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haptronym · 2 years ago

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Canon vs. Fanon #3: All Might has depression/PTSD

Part 3 of comparing canon to fanon! This one’s long. Previous posts are about Quirklessness and Toshinori’s appearance. The appearance one is slightly relevant here.

This one is... absolutely fascinating to me. This assertion is “unspoken canon” among a lot of All Might fans. It was for me, too, for a long while. There’s plenty of reason for him to have pretty severe mental health problems, considering everything he’s been through. I mean, just look at him.

But... things didn’t quite add up for me. So this post examines what got me into this idea, then what made me decide that it, ultimately, didn’t really fit him the way I once thought it did.

Big huge disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional, and I’m not trying to claim that my interpretations of the show are any more valid than anyone else’s. I’m not trying to “prove” any “facts.” This is just an embarrassing amount of speculation, personal musing, and gushing about my favorite character.

In real life, mental health issues manifest in many ways; they can be subtle, masked, or look nothing like “textbook” examples. This is not meant to be an analysis of mental illness: it’s an analysis of fictional depictions of mental illness. When an author is trying to signal “Look, it’s PTSD! Look, it’s depression!” they will often insert certain predictable symptoms to clue the audience in. That’s really the deepest anyone can go with this kind of character analysis. All we can do is take a look at the behaviors and thoughts we are given, look at the context, and go, “Does this seem close to what we might expect?” This is obviously subjective and full of personal opinion, and it’s not meant to be commentary on real life or an attack on anyone’s personal experiences with these conditions.

Lastly, fanworks aren’t obligated to follow canon or author intent, whatever it may be, because fanworks are quite literally all about exploring what canon doesn’t. In the end, we’re all just finding meaning in characters we love. Tons of people (myself included) find meaning in labeling All Might as traumatized or depressed, and that’s all the justification it needs.

Does he have PTSD?

Going to get this topic out of the way first because I feel like it’s pretty clear-cut by comparison. It makes sense to assume Toshinori might suffer from PTSD. You do hero work as long as he has, you’re sure to see some awful, haunting things. He recently survived a horrific injury and repeated revision surgeries.

But... as far as I can see, his canon mannerisms don’t seem to contain any of the usual markers that generally signal “look, it’s PTSD!” such as flashbacks, nightmares, hyperarousal, reactions to loud noises, or intrusive thoughts. The strongest anxiety reaction we ever see from him is his reaction to Gran Torino! (Which, by the way, I will always assert was played up by the narrative for funny points.)

This is the case both in specific reactions and in his overall demeanor. To me, he overwhelmingly comes off as comfortable in his own skin and in control of his emotions. Even when he’s describing the most harrowing fight of his life, or the death of his master, he stays composed. When a drone suddenly zooms up behind him and nearly hits him, he does not startle whatsoever... he just calmly snatches it out of the air like a badass.

We never see him freeze up under stress. We never see him anxiously overreact or mistake friend for foe. There are several mentions about having nightmares from the terrible fight with All For One that put a hole in him... but AFO is the one complaining about having nightmares, not Toshinori!

I did find this amusing set of panels, but I have a feeling anyone would react this way to having a door suddenly slammed open behind them in the middle of a quiet, dramatic conversation.

We could claim, “well, maybe he just has episodes offscreen. Maybe he’s getting treatment offscreen.” Sure, but we could also claim that maybe he likes to wear fursuits offscreen too. That kind of unfounded speculation is the definition of fanon.

Speaking of speculation, here’s mine: I think it’s perfectly plausible that he’s dealt with PTSD symptoms in the past. But I also think that, considering his immense duties as a hero, he would do everything in his power to immediately seek professional help and treat his symptoms. His Quirk can level city blocks with the flick of a finger. It would only take one wrong move during a night terror, flashback, or accidental overreaction to cause a national tragedy. I cannot imagine he would just sit around and go “welp, I don’t want to see a therapist because Secrets, guess I’m just traumatized forever.” For all his flaws, I think he’s more responsible and caring than that, plus he is a perfectionist and hates anything that interferes with his hero duties. He has an enormous budget, plus the support and coverup abilities of the national government on his side... he could find a way.

All in all... I just don’t see much canonical evidence that he has a condition like PTSD during the events of the show. I don’t see symptoms or treatments. If you think I missed something, please let me know.

Does he have depression?

Okay, welcome to the other 90% of this post.

When we first see Toshinori’s true form, the whiplash is overwhelming. He goes from a blustering, grinning showoff to someone who looks morose, tired, and resigned. Then he says these lines:

...Whoa. He doesn’t smile genuinely, he only does it as a ruse. His confident front is just a facade, hiding overwhelming pressure and fear. But he must act strong, because it’s his duty. Even if he’s crumbling inside, he can’t reveal his true emotions. It must be symbolic: his emotional “true form” must be just as exhausted and withered as his physical one. What a fascinating, relatable way to represent how depression quietly wears a person down, until they’re emotionally hanging on by a thread and can only spend a few hours a day performing normalcy until they have to sneak off and revert to their burned-out true form.

Look at him wildly overacting to put on a strong front for the kid that he wants to inspire. Such sacrifi-

Um. Anyway, one of these days, the facade will fall, and we’ll get to see the true depths of the bleak, overwhelming depression that he feels such a need to bravely hide...

Hm. This is perplexing.

Now, even severely depressed people don’t just cry nonstop. They can drag themselves out of bed and stumble through the numb haze to do what has to be done. They can fake enthusiasm. They can also legitimately feel inspired by things, or laugh at jokes, or get wrapped up in a fun activity for a time. There are periods of normalcy, scattered in between the long swaths of gray.

So when we ask whether or not a character has depression, we shouldn’t be asking, “why can they smile and function,” but where are their swaths of gray? Where, in the series, do we see them experience bone-crushing fatigue, suffocating sadness and guilt, fixation on past failures, numbness and loss of pleasure in the things they once loved? Depression is a serious mood disorder which impacts how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. Yes, Toshinori has to intentionally fix a smile on his face when performing a hero persona that smiles nonstop. Does this mean he has a mental illness?

I’m going to go through a handful of behaviors and attitudes common to depression, and compare them to what we see from him. We can’t know a person’s inner thoughts 24/7, but something as serious as mental illness tends to leave signs.

(Note that I’m going to address the war arc in a separate section, after all this.)

Behaviors: Lack of energy/motivation

One of the most debilitating parts of depression is that it saps a person’s energy and motivation. It feels like constantly wading knee-deep through mud. Even mundane tasks become difficult and draining.

Behaviorally, this can manifest in all sorts of ways, but people often begin cutting back to the bare minimum essential tasks. It’s difficult to do even the necessities, much less any “extras.” They may stop engaging in leisure activities or hanging out with friends. They can begin missing deadlines or falling behind on work.

In Vigilantes chapter 6+ beta, set several years before the series, we do see an example of Toshinori falling behind on work:

But I would seriously question this as an example of depression-fueled fatigue. Immediately prior to this, we watched him catch a purse-snatcher, stop a hit-and-run, defeat a rampaging robot, prop up a falling bridge, and save a kitten from a tree, all within minutes of each other. The implication just seems to be that he is a workaholic maniac who would generate too many reports for himself no matter what.

Aside from this... I think there’s very little evidence that he lacks energy. At the start of the main series, Toshinori can only physically do hero work for 3 hours a day. And, to our knowledge, he always does so. (Even on his days off... which is what triggers the events of the show!) If you’re using Vigilantes canon, he is also working as his own secretary at the same time. Then he takes on Izuku’s training on top of this. Through the short training montage, we always see him with Izuku at the beach, even when he has nothing to do but cheer &/or heckle from the sidelines. We do see him briefly riding on a Segway, which could have indicated a need to conserve his energy if not for the fact that he dismounts after about five seconds in order to unnecessarily transform into his hero form and shake his successor around like a rag doll.

Then, he also starts working at U.A., a task which requires him to learn huge amounts of new information and integrate into a whole new environment. How does he cope? In the light novels, he goes out for drinks with the U.A. teachers to socialize. He repeatedly jumps to contribute more than necessary, such as when he pesters Aizawa to alter a rescue exercise so he can appear as a villain. In another rescue exercise (depicted in the light novels), he even appears as a villain in his true form—trying to contribute even when he doesn’t have All Might time. (He really seems to like playing villains...) The one time he misses class (USJ) it’s because he spent too much time doing hero work, and he still goes to the effort to show up at the end even though he only has 10 minutes of hero form time left.

Aside from the purely physical limitations caused by his injury, Toshinori has never indicated that he feels drained by his ridiculously demanding lifestyle. In fact, the narration emphasizes repeatedly, like here in chapter 15, that his problem is that he refuses to cut back. And it’s not “you work too hard for an old person with an awful injury.” It’s “you work too hard compared to any human being, holy shit, calm down.” He is always pushing himself to his limits.

What about motivation? He clearly has enough motivation to get all of his work done, as we’ve seen. But one of the chief reasons that Toshinori decided to train Izuku is because Izuku gave him motivation to act. This could be interpreted to mean that, before meeting Izuku, Toshinori had lost the drive to do his work.

But think about the rest of the story. We just discussed how Toshinori pushes himself to his limits. In this case, the action he found motivation to do was to push past his limits and start spitting blood. That’s a dangerous thing to aspire to, and the story tells us so. Throughout the narrative, we explore the harms of this overzealous self-sacrifice, both as it applies to him, and and as it applies to Izuku, who tries to imitate him.

It wasn’t that he was unmotivated to do hero work at all before meeting Izuku—he clearly was, as shown by the fact that he had already used up all his hero form time on his day off. He was just less motivated to go beyond reason in the process.

Toshinori’s problem has never been a lack of passion—it’s been that he has too much of it, and pushes himself way too hard as a result. Far from needing motivation to act, he is constantly told he needs rest. If Toshinori has depression, it is definitely not hampering his ability to get things done.

Behaviors: Isolation

People with depression often stop hanging out with friends, stop going out to events, and generally withdraw. This does not fit at all with the Toshinori we see in the series. Once the show kicks off, he’s more social than he’s ever been, juggling hero work, Izuku’s training, teaching, and socializing with his new coworkers. Even after the events of Kamino, when he would have plenty of justification to spend several days (or weeks) recuperating and processing his loss of One For All in solitude, he leaps out of his hospital bed within a day to make appearances on national television and punch his successor in the face.

What about how he seems to have no family or friends? He mentions in Vigilantes chapter 6+ beta that he has very few friends that he can exchange personal contact info with, presumably because of his high-profile existence. The isolation of being a public figure is definitely real.

But this post points out that, throughout his career, it seems like he deliberately chose to isolate himself, even when he had no need to. He simply seemed to prefer spending his free time saving people from crime rather than dating, networking, or hanging out with buddies on the weekends. Could this have been some kind of defensive trauma response? Maybe, or it could’ve been that he simply got more fulfillment from his work than from making lots of friends or starting a family. Plenty of people (and a lot of high achievers) do not consider social life to be the pinnacle of their existence. This does not mean they are mentally ill.

In any case, he’s certainly not isolating from people during the main series—in fact, we see more named relationships of his (Nana, Gran Torino, David Shield, Nighteye, Tsukauchi) than most other heroes in the show get.

Behaviors: Sleep/appetite/pain/etc

The one time we see Toshinori apparently having trouble sleeping is in episode 101, when Nezu gently calls him out for spending way too much time compiling information on past OFA users. I’d argue that this seems more related to his obsessive research than to the somatic effects of a mood disorder. (Again with the boundless drive to get things done—something not usually seen in depression.)

Other than this, we don’t see enough of Toshinori’s day-to-day life to have much insight on whether he suffers from sleep disturbances, appetite changes, unexplained pain, or the other physical symptoms that often accompany depression. Even if we did see these things, they could just be side-effects of his injury.

Speaking of his injury, it’s remarkable how few side-effects we are shown. I think it’s common to go, “Well, I am pretty sure that this injury should have a ton of side-effects and significantly impact his day-to-day life, and we don’t see that. Conclusion: these side-effects are there, but the show just doesn’t want to spend time showing them. In the same way, I think he has depression, but the show just isn’t directly showing it.” Hold that thought; I’ll address it later.

Depression isn’t just characterized by physical issues... it’s a mental disorder, after all. It tends to change a person’s thought patterns and pigeonhole them into predictable mindsets. So, let’s go through a few common ones and see how they compare to the way he acts.

Mindsets: Negativity/catastrophizing

Depression tends to blinker people. Under its influence, it’s very hard to see anything besides the negative sides of a situation. It makes people jump to the conclusion that things will probably go as badly as they possibly can.

This is... the absolute polar opposite of the way we see Toshinori act and think.

Two days into the school year, class 1-A is attacked by villains at the USJ. This event was a horrific disaster for Toshinori. He failed in his teaching duties by using up his muscle form and not arriving on time, and nearly lost his entire class and his coworker because of it. His time limit was massacred: he’s still supposed to be teaching and doing hero work and now he only has an hour per day to do it. Meanwhile, his successor still can’t use One For All without pulverizing his bones to dust.

How does he react?

Another example: Kamino. His true form was exposed to the world. His Quirk is finally gone forever, and his hopes for a smooth succession are ruined. Society is sure to destabilize from this, and villains are going to grow bolder than ever in a time when there is now no one strong enough to stand against them. How does he respond?

Okay, first he punches Izuku in the face and yells at him. But. He quickly turns it around to a message of praise and hope. He finds something good in Izuku’s constant recklessness: for the first time, Izuku managed to get out of a situation without harm. And he finds something good in the loss of his Quirk: now it means he can devote himself to raising Izuku. Fantastic positive reframing at work.

I could go on, but... just watch the show. It’s obvious. Toshinori’s positivity is one of his most defining character traits. He is constantly bringing up the positive, both to others and to himself. If the odds seem impossible, then just smash past those odds!

Mindsets: Indecisiveness/reluctance to act

In depression, indecisiveness can strike even with tasks as simple as deciding what to wear. People spin their wheels with anxiety and doubt, ruminating endlessly over what they should choose, thinking of all the times they’ve gotten things wrong in the past. Then they avoid making any decision at all out of fear that they might screw up yet again. The bigger the decision, the harder it is to act.

With that in mind, I’m just going to copy-paste some insightful shitposting from @journalxxx about Toshinori’s typical decision-making process:

"This kid I just met two hours ago is perfect, Imma make him my successor, no doubt about it. We're gonna start training tomorrow and I've already picked the perfect spot and also went and planned his whole life for the next ten months, down to the composition of his meals-"

"Yeah, that villain attack on day 2 of school sucked, it brought everyone's moods down... Oh. Oh! But you know what would be cool and instructive? Simulating ANOTHER VILLAIN ATTACK! Oh man, what an idea, hey Aizawa, listen-"

"Oh, my friend's daughter wrote to me to just invite me on a trip after years? Hm, I should maybe think about it for a moment, given the schedules of my new job, my secret health issues, the recent villain attacks- PSYCH, LET ME CALL MY PRIVATE JET PILOT, I'M LEAVING RIGHT NOW- OOOH, AND I'M BRINGING THE KID WITH ME, THIS'LL BE AWESOME-"

(He didn’t even give Izuku time to change out of his school uniform. Why take 30 seconds to change when you could GO GO GO RIGHT NOW?)

Toshinori is the one who introduced the concept that real heroes “move before they think,” and by god, he lives and breathes this motto. Both the Tsukauchi identity reveal and the USJ fiasco happened because he got wrapped up in hero work: when he sees someone in need, he doesn’t hesitate for a second; he immediately hits the ground running. One would assume that, as his time limit got shorter, we would see him agonizing and deliberating about how best to use it... but we don’t.

For the most part, he makes decisions quickly and confidently and then sticks to them. Even with his life’s biggest, ultimate ambition, he apparently ran first and worked out the details later.

He does have a lot of difficulty initiating personal conversations: it takes him far too long to reveal important backstory info like the origin of OFA, and he had a lot of trouble reconnecting with people like Gran Torino and Nighteye. But this seems like a reluctance to open up, not an inability to choose. He’s always been a secretive person who would rather not talk about himself and who would prefer to conceal facts if it helps create a more positive and uplifting atmosphere. With most other situations, he could honestly benefit from a bit more indecision before impulsively leaping into things.

Mindsets: Lack of pleasure

This one is obviously subjective. We can’t exactly ask him, and the whole premise that kicked off this examination is the idea that he’s faking a smile to hide his fear and pain. But even so, it is really difficult to look at things like the first minute of episode 58 and conclude that he’s not having a genuinely great time.

I can’t know for certain, but I am pretty sure that he doesn’t ham it up like this because he’s grudgingly going along with what his media team ordered. I am pretty sure he made a lot of his career and branding choices because he just thought they were really fun and wanted an excuse to burst into rooms while dabbing and shouting corny catchphrases. He doesn’t need to be a huge, ridiculous goof, but he seems to love it, both in hero and in true form.

There’s a frequent idea that the only reason Toshinori works so diligently for so long, and acts so enthusiastic in his hero form, is not because it brings him happiness, but because he’s driven by workaholism. He has to be “on” 24/7 in front of others. If he stopped, or dropped his cheery facade, he would feel crushing guilt for letting down the image he’s supposed to uphold. Therefore: it isn’t that he feels happiness or pleasure from his work like it appears—he doesn’t, he’s desperately depressed and burned-out—he’s just even more desperately trying to avoid shame. There’s no joy in the excessive act he puts on.

There is no question that he’s a workaholic. Multiple characters tell him this to his face. When he talks about why he became a hero, he usually phrases it as feeling driven in some way, rather than “it’s just so nice and enjoyable to save people.” Other people refer to his drive as a “madness.” And throughout the whole story, he struggles with feelings that he’s not doing enough, despite going above and beyond pretty much constantly.

He has stated, several times, that his work is not easy. It’s not all smiles. In fact, it can be crushing, something he mentions in chapter 317.

But does this mean he has gotten no enjoyment from his hero persona? That it was never anything but a horrible slogging trap of obligation and guilt? That seems absurd. It disrespects his compassion and the earnestness of his heroic motives. Are we really supposed to believe that he gets no happiness from reuniting families after a disaster? No warm satisfaction from a job well done, or joy from inspiring people? Not even a smidge of pride from being fawned over? It’s a very hard job, but who’s to say it isn’t worth it?

In the end, we don’t have direct narrative proof either way. He does not look at the camera and tell us, “I feel immense pleasure and fulfillment in my life.” But he also does not say, “I am drowning in sorrow and nothing brings me joy.” To me, it seems most plausible that his drive to work is driven both by enjoyment and aversion... the same as most things in life. People have complex relationships with their jobs and goals. There’s no work in the world that is nonstop fun with no downsides.

Workaholism is definitely a red flag. But it cannot be used to determine someone’s mood or even their opinion of their work. You cannot assert “this person must feel no pleasure from their job” just because it’s hard and they would feel guilty if they quit. The person would need to show several other worrying patterns before this would become a plausible idea. And meanwhile, I think there’s quite a few signs that he experiences genuine happiness on the regular.

Mindsets: Excessive guilt/regret

Toshinori has the tendency to apologize for things that are not his fault. He is the classic overreaching hero, taking the weight of the world on his shoulders. Some examples:

Both after the Stain arc and after Shigaraki ambushes Izuku at the mall, he apologizes that he wasn’t there to protect Izuku.

After the Summer Forest Training incident, he is mortified that he was blissfully taking a bath while his students struggled for their lives.

He apologizes to Aizawa when Katsuki picks a fight with Izuku, saying that he should’ve been more sensitive to Katsuki’s mental state. No, Katsuki’s just feral.

He apologizes that he wasn’t able to be more helpful to Izuku in the Villain Hunt arc. Yeah, because Izuku ditched him!

This seems like a natural consequence of his grand hero goals and the overpowered Quirk he lived with for 40 years. It makes sense that, as his power wanes, he is going to have trouble letting go of his overinflated sense of responsibility. At the same time, he seems aware of this issue and knows that it’s unreasonable, shown when he comments in chapter 22 that he and Izuku are alike in their compulsion to personally apologize for everyone else’s problems.

In addition... he is also just a polite Japanese guy, even if he steals Western superhero imagery left and right. In the U.S, this kind of behavior looks dysfunctional, but in Japan, it’s customary to politely apologize all the time for the most unnecessary things. The notes below come from a story draft that Horikoshi, this show’s mangaka, gave to his animation studio. These notes are an example of normal Japanese humility!

(Note that the finished OVA almost exactly followed this so-called "incoherent" script.)

Interestingly, despite this reflexive apologizing, he doesn’t seem to dwell on his failures for long. Excessive guilt and regret is all about rumination. Izuku is a great example of this, as he does it repeatedly, mulling over old topics and beating himself up after the fact.

But Toshinori behaves very differently. He is forced to confront and deliver a lot of bad news over this series, but he usually handles it in a remarkably non-judgmental and matter-of-fact way. And then, we almost never see him revisit it in order to berate himself. Examples:

At the USJ, he says “I’m sorry, Aizawa,” when seeing the awful injuries he could have prevented if he had been there... and that is the last we hear about it. We don’t ever see him bring up the incident again to fret about how he should have been there or done better. Instead, he brags about how Class 1-A did a stellar job and how the villains picked the wrong fight. (Positive reframing, again!)

When he learns about All For One being alive again, he’s naturally upset... but we don’t see him berating himself for failing to do the job right the first time. He has a lot to be guilty for: Izuku now has to face the horror he couldn’t defeat. But he doesn’t really get down on himself for it.

When he learns about Shigaraki being Nana’s grandson, he is naturally horrified. He tries, later, to take on the task of saving Shigaraki. But Gran Torino and Tsukauchi immediately shoot down his idea and tell him it’s not his task. He still does what he can to help the war effort, but I don’t recall him revisiting this topic to ruminate over his failure to save his master’s grandchild.

When asking Inko’s permission to let Izuku keep going to U.A., he spends very little time begging forgiveness. He immediately turns it around and asks her to... think on the bright side of things, and imagine the good instead of ruminating on the bad.

Nighteye is one of the few exceptions. When Toshinori speaks with Endeavor shortly after Nighteye’s death, it’s clear that he still feels regret about the way he cut Nighteye off so long ago. Nighteye also haunts his thoughts later... which I’ll get to.

Interestingly, I believe the story strongly suggests that he ruminates and apologizes too little, and that this is a character flaw. For example, in episode 5, after the entrance exam, when Izuku asks him whether he knew One For All was going to shatter all his bones, Toshinori doesn’t berate himself for causing his student horrific pain. Instead, he replies with... a thumbs-up, a big grin, and a lame pun.

In fact, unless I’m forgetting, he has never apologized to Izuku for his harsh speech on the rooftop, for all the bone-breaking, for failing to defeat AFO the first time, for withholding vital information, or for generally doing a terrible job as a mentor. There are many, many fix-it fics out there that are clearly frustrated about this behavior. It has taken him over 300 chapters to begin to self-reflect and realize the folly in this. As of this writing (chapter 360) he still hasn’t gotten around to giving his successor a proper apology that actually addresses his real failings, instead of a generic “sorry I couldn’t save the day.”

So he apologizes for things he shouldn’t, and doesn’t apologize for things that he should. Flawed? Yes. But overall pretty low on the guilt and regret.

The tally so far

Lack of energy/motivation: none we can see. He is on the go constantly.

Isolation: none we can see. He seems to prefer work over idle socializing, but it would be hard to expect much else from the #1 hero.

Other physical symptoms: none we can see.

Negativity/catastrophizing: pretty much none, impressive considering this series is a giant string of disasters. He is practical with bad news and practices positive reframing all the time.

Indecisiveness/reluctance to act: he is extremely decisive, almost too much so.

Lack of pleasure: subjective, but he seems to have plenty of genuine fun.

Guilt/regrets: apologizes for stuff he shouldn’t, but does not dwell on things. In fact, his refusal to self-reflect on his mistakes could be considered a flaw.

This is why I bothered to make this post at all. The depression take has always fascinated me because from what I can see, it’s not just that it’s debatable: it’s that most of his behaviors seem like the polar opposite of what you’d normally see in a person suffering from depression.

I am not trying to say that he is perfectly well-adjusted and has absolutely no problems. He is a clear workaholic and has dangerously skewed opinions about his limits and his sense of responsibility. He is extremely reluctant to open up about personal topics and tends to hold people at a distance. He does not self-reflect on things he should—this could be a sign that he dissociates from his flaws instead of facing them. All I’m saying is that these problems do not seem to involve depression as it’s normally understood.

But I’ve left out an important scene, one of the most decisive in this entire discussion.

Fighting Fate

This scene, starting in chapter 130, is considered proof positive that Toshinori had pretty much given up on life, at least before he met Izuku. Because Toshinori straight-out admits that, when Nighteye told him that he was going to die, he went right ahead and accepted it.

What kind of person would just roll over and accept death? Only someone who’s lost all hope, right?

You may be anticipating a rebuttal. Good instincts.

Think back to the hospital scene where this prophecy happened. Toshinori had just experienced a devastating injury, something he would never truly recover from. Considering his usual invulnerability, it was also, most likely, the first time he’d ever been badly injured in the line of duty. Imagine how terrifying and bleak life must have felt, constantly wondering whether he’d die suddenly and uncontrollably at any instant from the thousands of complications that can come from losing so many vital organs. He decided to use whatever remaining time he had left to uphold his duties as the Symbol of Peace, at least until a successor could be found to take his place.

But then... Nighteye informed him that he was, essentially, guaranteed to survive for an entire six or seven more years. And not only that... he would die while facing off against a villain, which presumably meant he could do hero work during that time. That had to be incredible news for someone who didn’t know whether his remaining life was going to be measured in years, or weeks, or days, or hours. It must have been an enormous relief. And it’s no wonder he skipped right out the hospital doors, if he had been promised he would survive for years to come no matter what. I mean, why wouldn’t you fight as much crime as you could if you had the guarantee that you would never die for at least half a decade?

To me, his behavior perfectly aligns with the attitudes we’ve seen in the previous sections. He knew, better than almost anyone, how infallible Nighteye’s prophecies were. So he didn’t dwell on the unfairness of it or hesitantly spin his wheels while pining for a rosier solution. He just immediately chose to make the best of what he was given. To me, that doesn’t look like depression or hopelessness at all: that looks like a remarkably proactive, pragmatic approach to one’s inevitable mortality. (It also looks like raging workaholism to try and go back to work while still barely able to walk, but nobody’s perfect, and again: I think this driven behavior fits workaholism way better than it fits depression.)

In the real world, if somebody got a terminal diagnosis with a fixed time frame like this, Nighteye’s desperate bargaining (“We’ll change things! Somehow! In some unspecified way!”) would be considered the dysfunctional attitude, while All Might’s resolution to get on with his life would be the well-adjusted, healthy one. His only “flaw” was that he didn’t idealistically assume he could escape the inevitable just by really, really wanting it to happen.

But luckily, Izuku came along to remind him that he lives in a superhero comic. And so, when he reached his finish line... he rose up, sent his optimistic streak into overdrive, and refused to accept his fate.

To me, this fight was astonishing. Because depression is crushing. Depression is exhausting. The urge to lie down and give up is overwhelmingly powerful. Even if you can push past it in order to do your duty, it’s always still there, weighing you down, whispering in the back of your mind.

But we got to listen to the thoughts inside his head during this fight, and we didn’t hear those whispers, not for a moment. He never wistfully said goodbye to the relief of that finish line, or mused that it would have been nice for his pain to finally be over. He never complained that his responsibilities were too heavy. He didn’t push back those negative thoughts—because they weren’t even there in the first place. Instead, his mind was filled with thoughts of his loved ones and the duty that gives him purpose. He ignored AFO’s taunts, pushed aside the awful shock of learning about Tenko, and chose to defeat his destiny.

How My Hero Academia handles hidden emotions

(Spoilers ahead for anime-only watchers)

You may be saying at this point, “This nitpicking is pointless. We heard him say that he smiles to cover up the pain. So of course we wouldn’t see symptoms. Clearly, he’s just stoically hiding his suffering. He has no energy, but he makes himself get up in the morning. He consciously pushes aside the dark thoughts and chooses to be uplifting. He doesn’t complain because he needs to set a good example.”

You may also be saying, “This is unfair. You’ve barely said a word about the Aizawa bench scene or the Stain confrontation in any of your examples.” That’s right! I’m going to get to those now.

One thing I learned pretty quickly is that this show is not coy about telling us when a character is having trouble, even if they are trying to hide it. When Ida was trying to “show a strong face” during the Stain arc, his attempts to hide his distress in chapters 45 and 46 were about as subtle to the audience as a sack of bricks.

