#its possible to come off as generally decent and nice and also not let bullshit walk past you.

[snekdood]

ppl on the left apparently hate to hear it but, yeah, being mean to someone makes them less likely to want to hear out whatever you say. thats kinda like socializing 101.

[gaysimpsstuff]

Hawks With a Reader Who Tics

Genre: angst, fluffy fluff, 

Reader Pronouns: none

Other: This is based off of my tics, which usually only occur when I’m super stressed, and they’re all pretty simple. Just slapping my thigh, making a clicking noise, and general neck wanting to not be on my shoulders. If you want something more generalized, or something more along the lines of Tourrete’s Syndrome I am more than happy to oblige. Also this is totally self-indulgent so if no one else relates to this that’s fine.

Warnings: mentions of past teasing, reader cries, tics, shitty parents, cursing burnt toast and burnt bacon (the food not Dabi)

Taglist:  @smolchildfangirl @yuu-anon @poke-txts @combat-wombatus  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You had been going out with the Number Two hero Hawks for about two months now, and things were going great! No weird clicking noises or head-jerking or arms wanting to smack your thigh or random shouts of the word ‘yummy.’ You were beginning to think that maybe all your weird (an)tics had disapeared.

You’d never been more wrong.

Okay maybe you’ve been more wrong at times but still you were wrong.

All it took was one shitty day. Co-workers being assholes, Karens being Karens, but worst of all was a phone call full of bullshit from your parents. That was all it took for your body to start moving on its own. And not in the good way, the way that causes you to make weird clicking noises, jerk your head around like an owl, smack your thigh and repeat the word ‘yummy.’ 

Okay, you could deal with the clicking noise and the random yummy outbursts but all the more physical things? You really didn’t have the patience to deal with it. Which resulted in you leaving work early, complaining about being sick while masking as much as you possibly could to your boss.

And finally, you were home. And free to just let your tics do whatever the fuck they wanted until they wore themselves out. You hoped this wouldn’t be the type to last over a day, because that happened sometimes, and it was so annoying.

But you forgot something, something very important. You’d planned with your boyfriend to meet up and watch movies at your place. You were just lounging around half naked when you got the text that he was on his way.

“Fuck shit!” you rushed to get decent, knowing that all you could really do was put on a shirt, pants, and half-hazardly brush your hair before you heard the doorbell ring. “Alright Y/n you can do this.” you muttered. “It’s Hawks, he’s chill, you can stay calm and click still around him. Th- this’ll be easy! Suuper click click easy! And If you do tic, no problem he won’t hate you or make fun of you or break up with you! Just gotta go out there and face him, easy peasy... orIcouldrunawayandfakemydeathandlivemycottagecoredreamwithablindcatohhhyeahthatsoundssomucheasier*.” you shook your head (bad idea, you ended up hitting your chest really hard) and forced yourself out of the bathroom and to the front door, quickly ushering your boyfriend in.

“Baby bird! I haven’t seen you in person in forever!” he exclaimed. You sighed, looking up at him and immediately relaxing. Your boyfriend was so pretty, so kind, so perfect. Nothing could get in the way of a nice relaxing night.

“You saw me three days ago.” you deadpanned, holding back a click.

“It felt like forever!” he complained, walking in and shrugging his coat off. He was still in his hero costume, so he must’ve only just gotten off work. He folded his coat and put it on the little table next to the door, alongside his goggles and headphones.

“You aren’t injured?” you asked, checking his arms and face for scratches, then glancing at his wings to check their size. How many feathers had he used today?

“Baby don’t worry, I’m okay. Today was pretty chill. I only needed to use my wings for like- three things today. What about you? How was work?” you stiffened, praying you wouldn’t betray yourself.

“Eh it was okay.” you shrugged nonchalontly or however the fuck you spell it. Hawks raised an eyebrow at you. 

“You know I can tell when you’re lying.” you gave him a forced smile, ignoring how your heart sped up. 

“W-what are you talking about?” Stuttering. Of course you were stuttering. It wouldn’t take much longer before you simply couldn’t mask anymore.

“Dove, tell me what happened, I’m your boyfriend I want to help you-” he stopped talking when he saw how your hand was bouncing against your thigh, striking it hard.

