#hope it's ok i kicked it off pre established <3

[neverrcryarch]

@prismpowa : skunk & basil!

"nope, nuh-uh. ain't tellin' ya basil." i say with a shake of my head, arm moving back and forth as we walk, taking his along with mine. "this is like ... gonna be a super badass surprise date. like ... can't be a surprise if i tell ya what i got planned!" dinner at basil's favorite place, movie night at the drive in. nothing super special i guess, but it's more than we usually do. i like to treat him after all, when i got the money for it. "what ... are you sayin' you don't trust me?" i tease as i look over in his direction, lower lip jutting out into a pout.

[yuu-kumeii]

Heeello, hru?

i want a tsukishima kei × fem!reader, NO TIME SKIP, i want his reaction on the reader hugging him suddenly without saying anything and the reader doesn't pull away from the hug (aka gives him a long hug)

(Reader is clingy and doesn’t want to vent, but at the end she let it all out)

Genre: hurt/comfort, fluff, crying

Omg hi anon❗❗❗ I'm doing fine when I got this, but now I'm like a deflated grammar balloon 😭😭😭

SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG TO FINISH YOUR REQUEST I SWEAR I WAS THINKING ABT IT THE WHOLE TIME AFTER I GOT IT, I just didn't get the motivation at that time so I waited for inspiration to strike. But then inspiration hit me too hard and this ended up going waaaay off track ⚰️ PLUS I wrote the middle part during a campus tour and boy am I glad to have friends who are willing to be my beta readers bc past Yuu was NOT having a good time there 🥹. So sorry again in advance if this isn't exactly what you were expecting 🙏

Btw, your all caps red NO TIMESKIP is kinda funny to me bc it's like telling me to REMEMBER THAT THIS IS A PRE TIMESKIP THING NOT POST since I'm someone who mainly writes for post timeskip 💀 ntm how you probably had your own timeskip waiting for this thing 🧍‍♀️but anyways I hope you still enjoy this monster of a drabble fic hybrid 🫶

Also heads up, it's an established relationship, yeah sorry I didn't know if you would be ok with that but uh yeah sorry 😭

Word count : 3.5k (How did I get here)

There wasn't any indication as to why you started to feel the way you do, maybe you were tired. It could be from stress, school work has been piling up so it wasn't a stretch to say that you might've been feeling a little burnt out. But deep down, you know exactly why. You're just too embarrassed to say it out loud, because what kind of person would you be to think that your friends were that shallow? A bad manager and an even more awful friend, that's what.

Everyone has been asking about you, concerned for your lack of response as of late. You barely look up from your notebook, something about a 'full proof strategy for their next game'. One so full proof it apparently doesn't need any input from the team or Kiyoko...or the coach... It's obvious you're trying to avoid them without being absent. Which makes it even more strange, usually you'd want to get away from the people you're avoiding. So why aren't you?

"Oh no, [Y/N] lookout!" A voice suddenly calls out, snapping you out of your thoughts just as you see a ball coming straight for you.

Before you could react, someone beat it to you, "I got it!" A hand reaches out and blocks the ball, you don't register who it is until—

"Nice save, Yacchan!"

Of course.

Yachi was the one who saved your face from getting pummeled while you sat there with your head in the clouds. All the more reason the team should just— just—

Just kick you off the team.

Ah.

There it is.

That's what's been on your mind. Why it was so hard for you to actually avoid them, you were scared to be pushed aside while trying to encourage them to do so. Thinking you were being good at your job, only to see someone new do it better.

You feel like you've been lacking as a manager, despite being in the club for longer. It felt like the newcomer, Yachi, was doing a lot better in the short time she's here. You know it was unwarranted, she's been nothing but helpful. Picking up all the little things you and Kiyoko taught her. The team also welcomed her with open arms, as did you.

It was a gradual realization on your end, with 3 managers on standby, it's easy to lose track of who does what job. But more and more it felt like you've been doing the least out of the 3 of you. It really affected you, even without you knowing.

You start to forget routines, things like after school clean up duty, homework, even going as far as to forget planned hangouts. It felt like all you wanted to do was finish the day as quickly as possible, you don't even get up from your seat much anymore. Your indifference in class is mostly likely why no one tried approaching you for stuff, which makes sense, you probably look unapproachable anyway.

Well, almost unapproachable. If it weren't for Tsukishima, who chose to come up to you on days you fully ignore the team.

"What's up with you?" His words were short and lacked any poise, fitting for the only first year keen on riling up opponents and allies alike.

"...Nothing is, I'm fine" Much like Tsuki, your words were curt. Hoping that the less you answer, the more he's inclined to leave you alone.

Giving you an unconvinced look paired with an equally unconvinced once over, he shrugs and turns to leave you be.

"Suit yourself"

That hurts more than anything your own mind can throw at you, because all it does is convince you further that they're better off without you. All you've been doing is feeling bad about yourself, starting to forget everything important in favor of ignoring the problem.

But strangely enough, even when you forget, nothing seems to have any big consequences. When you realize you forgot about cleanup duty, your class partner just shrugs, saying your friend stayed behind and helped them instead. You think that it could've been Yamaguchi, he sometimes helps with cleaning duty when someone's partner goes home early.

It makes you feel worse about your moping, inconveniencing not one but two people. All because you can't convince yourself that just because Yachi is doing a lot better than you, it doesn't mean you're useless.

Right?

Not to mention the heartwarming messages from your friends when you don't show up to a hangout, they seem so understanding in spite of how you don't even tell them anything. The messages telling you to "Take care of yourself" and "Work things out at your own pace" could honestly make you cry.

Even the team tries their best to cheer you up, or at least to get your attention. You can't lie and say you don't see Hinata trying to get the other first years to pull some cool volleyball stunt he saw once, hoping that you'll congratulate them. It's hard to ignore it, especially when you can just feel his occasional stare, trying to get a reaction from you. But, as much as you want to cheer them on, you just can't do that. And yet, they're still so understanding. Trying to raise your spirit, Yachi even tried to start a conversation with you by asking for help on different managerial duties. But to no avail, all you do is point her in the right direction before going back to your place in the stands. Her efforts weren't in vain, but not enough to really get to you.

But it doesn't add up, how would they know you're going through a tough time? Are you really that obvious? You probably are. Either way, it's sweet of them to still think about you even when you're basically ditching them.

What does make sense to you is the homework, which you still end up submitting on time. All thanks to, you guessed it, Tsukishima. He just started reminding you about homework due in 2 days, complete with the pages and formulas needed. A smart comment about your recent forgetfulness is always attached to the message, something to remind you that it's from Tsuki of all people.

Someone you got to know through Yamaguchi, a mutual friend of yours, and if that's not enough, then being on the same team definitely is. As a manager on said team, you were always there for whatever sarcastic quip he had at the ready. Complete with every short joke ever made and that snide smile of his almost everyday. Needless to say, it didn't take long for a friendship to bloom. No longer hanging out only when Yams was around, you both built a routine for when you have each other. Yet you were always one to break routine for something new, a habit the tall beanpole never fails to challenge.

"Why do I have to come with you? You can just go alone" He says, not too keen on the idea of skipping your usual bakery visit for a cafe.

"Because I don't want to go alone and you're the only free one" You were always so sure he'd come with you anyway, to the point where you don't even try to convince him anymore.

He did end up going with you in the end, even if he did have his complaints here and there. But overall, it was one of the few times you can visibly see him having a good time. You chose a cafe themed around the stars and space in general, which you knew Tsuki liked quite a bit. Sure it would've been better to go to a dinosaur themed cafe, but the ones you know about are all the way in Tokyo and Fukui. Nevertheless, that space cafe visit was definitely a core memory in both your and Tsukishima's friendship, no matter how much that salt shaker wanted to deny it.

Though you did promise that one day, both of you would go together.

As friends, cause that's what you are, right?

Wait, actually do you even remember what happened after the space cafe? Wasn't it really important?

It feels like you know exactly what it is, it's a *fact* that you remember what it is. But much like everything else around you, it as well, whether you mean to or not, is pushed to the back of your head. Your thoughts start to discourage your resolve in this self-driven solitude of yours, built upon claims with no support. But why would the evidence matter if the claim itself is enough to make you believe?

It really felt like you were going to keep up this ruse forever, nothing really served as a consequence to you. The only thing keeping you in this state were the small glimpses of the team above your notebook, always up to some dumb fun. Something you always looked forward to in spite of the grueling practice ahead of them, well it was something you looked forward to.

Your eyes catch onto the other first years happily chatting with each other, except for Tsuki who preferred to stand on the sidelines, only chiming in to add a sprinkle of sarcasm into the conversation. That seems fun, you knew it was. As you watch everyone laugh at something Yachi says, something in you starts coiling around your heart.

You're suddenly aware of every breath you take, your thoughts start to repeat 'breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out...'

Your surroundings start to feel heavy, like you were tethered to your place. The sound of your own breathing feels louder than the voices in the gym. So focused on your empty notebook that everything else blurs at the edges of your vision.

It wasn't until you caught golden-brown eyes staring at you from across the court, genuine concern masked under a nonchalant gleam. You hold his gaze for longer than you'd like, unsure if there's anything else hidden under the bespectacled stare.

Tsuki only tilts his head in the direction of the other first years, probably telling you to come with them. You can only refuse, solemnly shaking your head. They can't possibly want you there with them, not after ignoring them for the better part of a week. It wouldn't be right to just butt in like that.

He probably knows that you're still not giving in, because it looked like he let out a sigh before walking towards them. Not before one last stare down with you, his gaze asking if you're sure about your decision. You can only hesitantly nod, you're not sure, you don't want to pick this decision, but you've convinced yourself that you're backed into a corner.

A corner you made up.

Well, no use in thinking about it now.

"Oi [Y/N], I'm gonna lock up the gym now! Better get going" Oh coach Ukai, you forgot he was still here. Taking your notebook and pen into your arms, you nod at the coach before heading towards the exit. Body slightly hunched over when you pass him, unable to look at him in the eye.

"Whatever it is you're going through, you know they got your back, right kiddo?" Ukai suddenly says, right before you leave. It makes you stand in your place for a while, thinking. You know they do, it just doesn't feel right to, especially when you didn't give them a valid reason for your distance.

"Y-yeah…Thanks, coach" You mumble, fully facing away from him. Turning to leave, when you catch a glimpse of the orange sky outside. Realizing how late it got, you break into a sprint back to your classroom.

Through the now empty halls, doused in ombre. No other soul in sight, leaving the sounds of your footsteps to be heard. The sky is beautiful today…wouldn't it be fun to experience it together?

Your pace slows right in front of your classroom, 1-4 written on a sign next to the door. Putting your hands on your knees to catch your breath from all the running, you stop to admire the light that passes through your classroom door.

And that's when you heard it, the faint scratching of a chalkboard being erased, you'd know that sound anywhere. It's soft, you could barely hear it over your own breaths, who could be cleaning it at this time? You know your partner didn't come to school today, they were sick. You yourself forgot, so why would anyone be there?

Slowly peeking through the door frame, you see a lone figure standing by the chalkboard. Short blond hair, a lean figure, headphones over his neck, the wire hanging loose. It's him, the one you felt the most guilt for. You watch him for a while, lazily swiping the eraser across the chalkboard.

So that's who your cleanup partner was talking about.

It wasn't Yamaguchi…

It was Tsuki.

He's been the one filing in for you, the one picking up after you. The one who kept pushing you to just talk to the team from a distance, he was looking out for you. The one that's been trying to reach out in his own way, you feel so stupid. Running away while your…

Your…

Your...

Own boyfriend looks out for you even when you unfairly pushed him away.

Your eyes glaze over and your breathing interchanges between short huffs and long shaky sighs. Feeling like you owe so much to him, keeping you afloat in an ocean of your own solitude. Step by step, you make your way over. Speeding up the closer you got.

Reaching him, you immediately press your face into his back. Arms wrapping around his waist, grabbing at the fabric of his school uniform to keep yourself in place. You can feel him tense, before slowly relaxing and going back to his cleaning. The guilt eating up at you even more, you clench your fists around his uniform, trembling in your place. Your lip trembles slightly, making your words sound even more pathetic than they already are.

"I'm…I-I'm so-so-...so-sor—ry—!" You sob, voice breaking off the same way you are. No words could express the mix of relief and remorse you feel, relief to be able to express your true feelings and remorse for your actions that didn't. Your eyes fill with tears that linger at their edge, waiting for a push to get them down.

"You better be, do you know how much they miss you? Those idiots won't stop asking me about you" Kei's words striking right through your heart, the coil no longer tight. Your tears finally fall as your cries get louder. You press your face further into your boyfriend's back for comfort, letting out all the pent up feelings you've harbored the past week.

"I…I just f-felt like—like I wa-was u-useless!" You whimper, sobs reduced to short intakes of air between big breaths.

"Idiot…" Turning to face you fully, Kei's hand settles itself on the top of your head, sliding down to the back. Pushing you further into an embrace of his own, refusing to look at you. One hand on the back of your head, the other fiddling with his headphone wires.

All that you've done, the distance you tried to make, it all came tumbling down. All at once. It was never supposed to take hold of you the way it did, so all you needed was something to justify ending it. Kei, is that something.

"It's just tha-that—Yachi is such-such a good mana–ger…be-better than me…" The words flow out before you could stop them, a confession to your actions. Hearing it out loud, you truly realize how weak your reasons are. It just shows how little it took to have you questioning your worth as a member of the team, laid out in front of the both of you.　

"..." His silence causes you to meekly look up at him, afraid of what he might think. Kei was always good at keeping a neutral face, never making it easy for you to know what he's thinking.

"I don't want to stop being your guys' manager…" You lower your head, voice a whisper, lip still quivering slightly.

"Then don't, no one's telling you to quit"

Huh.

"But—" You quickly look back up at him.

"But nothing, Yachi's great and all but when will we ever get another clutz like you who pays for my drink?" He has a smug look on his face after saying that, eyes filled with nothing but mischief.

You say nothing, words stuck in your throat. Still staring at his stupid smile, he's probably so proud of himself for that. But, you knew he said that to cheer you up. Something to keep you out of your own head, and it's working.

"Way to ruin the moment…" You mumble, "Could've been a bit more dramatic" A soft smile takes over your expression, already feeling much more relieved than before.

"You can do that by yourself," Kei retorts, looking at you from the corner of his eye.

"But you'd still do it with me" Your smile grows, eyes filled with adoration for the pretty face in front of you. After being alone for the better part of a week, it was nice to finally talk again. Even if you had so much making up to do, to everyone in the team, maybe you could start with the one who still held you close.

"Oh? You sound so sure of yourself for someone who's been running away from me" Eyebrow raised in faux skepticism, waiting for your answer.

"I promise I'll make it up to you first" You tell him, before burying your face back into his front, basking in his familiar scent and warmth where you feel most at ease.

"You better"

And you will. To all of them.

Walking home from school during sunset is a special kind of rare to you, barely anyone on the streets. Your newfound goal for the following week, circling in your mind. Beside you was Kei, matching your pace with long strides contrasting your own smaller steps.

"Kei…Do you want to stop by Paprika heaven?" You suddenly ask.

"Paprika heaven? Really?" Kei is not convinced you're being serious, you can practically sense that raised brow.

"It's a cafe! I know the name isn't the sweetest sounding but trust me on this!" You insist, letting out an exasperated huff.

"Shouldn't it be closed?" He questions further, still doubtful.

"It closes at 9, I checked" You proudly exclaim, crossing your arms with a content look on your face.

Kei rolls his eyes at your antics, "Alright, I yield" he raises his hands in surrender, yet a smirk still makes its way onto his face, "But you're paying"

You freeze, realizing that he's right. You are going to pay for it, with your own money. Immediately, your figure deflates dramatically. Slouching forward with an exaggerated groan.

"Right…" Your wallet will never forgive you. But not because Paprika Heaven was too expensive, a piece of your soul just dies whenever you take out a remotely large amount of money from your wallet.

This apparently amuses your boyfriend because he starts laughing, so much so that his shoulders move in time with each laugh. He turns to look at your stunned figure, which only entertains him more. Hearing his mocking laughter, it shakes you out of your stupor. Irritation starts to take hold of you, wanting him to stop laughing at your obvious misery.

"Wha—?! Stop laughing!" Your fists make contact with your boyfriend's chest, repeatedly hitting him to get him to shut.

"I'm serious! I might become poor after this!"

"That's your own fault" In between laughs, Kei is still able to call you out. Seriously, can't he take this seriously?

After a while he calms down, wiping a single tear from his eye. You also calm down, arms tired from the repeated attacks on your boyfriend. Leaning your forehead on his chest to rest, eyes closing on their own from the change in atmosphere. Kei only stands proud, hands in his pockets and a grin spread across his face in content.

Comfortable silence wash over you, the sun still peeking just beyond the horizon, lighting up the road just enough for you to see the way ahead. It's way too late for a bunch of high school students to be out, let alone ones who plan on staying out. But that doesn't matter, you can take the worried lectures from your parents later. Right now, you want to make up for lost time.

"Kei—," You raise your head to face him, taking a deep breath,

"Thank you" A closed eyed smile appears on your face, "For still putting up with me"

"...Whatever" He looks away from you, eyes gazing over the road in front of you.

But no matter how much he tries to hide it,

You can still see that small genuine smile on his face.

[nevertheless-moving]

Star Wars AU #20: MacenJar AU

Inspired by this meme and with permission from @simpskywalker

This au is dedicated to everyone who told me that this concept ‘gave them a headache’ or ‘psychic damage’. Especially that special someone who begged me to ‘please stop’ because ‘i hate this, i hate this so much’ and told me ‘please don’t say more words about this.’

Crack Lies Ahead, enough to consume a man. I have spoken.

“Ani. Ani. Anakin Skywalker.”

“Hmm?” The dulcet sounds of Padme calling his name dragged Anakin from sleep against his will. 

“Anakin, you have to get up.”

He groaned, rolling over. “...here’s my face...I’ll...be awake in a second...just sit down...I’m awake...”

“No, Anakin you have to leave, remember. You have a 5 AM take-off scheduled, and you made me promise I would get you up early this time, come on.”

She cruelly yanked the covers away. He gasped in betrayal. 

“My own wife...how could you.”

“Anakin if you’re not out of bed in the next 30 seconds the next time you beg to stay the night because ‘you can get up early, you swear’ I am kicking you out before anyone sits anywhere near anyone’s face, do you understand.”

He sat bolt upright and stumbled out of bed. “Ok, Ok, I’m up I- Padme!”

“Yes?” She asked sweetly, brushing her hair at the vanity. 

“It’s 3 AM!”

“Yes I know, you were going to stop at that bakery I recommended, remember?”

“You woke me up an hour and half early so I could stop at a bakery,” he asked, disbelieving.

“Yes, Anakin, it was your idea. It was going to be your cover, in case anyone wondered what you were doing in the building.”

“That is-” before he could call it the stupidest idea he had ever heard, the memory of promising Padme that staying the night was a good idea because it would facilitate his cunning ruse (he was distracted, ok? Padme was wearing a lot of layers) came rushing back.

“-right,” he finished lamely.

Padme just hummed and began braiding in her cosmetic forcefields. 

Anakin managed to stretch, complete his morning refresher run, and arrange his robes in a suitably decorous fashion by the time Padme had established the base layer of her hairstyle for the day.

A quick kiss- no goodbye, it hurt too much to say goodbyes in war - and Anakin was out the door. 

He idly scratched his chin, vacantly looking out the lift and vaguely considering growing a beard. The pre-dawn view was quickly replaced by metal walls as the ride dropped below the skyline.

The transparisteel pod began to slow scarcely one third of the way down. Anakin suppressed a groan and tried to arrange his expression in Jedi-stoic manner, hoping that whoever got in the lift with him would be too intimidated by seeing a Jedi close-up to think about what they were doing in a Senatorial Apartment building at 3:15 in the morning. If they ask, I’m visiting the famous Bebbisun Bakery. Bennison? BELLASAN. I’m visiting the Bellasan Bakery.

Actually, anyone getting into the elevator this early was probably also doing the walk of shame so it’s probably fi-KRIFFING SITH SPIT THAT’S

“Master Windu!” Anakin cleared his throat, trying to lower his voice an octave. “Good- Good Morning!”

Windu’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “Ah. Knight Skywalker. Good morning to you as well,” he replied, stepping in the elevator, doors closing behind.

The lift descended as Anakin’s heart rate skyrocketed. This was it. Windu had to be here for Anakin. What other possible explanation could there be? WHY WASN’T HE SAYING ANYTHING?

Wait.

What other possible explanation...could...why wasn’t he saying ANYTHING?

Anakin scrutinized Master Windu out of the corner of his eye. Were those...the same robes he was wearing yesterday? They looked like the same robes but then again...pretty much all robes looked the same so this was probably a stupid way to figure things out. Fuck, it was too early for this.

Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t get a sense of the Master’s surface emotions. But his underlying aura seemed...happy? Typically Windu's serene presence had a tinge of righteous fury (something that had frightened him back when he was a child). But now that ever present vaapad edge was... softened? Anakin wracked his tired brain for a more reasonable explanation than- than the obvious but obviously impossible. He had to projecting. Right? Then again...couplings weren’t forbidden (even if Anakin couldn’t quite understand how people enjoyed just- having sex without any attachment).

The corners of Anakin’s lips twitched. The Master of the Order. Getting laid. Master Windu. In the Senatorial apartments. Mace Windu. What level had he gotten on? Above aides...diplomats probably. Should he ask? Force, this was too good- he couldn’t not ask.

Windu stared at him cooly and the knight instantly sobered. What was he thinking? Windu was obviously trying to trick him! If he said anything, Windu would turn it against him! Well, he wouldn’t be fooled so easily. Anakin spent the next several levels of descent staring forward, determined not to be the one to break the silence. 

He was so focused that he didn’t notice the lift slowing prematurely again until the doors opened; an elderly Rodian hobbled in. The two Jedi moved even further apart to allow the man some space.  The lift closed and newcomer glanced at the humans curiously. 

“Aren’t you Jedi? What are two Jedi doing here so early?”

“Bakery,” Mace and Anakin responded in unison, heads snapping to stare at the other in surprise.

The Rodian chuckled. “Oh, that Bellasan place, right?”

“Yes,” Windu replied smoothly. “They have a famously unique caf blend.”

“And you can’t get Sweesonberry rolls anywhere else,” Anakin added quickly, not letting the opportunity to firm up his cover go to waste.

“You mammals and your carbohydrates,” The elderly reptilian clucked, bemused.

Knight Skywalker and Master Windu exchanged wary looks. The door pinged open on level 4848. 

“Enjoy!” the overly entertained Rodian called out as they stepped out from the closing doors.

Anakin cleared his throat. “After you, Master Windu,” he said politely. CHECKMATE FUCKER.

But Windu just nodded serenely, striding confidently ahead, past the checkpoints and into the attached upper-crust market. After a very short walk, Anakin found himself in line behind Mace Windu at a pastry shop in the basement of his wife’s apartment building.

Anakin blearily thought that sentence through again, then subtly pinched the inside of his arm.

Nope, he was awake.

Every second that passed Anakin had to fight the steadily increasing urge to blurt out something stupid, and possibly incriminating, if not both. Just say something bland! Nothing about why they’re both here so early. Nothing about coming here before. Something casual.

“Smells good,” Anakin said.

Nailed it!

“Indeed,” Mace replied.

I’m a genius! He actually thinks I’m here for the bakery! He’s never going to suspect a thing! He was probably here for some boring pre-dawn meeting, and now I’ve got the perfect excuse to come visit Padme whenever! I can probably start sneaking off more often, I’ve just got to remember to bring back a pasty or something. And he can’t even say shit about un-Jedi like consumption!

“Skywalker-”

Oh no. Please be about the bakery. Pleasebeaboutthe

“Believe me when I tell you that I’d rather not ask-”

Oh NO. THIS ISN’T GOING TO BE ABOUT THE BAKERY. I’M AN IDIOT.

“-But did you fly here in a temple speeder?”

Cold sweat started to trickle down Anakin’s back as they shuffled forward automatically in the surprisingly long queue. Guess that’s why Padme woke me up so early.

“Knight Skywalker? Did you hear me?”

“Yes, Master Windu, sorry- I was, uh, distracted by the specials board. I, um, have my own hoverbike. Built it myself. No temple resources involved.”

“Sounds...distinctive.” Windu’s tone seemed neutral, but the way he pinched the bridge of his nose was obviously irritated. They stepped forward again. Why are so many people at this bakery so early? Guess we’re far enough down that day/night cycles don’t matter so much. Oh kriff, he’s massaging his temples now. Why is he mad about the bike? Is he going to ask where I landed it? Fuck.

Anakin swallowed the lump in his throat. “I- I thought it would be better to take personal property. Since this isn’t exactly order business.”

“That’s very responsible of you. Such...separation of personal from professional is an important skill for a Jedi.” 

The trickle of sweat down his spine increased. The Chosen One discretely wiped his sweaty palms on the inside of his sleeves and prayed that his outer robe was hiding any growing pit stains. 

Are we...actually talking about this? Is he going to admit to having an affair? Is he going to tell me to keep this quiet? I CAN BARELY KEEP MY OWN RELATIONSHIP SECRET! Does he know about Padme? Does he know we’re married? Is this conversation still about the bakery visit? Is HE married?

“However...such a vehicle might not be the most discrete. And discretion is also an important skill.”

Is he giving me permission to use the temple landspeeders to visit padme? Is he telling me to take the bus? WAIT! IS THIS A METAPHOR? Is he telling me to come here less? Is this still about the bakery? Did I actually check that I wasn’t still asleep or did I just dream that I checked?

“Do you understand, Knight Skywalker”

“I- uhh. I mean- well, ummm- OH look, it’s your turn to order!”

Master Windu stepped up to the counter. 

“Hello, again! Same as last time?”

OH FORCE GODS HE’S A REGULAR. THIS IS IT. I’M NEVER GOING TO GET TO SEE OBI-WAN OR ASHOKA AGAIN AND PADME’S CAREER IS GOING TO BE RUINED AND

“The same blend please, but please add on one of your Sweesonberry rolls- a friend recommended them.”

...Did Mace Windu just call me his friend?

“Excellent choice! Your friend has good taste!”

Mace Windu stepped to the side and Anakin Skywalker stepped up. “...I’ll have what he had.” 

A minute or two later, they were walking back to the lift, matching disposamugs and flimsibags in hand. 

