#get her kolo!

[foolishlyzephyrus]

unfortunately the battle of ranskoor av kolos is still bad upon rewatch

[earlgreydyke]

having never watched the thirteenth doctor, i just caught up to the battle of ranskoor av kolos and i personally love it. i think everyone has really high expectations for a grand finale with multiple parts but i think this was a simple and well executed finale that concluded the season perfectly and the one episode runtime was just right for the narrative.

to me, the episode is a beautiful exploration of faith. the ux are very clearly adopting imagery of the crucifix but are sacrificing themselves for a false genocidal god. they are still able to maintain their faith and with the help of the neural blockers, come to understand that they have gone against the will of their creator, saving five planets (plus earth really!) from destruction in the name of their faith. meanwhile, graham and ryan commit the ultimate act of courage in refraining from avenging the murderer of their loved one in the name of grace. again, a testament to their faith in what they know to be right and what their Grace would have wanted. yaz maintains her faith in the doctor, refusing to leave her side. the doctor maintains her faith in herself. she started this season not able to remember who she was and she ends it fighting the same evil with utter conviction that she can get everyone out of this (all five planets worth of everyone!) she trusts in her intellect and most importantly, she trusts the courage of her companions to abide by their faith (the ux included).

[rottendecisions]

ranting about the new sonic.exe the disaster 1.3 update, spoilers ahead

a lot of changes happened! tails doll got added as a 3rd exe so i'll be talking about him first since he's the most prominent thing in this update

i think my main gripe with him is how lenient the restrictions for his attacks are. kolossos's attack cooldown got increased from 1.0s to 1.3s, sonic.exe can't attack for half a second when getting out of his spindash (and he generally has more restrictions in terms of the amount of damage he can do compared to kolo), you get the idea. tails doll? he can just go all in with very minor restrictions. i think it's a bit op that he's able to attack while using his flying ability, that's as if you gave the other 2 exes the ability to attack while climbing ladders, because the fly was given to td since he doesn't have ladders. another thing is his hitbox is HUGE. you haven't truly seen horrible hitboxes until you get sniped by td from 50 studs away, and that's with no exaggeration. even with players with good ping i still find myself having difficulty juking him because his hitbox will just snag me from so far away, not to mention his hitbox LINGERS, which leaves him basically impossible to juke. he's the new prototype kolossos and it sucks icl

now i'll talk about survivor changes and other stuff cuz those were less prominent;

SALLY MY GOAT!!!! she got so much sauce. i love her new shield switching ability, it's a lot more situational now as well as cream's overheal and i think i like it this way. eggman got a tazer which is like. fine i guess but it doesn't really do much, i get how he's supposed to be a support character now instead of a stunner but i can't help but side eye whenever i see an eggman in my game. blaze's new heatwave is so fucking scary. i don't think you can jump over it and it traps you for so long. blaze mains have become my number 1 opps

i love everyone's christmas costumes... they are so jolly... kolossos and amy look so so cute we need to kill them now. also i think it's funny that metal has a voiceline saying merry christmas before he explodes LMFAO

[lure-of-writing]

I'm Sorry

Authors note: Hi everyone! long time no see! I am finally back with what I think will be the last part of the "Never Good Enough" Series (Even though I feel like I should make one with the opposite ending, but that's a topic for a different day) and as always I can't wait to hear what you think and I hope you enjoy!

Summary: After one year, you and Azriel are finally in the same room again and actually ready to talk about your feelings

Word count: 6.2k

Warnings: None- please let me know if I forgot any

Part one, part two, part three

It had been a year since Azriel had last seen you and almost two since you had last lived in the house of wind with him, Cassian and Nesta. Every day since he last saw you was a painful reminder of what he could have had with you but Azriel also knew there was no one to blame but himself. 

“He will never be someone I need saved from. You on the other hand, well the same can’t be said for you.” Your words from that day plagued his mind at every moment of the day. When he was with his family, while on a mission, when training with Cassian. Every single moment of every single day it's all he could think about, well that and the way your face just looked so heartbroken and so tired. After he watched you winnow away with Kolos, Azriel knew that he had to change, become a better for you and then maybe then you would be willing to give the mating bond a chance. Azriel knew that the likelihood of you agreeing to try was practically nonexistent but even if there was a sliver of hope then he was going to do anything to try and make it work. 

In the days following your final departure from the inner circles, Azriel made a plan of the things he needed to right and the things he needed to change in order to give himself a fighting chance of getting you back starting with Elain. 

He had found her exactly where he knew she would be; in the garden of Feyre and Rhysands river house tending to the blooming flowers. “I need to talk to you.” These were the first words Azriel has said to the middle sister in almost a year. He watched as Elain wordlessly moved to sit on a bench while she made a gesture for him to sit. He did not. For a minute all he did was stare at Elain, he wondered how he could ever be with someone like her, someone who wasn’t you. Azriel cleared his throat before speaking. “What we did was a mistake. You have a mate and I should have respected that and you should have also but I am willing to admit that I  didn’t. I think it goes without saying but I deeply regret ever having a relationship with you, if we can even call it that. Y/n is my mate and I will do everything in my power for her to give us a chance and even if she doesn’t it does not  mean that I will want a relationship with you. I will never want a relationship with anyone but her. I am not asking for you to be understanding of this; but I do need you to be respectful of both me and y/n and whatever relationship we might have.” 

He watched as Elain processed his words and for a few minutes there was nothing said. Just the sound of birds singing in the distance along with the sound of the city of Velairs. “No.” Azriel was stunned. “No?” Finally she looked at the shadowsinger “No. I will not respect her since she has never once respected me or our relationship so I won’t respect yours. If there even is one that is. Plus Azriel you would have never regretted it if she wasn’t your “mate”. Once you realize everything she’s told you is a lie you will come right back to me but just know I won’t take you back.” Azriel had never seen Elain act or say anything like that before, apparently he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did. “I will never come back to you Elain. But just know if you disrespect her again, even if she's not here, I will not tolerate it.” With that he left the disgruntled woman where he found her.

A few days later Azriel found himself in Rhysands office. Rhys sorted through letter after letter while waiting on Cassian's arrival. “Have you tried to reach out to her?” he wasn’t sure why Rhys was asking considering that he knew the answer “No, I’m giving her the space and time that she requested, Why do you ask?” Rhysand glanced a look at him over the papers. “Just curious.” Azriel knew better than to believe Rhysand was simply “just curious”. “What is the real reason for asking?” Azriel was never to get his answer because just as Rhysand went to open his mouth Cassian came strolling into the room and with that their meeting started. 

At first Azriel did not understand how he could be someone you needed to be saved from but the more he sat and replayed the last two interactions he had with you he came to understand where he went wrong. It was not easy to admit that he was in the wrong but he was willing to do anything for you, even if that meant taking a long hard look into the mirror and confronting all of his ugly actions and words towards you , whether they had been intentional or not. After sitting and thinking about how to do better for you Azriel was hit with a groundbreaking realization. There were many moments in life where he had not been wanted even by the people that were supposed to want him. He remembers so vividly how it felt when he was rejected or picked last just because of who he was. He finally understood what you had been saying this whole time. Being picked because you were the last option or because the person picking you had no other option was gut wrenching and that was exactly what he had done to you. If only he had understood this two years ago then maybe he wouldn’t be in this position. Somehow Azriel had to find a way for him to show you that he would pick you a million times over without question, without any hesitation because he wanted you like he's never wanted anyone else. 

Kolos watched over the course of the two years as you pieced yourself back together again. With the help of him of course. Nothing brought him more joy than seeing you flourish after walking away from your mate. At first all you did was cry because you were never sure if you had made the right decision or you were angry at how you found out about your mating bond or simply just angry that these were the cards you had been dealt. 

“I hate him.” Kolos held your shaking body in his arms while you screamed into the darkness of the night. “I hate him so much. How could he do this to me?” Once more he simply held you and offered no answer for he had none. He, himself, could not understand why Azriel couldn’t see what was right in front of him. 

“If you think any harder, that little brain of yours just might explode.” Kolos studied you as you took a seat in the chair in front of his desk propping your legs up on his desk. “How very kind of you my sweet y/n.” snorting you smiled while shaking your head. “Couldn’t get any sweeter if I tried. Trust me I would know.” “Oh I’m sure.” for a second the conversation lulled but it wasn’t uncomfortable you both just sat and observed each other for a minute. “So what do I owe to the pleasure of your company?” grinning from ear to ear you shrugged “I figure that just my mere existence would bring you some much needed joy since without me your day would be quite dreary.” He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. Placing an arm on top of his desk he rested his head upon his hand slightly tilted. “How did you know?” he said dramatically. “Anyone's day would get better if they were blessed with my presence.” At that he chuckled “Never been wrong a day in your life huh?” “Never.” lazily you got up out of the unusually comfortable chair. “As much as I enjoy doing good deeds for those in need, unlike you I have a job to do so I will have to cut this charity session short today. I’ll see you later” and with that you were out of his door not without giving him a wink and catlike smile. 

Kolos knew that lately the two of you had been crossing over the line of just friends but he would never pressure you into something more. He always followed your lead and respected your feelings. When you first came back to the dawn court there was definitely some light teasing tossed around but he could tell that it was a way to deflect your true feelings and distract yourself from having to feel them but now it was different. It was genuine. 

Less than an hour later Kolos was sat across from you where the closest member of Thesans court sat at a circle table. Once again you winked at him with a sly smile before turning to face where Thesan was seated. You were going to be the death of him. For an hour you sat and listened to whatever news the different members had to deliver to your high lord before he relieved the true reasoning for the meeting. “I would like to take a visit to the night court in a few weeks time.” you were stunned to say the least. As high lord Thesan didn’t need to run anything by you but you would assume considering all things he would have at least given you a warning. You looked towards the second in command and saw that Kolos looked just as surprised as you felt. At least you weren’t the only one kept in the dark about this choice. 

After taking a much needed bath to relax you quickly dried off before donning a comfortable pair of loose trousers and a sweater you had stolen from kolos months ago on “accident”. Moseying into the living room you found kolos laying on the cream colored couch holding what you could only assume to be anything but interesting reports about nothing important. He watched as you went into the kitchen and started preparing something that he was assuming was for the both of you. “Is that my sweater?” without missing a beat you responded. “And if it is?” for a second he took in your appearance. Wet hair messily braided and resting on top of your shoulder, slightly flushed skin from a bath that he knew was unnecessarily hot, once he walked into the bathroom after you had taken a bath and wonder if he had been transported into a boiling pot of water instead of his bathroom and he wasn’t even in the water he just took a breath of the hot air and that was enough for him, the look of you all bundled up in his sweater. And he couldn’t find it in himself to care that you stole his clothes, you looked better in them anyways. “Then you should keep it. It looks good on you.” Kolos knew you to be a flirt but what you said next truly caught him off guard. “It would look better on the floor.” 

Azriel had just returned from yet another mission when Rhysand had summoned to his office where he saw just about every member of the inner circle waiting for seemingly his materialization. “What’s going on?” Azriel watched as his high lord and lady went back and forth mentally on how to tell him about whatever was going on. By the looks of everyone, no one had died or disappeared while he was gone so it couldn’t be that bad. Rhysand quickly looked at Cassian before turning his focus onto him. “Thesan would like to have a meeting with me here in the night court. He said he would like to bring some of his court members with but did not specify which ones. Y/n could be in attendance or she could not be, I don’t know.” Rhysand watched as his brother took in the information he provided him and waited for a reaction.

 “When?” Feyre spoke before Rhys could. “In a week's time.” Azriel nodded his head at the information but everyone in the room could tell that it hasn’t really registered with him that you may be in the night court again or even within his sight. “I pray to the mother that she will be here.” It was all that Azriel could say without feeling completely overwhelmed. He may be a crytherian and have been in more wars then he would like to remember but this is the most nervous he's ever been in his life. Azriel knew he had been preparing for months for this exact moment but now that it is arriving he wished he could have a few more months to keep getting ready to speak to you again. Even with the lack of feeling prepared he would do everything in his power to show you just how much work he's put into becoming better for you. 

“Cat got your tongue Kolos?” never in his seven hundred year life had he been more dumbfounded then he was in that moment. “Y/n that's not something to joke about.” He watched as you crossed the kitchen and moved to sit across from him on the couch as he moved himself to sit upright in front of you. “Who said I was joking? I mean come on Kolos I’ve been quite blatantly flirting with you for weeks now and you have done nothing but respond to it a few times here and there. I wait to be more than friends, that is unless you do not return my feelings." If you were the same woman you had once been while living at the night court you would have been terrified that his answer could be no but you were no longer her. You were different now, confident and self-assured and countless other empowering things but you were also fearless. Even in a moment where you should be scared you knew no matter what you would be ok and that's all that mattered. Night court you would never recognize dawn court you and for that you were more than thankful. 

“Of course I return your feelings” you watched as Kolos fought to find the right words. In his moment of silence you took a moment to truly take in his beauty. While Azriel was mesmerizing and could capture the attention of anyone who spared a glance his way, his beauty would tempt yours in and consume all of it, not letting it ever come back again. Azriels beauty was cold and ruthless. Koloss beauty on the other hand was warm. His golden skin radiates warmth and comfort so do his emerald green eyes that welcome you with uncontained joy. His shoulder length chocolate brown hair, that was always half tied up, helped complete his look of safe comfortability. Kolos had beauty that complemented anyone who was around him. His beauty would bring out yours without any question. You wondered how you were so blind to his beauty before, how had you not noticed it? “And I knew that you were flirting with me obviously, I was doing it back but I just wanted you to be able to heal and figure out what you wanted to do. I was following your lead. I was waiting for you to make the first move. I never wanted to do something and make you uncomfortable so I was waiting for you to decide what you wanted.”  

“Was what I said earlier about your sweater looking better on the floor a good enough first move or should I have been even bolder? I’m not really sure how I would get any bolder than that though.” Suddenly the male before you was full on belly laughing and before you knew it he was pulling you into himself. “That was more than bold enough.” gently he cupped your cheek bringing you to face him. “Can I?” his eyes ghosted over your features while he waited for you to respond “Ever the gentlemen”  he watched as you finally gave him the go ahead. “Of course.” without being told twice he pulled you into his lips and Kolos swore nothing was ever going to beat the feeling of your lips on his. 

During the week leading up to Thesans planned trip to the night court you and Kolos talked about what you wanted and didn’t want, how to go from friends to lovers and anything in between but most importantly how you were going to deal with Azriel once again, since both of you were one hundred percent sure that he would be there no matter what other obligations he had going on. 

It was the day before you were to leave with the rest of Thesans court members to attend the meeting with the night court when you found yourself strolling into Koloss office to bother him yet again. “ I’m convinced that you don’t actually do anything besides walk around and bother people.” Kolos didn’t even have to look up to see that it was you who had entered his office. “Be nice Kolos or you just might hurt my feelings.” hearing the slight pout in your voice he looked up to find you perched on the corner of his desk and honestly he wasn’t sure how you got there with him noticing but what he did notice was the mischievous look in your eyes. “But I only walk around and bother you. For the most part I just sit around and look pretty. I thought you knew that?”  Kolos could hear the teasing in your voice and once again he knew your only real intention to come to his office was to bother him but he didn’t mind at all, not with you smiling at him like that. “I would never dream of hurting your feelings but thank you for informing me that I am the only person who you bother, it really makes me feel better about myself. And as for you just sitting around and looking pretty, that sounds about right. I knew we didn’t give you a real job.” The light smack you delivered to his arm was accompanied by your sweet laughter filling the room as you tilted your head back from his remark and Kolos knew he would never get enough of that sound “And here I thought you were such a gentleman.”  Kolos grabbed the hand you smacked him with and brought it to his lips to place a loving kiss on the back of your hand. “For you sweetheart I will be anything.” 

Kolos knew today was going to be a true test for not only you but also for your newfound relationship. Kolos had no fear that you would be swayed by whatever stunt Azirel was sure to pull, since he knew you would not have entered a relationship unless you were one hundred percent sure that it was what you wanted, but he was definitely skeptical of Azriel and what he would do. The lengths he would go to to get you to accept the bond and him. 

Thesan, his lover and Kolos himself were in the common throne room waiting for all members of the court to arrive when he saw you walk in with another advisor. You were clearly in a deep discussion when you looked eyes with him. He watched as the two of you slowly made your way over to the now forming circle of people and heard you excuse yourself from the conversation while also promising to continue it at a later time. “So are we thinking this is going to be a full on shit show or a semi-shit show?” Kolos chuckled under his breath as not to disrupt the group with the belly laugh that was threatening to take over. “I was thinking it was going to be more of a game of tug-of-war?” you glared at Kolos as he took in your outfit. It was a two toned dress, one side a light pink and the other a light peach color. The top was asymmetric leaving one shoulder bare and the other covered and of course in y/n fashion the bottom had a slit going up the leg as usual. “I’m kidding sweetheart. It is only going to be a shit show if Azriel opens his mouth otherwise we're safe.”  Kolos’s unworried smile was the last thing you saw before Thesan winnowed you to the night court. 