“Fine- I’m I’m I’m F-fine fine!” you exclaimed, head jerking backwards. Hawks blinked in confusion.

“What was that?” his voice rose in concern. Tears were brimming in your eyes as you flinched away from his touch. You didn’t say anything, only grabbing the back of your neck to forcibly hold your head down. Even when you ticked you could just hold yourself back.

“Baby, talk to me, you’re worrying me.” Hawks took another step forward, and you just stepped backwards again, whimpering.

“N-no! No no!” you cried. Hawks stared at you with wide eyes, fearful. Suddenly he relaxed. 

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay.” his tone was different this time, soothing, sweet, it was exactly the kind that would make you relax. “I’m here, I’m gonna help you. Can you move your hands for me, Babe?” 

Slowly, your moved your hands away from your neck, immediately your head tried to dislocate itself, and a sharp stab of pain shot up your spine. 

“OW!” Hawks opened his arms, still giving you a kind look.

“I know, I know it hurts.” he whispered. “Just come here, let me hold you.”

Hold you? When you were spazzing out like this? What if you hit him? What if you hurt him badly? What if he never wanted to see you again?” What if-

You ran into his arms, sobbing. You felt something soft tickle the back of your neck. A feather. He rubbed your back soothingly. Rocking the two of you back and forth as you cried against his chest.

“S-sorry! Sorrysorrysorry!” you yelped when your arm smacked his side. 

“Shhhh shhh baby it’s okay.” He took your hand, gently moving it towards his face. Bad idea. You jerked your hand out of his grip, sniffling. 

“Do-don’t do th-that- don’t do that. I’ll hu-hurt you. S-sorry.” he nodded.

“I understand.” he murmured, taking the two of you to the couch. He kept you close to him, feathers covering your body to try and help you relax. It was nice. He was warm and his voice was soft. You felt so... heavy. You closed your eyes, cuddling against him, close as you could possibly get before you finally fell asleep.

You slowly opened your eyes, the smell of bacon filling the air. You blinked a couple time, realizing you were in your bed. You sat up, groaning. Your neck felt so sore. 

Click click

Ah, right. The tics were back. You thought back to yesterday, eyes widening as you remembered what happened. Hawks. He had come over hoping for a movie and cuddles, hoping for a break from taking care of people, and you’d ruined that with your stupid tic attack. How long had he stayed with you? Did he stay awake to make sure you didn’t tic in your sleep?

You ran out of your room, grateful you were still in your cozy movie party clothes. In the kitchen, Hawks had two plates on the counter, both with scrambled eggs and two slices of toast. Bacon was sizzling in the pan. 

“Good morning, Dove! How are you feeling?” he asked, a soft yet tired smile on his face.

“Hawks! Hawks oh babe I am so so sorry about last night!” you exclaimed, your fingers twisted and curled around each other as you hoped to find comfort in the movement.

“Don’t be, it’s okay. I made breakfast, look! I may have burnt the toast but you’ll be fine with that, right? Baby?” he cocked his head to the side, noticing your expression.

“Y-you sure it’s okay?” you asked softly.

“Yeah! Was this the first time you had muscle spasms?” He sent a feather towards you, tickling your nose before circling around and rubbing at the back of your neck. You felt yourself on the brink of tears again at the soft gesture.

“No...” you murmured. “But I haven’t had them in a while I- I thought they were gone.” He nodded, humming.

“What triggers them?”

“Just- general anxiety and bad thoughts...” you mumbled. 

“Alright. If you ever start ticking again, just call me. I’ll swoop in and help you. I’m pretty sure it’s hard to get stuff done when your body moves without you.” he flashed you a bright smile.

“Doesn’t it... weird you out?” you asked. “I could hurt you... I could accidentally break something I- I-”

“Baby.” you looked up at him. He took a step towards you, cupping your face into his hands and pressing a kiss to your lips. “I’m here for you. I care about you so I’m going to do everything in my power to make you feel comfortable. It’s my duty as hero, but more-so as your boyfriend.” you sniffled, nodding.

“Baby?”

“Yes, Dove?”

“You’re gonna burn the bacon.”

