#if anybody is interested in his backstory I’ll totally explain it

[niightfiend]

More of my FNV Courier Pickles and Arcade <3

[silenthillmutual]

daniil dankovsky is autistic and here’s why:

because i’m autistic and i said so

i kid, obviously. what sort of autistic person would i be if i wasn’t read to back up my silly little claim with an overly long post of evidence a total of three people will read? (hi ned hi jordan hi raven :))

i’m aware that this is cringey because adults aren’t supposed to have autism or interests or talk about either of those things, but this is my blog and you are free to block me if the cringe is too much for you.

these are some things i picked out from the DSMV’s diagnostic criteria, found on the CDC website:

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

abnormal social approach

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

defecits in […] understand[ing] relationships

difficults adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

repetitive motor movements or speech

rigid thinking patterns

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input

there’s also some misc. stuff not in the diagnostic criteria (though it may be in the adir or gars-3) i thought was worth noting.

important note from the diagnostic criteria: “symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning”. i’d say that in his case, they do.

spoilers for pathologic classic, pathologic 2, and the marble nest

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

in bachelor route of classic, daniil

seems completely oblivious to eva making advances toward him, to the point where she complains to him that he’s ignoring her in favor of asking questions about simon.

seems surprised when people mention maria being in love with him, despite outright asking her a couple of times if she’s flirting with him.

not to mention the fact that he asks her that at all.

his inability or resistence to making connections with others is typically considered one of his character flaws. although it is not outright stated in the dsmv criteria, one trait of autism and other neurodivergencies is “having extremely high or extremely low empathy” - and daniil, despite being a doctor, lacks empathy. which is not to say he doesn’t care at all. i think that he does, but is terrible at showing it.

for example, this scene from marble nest:

Sticky: You must feel terrible… right? That’s fine. I forgive you. You just got confused… Adults always do. Daniil: Oh yes, adults are always occupied with the most asinine nonsense. Like feeling anxious that a bunch of urchins keep roaming the streets, putting themselves in mortal danger!

daniil clearly cares about sticky’s wellbeing (and the wellbeing of the kids looking after him, though he’s not cognizant that he’s in a coma), but his way of showing it is… kind of by being a jerk. all of which bleeds into the next item on the list

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

he has no problem sharing his interests, but in both pathologic classic & pathologic 2, daniil speaks with a flat affect - which is to say that he lacks intonation. the words we read him saying may be dramatic or come across as passionate, but the actual voice reading his lines is very monotone, which may contribute to being read as lacking emotion.

and in pathologic 2, he has a voiceline lamenting not telling “her” (eva?) how he felt

in marble nest, he’s teased by the tragedians for being “heartless”:

Tragedian: Maybe. Possibly. But it’s useless to explain to a heartless man. …Take heart, Excellency! If you ever find it, that is. And then come back to us… Even though it all sounds like a rather implausible turn of events.

abnormal social approach

daniil has a tendency to say things that are tactless, odd, or just socially inappropriate. i probably don’t need to point out too many examples, as i think it’s fairly obvious - these are the things people love to pick at when it comes to him, but i do have a few in mind. like, for example, from haruspex route in classic:

Haruspex: What of the antibodies essential for making a serum? Bachelor: I don’t know for sure yet, I’ll send you a report in a few hours. Don’t go about cutting people’s hearts out for your panacea until then. It’s a… controversial solution, you know… Haruspex: What?! Do you even hear yourself? Bachelor: Sorry! I meant no offence… it was just a momentary lapse of… well, you know. Haruspex: None taken.

until artemy points out, daniil doesn’t seem to be aware he just said something rude. even with therapy, picking up on social cues doesn’t come naturally to people with autism, so we tend to say things that come across as rude or strange to others without realizing we’ve put them off. we tend to lack a “filter” that tells us when things are or are not appropriate to say. even when we may recognize it, the rules may not make any sense to us. for example, it makes very little sense that allistics favor politeness over honesty.

i think the glaringly obvious abnormal social approach in pathologic 2 is him threatening to hold artemy at gunpoint to get in the house, which is just overkill, but my personal favorite comes on day 7, when he’s complaining about the orders aglaya has given him. artemy stops him to say he doesn’t understand what daniil wants from him, to which daniil replies:

From you? Oh, nothing. I was just sharing.

to daniil, they were just having a normal conversation. but some part of this - his tone or his words or maybe even his body language - didn’t give artemy the impression that this was supposed to be a regular conversation. (we could, in fact, attribute the same idea to artemy here; why didn’t artemy pick up that this was a normal conversation? the reason i count it towards daniil is because artemy doesn’t seem to have this problem with anybody else. for the record: i don’t think artemy is neurotypical either.)

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

it’s hard to get proof of this in video games, but i will say i think it’s very funny that in pathologic 2 daniil’s idle animations are “pacing”, “sitting like he desperately wants to start bouncing his knees but is stopping himself from doing it”, and “standing unnaturally still” - but there you go. i don’t know anything about making gifs, or i’d gif this one specific talk menu idle he does where he holds eye contact for about three seconds, looks away uncomfortably, and then looks back out of the corner of his eyes.

deficits in […] understand[ing] relationships

mostly examples from his route in classic:

when the army arrives, he can claim to block that aglaya, whom he’s known for two days, is his best friend

he seems baffled by the fact that everone is smitten with maria and working with her, and seems equally baffled by the idea that she’s smitten with him

despite eva implying on day two that she is in a relationship with andrey, is completely blindsided by the revelation on day 6, asking him, “How in the world is she ‘your woman’?”

i’d also like to use his sign-off on his letter to artemy, day 2 of the haruspex route - he signs it as “Your friend (hopefully)”. i know i’m not the only autistic person who used to ask people if we were friends or not. pro tip, if you’ve never done this: don’t. it really weirds people out.

difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

the fact that he stands out is blatantly obvious even in pathologic 2 and in the haruspex route of classic. people will comment on him being an outsider and mention that they don’t trust him. but you can watch it happen in real time in his route, because he never fully acclimates to the town. he says something about this to aglaya on day 7:

Bachelor: Was there any particularly notable backstory? I’m deadly tired of all these people. They’re inhuman. They tell the future, believe in walking zombies, and die in all manners of painfully abnormal ways. Inquisitor: Your line of t hinking is obviously falacious - and I was implying something rather mundane. I promise you, no one can really tell the future around here: and neither are deaths inspired by third parties uncommon. Mysterious phenomenons do occur here sometimes… but hardly more often than anywhere else.

actually, there’s an example of him saying something similar to artemy on day 5 in pathologic 2:

Damn this town… I feel I’m trapped in a nightmare. The absurdity of it all… There’s no one to talk to. Everyone’s so volatile. They all seem to want to help, but… their help is worse than hostility.

some of this can be explained by the town’s strangeness, but keep in mind that the first instance happens after he’s been there and involved in the ongoing for an entire week, and the second at nearly a week in. clearly he’s struggling to adjust to the changes.

it’s also worth noting that his reason for fleeing the town in the nocturnal ending?

I have no place here anymore.

This town is no longer mine. No longer human. No longer rational. It doesn’t… accept the likes of me anymore.

repetitive motor movements or speech

it’s harder to see the motor movements in classic, but remember how i pointed out earlier that he paces? pacing is a form of stimming. murky, who is canonically autistic, can also be found pacing as one of her idle animations. having stock phrases for characters to speak when you come near them already ticks off the box on “repetitive speech”, but that by itself doesn’t really cover what they’re talking about - echolalia.

but you know what this does fit with? “‘quoting’ things(communication is HARD! sometimes we need to take shortcuts and use someone else’s words)“

i’ll get to the more obvious example in a minute - i want to point out something that happens very early in pathologic 2 first. you know how you first meet him and artemy accuses daniil of trying to guilt-trip him by asking if it’s true that isidor would still be alive if artemy had come sooner? keep in mind that he spoke to rubin first. and this is what rubin says, when you get a chance to talk to him:

Yesterday, I was told you had killed your father.

That’s not far from the truth, Burakh.

You betrayed him. You left when he needed you most. He cried out for your help, but you didn’t care. He was in peril, and you were too busy elsewhere, He believed, truly believed, that your arrival would put an end to his troubles. And, as always, he was right.

i’m not saying this was necessarily the game’s intent, but it’s entirely possible daniil is parroting back to artemy exactly what rubin said to him.

now, for what you’re probably expecting in this section: the latin. people love to refer to his use of latin as “random”, so let’s clear that up:

it is not latin daniil has made up. with the exception of latin that is mispelled in the game’s texts, all of them are proverbs or otherwise common sayings. you can find most of them on the wikipedia list of latin phrases, or through a 3-second google search.

he’s a doctor. him having taken latin isn’t anymore strange than a lawyer taking latin. in fact, if you pay attention, artemy also took latin; this is implied when artemy tells him he’s always sucked at it.

his uses of latin actually aren’t random at all. what he says fits the situation, and sometimes is used in place of him having to come up with something to say on his own.

prime example:

Forget it, Burakh. I have a splitting headache. If you have no urgent business, then we’ll talk later. Later, later… Qui non proficit, deficit.

qui non proficit, deficit - he who does not advance, loses ground. in other words, “i’m sorry, but i really do need to keep working.” one of his voice lines.

as for why he doesn’t translate the latin: it probably wouldn’t even occur to him to. these are not obscure sayings. the utopians all have a certain degree of education - what would he need to translate them for?

this bleeds into something that isn’t really mentioned, but that i’ve found i have a lot of trouble with in everyday life. autistic people have a tendency to either overexplain (and then have everyone get mad at you because they feel you’re being condescending) or underexplain (and have everyone get mad at you because you haven’t explained anything). the latin would be a case where it feels like a justified underexplanation. you’ll notice that when it comes to anything scientific, he tends to do the reverse, and overexplain. this also happens in classic, whether artemy has asked him to clarify or not.

rigid thinking patterns

the thing i had marked for this was simply his strict adherence to western medical practices and refusal to acknowledge the supernatural, even when it seems obvious - he has a conversation in his route in classic with yulia about this, and that is in fact how he manages to get to her: by asking saburov if there are any other logical skeptics in town. it should be noted they seem to be breaking with this in pathologic 2, where one of his voicelines is “I’m no positivist. There are things in this world beyond our mundane perception.” i have no idea where they’re planning on going with that.

there’s also a quote floating somewhere around twitter about him having been raised by a military man, and militaries tend to enforce very rigid routines. you could say the same thing of block - who (in classic at least) i also have my suspicions about.

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

special interests. the one that should obviously come to mind is thanatology, though i would argue latin if not classics in general is a special interest of his as well - in addition to his usage of latin, he also references pericles in the marble nest and was probably refering to the roman occupation of haruspicy in addition to augurs in the same text. he also makes references to shakespeare more than once in both marble nest and pathologic 2.

hyper- or hyperoreactivity to sensory input

i don’t have much written down for this one but there seem to be several places in classic especially where he asks npcs to stop shouting at him. we don’t really have the privilege to know their volume or how they’re interacting with him, but i think it’s also worth noting that he’s the only one of the healers who wears gloves. in pathologic 2 he’s the only named character i can think of who wears them at all. his thing in the lucid dream about the brain being “a border”? gloves are his border, as is his jacket, which may be worn to cut down on sensory issues.

he will also sometimes seem to “overreact” to the situation at hand - such as in classic, when some dogheads mispeak and say that daniil is going to “sterilize” them, and instead of understanding that they must have mispoken, freaks out over the idea that they think they’re going to be… well… sterilized. or in haruspex route, when his reaction to the inquisitor arriving is to threaten suicide.

miscellaneous

he never goes anywhere without that carpet bag. we don’t see it in pathologic 2, but we do hear about it and he doesn’t let it go for a second in classic - not even in the cutscenes where he’s using the microscope. his bag could be a comfort item.

“getting very attached to things like inanimate objects” could work for the bag - but you know what it actually fits the bill much more obviously? the polyhedron. in the haruspex route he recognizes that it’s a lost cause, but he’s still too attached to it to let it go.

in classic at least, daniil is absolutely terrible at lying. most autistic people either are not good at lying, or feel uncomfortable or anxious with having to lie. when he’s asked by yulia and the kids in the polyhedron to lie to block (for different reasons) he’s clearly uncomfortable with the idea that it’ll work. and when it actually comes time to come up with a way to lie to block about why he needs five rifles, your options are to either buckle and tell him the truth, or simply say that you need them for “self-defense”. block believes that you’re not lying to him, but daniil can’t come up with any embeleshments to explain why he needs what he’s asking for.

Commander: Are you hiding something from me? Bachelor: No.

he comes across as naive to other characters. in classic, capella has a voiceline saying, “The Bachelor is not smart. Intelligent, yes… but not smart.” in Pathologic 2, Daniil complains that Aglaya takes him for “a useless dreamer”. he’s also easily used by the Kains to fulfill their endgame in classic.

my final, and absolute favorite: he takes things way too literally. autistic people (and adhd people, from my understanding) have a hard time differentiating jokes and sarcasm. so my favorite moment in marble nest is a case of him taking that earlier advice - to “take heart” literally, by bringing the tragedians a literal human heart:

Tragedian: Oh… Excellency. What a sordid sight! Sorry for underestimating you. You definitely do have… how shall I put it… a creative touch. But this is pure madness. You can’t take things so literally! Daniil: You wanted me to come back to you with an open heart. Well, here I am. …It looked too fitting to be a coincidence.

your mind map, after this, updates to say “I misunderstood the tragedians.”

conclusion

people don’t stop being autistic with age and i think he’s a good example of what it’s like to be in your late 20s and be autistic. i’m sure i missed things as i haven’t finished haruspex route of classic yet and there may just be some other things he does or says that i missed! if anyone has anything to add they think fits i would love to know, thank you for your time :)

[bitter-sweet-farmgirl]

ADM Director's Cut: Iktibith E

This is in reply to THIS ask. Director's Cut is below the cut

I fled far away from the Company, my breath coming in ragged spurts as tears blurred my vision.  All I could hope for was that nobody would follow me.  I just wanted to be left alone.

Soon my feet left the familiar cobblestone of Rivendell’s paths and trod upon the plush, green grass.  I had no plan of where I would go; I just knew I needed to get away.

Suddenly, I found myself on the edge of a cliff, looking down at the rushing river below.  It reminded me of the stream back in Lothlorien, except more wild and unpredictable.

This part right here, where I began to describe Imladris, was kinda interesting to do because I just started to unconsciously start to compare it with Lothlorien and tried to connect Estel to it in some way.

A soft sigh escaped my trembling lips as I thought back to my foster mother and how she would take me out to the stream every day for a walk, balancing on the stones out in the gurgling waters and laughing if one of us got wet.

Oooo, this was interesting too because it was the very first time I ever mentioned Estel's foster mother and her backstory. This is truly where she began to grow as a character and take shape. Also note that I never specifically mention that her foster mother is an Elf... But it's kinda a given since I talk about her living within Lothlorien for a time.

I could still see her long brown locks tumbling down onto her shoulders, and blue eyes that sparkled with a merriment that still couldn’t quite conceal the pain she hid inside.

A pain she had never explained to me, other than a few passing words about a man she had loved very deeply, but had to leave.  She told me about the young son she had left behind as well, a boy no more than two centuries old whom she and her husband–my foster father, I supposed, even though I had never met him–had named after the season of green leaves he had been born into.

Also another interesting-as well as hard--part to write as I described her foster mother's history and gave you guys some tidbits to get you wondering about who she was....

Thinking about my mother finally broke the dam holding back my tears, and I began to sob; shoulders shaking as my head fell into my hands.

It was only one word, but it rocked me to my very core.  Not because of what it meant, but because of who said it.

My absolute favourite dialogue--well maybe not absolute, but up there in the top five ;). It really just packs this huge punch of emotion. Because really, if anybody else insulted Estel, she wouldn't really think twice about it. But since it was Thorin... well, that hurt pretty badly.

Back when Naneth had told me about the man she loved, I hadn’t understood her pain.  But now I did; on a personal level.  I knew there was something special about Thorin the moment I had laid eyes on him, but I hadn’t expected him to treat me with such blatant dislike.

Being raised in Elven culture, I had been taught about their belief in soulmates.  The person who you just knew deep down in your soul was the one the first time you laid eyes on them.  I didn’t know if Dwarves had such a belief or not, but the feeling I had felt deep inside me when I had first met him…  It was as if we were two halves of a whole being drawn nearer to one another in order to complete ourselves.

But he obviously didn’t feel the same.

“Miss Estel?”

I quickly wiped at my tears, trying to steady my breathing.  Of all the times in the world to approach me, he did it at the one time I didn’t want to be around him.

Heavy footsteps trod closer to me, but I didn’t look up to see who it was.  I already knew from his voice.

“Leave me alone.”  I growled out, turning my head away from him so he couldn’t see my tears in the bright moonlight reflecting from the river.

Thorin let out a sigh and proceeded to sit next to me, resting his arms on his knees as he looked out across the gorge.  "I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.  I truly didn’t mean to do so, Miss Estel.“  He murmured quietly, and I distantly wondered if he had gone mad.  Since when did Thorin Oakenshield apologize to anyone?

This was a bit of a delicate dance here since I was trying to make Thorin still seem aloof and unfeeling towards Estel--because he totally doesn't like her, that would just be crazy, right?--but I also wanted him to teach her Khuzdul.

I continued to hide my face from him, trying to use my midnight locks as a shield, but my attempts to quiet my running nose caught his attention.

"Are you crying?”  Thorin asked softly,  concern lacing his words.  A hand rested itself on my shoulder and I started, whirling to look at him in confusion.

Oh this was funny too, since as a rule, Dwarrows are FIERCELY protective of their Ones and Thorin would be horrified to see that Estel is crying--which explains his uncharacteristic physical touch.

Honestly, his first reaction would be to try and make her feel better, as well as go murder the person responsible for making her cry--himself--but since he's obstinately denying that he is in love with her, he settles for just being concerned.

Thorin watched me with a furrowed brow, retracting his hand from my shoulder.  I swallowed hard, turning away to wipe at my eyes.  "No, I’m fine.  Just leave me alone.  I know you don’t want to be doing this.“  I said roughly, but Thorin shook his head, sapphire eyes turning to look at the ground.

"I’m sorry.”  He murmured again, and I scoffed.

“Sorry doesn’t fix everything, Master Thorin.  It’s cowardly to insult someone in a language they don’t understand, and ‘sorry’ won’t magically fix it.”  I said, and Thorin’s gaze wandered over to my face.

“How do you not know Khuzdul?  You are a Dwarrowdame.” He said, voice filled with confusion.

I bit my lip.  He was beginning to tread on dangerous grounds, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it.  One wrong word and I could end up on my own.  "Personal reasons.“  I muttered, and Thorin opened his mouth, about to ask another question when I cut him off. "Personal reasons that I won’t be sharing, Master Thorin."

Yet another hard part to write. I really had to watch my wording here since I didn't want Estel to reveal any part of her upbringing to anybody yet, so giving Thorin an answer he wouldn't contest was a little difficult.

He nodded in understanding, his expression gaining a strange hesitance.  "Would it help if I taught you Khuzdul?”  He questioned, and I pulled my gaze away from the grove of maples I spotted on the other side of the gorge, raising an eyebrow.

“You would teach me?”

“Of course.  All Dwarves should know Khuzdul.”  He said, and I considered his offer, wondering just what strings were attached to this.

This is a good part. So of course, Thorin doesn't want to seem TOO nice, but I really needed him to be teaching her Khuzdul. So he just throws it out there, torn on whether he wants her to say yes--he would get to spend time with her and maybe find out about her backstory, who knows--but he also doesn't want her to say yes--he would be spending time with her and might mess up/make a fool of himself around her.

Of course, Estel is a bit skeptical about this--I mean, we are talking about the Dwarf who seems to want nothing more than to have her gone from this quest--but she goes along with it. (If I'm being honest, she probably would like to spend more time with Thorin too... ;))

There had to be something.

“And I wouldn’t be a burden?”  I asked skeptically, and Thorin was quick to shake his head, dark brown hair falling onto his chest.

“No, you wouldn’t be more of a burden then you already are.”  He said gruffly, and the faint feeling of warmth blossoming within me was snuffed out, only to be replaced with the familiar resentment of the Dwarrow sitting beside me.

My absolute favourite dialogue scene in this chapter beside the previous one I mentioned above. I just adore this part because it circles back around in Anrâd... Buzrâ when Estel brings this back up.

Backstory on Thorin's dialogue... To the person who isn't in Thorin's mind in this moment--everyone except me, haha!--this sounds like a really harsh comment that just reflects Thorin's feelings on Estel. Or maybe they recognize that he's just trying to maintain his gruff image. Either way, the true meaning behind his words is not revealed until Anrâd... Buzrâ.

That's when Thorin tells Estel that those words carried no weight for her since she was, and I quote: “You’ve never been a burden to me, Estel.  Only the greatest gift Mahal could ever give.”

Now isn't that sweet?

“I accept your offer then.  Thank you, Master Thorin.”  I said sincerely, “but I have one question.”

“What?”

“What does 'amralimí’ mean?”  I asked, and Thorin looked at me, his brow furrowed in confusion for a moment before he began to chuckle.

Note the purposeful misspelling of Amrâlimê here. I wanted to ensure that Estel didn't know the exact way to pronounce it since she might ask someone else to explain it for her. It also sounds more believable since she doesn't know the language, and therefore would be mispronouncing words quite easily.

“I’m afraid that I cannot tell you that just yet, Miss Estel.  You will just have to be patient.”  He said, standing up and rolling his shoulders.  "Zann galikh.  That means 'good night’.“  He said, striding away from me, back towards the paths of Rivendell.