To try and delay the inevitable, the pale and now very sweaty young Jedi took a sip of caf. He raised both brows involuntary. “This is...really good. Holy kriff. I don’t usually drink caf for the flavor but...wow.”

“Worth the trip?” Windu asked. Anakin choked a little but successfully managed to swallow. He took another sip to avoid answering. 

Windu took a bite of his roll, making a small noise of appreciation, “The pastry is also excellent. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth but this is remarkably smooth...I can’t say I’ve ever had anything quite like it.”

“Floral, right?” Anakin said, grinning into his cup. 

“Yes, that’s a good description.” Ha! I told Padme I was paying attention.

They drank companionably as the lift indicator dinged closer. 

“Skywalker...you’re parked on 4970, right?”

The knight nodded, too afraid to speak. The force seemed to swirl at the precipice of something. 

The Master sighed. “Look- I’ve got an unregistered van- this one time only, stow the speeder, and I’ll give you a ride back. If you’re visiting the bakery in the future- please take something with a closed cab. Last thing we need is the tabloids wondering where you’re going...”

Anakin nodded again, more eagerly again. He was practically being given permission to visit Padme! That was totally worth an excruciatingly awkward flight back to the temple! He just had to chew slowly so he couldn’t blurt out anything marriage related! He was a genius!

The lift opened.

“Jar-Jar!” Anakin said, surprised and pleased. “Wow, are you also here for the bakery? This place really is popular!”

“Ani! Little Ani! Wassa you doin here?” Jar-Jar looked around wildly, then stumbled out, foot catching at the gap. Windu darted forward and effortlessly saved the Gungan before he hit the floor, while Anakin stuck his arm forward to catch the closing door.

“Bakery, Jar Jar!” he said as he stepped inside. “I’d love to talk, but we’ve actually got to get back to the temple!”

Windu struggled to untangle himself from Jar-Jar, who was being particularly unhelpful about it, even for him. Wow he’s even clingier than usual this early in the morning. It’s nice how patient Master Windu is being; I feel like even Obi-Wan can be too hard on Jar-Jar sometimes.

“Actually Skywalker, why don’t you go on ahead and stow the bike- I just remembered I meant to pick something up for Council; I won’t take long.”

“Uh. Alright,” Anakin said, catching the keys. I guess I can’t really be late if I arrive with Master Windu.

“Ossa no!” Jar-Jar exclaimed sadly. “I was justa saying to Macey lassa night thatsa I missed talkin wit little Ani!”

Anakin smiled reassuringly as the lift began to close. “Don’t worry Jar-Jar! We’ll- catch uh-HOLD ON did you say LAST NIGHT?!”

Mace’s eyes closed in resignation as the door shut on the pair, Jar-Jar still tangled around the Jedi.

AND MACE WASN’T EVEN TRYING TO PUT HIM BACK UPRIGHT ANYMORE HOLY KRIFF JUST PUT THAT TOGETHER.

Anakin stared blankly at the metal walls as they rushed past. The lone Jedi Knight took a long sip of caff, then carefully placed the pastry bag and drink on the floor. He systematically wadded up the sleeve of his robe and shoved in his mouth. He then spent the next few minutes squealing with unholy glee while literally bouncing off the walls in a manner only accessible to a force sensitive in an elevator. He was still panting slightly when the lift opened on the primary parking level.

We can double date! Padme and I can host! I can help Mace and Jar-Jar plan their wedding! We can reform the order to allow for romantic love! I can be Jar-Jar’s best man! Padme and I can have another ceremony and Obi-Wan can give me away while Mace officiates and  and then we’ll all have sweesonbury cake and Jar-Jar can help teach our kids how to swim! 

With those dreamy thoughts running through his mind, it was child’s work to follow the the force to the unremarkable hovervan. He was humming to himself when Master Windu opened the door. 

He beamed at the older Jedi. Windu scowled in reply. Anakin smiled wider, unintimidated. He genuinely liked the Gungan, but anyone who could spend hours with Jar-Jar had to have a soft side.

“You know, Jar-Jar is a long time friend of Senator-”

“No.” Windu cut the eager words brusquely. 

Anakin shrank back, a little hurt.

(Maybe a lot hurt.)

Mace glanced over at the obviously crestfallen young General and sighed before amending his words.

“Not- Not right now, alright? Maybe if you’re miraculously more discrete about this than you are about your affection for Senator Amidala, then we can talk, understood?”

Anakin nodded with absolute determination, glimmering images of fairytale weddings visible once more. Distant, perhaps- but the chance was worth any amount of tongue biting. Now that there was a real, possible future where he could have it all, now that he knew Windu had a heart somewhere under his robes- he could be patient. 

He could be very patient.

Anakin calmed his grin down to a smaller, more Jedi-like smile, taking a sip of the cool but still really good caf. He channeled Obi-Wan’s most neutral diplomatic grace.

“Thank you for the ride, Master Windu. I appreciate it.”

Windu gave him an approving glance. “You’re more than welcome, Knight Skywalker.”

Feeling bold, he continued on with his best non-mocking impression of Obi-Wan.

"Have you had a chance to read the latest report on helmet redesigns? I think they might really improve peripheral vision without compromising concussive resistance.”

Mace hummed thoughtfully. “I have. I’m somewhat concerned about deploying such a radical change mid-campaign. Even better gear requires an adjustment period, and I’d rather minimize needless deaths while the troops readjust to hud flow.”

“Yes, that’s a reasonable concern, I was talking to Captain Rex-”

They spent the remainder of the flight chatting comfortably about troop safety and absentmindedly eating (or possibly stress eating in response to the prolonged absence of interpersonal conflict) the box of pastries Mace had picked up. When they arrived at the temple, they divvied up the remainder between them, quietly agreeing that there weren’t enough to share anyway. 

They continued their conversation, Master Windu accompanying him to the orbital loading bay. 

Obi-Wan rushed over in alarm at the sight of them approaching. “Anakin, there you are- I was starting to wonder if you’d make it. Terribly sorry Master Windu- I hope he wasn’t too much of a bother-”

“He’s not your padawan anymore, you don’t have to apologize for him. Though I do appreciate the reflex.”

“I suppose the concern isn’t completely baseless.” Anakin said, tone deliberately mildly. Mace chuckled slightly and Obi-Wan took a step back, slightly frightened by the sudden camaraderie. Anakin pretended to take a sip from his now empty disposamug to avoid fist pumping the air or cheering.

“I- Yes well- the important thing is you’re here in time for departure. What- what is that in the bag.”

Moment of Truth. Don’t freak out. Focus. Prove you can be discrete, THEN double dates, THEN Jedi Wedding Ceremony.

“Sweesonbury Roll,” Anakin answered placidly. He pretended to take another sip of caf. “Master Windu was kind enough to give me a ride from the bakery.”

“That’s- I’m sorry, what?” Anakin bit the inside of cheek to keep himself from reacting to Obi-Wan’s palpable bewilderment.

“I had to double back and get more, but we came straight here after,” Mace added helpfully, with zero hint of intentional mischief. “Oh and Skywalker- you can call me Mace if we’re not discussing temple business.”

Anakin SCREAMED (internally, of course). Outwardly, he simply bowed politely. “And you’re welcome to call me Anakin, of course.”

He deliberately avoided looking directly at Obi-Wan, his former Master’s bug-eyed reaction already pushing him to the edge, even just visible as it was out of the corner of his eye.

Windu nodded in return. “Safe travels you two. May the force with you.”

“And with you.” Anakin replied.

“May the force be with you,” Obi-Wan rushed to say, after a short delay.

Master Windu turned and exited the cargo bay doors. Anakin threw out the mug in a nearby bin, pulling out a roll and biting into it before turning to face Obi-Wan. They made eye-contact, each waiting for the other to break first. Usually that would be Anakin, but he had goals now. The Knight chewed. His Master’s eyes narrowed. The older man (who may have aged significantly in the last 5 minutes) finally broke.

“Who are you?”

Anakin just sighed, maintaining the Kenobi impression. “Come on Master, we don’t want to keep the troops waiting.” With that, he walked forward, hiding his smile as Obi-Wan followed closely at his heels. 

“Since when does my apprentice visit bakeries with Mace Windu?” Obi-Wan asked, almost desperately.

“You’re making it sound like a bigger deal than it is.” 

Master Kenobi sputtered as the pair opened the airlock for the short-range shuttle. 

Anakin mustered up an earnest smile. “Master? Would you mind flying- I’m still eating and-”

Obi-Wan made an incoherent noise of horrified outrage before fumbling for his communicator. 

“What are you doing?”

“NOTHING IS MAKING SENSE RIGHT NOW. EITHER YOU AND MACE NEED TO GO TO THE HEALING HALLS OR I DO!”

Anakin burst out laughing. “Relax Obi-Wan, I’m messing with you, holy shit. Obviously I’m flying.”

Obi-Wan slumped into the co-pilot seat, rubbing at his eyes. “Don’t do that Anakin! My nerves are stretched thin enough by the war as it is-”

“Sorry, Sorry!”

They strapped in and took off, Anakin still chuckling occasionally, Obi-Wan scowling in irritation each time. 

They ascended above the towering skyline alongside the first rays of sunlight.

“So you didn’t go to a bakery with Master Windu this morning?”

“Uhh-”

[leverage-commentary]

Leverage Season 2, Episode 14, The Three Strikes Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi I'm Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and Director of this episode.

John: John Rogers, Executive Producer, Writer of this episode.

Chris: Chris Downey, Executive Producer, and this is the Three Strikes Job.

John: This is the first half of the big season finale which we like to do. And we are meeting our favorite recurring character Detective Bonanno, played by our friend Mr. Blanche, right?

Dean: Yes, Robert Blanche.

Chris: Robert Blanche.

John: Fantastic find; local actor. And it was interesting because really as we had come to- first time dealing with split season, first time Sophies not around, we had to- you know, we really hunted around for the character we would be emotionally anchored to for the season finale; you don't want it to be a random vic. And- cause last year was the whole Nate arc- 

Chris: Right.

John: And having- Robert having established his character made him really beloved, made it easier.

Dean: And we've never really done a pre-opening like this that's quite this violent.

John: Yes.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: So it was a little bit out of our tool box, but yet we tried to do it in a way that it didn't seem like a completely different show.

John: This is the edited version. In the original version, a toddler wanders through the field of fire and is brutally mowed down.

[Laughter]

John: I'm glad we cut that out, that was weird.

Dean: That wasn't good.

John: Just seemed odd.

Dean: Especially when the toddler pulled out a gun and-

John: And was doing the [unintelligible] the dubs were cool though. I liked those.

[Laughter]

John: So this is Sonny at the toll booth; there's no two ways around this.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

John: How tough was this to shoot?

Dean: You know, it was actually pretty easy. We had about six cameras shooting simultaneously; we did it 3 different times and moved the camera each time. And this van you may recognize from Beantown Bailout-

John: Yes

Dean: Which also got shot up. So whenever we need to shoot up a car, that’s the car.

Chris: And did we add-? Or did we-

Dean: Now here’s the interesting thing-

John: We putty it in.

Chris: We putty it in? Oh.

Dean: The actor was not available this day to shoot. So that’s a different actor made up to look like Robert Blanche.

Chris: Oh wow, that’s great.

John: That's great. So our local Portland actor has a double? A stand in? 

Dean: Has a double. [Laughs]

John: Wow, that's great. Oh, she's fantastic. And now this is- again, one of these sorts of things where we’re trying to anchor all of Nate Ford’s emotional cues. And you actually tried to shoot this identically, if I remember correctly.

Dean: That's right. We wanted to try and match the look and feel of the hospital scene from the pilot, but just skewed enough so that we know we’re someplace else.

John: Paul Blackthorne's name. And this was a lot of fun. This was a big giant episode concept.

Dean: One of the things you have to understand is- you gotta know when we do these two-part season finales, they're really shot like a movie, cause you shoot them all at the same time. And this one is, as you will see - far more ambitious than what we did in season one. Yet because it’s at the end of a very tough season where the writers actually ended earlier than normal; we only have four days to prepare to shoot this two-part season finale.

John: Yeah. We actually started prepping off outlines.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And then I think I turned in the first half? First half first? Second half- 

Dean: Yeah.

John: I think I kept in order at least. And then, you know, turn them each in. And by that point, nicely enough, the Portland crew was such a well oiled machine that they knew what they wanted. Also, we had learned by this point to really try to find anchor locations. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: To build and tie our acts around. So knowing that we were gonna do the baseball scam, they knew they could start processing all that was needed.

Dean: This is also the first time in season two that we brought back this recurring nightmare of him reliving the death of his son. The idea was that he had to some degree resolved it at the end of season one, but yet it’s still there just below the surface, and then suddenly kicking in to the end of season two it comes back up again.

John: And it was really the last trigger. If you’ve been watching the arc all the way through, we’ve been playing with his control issues and the fact that he's drinking again, and that feeling of helplessness has triggered him back into his addictive behavior. I mean, he’s already kind of bathing in his addictive behavior at this point in the previous episodes, but this is what really pushes him over the edge.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Also normally we like to have fun kick in pretty early after the opening scene, but yet this- because we're trying to set up a larger emotional arc in this two-part season finale. We have an emotional opening with Bonanno getting shot, then we have another emotional beat where he’s reminded of his son, and here another emotional beat where he’s trying to connect with Sophie and his frustration of not being able to reunite with her is bubbling. So we really actually took a long time on this before we let the fun kick in, which is not usual.

John: Because we were really gonna screw with Nate Ford in these two episodes, and you really feel like you just can't, ‘Oh, remember that stuff you should have noticed in previous episodes? That’s why he's doing this.’ We really needed to reset it.

Chris: One of the reasons that I think this plays so well is that if you watch them back to back, which I'm so glad they were broadcast that way on TNT, is that this scene here really pays off in part two.

Dean: Yeah.

Chris: And it’s- you know, it's a little ways to go if you have to wait a week between them. 

John: Yeah.

Chris: But now it really plays like a movie.

Dean: And big kudos to Jeri Ryan because she had- she only had a few episodes to create an arc, and really everything she did in the previous episodes come together in these last two. 

John: Yeah.

Dean: She’s really part of the team by now.

John: Yeah. And that bit where she drinks his booze in order to get it away from him was actually the first physical bit we ever pitched talking about the character. We were trying to figure out a way to differentiate between Sophie and Tara, and the idea where Sophie is a little more sensitive, a little more coddling...

Chris: More empathetic.

John: More empathetic, yeah. Tara will just basically drink you out of your own problems. 

Chris: Right.

John: This was a tough day. Mainly because Tim really dug in on this.

Dean: Yeah.

John: This rage- this was a tough day. You know, he’s angry. And you can hear him- 

Chris: Yeah.

John: And you can- he really- this was a small set for them to be screaming at each other on. It was really nice.

Dean: Yeah. And it really helped the other actors as you’ll see just in the way they are reacting. I mean, you see Christian is really messed up by this. 

John: Yeah.

Dean: And it was a great way to-

John: Yeah cause one of his best friends in the world is sitting eight feet from him screaming at his face. 

Dean: Yeah.

John: I mean, you know. And yeah, they're all really digging in on the idea that Nate Ford has gone off the rails. 

Dean: But once they jump in, then the fun begins again. 

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: And now we start to get into that rhythm of, ‘Ok.’

Chris: You can see his little look on his face right here is the cue for the fun on Hardison.

John: Yeah. As soon as- yeah, as soon as the sarcastic ‘these guys are goons’ face comes up.

[Laughter]

Dean: Now by the way, those goons faces on the board are actually people who work here at post production at Electric.

[Laughter]

John: So don't be alarmed if you see them at your local bank or supermarket.

Chris: And I'll call out another couple of people whose faces are on this, too, you two guys a little later.

John: Oh yeah, we’re a little later. Exactly. This was also fun because this was something we kind of picked up on if you watch the second season episodes. A little bit more of detective Nate Ford. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know, he was a guy who hunted bad guys.

Dean: Right.

John: And we put him back in the context a couple times this season of hunting bad guys. You know, and this one in particular he figures out exactly the situation in which case they should pursue. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: Good crime scene photos. Big shout out to Derek.

Chris: Gruesome, yeah.

John: Gruesome, yeah. Nice.

Dean: But because we shot this scene before we had shot the scene with Bonanno getting shot-

John: We had no footage, that’s right.

Dean: We had no footage, so we had to make up fake crime scene photos and hoped that they would somehow-

Chris: Derek had those crime scene photos pretty easily, don’t you think?

John: That was a little disturbing.

[Laughter]

John: ‘I just went out and did it in a back alley in Chicago.’ This is also fun because this is one of the few times we’ve had Hardison of all people go, ‘I don't want to do this one. This one seems like a bad idea.’

Chris: Yeah. Now look at this shot.

Dean: Now this actor here- those of you who may have seen my film Flyboys, he was one of the pilots in Flyboys. And he did me a solid and came and did this little guest spot. And this is Richard Kind, who I had not worked with since Stargate-

John: Wow.

Dean: -and has been a family friend forever, and I think one of our most underrated actors in this country.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, it's the kind of part you typically don't see him in. I mean he plays kind of a nebbish-y guy. 

John: Yeah.

Chris: And boy, did he just bring a gravitas and a menace and really built a whole backstory to his character. 

John: Well let's talk about it- that’s where this story comes from. We really wanted to do our city of industry, corrupt east coast port town. I grew up near Boston, you grew up in New York- 

Chris: Yeah.

John: -and, you know, this is very much based around that, sort of, north of Boston, Route 1 type of town. 

Dean: Right.

John: And so getting an east coast actor, just a guy who could bring you that kind of New York power family vibe made a difference. And he showed up- he loved the script, showed up with three ideas. Three lines of dialogue, in three scenes that gave this character backstory, depth, and pathos. It’s like, ‘Wow, that’s a very good actor.’

Chris: And what the fact to do is Brad Culpepper the Third. I mean that he was from a long line-

John: Yes. And he dug in on that and he found something that just made you, you know-

Dean: He also came up with this concept that he wasn’t in it for the money, he was in it for the power and the legacy. 

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Which is an interesting distinction.

John: Yeah, exactly. There is- he really dug in on the evil speech of evil. The idea that he is not a bad guy in his own head in any way shape or form. This was- what hotel was this? Was this the Governor?

Dean: This was the Governor Hotel. 

John: They really did us a solid this episode, they did a fantastic job.

Dean: We ended up shooting three different episodes at the Governor, and then they were our host for the Leverage convention.

John: Oh, also the wrap party.

Chris: Which was fantastic.

John: I don't remember that much.

Chris: The Leverage convention, which was awesome.

John: I can't believe you people missed it.

[Laughter]

John: We’re gonna assume nothing horrible happens. The horrible irony of when we try to recall these DVDs. 

Chris: Oh, no, please.

[Laughter]

John: Lovely little- this was a great neighborhood; they put up with us. And this was a lot of fun, whenever you can play the annoyed brother vibe between the two of them.

Dean: Oh, I could watch it all day long.

John: Yeah. This was also the night we found out we got picked up for a third season.

Dean: That’s right.

Chris: Oh yeah, that’s right.

John: This is fun, that’s Beth in the rig on the ledge. If you go to my blog, you’ll see the pictures of her doing this. It’s insane. There's just no way we should be allowing her to be on the edge.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: That’s city hall, by the way, in Portland. That’s city hall.

Dean: That is, that is.

Chris: They let you just jump off the roof in city hall?

John: You know what- if you're in Portland, show up, ask, and they'll let you. I'm sure there will be no repercussions to me saying that. And this is kind of fun, Paul Blackthorne as the shadowy character that you kind of touch on. And this is all based on- his character’s actually based on a guy down in Florida-

Dean: Yes.

John: -who got an arms deal with the US government, who was like a bar guy.

Chris: Yeah, he was kinda like a party kid. 

John: Yeah, who somehow got a 300 million dollar contract with the US government selling recycled arms from Eastern-

Chris: Recycled arms from Eastern Europe, yeah.

John: That’s Beth on the rappelling line. Remember that? We shot that.

Dean: And I’ll tell you, this is an example of how Beth, even alone, just completely captures your imagination. She has no one else to act with here except for our AD off camera reading dialogue, and yet she's completely engaged in the story, in the character.

John: Yeah, this was a lot- this was- actually you wrote this whole chunk.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Oh, here's another great local guest star.

John: Yeah. And that was another thing that Portland gave us. There's a lot of great local theater guys, a lot of local great actors who can really land a joke.

Dean: Yeah, it was so surprising.

Chris: I love that he has the ice tea, it's such a great-

[Laughter]

Chris: Such a great touch.

John: I like- and also the sort of- I don't know if it’s the weird veiled hostility between Hardison and Eliot gets turned outward whenever they run one of these cons- 

Dean: Right.

John: -but that guy is going to be the subject of their rage at each other. This guy was really great. 

[Laughter]

Chris: And this is a crime lab bit. I mean, let’s be honest, there are eight different CSIs on; we wanted to have a little fun.

John: Yes. We were kind of making fun of the CSI- the whole idea that CSI shows up at your house. I had my house broken into, they didn’t show up.

[Laughter]

Chris: The fact that the beat cop could be-

John: Bossed around by-

Chris: Bossed around by CSI guys was born out of those shows

John: And this, by the way, the bit with the balloons, was Richard. 

Dean: Great.

John: Just awkward, just trying to shift it, trying to ground it. And again, this- what amazes me when we got into the research of it, was how cheap it was to buy these guys. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: I mean really- like $10,000 gets you somebody's kid in city politics.

Dean: That's true.

Chris: The promise of a job when you're out of the office. You know, I mean, that's what brought down the Illinois governor.

John: Yeah, that's right. That’s right. And that's what is kinda fun is we do- oh, I love this bit.

Dean: Comedy frame.

John: Comedy frame! What is this? A locked off comedy frame.

Dean: Exactly.

John: Locked off frame, two people come in facing each other-

Dean: And I love this little smile right there on Christian’s face .

[Laughter]

Dean: He was just enjoying the bit until he realized, ‘Oh wait, I have to perform in the bit.’

John: Is that on the X? Is that- how did you get the RED so low?

Dean: Oh we just put it right on the floor on a sandbag. 

John: Oh that's good. 

[Laughter]

John: Thanks to these nice folks for letting us trash their home, by the way.

Dean: Yes. And for those of you who may have noticed in the wide angles, just the little numbers on the evidence things on the floors.

John: Yes, that they’ve scattered all over the ground. Yeah no set-dec did a great job.

Dean: You can see the numbers in the background.

Chris: Oh those are great!

John: And- and earning his pay-

[Laughter]

John: Nicely done.

Chris: That’s a nice little transition there.

John: It is a nice- almost like you put some thought into this.

Dean: And I swear I didn't. And this is our line producer’s wife .

John: Yeah.

Dean: Who also did a guest star in last year’s two-part season finale.

John: Last year’s finale! 

Chris: Oh, that’s right!

John: I like the idea she was on vacation in LA last year.

Dean: Exactly.

John: And now she’s back and involved in another Leverage scam. In my head it's the same person.

Dean: And this is an interesting scene for their arc, because, you know, Beth - Parker - really didn't trust Tara coming in.

John: Well she's not part of the family.

Dean: And only in this scene does she actually start to earn her trust, and they start to bond.

John: And we also wanted to reset the fact that, again, Parker is good in the short con. If you throw a surprise at her she doesn't handle it well, because talking to people doesn't even go well. Interestingly enough, she relates to people better in character than as Parker. 

Chris: Yes.

John: Yeah. And so until Tara gives her- so yes, the awkward- we really pulled up every political trope we could find. 

Chris: Oh, sure.

John: I think we sat down - adultery, pregnancy, corruption. Then we just went through the Times one day, just pulled up every scandal from that summer.

[Laughter]

John: And the 4-18 months. And there's actually a mayor’s conference, too.

Dean: That’s right.

John: We found out where the mayor’s conference was.

Chris: It's in Vegas. Sure that's where you would have the mayors conference, and that’s where he would meet her.

Dean: I like the little turn Parker makes here, after she’s been coached part way through it, now she gets it. So now she’s feeling comfortable doing it.

John: Now she understands, yeah.

Dean: And you can see her-

Chris: ‘Yeah, I'll just wait out there.’

John: And that is an actual office- that's a conference room at the city hall?

Dean: That sure is.

John: That we rappelled down into.

Dean: We had to use it as the mayor's office, cause the actual mayor's office was too small.

[Laughter]

John: That's right.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

John: Infamously the mayor took the smaller office in the city of Portland cause he just felt like he only needed that much work space.

Dean: That's right. Mayor Sam Adams who’s been incredibly helpful to this show, and we’re very grateful.

John: Yes. Very cool guy. I don't regret that duffle bag full of cash at all.

Chris: That is a great shot there.

John: That is a great shot. That really establishes that space. 

Chris: She’s- jeez.

John: She's beautiful, yes. I was referring to the setting, but-

Chris: Sorry, I was just-

John: Yes, Jeri Ryan was very beautiful, too.

Chris: I was just lost in Jeri Ryan.

John: It happens. And this is the great speech. And again, we listened to transcripts and looked at testimony. I mean if you look at Blagojevich-

Chris: Blagojevich, sure.

John: The remarkable bluntness with which they announce their terms and prices always amazes me.

Chris: Yeah. And it almost sounds like movie dialogue, but it’s not! It’s just the way they talk!

John: Yeah.

Dean: The evil speech of evil.

John: And we come up with evil speeches of evil, and then when you go find the real ones it's like, really? You said that? With a straight face? Alright. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: No, research is your friend. We really- you know, this is a remarkable static act with an awful lot going on. I never noticed that before.

Dean: Well I think- again, this is- when we separate our team into different locations, but yet having them communicate, it really gives a sense of energy to it. 

John: But we only have, like, three agendas.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, running it at any one time. This was a tight little shot. I remember this. This was- we were in that back bedroom, and trying to shoot. And then you had to- you had a totally different blocking, if I remember correctly.

Dean: Yeah, instead of being in the room with him, we decided we’d squeeze him through the doorway and make him feel like he’s in an even tighter space than he was by framing it that way. But it also gives a chance to use this hallway and bring in our guest performer.

John: Yeah. And the clue that travels over two different episodes. Hopefully, again, I'm glad that they aired these back to back because it would be tricky to-

Chris: Yes it’s- to track- there's a lot of stuff that this really did play like a movie.

Dean: And once again, we got to the-

John: Oh, the big smile.

Dean: -comedy frame.

John: Yes.

[Laughter]

John: That’s for all you young filmmakers out there, that is the comedy frame. And then the look- just the look of pity on his face. Yeah. 