We see this same pattern in many other characters. Here is an example from Izuku in chapter 163, putting on a brave face and claiming he’s fine. Note how the narration beats us over the head with the fact that he is not, in fact, fine.

Endeavor and Hawks also come to mind as characters who put on a stoic face towards others. And yet, we are given inner thoughts and private moments where we see their true feelings. I’m pretty sure Bakugo is the one who’s been consistently the most mysterious about his true feelings, which is saying something. This show is not subtle overall.

Initially, when we didn’t see this happening with Toshinori, I thought that he was just being Plus Ultra once again. His whole arc is about hiding the truth of himself, right? So of course he’d hide his exhaustion and pain from the successor he’s trying to inspire. He doesn’t want to inconvenience others, or draw attention to his own problems. He must be so good at deflecting concern that he can even hide it from the narration!

But then, the series continued, and... suddenly, we started getting the same blatant signs that we got from every other character. We were shown, very plainly, that he was struggling with feelings of being unable to help like he once could. As soon as Aizawa asked him what was wrong in episode 113, he plainly stated, “I am struggling with feelings of being unable to help people like I once could.”

What? He just casually blurts out his troubles to a coworker the second they question him? What happened to “put on a smile at all costs”? What happened to stoically hiding his sadness no matter what, to the point that there’s no evidence he’s sad at all?

As the stability of the nation crumbles and things get worse and worse and worse, he gets less and less subtle. He starts dwelling on his past failures, thinking about Nighteye over and over, and berating himself for his shortcomings. He tries his best to keep his turmoil hidden, and for the most part, it’s kept private from other characters. But we see it clear as day. We are clearly shown tons of blaring depression warning signs: feelings of worthlessness, lack of motivation, rumination, guilt, indecisiveness, hopelessness.

At the climax of it all in chapter 326, he goes wandering off dramatically in the rain (subtle!!) and freely discusses his negative thoughts during a truly wild serial killer therapy session.

We, the audience, are very clearly shown every step of his pain. And after he’s processed through it for a while, he leaps with both feet back into proactive, positive action, doggedly contributing to the war effort, the same energetic behavior he shows during the entire rest of the show. He’s definitely shaken, and may very well still be dealing with persistent negative thoughts (“crawling through the mud,”) but his spirit is not broken, and he’s pushing forward as best he can.

Will he backslide after this? Who knows; the manga isn’t done yet as of this writing. But it sure looks like a typical character crisis/resolution arc. He went through a harrowing time of self-doubt, and by chapter 327, came back out of it with renewed determination to help and faith in his students and in the future.

So what gives? This certainly looks more like a classic depressive episode than anything we’ve seen thus far. All in all, it comes off remarkably similar to the way that pretty much every other character’s emotional troubles are handled: blatantly. And he picks himself back up really fast.

Some might say that he was always secretly depressed, and only opened up to Aizawa because the stress was just too much and he broke down. But I argue, again—My Hero Academia tells us when its characters are experiencing emotions, even if they conceal them from the rest of the cast. It makes no sense for Toshinori to be an exception.

For the first 250 chapters of the show, Toshinori does not show any signs of lethargy, excessive rumination, negativity, feelings of worthlessness, or other signs that typically accompany depression. We get plenty of glimpses into his private, inner thoughts during this time. We even get to watch him hiding his emotions! And, like almost every other instance of characters hiding their emotions (this example in chapter 59), his true feelings are crystal-clear to the audience. (He’s also not very subtle in general. Not really a master at concealing his distress.)

Then, we get a character arc where he does display all those depression warning flags, very clearly and straightforwardly, in much the same way that the show portrays other characters trying to deal with mental distress. So what does that mean for the beginning of the show, when we never saw anything like that?

The clearest explanation of all this, to me... is that Toshinori has never been playing 5-D chess with the narrative. What we saw is what he felt. We can now tell that he was never cleverly trying to bluster through depressive attitudes back then, because we now know what it actually looks like when he’s trying to bluster through depressive attitudes. His remarkable ability to act like someone who does not have a mood disorder makes much more sense if he does not, in fact, have a mood disorder.

Except for one thing... the rooftop scene that started all of this.

What was going on there? If he never had depression, why did the show start off with such a wild red herring? Why have him announce that he was hiding horrible, crushing anguish, then turn around and make him act perfectly normal for the vast majority of the show?

Heading back to the rooftop

This gets into very speculative territory. But please hear it out, and decide if it makes more sense than secret-depression-with-no-symptoms. To me, the key is to look at the whole rooftop scene in context.

Let’s think about it from Toshinori’s point of view. He’s just been accosted by, from what he can tell, a rabid fanboy with no sense of boundaries. He has no idea how important Izuku’s dream is, and Izuku doesn’t exactly sell his ambition very well.

Izuku is a skinny, timid little string bean who clearly hasn’t trained for a day in his life. He describes saving people as... “cool.” And now he’s blithely asking if it’s possible to become a hero on All Might’s level without a Quirk. To Toshinori, Izuku probably looks like just another head-in-the-clouds, delusional fanboy. (There’s plenty of room to argue that this was exactly Izuku’s mindset until Toshinori dropped opportunity into his lap. He did not seem to actually try very hard, he just had a lot of vague dreams and a notebook blog. But that’s for another discussion.)

Toshinori probably encounters dozens of kids who act just like Izuku every day: kids with no sense of perspective, who look at heroes and thoughtlessly go “that looks cool, I wanna do that.” After all, earlier in the chapter, every single kid in Izuku’s class seemed to be planning a hero career, including the kids with amazing powers such as “has a long neck” and “has puffy cheeks.” Good luck with that, kids.

I wouldn’t be surprised if All Might’s example specifically causes problems with expectations: he makes everything look fun and effortless, easily saving everyone with a smile, so young fans make unrealistic assumptions about what hero work is actually like. Long-neck kid is going to get a horribly rude awakening when he realizes how traumatic the profession can be and how unsuited his Quirk is for the job. It’s got to hurt Toshinori, knowing that he’s inadvertently setting up innocent children for this kind of shock and disillusionment. And now, he’s seeing those unrealistic assumptions play out in this youngster, who’s already reckless enough to do dangerous things like grab his leg when he’s about to launch into the air with the speed of a jet plane.

It’s probably hard to talk kids out of this idealistic mindset. But because Izuku has seen his true form, Toshinori suddenly has a lot of options available that he usually doesn’t. The cat is already out of the bag, so now he can use the reality of his situation to give this kid the biggest wake-up call possible. Hence showing him the scar. Hence talking about his smile.

My takeaway is: when he talked about his smile hiding his fear, I now don’t think Toshinori was trying to make some kind of deep personal admission about how he has to conceal his true feelings. It wasn’t really about his feelings at all. It was simply about trying to convey a sense of reality to Izuku. “Look, I don’t smile because this job is effortless, even though I make it look easy. In reality, hero work is difficult and frightening. Please understand the gravity of what you’re trying to get into. Even I haven’t come out unscathed.”

He’s been through hell. His job is much harder than it looks. But I don’t think he’s trying to tell a child he just met that he’s secretly depressed and living a double life. Despite the struggles he’s been through, his positivity, drive, and hope are genuine, and we see that clearly throughout the entire rest of the show. He just doesn’t want this poor kid to get the wrong idea about hero work.

I hope all this was able to demonstrate why, nowadays, I don’t think he was suffering chronic depression during this series. Now, before the series? We can’t know. I’m sure that he was devastated after Nana’s death, and had a nightmarish time trying to adjust to the reality of his injury. But over a long period of time? I seriously question whether he would have been able to accomplish the superhuman career that he did while juggling a chronic mood disorder—to me, it belittles the debilitating nature of this condition to claim, “well, he pushed past all the hampering symptoms just by being so driven and noble.”

We saw him go through a crisis in the war arc, and he is likely still dealing with that internally. To me, the fact that he picked himself back up so fast just makes it even more unlikely that he has been quietly buckling under a long-term mood disorder this whole time. I don’t think he was hiding crushing, overwhelming negative feelings and putting on a brave face, because this series shows us whenever characters—including him—do things like that. He’s had a hard life, and he has plenty of problems, but I don’t think that this mood disorder has been one of them.

But why doesn’t he have depression!?

More than the rooftop, more than anything else, I think one of the biggest reasons people headcanon Toshinori as having depression &/or PTSD is simply because they take one look at his laundry list of tragedies and go: “there’s no way in hell a person wouldn’t be messed up after all that.”

And... yeah. That’s a very reasonable point.

In fact, I’d take it even farther: every single person in this show should probably be more traumatized than they actually are. Class 1-A? They should all be on a first-name basis with their therapists by now, with everything they’ve been through. And yet, canonically, they don’t show significant signs of trauma. They process their hardships and then go on to do things like their schoolwork and coordinated dance routines.

This is where we have to accept that this is a shonen series. The poor author is caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, it’s implausible and lazy to just ignore the entire topic of mental trauma, especially with a cast full of children who are experiencing violent crimes firsthand. But realistically depicted mental illness requires huge amounts of time and care to properly address, and characters with mental illness tend to have trouble doing protagonist-y things, like running off to save the world. If the story were to give the cast “realistic” levels of trauma, then the plot would instantly grind to a halt, dragged down by the severe psychiatric problems of 20 teenagers.

What’s interesting is that the series doesn’t just pretend the issue doesn’t exist. During the rescue OVA that takes place directly after the horrific events of USJ, Aizawa tells Toshinori that he shouldn’t throw a random villain surprise into their training exercise because it might be traumatizing.

(But then they go ahead and do it anyway.)

Later, after the villain attack of the Forest Training Camp Arc, Nezu specifically says in chapter 86 that the kids received psychological evaluations.

So the show clearly indicates it’s aware of the risks... it just decides that the main characters miraculously happen to be super-resilient. Which seems implausible, and gets more and more implausible the longer the series lasts... but it’s not impossible. There are lots of factors that can have a protective effect against mental trauma, such as being a protagonist in a shonen series.

Honestly, I’d rather have this over-optimistic approach than have the story try to be “realistic.” Because, let’s be real, kids’ action-adventure shows usually can’t handle these issues tactfully. Just look at what happened when they tried to depict super-duper serious trauma with Eri. This poor girl had been tortured and abused for so long that she couldn’t even smile... but in episode 86, shoving her into a noisy, overwhelming concert magically rekindled her joy instead of, say, causing her to massacre half the student body in a panic attack. That’s just how these sorts of stories go... this show does not have the time or space to have her spend a decade in therapy like she probably needs in order to handle an event like this.

(But gosh, look how cute it is.)

Same thing with Toshinori. Should he have more medical symptoms than we see? Probably, but it would drag down the story. And if the show actually gave him chronic PTSD, then Japan would have likely become a smoking crater a long time ago. In my opinion, the only way he could canonically have PTSD and still keep the story moving is if he just so happened to have a conveniently neutered version of the disorder that never caused any meaningful trouble... and that’s pretty disrespectful to a serious real-life illness. I can get why the author might have looked at this dilemma and decided to avoid giving him PTSD at all. Not out of ignorance, but out of respect and a desire not to misrepresent the condition.

This is exactly why fanworks are so useful: because they aren’t constrained by the many limitations of the main story. They can look at what it might be like if Eri actually needed a decade in therapy. They can see what might happen if Toshinori completely fell apart, or accidentally hurt someone in a moment of panic.

However... please think about the kind of message it sends to say, “Well, obviously, he should have depression/PTSD. He would definitely have them if this weren’t a shonen series. I’m doing honor to his true character to give him these conditions.” Losing a loved one does not automatically doom a person to trauma disorders or mood disorders that persist 40 years after the event. Injuries, even terrible ones, do not automatically doom a person to trauma disorders or mood disorders either. It is horribly bleak to make these claims like they’re givens.

It is also so, so saddening to see so many assumptions that his career as the Symbol of Peace came at the cost of his happiness, or that he lacked purpose or meaning in his life before meeting Izuku. It feels like such a disservice to his heroic spirit and his desire to make a difference in the world. It must have felt so good, so incredibly fulfilling, to be able to help so many people and raise so many spirits, even for a few hours a day. Who wouldn’t feel satisfaction from being able to play such an amazing role? Notice how we only started to see the negative thoughts really creep in once he lost his hero form for good.

He doesn’t need to have suffered through his whole career for his relationship with Izuku to be life-changing. In fact, I think it is much more meaningful if he felt true happiness from his career before starting to teach. Imagine the pain of losing something so important, so joyful, so immensely fulfilling, your life’s work. It would take something equally special and meaningful to fill that deep void and pull him out of the despair we saw in the war arc.

I wasn’t born yesterday; I know that fanfic exists to let us gleefully torture our favorite characters as much as we feel like. Sometimes, at the end of the day, you just gotta give them a debilitating mental disorder. But I question the constant message that optimism and good deeds are worth more if they’re forced out past a pall of suffering. Sometimes, it’s nice to be reminded that people can go through hell and still come out smiling... a genuine smile, not hiding a thing.

(Thanks to @journalxxx for lots of help and input on this post)

#meta #toshinori yagi #bnha #bnha manga spoilers

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales Final Four: The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck Review! or The Batman Trial Episode but with Ducks, Sharks, And the Fonz

Hello all you happy people and welcome to the penultimate Ducktales review... for season 3 anyway. I still have most of season 1, all of season 2 (I did cover one but I’ll probably redo it), the tie-in comics, the 87 series, and even then i’ll never really be done with ducks between all the scrooge comics and other duck related shows like Darkwing Duck and Quack Pack. But as far as covering the show as it comes out as i’ve done for the past year, that’s’ts almost done. It’s honestly just starting to hit as I type this: this is the second to last episode. After next week while there’s always fan fiction (And I certainly aim to contribute to that), a possible Darkwing Duck Reboot under frank (though that’s in doubt) where they could show up, and a movie down the road given what we saw with Phienas and Ferb and the show’s popularity it’s still not the same as getting these well animated, well crafted adventures every week with breaks or the ocasional entire week of them. The show won’t go on, and whatever happens with the property next is a mystery no amount of ducks can solve.

So with all that in mind naturally this episode is a breather episode: It’s not unimportant: like the rest of the season it ties off a lot of loose ends, adds in some stuff we didn’t know we wanted, and in general feels necessary like every episode this season. It’s something I credit the season for immensley: They knew this would probably be it so while they had more stories to tell, they made sure if these were their last, to leave no loose ends. And outside of ones they just never wanted to address in the first place like “What happened to Donald’s parents”, “Why was every trace of Della missing despite Scrooge’s search for her having just ended”, and “What did Della thing of the decades long seperation”, they’ve tied up pretty much all of them except for FOWL and what Beakly was lying about, and I feel both are about to ducktail into one another int he finale. Could be wrong but I applaud them for tying off almost every loose end and character arc by this episode that isn’t related to FOWL in some way. Not every show can do that: She Ra was a masterpiece but still had a few things like Scorpia and Catra’s broken relationship, Hordak’s reformation and Adora’s Parents just left up in the air due to time constraints, Steven Universe ONLY got to go back and answer a lot of questions because they were lucky enough to get an epilogue mini series, and Star Vs... was not as good as either show by the end and by the finale about 80% of things it’d brought up all had the following answer:

My point is it’s VERY hard, even when you know the end is coming to tie everything up in a neat bow. And I can’t know how good the finale be or how satsifying it will be but given how well this season’s wrapped everything up so far, i’m betting on immensely. But we can talk about that when it finally comes around next week. For now we have a trial episode to talk about that’s mostly good.. mostly. See why the mostly under the cut as I discuss and recap the episode with full spoilers. Count it down!

We open in the Mansion, where a bunch of tribble like Fuzzy creatures are running amok. Unsuprisingly, Scrooge bought one for Louie as a pet to teach him responsiblity.. again. And once again he instead turned into a get rich quick scheme, didn’t read the manual and now they have an infestation.

ONCE AGAIN, Louie is written like he’s barely changed at all in the past three seasons. Anyone whose been following my reviews regularly knows this has been a pet peeve of mine for the entire season. Despite having an ENTIRE arc about Louie growing as a character and learning the human cost of his scheming and to use his angle seeing talent’s wisely, the writers keep writing him as if he learned nothing. I went back to track it and while not as often as it felt I noticed a few things. The first is that it WASN’T like this for the first half of the season. No really. He even learns brand new lessons in The Trickening and Louie’s Eleven. Granted he also exploits his uncle in Louie’s Eleven but that’s mostly played for laughs.. still not a great bit but not a major part of the episode.

So he was fine for the first act of the season... but then for whatever reason from Let’s Get Dangerous onwards (Again I don’t count the Christmas episode as both of those are meant to slot in anywhere and chronologically take place before this season for the timeline to make any sense), he’s just...

He’s utterly insufferable in his small parts of the first half of Let’s Get Dangerous! as he berates Huey for daring to look a gifthorse int he mouse.. even though everytime he’s seemingly got something for nothing or minimal effort it’s backfired and it’s something that seeemd to stick with “The Richest Duck in the World!”. He’s fine in Impossibin and alright in split sword as while he clearly hadn’t learned lying isn’t the best policy we at least got a good story out of it. He then went right back to obnoxious with New Gods on the Block where he, EPISODES AFTER THE SOLEAGEO FISACO again thinks an easy way out is the right way, and has NO guilt over possibly killing a bunch of people with his gold powers and in fact is disapointed he dosen’t get to keep a living being turned to gold!. He spents all of Fight for Castle McDuck being a huge dick to Huey AGAIN iwth no lesson, and now has yet another family endagering get rich quick scheme he feels no remorse about.

I will admit when I”m wrong and I DID think it was in way more of the season than I thought. And let’s face it in real life personal issues don’t just go away and you can sometimes slide back, i’ve done it way too many times and i’m not proud of it. We’re only human. But this isn’t real life, this is cartoon ducks. And cartoon duck wise most character development has stuck or if a bad trait’s come back it’s been in a new way. Webby is still trusting, but knows how the world works now and while idolizing scrooge dosen’t think he’s perfect anymore. Huey is no longer a skpetic towards the super natural and hasn’t forced a party on anyone. Dewey hasn’t craved other people’s love or thought he needed to earn his mom’s love again. And that’s just the other kids. They aren’t the same people theyw ere going in, neither is Louie. So it’s grating when an episode acts like h’es exactly the same, let alone almost a fifth of the season.

What makes it even worse though is that he had an ENTIRE STORY ARC dedicated to learning some of these lessons already. With the others if one episode were forgotten i’d let it slide as it happens with tv, i’m used to it. It’s not a great look but it happens. Mistakes happen again we’re all human. But you can’t act like an entire arc of a series didn’t exist. While they ignore Della’s history somehow being hidden for the rest of the show they don’t ignore that Dewey spent a whole season looking for her, as he never hides something like that from his brothers again nor do they, and he’s out of them the biggets mama’s boy. While they did take a while to adress Lena, partly because the episode got pushed back, they didn’t act like season 1 never happened and she was still working for her aunt. Della still isn’t on the moon and Owlson still isn’t working for glomgold. Actions. Have. Consequences. That’s the whole point of this episode, but they act like none of it got through to louie and it makes his arc feel like a giant waste in hindsight. This episode even feels like it was SUPPOSED to be in that arc: Louie is back to his season 2 characterization, Scrooge is actively trying to mentor him again.. it just feels really out of place as our second to last episode in that way and drags it down a bit.

Thankfully after Scrooge bars the door, and possibly leaves everyone to their deaths but he presumably has enough faith in the kids, the twins and Beakley to take care of it, he gets a summons to court.. and gets kidnapped. He and Louie are whisked away to a mystic court presided over by a giant statue of justice holding scales, that judges someone based on Karma. Scrooge’s foes have brought him to court, blaming him for being evil and if he looses he looses EVERYTHING. And their proscutor?

Sadly not Droopy, maybe next continuity, but searing the same Hannibal-Esque Getup is Doofus Drake to Louie’s horror. As for why he’s like this.. he thought iht was fun. Great gag.

After the credits we find out why he’s doing this: He’s still pissed about Louie taking half his inheritance and giving it to his family, so he’s going to take LOUIE’S inheritance. It’s.. honestly a great setup: Doofus was already a villian I liked, being a nice weird evil mirror dewey instead of a walking fat joke like last series. So I was glad to both see him pop up one last time to make it a full trilogy of apperances as an angonist and to see him take a step up from his passive roll in the past: in his first two apperances while he was evil and abusive, and still is, his evil was mostly due to his own warped logic, feeling he could put shock collars on and control people and that Louie lying to him was enough to warrant making him into a pinata. He’s still a bad person mind you: kid or not he ensdlaved his parents, tried to enslave louie and goldie and in general REALLY needs some help empathizing with people. But my point is that before he didn’t come after anyone.. so it’s a nice capper to have his final turn as antaognist be him going after our hero.. and at his most dangerous. Before someone would’ve come for Louie eventually in Doofus’ first apperance and Goldie would’ve found a way out or Scrooge, despite grumbling about it, would’ve helped.. if nothing else than to lord having to save her from a 12 year old over her. Here if he wins the family is out on the street and three of their greatest enemies are now infinitely more well funded.

So while naturally unnerved by his rival Louie offers to defend Scrooge who denies it despite the fact that Louie is REALLY good with words, and Scrooge, while not bad with them, can’t stop shouting and keeps pissing off the baliff, played by my boy Henry Winkler whose done a lot of voice work and also played Fonzie on Happy Days, is currently on the HBO series barry and in general is just a fucking delight. The irony is also not lost on me that he’s not playing a lawyer here despite being one on arrested development.

We get our first witness: FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. Hell. Yes. It’s nice to see him in his full glory one last time, as I don’t know how much he’ll be in the finale. Scrooge blows of the Duke Baloney thing, which is fair given that while Scrooge screwed up there, Glomgold still stole money from him right after and then spent his whole life trying to one up him. But Glomgold has a different tale in mind as he stole something else from him: the limelight.

It was 1980-something and Glomgold was a bonified celebrity in Duckberg for his hot dogging, grandstanding and treasure hunting loved by all and took Baba Wawa, a nice mix of Barbra Walters and the parody of her on SNL by the late Gilda Radner, to a shark shaped cave to get the gem of the shark god, a ruby tooth at the end of the cave. Naturally Scrooge popped up and easily made his way through and stole the spotlight. As it turns out he wasn’t always well loved and it makes sense: he dismises Baba asking him about how disliked he is, and dosen’t care and even in the current story, or rather season 1 of it, he dismiseed PR entirely in Jaw$. He was rich enough and enough of a job provider he just didn’t see the need for fame or glory, that just came second so it’s logical no one liked him. Fortunes naturally reverse as you’d expect though: Glomgold dashes forward and ends up putting Baba and her camerabird in danger and being Glomgold he irrationally assumes she’s working for Scrooge and leaves her to die. Scrooge however, after getting the rock, goes out of his way to save her because it’s the right thing to do. He can be selfish at times, and as we’ll see monstrously so, but at his core Scrogoe is a good man who will do right when the chips are down. So this leaves Glomgold trapped and Scrogoe getting his good press instead and realizes he likes the attention.

As the flashback ends Glomgold fills in the gaps, pointing out he was stuck with the sharks for days, but slowly bonded with them learned from them and they became family, helping him with traps, joining him for thanksgiving and even getting a heart taatoo with a shark on it. Awww. Look I didn’t really need to know where Glomgold’s love of sharks came from, nor that he had some weird tarzan origin story with them.. but my life is 100% better knowing all of this so thank you Frank and Matt. Thank you. I’m also entirely convinced the two have had this whole part of his backstory ready to go for three seasons and were waiting to use it, along with the other two bits we’re about to get to. This episode as you can tell is also a vingette episode, but one where the wraparound is way more improtant than usual.. but it works given the setting and allows the stories to be as long as they actually need to be, and it addds some nice stakes instead of just having Scrooge’s villians gripe about him.

Scrooge protests and the Bailiff puts a clamp on his beak, so he has no choice in the matter when Louie steps up for the defense. Louie also proves that irresponsible he may be.. he’d be a damn good lawyer, as he easily picks things apart, pointing out Glomgold was ALREADY bad by then, Scrooge had no intent to steal the spotlight and Glomgold is currently planting dynamite under his chair, with predictable and hilarious results. So he gets put on the “good” side of the scale. Next witness.

Next up is Ma, and I was delighted that as I’d hoped and theroized this episode wrapped up one little plot point that while not major, was something I was curious about: Ma’s claims Scrooge stole Duckburg from her family. This was also likely the backbone of the episode at one point as Frank pitched a beagle trial episode at one time, but Disney nixed it. Likely the magic stuff was added both to justify it better and to distract Disney Channel’s higher ups because they constantly underestimate what a child will like. It was for the best though as the beagles are just a bit weaker here: While Character Actress Margo Martindale is a delight and was specifically cast for the role, overall it just feels like they ran out of ways to make the beagles a big threat and releigated them to muscle when needed, to the point they only appeared in one episode besides this one this season as with FOWL about, they didn’t really need villians of the week and what ones they did use like Glomgold and Mark were far more entertaining villains who needed a coda to their stories.They aren’t bad characters, but in a series where their breaking into the bin or mansion wasn’t a story the crew was interested in they served no real purpose.

So we finally get answers about the whole Deed thing: It was sometime in Ma’s childhood, good look guessing when, and the Beagles owned Duckburg having clearly overwhelmed Fort Duckburg at some point in history between Clinton’s defense of it and now, with Grandpa “Pa” Beagle finally making an apperance. In the comics he was basically what Ma is to both series: the scheming brains behind the beagles who showed up on occasion and it was a good idea to use him as the past version of her.

Scrooge naturally comes a calling and unsurprisingly Ma was lying: Scrooge offered to buy the place first from Pa, he refused outright, and then when Scrooge showed off the money he was offering, Pa bet the deed for it in an arm wrestling contest. Not only that but as Scrooge finds out as he almost looses, Pa was cheating having a smaller beagle boy operate pull a lever in a device attached to his arm to give pa extra force. Scroooge simply dropped a few coins to distract the guy and claimed victory and the deed.

Little Ma is left dejected though and Doofus claims he ruined his life, but Louie steps up, at this poitn Scrooge has learned to reign himself ina nd accepted Louie as his defense without saying anything, a nice subtle bit. He probably realized that while irrepsonsible.. Louie has everything to loose her and no reason to slack off and dosen’t even relaly have to lie for his uncle to get him off: he’s simply using his ablitiy to see all the angles to poke holes in their story.

Case in point, he orders the “tape” to continue and finds Little Ma berating her dad for his failure and forcefully taking control of the family. LIke Glomgold, Scrooge may of cost her something.. but it was something she and her family hadn’t earned and they were still on a bad road. Scrooge just made it worse.

But suprisingly, its MAGICA, who we’ve established is an uncaring monster, who has a story Scrooge genuinely feels bad about. Like the rest she was not a good person: Long ago she and her brother Poe were extorting a villiage, and lording over it as gods, changing the population into goats, toads and other things. The only diffrence from what Magica would do to the blot and presumiibly others later, is that Poe reigned in her manical tend ices, trying to get her to think things through. The goat transformation was so they’d have milk and at least get something out of it and as to not waste all their slaves. Poe is voiced by Martin Freeman of The Hobbit and Black Panther fame. Great actor, does amazing work here. So like the others Scrooge changed things, and fought someone with bad intentions for his own self. He talked Magica into fighting him with both amulets by playing into her ego and Poe trying to talk her down, and easily deflected her bolt with the dime to turn her into a crow with her own spell. So far it’s just like the other tales in a nice mirror.. it’s what comes next that makes Scrooge into a bad guy too. Not as bad as Magica and Poe.. but sitll not good. Poe dives selflessly in front of the coin.. and shockingly while she cared nothing for Lena.. that wasn’t the case for Poe. Magica is truly devastated, desperatly trying to put the amulet back on and begging scrooge for help while he just ignores her and fills up his sack. And while they both deserved it... Scrooge and Louie both recognize he was wrong as the flashback ends with Poe escaping and Magica sitll haven’t having found him to this day. And props to Catharine Tate here a she takes a normally hammy terrible person who was wholly unsympathetic and manages to make her painfully human.