Thorin's denial here is pretty characteristic of him. There might have been some internal panicking--we'll find out in the chapter of Matters of the Heart that covers this from Thorin's POV--and he's trying to figure out how to cover up his 'slip of the tongue'.

~~~~~

The next morning found me reluctantly packing my things so we could leave as soon as possible.  I had hoped we could linger in Rivendell for awhile, but Thorin wanted to be off as soon as we could.

Here I really wanted to talk more about Estel's experience in Imladris, but I just kinda ended up skimming the entire thing, so hopefully I'll get around to writing a Bonus Chapter that covers it!

It would be an understatement to say that he disliked Elves.  He hated them with every fibre of his being.  But all this haste didn’t stop him from beginning to teach me Khuzdul.

"I am your ugshar; your teacher or one who is very learned in certain subjects.”  Thorin said while I rolled up my bedroll.  "Repeat the word.“

Rolling my eyes, I stared up at him.  "Ugshar.  Happy?”  I asked and he nodded gravely.

“That is a good start.”  He rumbled and then walked away from me, towards Dwalin who was leaning up against a wall inspecting one of his axes.  "We’ll continue this later.“

As soon as he had turned his back to me, I threw up my hands in a gesture of defeat.  I was never going to learn anything at this rate.

Estel is already frustrated with Thorin, isn't that funny? But anyways, Thorin is kinda nervous talking with Estel and he is looking for a way out of this situation and finds it in the form of Dwalin.

My guess in this moment is that Dwalin ribs him about Estel; says/does whatever guy friends say/do to their friends after they see them talking with their crush, idk.

"Hey, Estel.”  A voice whispered and I turned to see Kili and Fili motioning for me to come towards where they stood, partially hidden by a pillar.  "Come here.“

Letting out a quiet groan, I walked towards them as nonchalantly as I could and joined them beside the pillar.  Crossing my arms, I gave them a no-nonsense look.  "What do you want?”  I asked, getting a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach at the sight of Kili’s cheeky grin.

“Rumor has it that Thorin offered to teach you Khuzdul.”  Kili whispered conspiratorially and I nodded.

Nosy buggers getting involved with their Uncle's 'secret' crush already... I love these two.

“He did and it’s none of your business so bug off.”  I said, making Kili snicker.

“I’m curious, why don’t you know Khuzdul.  You are a Dwarf right?  Or are you just a really short human woman, or–Mahal forbid--an Elf?  Thorin might have a heart attack.”  He said, and even though his words were in jest, I felt a small shiver of fear travel down my spine.

I really love the Easter egg I planted here; it's yet another beautiful piece of this chapter. I plant a little seed of suspicion here as Kili says '...Mahal forbid--an Elf?"

Thorin doesn't like Elves, I state that many, many times and Estel knows that very well. It also ties in with Estel's mental description of her foster mother.

Again, note that I never specifically stated that her foster mother was an Elf. But right here, I actually reveal that her foster mother is indeed an Elf, because of Estel's reaction to Kili's words. If she had been raised by a human woman in Lothlorien, she wouldn't worry so much about Thorin's reaction to her upbringing.

But she is concerned, and that just reaffirms the belief that she was raised by Elves. It's also just a funny line of dialogue from Kili as he is his usual dramatic self.

“It’s none of your business.”  I repeated, but Kili didn’t want to let the subject go.

“What has Uncle dearest taught you so far?”  He asked, and I shrugged.

“The word for teacher and that’s it.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do before we head out or Thorin’s going to kill me.”  I said, turning away and beginning to walk away from the two annoying brothers.

But Fili and Kili reached out and grabbed my arms, pulling me back.  "I doubt he’d kill you, Estel…   I can guarantee you that thought has never once entered his mind.“  Fili laughed, and I gave him an incredulous look.

Fili slips up a bit here and reveals that Thorin cares for Estel. Not that my oblivious little Dame realizes that...

"Are you daft?  Wait, don’t answer that.  I already know the answer.”  I said, making Fili frown at my teasing.  "Have you seen how he treats me?  The way he looks at me?  And you think he hasn’t ever once thought that I’m an annoying burden?“  I asked, and Kili and Fili gave me astonished looks as though I had just said some sort of blasphemy.

Kili began stuttering unintelligibly, his brown eyes wide with shock.  Fili was a bit more eloquent and started to say something, but a sudden deep voice behind me cut him off.

Here Estel blows Fili and Kili's minds as she talks about Thorin in such a way. They thought that it was obvious to her that Thorin liked her and all that--again, noting that they all believe she is a Dwarrowdame raised by Dwarves. So now they are wondering why Estel doesn't like Thorin and are going to try and change the tide.

"Fili, Kili, what are you doing?  Have you gotten everything packed up?”  Thorin boomed, and I whirled around to see him walking towards us, his steel blue eyes smoldering.

The brothers muttered something about being almost done and quickly darted off, leaving me and Thorin alone.

“Were those two Lalkîths bothering you?”  He asked, stopping in front of me, and I cocked my head, not understanding his word of choice.  "Young idiots.“ Thorin clarified after taking in my puzzled expression, and I nodded in understanding.

"A bit.  They dragged me over here to ask if it was true that you offered to teach me Khuzdul.”  I said, and Thorin raised an eyebrow.

“Did they tell you anything?”  He asked, and I shook my head, wondering why this was so important.  "Good.“

Is it or is it not apparent that Thorin is deathly afraid of his sister-sons revealing his feelings about Estel to her? I mean, by this point, literally everyone in the Company--except for Estel--knows that Thorin is head-over-heels for Estel.

I opened my mouth to ask him why, but he had already turned away from me and was striding away, barking orders at everyone else.

I watched him go, Fili’s words echoing in my mind.  ”...I can guarantee you that thought has never entered his mind.“

There was a meaning to his words, I knew it, but I couldn’t figure out just what it was.  Perhaps it would be the key to understanding Thorin; the Dwarrow that seemed to change the moment you thought you had him figured out.

Estel is a bit confused over Fili's words and how they relate to Thorin, since she really doesn't even consider the idea that *gasp* Thorin might actually like her back.

[soapsilly]

Everyday a little less Part 2 - Viking imagine

Pairings: Hvitserk x reader, (slight) Ubbe x reader

Summary: (Y/N) is Kattegat’s healer and Hvitserk’s girlfriend but after Hvitserk decides to side with Ivar and fight against Ubbe, she questions herself if she can still stay with him.

Requests are open

Okay, so from now on I’ll only follow the story setting loosely so bear with me. I haven’t decided who I want (Y/N) to end up with so there will be a third part. Possibly a fourth. I have no clue at all so I’m hoping for a godly epiphany of some sorts xD. This chapter has a lot of backstory to explain some of the characte’s intentions. Also, Björn and Torvi are still together in this because I like Torvi and she obviously can’t be with Ubbe now. Paragraphs written in italics are flashbacks/memories.

———————————————————————————————————–

“Then they dropped me off at that clearing near the shore. Ubbe, you know where,” she looked at Ubbe before she continued, “that’s all I know”, (Y/N) explained at the feast.

“At least we now know that they’re back”, Ubbe reassured her. He knew how hard it was for her to leave Hvitserk. To her it almost seemed like betrayal. They swore to never leave one another, after all.

Hvitserk and her were lying in the grass watching the sunset after spending the whole day together. They had their hands intertwined and he was playing with her fingers.

“Have you ever been to Götaland? That’s where my father and my mother met… They say you can see Yggdrasil there,” he looked at her. He enjoyed when she talked about her travels.

“I know. And I have,” she answered.

“What about Uppsala? Have you been to Uppsala?”

She chuckled,”Yes, I have”. 

Eventhough he was older than her, he hasn’t really seen much of the world. His mother caused him and his brothers to live a rather sheltered life.

“Well, I’ve been to Paris,” he teased her because he knew she’s never been there.

He became somber for a minute,”Do you like Kattegat?”

“Of course. It’s my home. But there’s so much the world has to offer, so many places to see. So much to learn..”, she rambled. Hvitserk’s questions about her journeys reminded her of how she loved seeing different places.

“So you wouldn’t have stayed if it wasn’t for mother?” he asked her.

“Well… no. But I’m glad she had me stay here. I wouldn’t have met you otherwise”, she sensed why he’s gotten quiet all of a sudden.

“I guess I’ll have to thank my mother then. That’s the only good thing that’s come out of her only caring about Ivar”, he sent her a crooked grin.

She didn’t argue with him. She knew he was right.

“But you know, Ivar doesn’t need you as much anymore. Now would be the perfect time to leave again”, he looked at her.

“What are you hinting at, Hvitserk? I’m not leaving”, she questioned him.

His face lit up,”Great! Just what I wanted to hear!” 

She liked how he never stayed serious for too long. 

“So promise me not to leave me”, before she could answer, he continued,”I know you want to see the world. And you can. I want to raid and I want to explore. And having a healer present seems like a wise choice”, he sent her a wink.

She was about to answer when he interrupted her again,”I’m not done yet. Gods, Woman. Will you let me finish?” 

That earned him a slap on the forearm, which, in turn, earned her a deep hearty laugh from her lover.

“So as I was saying… Promise me not to leave and I’ll swear on my arm ring to always protect you and keep you safe”, he finished and she looked at him.

He was nervous when she didn’t answer immediately,”You know… now you should answer”.

She turned on her side, looking deep in his eyes. She knew he meant what he was telling her and she trusted him with her life because eventhough he was a goofball, he was a fierce warrior that would go all the way to protect the ones he loved.

She leaned forward and they shared a sweet kiss. When they parted he still looked at her expectantly.

“So I take that as a yes?”

She let out a laugh, which was like music to his ears. He loved making her happy.

“I promise, Hvitserk”.

“(Y/N)? Are you not well?” Ubbe already cursed himself for asking her that stupid of a question. Of course she wasn’t well but she seemed so distant all of a sudden.

“Yes, of course Ubbe”, she sent him a warm smile, “but I am rather tired. If you permit, I would like to retreat for the night”, she turned to Queen Lagertha, who in return nodded her head.

She thanked her and then left the table. 

Ubbe was about to follow her to make sure she’s alright, but the Queen stopped him, “Let her leave, Ubbe. She needs time”.

———————————————————————————————————–(Y/N) took a deep breath before entering hers and Hvitserk’s hut. It just seemed like yesterday when the two of them left it to sail to England.

The inside just looked like she left it. One of the slaves already started a fire so she had it warm when she decided to retreat for the night but she didn’t find any sleep. Memories of her and Hvitserk clouded her mind. Their bed didn’t feel familiar anymore. In fact, she felt like a stranger in a stranger’s home. 

When she heard the birds sing their song as soon as the first ray of sunlight hit the earth, she abandoned her attempts to fall asleep and decided to get dressed and wander around the market place for a while.

As she was strolling around her feet carried her all the way to the beach where she and the brothers used to spent a lot of time back when things were uncomplicated.

She sat in the sand thinking. Thinking of Sigurd, thinking of Ivar…

She and Ivar were actually very close growing up. She didn’t mind mending his pain as much as she could. She always sensed a kind of sadness within him. A sadness that he, himself, didn’t even know was there. It was hard for him. A viking that couldn’t raid, couldn’t fight. And it was even harder for him having Ragnar Lothbrok’s legacy weighing on his shoulders. But she didn’t help him out of pity or because the Queen ordered her to do it. She wanted to help him. 

He liked to think they developed a friendship that goes further than just her being his healer. And he unknowingly showed her a side of him that nobody else got to see.  He wasn’t used to anybody caring baout him the way she cared for him - with the exception of his mother, of course. To her he was friendly and she liked spending time with him, eventhough she still sometimes fell victim to the younger boys anger and impatience. But she never witnessed the violence and cruelty that many people feared him for. Thinking back now she thought of how she could be so stupid to not notice that the things people were saying about him were all true.

As she sat there in the sand she desperately tried to avoid thinking about Hvitserk. She knew she had to stop memories of him flooding her mind, if she ever wanted to have a good night’s sleep again. But every spot, every place, every nook and cranny, reminded her of him. 

“Let’s go. Do we have everything? What are we waiting for?”, Sigurd was excited to finally get going. The princes were planning to go for a day trip to their litte cabin, where they would hunt, practise their fighting and just unwind together.

“Ivar won’t be coming with you. He’s not feeling too well today”, (Y/N) informed the boys for Ivar, who wouldn’t want to admit to them that he couldn’t join them because of his disability. She knew how bad he felt on those days, not only physically but mentally, too.

“I’ll stay here with him”, she continued.

“Actually, I don’t really feel like leaving Kattegat today. I’ll stay here, too”, Hvitserk sent Ubbe a wink.

“What? Why? I know you were looking forward to our trip”, Sigurd exclaimed, “maybe we should postpone altogether?”

“No, Sigurd. It’s fine. We’ll still go,” Ubbe knew what Hvitserk was on about. His brother already told him a couple of nights ago that he had found an interest in (Y/N), after Ubbe commented on Hvitserk’s disinterest in the women that would very openly make their advances on the young prince.

“But…”, Sigurd was still cluesless. 

“Come on, brother”, Ubbe clapped his brother’s back, sent Hvitserk a wink and lead their younger brother away.

“So, (Y/N). A little birdie told me you never learned to fight? Let me teach you some. It’s important for a woman to be able to defend herself”, Hvitserk turned towards the healer.

“Sure. I always admired the way a shieldmaiden would fight”, she sent him a bright smile, that Hvitserk was sure he wanted to see again. Being the reason for her happiness made him proud in a way he never experienced before. 

Hvitserk was always popular with the girl’s but none of them ever made him feel the way (Y/N) did. She was smart, the best storyteller he’s ever listened to and caring but that wasn’t the sole reason that attracted him to her. What he loved about her the most was how headstrong she was. Whenever Ivar was calling her stupid or lost his temper with her, she wouldn’t just cower in fear or bow her head. She knew how to react to his provocations and even could make him apologize from time to time.

So there they were on the beach. Hvitserk was trying to teach (Y/N) the right stance while Ivar was correcting her from where he sat.

“Hvitserk! Her legs!” Ivar shouted.

“Further apart. You need to have a solid stance”, Hvitserk held her by the hips and nudged her legs in the right position with his feet.

“That’s good. And now take the sword like this”, Hvitserk proceeded to show her.

As she was about to take it, she heard Ivar whince in pain. Today was a bad day for him. She dropped the sword, Hvitserk’s attempts totally forgotten.

“What hurts?”

Ivar gestured towards his left ankle. The girl started to apply pressure to it, which was usually a good method to  mend his pain but  this time it didn’t. 

“Ivar, would you like a cold cloth?”, she offered to which he agreed.

She hurried over to the sea and wet some pieces of cloth in the icy water. When she returned she rubbed his leg with a mixture of hay flower and arnica before wrapping it with the wet, cold cloths. Then she sat herself next to him in the sand and started talking to Ivar. Much to Hvitserk’s dismay.

“Ahhh!” Hvitserk yelled and dropped to the floor. (Y/N) was on her feet and at his side in seconds.

“What happened?”, she asked him.

“I twisted my ankle. I made a wrong move. It might even be broken”, Hvitserk told her.

“It’s most likely sprained. But let me take a look at it”, she said worried.

She helped him out of his boot and rolled his pants to assess the severity of his injury.

“It’s not swollen or bruised,” she was puzzled, “does it hurt if I move it this way?”

“Yes, terribly”, Hvitserk answered looking down at her. He enjoyed the way she cared for him.

Ivar rolled his eyes, knowing what his brother was doing but he chose to not say anything about it while she cooled Hvitserk’s ankle.

“I’m not surprised to find you here”, she was pulled out of her thoughts by Ubbe, who had just arrived at the beach.

“How did you know I was here?”, she asked him without taking her eyes off the sea foam on the shore.

“I didn’t. I often come here to think. I’m just not surprised you had the same idea”, he answered, “how did you sleep?”

“Not at all”

He didn’t say anything.

“I just can’t get him out of my head, Ubbe. Everywhere I go, everything I see… it’s always him. It’s like he’s haunting me”, she told him.

He sat down next to her and grabbed her hand in support. He knew how she felt. He, too, lost his younger brother. In fact, he lost all of them.

For a while they just sat in silence until (Y/N) spoke up.

“Maybe things don’t have to end badly. Maybe he’ll come to his senses. Maybe things can get back to normal?” she asked him hopefully.

“Yes, maybe. I would like that”, Ubbe couldn’t know for sure but definitely couldn’t bring himself to crush her hope just like that. The way she looked at him made him want to shelter her and keep her out of harm’s way. So wether it was realistic or not didn’t matter at the moment. Only the Gods had the answers anyways.

She sent him a half-smile and then returned her gaze towards the sea a little less worried.

They were sitting in comfortable silence until a thrall came running to the beach.

“Prince Ubbe! There’s a message from Vestfold. Queen Lagertha is requiring your presence in the great hall”, she finished.

Ubbe jumped up but before he left the beach, he turned towards (Y/N) with his hand out-stretched to help her up, which she took gratefully.

He looked her deep in the eyes. 

“Guess, we’ll find out now. Are you ready?”

———————————————————————————————————–

To be continued…

Tag List: @sarcastichater​ @buckysjuicyplums​

[luuxxart]

GIVE US THE NEW WARRIORS HEADCANONS UR REDESIGNS ARE AMAZINGJAKMAKWJDKSL💖💖💖

aaaa omG thank you!! :’D I’m actually strangely attached to these characters so I’ll try to do my best to explain the design choices I made and everything

ok so here we go.

SCREENTIME

* first off

* Not an entirely bad name??

* I would prefer Worm tho as a reference to the Morris Worm

* And I did make his design a little more wormy. Kinda Doc Ock-ish.

* So his tragic backstory... Well. Long long ago... when he was just a little kid... his dad fucked his mom.

* Jkjkjkjk. But it would be better than fucking “internet gas.”

* To take this in a darker route, I think it would be cool if his grandad had been experimenting with creating cyborgs and turned his dad into one. And then turned Screentime into one. So Screentime escaped sort of half-finished and is just trying to help others who might mirror his situation of abuse.

* I like to think his first superhero story was he was just like fucking buying bulk ramen and then hears a dude harassing a girl in the next aisle over and is like. huh. word. guess I can intimidate this guy by threatening to take his fucking social security and make it public knowledge.

* Bc he can hook up to the internet and updates his database frequently so he can just Mr. Robot people.

* He’s probably like 18 or 19. Never was schooled and college is kinda pointless when you have the whole internet in your brain.

* So he’s just living in a rundown apartment. Payin bills by doing odd jobs and doin bitcoin stocks.

* On the battlefield, he’d definitely be a mind games kind of guy, but he’d also use his worm limbs for dexterity and could probably discharge bursts of electricity at the cost of losing some information in his database.

* Also it’s probably really hard to tell, but Screentime is my favorite out of the original designs.

TRAILBLAZER

* again! Not a bad name at all!

* Made me think of fire though... and hiking... so

* We really don’t have much information on these characters so they were kinda fun to play around w and I think she was my favorite in terms of concepts.

* Also what the fuck are those red things on her head am I just fucking dumb???

* They look like devil horns. So I’m gonna run with it.

* Ok so she got a backpack from a god.

* Well that god was a god of Hell and also her godfather. Her actual father was another god of Hell. And idk how gods really work in the Marvel universe?? But I think there’s probably at least some high-ranking demons of Hell. I think Hell exists??? If I remember Doctor Strange correctly? (Maybe not Doctor Strange... bro everything is so hard to keep up with)

* Anyway, her dad was killed by some hero traveling through Hell at some point probably. And so she’s been preparing since to go avenge him.

* Then she gets to earth and is kinda like... well, avenging can wait.

* And the reason she can’t just get anything she wants out of the backpacks is because the backpacks are alive. But over time as she gains their trust, they start to become more and more useful. So, like magikarp to gyarados.

* her outfit was so fucking hard to redesign. like,,, I still don’t like it. The backpacks and stuff yes. Everything else no. But it’s better than the Neon Nightmare.

* Her powerset shouldn’t be limited to just her backpacks though. I saw a lot of people complain about that. Bc anyone could steal them from her and use them?

* So I think she should have superhuman strength. Also, her backpacks should only respond to her command. It’d be cute if they were also kinda cheeky about it. Bc yeah she’s a spoiled little brat. But she’s their spoiled little brat so they’re not opening up for anybody but her.

* She’s defo the youngest of the group

* Even if she is an immortal demon kid lol

S

bro I can’t even say it

I’m renaming them Shuriken. Effective immediately.

SHURIKEN

* So Shuriken is non-binary. Which I think is really cool! They’re not the first non-binary character that Marvel has,, bc Loki exists,, but while they’re not a good step forward... they’re a step forward nonetheless and I kinda commend them for at least trying.

* But goddamnit why did they have to go and name them S

* Sn

* please don’t make me say it

* So Shuriken has ice powers that are sort of threatening to take them over. Like if Iceman couldn’t control his powers ig. Their powers sort of came to them mysteriously in the middle of them already having a gender crisis and high school is happening and all that blah and now they’re just like,,, so ,, “superheroing seems to be a good venture right now. Maybe I’ll find myself in heroics and forget about everything else”

* And most of the heroic ideal is on their brother, ,,,, uh,,,, Quarterback,,, who idolizes the “classic” heroes like Cap, Iron Man, and Thor.

* Shuriken prefers reading news stories about Night Slasher and Punisher, Jessica Jones, and just generally, the other edgier heroes.

* But because their brother idolizes heroics so much, it makes it sort of a surprise when Shuriken takes up their mantle before Quarterback realizes anything is going on.

* And how does the ice stuff affect them? They’re sort of on the fence about finding a cure and whatnot. Most people speculate its like later-in-life mutation, but Shuriken isn’t satisfied with this answer.

*they sometimes chop off the spiky ice parts for convenience(they have no feeling in the frozen over parts of their body)

*(I’m toying with the idea of them having a crush on Ms. Marvel ngl)

QUARTERBACK

* not much to say about him? Other than goddamn that neon was terrible.

* Also I’ve seen jocks wear pink, so some youtube dudes complaining about that can fuck off. Maybe not that bright of a shade?

* But I figure with a defensive character, you would definitely want a bulkier frame. At least Power Man levels of a bulky frame? Like I’m not talking Hulk or Thing. Just.. yknow. At least a good Cap size dude.

* Also a blockier costume would make sense. Since he’s supposed to be. Uh. Safe. For people to like,, crowd behind. Like a safe

* Like a safe sp

* Like a

* safespace.

* I also like to think he was sort of a stereotypical jock and then here comes his little sibling (by like,, 7 minutes) who’s finally just like “yo fuck the gender spectrum” and so he finally opens up to his own interests that he’s been burying

* Like the color coral

* Which is definitely not pink my dudiest of dudes ;)

* He’s definitely more

* CHILL

* than Shuriken about the whole ice taking over his body thing. Like, at the end of the day, he’s still a jock even if he did turn out to be a mutant. Like , the world didn’t just end because he’s got some cool ice powers

* Also only being able to create a shield if it’s for others?? What a fucking joke man come on

* He can create platforms of ice and just mainly uses the ice as shields.

B-NEGATIVE

* OK THIS IS MY SON

* not the original he kinda just looked like he took one look at Welcome to the Black Parade and said “I can do that outfit. But crappier.”

* Listen,,,, I constructed a son

* It’s like that thing from that movie

* I was like

* “We can rebuild him...”

* is that fucking robocop

* At any rate, yeah yeah, Morbius stuff is still withstanding

* What if

* And hear me out

* His parents were sort of antivax sort of anti-mutant sort of folk. They get into some sort of car accident when he’s kinda young. He gets a blood transfusion against his parent’s wishes and in the end also gets adopted by this weirdass doctor who probably has some nefarious purpose, considering he used Morbius’ blood in the first place.

* This would explain how he could survive having vampirism since a doctor would probably have easier access to donated blood and stuff.

* Should the blood be going to people who actually need a transfusion? yes, however, this doctor is clearly ,, off his fucking rocker and corrupt as hell,, and what is his purpose?? The world may never know

* I don’t think B-Negative cares about anything. Like he just seems like that kind of character? Totally and inherently aloof and selfish because he’s just been fed blood on a silver spoon his whole life?

* Just does not care

* He does care about music though. Specifically rock(alternative, punk, hard, etc) and the history of it.

* me personally I really like Pink Floyd and I’m not going to,, shove my beliefs onto a character but

* I’m going to shove my beliefs onto a character and say his favorite song of all time is probably Welcome to the Machine

* And he probably will not shut up about how righteous of a song it is and how pertinent the message is

* Bc I think it fits,,, a lot of things about the stuff I’ve wrote with the backstories of these characters

* and yes

* he can perfectly mimic Great Gig in the Sky. the man!! has pipes!!!

* I also think it would be cool if he’s the oldest of them? Like, younger than 21 but he’s out of high school. Just trying to get a bachelors in music history at fuckin uh. NYU probably.

* he unironically likes twilight

[twdmusicboxmystery]

Water Symbols and Ties Between Grady and Terminus: “A” Rewatch by @wdway

This is another re-watch from @wdway. She totally saves my butt on busy weeks when I don’t have time to write new theories, lol.

Here are her observations:

