with my alcohol responsibly.

At what age were you when you started to feel like you were mature enough to offer others advice? Around college-age, so like when I turned 18.

Did your parents smoke or drink when you were growing up? Neither of them did, because we had enough alcoholism happening at my old home. It was actually my drunken relatives that finally drove my mom out of that house.

Do you enjoy bonfires? I’ve only been to one and I was like 9 years old then, so I wouldn’t know how I feel about them now.

Have you ever stepped on a sparkler? Nope.

What, do you know of, are you allergic to? No allergies.

Have you ever ridden in an ambulance? Also nopes. I always feel bad for the ambulances that I see because I live in a very traffic-heavy city and they always end up getting stuck and crawling through traffic like the rest of us. We do try to swerve, but our roads are so tiny and always cramped that there’s little space left for us to move out of the ambulance’s way, so even though we’re able to make a path for it, the space is not big enough for the ambulance to drive in the speed it’s supposed to.

What is your favorite version of the Bible to read, if applicable? That’s a big no thanks from me.

Do you follow trends? or are you a trendsetter? Yeah, I follow some of them if I think they are nice.

Has anyone ever described you as a trendsetter? Nope, because I am not.

Do you know anyone who used to be loving, but then turned cold? List three people you’ve known whom this has happened to. My mom, Athenna, Macy. The only person I don’t resent out of these three is Macy, because I know she turned distant due to mental health issues and because she wants to fix herself first, which is responsible.

What SAT subjects, if any, did you get a perfect score in? We don’t have SAT.

What were your best subjects in school? and what was your favorite subject in school? I loved taking history electives in college, and I performed the best in them too. I also did well in international relations, which was under the political science department.

Have you ever been abused by a parent or legal guardian? I’ve been verbally and emotionally abused by my mom ever since I can remember.

Do you have a lot of wounds from your past? If we’re getting visual then I’d rather say that I have one ugly, infected gash that gets bothersome from time to time. My past isn’t made up of little tiny scattered wounds.

Has anyone ever called you a jerk? Behind my back, probably.

Are you a jerk? I can be, so I don’t mind being called it. I never said I was the nicest person.

What color were your bedroom walls in high school? They have always been white. My mom doesn’t let us have control over our own rooms, so in the beginning it’s always been plain boring white. Don’t get me wrong, I like my room but sometimes it just feels like living in a cell.

Is there a girl or guy you wish you hadn’t let slip away? I wish I was still close with my high school friends, and I remember saying how they were for keeps in my old surveys so that makes me extra sad haha. I’m civil with most of them, but no longer close. And I only ever talk to them if it’s their birthdays or if they achieved something big. The only people I’ve remained close with from that original group are Angela and Hans.

Is there an old friend that you miss and would like to reconnect with? Not really. Sofie and I have grown apart from each other now and we’re both very happy, so there’s no need to change that. I’m okay with seeing her once or twice a year.

Who has hurt you the most? My mom.

Have you been bullied? Yeah in kindergarten. Long-lasting effects though.

Which talent show, if any, would you most like to audition for? and have you auditioned for one? No thanks. I don’t have the kind of talent that I can show off, like singing or playing an instrument.

Do you know anyone who’s auditioned for American Idol? I don’t think so. But my mom knows someone who auditioned for our local version of America’s Got Talent. He’s a ventriloquist that my mom used to get for our parties. As far as I know he got into the grand finals, but I’m not sure if he won.

Is there someone you think should audition that hasn’t yet? American Idol’s been over for a while now.

What time of day do you usually feel your best? I love the evenings.

What’s one way in which you’ve changed within the last ten years? I was in sixth grade then, I’ve graduated from college now. My mom was purely verbally abusive to me then, now we have brief stints of having an actually healthy relationship. I had one dog then and I have two dogs now; I had no friends then and I have tons of them now. There’s been a lot of tiny changes but nothing that were life-changing.

Do you feel like time goes by fast, or slow? It goes both ways depending on how stimulated I am or how much fun I’m having.

Who do you know who has died of cancer? One of my great-aunts.

Has there been cancer in your family? Yeah, ^ that. Other than her I’m not sure if we’ve had other cases. My family tends to be hush-hush about cancer and only ever call it ‘c’ or ‘the big one.’

Have you ever stayed overnight in a hospital, and if so, what for? Yes, once for a low platelet count.

Have you ever been a victim of police misconduct? No but the cops here are just as corrupt as the ones in the US, so I can very much be a victim any time. It’s just a matter of being in the wrong place at the right time.

Have you ever been so angry you wanted to sue someone? Not so much that I wanted to sue someone, no.

Have you ever been a victim of racism? My country isn’t diverse at all and we’re all Filipinos here, and I’ve only ever traveled to Asian countries, so no. But racism is a big reason why I have no plans to go to other countries known for it.

Have you ever deleted a friend on Facebook for making racist comments? I’ve unfriended those who were being little bitches about BLM and George Floyd’s death, so I guess that kinda counts as being racist. I still have a few racist Facebook friends that I keep around, but that’s because they’re family members.

What was the last thing you ate? Binagoongan.

What was the theme of your senior prom? Clair de Lune, so like the moon and shit.

Did you go to prom? It was mandatory, so I had to go even though I really had no interest.

Have ever been engaged or married? I have been neither.

Are you an aunt or uncle? Nah but I’m a godmother to one of my cousins.

Do you live to glorify God and to do His will? LOL no

Are you happy with the way you are living your life day-to-day right now? It could be better and more filled with activity. But I’m not miserably depressed right now and that’s more than enough for me.

Do you feel like your life was better or worse six years ago? It was slightly better. I feel like 2014 was my best year.

Have you ever made a huge, catastrophic mistake? Not anything that ruined my life or someone else’s, no.

Do you feel like you are currently in a state of suffering? and that not all of your basic needs are being met? If so, how long have you been in a state of suffering? Basic needs?? So you mean poverty? No.

Do you hate social injustice? Absolutely. Anyone who tolerates it is automatically a gigantic prick, I’d say.

Are you happy with the current social class you are in? No. I don’t know how it translates to English, but in Filipino we have this term called naghaharing-uri that comprises the very very very very tiny top of the social pyramid and it’s made up of top government officials and their families, heads of corporations, old money families, etc. It’s no secret that it’s this 1% that exploits the 99% remaining in the pyramid, so even though I’m relatively comfortable in my class, I hate that, when it comes down to it, we’re only being used by this 1% for their own benefit.

Life isn’t fair. True or false? True.

Do you hate that life is so unfair? Sometimes, if it’s for stuff about social injustice and how some people have to be homeless, why homophobia exists, etc. But if it’s for tiny problems, I feel like they’re necessary sometimes so we can learn from them.

Name a few people who seem to have everything handed to them. Some richer kids that I know.

Who do you go to when you’re upset? Sometimes myself, sometimes Gabie.

Do you pray less or more than you did 5 years ago? A LOT LESS, thank fuck I got out of that trap.

Do you pray a lot? Definitely not.

Do you frequently have back pain? Yeah, haha. Kinda expected considering I have scoliosis.

What’s the worst side effect you’ve experienced for a medication? and what’s the worst withdrawal effect you’ve experienced from a medicine? Nothing worse than diarrhea. I’ve never experienced withdrawal.

Have you ever used an epi pen? Nopes.

What’s a name that you like but probably wouldn’t use for one of your kids? Isabella because I’m already an Isabelle and my girlfriend has a sister named Isabela.

What’s your name, and do you like it? Robyn. I like it now.

Would you prefer to give your kids common names or unique names? Common, more old-school names. I just feel like they sound super elegant.

Do you feel like anybody values you in the way that you deserve? Angela, Andrew, and Gab.

Who have you felt the most valued by? ^ Them.

Have you ever been treated like you were inferior? For sure.

What was the name of the biggest bully in your high school? Oh my god this survey is so long... we didn’t have bullies in high school. We had mean girls and mean girl cliques, but as long as you weren’t involved in drama with them you’d be fine.

Do you ever sleep outside? Nah. I’d sleep at the rooftop but there are sooooo many mosquitoes at night.

How many siblings do you have? Two.

Are you the oldest, youngest, middle, or only child? Eldest.

How many kids do you want to have? One or two would be great.

Do you want to get married? Yessssssss.

Best date you’ve been on? Probably that time we went to BGC so we can feel fancy and have a fancy dinner, then when we meant to walk back to our car to go home we ended up having impromptu drinks at like 11 PM when we randomly found a jazz bar loudly playing live music in the area. OH and that time we went museum hopping in Manila and we ended the day having delicioussss Italian food.

Dream date? Traveling out of the country.

Ever kissed someone on New Year’s? Nah. We celebrate New Year’s with our respective families so there’s no chance of that happening. Which is fine, because New Year’s is traditionally a family-centric holiday here so it would be weird for anyone to ditch their families.

Have you ever had an experience so good you felt like you were flying? Sure.

Have you ever been in so much pain you prayed that you would die? YES, with my toothache last year.

What brings you the most joy? My dogs.

What is your passion; what is it that would bring you the most joy and fulfillment in life? I’m at a point where it still keeps changing, so I don’t wanna give an absolute answer to this just yet.

Have you ever laid your dreams aside because someone else wanted you to? That’s never happened to me. I only ever gave up on one dream because it realistically wasn’t attainable, when it came down to it.

Who supports you in everything you do? My two best friends.

Who always tries to stop you whenever you try to go after your dreams? I haven’t had anyone bar me, but if someone tried to they would definitely hear from me.

Do you believe in following your heart, in going after your dreams? Not always.

Do you wish other people would want you to be happy? Of course.

Do you wish you had someone who loved and supported you? I already do.

[foreveralwaysanauthor]

oooh I’d definitely like to see mick and xander for the character sheet thing!

Alright! I’ll do Mick on this one and a separate one for Xander.

Dotted orange text is category

Numbered bold text is subcategory (ie. favorite food and favorite color under Favorites)

—————

Name: Makana Kaya Birch

From: Broken Record and Creating a Rift (my Teen Beach Movie fanfictions)

Age: 16 (Broken Record) and 18-19 (Creating a Rift

Appearance: Brown hair, just past shoulder blades. Brown eyes with a green ring. Wears mostly shorts and t-shirts in her world, but wears more dresses and play suits in Wet Side Story.

Preferences:

Sexuality: Straight

Favorites:

Food: Tacos

Color: Red

Animal: Octopus

Weather: Snowing. She visited New Hampshire with her parents for Christmas one year and fell in love with snow.

Season: Summer

Time of day: Afternoon/Evening

Music: Beach Boys

Foods they will/will not eat.

Will: Pretty much anything.

Won’t: Chili and yogurt. (Frozen yogurt is fine, just not regular yogurt)

Religion: The attend church, never said which. It’s up to the reader.

Political Beliefs: Independent. (She chooses whoever seems best, not by their status as either a Democrat or a Republican)

Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw

Personality: Empathic. Laid back to an extent, but mature enough to know when to be serious. She has a good head on her shoulders and has high hopes for attending a college in Florida, the other side of the country.

Family:

Parents: McKenzie Phoebe Birch, née Ellis, and Brady Aaron Birch

Any siblings? No.

Family life:

What was it like growing up? Pretty nice. Mack was the more serious one and Brady was the more laid back one. They evened each other out enough for Mick to have a simple, yet loving childhood.

Anything from childhood that affects them in their present state? Being taught to surf at only 3. Her great-grandfather (Mack’s grandfather) teaching her that communication is important in relationships. Her parents making her watch Wet Sode Story all the time and listen to their stories about being there.

Discipline as a child? If she got in trouble at school/at home she was kept from surfing, dancing and listening to music. If she got grounded for any reason, she was kept between home and school along with the aforementioned discipline. Getting low grades was never something Mick worried about, but her parents knew that if she got a grade lower than a C, she would get a tutor, but that was all.

Rich, poor or in between? In between. They weren’t rich rich, but they had enough to not worry about money much. Due to Mack being a professor and Brady creating new technology along with taking over the surf shop, they were well off.

Cultural history:

Any affects? Not really. She is French, Italian and a touch Scottish. Mack and Brady taught her that she was no different from anyone else and that skin color/cultures don’t mean you can treat/be treated by others differently.

Traditions? Visiting her Mom’s family back in New Hampshire every other Thanksgiving. They visit Australia to surf every year. Brady’s family will take the family for a vacation every once in a while.

Flaws

Overthinker. Mick takes things apart bit by bit until she’s come to her own conclusion, whether it be right or wrong.

Too straight forward. She has no filter to keep things from going directly from her mind to her mouth. Sometimes, she’ll catch herself, but other times, what she’s thinking will make it’s way out.

Over emotional. I think we’ve all seen her overreact to things like the whole journal thing and the idea that Butchy might drop her for someone better.

Wants

Attend a college.

Get married, maybe get a dog.

Visit England and maybe Japan.

Help her dad make new kinds of surfboards.

Needs

Family time.

Medication (EpiPen and inhaler).

Love, both familial and otherwise.

Pictures of cute animals.

Fears

Heights.

Alzheimer’s/Dimentia.

Losing the ability to surf.

Being strangled/attacked.

Losing her best friends/family/husband.

How do they handle:

Disappointment: If directed toward herself, she clams up and holds it against herself for a while. If directed towards others, she will make sure to say she’s disappointed, yet not make it a big deal after maybe a day or so.

Anger: Depending on the range, she can go from rolling her eyes and scoffing to full on assault mode where she can (and will) harm the person *cough* Xander *cough*

Embarrassment: Try to fight it and pretend her face isn’t a cherry look alike.

Betrayal: From a friend, probably alienate herself from them slowly until there isn’t any more contact between them. From others, most likely just say “why?” and try to move on.

Fight or flight: Depends, once again. In an attack, fight. In a situation she really doesn’t wanna be a part of, fly like a bird.

Money: Mick hates to spend money on herself. She likes to save her money and use it when necessary if it’s on herself. She’s all for spending on her friends, though, as long as it’s in reason.

Lack of sleep: Insert Red Bull and energy pills.

Alcohol: Hahahahaha! Fucking drunk off her ass. I could see her going through this, stage by stage, within maybe an hour of drinking:

Injustice: Try to find a way to make things right again. “There will always be a solution as long as we try hard enough.” -Mick from a future chapter...

Mental illness: She gets so frustrated about it, lemme tell you. When she got her memory back, a seed of fear planted itself in her that she may lose her mind someday. She’s not from the perfect world Butchy’s from, she’s scared of forgetting everything again.

Grief: Closing herself off so nobody can see her crying or worrying over existential fears.

Exercise: Other than dancing, surfing, and maybe riding her bicycle, she despises exercising. Her gym teacher in elementary school made them run laps on the track around the football field almost every class, so she developed a hatred of exercise. (My school had a mile long track around the field that our teacher forced us to do. Use that as a guide for how far the teacher made these 5-9 year old kids run)

Defining moment: You’ll see it soon, let’s just leave it at that.

How do they feel about:

Glitter: Every Halloween, Mick will run to the costume supply shop and stock up on all of the glitter they possess. Pressed glitter, yup. Little bottles that you’re supposed to put on as necklaces, you betcha! Glitter eyeliner, ooooh yeah! Glitter witch hats and sparkly crowns, she owns three of them already!

Ferris Wheels: HECK NO.

