#except for the steamroller who just went on and on about how he's only evil and wouldn't take any imagery ideas

[waldosakimbo]

OH MY GOD Heretic (2024) has me by the throat. I feel like this one is definitely worth rewatching, because it TELLS you so much, it advertises SO MUCH right away, and it's sinister how it plays out!

Does Sister Barnes have faith? Does Sister Paxton actually believe she's seen evidence of god from, hilariously, some amateur porn? You're given the idea Sister Paxton believes more but she has no converts and no baptisms. Sister Barnes is questioning, but she's more successful. Why is that? (Is it the big sad eyes?) When they spot the teenagers in the street and Sister Paxton earnestly says "I love them," they immediately betray her. She loves the world. Its cruel. She wants to save this man. He's cruel. Faith and cruelty. Iterations. The butterfly image. The dead moths coating the window. Belief and disbelief and god damn it's tasty. Quick aside, did anyone else think he drugged those drinks or not? I worried initially, but I think it was genuinely just another one of his tests for later. Also it's insidious how Reed tells them "truths." He tells them the walls and ceiling have metal but they don't know that would block cell phones. He tells them the front door locks by a mechanism timer that doesn't come undone until daylight, (but he can switch it off). He tells them the house is wired weird. He tells them he put the aromatic pie there, he tests them, and it's so. Good! So when he tells them about religion, his motivations, his study of theology, and the challenge from Sister Barnes (the faithless? Who choses Belief and stands up to him? Who has her throat slit as the sacrificial lamb? Beautiful, tragic) is the other side of that. The flipside of the coin. Hugh Grant is AMAZING in this, because he's Hugh Granting it up but instead of a comedy, it's a horror. Unsettling to the max. Why? Because it's just the power of humanity and faith. It's JUST. The power. Of humanity. And Faith. It's nothing supernatural. It's using knowledge, history, the arts, humanity and psychology. As a weapon. Longlegs fell short for me because it was eventually supernatural and I thought it clunky and mishandled in the second half. This one? It's just humans. It's just an evil man. And it's visceral. More grounded, which makes it Terrifying. Even when faced with a miracle, we learn it's false. It's a magic trick. Even when we could pray, we're told BY THE PERSON. WHO IS FAITHFUL, that it means nothing, but sometimes it's beautiful to still pray for someone. Which brings me to the point where Sister Paxton was stabbed and praying in level...three? of his twisted Dante's inferno house? Actually, quick aside to that, I love the back and forth of quoting Spider-Man or Voltaire. Quoting Virgil or the Swamp Thing. It's again putting them on opposite sides, another mirror. But also showing the house itself as a labyrinth, yes, but specifically I think that was Dante's Inferno poster in his office, making Paxton Virgil, travelling the levels of Hell to the frozen pit/horrifying chamber of cages where he keeps other pious women, going Through to get Out. "Sister P" Is praying even though she Just said it does nothing. Reed crawling towards her, his own throat slit. But there's this moment where he's draped over her, sobbing or choking, looking for the warmth of her prayer, I think trying to feel her belief because he's been searching for it for so long and he's left empty. Before he can find peace (or kill her, did he have his knife to her throat to kill her? I think he would, but I still think he had this moment where he wished he could believe to find peace with someone, especially after seeing that interview where Grant stated backstory of Reed that he was a lonely man who lost someone dearly to him and he searched through religions to find comfort and couldn't) he's killed. He's smashed in the head with the McGuffin from earlier. Victory. Did Barnes come back? I think she was saving her strength and had one final moment to help her friend. And then that fucking ending. Is she dead? Is she alive? Was the butterfly real? Did she believe? Is it only her belief, her butterfly, or is a final hallucination before she passes? Did she make it out of Hell? Anyways, I'm going to have to see this again soon. Delicious. Horrifying. Loved it.

[crashdevlin]

Civil Warriors 6- Africa

Civil Warriors Masterlist

Author’s Note: Originally posted to ao3 (This is an edited and improved version) Part Three of the Red Queen Chronicles!

Summary: The three super soldiers start their trek toward Wakanda.

Word Count: 4665

Pairing(s): Clint Barton x OFC, Bucky Barnes x OFC

Chapter Warnings: mentions of torture, mentions of brainwashing, mentions of murder, Bucky Barnes being suave

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Are you sure that you’re okay to walk this whole way?” Bucky asked as the sun started to go down on the second day of their trek across Africa. None of them had slept and it was evident in their attitudes.

“Barnes, don’t ask again,” Cassie snapped. “I’m just as genetically gifted as you and Steve are. Just because I’m a woman-”

“Hey, it’s not about that!” Bucky interrupted, blue eyes going wide. “I’m just...guess I just don’t know much about your abilities, so…”

“How about we make camp?” Steve suggested, hefting his bag off of his shoulder and dropping it to the ground. “We could use the rest.”

“I’ll get a fire going,” Bucky volunteered.

“And I can regale you with my back story while I set up the tent. Ya know, the stuff after Hydra lost me.” Cassie dropped her bag to the ground at her feet and grabbed the tent. “See, Fury stormed Der Spielplatz with fifty men and grabbed everyone on base. I think it was called Operation Playtime Distortion. It was a rescue operation for Agent Mackenzie. They found my files before they found me. I remember the look on Fury’s face when he walked into my cell on the sublevel and found me, sitting on my bed...confused. Confused, brainless, without a single memory to work from.”

She sighed and licked her lips, avoiding the gaze of the blue-eyed men with her. “He took me and cuffed me and put me on a plane to the Fridge.” She looked at Bucky for a sign of recognition of the name, but she didn’t find any so she continued. “Fridge was a place where SHIELD put dangerous people, dangerous items. I was there for ten years, basically grew up in that cell...all that I remembered of my life was in the Fridge for a long time. Fury didn’t want to release me into the world. For good reason...he read the file. He knew what was buried in my head.”

She bit the inside of her lip and cleared her throat. “Ten years in captivity, though, and I never showed it. When I was eighteen, I started a relationship with an agent...one of Fury’s right hand men...he convinced Fury to...got him to consider letting me out, but it took two more years of Fury considering before he eventually let me out.”

Cassie rolled the tent out and grabbed the poles. “I mean, I really thought I was normal. I mean, I obviously knew I was Red Skull’s daughter, but I thought of it more as…” She shrugged. “Johann Schmidt was just the sperm donor, you know? I wasn’t a Nazi. I was just a girl. I couldn’t remember the Hydra labs at all by the time I was eighteen and I hadn’t ever shown any abnormal physiology. Except the lack of a belly button, I was just like everyone else. I thought maybe I was really lucky and Red Skull’s enhancements couldn’t be passed down. Maybe it just wasn’t in me and I was okay with that. It meant I could focus on the goals I had for after I got out of the Fridge.”

Cassie pushed the first set of poles through the tent and grabbed the second set. “I wanted to get out, get a degree, get a job, get married, have a baby. I was halfway to a degree by the time I got out of the Fridge. My boyfriend got me started on the baby. He didn’t know that. I didn’t tell him. Would’ve just been...complicated. Things with Phil were over by then and it was easier for me to just...drop out of college and move to New York, just in time for Loki to rain down a storm of aliens on our heads. I was lucky, didn’t have to deal with the Chitauris, though. No, I got to contend with the Asgardian prince himself,” she said bitterly. “When he pulled me out from under the lab table where I was hiding and used his scepter to put me in a trance. Somehow, he used that thing to unlock what was in me. He unlocked my genetics. I was...suddenly strong, agile, an Olympic-level athlete.”

“So, Loki made you a super soldier?” Bucky asked as the fire started.

“Not really. I wasn’t a soldier. I was a super lab tech. Super...rape victim. Super broken.” She smiled sadly. “Super alcoholic. I spent almost all of my money on booze that year. Takes a lot to get me drunk. I assume you guys have a similar issue.”

“Haven’t tried. I was afraid of what might...happen,” Bucky answered, quietly.

“I tried...in ‘44 when Bucky fell off the train. Only drank one bottle, though. Might’ve worked if I drank more,” Steve said.

Cassie nodded. “Gotta drink fast. I’ve found that two bottles of strong, cheap whiskey are enough to get me drunk...for about an hour and a half. Which was usually enough to get me to sleep for a while.” She licked her lips as she pushed the second set of poles through the tent. “I fell into a deep spiral for a year. Loki, he killed my daughter, raped me, carved his name into my chest...it didn’t seem like there was very much good in life.”

“Been there,” Bucky muttered, pulling food out of his bag.

“Anyway, uh, Clint showed up after about a year of me...bottling everything up in whiskey. He was nice. He saw the potential in me, knew my damage...or at least the damage Loki caused...but he tried to help me find myself anyway.” She scoffed derisively. “Unfortunately, Loki noticed. He didn’t like that I was spending time with another man. He doesn’t ever like when I spend time with other men. He’s not exactly thrilled that I’m out here with you.”

“You think he’s watching us?” Steve asked, standing straight and looking around.

“He’s watching me. He’s always watching me. The psycho thinks I’m his queen, he’s gonna have an eye on me...as often as possible, anyway,” she said as she started pushing stakes into the ground one by one. “Loki showed up with the scepter again and put me in a trance. Steve was there for this part. Loki made me ‘Joanna’. Now, when I came back to myself after a couple weeks of following Loki around as Joanna, I thought I was evil. I thought Joanna was evil because of how I followed that jerk around, but she wasn’t. She just didn’t have all of my hang-ups. I talked to a shrink and he clarified some stuff. I realized that Joanna was just me without my inhibitions. But at first, I was convinced I was evil. I ran away...to Austria. I spe-”

“She left the base in a hospital gown. No shoes, nothing,” Steve said, his tone proud. “We were in the Alps, Buck, but she survived, made it down the mountain without even a hint of frostbite.”

“Didn’t know you were so impressed by that,” she mumbled.

“Of course I was. We thought you were dead after we went a few days without finding you...but then Clint found you.”

“Only after Loki found me first.” Cassie sighed as she looked at the tent. It was undoubtedly going to be a very tight fit for three supersoldiers. “Anyway, I lived the simple life in Austria for a few months. I worked at this little diner and relearned German, ‘cause when Fury steamrolled my Hydra indoctrination, he felt the need to rid me of my Mother Tongue.” She cleared her throat to deal with the bitterness. “Anyway, horrible nightmares, spiral of depression and sadness, found God but that wasn’t hard since I was sleeping in the closet of the local mission. Loki found me again, had his way with me again, disguised as the priest who kept me from trying to kill myself for two months. He didn’t have his scepter that time thought so I fought back and I fought back hard and then I ran...straight into Clint, who brought me back.”

She laughed quietly. “Blah blah blah, identity issues. Blah blah, my ex sent me to a shrink, I realized I wasn’t evil and that I could make up for my family legacy through being a superhero. Became an Avenger, Clint started teaching me Ops stuff and...I started remembering.” She turned to look at the soldiers. Bucky’s eyes were focused on her, but Steve was looking at the ground. “Muscle memory kicked in first. The way I field-stripped my pistol, how well I moved during sparring sessions. I held off the actual memories as long as possible, tried to focus on the ‘now’, but...when I told Pietro Maximoff that I’d never killed anyone, I got the first flash of…” She took a deep breath and swallowed. “Agent Mackenzie. It wasn’t much but it made me see that, if I kept letting myself remember then there was no way I was going to be the woman I thought I was when I was in the Fridge. If I remembered, I’d become more of this...other person. The ‘worse than Joanna’ person that Fury knew I was. So, I left the Avengers, went back to school.”

“Until I called you into this,” Steve said, guiltily.

“I was still remembering anyway, Steve. Remember Christmas? I wasn’t sleeping, freaked out when I was cutting the ham. It wasn’t being an Avenger that was doing it...it was everything. It was living my life.”