Hi ladies! I hope you're both doing well. I did a rewatch of s4e16 A, series number 51. I think it's important to mention that this episode was co-written by Scott Gimple and Angela Kang.

It starts out with a flashback of the prison and then we have Rick, Carl's and Michonne talking about how hungry they are. Later, they catch a rabbit in a snare. I thought about how much rabbits were featured in this back half of s4. It emphasized the size when Rick says, "A small one." Later, Michonne mentions again it was a small rabbit. This made me think of Lennie talking about the little ones.

I'll skip over the Claimers, other than the car scene where Daryl and Rick were talking. Daryl brings Rick a bottle of water. There's no label. It's just clear. It's actually a good size bottle and he sets it down in front of them. He brought water = Beth into that scene. They brought Beth into the Terminus part of the episode with the use of symbols that we were totally unaware of at the time. We gradually realized them as the seasons went on, the water being a huge symbol.

This is right after they jumped the Terminus fence and found this door propped open. Notice it says that it's a fire door, a way to escape. I think this can be considered a water symbol, just as a fire pull or ceiling sprinkler would be. I cropped this shot so that you could read the sign on the door a little easier. I do want to mention that Daryl is next to Rick and they are the only two in the shot.

Rick and co come out into a common area or plaza and are about to get a plate full of meat when Rick notices objects from people from the prison. He takes a guy to use as a shield against the sharpshooters.

I just mentioned how the door was the symbol of water, even though it was a door. Well, this is similar. That red object against the wall is a fire hose holder. I know this because I noticed it at the end of Us when Maggie and her group first came into Terminus. I noticed how it said fire hose. You can also see the fire hydrant next to it and if you look closely at the base, it's just a prop. There's a bottom section that should be buried or would be connected to some type of piping if it was real, so these are not objects that were already at this location. That means they're symbols.

Notice how this little corner is visible during the majority of this scene. We see it to the side or behind Rick almost the entire time. So, we have a fire hose and a fire hydrant. Both Beth symbols because they = water.

Look straight above the fire hose stand. There are 2 diamonds at the top of the building. I don't think they’re original to the building because of the shadowing around them. They appear to simply be tacked up, serving no particular purpose other than being diamond shaped, which = Beth.

Now look at the corner next to the hose and hydrant. There is a sign on the brick wall that I believe refers to the hose or hydron. It reads, “emergency water key, replace when used.” Just in case we didn't know this was a water reference, they wanted to make sure that they let us know, but I really like the fact that it's a water key.

I just needed to point out Daryl's Poncho which, ironically, he didn't notice, but Rick did. 

The three small pictures underneath it are original sketches of the Native Americans’ Thunderbird.

Our little group starts to run for their lives. We follow them as they run past a boneyard, turn different corners, and then all of a sudden we see this shot.

Notice the fire hose stand, a tire, the yellow objects, the abandoned car with a shattered windshield and these stacked train cars. During this shot, we hear a female voice calling for help. Here's the funny thing: we never see our group running through or past this, so this is staged simply to show us symbols. In one of the five flashbacks was of Rick coming into the prison with Beth/Judith sitting on the steps, Patrick was sitting on the floor in front of Beth's cell, making something out of Legos. Carl is cleaning his gun. Rick stops to talk to Patrick and Patrick thanks Rick for picking up the Legos and he makes a comment about that they are for ages 4 through 12. I've always thought that was somewhat odd.

I just want to throw out an idea to you. This might actually be a comment about the story arc lasting from season 4 through season 12. I'm not talking about the series ending at 12, I'm simply thinking that this storyline, Rick, Beth, Daryl and Carol will continue through season 12.

@twdmusicboxmystery:

Love it all! I especially liked the fire and water stuff you pointed out at Terminus and how they brought Beth into it. The combination of water and key is especially interesting. You did spark one idea from me.

And I know I sound like a broken record on this point, but could Terminus have foreshadowed the helicopter group? (Yes, I know I’m saying this WAY too often, and all the things I point to and consider probably do NOT directly equate to the helicopter group, but think of it as a mindset shift on my part. I’m kind of considering all things in light of the helicopter group.)

I was thinking that Terminus was where all the train tracks met, right? And we’ve seen more than one representation of the train tracks representing character paths. So, it would have made more sense if all the characters had met up at Terminus. And most of them did. Beth was the exception. But if this was a foreshadow of all character paths converging at some future point, then that would make sense. Because Beth is the one that’s been gone for a long time, but since then, others, such as Heath and Rick, have also disappeared.

So, all paths need to converge at some point, and we believe that will happen in some way via the helicopter group. See why I’m thinking this? I think what you’ve found here backs this up.

Another insight? Remember in 5x09, we see some train tracks with the camera moving forward along them, and the tracks disappear into the woods up ahead. Maybe those tracks represent Beth’s path, and the fact that it’s going to disappear for a while. But it will reappear and meet up with other character paths at some future point.

Which also reminds me of a kind of famous passage in the book of Revelation about a woman who gives birth to a child but then goes into hiding in the woods. Most scholars interpret it (a total analogy) as that the true gospel Christ taught would go into hiding for a while (Dark Ages) but re-emerge later. I don’t know if this is what they were going for or even considering, but it’s what I thought of. Might be a similar template. Anyway, great rewatch. You always have eagle eyes.

@wdway:

I cannot tell you how much I agree with you. I definitely think Terminus was tied to the helicopter people or, more precisely, that Terminus is connected to Grady and it is Grady who had a connection with the helicopter or what the helicopter group was at the beginning of the turn. I believe it's around a year-and-a-half into the turn when Beth was brought there, and I believe they have evolved over the 10 years.

Dawn pretty well confirmed that there was a group coming soon, so it makes total sense that it could be a military-type organization. I'm going to show you some shots that will totally bring back what I've been obsessing about all the seasons.

Top one is Hansen, Dawn's Superior until he went crazy. I know the second shot is really dark. This is the best I can do with trying to lighten it. Do you remember this at the end of No Sanctuary, where they give a bit of a backstory of Terminus being taken over by this big guy who terrorized them? I believe this guy is Hanson.

Isn't it strange that they tell a backstory about a group that TF has taken down and that they go to a lot of effort to make this person hard to see?

That's right. I think the crazy guy from the train box car is none other than Hanson. If you look at Slabtown and Coda, this person is discussed several times. An awful lot of screen time is taken up with a story of how Hanson went rogue. What's the need of that when Grady is about to be left behind and, more importantly, why do we repeatedly see a picture of him?

The first picture I showed above has his badge next to it. Another question of why do we need to see that? I'm going to throw out a crazy idea. Why not, haha. In the very dark picture below, the guy seems to be wearing some kind of large belt buckle. I think it might be a gun or something stuck in the front of his pants, but I think there's a badge there.

I guess there's a definite yes to me, believing that all of this relates to the helicopter people. More importantly, the new series The World Beyond apparently did not want to start until after we see episode 16. I've said this before. I think at some point, not necessarily the first episode, but I think somewhere within it we will see Grady, pre-Beth.

@frangipanilove

I love you take on Hanson. I totally agree that they alluded to something that we haven’t quite seen yet, and I would love to see Grady tied to the helicopter ppl somehow. I have wondered a lot about the tattoo guy from Terminus and what the deal was with him, and your pics show a remarkable resemblance between Hanson and the crazy terminus dude.

@twdmusicboxmystery:

It would explain the defunct cop cars at Terminus, if Hansen left Grady and arrived in them. And as you’ve said, the weirdness of some of this that hasn’t yet been explained.

That’s it for today. Anybody have any thoughts on these insights?

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Did you start making chapter theories in ch. 179? I would have liked to see your take in the psychology of certain convicts, like Sekiya, Gansoku and Henmi

Actually...

I began a little earlier at around chap 162, but at the time I didn’t really make a rambling post for each chapter.

I’ve also a re-reading series, but I ended up interrupting it at chap 18 (even if I actually wrote it till chap 38) for various reasons.

If you feel like listening to me ramble about those three I don’t mind doing it, just keep in mind it’s not a real psychological analysis. Those take a professional and much more information about their lives than I have at hand and I’m not even sure if Noda wanted to make them THAT psychologically accurate.

So take this more as a character analysis than a real psychological take of them.

For a moment let me group together Henmi and Sekiya as, like most of the characters of Golden Kamuy, they’ve in common they lived a traumatic event that influenced the rest of their lives and became their Freudian excuse.

Mind you, the trope is called Freudian excuse but in Noda’s case often it’s more a Freudian explanation, a ‘why they ended up like this’ a showing that they weren’t just random bad men born evil but once they were just ordinary guys like you and me and then something happened and they reacted to it in the entirely wrong way, turning them in complete monsters. A For Want of a Nail effect, if you want, something happens, and this event has a ripple effect, resulting in massive change in the character changes radically.

So, with this in mind, let’s go dig into those two.

Henmi is the first convict we meet whose life was totally screwed over by a traumatic event.

The previous convicts are:

- Gotou who, according to Shiraishi, murdered his wife and child while drunk, even though I would be more prone, analyzing his interaction with Sugimoto during which he’s friendly and harmless when drunk and attempts to murder him when he’s sober, to assume he was actually not drunk when he did it and merely said he was hoping this would result in a less

- Prisoner n 1, of whom we know nothing about except that he viewed himself as a small fish

- Tsuyama, whom we know is a murderer but not why

- Shiraishi, who’s not a murderer

- Hijikata, who’s actually a political prisoner

- Ushiyama, who killed out of self defence

- Nihei, who just couldn’t let go whose who attacked him but had to take revenge on them.

And then comes in Henmi, who actually has a backstory that explains why he became a monster.

Henmi himself doesn’t consider it an excuse, just his starting point, albeit it’s possible that, had Shiraishi never asked, he would have never wondered why he took that turn.

Henmi saw a board killing his little brother, apparently eating it alive.

We’ve no info on why this incident took place, but this seems to point out Henmi didn’t deliberately cause this.

So really, this is what turned him from an ordinary kid to a monster, so it’s not something he had caused.

Henmi watched this from his hiding spot, meaning he either arrived on the scene, was scared and hid or that both siblings were there but only Henmi managed to reach a hiding place and from there he couldn’t move to help his brother.

Henmi describes his brother’s death vividly. It was horrific, his brother was helpless and it wasn’t even the boar’s fault as the animal couldn’t understand him. Henmi thinks his brother was in a lot of pain and fear, in despair and hopelessness.

But then he says something that clearly leaves into us an impression. He says that each time he thinks at his brother ‘he really, really want to kill somebody, anybody’, and he seems to have an erection as he says so.

Due to this it’s easy to think that Noda is trying to depict him as someone committing ‘lust murders’, murders done by someone who searches for erotic satisfaction by killing someone… by is it really so simple?

Not quite because it’s not murdering someone what turns Henmi on, it’s the idea that this someone will murder him.

Henmi is not identifying with the boar, he’s identifying with his brother.

I’ll go and assume the idea here is that part of the problem here is that when Henmi saw his brother being killed, his body reacted in an inappropriate manner.

When one is scared the body produces dopamine. Some individuals may get more of a kick from this dopamine response than others do as, and according to some studies dopamine can trigger penile erection (though they’re still debating over this but whatever, Golden Kamuy isn’t meant to be a medicine text).

Anyway, in between the trauma to seeing his brother being killed in such a horrific way and his body’s reaction somehow Henmi came up with the idea he wanted to die like him.

We see Henmi doesn’t get an erection when he kills the Yakuza,

just when he thinks to how Sugimoto could kill him. We see Henmi thinks Shiraishi is masturbating to the thought of getting killed, not to the thought of killing someone.

Possibly part of all this is also due to guilt, he just stood there, watching as light died in his brother’s eyes (it’s interesting how he carve the kanji for ‘eye’ in his victims, as if to mark them with his sin) and let his younger brother be killed and even got off by it and that also explains his wish to die. In a way in this he’s similar to Sekiya, who thought he should have been the one who died, and not his little girl.

And it’s interesting Henmi has to think at it, before explaining this is what turned him into what he is, because this hints he tried to forget what he saw, that he buried it inside himself, for him it wasn’t ‘oh, okay, so this is how my brother die so let’s start killing people’, Henmi didn’t try to understand his impulses, he just followed them.

But, long story short, Henmi’s wish to die a beautiful death, like his little brother, lead him to become completely twisted.

Maybe the boar attacked them because they attempted to attack him, that’s why Henmi began to attack people, attempting to murder them in hope they would instead murder him, attempting to recreate what happened with his brother. Maybe if this experience had never happened to him Henmi would have just been an ordinary well-mannered and very sociable guy who helps friends (when Shiraishi sees Sister Miyazawa and follows her Henmi stops the guard from chasing him).

This however wasn’t meant to be.

Henmi flips, develops an obsession on his own death, whom he wants to be terrible like the one of his brother and maybe the second tragedy of his own story is by misfortune he had to kill over a hundred people before he met someone who could give him ‘his beautiful death’, hundred kills he likely felt insensible about because, when you start thinking being killed is the most exciting experience ever, you probably don’t even connect you’re doing something bad, which is also why we can label Henmi as a monster, because he’s absolutely remorseless toward his victims.

Henmi is dangerous, a serial killer that can only be stopped by death… but it would be interesting if we could peek to an universe in which he was never exposed to the trauma of losing his brother and see if in it he could have become an ordinary guy instead.

Oh well, we’ll never know.

Sekiya now as he’s similar to Henmi, yet very different.

While it’s likely that Henmi’s traumatic event or turning point took place when he was young, Sekiya’s traumatic event takes place when he’s a man and, in the volume version, Noda pays special care to it.

We know Sekiya used to be a livestock veterinarian who went around to different ranches in Hokkaido and looked after their horses and things like that.

The traumatic event that ruined his life is well known to the fandom and easy to understand and sympathize with.

Sekiya himself tells it to Kadokura, in a way that mimics a confession.

It was a Sunday morning and he was walking home with his daughter, who was still a toddler, she being right at his side, plodding around.

The images shows us a Christian church and this, combined with how it was a Sunday morning, tell us that Sekiya was probably walking home from Sunday mass.

We see him smile as he watch his daughter, light in his eyes.

Sekiya probably used to be a normal person, likely nothing over the top but what you would easily label good, and probably he felt that since he also has done his religious duty and gone to mass, God should smile down on him and protect him and his family.

(It’s possible he’s indulging a little in the capital vice of pride here… and considering his future actions in the future too)

We never hear Sekiya talking about a wife so it’s possible she died and he had to overcome that loss. Assuming a wife existed and died, he clearly overcome losing her and, evidently, being with his daughter, just watching her walk next to him, gives him joy.

Then something exploded behind him and he lost consciousness. When he wakes up he can only see that his daughter head and feet had been blown apart…. Which should be a pretty horrific thing to watch, especially for a father, but it takes him a while to realize this was due to a lighting having struck her, his eyes losing their light as he realizes this.

Abruptly Sekiya had lost his daughter, in a way that he didn’t even understand at first, a horrible way. She was a beloved child, a reason of joy for him and it could be she was the last member of his family alive.

Now there’s a really common characteristic in humans from various cultures.

Many of them tend to think that the lightning is ‘the weapon of God/a God’.

Wikipedia even have a full page in which they list the various thunder gods from all around the world and the bible too implied God can toss thunders and lightnings.

So Sekiya, man of faith, who believed to be a good person likely blessed or at least protected by his God, is facing such a terrible tragedy just after he left the church in which he probably received the Eucharist, a tragedy that took place by a mean that’s considered by many ‘a weapon of God’, a tragedy that should cause him agonizing pain because losing a child so young should be terrible.

Now… sadly the best thing Sekiya could have done at this point was just to mourn his own child and learn to cope with the pain of her loss, possibly without losing his faith but using it as a crutch in his darkest hour.

Sekiya though, doesn’t find in himself the strength to chose the best option for himself.

Sekiya can’t accept his own disgrace and the way it happened, mourn and move on.

We see Sekiya back in the church, wondering why this happened to his daughter and not him.

Actually he asks himself (or God) why his daughter was chosen and not him.

どうして娘が選ばれたのか… どうして俺じゃなかったのか

‘Dōshite musume ga eraba reta no ka... Dōshite ore janakatta no ka’

His next step, he explains to Kadokura, is to ask himself the following thing:

“Is ‘luck’ the will of God… or does the fact that a man like me was left alive prove that there is no such thing as God?”

「運」とは神の意志なのか…神のような人間を生き残らせるということは神など存在しないのではないか？

‘“Un” to wa kami no ishina no ka… kami no yōna ningen o ikinokora seru to iu koto wa kami nado sonzai shinai node wanai ka?’

It’s this thought that likely pushed Sekiya to test people’s luck over and over, ending up on murdering quite a bunch of people.

Now…

I think part of Sekiya’s problem is that he was a man indulging in the capital vice of pride.

He sounds like he believed he believed he knew how things worked (God would punish the wicked and protect the ones who walk on the right path as hinted in chap 172) and viewed himself and especially his daughter as people who should be protected, blessed by God and just couldn’t accept to be proved wrong when his daughter died, demanded an explanation, deluded himself he could understand what no human had ever understood, God’s plans or that, if he can’t, this would mean God doesn’t exist.

Of course Sekiya’s view about who God would bless and who he would punish is extremely limited as it implies God should murder whoever would deviate by the right path and would protect from everything whoever would remain on it and it doesn’t take a genius to know IT DOESN’T WORK THIS WAY, bad things can happen to good people and terrible people instead might be blessed with good luck.

But part of the problem though is that Sekiya’s obsession with trying to understand why his own misfortune happened to him works as a copying mechanism that distract him from the agonizing pain of his loss.

What’s more it makes him feel as if he has the power to control things.

What Sekiya wanted to get in fact was exactly what he got, for God to protect someone righteous and punish him for not being righteous anymore.

He’s overjoyed when he’s proved right, Hijikata survives to an extremely risky bet and kills him.

Although he says he has great interest in observing how fortune play out in people he’s never delighted when they die. He’s just businesslike, this is done, let’s move to the next.

Instead he’s delighted when he’s proved right even if this means he’ll die… but well, life had probably lost part of his meaning to him, circling about a sick game that couldn’t give him any satisfaction.

Nowadays may countries would have given psychological help to both Sekiya and Henmi after they suffered their trauma, so that they might not have ended up turning into monsters like they instead did.

However, in Golden Kamuy’s time, this possibility didn’t exist and if you couldn’t find by yourself the strength to overcome in the right way your traumas and problems well… no one would be capable to help you.

Most of the cast of GK would benefit from psychological help, Henmi and Sekiya are merely among the people who reacted to trauma in the worst way.

Now… Gansoku… well, the guy is hard to pin.

As far as we know he didn’t have a ‘traumatic moment TM’ that turned him into who he is.

When he explains himself, Gansoku says he expresses himself through violence the same way one would express himself through art but acknowledges this made others hate him as they didn’t understand him, which lead him to get jailed.

Gansoku doesn’t view this as bad as prison was a place busting with violence in which he made friends who were happy if he punched the guards and where he would go on a rampage and could only be stopped by Ushiyama.

His explanation seems to pain the picture of a violent man who can’t control himself and beat people left and right.

However when we met Gansoku we discover he’s a guy who basically promoted the stenka fights by encouraging people to bet on them. He’s a man who doesn’t attack at random but in a fight, can play in a team, tries to understand Sugimoto and helps him with his problems, helps Tsukishima when he’s wounded and can’t walk, can travel with Svetlana and protect her and wouldn’t fight with Sofia because he believed she wouldn’t be up for it.

He just love fighting and make no difference if he’s the one beating others or he’s getting beaten up. As long as he’s fighting someone strong he’s happy.

In short he’s not an uncontrollable abuser but a guy who loves to fight and who goes all out when fighting, a guy who can control himself and even being nice.

I wonder if he ended up in jail for a reason similar to Ushiyama, because he overdo it in a fight or in an argument. He said he was hated so maybe it’s the other people who would start the fight but, due to his superior strength he would hurt them too bad when he would react and end up in jail.

It’s hard to say, he’s undoubtedly strange but, at the same time, as he seems someone who doesn’t attack at random, that’s why he remind me of Ushiyama. But well, we’ll see if he’ll get more development.

For now that’s all I can say.

Thank you for your ask!

[lol-misantlery]

Yuletide 2019

Hello! I am misantlery on ao3.

Under the read more are specific details about what I want for Derry Girls, Mad Men, Queen’s Thief, Into the Spiderverse, Fleabag, and The Eagle.

General Likes

PINING, awkwardness, people being inexplicably fond of each other, breaking up/making up fic, people being emotionally repressed, denial, FORCED INTIMACY (pretending to be dating, bed sharing, huddling for warmth, trapped in elevator/closet/room together), amnesia fic, first times, hurt/comfort, trust issues, hooker aus, robot aus, happily ever afters.

I am good with g-rated or nc-17 rated fic, but if you’re comfortable writing porn here are some things I am into:

bad decision sex sexual experimentation fun/goofy/‘bad’ sex sex pollen intimacy issues

General Dislikes

rape/non con, alpha/beta/omega dynamics, mundane aus, soulmate marks aus, 24/7 BDSM, non canonical major character death, harm to animals, unhappy endings, mpreg, issuefic, harm to children.

If you want to know some more about what i’m into for each fandom/want some prompts, then keep reading but don’t stress about following each prompt to the letter or anything. They’re here for inspiration!

Why are you so into The Purge as a scenario???

Listen, this took me by surprise too. Explaining it now makes me sound like a crazy person. But I will try.

The Purge is a horror movie franchise, set in a dystopian near-future America where all crime is legal for one day a year, including murder. Pretty dark, edgy, violent stuff! I am not especially interested in the dark and grim sociopolitical realities of this situation, in case my prompts don’t make that clear. I am here for the absurdity, and in the case of most of these fandoms, for the weird and hilarious contrast between my requested fandom and the over the top violence of The Purge. You don’t even need to watch any of The Purge movies, because let’s be real, I don’t care about the world building or logistics here, and I’m not interested in a true crossover so much as I am in borrowing the “all crime is legal for a day” scenario. If any of the Purge prompts speak to you, read some wiki summaries and have at it.

Don’t feel obligated to write those prompts if these aren’t scenarios that appeal to you! And if you do write them, please, don’t make them super dark. Again, the appeal here is the absurdity, not the grim violence of it all.

Derry Girls: Erin Quinn, Clare Devlin, Michelle Mallon, James Maguire

Let me start off by saying you don’t need to include all four in a fic if you don’t want to! I’m perfectly happy with any configuration you end up putting together. If you want to include all the gang, that’s great too! I love everybody nominated so feel free to go wherever your imagination takes you.

I love how the group will spend all day making fun of each other but always come together when it counts. I would definitely enjoy you keeping with the show and doing something with that. Everyone going up on stage to perform with Orla and James realizing that he belongs as a Derry Girl are two of my favorite scenes.

Prompts:

Erin/Clare: I would love a fic where Erin and Clare really do go to prom together instead of the whole thing with Mae and John Paul. Maybe they go for real, or maybe Erin goes as her fake date to support her and then they have to continue the charade after prom. Erin would definitely do a lot of research and throw herself fully into being the best lesbian she could be, which obviously would include practicing kissing Clare a whole lot. I love a good fake dating fic that has the couple accidentally catching feelings. I also love the idea of everyone thinking she’s just making a statement and her dad being the only one to realize her feelings are for real.

