#i just think there's a lot more to be said about the racism in tomb than oh the black guy dies or oh the villains are all nonwhite

[galacticlamps]

I while ago when I was watching Evil, I know I referred to Kemel as the worst racism-driven POC caricature of the era, and now that I’ve gotten to Toberman, I really feel like I should expand upon what I meant by that.

For one, I hadn’t forgotten about Toberman when I said that - in fact, he was exactly who I was thinking of - and I’m not trying to make an argument about which is more offensive (I don’t really think there is a definitive answer to that, nor does trying to rank them in that way achieve anything, what upsets a person upsets a person at the end of the day & that’ll never be the same for everybody) but Toberman’s case is significantly more complicated and less straightforward than Kemel’s, which is why I want to talk about it a little instead of just being like ugh the annoyingly racist 60s.

To just recap what I find so appalling about Kemel: his character comes to us from a historical background - Victorian England - and is first introduced into the story as the hired servant of the human villain, a man who’s more than happy to aid the Daleks in enslaving the whole human race as long as it benefits him personally. In short, he’s exactly the kind of character who both by circumstances & personality, you’d expect to be totally fine with de-humanizing someone like Kemel - so why does the script need to do it as well, by making him mute? Maxtible already doesn’t respect or trust Kemel in any great regard, so he certainly hasn’t given him information that would alter the plot if he could share it with Jamie or Victoria, the other characters he primarily interacts with. In fact, Kemel seems perfectly capable of communicating with & being understood by both of them as well as Maxtible, so his not being able to speak for himself never seems to serve any purpose to the story itself, while it does rob him of one of the most important tools a character on a tv show can have. His overall role, objectifying and degrading though it may be, is understandable in-universe, and even his death on the Dalek planet, where only the 3 main characters are permitted to survive because the story demands both that they live and that everyone else on Skaro, human & Dalek alike, dies, doesn’t feel particularly racially motivated compared to other characters of color who meet similar fates. That’s not to say that having a story-motivated reason would justify treating him worse than the white characters of course, but the lack of one really does seem to emphasize that his muteness is instead the result of active 1960s bbc racism specifically - the writers themselves not seeing anything wrong with making the one character of color literally unable to speak for himself. It’s somewhat easy to single out both the problem there and the would-be solution that doesn’t involve either omitting his character or even changing any major events in the story itself - and with Toberman & Tomb, that’s definitely more complicated, simply because his status as a negative racial stereotype is much more involved in the story in which he appears.

Obviously, I am not about to claim that Tomb is not racist. But it does walk a very strange line with regard to when it’s conscious of that racism - and might even be trying to acknowledge it & make a point about it - vs when it just seems to take it for granted as totally normal & un-noteworthy (and the fact that it never seems to take pick a side of that line is what makes it inconsistent in general, racist for sure, and also very difficult to pick out just the racist parts only from)

As usual with characters like this, the problem with Toberman being treated the way he is, both by characters & the narrative itself, isn't exactly that he's black, but that no one else is - that he represents 100% of the black characters in the serial, and that 100% of the characters in his degrading position & who suffer his horrible fate are in turn black. That none of the 'good guys' or even the neutral characters are people of color of any kind - and that the other villains are also POC - or, I almost want to say, like, POC-coded? Between the complicated racial politics of Europe & the monochrome film though, the literal color of their skin is secondary to the fact that they're very clearly made out as Foreign in general. Which should in itself be considered an oxymoron, if we're being honest - not only because we're on another planet, but because just look at the rest of the (white) team - English, Welsh, American - there is some variety here, a fairly conscious attempt to represent more than just one homogeneous culture - and yet the result is still so blatantly racist.

Part of the story in Tomb is the shock & horror of seeing our first ever converted or partially converted character. Before now, we've seen full Cybermen and even men acting under the Cybermen's control (in the Moonbase) but until Toberman, we aren't faced with seeing a character we knew beforehand go through a transformation that strips them of their free will and turns them partially into a machine, and the first time I watched classic who, I was pretty surprised by that fact, given how that aspect of the Cybermen had always seemed like the creepiest thing about them & their biggest strength as villains. I did not expect to have to wait until their third serial within a year - proof that they were already considered very successful antagonists - before that element was presented in its full horror, and of course it’s no accident that the first time we do see it, it’s Toberman this happens to. The fact that he’s suspicious, large, strong, violent, silent, & obedient make him an unsurprising choice for conversion, someone the plot can use to demonstrate the threat of the Cybermen without asking the audience to stretch their minds too far or re-evaluate their stance on a character’s motivation or trustworthiness. He’s easy to write off, and not that far from what we expect a Cyberman to be like in the first place - which will of course become a plotpoint in itself, when it takes the other characters some time to realize he’s been partially converted.

But of course, at the end of the day, Toberman proves himself not to be anything like the Cybermen. He saves them all, defeats the Cybermen, and does so by overcoming what they’ve done to him. He’s so much more man than machine that it’s seeing his mistress - someone we only now learn must’ve been somewhat important to him personally, more than just an employer or even an oppressor of some kind - killed which breaks him of their conditioning & frees him from their orders. The unsurprise with which we saw him converted is now turned on its head into shock at the twist that this silent giant who we weren’t sure if we’d ever seen really think for himself before is not only capable of it, but so willful that he can break through and personally defeat the Cybermen, while our heroes are able to do little more than cheer him on. That is frankly a pretty ingenious plottwist, and a way of elevating Toberman’s status retroactively - because even if he seem ed like little more than a futuristic slave when the program began, looking at the end, it’s hard to believe Kaftan or Kleig or anyone else could ever’ve made him do anything he didn’t already want. So, was the serial really racist the whole time, or did we just bring racist assumptions to it ourselves because we recognized tropes we’re used to seeing used in racist ways? Is it possible that Toberman’s role in the ending - not only as the hero but as the character who surprised us by being one, now making us re-evaluate everything that came before - is that enough to totally change the verdict on his character? Personally, I don’t think so, but I think it’s worth posing that question in order to really zero in on which parts of the story are an obstacle to that anti-racist reading.

No matter how intentionally the writers meant it, the reveal that Toberman can defeat the Cybermen through his unique combination of strength, willpower, thought, and unsuspecting demeanor does actively play on the fact that the audience presented with this racially polarized group of characters will have seen him in the first few minutes and immediately recognized him as the strongman, the black man who’ll die, the villain’s henchman who doesn’t do anything but carry out orders other people think up & believe in, even if he takes a savage joy in doing harm. For the surprise of the ending to land, in many ways he needs to be that character the audience passed over too quick - dismissed on grounds that were partially racist on their own, and partially a simple recognition of the racist patterns that recur in media. In another context, his heroism & the specific way he achieves it in the end might’ve been a successful critique of the negative assumptions the audience willingly laid onto the character as a result of his race. But it still feels a stretch to say that’s definitely what happens here. Again, the problem isn’t that Toberman is black, or even that he’s black and strong and silent and evil in the first place - he needs to be those things for the audience to be properly surprised when the dismissive attitude those traits had earned him proves to be so wildly incorrect. The problem is that nobody else is, even within a group that’s notably diverse in origin, and even among the villains, he’s given a substandard role.

And that’s what I think is so unsalvageable about the idea, and why it’s impossible to prise the good elements apart from the shitty ones in Tomb - for Toberman to be in control of himself enough to save the day in the end, he must also have been equally on-board with Kaftan & Kelig’s plan at the beginning, rather than an unwilling accomplice or even a victim - but not only does that make him more of a villain & another piece of evidence in support of a moral divide running exactly parallel to the racial divides in the group - it also begs the question of why he isn’t treated by the script & the camera as equally worthy of attention, one in a Trio of Bad Guys and instead secondary to Kaftan & Kleig. Why don’t we know what his views on the Brotherhood of Logicians and the whole plot to ally with the Cybermen are, if he’s also a partner in the evil plan? The character has to be both the racial stereotype viewers expect to see (even if they aren’t particularly comfortable with it) while also being in the inverse of that trope - so the script & the camera must also treat him as secondary, not worth consideration beyond the fact that he is strong, so that there’s nothing in the text or on the screen inhibiting his strength from being used for evil in one scene and good in another. He isn’t allowed to have presence & agency of his own, because even when the characters (Kaftan, Kleig, the Cybermen) have stopped robbing him of it, then the needs of the script step in & start making demands which he’ll need to lack a great deal of specificity to be able to fulfill.

And last but certainly not least, with the story set in the future, what possible in-universe reason is there for the characters in the story never challenging - but instead, supporting - those same racist assumptions the writers are so clear banking on the viewers bringing to the episode, either consciously or unconsciously? Why don’t they ever balk at Toberman’s status as such a silent, obedient servant, other than the fact that it would spoil the ‘surprise’ that we should indeed have considered him his own person all along? Bodyguards might well still exist, but I wouldn’t say Tomb paints the picture of a highly stratified futuristic class system particularly well - and without one, it seems strange that this small party of explorers on an alien world would all default to treating Toberman as secondary when their group is so limited to begin with. He’s not even the only one there who doesn’t really belong, it’s well-established that neither Kaftan nor Kleig have any claim to being there in an archaeological capacity. So why ignore him, write him off as a forgone conclusion? Wouldn’t your default be to treat him like any other member of the team, who doesn’t quite belong there in an official capacity but is anyway? Why treat him as a literal extension of Kaftan herself, who doesn’t think or act on his own? Oh right, the racism. Perhaps if the story had been set in the past instead of the future, that point in the serial would’ve been quite nice indeed - we’d understand why it’s the default for the white members of the party not to pay too much mind to him, and never pause to consider what he might or might not want, whether it’s for them or against them. There would be an element of dramatic irony throughout the script inherent from the fact that the audience knows this is foolish, bizarre, unfair behavior, while the characters limited by the rules of their age’s society could be believably ignorant (or at least acting as such). But of course, if it’s set in the past you can’t have an expedition looking for the Cybermen or villains whose intention it is to use this technology to conquer and enslave the whole human race, to say nothing of the fact that it’s sympathy for Kaftan that breaks Toberman of the Cyberprogramming - he can be her victim, or he can be in control of himself enough to save the day, but not both.

This isn’t really going anywhere except to say that there truly isn’t some hypothetical, 21st century ‘good’ version of Tomb, or some lens of looking at it without the 60s racism, or even a way of distilling that racism down into particular points without which the rest of the serial stands up. There’s no clear way it ‘would be done now’ to achieve all the same clever parts (be it an unexpected plottwist involving an under-appreciated character, or a critique of the audience’s complacency with racist assumptions) that doesn’t also call for major alterations to the rest of the story, plot, and characters, to the point that it all falls apart anyway. However, Toberman is a fascinating character in as much as he appears to be a negative racial stereotype trying to be used for a good, anti-racist point - but unsurprisingly, the story attempting to do that gets caught up in its own contradictions & inconsistencies, failing so spectacularly that it doesn’t stand up to even the lowest level of scrutiny, and betrays the fact that the writers either weren’t overly concerned with the anti-racist implications, only the twist ending they could provide, or they didn’t think that an important enough area to even look into thoroughly enough to see the failings of in the first place.

At the end of the day, you can’t have Tomb without Toberman, and you can’t have a Toberman that doesn’t fit all of the negative racial stereotypes he does, or there’s no point in having him at all, and in turn, no resolution for Tomb. I don’t think there’s anything standing in the way of the case that Tomb might actually have had anti-racism on its radar as a vague, minor goal, likely only because it serviced the larger goals of the plot in general - but there’s also no question about how it failed if that was the plan. In a way, it’s a shockingly sticky cycle that racism has trapped this story in, particularly compared to the preceding serial, in which the most blatant example of real-world racism actually felt tangential and infuriatingly optional, considering how Kemel really had no great need to be mute, and could’ve still fulfilled all his plot- or character-development purposes just the same - better, even - if he’d been allowed to speak. With Toberman you absolutely have to take the good with the bad, whereas Kemel just got needlessly - though tellingly - mistreated by the writing itself.

[dve]

8, 22, 23, 25

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

fork found in kitchen moment but i find the idea of wake being a "bad/abusive" mother to be totally reductive of wake as a character, and the ideas the text is trying to explore. i know that gideon expresses feelings about her mother both pre- and post- realizing that wake is her mother and she was using her as a tool to open up the tomb -- and those feelings are absolutely valid and very real for gideon to have, so i understand that angle of it. but to me, wake was acting more out of furious desperation and determination to see her goals through and having a baby that she says augustine and mercymorn told her to kill and blow the doors open.

I’m sorry, Nonagesimus. I didn’t know what to do. Maybe I should’ve turned and gotten the hell out of there, holed up somewhere to wait until you came back. But I said: “What—about—my mother?” “Excuse me. I am wrong. I should not use that term,” said the necromantic saint. She rolled both her shoulders back and wiped those thin dilute tears of blood off her cheeks. “How she would have hated the word mother.”

[...]

“You sent me out there to kill a baby and open those doors. Whose baby didn’t matter on my end. I carried that thing under my heart … threw up every morning that first trimester … felt it kick … had to induce labour and give birth in a shuttle, alone, knowing by then that Gideon was catching up … Do you know, I gave that thing a nickname, my whole pregnancy? I used to call it Bomb.”

i think wake is living in a world where sentimental feelings towards the baby she's carrying is not an option when it comes down to what she's trying to do and what she's trying to achieve, and even then, when wake shoots mercymorn and says goodbye to gideon that feels very sad to me, and tells me that it isn't nearly as one-note as i think a lot of people wish it were. again: i understand the desire to have it be one note, but the series demands you exercise your brain a little more than that imo.

I didn’t know what to say—Thank you? Is this like round five now? I didn’t have to say anything, because her mouth opened, and the voice was Cytherea’s but the gravelly, hard-as-nails tone wasn’t. “Goodbye,” she said.

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

gideon was the one who saluted harrowhark with his cigarette, not pyrrha! also blood of eden's whole deal. generally i'd love to get a day-in-the-life with pash and aim. + pyrrha's grief for gideon the first that people just sort of brush past when i see her characterized, and how it acts in opposition to camilla and palamedes' whole deal throughout nona. maybe favorite isn't the right word to use for the last one but interesting is.

23. ship you've unwillingly come around to

i genuinely can't think of an answer to this one tbh. maybe pash/nona? but i wasn't ever opposed to pash/nona necessarily, i just find crown/pash or even cam/pash a little more appealing to my tastes.

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

we shouldn't be discussing racism in the fandom and the way characters of color, specifically black characters (i'm thinking of judith + marta + gideon the first + pyrrha-in-gideon's-body) are treated in fandom spaces because tmuir is white / because the empire has somehow liberated itself of the issues of racism and homophobia etc. i think it's a copout for many white fans who are uncomfortable with discussing these things.

choose violence w me

[bookaddict24-7]

REVIEWS OF THE WEEK!

Books I’ve read so far in 2023!

Friend me on Goodreads here to follow my more up to date reading journey for the year!

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132. Garnet Flats by Devney Perry--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

While I really enjoyed this one, I miss that suspenseful mystery that filled the first book and a little bit of the second book. With that being said, however, I LOVED the tension between the characters here and how he has to grovel to win her back.

I'm normally not a fan of second chance romances, but I ate this one up. I couldn't stop reading it and I just wanted to know why he has to win her back in the first place (like, what did you do, dude?)

The twist was a bit...listen, you need to super suspend your disbelief because this was some telenovela twists and turns LOL. But that spice was spicy (definitely spicier than the first book). I know this is probably mid-spice for a lot of seasoned romance readers, but I think there should be a fine balance.

