#he describes it in terms of like- an in-game raid battle and it makes so much sense to me

[rotteneldritchhorror]

I’m watching hasan dissect that fucking Alabama riverboat brawl and holy shit I wasn’t aware of the full details but Jesus fucking Christ this is beautiful

Cw for like— a lot of violence (half of which is racially motivated

THE FUCKING HAT THROW AT THE BEGINNING IS SO GOOD

[shadowonwater]

Pokemon Scarlet Playthrough part 11: Getting Schooled

Playthrough Masterlist

So I decided before going north to evolve some Pokemon to fill out my dex and then go to school for classes again. For the most part the evolving went well, but evolving Pawmo was a tedious nightmare. So yeah then I went to school again to catch up on my classes.

Art 3: He just explained that tera types can be used to avoid a Pokemon's normal weakness and that you can change the Tera type at the treasure eatery. Also he goes on a tangent about the mystery of snowflakes looking alike. I'm pretty sure it's a physics thing, Hassel.

Art Midterm: it's just a quiz, a very basic quiz for children. I got some exp candy though for passing.

Art 4: oooo grass gym leader is here! wow, these two are close. He asked if you can guess what mood he was in when he made his statue, and I'm like, idk??? "Surrendering" sounds sad though. He's like "no! You're wrong!". Proceeds to describe his mood.. which sounds like he was sad (in very simple terms).

Anyway Brass is like "Don't get too caught up in what sells, make what you want to make." A nice message, although it's lacking in the nuance of harsh reality, but what can you expect from a kid' game. It was funny when Hassel started bawling from Brass's story of his art journey.

Art 5: He tells the class about the 10 sights of Paldea, I haven't been to all of them, obviously. But I've been to a fair few, I do want to find them all though.

Battle Studies 3: Dendra talks about Tera Shields in Tera Raid battles, I don't think I remember ever seeing one, maybe they only show up in higher difficulties?

Battle Studies Midterm: Very easy, simple questions. Asking about Dendra's favorite type gave me a slight pause, but I remembered it.

Battle Studies 4: Stuff about the Let's Go feature and auto battles.

Battle Studies 5: Dendra talks about the TM making machines. Nothing exciting except for mentioned that there have been issues of people hacking to get LP.

I think this raises up an issue that purely digital currently like LP would have, hacking. I think the existence of LP as a currency is kind of bizarre. Because it's like there are two separate currencies of equal value, why not just have one? Also the LP that Penny gives me when I beat up Team Star might be hacked, she is a hacker after all. I might be using illegal money.

Math 3: A random thought that popped into my head, wouldn't it be funny if the History Teacher was the one named Tyme? and not the Math one? Puns are good, if this was Ace Attorney, I'd be the History Teacher.

Anyway... teach is like "Yall like horoscopes?" me: "no." Anyway she talks about Critical Hits. I didn't know that they were 1 in 24 normally, but I don't care too much about that. Challenge runners might tho. But yeah, Tyme, I am aware that there is a lot of probability in Pokemon battles.

Math Midterm: As always, these are pretty easy. Even the math one isn't too bad.

Math 4: Just because I passed your class doesn't mean I like numbers, ma'am. She talks about stat boosts in battle. Once again I am bested by math, even in a kids game. I am terrible with percentages.

Math 5: oh god, it's percentages again. Nevermind, she's just talking about accuracy. I personally prefer more accurate moves. Amusing to hear that people debate in the Pokemon world about which moves are better. I mean, it makes sense but it's still amusing.

Home Ec 3: He just talks about PP.

Home Ec Midterm: you know how it goes easy. Except for a weird question about what affects meal powers. I don't think it makes sense that the color of utensils or the amount of people eating should affect it.

Home Ec 4: talking about multiple people making a long sandwich reminds me of this post I saw once. Basically someone had a tradition with their family of making a ridiculously long sub sandwich and then cutting it into people's individual pieces. It also amuses me that it was Arven asking for advice. I imagine Arven really likes this class.

Home Ec 5: He talks about washing your Pokemon during picnics. He mentions there are areas where Pokemon don't like to be washed, brings to mind fire types with fire-y areas on their body. And that there Pokemon who don't like being washed at all, again fire types come to mind, as to ground and rock. Those Pokemon have a reason to avoid water, even if it's not reflected in gameplay.

Biology 3: Apparently Jacq and Clevell used to work together before getting into education. I wonder where they used to work together. Anyway he's just talking about ways to make it easier to catch Pokemon. Nothing I don't already know.

Biology Midterm: easy quiz. The extra question he tacked onto the end was cute. Yes the Pokedex is easy to use, but I wish it had filters.

Biology 4: He talks about Pokemon Evolution. I find funny saying stuff like "Press the B Button" imagine saying that irl. Anyway it's shame he didn't get to finish what he was saying . I don't know how to evolve Primape but when I decide to i'll use the internet. But it would be nice if it was stated in game how to do it.

Biology 5: He talks about Shiny Pokemon. He even brings up the Masuda Method. He brings up that, while it's a known phenomenon, it's unknown why it happens. It's fun that he talks about the Shiny charm as if it were more an urban legend than fact. I mean in a why it's just a good luck charm afterall.

Languages 3: Once again, my pre-existing knowledge of French and German is really backing me up. You don't need to tell us about your marital dispute, teach.

Languages Midterm: Easy, I don't know why he included his name in the test.

Languages 4: He talks about how Pokemon communicate and had his Pikachu act as an example. He also mentions how there are Pokemon who can communicate in ways other than sound, like telepathy. I just think it's neat how colorful the world of Pokemon can be.

Languages 5: More talk about understanding the meaning of Pokemon crys. I love how proud of itself the Pikachu looks when the students are clapping for it.

History 3: Apparently the school building is really old, about 800 years old. But the Pokeball part is new and the Raifort doesn't like that way it looks. Pokeballs are a popular design element in universe, but I guess there are people who aren't into it. So yeah , a real old prestigious academy, well known, even outside Paldea. Do you suppose a lot of Poke Professors have passed through here?

History Midterm: Very easy, I love fictional lore, lol.

History 4: She tells a fairy tale (hell yeah I love tales). So a king got 4 treasures (interesting that there are 4 when there's 1 of you + 3 friends) he gets them from a merchant from the East (where I wonder, Johto? Sinnoh? Maybe even just Kalos) and the king's castle gets destroyed (were the treasures destroyed along with it? was the castle cursed by the treasure or was it a coincidence?) Teach says you can ask her after class to hear the rest of the story, I hope that's true.

History 5: Some guy called Heath, I've never heard his name mentioned before but he wrote the Scarlet Book. A book talking about the findings of a Team from 200 years ago that actually managed to make it to the depths of Area Zero and back.

People calling Heath a liar is making me think of Noland the Liar from One Piece. Guy who finds something fantastical and tells other people about it but no one believes him because he wasn't able to back up his claim beyond his word. Rip Heath.

It's interesting that there are things in the Pokemon World that are considered too fantastical to be real. And that the paranormal is a thing. But the Pokemon World is already really fantastical. Like uhhh Ghost types?? And Legendaries?? Is that not fantastical enough to believe that this other stuff could be real?

Also another thing, talking about an expedition into a mysterious area reminds me of a book trilogy I'm found of called The Southern Reach Trilogy, also could be known the Annihilation Trilogy. I know there's a movie based off it, or at least the 1st book anyway but I haven't watched it, I would like to though.

So I'm going to go around and talk to some of the teachers again.

With Jacq I now have 200 Pokemon registered so he gave me 20 Quick Balls. Which is epic, Quick Balls are some of my favorite Pokeballs.

Raifort tells me the rest of the tale. The treasures were Pokemon! I wonder what kind they are... apparently they are sealed somewhere in Area Zero, guess I'll have to try to find them when I get in there. Sword makes me think of both Zacian and the Honedge line. But I'm not really sure what the others could be.

Tyme... I'm a bit concerned for her. Apparently someone's been watching her? Hope she's ok. I looked around but I didn't see anyone looking at her, at least not on the ground floor.

Clavell asks about my favorite teacher (I choose Raifort because Pokemon history class is really interesting, let's goooo for lore!) Clavell asked me about what hairstyles were popular among the youth. Just to see his reaction I said Pompadour, he was very happy when I said that, lol.

The nurse, Miriam is studying to try to become a Health Teacher, good luck, I'll be cheering you on!

Dendra is trying to learn to make better sandwiches. It was funny when the Home Ec teacher shook his head after the player tries the sandwich and it tastes terrible. When I first saw her there I was wondering if she might have thing for the Home Ec Teacher. I'll think about maybe shipping them.

Saguaro, the home ec teacher almost gives into peer pressure to eat a spicy sandwich, it's very funny, but I save the day, sort of. Apparently because everybody thinks he's cool, he tries to act that way. Not a great way to live if you ask me.

Talked to Tyme again, the person following her was a student wanting to ask a question, like she theorized. The student should apologies for scaring her teacher by somewhat stalking her.

Talked to Sanguaro again, he wants help in finding some sort of incredibly sweet condiment.

Talked to Dendra again. She was trying to make Miriam eat one of her sandwiches. A month ago, apparently Dendra made her a meat sandwich that was nothing but meat... including the bread. If the game would have let me I would have sided w/ Miriam. No one should ever feel pressured to eat something like that. It worked ok this time because Dendra truly has become better at sandwich making though. Another though, instead of Dendra x Sanguaro howabout Dendra x Miriam and she was trying to get better at sandwichs to impress her.

Talked to Hassel in the schoolyard, I don't know what the fuck that was. Some lady came up and he was like "I told you not to talk to me while I'm here." and she's like "it's a grave matter of importance to the family." What is Hassel part of some rich family or something, seriously, what was that?

Talked to Salvatore, he found a Pawmi that looked worse for were and was freaking out like "whatdoido?whatdoido?" Then he asked me if I had a potion, I sure as fuck do, I have so many you wouldn't believe. He think it might be a wild one that's wondered onto academy grounds, but it could be a trainer's he's going to look after it in the meantime. I bet this storyline ends with him keeping it, but I guess we'll see.

I decided to continue the Salvatore plot. The Pawmi is healthy and uninjured but it's not making any sounds. It is indeed a wild Pawmi that ran onto school grounds. I could be off basis but perhaps it may not be making sounds because it's deaf? Not sure if Pokemon would go for that but I'm digging the idea of the language learning a new language-sign language- to communicate with his new friend. It could also be mute, or as he theorized, just shocked. But I think the storyline I thought up of would be really interesting, and meaningful.

And now for our last, for now, update on school storylines. Hassel is indeed from some prestigious family, a family of dragon tamers! I wonder if he is related to Lance's family at all... Well he was supposed to be the head but he ran away and eventually became an elite four member and an art teacher. I wonder if he uses dragon types or something else. Well apparently his father is very sick and that was what the emergency was about.

So yeah I meant this post to have more than just school but... that didn't happen. Next post though, I'm going north.

[risingsouls]

[Okay, so I'm bored at work (I still have one lizard to answer and I will absolutely do that either later or sometime this week), so I'm going to ramble about the young vs old thing with Ganondorf in OoT I mentioned yesterday.

I think it's safe maybe to say that, even though they're super ambiguous about it, I think it's hinted at that Ganondorf was involved in the Civil War (and maybe this was just the manga, but I think it's also maybe implied that he killed Link's parents??? It's been a hot minute since I played all the way through OoT and an even hotter minute since I read the manga), and therefore probably decently aged in OoT. It's also hard to say how much time has passed since the Civil War, too. But again, it's safe to say I think he's meant to be like...40s to 50s likely? Again, there isn't much to go on, but the way OoT and people describe him in game, it sounds like he's pretty well-established and older.

THAT SAID. I'm not a fan of that. Like it's fine. It doesn't hold that much bearing toward anything. But the idea of this younger king, especially from a people that they definitely view as well beneath them, coming in and just shocking everyone with his passion, ambition, and cunning just feels...right? I don't know how to describe it but I'll try to go into some detail.

So, if you've followed me for any length of time, especially before when Nabooru had her own blog, you'll know that I have her being too young to actually fight in the Civil War. She was alive and well aware of what was going on and the tolls it took on the Gerudo, though. Since I HC that Ganondorf is only a few years older than her, the same would be true for him: he wasn't old enough to participate directly but was definitely aware and it was definitely a teaching moment for the future king (at this point I HC he was kept with Twinrova at the Spirit Temple most of the time, though they of course paraded him out from time to time and to remind the Gerudo they and exist as well as to show off how great of a teacher they are). So basically he was definitely fed all the details, every command and casuality, and expected to learn from the current leaders and generals while also being urged to learn from their mistakes and formulate his own potential plans of attack, strategies, etc. Thus, he was definitely more in the know than Nabooru but the point is, both were too young to actually fight in the war but certainly felt and understood its impact on their people.

You're probably wondering why that makes them not being physically involved more interesting because involvement and seeing the horrors of battle and the war first hand would be a perfect motivator for both of them. And that's true of course. But I guess I really like the idea of them both developing their passion for the Gerudo and helping them and elevating them on their own more interesting and appealing. They saw what happened and what continued to happen after the unification (which I really think was absolutely unfair and skewed against the Gerudo; I HC it was underhanded shit put in the terms of surrender/the treaty that was basically meant to at least push the Gerudo away all because they were the last to surrender and fought the hardest to maintain their sovereignty) and that lit a fire under their asses. ESPECIALLY for Nabooru as she got older because, at first, she really just wanted to be a warrior and fight and raid to her heart's content. But the older she got, the more she learned from others and just witnessing had her wanting to join the Elite for more than just the status of it; she wanted the position to really help her people on a deeper level than just defending them from threats and being a thief. She and Ganondorf craved Gerudo sovereignty and independence but, as we see, their ideas and methods for achieving it are VERY different in the end.

Not to mention like...out with the old, in with the new feeling. The old way of life beginning just before the war and especially after would have changed drastically for the Gerudo. They were forced to resort to thieving to stay alive. They were allies with people that, to some degree, would rather just see them fade away, and learning how to tread the new lines was new for the Gerudo, especially when, until Ganondorf took the throne, the leaders sent to Hyrule were female and I highly doubt the Hylians had much respect for them (and even Ganondorf likely only got a smidgen more for having a peen). So the idea of Ganondorf and Nabooru having to come into this new situation in their late teens to early twenties is incredible to me because they definitely show they're both forces to be reckoned with and, while they play the game (Ganondorf far better than Nabooru, but she's got her own methods), they're working to show that they are indeed the fighters everyone feared both on and off the battlefield. I can't say they're fully successful considering how things end up BUT I definitely think they both had their work cut out for them and facing it head on without much experience, especially on Nabooru's part who definitely had to learn A LOT the hard way, is just MMMMMM.

Last point goes more to Ganondorf but I also like him being fairly young in OoT because that offers more room to show his growth and maturity because I do not accept the Demise curse thing. In OoT, we absolutely see a cocky and self-assured king who believes he is untouchable even BEFORE he obtains the Triforce of Power. It not only reeks of a young adult but of a young monarch whose people adore him (not to the point of worshipping him like people suggest in game BUT I do think Ganondorf was well-loved and respected as their king among the Gerudo which is another slew of HCs that I won't go into here). Even after Link defeats him the first time results in basically a temper tantrum because he was SO SURE this kid shouldn't be able to touch him. No one should be able to. Like imagine how many tried and failed throughout the seven years. So seeing him learn from experience throughout the games as well as just maturing through age and refining himslef and his strategy to what we see in WW and TP is just really neat to me and a stronger statement. By making him younger initially, we get to see him grow up in a sense. We get to really see just how much power, greed, and impossible circumstances can corrupt even those who haven't been in the game all that long. And to me that's just *chef's kiss*.]

[ofcowardiceandkings]

Can I get you to infodump about the danelaw because I literally only know about it from crusader kings 3 and much as I love paradox idk how well history gets distilled into a management game

Kthx have a good day

this took me so long to get to APOLOGIES

i've kind of cherry-picked important and interesting bits without writing a whole book or something so here goes lol

first off its important to note that the Danelaw in and of itself was a VERY brief spit of time which was also constantly in flux !! it lasted less than 100 years sandwiched between the start of the Norse invasions and the ousting of a king (and his death), then it was only another 100 years until the Norman invasion, it was a Wild time

ALSO i'll mention too that the term "Danelaw" was probably not a contemporary term. It's first recorded mention as Dena lage in the 11th century, over 50 years after what's now considered the Danelaw had dissolved. It's a term used to distinguish the self-governed Norse-held areas of Britain from those under West Saxon or Mercian law, literally The Danish Law and wasn't used to describe the geographic area until a little later.

It's also worth mentioning that while certain parts of the Danelaw were maintained as kingdoms or client kingdoms of some form (namely the Kingdoms of York and East Anglia), a whole lot of what was part of Mercia or Essex was left to its own devices under Jarldoms of the larger towns (boroughs/burhs). What was called The Five Boroughs of the Danelaw were a very important area in their own right, constituting a strong alliance between the Jarldoms of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford. The area south of there was also under various Jarldoms (like Cambridge and Northampton) but they weren't as influential or closely knit as the Five. Technically speaking, the Danelaw is considered a Confederacy under the Kingdom of Denmark, but even aside from the existing peoples, the Norse people living there weren't all from Denmark by any stretch. After it's reunification under Alfred, the whole of England did become part of the Kingdom of Norway for a while under Cnut the Great, before his death split the various territories again, though England was still under Scandinavian influence of some degree all the way up to the Norman Conquest.

one of the more interesting things about the whole affair is that the culture and languages of the Scandinavian Norse and Anglo-Saxons were actually very similar as they had come from the same core groups of people not too long before. the speech was mutually intelligible at a basic level, both parties used a form of the Younger Futhark in some part, a lot of cultural concepts were the same. Aside from the Norse being an outside force, the only big difference was religion. The Saxon kingdoms had been entirely Christian for at least 100 years, despite the Saxons themselves being an interrupting force in the spread of Christianity through Britain even from during late Roman occupation.

Probably the EASIEST thing that made it all compatible other than the language was the similarity between the legal systems of the territories. For example the concept of compensatory damages existed in both places (weregild, literally man-gold), the Norse land division wapentake was more or less interchangeable with the Anglo-Saxon hundred, and so on. A lot of vague traditions held by Saxon peoples were continued in their own fashion, and other than the obvious upheavals of new rulers and raiding parties, not much else actually changed. The descendants of the united Scandinavian armies also made it a relatively peaceful area considering the remaining Anglo-Saxon kingdoms regarded them as squatters, but their closer shared culture and remaining unity actually made it pretty easy for the loose alliances of the Danelaw to stand up to the Anglo-Saxon pushback until it was mostly just Wessex left, with King Alfred in hiding somewhere in the Somerset marshes. It's really quite astounding Alfred bounced back to unify England at all after that on the face of it.

the geographic spread is also an interesting thing ! the first recorded Viking raid is in 793 at Lindisfarne monastery off the coast of modern Northumberland (VERY north) but the first recorded wintering of Norse peoples intending to stay long-term was actually in East Anglia (VERY south). What the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles called "The Great Heathen Army" marched the length of England to go and take advantage of a civil war happening back in Northumbria, where they captured and sacked York (Angle: Eoforwic, Norse: Jórvík) in 865. This established the START of the Danelaw as its usually measured, which spanned from 865 to 954.

It actually took only 10 years from the sacking of York for most of the Danelaw to become the Danelaw as most of its maps depict at its maximum, and for Alfred of Wessex to make peace with yet another settled Norse group in Dorset. Also! its worth noting that Alfred only became the king of Wessex after his brother Æthelred died in 871, well after the Dane forces had already taken hold of the Kingdom of York, the Kingdom of East Anglia, and a significant chunk of Mercia. He was of course already involved in the affairs but he did get chucked in at the deep end lol

Part of the peace keeping the re-established Kingdom of Wessex under Alfred and the Danelaw at large under fairly steady and peaceful borders for its more stable periods (definitely a relative term) from 878 , was down to Guthram and Alfred's agreements. After Alfred came out of his hiding in exile with an army, and forced the Danes to surrender, Guthram agreed to be baptised with Alfred as his godfather, and also agreed to go back to his Kingdom in East Anglia. In 884 Guthram made a run of it again and attempted to take Kent, but in being unsuccessful he signed the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, which basically established the formal border of the Danelaw and let them self-rule if they did keep to themselves. It wasn't until 902 that shenanigans started happening again, but considering how generally tumultuous the entire period was, just shy of 20 years of formalised peace wasn't bad going.

Eiríkr Haraldsson (or Eric Bloodaxe) was a pretty obscure guy for a lot of his life considering he was definitely Norwegian nobility. It's thought he may have been King of Norway for a short time, and maybe Northumbria twice over - though definitely for the second time when he was ousted from Northumbria - which essentially brought the end of the Danelaw proper. He's mentioned in a LOT of texts (Egils / Orkney / Icelandic / Norwegian sagas, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. potentially Historia Norwegiæ, Annals of the Four Masters, Annals of Clonmacnoise), but he's still a bit of a vague figure somehow. He's noted as being a son of Harald, and the Icelandic and Norwegian version of events is that he was one of Harald Fairhair's many sons, although some people think he may have been the son of Harald Bluetooth. He DID definitely exist though, the last Norse minted coins in York are stamped with his name. Norse Northumbria and York was very strongly tied to the Norse Kingdom of Dublin (which lasted a LONG time by comparison), but upon his being removed in 954 the hope of the lands becoming a two-part kingdom fell apart.

The end of the Viking Era itself is often cited as being the defeat of King Harald (Hardrada) Sigurdsson of Norway at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. He had landed hoping to retake York and the English crown as a whole with the help of King Harald Godwinson's brother Tostig, but the English forces managed to stop them. This actually probably helped out William the Conqueror (also of Norse decendant, Norseman - Norman) efforts less than a month later to take England, since the English armies had already dealt with the same thing and were mostly in the north away from the attacking forces from Normandy. Under William's Norman rule there were a few more attempts by other Scandinavian rulers to retake or at least plunder York, but the efforts never went very far. The last serious raids on England from Scandinavia came from Eystein II of Norway, who took advantage of The Anarchy (a civil war in Norman territories over a succession crisis between 1135 and 1153) to plunder the East Coast.