Steve nodded, standing straight, but maintaining an air of guilt. “Hey, Bucky, you wanna come with me, do a perimeter check?” he asked. Bucky followed without a word.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So, how’d you end up with the archer?” Bucky asked, eating his MRE spaghetti. “I know how you met, but how’d he get you to date him?”

“Hey, don’t say it like that. Archery’s sexy,” she defended, eating a large cracker. “Um...I don’t know, really. He’s nice and charismatic...attractive. Blue eyes get to me...and he’s a relentless flirt. He was workin’ me from the moment I met him.” She looked down and picked up a packet of peanut butter. “I think...in all seriousness, I think when I started to get confused about who I was, I needed someone who knew the real me. Clint used to surveil me for Fury...off and on for about two years, he watched me. So, he knew the woman I was with Phil. He knew all about me. He got to witness the happy optimist with the flair for science. I need that. I-I liked his bluntness and he wanted to fix me.”

“That’s the basis of your relationship?” Bucky asked, licking his spork. “Doesn’t seem very strong to me.”

“Well, sex is a factor,” Cassie responded flippantly, eliciting a deep blush to break out across Steve’s face.

Bucky reached out and hit his shoulder. “Come on, Steve. People are gonna think you’re a virgin if you act like that,” he teased.

“He’s not one?” Cassie asked.

“Buck…” Steve warned, glaring across the fire at his friend.

“Nah, I got him laid during the war,” Bucky answered, ignoring the look. “See, he had his heart set on Agent Carter, but his loins were just fine with this pretty French girl.”

Cassie chuckled as she ripped open the peanut butter. “Well, Clint and Tony owe me ten bucks.”

“You bet on whether I was a virgin?” Steve asked, eyes wide. Cassie just shrugged and Steve looked down at his knees. “Sophie was a very nice girl. I would’ve written her but...ya know, frozen in a block of ice.”

“A nice girl? I thought nice girls waited ‘til marriage back in your day.”

“She was French,” Bucky said, like it was the only explanation needed.

“Much more liberal in France back then,” Steve explained.

“Okay, then,” Cassie said, laughing. “So, wait...just the one, Steve?”

“Why does it matter?” Steve asked, running his fingers through his hair. “I mean, one is more than you guys thought, right?”

“Actually, I assumed you’d had several just since you thawed out,” Cassie responded before gesturing at him. “I mean, look at you. In today’s society, you being amazingly handsome and heroic...I figured you might have been talked into a couple one night stands.” The blush on his cheeks seemed to take Steve’s whole face, spreading like wildfire.

“Even I’ve gotten laid since you’ve been thawed out,” Bucky added.

Cassie looked playfully offended. “Oh, so the thing about not having a woman in your arms since the forties, that was just a line?”

“I said a ‘beautiful woman’,” Bucky corrected. “Ludmilla was a troll.”

Cassie laughed. “Really? You needed to get some so bad that you had sex with a troll named ‘Ludmilla’?”

Bucky smiled. “You sleep with Clint,” he reminded before tucking his hair behind his ears. “In my defense, I was breaking a seventy year abstinence.”

She smirked as she turned to look at Steve. “What about you? Have you broken that ‘frozen in a block of ice’ abstinence yet?”

“I-I really don’t think this is an appropriate-”

“Romanoff?” Cassie interrupted. “CIA Agent Carter?”

Steve sighed and looked away. “There was a SHIELD agent. She asked me to coffee, then we went to dinner...afterwards, she got a little...needful.”

Cassie turned to Bucky. “‘Needful’ equals ‘horny’, right?” Bucky nodded.

“That was a few months before SHIELD fell. Haven’t seen her since,” Steve finished quickly.

“You okay, Steve?” Bucky asked.

“Um...I just realized that she might have been Hydra,” he responded, rubbing at his temple and looking like he was questioning every decision he had ever made.

“I’m sure she wasn’t-” Cassie started, but Bucky interrupted.

“Might’ve been.”

“Well, she didn’t kill you in your sleep so you can probably count on her not being Hydra,” Cassie rationalized.

“Well, I didn’t...sleep.”

“You dog, you,” Cassie teased.

“All right, all right. Finish up your food and we’ll bed down.” Steve turned away, looking completely embarrassed as the other laughed at him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cassie lay on her side with her back to Bucky and Steve. The tent was small. They’d only been expecting to need room for two and she wasn’t large, but her two companions were. She tried to make herself even smaller, but her feet kept touching Bucky’s legs, her ass kept brushing against him every time she wiggled a bit to chase comfort. Or maybe it was the other way. Maybe he was touching her.

A few minutes after Steve’s breathing deepened and slowed, Cassie felt Bucky shift. He turned over to lie on his left side, facing her. “You smell good,” he whispered, tentatively moving his hand over to rest on her hand. “Which is so crazy since we’ve been sweating for two days.”

“There are pheromones in the natural scent of a person,” she whispered back, unsure of what to say. “But I...I have been wearing an antiperspirant. Just...saying.” She swallowed heavily as his hand began to drift up, his fingertips playing with the hem of her tank top.

“Steve told me to back off,” he whispered, his breath cascading over her ear and cheek. “I get why. How we were raised...back then, it was more than just a low move to make a pass at another man’s girl, ‘specially if he put a ring on her finger.” His hand slipped under her shirt and rested heavily above the thick circular scar she gave herself to represent a navel when she was eighteen. “But you’re not like any woman I’ve ever met. You’re nothing like the women from the forties but you...you’re not meant for 2016 either. I’ve lived through so many decades and...here you are. Here’s this beautiful woman who sees what little good is left in me.”

“I saw the good fifteen years ago, when you brought the CSF to the Playground. You were so cold and emotionless when you walked in. So strong and stoic, but when you saw me strapped down to that table in a fetal position so they could inject the CSF, you literally flinched.” She took a deep breath and sighed it out. “You refused to give them the vial. They had to call in your handler.”

“I just couldn’t believe they were experimenting on you. You were so young. I knew they were going to break you. I wish I could have stopped them.”

“It’s not your fault, Sergeant. I know you would have stopped them if you could have.” She turned over to face him, forcing his fingers to slide over her hip and settle in the small of her back. “You are absolutely a good man, Bucky.”

He shook his head a little, his tair tickling her forehead as it moved. “A good man wouldn’t have spent the last two days wanting  another man’s fiancée.”

She scoffed a little. “And a good woman wouldn’t be so damn excited to hear that. I guess neither of us are perfect.”

Bucky smiled softly. “To me, you are. As close to perfect as a man can touch.” He brought his hand up to pull a lock of sweaty hair from her forehead and tuck it back with the rest of her hair. So much care in a single action.

“Bucky...I meant what I said in Germany, ya know. If there was a man who might take me from Clint, it’d be you,” she whispered, part of her wondering exactly why she was telling the man.

His eyes went just a little wide. “I...we better turn back over.” His hand returned to the small of her back, though. “If Steve sees this, he’ll start a fight and I’m a bit disadvantaged at the moment.”

Cassie smiled. “I’d protect you, soldier.”

“No doubt about that,” Bucky whispered, smiling as he rubbed a circle into the small of her back with his thumb. “But we’ve got two weeks ‘til Wakanda. Plenty of time to piss off Captain America.” He licked his lips before pulling his hand back and rolling over to his back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As they were walking the next day, Cassie’s bag began to ring. “You brought a phone?” Steve asked as she dropped the pack to the ground and started to dig through it.

“Cool your jets, Rogers. I’m not an idiot,” she snapped, pulling out an old Nokia cell phone with a thick antenna.

“Whoa. Even I know that’s ancient tech,” Bucky said as he looked at it.

“Ancient, yes, but functional. Not working on the same systems as the new stuff. No GPS. If I keep the call short, they won’t even be able to ping the mobile towers,” she said, proudly. “Had to steal it from a museum, but it’s tactically sound.” She hit the button and held the cell to her ear. “Moshi moshi?”

“Cassie?” a familiar voice asked.

“Phil? Wh-what’s going on? How’d you know I have this-”

“I was wondering if I could use you on something...kinda world-ending important. Mack says he can’t get a location on your cell. Where are you?”

“Phil, it’s a...it’s a long story, but, uh...I’ll get back to you,” she said, moving to hang up.

“No! Don’t hang up! I wouldn’t be calling if I didn’t need-” Phil started.

“Is that Coulson?” Steve asked as Bucky looked between the other two.

“Is that Captain America?” Phil asked.

“Yeah, it is,” she answered both of them at the same time. “Look, I can’t stay on the phone. I know you’re running traces and you’re gonna have a location for me any minute now. I can’t let you find me. I’m actually pretty damn busy.”

“I have an Inhuman parasite in the body of a man I killed working to destroy the world. He’s infected Daisy and taken control of her, I think this is a little more important than whatever you’re doing in North Africa, Cassie.”

“Thanks for letting me know the trace is working,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I will call you back later. This is important, too.”

“Ya know, I thought you signed the Accords as a ruse to get out of the Raft, but if you’re not willing to help me with this just because it’s off the books-”

“Mein Gott, Philip! This has nothing to do with that! I am helping Cap and Bucky make it somewhere safe so that we can mount an offensive on the Raft and help the other Avengers escape captivity! If you really need help with Inhuman, we can help you after the jailbreak. I will call you back then! Goodbye, Phil!” Cassie snapped, turning off the phone and shoving it back into her bag. She looked up at the soldiers who were both looking down at her questioningly. “He was talking too much. I had to cut him off before they got a location,” she explained calmly.

“Who’s Coulson?” Bucky asked, offering his hand as she went to stand. She took it and slung her backpack over her shoulder.

“I told you I had an ex who’s a big fan of Cap and the Commandos?” she reminded him. “Phil Coulson, Director of SHIELD.”

“You dated the director of SHIELD?” Bucky asked.

“Well, he wasn’t Director when I dated him,” she said, smiling.

“He’s a good man,” Steve said, thinking of Coulson dead at Loki’s hand.

“That’s a recurrent theme with your boyfriends, isn’t it?” Bucky asked as Cassie adjusted the straps of her bag. “A good man, just couldn’t keep you.”

Cassie looked at her feet as she started to walk away from them. “Phil didn’t want to keep me. He found a pretty little cellist in Portland. He decided on her.”

“What an idiot,” Bucky commented, following her.

“And Clint hasn’t lost me yet,” she finished.

Bucky nodded once and moved past her to take point. “Where’s your ring?” he whispered as he passed her. Cassie looked down at her left hand, shocked to see that her engagement ring was gone. “Pocket.”

“How’d it get there, Barnes?” she asked, patting her pants.

“Don’t want people seeing it,” he said, turning his head to look at her. “Might think you’re worth stealing or something.”

“I’m definitely worth stealing. My wit alone is enough to make me worth the effort.”

“And that body of yours is just icing,” Bucky shot back with a smirk.

“On a very intelligent cake. Don’t objectify me, Sergeant,” she said with a smile.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart. You and I have both been objects.”

“Do you have to do that?” Steve snapped from behind her.

“You’re right, Steve. Let’s just pretend we don’t have a gorgeous woman traveling with us,” Bucky said.

Steve rolled his eyes. “You don’t need to pretend anything, but you shouldn’t be so shameless with-”

“A grown-ass woman who’s giving as good as she’s getting?” Cassie interrupted. “I’m not married, Steve.”

“Your fiance is sitting in a cell right now because of me. The least I can do is make sure that my best friend doesn’t break up his engagement while he’s stuck in there.”

“Glad you think so highly of me, Steve,” Bucky mumbled.