I have started the fourth book, but my brain isn't in the vacation mentality anymore. Will I ever finish it? We will see.

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133. The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb by R.L. Stine--⭐️⭐️

Sigh.

I never read these as a kid and some of these books make me wonder what 10 year-old me would have thought. This one was just...it feels like a misleading book. I don't know why I expected more LOL. The key is to not expect anything.

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134. Broken Promise by Linwood Barclay--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I am convinced that every book this author writes will always throw me for a loop.

I picked this one up knowing it was the first in a series because I accidentally read book four earlier this month or last month. I needed to know what had started it all! Of course, there were allusions to other characters from earlier books, so maybe I will never truly be caught up lol.

This one started with a bunch of characters and I'll admit that I was lost at first, wondering if I was going to enjoy this. Then twists started to pop up and I was hooked. Then one of the bigger twists happened and my jaw dropped. Barclay is one of the only authors that will ever get that reaction from me. His books are like a drug for those twisty turns.

I will definitely be checking out the rest of this series, where I will probably encounter more characters from other books I still haven't read by him.

Also, another thing to note is how well Barclay is setting up the rest of this series--especially with that cliffhanger.

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135. Jude Saves the World by Ronnie Riley--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I am absolutely adoring seeing all of this representation in younger fiction!

I loved the wholesome friendship between Jude and their best friend, and how open they were to someone new who needed companionship and friendship during a hard time. I also think a lot of kids in Jude's position may be able to relate with the difficulty of living with a mask on in order to not offend the family in their life who might not be able to understand the nuances of gender and sexuality.

I think the most important aspect of this book, however, is how Jude uses their voice to give voice to others who might feel voiceless--especially in a community that might not be as open as others when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community. I think it's so important to not only see the kindness and large heart that Jude has, but how they were able to create a community for others of any age who may not have the space to be themselves and speak out about their experiences. It goes to show that age isn't a limit when it comes to wanting to create a space for others.

This was a sweet, oftentimes jarring, and heartfelt story. I loved all of it!

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136. The Getaway by Lamar Giles--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Listen, a good horror book doesn't have to be gory to freak you out. Giles proves this in his novel, THE GETAWAY. Not only did he create a strangely familiar environment (so we could imagine ourselves there), but he also infuses it with some of the worst behaviours and prejudices (read: racism) in our society.

I didn't know what to expect when I went into this book. The cover was incredible, so I'll admit that this was a complete cover buy. The themes inside the book gave me as much chills as the cover, since the racism and prejudices were unflinching. This made me think of GET OUT if it was set in Disney World. Like...creepy af setting with a super disturbing story of white rich people who are living out their wildest dreams in the face of an apocalypse. Also, a perfect and creepy example of "the good ones" stereotype that we so often see when there is a Black family living among the rich white people.

If you're going to jump into this one, and I highly recommend it, be prepared for the TWs. I'm not kidding when I say that the racism is unflinching in this one. There's the unaliving Black people in a horrible but historical way, and so many comments made that it will make you want to take a breather.

Be prepared.

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137. Bad Cree by Jessica Johns--⭐️⭐️⭐️

While this book had some entertaining points, in the end, I found it to be just OK. I was neither disappointed, nor feeling all sorts of ways by the end of the book. I just shrugged because it felt like it was missing something.

I kind of almost feel like I was catfished with this book, in a way. I did appreciate the Indigenous mythology and they monster (because THAT was pretty cool). I also enjoyed the familial relationships. My meh-ness stems from the lack of horror I felt while reading this. Sure, there were one or two creepy moments at the beginning, but by the end of the book, I was just patiently waiting for it to end.

I feel kind of bad because so many of my friends loved it, so I know I'm an outlier here. But I just expected more?

Anyway, I recommend it if you want to dive into a spooky book that isn't really spooky. Also, if you want to read an indigenous story but explores familial bonds and culture (highly recommend it for those parts!). In a way, it made me think a little of EMPIRE OF THE WILD and how that one freaked so many people out, but I just felt meh by the end.

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138. The Visitor by K.A. Applegate--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

After reading the wild twist at the end of the first book, we jump right into the story where the kids are trying to find a way to keep their planet safe. I liked that this one delved into the effects of these aliens taking over the people around them. It also had some pretty heartbreaking moments since the changes are heavily affecting the friend of the mc of this book. (each book changes narrator between the kids in the group).

I will always find it so fun and fascinating seeing their minds when they change into a new animal.

Loving this series so far and also, justice for the one kid whose life changed so much after book one.

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139. Scorpia Rising by Anthony Horowitz--⭐️⭐️⭐️

One step closer to finishing this series!!

I'll be honest, this wasn't my favourite of the collection. While I enjoyed the later action and twists (even though one twist was like a knife to the heart), I wasn't a big fan of how much we saw of the villain's plans. One of the things I really enjoy about this series is how twisty it can be, but in telling us everything that the villains are planning for Alex, it kind of ruined it for me. I like being surprised, not being shown a map of what's going to happen (and then actually going through with it). It made the beginning of the book a little meh and dragged on.

I'm looking forward to the next books, but while I'm not as excited about this one, like I said before, this one had some fun and typical Alex moments--like the villains completely underestimating Alex. I don't know how this kid is still alive.

I AM curious, however, about how the next books will be after that big twist that just destroyed Alex.

Hopefully will read the next one sometime this year lol

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Have you read any of these books? Would you recommend them?

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Happy reading!

[literallymechanical]

Book Recommendations? Book Recommendations!

This is the list of books I've read during the pandemic, and let me tell you, I am doing all sorts of decision paralysis on what I should read next. If any of y'all vibe with these, do you have anything you'd recommend? Other than the obvious sequels. Ideally nothing too YA-ish, right now.

In reverse chronological order: Skyward, Ancillary Justice, A Desolation Called Peace, A Memory Called Empire, Spinning Silver, Empress of Forever, Red Mars, The Priory Of The Orange Tree, This Is How You Lose The Time War, Harrow the Ninth, Gideon the Ninth, Rhythm of War, Dawnshard, The Ruin of Angels, and Four Roads Cross. I've put a little review of each of them under the cut!

Skyward, by Brandon Sanderson, 2018. Your usual story about an outcast, misunderstood teenage girl finding an injured dragon and nursing it back to health, except instead of a dragon it's a starfighter spaceship. Really solid YA scifi with Sanderson's trademark meticulous worldbuilding. An enjoyable read, though much lighter than his usual epic fantasy.

Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie, 2013. Honestly, I didn't enjoy this one. It was pitched as a queer science fiction space opera, but the "queer" bit was gimmicky and falls apart if you think about it, I didn't find the characters interesting, and the plot didn't even try to hide that it was just a list of checkboxes. Felt like a YA novel that refused to admit it. This is the only book on this list that I personally wouldn't recommend. But all my friends seemed to enjoy it, so I might be the odd one out here.

A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkadiy Martine, 2019 and 2021. The first two books in what will presumably be a trilogy, and the best stories I've read in a long time. Twisty political thrillers wrapped up in gorgeous science fiction, and by FAR my favorite books on this list. Vibrant characters with nuanced relationships, scifi worldbuilding that is frankly breathtaking, a captivating story, and an all-around delight to read. Language, identity, colonialism/imperialism, and cultural assimilation are tackled through the lens of scifi. In my opinion, this is what science fiction should be. Also there are lesbians. Above every other book here I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THESE ONES. Martine seriously earned her Hugo Award.

Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik, 2018. Folklore-fantasy about three young women — the daughter of a jewish moneylender, a poor peasant girl from an abusive home, and the daughter of a nobleman who wants to marry her to the Tsar — caught up in a conflict between the Faerie realms, the human world, and something much more sinister than either. Highly recommend, especially if you're jewish.

Empress of Forever, by Max Gladstone, 2019. A fantastical science fiction breakneck-pace adventure romp that puts its foot on the gas in Chapter 2 and doesn't let up. It's also quite explicitly a genderbent retelling of the classic Chinese epic Journey to the West, with more lesbians this time. This book has all kinds of energy, extremely fun characters with more depth than you'd expect, and some bonkers high-concept SF. Highly recommend if you like swashbuckling found-family adventure stories, and wlw romance.

Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson, 1992. Every book, movie, and TV show about colonizing Mars since Red Mars was written owes pretty much everything to this book. It can be a bit dense if you're not up for lengthy (but gorgeous!) descriptions of Martian landscapes, and there are one or two bits where you just have to keep in mind that it was the 90's and this was quite progressive for its day. That being said, I am a sucker for a two-page description of a martian sunset. If crunchy hard-science fiction thrillers (emphasis on the "science") are your thing, I recommend this one. I'll read the sequels (Blue Mars and Green Mars) at some point.

The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon, 2019. The prose and plot read like classic high fantasy, but with a modern eye towards character-driven storytelling. It's not often that you get something that feels so classic and so modern at the same time. Scratches that Lord of the Rings itch, with Queens and dragons and glorious heroes, but queer romance and a heavy focus on character development makes this a modern fantasy classic. Highly recommend if you like doorstopper-length high fantasy, and lesbians.

This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar, 2019. A novella, you can read it in a couple of days — or a single marathon sitting, if you get into it. Gladstone (same author as Empress of Forever) and El-Mohtar take turns writing letters back and forth from time-traveling spies of rival timelines: Red works for the post-singularity mechanical Agency, and Blue fights for the Garden, a post-solarpunk biofuture. Their letters start out as taunts, and gradually change in tone as each develops a grudging respect for her rival. That rivalry blossoms — or compiles — into something deeper. It's emotional and raw, and it cartwheels merrily down the tightrope of fantasy, science fiction, and poetry. Highly recommend, though the flowery prose and gleeful disregard for explaining itself to the audience might be off-putting for some.

Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, 2019 and 2020. I'll let the pull quote from on the cover of Gideon from Charles Stross' review describe these: "Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!" This one is horrifying, and it's funny, but I wouldn't call it comedy-horror. It kind of defies genre, outside the very broadest scope of "science fantasy." Read it if you like lots of gore, graphic violence, madcap humor, and extremely unhealthy, codependent, dysfunctional relationships that are always on the verge of self-destructing into multiple-homicide. Highly recommend.

Rhythm of War and Dawnshard, by Brandon Sanderson, 2020. Rhythm of War is book 4 of the Stormlight Archives, one of several epic fantasy series by Brandon Sanderson. Dawnshard is a novella set between books 3 and 4. This is the same author as Skyward, but intended for a more mature audience. Stormlight is definitely my favorite epic fantasy series, and I've read a lot of epic fantasy. These books have some extremely interesting takes on racism, mental illness, trauma, disability, identity, family, and regret, far more so than pretty much any other high fantasy I've read. The first book is The Way of Kings, and if you like bigass doorstopper multi-book fantasy series, The Stormlight Archives should be at the top of your list.

Four Roads Cross and The Ruin of Angels, by Max Gladstone, 2016 and 2017. While Empress of Forever and Time War were standalone novels, these are books 5 and 6 in Gladstone's Craft Sequence, and they are absolutely brilliant. This is a world where about sixty years ago, humankind went to war with the Gods, and the Gods lost. "Magic" in this world is more or less synonymous with "legal contracts," where you can literally sell your soul to your student loan company and resurrecting a dead god is basically bankruptcy restructuring. "Necromancer" is roughly synonymous with "lawyer." The first five books can be read more-or-less out of order, but I recommend you start with Three Parts Dead. Gladstone is probably my favorite author these days. Everything he writes feel like it could be a poem. Also, once again, lesbians.

I am really not sure why about 2/3 of these books are about lesbians. Like seriously, I went into almost all of these books completely cold. The only ones where I knew ahead of time to expect lesbians were the Locked Tomb books, and The Priory of the Orange Tree. I don't know if this is just because a lot of modern scifi and fantasy has lesbians, or if all my friends who recommend me books are queer, or if it's just a coincidence, but hey, I'm not complaining.

[xadoheandterra]

Series: Semblance Title: Patriciate Fandom: Jak and Daxter Chapters: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | XIII | XIV | XV | XVI Characters: Jak, Daxter, Samos, Keira, Kid!Jak, Ashelin, Torn, Tess Tags: Worldbuilding, Accidentally King of Haven!Jak, hurt/comfort, things go wrong, things get better, things get worse again, slow build, slow burn, slow to update, cross posted, fantasy racism, canon divergence, been meaning to share this here Summary: “It’s yours,” Jak said softly. “Keep it…remember where you come from. At least one of us should remember….”

If Jak knew the consequences of that one, selfish choice…well, he’d probably have made the same decision either way.

​This entire mess is Ashelin's fault, and everyone else is just along for the ride.

“This is a bad idea!” 

Jak paced relentlessly around the room, fingers dug into his hair making the mess that Jak called a style even worse. He pulled a few strands loose, lips pressed thin and dark eco boiling under his skin. Thankfully he’d yet to start sparking, but to Jak just the burn of the eco alone fueled his panic.

“Jak, it’s the only shot we’ve got,” Ashelin said. She sat cross legged on the couch, elbows on her knees.

Jak shook his head sharply, turned on heel, and growled out, “I didn’t think you’d mean something like this!”

From the wall, Torn sighed. He shot a glance to Ashelin, and then to the agitated teenager and shook his head. This conversation wasn’t going as well as the first, and Torn only figured it’d get worse the more Ashelin pressed. Sometimes she didn’t know when to leave well enough alone—Torn couldn’t fault her for it, really, not when she’d grown up with Baron Praxis as a father.

“Ashe,” Torn chimed in as Jak made another turn, growled, pulled out a bit more hair, and sparked with dark eco. Yeah, this was getting worse. “I think you should go.”

“Torn there is still too much we need to talk about, that Jak needs to know,” Ashelin cut in and Torn sighed. She wouldn’t leave unless she got her way, he could see that. He shot another glance to Jak and pushed off from the wall.

Ashelin, you’ll just have to settle for not getting your way for once, Torn though with a sigh, and then grumbled incoherently as he stalked over to her and pulled her up by the arm.

“Torn! What are you doing!?” Ashelin demanded. She tried to pull herself free, but Torn held her fast. His grip bordered on bruising, but for once Torn decided not to be gentle. If Ashelin lashed out at him, so be it. They could grapple it out right there, but if there was anything Torn knew it was that right now Ashelin needed to be out of the room.

“Escorting you out of the room before the shit hits the fan,” Torn said lowly and dragged Ashelin towards the door. She put up a struggle, but not much of one. Torn found himself thankful for that. He didn’t want to find out who would come out on top in a fight. “Let me handle this, Ashe.”

“But—”

“No,” Torn snapped, opened the door, and unceremoniously shoved her out. “I’ll call you when he’s calmed down.” The door slipped shut in Ashelin’s face. Torn waited for a moment; held his breath. Would Ashelin push it? Nothing happened at first, just silence on the other side of the door. Then suddenly Ashelin slammed her fist into the metal; it rang loud enough that Jak jerked with a snarl on his lips, eco sparking around him almost like a cloud.

“I’ll get preparations ready,” Ashelin said sharply. “And next time don’t touch me like that, Commander.”

Torn snorted. “Yes, ma’am.” He waited a moment longer, and then relaxed when he heard Ashelin finally leave. Exhaustedly Torn ran his hand down his face and tried to muster his courage to face Jak. Honestly this entire thing was such a mess, and if it weren’t the fact that the necks of his men were on the line he wouldn’t have even agreed to go along with the crazy plan Ashelin and Samos cooked up.

“Sit down, Jak,” Torn said as he turned around, but Jak didn’t listen. He paced and pulled at his hair in equal measure and Torn wanted to wince at the mess that spiraled out of Jak’s scalp. They had a lot of work ahead of them, and Torn knew it’d be like pulling teeth the entire way.

