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star-trekkin-across-theuniverse · 2 years ago

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Worthy, pt 15

part 1 & 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14

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tags: @bolontiku, @rampant-salamander, @darkdragonpheonix , @440mxs-wife, @castiels-sunflowers, @peekingsunshine, @alexakeyloveloki, @feelmyroarrrr

word count: 2632

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“Does anyone get how creepy that sounds?” It gave me a full-body shudder every time someone said my mother was remarkable. Not because I didn’t agree, but because the word was dripping in innuendo. My mom was incredible, amazing, and a woman ahead of her time. She was absolutely remarkable. But the way it was being said made me want to scream. And I know innuendo is subjective but every time I heard the word I got a mental image of something significantly less remarkable than my mother.

“Her mother is a healer of some renown, Leif,” Thor interjected. “She has forged paths where other women have found it difficult.”

“A healer?” Leif’s face darkened. “So after all this time, he still tries to replace her?”

Thor turned to face me. “Leif’s mother was Loki’s first wife –“

“Sigyn?” I interrupted.

“No. Sigyn came after Mother,” Leif corrected. “Your Midgardian tales do not tell of my mother’s marriage to Loki. I ensured that any record of their union was destroyed in this realm so that his taint would not be on her. The people of Midgard, in a different time, revered her as a god.”

“But Loki was revered as a god as well. Why would it be so terrible to have them associated with one another?” I asked.

“The god of lies with the goddess of healing?” Leif scoffed. There was a puzzle piece in my head that suddenly clicked into place.

“Wait, what?” I gaped. “Your mother is Eir? That goddess of healing?”

“You know Asgard well for a Midgardian,” Leif quirked an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I grew up on this shit. Some people grow up hearing fairy tales. I heard Norse myths,” I shrugged. Leif tilted his head.

“Oh?”

I got up and crossed the living room, careful to avoid the broken glass. I grabbed the mythology book I’d brought back from Seattle and returned to the living room, handing it to Leif. He looked at it and smiled, handing it back right away.

“I know this book,” he chuckled.

“I do too. Inside out and backward,” I admitted. Leif took it again and looked it over, opening and closing it. He sat down on my coffee table so he was facing me, subconsciously rubbing his hands across the smooth cover of the book. I was astonished that the table didn’t collapse under his weight. He was massive and fully armoured. His eyes narrowed and a slow smile spread across his face.

“I know your mother. I signed this for her when she bought it. She was great with child at the time. You, I would imagine.” He flipped to the front page. His eyes flicked across the inscription and his smile grew wider. “Yes. Althea. She was lovely, kind. Wise eyes. You must have been born soon after; she was in that uncomfortable late stage of pregnancy. Stunning though, even as heavy with babe as she was.” He was lost in the memory of my mother, his eyes closed. “I never would have guessed that was my kin within her belly.”

“You mean to tell me you’ve been crawling around Earth for thirty years, writing books and generally being creepy?” I blurted. Thor laughed. He didn’t even try to look chastised when Leif glared at him.

“I spent most of my writing time in Asgard. Or in other realms, while looking for Loki,” he explained.

“Yeah, what’s with that vendetta?” I understood not liking Loki, simply based on the attacking the earth thing. But Leif was probably a million years old and he was still pissed about something that had obviously happened when he was little.

“Loki betrayed my mother, abandoned us both, took up with a monster and was more concerned with his children by her than what damage he had done in my mother’s life. She lost everything. Except me.” His eyes flashed and I knew I wasn’t really getting the whole story. “It was by the grace of Frigga that we continued to be welcome in court.”

“I didn’t realize,” I apologized. Leif shook his head.

“And how could you? I eliminated any record that tied Mother to him.” Leif’s tone was kind but dismissive.

“Which brings me to this question. If you don’t recognize Loki as your father, why would you recognize me as your sister?” It felt hollow, knowing how much he hated our mutual parent. Leif leaned back on the chair and considered the question.

“You have her eyes. Everyone tells you that, don’t they? But you have his intelligence. Does that frighten you, now that you’ve met him?” Leif ignored my question.

“No. I am more than the genes in my body,” I retorted. Leif nodded.

“As am I. We have more than a father in common. We have our mothers in common too. Raised by healers, the children of the god of lies. I would guess we have a lifetime of common experiences. And we alone of Loki’s progeny have retained that spark that you would call humanity. We are alone, together.” He had obviously felt alone for a long time, and maybe he saw me as company in a tenuous existence. For whatever reason, he was determined to count me as his sibling. “Suppose I buy into this. What does it mean?” I demanded.

“I know not what you ask,” Leif was confused.

“Well, okay, we’re half-siblings. But what does that mean? Are we suddenly going to be having family gatherings? Going to Disneyland? Camping? Weiner roasts in the backyard in June?” I was trying to see the significance of what this new relationship was going to mean, aside from more weirdness. I guess I was asking if it was going to be cool, or if it was going to be awkward like I felt every time Mjolnir flew into my hand. Leif looked stumped.

“I taught my brothers how to fight, keep their armour in repair, charm ladies. I am not sure those are skills you would need,” he began. I laughed.

“Yeah, not a lot of call for me to charm ladies,” I admitted. “Do you have any of Loki’s powers?”

“I did not train any of my magics other than those for healing. And those were a gift from my mother.” He shook his head.

“I can manipulate emotions,” I admitted. “Like, of the people around me.” Leif raised an eyebrow and glanced at Thor.

“It is weak, but it is there. I would imagine it is much more powerfully felt by the Midgardians,” he confirmed. Leif scratched his chin, the stubble making a scratchy sound. I waited for him to say something, although I was not sure what I was hoping for. I think I wanted him to tell me he could teach me better control.

“I cannot help you there, Ella. The only person who could,” he paused and glanced at Thor, “would have been my grandmother. But she was lost when the dark elves attacked Asgard.”

“But now we know that Loki is alive, Leif –“ Thor began. Leif rose and stepped toward him, his face changing from calm to raging in seconds.

“I told you he was not dead! I told you that you should not believe he was gone! I warned you! You thought me mad!” Leif’s interruption was explosive, and Thor sprang to his feet, Mjolnir low at his side.

“That does not change that he nearly died to save me. You are my nephew because he is my brother, do not forget yourself, boy.” Thor’s tone was a cold, dangerous calm. “You are not the only one who had been hurt by him; you do not hold exclusive right to claim damage. Loki is alive. He is the only one who can teach your sister to control the magic she owns. If you are so intent on helping her find her place in the world, finding your father would be a good start.” His fingers curled around Mjolnir and I found myself wanting to melt into the couch, while at the same time, feeling the crackle of energy coming from the hammer.

“Or maybe he could teach me to fight. It’s not something anyone learns here anymore. But if your stupid hammer is going to keep shooting into my hand every time I’m in trouble, maybe I should know how to use it?” I pointed the question at Thor. He shook his head.

“Leif is not worthy, so he cannot teach you to use Mjolnir.” He looked thoughtful. “But perhaps I should spend time giving you lessons.”

“Yeah. Awesome.” I didn’t actually want to learn to use the damn thing. What I really wanted was to go back to the way I was before I’d found that stupid hammer. Just another lucky kid who’d scored an internship at Stark Industries. It was never intended to be a boring or ordinary life, but it was certainly more boring and ordinary than anything that had happened since that moment I’d wrapped my hand around Mjolnir. I was already exhausted. Adding in ‘Norse god training’ was just going to make things worse.

XXX

“So, the screaming, sword-waving psycho is your brother? Not surprising,” Angela commented over her giant, disgusting waffle. I wasn’t even hungry for my eggs, I was so overwhelmed by everything.

“How is that not surprising?”

“Well, your father is a psycho. So it stands to reason the massive Ginger beast is also a psycho,” she shrugged and took a sip of her coffee.

“Massive Ginger beast?” I laughed. I rocked back in my chair. “Yeah, I guess that’s a somewhat accurate description.” The last Angela had seen of him, he’d been charging, sword and shield ready, toward me, screaming in what I’d later learned was the Alltongue, the language of Asgard. I’d understood it in the moment because I was holding Mjolnir. It was all very confusing. Angela looked over my shoulder and dropped her fork.

“Who is that?” She breathed. I’d become accustomed to the way she was always checking out guys. It was actually kind of fun. She had great taste in men, so always was able to find something easy on the eyes to look at, regardless of whether we were in the commissary, shopping, or out for an afternoon in the park. I followed her gaze to the guy she was swooning over and choked on my coffee.

“That would be the massive, psycho, Ginger beast, Ang,” I laughed.

“He cleans up good. Wow.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “Too bad about his dad.”

“That’s my genetics you’re slighting too, Angela!” I protested.

“Yeah, but you’re half-human so it’s okay. I know you’ll be fine. He’s half-god. Or is he all god? He looks all god. How does that work? Are they even gods? Holy shit, you’re half-god!” And Angela’s squirrel-like train of thought derailed.

“Not at all god. Just alien. He’s half two types of alien. I’m half one type. Thor guesses I’ll probably live about a thousand years. Won’t that be fucking awesome?” I was feeling snarky.

“If you get to be around guys that look like that, a thousand years will not be long enough,” she waggled her eyebrows.

“Just to remind you. That’s my brother, so grosso. More gross than Thor, thank you very much.” I made a gagging gesture.

“Yeah, but you were considering Thor last night,” Angela teased. I shook my head.

“No, not really.” I finished my coffee and pushed my plate away. “I need to get back to the lab. Just promise me I can be the maid of honour when you pin Leif down.” I winked and picked up my tray, stopping to drop it off at the garbages. Leif saw me and waved me over. I sighed and headed toward him.

“Ella!” He was entirely too cheery for the morning. “I have spoken with Thor and was hoping we could meet again this afternoon.”

I cringed. I needed a little time to adjust to all these crazy changes. Time away from brothers and uncles and hammers and myth and legend, and time just hanging out with components and screws and tools. I needed to build something to get my brain away from the chaos that was taking over my personal life.

“I –“ I stalled, “uh –“

“She’s busy. There’s an issue with the miniaturization of the quantum beam accelerator I’m working on, and as Ella is an expert in the area, I’m going to be taking up most of her time,” Bruce interrupted, holding two cups of coffee from the Starbucks in the lobby. He handed one to me and nodded with his head for me to follow. I smiled in apology to Leif and trailed behind Bruce out of the lab.

“I’m not an expert in Quantum beam accelerators,” I protested.

“You are becoming an expert in miniaturization though,” he countered. I shrugged.

“That’s arguable. I don’t know if you can even miniaturize a quantum beam accelerator anyhow,” I argued as we stepped onto the elevator, “I would be really difficult to –“ Bruce interrupted me with a kiss.

“I lied. To get you to myself. There’s no issue with anything. I just booked a day off and decided you are playing hooky with me,” he explained. He leaned in to kiss me again and I dodged away.

“Excuse me? You don’t get to swoop in all Captain Kissypants after ignoring me for two weeks!” I protested. “You got all hot and bothered and then ran away. And carefully avoided everything about me for two weeks. Not a word for two weeks, Bruce. You don’t get to all of a sudden reappear, book days off for me and kiss me in the elevator!”

Bruce looked down at his feet, his hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I panicked.”

“I don’t blame you. But you can’t just vanish like that. I mean, you can. It’s your life. But I’m left wondering what the deal is. If you like me, and you want to spend time with me, you have to treat me with more respect than that,” I explained. He sighed and kept looking at his feet.

“Ella, please. I’m sorry. I,” he paused and finally looked at me. “I haven’t felt like this in a long time. I haven’t let myself. Your work is intriguing, and your background is impressive and I saw your CV and thought you would be interesting to work with. And then you arrived and you’re this passionate, brilliant engineer. Your brain is this beautiful puzzle, so you’re interesting. And then you have some sort of magic power that prevents the Other Guy from taking over? You’re too good to be true.”

I laughed despite myself. “I think you’ve met my father? That’s a pretty big minus in my books.”

“And maybe that’s why I panicked. I don’t know. But I’ve been miserable for two weeks. And my work is suffering. And I guess maybe it doesn’t matter. I feel calmer with you. Even when you aren’t deliberately doing it.” He leaned back against the elevator wall. “I figured, book us off for the day, take you out, show you the parts of the city I didn’t break. As an apology for being a jackass.”

“Does that work with other women?” I asked. He looked confused. “Saying their brains are beautiful puzzles?”

“I’ve never tried it on anyone before, but my guess would be no.” One side of his mouth quirked up in a smirk. I sighed and let the resentment go.

“You’re a lucky man, Dr. Banner. I kinda liked it.” I leaned back against the elevator wall beside him. “If you play your cards right, I might even let you kiss me again.”

#bruce banner x ofc

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honourablejester · 2 years ago

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I went back to try the first two Eight Petals Argent books as a warlock this time. I think I’m just going to try out various characters of different classes to feel how they all play. And some impressions so far, of a (fathomless) warlock following immediately on the coattails of a (twilight) cleric.

I can’t tell how much of this is just bad luck compared to the cleric, because I’m also trying different routes through the adventure and different skills just mean different routes in some cases regardless, but the warlock feels significantly less survivable? Though this could also be a factor of a solo adventure where it’s all on you. But while they both have the same hit die and Con, with the warlock I’m worrying about my HP a lot more. A lot a lot more.

(I realise twilight cleric is an unfair comparison there, given Twilight Sanctuary and heal spells, but yeah)

Warlock also feels significantly more specialised. The cleric had tools for more situations. These adventures, to be fair to them, do do their best to vary things up a LOT, so different classes can have places where they shine, but what that does mean is that when you’re playing through the whole thing with just your single character to rely on, there’s areas where you struggle. I feel like I felt that less on the cleric, who could handle most things decently well. On the warlock, say, the lengthy outdoor survival challenge was more of an issue.

Where the warlock does feel significantly better, at least straight out of the gate, is combat. I feel like an attack roll cantrip vs purely save cantrips does make a big difference at low levels? Again, that could just be luck of the dice rolls, but I felt like the warlock’s hits just landed more. Once the cleric got up to third level and had things like spiritual weapon online, she sped up a lot more. The warlock, because I’m playing Fathomless, had functionally a spiritual weapon from day one (though it’s not going to level very well by comparison, I’m aware). They felt like they had more control over combat faster.

Although. Caveat. The warlock feels better in ranged combat, specifically. Once they get up into melee combat, the HP issue starts rearing up again, as well as the lower AC and lack of melee attack options. And, again, I realise that if I’d been comparing, say, a knowledge cleric vs a hexblade warlock, this comparison might also go the other way. My cleric having a rapier and a shield to work with helped her out a lot. Now that I’ve hit 3rd level on the warlock and picked up a melee cantrip via Pact of the Tome, we’ll see if that makes a difference.

The warlock’s higher off-the-bat damage output has helped them a lot, though. With the survivability thing too. In that my cleric almost always wound up having to be in melee, because most things survived long enough to close with her, while my warlock once, very memorably for me, survived by the skin of their fucking teeth a gauntlet of three combats in a row with nothing between them because they killed the third enemy in one hit with a hex-augmented agonising eldritch blast from 45ft away. It did 13 damage, which happened to be exactly as many hp as the enemy had. Which was fantastic, because my warlock had 3 hit points left and no means to get more.

In full melee, though, when I’m in tiny dungeon rooms, I have a dagger. Sometimes a hex-augmented dagger, but still just a dagger. It’s rough. I’m flipflopping on my 2nd level spell because of that too. I feel like going Misty Step, but since I’m fighting alone a lot of the time, or with only a single NPC, it might be worth picking up Darkness to pair with my Devil’s Sight? If I’m in a tiny room and forced into melee, dropping darkness might help balance things my way.

I also ran into an odd tactical thing I hadn’t considered with the Tentacle of the Deeps. You can deploy it, to start, anywhere within 60ft. But you can only move it, afterwards, 30ft per turn. Which did me a lot of good when it missed the first attack and the boss enemy promptly dashed to fucking melee with me 60ft away leaving my tentacle waving uselessly in the breeze for two rounds of trying not to die before it could catch up again. If it does hit it helps itself by dropping their move speed, but if it misses it can find itself left behind. I didn’t run into that issue with the cleric as much because, by luck of the draw, by the time she had spiritual weapon she was often in boss-with-minion fights with bosses who didn’t like to move so much, so she could leave the weapon on the boss while she was in melee with the minions. My warlock, who likes to be significantly more mobile to try and keep at range, and who was deploying the tentacle earlier against bosses designed to be much more mobile, ran into positioning issues the cleric didn’t.

I don’t know, I’m kind of having fun getting to actually play these things and explore the tactical and other differences in the way they play. I didn’t know solo adventures were a thing. The lack of a group around here and my lack of a space at home where I’d have the privacy for video to play online meant I didn’t have any actual experience with this game. It’s a lot of fun actually trying things out.

I’m so tempted to go back to a cleric next time though. A knowledge cleric this time. But. Let’s try things out before I fall immediately into a rut. Might try a rogue, get a non-spellcaster experience. Or a ranger. And I do want to try star druid at some point too.

I’m glad I found these things. I hope the fourth book comes out soon.

#d&d #5e #solo adventures #clerics vs warlocks #not really #more just musing on how differently they play #i'm having fun

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laurelnose · 4 years ago

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Very New to your blog and the posts are probably way old but I saw you do Witcher Biology (??) rants sometimes and Id love to hear your take, if you have one, on what monsters (namely "naturally occurring" ones like draconids and insectoids) contribute to the ecosystem if anything and whether or not they should be hunted into extinction. I was discussing it w/ a friend last night after dealing with Iocaste, the last silver basilisk, and now its smthn I'm Invested in

re monster ecosystems: I just figure theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans but because theyve got no natural predators aside from eachother and arent hunted by anything but witchers , monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ? Ive little knowledge on the subject as a whole but the whole thing intrigues me

hi & extremely belated welcome, anon! my apologies for the length of time you’ve been waiting for this answer; I had to think carefully about how I wanted to respond to this ask, because: there’s a lot going on here. also, because I am a disaster, I ended up posting it to ao3 first while I was avoiding tumblr for a spell and then completely forgot to come back. oops. i’m sorry!! This one’s about 5000 words long, which is a lot for tumblr, so reading on AO3 may be preferable.

The two main thrusts of your first ask (how do monsters interact with the ecosystem and should they be eradicated from the Continent) are questions of invasion ecology, the study of non-native/invasive species and their effects on the environment. Monsters, having arrived on the Continent about 1200 years ago during the Conjunction of Spheres from entirely alien dimensions, are indeed technically non-native species!

However, invasion ecology is…somewhat controversial, to say the least—there are a lot of invasive species, who have a lot of different & complex impacts, and a lot of different ideas about what we might do about any of this, and it’s basically all arguing all the time, so I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to approach the topic. Not to mention that for reasons I couldn’t initially put my finger on, it seemed wrong to apply theories of invasion ecology to the Witcher monsters. We’ll get into it! There are also a couple of common misconceptions/oversimplifications of how ecology works in your second ask which I want to unpack. Hopefully I pulled this together into something that makes sense, and feel free to ask me for clarification!

Some important background facts:

Species have always been moving to and “invading” new places on their own; humans and globalization have accelerated this process into a Big Problem, as the sheer number of invasive species being introduced all over the globe strains ecosystems already under pressure, but “native ranges” are always shifting, sometimes more dramatically than you might expect. If you go far enough back in time, all species are “non-native”.

