#it DOES certainly seem that there might not be newer characters coming up later in the season but who knows!

[larissa-the-scribe]

Terrarium Lights, Pt. 2.5

Last time on Terrarium Lights: the boi is struggling with the reality of having a hole in his memories. Gail is struggling about whether or not she should tell him that he is, in fact, a ghost. (Next part >>here)

The ghost agreed to go with Gail to the cemetery the next afternoon.

"I think it might be good," he said. "I can see more places, and maybe something new will help. Somehow."

"And a good walk can be just the thing to clear your head," Gail offered as further reasoning.

It was the anniversary of her parents' death, and she was going to leave flowers on their graves, her uncle’s grave, and David’s grave.

When she had been younger, cemeteries had fascinated her. Now, with more sadness associated with them, her enthusiasm was tempered somewhat—and yet, despite that, she still quite liked them. They had character, and history, and she had friends there. Sometimes, she told Michael that she was scouting the place out, so she could be familiar with it when she ended up there herself.

She gathered an assortment of flowers from her garden (daffodils, drift roses, and gerbera daisies) and arranged them in bundles in a basket. There was no direct path to the cemetery, but she didn't mind. It was a lovely spring day, the sun was shining, and the wind brought hints of seasalt with it.

The lad followed along behind her, in one of his quieter moods. His hands were in his pockets, and he mutely observed the world around him with attentive eyes. Those didn't seem fully brown today, but he still seemed aware of what was going on around him.

As they went down the road, they passed an open space where, looking seaward, one could see the lighthouse lifted against the sky. The lad stopped. Noticing his absence from her side, Gail turned to find him focused on it intently.

"Is that the one you've been telling me about?"

"Yes. The coastline hereabouts has a lot of shoals and shallows and salt marshes, and pokes out into the sea some, so the lighthouse is there to guide the ships into harbor without them running foul of those, at the mouth of the bay. Some good spots for oysters, though. Not as good as further South or East, but you get a decent harvest."

He took the information in without comment, standing and staring with his hands in his pockets.

"Does it… perhaps remind you of anything?" Gail hazarded when he didn't move for another minute or so.

"I… I can't quite tell." He looked away, down at the ground, kicking a shoe against the ground. "There's something about it, that feels closer than the memories, but I don't know what that might be. Newer and older than all of it. And try as I might to make something of it, the piece that would make it make sense is missing."

Gail hummed sympathetically. "Maybe it will come to you as we walk? If not, we can visit it sometime later. If you're up to it, maybe today, after our visit to the church."

"I don't know if today," he said, squaring his shoulders. “I…I’m really still not sure about going new places. But I think… I might like to try going there. I don’t know when. But… I think I should. Someday."

"Very well then," Gail patted his shoulder as she led the way onward. "We should plan for it. Maybe in a couple of weeks. We can see how you’re feeling then."

He murmured something in agreement and trudged after her.

Past the salt marsh, up the road, into a forest of oaks and Spanish moss, then the church.

It was a small chapel, of wood, and whitewashed. Its steeple rose up to bear its cross, but not higher than the trees surrounding it. Gail had always found it charming—large enough for those who met there, with rooms to spend time together in fellowship, a carved cross on the wall behind the pulpit, a smell of wood and polish and old books, and simple but lovely stained glass windows. Certainly there were larger, grander chapels and churches deeper into Santa Juliana, but those were far away, and—to her mind—less pleasant. Besides, this was where her friends were, and Pastor Jeremiah was a good shepherd to his flock.

Before heading to the graveyard, Gail went inside the church to pray, sitting on one of the back pews. It was quiet, soothing, and cool after the trek through the woods. She prayed over her family—alive and dead—and their works in all their different places, for Mrs. Oberson and her growing sickness, for the lad, for wisdom in helping him, for her congregation and pastor.

It all took longer than she had planned, a calm, unhurried peace seeping into her as she sat and laid her people and her concerns before the Lord.

The lad sat beside her.

She didn't know if he was praying, too, or just waiting for her to finish. He seemed to sense something of her mood and the silence that lay unbroken in the sanctuary, and made no attempt to interrupt or hurry her, or even question her. Gail supposed he was likely to do so on the return journey.

On the seat beside them was a hymnbook, open to the beginning of "Rock of Ages." He seemed to be reading that. To Gail's surprise, when she looked back at him after her prayer time, she found that he had turned the page, and turned it back again, holding it gently as if prepared to scour both sides of it.

It was, as far as she could remember, the first time he had directly interacted with the physical world in a way that moved it.

He noticed her watching, and put the page back. "Is it time?" His voice was hushed, little more than a whisper.

She nodded, and picked up her basket of flowers.

Previous

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[pop-roxs]

i am verrrrry slowly getting through the manga now :} and I apologize bc this message is probably going to get long akjdsjsh I tried to be coherent somewhat I prommy

yeah, even being newer to this series I could feel the difference in characterization between the manga compliant and non-compliant portions. and for the most part the anime only is REALLY bad 💀💀 the ghost episode was such a slog to get through I totally understand why my roomie showed me this season last. but at the same time there’s some bits I really enjoyed??

Again, still working on the manga, so maybe some of my complaints will be addressed later. I dunno if this makes sense but in a lot of the non manga portions of season one Sebastian felt like he had more ,, character to him?? I don’t know the right word. But like, him yoinking ciel when ciel was in danger, despite that going DIRECTLY against orders was interesting to me. And then ciel getting angry at him when detective guy died protecting ciel bc Sebastian didn’t do anything was a cool bit as well (though detective death had like zero impact they tried REALLY hard to make us care but it was so rushed). Sebastian also just felt like he had more snark in general. I feel like in the other bits I watched he was more just another extension of ciel and just does whatever ciel says without question. whereas in the anime bits the whole the like, nature of the contract is brought up more and bc of that we get to see a little more into Sebastian’s character and how he really feels?? I don’t know if that makes sense sorry 😭 I liked (for the most part) the characterization he got though

Also I loved how many more supernatural entities the anime got. Like there’s more than one demon, there’s ghosts (even though the episode SUCKS), angels, a hellhound, whatever the hell might be going on with Lau- I was shocked when my rookie said that there’s like, nothing other than Sebastian and the reapers in the manga itself (though she also hasn’t caught up fully so???). Hannah was fun in the time she lasted and I’m weirdly interested on the triplets. Why did they seem to be serving Hannah in that one flashback sequence? Is there a demon hierarchy? What’s it like? Also- how do demons come to be?? At the end of two ciel becomes one via Hannah’s contract with alois in his body so like??!? Can demons just do that to anyone anytime or what? (Also, Can demons make contracts with beings other than humans? Can demons die? PLEASE I NEED LORE).

Im a sucker for Angel themed villains also so I was kinda excited for that in s1 but.. it was. meh. It certainly doesn’t help that the male form of the Angel looks EXACTLY like one of my fav characters from another franchise, Namely Joshua from (neo) world ends with you, who coincidentally is also an Angel. like that’s just a character I already like but written worse and much more annoying and I don’t like him at all actually. Josh solos

No Ronnie this season which :’) my roomie told me ahead of time but I miss him still. wish we had more reaper lore though. Why is will so opposed to over time. What does he even DO when he’s not working. do reapers have like.. anything to do outside their jobs? Do they even get paid? why did grelle’s chainsaw get stopped by a coat getting caught in it I thought that stuff could slice through anything (same for Ronnie’s lawnmower thing during that one time in his intro in 2- like guys ur scythes are kinda ass if they break this easy. undertaker had the right idea keeping a basic design 😭) WHY DOESNT EVERYONE HAVE A LITTLE GLASSES CHAIN THINGY LIKE GRELLE? Ronnie lost his glasses At one pint I’m pretty sure will lost his glasses at another guys just get the. Stupid chain pls yall rely on ur eyesight it’s so much more convenient to have that thingy so ur glasses don’t get lost. grelle girlbossing here she has the right idea cmon man

(sorry I fuckinh love the reapers head full so many thoughts on them SPEAAKING OF-) the books that wrote peoples lives as they were happening was such a dumb anime only inclusion. We paused the episode for like 20 minutes JUST to complain about it- it’s an ultimately stupid choice (the library is sick though just make it a film library) that feels like it was made purely for the stupid death bookmark thing- which also was a stupid idea because that’s way too OP and it was made to fix the DUMBEST possible problem the writers could’ve written. A locked room?? Really?? That’s the barrier we need to overcome? didn’t they TELEPORT TO THE LIBRARY OR SMTH I am going insane I hate the books so much. the film aesthetic is so much better the books are confusing and stupid I am glad they’re not canon. If it was a like, they used to use books but then film was invented thats be neat. It’s funny to imagine the reapers going digital as time progresses but the books being used at the same time as the cinematic record pisses me off SO MUCH

undertaker reveal was funny though. like. obv doesn’t live up to book of Atlantic but the writers didn’t even try to make it hype they just made it a heehoo silly and I think it was for the best, it was a good moment.

The writers were trying to squeeze in condensed versions of greater arcs and important moments where they could and I think for the most part they did ok. the doll guy was clearly just a Walmart book of circus and then undertaker reveal.. like it was fine. Them killing off Lau was .. odd. I don’t get that. That whole arc was confusing. I do not understand the butterfly thing- is that in the manga too? it perplexed me and my roommate didn’t seem to get what was going on either

ack. I’ve more thoughts on this probably I just can’t remember em rn. overall I liked the anime I think but I can’t wait to read the manga- sorry for the rambling I hope it’s fine sjdhshshsh

AGH THIS RAMBLING WAS SO FUN TO READ!! so happy to have you in my ask box again btw

i completely agree w you on your opinions of the anime and the different characters that originate from it. i hATEEEEE ASHHHH!!! SM. grelles characterization in jack the ripper was very nice, right? she was her usual simpful self, but she also was such a powerful maniac(and i love her for that <3). after that shes almost purely comic relief. they make her so weak(when she couldve most likely won against undertaker in bota if sebastIAN FOCUSED ON HIS GOAL INSTEAD OF SHOWING OFF). she barely does anything to contribute to the legit lore of the anime.

i can assure you, theres more non-human entities than demons and reapers in the manga. book of the atlantic happened, right? they had the bizarre dolls in there. i wouldnt consider them human.

im glad you love the reapers! id love to see you join the reaper side of tumblr. i adore them and their found family theyre so goofy. as for the glasses chain thing, i do agree it would be more convenient, but i like grelle bein a little more unique <3

dont be afraid to pop up in my ask box again!!!!

[dimension-20-every-introduction]

Everyone Introduced in Dimension 20′s Shriek Week episode 2

[sineala]

After reading some comics about Iron Man, it seems he has a hard time developing a real relationship with a partner. He sleeps around a-lot, I think he might be a male nympho, like it seems he's addicted to sex. I was surprised in the last issue of Invincible iron man (#527) during the panel where he has some escort in his tub, what's funnier was when Pepper walked in and somehow the escort was able to hold her breath and hide underwater, I feel writers are unable develop and write him correctly

I’m trying to think of a way to put this that’s not “that’s because you’re reading Matt Fraction’s run” but... that’s because you’re reading Matt Fraction’s run.

Okay. So the thing about most fandoms is that canon is canon, and it’s very clear what is and is not canon. And it’s possible to watch a movie, or watch a TV show, or read a trilogy of novels and come away with a coherent picture of what the characters are like. Any given canon is usually made by a particular person or relatively small group of people, and it’s usually made over a relatively short span of time -- even the longest-running TV shows and the most-delayed book series don’t usually take, oh, more than 10 or 20 years at the most. I mean, there are exceptions, but for the most part, most canons are a snapshot of the era that they were made in (in terms of the values and attitudes that are reflected) and they have few enough hands in them that characters can stay relatively consistent.

This is not at all what comics fandom is like.

Marvel Comics have been made over decades and decades -- starting in the early 60s for modern Marvel, or the 40s if you’d like to count Timely Comics and Captain America -- and by hundreds if not thousands of different people. The people who are making them now are not the people who started making them. They’re not the people who invented the characters or the universe. And the values and beliefs and general societal attitudes that they are reflecting right now are not the ones that they were made with, actual generations ago.

And the fun thing about Marvel Comics is that everything is canon. Unlike DC, there have been no line-wide reboots. If you’re reading a comic from 1963, whatever happened in that comic is still considered to be true unless a later comic has deliberately contradicted it. So it’s all true. But at the same time, it also isn’t all true -- the characters are not aging at the same rates at which the comics are published, Tony’s origin story has now been set in something like four different countries, I no longer have any idea who Wanda and Pietro’s parents are, and so on and so forth. So the current writers basically pick what they want to be true and work from there. And they sometimes end up making radically different choices in characterization because that’s what they feel is the best way to modernize the character. So what you end up with is a bunch of things that are theoretically all true but in practice cannot really all coexist.

And sometimes fandom looks at canon and says, “We don’t like that change. Many of us don’t think it’s consistent with the established characterization. So we’re either not going to think about that part or we’re going to figure out a way to explain it that fits better with what has come before, that makes us happier.”

So Fraction’s Iron Man run is one of those points of contention. There are some things about it that pretty much everyone in fandom is going to accept, because it’s hard not to, because of the radical changes that are made -- say, the brain deletion in World’s Most Wanted. As far as I know no one writes fanfiction and pretends that Tony still remembers Civil War.  I’m not talking about fixits where he gets the memories back -- I mean saying, “Nope, that didn’t happen.” Fandom certainly could. But they pretty much don’t. And there are some things that much of fandom would prefer to gloss over -- like, the fact that Tony sleeps around. And I don’t think it’s the case that people are doing this because, say, they personally disapprove of this behavior -- they’re doing this because they don’t think it fits with the extant characterization of Tony.

Let’s say you’ve got, oh, fifty years of canon where Tony’s attitude toward relationships can basically be summed up as serial monogamy. Sure, he’s dated a lot of people, but he’s also been around a long time -- he’s had enough time to have a lot of committed relationships. And as far as I can tell, he was pretty serious about everyone he was with -- or at the very least, he wasn’t out there having one-night stands. He’s been engaged. He’s clearly out there looking for love. And then you’ve got maybe ten years of canon, starting with Matt Fraction’s run, where Tony really starts sleeping around.

So, both of these things are canon. But which do you believe? Do you believe in the older characterization, because that was the original conception of the character? Because it’s been the characterization for longer? Does that make it more true? Or do you support the newer characterization because that’s what Marvel wants the character to be now? Or do you find some way to reconcile them? I mean, you could. If you asked me how I’d make it make sense, I might say something like: “Tony’s behavior in this run is markedly unlike his previous behavior and I attribute that to his feelings about his declining public reputation after Civil War and Fear Itself, as well as his now-canonically-stated depression; perhaps he feels that he isn’t deserving of love or long-term relationships at this point, and he’s deliberately seeking out casual sex, possibly partly as a form of self-harm and partly as a way of attempting to alleviate his depression.”

Now, you might not buy that particular explanation, and you are totally free to come up with one you like better, but you get what I’m doing, right? I’m trying to come up with a way that makes what we have now make sense with everything we had before.

Or, you know, we can all just write fanfiction set in volume 3 and pretend everything after never happened. I’ve never done that before and I have no idea what you’re talking about. Ha.

So if you say to me “I think Tony’s addicted to sex” I’m probably going to say something like “I can see how you’d say that about Matt Fraction’s IM run but I don’t think that’s in character for Tony as a whole and here’s why.” And then I might talk about, say, how he does not display this behavior at other times in canon and maybe mention some of the many people he was very serious about. Rumiko Fujikawa. Bethany Cabe. Whitney Frost. You get the idea.

I hope that makes some kind of sense.

[amandahontas]

An Analysis of Antfrost

For my first psychological analysis, I’m going to be talking about Antfrost. Antfrost is an interesting character to start with since so much of his lore is connected with other characters who I obviously haven't talked about yet. I’ll start with some general background information on his character in case anyone is newer to the fandom or just knows less about him. Afterwards I’ll be moving on to talk about Ant’s personality and my personal thoughts on what I have found. 

A few things to keep in mind are: this is my opinion based on my background in  psychology (which I am not claiming to be an expert in btw), and I’m trying to keep these as neutral and unbiased as possible. Also this is strictly about the characters and not the ccs because it would be weird to try and analyze a real person who I only know through limited exposure on livestreams and youtube videos. Finally, I finished writing this on May 14th, 2021, so there are spoilers for any events that have happened before that and if any new developments make this analysis completely wrong, it is what it is. (I may go back and edit some of these later, but I also might be too lazy.)

People who seemed really interested when I first proposed this idea (I can add you if you ask):

@vulpes-ex-machina 

@head-full-of-things

Next up: BadBoyHalo (I’ll edit this to add the link when I finish writing it)

During the Manberg Rebellion, Antfrost, BadBoyHalo, and Awesamdude created the Badlands, a third party unaligned with Manberg or Pogtopia, and outside of the Greater Dream SMP. He also accidentally started the Second Pet War over accidentally killing a panda he intended to steal and keep in his animal sanctuary. The Badlands won the war. In the Manberg vs. Pogtopia war, the Badlands fought on Manberg’s side to try and keep the conflict going longer for profit. Ant specifically grinded a bunch for the war and gave Fundy and Niki a fox each. The Badlands peaced out when Technoblade became the enemy of the newly reclaimed L’manberg because they kept the conflict going in that way. 

Eventually, the egg began to become an issue. After experimenting on it and Skeppy, Antfrost quickly began to love the egg and was one of the founding members of the Eggpire. Ant destroyed the obsidian barrier around the egg in order to let its influence spread. Antfrost often takes the initiative to spread around the egg’s spores to try and infect more people. He has planted some in L’manhole, Snowchester, and Ranboo’s house in the past. He also celebrated along with the rest of the Eggpire when Tommy died. Outside of the Eggpire, Ant is a prison guard under Warden  Sam. 

Recently, Ant began setting up for the Red Banquet which was supposed to be a party to help bury the hatchet between everyone and the Eggpire. It turned out to be a trap with the Eggpire trapping everyone. The Eggpire brought Foolish up to the egg and Ant told Puffy that this never would have happened if she had stayed loyal to the egg before executing Foolish. Antfrost later died at the hands of Puffy, Foolish’s father and Ant’s former best friend, and we have not canonically seen him since (Antfrost (SMP), n.d.).

While I personally only joined the fandom after he was already corrupted, according to the wiki (n.d.), before he joined the Eggpire, Antfrost was known as kind and helpful. Despite this, he wasn’t opposed to occasionally causing chaos. He also cared very deeply about animals as evidenced by his animal sanctuary. Ever since the corruption we have seen him become careless and manipulative. He doesn’t care about anything other than the Egg, not his animals, not his friends, and certainly not himself. Ant has also said many manipulative things, such as blaming Foolish’s death on Puffy and all his attempts to persuade others to join the Eggpire. He is also the type of person who is more of a follower than a leader. He follows Bad’s lead as his right-hand-man when it comes to doing things for the Egg, and even when he goes off to do his own things, he is still doing them because they are what the Egg wants him to do.

What I'm trying to figure out is how the egg is affecting him. It appears to affect different people differently, which I will get into when I talk about other members of the Eggpire. In Ant’s case he seems to be fully unaware and possessed, though he is able to hide this when he wants to such as when he is a prison guard. The Egg almost seems to have given Antfrost a full personality swap, switching his kindness for cruelty and his care for carelessness. However, one core thing that has stayed consistent is Ant's tendency to be a follower, which can be seen in his willingness to follow Bad's lead in the Badlands as well as his complete devotion to obeying the Egg. This is probably why the Egg left this part of his personality alone.

Being a follower is not a bad thing. Ant is an exceptional right-hand man, which is an important role to any story.  He is fiercely loyal to the cause he gets behind and he puts in the hard work to try and keep the events that he is working on running smoothly. At least, he tries to keep them running smoothly, we all know what happened at the Red Banquet. Overall, I would like to see more lore from Antfrost in the future so I can get a better grasp on his motivations because as of right now he does not seem to be motivated by anything other than the Egg because of his possession. I also want to know how conscious he is of all his wrongdoings and if he is still possessed after dying. If he knew what he was doing this could definitely give him some trauma that he would have to deal with.