What makes the act so terrible is not who it happened to, they both desrved it, but Scrooge’s attitude, utterly callous to magica’s pain with not a drop of sympathy. While she deserved it as did Poe.. he’s not doing this to her as some justice for her crimes, or because she did something horrible to him or any valid reason.. he’s doing it because he’d rather get more of her and poes gold than lift one finger to help someone who had , for all his evil, selflessly sacrificed himself for his sister. For all Poe’s evil and tyranny.. there MIGHT of been a good man in them, in both of them.. and Scrooge could’ve cared less. He shut the door on Magica ever becoming a good person, ever getting her brother back to line his own wallet and to satisfy his own ego. See that’s the true mark of a hero: how they treat others, even the worst of them. And in his lowest moment Scrooge could’ve cared less about anyone but himself.

Scrooge feels bad and Louie does finally get the responsibility thing and this is where things start to go off the rails: he apologizes to Doofus and admits he dosen’t want an enteral rivalry and h’es sorry for any pain he caused. The off the rails part is because Doofus is genuinely not a good person, ahs done very bad things and is trying to bankrupt Louie for the crime of “taking half your fortune after you used it to torment and enslave your own parents’. It just.. dosen’t play as well as they’d like. That said I DO like both Louie deciding to bury the hatchet instead of just avoiding him and Doofus showing some nobiity in accepting it. Maybe he’ll change.

He goes off into the night, and Scrooge genuinely apologizes and accepts repsonsiblity... and here’s where the plot finishing going off the rails and into someone’s living room: the bailiff AWARDS THEM SCROOGE’S FORTUNE BECAUSE HE ADMITTED SOME CUPLABLITY AND WAS HUMBLE.

This just.. it makes no sense, it will never not baffle me and it hurts my brain> Yes he admitted some wrong doing and apologized for it.. but it was also THROUGHLY proven the other two weren’t his fault, and he was simply being a good man which should get him some good. Thankfully the conclusion is a bit better, as Louie points out while they made him, he made you so who made who, who made you... okay i’m getting into the AC/DC of things point is these incidents all shaped Scrooge into a better person. His mistake with Magica. is clearly learned from. He’s stopping a group of bullies in Ma’s story and saving a life without a second thought in the second. He learned to value others, to value family all because THEY showed him what happens when you don’t. By seeing the worst person he could be.. he became the best. So the trial’s thrown out his assets are returned, and their teleported out before magica can hit them with lighting. Lesson learned.. well kinda Louie tells scrooge to do it because he got the pet.

Final Thoughts for The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck:

Great title aside.. this one is a mess. It’s not a terrible episode: the flashbacks are genuinely engaging, each one helping flesh out the villians and in Ma’s case pulling one last dangling plot thread. Glomgold’s was just entertaining , clevelry using his 80′s origns for an 80′s style news special and giving us the origin to his love of sharks that we didn’t know we needed., Ma’s tied up a loose plot threat with a fun flashback and Magica’s was genuinely heart wrenching and did the tall task of making us feel for someone that terrible. The wraparound.. was a bit weaker. Doofus was the best part, playing an excellent manipulative bastard lawyer, and being a genuine threat and his walking away peacefully was a nice touch, and Louie having to defend scrooge was great and showed him off better than ever. And Louie did get some moments to shine.. it was just wierldy bookened with him acting terribly AGAIN, in a way he should know better than in an episode where he acts fine for most of it and even then he thinks lying to a judge is a good idea! I know he’s 12 but he’s not this stupid and while as I made very clear i’ve seen this shit before, I haven’t seen it flip flop in the same episode. Louie deserves better than this.

But it’s also in service to a responsiblility aseop that just.. dosen’t work as presented. Yes you should take responsiblity for your past, yes you should learn from your mistakes and own up to them, I have, and yes it’s all too easy to slide back> That’s all fine.. but him apologizing to Ma, whose family was terorrizing a town, and Glomgold, who he did nothing to, and having Louie apologize to Doofus, who while he tried to exploit him still enslaved his own parents and deserved to loose half his fortune AND loosing half his fortune wasn’t even the main thing Louie wanted to do as his main goal was getting BOYD a loving family.. it’s bullshit. Just pure Grade-A bullshit. Why are you booing them their right. It’s a good idea for a moral but it’s executed so overwhelmingly poorly it bogs down what was otherwise an exceptional episode, into just passable. It’s just mind numbing and saddening to know the next to last episode wasted so much good ideas on a clumsy moral. Thankfully I have hope the finale will be better, and again at least we got some good out of this one.

Next Time: Endgame Baby! Clan McDuck and their Amazing Friends Vs F.O.W.L. for the fate of adventure itself! One last ride! I can hardly wait!

This week on the blog: Ducks Ducks and more ducks.. and a top 12 list of my faviorite superheroines later today’s for international women’s day. But after that we have more of the Della arc, the last step in the Lena arc before Shadow War next week, and the 87 ducktales pilot treasure of the golden suns!

If you liked this review, share it around, follow for more, and you can comission your own for 5 dolalrs an issue or episode, or kick in some money on my patroen, link on my blog. Even a dollar a month helps and my next stretch goal is 5 dollars away and if we reach it i’ll review both the super ducktales mini series introducing gizmoduck AND a darkwing duck episode a month. Until the next rainbow it’s been a pleasure.

#ducktales #the life and crimes of scrooge mcduck #scrooge mcduck #louie duck #doofus drake #magica de spell #poe de spell #FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD #ma beagle #the beagle boys #disney channel #disney #ducks #uncle scrooge

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nsk96 · 4 years ago

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Favorites

Posts I want to find again later because I just realized the search feature ain’t functioning well T~T

IMPORTANT: Suicide prevention on Tumblr

Dancing Cowboy/ ra ra rasputin (video)

Activities for Anxiety and Panic

Survival myths/ safety / snake bite, bear attack, shark attack, shelter, hypothermia

Come here. No u (video)

Tumblr Tips: adding links to your bio

Tortoise scritches (video)

Women in chess

How to kill creativity

Hell sounds nice (video)

Queer-bating in TV Shows

Never ask the internet what to name your baby

Bookshelf relationship goals (video)

Skrek: the catnip was planted

Building a fort/tent at home

Haunted house vs mold

Email Office Battle (video)

Giant animatronic dinosaur (video)

Communication Advice

Napping kitten (video)

Skip account creation

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Snoring Dormouse (video)

Love Yourself - self respect toad

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Portal: look directly at implosion

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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Star Wars Canon Timeline in Chronological Order

https://ift.tt/2P9rWnU

Need help starting your Star Wars adventure? Check out our beginner's guide to the canon timeline!

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens ushered in an entirely new generation of fans looking for more adventures in the galaxy far, far away, but with the whole issue of Legends canon vs. the new canon and a whole slate of new books, comics, and movies arriving in the next few years, it can be hard to figure out where to start. Luckily for you, it's become a bit easier to dive into the canon materials now that a clear line has been drawn between Legends (pre-Disney) and new canon (post-Disney) stories, but that new material is quickly growing, too.

In order to help new fans get a clear look at the official Star Wars timeline, we've put together a list of the most central Star Wars books, comics, and games and detailed how they relate to the movies and TV series.

Read More: Everything We Know About Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

What won't you see on this list?

Most Star Wars Insider short stories, Star Wars Rebels Magazine comics, Forces of Destiny shorts, or Disney novelizations like The Princess, The Farmboy, and The Scoundrel. Star Wars Insider stories have been included where we felt they contributed most to the overarching timeline -- or if we felt they were particularly good.

This timeline is intended to help you find the best jumping-on point. (There's always the "pick up whatever you find first" approach, though.) Dates are sometimes approximate and are based on years before (BBY) and after (ABY) the Battle of Yavin, equivalent to before and after A New Hope, as per the official canon chronology.

Stream everything Star Wars with a FREE TRIAL of Disney+, on us!

32 - 20 BBY - Age of Republic

Written by Jody Houser

Art by Cory Smith and Luke Ross

The Age of Republic comics miniseries is composed of one-shot issues that prove writer Jody Houser is a powerful new addition to Star Wars fiction. The series focuses on Prequel characters such as Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Maul, Jango Fett, Padmé Amidala, Anakin Skywalker, Count Dooku, and General Grievous. They each get their own issues, which can be read together or separately. Age of Republic Special stars Mace Windu and brings in heroes and villains from across the Clone Wars.

32 BBY - Marvel's Darth Maul

Written by Cullen Bunn

Art by Luke Ross

Set before the events of The Phantom Menace and the villain's first demise at the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi, this comic book miniseries follows Darth Maul in the early days of his apprenticeship under Darth Sidious. While he's not allowed to engage the Jedi just yet, Maul still manages to come face to face with a young Jedi Padawan during one of his missions for the Dark Lord of the Sith. The events of the series show how the dark side makes Maul more powerful but also incredibly flawed.

Buy Marvel's Darth Maul

32 BBY - The Phantom Menace

Directed & Written by George Lucas

Buy The Phantom Menace

29 BBY - Marvel's Obi-Wan & Anakin

Written by Charles Soule

Art by Marco Checchetto

This comic series, written by Charles Soule and penciled by Marco Checchetto, is Disney’s first foray into deep Prequel territory, without even The Clone Wars to hang on to. Devoid of any ancillary material. Obi-Wan & Anakin paints a slightly different picture of the iconic Jedi team-up than the Legends stories did before. Anakin is a headstrong tinkerer, but there is also an edge of vengefulness or self-hatred around him in the first issue when he summons a hologram of Darth Maul that surprises and disgusts the Jedi Council.

The series expands on how Anakin’s life as a slave affects the way he views the Jedi. This isn't an easy apprenticeship for either Jedi, but we know that it’s leading up to at least some camaraderie by the time of Padme’s attempted assassination in Attack of the Clones.

Buy Marvel's Obi-Wan & Anakin

28 BBY - Queen's Shadow

Written by E.K. Johnston

This young adult novel details the lives of Padmé Amidala and her handmaidens. The loose plot follows Padmé as she transitions from queen to senator, but the episodic story is much more than that. It confronts the idea of slavery in Star Wars, the tragedy of the way Papatine manipulated Padmé’s political path, and the problems and privileges of ruling at such a young age. Padmé is presented as a formidable warrior, a teen still learning to hold her own, and a shrewd negotiator.

22 BBY - Attack of the Clones

Directed by George Lucas

Written by George Lucas & Jonathan Hales

Buy Attack of the Clones

22-19 BBY - The Clone Wars

Created by George Lucas

Buy The Clone Wars

21-17 BBY - Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel

Written by James Luceno

Before Jyn Erso embarked on her fateful mission to steal the plans to the Death Star from the evil Empire in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, she lived on Coruscant with her parents, Galen and Lyra. Galen is a scientist who means to use his kyber crystal research to produce renewable energy for the galaxy, but his friend Orson Krennic has very different plans. The scientist doesn't know that he's actually helping create a weapon for the Death Star!

Buy Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel

19 BBY - Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir

Written by Jeremy Barlow

Art by Juan Frigeri

Although Mother Talzin appeared to have perished in The Clone Wars, she returns in what may or may not be a spiritual form during the many battles in Son of Dathomir. This comic miniseries, like Dark Disciple, was adapted from unused scripts from The Clone Wars, and is something of a battle royale, pitting Darth Maul against a variety of foes, including Count Dooku and General Grievous.

Buy Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir

19 BBY - "Kindred Spirits"

Written by Christe Golden for Star Wars Insider #159

Often, Star Wars Insider stories will tie directly to one of the recently released novels, exploring side characters or presenting scenes before or after the book. In the case of "Kindred Spirits," the author was also the same: Christie Golden penned this tale of Asajj Ventress finding an unlikely ally shortly before Dark Disciple. Readers interested in the bounty hunter persona Ventress adopted during The Clone Wars might especially appreciate the tone of this one, which also features another tough female character.

19 BBY - Dark Disciple

Written by Christie Golden

While fans clamored for more of The Clone Wars after the animated series’ cancellation, stories set in this era, and overseen by many of the same writers and producers, began to emerge in different formats. Some unaired episodes of The Clone Wars were aired during conventions or released online; others were adapted into comics, as in Son of Dathomir. Dark Disciple was one of the more high-profile results of this effort, as it is a full-length novel telling the story of Asajj Ventress after her story on the television show had ended.

Ventress is reluctantly recruited by Quinlan Vos, a morally ambiguous Jedi in pursuit of Count Dooku. Dark Disciple is, in part, a love story, showing Ventress and Vos’ relationships with one another and how that affects their views of the Force. It’s also a war story, with the inventive action typical of The Clone Wars.

Buy Dark Disciple

19 BBY - Revenge of the Sith

Directed & Written by George Lucas

Buy Revenge of the Sith

19 BBY - Marvel's Kanan

Written by Greg Weisman

Art by Pepe Larraz

If you watch Rebels but haven’t read Star Wars books or comics before, Kanan series is a good place to start. The stories alternate between the crew of the Ghost undertaking what at first seems to be a simple mission on Lothal, and Kanan’s memories of Order 66 and his training with his Jedi Master. This is a good way to learn about this fan-favorite character.

Buy Marvel's Kanan

19 BBY - Marvel's Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith

Written by Charles Soule

Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli

This series literally starts at the moment Darth Vader is born, a second after the end of Revenge of the Sith. Unlike Marvel's first Darth Vader series, this new ongoing book tackles the earliest days of Anakin's transformation into the feared Sith apprentice, more machine than man.

Buy Marvel's Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith

18 BBY - Ahsoka

Written by E.K. Johnston

What happened to former Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano after leaving the Order in The Clone Wars? This is the story of what led Ahsoka down the path to becoming the Rebel agent Fulcrum. Anyone who loves the character's appearances in the animated series should read this book.

Buy Ahsoka

14 BBY - "Orientation"

Written by John Jackson Miller for Star Wars Insider #157

Like "Kindred Spirits," John Jackson Miller’s "Orientation" has some of the same characters as the Star Wars novels that came out around the same time. It was packaged along with Lords of the Sith, but touches some other Star Wars material, too.

Darth Vader is ostensibly the main character of the story, strutting his way around an Imperial training ship. But the other star of this story is Rae Sloane, a young cadet. Remember that name.

14 BBY - Lords of the Sith

Written by Paul S. Kemp

Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine have crash-landed in the dangerous wilderness of Ryloth in this dark side road trip. Lords of the Sith also has a connection to Rebels and The Clone Wars: freedom fighter Cham Syndulla sees a potential advantage for his rebels and tries to assassinate the Sith while they’re working their way through the wilderness.

The novel explores Vader and Palpatine’s tense power struggles as well as the things that bind them together. Lords of the Sith also has the new canon’s first LGBT character, the slovenly Imperial Moff Mors, who has her own character arc as the story goes on.

Buy Lords of the Sith

14 BBY - Tarkin

Written by James Luceno

Another tale from the dark side, Tarkin shows the history and martial rise of the man who would one day command the Death Star. James Luceno was known for writing big, encyclopedic novels in the Legends timeline—he’s particularly good at fitting different parts of the canon together and talking about the political landscape of the galaxy far, far away. The Tarkin novel brings both of those things into the new canon and tells the story of Tarkin’s attempt to retake an experimental starship from Rebel saboteurs.

Buy Tarkin

13 BBY - Lando's Luck

Written by Justina Ireland

Disney Publishing has been knocking it out of the park with the young adult Star Wars novels, and Lando’s Luck is the most entertaining of the Solo tie-ins. Funny dialogue and a fast-paced adventure make this story—in which Lando and L3-37 team up with a young princess—a good one to pick up if you liked Lando in either Solo or The Empire Strikes Back.

13-10 BBY - Solo: A Star Wars Story

Directed by Ron Howard

Written by Lawrence Kasdan and Jon Kasdan

11-5 BBY - Lost Stars

Written by Claudia Gray

Although Lost Stars spans throughout the Original Trilogy, it starts beforehand, with two young people joining the Imperial Academy. It’s essentially a love story, with Thane Kyrell and Ciena Ree still holding their feelings for one another even after Thane joins the Rebellion. This book is also a great look at the psychology of the people inside the two armies.

The new Star Wars books have dispensed quickly with the idea that all Rebels are noble (or noble scoundrels) and that all Imperial loyalists are scheming. Lots of different things drive people to make their choices in war, and Lost Stars shows that. It also culminates in an exciting battle that ties into The Force Awakens. After reading this one, you’ll never look at Jakku quite the same way again.

Buy Lost Stars

11-2 BBY - Thrawn

Written by Timothy Zahn

When the old continuity was turned into Legends, it meant that many of the greatest characters introduced in the old EU were no longer canon. It seems like even that couldn't keep the Empire's greatest tactician down, though. The cold, Chiss admiral Thrawn returns to continuity with this new origin story from writer Timothy Zahn, the man who created the character back in the '90s.

Buy Thrawn

11 BBY - A New Dawn

Written by John Jackson Miller

For fans of Rebels, A New Dawn shows the origins of some fan-favorite characters and sets the tone for the new canon Imperials. It introduces the ruthlessly efficient Count Vidian, who goes up against Hera and Kanan when the fate of a planet is on the line. Joining them are the unlikely duo of conspiracy theorist Skelly and ex-Imperial surveillance officer Zaluna. Although it explains more about Kanan’s history than Hera’s (more about her can be found in the short story “Mercy Mission,” in the Rise of the Empire collection), A New Dawn is a good piece of the continuity puzzle for Rebels fans.

It was also the first book in the new canon, making its title doubly appropriate. Author John Jackson Miller was well-known for Legends material, like the novel Kenobi and the Knights of the Old Republic comic series, before he contributed the first book to the new canon.

Buy A New Dawn

6-4 BBY - Servants of the Empire

Written by Jason Fry

This four-book young reader series follows Zare Leonis, the Imperial cadet who helped Ezra escape the stormtrooper academy in season one of Rebels. Like Rebels itself, the series can be enjoyed by people outside of its grade-school audience, too. Part of the appeal is the characters: the story switches between Zare and his conflicting ideas about the Empire to his friend, hacker Merei Spanjaf, who launches her own investigations while trying to avoid being caught by her security expert mother.

Zare is on the hunt for his sister, a promising, Force-sensitive Imperial recruit taken by the Grand Inquisitor. Like in A New Dawn, Rebels fans will be able to find plenty of connections to their favorite characters.

Buy Servants of the Empire

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6 BBY-3 ABY - Battlefront / Battlefront: Twilight Company

Video Game Developed by DICE

Novel Written by Alexander Freed

Like John Jackson Miller, Battlefront: Twilight Company author Alexander Freed came to Star Wars novels through short stories and comics. His canon short fiction has appeared in Star Wars Insider before (“One Thousand Levels Down” and “The End of History”).

Twilight Company visits some of the same locations available to players in the 2015 Battlefront video game, but its characters are new and unique. The cynical protagonist is Namir, a soldier who fights doggedly for the Rebellion’s cause without ever really believing that the cause is as noble as others do. He finds an unlikely ally in Chalis, a former Imperial governor whose ruthless plans for the Rebel squad’s success cause some dissent in the ranks.

Buy Battlefront

Buy Battlefront: Twilight Company

5-2 BBY - Rebels

Created by Dave Filoni, Simon Kinberg, & Carrie Beck

Buy Rebels

3 BBY - Leia: Princess of Alderaan

Written by Claudia Gray

After winning fans' hearts with the political novel Bloodline, Claudia Gray returned with a young adult novel about Leia's youth on Alderaan and her first missions with the Rebel Alliance. Leia: Princess of Alderaan focuses on the princess and her parents, Breha and Bail, but also includes cameos from characters such as The Last Jedi's Amilyn Holdo, Captain Panaka, and Grand Moff Tarkin.

Buy Leia: Princess of Alderaan

2 BBY - Thrawn: Alliances

Written by Timothy Zahn

The wildly popular canon Thrawn novels continue with a story set during the Clone Wars. Alliances jumps between the Original Trilogy and the Prequel era, showing how Thrawn worked with Anakin Skywalker before and after he became Darth Vader. The book also features Padmé on her own mission during the Clone Wars. She finds herself reluctantly teaming up with the titular Chiss mastermind.

0 BBY - Guardians of the Whills

Written by Greg Rucka

A fun look at Jedha before the decidedly less fun events of Rogue One, Guardians of the Whills captures Baze and Chirrut's voices well and shows what Jedha City was like before its destruction.

Buy Guardians of the Whills

0 BBY - Rogue One

Directed by Gareth Edwards

Written by John Knoll, Gary Whitta, Chris Weitz, & Tony Gilroy

Buy Rogue One

0 BBY - A New Hope

Directed & Written by George Lucas

Buy A New Hope

0 BBY - 5 ABY: Battlefront II/ Battlefront II: Inferno Squad

Video Game Developed by EA DICE, Motive Studios, Criterion Software

Novel Written by Christie Golden

A prequel to the video game Battlefront II, the novel Inferno Squad introduces players to Iden Versio, special forces commander and daughter of Imperial loyalist Admiral Garrick Versio. Assigned to infiltrate a group of Saw Gerrera's Partisans, she and her team grapple with the morality of both the Empire and the violent splinter group of the Rebellion.

The video game's campaign follows Inferno Squad from shortly before the destruction of the Death Star to the Battle at Jakku, where the Empire finally fell. Fans who read the novel will have much better context for the relationships between the characters in the campaign, which also introduces playable versions of Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren.

Buy Battlefront II

Buy Battlefront II: Inferno Squad

0 BBY - Marvel's Princess Leia

Written by Mark Waid

Art by Terry Dodson

Many of Marvel’s Star Wars comic series so far take place in the Original Trilogy time period. Before information about The Force Awakens was public, Marvel was already doing all it could with its re-acquisition of the Star Wars brand, launching three ongoing series (Star Wars, Darth Vader, and Kanan), along with a succession of miniseries. The Princess Leia story picks up immediately after the end of A New Hope, touching on Leia’s feelings—or lack thereof—about the destruction of her home planet.

Although Rebel High Command wants her to keep a low profile, Leia makes it her mission to recruit surviving Alderaanians to the Rebel cause. They are in diaspora, but not all of the people she meets want to go to war. She’s helped by Evaan, a Rebel pilot with a not-so-favorable view of the woman she calls “ice princess.”

Buy Marvel's Princess Leia

0 BBY - Heir to the Jedi

Written by Kevin Hearne

Heir to the Jedi was published right in the middle of the transition from Legends to new canon. Originally branded as part of the Empire & Rebellion series, along with Razor’s Edge and Honor Among Thieves, it alone of the three books in that series survived the cut-off. Kevin Hearne’s story explains how Luke learned the telekinesis he used in The Empire Strikes Back.

Since Obi-Wan never taught him that, someone had to encourage Luke to use the Force—and in Heir to the Jedi, it’s Nakari Kelen, a fellow Rebel pilot with whom Luke goes on a mission to retrieve a Rebel codebreaker.

Buy Heir to the Jedi

0 BBY - Marvel's Chewbacca

Written by Gerry Duggan

Art by Phil Noto

Some time after the events of A New Hope, Chewbacca finds himself comfortably crash-landed on the planet Andelm IV. He’s willing to have a bit of a nap before beginning a leisurely search for parts for his ship, but there are other people on the planet who aren’t so relaxed.

A girl named Zarro and her father have been conscripted into working essentially as slaves in a mine run by a man who plans to profit off of the Empire. Chewie and Zarro hatch a plan to free her father in this fun, five-issue series with beautiful art by Phil Noto.

Buy Marvel's Chewbacca

0 BBY - The Weapon of a Jedi

Written by Jason Fry

Prolific Star Wars writer Jason Fry tells a quintessential Luke story in The Weapon of a Jedi. A young Luke travels to Devaron on a hunch sent by the Force and discovers an ancient Jedi Academy where he can hone his skills—and where he fights with a lightsaber for the first time.

Although we don’t know for sure whether the Jedi Temple on Devaron will affect the Star Wars universe going forward, it’s Luke’s best canon example of a place where Jedi can go to learn, and maybe influenced the academy he eventually built in the New Republic. The book also features flash forwards to Jessika Pava, the Resistance pilot who flew with Poe Dameron at the battle of Starkiller Base.

Buy The Weapon of a Jedi

0 BBY - Marvel's Star Wars & Darth Vader

Star Wars: Written by Jason Aaron, Art by John Cassaday et al

Darth Vader: Written by Kieron Gillen, Art by Salvador Larroca

Some of the best—and more surprising—stories in the Marvel Star Wars line come out of the ongoing series, which occur concurrently and crossed over in their first big event, “Vader Down.” The series follows both heroes and villains of the Original Trilogy, including Luke’s earnest, enthusiastic slide into learning how to use his Jedi powers; Vader’s conflicted relationship with Emperor Palpatine and the Sith legacy of betrayal and competition; and Han’s maybe-wife Sana Solo.

The longest-running Marvel Star Wars series so far are also the ones that most clearly show how Marvel is handling the core characters going forward, so check these out if you want to see what Luke, Han, and Leia are up to after A New Hope.

Darth Vader recently wrapped and it's easily one of the best stories to come out of the new EU so far. You NEED to read this series!

Buy Marvel's Star Wars

Buy Marvel's Darth Vader

0 BBY - Marvel's Doctor Aphra

Written by Kieron Gillen & Simon Spurrier

Art by Kev Walker et. al.

After becoming a breakout hit in the comics, Doctor Aphra became the first Star Wars character who never appeared in the movies to helm her own comic book series. Her title reveals her history, including her parents and how she became a rogue archeologist.

Buy Marvel's Doctor Aphra

0 BBY - Smuggler’s Run

Written by Greg Rucka

Smuggler’s Run is one in a series of three young reader books put out as part of the Journey to The Force Awakens line. Along with Weapon of a Jedi and Moving Target, Smuggler’s Run follows one member of the Original Trilogy trio and is bookended by scenes set in the Sequel Trilogy era.

This one focuses on Han Solo and Chewbacca balancing living the lawless life with their work for the Rebellion. Written by Greg Rucka, Smuggler’s Run shows Han as he reluctantly takes on a mission to save a Rebel scout from the Empire.

Buy Smuggler's Run

0 BBY-3 ABY - Marvel's Lando

Written by Charles Soule

Art by Alex Maleev

Lando, written by Charles Soule, with art from Alex Maleev, shows the suave baron-administrator before he got his title. Lando thinks he has scored big when he plans to steal a valuable starship, but it turns out that the ship once belonged to Emperor Palpatine (and Darth Maul), and there are plenty of unpleasant Sithly surprises in store.

As well as featuring Lando himself, the comic has a lot of great supporting characters, including mysterious twin aliens and Lobot himself. Watching Lobot’s stoic expressions in The Empire Strikes Back will never be the same after reading this comic.

Buy Marvel's Lando

0-3 ABY - Marvel's Han Solo

Written by Marjorie Liu

Art by Mark Brooks

Buy Marvel's Han Solo

3 ABY - The Empire Strikes Back

Directed by Irvin Kershner

Written by Lawrence Kasdan & Leigh Brackett

Buy The Empire Strikes Back

4 ABY - Moving Target

Written by Cecil Castellucci & Jason Fry

Leia’s installment of the Journey to The Force Awakens series follows her on a mission to distract the Empire from the Rebellion’s growing fleet—the fleet that will attack the second Death Star at Endor. Her team travels through various adventures in their effort to do that, while Leia weighs her feelings about duty against the idea that she might be sacrificing some Rebel sympathizers in order to buy time for others.

Like the other two Original Trilogy books in the line, Moving Target is a quintessential Star Wars story with a few connections to other parts of the saga. The flash forward involves PZ-4CO, the blue droid seen in the Resistance base in The Force Awakens, interviewing Leia for her memoirs.

Buy Moving Target

4 ABY - Return of the Jedi

Directed by Richard Marquand

Written by Lawrence Kasdan & George Lucas

Buy Return of the Jedi

4 ABY - Marvel's Shattered Empire

Written by Greg Rucka

Art by Marco Checchetto

The timeline between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens is a bit sparse right now, with the Aftermath trilogy expected to fill up the years after Return of the Jedi. Another novel, Bloodline by Claudia Gray, due out in 2016, is set about six years before Episode VII.

However, Shattered Empire wastes no time in showing where Luke, Han, and Leia were immediately after Return of the Jedi, while also introducing Poe Dameron’s parents. Pilot Shara Bey and soldier Kes Dameron join the Original Trilogy heroes in mopping up what’s left of the Empire on Endor—and find some strange, Force-sensitive trees.

Buy Marvel's Shattered Empire

4 ABY - Alphabet Squadron

Written by Alexander Freed

This military novel is primarily concerned with the titular squadron, a bickering but charming group of Rebel sole survivors and ex-Imperials tasked with hunting down an elite TIE Fighter squadron. It’s one of the heavier books in the saga, not just because of the page count but because of the thorough look into the characters’ psychologies. (Thankfully, they are provided an in-universe therapist.)