Because of this, the very definition of “invasive species” is hotly contested. This is why you’ll hear dozens of terms like introduced species, injurious species, naturalized species, non-native species, etc.; these all have slightly different connotations, but all refer to a species that did not originate in a particular location.

An introduced species is usually classified as “invasive” as opposed to “non-native” or “naturalized” if its presence significantly alters the ecosystem it invades; some people define this more narrowly as a species that causes harm to an ecosystem. “Harm” can take a lot of different forms, as every non-native species interacts differently with the ecosystem they were introduced to.

Aside from various potential impacts to human economic activity, most forms of ecological harm by introduced species involve the decline of native species, by a variety of mechanisms; invaders might eat natives, outcompete them for food, interbreed with them, carry novel pathogens, etc. Invasive species are primarily a threat to biodiversity.

Now, here’s my Hot Take:

The Conjunction of Spheres is analogous to real-life ecological cataclysms such as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, and thus monsters are not invasive species.

The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event saw the extinction of 75% of all species on Earth after the Chicxulub asteroid hit, including the non-avian dinosaurs. The Earth has had several disasters like this, of varying severity—the Great Oxidation Event killed almost literally everything on Earth except for the cyanobacteria who caused it. These cataclysmic extinction events completely upended existing ecosystems, altering habitats beyond recognition and leaving swathes of niches emptied of life that the survivors could evolve to exploit.

The most recent Conjunction of Spheres on the Continent is supposed to have thrown everyone living on the planet at the time into chaos and darkness; it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the interpenetration of multiple spheres caused mass extinction of species living in the pre-Conjunction environment, similar to Chicxulub or the GOE!

But Socks, you might say, evolution works on a massive timescale! It took millions of years to fill the niches left open by Chicxulub, but it’s only been 1200 years since the Conjunction of Spheres! And you are absolutely right*, but the Conjunction of Spheres canonically came pre-loaded with new species. We actually have no proof that any of the animals we see originated on the Continent: if humans are a post-Conjunction phenomenon, why not also dogs? Why not bears? Who’s to say any of those were actually there before-hand? (The elves, I guess, but as they have not, actually, said so, there’s no proof!!)

* FTR, 1200 years is a shockingly short period of time to go from cataclysm that plunged the world into darkness and chaos to functioning medieval-era society considering how long it actually took humanity to build 13 century Europe (horses had been domesticated for at least 3000 years by that time), even if we’re not assuming that most of the ecosystem was destroyed, so, my timeline concerns here are minimal, lmfao. TIMELINE WHAT TIMELINE.

…and actually now that I think about it the three options for the origin of dogs are a) elves or dwarves domesticated them, b) humans brought dogs with them during the Conjunction, or c) dogs have existed for less than 1200 years, and I refuse to accept that dogs are practically a new invention in the witcherverse, wtf.

Anyways: we really have no idea which species are truly “native” to the Continent, or what the physical environment was like prior to the Conjunction. While monsters are not native to the Continent, monsters are also not invasive—there cannot be decline of pre-Conjunction biodiversity or harm to the pre-Conjunction ecosystem because there is no pre-Conjunction ecosystem anymore.

should monsters be hunted to extinction?

So, the thing is, I think we should try to eradicate invasive species from non-native ranges if we can; the biggest problem with that is feasibility, not morality. It’s much more difficult than one might think to eradicate an invasive species once it’s established, and we have to be very careful that the methods we choose don’t have other impacts, but invasive species are a huge threat to the biodiversity of Earth! If monsters are invasive species, then the answer is yes, they should be eradicated from the places they are not native to.

(Notably, on Earth this kind of eradication is not the same thing as extinction; it would be a local extinction, or extirpation, where the species is totally wiped out in the places it invaded but still exists in its native range. This does get way more complicated if the invasive is already extinct in its native range.)

However, I have just outlined a possibility that would make it plausible for monsters not to be invasive species. Let me also outline why I prefer this interpretation. Here is a book conversation between the sorcerer Dorregaray of Vole and Geralt:

“Our world is in equilibrium. The annihilation, the killing, of any creatures that inhabit this world upsets that equilibrium. And a lack of equilibrium brings closer extinction; extinction and the end of the world as we know it. … Every species has its own natural enemies, every one is the natural enemy of other species. That also includes humans. The extermination of the natural enemies of humans, which you dedicate yourself to, and which one can begin to observe, threatens the degeneration of the race.”

“Do you know what, sorcerer?” Geralt said, annoyed. “One day, take yourself to a mother whose child has been devoured by a basilisk, and tell her she ought to be glad, because thanks to that the human race has escaped degeneration. See what she says to you.”

–The Bounds of Reason, ch. 6

This is a, uh, incredibly unsubtle reference to a debate that has been ongoing for decades; Geralt’s stance here is one of the key arguments in opposition to wolf and bear reintroduction. What do we do about large predators that may pose a threat to humans? How do we balance preservation of the ecosystem with the safety of people who have to coexist with these predators?

I can’t fully agree with Geralt, because large predators are integral to the ecosystem, which I value for its own sake and because humans depend on healthy ecosystems. But I can’t fully agree with Dorregaray either, because Geralt is right: human life is valuable and worthy of protecting. This is an issue that India has been running into in the past ten years; as their tiger conservation efforts yield fruit, people become more likely to encounter tigers, and thus more likely to have a bad encounter with a tiger. It’s become a political struggle as rural people who have to actually live with the possibility of a tiger attack come into conflict with urban conservationists who just really want to preserve tigers (& in some incidents, some of those conservationists have been Western, which is a whole additional level of fuckery). The fact is, there isn’t a good answer to this yet! We certainly should not drive tigers, wolves, or any other large predator to extinction, but we also have to figure out a way to keep people safe. It’s something humanity still has to wrestle with.

Under this framing, which CDPR reinforced when they chose to have the Count di Salvaress defend Iocaste as an endangered species while making significant provisions to minimize the damage she could do to human life, there’s far too much baggage attached for me to say yes, monsters should be hunted into extinction. If you’re going to make monsters analogous to wolves, of course I do not think we should get rid of monsters entirely!

And frankly, Geralt doesn’t think so either, despite his hardline stance about monsters that eat humans. Sapkowski isn’t exactly an anti-conservationist; though Dorregaray is shown as out of touch in this passage, at another point the narrative sides with him calling Philippa out on exterminating a species of ermine for her fur collar, and it’s consistently put forth that Geralt’s best quality is that he doesn’t want to perform violence for the sake of it or destroy things without cause, and one of the representations of that is that he refuses to kill endangered species even at cost to himself:

“What should I say about you, who rejects a lucrative proposition every other day? You won’t kill hirikkas, because they’re an endangered species, or mecopterans, because they’re harmless, or night spirits, because they’re sweet, or dragons, because your code forbids it.”

–Eternal Flame, ch. 2

If monsters and other post-Conjunction creatures are invasive species, the nuance in this conversation is flattened, and Geralt’s refusal to kill mecopterans and hirikkas becomes a flaw rather than a virtue. Boring! I also think that one of the strongest themes in the witcherverse is the idea of all monsters being human ills; wraiths are manifestations of hatred, necrophages multiply because of human bloodshed, cursed ones are created out of malice, mages like Alzur and Idarran of Ulivo go out of their way to straight-up create monsters from scratch*, etc. Iocaste attacks humans and takes livestock because the traditional prey of the silver basilisk, roe deer, has been extirpated by human destruction of their habitat. The aeschna in Blood of Elves attacks humans because humans have altered and polluted the flow of the Pontar, hunting the aeschna’s previous food (seals) to extinction. The true monster is the actions of humans. Monsters that appeared unbidden from another dimension into a previously functional ecosystem to invade and cause problems undermines this theme; monsters that are integrated into the ecosystem and subject to the same social and ecological forces as other animals supports it.

* Idarran’s “idr” monsters from Season of Storms absolutely should be eradicated. Did the world not have enough man-eating arthropods, Idarran? Did you really have to mutate horrible new ones and release them in populated areas?? Mages are a scourge, lmfao

Additionally, one of the biggest reasons I felt like I couldn’t actually apply invasion ecology to monsters was that, whether you accept my Conjunction theory as sufficient biological justification for this or not, monsters just don’t really behave like invasive species. It’s hard to explain this because the setting is pretty brief about its ecological details, but aside from the fact that the narrative frames them like just part of the ecosystem of the world, there are never any details like “that type of flower doesn’t exist anymore because giant centipede tunneling destroyed the soil they needed to grow in.” When monsters are the aggressors, their victims are always humans, not the environment or other animals, and again monsters are themselves often treated as victims of human actions.

So I say monsters aren’t invasive species!

Which means that monsters are, regardless of their strange origins, now a part of the Continent’s ecosystem just as much as bears and wolves.

So let’s talk monster ecology.

what do monsters contribute to the ecosystem, if anything?

So, the phrase “contributing to the ecosystem” is actually super loaded, and I want to unpack that before we go anywhere else. Ecosystems are made up of organisms, and organisms interact with and impact ecosystems, but they don’t necessarily contribute to ecosystems! The implication of “contribute” is that it is possible for an organism to not contribute, and it follows from there that some organisms are not useful. This is functionally nonsensical, and also dangerous.

Conservationists talk a lot about “intrinsic value,” which in this context is the idea that we should want to keep species around just because their existence is valuable! Biodiversity is intrinsically valuable. This is important, firstly because I do believe that all species are intrinsically valuable, but also: ecosystems are so enormously complicated that we do not know the full extent of any species or individual organism’s impact, and we can’t predict what the consequences of removing any given species might be. Treating all species as intrinsically valuable is hedging our bets. All organisms affect the ecosystem, because it’s impossible for them not to, and while some species definitely have outsize impact, none of them are “not contributing,” and frankly even if some of them weren’t, it would be the absolute height of human arrogance for us to decide we could tell which ones were useless when we barely even know what most species eat. Mosquitoes are the base of the entire goddamn food chain, and you still get assholes claiming they don’t “contribute anything.” Of course, most people don’t really mean all of these implications when they use the phrase, but I don’t find it useful to talk about what species “contribute,” and avoid using that language if I can!

What I assume you mean by “what do monsters contribute” is a combination of “what roles might monsters play in the ecosystem” and “are monsters actively harmful to the ecosystem, i.e. do they cause loss of biodiversity?”

And this is difficult to answer! As I’ve said, I don’t think monsters are invasive species, and thus don’t harm the ecosystem, though we know that monsters can be harmful to humans. However, when it comes to the role they do play in the ecosystem, there isn’t enough in canon for me to do more than wildly speculate! Also, there are so so many of them, and the role of a hirikka is going to be wildly different from that of a draconid.

Just offhandedly, most of the big predatory monsters can be assumed to fill the same roles as Earth’s big predators, one of the big ones being overpopulation of prey species, which has ramifications throughout the ecosystem. Some of them are canonically ecosystem engineers, or animals that physically alter their environment (think beavers); for instance, shaelmaar and nekker tunneling. Additionally, the big insectoid colonies can’t be relying solely on naturally-occurring caves for their homes; they’ve gotta be constructing some stuff themselves. These tunnels can be repurposed as habitat for other organisms, from giant centipedes to sewant mushrooms. Necrophages, like corpse-eaters in our world, likely limit the spread of diseases from decomposing flesh (and really wouldn’t be as much of an issue if everyone would stop, you know, doing war and mass murder, lmfao). Arachasae use tree trunks and organic plant material to conceal themselves, which is likely contributing to plant reproduction in a few different ways—but the arachasae decorating essay is a different topic that I swear I will finish one day oh my god—

…anyways, feel free to ask about any specific monsters or niches if you’re curious, but if I tried to go into detail with every single potential niche/ecosystem service all of the monsters we know of might fill, we would be here all day!

Let’s talk about a couple specific things you brought up in your second ask.

> theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans

I mean…maybe! That is, yeah, they’ve definitely settled into niches by now, but feeding is way more complicated and interesting than that.

For instance: orcas can eat basically whatever the fuck they want—orcas are fully capable of bringing down everything from fish to seals to gray whales to great white sharks. But they don’t. In the Pacific Northwest, the resident orca pods almost exclusively eat salmon, while the transient pods largely feed on seals. Orcas are kind of an extreme example, but this is something called resource partitioning and it’s a big part of how animals limit competition with one another and what enables lots of predators to coexist in one place!

We see a big fuck-off dragon thing and we assume that it’ll eat anything it can fit in its mouth, and definitely some predators work like that. But just because an animal is technically capable of eating something and deriving nutrition from it doesn’t mean that it will. Silver basilisks made roe deer the staple of their diet before the destruction of beech forests meant they had to turn to humans—which is a pretty specific dietary restriction when there should be multiple species of deer running around, not to mention everything else a draconid could be killing! And given how many types of draconid there are…I have to assume there’s some kind of resource partitioning going on to prevent them all from conflicting with each other! For instance, if basilisks prefer roe deer, maybe forktails prefer wild goats, while wyverns are mostly kleptoparasitic (stealing other predators’ kills).

And of course, not all monsters eat humans at all; harpies steal from and attack humans, so they’re a dangerous nuisance, but they don’t seem to eat them. And in the books Geralt mentions plenty of monsters which are totally harmless.

So yes, there are lots of things monsters could be eating, but it would strongly depend, and there’s a lot of interesting places one can take monster diets! Netflix decided their strigas only eat specific organs, leaving the rest of the body untouche, & I love that for her. More monsters that need a particular kind of nutrition that leads them to take only specific body parts from some kills!

> because theyve got no natural predators aside from each other and arent hunted by anything but witchers, monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ?

Absolutely—invasive species whose populations rapidly increase once they’re away from their natural predators cause the decline of native species, often by eating natives directly or competing with natives for resources. And in fact, even native species who become overpopulated can seriously damage the ecosystem (see: white-tailed deer in the United States, whose overpopulation has such negative ecological effects that some people argue we should classify them as invasive, even though they have definitely been here this whole time).

However, even if we grant that monsters are invasive, it’s a little more complicated than that for a few reasons!

Despite the apparent preponderance of them in the witcher games, most monsters are supposed to be strongly on the decline, like witchers themselves. Geralt’s profession is falling out of necessity; human development of the Continent is going to be the biggest suppressing factor in monster populations in the future. Monster overpopulation is just canonically not a problem in this universe! But even in the scenario where the Inevitable March Of Civilization isn’t threatening monster populations, there are a lot of factors that could and would limit monster populations.

(TL;DR for this next part: yeah I definitely think they’ve figured out their own little circle of life—the term you’re looking for is ecosystem equilibrium, btw!—& I’m going to take the next 1.2k to talk about how.)

For starters, predation is only one among many limiting factors that affect populations & prevent them from ballooning out of control:

food availability: If there’s not enough food, there’s not enough food! It also matters how adaptable the animal’s diet is—silver basilisks moved from deer to humans, but if the eucalyptus went extinct koalas would not switch to eating cycads.

illness and parasites: Some people argue these are more important than direct predation for limiting populations, and I am often inclined to agree. Basically, if a population becomes very dense, illness and parasites spread more quickly, creating a natural limiter on how many animals can live in any one place. The greater susceptibility of some individuals to illness or parasites also winnows down populations. Non-native species often escape a good portion of their native diseases by moving to a new range—however, given how fast bacteria and viruses evolve, 1,200 years is a pretty decent amount of time for new diseases to arise. Also, just going to drop a link to my treatise on monster parasites here. It’s gross, mind the warning at the start of the post.

mate availability: If only a certain percentage of the population is actually able to reproduce, that’ll eventually bring the total number down. RIP Iocaste’s boyfriend 😔

territory/shelter availability: Animals need a certain amount of space and certain types of spaces to survive, and space isn’t infinite! It again depends on how adaptable an animal is; rats find ways to thrive nearly everywhere, but pandas can only live where there’s bamboo. If there’s not enough space to hide from predators, reproduce safely, store food, and avoid adverse weather, the population again limits itself naturally.

natural disasters: Wildfires, drought, flooding, tsunamis, storms, etc. pick off significant portions of wildlife populations. Disasters are sporadic rather than directly linked to population like most of the other factors but these periodic blows to population and the other impacts of fire or flooding are often integral to the ecosystem (see especially: fire regimes and fire ecology.)

Now let’s talk predation & monsters! (Genuinely, I think predation is one of the most interesting things in ecology; people tend to simplify it down to things eat other things, which—yeah, but there’s so much more going on there!)

First, I wouldn’t underestimate the effects of monsters eating other monsters! Even if it’s rare for a draconid to snatch up a nekker and carry it off, the threat of a draconid doing so can have dramatic impacts; researchers found that just playing the sound of dog barks on a beach stopped raccoons from foraging for crabs for over a month after the barking stopped, leading to an increase in crab populations, even though no raccoons ever encountered a dog. This is called the ecosystem of fear (which as a term is metal as hell) and it theorizes that just the fear of predators can lead to chronic stress for prey animals, decreasing reproduction and making them more susceptible to disease. Maybe draconids in Toussaint eat only a few dozen nekkers a year, but that might cause thousands of nekkers to have fewer offspring or fall to disease. When it comes to ecosystems the direct effect is usually only a small part of the story!

Second, when we talk about a species not having natural predators, we’re usually talking about an animal that would have a predator back in its home range—lionfish, for instance, have plenty of predators in their natural range (the Indo-Pacific), but no natural predators in their invasive range (the Caribbean), so invasive lionfish, suddenly freed of a limiting factor, can run amok. However, a great white shark has, aside from orcas (who do not actually eat white sharks, they’re just assholes sometimes) and occasionally other white sharks, more or less no natural predators anywhere once it reaches maturity, and that’s fine! Lack of predation of great white sharks did not cause their populations to explode and consume the ocean. White sharks are limited by other factors.

So: it is possible that wherever draconids originated (and it’s entirely possible that “draconids” came from multiple different places, tbh) there was something bigger that preyed on them, but it’s not unreasonable to assume they were also apex predators in their previous dimension (I mean…look at them), and that adult draconids were never really preyed on by anything else! It isn’t necessarily an issue for there not to be predators of certain monsters on the Continent.

(Though, of course, we also shouldn’t forget that most apex predators are prey when they’re young—baby white sharks are snack-sized for a lot of fishes, and bear cubs and wolf pups are similarly vulnerable. Based on the size of the eggs you see in TW3 draconid nests, a basilisk is hatched around the size of a little dog, which is the perfect size for small, ballsy predators such as wolverines to sneak into a nest and snap them up—predators such as more wolverines or raptors like eagles and hawks might also come directly for the eggs.)

When it comes to smaller monsters such as nekkers, who likely weren’t apex predators in their original dimensions and would thus be subject to that lack of natural predators—there are usually specific reasons why prey species manage to avoid predation in their introduced range. Lionfish confound Caribbean predators because lionfish are covered with huge poisonous spines that Caribbean predators don’t know how to deal with.