Once again you were back in the presence of people you once saw as family. Rhysand was standing promptly at the front of the group like you knew he would be and next to him was Freye. She looked as poised as ever. To her left was Cassian and Nesta looking less than impressed to be a part of this meeting, not that you blame them. It doesn’t take a genius to know that once the high lords left to have their private conversation shit would hit the fan. Lastly to Rhysands right was Azriel, you didn’t have to look in his direction to know that he was looking at you. So skipping over him you looked to the spot next to him expecting to see Morrigan standing next to him but she wasn’t and you couldn't help but wonder where she was at. 

“Welcome to the night court.” Rhysands presence took over the room just like his words did. “Thank you for having me. And the members of my court, it is greatly appreciated.” you didn’t hear much after that. You were too busy avoiding four pairs of pleading eyes and praying to the mother you make it out of this meeting relatively unscathed along with Kolos, mother knew he needed it more than you. 

It had been at least two hours of Thesan and Rhysand going back and forth about whatever they deemed necessary when you felt Kolos nudge your arm with his. Slowly you looked to see what he wanted “How are you doing?” he questioned quietly while Cassian was speaking. “I’m fine, I just forgot how boring these meetings are. I wasn’t kidding when I said my job is to sit around and look pretty, I have no idea what's going on. I’m going to die of boredom.” Kolos held back the laugh he wanted to let out. He knew that you did in fact know what was going on; you just couldn’t care less about court politics. He also knew you do more than just sit around and look pretty. “Well you are doing an excellent job of pretending that you are lost and you also are doing a good job at doing your “real” job. Keep it up.”  

You felt Azriels eyes bounce between you and Kolos through your whole interaction. Actually you felt his eyes on you the whole time since you quite literally magically appeared in front of him. He had watched every move you make, every subtle shift of your face. He watched everything. You could tell he was trying to be nonchalant while in your presence but he was greatly failing. Azriel may be the spymaster but to you he was always an open book from day one and it seems that some things never change. Placing your elbow on top of the table then resting your head on it you stared at the male who once had your heart. If he wanted to be out right obvious then so could you. 

Finally Rhysand, Freye and Thesan went to have a private conversation and only then did Azriel come to approach you. You hadn’t even been about to stand from your seat when you felt his presence looming over you. “I need to talk to you. Alone please. Only if you allow it of course.” Azriel watched as you contemplated his words before finally you nodded and motioned for you to lead the way. 

If there is one thing that Azriel is used to, it is silence. Being the spymaster and all meant that silence was a staple in his work environment, that is of course unless it called for the opposite. But the silence between the two of you was nerve wracking as he led you to an open cloister before stopping to look at you. Something was different about you but it couldn’t put his finger on it and if he was being honest with himself it scared him not knowing what it was. 

Leaning against a pillar you watched as Azriel fought to pick the right word to say. You could tell that he had changed just from watching during the meeting. He was remorseful but also he finally respected not only your choices but you. Silence continued to envelope the space between the two of you while contemplative looks were shared between the two of you. Finally Azriel has the courage to clear his throat and begin speaking. “How have you been?” you know that you shouldn’t be caught off guard by his question. You were friends for hundreds of years before you were mates. “I’ve.. been…good.” if he noticed you lack of a better word, which he did, he didn’t mention it. “How about you, how have you been?” you so desperately wanted to tack on “How have you and Elain been?” on the end but you refrained. Another argument with Azriel was the last thing you wanted to do again.  “I’ve been good.” again quietness fell upon the two of you as you nodded in understanding to Azriels answer. 

When it became obvious that Azriel wasn’t going to say anything you did. “So what did you need to talk to me about?” this seemed to knock Azriel out of whatever trance he was in. You examine Azriel as he takes a deep breath in an attempt to still himself for whatever he was about to say because clearly it was making him nervous. “There is a never ending list of things that I need to apologize for and trust me I will but for now let me start with this. I ended everything with Elain. I made it very clear what we did will only ever be a mistake and nothing more than that. Not only does she have a mate, which in retrospect I should have accepted at face value and not go forward with a relationship with her and I know that not everyone wants to be with their mate and chose to find another partner that isn’t their mate, but Lucien is not a random person, he is a friend of not only Freye but of the night court and I should have respected him and unfortunately for him, his very unwilling mate.” Azriel took a breath giving you a chance to respond but when you didn’t he continued on. There was no way he was going to mess this up now even with your unflinching gaze upon his and lack of verbal response to his apology. It may make him want to empty the lunch he had earlier into whichever bush was closest but he would endure it to make things right with you.

 “I am ashamed to admit this but it took me longer than I would have liked to finally understand what you were saying all those months ago. And I sincerely mean it when I say I am so extremely sorry for the pain I have caused you. I hope you know that it was never my intention to hurt you. I was absolutely blind to the love you had for me even if it was right in front of my face literally for hundreds of years and I now understand what you mean by being my second choice. First it was Morrigan, then it was you. After Morrigan it was Elain and then it was you. You were never first on the list and you are absolutely right when you said if it wasn’t for the bond I would have never picked you. There are so many excuses I could give you as to why it was never you but truthfully none of them would ever be close to good enough. I was too busy looking for the person and love I thought I wanted without ever stopping to realize the person and love I needed was right in front of me this whole time, and for that I am sorry.” Again you simply looked at Azriel without saying anything so he continued on even though he was sure his heart would give out at any second from how hard it was beating. 

“I am going to be honest. If it wasn’t for the bond then no I probably wouldn’t have picked you over Elain. I would like to think that one day I would have come to my senses and realized it was you that I wanted and not her but I can’t say that for certain. But I have thanked the mother everyday since the bond snapped into place that you are my mate. I’ve have wanted nothing more than to find my mate and I finally have. I know that I have to earn your trust and prove to you for the rest of eternity, just how much I am grateful that you are my mate, but it is something I am willing to do if it means I get a chance to try again with you. But…” 

You may be a different person then what you were two years ago when you left the night court but deep down Azriel is still your friend, he is still someone you would never want to hurt no matter how much he hurt you. So to see the tears welling in his eyes hurt your heart. 

“But if this is not something that you want then I will accept your choice, no matter how much it hurts. I will respect that choice. I won’t try to change your mind. I won’t beg you to change your mind, no matter how much I want to. If this mating bond isn’t what you want then just know that I will always be here ready to give us a try. No matter how much time has passed, whether it's one hundred years or a thousand I will be here waiting with open arms just for you. There will never be another person. There is only you. Since the moment I knew we were mates it has only ever been you.” 

For the first time since that fateful day you allowed Azriel feel your emotions through the mating bond and he did the same. Remorse, longing, heartbreak, sadness any and every emotion was overwhelming the both of you. It brought tears to your eyes just like it had pushed the tears in Azriels eyes over the dam of his lashes. “Come here” you beckoned while trying to fan the tears away. Azriel didn’t need to be told twice and before he knew it you had wrapped him in your arms and placed your head in the crook of his neck. And Azriel knew there was never going to be a more perfect feeling than you in his arms. Azriel wrapped you in his arms just like you had done with him mere moments before. For a long while there was no sound besides the random sniffle and rouge sob that would escape from each other's body. “I am so sorry.” He mumbled while pressing a kiss into the crown of your hair. Reluctantly  he pulled your body away from his and what he found broke his heart even more. Tear stained cheeks that were flushed from crying and red rimmed eyes looking back at him. In that moment Azriel swore to himself that he would never be the reason you cried again. 

Bending down to be eye level with you he wiped away your tears while taking in just how beautiful you were even after crying. For a long second you and Azriel just stared into each other's eyes before you finally looked away. 

“Oh mother, that really hurt my soul.” a breathy laugh fell from your face as you wiped away the tears that fell after Azriels hands returned to his side. “I can’t believe you said that to Elain. I’m sure she was pissed wasn’t she?” your mate shrugged while giving you a cheshire cat smile. He may not have said anything, for probably  not wanting to admit you were right about Elain not being as nice and innocent as she portrays, but his body language told you everything you needed to know. 

“I truly appreciate your apology and I am happy that you finally understand what I was trying to tell you all those months ago. You're smart so I knew you would have figured it out eventually.” Azriel laughed at your attempt of a joke. But then he watched as it was your turn to struggle for the right words and suddenly he was nervous all over again. “I don’t know how to say this or if there even is a right way to say this but Azriel please know that what I am about to say is not meant to hurt you in any way. It's actually the last thing I want to do.” It was as if Azriel had been pushed underwater because suddenly he couldn’t breathe and he knew you were going to walk away from him once again by the time everything was said and done.

“As much as I appreciate everything you said and trust me I do. It means more to me than you know. And I can tell how much work you put into understanding where I was coming from which again I truly appreciate it but I need to be honest with you. There are wounds that I am still healing from when I found out we are mates, and it has nothing to do with you. I promise it's just something that I need to work out on my own, and please don’t worry it’s getting better day by day. But there is also something I need to tell you.” Azriel watched as you wring your hands from nerves. “I am in a relationship with Kolos. And I’m sure you have questions but I am not ready to answer them and I hope you can respect that. I don’t know where my relationship with him is going to go but what I can say is that I am finally happy, Azriel. I am not pining after someone who doesn’t want me like I want them and it feels so good to be wanted for no other reason than simply being wanted. And I'm sorry that this information hurts you but I feel the need to be honest with you even though it hurts.” 

“I can’t say for certain that I do or don’t want the bond with you Azriel but for now I want to see what else life has to offer me. Completely on my own and not as a member of the night court or day court or whatever other titles have been given to me. I want to go live life unapologetically and maybe one day when everything is said and done I will be able to let go of the anger and hatred I have felt towards you for the past two years. I don’t want to hate you Azriel but there is nothing but sadness and anger and hate towards you and until those feelings are gone I can’t love you. So for now I am going to walk away, not from you but from this relationship because I am not ready. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for breaking yours. I can’t promise that I will ever come back but all I ask is that if I do, you welcome me with open arms and a forgiving heart.” 

If Azriel wasn’t heart broken at what you told him before then he sure was now. But he would never be mad at you for doing whatever was best for you even if it meant not being with him. For the second time in his life because of you he was speechless. He knew you were waiting for him to say anything but he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, there were no words. Or maybe not enough words in the human language to describe what he was feeling either way he wasn’t sure. 

With your mates lack of words you took it as your cue to leave. You placed a kiss upon his cheek and held his hand before slowly backing away while you took in your mate for one last time for mother knows how long. Reluctantly you gave his hand a tight squeeze before letting go “I’m sorry.” 

Unable to say anything, Azriel watched your retreating figure go as you followed the path he led you down to get to the cloister, once around the corner he fell to his knees and allowed himself to mourn for the first time in years since learning of your mating bond. Just around the corner you listen to Azriel cry in heartbreak while you felt all of his emotion and once again felt your own heartbreak and for the first time in your life you wondered if you had made the right choice. 

It had been a year since Azriel had last seen you and almost two since you had last lived in the house of wind with him, Cassian and Nesta. Every day since he last saw you was a painful reminder of what he could have had with you but Azriel also knew there was no one to blame but himself. 

“He will never be someone I need saved from. You on the other hand, well the same can’t be said for you.” Your words from that day plagued his mind at every moment of the day. When he was with his family, while on a mission, when training with Cassian. Every single moment of every single day it's all he could think about, well that and the way your face just looked so heartbroken and so tired. After he watched you winnow away with Kolos, Azriel knew that he had to change, become a better for you and then maybe then you would be willing to give the mating bond a chance. Azriel knew that the likelihood of you agreeing to try was practically nonexistent but even if there was a sliver of hope then he was going to do anything to try and make it work. 

In the days following your final departure from the inner circles, Azriel made a plan of the things he needed to right and the things he needed to change in order to give himself a fighting chance of getting you back starting with Elain. 

He had found her exactly where he knew she would be; in the garden of Feyre and Rhysands river house tending to the blooming flowers. “I need to talk to you.” These were the first words Azriel has said to the middle sister in almost a year. He watched as Elain wordlessly moved to sit on a bench while she made a gesture for him to sit. He did not. For a minute all he did was stare at Elain, he wondered how he could ever be with someone like her, someone who wasn’t you. Azriel cleared his throat before speaking. “What we did was a mistake. You have a mate and I should have respected that and you should have also but I am willing to admit that I  didn’t. I think it goes without saying but I deeply regret ever having a relationship with you, if we can even call it that. Y/n is my mate and I will do everything in my power for her to give us a chance and even if she doesn’t it does not  mean that I will want a relationship with you. I will never want a relationship with anyone but her. I am not asking for you to be understanding of this; but I do need you to be respectful of both me and y/n and whatever relationship we might have.” 

He watched as Elain processed his words and for a few minutes there was nothing said. Just the sound of birds singing in the distance along with the sound of the city of Velairs. “No.” Azriel was stunned. “No?” Finally she looked at the shadowsinger “No. I will not respect her since she has never once respected me or our relationship so I won’t respect yours. If there even is one that is. Plus Azriel you would have never regretted it if she wasn’t your “mate”. Once you realize everything she’s told you is a lie you will come right back to me but just know I won’t take you back.” Azriel had never seen Elain act or say anything like that before, apparently he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did. “I will never come back to you Elain. But just know if you disrespect her again, even if she's not here, I will not tolerate it.” With that he left the disgruntled woman where he found her.

A few days later Azriel found himself in Rhysands office. Rhys sorted through letter after letter while waiting on Cassian's arrival. “Have you tried to reach out to her?” he wasn’t sure why Rhys was asking considering that he knew the answer “No, I’m giving her the space and time that she requested, Why do you ask?” Rhysand glanced a look at him over the papers. “Just curious.” Azriel knew better than to believe Rhysand was simply “just curious”. “What is the real reason for asking?” Azriel was never to get his answer because just as Rhysand went to open his mouth Cassian came strolling into the room and with that their meeting started. 

At first Azriel did not understand how he could be someone you needed to be saved from but the more he sat and replayed the last two interactions he had with you he came to understand where he went wrong. It was not easy to admit that he was in the wrong but he was willing to do anything for you, even if that meant taking a long hard look into the mirror and confronting all of his ugly actions and words towards you , whether they had been intentional or not. After sitting and thinking about how to do better for you Azriel was hit with a groundbreaking realization. There were many moments in life where he had not been wanted even by the people that were supposed to want him. He remembers so vividly how it felt when he was rejected or picked last just because of who he was. He finally understood what you had been saying this whole time. Being picked because you were the last option or because the person picking you had no other option was gut wrenching and that was exactly what he had done to you. If only he had understood this two years ago then maybe he wouldn’t be in this position. Somehow Azriel had to find a way for him to show you that he would pick you a million times over without question, without any hesitation because he wanted you like he's never wanted anyone else. 

Kolos watched over the course of the two years as you pieced yourself back together again. With the help of him of course. Nothing brought him more joy than seeing you flourish after walking away from your mate. At first all you did was cry because you were never sure if you had made the right decision or you were angry at how you found out about your mating bond or simply just angry that these were the cards you had been dealt. 

“I hate him.” Kolos held your shaking body in his arms while you screamed into the darkness of the night. “I hate him so much. How could he do this to me?” Once more he simply held you and offered no answer for he had none. He, himself, could not understand why Azriel couldn’t see what was right in front of him. 

“If you think any harder, that little brain of yours just might explode.” Kolos studied you as you took a seat in the chair in front of his desk propping your legs up on his desk. “How very kind of you my sweet y/n.” snorting you smiled while shaking your head. “Couldn’t get any sweeter if I tried. Trust me I would know.” “Oh I’m sure.” for a second the conversation lulled but it wasn’t uncomfortable you both just sat and observed each other for a minute. “So what do I owe to the pleasure of your company?” grinning from ear to ear you shrugged “I figure that just my mere existence would bring you some much needed joy since without me your day would be quite dreary.” He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. Placing an arm on top of his desk he rested his head upon his hand slightly tilted. “How did you know?” he said dramatically. “Anyone's day would get better if they were blessed with my presence.” At that he chuckled “Never been wrong a day in your life huh?” “Never.” lazily you got up out of the unusually comfortable chair. “As much as I enjoy doing good deeds for those in need, unlike you I have a job to do so I will have to cut this charity session short today. I’ll see you later” and with that you were out of his door not without giving him a wink and catlike smile. 

Kolos knew that lately the two of you had been crossing over the line of just friends but he would never pressure you into something more. He always followed your lead and respected your feelings. When you first came back to the dawn court there was definitely some light teasing tossed around but he could tell that it was a way to deflect your true feelings and distract yourself from having to feel them but now it was different. It was genuine. 