OKAY i'll stop waffling now but here we go jfkddfjdk

i hope this was interesting enough and something like what you were after instead of just some word puke gjfkdkjfd !!!

[a-secret-bolton-vampire]

The Coming War for the North, Part 3: The Battle of the Bastards

To see the previous installments of this series, part 1 and part 2 are available to read here and here, respectively.

The idea that Jon and Ramsay would fight has been around for a while, even before the TV show. There are a lot of signs pointing to a similar confrontation in the books, but how it unfolds might be a little different from the show. In this final section, I'll get right down to business on this final battle for Winterfell, and the purpose and themes this plot line.

Two Snows & Winterfell

Jon and Ramsay are two very different, and somewhat very similar characters. Throughout ADWD Jon has letters sent by Ramsay detailing events transpiring in the North, including the retaking of Moat Cailin, and the marriage of Arya Stark (really Jeyne Poole) to the newly legitimized Ramsay Bolton. Stannis also begins his campaign to take the North, and sends letters to Jon detailing his movements and what he is doing. When confronted by Melisandre, Jon learns that Mance Rayder was actually Rattleshirt in magic disguise, and Rattleshirt is actually Mance in magic disguise, and with Melisandre's nudging, agrees to send Mance and six spearwives to rescue Arya from Winterfell.

Then Ramsay sends the pink letter and tells Jon that he defeated Stannis, has captured Mance, and demands Stannis's family and allies or he will attack the Night's Watch. Don't forget that Jon is the one who started this, not Ramsay. He was the instigator, helping Stannis and taking Arya away from Ramsay. Not to say Ramsay is in the right here morally (quite the opposite), but Jon did break his vows for this to happen, and he wasn't really on Ramsay's radar until this happened. Thus, ADWD has set up a rivalry between the two. However, the two characters have a lot in common to be set up as foils to each other.

Both are bastards of a very prominent noble lord of the North. Both resent their bastard status and yearn for approval to be a trueborn member of their House. And both want Winterfell. Ramsay already has Winterfell and is declared the Lord of Winterfell, while Jon nearly took Stannis's offer to be Lord of Winterfell, before rejecting it to keep his vows to the Night's Watch, while still yearning to have Winterfell. However, from there, they are complete opposites.

Ramsay is a demon in human skin, a sadistic serial killer and rapist who enjoys torture and murder, and has no regard for the laws of men. Meanwhile, Jon, as raised by Ned, is a noble and honourable person who tries his best to keep his oath and honour intact (although he does forsake it at the end of ADWD). In the season 4 DVD extras for Game of Thrones, GRRM himself even talks about this.

The relationship between Roose and Ramsay is, in some ways, a dark counterpoint to the relation between Ned Stark and Jon Snow. In both cases, a noble father with a bastard son. Jon and Ramsay are literally the opposite to each other. Jon is very noble and honorable. And Ramsay is none of those things. Roose himself is a cold and calculating man. A dispassionate man. "I placed far too much trust in you." But their treatment of the bastard son is very different. Ned keeps Jon Snow at Winterfell and he's raised with Robb and Bran. For all practical purposes, he is one of Ned's sons. Ramsay gets nothing from Roose.

Given the fact we have good build up between a rivalry between them, and that they are foils of each other, a confrontation between the two seems very likely. And even more so when you look both at the past history and at ADWD. The Stark-Bolton rivalry is the longest and most prominent feud in the North, supposedly dating back to the Long Night. Numerous wars were fought between the Red Kings from the Dreadfort and the Kings of Winter from Winterfell, some of them ending in Bolton victory. At least twice, two Bolton kings (both named Royce) took and burnt Winterfell (and it happened a third time in ACOK when Ramsay did it). The Boltons also were alleged to have flayed and worn the skins of Stark princes as cloaks.

In a way, this rivalry is a very dark, yet still grounded fantasy version of werwolves and vampires. There are quite a lot of stories including werewolves and vampires that have the two be natural enemies, with feuds that go back centuries sometimes. Of course, both the Starks and Boltons take on very clear roles as werewolves and vampires. Starks have warg blood in them (even if not all of them were wargs), and many of them have dreams at night of being a wolf and rampaging around, which sounds very much like old werewolf legends. The Boltons being vampires, on the other hand, is less magical and more implied.

The Boltons have this unearthly, sinister feel and look to them that makes them appear somewhat inhuman, with pale eyes variously described as dirty chips of ice or pale moons, and a look about themselves that is similar to some descriptions of vampires. Then of course there is the Dreadfort, a spooky old castle ruled by a very spooky and yet somewhat cultured man (Dracula anyone)? Then of course we have all the very creepy images of Boltons flaying people, and Ramsay sometimes writing using human blood as ink.

Basically, what I'm saying is that ASOIAF has done what Twilight did but better.

To go back to the future, it makes thematic and narrative sense for the Starks to retake Winterfell from their ancient nemesis. The rivalry began between a Stark and a Bolton, and will end with a Stark bastard and a Bolton bastard, fighting over dominance of the North and of Winterfell.

The Battle of the Bastards

At first glance, it seems like it's a no brainer for how this battle will unfold. Ramsay is gonna lose a lot of support, and Jon will have all the support and completely demolish Ramsay. However, while I do think it will end in victory for Jon (and not without outside help), I think that both are going to be in rather desperate positions, Jon maybe more so.

After Jon's resurrection, there is no question in my mind that he is going to head south. Those were his last thoughts and actions as he died, similar to how Catelyn killing a Frey and her grief of losing her family was the last action and thought before she died, and Beric protecting the smallfolk from the Mountain was his last act before dying. Given the strong implication he is inside Ghost, coming back, we should expect a darker, different Jon, one who doesn't give a shit, is more violent, and more determined. Of course, if he is to retake Winterfell, he should need support.

Fortunately, right before he died, he got all the free folk to cheer for him and agree to join him. Mix those free folk with the giants and mammoths that were recently let past Eastwatch, and he might have a formidable force. However, of the 4,119 or so free folk that are currently south of the Wall, not all of them are fighters. If we take the estimate for 20,000 warriors and 100,000 free folk in total, then we should expect around 820+ free folk capable of fighting. Not a lot. He will need some outside help. Of course, there is already set up for that in ADWD, when he marries Alys Karstark to Magnar Sigorn of Thenn.

He tells a captive Cregan Karstark to send word to his relatives at Karhold and yield to prevent their deaths, but Cregan stubbornly refuses. Alys believes Karhold will open their gates to her, and Alys is thankful for Jon Snow providing her refuge at the Wall and a marriage to get out of an even worse one she did not want. The strength of Karhold may not be the best, but it seems very likely for Karhold to join Jon and his cause, under the banners of Alys.

As for the other houses of the North, I don't expect much more support. Think about how Jon will look to the Northmen. He is a bastard, and those are already quite condemned throughout the North (and Westeros in general). He broke his vows by leaving the Night's Watch, and since the North takes vows and oaths and honour much more seriously than the rest of Westeros, being an oathbreaker who abandoned the Wall is not going to make him popular. And finally, he is leading a band of wildlings south. The North despises the free folk, thinking of them as savages, thanks to centuries of conflict with them. So the picture of Jon painted as an oathbreaking wildling bastard is going to be a major problem for him. At worst, he would be viewed just as evil and treacherous as Ramsay, the other prominent bastard in the North.

In fact, even if Ramsay loses a lot of support from his own actions (more later), he could use this to his advantage. At best, the northerns who hate Jon will remain neutral in the conflict, but at worst, they might even ally with the Boltons. The clansmen have a deep hatred of House Bolton, but they also have a very deep hatred of the free folk, so they may actually remain neutral. The Umbers are another House that deals frequently with wildlings, and many years prior, Crowfood lost his daughter to wildlings raiding south of the Wall. So instead of Jon's presence invigorating the Umbers to fight against Ramsay, their own vehement hatred of the wildlings might lead them to simply stick with Ramsay.

However, that isn't to say everything will go swimmingly for Ramsay. Their hold on the North is tentative, and if Ramsay kills Roose and Walda and their child, it could become even more unstable. For one, Lady Barbrey Dustin isn't loyal to the Boltons, but instead loyal to Roose. Her sister was the former wife of Roose, and Domeric was her nephew, so Lady Dustin has reason to be on friendly terms with Roose. On the other hand, she despises Ramsay, blaming him for Domeric's death, and not even allowing him to step foot in Barrow Hall because of it. In turn, Ramsay also holds her in contempt.

"It should have been you who threw the feast, to welcome me back," Ramsay complained, "and it should have been in Barrow Hall, not this pisspot of a castle." "Barrow Hall and its kitchens are not mine to dispose of," his father said mildly. "I am only a guest there. The castle and the town belong to Lady Dustin, and she cannot abide you." Ramsay's face darkened. "If I cut off her teats and feed them to my girls, will she abide me then? Will she abide me if I strip off her skin to make myself a pair of boots?" "Unlikely. And those boots would come dear. They would cost us Barrowton, House Dustin, and the Ryswells."

If Roose dies, not only would Lady Dustin probably suspect Ramsay, but she would simply not follow Ramsay. So already, just by becoming Warden of the North and Lord of the Dreadfort, Ramsay would lose the Dustins and the Ryswells. Of course, since Lady Dustin does have a grievance with the Starks because Ned never brought her husband home from Dorne, I think she would probably remain neutral in the conflict.

Other houses might leave Ramsay too. Some might stay simply out of fear of retaliation for betrayal. It will depend on the House, their head, their own needs and goals, etc. As for the actual battle itself, who knows what will happen. However, I do think that Ramsay will likely try to lure Jon into some sort of trap rather than give him a direct face to face confrontation. There is also very interesting foreshadowing and even direct confirmation that the battle is going to be possibly more magical than we might believe it to be. Not only are there giants and mammoths... in the final script GRRM wrote for the show, he put in this note:

[N.B. A note for future reference. A season or two down the line Ramsay’s pack of wolfhounds are going to be sent against the Stark direwolves, so we should build up the dogs as much as possible in this and subsequent episodes.]

So the hounds are going to fight the Stark direwolves... wait, direwoves? Not direwolf? Curious...

The Pack Survives

I purposefully avoided the other factions of the North there, because the heart of the conflict will be Ramsay vs. Jon. But Jon won't be alone, at least not entirely. There is Rickon, who is to be touted as the Lord of Winterfell by the Manderlys so they can support Stannis. He isn't even the only Stark who could join in. Sansa is in the Vale under the guise of Alayne Stone. Arya keeps warging into Nymeria, who leads a massive pack of hundreds of wolves throughout the Riverlands. Bran is training his demigod greenseeing powers beyond the Wall with Bloodraven and is definitely manipulating events far south of the Wall.

So, the plural of direwolves makes me think Ghost won't be the only Stark direwolf fighting against Ramsay. We could get Nymeria's wolf pack joining as well, and Shaggydog, or even Summer (if Bran is in the North at this time that is). In fact, the idea that Ramsay will fight against Rickon is something that is heavily hinted at in ADWD.

The next litter to come out of the Dreadfort's kennels would include a Kyra, Reek did not doubt. "He's trained 'em to kill wolves as well," Ben Bones had confided. Reek said nothing. He knew which wolves the girls were meant to kill, but he had no wish to watch the girls fighting over his severed toe.

And then, more directly...

"Stark's little wolflings are dead," said Ramsay, sloshing some more ale into his cup, "and they'll stay dead. Let them show their ugly faces, and my girls will rip those wolves of theirs to pieces. The sooner they turn up, the sooner I kill them again."

Ramsay may be impulsive and unaware of intricate politics, but he seems prepared for what to do should Bran or Rickon show themselves again. This makes me worried for Rickon, honestly. Will Ramsay capture Rickon and keep him prisoner as hold over Jon Snow? Will he kill Rickon like he did in the show? I really, really hope not, but I'm afraid that's exactly what will happen.

There is a line that Ned spoke in AGOT that George says will eventually be very important, that I think perfectly applies to this situation.

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives."

Ned speaks to Arya about this in King's Landing, to get her to understand that the Starks should not fight one another in times of danger, or be isolated from each other, but look after one another, protect each other. Winter has now come, the snows are falling and the white winds are blowing. Who is the lone wolf in this scenario? While Jon certainly fits the bill (he literally is a lone wolf, it's very clear at the end of ADWD he was prepared to ride to Winterfell all by himself until he got the wildlings to his side), I think Rickon could too.

Rickon is very isolated from everyone else, even when he was at Winterfell. He was only 4 years old, and didn't understand why everyone was leaving him. Given the plan to use Rickon as a pawn to reinstall Stark rule of the North being something we can cheer for and expect to happen, I don't think it will happen. Rickon, the lone wolf, will be used to try to depose Ramsay, but it won't go well, and he will die because of it.

Jon will probably find himself in a bad position in battle too, and very nearly die as the lone wolf... but now that winter is here, and everyone is starting to converge on Winterfell at some point, I think that it won't be Jon who ultimately retakes Winterfell: it will be all the Starks. Sansa may be in the Vale, but Littlefinger plans to use her to take Winterfell back at some point (even if it won't go exactly to plan).

"When Robert dies, Harry the Heir becomes Lord Harrold, Defender of the Vale and Lord of the Eyrie. Jon Arryn's bannermen will never love me, nor our silly, shaking Robert, but they will love their Young Falcon . . . and when they come together for his wedding, and you come out with your long auburn hair, clad in a maiden's cloak of white and grey with a direwolf emblazoned on the back . . . why, every knight in the Vale will pledge his sword to win you back your birthright."

Arya is having a lot of wolf dreams as Nymeria, and GRRM has said that her wolf pack will one day be used as a Chekov's gun. Bran may be far away, but he is getting more powerful and beginning to influence events as far south as Winterfell. The pack comes together to survive in winter, to help Jon and the North by defeating their enemies.

So as Jon fights against the bastard he so deeply despises, it won't just be him. It'll be the Knights of the Vale, led by Sansa. It'll be Nymeria and her wolf pack, piloted by Arya. It'll be Bran, skinchanging into whatever is around. TWOW may end up being the darkest book in the series, and the retaking of Winterfell won't be as glorious as we imagine or even as I spelt it out (Rickon's death and the perception the North has of Jon should play very big roles in making it not entirely happy), but this will be maybe one of our only moment of deserved catharsis we might get from it.

[flashfuture]

Follow up questions because I’m a Nerd and I love learning: is there any evidence to suggest frequent inclusion of women in Scandinavian warfare? Or is finding something like women’s armor rare? Was there a standard definition of any queer terminology in any ancient civilization? Did any Norse culture ever find its way to the Middle East???

I feel a bit like an over eager student writing this but uh...I’m very curious. 👀👀

When talking about women in Scandinavia you run into people describing how it appeared these women would take on the role of men in the absence of men. But I think there is an issue in that we’re assuming the role of women in these societies would match the role of an Ancient Greek woman (which is a whole other thing but I digress)

They’ve found that some of the founding fathers of Iceland were women, thirteen of them to be exact. women could inherit land and money from their parents. Women could be involved in legal matters and hold official positions. 

There is lots of evidence that women were very frequently going raiding. They have been debating recently I believe if the term dregnr a young warrior really was only applied to men. Young women were described in the same vulgar terms as dominators and something we discuss in ancient Rome was the ideal of male “hardness” basically just being the top dog in the room. Women were the same in Ancient cultures if not expected to hold themselves differently but Skalds (the poets) describe the women just like the men. 

Another thing quite recently (1993 so really recent in terms of historical archives) is the idea of the surrogate son. Basically, if a man died with no son to inherit a surrogate son would be chosen over a daughter. It has recently been noted that they very well could have been describing the daughter as a surrogate son. Someone to take up that male role of head of the household. This suggests in the sagas we have noted women but there is also a possibility for women to be described with male traditional words because of the role they were playing. 

And we have found tons of armor that looks ceremonially and some battle worn for women yep. All women could fight though it was excepted they could defend themselves and their home front. Against potential attackers and wild animals. 

Plus in the 13th century, the Christians introduced the Law of Gulathing which were sets of rules for people to follow. Women were then banned from cutting their hair like men, dressing like men, or in general behaving like men. This suggests It was common enough for them to throw it in the laws that banned traditional things that Scandinavians did that did not fit the Christian narrative or way of life. 

-- This is gonna go under the cut for the rest cause wow I got long lol. 

Okay queer terminology. You’ll see lesbian which was women who fucks women. and you’ll see penetrator a lot. These were slave cultures also so the idea of sleeping with another citizen was defiling them you shouldn’t do it.

In Ancient Athens, you saw men preferred the company of men over women because they didn’t think women were of value they were only good for producing heirs. There was a thing called pederasty where a wealthy man in his 20s, the erastes, would court a young wealthy man from the ages of 13-19, the eromenos, and teach him and keep him as a lover. Their debate over Achillies and Patroclus for example wasn’t if they were sleeping together but who was fucking who really. Because Patroclus was older but Achillies was the hero so was he being emasculated or were they breaking the age rule? That was their debate cause these things mattered to them 

They were kinda the exception to the citizenship rule. The Spartans felt the pederastry was weird because it involved citizens but they were all in with the homo. Obviously, this was all very public and you’d be scorned if they thought you were being penetrated.  

All in all, being penetrated was something women and slaves did and the last thing you wanted to be was a woman.  

Another thing to consider was these cultures had a lot of problems with excess. So too much sex or food and in Rome you were a uh Cnidus? Idk I can only spell it in Greek which is staggeringly unhelpful but basically, you can’t control your urges. Based off that time someone tried to fuck a statue I think or something like that

The Norse had a similar word ergi which meant you had too much heterosexual sex actually, you were too promiscuous. In the 12th century we know in Iceland homosexual acts like sodomy were banned under Christian canon (Thanks Richard I of England) so there is that. Pre-Christian influence there seemed to be no stigma around this minus don’t force yourself on your friends that’s rude but slaves were fair game. (I wrote a paper on the weird stereotypes of Vikings being the sexual aggressors when the literature of the time suggests the Lotharingians were way way more likely to commit those acts. At least according to French who were besieged constantly by everyone all the time.)

níð was an insult for the ancient norse which basically you had displayed unmanliness. Or you liked to take it up the ass to be plain about it. (Ancient people were vulgar as shit the Romans were obsessed with sexual threats to the point where its just in common day-to-day speech.) Ragr was a term that meant you were unmanly which is much more severe and you could like legally kill someone for saying that up till the 13th century. 

There is actually some debate that the concept of unmanly comes from making fun of the Germans. So like if you were Ancient Germanic or Ancient Brittania you were the savages of the day. Which is interesting when you consider the rhetoric those two countries put out. Like literally no one like the Germans or the Brits they thought they were filthy uncivilized and cowardly people. 

Also fun from the 7th to 10th century in Norse culture there were these figurines called gold foil couples. In it a couple would be portrayed which was a way of proclaiming themselves married before the gods. It was a very religious practice for them. There are figurines depicting people of the same sex in the gold foil figurines. 

Basically, we can thank Christianity for why we think the Vikings didn’t do homosexuality or homosexual acts. Because well they didn’t want them to starting in the 12th century again thanks Richard for having the worst break up with your boyfriend in the history of break ups. 

And onto gender which if you know Loki from Marvel him being genderfluid is based entirely on mythology and is common in Norse writings. Okay so essentially we think of seiðr or magic as something women do. And they did too. But men did practice it. This was seen as a third gender in Norse culture, the seiðmaðr a man who practices magic. Hence Loki moving between the three as he’s a known magic-user. There was also this concept of gender mixing, biological men buried in traditionally female clothing. But there is no way for us to know if that is this third gender or potentially they were more excepting of what we would call transgender. 

Because most of the writings we have come from the 13th century where Christianity really took over and just started making shit up. Like we have evidence they were trying to cover up things about Norse culture they didn’t like. So men who practiced seiðr were actually ergi and not a different gender, just an unmanly male. 

So yeah lol these were acts they did so verbs can be found really easily. But we have mostly Icelandic stuff cause Christians they did fucked up shit 

--

And the Vikings in the Middle East. They went all over. We have this assumption they were raiding whenever they went. Actually, the thing is they only raided northern Europe because they rightfully assumed those guys couldn’t fight back. 

But they had trading agreements easily with the Greeks, Persians, and Abbassids mostly. There is a woman from Sweden who was buried with a ring that was inscribed with “For/To Allah”

The Arabs had the term Rusiyyah to describe the Vikings because they came so often. They noted that the Rusiyyah were not good at practicing hygiene but also describe their bodies as being “in perfect form” They liked a good ripped viking and I can appreciate that. They were like “they’re filthy but damn are those rusiyyah built” 

Baghdad had the first real market place and they had paper from China so they were printing stuff into books which the Vikings found very interesting. There was so much international trade but the British and Germans who we mostly hear from now were so technologically unadvanced there was no way they could have participated with these other older cultures. 

There is money found sometimes that was certainly viking in nature. They didn’t really have money like the Arabs at the time preferring to trade in goods. So they offered furs and silks along with weapons and slaves. 

And it is possible that there was culture exchange as all cultures were being exchanged back then. We know some vikings converted to Islam as Arab writers commented that they missed pork dearly but were committed to the Path of Islam. 

The Slavs or Rus (Russians) of the time were also annoyed with these viking raiders because their shit would get stolen and then sold to Arabia where they’d have to buy it back usually. 

So yeah lots of trading going on. And many Vikings like I mentioned worked as bodyguards or mercenaries. We don’t know much of what the Vikings thought except that the writers in Arab noted they were very polite to their hosts if not aggressive with each other in a playful manner. 

Lol you really let my nerd pop off here. I’d have to do more research into the Norse effect on the Middle East though cause I only know about the other way around off the top of my head here. 