“I think the world of you, both of you,” Steve said, seriously. “That’s why I don’t want you to do something damaging to-”

“Steve, stop. If I chose to break off my engagement to Barton, it would be because I chose to. Not because of Bucky or you. Maybe I’m…” She shook her head. “...not really sure I want to be married. Maybe I don’t know who I am so how could I possibly make a good addition to someone else? Maybe I can’t marry him because I’ve been hiding the unsavory parts of myself from him. The worst thing he knows about me is Joanna.”

“Clint would love you anyway,” Steve said, matter-of-factly.

Cassie scoffed. “If he wanted an assassin for a bride, he’d have asked Natasha a long time ago.”

“You aren’t an assassin, Cassie,” Steve said, grabbing her hand to stop her.

She smirked sardonically as she turned and looked up at him. “We don’t know that, do we? What we do know is that at least one of the names on SHIELD’s Walls of Valor was on there because of me. I’ve killed. A good man, a good agent, one that Fury liked enough to go on a search for.” She shook her head and forced out a sharp breath of air. “Were there more? Was it a whole group of agents that I murdered? I don’t know. You don’t know. But just one is enough to make me question myself forever. And it’ll be enough for Clint to stop seeing me as his pristine Red Queen.”

Steve’s eyebrows came together. “He doesn’t love you because you’re… ‘pristine’.”

“He wouldn’t love me if he knew I was a monster, Steve,” she argued.

“I don’t agree,” Steve said as Bucky stopped and turned to them. “And you aren’t a monster.”

“You don’t have to agree. I know him. I know Clint. He sees me as this beautiful, broken thing, a little bit scarred but otherwise beautiful. The biggest scar on me is supposed to be the one Loki carved into my chest. He thinks that I’m...getting better, but I’m just getting better at hiding it. I shouldn’t have to hide anything from him though and I do. I have to hide. You think it won’t change how he sees me when he finds out I murdered someone? You can’t say that, Cap, because it’s changed how you look at me.” Steve opened his mouth to argue, but Cassie continued before he could. “You look at me and Bucky like Clint looks at fuckin’ rescue dogs. ‘Oh sure, this one has scars from being forced into dog fights but we can rehabilitate him!” she said in a mock of Clint’s voice before her face fell.

“Except we didn’t get the Pit Bull with the clipped ears and the scars, Steve. We got the Golden Retriever with the waggly tail who eats pizza.” She stepped toward Bucky and adjusted her bag on her back. “I don’t mind being the Pit Bull so much but Clint thinks I’m the Retriever...and it’s gonna hurt our relationship when he realizes I’m not.”

Steve shook his head sadly. “When did you decide your relationship was over?” he asked, quietly.

She looked between Steve and Bucky, then shrugged. “Probably when I saw how he looked at Bucky.”

“Was that before or after you told him that Bucky could take you from him?” Steve asked, pointedly.

“Back when we were still stateside, Steve. When we were watching the news about the bombing in Vienna,” Cassie answered before she started walking again. “He looked at Bucky like he was a rabid dog.”

“I’m not excited about all these dog metaphors,” Bucky spoke up as he followed her.

“I just don’t think you should write off your whole engagement until you know how Clint feels about...your past.”

“My past. Like it’s that simple.” She rolled her eyes. “This isn’t like you finding out I was pregnant with Phil’s kid or that I wanted so badly to be a mother that I was willing to let Loki’s child destroy me from the inside. This is worse. This is murder.”

“But ‘murder’ implies you did it on purpose, Cassie. You were forced-” Steve started.

“No, I wasn’t forced. I was given an order and I didn’t even try to resist. I murdered that agent and...memories are vague, but I think I liked it. I am a murderer, Steve. Clint is not.”

“We’ve all done regrettable things,” Steve said.

“Not like this. Only Bucky can understand this.” She swallowed thickly. “Look, drop it. I’m not who he thinks I am and I never will be,” she said before walking away.

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[langwrites]

Lang Plays Fire Emblem: Three Houses

So a while ago I said I was planning on playing the story routes in this order: Blue Lions, Black Eagles, Church of Seiros, and then Golden Deer.

The Golden Deer made a liar out of me.

So, here’s an approximation of What Happened During Verdant Wind.

So many spoilers below the cut, you guys. I do a lot of route comparisons.

Okay, I’ve been staring at the “which house do you want” selection screen for an embarrassing amount of time.

This shouldn’t be hard. I had a plan.

But no.

I clicked the Golden Deer, just like that. What the fuck, Claude. I blame you.

Immediately upon talking to this rop of students again, I can feel the difference in the social group from what the Lions were like. The latter were really a bunch of noble kids around their prince, and they felt really tight-knit. Classic Fire Emblem starter crew.

The Golden Deer is the fucking Scooby Gang.

First impressions of individuals:

Raphael, thank goodness, is the one character who absolutely has his shit in order. Sure, he’s bad at book work and thinks everything comes down to MUSCLES, but all of his emotional issues are handled by the time he arrives at Garreg Mach. He’s the brightest of sunshines.

Ignatz needs some more confidence in his art, and also I want to see his painting of Seiros. Now, if only both of his offensive stats and growths weren’t incredibly bad.

I was so close to making him my dancer. Just because he sure as hell wasn’t gonna be useful anywhere else.

Lorenz! I don’t like him. His haircut is a monstrosity.

Leonie! We are going. To be. Besties. Even though the timing of your support conversations are incredibly bad.

Marianne no please don’t be sad everyone loves you

Hilda is the greatest enabler I have ever seen. By which I mean she enables other people to do all her work for her.

Lysithea is going to have the last word with God. And especially he Death Knight.

And finally Claude! Teamwork makes the dream work, so obviously meme work does the same.

I’m sorry.

PRE-TIMESKIP

Mock battle! Marianne’s great and I love her and also the only healer oh god.

OKAY. I have access to New Game+ bonuses. What do I do first?

Immediately crank the Professor Level stat to max to avoid ever having to run short of activity points again.

Next, raise all skills I can’t easily get to at least Rank D+. HEAVY ARMOR IN PARTICULAR.

Third: Boost supports with people whose support ranks are an absolute pain in the ass to earn. Lookin’ at you, Rhea.

Also, put glasses on Byleth (named “Yuri” for this playthrough). Glasses are the bomb. I am the evil genius.

LEVEL GRINDING TIME.

It’s a lot harder with Blacksmith access being story-locked, but I can do this!

As a direct result, every single battle after this point is a complete curbstomp in my favor. Because the grind don’t stop.

I broke a lot more weapons than last time, though.

I will befriend Leonie and Ferdinand if it’s the last fucking thing I do. I will befriend everyone, and I will not get timeskip-locked out of supports! >:(

Ferdinand was my first recruit. Oh dear.

Okay, there are like five born cavaliers in this game. Leonie, Ferdinand, Lorenz, Sylvain, and I guess Dimitri if you’re on the right route.

Last time, Sylvain was a great paladin and a decent Dark Knight before he started getting one- or two-stat level ups for like thirty levels. Similarly, Dimitri was great until all his ultra-secret-awesome promotions didn’t use a fucking horse.

Contrast Leonie who, despite sitting out 99% of the game out of spite from me getting locked out of her support chain, went to endgame with a ten-level deficit and still rocked.

Ferdinand didn’t count since I failed to recruit him last time and he died. These two facts are directly related.

I didn’t use Lorenz at all; I recruited him to keep from having to kill him later.

This time, Lorenz straight-up sucks, Sylvain did the terrible level dance for like the entire game, and Dimitri’s not recruitable.

Contrast, again, Leonie. Her support chain with the player character is hot garbage, but she plowed through most of the game as a mainstay of my team and made it to Bow Knight first out of anyone.

Bernadetta and Ashe as Bow Knights don’t even come close to being as durable as she is, except for Ashe’s absolutely bananas Resistance. 29?! WHY?!

And Ferdinand is also awesome. His only real weak point is Resistance, but he doesn’t need it. He dodge-tanks everything, is faster than Leonie, and has two Saints’ relics he unknowingly stole from Seteth.

He still talks in MLA format, though.

I started putting off recruiting people so I wouldn’t have to level-grind them up to par with the rest of my team.

But if these people wanna join, of course I’m saying yes.

Lord Lonato’s rebellion and Miklan yoinking the Lance of Ruin feel way less relevant on a Golden Deer playthrough than on a Blue Lions one. None of the Herd really know who the hell these people are.

I say that despite having already recruited Sylvain for this playthrough and deploying him in the relevant level. He wasn’t treated as there by the game’s preamble cutscenes.

At least the Holy Mausoleum stuff feels more...handled? Claude actually asks questions about rebellion and about the “assassination plot,” where Dimitri didn’t really.

OKAY SO there’s this whole plot thing where Flayn goes missing for a month. With the Blue Lions, this is handled like a manhunt. Dimitri’s seriousness about the issue rubs off on everyone except Sylvain, and Felix actually correctly identifies the culprit almost instantly. He doesn’t know he’s done it, though, because basically everyone is just throwing out accusations. Manuela is the real MVP.

CONTRAST THE DEER. The very first meeting reads like a Scooby Doo episode, when they’re piling up clues and throwing out suggestions like the gang of goofball teenagers they are. Claude’s got this group running like Persona 4′s Investigation Team. None of them are jaded or frantic, they’re just doing this.

Why did Rhea entrust the investigation to a herd of teenagers.

Anyway, the rest proceeds as usual.

I don’t know why the game tries to drop the same set of hints for each route. “OoooowoooooOOOOoooo, your house leader might be the FLAME EMPEROR.”

The Flame Emperor wears heels. And is still too short to be either Claude or Dimitri. Especially Dimitri. Who the fuck let this kid get so tall.

The only real result of all this bullshit is that my wyvern-riding sniper of doom is not available during the first map where Yuri personally beat the Death Knight into the ground.

Which, by the by, was hilariously cathartic.

It doesn’t exactly matter, since the only unit who can make real use of the Dark Mage and Dark Bishop classes is unrecruitable, but bragging rights.

Remire Village’s drama is about as bad while playing as the Golden Deer. One of the foreshadowing cutscenes, though is excellent:

Claude actually finds a book that depicts The Immaculate One before its debut, only to have it confiscated by Seteth and learn that it wasn’t a library book at all; it belonged to “Tomas.” Like, all of his suspicions--which he shares with the player--start lining up. Censorship! Monsters! Sword of the Creator! What the hell is going on here??

Dimitri’s version of the cutscene involves him being caught investigating Lord Arundel by the player and Sothis. Which--since his route doesn’t meaningfully deal with the Morlocks faction aside from steamrolling them as incidental opponents--seems kinda useless.

Kicked the Death Knight into submission again out of spite.

Sylvain was useful! Mostly because I had him sit there and distract the incidentals while Claude and Lysithea cleaned house, but still!

Claude is the only lord character who seems to understand that the transforming Morlock faction probably needs to be taken more seriously. For the remainder of Part One, no one does so.

Rhea you’ve got some ‘splainin to do.

Marianne’s my team’s dancer this time. She’s a sweetheart. She seemed happy to be asked and to pursue the lessons, and being able to use Physic is a good trait in someone who’s nearly always going to be waaaaay behind the rest of the group.

Dad-stabbing happened.

Again.

Boop boop Solon’s dead.

Again.

Dear diary: I learned the definition of irony and set the Flame Emperor on fire.

I kid.

But Claude took her out in one completely overpowered shot, because crits are a thing, Flame Emperor class skills don’t reduce damage enough to survive it, and his Dex stat is through the fucking roof. And he was on a wyvern at the time because fuck it, why not.

Claude’s reaction to all of this is a minor letdown compared to the fully-rendered cutscene in the last route.

This would become something of a trend--taking out OP bosses with unexpected critical hits.

I didn’t expect to like Lorenz and now I do. How.

This is hilarious simply because he seems to be the only character that Mercedes hates. What the fuck, man.