Camping: In a camper, yes. On the ground, no. Not with all the mosquitoes and other creepy crawlies lurking about. In other words, Mick is our average Glamper.

Coffee: Brown water with ground up beans? Yeah, no, she’ll pass.

Crispy or floppy bacon: Any bacon is good bacon. She likes it in the middle, but anyway is good, really.

Mushrooms: Allergic.

Twilight Saga: Sparkly boys and werewolves and a fucking creepy cgi baby and-, hold up, is that Jay? Like, Mal and Malina’s friend? Wtf??? 🤨🤨

Guns: Owns a mini gun for protection and shares custody of a shotgun with Butchy. Butchy taught her how to use them both properly in case of an emergency or if someone were to break in. She is a licensed owner and never has had to use them before. She believes that guns don’t kill people, the people holding them do.

Extras

Do they have a signature smile? Not really.

Do they have a tell when they lie? Fidgeting with fingernails or scratching her head.

Do they have any nervous ticks? Her fingers shake, she bites her lips/cheeks, and her legs bounce if she’s sitting at a table or something.

Do they speak loudly, softly, or average? Average, leaning more toward loud.

Quality of voice. Smooth, like a lake on a windless day. Her voice rises more toward the middle of her sentences, but can also fall into a deeper tone if she’s not really concentrating on her inflection. It’s almost like watching a pinball rise and fall throughout a game, never sure where it’ll go.

Do they gesture when talking? She’s French. Of course she talks with her hands. Perhaps she should take up sign language, that might help her to stop gesturing so loudly 😆

Do they understand personal space? Yes, very much so. She enjoys her personal space and grants that to other as well out of habit.

How do they greet others? Usually “Hey” “Hi” or “What’s up?”

How do they say goodbye? “See you later/around!”

Something they always have with/on them. The bracelet with Butchy’s initial that matches the one he has with her initial. Her engagement ring. The flower ring. Her lucky shell necklace with a heart bead dangling from the center.

Do they recognize people better by their face or their name? She’s terrible with both, to be honest. She knows the names of people, but can never decide if it’s them or not by looking at them.Reversely, if she were to recognize someone as familiar, she wouldn’t be able to place a name with them until they said who they were.

What do they admire most in others? Honesty. Fairness. Compassion. Love of animals. Love in general. Intellect.

Pet peeves. Silverware grinding on ceramic plates/bowls. Questionably sticky floors. Loud people when there’s no reason to be loud.

What grosses them out? The smell of sliced cheese with nothing else on/with it, the smell of peroxide/rubbing alcohol, moist objects, the smell of diesel radiating off of a truck.

[uomo-accattivante]

A long time ago, a grade-schooler got his hands on a spaceship. He followed the assembly instructions as best he could, snapping on the cannons, the landing gear, the tiny interstellar-chess table. Soon enough, Rian Johnson was holding his very own Millennium Falcon. “The first thing I did,” he recalls, “was throw it across the room, to see how it would look flying.” He grins. “And it broke.”

Johnson grew up, went to film school, made some good stuff, including the entertainingly twisted 2012 sci-fi drama Looper. He’s nearly 44 now, though his cherub cheeks and gentle manner make it easy to picture the kid he was (too easy, maybe – he’s trying to grow back a goatee he shaved); even his neatly pressed short-sleeve button-down has a picture-day feel. In late October, he’s sitting in an office suite inside Disney’s Burbank studios that he’s called home for many months, where a whiteboard declares, “We’re working on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in case you forgot).” Johnson is the film’s writer-director, which means he ended up with the world’s finest collection of replacement toys, including a life-size Falcon set that nearly brought him to tears when he stepped onto it. He treated it all with what sounds like an intriguing mix of reverence and mischief – cast members keep saying nothing was quite what they expected. “I shook up the box a little bit,” he says, with that same grin.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, everything is broken. In the months since the franchise stirred back to life in 2015’s The Force Awakens, it has felt rather like some incautious child grabbed civilization itself and threw it across the room – and, midflight, many of us realized we were the evil Empire all along, complete with a new ruler that even latter-day George Lucas at his most CGI-addled would reject as too grotesque and implausible a character.

Weirdly, the saga saw it all coming – or maybe it’s not so weird when you consider the Vietnam War commentary embedded in Lucas’ original trilogy, or the warnings about democracy’s fragility in his prequels. In the J.J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens, a revanchist movement calling itself the First Order assembles in Triumph of the Will-style marches, showing the shocking strength of an ideology that was supposed to have been thoroughly defeated long ago. What’s left of the government is collapsing and feckless, so the only hope in sight is a band of good guys known as the Resistance. Familiar, this all sounds.

“It’s somewhat a reflection of society,” acknowledges the saga’s new star, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, and who has gone from unknown London actress to full-blown movie star nearly as fast as her character went from desert scavenger to budding Jedi. “But also it is escapism, because there are creatures and there are people running around with fucking lasers and shit. So, I think, a wonderful mix of both.”

And the worse the world gets, the more we need that far-off galaxy, says Gwendoline Christie, who plays stormtrooper honcho Captain Phasma (as well as Game of Thrones’ Brienne of Tarth): “During testing times, there’s nothing wrong with being transported by art. I think we all need it. Many of us are united in our love for this one thing.”

The Last Jedi, due December 15th, is the second episode of the current trilogy, and advance word has suggested that, as in the original middle film, The Empire Strikes Back, things get darker this time. But Johnson pushes back on that, though he does admit some influence from the morally ambiguous 2000s reboot of Battlestar Galactica (which is funny, because Lucas considered the Seventies TV show a rip-off and urged a lawsuit – long since settled – against it). “That’s one thing I hope people will be surprised about with the movie,” Johnson says. “I think it’s very funny. The trailers have been kind of dark – the movie has that, but I also made a real conscious effort for it to be a riot. I want it to have all the things tonally that I associate with Star Wars, which is not just the Wagner of it. It’s also the Flash Gordon.”

As of late October, almost no one has seen it yet, but Johnson seems eerily free of apprehension about its prospects. He exuded a similar calm on set, according to Adam Driver, who plays Han and Leia’s Darth Vader-worshipping prodigal son, Kylo Ren. “If I had that job, I would be stressed out,” he says. “To pick up where someone left off and carry it forward, but also introduce a vocabulary that hasn’t been seen in a Star Wars movie before, is a tall order and really hard to get right. He’s incredibly smart and doesn’t feel the need to let everyone know it.” (“It felt like we were playing the whole time,” says Kelly Marie Tran, cast as the biggest new character, Rose Tico.) A few weeks after we talk, Lucasfilm announces that Johnson signed on to make three more Star Wars films in the coming decade, the first that step outside of the prevailing Skywalker saga, indicating that Disney and Lucasfilm matriarch Kathleen Kennedy are more than delighted with Last Jedi. And Kennedy’s not easily delighted, having recently replaced the directors of a Han Solo spinoff midshoot and removed original Episode 9 director Colin Trevorrow in favor of Abrams’ return.

The Force Awakens’ biggest triumph was the introduction of new characters worth caring about, led by Rey and Kylo Ren, plus the likes of John Boyega’s stormtrooper-defector Finn, Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron and more. Kylo Ren (born Ben Solo) lightsaber-shanked Harrison Ford’s Han, depriving Johnson of one coveted action figure – but the film left us with Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia, now the general who leads the Resistance, and the climactic reveal of Mark Hamill’s now-grizzled Luke Skywalker.

The Last Jedi will be Fisher’s last Star Wars movie. In the waning days of the cruel year of 2016, she went into cardiac arrest on an airplane, dying four days later. Less than a month afterward, 500,000 or so people assembled in Washington, D.C., for that city’s Women’s March, and Leia was everywhere, in posters bearing her doughnut-haired image circa 1977, with accompanying slogans (“A Woman’s Place Is in the Resistance” was, perhaps, the best).

Johnson had grown close with Fisher, and is glad to hear that I visited her psychedelically decorated Beverly Hills house a couple of years back, where she did almost an entire hilarious interview prone in bed. Afterward, she cheerily cracked jokes about drugs and mental illness in front of a visiting Disney publicist. “You got to experience a little bit of that magical sphere that she created,” says Johnson, who went over the script with her in that same bedroom. “I’m happy I got to poke my head into that, briefly, and know her even a little bit.”

He left her part in the film untouched. “We didn’t end up changing a thing,” says Johnson. “Luckily, we had a totally complete performance from her.” So it is now Abrams who has to figure out how to grapple with Fisher and Leia’s sudden absence. (He is characteristically gnomic on the matter: “It’s a sad reality,” he says. “In terms of going forward … time will tell what ends up getting done.”)

Overall, Johnson enjoyed what seems like an almost unfathomable level of autonomy in shaping The Last Jedi’s story. He says no one dictated a single plot point, that he simply decided what happens next. And he’s baffled by fans who are concerned by the idea that they’re “making it up as we go along”: “The truth is, stories are made up! Whether somebody made this whole thing up 10 years ago and put it on a whiteboard and we all have to stick to that, or whether we’re organically finding it as we move forward, it doesn’t mean that any less thought is being put into it.”

Mark Hamill’s single scene in The Force Awakens lasts all of one minute, and he doesn’t say a thing. But it’s an indelible piece of screen acting with real gravitas, from an underrated performer who had become better known for Broadway and voice-over work – he’s been the definitive animated Joker since the early Nineties. (“With voice-over,” Hamill says, “I thought, ‘This is great! I can let myself go to hell physically! I don’t have to memorize lines!’”) As Rey approaches him on the lonely mountaintop where’s he’s presumably spent years studying the Jedi equivalent of the Talmud, Luke Skywalker’s bearded face cycles through grief, terror and longing.

“I didn’t look at that as ‘Oh, this is going to be my big chance,’” says Hamill, who has just shown up at Johnson’s offices and plopped down next to him, carrying a large thermos of coffee in the right hand that Darth Vader once chopped off. He has a trimmed-down version of his elder-Jedi beard, which he’s grown to appreciate: “I shaved, and I thought, ‘You know what, the beard does cover up the jowl.’”

Hamill is a charming, jittery chatterbox – turns out that even at his youngest and prettiest, he was a geek trapped in the body of a golden boy. He is excitable and wild-eyed enough to give the vague sense that, like Luke, he actually might have spent a few solitary years on a distant planet, and is still readjusting to Earth life, or at least movie stardom.

He admits to having had “frustrations over being over-associated” with Star Wars over the years – his Skywalking cost him a chance at even auditioning to reprise his stage role as Mozart in the film of Amadeus – “but nothing that caused me any deep anguish.” He still spent the decades since Return of the Jedi acting and raising a family with Marilou, his wife of 39 years. And as for his current return to the role of Luke? “It’s a culmination of my career,” he says. “If I focused on how enormous it really is, I don’t think I could function. I told Rian that. I said, as absurd as it sounds, ‘I’m going to have to pretend this is an art-house film that no one is going to see.’ ”

For his Force Awakens scene, he says, “I didn’t know – and I don’t think J.J. really knew – specifically what had happened in those 30 years. Honestly, what I did was try and give J.J. a range of options. Neutral, suspicion, doubt … taking advantage of the fact that it’s all thoughts. I love watching silent films. Think of how effective they could be without dialogue.”

Abrams had some trepidation over the idea of handing Hamill a script with such a tiny role. “The last thing I wanted to do was insult a childhood hero,” he says, “but I also knew it was potentially one of the great drumrolls of all time.” In fact, Hamill’s first reaction was, “What a rip-off, I don’t get to run around the Death Star bumping heads with Carrie and Harrison anymore!”

But he came to agree with Abrams, especially after he counted the number of times Luke was mentioned in the screenplay – he thinks it was more than 50: “I don’t want to say, ‘That’s the greatest entrance in cinematic history’ … but certainly the greatest entrance of my career.”

Johnson turns to Hamill. “Did I ever tell you that early on when I was trying to figure out the story for this,” he says, “I had a brief idea I was chasing where I was like, ‘What if Luke is blind? What if he’s, like, the blind samurai?’ But we didn’t do it. You’re welcome. Didn’t stick.” (He adds that this was before a blind Force-using character showed up in 2016’s side film Rogue One.)

Hamill laughs, briefly contemplating how tough that twist would’ve been: “Luke, not too close to the cliff!”

He had a hard enough time with the storyline Johnson actually created for Luke, who is now what the actor calls a “disillusioned” Jedi. “This is not a joyful story to tell,” Hamill says, “my portion of it.” Johnson confirms that Hamill flat-out told him at the start that he disagreed with the direction Luke’s character was taking. “We then started a conversation,” says Johnson. “We went back and forth, and after having to explain my version, I adjusted it. And I had to justify it to myself, and that ended up being incredibly useful. I felt very close to Mark by the end. Those early days of butting heads and then coming together, that process always brings you closer.”

Hamill pushed himself to imagine how Luke could’ve gotten to his place of alienation. A rock fan who’s buddies with the Kinks’ Dave Davies, Hamill started thinking about shattered hippie dreams as he watched a Beatles documentary. “I was hearing Ringo talk about ‘Well, in those days, it was peace and love.’ And how it was a movement that largely didn’t work. I thought about that. Back in the day, I thought, by the time we get into power, there will be no more wars. Pot will be legal.” He smiles at that part. “I believed all that. I had to use that feeling of failure to relate to it.” (We do already know that Luke was training a bunch of Jedi, and Kylo Ren turned on him.)

Hamill’s grief over the loss of Fisher is still fresh, especially since the two of them got to renew their bond, and their space-sibling squabbling, after fallow decades that had given them far fewer reasons to get together. “There was now a comfort level that she had with me,” he says, “that I wasn’t out to get anything or trying to hustle her in any way. I was the same person that I was when she knew me. … I was sort of the square, stick-in-the-mud brother, and she was the wild, madcap Auntie Mame.” Promoting the movie is bringing it all back for him. “I just can’t stand it,” he says. “She’s wonderful in the movie. But it adds a layer of melancholy we don’t deserve. I’d love the emotions to come from the story, not from real life.”

I mention how hard Luke seems to have had it: never meeting his mom; finding the burnt corpses of the aunt and uncle who raised him; those well-known daddy issues; the later years of isolation. “It’s the life of a hero, man,” says Johnson. “That’s what you’ve gotta do to be a hero. You’ve gotta watch people that you love burn to death!”

Hamill notes that reality is not so great either. “Sometimes,” he says, softer than usual, “you think, ‘I’d rather have Luke’s life than mine.’”

Adam Driver has a question for me. “What,” he asks, “is emo?”

Between training for the Marines and training at Juilliard to become one of his generation’s most extraordinary actors, Driver missed some stuff, including entire music genres. But the rest of the world (including an amusing parody Twitter account) decided there’s something distinctly emo about his character, with his luxuriant hair, black outfits and periodic temper tantrums. “You have someone who’s being told that he’s special his whole life,” Driver says of his character, “and he can feel it. And he feels everything probably more intensely than the people around him, you know?”