“SHIT!”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*orIcouldrunawayandfakemydeathandlivemycottagecoredreamwithablindcatohhhyeahthatsoundssomucheasier 

Translation: Or I could Just run away and fake my own death and live my cottage core dream with a blind cat ohhh yeah that sounds so much easier

[bella-in-a-bag]

Not mine

Ao3 

Masterpost

 - Next

Words: 2446  

Day 5 - Any intense emotions your soulmate feels you will also experience 

Maybe that was worse, because he was just broken and no one was to blame, just himself. Maybe he had repressed his feelings to the limit and they were retaliating, unlike, but he wasn't human after all. Maybe he deserves this and there is no reason, it just is and he has to accept that. 

Where Logan gets someone elses feelings.

Tags and triggers under cut

Hurt/Comfort, Unsympathetic Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, more or less, he's just mean and never actually in the story, just mentioned, it's implied that he's just stressed, mention of violence, Swearing, Remus doesn't get gross, , tw panic attacks implied

Logan didn't know how his chest had suddenly gotten so tight, his eyes watery and his gut twisted in a way that made him want to throw up. Feeling such an intense array of emotions left him unable to think, let alone reason his way out of something he didn't know the cause for. Just a minute ago, he was fixing Thomas's schedule to include his meeting with Joan, an action that he deemed deeply satisfactory, when a wave crashed into his train of thought. Anger for something he didn't know the motive but knew was wrong, as well as many other things he could only identify as a mixture of pride, guilt, grief and sadness.

Well, no use in trying to get something done now.

Logan was used to these impulses, as he liked to call them, but every time he suffered them he felt like the world was figuratively trying to crush him into a pile of dust, so maybe the appropriate term should be awareness of the situation. He didn't freak out when they happened, which was good, but the unpleasantness still stuck all the way through the episodes. Surprising no one, he hated them more than he hated Thomas pursuing theater and YouTube instead of a stable career, but unlike the latter, these problems only affected him. Maybe that was worse, because he was just broken and no one was to blame, just himself. Maybe he had repressed his feelings to the limit and they were retaliating, unlike, but he wasn't human after all. Maybe he deserves this and there is no reason, it just is and he has to accept that.

Logan realized that if Janus heard that he was going to get lectured, but he didn't really mind, not when his brain was spiraling back and forth between a decision he wasn't sure he was making himself. The pros and cons, the possible outcomes, the whole problem laid out to him in a way he could only watch someone from afar look at a map he couldn't see. It reminded him of the courtroom scenario, but at the same time the problem felt more trivial and more important. The stakes were high, he guessed while trying to assume the best decision based on the pieces he could get, but then a choice was made and anxiety filled his mind to the brim.

He almost didn't answer when he heard a knock on the door, too many things happening at once, but he pushed himself up his chair and answered with the loudest voice he could manage. "Who is it?" It still sounded too emotionally charged, or maybe it didn't and his ears were playing tricks on him. "Can I come in?" Still no answer to his question, but if he ignored them maybe they would go away. The three seconds he stood in the middle of his room waiting for an answer felt like an eternity, but to his dismay, that someone finally decided to reveal their identity.

"I'm Remus, Logan" he sounded far too broken for the Duke, and Logan deduced that wasn't good. "Can I come in?" The desperation in the voice pushed Logan to open the door and let him in, trying to look collected.

"How may I assist you?" He wanted to add that he couldn't even assist himself, but the thought remained in his head.

"I need you to coach me through Virgil's breathing exercises" it still felt wrong the way his voice broke when he said Virgil and why would he need them in the first place? Remus was becoming a decent distraction from his own problems, he realized as he tried to make sense of the situation. Logan gestured at the foot of his bed before beginning to speak.

"Ok, I want you to breathe in for four, hold for seven and exhale for eight" Remus simply nodded and Logan began the exercise, counting with his fingers when he saw the creative side struggling to follow his instructions. After 15 minutes and 23 seconds, Remus seemed to look more like himself and Logan stopped counting, finding comfort in the way his mind had started to function as well. Remus was looking at the ground while biting his nail and it didn't look like he was going to speak any time soon, but Logan needed to know what happened in order to help Remus. He might be also teeny tiny bit interested, but that is besides the point.