“This is insane, Torn. You know that!” Jak snarled, and twisted. His eyes were tinged black when he shot a look at Torn.

Torn shook his head. He made a step towards Jak, slow so as not to spook the teenager. “Look, it’s just a suggestion. You don’t have to go through with it if you don’t want to. We can find another way. You still have a choice in this, Jak.” Lying to calm down a berserker, not the brightest of ideas you’ve had there, Torn grimaced.

Jak’s eyes narrowed, and like Torn he could tell the lie when he heard it. Torn kept his face impassive despite the fact that even saying the words made him want to punch himself in the face. There wasn’t another option, and Jak knew it. Torn knew it. The only reason why they were going through this mess was because there wasn’t another option.

After a moment of a stare down between the two, Jak snorted and turned away. He uncoiled a bit, muttered petulantly, “That’s a nice sentiment.”

Torn barked a laugh. “Yeah.”

With that, all of the fight just seemed to leave Jak. He flopped onto the couch, leaned forward until his head was between his legs. Torn never saw the kid before look so defeated. It didn’t sit well with him at all. He forced a calming breath out and took a step, and then another, until he knelt down in front of Jak and poked the kid’s forehead until he looked up.

“I don’t like this as much as you,” Torn said carefully.

“Thanks,” Jak grumbled.

“I don’t like that you’re not really getting a choice,” Torn amended. “It’s…Mar, Jak, this is a shitty situation. If there were any other way….”

“But there isn’t,” Jak sighed. “We’re just…gonna leave it up to fucking luck.”

Torn shook his head. “The Shadow is certain you’re the heir to the House of Mar.”

“I was just some kid he took in off the street,” Jak said back sharply. “I could have found that little trinket you all took as a sign of my supposed heritage.”

“You could have,” Torn agreed, “except that the Shadow said Mar’s Tomb recognized you as the heir.” He watched Jak grimace, and then winced himself. Shit, he shouldn’t have brought up the tomb. Bringing up the tomb brought up the mess afterward and that can of kangarats shouldn’t be touched. Torn shook his head, turned, and sat down with his back against the couch tiredly. “I’m not saying it’s not a shitty damn plan. As far as ideas go this is the worst one I’ve heard yet, but Ashelin’s sure of it, the Shadow’s sure of it…and hell, if it works….”

Jak groaned and dropped his head between his knees again. “I don’t want to think about that.”

“You’d better start thinking about it,” Torn sighed. “Or we’re all fucked.” He paused, then added with exhausted humor, “Hell we were already fucked from the start, planning on placing a goddamn kid on the throne….”

“Was that plan before, or after you were going to send a four year old through the ‘trials of manhood’ that included traps that can kill a person?” Jak quarried dryly. He raised his head to look over at Torn.

Torn shrugged, “Hey, that wasn’t my idea.” He glanced to Jak. “For the record I was against that one.”

“Good to know you have some morals,” Jak rolled his eyes. Torn snorted.

“Yeah, well, the KG fucks with everyone no matter how long you’re in for,” Torn said with bitter humor. He rubbed a hand along his neck and shook his head with a sigh. Next to him Jack massaged his temples.

“How long do I have, Torn?” Jak asked.

“I don’t know. A few hours, maybe?” Torn grimaced. Ashelin wanted to push this whole thing through as fast as possible. They’d only first brought the subject up barely the night before last and since then it’d been a whirlwind of preparations. Jak, thankfully, had been rather amenable in the beginning—at least until he got the full details out of the young Baroness. Then the childish petulance settled in and Torn found himself actually missing Jak’s little rat.

If it weren’t for Jak’s insistence that Daxter spend as much time with Tess—Torn didn’t even want to contemplate whatever Tess was doing with the rat, it made his teeth ache—then Torn was certain he’d be right here. In fact he’d probably be a complete nuisance, but then maybe Jak wouldn’t have been ready to eviscerate Ashelin minutes ago. Or he could have egged Jak on, Torn wasn’t sure which it would be.

Jak groaned and leaned back. “Dax is gonna hate me.”

Torn looked over at the kid in surprise. “What? You mean you haven’t told him?” He thought they shared everything with each other. Hell if he didn’t know better he’d have thought they were something more than whatever it was they were to each other.

“Haven’t really had the chance,” Jak mumbled. “He’s probably worried sick.”

“Shit.”

Torn could feel a migraine coming on. He didn’t look forward to the eventual, ensuing explosion that would happen when Daxter would find out. Mar, this was turning into quite the mess.

“You’re going to give me grey hairs before I’m fucking thirty,” Torn grumbled.

“I thought you were thirty,” Jak quipped back and Torn groaned. At least they were past the petulant stage now, if anything, which meant they could probably get the preparations on the road.

“Knowing Ashelin she’s making sure the council chambers are ready,” Torn groaned and heaved himself up. “She’s already gotten the tailor’s things and they’re in the closet.” Torn gestured haphazardly to the closet. “Which just leaves one thing for us to really work on.”

“I hate those clothes,” Jak grumbled. “Why can’t I just go as I am?”

“Because you look like something dragged out of the sewer,” Torn pointed out.

“I was dragged out of the sewer,” Jak countered with a scowl. It wasn’t a lie, he’d been down hunting metal heads and barricading holes in the sewer system for a few hours earlier.

Torn shrugged. “Up soldier. You need a bath, then you need to get dressed,” and here Torn grimaced, “and apparently I’m now in charge of your hair. For Mar’s sake do you ever brush that mess?”

Jak was quiet for a moment, and then he glanced over to Torn with a sort of sheepish smile. “Dax uh usually does that.”

Torn stared at Jak dumbfounded for a moment, before he sighed irritably. “You, kid, are a pain in my ass.” He scrubbed his face. “Shower. Now.”

“Alright, alright,” Jak grumbled. “I’m going.”

Torn breathed in through his nose as Jak’s fingers, sharpened into fine points but thankfully not into the length of claws they could become, dug into the soft tissue of his upper thighs. He kept his hands on Jak’s hair, tugged and parted stands, and as carefully as he could worked in a de-tangle-r to get better purchase. Throughout the entire endeavor so far Torn had kept up a steady commentary even as his voice grew hoarser and his breathing harder.

“You should seriously think about cutting this all off,” Torn grumbled. He kept his face, his chest—every part of him except his hands and his thighs which let Jak know just how far away Torn was, as far away from Jak as possible. The still slightly bleeding slice across his abdomen had been warning enough the first time he’d gotten to close.

Jak grit his teeth and squeezed Torns thighs with a hissed, “No,” that sounded more guttural and animalistic.

Torn shook his head. “Honestly Jak this is just ridiculous.” Torn wasn’t quite wheezing yet, but he found it to be a near thing.

“Then stop messing with it,” Jak snapped back. His head twitched, which pulled Torn’s hand, which pulled Jak’s hair, which lead to Jak letting out a sharp howl of surprise. Pitch black eyes turned back accusingly at Torn, who jerked his hands free.

“If you’d quit moving this would be over faster!” Torn snapped, hands up to show Jak he didn’t mean harm. “And if you keep firing off that Mar forsaken eco you’re going to ruin your clothes!” For a moment he couldn’t catch his breath, and Jak shot him a concerned look as his voice petered out into a hoarse whisper and a wheeze, but Torn stood firm. He was fine.

Jak huffed; the black didn’t leave his eyes and Mar was it weird to see concern within the black of what everyone called a monster. Jak’s nails didn’t return to normal either, and his skin remained eerily pale. Still Torn found himself capable of once more working on Jak’s hair with a grumbled, raspy sigh even as the teenager shifted—this time thankfully just his body—uncomfortably.

“It sits wrong,” Jak growled. Torn could easily imagine him with a pout, eyes glued down at his clothes.

“Welcome to Haven nobility,” Torn said back sarcastically, voice just a tad stronger, “where everything is impractical.”

Jak whined and his fingers let up from Torn’s thighs. Torn sighed in relief, carefully portioned off another piece of hair, and began the torturous braiding and wrapping process that he’d worked so diligently on since Jak came out of the shower, dressed.

“I feel overbalanced,” Jak whined, and tugged at the channeling ring that previously sat over his chest. Now it settled square in the middle of his waist and took up a good chunk from his hips to his ribs in thick leather.

“Stop that,” Torn swatted Jak’s hands away from his waist absentmindedly. He sucked in a breath and it made a sort of whistle. Shit, Torn winced, but continued as if nothing sounded wrong. “You’ll tear the leather.”

“This is stupid,” Jak said back, and shot him another glance out of the corner of his eye.

“Yeah well if you’d just sit still,” Torn growled in response.

At least Jak didn’t feel like he’d go off on a hair trigger anymore. When they first started Torn honestly feared for his life with how tense the teenager grew with each movement. He didn’t want to think of the reason behind Jak’s automatic, practically instinctual response to being touched in what should have been a fairly platonic manner.

“I’m going to fall on my face if I get up,” Jak complained.

“You didn’t fall on your face once from the bathroom to here, Jak,” Torn grumbled. “You’ll be fine.” He tried to catch his breath, and thankfully it didn’t hurt when he finally did.

Torn portioned off another section of hair and went to work. His fingers moved with long practiced ease through Jak’s locks, and a part of him felt greatly pleased that Jak’s hair was quite clearly designed for the twists and braids. If he’d had hair like Erol’s there would have been more of a problem than a few new scars from clawed fingernails.

“Can’t we just call this thing off?”

“It’s too late for that,” Torn sighed.

Both boys jerked towards the door as it slid open. Ashelin stepped into the room and she looked hurried.

“Torn I—” she lifted her head and then froze, before she sharply shook it once. “We have a problem.”

Jak tensed back up and Torn sighed. Great. Couldn’t anything go just right today?

“Ashe now is not a good time,” Torn growled.

Ashelin placed her hands on her hips and scowled right back at him. “Well I wouldn’t have come in here if you had picked up your communicator soldier.”

Torn pressed his lips thin and focused on Jak’s hair and tried to ignore how stiff Jak was in front of him.

“Get on with it, Ashe,” Torn grumbled, silently noted how Jak’s ears pressed back, and carefully dragged his nails along the section of hair he’d already finished. Jak surprisingly relaxed minutely at the touch.

Ashelin shifted from hip to hip and looked towards the window, her lips pressed thin. She didn’t speak and Torn focused entirely on Jak’s hair which for now seemed to keep Jak for the most part still. He didn’t want a repeat of earlier, especially not when the kid sat between his legs and had already injured him as it was.

“It’s missing,” Ashelin said eventually, her voice practically a whisper.

Torn froze, and then with an extremely hoarse wheeze he said, “What?”

In front of him Jak twisted. He pulled his hair out of Torn’s grasp, reached down for the small respirator that sat attached to his shirt and lifted it up over Torn’s face. Torn shot him a momentary glare—Tess had to have told him to do that, damn her. He could take care of himself! Granted breathing did feel easier with the respirator over his face, but having one of his men—and Jak would be one of his men Mar dammit—take care of him always felt a bit awkward in some respects. Still with a huff Torn took the respirator back and focused onto Ashelin. Jak’s hair was almost done anyway and it’d be better to get this potential mess dealt with first.

We’re going to die. Torn grimaced.

“Ashe, what are you talking about?” the commander questioned.

Ashelin licked her lips. “The seal. The one they use for—it’s gone, Torn. My father must have—I can’t believe I didn’t think of it—” the proud Praxis heiress seemed to deflate almost instantly and Torn wanted to quit everything. Life, the guard, this entire mess.

I need a vacation.

“What do you mean it’s missing, Ashe?” Torn said instead, the words ground together like glass in his throat.

Jak glanced between them. “What’s missing?”

“The artifact that’s used to prove heirs to the House of Mar,” Ashelin explained. “Historically it’s been nothing more than a display really. The line of succession has never really been in question before now. At least not that I know of.” Ashelin turned to Torn. “It’s missing.”

“Praxis had something to do with this?” Jak questioned.

“We don’t know that,” Torn interrupted.

“But it’s something just like my father to do,” Ashelin grimly said.

Torn rolled his head back. He wanted to curse ‘children’ even as he tugged away the respirator, it’s job done for the time being.

“There has to be something else, Ashe,” Torn said. “Anything.”

Ashelin trembled. Dammit Torn wanted to drag her over to the bed and wrap her in his arms, she was Mar damned trembling. Ashelin didn’t tremble. Torn dragged his hand down his face and waited, ears primed to hear what she would say.

“It was the only option we had left,” Ashelin’s words were a whisper. Torn spat out a curse so sudden that Jak jolted and tumbled off the bed. Ashelin, over by the door, snorted faintly at the site. Jak merely lifted up one of his middle fingers in response as he pushed himself up with a huff.

“I told you I’d overbalance,” Jak said to Torn.

“Why was it the only option?” Torn questioned. “Aren’t there other artifacts from Mar’s era laying around the city somewhere?”

Jak huffed from the ground, rolled his eyes, and pulled himself up to his knees as Torn and Ashelin talked. Torn wanted to tell the kid to shut up for a moment, that this was serious, but he held himself back. Jak had finally relaxed enough that his eyes were back to normal and even though he looked a little silly, clothes rumpled and hair half done, this conversation was just as important as Jak’s wellbeing.

“Any other artifacts have been missing since before I was either born, or,” Ashelin shrugged. “The only other two I can think of are the Heart of Mar or the Ruby Key, but both disappeared when I was a child.”

Jak, now on his feet, rubbed nervously at the back of his head. “Uh, I know where the Ruby Key is.”

In unison Torn and Ashelin turned, voices practically echoing, “You do?!”

Jak coughed. “Yeah uh…let me call Dax.”

“The rat has it?” Torn wanted to scream.

“No, Tess has it locked up,” Jak snapped back. “Which was Daxter’s idea.”

“How did you get it?” Ashelin demanded. “Where was it? When did you—”

Torn slipped off the bed, around Jak—he slipped his comm into Jak’s hands as he did so—and more gently than earlier grabbed Ashelin and pulled her out of the room.

“Question him on it later,” Torn said under his breath. “The kid’s under a lot of pressure as it is.”

“He’s under a lot of pressure?” Ashelin hissed. “I’m the one trying to make sure you all live!”

Torn sighed. “Ashe. Not now,” he said sharply. “Just…stall. I will call you.”

Ashelin stared up at him, huffed, and stormed from the room. Torn closed his eyes and knew that would just bite him in the ass later.

Daxter lounged on the bar, behind the lip where Tess mixed drinks for the Naughty Ottsel’s patronage. Ever since Jak waltzed in, told Daxter to spend the day with Tess and that he’d handle anything Torn threw at them himself, and then waltzed back out the ottsel moped. Occasionally he’d grab a bottle and drink from it until there wasn’t anything left, but for the most part he just stared at the acohol in melancholy 

“Jak jus’ don’ do this, Tessy,” Daxter moaned again. His eyes remained firmly on the head of Kor that nestled above the mirror.

“I know shnookims,” Tess cooed back, “but maybe he just wants you to get your hero’s reward after all the work you’ve done?”

“Yeah…ya th’ bes’ babe,” Daxter mumbled and rolled over. He grabbed a bottle and pulled out the cork and took a swig.

“Anything for my darling,” Tess said back and scratched behind Daxter’s ears in just the right spot to make him feel better.

They lapsed back into silence with Tess serving drinks and Daxter focused on the bottle between his hands—paws? He still wasn’t used to the whole ottsel thing even if it’d been almost three years now. Oh he certainly found himself better with the transformation now, more comfortable in his skin than he’d been when it first happened, but that didn’t mean Daxter didn’t miss being tall and elfin, or even the buck teeth. Precursors did Daxter miss having his buck teeth. He never expected to miss that part of himself at all.