 I was hoping for another Antfrost lore stream to come out while I was making this, but alas I have not been fed. I’ll probably come back to this one if more lore happens, but I’ve been working on this for far too long, so here you all go!

References

Antfrost (SMP). (2021, May 3). In Fandom. https://dreamteam.fandom.com/wiki/Antfrost/SMP

[theoriginalladya]

"Holiday Celebration" for Alexandre/Kaidan :)

from this prompt list

On AO3 here

My friend, thank you so much for asking about Alexandre and Kaidan!  I won’t apologize for the length of this prompt - it’s the beginning of Alexandre’s story, and for that I am very grateful!  (also pardon the extra information for that purpose! lol) I hope you enjoy it!

~~~

Title: Six Cents Dix-Neuf

Summary: 619 days ago, Alexandre Shepard received secondary exposure to eezo in an accident that killed his father. Today, he enters the hospital, room 619, and begins a journey that will change his life forever.

Characters:  Alexandre Shepard, Kaidan Alenko, Nathalie Alenko

Series: Copains de Combat

Author’s Note: Many, many years ago when I was in high school, I was paired up with a pen pal over in France. For decades, he and I wrote back and forth to one another. Twice, I was fortunate enough to meet him in person. He was one of the nicest, kindest people I've ever had the fortune of knowing. We lost touch about 21 years ago, shortly after my son was born, but I always looked for him online in the hopes we might connect again. Sadly, about a month ago, I came across irrefutable proof of what I've known deep in my heart; my friend died shortly after we lost contact with one another. Now, all I have left are the memories.Alexandre Shepard is a fictional creation of the man I called friend. I can only hope somewhere, somehow he knows I still think about him fondly.

~~~

Room 619.  

Alexandre Shepard stares at the number and hears his father’s voice inside his head.  Six cents dix-neuf, mon fils.  A tremor shakes his hand as he reaches for the handle.  Either God has it in for him, or He has a very wicked sense of humor. Six cents dix-neuf.  The same number of days since the eezo ‘accident’ that killed the elder Shepard and exposed Alexandre, which in turn, led to him being here, at this hospital.  

Room 619.

He enters the room, sets his things by the empty bed nearest the windows before walking over to stare outside.  The hospital room is like any other in any Alliance hospital. This one happens to overlook the city of London.  Not a bad view by any means, particularly in winter with brightly colored and festive holiday decorations hanging, but it is not where he wants to be.  Anywhere but here would be preferable; finishing his studies, preparing for enlistment, anything other than waiting for surgery, for an implant to help him control his sudden and unexpected access to dark energy. He never asked for it; he saw the faces of the crew, of the other kids in his class.  His mother.  His brother. Disappointment.  Horror.  Fear.  No, he did not ask for this; apparently, what he wants out of life no longer matters.

Room 619.

The door opens behind him some time later. He isn’t in a private suite, and all Alexandre knows is that his roommate is also biotic.  Though greater in number than they once were, not many come through this hospital, and certainly not enough to create a wing specifically to deal with them.  What few rooms the hospital does set aside for them have to double up on occupancy if and when necessary.  Alexandre swallows tightly.  The fist that rests against the wall tightens, and his gaze is captured as the strange haze of blue returns to spark weirdly around it.  He doesn’t want a roommate, doesn’t want anyone else to know his ‘condition.’  Maman insists he keep it quiet, to protect himself, his one chance at a future. And David?  Well, he was lucky to hear from his older brother at all, and even then, the message was brief.  The ship’s doctor said biotics weren’t a deadly condition.  Someone needs to explain that to his family and friends.

“Six cents dix-neuf,” he mutters, the energy fading as he releases his fist.  Six hundred nineteen days.  Why?

Shuffling steps approach, but stop short of his position. That is something, at least. Alexandre is not in the mood for conversation, good or bad.  He wants to be elsewhere, anywhere but here.  No choice.  But, th minute he knocked Stacey Ratzenburger from her seat in class after a violent sneeze with an added dark energy kick, his life was forever changed.  It’s no longer a question of what he wants, but where he can be put so as to not be a danger, to himself or others.

“Beautiful view.”

Alexandre huffs softly but does not turn.  The voice is deep, warm, comforting in a way, but he really isn’t in the mood to chat.  Still, they’ll be roommates for a time, and his parents raised him to be polite. “It is … different.”  

His companion chuckles softly.  “Your accent suggests you aren’t from around here.”

Alexandre nods.  “I was born in the colonies.”  Which is true enough.  His mother was on leave when he was born, and his documentation lists Terra Nova as his place of birth, even if it was his home only for a few days.  Glancing to his right side, he spies his roommate standing off to the side in the shadows.  Odd behavior, particularly for one who seems to be otherwise outgoing and friendly, but Alexandre does not ask.  The man’s reasons are his own; Alexandre can respect that and hope for the same consideration in return.  “You are from …?”

“Earth.  Canada, to be more specific.”

Canada.  A wild country filled with mountains, trees and wild animals in the western provinces and descendants of his kinsmen in the east. At least, that is how his father explained it once when he was young.  He knows better now, of course.  Half turning, he eyes the shadow.  “Vous parlez français?”

A soft snort – disgusted?  Amused?  He isn’t certain – fills the air.  “Only when I have to.”

Folding his arms across his chest, Alexandre leans back against the wall, a smirk toying with the corner of his lips.  That is a mood if ever he’s heard one before. “Tu me comprends?”

This time, it’s a disgruntled sigh of exasperation. “Yes, I understand you.  I would have thought that obvious?”

“When you hide in the shadows, nothing is obvious.”

There is just a moment when Alexandre thinks perhaps he’s pushed a bit too much.  After all, they have only just met, and not even formally.  Yet, something about this man tugs at memories of his past, at a time more comfortable for him than now.  

How long has it been?  Four years?  Five? I wonder where you are now, mon ami, and where your life has taken you?

With a soft shuffle of slippered feet, his roommate steps out of the darkness.  He is tall, at least equal in height to Alexandre himself, with a mop of dark hair and warm amber eyes.  But it’s the lines of pain at the corners of his eyes that Alexandre notices and he recalls the warning at the desk; he suffers from migraines.  Immediately, Alexandre reaches over and pulls the curtains to block the direct light from outside.  

“Merci.”

Alexandre’s lips curl upward a tick in appreciation, but he cannot help but tease, “Was that so difficult?”

The amber eyes narrow.  “Anyone ever tell you that you are impossible?”

This is what he needs; the distraction, the banter, the return to familiar times. His lips form a full-fledged grin now. “My older brother.  Often.  Repeatedly,” Alexandre replies.  The grin fades a little.  “And an old friend.”  He shrugs, a gentle movement but one that apparently catches his companion’s attention as his eyes focus on it.  “I have not heard from him in a long time.”

“Ah.”  Sympathy? Empathy?  It isn’t unwelcome, but unexpected.  His roommate moves a few steps closer, nods in the direction of the curtains.  “Thank you for that.”

“No trouble.”  Alexandre gestures toward the beds.  “Is it easier for you if we sit?”  He tilts his head in some concern.  “I can fetch a nurse?”

His companion moves toward his bed even before Alexandre finishes asking his questions.  “No nurse,” he insists.  “It’s just … results of the tests they did.”

Alexandre follows, climbing up onto his bed and making himself as comfortable as anyone can in such places.  He tugs his pillow onto his lap, bunching it in his arms. Old habits offer comfort.  “Tests?”

The Canadian lies down, eyes closed tightly, but he still engages in conversation.  “I have an L2 implant, given to me when my biotics manifest a few years ago,” he explains. “Horrendous migraines are one of the many possible side effects.  They are testing to see if there is anything they can do to help.”

The complete and utter lack of hope in his tone leaves Alexandre on edge.  All he knows is what the ship’s doctor told him before leaving.  You are fortunate.  You will receive one of the newer implants, not one of the defective L2s.  To a teenager who has no idea what that means and doesn’t want one, it did little to reassure.  “Do all who have implants suffer?”

One eye opens and focuses on Alexandre. “No.  Is that why you are here?  For an implant?”

Alexandre’s gaze drops and he hugs the pillow close to his chest.  Lifting one hand, he turns the palm up while wiggling his fingers slowly, cautiously. He still has no real understanding of how the biotics thing actually works.  It takes a few moments, but the glow returns.  “Yes.”

The other man pushes up a little, folds his arm and rests it beneath his head as he watches closely.  “You’re worried.”  It’s a statement, not a question.

Alexandre shrugs again.  It’s vaguely disconcerting his reaction is so easily seen.  “I have no choice in the matter,” he replies. Pulling his gaze back to his companion, he counters, “Fate has decided I need more challenge in my life.”  He tosses his pillow back to the bed and flops onto it, staring up at the ceiling.  He does not want this conversation.

“That’s a rather fatalistic approach, don’t you think?”

Alexandre says nothing in response, only rolls so his back is to his roommate.

Several minutes of silence pass.  In the back of his mind, Alexandre hears his father chiding him gently for being rude, but he ignores it.  A soft knock at the door precedes it’s opening, but he ignores that, too.  No one is here for him, and he doesn’t expect the nurses to take undue interest until later this evening in preparation for tomorrow’s procedure.  

Soft steps echo through the room, followed by a soft, feminine voice.  “There you are.”

His roommate’s voice has a slight edge to it when he speaks, but there is nothing but welcome in it.  “Hi, Mom.”

Mom.  Alexandre fights back a wave of jealousy that grasps hold.  It’s stupid; it isn’t his roommate’s fault; it isn’t even Alexandre’s.  With another long glare up at the ceiling, he silently challenges, Why do you do this to me?  Why am I such a tempting target?

When Fate does not reply, he sighs heavily and rolls over to face his roommate and his visitor.  But, when his gaze falls upon the other bed, he frowns.  Something about the woman, about her face, her hair, maybe even her voice, speaks to him.  Or, maybe it’s the small box she carries, so brightly colored and festive looking.  A reminder of happier times.  

“How were the tests?”  She sets the box on the rolling tray table and positions it between the beds.  The response is unintelligible, which is just as well.

Alexandre loses track of time as he focuses on a ray of light coming through the curtains and shining across the room.  Just a sliver, but not enough to bother his companion, he doesn’t think.  Still, it’s plenty to remind Alexandre of the world outside.  Timing, as is often said, is everything; Fate’s decision to throw his life all akilter right before the one holiday he associates most with his father six hundred nineteen days after losing him is ill-timed at best.

Six cents dix-neuf, mon fils.  Joyeux Noël.  

Alexandre closes his eyes, teeth gnashing together. “Six cents dix-neuf,” he whispers to the shadows.  “Joyeux Noël, Papa.  Tu me manques.”

He doesn’t notice the room go silent, or hear the sharply drawn breaths at the other bed.  He doesn’t see two pairs of concerned eyes turn toward him, focused on his huddled form.  Alone in his own private world of despair, Alexandre knows nothing but the pain of loss and change thrust upon him.  Until a moment later when he is torn from his misery by something completely unexpected.

“Kaidan, why didn’t you tell me –?”

Kaidan.

The name is common enough, he supposes, but it is one tied to a happier time in his life, one that has been tickling at the back of his memory since meeting his roommate.  Bolting upright with a sharp gasp, Alexandre half turns until he can look, really look at the man lying in the other bed.  “Kaidan?”  It comes out as a strangled whisper, but the other man must hear it.  Their eyes meet, and Alexandre stops breathing.  Dark hair, dark eyes.  An older face marked by time, a few scars, but beneath it all, something so familiar and unexpected …  Swallowing tightly, Alexandre chokes out, “Mon copain de combat?”

The man’s eyes widen a fraction despite the pain he suffers from, but it’s the word that passes his lips that are the true gift for Alexandre this year.  “Alex?”

He has only ever allowed one person to call him by that shortened version of his name.

Alexandre scrambles off his bed to stand beside him. He glances up to the woman, the ache in his chest lessening.  “Nathalie?” She nods.

Kaidan adjusts his bed.  “Mom, it’s Alex.  Don’t you remember?  From the Lisbon.”

Nathalie Alenko blinks in surprise, but a slow smile curves her lips at the same time.  “Alexandre Shepard?”

One, last tour, the final cap to a long career in the Alliance; the forging of a friendship, now rekindled after seven years separated.

Alexandre turns back to Kaidan.  “I …  It’s you. C’est un miracle.”

With a smile, Kaidan extends a hand that Alexandre takes immediately.  “Well, it is Christmas …”  

[tcheschirewrites]

Hey, are you participating in NaNoWriMo? Have you ever? And what was your experience like? I'm considering it but I feel so intimidated because I know I won't be able to commit to it wholeheartedly. Lowering my expectations and pacing myself would seem like the perfect solution but work kills my creative brain cells by the seconds. I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of November I've only written half of page of alien language. Any advice? Also does Nano have to be a new project?

Oh man, Nano. I’m well familiar with Nano, and I’ve participated a few times (to varying degrees of success). This got very long, so I’m putting a cut.

The first time I attempted Nano was in 2006 for my novel Seerking. I had heard about it from a friend who was in an LJRP I was in, and she encouraged me to try it. I was still in high school at the time, and very frankly I did not have the dedication necessary to complete it. I got a lot of worldbuilding complete, but very little writing. I got about two pages of prose, and three notebooks of character and setting history, as well as a fairly detailed outline. I still have all of this.

The second time I attempted was in 2009, for a story that is based heavily on the Iron&Wine song ‘Boy With a Coin’. I got a little bit further, but I got stuck in a few places. I think it’s because my idea was bigger than my life experience, and I also got stuck in a lot of small details. Additionally, my first Word document (where I got about two chapters in?) was destroyed when my laptop’s hard drive just straight gave up on life - I did buck up and rewrite quite a bit, though it didn’t sing quite the same notes, and I have this handwritten copy still. (It’s possible I tried again with this same project the year after? I don’t remember tbvh)

My third attempt was in 2011, about a goverment operative and a faun. This one I got the furthest, and I still have the original handwritten draft and the typed copy. I pantsed this one, 100%. To this day, I still don’t know how this story ends, but I’d love to attempt a rewrite someday.

Then, unfortunately, from around 2012 until Fall of last year, I stopped writing period. I was in a real bad situation, and just didn’t have the energy for anything, let alone a novel. My most recent experience with Nano as an organization was Camp Nano, which is a much looser structure, and it is in May and July. Rather than the hard and fast 50k, you set your own goal when you announce your project.

I can understand your hesitance to participate, honestly. Nano is a beast of a project – to reach the minimum goal of 50k in the 30 allotted days, you have to produce 1667 words of new content every single day. This is approximately 3 pages, maybe a little more – which is a lot when you’re already stressed! And if you miss a day you have to adjust your daily totals for every following day, and the pressure starts to mount! It’s a lot, even if it is only meant to be a neat little challenge (mostly, I’ll cover benefits a bit later).

Now, my recommendations are going to follow two paths: planning, and pantsing. If you are naturally a planner – that is, you like having rough outlines, refined outlines, you like having character data, history, etc – then I recommend you have as much of your novel planned ahead of time before November 1st hits. Whatever notes or files you need to have set aside before you begin writing those first words, have them ready – read over them, refine them, and have them memorized front to back so that you know what your story is meant to be. If you are a natural planner, and you have not done this by today’s date (it’s 30 October where I am), then I do not recommend participating this year because it will stress you the fuck out and you might even make yourself sick.

The other popular option is called pantsing – essentially, you have a rough idea, and you’re flying by the seat of your pants. (This is literally what it is called on the Nano website, by the by – there are badges for it and everything.) If you are a pantser, then I still recommend a little preparation, but of a wildly different degree and type: find your story’s ambiance. If you are a pantser, think about what sparked the idea for your story? Try to put yourself back in the place (emotionally or physically) where you had the most intense version of the idea, and hang onto that feeling with both hands. This is incredibly important, because it will allow you to harken back to that feeling without chasing the high of first being hit by that feeling. If you are a pantser, focus heavily on the feelings you want to evoke with your story, and let your heart guide you.

Now the third option (I know what I said, I lied all right) is if you are a combination planner-pantser; you don’t want to have the rigidity of the outline, but you also like having a little bit of structure, or at least a direction to go in. If you are a combination planner-pantser, I recommend doing very soft preparation for yourself in the week leading up to Nano. So things like building yourself a playlist, maybe doodle what your main looks like in your head, or small details like character names and short dossiers. If you’re able, I recommend coming up with an ending, so you know what the end-goal looks like and you are able to track your story’s completion in your head.

For all three, I would recommend deciding ahead of time how you want to write your novel – are you going to type it up in a word processor (please make so many backups, do not live the heartache that I had to)? Are you going old school and hand writing it? Are you feeling like a boss that day and maybe want to dictate it into an app on your phone? Pick one, and make a dedicated space for your novel. You can mix them up, certainly, but make sure that you are able to consolidate effectively or you’re going to stress yourself out.

Now, you asked whether or not it has to be a “new” project. There are actually a few answers to this, depending on what you mean. Now, if we are to assume that “new” strictly means a brand new, fresh idea that you have just come up with specifically for National Novel Writer’s Month 2020, then the answer is no; it does not. Back in the day, there were a few purists that insisted you had to have a designated project every year, but like most purists, they’re just being assholes about it.

As a matter of fact, it does not even have to be a brand new project that you have not written any words for at all – however, if you do have an idea that you have already written for, you are not permitted to use any of your previous word count toward your goal. This is definitely a no-no. Personally, I’ve tried this, and I found it rough – I liked having the designated project, and I liked the buildup to it.

If you have, though, an idea that you’ve worked over and you are simply ready to start putting words on a page, this, I think, is Nano’s sweet spot.

Now, I know most of this 1000+ answer has been cautioning and reminders that Nano is tough – because, well, it is. It is a huge undertaking, and I feel like every participant has their horror stories to tell about their experience. But I want to reassure you that it isn’t 100% a hard slog to a dreary end; there are so many tools that Nano themselves provide you, as well as user-run communities and workshops, and even some benefits after the fact. These are the things I want to wrap this post up with.

Firstly, no matter how tired or stressed you are, if you register for nanowrimo.org, you’ll begin receiving daily emails from published authors and past participants. These range from silly and tedious, to incredibly comforting. My favorite one, which I cannot remember a lot of specifics from, was from a man who detailed his experience and reassured everyone that the work doesn’t have to be good – it just has to be 50k words. That’s it. You can have typos and errors all over the place, plot holes of all shapes and sizes, and a main character who doesn’t make any sense at all; it doesn’t matter, because the point of the event is simply to finish. Neil Gaiman has also said a time or two that your first draft’s only purpose is to exist. Just get the words out; you can fix them later.

Additionally, when you are completing your profile, you can enter in your location and there are designated forums for participants in your area. In the past, there have been meetups for group-writes and workshops as well, though I imagine they will be more along the lines of Discord calls this year. If you are a social person who needs a pair of eyes to help you work through a scene, Nano’s got your back. They will also send you statistics for your area for the average word count, daily word count, past winners, etcetera. It can sometimes feel like you are very alone during this difficult project, but a lot of these things bring a very human element to the event.

Finally, what comes after you have completed. A lot of these benefits are newer than my time, but I browsed through them when I did my Camp Project. When you complete the goal in the allotted time, you get a neat little badge for your webpage and a printable certificate for the immediate boost of dopamine. But you will also get discounts to some neat shit, like different word processing applications (I got 50% off of Scrivener when I finished Camp), as well as things like The Great Courses, discounts in the swag store, etc. But more than that, there are partnering websites who want to help you on the road to being published. Wattpad is in this group, but I believe also big name publishers (I might have seen Penguin on there at one point) are willing to work with winners to get their works distributed.