Less than an hour later Kolos was sat across from you where the closest member of Thesans court sat at a circle table. Once again you winked at him with a sly smile before turning to face where Thesan was seated. You were going to be the death of him. For an hour you sat and listened to whatever news the different members had to deliver to your high lord before he relieved the true reasoning for the meeting. “I would like to take a visit to the night court in a few weeks time.” you were stunned to say the least. As high lord Thesan didn’t need to run anything by you but you would assume considering all things he would have at least given you a warning. You looked towards the second in command and saw that Kolos looked just as surprised as you felt. At least you weren’t the only one kept in the dark about this choice. 

After taking a much needed bath to relax you quickly dried off before donning a comfortable pair of loose trousers and a sweater you had stolen from kolos months ago on “accident”. Moseying into the living room you found kolos laying on the cream colored couch holding what you could only assume to be anything but interesting reports about nothing important. He watched as you went into the kitchen and started preparing something that he was assuming was for the both of you. “Is that my sweater?” without missing a beat you responded. “And if it is?” for a second he took in your appearance. Wet hair messily braided and resting on top of your shoulder, slightly flushed skin from a bath that he knew was unnecessarily hot, once he walked into the bathroom after you had taken a bath and wonder if he had been transported into a boiling pot of water instead of his bathroom and he wasn’t even in the water he just took a breath of the hot air and that was enough for him, the look of you all bundled up in his sweater. And he couldn’t find it in himself to care that you stole his clothes, you looked better in them anyways. “Then you should keep it. It looks good on you.” Kolos knew you to be a flirt but what you said next truly caught him off guard. “It would look better on the floor.” 

Azriel had just returned from yet another mission when Rhysand had summoned to his office where he saw just about every member of the inner circle waiting for seemingly his materialization. “What’s going on?” Azriel watched as his high lord and lady went back and forth mentally on how to tell him about whatever was going on. By the looks of everyone, no one had died or disappeared while he was gone so it couldn’t be that bad. Rhysand quickly looked at Cassian before turning his focus onto him. “Thesan would like to have a meeting with me here in the night court. He said he would like to bring some of his court members with but did not specify which ones. Y/n could be in attendance or she could not be, I don’t know.” Rhysand watched as his brother took in the information he provided him and waited for a reaction.

 “When?” Feyre spoke before Rhys could. “In a week's time.” Azriel nodded his head at the information but everyone in the room could tell that it hasn’t really registered with him that you may be in the night court again or even within his sight. “I pray to the mother that she will be here.” It was all that Azriel could say without feeling completely overwhelmed. He may be a crytherian and have been in more wars then he would like to remember but this is the most nervous he's ever been in his life. Azriel knew he had been preparing for months for this exact moment but now that it is arriving he wished he could have a few more months to keep getting ready to speak to you again. Even with the lack of feeling prepared he would do everything in his power to show you just how much work he's put into becoming better for you. 

“Cat got your tongue Kolos?” never in his seven hundred year life had he been more dumbfounded then he was in that moment. “Y/n that's not something to joke about.” He watched as you crossed the kitchen and moved to sit across from him on the couch as he moved himself to sit upright in front of you. “Who said I was joking? I mean come on Kolos I’ve been quite blatantly flirting with you for weeks now and you have done nothing but respond to it a few times here and there. I wait to be more than friends, that is unless you do not return my feelings." If you were the same woman you had once been while living at the night court you would have been terrified that his answer could be no but you were no longer her. You were different now, confident and self-assured and countless other empowering things but you were also fearless. Even in a moment where you should be scared you knew no matter what you would be ok and that's all that mattered. Night court you would never recognize dawn court you and for that you were more than thankful. 

“Of course I return your feelings” you watched as Kolos fought to find the right words. In his moment of silence you took a moment to truly take in his beauty. While Azriel was mesmerizing and could capture the attention of anyone who spared a glance his way, his beauty would tempt yours in and consume all of it, not letting it ever come back again. Azriels beauty was cold and ruthless. Koloss beauty on the other hand was warm. His golden skin radiates warmth and comfort so do his emerald green eyes that welcome you with uncontained joy. His shoulder length chocolate brown hair, that was always half tied up, helped complete his look of safe comfortability. Kolos had beauty that complemented anyone who was around him. His beauty would bring out yours without any question. You wondered how you were so blind to his beauty before, how had you not noticed it? “And I knew that you were flirting with me obviously, I was doing it back but I just wanted you to be able to heal and figure out what you wanted to do. I was following your lead. I was waiting for you to make the first move. I never wanted to do something and make you uncomfortable so I was waiting for you to decide what you wanted.”  

“Was what I said earlier about your sweater looking better on the floor a good enough first move or should I have been even bolder? I’m not really sure how I would get any bolder than that though.” Suddenly the male before you was full on belly laughing and before you knew it he was pulling you into himself. “That was more than bold enough.” gently he cupped your cheek bringing you to face him. “Can I?” his eyes ghosted over your features while he waited for you to respond “Ever the gentlemen”  he watched as you finally gave him the go ahead. “Of course.” without being told twice he pulled you into his lips and Kolos swore nothing was ever going to beat the feeling of your lips on his. 

During the week leading up to Thesans planned trip to the night court you and Kolos talked about what you wanted and didn’t want, how to go from friends to lovers and anything in between but most importantly how you were going to deal with Azriel once again, since both of you were one hundred percent sure that he would be there no matter what other obligations he had going on. 

It was the day before you were to leave with the rest of Thesans court members to attend the meeting with the night court when you found yourself strolling into Koloss office to bother him yet again. “ I’m convinced that you don’t actually do anything besides walk around and bother people.” Kolos didn’t even have to look up to see that it was you who had entered his office. “Be nice Kolos or you just might hurt my feelings.” hearing the slight pout in your voice he looked up to find you perched on the corner of his desk and honestly he wasn’t sure how you got there with him noticing but what he did notice was the mischievous look in your eyes. “But I only walk around and bother you. For the most part I just sit around and look pretty. I thought you knew that?”  Kolos could hear the teasing in your voice and once again he knew your only real intention to come to his office was to bother him but he didn’t mind at all, not with you smiling at him like that. “I would never dream of hurting your feelings but thank you for informing me that I am the only person who you bother, it really makes me feel better about myself. And as for you just sitting around and looking pretty, that sounds about right. I knew we didn’t give you a real job.” The light smack you delivered to his arm was accompanied by your sweet laughter filling the room as you tilted your head back from his remark and Kolos knew he would never get enough of that sound “And here I thought you were such a gentleman.”  Kolos grabbed the hand you smacked him with and brought it to his lips to place a loving kiss on the back of your hand. “For you sweetheart I will be anything.” 

Kolos knew today was going to be a true test for not only you but also for your newfound relationship. Kolos had no fear that you would be swayed by whatever stunt Azirel was sure to pull, since he knew you would not have entered a relationship unless you were one hundred percent sure that it was what you wanted, but he was definitely skeptical of Azriel and what he would do. The lengths he would go to to get you to accept the bond and him. 

Thesan, his lover and Kolos himself were in the common throne room waiting for all members of the court to arrive when he saw you walk in with another advisor. You were clearly in a deep discussion when you looked eyes with him. He watched as the two of you slowly made your way over to the now forming circle of people and heard you excuse yourself from the conversation while also promising to continue it at a later time. “So are we thinking this is going to be a full on shit show or a semi-shit show?” Kolos chuckled under his breath as not to disrupt the group with the belly laugh that was threatening to take over. “I was thinking it was going to be more of a game of tug-of-war?” you glared at Kolos as he took in your outfit. It was a two toned dress, one side a light pink and the other a light peach color. The top was asymmetric leaving one shoulder bare and the other covered and of course in y/n fashion the bottom had a slit going up the leg as usual. “I’m kidding sweetheart. It is only going to be a shit show if Azriel opens his mouth otherwise we're safe.”  Kolos’s unworried smile was the last thing you saw before Thesan winnowed you to the night court. 

Once again you were back in the presence of people you once saw as family. Rhysand was standing promptly at the front of the group like you knew he would be and next to him was Freye. She looked as poised as ever. To her left was Cassian and Nesta looking less than impressed to be a part of this meeting, not that you blame them. It doesn’t take a genius to know that once the high lords left to have their private conversation shit would hit the fan. Lastly to Rhysands right was Azirel, you didn’t have to look in his direction to know that he was looking at you. So skipping over him you looked to the spot next to him expecting to see Morrigan standing next to him but she wasn’t and you couldn't help but wonder where she was at. 

“Welcome to the night court.” Rhysands presence took over the room just like his words did. “Thank you for having me. And the members of my court, it is greatly appreciated.” you didn’t hear much after that. You were too busy avoiding four pairs of pleading eyes and praying to the mother you make it out of this meeting relatively unscathed along with Kolos, mother knew he needed it more than you. 

It had been at least two hours of Thesan and Rhysand going back and forth about whatever they deemed necessary when you felt Kolos nudge your arm with his. Slowly you looked to see what he wanted “How are you doing?” he questioned quietly while Cassian was speaking. “I’m fine, I just forgot how boring these meetings are. I wasn’t kidding when I said my job is to sit around and look pretty, I have no idea what's going on. I’m going to die of boredom.” Kolos led back the laugh he wanted to let out. He knew that you did in fact know what was going on; you just couldn’t care less about court politics. He also knew you do more than just sit around and look pretty. “Well you are doing an excellent job of pretending that you are lost and you also are doing a good job at doing your “real” job. Keep it up.”  

You felt Azirels eyes bounce between you and Kolos through your whole interaction. Actually you felt his eyes on you the whole time since you quite literally magically appeared in front of him. He had watched every move you make, every subtle shift of your face. He watched everything. You could tell he was trying to be nonchalant while in your presence but he was greatly failing. Azirel may be the spymaster but to you he was always an open book from day one and it seems that some things never change. Placing your elbow on top of the table then resting your head on it you stared at the male who once had your heart. If he wanted to be out right obvious then so could you. 

Finally Rhysand, Freye and Thesan went to have a private conversation and only then did Azirel come to approach you. You hadn’t even been about to stand from your seat when you felt his presence looming over you. “I need to talk to you. Alone please. Only if you allow it of course.” Azirel watched as you contemplated his words before finally you nodded and motioned for you to lead the way. 

If there is one thing that Azirel is used to, it is silence. Being the spymaster and all meant that silence was a staple in his work environment, that is of course unless it called for the opposite. But the silence between the two of you was nerve wracking as he led you to an open cloister before stopping to look at you. Something was different about you but it couldn’t put his finger on it and if he was being honest with himself it scared him not knowing what it was. 

Leaning against a pillar you watched as Azirel fought to pick the right word to say. You could tell that he had changed just from watching during the meeting. He was remorseful but also he finally respected not only your choices but you. Silence continued to envelope the space between the two of you while contemplative looks were shared between the two of you. Finally Azirel has the courage to clear his throat and begin speaking. “How have you been?” you know that you shouldn’t be caught off guard by his question. You were friends for hundreds of years before you were mates. “I’ve.. been…good.” if he noticed you lack of a better word, which he did, he didn’t mention it. “How about you, how have you been?” you so desperately wanted to tack on “How have you and Elain been?” on the end but you refrained. Another argument with Azirel was the last thing you wanted to do again.  “I’ve been good.” again quietness fell upon the two of you as you nodded in understanding to Azirels answer. 

When it became obvious that Azirel wasn’t going to say anything you did. “So what did you need to talk to me about?” this seemed to knock Azirel out of whatever trance he was in. You examine Azirel as he takes a deep breath in an attempt to still himself for whatever he was about to say because clearly it was making him nervous. “There is a never ending list of things that I need to apologize for and trust me I will but for now let me start with this. I ended everything with Elain. I made it very clear what we did will only ever be a mistake and nothing more than that. Not only does she have a mate, which in retrospect I should have accepted at face value and not go forward with a relationship with her and I know that not everyone wants to be with their mate and chose to find another partner that isn’t their mate, but Lucien is not a random person, he is a friend of not only Freye but of the night court and I should have respected him and unfortunately for him, his very unwilling mate.” Azirel took a breath giving you a chance to respond but when you didn’t he continued on. There was no way he was going to mess this up now even with your unflinching gaze upon his and lack of verbal response to his apology. It may make him want to empty the lunch he had earlier into whichever bush was closest but he would endure it to make things right with you.

 “I am ashamed to admit this but it took me longer than I would have liked to finally understand what you were saying all those months ago. And I sincerely mean it when I say I am so extremely sorry for the pain I have caused you. I hope you know that it was never my intention to hurt you. I was absolutely blind to the love you had for me even if it was right in front of my face literally for hundreds of years and I now understand what you mean by being my second choice. First it was Morrigan, then it was you. After Morrigan it was Elain and then it was you. You were never first on the list and you are absolutely right when you said if it wasn’t for the bond I would have never picked you. There are so many excuses I could give you as to why it was never you but truthfully none of them would ever be close to good enough. I was too busy looking for the person and love I thought I wanted without ever stopping to realize the person and love I needed was right in front of me this whole time, and for that I am sorry.” Again you simply looked at Azriel without saying anything so he continued on even though he was sure his heart would give out at any second from how hard it was beating. 

“I am going to be honest. If it wasn’t for the bond then no I probably wouldn’t have picked you over Elain. I would like to think that one day I would have come to my senses and realized it was you that I wanted and not her but I can’t say that for certain. But I have thanked the mother everyday since the bond snapped into place that you are my mate. I’ve have wanted nothing more than to find my mate and I finally have. I know that I have to earn your trust and prove to you for the rest of eternity, just how much I am grateful that you are my mate, but it is something I am willing to do if it means I get a chance to try again with you. But…” 

You may be a different person then what you were two years ago when you left the night court but deep down Azriel is still your friend, he is still someone you would never want to hurt no matter how much he hurt you. So to see the tears welling in his eyes hurt your heart. 

“But if this is not something that you want then I will accept your choice, no matter how much it hurts. I will respect that choice. I won’t try to change your mind. I won’t beg you to change your mind, no matter how much I want to. If this mating bond isn’t what you want then just know that I will always be here ready to give us a try. No matter how much time has passed, whether it's one hundred years or a thousand I will be here waiting with open arms just for you. There will never be another person. There is only you. Since the moment I knew we were mates it has only ever been you.” 

For the first time since that fateful day you allowed Azriel feel your emotions through the mating bond and he did the same. Remorse, longing, heartbreak, sadness any and every emotion was overwhelming the both of you. It brought tears to your eyes just like it had pushed the tears in Azirels eyes over the dam of his lashes. “Come here” you beckoned while trying to fan the tears away. Azriel didn’t need to be told twice and before he knew it you had wrapped him in your arms and placed your head in the crook of his neck. And Azriel knew there was never going to be a more perfect feeling than you in his arms. Azriel wrapped you in his arms just like you had done with him mere moments before. For a long while there was no sound besides the random sniffle and rouge sob that would escape from each other's body. “I am so sorry.” He mumbled while pressing a kiss into the crown of your hair. Reluctantly  he pulled your body away from his and what he found broke his heart even more. Tear stained cheeks that were flushed from crying and red rimmed eyes looking back at him. In that moment Azriel swore to himself that he would never be the reason you cried again. 

Bending down to be eye level with you he wiped away your tears while taking in just how beautiful you were even after crying. For a long second you and Azriel just stared into each other's eyes before you finally looked away. 

“Oh mother, that really hurt my soul.” a breathy laugh fell from your face as you wiped away the tears that fell after Azriels hands returned to his side. “I can’t believe you said that to Elain. I’m sure she was pissed wasn’t she?” your mate shrugged while giving you a cheshire cat smile. He may not have said anything, for probably  not wanting to admit you were right about Elain not being as nice and innocent as she portrays, but his body language told you everything you needed to know. 

“I truly appreciate your apology and I am happy that you finally understand what I was trying to tell you all those months ago. You're smart so I knew you would have figured it out eventually.” Azriel laughed at your attempt of a joke. But then he watched as it was your turn to struggle for the right words and suddenly he was nervous all over again. “I don’t know how to say this or if there even is a right way to say this but Azriel please know that what I am about to say is not meant to hurt you in any way. It's actually the last thing I want to do.” It was as if Azriel had been pushed underwater because suddenly he couldn’t breathe and he knew you were going to walk away from him once again by the time everything was said and done.

“As much as I appreciate everything you said and trust me I do. It means more to me than you know. And I can tell how much work you put into understanding where I was coming from which again I truly appreciate it but I need to be honest with you. There are wounds that I am still healing from when I found out we are mates, and it has nothing to do with you. I promise it's just something that I need to work out on my own, and please don’t worry it’s getting better day by day. But there is also something I need to tell you.” Azriel watched as you wring your hands from nerves. “I am in a relationship with Kolos. And I’m sure you have questions but I am not ready to answer them and I hope you can respect that. I don’t know where my relationship with him is going to go but what I can say is that I am finally happy, Azriel. I am not pining after someone who doesn’t want me like I want them and it feels so good to be wanted for no other reason than simply being wanted. And I'm sorry that this information hurts you but I feel the need to be honest with you even though it hurts.” 