Drowners, on the other hand, are basically just man-shaped fish; they don’t have any adaptations or defenses that would really stump a bear or a wolf. Again, bigger monsters are still probably checking the populations of smaller monsters no matter what, but there’s really no reason a bear couldn’t figure out how to eat a drowner! Unless a monster has a unique defense (e.g. scurver spines), is actively distasteful to eat (rotfiends, probably), or is just difficult to take down (nekkers in packs), most of the non-monster predators* on the Continent will have incorporated various monsters into their diet by now, or suppressed monster populations indirectly with the threat of predation or by competing with them for food. It has been over a thousand years, which is nothing evolutionarily but is still a decent period of time for mammals, who pass hunting techniques down to their babies, to figure out how to eat ghouls—especially if we’re considering that the Continent’s mammals may also be a result of the Conjunction and would thus have to have been just as adaptable as the monsters to establish themselves. And I’ve also actually talked before about how wolves specifically might be preying on necrophages!

* For reference, the non-monster predators are, considering the Continent is more or less Europe, most likely lynxes, brown bears/polar bears (in Skellige), wolverines, foxes, badgers, and a variety of large birds of prey.

So—yes, if monsters were truly overpopulating, then that would damage the ecosystem. However, canon tells us they are definitely not doing that, and there are also many factors that would prevent that from happening!

(Though I will say that some of the reasons white-tailed deer are overpopulated are that we got rid of cougars and wolves and human development creates a lot of extra habitat of the type that deer like. Given that we know many of draconids are for sure in significant danger of going extinct, and the trajectory that Europe’s wolf and bear populations followed in real life, it is possible that the Continent will have to contend with an overpopulation of some of the smaller monsters at some point as they continue to try to eradicate the larger predators, both monster and non-monsters—you think the drowner problem is bad now, wait until the bears are gone and city development has tripled the number of sewers. Yet another of those humans-make-monster-problems-worse things I am fond of in the Witcherverse!)

…whew. that was a lot of words. In conclusion: ecology is really cool & there’s a bunch of ways monsters can fit into it!!

#kaer morhen biology of monsters 101 #and a bit of #witcher book blogging #asks #anonymous

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notajinn · 4 years ago

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Top 9 Games Played in 2020: Number 1: Bug Fables

Rising from the ashes of the once-great Paper Mario series comes a game I never expected.

A beautiful little game called Bug Fables.

Where It Excels

Bug Fables is thoroughly inspired by the first two Paper Mario games, and it shows. It uses a similar battle system, a Medal system similar to Badges, and even similar paper-like aesthetics. It would be easy to just say "wow, what a ripoff" and brush it aside.

But this is not a copy-paste of Paper Mario. This is clearly designed with love for those games, and for the people who enjoyed them. This is a game that says "yes Paper Mario was good, but how could it be improved?"

So let's talk about what it does differently (and arguably better) instead.

The story does not have the history of the Mario series to build on, so Bug Fables relies on having to be an interesting self-contained world. It does a good job providing lore as you move forward through the early story, and you can find optional Lore Books that give background into things like why some bugs evolved into intelligent beings, and the past conflicts between different groups. As someone who does not like most bugs in-person, they did a good job getting me invested. The tone is often lighthearted, but able to become serious when needed. The world feels more grounded than Mario, so there's a greater sense of danger during darker plot points.

I loved all three main characters (Kabbu the Beetle, Vi the Bee, and Leif the Moth) by the end, though some take longer to become interesting than others. Each of them feels well fleshed out, and get at least one important backstory sidequest.

And while it initially appears to follow the Paper Mario structure of "find the special items in episodic adventures, then go fight the final boss", it actually feels more like a traditional RPG because the story evolves over time.

In battle, you have three full party members. Each of them have their own HP and specials, and can equip individual Medals. You can change the formation of battle to decide who is in the front (more damage but more aggro) or back (less aggro but normal damage). Importantly you can also pass a turn to another party member, which depending on the enemies and formations may be your best option. For example if you have a bunch of flying enemies, you can just pass an extra turn to Vi so she can continue grounding them. There are certain enemy types that can only be reached by certain character's regular attacks, but you can often use a Special to overcome a lack of reach at the cost of SP. There are even combination attacks that take multiple characters' turns in order to deliver especially devastating specials.Each attack and special also have a unique action command that lets you make them better with good button inputs.

Medals are your equipment replacement, and can give you new active or passive abilities, or just raise your stats. However unlike Paper Mario, most the especially powerful Medals (like boosting your attack) are offset with a weakness (lowering your defense). This means you need more strategy than "I'll just equip this attack-boosting Medal." I'd argue there's less active ability Medals in Bug Fables than Paper Mario, but the greater strategy to the passive abilities makes up for it. There’s even strange setups like giving yourself poison but having +1 defense.

There are two EXTREMELY important Medals that Bug Fables copies from Paper Mario, but in a better way. One immediately defeats weak enemies on the field when you touch them. The other prevents enemies from getting a first strike on you. And Bug Fables gives you both of these extremely early with low MP cost. These make backtracking significantly less frustrating. The backtracking was one of the worse parts of the Paper Mario games, so I appreciate this. You also still get a fast movement option after a few chapters.

Quests are very well organized. You'll find a quest board in every town, and can take as many quests at once as you want. There's a quest log in your menu to keep track of them, and it updates as you go through steps of multi-step ones. And often a quest-important NPC will have an exclamation over their head to make them easier to spot. A lot of them have fun interactions and situations, so they’re definitely worth doing. Only one is a particularly long fetch quest with item trading, but it feels like a purposeful parody.

A lot of strengths in this game come from convenience. For example, you can fast travel between towns almost as soon as you unlock a new town. And you have two-item cooking unlocked from very early-game. These were things that felt unnecessarily gated in Paper Mario. Every party member can also scan the enemy to get stats and provide some information, whereas Paper Mario restricted it to one partner. As a bonus, this means you get three unique pieces of dialogue for every enemy depending on who you have initiate the scan.

Dungeons and their puzzles feel much more involved. There is less emphasis on platforming, and more on using your characters abilities like creating ice blocks. It's a step closer to a Zelda dungeon, which is appreciated. Save stones are well-paced enough to not make exploring feel to daunting either.

In terms of design and sound, it's strong for an indie title. They can't quite compare to a big publisher like Nintendo, but the world and characters look pretty good. And there's at least a few songs I still have stuck in my head.

The game also feels much harder than Paper Mario, which is good because I felt those games were too easy. It can be rough early on when you're learning, but fun once you get the hang of it. The game never gets to a point where you just steamroll everything either, so you'll have to continue paying attention for the whole game. I know some people like to overpower enemies, but I think that gets boring.

Where It Falls Short

While I don't like steamrolling enemies, I do like a sense of progression. And Bug Fables has that in many forms, like levels, and field abilities.

But at no point in the story do your standard attacks do more damage. Paper Mario would give you upgraded boots and hammers and you progress for more damage, but you'll keep hitting for your normal 2 damage here outside of Medals or an optional expensive upgrade. I know that in-universe it may have been weird to explain why Kabbu's horn is suddenly stronger, but they managed to give reasons for Vi not to fly despite being a bee for a long time.

There's also a dungeon puzzle near the end of the game that I found annoying. The solution to one section was actually to defeat a particular enemy. Given I was avoiding enemies at this point looking for a puzzle solution, this took longer than I'd like to admit.

You can also optionally get a fourth sort-of-party member, which I only learned about by accident when looking up Medal strategies. However it is not from an official sidequest that appears on the board, and I honestly missed any hints towards it. I was expecting them to show up in the late-game, but as I was getting ready for the final chapter I still didn't have them. Only when I specifically looked up what to do was I able to find them. I don't mind optional party members, but you need a little more guidance than what Bug Fables provided.

My final complaint may be strange, but...the game does not have a cliffhanger ending. It's a self-contained story that resolves everything important. Which means I don't think they can easily get another game out of this. But I'd love to see another similar game by this team.

Maybe if they do a time-skip and follow a different set of characters, it could potentially work.

Final Thoughts

Bug Fables is yet another indie title that proves you don't need to be a big studio to make an incredible game.

If you like classic Paper Mario, or just fun RPGs, I highly recommend giving it a shot.

#top games of 2020 #bug fables

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slusheeduck · 4 years ago

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Binding Resolution

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5]

Chapter 6

The dungeon is more of a storage room than a dungeon, but everything is significantly less rusted and dilapidated than when you were in there before. The suits of armor seem to silently discuss which of you goes where, unbothered by your or the Prince’s struggles. Eventually, they split up. You’re chucked into the cell, and as you skid onto the floor, you hear the heavy sound of chains and a lock.

“Release me! Take these off! You’re part of MY house, you stupid tin cans!”

The suits of armor don’t reply, and you hear metal footsteps go back up the stairs.

“No, NO! Come back!” The Prince’s voice becomes steadily more frantic. “Let me go! I’ll fix things! Vanessa! VANESSA!”

You pick yourself up finally, taking a moment to check between two kegs for the shortcut you’d found last time. But the wall’s still in one piece, and you figure it’s going to take a few hundred years of water damage before that passage will show up. For a moment, you simply lean against the wall. You’ve dealt with a lot up to this point—more than probably any of your friends from back home have—but seeing the entirety of Subcon frozen just…

You really miss home.

You look up as you hear the clanging of metal hitting the floor, and you run over to the cell wall. From the back corner, you can see the Prince; he’s flailing hard against the manacles that hold him, trying to push against the walls and twist his way out of them. But with the cuffs so high up on his arms and holding him off the ground, it looks like he’s more likely to dislocate his shoulders than anything else. His crown had hit the ground, apparently, and you watch silently as the contract from inside his coat follows. After a bit more struggling, he finally lets himself fall back, head hitting the wall as he lets out a sound somewhere between a sob and a frustrated yell.

“Stupid, stupid, STUPID!” The words echo against the stone walls. “I should never…what was the point? I try to help you—” He punctuates the word by twisting around to glare at you. “—and all it does is make Vanessa mad at me. And then I try to make it up to her, and she becomes…whatever she is now. I spend my whole life trying to do right by Subcon, only for it to…” He chokes before he can finish the sentence, then shakes his head. “I am through helping anyone! If I survive this, I’m not putting my neck out for a single person ever again!”

The room grows darker, and in the shadows, you swear you can see something edging toward the Prince’s feet. You know what’s about to happen, and you swallow hard.

Then, very softly, you say, “Sorry.”

The Prince looks up at you, surprised, and the room gets a little less dark. He sighs, going limp.

“No, no. You shouldn’t be sorry, kid. You never should’ve been caught up in this.” His head falls back, and he lets out a humorless chuckle. “I really should’ve gotten a jump on that renovation, huh?”

You lean your forehead against the bars for a moment, then walk over to the opposite corner of your cage and pull out your umbrella. The crown is too far to reach, but you just might be able to get the contract and keep a hold of it. You know it won’t change things, but considering how much the Prince wanted it, you feel like it’s at least something nice you can do before the end.

You try once, but the angle’s wrong. You try again, and you’re so close. Your arm’s just a little too short, but maybe if you push just a little harder.

“Leave it, kid.” You can’t see the Prince from this angle, but you can still feel just how sad he is by his voice alone. “It can’t do any good now.”

You move back to your original corner, looking at him curiously as you point at it, and he shakes his head.

“It’s a prenup. That’s…it’s a thing people can get before they get married, that spells out who owns what and how things get divvied up after a death or divorce.” He bites his lip. “I love…loved…Vanessa, but she was never going to care about my forest. She hardly even cared about her domain, and once we were married, it’d just be one more area that’d be ignored. So I thought, if I could get her to sign this, I’d be able to keep control over it.” He sighs, going limp in the manacles. “But it’s a moot point now. All because I bought some stupid flowers.” He makes a noise that’s a very sad excuse for a laugh. “I guess I should’ve paid attention when you were bothering me. Now we’re both screwed.” He goes silent for a moment, brow furrowing, then looks up at you. “You…you knew, didn’t you? About the flowers?”

There’s no point in lying now, so you silently nod.

“But…how? I mean, you just showed up here and…” He shakes his head. “Actually, no. No, I don’t want to know. I don’t know how long we’ll be down here, and I’ve read enough to know that that kind of information makes you go crazy. I don’t need that on top of everything else.”

You figure that’s fair, and you sit down with a sigh. For a moment, the two of you are quiet.

“Actually, no, it’s gonna bother me too much not to know. Tell me.”

You look up at him, then scratch your head. You’re not sure how much he knows about Time Pieces, and explaining the whole thing of how future him was going to trick you into contracts, steal your soul, and attempt to murder you before you contractually obligate him into a very one-sided friendship was…probably not going to go well.

But you still have the storybook, at least. So you dig into your backpack, and a pang goes through you as you see the second Time Piece still sitting there. You could just use it now. Go forward again, and if you clean up the Time Rifts, maybe he won’t remember this. Things will just progress as they did before, but without your crippling failure coloring the scene. Or maybe you could go back and try again…

But what if you fail again, and make things even worse?

“Kid? You okay?”

This is awful. You should have just gone back right away. Because it’s not enough that you failed, but in a way, you were part of this whole thing. You helped turn Vanessa into what she is. You were part of the reason Subcon Forest was frozen. And ultimately, you’re now part of the reason why the Prince becomes Snatcher.

You rub your eyes, then push the Time Piece aside to pull out the storybook. It won’t help. It might make things worse. But…if you’ve already caused all of this trouble, you might as well let the Prince know what he’s in for. So you take a breath, then scoot over as close as you can to him. You stick the storybook outside of the bars of your cage, then flip through the pages.

The Prince is silent as you go through the pages, and he stays silent as you close the book and put it back in your backpack.

“That’s how it ends?” he finally asks. “I just get left down here until…until I’m consumed by darkness or whatever?”

You nod sadly. The prince stares at you, then sighs and lets his head fall forward. You sigh as well, leaning against the cage. What a horrible ending this is.

But then you hear something strange. The Prince starts to laugh—really laugh, not anything like the pained chuckles from a few minutes ago. It grows louder and louder, echoing off the stone walls of the basement, and it starts to sound less like the laugh that accompanies a joke and more like a laugh that’s followed by “FOOOOOOOL!!”

You hop up to your feet, gripping the bars of your cage as the laughing continues, until finally the Prince lets his head fall forward, still chuckling and wearing a smile that is not the least bit reassuring.

“Well, then,” he says in a low voice that sounds all too familiar, “why put off the inevitable?”

The shadows that have been lurking by the Prince’s feet spring up, covering every inch of space in the dungeon. You scramble back, trying to avoid them, but you can’t keep your eyes off the Prince. He stays very still as the darkness wraps around him like a cocoon—climbing up and leaving every bit of him shrouded in shadow except for his dark eyes. They fix on you for one moment, then they close. When they open again, all that’s left are two bright yellow lights, followed by a big yellow grin that splits across his face.

Finally, you force yourself to shut your eyes and back up against the wall. You know this isn’t something you want to see, and you cover your eyes until you hear the manacles clang against the wall. Finally, you peek your eyes open as you hear another laugh.

And Snatcher grins back at you.

“Thanks for the inspiration, kiddo. Sounds like you saved me a lot of time,” he says, making his way in front of your cage. His mouth can’t quite stay put, but you notice the grin growing wider. “In fact, I think I owe you some kind of reward for that.”

It’s been a while since you’ve actually been scared of him, but you feel just as nervous as you did when you first ran across him in Subcon Forest. You run to the door of your cell and try to open it, but unsurprisingly, it’s locked. You move back to the center of the room, watching as Snatcher looks over at the contract still on the floor. It floats up and opens, and the words on the page shift and spin. When it stops, you’re looking at a very, very familiar looking contact.

“Here’s the deal, kid. I said I wanted you to stay, and now here’s your chance!”

You hesitate, then walk over to look at the contract though the bars.

Your eternal servitude and residence in Subcon Forest in exchange for getting out of here.

He hasn’t figured out the soul thing yet, but that’s the least of your worries. You look up at him and shake your head right as you hear a horrible scratching noise from upstairs. You turn to look at the basement door, and your heart races as you see the doorknob start to freeze.

“It’s your choice, but I’d take it if I were you,” Snatcher says with a dark chuckle. “I know Vanessa better than anyone, and she’s furious with you. And when she’s furious, we both know that bad things happen. So you really ought to sign.”

You back away, looking up as you hear the door creak open.

“Better hurry, kiddo!”

“My prince…”

There doesn’t seem to be a way out. Except that there is, and now you realize you probably should have taken it sooner. You dig into your backpack and pull out the Time Piece.

“Is that…you’ve had a Time Piece this whole time?” Snatcher’s smile drops, and he throws himself toward the cage bars, reaching through. “Give it to me!”

You shake your head. He hasn’t figured out he can go through objects yet, apparently.

“You don’t know what that can do, kid! Give it here, I can fix things!’ The desperation in Snatcher’s voice catches you off-guard, and you hesitate just one moment too long.

“What are you doing, my prince?”

The door opens, and Vanessa’s red eyes flash from the doorway just as Snatcher pushes himself through the bars and lunges at you. You’re out of time.

So you throw the Time Piece down, and you hope for the best.

“I’m not giving you anything else, kid. Get lost.”

You’re still shaking from a moment ago, but you’re in a warmly lit hollow tree, staring at a bookshelf. You don’t move a muscle, still catching your breath. It worked. It worked better than it should have, actually, and you’re not sure how you ended up here instead of the basement, but you’ve never cared less about anything in your entire life.

“Legally, I’m not able to kill you right now. But you really should know that I’ve mentally killed you at least eight times in this visit alone.”

Your head starts to spin, and you feel woozy. A time jump is still a time jump, after all, and that was a very big jump forward. You should probably lay down, so you do—face first onto the floor.

“Wait, did it work? And here I thought all those books on the power of positive thinking were a load of crock!”

You stay put on the floor, keeping your eyes shut. You got out safe, but just hearing Snatcher is enough to remind you of how much you messed up. All that work, and things are still the same.

You’re not a crier, as a general rule, but you can feel a big sob threatening to come out. But you swallow it down. Crying doesn’t help, and you still have a lot of clean up to do. And a long way to go before you get back home. You push yourself up, rub your eyes, and take a deep breath before heading out of the house.

“Hey, kid.”

You stop, swallowing hard, then turn back to look back. Snatcher’s gaze is still fixed on his book, but it doesn’t look like he’s reading. Finally, he looks up at you.

“Those Time Pieces you’re looking for, a lot of people are trying to get them from you for a chance to fix their lives, right?”

You nod.

“Thought so.” He closes his book. “Look, I’ve been around a lot longer that most of those dummies you’ve run into, and I know I’ve done a lot more reading.” He lets out a sigh that sounds somewhere between disappointed and irritated. “You can’t change the past with ‘em. No matter how hard you try, whatever happens is always going to happen.”

You wait for him to say something else, but he just opens his book again. You sigh, then turn and make your way out.

“So don’t beat yourself up over it, okay, kiddo?”

You stop in place as, for one moment, you hear the Prince. You turn back around, but Snatcher is still reading. After a minute, he looks up at you.

“Weren’t you leaving?” he asks snidely. “Unless you’re planning on dying like a nice kid would, I want you out of my forest.”

You smile a bit despite yourself, then nod and, for once, leave the forest when he asks. You’ll be back, obviously; there’s a lot of clean up to do to scrub your meddling out of this story. But, for a little bit, you figure it’s okay to keep a friend, even if he’s left in a past you can’t change.