All that said, I recommend every writer attempt Nano at least once in their writing career. Even if I personally have not done so stellar in the past, it is a fantastic learning experience for all of the work that goes into producing a novel from start to finish – it forces you to know your limits, and sometimes to overcome them. I don’t think I will be participating this year – I have so many side projects that I want to get done, but I will very likely drop everything to do it next year. I have two novels that are real roughly built up that I could do for this, though, and I would love the dedicated time to spend on them.

[shortythescreen]

Warning(s): NSFT/18+. Vaginal sex, semi exhibitionism? Corny porn plot. 

Pairing(s): Crypto/Wattson. 

Author’s Note(s): A commission for my lovely @dargonwolfeh! Had so much fun writing this continuation of their fic. My first ever fic with two canon characters together! Someone pinch me lol. 

On paper, Crypto and Natalie are not living together.

They could file for it if they chose to. Could go the Apex Execs and tell them they needed one less suite. It might be the smart thing to do, considering Natalie never spends time in her own apartment anymore. Crypto’s hesitant to share his business with others, though. Especially the people he’s hellbent on taking down. Especially since the marketing team would surely publicize them as ‘star crossed lovers’ should they ever be placed on different squads in the arena.

So, they say nothing, even though everyone knows they live together. Everyone knows they’re a couple. Even if they themselves haven’t quite realized just how deep they’ve sunken.

Until now, anyway.

Crypto stares into his medicine cabinet, hand frozen on the little handle attached to the mirror. He’s not very particular about grooming himself. Mila Someone he knew before taught him that he needed to use a different soap for his face than he did his body and that’s… about the extent of his self-maintenance. He’s bought the same shaving cream, the same 2-in-1 hair and body soap, and the same face wash for… years.

Therefore, the bubblegum pink moisturizer tucked neatly against his shaving cream is definitely not his. Neither is the ‘normal to dry’ face wash, or the gummy women’s multivitamins. As a matter of fact, now that he looks at it more closely, a majority of the things in his medicine cabinet don’t belong to him. Awhile ago, he might have been bothered by that, but now…

The front door of his apartment swings open and shut and he doesn’t panic. Doesn’t think it’s the syndicate, come to arrest him because they know who he really is. He knows who just got home, who’s blabbing on the phone.

“Non, Octavio, not like that!” Natalie says. Crypto closes the cabinet, forgetting why he opened it the first place. When he sees his reflection, the dark dusting of stubble beginning on his jaw and his upper lip, he remembers. He decides he’ll say hello to his girlfriend before he takes care of that.

He takes a step away from the bathroom counter, peering out the open door of the bathroom. Natalie is shrugging out of her coat, holding her phone between her shoulder and her ear, the opposite hand cupping it to make sure it doesn’t slide as she strips out of her day clothes. Her sunny hair tumbles out of its hood as she does, the short locks brushing just beneath her ears, and his lips twitch up at the sight of it.

She turns and beams as she sees him. She finishes hanging up her coat, tossing it carelessly over the rack and lifting her head, holding one arm out to him. Shirtless, Crypto exits the bathroom, looping an arm across her shoulder blades to tug her close. He kisses her forehead in greeting.

“Salut, mon amour,” she mouths up at him. The grin fades from her features and her eyes turn towards the chatter coming from her phone. “Okay, well, that means you didn’t plug it in to the right port.”

Crypto loudly snorts, making Natalie press her lips together to hide a laugh. She presses a finger to her lips, silently shushing him. Those pretty blue eyes flicker over his chest, over the dark line of hair on his lower belly. He smirks at her, reaching up to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear, the rest of it falling over his knuckles.

The tips of his fingers dance down the side of her throat and Natalie shudders. She takes a step away, trying to put some distance between them.

Their match from last week flashes through his mind. She certainly hadn’t backed off him while he was trying to talk to Ajay. They were very lucky that she was distracted by the match – or that she was willing to turn a blind eye to their shenanigans. Though his expression stays neutral, Crypto snatches Natalie’s hips, pulling her close.

“Y-You’re working with an older model, Octavio, it’s not going to go as quickly as the newer one,” says Natalie, the little stutter at the beginning of her sentence making him quietly smirk. He dives down, licking a stripe up the same place his fingers were, and she shivers against him.

“If you want it to work, you have to have patience,” she continues as Crypto traces the band of her pants, all the way to the back. The prominent curve of her ass feels perfect in his palms and he squeezes, tugging at the stretch waist she wears.

Natalie always has a problem finding pants that fit. Her ass isn’t proportionate to her waist, sticking out further than any smaller size jeans would allow. She likes the stretchy ones for that reason and he’s grateful for that now, snapping the elastic band against her.

Natalie squeaks and Crypto backs her up, against the couch. Their legs knock as they move but when she finally hits the cushions, she falls into them with a plop. Her dark eyes twist up to him and, oh, for all she seems so sweet, he knows that look.

“Non, mon amie, I’m fine,” Natalie suddenly breathes, remembering Octavio is on the line. Her throat flexes and Crypto smirks, palming the bulge in his sweatpants. Her eyes blink to his crotch then back up to him, like she’s waiting for him to make a move. He has every intention to. “Uh-huh. Okay, well, let’s try this again.”

Crypto reaches down, manhandling her onto her knees. She hangs onto the back of the sofa with one hand, clutching her phone with white knuckles in the other. He grips those stretch pants, pulling them slowly down, and biting his lip at the way they stretch over that juicy round ass of hers. Natalie likes boxer briefs, especially ones with interesting patterns. Today, the underwear has bananas as they design, peeled or otherwise. The innuendo isn’t lost on Crypto and he snorts. Natalie glances over her shoulder with a sneaky grin.

“Cheeky,” he says, tugging those briefs down. Her pussy is perfect, pink and open and waiting for him, surrounded by golden curls, and Crypto’s mouth waters. She shivers as cool air caresses her and he’s right behind it, spitting onto two of his fingers. He holds her open with his opposite hand, fingers sinking into the pillowy flesh of her ass, spit dripping onto the couch as he presses his wet fingers against her.

“T-Then you just-” Natalie begins, and he can’t see her face, but the little hitch of her breath tells him all he needs to know as he pushes his fingers past her outer lips. They clutch her clit on either side, and he sees the muscles in her lower back clench. “Just plugitin.”

She chances a look over her shoulder once again and Crypto smirks. She’s so eager already, so ready to be fucked. He doesn’t have nearly as wild of a sex drive at Natalie – had to remind her during the first few times that foreplay’s important, that having her soaked and wet and trembling made it easier for him to fuck her to pieces. He’s tempted to remind her again, but he can already feel her cunt lubing up his fingers with every stroke of them against her. He should have known she was a little bit of an exhibitionist, sought a little thrill after she sucked the soul out of his dick in the arena.

Crypto pushes one finger up to the knuckle inside her and she squirms, clearly wanting more. He watches her, waiting.

“Oui, you put in the password? And it’s-” Her jaw drops as he slides a second finger in on one of his thrusts, stretching that sweet cunt. It hugs his fingers beautifully and the thought of having it on his dick instead makes Crypto bite his lower lip. Natalie thrusts her ass back into his palm, always greedy, always hungry for more. She’s so used to being on top, to riding him, fucking him open, and he can feel her trying to take control even though she’s the one vulnerable here. “I-It’s still not working?”

Her head drops as he pulls his fingers out, only tugging his sweats down low enough to free his cock. He slides his wet fingers up and down the length of it, before raising the same palm to spit in it once more. Natalie’s been like a bunny recently and Crypto thinks he should have had the foresight to hide some lune underneath the couch.

He didn’t, though, so he pumps himself, biting his lower lip, waiting until he can hear his fist moving along his shaft, until it sounds wet and sticky. He rolls back the foreskin, pressing the blunt head to her weeping hole. Natalie tenses all over and he peers up at the back of her head, waiting. When he doesn’t move, her head snaps towards him, and she gives him a glare that could turn blood cold. He chuckles, obliging her with a slow roll of his hips, seating his cock inside her.

Natalie bites her lower lip, hard, and he knows he’ll be able to see the indentation of her teeth in the pink skin later. He doesn’t care though, pulling her back onto his cock, careful not to clap his hips against her ass, even though he wants to.

“Octavio, listen, I-I just got home.” Lie. Crypto would smirk if he weren’t so entranced by the hot, velvety heat of her. She starts fucking herself onto his cock, hips driving back, and Crypto leans back, watching her work. “I will come and take a look later.”

She rests her forehead against her clenched fist, thighs scooting apart, giving her a wider range of motion. Her cunt makes white, creamy streaks on his dick and Crypto bites his tongue, driving forward. Natalie slams her fist against the back of the couch as he piledrives into her cunt, the blunt tip hitting that spot that he knows makes her see starts. “Oui! Ouiouioui, okay, au revoir!”

She tries to push herself up onto her forearms, tapping desperately at the end button on her phone. When it finally beeps, signifying Octavio can no longer hear her, she groans, low, and loud, and long, and the noise goes straight to Crypto’s dick. He mouths at her shoulder, moaning himself, grinding his cock hard and fast into her cunt.

“Crypto!” She gasps. He hooks an arm around her torso, grappling with one of her breasts through her top. She slips the hand that had been holding her phone down, feeling where they’re connecting. The noise he makes isn’t human, the fat of her ass quivering with every clap of his hips against hers.

She drags those fingers up, toying with her clit as he pinches a nipple through her top, and she moans something like his name. When he glances down, he sees sweat pulling in the small of her back and he sighs, biting her shoulder. He sinks himself down to the base and grinds his cock down, against that spongy spot he found with his fingers earlier. Her voice grows higher in pitch, fingers frantically moving on her clit, and Crypto shudders, closer, close, fuck, he’s so close-

“Crypto!” She yelps and without warning, her cunt constricts around him. His jaw drops, the scorching heat of her closing in. He thrusts his hips forward once, twice, before suddenly pulling out, grabbing his cock – fucking soaked, still attached to her cunt by a sticky trail – and jerks it frantically. He throws his head back, Adam’s apple bobbing as he cums onto the globes of her ass.

They’re both panting, trying to catch their breaths. Her blonde hair somehow looks crazy, even though he hadn’t fucked with it the whole time she was on the phone. She looks over her shoulder at him, beautiful, gorgeous pink lips parted to suck in breaths of air.

“You… are mean,” she groans, flopping onto the couch. Crypto snorts, smirking at her.

“Karma is mean,” he says, nudging her over on the couch with a knee. He knows they’ll regret it later, that his spunk is smearing all over the cushions, but she looks so perfect, so fucked out. He squishes her into the couch, joining her.

“You liked what I did in the ring,” whines Natalie.

“And you didn’t like what I did just now?”

“That’s not what I said, mon amour,” she grumbles, turning to nuzzle into his chest. Crypto kisses the top of her head, looping an arm around her, and reaching up to ignore her phone as it starts to ring again.

[damienthepious]

i am out of ways to say hi it’s tuesday fic time. but hi, it’s tuesday! fic time.

Scattered On My Shore (Chapter 8)

[Ch 1] [Ch 2] [Ch 3] [Ch 4] [Ch 5] [Ch 6] [Ch 7] [ao3] [Ch 9] [Ch 10] [Ch 11] [Ch 12] [Ch 13] [Ch 14] [Ch 15] [Ch 16] [Ch 17] [Ch 18] [Ch 19]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla, Sir Damien/Rilla

Characters: Rilla, Lord Arum, Sir Damien

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Lizard Kissin’ Tuesday, Pre-Relationship, (for the three of them. it’s established r/d), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Injury, Injury Recovery,  Hurt/Comfort,  (this will also be), Enemies to Lovers, (for damien and arum eventually lol)

Fic Summary: Strange things wash up out of the lake near Rilla’s hut, on occasion. But this monster… this monster is certainly the strangest.

Chapter Summary: Rilla is starting to feel a little like they're bonding. Arum is unconvinced. Damien is on his own journey.

Chapter Notes: Fam this one gets weird. Chapter specific warnings for overt threats of violence, characters being restrained, implications of a canon-compliant death, and I think that's it? Oh forgive me, this chapter is long and my day has been even longer. Hey, I love you. <3

~

Rilla fills a basket with anything she thinks might interest him even a little. She doesn't have much of a fiction section (most of it is borrowed from or gifted by Damien, actually), so she just kinda scoops that entire little shelf in with the rest.

"Obviously I don't know what you might like," she says later in the afternoon when he's woken again, and he stares at her in alarm over the assorted pile as she sets it down next to the cot, where he'll be able to reach without much strain. "But I figured that now that you're awake more often, you might want some reading material."

"I don't-" he sputters, frowning down at the books in indignation. "I cannot imagine any human storybooks could hold my attention for a single moment."

"That's fine," Rilla says with a shrug. "I'm pretty sure I don't have any kids' reading material, so you should be safe on that front. There's a bit of fiction in there, but that's not really my thing so I can't give you any personal recommendations there. Mostly it's field guides, bestiaries, treatises on certain scientific concepts, collections of recipes, censuses of certain herb families, medical guides- just a whole bunch about a whole bunch, really. If you get bored enough, I'm sure something in there will be worth a read," she says casually, and then while he's still stammering through a growl she gives him a bright, disarming smile (he actually pulls his head back, blinking) and then she skips right back to the door. "I've got an experiment I gotta keep an eye on for an hour or so, I'm sure you can keep yourself out of trouble for that long, but if you need me just shout, okay?"

He stares at her, mouth hanging just slightly open, so she grins a little wider and leaves him to it, keeping the door cracked just an inch or so as she goes.

He'll never pick a single one of the damn things up if she's there to gloat about it, but if she just leaves him to stew in his own inactivity unsupervised for a while, she's sure the temptation right there next to him will do the trick.

Sure enough, the next time she comes in (current pretense: a little cadre of plants by the window require watering. Could it have waited? Almost certainly), he's pretending to sleep (she can tell the difference) and the books are definitely rifled through. She's almost positive that it's at least one tome lighter, actually, and she's pretty confident that if she snooped she'd find the missing book tucked into the covers or under the lizard's pillow.

When she comes in with dinner he's given up the pretense on his end, scowling and waving one particular book in the air between them.

"What is this nonsense? " he snarls. "This information is spurious at best, Amaryllis. Some entries are passable, perhaps, but clearly you know nothing about-"

She tilts her head to try to figure out which book he's taken such offense at, and she's moderately unsurprised to see that it's one of the bestiaries. Okay, fair.

"Which ones are wrong?" she asks as she sets his food down on the table beside him, making no effort to disguise her enthusiasm, and he pauses, blinking at her. "I had Damien snag that from a library in the Citadel so I could make my own copy- with corrections, obviously. Actually, hang on-"

She spins on her heel and jogs to retrieve her half-written pile of unbound notes and her recorder from the front room, and she's already recording and shuffling through the pages when she returns.

"Which ones are bunk?" she asks with relish. "Frankly I've never trusted that author, I don't think he ever actually came within ten miles of the Western Wastes. His descriptions of western monsters always seemed the most vague, and they don't match up with other reports and firsthand accounts I'm aware of."

Arum snorts. "That stands to reason , " he growls, and then he smacks the page with the back of a hand. "Sickle-Claws are feathered, obviously, and half the size he has claimed."

"I knew it," she says, pulling the stool close and sitting by the bed. "That fraud wouldn't know an Everdead if someone whipped a branch back in his face."

He laughs again, apparently just as amused by that mental image as Rilla is, and then he starts flipping through the book, pointing out mistakes and false claims and outright fabrications with a smug sort of pleasure, and Rilla shows him her own notes, her amendments and additions from her own research, and he wrinkles his snout but he can't seem to find a complaint to voice, except specifically regarding her sideline notes on the magic involved in certain creatures.

"That isn't how magic works, Amaryllis." He shakes his head. "You can't predict it, because it is by definition unpredictable. If you try to shove it into a single labeled box all you will do is cut your hands in the attempt. Humans cannot possibly comprehend the true incomprehensibility of the larger universe."

Rilla raises an eyebrow. "I can comprehend quite a lot, Arum."

"Perhaps," he says with a sneer. "But if you expect magic to conform to consistent rules like your other natural and mathematical laws, you will be sorely disappointed," he hisses, gesturing to another book from the pile. "Magic is larger than that. It is outside of such constraints, as the Universe itself is."

"Just because it has different rules, doesn't mean it's incomprehensible-"

"No, no-" he shakes his head sharply and then then winces.

"Careful, Arum, c'mon-"

"Hush, it is simply sore, little doctor. As I was saying- magic does not have different rules. There are no rules. "

"Everything has rules, Arum. It's just a matter of figuring them out, regardless of how complex or granular-"

"Your assumption that everything in the Universe can be understood is precisely why you will never be able to understand, human. You cannot see outside your own level. I have moved beyond that."

Rilla frowns, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "Cool. Good for you."

He chokes, almost a third laugh. "That- you ridiculous little-"

"I'm sure all that big picture stuff is real fun, Arum, and if you actually tried to explain any of it I'm sure it would be fascinating as hell, but if it doesn't have structure, if it can't be used reliably, I don't really see the point."

"It- it is not meant to be used, Amaryllis, it simply is."

"See, and that's cool too, but my needs as a doctor and a researcher mean that I'm less interested in the whole cosmic mystery and more interested in practical application," she says, tapping the book in his claws. "I learn the rules so that I understand how they can be used. If there aren't any rules- well, that's not exactly going to expand my toolkit, is it? Either it's understandable and useful to me, or you're right and it's incomprehensible, which means it's not much more than a curiosity, y'know?"

He frowns more deeply, turning his face away from her and making a noncommittal noise.

She pokes at the book again, and he blinks at her warily. "Hey. What about this one? I've never seen any other documentation of Syokoy as far northwest as he claims."

His snout wrinkles again, but his posture relaxes slightly as he growls into another scathing correction, and Rilla relaxes too. It's almost easy, like this. Almost comfortable.

~

One thing that's become more awkward now that Arum is consistently lucid: bathing.

And, like, Rilla is a professional, obviously. She's needed to give sponge baths to bed-bound patients more times than she could count, and she's already bathed him once while he was much less coherent, but-

He's so, so embarrassed to need the help.

Now that he's strong enough, she can let him do most of the work at least, and the only embarrassing, strangely charged part of the process is when she needs to help him wash his back. He can't really reach behind himself, yet, with how torn up his front is, with one of his wrists broken, so she has to scoot behind him and scrub down his gently gleaming scales.

He really doesn't seem to have many scars, beneath his newer injuries. She wonders about that, but she knows better than to ask. She just does her job, doing her best not to flinch when he does.

~

Rilla tries not to revive the argument about magic if she can avoid it. She's definitely interested in it, she wants to know what he'll say, really, but- it agitates him to a degree that she figures is probably not great for his current state. His throat is nearly recovered (his voice is still rough and fascinating, but there's a sort of murmuring musicality to it, too, now that he's had enough time to recover from the near-drowning part of his injuries), so she would really rather avoid making the monster shout. She'll pin that one for later.

Not that they don't argue. He's remarkably opinionated, and he takes umbrage with a number of the books in her collection. He seems baffled by just the structure of most of her instructional and encyclopedic tomes. Anything that's arranged alphabetically infuriates him.

"It is entirely arbitrary, takatakataka. They may as well be in an order that is entirely random."

"In what way would that be helpful?"

"There is a list at the beginning, and it tells you exactly where everything can be found!"

Rilla raises an eyebrow. "Uh… and?"

"Anyone may read this and find the information!"

Rilla blinks. "That's… kind of the point? To share the information?"

Arum pulls his head back, eying her in alarm. "That- I- but- if anyone can access it, how can it be useful to you? If anyone can do what you can do, how can you barter your skills?"

"Hm," Rilla frowns, just slightly. "I mean, just looking at my own profession- just because someone reads a book of remedies, doesn't mean they'll have the skills to implement them. It's less than half of it, even. You need training, too, an apprenticeship, and then personal experience. Practice. The books are important to the learning process, and no one can be expected to hold all that information in their head at the same time, but it's not the whole of it."