Once again, Edelgard invades! Once again, I drop someone unexpected on her head!

Not really. It was Yuri.

Yuri does the timeskip shuffle and we’ll see everyone again after a nap.

FIVE YEARS LATER.

Aw, Claude was waiting for Yuri to show up. Adorable.

The post-meetup fight is actually harder than it was in the BL route, despite excessive level-grinding. This is due to three factors:

Claude is automatically on a wyvern, meaning that he has inherent class vulnerability to archers on a map with at least five of them. And less range than they did, for some fucking reason.

Lorenz and Ignatz started out on the same corner of the map and both of them are shitty offensive units who could barely kill a mage between them. (Neither of Ignatz’s offensive stats cracked 20 for another thirteen levels.)

I don’t have Ashe and his personal skill Locktouch, and nobody started with a Chest Key or Door Key, which meant I had to keep various enemies alive long enough to steal all of their stuff. And the enemy item drops came up one short of the number of chests on the map. I want my stuff, dammit.

LET’S MAKE A SCENE.

Randolph, as a boss in Verdant Wind, did not get any better at figuring out when he’s outmatched. Therefore, I killed him with Raphael again.

At least he straight-up died this time.

Claude didn’t even get to set the damn place on fire.

Ingrid is turning out to be way better of a unit this time than she was last time. She’s a little slower, but a lot stronger.

FELIX, WHERE THE FUCK WAS ALL THIS STRENGTH HIDING LAST TIME. YOU’RE TEN POINTS AHEAD OF THE GUY WHO HAS STORY-BASED SUPER STRENGTH.

AND SPEED.

Iiiiiiiiit’s JUDITH!

She only shows up on one map in the entire Azure Moon route, and that’s a damn shame. She’s so cool in Verdant Wind.

A lord-class character who isn’t also a Lord! WOO!

Also her spies are better than anybody’s apparently.

I am choosing to believe that because Ingrid’s family is related to Judith’s, her badassery in this route is the direct result of meeting her distant cousin and absorbing badass radiation.

There’s something funny about having to pull one over on Lorenz’s dad to get anything done. The Great Bridge falls not to power, but Claude baiting Count Gloucester’s entire army to be somewhere else. (FEAR THE DEER.)

As a result, Ladislava dies alone. (As opposed to taking Ferdinand with her due to plot shenanigans.)

Lysithea and Ferdinand’s paralogue was really quite sad, for all that the only named guy who died was deeply unsympathetic. Ferdinand’s dad was an asshole, but he wasn’t the asshole for this particular scenario, and now both of his parents are gone. :(

Felix...hasn’t heard from his dad in a while. Worrying.

Oh, and Caspar’s uncle is still dead, in case we were keeping track of that.

Dorothea’s happier with Ferdinand alive. She did an impression of the Gatekeeper. :3

Gronder Field! FUCK.

I delayed playing this chapter for two solid days because I already knew what was gonna happen. Specifically: Edelgard gets injured and evacuated, and Dimitri drops of exhaustion just in time to get run through like ten times by the Emperor’s rearguard.

I eventually got my shit together enough to do the thing.

Marianne, Raphael, and Ferdinand went after the Kingdom army first. Leonie and Felix hung back and then reinforced them after taking out the archer on the central hill.

Claude killed everyone in the center of the map, which meant Edelgard set the entire hill on fire and if Bernadetta had not been recruited she would’ve burned to death there on the spot.

Ahem.

I sent Yuri to clear the entire left side of the map by herself.

She succeeded.

Raphael KO’d Dimitri with a luck Gauntlet crit, got blasted down to half health by a Warlock, then plunked ineffectually at Dedue until Marianne used her Levin Sword to sort him out.

Ferdinand killed everyone else on that side of the map.

Claude once again got the kill on Edelgard with a lucky crit, after Yuri had killed everyone else (up to and including the Demonic Beasts) single-handedly.

And then the plot moved on. Hilda’s account of Dimitri’s death was awful, Dedue’s reaction was worse, and off we go to punch Edelgard’s teeth in.

Again.

Annette’s dad is probably dead now.

Felix’s, too.

(I THOUGHT WE WERE DONE WITH THE DAD-STABBING.)

FOOOOOORT MERCEUS.

No matter how many times I think about it, Claude’s Almyran army reinforcements only make so much sense. How the hell and fuck did he manage to sneak an entire foreign army across a whole country to help with one battle?

But hey, they’re here, and Claude almost admitted the reason why he could do that. And the arrow greeting between him and Nader was cool.

(Spoiler: On top of being the Alliance’s leader, he’s also the crown prince of Almyra!)

The Death Knight had the gall to run from my army.

Yuri punched his ticket for the third time, which was not the charm.

And then Fort Merceus took an intercontinental ballistic missile and suddenly defeating the fort’s garrison feels a lot less triumphant.

Spot the miscolored eyes in this cutscene!

Welp. Fuck it, we’re off to Enbarr. Time to also punch Hubert this time! What a change of pace.

Eyyy, it’s the Enbarr map. I totally forgot to bring Seteth and Flayn along to check out the opera house, despite a whole bunch of characters talking about how they totally wanted to check that place out at some point. No room for deadweights in a map that has SO MANY ARCHERS.

Managed to get the special dialogue between Ferdinand and Hubert, and now I’m sad again.

Killed Hubert with Claude.

And because this is a two-part map, we immediately run off to chase down Edelgard. Due to the player army not doing a really weird 180 in the middle of the plot to kick Cornelia out of Fhirdiad, she didn’t have time to turn into a giant demonic thing! She just has WAY TOO MANY MAGES.

Strategy: Forget what Door Keys are, split the team by Avoid rating, and go to town.

Claude nearly died thanks to a critical mass of Gremories and Mortal Savants (and still, what the fuck is that name), but Dedue-as-guest-character didn’t, so I count that as a win! His defense was so high that the Giant Demonic Beast couldn’t even scratch him.

Claude, Petra, and Ingrid all having Alert Stance as a skill means dodge-tanking is hilariously easy.

Also, Ingrid was supposed to just take a chunk out of Edelgard’s HP bar for the final assault and ended up crit-killing her on the first attack. With a bog-standard silver lance.

Weird as the situation turned out, I guess that means one of Dimitri’s friends really did avenge him after saying they would. Even if Dedue was the only one who had a special cutscene about it.

We rescued Rhea! And the characters being happy about it doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. I want answers, same as Claude, and being forced to RP Yuri being oh so worried about Rhea’s safety felt incredibly disingenuous.

Claude actually yells at her over the “...” she seems to think is an explanation. THE TIME FOR SECRETS IS PAST.

WHY DID ALL THIS SHIT HAPPEN.

WE’VE BEEN AT WAR FOR FIVE YEARS.

A WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE DIED HORRIBLY FOR BASICALLY NOTHING.

Incidentally, this is why I didn’t end up playing Edelgard’s route as planned. Her logic for kicking two other sovereign countries in the balls felt incredibly self-centered.

At least Catherine’s happy. Same with Alois and the rest of the Church crew.

They are soon going to be not as happy.

I’m filling out the ENTIRE support log before endgame. I have absolutely no idea what characters are going to end up together as a direct result.

The last conversation? Seteth and Manuela’s A+ support!

Because so many of the support conversations are romantic at A/A+ level, I guess we’ve managed to turn this ragtag army into a polyarmory.

Oh boy, Thales sure is a sore loser.

I say, as though I didn’t kill EVERYONE he knew over the course of an hour and also split his skull open under Seteth’s axe. His racism would have keeled his ass over before death set in.

That sure is a ICBM.

GOD DAMMIT RHEA, THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A Q&A SESSION AFTER THIS.

WHY DOES EVERYONE WHOSE JOB IS EXPOSITION UP AND DIE.

Meanwhile: THE UBER-DEAD PEOPLE.

Claude, your route is batshit. What is this genre anymore?!

I wanna point out that, despite seeing Rhea/Seiros do the dragon thing, the player character never told Claude what the fuck that was about. I feel like one of the first things I would have done after the class reunion would be going, “By the by, did anyone else notice the fucking dragon?!”  WHO IS ALSO THE POPE???

Bah.

ANYWAY. Looooong-overdue exposition time!

I notice that Rhea didn’t out Seteth or Flayn, which was nice of her.

Claude, she can turn into a fucking dragon. I don’t think immortality is that far from being plausible.

GOD DAMMIT NEMESIS, CAN YOU FUCK OFF FOR TEN MORE MINUTES.

Uuuuuuugh fine, fuck everything, I’m putting your head on a pike.

CLAUDE, THE SWORD OF THE CREATOR LOOKS LIKE A SPINE.

OF COURSE IT’S MADE OF BONES. A BUNCH OF THE HEROES’ RELICS MOVE ON THEIR OWN!

The frantic music is not helping.

Time to kill a bandit king.

“My flabber is completely gasted by now.” Okay, that made me laugh.

Nemesis’s boss mechanic is pretty neat. To kill him at all, you need to kill all of the minibosses in the level and take down his friendship-based-plot-armor.

Or it would be, if I didn’t already make a habit of steamrolling everyone else on the field before tackling the boss at the end.

CUTSCENE.

Cutscene lesson: “Fuck honor duels.” It’s time for CHAIN SWORD LIMBO.

Claude, your bow shoots LASERS. SINCE WHEN.

Also getting kicked across the field by a dude twice his size didn’t seem to actually affect his mood much.

Awww, Yuri smiles now. Adorable. :D

AND THAT’S A WRAP.

Pairings: Yuri/Sothis (mostly to get them out of the way and see what everyone else would do), Claude/Petra, Raphael/Marianne, Catherine/Shamir, Lorenz/Mercedes, Ashe/Annette, Felix/Sylvain (bad end; the former straight up disappears), Seteth & Flayn wander off, Manuela/Dorothea, Lysithea/Linhardt (again), Leonie/Ignatz, Ferdinand/Bernadetta, Caspar/Hilda, and a couple of people are alone. Cyril gets to actually be a student after the story’s done, though!

Whew, that was fun. Gonna mix up the pairs a bit next time I play through the endgame and see what happens.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 219

So let me just recap the last twenty episodes.  Gohan went to high school, and he didn’t want anyone to know about his super powers, so he invented a superhero persona to disguise himself.   Videl learned his secret, and blackmailed him into entering the 25th Tenkaichi Budokai, because she also learned that he was the son of former Budokai champion Son Goku.    Videl is, of course, the daughter of former Budokai champion Mr. Satan, so she thinks it would be a dream match to fight Gohan, but she has no idea how much stronger Gohan is.   

Overhearing Gohan talking about the tournament, Vegeta invited himself to the competition, just so he can Gohan could have a real competition instead of Gohan just steamrolling the others.   Then Goku decided to join in, cashing in his one day to return to the living world.    And before you knew it, we had this feel-good reunion on our hands, with most of the Z-Fighters and their friends having a fun time.   

Except the Surpreme Kai is also in the tournament, as he and his sidekick Kibito have entered undercover, apparently for reasons having to do with two other entrants, Yamu and Spopovitch.    As far as anyone can tell, Y&S were once ordinary humans, but they’ve been drastically changed, and they seem to have some evil agenda for the tournament.   

And that brings us to this episode, the finale of the “World Tournament Saga,” as Funimation reckoned the story arcs back in 2001.    The irony is that the past ten episodes have been all about this tournament, but it’s actually been nothing but a sideshow.    The real story unfolds here, with Kibito facing Gohan in the fourth match of the first round.    Kibito just wants Gohan to turn Super Saiyan, and the Supreme Kai explains that this is because he expects Yamu and Spopovitch to assault Gohan.     Gohan could easily fight those two off, but Shin plans to psychically restrain Gohan, allowing Yamu and Spopes to do their business.    The point of all this, as we’ll see later, is that the Supreme Kai wants to follow Yamu and Spopovitch back to their boss.     