[nbmudkip]

a guide to shiny pokémon in sword and shield: what they are, what’s new, and how to get them

hiya! i’m aster, aka lesbianmudkip, and i am a stream moderator for Dallas aka TheSupremeRk9s on youtube! since he’s been streaming his shiny hunting a lot lately, i’ve noticed there is a LOT of confusion and misinformation going around about shiny pokémon in pokémon sword and shield. i would like to help clear things up! this is my attempt at a comprehensive guide to shiny pokémon in sword and shield, for both amateurs and veteran hunters alike.

for new fans

what IS a shiny?

ever since the second generation of pokémon (Gold, Silver, and Crystal), there has been a special phenomenon in pokémon games called shiny pokémon. a shiny pokémon is an extremely rare version of a pokémon that is differently colored from normal members of the species and that sparkles when encountered or sent out into battle.

shiny pokémon don’t necessarily have any increased stats or heightened battle potential. they’re just colored neatly and sparkly! a lot of people like to play pokémon by shiny hunting, which is purposely searching out shiny pokémon to add to their team or collection. people love trying to defy the odds to get something beautiful and rare—VERY rare, in fact.

so what are the odds of finding a shiny pokémon?

unfortunately, the answer to this question can get rather complicated. this is because there are certain methods and conditions capable of increasing the possibility of encountering a shiny! but, to keep things simple, i’ll stick to just the basic, unaltered odds for this explanation. (i may make posts explaining each method in the future!)

in all games from gen 2 (G/S/C) through gen 5 (B/W/B2/W2), the odds of encountering a shiny pokémon in the wild are 1/8192. now, this doesn’t guarantee that you’d find a shiny after 8192 encounters—it’s simply the chance. some people find shiny pokémon in those games after 50 encounters, and some end up going to 50,000! it’s all up to luck.

in all games from gen 6 (X/Y) to the present (SW/SH), the odds of encountering a random shiny pokémon were increased to 1/4096, about double the previous odds. again, this does not guarantee a shiny within 4096 encounters, it is just the likelihood of any individual encounter being shiny!

like i mentioned earlier, there are a LOT of ways to increase the odds of encountering a shiny. listing all the different methods for all the different gens and all their different individual odds would make this post a lot longer than it needs to be, so i won’t be describing them on this post. i would, however, like to mention one especially notable thing: the shiny charm!

the shiny charm is unlike any other method of increasing shiny odds because—well, because it isn’t a method. the shiny charm is a key item obtainable in gens 5 (B/W/B2/W2) to the present (SW/SH). it is only obtainable after completely filling out the entire pokédex—that means catching every single pokémon obtainable in a specific region (game), including starters, version exclusives, and legendaries. it’s not an easy feat, but the reward is high. once the shiny charm is in your inventory, it triples the odds of encountering a shiny pokémon! for wild encounters in the gen 6 games and up, this changes the odds from 1/4096 to 1/1365. the effects of the shiny charm also stack with many methods, allowing you to boost your chances even further. (there are rumors that the shiny charm has an even greater effect in SW/SH than previous gens, but this is unconfirmed.)

SW/SH hunting: what’s new?

shiny hunting methods

in terms of methods in SW/SH, we honestly didn’t get much. however, there is one new method i should go over. the first of the two primary shiny hunting methods in SW/SH is pretty simple, and the only one doable for wild encounters—the number battled method/KO method.

the KO method relies on the number battled count in your pokédex for each pokémon. this counter increases by one every time you knock out or catch a certain species of pokémon. this includes knocking out pokémon owned by trainers. at certain intervals, the odds of encountering a shiny pokémon of that species are increased permanently. here is a table explaining the odds:

so, for example, if someone has knocked out or caught a total of 132 rookidee, and the counter in their pokédex for rookidee reads 132, then their odds of encountering a shiny rookidee are 1/1365. every time that player encounters a rookidee, instead of rolling the 1/4096 chance for a shiny one time, the game will roll it 3 separate times, making the chances 3/4096 or 1/1365.

the only other known method in SW/SH is the masuda method. this is basically the same as in all previous gens since gen 4—breeding a pokémon from one region with a pokémon from another region increases the odds of hatching a shiny pokémon to 1/683, making it 6x more likely. however, one minor change is that instead of needing two pokémon from different regions, one only needs to breed two pokémon from different language games. for example, a french pokémon and a german pokémon breeding will result in the masuda method taking effect. there are also rumors that masuda method breeding produces higher shiny odds than previous gens, but these are unconfirmed.

some confusion has arisen about methods in this game. specifically, many people believe there is a form of chaining for shiny pokémon in this game by knocking out the same species of pokémon consecutively without knocking out another pokémon or shutting off the game. however, the presence of chaining in SW/SH has been proven false. consecutively knocking out pokémon of the same species is more likely to make that species appear, but it has no effect whatsoever on the odds of a shiny. only the number battled in the dex affects shiny odds in SW/SH.

shiny sparkle animations

as some of you may know, SW/SH is unique in that there are two different types of sparkles that may come with a shiny pokémon.

here is a comparison of the two different types of sparkles—one comparison of pokémon being encountered in the wild/in a raid, and one of newly hatched pokémon. one is commonly referred to as squares, and the other as gold stars, or just stars. the question of what these sparkles mean has been much debated since the games were released, and a LOT of misinformation has been spread and reinforced. however, through the power of datamining, we have discovered what the difference actually is!

...unfortunately, the answer is a bit complicated. the reason for this is because the rarity of each type of sparkle is dependent on how the shiny pokémon was encountered.

for wild encounters: the square shaped sparkles are FAR more common than the stars. the stars, in fact, are astronomically rare—there are no videos (that i know of, as of the present date 11/25/19) of encountering a star shiny from a random wild encounter. for every shiny pokémon encountered in the wild, there is a 1/4032 chance that it will have the star sparkles. basically, on top of the 1/4096 chance if encountering a shiny pokémon, there is another 1/4032 roll to see if the shiny pokémon’s sparkles will be stars instead of squares. (this information is not 100% confirmed; however, it is widely agreed on among shiny hunters and seems most probable considering the data we have uncovered combined with the recorded shiny pokémon that have been encountered so far.)

for “special” encounters: the star shaped sparkles are more common, but not by nearly as much. for all special encounter shiny pokémon, there is a 15/16 chance that they will have the star sparkles, and a 1/16 chance that they will have the squares. so, the square sparkles are rarer for these encounters, but not nearly as rare as the star sparkles are in the wild. (for clarification: the games consider any encounter besides a regular wild pokémon to be a special encounter. this includes hatching eggs, raids/max raids, and static encounters like the impidimps on the mushrooms in glimwood tangle or the sizzlipedes in the fire-type gym.)

shiny locked pokémon

unfortunately, shiny locks are back in SW/SH and meaner than ever. for those new to shiny hunting, the term “shiny locked” refers to a pokémon that is programmed in a way that makes it impossible for that pokémon to be shiny. the following is a list of all shiny locked pokémon in SW/SH:

the starters (the grookey, scorbunny, or sobble you get at the beginning of the game as your first pokémon. however, you can get these shiny via breeding!)

all gift pokémon (all in-game trades and all pokémon received from a NPC, such as the toxel at the daycare and the charmander from Leon)

all legendary pokémon (zacian, zamazenta, and eternatus)

EDIT: all wild area pokémon that are too high level to catch are also shiny locked!

a notable exception to this rule is the fossil pokémon. while they appear to be gift pokémon because you receive the fossil items from NPCs, you resurrect them yourself, so technically they are not gift pokémon and thus are not shiny locked.

another notable exception, specifically to the last point: only the RANDOM wild area encounters that are too high level to catch are locked. static encounters that are too high level to catch are not locked!

final notes

that’s just about all the important info about shiny pokémon in SW/SH that i can think of! i’ll update it as information is released, and if anything needs clarification, shoot me an ask or leave a question in the replies. thanks for reading, and as always, good luck on your hunts!

[toastling]

Amily Garen

Amily Garen is a professional hero from Chelsea, Manhattan, representing the hero agency Street Justice. Though she’s only been in the game for 2 years now, she’s already made a name for herself as one of the industry’s rising stars. She’s an active member of NYC’s supernatural community and one of the faces of the city’s LGBT community. She’s also a vocal advocate for superhuman and drakan rights, and in her brief time as a hero, has taken part in numerous protests, marches, rallies, and demonstrations throughout the city, using her celebrity status to bring attention to causes that are important to her.

Though she’s becoming increasingly well-known individually, Amily is better known in tandem with her partner, Snow Angel. The two of them together form a rather popular duo known to fans as ‘Thundersnow’. They’re not just partners on the job, though - they’re also romantically involved, and are one of the most popular couples in the hero industry. While they make no effort to hide their relationship, the two girls are very serious about keeping their private life private, and are very careful about what they choose to reveal to the public.

Amily is on good terms with many rival heroes and agencies, and is known to team up with them on occasion - with or without Snow Angel - if they ever need a little extra muscle, as among heroes in her age group, her combat ability is unmatched. When it comes to fighting villains, Amily’s closest comparisons are all veterans decades more experienced than herself. Her training is extensive, and she’s been known to tutor others on request. She apparently taught Snow Angel everything she knows and spars with her regularly.

In spite of her skill however, Amily is yet to tap into her full power. The things she is theoretically capable of would make her a real superhero, but she still has a ways to go before she gets there. Nevertheless, she makes clever use of her inhuman strength, speed, endurance, and electrical abilities, and is known to be very adaptable and off-the-cuff in battle.

Amily’s high potential stems from the fact that she is what’s known as a halfling. Born to a superhuman mother and a dragon father, though he was never really a part of her life, Amily has always been steeped in both human and drakan culture. She’s part of a growing trend of professional heroes who’ve foregone the idea of separate hero and civilian identities, and just uses her given name instead, with her pride in her drakan heritage as a large part of the reason why. She is as far away from shy as you can possibly get and is as bold and passionate a girl as you’ll ever meet, and she wears her heart, heritage, and identities on her sleeve in hopes of inspiring others like her.

Amily was lucky enough to have piqued the interest of the King of Dragons, Sirus Albion, from a very young age. Having seen something in her, King Sirus assigned his former head of the Royal Guard - Li’alie Ninoke - to help raise and tutor Amily in her draconic ancestry and abilities. This is likely where Amily’s vast combat experience stems from, and why even without her father in her life, she is incredibly well-versed in the history and culture of the dragons.

All things considered though, halflings don’t exactly have the best rap among either race. They’re still largely considered to be outcasts, and are no strangers to bigotry or fear mongering from humans and dragons both. But Amily has never once wavered in her pride for who she is. She has worked hard and earned the respect of the humans as a hero, and of the dragons as a scholar. She’s even earned herself a title among the dragons - the ‘Blitz Dragon’ - which is almost unheard of for halflings. Because of her extensive knowledge of human and dragon cultures, and her celebrity status as a professional hero, Amily is considered by many to be one of the faces of the halfling community.

As for why she does what she does, Amily has always been stubborn and has never liked bullies. She challenged anybody who bullied her to fights she usually won, and went out of her way to get in-between other kids and their bullies any time she saw something going down. All her life, she’s wanted nothing more than to help and protect other people, and to empower those who feel like they’re powerless. She fights to put a smile on other people’s faces. That isn’t to say violence is all she knows - she often tries to resolve matters peacefully via communication before they ever escalate to that point - but she’s more than capable if it comes down to it.

She’s friends with just about every hero in her age range and is known for being very upbeat and personable. She’s described by her friends as an absolute joy to be around, and one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet. She is warm and understanding, boisterous and open-minded, and at her core she just really, really loves other people. But that isn’t to say she’s inexhaustible. Like most heroes, Amily always tries to put her best foot forward publicly, but the Amily her friends and fans know and the Amily her girlfriend and her family knows are likely two very different people.

Like most heroes today, Amily is on the front lines fighting and investigating Providence. Following a warning from a veteran hero that something big was due to go down in New York, Amily has been working overtime, doing everything in her power to avert another tragedy before it happens, including teaming up with law enforcement to raid suspected Providence hideouts. She’s made a few notable busts over the last couple of months, but so far, the organization’s grander plans for the city elude her. But for as long as they are a threat, she will be there, fighting tirelessly to put an end to their schemes.

Amily is what she’s always wanted to be - a hero - and is on track to be one of the best in the entire country. But for her, it isn’t about the fame or fortune that the hero’s life entails. For Amily, it’s just about doing the right thing. If she has the power to help, then she also has the responsibility, and if there’s one thing Amily considers herself to be, it is responsible.

[lichlairs]

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Daily Monster #56: Demogorgon

Today we’re talking about one of the most iconic monsters in Dungeons and Dragons. Not only that, but with the recent interest in this particular creature after Stranger things, I think it’s safe to say that at least a few newbies have found the hobby through it. Without further ado, let us discuss…

The Demogorgon

The basics

Alright, here we go, this one might just take a little longer than usual so let’s just get right into it.

Like our Tiamat article from a couple of months back, Demogorgon is definitely not the kind of monster you want to just throw at your party willy-nilly. Even just looking at the numbers for the stat block triggers my fight or flight instinct. We’re looking a solid +2 DEX for this monster’s lowest stat, granted, considering Demogorgon is a size Huge I would still think this is pretty great. Demogorgon’s WIS and INT are both more than acceptable at +3 and +5 respectively, but chances are that if you end up fighting this thing, you’ll want to watch out for its +7 CHA, +8, and +9 STR. That’s right, this thing has a 29 in strength.

Not only is this thing incredibly tough with an AC of 22 and a giant hit point pool of 28d12+224, but it also has some crazy saves and resistances! I’m talking about +10 DEX, +11 WIS, +15 CHA, and +16 CON to saving throws. Actual bananas… but even if you do manage to hit this thing, you still have to worry about overcoming Demogorgon’s resistance to Cold, Fire, and Lightning as well as its immunity to Poison and non-magical weapon attacks. And of you’re hopping to put this bad boy under some negative condition like charmed or frightened, you might want to think again because this chaotic demon has a handful of condition immunities as well. At this point sneaking your wait out might sound like the best choice but even that is unlikely considering Demogorgon’s Perception of +19, Truesight of up to 120ft range, and passive perception of 29.

Although communicating with this demon should be an easy task thanks to its telepathy of up to 120ft rage and its ability to speak all (and I do mean all) languages, I don’t recommend lying to the Prince of Demons; +11 to Insight might not sound like much after some of the other numbers we’ve discussed, but it’s still plenty.

Demogorgon gets an Innate Spellcasting ability that uses his CHA and has a crazy save DC 23. Using this feature he gains access to the following spells:

At will: detect magic, major image. 3/day each: dispel magic, fear, telekinesis. 1/day each: feeblemind, project image.

If you thought we were done listing all the ways in which today’s monster is a tough one to chew then you’re wrong; not only does he have a Magic Resistance that gives him advantage on saves, but thanks to its Two Heads, he also just gains advantage to save from pretty much every other condition that wasn’t in his list of resistances already.

Now that we’re done listing its features and attributes, it’s finally time to discuss some of the weapons at Demogorgon’s disposal. As a creature of legendary proportions Demogorgon has a multiattack and both Legendary resistances (3/day) and Legendary actions to compliment its array of attacks.

While under normal circumstances a Tentacle attack might not sound all that scary, getting hit by Demogorgon’s tentacles means having to make a save against hit point reductions. This basically means that it won’t matter how many clerics you have in your party because no healing can recover damage taken from these attacks.

Next we have Demogorgon’s infamous Gaze attack; any creature can choose to succeed on the save imposed at the cost of not being able to look at our demon until its next turn. Those who choose to hold his gaze must make a DC 23 CON save or suffer one of the following three effects:

Beguiling Gaze: on a failed save the target is stunned until the start of Demogorgon’s next turn or until the demon breaks eye contact.

Hypnotic Gaze: on a failed save the target is charmed until Demogorgon’s next turn, making it so that our demon can dictate their very action and move. Note that this cannot be use in conjunction with the Maddening Gaze legendary action.

Insanity Gaze: on a failed save the target suffers the effects of the Confusion spell, minus getting to make a saving throw, of course.

Today’s monster can take two legendary actions each round of combat. The first of our two options is a pretty simple Tail attack that does some pretty good damage but nothing else to boot. The second one, however, allows us to use Demogorgon’s Gaze an extra time per round as long as we only choose between Beguiling and Insanity.

All in all, this huge fiend definitely packs a punch. It’ no wonder he’s nicknamed the Prince of Demons. For those of you following along, today’s monster is considered a CR 26 creature of chaotic evil alignment.

The lore

Historically speaking, although there is some debate about it, the word “Demogorgon” is mostly accepted to have been the product of miscopying ancient documents. While this initial misunderstanding of Greek equaled our Demon Lord to a primal god, Christian writers slowly turned the word to represent a demon in hell.

In terms of our favorite pastime, Demogorgon first appeared in the world of Dungeons and Dragons back in 1976 when it was introduced along with Orcus as part of the Eldritch Wizardry supplement. This is one of those monsters that have been a staple of the game for as long as there has been a game.

Today’s monster goes by many nicknames: Prince of Demons, Sibilant Beast, Master of the Spiraling Depths. Demogorgon reigns over the Gawping Maw deep within the Abyss (88th layer to be specific) where it has built itself a massive castle, Abysm, with two spiraling towers shaped like snakes, one for each head.

Speaking of heads, one of the most important features about the Demogorgon’s appearance is its two very large simian like heads, each of which has a name and a distinct personality. The first head, Aameul, is the more charismatic and deceptive of them, always making plans and trying to find ways to separate itself from its tin head, Hethradiah, who represents primal savagery and destruction rather than cunning. The rest of Demogorgon’s body can be described as a combination of scales and fur, with broad shoulders and two tentacles instead of hands.

Even though the word “scientist” might not be the first thing you think about when you see depictions of this creature, Demogorgon does in fact have a bit of a hobby in creating twisted creatures. As if being an 18ft tall mutated simian with two heads wasn’t enough, he can count on the creatures he has created such as retrievers, ettins, and death knights= as well as a steady supply of hezrou and other nefarious beings that he keeps under his command.

Although his cult isn’t as numerous or common as that of other demons and evil entities, the Sibilant Beast can count on the support beings like the kuo-toa, troglodytes, and even human beings. In fact, it’s not entirely uncommon for warlocks to seek pacts with Demogorgon.

There is a lot more I could cover for today’s monster, but for the sake of not having article end up being longer than the Wikipedia page, I believe I’ll leave it at that.

The execution

Oh boy, this is a big one. I definitely wouldn’t recommend throwing this at your players until they’re near max level or have some sort of godly support to back them up. This is the sort of BBEG you leave for the end of the campaign, that’s for sure.

So, okay, let’s get a couple of things situated before we being. The first of these is the fact that, unlike other evil entities, Demogorgon is unable to planeshift, which means that, if you really really want your party of adventurers to fight him you’ll have to make them go to him and, as fun as raiding Abysm sounds, I think I’d pass, personally.

The second thing we need to know is that while he cannot be summoned into the material plane, extremely powerful individuals who worship him might have the ability to summon an aspect of him, which is actually where we get our statblock from.

The way I see it those are our two real options on how to push for an encounter with this monster. I think a way to even the battle field a bit more and give your party a little more of a chance to survive this encounter would be to have Demogorgon be focused on a different goal while the party assaults him. Perhaps now that an aspect of him has been released into the Material Plane he’s on his way to destroy Waterdeep or something. This would leave your party with a couple of rounds to unleash their worst on our Demon Lord before it finally turns to deal with the annoying flies buzzing around it.

An interesting idea for this combat would be to have the first half of it focus on minimizing Demogorgon’s damage, and surviving the effects of his presence in the Material Plane before decides that getting rid of our pesky adventurers is the best call. On top of having stuff like flying giant boulders that are being tossed about by our Demon and the expected chaos of it barging into a city, you could also decide to spice things up by having a few of its faithful servants show up.

One of the things that I enjoy the most about combat both as a player and as a DM is to have choices. Would the players decide to deal with the chaos around the city and save innocent lives? Or would they focus on trying to dispatch our Demon Lord back into the Abyss?

Aaaand that’s it for today. If you enjoyed this article and want to see other similar content, don’t forget to visit our social media so we can let you know when we post new articles. We put up new content every day of the week!

[mysweetestcreature]

Meus Amor (Hogwarts!Harry) Part II

(Banner by the lovely @pretty-hazza)

***

Series Masterlist

***

They’ve been inseparable since the start of the spring term, even more so now since they’ve taken their relationship to a more intimate level. Harry chooses to ignore the disdainful looks that some of her fellow Gryffindors give him when they see his arms wrapped protectively around her, or while he waits for her outside the portrait hole. They think he isn’t good enough for her.

And maybe they’re right.

However, it doesn’t change that fact that he’d do anything for Y/n. She’s the person that’s keeping him together and maintaining that last bit of goodness within him that he so desperately is clinging on to. He absentmindedly grazes the white sleeve that covers his left forearm. Sometimes he can feel it burning, and it just becomes a reminder of how fucked he is. The thought of her finding out what he’s done in these past few months makes his insides twist in the most excruciating ways. He’s ashamed of himself. Just looking at her looking at him with such fondness and pride––she doesn’t care what any of those nosey pricks have to say, she’s proud to call Harry her boyfriend––has guilt shredding through him like a knife. 

Whenever he finds himself tensing up from all his stress, just the touch of her hand against his brings him back to earth. Her smile––gods, how he could just admire it forever––is his lifeline. If she senses something off about him, she doesn’t say anything. The less she knows, the easier it will be to keep her out of his mess. 

To him, she’s perfect. There aren’t enough words in the English dictionary that can describe how much he loves her. Yet, he knows he doesn’t deserve her because she’s just so pure and full of optimism, finding the good and magic in even the darkest of things. She deserves someone who won’t put her at risk, and his heart constricts because that someone might not be him. But he’s not strong enough to let her go. He’s not strong enough to tell her to get lost because he knows he won’t survive it.

Especially with what’s soon to come.

***

Artemis drops a copy of the Daily Prophet in his lap during breakfast. The front page is a report on the most recent Death Eater attacks, one of which occurred not too far from Hogwarts. They don’t choose their battles anymore, instead they wreak havoc on anyone and anything that gets in their way. He skims over the text, ignoring the animated picture of Scrimgeour from a press conference. It just reminds of that fateful day in December when his father had turned his back on his own family. 