He tilts his head, considering that. "I suppose."

"Besides," she says, "I'm sure there are books with secrets, books that aren't meant to be shared, but those are probably kept somewhere hidden."

"Interesting," he hisses.

"Okay, so- if monster books aren't meant to give information to others, what's the point of them?"

"To save information for yourself. My predecessors-" he pauses.

She knows that look, by now. He thinks he's said too much. She rolls her eyes, sighs, and changes the subject.

~

Rilla isn't sleeping well.

Her sleep is strange apparently by nature; she sleeps deeply but in short bursts, and she has a habit of rising in the middle of the night for some water or to relieve herself only to be distracted by a book or an idea or an experiment clear until morning. Hell, she'll sleep whenever, for an hour or so at a time. It amuses Damien, but his own sleep habits are so firmly regimented by his work (when he isn't being plagued to sleeplessness by his mind) that he rarely wakes when she slips from the bed at night.

Currently, though, she's having a little bit of a hard time falling asleep at all.

Damien knows how to take care of himself. She knows that. She's not entirely sure he's capable of losing a fight. He might get hurt, that's happened entirely too often, but- he wins. He always wins, eventually, even if he has to put himself through hell, first-

She turns over again, presses her face into the pillow, sighs into the dark.

They have an argument to finish, she thinks. Damien would never leave a narrative arc like that unsatisfied.

She gets to sleep eventually. It's enough.

~

Arum isn't in his cot when Rilla comes in with dinner the third day after Damien leaves, and that's-

That's so entirely surprising that Rilla just kind of- stops, staring at the empty cot with the blankets kicked down for an extended moment, her brow furrowed in confusion, and she's almost relieved when she hears the distinct click of claws on hardwood behind her before she has a moment of wait that's probably not good-

The scaled arm wraps around her midsection from behind, and Rilla jolts, automatically pulling forward and away. He holds tight, though. Shockingly tight, actually, and then there is cool metal by her neck and Rilla knows her own damn scalpel easily and she goes still, because Rilla may be stubborn but she's not stupid.

"Arum," she says, and he growls behind her. She's not- scared, really. The scalpel almost makes it ridiculous, considering the claws. "Arum what the hell are you-"

"I'm leaving, you foolish little primate," he hisses.

"You aren't well enough-"

"I don't care what you think."

"Well you should, Arum, because you can hardly stand and if you think you're going to make it ten steps-"

"I appear to be standing perfectly well just at the moment, little doctor."

She twists just slightly, glancing back towards him as best she can, and she sees that he's stolen one of her crutches. It's not big enough for him, he's remarkably tall when he's not tucked into her cot, and it doesn't look at all comfortable tucked under his lower arm like that, but it's working enough that he's upright, at least. He adjusts his arm around her slightly, growling low.

"Arum," Rilla breathes, and she knows the exact pressure the scalpel in Arum's hands will require to break the skin. He is nowhere near that pressure, but she's very aware of it as an abstract concept, regardless. "Arum this is stupid and you know it."

"Can't even treat me with some respect when I could slit your little throat," he snarls, and she can hear how labored his breathing is. He really shouldn't be standing like this, stolen crutch or no. "Not an ounce of self-preservation in your absurd, fragile body."

"I could say the same damn thing about you, you ridiculous-" she cuts off as Arum shifts his grip on her, not because she's afraid of what he'll do, but because the hiss he gives as he moves sounds more like he's in pain than trying to threaten. "You're gonna get yourself killed because you're too stubborn to just wait until you're actually well enough to-"

"You don't have the first clue what you're talking about. I do not have time to convalesce. I have one purpose, I have one duty, and every moment I lie in that absurd little bed I am failing it. I cannot think, I cannot- I need to return home. I do not care if you understand why, Amaryllis."

"Arum-"

"I thank you for services rendered, such as they were, little doctor. My death would have been assured without you, that is undeniable. And for that, I will not harm you, so long as you do not force my hand," he hisses close by her ear, and then he lifts the last of his hands, and he is holding one of Rilla's syringes with it.

"Arum," Rilla breathes, "what-"

"This is the injection you gave to me before you plucked the basilisk's claw from my ribs. It kept consciousness from me rather effectively for a number of hours. So, little doctor, I must now trust to your expertise."

He adjusts his grip again, meeting her eye over her shoulder and pulling the scalpel further away from her skin.

"Have I gotten the dosage correct, Amaryllis?" he asks, quite seriously, his tone quiet and measured though she can feel him trembling very slightly against her.

She pulls her eyes away from his with some effort and looks at the syringe in question, and then she bites her lip. "It- I mean, good job because you matched exactly the dosage I gave to you, but the thing is-"

"I'm leaving, little human, and nothing you say is going to stop-"

"If you inject me with that I'll go into a coma, and there's a distinct chance I could die." She inhales shakily as Arum blinks at her, then narrows his eyes suspiciously. "You're a monster, Arum, and your metabolism and internal structure are much different from mine. What was perfectly fine and low-risk for you could absolutely kill me."

He stares hard at her for a long moment, frowning hard and trembling lightly, and then he apparently decides she must be telling the truth because he exhales deeply and moves the syringe much further away from her. She tries not to sag in relief, but the tension in her muscles eases enough that she's positive that he must feel it.

"Thank you," she says. "Now just- put down the-"

"I am certain you must have some form of binding in this little hut of yours," he interrupts in a growl, and Rilla blinks, not quite understanding him for a long moment. "Ropes, or scarves or some such. Bandages, those will suffice."

"Arum you can't leave," she tries again, but he's ignoring her now, edging the both of them across the floor towards the cabinets where he's definitely seen her store her bandages. "You won't make it four steps, you'll just get killed and after you've made so much progress-"

"You can stop acting at your leisure, Amaryllis. I am perfectly aware that you do not have the first clue what will happen when you are unable to keep me beneath your thumb any longer. I am simply skipping the intermediary steps. I will not wait for either your pet knight to return with his bow again, or for you to attempt to make me into another pet for yourself. I am leaving, I am going home, and you will not stop me."

When they're close enough to the cabinets, Arum sets the syringe down, then knocks it further along the countertop, out of Rilla's reach. He pulls out a roll of bandages, then glares down at her as she scowls back up at him.

"This is a completely stupid plan," she reiterates, but Arum only frowns more deeply and pushes her to sit on the stool.

"Possibly," he growls, and she rolls her eyes as he pulls her wrists behind her back with surprising gentleness, binding them together at the wrists. "But at least it is a plan, instead of this nonsense inaction."

Rilla tries to pull away, tries to make things difficult for him, but only for a moment. He does still have that scalpel- but really, honestly, she's been working so hard to treat him, to make him well again, and the idea of jerking away too fast or elbowing him to get him away, of twisting his broken wrist (the one wrapped around her, least needed for dexterity, not a bad maneuver), the idea of doing something that might reopen his wounds or hurt him worse- it makes her feel a little sick, actually. She's terrified of what's going to happen to Arum if he tries to walk out her front door on his own with no weapons and a flimsy crutch that can barely support his weight, he's going to get himself hurt, get himself killed-

He's going to hurt himself, but Rilla can't make herself hurt him, to try to get him to stop. She just can't.

"Please," she tries, and his violet eyes flick up to her from where he's knelt to bind her ankles to the legs of the stool. "Arum. Don't do this."

He stands slowly, and she really hasn't gotten the chance to see him at his proper height, yet. He does look a little more dangerous, when he can glare down at her like that with his frill half-flared (he just won't stop pushing himself, the giant ass).

"And what, precisely, do you propose, then? You and your knight had a rather unproductive argument the other day, I must say, though it did rather effectively clarify a number of points for me. The first being, my land is in danger, without me. The second, that your Damien can only be collared for so long before he decides to put an end to this. The third, that you, little doctor, do not have a strategy for how your treatment of the monster will end. You don't have the first clue what you will do with me, when I am too strong again to push and prod and poke-"

"If you die-"

"Then I certainly will not be your problem anymore, little doctor," he hisses, and then he turns to limp his way towards the door.

"All of this is for nothing if you just- Arum, please, I know I've been- stuck in the moment, I know I haven't been thinking about what comes next, and yeah, a lot of that was because I don't know, and I'm scared because I hate not knowing, but- but you don't have to do this. We can figure it out together, please Arum-"

He pauses at the door, leaning heavily against the frame, and then he looks over his shoulder, vivid purple fixing on her one more time.

"Farewell, Amaryllis," he says, his voice almost gentle, "and… thank you."

He closes the door behind him, ignoring the way that Rilla shouts after him, the way she keeps calling his name until she hears the front door open into the night. After a long moment, charged and quiet even of Rilla's voice, that door closes as well.

~

Somewhere distant, on a gently lapping shore, Sir Damien digs a grave.

His stomach turns, and turns, and his palms hurt against the wood of his shovel. His companion has sweat on her brow, but that is the only indication of any strain. Her expression remains stern and immobile, and Damien cannot possibly say whether she feels as he does, just now. In truth, he does not know if Sir Caroline ever feels… conflicted.

Dirt scatters as it falls. Sir Damien digs to lapping-wave rhythm and intermittent pigeon-coo, with his heart pounding as if it wishes to escape.

He wonders, in a continual refrain, if this was truly the right choice, if there was no other way. If this man could not have been saved .

Monsters, witches, and mercy.

Sir Damien knows good from evil. He knows monsters from man. He knows dark magic from miracle. He knows what is right, and he knows what is wrong.

(The shore laps soft as breath, the lake stands mirror-still, and he has not heard Saint Damien, has not so much as felt a hint of him since-)

Sir Damien wonders if he knows anything at all.

~

When Rilla finally, finally hears the bandage start to tear, she could just about shout with triumph. Instead, she grits her teeth, grins hard, and pulls harder. It rips more, pulling against her wrists, and then her arms are free so quickly that she almost smacks her hands into the bedside table in their wide swinging arc. She pulls her hands in front of herself first, rubbing at her wrists and assessing the damage (bruised, a little raw, very minor friction burns, nothing a little aloe and time won't fix), and then she reaches for a drawer. Arum may have been paying a little too much attention to where her medical supplies are housed, but Rilla has more than one damned scalpel, and she has it in her hands and slicing through the bandages tied around her legs in no time flat. She hasn't been pulling on those, so no damage to inventory there, at least.

She stands and stumbles just a bit, her muscles rubbery from sitting in that position for- for however long she had been, but she doesn't have time to do some stretches because Arum may be slowed down by his injuries and she knows what direction he'll go, but he still has a hell of a head start on her, and she can't afford-

Rilla nearly trips over her own feet when she bolts into the front room, and this time it isn't because of sore muscles.

It's because Arum is still here.

He's curled up on the floor, his back against her front door, his arms wrapped loosely around his knees. He flicks his eyes up towards her for less time than it would take to blink, and then he looks away, his eyes vaguely on the floor.

"Arum. Oh, thank the Saints you didn't-"

"Apparently even my stupidity has limits, yes."

"Arum," she repeats, uncertain and honestly a little scared that he's managed to hurt himself between his room and the door, somehow.

"You did not inform me precisely how close we are to your Citadel," he mutters into a palm, and she holds her own hand over her heart as it tries, valiantly, to slow its racing. "Within sight, even in the dark of night."

"You- Arum-"

"Congratulations," he growls dully, still not looking at her. "You were correct. I did not take a single step outside your little abode. Foolishness, all of it. Without my- without- even at my best it would take a week and a half at the least to reach my home from here unaided. Hobbling in unfamiliar terrain with this-" he pauses to kick the crutch beside him, sending it spinning across the floor, "thing, in this condition, it would be impossible. Pointless. And I-" he pauses, his lip curling down miserably, "I want to return home alive, in spite of it all."

She steps a bit closer, and he turns his face away so that he is no longer looking at the floor by her feet. "I… Arum, I'm sorry. I know this must be… I know you're probably homesick-" he chokes out a bitter, unpleasant laugh, "and- and I know how hard it is, to be pulled away from your home. From- from your family," she suggests, and he flinches, curling his arms more tightly around his knees, pulling himself into a ball in front of her door and scowling. "I should have tried to talk to you about it sooner. Look, I- I'd be lying if I said I know exactly how I'm going to make it happen, but- but I'm not helping you so that you can run off and get killed by knights or whatever trying to get home. I'm not putting in all this hard work just for you to die," she says dryly, and she's gratified when he gives a smaller, less choking sort of laugh at that.

She takes another step, and when she's almost beside him he still won't look up, so-

She turns, leans her back against the wall, and slides down to sit beside him, sighing. He finally glances her way, then, if only to give her a look of distinct alarm.

"I want you well again, Arum. I want you healed, and I want you safe."

"Why? " he hisses low, his voice shaking.

"It's my responsibility to look out for my patients. In your case," she smiles, very slightly, "I think that means I'm gonna have to get you home. I don't know how, but- but we'll figure it out."

He blinks at her, then ducks his head. "We will figure it out," he repeats, skeptically.

"Yeah," she says. "We."

Slowly, she turns her hand, not exactly reaching for him but just- opening her palm towards him, spreading her fingers in gentle invitation.

He stares at her hand for a long moment, his eyes darting to the reddening mark on her wrist, his tongue flicking nervously in the air, and then he looks away.

She tries not to feel too disappointed-

A scaled palm settles uncertainly over hers, clawed fingers loosely curling around her own. He won't look at her, he's frowning and his damned frill is flared again, but-

"We," he murmurs, and Rilla smiles.

[->]

[mysticsparklewings]

Blue Java Bananya

Well here's something I wasn't planning on making at all! This year certainly started off with a bang!, and not a good one, what with my drawing tablet going kaput on me. But at the very least, thanks to my brother I have a temporary solution. He was able to get his hands on a Surface Pro 3 through work, and after acquiring a stylus I've been working on adapting to it for the time being. It's taking a lot of getting used to, but I'd rather have to get used to this than have nothing at all until next century when I can afford a more proper replacement. Anyway. That whole fiasco just depressed and stressed me out to no end, among other life things. For my birthday, I was gifted a DVD of Bananya, a show about, you guessed it--banana cats like the one I've drawn here. I watched the whole thing (about 40 minutes, the episodes are pretty short) in one sitting, and for that time I was able to forget about everything that was worrying me and just enjoy some cute fruit kitties and simple fun. No over-the-top, save-the-world plot, no complicated character dynamics, no overcoming past trauma, just fun and cute. I knew about Bananya for a while, as a couple of years ago I got my hands on a couple of plushies before I even knew the show existed; I just thought the concept of cat-bananas with velcro peels was adorable. It was only later when I was wondering where they originated from that I found out there was a show, and subsequently that the only way to watch the English dub was on the DVD. (No offense to anyone that prefers subs over dubs; I just have a really hard time splitting my attention between what's happening and who's saying what and trying to read the text. Plus I have a hard time sitting down and just watching a show and doing nothing else; dubbed makes it possible for me to do other things and not have to stare at the screen and hope I can read fast enough.) Since I had bananas on the brain after that and it's a really simple and cute art style, I decided to test out getting accustomed to the Surface Pro that I'd draw a little Bananya OC of sorts. In the show, the bananyas are named more so for the cat part of their appearance, usually, but I wanted mine to stand out a bit more and I'm pretty sure that if they aren't already that eventually, all the default cat-pattern names are going to be canonically taken. So I went and I looked up strange/different types of bananas and discovered the blue java or "ice cream" banana, which has a bluish tint to the peel when it's young, and because of it's vanilla taste and creamy texture, it's actually offered as a healthier alternative to ice cream in areas where it's more commonly found (hence the nickname). And now I really want to try one but I haven't the foggiest idea where I'd find them here in the states. My other option was a red/pink variety and the show already has at least 2 bananyas with pink peels and one with pink on her head, so I took the blue banana and ran with it. (Although upon further inspection, I think the newer bananya episodes they're currently working on that haven't been dubbed yet feature one with a blue banana peel so I may still not be completely unique here despite my efforts.) I went with more of a teal/greenish-blue as opposed to a more "true" blue, since even in pictures while the blue java is definitely blue compared to the average banana, it's not blue like a blue raspberry candy is blue. They're actually a pretty pastel kind of almost mint color-- And suddenly, as I'm typing this I think I better understand why vanilla Tootsie Rolls come in a blue wrapper...are they based on these bananas?? Does anybody know?? --*ahem* As I was saying... The bananas, from what I understand, also lose/fade that blue color as they mature. Which would explain why I couldn't seem to find a picture of a peeled Blue Java banana that had that same pastel-colored peel. But I went with it anyway. (This is a show about banana cats, I don't think we have to be 100% scientifically accurate here.) I also added some black spots to the cat part of my bananya, as I haven't seen a white-with-black-spots one in canon material and I have a bit of soft spot for black-and-white kitties in particular. And while I have had second thoughts that maybe her name should be "ice cream bananya" instead (for the reasons I went over earlier about the real bananas), I ultimately when with Blue Java Bannaya, as it very on-the-nose like the other bananya names, and in a way I think the "java" part fits with the black spots. But that's mostly just because java makes me think of "java chip frappucino" from Starbucks, which makes me think of chocolate chips, which are usually dark spots in cookies...see where I'm going with this? Though on the other hand, the black and white also kinda makes me think of Oreos, which would tie-in with the ice cream thing because usually Cookies n Cream ice cream is made with Oreos or knock-off Oreos, so I suppose it would've been equally fair to name her "Cookie Bananya" or something... Eh, for now, she stays as Blue Java. Or just "Java" for short. It was pretty straight forward to draw her, as I mentioned that the bananya style is pretty simple. Dare I say minimal? The main struggles I had boiled down to the learning curve with the Surface Pro and the new stylus. The pen pressure, maybe obviously, isn't as good as I'm used to, and the disparity between the tip of the pen and where the cursor actually is is different, and I think there's a little bit of lag when I'm drawing but that might be more to do with me having the stabilizer turned up a bit higher than normal in trying to compensate for the other issues. Still, I was at least able to manage for something as simple as this. I am admittedly horrified at the prospect of one of my usual, more complex digital drawings though...learning curves and baby steps... I'm not happy about the tablet situation, but at least the bananya is cute so I can focus on that instead. I do sincerely hope I'm very wrong about how long I'm going to be using this new set-up for though, because the way things are going it's going to be a very long time before I have the option of a better alternative... ____ Artwork/Character © me, MysticSparkleWings I do not own Bananya ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[vicehectic]

Midoriya Hisashi as All For One

Okay so I see this a lot. 

“Midoriya Hisashi is All For One Theory!” “Deku’s Dad is All For One!” “All For One’s Son is Deku!”

And I’m kinda done with it? Unpopular opinion I guess? I don’t think Midoriya Hisashi is All For One.

Kay I’ll probably get mauled for this and yelled at and people aren’t going to agree but I just want everyone to hear my out? Like please don’t hate me because this is just my (and a friend’s) analysis and opinion of the BNHA world considering most factors and Horikoshi Kohei. 

My main argument comes from a quote from a friend because it really defines what my response to the All For One dad theories is. 

“Not everything has to be some sort of deep parallel or reference. That’s not how narratives work.”

The Doctor:

I see that a lot of people talk about the doctor, at this point in the manga, that we virtually know nothing about so I really don’t want to address it until we know more. Like, sure, we know that he’s probably the same quirk doctor Inko took Izuku to as a child and somehow this doctor is connected to All For One but we don’t know if this doctor has a cover job as a quirk specialist to function in society because the dude needs a job or if All For One is keeping an eye on Izuku like Aizen somehow kept an eye on Ichigo in Bleach and planned out everything like a freaky ass stalker like wtf Aizen. ANYWAYS, it’s something I really don’t want to cover at this point.