As anyone who’s seen Driver in practically anything, even Girls, could tell you, the actor himself seems to feel things more strongly than most. “I don’t think of myself as a particularly intense person,” he says, possibly not unaware that he is making intense eye contact, and that his right knee is bouncing up and down with excess energy. “I get obsessive about certain things and, like, enjoy the process of working on something.” He’s in a Brooklyn cafe, on a tree-lined street, that seems to be his go-to spot for interviews. He arrived early, fresh from shooting the new Spike Lee movie, wearing a dark-blue sweater over black jeans and high-top Adidas. Driver has a certainty to him, a steel core, that’s a little intimidating, despite his obvious affability and big, near-constant laugh. It’s not unlike talking to Harrison Ford, who played his dad. Until Driver’s character murdered him.

Driver, raised by his mom and preacher stepdad after his parents divorced when he was seven, doesn’t flinch when I suggest his own father issues might be at work. “I don’t know that it’s always that literal,” he says. He mentions that Kylo Ren also murders Max Van Sydow’s character, who was sort of a “distant uncle” to him. “No one asks me, ‘So you have a distant-uncle problem?’ ”

John Boyega told me in 2015 that Driver stayed in character on set, but that seems to be not quite true. Driver just tries to keep focused on his character’s emotions in the face of an environment he can’t help but find ridiculous. “Watching Star Wars, it’s an action-adventure,” he says. “But shooting it, it’s a straight comedy. Stormtroopers trying to find a bathroom. People dressed as trolls, like, running into doorways. It’s hilarious.” And when he wears his helmet, he can’t see very well. “You’re supposed to be very stealth, and a tree root takes you down.”

He refuses to see his character as bratty. “There is a little bit of an elitist, royalty thing going on,” he says, reminding us that the character’s estranged mom is “the princess. I think he’s aware of maybe the privilege.” He does acknowledge playing Kylo Ren younger than his own age of 34: “I don’t want to say how much younger, 'cause people will read into it… .” He flushes, and later says he regrets mentioning it at all. If it’s a plot spoiler, it’s unclear exactly how, unless it’s related to his unexplained connection to Rey. The two apparently spend serious time together in this film. “The relationship between Kylo and Rey is awesome,” says Ridley, whom Driver calls a “great scene partner,” apparently one of his highest compliments.

At first, Driver wasn’t totally sure he wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. I’m always skeptical of Hollywood movies because they’re mostly just too broad,“ he says. But Abrams’ pitch, emphasizing the uniqueness of Kylo Ren’s character as a conflicted villain, made the sale. “Everything about him from the outside is designed to project the image that he’s assured,” he says. Only in private can he acknowledge “how un-figured-out he is … how weak.”

Driver can make a passionate case for why Kylo Ren isn’t actually a villain at all.

“It’s not like people weren’t living on the Death Star,” he says, his brown eyes shifting from puppyish to fierce without warning. He seems almost in character now. “Isn’t that also an act of terrorism against the hundreds of thousands of people who died there? Did they not have families? I see how people can point to examples that make themselves feel they’re right. And when you feel in your bones that you’re supported by a higher power on top of that, and you’re morally right, there’s no limit to what you’ll do to make sure that you win. Both sides feel this way.”

You’re starting to talk me into joining the Empire, I say. He laughs and shifts his delivery one degree over the top. “So, the rebels are bad,” he says, connecting his fist with the table. “I strongly believe this!”

On an extravagantly rainy Thursday evening in Montreal, I’m sitting at crowded, noisy Le Vin Papillon, a wine bar ranked as Canada’s fourth-best restaurant, holding a seat for a Jedi. Ridley arrives right on time, in a fuzzy faux-fur coat and a jumper dress – “the dregs of my wardrobe,” she says. Her shortish hair is in a Rey-ish topknot that makes her way too recognizable, but she doesn’t care. “This is how I have always had my hair,” says Ridley. “I am not going to change it.” She’s been in Montreal for three months, shooting a Doug Liman-directed sci-fi movie called Chaos Walking – which “is a little bit chaotic, in that we’re writing as we go and everything,” she says. “I’ve realized I don’t work well with that.”

She’s on the second of two unexpected days off thanks to co-star Tom Holland (a.k.a the latest Spider-Man) suffering an impacted wisdom tooth, but she’s still deeply exhausted. 

“I need a [vitamin] B shot in my ass,” she muses, in the kind of upscale British accent that makes curses sound elegant. It seems already clear that typecasting won’t pose the kind of problem for her that it did for the likes of Hamill and Fisher. Instead, she’s just busy in a way that only a freshly minted 25-year-old movie star could be – and she still managed to fulfill a pre-fame plan to go back to college for a semester last year. “I have no control in my life at all,” she says. She has four movies on the way, not even counting the Liman one. “So there is a lot going on, and I have never had to deal with that before. I don’t think my brain can really keep up with what is going on.” She has full-blown night terrors: “I wake up and scream.”

Rey had an epochal moment in the last movie, claiming her lightsaber from the snowy ground, and with it, her power, her destiny, her place at the center of the narrative. Her turn. Ridley is still absorbing what that moment, and that character, mean to women and little girls. But she definitely felt more pressure this time around, especially because last time, “it was all so insane, it felt like a dream,” she says. “I remember saying to Rian, 'I am so fucking neurotic on this one.’ I was like, 'I am going to fuck this up. All these people think this thing. How do I do that thing?’ ”

Part of the problem may have been Ridley’s tendency to downplay what she pulled off in the first movie. Her heart-tugging solo scenes in the first act, especially the moment where she eats her sad little “one half portion” of green space bread, created enormous goodwill, in seconds, for a character no one had seen before. She mentions Harrison Ford’s effusive praise for that eating scene, to the point where he was “getting emotional.” “I don’t know,” she says with a shrug, ultimately giving credit for the impact to Abrams and the movie’s cinematographer, Dan Mindel. “I was just eating!”

But in other ways, Rey has given her confidence. On her current film, she says, she was offered a stunt double for a scene where a door would swing open and knock her back. She took Liman aside and said, “'Doug, I don’t need a stunt double to do that.’ And I thought, 'I don’t know if this would’ve happened if it was Tom Holland.’”

Unlike almost everyone else in the world, Ridley has known for years who Rey’s parents are, since Abrams told her on the set of The Force Awakens. Ridley believes that nothing ever changed: “I thought what I was told in the beginning is what it is.” Which is odd, because Johnson insists he had free rein to come up with any answer he wanted to the question. “I wasn’t given any directive as to what that had to be,” he says. “I was never given the information that she is this or she is that.” 

The idea that Johnson and Abrams somehow landed on the same answer does seem to suggest that Rey’s parents aren’t some random, never-before-seen characters. All that said, Abrams cryptically hints there may have been more coordination between him and Johnson than the latter director has let on, so who knows what’s going on here – they may be messing with us to preserve one of Abrams’ precious mystery boxes. In any case, Ridley loves the speculation: Her favorite fan theories involve immaculate conception and time travel. It seems more likely that she’s either Luke’s daughter or his niece, but again, who knows.

Back in 2015, Ridley told me she was fine with the idea of being seen as Rey forever, the way Fisher was always Leia. Now she’s changed her mind. “There are literally no similarities with Carrie’s story and mine,” she says, adding that while Fisher ultimately embraced writing over acting, she plans on continuing to “inhabit” as many characters as possible. On the other hand, “a lot of Rey is me,” she says, “but that is not me being Rey. That is parts of me being a character as Rey, because how could it not? So in that sense, I understand it, because so much of Leia is Carrie.”

This trilogy will end with Abrams’ Last Jedi sequel, and after that, it sounds like the main thrust of the franchise will move into Johnson’s mysterious new movies, which look to be unconnected to the previous saga. As far as Abrams is concerned, that will be the end of the Skywalker story. “I do see it that way,” he says. “But the future is in flux.”

As far as Ridley is concerned, the future of Rey is pretty much set. She doesn’t want to play the character after the next movie. “No,” she says flatly. “For me, I didn’t really know what I was signing on to. I hadn’t read the script, but from what I could tell, it was really nice people involved, so I was just like, 'Awesome.’ Now I think I am even luckier than I knew then, to be part of something that feels so like coming home now.”

But, um, doesn’t that sort of sound like a yes? “No,” she says again, smiling a little. “No, no, no. I am really, really excited to do the third thing and round it out, because ultimately, what I was signing on to was three films. So in my head, it’s three films. I think it will feel like the right time to round it out.”

And how about coming back in 30 years, as her predecessors did? She considers this soberly, between bites of Brussels sprouts roasted on the stalk. (We split the dish, which means she got … one half portion.) “Who knows? I honestly feel like the world may end in the next 30 years, so, if in 30 years we are not living underground in a series of interconnected cells … then sure. Maybe. But again, it’s like, who knows. Because the thing I thought was so amazing, was people really wanted it. And it was done by people who really love it.”

She thinks even harder about it, this new Star Wars trilogy that we’ve made up on the spot. “How old will I be?” she asks, before doing the math. “55.” She looks very young for a moment, as she tries to picture herself as a middle-aged Jedi. Then she gives up. It’s time to go, anyway; she has a 5:25 a.m. pickup tomorrow for her new movie. “Fuck,” Ridley says. “I can’t think that far ahead.”  

###

[son-of-alderaan]

Jedi Confidential: Inside the Dark New 'Star Wars' Movie

The cast and director of 'The Last Jedi' on the story's secrets, a disaffected Skywalker and a death in the family

A long time ago, a grade-schooler got his hands on a spaceship. He followed the assembly instructions as best he could, snapping on the cannons, the landing gear, the tiny interstellar-chess table. Soon enough, Rian Johnson was holding his very own Millennium Falcon. "The first thing I did," he recalls, "was throw it across the room, to see how it would look flying." He grins. "And it broke." 

Johnson grew up, went to film school, made some good stuff, including the entertainingly twisted 2012 sci-fi drama Looper. He's nearly 44 now, though his cherub cheeks and gentle manner make it easy to picture the kid he was (too easy, maybe – he's trying to grow back a goatee he shaved); even his neatly pressed short-sleeve button-down has a picture-day feel. In late October, he's sitting in an office suite inside Disney's Burbank studios that he's called home for many months, where a whiteboard declares, "We're working on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in case you forgot)." Johnson is the film's writer-director, which means he ended up with the world's finest collection of replacement toys, including a life-size Falcon set that nearly brought him to tears when he stepped onto it. He treated it all with what sounds like an intriguing mix of reverence and mischief – cast members keep saying nothing was quite what they expected. "I shook up the box a little bit," he says, with that same grin. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world, everything is broken. In the months since the franchise stirred back to life in 2015's The Force Awakens, it has felt rather like some incautious child grabbed civilization itself and threw it across the room – and, midflight, many of us realized we were the evil Empire all along, complete with a new ruler that even latter-day George Lucas at his most CGI-addled would reject as too grotesque and implausible a character.  Weirdly, the saga saw it all coming – or maybe it's not so weird when you consider the Vietnam War commentary embedded in Lucas' original trilogy, or the warnings about democracy's fragility in his prequels. In the J.J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens, a revanchist movement calling itself the First Order assembles in Triumph of the Will-style marches, showing the shocking strength of an ideology that was supposed to have been thoroughly defeated long ago. What's left of the government is collapsing and feckless, so the only hope in sight is a band of good guys known as the Resistance. Familiar, this all sounds.

"It's somewhat a reflection of society," acknowledges the saga's new star, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, and who has gone from unknown London actress to full-blown movie star nearly as fast as her character went from desert scavenger to budding Jedi. "But also it is escapism, because there are creatures and there are people running around with fucking lasers and shit. So, I think, a wonderful mix of both."

And the worse the world gets, the more we need that far-off galaxy, says Gwendoline Christie, who plays stormtrooper honcho Captain Phasma (as well as Game of Thrones' Brienne of Tarth): "During testing times, there's nothing wrong with being transported by art. I think we all need it. Many of us are united in our love for this one thing." The Last Jedi, due December 15th, is the second episode of the current trilogy, and advance word has suggested that, as in the original middle film, The Empire Strikes Back, things get darker this time. But Johnson pushes back on that, though he does admit some influence from the morally ambiguous 2000s reboot of Battlestar Galactica (which is funny, because Lucas considered the Seventies TV show a rip-off and urged a lawsuit – long since settled – against it). "That's one thing I hope people will be surprised about with the movie," Johnson says. "I think it's very funny. The trailers have been kind of dark – the movie has that, but I also made a real conscious effort for it to be a riot. I want it to have all the things tonally that I associate with Star Wars, which is not just the Wagner of it. It's also the Flash Gordon."

As of late October, almost no one has seen it yet, but Johnson seems eerily free of apprehension about its prospects. He exuded a similar calm on set, according to Adam Driver, who plays Han and Leia's Darth Vader-worshipping prodigal son, Kylo Ren. "If I had that job, I would be stressed out," he says. "To pick up where someone left off and carry it forward, but also introduce a vocabulary that hasn't been seen in a Star Wars movie before, is a tall order and really hard to get right. He's incredibly smart and doesn't feel the need to let everyone know it." ("It felt like we were playing the whole time," says Kelly Marie Tran, cast as the biggest new character, Rose Tico.) A few weeks after we talk, Lucasfilm announces that Johnson signed on to make three more Star Warsfilms in the coming decade, the first that step outside of the prevailing Skywalker saga, indicating that Disney and Lucasfilm matriarch Kathleen Kennedy are more than delighted with Last Jedi. And Kennedy's not easily delighted, having recently replaced the directors of a Han Solo spinoff midshoot and removed original Episode 9 director Colin Trevorrow in favor of Abrams' return. 

The Force Awakens' biggest triumph was the introduction of new characters worth caring about, led by Rey and Kylo Ren, plus the likes of John Boyega's stormtrooper-defector Finn, Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron and more. Kylo Ren (born Ben Solo) lightsaber-shanked Harrison Ford's Han, depriving Johnson of one coveted action figure – but the film left us with Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia, now the general who leads the Resistance, and the climactic reveal of Mark Hamill's now-grizzled Luke Skywalker.

The Last Jedi will be Fisher's last Star Wars movie. In the waning days of the cruel year of 2016, she went into cardiac arrest on an airplane, dying four days later. Less than a month afterward, 500,000 or so people assembled in Washington, D.C., for that city's Women's March, and Leia was everywhere, in posters bearing her doughnut-haired image circa 1977, with accompanying slogans ("A Woman's Place Is in the Resistance" was, perhaps, the best).

Johnson had grown close with Fisher, and is glad to hear that I visited her psychedelically decorated Beverly Hills house a couple of years back, where she did almost an entire hilarious interview prone in bed. Afterward, she cheerily cracked jokes about drugs and mental illness in front of a visiting Disney publicist. "You got to experience a little bit of that magical sphere that she created," says Johnson, who went over the script with her in that same bedroom. "I'm happy I got to poke my head into that, briefly, and know her even a little bit."

He left her part in the film untouched. "We didn't end up changing a thing," says Johnson. "Luckily, we had a totally complete performance from her." So it is now Abrams who has to figure out how to grapple with Fisher and Leia's sudden absence. (He is characteristically gnomic on the matter: "It's a sad reality," he says. "In terms of going forward ... time will tell what ends up getting done.")

Overall, Johnson enjoyed what seems like an almost unfathomable level of autonomy in shaping The Last Jedi's story. He says no one dictated a single plot point, that he simply decided what happens next. And he's baffled by fans who are concerned by the idea that they're "making it up as we go along": "The truth is, stories are made up! Whether somebody made this whole thing up 10 years ago and put it on a whiteboard and we all have to stick to that, or whether we're organically finding it as we move forward, it doesn't mean that any less thought is being put into it."