"If you are not comfortable you do not have to answer" Remus's finger was out of his mouth, good. "But may I ask what is bothering you, you seemed troubled. And by previous experiences, I assume you do not get easily troubled." Remus snorted, Logan wasn't sure why but that is a problem for another day.

"I might have fought with good ol' Virgin again, which might not have ended so good ol' ok" That usually didn't end up well, Logan remembered trying to comfort Virgil with Patton making cookies and Roman swearing revenge on the background.

"If you were in his room that would explain your distress"

"We were on common territory, so my bullshit comes exclusively from me."

"I wouldn't consider your stress fake, but did anything he said upset you into this state or was it the whole situation in general."

"Well, there were some things said." He paused for a moment, looking down weighting if it was worth it or not. Logan was beginning to think he would just get up and leave when he resumed talking, startling him just enough to make him flinch but improbable that the other side had noticed.

"I had this extremely good idea, you see. It was good, so good I was going to show it to Thomas. Not an intrusive thought, you don't need to worry legged dictionary, but an actual real plot for an episode." Logan nodded along, listening carefully to the side's words. "I made the mistake of telling Virgil, cause he was the only one around and I needed to tell somebody. He's still pissed that jay-nus got sort of accepted, hypocrite coming from him," Logan bit the urge to correct him, shifting a bit on the spot." so he didn't take well the idea of me making something useful. Or he was afraid that I wasn't going to make anything and kill Thomathy on the spot, but hey, same difference. He also called me something a bit ugly." Remus's voice shifted into Virgil's like second nature, which would make sense given Janus's history. "Yeah, well maybe you are better off trapped in the subconscious, no one wants you around anyway. I'm sure your brother won't miss you."

This time Remus didn't continue speaking and Logan understood that he wasn't getting more info right now.

"I am sorry Remus, Virgil has been a little over the edge lately with Janus up in the primary mindscape." Bad wording Logic, now he looks more sad. "I am in no way trying to excuse his actions, perhaps I could talk to him later. Make him see the error in his thinking, possibly getting him to apologize."

"Thanks Logan." Satisfactory, he isn't even using a nickname.

"If I’m not intruding too much, why didn't you go to Janus for help?"

"Intruding is my thing logical meat bag" That one's creative "but he's busy and you seemed good at comforting V-movie, so I guessed you could comfort me too. Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw, I sound like Roman."

"I guess you do not want anything to do with chainsaws, but I appreciate that you would come to me for help. I am not in any way qualified in dealing with emotions, but I am suitable for providing physical help, techniques do not depend in whether you are very sad or mad at someone eating your last crofter jar." Remus smiled, which was good.

"Well that was fun." Remus stretched and half laid on the bed, his legs dangling on the edge. "But you seemed pretty out of it Wikipedia, when I came in" So much for looking collected, then.

"I was not doing well, but I am fine now"

"You can't just not tell me what bothered you, I need to know what to hit." That was nice, in its own way.

"I am afraid you cannot hit my problems, Remus"

"If you don't tell me I'll have to disagree, Logan”

"Well, why would I lie to you if it doesn't benefit me?" A short idea dashed through Logan's head, and he followed it. "Remus"

"Janus lies without reason, Logan"

"I am sure he has his reasons, Remus"

"You don't know that, Logan"

"You don't know that either, Remus"

"Logan?"

"Remus?"

"You're good at avoiding issues, glasses." Maybe Logan laughed a bit, not that he would admit it.

"I like you, but if you don't tell me I won't leave your room till eternity." Logan did not appreciate the idea of Remus in his room for an eternity, whatever that meant given that Thomas, and per se his sides, won't live an eternity.

"It is difficult to explain, but let's just say that nothing caused my distress." Remus launched himself forward to sit down properly, one of his hands playing with his mustache.

"I belive I am feeling and experiencing things that haven't happened to me. I am unsure of the cause but I know for certain that it is not an emotional response to something that happened to my person."

"Do you know when it started?" Serious Remus voice, that is definitely scary.

"I do not remember"

"So you had a crisis but you didn't know why it happened."

"Yes and I did not tell you anything about a crisis, how do you- nmg" A hand pressed his lips together, making him unable to speak.