“Could you give me the sports page?” Niall asks, his mouth full of toast and jam. “Heard Ireland might be going to the World Cup again!” Harry rolls his eyes and plucks the page and shoves it in his friend’s face before he continues to flip through the remaining parts he’s got left. A particular name catches his eye on page four, it belongs to his girlfriend’s father, Nicolás Y/l/n. The Auror had been interviewed on what the Ministry is doing to keep the community safe. 

“I assure you all, that my men and I are working tirelessly to protect our families. So far, we’ve been able to put over two and half dozen Death Eaters in their rightful place in the cells of Azkaban. We will not stand down until our streets are safe and we can go back to living in peace.”

The article then goes on to praise Mr. Y/l/n for having lead his team during a raid of a safehouse that You-Know-Who’s followers had been hiding in, making at least a dozen more arrests. He’s a good man, with a moral compass that would put Harry’s family to shame. And it’s obvious he’s extended those ideals to his daughter because she really is just kindest person. 

Hands suddenly wrap around his eyes. A stifled giggle erupts from behind, and he can hear Niall let out a soft chuckle from right next to him. “Hi, love,” Harry greets. The hands fall from his face and onto his shoulders.

“How’d you know it was me?” Y/n pouts, as she squeezes herself in between the two boys.

Harry leans in and presses his lips to hers, letting them linger a little longer than he would usually allow in front of so many people. “Couldn’t imagine anyone else wanting to make such an effort.” She sticks her tongue out at him, then reaches for a blueberry left forgotten on his plate. Her face scrunches up from having picked up a ridiculously sour one. Harry fawns over how cute she is as her lips pucker from the taste, and he kisses her forehead as she takes a long gulp from his goblet. 

“There’s a reason why I left them there.” He wipes a dribble of pumpkin juice from the side of her mouth with his thumb. Y/n lightly hits his arm, then tries her luck at a seemingly succulent strawberry, humming in triumph when its sweet juice tickles the roof of her mouth. 

“No food over at the Gryffindor table?” Niall teases, but she shrugs him off. When she walked into the Great Hall this morning, it had occurred to her that she never sits with her boyfriend during meals––not counting when they eat out in Hogsmeade––and she thinks that’s absolutely ridiculous. Luna Lovegood sometimes trades a spot at the Ravenclaw table to sit with her friends in Gryffindor, so why shouldn’t she be able to sit here?

“Thought I’d eat breakfast with my favorite guy,” she kisses Harry’s cheek, who in turn takes her chin between his fingers and kisses her deeply, completely disregarding the pairs of all-too curious eyes that darted their way.

They move naturally with each other, her fingers playing with the hem of his jumper. He snakes an arm around her midsection, letting his hand run up and down her sides. He can hear Daphne and Pansy squawking in disgust from a few seats down. It only makes this all the more enjoyable because Daphne still refuses to leave him alone, even after she watched Y/n and Harry waltz out of his dorm room, clothes completely disheveled from their previous engagements. He sucks her bottom lip, the remnants of that strawberry still fresh on her tongue. 

Niall lightly nudges her back, and the couple turns to face him with annoyed expressions on both of their faces. “That’s so sweet, Y/n. I don’t know what to say.”

***

It’s the first time he’s ever been in the Room of Requirement. Lost items and things just thrown in here stacked high in numerous piles all throughout the space. There are mysteries within the room, treasures for anyone willing to scout through the clutter to find them. About a month ago, he’d found a collection of muggle children stories compiled into one large book. He’d given it to Y/n and laid his head in her lap as she read them out loud to him. Something about a girl falling into a hole and entering an imaginative world, or some nonsense like that. There might have been a rabbit, but he really can’t remember anything because he had been so comfortable that he’d been dozing in and out of sleep. 

If only he could be doing that instead of spending all night cooped up with Draco Malfoy as they try to mend this bloody vanishing cabinet like they’ve been doing since their return to school in January. 

The platinum blonde haired boy stares at the hunk of wood with such hatred that Harry thinks his steel grey eyes could potentially set it on fire. “Fucking piece of garbage,” he kicks the front right leg of it, cursing to himself once more. He then plops himself down on one of the chairs with broken arms across from it. 

They’ve been at this since after dinner. Once Harry had walked Y/n back to her common room, he came straight here. She had tried to convince him to spend an extra hour with her and Liam, so they could teach him how to play Monopoly. It took everything in him to say no to her, but he did promise that they could do it some other night. (Although, he doesn’t know how a game with non-moving pieces could ever be enjoyable.)

Harry shakes his head and pulls his wand out from the pocket of his robes. He’d recently come across a book while he and Y/n had been in the library on how to fix these kind of things, but the mere words in black and white had made it out to seem like the simplest task to accomplish. From what he’s read, the repeated use of mending spells should have been enough to do the trick, but they’ve been doing just that for a good four months. He’s said the repairing charm so many times that Niall says he’s been muttering it in his sleep. 

“It’s no use,” Draco tries telling him, but Harry keeps at it. Spell after spell leaves his mouth with the hope that one of them will make even the slightest alteration. All they’ve been able to transport are inanimate objects, which had been somewhat exciting at first, but the initial amusement quickly faded because they’re expected to sneak in an entire group of living Death Eaters. Whenever they tried living creatures, their lifeless bodies are what reappeared. Who knows what sort of shit they’d be in if they managed to severely incapacitate those above them.

A cage of pixies used in their second year––when Gilderoy Lockhart had foolishly set them free, the wanker––sits on the end table next to him. He casts a freezing charm on them to immobilize their movements long enough for him to grab one without starting a riot. Quickly putting it inside the cabinet, he says the counter-spell and immediately hears the pixie banging itself against all four inner corners. 

This is where they fall short every time. Getting a living creature to the twin cabinet at Borgin and Burkes is the easy part, they’ve only done it about seventy-something times. It’s the return trip that’s giving the two Slytherins immense amounts of stress that Harry could quite literally blow his top.

“Harmonia Nectere Passus.” The cabinet falls silent. Harry opens it up ever-so slightly––just in case the blue mischief maker is playing tricks on him because that may or may not have happened last week––to check if it’s empty. No sign of it when he opens the door all the way. The slight glimmer of hope––the same kind that bubbles in him when whatever it is that they stuff in the cabinet disappears. He closes it and repeats the previous incantation. 

“Harmonia Nectere Passus.” A soft thump comes from inside. He rests his head against the door, eyes shut tightly because it’s more than likely that it’ll just be another failed attempt. There’s no sign of movement, but he still wants to think otherwise. Draco barks at him to open it, and Harry mentally counts to three before swinging the door open.

“Fuck.” No such luck. The pixie’s dead body lays on its side at the bottom of the cabinet. Its once electric blue skin, a dull grey. He lets out an aggravated sigh, then falls into the chair next to the other boy. “I just don’t get it, we’ve tried everything!” he exasperates, running a hand down his face. While he wants to believe that maybe there’s just something they’re missing, he knows for certain that they’ve been attentive. 

He feels like he could punch a hole right through the bloody thing. All he wants to do now is to reduce it to ashes, at least that way he won’t have to look at it ever again. His head hangs low and he brings his left ring finger to his lips. 

“That’s an interesting ring,” Draco speaks up after a few minutes of silence. Harry simply nods, a small grin forming when he reads the message on the warm metal. Sleep tight, I love you! He can just picture her curled up under her sheets, Ashes sprawled out by her feet as she flips through another book or magazine. “What does it mean?”

“Who says it means anything?” he counters. 

The blonde-haired boy snorts, and that may be the first time since the end of fifth year that Harry’s heard him do so. “All jewelry holds some kind of meaning,” he boldly states. “If it didn’t, then no one would bother to wear them.” He holds up his right hand; a large bulky ring sits intimidatingly on his finger. “This was my father’s ring. I wear it because it serves as a reminder of why I’m slaving away in this hellhole with you. Vol-” he clears his throat, “The Dark Lord wasn’t too pleased with him when he got caught. Now my mother and I have to pay for his fuck-ups.”

Harry lets the words simmer and really take the time to digest them. They’re all the same. Each child of fallen Death Eaters, forced to partake in something that they never signed up for. He looks down at his own ring, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly. 

“It’s for my girl,” he finally admits. Letting out a breath he had been holding this entire time. “She’s my reason for doing this. I just want to protect her.” He leans back against the chair and stares up at the ceiling. He doesn’t know why he’s opening up to Draco Malfoy, but he guesses if there’s anyone who will understand his position, it’s him. 

***

Harry loves rubbing his thumb over her ring while they walk hand in hand. The conversation that he and Draco had had about their reasons for doing all of this still fresh in his mind. The matching ring she wears reminds him that there is purpose to this shithole of a life, and he’s positive that she’s his. They walk aimlessly around Hogsmeade, stopping to look at a few window displays and stopping in Tomes and Scrolls (she needs to pick up the latest issue of Witch Weekly), before settling on booth seat in the Three Broomsticks. Harry orders them a few butterbeers, before sliding in next to her on the cushions.

“Did you remember to ask for Madam Rosmerta’s extra sweet version for me?” Y/n asks, and Harry playfully rolls his eyes at her. He’s been actually trying to get her to lessen her sugar intake––sometimes she gets terrifyingly hyper that he just doesn’t know what to do (although when the mood is right, it does come to his advantage) ––but it’s failing miserably because it only takes one look into those damn puppy-dog eyes for him to bend at her will.

“Of course,” he nudges his nose to hers. “What kind of boyfriend would I be if I couldn’t remember the enormous sweet tooth you have?” 

She lets out a giggle, then leaves kisses on his cheeks, jaw, and chin. “So, I got a letter from my mum yesterday…” she pauses briefly when the waiter brings them their butterbeers. They both take long sips from their mugs, indulging in its sweet butterscotch flavor. Harry lets out a content sigh as the liquid fizzes in his mouth. He watches as she sets hers back down on the makeshift napkin coaster. A nervous chuckle passing through her lips as she busies herself with the handle of the mug “…and she was wondering if you’d want to maybe want to spend the summer holiday with us?” 

“Yeah?” He tucks her hair behind her ear and over her shoulder. To say that he’s rather stunned would be an understatement. He’s never been in a relationship long enough to do the whole ‘meet the parents’ thing. Would they like him? Fuck, he already knows that Mr. Y/l/n won’t! After all, he had been present during the arrest and the trial, which means he must know who Harry is. 

“Yeah,” she smiles, scooching in closer so that she’s basically sitting on top of him. Just imagining how much fun it would be to spend an entire summer with him excites her. “I mean I get it if you don’t want to…” she pauses, twirling one of his curls around her finger, “…with all that’s going on with your family and all.” Her bottom lip tucks between her teeth, as she tries not to look him directly in the eyes. Of course, she’d understand if he has to say no…but Merlin’s beard she’s praying he’ll say yes because she may or may not have already mapped out the things that they would do together, last night. 

The depressions in his cheeks become more prominent as he leans his forehead to rest on her temples. “I’d like that.” Her shoulders relax and shrug forward as she turns just enough to meet his lips. They both giggle into the kiss but maintain the connection for as long as possible. 

***

Dearest Harry,

I haven’t heard from you since you went back. You haven’t responded to any of my previous letters, and I guess I’m to blame for why you’ve distanced yourself from us. It was the hardest decision that I’ve ever had to make. For years I feared that my children would follow in their father’s footsteps. You of all people should know that. However, the extraneous circumstances had presented themselves, and it left me no choice but to push aside my pride for the better good of this family.

Even Gemma had been upset with me when she found out about you. She didn’t speak to me for a few weeks after you boarded the Hogwarts Express back to school. You know her, ever the protective big sister to you. I’m not sure if you two have been talking, but in case you haven’t, please find the time to at least send her an owl. She misses you…we both do.

I understand if you still need some more time. My biggest grievance is that you had to get involved in whatever it is your father has started. You have so much potential, of which I’m afraid has been snatched from beneath your feet. Believe me, if there had been another way, I would’ve fought for it. Unfortunately, luck is not on our side. As much as it hurts me to see you and your sister have to suffer through this mess, there is just no turning our backs on this.

I know you may never forgive your father for all that he’s done. If I were in your position, I don’t think I could have handled the situation as well as you have. I would have most likely done something brash, like runaway to some island off the coast of Denmark. But please remember, he still is your father. And if everything goes accordingly, we have a chance at becoming a family again. Isn’t that what we’ve wanted all along? 

Your father loves you, Harry, never forget that.

All my love,

Mum.

Harry crumples the paper up and tosses it in the nearest waste bin.

***

In all of his Hogwarts career, Harry has never studied this early for his final exams. But here he is, sat in a chair surrounded by textbooks from each one of him and Y/n’s classes. Usually, he’d study a good two and a half weeks before the scheduled dates. He’s a good student, gets high marks in all his classes and balances that all out with Quidditch. What he’s trying to get across is that he’s more than able to hold off with the studying, especially when June is six weeks away.

“We could go back to my room,” he peppers kisses up her shoulder and to her neck. Y/n giggles as she pushes him away.

“As much fun as that sounds,” she starts. She picks up her Arithmancy notes and holds them centimeters away from his face. “I think we could benefit from a few extra hours in here.” His face falls flat, groaning as he bangs his head against the open Transfiguration book. 

Y/n finds it extremely amusing how childish he’s being right now. He starts grumbling to himself, flipping to Chapter 23 to read up on how to change the color of one’s eyebrows. She massages the back of his neck, before turning back to study over all these complex equations that Professor Vector expects them to know how and when to use.

It takes about half an hour until Harry grows bored again. He tries to entertain himself by making paper cranes and sending them off to random parts of the library, but that can only really stimulate the mind for so long. He rests his chin on the table, his eyes flickering over to Y/n. She looks so beautiful when she’s completely focused, with her lips quirked to one side as she scribbles through problems in her muggle notebook. He doesn’t even try to resist the urge to kiss her again. 

“You’re being awfully clingy this afternoon,” she says pointedly, but doesn’t pull away when his lips make their way up to her own. She supposes half an hour is enough to deserve a break. 

***

She’s infatuated with the how the pinkish pearl colored liquid that sits in her cauldron smells. Today, Slughorn is having them try their luck at brewing Amortentia, the most powerful love potion in the world. (It must be noted that they are NOT allowed to remove any product from the chambers, and each brew will be thrown out soon after dismissal.) Every time she breathes in through her nose, scents of strawberries and hot chocolate and Harry’s cologne send her senses into a whirlwind, and she doesn’t know how much more of this seduction she can take. 

“Sit still, will you?” Liam looks up from his brew. It’s easy for him to say, he had brought nose clips to class and didn’t even think about bringing her a pair. 

“I can’t help it!”

It’s like her entire body feels all hot and bothered, and she fans herself with the flap of her textbook to get some sort of air circulation going in this stuffy excuse of a room (it’s the hormones talking). Y/n looks over to her boyfriend’s table, he’s concentrated on finishing up his potion––and sure does he look good doing it. Now, it’s like his scent is the only one emitting from her cauldron. All she can think of doing is running her fingers through his gorgeous brown curls and poke at the dimples on his cheeks. Yet, she nearly gawks when she notices that he’s being surrounded by Greengrass and bunch of other serpent girls that she hasn’t bothered learning the names of. 

“If you were my bird, I would never let another girl get that close to me,” she rolls her eyes and turns around to see Enzo Hopkins, another Slytherin, smirking at her. “Pretty girl like you? Deserves better than that twig.”

Y/n can’t help but snort. Ever since her and Harry had become official, she’s been getting some unwanted attention from this boy. Apparently, he and Harry have some a not-so-great history, and Hopkins has been jealous of him ever since. It started when both boys were looking to fill in the last chaser position back in third year. It had been Harry who had come out with more scored points, but Hopkins had insisted that Harry had cheated––even went as far as to accuse the keeper of fancying him––in order to outdo his own score. And that’s just one of the reasons why they don’t quite get along. (He may have fancied Daphne around the time she and Harry had hooked up, but that has yet to be confirmed.)

“Still not interested,” she tuts, shaking her head because the guy really can’t take a hint. But she doesn’t expect him to grab her elbow to drag her just centimeters from him. His breath smells like the roast beef from the Great Hall, and there’s a little piece of salad stuck between his canine and first premolar. 

“You’d be better off with me, babe. Could give you everything you want. I bet I could make you feel better than Styles ever cou-” Hopkins lets out a cry of pain and slouches over to cradles the area between his legs. 

She towers over him now that he’s been reduced down to his knees. “Don’t call me ‘babe.’”

Their little scene is enough to catch everyone’s attention. Harry’s eyes lock on her, and he’s taking long strides over to where she stands, her arms firm on her hips as she watches the way Hopkins hisses through his gritted teeth. 

He wraps an arm around her waist. “Did–did you do that to him?” She gives him a proud nod, admiring her handy work. 

“Good heavens, what happened here?” Slughorn gasps at the sight. 

“He rammed into the corner of the table, Sir,” Y/n explains, her voice dripping in false innocence. “You should really be more careful, Enzo.”  

The boy lets out a disgruntled screech as he barks at one of his friends to help him up. The rest of the class quickly falls back into their routine, but Harry stays by her side a bit longer. Once Slughorn is out of ear’s shot, Enzo turns to him. “Better keep that bitch of yours in line, Styles, or she’ll get what’s coming to her,” he sneers and inconspicuously taps over his sleeve, fully aware of what its affects would be on Harry.

This makes Harry tense up enough that Y/n can feel his body harden against her. Her boyfriend’s face is hard and indecipherable, a look that she hasn’t seen since they first met. Harry drops his arm from around her and steps towards him.

“You touch her, and I swear, I’ll ki-” but Y/n tugs at his arm before he can finish his sentence. She urges him back, employing Liam to stand in between the two.

“Just ignore him, yeah?” she places a hand on his cheek and nudges him to face her. “Harry, look at me,” she pleads. “It’s nothing but an empty threat.” His chest continues to heave, but he manages to peel his eyes away from Hopkins to look at her. Her eyes exude worry and a slight amount of fear, and Harry doesn’t know if it’s because of what the prat had just said or maybe it’s him.

***

She pushes the mashed potatoes on her plate around with her fork. Her thoughts wandering over to what had happened in Potions. Harry had been so…un-Harry. It’s the only way she can describe it. There was something about the way his eyes had turned shades darker that she can’t seem to shake off. It’s like he had turned into a completely different person in a matter of seconds. Sure, what Hopkins had said had been rude and downright misogynistic, but the boy has been known to be all talk and no action.

“Earlier,” she starts, capturing Liam’s attention.

“What about?” he asks, wiping his mouth with his napkin and setting it to the side.

“It’s just…I’ve never seen him get like that before,” she stares down into her lap, her lips purse tightly to form a straight line. Her eyes find him from across the room, busy listening to Niall to notice her staring. He looks completely calm as he hunches over plate and forks a few pieces of chicken while chuckling at something his friend must have said. No traces of that earlier coldness, he’s back to being her Harry. 

“You can’t blame him, that Hopkins was a right git.”

Maybe Liam’s right. What if it was just his way of defending her? She shouldn’t be getting her knickers in a twist over that! And she’s confident that her boyfriend would never partake in such violence. She sees the way he is with people. The other day, he had helped a first year Hufflepuff pick up all her books when some bully had zapped her a hole in her backpack, then had grabbed said bully and made him apologize. 

He’s a good guy. She wouldn’t be so in love with him if he weren’t. The way he handles all the bad talk about him and his family is extremely admirable. What she’s heard people say about him can be so foul. They have no right to assume anything about him. Just because his father is a Death Eater, doesn’t mean anything. Harry is his own person, and she knows how much he hates being branded because of his name.  

That’s why she really wants him to meet her parents. Her mother seems to already like him, of course, that’s just based on what Y/n has told her in her letters. It’s her dad that she’s slightly worried about, but she hopes that when he sees how amazing Harry is and how utterly happy he makes her, he’ll accept him as hopefully a permanent resident in her life. 

***

That damn cat.

It’s impossible to take him anywhere without him running off. What’s worse is that he somehow managed to escape both their watchful eyes, and now he’s lost somewhere in Hogsmeade. 

“Ashes?” she looks under the bench outside of Honeydukes, then behind one of the rubbish bins across from the Hog’s Head Inn. Harry stops a few of the townsfolk and describes the cat’s physical attributes. 

“He’s around this big and about this tall,” he uses his hands as means of measurement. One of the two witches is deaf in her left ear, so Harry nearly screams into her right. “A cat. C-A-T,” he annunciates, but it still proves to be useless. 

Y/n stops to think. If she were her cat, where would she scurry off to? Ashes really likes food, but she’s already scavenged through the trash. The Shrieking Shack, maybe? No! He’s much too cowardly to even go near it. 

“I honestly have no idea where he could be,” she drops her face onto Harry’s shoulder. He rubs her back and lets out a long breath. “What-what if we never find him? He can’t fend for himself out here! He needs me to cut his fish into small pieces or else he won’t eat it!” 

Harry snorts, which earns him a glare from his girlfriend. “Don’t worry, love. We’ll find him. He’s probably found his way to the owlery,” he says. “Remember? That’s how I found him.” She nods her head, and he takes her hand to leads her to the Three Broomsticks because all this searching has famished him like no one would believe. 

When he opens the door, they nearly collide with someone. Harry rushes out an apology but stops as soon as he recognizes the platinum blonde hair. 

“Ashes!” she squeals. He looks down to see the cat cozied up against Malfoy’s right leg. “So this is where you wandered off too, you silly cat!” She picks him up and continues to lecture him. 

“Saw him clawing at the door to the toilets,” Malfoy says, Harry notices the way he studies her movements. It makes him feel slightly anxious because Malfoy knows exactly what she means to him and he doesn’t like having him––and any other member of that group––so close to her, even if they’ve become somewhat friendlier over the past few months. It’s nothing against Draco in particular, it’s just a reflex he’s developed. 

“Thank you for looking after him,” she says gratefully, ignoring the way Harry’s hand tightens around her waist. “Maybe you’d want to join us for lunch?” 

“I’m going to have to decline,” Draco says, his eyes locked with Harry’s. “but maybe next time.” She watches as he and Harry exchange understanding nods, then Malfoy excuses himself and steps around them. They watch as he disappears through the door. 

Y/n turns back to Harry. “What was that?” she questions. 