I also love the idea of them bonding over a crush on Ms. De Brun, either after the first time or having her roll back into town and Erin going full Dean Pelton “This better not awaken anything in me.”

Michelle/James: I’m very into their combative but loving relationship. Michelle asking him to stay in the finale *__* I’m also very much into introducing a cousinfucking aspect but if you aren’t, don’t worry. I also enjoy how they are in the show, so if you keep their relationship at that level I’ll still be perfectly happy. If you are into it, Michelle totally gives off a “stop making love to me while I’m trying to fuck you” vibe and I would really enjoy seeing how annoyed she would be to realize he was more than just a ride to her.

Michelle gets caught in a time loop and has to figure out how to escape it. Maybe she lets James leave Derry all those other times and the version we see is the one she got right. Or maybe James and Michelle both get caught up in a loop and try increasingly ridiculous schemes to get out of it.

Or maybe Michelle’s mom gave up James’ room when she thought he was leaving with his mom and now James and Michelle have to share a room. They have to deal with all the feelings the finale brought up.

If you are more inspired by one of the other configurations please go for it. I loved James being instantly on Clare’s side when she came out. Finding out how Michelle and/or Erin and/or Clare’s friendship started would be fun. I liked James coming through for Erin when she got stood up. If you are more inspired by James and Erin please keep it platonic. I like them just as friends. I’m definitely open to James, Michelle, and Erin being queer/bi/etc if you’re interested in including that in any of these prompts.

Something based on this post: https://v1als.tumblr.com/post/187672633662/meanwhile-in-the-other-derry . If this appeals to you please go as wild as you want. Fic about the Derry Girls bullying a clown to death? Awesome! Fic about Mary Quinn beating the shit out of a dumb clown with a frying pan or Sister Michael being incredibly unimpressed by It? Love it. If you want to go to an angsty place I’m into it but I would prefer it doesn’t end with anybody perma-dead. I'd be equally happy with ships or no ships for this. No need to bring in the rest of the It characters unless you feel like it.

Mad Men: Bob Benson, Pete Campbell

This is probably my forever yuletide fandom! The show’s been over for a while now, but I still have an enormous soft spot for the love story of Bob and Pete, and would read any number of variations on it.

I don’t mind if you ignore certain parts of canon (s7) or go canon divergent, you can also follow canon if want (Bob shows up in Wichita??) GO WILD.

Shipping Bob/Pete began as a joke for me, but I do ship it for real. I like that Bob is all *_________* about Pete and Pete is simultaneously disgusted and intrigued. He might not be gay, but he’s definitely into someone who’s into him.

Also, if you just want to write about Bob I’d be really interested in his past and what the whole “manservant” deal was. We pretty much know nothing about him and I’d be interested in some backstory, but I’m not exactly looking for Bob/OMC PWP. In case it seemed that way!

btw, https://vimeo.com/132033248 is a supercut of all Bob/Pete scenes (pw: kneetouching). Enjoy!

Prompts:

Fake dating: The CEO of a big company is secretly gay and Pete thinks pretending to be gay will form a bond of solidarity that will give him an edge, but the CEO mistakes this for interest and Pete scrambles to come up with an excuse to get out of doing anything gay and he comes up with, “I have a lover! You may have met him…”

They go to a gay bar lolz and awkwardness ensue.

Pete molds Bob into the Perfect Ad Man and falls for him in the process. Basically “My Fair Lady” with a hillbilly and sodomy.

Groundhog day fic: Pete has to go through the same day again and again, tries to get help from Ken, Peggy, etc, and then comes to the realization that only Bob believes him.

Bob is a conman who starts out trying to seduce Pete as part of a long con, but ends up falling in love.

what if Bob is a spy who mistakes Pete for his contact because Pete compliments his tie? what kind of spy and mistaken identity shenanigans could ensue?

What if Bob and Pete + the Purge??? I feel like Bob would do well. He’s got secrets. Maybe one of those secrets is a facility with weaponry. Also, sodomy wasn’t legal in New York until the 1980s. What if someone in the office awkwardly asks Bob what he’s going to do during the Purge and Pete is appalled, because how uncouth! Everyone knows you don’t ask people what they’re going to do during the Purge! And then Bob makes some veiled comment about how he always spends his Purges banging dudes, and Pete is horribly Intrigued because sex stuff is never a Purge thing he’d thought of.

Queen’s Thief - Megan Whalen Turner: Gen, Attolia

I love these books, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I love Attolia, Gen, and their relationship best. I didn't see the twist where Gen confessed his love to Attolia coming at all the first time I read it and I frantically read to the end to make sure that everything turned out ok. As soon as I got there, I flipped to the front and started again. Somewhere between that moment and when I reached that scene on the stairs again, they became one of my all time OTPs. To be honest, it was probably when she cut off his hand.

I just love them so much, with how ruthless Attolia is and how clever Gen is, and all I want is a fic that focuses on them and their sort of messed up dynamic and that will be enough. I also love Kamet/Costis and would be happy to see something about them in addition to some Gen/Attolia content. I'm open to canon divergent AUs, but, please, no AUs where Attolia doesn't cut off his hand.

Prompts:

Part of what I love so much about this pairing is how terrifyingly competent they are together, and what a good team they make. So I’d love a fic about something like, what if some of their barons are stupid enough to think that Gen and Attolia can be turned on each other? Obviously Gen and Attolia have to go crush them together.

They have to go on some kind of diplomatic visit to Eddis or Sounis or maybe something further afield and absolutely nothing goes as planned. Again, show me how terrifyingly competent they are! Or just go for the lolz: how hilariously wrong can things go, and how do Gen and Attolia deal with it? You can also go the action/adventure route: do they have to get themselves out of a sticky situation by fighting or sneaking around?

Speaking of sneaking around: I’m also into the many possibilities of the scenario where Gen teaches Attolia how to sneak into his bedroom for once. Sexy, funny, emotional, all of the above, I’m into any of it!

Part of the messed up dynamic that I love with these two is how fear and love and guilt are all mixed up together for them, after Attolia cuts off her hand. So I’d be really interested in anything about how/if Gen gets over his fear of Attolia in bed or not, but maybe definitely at least in part through sex.

And because I’ve got a soft spot for Costis and Kamet: Gen and Attolia attend Costis and Kamet's wedding, in disguise or not. Maybe it makes them think of their own wedding! Maybe everyone just reflects sappily on True Love! Or maybe someone gets up to shenanigans!  It’s up to you, dear writer!

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: May Parker, Olivia Octavius

"My friends call me Liv," Doc Ock says to Miles. And then when she walks into Aunt May's house, May says, "Oh great, it's Liv." I would really love to read a lot more about what's going on with that. Sex is not a must, but I do ship them and anything about a romantic relationship would be great. If you're not into that, then I'd love to read more exploring their dynamic in general -- May is so fondly exasperated and not remotely surprised, but they both immediately go to the mat.

Prompts:

Pre-movie college backstory. Were they rivals-turned-lovers in college? Friendly but disinterested roommates who spent all their time playing science cloak-and-dagger games before realizing over spring break that their nemesis was their roommate? 

Pre-movie Spidey parallels backstory. May was clearly supporting Peter as he developed into your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and Octavia has been... what? We know she's CEO of Alchemax during the movie -- was she promoted? Is she the founder? I'd love something exploring their parallel paths, May as a behind-the-scenes string-puller and Liv as a mad scientist, with Peter in the middle working to counter Liv more explicitly. 

Post-movie, MIles goes to visit Aunt May and finds Liv there. They have a really awkward tea. 

Post-movie, Liv tries to make a comeback. May rolls her eyes and gets to work.

Purge!AU: What happens to the two of them on Purge night? Does May reluctantly go out to try to stop whatever Liv is up to this time? Do they end up working together for some reason? Do they declare it amateur night and just order a pizza?

Also, I would be interested in a fun fic where May and Liv both end up sort of awkwardly mentoring Miles because Miles and Liv end up in a classic supervillian-superhero team-up against some other big villain or disaster.

Fleabag: Fleabag, Priest

So I watched all of Fleabag in a weekend fueled by pizza and beer and loved all of it. But, not gonna lie, what really got me to sit down and finally watch the show was all this talk of a hot priest romance going on in season 2. Others may never believe Moriarty from BBC Sherlock could bring it like that, but I saw the light.

I’m absolutely fine with shippy fic for this fandom. If you want to go down the hardcore priest fucking road then go wild, but I did love everything about the show. Fleabag herself and all of her issues, Claire (and her haircut) and everyone else. Whatever you can write for me that captures how heartbreaking and funny the show is would be great, I'm sure.

Prompts:

With all this talk of the cool Pope maybe considering letting priests marry let’s pretend that the Vatican really does that and now priests everywhere can get married. How would Fleabag feel when she sees the news on the telly? How would the Priest? Imagine them bumping into each other after the news come out.

I think one of the most interesting things about season 2 was the Priest knowing when Fleabag was breaking the fourth wall. What if the fox is his personal fourth wall that no one sees but Fleabag that he can’t leave behind until he deals with his shit? 

Purge prompt: Brexit finally happens and the new PM decides to try this Purge thing the Americans have been doing every year. How would Fleabag fare in the purge? Would she stay locked inside with her family having to fight off Stepmother, who’s down to do some purging herself and is scarily good at killing people? Would she go off to hunt Martin? Maybe fucking a Priest doesn’t count if it’s during purge night.

The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth: Marcus Flavius Aquila, Esca Mac Cunoval

I love this stupid movie so much.I love Marcus, Esca, and Marcus/Esca and would prefer them shipped. UST/pre-slash is okay, too, if you'd rather not write a romance, but please at least leave me the hope that it's going to happen!

What I really love about Marcus/Esca is how even when Marcus is the one who holds official power over Esca as his owner, Esca is always the one with the power in their relationship because Marcus is so desperately into him. I love Marcus pining for Esca but being too honourable to do anything about it, while Esca is too angry at himself for pining for Marcus to do anything about it. I also enjoy Marcus having Roman issues about wanting Esca to fuck him and I don't care if they're not entirely historically accurate. I would just be very into Marcus having very rigid ideas about sex between men and struggling with wanting Esca to fuck him and Esca helping him overcome that.

Some general things about them that I love, both in the movie and in potential fic: cultural miscommunications, or just them worrying enough about miscommunication that they don't even try. Marcus having such utter blind trust in Esca. Esca having to relearn how to let somebody care about him.

Prompts:

That said, my first request is PWP. /o\ I would really, really love a Seal People Made Them Do It fic. Maybe the Seal Prince wants Esca to prove Marcus is his slave, or maybe there's a general boning festival going on and it'd be weird/suspicious for Esca not to participate, I don't know (and not too concerned with historical accuracy on this one). But I'm very into the danger element of they have to fake it for their safety/survival and the intimacy element of them understanding each other with few or no words. Like from Esca's POV, he gets that Marcus understands and consents, or from Marcus', understanding that if he doesn't want to go along with it, they can try to kill their way out. And, okay, if Marcus is a little ashamed of being into it, I am very, very there for that. :9

I would also love a roadtrip fic! The movie clearly ends with Marcus setting Esca up to choose their next adventure, so what does he choose? I don't have a lot of specific plot ideas for that, but I would definitely love to see them on another journey together, maybe hitting all the fun roadtrip tropes, like huddling for warmth in the woods and there being only one bed in their room at the hospitia. 

Or, if you're feeling up to something fun and weird, a Purge AU. Honestly, Ancient Rome is a setting that seems oddly suited to hosting the Purge and I would love to see it either played relatively straight to dark and dramatic effect, or humorously deconstructed, with Esca exasperated by more let's-kill-people Roman nonsense.

I would also really be into fic from Esca's POV, holding Marcus during the surgery and contemplating letting twitch and die, and then ~looking into his eyes~ and feeling sick with himself for having such a thought about the man who saved his life, even if he is a Roman asshole. Perhaps followed by all the times Esca could have had him killed or let him die and deciding not to because HONOR until he realizes no, actually, I just really, really want to bone this dude. And then he follows up on that realization, in whatever romantic form that takes.

[cosmicmoved]

IT’S TIME FOR MIN’S OFFICIAL INTRO... a mintro, if you will. KIM MINWOO, KNOWN AS MIN; 24 YEAR OLD POPSTAR, MEMBER OF POP DUO SO:DA. this is a muse i made back in march for a closed rpg that didn’t open so i wanted to give him a second chance! (:< i’ll write a proper bio for him soon, one that makes him sound like less of a moron, but this is just a basic rundown of his basic situation & some extra facts about him! sorry if this sucks, i can’t introduce a new muse without getting nervous for the life of me asdfghgfdfg anyway !! this gets pretty lengthy, even though it’s all just bullet points, so i threw it under a cut to save the dash. please click the read more to learn about min! if you have any trouble reading the theme, please refer to the mobile version of this post!

FIRST!! I want to be clear that Min is not a K-Pop idol, he’s a popstar. Technically, he started off in the K-Pop industry, is still ‘owned’ by a Korean company and was trained under that system but to describe him that way is no longer accurate. (i’m also very aware there’s already a k-pop idol called min but as he’s fictional, a man and, again, not a k-pop idol, it doesn’t really matter that much but m!ss a deserved better anyway)

BASICS

min is tomo’s best friend. tomo, having a lifetime of awful hollywood experience on min, was one of the first friends he made after moving to LA and they were both around the same age. they’re a chaotic combo and i love them... (i know the fc choice seems a bit too easy but i actually made both of these characters totally separately & making tomo made me want to give min another shot so i decided to lump them together)

full name is kim minwoo (김민우 / 金玟雨 / kim min-u) but he goes by MIN, both as a stage name and a nickname. call him either min or minwoo, he doesn’t really care either way. (he’s fed up with people pronouncing the W...it’s silent...)

birthday: 12th June 1995. he’s 24 years old.

nobody can tell whether or not he’s a jerk because he’s essentially a nice person. is it false bravado or does he just lack tact? is he just a part-time bastard? like.....he’s not mean, he’s a good person, he cares about other people!! ...but he’s also kind of a brat & he’s VERY stroppy. he gets upset if stuff doesn’t work out the way he wants it to.

he’s a member of the pop duo, SO:DA; an okay singer, more of a rapper, but a solid dancer. also very much known for his look, something about which he’s more bitter than he lets on. (he pretends to eat it up but he actually finds it pretty frustrating, a direct contrast to tomo who loves being the designated Pretty Boy so long as it’s not in clean, shiny way; if ur gonna call min pretty a bunch of times, compliment him somewhere else too at least once if u don’t want to end up on his list of enemies)

SO:DA debuted in south korea back in 2014 but the company made the decision to move it abroad a year later in an attempt to globalise their output. it’s hard to consider them as a k-pop group as they’ve been based in LA for 4 years now and they release music entirely in english. (pls don’t mention super m to me, i made this character in MARCH asdfghgfdfh)

the group’s name was originally short for SOL & DAL, taken from the french word for sun (soleil) and the korean word for moon, but they dropped it after the move abroad. min was the member who represented the moon while his partner in the group was the sun. they’ve sort of kept the concept in terms of visuals and all the rest but they mostly don’t speak about it.

min actually grew up in the UK. born in seoul, moved to a london when he was four and then moved back to seoul when he was thirteen and then to LA when he was eighteen.

EXTRA TRIVIA

min’s not as into partying as tomo so like...he’ll go along with it and go to clubs with tomo but usually doesn’t drink as much & often ends up in charge of dealing with the aftermath of tomo being an idiot. min doesn’t really mind bc he’s used to people trying to chase after him & being treated like an irresponsible child so he likes being the responsible one for once. (actually, he’s just a much tamer character than tomo in general. i think the same heavier topics will come up by virtue of him being a big part of tomo’s plotline but, in isolation, min’s less intense. min doesn’t take any drugs, for one thing; it’s part lack of interest, part he’d never get away with it like tomo does)

min isn’t allowed to do wild shit in public or else his management will come down on him like a tonne of bricks but he likes the idea of the Bad Boy image so he kinda...mooches off of tomo for the street cred. like they’re genuinely best friends and he’s not using tomo or anything shitty like that but i can’t say that min doesn’t enjoy being seen as trouble by proxy.

got banned from club penguin when he was ten for saying fuck. (more than once bc saying it once only gets you banned for 24hrs.) it was his first experience with resenting authority for enforcing their rules on him 😔

he likes to keep this sort of...mysterious, tortured image but his upbringing was actually fairly ordinary. he gets on with his family and loves them a lot. nobody’s dead, there’s no awkward relationships.

he has two siamese cats, both aged about 3 years. they have their own instagram account that’s about 40% run by min and 60% run by his manager when they have nothing better to do (usually after min has spammed them with pictures he’s taken). in conclusion, they are baby.

this has actually resulted in them having to separate their channels of contact by purpose; one messaging service will be used for important stuff, one will be used for casual stuff, one will be used exclusively for social media (cat pics & selfies), so on and so forth.

his management won’t let him get tattoos and he’s mad about it. like to the point that he’s been known to wear fake tattoos occasionally. do NOT clown him for it. he won’t take it.

actually, min’s management is just very controlling and overbearing & he’s totally overworked but hahaha we’re just going to ignore that bc arguing with the people in charge means risking your dream career in music & potentially losing it all, esp bc you skipped out on uni and fucked up a lot of high school just to pursue this job hahaha let’s just internalise that shit and get on with it

owns the cherry coke aesthetic. actually thinks classic coke is better. shhh, don’t tell. his favourite sweet is basset’s cherry drops though hehehe (not that he gets to eat them very often, given i can’t imagine they’re easy to find outside of the uk)

actually drinks too much coca cola. that probably explains the stroppiness, as well as his awful sleeping patterns.

pepsi can get fucked

min claims to be a vegetarian.

min is not a vegetarian.

the backstory there is pretty simple; min’s fussy. he has particular tastes. most kinds of meat, esp red meat, do not fall into his OK Zone. instead of having to suffer through important, fancy meeting dinners with posh steaks and not being allowed to use his fussiness as an excuse, he started claiming he was a vegetarian. people seemed to be more accepting of that. the only trouble is that he’s now widely known as a vegetarian when he doesn’t actually give a shit. the only people who know he’s bullshitting are his friends. he just wants a mcdonald’s double cheeseburger.

min lives on a diet of utter shit. he’s contractually obliged to eat healthily when preparing for promotions so he doesn’t just fuckin collapse on stage from malnutrition. pls eat a vegetable.

o yea he’s petty as fuck. wrong him like...once...and it’s fuck u city.

also he currently has silver hair. he’s icy...u see that he’s icy......i know the graphic is pink hair but i made it as a sidebar for smth like a year ago and i wanted to reuse it (:<

ALSO !! uhhhhhh, if anybody’s interested in rping the other half of SO:DA.........pls let me know asdfgfdf i’d literally LOVE for someone to take that role hehehe! p much everything is up to you besides a few requirements; he has to be close enough in age to min, probs not too different in build (duos always kind of have?? a sorta physical symmetry??) and he's a vocalist. the personality is totally your call but there has to be that sunny image. fc and everything else is your choice too but i’d have to be chill w/it & agree that it works asdfghdd!!

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Chapter 7 – Stalking? No, slut dads who slutted each other.

A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad. The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.

I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!

The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady wearing a rad-looking carriage dress hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband.  In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.

For the last book check out the brainless tag.

If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?

This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England.  Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag.  She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon.  He’s the manchild in charge of the supernatural police with a zillion dollars and he’s totes super hot too ok.  Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything.  Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government.  She has a dumb friend named Ivy, a gay vampire friend named Akeldama, a family who’s evil because they do the same shit as her but while being blonde, and most importantly Alexia is better than everyone cause…cause.

Last time on Gormless:

There’s some mysterious force that’s turning the Vampires and werewolves into humans. Alexia is in charge of figuring out that deal, and she is doing a bad job at it.  Her husband is in charge of the Supernatrual Police (BUR) so he’s going to Scotland about it.

Alexia is also going north to help her husband with a crew crafted for a comedy. and oh boy I can’ts wait.

Chapter 7 – Stalking? No, slut dads who slutted each other.

Tunstell has been poisoned! So Alexia and LeFoux tell him to puke.  Ivy gets really offended that they asked him to puke.  Like it was actually kinda shocking how nasty Ivy gets about this. Ivy insults Alexia, and laughs condescendingly while saying it’s just regular old food poisoning.  Like that’s pretty fucking cold Ivy damn.

I know this is supposed to be a comedy of ~manners~ this hubbub is because it’s gross and ~untoward.~  But a secret part of me wants to believe that Ivy is pissed at Tunstell for giving her feels and wants him to suffer.  

Also I love how Alexia and LeFoux just TELL him to puke, and when Tunstell is like…what? How? They’re like you’re an actor just puke wtf do we have to explain everything to you?????? But eventually they concede, he takes some ipecac, barfs, and doesn’t die.  Ivy was fluttering around him all a tizzy over this incident.  A part of me is like, why didn’t they just leave Ivy and Tunstell alone here to sort out some shit?  But I mean, Ivy seems salty enough to allow him to be in horrible pain. If they weren’t careful she was going to pull a fake eggplant off of her ugly hat and suffocate him with it.

LeFoux gets fed up with all of Ivy’s tittering so she gives her a bit of Cognac.  She takes what are described as two nips. So I was picturing itty-bitty sips, and Ivy immediately becomes blitz out of her fucking mind. I’m not exaggerating, 2 sentences after the nips, she’s staggering in zig-zags. She bumps into doors, spills drinks, and giggles like a mad woman.  I haven’t had cognac before but like….REALLY?  To me, they might as well have written, “Ivy was within 15 feet of an alcoholic beverage, so she’s sloshed.  She starts laugh-crying while singing Danny Boy incoherently and trying to give Tunstell a handy under the table…but it wasn’t Tunstell it was just an empty chair.  Which was actually lucky for Tunstell cause at this point she couldn’t do more than just play bloody knuckles with his nut-sack anyway.”

But anyway Ivy and Tunstell retire to their rooms and Alexia and LeFoux go to have a chat on the deck. Alexia is like, “Why would anybody want to poison Tunstell it makes no sense!”  To which LeFoux, with more patience than I could ever muster, points out Tunstell ate HER meal.  Alexia has a moment before she’s like, “Oh yeah, people are always trying to kill me.” LeFoux is a bit flummoxed that Alexia seems pretty chill and incurious about almost being murdered.  Alexia continues this track of being an intellectual giant by asking LeFoux if she’s a spy or assassin out to get her.

She, of course denies it, by saying she could have easily killed her earlier cause gosh what a badass she is.  But like what the hell Alexia!? All you did was alert LeFoux to your distrust of her. What were you hoping is going to happen by asking that question? Denying it is hardly going to prove one way or the other, were you hoping you’d get,

“Yes! KER-STAB! U DEAD!”

Yet it’s almost as if her wish came true because a mysterious figure shoves Alexia off the deck, to meet her doom splattered on the English Countryside.

NO this isn’t where the chapter ends. Here we are 4 pages in and we have a much better cliff-hanger than TUNSTELL DUN BE POISONED!

Unluckily for us Alexia’s descent is cut short because a random protuberance on the dirigible catches her dress and she hangs on for dear life while LeFoux fights for hers against the mysterious shoving assassin.  

But just as you were getting caught up in the action, a port-hole opens near Alexia to reveal the still hammered Ivy.  We have a very appropriate bit of comic relief where Ivy slurs out how extra it is of Alexia to be climbing around on the outside of the dirigible.  Which, to be fair, I wouldn’t put it past her.  But eventually LeFoux scares off the attacker and they rescue her.  The attacker was wearing a mask so we CAN’T SAY who it could possibly be.  I bet it’s Angelique.

However LeFoux goes back to Alexia’s room with her, and Alexia sees she got a scratch on her neck from the fight.  So she takes off LeFoux’s cravat and cleans it up.  It’s very intimate.