I say all of this because Episodes 200-219 are sort of a lull in DBZ.   I don’t know if everyone sees it that way, or maybe it’s just me, but it is tempting for me to write this part off as kind of boring.    Mostly, I look back on it fondly because I was excitedly buying these episodes on VHS tapes in the summer of ‘01, because I really wanted to know what happened next.    I don’t know why I’m so nostalgic for those days.    I felt kind of pathetic at the time: this huge nerd, fresh out of college, sitting alone in his apartment watching anime tapes.   A couple of liveblog posts ago, I used a joke that I’ve been sitting on for 18 years because I had no one I could share it with.   This batch of episodes is a little lower-energy than the rest, but they’re still special to me, and they do carry a heapin’ helpin’ of plot, even if it looks like it’s just the gang sort of whiling away an afternoon.  

Sometimes you can just do that, you know?    You can blow a day doing something fun instead of something that “keeps the plot moving”, and it’s not wasted time.   I don’t regret those nights watching these episodes on tape over a glass of milk and a bag of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies.   If anything, I regret that I might have ever regretted it.    Sometimes you just gotta chill out.   DBZ knows it, and we should know it too.   

Anyway, Gohan’s agreed to Kibito’s request that he turn Super Saiyan, but he decides to up the ante and offers to turn into a Super Saiyan that has advanced beyond a Super Saiyan by further overcoming the Super Saiyan wall that separates Super Saiyans from Ascended Ultra Super Saiyans who have surpassed the Super Saiyan.    In case you’re wondering, the term “Super Saiyan 2″ still hasn’t been coined yet.   It can’t happen soon enough.

When I watched these episodes the first time, I didn’t understand the distinction between SSJ1 and SSJ2, mainly because the show hardly bothered to distinguish them as separate forms.   I just assumed that Gohan powered up when he beat Cell, but he hadn’t actually transformed into something other than what he was when he first started fighting him.   You can tell the difference between SSJ1 and SSJ2, but it’s kind of tricky, and it helps to have a side by side comparison.    With Kid Gohan, it’s pretty easy, because you see him in both forms for several episodes, and he switches back and forth a couple of times.   

With High School Gohan, good luck, because his hairstyle looks about the same either way.

Here he is in Super Saiyan 1, back in Episode 205.   

And here he is again in Episode 200.   Not much of a difference.    Really, the only reason I think I can tell is because of context clues in the story.   Gohan only transformed in #200 to disguise himself, so why waste energy using his strongest form just to clobber bank robbers?    In #205, he was just training, and while he might have eventually worked his way up to training in SSJ2, Episode 205 was his very first day of whipping himself into shape, so it doesn’t seem likely.    And in Episode 210, I assume he went to SSJ2 because he offered to do it.     Why bring it up at all if he wasn’t planning to use the form?

Everyone’s amazed, especially Videl and Gohan’s other friends, who now realize that Gohan was the “Golden Warrior” and Great Saiyaman.   But Vegeta’s not impressed, becuase he senses that Gohan is actually weaker now than he was when he defeated Cell seven years ago.   

Lines like this are evidence that Vegeta must have mastered the SSJ2 transformation himself by this point.   I’ve seen this hotly debated in the fandom, since we really have no direct proof, but Vegeta was certain that he could beat Gohan here, and I don’t see how he could believe that unless he managed to replicate the power Gohan used to beat Cell.    Make no mistake, Gohan may be weaker than he was in Episode 192, but that’s still way, way stronger than almost everyone else here.   

The live crowd starts to figure out that Gohan must have something to do with those guys from the Cell Games, which is exactly why Gohan asked everyone not to transform at this event.  

Meanwhile, Yamu and Spopovitch ready some weird device and they prepare to go into action.    As they do...

The Supreme Kai uses some sort of power to immobilize him long enough to allow Y&S to do their thing.   

I’m not really sure how these two expected this to go.    They were scouting the tournament for strong powers, but did they really think Spopovitch would be strong enough to restrain such a person all by himself?    Shouldn’t they be a little suspicious at how easy this is?    They don’t know that the Kai is helping them right now, but you’d think it would occur to them.     In any event, they jab Gohan with some sort of bottle, and it sucks the ki energy right out of his body.  

Krillin tries to make the save, but Piccolo stops him because this is too important.  I do like that Krillin is the one to try to jump in.   He’s been riding with that kid for years, and he’s just used to having Gohan’s back.   You might as well as a fish to give up swimming.   

Videl tries to jump in too, but Goku stops her.    She’s pretty upset about it...

But Goku assures her that his son can survive this.    He doesn’t know what’s going on, and he may not entirely trust the Supreme Kai, but he trusts his son’s toughness.     There is something I really like about Goku and Videl’s interactions.    They barely appear together, but there’s a lot of untapped potential there.    For Videl, Gohan is this magical boy, a pure cinammon roll who can do wonderful things and sweep her off her feet.     But his dad is this Legendary Super Saiyan who grew up in the woods and pees wherever he wants.   Goku embodies a lot of the stuff Gohan is trying to hide from her, and that must surely intrigue and frighten Videl.

Cool shot of Mighty Mask (Goten and Trunks) watching this play out from the nosebleed seats.    I’m not sure why they don’t jump in.   I guess they figure if the adults aren’t getting involved then they shouldn’t either, but that seems contrary to what they’ve been doing up to now.

Then Yamu announces that their doohickey is full, so they can stop now.   Mission accomplished, whatever that was.

Kibito just stands there like a goof.   I guess they have no idea what he’s all about, so they must think he’s too scared to intervene.    They did threaten to kill anyone who got in their way, but it’s strange that they came here to steal ki from powerful fighters, and never considered that they might meet people stronger than themselves.

Spopovitch even remarks on how easy this was.    Seriously, they filled that whole bottle after attacking just one guy.    You’d think that would make them a little wary, but no.

Then they just fly away.   The Supreme Kai waits for them to get a decent head start, then he announces that he’s going to follow them, and he asks the Z-Fighters to join him if they wish.   

Goku’s in, because he wants to know what’s happening, and he’s not worried about Gohan, since he survived, just as the Kai promised, and Kibito’s going to stay behind and heal him, so they must be on the level.

Yeah, Gohan’s alive, but he looks to be in pretty bad shape.   See, this is exactly the skin color Yamu and Spopovitch have all the time, and I’m pretty sure that’s meant to indicate how physically messed up they are.   But Turles looked like this all through Movie 3, with no explanation given.   Was the Tree of Might’s fruit doing that to him?   Who knows?

Videl asks Gohan to shake it off.    I don’t think Taylor Swift songs can fix what’s wrong with Gohan right now, but I’m betting that usually perks him right up.   

Piccolo and Krillin are going to go with Goku, but Vegeta hates this idea, because their match is next, and Vegeta wants to fight Goku above all other business.    Whatever the Supreme Kai is up to, it could waste Goku’s whole day, and they might never get a chance to have their fight.  

So ultimately, Vegeta joins the Supreme Kai, since the only way he can ensure he gets his fight with Goku is by sticking close to him and making sure this situation gets resolved in timely manner.  

And 18′s staying behind, because the Tournament has a cash prize but the Supreme Kai is doing this pro bono.   

She also tells Krillin to bug out if things get too rough.   I’m pretty sure Krillin’s been fighting above his class for decades now, so it’s a little late for that.   18 knows that, but she’s gotta say it anyway.

So everyone leaves, and Kibito heals Gohan in the ring, promising a full explanation later.   

Then Videl asks if she can join Gohan and Kibito.   Gohan isn’t thrilled with that idea, but she insists,so they leave together.

Mr. Satan hates that, but he can’t really do anything about it.    Also, this is the first time he’s seen Videl fly, which is a shock.

Chi-Chi is worried.   I’m not sure why everyone in the stands is all beat up.   Maybe Chi-Chi did that while she was worried about Gohan earlier.    Tbh, I only took this screencap because I like Chi-Chi’s mussed-up hair.  

So... what about the tournament?    What about the tournament?   This is kind of a shame, really, because when I first watched these episodes, I just naturally assumed they were really going through with this event, and in a few episodes we were really going to see Goku fight Vegeta in a Budokai match.   But in hindsight, the 25th Budokai looked like a real clusterfuck of a tournament.   16 participants, many of them hopelessly outclassed, and the brackets were completely screwed up.    Was anyone really looking forward to seeing Yamu fight Goten and Trunks in a Might Mask costume?   The reality is that this tournament really was never meant to happen.  

Far away, the Z-Fighters catch up to the Supreme Kai, and he starts filling them in on the plot.    Long ago, there was an evil wizard--or “Madoshi”-- named Bibidi, who “accidentally conjured up” a monster.    Okay, that’s interesting, because the dub always said that Bibidi created Majin Buu, but I’ve seen other sources state that Buu existed long before Bibidi hooked up with him.    So that explains that.   

All Buu ever did was wreck shit, and he destroyed hundreds of inhabited worlds, which sounds kind of nostalgic to Vegeta, since the Saiyans basically did the same thing in the day...

But the Kai can hear his thoughts, and he quickly points out that Buu is far beyond the power of the Saiyan species.  Frieza killed nearly all of the Saiyans in one attack, and the four Supreme Kais could have killed Frieza in one blow, but Buu killed the other Supreme Kais, which is why Shin is the only one left.  

The problem with Majin Buu was that even Bibidi had trouble handling the guy, so he would store him in a magic ball from time to time.    I’m not quite sure how that worked, but I assume Bibidi would unleash Buu on a planet, then put him into storage before heading off to the next target.   

So this is a pretty big infodump.  It takes up half of this episode and half of the next one.    One thing I like about how this is executed is that we keep shifting from one group of characters to another.   It’s a little thing, but it keeps the scene from getting stale.   Also, Shin and Kibito are just telling the same story, so it’s not like we lose anything this way.  

So Shin managed to kill Bibidi while Buu was sealed up, and that ended the Buu crisis, except they never actually disposed of Majin Buu.    The thought was that there was no need, since only Bibidi had the ability to free Buu from his seal, and life on Earth was primitive and undeveloped, so this planet seemed like a good place to leave Buu.    They put the ball somewhere that Earthlings would likely never go to, and called it good.  

That’s a bit of a plot hole, though, because later, a major plot point will be that Buu might end up getting released prematurely, which implies that the magic ball is a lot easier to open than this, even without a wizard.   But we’ll get into that later.

As it turns out, the Supreme Kai recently discovered that Bibidi had a son, Babidi, who is just as evil as his dad, and has resolved to break the seal and unleash Majin Buu all over again.   

I have seen sources that say Babidi wasn’t actually the flesh-and-blood offspring of Bibidi, but actually a sort of magical duplicate of Bibidi, one that survived Babidi’s death and vowed to carry on where the original left off.   Sort of like how Piccolo Junior began as a virtual copy of King Piccolo, but gradually developed into a distinct being.   I suppose that’s more plausible than Bibidi getting laid, but otherwise, I don’t know that it really changes the story at all.

So Babidi wants to release Majin Buu, and he’s apparently getting close to reaching that goal.   So what does that have to do with Yamu and Spopovitch, and their mission to collect Gohan’s energy?   Well, that part has to wait for the next episode.   

And that’s the World Tournament Saga.   Next up is Babidi, and he’s a real treat.  

[wrestlingisfake]

G1 Climax B Block finals preview

Tetsuya Naito vs. Jay White - Naito is the IWGP intercontinental champion, but his title is not at stake.  This is for points in the G1 Climax tournament--the winner gets 2, the loser gets 0, or both men get 1 if there’s a 30-minute time limit draw.  Naito and White both have 10 points, putting them in a four-way tie for first place in B Block with Hirooki Goto and Jon Moxley.  There’s no guarantee that the winner of this match will win the block, but the loser certainly won’t, so the stakes are high.  The winner of B Block will go on to face the winner of A Block in the finals on August 12.