It also earns its place on the timeline because it sits between the formation of the New Republic and the establishment of a truly stable galaxy. Characters like General Hera Syndulla show the struggle of former Rebels, whose lack of a central leadership helped them survive, as they adapt to being the dominant power in the galaxy. Alphabet Squadron is the first novel in a trilogy.

4 ABY - Aftermath

Written by Chuck Wendig

The first novel set after Return of the Jedi brings a new cast of characters to the story, Rebels who, with varying degrees of reluctance, find themselves embroiled with a meeting of the surviving Imperial officers. Remember Rae Sloane? She’s back, as an admiral this time—and she has her own plans for how to restore the Empire to both greatness and stability.

Aftermath also stars Norra Wexley, an X-Wing pilot who fought at the Battle of Endor. She has become estranged from her son Temmin, who will one day become “Snap” Wexley of The Force Awakens’ Resistance fighters, and recruits him, plus a bounty hunter and an Imperial deserter, on a quest to find her missing husband. Aftermath is followed by two sequels, Life Debt and Empire’s End.

Buy Aftermath

5 ABY - Aftermath: Life Debt

Written by Chuck Wendig

Buy Aftermath: Life Debt

5 ABY - Aftermath: Empire's End

Written by Chuck Wendig

Buy Aftermath: Empire's End

7 ABY - Last Shot

Written by Daniel Jose Older

After years of friendship, Han and Lando reminisce about getting older while facing the same old trouble these two always seem to get into. This is a must-have tie-in novel to Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Buy Last Shot

9 ABY - The Mandalorian

Created by Jon Favreau

28 ABY - Bloodline

Written by Claudia Gray

Star Wars: Bloodline by Claudia Gray gives a clearer picture of the state of the galaxy before The Force Awakens than any other new canon entry. The New Republic has been standing strong for almost thirty years, and the events in the novel tips things toward the chaotic scenario we saw in Episode VII.

Buy Bloodline

28 ABY - Phasma

Written by Delilah S. Dawson

The history of the First Order's feared enforcer is revealed secondhand through a Resistance spy interrogated by the First Order. The Phasma novel explores the irradiated planet Parnassos and the way Phasma first met Brendol Hux, shedding some light on the premier stormtrooper without explaining everything behind the mask.

Buy Phasma

28 ABY - "The Perfect Weapon"

Written by Delilah S. Dawson

"The Perfect Weapon" by Delilah S. Dawson was the first short story to feature one of the new characters from The Force Awakens. Like the young reader books listed earlier, it’s part of the Journey to the Force Awakens line and was released as an ebook and excerpted in Star Wars Insider #163.

Bazine Netal, the woman who informs the First Order of the Resistance fighters’ presence at Maz Kanata’s castle, works as a bouncer and hired gun in this story. It doesn’t take place at the same time as The Force Awakens or particularly illuminates Bazine’s actions during the movie, but if you’re interested in her from the few glimpses in The Force Awakens, it might be worth checking out.

Buy "The Perfect Weapon"

28 ABY - "Bait"

Written by Alan Dean Foster for Star Wars Insider #162

The Star Wars Insider story that ties most closely with The Force Awakens so far is also tied to "The Perfect Weapon." "Bait" follows Grummgar, the alien seen lounging with Bazine in Maz Kanata’s palace. Like "The Perfect Weapon," it takes place at an unspecified time before the movie and shows a hunting trip that doesn't quite go as expected.

28 ABY - Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens

Written by Landry Q. Walker

Although four of the stories in this collection were released as e-books, six of them, all by Landry Q. Walker, are only available in this collection. The anthology tells selected tales from the lives of the denizens of Maz Kanata’s palace, including the Jakku lawman Constable Zuvio and the red-masked Crimson Corsair. The stories follow in the tradition of Legends' "Tales" anthologies that were set in the Original Trilogy and have some surprising connections to the Prequels.

Buy Tales from Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens

34 ABY - Marvel's Poe Dameron

Written by Charles Soule

Art by Phil Noto

Before he destroyed Starkiller Base, ace Resistance pilot Poe Dameron was already taking on missions from General Leia and fighting the good fight against the First Order. This comic book series shows what Poe was up to before he met Lor San Tekka on Jakku.

Buy Marvel's Poe Dameron

34 ABY - Marvel's C-3PO Special

Written by James Robinson

Art by Tony Harris

Want to know what was up with Threepio's red arm in The Force Awakens? This touching one-shot tells the story of a droid adventure for the ages that is surprisingly full of emotion. Who knew droids could feel so much?

Buy Marvel's C-3PO Special

34 ABY - Before the Awakening

Written by Greg Rucka

There’s something to be said about not having to answer every question about a large science fiction universe in a movie, but for people who have questions about The Force Awakens, this is the book that answers them.

How did Poe Dameron become part of the Resistance? What was life actually like for Finn in the First Order stormtrooper corps, and why does he make his decision on Jakku? When did Rey hone her piloting skills? Before the Awakening answers all of these questions, as well as tell three fun stories suitable for young readers.

Buy Before the Awakening

34 ABY - Resistance

Created by Dave Filoni

Overlapping with The Force Awakens, Resistance follows former New Republic pilot Kaz Xiono on a mission to discover a First Order spy on a floating platform where starship racers rule the roost. Kaz is joined by the aspiring pilot Tam and quirky Neeku in the mechanics’ shop run by deadpan ex-racer Jarek Yeager. Poe Dameron, BB-8, General Hux, and Captain Phasma make cameos in this laid-back Star Wars romp, which might be best for the younger set who aren’t ready for Rebels.

34 ABY - The Force Awakens

Directed by J.J. Abrams

Written by Lawrence Kasdan, Michael Arndt, & J.J. Abrams

Buy The Force Awakens

34 ABY - Marvel's Captain Phasma

Written by Kelly Thompson

Art by Marco Chechetto, Andres Mossa

Set immediately after The Force Awakens, Captain Phasma follows the titular stormtrooper captain out of the trash compactor in which she was imprisoned at the end of Episode VII. She quickly finds her way to an inhospitable planet in pursuit of Sol Rivas, a First Order lieutenant and the only person who knows that Phasma lowered Starkiller Base's shield. The comic shows how Phasma escaped and some of the tough choices she had to make in the aftermath.

Buy Marvel's Captain Phasma

34 ABY - Canto Bight

Written by Saladin Ahmed, Rae Carson, Mira Grant, John Jackson Miller

The Canto Bight novella collection includes four stories set in the lavish casino city from The Last Jedi. Its varied visitors include a down-on-his-luck gambler, a casino servant, and a salesman who won a trip to the city.

Buy Canto Bight

34 ABY - The Last Jedi

Directed by Rian Johnson

Written by Rian Johnson

Buy The Last Jedi on Amazon

34 ABY - Resistance Reborn

Written by Rebecca Roanhorse

Leia Organa called for allies at the very end of The Last Jedi, and this novel, the first set after Episode VIII, shows who answered. Characters from across the Expanded Universe reappear for a who's who of current Star Wars. It also takes a look at the more banal side of the war, showing a middle manager in the First Order instead of a wartime villain at the helm of a starship. Resistance Reborn's heroes and villains are no less heroic or villainous for trying to survive in their day-to-day lives (and in Poe Dameron's case, trying to deal with his interpersonal complications).

35 ABY - The Rise of Skywalker

Directed by J.J. Abrams

Written by J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio

Megan Crouse writes about Star Wars and pop culture for StarWars.com, Star Wars Insider, and Den of Geek. Read more of her work here. Find her on Twitter @blogfullofwords.

John Saavedra is an associate editor at Den of Geek. Read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @johnsjr9.

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Books

Megan Crouse John Saavedra

Dec 17, 2019

Star Wars

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ask-de-writer · 5 years ago

Text

HONOR vs ORDERS : MLP Fan Fiction : Age restricted 18+

HONOR vs ORDERS

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

Commissioned and idea provided by

EDB COMMAND

8813 words

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Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions. Those who do commission art works may charge for their images provided that I receive a copy of each image for my archive. All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fictions is actively encouraged.

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This tale is age restricted to 18+

Trigger warnings: Military combat violence, Sex

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Master Sargent Iron Hooves surveyed the entrance to Shattered Claw Pass through his binoculars. Shaking his head at the mass of boulders and the steep, narrow, rocky sides of the pass, he muttered loudly enough to be overheard, “The Brass are nuts! They really expect the Army to get through there in one piece?”

Sargent Haze pointed out, “At least the boulders and brush will allow us to do an advance from cover to cover. What really bothers me is the Princesses sending us in to help the Empress in this Civil War. It ought to be the Gryphon's business, not ours.”

Remembering some of the slaves that they had freed as the Combined Army took Rebel strongholds, Iron replied grimly, “If I had not seen how these Rebels treat their slaves, I would agree with you, Haze. Thing is, I have seen it. We are on the right side of this mess.

“There goes the Spearhead into the pass. We need to move up!”

Turning to his squad, a mix of ponies and Gryphons, he called out, “Iron's Claws! Advance under cover! Front rank, pick your cover and advance as soon as our cover fire is established! You know the drill!”

The rest of the unit providing cover fire to keep enemy heads down, the front rank scooted forward. Iron was proud of the Gryphons in his mixed unit. They hated ground combat but given proper orders, did it well. They did it even better once they realized how effective it was at forcing the Fliers back.

The second rank, now dodging their way through the broken terrain, were being covered by the rear and first as they leapfrogged past the first rank and took their safe positions. The first and second now providing cover, Iron tapped Haze on the shoulder.

“Our turn!” louder, he called, “Third rank, advance!” Joining their force, the Master Sargent and Sargent worked their way through the rattle and smoke of small arms fire, up past the rest to take the lead positions. Like a well oiled machine, the first rank, now at the rear, advanced through the other two ranks to take the lead. Then the second leapfrogged and it was the turn of the third again.

The rebel fire trying to stop them was not well coordinated. The Rebel contempt of ground action blinded them to its true effectiveness. The cover fire of Iron's Claws was not only keeping their heads down, it was taking out those who got too enthusiastic or tried to take to the air!

Iron's Claws was well inside Shattered Claw pass when the Rebel ambush opened fire. The deafening roar of the Rebel MT81 quick fire cannons filled the pass!

Without awaiting orders, Iron's Claws scrambled, not to retreat, but to better cover from the heavier fire from higher up! Sargent Haze was scanning the canyon walls with binoculars. He tapped Master Sargent Iron on the shoulder and pointed. Iron got it at once. The MT81 nests were revealing themselves by the smoke and flame of their weapons.

“They are in range of our rifles! At least most of them are!”

Iron bellowed, “Iron's Claws! Hit those nests with everything that we have!”

Gryphons and Ponies aimed high and began to fire up the walls at the MT81s that were cutting off the Spearhead. Their return fire reduced the effectiveness of the Rebel fire some.

Seeing the results, Iron sent a messenger around to his pinned down troops. Half kept up the semi random fire upward. The other half waited in silence. When the next nest opened up, they all took close aim and blasted a solid volley of fire at it.

They had the pleasure, for a combat situation, of seeing two Rebel Gryphons tumble from their position! The weapon itself was pushed into view as they fell. In seconds, that MT81 was hit by multiple bullets and destroyed.

The volley shooters went silent again, waiting for the next target!

They did not have long to wait. As they opened up, a grinning Haze observed, “They have to keep shooting or the Spearhead will get out of the trap! When they shoot, so do we! They can't really divide their attack, they haven't got enough good nest positions!”

Iron had his brow furrowed in deep thought. “How in heck did they get those guns up there, Haze? MT81s are too heavy to be flight portable!”

While Haze was pondering that, private Glida, one of their Gryphons, tapped Iron's shoulder and pointed. In heavily accented Equestrian, he pointed up and said, “That is strange. The usual flight Talon is four. Why are there six in that one?”

Iron's binoculars provided the answer in only moments. Each of the six was carrying something fairly heavy. The one in the lead had a spindly object. He hit a ledge, planting his part. The next had a longish boxy thing. He hit the ledge and the two worked for a moment, attaching the receiver to the tripod base. He flew out of the way of the next, with a long object. It proved to be the barrel of the MT81 being assembled as Iron watched.

His tight grin as he figured out how the Rebels were getting around the MT81 weight issue was frightful to behold. He whispered to private Glida, who carried his new orders to the volley fire group.

As the last of the Rebel group was approaching with an ammunition box to complete the weapon and put it into action, he had to spread his wings and brake. The volley ripped into him, dropping him and the ammunition the weapon needed to be operational, down into the floor of the pass!

The volley group then concentrated their fire on the nearly complete weapon. It took only a few hits to put it out of action entirely.

Haze had a grin of his own, now. “We got it! Now that we know how to take them, we can fix this mess!”

Iron's sharpshooters were in the process of tearing up the third MT81 nest when a gryphon in the uniform of the Imperial Army Messenger Corps flew up, staying low and zigging to present a difficult target. He landed hard, raising dust and small clods of dirt with his talons. Saluting Master Sargent Iron, he reported, “Sir, it is the order of the High Command of the Combined Army that you retreat at once. The presence of the MT81s have made it impossible to achieve our objective.”

Iron nodded sourly as he watched the Rebel carrying a new weapon receiver, a vital component, tumble from the air! The receiver, the heart of the weapon smashed on to rocks below.

“What of our spearhead?”

The messenger shook his head, laying his crest flat in distaste. “We must sacrifice them. It is necessary to save as much of the whole army as possible.”

“I see. We have just learned how the Rebels are getting the MT81s up there. We have now neutralized three of the nests entirely, their weapons destroyed. I will notify my troops.” Iron let out a long and disgusted sigh.

The messenger left to carry his distasteful order to the remaining front line units.

Sargent Haze shook his head, lips curled in disgust. “We have to retreat and just leave over a hundred troops? Sickening.”

Master Sargent Iron Hooves surveyed the situation. “That is not what I told the messenger, Haze. I said that I would notify my troops. If they are willing, I will lead them in to see if we can rescue the Spearhead.”

“That is a mutiny, Master Sargent. Count me in!” Haze actually smiled for the first time in a while.

When Glida returned from his round of the troops, he saluted, reporting, “We have the entire unit ready to advance, Sir. None of us wants to abandon troops to slavers like these.”

“Thank you, private Glida.” Iron's voice bellowed out over the din of the battle, “Iron's Claws! Advance under cover! Lead unit! Provide ground cover fire! Second Unit! Watch for nests or guns on the move and neutralize!”

Iron's Claws began to rake their way deeper into Shattered Claw Pass.

The Rebels were trying, too late, to set up a solid ground defense. The trapped spearhead was too dangerous to fly over in the attempt to get at the new foe, striking from the rear. Iron watched as gryphons attempting to place themselves between the forces, fell from the air. Some were getting through. While involved in a leapfrog, Iron felt his foreleg driven out from under him. He hit the ground hard. Glancing at the leg, he realized that the bone was not hit.

Struggling up, he limped to cover. Haze was on him in an instant. Ripping away uniform, he examined the wound and pronounced, “Flesh wound, Sir. Gonna slow you a bit. Once I get this wrapped, you can go on.” The wound bandaged, Iron and Haze rejoined the advance.

The enemy was keeping Haze busy binding up wounds. Too busy. Iron called a halt. His war bellow instructed, “Concentrate fire on the first three of any MT under transport! Watch for and neutralize as many ground troops as you can! As bad as the MT81s are, we are taking more hits from the ground troops.”

The scent of powder smoke was contaminated by the stench of blood and spilled guts. Haze was back in a few moments. “Got us as patched up as I can, Sir. We have not lost a single trooper yet. We did a lot of bad damage to some of the Rebels, though. I patched up any that looked to survive. I remembered what you said in mission briefing.”

Iron nodded, adding, “When the Rebels figure out that the ground is where the war is going to be decided, it will get really messy.”

Soon, Iron's Claws reached the nearest of the spearhead troops! An MT81 tried to spoil the celebration. Iron did not even have time to order return fire before his troops were on it. The wounded gunner fell fluttering to the bottom of the pass.

In the lull that followed, the major leading the spearhead approached. He politely raised his crest in greeting as he said, “I am Major Graak. I do not wish to seem ungrateful, Master Sargent, but wasn't there an order to retreat?”

Master Sargent Iron Hooves nodded seriously, “Indeed there is a retreat order, Sir. Shall we comply with it and get you all out of here?”

The Major's crest flipped up as he fluttered his wings in gryphon amusement. He replied, “Sir, that appears to be the best idea of the century! You seem to understand how this ground action works better than I. Will you lead us?”

“Yes, Sir. We are using an advance in force, under cover. It is a leapfrog type of advance. Your remaining force is small enough to make it work. We need to divide the whole force into three parts. The lead and second ranks provide cover fire for the rear to pass through them and find forward cover. They become the lead. They and the old first rank are then the new first and second ranks. They then provide the cover fire while the rear passes through and becomes the first.

“That is it in a nutshell. The details are a pain but we can do it.”

The retreat was interrupted by several attempts by the Rebels to plant new MT81 nests. The concentrated fire of the combined unit left shattered weapons and broken bodies behind. Their retreat was delayed.

“Master Sargent! What is the meaning of this? That is a Rebel trooper that your Sargent is wasting our bandages on!”

“If you look, Sir, we have been recovering all of the wounded that we encounter. It is the standing order of our Princesses that the enemy fallen be treated the same as our own.”

Haze went to retrieve another of the fallen, entrapped in a bush. He was cutting away the branches in the way when a shot rang out. Sargent Haze fell back, bleeding. Before Iron could stop him, the Major ordered, “Shoot!”

A dozen of his troops riddled the wounded Rebel with bullets. Haze rolled to his hooves, bleeding from a shoulder. He stalked up to the Major and spat in his face. “That was not necessary, SIR!”

Shocked, the Major turned and found Iron laying on the ground, bleeding from his right hind leg. Haze, kneeling to check his Master Sargent's wound, snarled, “Major, this was the result of your idiocy! Before you order troops to shoot, be sure that they are not shooting in our direction!”

Iron interrupted Haze's tirade, “How bad is it, Sargent?”

Haze was probing the wound. “Bullet is still in here. There, got it!” He disdainfully dropped the bloody lump of lead at the feet of Major. Returning to his task, he bound up the wound. “Not too bad, really, Sir. Might get a bit of a scar from it. You've lost more blood than is really good. Otherwise you are fine.”

Iron got to his hooves and shuddered all over. “Thank you again, Haze. You are a good medic. Now let me see to YOUR shoulder!”

Haze bandaged, the troops began to advance again. The Major, smarting from both his mishandling of the fallen enemy and Sargent Haze's rebuke, said, “Master Sargent, we have not engaged any enemy for some time. We can make better time marching in formation!”

Iron, limping as he headed for his next cover replied, “Correct, Major. You were making great time, there in the pass!”

It was just then that Haze reported, “Sir, I can see the end of the pass! We have a problem. They have sneaked at least fifty ground troops into the boulder field.”

The Major suggested, “I was not properly trained in this sort of ground operation. We do outnumber them. I do not wish to make any more mistakes. How should we use our superiority?”

Iron regarded the Major with far greater respect. “I understand how difficult that must have been to say, Major. We will split our force before they can properly see us. One group will advance from cover to cover straight onto them. That advance is a feint in force. We will be drawing their attention and fire.

“The second group will swing to the far right, advancing from cover to cover but doing no suppression fire. Our job is simply to keep the enemy engaged until the second unit is in position to take them from the right rear. The enemy will then be caught between our forces.”

Nodding understanding, the Major took the frontal attack force. Iron's Claws, together with a good many of the rescued spearhead, began the sneak off to the right.

The Major's troops opened fire from their present cover while a rank leapfrogged to new forward cover. The heavy return fire from the Rebels showed that he did have their attention!

Maintaining silence, Iron's Claws slipped from cover to cover. Haze tapped Iron's shoulder. “I owe the Major an apology. He is handling that advance really well.'

Iron nodded as they sprinted for the next cover. “It was inexperience, not incompetence. He is a fast learner. He is doing a great job at keeping his temper, too.”

Reaching their objective, Iron's Claws could peer around the boulders of their cover, keeping low. Over half of the enemy force was in plain view from their position. Iron tapped Glida and sent him around to his command with their orders.

They opened up on the exposed enemy, firing aimed shots with deadly accuracy.

Rebels tried futilely to take cover from the new attack, only to expose themselves to the Major's fire.

In only moments Iron's Claws were advancing on the trapped and decimated Rebels. It was a short and bloody engagement.

During the mop up after the battle, Haze got his chance to lay his rifle at the claws of the Major. “Sir, I apologize for my outburst. You are a truly good officer and handled this with professionalism. I have never seen an officer learn an unfamiliar mode of combat as swiftly as you just have.”

The Major looked down at Haze and replied, “If it helps, you and yours risked all to save us. Your Master Sargent being struck by our friendly fire must have been hard. You are forgiven. It is an honor to have such troops as you.”

Iron turned over yet another of the enemy fallen. The gory exit hole, no longer bleeding told the tale. Another one who would never see home. Iron was staggering just a bit. He recalled Haze's comment about blood loss and chuckled. “Blood or no blood, the job is not done! I'll collapse later!”

At the rustling in some brush, between several boulders, Iron turned, aiming his pistol. Seeing that the injured enemy trapped there was unarmed, he put away the gun and said, “Relax, there fellow. We will get you out to medical help as soon as we can.”

The enemy soldier stilled. As Haze approached with the medical field kit, Iron began breaking away branches and wrenching them out of the way. He told the Rebel, “Almost there. We can get you patched and on the way to the hospital in a few moments.”

While his hooves were occupied, Iron caught a glimpse of a talon striking out from the brush! He felt a searing pain in the right side of his face! The drag of claws raking and chattering over bone! Flesh tearing across his eye!

Shock, long delayed, hit. Seeing clearly with only his left eye, he felt his legs going rubbery. With no sensation of falling, he felt the ground as he hit. Fading hearing caught the sound of a shot.

He thought that he heard, “We have one down! Get the stretcher!” He was briefly wondering who it was for. Then darkness took him.

~~ ~~ ~~

The view from the window was spectacular, as were all of the out facing windows of Canterlot Castle. The room inside was spare, compared to most. There were few hangings and no fancy lanterns or sconces. The room was dominated by two large tables. The bigger one had a large map of the Gryphon Empire on it. Placed about on the map were red and yellow markers of different shapes, some bearing tags with numbers or other vital information about the unit the marker represented.

A unicorn General was using a long wand with a hook to move some markers out of Shattered Claw Pass. He snarled, “I ORDERED them to retreat! We need to make an example of him! Break his rank and throw him out of the military entirely!”

Princess Luna tilted her head curiously from her place at the other table. She waited until the General was done with his marker movement. “Come here, General Horshet. I have some questions about this situation. If it helps, I do think that we need to make an example of this disobedient Master Sargent.” She had a hoof on the open file before her.

The General returned to his place at the War Table. In his anger at the mutiny that he had just finished detailing on the Map table, forgetting to dip his horn to the Princess, he demanded, “What do you have in mind, your Highness?”

Princess Luna gave him a stare that would have flash frozen a Polar Bear. In a soft voice, she replied, “I was thinking of following the lead of the Empress. She has just awarded Master Sargent Iron Hooves the Claw of Honor, one of the three highest awards of the Empire.

“As a result of his INITIATIVE, seventy three injured were recovered and are now either back in action or in the hospital. Over one third were soldiers of the Rebels.”

General Horshet interrupted, “That alone is enough to justify cashiering him! Wasting our resources on the enemy is treason!”

Luna slammed down her hoof in irritation! “They are LIVES, General! The whole purpose of the war is to preserve both freedom and as many lives as possible! Glorious Victory is nowhere on the list! Neither is your ego!”

Celestia laid a calming hoof on her sister's shoulder. “Luna, dear, you are correct. Skyglow, the Titan of Life Creation, who created us, did so to save all of the lives on this world. Nothing is more important than living beings of wisdom. What did you have in mind?”

Luna took a deep breath and steadied herself, anger put aside for the moment. “I was going to award him the Luna's Crescent of Mercy for his heroism in saving enemy fallen, even though he was severely injured in the deed.”

Princess Celestia smiled, “Most fitting.

“General, I have a few questions for you, too. What was the source of our new intelligence on the Rebel redesign of the MT81 to make it flight portable?”

General Horshet squirmed under her serene seeming gaze. “Some of the troops spotted the way that the weapons were being transported.”

Celestia froze like a glacier. “I saw that you altered the field reports to remove Master Sargent Iron Hooves from the observation. It took binocular study to verify what the gryphon private Glida noticed. The private brought the unusual flight pattern to the Master Sargent's attention. ONLY the Sargents had the binoculars to verify that the flight pattern was transporting a disassembled MT81.

“That observation made it reasonable for Iron's Claws, only twenty five troops, to risk an advance against potentially murderous fire from the Rebels. They were able to put over a dozen of the flight portable MT81s out of action. They linked up with and saved the surviving troops of the Spearhead.

“Major Graak credits the survival of over half of his Spearhead command solely to the actions of Master Sargent Iron Hooves. Over a hundred lives that YOU abandoned, most of them Gryphon Empire troops. ALL of the combined force, including the Major have proposed Master Sargent Iron Hooves for decoration.

The Major also credits Master Sargent Iron Hooves with revealing a dangerous weakness in Empire military training. The Empress has asked that he be allowed to advise the training of her troops in ground combat.

“In your embarrassment over being shown to have been spectacularly WRONG both in the campaign plan AND in the retreat order, you have been seeking to punish the Master Sargent. I would far rather punish YOU!”

General Horshet swallowed hard.

Luna interposed, “All true, Sister. Still, this is the first serious misstep of this General's career. Let us note it in the record and keep his otherwise good service to Our Crowns. What would you do about Master Sargent Iron Hooves?”

Celestia nodded. “True enough, Sister. Because there truly WAS a direct violation of orders, no matter how well it has worked in our favor, I will withhold the Celestia's Medal of Courage.”

General Horshet smiled tightly but held his peace.

Celestia went on, “I will grant him a special citation for heroism, along with a benefice of gold and award him the Solar Heart for his injuries suffered in our service.”

General Horshet's tight smile became forced.

The Princesses of the Realm bowed politely and left General Horshet to his work of planning the next assault on the Rebel positions.

~~ ~~ ~~

Iron woke, head muzzy. Trying to move was met the sort of resistance that only restraints convey. He heard voices outside of a door that he could not see well.

He shook his head attempting to clear it. His vision focused some, but things did not look right. Nor did the place he was in. It was like no hospital of his experience.

The voices outside crystallized. They were speaking Gryphon. “Why should I be lead nurse? Simple. I speak better Equestrian than any of you. Don't worry about being left out of the nursing team for this hero. You are all very good and will be needed!

“He is stirring! We need to be very careful. He has had to be restrained. Even unconscious, he was trying to carry on the battle and save our troops.”

Three Gryphon nurses entered wearing their yellow nurses caps that had a wide slot to allow their crests the freedom to express so much of their feelings.

One was somewhat larger than the others. She was also a truly stunning example of Gryphon femininity. She spoke in clear but gryphon accented Equestrian. “Hello, Master Sargent Iron Hooves. I expect that you are wondering where you are and what has happened. Do you want me to fill you in?”

Iron found that his throat was a bit sore as he spoke, “Please do, nurse. I expect that since you and the others are nurses, that I am in a hospital.”

“That is correct. You are in the Imperial Eyrie of Healing, number three. You have suffered both wounds and blood loss, along with what we call battle shock. It was a major effort to restrain you for the surgery. We have saved your right eye but it was touch and go. The talon rake fortunately missed the visual parts of your eye.

“I fear that you will carry severe facial scarring near and across your right eye and ear but your vision should be unimpaired. The gunshot wounds were purely routine but caused much blood loss.”

Iron thought over the news for only a moment before asking what was most important to him. “What of my troops? My ponies and catbirds? What about the Major and his troops?” As he asked, he was making an effort to reach the side of the ~ ~ NEST? ~~! Oh, right. Gryphon hospital.

The lead nurse's crest rose in a smile. “They are safe. YOU were the last one to be wounded in the rescue. Major Graak credits you, not only with the rescue of more than half of his spearhead force, he says that you and your troops showed us a vital weakness in our military training and tactics. You are a hero to your troops and, I may add, to the entire EMPIRE!”