[Laughter]

John: And the badge on the- there's no reason the CSI guys should have a badge on a shield. Chris just loves the badge on the shield- the badge on a chain. 

Dean: Exactly.

Chris: He likes that.

John: He really likes that look. If he can be doing like a 1970s- if he could be doing the British version of Life on Mars, he’d be the happiest man alive.

Dean: Oh yeah.

[Laughter]

Chris: Now I got a question for you. So was- now we had a Maltese Falcon joke, just one line in-

Dean: The previous episode.

Chris: -the previous episode. Did that give you the idea for the Maltese Falcon? Who came up with the Maltese Falcon bit?

John: No, you know it was- it was literally, I was trying to figure out, ‘What's the MacGuffin? What’s the maltese falcon? You know what, it'd be actually kind of fun to just call it that.’

Chris: Just the Maltese Falcon, OK.

John: Cause it’s so famous now, it's a little meta. And, you know, the fact that it would be called something rather than a shorthand for something- 

Chris: Right.

John: Cause we use that in the writers room all the time.

Chris: Yeah, we do.

John: The maltese falcon, what's the thing? Macguffin, Hitchcock famously defined it as. And this is Nate deciding to bail on the pitch and making- and this is tough. He’s basically processing offscreen dialogue and acting like he’s coming to a decision. 

Dean: I love Richard’s reaction to it, it's like ‘What?’

John: We just went for the whole-

Chris: ‘You just paid all this money, you don't want to engage in graft with me?’

John: Behind though-

Dean: Even out of focus he's stealing the scene.

John: I know. He's really upstaging the hell out of- out of focus. Look how far back he is. Aaand you're back. 

[Laughter]

John: And we've announced our agenda.

Chris: We've announced our agenda, we know our- and here we go.

Dean: Now this place was great, this ballpark. We wanted to shoot here all year and hadn’t really found a way to do it.

John: And that's why I give full props to Chris, is cuz I had the crime story back half of this done, and I could not figure out what the con on the mayor was. And you had fallen in love with this location you had seen- you were like-

Chris: This was great, I had gone to a game here.

John: We can finally pay off this location. And that’s- again, that's an advantage of being a city where you get to know- cause the baseball con was always a half an episode.

Chris: Right.

John: And we could never quite get it to be a whole. And then it was like, ‘Oh, we need half an episode. Boom.’

Chris: Well also there's a lot of public corruption around building ballparks, and we did a little research that minor league ballparks bring 30 million dollars into the local economy.

John: That was great. The day we did research and found out it was just a flat 30 million for almost every ballpark, it’s like, that’s just a great number.

Chris: Yup.

Dean: And by the way, I think some of the best special effects we’ve ever done are in this two-part season finale, but I don't think you'd even notice it. For instance all these shots in the ballpark, we had to erase and change all the signage-

John: Oh, that’s right.

Dean: -because we didn't have permission. And then later, we had to put in the crowds that were reacting. So there are amazing special effects in this, but they are so real you didn’t even know.

John: That’s right. Utterly seamless. If you see them, we screwed up. Yeah, and this particularly since those aren’t lockoff, the camera is moving, you know, the character is wiping in front of it, yeah.

Dean: And again, I love what David is doing in this scene, he is just channeling Smithers.

John: Yes.

[Laughter]

John: And there’s Paul Blackthorne, he’s really doing the job for us as evil European dude. He has a large black car- 

Chris: Yeah.

John: He's got a halfway rolled down window. We know what his job is in the story, we know what his job is in the narrative. 

[Laughter]

John: But what I love here is the fact that Richard there's just so dismissive. I mean the body language here besides- Why is this a good shot? Because you don’t have to turn around to get both of them.

Dean: Exactly.

John: He’s very casually powerful. 

Dean: Right.

John: This is a man who’s used to the world running the way he wants it to run.

Chris: Right, in this little burg of Bellbridge.

John: Yes.

Dean: And this is such a terrific location, and we were there early in the morning, got this great light. I was so excited to shoot this. 

Chris: And they have a nice-

John: Story shcmory. Pictures.

Chris: They have a nice rapport here, too. They have this kind of easy going, you know, banter.

Dean: You know, so much of this episode- these episodes, was wish fulfillment. We wanted to be in that ballpark all year, we wanted to get near the water under the bridges...

Chris: Yes.

John: You also- in case you're skipping through the commentaries, you’ll notice this happens in Bellbridge, Massachusetts. Bellbridge is the corrupt town in Chris’s episode, Order 23.

Chris: Yes, yeah.

John: We decided to create just one imaginary Massachusetts city we could crap on for an entire season.

Chris: Yes.

John: Just to make sure we had clearances, and we always knew- 

Dean: Exactly.

John: So please, if you're from a real Bellbridge, don’t be angry. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah, their rhythm here is lovely. They are partners by this point, in a very different way. And the fact that Jeri has established that over six episodes is pretty cool. How tough is it to shoot in a ballpark, my friend?

Dean: Well some of this we actually stole footage at a real- during a real game, but the rest was very easy because they were so cooperative. I mean, this is the actual locker room and they let us have it for the day, and gave us equipment and were-

Chris: And those are the- are those the uniforms?

Dean: Just terrific. Those are the actual uniforms. The ‘P’ is actually for Portland. 

[Laughter]

Dean: But in our show it’s-

Chris: Palmerstown.

John: And I love the fact it's actually the Portland Beavers, because if we come up with a comedy mascot we couldn't have beat beavers.

Dean: No.

John: And by the way the Portland Beaver? Good guy.

Dean: Very good guy.

John: Very good guy. Really cool. We hung out, everything.

Chris: Oh apologies to Crash Davis here, but boy does he do- he does-

John: Oh he's so digging in.

Chris: Does a great Bull Durham.

John: Really digging up. This is- we went back and forth- are we doing Major League or Bull Durham here?

Chris: It's pretty Bull Durham here. 

John: It’s pretty Bull Durham.

Chris: The journeyman catcher who shows up unannounced, it’s- 

John: Yeah, and also the idea that these- you know, talking to a lot of these guys who play this level ball, the precarious nature of their lives- I mean the guys who are kind of on rota from a major league team make a lot of money. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: The guys who are journeymanning this out, a lot of them have day jobs, man.

Dean: What I love about this is that Eliot himself doesn’t like baseball. Because we’ve already established what a big, giant sports fan he is. 

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: About how excited he was about all the sports channels in- both season one and season two.

John: But it's hockey- and it’s always hockey and football. And interestingly, we gave him your problem with baseball.

Dean: Exactly.

Chris: Yes we did, it really worked great.

John: I love baseball and I'm like, ‘I have no idea what he wouldn't like.’ And you said, I don’t like-’ Oh.

Chris: Oh, and John did a beautiful job directing this.

John: This is my directing debut right here 

[Laughter]

Chris: Mark it down folks.

John: Japanese power drink commercial. Because it really was one of those things I had in mind and it's like, ‘Alright describe it. You know what? I can't describe it, I'll just shoot this.’

Chris: I think I originally wrote it as it’s like a car- like a local car ad. 

John: Yeah.

Chris: Oh my god, how great is this Japanese sports drink commercial?

John: Also, again, you're lucky to have Chris Kane because a lot of actors wouldn't do the comedy beat in the commercial.

[Laughter]

Dean: Nails it.

John: He nails it. Look at the big smile! 

Dean: And he enjoys it!

John: Look at that, having a good time.

[Laughter]

Dean: But he hates baseball, and then he comes in here and the minute he cracks that bat you just see- you know, heroin to the junkie.

Chris: He really did- he gave it a real arc, you know. 

John: And also, I like the fact that this is the first time he uses a baseball bat for what it's actually meant for.

Dean: Right.

[Laughter]

John: He's been beating people up with baseball bats for like 20 years, and never really hit a ball with one before. Also, by the way, cool digital ball.

Chris: Oh watch this.

Dean: Exactly.

John: There you go.

Chris: Oh that is great.

Dean: I'm telling you some of our best digital effects-

Chris: That’s fantastic.

John: Oh look at that look.

Dean: And the second one- watch the indentation on the pad on the wall when the ball hits it. Small thing for effects artists, but really lovely, just oh that little indentation.

John: Oh that’s nice, the shadow. And there we are.

Chris: Oh there you go folks, there's Dean and John.

Dean: Oh dear, oh dear.

John: We’re also doing the voices here on the radio shows. On the DVD there should be about nine takes of this scene. Because the two of them, at one point it got very weird and sexual with her speaking Spanish, and Hardison getting all ramped up.

[Laughter]

John: It- this was definitely one of the ones where you just, like, park the camera and let the two of them go.

Dean: Yeah.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: Interesting, one of the challenges of shooting the greenscreens is color temperature.

Dean: Yes.

John: We actually had a little bit of trouble with this shot because- most people don’t understand, there’s a lot of different greens that go on green screens. It was not dead right, doing the special effects goes from easy to unspeakable.

Dean: Exactly, and so this one had- a lot of work had to go into being able to see what was on the screen.

John: Ironically, a lot of this was harder to see than the incredibly complex crowds and baseball stuff.

Dean: The stands, exactly.

John: This was a lot of fun. Outside real city hall, outside Portland city hall, at a coffee shop across the street at some ungodly hour of the morning.

Dean: Yeah, this was the first thing we shot that day.

John: And again, this is- it was interesting how originally there was an entire subplot where, how they’d been lured there, how the mayor- and you don’t need it.

Chris: Yeah. This is much better.

John: Yeah.

Dean: He just sees them, he walks across the street.

Chris: Yes.

John: We even took that bit out. We originally had him see them.

Dean: I love the really, really bad heist.

[Laughter]

John: The bad lift.

Dean: Smithers stumbles into the table.

John: And Kind just drops the look there a little bit.

Chris: A little disgust right there.

Dean: Just a little squint.

[Laughter]

John: And the turnaway when it’s like, ‘Oh horrible lift.’ They don’t even have to- they both know what happened, they both know it was unspeakable. 

Dean: Well, you know, amateurs to pros, you know?

John: And this was fun, these are based on real blueprints.

Chris: Yeah, real blueprints for-

Dean: This was that other shot was the beginning of the day. This was the last shot of the day, and we’d run out of time. So I had to shoot this all in one shot.

John: Oh this is a one-er!

Chris: This is a one-er, take a look at that.

Dean: This is a very hard steadicam shot. While it’s not that impressive of a shot, it's a very difficult shot.

John: And also-

Dean: Cause you’re doing all the coverage with one camera.

John: And you're banging focus like crazy.

Chris: You’re getting a lot of information, right.

John: And also the actors can’t mess up.

Dean: That’s right.

John: At no point can they stop, can they drop a line, can they, you know.

Dean: The only thing we did is one little reverse at the very end on David’s character. But as you can see all of this-

John: To give you a cut, or?

Dean: Just to give us a cut in case we needed to combine.

Chris: It’s interesting how great these end of day one-ers come out.

Dean: Yeah.

Chris: And they're born of necessity.

Dean: That’s what so interesting about television is, you know, it really forces you to be creative.

John: Yeah. Oh there you go, I see what you did.

Chris: Oh here's the ballpark.

Dean: Now this is a mixture of stuff that we staged and stuff that we stole during an actual ballgame. But all the-

Chris: The actual ballgame you shot before, I think, the script was written.

John: I think I sent the outline saying we would be at the ballpark. And so Dean had to come up with a shot list based on basically our friendship- 

Chris: This is great.

John: -figuring out what I would probably put in the script.

Dean: These are all real things there. 

John: Yeah.

Dean: That we shot. Now all the crowds, though, we added digitally.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

Dean: So in all these wide shots when you see these full crowds, they had about- there was a scattered amount of people. In all the shots where it’s full, that’s us.

John: Yeah.

Chris: That’s great.

Dean: For all these shots here. And of course all the signage is changed digitally.

John: And Kane went down, caught a couple pitches, and actually on the shot we have him hit, he actually connected, put it on the warning track. It was a good day for Chris Kane.

Chris: That’s a beautiful shot, too, there; love that.

John: That's a beautiful one, yeah.

Dean: And this actor is actually a state senator.

[Laughter]

Dean: Who had helped pass the legislation for us to-

John: I actually think we’re the bad guys at this point. Seriously, we’re doing an episode about graft and corruption and- 

Dean: Well the hilarious thing is, he wanted to play the corrupt mayor.

John: I know. And we were like ‘You know dude, that's probably not the best idea for you to play the corrupt mayor.’

Chris: I can see the campaign commercials.

Dean: All those crowds, digital. 

Chris: Wow, that’s great.

Dean: I mean that's really something.

John: And look at that, through a moving shot.

Dean: And then all the signage behind them is changed as well.

John: And that’s our-

Dean: And if you notice, that’s Hardison’s orange drink on the sign.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: Oh my god, that's right.

Chris: And to do with- with a moving camera is very difficult.

Dean: Very difficult.

John: And this is a conference on the mound from both Major League and Bull Durham.

Dean: And the pitcher is actually our second AD.

John: Kyle, yeah.

Dean: Yeah.

John: That's right, you give him a nice hero shot here, too.

Chris: Oh, that's a great shot of Kyle.

John: I also love- This helps lock in the arc where he’s like, ‘I'm now fully committed to winning baseball as much as I am to winning fights.’

Dean: Exactly.

John: No this was a lot of- and this is a lot of fun. This was- it's amazing what you can do with implication.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, just put two people in the same geography and let the characters draw their own conclusions. 

Chris: Yeah, let them do the math.

John: A lot of time you'll try to oversell the con, and what you have to remember is people create narrative about the world around them, you know?

Dean: Oh and I love this bit.

John: Yeah this is a lot of fun, the stuntie really took a hit. And down!

Chris: Oh, oh, oh!

[Laughter]

John: I love he does kind of the -

Dean: Notice that the ref is cross eyed; he's a real ref! 

[Laughter]

Dean: That is not something that- I didn't ask him to act cross eyed.

John: I love this- that dude is dead. That dude is dead. He’s plainly just- he's not getting up. Right now they're asking people to leave the park quietly.

Chris: I think he did that in one or two takes, I mean, he just got it.

Dean: Yeah.

John: He just- it was a beautiful fall.

Dean: By the way, this is another one-er and this is a very difficult scene to light for television where you don't have that much time. And our DP was really creative in the way he made the sun blazing through the back to light up pretty much the entire set.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Now was it easier because you're working with the RED camera for something like this? Available light...

Dean: The RED helps, but at the end of the day it’s about your DP and your gaffer, and we really have, really, two of the best guys in the business.

John: And again, this is also- so much help to be able to do the research on this. Where it’s like, ‘Well, how could he possibly communicate in code how much money-?’ No, he would write it down and give it to him.

Dean: Right.

John: That's what they do, apparently, I had no idea. 

[Laughter]

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Or they'll just say it, unaware. And this yeah, this was a lot of fun, because also- Richard really found the idea that he was supposed to help Nate feel overconfident. 

Dean: Right.

John: You know, he's supposed to play into it a little easy. And he's- now he's totally into it.

Dean: I love how cross eyed the ref is, that's so great. I mean, the umpire, that's just so great.

John: Boom! That was a good solid hit. That's- Chris Kane put it on the warning track ladies and gentlemen.

Dean: And if you listen carefully in the background, you can hear the crowd chanting ‘Roy, Roy.’

[Laughter]

John: Oh he's become a hometown hero in roughly two weeks. What's the next shot up? Oh there we go, back at McRorys.

Chris: Now- now we're back.

John: Now this is one of our lovely roundy- and oh, this is great. One of our roundy-rounds where we just basically- script kids, when you want to communicate pipe and reset, the way to do it is have somebody not give a crap about the pipe that you're talking about. 

[Laughter]

John: He has his own agenda, it makes it instantly amusing.

Chris: Somebody comes in irritated.

Dean: And boy did he knock this out of the park. 

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

Dean: Kane, who didn’t care- I mean Eliot, who didn't care about baseball at all, is so proud of himself and he's so mad they didn't share his moment of glory.

John: His joy. They named a sandwich after him. Also, that’s a nice beat that they all chose. It’s like, you know, alright, you gotta give it up. That's a nice moment; boom, boom, and the fistbump.

Chris: You got a sandwich named after him.

Dean: Eliot has a hoage? No a reuben.

[Laughter]

John: I also like- I had not noticed before because I was kind of- Nate’s taking a phone call and I was watching it for that beat, the, sort of, fun that Jeri Ryan’s playing there, it's like, ‘OK, I'm part of the family now, this is genuinely amusing.’ 

Dean: Now this is a fun reveal shot. 

John: One of the cross cuts that I gave you again as your birthday gift. Moving in opposite directions?

Dean: Moving in opposite directions so that they are always looking at each other screen direction wise.

Chris: Right, right.

John: Cause we know awful things happen when you cross the lines.

Dean: If you cross the line, cities fall.

[Laughter]

Chris: No, but I mean, when you do phone calls that's an important thing to do.

Dean: For me I think so. I’m old school.

John: What I love is the fact that he starts the incredibly confident powerful guy that we know. And by the end of this swing around, Richard lets himself just kind of look- just 

Dean: Now he's-

Chris: Nice reveal there.

John: Yeah, and nice reveal on that blown out window. And now he's just a pawn, he's just a broken little man, you know. And that's very- the last shot is plainly Nixon. 

[Laughter]

John: It’s plainly like- what's that famous shot of Nixon at 2am in the oval office?

Dean: Right.

John: It’s that look at him. And he did all that in one take, conveying pipe to Nate.

Dean: And now we switch to our handheld, because our guys are in trouble. And I love how much Nate is overcompensating. Whenever Nate’s overcompensating, you know something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. 

John: And his addiction is taking over. Be it booze or control.

Dean: And in this case, both.

John: Yes. He's not really got his head on in this particular case. Yeah, everyone's arguing with him, everyone- and this is another great thing, when Nate spins out you don’t ever have a problem with the plot, because the problem with the plot is the point of the plot. 

Chris: Right.

John: Like with, ‘That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense.’ Exactly! Tell that to Nate!

Chris: Yeah.

John: It's important for him to know.

Dean: Our editor did- Brian Gonosey, did a very interesting choice here from cutting from Nate to Nate. Which we almost never do, and it gives it, kind of, strange, nervous energy.

Chris: Well you're kinda-

John: It's claustrophobic.

Chris: You get the sense of people's eyes on him.

Jon: Right.

Chris: A lot of people looking at him.

Dean: But it’s not- again, that kind of cut we don't normally do on the show, and it really makes this a nervous scene.

John: Yeah, you’re going-

Dean: Nate to Nate to Nate to Nate.

John: Yeah, cause you're hopping- Jeri to Parker, you're seeing him plead his case. Jeri to Beth, Jeri to Beth, you know, you're seeing him through their eyes. And then back to the reactions where they know, yeah.

Dean: Something’s wrong.

John: And each one of them is making a very specific decision at that point.

Dean: Again, this port- these guys were so great to let us shoot there.

John: Oh man.

Dean: Gave us such wonderful access.

John: That’s the real port, that's not stock, baby, that’s-

Dean: That’s right, that’s the real deal.

John: And- and a lot of fun doing the TSA stuff, doing the Homeland Security stuff. The research on this was as horrifying as you'd imagine. Most of this is security theater, your ports are not secure, sleep tight America. 

Dean: And this actor was also discovered in that same improv group that we found the actor from the doctor episode.

Chris: Oh that’s interesting.

Dean: The Order 23.

Chris: John, you made a good point about how Order 23 pays off. A question about Order 23, about security at the courthouse. 

John: Yes, in Order 23 there's a beat like ‘How do they get the gun in there?’ And it’s because the courthouse has not been refurbished, because the budget on the town-

Dean: Right.

John: The city is so poor. And that's also why he felt confident hiding the money there. 

Chris: Right, right.

John: That pays off here in the- you find out the reason there's no money for the city is the mayor has grifted it all.

Dean: Right.

Chris: All the security money that he got, federal anti-terrorism money went into his own pocket.

Dean: And I love how Eliot is now playing a celebrity.

[Laughter]

Dean: And he's so proud that he's a celebrity.

John: And we also flipped roles for once, cause Hardison is usually not the one who’s annoyed, it’s-

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah, no it's true, he is.

John: It's really he’s- and it’s really both, ‘Get back on the job,’ and, ‘I'm not the center of attention.’

Chris: Yes.

Dean: These two are magical together.

John: Yeah, that's a great- this is a great noir set up.

Dean: Yeah, even with the black car in the distance, which is a bit of red herring.

Chris: Look at this shot, I mean this is a movie shot.

John: Beautiful. Now how do we- was this at night? Or were we during the day here on this?

Dean: This was at the end of the day, so we actually spilled into night and had to light it to keep it looking like this. And that's an actual oil tanker that they allowed us to shoot at.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Wow.

John: And then that- this walkway is actually exactly where we just located it. It's directly below the docks. And it really was- a lot of the fun was walking around the location going, ‘OK, this scene can happen here, this scene can happen here.’ And we didn't get too poisoned shooting in this warehouse. We all had funny coughs for about a week, but we were OK.

Dean: They warned us about spiders and raccoons under this- 

John: Yeah.

Dean: So we were looking for eight-legged raccoons at some point.

John: At some point we were very worried there would be a horrible combination.

Chris: Oh really? Wow, I missed this part.

John: Well you weren't up here for shooting at the oil tanker, getting poisoned by fumes.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I looked at the schedule and went, ‘What’s the day you hang out in the baseball park?’

John: I noticed that. You came for the baseball park-

Chris: ‘Oh, I’ll come for that.’

John: You really didn't hang out with us in the oil tanker hold. Yeah, black lung kicking in. 

[Laughter]

John: This is a great cross cutting by Brian, this kind of- what he's doing is he's finding some- finding an odd rhythm here. It's not danger, it's unease.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, every shot is a little too short, it's a little too- yeah. And again, sort of end of day shooting, everything in the warehouse from the moment they walk in- like they get to the oil barrel, through the end of the episode pretty much, you did in a one-er. 

Dean: Yup.

John: One direction one way, one direction the other.

Dean: Your easy bake oven reference is awesome. I don't know how many people under the age of 40 are gonna get it, but god I love that reference.

John: Who under 40 watches television anyway? 

Chris: I appreciate it so much. Made me laugh so hard.

John: They've still got those. I got one for my niece.

Chris: With the one little bulb that actually makes the cake. 

John: Who knew? I love, Parker is constantly finding crates full of guns.

[Laughter]

John: I'm fairly sure she could open a gift with purchase from Neiman Marcus and it would have guns in it.

Chris: And by the way, kudos to you to find- when we put this thing together, to find the transition between corrupt mayor and arms deal in the docks. I mean, the thing was built around certain setpieces.

John: Yeah. And also it sort of made sense these- when you research, the amount of legal arms dealing that goes on in the states is magnificent. 

Chris: Right, right.

John: And when you find out these guys run these things out of Boston, New York, Miami, you know.

Chris: Right.

John: It's got to be somewhere.

Dean: And this is one of the rare times where our team is really losing at the end of an episode.

John: Oh yeah, they’ve got to lose. They really- they have- and this was interesting, because it really was one of those times where we sat back and said, ‘In what version of this show are our guys the bad guys that get caught?’

Dean: Right.

John: Just write this section of this show like that show. Like we're writing NCIS or we’re writing CSI or something. And really put our guys in the dead seat. And man he just radiates rage.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And it's not just because Richard Kind is a bad guy, it's because he's lost control.

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know, that is Nate Ford in a world he doesn't want to live in.

Dean: Now we got them in this impossible situation, and- but we can’t end the show without a little bit of fun. 

John: Yeah.

Dean: And the win within the loss here is, I think, is truly inspired.

John: Oh yeah, managing to get them out of there. 

Dean: Yeah.

John: That was a lot of fun. I can't remember where the idea from- the idea of the multiple exits came from. We were playing around in another episode with ambiguity, somebody- signal of, like, time and ambiguity, and that held over, because you use all the parts of the animal, and that hung out and that's of course-

Chris: That's Katie O’Grady.

John: Katie O’Grady.

Chris: She’s a terrific Portland actress. She runs an acting school up there. 

John: Yup, yup. And she really came in as kind of one off, and it’s- after two episodes it’s like, ‘Yeah, I could see this character coming back. I could see this fed,’ you know. A lot of Portland actors did that. A lot of Portland actors turned one day into a recurring role. 

Dean: Yeah.

John: The- and just barely buying him enough time. And that's the important thing here, is that each character is finding a little piece of the solution. That was the fun of this episode is, there's a famous fighter pilot saying which is, ‘Stay alive for the next 10 seconds.’ That's all you have to do. In the next 10 seconds, your wingman will get the guy, or the guy will get out of position, and that's all they are trying to do for this section of this script.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Thers a great turn here where he reveals that he was somehow part of this attempted assassination of one of the family- the extended family. 

John: Yeah.

Dean: And the rage that comes out of Nate is everything that’s built up over the entire year. 

John: And what's really interesting is, because you shot this all in one piece- this is not split up into takes, this built in real time.

Dean: That's right.

John: You know, this really builds from that confession- and I was out of position the first time he did the wrench, and I was like ‘What the hell just happened? Did Tim just crush Richard Kind’s head?’

Chris: It's his friend! They're friends!

[Laughter]

John: Yeah, they're friends, but the wrench wasn't in the script. Tim just picked up the wrench!

Dean: Right.

Chris: He just picked up a wrench. And we were like, ‘Is that a rubber prop wrench?’

Dean: I love her character is like, ‘Then just kill him.’ I mean, she has no moral position on this, she just wants to get out alive.

John: Yeah, this- like we were talking the other day, where Sophie still exchanges Christmas cards with people she's ripped off, Tara Cole has walked out of a lot of burning buildings with metal suitcases full of bloodstained cash. 

Dean: And never looked back.

John: And never looked back. And in that moment she is absolutely serious. If you're gonna kill this guy, get it done. You know, but she’s not gonna coddle him.

Dean: Now this may be one of my favorite bits that you guys have ever come up with, and it starts with a great turn.

John: It’s like- you know why? Cause it’s a locked off comedy frame, my friend.

Chris: That is.

Dean: Locked off comedy frame. But it's one of the oldest gags in television. 

John: It is.

Dean: Is that slow turn look.

Chris: The turn look.

John: And then the turn reveal, and this- 

Chris: ‘Oh no. Oh no, you're not gonna do it. Oh no, no way, Jose.’

[Laughter]

Dean: And once again, Aldis Hodge showing why he is a truly, truly special talent. This part is not written.