“What was what?” he plays off, putting a hand on her shoulder as they find themselves an empty table. It’s in the middle of the room, right next to a group of fifth year Ravenclaws. His eyes glaze over the menu, and she knows this is his way of avoiding the topic. “You want your usual, love?” Before she can even answer, he’s halfway to the bar. 

*** 

The last game of the season, Slytherin versus Gryffindor, and the crowd is absolutely going crazy to see who will take the Inter-House Quidditch Cup. All the players gather in the center of the field, as they listen to Madam Hooch give her pre-game spiel about having a ‘nice clean game’––which everyone knows never happens, especially when these two opposing teams go head to head.

So far, Gryffindor is leading by twenty points. The golden snitch has yet to be seen, which gives the Slytherin chasers enough time catch up. Luckily, Niall (who is the team’s keeper) is able to catch the quaffle before it passes through the left ring and tosses it to Harry when the latter quickly sweeps by on his broom. With it tucked securely under his arm, he dodges his way across the field. Y/n holds her breath as he makes it close enough to attempt his shot. She watches as he throws it up in the air and hits it with the back of his broomstick, right between Weasley’s hands, and through the middle ring. 

“Ten points for Slytherin!” Zacharias Smith announces through the loud speaker.  

The rest of Slytherin House erupts in cheers, and she joins in despite being sat with those from her own house. She can’t help it though because he just looks so good in that uniform, and those nice fitted pants make his thighs look extra good and give his butt a nice plumpness to it. Just before the game, she’d pulled Harry into an empty classroom while he was on his way to the locker rooms. It was just so she could give him a courage boost, and he didn’t mind it one bit. 

“I know you want to support your boyfriend and all, but the least you can do is take off the jumper,” Liam motions to the back of her grey jumper with STYLES embroidered on the back in emerald green lettering. He pulls his hood over his head and seeps further into his seat, even goes as far as to cover over the side of his face “You’re embarrassing me.”

Y/n pulls the strings of his hoodie so that it completely obstructs his vision. “Oh, hush,” she giggles. Another wave of roars breaks out, and she turns her attention back to the game. Potter and Harper neck and neck as both seekers chase after the golden snitch. Some of the other players pause midair to get a glimpse of the action. 

“Potter and Harper have both spotted the snitch! Who will get to it first?”

She looks for Harry, who uses their momentarily distracted states to snatch the quaffle right from Ginny Weasley’s arms before she even gets a chance to see him coming. He flies towards the goal rings, a bludger hot on his tail when one of Gryffindor’s beaters––she hadn’t noticed which one––hits the erratic ball in his direction. 

“Harry, look out!” she screams, covering her eyes because the bludger is just that close to knocking him off his broom. Four players have already been rushed to the Hospital Wing, which clearly proves her point that flying is just about the worst thing about the Wizarding World. Once one is able to apparate, there really is no purpose in having to ride that death stick. In their second year, Ron Weasley had crashed his father’s flying Ford Anglia into the Whomping Willow. Point validated. 

A gasp spreads amongst the crowd, and it only worries her further. “I can’t watch,” she turns to face away from the game. 

“Styles scores another ten points for Slytherin! Both teams are tied with 100 points each.” 

She turns on her heel and looks through the cracks between her fingers. “Oh thank, god,” she breathes out and shakes Liam’s arm in excitement. When Harry looks her way, she blows him a kiss which has the cute little crevices of his cheeks popping out and he shoots her back a knee-buckling smile that she loves so much. 

***

The Black Lake glistens in the moonlight, its water reaching out to encompass the rocks that scatter across the sand. It’s peaceful here, only the sounds of the night filling their ears as they lay against a tree, a blanket transfigured into a cot beneath them. A half empty bottle of firewhisky is passed between the two of them, intoxicated giggles carrying through the air whenever one of them burps aloud. 

Half of the student body are cramped in Gryffindor Tower, celebrating how Potter had been the first one to gets his hands on the golden snitch. Had McLaggen not hit the bludger into the Slytherin seeker’s broom, the turnout would have probably been different. But that’s Quidditch, a brutal mess of a game. All of Y/n’s friends are up there basking in their house’s victory, but she would much rather spend the night enveloped in his arms. 

Harry finds that drunk Y/n is the cuddliest person in the world. The warmth brought about by the alcohol burns her cheeks and has her leaving sloppy kisses over his face. And she tells him stories that he’s sure she’s making up as she goes.

“…and that’s why river trolls and mountain trolls don’t get along!” she exclaims.

And she’s just met with his laughter. “That’s enough for you.” He takes the bottle from her hands. A cute little pout splays across her lips, and he really can’t help himself and just kisses her. His hands roam up her sides as he listens to her whimper into his mouth. 

She can taste the firewhisky on his lips, or maybe it’s the flavor coming from her own. Whatever the case, she feels like she’s on cloud nine. Her fingers travel underneath his shirt, marking crescents into the toned muscles of his back.

“We’re outside, love,” he chuckles when he pulls back. 

It’s most definitely the alcohol talking, but she’s feeling uncharacteristically frisky. Her hips unintentionally buck up, pushing pressure into his crotch region. “Don’t care.” He lets out a groan and buries his face into her neck, sucking tenderly on her pulse while her hand palms him through his trousers. “Want to make you feel good.” It’s as though her words are wrapped within a halo, and his mind gets all fuzzy as she wraps her legs around his hips and turns them over. 

“I-I want to try something,” she blushes, her fingertips gently pulling his trousers and boxers down by their waistbands to about just below his thighs. They’ve only been intimate a handful of times and have yet to fully familiarize themselves with each other’s bodies. Plus, there was a very explicit article in Witch Weekly entitled, “How to Please Your Wizard in Bed” and her curiosity had once again gotten the better of her. How could she not read it? 

“What’s that, pet?” he rasps. He only ever calls her that in times like these. She doesn’t respond, instead settles herself in between his legs. His breath catches in his throat when she takes his stiff member in her soft hand.

She watches how his eyes close and his head falls back onto the cot. The rise and fall of his chest uneven as she jerks her hand up and down. “Does…does this feel good?” Her front teeth sink into her bottom lip. 

“Feels brilliant,” he croaks, and he bucks into her hand. This gives her a bit more courage. Before he’s got time to process her actions, her hot breath tickles the swollen tip, her lips just barely connecting with the skin. Dribbles of pre-cum bubble from the slit, and her tongue grazes over it, the new and welcoming taste of him sliding down her throat, and she swears she can even feel it once it’s gone down into her belly. With the adrenaline coursing through her system, she confidently takes a good amount of him into her mouth. Her tongue running over each vein and swirling over each curve. She really is trying to drive him mad, that he’s completely sure of. 

Not a single coherent sentence can escape him. All the words feel jumbled as he revels in how good she’s treating his aching cock. Salazar save him because he doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to last if she keeps this up. He watches through hooded lids as she bobs her head over him and gathers her hair in his fist, wanting to get a better view of her pretty lips sucking him off. He tries to control himself, resisting the carnal desire to fuck her mouth, but it’s becoming too much for him to fight. His hips buck forward, enough to send his cock into her tight throat. Tears start to prickle behind her eyes, but in no way does she want to stop. The control she has over him, she loves it. She loves how he’s completely dependent on her to help him reach euphoric bliss. 

“I’m about to-fuck…” he whines. His knuckles grip the edges of the cot tightly between his knuckles. He’s so close, his senses heightened, every nerve in his body being washed over by the feeling of him tumbling over the edge. Their eyes meet, his mouth parted as he watches her jerk the base of his cock, while the rest of him is still entrapped between her swollen lips. The vibrations of her moans are the last bit he needs. His eyes shut tight when his orgasm rips through him, long white ribbons of his hot cum fill her mouth.

She swallows every last bit of it. The salty-sweet taste giving her goosebumps all over her body. She really can’t believe she just did that, and yet she’s so happy that she did. Some sort of fulfillment comes out of him falling apart right in front of her. 

“That was…that was bloody amazing,” he pants, pulling her back up to lay on his chest. He covers her lips with his, still able to taste himself on her. 

“Yeah?” she muses, tracing circles on his sweaty torso. 

He nods his head vigorously. “Most definitely.” 

***

In their fourth year Barty Crouch Jr. (who was posing as Mad Eye Moody) had given his class a demonstration of the three Unforgivable Curses. It had been the first time that most of them had been exposed to such cruelty in the seemingly sheltered environment of their beloved school. A poor harmless spider had become subject to such treacherous treatment, each spell casted with such carelessness, that some students still carry the burden of that day deep within their chests. 

Unfortunately, two out of the three are part of the Sixth-Year curriculum. Today the Gryffindors and Slytherins gather around Professor Snape, as they are forced to learn the Cruciatus Curse. Y/n stands in between Liam and Harry, leaning into the latter’s side as she hides her face in his sleeve as Snape does a demonstration of his own on Mr. Filch. The caretaker’s yelps of pain bounce off the walls.

“I hate it,” Y/n mutters. How in the world is this appropriate to teach? Learning about it is one thing, but having to actually subject another to it? It’s outrageous! There might be a war simmering to the surface, but that doesn’t mean that this is the only way of fighting it, right? And maybe Y/n is foolish for wanting to see the glass as half full, but it’s all she can afford.

Her father, is having a field day at work. New Death Eater activity has been swarming around Wizarding England, which means he can barely blink twice before another problem strikes. Knowing that her father is out there, coming face to face with these types of dangerous enchantments as he and his fellow aurors infiltrate a crime site…it’s beyond scary, and all the more nerve-wracking.

None of this is new to Harry, however. In fact, he’s seen those red zaps of light torment others more than he can count. He brings his girlfriend into his chest and covers his hand over one of her ears. He lets his mouth hover in her sweet-smelling hair as he keeps his eyes forward. “It’ll be over soon,” he tells her, rubbing soothing circles on the small of her back. She lifts her head up and nods slowly, and he kisses her forehead and whispers a few more words of reassurance. 

“You are to only perform this with the mildest of intensity, do I make myself clear?” Snape turns to the class, his face as unreadable as ever. He orders for everyone to break into pairs, and each student rushes to find a partner that will hopefully go easy on them. Y/n groups with Parvati Patel, which leaves Harry and Niall together. 

Almost immediately, Niall is letting out little cowers of pain––and Harry has only put in the bare minimum of his efforts––hunching over on his knees. “He said lightly!” the Irishman cries.

“It barely grazed over your arm. Not my fault you’re a ninny,” Harry teases. “C’mon then, have at me.” He holds his arms out low at his sides, signaling for Niall to hit him. That flash of red light hits him in the shoulder. He can barely feel it at all. It’s almost as though Niall had just thrown a pebble at him. 

His friend is clearly annoyed, huffing as he mutters a few colorful words under his breath. “What are you, immune or something?” 

“I’ve got a high pain tolerance, is all,” Harry plays off, but the truth is, is that he’s experienced much worse in these past few months. The memories of his initiation still fresh in his mind, as they replay over and over until he passes out in his bed from exhaustion. But then even then, fragments of it still haunt his nightmares. Whenever he closes his eyes, it’s all he can see.

The cloaked figure grasps Harry’s wrist tightly between his fingers. The fingertips of his other hand dancing over the naked skin of his forearm, his long nails tauntingly scraping over a long prominent vein.

“Your father would be very proud,” the figure says, the strange sound of empathy tensing the muscles in Harry’s jaw. He takes out his wand and holds it above the untainted flesh. Harry looks up to meet his hostile eyes. His chest hurts, he can feel the blood drain from his body as the wand pokes at him. There are a few tears fighting to flow out, and Harry has to close his lids shut to conceal such a moment of weakness.

Not here. Not with these people around. Not with all that’s on the line.

An incantation flows through the air and once it reaches his ears, it feels as though his skin is on fire. Excruciating pain courses through him, but he doesn’t dare flinch. Harry holds his breath, just waiting for it all to just end.

After what feels like hours of standing there, the cloaked figure releases Harry’s wrist. He opens up his eyes, and they immediately land on the raw markings that take up the length of his forearm. It’s terrorizing. The feeling of it ingrained permanently on him makes him feel as though he’s just taken a bludger to the stomach.

It feels wrong. He feels like scum. What would she think of him now? These markings on his arm, claiming him as part of the world he tried so hard to pull away from.

He’s a fraud.

Suddenly he remembers that he isn’t the only person in the room. He lifts his head and finds himself surrounded my masked men. And although he cannot directly look into any of their eyes, he can feel an expectancy as he turns back to the seemingly bigger figure.

He takes a deep breath in through his nose, his nostrils slightly twitching as he meets the cloaked figure’s gaze. The man’s rotting teeth on full display as he smiles wickedly at Harry.

Harry looks past the man, over his shoulder. His mother and Gemma stand small behind him, they give him soft nods, their mouths formed in thin fragile lines. The lump in his throat is forced down, and he takes just a few moments to find the strength to allow these next words to come out. All he thinks about is that he’s doing this for all of them.

3…For his sister.

2…For his mother.

1…For her.

He bends his body forward, his face parallel to the floor, looking at the cloaked figure’s dirty, bare feet.

“My Lord.”

His eyes open at the chilling scream of agony, and he immediately recognizes it to belong to his girlfriend. He snaps his neck in her direction, his blood runs cold when he sees her in a heap on the cold marble floor. 

A crowd quickly forms around her, and he has to shove each person out of the way just to break through.

“Get out of my way!” he barks at them, Gryffindor and Slytherin alike fearfully clear a path for him. By now, everyone knows that they’re an item. And while not everyone in his house is as accepting as Niall or even Malfoy, everyone knows and respects the name Styles.  

Or so he thought.

By the time he’s pushed Lavender Brown to the side to get to her, Liam is trying to help her get up, but she can barely move. Her face is scrunch up in pure anguish, barely able to pick her upper body up. 

“What the fuck happened!?” Harry yells at Parvati, as he gathers Y/n in his lap. “Love, are you okay?” his tone less harsh. He cups her face, wiping away the pained tears that scatter across her flushed cheeks. She weakly shrugs her shoulders, her head falling into the crook of his neck as she takes staggered breaths. 

“We had just finished, but then someone struck her out of nowhere!” Parvati says hurriedly. 

A few sniggers catch his ears. He turns to his left and sees Hopkins, smirking down at them, with a wordless exchange with Liam, Harry carefully moves Y/n to rest in his arms. Before she even has time to process that he’s no longer by her side, he’s back on his feet. His eyes are blazing as he gets up, his head spinning with rage as the boy continues to look at him with such smugness. But it’s quickly wiped away when Harry leaps at him, collar scrunched tightly in his fist, the tip of his wand nearly piercing through his neck. No words are able to come out of him because his mind is clouded and all he sees is a belligerent shade of red. 

“What’s wrong, Styles? Your Gryffindor girlfriend can’t take a little pinch?” Hopkins taunts. Although, the nervous flicker of his eyes to Harry’s wand is not unnoticed by those around them. Niall tries to get in between the two, but it proves useless because there’s no getting through to Harry.

“I warned you that if you ever touched her I’d-”

“You’d what? Kill me? You don’t have the balls,” he continues. Harry seethes at him, his knuckles turning white from how hard he grips his wand. “Go on then, you know the spell. Big Death Eater like yourself.” The last part is spoken low enough so only he can hear it.

All eyes are one Harry, each pair anticipating his next move. They all know him to be more of a pacifist, one of those who rarely got involved in any fights (unless those playful headlocks with Niall count, but surely, they wouldn’t). Y/n tries her best to get back on her feet, but it’s as though she can still feel the jolts of electrifying pain eating at her. Fear drowns out the feeling, however; she’s afraid of what Harry will do. 

But surely, he isn’t capable of committing something as extreme as that…right? Never has she seen him so enraged. It’s another side of him that she never knew existed, and it scares her because she knows that this isn’t her Harry. She scolds herself for being so weak because she knows that she’s the reason why he’s gotten so worked up. 

Liam tries to hold her down when she tries to get up. “Don’t move, you were hit pretty hard.” 

The words are right at the tip of his tongue. Hopkins is right, Harry does know the spell, and he damn well knows how to use it. It already tastes bitter in his mouth, as the dark part of him itches for him to just spit it out. He mouths the first word, but the second remains caged by the sensible part of him that won’t allow for him to truly become what he’s always despised. But he wants to say it, wants to show Hopkins––and everyone watching them––that no one touches his girl. 

“Harry…” he hears her call his name. Her voice strangled by fear and desperation. “Harry, please…” His wand pokes harder into the boy’s throat in such frustration. He’s not a murderer, nor does he have any intentions of getting sent to Azkaban and sharing a cell with his negligent father. He’s better than that.

At least that’s what he wants himself to believe. 

It takes all the self-control he has left to release the tight grip he has on Hopkins’ collar. His wand being stuffed back into his pocket. With one last hardened look, he turns his back to him. 

She’s finally able to breathe again, the constriction in her chest easing up as he walks away from him. Their eyes meet, and she motions for him to come back to her. With one last glare over his shoulder, Harry picks up his feet and wills himself away. 

***

The Hospital Wing is full of the moaning and groaning of students suffering from varying ailments. A few beds down, lies a girl who had somehow managed to curse her nose off while trying to remove some of her acne. So even though her face is as clear as day, the obvious absence above her mouth really does take away from her flawless skin. There’s also a boy who has been laying there unconscious for two days because of some freak mishap out in the Courtyard.  

“I’m fine, really,” Y/n whines, but Harry shakes his head as he tries to keep her still in the hospital bed. She’s a tad bit annoyed because she really doesn’t need to be here, especially considering the state of everyone else. But he can be just as stubborn as she and refused to take no for an answer as he carried her right to Madam Pomfrey’s door. 

“Could’ve fooled me.” His voice lacks the usual cockiness. As he sits down beside her, an arm under her head as he mindlessly plays with the bottoms of her hair. Since coming here, he can barely look at her without feeling guilty. It’s supposed to be his job to protect her, but he let this happen. What’s even worse is that he allowed a stupid school bully to hurt her, how is he ever going to stop The Dark Lord from doing the same?

He closes his eyes and lets his face fall into her hair. Her sweet scent evening out his irregular heartbeat. Despite not wanting to be here, Y/n is glad that he’s relaxed a great amount since earlier. She kisses his collarbone and runs her hand up and down his thigh.

She gargles the words in her mouth, chewing on her tongue before it accidently slips out of her. “If you could, would you have done it?” And she immediately regrets the question.

He takes a few moments to respond, and she thinks her heart might stop beating. He lifts her chin up with the back of his knuckle. Her eyes lift from his mouth up to his eyes. They’re not as dark as before, but the light in them still visibly absent. 

“I think I might have.” 

It’s the way he says it, each word sounding more regretful than the last. She takes in his appearance, the way his jaw tenses so much that the sharp bone nearly breaks through his skin. Does he mean it? A new question rises to the front of her mind, but she won’t push him any further.

They sit in silence. Both of them having nothing else to say. All she can do is give him a small nod of understanding, her eyes disconnecting with his. She turns back and rests her cheek against his sturdy chest. She begins to feel her eyelids getting heavier as she focuses on his heartbeat. As hard as she tries to fight off sleep, the warmth from his body isn’t helping her in the slightest. A yawn passes through her lips, and she finds herself snuggling further into him. He pulls the white sheets of the infirmary up just below her shoulder. The back of his fingers graze over her cheek as he lulls her to sleep. Once her eyes remain closed, he presses his lips to the spot between her eyebrows. His own eyes closing as he inhales deeply.

“I won’t ever let anything happen to you.”

***

It’s nearing curfew, the sound of the soles of his leather shoes tapping against the marble flooring echo through the nearly empty corridor. Madam Pomfrey had quite literally pushed him out of the Hospital Wing and towards the staircase, despite his incessant pleads to let him stay. “I assure you Miss Y/l/n will survive a night without you, now shoo!” she had said to him. And it’s not like he doesn’t have faith in the matron––she’d mended quite a few of his broken bones during Quidditch season––but he’s afraid of what could happen when his girlfriend isn’t right next to him. 

The lighting falters drastically in intensity as he reaches the dungeons. Only the illumination from the mounted torches guides his way towards the stone wall that conceals the entry way to the Slytherin Common Room. Before he can carelessly mutter the password, he stops. A daunting presence makes itself known behind him, the hairs on the back of his neck rise up as he lowers his gaze down to the floor. His eyes trail backwards, until they are met with the long black robes that cover the black shoes.

“Professor,” he draws out the word as he slowly pivots on his heel. 

Snape’s long, greasy hair cupping the perimeters of his cheeks, an unamused look distinguishable in his black irises. Without a word, he’s dragging Harry by the back of his collar towards a secluded area of the dungeons. Harry knows better than to resist, but that doesn’t stop him from letting out grunts of frustration as he gets thrown against the wall. The professor releases him, his hand snapping open as if the fabric were made of fire and thorns. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Snape’s low and nasally monotone voice bites at him.

Harry scoffs, pushing himself off the cold stone wall and standing up to his full height. “I was going to head back to my room, but it seems as though you have other plans for me.” 

The older wizard glares at him. “While you may find humor in all of this, I am trying to make sure that you keep on track. Which means such behavior exemplified earlier must be put to and end so that you can fulfill your responsibilities. Do you understand me, or are you too taken by your feelings for Miss Y/l/n?” he sneer. Harry narrows his eyes at the former potion’s master. His tightened fists hidden by the sleeves of his robes. Whenever he hears any of these people mention her name, he’s immediately brought on edge.

“The deal was that she stays out of this,” Harry spits back. “I’ll keep up my end of the bargain if you lot keep yours.” There’s a fire in his eyes, sparks of blazing fury overtaking his clear green orbs. This had only been the first strike, but it had been enough to send Y/n to the hospital wing. He doesn’t think he can fathom what further potential threats will hold. 

Snape lets out a bitter laugh. “As difficult as it may be for your teeny mind to comprehend, The Dark Lord is testing you. He has got eyes everywhere, so I advise you watch yourself and think twice before you get yourself in a situation that I guarantee you will not survive. None of you will.” And just like that, he flips his cape and marches down the corridor until his figure is lost in the darkness.

The younger wizard is left standing alone in the empty corridor. He leans back against the wall, sliding down until his bottom hits the marbled floor. His arms balance themselves on his bent knees as his head falls forward. A small puddle forms right beneath his nose. 