(And then you do Death Wish mode and hate him again.)

Thanks so much for reading! This has been probably the fastest I've ever written a multi-chapter fic, and I'm glad you've joined me for it! Askbox is always open for headcanons and recs and such, but for now I CAN REST.

#a hat in time #ahit #ahit fanfic #hat kid #snatcher #queen vanessa #angst?#I guess a little bit #ANYWAY IT'S DONE #I FINISHED #I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO SLEEP OR DO ANYTHING BECAUSE OF THIS FIC SO I REALLY HOPE YOU GUYS ENJOYED IT #For real though It's been fun #I am very tired but very content

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scripttorture · 5 years ago

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Ok so I have a character that I want to be captured and held for several months for experimentation. She’s never awake for the experiments but when she is awake she’s chained to the ground by her wrists and blindfolded. She’s also an amputee from both of her mid-calves down on her legs and her prosthetic legs have been taken away so basically all she can do is sit down and lay down. If she was able to stand the chains would be just about long enough for her to stand up straight 1/?

I understand that her recovery would be a very long and difficult process, her shoulders would probably be ruined, her legs would be incredibly weak, and she would probably be bruised all over since she doesn’t have any cushioning under her. But my main problem is that I’m not sure what psychological effects she would experience. Every so often someone will come and speak to her but mostly just to agitate her. I plan on her being far more impulsive and easy to anger after she escaped 2/3But I don’t really know what else she would experience in changes of behaviour. Also wouldn’t the lack of light hitting her eyes for so long also mess up her vision?

I will give a more thorough answer because I don’t know how to be brief but there are several masterposts that I think could help you.

I have two posts on medical testing. This one covers the basics of how medicines are tested. This one covers unethical experimentation.

If you haven’t already I recommend reading the second one for the discussion of the differences between unethical experimentation and pseudo-scientific torture. From your description this scenario could be either.

I’d caution against showing torture as reasoned, controlled or directed by logic. Because it isn’t.

I talk about the long term effects of torture on survivors (and torturers) here. I have a post on the effects of solitary confinement here and I highly recommend Shalev’s sourcebook which is linked as one of the sources at the bottom.

I don’t know whether a total lack of light would have long term effects on her vision.

One of the possible physical effects of solitary confinement is worse vision. It’s suggested (though not to my knowledge proven) that this could be due to poor cell conditions and living in low light for prolonged periods.

However, low light is different to total darkness. I know of at least one historical case where a prisoner was kept in total darkness for months and reported no vision problems afterwards.

One case does not constitute proof and a lack of reporting does not necessarily mean a lack of symptoms. You might get a better answer from an optician. Once again, I’m not a medical doctor of any kind. And I’d rather be clear about what I don’t know.

Which I think brings us to the main part of the question: the physical effects the character is likely to suffer from and long term psychological effects of torture and solitary confinement.

Let’s start off with the physical.

You haven’t said whether the character’s hands are cuffed behind her or in front of her. I’d suggest in front because that would give her a greater range of movement, allowing her to feed herself and reducing the chance of uh- essentially sudden death.

Because the character’s movement is already significantly reduced by taking her prosthetics away. Having enough mobility to be able to shuffle and crawl would help prevent some of her muscle mass dying off. This in turn reduces the chance of kidney failure.

Being able to feed herself more easily reduces the chance of death by starvation, dehydration of malnutrition. She’s imprisoned long enough for this to a be a real concern and generally guards are unlikely to take the time to hand feed every prisoner three times a day.

Your instincts about the character’s long term injuries are generally pretty good, but depending on the type of cuffs used, the weight of the chains and how she’s handled by guards I think nerve damage at the wrists could be more likely then long term shoulder injuries.

Essentially there are major nerves close to the skin in the wrists that are vulnerable. Thin cuffs, cuffs that are capable of tightening (ratcheting cuffs) and heavy cuffs/chains are all going to put more pressure on the wrists. Which over those months is going to cause irreparable damage to the nerves resulting in less mobility in the hands.

Long term loss of fine motor control. Struggling with things like turning the pages of a book or doing up buttons.

Now if that’s not what you’re going for the easiest solution is to describe the cuffs as wide (perhaps as much as a third of the forearm), made of lighter softer material such as leather and closed in a manner that will not tighten further, such as a buckle.

None of this would necessarily cause shoulder damage. The pressure, the weight, is unlikely to be resting there for long periods of time and the character would have enough mobility to relieve that.

Chronic pain in the shoulders (and knees) is certainly possible. But it doesn’t necessarily mean there’d be mobility issues or easily identifiable damage.

If on the other hand you want the character to have long term damage the shoulders there’s an easy way to do that in this scenario. How are the guards transporting her? Dragging her, with a grip on the arm below the cuffs, would cause bruising and put a lot more pressure on her shoulders. Done repeatedly over time I think that could cause damage to the muscles and ligaments of the shoulder.

As a final not if you haven’t already I’d suggest looking up the ulcers amputees can get on and around their stumps.

I think that covers the physical effects, let’s move on to the long term psychological symptoms survivors experience. :)

We don’t have a way to predict who gets which particular symptoms. We know which symptoms are possible but we don’t really understand why some survivors experience some symptoms and not others. We just know that most people don’t experience every possible symptom and what is broadly possible.

So my general advice is to approach picking symptoms like an author. Think about what adds the most to your character and story.

Think about which options can have an interesting impact on the plot, create interesting problems for the character or show the audience something about the character.

What you’ve got so far is a good starting point. But it is a starting point, it’s one symptom when I think the character is much more likely to have something in the range of 4-6.

That’s a slightly higher range then I quote on the Common Effects of Torture masterpost because the character is also in solitary confinement, which would make the symptoms of torture worse.

What you’re describing sounds like the mood swings that are a common symptom in solitary survivors. Like I said, that is a good place to start.

Given the restraint torture being used, the lack of appropriate bedding and the fact she’s a double amputee I think chronic pain is also incredibly likely. It can also fit very well with severe mood swings in a narrative. It can provide ‘reasons’ for shifts that seem really sudden to other characters making the mood swings seem more understandable and relatable to readers.

Memory problems are incredibly common in survivors but are rarely portrayed well in fiction. Depending on the kind of story you want to tell memory problems could be a good fit.

Based on what you’ve said I don’t think memory loss would be a good fit with this story. I think it would be hard to detect and have very little impact on the character and plot.

Forgetfulness might be a good fit, but given the extent of the impact it can have on a survivor’s life it might effect what the character is capable of later in the story. And it might do it in ways you don’t want.

Intrusive memories and inaccurate memories could both fit very well with this story. Intrusive memories particularly could be linked to the character’s mood swings and (if you use it) chronic pain.

Again, this could be used to help the audience understand the character’s anger and her mood swings. It could really help put them in her shoes.

Hypervigilance, anxiety, social isolation and long term personality change would all fit quite well.

The solitary confinement masterpost has information that also applies to social isolation.

Long term personality change isn’t very easy to strictly define. It varies widely between individuals. From a writing perspective I think the main thing is trying to balance showing a radical change in the character with making that change understandable to the reader.

I think you could do that here, especially when you’re using anger and mood swings as your groundwork.

The NHS website has a pretty good introduction to anxiety disorders here. It also briefly discusses hypervigilance (which it terms hyperarousal) as one of the symptoms of PTSD.

Both can include physical symptoms like chest pain, heart palpitations and dizziness.

Wrapping this up, remember that my symptom suggestions are just that: suggestions. If you see something on the symptom list that seems like a better fit for your story or character then use that. You know the story better then I do, you know what fits.

I hope that helps. :)

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#writing advice #tw torture #tw ableism #tw medical abuse #unethical experimentation #writing torture #writing victims #writing recovery #symptoms of torture #solitary confinement #chronic pain #restraint torture #nerve damage #mental illness

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yogaposesfortwo · 5 years ago

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Digital Detox? Nah. How to Cultivate Digital Wellbeing

When Jess Davis and I were first scheduled to chat, I didn’t get an answer. I knew that she was planning to spend the day in the woods, and figured it was a reception issue. It’s an appropriate issue for Jess to have—as the founder of Folk Rebellion, a media and lifestyle brand advocating for offline living—a lack of cell reception kind of comes with the territory. When I spoke with her a few days later, she gushed about her experience in a Getaway cabin, a new-ish company founded to help city folks develop a personal relationship with the great outdoors. Jess had been running around for the previous couple of weeks, stressed and overworked, and had gotten sick. Jess’s friend and founder of Getaway insisted she come and stay in a cabin, completely off-grid. Unplugging for a few days was just what the doctor ordered—though it came as no surprise to Jess. A former award-winning brand strategist who thrived for 10 years in a fast-paced, tech-heavy world, Jess had a reckoning that while she’d helped to create a world that was digitally connected, the flip side was a sincere disconnection from the actual, tangible world. She founded Folk Rebellion to help others like her develop a sense of digital wellness and a healthy relationship with their devices. WTF is Digital Wellbeing? “Five years ago, digital detoxing was a way to start the conversation,” says Jess, but notes that an absolute approach may not be the healthiest way to go about digital wellness today. The digital revolution isn’t comparable to something like cigarettes, for example, when it comes to being healthy. “Technology is an amazing tool when used appropriately. For me, it’s digital wellbeing,” she says. “The same way you have wellbeing with nutrition and with exercise, I think that the next form of wellbeing is being digitally well. You can’t rush to yoga, have your juice, take your supplements, and be well if you don’t have a healthy relationship with your technology and your devices,” she says. Jess likens the evolution of digital wellness to the seatbelt revolution in the 1980s. Cars were, point blank, unsafe—and auto manufacturers were reluctant to spend the money to revamp their factories. Ralph Nader led the charge to change mindsets: It wasn’t cars that were dangerous, it was the cars without safety precautions. He successfully lobbied for seat belts, airbags, and stop signs. “I’m not saying that the tech is bad and we need to go without it completely,” says Jess, “but if we don’t start adding some stop signs, seat belts, and some age restrictions, there are going to be some negative things that happen.”

The Dangers of Digital Overdose Going through the windshield of a car is a significantly more dramatic deterrent, however, than the threat of a sore thumb. Consequences of digital overuse are much more nuanced, and complicated by the fact that digital dependency is, point blank, a revenue model. The more time we spend online—and the more information we share—the more money companies make. “When you think of addiction you think of drugs,” says Jess. “You think of all of these terrible things that you think, ‘Oh, no. Not me.’ When you find out that people are sitting alone and they can’t get off of their phones for like 13 hours a day or a video game, this is addiction.” Jess should know. Before she left her previous life, she absolutely considered her own dependency an addiction. “The experiences that I had and what’s now being documented is a general sense of dissociation from reality,” she says. “A malaise, a feeling of un-wellness 24/7. Inability to focus, memory loss—which was my number one ailment—which now they call digital dementia. It’s terrifying, but it’s literally called that,” she says. If we don’t start adding some stop signs, seat belts, and some age restrictions, there are going to be some negative things that happen. Overuse can result in myriad consequences. We’re physically rewiring our brains to consume and retain shorter and shorter content, which shortens our attention spans. This can in turn inhibit our ability to be creative and to follow-through with complex tasks. Additionally, there is no shortage of evidence that boredom—space previously unfilled by mindlessly scrolling—spurs innovation. But it’s more than that. “One of the things that they’re finding is the scariest thing to me is that children who studied with an iPad or used and iPad as a learning device from birth till they entered kindergarten versus children who did not,” says Jess. She understands that these can be great learning tools, but when comparing the socialization of these kids, children who used the device were 35 percent less empathetic than the ones who didn’t have it when they entered kindergarten. “What does society look like 35 percent less empathetic?” asks Jess. There’s also the issue of increasing narcissism, which leads to increased rates of depression and isolation. The long-lasting effects of heavy social media use have yet to be determined, but again, there’s no shortage of anecdotal evidence that the negative effects of overuse are damaging at the very least. And Jess suspects that there are potential negative effects on physical health as well—she thinks there could be a correlation between the cortisol released when our phones ding, and increasing stress levels that lead to autoimmune disease. “That’s my hunch, anyway,” she says. Corporate Responsibility Just as the doctor who created Frankenstein was ultimately horrified with his invention, Jess says that many of the bigwigs who helped to create Silicon Valley are aware of its dark side. One group, the Center for Humane Technology (the guy who invented the “Like” button and an original founder of Twitter among its founders) is one organization looking to pull back the reins on the creations they put into the world. What does society look like 35 percent less empathetic? “They’ll go to Google, they’ll go to Apple, and they’ll say: ‘This is how you need to start thinking about making things’,” says Jess. “On the other end of the spectrum is me, and organizations like Folk Rebellion. What we’re really trying to do is to educate the consumer.” Jess says the approach to curbing digital addiction should be three-pronged: Organizations funded by the government (ie: education in public schools), corporations, and personal choices. “I think it really starts on a small scale,” she says. “Homes, small businesses, neighborhoods, families, schools—things like that.” Advice for Kicking Your Addiction The first time Jess purposefully went without her phone for a three-day weekend, she says she was forced to face just how dependent she had become. “I’m an introvert at heart,” she says. “What happened was I kept touching my back pocket when I was being introduced to somebody, and I then had this gross realization that I’m cutting off conversations of people I have just met because I’m uncomfortable and I have this sort of get-out-of-jail-free card in my back pocket,” she says. The first step Jess recommends to digitally detox is to truly get rid of everything. Keep a pen and paper handy, and jot it down every time you think of your phone, touch your pocket, or feel uncomfortable without it. “Then you start to understand your triggers,” says Jess. “Once you have that, you go back to the real world and you have to start to set these boundaries in balance.” Jess only checks her email Monday through Friday, at specified times. She keeps her cell number private. She gave herself the rule that she no longer scrolls while in motion—that includes the subway, while walking, or in a car. “It’s just creating space,” says Jess. “If you can slice off and put these little hatch lines throughout your day of space that you can expand that doesn’t have the digital or the tech in it, that’s where you’re starting to create that better balance of it.” The other thing she’s done is to reintroduce tangible mediums where possible. “I use tech all day—I’m a creator on the computer,” she says, “and so when I don’t have to be working, I go back to the forms that I used to love before these devices kind of consumed everything. I have magazine subscriptions. I actually carry physical books.” Despite that they’re heavier, for Jess, it’s a relationship worth the weight. Bottom line? Technology isn’t the enemy—it can be a powerful tool to connect, which can enhance your relationships and make life easier. Allowing the digitized world to make life too easy, however, is the trap. As yogis know, balance is the key. Author: Lisette Cheresson Source: https://wanderlust.com/journal/digital-detox-uk/ Discover more info about Yoga Poses for Two People here: Yoga Poses for Two Read the full article

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keeroo92 · 6 years ago

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Savior, Bloodstain, Hellfire, Shadow Ch 6

May 28th, 12:36 am

V wakes up with a start, his awareness returning to him instantly. His eyes shoot open to see a faded blue wall and horribly patterned carpet. He doesn’t see you and panics; the last thing he remembers is being dropped by Griffon and sending the bird to get you.

How did I get here? Did Griffon reach Y/N?

He turns around and the tension leaves his body as he spots you lying on the floor on his other side. You look like you’ve been through hell, fingertips and forearms bloody, dirt caked across your body, tracks of tears lining your cheeks.

Did Y/N… climb the last ten feet?

The second he thinks it he knows it’s the truth. His stomach roils with guilt and shame, knowing you only had to do it because of him, because of his weakness. He had failed you, again. And you had probably saved his life by bringing him inside. He stands up carefully, leaning heavily on his cane, and looks around to see what he can do to help you. There’s a bathroom to his left, a set of double doors in front of him. He steps to the doors, opening one slowly just in case. He doesn’t hear any demons and opens the door further to look beyond it.

Massive shelves span the cavernous room, full to bursting with books of all shapes and sizes. There’s a desk before him on the right and some computers to the side, groupings of comfortable looking leather sitting chairs scattered around, and posters on the walls showing smiling children reading books encouraging them to "Read!".

I’m in a library.

Even as Vergil, he had loved libraries. He wanted to peruse the shelves, hands practically itching to feel the spines of the volumes of knowledge, but that would have to wait until you were taken care of. He returns to your side, checking on you briefly. You seem to just be sleeping, so he goes into the bathroom and wets some paper towels. He sits by your side and gently wipes away the dirt and blood as best he can.

Marginally better.

Next, he summons Griffon, the bird appearing in a burst of black shards and immediately yelling at him.

“V! What the fuck, man? One second, I was headed to grab Y/N, the next POOF! What the hell happened? Is Y/N okay?” he bird asks anxiously, clearly concerned about you.

“I think I lost consciousness. Y/N appears to have climbed the last ten feet and carried me here to safety. I don’t know where she found the strength, but she saved my life,” V replies seriously. “She’s over here, and I need your help. Can you lift her legs while I take her arms? I want to bring her inside the library.”

“Yeah, yeah I can do that. Jeez, she really went through the ringer for ya…” Griffon says, making V’s stomach churn again in shame as the demonic bird takes your ankles in his talons. V lifts your torso, hands gripping under your armpits and the pair of them move together to bring you to one of the sitting chairs V had spotted. They settle your sleeping form into the leather chair easily.

“Griffon, can you go look for her bag? I didn’t see it before,” V asks as he takes a seat beside you in an identical chair. It’s so comfortable he gasps slightly, only then realizing the exhaustion tugging at his limbs, begging him to rest. He roughly pushes it away, ignoring it.

“On it, pal!” the bird caws and flies back to the entryway. In the meantime, V uses more paper towels and washes another fraction of the dirt off you, respectfully avoiding any areas he deems inappropriate to touch without your express consent. His heart is choking him as he imagines what you had to do to get here. He starts to shake, hoping you’ll forgive him for failing you.

“…V?” he hears you mumble.

“I’m here, I’m fine,” he responds gently.

“Damn straight you are. You’re welcome, by the way,” you groan back, not bothering to open your eyes.

“I know, and I cannot thank you enough. You saved my life, and thoroughly risked your own to do it.”

“Heh, guess we’re even then. You saved my life the day we met,” you remind him with a rueful chuckle. It does little to assuage his guilt, but he smiles at you anyway.

“Rest, Y/N. It’s my turn to take care of you now,” he murmurs gently and you settle into the chair, easily falling back into slumber. He hears Griffon returning but his eyes don’t leave your face, still wrestling with his inner turmoil as you rest peacefully after your ordeal.

What if she had fallen? She could have died, took the risk of dying, for me. Why? Why would a person do that?

“Here’s the bag, Shakespeare,” his summoned friend says, interrupting his musings as he drops your bag at V’s feet. He lands on another chair nearby, his demonic gaze watching you rest.

V reaches down to pick up your bag, grunting slightly as his still-sore body complains loudly. Pulling it into his lap, he starts digging through it. Unfamiliar with the items within, it takes him a long time to find what he thinks are bandages. He also pulls out a bottle of water and a few granola bars, setting them on the table next to you for when you next wake up.

He struggles to unwrap the roll of sticky fiber, mind remembering the way you crafted his cane’s sheath with a small smile. Your hands had been so sure, so practiced. He fills his thoughts with memories of you, all the moments of cunning and strength you’ve shared with him in your travels so far.