“It’s jus’,” Daxter began again after Tess shoed a patron over to one of the booths. “It’s jus’ Jak’s not been ‘round since th’ party, y’know? An’, an’ that s’not like ‘im.”

“Maybe Jak’s taking a break, too,” Tess pointed out cheerfully. “It has to be busy work being your sidekick, right?”

“Yeah! Definitely!” Daxter replied. He almost knocked the bottle over, but stopped himself before he could. It’d be a waste of perfectly good alcohol. Tess scratched behind his ears again, and once more they lapsed into silence between them.

Daxter liked that he and Tess could just coexist like this when it came down to the wire. They flirted, they enjoyed each other’s company, and then they could just be with one another. It felt like a slice of home that Daxter sorely missed—now if only he could get rid of the ottsel shape then everything would be absolutely perfect!

Behind the counter Tess’ Underground communicator began to go off. She said to Daxter distractedly, “Can you get that whiskerpuss?”

“Sure Tessy-baby!” Daxter nodded once, set the bottle down, and hopped off the counter. He furrowed his way underneath the bar and found the small device. He scowled when he saw the idea. “Ugh, what does the Tattooed Wonder want now?” Daxter grumbled but quickly smashed the button to answer the call. “Whaddya wa—”

“Oh thank the precursors, Dax!” Jak’s voice came through loud and clear, and Daxter paused.

“JAAAAAAAAK!” Daxter yelled and suddenly had the communicator in a death grip. Any vestiges of alcohol induced haze left him immediately. “Where the hell have you been?” Daxter quickly launched into a full tirade, berating Jak for leaving him behind while alternatively demanding to know if he was okay and just where the hell had he gotten his skinny ass to.

On the line Jak sighed. He let Daxter go off for a little bit before he started to interject. Jak’s voice steadily raised higher and higher, repeating a mantra of “Dax,” with the hope of getting the ottsel to shut up.

“DAX!” Jak snapped in the end.

“WHAT?!” Daxter yelled back.

“TAKE IT OUT BACK BOYS!” Tess followed the raised voices and quickly shoed Daxter out from the front room of the bar. Daxter put on a show of beleaguered acceptance until the door swung shut behind him, both Jak and himself silent after Tess’ reprimand.

There was a moment as the door slipped shut and the hum of the Naughty Ottsel faded before Jak mumbled, “Tess is scary.”

“Damn straight!” Daxter cheered. “That’s my girl!” Jak laughed faintly on the other end. “Now what did you want from the great Orange Lightning,” Daxter drawled out. His voice hit the familiar, low raised pitch that reminded both teens of better days.

“Let’s go back and see the geologist,” Daxter drawled out in Jak’s ear, and Jaked huffed a laugh back.

“I need you to get the key and bring it up to the Palace, Dax,” Jak said. Daxter jerked out of fond memories with a blink of surprise. He stared for a moment at the communicator, as if it had betrayed him, certain he’d heard wrong. “Dax? Hello?”

Daxter squeaked, “The Palace?!”

“Yeah that’s what I—”

“What the HELL are you doing at the fricken Palace Jak!?” Daxter shrieked.

“Look I’ll explain later,” Jak said quickly. “Just…can you get the key and bring it here? Please? Ashelin will meet you at the entrance.”

“Nuh uh, not until you explain your ass here buddy!” Daxter shook his head rapidly. “I’m not doing a thing until I get my answers!”

Jak huffed, and then growled a short, “Dax. Please.”

For a moment Daxter didn’t say anything, and then he sighed. “Fine, but I’m not givin’ the key to Ashelin! She’ll jus’ hafta escort me up to you where ya can explain away.”

“Dax…” Jak didn’t quite whine, but it was a damn near thing. Daxter quirked a smile. Oh yeah, he almost had him where he wanted him.

“No way buddy. Do it my way or don’t do it at all!”

For a moment Jak didn’t say anything. Not a peep came through the communicator. Daxter leaned back against the wall, a smug smile across his face. He could already tell what Jak was thinking. He knew the blond as well as he knew himself, and what he knew was that Jak’s little brain right now just happened to be racing through the multiple ways he could attempt to wheedle Daxter into doing what he wanted. Then Jak would remember the ways Daxter would counter Jak’s wheedling and how, ultimately, Jak would give in.

“…fine,” Jak murmured, “but Dax? Be nice.”

“Oh you don’t have to worry about me, baby,” Daxter laughed. “I’ll be on my best behavior.”

“….that’s what I’m afraid of.”

[katerynree]

Blog Post 10/14

1.       Is gender a social construct? Why is this a problem?

Yes, I do believe that gender, just like race, is a social construct created by people’s societal expectations. There are so many examples of why this idea of “gender” is toxic. For example, a girl wanting to dress “boyish” or act like a “boy” makes her a “tomboy”, instead of it just being a girl who wants to do what she wants. Or a boy doing “girly” things makes him a “f**got”. Or being a transgender or nonbinary (also many gender terms that I haven’t taken the time to list) is so harmful to people because these people believe that there are only two genders, female or male and you can only be the gender you were born to be. The problem with gender being so widely important to people is that it is invalidating people who do not follow the template of being a “girl” or “boy, “woman” or “man”. The idea of a gender was created by the people, and anyone who goes against that is automatically shamed for it or made fun of and it has to stop.

2.       How is gender being used to advertise products?

The biggest use of gender for advertising would be in videogames. Games such as League of Legends, Overwatch, Tomb Raider, and many more oversexualize women in hopes of getting more men to play. These games made avatars as women with big breasts, skimpy clothing, skin-tight suits, etc., sexualizing women and putting them on display in hopes of bringing in more players. Maybe their intentions were not to sexualize women, but it is hard to believe that when they come out with characters that follow the descriptions I have listed. Take Tomb Raider for example. The whole premise of the game was to show that Lara Croft was a strong woman, but they gave her big boobs stretching out her shirt and short shorts that would definitely not be good to wear when in action.

3.       What is the importance of online usernames?

Online usernames can sometimes reflect the users themselves. Whether it be their actual name, a show or game they like, or anything in general that the user may have in their life/personality. Take Daniels’ article for example. Men in white supremacist groups choose a name for themselves reflecting how they think about themselves. “Heroes” and “martyrs” they call themselves, so they obviously want a screen name saying just that. The article even said that research shows that screen names for men and women tend to follow the societal construct of gender, showing their sexuality or gender identity.

4.       How does O’Riordan’s “Gender, Technology, and Visual Cyberculture” relate to Ow’s “The revenge of they Yellowfaced Cyborg Terminator…”?

I am sure we all remember Ow’s article about the videogame “Shadow Warrior” and its blatant disrespect towards women. Both O’Riordan and Ow’s articles have shown that videogames or digital media platforms may sometimes oversexualize women in hopes of gaining more of an audience. I have noticed that there are certain categories that a lot of male gamers tend to go for such as: “sexy women characters”, action, and nasty comments towards women.

Daniels, J. (2009). Gender, White Supremacy, and the Internet. Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights (pp. 61-86). Rowman & Littlefield.

Haraway, D. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (pp. 149-181). Routledge.

O’Riordan, K. (2006). Gender, Technology, and Visual Cyberculture. Critical Cyberculture Studies (pp. 243-252). New York University Press.

[iztarshi]

Boatswain’s Call

In which I reread the episode and, despite how much I love him, will probably wind up dragging Peter Lukas.

Why is Peter drinking black coffee in a seedy bar? It does serve black coffee so he can’t be the only one, but still.

Even by those standards he was very pale, weirdly so for someone who apparently lived their life on the sea.

This could be a Spooky Lukas Thing, or it could be because Peter never comes out of his cabin.

His eyes only moved a fraction of an inch to focus on me, but it felt as though the movement had the weight of a heavy stone door. Like a tomb. Don’t know why that’s what popped into my head, but there you go. I asked if he was Peter Lukas, and he said, “Yes”. I’d gone blank on what to say next, and it was then that I noticed the silence. I looked around to see that the place was now completely empty.

Spooky! Also really funny once you know Peter, although it probably does feel like stone doors and tombs to have someone suddenly focus on you while connected to the Lonely.

He seems to drag them halfway into the Lonely, which might be because he doesn’t want this conversation overheard, or might just be that she startled him while he was having a quiet coffee and not paying attention to his surroundings.

He’s much less talkative than with Martin, but he always initiates social contact with Martin, so I think we see him there having actively prepared to be “on”.

Tadeas Dahl is very interesting. Presumably that’s a fake name, because Peter decided to be weird about names, but he’s someone who almost fades into the background of a “Lukas statement” despite doing 90% of the work in it. He’s the one who both carries and uses the Boatswain’s Call. Normally contact with an artefact for that length of time either messes someone up or converts them into an avatar eventually, but he appears to not threaten the Lukas monopoly on the Lonely, or at least he doesn’t automatically spook people the way Peter does.

It was like they were doing everything in their power not to think about each other. It took me less than a day of ignored hellos and grunted answers before I fell into line, becoming just as quiet as my crewmates.

This seems to be a reaction to what they’re about to do, but they don’t just avoid the new crew members who are likely to be sacrificed, but others too. Later someone says it “wasn’t an easy choice”, implying they may vote (rather than Peter choosing), meaning it’s possible any of them could be in danger even if it’s nearly always the new crew members.

The only person who spoke was Tadeas Dahl. The mate would walk among the crew, giving instructions and orders in a dozen different languages, as the crew scrambled to carry out his commands. He was just as composed as he had been when I met him, and it soon became clear that, if he had emotions, he kept a tight wrap on them.

He’s clearly a very useful person, since I am very sure Peter only speaks English. Not to mention that Peter doesn’t actually run the ship anyway. Tadeas seems to be the Martin of the Tundra, the one who actually knows how to do the job that Peter has officially. But it does make me wonder about his relationship with Peter -- Peter lumps him in with the crew as “loyal to my money” but Peter also lumps Simon -- who is visibly fond of him -- in with avatars who can’t be bothered to murder him. So I don’t necessarily take his word for it.

I didn’t see Captain Lukas at all that first week. I only knew he was onboard because every meal time the cooks would hand a tray of food to the mate, who’d take it up to the captain’s cabin.

See? Not doing his job.

Also, as @odetoviscera pointed out to me, Tadeas feeds Peter both physically and metaphysically.

Which made me think, because the only other place we see that relationship is Eugene making candles for Agnes. It’s clear you can feed an avatar on someone else’s work, but it’s very rare.

I’m hoping for Tadeas to turn up in season 5, tbh.

There was one crewmember who did catch my eye. He was a young guy, white and, from what I could tell, Scottish.

Does Peter specifically eat white people?? With a crew implied to be heavily multi-racial heading out from a port in Brazil, he’s somehow picked up two white people from the UK as potential snacks.

Then there’s the racial profiling of the Silence Tower Block.

If this is racism it’s a really weird form of it.

From a distance it looked fine, new paint shining in the sun, but looking closer I saw that it had rusted all the way through. Not just that, but checking out where the rod connected to the container, it became clear that they had rusted together.

Peter, WHY!?

Why on multiple levels at that.

First he’s travelling cargo routes with a full crew, it would take nearly no extra effort to ship cargo.

Second, he can take the time to have someone paint over it but not to get new containers? Or clean up the rust?

Is this just his aesthetic?

I like that the lifeboats are not the lumpy orange modern ones. First, those actually would be more awkward to get in and out of regularly. Second, they would definitely ruin the aesthetic.

The only time Peter turns up and it’s to get in the lifeboat with the rest of them. Is his presence actually necessary? Does he just want to be there? Is the Boatswain’s Call powerful enough it would actually be a bad idea for him to remain?

I have never heard a whistle sound like that. It was shrill, so high and piercing that I felt my hair stand on end, but it also seemed distant. Like I was hearing it from far, far away. I don’t know how long he blew that boatswain’s call for, but by the end, I realised we were surrounded by thick sea smoke. We should have far too far south for it, but it rolled and billowed around the lifeboat, obscuring the Tundra.

The Boatswain’s Call is really complete overkill for what it’s used for? It engulfs the ship in order to throw one person into the Lonely, something Peter can do on his own without disturbing people in the next office.

I suppose the spookiness and the fear it spreads among the crew are also ends in themselves.

No-one said a word, but I could have sworn a few of my shipmates were crying.

Peter says in his statement that his crew have no qualms about what they do. Which is either him being extremely unobservant or lying to himself (I doubt he can lie to Jon at that point) given that some of them are crying here.

I don’t know how he feels about it either. He seems to have no trouble throwing people into the Lonely, either physically or emotionally, when he’s working at the Archives. But here he seems to prefer to have as little to do with any of it as possible. He’s just sort of there while it happens.

Possibly he’s just lazy and/or depressed, because “not doing anything” seems to be Peter’s default state.

After that night, the atmosphere on board changed. People talked, and you’d occasionally hear actual laughter on board. Games were played, people drank, and there was this sense of relief to it all.

It might just be a relief once you’re not waiting to commit murder? It doesn’t seem like it’s a Lonely ship, though. The crew are probably lonely, isolated by what they do, but they only act unwilling to socialise while waiting for the ritual to happen.

I didn’t even think about my pay until it came through a couple of days later: twenty-five thousand pounds. For barely two weeks work. I don’t mind telling you, it was almost enough to tempt me back.

Does Peter just have infinite funds? No one in his family seems to care how he spends their money, and he never makes any.

Solus Shipping PLC, a company founded and majority owned by Nathaniel Lukas.

Did Nathaniel found a shipping company just so the family heirloom can get some use? Or does he actually ship things on other ships? Or is Peter not the only Lukas out there on a boat?

The Lukases funding the Magnus institute is also interesting, although this statement isn’t the first time we hear about it. A lot of their pull -- and a lot of what Peter is implied to use to carry out his deal with Martin -- is more to do with them funding other avatars than being dangerous to them. Both money and favours get traded a lot, and of course for Peter there’s gambling.

Even though the official crew manifest for the Tundra has remained the same for the last ten years.

Obviously the immediate implication here is that Peter doesn’t register people he’s going to eat as crew. But I also wonder whether ten years ago marks when he went back to sea after the Silence.

[isagrimorie]

@glompcat replied to your post “Eleven really was so weirdly sexual in 7B. Just saw a post in twitter...”

ngl, that was a huge part of why I had originally quit the show during Eleven's run. I was only able to finish it (or start Twelve's at all) when I was trying to catch up to be ready for Thirteen (Eleven's erection joke about watching Jenny fight, after kissing her - someone he knows is in a relationship, is gay in a time period where that guarantees a lifetime of violence, and who he claims is his friend - is, for me, probably one of worst things the Doctor has done)

Oh god. The erection joke with Jenny. I keep forgetting/actively trying to forget that because, wow. I don’t know if Gatiss wrote that Sonic/erection joke in, or Matt Smith improv’d that (also this is why I thought it was ridiculous whe people were scandalized that Thirteen’s screwdriver looked like a sex toy when writers have explicitly used the sonic as the Doctor’s dick metaphor for a while now...). From what I heard Eleven kissing Jenny was something Smith improvised. 

7B really did seem like Eleven escalated being sexual especially with and around Clara. 

I want to clarify that my impression of that scene in The Crimson Horror is influenced by own history with straight guy friends enacting violence on me, and that now that I've seen the entire series I'd place that scene with others like Four's racism in Talons of Weng-Chiang or the TARDIS not being able to translate indigenous languages in Four to Doomsday and the treatment Toberman in Tomb of the Cybermen and so forth in terms of just... huge mistakes.