Mark Hamill's single scene in The Force Awakens lasts all of one minute, and he doesn't say a thing. But it's an indelible piece of screen acting with real gravitas, from an underrated performer who had become better known for Broadway and voice-over work – he's been the definitive animated Joker since the early Nineties. ("With voice-over," Hamill says, "I thought, 'This is great! I can let myself go to hell physically! I don't have to memorize lines!'") As Rey approaches him on the lonely mountaintop where's he's presumably spent years studying the Jedi equivalent of the Talmud, Luke Skywalker's bearded face cycles through grief, terror and longing.

"I didn't look at that as 'Oh, this is going to be my big chance,'" says Hamill, who has just shown up at Johnson's offices and plopped down next to him, carrying a large thermos of coffee in the right hand that Darth Vader once chopped off. He has a trimmed-down version of his elder-Jedi beard, which he's grown to appreciate: "I shaved, and I thought, 'You know what, the beard does cover up the jowl.'"

Hamill is a charming, jittery chatterbox – turns out that even at his youngest and prettiest, he was a geek trapped in the body of a golden boy. He is excitable and wild-eyed enough to give the vague sense that, like Luke, he actually might have spent a few solitary years on a distant planet, and is still readjusting to Earth life, or at least movie stardom.

He admits to having had "frustrations over being over-associated" with Star Wars over the years – his Skywalking cost him a chance at even auditioning to reprise his stage role as Mozart in the film of Amadeus – "but nothing that caused me any deep anguish." He still spent the decades since Return of the Jediacting and raising a family with Marilou, his wife of 39 years. And as for his current return to the role of Luke? "It's a culmination of my career," he says. "If I focused on how enormous it really is, I don't think I could function. I told Rian that. I said, as absurd as it sounds, 'I'm going to have to pretend this is an art-house film that no one is going to see.' "

For his Force Awakens scene, he says, "I didn't know – and I don't think J.J. really knew – specifically what had happened in those 30 years. Honestly, what I did was try and give J.J. a range of options. Neutral, suspicion, doubt … taking advantage of the fact that it's all thoughts. I love watching silent films. Think of how effective they could be without dialogue."

Abrams had some trepidation over the idea of handing Hamill a script with such a tiny role. "The last thing I wanted to do was insult a childhood hero," he says, "but I also knew it was potentially one of the great drumrolls of all time." In fact, Hamill's first reaction was, "What a rip-off, I don't get to run around the Death Star bumping heads with Carrie and Harrison anymore!"

But he came to agree with Abrams, especially after he counted the number of times Luke was mentioned in the screenplay – he thinks it was more than 50: "I don't want to say, 'That's the greatest entrance in cinematic history' . . . but certainly the greatest entrance of my career."

Johnson turns to Hamill. "Did I ever tell you that early on when I was trying to figure out the story for this," he says, "I had a brief idea I was chasing where I was like, 'What if Luke is blind? What if he's, like, the blind samurai?' But we didn't do it. You're welcome. Didn't stick." (He adds that this was before a blind Force-using character showed up in 2016's side film Rogue One.)

Hamill laughs, briefly contemplating how tough that twist would've been: "Luke, not too close to the cliff!" He had a hard enough time with the storyline Johnson actually created for Luke, who is now what the actor calls a "disillusioned" Jedi. "This is not a joyful story to tell," Hamill says, "my portion of it." Johnson confirms that Hamill flat-out told him at the start that he disagreed with the direction Luke's character was taking. "We then started a conversation," says Johnson. "We went back and forth, and after having to explain my version, I adjusted it. And I had to justify it to myself, and that ended up being incredibly useful. I felt very close to Mark by the end. Those early days of butting heads and then coming together, that process always brings you closer."

Hamill pushed himself to imagine how Luke could've gotten to his place of alienation. A rock fan who's buddies with the Kinks' Dave Davies, Hamill started thinking about shattered hippie dreams as he watched a Beatles documentary. "I was hearing Ringo talk about 'Well, in those days, it was peace and love.' And how it was a movement that largely didn't work. I thought about that. Back in the day, I thought, by the time we get into power, there will be no more wars. Pot will be legal." He smiles at that part. "I believed all that. I had to use that feeling of failure to relate to it." (We do already know that Luke was training a bunch of Jedi, and Kylo Ren turned on him.) Hamill's grief over the loss of Fisher is still fresh, especially since the two of them got to renew their bond, and their space-sibling squabbling, after fallow decades that had given them far fewer reasons to get together. "There was now a comfort level that she had with me," he says, "that I wasn't out to get anything or trying to hustle her in any way. I was the same person that I was when she knew me. ... I was sort of the square, stick-in-the-mud brother, and she was the wild, madcap Auntie Mame." Promoting the movie is bringing it all back for him. "I just can't stand it," he says. "She's wonderful in the movie. But it adds a layer of melancholy we don't deserve. I'd love the emotions to come from the story, not from real life."

I mention how hard Luke seems to have had it: never meeting his mom; finding the burnt corpses of the aunt and uncle who raised him; those well-known daddy issues; the later years of isolation. "It's the life of a hero, man," says Johnson. "That's what you've gotta do to be a hero. You've gotta watch people that you love burn to death!" Hamill notes that reality is not so great either. "Sometimes," he says, softer than usual, "you think, 'I'd rather have Luke's life than mine.'"

Adam Driver has a question for me. "What," he asks, "is emo?" Between training for the Marines and training at Juilliard to become one of his generation's most extraordinary actors, Driver missed some stuff, including entire music genres. But the rest of the world (including an amusing parody Twitter account) decided there's something distinctly emo about his character, with his luxuriant hair, black outfits and periodic temper tantrums. "You have someone who's being told that he's special his whole life," Driver says of his character, "and he can feel it. And he feels everything probably more intensely than the people around him, you know?"

As anyone who's seen Driver in practically anything, even Girls, could tell you, the actor himself seems to feel things more strongly than most. "I don't think of myself as a particularly intense person," he says, possibly not unaware that he is making intense eye contact, and that his right knee is bouncing up and down with excess energy. "I get obsessive about certain things and, like, enjoy the process of working on something." He's in a Brooklyn cafe, on a tree-lined street, that seems to be his go-to spot for interviews. He arrived early, fresh from shooting the new Spike Lee movie, wearing a dark-blue sweater over black jeans and high-top Adidas. Driver has a certainty to him, a steel core, that's a little intimidating, despite his obvious affability and big, near-constant laugh. It's not unlike talking to Harrison Ford, who played his dad. Until Driver's character murdered him.

Driver, raised by his mom and preacher stepdad after his parents divorced when he was seven, doesn't flinch when I suggest his own father issues might be at work. "I don't know that it's always that literal," he says. He mentions that Kylo Ren also murders Max Van Sydow's character, who was sort of a "distant uncle" to him. "No one asks me, 'So you have a distant-uncle problem?' "

John Boyega told me in 2015 that Driver stayed in character on set, but that seems to be not quite true. Driver just tries to keep focused on his character's emotions in the face of an environment he can't help but find ridiculous. "Watching Star Wars, it's an action-adventure," he says. "But shooting it, it's a straight comedy. Stormtroopers trying to find a bathroom. People dressed as trolls, like, running into doorways. It's hilarious." And when he wears his helmet, he can't see very well. "You're supposed to be very stealth, and a tree root takes you down."

He refuses to see his character as bratty. "There is a little bit of an elitist, royalty thing going on," he says, reminding us that the character's estranged mom is "the princess. I think he's aware of maybe the privilege." He does acknowledge playing Kylo Ren younger than his own age of 34: "I don't want to say how much younger, 'cause people will read into it. . . ." He flushes, and later says he regrets mentioning it at all. If it's a plot spoiler, it's unclear exactly how, unless it's related to his unexplained connection to Rey. The two apparently spend serious time together in this film. "The relationship between Kylo and Rey is awesome," says Ridley, whom Driver calls a "great scene partner," apparently one of his highest compliments.

At first, Driver wasn't totally sure he wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. I'm always skeptical of Hollywood movies because they're mostly just too broad," he says. But Abrams' pitch, emphasizing the uniqueness of Kylo Ren's character as a conflicted villain, made the sale. "Everything about him from the outside is designed to project the image that he's assured," he says. Only in private can he acknowledge "how un-figured-out he is … how weak."

Driver can make a passionate case for why Kylo Ren isn't actually a villain at all.

"It's not like people weren't living on the Death Star," he says, his brown eyes shifting from puppyish to fierce without warning. He seems almost in character now. "Isn't that also an act of terrorism against the hundreds of thousands of people who died there? Did they not have families? I see how people can point to examples that make themselves feel they're right. And when you feel in your bones that you're supported by a higher power on top of that, and you're morally right, there's no limit to what you'll do to make sure that you win. Both sides feel this way."

You're starting to talk me into joining the Empire, I say. He laughs and shifts his delivery one degree over the top. "So, the rebels are bad," he says, connecting his fist with the table. "I strongly believe this!"

On an extravagantly rainy Thursday evening in Montreal, I'm sitting at crowded, noisy Le Vin Papillon, a wine bar ranked as Canada's fourth-best restaurant, holding a seat for a Jedi. Ridley arrives right on time, in a fuzzy faux-fur coat and a jumper dress – "the dregs of my wardrobe," she says. Her shortish hair is in a Rey-ish topknot that makes her way too recognizable, but she doesn't care. "This is how I have always had my hair," says Ridley. "I am not going to change it." She's been in Montreal for three months, shooting a Doug Liman-directed sci-fi movie called Chaos Walking – which "is a little bit chaotic, in that we're writing as we go and everything," she says. "I've realized I don't work well with that."

She's on the second of two unexpected days off thanks to co-star Tom Holland (a.k.a the latest Spider-Man) suffering an impacted wisdom tooth, but she's still deeply exhausted. "I need a [vitamin] B shot in my ass," she muses, in the kind of upscale British accent that makes curses sound elegant. It seems already clear that typecasting won't pose the kind of problem for her that it did for the likes of Hamill and Fisher. Instead, she's just busy in a way that only a freshly minted 25-year-old movie star could be – and she still managed to fulfill a pre-fame plan to go back to college for a semester last year. "I have no control in my life at all," she says. She has four movies on the way, not even counting the Liman one. "So there is a lot going on, and I have never had to deal with that before. I don't think my brain can really keep up with what is going on." She has full-blown night terrors: "I wake up and scream."

Rey had an epochal moment in the last movie, claiming her lightsaber from the snowy ground, and with it, her power, her destiny, her place at the center of the narrative. Her turn. Ridley is still absorbing what that moment, and that character, mean to women and little girls. But she definitely felt more pressure this time around, especially because last time, "it was all so insane, it felt like a dream," she says. "I remember saying to Rian, 'I am so fucking neurotic on this one.' I was like, 'I am going to fuck this up. All these people think this thing. How do I do that thing?' "

Part of the problem may have been Ridley's tendency to downplay what she pulled off in the first movie. Her heart-tugging solo scenes in the first act, especially the moment where she eats her sad little "one half portion" of green space bread, created enormous goodwill, in seconds, for a character no one had seen before. She mentions Harrison Ford's effusive praise for that eating scene, to the point where he was "getting emotional." "I don't know," she says with a shrug, ultimately giving credit for the impact to Abrams and the movie's cinematographer, Dan Mindel. "I was just eating!"

But in other ways, Rey has given her confidence. On her current film, she says, she was offered a stunt double for a scene where a door would swing open and knock her back. She took Liman aside and said, "'Doug, I don't need a stunt double to do that.' And I thought, 'I don't know if this would've happened if it was Tom Holland.'"

Unlike almost everyone else in the world, Ridley has known for years who Rey's parents are, since Abrams told her on the set of The Force Awakens. Ridley believes that nothing ever changed: "I thought what I was told in the beginning is what it is." Which is odd, because Johnson insists he had free rein to come up with any answer he wanted to the question. "I wasn't given any directive as to what that had to be," he says. "I was never given the information that she is this or she is that."

The idea that Johnson and Abrams somehow landed on the same answer does seem to suggest that Rey's parents aren't some random, never-before-seen characters. All that said, Abrams cryptically hints there may have been more coordination between him and Johnson than the latter director has let on, so who knows what's going on here – they may be messing with us to preserve one of Abrams' precious mystery boxes. In any case, Ridley loves the speculation: Her favorite fan theories involve immaculate conception and time travel. It seems more likely that she's either Luke's daughter or his niece, but again, who knows.

Back in 2015, Ridley told me she was fine with the idea of being seen as Rey forever, the way Fisher was always Leia. Now she's changed her mind. "There are literally no similarities with Carrie's story and mine," she says, adding that while Fisher ultimately embraced writing over acting, she plans on continuing to "inhabit" as many characters as possible. On the other hand, "a lot of Rey is me," she says, "but that is not me being Rey. That is parts of me being a character as Rey, because how could it not? So in that sense, I understand it, because so much of Leia is Carrie."

This trilogy will end with Abrams' Last Jedi sequel, and after that, it sounds like the main thrust of the franchise will move into Johnson's mysterious new movies, which look to be unconnected to the previous saga. As far as Abrams is concerned, that will be the end of the Skywalker story. "I do see it that way," he says. "But the future is in flux."

As far as Ridley is concerned, the future of Rey is pretty much set. She doesn't want to play the character after the next movie. "No," she says flatly. "For me, I didn't really know what I was signing on to. I hadn't read the script, but from what I could tell, it was really nice people involved, so I was just like, 'Awesome.' Now I think I am even luckier than I knew then, to be part of something that feels so like coming home now."

But, um, doesn't that sort of sound like a yes? "No," she says again, smiling a little. "No, no, no. I am really, really excited to do the third thing and round it out, because ultimately, what I was signing on to was three films. So in my head, it's three films. I think it will feel like the right time to round it out." And how about coming back in 30 years, as her predecessors did? She considers this soberly, between bites of Brussels sprouts roasted on the stalk. (We split the dish, which means she got ... one half portion.) "Who knows? I honestly feel like the world may end in the next 30 years, so, if in 30 years we are not living underground in a series of interconnected cells ... then sure. Maybe. But again, it's like, who knows. Because the thing I thought was so amazing, was people really wanted it. And it was done by people who really love it." She thinks even harder about it, this new Star Wars trilogy that we've made up on the spot. "How old will I be?" she asks, before doing the math. "55." She looks very young for a moment, as she tries to picture herself as a middle-aged Jedi. Then she gives up. It's time to go, anyway; she has a 5:25 a.m. pickup tomorrow for her new movie. "Fuck," Ridley says. "I can't think that far ahead." (x)

[queenofbraces]

WIP Meme (Super long post)

List all the things you’re currently working on in as much or as little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on.

This can be writing, art, vids, gifsets, fanwork, or original work!