Shigaraki is related to All Might as the grandson of Shimura Nana so it would make sense that Izuku is related to All For One because parallelism!:

OKAY! Yes! All For One knowingly took in Shigaraki because he’s the grandson of Shimura Nana, the seventh One For All holder. All For One took in Shigaraki to have some sort of upperhand over All Might who loved his master so much. All For One is using Shigaraki as leverage - whether Shigaraki knows it or not. But just because All For One took in Shigaraki, someone who has a connection with a precious person to All Might, does not mean that there needs to be a parallel where All Might takes in Midoriya either knowing or not knowing that he is All For One’s son. 

Shigaraki and Izuku - Their Relationship:

Another thing I see a lot is that Shigaraki and Izuku are seen as parallels to each other and that’s true. You’ll see it in posters, art, and manga panels that it’s Shigaraki and Izuku directly facing each other classically: protagonist versus antagonist. But when I really look into the characteristics and defining points of Shigaraki and Izuku I kind of lose the connection. It’s still there mind you, but I have to remind myself that they are connected - by fate or some shit. 

Izuku just wants to be a hero. He wants to be the Symbol of Peace. He wants to save people - everyone in need of help. 

Shigaraki wants something different. It’s not like Shigaraki wants to be the next Symbol of Evil, even if All For One is grooming Shigaraki to become his successor. Shigaraki makes it very clear what he wants. Shigaraki’s goal when he infiltrates the USJ is to kill the Symbol of Peace: All Might. Later, in the aftermath of the Stain Arc, we see that Shigaraki’s goal for the League is to “create a world without All Might. And cause enough destruction to show them all how fragile their justice really is… that’s [his] conviction. It’s all about All Might” (chapter 69 “Interview with Midoriya”). For Shigaraki we see the motivation of killing All Might in the newer chapters prominently. He was taken in by All For One when nobody wanted him after he probably accidentally disintegrated his family. All For One’s words most accurately describe how Shigaraki feels “’Surely a hero will...’ ‘Just leave it to the heroes to...’ Everyone used excuses like that to ignore you, didn’t they? Who in the world could do something like this to you?” (Chapter 222 “Shigaraki Tomura: Distortion”). Think about it. In a world with where peace is supposedly everywhere because of All Might, people become complacent. People will think “it’s not my job to help other people - that’s what heroes do”. Heck this is the world that discriminate against  people with “defective”, “lame”, “villainous” quirks and discriminate against those who don’t have quirks. Society in the BNHA has come to this point that I almost sympathize, despite hating characters like Shigaraki and Stain. Shigaraki and Stain are similar because they believe what they believe is correct and will do anything to achieve it. For Stain it was killing all the heroes he thought were fake. For Shigaraki that means killing All Might and recreating the justice in society in his own image. In this sense Izuku and Shigaraki aren’t parallels. Stain and Shigaraki are parallels more than anything.

The only connection Izuku and Shigaraki is that Izuku interrupted Shigaraki from potentially killing All Might at the USJ so he hates him and sees him as a pest. They’re put at odds against each other because their goals are clashing. But it was Shigaraki’s decision to go after All Might (after probably being convinced by AFO that All Might created this “justice”) and Izuku can’t stand for that because he loves All Might. 

Izuku as the Current Holder of One For All and All For One:

I feel like a lot of people forget that just because All Might is powerless to villains now, All For One is not powerless. All For One is perfectly capable of planning an escape and attacking Midoriya. What All For One wants is still unclear. He wants to groom Shigaraki to be his successor at some point but what after that? What before that? In my head, All For One is the main antagonist and Shigaraki doesn’t even hold a candle to him.

Shigaraki is just a stepping stone to get to All For One. Shigaraki isn’t the main goal. Midoriya’s main goal as the holder of One For All is to defeat and kill All For One. Do the deed that the previous holders were unable to do. 

We just need to know more about what All For One wants.

There’s a visual parallelism in manga panels showing Shigaraki’s face and Midoriya’s face and with panels showing All For One and the original holder of One For All right next to each other. More than showing that these two panels are parallels I think it’s just emphasizing that right now Izuku’s main concern is Shigaraki. That’s how the story is shaped. Shigaraki right now is Izuku’s concern because Shigaraki is trying to kill All Might. And even if Shigaraki doesn’t know it right now, Shigaraki’s main concern should be Izuku because Izuku is trying to kill All For One. That’s just what the story is. Nothing less, nothing more.

So in the same way that Izuku’s main antagonist is All For One and Shigaraki is in the way; Shigaraki’s main antagonist is All Might and the justice he created while Izuku is in the way.

If All For One Really was Midoriya Hisashi:

If All For One really was Izuku’s father, Izuku would be more susceptible to the recessive gene as someone from the era of the beginning of quirks. That is true. But with that logic that could applied to anyone who is quirkless in the BNHA universe. People just push that logic onto Izuku because he’s the main character and because “there must be a connection”! Izuku could just be a quirkless kid born to parents with quirks. Remember that 80% of the world has quirks but 20% is a large number of people who are quirkless. Not all of them are related to All For One.

A flaw people try to cover up with this theory is “All For One doesn’t give Izuku a quirk for these reasons!”, because in the end Izuku doesn’t have that thing in his foot and no quirk to call his own originally. I see a lot of “giving a quirk to someone would make someone a vegetable like a Noumu so All For One doesn’t do it”. Noumus are creatures injected with far too many quirks to be considered human anymore, but the original holder for One For All is a prime example of someone who turned out relatively fine after getting his quirk. I honestly doubt giving one quirk to Izuku, especially in his later years, would make him brain dead.   

I, personally, think that All For One wouldn’t give Izuku a quirk just because he is his son. All For One looks at potential and how they would benefit him in the future – he doesn’t care about blood relations. That’s shown in the way he gives the original holder of One For All a quirk despite the original holder protesting. All For One thought he was right, so he did it. That’s how his mind works. 

I also see that because Hisashi is “working overseas” and because he’s hardly mentioned he probably is All For One. It’s significant that Hisashi is not there for Izuku’s checkup. Inko is worried about why Izuku isn’t getting his quirk and it seems serious enough. If Hisashi was around at this point he would be there. We don’t know if Hisashi ever comes back from working overseas because Inko nor Izuku explicitly mention him but its clear that Izuku doesn’t think much of him because he doesn’t think of him even though we see most of this world through Izuku’s eyes. If Hisashi as All For One never comes back, he wouldn’t have the chance to give Izuku a quirk. That’s true. But also maybe Hisashi is just an absent father and we really don’t need to look into it so deeply?

If we assume that All For One has an alternate persona as a regular person it can be just as easy to assume that All For One is someone else’s absent father or the person who does your taxes because he has a different identification under a different name and quirk. Just because there is someone mentioned that we have not met does not mean we can assume that it’s All For One who has multiple quirks. What does that mean about the recently mentioned Shirakumo that Aizawa and Mic used to know? The two teachers may have met All For One as Shirakumo before he and All Might fought to the death. These connections are easy to make but harder to prove.

Izuku and his Similarities to the Original Holder of One For All:

The first holder of One For All certainly shares some similarities with Midoriya but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are related. I see people who say that All For One could be Izuku’s dad because he’s really similar to All For One’s blood brother: the OG holder of One For All, but personality traits are not genetic. Midoriya has a strong sense of justice, just like the OG holder, because he watched and admired All Might as a child and found it unfair that he was quirkless when he wanted so bad to be a hero. That’s how Midoriya grew up. He wants to help everyone and give people hope. And just because Midoriya has a strong sense of justice does not mean other characters don’t. We see Ashido Mina rush in front of a villain and spout out random directions to protect her friends and other civilians while she was just a middle schooler. A lot of the students trying to become heroes have the same strong sense of justice.

Horikoshi and his Puns & References:

Izuku’s dad name could be important in a different way. We all know that Horikoshi (Hori) loves his puns and it’s true that Midoriya Hisashi’s first name is a pun on “Hisashiburi” or “it’s been a long time (since I last saw you)”. But this could just a pun for an absent father who works overseas. I also find it hard to believe that Hisashi as All For One would care enough to send money to Inko for her and their son, even if he had the money. I haven’t seen this omake about class 1-A’s parents that people reference but if I were an author who has yet to reveal a character who is important enough to name and say that he will eventually be revealed, I would not want to debut him in an omake. My debut for that character would be dramatic or maybe so unexpected that it’s just plain funny. Midoriya Hisashi is important enough to name and probably too important for an omake.

So, I don’t know a lot about Star Wars. And this is insane that this is kind of my main argument throughout all of this. I’ve seen all the movies because my dad forced me but I’m not into the fandom. I know some things but my memory is shot on a lot of things and these references. But this is something I do know. As Hori’s fans, he knows that we know that Hori loves Star Wars. He’s mimicked those movie posters and All For One is blatantly a homage to Darth Vader. But because Hori knows that we know that, Hori would not pull “the embodiment of evil’s son is the main character” on his fans. It’s too predictable and honestly anti-climactic.

So really all I have to say is that it would be boring and anti-climactic if Midoriya Hisashi is actually All For One. Horikoshi probably wouldn’t do it. Sure there are signs that fans have identified as potential clues but that is just fans connecting the dots and jumping to conclusions without actual evidence. I see it as starting from step A and skipping all the twenty four steps in-between to get to Z. I’m going to end this by quoting my friend again because this is my reaction to most All For One is Midoriya Hisashi Theories.

“Not everything has to be some sort of deep parallel or reference. That’s not how narratives work.”

[ifridiot]

WoW Fic: Edible

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: World of Warcraft Rating: Mature Warnings: Aftermath of Violence Relationships: Tal Runetotem (Tauren OC) + Bynx (Forsaken OC) Characters: Tal Runetotem, Bynx Additional Tags: Cannibalism, Vomit, Practical Decisions not Panning Out Summary: Tal hates waste, and he figures his undead buddy Bynx has a good idea when it comes to finding food after a battle. 

Bynx (actually named Daniel) belongs to @thats-so-ravenholm. This fic is like 7 years old, but I just found a flash drive with all my old WoW writing on it lmao.

---

As was common among his people, Tal abhorred waste. When he killed game, he used everything he could, even saving bones on occasion to use for carving. All that could be eaten, was, or at least was packed up for later consumption. Skins were collected, generally to be sold, as he’d only ruin them making anything himself. Tendons and sinews make good cord, and while his braiding was often clumsy at first, he found himself utterly capable of making solid rope from twisted strands of animal sinew. Everything in an animal’s body was a gift from the Earthmother, and it was blasphemous to squander such things.

So, despite knowing that most people loathed it, he very quickly came to appreciate Bynx’s occasional consumption of their fallen foes. They were always humanoid, and Bynx only seemed to eat those who had wounded him worst, but other than that the act seemed spontaneous, not malicious or profane.

In a way, Tal understood where the disgust came from, to the average person seeing a Forsaken dine in such a way. Especially those with a more sympathetic build to those being dined upon. There was something about it, a certain graceless voracity; it was messy and crude, just as all desperate battlefield meals were. If you were, say, a blood elf, watching a forsaken devour the flesh of, say, a night elf – or even a human – wouldn’t it be easy to image one’s own corpse treated in such a way? Indeed, even orcs and trolls shared enough basic features with Bynx’s intermittent meals for Tal to understand why they might reel away at the sight.

What Tal saw was an unconscious acknowledgment of the Earthmother’s ever-present gift. Perhaps if ever he saw a Forsaken munching on a Tauren corpse, he too would feel his guts revolt in disgust, but somehow he doubted it. Mostly he was just curious as the regulations of this strange ritual – what drove Bynx to it at such seemingly random intervals, what were the precedents for how much he ate and when? What was the meaning behind the act?

They had been traveling together just long enough for Tal to feel comfortable talking casually with the smaller male, but not long enough for him to even consider voicing a song as they walked. It was hard to work up the nerve at an appropriate moment to ask. There was a distinct chance that, had his wits always completely been about him, he never would have.

But after some time, there finally came a day when, having barely fought their way out of a mob, Tal stood leaning against his axe and panting as he watched Bynx curl over a corpse and begin to claw hunks of meat into his mouth, hot and raw. The smell in the air was foul, between the stench of death and Bynx’s wounds, the enormous Tauren couldn’t even smell his own blood, racing out of him from several rather serious wounds as it was, and he was dizzy and tired enough not to really give much thought to his mouth.

“Ey, Bynx… why does that, huh?”

The Forsaken paused, hand against his mouth as he raised his eyes to regard the larger male. Swallowing thickly, he wiped at the blood on his face, smearing gore more than removing it, before hissing out, “Do what?”

Gesturing vaguely at his companion and the corpse that had suddenly become dinner, Tal offered a shrug. “Eat him. Didn’t eat last time we fought here.”

“Nor did we almost die.” Bynx grumbled, digging his claws into the corpse and scratching up another palm-full of meat. He brought it to his mouth, glanced back up at the Tauren, and seemed to sigh in exasperation upon noting that the other’s curious stare hadn’t wavered at all. “Flesh for flesh,” he grudgingly said, eyes boring into Tal as he spoke. “I eat the flesh of the dead and heal my own.”

Comprehension was a little slower in his wounded state, but after a moment of mulling the words over, Tal’s eyes glinted in understanding. It wasn’t a ritual at all, but it made sense – if he could eat a wheel of cheese or a joint of venison and regain stamina and health, then did it not serve that any meat would do? And what were their fallen enemies then, as he had already noted, but so much meat?

He took a few steps toward the other, the motion shambling and filled with a pronounced limp. He had run out of potions long ago and they’d yet to make it anywhere to restock. As for food, he’d have to kill if he wanted to eat… and yet, it struck him, wasn’t that exactly the problem Bynx was solving right now?

“Ahh, always got a smart thing, you,” he said, looking at the bodies in a new light. One man’s arm had been severed at the elbow, and with the armor gone, the lone limb looked like nothing so much as a scrawny knuckle of meat. Holding onto his axe for balance, worried he’d fall otherwise, he bent to pick up the arm. It surprised him to feel the sharp sting of something striking his outstretched hand; he glanced at his companion, saw the knife that had been slapped against the back of his hand and the serious expression on the other’s face, and furrowed his brow in confusion. “I say ’sa good idea, and I like to try a thing for myself.”

When he moved again to take the arm, the flat of the blade slapped him once more, too fast for the eye to follow. It stung, even through the leather of his gloves. “Not for you.”

Straightening up with a low chuckle, the Tauren shook his head. Forsaken had never seemed territorial, but every race had its proclivity when it came to sharing meals. Especially with newer comrades. Using the axe like a walking stick, thanking the Earthmother for letting him find a weapon with such a stout handle, he limped toward a different body. “There, no need ta make like its theft. I got my own, killed my share and keep to mine then.”

“Tal,” Bynx hissed, his voice a low, unhappy growl, “This is a bad idea. Your people do not eat what mine do.”

Grasping the edge of a life-ending gash in the chest of a dead human soldier, Tal smiled to himself and shook his head. He’d eaten many things that most Tauren – honestly, most people in general – would shudder at. As a warrior and a young bull out on his own, he’d been stuck out in the field with no game to be had but wolves, had eaten bugs when there was nothing else. He was no stranger to raw meat, and while it certainly wasn’t his first choice, there were worse things to eat. He twisted his wrist as sharply as he could, pulling the flesh from the body. In his weakened condition, it took three tries, three sharp jerks, to finally rip the meat free. The rough sound of tearing flesh was incredibly unappealing, as was the stink of human blood and death lingering thick this close to the ground. But here before him was a means to soothe his aching wounds and heal some of his hurts.

He brought the limp, tepid meat to his mouth, trying not to breathe the stink of it, and ignored Bynx’s warning not to be an idiot. At this point, it was almost a matter of stubborn pride; he’d said he would, and by the Earthmother he wasn’t a liar or a coward. Closing his eyes, he opened his mouth, shoved the chunk of meat in, and chewed. The flavor was coppery and gamey and pungent, blood having been allowed to cool in the body before being carved, but it wasn’t all around bad.

Still, it made his guts churn, the unfamiliar sensation of nausea crawling up his throat, but he swallowed it down with the meat and opened his eyes to look at Bynx. It was something of a surprise to find the Forsaken staring intently at him, looking almost anxious. “Not a good meat, but passable in a pinch.” He said, ignoring the way his stomach was still fighting the raw, strange food thrust upon it. “Sure not somethin’ to make habits about, but…” he grumbled, reaching down to rip another chunk of flesh up.

Whatever else he might have said was lost as he bent slightly forward, trying to get better leverage to pull the meat free. His stomach gave a final roil, the sudden pain of a cramp lacing through him, and he opened his mouth with a low moan. Saliva pooled in his mouth, throat working in anticipation as his stomach heaved; his grip on the axe faltered and the weapon clattered over the corpse as he fell to the side, arms wrapping instinctively around his guts. He managed to roll to the side, getting his less-injured arm under himself to push up on hands and knees, before he lost the contents of his stomach on the bloody ground.

Having rarely in life been sick, the experience was novel, in a grotesque way. The vomit was alarmingly red, and the sight and sensation of that foul meat spilling out of him only worsened the nausea; he gagged again, coughing when his stomach finally ran out of fuel to expel. He shuddered, the arm supporting his weight feeling weak and jelly-like, but the thought of ‘jelly’ made him think in a weird way of the soft, seemingly innocuous meat he’d just eaten, and he gagged again, spitting bile.

The careful touch of boney fingers on his bare shoulder surprised him, but he didn’t trust himself to look over his shoulder at his friend. He could tell by the astringent stench of the other’s wounds that it was Bynx; the smell of his vomit mixing with that particular odor causing him to gag again, and he gave a weak, unhappy sound as he tried to swallow back a fresh wave of nausea.

Letting that sharp hand guide him back, he pushed himself to a kneel, up away from the worst of the stink. “I told you it was a bad idea,” Bynx said softly, somehow not making the words sound like a jibe or gloat. Tal could only manage another low moan, nodding his shaggy head because, obviously and as usual, Bynx had been correct. “Get up, away from your mess. C’mon.”

Forsaken were surprisingly strong, but even in this state Tal refused to put any weight on his small companion, instead carefully getting to his feet on his own. As he stood, Bynx’s hand slid from his shoulder to his elbow, and finally off him entirely. He disappeared from the Tauren’s view for a moment, returning with Tal’s axe dragging behind him. Hefting it awkwardly, he thrust it into the other’s hand, before moving to point at a boulder a little ways away from the site of their battle.

“Go sit. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

Not willing to argue, probably honestly incapable of it, Tal leaned against his axe again and made his shaking way to where he’d been pointed. Behind him, he could hear Bynx return to his feast. Part of him expected to feel a sharp return of his fading nausea as the sound of tearing flesh, but even when he thought about what Bynx was doing, he only felt the lingering misery of his mistaken meal. For Bynx, such was natural behavior.

For a Tauren, obviously, it was not. Just as some plants were poisonous to man but not the birds of the area, so too, it seemed, were some meats poison only to some. Human was, obviously, on the list of things inedible to him.

It was kind of shame, he thought as he sat, curled miserably over his cramped, aching stomach. The meat was so easy to come by and so often went to waste.

[dalekofchaos]

The Best and worst changes for the Original Trilogy

Been wanting to do this for a while, so here are what I think are the best and worst changes that George made to the Original Trilogy

The Good

The special effects enhancement. This is an obvious choice, but the re-releases do improve most of the effects in the film, with just a few exceptions. One might argue that the film’s original effects were part of what made it so good – after all, at the time of release the visuals were one of the major selling points of Star Wars. But most fans agree that there’s nothing wrong with bringing the original films up-to-date with modern special effects, and that certainly shows when you compare scenes like the Battle of Yavin where the older effects do somewhat break immersion, particularly if you are used to the newer releases. The improved laser blasts and lightsaber effects make the action scenes appear less scratchy, and improve continuity between this trilogy and the ones that come before and after it in the timeline. It would certainly be

Aurebesh replacing english. The Star Wars universe is vast, containing hundreds of aliens from different worlds speaking a variety of languages. However, in the original trilogy, just about everyone on screen spoke English - or as it's referred to in canon, Galactic Basic Standard. The Basic language is just that, the most basic language that most residents of a galaxy far, far away (and us, the audience) can understand, and for the most part it's indistinguishable from English. Except when written. Basic does not use the Latin alphabet of English and countless other Earth languages, instead Basic is written using Aurebesh. But Aurebesh didn't appear on screen until Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, and even then, the Aurebesh symbols used were completely random. It wasn't until Stephen Crane of West End Games chose to add meaning to the random symbols when working on several Star Wars miniature and role-playing games that Aurebesh was officially "born." And in the 2004 DVD release, Aurebesh finally replaced any and all English writing that still appeared in Episode IV: A New Hope, most notably on consoles within the Death Star. The change is minor, to be sure, but it's one that gives a cohesiveness to the Star Wars universe and adds to its otherworldly vibe.