“I can’t say for certain that I do or don’t want the bond with you Azriel but for now I want to see what else life has to offer me. Completely on my own and not as a member of the night court or day court or whatever other titles have been given to me. I want to go live life unapologetically and maybe one day when everything is said and done I will be able to let go of the anger and hatred I have felt towards you for the past two years. I don’t want to hate you Azriel but there is nothing but sadness and anger and hate towards you and until those feelings are gone I can’t love you. So for now I am going to walk away, not from you but from this relationship because I am not ready. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for breaking yours. I can’t promise that I will ever come back but all I ask is that if I do, you welcome me with open arms and a forgiving heart.” 

If Azriel wasn’t heart broken at what you told him before then he sure was now. But he would never be mad at you for doing whatever was best for you even if it meant not being with him. For the second time in his life because of you he was speechless. He knew you were waiting for him to say anything but he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, there were no words. Or maybe not enough words in the human language to describe what he was feeling either way he wasn’t sure. 

With your mates lack of words you took it as your cue to leave. You placed a kiss upon his cheek and held his hand before slowly backing away while you took in your mate for one last time for mother knows how long. Reluctantly you gave his hand a tight squeeze before letting go “I’m sorry.” 

Unable to say anything, Azriel watched your retreating figure go as you followed the path he led you down to get to the cloister, once around the corner he fell to his knees and allowed himself to mourn for the first time in years since learning of your mating bond. Just around the corner you listen to Azriel cry in heartbreak while you felt all of his emotion and once again felt your own heartbreak and for the first time in your life you wondered if you had made the right choice. 

taglist: @j-pendragonx , @piceous21 , @harrystylesfan2686 , @kemillyfreitas , @naturakaashi ,@kalulakunundrum , @thelov3lybookworm , @marina468 , @feyres-fireheart , @thalia-as-blog, @blurredlamplight , @wallacewillow0773638 , @inkedaztec , @nastynesta , @f4iry-bell , @amysangel , @saltedcoffeescotch , @pricklepearbloom , @luvmoo , @planetwaynez

[cynicalone94]

Distrust

When you're scared and alone, who do you trust?

Read on AO3 here or below the cut.

Jay speaks Pashto, I do not. I apologize for any errors caused by my use of Google Translate.

@whumpril

They’re grabbing lunch when the call goes out on the citywide.

Drive by shooting, just six blocks from where they are.

So they race in that direction, arriving on scene in three minutes to screams and chaos.

Jay is headed toward an officer when the screaming of a child reaches his ears.

Her words, specifically the language that they are spoken in, threaten to send him spiraling into a flashback but he grits his teeth, reciting an old mantra under his breath.

An officer is pulling her away from a bleeding woman with paramedics trying to stem bleeding from her torso.

The girl is crying and screaming for her mother as a clearly frazzled officer repeats that they’ll take care of her, raising his radio to request a translator.

Jay surges forward.

“sama daa, sama daa. valaghwe sta da mor sara marsta kawi. sama daa.”

[It’s okay, it’s okay. They’re helping your mom. It’s okay.]

The patrol officer freezes, turning to stare at him and Jay lifts his shirt to reveal his badge, keeping his attention focused on the little girl.

She can’t be more than four or five years old and she’s staring back at him through teary eyes.

“zaa khpala mor ghwaram.”

[I want my mama.]

“zaa poheegam. dwi da kar kolo lapara zai taa artya lari. no dwi koli shi da valaghi sara marsta wakri.”

[I know. They need room to work. So they can help her.]

She’s quiet and he frowns.

“zaa Jay yam. zaa da poliso afsar yam. sta num saa di?”

[I’m Jay. I’m a police officer. What’s your name?]

“Jamila.”

“da dir khkali num di.”

[That’s a very pretty name.]

“zaa daregam.”

[I’m scared.]

“sama daa. os khtama shwe ao dwi valasa kawi chi sta mor sara marsta wakri.”

[It’s okay. It’s over now and they’re trying to help your mom.]

She nods.

The patrol officer has stepped back, glancing between the two of them.

“Would you like me to contact Child Services, Detective?”

“Yes.”

“jamila. yo sok baa rashi chi ta wakhli, yo khwandi zai taa baa day bohy ao sta da korni da moondalo valasa baa wakri.”

[Jamila. Someone is going to come get you, to take you somewhere safe and try to find your family.]

She lunges forward, arms wrapping around his neck.

His arms instinctively curl around her.

“aya taa plar lary?”

[Do you have a dad?]

She shakes her head.

“ana ao neka lary jwand kawi.”

[Grandma and grandpa live far away.]

“aya taso da valaghwe numuna pezny?”

[Do you know their names?]

“basher ao ilwera. shemani.”

[Bashir and Elvira. Shemani.]

That will make it easier on DCFS. He just hopes that far away doesn’t mean back in the Middle East.

“aya taso valagha khlk ledali chi da yay kri dee?”

[Did you see the people who did this?]

She tucks her face against his chest and nods.

“aya taso valaghwe tashreh koli shai?”

[Can you describe them?]

She doesn’t answer and he tries not to sigh.

She may be the best witness that they have but who knows what kind of description he’ll get.

If he can even get her to give him one.

He lifts her up, walking back to the truck.

Dropping the tailgate, he sits down, still holding her close.

“jamila? zuma danda da valagho bado khlko newal dee chi sta mor taa yay zyan rasoli di. aya taa fakar qui chi zuma sara marsta koli shi?”

[Jamila? My job is to catch the bad men who hurt your mom. Do you think you can help me?]

She shakes her head.

“dwi baa poh shi.”

[They’ll know.]

“valagha ma walidal.”

[He saw me.]

“valagha taa waledy? dada yay?”

[He saw you? Are you sure?]

That changes things. They can’t just send her off with DCFS if there’s the possibility that the shooter knows she can identify him.

“valo.”

[Yes.]

The lady from DCFS isn’t thrilled with it but she accepts when he tells her that he’d like to take Jamila back to the station for the day.

That they’re worried the shooters will come after her.

She takes the name of Jamila’s grandparents and promises to try to contact them.

Kim and Adam swing by and he buckles Jamila into Makayla’s car seat in the back of Adam’s jeep.

Ends up riding back with them with she won’t let go of his hand.

It takes a lot of coaxing but she slowly starts to talk again, describing the two men behind this.

He pulls out a book of mug shots, sitting with her and flipping through the pages until she sees the right faces.

Then he sits with her, watching silly videos on his phone, while the team goes to bring them in.

Holds her hand during the line up, promising her over and over that they can’t see her.

The case worker calls as Kevin and Adam leave to take the pair to Central Booking with good news.

Her grandparents live in Indiana and are on their way to pick her up.

Will calls just as she hangs up with even better news.

Jamila’s mom is out of surgery and expected to make a full recovery.

She’s awake and asking about her daughter.

He calls the case worker back, letting her know that he’s taking Jamila to see her mom and asking if she can have the grandparents meet him there.

Then he bundles her into a borrowed car seat in the back of his truck and drives to Med.

They’re waiting for an elevator to take them up to the floor her mom is on when a man approaches.

“Where’d you get her?” He demands.

Doesn’t give Jay a chance to answer before he continues.

“You need to let her go asshole.”

“I’m a-”

“You think I can’t tell that she’s not yours?” The man snaps. “What, you decided you wanted some ‘exotic’ kid?”

Jay turns slightly, setting Jamila down and pushing her behind him.

Pays for the distraction as the man gets hold of his right wrist and twists hard, slamming him up against the wall.

He feels his shoulder pop out of joint, something in his wrist cracking and is officially out of patience.

Especially as Jamila screams.

Rams the elbow of his good arm back into the man’s stomach and sweeps his legs out from under him.

Gets his knee in his back and pushes him down with his good hand.

“I’m a cop, dumbass.” He snarls. “Her mom was hurt today and I’m taking her up to see her. Not that it’s any of your business.”

Then hospital security is there, taking custody of the man and dragging him off to await the police.

“Are you okay?” Will says, having been drawn to the commotion.

“Messed up my damn arm.” Jay growls.

“Hit your head on the wall too, by the looks of it.” Will says, reaching for him.

Jay turns away, looking to Jamila.

“aya taso rogh yast?”

[Are you okay?]

“valagha taso taa zyan raswi.”

[He hurt you.]

“zaa baa kha sham. da khpaly mor ledo taa chamto yay?”

[I’ll be okay. Ready to see your mom?]

She nods and he hoists her up with his good arm, settling her on his hip.

“Jay.” Will cautions.

“She feels safe with me.” He tells his brother. “Nobody else can even understand her. I just want to get her upstairs to her mom and then I’ll leave Hails with her and come back down to get looked at, I promise.”

He nods to his wife who’d agreed to park the truck while he brought Jamila straight inside and is approaching now, eyes wide as she looks at him.

“Thirty minutes or I will come after you.” His brother retorts. “And see if she’ll let Hailey carry her.”

“My left arm is fine.” He says, turning as the elevator doors open.

Hailey follows him in and he gives her the cliff notes on what had happened while they ride to the fourth floor.

Jamila’s mom is awake when they step into the room and he settles her daughter gently on the side of the bed.

“da valaghi ana ao ana paa lara dee. zuma malgari baa tar valagha wakhta pory staso sara paty shi tar so chi dwi dalta rashi.”

[Her grandparents are on the way. My partner will stay with you until they get here.]

She eyes his head and right arm, hanging limply at his side, in confusion.

“paa berani sanga ke stunza.” he explains. “valagha kha daa.”

[Trouble in the Emergency Department.] [She’s fine.]

“manana. da valaghi da khwandi satlo lapara. valagha mata raostalo lapara.”

[Thank you. For keeping her safe. For bringing her to me.]

“khushala yam chi marsta wakram. kaa saa taa artya larai no da ji ghukhtana wakri.”

[Happy to help. Ask for Jay if you need anything.]

She nods and he glances at his wife, making sure she has things under control, and then makes his way back downstairs.

Too many scans and more drugs than he’s happy with later, he’s the owner of a new cast and a sling to support his freshly reduced shoulder.

Arrives back up stairs to find that Jamila’s grandparents have just arrived and that the hospital has found a translator.

Endures it uncomfortably as all four of them thank him for his help until Hailey cuts in, explaining that she should be getting him home.

They end up stopping back in the ED on their way out.

“Any chance I might get a niece or nephew out of this?” Will asks teasingly.

“Shut up.” Hailey retorts before glancing over at him, her eyes softening. “Maybe.”

Maybe indeed.

[mythictold]

“  you’re not fine. and you don’t have to pretend that you are with me.  ” chakotay @ janeway

she weaves between crew members in the mess hall-turned-triage, connecting with those who are conscious and checking on those who are getting medical attention. a small handful were in sickbay proper, having emergency surgeries or other invasive procedures to ensure their survival - and even that was touch and go. she's made sure every injured member of the crew has been seen to and is being treated as needed; neelix has been passing out rations to those in the mess while the ones still on their feet take inventory of the ship and what systems are damaged or lost entirely.

the attack had blindsided them. species 8472 taking offense to their passage through a section of the delta quadrant and retaliating harshly before voyager had been able to detect them. they'd barely been able to repel the attack, but the ship had taken severe damage. entire decks unusable until the hull was repaired, engineering had taken a beating . . . a damn mess, frankly. it's out of pure adrenaline and spite and determination that she's still on her feet - she's perhaps the only one who hasn't seen medical attention for the cuts and bruises and phaser blast to her side, but she doesn't quite feel it. not yet at least. not until chakotay speaks and she's suddenly reminded that she's human, and allowed to be vulnerable. only then does the burning pain settle into her ribs. damn.

"about which part?" she asks lowly, flinching as she finally stops near the bar that leads back toward the actual kitchen, leaning against it for support. they're still running on emergency power until generators can be repaired, too. the ship is in terrible shape and while they're limping along at a pitiful warp 1, she doesn't know how long it will be until they're sitting ducks. she's hoping it doesn't come to that.

"i'm not alright that we keep getting attacked. i'm not alright that i'm injured. i'm not alright that we keep losing people. should i give you the full list?"

frankly the only reason she hasn't completely lost her mind is because she knows kolo and kieran are safe and unhurt, though terrified. she aches to go to them, to comfort them, but they're both lightly sedated and sleeping against harry kim against the far wall.

"i'm not alright that we could have lost them." she says, lower. "they were safer on new earth." and it's the truth. the worst enemy there was a rogue monkey or annoying gnat, not a species hell bent on killing them. her gaze snaps back up to chakotay; she's faltering somewhere between captain and kathryn - two separate parts of her, professional and personal. her hand moves to touch his shoulder instinctively, ensuring he's alright.

"i'm going to send some officers down to help be'lanna. any hands to help get them back up and running. tuvok's agreed to lead the security teams in investigating every hull breach, and repair them as they can until we can get the proper repair teams on them." her mind focuses to work, to the task at hand, though her gaze strays back to the boys. "i may not be alright, chakotay, but i've got to focus on something. if i give in to any ounce of myself, i'll lose my mind."

@stcrdate

[pa-pa-patato]

Cala headcanons cause I’m meningitising a cala chapter

•sweetheart always tries to avoid violence , but stars does she love a good fight

•was given a special knife as wedding gift from ebi It is a gorgons tradition to give a weapon so they can protect themselves from their spouses (It started because pirates would take gorgons  and force them to marry them)

•is obsessed with making poison and medicine of out plants

•speaking of poisons either don’t affect her or have a very week affect on her

•once sucker punched cuphead cause he tried to scare her while she was home alone with a fever

•had a arm wrestling match with Alice (someone pretty please draw this 🙏)

•had eaten soap before cause it smelled nice

•actually does have heir it’s just in a buzzcut so it wouldn’t bother Paul 

•is incredible in charging voices

•would be a great kolo dancer (this https://youtu.be/VNBsllO9vys?si=HmZ4Q_rC3Skkt3_l)

•hates squirrels

•can shapeshift into a naga

•adores food , loves it ,want to get on her good side? Give her food. Want her to forgive you after you had a fight? Give her food. Just give her food she loves it

•doesn’t get periods

This is not a headcanon-BUT PLEASE LET HER AND BENDY BE BESTIES!! PLEASE I WILL GIVE YOU MY HEART MY SOUL MY MONEY PLEASE 🧎‍♀️🧎‍♀️🧎‍♀️🧎‍♀️ ON MY KNEES BEGGING 🙏 PLEASE 🙏

[lshark-cs]

Iron God Chapter 65 [Xigon]

The eyes of the king-snake follow the Sight, and to the mother-beast hearkens the fragile god.

_______________________________

The spell of Kaosaan's mimicked voice shattered with the excruciating reality of Azvalath crying for his master. As if waking from a dream, Xigon fell back down to his student's side. As painful as it was to see someone he loved in this state, it was also a relief to know he still had enough of a soul to feel anguish.

There was shouting and a crack of lightning somewhere in the distance, but it scarcely registered. The only thing he could see in the dark was Azvalath. Not all of him, though. Only the heat of his clinging life force.

Azvalath reached for him. "Master, please..."

Xigon saw his own hands glowing fiercely white as he closed the gap between them. When he held Azvalath, there was another compulsion. One he'd certainly experienced before, but never with so much clarity.

[swallow our pain, thankless, and grow cold]

With his entire being he could shield the helpless from Kaosaan's jaws, if only he accepted this blessing. He could hold Azvalath in peace forever, until there was nothing left of his soul to break.

The moment he recognized the idea for what it was, however, he let go of his student and turned away with a snarl of self-loathing.

He tried to stand up and walk away, only to find that he couldn't. The faltering life forces of his student – and of Ami on the other side of the door he'd commanded Rizval not to let him through – tethered him stronger than gravity.

Xigon thudded his fist against Rizval's door. "Rizval, any update?"

They thudded back. "All secure."

"Azvalath is down." Xigon leaned his head near the keyhole to try and listen through. "Status on Ami, please."

"Live." Ami's voice was a dull croak. "Rizval, in my right inside pocket there's a vial labeled B64. It's a greenish color. Give it to Xigon right now."

He heard a shuffle, then the door's middle slot opened and a vial dropped to the floor somewhere in front of him. Xigon reached out and felt around the floor until he found and grabbed it. "What is this?"

"Coagulant." He heard her drag herself a little closer. "Put it in his ears and anywhere else he's bleeding. Promise you, it'll help."

Xigon turned the vial in his hands until he found the top and popped it off. The solution was thick and burned slightly on his fingers. He didn't have to fumble in the dark long to find Azvalath's ears, thankfully, but the way he winced and whined made Xigon feel a strange phantom pain.