Okay, so since @the-ghost-of-keith-kogane tagged me for the WIP meme (First of all: how dare u call me out like this D:< ) let me tell you about all my 2 dozen WIPs. (Almst none of which have any real writing *sob*)

VOLTRON

-Initial Exposure: Keith gets exposed to some funky Druid magic and gets turned into a shapeshifter of the body horror kind. Klance, maaaaybe Klunk depending on my mood. Angsty but also a happy ending planned

-Real!Shiro AU. Pretty much another story dealing with the fact that the Shiro we're seeing isn't the real Shiro. Gotta fix it so it’s not just another rehash. Kinda whumpy. Shatt probably. Angsty

-Steven Universe Crossover: What it says on the tin. A wormhole leads the Castle and its crew to the Steven Universe world. They all chat and relax. Silly and without much plot. Just wanted to see the two half-alien boys with a sword and a lion meet.

HARLOCK/ COSMO WARRIOR ZERO/ GUN FRONTIER

-Eyes of the Arcadia: Harlock gets badly injured  and Tochiro/The Arcadia takes over his body until Harlock can be healed. Tochiro gets to interact with the crew properly for the first time in years.

-Eldritch Abomination Harlock: CWZ. Short Zero/Harlock story where Harlock wants to date Zero and decides to give Zero a quick peek of what he looks like.

-Too Many Harlocks: Started out as a semi-serious idea, but I like the OOC/cracky direction it's headed in instead. An accident with the nearly-complete Arcadia sends CWZ!Zero and CWZ!Harlock to the Gun Frontier where they meet that universe's Harlock and Tochiro, as well as Shinunora. Then they go to the Endless Odyssey universe slightly post-series. CWZ!Harlock hates everyone and pretty much complains the whole time. (Let the man just shoot his other selves, please.) Having a lot of fun imagining this one. Not really familiar enough with any other Harlock series to include them, and those I am vaguely familiar with aren't distinctive enough to include

BLACK JACK

-Two-toned Demon: Magic AU where Black Jack is thought to be some demon or other monster. Not sure yet if it's more Medieval or Modern fantasy. KuroKei. Started because Pinoko would pretty much be a homunculus of some kind and it kind of spiraled off from there. Still also have to work up a full magic system. Will include some of Black Jack's family.

-Autistic!KuroKei fics: What it says on the tin. I was in need of autistic interpretations of these two so I'm working on some. Pretty self-indulgent and yeah, their being autistic is the main point of the stories but sometimes you just want that. (Message me and I will talk for hours about this topic no joke)

-From One Surgeon to Another: Crossover with Franken Fran. Black Jack and Pinoko run into one of Fran's creatures she made for a client. Pinoko's fine but Black Jack is injured badly enough to require emergency treatment. Fran includes some free "upgrades" and Black Jack must deal with the emotional consequences of them. Maaaaybe KuroKei, dunno yet.

-Story where Yabu, Okamoto, and Kei decide to catch up with Black Jack. Okamoto brings Konomi (because apparently I ship them now???). Yabu got clean, got married, and has two kids. Okamoto and Konomi are engaged. Kei is still single and Okamoto tries to set him up with Black Jack in part because Okamoto knew Kei in school and knows how much he still likes Black Jack. It works. Kind of a 'California Café' type of fic but eh. Can't all be exciting. :P (though in one version Black Jack gets shot because 'Black Jack gets injured' is a favorite trope of Tezuka's and quite frankly mine too)

-Story where Black Jack is unknowingly sent to treat Kei's mother. Kei comes after his father finally sends for him (Kei's parents didn't want to worry him) and finds out Black Jack is treating his mother. Black Jack and Kei reveal their relationship, much to the surprise and delight of Kei’s parents. Kei's mother is cured. Black Jack and Kei get engaged. Possible sequel where Black Jack saves Shoren's newborn, and the two start to reconcile. (This would be a fix-it of sorts of BJ21.)

DOCTOR WHO

-Eldritch Abomination Doctor/Doctor Nyarlathotep stories: I have a bunch of different ideas for this, so I'm not sure which direction it's going currently. Definitely includes one where Jenny is half-meatsuit/lower plane being, half Eldritch Abomination.

-The adventures of Spoonie!Doctor and Spoonie!Clara. Fairly self-indulgent fic where the Doctor has arthritis and Clara has fibromyalgia. Pretty much for getting out my frustrations and feelings about being Chronically Ill.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

-Dead Sonic!AU. Sonic Forces AU where Sonic dies at Eggmkan's hands and effectively becomes a Phantom Ruby- and Chaos Emerald-powered ghost. One version involves him being aware he's dead but he keeps it a secret until Infinite is defeated and he destoys his Phantom Ruby shard. The second version involves Sonic finding out he's dead much later. Overall angsty and sad.

-Mephiles!Infinite AU. Sonic Forces AU where Mephiles has broken away from one universe where Iblis was destroyed, and into the Forces universe, where he wasn't. Infinite the Jackal is actually Finn, a normal Jackal and head of the Jackal Squad, a band of mercenaries. Finn is friends with Gadget. Mephiles takes on Shadow's form and fights Infinite, later taking on Finn's form and bonding with the Phantom Ruby to become Infinite. Possible Infidget once I figure out their relationship better lol.

-Sonic Unleashed/Sonic X crossover. Sonic attempts a Chaos Control at night using a drained Chaos Emerald. He ends up in the Sonic X universe amd tries to get home. Ultimately silly and light-hearted. Seriously tempted to place this a tad before the Shadow Saga. SU!Sonic takes one look at the TV where footage of Shadow is being shown, and says, "Hey guys, I'm gonna be back in a bit. Gonna save Sonic some jail time and the rest of you like 2 weeks of time and effort." And then he just solves the entire damn thing by talking to Shadow lol.

-Silent Chronos: Started life as a Sonic '06/Silent Hill crossover, hece the working title which hasn't chaged in like...10 years. Pretty much, when Shadow and Silver go to the past and encounter Mephiles and Iblis' birth, Mephiles' power alters and corrupts the Soleannan labratory. Most everyone is turned into monster, with the exclusion of Shadow and Silver. The monsters started out largely symbolic,  but all need to be redesigned something awful. Still haven't figured out much of the plot which is why it's been on the backburner for forever.

ORIGINAL WORKS

-Farron Base: If John Campbell's 'The Thing' were nice. A group of scientists go to explore an abandoned military base and research how the flora and fauna have settled in. They find the base in remarkable condition, with a huge variety of mutated, monstrous creatures. Most are fairly friendly and some are even intelligent. The base's protectors are Nigel and Jay-Myalia (names changed later), who are intelligent, benevolent shapeshifters of the body horror kind. Again, see John Campbell's 'The Thing'. Features actual scientists (!), none of whom are cishet, and one of whom is explicitly autistic. Still not much of a plot yet :///

-Shalkrei: This started back in middle school, so at least 14 years ago, as a Sonic AU. It was my SpIn for a while, and it got huge and complex. Currently doing some pruning. It involved 'demons', magic, ancient civilizations, and furries. Also had at least one parallel universe with different species and rules.

Holy shit this got long, sorry

Tagging @Elumish, @chocolatcoffees, @Sonic-the-tumblog,  and anybody else who wants to do it since I don’t follow that many writers

[theshatteredrose]

Finally Home - Etrian Odyssey 2 Fanfiction

Summary: Shiki was…glad to be home.

AN: The last part of this Shiki Saga I have going on. It turned out longer than expected, just under 4,000 words XD I was hoping to have written this up sooner but fell ill with the flu and writing while loopy on meds is not a good thing to try, trust me. Anyway, enough stalling, I hope you enjoy reading and let me know what you think~

~*~*~*~*~*~

Shiki tightened his arms around Rahas’ shoulders as he readjusted his arm he had hooked under his knees. He looked down at the sleeping dark hunter resting in his arms. His cheeks were slightly red, stained with streams of now dried tears. He had cried himself into exhaustion before promptly falling asleep against him, in his arms.

When the crying first started, Shiki felt that they were perhaps the only tears he had released in years. He may have shed one or two here or there, but not in the way he needed. They’ve been building since he was a small child. He wasn’t allowed to show any weakness. He wasn’t allowed to cry.

Shiki sighed and shook his head. It broke his heart to see the feisty child he knew, he raised, sob so loudly, to break so hard. But…at least it was with him, in safety, with company. He wasn’t alone.

He had been through so much. He was…relieved that he was safe here in Lagaard. When that blue haired dark hunter told him that Lynus and Rahas had taken residency in Lagaard and that Taksony was officially dead, he could scarcely believe it. He wanted to, but he had grown cynical over the years.

But…he had to see. What did he have left to lose?

He was convinced to make his way to Lagaard when Avith made a throw-away comment of Hamza and Gerald’s names. If Gerald was still alive, he had to find him. He had to see him again.

He could never imagine that Gerald was still alive, that he had taken in and raised his son, and that his son had made friends with Rahas and Lynus. It was like…a dream. He thought it to be a dream, honestly, until he found Gerald. And seeing his face, though having aged over the years, the relief in his expression brought it all home to him.

Heh, home. God, he hadn’t have a place he would called home for years.

Nudging the door to the tearoom open with his foot, Shiki was relieved to see that Gerald was still standing with Hamza, and that Lynus was there as well, waiting for him. Farley was there as well, sitting patiently in front of the fireplace. And they all immediately looked up when they heard Shiki step in. Though they wore expressions of surprise and concern on their faces upon seeing Rahas sleeping in his arms, they didn’t appear shocked.

Shiki didn’t say anything as he carried Rahas over to the couch in the centre of the room and laid him down gently, resting his head on a pillow. He lingered where he stood and took in the sight of his former student.

The kid had grown quite a bit these past few years, hadn’t he? What’s with the hair covering half of his face? Emo phase? Tisk. He was going to push that hair back, even if he had to cut his hair himself.

But…he was glad the kid threw a punch at him. It was a relief to see that he kept his feistiness.

When he first met Rahas, first introduced to him as his new teacher, Rahas was…a shell of a child really. There was no other way to describe him. The complete opposite of his own precious son. A child soldier. A mindless puppet. A kid who knew no better.

It broke his heart.

And made him determined to turn this kid into a person, into a rebel.

It wasn’t easy, to be completely honest. The kid was quiet, sullen, withdrawn. Hard to talk to, let alone communicate with. He was, however, unnervingly obedient. Though he would glare and seethe at the orders, he still completed them with a sense of caution. He had been trained to obey all orders, if he didn’t submit or didn’t complete the task to the satisfaction of the one barking the orders, he would be punished.

Punishment…god, Shiki hated that word so fucking much.

Taking the blows that were meant for Rahas was easier and far less painful than having to listen, to watch as the small child tried to reign in his cries and stop himself from withering from the pain.

But, day by day, Shiki was able to gain the child’s trust through their continuous training. He really began to open up and become rebellious when Lynus was forced into their hell a year later.

Lynus, the poor kid. He was so scared, so small. So innocent. So vulnerable. While neither Shiki nor Rahas belonged in that hell, Lynus was completely out of place. He was so timid, so gentle, so…caring. He truly didn’t belong there at all.

Rahas saw that as well. And it gave him a reason to grow stronger, to become stronger. He had something, a goal to hang on to. It wasn’t ideal, having him obsessed with someone, but at least he had something, someone to focus on rather than concentrating on the uncertainty and suffering around him.

Shaking his head again to rid himself of the memory of a small, tiny Rahas getting frustrated and hitting him with his small hands, showing emotion for the first time from his mind, Shiki took a step back to allow Lynus to step forward. Immediately, the carrot top was crouched by Rahas’ side on the couch and was inspecting him carefully. And standing at the back of the couch, looking over in concern was Simmons, his son.

Simmons had been so surprised and greatly concerned by Rahas’ break down, but the understanding boy didn’t ask questions or demand answers. He quietly followed Shiki back to the tearoom, staying close, keeping a watchful eye.

“Is he all right?” Simmons asked Lynus with genuine concern on his face.

Lynus lifted his head up and smiled gently at him. “He’s just sleeping,” he answered as he idly ran his hand through Rahas’ hair. “He’s been holding that in for quite a few years now. He’s exhausted.”

Simmons simply nodded his head as he focused his gaze upon Rahas once more.

Shiki was honestly relieved that his son got along well with his adopted sons. Ironic or perhaps poetic justice that the they would become friends here in Lagaard. Though how and why, he would love to know.

“You were a bad influence on him,” Hamza suddenly said to him, causing Shiki to look over at the war magus to find him with his arms folded across his chest, a truly amused look on his face.

“You’re welcome,” Shiki jokingly returned. “I hope he’s managed to conquer every window Lagaard has to offer.”

The twitch at the corner of Hamza’s mouth told Shiki that Rahas was indeed fond of making a break through the window at any convenience. He taught him well~

It was nice how easily he was able to fall back into the life of Lagaard, into the small remnants of his life.

But…Now that he was back he was unable to prevent a sense of guilt from creeping into his chest. Perhaps he could have returned sooner? Returned to his son and Gerald years ago?

But he argued with himself that he couldn’t. Not only did he believe them to have been killed alongside his beloved wife, but his early return may have pulled them deeper into danger. Taksony may be dead now, had been that way for nearly a year, but the bastard was still alive when Shiki was no longer of any use to him. Had he known that Shiki managed to crawl out of Yggdrasil labyrinth alive, he would have made sure he, along with anyone around him was dead for good. In the most brutal of ways possible most likely.

Shiki was about to ask Hamza how he came into contact with both Rahas and Lynus when his gaze fell upon a lone redhead standing in the corner of the room, looking rather awkward, his gaze focused in mostly on Lynus. And he felt his heart leap into his throat when the redhead seemed to realise he was looking at him and turned his own gaze toward him curiously.

He…had eyes similar to those of Sandra’s. And he appeared to be a landsknecht, too.

Who…?

Lynus looked up at him before he glanced over at the landsknecht. He seemed to realise something, either Shiki’s curiosity or surprise, and he smiled at him as he made his way to stand next to the man with the red hair.

“This is Axel,” he introduced. “He’s…”

Lynus then paused as he turned his gaze toward the red-haired landsknecht, to look at him with a soft expression for a silent moment. A smile, one that was filled with utter fondness and loving tenderness appeared on his lips. And as he turned to look back toward, a light flush dusted across his features.

“He’s my everything,” Lynus said, his voice sincere and gently, but resolute all the same as he leaned against the redhead’s chest.

Shiki immediately understood what he meant. And as his gaze flickered toward the one named Axel, he saw the same loving tenderness. An arm was immediately wrapped around Lynus’ tiny waist and had pulled him close to him. He could see so easily that Axel regarded Lynus the same. He regarded Lynus as his whole world.

It was truly beautiful to see. He wasn’t at all disappointed that he couldn’t fall into protective dad mode and run off any admirers with a shotgun.

“You look so happy,” Shiki murmured. “I’m relieved. You deserved this happiness.”

Lynus didn’t reply, he simply granted him a beautiful and somewhat relieved smile as he rested his head back against Axel’s shoulder. He tilted his head back to look at his landsknecht and Axel looked down at him before leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to his forehead, Lynus closing his eyes at the tender touch, the two of them completely uncaring that there were others around them.

Shiki got the sense that they were affectionate all the time, regardless of who or what was around. And something else told him that the landsknecht wouldn’t be easily scared off, anyway. No matter, he still had Simmons and Rahas to defend.

“They are members of my guild,” Hamza explained.

“Ah, Reckless?” Shiki asked with a half-smile.

However, his smile abruptly disappeared when Hamza’s face fell into a pained expression and Gerald shook his head. Shiki felt his stomach clench in concern, in fear. Something happened, didn’t it? He had been…gone for too long. There was so much that he missed.