Biggs Darklighter added scenes. In an earlier cut of Star Wars, Luke was introduced much earlier in the film, with scenes of his life on Tatooine spliced with the capture of Princess Leia and C-3PO and R2-D2's escape. These scenes primarily showed Luke hanging out with friends, giving us a sense there was at least a little more to his social life than power converters and Tosche's Station. But these scenes also introduced us to a minor though pivotal character: Luke's best friend, Biggs Darklighter. However, I wouldn't be surprised if you do recognize the name (or hear Mark Hamill in your head saying, "Blast it Biggs! Where are you?") and that's because though these earlier scenes on Tatooine were cut, Biggs still appears in the theatrical release of Episode IV - albeit very briefly. During the attack on the Death Star, it's Biggs flying alongside Luke and Wedge Antilles when they make the final and successful trench run to destroy it. Biggs doesn't survive that trench run and we see the effect his death has on Luke, but we aren't told why Biggs was important to Luke (as opposed to the countless other Rebel pilots who died). Without any earlier scenes setting up the childhood friendship between Luke and Biggs, the impact of his death is lost. That was until the Special Edition release when at least one of Biggs scenes was added back in. It's a scene that now comes right before the assault on the Death Star, inside the Rebel Base, and it features Luke and Biggs reuniting and reminiscing like old friends. It's a short scene, but it practically doubles Biggs' screen time and gives us a least some idea that he and Luke go way back, making his death yet another in a long string of tragedies Luke suffers throughout the trilogy.   

Ian McDiarmid's Palpatine, but using the original dialogue would've been better as Vader was already hunting Luke for destroying the Death Star

Cloud City’s enhanced scenery. The Empire Strikes Back has the least major changes of any of the original trilogy in the Special Edition. The Special Edition added enhancements and additional aerial shots. Expanded scenes and new backgrounds in Cloud City made the location lovelier and added depth. I can't picture Cloud City as it used to be.

Enhanced Lightsabers. For the original films the lightsaber effects were done with the actors holding white spinning three-sided rods covered with reflective material. Korean animator Nelson Shin drew saber effects onto the film. They also added the glowing effect and the colors were put onto the film by hand. It was a complex feat of engineering for its time but it left many problems behind. There are many scenes where you can see the white rods or the colors were wrong. Lucas went through and corrected the mistakes with the lightsaber using CGI.   

Boba Fett's voice change. Boba Fett was a fan-favorite for decades before he was revealed to actually be a clone. So when it came time for the original trilogy’s 2004 DVD release, it made sense for actor Temuera Morrison — who played Jango Fett and various clones in the prequels — to return to the franchise as the new voice of Boba Fett, the cloned version of his original character. Luckily, Morrison has a fitting voice, allowing the continuity fix to help rather than hinder the classic films.

Oola’s Death. It’s strange to consider when you watch it now, but in the original cut of Return of the Jedi Oola’s death scene was much more brief – she simply falls down the trap door into the Rancor pit in Jabba’s Palace, and the Rancor reveal is saved for later. Amazingly, the actress who played Oola filmed the extended death scene over a decade after first appearing in Jedi, with no difference to the visuals whatsoever. The Rancor isn’t revealed completely, meaning that the impact of its later appearance isn’t spoiled, but it does create a menacing scene showing more of the mercilessness of Jabba The Hutt  

Battle Of Yavin. Star Wars revolutionized film making and ushered in a new era of special effects. But some effects get outdated. And even though there is a magical charm to the practical in-camera effects that the original Star Wars trilogy were made with, digital and CGI effects would be become the modern norm. And when its used correctly, CGI can look amazing. Hence, the climactic ending space battle in A New Hope. Tossing away the bluescreen, matte film and super imposed ships and replacing them with digital X-Wings and Tie Fighters. This recreation of the attack on the Death Star and galactic dogfight finale is a thrilling piece of cinema. Seeing spacecraft flying and zooming in and out of impossible camera angles is just as dazzling as the original scene. Lucasfilm actually did the impossible, they took one of the most classic epic battles in movie history and actually made it better.

The Death Star Explosions. The explosions of the Death Star and Alderaan were one of the most striking changes in the Special Edition movies, enhanced with brighter colors and expanding rings of matter. But one of the most exciting things about the original Star Wars films is that the groundbreaking special effects were being invented as the films were made. The newly-formed Industrial Light and Magic spent years building models, inventing cameras to shoot them, and occasionally blowing them up. So when the Death Star is destroyed (both times), the explosions look and feel real, because they were created using footage from actual explosions.   

The victory celebration The change to the music at the end of Return of the Jedi is, in my opinion, one of the best decisions George Lucas ever made. The original song that played during the celebrations on Endor was ‘Yub Nub’, a nonsensical and comically puerile ditty that doesn’t do the finale justice, but the replacement, John Williams’ aptly-titled ‘Victory Celebration’, seems a much more fitting tune to end the original trilogy. For comparison, one needs only to look at the ending of A New Hope – the tune used there fits the tone and gravitas of the scene, and ‘Yub Nub’ simply does not.

The Worst

Darth Vader saying No in ROTJ. There was absolutely no need to have Darth Vader say “No” in this moment. We were looking at a still mask. Yet we could still sense his feelings and thoughts. He was clearly conflicted and you could tell he was about to do something. This is good film making. You can tell he is making the hardest decision of his life, choosing between his master and his son, the conflict was visible on his face. There was no need for Vader to say anything. Vader saying “No” lacks any sort of nuance and has him verbally stating those feelings. "NOOOOOOO". This scene was shot so perfectly that you could see Vader's internal struggle to do the right thing despite being unable to show any facial expressions. There was no need for a "nooooooo" to indicate what he's going to do, we know what he's going to do because of how the scene is shot. This takes away from the scene and it makes it so obvious that it takes the viewer out of the moment. The silence was a powerful moment.

Jabba’s appearance in A New Hope. I feel like the scene takes away the menace from Jabba The Hutt. The horrible CGI did not help either. The appearance is a complete downgrade from his appearance in ROTJ. And it really did not help that it’s a shot for shot of the same dialogue with the Han and Greedo scene. The added scene with Jabba was completely unnecessary. Han and Greedo’s  scene ALREADY showed us Han’s debt to Jabba. And really, Jabba is a powerful and influential figure in the galaxy. He is the boss. He uses Bounty Hunters as play things to do his bidding. He was capable of ensuring that Han could not be in a civilized star system without being hunted. Jabba is someone who feeds slave girls to his pet monster if they screw up a dance routine, but he's apparently okay with a deadbeat lowlife smuggler who owes him money stepping on his tail in front of all his men. Hell, Jabba would not care if Han fried Greedo, Tatooine is a hive of scum and villainy, Jabba can easily replace Greedo.   It took away the menace from Jabba. Not to mention, this change takes away some of the suspense people originally had about Jabba the Hutt. It just takes away some of the mystery of Jabba as a character. Jabba is the boss, he should not be doing grunt work and it just takes away the impact of seeing Jabba in ROTJ.

Greedo shoots first. Here’s why Han shooting first matters.  Greedo was hunting Han Solo and found him in Mos Eisley Cantina who wanted what Han owed Jabba, which Han didn’t have it with him just then, so Greedo ready to shoot Han, is then killed by Han. In the original theatrical version, Han shoots Greedo dead, but in all the film alterations, Greedo shoots first.  Lucas  wanted Han to be a good role model so he editied out but that was pointless because at that point already Han was still a smuggler out for himself. Lucas wanted kids to think he was a hero Except he’s SUPPOSED to be a cold blooded killer in the beginning. That was the whole POINT of his story arc. A selfish smuggler who is COMPLETELY fine with letting other people die if it meant his own survival and goes through an internal and external journey to not only give a damn about his fellow person but also grow as an individual to be a hero that is willing to risk his own safety for a much larger cause than himself. Him shooting last takes away the beginning part of a GREAT story arc and reduces it to “This bad ass is a bad ass. The end.”. Killer to hero is a much more interesting story than bad ass to still being a bad ass.

Pointless CGI in Mos Eisley. Mos Eisley was the home of scum and villainy and also the home for wayward CGI creatures that escaped their digital pens. The thought was more roaming creatures would add color and vivacity to the bustling desert town, but unfortunately, they looked like lost sideshow attractions. The CGI stuff in the background doesn’t blend in with the rest of the film and just draws attention away from the action in the foreground. It’s like an irritating five-year-old onscreen screaming, “Look at me look at me."

Editing the Jabba’s Palace Sequence. Jabba's palace was another opportunity to put a vast array of unique and interesting aliens on display, much like Mos Eisley's cantina. And also like the cantina, a gangster's hangout deserves a house band. In the original release that was the Max Rebo Band and the number they performed was "Lapti Nek." The original scene was short and feels like it belongs. This scene doesn't feel intrusive and out of place like the special edition, it feels like in Jabba's Palace there is a band playing some alien music. The added CGI was awful and became unwatchable. It detracts from the grit of the scene that’s created, in part by the aliens in the background, that in this case are actually portrayed by actors or puppeteers. It didn't need the whole new scene and terrible CGI dancing. To call the scene distracting would be an understatement. Visually, it's incongruous with the dingy, smoky atmosphere of Jabba's Palace, largely in part because of how badly the CGI aliens mesh with the real actors and sets. The new song also doesn't fit with the mood of the setting, it’s just tonally offensive and just kills the mood of Jabba The Hutt. Jabba’s Palace was so uncomfortable and full of dread. All we needed to see was a short music scene, Oola displeasing Jabba and Jabba sending Oola to the Rancor. That’s all you need to establish that everything about the palace is a nightmare and just adding the horrid abomination known as Jedi Rocks just killed it for me.

Replacing Sebastian Shaw with Anakin Skywalker. I understand the in-universe reasoning behind  changing Anakin’s Force Ghost to Hayden, but to me it is completely and utterly disrespectful to replace a now dead actor’s only appearance in Star Wars. It ALREADY made sense for Anakin to appear old. I love Hayden and I love the Prequels, but he should not have replaced Shaw as Anakin. It both contradicts Vader’s redemption and disrespected the memory of Sebastian Shaw. It’s not that they shot a whole new scene with Hayden, Hayden Christensen’s head was pasted on over Shaw’s body and that is really disrespectful to Sebastion Shaw since he passed away a few years before the special editions. The whole idea was that there was still some good left in the old man version of Anakin and that’s what we’re seeing here. It was the old Anakin who made the choice to save Luke so it makes more sense to have him as the Ghost. Luke wouldn’t even recognize the young Anakin which makes the change even more of a fail. Anakin appearing as he did in ROTS invalidates the fact that he was redeemed at all in the end. I mean, the first thing he does in that movie is behead Dooku, then immediately admit that it’s “not the Jedi way.” He then goes on to slay a ton of Jedi and then murder a bunch of little kids, before going to murder Nute Gunray/other Separatist leaders etc. That’s why it’s such a baffling decision to show Hayden at the end of ROTJ… it completely undermines the payoff of ROTJ: Vader still had good in him (like Luke said) even as an old man. Why would you turn back to the person who murdered children and betrayed everyone you loved? The entire point of the ending of Return of the Jedi was that after years of having been corrupted as Darth Vader, Luke’s adherence to the Jedi principles and refusal to strike down his father in anger is what causes Anakin to realize that he’s been consumed by the dark side. He then atones as best as he can by sacrificing himself to kill Palpatine and asks Luke to remove his mask in a final act symbolizing his freedom from Darth Vader. Anakin has mere minutes as a jedi before he succumbs to his wounds, but it’s extremely important to note that he died a jedi. This is why Luke gives him a traditional jedi funeral, and why he is able to apparate as a force ghost. This is why the movie is called Return Of The Jedi. This is what makes the ending scene significant. Anakin appears not as the intimidating figure of Lord Vader, but as a mild old Jedi knight, like he would have appeared if he had never been corrupted by the dark side. This is why Anakin as an old man works, it shows what the dark side can do to you, but it beautifully shows that Anakin can still find redemption and die as a Jedi and return to the light. He nods to Obi-Wan, who smiles at seeing his friend finally free of the Dark Side, and the film ends with them standing side by side as old friends once more. Having Anakin appear as he had looked when in his 30’s would discredit his sacrifice in the final scene. It would imply that the last time he was truly a jedi was when he was the young hotheaded general who saw the jedi code as a hindrance, and not a healed version of the wisened old man who finally understood the importance of peace. Additionally, it removes the symbolism of Anakin and Obi-Wan standing side by side as old friends once again. With Anakin appearing as an apprentice to Obi-Wan rather than an equal. And Luke recognizes him. He already saw the father behind the mask. Anakin appears as the wise old Jedi and father figure to Luke that he would and should have been have been and who he died as. Shaw is more aesthetically pleasing in that shot. Seeing him portrayed as Alec Guinness’ contemporary, as a father to Luke, he just looks like he belongs in the original shot. I grew up with the Original Trilogy on VHS, so seeing Sebastian Shaw as both the unmasked Anakin and the ghost of Anakin was wonderful to see, when both Anakin and Obi-Wan look at each other here, it seems they are finally at rest after decades of war thanks to Luke, Leia and the rest of the Rebels who believe in the Old Republic, when we got to the prequels, it all changed and did not make complete sense, I enjoy the prequels, but it did not work to change, there was ALREADY an in-universe explanation as to why Shaw works as Anakin’s Force Ghost. Shaw fitted a much better vision of Anakin, an Anakin who did not intend to fall but raised up when he realized his true self in his son. And finally he looks at his children with so much love in his eye which is really emotional. Anakin Skywalker is finally at peace with his old friends and looking on his children with so much happiness.

[jamsque]

Bitterness in the Age of Fighting

I was excited when the first episode of Fighting in the Age of Loneliness appeared in my youtube feed last Monday, I’m willing to watch anything Jon Bois puts his name on right now. Most of his content is centered around American football and basketball and baseball, which is great, those are all sports I have watched at least semi-regularly at some point in my life, but for the past few years I’ve followed Mixed Martial Arts more closely than any of them. Felix Biederman, the writer and narrator of the show, was a new name to me: I know Chapo Trap House by reputation but the most I have ever heard of it is a few clips out of context.

That first episode did some strong establishing work to set the tone and context for the series, and then got to work telling the fascinating story of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the Gracie family. It’s a story I know decently well, I think Felix did a good job of picking out the interesting characters and especially the moments of class struggle, and of course his words are backed up by the datawave audiovisual stylings of Jon Bois that we have come to know and love. The political ideas were more familiar and less interesting to me than the bits about fighting but I was curious to see how the show was going to try to draw connections and parallels between the rise of MMA as a spectator sport and the socio-political environment in which that rise took place.

I was engaged and I watched each episode as it came out through the week and by the end of episode four on Thursday I was starting to turn a little on the series. In this era of Youtubers with healthy Patreon support and good microphones I’ve gotten used to clear, smoothly edited, well recorded voice work and for me Felix’s narration falls short there, especially for a project with a major media company behind it. More than that, though, I was no longer on board with where the show seemed to be going, and I was worried that it would end on a sour note. I found myself agreeing with Felix’s political commentary but disagreeing more and more with his thoughts on MMA and the way he was choosing to frame the history of the sport.

The final installment disappointed me more than I had feared it might, enough to motivate me to make some kind of response to or critical reading of the whole series. Re-watching it with that in mind I (unsurprisingly) found more things I disliked. Fighting in the Age of Loneliness does an excellent job of telling the story of the ancestry, birth, rise, fall, second rise and anticipated second fall of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but along the way it makes some pretty big missteps and takes some positions that I strongly disagree with. I’m not going to break down each episode individually but I do want to lay out the issues I have with the series and in particular dig in to the problems with the last episode. Towards the end I think I might even call Felix Biederman a fascist.

First, I want to provide some context for my own thoughts about MMA, and make some inferences and assumptions about Felix’s history with the sport that I think go some way to explaining why we see it quite so differently.

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I am absolutely not a long-time hardcore Mixed Martial Arts fan, until relatively recently I didn’t have any interest in combat sports at all. Growing up in the UK around the turn of the millenium I was aware of boxing but only from a distance, it was already well on its way to fading from the forefront of the popular sporting consciousness, and my pacifist socialist middle-class parents certainly weren’t watching Mike Tyson fights. The first contact I had with what I would later know as MMA was a grainy video I remember watching on some pre-YouTube video sharing site as a teenager: a highlight montage of a man wearing black, red and white shorts kicking various different people in the head in various different boxing rings, with the same concussive effect each time.

I became more aware of the modern sport of MMA when I started noticing the UFC in mainstream sports media headlines around 2014. Three names kept appearing in those headlines: Jon Jones, for running into things with cars, Conor McGregor, for running his mouth, but most of all Ronda Rousey, for running through every challenger the UFC put in front of her. I suspect that there are a lot of newer MMA fans who, like me, were swept up in the hype surrounding Rousey and McGregor during that time, and stuck with the sport after they finally broke their respective winning streaks and came back down to earth.

Three years later even though I watch MMA most weekends and even though I have become almost as fascinated as Felix Biederman seems to be with the history of the UFC, the people who have fought in it, and the things that they have done to each other, I still consider myself a ‘casual’ fan. This is at least partly because when I think of ‘real’ or ‘hardcore’ MMA fans, I think of people like Felix, who have been around the sport for a lot longer and are, at best, skeptical about the results of its most recent jump in popularity.

Felix doesn’t explicitly talk about the genesis of his interest in the sport but there are hints in the text. The general tone of the piece goes from being detached and historical in the first episode to personal and emotional in the last, which I think is both a deliberate choice on Felix’s part and a reflection of his own experience. The third episode, when his narrative reaches the mid-2000s, is when I think it transitions from learned history to memory, and it’s around here that Felix starts making frequent references to goings on in MMA fan culture. If I’m correct then Felix Biederman has been following MMA for at least a decade longer than I have really known what it was. He has had the time to become emotionally invested in fighters and even the UFC as an organisation in ways that I am not, and of course his initial views on the sport were formed a relatively long time ago. MMA fights in 2018 don’t look all that different than they did in 2005 but the UFC has certainly changed a lot in that time, as have public awareness of and attitudes towards a new generation of combat sports stars.

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That decade and a half of change in the UFC is the real focus of Fighting in the Age of Loneliness, but it presents itself as something much broader. The first episode is titled ‘The Invention of Fighting for Money’ and in it Felix makes a lot of sweeping statements about the past that don’t hold water. He very much tells the winner’s version of history, the narrative favoured by the UFC and the Gracie family, who would have you believe that they invented not only the modern sport of MMA but somehow the very idea of fighting itself. Felix remarks on the marketing and promotional skills of Rorion Gracie in the second episode without seeming to realise quite the degree to which he has himself fallen prey to them, and he also comes across as having the slightly fetishistic attitude towards East Asian martial arts that has become common in the USA over the past half century or so.

As he transitions out of the prologue, Felix says “the true catalyst for MMA as a sport, business and spectacle go back to Japan”, and when he goes on to describe the spread of Jujutsu from Japan to Brazil he says “after hundreds of years, Martial Arts had finally broken containment.” At the end of the series he proclaims that the “fourth era of fighting itself” is currently beginning and that the previous two ‘eras’ only lasted a handful of years each.