Iron looked up at the lovely nurse and shook all over. “A hero? I just did what needed doing. We had troops that we could save. It was no fault of the Brass that they ordered a retreat. They did not know the weakness in the MT81 . . .”

The nurse put a claw gently over his lips. “You had better intelligence of the situation than the Brass. Best not to say what it was, just now.”

Iron subsided. “I get it. Sorry.”

“Don't be. You are just post surgical and low on blood. We were able to address all of your problems but that last one. You are now, and will be for some weeks to come, unfit for combat due to the rebuilding of your blood supply. It is the best that we can do.”

“I do see. Well sort of. My right eye appears to be under a dressing. That makes seeing harder!” They both giggled.

The other nurses of the team set to work, checking Iron out thoroughly. They compared what they found to a chart, converting measurements from those for a gryphon to what a pony should have and then entering the results into a folder.

While they were doing their work, Iron's open eye was working too. He was frankly ogling the head nurse! He was intrigued by her eyes, unusual for a Gryphon, or pretty much any other kind in Iron's experience. They were red and her irises were not equal in size. Somehow, that apparent imperfection made her even lovelier.

The other nurses left to carry out whatever duties were required. Iron impulsively took the lead nurse's foreclaw and said playfully, “As a nurse for a bedridden patient, you are only partly succeeding. Some of me is getting up!”

She gave a throaty chuckle and reached delicately for his indelicate parts. “It seems that you can't keep a good Sargent down!” Her crest rose sharply. Her eyes opened wider and her pupils dilated in fascination.

She quietly told him, “My name is Graysa. It means . . .”

Iron interrupted, speaking quietly too, “Wise Gryphoness. Sort of like a healer or what we in Equestria call a hedge witch. It is a lovely name for a beautiful gryphon.”

Her crest rose in a happy looking smile. Her foreclaw began working Iron's member rhythmically.

He was amazed that the same kind of talon that had ripped him so badly could be so gentle and arousing. She was watching him, crest rippling in amusement while his tension built and built. His release felt astounding.

Before he could say anything, Graysa said, “Consider it a down payment. It is too soon after surgery for more active pleasures. I have some work to do, preparing medication for you. I will return soon.”

Almost puzzled, Iron asked, “Don't you have other patients to tend?”

She turned in the door and said, “Orders of the Empress. We are to have a nurse with you as much as possible.”

As promised, Nurse Graysa returned shortly. Her crest showing a jaunty grin, she poured some liquid into a spoon and pointed it “threateningly” at his mouth. “I do know how bad it tastes. Unfortunately for you, you actually do need this.”

Iron obediently opened his mouth. Graysa was right! It was awful.

The gryphon hospital nest was a bit roomier than a bed stall in an Equestrian horsepital. Graysa sat on the nest side and produced newspapers. She began to read to him. Their accounts of the Battle of Shattered Claw were lurid to say the least!

Iron was giggling at one in particular. It had the Valiant Iron's Claws 25 charging through a murderous hail of shells from the Rebel's deadly MT81 quick fire cannons! Chortling, he commented, “They sure painted that one with a broad brush! Wrong colors, too!”

When Graysa's cheerful giggling was done, she said, “I am filling time for a reason. The Empress was notified that you are alert. She is coming to see you.”

Iron sobered at once. “Why? Sure, I guess that we were news. We just did our duty as we saw it. The whole unit voted to try for the rescue.

“I am curious though, about why the papers are so wrong about how the battle went.”

A new voice, from the room's door answered, “That was my order. I detest censorship but keeping secret what you and your troops discovered about the weakness in how the Rebels are transporting the MT81 parts will save many lives in the near future.”

Graysa had gone to her crouch of respect. “Your Highness. You are earlier than I expected.”

The Empress wore no fancy jewels. The guards with her were in very functional battle armor and heavily armed. They had clearly been briefed because they held back and let the Empress of the Gryphon Empire approach the nest.

To Iron's embarrassment, she gave him, a mere Master Sargent, a crouch of respect. Rising, she said, “I have not come with empty claws. Your heroic and successful effort to save over a hundred of my troops came at a severe cost to you. I hope that this can make up in some small measure for the injury that you got in My service.”

She produced a flat case of fine woodwork. Speaking to Graysa, the Empress requested, “Can we raise his head enough to place the ribbons about his neck?”

Graysa replied, as she put strong but gentle claws behind Iron's head and lifted, “We can, your Highness. He does tire quickly just now. The loss of so much blood does that.”

“I shall be mindful of his present weakness.”

The Empress opened the case. Inside was a medallion of white gold, enameled with red. Embedded in the red, jewel like finish of the enamel was a yellow gold claw. She lifted it from the case and placed the ribbon over Iron's head and settled the medallion on the center of his chest.

“This, Master Sargent Iron Hooves, is the Claw of Honor. It is among our three highest battle decorations. I am not yet done.”

She produced another flat case, similar to the first but a blue so dark as to be almost black. It had the silver crescent moon of Princess Luna set into the wood. The Empress removed the large white gold medallion and set the dark blue ribbon about Iron's neck. That medallion lay alongside the Claw of Honor.

“Your own Princess Luna, for your gallantry in rescuing all of the wounded that you could, regardless of side, has granted you this Luna's Crescent of Mercy.”

The Empress produced yet another case. It was of wood that glowed golden yellow. On the case was Celestia's Sun. Inside, the medallion was of yellow gold inlaid with ruddy red gold in the form of a heart. The Empress set that ribbon about his neck too.

“For your wounds, taken in the service of your Princess Celestia, you are granted the Solar Heart.

“I have one other thing, granted from your Princess Celestia.” She produced an ornately framed and beautifully lettered Citation for Courage. She also handed Iron an envelope.

“Along with the Citation for Courage goes this benefice. She has granted you 100 golden bits a year. You may draw that money in Equestrian Bits or Empire Realms.”

She once again crouched respect. Rising, she said, “I hope that we shall meet again, Master Sargent. It is my honor to know that such as you serve me.

“I have one last request, which you may freely accept or reject. Major Graak has informed me that you, through the tactics that you used, revealed a major weakness in the training of our troops. We have seriously undervalued the importance of ground combat. During your weeks of recovery, could you please assist our trainers to understand how that work is done best?”

Iron answered, “Of course, your Highness. I would be honored.” He sort of shuddered. Looking at Nurse Graysa, his vision faded.

He faintly heard, “Do not be alarmed, your Highness. He is simply tired out. One does not lose as much blood as he did and dance the Shehara.”

Iron woke in the middle of the night, to judge by the window. He was ravenous. He was surprised to see Nurse Graysa sitting quietly by reading from a book of a kind that he had never seen before.

He spoke softly, “Aren't you off shift?”

She looked up and nodded, folding her book and wrapping a red string about it to keep it closed. “I am. You slept through dinner. I saved it for you. The others keep trying to take away your tray! I had to guard it if you were going to get anything at all!”

Graysa brought over the tray and uncovered the food. She loaded a fork with clover salad. Iron was about to say something when she stopped him. “Food is important. You saw how fast you collapsed and can see how long your recovery took. For now, let me feed you. Later, you will be able to feed yourself. Not yet, though.”

Iron was practical enough to see the sense of her words. Besides, there was the simple fact that she was far stronger than he was, for now. He opened his mouth. Being fed by Nurse Graysa turned out to be more fun and erotic than Iron had ever imagined. As she turned from tray to him, the front of her uniform proved to be open, granting him exciting glimpses of her feathered breasts. The distraction was sufficient to keep him from noticing the taste of cold hospital rations.

When he had eaten she leaned forward and playfully beak stroked the unbandaged left side of Iron's face. Leaning over him, her uniform fell open entirely. The golden brown feathers covering her breasts became yellow down surrounding her bare nipples. She took his right hoof and gently pulled it into her narrow cleavage. Crest smiling, she told him in a saucy voice, “Stop being such a gentleman! You are not an officer and one!”

Iron grinned back and retorted, “Exercise to help me get my strength back?” He put his other foreleg around her and pulled her close. The beak stroking sort of kiss took only a few moments to get used to. Her body was firm and solidly muscled contrasting erotically with the softness of her breasts under his exploring hoof.

Graysa made a little chirping purr as he responded. Her talented talon played with his stallionhood again. For some reason, he came more quickly than the previous time. She shifted her position and Iron felt her long, slightly rough and very exciting tongue “cleaning up the mess.”

She shifted position on his nest again. He found her lovely form pressed next to him. His hoof, exploring the soft wonder of her feathered breasts, encountered a necklace pendant hidden in the feathers of her chest.

Curious, he pulled it out to where he could see it better. Graysa assisted him in seeing it by lifting up some, trailing her nipples teasingly across his chest. The pendant looked for all the world like some ideogram of Chineighese.

Her crest took a complex expression, both sad, wistful and smiling, all at once. She responded to his unspoken question, “It is a character from an ancient language. I like it because my name of Graysa means Wise Gryphoness and the ancient word is Wisdom.”

Iron sensed from the complex expression of her crest that there might be more to it. Telling it was up to her, though. He let the pendant fall and returned to the more pleasant pursuit of pleasure. Between the interlude and the excitingly exotic female beside him, he was “Up to the challenge.”

She worked his shaft with her talon for a little and then, lust lighting her eyes and crest, straddled him on the nest, driving herself down, taking his full stallionhood deep into her body. She leaned forward, bracing herself with a talon on each side of him. Her breasts tickling his chest again. She started to rhythmically pump herself on his hard shaft, her breasts bobbing against him with each stroke. Iron held her in a strong grip about her muscular waist and helped her action.

She came in a strong almost bucking and shuddering orgasm. She bit her beak tight to keep from crying out in ecstasy. As her orgasm passed, she resumed her eager assault on Iron's very willing self.

He felt the tight slickness of her around his cock, shifting, lifting and driving down, tickling him toward release. It took only a few minutes before she came in another shaking, hip thrusting orgasm. In the middle of her intense orgasm, Iron came too, shooting his sperm into her.

They lay together, beak stroking and nuzzling in contentment. Graysa softly closed Iron's open eye. She whispered into his left ear, “Sleep, Soldier and Lover. Sleep well and dream of something other than war.”

Iron, breathing deeply and regularly, smiling in his sleep, eye twitching in a dream, did not notice when nurse Graysa slipped silently out of the room.

The next morning, wondering if his memory of last night was a dream, Iron was able to sit up and eat his breakfast without help.

The nurses, including nurse Graysa, came in and did the usual nurse things with temperature blood pressure, respiration and, new to Iron, a simple test of hearing acuity. The nurse holding the clicking device told him, “Since one ear has suffered damage, it is important to be sure that the good ear is working properly.”

A doctor came in and all of the nurses deferred to him. “Time for a dressing change, Master Sargent. While we are doing it, you will still have no use of your right eye, so do not be alarmed. For your eyelids to heal in a functional way, we had to immobilize them for now.”

The doctor stood back while nurse Graysa took charge of the actual dressing change. As soon as the bandages were off, the doctor examined the healing progress with a magnifier and expertly trimmed away a bit of tissue. Commenting, “Talon rakes are so nasty! Still, this one is healing very well. I expect that you will be out of the hospital in only another two days. You will be on restricted activity until your blood volume is back to normal. That might be several weeks. We will have to see. We Gryphons have little medical experience with ponies.”

Iron nodded acceptance. “I understand, Doctor. What about my ear? A nurse indicated that it was involved.”

“The talon rake took a piece out of your outer ear. We have no experience with such ear structures, so we sealed the edges of the removed portion. It is already well healed.”

After the doctor left, nurse Graysa approached, crest at a grin. She held the medicine bottle and spoon! “If it helps, Master Sargent Iron, this is a blood strengthening tonic. We cleared it through the Equestrian medical personnel at the Embassy. And NO. Gryphons don't like it either!”

As she fed Iron the tonic, she winked and whispered in a conspiratorial way, “If you sleep through dinner, I may be forced to stay past my shift to guard it and make sure that you get it!” Her crest bobbed up jauntily.

The day was a hospital day. Boring. Except for occasional nurse visits, and they were strictly professional. At his afternoon dose of tonic, nurse Graysa gently laid the side of claw on his eyelid, pulling it down and shutting his eye. She murmured, “Sleep, Iron. Sleep well and be rested when you awaken, this evening.”

It was after dark when Iron woke up. He did feel well rested for the first time since Shattered Claw Pass. Turning his head quietly, he saw nurse Graysa looking at a scroll that appeared to have a painting and some sort of Chineighese or the like characters on it. She was silently weeping.

Iron gave her the time to deal with whatever it might be. In a few minutes, she rolled the scroll, bound it with a red cord and put it away. He figured that he had seen something very private and said nothing of it. Instead, he yawned and stretched.

Her crest immediately went to a smile. “Awake at last, are you?

“And feeling better rested than in a long time.”

“Good. A recovering soldier needs his strength! I saved your dinner again!” Her crest popped up to saucy grin. “Want me to feed you again, like last night?”

With crystal clarity, he recalled all that went with that dinner! Eager, he replied, “That sounds like a great idea!” She promptly opened her uniform entirely, dropped it and stood proudly before Iron. She wore a lingerie that covered everything . . . in transparent gauze! It was a bare wisp of smoke that hung from a lace strand above her breasts, down to just below them, like a skirt, it was open at the lower end. The bottom border had a small fringe whose minuscule weight was all that kept the light fabric in place.

About her hips was another, wider strip of matching lace. Garters hung from it to hose, encasing her legs. A short skirt, exactly matching her top, hung from the lace belt almost to mid thigh. She shrugged her wings up and half spread them.

Her delight at Iron's stunned expression was obvious. She pirouetted slowly around, her tufted tail reaching out to stroke Iron from neck to groin. As she sat to the nest and started to feed Iron bites of his dinner, her tail mischievously feather duster tickled his private parts.

Giggling a bit at her trick, Graysa leaned forward to put bites into his mouth, her reaching foreleg “accidentally” caught her loose top and lifted the fabric away. It hung up in her feathers, leaving her breasts invitingly bare.

Between bites, Iron managed to get out, “I do believe that you are trying to seduce me, madam!” Then he lost it and began to snicker.

Dinner over, Graysa snuggled next to Iron, her tits pressed to his chest, a wing covering him. Her tail continued to stroke him most naughtily!

Mindful of her wings, Iron pulled her into a hug and rolled her to her back. Her crest grinned, while lifting her knees to drop the gauze skirt up around her waist, welcoming his hard member's thrust. She did not have to wait!

As he pushed into her firm but yielding cunt, she was hit by more giggles. Without stopping the stroking that he started, Iron raised his eyebrow questioningly.

She filled in, “That tonic seems to be working wonders!”

Iron managed to retain his stroking pace as he joined her in the giggles. Their shared light mood both hid their rising passion and enhanced its release as they orgasmed together.

Iron held Graysa close as he slowly collapsed. She returned the embrace fiercely. She stroked and tickled from the bandages on his head, down the side of his mane and down his back. She held him by legs and wings wrapped about him and beak stroked his face.

“Mission accomplished!” she whispered. “Well done, Iron. Well done indeed.”

She carefully rolled him back to the nest. Getting up, she first covered him neatly and beak stroked his open eye shut. “Sleep well and heal, my General, someday.”

Dressing in her uniform, she softly left the room.

The next morning, Iron was greeted by the usual gaggle of nurses doing all of their needful nurse things. Breakfast, when it came, was uninspired but, like hospital food anywhere he had ever been, it was edible.

Graysa accompanied the doctor. She expertly snipped away the bandages. Nodding in satisfaction, the doctor asked, “Would you like to see how well your eye has healed? I am going to remove the stabilizing stitches now. When I do, open your eye slowly. It will be painful at first.”

He reached for Iron's right eye with fine forceps and small scissors. Iron felt the pulling and tweaking as stitches were removed. The doctor was right. It hurt.

He opened his eye and looked at Graysa. She crest smiled happily at him.

He had to say, “My eye does hurt. Looking at you makes it hurt a lot less!”

The doctor made notes in his folder. Lifting his eyes to Iron, he said, “It appears that you can be discharged from the hospital today. You have friends and well wishers to take care of you. They are already waiting for you.”

Shortly, Haze entered the room. “Sarge! They said you are really weak, yet. We have a trundle for you! We really upset the Brass in Equestria! I will fill you in later, but we are ALL on detached duty! They want us to stay with the catbirds and away from them!” All the while that he was talking he was helping Iron to get into the hospital trundle.

Graysa came in and gently beak stroked Iron before handing him a package. Unequal red eyes twinkling, crest raised in an ambiguous smile, she offered, “Here are all of your personal effects and your medals. It has been such an honor to serve all of your needs.”

~~ ~~ ~~

Sitting in the control chair of her nerve center at the top of the ERIS, Inc. tower, the dragonequis raised her unequal red eyes from the many screens and consoles that controlled so much. Gazing out of the large window, she took in the scene of Equestria spread out before her. Lovely. Easily worth the massive efforts that she and her organization put into it.

One of her screens chimed for attention. Princess Luna gazed out of it at her long standing friend. “Eris! I am so happy to catch you in! I wanted to fill you in on what we are doing to support the Empress against those Rebels.” The Princess of Night chuckled.

“I have had my hooves full with General Horshet! Do you know that he still wants to find a way to cashier that Master Sargent Iron Hooves?”

Rather dryly Eris replied, “I was aware of that. Sort of a personality flaw for a general to put personal feelings ahead of effectiveness.”

“Oh, I do know it, Eris! I had to directly threaten his career to straighten him out. I . . . Dear! Did you lose the pendant that you always wear?

“What? That? No, I gave it to a being that had need of it. I can easily replace it. It is only gold.

“Now, about those supplies that you are sending . . .”

~~ ~~ ~~

Down in a deep valley not too far from the Imperial Eyrie, Iron was met by all of his small command. All twenty five of Iron's Claws, both pony and gryphon, were there. Their cheers at seeing him were not thunderous but they WERE as loud as twenty five throats could be!

He was surprised at who stepped out of the headquarters building. Major Graak saluted him first! As Iron saluted back, the Major said, “I persuaded the Empress to create a special ground combat school. You and your troops will be our instructors. The officers that you train will carry the training to our army.

“After a tactical and strategic analysis of Shattered Claw, our High Command concluded that what you pulled off without losing a single life was not possible by any means that we know. They did factor in knowing how the MT81s were transported. We still could not have done it.

“We hope to greatly shorten the war with your skills to guide us.”

Iron, speaking in front of the whole small command, said, “I heard that you continued to rescue enemy fallen after I was wounded out. That was true courage at its best, Major.”

Major Graak looked down at Iron in his trundle and replied, “I had the best example of the courage to do what needed doing that I could ever hope to find, Sir.”

Haze was helping Iron set up his new quarters. Unpacking the box from the hospital he proudly set out Iron's new medals in a display case. He stopped, puzzled. He had a necklace pendant shaped like an oriental ideogram and a note written in Gryphon.

“What are these, Sir? Some award that I did not hear about?”

Iron's jaw dropped when he saw the pendant. “A nurse at the hospital had it. She said that it meant wisdom in an ancient oriental language. Let me see the note.”

The note read : “Dear Master Sargent Iron, A token to remember me by. As you so well guessed, Graysa means Wise Gryphoness. I gift you with my Wisdom. May it guide you well.”

Haze shook his head. “I kind of have a hobby of non Equestrian writing systems, Sir. That doesn't look quite right. Let me check.”

Shortly, Haze returned with a Chineighese folding book. “I was right, Sir. That is not Chineigese for wisdom. Here, see for yourself.”

Iron took a look and agreed. “She said that it was an ancient language, Haze. This is modern Chineighese.”

“Ancient, Sir? That would almost have to be . . .” Haze trailed off. He left. It was three hours before he got back, a very different fold book in his hooves.

“Ancient is the word for it, Sir. The original X'ibian language was outlawed and replaced by Chineighese characters after the conquest, a thousand or more years ago.

“It does say Wisdom in ancient X'ibian. It has a funny footnote too. You will get a kick out of it.”

Iron took the book and looked at the page. The featured character was the same as the pendant. It was the word for wisdom. The footnote added, “By coincidence, this character was also the name of the famous and legendary Dragon Queen of X'ibia who vanished shortly after the death of Im Farst, first Emperor of the X'ibian Empire.”

Iron shook his head. Graysa, Wise, Wisdom, the Dragon Queen? No. It couldn't be . . .

~~THE END~~

#HONOR vs ORDERS #MLP Fan Fiction #Written by De Writer #18+ age restricted

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hytregos · 5 years ago

Text

Existence No. 1: Awakening

Pages: 18

Word count: 8463

...

Many years after the Omni War, everything has been devastated. This is a world where all your characters meet, either from fanfiction or canon stories. Name the character or fanfic, it is in it but is must make canonical sense. All worlds have been brought down to their knees, only to beg for a piece of crumb. After the war, the United Rail Nations formed a new ideal and recovery method on how to recover after the war.

However, when it was thought they all could recover; there have been financial and policy setbacks that have kicked in just days, weeks, or even months before hand. This resulted in what many would name, the green death. Why was it named this way, it is named because everyone started losing money randomly without any intervention. Stocks start to deplete rapidly, a majority of cosmic bank and planetary banks went dark. Worldly civilizations and economies started to fall apart.

The newfound and enriched politics that have formed up and have been established started to slowly break apart to the point where politicians and leaders start having fist fights. After a while, the broken political system started to shatter more widely. This was an opportunity for terrorists and pirates that originate from any spectrum. Mass death and revolutions plagued everything. As if anything could get worse, there have been reports of civilization shutdowns, causing mass famine to spread. This allowed multiple unknowns to take place and rule the abandoned or dead worlds in their name.

Just as things can’t get worse, there are many secrets in the cosmos. Some are open; some are not meant to be discovered. And some… that are originally not meant to be.

Prologue No.1

Everything has its beginnings. Everything has its pros and cons. Everything starts with humble or great beginnings. There are heroes and there are villains who created their stories, stories that have been passed down through time. Most particularly; The grey fox, the blue falcon, the hare, and the frog taking on the evil monkeys, fish, and bugs. The naive little boy martial artist to challenging the gods. The young star warrior who stood against a king, a knight, and nightmares. Two plumbers, a princess, and a demon king. A silent boy with a fairy, a princess, and a reincarnation of the lord of evil. A kaiju and a country. The battle of metal tops with spirits within. Knights who’s blades shine with the force would ease the darkness. One soldier, one alien, one ark, and seven rings. The slayer who went to hell and back. The man who does good. A trainer and its companion. The man of the universe. The cats of the universe. The dragon warrior. A cat who shows fun with a big hat, colored red with white stripes. The green what who stole Christmas. The robots in disguise. A brave kid against the Titans. A boy who claimed the stoned sword that once belonged to his father. A targeted man who survived the POW camps. The firstborn of a God. The founders of the land of the free. The father of country named India. The man who forged the art of war. The father of western studies. The president who freed the slaves. The lost underwater city. The man on the moon. The first woman to fight for women's rights. The American Evangelist. War that conflict with other worlds. The underwater creature of madness. The scientist who constructed E=Mc2. The entrepreneur who named a theme park after himself. The little blue people who wore white and red. The big blue people who are tree lovers. The Mexican tiger boy. A spoiled boy with a groove. A ghost hunting phantom. A leader of the primates.

A time card came with a thousand to a trillion introductions later, both in the realm of fiction and nonfiction.

“They told me to hold the time card because some yellow sponge was what came and it would be a waste of time and effort if the author included a lot more introductions”, an individual announced as it walks off with the time card.

And finally, the chaos warriors and the protectors of seven gems with its giant emerald. These characters and their stories inspired others to make their own fan made creations or even something new but inspired by them. Just like this one. And believe it or not, all of these characters actually met.

Before all of those, everyone was separated. But then, geniuses from their own realms came together to build machines or create special portals to other realms. That is how everyone met. For short, just think about anyone fictional, they likely met but also won't be doing what you could expect them to do. Just like a Sondash ship. It was a new golden age. Everyone started new alliances and created new… things (almost anything to be exact, kind of like the virtual reality thing in Ready Player One known as the Oasis).

However, everyone speculated that a new force of negativity will rise eventually. Some agreed, some neglected, others were silent by just the thought of it. After ten years, it came to be, the empire, a combination of forces united into one formidable foe. Those who knew, shoved it in disbelievers faces screaming, “HAHA, WE WERE RIGHT!” Sharply little of those who were silent, knew about something, that this was part of an upcoming disaster, upon immeasurable levels, upon mythological levels. The war had two names; The Omni War and The War to End All Wars. The one who established led this empire was Mhleliw II. It took eight years but the empire has been defeated. He promised that this empire will last forever, and that everyone will ascend to godhood. However, despite his defeat, Mhleliw II was never found nor was any trace of him. Some suspect he may have killed himself or have wandered off in his madness.

After years of peace and terror with violence that was unbearable for one moment everything went back to normal. Everything is a barren wasteland. And the war came with a cost. A new depression came where everyone is set on the break of poverty and worse. It didn't start immediately; it started after cosmic stock market trading system crashed. It started a year later after the war ended. After the trading system crashed, then came banking failures, digital piracy, name it, it happened.

However, after researching the technology and the nature of the mechanisms that belong to the empire, people began to go mad upon trying to understanding it. One of these unfortunate madmen, is a young child, before the age of 10, saw two sigils clashing with each other out of pure rage, fighting for dominance. Another was a mad teenager, aged 15, who saw what it looked like or what they looked like. Because of this, there has been a new research group with highly developed and trained minds to ensure that they don’t go mad upon research. This group is known as “Project Omni of Creation and Destruction”.

Now, we get to the story-

Some Skion scouts, who suddenly got lost, trapped in some realm. The Skion are four armed vampire like beings without the special powers, wearing antiflux oxygen suits that run on 48 hours of oxygen. It all went from random galaxies to now, breaching rifts with singularity micro-dimensions. Now, they’re stuck, in an unknown void, surrounded by some barrier. The

location with the barrier has what felt like ten suns, with a surrounding of four other bright lights, each with their own attributes. One is comprised of an advanced technological machine like flicker, one comprised of corporate promotion spotlights, one of the desolations of matter and anti-matter, and one comprised of both cosmic time schemes. The one they fly above is comprised of what looks like a world purely composed of how nature sets up the way of how life naturally functions.

The scouts are Mikov, Trieechii, and Qu’tuk. Mikov is the youngest and stands 5.5. He is also the most amateurish and irresponsible. He’s bald with triplet pointy ears with yellow silicone iodine eyes with tiny pupils. The skin is as reluctant and dirty as frog depiction. His color scheme on his armor is yellowish plagued with stone red paint cells. It had extendable chain lingering and dangling on the spiked shoulder plates with molting krinkiton metal.

Qu'tuk, the middle aged of the three, the leader of this patrol squadron, he unfortunately stands 4.11 due to a lack of mutual calcium and protein deficiency since birth. He has no eyes but has astronomical sensory of his surroundings. Not only the shortest but also the heaviest of the group, as well as the strongest. He has no hair, no ears but has earholes. Extremely thinned eyebrows with some baize splashed onto some of the parts. His personal armor standbys are nothing but a deflection electromagnetic bubble which always malfunctions.

Trieechii, the oldest of the three, also the leader of this squad, standing 6.2. Like Mikov, has triplet pointy ears and silk flavored eyes with large pupils with a secondary pupil. His neck is oval shaped due to a mercury and prolonged corona exposure that came from one of a variation of a tyrannical singularity created space mutant's crystals. He has a hairstyle that is identical to that of Niagara falls with a multitude of broken hair fangs that looked like a 10 foot dragon slayer wearing dragon killing equipment... who is a dragon type as well. His armor pigments were pure purple mixed with granite and ruby.

Qu'tuk shoved Mikov with aggression, “It was your idea to bring us here!”

Mikov turned around and responded, “Mine!? You’re the one who thought about this AFTER you raided bunker c-42 on empire terrain! And after you decided to tinker with rift crossing dimension breaches!”

"Oh BLAH BLAH BLAH, always blaming the deadbeat smartass!"

"Oh BlAh BlAh BlAh, AlWaYs BlAmInG tHe DeAdBeAt SmArTaSs!"

"Oh, now we are going through this AGAIN?"

"Oh, NoW wE aRe GoInG tHrOuGh ThIs AgAiN?"

Those two argued for a long time. This strife of words went upon to even Mikov, as usual, starts mocking Qu'tuk. The situation is a dumbass vs a smartass. Mikov is a buffoon who only knows how to get into trouble while Qu'tuk is the one who many would consider "the one who knows too much".