The look on your face after you’d killed your first demon with nothing but a frying pan. The way you had chosen to stay, even after his warning that you might not survive. How you had trusted him to guide you past the Empusa Queen, steps never faltering as he had signaled you to run. How you had pushed him up that ladder with tickles.

“He sits down with holy fears, and waters the ground with tears: Then humility takes its root, underneath his foot…” he recites thoughtfully.

Y/N is so much stronger than I will ever have the chance to become. If only I had more time.

He reaches for your arm, about to wrap the sticky bandage over your scraped forearms when Griffon speaks up.

“Uh, V, won’t that stuff hurt?” the bird inquires, stopping his hands as he thinks about it.

“Ah… yes, I suppose it would,” he replies softly.

He sets the bandage down carefully and looks through your bag once more, digging through the tubes of ointment and bottles of fluids to reach a stack of individually wrapped parcels. He reads the label.

“Gauze patch…”

He glances at Griffon and they both shrug. He tears the wrapping off, finding a soft patch of cloth within.

Much better.

He lays the patch on your scrapes gently, hoping he isn’t making it worse through his clumsy attempts at first aid. He takes up the sticky bandage again and slowly wraps it over the patch, cursing each time it sticks to itself or the patch shifts away from your wound as he pulls the fibers tight. After several minutes, he manages to create a lopsided wrapping, the gauze hopefully still covering the actual wound beneath it. He holds the roll in his hands and tries to tear it by hand to no avail; the fibers are too strong.

“Griffon, if you would…” he says in a resigned tone, and the brazen bird hops over like a crow. He leans close to your poorly wrapped arm and snaps his sharp beak through the bandages.

“You suck at this, V,” he says rudely and V nods, already brutally aware of his shortcomings.

They repeat the entire process on your other scraped forearm, and the second wrapping is slightly less haphazard. Griffon cuts the bandage and V puts the roll to the side.

“I don’t know what else I can do,” he mumbles sadly.

“Then rest, dumbshit,” Griffon tells him, half with caring and half with frustration. V nods, releasing his hold on the beautiful bird, and Griffon dissolves into a cloud of glittering black shards. They rush at him and sink into his skin, marking him with Griffon’s presence. He leans back in the chair beside you with a sigh.

My failures keep growing. What if I cannot reach Urizen? What if I fail in what matters most?

He falls asleep with that thought into a troubled sleep.

________________

May 28th, 4:27 pm

You awaken slowly, blinking open your crusty eyes with a low moan. You turn your head at the sound of cloth on leather and see V already leaning toward you, a wall made almost entirely of glass behind him letting the sunlight through. A stack of books lies next to him, one in his hands even as his emerald eyes find yours. He smiles at you gently.

“Good afternoon, Y/N. How do you feel?” he asks you kindly.

You take a moment before answering. Assess the damage. Your exhaustion has faded significantly, down to a low current of mild sleepiness. Your limbs are sore all over, muscles not used to climbing screaming at the abuse they endured the night before. Your stomach growls loudly, announcing its emptiness.

You flush slightly as you speak, “Sore and hungry, but better. How about you? You rested at least a little, right?”

You glance meaningfully at the stack of books on the table by his elbow and he has the grace to look embarrassed at your questioning tone. He clears his throat, holding out a granola bar to you. You take it.

“Yes, I rested for a bit. I thought some reading would help rejuvenate my spirit,” he replies.

You raise an eyebrow and unwrap your snack, the first bite of crunchy goodness making your mouth flood. When’s the last time I ate? You can’t remember. You devour the bar in another few bites and accept the water bottle V holds out to you, gulping it down quickly. As you lower the bottle you finally notice the bandages on your forearms, a mediocre but passable effort. You glance at V and he blushes.

“I… dressed your wounds as best I could. I apologize for my clumsy efforts,” he mumbles, looking away from your eyes. You smile, letting out a low chuckle.

“V, why on Earth are you apologizing for taking care of me? Thank you,” you reach out and touch his shoulder as you speak, wanting to feel his skin. His eyes shoot to yours at your touch, holding your gaze as you speak. A smile twitches the corners of his mouth upwards, and he puts his hand atop yours on his shoulder.

“You’re most welcome,” he says softly, emerald gaze seeming to bore into your very soul. The air between you almost crackles with energy.

You look away first, suddenly acutely aware of the dirt and grime covering your body. It looks like V washed some of it off, but he politely didn’t go anywhere near your hips or thighs. You stand, withdrawing your hand from beneath his.

“I’m going to go clean up a bit,” you tell him and walk toward what you think leads to the entryway, easily finding the restrooms near the front door. You duck into the restroom and stare at yourself in the mirror.

Your hair is greasier than you’ve ever seen it, hanging limply around your face. Your shirt, with the bottom inch of its hem missing, is stained brown and red from the dirt and blood covering it. Your bandaged arms aren’t much cleaner. Looking down at your legs, you see more of the same; blood and dirt so thick your skin feels stiff. Your shoes match the rest of you, their previously white fabric now ruined.

The faucet spews water out when you test it and the soap dispensers are full enough. You strip everything off, locking the door almost as an afterthought. You plug the sink and wait for it to fill, adding plenty of soap. You fill a second sink with just water and get started, plunging your filthy clothes into the soapy water and scrubbing at them with what remains of your fingernails until the water turns nearly black. You move your clothes to the other sink, rinsing them as best you can as the first sink drains. You repeat the process a few times, refilling the sinks each time until you’re satisfied.

You wring out your clothing and bring it to the hand dryer mounted on the wall, taking each piece and holding it under the warm jet of air until its dry. It takes quite a long time, especially on your pants and shoes, but eventually you finish.

Now, for my body.

You fill the sink once again and remove V’s bandages to get the skin underneath scrubbed as well. You take what an old friend would call a “hoe bath”, splashing water against your torso with your hands and scrubbing as best you can. Your arms and legs are easier, able to be brought directly under the running water to scrub and rinse. You pay special attention to your armpits; you sweat through your deodorant ages ago. You use paper towels to dry off and dress, unlocking the door and returning to V feeling like a new person.

He’s still sitting where you left him, reading a think volume that seems to hold yet more poetry. He looks up as you approach, and his eyes widen slightly.

“How on Earth did you manage to get that clean?” he inquires, brow furrowed.

“The bathroom’s got soap, I splashed myself for a while and washed my clothes in the sink.” You tell him, and you glance at his own clothing. The black hides the grime better than your own clothing did but you can tell he’s almost as filthy as you were.

You blush as you continue, “Do you want me to wash your clothes too?”

He turns scarlet, taking a quick glance at the sorry state of his attire.

“I suppose that would be prudent…” he says slowly and you almost laugh at him.

“Alright, come on,” you say, beckoning him to follow you. “But you’re going to help me wash my hair as payment.”

“That seems fair,” he answers you, carefully marking the page he was on and setting the book at the top of the stack. He stands and follows you to the bathrooms.

“Go in there and take off anything you want me to wash. I’ll wait out here and you can hand me your stuff through the door,” you explain, cursing your cheeks for betraying you with a fierce blush.

He blushes too, and you feel a little better knowing he shares your embarrassment as he enters the men’s room. You wait by the door, trying not to imagine him undressing himself and failing spectacularly. You’re trying to imagine what kind of underwear he wears when the door cracks open just enough for a tattooed arm to reach out, holding a stack of fabric. You jump slightly as your inappropriate thoughts are interrupted by the very subject of them.

“Thanks,” you choke out as you take his clothing. His arm retreats without a sound and you stand there for a moment, your brain having to restart itself. You mentally shake yourself and head back into the ladies’ restroom, setting V’s clothes on the counter and filling the sinks yet again. He’s given you his pants and his leather vest, and you immediately picture him waiting in the men's room in nothing but his underwear and sandals and the image both makes you giggle and excites you. You wash the pants easily enough, but the leather makes you pause.

Doesn’t leather need to be cleaned a certain way? Somehow I doubt commercial hand soap is good for it…

You decide to play it safe and use a wet paper towel to wipe it as clean as you can, not using a drop of soap. A few dry paper towels later and it’s barely damp. You set the vest aside to dry his pants on the vent. Finished, you drain the sinks and bring his clothes to the door of the men’s room and knock, waiting patiently for him to answer the door.

“That was fast,” he says as his arm reaches out blindly. You hook his clothes on his fingers and he withdraws. It takes him a fair amount of time to dress and come out, but when he does he looks almost as clean as the day you met.

How the hell does his hair stay so damn clean?

Baffled, you set the thought aside for now.

“Shall we wash your hair?” he asks mildly, and you smile, leading him into the ladies’ restroom. He blushes as he enters, as if entering the forbidden area with you embarrasses him.

You stand in front of the sink and bring the water to a comfortable temperature, then lean over carefully until your head is under the flow. V steps forward and starts gently rinsing your hair under the stream, his hands careful. He takes his time and your back starts to ache at leaning like this for so long as he gets a handful of soap, softly massaging it into your scalp. The feeling of his hands rubbing your scalp makes you forget the pain in your back, your mind focusing on the simple pleasure of his touch. He rubs tiny circles on the sides of your head and you let out a low moan of pleasure at the feeling.

His hands falter and you blush heavily, praising your lucky stars that your face is hidden. His fingers start moving again, making smooth strokes and you forget your embarrassment as he begins to rinse the soap away. You see the dirty water swirling at the bottom of the sink and watch it disappear down the drain happily. The suds get fewer and fewer until V pulls away.

“All finished. I’ll get some towels,” he informs you and takes a few steps away. He brings a stack of paper towels over and presses them into your dripping hair, absorbing the worst of the water. You stand up slowly, holding the towels in place, and walk over to the hand dryer. You partially dry your hair, running your fingers through it as you go. Once the dripping stops, you stand up straight again and look at V.

“Thanks for your help,” you warily say, remembering the moan and blushing again.

“It was my pleasure,” he replies with a roguish grin, eyes sparkling in amusement.

You turn your tomato colored face away from him, walking back to where you had last seen your bag. V follows you, taking a seat next to you and resuming his reading. You try to put his presence in the back of your mind, but its difficult. Your eyes are almost drawn to him; he looks so handsome with his nose in a book, brows furrowed and lips parted in concentration, elegant fingers occasionally turning the pages.

Your mind reflects on your interactions and impressions of the man. There’s no denying how physically attracted to him you are, and your deeper connection with the poet has been growing over the last few days considerably. His focus, his determination… the way he almost dances through battles as if there’s no danger of death… you know you never would have been able to get him here without his example. You never would have been able to make that climb for anyone else. The fact that it was him that needed you made all the difference.

This goes so far beyond the physical now… I think I’m starting to fall for him.

The realization makes your stomach flip, as if merely thinking the words would somehow alert him to the nature of your musings. You glance at him to find he hasn’t moved, still quietly reading the tome in his hands, and your anxiety settles.

It takes you twenty minutes to rewrap your arms, though normally it would only take ten.

You put the bandage roll away and stand. There’s still a little daylight left and you don’t want to waste it.

“Are you ready to go, V?” you ask him.

He almost mournfully closes the book without marking his place, setting it aside to stand. He stretches his long arms and his expression shifts to the focused, determined look he wears most of the time.

“I am,” he replies simply.

The two of you walk out the doors together, both sad to leave the library behind. It had been a nice respite from the chaos, and it felt incredible to be wearing clean clothes again. But as much as you wanted to linger, Urizen was still out there. You take one last look at the shelves of books and turn away, focusing your mind on the task at hand.

Once outside, V flicks his arm to the side and summons Griffon, his tattoos changing from near-black to become almost invisible.

“What’s on the agenda today, folks? More demon murder? More fighting for our lives?” the feathered fiend asks as he appears. He flies a few circles around you and V, stretching his wings happily.

“We need you to scout ahead and check for any demons that are beyond our skills to defeat,” V responds, indicating the direction you intend to travel. Griffon sighs, flaps twice and yells back at the pair of you as he departs.

“If I die it’s all your fault!”

You and V both shake your heads and start walking, following Griffon’s path from ground level. You cross the street and enter a small parking lot, a few lonesome cars still waiting for their drivers to return and claim them. You don’t waste energy talking, focused on traversing as much of the area as you can before what little daylight is left runs out. V seems to be thinking in the same vein, as he doesn’t speak either.

You travel in companionable silence for a short time, crossing the parking lot and walking past a fast food joint before Griffon returns.

“Faithful scout-bird on duty, ready to report!” he calls to you as he lands on V’s outstretched arm. You and V wait for him to continue and he does so almost without skipping a beat.

“It doesn’t look too bad, a couple groups of Caina and Empusa skulking around but no Queens or anything that I can see. Should be a pretty easy run,” he says and starts preening his feathers.

You sigh in relief; you knew another day like yesterday would have been too much to handle.

“Excellent,” V says as he steps forward, casually gesturing at Griffon and the beautiful bird vanishes in a cloud of black shards. You follow soon after him.

The next block is deserted, not a single demon bothers you as you pass a massive furniture store. It isn’t until you enter an industrial area that you spot them ahead, a group of four Empusa slurping at a puddle of what might be human remains. Your stomach churns at the thought, remembering that not everyone had been as lucky as you were and survived.

This shouldn’t take long.

For a moment you grin at the change within you – the first Empusa you had ever seen had made you quake in fear, and now here you are, about to face four with total calm.

V's arm flicks out and Griffon dives forward in a whirlwind of dark flecks, slashing one Empusa with his talons, and the time for thinking is over. V flicks his arm to the side, bringing Shadow into existence beside him in a cloud of black shards. She roars defiance and leaps forward, slashing her claws against the same demon Griffon attacked. You turn your attention to the next foe, knowing V will clean up after his summoned friends.

You set your sights on the bug-like demon in front and to your right, pulling out the revolver and firing quickly. The single shot misses entirely, and you switch to your hammer and dagger, stashing the gun away in frustration. You dash at the Empusa, slashing furiously with your dagger and bringing your hammer in for a heavy blow to the head and the Empusa dies seconds later. You look around but V has already taken care of the other three, ending the battle before it even seemed to begin.

It isn’t until the streetlights flicker on that you realize how late it’s gotten.

“V, we should look for a place to stop for the night. Keep your eyes peeled,” you say, looking around yourself.

“Let’s continue a bit longer, we’ve almost reached a residential area.” He responds softly, and you nod. An actual bed would be heavenly. You press on, keeping your eyes open for the next threat. It doesn’t take long.

The familiar red webbing appears again as you turn a corner into a gas station. Instead of the usual Caina’s and Empusa’s, however, you’re faced with a trio of lizard like demons. They jump from one foot to the other, hopping forward in an odd loping pattern.

“Y/N, stay back!” V shouts, then snaps his fingers in a high arc and the black of his hair fades away into a stark white. You watch in amazement as a meteor descends onto the demons, striking all three as it hits ground. The meteor’s impact area bubbles, and the ground rises to form a vaguely humanoid shape. It’s huge, and you wonder how you and V can hope to overcome this new foe until he jumps onto its back, sinking his cane into its shoulder and seeming to steer it back into the enemies.

The massive creature swings its club-like fists at the lizards, hitting them repeatedly, and follows up with a well-placed laser. The path of the laser explodes a short time later, and all three enemies vanish into a cloud of black dust as V jumps off the huge creature. It puddles down soon after as the red webbing dissipates.

You stare at V, open mouthed, as his hair fades to black again. Oh, that must be where that… thing comes from. His… hair.

He chuckles lightly, leaning heavily on his cane as he strides over to you.

“What… what was that?” you finally choke out. Griffon flaps over to you, landing on a nearby mailbox as he answers.

“That, girlie, was Nightmare. Pretty cool, eh?” the bird cackles at the look on your face before V points his cane at him, and he vanishes into V’s tattoos with Shadow following soon after.

V nonchalantly points to a nearby building, a hotel if you had to guess. There’s no sign still standing.

“Let’s take a look, perhaps there’s somewhere we can rest in there.” He murmurs quietly. You look closer at him, concerned. He looks exhausted. Summoning Nightmare must be tiring… I hope he doesn’t have to do that too much tomorrow.

You nod, and the two of you proceed into the building. The front door opens easily, and inside you see the markings of a hotel as you’d guessed, the front desk and sitting area of the lobby a dead giveaway. You’re tempted to rest there until you see how much the ceiling has cracked, and you decide a more stable area might be wise. There must be a massive root under the building, as there’s several sections of the ground floor that have shifted by several feet, causing rubble to block the majority of the inner doors. Finally, you find a door that’s been left open, and inside find a tiny room decorated with the boring standard hotel aesthetic of trying not to offend any guests. The comforter on the single bed is drenched in blood, and you try not to think about the fate of the room’s previous occupant as you drag the sodden thing to the hallway, leaving only a top sheet on the bed. There’s no couch anywhere to be seen, and rubble is strewn across the floor. V begins clearing some room off, presumably thinking to sleep on the floor. No, he needs to rest for real, you think before you take his hand, pulling him toward the bed.

"V, you need to rest as badly as I do. Come up here and share the bed with me," you say, blushing furiously. His eyes sparkle with humor as he nods, following you.

"Much appreciated, Y/N," he says, his voice like velvet again. Did he know he was doing that? You flush slightly, and his lips twist into a familiar smirk. Oh. He knows. Dammit.

You slide between the blankets, body celebrating the simple joy of sleeping on an actual bed as V lies down beside you, carefully facing away from you politely. You rest your head on one of the pillows, eyes fluttering shut as V settles in.

"Well... goodnight, V. Sweet dreams," you mumble. You drift off quickly, exhausted from the last two days.

#dmc5 v #dmc5 #dmc #v x reader #v x you #fanfic #op #fluff #SBHS

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cheeseeatingtrashmonster · 6 years ago

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Who Said That Every Wish Chapter 16: The Many Forms of Magic

More is revealed about Paon. Plagg explains the change with his miraculous.

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Nathalie tried again. Thankfully, Duusu was more than willing to keep transforming her.

Nothing. Darkness. Silence. No smell or taste or touch. Nathalie went the full five minutes in this sensory deprivation, trying to feel anything. The jolt of sensations returning when her transformation dropped was just as overwhelming the nineteenth time as it had been the previous eighteen.

"Take a minute," Duusu said, her little kwami paw on Nathalie's hand where it covered her eyes. The lights were off, the blackout curtains were drawn, the apartment was quiet because Felix was at the hospital (not that he made much... any noise). Still, even the feeling of the carpet fibers beneath her feet was too much after the total lack of everything from using the Peacock's powers.

"Anything?" Duusu asked.

"Nothing," Nathalie said. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees and head in her hands. "An eternal five minutes of nothing again. You're sure that doesn't mean that she's dead?"

"If she was dead, you wouldn't be able to connect. If she was unconscious, you would still be able to hear and maybe feel. If she was asleep, you'd see her dreams and feel wherever she was laying down."

"I should try someone else again, to see if the power itself is still working."

"We tried that," Duusu said, gently tugging Nathalie's hand from her face. "You said you never wanted to know that much about the mayor."

"This power really isn't meant to be used outside of a battle or search and rescue setting," Nathalie said, holding out a few raspberries to Duusu, who landed in her hand to eat.

"Some mysteries cannot be solved," Duusu said.

"I had to try though," Nathalie said. "And, as long as you're with me, I'll have to keep trying from time to time."