"I think I figured out and I am not smarter than you, probably." The hands off now, that's good.

"Well then, what is it?"

"I do not know how this happens, but I know why it does. Still no clue?"

"No, I am afraid I do not know. Emotions are not my expertise."

"I don't think this has anything to do with emotions. Ok, I'm going to give you the data and see if you can complete the puzzle, live up to your title Sherlock." That nickname made Logic all warm inside, not because he was being called Sherlock but because Remus meant it as a compliment and not an insult.

"You were feeling bad emotions but they weren't yours. I was feeling bad emotions. At the same time." Logan could almost physically feel the click his brain made while connected the dots, every time he had seen Remus sad or angry after he had had an episode, but as they have also happened without seeing him, there was no need to make a connection before. But it was obvious, of course it was. Obvious as it was, it still left option for a lot of questions, like for example, why?

“Ah, well.” Logan had to stop talking, the realization dawning on him. If this is what Remus was feeling, maybe that wasn’t so good. Because he knew what he had gone through, and if he had a reason, it had probably been worse. “Well, that is a lot to take in. Remus, you have gone through a lot.” A pause for air, so he wouldn’t drown in all the weird feelings he was having now. It was probably Remus, or him, or both. “You don’t need to deal with this alone anymore.”

“I wouldn’t want to drag you more into hell with me.” Sadness, and this time Logan knew it wasn’t his, even if Remus’s smile tried to convince him otherwise.

“You are not dragging me anywhere, because we are sitting on my bed and you did not choose your feelings to go to me.” Another beat of silence, this time less dense.

“I think it happens both ways.”

“Oh. That would make sense.” Logan did not want to think of what that implied, had the other side felt the anger he couldn’t control when it escaped its grasp and flooded his senses, or was he safe. No, he probably knows now, think clearly Logic.

“Don't worry dicktective, I’m not going to judge you. I don’t do that, not even kink shaming! Unless that is your kink, then maybe I’d make an exception for you.” Logan figured he tried to sound suggestive, but in all honesty he just sounded tired. He was tired too, so tired he could jawn. So he did, at the same time as Remus. Remus smiled afterwards, less maniacal, more soft. Logan smiled back.

“We are soulmates, Logan.” The logical side was taken aback. He barely knew Remus and he was sure that soulmates meant a declaration of love so good it was as if it was chosen by the universe.

“No?” Yes, appropriate response Logan, five stars would recommend.

“I mean, that’s the drill right?. We share emotions, we share a soul. Isn’t that soulmate 101.”

“Soulmates aren’t real, those are just fairy tales.”

“Maybe Thomas wanted them to be real, so he made them real in his messed up mind.”

“That, that actually makes sense.”

“Look, it’s even making me intelligent. I should hang around your room more often.” An offer perhaps, to see where this goes. Logan is very dense right now, but he nods unsure of everything.

“Why me? I’m the least emotional side.”

“That might be what you think, but you don’t know everything.”

“It’s terrifying.”

“Not knowing or soulmates?”

“Both.”

“I figured. I am pretty scary.” A feeling of discomfort, but this time is his own.

“Not you, emotions. I would react the same way if it was any other side. Maybe not Patton, as he insists on calling me his kiddo and that would be uncomfortable.”

“I’m morally depraved and it would still feel weird.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah.” Silence, this time they are just lost in thought. A minute passes, maybe ten. Logan isn’t keeping track of time. It doesn’t matter anymore, not when his world just tilted a bit to the side.

“Logan?”

“Remus?”

“How the fuck are we going to tell the others?”

“We'll figure it out, let's worry about ourselves now.”

"Thanks Lolo."

"You're welcome Remus."

He wasn’t really sure of anything. But with Remus by his side, sounding so confident and yet so scared, maybe things would turn out ok. He was greeted with happiness, a feeling that wasn’t his but still belonged, somehow. And somehow, he knew Remus was receiving happiness as well.