These generalisations don’t stand up to even the lightest scrutiny. The history of Martial Arts or combat sports or fighting or whatever term you care to use goes back much farther than feudal Japan, and some of the other things Felix says imply that he is at least partially aware of this. As he is giving his starry-eyed take on the life of Judo’s inventor he says “As long as there are people, they will at some point want the ability to keep someone from kicking their ass, no matter how unlikely it is that they will ever get into a fight.” It strikes me as particularly American that his argument in favor of combat sports being inherent to human society is based on the concept of self-defence. I prefer a line of reasoning that is similar but based on competition: As long as there are people, they will at some point want to test their wits and skill and strength against each other.

Indeed, the story as we know it of unarmed combat sports is as old as recorded history: there are images of wrestling in four thousand year old Egyptian tombs, and the classical Greek Olympics included an event called Pankration, which could be roughly translated as ‘fighting with all of your power’, that had an almost identical ruleset to early Ultimate Fighting Championship events.

Felix oversimplifies the history of fighting as a whole, but even if we just look at what he says about Mixed Martial Arts he gets it wrong. In episode one he says “The entire sport of Mixed Martial Arts owes its existence to Mitsuyo Maeda” and then in episode two he alleges that “A world where proto-MMA existed outside of gymnasiums in Brazil seemed pretty unlikely in 1976.” A corollary of my earlier statement might be that as long as there are people testing their wits and skill and strength against each other, there will be other people who think they can do it better. People have been pitting different schools of fighting against each other and amalgamating them long before the Gracie clan existed.

A decade before the date when Felix claims that mixed martial arts were confined to Brazil, Bruce Lee was blending Wing Chun with other styles to formulate Jeet Kune Do. A decade before that a Japanese Karateka was devising a ruleset which would eventually become Kickboxing to facilitate competitions between karate and Muay Thai. In the 40s the Kajukenbo school was founded in Hawaii with the goal of rigorously testing multiple fighting styles against each other to determine which elements of each were the most effective. In the 30s a Czechoslovakian Jew was refining the boxing and wrestling he had been taught in gyms into Krav Maga in brawls against anti-semitic thugs.

In Victorian London the Bartitsu school taught gentlemen a blend of five different fighting styles from around the world, while in the music halls exhibition matches pitted boxing against Savate. Savate was itself developed over the preceding century by efforts to find a middle ground between the heavy-booted street fighting style spreading from French ports and the Queensbury rules boxing that was popular in England.

Even the legend of the birth of Muay Thai, a fighting style which has had arguably as much influence on the modern sport of MMA as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, is a story about mixed martial arts: when the Konbaung Dynasty of Burma captured a famous fighter during their battles with Siam in 1767, they offered him the chance to win his freedom if he could demonstrate the superiority of his Siamese boxing style against the Burmese school, which he promptly did by knocking out ten Burmese opponents.

Felix contradicts himself on this topic in the first episode when he describes Jigoro Kano studying western wrestling and sumo to augment his Jujutsu training and develop Judo. In the second episode when he says “In 1993 no one knew anything, and most people still thought that if you did karate the right way you could blow up somebody’s heart” he is obviously being facetious but he is also projecting his own ignorance outwards. There has always been fighting, all over the world, and there have always been evolving schools of thought about the best ways to fight and the best rules for fighting as a sport. The story of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the Ultimate Fighting Championship is captivating but it is not, as Felix presents it, the only story about fighting. In this regard, as with others, he seems to have internalized the some of mystique that the UFC has cultivated around itself and its history.

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Once the history lesson is over I think Fighting in the Age of Loneliness hits its stride and Felix’s passion for the Pride FC and UFC fights and fighters that drew him into the sport shines through in the writing and the narration. His criticisms of the ways that the UFC continues to underpay and otherwise mistreat its fighters are spot on and if anything he could have gone into its anti-union policies in more depth. Before I get to the final episode, there are a few smaller criticisms I want to get out of the way.

Firstly, I would like to have seen more about modern women’s Mixed Martial Arts in the show. I largely chalk this up to the difference in perspective on the sport between Felix and myself: a female fighter was what drew me to watch the UFC in the first place so my image of the sport is one that has always included women, whereas Felix got his start watching Pride, which had no female fighters, and an all-male era of the UFC. There were women competing in MMA at that time and a few exclusively female promotions but if Felix ever watched any of them he doesn’t mention it. In the end, Ronda Rousey gets a minute and a half, Joanna Jędrzejczyk gets about 30 seconds and Cristiane Justino gets a name check.

Rousey is the only female fighter to be mentioned outside of the quarantined WMMA portion of the show, and she comes up during a rather odd accusation of nepotism that Felix levels at Dana White, one which I have heard from other longer-standing UFC fans. I am no supporter of Dana’s and I’m not seeking to defend his character, but it seems far more likely to me that the reason the UFC put so many promotional resources behind Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor is not, as Felix supposes, simply because Dana White personally liked those two fighters, but rather because he saw the opportunity to make a lot of money off of them, which he did. Dana is a fight promoter, he is notoriously fickle in his affections and the warmness he displays towards any given fighter is directly correlated to their ability to drive pay-per-view buys for his promotion.

I also think that there are some more straightforward explanations for the UFC’s success than the poetic ones that Felix understandably focuses on. The ideas of the UFC as a refuge for outcasts and the alienated, both as fighters and as fans, and the honesty of single combat in an age of uncertainty are clearly very thematically important to Fighting in the Age of Loneliness as a project. For me the series places too much importance on the role those things played in the current popularity of the sport and doesn’t put enough emphasis on, or even mention at all, some more mundane but more significant contributing factors.

The vacuum at the top of combat sports that was created when boxing all but collapsed under the accumulated weight of decades of corruption and promotional malpractice, and the brief but significant success that the WWE had with a grittier presentation of professional wrestling in the late 90s both set the stage for the rise of modern MMA in the USA. That rise was helped along by things like the value of the walk-off head kick knockout and the fourteen second armbar victory in the age of the highlight clip and the animated GIF, and the mix of astuteness and good fortune that led the UFC to put out a reality TV show featuring actual physical conflict at a time when programming was being dominated by reality shows based on exaggerating and continually re-hashing interpersonal squabbles.

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At the end of episode four, titled “As the world fell apart, the only magic was in the cage”, Felix’s rhetoric about the things that happen during UFC fights reaches its most florid, mythological heights. Against a montage of post-fight embrace photographs he says “The magic that we wish we saw everywhere else was in the cage [...] At least there was one place where unthinkable things actually happened, at least if you put two weird people with incredible abilities in front of each other their combined experiences and opposing martial abilities would create a beautiful, maddening story.” I am not criticising Felix for being more captivated by the emotion and passion of fighting than I am but the praise and reverence which he lavishes upon his favourite period of the sport’s recent history at the end of the fourth episode clashes brutally with the way he starts the fifth.

“No-one is ever content to just like something, especially not nowadays”, he says. “We’re not just fans of things any more. We declare our media consumption habits to determine the types of people we are [...] now if someone doesn’t like something we like they hate us” These lines and the visuals that accompany them are presented as a barb aimed at the legions of TV personality and pop star fans bitterly defending their territory on social media. Although there is a hint of self-deprecation about this segment I don’t read much self-awareness here, mostly just old fashioned middle-class punching down at the popular culture of the working class.

In the way he frames what he views as the best period of the UFC’s history, Felix is himself engaging in, as he puts it, “battles that our millionaire entertainers will probably never give a shit about or even find out about”. He has taken to the field of the culture war to defend his memory of a past version of a massive, sinister entertainment company against the changes that he perceives to be ruining it.

Here is where the bitterness begins to creep in, and build. Felix starts talking about the insecurity of modern MMA fans and the sport’s image problem, but then he abruptly dispenses with those concerns and starts arguing that MMA should remain insular and niche. A this point he also waves a huge screaming red flag by describing Jon Jones as a “weird person” who is “actually pretty fascinating once you get to know him” and who has “more depth than most would know”, but we’ll get to that later.

“Who gives a shit if we don’t have hundreds of millions of people watching with us every time, and why do we care if people think we’re fucked up or weird for watching it. We know what our sport is, and we know who we are [...] It’s our stupid violent insane spectacle sport for freaks and assholes that’s as legitimate or illegitimate as any other sport in the world. Well, at least it was ours at some point.”

I recognised this argument the moment I heard it. It sounds almost word for word like an insecure gamer defending video games as an art form and as a hobby that is just for real nerds and not the masses. I know that argument very well because I have been that insecure gamer in the past. In complaining that MMA is not “ours” anymore he has jumped from “if someone doesn’t likes something we like they hate us” to “if someone likes something we like for the wrong reasons they hate us”.

This is the tone that Felix adopts for the entire final episode, and he proceeds to decry three recent changes he thinks the UFC has made in an effort to bring the sport into the mainstream, changes that he declares as already being “to the detriment of the viewers, the fighters, and ultimately, [the UFC] themselves”.

The first is the Fox TV deal, of which his criticism is that it has led to too many fights and therefore too many fighters, but he doesn’t present any reasons why more fights has been a bad thing. He talks about how poorly the UFC compensates its rank-and-file fighters, which is a great argument for better fighter pay, but is not an argument for fewer paid fighters or fewer fight cards.

The second is the UFC’s apparel deal with Reebok, which he accurately assesses as a disaster for their fighters.

The third is drug testing, and for me this is where Fighting in the Age of Loneliness goes completely off the rails. The first thing he says in this segment is probably the only part of it I agree with: “the vast majority of your favourite athletes use steroids.”

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Felix is right that the UFC asked the US Anti-Doping Agency to start testing its fighters more to provide an image of legitimacy than because they actually care about fair competition, but his main problem with the policy is that performance enhancing drugs are in fact cool and good. Earlier in the series he celebrates the way that Pride FC’s “loose medical oversight” and “pro-steroid policy” allowed its fighters to “consistently break laws of god and man,” now he gleefully exclaims that “Steroids are actually kind of amazing.”

“The human body is absolutely not designed to fight for 15 to 25 minutes, but steroids help make it work”. Felix provides no justification whatsoever for this claim, and it’s a ridiculous one that springs from the same myopic view of the history of combat sports that he expresses in the early episodes. To present just one counterexample, fighters in classical Greece did not have the benefit of modern nutritional science and training methods, let alone anabolic steroids, but the only time limit on Pankration bouts was sunset. Fights that last more than 25 minutes might not be the most fun to watch but they’ve certainly been happening since long before the steroid era.

Felix doubles down on this position. While he acknowledges that steroids “have their side effects” he asserts that “it is impossible to compete at the highest levels of fighting without some chemical help.” This is another absurd claim, he does try to back this one up but in doing so he immediately undermines it: “Talk to any retired fighter, and they’ll give a number anywhere from 75 to 90 percent of their former training partners juicing.” Rather than proving his point, this statement suggests that it is not at all impossible to compete at the highest levels of fighting without chemical help because at the very least ten percent of fighters are doing it. This scaled-back version of his original pronouncement does make the prospects of success seem pretty bleak for clean fighters, but Felix doesn’t care. He is happy to accept that if most fighters are doping then fighters need to dope to compete and therefore it is OK for fighters to dope.

USADA testing in the UFC has, in Felix’s opinion, fucked things up. There are a lot of very valid criticisms that he could make about the inconsistent way that the policy has been applied to different fighters or the odd ways it has conflicted and overlapped with state athletic commission testing policies or the lack of fighter engagement in the process of rolling out the program leading to confusion and uncertainty about the rules, but he doesn’t. Instead of talking about the massive unregulated supplement industry in the USA and the habit that some supplement brands have of ‘accidentally’ slipping a bit of the good stuff in their products to make sure that their customers get the gains they crave, he complains that fighters are being punished for “by-products of over the counter substances”. By-products and contaminants are not the same thing, I’m not sure if Felix just misspoke here or if he genuinely doesn’t understand the problem he is talking about.

He goes on to moan that the punishments for breaking the rules of the sport are longer under this new program. He doesn’t say why the longer bans are bad, just that the UFC has been ‘capricious’, and it seems obvious to me that the reason he disagrees with the longer bans is that he thinks PED usage is a good thing. Let’s address that idea.

There are two main reasons why I think performance enhancing drugs should be banned in almost all sports. The first is that PED use is bad for the long term health of athletes. We know that there are permanent negative effects associated with the use of anabolic steroids, and there are scores of other widely used PEDs that simply haven’t been around for long enough for the consequences of their use to be properly understood. It is possible to argue from this position for the regulation and standardisation of PED use in sports, and although I disagree with that line of reasoning I do think it has some merit, but there is no hint of this argument in Fighting in the Age of Loneliness.

I think the most practical way to prevent athletes from being incentivised to gamble with their future health for short-term gain, especially in a sport like MMA which already carries so much physical risk, is to ban the use of PEDs and enforce that ban with testing. Felix talks about steroids helping fighters to recover quickly from serious injuries, but I don’t think that is a worthwhile tradeoff to ask them to make, and I don’t think it would be a bad thing for the health of fighters if less prevalent PED usage meant that fewer of them had to endure the accumulated physical toll of fighting four or five times a year.

The second reason is a purely sporting one. The rules of all sports are arbitrary, but they usually constitute an attempt to delineate a competition that tests one particular set of skills and abilities in its competitors and excludes others. Chess is not designed to be a test of split-second reflexive reactions, 100 meter sprinting is not supposed to challenge your ability to predict the strategy your opponent is going to employ and prepare a counter-strategy, and as far as I am aware there is no sport that seeks to test its competitors ability to improve their bodies through medical intervention. I want the sports I watch to be fair competitions that are about what they are about, and Felix does too: he repeatedly praises the “truth” and “honesty” and “earnestness” of “what goes on in the cage,” but he fails to see how this contradicts with the idea of allowing the outcomes of fights to be heavily influenced months ahead of time by means of one fighter having access to less scrupulous, less restrained doctors than the other.

There is some nuance here around where you draw the lines between sports nutrition, necessary medical assistance and doping, but again Felix does not adopt a position so sophisticated. It’s been demonstrated in almost every popular sport that athletes with the help of an organised and scientific doping program have a significant advantage over clean rivals with similar levels of experience and training, and that’s not a contest I was ever interested in watching. Fighters shouldn’t use steroids any more than match sailors should use outboard motors, it is contrary to the very concept of the sport.

*

Felix isn’t just mad about USADA testing because he thinks steroids are nifty, though. He’s also mad that they took away one of his favourites. “At the absolute highest level of the sport, no-one was derailed by this as much as Jon Jones” This is another part of Fighting in the Age of Loneliness that emphasises the gulf between Felix Biederman’s perspective on the UFC and my own. He watched Jon Jones’ rise through the ranks and his multi-year reign as the consensus best fighter in the world, and was apparently completely captivated by it. In describing him Felix returns to the hagiographic tone of the third and fourth episodes, describing him as “a giant, freak athlete who did moves that he learned off of youtube to humiliate fighters we grew up with”, comparing him to Napoleon, calling him “a genius who can destroy world champions with stuff he saw in a movie, the equivalent to those savant kids who can hear a song once and instantly play it on a piano perfectly”

By the time I was starting to watch the UFC, Jon Jones had already sabotaged his career fairly comprehensively. I don’t know Jon Jones as a legend or a genius or the greatest fighter in the world because I’ve never seen the fights that earned him that reputation. Here are the things that I do know about Jon Jones, things that have happened or that I have learned about since I started following the sport:

Jon Jones is a homophobe. In 2012 Jon Jones crashed his car, plead guilty to driving under the influence, and received a slap on the wrist. In January 2015 Jon Jones tested positive for cocaine in an out-of-competition test and was issued a token fine. In April 2015 Jon Jones ran a red light and caused an accident involving two other cars that left a pregnant woman with a fractured arm, then ran away only to turn himself in after an arrest warrant was issued and eventually plead guilty to fleeing the scene of an accident, receiving 18 months of probation. In 2017 Jon Jones was given a one year suspension after testing positive for banned hormone and metabolic modulators, which turned out to be contaminants in an erectile dysfunction pill he had been given by a training partner. In 2018 Jon Jones tested positive for an anabolic steroid and was suspended again for 15 months.

On the front steps of courthouses Jon Jones is humble and apologetic, and in the immediate aftermath of being caught doing something he shouldn’t have he often talks about how hard the experience has been for him and how much he has learned from it and grown as a person. At all other times he acts as though the bad things that happen to him or around him are never his fault, that he has no responsibility to ever change or even reflect upon his own behaviour, as though in all these struggles he has been the victim of cruel circumstance and conspiracy.

The Jon Jones that Felix describes is not someone I recognise, and the way he describes him is concerning. “As we got to know Jon more, we saw his personal foibles, like his DUI arrest and rivalry with Rashad Evans” I don’t think that having a heated rivalry with a competitor is comparable with drunk driving at all, and in framing the incident this way Felix trivializes it. He does this again with Jones’ hit-and-run conviction, mentioning it in passing but quickly moving on to quip about how awesome Jones got at powerlifting in his year off. He calls Jones “a person with failings who sometimes acted like an asshole, got pissed off and said incredibly cutting things to his opponents”, reinforcing the impression that Jones’ main character flaw is simply being too fierce a competitor, instead of calling him, say, a person with failings who sometimes acted like an asshole, took drugs he shouldn’t and crashed cars.

Felix is constantly making excuses for Jon Jones in this part of the episode. When he gets to the second failed drug test, he says Jones “got popped by USADA”, a turn of phrase that subtly reinforces Jones’ own narrative of victimhood, especially since Felix has already established USADA as the bad guys who are fucking up the UFC. He wraps up the Jones segment with a ‘boys will be boys’ defence couched in another appeal to the glory of days gone by: “It used to matter less if you acted like an idiot. Everyone was a bit of an idiot in one manner or the other in life, but god forbid you now embarrass the sport”.

*

From here, Fighting in the Age of Loneliness whines to a messy conclusion. The segments get more disjointed, it’s at this stage that modern women’s Mixed Martial Arts gets all of two minutes of consideration, and then there is a rather reluctant summary of the UFC career of Conor McGregor, who Felix seems not to like. He certainly doesn’t describe him with close to the same kind of exaltation that he deploys earlier for fighters who had similar trajectories like Mauricio Rua, Anderson Silva and Jon Jones.

After that, Felix goes back to behaving like a fan of an indie band that has started making top 40 hits. He doesn’t like that the one of the UFC’s new part-owners is an asset stripping firm, even though in his golden age one of the UFC’s part-owners was an Emirati war criminal. Back in the first segment of the first episode he references “this modern era of fighting, where all of the things that used to make the sport unusual are mostly gone,” and now he returns to that idea and calls the supposed new “fourth era” of fighting “sanitized and oversaturated,” contrasting it with the “honesty of a fist-fight” and the “cultural haven for strange people” that the UFC offered ten years ago. He complains that there aren’t enough knockouts any more. When he brings up the recent long-anticipated fight between Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov he says “sometimes the dam of normalcy breaks and we get momentary bursts of how things once were,” which strikes me as a rather ‘what have you done for me lately’ attitude to take about something that happened the month before this video series came out.

Things drag closer to an end and Felix keeps returning to his golden age. “What was once a weird refuge for those who needed it is now eroding into just another thing that’s as formless and indistinct as everything else. Fighting has rid itself of so much of its magic. It does not transcend the world any more.” The way that he constantly makes references to a bygone era when everything was simple and pure and good and as it ought to be, and wishes dearly that we could return to that era instead of continuing to face the injustices of this current moment in time, reminds me a lot of an ideology that has has a big resurgence in the USA recently.

The episode wraps up with one final spasm of bitterness. “This will happen to everything that you love. Nothing you like will remain untouched, and it will get further and further monetized into meaninglessness. This isn’t just our problem in our idiotic bloodsport. You’re fucked too.” He’s not wrong about the commoditization of entertainment and sports-as-entertainment but he sounds once again like a whiny gamer stereotype or a disillusioned popstar fanboy of the kind he mocks at the start of the episode.