John: No.

Dean: This part is just him going- 

John: The printed page ends with, ‘They turn and look at the van.’

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: Yes and- 

Dean: All of this is him being brilliant.

John: And that means also that Beth and Chris had to find the timing to when they were both gonna turn.

Dean: Right.

John: And that's the thing is, they work together a lot, now they've got a lot of, sort of, physical cues from each other. But yeah, this is all him, this is all him going off. And this is born of 207 when we shot him and Will Wheaton versus each other; they spent the whole day in the van alternating. And so Aldis was making a joke about the fact he has a very weird relationship with that van, cause he's in it and nobody else is.

Dean: And he even brought back in the fact that everyone teases him that the van smells.

John: Yes, exactly.

Chris: That the van smells, we made that a recurring thing.

John: So that's become a recurring thing and it was really- it was really the actors discussion of his character that led to the bit. 

Dean: Now a lot of people may miss this-

John: Oh this is my favorite bit-

Dean: -but just watch Parker when the doors shut.

John: Yup.

Dean: Because Parker is so close to Aldis she gives a kiss goodbye and leaves the little lip print.

[Laughter]

John: I never noticed that before. 

Chris: Oh she did, she leaves the lip print, that’s great.

John: Not in the script. 

Dean: One of my favorite camera moves right here. ‘Aaaaand, let’s begin.’

[Laughter]

John: There is- definitely been working together long enough now that we know- and now that jazz music is in the background, we’re up and running.

Chris: There you go.

Dean: It all kicks in. And again, how Richard was able to now change from that dark to humorous. Literally turning on a dime.

John: And this is him-

Chris: Oh there's so many speeches he made saying goodbye.

John: This is him doing the- that is Kirk saying goodbye to Spock.

[Laughter]

John: By the way, from the Wrath of Kahn, that is the speech he's doing right there.

Dean: And we- my favorite digital effect.

John: No van, no van there.

Dean: All painted.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: ‘I’ll miss you.’ No and that was- but of course, again, you were blowing stuff up at a dock.

[Laughter]

John: Without any real permission or notifying the authorities. It’s really I think I'd be disappointed now if you called ahead. 

Dean: That’s right.

John: And this is the reveal, and this was really tricky, trying to figure out the timeframe, how they could get around, how quickly they get around.

Dean: So we had to use the bomb as the time signature.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Right.

John: Because the- when we got there originally, this was structured slightly differently, but the exits in the physical locations didn't match. But that’s why TV is great, you have a writer on set-

Dean: Exactly.

John: So you can actually have the director walk around with you and go, ‘This isn't gonna work.’ ‘Sure it will.’ ‘No it won't, fix it.’

[Laughter]

Chris: Well I think originally the thing went inside the- 

John: Yes, yeah. And we couldn't do that, and you couldn't see the blow, and then you had to blow all three doors simultaneously if you did it, and it would've been madness. And Katie's look of rage there is magnificent. 

Chris: That’s great, as the car goes by.

John: It really- ‘I am an angry, angry fed.’ And this is also one of the times when we don’t let Nate off the hook.

Dean: Right.

John: You know and Aldis is genuinely- yeah.

Chris: Yeah, he managed to transition from the fun of saying goodbye to the van, to actual rage.

Dean: Genuinely pissed off. And now another bit of John Rogers directing on this episode is the car getting away.

Chris: Nice!

John: The car- yeah, this is-

Dean: Right here, here we go and then look at this nice power slide.

Chris: Oh, good job.

John: I caught the reflection in the side of the car that was suction cup bounce and they actually hold on. You didn't give me the wet down one.

Dean: And this is my favorite reveal of a character ever.

John: I have no idea how you did this! Did you lower him by rope? How does he get in the shot?

[Laughter]

Chris: Well he comes in-

John: And we’re coming around, this is all a one-er and… he… is… there.

[Laughter]

John: He just- it is one of those things where, much like- 

Chris: How would he fit inside?

Dean: [Mimicking Mark Sheppard] There's no one else that can make an entrance-

John: Quite like Mark Sheppard.

Dean: -like Mark Sheppard.

[Laughter]

John: And by the way, we decided to make him- because we were cooking up a threat, and- we’ll actually continue talking about this in the next episode...

Chris: In the next episode.

Dean: Please stay tuned for the second part of this. 

Chris: Stay tuned.

Dean: But this was a lot of fun, and thank you for listening to the first half. Stay tuned for part two.

[keltonwrites]

I'm not sure if that's a good thing

“Well you’re definitely the first.” This past week, we screened-in the eastern facing porch on the side of the cabin. The porch slopes to the South, with the brick-on-dirt floor crumbling in that direction as well until it reaches uneven slabs of stone acting as steps down to the “yard” below. A mixed material retaining wall wraps beneath the steps to the south facing garage, holding up one corner of the narrow deck on the front of the house. The deck, in the heat of a high altitude summer, droops off the house like it’s daydreaming about the winter snow’s embrace. It’s safe to sit on, though I would not recommend leaning on the railing.

The side porch takes the brunt of the wind. Our wooden rocking chairs have been rocked some 20 feet into the yard more than once in the two months we lived here. In the myriad of threats we heard about the weather, most people included the wind. We all know how I feel about this ongoing weather intimidation tactic. I asked, “what speed are the gusts?” “Oh, they get up to 70 miles per hour on some days.” This was the first quantifiable piece of weather information someone had offered — an actual number we could react to with data and our historical personal experiences of various weather events. And our reaction was: uhhhh…. OK???? Look, I get it. No one’s preaching the skin benefits of -20 degree wind gusts at 70 mph, building snow drifts against your house in the span of minutes that Cooper could die in. I am not going to pretend that’s pleasant. But 70 mph? Any wind I’ve driven faster than does not intimidate me. I used to rally the horses at 12 years old in winds over 70mph to get them in the barn before the latest tornado whipped through. I helped shutter the resort in the BVI as the Category 5 hurricane rolled in. Even in Topanga, 70 mile per hour gusts were not uncommon in Santa Ana events. We had our single pane windows shatter more than once from debris in the wind. We taped cardboard up and went to sleep. That “70 mph” was all I needed to hear to confirm our next project: we were going to build a catio for these cats, and we were going to do it on the pre-existing porch structure to save time and money. We spent a week framing out the structure. We had to carve into the logs of the house to embed the wood supports for the framing.

And from there, every piece of wood was custom carved and cut to fit around the existing timber supports. The existing porch was so wildly uneven that there are gaps between each piece of old wood and the new framing. Our plan is to mix all the wood chips from the project with mortar/chinking and stuff the gaps — a good solution for the log cabin look. We built a plywood pony wall up to 28 inches from the interior of the porch, which gives a height of ~4-5ft from the exterior ground below. It’s capped with a 2x6” railing for even the fluffiest of cats to find a perch. The exterior will be wrapped with corrugated metal that we’ll quick-age to match the metal that wraps the bottom of the cabin. On the interior of the porch, we’ll use shiplap to hide the framing.

The screens themselves can withstand winds up to 120 mph, but to-be-determined if they can hold the weight of a growing maniac cat who has already tried to climb them. In the event the screens succumb to cat (or wind or snow or neighbor judgment) we’ll reinforce with metal mesh. We’re going to maintain this screen porch regardless of what the screen is. We had the pleasure of running into one of our more industrious neighbors the other day, and Ben asked him, “hey we’re building a screen porch. Is this a terrible idea?” He laughed. “Well you’re definitely the first.” But he liked it. Great way to diminish wind into the house. Simple way to regulate the temperature with massive south-facing windows. And indeed a practical outdoor safe haven for cats in predator territory. Just because you’re the first doesn’t mean you’re foolish — just foolhardy. There’s plenty of that here. This town has the typical mountain town’s truncated version of a colonizers’ history: “established 1881.” But it was plenty established prior to that by the Uncompahgre Band of the Ute Nation, removed by the U.S. Army on September 7, 1881, nearly 140 years ago. The government relocated the Uncompahgre Ute People to Utah, and one year after the Ute were forcibly removed from their ancestral land, San Miguel County split off from Ouray County and was made its own political subdivision in the newly-formed State of Colorado. In 1879, the ore-laden valley already had 50 people living in it, with a new narrow gauge railway only 2 miles away. By 1885, it was a town of 200 people. There was a hotel, a couple saloons, a pool hall. Winters were treacherous; the valley was and is prone to avalanches. But where there’s gold, there’s gumption. The power needed to run the stamp mill to process ore drove innovation. Timber was scarce at such high elevations, so a wood powered steam mill wouldn’t cut it. But the San Miguel River just a few miles down from the mine looked promising. Thus began the development and construction of the Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant. It was a hit. In fact, it was so successful that the Ames Plant led to the adoption of alternating currents at Niagara Falls and eventually to being adopted worldwide as a viable power solution. The plant remains, but the gold rush obviously didn’t. By 1940, the U.S. Census declared this little town I call home as tied for the lowest population in the country: 2 people. By 1960, it was one of four incorporated towns in the U.S. with no residents. But the joke was on the Census — the town’s single resident was just out of town the day the census came through. 1960 population: 1. By 1980 the population grew to 38, 69 in 1990, and about 180 now. (Plus 51 dogs according to the town’s website.) With modern amenities, it’s easier to be here. Studded snow tires, satellite internet, solar panels, instant coffee. No matter the hardships, there’s the reality of the present. In the 1880s, as the town boomed, the Ouray Times declared, “it will be at no distant day a far more pretentious town than it is now.” That day hasn’t exactly arrived, but I guess it depends on what you consider pretentious. I don’t think the town claims any airs of excellence beyond what’s true. In fact, the town hardly claims anything at all. There’s no sign indicating it’s even here. There’s just the old side and the new side. The new side, the Eastern half, was drawn out in the early 1990s, some 100 years later, and is separated from the Old Town by an avalanche zone—preserved open space for hiking in the summer, preserved open space for surviving in the winter. The town forbids short-term rentals, no one has a fence, dogs roam free, and all the houses have that cabin look to them. A boulder nests in a grove near a trailhead in the center of town with a plaque paying respect to the Utes who called this valley home. There’s no industry here. No businesses allowed. If you want a $7 latte, you can drive the 14 miles required to get it, assuming there’s not an avalanche blocking your path. You can, however, buy a pink lemonade in a

solo cup at the permanent lemonade stand run by the local feral child mafia. Crystals (rocks) can be purchased for an additional cost. We bought one, hoping to buy favor at the same time. The town plan has a few guiding principles, and it’s all in the name of preservation. We must preserve: 1 - the quiet atmosphere 2 - the rustic character 3 - the natural setting

And finally: 4 - protect the health and wellbeing of the people here No snowmobiles, no ATVs, no drones. In fact, the only sign of the outside world here are the passers-through. When you take the dirt road through town to the end, you enter National Forest, and you can hike over the pass saddle at nearly 12,000 feet before descending down the other side into Silverton. The pass road climbs rutted through an aspen forest before scaling across a scree field and then lurching over to the other side. Every day, it seems like 30 or so Texans and Arizonans in lifted and loud Jeeps with unused mods climb over this mountain in the comfort of their air conditioning, simply to drive down the other side. You could hike it, ride it, run it, and ski it, but they don’t. They rev their engines, kicking up dust in a town of feral children and roaming dogs, staring at us instead of waving. I’ve lived here for two months and look how salty I am. I’ll fit in yet. But today, there is a temperature that whispers of perfect trails and the dwindling of ogglers driving 35 in a 15. It’s already snowed in the mountains we see from our kitchen. Today, like a dedication to the Septembers of our youth, you can feel a chill in the air. A temperature akin to pencils and sweaters and reinventing yourself. A temperature that doesn’t exactly sing “screen porch” but could if you had the right slippers on. That’s what I did this morning: put my slippers on and sat there in the cool mountain morning air, thinking about the cemetery behind our house, about the Ute tribe, about the miners, about the mailman who died on Christmas in 1875 on the pass, about the 5 people who died in avalanches here just last year, about the people in their cars on their phones driving through, and all the people who’s very first question to us was, “so are you gonna live here part-time or full-time?” Maybe it will be a hard place to live. But at least we’ll have a screen porch.

Every week I'm writing about moving to log cabin in a small town at 10,000 feet. Subscribe here for free: tinyletter.com/keltonwrites

[shinygoku]

Top 10 CSatM Episodes (2/2)

See part 1 here

As a few paragraphs and pictures for 10 episodes in a row makes a rather long, unruly beast of a post!

The second half of my personal preferred picks for a Top 10, though the order they’re being listed in doesn’t correspond to my favour, but the order how I watch them on my DVDs. I still suggest you read the first half of the list before this one, all the same~

Spoilers below the cut, be warned! ✂

Crater 101

So this ep is pretty much a sequel to Lunarville 7, and is followed up with Dangerous Rendezvous. Neither of those made the cut of my list though, and even isolated from those it makes a solid story. The most Space-y of all the episodes and a visual treat, cause while we mostly stuck to the stark accommodations of Lunarville 7 in that episode, here we see the grey grimy gloom of the outside of the Moon, and the sharp, delightful contrast of the Mysteron’s fantastic plastic Complex. Here, vivid marbled colours and flashing lights join inorganic shapes that suggest something of the Mysteron’s nature, but as always, nothing conclusive.

Moving away from the lovely Aesthetics, this is also a strong one for characterisation. We get some sweet interactions with The Lads and for this episode only, the Best Female Character in the whole show. Linda Nolan is the controller of Lunarville 6, a smart, capable woman who had her own cool space mission referenced and in fact critical to the plot. She is also relatable in that she catches feelings for Scarlet, so while she’s barking up the wrong tree I still have nothing but respect for her, hehee.

Eerie, tense, interesting and still somewhat funny, this is another episode that eeks into an even higher ranking list than 10, I could comfortably put it in 5 and mmmaybe 3. Though I’m not gonna be able to say definitively as the best episodes all bring something different to the table, and this may just be the strongest in the uniqueness regard.

Fire at Rig 15

I get the feeling this may be an unorthodox choice, somehow? But yeah, I just really enjoy it. It’s not a funny episode, but it is rather exciting, and contains some lovely new music and a sweet scene at the end. The Mysteron’s plot is pretty simple, but should it succeed, devastating as it would be crippling Spectrum’s operations by removing the unique type of fuel all the craft uses.

In a way, it’s kind of like a dark mirror to a typical Thunderbirds setup; whereas in that show the initial fire would be more likely to be accidental or just maybe some ne’er do well like the Hood, this time it’s as simple as the Mysterons reopening the master valve. When traditional firefighters would eventually retreat to make room for International Rescue, here Spectrum themselves have a rather passive role as a professional rolls in. And of course, said man finds himself very, very dead due to further Mysteron interference (see picture), with Black seemingly hypnotising the poor bloke into standing too close to the explosion.

From there his duplicate half buries his original corpse and later receives direct instructions from Black to suicide bomb the nearby refinery, and it’s en route to this is where the thrilling car chase takes place! Scarlet saves the refinery but the whole SPV he was driving is completely ablaze at the end of it. Like my thoughts on Point 783, I really appreciate the human touch to the last scene, with soft music as arrangements are made for Scarlet to recover from the horrible state we’re spared of seeing. Seeing how his ability to recover from death is one of the cornerstones of the whole premise, I love it when we’re allowed a bit more insight into what the other Spectrum personnel do in the situations, in this case White specifically instructing Dr Fawn to make sure Scarlet is comfortable as the process takes place.

Treble Cross

A notable and unique spin of an episode, where a rather routine Mysteron threat takes quite the turn when their assassinated target is brought back to life! It seems by the 2060′s we’ll have cool machinery to do CPR for a couple of hours as well as doctors ready to play god when they happen to drive by the car crash scene, heheh

Seriously though, this is a really fresh premise, that the villains who have been using doppelgangers for their devious schemes get the tables turned. This time the duplicate gets perma-killed while the original Major Gravener willingly participates in an undercover mission to help draw Captain Black into a trap at last... However, an easily overlooked factor in the driver who was also killed had been duplicated offscreen, so even with this amazing chance Spectrum can’t catch Black. But the World Capital, Futura City, is saved and Spectrum find the Mysterons themselves can’t tell their own copies from the original person, so it’s all in all a net gain!

Also this episode contains the World’s Happiest Clock, so that’s a neat plus.

Flight 104

We start this story on the incredible note of Captain Blue singing in the shower of the Hotel room he shares with Captain Scarlet. Scarlet then orders them both room service for some lunch. And if that sounds like the start of a fanfic plot, it may well be, but it’s also literally right there in the episode, baybee!

Charmingly domestic opening aside, I love this whole shebang. Again it’s the usual Mysterons threatening of an individual who Spectrum are bodyguarding, but the way both our heroes and villains go about this is different from the norm. Scarlet and Blue are trying to avoid drawing attention, so they spend the whole episode in normal clothes (Blue spending 1/3 of this in that comfy bathrobe!), and don’t have their comms. What’s more, they get a pair of reporters suspicious, and the two trail them looking for a Big Scoop.

When I was first watching this, I was expecting the journalists to get killed by Black to be the Mysteron Pawns, but no! They’re both fine from the start to the end! Then we find Black doing ....something.... to the Flight Crew of the titular Flight 104, but they aren’t killed either, just drugged. Instead, the Mysterons remotely pilot the plane on a slow collision course with the Alps, but are undone when an Electrical Plant interferes with their control.

As breaking into the pilot cabin had the side effect of jamming the landing gear, the plane has to crash land at the airport, but almost everyone being unharmed makes this one of the most gentle episodes of the lot... of course, Scarlet himself is still heavily implied to have been killed from the crash, but even his injuries seem pretty minor this time. And yet, it’s not lacking in excitement, as the tension of Spectrum trying to communicate with the two without their Comms and the inability to override the Mysteron’s control until that pre-established Electrical weakness kicks in holds for a while.

Inferno

Those who know of me from Thunderbirds are Go (the 2015 TV series) discussion are likely to know how much I love the episode from Season 1, Tunnels of Time. It heavily features my favourite ship in that show as they explore an ancient South American Temple which is full of peril. The temple is destroyed by the end of the episode.

So anyway, Inferno features my favourite ship in this show as they explore an ancient South American Temple which is full of peril, and tragically the temple is destroyed by the end of the episode! Heheeheheee~

Ok seriously though, eerie parallels aside this is another utterly beautiful instalment, with set design and lighting that really blows other episodes out of the proverbial water. And the pyrotechnic team clearly had fun with the seemingly unending explosions at the end of the adventure. An all-around visual feast!

Main plot is relatively simple, like in White as Snow, the Mysterons kill a Satellite and its crew and steer the reconstructed version towards their target of the week. Unlike WaS, they succeed in the end, a reminder that they’re still not to be underestimated. No human lives are lost, but the important complex and more tragically, the 800 year old temple that’s otherwise intact, get bombed to smithereens. Something something additional cost of warfare on Culture and History.

But while this is the end of my personal Top 10 list, it’s not all bad, because the Scarlet and Blue antics in the temple are utterly lovely and [chef finger kiss] splendid cinema~!

That about wraps up this Two-part post of mine! Picking 10 out of 32 is easier than 10 out of 100, but it’s still tricky as most of the episodes are very good, with only a few I’d promptly write off as a candidate for the list. And in some ways I wonder if I went about this the right way, some eps I only saw once and might feel strong enough to pip one’a the ones I did choose.

I have been rewatching each of the eps covered, and a few that didn’t make it, but my initial choice was made looking at the full list and letting my gut grab a few, having to think over more as the slots filled. Some fan favourites like Lunarville 7 came close, but I hope I’ve been able to clearly convey what it is about this selection that gave them the edge ;3

I will write further posts on Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons in the future, but after this mammoth and also the Notable Episodes list I’d quite like to enjoy it for a while without thinking about points to talk about, haha

[i-dream-of-twilight-sparkle]

Chapter 28: Starlight’s Mother, Part 4 - The Tragedy of Starlight’s Past

The group that went to New Haven to bring back Sunburst’s father return to the room where everyone else is waiting for them.

Twilight: Welcome back, all of you! So you’re Sunburst’s father? It’s nice to finally meet you.

Sunspot: I could say the same Princess Twilight… especially after you and your son Spike’s Dragon Tear has allowed me to find some closure about Sunset. We still have yet to hear everything about what happened… but I’d still like to thank you and Spike so much for letting me see my sister again, from beyond the grave no less.

Twilight: You’re welcome! Once me and Spike discovered this and got some important information on how it all works, we needed to immediately get to the ponies we knew that would need to see any spirits whether they miss them so much like Applejack and her parents. Or as it turned out… figuring out the mysteries about Starlight’s Mother, your sister, and what happened to Sunset. Who knew they’d all connect?

Sunset: Speaking of what happened to me, while there... I had another memory jog… I still don’t know everything yet… but Sunspot brought back something that helped me remember something.

Twilight: Oh? What is this?

Sunspot brings out the jar with Sunset’s disembodied yellow horn he found while on a search at Nightmare Cliffs.

Just about the entire room gasps. Any Unicorns and both Alicorns in particular shivering at the sight. Rarity in particular just about shrieks in horror.

Rarity: I-is t-that…?!

Sunset: My disembodied horn? Yes, it is.

Rarity falls over fainting, Fluttershy catches her as she falls backward

Twilight: You lost your horn?! Was this during the confrontation with the Anarchists?

Sunset nods

Sunset: When I saw the horn, I instantly got a mental image of facing two pony shaped figures in front of me and another flying above me. Followed by a large rock that was dropped at the base of my horn, breaking it off and giving me a short concussion.

Twilight: That’s awful… I suppose that also explains how you had trouble despite the anarchists otherwise being regular ponies…

Sunset: It definitely looks like whatever happened, they took advantage of the fact I couldn’t effectively use my magic after my horn broke, and I died somehow… That’s all the new information I have, though of course a reminder that 2 of the 3 lost their lives too… so whatever happened next certainly couldn’t have been as simple as they grouped together to throw me off the cliff or something.

Starlight: Brrr… losing the horn… that’s a fear just about every unicorn has… I can’t imagine what that must of felt like…

Sunset: It was quite painful… and I definitely think I remember feeling a bit of helplessness after I recovered from the concussion.

Starlight: At least physical injuries don’t seem to have shown up permanently on your spirit. I can see your horn’s still on you right now

Twilight: Spirits show up as the last known appearance of those who summoned them. Which means Firelight’s memory likely allowed Sunset to appear as she was on the last day Firelight saw her before she left towards that fateful chase. It might be possible had Starlight summoned Sunset by herself, maybe the physical appearance of when you died would of showed up, since it defaults to just about the spirit’s age and/or last appearance when alive if the one who summoned them is somepony blood related that did not know them. Though Spirits are also capable of becoming any age/appearance they were when alive. I saw Jinn turn herself into an old mare, and a filly earlier. I wonder if the same goes for physical injuries?

Sunset closes her eyes and focuses, she only needs to go a little bit forward. Most of her horn fades away revealing a hole of a horn very much akin to Tempest Shadow’s own broken horn, a disheveled and wet mane and tail as if she was in the middle of a heavy storm, and her right eye injured with a black eye revealed as she opened her eyes

Rarity has finally recovered from her faint, but as she looks up she now sees Sunset with her injured appearance. And she faints again.

The rest of the group just look taken aback as they view Sunset’s likely appearance before she died.

Twilight: Ouch… I hope going into injured appearances doesn’t result in you feeling that pain again…

Sunset: Thankfully no, it’s only appearance-wise on us spirits. We don’t exactly… have nerves anymore. Like say if somepony who was able to touch me, hit me for some reason. It wouldn’t exactly hurt. I could still get angry and ask why they’re trying to hit me, but I don’t think Starlight, Sunburst, Princess Celestia, Fi-Fi, and my brother would ever want to.

All those who she named nod in agreement that they have no reason to want to hit Sunset. Sunset focuses again to erase the injuries and looks like how she was before again.

Meanwhile, Sunset’s brother Sunspot approaches Princess Celestia and bows before her.

Sunspot: Princess Celestia, it’s an honor to be in your presence.

Celestia actually looks sort of solemn at the bow of Sunset’s brother.

Celestia: Are you sure I deserve this bow… Sunset led a dangerous life because she was my protege… It’s indirectly my fault your beloved little sister’s life ended this way...

Celestia closing her eyes, with tears dropping. Sunset looks at her old mentor, and immediately goes to reassuring the Princess.

Sunset: Princess, you know as well as I do that I when you said you wanted to make me your personal protege, I was enthusiastic. I very much enjoyed my time as your student, if anything, I should of listened to you when you told me to take a break from watching the movement of every threat out there that I personally chose would be my prerogative. But I was so dedicated to protecting Equestria that I lost sight of having much of a personal life. And because I chose to pursue criminals at every opportunity, that only made it more difficult to establish one.

If there’s anypony to blame for what happened other then the 3 anarchists I chased that fateful day, it would be myself, for getting careless…

Celestia: I appreciate hearing that from you, Sunset… just even I kick myself for what I perceive as failures… even as I now have my sister back, it doesn’t make it any less upsetting that I didn’t stop her turn into Nightmare Moon in the first place…

Sunset just gives Princess Celestia a reassuring smile.

Sunset: Good thing you found a new student that succeeded on bringing her back to you, and now Twilight will achieve everything you hoped I would one day. And from the sounds of things, the world has gotten more and more peaceful. Actually…

Sunset turns towards Twilight.

Sunset: Is if ok if I ask for a run through on all the threats you faced in your time as Celestia’s student? I know you didn’t really start saving the world until past Adulthood, meanwhile my world-saving days started in my pre-teens. But maybe I can provide some commentary if any of them were in my list of potential threats.

Twilight: Well.. I guess I’ll start with Nightmare Moon. Where, through trials of my friends showing their elements. we discovered the Elements of Harmony and were able to banish the evil out from within Luna.

Applejack tips her hat up and winks, Pinkie Pie bounces, Rarity gracefully poses, Fluttershy smiles, and Rainbow Dash gives a smug grin as Twilight reminds them of their first triumph together.

Sunset: Mmhmm! Very nice! It was still a good two decades before Luna’s Banishment was over so I would of been in my 40’s if I had been the one to face off with Nightmare Moon. Though if I had continued on, I likely would of already ascended prior to then so I could really help bring Luna back.

Celestia: I don’t know if Sunset would of had 5 individual friends, like you did Twilight. Another option we possibly had was I use half of the elements, while Sunset used the other 3 for us together to free Luna. I probably would of used the elements of laughter, kindness, and generosity. And Sunset would be given magic, loyalty, and honesty.