Trieechii one had to fire a shot between them to cease the quarrel. But that barely did anything. They continued to quarrel after the shot was fired. How can he deal with this? Usually, the shot works but didn't work didn't work. Trieechii reaches for something in one of his four pockets and pulled out a flare. This flare began to gleam a bright light, overshadowing the argument between the two Skion scouts. They both used their arms to shield their eyes from the bright light. The flare that Trieechii is using is a Glani flare. This flare has been manufactured and produced by the Alien sentient modulator known as Cellva konk, who is known for inventing the alpufan dusk.

Both Qu’tuck and Mikov stopped fighting and turned to Trieechii. They both gave a dumbstruck face to him to resemble their idiocy. These to bundlers, they always get into repulsive arguments over a little crumb of bread. Some back at planet Sulop began to wonder why those two were stationed together in the first place. Trieechi gave them disappointed, but not surprised face. The two responded with the usual gestures, a spinning hand, giving off a ‘I won’t do it again’. Trieechii knows that another quarrel will happen again, just give it time.

Trieechii then turned his attention to the strange barrier to see a shadow flying towards them. Both Qu’tuck and Mikov turn to look at the shadow. When the creature bumped into the light part of their barrier, the creature bounced back. But nothing less, it did it again and again and again until there was a crack. The scouts didn’t even notice the crack, but what they did hear was the sound of what felt like two church bells being scrapped by each other.Qu’tuck and Mikov hovered to the location to figure out what is happening there. Likely that this barrier was there to keep the shadowy figure and others like it in that so called world.

“Wait, I don’t think moving closer to that barrier is a good idea.”, Trieechii exclaimed cautiously.

The other two smirked and looked at each other and back, “We’ll be fine, it’s just a shadow figure. Likely one of those shadow demons that the night hunters fight.”

“I am just saying… Look around you, does this place seem out of order to you?”

The two stopped and turned to Trieechii with flickfulness.

“Think about it, a giant creature that shows that it wants out and four others that could be like this place? Something doesn’t seem right here.”

Qu’tuck moved his voice in, “I think he’s right. I mean… now that I think about it, I don’t think we are supposed to be here. I think it is best to figure out a way out before we one, lose oxygen and lose our ability to properly breathe and second, maybe the one light with machine flickers would be able to help.”

Mikov doesn’t care and just laughs his ass off, thinking that this is a joke. Matter of fact, this scout thinks that all of this is a joke. Why does this person think all of this is a joke is a reasonable matter. Under Mikov, the creature flies towards the barrier, focusing its attention at the three scouts. Mikov flies closer to the barrier, not acknowledging the other two’s call outs for him to fall back. In response, he goes on a freefall to the barrier. Because he is falling at a rapid paste, the creature stops soaring and hovers in place, waiting for the moment to strike.

Mikov stops his freefall right where he is at the exosphere, the tip of the world’s atmosphere. The other two soared down to Mikov’s position. The creature’s eyes began to gleam with excitement. It stops hovering and aerialites to the Skion’s position. It aligns its wings together and creates a twin spear motion with the wings. It began to ascend into the air once more and lock on the three Skion scouts. Qu'tuk notices the creature charging at them.

The creature appears large, has five wings on both sides of its body. But because it is seen as a shadow figure, it is hard to truly make out for what it is. The most notable thing is the eyes, the two slit pupils that may have given its size away. From what the eyes can tell them, this thing is a massive flying behemoth. But would behemoth be the right term, it is rather skinny and slick than hulking and bulking. Rather, this would be some kind of flying serpent like creature with wings rather than gliding scales on the bottom of its body.

The other two then turn to the barrier to see the shadowy figure penetrate the barrier, allowing it to reach out. Their eyes stared shook, their blood ran cold like ice, every breath felt like charcoaled firecrackers. It looked small from the distance, but now, they see… this thing. They are not sure what this thing is. Qu’tuk however, slowly started to bleed out from his eyes and choke from the blood that ran down from his eyes to his mouth.

The other two opened fire at the creature. They used Krakulon Harpoons to potentially stun the creature and keep it away. It stuns enemies by emitting a 100- 1,000,000 volt stun, enough to render an Elder electric Dragonite to its bones. But the harpoons didn’t work, the sun is having no effect on this creature. But rather, the stun effects are reflected back at them, causing the three scouts to have a severe reaction to the electrical volts. However, the volts returned are stronger than the volts brought from the harpoon.

The creature looked back at its world, never before did it attempt to do such. Many others do try but most all never made it. Perhaps the Celstiontiqunchs’ were but delusional liars made up of those who descended on mad corruption. Last time they were free was when they were frontiering strife from those machines. This barrier was made to keep them out forever, but this? Why, no, more like how, how did it free itself from the barrier? The creature looked at the three Skion scouts. It noticed that one of them still lived after that reflected volt. Trieechii weakly slithered his nearly shut eye towards the creature as he can only see it’s eye. He can’t truly understand what he is seeing. What is this thing? Why is it here? Where is this place?

The creature simpered one of its right five eyes towards Trieechii, returning attention to Trieechii. It gave off a blank red eye, no pupil or cornea, that shines at Trieechii. Slowly in response, Trieechii began to shake uncontrollably as his mind starts to deteriorate. The creature turns back to its world. Upon returning to it’s world, it notices that the barrier is flickering. With each flicker, the barrier grows weaker and weaker, allowing it to pass through. Could that mean… he is returning? Or is…, it returning? Either way, these questions conflict with the creatures thought processing.

Next, in a faraway land known as Equestria, that has been renamed Pionola; the new leader, Dimeonka, is now leading the ponies. Because of the war, Pikonola is having a hard time and Dimeonka doesn't stray far from the struggle. Dimeonka is a stallion with a black pigment with white red stripes. He is a calm mined pony with a low temper esteem. He likes to point the way to a better world, through extremely dangerous situations that can leave an entire species extinct. He goes through PTSD and is currently on medication. His eyes are brown, mane and tail are blond and he has an arrow piercing a page as a cutie mark.

But what happened to Twilight and her friends? Twilight and the rest of the mane six died in the war. Celestia and Luna died in the depression due to lack of funding and the plague. Discord; after fluttershy’s death, went into depression, which lead him to suicide by making himself fade from existence. Spike is nowhere to be found. In other words, Equestria is in ruins. Lack of funding and something about some powerful demon who always smiles came in and turned the world into a ghost town. The biggest one is a war against a band of space pirates.

The current party runs Equestria is a Brankius party. It is a party where the direction of society is directed by a higher one’s thinking. In other worlds, there is this hidden individual who gives orders to officials and the officials’ synchronize it in their way so this hidden individual won’t be detected. In context, Dimeonka is not the true leader, but a figure to the real one, playing the act whole the hidden one dangles with the puppet strings. However, the figure must

be a well known selective that must commit an action that will make him forgotten, so he or she or it can remain in power.

Although it works perfectly if done correctly, the political party is heavily flawed. Secretly, everyone fights for that secret leadership, only for everyone to end up killing themselves after obtaining such position. This has been going on for a long time, enough to render Dimeonka to his hoofs and possibly be on everyone’s mercy. But after a long setback, Dimeonka changed somethings to how Equestria’s Brankius party roles. Because of this change, the secret leader has been revealed and executed, and Dimeonka became the true ruler.

He is a reddish solid color, with short mane and tail that indicates that he has fought an Ursa Major and lived. His eyes are violet with some bloodshot veins indicating bloodshot eyes. He bares a conch shell crest cutie mark, indicating that he likes to decorate things in a ‘counched’ matter. He wears a pair of goggles, the left glass however is slightly cracked but barely noticeable unless you look real hard on it. He stands at 5.7 ft tall and 6.10 ft at length.

In the castle, a guard is taking a break in the guard headquarters. However, in other worlds there are guards, security, and other personnel or some type of police headquarters with a lone operative taking a break. Each of them laid down or sat down and rested. However, they heard some type of voice or felt some type of presence. They look around to see nothing, but that insecurity remains. ?They each know something is here, there has to be something here, but what?

Each of them looks up to see some strange shadowy figure that is staring down at him. Some didn’t seem concerned that much, some were concerned, most were silenced. Those who didn’t seem concerned, waited for it to do something. Those who were concerned armed themselves or amped their abilities and prepared for a fight. Those who were silenced, couldn’t bare to witness what they are seeing.

Despite different approaches, they all met the same fate. The ones who were not concerned were an easy picking, allowing the shadowy figure to pounce on them, metaphorically devouring them. Those who were concerned, tried to dispense of it, but all failed in the attempt. Those who were silenced, began to tear with terror. They are returning, they know the time is right. THEY are here, they are… The shadow figure opened its mouth at the silenced guards and…

Shortly after, the guard shows up struggles to stay up as it walks down through the empty halls of their locations. They shook ferociously as if they were frostbitten. Their eyes look bloodshot, their faces reddened with some but not noticeable cuts. Their armor/suit is ragged, cut, and damaged. Their posture is rugged and clearly, the individual(s) struggled to stand.

“Why are you shaking like that and where were you?”, curiously asked the leaders as the guard walks forward.

The guard stops and tries to speak, but they each fell down in different ways, showcasing a fresh slashes, cuts, or scars, through their bodies, from their head to their feet. Thecuts began to bleed heavily. Some of the cuts even exposed their interior muscles or even their bones. Some of the flesh that are right by the damage started to fall off as the blood began to sprinkle, but for some, it didn’t or did sprinkle again. Their bodies begin to cloud as more blood began to leave their body.

One section of leaders were not conspicuous of the situation and mildly laughed it off, claiming that the whole thing is an act. Some began to laugh with the leader, while the others try to help the individual. The second cast were curious about what is going on, so they called a medic to figure out what is going on. The third cast rushed to the individual's attention, demanding a medic to aid this individual. However, what they all have in common, is that they were attacked by the same thing. However, each attack on each individual has taken different forms, all depending on the area and species. What could be the cause of such calamity? Is it another terrorist attack or some type of remediation that is randomly unfolding itself to the world. There are enough problems right now, why start a new one?

Each of the guards were shaking intensely as the cold started to flood their bodies. They all wish they have never seen what each of them have seen, they just want to forget it. But now, their lives are cut short because of this calamity. Was it fate or some sort of interruption? Each withering slowly as the light starts to fade for each of them. Each of the leaders or medics or anyone who was close to the guard asked questions such as, “What happened? Who did this to you? Is this some prank? Who would commit such brutality?” Each of the guards slowly looked up with clouding eyes.

“He….”, they each weakly mumbled out loud.

“Who?”

“HEEEEEEE…..Ee.eee--”, each of the guards died out before they could utter a word.

This info, not enough, but by how each said it, it is as if they have seen something they were not supposed to see. Each of the medics used brain transplants on the guard(s) to translate what they saw. they stick the electrical receivers in the neck part and the neuro receivers in the cranium parts. The medics added the impulses into the victims to get a read of their memories. This is happening through many methods; psychiatric memory manipulation, magic mind reader, anything to figure out what happened.

Back at the throne room, Dimeonka used a mind extract spell to analyze the corners of the guard’s recent memories. This spell only allows Dimeonka to go back to memories that are 72 hours old, or three days to be simplesti. He looked into the mind of the recently deceased guard and found what appears to be a shadowy figure or some type of [phantom that attacked him. It was fast but terminal. It took many forms but what remained was a figment of eye and a spine of teeth. IS that right? A figment of some sort or… something? Dimeonka can’t tell since the memory is starting to fade. But unlike most times, matter of fact, this is the first time anyone’s memory is fading a lot quicker than necessary.

When Dimeonka stopped his mind trace, he noticed that the body is starting to fade from existence. No seriously, none of that thanos dust or fade like a ghost, fade as if this guard never existed in the first place. Dimeonka took notice as the guard starts to fade away. This method was said to be complete fiction with possibilities such cause being impossible. But seeing the impossible before him, stunned him to the bone. He is speechless on what he has witnessed. Never before had he witnessed such testified death impossibility happen before him. Everyone else who knew about the same theory were also stunned, speechless.

Dimeonka stumbles backwards conflicted, trying to understand what is going on. But has he goes deeper into realisation, he notices that he is slowly beginning to lose his mind. His head pounding, brain cells start to deteriorate and rupture, and his vision starts to blur. He can barely keep it together, this is something that should NOT happen. Begins to hum “whisper of the river” to calm himself down. It is a song that requires you to use leaves for instruments to play it correctly. This song has been used in mediation sessions that he has been taking lately. Though it is hard to play it correctly with the right leaf structure, the result is really soothing.

The Everyone else is either losing their mind, remained frozen, or quickly assessed the situation and alerted everyone in their high councils about the situation. This isn't just happening to Dimeonka, this is happening to everyone! When each senate or council member got the information, they either doubted or embraced the information. Those who doubted the information either went mad or had some of their own underlings containted. Those who embraced it couldn’t believe what they are hearing and try to reject the information. They can’t bear to hear such information that invalidates the current knowledge that they have.

Every time something new but unexpectedly large is announced, nearly everyone panics. No one can rest in this time of era with war, terorism, economic deterioration, etc. What else is there to do in these times without having some sort of life or death stress? Is everyone’s struggle in vain, does it have no end? Would there be a moment where everyone can finally rest? Some are indeed dying from overwhelming stress, anxiety, etc. But this uprise, this crosses too many lines.

Dimeonka then calms himself down and orders three guards to investigate the area. The three guards swifty stampede through the halls to the location where this recently deceased guard was. The iron weight added with every thump on their hoof gave out loud clanging vibrations to the fortress. The stress from the fast pasting stallions causes the armor to start scratch up in some parts. However, this particular armor is constructed by a form of nanometal that regenerates any form of it'setal tissue, as long as the wearer is alive.

"What do you think caused that?", the second guard personifies to everypony.

"Could be some large creature. Otherwise, something new, maybe not.", the third guard responds hastefully to the second guard.

Like everyone, they pray for a REAL rest. Everyone is always on alert, no breaks, almost no sleep, and even no repercussions for their physical or mental health. These guards are no different from such unfortunate calamity. The guards have been trained to contain a mind that is solid metal. However, because of the underdeveloped and decaying economy, as well as political corruption that sprung behind places, the guards begath to throttle into corruption as well. Because of such actions being taken to course, the united rail nations stepped in for each local system and suggested robotic guards, but many, including Equestria, declined the offer.

The guards arrive at the scene of the incident, only to find nothing but debris that originated from the guard and the room storage. The room is about the size of an average size shed. The room can store up to 25 stallions and is one of the new five guard stations that hosts a mini kitchen. This station also holds five beds and has an armor closet that holds different types of armor, all for different purposes. Such example of differentiation is bulk armor is for walls, slim is for scouting and patrols, and weighed is for intense wind resistance.

They scavenged the room for any clue but no answer. However, there is one clue, on the chair, a giant clawmark that is causing the chair to spaze in and out of existence, trying to render itself and keep itself alive, somehow. One of the guards attempted to touch it, but was stopped by a voice in the guard’s head, telling him not to think about it. I mean, it’s just some anomaly, what can go wrong? These guards are nothing more than mere privates that just entered a militant force.

During the scavenging, they manage to uncover the guard’s notes, written in a black notebook with stretch marks that have dried tear stains on it. The pen has been used three days ago and is covered in dry sweat. The notebook has been written on the same day as when the pen has been used. The pen has a metallic but rubbery for it’s build. It is six inches and some damage indicates that this guard chews on his pen. The chew marks indicate healthy but brittle teeth bites.

Two of the guards looked everywhere but barely any clues to what really happened, other than the claw marks on some places. They turned to the third guard, who has begun to stutter and sweat. His eyes are pinned on what he is reading, something about an unknown force awaiting and some schematics about unreilating and unknown locations. Some of this knowledge… is not even on record. Trojecting seven light years from waypoints outside their own multiverse and pinpointing several stars to constellations that don’t replicate natural shapes. This knowledge...., isn’t theirs or anyones that they know of.

As much as the guard tries to understand it, he can feel his mind slowly melting as he attempts to see any real meaning in their world. But all of this…it makes no sense, everything is wrong here, it doesn't match up! The guard begins to pant uncontrollably as he thrives deeper and deeper into the pages. Be begins to hear voices, voices that he has never heard of before, or rather voices that maybe no one has ever heard from before. The guard looked around to see if anyone is there, but all he could see was his vision blurring and the two guards looking at him with confusion and scarcse.

The guard looks up to see a figment of shadows looming above their heads, mumbling things to one another, as well as giving off a glitch like vibration to them every time they revolve around each other. They each can’t be described but they all have multiple appendages on nearly every part of their body, each with their own set of eyes and mouths. The main eyes are large with a set of 2x3. The best they can come up with is some twigs that are strapped down to a large pole and liquefied in some jello maker. The limbs are rather something that a jellyfish would have, something rubery but also slimy and satisfying to touch.

The guards don’t know what to think about this, al they have in mind is what is happening to the third guard as he starts to swiftly turn the pages frantically and in a frightened motion. He continuously turns his head and eyes as he swarms through every page he looks at. All of it, it is not supposed to make any sense. Everything this guard is reading, it’s all wrong. It’s supposed to be WRONG! None of this is supposed to be true!

The guard starts mumbling some strange words, in a voice that mirrors that of the shadowy figures that are floating close to the ceiling. The creatures crack down to the third guard, emanating a strangely distortive energy around them that causes all but the shadowy figure’s vision to start blacking out. Is this what that earlier guard experiences, was this the final moments of vision before he passed? Is this, what he saw? What the hell is going on, someone tell them something, tell them something NOW!

One of the guards, the first guard, ran away from the scene before this blacking out could advance. He can only bare to look back and witness the two fading from existence like that.

There is no true way to describe the situation that they are in, it is as if they are being erased from their memory. However, despite such feeling of relativity, it is not the exact same. This one guard, named Hipiro, has joined the guard just to get paid and finally make a living, not settle down on unknown anomaly that shatter reality by just being there.

Hipiro is a low class guard, just like the other two, mostly just so he can make a living out of something. The other two did it for the power and position. Hipiro is 27 year old pegasus who was born with one wing deficiency; a disorder that only gives pegasus one wing instead of two. This deficiency is rare, but it has happened before. It is as rare as obtaining candymarus; a condition where somepony born with candy for body parts. However, one of the largest differences is that one does not almost instantly die days after birth.

Hipiro runs off to the throne room but before he enters it, he is introduced to a foul odor, fresh but foul and somewhat spicy. When he arrives at the throne room, he only witness what can be described to be gore. What else can be said about witnessing multiple corpses rangolled around and hung from their intestines or any organ of bone of theirs. Their eyes are jotting out with their Sclera and corneas ripped to shreds. Parts of their iris’ are scattered with their pupils mixing with other pupils. The veins of the eyes are mixed with some of the blood puddles that has dried up. Actually, Hipiro is not even sure if the strains are veins or thin tissues of flexible muscle.

The legs and hoofs are dismembered and dislocated. Their muscle tissue is slowly slithering off as is drips down from the body part is was originally assembled to. Some of the muscle tissue has some bone marrow leaking onto the remains, causing the order more rock and milk like. Some of the bone marrow has protein and fat in it, causing the odor to worsen. The stench when blood starts to rot and bodies began to decompose. But it has barely been an hour and this is happening? What the hell is going on, SOMEONE TELL HIPIRO SOMETHING!

The flesh that surrounds the torsos have been tangled up in what can be described to be a big pile of cheap spaghetti. Intestines all chews or clawed up and tossed around one another. By some means, some of the dead poses are even individuals who are attempting to return their intestines back in their bodies. Some of the intestines still has depiction in them that are now leaking from the intestines. Some of the stuff wasn't even fully digested ye and it comes out as a brownish liquid that is jet to be become a wet solid based depoture known as poop. Some of the intestines has depiction on the exterior of them. Some have dried up with insects feeding off them and maggots devouring the remnants.

The livers and kidneys are no different from such fate. They all are torn up and scattered among the throne room. Stomach acid starts to corrode the gallbladder and kidneys. Some of the corroded parts happen to be tongues Some parts of the arteries are penetrating the spleen, and

thoracic. The stomach acids also increase the smell of the foul odor coming from the remains. Some of the kidneys and livers have become a breeding ground for many insects. This place, nothing but FOUL!

The heads and tails of the ponies are all what can be described to overlayed flesh just being folded to the point of There is a pony with their stifle being crushed by a spinal cord that is slowly being devoured and covered in slime and mucus by bone worms. The skull is bashed up with parts of the brain dripping out or splattered across a terrain. Their tongues are al dripping out with saliva and blood with their spinal fluids leaking down from their necks. Their teeth brackled and some hung around like decorations. Even their noses were all smashed as if they were compressed by a hydraulic press.

Hipiro slowly walks in to see everybody rendered down and disemboweled and possibly eaten, al in different ways. He starts to suspect that this has something to do with the shadows that has been circling that guard station. Now that he that he thinks about the shadows, Hipiro begins to wonder; is the other guard, Thundero ok? Is he dead, is he injured, what has happened of him? All of this is rapidly flowing through his mind, making him feel unstable. Too much, so little time, so many weird things going on. He doesn’t know what to do.

He then hears a rather high pitched joyful but sinisterly unsettling and disturbing laugh, in a voice that he has never heard of before. He looks around to see some of the bodies disappearing, only the blood stains remain of the deceased ponies and stallions. Wait, what happened to Dimeonka; where is he? Has he met the same fate as these unfortunate souls? If anything, what if he evacuated just before whatever happened here? The possibility is medium, he mostly never backed down from a challenge, especially if it threatens his position of power. But if it doesn't me may try to strike a deal with it so there wouldn't be any conflict.

He then hears a studderosh and petrified voice in the distance. Sounds familiar, rugged and weakened, through a pile of corpses. Out came a hoof, covered in blood but looks as if it were blending in with the fur. The fur color… and how the hoof is shaped, it’s familiar. Hipiro gallops towards the pile of bodies carefully, he doesn't want to trip over the bodies or slip caused by blood puddles. If he did, he would likely end up with serious injuries due to armor added impact which could lead to a concussion or some loss of bone structure or even interior bleeding.

He arrives at the corpse pile and reached his hof out and led a hoof to this survivor, only to the survivor to be a familiar stallion.

“Dimeonka?”, Hipiro sharply realizes after he has pulled this stallion out from the pile of corpses.

Hipiro lifts him out, only to feel vibrations coming from his leg. These vibrations that is intensely being deominstraighted to Hipiro, it is as if something has scared Dimeonka. He has shakes like this at times, however for the shaking to be intense as if he were a vehicle in an extremely rocky road, something has caused him to result in this behavior. Hipiro pulls Dimeonka complete out of the piles and the first thing he witnesses is the sheer horror on his face. Whatever Dimeonka has seen, it must've been out of this word.

“Hey, Lord Dimeonka!”, Hipiro calls out to his master.

He then proceeded to tap him, causing his to snap in fright and terror. Hiprio jumped back in shock at what has happened to Dimeonka. Dimeonka looks at Hipiro with petrification as if he has seen something that scarred him for life. Hipiro waves his wing to Dimeonka, but in response, Dimeonka swiftly gallops out of the pile, circles around the room, and back into the pile.

“WHAT ARE YOU D-D-DOING!?”, frantically squealed the petrified stallion with his body still heavily shaking uncontrollably.

Hipro jumps in response to his random squealing. Whatever Dimeonka saw, it clearly gave him an impact. Never before has Dimeonka ever acted this way.

“NEVERMIND WHAT I SAID!”, Dimeonka squeaked and dragged Hipiro into the corpse pile.

“What are yo-”, Hipiro is interrupted by Dimeonka, shushing him.

“This world, this isn’t our WORLD! This place, it doesn't… IT DOES NOT BELONG TO US! IT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE OURS!” , Dimeonka begins to lose it.

“Lord Dimeonka! Listen to yourself! You don’t know what you are saying!”

“NO, YOU LISTEN TO ME! LISTEN TO MY VOICE AS I COMMENCE THAT WE SHOULD ALL OPEN OUR EYES!”

They both then hear some chuckling in the distance. It originates beyond the throne room entrance. The chuckling continuously gives off a vibe as if there are multiple voices there. One childish, one of an adult, one of a lunatic, one of a beast, one of a creature from an unknown world. The walls began to collapse as the bodies began floating in the air, exposing Hipiro and Dimeonka. The roof began to distort as it gave of this glitched or static like sound effect. It is as if reality of collapsing, but for the two, they know it’s more than just a reality split.

“They are here…”, Dimeonka mumbles in submission.

“Who?”, Hipiro responds swiftly and mildly frightened, and recognizing the submission in Dimeonka’s voice.

“They… I don’t know. But they are here. They are here to take what we have become. They are here to reclaim what is theirs.”

Hipiro glanced at Dimeonka cluelessly; who is… are they? What do they want? Hipiro starts to feel his brain pounding intensely. Each pounding causes him to startle and fall to the ground with immense pain. He recovers but slowly feels the aftermath of the head pounding still taking affect. He remembers something about Dimeonka, before his leadership, he had to be taken in for insanity treatments. Perhaps this was one of the main reasons. He may have been slowly losing his mind over time, likely due to a drastic change of point of view.

Nothing less, the voices, they slowly creep up closer to the two, causing them to gain goosebumps. The voices echoed through the room and through the halls, but it also gives a feeling that these voices originate more than just one location. Hipiro looks for an exit and notices the open glass figurine window. He charges at the glass figurine, hoping to make an escape and breach into the outside world, escaping this situation. He could take Dimeonka, but given his current situation, his mind is set into submission as he slowly begins to grow unstable.

He collides with the glass only to be reflected back, not dealing any damage to the glass. This blast sent him back a 1 ½ yards away from the glass. He felt this deflection as if something backhanded him back to his starting point. He looks around to see nothing but Dimeonka scrambling his voice around as he begins to roll around, once again, in submission. Hiprio begins to think, “Who is he really submitting to?”

A voice called out Hipiro’s name in an unsettling and grooming way. It is as if the plagued sea of stars have begun to spiral in his tounge. The sky begins to twaddle around him as an attempt to slurp some sense into him. The revendius vocality is causing him to stutter and shaking randomly. It is small and barely noticeable; but for the emitter, it is noticeable. The voices begin to cackle out like some ravaging noises, so infamiable, so untamed, it can never be recognized or even puzzled together.

A shadowy figure begins to loom over the halls, but some of the shadows originate from the windows. The shadows that are originating from the windows cause mass screaming among the new Ponvymania town. A gang related town with a low tolerance for anyone squishy or soft. Ponyvill fell into decay after the Omni war hit Equis. It when out quicker than a rendering siphon. It is peckering with the scent of… mixed frost and sea salt, or so what can be stated.

.Hipiro stumbled backwards as the shadows began to surround him, starting with some type of… claw like figure? He is not sure, but what he sees, is a claw of sales that indicate something of reptilian origin. Or… what impracticalities have penetrated his mind? Hipiro then begins to hear Dimeonka screeching some foul and dispensed language, he can’t even understand what Dimeonka is saying. Matter of fact, there has been no recordings of the language that Dimeonka is using. Words that… could not… should not…

The shadow begins to form, around Hipiro as he preps a Gattatik Val C-3 Machine Gun from his armor. The weapon supports a cooler from the barrel and the ammunition are Slug double F centimeter roundz. One shot from this weapon can send a curl a blue whale to oblivion. The bullets however, are nothing more than a crum, enough for a mouse to feast on. He stands firmly, waiting the the ting to pop out. He feels a hoof dragging upwards on his hind left leg. He turns his neck 157 degrees counterclockwise to find out who is dragging his limb.

Dimeonka looked at Hipiro with fanaticism in his eyes and sweat. His heavy breath gave a feeling as if he lost it. Hipiro slowly moved his head backwards, away from Dimeonka as he slowly creeped up to his upper torso. Dimeonka reacted to this by pinning Hipiro down on the ground. Dimeonka screamed in submission, demanding the shadow to take them away.

Hiprio pointed the Gattatik as Dimeonka is he screamed, “I am sorry… I have no choice.” Hipiro fired the gun, instantly ripping Dimeonka in two, scattering his organs and kidneys everywhere.

The foul scent of deprained blood being spilled fresh as the scaled claw swipes it an ingests it like a…- jellyfish, or a blob like substance. The body of Dimeonka is swiftly ripped apart and dissolved as it was injected by the random gloomy prepotouisms. The liquids from the body began to evaporate as his skin and fur begins to dissolve. The muscles are ripped up and saturated into this smoothie like substance. The bones have been ruptured into… seeds inside of a strawberry shake? The organs and the brain have been shifted in tenderized cuisines in a size of a pill.