And then the episode doesn’t actually end. The sort-of epilogue about Donald Cerrone fighting Nate Diaz seven years ago is a good little segment, but it doesn’t do anything here. It doesn’t serve to illustrate or emphasise any of the things Felix has been talking about in the minutes leading up to it, it doesn’t follow from them in any kind of narrative. It feels like a piece that some combination of Felix Biederman and Jon Bois just liked too much to cut, even though they couldn’t find a place to put it, so they stuck it here at the end. Maybe it is intended to provide some sense of denouement after Felix’s angry ranting. Regardless, it comes at the end of such an unpleasant half hour that its attempt at poignance failed utterly on me.

*

Felix Biederman likes different fighters than I do, he has a perspective on the sport of Mixed Martial Arts that often seems parochial and outdated to me, and I am puzzled by his obsession with the idea that combat sports athletes are all strange, broken people, but none of these things would bother me if Fighting in the Age of Loneliness did not present itself as an authoritative, comprehensive history of fighting, instead of what it is, which is the story of Felix Biederman falling into and out of love with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Together with Jon Bois he certainly tells that story well, their collage of tales of societal fracture and political indifference with images of single combat is a powerful one, but in pursuing its thematic goals the series fails over and over to justify or interrogate the positions it puts forward.

If the UFC disappeared tomorrow, or if it had never been created in the first place, fighting would still exist, Mixed Martial Arts would still exist, the “one two path of a punch to a guy snoring on the ground” that Felix claims to adore will still exist. Fighting is exactly as magical and exactly as mundane today as it it always has been and always will be, even if Felix Biederman doesn’t enjoy watching it as much as he used to.

[retros-gaming-soap]

Roswell Analogy 1999 vs. 2018

Michael Guerin, New vs. Old

Alex, Michael, Maria and Isabel love drama quadrangle vs. Alex and Michael/Michael and Alex

Up to a point Michael and Isabel always saw each other as related but the destiny they had with each other, wanted it to be otherwise including in the books.

However the main love drama of Michael in the original show was the one he had with Maria and how they switched around from the destiny of him and Isabel, and then Maria and Alex to a point, I’d call that a love quadrangle but who I’m to say.

However these sibling feeling seem to be even more in the new show hopfully that means we won’t see that change, as it seemed pretty impractical.

I think the idea is that Alex and Maria have switched roles in some ways but I suppose in some was Alex’s new story could be blending in some of Cameron Winger from the books (Winger looked military and had a bad childhood but Maria could be the betrayer in this story or maybe if Jenna Cameron comes back), this made more room for all the other stories of season 1 and scenes or plots that might have been given to other characters and that fits better with the new dynamic in my opinion: The Ages being changed and overarching plot, this made Alex and Max be the Jim Valenti part of the show and Michael being in a more proactive sibling role (however the new tonal shift is also what makes the shows so different), it could bag the question does it stray too far from the source material or the fandoms expectations?

I'm missing informarion about the books as I haven't read them, but making room for the other plots like what happend to Rose, protecting Isabel and then making the already existing friendship from the books with Alex a romantic one, not only seems to me an interesting writing choice (see next chapter), it also seems to make more since then having Michael in a relationship with Maria at the get go, that would have felt up alot of “will she find out plot”. This is however only based an initial thought since I haven't read the books and is just going off of the old show, hear say and assumptions.

Breaking down Alex and Michael as an original take on a gay love story

-----(will be written)-----

While the appearance of Cameron Winger could be the inspiration of changing Alex but Will Maria take her storyline?

Lets talk endgame? Alex vs Maria

This is probably one of the few times I think they made a Bad choice in writing, having Micheal go through almost the same arc as Liz and Max, when Liz didn’t feel she could be with Max eventhough she still loved him she choose to be with Kyle! Micheal mirroring the same seemed to blow all the good well from the amazing story arc they both had in the in the course of the whole season it was incredibly derivative and so very disappointing.

And yes it's pretty obvious that Micheal loves Alex and only likes Maria.

And unlike with Liz and Kyle this will obviously bite Michael in the butt, Michael seems to just be with Maria because she’s not tied to all the baggage and pain of all the things that’s happened both with their relationship and also in his live but to some extent also that he is tired of being pushed away by Alex.

Maria is the less complicated relationship but really why do Maria even want Michael?

unless this show runs so long the writers write Alex out of the show, it's pretty obvious that Alex is endgame.

However changing Maria DeLuca's personality and her main family issues definitely made her less appealing as a love interest for Micheal as they now don't feel as connected as they did, Maria wanting out of Roswell and missing her father in the original show made them empathize and understand either, what is left now is just some random sexytime? At least that's how it feels so far, as we haven't gotten any reason to think otherwise. Even if book and 1999 tv show says otherwise, the chemistry and history between Maria on this show isn't even gotten explard on screen, so "we'll just have to imagine the whole thing" off panel! from before the show? Not to mention he even said point blank that he'd always love Alex! And having a bi character choose that he'd rather be in a underdeveloped relationship with a straight person? All of it would really raise a lot of eyebrows, not saying it couldn't be done but really what would be the point, now that they've already made the change from the source?

Max Evans, New vs. Old

Power changes and Less Powers?

Development of powers being a plot point.

Possible death of canon character?

What's the odds of this, not just being a fake out? It certainly is ballzy of them to end season 1 with a dead main character. Did he ever die in the original show?

Jenna Cameron last name is the same name as Michael's book girlfriend Cameron Winger, is this a significant? 

Isobel Evans-Bracken vs. Evans

Her love Triangle (TV only) vs. circumstantial Marriage victim to Noah Bracken

Season 1 ended up showing a victimized Isobel unlike her stronger counterpart in the original show, surprisingly since woman in general have be shown as stronger characters in media in newer age. Maybe it isn't fair to judge a characters accomplishments by one season, but what does she even have left? As far as I know she doesn't have strong friends outside of the once in the know and she doesn't seem to have any potential love interests? By sacrificing the love to Michael and giving her another brother (an initially ingenious idea), as far as I know she doesn't seem to have any canon character arcs left? What was her relationship with Kyle Valenti in the original show? Did liz have a sister in the books? if yes, was she friends with Isobel?

Noah Bracken

Is Noah Bracken, this shows version of Nasedo? or someone else?

If Noah is Nasedo then we still haven’t seen the fourth Alien.

In the books I guess the fourth Alien was Nikolas Branson, but in the original show it was Tess Harding.

They seem to have implied in interviews that they want it to be more like the books then the original show was, but I know for a fact that they have kept some things if not just small things like the hair of Max not being blond like it with in the books.

Small things like that, though I might need to read the books to see if they have made bigger changes that fit more with the original show then the books.

Was what Noah did with all the murder kind of like the Harvest?

Alex Manes vs. Alex Whitman

How significant was his Relationships for Isobel in the original Roswell show?

Comparing it with his friendship with Michael. Was there shipping of Alex and Michael in the original fandom community? And what was the thought behind it? How big was the ship?

Fandom shipping Kyle Valenti with Alex in original show! Is there basis behind the ship?

Fx. close devoted friendship, saving one from death, long hugs, close trust (sharing secrets), etc? I think not but it's been awhile since I watched the original show though.

Alex certainly seems the type at the beginning of the show, seemingly only being friends with girls, seemingly not firting with said famale friends, not seeming all that bothered about not having a girlfriend but that all changes later in the original show.

Kyle Valenti: The secret gay bully trope? Overused as it was in drama shows, this theory might have been how the small shipping of Alex and Kyle happened? It's a theory of a theory that might need some looking into. 

I’ll be writing about the death of Alex in the old show as I get to the episode of the original show.

Cross pollination of fandoms from 1999 to 2018!

Kyle with Alex seems to have such a lasting fanbase that some people are crossing it over to Roswell, New Mexico! I can't say it’s based on anything on screen, but it’s great so see them develop a layered interesting friendship and I’d love to see more of their friendship grow over the next seasons. I guess the fact of enmities to friends has its appeal.

Mr. Whitman vs. Homophobic evil dad (Jesse Manes!) trope.

It seems strange that Jesse Manes was one of Alex’ Brothers but that they choose to make that his fathers name in the new show! I get the idea of making his father a heartless character they certainly didn't have a lot to play with from the books and classic show and it certainly made Michael and Alex have more of a connection but why the name change? They didn’t have a problem with renaming one of Alex’ brothers even though they didn’t have to, they already had two other names to use Robert and Harry both brothers of Alex in the books.

Reason behind name change from book accurate Manes name to orignal show last name?

It was pretty obviose why they changed Liz’s name from Ortecho in the books, so they didn’t have to address Liz’s parents heritage but why Whitman! What's the significance?

Last Update 02-07-2019

As I rewatch the original show (and maybe even when I’ll read fanfic) I’ll Update this post with theories and thoughts.

[theinquisitivej]

‘Secret Rooms’ Definitive Edition – A New Century Review

Available on Kindle on Amazon.

Available as an audio series on Bandcamp.

When I first reviewed the original edition of Secret Rooms back in early 2017, I thought it was a solid instalment in this alternate history series of fictional stories. I enjoyed the mix of genres, the variety of conflicts the characters found themselves in, and the balance of humour and more intimate moments where characters went into their experiences with grief. At the time, I saw it as an enjoyable story that is somewhat overshadowed by some of the later instalments in the series which were getting better and better with each book. Having said that, my review for Secret Rooms is still full of the many positives I found in the original edition of the book which make it a great read and/or listen. I stand by everything I said back then, and you can read all of it here.

         But things sure have changed since that review. New Century has had two new entries with The Christmas Thieves and Let Them Go, and Secret Rooms has been bolstered with a brand-new Definitive Edition. This new edition adds extra chapters, some re-recorded lines, and just more content that helps this early story in the series stand up with the rest of the impressive entries in New Century. It’s not a radical transformation, but this expansion on the original story makes the narrative feel more complete, more thematically resonant, and just as polished as the other standouts of New Century like Arlington, Tiger’s Eye, and Let Them Go. If you’ve been following me, you’ll know that I’ve been writing up each of the new chapters of this edition which have been collected into a new short-storyline called Weirwood. You can read my detailed thoughts on these chapters here, here, here, and here. What I aim to do with this review is to lay down a string of observations that I noticed while listening to this Definitive Edition and re-experiencing the story of Secret Rooms. If you want a spoiler-free review of the story, the original review absolutely has you covered. If the story sounds like your cup of tea, check out the Definitive Edition, and once you’ve enjoyed it, and you will enjoy it, come back here and we can sit down and talk about the book together.

         As I’ve mentioned before, there are moments in this story which seem to take influence from Mass Effect. Encounters are self-contained and varied, making the world of the Reunified States of America feel more alive and unpredictable. There’s also a sense with each of them that, whatever our protagonists decide to do, there are half a dozen other possible outcomes that might have occurred if they had gone left instead of right. Characters discuss their options, and the different suggestions will rarely be unreasonable or entirely without merit. There’s no clear answer to how each of the problems they’re confronted with ought to be resolved, so the story of Secret Rooms is very much about a group of people trying their best to do the right thing and help as many people as possible. A lot of the time, that means making choices that aren’t guaranteed to lead to the best outcome. A lot of the time, they simply have to take a leap of faith and hope that it will be for the best.

         Speaking of Mass Effect, you could summarise parts of Secret Rooms as a charismatic badass female leader recruiting a number of striking personalities in order to accomplish a seemingly impossible task. Yes, I am comparing Annie Oakley in New Century to FemShep, and I find her sentiment that the world isn’t going to get any better unless we step outside and make it better inspiring. In contrast to how Arlington pitches Annie against unpredictable and overwhelming forces that render her practically powerless, Secret Rooms shows Annie in her most impressive light. What makes the story of this book as compelling as it is then is that, after Annie is established to be the ideal image of a Cartographer, she passes the responsibility of decision-making to Abigail for the duration of their excursion together which makes up a good portion of the narrative. At first, this is done to give Abigail a taste of what it’s like to be confronted with a difficult situation so that she can appreciate what is required of being a Cartographer. Once they arrive at the House of Versteckt, however, Annie is forced to leave James and Abigail to fend for themselves as she rides to gather reinforcements. This is James and Abigail’s greatest test, and after making it through, they’re changed forever. Secret Rooms is the story of these two capable yet inexperienced characters and their journey to find their own way as they set out from their familiar home and are cast into completely uncharted territory. Having Annie play an important supporting role as this accomplished Cartographer supervising these two new recruits provides a safety blanket for the first part of the story, but once we enter the final act and the two are left alone, our protagonists seem unbearably vulnerable.

         I’ve already discussed the accomplishments of the additional chapters as an emotionally affecting story-thread within this new edition of the book, but it must be stressed that these chapters aren’t just a tacked-on short story. The new chapters are integrated into the existing structure of Secret Rooms seamlessly, and they even reinforce some of the key story-beats and themes of the original text. After we’ve seen half of the people of New Athens leave for dangerous lands in spite of Abigail’s best efforts to convince them against this course of action, we transition back to the story of James and Abigail’s past at Weirwood. The first part of this section has James relate a memory he had had of Nathan telling him that the best way to convince a wondering chicken to come to you was to pretend you weren’t interested in it and didn’t want it. By placing this immediately after the chapter where we see that Abigail couldn’t get these wandering civilians to come with them, the audience is invited to form a connection between the two moments separated by time. Is it possible that Abigail would have found more success if she had not made it clear that she really wanted the people of New Athens to come with them, as Nathan suggests you avoid coming on too strongly with the chickens? Or could it just be that there really is no way to convince something out of your control to be tamed when their mind is set against it, so all you can do is steer into it and act like you never even wanted it in the first place? Either way, I appreciate how the added chapters reinforce moments from the original story in little ways like this.

         One theme in particular that becomes much more pronounced in this newer edition is the concept of human relationships between a group of three people who love each other. Abigail and James both share a personal connection with Lucy and with each other. For a time, they are content as this group of three that has somehow found a happy balance. Even when things get messy and complicated, the individual pairings we see, first with James and Lucy, then Lucy and Abigail, is presented as something sweet and beautiful, even if it does lead to the third member of the group feeling hurt in each case. It’s compelling drama that takes this situation seriously – you certainly couldn’t accuse this plot thread of being a clichéd love triangle, as it’s much too well-observed for that. It taps into a very human experience, and while part of you wants to blame someone when things go wrong, the writing ensures that you understand why things happen as they do, making it an intensely bittersweet story, even before the tragic ending reveals itself. As I listened through the Definitive Edition and reached Part Four, I realised some of the parallels that can be drawn between these three and the story of Krieger, Greta, and Charlotte. The Definitive Edition presents us with two groups of three, each of them being made up of two female members and one male member, and each group is made up of people who share a romantic love for one another. All of these people are in love with not just one person, but two people. And, sadly, the two groups are also alike in that they have each lost one of its members, and each group mourns the loss of the sensitive soul that they so dearly miss.

         It could be that these similarities are there to make us notice the connection and then ask what makes the two trios different from one another. While Lucy, James, and Abigail were young, practically children when they felt this love for multiple people and were struggling to process these feelings, we see evidence that Krieger, Charlotte, and Gretta managed to maintain a polyamorous relationship for an extended time as adults. This makes me wonder what might have been if Lucy was still alive; could the three of them have worked things out and still be close? Is there one reality where Lucy is still alive and the three of them enjoy a long-term polyamorous relationship with one another? Then again, the trio from the House of Versteckt certainly isn’t a wholly perfect example of a healthy polyamorous relationship, at least in respect to the awful thing that Krieger does to Charlotte. The final chapter does a brilliant job at getting you to be sympathetic towards Krieger even as he discusses the process of killing one of the women he loves and his reasoning for doing so. His logic for why it’s too dangerous for Charlotte to continue as she is does seem sound, and you can tell from the words and Matt Wardle’s emotional performance that this is killing Krieger. Even so, in comparison with Abigail and James allowing Lucy to be free and go out into the open world as they let go of her, Krieger sealing Charlotte away and making the decision for her that her life needed to end is a horrifying violation. If you’re looking for evidence that Krieger’s actions have had lasting negative consequences that Charlotte herself did not want, look no further than the fact she appears to Abigail as a ghost, her spirit being trapped by what Krieger did. The dynamic and interconnecting relationships of each trio is touching, heartbreaking, and fascinating to see unfold as the narrative progresses, and the Definitive Edition makes this one of my favourite aspects of Secret Rooms.

         There’s also a point of connection between Lucy and Krieger due to them both having conversations with the main characters about the cosmological and their place in the wider universe. When Krieger delivers his lecture about Pandora’s Box and the theory of multiple realities, I couldn’t help but think of Lucy and James sitting together looking at the stars all those years ago at Weirwood. A crucial difference, however, is that while Krieger sees the scope of reality and the potential Lovecraftian horrors out there and thinks of the fearful implications of that (despite his insistence that he would still open many boxes and explore many realities), when Lucy considers her small stature in the scale of the infinitely greater universe, she sees the hopeful side of things. If nothing matters, then everything matters, as she says. I appreciate having these two moments of introspection from different characters and seeing their different conclusions on, more-or-less, the same subject. It opens things up, and makes me even more contemplative than the original edition had already made me.

         On a similar topic, the starry eyes, both those that Gretta is revealed to have and those that Abigail and James acquire after touching the orb, made me think of Lucy and her stars, especially as James describes looking into Gretta’s eyes like looking up into the starry sky at night. Perhaps this would be the only way to describe such a concept, but it nevertheless felt like a deliberate connection between the eyes and this important memory of Lucy. My interpretation is that this connection is there to make what Abigail and James see when Krieger and Gretta leave through the Wind Door and Gretta’s eyes are revealed feel even more like something beyond their world. This memory of Lucy and the stars is like an ethereal moment which is forever out of reach for James, so the connection between this moment and seeing Gretta’s eyes makes it feel like we’ve stepped beyond what we can understand or touch in the physical world that we know.

         Listening to Secret Rooms this time around, I realised how much of a blow it is for James to lose one of his eyes. The original draft already did an effective job at conveying how much the loss of their eyes will affect James and Abigail through the writing. But because we get that added time with the two of them at the start of the Definitive Edition that shows us these characters from an early age, I feel the magnitude of how much of what James relies on to get by will be irreversibly affected by what he’s lost. We know how much he needs his powers of observation to get by in his day-to-day interactions with people and his duties as a doctor. So much of his identity has been built around his sharp eye and his close attention to detail. Now that his sight is less than what it was, these parts of his identity are affected considerably, and you can imagine how that would make James feel unsure of who he is now that he’s no longer that version of himself.

         The Definitive Edition of Secret Rooms is a terrific success. I enjoyed this story before, but with the added content that this new edition brings, there’s more time with the characters which makes the later sections of the story more meaningful, and the themes are bolstered by the story thread with Lucy which invites us to draw parallels between what happened in the past and what we see in the present. On top of that, the story of Lucy and Weirwood is just a really emotionally affecting story about past regrets, achingly beautiful memories, and the deep connections between three people who loved each other. Maya Santandrea is a wonderful Katherine Holloway and I’m sure there are dozens of little audio adjustments and small technical edits throughout the audiobook which make the whole thing even more polished than it already was. Tiger’s Eye and Arlington are still at the top of my list of New Century stories, but through a combination of coming to appreciate it even more on a second listen and some really well-implemented additions to the text, Secret Rooms has climbed up high to be yet another of the really close favourites that the series has in spades. Depending on my mood, I could very well see myself saying that Let Them Go, The Princess Thieves, or yes, Secret Rooms is my favourite New Century story.

Final Ranking: Gold.

Striking an impressive balance between a fun spirit, nail-biting tension, and emotional drama, Secret Rooms takes you through a remarkable number of different genres and tones, and it makes all of them work. This was already a good story. Now it’s even better.

Join me in the new year as we dive into all-new territory with New Century’s most ambitious story yet, SteamHeart.