"You may want to ask the Guardian about what you're seeing. It's my power, but it's their magic."

"Maybe," Nathalie said, reaching for her tablet. She winced when the screen lit up too bright, but kept it up long enough to compose an email to Fu.

"You should also tell the boys that you've been trying," Duusu said, settling in the nest she had made herself on top of Nathalie's dresser. "They would want to know."

"I don’t want to give them false hope."

"Gabriel should know, too."

"I'm not so sure about that," she said. "He had the miraculous. I'm sure he must have tried himself."

"Sweetie, I'm the Peacock kwami. I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that he never once used my powers. Never even tried me on."

"What do you remember after you and I said goodbye? Obviously, Emilie never returned you. Did she ever activate your miraculous?" Nathalie asked.

"Not much happened. Emilie brought me back out shortly after she got home that night. We talked for a little while. Then, a few years later, she checked on you once. That's it."

"Do you know when that was?" Nathalie asked, trying not to show how hopeful this information made her. If Emilie had used the brooch right before she went missing...

"It was while you were overseas," Duusu said with a pitying look. Nathalie had forgotten how well her kwami read her. "You were making coffee, humming to yourself. You can't sing, Sweetie. Paired with a bird and can't carry a tune. There was someone else there, but I didn't recognize them."

"I was here when she went missing," Nathalie said, more to herself than to Duusu. "Thank you. It's nice to know she thought of me while I was gone."

"I think she kept me because I was a way to check up on you," Duusu said. "She gave Fu the Turtle back before then, from what Wayzz told me."

Nathalie allowed herself a small smile. "Thank you," she said again.

"Get some sleep, Sweetie," Duusu said. "And you probably should consider telling the boys."

/*****/

Because Adrien still wore his ring, Plagg didn't disappear when Felix’s ring came off. Plagg had Nino hand him the miraculous so he could study it uninterrupted in a cupboard where none of the doctors, nurses, or techs would see him.

"Oh my gosh, Nino, you'll never believe what Nathalie just- woah, what's going on?"

Felix, who was half asleep and whose head was on Nino's chest, simply lifted his right hand in the air. Nino, who was fully asleep, must have felt Felix move because his unbroken arm wrapped tighter around him. Both looked emotionally wrung out. There was also the fact that Felix was there at all, much less cuddled up to Nino, seeing as the day before he had refused to show up at the hospital for a Miraculous Team Meeting.

"Hi to you too?" Adrien said, responding to what he thought was a weird half wave.

Felix waved his hand around in a way that seemed more significant and specific than a greeting but definitely not clear enough to actually convey his meaning.

"When did you two make up?"

"Around one or two?" Felix managed to turn a little towards Adrien without waking Nino.

"In the morning?" Adrien asked as he pulled the chair around to see Felix better.

“The ring is off," Felix said. He held his hand up again.

Adrien grabbed his hand, checking the finger for signs of damage. There was scarring and healing scratches that ended abruptly in a patch of clear skin where the ring had been.

"When? Why? How? Where is Plagg? Can he still transform me? Should I wear both rings? Are you quitting for real now? Or do you want to reverse the thing that made my ring and be the only Chat Noir again? What does-"

"Adrien," Felix said. "I don't know. Plagg's around here somewhere. But all the hero stuff? I don't know."

"What does Nino the Guardian in training say about it?"

"Nothing, so far," Felix said. "I think he was too freaked out by how hard I was crying."

"I swear, so far your relationship has been mostly you crying," Adrien said.

"He tells you too much," Felix said, scowling.

"Speaking of being told too much," Adrien said, scowling himself. "I take it Nathalie gave you a similar lecture to the one I just got?"

"Did you know she likes fighting sea monsters?" Felix asked. He didn't want to think about what Nathalie had said at all.

"No, I didn't know that. I hate sea monsters. Mostly the 'sea' part."

"I feel the same. We'll let the Turtle and the Bird handle it next time."

"You two are such cats," Nino said. His voice was gravelly from sleep and he was squinting without his glasses. Felix detangled himself to stand by the bed and stretch.

"We're aware," Felix said. "But we were that way before the miraculous, I think. Will you be offended if I do some stretches while we talk? I haven't gotten to the ballet studio in a while."

"Offended? No," Nino said, the fake innocent look on his face giving away where he was going with this. "Significantly distracted from the conversation? Absolutely."

"I can leave," Adrien offered.

"Never mind," Felix said. He picked up his book and sat at the foot of the bed, pretending that Adrien and Nino couldn't see how red he was turning.

"So!” Adrien said. “Why did the ring come off now of all times? Was it Hawkmoth's defeat?"

"No, it was more recent than that," Felix said, still staring at his book. "I caught the ring on my shirt yesterday and it tugged the skin like it always does. Did."

"True love's kiss," Plagg's muffled voice called from within his cupboard.

"Yes, because we're cartoon characters and fairy tale logic applies here," Felix said, rolling his eyes.

Plagg emerged from the cupboard clutching camembert in one paw and the ring in his other. "True love's kiss from Ladybug worked on Punny Chat when Dislocoeur hit him with an arrow. It worked for Adrien. Why would you assume it wouldn't work for you, too?" Plagg asked.

"Oh, you're serious?" Felix asked. "That has a lot of implications that I... am going to not focus on right now." He glanced at Nino to see the same baffled expression on his face that he felt on his own. "I assume you mean Nino kissing me?" Plagg nodded. "We kissed the night I ran away. Is it a delayed reaction magic kiss effect?" He sighed. “I can’t express how angry it makes me that I just said those words in that combination.”

"That was Nino and Felix. Last night, did Carapace kiss Chat Noir?"

They looked at each other, then both nodded at Plagg.

"There you go. The combination of miraculous magic being active and true love's kiss fixed your miraculous. It's safe now to put on and take off whenever you want. You're free to quit now that Hawkmoth's defeated, but if you put it back on, you're not stuck anymore. You have the freedom to choose whatever you want."

"I am absolutely not putting that back on," Felix spat. "You can't know it's fixed for sure."

"It's literally linked to my life force," Plagg said. "I know for sure. And I was the one to warn you that there was something wrong before you put it on, remember?"

"Oh, I remember," Felix said. He took the ring from Plagg, pinching it between two fingers, and held it out to Adrien. "Take it. Wear both, combine them, don't, it's up to you. I meant what I said. I'm done being Chat Noir."

Adrien started to protest, but Nino held a hand out. "Okay. I told you, whatever you need. That's fine. Right, Adrien?"

Adrien nodded and wondered how he could have ever missed the way Felix looked at Nino. No one made Felix look that happy and at peace.

/*****/

"What if, after graduation, I traveled for a while?" Felix asked the next day during physical therapy. "I know things are new with us, and I would miss you, but... I'm free. I'm free from my father, I'm free from... work..." It was a flimsy cover, but when talking in front of Karen they had talked about Felix "quitting his job" instead of "being freed from his broken miraculous."

"I'm not gonna lie, I'd miss you a lot,” Nino said, fighting with his crutch. "But that sounds like exactly what you need."

"You could come with me," he said. "Or Adrien. Or Marinette. Or Nathaniel. Or I could go alone. But being able to get up and leave just because I want to... I've read so much about so many places. I'd like to see some of them."

"Yeah, I'd like that," Nino said. "Depends on when you leave and how long you'll be gone though. It'll be a while before I can do long tourist type walking, and then there’s university in the fall."

"We'll figure out something," Felix said.

"That is a very un-Felix approach and I like it," Nino said.

The door to the physical therapy room creaked open. The boys ignored it since they were in the middle of an exercise, but Karen addressed the visitor.

"Can I help you? This is a private session."

"I apologize, I was looking for Felix."

"Nathalie!" Nino called. "That is not your happy face. Here I was hoping you came looking for us for a good reason this time."

"Unfortunately, no. Felix, I'm sorry to take you away from assisting Nino, but I need your help."

Felix turned to apologize to Nino (or ask him to beg him to stay because that was definitely not Nathalie's happy face, so whatever she wanted couldn’t be good). Before he could get out a word though, Nino gave him a quick, accepting smile and said, "Text me what happens."

"I'll probably be back later," Felix said. Nino patted his shoulder and Felix followed Nathalie out.

"What is it?" He asked in the hall.

“It’s your father.”

#miraculous ladybug #nelix #nino lahiffe #felix agreste #nathalie sancoeur #Who Said That Every Wish #Take Me Home #my writing #one chapter left!!

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thesffcorner · 6 years ago

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Her Royal Highness

Her Royal Highness is the second book in the Royals series, written by Rachel Hawkins. It’s more of a companion novel, following entirely different characters, and though I personally would recommend reading Prince Charming first, you don’t have to. This book follows Amelia or Millie, a 17 year old girl from Texas, who gets a scholarship to MacGregorston, a Private College in Scotland. Once she gets there, she realizes that in addition to dealing with the new timezone, weather and school system, she also has to deal with her roommate: Her Royal Highness Flora, the Princess of Scotland. The reason I say you should read Prince Charming first, is because you might be a little confused as to what kind of parallel universe this is where Scotland has a Queen; well in this book series both England and Scotland have royal families, and we follow the Scottish one, which is really like our real world British Royal Family. This whole series for me comes with a caveat; if you are like me, and you are not interested or have mixed to negative opinions on royalty, the British royal family or tax draining monarchy in general, you still might like this series, because shockingly, though at no point condemning the royals, Hawkins is at least critical of them, and there are many instances in the book where actual important things are discussed. It also helps, that in both books, the lead characters isn’t obsessed or even interested in royalty; both Daisy, and here Millie are very oblivious and sometimes outright hostile to the glamour and strangeness of that kind of living, which presented itself as a nice ‘straight man’ to the still very patriarchal, very imperialist royal family. So let’s talk about this book. Unlike the first book, which focused more on Daisy getting to know the family, lifestyle, and her relationship with her sister, here the focus is the relationship between Millie and Flora, and their gradual move from enemies, to friends to lovers. As such I ended up really enjoying their romance. Hawkins excels at enemies to lovers; there was a perfect amount of time devoted to each section of the relationship, and at no point did I think that things were moving to fast or dragging. Even when Millie and Flora and Millie are ‘enemies’, their rivalry is mostly just petty, like speaking loudly on the phone, putting tape to separate their dresser, or insulting each other with supremely dorky insults. The parts where Flora does do things that are extreme, and could put Millie into physical danger or in danger of expulsion/losing her academic scholarship, are treated as serious events, and Flora is always called out on her behavior and suffers consequences. Since this book is so focused on the characters, I’ll talk about them first. Let’s start with the supporting cast: Sakshi, Perry, Sherbert and Sebastian. Sebastian and Sherbert we met in the last book; Seb is Flora’s twin brother, and Sherbert is part of his friend group, a boy who is dating the Crown Prince of Greece (I think. Or maybe he’s just the son of a wealthy Greek businessman). If you’ve read book 1, there is not much difference between how Seb is there, and how he’s here; he’s his usual charming self, a bit of a hot mess, and his little scuffle at the end of the last book doesn’t seem to have done much damage to his reputation, or even his relationship with his siblings. I really liked his and Flora’s dynamic; they are very similar, except as it tends to go, Seb is allowed to get away with a lot more things than Flora is, which I felt was both intentional and frustrating. They are however ready to throw down for each other at any point, and I liked that Seb got to be the one who makes Millie see the error of her actions in the end. Perry was not a character that had a lot to do; he hates the school because his parents forced him to go there, and he has a crush on Sakshi. There were some funny bits with him, like ordering the wrong kind of beer for Seb out of spite, or his conversation with Sakshi about whether he’s been gay the whole time they had been friends. Overall he was the gloomier foil to Sakshi’s bubbly, larger than life personality. Sakshi was my absolute favorite character. I need the next book to be about her, she was amazing. She is extremely feminine and sharp, while also being physically imposing at 6ft tall. I loved her friendship with Flora, loved how supportive and genuine she was with her, and I even enjoyed her ‘project’ to ‘fix’ Seb, so she can marry a prince and have the biggest philanthropy/charity platform in the UK, which falls away when it turns out that he’s a Harts fan. Even her being an Arsenal fan couldn’t deter my love for her character. As for our leads, let’s start with Flora. I liked Flora a lot; at first she’s the typical mean girl/snobby girl, but it quickly becomes clear that she’s not just catty; she’s willing to throw down and cause some physical and property damage, in her bid to get expelled. She has a very strained relationship to her mother, and to the expectations put on her by royal life. I found this very interesting, and I wish it was explored more; as is the book just doesn’t have time to properly address this relationship, mostly because we are seeing it from Millie’s perspective. I liked that Flora was the more active and willing participant in the relationship between her and Millie, and their banter was hilarious. The things I didn’t like about Flora, like her stubbornness and her willingness to disregard the well being of others for her own personal goals were addressed in the book, by the other characters and she changes by the end, to be less flippant. Millie was the character I liked least. It’s not that I hated her, but she was a pale comparison to Daisy who I related to a whole lot more, and found just simply funnier. Millie was a bit grating, very much a goody two shoes; she’s never broken a rule, she’s obsessed with geology, she only cares about school, avoids conflict. She also has this almost… fetishistic fascination with Scotland? Like she’s obsessed with Scotland, but doesn’t actually know anything about Scottish history or politics other than the most stereotypical things like Braveheart? She does improve significantly, and I like that for a change it was actually her that messed things up. When her fight with Flora begun, I really didn't understand what her big deal was; I still don’t understand why it matters whether Flora broke up with her ex, or her ex did; Flora not wanting to be just a secret to her ex is a perfectly valid reason to break up with someone, regardless. Whatever went down in her previous relationship has no bearing on her current one, and Millie blindly believing what a trashy tabloid writes was really dumb, for someone who’s portrayed as otherwise a sharp and sensible character. The only thing I did agree with Millie on, was Flora paying her tuition. Flora shouldn’t have done it at all, let alone done it without consulting and asking permission from Millie. We get hints on this class inequality between the girls, but it should have been a clearer examination on how their opposing view on money clashes. Flora is a princess, money means nothing to her (even though her money come from unfair taxes, and seizure of lands that should be public property, but this is a kids book, so maybe we can ignore socialism for a bit), so paying for someone she cares about it just that; a nice gesture. But when you don’t have money, or have very little, like Millie, every cent someone gives you feels like you are now in their debt, and you may never be able to repay it. It could have been a genuinely complex argument, but like Flora’s relationship to her mother, the book doesn’t devote enough time to it. The ending too felt a little rushed; while it is in Millie’s character to rush into things and do self-sabotaging things for a person they love (like not wanting to go to Scotland because she has a girlfriend), it still wasn’t great. It doesn’t help that the book just ends; we don’t get any resolution on things like Millie and Jude, Flora and her mom, or the scholarship. Regardless of the flaws, I still think this book is super enjoyable and fun. I really loved reading it, and I think if you liked the first book, or even if you just want a cute sapphic love story, this is the book for you. I will definitely read whatever else Rachel Hawkins has published because she’s convinced me that she’s a really solid, very funny author.

#her royal highness #her royal highness review #book review #moni talks

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thebibliomancer · 7 years ago

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #200: The Child is Father To...?

October, 1980

I kept dreading getting to this moment.

As the numbers ticked higher, I thought ‘well 200 is still a ways off’ but I knew it was coming.

Its not just that issue #200 is bad. Everybody knows its bad. Its the fact that everyone knows its bad.

As far as this series is about anything its about exposing how bonkers the Avengers comic could be for people less familiar with it.

But issue #200 is so infamous that I think a lot of people know about it, by reputation at least.

But I’ve been pitching pennies into the void so long, whats another 2 cents? This is just a speed bump on the way to more interesting things anyway.

She-Hulk will be joining the team soon. Tigra’s first stint on the team before that. There’s the fall of Yellowjacket and the albatross that Hank Pym will be wearing around his neck forever upcoming too. Moondragon returns to finally pay off the point of the Korvac Saga.

There’s a lot upcoming to get excited about.

So lets get through this... dear lord, its a double sized issue.

Right in the cover we can see the cracks underlying the story. Not just on the big 200, looking all weathered and damaged. Odd choice for a celebratory anniversary issue.

Also odd choice to have Iron Man and Hawkeye in a combat ready pose when the rest of the Avengers (except Vision. Always except Vision) are smiling and posing around the big cracked, damaged, rotten 200 like a publicity still.

Beast is even hanging out of it. Seductively.

Not right now, Beast. Read the room.

The point I’m trying to make is that there is a dissonance with this cover mood. Why are Iron Man and Hawkeye ready for action when everyone else is in a party mood?

The mood is just as confused in the book itself because it is a confused mess, designed out of committee, compromise, and with a stunning disregard for character. But I’ll get to that.

Also, perfect symmetry wasn’t really attainable here what with Thor and Captain America having significantly different profiles, but I’m annoyed that Yellowjacket wasn’t placed next to Vision so he’d mirror Wasp. You ruin everything, Yellowjacket.

Bit of a trivia: this cover was used as one of the covers for the Essential Avengers volumes. They cut out the big 200 to make it more general which honestly makes the cover look bland. Avengers posing around a big void for no reason.

Now lets get on with it.

“For generations the symbolic root values of the American people have been embodied in the phrase: ‘Mom, apple pie and the girl next door.’ Wars have been fought for these ideals; presidents have been elected over them. Obviously motherhood means a great deal to most Americans. So why, then, do these five heroes, these Avengers, seem upset that one of their own -- is about to give birth? Why is there excitement tinged with a subtle, subconscious shadow -- of fear?”

I think they would seem upset because Carol seems afraid and upset by the situation, became nine months pregnant in a matter of days, and has insisted that there is no possible father.

The real question is why there’s excitement at all? Finally showing some upset and fear is reading the mood but nothing explains this weird mood dissonance where the Avengers react to a mysterious accelerated pregnancy with ‘omg baby!!’

And the last issue ended with Dr. Donald Notthor Blake shouting in panic that Carol had gone into labor and its like nothing he’s ever seen. A good reason for the Avengers to be anxious and yet not really followed up on.

Unless. Oh god. Dr. Donald Notthor Blake really doesn’t have any obstetric experience and has no idea how to deliver a baby.

Thankfully, Jocasta is assisting him. She has cold hands and the precision of a computer so obviously she has excellent bedside manner.

Also, that first part of the narration sounds fake. I’m pretty sure the symbolic root values of the American people are ‘fuck you I don’t like taxes’ and ‘fuck you I want to own people.’

You think other countries don’t like motherhood and pie and geographically adjacent girls? Newsflash, a lot of people like those things. America is not special.

And why is this narration even playing over a scene where a woman is giving birth after being impregnated against her will or knowledge? Shooter, Perez, Layton and Micheline, what part of that sounds like the ideal of motherhood??

We are still on page one.

ALSO. Why does the medical examination laboratory have a big window the Avengers can look through to see their teammate giving birth?

And why are the Avengers pacing outside the door like anxious fathers-to-be?

Hawkeye even snarks about it when Captain America expresses worry.

This comic does not know what its mood should be. Will be a recurring complaint.

Captain America: “Sorry, Hawkeye, but I can’t help being a little nervous. I never thought I’d see the day a child would be born in Avengers Mansion.”

Iron Man: “I hate to put a damper on things, Cap, but it hasn’t been born yet -- and we’ve no assurance that it will even be a ‘child.’”