There are scenarios where neither White nor Naito will win the block, depending on what happens in Goto and Moxley’s matches.  However, I think by the time this match starts, those scenarios will be wiped out, and this one will be for all the marbles.  Both Naito and White had rough starts this year, clearly to keep us expecting them to be on the brink of elimination right up until the last minute.

These two have largely been kept apart during the past two years, as White has dramatically shot to the top.  White has wins over Kazuchika Okada, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Kenny Omega, leaving Naito as arguably biggest name he has yet to conquer.  (I say “arguably” because I don’t think he’s tangled with Kota Ibushi yet either...funny how that works out.)  Even if White doesn’t win the tournament, a win here sets up a feud over the intercontinental title that could easily be the match for both men at Wrestle Kingdom in January.

The wrestling in this match could get interesting since Naito’s style revolves around trolling opponents into losing their chill, while White’s style is based on counterattacks.  I picture this one starting with both guys trying to bait the other into making the first move, which could lead to a shit-ton of stalling.

The bottom line is which of them is the better opponent for Kota Ibushi in the finals.  We’ve already seen Naito feud with Ibushi back in the spring, so I think it’s White’s turn this time.

Jon Moxley vs. Juice Robinson - Moxley’s IWGP United States championship is not on the line.  This is another tournament match for 2 points.  Moxley has 10 points, and he could still win the block if he and Naito tie at 12, although a three-way tie with Goto would be more complicated.  At 6 ponts, Robinson can’t win the block, but he at least has a chance to avenge his loss in Moxley’s debut, where Mox captured the US belt.  A Robinson win would almost certainly set up a rematch for the title, perhaps as soon as September to avoid scheduling conflicts with AEW.

I’ve seen a lot of talk about who the MVP is in this tournament, but for my money it’s Moxley.  He may not deliver the highest star ratings or the best workrate, but his offbeat style has freshened up a tournament that is known for largely featuring the same guys year after year.  Usually at this stage only a few tournament matches still feel important, but this one is a big ass deal.  Juice hasn’t been the same since his loss to Mox on June 5, and it’s time to find out if that personality shift will pay off, or if he’ll sink further down the card and have to reinvent himself even more.

I think Juice is going to get his win back, if only to eliminate Moxley and simplify the narrative heading into Naito-White.  But I’m sure they’ll have me second-guessing that prediction all through the match.

Hirooki Goto vs. Shingo Takagi - Another tournament match.  Goto has 10 points, and he holds tiebreakers over both Moxley and White, so he’s actually not in a bad position here.  He can’t win a two-way tie with Naito, but in a Goto-Naito-Moxley tie there’s no clear resolution except to compare in-ring time, so he’s at least got a chance.  Unfortunately for Goto he’s up against Shingo, so I don’t think getting to 12 will be an easy feat for him.

Shingo went 9-1 in the Best of the Super Jr. tournament, which made it a no-brainer to give a run with the heavyweights.  His 3-5 record thus far would be disappointing if you didn’t take into account that his summer schedule has been far more grueling.  Unless they’re really gonna go somewhere with Goto (or if they really want to tease some complex tie scenarios during the main event), I think Shingo steamrolls him to finish with 8 points.

Tomohiro Ishii vs. Taichi - Yet another tournament match for 2 points, although neither man can win the block.  Ishii won the the NEVER openweight title from Taichi on June 9, so even though the championship isn’t being defended, this is Taichi’s chance to earn a title shot down the road.

The basic story between Ishii and Taich in 2019 is that Taichi is a rule-breaker’s rule-breaker, bringing a bunch of gimmicks with him and using every cheap shot in the book, but for something about wrestling Ishii makes him want to put all that aside and have a clean fight.  Unfortunately for Taichi, that may have cost him victories against Ishii in the New Japan Cup and for the NEVER title.  So will he be inspired to play fair again, or will he pull every trick to reverse his fortunes?  Personally I don’t think it matters, because Ishii is a human wrecking ball.

Jeff Cobb vs. Toru Yano - Yano has cheated and schemed his way to 8 points in the tournament, but Cobb is the biggest dude he’s had to face yet.  I was expecting Cobb to do a lot better than the 6 points he’s earned so far, so this may be his chance to save some face.  I don’t expect this one to go very long.  I’m picking Cobb to win, but Yano won’t make it easy.

Kazuchika Okada & Hiroshi Tanahashi & Will Ospreay & YOSHI-HASHI vs. Zack Sabre, Jr. & Lance Archer & Minoru Suzuki & Yoshinobu Kanemaru - Tanahashi and Ospreay just had a big match the day before, but I would imagine the good guy team will all be on the same page.  In contrast, Sabre and Archer were not getting along in the buildup to, and aftermath of, their tournament match last week.  Heel solidarity goes a long way, but Sabre’s a dick and Archer isn’t the forgiving type.  I think that will hand victory to Okada’s team.

Kota Ibushi & Tomoaki Honma & Toa Henare vs. KENTA & Karl Fredericks & Clark Connors - Ibushi won the A Block, so this is his “night off,” so to speak, before he leaves it all on the ring in the finals 24 hours later.  One of his teammates could do a job here, but I would expect his team to win anyway.

EVIL & SANADA & BUSHI vs. Bad Luck Fale & Yujiro Takahashi & Chase Owens - Another LIJ vs. Bullet Club matchup.  I dunno, flip a coin, I guess.

Syota Umino & Ren Narita vs. Yuya Uemura & Yota Tsuji - Everybody in this match is a Young Lion, so it’s basically a battle of the jobbers.  These actually tend to be more fun than seeing any of these guys fighting real stars, since they’re actually allowed to beat one another.  Jon Moxley’s faithful assistant, Umino, is the head of the class and should probably pick up the win.

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Gormless Ch. 4 - Dab on them Pineapples

A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad. The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.

I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!

The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady wearing a rad-looking carriage dress hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband.  In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.

For the last book check out the brainless tag.

If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?

This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England.  Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag.  She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon.  He’s the manchild in charge of the supernatural police with a zillion dollars and he’s totes super hot too ok.  Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything.  Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government.  She has a dumb friend named Ivy, a gay vampire friend named Akeldama, a family who’s evil because they do the same shit as her but while being blonde, and most importantly Alexia is better than everyone cause…cause.

Last time on Gormless:

There’s some mysterious force that’s turning the Vampires and werewolves into humans. Alexia is in charge of figuring out that deal, and she is doing a bad job at it.  Her husband is in charge of the Supernatrual Police (BUR) so he’s going to Scotland about it.

There’s a dude named Channing who wants to punch and have sex with Alexia, and Ivy is getting married to some rich slub, even though she’s in wub with Maccon’s servant Tunstell.

Alexia’s hubby told her to go to a hat store for mysterious plot reasons, she brings her dopey friend Ivy.  The hat store is run by a hot lesbian and as they’re chatting BOOM an explosion! GOLLY WHAT’S NEXT!?

Chapter 4 - Dab on them Pineapples

This chapter starts off totally under described.  Basically the explosion shook the hats on their nice dangling hooks, and turned out the lights.  They don’t even describe it as unbalancing Alexia.  So the whole next bit makes so little sense.  She first reacts by feeling around for Ivy.  She finds Ivy has fainted…cause okay? Ivy is whispering about Tunstell though so she’s like, “YEAH MY FRIEND UNCONCIOUS ON THE FLOOR AFTER AN EXPLOSION IS FINE! BYE LOSER!”

She immediately starts scurrying around for that secret passage she thought she saw earlier. Finds it, goes in, and down an elevator. I just…I was so flummoxed that this was her first response?  All it would take for this to make more sense is to write, “It sounded as if the explosion happened below them, and Alexia would bet you 100 pounds that this secret passage would lead her straight to it. And what if someone was hurt down there?”

It seemed so bizarre for her to go, “EXPLOSION? I’M GOING TO MAKE A BEELINE FOR THE SECRET PASSAGE! MY FRIEND OUT COLD? WHATEVER!”

When she gets down there she finds a messy workshop, where a small explosion clearly took place.  She finds LeFoux yelling at a child and there’s a ghost lady just chilling there.  The gist of the conversation is that the child threw a rag soaked in ETHER into a huge furnace which caused the explosion.  The boy is just like, “lol it went bang.”  And Alexia thinks that’s hilarious and reintroduces herself. LeFoux has to remark that WOW ISN’T LADY MACCON SMART FOR FINDING OUT THE SECRET PASSAGEWAY? GOSH I KNOW I CONFIRMED IT TO HER MINUTES AGO! BUT SHE’S SO SMART!  The ghost is LeFoux’s aunt Beatrice, and the boy is introduced as LeFoux’s son Quesnel even though the two do not look related.

I also find it odd that LeFoux, the owner of this establishment, with a shop full of customers, just slips into the passage and doesn’t give a token, “DO NOT PANIC CUSTOMERS I’M GOING TO FIGURE OUT THE ISSUE, PLEASE STAY WHERE YOU ARE!”

Alexia praises the child for the explosion.  I can’t help but feel a bit exasperated by the book’s tone for this.  This child could have not only killed himself on a flight of fancy but perhaps a block worth of buildings full of humans in a crowded city, and the story treats it like he stole a pudding out of the fridge he wasn’t supposed to have.  But I mean, my job is to worry for the well-being of children and I have a habit of overthinking this shit so take that paragraph with as much or as little care as you see fit.

LeFoux punishes Quesnel and tells her aunt to take him away so she can have sexual tension with Alexia.  Alexia, you do not deserve the sexual attention of anybody except your dipshit husband. Leave the MacDougalls and LeFouxs for the more-deserving slutty, bisexual hate-readers okay.

Faps you realize you will never be able to have sex with a fictional character right?

Faps why would you want to bang a fictional character in a story you don’t even like?

I HAVE TO FIND SOMETHING TO ENJOY HERE OKAY!?

During some mild flirtation where Alexia first realizes women are hot, LeFoux explains that Maccon commissioned a gift that is ready for her.

It’s a huge ugly umbrella that takes a page to describe just its physical appearance, which was hard to follow.  My favorite detail is,

“The handle looked like something that might top an ancient Egyptian column, carved with lotus flowers---or a very enthusiastic pineapple.”

I don’t know what the fuck that’s supposed to mean but with that line I have decided that the handle of her umbrella looks like this:

(Picture of a pineapple dabbing, while wearing bright red shoes.)

And you cannot convince me otherwise.

We spend a few more pages explaining what her James Bond styled umbrella can do. Which includes:

Shoots poison darts.

Can switch between a silver and wooden tip depending on if you’re stabbing vampires or werewolves.

Can emit a magnetic field which can disrupt steam engines temporarily.

Can spray different kinds of toxic mists which can kill humans, and severely injure werewolves and vampires.  

Okay sure, she gets a proper weapon with a lot of weird uses. Sure good!

So now it’s time for me to complain about some writing choices!

Much to my annoyance, every time LeFoux smiles at all (which is a fucking lot) instead of using multiple verbs and descriptors such as, “She smiles, grins, smirks, beams, looks amused/smug/delighted/etc.” She says LeFoux ~dimples~ 100% of the time. And I’m like nobody verbs dimples that way you fucking weirdo who writes like they’re 12.

There’s also this really clumsy pointless exchange where it’s revealed that LeFoux has made special equipment for Prof. Lyall, and she remarks that he’s a curious man. Alexia says he’s not a man at all (cause he’s a werewolf) and LeFoux remarks, “I, too, am not a man. I simply enjoy dressing like one.”