***

A/N: After 324908 delays, here it is! It’s a bit shorter than the previous part, but I didn’t want to rush through it too much. There are so many things that I would like to happen, and if you guys are willing to bear with me, I think I can make this into a full on series! (Each part will probably be a minimum of 10k words.)

What do you guys think? What what will happen next? Will Y/n find out about Harry’s secret? Send in your comments and questions here!

[the-archetype-of-civilization]

THIS IS ALL OPINION, YOU DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT.

ALSO, SPOILERS FOR MANY THINGS AHEAD.  READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I think there are many reasons why people love villains so much.  Some because they identify their problems with themselves, or understand their motives to a reasonable extent.  Some because they just enjoy a good villain with evil intent to ruin the order set in a universe.  But one thing brings almost all of it together that solidifies both arguments for a villain that needs to be explored and understood more in order for villains to truly feel like villains and inspire the fear that they create: proof, a show of strength.

There are many different villains I could describe that fit the bill to each parts of what makes a good villain.  One that I believe many reasonably understand and agree with in terms of villainy is the MCU character Killmonger, a tragic character forced to live under the weight of being orphaned by the very people he was born into, and realizing the true extent of the racism bred all around the world.  Though, in my opinion, his actions were underwhelming in terms of the fear he wanted to create.  While he did display his strength in defeating T’Challa single-handedly and almost created a genocidal raid across the globe, there wasn’t enough screen time with him to truly show just how much of an imposing threat he was (killing civilians does not count, it’s an easy way out for them).  A menace requires fear instilled from consequence.  If you build up a villain to do something monumental and with tons of repercussions and stop it at the last minute where everything is peachy keen, his imposing-ness is null despite any of the speeches he (convincingly) makes.  Ultron is a villain I think that I think is in a similar vein, but very close to being a true villain in my eyes because the dude was literally about to destroy Earth with a hand-made meteor and that was a sight to behold.  But, despite having a charming(?) personality for a robot that’s supposed to display overblown (not subtle or underwhelming) cynical, nihilistic, and misanthropic tendencies (and yes, that is a very big gripe of mine as a fan of Ultron from the comics!), Ultron didn’t do much in his time to show how villainous he was aside from killing off Quicksilver (which wasn’t much of an impact considering that it was his first time appearing on the main screen and was killed off right then and there.  It’s more of a shock for the movie industry than it is in terms of story).  Also, that movie design was absolutely hideous!  His robot army design was perfect, but his main design completely goes against who he is!  He’s not supposed to look more human, he’s supposed to be a robot that hates humans!  He shouldn’t look like them with fucking teeth and pupils!

Those last two were hard to find at the top of my head, but for these villains it’s pretty easy to find.  There are plenty of villains that can create monumental and horrifying destruction, but still be underwhelming in terms of personality.  While they don’t have to necessarily be agreeable or even have understandable motives, personality is what drives the character across.  The standard “I’m evil because I’m evil” could work as long as they have the flair for it.  Darth Vader fits the mark as a terrifying villain with a “evil” personality but gets away with it by being a tragic character in his own right.  Exdeath from Final Fantasy V I believe fits this bill rather well considering the amount of destruction he causes in the world, but has an underwhelming personality of “I WANT TO DESTROY EVERYTHING BECAUSE I’M EVIL,” even thought he’s my personal favorite FF villain.  But sometimes it’s okay to have a standard villain of being evil for the sake of being evil if the actions that they do are monumental to the plot.  But, this is just a personal opinion of mine.  Kefka and Sephiroth can be argued to be great FF villains, creating mass chaos and killing important characters with evil intent and ruthless personalities.

And then, there are ones that do absolutely neither.  Snoke, having an underwhelming personality and no threats to show for it (the Starkiller base represents the First Order, not Snoke himself personally).  This, unfortunately, goes the same way for the Night King in Game of Thrones.  An interesting and fearsome character and exudes fear from his mere appearance, shows little to nothing about how fearsome he is.  Despite being the brains for the White Walkers, he himself doesn’t do anything monumental or show the personal fear that he himself could instill regardless of his army.  A villain is only imposing by himself when there’s no one to help him.  If he can get the job done himself, he’s sure to be feared.  The Night King hasn’t succeeded in that.  Despite him making an attack at Hardhome, killing one dragon and weaponizing it on the Wall and at Winterfell (briefly, I should say), he doesn’t show anything that he can personally do that would create fear when it’s just him and with no army.  Other than raising people from the dead, we haven’t even seen him fight anyone!  Nothing that shows how he can personally hold his own in a fight.  And I’m sure some can argue that maybe he doesn’t care or need it, but why focus on him at all then?  Why go through the effort to make us fear the White Walkers (a foe that EVERYONE fears) and find the leader that gets killed so quickly and so easily without even making people suffer the consequences of crossing him?  The Golden Company was something far worse, however!  A so-called “fearsome” sell-sword faction completely annihilated in one episode of their physical introduction?!  Bullshit!  There are plenty of villains here that I could mention that can’t achieve fear or motive here, but I’ll save it for these two examples considering that these two were the ones I was very frustrated with.

But, there are two villains that I can think of right now that fulfill motive and fear right off the bat.  The main one (that I’m sure many of you saw coming) is the MCU’s version of Thanos.  No doubt, someone that has an understandably flawed and warped sense of destiny and justice, believing genocide of an entire universe to be “merciful” and saving it from destruction.  It’s absolute brilliance, especially compared to Thanos in the comics, that really fulfills the role of “the Mad TItan” more than the MCU version.  And that’s not to count just how much chaos he has created over the course of 22 films.  Despite being seen in small cameos and brief snippets and mentions, Thanos was someone to be feared in the MCU that many people were eagerly awaiting to see finally revealed in Infinity War.  And he achieved it in spades.  A villain that is absolutely ruthless with his enemies, despite being understanding and honorable about their goals. Imagine beating up the Hulk in 1-on-1 combat so much that he’s not angry anymore and refuses to be.  That’s a feat in itself.  And even while utilizing the Infinity Gauntlet, he can hold his own in a battle against 7 of the greatest heroes in the universe that almost got it off of him!   He pulled a fucking moon down on a planet right after, too!  And the coup de grace of it all was of course the snap heard throughout the universe: the Decimation.  And he succeeded in his mission and rested, like he said he would.  He wasn’t evil because he wanted to be or was vengeful about what happened: he believed himself to be a savior, someone that was willing to do what others wouldn’t.  And even without the Infinity Gauntlet, the guy won’t quit and is still ridiculously strong in a fight with just a double bladed sword in Endgame!  A perfect movie villain rarely shows itself, and Thanos was definitely one of those and I hope we see more that follow in his footsteps.

The secondary villain that I think of (that not many would understand) is Ardyn Izunia, or Ardyn Lucis Caelum, from Final Fantasy XV.  Hajime Tabata aimed to make FFXV’s villain to be better than Kefka and Sephiroth combined.  Now, that’s a gamble.  Considering how memorable and iconic both villains are, it would be very hard to accomplish something like that.  But, in my eyes, I believe he did.  Ardyn is a very tragic character, a Christ-like figure that wanted to cure the people of the land from the Starscourge that plagued them.  He would absorb the disease and cure them, unlike his brother Somnus that would kill them mercilessly.  After his fiancee was killed by Somnus himself, branded as a traitor and demonized by the people that he cured, denied ascension to the throne by the Crystal, and abandoned by the Astrals that were by his side.  Fueled by hatred for his betrayal on almost all fronts (including his fiancee, he believes), he seeks to end the Lucis bloodline and destroy the world that the Astrals created out of vengeance.  Hey, if you found out that you were simply a tool used for the gods to fix the shit that THEY fucked up themselves, you’d be pissed too (*cough*Noctis*cough*).  And boy did he show them what for.  He becomes chief commander of Nifleheim’s military, including weaponizing people as daemons, using Magitek to ascend to military supremacy, and seizing all of the crystals in the world until all point to the last one located inside Insomnia.  Not only that, but he kills Noctis’ childhood sweetheart and he brings the entire world to ruin for years to come while Noctis was inside the Crystal.  Ardyn basically did what both Kefka and Sephiroth achieved individually: bring the world to ruin and kill a pivotal character/love interest, respectively.  And he can seriously hold his own in a fight, able to use the same powers that Noctis can easily.  He even used Ifrit (an infernal Astral!) as a puppet!  That level of hatred for a bloodline is something palpable.

That’s why it’s so important to show your intent just as much as it is to say it.  Both go hand in hand and it’s what creates arguments and discussions like these, so we are able to analyze and study villains as integral and important characters in entertainment.  And to discover the darker sides of humanity that lives and resides within all of us, so we can better learn ourselves and how to control the demons inside all of us.

Honorable mention: With the new Star Wars movie coming out soon, I’m super hyped to see the Knights of Ren making a return!  J.J. definitely did an awesome move by bringing them back, and there’s something so appealing about them.  Something about organized personal goons for the main baddie is a concept that I always love to compare and explore.  It’s why I loved the Praetorian Guard from The Last Jedi so much.  Same for the Nazgul from The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies, the Black Guard from Tron: Legacy, the K-Tron units from Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and the Heavensward from Final Fantasy XIV.  Despite them not having much screen time, or little to no dialogue whatsoever, the times they do appear, their main objective is to eliminate the threats before them with extreme prejudice.  Their main concept overall is action with little dialogue and achieving the simple goal that the viewer can already assume, and that’s something that I absolutely adore.  Costume designs are also a huge plus, because goddamn do they all look good!

[tacticsroom]

Rutger: Lone Swordsman (Unit Review)

Available at 3-4★ (Grand Hero Battle Reward)

Note: As a Grand Hero Battle reward, Rutger does not have access to boons/assets and banes/flaws.

Lv. 40 Stats (Flaw/Neutral/Asset)

HP: 41/44/47 Atk: 29/32/35 Spd: 36/39/43 Def: 25/29/32 Res: 21/24/28

Neutral BST: 168

Max Dragonflowers: 5

Skills

Weapon: Slaying Edge+ (300 SP)

Mt: 14. Rng: 1. Accelerates Special trigger (cooldown count -1).

Sword. Can be inherited. Can be refined.

Assist: None

Special: Vengeance (200 SP)

CD: 3. Boosts damage dealt to foe by 50% of damage dealt to unit.

Can be inherited. Cannot use: Staff.

A: Atk/Def Bond 3 (240 SP)

Grants Atk/Def+5 to this unit during combat if unit is adjacent to an ally.

Can be inherited.

B: Vantage 3 (240 SP)

Unit counterattacks first when attacked at HP ≤ 75%.

Can be inherited.

C: None

Analysis

Following the arrival of new Binding Blade units comes Rutger, our latest infantry sword GHB unit. Rutger’s movement type along with his weapon of choice places him at a stark disadvantage, with most players already having at least one infantry sword unit they rely on. He lacks a weapon with secondary effects such as Distant Counter or effectiveness against a unit type. Being a GHB unit denies him access to boons and banes leaving him in some aspect outmatched compared to summonable units. However, being a Gen 3 infantry unit Rutger carries a higher overall BST compared to past infantry units and his stats shape him into a fearsome swordsman with the proper investment. Most notable on Rutger is his high base speed, starting at an incredibly high 39 without a boon. Upon being merged, Rutger will gain +2 to his HP and Spd and +1 to his Atk.

Rutger’s base kit is rather underwhelming at first glance, carrying skills that some would consider contradict his statline. Carrying Atk/Def Bond 3 in his A skill, he benefits greatly when close to his allies granting +5 to his Atk and Def respectively while in combat allowing him to hit harder and take less physical damage. This can be stacked further thanks to the introduction of Bond seals a few months back. Vantage as his B skill provides him with ability to dish out a hit first when below 75% of his HP which, depending on the circumstances, can easily allow him to survive an enemy attack that would have otherwise struck him down. However, if activated at the wrong moment, it could very easily spell his demise so it should be used with caution. Vengeance suggests a brash playstyle, the idea being placing him in combat, injuring him significantly and then immediately dishing back out damage based on 50% of the damage he took. While showing potential when combined with Vantage it may be better to swap this special. His saving grace is the inclusion of Slaying Edge+, reducing his special cooldown by -1. This allows him to run higher cooldown specials, whether it be AOE specials such as Blazing Wind or specials like Galeforce. Run with Quickened Pulse, he has access to turn 1 Glimmer/Moonbow easily.

With the introduction of Heroic Grails in November last year, GHB and TT units alike could finally be merged without the need for a rerun. This made them worthier of investing in for old and new players alike along with providing access to skills otherwise deemed “too expensive” or “premium”. Although easier to merge, the investment cost of doing so for GHB units truly depends on performance in Aether Raids, prior copies obtained and merged, and how many reruns of a GHB unit were missed if applicable. For example, Michalis and Rutger have different grail costs despite both being GHB units as Michalis has had more copies available for free over time. Grail cost for obtaining a GHB/TT unit starts at 100 and increases by 50 each time the same unit is summoned capping out at 500 grails. Compared to Michalis’s grail cost of 750 if all 6 prior copies were obtained and merged, Rutger’s grail cost is at a grand 1500, more than double than Michalis. It’s also important to consider that Rutger will not be available as a grail unit for some time until he is added to the Grail selection of heroes. Such an investment should not be taken lightly and should be contemplated heavily on before committing to the Lone Swordsman.

Reasons to Invest in Rutger

You like Rutger and intend to use him in a core team, whether it be for Arena, Aether Raids, or an Infantry Team

You’re interested in building Rutger to suit your needs, whether it be as a fast swordsman or a bulky physical wall

You have obtained all or most previous copies made available and do not mind the grail cost

You are interested in having an Arena and Aether Raids bonus unit.

Note: GHB units do not consistently rotate like the Askr crew (Anna, Alfonse, Sharena, Fjorm) in Arena and Aether Raids. While Rutger is guaranteed to be featured as a bonus unit due to his status as a GHB unit, it is only applicable every several months.

Reasons NOT to Invest in Rutger

You don’t intend on using him as a core on any team or in any PVE game modes such as Rival Domains or Grand Conquest

You don’t play Aether Raids and have no interest in obtaining grails

You consider Rutger’s playstyle and base kit uninteresting and would rather fodder his skills off to other heroes you use

You are missing copies of him and have no interest in using your grails to obtain copies to merge

You already have an invested infantry sword unit that you use on your core Infantry, Arena & or Aether Raids team

Similar Units

Note: As a Grand Hero Battle reward, Rutger does not have access to boons/assets or banes/flaws and therefore is not directly comparable to any summonable units. 

Ayra: Astra’s Wielder (41/33/37/31/21)

Rutger: Lone Swordsman (+3/-1/+2/-2/+3)

Note: Ayra has access to uninheritable skills and therefore is not directly comparable.

Karla: Sword Vassal (42/35/40/23/22)

Rutger: Lone Swordsman (+2/-3/-1/+6/+2)

Note: Karla has access to uninheritable skills and therefore is not directly comparable.  

Lon’qu: Solitary Blade (45/29/39/22/22)

Rutger: Lone Swordsman (-1/+3/+0/+7/+2) 

Note: Lon’qu has access to uninheritable skills and therefore is not directly comparable.

Build Suggestions

Budget/Low Investment:

Rutger’s base kit does provide him with some interesting options, opting to make him bulkier while having the speed to compete with faster units. On a budget Rutger can easily work as a defensive unit.

We take a defensive refine in both builds to increase his physical bulk, bringing his defense up from a measly 29 up to a decent 33 allowing us to use Bonfire as his special. Starting with the build on the left, when his default A is combined with the Atk/Def Bond seal and its criterias are met he gains a hefty +10 to his Atk and Def respectively pushing both stats to 56 Atk & 43 Def. Threaten Def 3 is taken to better increase his damage output should a foe fall into its range. The build on the right expands on the same ideas as the left with the only changes being to C skill and seal. Here we use Close Def 3 to grant him +6 to both his Def/Res raising both to 44/30 in combination with Atk/Def Bond making it easier to take hits from dragons. Atk Smoke 3 is taken as the C skill to ploy his foes within 2 spaces by -7 Atk, better ensuring he can handle multiple rounds of combat without being defeated.

Rutger’s other Sacred Seal options include Brazen skills, Smoke seals, Darting Blow, Atk/Spd Bond, Atk/Def 2, Atk+3, Speed+3, Blade skills and Threaten skills.

Player Phase/Offense:

Rutger possesses incredibly high speed without a boon or merges and as such allows him to run more offensively geared setups with ease. The following builds will revolve around using his speed to the fullest. 

Being an infantry unit grants him access to the Flashing Blade seal, granting him +1 to his special charge if he has more speed than his opponent. When combined with Slaying Edge+, Rutger can activate his special with his followup attack or charge a high turn cooldown like Galeforce in a single turn. Both builds displayed are built on the same concept of getting him into desperation range so he can effectively sweep multiple foes in a single turn. The build on the left uses Fury to grant him more bulk and to help him fall into desperation range faster with its recoil. Once in desperation range so long as he doubles his foe on his followup attack he’ll activate Luna and wipe his opponent. The build on the right uses Life and Death 3 instead granting him +5 Atk and Spd at the cost of -5 to his Def and Res. 

High Investment:

Rutger has plenty of options at his disposal when it comes to high investment. Whether it be a physical bruiser or a dangerous sweeper it’s needless to say he poses himself as a noteworthy threat. The following builds are best suited for players who intend to heavily invest in Rutger.

The build on the left more or less carries the same idea as what was described in the player phase section, utilizing Rutger’s high speed to activate Galeforce in a single turn. While Atk/Spd Solo 3 does limit Rutger slightly in terms of positioning it does grant him +6 to his Atk and Spd without sacrificing any of his stats or suffering recoil. His high HP pool allows Rutger to run C skills like Panic Ploy or Infantry Pulse to better support his team. 

The build on the right mixes things up in comparison, maximizing his damage output while preserving his defense at the same time. The key component of the build is the inclusion of Sturdy Impact, granting Rutger +6 to his Atk and a massive +10 to his defense along with the denial of a follow-up attack from his foe. This carries both his Atk and Def to 59/43 before buffs and lets Rutger shrug off physical hits while charging Galeforce with the use of Heavy Blade. Chill Spd is taken as the B skill to improve his matchups against faster opponents while Def Smoke grants him the opportunity to take out more than 1 foe in a single turn, ploying enemies within two spaces for -7 Def after combat.

[180abroad]

Day 125: Hadrian’s Wall and the Scottish Borders

When we first started planning this trip, one of the big sites I'd wanted to see was Hadrian's wall. But it's so far from anywhere else we wanted to go in England that I had resigned myself to the fact that I probably wouldn't get to go. Luckily, Rabbie's offers a tour of the wall from Edinburgh. Not only would we get to see Hadrian's Wall, we'd get to approach it from the north like an old Celtic barbarian.

It was a long tour, so we had to get up and into town early.

There must have been quite the party going the night before. Even the statues woke up with traffic cones on their heads.

Our guide and driver for the day was Nik, a middle-aged, born-and-bred Edinburgh man with the accent and stories to prove it.

As we drove south, we passed through the beautiful rolling hill country that makes up the Scottish Borders. The Highlands are seem to get all the glory when it comes to romanticizing Scottish countryside, but the Lowlands definitely have their own idyllic charm.

Nik told us some interesting stories about the medieval residents of the Borders and their complex relationship between England and Scotland. They were ethnically Scottish, but the Borderers resented both countries because their wars inevitably brought the razing and pillaging of border towns by both sides.

The Borderers were excellent horse riders and highly valued as mercenary cavalrymen throughout Europe. Whenever the English and Scottish armies fought in the Borders, the Borderers would hire themselves out to both sides, then sit on the sidelines of each battle until the winner was clear. They made special coats with English colors on one side and Scottish colors on the other, so they could flip their coats inside-out to match whichever side they decided to be "fighting for" at the moment. Hence the term "turncoats."

When they weren’t fighting as mercenaries, the Borderers spent a lot of time fighting themselves. One town would gather a raiding party and invade the next town over. That town would then gather a counter-raid to get their stuff back. Eventually, the raids became so bad that towns hundreds of miles away–well outside the Borders--were being raided by these crazy hill people. Neither country wanted to take responsibility for them, but when King James VI and I united Scotland and England under one crown, he was able to raise a police force to move in and establish order.

We also saw a lot of sheep on our drive. According to Nik, there are three sheep in Scotland for every man, woman, and child. Which is the perfect number, he said–one for meat, one for wool, and one for snuggling.

Our first stop was the abbey town of Jedburgh, just ten miles north of the border with England. Streamers hung up all over the town indicated that a festival was going on, but it was dead quite on this Thursday morning.

The abbey, like most abbeys in Britain, is only a picturesque ruin now. But this time it wasn't Henry VIII's fault--the Scottish destroyed their own abbeys during their own Presbyterian Reformation.

Before its destruction, the abbey was inhabited by Augustinians, who were known as cannons rather than monks. Whereas monks live and work in their abbey, cannons are priests who choose to live communally in an abbey but still teach and perform services in their local community.

We got about an hour to explore the small museum and wander through the peaceful ruins.

Next we headed down to the crossing between England and Scotland, where we pulled over for a quick photo op. There's no security or anything, just a pair of engraved standing stones.

The view was fantastic, though.

Our timing was good, too. Just as our group finished taking pictures, a kilt-clad busker showed up to serenade us with his bagpipes. More oddly, a man driving through the parking lot stopped and called one of our group mates over so that he could give her some sort of "helpful" pamplet. According to Nik, this guy is a regular feature at the crossing who stages this sort of thing all the time, making it seem like he's just a friendly local who randomly decided to pull over and give the handout to a passing tourist.

After a few very pleasant hours of driving (some of which my dad and I might have spent dozing), we arrived at Hadrian’s wall. Specifically, we arrived at Steel Rigg, a dramatic line of glacial crags that the wall runs along the top of.

It was a steep climb up to the top of the outcrop, but the view was well worth it. Even if the wall was never really used as a defensive installation, it was easy to imagine hordes of painted Celtic barbarians massing to the north.