“I’m afraid only Cedric and I are all that is left of Reckless,” Hamza eventually confided, swallowing back the lump in his throat.

Shiki wanted to ask how, why, what happened, but held his tongue. He…may learn the full truth later. Not now. Maybe when it was just him, Gerald, Cass, and Hamza with Cedric at the bar. Like old times.

Hamza managed to give him a polite smile. “I…well, I am the leader of a new guild. The Guardians. Lynus and Rahas are members.”

“Ah,” Shiki uttered. Though he felt saddened by the demise of old friends, he was relieved that his kids had been under the watchful gaze of someone he knew and trusted. “Nice to know you’ve been looking after my kids.”

Hamza raised an eyebrow at him, though his smile soon became more genuine now. “Your kids, hm? Well, Rahas certainly takes after you. Just more of an emo brat, really.”

Shiki snorted in amusement. “Again, you’re completely welcomed.”

The room however quickly fell into silence when a low groan from the couch drew their attention. Shiki immediately turned around to see that Rahas was clutching his forehead and had his eyes squeezed shut. Slowly, he blinked them open and tilted his head to the side, to…look up at Simmons.

Simmons smiled a relieved smile as Rahas seemed to stare blankly up at him. “Are you feeling better now?” he asked. “You’ve been holding that back for years, haven’t you?”

Rahas made no attempt to respond. In fact he furrowed his brow in confusion. But then he abruptly sat up, his eyes wide as he frantically searched around the room. Everyone became quiet as Rahas’ gaze fell upon Shiki and a flicker of disbelief mixed with realisation appeared in his eyes.

“Y-you’re real,” he croaked out.

Shiki grinned at him before leaning forward to ruffle the dark hunter’s hair, purposely pushing back that stupid emo side bang thing he had going on. “Of course I am. Far too handsome to be a mirage, don’t you agree?”

Rahas said nothing in response and surprisingly allowed him to push his hair back. He just stared at him for a long, silent minute before his face creased into a relieved but confused expression. “Where the hell have you been?” he finally asked.

Ah, fair question. He was sure it was on the lips of everyone else in the room.

But he didn’t really want to explain, to describe the night he was taken. He didn’t exactly want to remember how he was threatened, how they trapped him, how they said they would murder everyone and destroy everything he loved if he didn’t cooperate. And how, not wanting to chance his wife or son’s life, he agreed.

Or how…he learnt that they carried out those threats regardless of his cooperation.

Not with Simmons in the room. He didn’t exactly know that he had been held captive and then dumped to die in the labyrinth in Etria. He might try to explain to him one day, just…not yet.

Instead he focused his attention on what was relevant.

“Believe it or not, but the ones known as Avith and Zalaph both played parts in my survival and return,” he said.

There were a few gasps of surprises along with mumbled curse words from around the room. Ah, so Avith had made his presence known in Lagaard? Wonder what kind of shitstorm he caused.

That blue haired dark hunter had always been a wild card. But Shiki felt that he wasn’t as bad as he made himself to be.

Only when Avith intervened in his so-called execution did he realise how unpredictable but non-malicious he really was. Not only that, but he truly was an unconventional genius. The way he interfered, the way he allowed Shiki to escape with his life; he made it appear that he had done absolutely nothing to aid him. He tricked the guards into believe that he was loyal, tricked them into believing Shiki was dead, misleading them in such a manner so it wouldn’t appeared he was fooling them at all.

He was quite intriguing, really.

A smug little shit, but interesting nonetheless.

However, he wasn’t all that surprised that Lynus seemed incredulous as he clutched to the shirt of his landsknecht. He was a gentle soul, a tender-heart who was truthful and honest. He wore his heart on his sleeve. He was someone who was sincere and lovingly mindful of others. He didn’t understand the mindset of those who had deceitful intentions or unpredictable motives.

Shiki understood, though. And from the look of begrudging annoyance on Rahas’ face, he understood too.

Avith had a soft spot for Lynus. Shiki was fairly certain a few of the guards did as well. But their fear of Taksony was stronger, so they obviously couldn’t show any of that fondness to the gentle medic.

He would no doubt learn of Avith and Zalaph’s stay in Lagaard at another time. Right now he needed to explain what happened to him.

“As per usual by Taksony’s methods, I was thrown into Etrian’s labyrinth and expected to…stay there,” Shiki continued, his face turning dark as he remembered how those bastards literally let him loose without weapons or armour, and fucking laughed as they taunted him to run. “Seventh floor, I believe. Where a powerful monsters lurk in herds. They were hoping that I would just happen to stumble across its nest and meet my demise. No one would question it, you know?”

Thankfully, he wasn’t stupid enough to head in the direction the guards were trying to herd him in. A shortcut they obviously weren’t aware of. It was enough to hide himself away, but…not enough to save his life. There was a monster waiting on the other side. It had lunged at him. It went…dark after that.

That must have been when Avith or Zalaph intervened. He wasn’t sure, but he…heard a familiar voice. Two of them. Talking to each other.

“To be honest, I don’t know how Avith interfered,” Shiki said as he shook his head. “I don’t even know why he did, but that smug little bastard was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes and found myself in a chamber like structure, still surrounded by the foliage of the labyrinth, but there with a healing spring nearby.”

Shiki fell quiet as memories of him just lying there on the ground, the grass tickling his exposed back and arms, staring up at the canopy of trees and surrounded in an almost unbearable humidity. He honestly didn’t remember what happened. He remembered seeing a yellow, insidiously large scorpion and an intense pain in his left shoulder. His next memory was looking up at the tall trees and hearing the sound of a steady dripping water source.

“Drink up, old man,” Avith had said to him and he crouched down next to him, grinning that smug, almost feral like smirk of his. “Best to change your class when you get out of here. Dark hunters might start being the ones who are hunted.”

Shiki hadn’t a clue what that meant, what he meant.

When Avith and Zalaph left him alone, a part of Shiki just wanted to…fall asleep and never wake up. What was the point of living if he was alone? But another part of him was stubborn, not wanting that Taksony bastard to claim another victim. It wasn’t until he felt the soft nuzzle of a wet nose against his cheek that made him open his eyes and loll his head to the side to see a scrawny wolf pup did he make his decision.

He wanted to live.

“Farley found me soon after,” Shiki continued with a small smile on his lips, his gaze flickering over to the said wolf. “Scrawny little thing he was. Quite ill. Gave me a reason to…fight back, I suppose.”

A small part of him wondered, though; did Farley find him? Or was he…led to him by another? By someone who knew that Shiki would only live if there was something, something to live for?

“You’ve been in Etria this whole time?” Lynus was the one to ask him softly.

Shiki turned to regard him and idly trailed his right hand along his left arm. “I had…a few injuries and needed to keep a low profile. After all, they frequented that labyrinth often. I…didn’t see them, but I had heard of rumours regarding mysterious and unfortunate deaths of unknown victims.”

…He wished that he could have been strong enough to save others.

“I trained myself to become a ronin,” Shiki said. “Because of certain…injuries, I wasn’t able to use a whip.”

Lynus’ gaze immediately flickered over to Shiki’s arm and furrowed his brow in thought. He appeared to be inspecting his arm with his eyes along, at a distance. He…wouldn’t be that Miracle Medic he had heard rumours of? Ah, honestly, he wouldn’t be surprised if he was. Even as a small child, his gentle healing was incredible.

But…gossip wasn’t always a good thing.

“How do you know Lynus and Rahas, though?” Simmons suddenly asked, pulling both Shiki and Lynus from their thoughts.

Shiki paused for a moment. “They were the reason why I was in Etria,” he replied slowly, feeling a sense of regret when Rahas visibly winced from the couch.

Simmons looked at him for a moment before he…nodded his head and offered an all too understanding smile. “Well, that’s ok. If you were there it was because Rahas and Lynus needed you more than I did,” he said with a sheepish shrug of his shoulder. “I missed you being my dad, but I’m ok with it if you were busy being a dad to Rahas and Lynus.”

The room fell into silence as they all regarded Simmons with expressions of surprise. Simmons, thankfully, didn’t seem to notice as he leaned forward to unexpectedly poke Rahas on the cheek.

“My dad is the best dad, huh?” he said to him.

Rahas had been completely caught off guard and stuttered for a few moments. “Y-yeah. The b-best…L-like a real dad…”

Simmons beamed at him.

And Shiki had wanted to tease Rahas about calling him dad from now on, but he found himself pausing. There was plenty of time in the future to tease and rile the dark hunter up. Right now, he was curious as to how and why those two exact opposites became friends.

Before he could ask, though, Hamza unexpectedly clasped a hand onto Shiki’s shoulder and leaned in to whisper something to him. “He’s trying to court him.”

“As in dating?!” Shiki spluttered in surprised as his gaze immediately whipped around to look at Rahas with wide eyes.

Rahas immediately snapped his head up to look at him in return, his eyes just as wide but there was also a surprising dusting of red on his cheeks. “No!” he yelled as he leapt to his feet. “Fuck, no, don’t even go there!”

Too late! Shiki was already laughing out loud. Good god, this was…

“We’re not dating!” Rahas all but shrilled.

“Don’t be rude, Rahas,” Lynus chided lightly while Axel coughed to cover up a laugh.

“What’s dating?” Simmons asked aloud with his head tilted to the side in confusion.

“Dating is something that occurs after you have successfully courted someone,” Hamza was the one to explain with a shit-stirring grin on his lips.

Simmons looked…thrilled at the prospect while Gerald sighed and ran his hand over his face in an exasperated manner.

This…all of this…this is exactly what Shiki needed. What Simmons needed. What Rahas needed.

“This is fucking perfect!” Shiki yelled as a wide, obnoxiously mischievous grin appeared on his lips, and he proceeded to loop an arm around his son’s neck and dragged him closer. “Simmons, my boy, do I have some tips for you. You’ll have Rahas courted in no time. Just leave it aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall to me~”

Naturally, Simmons looked ecstatic at the prospect once again, not truly understanding what was really going on while Rahas just bristled and hissed like an adorable feral cat at Hamza. And the war magus just regarded him with that knowing, mischievous smile of his.

Shiki had missed so much. So many terrible things had happened while he was gone. But this…this was beautiful. Right now, it was perfect. And he knew that he was going to do whatever it took to stay here, with his son, which Gerald, with everyone, and share their lives with them once more.

He…he was home now and he was going to stay.

[livefromtheloam]

Whatever Happened to Kamigawa?

So, I’ve noticed the Kamigawa discussion happening a bit more often these days, so I wanted to give my take on the original block and whether or not it’s feasible for Wizards to return to the plane in a Standard set.

This wound up being much longer than I had anticipated so I’ll throw in a jump so as not to take up all of your dash.

Intro

Magic the Gathering is a franchise that serves two purposes. It is a deep strategy card game which adds onto itself annually. It is also a rich, setting-driven collection of stories which explores different fantasy worlds. Magic is at its best when these two factors are both strong (the original Innistrad merged flavor with game play better than any other block), but is also excellent when it’s light in one (Kaladesh was light on mechanics but had amazing story) or the other (the original Zendikar was light on story but had amazing mechanics). Additionally, when a world is heavily inspired by a real-world source, the flavor has to match expectations. Innistrad truly felt like you were playing a role in the battle between a struggling human race and hordes of different things that go bump in the night. Even leaving aside the ancient Egyptian theme, Amonkhet was able to marry its flavor (idyllic city in a harsh cursed world owned by Nicol Bolas) with its gameplay (powerful spells and abilities that hurt your own creatures, cause you to discard, etc) with the added bonus of having a sunny, beautiful art direction.

While all those sets did their things right, I can’t help but feel as if Kamigawa had to get both sides of the equation wrong for us to get them.

Mechanics

Gameplay wise, Kamigawa was a mess. While samurai/bushido and ninjas/ninjutsu were home runs, the rest of the block felt like a frustrating puzzle with no solution. Spirits and Arcane were supposed to play off each other, but in reality there were only a few combos that were useful. Flip cards were messy and difficult to grok. Too many Legendary cards, made the best abilities less consistently playable and deckbuilding was made much trickier thanks to it (not to mention mirror matches using the Legendary rule of the time). Uncommon Legendary cards felt almost like a cheat. Epic spells, while a neat idea, were underwhelming. Offerings made it seem like the block was considering being tribal, but there were too many creature types and not enough support for most of them. Even equipment, which had been introduced in the previous block, was struggling to find its identity in a non-artifact world.

Entrenched players found themselves almost fighting against the game itself, while newcomers were confused and frustrated by a game that already had a reputation for being confusing and frustrating.

Flavor

Creative wise, Kamigawa was a bigger mess. I’ll get into what I think their motives for creating a Japanese-inspired world were later, but there were many issues for non-Japanese fans. Ostensibly, the setting is based on Sengoku Period Japan, and even if you don’t know it by name, you probably know the general idea of warring clans forging what would become the Empire. Since this is a fantasy setting, they also included their take on the kami, spirits and gods based on Japanese folktales and religion.

On paper this sounds good, but in reality it was incredibly difficult to keep up. As there was a Legendary theme, a huge number of cards had names that were unfamiliar to the vast majority of non-Japanese players. (As someone with a big "foreign” last name from a big "foreign” family, I can sympathize.) And to make matters worse, very few of those Legendary creatures (items, locations, etc.) featured in the main storyline of the set! The kami themselves were designed to be representations of their respective domains (kind of like Elementals, now that I think about it), but wound up being kind of incomprehensible and difficult to parse. Even though they took on many different kinds of forms, the kami artwork was extremely weird, even for fantasy. 

What Went Wrong

Everything changed in 1997. This was the year Pokémon left Japan and conquered the rest of the world. It was a vast multimedia phenomenon and it brought with it the idea that cartoons from Japan were really cool. While we had anime in the States previously, Pokémon introduced it to a far wider audience than ever before. By 2000, a large portion of animated shows that aired in the United States were made in Japan. The audiences couldn’t get enough and distributors had no problem with selling a product for which only the voicework and minimal editing needed to be done. Champions of Kamigawa was released in 2004, which means production started in 2002, still in the middle of the anime boom. While I can’t find anything stating that this craze wasn’t a driving factor in setting a Magic block in a world influenced by Japanese culture, I wouldn’t bet against it (as evidenced by this paragraph that’s already gone on too long).

The problem is that design did their homework too well. They based it on real world history and mythology, which bucked Western expectations of what Japanese culture was in regards to many elements. Non-Japanese fans didn’t have the cultural foundation or vocabulary for many of these new characters and fantasy creatures and the most foreign ones still stuck out and used more brainspace than the things players already got, like samurai and ninja. There was little resonance with anything that wasn’t already a trope.

I should note here that this was their first modern attempt at creating a Magic setting inspired by a real world one. Arabian Nights and Portal: Three Kingdoms were adaptations of the 1001 Nights and Romance of the Three Kingdoms settings, respectively, while Ice Age and the Dark were made in a completely different era of design. Of course there would be hiccups.

This was also the first time they had told a story that didn’t tie into Urza’s epic saga in years. It was completely new. And while I’m not sure if this were added later on, Kamigawa is mentioned as being very far away from Dominaria and other known planes, giving it an excuse to be stranger.