….This is like super clumsy and not how humans talk at all. And there’s no reason why you need to bring that up AGAIN at all? We can tell she enjoys masculine dress because…she’s described as dressing masculine. Like….why? 

Like I know this isn’t meant to be a complex novel, but like I feel condescended to how often unimportant shit needs to be brought up again and again. UGH!

So they head back upstairs, Tunstell shows up so he and Ivy can stare longingly at each other, and OH YEAH tell Alexia Lyall wants to speak with her.

You gotta do more for me to ship Tunstell/Ivy then like show them cozy with one another and shouting in my ear about how they pine for one another.  Like maybe some dialog besides, “How are you?” “Oh I’m fine”?

So Alexia goes to see Lyall. She struts in swinging her new umbrella like HEY! HEY! ASK ABOUT MY NEW TOY!  Lyall does not.  Lyall has his issues don’t get me wrong.  But I find it so refreshing that he refuses to feed Maccon and Alexia’s shitty little egos.

Lyall says the humanization phenomenon has been ~spotted~ again and it’s moving toward Scotland, a bit ahead of Maccon, who is also heading that way.  Maccon doesn’t know he’ll be meeting the mysterious soul-sucking power soon, which could be a problem since he’s only useful in the sense that he has powers.

Alexia takes note of this, and decides she wants to have Lord Akeldama and LeFoux meet cause that would be cool I guess.  That’s where we leave off.  I’m not sure if the two are going to get along immediately upon meeting or hate each other’s guts. I hope they hate the other’s guts cause I think that would be more entertaining.

Say something nice Faps:

These chapters don’t always end and start on similar notes. So it doesn’t feel repetitive.

Lyall, while not totally free from this writing’s bullshit, helps ground this material by being a voice of sanity. A lot of authors can get caught up in HOW FUCKING COOL THEIR PERFECT FUN CHARACTERS ARE and it’s just kinda refreshing that this author has enough self-awareness to realize how exhausting and irritating their antics/personalities can sometimes be. Or in the very least enough awareness of writing to know when to slow it done and take a breather.

 LeFoux is hot.

Since I have identified her new murder parasol as having a dabbing pineapple handle, all mentions of it conjure hilarious mental images for me.  She was described as cradling it like a baby, and swinging it wildly in order for it to fail to catch Lyall’s attention.

 I also kinda like how despite getting a badass weapon crafted for her, it’s hideous.  Like perhaps it’s for the humor sake, but I appreciate we’re not just going to steamroll how cool and great Alexia is. Even though she got this super rad weapon with all these functions without having to earn it. The item does have the downside of being tacky and heavy. You know?

[dustedmagazine]

Listening Post, March 2017

It’s been a while since the Dusted staff has gone over the things we’ve been listening to (besides what we’re reviewing) of course, and a (relatively) new year and some new faces seemed like as good an occasion as any. Some witchcraft-based Liars reminiscing starts us off for a conversation that covers everything from the powerful emotions of the new Mount Eerie to a percussion record you can’t get digitally to the blues, and much, much more...

Ian Mathers

I guess one of the things about getting older as a music fan is that there's more chances with every year and every crop of new acts/albums to have a band you love but haven't played or thought about in a while pop into your head apropos of basically nothing. I still remember being back home some holiday weekend in my first year of university, idly flipping on MuchMusic, and seeing Ladytron's video for "Playgirl". It was shockingly out of step with what people were doing in 2001 (or at least what I was paying attention to), and I simultaneously loved it and felt vaguely marginal for doing so. Remembering "Playgirl" had me going back to their old albums, and slightly to my surprise I found that while I love them all (including 604, the most overtly throwback-y) the one that's aged the best is actually their slightly atypical synthpop/shoegaze (synthgaze? shoepop?) Witching Hour, from 2005.

My wife saw The Witch (or, I guess, The VVitch) when it played as part of the Toronto International Film Festival two years ago, and had been after me to watch it with her ever since, but I only felt in the right mood for it recently. Sure enough I loved it, but while I did think the score/sound design were great, ultimately it mostly had me reaching for my favourite Liars album (and, I suspect more and more, one of my favourite albums full stop), They Were Wrong, So We Drowned. It is, uh, not an optimistic record when it comes to human nature, politics, empathy, xenophobia, etc. I wish this didn't feel like such an apposite historical moment to brace ourselves and remember that sometimes there's just no avoiding the steamroller (cf. "Hold Hands and it Will Happen Anyways”). That the album tries anyways, if for nothing else than at least to leave a record of the injustice, feels important.

Damien Jurado, who has some fans here at Dusted, is a guy who's work I always respect but oddly enough generally can't get into that much; the exception is his 2006 album And Now That I'm in Your Shadow. I found myself listening to it late one night recently, which really is the perfect time for the record. I'd hesitate to call it a narrative, let alone anything like a concept album, but conceptually and emotionally it feels very much of a piece; whether or not these are the same people or even the same places the songs are suffused with desolation, infidelity, murder, loneliness. I've given his more recent work a listen or two and it's always been good but I think it's that for me And Now That I'm in Your Shadow is so singular in effect that Jurado's other work in the Catch 22 of me wanting it both to be exactly the same and somehow not just a retread. I do like one earlier (and creepier) song I heard somewhere, "Amateur Night", so maybe I should just find the album that's on and go from there. But maybe someone here has guidance for me.

Jennifer Kelly

Oh, Ian, you have just brought up two bands I LOVE, and, god dammit, we like different albums. 

Per Liars, I am a dyed-in-the-wood They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top fan. It was my gateway, for one thing, to ESG. I am also partial to a split they did early on with Oneida, one of those you-cover-mine-and-I'll-cover-yours deals, so here they are revisiting "Rose and Licorice."

One of the top live experiences of my entire life was a show with Yeah Yeah Yeahs opening (after the first EP, before the first album), Liars (just off Trench) and Sonic Youth (I'm thinking maybe Murray Street?), where I just kept saying, this cannot get any better, the next band will be a let-down, and then the next band ratcheted it up and obliterated everything before it.

I also like that Jurado album, which was, I believe, the last one before he hooked up with Richard Swift and went less acoustic folk, more psychedelic, but my favorite ever of his is Mariqopa. I feel like he kinda flattened out the mythology by explaining it (circa Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Sun), but in this album it's just sort of luminously, weirdly there, like a spaceship in the middle of a cornfield. You have no idea what it's about, and that makes it about everything.

Bill Meyer

I can't contribute much to discussion of the Liars or Jurado; neither exerts much attraction upon me. Two records that have ben drawing me back are Jon Mueller's DHRAANWDN (aka Hand Drawn) (Rhythmplex) and Eli Keszler's Last Signs Of Speed (Empty Edition). Both are limited edition double LPs by drummers, and both transcend whatever expectations you might have of a drummer's record. Beyond that they are very different. Mueller's comprises four sides of solo performance drawn from a six hour session he recorded in a Shaker meeting house. The drum kit plays the room's acoustics, resulting in waves of surging, polyrythmic sound. The sleeve, which varies a lot of white space with die-cut cut-outs that reveal a text about transformative experience and images of human-free environments, expresses the album's titular concept, as does the fact that you can only buy the physical object - there aren't even any digital promos.

Keszler's album, on the other hand, is a response to his performances over the past couple years at electronic music and dance venues. The extravagant bass presence counterbalances the precisely choreographed blizzard of discrete sounds that he generates with the rest of his kit, creating an impression of multi-dimensional space. Keszler creates a virtual space in part through physical effort, while Mueller inhabits a space that is physical but devoted to the spiritual. Both records are beyond solid. 

Derek Taylor

I can’t really speak to any of Ian’s musical selections so I’ll speak to his filmic one instead. I too loved the The VVitch for its exacting verisimilitude and expertly wrought and rising dread. Lots of great themes to unpack therein and Robert Eggers decision to go all in on a “what if there was actual veracity to events presaging to the Salem hysteria” scenario is a bold one as is the “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” plot arc of the film. Great casting too and a hair-raisingly satisfying denouement in the primeval (or is that prime evil?) woods that still sticks with me.

As to listening it’s been the usual juggle of new releases with older favorites. On the former front there’s, Deuce, tenorist Stephen Riley’s latest duo with pianist Peter Zak. The pair has a previous encounter and two more with Zak as a member of Riley’s quartet. It’s the usual amalgam of ancient standards this time with three interstitial “Interludes” by Riley interspersed and a gorgeous rendering of Joe Henderson’s “Tetragon”. They also tackle my favorite standard “Everything Happens to Me”, Riley pulling apart and contorting the melody like fluffy cotton candy with his inimitable hardened-reed rasp and without losing sight of the gentle fatalism at the tune’s core.

In terms of classics, it’s been the series of bootlegs documenting the Charles Mingus Sextet/Quintet's 1964 American/European tour (Cornell, Town Hall, Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Bremen, Paris x2, Wuppertal, and Stuttgart). Every date has its ample charms, but the Cornell University hit released on Blue Note back in ’07 is the one I go back to most frequently, both for the quality of the concert and its capture on tape. Trumpeter Johnny Coles had yet to fall ill and is featured splendidly alongside Eric Dolphy and Clifford Jordan and calling Jaki Byard and Dannie Richmond a rhythm section is like reductively referring to James Baldwin as an African American author, it barely scratches the surface.

Bill Meyer: Peak Mingus!

Jennifer Kelly: Have any of you been listening to Mount Eerie's A Crow Looked at Me? So powerful, so beautiful, absolutely harrowing...but I can't imagine how you could possibly review it.

Bill Meyer: I've never listened to Mount Eerie much, but this one is in my inbox and I didn't delete it because of the story attached to it. I think I need to check it out.

Ian Mathers: I need to get my hands on that Mount Eerie and listen, but I'll admit to being a bit daunted... my mother-in-law died in 2015 and it made (for example) the Sufjan Stevens album from last year a simultaneously important and really challenging listen. My wife is still dealing with a lot of the emotional fallout, and we are both Microphones fans from back in the day, so I might give it some solo listens first, so she has some idea of how tough it might be.

Jenny, I absolutely adore They Threw Us All in a Trench... too, I wish I'd had the chance to see them around then! I'm sure they're still good in concert, but there's something about that record that seems like it would be ferocious live. And your cornfield spaceship description honestly makes me really excited to check out Mariqopa—honestly the fact that Jurado did extend the mythology made me a bit wary, but as a standalone maybe I can approach it.

Bill, that Kezsler sample is pretty damn interesting.

Mason Jones

I'm a fan of Liars' They Threw Us... as well, and saw them around that time here in SF playing with Animal Collective if I recall correctly. They put on an entertaining show. That album and They Were Wrong... were both pretty powerful at the time, and then they lost steam somehow and became more predictable. Interestingly I thought their most recent album, Mess, was an improvement. Though slicker than it needed to be, there were good ideas percolating through it.

On the newer side, I've been surprised by how much I'm enjoying the newest Grails album, Chalice Hymnal. It's a pretty great combination of heaviness, stonedness, and kosmische rock. I also stumbled on the self-titled album by Helén, which is intriguing. Some is reminiscent of early Circle given the strong rhythmic foundation, but it gets into some rock-epic portions and, I don't know, prog-opera-something? Hard to describe and I haven't made up my mind whether it all works or not. But it's a worthy listen.

Bill Meyer: All right, I'm going to check out Mount Eerie. 