And seeing the way crags rise up like a wall themselves, I can very easily understand how George R.R. Martin was inspired by this place to create his fictional wall of ice in A Game of Thrones.

Next, we went to the nearby Vindolanda excavation and museum. Vindolanda was a Roman walled settlement inhabited by the soldiers who manned Hadrian's wall, as well as their families and the various merchants and artisans who supplied them. The site has been meticulously unearthed, and the included museum is filled with fascinating artifacts from the Roman inhabitants’ everyday lives.

There was pottery, flatware, tweezers, and lots and lots of leather shoes. The Romans wore very intricate leather shoes, but apparently very few examples are still around. Vindolanda is a treasure trove of leather and wooden goods because the land it's on is basically a bog--pretty much the same story as with the Celtic artifacts we saw at the Irish National Museum of Archeology in Dublin.

Despite being such innocuous pieces, one of the collections that struck me the most was the wooden barrel staves on display. We could see the ancient branded markings in old Latin clear as day, and one stave still bore a round stain from when some Roman set something dirty on it. The world's oldest coffee ring, perhaps?

There was a fascinating collection of Roman locks and keys that were much more intricate than what I would have assumed they had at the time.

Other interesting finds in the museum included a piece of intricately painted glass that had been imported from Roman Germany, some surprisingly shiny Roman coins a bug-resistant wig made from local moss, and a small metal hand used for religious ceremonies.

But the pride of the museum's collections was a barely distinguishable pair of leather boxing gloves. Boxing was a favorite pastime in the Roman Empire, and there are countless artistic depictions of soldiers and gladiators wearing an ancient form of boxing gloves. But these gloves found at Vindolanda are the only known surviving pair in the entire world.

Normally, there is an afternoon guided tour of the ruins, but today's tour was replaced with a performance by a group of local Roman Legion reenactors.

They described their arms, armor, and troop composition. We learned that up until the mid-20th century, historians didn’t actually know for sure how the iconic Roman segmented plate armor worked. It wasn’t until an old wooden chest under someone's house was discovered to contain two intact sets that people were able to accurately recreate them. And by recreating them, historians and reenactors can learn firsthand how they work and would likely have been used.

And you know you're in for a treat when your tour guide is excitedly taking pictures along with the rest of the group.

We learned how most of the soldiers manning Hadrian’s wall would not have actually been Legionnaires, but rather auxiliaries. Auxiliaries were non-citizen soldiers who fought for the Roman army in exchange for citizenship after 25 years of honorable service. In the meantime, they got less money, worse equipment, and more dangerous postings.

The reenactors also described how the invincibility of the Roman army was not just due to the superiority of their arms and armor. At the time, the Romans basically reinvented the idea of a professional, standing army. The Celts of Scotland had a proud and fierce warrior culture, but they didn’t really have armies. When one clan went to war against another, they would just gather all the able-bodied men together and head out. They were strong and fierce, but they just didn’t have the skills and tactics that full-time soldiers are able to develop through years of constant, structured practice.

We got to see the reenactors charge, duel, throw spears, and even fire a ballista (basically a giant crossbow, for anyone who's never played Age of Empires).

Leaving Vindolanda, we headed back up to Edinburgh through the western Lowlands. Again, the rolling hillsides were spectacular. I was especially enthralled by the area around the River Tweed, the home of a famous British textile. We could easily see how the raiding parties Nik described could hide out in a fog-cloaked ravine and become virtually unfindable. Nik also pointed out the particular hillsides where the wild haggis love to run free--in circles, of course, because of their naturally lopsided legs.

We also passed by the narrowest hotel in Britain.

Back in Edinburgh, we finally got my dad his first taste of Nando's before heading back home. It was in a shopping mall at the edge of Old Town, and it was about an hour's wait between when we first put our names down on the waiting list and when we actually got our food. It was well worth it, though--especially considering that it would be our last Nando's of the trip.

Back home, we rested up and prepared ourselves for our last two days in Edinburgh. We would be staying in the city, and we had almost all of it left to see.

Next Post: Edinburgh, Part 2 (History, Hiking, and Beer)

Last Post: Glasgow

[inhumansforever]

Marvel Rising Alpha #1 Review

spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers

The creative team of Devin Grayson, Georges Duarte and Rachelle Rosenberg assemble once more to bring us the next chapter in the Marvel Rising saga.  Recap and review following the jump.  

In the previous zero issue of Marvel Rising, an unseen villain had hired a splinter faction of the renegade science terrorists known as AIM to raid the Stark Institute and conduct genetic screenings on a group of students.  Fortunately, Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl were on hand to save these kids and defeat the villains.  Yet one of the AIM scientists managed to escape and transferred the data he had collected to his secretive benefactor.  Their mission had proven a success and the villain was able to identify a young Inhuman named Ember Quaid who possess substantial powers… and now it would appear that the cad has initiated a plan to use young Ms. Quaid and weaponize her abilities toward a nefarious end.  

We are introduced to Ember as the issue opens.  She’s a troubled young woman who describes herself as a total loser.  It sounds as though Ember’s mom is kind of a mess, constantly moving from home to home, city to city looking for a fresh start after bad relationships.  

It has been very difficult for Ember to make friends and foster a sense of self with all of this moving about.  The only degree of constancy Ember has been able to find is online gaming.  While Ember sees herself as a loser in real life, she feels something of a goddess in the realm of multiplayer online role-playing games.  Which is all fine and good until some of the guys she plays against realizes she is a girl and it triggers insecurities and vitriol…  

Ember has made the mistake of playing one of these games against a group of male classmates at her new high school in New Jersey.  She defeats these guys thoroughly and they angrily insist that she must have been cheating.   These guys are complete jerks who seem to feel as though losing to a girl threatens their delicate sense of masculinity.  They refuse to believe it and level insults at her and accuse her of using cheat codes.  These bullies end up ‘doxing’ Ember, freezing her out from her gaming accounts and taking away from her the one place in her life where she has felt in control.

All the while, Ember has been text-messaging with a mysterious online pal who has been a sympathetic ear for Ember’s troubles.  And it soon becomes clear that this unseen friend is likely the so-far faceless villain who hired AIM to seek out Ember in the first place.  

On top of everything else going on in Ember’s life, she is also an Inhuman.  The Terrigen Cloud had floated over the East Coast some time ago... it awakened Ember’s latent Inhuman genes and caused her to be encased in a transformative cocoon.  Yet when she emerged she found that she apparently gained no super powers.  Once again, Ember felt cheated by life.  

It turns out that Ember did indeed gain super powers, only they remained dormant... requiting a specific emotional stimuli in order to be triggered into bloom.  These power entail the ability to absorb electrical energy and re-manifest it into hard light constructs.   And being bullied by these poor-sport jerks is exactly the kind of trigger needed to bring about access to these powers.  

Meanwhile, Doreen Green has been teaching a class in game theory at the the high school.  And it also turns out that this is same high school attended by Kamala Khan, who is taking the class in order to make up credits.  Of course, Doreen is secretly the super hero known as the unbeatable Squirrel Girl; and Kamala is the marvelous Ms. Marvel.  

Somehow these two heroes don’t recognize one another, despite the fact that Squirrel Girl’s ‘disguise’ is little more than a pair of squirrel ears attached to a headband.  It all sort of stretches the willing suspension of disbelieve and is played for laughs when Dorren’s correctly surmises that Kamala is secretly the fan fiction writer, ‘Slothbaby,’ whom Doreen is a big fan of.  

Having a couple of superheroes at the school ends up fortuitous as Ember’s powers spark into bloom.  Draining energy from the electronic devices around her, Ember is able to unconsciously manifests a digitized squirrel wielding a giant mallet.  The video-game-style squirrel goes on a rampage, looking to wallop the boys who had bullied Ember.  Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl jump into action and team up to take out the rampaging squirrel.  

Ember’s mysterious texting pal helps her to realize that she was the one who created that video game squirrel… and they encourage her to take it further, to concentrate and create an even bigger manifestation and get revenge on the guys who had bullied her.  Ember follows the advice and the next day she manages to create a giant Donkey Kong style digital gorilla that runs amok and attacks the boys who had bullied her.  

Once again, Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl spring into action, interceding to make sure no one gets hurt.  Chaos ensues with a battle that is equal parts comic book action and old school arcade game.  The two heroes are ultimately able to pool their strength and demolish the gorilla, shattering it into a scattering of digitalized cubes.  

In the wake of all this Ember is left enraged.  It feels so unfair to her that these superheroes should show up only to protect the bullies who had given her such a hard time.   It’s as though these heroes are only interested in maintain the status quo and keeping outcasts like her on the fringes, disenfranchised.  

Ember’s mysterious texting pal is able to capitalize on her anger, encouraging her to take it all further.  If these heroes are against her then it stands to reason that she must be a villain.  And the only way she is going to gain satisfaction, to feel a sense of empowerment, is to embrace such villainy and take the fight to the heroes.  

And it is here that the issue ends, with Ember using her powers to summon an appropriately villainous guise; and the next step clearly to be an attack on Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl.  A panel informs us that the story will continue next month in Marcel Rising: Ms. Marvel & Squirrel Girl #1.  

Grayson and company make an interesting decision in having Ember be something of a central focus to the issue.  She’s a sympathetic character.  She is being mislead and coerced into making bad decisions, yet the factors that bring her to this point is quite relatable.  The best villains are often those who don’t see themselves as the villain, who feel justified in their actions; and whom the readers can in some ways relate to.  

Ember is just a lonely girl who has had to deal with bad parenting and not having any friends.  The one place she felt self agency and empowerment was gaming… and yet the malignant sexism so prevalent in the world of online gaming has acted to take that respite away.  It isn’t fair, it’s enraging… and it’s rather understandable that she would want to see justice… to get a little revenge.  

A better path is presented to Ember when Kamala approaches her and tries to make friends.  Ember would so fit in with Kamala and her pals.  Unfortunately Ember is too angry to seize upon this opportunity.  Besides, why even bother trying to make friends with Kamala when it is likely only a matter of time before her mom uproots her once again and has them move somewhere else?

Again, it all casts a sympathetic light on Ember.  And I hope that things change for her as the story plays out.  She could end up a villain for life, but it is possible that Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl might be able to help her see a different path and break free of the influence of this mysterious figure who has been pulling her strings.

There is a rather overt undercurrent of the whole ‘gamer gate’ ordeal in the way the boys bully Ember and try to put forth gaming as a place for boys only.  This is interesting and of course an important matter to address… although it’s presented in a kind of ham-fisted fashion.   Sometimes it can be more effective to be a touch more covert in recapitulating real life matters into fictional stories.  

Also, I’m not sure if the term ‘doxing’ is being used correctly.  My understanding is that doxing is publishing an individual’s real name, email address and whatnot.  Yet here it is presented as blocking a gamer’s ability to access their online account.  Are there multiple definitions for doxing?  

All of this aside, the tale is successful in putting forth Ember as the victim of bullying, and as someone whom many readers are likely to be able to relate to.  

As was the case in last month’s zero issue, Grayson does a really terrific job scripting the interactions between Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl.  They are both such bubbly and positive characters, yet Grayson is able to give each a distinct sense of voice… even without the arrows on the voice bubbles, it is clear which character is talking.   The two are as fun together as I hoped they would be and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of it.  And I like that Kamala appears to have figured out Squirrel Girl’s true identity… very intrigued as to how this will play out.  

The illustration by Georges Duarte matches the story quite well.  It’s a little clunky at some points while generally fluid with dynamic action sequences; while also remaining accessible to newer readers.  I especially liked the digitized creatures and how they had a sort of 64-bit style to them.  Also the way that the manifestations were reduced to cube-like bits when defeated was pretty cool.  Rachelle Rosenberg continues to be a total rockstar in the coloring department, utilizing a vibrant scheme that really brings to life the electrical nature of Ember’s powers.  

I liked everything about this issue except for one crucial component: the price point.  Four ninety-nine… that is way too much.  What is Marvel thinking?   Paying five bucks for a comic is not a big deal for me, but I’m an adult with a job and disposable income.  Yet I am not at all the target demographic for this comic.  Marvel Rising is supposed to be about appealing to both new and longtime readers, those who are older and those who are younger.  And it is meant to inviting to a broader, more diverse group of possible readers.  This is all great, but the five dollar price tag is likely to filter out a substantial number of potential readers.  The zero issue was free and now the subsequent issue is five dollars?  That’s not how you sell comics… that’s how you sell crack…

Despite my being bummed out over the price tag, this was an extremely fun read, with cool art and strong, relatable characters.  Definitely recommended.  Four out of five Lockjaws.    

[aion-rsa]

Best Cyberpunk Movies to Watch Before You Play Cyberpunk 2077

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We’ve warned you of the dangers of overhyping yourself for Cyberpunk 2077 ahead of the game’s December 10 release date, but I understand if it’s hard to contain your excitement for 2020’s most anticipated game. However, that still leaves you with the question of what to do while you’re waiting to finally play CD Projekt Red’s potential masterpiece.

I can think of few better ways to pass the time than to curate a marathon of the best cyberpunk movies. While the definition of the cyberpunk genre (especially on film) has traditionally been somewhat debatable, these are movies that showcase a vision of the future where technology seems to have towered above the humans who designed it just as a new breed of revolutionists prepare to counter this growing culture.

So whether you want to celebrate the genre or just understand it a little better, these are the cyberpunk movies you need to watch ahead of Cyberpunk 2077‘s release.

Akira

Along with being arguably the most important anime film of all-time (at least in terms of the global growth of the genre), Akira is considered by many to be the definitive on-screen portrayal of cyberpunk style and the genre’s social commentary.

As the story of bikers in Neo-Tokyo who find themselves at the target of a manhunt after an incident grants one of them telekinetic powers that could destroy society, Akira checks nearly every cyberpunk box in its elevator pitch alone. Yet, the true joy of this movie will always come from basking in the beauty of its animation and the ways that it highlights a vision of the future where technological advancements were built on the crumbling foundation of forgotten souls. 

There’s no world in which Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t heavily inspired by Akira. We wouldn’t be shocked if the game even featured a few Akira Easter eggs.

Blade Runner

While this list is simply arranged in alphabetical order, it’s certainly amusing that arguably the two most important cyberpunk movies ever find themselves at the top of the list. 

Blade Runner’s story is an admirable attempt at an ambitious tale of identity and humanity in a rapidly evolving world, but this film’s greatest gift will always be its world design and practical effects. Blade Runner finds its “punk” in a noir-like atmosphere while the movie’s “cyber” elements shine in a largely unromantic futuristic city clearly dependent on often cold forms of technology. 

Everyone should see Blade Runner at least once, and we can’t think of a better time to view it for the first time than before you play Cyberpunk 2077. 

Burst City

If you’ve got the stomach for something totally weird and very raw, then I highly recommend this 1982 cyberpunk musical oddity. 

Burst City leans heavily into the “punk” part of the cyberpunk equation with its story of various bands who battle the police and each other in a dystopian version of Tokyo. While the plot itself is admittedly barebones, it proves to be the perfect set-up for what amounts to a unique look at the underground Japanese punk scene of this era. 

Cyberpunk 2077’s pop culture is clearly built around music, so it will be interesting to see whether the game borrows many ideas from this sometimes overlooked gem. 

Cypher

Corporate espionage is a big part of the Cyberpunk 2077 universe, which makes it that much easier to recommend this 2002 film that’s all about the dangerous pursuits of corporate spies. 

To be fair, that’s really the simplest summary of a labyrinthe of a plot that begins with a man taking a job in the lucrative field of corporate espionage. What follows is a series of mind blowing revelations that show us the lengths these corporations will go to and how dispensable everyone is in their pursuit of power. 

If you need to be sold on Cypher‘s cyberpunk credentials, just know that its director once described it as “James Bond meets Kafka.”

Dark City

John Murdoch has a problem. He’s just woken up in a bathtub in a seedy motel with no memory of who he is or what is happening. To make matters worse, he’s being pursued by a mysterious group of strangers who chase him through a city where it’s always night. His only hope is a vague series of clues and mysterious psychokinetic powers that he’s only now just beginning to understand. 

Dark City is an impossibly bleak and literally dark film that confronts the burden and the power of the human mind. It’s a complicated and often ambiguous film that benefits from grand ideas and an absolutely lovely noir-focused sense of style.

What Dark City lacks in scenes of high-tech glory and traditional punk design elements it more than makes up for with its bleak, intelligent, and unflinching vision of a future that absolutely belongs in this genre. 

Dredd

Few people expected much of Dredd given how hard the ‘90s adaptation of the character fell on its face, but this 2012 movie proved to be one of the most compelling pieces of wide-release cyberpunk entertainment in years. 

Dredd’s fantastic action sequences and small scale story that invokes the core concept of The Raid: Redemption and Die Hard sometimes disguise the movie’s brilliant cyberpunk world-building. In every corner of every shot, there are these hints at just how bad things have gotten and what desperate measures have been enacted to keep even the visage of civilization alive.  

It’s easy to imagine that Cyberpunk 2077’s weapons and comments will mine a few ideas from this modern classic. 

eXistenZ

Nobody goes into a David Cronenberg film looking for a straightforward feel-good ride, but eXistenZ still manages to stand out as a uniquely weird entry into the director’s legendary filmography. 

Considered by many to be a spiritual follow-up to Videodrome, eXistenZ follows a game designer who must dive into her latest virtual reality creation in order to repair potential damages. The journey through that virtual world will certainly not disappoint any Cronenberg fans looking for memorable moments of body horror wrapped around an introspective plot. 

With its VR concepts and meditations on the inevitable intersection of technology and flesh, eXistenZ offers a glimpse into a cyberpunk void that may not be quite as memorable as Cronenberg’s best works but is worth a look. 

Ghost in the Shell

With very little respect to the 2017 film of the same name, I want to make it clear that I’m absolutely talking about the 1995 animated classic. 

Released at the cultural height of the “Hackersploitation” genre (more on that in just a bit) Ghost in the Shell envisions a world in which people are neurally connected to the internet and cyborgs have been integrated into society. Into this future comes a hacker known as The Puppet Master whose unique abilities present a clear threat even as they raise questions about what remains of humanity that’s worth saving. 

Along with Akira, this is absolutely one of those cyberpunk movies everyone should see even if they don’t typically consider themselves to be fans of anime or even animated feature films.

Read more

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Hackers

Hackers is essentially the big-screen version of every regrettable high school yearbook photo ever taken. It’s a relentlessly corny slice of the ‘90s that will be particularly painful to anyone who ever thought it was truly the height of cool. 

Yet, there is still something genuinely cool about Hackers. It treats hackers with the same bizarre cultural relevance as bouncers are afforded in Road House, but the idea of gangs of hackers and celebrity hackers taking over the digital age has always tapped into the heart of the cyberpunk genre. 

We know that Cyberpunk 2077’s universe is highly inspired by ‘90s counterculture, so you should expect a few nods to this movie somewhere along the way. 

Johnny Mnemonic

Wait, Johnny Mnemonic is a ‘90s sci-fi movie starring Keanu Reeves that’s all about a man who knows too much trying to escape from gangs and corporations? Are we sure this somehow wasn’t a soft adaptation of Cyberpunk 2020?

It’s not and, if I’m being very honest, this movie doesn’t always live up to its considerable potential. However, it’s a consistently entertaining piece of ‘90s technological absurdity bolstered by some genuinely fascinating world-building and the charisma of its leading man. 

Don’t expect a masterpiece, but Johnny Mnemonic is the perfect movie for getting you in that Cyberpunk 2077 mood. 

Robocop

Countless words have been written about Robocop’s status as both one of the best action movies ever made and one a biting piece of social commentary, but Robocop somehow never seems to get enough love as a brilliant slice of cyberpunk style. 

With its roaming gangs and mega-corporations whose power has become fully integrated into and unchallenged in society, Robocop has the cyberpunk genre flowing through its veins. What’s truly remarkable, though, is the way that the movie so effectively balances the seemingly inevitable hopelessness of its world with a bleak sense of humor that speaks loudly even as it is delivered with tongue in cheek. 

Since you probably don’t need an excuse to watch Robocop again, I’ll also take this chance to point out that Robocop 2 is a largely underrated sequel that somehow amplifies the original’s cyberpunk vibes. 

Strange Days

Released in 1995 to divisive reviews and worse box office returns, Strange Days’ poor reception threatened to derail the career of legendary director Kathryn Bigelow.

Years later, though, it’s easier than ever to overlook Strange Days’ rough edges and bleak tones and appreciate its painfully accurate portrayal of racial inequality and sexual violence. Though it was only set four years in the future, Strange Days took the pulse of its time and imagined what would happen if society just reshaped itself around its problems rather than attempted to address them in a meaningful way. 

Strange Days is a hard watch but a great example of the forward-thinking pessimism of the cyberpunk genre. 

The Matrix

At the tail end of a decade obsessed with hackers but often lacking in truly great works of “Hackersploitation,” The Matrix came along and shattered all expectations by combining tech fears, underground style, high-flying action sequences, and jaw-dropping special effects that made it the most unlikely blockbuster of the ’90s.

Long after the special effects have become commonplace and the film’s most memorable sequences have been parodied to death, it’s The Matrix’s cyberpunk philosophy and setting that endure. The Matrix so seamlessly weaves its grander ideas and world-building into the movie’s legendary fights that it’s easy to forget how much weight they carry. 

While you can safely skip your rewatch of the sequels unless you’re an apologist or sycophant, don’t forget that The Animatrix really got everyone excited about the grander implications of this movie’s promising universe. 

Total Recall

Two Paul Verhoeven movies on the same list? Yes, but to be honest, Total Recall almost didn’t make the final cut. 

While Total Recall lacks some of the philosophical depth and overwhelmingly bleak tones that so often help us identify the defining entries in this genre, it manages to tap into the cyberpunk genre’s sometimes overlooked elements of absurdity and uses them as the basis for a truly fun adventure. 

If it’s been a little while since you’ve actually watched this movie, you might be surprised by how its complex and well-told plot expands a fascinating world where the false promise of anything being possible has been revived in a horrifying new form. 

Upgrade

The final movie on our list is also the most recent cyberpunk film that I’d recommend you watch ahead of Cyberpunk 2077’s release. 