(sorry to keep clarifying? I think I sounded judge-yer than I meant) For me it was also a function of... I had only seen the New Series, which def. has its problems but as a teen watching it I didn't register a lot of what was going on. That joke came on the heels of the Doctor being built up as being flawless, and then suddenly not only is he making sexual jokes all the time, he is evoking a real fear of mine It also, to my eye in subsequent rewatches, seemed to convey the message that Jenny and Vastra's marriage wasn't ~real~ but rather the lynchpin of some massive joke. I suppose what I am saying is that Moffat really needed sensitivity viewers. Someone to tell him that a lot of his "jokes" (for example the way Twelve treated Danny - especially when there was a Classic ep about the Brig becoming a math teacher after he left UNIT) really were not landing the way he intended.

Oh, I agree. I’ve learned to like Moffat and understand his weaknesses in writing but I’m still very aware where he fails, the need for sensitivity viewers was one of them. It’s why I liked there’s a writer’s room type in the current series because it means more diverse points of views, not that it’s perfect there were still missteps (looking at what happened to Grace). 

I was bewildered when I returned to the show in 7B at how sexual Eleven’s gotten.  

And yeah, Twelve being condescending and calling Danny ‘PE’ when he’s said several times he was a math teacher... that put me off and one of the reasons why I stopped watching too. Like, I know Moffat intended to show that Twelve has problems with soldiers because he was working through his own issues but a lot of the soldiers s8 casted were people of color. 

And then Twelve being mean to Courtney was the last straw. The optics were not great.  

Toberman in Tomb of the Cybermen 

I haven’t watched Talons of Weng Chiang and I don’t know if I will but the first time I watched Tomb of the Cybermen, I was put off. Everyone kept talking up ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’ and from the lists that I saw how it was such a classic, people failed to mention how racist it was and how poorly it treated its one black character. 

Then, it doesn’t help that Doctor Who had so few black characters in its 50 year history and majority of them were killed and converted. 

I hope s12 will subvert that hard. 

[idk-loving-kpop]

FYI SUPER LONG POST!  You have be warn, but still show it some love. okay!

OKAY!!! Super excited!!! Cause 1 this is the LAST ONE I have before I open my ships again. 2 I LOVE doing my “triple threats” with BTS. Okay cause after Super Junior, BTS is my bias group (no thanks to my friend who ask me to go to their concert, literally I went to their concert & became a fan of them because I saw them live.)  

This person sent me the request via messaging ... She requested Selca, Written & Astrology.

When people request all 3 ships this is how I do them.

1st : Selca - To me easiest ones you can do. I base it on looks & vibe.

2nd: Written - How person describes his/herself looks & personalities.  The more details the better. JUST DON’T START WRITING YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY. *lol*

3rd: Astrology -  This take me the longest to do because especially if I have to compare DOB.  And I have to check astrology signs for the members, which at this point I have some memorized, but some I don’t. 

----------------------------- LET US BEGIN  -----------------------------

DOB: DAY/MONTH/YEAR

I'm 5'4, slim thick/hourglass figure (a uk size 8 but my breast are +DD and my waist is 24 inches so it gets hidden by my boobs a lot which is honestly kind of annoying), I have brown eyes, and naturally dark brown hair buts its bleached platinum blonde and its shoulder length.

I am a ambivert. I can be outgoing when a want but its usually around people i'm comfortable around or familiar surroundings. but I can also be quite withdrawn and shy especially around someone I like. I have social anxiety which makes me a lot more quiet around new people or in situations which involve public speaking (I even start shaking because my anxiety levels spike so high). I love music and am always singing. I can't dance but I really love dancing and at one point wanted to be a dancer but I never really got a chance to take any lessons or anything so...yeah. I'm a creative person so I enjoy art such as drawing and painting when I feel motivated to. I love love love reading my favourite book is probably The hobbit by Tolkien. tbh i'm interested in anything that tickles my fancy. I'm a huge nerd! Anime, memes, vines, manga, video games I love it all. My fave video games are interactive ones like Tomb Raider, Outlast, Uncharted, Dead Space, etc. I'm studying History and Archaeology at Uni and museums are my second home. Although I am quite soft spoken and kind hearted (I literally cry if something on tv is heart-warming or sad like if a dad and his son have a heart to heart and hug or something) BUT I am also outspoken. My BS meter is low so if someone is chatting shit about something i don't agree with such a racism. sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, men staring or harassing women or girl, etc I have to say something. I just can't sit there and let it be. I am quite outdoorsy I love working out, running, martial arts, football, etc. I grew up going football club and taking karate and MMA so I've always been pretty active. also lowkey i'm a huge tree-hugger (literally and mentally) I once bumped into a tree and hugged it and said sorry....I studied Geography in High school and sixth form so i'm very passionate about the environment, animals, etc. P.S. I LOOOVE ANIMALS mainly cats overall I am a huge sucker for animals. I'm also a older sibling so i'm quite protective of the ones I love and literally would do anything for them or to protect them. I have insomnia so i'm a night owl but I've always been like that I usually only sleep for about 4-5 hours and i'm good to go. I love having deep conversations late at night with my sister, thinking about trippy things like what the meaning of life is and if aliens exist or if planet of the apes actually happened and what would we do? I also really enjoy movies; mainly horror movies even though they scare the shit out of me, I still watch them. Also i'm all about girls supporting girls. Girl power all the way. I also south Asian so desi culture is also very important and very prominent in the way I behave. I usually speak a mixture of Urdu and English in my sentences as opposed to just speaking one language at a time. I really love languages so i'm also learning Korean and i'm studying latin at Uni. i think that's all.....i'm pretty sure i left something out but it feels like I've been typing for years so i'm going to stop now...soz if this is a lot. also i wrote this as fast as i can so i apologise for the spelling and grammar mistakes

Damn ... I didn’t know how much you wrote until I copied & pasted on the post . *lol* ... It didn’t seem that long when I was reading it.  Ok, so I put in bold stuff that stood out to me ok.  

FYI shout to all the girls w/ big boob problems ... I have the same issue it is really annoying.  I joke w/ my friend all the time that I would give her half of my boobs / body fat cause she is skinny a flat . *lmao*

I can’t help myself so I will make some comments ... I am the same way, I can’t sing or dance (even though I am Latina) but I do it anyways because ever sine I was little I love music & boy groups. So I will keep on doing me. I have a great work environment that we do that at work sometimes too. I’m not a talented in the arts what so ever. But I have always loved and appreciated them. 

That is so interesting that you are studying that in Uni. History has always been my favorite subject, quiet a nerd when it comes to almost got a perfect score on my state test when I was in school (fyi I hated school but I liked learning). Not many people study that in Uni/College. 

The tree incident made me laugh so much ... Again your not alone cause I sure do have a picture when I was on a high school trip of me hugging a tree. *lmao* 

The meaning of life, is different for everyone.  We can’t have functioning society without everyone doing their own part.  Everyone life means something, no life is great than another life. 

Aliens do exist.  Our universe is so big for just the human race to exist. Also I grew up watching Star Trek and I like watching Doctor Who. 

If planets of the apes happen I would die.

When I read “girl power” literally said it like Spice Girls with the peace sign & everything …

Okay I will shut up now & get to the ships …

Western Sign:  Pisces    Eastern Sign: Tiger “Ideal” Partners for Pisces: Cancer and Scorpio “Ideal” Partners for Tiger: Horse and Dog

BTS Selca – JHope (Aquarius / Dog)

BTS Written – RM (Virgo / Dog)

BTS Astrology – Suga (Pisces / Rooster)

Western – Suga

Eastern – RM & Jhope

 Comparing DOB Suga matched better, followed by Hobi a close second and then Namjoon.  

 Shout out to V who came in 2nd place on my Selca & Written.

Stray Kids Selca – Hyunjin (Pisces / Dragon)

Stray Kids Written – Lee Know (Scorpio / Tiger)

Stray Kids Astrology – Lee Know (Scorpio / Tiger)

Western – Lee Know & Hyunjin

Eastern – Lee Know

  And NO I didn’t plan it like this it sort of just happen.  And yea it is a lil freaky that Astrology ships kinda had the answers to Selca & Written … For Stray Kids couldn’t find much of their personality or ideal type so I kinda based it on hobbies more than anything. Probably has the years go by & they do more interviews and stuff, I can better match them with people.

Hope you like your results.

And let me know what y’all think! 

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 2: The Bloody Pit (Transcript) - 23rd March 2015

tw: death, claustrophobia, racism (H. P. Lovecraft), ghosts

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Most people are afraid of the dark, and while this is something that we expect from our children, adults hold onto that fear just as tightly; we simply don’t talk about it anymore. But it’s there, lurking in the back of our minds. Science calls it nyctophobia, the fear of the dark, and since the dawn of humanity our ancestors have stared into the blackness of caves, tunnels and basements with a feeling of rot and panic in their bellies. H. P. Lovecraft, the patriarch of the horror genre, published an essay in 1927, entitled “Supernatural Horror in Literature”, and it opens with this profoundly simple statement. “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”. You see, people fear the unknown, the what-if, and the things they cannot see. We humans are afraid of the dark. We’re afraid that our frailness and weakness might become laid bare in the presence of… whatever it is that lurks in the shadows. We’re afraid of opening up places that should remain closed. We fear what we can’t see, and sometimes, for good reason. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

The Berkshire Mountain Range in Western Massachusetts sits in the very top left corner of the state. It’s not the Rockies by any stretch of the imagination, but in 1851, those hills were in someone’s way. The Troy and Greenfield Railroad Company wanted to lay some track that would cut through the mountains, and so they begun work on a tunnel. On the western end sat the town of Florida, with North Adams holding up the eastern end. Between those towns was about 5 miles of solid rock. This building project was no small undertaking, no matter how unimpressive the mountains might be. It ultimately took the crew 24 years to wrap things up, and came at the cost of $21.2 million. In 2015 money, that’s $406, 493, 207. See? It was a big deal. Monetary costs aside however, construction of the tunnel came with an even heavier price tag. At least 200 men lost their lives cutting that hole through the bones of the earth.

One of the first major tragedies occurred on March 20th , 1865. A team of explosive “experts”, and I use that term loosely because nitro-glycerine had just been introduced to America about a year before, entered the tunnel to plant the charge. The three men, Brinkman, Nash and Kelley (who, by the way, his first name was Ringo, which I think is just awesome) did their work and then ran back down the tunnel to their safety bunker. Only Kelley made it to safety. It turns out that he set off the explosion just a bit too early, burying the other two men alive. Naturally, Kelley felt horrible about it, but no one expected him to go missing, which he did, just a short while later. But the accidents? They didn’t end there.

Building a railway tunnel through a mountain is complex, and one of the features most tunnels have is a vent shaft. Constant coal-powered train traffic could result in a lot of smoke and fumes, so engineers thought it would be a good idea to have a ventilation shaft that extended from the surface above and allowed fumes and water to be pumped out. This shaft for the Hoosac Tunnel, as it became known, would be roughly 30ft in diameter, and eventually would stretch over 1000ft down and connect with the train tunnel below. By October of 1867 it was only 500ft deep. Essentially it was a really, really deep hole in the ground. To dig this hole they built a small building at the top which was used to raise and lower hoists to get the debris out, as well as a pump system to remove ground water. Then, each day, they would lower a dozen or more crazy, Cornish miners (not underaged kids, by the way, the other kind of miner) into the hole, and set them to work. You see where this is going, right? Please tell me that you see where this is going.

On October 17th, a leaky lantern filled the hoist house with natural gas, a naphtha, an explosive gas found in nature, and the place blew sky-high. As a result, things started to fall down the shaft. What things? Well, for starters, 300 freshly sharpened drill bits. Then, the hoist mechanism itself, and finally, the burning wreckage of the building. All of it fell five stories down the tunnel and on top of the 13 men working away at the bottom. Oh, and because the water pump was destroyed in the explosion, the shaft also began to flood. The workers on the surface tried to reach the men at the bottom, but they failed. One man was even lowered into the shaft in a basket, but he had to be pulled back up when the fumes became unbearable. He managed to gasp the words “no hope” to the workers around him, before slipping into unconsciousness. In the end they gave up, called it a loss, and actually covered the shaft. But in the weeks that followed, the workers in the mine frequently reported hearing the anguishing voice of men crying out in pain. They said they saw lost miners carrying picks and shovels, only to watch them vanish, moments later. Even the people in the village nearby told the tales of odd shapes and muffled cries near the covered pit. Highly educated people, upon visiting the construction site, reported similar experiences. Glenn Drohan, a correspondent for the local newspaper wrote that “the ghastly apparitions would appear briefly, then vanish, leaving no footprints in the snow, giving no answers to the miners’ calls”. Voices, lights, visions, and odd shapes in the darkness, all the sorts of experiences that we fear might happen to us when we step into a dark bedroom or a basement.

A full year after accident, they reopened the shaft, drained out all 500ft of water. They wanted to get back to work, but when they did, they discovered something horrific. Bodies… in a raft. You see, apparently some of the men survived the falling drill bits and debris long enough that they managed to build a raft. No one knows how long they stayed alive, but it’s pretty clear they died because they had been abandoned in a flooding hole in the ground. After that the workers began to call the tunnel by another name: the “Bloody Pit”. Catchy, right?

About 4 years after the gas explosion, two men visited the tunnel. One was James McKinstrey, the drilling operations superintendent for the project, and the other was Dr. Clifford Owens. While in the tunnel, the two men, both educated and respected among their peers, had an encounter that was beyond unusual. Owens wrote: “On the night of June 25th, 1872, James McKinstrey and I entered the great excavation at precisely 11:30pm. We had travelled about 2 miles into the shaft when we finally halted to rest. Except for the dim smoky light from our lamps, the place was as cold and dark as a tomb. James and I stood there talking for a minute or two and were just about to turn back when I suddenly heard a strange, mournful sound. It was as if someone, or something, was suffering great pain. The next thing I saw was a dim light coming along the tunnel from a westerly direction. At first I believed it was probably a workman with a lantern; yet, as the light grew closer, it took on strange, blue colour, and appeared to change shape, almost into the form of a human being without a head. The light seemed to be floating along, about a foot or two above the tunnel floor. In the next instant it felt as if the temperature had suddenly dropped and a cold, icy chill ripped up and down my spine. The headless from came so close that I could have reached out and touched it, but I was too terrified to move. For what seemed like an eternity, McKinstrey and I stood their gaping at the headless thing like two wooden Indians. The blue light remained motionless for a few seconds, as if it was actually looking us over, then floated off towards the east end of the shaft, and vanished into thin air. I am, above all, a realist. Nor am I prone to repeating gossip and wild tales that defy a reasonable explanation. However, in all truth, I cannot deny what James McKinstrey and I witnessed with our own eyes”.

The Hoosac tunnel played host to countless other spooky stories in the years that followed. In 1874, a local hunter named Frank Webster simply vanished, and when he finally stumbled up the banks of the Deerfield River three days later, he was found by a search party without his rifle and appearing to have been beaten bloody. He claimed he’d been ordered into the tunnel by voices and lights, and once he was inside, he saw ghostly figures that floated and wandered about in the dark. His experience ended when something unseen reached out, took his rifle from him, and clubbed him with it. He had no memory of walking out of the tunnel. In 1936 a railroad employee named James Impoco, claims that he was warned of danger in the tunnel by a mysterious voice, not once, but twice. I’m thinking it was Ringo, trying to make up for being an idiot. In 1973, for some unknown and god-awful reason, a man decided to walk through the full length of the tunnel. This brilliant man, Bernard Hastaba, was never seen again. One man, who walked through and did make it out though, claims that when he was in the tunnel, he saw the figure of a man dressed in old clothing of a 19th century miner. Again, not a kid. He left in a hurry, from what I’ve read.