I'll mention one other thing I've been playing lately. Having spent a bit of time with the Bruce Langhorne tribute album The Hired Hands this past month and the excellent Robbie Basho tribute Basket Full Of Dragons last fall, I'm ready to turn down my disdain for tribute records - at least when they involve very strong acoustic musicians honoring a great guitar player. So I dug out the first Basho Tribute, We Are All One, In The Sun, which was released by Important Records in 2010. I've been playing it over and over. Like Dragons, it was assembled by Buck Curran , who sure knows how to pick people who know their Basho. It begins and ends with Steffen Basho-Junghans playing variations on a couple of his namesake's tunes on a 12-string, and his lyric extrapolations make me really wish he would put out another record and finally tour the USA. But that's not to slight the excellent contributions by Meg Baird, Helena Espvall, and several others.

Brett Marion

I was witness to that same fantastic Liars/Yeah Yeah Yeahs tour leg too, caught them upstairs at the Magic Stick in Detroit. I was pretty smitten with Karen O at the time—from the cover of that first ep, and the range of her vocals—sometimes country accent, sometimes speak-sing, sometimes fragile, like on that “Crimson & Clover”-esque last song, “Our Time,” and then how she impossibly strangles the title to “aaaaaaaarrrrrrt staaaaaarrrr.” And Liars’ Angus Andrews seemed like seven feet tall. He might be. Great stage presence, both bands—exuding lots of confidence and attitude—but naïve, friendly, and approachable. I liked Trench a lot but thought They Were Wrong, So We Drowned was even better—it just nailed an overall Halloween feel.

Lately, I’ve had a hard time digging too deep in any one direction. The last half year or so I’ve been doing okay keeping up with Stephan Mathieu’s ambitious 12 CD release, Radiance, issued one month at a time, I think he’s through about ten so far. The last two, To Have Elements Exist In Space and Feldman have been one-track near hour-long pieces, so I haven’t made it all the way through those yet. The newest Six Organs of Admittance, Taylor Deupree, and PAN label stuff have been on, but not absorbed entirely. I also find myself getting sidetracked with making compilations that I occasionally post on Mixcloud (sort of the whole ‘80s-‘90s ‘mixtape’ thingy I’m sure we’ve all done for people), my latest—not completed—mixes/drafts being a ‘beginner’s guide to Alice Coltrane’ and ‘GAS,’ but it’s always a long process and I only ever get around to completing one or two a year, tops.

Bill Meyer: What does Mathieu sound like these days? I'm a bit out of the loop, although I have enjoyed some of his records immensely in the past.

Brett Marion: He sounds quite a bit like he always has—that grainy, shifting textural drone. Some tracks hit where it hurts so good, while others… meh. The last few year’s it seems he’s been into exploring more long-form pieces. One release, Nachtstucke, from 2015, featured a one hour piece, a piece over two hours, then two more around the half an hour mark. I wonder how many have made it through that over two hour piece more than once.

Bill Meyer: Well, I did just buy an LP he made with Kassel Jaeger and Akira Rabelai, I'll see how that one goes. Can't get everything.

Matt Wuethrich

I assume you mean Zauberberg on Shelter Press, Bill? Excellent LP. It's very diffuse in structure but still feels like there's a lot to take in. It's kind of a marvel how they embed they approaches within each other and shapeshift through different sonic spaces (Mathieu's manipulations of mechanical/acoustic historical recordings, Jaeger's field recordings, Rabelai’s digital treatments).

In my own listening I've been pretty deep into the official reissue of Giusto Pio's Motore immobile on Soave, sublime minimalism from Italy that first probably appeared on most people's radar through Alan Licht's minimalism lists (specifically Minimalism Top Ten III). Just organ/piano, voice and violin. Rich and hypnotic.

Bill Meyer: Yes, that's the one. I haven't scratched the surface but I am glad to hear that you find it deep. Gotta check out the Pio.

Justin Cober-Lake

I've been digging into a somewhat random cross-section of blues recently, connected to a project looking at possible points of connection between that genre and psalms of lamentation and maybe the book of Lamentations (though that may have a different focus). I don't have much to say on the subject yet, but I've been thinking about how the hill country artists really dig into an issue and stick there until it's worked out (or until the tape runs out or whatever). Charles Caldwell is the guy standing out to me right now, particularly his confused complaint on "Hadn't I Been Good to You."  The Junior Kimbrough I grabbed this morning, All Night Long, was a sort of comical comparison, since it's largely a sex album.

There's something about the groove that makes this connection more noticeable, though I'm not sure how much it will translate to trance-blues acts like Otis Taylor (or even R.L. Burnside) who often use repetition more to set up storytelling or to do other things.

Derek Taylor: That’s an area of music near & dear to me, Justin. I coincidentally spun that Caldwell album this weekend too after re-opening a rabbit hole with the George Mitchell Collection box set. Such a shame it was Caldwell's first & last. Kimbrough (and really nearly all of those hill country guys from Burnside on down to T Model Ford) had copulation on the brain much of the time and its more misogynistic manifestations ("You Better Run") more often that I'd like. 

I remember catching Burnside prior to & during the self-parody phases of his career and being pretty demoralized by the latter seeing him run through the tropes (“Well, well, well…”), and take copious swigs off a decapitated kewpie doll filled to the severed neck w/ whiskey. T-Model Ford was like that too (“It’s Jack Daniel’s Time!!!”, apparently between EVERY song). Fat Possum did a lot of arguable good in getting those guys gigs/tours/etc., but they did a fair share of bad too in enabling/reinforcing a lot of their worst tendencies. 

Guessing you‘re familiar w/ Mitchell & the box, but if not I can’t recommend it highly enough. Mitchell did work similar to the Lomaxes, but with a level of candor & self-awareness that they often lacked. The accompanying booklet is nearly as priceless as the music as it’s filled with anecdotes of Mitchell’s travels & encounters, often hilariously so. This missive about Big Joe Williams is one of my favorites as it really captures the essence of the guy: "At one point, we drove with him down to St. Louis to find Walter Davis and Henry Townsend. On the way down, Big Joe announced that he had to take a shit, and I told him we'd pull into the next service station. And he said, "No, I like country shits. Just pull over to the side of the road—I want to take me a good old country shit."

Matt Wuethrich: A big, big second on that George Mitchell set...it seems to be rather low profile considering the wealth of material on it. Every time I spin it I discover some new gem. (For five discs, it's relatively inexpensive, too.)

Jennifer Kelly: Anyone else (besides Bill Meyer, who’s reviewed it) into that new Tinariwen?  And, quick question, if anyone has access to liners, is that Mark Lanegan?

Also really, really digging that the Bug Vs. Earth collaboration, so dark and clanky and post-atom-bomb-ish, exactly what I need at this point.

Bill Meyer: That’s Lanegan.

Ian Mathers: I've heard you and others praise the Bug Vs. Earth album, Jenny, and honestly the two make for such weirdly fitting collaborators I'd want to check it out just based on the combination. "Dark and clanky and post-atom-bomb-ish" sounds about perfect for 2017. Would you mind uploading it to the drive at some point?

The blues are one of those genres where I know I like at least some of it, but something's kept me from going much deeper with it. My dad got the (de rigeur, I assume) Robert Johnson box set when I was a kid and I love a lot of that, and I've gotten the odd album or comp I've loved from Son House or Howlin' Wolf or Buddy Guy (in the latter case, specifically Sweet Tea) but that itch feels mostly scratched at this point?

Bill Meyer: I just listened to a bit of it, Ian. Yeah, it's dark and clanky all right. I think the sounds are cool, and I'm intrigued that the Bug has cottoned to Earth's restraint. I expected an attempt to lure Earth into less measured venting of darkness.

Derek Taylor: Guy’s Sweet Tea is a curious case as it involved him jumping on the Hill Country bandwagon w/ Kimbrough & Cedell Davis covers and a Fat Possum production facsimile. Some called it a crass cash-in, others a sincere stab at homage. I don’t go back to it often & when I do just in doses, but considering Guy’s place in the music I’m inclined to go with the latter take. Guy’s been a proponent of commercially viable blues since he got his start in Chicago with Muddy Waters, so it makes sense that he would be attracted the Fat Possum aesthetic at that time although the guys there have taken pains over the years to stress just how shakey that business paradigm is in the larger music business scheme.

Speaking of Davis, he’s definitely one to delve into especially the early material released on the L+R Living Country Blues USA series, half a cd, Highway 61, on the Wolf label, and his first for Fat Possum, Feel Like Doin’ Something Wrong. Utterly unique approach to slide guitar necessitated by partial paralysis from a youthful bout with polio. Some enterprising (if largely erroneous) journalist dubbed him the “Ornette Coleman of blues guitar”, if I recall correctly, for his ability to make familiar fascinatingly foreign through tonal plasticity. He’s apparently still kicking at 89 and put a record out last year. Some vintage footage:

Ben Donnelly

Liars’ dedication to conceptual switcheroos shows the long-term hazards of being dedicated to approaching each album as a blank slate. My fatigue has generally increased each time I try out the latest Liars, to the point that I don't check their releases out right away. I'm sure I'm missing some gems in there, and suspect it will all make more sense in the future. The ramblings of The Fall and Wire fifteen years into their careers makes more sense now.   That said, that first pivot between the on-trend disco punk to graveyard junkyard percussion was landmark, one of those moments where the leading edge re-shuffles the received history. The arc from 1981 Danceteria to No Wave to Einstruzende Neubauten is pretty direct, but by 2000, all I could see was that one end resulted in "Love Shack" and the other in post-rock. Liars sent out a big signal - they were looking at history differently, felt free to jump between the connections they saw, and their revision enlivened everything. The early single "You Know I Hate Stupid Phones" goes a lot of places in two minutes, one of those gems that gets lost in their constant shuffle:

Ladytron I like even better. Artists who are so ready for Vogue Italia will always be held in suspicion in less fashionable quarters. I liken them to Siouxsie and the Banshees: art bands who are facile with hooks and glamour to the extent that it's easy to underestimate them. Approaching both, there's the temptation to put aside the style statements and the associations with lesser goth/electro acts and try take the brilliant singles and remixes as stand-alone artifacts. But that's a mistake—the mascara is as necessary as with Bowie and Prince. When they declared "they only want you when you're seventeen, when you're twenty one you're no fun" it's impossible to tell which side of the cynicism holds their sympathies. Probably both, which is why their best tracks frequently slap me like I haven't heard them a hundred times. This high concept obscurity, Missy Elliot rethought as Japanese synth-punk, still bewilders.

Ian Mathers: Derek, that Cedell Davis video is damn good, I'll have to track down an album.

Ben, I can't believe I forgot to mention Ladytron's "Oops" cover—literally one of one my favourite covers ever, and one where I love both it and the original about equally in a way that means I don't even know which one I'd pick if forced to (and also, incidentally, the place where Ladytron got closest to Add N to (X), if anyone remembers them). That early Liars track, though, I'd somehow never heard. I really, really love the bass sound on their early records.

Derek Taylor: Tenorist Fred Anderson’s birthday yesterday (he would’ve been 88) sparked a shelf perusal of his work. The flurry of activity in his final years leaves a pretty respectable discography. I opted for Black Horn Long Gone on Southport, a ’90 studio trio session in Chicago with Malachi Favors and the erstwhile AJ Shelton released in ’09. It’s a loose & limber date with Favors negotiating Fred’s singular horn vernacular in a sometimes akimbo manner that takes a bit of getting used to. Shelton, operating under his woke moniker Ajaramu, isn’t always entirely on the same page either, but occasional surface discombobulations don’t detract in the least from the deep reservoir of feeling feeding the music. The solo “Ode to Clifford Jordan” is the rare chance on record to hear Fred in that format for the duration of a piece.

Time spent with Anderson usually means revisiting the other two Freds that comprise my Fred triumvirate, McDowell & Wesley. Currently ears-deep in the Arhoolie collection Good Morning Little School Girl which cherry-picks from McDowell’s Janus-worthy repertoire of blues and spirituals. His wife Annie Mae & a small contingent from their Como, MS congregation join him on a couple of the latter.