Mood dissonance. Cap: ‘omg baby!’ Iron Man: ‘More likely an alien’

Inside the medical room, Jocasta detects weirdness with her cybernetic senses. Maybe Ultron gave her an ultrasound when he built her.

Either way, despite my fully deserved mocking before, the real weird thing that made Dr. Donald Notthor Blake panic is that the birth is seemingly occurring without any trauma at all. No trauma and no pain? That ain’t right, per Dr. Donald Blake.

Second round of mocking aside, here’s a weird thing. Carol isn’t pushing at all. The whateveritis baby is just coming out all on its own.

But the baby boy is born and the peanut gallering Avengers all rush into the room to coo over him.

And while they gush about how tiny and cute the baby is and how he’ll be a quarterback when he grows up (???), Captain America asks Dr. Donald Blake to examine him thoroughly. Him the baby. Because Cap is finally realizing that something here isn’t natural. Like the fact that he was born after a three day gestation. For example.

Meanwhile, Jocasta has a weird epiphany about why Humans Are Special TM. A weird, almost Rose Quartzian epiphany.

Jocasta: “Look at them, Vision. Even under these bizarre circumstances, birth seems so... so natural to them. How incredible it must be to be born, to be small, to grow. Even with all their frailties, their weaknesses, I can’t help feeling that in this universe, humans are something very, very special.”

Vision: “It is life that is special, Jocasta -- in whatever form it takes.”

Do... do you think only humans give birth and grow up, Jocasta? Where do you think baby Inhumans, Skrulls, and Atlanteans come from? The Kree are supposedly test tube grown for maximum perfectness but they can still get pregnant. Bug on Star-Lord’s proto-Guardians of the Galaxy team was actually in jail for impregnating a Kree. Consensually. But the Kree have this weird thing about genetic purity. But also this weird thing about not evolving anymore. So maybe they should try crossbreeding with other alien races and see if that does anything for them.

I am getting off track.

Jocasta, you’re dumb. Humans Are Special posts tend to annoy me but this is the stupidest one yet, Jocasta. I still like you but stop.

Wasp realizes that Carol Danvers isn’t around also talking about how great the baby is and goes looking for her after being told that Wonder Man is taking her up to her room to rest.

And no surprise from Wasp who has been on the ‘baby yay!’ train the whole time but she is incredibly insensitive to Carol.

Wasp: “I just wanted to congratulate the proud parent. It’s really a beautiful baby, Carol. You’re so lucky to --”

Carol: “‘Lucky?!’ Wasp, think about what you just said! I’ve been used! That isn’t my baby! I don’t even know who the father is! So if you want to help me, please... just leave me alone.”

Sometimes this comic shows flashes of what may be self-awareness and I wonder if it knows how awful it is. But since Carol later apologizes for snapping at Wasp, no. No it does not.

Its red herring self-awareness. The worst kind.

Also, flashes of modern day Carol. That is the face of a woman who wishes there was something at hand to throw. Like a building.

Meanwhile, in the garden or courtyard of the mansion, Vision and Scarlet Witch do some relationship discussion.

Vision: “You seem calm, my wife, at ease with yourself.”

Scarlet Witch: “That’s because I am, darling. Ever since I reconciled my conflicting emotions concerning parenthood, I’ve not only felt more peaceful, but stronger as well.”

Vision: “Then you feel no regrets that we have produced no offspring?”

Scarlet Witch: “None that matter. A child’s a thing of fragile beauty, something that must be nurtured and protected. Like this rose... and the love we feel for each other. Which is, I’ve realized, the most important thing in my world.”

Vision: “And, my love, in mine.”

Aw. That’s nice.

Also nice is that the rose Scarlet Witch picks during this garden speech is a yellow matching Vision’s cape.

Even in the midst of this thisness, I like that we get a good character moment between Vision and Scarlet Witch. The good ol’ best ol’ Seeing Red ship.

Looking forward five years to the Vision and Scarlet Witch miniseries, these two actually do get to have kids. Granted, it happens after the two ragequit the Avengers because the government is suspicious of Vision after he tried to take over the world under the influence of an alien supercomputer. And magic is involved. And it gets undone by having the children be secretly parts of Mephisto but then it turns out that the kids are retroactively real kinda and are the Young Avengers Billy Kaplan and Speed.

Comics are complicated.

My point being. I like that when they didn’t have Avengers work to worry about, these two somehow immediately found a way to have the children they wanted. And I like that they had an mature, adult conversation about their expectations of their relationship before then.

Scarlet Witch and Vision are so good and a large part of me really hopes they get their own movie in the MCU that’s just. Weird stuff they deal with while trying to sort out their relationship.

Moving on.

During this conversation, Jocasta has been creepin’ like a creep from a second floor window.

Wasp spots her and asks if anything is wrong and Jocasta tells her that there’s just so much about human emotions that she doesn’t understand despite being based on Jan’s personality.

And Jan “Can’t Read The Mood” Van Dyne says something insightful.

Wasp: “Don’t worry, lady, you’re not alone. There’s still a lot about human emotions that we humans don’t understand.”

Also, I think this is the first interaction that Wasp and Jocasta have had.

I know things are probably awkward between them. But Vision and Wonder Man hashed their shit out to function socially around each other. I want more Jocasta and Wasp interaction.

I want more interaction between Jocasta and Scarlet Witch.

So far, Jocasta has mainly been about the dudes, minus an abortive attempt to make friends with Ms Marvel. She’s been trying to make friends or more with Vision a lot. And I get the logic behind that. If anyone gets where she’s at its him but also he’s too wrapped up in him to get where she’s at. But here’s the thing. It just comes across as another Vision-Wanda-Other Woman love triangle.

Give Jocasta girl friends. Or a girlfriend. But definitely girl friends.

Also, Wasp got another new outfit and this one isn’t terrible. I think she got it a couple issues ago but I was preoccupied. Good job, Wasp. You remembered that pants should have both legs.

Meanwhile, Beast and Hawkeye play pool in the rec room.

This is another very good character moment.

Hawkeye has won two games, making two malteds that Beast owes him. Hawkeye is very good at pool because you just pick up on these tricks when you’re a carny. Obviously.

He suggests a third game, double or nothing. And loser gets to shoot first.

But first, Beast pulls out a calculator. A TI-59, in fact. And does a little trigonometry.

And while Hawkeye is protesting that pool isn’t something you learn in math class, its a game of skill and instincts, Beast takes a single shot and sinks every ball.

Because, yup, this whole time Beast was hustling the hustler.

In fairness, you have to be pretty good at pool in the x-mansion. Cyclops is just super good at it and is probably a real sore winner.

Beast tries to get Hawkeye to play again, this time for a year’s salary but Hawkeye says “I only need to get burnt once to know a fire is hot!”

Anyway, I’m glad that some of this issue’s bloated page count went towards this nice little moment.

But with no forthcoming pool game, Beast decides to check in on the main plot with the vidcom intercom.

Apparently in the last hour, the baby has grown to the size and maturity of a two year old child.

So the accelerated growth is accelerating. He was aging three months a day and now he aged two years in an hour. Maybe he’ll age to skeleton bones like he drank out of the wrong grail and this story will end.

Anyway, the creepy Satan child stares right into the camera and thus our souls and demands someone change his diaper.

Uncanny.

Of course, its kind of a thing that most comic artists just don’t know how to draw babies without making them seem like cursed gremlins. So maybe this isn’t supposed to be exactly as creepy as it is.

Its just hard to tell because of the tone thing. This is a weird, unnatural baby. But also 'ZOMGBABY!!!’ So who knows.

And then an interlude. To build up the subplot which is needed to add some action scenes.

Completely normal civilian Raoul Kramer gets off the subway train, monologue complaining about how day in and day out everything is the same ol’ same ol’ same.

But when he leaves the station he finds everything has gone all old timey horse and buggy. Oh god, everything is so same ol’ it went back in time to be different same ol’!

What a perplexment.

But back in the mansion, Wonder Man goes to Ms Marvel’s room to see how she’s holding up.

And apparently she’s feeling well enough to get back in her bathing suit costume.

I guess it makes sense. Its the clothes she uses to punch people and maybe throw buildings at friends. So now that the ordeal is over she can get back to where she left off and love feeling strong and not have to think about cursed child at all.

Of course, people just keep trying to harsh her mood. By insisting that she interact with the baby she wants nothing to do with.

Wonder Man: “So how about coming down to take a look at your son? He’s really an extraordinary little --”

Ms Marvel: “No! He’s not my son! I don’t want to have anything to do with that... that thing!”

Wonder Man: “Come on, Carol, my eyes may look strange, but they see perfectly well. And right now they can see that you’re frightened -- just plain old run-of-the-mill scared. And you’ve every right to be. We don’t know what’s happened to you any more than you do, but ignoring it won’t help anything. Though maybe facing up to it will. What do you say?”

Amazing how a story where a woman is impregnated against her will also has the men in her life insisting they know what’s best for her more than she does. Its really the full package.

Meanwhile, more tone whiplash. After a scene where Ms Marvel calls the baby a thing and insists she wants nothing to do with him, we get a scene of Beast carrying an armful of sports equipment to the impromptu nursery.

I don’t know why Beast is going all sports dad on this mystery baby. I know he played football in school but he’s just behaving very oddly.

Unfortunately for Beast’s dream of having a superbowl winning son-by-proxy, as a now five-year-old with a smart mouth Marcus (because he names himself here) is not really interested in the sportsball. Rather, he’d like a laser torch and some electronic components.

As fast as his physical development, his intellectual capacity has developed far more. And he promises to answer the questions the Avengers have about that once he gets the materials he asked for.

But Cap insists on some answers now and Marcus agrees. He won’t have the manual dexterity necessary for another twenty minutes anyway.

Marcus: “What would you like to know?”

Captain America: “For starters, where did you come from?”

Marcus: “My mother.”

Captain America: “Yes, we know that, but... that is, how were you conceived?”

Marcus: “Uhhhm... by my father?”

Captain America: “Well, of course, blast it! But who is your father?”

Marcus: “I am.”

I wanted to joke that, like Vision, Cap doesn’t know where babies come from. But look at this completely unhelpful brat. He’s definitely being willfully contrarian. And I don’t want any good things to happen to him but from his point of view, things would have gone a lot better had he been a lot more forthcoming.

Iron Man, whose child interaction credentials are suspect, suggests that they just give Marcus whatever he wants and then maybe he’ll behave better.

Cap doesn’t like it but he agrees.

Sending Marcus to his room probably wouldn’t work. He doesn’t have a room. And sending him to bed without dessert? Also probably wouldn’t work. We haven’t seen him eat and he’s growing so fast as to seemingly preclude any nutritional needs. On the other hand, if he’s never tasted anything, the taste of chocolate might kill him. I read that in a book.

Time for another interlude! West of Queens where Ms. Marjorie Hansley checks the mail in hopes that she won a big publishing company sweepstakes grand prize all-expense-paid trip around the world.

We don’t learn whether or not she won the sweepstakes (which I consider rude) but the universe provides in another way and gives her a no-expense-paid no-refusal trip to Jurassic Park.

Or some prehistoric dinosaur time.

Where she is likely to get eaten by an alligator.

Ms. Marjorie Hansley is dead, basically.

But also it seems that time is warped and space is bendable.

I bet this is Marcus’ fault. You don’t backsass Living Legend Captain America and not break time.

But also: he’s aging at an accelerated rate. And time is screwing up elsewhere? He’s borrowed so much time from the time bank that the bank has gone bust and there’s no bailout package for the fourth dimension!

Probably not actually. But imagine if that was the plot.

Back at the mansion, again. Wonder Man and Yellowjacket have a talk.

Wonder Man: “I guess Ms. Marvel isn’t going to show. Tell me, Hank, you’re an old married man -- how did you ever come to understand women?”

Yellowjacket: “I didn’t.”

Wonder Man: “What? But, you and Jan -- !”

Yellowjacket: “Simon, I love Jan, and I accept her for what she is, but to be honest, the day someone comes out with a book on what really makes women tick -- I’ll be the first in line with my checkbook!”

There’s just so much I could say to this exchange. Much of it very harsh towards Hank and about upcoming events. I guess this is in-character for him though. He has never put much effort into understanding his girlfriend and then wife Jan and he passes that ignorance off as women just being fundamentally inexplicable.

You’re not a good scientist, Hank. Let’s leave it at that.

And Wonder Man. Ffs, Simon. Is it really, really, so difficult to understand why a woman might not want to come meet her rape baby?

Again. Not out of character from a man stuck in the past like Simon Williams can be. But this isn’t as fun a character moment as the pool sharking.

At least they’re saying women instead of females.

Meanwhile again, there are a lot of meanwhiles in this comic. A lot of jumping around. But Dr. Donald Notthor Blake observes a now twelve-year-old Marcus sciencing up some gadget or doohickey and marvels that this 12 year old has the intellectual capacity of Einstein now.

And he also wonders that maybe this situation does not require the talents of Dr. Donald Notthor Blake but instead those of the Mighty Verymuchthor Thor.

To put it another way, I think the good doctor Blake is imagining hitting a child with a hammer.

Another meanwhile, where Cap, Beast and Hawkeye are having a tea party.

And where Hawkeye has just suggested putting Marcus in a cage.

Now that everybody isn’t going ‘squee babyyy!1!’ because he is no longer a cute infant, the backlash the other way towards violence and imprisonment is something to behold.

Iron Man comes into the... parlor? Tea room? to let Cap know they’ve been getting some prank calls on the public line. Just some nonsense about a delicatessen being robbed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Probably some snotty teenagers having a fun.

Meanwhile again and elsewhere, Jocasta comes to talk to Vision. Who is currently engrossed in studying a subtle energy aura around Marcus that grows as the child does. And it seems that the energy is emanating from within the weirdo and might account for his unnatural growth rate.

Jocasta offers to help with his investigation but just then Scarlet Witch returns with Yellowjacket’s latest readings on Marcus’ physiology. Just what Vision needed.

And now that Scarlet Witch is here, Vision turns to her and starts telling her about his fascinating theory about Marcus.

Feeling like quite the third wheel, Jocasta just leaves, unnoticed.

“Sensing in her husband’s well-modulated tones an excitement that would escape most others, the Scarlet Witch listens intently... so much that neither she nor the Vision even notice when Jocasta turns and, softly, leaves the room. And that, thinks the metalloid would-be Avenger, is the harshest hurt of all...”

Dammit. If she leaves the team because of this bullshit, I’m going to be nettled.

BUT ALSO: lets mock Yellowjacket.

Do you see how Scarlet Witch takes the time to understand Vision, able to sense in him moods that most others don’t? Because she loves him and took the effort to connect with him?

Maybe if you had done the emotional labor, Yellowjacket, women wouldn’t be a big impenetrable mystery to you.

But of course not. That emotional labor flows one way. Get dunked on Yellowjacket specifically and the culture that shaped him more generally.

Elsewherewhen AGAIN, but specifically half the mansion away, Ms Marvel decides that she will, after all, go see the baby she didn’t want.

And also she apologizes for snapping at Jan.

Boooooo! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Not My Carol!

But she also waited too long. Without proper parental role models, Marcus has grown into a teenage dirtbag, baby.

Now that he’s not a baby I can say: What a punchable face. Someone should punch that face and never stop punching that face forever.

Also the narration specifically states that seeing Marcus fills Ms Marvel with “an odd sense of calm... along with an unexplainable, and undeniable, attraction.”

HEY. That’s gross, comic. I don’t care about the eventual bullshit handwavey explanation for this nonsense. That. Is. Gross.

And I mean, look at that face. Its a face that only a mother could punch. Because she’s closest.

... And Marcus is wearing his child clothes as a loincloth. Did... did nobody get him grownup clothes? Several Avengers live in this mansion. Raid someone’s closet!

Marcus also continues to be an inscrutable ass and refuses to explain anything until his science project is completed. Like how he already knew Carol’s name.

The weirdness of the situation is sufficient that even Wasp is noticing that the situation is freaky.

But before he can refuse to explain anything any further, there’s a huge explosion and Marcus complains “Not so soon! Not so soon!”

Because outside there’s a dinosaur and several UFOs attacking Avengers Mansion.

... Y’know, usually I’d be excited to see dinosaurs and UFOs living together mass hysteria but in this comic its just time wasting to fill out a page count and throw some action scenes into the mess.

I can’t even enjoy Dinosaurs and Mars Attacking the Avengers.

Of course, the Avengers rush out to go fight the dinosaur. Iron Man even punches a T. Rex in the face. But as said, I can’t enjoy this.

Okay. So there’s one bit of the pointless action that I like. While Vision phases through the ceiling to join the dinosaur punching action, Scarlet Witch runs into a medieval knight who decides that she’s obviously a sorceress and so he’s honor-bound to run her through. As ya do.

Not even stopping to think 'this is bonkers' she uses her probability-altering powers to make the knight’s own lance wrap around his face and throw him off his horse.

Which you may recognize as having a probability of ‘exactly zero that would never happen in any circumstance just admit that her power is magic, comic’ but I don’t even care because I love it when Scarlet Witch gets to Do A Thing.

It takes six pages but the knight manages to get up from that asswhupping and accosts Scarlet Witch with a sword.

He doesn’t even get a chance to get his ass kicked by Wanda again because Jocasta comes out of nowhere and uses her ever-useful eyebeams circumcise his sword.

He tries to stab her with the remaining stump while yelling he won’t be bested by women but the blade just shatters on her invincible metal bust.

Sir Cecil of Clampett then immediately surrenders and sinks to the floor muttering about how he’ll never throw porridge at the queen again if they let him live but they’re not even paying attention to him anymore.

If this is to become another bullshit love triangle, I love that Jocasta is still being a civil, great person coming to Wanda’s aid like that while conceding that Wanda can take care of herself.

I just want there to be super-heroine Avengers who are best friends. MEET MY EXTREMELY LOW BAR DEMANDS, COMIC.

But I skipped over a lot of action scene to get to the part I liked. Lets summarize. Iron Man punches a dinosaur again.

... And then some Native Americans attack Beast, Hawkeye, and Captain America.

I’m uncomfortable with this. And Cap beating them up. And with the usually delightful Beast making jokes while beating them up.

Pro-tip: you should probably never have a man dressed as an American flag punching Native Americans.

Hawkeye is smart enough not to get involved in this. Or paranoid enough. Because he’s sure that Marcus is behind this and runs off to deal with him.

In the... science room? Marcus refuses to leave before he finishes his machine, even as the roof is crumbling around them.

Wonder Man, Yellowjacket, and the Wasp fly off to investigate, Wonder Man cheerfully disobeying orders that he stay and protect Marcus.

Ms Marvel also decides to shove Dr. Donald Blake into a reinforced broom closet for his safety. Which gives Dr. Donald Blake the privacy to turn into Thor so he can fly off and join the pointless action scenes.

It becomes clear that in addition to padding out the story and adding some, any action at all, the point of these time distortion fight scenes was to split the party so that events can unfold without too many people around.

I also take some comfort in knowing that even in this comic, Wonder Man’s intrinsic Wonder Manliness shines through as he Leeroy Jenkinses into the fight and immediately gets blasted by future cannons that he didn’t notice because he was recklessly charging into things.