Hipiro thought Dimeonka would die in battle or some kind of disease or assasination attempt. But this, how can it be spelled out? Being eaten alive? Being dissected alive? Being burned or melted alive? Atoms ripped apart? What can it be? What is this thing doing? Is there anything to be said for what Hipiro must bestow? He walks backwards frightened, he rather be hypnotized into being a worthless slave he once was rather than witness this. He felt a pat on the back, it felt scaley, but interestingly smooth and mildly soft. He stops to turn to witness a giant appendage glooming over him… Hipiro slowly increased his voice to produce a scream that he

could never reach. The thing opened what appears to be opening its… mouth and towered over Hipiro.

Back at the unknown word, the barrier that surrounds the location begins to raddle. The creatures within the world begin to look up and notice the barrier flickering on and off, rattling intensively. That is when they knew, the barrier, it is dying. One of those creatures… expands its wings and skyrockets in the air. This thing begins to curl into a ball in preparation for potential breach. The creature makes contact with the barrier and it miraculously breaches. The pressure from the breach scatters into the infinite sea for where the starts and beyond lay. The creature uncurls itself and looks back. In response, the creature cries out to the other creatures, informing that the barrier is broken, and descend back into its world once more.

The creatures responded drastically, screeching and whaling their snarls at every location there is. This was enough to inform the other starry locations and some locations in the…--- infinite sea of stars, where ‘everyone’ thrived. Those who heard such sounds… and paid attention to these foul and unfortunate sounds…, they were all RE-introduced to… what they considered a voice from the reaches beyond the void. Those who didn’t pay attention, ignored it and moved on. No one could ever guess what has happened.

#Existence Novel #Hytregos

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silver-wields-a-pen · 5 years ago

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⭐ and 👻 for the writer asks

Sorry for the late reply, I couldn't find the post with the questions

Thanks for the ask

Writer asks

👻- 2 or 3 sentences from something you haven’t posted yet

Here's a bit from an illthdar fan fiction I wrote this last week 😁

“Do I look that stupid?” Hui-fa leant against the parapit wall and shook his head. At twenty-four, and the spitting image of his father at that age, he was the eldest of the uv dra C'Deney siblings, and part of the Jasper Order.

His friend and teammate, Yasamine, wore a teasing grin that said she was about to ruin him. With curly lavender hair, amethyst eyes and a figure that drew many an eye, she was a deceptive looking badass, regularly beating down foes who thought she lacked substance. “If you need to ask...” She laughed and ducked his playful arm swing.

“Great friend you are.” He chuckled. They'd grown up as playmates and chaotic cohorts, getting into more trouble than both their fathers combined. “Dad has to lose the fight, so anyone betting on him is asking for their money to get taken.” Most of their discussions revolved around who could beat who in a fight, with each coming up with more outlandish rules and restrictions so their favourite could win. With the upcoming Winter vs Spring King fight, Yasamine questioned whether Tundra could beat Avari.

“Okay, in the context of the story he has to lose, but would he if he didn't have to?” She tilted her head and raised both eyebrows.

Hui shrugged. “No idea.”

⭐️- how do you get your inspiration?

I get inspired by all sorts of things. Current events are usually good for background into political corruption and how bad society can be. Stuff like girls getting sent to prison for killing their rapists I'll include as conversations between characters to show their moral views. Jokes and dialogue banter I'll look up funny phrases and see what sparks my own ideas.

Like this piece from my recent illthdar fan fiction. The line about satnav sprang from the old cliche about fumbling to find buttons and such on women's clothing.

“I'm glad we get to rub our sexy bits together,” Salem joked, as he tried to find the opening on Imogen's bodysuit. “Or I would if I could locate them.”

“Oh, baby, you wanna turn on the satnav?” she teased, wiggling and making him groan. In a faux robotic voice she said, “You are two inches to the left of your destination.”

Salem dropped his head against Imogen's shoulder as laughter overtook him. “I love you, you sexy wench.”

“The wenchiest wench,” she replied, slipping buttons on his shirt free.

“Sexiest sex.”

Imogen paused. “Is wenchiest a word?”

“You mean sauciest?”

“Sauciest sauce?” She pulled his shirt off and tossed it over his head. “Sounds like something an ad company would use to sell condiments.”

“You are delicious,” he replied, finally locating the fastening and peeling the bodysuit off.

“And I go well with everything?” she asked, shoving him back onto the bed. “Especially you.”

“I am pretty tasty.” Salem linked both arms behind his head and grinned. “I mean, look at me.”

“An all you can eat buffet.” Imogen slinked her way up him and indulged in a long kiss. “Good thing I brought my appetite.”

#Writeblr #writeblr community #Asks #Writer asks #Illthdar

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mantra4ia · 6 years ago

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OG Roswell vs Roswell New Mexico

I just finished rewatching Roswell (concluded/three seasons/streaming on Hulu) circa my youth from late 90s/early 2000s in order to compare it with Roswell New Mexico (new/ongoing/CW), and I have made the following conclusions so far:

Pros-

CW definitely picked the right actors for Max Evans and Liz (formerly Parker) Orcheto. I love Nathan Parsons - he has the soft-spoken, essense of puppy dog look that Jason Behr had in the role- and the chemistry between them is great.

That said, I think the original series did it better. Nothing beats the casting Shiri Appleby and Jason Behr and their goofball mariachi scenes, biology lab shenanigans, and alien 👽 ears. Sidenote about RNM: for as much as I love the unexpected twist of Alex and Michael together in RNM, nothing beats the casting of Majandra Delfino and Brendan Behr either. Their fantastic "at the same time I want to hug you, I want to wrap my hands around your neck" Michael-Maria dynamic is unbreakable, which I think the CW is trying to replicate with Alex but not with the same bantering charm.

RNM definitely comes out swinging with the political commentary/humor, and it makes the show feel of-the-times in the same vein as classic Roswell's "George Bush is an alien" t-shirt and the other references of the era to various 90s pop culture and music artists. The revival doesn't always stick the landing with the laugh, but the effort is there.

So on the subject of humor, levity in the original series is beyond compare. Yes it's corny, yes they pull out all the stops on hokie. But that's also what makes it so endearing. Seeing the main characters' relationships with their parents is also an unfortunate missing piece that RNM, by the mechanics of the "all grown up" plot, misses out on. Mrs. DeLuca, Mr. Evans, and the sheriff, had their fair share of laughs in Roswell and I miss that.

Alien special effects have far improved over the course of nearly 20 years. No more silver paint handprints, woooooohoo.

That said, nobody does 90s music transitions between scenes like Roswell. Nor jump cuts and cutaways.

I like Roswell New Mexico's homages to the OG show (the CrashDown, the waitress uniforms complete with antenna, and the ketchup are still priceless). More than anything, I like the fact that RNM paid attention to where Max's character left off in the original series, a little lost in purpose but wanting to help people, and so they made grown up Max a deputy, and likewise Liz became a scientist. And of course, the throwback mentions of Liz and Max in bio lab, Liz wiping hot sauce from his face...

But why have an homage when you can have the original hot sauce? Or, for that matter, half broken Jeep, fully DoA Jetta, and peach Snapple?

I'm thankful that so far there is no sight of the Tess character in RNM (I say, despite my love of Emilie de Ravin), and that they've seemed to pass along her mind warp power to Isabelle.

Cons-

How dare RNM backseat Maria DeLuca's character?! She was the beating heart and soul of terrestrial Roswell, her friendship with Liz is vital to the show in a way that the revival is not pulling off so far.

Roswell New Mexico has one advantage over Roswell for which I am grateful, and that's the fact that Maria, Max, Liz and crew are grown up and not keeping diaries anymore (thankfully I think TVD used up that plot device and the well has gone dry for the foreseeable future), which leads to fewer face-eating awkward make-out scenes in high school back rooms. Yet somehow the post-teenage angst is still front and center, go figure.

I like Michael Trevino. He's a welcome addition to any ensemble. But the CW plug to the Vampire Diaries/Julie Plec by putting a VD book on the shelf in Rosa's room is so cringy I can't take it. I am trying to black out the fact that Plec is EP on RNM and they make it impossible.

Roswell was kind of episodically self-contained with very few true cliffhangers, whereas Roswell New Mexico seems to stretch out the plot arcs a bit more. I can appreciate that added bit of complexity.

However, RNM also takes itself way too seriously. And I'm not just talking about the balance of drama and humor, for which the revival leans into the dramatic side heavily. I'm talking about the fact that the original Roswell, while it fully embraced the science fiction, was also self-effacing at times, like it was in on the joke that everything was just a little bit ridiculous. It embraced the cornball element. Dare I say it loved the cornball, and I think that's part of the reason why it's so rewatchable and bingeworthy years later. Roswell New Mexico has none of that.

I never understood the need for royal hierarchy conflict, love triangles, babies, and exiled aliens fighting a nearly unseen foe - Kivar - in Roswell (because more often than not the plots double back on themselves and come up half empty), so I'm glad Roswell New Mexico took a more worldly approach to the problems the protagonists are facing.

Sadly Michael Guerin and Isabelle, like Maria DeLuca, fall flat in the new series so far. In part I think it's because the story hasn't done a lot of relationship building between them and Max (it spends so/too much time building the drama and tension around Liz's sister's 'murder' plot that I'm not yet invested in) to highlight the sibling connection that made the first iteration charming. And that's a shame.

Lastly, who's disgusting idea was it to swap hot sauce for acetone polish remover? Never. No. NO.

Overall, I still much prefer the original Roswell vs. the Roswell New Mexico revival. It has a rewatchability and heart that the new series has yet to capture for me. I could give it time at least until I see the episode that Shiri Appleby directs, but I think that the new tone of the show is something else entirely and I'm not the biggest fan.

#og roswell #roswell #roswell new mexico #compare and contrast #max evans #liz parker #maria deluca #michael guerin #valenti #shiri appleby #jason behr #brendan fehr #majandra delfino #emilie de ravin #nathan parsons #crashdown cafe #hot sauce on everything #first impressions #roswell reaction'd

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allspark · 5 years ago

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It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like Transformers, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, My Little Pony, Spider-Man, Star Trek, and more! All coming your way for June 12th!

TRANSFORMERS #7

Brian Ruckley (A) Cachet Whitman (CVR A) Christian Ward (CVR B) Livio Ramondelli

When another body shows up, Chromia and Prowl feel the pressure to get answers. Bumblebee, meanwhile, applies for a new job-as a bodyguard. But first, he has to impress Elita-1.

• New story begins here! • A brand-new era of Transformers!

TRANSFORMERS #1 (2ND PTG)

Brian Ruckley (A) Angel Hernandez, Cachet Whitman (CVR) Gabriel Rodriguez

GI JOE A REAL AMERICAN HERO #263

Larry Hama (A/CVR A) Netho Diaz (CVR B) Dan Fraga

As Cobra continues its relentless onslaught on a global scale, G.I. Joe is there to meet them in kind. It’s tyranny versus freedom-heroes and villains will rise and fall, bullets will fly, blood will spill, and who and what remains when the smoke clears is anyone’s guess! Join Living Legend Larry Hama and superstar artist Netho Diaz for another explosive adventure into the action-packed world if G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero!

AMBER BLAKE #1 (2ND PTG)

Jade Lagardère (A/CVR) Butch Guice

AMBER BLAKE #4

Jade Lagardère (A/CVR) Butch Guice

Amber Blake has finally found the person responsible for all of the pain in her life-and there’s no way she’s letting him get away again. But nothing is as it seems, and when the people closest to her betray her, she’ll have to use all of her skills to get out alive-and to get the vengeance she’s longed for.

BERKELEY BREATHED’S BLOOM COUNTY ARTIST EDITION HC

Berkeley Breathed (A/CVR) Berkeley Breathed

The Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of one of the most cherished and fondly remembered comic strips of all time showcases his art in this deluxe oversized edition. You’ve read all the strips, now see the art! This Artist’s Edition features an incredible selection of daily and Sunday comic strips, as well as a selection of sketchbook pages and drawings, published here for the very first time, each and every one scanned from the original art. The dailies are presented at the ACTUAL size drawn, and the Sundays have been slightly reduced but are still bigger and more beautiful than they have ever been presented before! This is the ULTIMATE Bloom County collection by the inimitable Berkeley Breathead!

• Advance solicited for November release! • Bloom County returned as a successful webcomic in 2015, with collections published annually by IDW to critical acclaim.

DISNEY COMICS AND STORIES #5

Andrea Castellan, Marco Gervasio, Tito Faraci (A) Andrea Ferraris, Marco Gervasio, Alessio Coppola (CVR) Paolo Campinoti

Three stories never-before-seen in the U.S. await you in another fun-filled issue! In “Mickey Mouse and the Hydrophilic Monsters,” Mickey and Goofy encounter plant life like they-or you-have never seen before! Then, in “Pluto and the ‘Super’ Day,” what happens when Goofy dog-sits Mickey’s beloved pup? Why, nothing less than the unexpected! Finally, in “Shhh,” Peg-Leg Pete and his accomplice encounter more than they bargained for in a robbery gone very wrong!

GLOW #2

Tini Howard (A/CVR A) Hannah Templer

Faced with foes in the forms of the Star Primas-who have real muscles and matching windbreakers-the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling are ready to prove they aren’t unskilled losers. They’re paid television actors! And it’s time to show those Star Primas that paid television actors mean business… Based on the hit Netflix series!

GOOSEBUMPS HORRORS OF THE WITCH HOUSE #2

Denton J. Tipton, Matthew Dow Smith (A/CVR A) Chris Fenoglio

Rosie thought it was bad enough having a witch as a neighbor, but now the witch is trying to take over the whole town! As their parents fall under the witch’s dark spell, it’s up to Rosie and her friends to try and save the day. And they thought algebra was hard…

GLOW #2

Tini Howard (A/CVR A) Hannah Templer

GRAVE TP

Dan Fraga (A/CVR) Dan Fraga

ADVANCE SOLICITED FOR APRIL RELEASE! For fans of coming-of-age stories similar to Stephen King’s The Body; the movie based on it, Stand By Me; IT; Stranger Things; and E.T. Drawn one panel per day over a year, follow the story of three boys who discover a shallow grave while on a weekend camping trip. But that’s just where the mystery begins. The unexpected find reveals a cigar box containing seven mysterious items: a knife, a coin, a pocket watch, a rare baseball card, a gold ring, a silver spoon, and a strange manga comic. How are these items connected? Whose body lies buried? Find out in this once in a lifetime tale of friendship, mystery, suspense, and growing up.

MARVEL ACTION SPIDER-MAN #5

Erik Burnham (A/CVR A) Christopher Jones

Now that Peter, Miles, and Gwen have joined forces, nothing can stop them! Except maybe for homework and an internship at the Daily Bugle. Not to mention being stalked by a most dangerous foe… Kraven the Hunter! All-new web-slinging action in the Mighty Marvel Manner! This exciting new story arc features the Marvel Action debut of Kraven the Hunter! Variant cover by Marvel Action: Black Panther artist Juan Samu!

MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC #78

Katie Cook, Andy Price (A/CVR A) Andy Price

The thrilling conclusion to the “Cosmos” story arc is here! With the most powerful ponies in Equestria under Cosmos’ control, do the remaining ponies stand a chance? And whose side will Discord take? Don’t miss the end of what might be Katie Cook and Andy Price’s finest MLP story yet!

MY LITTLE PONY TO WHERE AND BACK AGAIN GN

Justin Eisinger (A/CVR) Various

Adapting the most beloved My Little Pony animated cartoon episodes to graphic novels! My Little Pony comes to bookshelves! Revisit the inhabitants of Equestria and learn about the magic that friendship brings in this adaptation of the television series’ sixth season finale! This volume adapts the two-part “To Where and Back Again” in an original graphic novel.

ROAD OF THE DEAD HIGHWAY TO HELL TP

Jonathan Maberry (A) Drew Moss (CVR) Santiperez

Advance solicited for June release! The five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author introduces the world to the latest chapter of the zombie epic in this over-the-top wild-ride prequel to ROAD OF THE DEAD! The dead rose and are feasting on the living and a young scientist may hold the secret to a cure. Meanwhile, zombies and biker gangs want her dead, so it’s up to a bunch of losers in muscle cars and a hijacked tank to risk everything to save her.

STAR TREK Q CONFLICT #5

Scott Tipton, David Tipton (A/CVR A&B) David Messina

The contest for the ages continues as the Captains race to capture the one exotic creature that Trelane is missing from his intergalactic menagerie-a Borg Queen! But as the Godlike beings revel in the games, the crews are hatching a plan of their own. Don’t miss the penultimate issue of the biggest Star Trek crossover of all time! The crews of The Next Generation, The Original Series, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine come together to face their biggest challenge yet! Written by Star Trek: TNG: Mirror Broken scribes Scott & David Tipton!

STAR TREK VS TRANSFORMERS TP

John Barber, Mike Johnson (A) Jack Lawrence (A/CVR) Philip Murphy

When Kirk, Spock, and the entire crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise investigate problems at a remote mine, they’re met with a explosive battle between powerful warriors who change into vehicles from the 20th century! As the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons rages, it’s up to Kirk to decide-does he violate the Prime Directive and interfere in a war that’s raged for millenia? And how will the Klingons complicate the issue? It’s cartoony fun between two of the most popular science fiction franchises in the world!

• Advance solicited for May release! • Four decades in the making, it’s the crossover that fans have demanded! Kirk, Spock, and Autobots! • Decepticons and Klingons! Optimus Prime and the Prime Directive!

SWAMP MONSTERS

(CVR) Iger Shop

Something’s out there in the mad, murky depths of the fear-filled, sinister swamp… some… swamp… THING is coming for you! And it’s out for mud! The terror team that brought you Zombies, Return of the Zombies, and the petrifyingly popular hit series, Haunted Horror, takes you on an excursion of evil into the dankest, lagooniest corners of your nightmares, and dredge up over 240 pages of icky, drippy, slimy, grimy beasts from the grungy bottom of the Pre-Code comics’ bog. Swamp Monsters includes a fascinating introduction by comics legend, acclaimed artist of Swamp Thing, “Swampy” Stephen Bissette!

V-WARS GOD OF DEATH ONE-SHOT

Jonathan Maberry (A) Alex Milne (CVR A) Ryan Brown

Michael Fayne was patient zero of the plague that exploded into the Vampire Wars. A cult of militant vampires wants to resurrect him. Luther Swann leads a strike team to prevent the rise of a vampire god. New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry returns with an all-new V-Wars tale.

Five-time Bram Stoker award-winning author Jonathan Maberry returns to his signature comic book creation in time for the new TV series starring Ian Somerhalder!

Cover and interior art features the return of Transformers: Unicron superstar artist Alex Milne! Watch for V-Wars on Netflix starring Ian Somerhalder in 2019!

Join the IDW Hasbro Shared Universe related conversation here in our Comics Discussion and Reviews section and here for all other franchises, superheroes, or general comic book discussions! Not a member? Join our community by creating your own free account here! Or jump right into the live chat on our Discord server or our Facebook Group!

IDW Comics Shipping List for June 12th! It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like…

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thedeaditeslayer · 6 years ago

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Bruce Campbell says ‘Evil Dead’ franchise is dead to him.

Bruce Campbell is best known as Ash, the wisecracking, chain-saw-wielding demon hunter in the phantasmagoric “Evil Dead” movies and the Starz spin-off TV series “Ash vs. Evil Dead,” which just ended its run after three seasons earlier this year.

It’s the role that turned the actor into a cult icon — a man who went on to pen three best-sellers and co-star in such series as “Xena: Warrior Princess,” “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” and “Burn Notice” — and no doubt will be the subject of many of the questions put to him at the Fandemic pop-culture convention at NRG Center this weekend. But it’s a character he won’t be playing ever again.

“I’m done,” he said emphatically by phone from his home in rural southern Oregon, which — speaking of “burn notice” — just happened to be about five miles from a raging wildfire when we spoke in July. “Physically, emotionally, I’m spent. That’s it. These three seasons about did me in. I’m 60 now. I’m like, ‘You know what? Let’s quit before the dentures come out and the hearing aids and the walker. Let’s not be embarrassing.’ With all due to respect to our ‘Star Wars’ friends, they were pushing it.”

That the ratings were only modest made the decision to walk away from “Ash vs. Evil Dead” somewhat easier, though Campbell, an executive producer, notes that the show, which recently became available on Netflix and DVD, is finding a larger audience in noncable-TV formats.

“We’re selling the show to 100 countries but it gets canceled because not enough are watching it on one platform,” he said. “But when it goes to another platform, it goes crazy. … You have to shake your head, and that’s why you can’t really get too crazy about it. … The film industry is changing about every two hours now.”

These days, Campbell is more inclined to pursue projects purely of his own creation, one of which is “Last Fan Standing,” a TV game-show version of a live pop-culture trivia concept he’s been touring around the country. “It’s a game show for geeks. How much does Thor’s hammer weigh? It’s ‘Game of Thrones.’ It’s ‘Star Wars.’ It’s horror, sci-fi and fantasy,” he said, and then referred to a veteran game-show host from the ’70s. “I’m in the Wink Martindale phase of my career. It’s time to put the chain saw down, put on the glasses and do a game show.”

He has lots of other ideas, too.

Campbell says he’s moving into the third act of his life.

“Act one, you do everything. Act two, you’re selective. Act three, you only do the crap you want to do. My wife and I, she’s my partner in life and my business partner, we’ve developed probably a dozen projects between television and film. She looked at me the other day and said, ‘Dude, you’re getting old. You just turned 60. If you don’t start doing this stuff, when are you going to do it?’… I’ve worked for a lot of other people for a lot of years, and I’ve said a lot of dialogue that wasn’t written for me.”

In addition to trying to get his projects off the ground, he makes the occasional convention appearance, about three to six per year. He’s been making the convention rounds since 1988 and generally enjoys them.

“If it’s a dead convention and you’re the Maytag repairman waiting to sign something from little Billy, that’s when it can get grim. That’s when the whiskey comes out,” he said. “If it’s busy, fun, fun city and the weather’s good — no flooding in Houston or whatever — it’s different. And with Texas, it’s either on fire or under water, so we’ll see what we get.

“I’m very acerbic and my Q&A’s tend to be — there are insults hurled, there’s no question about it, but it’s in good fun,” he continued. “And thank God, these conventions have exploded. Back in ’88, there were probably three or four legitimate convention companies. Now, holy crap … . If I wanted, I could probably do 52 weekends a year at different conventions.

“In the old days, you’d see Adam West, Burt Ward and Lou Ferrigno, the guys from the TV shows from the ’70s and ’80s. Now, we want to meet Jeremy Renner, right now.”

Brisco’s back?

If Campbell never wants to see or hear from Ash again, the one role from his past he wouldn’t mind revisiting is that of Brisco County Jr., the cowboy hero of the ingenious but ill-fated “The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.,” a critically adored science fiction-Western mash-up that aired for only one season on Fox in 1993.

“I would actually be willing to do a Brisco revisited,” he said. “(Show creator) Carlton Cuse (who would go on to produce “Lost”) and I have stayed in touch. … It’s armchair conversation but if there’s a healthy way to make these things work, it works. … If someone can go, ‘Here’s what you would do for a two-hour TV movie or six-hour limited series.’ But it has to make sense because, you know, ‘Brisco’ is 25-years-old.”

Meanwhile, the inferno continues to rage not far from Campbell’s home while we’re talking but, in true fashion for a man whose Ash character fought foes worse than fire, he’s not overly concerned. He’s been through this before; 20 acres on his property burned in 2012.

Judging from his Twitter feed, where he thanked local firefighters, everything turned out OK for him. “It’s sort of the hazards of living in the woods these days,” Campbell said during the interview. “I’m ready … I’ve got some acreage here and I’ve been thinning (it) every year for 15 years so if my place burns down, at least I tried. … We’ll be safe. We can see it coming.”

#Bruce Campbell #Ash vs. Evil Dead #Ash vs Evil Dead #Evil Dead

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loghainmactir · 6 years ago

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On Mages, Anders and Trench: A Comparison/Breakdown (1/5)

Lemme preface this by saying I honestly don’t know what I’m saying at any point ever, so this might be a huge waste of both of our times. But hi! Welcome to part one of Alister’s Incredibly Unnecessary and Lengthy Breakdown of twenty one pilots’ Album Trench in Relation to Anders and the Mage Rebellion.

I’ve been thinking about this at least a month now, but I finally kicked myself into gear when I saw drellvhen’s solavellan/Africa breakdown (link), so thank you so much for the inspiration lmao.

Parts of this, of course, won’t match up timeline/context wise (Trench seems to be more of a “modern” story and explicitly mentions the band/relationships/their fans, after all lmao), so some of it’ll need a little bit of flexibility when imagining what I’m trying to say; just bear with me. Often, it’ll also be very, very literal. I’m not good with metaphors, lmao.

This’ll also be long, because I love Dragon Age and twenty one pilots a LOT, so grab some water, a snack maybe, and let’s get started with a brief explanation of Trench!

Trench is twenty one pilots’ fifth studio album; it’s a concept album exploring mental health, suicide and doubt (themes featured heavily in their other albums, too), and it’s set partially in the fictional city of Dema and partially in the valley that surrounds it—“Trench”, which the album’s named after.

Now, some background on Dema; it was inspired/based on a concept within Zoroastrianism. The “Tower of Silence” (which is what Dema literally means) is a place to dispose of dead bodies by having vultures eat at the corpses; they were inspired by the “sad and intriguing concept of a dying religion”. Vultures and religion are two big themes within Dema, and they actually play similar roles within the “story”.

The album’s Dema is ruled by nine “bishops”, headed by an entity called Nicolas Bourbaki (which, in real life, is a group of [largely] French mathematicians– no, I don’t know why Tyler decided to name him after the Bourbaki group, and I’d hesitate to say we might never know properly).

Nicolas (who we’ll call Nico for short) is known by another name in this world: Blurryface. He is, in fact, the very same Blurryface from their 2015 album (of the same name)– for context, Blurryface is a character who personifies Tyler’s insecurities, anxieties and depression. There’s nine other bishops, as well, but they’re not as relevant– at least here, where we’ll largely be focusing on Nico/Blurry.

The bishops use the vultures as “protection” within Dema; they (as far as I can tell) act as watchdogs (birds?) for the bishops, telling them who’s trying to escape. The bishops then retrieve them, and they “smear” them– kinda irrelevant to our comparison, here. Those who HAVE successfully escaped are known as Banditos; they wear yellow, and they try to liberate others within Dema.

Dema and Trench is all a metaphor, of course, for a place where you’re knees-deep in mental illness (Dema), and the in-between where you have control (Trench), but there’s always that risk of being dragged (in Tyler’s character’s case, literally!) back to shit creek. Banditos are a metaphor for people who’ve been there, done that (so to speak, anyway), or people close to Josh and Tyler.

Now, just reading this, there’s immediately a few REALLY apparent comparisons you can draw:

Dema can be compared to the Circles in the sense that they’re both incredibly oppressive places framed as a safety net (we learnt this about Dema through the introductory character, Clancy, pre-album release; he “wrote” letters with these details in them). People want to, try to, and fail and succeed at escaping them. They’re also huge depressing towers:

(That’s Dema. Gives off some sad, grey Kirkwall vibes, right?)

The bishops and the vultures can be compared to the Templars and the Chantry: watching for escapees, rebels, trying to catch them and taking them back. That’s pretty self explanatory.

Banditos, then, are the mages, the mage rebellion and Anders (and blood mages too). They’re trapped in the Circle, and while a good many of them are fine with (or are too scared/worried to do otherwise?) remaining in the Circle, the mage rebellion are the ones trying to liberate the rest of their people from oppression.

Trench is Kirkwall in relation to the mage rebellion; the no man’s land where the mages are free and in control once out of the Circle, but ever in danger of being caught by the Templars.

Really, it’s super interesting when you dig deep into it; I wonder if Tyler’s ever played Dragon Age 2. I doubt it (though it’s always possible), but it’s bizarre how you can compare the main locations and factions even at a base explanation level.

Either way, we’ve finished the introductions and the who’s who in this comparison; now for breaking down the lyrics and putting my thoughts to them. For reference, I probably won’t be doing all songs/every lyric ever– there are some, obviously, I can’t draw comparisons to (partially because we don’t get enough info on Anders’ mage rebellion, and partially because… there’s no link, lmao), so I’ll be leaving some out.