Stories about the tunnel persist to this day. It’s common for teams of paranormal investigators to walk the length of the tunnel, although it’s still active with a dozen or so freight trains that pass through each day. There are rumours of a secret room, or many rooms, deep inside the tunnel. There’s even an old monitoring station built into the rock about half way through, though few have been brave enough to venture all the way there and see it. Those that have report more of the same: unexplained sounds and lights. Oh, and remember Ringo Kelley, our sloppy demolition expert who got his co-workers killed in 1865? Well, he showed up again. In March of 1866, one full year after the explosion, his body was found 2 miles inside the tunnel, in the exact same spot where Brinkman and Nash had died. He had been strangled to death.

Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke. You can find a transcript of this show, including links to source materials, at lorepodcast.com. Lore is a biweekly podcast, so be sure to check back in for a new episode every two weeks. If you enjoy scary stories, I happen to write them. You can find a full list of my supernatural novels, available in paperback and ebook formats, at aaronmahnke.com/novels. Thanks for listening.

[canardroublard]

A non-exhaustive list of academic-ish articles on film theory that I’d love to write but probably won’t get around to:

Alita: Battle Angel, Avatar, Aliens, Terminator, James Cameron’s broader filmography, and the separation of the self from the body (aka what the hell is this guy’s deal. I need to know)

Alita: Battle Angel, “Strong Female Characters” and how the cure to cinematic misogyny is not having a woman punch people (why we need to deconstruct story structures which promote or condone misogyny and toxic masculinity, rather than simply centering a woman in these story structures)

A related, or possibly the same essay, Alita Battle Angel vs Wonder Woman 2017, or how to write a naïve character without depriving her of agency

And finally, Alita Battle Angel is racist, mostly in typical ways that should be apparent to anyone with decent critical thinking skills, but I could probably circle back to my first topic (separation of self from the body) specifically as it relates to Mahershala Ali’s character and get into some meaty stuff there

The Man From UNCLE as a film which consistently subverts gender tropes and stereotypes, especially surrounding masculinity and the expectations for the male action movie lead, and why this may have contributed to its poor performance with reviewers

Beasts of the Southern Wild - I don’t have any firm theses on this yet, it’s been a few years since I’ve watched it so I’d have to refresh my memory, but probably lots that could be said about the magical realism aspects of the film, and of course racism and classism

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, and why this film does everything that A Star is Born tried to do, but does it way better and much more interestingly and didn’t make me feel like I’d wasted 2 hours of my life

The Handmaiden - A loooot to talk about here. Power dynamics between Japan and its neighbouring countries (obviously Korea, in this specific case, but that dynamic has parallels within the region) as played out on a personal level, fetishization of queer women (not saying that’s what the movie does, I’d have to rewatch and dig into it more to get a thesis on that). Oh and I am FASCINATED by this film’s use of gaze. And how gaze interacts with architecture and space.

The Circle - Yes, that Emma Watson/Tom Hanks tech company film. It was spectacularly unsuccessful as a film, a story, or really as anything, and I want to deconstruct why it sucked so bad

A non-exhaustive list of other films I’d write about in no particular order

The Favourite

Romeo + Juliet

Wes Anderson I like your films but you are kinda a misogynist (yeah let’s just cover his whole filmography because why not)

Widows (race, relationships, misogyny, and the messy intersection between those three things. Also women’s platonic relationships)

Disobedience

The Red Turtle and why I, a lover of animation, fucking hated it (spoiler: because the male main character, who admittedly has been having a bad time lately but that isn’t a valid excuse imho, acts like a dick and is rewarded for it)

The Beguiled (gaze, power dynamics)

The Florida Project

Annihilation (admittedly first I’d have to understand this mindfuck of a film before writing about it, but if I could get there I’m sure there’s lots to be said)

The Fall (not the Gillian Anderson tv show, the Lee Pace movie)

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (idk if I’d get much further than “it’s racist” but if I were really motivated I might be able to deconstruct that a bit further) Update: wrote the “it’s racist” post. HERE

Dunkirk and perpetuating the myth of White History

Atomic Blonde

ETA

Tomb Raider (2018) and why it is at best “two-steps-forward-one-step-back” to give a white woman no romance in a story if by doing so you deprive characters of colour, namely a Chinese man and iirc a black woman, the opportunity to be romantic interests/leads

Beauty and the Beast (Emma Watson version) it’s almost impressive how this film goes out of its way to subvert its own marketing department’s attempts to make it sound feminist

Their Finest - something something war something lesbianism (I’d have to watch this again)

London Road - yes I know no one else saw this film. Even I can concede that “musical about a series of horrific serial killings” is a difficult sell to most people. But it’s a good film. Watch it. There’s lots to talk about here

Home (Dreamworks) which has a surprising amount to say about colonialism for a children’s film

Boy, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, absent parents and the struggle of self-determination for boys coming of age. Or, portrayals of boyhood in the filmography of Taika Waititi

Kill Bill , Strong Female Characters” and how the cure to cinematic misogyny is not having a woman punch people and JFC these films are misogynistic

Anna Karenina is unadaptable as a film so please stop trying to make that happen, everyone, because by trying to cram it into a 2-3 hour movie everyone drops the Levin/Kitty story and without that you lose literally half of the actual story of the book

ETA (29/03/2019) wrote a post at least touching on the basics about racism in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri so I’m crossing that off the list for now.

[ladysmaragdina]

other Shadow of the Tomb Raider thoughts:

- whoever decided that a little old indigenous lady who lives in Totally Not El Dorado should sell advanced modern climbing equipment has some explaining to do. Like, I can’t even use GUNS here. GODDAMN.

- whoever decided that the obvious, subtle name for a restaurant IN MEXICO was ‘la casa mexicana’ HAS SOME EXPLAINING TO DO.

- The first outfit you get in this game is made of jaguar hide. I’m never, ever letting Lara take it off (except when I have to for Plot Reasons), because the game shows her making this outfit out of a jaguar she killed just a few hours beforehand. I’m pretty sure the pelt hasn’t been CLEANED, much less cured or anything. Lara must smell fucking rank, and this is hilarious to me.

- the story is pretty... I mean, it works. Mostly! Mostly?

- There was a moment when I hit the Main Hub where about six pages of the script fell out and got swept off with the trash, but... okay. I can live with that? It was deeply weird. One minute you’re trying to find a temple, and the next minute there are people! Not just people, but rebels! And cultists! And a succession crisis? I gotta wear blue to indicate that I’m on the side of the rebels? Who are rebelling... against... wait, but you said they’re all off in the jungle, but everyone is HERE, and the “rebels” are IN POWER, or... are they? They’re just coexisting totally peacefully in the streets but also in deathly danger of being kidnapped and murderdeathed at any time? And... Who the fuck are ANY of these people? Is anyone gonna explain what those weird not-zombies are? Anybody? Is anyone going to explain why THESE guys think human sacrifice is cool but THESE guys think human sacrifice is cool in some never-defined DIFFERENT way and you know what, that’s fine, I’ll just go crawl through this pit of human sacrifice victims for SOME REASON and.... ah, there’s the plot. I think. I’ve missed you. (Apart from that, the story is decently solid, by which I mean that it clips along as a fast enough pace that the route from A to B to C makes good urgent sense. But I still don’t know who the FUCK these people actually are)

- Lara can apparently pass as an indigenous person by putting on the appropriate dress, and everyone in Totally Not El Dorado has a) never heard of the outside world and b) effortlessly code-switches between Quechua and English. I’m not even going to try to unpack that one. 

- (I am aware that Totally Not El Dorado has an actual name that actually comes from real life, but a) spoilers and b) I don’t think the game cares)

- “It must have taken hundreds of sacrifices to fill that pit with blood,” says Lara re: a pit that was once filled with a heck of a lot of blood. This pit is about the size of a  large hot tub, which means it would take somewhere in the vicinity of 300-400 people; Lara is right, and I hate - hate - that I know this.

- “They didn’t enter,” says Lara in a tone of utter shock and confusion re: the spooky not-zombies, as she walks into the heart of the temple where the Macguffin That Was Forged In Paradise And Can Save Or Doom The World is kept. Lara, an archaeologist, has apparently never heard the word ‘sacred’ in her life. (To its great credit, the game seems to be trying to say that Lara is wrongheaded about this! But the game has also never been able to stick with a solid thematic character choice for Lara for more than... twenty minutes? It had a FANTASTIC choice in the prologue that it has done LITERALLY NOTHING WITH SINCE)

- there is a random parasitic worm in someone’s arm. It is at least a foot long and as thick as my thumb, has an entire extended cutscene devoted to it, is incredibly disgusting and probably triggering to someone, and is (so far) pointless and never mentioned again.

- someone on the level design team has a Thing for underwater sequences. I’m not a fan.

- I’d be much more of a fan if I could get the swan dive mechanic to work consistently, because when the story objective is ‘dive into the cenote’ it’s REAL gauche to cannonball instead... which feels pretty thematically appropriate, honestly.

- ...I feel like the big problem I’m having with this game is that it’s setting up these INCREDIBLY obvious theme touchstones and then not cashing in on them. Lara is destructive! Lara is impulsive and bullheaded! Lara is selfish! Lara doesn’t think about the implications of her actions! Lara is a terrible archaeologist and needs training on cultural sensitivity! Lara doesn’t connect history to actual people! These are all GREAT fucking things to set up, but... like... are we going anywhere with this? Ever? (Naaah, screw cultural sensitivity, we’re just gonna milk indigenous body modification for all the dehumanized horror tropes we can!) The game seems afraid to go anywhere with these really heavy themes and seems to be setting up a hard pivot to a trite “the future is more important than the past” moral, which is SORTA connected to the “Lara is a shitfuck archaeologist” thing they’ve got going on, but... it feels like a cop out. It feels like an excuse to keep them from needing to unpack all the vague racism the game has going for it. Shadow of the Tomb Raider wants to have its cake and eat it too, it wants to say ‘tomb raiding is bad’ and also ‘look at how much fucking fun tomb raiding is,’ and has no idea how to balance that.

- I could be wrong! PLEASE PROVE ME WRONG, GAME. I AM GLAD THAT YOU ARE TRYING. TRY HARDER. I REALLY WANT ‘SHADOW OF THE TOMB RAIDER’ TO THEMATICALLY COMMIT TO BEING ‘SHADOW OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM’ AND MAYBE EVEN MAKE ME FEEL BAD THE WAY SPEC OPS: THE LINE DOES. PLEASE LET LARA LEARN A LESSON THAT ISN’T ABOUT HER FATHER.

- I think the BIG PROBLEM with the Tomb Raider Reboot Franchise is that after the original 2013 game, Lara’s “survivor” arc was finished, and they have no. fucking. clue. what to do with her character. 

- in other, lighter news: there are way fewer bears guarding the tombs this time. And by fewer, I mean none. I’m actually playing a Tomb Raider game instead of a Rise of Leo DiCaprio simulator like last time. There are way more tombs. There is way more emphasis on tombs and parkour. The tombs are no longer beefgated by ridiculously undying bears. All is well.

- I am GENUINELY enjoying the game, despite all the weird pivots on theme and whatever the FUCK the person who "implemented” Immersion Mode was smoking; I’m having a great time, as long as I can turn off my brain a little bit. The gameplay balance is a hell of a lot better than Rise of the Tomb Raider. Shadow of the Tomb Raider probably isn’t as good a game as Tomb Raider (2013), but I don’t think it ever could have been, because that game has a solid narrative arc and this one just kinda throws darts at things and doesn’t look to see if they stick.

- speaking of which, I’m still waiting for a ‘darts shooting out of the skulls in the walls’ trap like in Indiana Jones

- please give this to me

- I know we have ‘spikes springing out of the walls’ but that is not remotely the same

- please

- there are so many skulls embedded in the walls everywhere

- please have some of them try to kill me

- it would be so cool

[weapon13whitefang]

in the talking dead for the quiz they say that the box Michonne had, the things inside was inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird.If you've read the book the the Mockingbird represents someone innocent that has been injured or destroyed by evil(in the book Boo Radley,Tom Robinson,etc.) ( in the show I guess Rick can be a representation but mostly Beth in my eyes) considering the comparison of beth and birds lately, I would love to hear your opinion

Sorry it’s taken me awhile to answer you! I wasn’t ignoring you, I just had to find a way to really think about what you were asking and about the source material.

First off, I don’t watch Talking Dead anymore. I don’t have much like for Chris Hardwick after all the stuff I’ve learned about him and all the stuff that’s been proven… Yeah I just can not watch Talking Dead without wanting to throw something at Hardwick… You know I don’t much trust ya when I won’t even watch for my favorite actors on the show… I don’t know, maybe he really didn’t do the crap that was said but… I’m not seeing any evidence against it… So I don’t watch Talking Dead.

That said, I have gotten a break down of stuff that was talked about. And I gritted through a few scenes of it to listen to my favorite actors talk… And let me just say that, yes. I know the book To Kill A Mockingbird. I don’t know if it’s just a Midwestern school thing, but for most Missouri kids I know, To Kill A Mockingbird was one of those books you read every year until senior year. The first time I read the book was in fifth grade, over fifteen years ago… I can still recall how I felt after reading it to… It’s just one of those books that sticks with you like Lord of the Flies or Romeo and Juliet or The Great Gatsby – those books teachers shove down your throat because they have such important life topics.

You mentioned how the Mockingbird represents “someone innocent that has been injured or destroyed by evil (in the book Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, etc.)”. And you’re right in that, this is the main theme of the book that most people will point out… Interesting to note, though, that Harper Lee was never forthcoming with the symbolism and themes. But she was famous for saying that the story spells out the meaning of a code of honor and the conduct in the heritage of the Southerners. Which makes sense if you look at in a simplistic term, sure. Honor is the high respect you have for someone or something. Conduct is the manner in which a person behaves, especially on a particular occasion or in a particular context.

An example of this is basically the whole thing with Tom and Boo. Bob Ewell is the town drunk and known to be one mean and cruel man. But because Bob is white, because Mayella is white, and because poor Tom is a man of color, the view of what they know is right vs what they see as right is truly shown. It’s very very obvious in the book that Tom Robinson is innocent and that the stuff he’s being accused of, are things he couldn’t and wouldn’t do. People of the town know what kind of man Bob Ewell is… But because Bob and Mayella are white that’s enough for people to turn a blind eye to it and sentence poor Tom to be hanged. It doesn’t matter all the proof that Atticus had. It didn’t matter if Bob Ewell had been caught red handed, even. Because Tom was a black man, he was doomed. Ignorance, racism, and hatred play a big role in the undertone of the book and it is those key elements that lead to an innocent being killed. It’s what leads to people like Boo and Tom being hurt. Bob Ewell was a symbol of evil in that he was a cruel, racists,and unbearable man. But because he was white, Tom – a black man that was the symbol of innocence with Boo – was screwed.

There’s so much you can talk about when it comes to this book. There’s themes and undertones that you can pick at and everyone would have a different opinion. For me, this is a book of studying the moral nature of a person; are people good or evil? It’s highly noted that a single person can be good or evil, while people as a whole can be evil or do good. As individuals, the jury would probably have agreed with Atticus and Tom would’ve lived. But as a whole – to uphold an image of “pureness” – they made an evil choice because of an evil man… Yet it’s more than that. Scout and Jem in the beginning of the book believe that all people are good and innocent because the two have never been exposed to evil and they believe people have never been around evil so that makes them good and innocent. By the end of the book, they both have experienced what evil is and have to come to understanding with it and their view of the world. It’s through Atticus – who is an example of being able to see evil but not letting it change him to evil but instead also see the good and learn to see people as a whole in that they have good and bad in them,that nobody is truly evil to the core, but that things in life lead them down these paths that aren’t always just good and evil. That the world isn’t black and white, heroes and villains. It’s gray. That’s how I always saw the book,anyway.