That still doesn’t excuse the curveball that players got thrown when it came to the subpar mechanics. As stated earlier, bushido and ninjutsu were great. Players grokked them immediately and many remember them fondly. However, the mechanics that didn’t play nicely outside the block, as well as the overall frustrating gameplay, made many people reconsider their hobby of choice.

Which brings me to the final nail in Kamigawa’s coffin. The Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game hit American shores in 2002. This was a direct result of a Western obsession with all things anime. Yu-Gi-Oh was able to hit all the anime tropes that Magic couldn’t, even in their Japan-inspired set. And while Magic had been able to weather the competition that was the Pokémon TCG, it couldn’t deal with a third contender.

Finally, I want to address a nagging thought. Normally, one would expect “the names were confusing for most people, but not me,” or something similar. I can’t in good conscience say that. Since I was a child, I’ve been interested in Japanese culture and mythology (as well as others - I did choose to study anthropology after all), but without having been immersed in it, I was just a fan at the time, not a scholar and certainly not Japanese. As I mentioned earlier, I bear no ill will towards those who can’t keep a glut of new unfamiliar words and names straight as I’ve seen how confused other people get when they’re introduced to my family all at once. This extends past the names, of course, and into many of the bits and pieces of Japanese folklore they did use.

Is there Hope?

Honestly, not a lot. Kamigawa had its chance at being a featured plane in a Standard set and failed. As Mark Rosewater has repeated ad nauseam, it’s almost disingenuous to try to convince the powers that be to approve it thanks to poor sales and abysmal player reaction to both the mechanics and creative direction. It’s not like bringing back a risky mechanic here and there - this is a whole setting, with everything that goes into it. Every set that comes out has an incredible amount of work and resources behind it, and there’s always a risk that it won’t sell. If you want a plane with gods (that aren’t mostly dead) and too many Legendaries, there’s Theros. If you want a plane with Asian influence, there’s Tarkir. If you want a plane with wacky spells, hey we’re finally going back to Dominaria next year. Why would a company that’s in the business of making money take a risk on losing when there are much safer gambles?

That being said, with the right pitch and a lot of work (and possibly the total destruction of all the collected market research and sales data) a Return to Kamigawa could be made. The fact that we’re going to three worlds a year now improves the chances of going back, and a decade and a half of experience with their modern design sensibilities definitely help. Realistically though, we’re only likely to see bits of Kamigawa in core sets and supplementary products.

But could it be GOOD?

Absolutely! Everyone’s got an opinion on how this could be done, but you’ve read this far so why not consider mine? These are just ideas for one to two Standard sets, not supplementary products or an old-fashioned block.

To start, it’s a great thing that the Champions of Kamigawa block took place thousands of years in the Multiverse’s past. It makes it easier to justify massive changes to everything.

The kami need to be dialed back, but present. I think a good case could be made for the kami being enchantment creatures, but there need to be far fewer, and they need to serve the story and an in-game purpose. Perhaps they could all be lords for their respective things, but they shouldn’t be normal creatures with freaky art. They also shouldn’t have freaky art. They shouldn’t be a rehash of the gods and Nyxborn creatures from Theros, but that’s a good starting point. I could see a mythic cycle of god-like kami and a rare cycle of concept-like or element-like kami. Give them the creature type Kami and abandon spirits altogether (unless the actual ghost of Toshiro Umezawa plays a role). Have no more than three other cards interact with this creature type.

The tribal component needs to be tightened up. There were so many cool new races in the Kamigawa block, but ultimately we only need five races of people (including humans), two classes, and then an assortment of other creature types. More on this in a bit.

Do away with the Legendary theme altogether. It never works and only sounds cool for about five minutes. Quality over quantity. (That being said, a Legendary theme for a Commander-focused product would work out very well I think.) Likewise, do away with the parasitic mechanics. Splice onto Arcane only works if there are Arcane cards outside the set and only if you want to actually play those cards.

It would be better to stick with a tried and true theme for limited - either Samurai vs. Ninja or five faction turf war. You could even have watermarks for the different clans. Everyone loves those, and clan emblems were used in real life too. Either way, it’s best not to deviate too much from what other sets and blocks have proven to work and it helps dictate the design of the set.

Speaking of design, there’s still a lot of great stuff going on in the original block. I haven’t mentioned the Soratami (moon people), Orochi (snake people), Nezumi (rat people), or Akki (goblin people), but they serve the set perfectly. Tribal is always a popular mechanic, and as a subtheme or even a major theme, players always want a team to join. Again, there are other creature types that could be utilized, but I think these are perfect to be the main races, along with humans. The Soratami are especially cool because they’re a Magic-specific race, much like the Aetherborn, and we’ve got a fan-favorite, story-driving moonfolk Planeswalker in Tamiyo.

There should absolutely be Japanese cultural and mythological inspired creatures, but they should be based on a modern idea of Japanese fantasy. Kappa, tengu, oni, and other assorted yokai fill in these spots pretty well, not to mention dragons. There’s also a good amount of things that can be done with locations, like shrines and castles, which wouldn’t necessitate them being Legendary.

If I had my way, the feel of a Return to Kamigawa would have a theme of journeying (a theme in a lot of old Japanese stories), much as original Zendikar had the feel of adventuring or Kaladesh had the theme of inventing. Lands with the type Road could lead you to places represented by other lands or artifacts with the type Shrine or Castle. These could help you play spells of a specific type, say, samurai or snake. In turn, those cards synergize with other spells. In practice I don’t know how this would play out, but as a midrange kind of limited environment, I can see it being enjoyable.

Final Thoughts

Despite its checkered past, the original Kamigawa block was very important. It was a first for a lot of modern Magic design sensibility, but wound up being more like a mistake to learn from than a model to base future sets off of. Additionally, it strayed when it should have stayed faithful to the source material and vice-versa. And while there were some very cool, very resonant elements that were introduced, the strange and unfamiliar elements are what dominated many players’ perception of the world. Combined with increased competition and a failed attempt at appealing to a certain type of fan, the block was doomed from the very start. 

Knowing what they know now, I think that the Magic team can put together an amazing Japanese-inspired set and keep it on Kamigawa, rather than having to create a new plane. They need to define what they want Japanese-inspired to mean, however, and keep it more in line with audience expectations. They need to focus on what people still love about the plane and bring it in line with what a Magic set is now.

[thisgeekyteacher]

The months they go so fast, and May disappeared in a whirl of outwith the norm events. What with many comings and goings, a whole week in Cumbria and more train journeys than I’d really like to make in a month, I’ve made it to June more battered and broken than when I started.

I’ll be honest, I don’t really know what to put in here regarding the news. Brexit is a nightmare, Trump is no better, and News the world over is just miserable. So I think I’ll go with something that hit home for me.

My heart broke when I read about the sinking of the tourist boat on the Danube in Hungary. It is all the more heart wrenching as the wounds scored into the psyche of the nation as a result of the Sewol tragedy are still smarting. This has been close to the bone.

It also made me afraid. Afraid that I might know someone on that boat. True, the chances were slim, but I have met so many Koreans who have made clear their wishes to travel abroad, and many of them since have. I didn’t want any of my friends to be on the boat.

I hope that recovery operations in Hungary are swifter than they were for Sewol, and I hope everyone is found.

I’ve mentioned this book in the up-coming Reading Nook post, but it’s that good that I’m putting it here as well!

If you’re fascinated by Jack the Ripper, this isn’t necessarily a shoe-in. If you are fascinated by Victorian London in general, then this is a perfect read.

Hallie Rubenhold has clearly researched into every nook and cranny, digging up every little tit-bit of information relating to Jack the Ripper’s victims, and gives them their names and lives, immortalising them – Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary Kelly – as more than victims, as more than the prostitutes they were always assumed to be.

It’s a heart wrenching read and, and it’s very core, highlights without even having to put into words, how similar women’s situations are now. It is still an automatic assumption that a woman has fallen, that she is lesser, that she is sex worker, if she is in any way perceived to have “fallen” below society’s standards.

We have a long way to go.

I’ve still been slowly making my way through bones, and in the BF’s week of ill, a lot of of the Netflix shows were consumed. I’m now very used to the background noise of people being beaten to a pulp. That or football…

Some of the shows are great, some seem to just dole out the violence for violence’s sake, but as I’ve mostly been passively watching. The roster has been made up of Luke Cage, The Punisher and Daredevil. Luke Cage appears to have a stellar OST, and Daredevil has it’s captivating moments, but The Punisher does nothing for me!

I think we’re nearly at the end now, so hopefully there will be something less noisily violent gracing our TV screens.

More Marvel, this time Endgame.

I know I’m going to get some flack for this, but though I’m satisfied with the ending, the getting there was less gratifying. I could have done with film about half the length, or at least sped up, and I got so frustrated that I nearly left.

I am still deeply unimpressed with how a couple of the characters were dealt with; whilst I understand the point of the exercise, I feel it was handled badly and it left a sour taste. Man it’s hard to write an opinion piece on a movie you don’t want to spoil.

Whilst I would recommend seeing it, because… Endgame, I can’t sit here and say it’s going to blow your mind. It rounds out the Infinity Saga nicely, and sets up the next chapter. I’m going to miss this generation of Marvel, but I believe that what’s coming will be fantastic.

Those in the know are more than aware that I’m not remotely fussy about music genre, I will listen to anything and everything that sings to me. They will also know that I love me a good K-Pop release. What they might not know, is that of some of my favourite Korean artists, the Japanese releases outweigh the success of their Korean ones.

In May, we were treated to Seventeen’s newest Japanese release, Happy Ending. I’ve been disappointed In Seventeen’s recent Korean releases, they’ve just not quite been there. Happy Ending happily bucks this trend.

It’s a treat, being able to consume music from one group in two different national markets. Whilst there are Korean rock groups, and excellent ones at that, you will generally find this sound is more readily accepted in Japan than in Korea.

May has been changeable, weather-wise, and there has been much need for an interim jacket. I’ve not had the greatest of need for one before now – both Hong Kong and Korea are not known for their prolonged seasonal transitions. This year I acquired a second-hand Burberry trench coat that isn’t an colour of cream/beige that makes me look sick, and I have been rocking it (if I do say so myself). It’s a fast way to lift an outfit into something a little more put together.

I was rained upon immediately after this photo, however. The sunnies are a complete and utter lie. Oh, London weather! And now we’re in June and it’s chucking it down outside – a classic British summer. Why did I come back again?

Given this guy a wash, so he’s a wee bit damp!

This months revelation is not a product, but a tool! I have been into sponges for a million-and-one years, and for some reason, in recent months they’ve not been doing the job for me. Personally, I’m going to put that down to my Korean stash has finally run out and those on offer in the UK just aren’t up to par (and no, I’m not going to pay silly money for a sponge).

In light of this, I turned to the make up brushes, picked one that looked like it might be halfway decent for foundation, and gave it a whirl. I haven’t looked back since. Who knows why something that hasn’t worked before is working now,  but it does and I’m loving it.

As I slowly march through the endless collection of recipes at my disposal, there have been two of note this may:

On the right we have a smokey pork and black bean recipe from BBC Good Food, technically a taco recipe that instead had with salad to make a frankensteined buritto bowl. On the left we have a gluten free bread recipe from one of the plethora of LEON books I have. If you’re interested in them, I recommend keeping an eye on kindle prices!

The frankensteined burrito bowl was a huge success, and I enjoyed it for many a packed lunch – I packed my salad and meat separately, heated the meat at work and threw it all together with a smidge of cheese and a dollop of soured cream (technical terms there).

The bread, though no unsuccessful, was odd. It’s gluten free, it was always going to be odd. It looked more cakey than any bread I’ve ever come across, but was also dense, without being heavy. I found this bread to be very enjoyable, just as long as you are of the full understanding that it is not, nor is it ever going to be, regular bread!

Stunning photo, I believe from the press performance

The boy and I managed to get tickets to see English National Opera’s production of Faust, at their home in Covent Garden. The Opera House is a stunning mixture of sleek modernity in the foyer/bar and old fashioned opulence in the theatre itself, right down to the patrons; there were some tail coats spotted, and one lady in the most fabulous, sparking red dress. Opera attendance aspirations right there!

Faust (the French version by Charles Gounod, at least I think so!) was long, funny, long some more, rousing, opulent, disturbing and a spectacle.  Méphistophélès appearance in the second half (end of Act IV or beginning of Act V, I’ll be honest I’m not sure, all the Act’s melted into one) was fabulous; the scene stealer of the evening.

After the opera, we (one of our friends was in the production) headed off to China town for a bite to eat, and had this amazing aubergine number that I can’t for the life of me remember the name or make up of. Let this post serve as a reminder to the boy that we need to go have that again (a test to see if he reads the blog, perhaps…)

This month, the best place I have been is the Garden up in Cumbria. Getting through May felt like a war of attrition. There were highs and there were really, really dark lows. Being able to get home was a saving grace, and I was lucky enough to be able to experience some amazing weather. Here’s a wee photo of Colin  the pheasant strutting about like he owns the place, to a stunning back drop. Who needs filters when you live in the countryside! 

2019 has been a good year for the family. My nephew (hereafter nephew the first) arrived in January, and he is the spitting image of my brother, so much so it’s hilarious. In May, another member of the family arrived, another wee lad, to my cousin. It’s far too convoluted to go through the whole relation nomenclature rigmarole, so I’m just going to stick with nephew the second. He is adorable, with So. Much. Hair (quite unlike nephew the first, who is so blonde he looks bald), and I’m so damn proud of my cousin I could cry. I mean I will, I’m a crier. I can’t wait to go meet the wee lad and get in some of those baby cuddles!

  Re-Cap:

So May wasn’t all bad, despite the low parts of the month. I got some in some solid hours at home, we gained another new addition to the family, the boy and I got a wee trip tp the opera and he got to enjoy some of my food aspiration experiments (though apparently not enough, according to him, which is difficult when he’s more of a savory guy and I am all about that baking!)

Here’s hoping that June is a great month for all of us!

  If you would like to support TGT, head over to my Kofi:

  Last Month Today | May 2019 The months they go so fast, and May disappeared in a whirl of outwith the norm events.

[emetoandotherthings]

Damian’s Coeliac Saga ~Pt.1

A/N: So after @its-a-goddamn-heartbreak and I discussed how Damian found out about his gluten intolerance, we essentially planned an entire multichapter fic about it - and so I’m writing it! Here is part one, get ready for angst, pain and just general torture of 14 year old Damian (and fucking snarky 12 y/o Jude). I hope you enjoy ~ more will follow in days to come!

           “Damian, Damian!” A hand shook his shoulder roughly and he opened his eyes blearily to see his mother looking down at him, frustration on her face.

           “Mmmm…. What?” He mumbled, moving slightly in bed to get away from his mum’s hand.

           “It’s quarter past eight!” She replied briskly. “You need to get up, you’re going to be late for school.”

           “Alright, alright…” He placated, moving his cosy bed covers away from his face.

           “I thought you wanted a shower this morning,” she’d begun to move to the door.

           “I did…” Damian said, sitting up in his bed and feeling that sudden woozy sensation which accompanies moving too quickly.

           “You’re not going to have enough time,” she shook her head, “you’ll just have to put up with it for a day. Come on, out of bed! I’ll put the kettle on so you can have a cup of coffee before you leave!”