Twilight: Those elements do seem to fit you, I know from experience Princess Celestia would of wielded the 3 elements she mentioned, and now that I’ve met Sunset… She was very good at magic, she was really loyal to Princess Celestia, and while this is a bit posthumously… she’s shared much of the truth of quite a few things. So that might’ve worked.

Sunset: What’d you face off with next?

Twilight: Next was… Discord. He was surely a hoof full…

Sunset: Ohhhhh yea, Discord was still trapped in his statue throughout my time. But I was aware of what crazy things he was capable of. But apparently he’s on the good side now?

Twilight: When he wants to be I guess... he’s friends with Fluttershy so he doesn’t do much to actively antagonize any of us. But he does do some things we often have to go and fix… Frankly, one good thing about being a genie… is that I’m able to fix something crazy he does faster then it otherwise normally would of been.

Sunset: It is true that becoming a genie got you powers just about on par with Discord. He does call himself the Spirit of Chaos. Given you’re at least in part Spirit, you could say you’re the Spirit of Order. *giggles*

Twilight: Wait… is Discord’s magic soul magic too?

Sunset: I’m not even sure, I think Discord has magic that fits in its own category, but it is quite powerful. It might be safer to say it’s sort of a mix between soul magic and dark magic? It’s neither powered up with good over a lifetime like soul magic is, though it’s not inherently malicious or damaging like dark magic is.

Twilight: Hmm… true. His magic often has insane or annoying results, but it’s often all for laughs and/or doesn’t purposefully harm anypony. Might be for once, something interesting to talk about to him later.

Anyhow… after we defeated Discord. Queen Chrysalis and her army of changelings invaded my brother’s and Princess Cadence’s wedding

Sunset: Ah yes… Queen Chrysalis… I did some recon of the hive back in the day. But due to that protection they have of not allowing non-changeling magic from working around or in the hive… I couldn’t really approach to attack myself, as it was too dangerous to go in alone. But they also didn’t have much power, since there was no big event for them to gather enough love to attack like the wedding your brother had. I had them listed as a low-tier present time threat that could potentially become a big threat, if a publicized event full of love to feed on happened as they invaded.

Twilight: Which happened to be my brother’s wedding… huh…?

Sunset: I guess so! And it was also another reason I had a secretive wedding with Fi-Fi, a personal protege of the princess having a public wedding may have been exactly what Chrysalis was waiting for.

Twilight: The changeling invasion was the last big event before I became a genie. Going to Saddle Arabia was in fact somewhat of a reward Celestia allowed me and Spike after defeating Chrysalis. There was no threats then, but I wonder if maybe Malakhar would of tried to genify you at some point Sunset if he had seen you?

Sunset: Possibly! Though I believe Malakhar may have only been a little colt back when I was still Celestia’s protege.

Twilight: I guess his Grandfather could of possibly done it then, if they had found out about you early enough.

Sunset: I have been to Saddle Arabia before, but I mostly accompanied Celestia during routine negotiations with the Sultan. So I was never there too long, and never really on the Streets where Malakhar’s grandfather could of approached me.

Twilight: Alright… so next… the Crystal Empire came back and so did King Sombra.

Sunset: Oof, Sombra is certainly a doozy. He’s pretty much dark magic incarnate. I think sometime ago, he discovered a way to sort of control himself in Dark Magic form if he ever was killed though at the price that if he’s defeated, he sort of gets a fate worse then death in being trapped in a void that only could escape through substantial magic, such as the Crystal Empire coming back. I think technically the first time Celestia and Luna faced him was when he “died” for the first time.

Twilight: Oh, is Sombra being controllable dark magic why he has that sort of smoky form?

Sunset: *shrugs* I only heard of Sombra through whatever the royal archives had on him, so I’ll take your word you saw that. But maybe?

Twilight: The fact he only goes to a void may have explained why he came back two more times…

Sunset: WHAT?! You had to face Sombra THREE times?! How in Equestria did that happen?

Twilight: …I did say Discord did things that we had to fix

Sunset: ….Are you sure Discord is on the good side? I would of put him back in stone for bringing back Sombra TWICE!

Twilight: Believe me when I say I sometimes feel the same way… but again, he does have a legit friendship with Fluttershy. Plus, he’s actually helped me out at least once when I was had this strange Genie Sickness. He also helped with something that i haven’t quite gotten to yet. But I still have a few more events and/or villains to talk about before then. 

Though Sombra was the last threat before I ascended to Princesshood. Though… given you were Celestia’s student before me. I hope you don’t feel like me mentioning that is sort of flaunting a status you didn’t achieve…

Sunset shakes her head horizontally

Sunset: No, staying to eventually ascend to Princesshood became the opposite of what I wanted. I wanted a family. Celestia & Luna have never been married, and the reason for that is while outliving friends, family, as well as royal staffers & guards is hard enough. It’s a whole ‘nother thing with special someponies, and your own children. Cadence has your brother, though arguably she may be the one exception being the Princess of Love. Outliving your brother is just going to have be something she faces one day.

Twilight: Yeah… though at least Spirit summoning will sort of help with that. But I picture it’ll still be rather hard for both her & me when Shining passes

Sunset: Just always remember that everypony going up there just continues to protect the planet long after they’re gone and that may make you feel better. Plus, unless you have a lot of huge dragon friends that pass you want to see, it should be safe to summon a few friends down every now and then.

Twilight nods

((Story continues after the break))

Twilight: Continuing on… my first huge test against a villain as Princess was Tirek.

Sunset: Oh yeah… Tirek would of certainly been a toughie had he gotten out with enough strength to cause havoc when I was around

Twilight: He certainly was tough, even with the combined added strength of Celestia, Luna, and Cadence coursing through my veins. Tirek had Discord’s magic powering him up... So we had a stalemate. And it took an additional power-up offered by the Tree of Harmony to send him back to Tartaurus as we just happened to have collected these sort of strange keys over the course of that year that allowed us to open a box given to us.

Sunset: Sometimes you gotta be lucky, when saving the world!

Twilight: After Tirek… was when we returned to Saddle Arabia, though this time also bringing my friends along. That was when we came face-to-face with Zathir, who controlled me with a device of his own, and if not for Spike creating his Dragon’s Tear that we’re using to see and talk with you now… the world would likely be under a Saddle Arabian empire controlled by Zathir.

Sunset: I did always have a feeling that Zathir was somepony that had some sort of plot in his mind. Though now I know what it was, his method of trying to take over the world seemed unlikely given no genies were around. And up until what he did to you, the Sultan naively trusted him.

Twilight: Perhaps the scariest part was ironically after I was freed from his control… where he stabbed Spike straight in his right eye…

Sunset: OUCH… I guess that explains Spike’s scar…

Spike: It’s thanks to Fluttershy, I didn’t end up with only one eye. Remnants of being a vampire bat pony had healing properties in her fang.

Sunset looks over to Fluttershy a bit dumbfounded

Sunset: You were a vampire?!

Fluttershy sheepishly smiles

Fluttershy: Sorta… only in regards to fruit… not blood, ehehhehheh...

Applejack: We kinda always get some pretty strange things happen t’ us, even when we’re not saving the world

Sunset: I see… well, I certainly have to be thankful for what happened after you girls defeated Zathir... not just for the usual saving the world once again... But due to that event spawning the very Dragon’s Tear allowing me to speak down here so I can see my husband again and talk to my lovely daughter for the first time. 

So… what came next?

Twilight gulps, given Sunset just mentioned talking to her lovely daughter… given her daughter was the next villain. Twilight looks over to Starlight, who gives her a sad face but still whispers as she says…

Starlight: Go ahead, Twilight. It’s best she knows much of the truth of what my life’s been like…

Twilight nods, even if she is still a little afraid of Sunset losing all good will she had for her daughter up until now.

Twilight: Well um… how can I put this… your daughter… Starlight… led a whole town under an Equalist Cult that took cutie marks away… and aimed to expand...

Sunset looks over to her daughter with a stern look, causing Starlight to lower her head. But instead of actually getting mad at Starlight, Sunset just breathes deep and sighs.

Sunset: *sigh* I knew I shouldn’t have left that manifesto in the house… even if I at least tried to hide it…

Twilight: Huh? Manifesto?

Starlight: She’s… probably referring to the other book I found when I broke the wall… it happened to be the manifesto that got me hooked on the beliefs I held over “Our Town”…

Sunset: Among many of the criminals I defeated were also those looking to start dangerous cults. I burned most copies, but usually kept one as a sort of historical account of what to look out for. It’s a shame that this one lone copy ended up in the hooves of my daughter, and she got influenced by it… so I kind of blame myself more for that one…

Sunset turns around to Firelight with a rather stern eyebrow raise at her husband

Sunset: Though I should also ask how you let her read it…

Firelight: Um… you never told me what the book looked like… I thought it was just a math book from the Equal Sign on the cover… She always looked like she was quite deeply engrossed in the book… I didn’t want to take it away from her because she always had this infectious smile on her face reading it so intently…

Sunset: You never saw what was in the book other then the Cover?! What kind of filly her age was going to be so engrossed in Math like that?!

Firelight: I’m so sorry, Shimmy! I really thought she was just yearning to be a fantastic mathematician or something!

Sunset facehoofs

Sunset: Well... at least Twilight and the others broke you out of that ideology… and you seem to be on good terms now. 

Given the reaction though, it makes Twilight even less sure about telling Sunset about what came next. She leans on over to whisper to Starlight.

Twilight: Starlight… I can skip over what happened with the time travel… I feel like she may blow a gasket if she hears about that…

Starlight looks to the side and allows Twilight to not mention it, though she has this strange sense it’d probably be important for her mother to hear it anyhow.

Twilight: Anyhow… next Queen Chrysalis came back. And managed to bottle nap me and capture many of us. A team of your daughter, Trixie, Discord, and a rogue changeling named Thorax had to come in and save Equestria

Hearing this cheers up Sunset, she grins and looks at her daughter

Sunset: No way! My daughter has saved Equestria once? Once again, the apple hasn’t fell far from the tree. I’m proud of you, Starlight!

Starlight at first blushes from her praise, but then she looks to the side sadly. And she lowers her head and closes her eyes.

Starlight: No… I don’t deserve this praise yet… maybe not even ever... and I refuse to hold any more secrets out from my family…

Sunset: Huh? What do you mean?

Starlight: There’s some context missing before I helped defeat Chrysalis the 2nd time around… it didn’t go as simply that Twilight and the others freed me from the Equalist ideology and then I was on their side from then on… I ran away and plotted a revenge plan… 

The whole room gasps as it looks like Starlight’s about to fully come clean to what she’s done to her mother who was known for making sure Equestria was safe at all costs. Starlight’s use of Time Travel arguably being one of the highest threats to Equestria as they knew it throughout Twilight and her friends’ era.

Starlight: I tried to change the past with a Time Travel spell by preventing the Elements from earning their cutie marks… It took seeing multiple timelines of bad outcomes and some soft spoken words from Twilight before I was finally convinced to get back to the present safe and sound…

Sunset just stands there distraught, and her face towards her daughter becomes even more stern.

Sunset: Starlight… An act like that… if I were the one to see you do that… I would of had the hard choice of having to turn my own daughter into stone.. or sent to Tartaurus! You don’t mess with time travel! Do you have any idea how many lives that effects?!

Starlight: I know, I know, I know! I kick myself for it everyday… I never even gave Twilight the full context of why I did it back then… I told her what put me on the path was Sunburst earning his cutie mark and leaving me in sparsely populated and friendless Sire’s Hollow…

But I left out that you disappeared 2 weeks after I was born…

I left out that when my father was at work... I was left alone at the house, not even one babysitter as a mother figure to tell me right from wrong... and a naive father… 

I left out that not only did I read a manifesto that only reinforced my beliefs about Cutie Marks… I also got my very own Cutie Mark by using a spell book you left behind in the house after an intense magical outburst… I never even mentioned back then that I couldn’t understand my mark…

Or perhaps more accurately… I didn’t want to understand it…

Thus over years of indoctrination, I eventually put it into action when I took over a small village and plotted to expand. But then I was defeated by Twilight and the other Elements of Harmony... my hypocrisy exposed as they managed to show I still had my Cutie Mark to the entire village and thus had been lying to them… I ran away, occasionally keeping up with Twilight’s movements.

Until... I finally made my move and gave in to my darkest impulses… I entered her castle and went to change the past… Battling Twilight as the timelines changed… It still took a bit of time… but seeing all those horrible futures… and Twilight speaking to me softly near the end… I finally gave in, and turned myself in fully expecting a harsh punishment for what I did… What Twilight did instead… I couldn’t have ever expected…

She extended the hoof of friendship, and put me under her wings as her student. I couldn’t believe it myself, I had done such terrible things and from all they knew, for such petty reasons as a friend moving away… Not that I wasn’t grateful for not being as harshly punished as I probably should’ve been… but another thing about being under Twilight’s wing… she sort of became the mother figure I never had in my life at that point… and this was an opportunity to finally feel how that felt like…

Starlight starts tearing up heavily

Starlight: I just didn’t have a very happy early life because you were gone, mother! I was so jealous of other ponies! I was left with almost no reason to care what happened to the world when it all seemed so unfair! 

Twilight and her friends get worldwide recognition as heroic, talented ponies not just because of their marks… but they also had lovely families and friends that loved them, were always around, and/or didn’t keep such important secrets from them! And while I never understood how I got it until now, because I had so much raw magical power... perhaps I thought it was just my destiny to change Equestria in the way I saw fit...

But then my Equality Cult was foiled in “Our Town”... I thought I would only end up rotting in jail if I allowed myself to be captured, so I gave in to my worst instincts and decided to get revenge on Twilight and her friends in the best manner possible while also proving cutie marks weren’t the be-all to end-all once-and-for-all. And Time Travel felt so enticing to that goal... 

I wanted to see Twilight’s face when she sees cutie marks don’t matter and the world would of been fine without her and her friends finding their talents. But each timeline kept backing up what Twilight was saying... Especially the one where Equestria was nothing but a cloudy, deserted wasteland!

I gave in to dark instincts prior to time traveling, but I never aimed to actually kill anypony nor end nearly all life on Equestria! I foolishly thought everypony’s lives would generally be unchanged without the Elements of Harmony finding their marks! I still cared about Equestria at large, I just refused to believe 6 Cutie Marks were so important to the world when all I had known about cutie marks was the loss of my only friend and utter confusion and disdain about my own... And never having that mother figure in my life to tell me right from wrong…

If only you had survived, Mother! *sniff* I may have never gone the path I went down!

Starlight covers her eyes with her hooves and just starts sobbing uncontrollably on the ground. Sunset now hearing the full context lowers her head, and lessens her stern look at her daughter. She sits down for a moment and stays silent. Before outstretching her hooves to call Starlight in for another hug.

Sunset: …Come here, dear. You look like you need another hug from me

Starlight sniffs, and is a little bit surprised she managed to get her mother on hugging terms after she admitted how dire her actions got. Starlight walks on over into her Mother’s hooves and continues to sob right into her mother’s shoulder. Tears again falling through the transparent spirit. Suddenly, her mother lets go of the hug and starts singing toward Starlight.

((To the tune of My Past is Not Today))

Sunset: Answers…

Was all you desired… But all that grew inside of you was the darkness you acquired…

When you began to fall And you lost the path ahead… That’s when your friends found you And they lifted you instead!

(Sunset jumps up slightly kicking her hind legs as she transforms her body from the waist down into her spirit tail and triumphantly flies around her daughter as she sings the chorus)

Like a phoenix burning bright in the skkkkkyyyyyyy! I’ll show there’s another side to you... You can’t denyyyyyyy!

I may not know what the future holds But hear me when I saaaay... That your past does not define you... ‘Cause your past is not todaaaaaay!

(Starlight feels the warmth and comfort of her mother’s singing get to her as her tears start streaming more in joy rather then from admitting everything she’s done. Though she still expresses some concerns)

Starlight: My... past is not today...? I don’t know about that... It’s certainly always felt like it’s still today... because I can’t help but always think about it... *sniff*

Sunset: Your past is what shaped you into the pony you are today, that’s all true. There’s no shame in admitting things you’ve said and done were wrong. But you also don’t have to feel like who you were in the past is still who you are now. You alone... have the power to shape yourself into the pony you want to be...

(Starlight smiles and raises her head high, as she begins to sing a verse of her own towards her mother)

Starlight: Vengeance…

Is what I belieeeeved…

Would be the only way...

to make them seeeeeee…

Because you disappeared...

And I found myself alone…

Until you came down like a comet...

And now it truly feels like hoooome!

(Starlight charges up her horn to allow her to levitate herself in the room, she used it originally before she got her cutie mark. And eventually mastered it by the time she fought with Twilight across the timelines, but is now simply using it to go in sync with her flying spirit mother in the air)

Like a phoenix burning bright

In the skkkkkyyyyyyy!

I’ll show there’s another side to me

You can’t denyyyyyyy!

I may not know what the future holds

But hear me when I saaaay...

That my past does not define me...

‘Cause my past is not todaaaaay!

(Starlight and Sunset quiet down their voices to repeat the chorus together)

Sunset & Starlight: Like a phoenix burning bright... in the sky...

Sunset/Starlight: 

I’ll show there’s another side to you/I’ll show there’s another side to me

Sunset & Starlight: You can’t deny!

Sunset & Starlight: I may not know what the future holds 

But hear me when I say…

Sunset/Starlight: 

That your past does not define you/That my past does not define me

‘Cause your past is not todaaaaaay!/’Cause my past is not todaaaaaay!

Once they float themselves back down, with Starlight deactivating her hover and Sunset reforming her spirit tail back into her hindlegs and pony tail while both of them slowly float back down to the floor. They once again embrace eachother as Sunset softens her voice as she comforts her daughter further.

Sunset: I wish I could of been there for you too, Starlight. I would of gladly told you how special Cutie Marks actually are. Both Myself and Princess Celestia thought at one point thought my mark meant I was destined to be the next Princess of the Sun. But perhaps, whether I changed my destiny or perhaps what I now hoped would actually be my true destiny was… so that one day, I’d instead simply be your sunshine… showing you the light and warmth of a loving Mother, always there for you, and supporting you on whatever path you took…

But because I was gone… you had no such sunshine. And not even a sliver of moonlight to comfort you as you fell deeper and deeper into darkness. At least you understand where you went wrong, you can say sorry, you can feel remorse, it doesn’t make what you did justified, but the fact you can actually learn and there was still hope for you to change yourself into a better pony… is probably ultimately why Twilight decided to put you under her wing as her student…

I love you, Starlight… I hope you know that…

Starlight: *sniff* I love you too, mom!

The mother-daughter hug after their song lasts a good long while, the rest of the group smiling or crying joyous tears again as Starlight came clean to her mother about what she did. And Sunset answering her daughter with the comfort of her mother she couldn’t get for her entire life until now. It’ll never erase what Starlight has done, Starlight certainly never will quite forgive herself for doing what she did.

But she’s finally gotten most of the things she’s always wanted during her life. Lots of friends, she now recognizes that her cutie mark shows her true self as the daughter of a former Celestia protege who became a student of the next one, and is for now the Principal of the School of Friendship where she’ll be helping hold up Twilight’s ideals to the next generation of both ponies and non-ponies alike, and now she has her mother back to talk to whenever she can stop by to see Spike summon her spirit back down.

They let go of the hug and stand back up, Twilight herself tears up with liquid pride for Starlight for coming clean the way she did. She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to straight up admit what she had done right after informing Sunset of the one time Starlight saved Equestria from Queen Chrysalis. But she’s proud of Starlight for bravely going forward with admitting it, even to her Mother who dedicated her life to protecting Equestria’s way of life.

Twilight: I’m very proud of you, Starlight.

Applejack: That took guts t’ admit t’ your Mother, Starlight. Perhaps some o’ the strongest, honest feelings ah’ve ever seen. If ah could, ah’d let ya borrow the Element o’ Honesty necklace fo’ this.

Firelight: I’m happy to know that you’ve obviously inherited your mother’s singing talent too... you both sing so beautifully... *sniff*

Starlight: Thank you all…

Everyone in the room takes a small moment to smile and help comfort Starlight further. Allowing some free time before Twilight finishes her recap of what they’ve faced over the years.

UP NEXT: Chapter 29: Starlight’s Mother, Part 5 - Closure At Last

[puroresu-musings]

NJPW / ROH G1 SUPERCARD Review (April 6th 2019, New York, Madison Square Garden)

Honor Rumble  **

NEVER Openweight/ROH TV Title vs. Title Match: Will Ospreay vs. Jeff Cobb  ****

Rush vs Dalton Castle  DUD

WOH Title Match: Mayu Iwatani (c) vs. Kelly Klein  **

New York City Street Fight: Flip Gordon, Juice Robinson & Mark Haskins vs. Bully Ray, Silas Young & Shane Taylor  **1/2 (I guess)

IWGP Jr Heavyweight Title Match: Taiji Ishimori (c) vs. Dragon Lee vs. Bandido  ****1/4

IWGP Tag/ROH Tag Title vs. Title Match: Guerillas Of Destiny vs. Brody King & PCO vs. The Briscoes vs. EVIL & SANADA  ***3/4

RPW British Heavyweight Title Match: Zack Sabre Jr. (c) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi  ****

IWGP Intercontinental Title Match: Tetsuya Naito (c) vs. Kota Ibushi  ****3/4

ROH World Title Ladder Match: Jay Lethal (c) vs. Marty Scurll vs. Matt Taven ****

IWGP Heavyweight Title Match: Jay White (c) vs. Kazuchika Okada  ****3/4

Photos.

Well this was a historic and interesting show, as at times it was like watching two completely different wrestling shows at the same time. First things first, the lion’s share of ROH stuff on here was... not good. ROH is a company that once had such a unique identity, that watching it now is so weird. Lets face it, without this relationship with New Japan, what identity would Ring Of Honor even have? Also the booking on here from the ROH standpoint, was a tremendous example of not knowing what your audience wants. Nobody in the sold out MSG wanted to see guys like Minoru Suzuki, Tomohiro Ishii, Hirooki Goto and others, wasted in the pre-show batle royal, and have nearly half an hour dedicated to a disinteresting Bubba Ray Dudley street fight, or a TNA nostalgia act, not to mention a Ladder Match, that whilst great, was horrendously over-long at 29:35. Also Matt Taven winning the belt seemed like a total anti-climax.

However, the NJPW stuff on this show was excellent. The pre-show Rumble was what you’d expect, it was mostly disinteresting, and it went on forever (42:21). The ROH guys got zero reation coming out, whereas the New Japan guys all got respectable to enormous pops, depending on who they were. The biggest responses were for Minoru Suzuki, Tomohiro Ishii and Jushin Thunder Liger, the latter of whom got the legend treatment. However, the biggest reaction was saved for the surprise appearance of The Great Muta! It was tremendous to see him, even though he moved like a glacier, he was in really good shape, and his exchanges with Liger got over huge. Kenny King won to no reaction, when he eliminated both legends. The first bout of the main show saw NEVER Openweight champion, Will Ospreay, take on ROH TV champion, Jeff Cobb, in a title for title match. This was great stuff, as you’d expect, but probably wasn’t as good as expected. They worked a great big guy/little guy style, with the added wrinkle of the big guy being able to fly too. The crowd was hot, the action great, and the stuff creative. The finish saw Cobb hit a top rope Tour Of The Islands, followed by a regular version, to win both straps in 12:52. This means Cobb defends the NEVER title against Taichi at the next NJPW show, which is quite the styles clash. Next, Rush squashed Dalton Castle in 15 seconds in what was an effective way to get the Mexican star over, but felt somewhat superfluous on this show, and Kelly Klein won the WOH title from Maiyu Iwatani in a profoundly uninteresting contest, with a horrendous post-match.

The never-ending Bully Ray stuff was next. I must admit, I was so disinterested, I went and did something else for a bit in the hope I’d miss this, and came back only to find it still going! What I did see was OK, at best. The show really wasn’t doing well at this point, with a single match worth a damn thus far, but it picked up considerably from here. The 3 way Jr Title match was excellent. Yes, it only went 8:54, and with even 5 more minutes, could have been outstanding, but it was still the best thing on the show up to this point, by far. The spots these guys did were mind-blowing, culminating in Bandido hitting a DOUBLE top rope Fall Away Slam into a Moonsault on both Lee and Ishimori, which blew the roof off the Garden. In the end, Dragon Lee won the title in an all-action sprint, when he pinned Bandido (not the defending champion) with Desnucadora. This was so good. Next up was the insane 4 way tag title vs. title match, with IWGP tag champs, GOD, taking on ROH tag title holders, PCO and Brody King, with the Briscoes and EVIL and SANADA thrown in for good measure. This was another wild bout, which saw PCO take the craziest bump of the weekend, that I saw anyway, when GOD gave him a double powerbomb out of the ring, and he landed hard on the concrete. This was insane, and I feared he may have been dead. Tama hit King with Gun Stun, then the Tongans won both sets of belts when they pinned him with a Super Bomb. I really liked this, it was an unhinged four-way brawl. The ROH guys, and even GOD, looked really good here, however EVIL and SANADA were literally just bodies going through motions here and if they weren’t in it, I’m not sure it even would have mattered. Toru Yano stole the IWGP tag belts in the post match, whilst the Enzo and Cass bullshit kicked off around ringside.

ZSJ successfully defended the Rev Pro British title against Tanahashi next. This was another excellent bout in their series, but coming after three crazy matches in a row, two of which were great, and with them working a considerably more methodical style, the crowd were slightly more subdued here. Despite the slow start, they finally won the crowd over, and Sabre retained after submitting the Ace with his new stretch he’s calling Yes! I am A Long Way From Home (which I believe is Mogwai reference) after 15 minutes of action. Tana was apparently injured in this somewhere though, which puts a bit of a dampner on things. Naito defended the I.C. Title against Ibushi next. What more can be said of matches between these two? Every time they get in there against each other, I’m fearful one, or both, might die. Which is never a great feeling to have when watching a wrestling match. Of course, the fact their matches are always out of this world good makes up for it slightly. But only slighty. This had loads of crazy stuff in it; Ibushi hit a snap rana on Naito off the apron to the floor, as well as that deadlift German off the second rope, which when Naito landed, his head snapped like he’d been thrown out of a car. They had a stiff strike exchange, before Naito hit a reverse rana and Destino for a great near fall. Ibushi battles back with a headkick, two Boma Ye’s, a Last Ride, and Kamigoye to win the Intercontinental title in decisive fashion at the 20:53. This was the right move to me, as with Kota part of the company full time, New Japan really should be positioning him at the top of the card, and Naito is already an established star (even if that star has fallen somewhat over the last year), so he isn’t hurt by the loss. Ibushi’s first defense is against Sabre Jr at the Sengoku Lord show in Nagoya on April 20th, which should be great. The ROH World Title Ladder Match followed. It too was excellent, and featured some incredible bumps, but it went on much too long, and Taven winning hardly invokes enthusiasm, it must be said.