As promised, the bleeding stopped in a few seconds.

"Now Rizval, in my left inside pocket you'll find a cartridge marked Ld-R, containing what looks like ink and a razor-dart for administration." Her voice weakened as if she were crying. "Xigon, please don't use this unless you absolutely must."

The container dropped in front of him. It sounded heavier than the first. "What is it?"

Ami took a huge shaky breath. "Rager."

His hand halted over the poison. "Why would you give me this?" He clenched his fingers into a shaking fist. "What could possibly warrant using this?"

"When I first made Rager, I was hoping to use it on myself," she rasped. "I wanted to die in a blaze and take Magpie down with me. She never let me, though, 'cause she knew what I wanted."

Xigon's head and chest burned with a phantom agony as he placed his hand over the cartridge. Around it he could feel a string. Confused, he moved his fingers until they found something smooth and pointed.

Even without seeing, he recognized Kolo's talisman.

"Master?" Azvalath's voice cut through the dark. "Why doesn't Kolo have that?"

He shook his head. "I don't know why she'd let go of it." He pushed it toward Azvalath. "Can you get it back to her? I can't move from here."

"Why not?" Azvalath grabbed his hand. "I can't go alone."

Xigon shook his head. The so-called Sight Ami had described, the first scrap of wisdom Kaosaan had fed him – so long ago he'd mistaken it for his own power – it chained him where he sat, between Azvalath and Ami in their mortal perils.

He could carry Azvalath with him if need be. But Ami...Ami had to stay where she was.

"Ami." He pulled himself to his feet and found the slot in the door. "You came to me for a reason. Come now and I'll give it to you."

"Master, what are you about to do?" Rizval's voice cracked.

He wasn't entirely certain himself. When he drew Respite from the sheath on his belt, he heard Azvalath gasp, and he knew exactly what it looked like. What it would all too likely turn out to be.

He couldn't deceive himself. Ami could very well die here, but on the off chance she didn't, she would finally attain what she'd been striving for. Either way, they wouldn't stay trapped right here.

He slipped his ungloved fingers through the slot. "Ami, come."

He heard a shuffle and a small pained cry as she hauled herself up, perhaps aided by Rizval. Then her fingers locked around his.

He bowed his head. "Hear me, Iron God. Should this child stray, bear her gently to the darkest shore. Your mercy is not lost to us."

"Pious bastard." Ami growled at him. "You know our god can't help us now."

He pursed his lips. Yes, he knew, but the motions still gave comfort.

"Thank you, Master." She gave his fingers a squeeze. "For giving me a second chance."

"Likewise." He breathed a heavy sigh. "Push your back to the door and hold still."

He heard unsteady footsteps, then Rizval said something he couldn't discern. He searched for Ami's heat under the dark writhing tendrils, and when he found it, he thrust the dagger through the slot.

Scalding blood gushed over his hand. He heard Ami gasp and saw her heat flare out like a shattered lantern.

Xigon could only pray it was Vraelen that caught her as she fell. He brought his bloodied fist to his chest and felt his own heart pounding, then a sensation like falling. Bright flares tormented what remained of his vision. White-hot, scorching...then blue.

A great blue eye, one that had long evaded him, now beheld him as it had soon after he'd first met Qila.

Xigon. I thought I had lost you.

Tears burned in his mutilated eyes. "It was you who abandoned us, Vraelen."

Why would you believe such a thing?

"Because Qila still cries for you." He took a deep shuddering breath. "And for me, Kaosaan fills your silence. Don't you know, all the curses she forces me to swallow?"

Xigon, I've tried. The eye glistened. I have tried to reach you for so long. But even when I can reach you, there is little I can do. Kaosaan is far beyond me.

Xigon swallowed hard. A vague sensation of warmth coiled around him, almost like a gigantic hand.

If you were so desperate for me, you would follow the lead of Qila and Sothyrion, and you would do all in your power to restore me.

"It's not you I want." Xigon practically spat. "I tell my order they will do your work in your stead. And I have far more faith in the least of their abilities than I ever had in yours."

He thought he saw the Iron God flinch, and it gave him a strange satisfaction.

"And with Kolo, that dream may be feasible for the very first time." Xigon lifted his chin. "We have more of a chance than ever before."

Tell me, Xigon. A chill spiked through the air. Has that ever been your true intent?

Of course the blue eye would see straight through him.

"They can't know otherwise, not until they absolutely must." His head sank. "It would break them."

You expect them to stand and fight you if or when you succumb entirely to Kaosaan's will. Vraelen laid Xigon's vilest hope bare. Shame on you.

Something warm pressed over his eyelids.

I've got Ami. Take care of Qila for me.

Xigon opened his eyes.

He could see again. He was back where he'd stood before. All was quiet. The tug from Ami was gone.

With one chain broken, he turned to his other. "Azvalath, come." He extended his arm.

Azvalath latched on for dear life. The younger man's trust was somehow more painful than anything Qila had ever done.

['round and 'round the king-snake chased himself, 'round and 'round for centuries]

[liviavanrouge]

Protective School Mom

Epel: GET HIM MAMA AOLANI!

Aolani: *Glares at Kolo* Bullying my kids?

Wavern(Twst Wanderer): *Peeking out from behind Aolani scowling*

Polaris(Twst ice dragon): *Smirks, flipping Kolo off*

Kolo: They're brats!

Aolani: So. Are. You.

Kolo: Let me tell you something right now

Aolani: Run up!

Ace: Get him Mama Aolani! Teach him a lesson!

Deuce: Yeah!

Kolo: Let me tell you something right now.

Aolani: *Tying her hair up* Run up hoe!

Idia: *Hiding behind Aolani*

Cater: He's a bully!

Kolo: At the end of the day-

Aolani: Hoe run up!!

Kolo: -I will fuck you up!

Crowley: *Sighs*

Crewel: *Stares, his cheeks turning pink* Hm...

Aolani: Please!

Kolo: And I'm trying to be the bigger person

Aolani: *Glares at him* PLEASE!!

Floyd: Get him Mama!

Azul: He is certainly disrespectful

Riddle: He failed me for being late for the first time!

Aolani: *Smiles, taking her heels off*

NRC Students: GET HIM MAMA AOLANI!

Aolani: Oh I will.

Kolo: Shit....

@anxious-twisted-vampire @yukii0nna @writing-heiress

[myfandomrambles]

C-PTSD & BPD Thirteenth Doctor pt. 2

(Doctor Character Study part 3E.2) E.1, E.3

An analysis of The Doctor as having Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) along with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). If you read my ADHD & Autistic doctor posts you will notice some symptoms overlap mostly with impulsivity. I chose to put C-PTSD and BPD as one post because symptom overlap is strong, and the disorders are highly comorbid

[Thirteenth Doctor will be in 3 parts due to length. Find the whole thing on AO3]

13th Doctor 2: Morals & her Trauma Informed Identity

Thirteen also shows a need to be seen as moral and a good person in situations including in TV: Resolution when facing the Dalek. She wants to be seen as a good person to her friends, letting them see her anxiety while also having previously hidden the fact she enjoyed scaring the Dalek. 

“Dalek: Hide behind your shield, Doctor, you and your human friends. You have failed. Doctor: Say hello to a Dalek. Dalek: Signal activation in nine rels. The fleet shall be summoned. Doctor: No, it won't. No matter how many times you try, no matter how long you wait, I'll always be in your way, backed up by the best of humanity. Now, final, final, final warning, cos I'm nice. I really do try my best. Stop the signal, get off this planet. Dalek: You are not my commander. Doctor: I tried. You heard me, right? I tried! I gave it a chance. Yasmin: Yeah. Ryan: Yep. Graham: You did.”

She wants to be viewed as good by those she loves and upholds part of her worldview where she matters as a hero. But also can not truly hold to the idealised version of ‘The Doctor’ We see this in TV: The Woman Who Fell To Earth, we see it in how she won’t shoot Tzim-Sha, becoming mad when Tzim-Sha is kicked off the edge, while she put DNA bombs. The idea of The Doctor is still removed from the personal status. A similar contradiction shows up in TV: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos 

“Doctor: Equipment. Doctor: I borrowed all this from your ship, Paltraki. These throat mics work like commdots. Side of the neck. Stay in contact. Take one each. Grenades. Codebreakers for doors. Also, a bomb. Ryan: What happened to never do weapons? Doctor: It's a flexible creed. Doors, locks, walls, buildings, fair game. If it can be rebuilt, I'll allow it. Ryan: No, no. You stopped me shooting at Sniperbots before. Doctor: You were new. I have to lay down the rules if someone's new. Also, don't quote that back to me. My rules change all the time.”

The Doctor is willing to use weapons while having been deeply against them, which is remarked on by Ryan because she told him off for using weapons in TV: The Ghost Monument. This hypocritical state isn’t incongruous with The Doctor’s history, not using guns is something she has built her sense of self around the idea of a pacifist hero with words is something she needs to grasp onto. Her willingness to wipe out her enemies wholesale she argues in TV: War of the Sontarans that they shouldn’t have killed the retreating Sontarans to then kill mass numbers of them along with Daleks and Cybermen in TV: The Vanquishers. In Prose: Combat Magicks she uses her experience with understanding war and alienation to choose to kill aliens who are exploiting Earth with minimal time spent trying to negotiate. Her complicated moral stances and actions reflect a lot of who they want to be but also who they are when it comes down to choosing to save the most people possible. 

Connections with her past in war had less of an impact on her to start with due to being more removed from war trauma. Both the Time War and Trenzalore are at a distance from her. Though we do know she does carry it with her in Prose: The Day of The Doctor [novelisation]. She does return to give Cass a proper burial. Her dislike of war showed through in the above discussion of speaking against weapons while still knowing how to use them also points to her current connection to violence,

War and her connection to it still have a strong effect on her identity. (TV: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, TV: resolution, TV: Fugitive of The Judoon, TV: Ascension of The Cybermen, TV: War of the Sontarans, Prose: Combat Magicks, Prose: The Good Doctor, Comic: Hidden Human History, Comic: New Beginnings, Comic: Old friends & Comic: Alternating Current )

In TV: Demons of the Punjab we see an interesting connection related to the wars being discussed during the episode. Prem’s history with war and loss feels very impactful. The Doctor wants to go with him when he is going to be killed, offering kindness and something we know has helped them with previous losses. Her belief in the goodness of Prem for wanting to avoid war shows a great deal of resonance. 

The Thijarians' goal of remembering the forgotten dead also mirrors The Doctor’s own history of dying alone and the way The Doctor has a history of leaving forgotten dead behind her. Her own planet had been destroyed by war, The Doctor does believe Gallifrey exists at this point but it was still ravaged, so connecting to people who lost everything and committed to kindness resonates with her. 

Connected to her views on weapons and war as bases of her identity we also have her overt moralising to other characters in their actions. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth, TV: The Ghost Monument, TV: Demons of the Punjab, TV: Kerblam!, TV: Fugitive of The Judoon, Prose: Combat Magicks, Comic: Hidden Human History, Comic: Old friends)

In TV: Arachnids in The UK as a very prominent example of her moral ideals when faced with innocent spiders suffering and causing suffering. 

“Doctor: Whatever happened, there are living, breathing organisms out there and we treat them with dignity. So here's what we're going to do. Robertson: Shoot them! Doctor: We're not going to shoot them! Robertson: What's wrong with you people? What is wrong with this country? Why don't you do what normal people do? Get a gun, shoot things, like a civilised person. Doctor: Because I've got a much better idea. Spiders are roaming this hotel searching for food. We're going to lure them in here with the promise of food, then deal with the spider mother in the ballroom. Oh, that sounds like the best novel Edith Wharton never wrote. Najia: Once they're in here, what happens? Jade: We shut them in and isolate them. Robertson: You're going to let spiders use my panic room? Jade: They deserve a humane, natural death.” & “Jade: She's suffocating. She's got too big to breathe efficiently. Even moving around in here, it's using up what little oxygen she can absorb. She won't survive for long. She's more scared of us than we are of her. Doctor: I'm so sorry this has happened to you. Graham: So what do we do, just leave her? (Robertson enters.) Doctor: No. Absolutely not. Robertson: My hotel, my rules. I am the future President of the United States. How's this for fire and fury? Doctor: No, don't! (He shoots the spider and she falls on her back, nearly hitting The Doctor.) Doctor: Put the gun down. She wasn't a real threat. She was dying anyway. Robertson: Ah, well, then it's a mercy killing. Doctor: I don't see any mercy in you.”

This decision The Doctor wants to make for the smaller spiders to starve or dehydrate to death. She backs the idea of a “natural death” even when it could be kinder to shoot them. The Spider Mother is also going to suffocate to death, an extremely painful way to die. Robertson is clearly acting out of a love for violence and selfishness, not truly wanting to be merciful. But his impure motives do not change the fact that there is a conversation to be had about euthanizing them instead of giving them painful ‘natural’ deaths. The Doctor may be correct but it's still interesting there were no consideration given by any of the characters who are worth hearing out. 

We see another strong outward moralising moment in TV: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos. She argues with Graham about his wanting revenge by killing Tzim Sha. She is against, even telling him to leave, she is right to warn him against murder. Which makes sense as they have killed before and she’s never liked it in any regeneration. 

“Graham: Doc, can I have a word? Doctor: Of course. Graham: Just the two of us? Ryan: Fine. Come on, Yaz. Graham: I need to be honest with you, cos I am really grateful for everything you've done for me. Well, for us, you know? Everywhere we've been, all the adventures, been amazing. But if that is the creature from Sheffield, I will kill it if I can. For what it did to Grace. Doctor: Go back to the Tardis, Graham. Graham: No. Doctor: I won't let you do that. Graham: You ain't going to have a say in it. Doctor: You're better than this. You are. You have to be. If you kill him, I can't have you travel with me. That's if you even live. Graham: I understand. Doctor: No, you don't. We're going to rescue hostages. Anything that compromises them is dangerous. And if you kill him, you become the same as him. Graham: I ain't having that. Doctor: I'm serious, Graham. (She walks on.) Graham: And so am I.”

&

“Doctor: Where's Tim Shaw? Graham: Oh, he's taking a very long nap in a very small stasis chamber. Ryan: Of his own making. I like that. Graham: Yeah. Oh, I couldn't do it, Doc. Yeah, I had the chance. Too weak. Doctor: Graham O'Brien, you're the strongest person I know. Well, one of a few.”

The Doctor is trying to protect Graham and maintain her moral ground, something she is very devoted to. In this self view she supports putting Tzim-Sha in a tortuous situation is more moral than killing them, clearly showing how she interprets these moral quandaries. Another example of this is her monologuing  in TV: Orphan 55 :

“Doctor: ... I know what you're thinking, but it's one possible future. It's one timeline. You want me to tell you that Earth's going to be okay? Cos I can't. In your time, humanity is busy arguing over the washing-up while the house burns down. Unless people face facts and change, catastrophe is coming. But it's not decided. You know that. The future is not fixed. It depends on billions of decisions, and actions, and people stepping up. Humans. I think you forget how powerful you are. Lives change worlds. People can save planets, or wreck them. That's the choice. Be the best of humanity.”

This highlights that her moralising comes also from her years of experience, making it a clear connective tissue between Doctors and something that characterises this Doctor on her own terms. 

Another facet of Thirteen’s identity formation is her tendency to have a false self. A trait that comes from personality disorders, especially in Cluster B personality disorders; Antisocial Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 

This is most clearly referenced by King James in TV: The Witchfinders

“Doctor: Yeah, yeah, I know. It must be comforting playing that role, hiding behind a title. James: Just as you hide behind Doctor, perhaps?”

This is an important way she intersects with the world, especially in Series Eleven where she is putting on this mask of being happy-go-lucky. The above symptoms and some later described here show that she is already struggling but is doing her best to act like she is someone she isn’t. Her false self and masking make her interactions feel stilted and start the above-discussed film between her and her companions. 

The Doctor concept is bolstered when saving people and being gratified by helping, this heroic idea of what ‘The Doctor’ is meant to be is something The Doctor will hold on to. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth, TV: Arachnids In The UK, TV: Kerblam!, TV: The Witchfinders, TV: Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror, TV: Praxeus, TV: Can You Hear Me, TV: The Halloween Apocalypse, TV: Eve of The Daleks, Prose: Combat Magicks, Prose: Molten Heart, & Prose: The Secret in Vault 13)

TV: It Takes You Away shows her putting herself in the hero role doing her best to protect everyone and having a fight response towards the Solitract. Once everyone is safe she lets the arousal in her body go down and she connects with the Solitract. This shows her heroic tendencies and some of her most honest kindness.