           “Okay,” he rubbed his hand across his face as his mum left his bedroom. He was just so tired… He couldn’t explain it either; he’d gone to bed relatively early and hadn’t done any extra study or anything. He knew that being in fourth year, with the imminent reality of exams which could make or break his future, was going to be tough, but he hadn’t thought it would be this hard.

           “I’m not hearing any movement!” His mum called from downstairs.

           “Alright!” He shouted, and dragged himself out of bed. He couldn’t explain why he felt so tired… It wasn’t just tonight either, but for the past couple of weeks he’d felt like he was teetering on the edge of exhaustion – and despite knowing his goal of getting in to study medicine, he hadn’t quite been able to make his brain do what he wanted… He felt like weights had been stitched under his skin as he dragged on his school uniform.

           His mum had left him a mug of coffee and a slice of toast on the counter, but he couldn’t face taking more than a few bites while downing his cup of coffee.

           “Good morning sleeping beauty!” Jude smirked and make a mock curtsey towards Damian, before picking his own slice of toast up.

           “Shut up,” Damian replied curtly, placing his mug into the dishwasher. “Hurry up, we need to leave in two minutes.”

           “Says the boy who got out of bed ten minutes ago!” Jude scoffed with his mouth full, but Damian chose to ignore him and headed to clean his teeth.

           In the whiter light of the bathroom Damian was confronted by how awful he looked – his skin pale, and dark circles bloomed underneath his eyes. He tried to ignore looking at himself in the mirror as he rapidly cleaned his teeth, then grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder. Jude was standing at the bottom of the stairs, ready to go.

           “Come on, let’s go,” Jude jostled impatiently while Damian set their house alarm.

           “Hold your horses!” Damian snapped as he fished his key out from his bag and locked the door.

           The morning was crisp and bright, the sun was low as they walked down their road and turned along the main road towards the end of the street that Cain and Eden lived in. In the morning light, Damian could see the white blonde hair of his best mate. Jude had sped up to meet Eden, and the two of them were already quarter of the way up the hill before Damian even made it to Cain.

           “You alright?” Cain asked as Damian caught him and the two began making their way up to the school.

           “Yeah…” Damian said. “You?”

           “Yeah,” Cain nodded. “How did you find the maths homework?”

           Damian’s heart skipped a beat, and he clapped his hand to his forehead with considerable force. Cain was looking at him strangely, his eyebrows raised.

           “I totally forgot!” If it was possible for him to feel any worse then this would be the moment, but he already felt so weighed down that it was impossible to grind him down anymore.

           “That’s not like you…” Cain commented, his eyebrows raised. “Were you busy last night?”

           “Kind of,” Damian lied, running his hands through his hair. “I’ll have to do it during registration.” He couldn’t believe that had slipped his mind, but being so tired it felt like things were slipping from his brain in a manner beyond his control.

           The loud, boisterous chatter in his registration class made it nigh impossible for him to concentrate on the simultaneous equations he should have solved last night. Cain was trying not to seem worried, because he’d never been in this situation; he’d watched other classmates frantically trying to finish homework but never Damian… He couldn’t help but notice that his friend’s face looked a little waxy, maybe ill – but Damian was the last person you could suggest the possibility of being ill to, he’d simply ignore any comments until Cain gave up trying.

           “How are you getting on?” Cain asked, aware that the bell to signify the start of their first period was imminent.

           “I’m – nearly – done,” Damian finished with a flourish, then sank his head down onto his arm.

           “Are you okay?” Cain was slightly alarmed by this action as it was so out of character for his friend. Slowly Damian raised his head, he didn’t look okay.

           “Just tired,” Damian shrugged, although apart from the lingering tiredness that had been around since he woke up, there was a strange discomfort in his abdomen. He wasn’t quite sure whether that was because he’d only had three bites of toast along with his coffee, or for another reason.

           The bell rang, interrupting Cain’s ability to question further as he’d risen immediately. Cain didn’t sit next to Damian in maths, but he couldn’t help but cast anxious glances over in his direction. Damian really didn’t look at all well – his eyes were glazed over and Cain could tell that he wasn’t concentrating on hi work which was most unlike him.

           From the position Cain sat, he could see Damian’s hand at his stomach and a grimace on his pale face. Perhaps he was coming down with something? Cain barely managed to focus on his own work as he thought over what might be going on with his friend. What if he really was burning himself out? Cain had joked about that with Damian for as long as he’d known him, but he’d never considered that it might happen. As they left class for break Cain couldn’t quite decide whether to say anything, but before he got the chance Damian said something about going to physics a bit early and disappeared.

           Damian felt like he was being dragged, suspended through treacle, as time went so slowly, and he was so tired. By the time he’d gotten through physics by the skin of his teeth, and sat next to the radiator in his English class he was ready to give up. He wanted to go home, his stomach felt weird and he couldn’t tell whether he was overheating because he had been sat next to the radiator or for another reason. Then he saw Cain’s face at lunch time, and he wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of wanting to go home.

           “Are you coming to the art room for lunch?” Cain questioned; one of the teacher’s opened their room for some people to study in, and the two of them sometimes went along. Damian weighed it up in his head, he could have a bit of rest for an hour and maybe eat something to bring his blood sugar back up; then he could reassess whether he wanted to go home or not.

           “Yeah, okay,” Damian nodded. He followed Cain along to the art studio, perching on one of the high stools and resisting the urge to put his head down onto the table straight away. Watching Cain unpacking his art stuff from his folder, Damian pulled out the Tupperware box that his mum had packed his lunch into. He didn’t recall a time when his usual ham sandwich had looked more unappealing, but he took a bite anyway, telling himself that it’d make him feel better.

           “Are you alright?” Cain asked, normally Damian would have some of his work spread out on the table while Cain sketched.

           “Yeah,” Damian answered, although his jaw felt like it was wired shut as he tried to chew on his sandwich.

           “Are you sure?” Cain persisted. “You’ve been kinda quiet and off all day – I mean, normally you’d be trying to explain to me how sine waves work in physics or something…”

           “I’m just tired that’s all…” Damian passed it off. “What are you drawing?”

           Cain pursed his lips for a second, then seemed to accept Damian’s explanation and began to talk about shading or something while Damian tried really hard to pay attention.

           He didn’t bother with the second half of his sandwich, but sipped on his bottle of water, but barely ten minutes later he felt like his stomach was expanding. He tried to shift the waistband of his school trousers, but there was nowhere he could move it to that didn’t hurt. He placed his head in his hand and took some deep breaths in through his nose, and when that didn’t help he wrapped his free arm around his stomach.

           “Damian?” Suddenly Cain’s voice was right next to him and he felt Cain’s hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

           “I don’t feel good…” Damian whispered honestly, only then realising that he’d closed his eyes. “Brrruuuurp! Oh! Excuse me…” The deep belch broke past his lips before he could stop it and his hand sprang to his mouth.

           “I thought you were looking off… Do you feel sick?” Cain questioned, Damian nodded slightly – he wasn’t quite sure how to explain the strange puffy sensation inside his abdomen. “Come on, I think we should go to the office.”

           “Just – buuurp – give me a minute please…” Damian requested, then he heard Cain packing his stuff up for him.

           “Let’s get you home,” Cain coaxed him off the stool, “I’ll carry your bag, you just have to walk, okay?”

           “Thanks Cain,” Damian muttered, the weird sensation in his stomach causing more pressure every second.

           “It’s absolutely no problem,” Cain assured.

[kelasparmak]

001: Vorkosigan Saga. 002: Charles Gunn/Wesley Wyndam-Pryce.

OH MAN THIS GOT LONG

Vorkosigan Saga:

Favorite character: Hmmm, tough one. No, just kidding, everyone who’s ever met me knows Bel’s my favourite, hands down, no contest.

Least Favorite character: I mean, there are a lot of baddies to pick from. Ryoval, Ser Galen and Bruce Van Atta all rate highly.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): This one actually is tricky, since I really really like a lot of the canon relationship dynamics. Byerly and Ivan definitely, Aral and Cordelia (and Oliver Jole, though it’s Aral and Cordelia’s dynamic that I’m particularly fond of), Ethan and Terrence, Simon and Alys, and I think Miles and Bel. (Honourable mentions go to Bel and Nicol, Ivan and Tej, and Elli and Elena, which is a pairing I’d not actually really considered until I got desperate for Vorkosigan fic and ran the Russian works on AO3 through Google Translate and found some really interesting fic.)

Character I find most attractive: My mental images of book characters are generally super vague and I’m eh about attractiveness anyway, but thinking about it I’d probably say Rish, Taura or Dono Vorrutyer.

Character I would marry: I’d be quite happy marrying an awful lot of them, really. Bel, for preference, since I’m practically in actual bona fide love with it.

Character I would be best friends with: I’d like to say Bel, but I don’t think I’m exciting enough. My actual best friends through life have mostly been more like Tej or maybe the younger Kareen, so maybe one of them? Tej and I could definitely bond over language learning. (I would also love to be best friends with Byerly, but again, I don’t think we have the same idea of a good time.)

A random thought: The first thing that springs to mind is my fascination with the fact that Bel and Jole had a fling back in the day. When was this? How (hilariously) would Miles react? I would love for Bel, Nicol, Garnet Five and Corbeau (since he’s the Barrayaran Imperium’s ambassador or attache or whatever to Quaddiespace) to visit Sergyar and pop in on Miles, and have that awkward ‘yes, we’ve met’ conversation when Miles tried to introduce them to each other. Well, awkward for Miles and Jole, at least; Bel and Cordelia would no doubt find it hilarious.

An unpopular opinion: Iiiii don’t really like that more or less everyone ended up paired off to an Appropriately Gendered Spouse, with a bureaucratic position and babies ever after. I mean, that’s an oversimplification and there are exceptions (like Elli, or Ethan and Terrence, though that’s implied rather than explicit and since Athos is men-only it feels a little ‘for lack of alternative Terrence might end up with a guy and if he does it’ll probably be Ethan’) but that’s how it feels to me. I don’t know how unpopular that opinion is, though.

My canon OTP: Aral/Cordelia

Non-canon OTP: Byerly/Ivan (I mean, we’ve essentially had this question already)

Most badass character: I think Taura or Elli, probably? Miles is definitely a contender too, but I suppose because you see him wallowing in self-pity or making it up as he goes or doing extremely silly things pretty often the overall effect is perhaps diminished a little. Though I think overall the sheer amount of obstacles, self-imposed as well as external, that he manages to overcome, might put him at the top of the list.

Pairing I am not a fan of: Leo/Silver, probably. I don’t think it was very ethical for Leo to get involved, at least not at that point - I’m not sure if she was canonically a great deal younger than him or if I’ve just imagined that, but there’s a huge gap in terms of life experience, and I think that given the way Van Atta had exploited her very very recently, Leo should have given her some space and time and the tools to figure out what she wanted before he got involved with her.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Bothari’s portrayal made me pretty uncomfortable at times. Not sure if it was necessarily a screwup because she writes other mental illnesses pretty well, at least as far as my understanding of them goes, but I felt like with Bothari there was a very fine line being tread between a very complex depiction of schizophrenia (specifically traumagenic schizophrenia) & cyclical abuse on the one hand, and the ‘dangerous and barely-human crazy person’ stereotype on the other.

Favourite friendship: So many. In the interests of not just repeating myself from the shipping questions, though, I really like the development of Miles and Ivan’s relationship from not really Getting each other at all in the first book (and Miles in particular being pretty contemptuous of Ivan), to a close (if constantly mutually exasperating) friendship once they’re a little older.

Gunn/Wesley

when or if I started shipping it: Gosh, it’s been absolutely years since I watched Angel and I only watched it the once, so any of these answers may be completely wrong, but honestly I think it was from the first time they argued.

my thoughts: I really liked their 'odd couple’ dynamic - it reminds me a little of a much more extreme version of Eliot and Hardison’s initial impressions of each other, in that they each have a lot of preconceptions about the type of person the other is and about their worth, but pretty quickly get over it and come to respect each other and (shockingly enough) realised that it was actually really useful that they’d had such different experiences and that they worked much better together than separately. I’d have liked more episodes dealing with their very different backgrounds and attitudes in a more casual setting - I don’t remember how often that came up but I don’t feel like it was very often, or at least not often enough for my liking :P I just wish that phase

What makes me happy about them: I guess I’ve just said it. Got a bit carried away there I guess. 

What makes me sad about them: The goddamn unnecessary love triangle! And everything getting fucked up! Why did this happen! I prefer to pretend that storyline, and the Illyria storyline, and the Grimdark Wesley storyline, didn’t happen, because they were silly and unnecessary. Whedon, you didn’t even have to let my kids be happy, but making them miserable because of internal conflict that wasn’t even in-character for them wasn’t even lazy writing, it would have been lazy writing with different characters, but this required effort! To be bad! Why! (Caveat: possibly the Grimdark Wesley storyline isn’t so much objectively bad as I just didn’t like it. I don’t mind him being emo, that’s a-ok, but his behaviour toward Gunn and Fred was straight-up gross, and while I quite liked Wesley dealing with the consequences of his mistakes, I’d have been happier if he’d learned from them instead of getting worse, lol.)

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: Iiii actually have never read any fic of this series, I don’t think, so I guess I don’t know. I can imagine some things that would and that I wouldn’t be surprised to see done.

Things I look for in fanfic: Well, nothing, but I guess it would be the dynamic that I liked between them in the Good Times. Preferably a ridiculous shenanigans, some near-death experiences, actually talking about their feelings, and a healthy dose of fluff (or h/c). And Gunn being smart as hell, because he is and arguably is better at applying that in practice than Wesley.

My kinks: I am a pure and innocent soul and I don’t even know what a kink is. (Okay, but leaving out the sexual element, I guess even though I was talking about how much I hate Grimdark Wes, I’d probably be interested in hatesex fic set during that period if it was concerned with working out their frustration and betrayal rather than just uncomplicated angry sex) (Also, I can see Wesley being super into Gunn being smart as fuck generally, and specifically into his Lawyer Talk after he got essentially the entire corpus of law and G&S downloaded into his brain. In my head this is not a very sexy thing, it’s very ‘Ooh Mr Darcy’, Wesley is hopelessly enamoured and Gunn is initially bemused but flattered and very quickly gets tired of Wes swooning every time he says something smart, which is way too often for it not to have lost its effect AND YET. And especially if they’re working for Wolfram & Hart together in this scenario, in which case Gunn uses advanced legal terminology often on account of it being his job, which makes it hugely impractical for Wesley to try and jump his bones every time it happens. He’s probably just into the legal jargon and not the Gilbert and Sullivan because that would be a very weird kink and not one I can imagine being sexy at all, but now that I say it, if someone wrote that fic I would read it just out of morbid curiosity.)

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Fred! As well as each other! Guys, polyamory, it’s a thing! (If it had to be other people, I’d probably go for Gunn with Fred and Wes with either Angel or Spike. Probably not Lilah.)

My happily ever after for them: No one dies and Gunn has high self-esteem and Wesley stops fucking up everything he touches. Nothing bad happens and The Gang never have to deal with apocalypses or implausibly huge conspiracies or anything, they just hang out being supernatural detectives and doing Season 1-2 type stuff forever. Possibly they are in a triad with Fred but this is not necessary.