Which brought us to the main event of the evening. This was an exceptional piece of drama, which took its time to get to where it was going. I’ve heard people complain about how the first half of the match wasn’t exactly scintilating, but it was all part of telling the story it set out to tell. It built to an incredibly dramatic climax, which saw, amongst other things, Jay White joining an incredible elite club of guys who have ever kicked out of a full on Rainmaker, probably the most protected finisher in the business. In fact, it took Okada four dropkicks and four variations of the Rainmaker to finally put Switch Blade away. After hitting a Blade Runner (which noticeably wasn’t kicked out of here), Jay went for another, but Okada turned it into a German Suplex. As the sold out MSG went crazy, and after a series of blocks and counters, Okada hit the spinning Tombstone and another Rainmaker to win his 5th IWGP Title at the 32:33 mark, and send everyone home happy. Honestly, Okada looked like the best worker on the planet (I mean, because he is. Even better than Kenny) and he put in a superstar performance here, doing everything to make White look like a star. To his credit, Jay carried his load well here too, and looked great throughout. At only 26 years old, the future is very bright for him too, but the title change was the right call I believe. Okada is still your franchise player, and whilst he doesn’t have a whole load in the way of fresh challengers, his main events are unequelled. Next up for him is a title defense against SANADA in Fukuoka on May 3rd, as he promised to Cold Skull after beating him to win the NJC. Their last match was a classic, so I see no reason for that not to be too.

NDT

[a-patheticapathetic]

Glass Animals - How To Be A Human Being: Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lUfunQW84U&list=PLQReQsnItdzYQzuK2yD7ipXIT9ce9WAWA

I’ve been listening to this album for a few months now and I think I can call it one of my current favorites. I don’t know anything else that’s quite like it. The sound, the variety, and the story make it completely unique. Plus the lyrics deal with some refreshingly dark subjects in a way that feels respectful. Each character on the intentionally cheesy album cover is tied directly to a song on the record and that idea is so good I can’t believe I haven’t seen it done anywhere else. 

I’ve done a couple of track-by-track reviews before, but I want to try something different. I’m going to start the album, and write about each song as they play. I don’t if I’m going to try to keep it relatively formal or fall into a less coherent stream-of-consciousness kind of writing. If you want to listen to the album along with me, there’s no real way to synchronize. If there’s something I want to point out, I’ll try to guess early. After the album I’ll give number ratings to each song.

Ok, here we go.

Life Itself - 8/10

The strange noises we start with here make a really interesting transition into the percussion intro. The vocals instantly draw you in. The pre-chorus here is one of my favorite moments on the album. Such a good melody, and transition into the hook. Sounds nice but the lyrics aren’t up to the standard of everything else. The positive sounds combined with the desperate lyrics really stand out. The scale of the song really opens up during the hooks. More interesting noises in the break, building back up into the last chorus. A sweeping chord progression, feels like it’s rising. The synth solo again, and drop to near silence. This song really establishes the feel of the album effectively.

Youth - 6/10

This one has never been my favorite. It’s too poppy for me. Again, the pre-chorus knocks it out of the park. Great vocal performance. Honestly a lot of my problem with this song comes from the word “dappy”. Silly UK slang like that kinda takes away from the more serious theme of the rest of the lyrics. Even still, the emotion in the song can’t be overlooked. It really feels like one of the most hopeful tracks here. I feel like it would have been better if it ended during that bridge, instead of jumping back in. Another chorus wasn’t entirely necessary. 

Season 2 Episode 3 - 8/10

One of the centerpieces of the album. Iconic and unique. The breathy intro doesn’t give any warning to the 8-bit sound effects that follow. The lyrics here are so hopeless and the instrumental just doesn’t care, I love it. The pre-chorus again is amazing. The chorus hits you at full force, much deeper sonically than the intro was. Then back into the lazy verse. Is it about her, or about microwaving french fries? The second pre-chorus evolves and seamlessly transitions. Interesting mix-up after. Coast out on the intro.

Pork Soda - 8/10

Intended to sound like it was being played on the streets. Really punches you when the percussion comes in. Darker vocal performance for the first verse. Pineapple chorus, then a strange verse. Laced with effective cursing, first swearing we’ve heard so far. Stop. Hook vocals are back, mixed with the verse. The song starts to build really effectively here. Strange verse 2, but this time completely clean. Even more buildup and release. After, the slowdown. Back to the streets, leaving the bassline alone.

Mama’s Gun - 5/10

Immediately, a completely different sound. Quiet, woodwind focus, with background humming. A sense of paranoia in the vocals and lyrics. Instead of a hook we get a deeper instrumental. Next verse, another layered voice. Starts to drag a bit, but then the real chorus. Marching slow drum, then the instrumental again. Near silence, sounds like owls used as instrumentation. Odd, fantasy-like backing vocals. Buildup, and finally the song gets to the point. Is that a guitar? 

Cane Suga - 6/10

Strong melody to start off. Back to electronic noises. Ethereal vocals, sounds like they come from a long ways away. Then some kind of rapping, almost. A steady stream of not quite decipherable syllables, pitch shifted. Small pause, back to the distant hazy verse. The buildup begins. Results in a very satisfying drop into the ending.

[Premade Sandwiches] / The Other Side Of Paradise - 7/10

Honestly, just listen to this first one.

[PS] has always seemed like the intro to Paradise for me. The song proper starts with some on/off instrumentation, drops us dead into the verse. Much more subdued and consistent. Great vocal melodies during the verses here. Back to the intro instrumentation for the hook. High-pitched, tinny guitar work. A worrying transition into verse 2. Haunting background vocals here change the feel from the last verse. Small buildup into the bridge. Chilling crooning. This is one of the best moments on the album. The tension rises immensely. Precision f-bomb strike has a massive impact. The spiral is cut off by the hook before it can lead to insanity. Are they saying “go” over and over again?

Take A Slice - 9/10

The song that got me here in the first place. Lazy intro gets snipped off by some threatening percussion and a dark melody. The vocals fill you entire head. They have an air of imminent violence. And then....

Titanic percussion kicks you in the goddamn throat. The chorus hits with the force of a freight train. Horns and strings, distorted. Then, drop back into the verse. Don’t get comfortable. Even louder, now. Sleaze incarnate. The chorus again, and a guitar fed through a unspeakable amount of filters. The repeating note in the background gets higher and higher until it drops from under your feet. Spend the aftermath in free-fall.

Poplar St - 7/10

No, it isn’t RHCP. The cleanest guitar we’ve heard so far. A great vocal melody. More guitar gets added as the chorus begins. Next verse switches up the arpeggios to a quieter tone. Ends on a worrying note. Chorus really opens up now, before dropping it all for a whispered bridge. Haunting backing vocals. One more chorus, the song uses everything it has left. The outro is spent of energy, only here to finish the story. I don’t love you anymore, and ceased to be.

Agnes - 7/10

For the finale, the happiest instrumental and the saddest lyrics on the album. Sounds like it’s gonna be a pop song. Vocals sound the part, but listen to the words. And so it goes. The chorus humming here would be happy if you isolated it. Where went that cheeky friend of mine, where went that billion-dollar smile. The true nature of the hook, and ride it out.

Definitely ended up being more stream-of-consciousness. Oh well. 

I can do numeric song ratings but I can’t bring myself to give an album an x/10. So on a scale of “My body’s looking wrong” to “I feel fantastic”, How To Be A Human Being gets a “Sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me sad”.

[sidbridgecomedy]

Running Open Mic Night

Hey comics...

I thought I'd sit down a second and give some insight into the difficulties of running one of the most important open mics in the area (and the longest running one at that). I get a lot of feedback/wishes from comics who want more time or more freedom. Here's the rationale behind the way I run things at Cozzy's, as it unfolded live last Thursday.

Yes, there's backstage work. I have to decide each week if I'm going to host it myself or if I'm going to give someone else the honors. That "someone else" must be someone I deem as capable of running the evening - some can handle it without me there, some need a little hand-holding (and that's ok).

While I do promote the show on social media, the show's presence on the calendar promotes itself. The words "Open Mic" on the official calendar of an established comedy club are an enticement that lure in first-timers and their friends. I also make sure we have a sign up sheet and get there early to run sign-up.

Yeah, 30 comics may sign up in one night and those comics are a chunk of the audience, but the rest of it consists of a few club regulars, a couple of people who wandered in, and a ton of people there to see their friend try comedy for the first time.

Last Thursday, I frankly felt beat up by 8:15. The list had been out for less than 15 minutes and already 30 people had signed up, not including an expected drop-in from one of my favorite headliners. I estimate 20 of those people were there before I put the list out. I'm strict about sign-up time - the list goes out at 8:00 and closes at 8:30. Why? Because 1) It gives me the ability/time to plan the show and arrange the lineup and 2) If you can't handle something as simple as "Get here by this time to sign up" your ass won't make it to a weekend show on time and you'll get fired.

I snatched the list up at exactly 8:30 and started arranging the lineup. Not two minutes later I feel a tap... "Can I still get on that list?" Nope. I had 34 comics plus a headliner. I made that clear to the latecomer (who I like enough not to name here) and got "How much do I have to pay to get on the list?"

Dude. You could pay me a million bucks and it still wouldn't bend space and time to create a place to add someone to a show that over-packed. Two minutes later a second comic came in - a more experienced comic who I happen to love, but he saw the list and knew there was no space. He had the courtesy to not bother asking. That's an asset.

I still had to arrange this monster list. Only on rare occasions do I put people up in the order they sign up. It sucks, but as a host you have to make value judgments. If you know three comics are going to struggle, you can't put them back to back. If you know a few comics are going to rock, you want them up there when the audience is at its peak. If you know someone brought a ton of friends, you want them towards the end so their friends don't bail on the show.

Plus I had a headliner. Brett Leake is one of my favorite people in the world. He always asks me in advance for a space and if I told him 30 people were signing up he would offer to back out without a second thought. I always bend over backwards to make sure he's got a spot. Why? The audience needs to see him - he's hilarious and it reminds everyone that sometimes a headliner shows up out of nowhere at Open Mic Night. And the comics need to see him. Every aspiring comic in that room needs to watch how a guy like Brett irons out new material. Brett is a mensch. He insists on going up early, and he did exactly 5 minutes. Typically a headliner will ask to go in the middle of the show and do 10-15 and that's their right as far as I'm concerned, assuming their headliner credentials are legit and verifiable.

Once I've got that lineup set, I have to corral everyone for a pre-show meeting. Is it a little juvenile that I make everyone hear the same speech before each show? Maybe. Do people screw up every single week? Yep.

It's gotten to the point where I can tell by the look in a first-timer's eyes if they are going to be either funny, nervous/terrible, or a complete asshole with nothing but disrespect for the stage. I always ask the first-timers to stick around after the meeting for some basic comedy 101 and a pep talk. Without fail, one out of every three first-timers will ignore all the rules and have to be pulled from the stage.

Last week it happened and I saw it coming a mile away. Look, maybe the poor guy was nervous, but the dumb grin on his face was like a caption for a picture where every word I said slide in one ear and right out the other.

I have rules. At the behest of the club I work for, I ask the following: 1. Never use the N-word or C-word (for obvious reasons). 2. Avoid the F-word. If it slips out once or twice or makes the joke hilarious I let it go. If it's unnecessary or repeated like it's a damn comma in your sentence, you're done. This is the rule people have the most trouble with because to so many of us it's just a word. And I get that. But I'm not worried about your feelings. I'm worried about the audience and the tone of my show, so suck your feelings in for one night and put a sock in it. Oh, and "Mother***ker" is still the f-word so don't try semantics on me. 3. Don't be disgusting. Don't hump the stool and talk about your bodily fluids the whole time. Again, this one gets a lot of brush-back because apparently bodily fluids are the only life experience a lot of people have to talk about. Again, my responsibility is to the club and the only way the club makes money on open mic night is if people order food and drinks, which they won't do if they want to throw up.

We had to piggyback the hosting that night for obvious reasons, so my job as host was about as dry as it gets. Warm the crowd up at the beginning of the show, then spend the rest of the night timing people and enforcing the rules. The list of comics for the show ended up at a whopping 34 - I was lenient with two people who got there super early and signed up on a sheet of paper that wasn't actually the list. It was an honest mistake.

(Note - even that honest mistake is a tough one for the show runner to deal with. Adding a comic outside of signup time can mean having to shuffle the whole show, change set times, and confuse people who don't know who they have to introduce next. That's why I get pretty cranky over this stuff).

I did four minutes at the beginning of the show. It's the host's prerogative to set his or her own time. My goal was to use a few specific bits that were good enough to guarantee a laugh, but new enough to work on in front of a good crowd. By the way, anyone who complains about being first, remember you aren't first. The host is first. You're second. You're going up to a warmed-up crowd. It's not the best spot on the show, but it's not bad so don't bitch.

Brett Leake (Did I mention he's a wonderful person? Because he is) listened and reacted to every comic he was able to watch. When I got off the stage, he had specific feedback on each of my bits and it was like a gift from heaven. If a headliner ever gives you feedback on your material, LISTEN and be thankful.

After that I settled into what I knew would be an exhausting night. I worried for myself, I worried for the comics and I worried for the crowd. 34 is basically too many people. I better explain myself again...

Why let 34 people on stage, then?

Who am I going to cut? Plenty of mics put 15 slots up and when they are full, that's it. There are just too many people I DON'T want to turn away: Talented comics, comics who are loyal to the club and the show, first timers who brought out their friends or didn't bring friends but finally got up the guts to try - and those categories cover most of the signups. Plus there needs to be a good variety on the show. If I just let the experienced comics on, nobody new will develop and the first timers with tons of friends will stop attending.

Why not make the show longer then? Nope. That's rude to the audience. A comedy show should really go no more than an hour and a half. We stretch to two hours, sometimes 5 or ten minutes more, to squeeze everyone on. By the end, the audience is exhausted. The are starting to clear out and we are risking leaving them with a bad taste in their mouths.

So I took my trusty timer and my flashlight and kicked back to watch what was ultimately a good show - one of the major highlights being Brett Leake, who has the rare ability to write material that requires you to engage your brain, yet still bring it down to a level that any audience can relate to. Most of the comics were super courteous - carefully following the rules, not running over time and really working on solid material.

Yes, some were terrible. And while it has always been policy to shorten the set of a terrible comic, most of the time no one notices when we're only doing 3 minutes. If someone is up there for one crappy minute and I give them the light, that means they get another crappy minute. That's most of their three minute set. So yeah, no real lesson learned there.

One thing that often shocks me at these shows is when comics don't make use of that final minute - I'm not complaining that more than half the lineup ended their sets 30-45 seconds early because it helped fit everyone on stage, but I give two lights - a solid beam to signal one minute is left, and a waving light to signal ten seconds. Go to the 10 second mark, then finish - abruptly if you have to. Between early endings and a couple of people who had to leave and drop off of the show, we were able to stay on time all evening.

The pleasant surprises make it fun - we had one first-timer who did really well and had the right amount of humility. I hope he comes back. The annoyances are ever present. The first-timer I mentioned earlier got up there and dropped the f-bomb more times than I could count in his first 15 seconds. Yeah, it's "just a word" but this guy was in the meeting where I explained very clearly not to do that, then stayed after when I repeated that rule right in his face. At least he obeyed the light and ended his set when I shined it on him at 30 seconds. I'm still a little pissed because when I pulled him aside and told him why I lit him early, there wasn't a hint of an apology.

I don't need this guy to apologize. He made his statement and it'll cost him later. On the flip side, I have another regular who has a very hard time stopping himself from using the F-bomb and he came up to me before the show and apologized sincerely for some language he used last week. That was the right thing to do. He's a good guy and I hope to see him continue.

At about the halfway point of the show the audience started to thin. Generally, I make the comics stick around for the whole show because that's an expected courtesy. If they do need to leave early, I ask for an explanation - and if it's reasonable, I'm usually okay with it. I try not to hold myself up as the litmus test for reasonable - I run that show to the bitter end, then get up at 5am the next morning for my 4-mile run. That's not normal and I recognize that.

I think the crowd thinned in this case just because - even in one hour - it's exhausting to watch a show that has that many comics. Cramming 15 people on stage in 60 minutes feels a lot longer than it actually is. I appreciate all the comics who went later in the lineup and still gave it their all for a slightly smaller audience - not a bad audience, mind you - Cozzy's open mic shows have been blessed with actual non-comic audience members - plenty of them.

The show ended up finishing at 10:50pm, which is good. No, I didn't use that extra time for the two comics I turned away because 1) They left, 2) The audience was tired so would have had to set themselves on fire to get laughs and 3) That would kind of negate the whole "be on time to sign up" message.

The aftermath of a show like that is actually pretty rewarding. The best comics of the bunch hang around and talk about what worked and what didn't work - they share stories about recent gigs and talk about what shows they have coming up. It's a wonderful fraternity with a true mixture of all types - even "edgy" comics still come to my show in spite of the fact that quite a few of their friends don't like me and my rules.

Some day I will have to hand Open Mic Night off to a new boss. I've been running it for more than five years and it's as exhausting as it is rewarding. For me it sometimes becomes a crutch that allows me to rationalize not being aggressive enough in my own bookings because I have a show to run. However I really love Cozzy's. From the beginning, Lorain has been there with opportunities and honest assessments of my progress. I've met amazing people thanks to all the work I've done at that club and wouldn't trade the experience for the world. There's a reason Cozzy's is the longest running comedy club in the area - while bar gigs come and go, Cozzy's continues to assemble the right talent for a well-nurtured audience of honest, rowdy blue collar heroes.

There you have it. This was supposed to be Open Mic Night in a nutshell, but as you can see it's much more complex. We've experimented with alternative formats before, including pre-selected spots, bi-weekly ProAm shows and only doing Open Mic once or twice a month. It's always come back to what we have now.

Other successful open mic formats in the area have included the Funny Bone's bringer show, Clash of the Comics - which packs the house every month and really takes the competitors to a new level and the original Cinema Cafe formula, where the comics were carefully pre-selected and the audience was developed with care to help each comic build a following.

I'm always open to new ideas, but for now I'm proud to be one of the many people in the area who help new talent reach that next level.

[starryoak]

Unpopular Opinion

Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 have more enjoyable and immersive lore than any of the other Fallout games. Explanation below.

While Fallout New Vegas is better than both of them and is better written with more logical and sensible lore that is more internally consistent and believable, the barren state of the Mojave Wasteland lends itself to detachment with all of the lore in the present day detracting from a severe lack of pre-war connection that both Fallout 3 and 4 provide.

Essentially; FONV is still the best game in the series but it feels detached from what I feel is half of the entire point of Fallout; the pre-war setting. The setting placing it in a true wasteland with the only real activity in the present allows for a lot of great lore about the future of the Fallout world which is admittedly highly enjoyable. But it is severely lacking in the roots of the past; even the one place that SHOULD have pre-war roots, New Vegas, is devoid of the scattered lore that made Fallout 3 and 4′s old houses and locations a joy to investigate.

Gomorrah, The Tops and the Ultra-Luxe have no backstory beyond the tribes that were put there, when they were pre war establishments that Fallout 3 and 4 would have happily provided even inconsequential details for; stories of the drunkard that got kicked out of Gomorrah or the sex scandals of the Ultra-Luxe or The Tops, anything about the people who lived in Vegas when it wasn’t New Vegas.

Fallout New Vegas practically presents a world where the past no longer matters or has any effect on the present and that is beyond sad for something that had the ability to write such interesting stories; they placed the best Vault concept in the game and executed it perfectly; Vault 11. I have no doubts they could have told stories of the past that were better than Fallout 3 or 4, but they didn’t, and ultimately failed to represent the actual tragedy and intrigue that brought me to the Fallout Universe at all; the past and how it all went so horribly wrong. 

I honestly obsessively read the Fallout Timeline as a pastime; it’s a beautiful tale of political fuckups that honest to god end up feeling real. It’s just missing from the Mojave Wasteland. I understand, the Mojave was hardly a populated place, but again; even in VEGAS, the centerpiece of the civilization, hell, Boulder Dam, neither of those pre-war places feel like they ever were inhabited before the bombs hit even when that should be true. It’s something I feel like is a disappointment in what is otherwise the best game in the series. Hell, looking at the timeline, you can see just how little pre-war events factor into ANYTHING in Fallout New Vegas

Putting aside inconsistencies like when Jet was made, pre or post war, putting aside silly ideas like Little Lamplight, as if we really feel like the Fallout universe, the one with all these stupid ideas from day 1, an exploration of ‘what if 50′s sci fi was right about radiation’, is somehow destroyed in credibility by the existence of a camp of kids living on their own when the Puppet Man from the Penny Arcade comics are canon, when an AI named Skynet is around, when there’s a guy with a tree growing out of his head running around in the first two games, when there were plans for a community of sentient animals in the first game... tangent, sorry, point being, Fallout is fucking silly you guys, Little Lamplight’s continued survival is barely scratching the surface of implausible things.

Putting aside all of that, there are certain things in the Fallout universe that struck a chord with me; the stories of the Sierra Madre are certainly one of those, as is the story of the Father In The Caves, but those aren’t even in the vanilla FONV game. You know the stories that do?

There are the little ones. The skeletons clutching each other in their last moments, the bodies in the bathtubs with booze or toasters or syringes, suicide in the last moments of the end, preferring to die of their own volition than by radiation poisoning.

Then there’s the other stories. The Boylston Club all agree to die together after the war just so they don’t have to live with the consequences of the world without their luxuries, Jamaica Plains leaves a hopeful note to the future with the treasures of their lives that will mean nothing to the people who will eventually find it, the hope failing to account for the simple fact that they were doomed to die, a group of bowlers have their friend sent off to war who ends up with a grave spinal injury that will lead him to be unable to bowl, and they decide to rig him something to allow him to bowl despite this, the Keller Family’s story, the story of Kim Wu avoiding the Chinese Internment Camps... all of these are missing from Fallout New Vegas in a big way.

None of these actually add anything to your inventory (ok, a few do) or to your completion of the game, and you can just leave them and lose nothing... but they’re the best parts of the game to me. The thing that make them special to me, more than any post-war interactions short of people who lived back then, is the sense of helplessness you have for them. You can’t help them. You can’t do anything. You can only bear witness to their ancient stories and tragedies.

I’m not bashing Fallout New Vegas here, guys, it’s still my favorite of the Fallout series, probably objectively the best, but... there’s still some things that are missing. Shit on Todd Howard all you want, whatever the people were working on still worked in some way. 

@titleknown yo i put it into words.

[just-her-furry-self]

(TRIGGER WARNING: risk, reckless behaviour, implied potential mutual harm)

He watched her pop about the room lost in her own world and whatever tune was playing on her headphones with a wry smile.  She was up to something, but there wasn't any point asking about it.  Whatever it was, it would be within the established rules, if only by half a hairs width, and that would be that.

They were wrapping up morning coffee and getting ready for a run on the bike.  This spring she'd finally persuaded him to personally own a vehicle younger than he was, and they'd picked out a touring model with a one-up seat that fit them both.  He'd never be the first to say so, but he had to admit it was a fine piece of iron, even if it had far more bells and whistles than he'd initially pictured.  He'd been ready for a little while, checked and warmed up the bike, parking it next to the door and hauling their gear (matching jackets, at her insistence) out of the closet.  She, on the other hand had already made several secretive trips back up to the loft, and was (she promises this time!) almost ready to go.

Down in the garage, he kicks the bike off it's stand and chuckles as she uses him like a boarding ladder to step up from footboard to peg and swing a leg over behind him.  Once she's settled, he brings the bike to life, taps the button on the fairing to raise the door and idles into the alley.  They ride, enjoying the sunlight as the day unfolds ahead of them.  Claiming space in an outbound lane they clear the city and settle in on a wide stretch of divided highway carving north to nowhere in particular.  Her leaning on his back, peeking over his shoulder, him with his feet up on the pegs just sliding along for the joy of the ride itself. Before they left, he noticed she'd dropped her phone in the cradle on the bike's bars, and although he assumed it was for music, she hasn't made any effort to request a track, or sneak around him to poke at it.  Still, she's not done that before.  Her reasoning becomes clear enough after a few more miles, and sets a far more entertaining tone for their morning.

When they've settled into a rhythm and she's comfortable and feeling secure perched behind him, she leans over one shoulder and leans up to swipe and unlock her phone.  On screen is the app for her Bluetooth connected vibrator, synced and in standby.  With a flourish, she gestures that this is for him, not her, and scoots closer to his back, wrapping her arms around his waist to see what he'll do with this opportunity. with a quick glance to catch her eye in the mirror, waiting for the nod that she's ok and good to go, he reaches out and nudges the slider up to a low, but insistent buzz, feeling her squirm and cling a little harder, he grins and wonders where this particular plan came from.  Before he can puzzle out her intentions, he's snapped back to a sharp focus as he feels one of her hands slide down the front of his jacket and rest firmly against his cock, rubbing his jeans, and adding her own distraction to the equation.  On a whim, he nudges her vibe a little higher, and feels her pick up her pace and stroke a little harder, a little faster in turn.  So that's her game.  Good thing their new toy has cruise control...

Thinking back to when they've played with this particular toy in the truck, he picks a compromise and dials in a setting that won't _QUITE_ set her off in short order, but at the same time doesn't have her groping him until he can't focus on the road either.  She shivers against him, squeezing her thighs tighter, and squirming.  Stroking steadily, running her hand over him, rubbing him through his pants, she seems determined to get them both off at full highway speed.  This isn't a side of her he's seen often, only once in a while...  Welcome any time though. He sighs contentedly and makes a decision for them both.  Every major road sign, he'll up the speed on her buzzy little friend another notch.  Seeing one slide by for a roadside turnoff, he makes eye contact with her again, grins and shakes his head, before bumping the slider up and rolling right on by.  It's not until the next offramp announcement that she sees the pattern, squirming against him with anticipation of how far he might take things this fine morning.