This’ll be organized by track: each song has a title to point out where each begins. I’ll also put links for each song in case you want to listen along!

So, without further ado, we begin with:

Renegade Coat, Cover Me!

Jumpsuit is our very first song (link here) on the album; it was the first single for Trench, and the music video was the first time we ever saw Nico, the Banditos, and how Nico’s influence works (and subsequently how the Banditos can save people).

It’s also the first song that made me think of Anders: Tyler’s yellow and green jumpsuit vs Anders’ renegade coat is a really neat comparison! This’ll be a short one, because the lyrics are pretty straightforward and can be taken really literally.

I can’t believe how much I hate Pressures of a new place roll my way Jumpsuit, jumpsuit, cover me

We begin Jumpsuit with an Anders who has just arrived in Kirkwall; he’s looking for Karl, Justice has become Vengeance, and he is so, so full of this brand new anger. “Pressures of a new place roll my way” is easily seen as the fact that Kirkwall is full of Templars and blood mages, even so early on in the game; it’s swarming with them. It’s a brand new place, he’s surrounded by Templars and doesn’t want to be found by the Wardens. The pressure is on him to hide and stay low.

I crumble underneath the weight, Pressures of a new place roll my way

Really simple: Anders finds himself crumbling underneath the “weight” of the Templars’ oppression in Kirkwall, under the injustices done to the people there.

Spirits in my room, friend or foe? Felt it in my youth, feel it when I’m old, Jumpsuit, jumpsuit, cover me, Dustin’ off my-- jumpsuit (cover me, oh!)

Here, the ‘room’ is Anders’ head/body. Anders has only just merged with Justice, and now suddenly he’s Vengeance: is Vengeance a friend? Or is Vengeance a foe? ‘Felt it in my youth, feel it when I’m old’ can be taken as lyric that’s almost looking to the future: Anders is young, in his late twenties/early thirties, but Vengeance is going to be there presumably forever. He’ll feel it, then, when he’s young.

As for “dustin’ off my jumpsuit”, I’m imagining an Anders who comes to Kirkwall in clothes that aren’t his own: his Renegade Coat is kind of, erm... well, it’s got fucking feathers on the shoulders, c’mon. “Dustin’ off my jumpsuit” can be seen as Anders and Vengeance deciding that Kirkwall’s injustices cannot be ignored: he’s putting on his Renegade’s Coat, he’s going to help.

I’ll be right there But you’ll have to grab my throat and lift me in the air If you need anyone I’ll stop my plans (I’ll stop my plans) But you’ll have to tie me down and then break both my hands If you need anyone

Now, this (to me) is the most interesting thing to compare to Anders: it would be referencing both Awakenings Anders and Dragon Age 2 Anders and his reactions to the mages’ treatments. “But you’ll have to grab my throat and lift me in the air/If you need anyone”: this reminds me of Anders and Justice’s conversation in Awakenings:

J: Why do you not strike a blow against your oppressors? Ensure they can do this to no one else? A: Because it sounds difficult? J: Apathy is a weakness. A: So is death. I'm just saying.

It also counts for the dialogue after it, when Justice says Anders has ‘an obligation’: Anders, in a way, is forced into acting through Vengeance. He needed someone to force him into action in Awakenings, so to speak. Anders in DA2, however, is the EXACT opposite: to stop Anders from acting out against the Circles/Chantry/Templars, you’d NEED to tie him down and break both his hands. He’ll fight against them until he can no longer.

You could even go so far as to compare the song’s slow rise from soft and sung to loud and screamed to Anders’ fury, too. The rest of the song repeats from here on out, so now we have....

Danger In The Fabric Of This Thing I’ve Made

Levitate! Levitate (link) is a short track, and there’s no singing in this; just rapping. I don’t actually know if they’ve got another song like this-- they tend to have a mix of both. It’s also the song that I LOVE in relation to Anders and the mage underground: it is SO, so fitting it’s almost scary. The video is actually the third and final story in the music video’s orders, and shows the Banditos escaping with Tyler, and finally jammin’ out at the Bandito camp (and then the end, lmao, which Happens).

Oh, I know how to levitate up off my feet And ever since the seventh grade I learned to fire-breathe And though I feed on things that fell You can learn to levitate with just a little help Learn to levitate with just a little help

Like we were with Jumpsuit, we’ll take this literally and metaphorically: Anders learnt magic at a young age, but he also began to his escape attempts almost immediately; he was brought back to the Circle at twelve years old, and he had his first escape attempt six months later. How old are seventh graders? 12-13 years old (this actually wasn’t something I realized until literally just now and it’s weird how well this song aligns with Anders, honestly).

If learning to ‘levitate’ and ‘fire breathe’ is learning to resist and defy the Circle, Templars and the Chantry, ‘Though I feed on things that fell’ refers to Anders and Vengeance growing angrier and angrier with every mage that can’t escape (through death, tranquility, or other general fuckery, honestly). This is also a partial cry to mages who are maybe unsure of whether or not a rebellion is the right choice, or if they can: Anders and the rest of the apostates are “just a little help”.

Come down, come down, Cowards only come through when the hour’s late And everyone’s asleep, mind you Now show up, show up I know I shouldn’t say this But a curse from you is all that I would need right now, man

Just as the chorus is a callout to other mages, this verse in particular would be directed at Templars. It’s well documented that Templars abuse mages, both outwardly and in secret; “Cowards only come through when the hour’s late and everyone’s asleep, mind you” can refer to this abuse happening behind closed doors (and therefore takes on an incredibly sinister undertone), but it can also refer to the Harrowing.

While the Harrowing can come at any time, the one time we do specifically see the Harrowing, it’s in the middle of the night: you wake up the next morning with Jowan worrying about you. The Harrowing is also when mages can be made Tranquil; therefore, it could be saying that they only come through when the mage is defenseless and alone.

But it could also be referring to the other mages/mage sympathisers: Anders feels as if they aren’t doing enough to progress their liberation from the Circles, and he’s calling them cowards for only working to free people through the night when Templars might be otherwise busy or whenever they’re not working.

Hooking back to the Templar callout, ‘a curse from you is all that I would need right now, man’ is another fairly self explanatory line: Anders doesn’t need much to be pushed into his big, final plan. At this point, with the repetition, it’s almost like he’s asking for them to ‘curse’ him-- for the templars to do something that’ll tip him over the edge, if you will.

Danger in the fabric of this thing I made I probably shouldn’t show you, but it’s way too late My heart is with you hiding, but my mind’s not made Now they know it like we both knew for some time I’d say

This is my absolute favourite line in this song with reference to Anders. I think it sums up his and Hawke’s relationship (whether romantic, friendly or otherwise) REALLY well. While Anders didn’t start the mage rebellion, not by a long shot, he IS one of the catalysts for the Mage/Templar war; Anders knows this. The whole ending of DA2 relies on the fact that Anders is scared and doesn’t want to tell Hawke about his plans. But “it’s way too late”-- he’s already set these plans into motion at the start of Act 3.

“My heart is with you hiding, but my mind’s not made” refers to this idea, again, the idea that Anders is completely behind Hawke, completely willing to along with their own personal goals, but he’s not sure of how they’d react, what they’d think. His mind’s not made on whether or not to include them in his plans. HOWEVER, “now they know it like we both knew for some time I’d say” refers to the fact that Anders’ anger/willingness to skirt around direct action has clearly begun to rapidly disintegrate by the time Act 3 comes around.

There is no way Hawke doesn’t suspect something’s up, and anyone who knows Anders knows he’s going to do something. Here, “they” could refer to anyone, but it makes the most sense when referring to Hawke’s companions. Almost everyone in the group makes a comment on Anders’ state. They all knew it was going where it winds up.

They’re smirkin’ at fresh blood, they’re circling above But this is not enough, yeah, this is not what you thought No, no, we are not just graffiti on a passin’ train

This is in reference to Dema’s vultures and bishops: they’re waiting for the Banditos (and Tyler) to slip up. Here, it’s about the Chantry, Templars and the mage rebellion: it’s about how Templars are everywhere in Kirkwall, how they’re under the belief that the mage rebellion can be crushed and the mages can continue to be controlled. But the rebellion is not a passing phase, not just something minor that can be brushed over.

Now, I know what you’re saying: “Alister, there are no trains in Dragon Age. Duh. Shut up.” To which I say: you’re absolutely correct, and I’d love to shut up, but I’m physically incapable of doing so! However, imagine with me for a second: mages leaving signs and graffiti around Kirkwall to tell others of their presence, and as soon as one is erased, more is put up in it’s place. Little signs and messages of the mage rebellion. Rad, right?

This culture is a poacher of overexposure, not today Don’t feed me to the vultures, I am a vulture who feeds on pain

These lines play on the idea that things come and go within our culture really, really quickly; when comparing it to Templars and Mages, you can absolutely say that this is referencing the culture within the Circle (made by Templars, mind you) that encourages very little exposure to the outside world. Templars crush and reject any idea or desire to leave the Circle or to have their own autonomy; they’re the poachers of overexposure to the outside world.

“Don’t feed me to the vultures, I am a vulture who feeds on pain” is a REALLY interesting line re: Dema and the character in this song, but it’s pretty straightforward to Anders and actually loops back to “And though I feed on things that fell”-- Anders, here, is asking those he knows to keep him hidden in darktown/Hawke’s estate, and he’s, again, someone who’s anger and sense of “I need to do something” is fuelled by the pain of other mages.

Sleep in a well-lit room, don’t let the shadow through And sever all I knew, yeah, sever all I thought I could depend on my weekends On the freezing ground that I’m sleeping on Please, keep me from, please keep me down from the ledges Better test it, wooden wedges under doorways, Keep your wooden wedges under doors

This bit is a little harder to relate to Anders. It could absolutely be thought of as him referencing pre-Kirkwall, but post-Awakenings days; it could be a reference to sleeping, literally, on freezing ground (and sleeping on the streets before he gets his clinic) while he struggles to understand what Vengeance has become and dealing with dark thoughts as a part of that.

‘Sleep in a well-lit room, don’t let the shadow through’ could be along a similar line to “cowards only come through(...)”; Anders is saying that to keep the Templars out, to keep them safe, mages use “wooden wedges” as unreliable, low-effort ways to keep free mages safe.

The implication of it then, especially with the repetition of the chorus at the end of the song, is that the mages need to take a different approach to keep themselves safe-- not just use ‘wooden wedges’. Especially when you take the video’s end into account, you could totally draw that comparison; Tyler gets taken by Nico, and similarly, many escaped mages get caught and found as Dragon Age 2 progresses. The rest of Levitate is fairly straightforward and it’s more difficult to include Anders in it; it deals with Tyler’s insecurities re: creating something new and original.

If you’ve reached this part of the post, first thing’s first: thank you so much! You’re an absolute champion. This really is just the most self-indulgent piece of ‘meta’ ever, honestly, lmao.

Part 2 will hopefully come soon, and it’ll deal with the next two tracks on Trench, Morph and My Blood!

#dragon age #dragon age 2 #anders #twenty one pilots #meta #long post #my writing #hmhmmh. anyway! p1 is done i #i'm kinda tired of looking at it tbqh #ok to reblog

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himitsusentaiblog · 6 years ago

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What's a good Godzilla movie to watch for someone who's new to the franchise?

Good question! I would always want to recommend starting at the beginning with 1954′s Gojira.

By that I mean the original Japanese version which is fairly easy to get your hands on these days thanks to a really amazing release from the Criterion Collection. It is just a better film in every way than the 1956 American adaptation Godzilla: King of the Monsters. The American version kind of dulls the impact of the scenes by giving a third party, impartial observer instead of the visceral, on the ground feeling of the Japanese citizens actually being attacked. I would also mention it feels a bit off to have an American be the protagonist of a film inspired by the American atomic bombings and the unfortunate fate of the crew of the Lucky Dragon #5 thanks to another American nuclear test.

The film is rather grim and very serious dealing with a national trauma for one of the first times it was allowed to in cinema in the form of a giant metaphor for the new age the world was entering into. This is also somewhat the problem with recommending it as and entry point, it doesn’t really represent the franchise as a whole. Pretty quickly, the Godzilla series became about spectacle and the fights between giant monsters. For this period, I can find no better film to point you to than 1964′s Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster.

Not only is this the film that introduces Godzilla’s greatest foe, the three-headed space dragon King Ghidorah but it is also the first time Godzilla played the heroic role and teamed up with other monsters to fight a threat to the Earth. This was a turning point in the series and would pretty much set the tone for the franchise through the rest of the Showa Era. It is also a showcase of the special effects talent Toho had at the time, headed by tokusatsu legend Eiji Tsuburaya. The miniatures, suit work and visual effects are just outstanding.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention at least one of the Heisei Era of films (the series from 1984-1995) which brought Godzilla back after a 9 year absence. These are some fans favorite films and one of my all time favorites it from this era. That would be 1991′s Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah.

This movie is kind of nuts. It involves Time Travel, World War II, a new origin for the three-headed dragon, a tweaked origin for Godzilla and a Terminator-esque android that can run as fast as a car. It’s a science fiction spectacular big on high-concept shenanigans and bizarre plot turns. Oh and it ends with Godzilla fighting a cyborg version of his greatest foe in the heart of Tokyo.

Good times!

Thanks for the question and happy viewing!

#Askbox Replies #Godzilla #Toho Monsters #Recommendations #Gojira #ghidrah the three-headed monster #godzilla vs. king ghidorah

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malliebuu · 7 years ago

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Mallie’s Reylo Fanfic Rec List:

This is in no particular order and not limited to! There are so many talented writers out there! These are stories that have really stuck with me, so I am sharing them with you all! I will add as I go.

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The Inheritance of the Resistance by @waterlilyrose

Rating: Explicit

Summary: The discovery of a new unknown Duchess of the House of Kenobi brings new life to the Rebellion Court. Having lost their old Queen Leia, Rey and Han are forced into a deeply unconventional but quietly happy marriage. Having never had a family of her own, Rey sees Han as the father figure she always longed for.

So when the disgraced Prince returns to court to make amends with his aging King, how will he take to the girl who is now effectively his stepmother?

Medieval/Tudor Reylo.

Review: This has Tudor vibes - it is unreal. I love history, so naturally historically AUs are right up my ally. I was quite impressed by the setup and dynamic. The author uses Star Wars terms in place for the historical ones. This doesn’t follow the Tudor chain of events, but veers in it’s own original direction. Ben and Rey for this interesting relationship and it is quite troubled because Rey is actually married to Ben’s father ::gasp::. Love this fiction. So beautifully heartbreaking! (complete)

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There Shall I Be By philcollins

Rating: Not Rated (Mature if anything)

Summary: AU in which Rey, our lonely scavenger from The Force Awakens, meets Kylo Ren under very different circumstances - he's a shepherd on Jakku. Rey inherits an estate on the moon Ceathea and Kylo follows her there, works for her there, and soon encounters his hated old foe, Uncle Luke Skywalker. Will Rey ever accept Kylo's love? Will crusty old Luke Skywalker come between Rey and her true love? More familiar faces will make an appearance in this Force-free story of love, longing, angst, and anger.

Review: This story was so heartbreaking, but so good. A mix of pining, angst, drama and uncertainty. This story I read nonstop and was quite heart broken, but these two stubborn people just need a little extra time in order to figure out they were meant for one another. This story had me sighing and talking aloud with frustration! So well-written! (Complete)

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The End of Father Kylo By Sweet_Solitude

Rating: Explicit

Summary: After a filthy youth and almost suffering a great loss, Kylo turns to priesthood and leads a virtuous life. That is until he meets a girl who turns his world upside down and reminds him that he has a functioning body below his waist.

Review: Again, this one was found during my priest Kylo fazes. Don’t judge me! This has everything you would think when you think of the church and priests, though there is a little bit of something else. Yes, I am going to hell. I know this. Smut, smut! Love this kinky one-shot. If you aren’t offended by this, give it a read. ::fans face:: (one-shot)

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Fault Lines By Devil Betty

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Rey has always dreamed of a family. She starts to believe she could have it when she moves in with her new foster mother, Leia Organa. Then Leia’s son, Ben, moves back home and threatens to ruin the life Rey is trying to build. Nothing will prepare either of them for the truth. Some family secrets should stay hidden.

Review: This story is a “page-turner”. It has a simple setting, but so much happens and the dialogue between both Kylo and Rey are so intriguing. The chemistry is unmistakable and the lemons are to die for. Unfortunately, this is one minor thing that has a draw back, and both character experience a major revelation that hurts them both. Please read warnings before reading!!

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Spit and Sweat by bunnystealsyourcarrots

Rating: Explicit

Summary: In 1975, Finalizer played a gig at CBGB. The punk band gave their best, the crowd went wild, but a young girl named Rey wanted more.

God Save Them All.

Review: AH! This AU I really couldn’t get enough of because it involves our lovely Kylo and Rey, but is also peppered with sex, drugs and rock-n-roll! I mean...no on the drugs, but in all seriousness, I LOVE Rock-n-roll! So, naturally I honed in on this like no one’s tomorrow! The chemistry between Kylo and Rey is off the damn charts! Ugh, the sexual tension! I absolutely love how this starts as a childhood crush and as she gets older Kylo sees her and is completely blown away! (Uncomplete)

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Love and Comfort, Sex and Wondering If This Could Be Our Turn By AquaWolfGirl

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Anonymous Prompt: Ben and Rey are in college and best friends, and very much in love, they just don't realize it. Rey is tired of people making jokes about her being a virgin, so she asks Ben to help her out.

Review: Virgin Rey has a little delima. Ben is there to help guide her. This is actually a very sweet and sexy story! Give it a read! The author is a fantastic writer! (One-Shot)

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nolite te bastardes carborundorum By SaintHeretical

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Born on the fringes of a dystopian dictatorship, Rey has lived most of her life in the shadows until desperation drives her into the hands of the government. Her unblemished womb is her only salvation, which leads to her being placed as a Handmaid in the household of Commander Kylo Ren and his infertile wife.

Her task? Produce a healthy child for the Commander, or be banished to a life of hardship and almost certain death. A Reylo Handmaid’s Tale AU

Review: I loved The Handmaid's Tale, so naturally when I visited this story, I was drawn to that aspect. There is non-con in this, so please beware when reading. If you do not know the Hulu original series, refer to their site for a detailed description. The author, in response to this TV show, stays true, but brings originality and this is really a wonderfully written piece. The author is extremely talented! (Unfinished)

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Innocents Lost By Pontmercy44

Rating: Explicit

Summary: “That’ll scar.” Han stood behind him, nervously. He’d always been nervous around him, first, because he was a baby, and Han didn’t understand babies, and then, because he had the Force, and Han didn’t understand the Force. “Girls like scars.”

“It’s not like it matters.” Ben looked out at the thousands of spires. “I’m going to be a Jedi.”

Han grunted in sympathy, and then sat next to him, swinging his legs off the side of the tower. The urge to feel alive, to take risks and taste danger – that was what he’d inherited from his father. “Heard you got off the hook.”

“Not exactly. Community service.”

“Better than a detention block.” Han leaned back on his hands.

Ben scoffed. “It’s asinine.”

His father shifted, looking up at the stars, through the hazy, translucent atmosphere of Hosnian Prime. “What do they have you doing? Picking up orbit pollution, or something?”

“Worse.” Ben snorted. “Teaching orphans to read and write Basic. On Jakku.”

Han winced. “Only slightly better than a detention block.”

Review: Love this story! I flew through it. Very well-written! Ben has to do community service as punishment and meets little Rey on Jakku. This forbidden relationship is beautiful and bittersweet at the same time. I love this first love adaptation! The author went above and beyond with these two! (complete)

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Daddy Dearest By AquaWolfGirl

Rating: Explicit

Summary: When single father Ben Solo moves into his new apartment in Bespin with 5-month old daughter Amy in tow, he hopes to hell and back that this life will be better than the one they left behind in upstate New York. It's not long before his life becomes a cycle of work, Amy, work, Amy. One night, while trying to fish his keys from his pocket without waking his infant daughter, Rey, his next door neighbor, offers a helping hand.

Review: Daddy Ben! He is a great dad who falls for the babysitter. Interesting read; well written! You feel so sorry for Ben, but also Rey is a God send! Sweet interactions! Give it a read if you want some light hearted, fluffy interactions. Not much for fluff, but this was really a nice read! :3

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Stigmata By SaintHeretical

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Fifteen years after tragedy tore them apart, a priest and his sister band together to protect a homeless girl who appears to have been touched by God. Too bad his excommunicated nephew seems to have other plans for her.

A Reylo slow burn Modern/Religious AU.

Review: After the priest hype came out, I searched merely to humor myself. I found a few fictions that really had an interesting plot. This is one of them. Focused on Christianity and different groups within. Kylo and Leia are curious about this young girl who turns out to be homeless and has a curious development. She has formed the stigmata. This really is different than anything I have experienced. I usually don’t go for stuff like this, but there is enough angst and romance to fill my needs. LOVE it!

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World In My Eyes By Sasstasticmad

Rated: Explicit

Summary: "The bond should be dead," Rey says through gritted teeth. "Just like you.”

"The bond is only this strong because of you," Kylo Ren tells her. "You're the one who touched me. You took my hand and let me hold yours. This is your fault, not mine. (A post-TLJ force bond fic)

Review: This is after TLJ. I was obsessed for a while, which I am sure comes to no shock to anyone! Everyone was wrapped up in the force bond, which sasstasticmad delivers VERY well! There is so much continued tension between Rey and Kylo. It is quite interesting to see these two continue their interaction from opposite groups. The Resistance Vs First Order. (incomplete)

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Wolves By @albastargazer

Rated: Explicit

Summary: Rey Kenobi is a human beta until one fatal night and everything changes. With the existence of werewolves turning her world upside down, she is left with only her boss, Ben Solo, to help. Little did she know he is an Alpha wolf and the next leader of his pack, intent on claiming his rare omega.

Review: A/O/B dynamic. This story really is amazing. I have always had a soft spot for werewolves and I haven’t really had the pleasure of finding one that really stuck yet, of course, that was until I stumbled upon this little number. The dynamic between Ben and Rey is quite interesting. A horrible event leads Rey down an interesting path. Ben takes charge and attempts to help Rey. Interesting revelations emerge, however. (incomplete)

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Hatchling By g_girl143 @gwendy85

Rated: Teen

Summary: Rey's leads a predictable life as a general labourer at Niima Junkyard until an unexpected visit from the daughter she doesn't even know exists turns her world into a tailspin.

Review: This is simply the sweetest story. I binged it in one sitting. So sad that it doesn’t update as frequently, but when I do get an e-mail I am jumping for joy! This author really is talented. Love the way this dynamic is set up. There are so many intriguing questions-- you are left wanting more. So bitter sweet it isn’t complete! It really is something I haven’t seen done before. Really hope that it is completed someday! So much potential! I cannot wait to see what becomes of this new found family knit that develops on a whim, no thanks for Rey’s surprise daughter! ;)

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Kismet by @ladylionhart

Rated: Mature

Summary: Sometimes, what seems like a simple mistake is truly the first step of a fateful journey.

- Or the one where a single text message sent to the wrong number completely changes the lives of two people and those around them.

Review: Easily one of my all time favs! This is such an amazingly written, intriguing AU. It really begins like none other via text. Both parties, shockingly, continue their witty bouts of conversation until they both begin to develop feelings for one another without actually seeing one another. When they finally begin to interact on a level far from platonic, it heats up fast and you are left needing more! LOVE!

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Summer Heat By @isharan

Rating: Explicit

Summary: A lonely young woman arrives at the cottage she inherited from her grandfather on a remote lake in northern Ontario, to find her neighbor is a rare Alpha, a relic of the old days when humans were ruled by their designation. Across a long hot summer, they connect over their shared history, and she finds that the past may not be as far away as she assumed.

Review: ::Bats lashes:: What can I say about this one? Well, I am slowly dying because man is this a slow burn! This is an A/O/B dynamic, but it is so well written that it isn’t just a heat and commence screwing each other’s brains out. No, this really has amazing storyline that has you asking questions or attempting to figure out the author’s train of thought. Gosh, there are so many good things to say about this fic! Ben is absolutely a dream in this fiction too. I cannot even begin to describe because I just wouldn’t do it justice. This fiction killed me in a good way! (Incomplete)

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Serotonin and Dopamine By Pontmercy44

Rating: Explicit

Summary: He could lie and say it was because he was gentleman, but that wasn’t quite true. “I – well, I want to take advantage of you. But I know better.”

Rey looked at him for a long moment, and Ben thought she might slap him. She didn’t. She started to laugh, shaking her head as if she couldn’t quite believe it. Finally, she said, smiling, “Goodnight, Ben.”

Ben turned and walked slowly back to his car. He heard her door creak open, but he didn’t hear it slam shut. It felt as if he was walking away from his chance, from his chance to have something good and uncomplicated and nice.

Ben turned around, and went back to the door. Rey waited for him, biting her lip. He took off his stocking cap and held it in his hands in front of himself. His ears were cold without his hat, but he was in the posture of remorse and penance. "I'm sorry. I'm an ass. Can I kiss you again?"

Review: This fiction was different and reeled me in because Ben was different. In this fiction he has mental disorder that makes it difficult to form relationships. Though, Rey takes to him and Ben to her in the sweetest of ways! I really liked the development in this story. The author delivers fluffy feels too. I am not usually one that enjoys a ton of fluff, but they did right by it! (Complete)

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An empire to be won By Bitterbones @dvrksister

Rating: Explicit

Summary: The grin of satisfaction that split Rey’s face was utterly demented. “In three days time I will be wed to her son.” Rose blanched at the word son, apparently having been unaware of the familial relationship between her beloved general and the scourge of the galaxy.

Rey chuckled and continued, “It will be televised across the galaxy, and I’m certain that she will be watching; supportive mother that she is. Tell her to look on her son’s face, and see that he is gone. Tell her that the mark she sees there is my own, that it is an engagement gift from myself. And tell her that where she failed to save Ben Solo, I will raise Kylo Ren.”

[In which Kylo and Rey are betrothed as children and separated for their respective darkside trainings. Their reintroduction as adults is explosive, to say the least.]

Review: Cold Showers. I swear, these two, from the beginning, have so much sexual chemistry I had to fan myself when reading. Holy shit, this was tense. I LOVE her Kylo. This is an arranged marriage fiction, but even so there is so much going on in the world she so wonderfully weaved as well as the character interactions. You will be flying through each chapter begging for more! (Incomplete)

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Eunoia By MalevolantReverie @malevolent-reverie @meth-lab-shenanigans

Rate: Explicit

Summary: Rey Kenobi, an underachieving college student becomes tangled in a twisted web with her astronomy professor, Kylo Ren, who is hiding a dark secret. (Unfinished)

Review: Violent, dark, heart wrenching, Eunoia is the cream of the crop for dark fictions. I am a huge horror fan, so naturally I was curious to read something dark and dreary in regards to Reylo. The author doesn’t hope back, which I am quite pleased about. She really builds her word and characters fantastically. The dark character of Kylo really stays completely vile. Please only read if you can hand reading explicit content. Contains non-con!

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The Quietest Evening By MalevolantReverie @malevolent-reverie @meth-lab-shenanigans

Rated: Mature

Summary: Every so often, a girl disappears. No one knows where they go or why they’re taken, but they're never seen alive again. Rey, the police chief’s daughter, is next.

Review: This story is one of my favorites from MR. This one wasn’t nearly as graphic as the others she has written, but I really like the storyline she has built here. It was dark, contained secrets and revelations that had my jaw dropping. I really was at the edge of my seat for this one. It really got my heart pumping! If you are looking for a dark, angsty thriller this is the story for you. Please be aware there are triggers and non-con! (Completed)

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Nobody Knows By hernamewasalice @hernamewasalicewriter

Rated: Explicit

Summary: Nobody knows that the loving wife of Ben Solo was kidnapped as a teenager. Nobody knows. Not their family or closest friends. Not even their twelve year old son, Benny.

Review: Amazing story! This is another extremely dark fic, but more so the past that is associated with Rey and Kylo. Kylo has so many secrets, so does Rey. They look like the perfect couple, but really they have a more sinister start. There are parts that are tender and sweet, but the reality and hard truth of it all is quite painful. Author has an extremely fantastic beginning where she pulls you in. It is seen through the eyes of their son! So good! Recommend! Please be warned, however, there is non-con and violence! (Unfinished)

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#reylo #reylo fanfiction rec #rey x kylo ren #ben solo x rey

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