  In TV: The Haunting Villa Diodati Along with coming into a space of control when dealing with the historical figures, especially Byron, and while this control is a huge part of her actions in the story we also see when she comes it she wants to protect other people, even when it leaves her  very stressed. This carries into TV: Ascension of The Cybermen & TV: The Timeless Children.

A key aspect of identity and the way her trauma shows through for Thirteen is the revelations of the Timeless Child and the way this reframes who they think they are and their history. 

The beginning of this arc with the destruction of Gallifrey (TV: Spyfall pt1) acts as a deeply re-traumatizing event. Dealing with being forced to view your planet in a state of destruction and the loss of her people for another time causes her to struggle and leaves her in a bit of an obsessive and dissociative state. During TV: Fugitive of The Judoon the repercussion of what she was forced to view others can see how she is fixating on the loss and the violence of The Master. Dissociative and repetitive behaviours become so disruptive that those around her notice:

“Ryan: She's doing it again. Spending hours at the controls looking for something. Thinks we haven't noticed. Graham: I'll ask her. Hey, Doc, what are you looking for? Doctor: How long have you been there? Yasmin: Twenty minutes? Doctor: You haven't. Ryan: What you looking for? Doctor: Not looking for anything. Yasmin: Don't lie to us. Doctor: The Master. Graham: Why would you do that? Yasmin: The Kasaavin took him. Doctor: Yes. They transported him to their dimension and I can't get there in the Tardis, but I thought if he escaped, I could track him. There's no sign. Ryan: I thought he'd be the last person you'd want to see. Doctor: He left a message for me. Graham: Saying what? Doctor: It's personal. Yasmin: Is that where you go, when you leave us to explore and you say you'll be back in an hour but you never are? Are you out looking for him? Where do you go? Doctor: Home. On my own. Yasmin: Why? Why not with us? Doctor: Cos you ask too many questions.”

In the same episode, there is a similar invocation of the trauma of having a place she cared about taken from her. The trauma reactions come out when in a high-stress situation. She doesn’t just point out something is wrong with the timeline, she says so graphically and mentions she’s seen it multiple times, she has no tact to be had here and she doesn’t even fully grasp what Gallifrey had done to her yet. 

“Gat: There won't be two payments, because two of the same Time Lord can't occupy the same space at the same time. It's an abomination. It'll destroy the time streams before you get anywhere near Gallifrey. Doctor: What did you say?...Gallifreyan. You're from home. Gat: I serve for the glory of Gallifrey. Doctor: Then both of you can only be my past. But that's impossible, because I know my own past. I lived through it. All of it. Fugitive!Doctor: You're wrong.

Doctor: I'm not wrong. I've seen Gallifrey destroyed. Twice. First by a war, second by a lunatic who I'm still trying to find. In my time, Gallifrey doesn't exist. It's gone. Forever. And if you don't know that, you're in my past. So, you are only serving at the glory of ash and bone.”

This episode was overall very upsetting. She deals with flashbacks during this episode, we notice the hypervigilance and fight-bound procedural memories go back to the Fugitive!Doctor. Even when she has been fob-watched she already couldn’t hide who she was on the inside fully. 

As we move forward with this arc (TV: Timeless Children) we end up with The Doctor learning about the abusive situation and mind-wiping that she went through repeatedly for an uncountable number of lives. She starts out being very confused and disbelieving;

“Doctor: I know my life. I know... I know who I am. Master: No, you don't. You never have. Your life has been hidden from you. Our founding parents wanted a noble creation myth for the Time Lords. Born To Rule. Doctor: I remember my home. I remember growing up. I remember you and me at the Academy together. Master: That happened. It just wasn't your first life. Doctor: Why would they lie? Why would they do that? Master: I wish it wasn't true, but it is. You know what I find the most infuriating? You always behaved like you were different, like you were... like you were special. And you were. You can see... you can see why I'm angry. A little piece of you is in me. All I am is somehow because of you, and believe me when I say, I cannot bear that. Doctor: Show me the rest. Master: I'm not sure you can cope with much... Doctor: Show me the rest! I have a right to know my own life.”

She starts to work through it when she is left in The Matrix by The Master.

“Fugitive!Doctor: Don't ask me, I'm as lost as you are in here. Maybe you just summoned me. Doctor: Where do you fit into all this? Were you me all that time ago? Were all my memories of you erased? Did they force me back into becoming a child? How many more of me are out there? Fugitive!Doctor: I don't have those answers. But say I did, would they even help? Doctor: Of course they would. All this, it means I'm not who I thought I was. Fugitive!Doctor: Because your memories aren't compatible with what you learnt today. Doctor: Yes. Fugitive!Doctor: Have you ever been limited by who you were before? Doctor: Ah. Now, that does sound like me talking. I'm so tired. The Matrix is sapping all the energy of out of me. Fugitive!Doctor: No time to be tired. Still, work to do out there. Lives at stake. Armies being born. People need The Doctor. Doctor: I don't know how to stop The Master. Fugitive!Doctor: Course you do. That one question that's nagging at you, the one thing he said that you didn't understand. Doctor: The one thing who said? The Master? Fugitive!Doctor: No. Get out of here. I know this place has blown your mind. Maybe you should return the compliment. Doctor: No, wait. Are you still there? Of course, she's still there. If you were me, you're buried within me, buried within... Too many thoughts. All right, first things first, what did she say? Mind blown. Yes! Of course! All this history, all these lies, it's too much stimulus. It might work. I've fought the Matrix before, denied its reality, I can do it again. Maybe...”

This moment is followed by a conversation with The Master within the same episode:

“Master: ... I have broken you and created a new race. And now? Now I shall conquer... everything. Oh. Doctor: You think you've broken me? You'll have to try harder than that. You've given me a gift. Of myself. You think that could destroy me? You think that makes me lesser? It makes me more. I contain multitudes more than I ever thought or knew. You want me to be scared of it because you're scared of everything. But I am so much more than you.”

While these words are good we know that this mental state isn’t the truth. The Flux arc shows that these positive statements do not fully resonate with her ability to fully integrate these revelations. In a sense, she wants to integrate these revelations about her history of abuse and trauma into her already scarred psyche. The Doctor is stubborn, inquisitive and brave by temperament, integration without action wasn’t going to come easy.

The memories of the Timeless Children being stolen also relate to the history The Doctor has with mind wipes with Donna (TV: Journey's End) and Clara (TV: Hell Bent) . A lot of pain is linked to the loss of memory. Swarm and Azure took the Fob Watch holding The Doctor’s memories away from her, opening them up to fracture her memories reinviting traumatic content to come up in her. (TV: The Vanquishers)

She is left with confusion about her past and pretty strong losses even if Gallifrey wasn’t kind to her she still grew up there and put themselves through hell to protect the common people of Gallifrey. To have lost herself, her past home and knowing another person died for her is exhausting to her mind and body. (TV: Timeless Children)

Instead of being free to process her trauma in a way that she could engage with other people, get trauma energy from her nervous system and even just get some fresh air she is taken into custody by the Judoon. She is left in a place that forces isolation and static movements. She is incapable of doing anything to help herself. She is forced into a situation that is already traumatic, being stressed in a situation with no escape, and carrying recent wounds that can’t heal. Terror without escape and resolution is the basis of trauma.

She mentions that she was imprisoned and that it hurt her in TV: Revolution of The Daleks.

“Harkness: Why were you in prison in the first place? Doctor: Evading the Judoon. Twice at once. Then once I was in, they took 7,000 other offences into consideration. Harkness: They stopped at seven? Doctor: I was in prison for being me... right at the point when I wasn't sure what that meant. Ah, it's been a tough few decades. Harkness: You're okay now, yeah? Doctor: Oh, I guess we'll find out. Wakey-wakey. Harkness: Hey! Doctor: Nice nap? Thanks for waiting. I had a lot to think about in there. And three very special people I've missed. Harkness: One of them was me, right? Doctor: You never change. Harkness: Wish I could say the same. Doctor: Right. Find me my fam.”

Panic and obsession she had about her lost memories became intensely powerful over time. This leads to trying to interrogate Karvanista in TV: Halloween Apocalypse mirrors a very real need people with dissociative amnesia have to understand what they have lost. This extends to  TV: Once, Upon Time we see flashbacks happen a lot tied into some of the sci-fi elements. Her getting lost in time reliving a traumatic incident that The Fugitive!Doctor experienced. It’s stronger than Yasmin Khan and Vinder experienced. While not directly flashbacks as it’s time distortions and the Mouri it very much mirrors when you have complete flashbacks and lose track of reality, and can’t let go easily of trying leaving her very distressed when she loses that connection psychically with her past. 

“Doctor: No, no, no. Put me back, put me back. I want to go back in there. I have to get back in! Yasmin: Doctor, it's okay. Doctor: It's not okay! Not for me! You don't understand anything. Yasmin: All right. Doctor: I had a chance while it was broken. Vinder: Well, it's not now. The Mouri, they're all back. Yasmin: You saved our lives.”

(TV: Once, Upon Time)

Her memories and fears around her stolen past come to a head in TV: Survivors of The Flux when she is able to meet Tecteun face to face. This woman we know medically, psychologically, and emotionally abused The Doctor for a very long time. Tecteun used The Doctor as a science experiment for her own gain and after that as a weapon. It’s horrific for a child to have been tortured medically so much she died repeatedly. The Doctor confronts her adoptive ‘mother’ about the situation and instead of truly getting answers or help she has to deal with the violence her ‘mother’ enacted on her and the universe being manipulative. 

“Tecteun: Yes. I found you. A lost child, alone, beneath a monument on a deserted planet, seemingly deposited thereby a wormhole. No way back, no one to care for you. Doctor: You took something that didn't belong to you. Tecteun: I rescued you. Would you prefer to have been left? Doctor: You assumed I came through that wormhole, but you don't know. What if I was waiting there to collected? What if I was supposed to be taken through it? What if whoever left me there was taken by that wormhole? Tecteun: What if, what if, what if? Doctor: You denied me my life! Tecteun: I gave you a life. Everything you are is because of me. But I understand. You think you could have been something else, someone else. Doctor: Maybe. I'll never know. Tecteun: You judge me for giving you the journey of your lifetime. What do you do, Doctor? Pick people up, take them with you? You adopt them, use them, for reassurance, for company. They're your experiments, just as you were mine. Doctor: We are not the same. Tecteun: This just shows I was right to order your memories erased.” & “Doctor: A Galifreyan device for the protecting and storage of memories and identities. Of course, you kept them, the memories you took from me. Tecteun: A good scientist never throws away their workings. We had them quantum stored for a long time in the Weeping Angel who tracked you and betrayed you but don't worry, it didn't escape. Everything has been transferred now, stored in that fob watch. Doctor: How much was lost? How many lives? How many people have I been? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Tecteun: What would you give to know? What if I offered you a choice? You can return to the dying universe you left, defend it from its inevitable destruction and fail, or rejoin Division. Rejoin me. Come with us into the next universe, into the beyond. Help me build! With your memories restored. Be complete again. The next universe holds the other end of the wormhole where I found you. That universe may be where you're from, where you began. Your origins, perhaps. Think of the discoveries that would await us both there. A new start. Doctor: If you really knew me, you'd know I'd never agree to any of this, no matter how strong the incentive.”

Tecteun takes credit for all of the good Thirteen and The Doctor more widely had and done and her tendency to pick up people across time. And blames The Doctor for why they continued her abuse of The Doctor by forcing her to lose part of herself and her history. Pretending to know The Doctor and leaving The Doctor afraid of herself and angry at her story. More so than just losing the memories there is also a lot of anger at the way someone would do that to her. The Flux being sent out to the world is something The Doctor would never allow, showing that even when Tecteun tries to manipulate she doesn’t understand everything The Doctor is.

While Tecteun did change The Doctor on a deep level by what she did to them as a child, it doesn’t define everything The Doctor has been and can be. While Teteun views The Doctor as a daughter she has no grasp of the love and loss The Doctor has been through, who she is now.

The Doctor recovers the fob watch with her memories, given what she wanted but after more violence and loss. Realising she was keeping people at bay.

“Doctor: ... Yaz. I'm sorry. I didn't let you into what I was doing. Going after Karvanista. What I was looking for. I shouldn't have shut you out. Yasmin: No. You shouldn't have. Doctor: I was looking for information about me. A life I never knew. I want to tell you everything. Yasmin: I'd like that. DAN: Did you say left or right? Yasmin: Come on, Scouse, let Yorkshire show you the way. (The Doctor takes the fob watch out of her pocket, then removes a blue globe from the console and holds it over the long, long tunnel down into the workings of the Tardis.) Doctor: Do me a favour. Keep this safe somewhere deep within this Tardis. Somewhere I can never find it. (Drops it and replaces the globe.) Doctor: Unless I really ask for it.”

This shows that The Doctor can't deal with everything at that point when it comes to her possible memories or fully connecting with Yasmin Khan. That she doesn’t show or explain the fob watch Yaz is purposeful, she trusts Yaz very much but she doesn't trust herself to fully connect with her past. The way she phrases it to the TARDIS also points to a cold fear/anger flight mindset, showing she is still struggling to process her trauma. No matter if it is a good idea or not, she can’t deal with it all right now. But her true confidant here is her TARDIS, no matter how much she loves Yaz.

[nostalgiachan]

Once more, it's 100 OC time, and here we have the second half of the main party members, in both full-size and PS2-output style. As always, new images up top, old below, and detailed character info (and essentially the story of the game) below the cut.

#69 (lol, lmao): Ilya Node Idea: The (World's Angriest) Mechanic Story: Silmerein

#70: Dorom Kolos Idea: The Surprisingly Cultured Drunken Ogre Story: Silmerein

#71: Nalien Urymere aka Nenali Maelstrom Idea: The Acrobatic Witch Story: Silmerein

#72: Dynn Mortar Idea: The Scientist Story: Silmerein

Continuing where we left off in the story summary from the last post...

So next, you head to the badlands, just the rockiest, craggiest piece of shit land you ever did see. And as the party's heading through this bullshit, they see a rail-thin, scraggly-looking girl dragging herself across the road.

They bring her to the wagon, fix her up, and ask where she lives, but she is determined to get to Silmerein. Eventually, after the party tells her "Nah, we're taking you home, you're fucked to shit," she gives up and tells the party where she lives: a super-secret city lost to history deep in the badlands.

So back when the end times were happening, the few survivors had huddled together in this city. And once Silmerein had saved the day, most people left and never looked back. But some folks were far too paranoid to leave. And they were determined to make sure that anybody who left never found their way back. So over the centuries, people forgot it was there, and anybody who still lived there wasn't allowed to leave.

So this girl, Ilya Node, telling the party where it is is A Problem.

When they reach the city, they're lucky enough to be met by Ilya's mentor, a fairly dorfy engineer. And he welcomes them inside and whatnot, but once they're in, he tells them they're not leaving again. Meanwhile, Ilya is fucking pissed. She's healed up enough that now she's practically frothing at the mouth to get out of the city again, because she is on a fucking mission.

See, she and her younger brother, Leon, were orphans, getting along as you do. But one night, her brother was snatched right out of his bed, and Ilya happened to see it. She couldn't do anything about it because the plague had caused her legs to stop working, but she swore he had been taken by a Silmereinian. Nobody believed her, though, because how could a Silmereinian still have knowledge of the city? Pff, nah, can't be me.

So she had managed to hobble her way out of the city and walked far enough across the badlands that her leg braces and crutches totally shattered and she was forced to crawl. She was powered by THE FUCKING FURY. Well, as you're learning her backstory from her mentor, she revs up a mining mech and BAILS. She takes off for the mines, which are just a horrible labyrinth of caves, and figures she'll pick a point and start digging her way to freedom this time.

And unfortunately, this is about the point where the plot gets just slightly more vague because I hadn't quite worked out all the details. But the important thing is that somehow, Lima had to get into close enough proximity to directly touch Ilya off-screen. Because as we'll find out later, the only reason the big boss-fight-inducing freakouts happen is because Lima's causing them. So Ilya becomes a giant rabbit monster.

They have a fight, Triangle wins, Triangle man.

So Ilya's like "I guarantee you I'm burning Silmerein to the fucking ground when I get there, let's go." She's your big heavy hitter character, pilots a mining drill to fight.

Anyway, after badlands, our next stop is further into the mountain to meet the Mountain Ogres, specifically this guy, Dorom Kolos.

The Mountain Ogres are in a pretty constant war with the Sea Ogres as the Sea Ogres ran the Mountain Ogres out of their ancestral homeland. I don't remember what the exact arc of Dorom's story was going to be, but tl;dr his infection is in his spine, which is now wholesale jutting out of his back, leaving him in a constant state of pain that he medicates with alcohol. He's your drunken berserker whose super mode is a demon bear.

bearserker

This is about the point where you'd be properly introduced to the Paladins of Silmerein, the goon squad who are your initial direct antagonists as they're trying to keep you from reaching the city and/or kill you. Mostly kill you.