Three signs later, he's pitching a tent in his jeans, she's squirming and rolling her hips against him and he's had to lower their cruise to the minimum allowed on this interstate in order to keep their velocity within his admittedly VERY distracted state of mind.  They've passed or been passed by numerous vehicles, most of which have been _VERY_ aware of what she's doing to him at 50 miles an hour atop their big silver and red Harley.  He feels her hand leave him, and both her arms clamp around his waist HARD and she shakes, shivers, and bucks against him as the toy buried up inside her finally becomes too much to handle.  They're only 2/3 of the way up the dial and he's pretty sure there's another off ramp before long.  No stopping yet... And OH but her hand's back, dancing along his length, rolling her palm on the head of him, everything but actually jacking him off.  And by god it feels magnificent.  The wind around them, sun shining, road stretching out ahead full of promise, and the pressure in his balls pushing well into the yellow, headed for a VERY enthusiastic explosion before long.

As the overpass flashes past in a blur of concrete and signage, he gives her another shot.  Feeling her tense like an electric current just passed through her whole body straight to her pussy, he groans and arches his hips slightly, encouraging her to get back to her task.  Grateful when her hand starts moving again, he white knuckles the bars and rolls on, hoping for another sign real soon.  Things are getting good, and he wonders if she'll be able to feel it through his jeans when he goes off...  As if reading his mind, she slides a hand up, undoing his belt and the top button on his jeans and slipping a hand inside.  reaching down to take things truly in hand, she feels him slick and sticky with pre cum, rubbing his cock and wrapping her fingers around his length, stroking slowly, but FAR more effectively.

Throwing caution, or what's left of it, to the wind, he inches his hand along the handlebars, and thumbs her speed setting to the max, alternately hunching forward or arching his hips against her.  Close now, feeling her shiver and squirm on his back, both of them so close.  Still in his lane, but taking up ALL of it, he mirror checks to make sure they won't be rear ended, as fuse runs out quicker than he'd thought possible.  And just when he thinks she's out of surprises, she finds one more to seal the deal.  Feeling the pressure from her thighs slack momentarily at first has him worried she's slipping from the bike, then in a flash her legs are up, and crossed around him, clinging to him and wrapping herself around him as she loses her bid to hold out any longer.  Shuddering and holding on as best she can, he hears her scream in his ear, over the noise of the wind rushing past, over the rumble of the big bike, he hears pure triumph and lust and follows her across the finish line.

She cries out again as she feels him explode in her hand, hot, sticky and without any attempt to hold back.  He blows his load into her palm, feeling her rub it all over him.  Struggling to maintain some of his wits, he toggles cruise control off, pulls clutch and coasts to the breakdown lane, coming to a shaky, unsteady stop and barely getting the stand down before flopping the big bike over, stalling like a rooky and groaning in pleasure as he fills his own lap with his cum.

Staggering to his feet next to the bike, toggling her vibrator back to idle, he pauses only long enough to zip and belt up before helping her down to stand in front of him, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her to his chest.

"Jesus kitten, that was intense.  You trying to find the edge, or just felt like rolling some fucking large dice today?"

She shrugs, and reaches out to push the slider back to about 1/4 and moaning happily when her toy answers the call.  Rolling his eyes, but with a grin plastered to his face and a visible dark spot on the front of his pants, he gets her attention and presses the issue just a little.

"That might have ended badly, y'know.  Not that I mind in the slightest, and if you're ok we can DEFINITELY add this to the list for as many times as you like.  Just making sure you're aware."

She smiles up at him, still in a happy haze from adrenaline and afterglow, and with a saucy little grin...

"So?  Felt worth it to me...  Tell you what.  Don't touch that dial, and let's loop our way back.  If you reload before we get into traffic, I'd be more than happy to help out again and see if our luck holds..."

With a hungry growl, he plucks her off her feet, plunking her down on the back of the bike and swings a leg over.

"Deal.  Hell with it, let's ride and see what happens."

[nemossubmarine]

GM’s reflections on KoNS

So, my first solo-GM’d campaign, and my first DnD campaign is over. It took 9 months and ranked up to 21 sessions, which is quite a lot. It was definitely definitely far from perfect, but there were things that I liked, and things that I learned. I started putting this piece together around the time the third arc kicked off. It’s mostly comments on what I think I did wrong/did not work and what may have caused these issues, and what I can do differently. There’s a lot of comparisons to the DA game I play in / run, because that is my high standard, that is what I aspire to get to, which is of course not possible, since the system is different and players are different.

Anyway, I know my players follow me here, so a quick note to you, in case you’re planning on reading this (which I do not expect (recommend?) you to do). I just want to say that this is not me saying that any player played wrong, or was a cause of something that I didn’t like. At the end of the day I am the GM and the mistakes that led me being displeased with aspects of the game are my responsibility. These are my reflections on what I expect and want my games to be. It, of course, has to do with players, because there’s no game without players. Mostly players are mentioned in me thinking how I could encourage this and that sort of behavior etc. Anything said here is not meant to be a comment against you as a player or as an individual. I recommend not reading this, if you think you might take it personally. (not that I think there would be anything too upsetting in there, just covering all my bases)

Also if anyone who happens to read this (which I don’t expect anyone to do!), wants to discuss, I’d like to hear whether you agree/disagree/have had similar experiences. GM’ing is a lonely job, and I got more than my fair share of that with this adventure, so I might be too wrapped up in my own stuff to really know if something’s just a common GM-mishap.

The rest is under the cut, because, as usual for me it is long and rambly. As in almost 4k words. It’s more than a small essay, I could return this as a homework assignment, haha.

Maybe I should do some kind of sub-titles, to make this a bit more organized. Alright. Alright.

Session building In general, I am more used to writing story-lines in bulk, because I usually have several months in-between the adventures I run on the DA game. Compared, this was very fast-paced for the most part. I do think running KoNS made me better at improvising on the spot, because there was several sessions I had to run with the barest of outlines.

What I think would have been good to have was a bit more time to set up the world. I built it on the fly, and while I enjoyed the process immensely, I think it left the PCs detached from the world, because they didn’t know if stuff fell in line with the DnD norm or was I planning on something different entirely. I’ll talk a bit more about the fast and loose gamestyle’s effect on the plot in a future segment.

Anyway, one other thing that suffered was map making. I relied some on ready-made maps, but again, I get a mental image of a place, and no map really completely captures that. And it’s not like I made every single place I imagine into a map, because making maps on the computer by yourself is sloooow. I think that’s something I want to rectify for future games, having maps of most locations, so the players have something to look at. That will probably mean having to rely on maps other people made more, which, good, they’re better at it than I am, I should totally do that.

The very first adventure I ran had a thing that I’ve never used again, but I really think should pick back up. Those were short descriptive pieces of new locations I’d written beforehand. I have no trouble describing things off the top of my head, but if I want to go for a certain mood pre-written descriptions really help. So yeah, I definitely think some more attention could have been given to describing things.

I thought I would learn the books while I ran, because that’s how I learned to play/run DA game, but I kinda underestimated the fact that there’s a ton of books, and even when I tried to limit the books I allowed on the table, I still didn’t pick things up as fast as I hoped, which kinda lost me authority as a GM. It was difficult for me to find a comfort zone with the rules of the game in terms of what to throw out and what to keep. Running DA I’m usually very experimental, basically changing stuff every adventure. I never got there with DnD, perhaps because I didn’t have time to stop and think about the rules as the pace of the story was so quick.

There’s one more thing that fits under this section. We had some canceling trouble. Of course games have to be canceled for a lot of reasons, that happens, but by the end, every other (or even more) of the sessions planned were cancelled. It bummed me out, not gonna lie. It kinda pissed me off a lot too. I don’t ever want to be the kind of GM who people are afraid to tell that they can’t come and stuff like that, so I didn’t air it out on the players too much, but yeah. It blows. Trying to arrange six people’s schedules to match with you as the main organizer fucking sucks always, but there was other effects too. It made me feel that no one wanted to play my game, that people were losing interest. It broke the momentum of the plot. It cut off my thinking process; I don’t write everything down, because I like to toy around with ideas in my head that I’m not so sure about, but if there’s a 3 week gap between sessions? I can’t do that.

It was especially bad with the final session, where I had prepared for the final battle very extensively (going as far as to have another person test it with me) only to have the session cancelled last minute and moved 3 weeks. And in that time, school had started, I was knee-deep in exam books and my other game had started, which I was also GM’ing for, I had no time nor desire to spend a lot of time going over the things I had decided three weeks prior, so a lot slipped my mind. So yeah, the finale definitely suffered for that, and that bummed me out more than anything. I’m not blaming any of the people who had to cancel, it was just, super-unfortunate in general.

I think there’s a quick fix to it though: breaking down the story in chunks (similar to our DA adventures) with breaks in between might help, so no one has to be free 21 weeks in a row. Another one is to agree that if only one player is missing (which I think in all cases except handful happened here) and especially if it’s a last-minute cancel to play something. Not main plot (unless all players are fine with it), but a side mission. I’ve understood they’re really common among RP groups, and while I didn’t get why people did that before running KoNS, I definitely get it now; it keeps the people who can attend in their characters, helps to keep the story and feel of the game in mind and most importantly doesn’t make your GM sad.

Combat Haha, battles, oh god damn.

DnD’s battle system always felt too complicated for me, too many variables. I developed an early dislike for it, which I really didn’t actively try to work around, until it came time time to actually design Yadira. There were maybe like 8 battles in the whole of KoNS, bounties non-withstanding, so I wasn’t very prepared to make a boss battle. It doesn’t help that I’m like, do everything on your own, don’t take stuff from books ever, so it was not like I could reskin something relatively similar as her. In the end, I think Yadira worked just fine, mostly thanks to the fact that I got to test run her before actual game.

Next time, well, next time I’m probably not running DnD, but I’ll actually learn the damn craft, I did it for DA, I can do it again. I’ll also want to have a discussion with the players about how much battling the players want to do. But, yeah, I’d want to actually work on that from the beginning, and not let myself get too scared to learn. I’m more of a story GM, but there’s a lot of cool stuff to be done with battles, and I want to keep that craft up.

Plot Considering the fact that when I started the necklaces had like, map-pieces to an ancient weapon or something like that, I’m surprised how well the plot actually came together. There was some stuff that got dropped that could have used more time and probably more than a few inconsistencies, but in the end, I did ok.

Although, I have a real villain problem. I am not very interested in cults or dragons or pure evil tyrants, which leaves me with unfathomable forces that don’t care about your existence. Which, fair enough. They did need some building up. For the most part our heroes were concerned with Sweepers, the pan-dimensional clean-up crew, which I made way too gnarly-looking for their super-neutral outlook, because they didn’t know that the real “villain” was Ishran the sun god and Yadira, the former Raven Queen. I think Ishran-in-Adam  and Ishran-outside-Adam needed a lot more building up than the few sesisons they got, although, considering how short the story was, I guess I did ok. But yeah. Next time, I need to work on build-up of villains a bit more.

This might be more relevant to the NPC section, but as I’m mostly going to focus there on NPC-PC relations, I’m going to put it here. I was quite sad about the fact that by the time end game rolled around none of the female characters I had established had really big roles anymore. It had to do with the fact that I had introduced them really early (such as Mairin and Joan) and as they were working with the PCs, they couldn’t have information that could help solve the puzzle, as there was no reason why they wouldn’t have given it out. Now that I know that I hopefully have a bit easier time putting out a balanced end game crew. And maybe in general building NPCs who are relevant in the story throughout.

In general, I think the story might have been a bit too fast-paced and contained way way too many NPCs (or didn’t have a clear focus on only a few, leaving the rest as backdrop). As I said, I’m more used to writing pieces of stories that last about 4 to 7 sessions. In KoNS most plot points lasted only one. Some of my players commented that they liked the fast-pacedness, which is fair enough. I wonder if perhaps I would find it easier if there wasn’t as much changing scenery, or more returning to old scenery?

There were a moment where I think I started coddling the players a bit regarding the plot information. When they didn’t ask for information from an NPC, I just gave it to them, but that just re-enforces them not asking questions, and also, they’ll be much more interested in the answers, when they are the people who actually asked. And I was very hesitant for punishing PCs for lackluster information gathering, and I shouldn’t, because it shouldn’t be me hitting them with a stick, because they didn’t play the way I wanted to, it should be a plot point and a learning moment and natural consequences. Speaking of consequences, wow, those are way harder to set up when you’re writing on the run, and don’t have to wait a year between adventures.

There was one point where I kinda slipped with the plot. I wasn’t aware enough whether it could hold a new player added in the middle. And I don’t think it did. I felt bad for the new PC a lot of the time, because the story simply didn’t bend to give him a chance to get the same stuff the others did, and I struggled to include him naturally and let him have moments as a character. For example, the necklaces; from a quick glance it would make sense to add a fifth player, because there were five necklaces, but there was no good way for me to hand the necklace over, because I needed to get to the third act and I needed to give the necklace to Alexis for that to happen. Compare this to when for example Alf was added to our DA RP. I wrote that adventure, and it was rather easy to slip him in, give him a plot relevant (for that adventure) place and make PCs work with him, and later adopt him into the party. But the difference was that, though there are some themes that carry over from adventure to adventure and some honest to god plotline in our DA RP, a main plot only lasts for the adventure, and there’s not an end goal in mind.

And yeah, maybe that tells that I’m not good enough as a storyteller and as a GM, that I have way too much pride in the story that I don’t allow the characters really to change it (more on this later), but it wasn’t a free-roam campaign, it was a story-campaign, and that’s where the trouble ended and began. I think for future, I will not allow new players to enter once the story is on the move, unless I feel that an addition is necessary for a story reason (we can talk endlessly about how (un)balanced our party was,  but that’s not my concern, tbh). And that’s a call I want to reserve an only right to make as the GM. I don’t think it’s unreasonable, I would just need to be upfront about it to players before starting.

(slightly tangential: trying to make/making strict rules as a GM really makes me feel like an asshole. I’ve never had to make that kind of calls in DA RP, except for people using cell phones. I think it’s just a matter of, I know my DA RP group’s playstyle, because we evolved it together, so it is my playstyle as well. Setting rules shouldn’t make me feel like an asshole, because it’s simply clearing up expectations that might be different from player to player? Anyway, I’ll still feel like an ass :P)

Gameplay: PCs, NPCs, Playing and Roleplaying This is a huge topic but a lot of it sorta ties together, so I’m gonna work with this title. I’ll bring up few small points first, and then move on to bigger topics.

I felt I had a lot of problem giving people things to do, moments to shine in based on their class. For example, we had a paladin in our group. I have real trouble wrapping my mind around stuff like evil alignments (see above my discussion about the way I do villains), so spells like “Detect Good and Evil” found little use. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that in DnD class defines you much more than I ever think it did in my DA group. I don’t think Cahair as rogue of the group, and not only because he is one of three, he is defined as the Dalish elf of the group, and his storylines follow accordingly. I never did that to the players based on their class. I think that’s where I really misunderstood DnD.

Speaking of underutilized parts of PC: Animals. I admit, having animals has never really worked seamlessly in any game I’ve played in (Alf has animals in DA RP and Randy has a dog, and we kinda forget them half of the time :D). Ofc it’s player’s responsibility to remember to bring their animal, but I still think I could have given some places to use them. Namely our Paladin’s horse. A lot of stuff happened indoors, most traveling was skipped and when they did travel, it was places where horses really didn’t work. Woops. I did make the ranger’s animal a plot point, maybe 1/3rd of a plot point really. I explained his origins, but it never became really too relevant. More of a time question than anything, I think.

I suck at rewarding my peeps, no ifs no buts. I gave them money, but not really anything to use money on. I threw some magic items at them, bc idk I thought that was what you are supposed to do. I don’t know how much of this has to do with how I play Cahair. I actively work on him having as little money as I possibly can (sharing the extra amount of pay he gets from being an officer with the people he works with, for example), and we are not big on throwing magic items around. Everyone got something after the Nightmare campaign, and even then I didn’t get anything that actually helped, just something that explained in game stuff he could already mechanically do (I did get climbing gloves after the pirate campaign, but that’s about it). That said, I don’t know how much it actually bothered my players, I just know that you’re supposed to fling treasure at your players in DnD, or whatever. I did like the music box Adam gave to Jeff, but like, that was bc there was an actual connection there, so it was kinda meaningful.

Maybe it’s time to talk about connections. There were several NPCs given to me by the players relating to their character. Playing them was always super-stressful, and I think I sometimes read them wrong, started taking them to unexpected direction. Of course throwing players out of the loop about people their characters are supposed to know can be a lot of fun, but if it stops matching the picture players have in their head, well. It’s a thin line to walk on (most notably, Elpidios’ plotline was very stressful, bc I wasn’t sure if it could be resolved).

In my DA game, the PCs are incredibly close. We have a lot of discussion just among those characters, and I, when I GM, try to encourage that to the best of my ability. I never really felt that the PCs here made such a strong connection. There’s several reasons: the fast-paced story that didn’t allow them to stop and get to know each other that closely, the fact that they were sort of thrust together by the plot and they didn’t choose to go on an adventure together and the fact that they were all pretty good guys with similar opinions on things, so no conflict arose.

The lack of conflict among the PCs is a curious thing. It most definitely has to do with the unfocused world-building. In our DA group, we’ve had conflicts over Humbert wanting to put Elspet and Boshara back to the Circle for their own safety. Alf and Cahair bonded over people, both PCs and NPCs, being gross about elves. No such thing existed in my universe. I consciously avoided writing in racism/sexism/homophobia as huge issues in the world, but that left the world devoid of issues. There were the drow and the elven civil war, but it touched really only one of our heroes.

There also, of course, can be personality conflict, and that is an extremely thin line to walk on. I don’t want no asshole chaotic neutrals stealing from the group, or someone bullying the lawful good guy for being, well, good. But some conflicts might have brought people together. That’s definitely a much more touchy subject though, even in our DA group, where I feel frequently displeased that I cannot bring up Cahair’s boyfriend without having a PC who hates him comment on it, or me being worried that since we all tease Humbert, our templar, that the player might feel unwanted.

I definitely definitely do not want to insert conflict where there is none. It should be natural conflict or no conflict. That would have probably come more naturally if our heroes had time to get to know each other and chatter.

Another fact that made me think that I might not have been as encouraging with roleplaying as I want to be, is the PC’s relationships with NPCs. One note on NPCs in general, again, there was way way more of them than necessary, but yeah, relationships. There were some I really enjoyed, namely Adam’s and Jeff’s and Dophina’s and Prince Floyd’s, but again there was not much time to evolve PC-NPC relationships a lot. I did offer chances, which Jeff’s player took a lot in the third act, because the player knows me and my GM’ing style.

There was that first session of the 3rd arc, where I asked PCs to pick someone to talk to. I had done a similar session with the DA crew in Antiva, and it had worked marvelously. In KoNS it didn’t work out as well. I think the biggest problem was that the conversations were different. In the Antiva campaign, each scene we played had an end goal (Humbert wanted to ask Alf for more deciding power in the ship / Boshara wanted to know why Cahair was so upset with her), while a lot of the scenes in the KoNS version were chatting with no particular goal. This leaves a huge pressure of preparation on the player, and I should have been in those cases more attentive in asking the players what they wanted out of the conversations. I’m not saying it was all horrible, but a lot of the conversations kinda sizzled out. There were two conversations that worked out really well. One was between Lir and Lutharin, but that had been a conversation I had wanted to have, to set up Lutharin’s understanding of the differences between surface elves and the drow, I was prepared for the conversation. The other one was between Jeff and Adam, but that was where Jeff’s player had prepared well with what he wanted to discuss (again, he knows me, he was present in Antiva session as well).

I also think it might be unusual and for some a bit awkward, to have a one-on-one conversation between PC and NPC (or two PCs) in front of everyone else. I’ve certainly done those things in secret, because the things I’ve shared with the PC have been plot-relevant. But I think there’s a lot of merit to having non-plot-relevant conversations in front of others. For one, it’s interesting. Second thing, those kind of conversations are gold mines for character development, and if that development happens off-screen for the others, it might be difficult to bring to the table. But maybe that’s just me.

(And I’m not saying I wasn’t awkward playing NPCs at all, mind you. NPCs relating to PCs were always a bit awkward, as were most of the gods, and basically anyone else I hadn’t a clear picture on, which just goes to show I need to limit the number of NPCs)

Anyway, maybe I just didn’t give a clear enough permission to do this sort of thing? I remember feeling very awkward about playing Cahair in the first campaign of our DA game, bc it was a highly emotional story for him, and not for the others, so I felt a little over-the-top at times. And not even a little. But, I told the GM that it might be fun to bring back Harralan, the villain of the first adventure, and Cahair’s first love. Well, she did, on the third adventure, giving my character a chance to have a conversation with him he never got to have in the first adventure. I felt it was a sort of permission for me to roleplay to my heart’s content, and it definitely helped with the awkwardness. I guess we never had a moment like that?

It of course wouldn’t have worked for everyone, and not everyone has to enjoy this kind of stuff. But I enjoy it, and would have liked more. I think Adam’s and Jeff’s third act relationship-growth was really good. I just wished relationships like that were present for everyone throughout the story. Of course, the NPCs kept changing session to session, so that would have been difficult.

Closing thoughts There are a lot of complaining in this piece, because that’s what this piece is about. At the end of the day I still really loved running the game, loved my players and I am proud of the story we build together. I think this is a good place to start working towards better games and better stories. I will take a break from DnD, but when I eventually return to it, I’ll be smarter for having run KoNS.

And that’s it for the most part. I’m gonna go snooze now forever, since I’ve been doing more than enough GM’ing for a while. Except I’m still running an adventure in DA RP, ah well. But yeah, I’m planning on partaking in NaNo, so I don’t have plans on running another long game any time soon.

[thetoptwoinches-blog]

Wales – A look to the future

So Wales did it! They out-battled Ireland and won an incredible test match. I was in the ground and can honestly say that, to a man, I’m chuffed for the players.

Howley had made a bold call by selecting the same 23 as he had against Scotland and – other than a couple changes brought on by injury – the same as against both Italy and England.

As many a fan and pundit has said, his decisions have been ‘vindicated’.  

But, at what cost?

Wales have used 26 players so far in this tournament, and used only 7 others across the entire November period (not a single one of those uncapped).

In fact, as I’m sure many saw (and were equally shocked by) on Scrum V, Wales have only handed out 3 new caps since the 2015 RWC – 4 fewer than Scotland, 9 fewer than England, and a whopping 16 fewer than Ireland.

Giving youth a crack used to be a staple of Warren Gatland’s system (think Prydie, Amos, Robinson, and co.), but since the RWC Quarter-Final defeat almost exactly 18-months ago, Wales have gone more into their shell than ever.

Granted, not every experiment has worked – but that’s the point of an experiment; you devise a hypothesis, you test it, and then you see the results. If one Will Harries-shaped test doesn’t quite work out, another George North-sized one might just do the trick.

It’s through mixing things up and throwing people in the deep end that we learn whether they can swim – or else you could end up with an injury-ravaged squad at a World Cup, and find out that all you’ve got is a bunch underdone back-ups, ready for nothing more than the paddling pool.

So why then, have we been so reluctant to hand caps out to youngsters since the world cup?

Well, Jiffy raised one train of thought during Sunday’s Scrum V: this is a winning business, and the players currently out there are the best ones for the job.

Ok. That could well be true. But, as Gwyn Jones rebutted, there is simply no way of knowing that for sure unless risks are taken and players on the fringes are given a go – at least for more than a token couple of minutes at the end of games.

Second line of thinking: Rob Howley is the Interim Head Coach – it is not his responsibility to aide Warren Gatland’s long-term player growth; it is his role to hold the fort and hope they win matches.

Personally, I think anyone that truly believes this is a fool!

OF COURSE it should be Howley’s job to think about blooding in these players, as he’s the one that has to coach them to the next World Cup. And he must know himself, that at our current rate, he’s at serious risk of working with yet another under-baked squad (from a depth perspective) come World Rugby’s next showpiece event, only 2 and half years away from now.

So, looking forward then. Where and when do we get the low-to-no capped players out on to the park for a chance to get some genuine game time, in test match environments?

Well this summer’s tour of the Pacific Islands should certainly act as a start, and, while Tonga and Samoa aren’t exactly tier-one nations, you best believe that they will both be 100% fired up to smash any and all Welsh youngsters straight back to that paddling pool they came from.

The New Kidz on the Block

So who are these wondrous youngsters set to breathe new life into a stagnating Welsh squad, I hear you ask? Well, I just so happen to have pulled together the following (entirely subjective) list of players, aged 23 and under who could well do just that:

Ospreys

Nicky Smith, 22 – 10 caps

A well-established name at regional level, Smith started the first match of the Six Nations and has deputized well for Rob Evans throughout the rest of the tournament. With Evans pushing hard for a Lions spot, Smith could well be a Wales starter again this summer.

Rory Thornton, 21 – 0 caps

Brought into Wales’ Six Nations training squad, Thornton is still yet to play for the full test team – but the 6 ft 7” lock has already made over 50 Ospreys appearances, and looks nailed on to get his first cap soon.

 Adam Beard, 21 – 0 caps

Having partnered Thornton in the engine room for Ospreys and at Wales u20s level, we’ll hopefully see their partnership start to blossom at international level soon. 6 ft 8” Beard is a Charteris-type lock, with a serious set of maul-stopping telescopic arms on him.

Olly Cracknell, 22 – 0 caps

The Leeds-born, former Wales u20s backrow has kicked on massively at Ospreys this season. He seems equally adept at 6 or 8 and has developed into a hugely destructive tackler and ball carrier. Expecting big things.

Sam Davies, 23 – 5 caps

Well, what else is there to say about Sam Davies at this stage? Is having another superb season for the Os and should have been given much more game time for Wales than he currently has. The former junior world player of the year seems to have the full package as a 10, and should start for Wales this summer

Keelan Giles, 19 – 0 caps

The kid! Giles burst on to the scene last season for the u20s, scoring 5 tries to help them on their way to Grandslam success. He was then brought into the Wales training squad out in New Zealand last summer, and has taken to the professional scene this season like a duck to water, scoring 12 tries in 12 games so far. The lightening-quick wing should have been blooded in the autumn, and should start this summer.

Dafydd Howells, 21 – 1 cap

Made his Wales debut on the Japan tour 4 years ago and has pushed on massively this season, scoring 9 tries in 19 games. Along with Giles, Ospreys have 2 very exciting young wingers and Howells should expect another call up this summer.