So taking into account that this book has many themes, how do they apply to the show? First off, letting me know that was kind of interesting for me. Thanks for sharing that because it got me thinking a lot… In the box, Michonne specifically pulls out three things. A preserved four-leaf clover, what appears to be baseball cards, and the little sheriff figure with the gun. Lets focus on these things fora bit before I get to the mockingbird (And I will, just hold on for a second!)

Coming from an Irish and German background, I always loved trying to find four-leaf clovers at my grandma’s house. First off, the four-leaf clover is a very rare plant to find because they just generally do not grow with four leaves. They’re kind of a mutation of sort, basically…Anyway, each leaf on the four-leaf clover has a meaning according to my grandma. Faith, Hope, Love, and Luck. The regular three leaf I learned in bible school that it represents the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit and if you found a four-leaf, the fourth leaf was God’s Grace. So, finding a four-leaf clover was basically really good fortune for you, as in the holy trinity is watching over you and giving you grace.

There’s a lot of symbolism around the four-leaf clover really. After doing some digging, I learned that apparently in some biblical background stories about the Garden of Eden, Eve took a four-leaf clover with her to remember the place she and Adam were cast from (that’s kinda depressing but I get it). I also learned that apparently Druid priest used the four-leaf clover to ward off evil spirits in worship rituals. Also, in some cases,children and adults would hang a four-leaf clover over their doors to ward off bad omens, witchcraft, and evil spirits. In the Middle ages, they believed that those that carried a four leaf clover could see the fae folk. It was also believed to help ward off and give protection from The Evil Eye – which is basically a legend about a malevolent spirit of evil casting misfortune to someone; cause them to harm themselves by casting eyes on them. So the clover was like a “shield” against this gaze.

If there’s one thing that has happened to TF, it’s the cast of the evil eye upon them. Rick is “dead” (so they think) and their world has been cast astray of what they all know – which is following Rick’s leadership. Even with Michonne taking over (she doesn’t let them call her the leader but she basically is) everything is still not together – they’re all scattered away from one another and all lost with Rick gone, even after all this time. Finding a four-leaf clover – one basically buried away in a tomb van – shows a prospering future for Michonne and TF. Something they could all use… The clover is linked to the box, which means it’s basically a box of memories for someone…Just as the clover was a memory for Eve, that clover was for someone else…

I find it fascinating the Morgan and Michonne both found“lucky” items in abandoned vehicles.

Next up is the baseball cards – or at least that’s what they look like – and I’m wondering if that’s supposed to represent Negan. Finding the clover then the baseball cards in order… I’m thinking Negan is going to have a big hand in the future. Now obviously I could be wrong and maybe they’re just school photos or something like that and maybe they have nothing to do with good for Negan. But you say baseball and I automatically think of baseball bat and then I think of Negan. Plus the cards were wrapped up – imprisonment symbolism? Michonne would be the only one who could truly let Negan free… I’m not to sure about these cards but I do feel Negan with them.

Finally the little sheriff figure. Obviously, it’s for Rick. But what does a Sheriff represent in general? Well first off the Sheriff is supposed to represent keeping the peace. A sheriff protects the peace, enforces law, provides traffic control, investigates accidents, transports prisoners,and leads a community. I work for a Sheriff department, as luck would have it(for me, anyway) and I can tell you something neat. The badge we all know – the star badge – was taken because it was cheaper and easier to make than the original badge – which was an eagle shaped/themed badge. Plus the star is a symbol of all fifty states and the Sheriff wears the star with his state and his county name printed on it. So it’s his American shield/symbol of bringing peace.

Rick being a Sheriff is really interesting for me since I started working with the Sheriff of my county. Throughout the last eight years of TWD, I have seen Rick do basically everything I just described above… But he’s also been very much the complete opposite of what a Sheriff is supposed to stand for. I mean Rick has murdered before. He stabs Shane after luring him into a false sense of peace, straight up put a machete through Thomas’s head at the prison, strangles a Claimer to death and rips the throat of another open…Like Rick has done a lot of shit a Sheriff shouldn’t do… But he is still a symbol of peace and future, which is what a Sheriff is.

So with those items aside, lets talk about a Mockingbird. In the book, there’s a quote about the Mockingbird, which is supposed to be part of the symbolism we talked about above. The line is said by Atticus and later affirmed by Miss Maudie, I believe. It goes as followed:

“Rememberit’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.

“Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs,they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

This line is the main line for the title of the book and is basically the key metaphor explored by people. It’s true that Boo and Tom are indeed part of this symbolism. The mockingbird is a symbol that good, innocent people are destroyed by evil. Tom is destroyed by evil and I believe he’s even likened to a songbird that was slaughtered by children (or something like that, I’d have to dig my copy out and really read it again… Which I just might…). For Boo, he was destroyed by the evil that is his abusive father long ago, but he was still just good and gentle and didn’t cause no harm and saved Jem and Scout. Scout even makes a wise comment that hurting poor Boo would be like shooting a Mockingbird – it would be a sin to punish something/someone who has done nothing but try to be a good soul.

I believe the reason they decided to use To Kill A Mockingbird for this episode is because of Magna, Yumiko, Connie, Kelly, and Luke… And for Michonne. Think about it. There’s a trial scene. At this point,Judith would be Scout and even a bit of Boo. Michonne is being a Bob Ewell (funny how that works) and Magna and her group are Tom Robinson.

Michonne bases Magna and the whole group on one simple thing– Magna was a convict. She basically riled up a lynch mob with everyone and made the group out as these monsters that would stab them all in their sleep…Just as Bob painted Tom as some kind of big violent rapist. Judith was basically Scout and Boo. Judith saved them and brought them in, but she also killed to protect them (sure they were just walkers but yeah). Think about the character Scout and the Character Boo and then think about Judith. Judith can basically be considered “innocent” (I use that lightly because the girl isn’t completely innocent, she knows things, but she’s not grown enough to experience what true evil is). Judith is Scout in that she sees these people and assumes “good” because it’s something she just sees. Now obviously Magna and them are good, but what if they weren’t? Judith wouldn’t be able to see it. It wouldn’t take much to pull the cloak over a child’s eye, even one as quick witted and smart as Judith.

I believe that’s part of the reason we had her speaking against Negan. What Negan says is true about people. They can look real nice and seem real nice, but they can turn on you real quick and do damage. Funny enough, Negan is basically an anti-Atticus in his own right. He knows what is real good and what is real evil, but he lets himself make his own choices and runs an evil path. Atticus knew the difference between evil and good but stayed good and kind. Which, yeah, Rick fits this mold with a little push… But it’s also Daryl who fits this role the most and that’s something as well.

Anyway, Michonne was basically going to get Mockingbirds killed. Magna and them haven’t done anything evil that we know of so they’re not far from sin, but they are people that have done no wrong to the people that have helped them and have shown to be good and even democratic (the whole voting scene) and that’s our evidence that they’re good people just trying to survive. Michonne would basically be doing what Scout told Atticus about Boo –it would be like shooting a mockingbird to send them off. And I agree that Rick would have helped them too… He would’ve been wary and he would’ve been watching the new people, but Rick would’ve given them a chance to prove themselves as good. Michonne wasn’t doing that. She was stone walling them out – being a child throwing rocks at the mockingbirds.

Now… I know you asked about Beth. The more I think about it, Beth was an Atticus. She knew the world was full of evil… But she knew there were good people and knew that you had to see people for their strengths and weaknesses to see their whole and see them for who they were as a whole. Beth was like Jem and Scout too. She hadn’t experienced real evil until watching her father be beheaded… But she wavered in her belief of good people with Dawn and that put her at how Jem was towards the end of the book. But if she were around now, Beth could’ve been an Atticus…

Which leads me back to Daryl. If there’s anyone that fits the mold of Atticus, it’s Daryl… At least he did. Right now I’d say he’s more of a Jem. Lost his faith in systems and his beliefs of there being anymore good people… By the end of the book, Jem becomes distant in his belief of good people and justice. Daryl was an Atticus but now he’s a Jem… But he can become an Atticus again, which I believe will happen as the season goes on.

To be honest with you, the only thing bird related I’ve seenwith Beth was the bird cage in her cell room back in season 4. The birdcage in media – art or otherwise – is generally a symbol of lost freedom for a bird but also a frame of appreciation for their natural wonder. The birdcage is a symbol as much as the actual bird encased. For example, when I hear someone speak of a caged bird I always think of Sweeny Todd and the song “Green Finch and LinnetBird” that Johanna sings. In the song, Johanna compares herself to the caged bird and how she is trapped in the judges house, how her dream is to be free of her imprisonment and also talks of her inability to cope with the fact she will probably never escape. It’s always that song that comes to mind when I think of a bird cage and honestly it’s probably the most symbolic image and song I can think of. A bird that sings jubilantly and carefree while trapped in a cage…Yeah. That sounds like Beth. She still sings and still shows peace and acceptance even when she is basically in a giant bird cage in season 4 – the prison.Later – in season 5 at Grady – Beth still sings and is still an imprisoned bird, but she’s not as jubilant as she was. Rather she is like Johanna – she is trapped and isn’t sure how she’s to get free. But unlike Johanna, Beth isn’t disillusioned to her captivity and knows she’ll get free.

Now what about a Mockingbird? Well let’s talk about the bird itself. I know some people like @twdmusicboxmystery believe that the bird Daryl sees in 9x06 is an Osciner bird – the Songbird. But I believe it really is supposed to be a Bluebird or a Mockingbird, which IS a type of Songbird. I’m leaning more towards it being a Mockingbird since that’s part of the story in9x06. So Mystery isn’t wrong, I just believe it’s a different type of songbird than what they think it is.

And if it is the Mockingbird – which I believe it is – then that’s also a symbol for Daryl in that he doesn’t kill the bird and he doesn’t destroy it’s food source with the walker. He doesn’t commit a sin. He lets it live. And seeing a bird feeding it’s young and letting it live is definitely Daryl as a Boo Radley. Boo Radley was horribly hurt by his own father – like Daryl– and shut himself from the world because he wanted to be away from all the pain and horribleness the outside world can offer. That is what Daryl has basically done – shut himself way from people and their societies to “protect” himself from their troubles and pain. Loosing Rick put Daryl there but since Tyreese’s death – yes even with Beth’s death – Daryl has been pulling away and it’s no surprise he reached that point with Rick’s departure.

I know I’m not giving some deep meaning into the whole “Here’s all this that shows that Beth could be alive” and for that I’m sorry. I know that’s what you wanted me to answer, was probably hoping for… But I don’t see much symbolism around this bird and Beth and Daryl. I believe the bird is representing the To Kill A Mockingbird theme and that Daryl has his place as Boo at the moment, but is also an Atticus in his own right but needs to find his balance again. Which Daryl has a balance, he’s just off kilter right now.Understandably so.

This isn’t me shitting on anyone. I believe too many people are putting TOO MUCH emphases on all these things being related to Beth. I don’t have any connection for birds and Beth except for one thing and that’s Beth back at the prison and while she was in Grady because of that birdcage. People want to point out Carl seeing a bird cage back in season 4 with a dead bird on the ground and I think that was to symbolize how Carl was feeling and what he was going through – that he was a bird that escaped a cage but he has a chance of dying like the bird, who was probably caged it’s whole life and once free it didn’t know how to care for itself. But Carl wasn’t going to be the bird. He was going to survive and carry his dad along. Which he did. Sure he dies later,but for that scene and for that moment, Carl didn’t let himself become the dead bird.

So… I guess – posting all of this – I don’t really have anything to add to Beth and Birds and symbolism besides to say that sorry I don’t have anything but maybe reading what I’ve posted will give you a thought to go with your connections for Beth?

Thanks for asking me, by the way. This was pleasantly stimulating.

[obsidianarchives]

Black Woman Creator: Kiesha Richardson

Raised in Philadelphia in a house full of women (grandmother, 4 aunts, and mother) Kiesha Richardson learned early on the importance of solidarity and support among women. She is the founder of Ge’NeL Magazine, a woman-operated geek and pop culture website devoted to creating high quality from a woman’s perspective to combat sexism and racism in the gaming world. She is also the owner of Ge’NeL Media, LLC, a small startup that edits and creates content for businesses and brands. When she’s not working, she’s leading her World of Warcraft guild, traveling the world and playing faux-tographer, or relaxing at home, watching Netflix or reading comics with her pups. We spoke to Kiesha about Ge’NeL and being a creator.

Black Girls Create: What do you create?

We create geek culture and gaming content from the perspective of women because most of the outlets are dominated by white men. When I go to different websites, their communities are pretty toxic and they don’t try to fix or address it. It’s just “sexual harassment is ok and it’s normalized” so I figured it was time we do something different. Through my research, I didn’t realize that there were more places for women, especially women of color, to express their geeky side in a safe space. So one of the things I wanted to do is instead of creating a safe space I want to change the narrative. Make sexual harassment, racism, and homophobia no longer normalized.

BGC: What inspired you to create this site?

I personally got tired of trying to play different games and being called the N-word or told to go back to the kitchen, or that I shouldn’t be playing games when someone would hear my voice. It just got really tiring. The last straw came when I was streaming and a couple of friends and I were just having fun, minding our own business, and this dude came into my stream channel and said “show me your n***r tits or get the f*** out.” When I talked to other women about it they would say “oh it’s happened before,” and I thought it shouldn’t be normal. So I tried talking to other organizations I was writing for and the response was “we don’t want to get political.” I thought “thanks for being an ally,” and decided to do my own thing.

BGC: Why do you create?

I create because first of all, I just love writing. It was the natural outlet for me. But I also create so I can just stop this nonsense. We don’t have to deal with this stuff anymore and we should at least get larger platforms to take notice and do something. Some of the gaming companies and developers are trying, but it’s not enough. It’s so pervasive and if you go to different forums or gaming groups and try to have this conversation, there is a lot of pushback. But when you ignore it, you’re not addressing the problem and you’re letting it spread, so we have to do something.

BGC: How did you get interested in gaming?

I’ve been gaming since I was 8 years old, in the second grade. My childhood best friend had an Atari and I got hooked on it at her house. We would exchange different cultural things; she wasn’t allowed to watch music videos so she would come over to watch videos and I’d go over to her house and play games. So we would switch off that way and I’ve been playing ever since.

BGC: When did you realize that gaming was a part of your identity more than just a hobby?

When I lived in Germany with my parents, I took a semester off of college to move. My brother, cousin, and I would have sleepovers in each others’ room and play games all night on the weekend. We would take turns playing different games like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and others to see who could beat the map. It became something that was a part of us. When I ended up working in Iraq running a recreation center, I was the only one who knew how to set up Xboxes and Playstations and set up tournaments. So it was what I did and how I knew gaming was just me.

BGC: What was it like to take something like gaming to a different country and culture? Is it easier to connect or is it just another cultural exchange that needs to happen?

It’s definitely easier to connect with people through gaming. I operated the recreational center for the US and UN forces. You can’t make people forget that they’re in a war zone, because we were definitely in the thick of it, but what I could do is give people a place where they could at least relax for some time, and that was through video games. It was how we connected and how we communicated and found commonalities where there weren’t many to be found. I made so many friends that I’m still friends with today. When they would have a bad day or be stressed out, they would come and just talk about games. Video games were a way of bridging a gap in communication.