Gotta be honest, I am so here for the lesbian flirting.  I think fewer people should be flirting with Alexia, but I hardly care at this point. I’m happy that this book isn’t afraid to throw a masc-presenting lesbian love interest.  I mean, this is perhaps quite a low bar since modern romance novels don’t tend to be homophobic, but I appreciate a stronger inclusion regardless.

But as she’s doing so she spies a tattoo on her neck of that OCTOPUS SYMBOL!  YANNO THE HYPOCRAS CLUB THAT TRIED TO KILL HER, HER HUSBAND, AND THE TOKEN GAY MAN LAST BOOK! OH NO!  But Alexia pretends she didn’t see it.  She asks LeFoux why she’s following her around.  LeFoux is all like, “Oh GOSH I WISH I COULD TELL YOU BUT I CANNOT! I AM MYSTERIOUS!” I really hate this cop-out, and I particularly hate this one cause I can already taste it now…the reason she can’t tell Alexia is for a really dumb reason that would cause 0 damage if she told her right now. (Also going back and editing this after I finished the book, I was right. SHOCK!)  It’s also kinda infuriating cause Alexia (rightly so for once) is like, “Just tell me!”  To which LeFoux rolls her eyes and is like, “Oh you soulless are always so annoyingly logical.”

HEY LISTEN GIRL, PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO KILL HER ALL THE TIME, IT’S NOT FUCKING ~DISPASSIONATE~ OF HER TO BE DISTRUSTFUL FOR CHRISTS SAKES! UGH!

In order to appease Alexia’s outrageous line of questioning, LeFoux barfs out some totally unrelated backstory. She was an illegitimate child from a slutty dude who died soon after she was born.  She was raised by her aunt. As a child she met a man who used to be gay lovers with her dad. TURNS OUT THAT RANDOM MAN IS ALEXIA’S FATHER! WOW!  What does that have to do with her following Alexia around like a dog trying to hump her leg?

BEATS THE HELL OUT OF ME!

But Alexia is swayed with that and they part ways.

Say something nice Faps:

It’s getting even gayer up in here. Seriously Alexia, if you were seriously considering getting deep-dicked by Douche-canoe, douche canoe, of the dickwad douche canoes you better be considering this.

In particular I like the idea that Alexia’s father was openly bisexual. In part because she describes him as basically down for any person who wanted to fuck him. I am the kind of slutty stereotypical bisexual that relates to that.  Also the more gay characters the better my friend.

I mean, I’m not super happy with the direction they continuously drag Ivy’s character but it’s at least it’s more of a personality.  And I’ll take the comic relief, even if it isn’t good.

[tessatechaitea]

Team Titans #23

Redwing must have been furious when she didn't make the Birds of Prey roster.

The good news is that I'm almost done reading all of the Team Titans comic books I own. The gooder news is that I'm almost done reading all of the New Titans comic books I own! The most goodest news of all is that I'm still alive somehow. Although that's only good news in the sense that, by being alive, I can appreciate being alive. The news that I were dead would be just fine with me as well because I wouldn't have to hear it. The good news about the bad news of my death is that none of you would hear of it either! You'd all just believe that I got bored of writing comic book reviews and went off to live on a beautiful tropic island full of kittens. After I finish reading Team Titans and New Titans, I'll have to dig out another old series to reread. I'm excited to find out what it will be! I was on Twitter earlier and was perplexed by this person's response to a Tom King tweet. If a smarter reader than me could explain what he meant, I'd truly appreciate it!

My current theories: 1. He's just a Trumpist and knows Tom King isn't a white supremacist asshole so he simply assumes this tweet is somehow mocking Trump. 2. The Tweet didn't delve inside the mind of the protagonist thus relying too much on the reader using their own mind to form conclusions of the protagonist's intent, making it a 'difficult' read. 3. The person replying probably just responds this way to all of Tom King's tweets because Batman isn't punching enough villains these days.

This issue begins with Jensen practicing some of his beat poetry.

Snap! Snap! Snap!

Snap! Snap! Snap!

Snap! Snap! Snap!

Audience nods smartly while puffing nonchalantly on long cigarettes.

Redwing has transformed into a woman with the head of a bird and huge talons on her hands. If any of these Team Titans had a romantic interest in her, they'd probably be thinking, "Did her anus, vagina, and urethra just merge into a cloaca?" But apparently none of them do have that kind of interest because none of them are currently throwing up the way I am after having that thought. But now I'm also thinking of Hawkman and Hawkwoman's sex talk. "Let's kiss cloacae, baby!" While everybody tries to pretend Redwing is still the same person she's always been (except grosser), Chimera reminds the Team Titans that other totally-not-monsters-just-because-they-look-like-human/animal-hybrid creatures are trying to kill them. For some reason, Redwing attacks the other Team Titans. Maybe she's just trying to get them to admit that they all think she's a monster now. If that was her plan, it works because Lapidus is all, "If you're intent on proving you're as much a monster inside as well as out, then you'll have to go through me!" Idiot! You're not supposed to say she looks like a monster to her face! You're supposed to act more like her brother Prester Jon and avoid eye contact and tugging at the inside of your shirt collar and mumbling things like, "Yikes!" At least that allows you to deny your true feelings when she confronts you about why you're acting so weird.

Me at prom.

Sometimes I completely understand that I'm reviewing comic books that never wanted me as an audience. I don't care what young person is infatuated with what other young person, or how much bullshit drama one member of the team can create for no reason at all. If I was, I would be a fan of the Legion of Super-heroes. So if I hate this comic book with such passion that I've certainly spontaneously created at least five kidney stones within me, it really shouldn't reflect on the comic book at all. I'm sure somebody cares that Killowat has a crush on Mirage but he's also a racist piece of shit. I'm sure somebody cares that Terra has littered the Troy Family Farm with stone dildos because Changeling won't fuck her. I'm sure somebody cares that Prestor Jon has an issue with his sister because she doesn't look as human as she used to (while it's okay for him to look like Stretch Armstrong). But that someone is not me. I don't think it ever was me. Half the comic books I own were purchased because of simple momentum. I bought the first issue and felt compelled to buy the second issue and, well, fuck it? Why not just keep buying them no matter how terrible they were?! I know that doesn't say anything positive about my decision making but then I've also never claimed to be good at making decisions. The fact that I read every comic book of The New 52 for six or seven years proves that! Prester Jon refers to Qurac as "hell on Earth" which Chimera has opinions on.

"Hell! What a western concept! But, I mean, you're right and I'm going to go along with that characterization so I don't even know why I pointed that out!" I didn't say she had strong opinions on it.

Chimera mentions that she last met the Team Titans in Team Titans Annual #1. Fuck! I didn't review that issue! I'm sure I own it but it might be stored with all of the Bloodlines Annuals. Well, I guess I can review it whenever I find it during my reread of all of my thousands of comic books from the last forty years!

It's true that I never expected Peter David's Aquaman but I certainly wasn't waiting for it.

Prester Jon tries to discover what caused Redwing's transformation (as well as that of the human/animal hybrids outside) while a young Quraci girl looks at Redwing and cries. I think it's supposed to be touching how the little girl can't communicate but she can feel emotions. Although it would be better if she could communicate because, for some reason, she knows the entire backstory as to how and why people became mutant animal monsters. Something about how aliens crashed in the desert and Circe saw they could be used to make human/animal hybrids but some of the aliens died in the desert and when Cheshire nuked Qurac, the aliens were atomized and everybody breathed in cremated alien space DNA. It's totally the kind of thing a little girl would know all about. Chimera shows Killowat and Terra that the Americans have come to Qurac to save the oil and not the people. That sets off Killowat's Angry Right Wing Logic Centers.

Oh? Is criticizing America's foreign policy of protecting investments considered politically correct? Although doesn't this anger and argument seem tame from a 2019 perspective?

Anybody who begins an argument with "I refuse to believe" is a person with whom I immediately stop arguing. It's a great opening tactic because I appreciate your desire to not waste my time by immediately revealing that you won't be listening to facts and evidence. Also, "I refuse to believe America would rape a country of its resources at the expense of saving the people" may as well be a declaration that you spent most of your time in history class yelling, "Nyah nyah nyah nyah! I can't hear you!" Not that America's public educational system was particularly great at exposing America's imperialistic abuse! There's definitely a reason right wing thinkers believe college educations turn people into leftists. Because it does! Leftists are just rational people who aren't viewing the world through the lens of preconceived opinions! College educations are less about broad generalizations and more about trying to put history in as much context as possible. Patriots are often as blind as people of faith. One of the conditions of being faithful is to not question your faith. It's right there in the word! So any examination of your faith is questioning that which you shouldn't question. Being a patriot is the exact same thing. If you question our government, you're against our government. There's no belief in trying to improve our government because it's an acceptance of flaws in the United States. Of course now that's simply become a way to not ever question anything a Republican does because obviously everything any Democrat does is completely wrong. It's believing in tribe over anything else. I am not a Democrat because I believe whatever the fuck every Democrat believes. Hell, I'm not even technically a Democrat! I am liberal, sure. But I don't support any idea or belief from what would be considered my tribe. And neither are a lot of liberals which is why you have trouble with Democratic voter turnout. Every Republican nominee is practically interchangeable. As long as they spout the handful of talking points important to the accepted base (2nd amendment, anti-abortion, Christian values, white supremacy...I mean states rights!), they'll do. But Democrats have the constant fight over whether a candidate will lose voters if they move left away from center while hardly ever acknowledging how many votes they'll gain as they move left. I've always said they should abandon all those assholes at the center. If you're only voting Democrat because you support their social views but don't want higher taxes maybe you're actually a Republican. Because if the Democratic party moves further left and you abandon it because of taxes to side with the gun toting fetuses who support locking up refugees on our southern border, who the fuck wants you at that party anyway?! Back to the comic book, the Team Titans speculate that the cremated alien DNA has combined with the tainted oil in Qurac and the metagenes in certain individuals to transform them into monsters. So now they've got to destroy all of America's profits by making sure the oil isn't sold all over the world. Killowat is all, "I can't believe we're going to save the world at the risk of America's profits!" I mean, he doesn't say that explicitly. But I can read between his racist and xenophobic lines.

Finally an argument that wins him over!

Look, I get being resistant to truth! Whenever I brush my teeth, I can't help thinking about the Barney song where they mime brushing with huge toothbrushes and sing, "While I'm brushing my teeth and having so much fun, I never let the water run!" And then I just let the water run! I know, I know. I'm a fucking monster! Terra and Killowat solve the problem by putting the contaminated oil back into the ground. That seems scientifically sound enough that I won't bother questioning it like a college-educated leftist. But Killowat assures Chimera that she hasn't won the argument even though her argument was simply, "Maybe you should question your government sometimes, idiot." Meanwhile the animal people attack the other Titans upstairs. The Titans can't kill them because they were once people (although I guess if they had always been sentient monster people, it would have been okay to kill them? Sometimes I'm not entirely sure of comic book superhero rules). They solve their problem by sending them into a Fairy Land via one of Chimera's portals. She was hesitant to do it earlier because she didn't know if what transformed them was catching. But now that Prester Jon somehow did science and figured out what happened, everybody agrees it's okay to banish them to a world where they'll never see their loved ones again and nobody will work out how to save them and they'll probably just turn on each other when they get hungry. Superman throwing every villain into the Phantom Zone has left a terrible example for young heroes to follow!

Oh the 90s! When every time anybody said anything, you had to wait a few seconds to see whether or not they really believed what they just said!

Later Killowat acts like a total jerk. But he acts like a different kind of total jerk than he usually acts like. So after he's done, he says, "Whoa! What just happened?! Is that shadowy person on the ground hiding behind the tree controlling me?! And who might it be?! ZERO HOUR!" Team Titans #23 Rating: B-. They sure used to pack a lot of story and words into comic books, didn't they?! And for only $1.95! That's two dollars less than the crappy comics DC puts out today that have four less pages and far less story every month! And it's three dollars less than Marvel books! No wonder Marvel is more popular. People probably look at the price and think, "Whoa! I'm getting a whole dollar more quality out of this comic book than that stupid DC comic book!" It also might help that Marvel doesn't mind having synopses of the story to help new readers or old readers whose memories aren't that great anymore. DC refuses to do the same, instead relying on the writer wasting two or three pages of actual story where characters think about what happened in the previous issue. A lot of DC books suck in collected formats!

[thegeminisage]

What other characters (of DBH) you think people should appreciate more and why? I love read your opinions❤

omg anon pls thats so sweet

(if anybody wasn’t here for the last ask the first character was north & there’s a follow-up here)

alright just a “””quick””” (lol as if) little thing for each one bc it’s getting late & you’ve already been waiting on this for like an hour at the time i started typing. it’s probably gonna be long as fuck but the tl;dr is at the bottom

LUTHER:

they did luther so dirty…it was like david cage was playing “racist trope bingo” for his entire debut chapter…and then on top of that all he cares about is kara & alice, these two near-strangers, and it’s real easy to get him killed for them. in fact, in an ending where kara sacrifices herself at the border, she tells alice that luther will get her across the border, and after that, rose will take care of her. UM WHAT? don’t call ur PSN trophy “happy family” and then try to erase luther like that!! what does luther want? what are his hopes and dreams, his fears? nobody ever bothers to ask bc they’re too busy making ralph alice’s dad. and it’s not that i don’t like ralph - i do! but he threatened alice with a knife TWICE. after her previous dad’s bullshit, that’s the last thing she needs!!

here’s my take on luther: he says that what his life was before kara & alice doesn’t matter, and that’s because david cage doesn’t care about him. but imagine instead that luther remembers what he did (was forced to do) before he broke his programming. our luther is sweet and gentle and good, but zlatko forced him to use his strength as a weapon for LITERALLY tearing people apart. don’t you think luther regrets that? don’t you think he wishes he could take it back? perhaps his even temper and loving heart is a RESULT of those early memories: he’s seen the worst sides of anger and callousness, he’s had to be complicit in it. my feeling is that he never ever wants to be complicit in something like that again…it feels weird when he picks up a gun in the game because i think he would be even more of a staunch pacifist than josh?? i feel like even when luther does get annoyed or angry he’s so afraid of the harm he’s capable of doing he doesn’t even really let himself feel it And That’s Sad. he should be able to get annoyed at like a broken coffee maker or some shit without illogically worrying it will result in someone’s maiming or death?? maybe he is So Ready to throw himself on a grenade for kara and alice because yes, he does love them, but also he feels he has to redeem himself somehow, yk? he has to be willing to do absolutely WHATEVER it takes to be Good

they didn’t give luther any depth…he never got to speak to zlatko’s captives and apologize, he never got to express a feeling about kara potentially burning down the whole fucking nightmare house (with living androids inside, i might add) - would he have wished to save those androids? would he be glad their suffering was over? would he have motherfucking hearts in his eyes for kara single-handedly destroying his own personal hell? he deviated for alice, it was alice that made him say “ok, doing this to kids is where i literally can’t take it anymore” - don’t you think he’d be so retroactively terrified of all the terrible things that could have happened to her? 

like i truly don’t get why people make ralph alice’s dad when luther loves her so fucking much he’d bring her the moon if she asked - he’s the only person who loves her just as selflessly and unconditionally as kara does. she accepted him and wanted him to say goodnight their very first night together…as soon as he resisted his programming, she stopped being afraid of him, and it must be so amazing for him to finally have people around who don’t either fear him or try to control him…whether u ship him with kara or not (i do, everyone should - it’s one thing to HC kara as gay but i side-eye people who don’t wanna ship luther with anybody) you know he’s gotta cherish them so much

AMANDA:

ok look i know amanda is the antag to connor’s story but honestly she’s metal as FUCK. i was so fucking floored to not only learn the garden isn’t a garden but that amanda isn’t amanda…my first playthrough i was letting connor be just a lil bit deviant but whenever amanda would ask about it i would panic and lie…now i know it doesnt matter what you can say and you can be blatantly deviant right in front of her and she’s like ok Whatever BUT i was deeply shook to realize all my lying to her all along hadn’t meant a thing…she did in fact KNOW i was lying because she wasn’t real, she was living in connor’s brain and she could see all that shit he was doing

and also?? like, imagine you were made out of a dead person’s face and voice. we don’t know if amanda has a body, we don’t know if kamski actually liked what he created or thought it was creepy (like imagine if he and amanda were close and then she died…it’d be weird to see her like that), we don’t know if amanda CAN deviate like the androids…she’s living this half life potentially stuck in some garden and just doing what her program says like everybody else. but even though machines get all the sympathy in this game i very rarely ever see people stop and go “dude, is she ok…is someone controlling her can we help her” - amanda’s a lot like connor, she’s hunting down deviants but she’s not a human and she’s not alive yet so who’s pulling her strings?? can they be cut??? 

JOSH:

i’ll be honest i haven’t figured out what Angle i like best for josh the way i’ve got one for luther and north but he has such strong convictions i feel like they would have to stem from some past experience. everybody’s always arguing about simon vs north that nobody stops to give josh the attention he deserves…he’s part of the fantastic 4 too!! who is josh? what does he want? what is he afraid of? does he refuse to be violent for reasons like luther - did he hurt someone, deliberately or accidentally? (to a lesser extent, a pacifist markus who shoved leo can also follow this pattern - he gave into violence and thought he’d killed carl’s son, so he swore to do no more violence after that.) or: did he see someone else get hurt/get hurt himself? i know the backstory they give him in the gallery but tbh it’s very similar and not stand-out from most of the rest of the stuff we hear…

like, what made josh deviate? we literally never find out. i think it would be interesting tho if instead of just being the victim of violence, he was ordered to DO violence, and refused - maybe that’s why he got hurt. but i think his relationship WITH violence could be a complex thing for anyone who wanted to tackle it. we know why north prefers violence, why does josh detest it? (similarly, why does simon prefer safety over either approach? - but fandom gives him a lot of love and attention and tries to explain this, and nobody tries to explain it for josh.)

KARA & ALICE:

like…to a small extent…i know they’re main characters but i could write an essay just on why they didn’t get a fair shake either - constant victims of assault, little depth, kara got to choose what happened to her but not what kind of person she was gonna be like markus & connor, significantly less playtime than markus & connor, had NO influence on the big macro plot like markus & connor, i could go on…but definitely the worst for me is that everything about kara that made us love her (from the short), was ERASED - david took her memories and never made the slightest move towards kara wanting them back, or her being able to get them back. she’s six years old and he took all of her history from her, all of her agency!! i feel like translated into fic they can both become very flat - all kara cares about is protecting alice, and alice is constantly scared or hurt or needing to be taken care of, like a baby doll. granted that’s not actually far from the game’s canon, but it could have been MORE. kara had six entire years of experiences before she met alice - what makes alice special? who is kara without alice? 

i really wish we had been able to take a personality route with kara - her main superpower seems to be empathy and getting people on her side (ralph, jerrys, zlatko’s creatures), but she can also wave around a gun at anybody who gets near her baby. it would have been really interesting to explore two sides of that - to have a kara who is 1000% Done and ready for wholesale murder if it means surviving vs having a kara who can bring out the best in anyone, even if they seem like bad people at first. (imagine the influence you could have over alice - she would learn to be wary of strangers or be warm to them.) but instead the narrative is wishy-washy; you can’t teach alice anything, and in fact she serves as kara’s moral compass instead of the other way around - you wind up doing things like comforting the guy who broke kara multiple times and waving a gun at ralph (who like, shouldn’t have done that, but also isn’t 100% in control of his own facualities all the time). it would have been really interesting to see kara be able to influence her own fate more as well - the camp sections are shitty and should not exist but like maybe a kara who had spent the whole game yelling at everyone with a gun would have the ability unlocked to then rally the people inside, and who cared what connor and markus were doing, you know? 

but david doesn’t know how to write women so that’s not what we got - kara carried that entire franchise into reality and he totally screwed her over!!

TL;DR

luther was forced to do terrible things and that could explain a lot of his behavior if anybody cared, nobody ever wonders if amanda is being forced to obey programming like the rest of the machines or if she’s ok, josh’s relationship with violence could be very complex and we don’t know his motivation for refusing to participate in it the way we know north’s for preferring it, and david can’t write women so he shafted kara so fucking bad and it is an honest to god shame

(dbh meta tag)

[humansofap]

This is an interview I conducted with Amy Quinn in the fall of 2017 for a book project about Asbury Park. Much has changed in the past year and a half in the city, but much has stayed the same. It is along read, but worth your time if you care about Asbury Park and what the humans who have lived here think about its history and trajectory. Thank you Amy for your candor and time.

..............................................................................................................................

Today I am interviewing Amy Quinn, Asbury Park council woman and gay rights activist. It is a very windy afternoon so we have forgone our original plan of walking the boards and are sitting instead at a cozy table at Cubacan. As with everyone else, I am curious to know what drew Amy to Asbury Park in the first place.

The answer is simple. “Gay friends of mine had started to come here. That was how I first heard about it and started to come see it. I bought here when I was like 24. So I guess 17 years ago? I came to visit and bought my house within a week.”

I am taken aback and ask her to clarify. “So, you’d never been here before, came and saw it and within a week had bought your house?”

Amy is very nonchalant. “I bought a little condo on Deal Lake Drive. I saw this old building called the Santander, from the 1920’s, and immediately fell in love with it, and so I immediately tried to get a place. Back then it was relatively cheap, it was different than it is now. I lived in Jersey City but had been looking at places on the Jersey shore and I was looking at Belmar and Bradley Beach and then I saw this place and loved the building.”

I can sense there is more to this story. I ask what made her decide she wanted to move in the first place.

“I wanted to live by the water. And Asbury was the only place I could afford by the water. And there were already gay bars here. Georgie’s was here, the Empress was here, there was a little gay bar called Anybody’s that was here, there was already a gay community here so that was obviously a draw.”

I ask her to walk me through her first impression of the town.

“It was the year 2000. I drove down with some coworkers from my job at Child Protective Services in Jersey City. And they thought I was insane to want to live here and they actually said they wouldn’t come visit. I mean every street you turned down there were hustlers or prostitutes. Like down Cookman and down the waterfront. There was nothing on the waterfront, although there might have been 1 gallery that opened near the McLoone’s space. Cookman was all empty shops, 1 antique store, and a gallery or two. Everything else was boarded up.”

I’m trying to picture the scene and still feel like I’m missing part of the story. “So you came down and everything was boarded up and there were hustlers and drug dealers and prostitutes everywhere. What made you think to yourself “this is a place I want to live?” 

Amy tries to explain. “So there was this Kingsley Deli owned by a woman named Rita Murano, she’s a character and I had stopped in there shortly after I had moved. She ran this deli and she had a cat and there were other characters in there shooting the breeze about Asbury. Even back then you saw an artist community, a music community. The Pony was open back then; the Wonder Bar was open back then. So, you saw some music, you saw some art, and you saw gay people and you take those 3 things and that would absolutely draw me to Asbury.

I argue “Ok but I mean you drive into town, and you’ve never been here before and this is your first impression!”