Owen Watkin, 20 – 0 caps

I love the look of this lad. He’s strong, fast, and distributes well – basically everything you want from a centre. Playing across 12 and 13 last season, Watkin put in a string of impressive performances in the Pro12, as well as being a key member of the Welsh u20s Grandslam team. A bad knee injury during pre-season means he’s not featured at all this season, but hopefully he can come back smoothly in the very near future.

Kieran Williams, 19 – 0 caps

Neck on the line a bit with this one, as I’ve only seen him play 4 u20s matches. But what a 4 matches they’ve been. Williams has already scored 5 tries this tournament and looks a serious prospect at 12. Like Watkin, he’s strong and quick, and is already being likened to Welsh rugby royalty, Scott Gibbs.

Scarlets

 Steff Evans, 22 – 0 caps

One of many exciting young Welsh back 3 players, Evans may be top of the pile in the Welsh selectors’ minds. He’s already racked up 50 Scarlets caps and has 6 league tries to his name so far this season. A long way from the biggest player in world, Evans is still a tough little nut! Should have been given some game time this Six Nations – near-certain to play this summer.

Rhys Patchell, 23 – 4 caps

How is this guy still only 23?! Patchell made his Cardiff debut in 2011 and he’s been balling away ever since. Can dip in and out of form, and is, at times, guilty of looking for the miracle pass too often, but there’s no doubting his quality. A move to Scarlets this summer has helped him get regular game time at fly half, but a bad injury back in January has somewhat curtailed that progress. If fit, he’s more than likely to travel as back-up 10.

Will Boyde, 22 – 0 caps

Kind of come from nowhere this season, Boyde has become a regular in Scarlets’ dynamic back row. He’s big, strong, good over the ball, and has proved a useful try-scoring threat, to boot. Faces strong competition for places, but could well break into the Wales setup in the next couple years.

Dan Jones, 21 – 0 caps

Was the starting fly half for the Wales u20s Grandslam side, and has deputized superbly for the injured Patchell so far this year. Jones seems to have a good head for managing games (as proved when he masterminded Scarlets 21 point comeback away to Munster) and has a boot as reliable as Leigh Halfpenny’s circa 2013. In my opinion, the 2 other fly halves already listed are still a good bit ahead of him, but with 2 years on both of them, there’s no saying he can’t push them for a spot over the next few years.

Cardiff

 Ellis Jenkins, 23 – 3 caps

A former Wales u20s captain, Jenkins is an all-action jackler, whose already got more than 50 Cardiff Blues caps. Was called up for Wales’ tour to NZ after Lydiate’s injury and made 3 appearances off the bench against the All Blacks. No doubt a talent, but in a crowded position, he could well struggle to break into the Wales setup again.

Tomos Williams, 22 – 0 caps

Opened the season well, starting the first two matches and scoring against Edinburgh. Has, at times, found minutes hard to come by, despite some patchy form from Lloyd Williams, but looks a livewire when he’s on the park. He’s fast, delivers the ball quickly, and generally keeps defenses honest – his only problem is there’s about 10 other scrum halves in Wales that do the same thing. Will probably find his breakthrough hard to come by.

Rhun Williams, 19 – 0 caps

Highly rated young full back, Williams is a key member of the Wales u20s setup, and has also broken his way into the Blues side this season – scoring 4 tries in 8 matches so far. Pacey, got a great step, picks good lines, counters well – he’s definitely got all the makings of a very good 15.

Corey Domachowski, 20 – 0 caps

Only just broken in to the Blues side, this kid looks like he could be the real deal at loose head. A tank of a lad, he recently went toe-to-toe with Munster for 75 minutes and did not look out of place. Wales aren’t blessed with heaps of quality young props, so the earlier we can get this lad exposed to an elite environment, the better.

Dragons

 Hallam Amos, 22 – 11 caps

Broke into the Welsh team when he was about 12 years old and injuries have been the only thing holding him back since. Was the starting winger for the opening 2 world cup games, but a nasty shoulder dislocation in the England match ended his tournament, and he then did the same injury against Australia back in the autumn. Hasn’t played since and will be in a race against time to be ready for the summer, but he’s got a very bright future (if he can stay fit).

Ashton Hewitt, 22 – 0 caps

This lad has been one of the few bright sparks for the Dragons over the last 2 seasons – 7 tries last year and 5 so far this season (not bad going when you consider how little the Drags create chances), Hewitt has got gas to burn and is a very exciting prospect. Was called up to the Six Nations squad, but a return from concussion has resulted in zero playing time. While he is doubtless a talent, he’s competing with a lot of talented wingers, and he’d be below both Giles and Evans in the pecking order, for me.  

Harrison Keddie, 20 – 0 caps

Insanely bright prospect, Keddie – with his barnstorming carrying ability – was the standout performer as Wales’ u20s clinched the Slam last season. He’s progressed to make 16 appearances for the Dragons this season (mostly from the bench), and will surely cement down a starting no. 8 spot in the next year. The u20s championship has been, without doubt, a bit of a red herring in the past, but hopefully Keddie has the long-term quality to prove the exception, rather than the rule.

Tyler Morgan, 21 – 3 caps

Signed a National Dual Contract in 2014, started a World Cup Quarter-Final in 2015, and yet he’s still only 21! Morgan, a little like Amos, has had some bad luck with injuries, but he’s no doubt incredibly talented for his age. I must admit, I’m yet to see him have a game that makes me think “wow, this kid has got it!”, but you don’t receive those kind of accolades, at such a young age, unless you’ve got the potential to be a serious player. Playing in a team like the Dragons isn’t going to help any back’s cause, but hopefully Morgan finds a way of growing to the level expected of him there.

On to the summer…

Much like the summer tour of Japan in 2013, I believe we can expect Wales to take a very inexperienced touring side, with there being a good mix of young players and those that have been on the fringes of selection for a few years. As with the 2013 tour, I’m sure there will also be some more experienced campaigners who – though they may not have a nailed down Wales starting spot – are able to add the on/off-pitch expertise of 1st team regulars (e.g. Samson Lee and my tour captain, Jake Ball).

The only downside of this tour? The lack of a Head Coach that the fringe players can really make an impression on – as, unlike the rest of the home nations’ teams, the Welsh lads will be left with Wales’ 3rd in command to impress. It’s not overly fair on those that have been waiting for their chance, but make an impression, they must!

Have a look at the potential summer tour squad I’ve selected below and let us know if you strongly agree / disagree with any on the list.

Couple notable mentions from those selected:

Ashley Beck – delighted to see him back fit and influencing games for Ospreys week-in-week-out. It seems like an eternity since he’s had a run of games, and with his ball-playing ability at 12, he could well be the man to push Scott Williams for a Wales starting spot in the future.

Thomas Young and James Davies – both been in outstanding form for their clubs all season, but unfortunately they happen to play in arguably Wales’ strongest position. Hopefully both can get a chance to make their debuts this summer and impress forwards coach, McBryde.

And, just as an added bonus, here’s my team to face Tonga on June 17th:

Smith, Dacey, Lee, Thornton, Ball, Cracknell, Young, King; A. Davies, S. Davies, Giles, Beck, Morgan, Evans, Amos

Parry, Gill, Andrews, Hill, J. Davies; Habberfield, Patchell, John

Thoughts and feelings, as always, more than welcome (https://twitter.com/TheT2I)

Lloyd Jones, TT2I

[persondudeman]

My 20 Favorite Albums of 2016

I know I'm late to the whole “end of year list” thing but really I don't think you can make a list of stuff that came out of a year until it's actually over. I see people with the top ten lists in mid December and I'm like, “the year isn't even over yet!” Ramble over, on with the list. 20. Dayshell – Nexus So here's the deal, I was really interested in what Shayley Bourget was going to do after he left Of Mice & Men because he was the only thing that kept me interested in that band. The 2013 self titled album Dayshell showed me that he could make it without his former bandmates and thrive delivering a bunch of fun, raucous rock songs and a few other songs while good in their own right I don't think really fit the style the band was going for and it resulted in a kind of odd reception of what would otherwise be a kick ass album for me. This new album Nexus does away with any of that dissonance and gives us a more cohesive vision of the band's sound. From the opening bass riff in Car Sick, I just have to fucking jam to this album. If you ever see me doing a weird chair wiggle with my earbuds on, odds are that I'm listening to this album. The mood the music gives me is the essence of fuckin' cool. Like, walking down the sidewalk in slo-mo with some sick ass shades on cool. If you're down for that, then get in an open top car, cruise down the highway, and bump the fuck out of this album.     19. Plini – Handmade Cities Plini's been killing it for a hot minute before this debut album with all his trilogy EPs offering up some of that good ass jazzy guitar. The songs on Handmade Cities are just as good as those trilogy songs but without the need of a musical narrative throughline. This is a good establishing album from a guitarist who's fit to be a breakout success. Get on board now because there's already an amazing backcatalog that's sure to get even better. 18. Frost* – Falling Satellites So this is a band I was seriously sleeping on. I legitimately had no idea progressive pop was a thing until I checked out Frost* and their sound is this odd mix of flavors that I really like but I would have never thought of putting together. Essentially it's progressive rock but with a penchant for pop production so you get the cryptic lyricism and scope of prog rock but with a reliance on synth and super glitzy studio effects that by all means shouldn't work but inexplicably does. Jem Godfrey goes HAM on the keys and has a really unique timbre to his voice that colors every track. 17. Mandroid Echostar – Coral Throne I was hype as FUCK for this album to come out. I heard these guys on the EP Citadels and was fucking blown away by the musicianship and passion on display. Their willingness to experiment while not always a 100% success was something I welcome in a band. Once I heard about the new album, I pre-oredered it along with a hoodie that's the coolest thing ever! That said, how is the album? To use a word that's essentially lost all meaning, EPIC. I mean that in the literal sense. Everything on this album is huge! The passionate, booming vocals, the shread-tastic guitar playing, the groovy as fuck bass licks, and the bombastic drums. This album took the experimentation on Citadels and crafted an amazing foundation on which I cannot wait for them to experiment and adapt from. 16. Emarosa – 131 I've been a big fan of this band for a while and even though Versus was a good comeback album for a band who had been on hiatus for the better part of 4 years it felt as though the band was still living in the shadow of Relativity and the self title and that music was good but I couldn't help but want the band to evolve. That's where 131 comes in. From the first notes of Hurt you know this is going to be a different beast entirely than the albums that came before it. Bradley Walden's voice is just fucking dreamy and instrumentally it goes from subdued and ambient to pounding and great. At the risk of starting shit, this album is fit to make you say “Jonny who?”   15. Polyphia – Renaissance There's instrumental bands but then there's Polyphia. In an era of down tuned guitars and five million note solos Polyphia asks the all important question, “can't we have some god damn fun!?” To that end, this new album answers a resounding Fuck Yes. I loved Muse but the overabundance of guest solos and musicians could leave one with the impression that Polyphia wasn't strong enough to stand on their own. Renaissance takes that preconception and kicks it in the fucking face because Polyphia delivers a more cohesive, catchy, and overall fun album. They have technical flair in spades on this album but never is it too atonal or verbose to keep away from the rest of the music. Polyphia has found a winning formula with Renaissance and I can't wait for new material. My only complaint is that after the album's release they made a remix of one of their songs and called it Lit and it was fucking awesome! So now my opinion of the album has changed to it was pretty great but it didn't have Lit on it so fuck!  

14. TTNG – Disappointment Island This is one of those albums I can only listen to once in a while because it is very emotional. Henry Tremain's falsetto is a beautiful haunting deity that pierces my soul and the instrumentation is a light kind of noodley which can be more punishing than the hardest breakdown especially on the track Whatever, Whenever where the strings pluck on after moody disaffection. This section is shorter than the others because I need to be in a very particular mood to listen to this album. If you feel moody and disaffected, put on this album and drift away. 13. Letlive – If I'm the Devil Another band I had been seriously sleeping on. Letlive is normally known for their high intensity fiercely political songs and while I love that and we desperately need voices like that who speak out against political injustices, it was somewhat nice to see them dial it back a little bit and become just a little more personal. I think the intro of the album, I Learned to Love Myself doubles as basically the album's thesis paired with the album title essentially that they have been shaped in a bad way but they're going to love themselves anyway and I think that is a message that needs touting and in the coming years of turmoil, I hope to look to Letlive as a vehicle for change and revolution. 12. Animals As Leaders – The Madness of Many You know how I slagged off noodliness and downtuned guitars in the Polyphia spot? Well, this is different. Animals as Leaders has a way of crafting the densest music that I find pretty accessible. From the opening notes of sitar from Arithmophobia, you know you're in for something you may not fully get your first listen but have an unparalleled appreciation for. While it is less melodious than their last album The Joy of Motion, The Madness of Many offers a lot of great songwriting for those willing to take the dive. 11. The Fall of Troy – OK   Holy shit, The Fall of Troy had an album this year! These guys were on hiatus for 7 fucking years! The likelihood of them making an album at all was astronomically unlikely and the fact that it's so fucking good is a god damn triumph! If you've been missing their particular brand of post hardcore then this is a real treat! Thomas Erak is just as much a guitar god as ever and his voice has aged into a bitter howl that’s fucking intense. Hearing his refined screams and blistering guitar playing is amazing! I'm blown away that even as stripped down as this album is compared to In the Unlikely Event that just three guys can pull of this huge ass sound! 10. Haken – Affinity Affinity is one of those albums where really one song is worth the price of admission. Don't get me wrong, the rest of the album is great too but... 1985. As far as I'm concerned, the album could just be that song and I'd be like, “it was a little short but this album was fantastic!” This album positively oozes 80's synth prog but with a reckless progressive abandon that's quintessentially now that makes it the perfect tribute because you're struck with nostalgia (or if you're as young as me, secondhand nostalgia) for all the good stuff about the 80's like the first 5 80′s Rush albums but coincidentally forget all the shitty stuff about the 80's which happens to be basically everything else from the 80's. I swear the little synth break in the middle of 1985 evokes some kind of emotion in me. I either start crying or get really pumped or have a stupid ass grin on my face or some bizarre combination of the 3 and if you want to experience that too, listen to this album! 9. VOLA – Inmazes With Haken covering 80's synth prog, there's also a great place for electronic elements in modern metal and VOLA showcases that perfectly with Inmazes. It's a bizarre combination of heavy riffage with video gamey synths that works extremely well. I've heard VOLA described as Tears for Fears mixed with Meshuggah and if that sounds like a combination you might like, you need to check this out because odds are you will. Even if it doesn't seem like it will mix, trust me it will. 8.  Three Trapped Tigers – Silent Earthling The fact that I'm putting another instrumental band higher than Animals As Leaders is seen as blasphemy in some circles but you have to believe me when I say that these guys are really that good. They have a really technical approach to synthy music that I haven't really seen anywhere else and are yet again another trio that makes everything sound really big and grand. At times it feels like the Hotline Miami soundtrack but other times it's super bombastic and crazy. The more I say about this album, the less good I get at describing it so I implore you GO LISTEN TO THESE GUYS THEY’RE REALLY GOOD!! 7. Deftones – Gore This album is both crushing and beautiful at the same time with both some of the sludgiest breakdowns I've heard and some of the lightest passages of ambiance. Chino Moreno's voice booms and croons and soars all over the damn place throughout this album and the guitars echo and crunch along with him. It's ultimately an uplifting album by the end but damn does it sink deep into depressions to get us there. If you need to fade away, pick this album up. 6. Balance and Composure – Light We Made Remember Deftones? Well now you don't have to! Okay, that's not quite it but at the same time though, Balance and Composure's latest shares a lot of similarities to Gore with its ambiance and overall melancholy. I was a fan of their previous albums but this new album is almost a complete departure from that style and whereas most bands feel very odd in new territory Balance and Composure seems to thrive. The long stretches of guitar tones and soft ambient vocals layered with light keys is something they've never attempted before but absolutely nail. This is another fade album for those of you who need to fade away.   5. The Dear Hunter – Act V: Hymns With the Devil in Confessional You know how award shows give out awards to actors who recently starred in something that the award show just now recognizes and the award is well deserved but really you know it's for their earlier works and this is kind of penance for all the other better stuff? Okay, well maybe not that specifically but that's my place with The Dear Hunter. I had heard of these guys and checked out a few albums before but this is the year that I really dove into their discography and discovered the treasure trove of gems awaiting me. This isn't to say that the album isn't worth this spot, it totally is. Casey Cescenzo's lyricism is on point as ever with a poetic gravity that makes each bit hit super hard and this album basically went full on musical with songs like The Haves and the Have Naughts I can basically envision taking place on stage. The reason I had that little caveat before this however is that you need to be familiar with The Dear Hunter's previous acts to really get into the album. Granted, the album itself is great, but knowing about the previous acts going in makes it much better.   4. Thank You Scientist – Stranger Heads Prevail None of the people I watch had this album on their top lists and honestly I think they're doing a disservice to themselves. Thank You Scientist dropped one of the most creative, imaginative, and fun releases of the whole fucking year and the so called “critics” didn't do shit! This album is an explosive blast of jazz fusion that's at once technical and crazy but also accessible and catchy. You know what? Instead of me waxing poetically about this album, go check out the song The Amateur Arsonist's Handbook and thank me later. There's a violin solo that's beyond words it's so good! 3. Dance Gavin Dance – Mothership Some of you may know that Dance Gavin Dance is one of my favorite bands and this year they released one of their best albums to date and I'm tempted to say that this is their best album ever. Yes, even better than DBM 1. Where DBM 1 is lightning in a bottle, Mothership is pure cultivated skill over the course of their decade long career. Everyone has never sounded better. Tilian is raw and emotional but still possesses amazing skill and range from screaming along on Chucky Vs. The Giant Tortoise to his soaring over Deception. Jon Mess sounds better than anything he's put to record before with an unparalleled clarity to his screams. Will Swan's guitar playing has been gushed about to death and honestly I can't add anything to it except another glowing appraisal. Matt Mingus' drums are bombastic and crazy but consistent and Tim Feerick's bass provides a much needed spine to the songs. Before I gush myself to death I implore you to listen to this album. Even if you weren't on board with Dance Gavin Dance before, give this a spin because it may make you a fan. 2. Periphery – Periphery III Select Difficulty This is one other instance where one song or in this case, cluster of songs is worth the price of admission. I saw a lot of people turned off by The Price is Wrong's lyricism and I'm hoping that the triple threat of Flatline, Absolomb, and Catch Fire are enough to bring them back. I also see a lot of people wishing that Periphery would go back to their Periphery 1 sound but that's for another time. The fact that this was made right after what I consider their magnum opus Juggernaut and it's still pretty damn good is a miracle in itself. The fact that it's just as good as Juggernaut I can't even fathom. To keep this from just becoming a bunch of gutterances I'll just say please check out this album. If you’re anything like me, the bass line in Absolomb will awaken things in you. 1. Iamthemorning – Lighthouse Technically if we're going by favorites, Periphery would be number 1. However, sometimes I have to forego personal taste and showcase something masterful. Iamthemorning's Lighthouse is a work of genius that needs to be remembered. From the first track I Came Before the Water Part 1, Marjana Semkina graces the ears with her operatic falsetto that I just cannot praise enough and when combined with Gleb Kolyadin's piano work, and a veritable studio orchestra it creates a thing of unbridled beauty. This all culminates in what I think is the best track off the album, the title track where Mariusz Duda shows up and I just fucking die because it's just too beautiful. This is yet another album I can only listen to sometimes. It tells the tale of somebody suffering through mental illness and their suicide. It's very bleak but not without hope. At the end of the album in the liner notes the band has a message that says, “This album is dedicated to the subject of mental illness and we'd like to pass on the message to all the lost souls out there: you are not alone, ever.” I want to take that sentiment with me into the coming years and I hope you do too. Thanks if you read this far. If you want more of this music talk abouty type of thing, tell me.

[abiteofnat]

RUN RUN REINDEER TO DOWNTOWN CHICAGO...

Because we got holiday spirit out the wazooooo in 90% of the restaurants, cafes, bars, and every street along the way. There’s really no way to escape the Christmas trees (or non-denominational holiday foliage?) when you’re walking to and from anywhere between Division Stand Jackson Ave, and forget about avoiding any kind of light strand strewn over/on/through EVERY SURFACE. I personally adore it and let each tiny lightbulb light up my soul, only enhanced by the smile upon my face as the bus displaying “Seasons Greetings” with little terribly animated reindeer pulls up to take me to my Christmas shopping. The bitter cold has arrived, but the holiday cheer is keeping us all toasty. (See what December does to me? I’m unbaked sugar cookie dough, all pale and mushy with comfort and love). 

The best thing besides Chicago’s outdoor city spirit is the effort to decorate the inside of most dining establishments to make everything a little bit warmer and festive. There’s nothing like sitting under a lot of sparkly lights and surrounded by bows, fake snow, and seeing a boozed-up hot chocolate on every menu, but let’s be real- WE GO FOR THE PHOTOS. If you’re an Insta-hoe or a simple mom looking for that xmas card-worthy photo, you want that big ole pimp of a tree sparkling behind your DSLR/iPhone 8. I would consider myself a bit obsessive about this and harbor zero shame- if you’re happy as a clam and feeling that new turtleneck, you use those limited edition backgrounds to your ADVANTAGE and you better WORK. So, where can you find these spots? Good food AND good content? Oh honey. Let me tell you. 

FOR BREAKFAST... 

1. Pierrot Gourmet at The Peninsula  

Ok before you see “Peninsula” and decide this is way too fancy for your typical brekkie, take my word for it- they are all for you rolling up in your leggings and a beanie and ordering their fine ass breakfast at a reasonable price. Pierrot Gourmet is thee more casual-cafe dining option that the hotel houses right on the corner of Rush St and E Superior, which makes it ideal for enjoying a beautiful pastry or omelette and then hopping over to Michigan Ave for some shopping! If you have your family members with you or want to go on a cute breakfast/lunch date on a blustery day, this couldn’t be more perfect. They have lots of *tasteful* holiday decor, cute little windows to sit in and get that sipping-a-cappuccino-and-pondering-life photo, and a cheese + egg flatbread which is DELISH. Oh, and a whole bakery case full of gorgeous cakes & tarts if you’re just looking for a pick-me-up. Super accessibly chic, super delicious. 

FOR LUNCH... 

2. Bub City 

This place offers it all: a refreshing drink or draaank depending how you feel by 1 p.m., lots of lights, and delicious BBQ meals served super casual but NEVER lacking in flavor. Choose from an array of sides like mac & cheese and buffalo tots or charred brussels sprouts and corn off the cob, and then get a big sampler platter for the table! It’s right in River North and takes us to our next location... P.S.- they also have fried pickles!!! 

FOR A GIFT OR A TREAT... 

3. L.A. Burdick Handmade Chocolates 

Looking for a truffle to give you a sugar spike or a gift box so pretty it’s worth shedding a tear? Go to this chocolate boutique and find out just why Starbucks hot chocolate doesn’t cut it when DRINKING CHOCOLATE IS AVAILABLE. Drinking chocolate is super melty, super creamy chocolate served in a petite cup for enjoying leisurely and on-the-spot, and don’t worry- they also serve coffee. Just to chase down all the chocolate because yes, it is RICH. Build a box of unique, indulgent chocolates for a friend or family member out of their wide selection- from raspberry creme to mice made of white chocolate (!!!) you can’t say no to their little ribbon tails. Fancy chocolate on State St.? Sounds like something out of a damn movie.

FOR COFFEE... 

4. 3 Arts Cafe 

I know I KNOW this has appeared on here before, but if you know a more exquisite place to grab a cup of coffee then please let me know. While it’s beautiful any time of year due to being exceptionally built and decorated from corner to corner, during the holidays they pack the lights, fake oak branches, dried fruits, and glittering ornaments in from the lobby all the way to the coffee counter. Even just to take a peek at the glass roof and smell the truffle grilled cheese wafting out of the dining area it’s worth it to grab a shockingly delicious cold brew or hot coffee, and who knows- you may just find that perfect couch and buy yourself the perfect Christmas present. As in the cup of coffee, which you can sip while staring at the perfect couch that costs more than 10 years of rent put together. 

Other honorable mentions: The Ghirardelli Ice Cream & Chocolate Shop on Chestnut St., Leonida’s Chocolate Cafe on Chicago Ave, and the Sunny Side Up coffee shop below the cafe. All have warm specialty drinks as well as a good hot cup o’ joe! 

AND FOR THE FINALE... 

HIGH TEA! There is nothing more festive, fun, and spirited than holiday tea at a hotel tea room downtown. Get on your nicest threads, make 3 p.m. reservations for a lengthy tea/dinner/champagne extravaganza, and just freaking RELAX. Kick back and enjoy Christmastime like it’s the 1920′s. Since my family is all about having a night out on the town and making memories through fun experiences, we’ve had a lot of Christmas Eves at a lot of teas and it’s one of my absolute favorite parts of the year. Each tea room offers an entirely different vibe, variations of tasty tidbits, and a taste of the high life in the shape of a champagne flute, so let me walk you through them! 

1. The Drake Hotel: This hotel is old money all the way, and greets you with a gigantic Christmas tree upon walking in, burgundy, velvet ribbons lacing through all the stairs and handrails, and then the sparkling, silver tea room that is full of real-time carolers and ALWAYS tons of people. This is the classic, Chicago “I AM FANCY” tea that never gets old, so make your reservations! 

2. The Langham: This tea offers a view over the river and of all the tall as heck buildings around it, which makes it feel a little more intimate and “modern.” The treats are also modernized but super yummy, and with white comfy couches and chic, metallic trees in the lobby it’s as enchanting as the first winter snow. I really love this location, and for a sexy & sweet afternoon tea with your love? You gotta go! 

3. The Four Seasons: This is the ideal mix of the first two places. The Four Seasons offers a classic yet updated tea room (with my favorite bar tacked on- dark velvet chairs, my top wine on the menu, little wasabi nuts in crystal bowls... WHO AM I?) and the best tea menu out of them all. They will bring you as many of anything as you want, are incredibly friendly, and it never gets too busy OR too quiet in there. Family tea or dinner before a big show? This is your place. AND THE DECORATIONS ARE GORG. 

Where am I going this year for pre-church high tea you may ask??? That... will be revealed later on! It’s a new location for me as well, which makes it EVEN MORE EXCITING! 

I hope this guide guides you through downtown on a snowy shopping day and keeps your belly warm and your sugar levels high. I really can’t get enough of Chicago during the holidays and I’ll be damned if I don’t document every tree I see. Have a happy, safe holidays and I’ll try to get anotha post out before the real madness begins. 

Until next time, Happy Eating! 

-Natalie