BGC: Who or what inspired you to do what you do?

I’ve loved writing from a very young age. My grandma, Nancy, always inspired me to write, even when I would get in trouble for my writing. I actually think getting in trouble for my writing made me want to write more. When I was in the fifth grade I was supposed to write a Halloween story and she said she wanted it to be scary, to “let our imagination fly.” Well, my imagination flew too far because she called a parent/teacher conference to ask if I was being abused or if anything was going on at home because the details in my story were too vivid. When my mom assured her there was nothing going on, she asked if I plagiarized and I was shocked because I did what she had asked me to do.

BGC: Something that I’ve noticed is that the things that either got me in trouble growing up or made me feel ostracized are the things that I’m not most successful with. Have you noticed that as well?

Yes, I do notice that. I’ve always been a bit rebellious and it got me into a lot of trouble. My mom used to tell me “sometimes you have to know when to close your mouth. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong, just know when to shut up,” and now I’ve found that it’s helped me out a lot. Sometimes you have to say what you have to say and ask for forgiveness later.

BGC: Why is it important for Black women to create?

We need to be the authors of our own stories. For too long other people have been telling our stories and that’s something that we need to change. We need to change that narrative. I love Black men, I do, but our story isn’t always intertwined with theirs and we’ve had different struggles throughout history. Angela Davis talked about how the Civil Rights Movement left Black women out just like the women’s suffrage movement left Black women out. We need to be the authors of our own story now and it’s time, it’s important for us to do that.

BGC: How do you balance creating with the rest of your life?

Is there such a thing as balance? I’m not exactly sure yet. I want this to be my career, to be honest. When I was going through my divorce, writing was the only thing I could do. I couldn’t get out of bed. I’d always lived with depression but going through that divorce, it was crippling. The only thing I could do was write, I’d be in bed with my laptop and I could write. It was a way for me to transport myself out of my circumstance and when I think about that and how writing saved me in addition to gaming, I think the balance is just living and not letting one overtake the other. They both saved my life, creating and writing helped me and video games helped me, but I have to make sure to go outside every once and awhile I guess.

BGC: How does writing help your mental health? Do you ever find that writing hurts your mental health?

I think helps because a lot of times it’s not easy to talk about what you’re going through with other people. When I write, it’s a way for me to communicate how I’m feeling and what’s going on with me. I noticed when I first started blogging and I started writing about depression, there were other people who were feeling the way I was feeling and that was important to me. So when I do write about mental health I try to keep in mind that I’m not alone. People may not have the exact feelings but they’re feeling a similar way. When I write, I try to take into account self-care when it comes to mental health issues. So when I write, I try to make sure that other women know that they’re not alone and know that taking care of themselves is a part of taking care of their mental health. One of my coworkers once said “muting you is my self care for the day.” Sometimes you have to mute the negativity. It’s definitely easier said than done but don’t be afraid to hit that mute button. Take care of yourself and do it in a way that makes you feel good. People think self-care is one size fits all and it’s not. You have to figure out what makes you happy, no one else is going to make you happy. Things won’t necessarily make you happy, but something might. People say “material things won’t make you happy,” but shoes do for me. Figure out what makes you happy and try something new. I think that goes a long way towards helping your mental health.

 BGC: What’s important to you when you’re building a community and working with other writers, especially when you’re trying to serve underrepresented groups? What do you try to focus on when working with other people?

Passion, empathy, and understanding that there is a problem that we want to address and that we are going to be the voices to do it. There is no such thing as a perfect person and there are no perfect writers. I have people on my team who have no writing experience, no writing background, but their stories are beautiful. I can work with someone who is not really a writer. What I can’t work with is negativity, internalized sexism, and putting down other women. With me being a streamer, I come across so many people, especially guys, who have a problem with women who show cleavage when they stream, but they’re marketing and are full of life with energetic personalities and these guys only reduce them to what they're wearing. Then you have some women who will piggyback on that and say they’re making streaming worse for the rest of us. How? They’re working, it was nothing to do with the boobs, I mean guys (and some women) will look, no doubt, but that’s not going to keep them watching. It’s about positivity and being understanding of all women and their struggles. You don’t have to like all women, that’s not realistic, but you don’t have to put them down. I’m not going to be negative and when I look for people to work with I look for that positivity. Are you uplifting other people or are you trying to tear people down because you don’t have your own stuff going on? Positivity. Empathy. Sisterhood. Solidarity. That’s what I want the community to be regardless of racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural backgrounds. I want women to be able to be themselves. I want to uplift us all without having to step on someone else. Having male allies, that’s fantastic. Guys who come to the site think Ge’NeL magazine is anti-male and it’s not, we just don’t want to be shit on. We’re tired of the racism and sexism and xenophobia. I didn’t know there was an entire community of Muslim women gamers but they don’t say anything because of how they’re treated on social media, so we have to uplift each other. But I’m also not going to try to let someone take over the narrative of Black women. Our story is our story and it’s okay for us all to have different stories, to just be different chapters in the same book.

BGC: Do you have any advice for new creators who are just starting out on their journey?

It was hard for me to get to the point where I was getting paid writing gigs and I can’t remember where I heard the quote but someone said if there are no opportunities create your own. So that’s what I did, I didn’t give up. I started putting everything single thing I did on my resume when it came to writing. Don’t be afraid to go to content mills to get the experience that you want or need. Research, read, you can’t be a writer without reading. If you don’t understand the content you’re trying to create or how other people view different types of content, then you’re not going be successful.

BGC: Do you have any future projects that you’re thinking about working on?

Not exactly with Ge’NeL but there is a non-profit in Augusta called Girl Warriors that takes at-risk girls and introduces them to tech and other avenues outside of the environment that they’re currently in. I’m also going to be editing a book as well.

As for Ge’NeL, I’m still trying to find more writers. Unfortunately, we don’t have a budget to pay, we’re all volunteers at this point. But I’m looking for writers, editors, and I am putting together a pitch deck to get some funding for Ge’NeL and to maybe start a stream team.

BGC: Where can we find you?

You can find me on twitter @onewildflowerz, same for Facebook and Instagram, or you can find Ge’Nel at @genelmag on Twitter and Facebook.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Good morning all. Alternatively, good time of day whatever time of day that is when and where you’re reading this.

I’m going to talk about white supremacy and the Locked Tomb trilogy.

I don’t think this is spoiling much of anything that you can’t pick up from the books’ back covers.

So, the Locked Tomb trilogy is set in the heart of a galaxies-spanning empire which is constantly expanding through military conquest. (And necromancy. Officially these books are somewhere in the fantasy/sci fi/space opera realm, but there’s significant horror elements as well.)

It is also in many ways a dystopian/Crapsack World setting. Not in the planets being colonized, which to my great disappointment we haven’t seen at all, likely exception at the very very end of Harrow the Ninth. But in the very core of the empire.

The protagonist from the first book hadn’t ever had a hot beverage or a hot bath, in spite of living on a cold world, before age 18. The major characters in the first book, most of whom are incredibly privileged within the system they exist in, have lives that are...thin, sparse, with nice things being few and far between. There are quite a lot of images of decay and disrepair. Virtually no one seems to have a significant amount of control over their own life, and pleasure is a thing snatched here and there where you can find it. Relative status does not seem to bring physical comfort with it. Luxuries are things like pieces of actual paper or wood. Food exists, but does not seem to actually taste good.

It is jarring to think about the level of death and destruction that is happening offscreen, on an apparently mind-breaking scale, and then look at the lives of the people who presumably benefit the most from that death, and...their lives are that awful.

But I said I was going to talk about white supremacy.

First, a thing: thinking that a thing is bad and that the overall movement to oppose the thing is good, does not require approving of or agreeing with every aspect of that movement. You can be for trans rights without accepting the transmedicalist idea that having a very broad definition of transgender is harmful; you can be for feminism and also against the sorts of feminisms that argue that trans women aren’t women or that sex work should be abolished.

Racism is bad and the movement for racial justice is good and necessary.

And...there is a substantial segment of the movement for racial justice, I don’t think I have a label for this segment, that is very attached to the idea that white supremacy benefits white people, and that the core of good white allyship is talking about how much you as a white person benefit from white supremacy, and I think that is fundamentally incorrect.

What there is is a history of exploitation and violence and a diversion of resources from people of color to (some, anyways) white people; a pattern of white people getting jobs more easily than black people, getting loans more easily, getting an education more easily, having more economic advantage and overall having more wealth. White privilege is a thing.

(The suffering of people of color under white supremacy is definitely a thing, and framing that suffering primarily in terms of how white people don’t suffer in the same way is weird. I want to assume there’s some reason for it? That people generally know what they’re doing? But it is weird.)

What I am saying is, even with everything about white privilege (economic advantage within a very exploitative and anti-worker system, fictional heroes and leaders that look like you, real life leaders that look like you, the ability to not think about racism most of the time, a much lower chance of getting killed by the police) white people are not actually better off for white supremacy, and indeed it is counterproductive to say that we are.

I don’t think even the white people at the very top of the system are actually better off for the existence of white supremacy, compared to how their lives might be in a more equitable system, just richer.

So when parts of the racial justice movement are acting like a more just world would mean white people have to give things up...I mean, yes, strictly speaking, we have to give up things like “having people with our skin color be the hero all the time”, and having relative advantage within an inherently exploitative system, but that’s so little compared to what we might gain from a less abusive system. Connection and meaning and labor justice and actual safety and...hey, you know how I listed “less likely to die at the hands of a police officer” as privilege, like, yes that is privilege and also I do consider just not having police that routinely kill people to be a viable option here, and I do not think the existence of police actually is net beneficial for me.

(Side note on “police”: If we end up with people who deescalate public fights and walk people home when they feel unsafe and get you your stolen bike back and keep a database of people who have harmed children and so on and we call them police but they don’t kill people or violate people’s autonomy I would consider that very much a win, whereas if we replace police with another group of people called anything else who still harass entire communities and kill people dead, that is not a victory no matter what the new name is. Ditto for replacing sending people to jail with involuntarily committing them to mental institutions.)

(That might seem obvious, but the logical extension is we need to talk about what exactly makes cops bad rather than just saying they are and leaving it at that. I have seen a little exploration of how medicalizing the sorts of things cops get called in for can be problematic, but not much discussion on what exactly were trying to defund or abolish when we talk about abolishing or defunding the police.)

The idea that racial justice should just be rearranging how things are divided in the current system without altering the fundamentally exploitative nature of the system in any way, is just so sad. So limited. And is ignoring the history of how much racism exists entirely to preserve a fundamentally exploitative system.

[chivalin]

Becoming & Being Sith (Inibri x Overseer Harkun)

868 words, M!Twi’lek Sith

Rating & Tags: Teen; Mild Language, Racism, Pre-Relationship, Established Relationship

Notes: Overseer Harkun before and after starting a relationship with Inibri, a former slave turned sith lord.

Becoming Sith (295 words)

Tags: racism, use of slurs and general asshole attitude from Harkun, pre-relationship

Harkun turned up his nose when he saw the new shipment of slaves. This lot seemed even more hopeless than the last as he could already dismiss three of them by just looking at them. The four that remained were only marginally better.

Two of them were humans, wide-eyed and slightly hunched. He would have to cut that behavior out of them but otherwise they had potential. A Togruta female shared similar behavior. However, Harkun knew from experience that it was harder to cull submission out of aliens. It was like a second nature to them.

The last one was a blue Twi’lek male that made Harkun narrow his eyes. Alien stood there proudly, his eyes staring at him with fierce determination. False confidence, Harkun concluded. The Twi’lek would break within a week.

“Now listen up, you miserable curs–”

After giving assignments, Harkun watched them all disappear from the room into the tombs below. All, except one – the blue Twi’lek who kept his eyes on him. “You deaf or something, slave?” he snapped. Twi’lek shook his head. “Well. If you have nothing to say, of you go to the tombs, then,” Harkun said irritated.

“I’m waiting,” Twi’lek said firmly, making Harkun’s brows furrow. “What are you waiting?” he asked, and not even a moment later, a terrified scream carried to their ears. Harkun turned around to the door and cursed. Clearly, someone had not listened to him about protocols.

“It was the Togruta,” Twi’lek said, appearing at his side. Harkun looked at him suspiciously. “I heard her talk about it on our way here. She and one of the humans had had some sort of rivalry,” Twi’lek clarified. When Harkun didn’t respond, the alien smirked and started to make his way towards the tombs.

*

Being Sith (573 words)

Tags: established relationship

Harkun watched each new acolyte with a critical eye. They were a decent bunch. Three humans, two Twi’leks and one Cathar. The Twi’lek women seemed to share affection between each other, what with their hands being intertwined and bodies leaning closer together. Harkun watched them thoughtfully. He had had experiences with similar situations before with a pair of humans. It could be possible to turn their care for each other a strength – he just had to be careful about it.

One of the humans watched him eagerly, his head obviously filled with tales of the glory of the sith. The two others were meeker, trying to make themselves seem as small as possible. Harkun had his work cut out from him.

The last one, a Cathar woman, was eyeing him suspiciously. Her ears were flat against her skull, and lips curled into a slight snarl, revealing some of her razor-sharp teeth. Her defiance was good, but it was up to Harkun to guide her to use it properly.

“So, you have survived the first trial. Congratulations, you’re not as worthless as you look,” Harkun started, his voice a practiced mix of stern and mocking. “But, don’t think for a second that you’re anywhere near becoming a sith yet.”

Harkun continued his speech perfectly until his eyes were drawn to a figure standing in the doorway. He stuttered slightly, making the acolytes starting to look around. “Keep in line, you filthy slaves. There’s a sith lord in the room,” Harkun snapped. He looked back to the door.

Inibri waved his hand casually to everyone, pushing himself of the doorframe. He was wearing casual clothing; a beige, sleeveless body armor that hugged his skin and beige-black lower robes. He was also sporting his usual sharp clawed gloves.

“My lord,” Harkun said nodding. He had a hard time hiding his smile. “Overseer,” Inibri said. He dragged out the title while brushing his lips with his clawed gloves. “Is there something you need, my lord?” Harkun asked.

“I wish to speak with you privately, but you may finish educating these acolytes first,” Inibri said, returning to his original position. Harkun nodded, hastily giving the wide-eyed acolytes their next tasks and sending them off. However, they all stopped in front of the door that Inibri was partially covering.

The Twi’lek remained quiet, merely observing the nervous acolytes. Finally, the Cathar went past him slowly, keeping her eyes on him. Inibri chuckled, moving himself inside the room. He waited until the acolytes were out of sight before going to Harkun, wrapping his arms around him in embrace.

Harkun couldn’t hold his smile back anymore when he embraced Inibri back. They kissed, him crouching enough so that the Twi’lek wouldn’t have to be on his tiptoes.

The kiss ended all too soon but Inibri’s hands remained wrapped around Harkun. “Your teaching seems to go well,” Inibri noted, watching him intently. “They have potential,” Harkun answered, rubbing his hand against the Twilek’s side, earning himself a chuckle. “Especially the Cathar – she reminds me of you.”

“I hope not in all the ways,” Inibri teased, placing his hands on Harkun’s belt. “No. Definitely not,” Harkun murmured, feeling weak at the knees. Inibri’s closeness was sending little jolts of electricity against his skin, making him burn pleasantly.

“You want to– you know…?” Harkun asked awkwardly. “Well, when you put it that way…” Inibri said amused, starting to lead Harkun towards his own bedroom.