Amy tries again. “My first impression was the beautiful architecture. I think we have extraordinarily sharp architecture. And I like that. And I saw a lot of characters and I say that endearingly. I like characters. And I saw the Santander. I’ll say without having seen that building, I looked at a bunch of buildings but as soon as I walked into that one I knew it was where I wanted to live. And the Santander is a bit of a microcosm itself, of Asbury park because it has studios, one bedrooms, 2 bedrooms, and then 3 penthouses with like 5 bedrooms. So, you had people in the Santander who were very low on the economic scale and very high on the economic scale. Because if you were renting a penthouse you were doing pretty well, but if you were renting a studio for 500 a month you probably didn’t have that great of a job. So, we had artists, waiters, musicians, gay people, I would argue the Santander was a microcosm of what existed in Asbury park. Super diverse in both profession, economics and race.”

I ask if she was afraid to move down here, especially after everybody told her she was crazy and they wouldn’t come visit.

Amy says no, and reluctantly tells me the one thing that finally makes it all make sense. “So there’s a backstory. I was going through a breakup, so I was running from something sad and trying to start over. I had my high school sweetheart and we were together for maybe 5 years and we had a bad breakup and I had to get out and Asbury was the place that seemed like home to me.

I nod my head and tell her that I think a lot of us have that same story.

Amy tells me that she absolutely loved the characters she met when she moved here. “So here’s one other story. When I moved down here I was working for the state of NJ for DYFUS in Jersey City and I was commuting. I would get home around 9 or 10 and I would take my dog to what wasn’t technically a dog beach then but nobody lived here so it didn’t matter. So I would go late at night and there would be lines of hustlers (male prostitutes) that would be hustling on the North end by the fisherman’s lot. And they were the nicest people on the planet when I would come, and I’d let my dog just run around because I felt so guilty he’d been in the house for like 10 hours. And I would let him run back and forth on the beach and I would stand on the boardwalk with them and shoot the breeze about our day and they would tell me it was too late for me to come down there, they’d offer to walk me a block back. They were total characters and really lovely human beings.”

I am smiling as I picture those nights. I think about Asbury Park now and observe “Obviously, Asbury looks very different now. When did you see the changes start to happen?”

Amy pauses to think. “So I have two different answers for two different areas. I would say on Cookman Ave. the interesting thing has always been that while there were developers and investors downtown, they were smaller and generally people who lived in town, like the Pats. So, the downtown really saw an organic pop up of places. There was a place called Be Green that popped up; another place called Apex gallery. A shoe store. So, you saw those over a course of 5 or 6 years pop up. Some made it and some didn’t but you saw them pop up. And then the waterfront you really didn’t see anything until Madison Marquette came in in 2008 and started to put some substantial money into the waterfront. Cookman was on a trajectory of going up well before the waterfront, and came back in a better and more organic way. Madison swooped in and started making changes. And then there was Asbury Partners and they went under and eventually there was iStar in about 2010.” 

I am curious about the characters in town. I ask her when she saw new people start to come in.

“So I would say we saw a wave in or around 2005 when you started to see some shops and some galleries opening up. And you could rent space that was reasonable. So you could have a gallery and get a space that was reasonable. Which you can’t do anymore. The rents downtown are through the roof now. I continued to see gays move in. I would say we saw younger hipster-ish people moving in and musicians and artists. I would say that’s mostly what we saw in the earlier days. At least downtown, the neighborhoods were riddled with people who had been here for years. So, that’s where you saw all the diversity right? Because we saw a lot of African Americans all through this side of town through about 2008. The housing stock was different back then. It wasn’t $1700 for a 1 bedroom, it was $600. So, you saw a whole lot of diversity throughout the whole town. And if I had to describe the people running the shops I would say they were more people of an artist nature. Be Green was a vegan store before anybody was vegan. I think we’ve lost some of that diversity over the last 17 years.”

I keep hearing the word diversity, but I want to know “was there a sense of community among people of different races? Or did everybody kind of do their own thing?”

“I really have to think about that. So, because there was so much diversity in the waterfront area, I think there was a feeling of community. I’m trying to think of examples of where I felt that. So, my feeling is when you walked down the street in 2000 you saw multiple races not just black or white. You saw Hispanics and Haitians and everybody. There was more of a feeling of cohesiveness and community when you walked down the street than there is now. So, did I hang out at the Baptist church? No, nor do I now. But when you walked your dog you saw more of people of different races that you said hi to. And now you see more of people who look like you.”

I wonder about diversity in the gay community at the time.

Amy seems surprised by the question. “I would say that in the gay community the number one priority is that you’re gay and nobody cares what color you are. Which is why I think the gay community has really gone through a metamorphosis when it comes to bisexual rights. Bisexuals always felt kind of ostracized in the gay community. So, I think in the gay community we never care what color you are so long as you were gay. What we really had to look at was about different spectrums and really come to terms with its not just gay or straight, even though that’s the way we were raised. You used the term bisexual to come out, to soften the blow when you were going to come out when you were gay. When you came out if you used bisexual first, we would say “are you just saying that because you can’t say gay?” So, for me personally it took a long time to say “ok there are bisexual people who are not just using that as a stepping stone to soften the blow. And then the transgender community.”

I ask if she is suggesting that the gay community on the east side was a safe haven for gay people of different races to be themselves when they couldn’t be in their own communities (the west side specifically) and maybe perhaps still is?

“I think in the gay community that if you’re here for example at Georgie’s, especially back when it was less acceptable, I’m not ever going to repeat you’re here. It’s Vegas. I’m not going to say that I saw reverend or priest so and so here. Trangenders were much more rejected than if we’re talking about race. There were absolutely people coming to the bars in Asbury park who were nonwhite who were absolutely not out and there was this sense of we’re not going to say a word. We’re not in the game of outing people.”

I question whether that sense of inclusiveness still exists today. “Do you think that’s changed at all? Because the community has expanded a lot and diversified. There’s a lot less hiding and people are ok with who they are, and so their regular general human stereotypes and attitudes come out. I wonder is the gay community as inclusive as it was back then?”

Amy shakes her head slowly. “I would say no. Well, in some ways we’re more inclusive. We’re more inclusive of the transgender community. In that sense, there’s been an expansion. But in the sense of specifically Asbury Park, I would say there’s an economic element. There wasn’t that level of wealth that there is now. Back then people were buying up Victorians for $30,000, and spending years fixing them up. Now these Victorians are selling for $700,000. I would say there’s been a change or wave from the initial people who came in who kind of fixed it up. There’s been a wave of people who have moved out. And there is currently a different status of gays than were here previously. They may be different people. I’d say an absolute expansion on LGBTQ and I would say because of Asbury’s rise there has been a loss of gays in all economic statuses that used to be here. There is more of a class divide.”

 I shift the conversation back to the early 2000’s. “So you saw this gradual wave of musicians and artists and creative people opening these shops…” 

“And getting on boards and getting involved in local government…”

I ask Amy when she decided to get involved in government.

“I started on the Environmental Commission in 2006/7 and stayed on that and kind of watched how government worked and eventually ran [for city council] in 2009. For a long time, I had criticized the previous councils. I mean they gave away the boardwalk and everything else they did.

I ask her to describe the feeling in town when all that was happening. “What was the attitude? By the people who lived here, or were moving here or had opened stores here, because essentially this place was barren for a long time. And then there were these brave souls who just wanted a home who came here and stayed despite everything that was happening.”

Amy interrupts “And they lost their properties.”

I remind her “You were a part of that. You were one of the people who moved here when you had no real reason to.”

It seems we have gone full circle when she replies “You say that but that’s not true. There were gay bars here, there were clubs and there was sharp architecture.”

At this point I am laughing as I argue “For most normal people, if you’re making a pro and con list, and the pros are there are bars and sharp architecture and your con list is that there are hustlers and drug dealers and crime and your entire neighborhood is boarded up and there’s nothing going on and its terrifying, no sane person would move down here!”

Amy shrugs her shoulders and says “But we did!”

I decide to drop it. “So the non-sane people who moved down here and decided this was going to be your home and you were going to build, how did you feel when the eminent domain happened, when they gave away the boardwalk, when all the redevelopment plans were being made?”

“I was horrified. There’s a documentary about a little old lady Angie Wright Readings who was losing her home and eventually lost her home, who had stayed through the good and the bad of Asbury Park and just wanted nothing more than to die in her home, and iStar had rights to her property and they took it.”

“What was your personal sense? How did your friends feel?”

Amy thinks back. “Ok so keep in mind I’m in my 20’s, I’m going to law school and I’m working a full-time job. So, I’m watching it peripherally and I’m watching people at the meeting at the Berkeley hotel because they couldn’t fit everybody in the council chambers because there were so many people against it [eminent domain]. Hundreds of people were there fighting about the eminent domain. I’m in my mid 20’s and I’m still trying to get my lay of the land and I felt a deep sense of horror and sadness at what was happening. Because properties were being taken. You felt a sense of sadness.”

We both know that despite the massive opposition, eminent domain came to pass and slowly properties were taken. We sit silently for a minute thinking about everything that was lost. Amy asks me to turn off the tape recorder. She tells me that this is a difficult subject for her to discuss because of her involvement in city politics and her public persona. I completely understand. But I am also here to get the truth and to understand her very real and personal feelings about what has happened in Asbury Park. I consider Amy a friend and somebody I look up to. So against my better judgement, I tell her to take some time and think about whether she would like to continue speaking to me or if she wants me to scrap the whole thing. She suggests that in the meantime I interview her friend Carol Torre, who has been active in the gay scene in Asbury Park for over 40 years. We say goodbye and I leave Amy with a decision to make.

3 weeks later, I get an email from Amy. She has decided these stories need to be told. We agree to meet on the boardwalk the following morning.

As we walk to Convention Hall, the morning fog is just lifting and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful November day. We stop for coffee at AP Roastery and Amy stops to say hello to several people she knows. We decide to walk down the North end of the boardwalk, hoping for a little more privacy and less interruptions. 

I want to know about the gay community in Asbury today. Does Amy feel like there are still a lot of gay people moving in or are they just coming to visit? 

“Hands down there are still gay people moving in. But I think it’s different kind of people. So, when I moved here, it was cheap and it was by the beach and there were gay people here. And the housing stock and rentals were very different. I think it’s a different economic demographic that was here in the early 2000’s that bought up old Victorians and fixed them up and joined committees and commissions and formed political action groups – AP Action was a group really involved in getting gay people representation on commissions and boards in the 2000’s. I’m not sure I see that activism from the gay people coming into town now. And maybe it’s not needed. I think we’re #3 in the country for the most gay-friendly policies in city hall. So maybe people just don’t feel like they need to be active and get involved. I think AP action was about making sure gay voices were heard. The people who came in 2000 were really about seeing a city that had fallen apart come back in an organic way that was like fight-ish. I can’t really think of a better word than that. So, people coming here now, that fight doesn’t exist in the way it needed to then, so the people we’re getting now don’t really have that fight in them. Also, I think a lot of people are coming to Asbury to make a buck.”

I can understand why Amy had to take time to think about whether she wanted to voice these opinions. I ask her how she hoped Asbury would look now, back when she first moved here. Was this how she and the other “pioneers” so to speak had envisioned?

Amy smiles ruefully. “I think not fully understanding how gentrification worked back then; I was like 24. I think we wanted to be successful and I think we wanted to see Asbury Park voted best city. If you had said to me in 2002 that Asbury Park is going to be voted best small city in the United States, I would have said that’s insane. So, in some ways yeah this is absolutely what I wanted. But I think what I didn’t factor in was the whole capitalist idea that people contributed. Because when you’re in your early 20’s you don’t have the foresight to know how things get to where they need to get.”

I ask if she is happy with the way things turned out.

She is cautious in her response. “I’m happy in some ways. I love that I don’t feel like I need an alarm system on my house and crime’s at its lowest.”

I interject. “On this side of town.”

Amy retorts that “throughout the city crime’s at its lowest in 20 years according to FBI statistics. Some of the developments been a good thing, especially downtown which has been far more organic. And then I would say that the stock of housing and rentals and reaching such high levels and pushing people out who contributed to what it is now is truly heartbreaking.”

I ask how she feels about the commercialization of Asbury Park and the push to bring in bigger brands and corporations slowly.

“I think that we as a city would have to keep an eye on that. But I don’t know that we can stop that. For example, right now we’re in a battle over short term rentals. Investors are buying properties in Asbury Park and using them as short term rentals. So, that is now changing the characteristics of neighborhoods because then you no longer have neighbors right, you have mini hotels that you’re living next to, which I don’t love, and the second part of that is that you are now taking rentals off the market. Let’s say you are taking 3 yearly rentals in a multi dwelling unit, and you’ve taken that off the market. One of the biggest complaints we get in Asbury are that there are no yearly rentals. Because they are renting them out short term and making $2000 a night as opposed to $2000 a month. I think we’re rolling that back, we’re going to ban that, and we’re going to do inclusionary renting which means we’re going to make investors have a certain percentage that is affordable.”

I see why it’s necessary, but ask Amy to explain how it’s going to work.

“The developer says they’re going to build 10 units, and we say that 2 of them have to be affordable. And that goes according to zoning. Who decides what’s considered affordable is a little tricky. The county defines affordability. So, is it going to be $400 rent? NO. But it’s going to be maybe affordable to middle class families. That’s one of those things that we don’t have a lot of control over – the defining. It’s tricky. And the commercialization if it comes down the pike is going to be even trickier.”

I decide that we’ve tap danced around the issue enough and make a very direct statement, hoping to hear what Amy really feels about the subject. “As far as commercialization, we’ve been all over the news as this new vacation destination. If you look at all of these promotional videos and ads being put out now, you’re not seeing any black people. You’re not seeing any normal people. It’s all very whitewashed.”

I am both surprised and happy when she does not hold back. “So a perfect example of that is iStar. Here’s the hypocrisy of iStar. They talk about how this is such a great gritty, musical, artsy city and then they build for the people who are the opposite of that. They build for people who are not particularly artsy or gritty or a part of the comeback, but are extremely upper middle class people. But the narrative they sell is that they’re so incredibly supportive of these kinds of people, of artists and musicians and sculptures etc. So, when you’re talking about these advertisements, I agree with you 100% that there’s a huge level of dishonesty in suggesting that Asbury park is looking for artsy people – apparently we’re only looking for extremely rich artsy people if we’re going according to what iStar is building. And we’re setting it up so they [the real artists] can’t stay. We’re building so these people can’t stay here. Maybe the subtle message is that we’re eventually going to get rid of them. I don’t know.”

I appreciate Amy’s candor and decide to push a bit further. “Let’s talk about iStar for a little bit. I’m sure you’ve had to have dealings with them as a person in government. What has that been like for you?”

Amy shakes her head and rolls her eyes as she says “Extremely challenging. I think iStar thinks they are the savior of Asbury park. And you gotta give them some credit for some stuff like the hotel. But then I don’t agree with what they’re doing in other aspects like with the Lanes. I think I have a more complicated relationship with iStar. I think they’re here to make a buck. Do I think they’re here to make Jenn Hampton’s life difficult? No. Do I think they are making her life difficult? Abso-fucking-lutely. I think they’re really bullies about it and I think that’s despicable. But I think their overall goal is to make a buck and at some point that buck being made has been beneficial to all of Asbury park. In the sense that did we need another hotel? Yeah. Did we make them do work for it for work-force development? Yeah. And they did it and did a good job. Which that wasn’t really iStar that was the Salt hotel.”

 I ask if she knows how many people who attended the Salt School Program are actually employed at the hotel currently.

Amy says she does not.

As we are walking back towards Convention Hall, we run into a man walking his pack of adorable pups. He stops us and asks Amy if she is indeed Amy Quinn. He introduces himself and Bruce Booker and says he has a show on APTV (a local TV channel Amy had a hand in starting) and he informs her the channel hasn’t been working on Cablevision the past week. She promises to take care of it and sends an email on the spot. He asks us what we’re up to and I tell him about this project. He asks if he can do a quick video interview of us and suddenly the tables have been turned. He asks me to describe the project and why I picked Asbury Park over other towns in the area. Then he asks Amy how she feels about the project.

Amy is very gracious. “First of all I love Humans of Asbury Park. That’s how I got to know her. I think the gentrification project is very important. I think it’s a very complicated question. I think what we’re seeing right now in the city of Asbury Park is people being priced out. And I think the council, myself included, are scratching our heads trying to figure out ways to stop that.”

He asks her if she thinks we’re growing too big too fast.

“I think this train that we pushed up this hill; we were like go, go, go, and now we’re like wait a minute, let’s get our bearings and that we’re not losing people who were really a part of it.”

Bruce thanks us for our time and we part ways.

Amy and I keep walking and I get back to asking her about iStar. “So, you and I agree they’re just here to make money. The question is, do you think they’re doing things to help the people who actually live here?”

She does not give me the direct answer I am looking for. “I think they went into the Salt School with the best of intentions. But that was Salt Hotels, not iStar.”

I let her sidetrack me for a minute and ask “You don’t think that was just a PR campaign?”

“The city was one of the people who said work-force development. So, it wasn’t in their minds to do it in the first place. So, we’ve made these developers try to incorporate work-force development. I guess I have to think about whether I blame iStar or the Salt School or even the city in are we providing people with the skillset that can find employment in Asbury Park. So, we hired this company to deal with workforce development because its complicated in Asbury Park for a number of reasons. One, because we’re seasonal. Two, because we have a restaurant/hospitality and we have to develop the carpenters and plumbers and all that. So, we have to go through the high school or some kind of vocational school. So, are we providing kids in Asbury with the skills to get these jobs? At this point I’d argue no.”

I tell her it sounds like she’s describing a vocational school type of situation 

Amy nods. “So that’s something we kinda talk about and hope the Board of Ed gets on. And I don’t know if they’re getting on it or not. I think it’s more complicated than that.”

Amy statement strikes a cord with me. “So you’re saying you hope the Board of Ed gets on it. Well here’s the thing. And this is historically a problem in Asbury park. There’s no communication or cohesive plan or kind of collaboration between different parts of government and developers and its every man for himself. Because the developers have their own agenda which is strictly to make money. The city is trying to keep everyone’s shit together. The problem is that there could be more collaboration going on.

Amy concedes. “I 100% agree with you.”

I ask her how she feels about the developers bringing in people who don’t have kids. We know this because upper middle class people with kids don’t want to put their kids in Asbury Park public schools. And they’re also not buying tiny 1 bedroom condos for a million dollars. So, all these people coming in are not going to do anything to help the school system. So, the school system in turn doesn’t help the community. I know that Amy agrees that a large part of the problem is education. When the standards are not high, and you have a very high dropout rate, and you have a school system that needs fixing, then you’re going to have a lot of kids who are flunking out and joining gangs. I want to know how she feels about this cycle.

“I agree the school system is an issue. I agree the gap between East and West is an issue. I think from my perspective, and these are small little things to fix it, but I think it’s far more complicated than me figuring it out. I would say the new wave of people who have come are probably less affected, as opposed to the earlier wave in the 2000’s I was describing. Because those people are still on the school board, are going through the trenches and trying to fix it up. But is the new wave of people coming into Asbury park super cognizant of the school board? No.

I ask what things she feels are being done.

Amy cuts to the heart of the issue. “Can I just say, I think the gap is partly a result of economic circumstances but also partly a result of mistrust. From all the different communities in Asbury Park. From the Hispanic community to the gay community to the African American community, there’s a level of distrust. Here are things we are trying to do to help. One, we’re trying to do something that affordable housing is stopping the people leaving who are being priced out. Whether that’s the waiters and waitresses at Brickwall or the African American community or churches. I think that’s the biggest puzzle we spend our time trying to solve. Whether its through inclusionary zoning or banning short term rentals. Two, workforce development. What we continue to hear from these small businesses on the boardwalk is they’re not getting a skillset that they need from the kids in Asbury Park. So, we hired this company to help us teach these kids the skills they need. Are these very small steps? Absolutely. Are they moving very slow? Absolutely. Could we be doing a lot more? Absolutely.”

I observe a change I’ve seen. “A couple of weeks ago there was that big block party on Springwood Ave. and that was pretty much one of the first times I’ve personally witnesses such a coming together of different parts of the city.”

She Is very excited that I attended and enjoyed it. “The city did that. It’s the first year we did it. Our planner Michele Alonso worked with a guy named Steven Brenner and they put that together. And I think the really great part about that is that when reaching out to get vendors or talk to people about having a mural in front of their stores, instead of sending an email and waiting for a response, Steven went to every business and said this is what we’re doing and would you like to participate. And I think the reason it was so successful was that he used that tactic. That was a super good learning experience.”

I tell her I think that was a huge success and ask if they plan of doing more of those.

“I think so. We had a little bit of grant money to do it. I think we’re interested in doing it again. Do you ever go to the concerts in the park on Monday nights? You will find the most diverse eclectic group of people ever.”

I have an interesting thought and ask “How do you think it would play out if you tried to do an event like that on this side of town with the same people?”

Amy immediately responds “I don’t think the same people would show up. I think it goes back to that level of mistrust. But there’s such an ingrainedness there that there isn’t a quick fix for that.”

I ask if she feels like it’s unwarranted.

She’s honest. “I think Asbury Park had a tremendous amount of corruption in the 90’s and early 2000’s. So no. And I get the mistrust. 

I observe that I’ve heard from people that they feel unwanted on this side of town. It’s obviously not as blatant as segregation was in the 50’s but they still feel like they get looked at weird and the cops stop them if they’re here on the boardwalk and they feel not welcome on this side of town.”

Amy concurs. “People have said that to me as well.”

I ask if she feels that where Asbury is moving now and the plans that are in place now and the development  and the vision for the people who are now responsible for growing this city to where they want it to be, does she feel like that’s going to fix these issues or make it worse? The developers and the new people their bringing in to live in this city.”

We are walking back to our cars and we stop in front of the new building going up on Ocean Ave. I stop and point up to it. “I mean look at this thing. How many people are going to be living in this?”

Amy shakes her head. “I think its 60 residential, maybe more, 40 hotel, commercial and parking.”