Actually, one of the things that stand out about Upgrade is its video game sensibilities. As the story of a man who gradually begins to understand the extent of his newfound powers, Upgrade taps into that role-playing idea of building a character over time. While it showcases the potential horrors of body enhancements, it also gives us time to dream of having such abilities. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Cyberpunk 2077 is all about enhancing your character through implants similar to the one featured in this film, so check out Upgrade if you can’t wait to see what one of the game’s end game characters might look like. 

The post Best Cyberpunk Movies to Watch Before You Play Cyberpunk 2077 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[casualarsonist]

Dune (novel) review and analysis

In commemoration to Frank Herbert’s epic novel, I’ve decided to make this review 10,000 words long.

Frank Herbert’s Dune has long stood as one of science fiction’s towering giants - a monolithic feat of imagination and a landmark science fiction novel. And as a work of fiction, this it true. Over the greater part of a thousand pages lay stories of sprawling civilisations, with dozens of unique characters engaging in complex power-plays whilst battling the brutality of the ecology of the sand-planet Arrakis. Following it’s release in 1965, it was (and still is) regarded as a masterwork in world-building - a milestone for the genre, and the Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones of its time. As a work of fiction, it’s a triumph. As a piece of literature…well…

Frank Herbert was great at many things in his life. Writing was not one of them. And while Dune is a standout novel that, all things considered, has aged better than many novels (particularly of the sci-fi genre) of a similar time, it is, at least in my humble opinion, a spectacularly average work of prose. But I say this with the works of Cormac McCarthy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kurt Vonnegut, and others in mind, so I am probably doing him a disservice in comparing his work to what I believe to be the cream of the crop. But if you’re going to tout a novel as ‘one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time’, I think you have to allow it to undergo rigourous scrutiny from all angles. So with that in mind, let’s scrutinise this motherfucker.

Spoilers abound, including a spoiler for Metro 2033.

It is thousands of years in the future, and mankind has conquered the stars. Dune centres around the Atreides family - one of a number of Great Houses united under the pseudo-feudal collective ‘Lansraad’, owing allegiance to the Emperor Shaddam IV. Duke Leto Atreides - a hard but compassionate man and a competent leader - has been given charge over the desert planet Arrakis, displacing House Harkonnen - the Atreides’ mortal enemies. Leto senses correctly that this dangerous exchange of power is an intentional move by the Emperor to set his family up on the losing side of an inter-House rivalry, and with the help of the traitorous Yueh - the Atreides doctor - and the armies of the Emperor, the Harkonnen’s capture and kill Leto, whilst his son Paul and pregnant concubine Jessica disappear into the desert. There they encounter Arrakis’ indigenous inhabitants - the Fremen - and are accepted amongst them after proving their worth through combat and their uncanny abilities of deduction and prescience, abilities taught to Jessica and Paul by the Bene Gesserit, a powerful sisterhood who wield abilities of superhuman physical and mental conditioning to influence and manipulate society.

Paul, for his part, has been prophesied to be the ‘Kwisatz Haderach’ - the name for a messianic male Bene Gesserit, a child born of generations of genetic manipulation with the power to see through time and space. And when I say he is ‘prophesied’ to be the Kwisatz Haderach, I mean that he is the Kwisatz Haderach, and this, like most questions and mysteries the novel establishes, are answered immediately and conclusively without exception.

But anyway, after their escape the book jumps a number of years ahead, and Paul has had a son with a Fremen woman, while Jessica has given birth to Paul’s sister, Alia, a child imbued with all of Jessica’s Bene Gesserit powers in the womb, who speaks and acts like a grown adult despite looking and sounding like an infant.

Under Paul’s command, the Fremen tribes have been performing successful raids against the Harkonnen forces and reducing the flow of the addictive spice Melange - the galaxy’s most valuable trade commodity, and one that occurs only on Arrakis. This brings the Emperor to the planet, followed by the armies of every house in the Lansraad, and with the Fremen tribes at his back, Paul drives over them like a steamroller, taking back control of Arrakis with little to no complications because he’s the Kwisatz fucking Haderach, as we were told in the first chapter. His infant sister knifes the Baron Harkonnen to death, and Paul forces the daughter of the Emperor - Princess Irulan - to marry him while promising that he will never love her or otherwise show her affection. Jessica celebrates this. The end.   So, I hope you could keep up with all the terms; my spellcheck was going absolutely mental as I was writing that.

But where to begin? Firstly, despite some of the criticisms I’ve read (as well as some of the criticisms I will make), I should note that I didn’t find Dune to be a particularly laborious read. Its length is obscene, yes, but my Tube rides would pass by in a flash when I was buried in the text. And although I personally don’t understand the decades-long literary trend of putting fake songs into a text (I’m looking at you, Lord of the Rings), I never found the numerous pages of songs in Dune to be as big an impediment to my interest as I did in, say, Lord of the fucking Rings (and skipping over reading them sped the whole process up considerably). I understand that saying that Dune ‘isn’t unreadable’ isn’t exactly high praise, but I think it’s worth at least outlining the extent of my criticisms of the text, because I’m going to tear into Herbert’s writing as we go on, but I don’t want you to think that sub-par prose necessarily translates into an odious reading experience. And in any case, Dune didn’t become one of the biggest selling sci-fi novels entirely without reason. The one thing that it does unquestionably well is exercise Herbert’s imagination.

Rarely has a imagined universe been so clearly realised before or since Frank Herbert’s seminal series, and this can be ascribed chiefly to one particular detail: his research and preparation. In reading George Arr-Arr Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, for example, one can detect in the convoluted and meandering text the fact that he doesn’t actually know where his novels are going when he starts writing them. The swelling word count of each successive entry in the series also bears testament to an increasingly relaxed editorial oversight, and this has resulted in each book becoming more bloated and complicated than the last. And while Dune itself is bloated terms of its length and complicated in terms of the language it introduces to the reader, there is a specific and unerring clarity in Herbert’s vision of the Dune universe that one would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere, and this is because the world itself was layed out by Herbert in detail, and years in advance, of the final writing and publishing of the novel. One can get a taste of this preparation and backstory in the supplementary appendices in the back of the book, as well as the accompanying glossary, which offers a definition of every single alien term that appears in the course of the preceding nine-hundred pages, and whilst not every creature or machine is described in minute detail, all the pieces of this puzzle fit together in the greater context of the novel.

There is also a sense of uncanny timelessness in the world of Dune, and Herbert has achieved this via a number of paths - the first being that he drew from real-world sciences as a foundation upon which the ecology and engineering of his universe is built. Rooting his fantasy work in a bed of modern fact (and remaining restrained enough in his vision to avoid sending his characters to absurd destinations such as planets made of cheese, or inhabited by talking animals, for instance) bestows a tangibility in one’s mind’s eye to the people, places, and things, and interestingly leaves Dune feeling relevant even to an audience for whom the technologies of the Sixties seem archaic and obsolete. The second factor that gives the novel life is its appropriation of Middle Eastern cultures as inspiration for that of the Fremen. This is obviously an accidental boon, but as with the surge of Middle Eastern cultural influences spreading throughout the Western world in the Sixties, so too has the region, its people, and its customs come to the forefront of Western attention in the last few decades. People are far more common with the word ‘jihad’ now than they would likely have been at the turn of the millenium, and this coincidental familiarity left me feeling a greater understanding of the desert-dwelling Fremen than I might otherwise have had, had I read the book as a teenager, for instance.

So before I launch into a diatribe, it’s worth pointing out that Dune IS a genuine landmark work, and with good reason, but it has its limits. And now that I’ve got that disclaimer out of the way, I can begin the fun part: talking about all the reasons Dune shits me off.

1: It starts each chapter with a spoiler for the rest of the novel.

Now I don’t know how you feel, but if I had to guess, I’d say that one of the main things that keeps an audience engaged in the plot of a piece of fiction is the fact that they don’t know what’s going to come next. Hell - this is why we engage in fictional stories at all, and why every series of Game of Thrones is preceded by an onslaught of social media statuses proclaiming that someone is going to get their eyes gouged out if they reveal whether the Immodium cures Daeneryus’ chronic diarrhea at the end of S03E05.

Frank Herbert has other things in mind, though, for every chapter in the novel begins with an excerpt from a piece of in-universe fiction - usually written by the Emperor’s daughter, and almost always regarding Paul’s actions in the future. Through these excerpts we get a glimpse into the world beyond the novel, specifically, into a world in which Paul is both a god, and not dead. This didn’t seem to perturb Herbert though, and he soldiers on admirably in his endeavor to supply multitudes of cliffhangers, the outcome of which have either already been revealed to us, or are revealed in the paragraph following the incident itself. Tracts of text are rendered wasted and pointless by Herbert’s own premature narrative ejaculation, and the trials that Paul undergoes on his journey towards godliness hold no weight because we know the outcome of his character from the opening of the very first chapter. In the most egregious instance, one chapter ends with Paul near death after poisoning himself. 'Will he survive?' I asked myself, 'Maybe the prophecy is wrong! Maybe something, anything, that hasn't already been revealed to us is about to happen!' In the very first sentence of the next chapter, an excerpt written far in the future that tells us specifically that Paul lives and gains the powers of the Kwisatz Haderach, like a time-travelling dickhead who has come back to the past to spoil your good time. Herbert then decides that blowing his load is no impediment to making the reader sit through six pages in the eyes of a character that doesn’t know of Paul’s situation, and we watch them trip clumsily over their own emotions and agonise over a question of his survival that was answered for us literally as soon as it was posed.This moment is so utterly confounding in its dramatic ineptitude that I was agape, staring at the page in disbelief. It’s as if The Usual Suspects began with a Kevin Spacey monologue directly to the camera talking about how he is Kaiser Soze, and then the rest of the film conducted itself as if it were still a mystery. It’s as if the opening crawl of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ told the audience that Darth Vader was Luke’s father, and then still tried to pull off the reveal. And this pattern is repeated from start to finish - every time you reach a point in which you wonder ‘will they make it out of this?’ Herbert comes back from the dead, strips the book from your hand, smacks you in the face with it, and emphatically replies ‘YES’.

2: Its inner monologues are prolific, and terrible.

No-one thinks to themselves like the characters in Dune think to themselves. If you are at McDonalds and you want to buy a burger, you don’t stand in line thinking to yourself ‘I am at McDonalds, and I am hungry. I wish to buy a burger, and I can see the burger menu in front of me, but I don’t know which to choose. I must hurry because I am almost at the front of the line - if I cannot choose in time, I will end up at the front of the line having not made a choice, and everyone around me will be inconvenienced!’

But Frank Herbert thinks people think like that.

He uses the character’s inner monologues as a medium for clumsy exposition, and eradicates any sense of realism or immersion they may hold. Now that’s not to say that one can’t use an inner monologue for that purpose, but the characters of Dune project a constant and unfiltered analysis of even the most basic social interactions, redundantly vocalising things made obvious in the text. Paul will do a thing, and Jessica will think that ‘Paul is doing that thing!’, and it will all be presented so dramatically that it makes you want to hurl the book into traffic. Herbert takes swathes of description that most writers would simply frame from a third person perspective about the characters and the world, and presents them instead as unedited, actual thoughts that the characters think in real time. In the midst of action and a threat to his mother’s life, Paul stops and takes a minute to recite this in his head: ‘They will concentrate on my mother and that Stilgar fellow. She can handle them. I must get to a safe vantage point where I can threaten them and give her time to escape.’ No-one alive has ever had a thought that forms itself like that, and this actually ends up having a tangible discriminatory effect on the reader, for whom all of the characters whose thoughts we don’t hear seem like pretty normal people, and all the central characters end up coming across as fucking weirdos, and one finds oneself subconsciously disliking them. Which brings me to my next point…

3: The Atreides are fools, assholes, or both, and the writing doesn’t help.

Now to be fair, it’s important to note that one of the key themes of Dune, according to Frank Herbert, is the danger of the ‘superhero’ myth. Through his genetic talents, his lifetime of training, and the legends and prophecies sewn into the Fremen culture, Paul takes a straight-line trajectory towards becoming the foretold Kwisatz Haderach, but despite his triumph over every challenge and his ultimate and all-encompassing victory over his enemies, he is not a character to be envied - he seemingly loses his attachment to the people around him and is consumed by his own myth, becoming more of a dictator than anything else. However, there are two problems with the portrayal of Paul et al. that confuses the intended message. The first is that a large proportion of the Atreides’ characterisation goes into establishing their constant control over their emotions, reactions, and decision-making processes; the effect being that from the very beginning of the novel the Atreides’ all seem to exist in their own little bubble, separated from the world at large as well as those around them by their own singular brilliance - Leto is a ‘great’ commander bearing the burden of the his people on his shoulders; Jessica is a Bene Gesserit and a concubine, viewed with suspicion by many around her due to her powers and her unofficial place within the family; and Paul is a demi-god in training. And since the tone of Herbert’s prose is so lacking in emotional nuance and resonance, it becomes difficult to discern whether he is intending to convey that, in any given situation, a character is displaying an intentional control over his or her reactions, or whether they are actually supposed to be displaying an unhealthy emotional disconnect. Within the text both instances appear the same, and it is only whether the control or the disconnect are explicitly stated that I, for one, could decipher the points in which it was intentional. Such as it is, the off-screen death of Paul’s son reads like a footnote for all the pause it gives him, and I still can’t figure out whether that’s because Herbert is trying to indicate the depth of Paul’s depravity, or whether he’s just a shitty writer who failed to properly demonstrate his character’s emotions, because honestly, it could be either.  

And this brings me to the second problem, which is that the prose itself is complicit in the confusion. As stated, Herbert’s grasp of dramatic tension is so feeble, his demonstrated understanding of interpersonal emotions so poor, and his writing so matter-of-fact and lacking in colour, that it buries whatever philosophical subtext it may have and confuses speculation on its themes by virtue of the simple fact that any supposed ‘mystique’ could just as easily be chalked up to the author’s failed hold over his own material. The way Herbert fumbles with the tension he tries to invoke and the clumsiness of his writing when he gets inside his characters heads leaves it equally possible in my mind that his characters are complex as it is that they are simple - a situation I’ve never witnessed before - and in any other circumstance I’d admit that there was a kind of brilliance to this, if it wasn’t for the fact that the general tone of his writing clearly conveys the infancy of his talents as an author. My inclination, then, was simply to take everything at face value because the novel is written so explicitly. Which finally brings me to my actual point here:

If the novel is to be taken as it is written, then all of the main characters are giant idiot dickheads.

Let’s begin with Duke Leto. It’s kind of strange that everyone in Leto’s shadow exhibits an explicit and almost unfathomable loyalty to someone who’s temperament is almost exclusively characterised by flushes of anger, harsh words, and a deep belief in the feudal hierarchy - the idea of ‘right by birth’ being an absurd inflation of self-importance that Paul himself adopts as an awful character trait later on. Most of Leto’s subordinates seem to display symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome, seeing brief moments of kindness following a rebuke or an outburst as a sign of his famed benevolence and compassion. ‘Show, don’t tell’ is an adage that comes to mind when pondering the writing of this character, and for all the tales of a 'great leader' that surround him, we see little of this in the timeline of the novel itself. A man whose idea of ‘strong leadership’ is a calm word after an outburst isn’t a figure of worship, he’s a cunt. And I can see the typing fingers of fans a-flurry as they rush to point out that Leto is supposedly uncharacteristically stressed by the danger his family has been put in - an excuse that would hold far more weight if Herbert had found time to actually demonstrate this somewhere within his novel’s nine-hundred pages, but he didn’t. Instead, we’re simply told that he’s not usually like that, which has as much meaning to a reader as being told your neighbour’s shithead Chihuahua ‘isn’t usually like that’, right after it bites the tip of your dick (true story, don’t ask). And after all this - after all his bluster and bullshit, and after spending a good deal of his story ostracizing the mother of his child in an effort to supposedly fake out the true traitor in his family’s midst - he succeeds in exactly none of his efforts, and the Harkonnen plot plays out without a hitch. To make matters worse, his final living act is to activate a poison gas capsule hidden in his tooth in an attempt to kill the Baron Harkonnen, and he even fucks this up, killing only himself and one of the Baron’s disposable offsiders. His capabilities as a leader are nil, and his compassion limited, at best.

Meanwhile, for her part, Jessica spends the majority of Dune pinballing between disgust and fear of her son because he is turning into the very thing she has been training him to be for the entirety of his existence, and vengeful joy as he rains destruction down upon their mutual enemies. In what you’ll come to see is a pattern amongst the Atreides, any sense of genuineness one may garner from her faint echoes of self-awareness is reversed and erased by the fact that she continually makes the same decisions she spends so much time regretting, and then comes to regret those decisions as well - simply put, she's written to be self-aware, but not written to learn. For instance, as the focus on her dwindling attachment to Paul begins to grow as he gets more powerful, she willingly undergoes a ritual whilst pregnant that bestows all her powers upon her unborn daughter, resulting in the birth of what the Bene Gesserit call an ‘Abomination’ - a child that she once again finds disconcerting. Typically the Bene Gesserit kill these children as they risk being dangerously possessed by the spirits of dead Bene Gesserit, but Jessica doesn’t care about that because she is the mother of Paul Atreides and she can do whatever the fuck she wants. And far be it from me to say that a mother shouldn’t be able to keep her child if she wants to, but there’s a distinct difference between wanting to keep your unborn daughter; and forcing upon her powers that she cannot refuse, making her a target for a powerful order, and then having the audacity to look down upon her as something unnatural simply because she is what you made her to be. The point I’m making is that whilst the character of Jessica constantly reminds the reader that she is disenfranchised or a passive observer amongst the events that take place around her, such claims are a hard pill to swallow coming from a character for whom a core motivation of their order is the pursuit of power, and particularly the desire to manipulate it from behind the scenes. Jessica is demonstrably one of the most influential and powerful people in the universe - she is a master of wits and observation, outsmarting even Leto’s security expert (who, it should be mentioned, is a human computer), and a master of combat, easily besting the chieftan of the first Freman tribe they encounter. She even has the power to force others into doing her bidding by the use of ‘The Voice’ - an ability she uses at least half a dozen times. And yet what is the one thing that gives her solace? The fact that her son plans to marry an innocent girl for political reasons, and then torture her for the rest of her life by withholding any kind of affection in favour of his concubine. These are the last words of Dune:

“Do you know so little of my son?” Jessica whispered. “See that princess standing there, so haughty and confident. They say she has pretensions of a literary nature. Let us hope she finds solace; she’ll have little else.” A bitter laugh escaped Jessica. “Think on it, Chani: that princess will have the name, yet she’ll live as less than a concubine - never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she’s bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.”

After everything that has happened, to the end, Jessica’s one gripe is that she was never treated with the respect of a Queen all those years ago when Leto was alive. Great. What a wonderful person. And make no mistake - she is talking about the innocent daughter of their enemy here; a girl who only wants to be a writer and scholar and will spend the rest of her life recording the history of this woman’s fucking son. And for some incomprehensible reason, Herbert decided that this, a petty display of spite that boils the most powerful female character in the novel down to the desire to be 'a wife', that this would be the perfect way to end his epic science fiction novel.

So what about Paul? We’ve already discussed in brief his descent into war mongering and self-absorption that makes him one of the most singularly unlikable characters in the book, but what makes it worse is that, once again, every single decision he makes leads him directly to the one point that he swears he never wants to go. His one steadfast moral handhold is his understanding of the fact that encouraging the Fremen to worship him and playing into the prophecy of the Kwisatz Haderach runs the risk of drawing these people to the edge of waging a religious war. But he also knows that their military might united under his leadership is his one way of winning back his seat as the ruler of Arrakis. So what does he decide to do?

We already know the answer to that.

Time and again Paul fans the flames of religious fervour and further asserts his singular command over everyone, ultimately leading his army to the brink of jihad. At various points he sets out to demonstrate that he fulfills the requirements of the prophecy, at others he demands fealty based on his birthright as son of the former Leto Atreides. By the end of the novel he literally says that he lives by two separate moral codes - that of a noble family, and that of the Fremen - and that a course of action illegal for an Atreides (i.e. the murder of the fucking Emperor) is not illegal for a Freman. You understand what this means, right? Paul is making the argument of a crazy person - he genuinely ascribes the blame for an illegal murder at the feet of a different version of himself. And while it’s true that Frank Herbert came out a decade after the release of the novel and talked about how it’s supposed to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of hero worship, it’s also true that Tommy Wiseau asserted that The Room was a drama, right up until he realised that everyone was laughing at it.

Dimitri Glukhovsky’s ‘Metro 2033’, for instance, ends with the protagonist realising at the last moment that the assumption upon which his last mission rests is incorrect, and that the race of beings that he is about to destroy are actually intelligent and benevolent, rather than the violent demons they are thought to be. This climax is a crescendo of swelling emotion and tragedy that leaves the main character broken and disillusioned, and it is one of the few times I’ve cried whilst reading a novel. Glukhovsky devotes the entire final section of the book to the failure of his protagonist, and of humanity at large, to realise what they have done until it’s too late, and the emotional repercussions of this.

Frank Herbert devotes a couple of lines to Paul's awareness of his ultimate failure.

And much like the death of the Paul’s son, this too reads like a footnote. So how are we supposed to understand the intentions of a novel that presents itself so dispassionately? One that portrays enormous and important events in such an off-hand manner? I’m not entirely sure to be honest. For certain, I could delve into a debate about the possible meaning of this and that and dive into the encyclopaedia of interpretations, and again, perhaps a certain amount of merit should be given to Dune for opening itself up to that kind of discussion. But I could also just take it for what it is, rather than what it accidentally might be, and that is a very imaginative but flatly-written tome, with passionless two-dimensional characters, and a storytelling style that constantly undermines its own drama. I bought the sequel - Dune Messiah - because it’s about one fifth of the length, and I was keen to see exactly how Herbert expands on the foundation he has laid here. Perhaps it has all the answers? Perhaps it will confirm that every assertion I have made in this turgid article is incorrect? If so, I’ll be sure to let you know. But for now, I only know what I know, and that is that Dune is a phenomenal work of imagination, a great fiction, and a poor, poor text.

6/10

Just Okay