And then as he considers the benefits of cowardice, he gets attacked by a giant snake. Because Wonder Man.

He gets to throw the snake at a pterodactyl that was bothering Iron Man because the fundamental truth about Wonder Man is one of contrast. Bone-headed failures making more apparent when he manages to do a good job.

Thor shows up and does what Thor does best, invalidate the presence of most of the rest of the Avengers by just being so much stronger than they are.

He creates a giant tornado that sucks up the dinosaurs and UFOs and such.

Thor is the Avengers’ win button.

He also notes that there’s something weirdly familiar about Marcus.

Meanwhile, inside the mansion, Jarvis finds himself accosted by the actual fucking D’Artagnan of the Musketeers. Hahaha what.

Who threatens to stab Jarvis in the tongue if he doesn’t tell him where Rochefort is.

Yellowjacket summons a cloud of ants to distract the musketeer and then Jarvis punches him in his face.

Take that, beloved literary figure.

Meanwhile there are so, so many meanwhiles. But in the nursery lab random location, Marcus tries to convince Ms Marvel to leave while he activates the machine.

But she is struck by a strange compulsion to stay at this side no matter what.

So he makes her smell his fingers or maybe uses pink energy to zap her face and that knocks her unconscious and cover Scarlet O’Haraing in his arms.

Which is the part Hawkeye managed to come in just in time to see.

Assuming that Marcus was attacking Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye fires an exploding arrow at the machine built. Exploding it.

Marcus cries a single tear and then puts Ms. Marvel down safe and comfortable in a pile of assorted rubble and pointy shrapnel.

Hawkeye: “Okay, curly-top, put the lady down, gently!”

Marcus: “Yes. I shall... since that had been my intention all along. FOr I knew that the energies from my machine might prove dangerous to humans, and so had planned to take Ms. Marvel to a place of safety. you see, it had been my wish that no harm should befall anyone. But now, bowman, you’d be well advised to try and kill me! For if you don’t, then by the seven levels of limbo, I shall kill you!”

A smirking Hawkeye replies that sounds fair.

But then the a lightning bolt hits between them and Thor and Iron Man enter the scene.

Thor reiterates that Marcus looks familiar and demands he know the source of this deja vu. But Marcus says he’ll tell them nothing unless they kill him.

Ms. Marvel wakes up off-screen and tells Marcus to cut his shit out.

Ms. Marvel: “I don’t understand you -- but I do know you, somehow. And I sense that you’d no more take a life gratuitously than an Avenger would.”

Marcus: “Well, y-you’re wrong! So you’d best tell your comrades to defend themselves, b-because I’ll destroy anyone who gets in my way! I will!”

Ms. Marvel: “In that case, Marcus -- you can start with me.”

And then she stands between him and Iron Man, Thor, and Hawkeye.

Marcus confesses that he wasn’t going to hurt anyone. He just wanted to goad them into killing him, honest!

Because he couldn’t bear to go back to living like he has been since his father abandoned him. His father... IMMORTUS!

DUN DUN DUN!

Ms. Marvel has some concerns. Like how she’s never met Immortus and definitely never did the nasty with him.

And now the rest of this comic is going to be backstory and exposition. Just pages of Marcus explaining things, while crying a single tear.

So once upon a no-time, Immortus ruled Limbo. Not the Illyana one. Or the fun party game. But the place of no-time that we visited during the Celestial Madonna story. You’d think you’d remember that. I certainly typed enough words words words about it.

Anyway, Immortus grew lonely living in Limbo all by himself (later retconned so that he lived with a bunch of Space Phantoms but they’re all boring) so he decided he’d go cruising for some booty.

So he cruised through Earth’s time-stream and eventually found a woman, the sole survivor of a sinking ship, pulled her from the cold waters, and took her back to Limbo with him.

Marcus: “Once back in Limbo, through a combination of gratitude and the subtle manipulations of my father’s ingenious machines, the woman fell in love with him. My father then created within Limbo a pocket of change -- a bubble where time flowed naturally. It was there that I was created.”

... So to reiterate, Immortus caused a woman to fall in love with him with the aid of “subtle manipulations of... ingenious machines.”

Mind control, basically.

So if Marcus had a dad and a mom and neither of them were Carol then how did Marcus come out of her?

There’s a very... explanation for that though.

Immortus raised Marcus in a yes-time bubble so that he could grow and develop.

But there was a limit to how long a mortal could spend in Limbo before being just rubber-banded back to Earth. Which is what happened to Nameless Mrs Immortus.

And then Immortus went to help on the Wild West Adventure which led to Kang dying trying to kill Thor which led to Immortus dying because Kang is his younger self so he never existed.

Which raises unanswered questions now that we know about Marcus.

If Kang died before becoming Immortus which caused Immortus to fade away, why is Marcus even still around?

Is it because he was in a no-time zone like Limbo, unaffected by changes to the time-stream? If that’s the case, couldn’t Immortus have avoided disappearing in a puff of logic by staying home?

Its possible that after all that time alone and all the regret for his past self’s actions, he wanted to die. But that’s a rude as hell thing to pull on a son.

So Marcus was left alone and even more alone than his father had ever been. As a child of Limbo, if Marcus tried to visit Earth, it would create an irreparable disruption of the local time-stream.

But then he had an idea. Marcus got a wonderful awful idea.

If time disruption was a result of being born into Limbo, what if he were born onto Earth?

And by accelerating his birth and aging processes he could negate the time flux distortion before it became irreversible. Because it would be slowed down or confused by him being a baby.

Time would be like ‘whaaaaaat a baby?’ and get really distracted and out of character.

But it would take an exceptionally strong woman to survive gestating a nine month pregnancy in only a couple days so he searched through time and eventually decided on Ms. Marvel for her powerful combination of Kree and Human strengths.

Also, I think he just has a thing for strong blondes that should kick his ass.

A different version of Marcus, Kang’s son instead of Immortus’ but still named Marcus and still looking the same genetics are weird, later developed a crush on Carol. Her reaction to which was split between ‘wut?’ and ‘get rekt!’

But this Marcus decides to time-kidnap Carol while she was traveling to visit Scarlet Witch in New Jersey. Just takes her right out of the Quinjet and brought her to Limbo.

And thus began the wooing process. Because Marcus wanted to win her hand on his own merits and not through some skeezy mind control technology.

Marcus: “To aid my purpose, I brought others in from Earth’s time continuum. I had Shakespeare write you a sonnet, and Beethoven performed an original prelude in your honor, while Marie Antoinette herself clothed you in the finest of satins and silks. Finally, after relative weeks of such efforts -- and admittedly, with a subtle boost from Immortus’ machines -- you became mine.”

You started off with such noble? intentions of kidnapping a woman and convincing her to love you and then you ended up using mind control anyway. You can’t say he didn’t come by it honestly. Its even the same word choice of ‘subtle.’ Subtle manipulations... subtle boost. He learned it from you, dad. He learned it from watching you.

Anyway, after using a machine to convince Carol that she loved him, he used technology and magical limbo powers to implant his ‘essence’ in her “causing a condition that resembled pregnancy.”

Y’know. In the sense of having a baby growing inside her womb. That’s the resemblance.

Also, also. The process of implanting essence looks a lot like rated-g sex. And now we know what Carol’s orgasm face looks like. Thanks a lot, comics. Thanks a lot.

Anyway, having implanted his ‘essence’ inside of her he wiped her memory and sent her back to Earth a second after she had been taken.

I... don’t know why it was necessary that she have her memory wiped. You’d think that to prevent a lot of anxiety and fear, you’d want her to know that her boyfriend would be popping out of her in a couple days.

The memory wipe and the mention that he totally used machines to make her love him make this one sketchy story. Which, do note, he’s saying right in front of Thor, Iron Man, and Hawkeye.

Who are all nodding and going ‘yeah that sounds like your classic love story right there. Like Beauty and the Beast.’ Because they are fools.

Marcus: “Once ‘reborn,’ I knew that as my artificially accelerated growth progressed, the Limbo effect would become stronger. But I had hoped to build a machine to negate the effect before I reached full maturity -- and the effect became permanent. Then, I could have lived among you, using my knowledge of time and history to better the human race. but when my machine was destroyed, I knew there was no time to build another before the Limbo effect became fixed. Therefore, since I cannot and will not cause the destruction of a world just to realize a dream, my options became either to return to Limbo, living in solemn, solitary hell unto infinity... or else goad you Avengers into killing me, and thus sparing me. Now, I have no options...”

This again raises the specter of why didn’t he just let Carol keep her memories. She could have gone up to Iron Man, Yellowjacket, or Beast and said ‘hey time is going to start breaking, I need you to build a machine. No time to explain, I met a guy and I’m going to give birth to him soon. I SAID NO TIME TO EXPLAIN BUILD FOR ME, WRENCH FOOLS.’

Getting a head start on the machine would have erased some of the race against time aspect.

When Hawkeye asks why he didn’t just tell them any of this, Marcus claims that they never would have trusted the son of one of the Avengers’ oldest enemies.

But Immortus has been more a weird, helpful weirdo than an enemy when you factor in that his first appearance was retconned out of existence by Enchantress. They’ve only ever known him as the guy that helps them fight Kang. Who, in fairness, is one of their oldest enemies.

But Carol decided or perhaps ‘decided’ that Marcus won’t be alone.

Ms Marvel: “I mean that while I still don’t know what I felt for you in Limbo, some of that feeling still lingers. And that, combined with the fact that by some bizarre logic, you are my ‘child’ -- makes me feel closer to you than I’ve felt to anyone in a long, long time. And I think that just might be a relationship worth giving a chance. So I’m returning to Limbo with you.”

Which might be a sweet sentiment minus the fact that the lingering sentiment she feels was mind control and the pseudo-incestual vibe to this whole relationship and MINUS THE FACT THAT EARTH PEOPLE CAN ONLY BE ON LIMBO FOR A LIMITED TIME BEFORE BEING YANKED BACK TO EARTH AS PREVIOUSLY ESTABLISHED.

So, no. Nothing about this is a sweet sentiment. Its just layers of horrible.

Iron Man questions if Carol is really sure about what she’s doing and she tells him “not entirely” but she gonna do it anyway. Which at the very least is very Carol Danvers. She tells him to say goodbye to the others.

And then Thor hammerwhirls Marcus and Carol to Limbo. Because he can do that. Remember? He can open space-time rifts by spinning Mjolnir fast enough?

Once Marcus is hammerwhirled off of Earth all of the various time weirderies throughout the mansion vanish, leaving the Avengers who were fighting them perplexed.

And back in the nursery/lab/whatever Hawkeye laments that maybe if he hadn’t destroyed Marcus’ machine none of this would have happened.

Hawkeye: “I can’t help it, Shell-head. I just feel rotten. If I hadn’t destroyed Marcus’ machine --”

Iron Man: “-- Maybe things would have happened the same way, Hawkeye. There’s no way of knowing. We’ve just got to believe that everything worked out for the best.”

Hawkeye: “Yeah, I guess you’re right. That’s all we can do. Believe... and hope that Ms. Marvel lives happily ever after.”

Spoiler: She does not.

So, uh. Yeah. That was Avengers #200.

What does one even say about something like that?

How does something with so many otherwise decent writers turn out like this?

Jim Shooter, George Perez, Bob Layton, and David Michelinie are all credited with writing the plot.

But it seems nobody remembers whose idea this was.

The usual Avengers writer at that time was David Michelinie and he attributes the poor quality of the issue to last minute rewrites and being written by a committee.

David Michelinie: “It’s true that that story originally had a different ending, one suggested by Bob Layton. I believe it involved an alien race (the Kree?) which had reached the limits of its evolutionary possibilities. By generating an alien/human hybrid (impregnating Carol with an alien seed), a new evolutionary path could be created and the dead end could have been circumvented. However, after that storyline had been set up and Avengers #200 plotted, a story came out in another title which almost exactly duplicated the story we had scheduled for Avengers #200. So a last minute alternative was hammered together (hence the plot credit for four different people on that issue) and was hastily drawn and scripted to meet extremely tight deadlines. I don’t remember why we sent Carol Danvers off with Marcus, and out of the Avengers, but I assume it was something that was put together in that marathon plot session.”

The comic that duplicated the original proposed #200 probably would have been What If? #20: What If the Avengers had Fought the Kree-Skrull War Without Rick Jones? Wherein the Supreme Intelligence fuses with Rick Jones’ corpse to become a new being.

In the sense of creating a Kree/Human hybrid, I guess it was stepping on #200′s toes. Although Carol is already a Kree/Human hybrid anyway so. Whatever.

Artist George Perez says in his book:

George Perez: “I don’t remember if it was Dave or Jim who did the Carol Danvers pregnancy story. I believe by the time it was printed it was by four different writers or something. That was probably not the most shining hour for the character, but I liked the idea that they had the story that I really love, which was kind of a precursor to what I would end up doing in Crisis [on Infinite Earths], stuff where you could draw anything happening from various time zones. Like issue 200 of the Avengers, I got to draw a dinosaur attacking Avengers Mansion, with a biplane flying [by]. All this great stuff I eventually got to do with Crisis on Infinite Earths, I got to do with the Avengers.”

As for Jim Shooter, he weirdly both disavows any knowledge of how this happened and also takes full credit.

Jim Shooter: “I found my copy of Avengers #200. I read it. I agree with the consensus, it’s heinous. But, I don’t remember much about how it got that way.

I am credited not only as Editor in Chief but as one of the co-plotters. However, I didn’t see anything in the book that jogged my memory. No bits that I remember suggesting. No corrections of the sort I might have made to a plot passed before me.

But I did see many things I would have changed if I’d seen the plot. For instance, leaving aside the Ms. Marvel mess for the nonce: Iron Man thinks it’s okay for the weird, mysterious child to be given a “laser torch” and electronic equipment so he can build a machine. What?! As the massive machine is being assembled, no one bothers to question what it is or does. What?! Trouble ensues. No kidding, really? Good grief.

At that time, I didn’t approve plots. Editors did. I can think of no reason that plot would have been passed before me. I don’t remember participating in a plotting session. David Michelinie lived far away and seldom came to the office. He and Bob Layton plotted books together mostly over the phone, then Dave wrote them up and presented them to the editor. I don’t know to what extent George Perez was involved. George often added bits and scenes, or made small changes to stories he was drawing, so possibly that is why he was given a plot credit. Usually writers didn’t mind George’s modifications because they were generally pretty good.

Generally, the first time I saw a book was when the finished pages were given to me to sign off on before they were sent to Chemical Color, the separators. There were exceptions, of course, books with which I was more involved. I don’t think this was one of them. But, possibly I made some suggestions that garnered me a ‘co-plotter’ credit, and if so, what was I thinking?

And, I guess I signed off on this book.

I regret it.

But, in those days, in any case, the buck stopped at my desk. I take full responsibility. I screwed up. My judgement failed, or maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. Sorry. Avengers #200 is a travesty.”

I’m not here to unravel this mystery or cast blame. Although I blame everyone, really.

Shooter is right that the buck stopped at him and he said yeah sure buck go on ahead. Good on him for taking that blame.

Was Avengers #200 the worst story in Avengers history?

I don’t know. I can’t rightly say. I’ve only covered 200 out of... somewhere over 500.

Its not the worst written Avengers story. That would probably be the Crossing crossover. So convoluted and impenetrable, nobody is quite sure what order the issues should be read in.

It might not even be the most offensive. Avengers #33 tried to say that racism is made up by communists.

Its definitely a contender.

Made worse that nobody involved seemed to realize what message they were putting out, which judging by some comments I’ve seen was just unblinkingly accepted by children who read this back in the day.

But here’s the thing. Four different people had enough input to get a co-plotter credit and not one of them went ‘maybe we shouldn’t.’

You can blame the writing by committee for the uneven quality and weird tonal whiplash but you can’t blame it for the central problem where Ms Marvel is raped and impregnated against her will and against her very clearly stated desire not to have children.

That was the foundation of this entire thing.

Even before the story was changed, it was going to be about Carol being impregnated mysteriously. The only thing that was changed was the set dressing. Instead of the Supreme Intelligence and the Kree, it was changed to Immortus’ son.

Because this was a milestone celebration and the important thing here was that a long-time Avengers enemy be behind it.

(Its not even a good milestone celebration. Whose story is this really? Its not really Carol’s. Things happen to her and then she gets a sendoff that would make Doctor Who say ‘whoa, too far.’ It doesn’t celebrate her as a hero. It doesn’t celebrate any of the other Avengers and their history. This is a story about Marcus? And who the fuck is Marcus? The previously unmentioned story of a barely recurring Avengers frenemy. Avengers 100 had EVERY AVENGER. They were badly utilized but thats how you do a milestone.)

There’s no reason to believe that the setup pre-rewrites was going to be any different. Ms Marvel suddenly coming down with a bad case of three-day pregnancy while being alarmed and terrified by what was happening.

There are stories that are bad because of rewrites. And then there are stories that would have been bad from the very conception.

And this would have been one of them.

Pun unintended.

No matter how well-written Avengers #200 was. It would always have been the story where Carol Danvers was written out.

Maybe she wouldn’t have headed off into Limbo at the end because of lingering mind-control affection for her rapist/son but I feel it likely she still would have left the team. Probably gone into space to raise her Kreeman baby.

Heinous and travesty are right.

Could this story have been salvaged?

Like I said, the core concept was Ms Marvel getting mysteriously pregnant. They moved the tombstones but didn’t move the bodies. You’d have to get entirely away from that to find something worth telling.

You could do something with the time weirdery that lets the Avengers punch dinosaurs and maybe relive some old enemies. That could be a way to do a milestone issue. Harkening back without literally just reprinting old panels. Right, AVENGERS 150??

You could have done the pregnancy thing is Carol was an active and willing participant and didn’t have her mind wiped but it still would have felt gross. Because you had her loudly announce her opinion that punching people was more important than motherhood to her.

Do you see, various people who worked on this book, that by having her say that and then immediately become pregnant that it kind of feels vindictive? Punishing her for the words you put in her mouth? And that anything that comes after that will be tainted by that?

Also, mysterious pregnancy plots are usually bad. The only one I can think of that wasn’t was the Spider-Woman plot and the only mystery was that she wouldn’t tell people that she just got a sperm donor so she could make them think that Carol was the father somehow. And its still not great that someone’s thought was ‘what surprising twist can I do with this female character after a time skip? PREGNANCY!’

So was Avengers #200 salvageable? God no. Some of the interpersonal interaction bits were okay. But the actual plot itself was bad, bad, bad. I couldn’t even enjoy the time weirdery because it was disembodied from the plot and was time wasting action scenes and to split the party.

Iron Man punched a T. Rex. TWICE.

I should be gushing about that. I should never stop gushing about it. But it does nothing for me.

Carol Danvers will return... In Avengers Annual #10, angry as hell.

Follow @essential-avengers. Because I will cover Avengers Annual #10 wherein Carol Danvers is angry as hell.

#Avengers #Ms Marvel #Marcus Immortus #the Vision #Scarlet Witch #essential avengers #Wonder Man #Captain America #Iron Man #Thor #Beast #Hawkeye #the Wasp #Yellowjacket #Jocasta #Jarvis #Essential marvel liveblogging #And now its finally behind me

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