I start doing math. “So even if we’re just saying 60 residential. That’s at least 120 people in theory. And we’re not even talking about the hotel or anything else. So, that’s 120 people who haven’t lived here before, who are going to now be living in this community. Do you feel like they’re going to help fix these problems or do you think it’s going to become an even bigger issue?”

Amy struggles with her answer. “I think a small percentage of people might get involved and want to fix the problems, but I don’t think that the overwhelming majority who move into 1101 will. But I’m going to push back on you for a minute. For 17 years, all I’ve heard is this is the biggest eyesore in Asbury Park, that nothing gets done in Asbury Park because of this and so we pushed for this to have some sort of development because everybody hated looking at it. So, you take the good with the bad. Because we didn’t want this to sit barren. And iStar owned it so obviously we didn’t have any say on what they would build. I don’t know how I feel about what they built, but I’m glad it’s being built. In the early 2000, people came in and fixed up all these old Victorians and they got these political organizations. I’m not as inclined to say they’re not going to be involved in Asbury park. Take north beach. Some of the most activist-y women on earth who are involved with reading groups and who are involved in fundraising who are involved in getting the back to school knapsacks with Connie. So, is it all of north beach? No. Its 10 women who don’t want to cross in terms of their gonna get shit done. 

I ask if she’s ok with the demographic of people that we’re selling these apartments to. And the idea that we’re selling them. Which is, come live in this beautiful town that’s a vacation destination and you have access to all this art and “culture” but it’s a whitewashed version of it. People are not going to move into that building because they want to help this community. And it’s not just this building, there are so many other buildings and condos going up. So eventually it’s going to be the majority of people living here that won’t care because the ones that do will get priced out.

Amy shakes her head sadly, averts her eyes from the monstrous skeleton going up, and says “I agree.” 

[backstorywithdanalewis]

Commercialization of Space Back Story with Dana Lewis podcast link:  https://www.buzzsprout.com/1016881/6472390

Speaker 1: (00:01) Nine eight seven five three two one. [inaudible] not even gravity contains humanity when we explore it as one [inaudible] that's the word we want to hear. State wonder Pulsion is nominal crew onboard dragon and Falcon nine stage one is preparing to throttle down. This is in preparation for max Q, which is maximum aerodynamic pressure. Call out for throttle down power and telemetry. Continue to be nominal for the vehicle. Now traveling at 262 meters per second, Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (01:16) Let's throttle up. Hi everyone. And welcome to backstory on Dana Lewis. Four astronauts successfully took off in NASA in space. X's historic first commercial flight to the international space station on November the 15th. Why does it matter well beyond the fact that, you know, if you like space travel and you like space exploration, it's very cool to see that rocket that is paid for by Elon Musk and NASA to kick off the launch pad and carry those astronauts back to the international space station. This is a new era in space where commercial enterprise working with NASA is now pushing back to the international space station and the Americans who have had to pay the Russians some $80 million per mission to take them into space because the shuttles were grounded long ago. Suddenly now have a path back to the international space station and then NASA will push out from there to moon missions and Mars missions. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (02:26) Um, and it's the beginning of something new between this partnership between commercial enterprise and NASA? It is ironic that when I was a Russia correspondent, I mean, based in Moscow for NBC news in Russia, and I was covering space station Mir, that's the one that proceeded the ISS that NASA wouldn't absolutely look at any commercial partnerships, none of them. And yet they were running out of money. The shuttles were getting into trouble. Eventually. Mir was deorbiting by the Russians and suddenly the Americans didn't have their own spacecraft to get them up to the international space station and beyond. So here we are. And I want to introduce you in a moment to someone who was involved in those early missions with the Russians to try and introduce commercial space travel instead of taxpayers having to fund everything. And here's the irony, the Soviet union, which don't forget. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (03:28) We were in a huge competition with, in the sixties and seventies for getting to space being the first to the moon they were in. They were in space by the way, the first with their first man mission with Yuri Gagarin, the cosmonaut, isn't it ironic that this was a competition between democracy and capitalism versus communism. And yet, ironically, you're about to hear how the, the Russians, after the fall of the Soviet union and communism were in fact, the first ones to pave the road towards commercial space travel and the Americans and NASA absolutely rejected the idea. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (04:19) All right, I'm in London, but I take it to Washington now and Jeffrey Manber heads up a company called nano racks. Hi Jeff. Hey, good morning, Dana. I was thinking back that the first time I met you was at mission control on the edge of Moscow, um, in 2001. And you were about to help an American entrepreneur go into space, a guy named Dennis Tita. Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (04:44) Yeah. Uh, it was, uh, well, it was if I may, if, if it's, if this is allowed in journalism, uh, we met one year before, when we were sending the Russian crew to the Mir space station and we were opening up the mirror after, uh, I think nine months or something when it was empty. And I headed a Dutch company called mere Corp. And I'm pretty sure that you were present, uh, in the mission control room. Uh, and I remember I was scared out of my mind, uh, and we were sending two Russian cosmonauts, uh, to the Russian space station mirror. And it was the first and still only as we do this recording, uh, uh, human being sent on a commercial mission, uh, with total private funding and the Dennis Tito was a year later. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (05:34) Yeah, you're right. And, uh, because we, we, as American correspondents were called out to the mission control center. Every time there was a burp on mere and there was a lot of them, I mean, there was a fire and there were so many different incidents with me or, um, and then w what was interesting. I was taking a look back, um, and it's interesting in talking to Jeffrey Jeffrey member is that in fact, the Russians had a company called enter DIA and enter Ghia and Jeffrey, you can explain it, but while NASA said, no commercialization Energie became from post Soviet period, it became a private enterprise in effect, Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (06:18) Right? And not even in effect. I mean, you have to remember, this is now Dana going way back. Uh, but after, uh, the collapse of the Soviet union, uh, Gorbachev privatized, and wanted to privatize the few world-class markets that Russia had, uh, one was the Bolshoi ballet, and it went private. One was Aeroflot and it went private and the third was space. And, and so they knew they had an internationally accepted, um, uh, industry that would find their customers in the West Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (06:53) Because they didn't want to fund it anymore. Government just didn't want to pay all the different reputable, Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (06:57) I don't care. The reason in Washington, they would always say to me, Oh, the Russians are being capitalists because they need the money. And I say, what do you think I show up at work every day? Cause I don't need the money. I mean, what does it matter about one's, uh, motivation? Uh, the reality is that the Russians unleashed, uh, 94, 1995, their organizations and the equivalent of Boeing, the equivalent of Lockheed, and they said you survive with customers. And that profoundly changed the industry, the space industry space exploration, and we feel those ripples today. So interview, Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (07:39) Wait, wait, wait, because it's incredible that here we are, 70 years of communism, they wouldn't embrace capitalism and free market. And then after the collapse of the Soviet union, it's NASA, that will not embrace privatization of space and commercial interests in their space program, but the Russians are leading the way. And I don't think people realize that. Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (08:03) Well, I had a, I, since you're in London, uh, I'll say that I had a cheeky comment in, uh, in the nineties. Uh, and that was, if you wanted to practice, uh, capitalism in space, you had to go to Moscow. And if you wanted to work with the socialists, you work with NASA, and that was the impact. That's why I was in Moscow, much of the late nineties. That's why we did Dennis Tito. And that's why we did Lance bass event sink. And that's why the Europeans European space agency began paying for their astronauts to go to the space station. But you're correct. Dana, the, the, the capital, the first capitalist, the first commercial offshoots of the government exploration of space or governments, um, where the Russian in the post Soviet period. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (08:52) Unbelievable. So the space shuttle program ends and the America has no way to send anybody to space. People don't realize that after announcing that they were going to ground the shuttle program, suddenly I don't know what the bill was for T for Tito's seat, but it was rumored to be around 20 million to get on a Soyuz. Where are you going to give me the number or not? Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (09:15) It was 20 million in cash and media rights Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (09:20) And media rights. So you got some of that back, I assume, 20 million soon as, as soon as NASA announces that they are going to ground the shuttle program, they then have to pay the America has to pay Russia to take them to the international space station. And I think it was about 80 million arrived. Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (09:39) Yeah, it started much less. And it wasn't even the passengers. I mean, we, we, um, we were doing this, uh, this conversation in 2020 and, uh, 20 years after, um, the international space station, uh, began the construction. We are dependent today, even with the exciting news or space X and the commercial crew. And today we no longer need, it seems the Russians to ferry pass, uh, astronauts to in front, but we still need the Russians for their cargo. We still need them to carry oxygen. We still, I mean, the, the Russians are a true partner with us, or we are partners together, uh, on the international space station. They, there were a lot of bumps along the way. If you're in the community, you know, what went on and goes on in the sausage factory. But the, the, the, the, the, your point is, is spot on the, the, we cannot, we could not, and cannot do the international space station without the partnership between Russia and America. So the us is still paying Russia. We no longer pay them for the cargo, it's their contribution. Uh, and we supply things for the Russians, and it's still, we're still codependent on one another, but for communications, they need us, we need them for oxygen. It's, it's, uh, it's, we're tied in together, which is one of the redeeming quality, still about the aging international space station. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (11:09) Why did it take NASA? And I want to talk to you about nano racks in a sec, but why did it take NASA so long to come to grips with the fact that the government coffers are not endless, and they will just not keep getting all this money anymore, and that they had to embrace commercial partners, Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (11:29) They're engineers. I mean, so again, it's compensation is taking place while we hope that the Biden folks will, will, uh, uh, come in in January. Um, and I don't know if NASA folks are coming to grips on the fundamental changes that will take place in American space policy, uh, with our return to the moon on what the emphasis NASA will be going forward. Uh, you know, now I've spent, you know, I spent decades in space and NASA folks, a good friends of mine, but they're engineers first. And they don't sit there thinking about what this policy change will mean. And, and so we also did a disservice to NASA, uh, Dana, I'll say, in the mid nineties, bill Clinton, the Clinton administration said verily, we're going to end the American space station, freedom of which we had spent billions on. And it was being constructed. Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (12:24) I want you to work with the Russians, which made me happy. I worked for the Russians and I was one that pushed us to work with the Russians. But then there was a third part. I didn't anticipate NASA get on planes and go negotiate with the Russians and all of these NASA engineers with their thin blue passports who had never been overseas before get on a plane, go to a foreign land Moscow in 1992 in 1993 with dim lights, not working and, and society and collapsed. And they come, they come from Texas and Florida and Alabama, and, uh, and they'd never met international people. And who do they meet on the other side, Russians that have been schooled in negotiations with Americans that had hired people like me to advise them on how to work with America. And it was a catastrophe. It was just in the beginning. It was so, so, so my heart goes out and I would go to the white house and the Clinton time and say, guys, you realize you're sending NASA engineers and negotiate with very sophisticated people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't worry. We'll take care of don't don't. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (13:33) What was the, if you were to give me an example of the catastrophe, where did the Russians get the edge? Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (13:40) They got the edge in, in, uh, uh, very good contracts, like for, for me or shuttle, if you all remember, you know, those beautiful pictures of the shuttle docking with the Mir space station and the, and the Americans paid Russia close to $500 million for it. And it was a very good contract written very well. Uh, and, and, uh, fortunately the Russians produced all the time. They, you know, sometimes it took, uh, it took a while, but the contracts were it's strangely sophisticated contracts written by very sophisticated people Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (14:16) Tell me you are nano racks. Um, the largest commercial user of the ISS with customers in over 32 countries. Um, and then you are also sitting on the next space, X cargo ship after this one to ISS on the Bishop airlock. First of all, what is the Bishop airlock? And then just in general, what, what is the commercial use of the international space station? What do you, what do you do up there? Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (14:44) Well, you know, the, the international space station is owned by multiple governments and, uh, as we all know, governments, not market well, and, uh, it's not the job of governments. And so when the station was nearing completion, about 11 years ago, uh, I realized that very few people were using very few companies were signing up to use the station. And, uh, we approached, uh, uh, NASA and said, you know, we don't, you know, we don't want funding from you. And they were like, Oh my God, what's this. And we want to put research hardware on the station that will pay for, if you give us resources, uh, if you give us astronaut time and power and, and launches up, and NASA was pretty desperate at that time, people were not using it. So they gave us a very fair, very good space act agreement. Um, and we have grown year by year. Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (15:37) And as you said, we have customers in over 30 countries now, we've, we've sent up over 1000 projects in 10 years, we've deployed over 280 satellites. Uh we've um, a lot of companies I'm proud to say, Oh, they were existence to having worked with NanoRacks and, and we've shown the value of working on a space station as a destination. And, uh, I'll, I'll say first, I'll say what the Bishop airlock is. And then if I may say something philosophical there, I say something philosophical, but, uh, we right now, the only cargo door on the space station is the Japanese space agency. They have a magnificent, uh, air lock, uh, which is how we've deployed, uh, our 200 and the most about 280 satellites. Um, and we thought we, the market demands something bigger. And, and right now, when we want to use the Japanese airlock, we have an agreement with NASA. Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (16:35) NASA has a treaty with the Japanese government and, and th that filters down to the Japanese space agency. It is not the most efficient system in the world. And so we went to NASA about four years ago and said, we will self-fund and airlock. And, uh, um, if you'll give us a free ride up and, uh, they said, yes. And so now sitting on the next, uh, space X cargo ship space, X 21, we are on the vehicle waiting for the launch in, in December. And, uh, uh, it is a permanent addition to the space station, five times larger than the JAXA, uh, air lock. And we already have, uh, contracts from European space agency, NASA, commercial customers, uh, and it will be, it allows for more efficient, uh, cargo and satellites to, and from the space station. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (17:24) Just give me a, sort of a, uh, a sampling of some of the other projects that make money on the international space station through the nano racks helps on those contracts. What are the contracts for, what do you do? Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (17:37) Uh, we do biomedical research, uh, for our customers. We do, uh, um, uh, basic research, applied manufacturing. We have some fiber optic manufacturer, Z bland, uh, projects going on on behalf of our customers, additive manufacturing, uh, education. Uh, and so it's the gamut. And, um, I've taken some criticism because I never say no to a customer. And, uh, and, uh, and yet, because I want to understand the whole market, we've done everything from aging, uh, scotch turpines where, uh, uh, scotch, uh, uh, scotch, uh, odd beg, uh, manual, uh, did research for two years with turpines they're the building blocks of whiskey and food flavorings and paint. Think about that the next time you have credible. Yes. And, and what they found was very interesting. They found that the turpines aged on the station over two years as if it had been five years. So you had an acceleration of flavor. And so one of the things we're doing in that are X, we, you probably don't know this. We announced a few weeks ago, a major project with the UAE, the Emirates, uh, to do in space research to a far greater degree, we are going to have our own researchers, um, working on, uh, in space research to look at overcoming climate change, uh, developing ag tech products. So I happen to think that the environment of space is one of the keys for a lot of innovative research that just hasn't taken place yet. So, Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (19:14) I mean, it's incredible stuff. Right. And does, does has NASA now, do they reluctantly kind of go, Oh yeah. Nano racks. Well, yeah, we'll sell it to them because we need, we need the extra dough or do they now, you know, has there been a sea change in thinking, Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (19:32) Well, you know, like many things, there's no one thing called NASA. Okay. There's different areas. And as we speak today, at the end of the Trump administration, there has been a pushback against commercial. And, uh, a lot of folks, uh, ending up in the, uh, the Trump administration ironically, uh, are bothered by some of the things that NanoRacks and others are doing. And we've had some turndowns lately to speak Franklin. We've had some commercial projects lately never happened to us before. And it's because some of the folks, uh, think, uh, this is not still the right use of station resources, but I always like to use the example. You may have heard that a year ago, we had DoubleTree cookies and we baked DoubleTree cookies on the station. And, uh, some of you may know that when the old days, when you used to travel and you'd go to a hotel, if you went to a DoubleTree, you could smell their, their cookies when you walked in. So DoubleTree came to NanoRacks and said, we want to, uh, bake cookies on the station. Well, guess what? There was no oven. And so there was no oven on a hundred billion dollars permanently crude station, because NASA is afraid of crumbs. So my guys, Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (20:43) Or, uh, another and fire Crump's, they Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (20:48) Were afraid of pumps. So, so my guys designed an oven that was, uh, that is circular. And, uh, everybody smiles I'll DoubleTree cookies, but what did we get out of this commercial project? We got the first oven. We now have others doing very basic research. And we signed with Scholastic and American educational company that, that went into 50,000 students and taught them why baking in space is different than the earth. I believe in commercial, I don't believe in it's solely because of cashflow. I believe because it's the most efficient means to educate and reward, uh, the society that paid for things like the space station. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (21:27) Very cool. What will happen in the Biden administration? Will they embrace the commercialization that the Trump administration was getting a little chilly with? Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (21:37) I think, um, it may still be Chile, uh, and that's a good segue. I think that NASA will embrace climate change. Uh, I think that, uh, uh, they will, uh, want NASA to be part of the solution via earth sciences. I'm very excited with our UAE announcement on the star lab research center, where we'll have 15, 20 researchers looking at ag tech innovation, uh, using the environment of space, uh, to overcome to green the deserts of earth. Uh, and I think that, that the commercial pathway will be viewed with skepticism. One of my greatest fears, Dana, and I've been saying this publicly for a year is NASA flew a little too close to the Trump flame to the Trump's son. And whether it's the space force or whether it's some of these commercial projects, I fear that they may be too well identified with Trump. Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (22:31) You know, Trump ran around saying, uh, rich people want rockets, which guys, uh, own rockets or something like that. And I had a great worry a year ago with the publicity, with the space force. We can argue as to the merits of the United States, having a division that looks for securing the security of the United States assets and space. Okay. We can argue that, but good law, uh, logo branding, uh, you know, how closely it's identified with Trump's. So I have some concerns that the Biden folks are gonna come in and as the Trump folks did and say, you know, this in space, it was Trump's, let's get rid of it. We'll see. We'll see Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (23:13) If you look last question to you, if you, if you look forward to, there's going to be a man mission back to the moon in 2024, uh, you know, they keep talking about, well, you're, you're raising your eyebrows. Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (23:27) Yes. They won't be a man, man. Mission back to accrued mission back to the moon in 2024, have a go ahead. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (23:34) They they've said that there would be. Yeah. And I get it wrong. Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (23:37) Well, no, but even before the transition, uh, out of Trump, um, it was already behind. So let's hope they continue the return of America to the moon. Uh, let's hope that program continues. Uh, I think, uh, there'll be a year of what we wait for the new head of NASA. So 20, 24 is out, uh, this is my personal view. NanoRacks is not involved in this, but looking at him as an observer, I think 20, 24 is out. The question is how much do we commit funding to return to the moon? When we have very strong climate change, environmental issues of which NASA can be part of the solution. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (24:14) So if you look forward to, you know, uh, space X is an Elon Musk's dream of, of inhabiting Mars and all of that will commercial space, commercial companies like yours, play a part in, in this as we go forward. Or do you think that NASA, if the, if suddenly they become cash flush again, we'll turn their back on commercialization again. Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (24:39) Well, you asked a lot here and you said, it's the last question, and I'm going to answer with a lot of issues. You may want to follow up another time. First off, I think the United States will not be cash flush, uh, whomever, you know, and the next administration, um, we, we have to pay for COVID and we have a lot of debts to pay. And so I I'm, I'm really dubious that there'll be a lot of money for organizations like NASA over the next couple of years. Uh, and, and so, but having said that I see parallel paths emerging. I see the, um, the, uh, extraordinary wealth of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk continuing to go forward, um, with their personal aspirations. And I think more than ever, they will literally lift up and keep going. The commercial pathway companies like NanoRacks will find niches important niches, like private space stations. Okay. As, as bayzos and, and Musca continue their dreams, uh, companies like NanoRacks will be able to work in partnership with governments, uh, whether UAE, the United States, uh, and work with entrepreneurs like Bezos and, and muscle, it's going to be a fascinating time to figure this all out, Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (25:51) Jeffrey, you know? Yeah. We could go on for a couple of hours on this, but I mean, I think most people just don't even realize the backstory on how the, how this has been run financially, and hasn't been run very well financially, the space program. Um, you wrote a book called selling peace inside the Soviet conspiracy that transformed the U S space program. That books, I think you've got to do a second edition because that, how old is that? 10 years ago. Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (26:19) Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (26:21) Right. Time to write another one, because there's been a lot of developments in commercialization of space in your company, and, uh, it's amazing Jeffrey member. Great to talk to you again, Jeffery Manber/Nanoracks: (26:31) Great to talk to you and great to see you take care. Dana Lewis - Host Back Story: (26:33) And that's our backstory on the commercialization of space. If you have never heard president Kennedy's full speech on space, you ought to, it's inspiring romantic. We choose to go to the moon. You've probably heard a ten second bite of it, but I leave you with the full speech it's worth a listen because it gives incredible perspective on the pace of science in this speech was given September the 12th, 1962 in 1969. Kennedy's promise was realized Americans walked on the moon and in 2024, the first female astronauts will set foot on the surface of the moon. 55 years after Neil Armstrong took his iconic one small step. We have indeed come so far. I'm Dana Lewis. Thanks for listening to backstory. And I'll talk to you again soon. And here's president Kennedy President Kennedy: (27:38) President. Pitsa mr. Vice-president, governor Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley and Congressman Miller, mr. Webb, Val scientists, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be a very brief, I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion. We meet at a college noted for knowledge in a city noted for progress in a state noted for strength. And we stand in need of all three. Well, we meet in an hour of change and challenge and a decade of hope and fear in an age of both knowledge and ignorance, the greater our knowledge increases the greater our ignorance unfolds. Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today. Despite the fact that this nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth, more than three times, that of our population as a whole, despite that the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension, no man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come. President Kennedy: (29:24) But condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of about a half a century stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them, advanced men had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of Sheldon. Only five years ago, man, learned to write and use a car with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50 year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power Newton explored the meaning of gravity last month, electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week. We developed penicillin and television and nuclear power. President Kennedy: (30:40) And now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have lift really reached the stars before midnight. Tonight, this is a breathtaking pace and such a pace cannot help, but create new whales as it dispels old new ignorance, new problems, new dangers, Shirley, the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hot chips as well as high reward. So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest to wait bought this city of Houston. This state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. Speaker 1: (31:34) [inaudible] President Kennedy: (31:43) This country was conquered by those who move forward. And so we'll space. William Bradford speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay colony said that all great and honorable actions are a company with great difficulty and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man in his quest for knowledge and progress is determined and cannot be deterred the expiration of space. No, go ahead. Whether we join in it or not. And it is one of the great adventures of all time and no nation, which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space. Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention and the first wave of nuclear power. And this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it, we mean to lead it. Speaker 1: (33:07) [inaudible] President Kennedy: (33:11) All the eyes of the world. Now look into space to the moon and to the planets beyond. And we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace, we have bow that we shall not see space failed with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding yet the vows of this nation can only be fulfilled if we in this nation are first and therefore we intend to be first Speaker 1: (33:54) [inaudible] President Kennedy: (34:00) Sean, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves, as well as others all require us to come make this effort to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all man, and to become the world's leading space bearing nation. We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used all the progress of all people for space science, like nuclear science and all technology has no conscience of its own where they, it will become a force for God. Oriel depends on man. And only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence, can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war? I do not say that we should, Oh, we'll go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea. President Kennedy: (35:24) But I do say that space can be explored and nasty without feeding the fires of war without repeating the mistakes that man has made and extending his rent around this globe. Ours, there is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet it's hazards a hostile to us. All it's conquest deserves the best of all mankind and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why some say the moon, why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain five 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic. Why does rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon Speaker 1: (36:19) [inaudible] President Kennedy: (36:26) To go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing. Not because they are easy, but because they are hot, they caused that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept. One. We are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win and the others too. Speaker 1: (36:51) Yeah, President Kennedy: (36:54) It is. For these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear, as among the most important decision that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the presidency in the last 24 hours, we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a salmon C one booster rocket many times as powerful as the Atlas, which launched John glamour generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerator on the floor. We have seen the site where five F1, rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral, as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block. And as long as two lengths of this field within these last 19 months, at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were made in the United States of America, and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet union. The Mariner spacecraft Speaker 1: (38:31) [inaudible] President Kennedy: (38:38) This spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40 yard lines. Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea do stair a safer costs. Tyra satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and we'll do the same for forest fires and iceberg. We have head off failures, but it's all about us, even if they do not admit them and they may be less public to be shown. Speaker 1: (39:18) [inaudible] President Kennedy: (39:23) Sure. Well, we are behind and we'll be behind for some time in man flight bot. We do not intend to stay behind and in this decade we shall make up and move ahead. Speaker 1: (39:36) [inaudible] President Kennedy: (39:44) The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation by new tools and computers for industry medicine, the whole, as well as the school technical institutions, such as rice will reap the harvest of these games. And finally, the space effort itself while still in its infancy has already created a great number of new companies and tens and thousands of new jobs space and related industries are generating new demands and investment and skilled personnel. And this city and this state and this region will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Speaker 1: (40:44) [inaudible] President Kennedy: (40:49) Your city of Houston with its man spacecraft center will become the hot of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next five years, the national aeronautics and space administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses, the $60 million a year to invest some $200 million in plan and laboratory facilities. And to direct our contract, a new space efforts over $1 billion from this setup in this city, to be sure all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year space budget is three times what it was in January, 1961. And it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined that budget now stands at 5 billion, $400 million a year, a staggering sum though, somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year space expenditures Speaker 1: (42:00) [inaudible] President Kennedy: (42:05) Bass expenditures will soon rise Samoa from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States fall. We have given this program a high national priority, even though I realized that this is in some measure, an act of faith and vision for, we do not now know what benefits await us, but if I were just saying my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket, more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion guidance, control, communications, food and survival on an untried mission to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to where re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour causing heat about half that on the temperature of the sun, almost as hot as it is here today and do all this and do all this and do it right. President Kennedy: (43:38) And do it first before this decade is out. Speaker 1: (43:42) [inaudible], President Kennedy: (43:53) I'm the one who's doing all the work, so I'll get to stay cool for a minute. However, I think we're going to do it. And I think that, uh, we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job and this will be done in the decade of the sixth. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university, it will be done during the terms of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform, but it will be done and it will be done before the end of this decade. And I am delighted that this university is playing a pot and putting a man on the moon as part a great national effort of the United States of America. Speaker 1: (44:34) [inaudible] President Kennedy: (44:42) Many years ago, the great British Explorer, George Mallory was to die on Mount Everest, which I asked, why did he want to climb it? He said, because it is there spaces and we're going to claim it and the moon and the planet today, and new hopes for knowledge and peace today. And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on man has ever inbox. 

[applegelstore]

So we (=my sister plays, I watch her and do other stuff besides) have finally marathoned through Tales of Berseria (only the post-game sidequests left). So here’s excerpts of my final verdict (mostly in contrast to Zesty because sorry but I can’t help it. Plus, it’s the prequel for Maotelus’ sake). Cut for massive length and very heavy spoilers, obviously! No reviews, though, just incoherent ramblings. Many, many incoherent ramblings.

-The plot is indeed kinda more exciting than Zestiria. Which isn’t particularly hard. I mean there are many reasons why I love Zestiria, but the plot (and the villains) sure aren’t one of them. The plot was kinda just… there and didn’t do any harm, but honestly I could just have watched a 200 episode show of plotless party banter and would have enjoyed it just the same. The plot in neither game makes particularly much sense, tho.

-I have a billion questions and somehow most of them concern Zaveid’s gun in both games. Like, how does it actually work? It separates fusings, but it’s the basis for the invention of the armatus? Apparently it also boosts magic? Idk. And where does it come from? Let me guess, there was that super advanced sci-fi-civilization that lived on the planet like 20 000 years ago and is now forgotten *insert dramatic music here*

-How on earth did Velvet get out of that volcano…? But as long as Morgrim is safe, I’m good.

-On that note, Velvet literally screaming WAKE UUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!!!!!!!! at the volcano made me kinda happy

-whenever she has facepalm/I’m so done/I’m surrounded by idiots moments, I feel her very much

-Despite the headscratchers, I’m totally digging the Berseria/Zestiria worldbuilding, like hell

-Sue me but I still like the Zestiria characters lightyears better than the Berseria characters. Mostly because they’re funnier, more relatable, and also because I honestly don’t like the Darker and Edgier trope. But also because the costume designs are goddamn awful, Magilou is an obnoxious pest, and it takes Eleanor far too many hours of game play to get that other people than abbey members have human rights (I ended up liking her in the end but honestly getting there was a pain). BTW yes, Velvet, Phi and Eleanor probs have more dramatic changes in personality over the course of the game than the Zesty squad combined, but can anybody explain to me what kind of character development Eizen, Rokurou and Magilou display? …Thought so. Also, no, dramatic 180° turn character development is NOT a prerequisite for good character writing in my opinion, thank you very much. I also think that mental breakdowns aren’t a prerequisite, just in case you were wondering. I’m honestly not a big fan of the Heroic B.S.O.D. trope, although there might be some exceptions where I thought it was well done. I still prefer to do without.

-At least I can tolerate Magilou and Eleanor now that the former got a backstory and the latter finally learned how not to be a dick

-Phi’s constant complaints that he doesn’t want to be treated like a child (I’ve got bad news for you sweetie, you’re TEN) do horrible things to my headcanon that he simply stays physically 10 for eternity, but don’t think I’d give up too soon

-however, I guess we can establish that he plays splatter games with a burning passion

-I am very glad that the monster doggies and the monster bird are safe and sound in the epilogue

-WHERE IS FIRE MUM

-How on earth do people defend the opinion that Berseria was less of a button smasher game than Zestiria?? Because honestly in Zestiria I never managed to win battles by doing nothing but frantically smashing X/Square/Triangle/Circle without any plan or order.

-THE BATTLE CAMERA IS SO MUCH BETTER THO I can control it freely! Oh bless the new camera. I want that so hard in Zestiria. It would help a bunch.

-the equipment upgrade and drop system is also a billion times more effective in the sense that you don’t have to carefully plan your fusings (guess who’s always too lazy to do that) and fruitlessly try to farm the drops for that for hours (guess who’s too lazy for that as well, and also helplessly underlevelled because she’s so lazy and ends up with bosses one or two hitting an armatus even on normal mode *coughs*). Bless.

-I mean the new equipment system in Berseria is basically Final Fantasy IX but for lazy noobs. There’s ups and downs to that, I guess?

-Meirchio is so goddamn pretty, I didn’t even realise that in ToZX. Guess I was distracted by how bad the trainwreck is. Anyway I love everything about this town

-Aball and its surroundings incl. Taliesin also deserve awards

-the dungeons and field areas weren’t anymore interesting than Zestiria, tho

-btw Aball=Avalon? Magical apple island and stuff? Just asking because honestly some of the Arthurian references are pretty obscurely named (it took me quite a while to get the Lastonbell=Glastonbury reference, too, trollolol. Anyone else reminded of Good old Ah! My Goddess translation sins? I mean, come on… Verdandi to Belldandy? Apparently, correctly transcribing Roman letters into Japanese script is even more difficult than Ancient Avarost)

-Morgrim, let me love you, please take all my blessings, you are purrfectly pleasantly plump and I want to cuddle you and give you kisses

-why exactly was Shigure one of the bad guys?? It still escaped me after we cut him in half, sacrificed his soul to some ancient deity, and killed his deceased, reincarnated, dragonised mum

-speaking of which, is it really clever to use the souls of your mortal enemies to revive gods that you want to be on your side!?

-anyway, screw you, Melchior, in particular

-Bienfu is a strong contender for most annoying mascot ever and I still wanted to throw him into the ocean hours into the game. I swear if I have to hear him yell BIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN just once more in my life I’m gonna punch the screen.

-I’m with Jude on the pengyons. I mean I guess killing and eating them is preferable to killing them but not eating them, but still. Everyone speaks about representation, where’s my representation? Is there a single JRPG in which at least one of the playable characters is a vegetarian?

-I was surprised how much I enjoyed the Jude and Milla cameo, cracktastic as it was. Milla was actually my favourite in Xillia, although I had and still have severe problems with her character. But here I only saw of her what I love about her, and it made me happy. You go, Milla

-The skit writing with the constant “all males are perverts”, “all women are deceitful whores” and “men and women are fundamentally different and will never understand each other or be friends unless they’re incestuous siblings” is goddamn awful, period.

-apparently if your vessel becomes malevolent even the tiniest bit (no need to go full tainted), that physically hurts your malak/seraph. I’m glad that doesn’t happen in Zesty.

-Zaveid. Buddy. I feel sorry for you. But it also kinda shocks me how fast you get over your girlfriend’s death. I also have bad news: Eizen’s little sister will still look like a 12-year-old in a 1000 years from now. I actually hope you’re NOT into that.

-btw Zaveid and Eizen jump from mortal enemies to true name basis pretty fast holy shit

-I wouldn’t have minded more Aifread’s Pirates shenigans and nobody is surprised

-I want the cracktastic enemy book back

-I want my elemental powers back. Fuck this don’t ya try to talk down my beloved Magical Dragqueen mode IT’S THE POWER OF LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE y’ignorants

-dear malak NPCs, thank you for establishing that the abbey version armatus is a sucky beta version which will be replaced with the awesome real thing in a couple of centuries, and will eventually symbolise harmony between humans and malakhim. Bonus points for carrying along the motherfucking Galahad ruins bow to drive home the point

-I’m a little too amused by the fact that the ending credit cards are a “everyone’s happy, nobody ever died, and everybody’s friends with each other” AU

-uhm, guys? Did they give Artorius’ sword to Sorey’s gay pride armatus in the anime? I didn’t like it even back then but now I hate it even more, pls no

-I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want Sorey back I want

-I know there will never be a Zestiria sequel because it didn’t sell well enough for that, but just in case: the only premise I’ll accept is “Phi, Sorey and Mikleo free Velvet from her prison and finally tear Innominat apart for good”. I don’t know how that would work without killing Velvet and Phi, but hey, I’m sure we’re gonna find a solution because it’s as JRPG and all we need is the POWER OF LOVE *dundundundun*

Everyone is happy. Also what is this “reborn Malakhim aren’t the same people they died as anymore” crap, don’t give me this heartbreak material you assholes

-is it wrong if I wanna play Zestiria after finishing Berseria? Actually, we would have gotten there far sooner if I hadn’t insisted taking breaks so I could play a few hours of Zestiria in between. Whoops.

-my sister was worried that Phi would miss his auntie Velvet very much and suggested Sorey and Mikleo should adopt him once the sweet baby slumber party is over. At this point I’m wondering whether I should give her fanfic recs to brighten her days, or whether that will cause her to forever ban me from her Playstation and refuse to cook for me ever again

-after watching the Zesty DLC, she also told me: “I don’t know what was the point of it, but Rose and Alisha were very cute.” She’s on the path to righteousness.

[jira-chii]

Comparing Shoumetsu Toshi eps 5 and 6 to the game

Warning for *SPOILERS* and possible (probable) bias 

So I definitely think episodes 5 and 6 of the Shoumetsu Toshi anime are my favourite so far. There are just so many Easter eggs for fans of the game to find, the plot makes sense, and the pacing is actually not a complete wreck.

I’m going to note down some of the parts I really enjoyed, that referenced the game and involved changes that I actually agree with. I’m also going to mention the bits I didn’t quite like, why I think they made those decisions, and maybe what I would have done instead?

Tsubasa and Yoshiaki

I’m going to straight up start with the biggest Easter Egg I enjoyed. They referenced the Clock Tower!!

An anime original scene is Yuki and Yoshiaki bonding over having siblings. This is not only a sweet scene that gives us a break from all the (melo)drama, but also closely relates to a core theme of the anime (and the games to an extent). There are many instances in the game of Yuki referring to her relationship with Souma when she sees tragic family situations (Eri and Maya, for example), but the anime makes this even more explicit. I particular like the conclusion they reach: that there are things even siblings wouldn’t understand about each other.

Yoshiaki and Tsubasa have the same power instead of opposing ones. I talk about this more in my blog post about Tsubasa’s 9* Trance advent but this makes a lot of sense for the anime, and means an otherwise very convoluted plot becomes so much more succinct. That said, we miss out on a lot of really wonderful possibilities with the limited situation in the anime. For example, we barely see Tsubasa interact with the Kaitodan or Yoshiaki (both of which are super important to his character development). Also he straight up dies at the end. So rip character development entirely. However, considering the limited format of the anime, it would not have been possible to keep focusing on these characters for more than two episodes anyway, so I can see why they just decided to kill him off.

Yoshiaki and Tsubasa’s flashback is a direct reference to the game, where Tsubasa made a flower disappear to cheer up Yoshiaki who tripped. In the anime it’s a rock, which is just so much faster to explain visually. Even better, it is used as a plot point illustrating how their powers work, so it’s not just pure fan service. Win-win.

Another Tsubasa-Yoshiaki parallel to the game is that Tsubasa ran away in order to protect Yoshiaki. In the game it was because the organisation was chasing him. In the anime it’s because he wants to destroy all the AFs before Yoshiaki’s power awakens. I quite like the resolution too: how Yoshiaki uses the power he and Tsubasa share, to make the AF disappear, bringing an end to the fight, but also erasing Tsubasa in the process. 

On that note, I find it interesting that the anime decided to only make Tsubasa a tamashii. I mean, we definitely would not have the same level of tension if Yoshiaki, and all of the Kaitodan were tamashii too I guess.  

Kaitodan

Kana hacking Geeks’ computer is a really great way to introduce the nature of her character. Very cute too. Unfortunately she gets barely any screentime :(

Sumire uses a gun to puncture a tyre. They totally could have just made Rui do it with his knife but they didn’t. Why? I think it’s a deliberate reference to Sumire’s past.

Jack speaks English. Jack is great. But he didn’t speak enough English. Enough said. 

I think the most controversial thing (for me at least) were the changes they made to Kaitodan’s backstory. It’s not Tsubasa, Rui and Kouji helping each other out and finding a sense of belonging in the process. It’s purely Tsubasa leading a couple of delinquents (well, just Rui and Jack) to do “greater things”, and man it just feels like so much of the charm of the Kaitodan is missing just like that.

That’s not the only thing missing. Yayoi, Kouji and Saori straight up didn’t make it into the anime at all. This is not even controversial, it’s a straight up sin.

One final very small nitpick. Sumire’s chainsaw is like, not threatening at all. When she uses it to knock the AF out of Souma’s hand, she’s basically using it more like a blunt weapon…

AF

They gave artefacts (AF) a backstory. Honestly I wasn’t too keen on it at first because it seemed too simple and a little tacky. However I will admit it does make their inclusion in the anime seem a lot more natural and, to an extent, I guess I am glad they made an effort to explain the weird thing Souma has been holding. Which is not a canon AF btw.

They made up an AF. Hoshi’s Tears complement Tsuki’s Tears and Taiyou’s Necklace from the game (although none of those are actual AFs either). It’s also a pretty subtle way of including Hoshi in the anime (but does this mean he won’t appear at all then?). 

My problem then, is that the AF backstory they came up with doesn’t actually match the events in the anime…They don’t really explain why Souma/the organisation have their hands on both Hoshi’s Tears and Tsuki’s Tears. Additionally, even though there seems to be a lot of information about AFs on the Internet, we haven’t seen anybody except Souma use one. I just think they needed a more legit explanation regarding their use, and maybe should have fed us a little bit more information about them sooner, rather than giving us a whole information dump through a news report at the very start of ep 5.

Look, I’ve mentioned it before: making an anime adaptation of a game with a plot as complex as Shoumetsu Toshi’s is no easy feat, and I commend the anime for achieving what it has done so far. 

In my personal opinion, they handled Yoshiaki and Tsubasa very well, tying it in with main character Yuki’s conflict with Souma, and having it mean something important. Though some fans may not have liked the changes, personally I think it fits the narrative of the anime very well, and I would not change it at all unless I could change the whole plot of the anime (more on this later).

However I do not think they handled Kaitodan nearly as well. Throwing two incredibly beloved sets of characters into the same arc was a risky move. There was definitely favouritism for one set over the other, as Yoshiaki stole the show, leaving the Kaitodan dangling from the sidelines. The Kaitodan are risky enough by themselves, because there are so many distinct members. Even with the anime literally halving the group and depriving them of their leader, there was just not enough screen time for each of them to shine. 

How to do this though? I actually think Takuya’s flashback of him chasing Tsubasa could be a good place to start. The way it was done in the anime was just so random, creating a connection between Takuya, Tsubasa and Yoshiaki out of thin air. That’s too much for a newcomer to handle at once. 

Bring up this memory earlier. Use it as a tool, maybe to explain how Takuya and Yumiko used to work together. Then when Yoshiaki mentions Tsubasa in a later ep, the audience will actually know who he is.

Also, give the Kaitodan just a little bit more screentime. Particularly the chicks. Rui and Jack get quite a bit more screentime, including in their flashback, but Sumire is relegated to damsel in distress and poor Kana probably doesn’t even get more than ten seconds on-screen across both episodes. 

I think the whole stealing AF thing could have been used better. Show the Kaitodan doing the actual heist, utilising Kana’s hacking abilities (which are bullshit in the first place because nobody actually knows how hacking works). But yeah, get her to open security doors or some shit, and show her face on the computer. I actually think it is better to use more time leading the Kaitodan on a useless goose chase, because it shows how capable each member can be, even with their leader missing. Hell, have Takuya and Yuki chase them and try to beat them to the AF. This would serve to show how much good they actually are, especially given how they’ve been built up to be this really skilful group of thieves. It also gives us the chance to see some character interaction (like Rui hitting on Yuki, and Sumire actually using her chainsaw). The tone shift would keep the episode interesting, without tiring the audience by having too much drama.

Also, it’s more dramatic of a reveal if they spend all this time trying to steal the AF, only to realise at the very end they’ve been duped by Souma.

Finally, with the AF backstory…look, they did it to fit the story they’re going for with the anime. I may come back to this after I’ve seen the whole thing to decide what changes I would make. Definitely introduce it earlier, and not just as this strange weapon Souma uses to terrorise our MCs.

Sorry this ended up turning into a rant (and semi-fanfic??). I’ve actually got a whole list of things about the anime I would do differently, but I’ll see how the actual thing pans out first before I make a judgement on what changes I would make.

I know there are so many restrictions the creators have to work with, I just think they could have made some better compromises.