[I briefly cover the first one you'd probably run into, Gamel Jugrenon, but I'll leave that solo sentence to when I actually redraw her]

One way or another, you fight Dorom's demon bear mode and ward off the Paladins, and you head on to the next bit.

Next is a spooky little forest in a mountain valley where you run into a circus featuring one Nalien Urymere aka Nenali Maelstrom.

Nalien comes from a village in said woods which is horribly superstitious and believes magic use and consorting with monsters to be a capital offense. So when she grows bat ears thanks to the plague, her parents are terrified for her safety but don't think they'd be able to leave without raising suspicion. Fortunately for them, the circus had come nearby, and they asked if they would be able to take in Nalien for a short while. The ringmaster agreed, took Nalien in, and started training her in magic and acrobatics.

[Fun fact: the bat ears also reduced her eyesight, which is why she wears glasses.]

As with Dorom, I didn't quite get into when the Paladins would show up and how Lima would get Nenali alone to cause her freakout, but big bat battle under the big top happens. I presume the spooky villagers would probably show up to ruin everything.

The last place before hitting Silmerein is a laboratory high in the mountains that the party stumbles on. There, they meet this fellow, Dynn Mortar, a magitek scientist.

It's here that they'd find out a lot more about the Paladins, chiefly that they're all missing body parts for which Dynn had fashioned prosthetics. [I make a brief swerve to cover all of the Paladins. We'll get to them next time.]

So back to Dynn, as you can surmise, he's the final host needed, and his infection's in his heart. So he turns into a monster squid. Because squids have three hearts. Look, I tried to relate the monster forms to the parts, and spine and heart gave me problems. Just like in real life amirite. [For some reason, I didn't mention how Dynn's infection properly manifested, but: basically, it caused severe heart arrhythmia and wholesale heart failure. He had to build and install his own pacemaker to keep functional.]

But yeah, at this point, the We Have Horrible Demon Infection Crew is assembled, and the only thing left is to get into Silmerein, get to the monument, and get this party started. So by this point, there's been a budding romance forming between Talin and Lima, and you either get a confession before the big event or it edges real goddamn hard, I don't remember which I was going to go with. But you get to the city, you get to the monument, and that's when everything goes to absolute balls.

The romance was completely calculated on Lima's part.

Because, as mentioned, the whole point of this trip was for Lima to go about, collect the now gestating parts of the avatar of Rodimir, and return them all to the source so the avatar can rise again.

So Lima Does the Thing, but after all this time Being a Person, she doesn't want to just go back to being an unconscious part of the avatar. So she pulls a Pope Zera and subsumes his will. So now the avatar is well and truly dead and it's Lima's time to be in charge. Talin is fucking crushed, everybody's just lost a lot of power now that they're not hosting body parts anymore, Clarine [the leader of the Paladins] is freaking out because "Wait, didn't I do everything Imosene told me to? Why didn't this work?" And here's where we get into what her plan was.

See, while the avatar was busy seeding the plague, Imosene was functionally doing the same thing. But she had to expend a lot more juice to do it and wasn't able to craft a wholesale person like Lima to do the collecting. The best she could do was grab the first person who could hear her, and that happened to be Clarine. And all she was really able to tell her was to "gather the parts" and show her who she needed to find.

And Clarine interpreted that literally. She found everybody on her list, but thought she needed to remove the parts from them, not really knowing about the whole gestational period thing. So now we've got a whole lot of underpowered Jesus parts that can't be used for much.

Things are looking pretty fuckin' bad.

At least until this guy shows up.

And he'll be covered in the next batch, along with the first three Paladins of Imosene. So stay tuned, same Silmerein time, same Silmerein channel!

[coffeewithcutcaffeine]

Much has been said and shown about Moldova over the past few weeks, mainly due to the referendum and presidential elections. Nonetheless, very few of us (including myself) have really sat down and tried to immerse ourselves (or at least understand) into the issues ordinary Moldovans have to face on a daily basis. Moldova is always looked upon as Romania's poorer little sister or a heavily Russified region, but to help them integrate themselves, push through the difficulties, and reach a particular goal, we must pay attention and try to hear them first.

The Slovak newspaper Denník N (in cooperation with its Czech counterpart, Deník N) published a wonderful article written by the Czech journalist Petra Procházková that delves deeper into the ordinary Moldovan soul and is a true eye-opener. You may not be able to relate to every opinion shared in the article (God is my witness that I didn't, either), but it might help you understand where it all comes from. It shows why it is important not to remain in our comfortable bubbles but speak out, explain, support our points of view with solid arguments. It also proves that the world sees Eastern Europe as a region not worthy of attention, which is something that must change in the following years.

Here is a link for those who can (and want to) read in Slovak:

For those who cannot but are interested in the topic, I am putting my own translation of the article below (warning, Russophilia mentioned; despite that, I encourage you to read it as someone who genuinely, from the bottom of her heart, cannot stand Russia and what it represents):

I shed all my tears there. How Lora from Moldova uprooted her cherry orchard and why the EU is to blame

(by Petra Procházková, Deník N)

The second round of Moldova’s presidential election on Sunday (November 3) will determine the country’s future. The candidates are the incumbent head of state, Maia Sandu, and the former prosecutor general, Alexandr Stoianoglo. The former represents the pro-Western direction of the country; the latter promises to mend broken relations with Russia, as well as maintain a certain type of neutrality until it becomes clear who will actually win in the region.

A young man in a sweatshirt stands by the stalls at the local market, passing the time. He has just arrived from Italy. Here in the westernmost tip of Moldova, in an area with fertile soil that is hard to find elsewhere in Europe, and people who know how to make the most of it, you cannot find work at all.

‘I’ve been travelling there for three years!’ Nikita says, pulling out his phone to show us some photos. ‘Here we pick watermelons, here pumpkins. They’ve got it nicely organised. They give us free accommodation, they feed us, though they charge a little for food. But not much. I get 7 euros for an hour of hard work. People here wouldn’t even dream of that. But now I have to go home for the winter.’

Around Nikita’s birthplace of Lipcani in Moldova, the soil is as fertile as in Italy. After all, 77 per cent of Moldova is farmland. Everything imaginable is grown here in the north-west. But Nikita is only one person out of a third of the working-age population who pick Italian or Spanish apples instead of Moldovan ones, or who look after feeble German pensioners. They even work as receptionists in Moscow or history teachers in Omsk. The dispersion, both geographical and professional, is enormous.

For there is no one left in Moldova who does not have to stay there.

‘It’d be enough for me to earn 10,000 lei (a little over 500 euros - ed.) at home. And I’d never go anywhere. It’s so beautiful here!’ Nikita says and goes off to kill time.

Cabbage and chrysanthemums

A woman in a warm waistcoat offers cabbage for 7 lei a kilo (about 0.35 euros - ed.). That is a good price. A few kilometres down the road, some men sell it for 10 lei. Ruslana, however, has lowered the price because the customers are few and ‘I’m not going to throw it away’.

‘We own a decent piece of land, but we can’t sell much of the produce. How much do we need per month to be able to live a normal life? About 10,000 lei. And I can’t earn that much from flowers and cabbages. But there is no other work here,’ she says.

Ruslana comes from the village of Trestieni. At home, she has children, a husband, grandparents, a pig, chickens, and several dogs. ‘We bottle and preserve everything we grow, we buy milk from our neighbour or exchange it for what we have in turn. We survive.’

Ruslana will not vote on Sunday. Whether it is one or the other who wins, she says, it will not make any difference to her family.

Even cheaper than Ruslana’s are the cabbage heads of Timur who lives in the neighbouring village of Satul - a kilo for 6 lei (about 0.30 euros - ed.). Neither he nor the other inhabitants of this remote region know that the World Bank has invested millions of euros in various agricultural projects in Moldova - for example, to boost the country’s competitiveness. Timur has heard something about this, but where is the money? He has no idea. Probably in other parts of Moldova. It certainly has not come here.

Nor has he heard that in 2022, the EU has temporarily liberalised trade in seven Moldovan agricultural products: tomatoes, garlic, grapes, apples, cherries, plums, and grape juice. These products were allowed to enter the EU market in larger quantities and with no customs duties. There are dozens of other EU projects and NGOs supporting Moldovan civil society and agriculture, but their echoes do not reach very far here, in the region between Ukraine and Romania.

Sugar and men’s suits at half-price

Timur will vote, but refuses to say who. Besides cabbage, he sells apples, a kilo for 0.50 euros. When he finds out that we are a Czechoslovak team, we get three apples for free. He served in our country in the 1980s, he announces with a smile. He spent two years in the 152nd Engineer Battalion in Zdechovice. He says he liked it there.

‘They say Stoianoglo wants us to be with Russia. But I’m not really sure about that. I have to ask you this. You know what? I’m going to vote, but no matter what the result is, I’m still going to stand here and sell. Sandu is supposed to lead us towards the EU. Stoianoglo towards Russia. You don’t want us in Europe, but Russia would accept us. I don’t think anything will change in my lifetime. For the worse, maybe.’

At home, Timur speaks Romanian, but his Russian is perfectly clear, without any traces of an accent. ‘I switch between languages as I please,’ he says.

The enterprising farmer manages to make a living not only as a ploughman and market seller. Every week he travels to the neighbouring country, Ukraine, to the city of Chernivtsi, for a big shopping trip. ‘It definitely pays off. Because a kilo of apples costs 10 hryvnia there, 10 lei here. But if you buy euros here and then exchange them for hryvnias there, it’s half as cheap as in Moldova,’ he says.

‘In Moldova, you buy a kilo of sugar for 20 lei; in Ukraine, when you re-count the money, convert it and exchange it, it’s 10. I buy what I need, bring what the customs allow me to bring, and sell it cheaply at home. And I can even dress myself well there. A suit here costs half as much as it does in Ukraine. And don’t even get me started on gas! Compared to us, the Ukrainians pay kopeks. But you can’t take gas with you. But these are all small things. What matters is that there is no war.’

The money for a funeral is saved for decades

Timur is one of the few who does not complain significantly or live from hand to mouth.

Vladimir died at the blessed age of 80. That’s quite an achievement by local standards. He had been on sick leave for the last three years, so more money was put aside for the funeral. His wife has survived a stroke and for the past twenty years, she has been thinking about how they will both say their final goodbyes to their fellow villagers. She has been saving money and now, her efforts have finally resulted in a nice, not too flashy, but not too modest funeral.

We are in the westernmost Moldovan village of Criva. It lies in the valley of the Prut River and is one of those villages where the old and the young live in a forced symbiosis. Productive adults have gone abroad to work, both to the West and to the East, to Europe or to Russia. Ideology played very little part in their decision-making. What mattered the most was who knew whom, who they bumped into, who helped them find a job.

‘My friend went there, so I went there as well,’ is the most common answer from Moldovans at the tip of the region gripped from above by Ukraine and from below by Romania.

The late Yuri’s daughter lives in Canada. This time, she sent more money than usual to help give her father a decent funeral feast. He deserved it. He drove a tractor in an agricultural county where the soil is the right colour and consistency. He supposedly did his job better than anyone else. He lived to see the collapse of collective farms and the decline of one of the most fertile parts of Europe, according to his relatives who also worked in agriculture. But the collectives collapsed with the fall of the Soviet Union, the borders with Russia remain closed, and nobody wants their apples, cabbages, nuts, potatoes, garlic, onions, or watermelons anymore.

A funeral is the worst kind of nightmare for Moldovans, and not only because it is a sad event associated with the death of a loved one. It also eats up a large part of the family’s savings. The final farewell here has its iron rules: the deceased’s shoes must be put on, and they must be dressed in new clothes, including underwear. This costs 3,000 lei. A car to take the open coffin with the body to the cemetery costs 2,000 lei. This, of course, is in addition to the payment for the priest’s services. If the body has been previously deposited in a morgue, one has to pay another 2,800 lei.

A new gravestone and the work involved in digging the grave and placing the coffin in it cost another few thousand lei. The most modest table in a restaurant costs around 6,000 lei. This is another trauma for the family, if we stop thinking for a moment about the death of a loved one - such a modest feast is considered a disgrace. In short, for less than 20,000 lei, you cannot secure a ‘decent’ funeral.

And a wedding? Unless you invite at least a hundred people, it is not a Moldovan wedding. In that case, you need to prepare at least 80,000 lei.

Victoria is saving money for a dance with her great-grandson

Campaigning for the election is not exactly a big affair here. There are only a few posters of Alexandr Stoianoglo, the challenger to the current Moldovan president Maia Sandu, in Lipcani and the surrounding villages. Lipcani is, for a change, the northernmost town in Moldova. From here, it is close to Ukraine as well as to Romania.

Alongside the posters, we finally come across a live campaign in the form of a woman in a stall holding a newspaper with Stoianoglo’s picture on the front cover. The volunteer’s name is Victoria. She has two grown-up children: a son who works in Russia, and a seriously ill daughter whom she looks after. Her daughter, Victoria’s granddaughter, also lives in Russia. Victoria worked all her productive life in the food distribution department of the local agricultural trade union. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the union.

‘How can you abolish agriculture in an agricultural country?’ she asks angrily, hoping that Mr Stoianoglo will steer the country in the right direction. ‘This president [Sandu] is leading us to ruin,’ she warns the few people who pass her by. The town, like all the surrounding villages, does not give a lively impression. The most active part of the population is somewhere in Europe or Russia.

Victoria has her reasons to complain. She has to work very hard to get something to eat. Not only does she hand out newspapers with Stoianoglo’s face on them, but she is also rewarded in kind. She refuses to reveal with what or how much.

‘I worked for thirty-eight years. In one place! And now, my pension is 2,770 lei (142 euros - ed.). My granddaughter used to help us from Russia, but then they closed the banks! We haven’t been able to receive anything from her in months! Tell me, is it my fault what is happening, and that because of this, the Russian banks are closed and I will starve to death here?’

Victoria lives in an old house that has never had gas. That seems to be an advantage now that prices have risen sharply again in the last year. Russian gas prices have been perfectly mirroring the deteriorating relations between Russia and Moldova over the last few years. As a result, raw materials are becoming more expensive. After Chișinău joined the anti-Russian coalition condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Moldova had to give up cheap Russian raw materials for good. Many Moldovans take this personally, blaming both President Sandu and the EU.

‘We use wood for heating. Imagine, a cubic metre of wood cost 700 lei a few years ago. Now I had to buy a cubic metre for 1,400 lei. But if I wanted to heat my house, I wouldn’t have enough money to pay for electricity. I also have to pay for the internet. How else can I keep in touch with my granddaughter?’

A disability pension for her daughter could not be arranged. She is not the first person to tell us that it ‘does not work so easily here’. Mostly, she complains, it costs money. ‘To get the pension, you have to pay the official. And I don’t have the money for that right now.’

The granddaughter - now a geography and maths teacher with Russian citizenship living in distant Omsk - found herself literally on the other side of the front line as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Without her financial help, both Victoria’s and her daughter’s situation has worsened dramatically. Victoria is genuinely upset about the sanctions; she says the war in Ukraine, literally just a few kilometres away, is none of her business. And the European Union? It has caused all of this.

‘I am going to vote because if Stoianoglo wins, maybe he will help me hug my great-grandson one day,’ explains Victoria.

Daniel is in sixth grade. ‘They send us pictures of themselves in the park, at the cinema, playing sports. They live like royalty! And how he does ballroom dances, in a tuxedo and with a little girl, they both look like something out of a fairy tale. When I manage to save a few kopeks here and there, I send it to him so he can buy something for himself. You know why? To remind him of his grandmother and great-grandmother. So he knows he has us still.’

Victoria has seen Daniel twice - as a baby and when he was four years old. That was when her granddaughter could still come to visit her family in Moldova. But then came the COVID and the war.

‘Why, I am not afraid that the Russians will attack us. They’re like that, you know, if you leave them alone and don’t provoke them, they’ll leave you alone as well. We have to get along with them somehow,’ Victoria declares, adding: ‘I was born in the USSR, I went to school and worked all my life in the USSR. I learned everything in the USSR. I had everything I needed then. And now I live like a pauper. But I still want to do one thing - dance at Daniel’s wedding.’

Why should an Italian baker be any better?

Sitting by a half-empty box of tiny garlic heads, she is annoyed. Her name is Lelia. She worked as a saleswoman all her productive life and even managed to work her way up to a restaurant manager. ‘One euro buys two loaves of bread. That’s what we ended up with,’ she laughs bitterly.

Lelia celebrated her 83rd birthday on October 4. In 1996, she decided that her life was not over yet and went to Italy to look after a feeble Italian man with a pension of over 2,000 euros. ‘His family paid me 1,200 euros a month. The grandpa was ninety, he was good to me. He worked all his life as a baker, and look at what a nice pension he had.’

With this statement, any praise for Europe ends. ‘And I brought up six children, worked for thirty-eight years, and got what? A pension of 1,800 lei. 93 euros! What makes that baker better than me? Did he have eleven grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren like me? Go to hell with your EU!’ she shouts at us, as though we were to blame for her misery and need.

‘Russia is rich. You have nothing. No real natural resources. So no need to quarrel with the Russians,’ she concludes. ‘And yet you and Sandu want to drag us into a war.’

Her daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren live in Russia. She will never have that kind of money. One of her younger grandchildren, however, works in France. ‘He graduated from two universities and got a job here in Moldova for a stupid 300 euros. How can you start a family on that? So he went to Paris to work as a taxi driver. With a degree in economics. If you believe in God, may He protect you,’ she ends the conversation with us because she says it leads nowhere. She is probably right.

It is all the fault of ‘those at the top’

The lady at the next stall has a pension of 1,900 lei (98 euros - ed.). Lora can count very well, she is an engineer. ‘Last year we uprooted twelve hectares of cherries. Oh, no! No disease! We grew them with love, but the real drudgery was picking them, and then we had to throw it all away three years in a row! Throw it away, you understand? We tried to sell a kilo of cherries here for 10 lei (0.50 euros - ed.), but nobody wanted to buy them. People are more likely to buy sugar or bread, but cherries? So we uprooted them. These twelve hectares are now a salt pan because I shed all the tears I had left there.’

Nothing grows on the land where the cherries, once a luxury item on Moscow’s markets, once grew on their trees. Thistles and weeds have taken over. Lora has kept two cows and is trying to sell her own cheese. Not a single person has come to her stall in the hour we have been talking to her.

‘We used to export everything to Russia before, but now? Not even a potato. Not even a litre of wine. Everything is closed, blocked, you can’t transfer any money, and you can’t get the goods across the border. So we sit here in the square with our goods like fools, waiting to see how the elections turn out. And what will they change? Nothing. And you in Europe are going to let us in with our apples? You have yours,’ Lora concludes.

When Lora’s Soviet collective farm disappeared, she fell from the pedestal of a chief economist to a job as a cleaner at a petrol station. But even that recently closed. She is left with two cows, which she says eat more than they earn.

Even Lora, the spokeswoman for the highly educated market workers, does not know what needs to change to make life better for Moldovans. She says the elections are useless. After a long silence, she shrugs her shoulders and finally reveals the secret of Moldova’s crisis: ‘What to do? You have to ask those at the top.’

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

Judging Doctor Who: Thirteenth Doctor

(This is all in good fun, I don't take fandom seriously)

Good episodes I like

The Ghost Monument - Good start of bonding for companions that don't actually know each other that well. Slow in places, but also funny with a good series of ridiculous dangers. Also I like that we're back to companions via accidental kidnapping!

Rosa - There are so many good things here! I appreciate the show finally acknowledging the historical racism companions face. But also the heist-level antics their ever-changing plan has to deal with are so good and amusing. Good familial tension between Ryan and Graham.

Demons of the Punjab - I really enjoyed the historical, and it was really complex but also sweet. And it was time for an episode where the scary aliens aren't the real bad guys.

It Takes You Away - Very literal metaphor for getting lost in grief! A blind character played by a blind actor whose blindness isn't the biggest part of her character! The Doctor befriends a lonely sentient universe who is at the time shaped like a frog! Also there's a passing mention of a sheep uprising, and I now need THAT in the form of a novel.

The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos - Sure the plot itself could be more put together, but I love the worldbuilding of the Ux and their religion, and it has been a while since there was a planet-stealing plot.

Fugitive of the Judoon - One of my favorites! I love the reveal you never see coming, the way this show only using established fob watching for ridiculous things every five seasons or so, the fugitive Doctor's entire character, the mystery around her, and the way that despite seeming to be part of the timeless child arc, she has the TARDIS, which means she comes sometime after the first Doctor and in no way messes up the timeline.

Praxeus - Love the confusion and the companions picking up companions thing. Love the nod to microplastics and pollution. Just generally pretty good.

Ascension of the Cybermen - I like them running around the apparent end of the (humanity's) universe, when we know there is a future but they don't. I like the cybermen reveals. And yes, I don't like where it's going, but the shock of walking onto a dead Gallifrey was such a good moment.

Revolution of the Daleks - This one has everything: the Doctor imprisoned and gaining decades more trauma! (while stewing in other horrific new trauma!) Companions on their own having to be the heroes! Yaz pining! Jack's back! Classic dalek plot! Excellent non-tragic send off for Graham and Ryan, letting them continue to help people!

The Halloween Apocalypse - The Lupari are so much fun!!! I love how much this season jumps around between perspectives and lets you catch up. If the entire universe has to be in danger (again), at least the flux is interesting and different. There could, however, be some more Halloween in this apocalypse.

War of the Sontarans - Hardly anything is set in the Crimean war, so that's fun. Also sontarans are always great enemies, and I love historical revision episodes.

Once, Upon Time - Still loving the jumping perspectives, and the fugitive Doctor backstory.

Eve of the Daleks - Time loop! Daleks! Sweet, awkward, imperfect love story!!

Legend of the Sea Devils - Was this the best use of sea devils? Nope! But it was fun—there was a Chinese lady pirate! And the Doctor and Yaz finally got to talk and yes, I ship them but yes, I think the most in character thing is for the Doctor to explain that she can’t maintain a relationship. She can barely manage the usual companion situation!

The Power of the Doctor - Yes, I hate the cybermasters. But the rest of the episode was too good for me not to like. This wonderful, unnecessarily complicated plan is so very the Master. He's literally Rasputin! Plus, the start of bringing back classic companions all grown up, which is a trend I love. And there's a weird sexual tension in the Master turning the Doctor into himself. And yes, I liked the utter confusion of regenerating into the same body again.

Bad episodes I like

The Tsuranga Conundrum - The setup was good, the conclusion made no sense and felt like they wrote themselves into a corner without an answer. But I enjoyed the characters along the way!

Survivors of the Flux - I struggled with where to put this one. I like it all except the actual conclusion of the season long arc! So it goes here. I loved Yaz and Dan being trapped in history, and Yaz pining again, and the weird doorways to everywhere. But Tecteun was random, and either should be dead or (if she gave herself infinite regenerations) should at least have been hinted at all season. And the flux was an interesting mystery, and the answer being that it's purpose was to destroy the Doctor and all the good she's done was a little boring. What happened to no one ever hearing about this one silly guy and just trying to take over the universe for their own purposes?

Good episodes I don't like

The Witch finders - It was fine, but I found it kind of uninteresting.

Orphan 55 - Also fine, but I really don't enjoy such hopeless climate episodes.

Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror - Again, it was fine but didn't really hold my attention. And not enough of it happens at night.

Bad episodes I don't like

Arachnids in the UK - Strong start, disappointing ending. They set up this evil businessman and then took care of the spiders but did nothing about him.

Kerblam! - What is this?? One of the worst episodes of all time, though I don't hate it quite as much as Listen. They set up cool space Amazon, showed just how awful it was, and then had the answer be a plot by the disenfranchised humans against the customers and stopped that and did nothing to deal with the company. It was awful! Why is it one of Thirteen's only 2 novelizations??

Resolution - I liked the parts of Ryan and his dad, but the dalek plot wasn't the best and we really didn't need to be giving daleks sudden new abilities.

Can You Hear Me? - The idea was alright, but the execution felt clumsy, and like it was trying to do several genres of story at once.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati - I really wanted to like this one, but I didn't. It didn't hold my attention. Plus cybermen don't need additional lore and abilities either.

The Timeless Children - I'm actually ok with the Doctor's foundling backstory. It exists as both canon and irrelevant to me, depending on what I prefer for the current story. But I absolutely cannot forgive, after bringing back post-war Gallifrey and using it for ONE episode, immediately killing everyone on the planet forever. I hate this, I cried so much the first time and hate it even more now after getting into the audios.

Village of the Angels - It just didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the Flux series vibes.

The Vanquishers - I liked the Doctor putting her lost memories deep in the TARDIS for later, but don't care for any of the rest of the way the Flux was wrapped up.

Episodes that were kinda offensive

The Woman Who Fell to Earth - I actually like this intro a lot, but they fridged Grace, ANOTHER Black partner of a white companion. Come on, Doctor Who!

Spyfall - Ok, in some ways this was the perfect reintro of the Master. I liked the spy thing. However. It did so many things that were just offensive. Having the first non white Master work with the nazis, for instance, and then punishing him by revealing his race and leaving him to them! WTF!

[superwholockednico]

First time watching the 13th doctor Thoughts

First off, this is my first time getting 'not my doctor' syndrome. I think this may be because all the other doctors were already doctors when I started watching Doctor Who.

(While all of capaldi's seasons weren't out then, I was aware going into the fandom that he was one of the doctors. I also watched all the seasons near consecutively during summer break, so I never had time to be like. Noo I want to watch the last doctor. Because I just wanted to watch more doctor who.)

But this time it was different. I was looking at a lady I knew as an actor (from Chibnall's other work, Broadchurch (my beloved!)) and from her cover of Yellow, of all things.

Perhaps more importantly, I came in knowing many people didn't like her seasons. Which is weird.

Like, it is a weird experience going into a show you love being like. Ok so is it as bad as people say.

I have experience in this. I watched supernatural. (of course) And I was a bit behind on the show, always a handful of seasons behind, so I knew I was heading nowhere good. But with supernatural, you never know when it gets bad (expect the last episode. I know that one is ass). The best episodes are in the worst seasons and the worst seasons sometimes have the best ideas and its a mess. But people (on twitter, especially) gave me this idea that 13's seasons were all worse quality.

It really wasn't.

Now I'm only on season 1, and the timeless child arch is still to come, which I fear as I don't like the concept from what I've heard (i really like the idea of the doctor as just some person fumbling around, hence why I like 12 better than 11). But for now. It's a pretty good show.

The episodes feel very rewatchable to me.

Compared to the much more interconnected stories going on in 11 and 12's run, every episode of season 11 could be watched alone with little explanation. Not that that is better or worse, but it means I can def go back and pick a random episode to rewatch whenever I need.

And It is fun!

Almost every episode in this season was super fun! Obviously they had some more emotionally charged ones ('demons of punjab', 'the battle of ranskoor av kolos' (the finale), and maybe a bit of 'It Take You Away') but overall there were a lot of really fun moments and sites and it was somewhat whimsical at times but not in the same way as 11. The peak example being Kerblam!

The characters were also what made it so fun.

They're a jolly little crew of fellas traveling through space togather. No one feels like the 'main character' (ok Ryan sort of does. Because he started off the show you know, Rose style?). So far, it is Yasmin who feels like the tack on.

Which is funny because the only companion I've heard about at length is Yaz and how great she is and so far I am like, oh yeah, she had a few episodes (Arachnids in the UK and Demons of Punjab). Like I don't really care about her yet. I don't feel connected with her.

You know who I do feel connected/invested in. MY OLD MAN. GRAHAM CRACKER. (not cus he's white, it's a brand guys). i love this old man. I feel for him. I wanted his revenge when he wanted his revenge. I was so happy for him when he was happy that Ryan called him gramps (or whatever he called him). Like I was literally giggling cus he was happy over it and that made me happy cus I was emotionally invested in him!

I liked the idea of Graham before I watched this season actually, due to a reddit post where someone was like, best crossover would be three old men (the 12th doctor and graham and wilf) running around for an episode. And I was like, omg that is an amazing idea.

Okay I need a whole post for the Fam and how I actually love having a little crew in the tardis. Next post it is.

[whovianwatchingstartrek]

A Whovian Watches Star Trek for the First Time: Part 050 - Archer Captured and T'Pol Down Bad

Star Trek: Enterprise - Season 2 Episode 25 - Bounty

Getting close to the end of Season 2, meaning I'm more or less halfway through Enterprise.

The episode begins with a visitor desperate to talk to Archer. Specifically, someone who belongs to a new species called the Tellarites. He seems pleasant enough, but that's soon revealed to be a ruse, even still in the cold open, as a stuns Trip and then kidnaps Archer.

This episode is a follow up to Judgement! The Tellarite has been hired to return Archer after his prison break. Unfortunately it doesn't follow up on the Kolos stuff, but it does touch on a few of the issues of the Klingon justice system. Archer does a good job trying to play on the Tellarite's emotions to let him go, but it doesn't work. The action in Archer's half of the episode is good, especially his escape from the Klingon ship, and I like that Archer found a solution that works for both him and the Tellarite.

Trip is left in command of Enterprise as T'Pol is stuck in Decon with Phlox. We've had a few of these weird scenes in Decon, and they've all been really awkward, but this one is a new level. Weird leg shots aside, T'Pol is starting to show signs of paranoia, aggression and later horniness. At first I thought it might have been symptom of whatever pathogen is infecting her and phlox, but apparently it's part of the Vulcan mating cycle, and if she doesn't mate, she'll die. If you asked me to pick which members of the crew would be the first two to end up sleeping together, T'Pol and Phlox would not have been my first guess at any point in the series. The Vulcan 7 year mating cycle had been mentioned a few times before, I really wasn't expecting this. T'Pol is an attractive woman, and she does make my bisexual brain do things, but I really do have to question the motives behind the writer's choice to have an episode that is essentially dedicated Sweaty T'Pol running around Enterprise in her underwear while Horny out of her mind.

I feel like this one could have done with a couple redrafts particularly around it's B-Plot, but it was well put together. It just felt bizarre to watch.

Comparing my Enjoyment of this Episode with a Doctor Who Universe Story of the Same Title

Doctor Who - Tales From the TARDIS Volume 2 - Bounty

It's an audio story without it's own cover art, I don't have an image to put here, so I'm just throwing in a random image of the Eighth Doctor

So, Bounty exists in a weird place it's a short audio original story, that's the only original story on a release that mostly consists of adaptations of other Doctor Who works.

It's set early on in the Sam era of the Eighth Doctor Adventure novels, specifically immediately after the first book in that range. The thing with narrated audio books like this is, you've only got one actor to sell the whole story, and Paul McGann, who is normally a brilliant Actor, really doesn't sound enthusiastic about this one. Whether or not it was that or the absolute lack of plot in the short story, getting through this one felt like a chore. Basically, an Alien steals the TARDIS Key, and a not very interesting chase across a beach happens. Not much to chew on, really. No interesting character work, because a random side audio story can't really do anything with the EDA characters, those books were still being written at the time. Not much world building, not much insightful commentary. This one was definitely a dud, and I think Paul McGann Narrating it agrees.

As weird as Enterprise's Bounty was, it at least made me feel something, it at least was entertaining. I can't say the same about Tales from the TARDIS's Bounty.

Some day, I'll get a Star Trek episode that shares a title with a good Doctor Who story.

[adventure-showdown]

What is your favourite Doctor Who story?

ROUND 1 MASTERPOST

synopses and propaganda under the cut

The Tsuranga Conundrum

Synopsis

As the Thirteenth Doctor and her friends end up stranded without the TARDIS on a hospital ship in space, with a strange and potentially deadly intruder on board, it is up to them, the crew, and the patients to figure out what it is, what it wants, and how to stop it before the creature tears the ship apart.

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

The Battle Ranskoor Av Kolos

Synopsis

Team TARDIS discovers nine different distress calls, all coming from the same location on an unknown planet in the far future. Little does the Thirteenth Doctor know that her very first enemy has survived throughout the centuries, and is looking to get revenge upon her in a crueller way than is even imaginable.

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

Praxeus

Synopsis

What connects strange bird behaviour in the skies above a Madagascan beach to mysterious deaths by a deadly virus that seems to be spreading? And what does a famous British astronaut have to do with all of this? Can the Doctor, Ryan, Graham and Yaz solve this puzzle before it's too late?

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

Can You Hear Me?

Synopsis

What connects the nightmares of a young girl from 1380 Aleppo to strange happenings in the present day? Who is the shadowy figure who appears in the night? And what have they got to do with a young woman in the far future, trapped in an impossible prison? Time catches up with the Doctor's friends, whose wants and dreams are set on colliding. They must now embark on a mission that will draw out their innermost fears, to be confronted.

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

Flux

Synopsis

The Doctor must stop a deadly force slowly destroying the universe, but the trouble doesn't end there as old enemies and new seek to take advantage

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

Legend of the Sea Devils

Synopsis

When the legendary pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao, alias "Madam Ching", awakens an antediluvian Sea Devil extremist, the Doctor's TARDIS is pulled off-course and Team TARDIS must try to work together with the historical rogue to save the entire Earth from global flood. But amidst the high-stakes, high-sea adventure, it soon becomes clear the stakes for everyone involved — even the Thirteenth Doctor and Yaz — are much more personal than a legendary sunken treasure, or even the all-important Keystone...

Propaganda no propaganda submitted