@tsshipmonth2020

[deltaengineering]

Fall Anime 2019 Part 4: also, he has a gun for a head

Beastars

So here’s the CG anime that everyone for some reason decided way in advance would be the best show of the season, more or less by default. I was very skeptical of this for a multitude of reasons. First of all, that is a bad name for a show and you can’t convince me otherwise. It’s actually even worse because you’re supposed to write it in all caps, but I refuse. Second, it has a terribly on the nose conceit in which all sorts of animals live together in a high school setting and it’s all metaphorical ‘n shit. The main character is a wolf but get this, he’s actually all sensitive and quiet! Yeah, this is definitely rated D for Deep. And finally it’s by Orange, the CG studio that got an inordinate amount of acclaim for making Houseki no Kuni, the show that everyone thinks looks great and finally made CG anime worthwhile (actual real fact: HnK does not look great most of the time and CG anime was worthwhile well before it). 

But enough about my preconceptions since Beastars is... pretty good, actually. If you ignore the setting, which is indeed terribly on the nose. And there’s not much else to say about the story so far besides it. However, it looks significantly better than Houseki no Kuni because it actually has really good character animation throughout instead of a one-minute action scene with flashy spinny camera tricks every other episode. The directing’s strong too, even if the show conspicuously mainly consists of obvious manga panels. I’m still not too hot on the animal stuff but the general writing seems to be sufficiently competent it would work simply on a character level. So I don’t love it, but it seems solid enough to see if it goes somewhere with its “Zootopia but also Beverly Hills 90210 but also they eat each other sometimes″ plot.

Rifle is Beautiful

Remember the whole “anime about some assorted anime girls joining a club doing an oddly specific activity” thing? This is another one of those, and now it’s about air rifle sports shooting. Except it’s not about air rifle sports shooting because that’s apparently way too violent, so they use rifles that look like exactly like air rifles but are actually based on lasers or really bright flashlights (they can’t keep their bullshit straight between scenes, sorry) instead. I just don’t think “girls doing activities” anime should blatantly misrepresent their subject matter like that, you know? With the possible exception of idol anime that is, ain’t nobody who wants to hear about that shit. Apart from that it’s nothing special, so if you are really into air rifles and wish to watch an anime that’s not about those, knock yourself out. It goes through a whole “club needs 5 members” arc in the first half of the first episode, so I really can’t say where it goes next. Nowhere much, I would guess.

Oh right, there’s one more thing: They frequently render the bodies in CG and the heads in traditional drawings, and they do it every time when they’d actually have to draw a rifle otherwise. It’s a weird effect that I think I haven’t seen anywhere else before, and it’s not great but also not terrible. And it’s the most interesting thing about the entire show.

Kabukicho Sherlock

“Let’s take a bunch of public domain characters and put them into a hip modern setting” seems to be its own genre at the moment, and not only because the BBC did that with S. Holmes, Esq. already. Obviously this show is influenced by that (besides other public domain namedroppers like Bungou Stray Dogs), mostly in Watson and his relationship with Sherlock, but Sherlock-san is rather different here; he’s neither the classic Victorian bohemian nor the abrasive sociopath of the BBC version, and tends more towards a bumbling 90s pop culture version of autism and/or general wackiness here. These two are surrounded by a bunch of campy transvestites for some reason, and I’m not quite sure whether I’m supposed to find this particular stereotype offensive or empowering this week, but it sure is annoying. And it has the same character designer as Joker Game, so if you like chiseled, angular anime men, you’re in for a treat here - even if they tend to wear a lot of makeup and dresses sometimes. I don’t know man, it seems sort of okay-ish for the most part but it’s neither as funny as they think, nor as weird as they think, nor is the murder of the week intriguing at all. Oh yeah, he’s hunting noted public domain character Jack the Ripper. Because of course he is.

 Shin Chuuka Ichiban!

I am told this is the sequel to episode 19 of a 52-episode anime TV show from 1997. Okay. I am also told to not dare watch this without the important setup therein, which makes me think I should pay less attention to what I’m told because understanding Shin Chuuka Ichiban and its backstory is not hard at all. Kid is superawesome cooking champion in ancient China and goes around clowning on lesser cooks, got it. It’s not a complicated setup and it’s not a complicated genre either: This seems to be mostly about sick shounen cooking duels. Besides the setting, the main difference between this and Shokugeki no Soma seems to be that SnS goes for ridiculous and Chuuka Ichiban goes for epic - which is to say that it fancies itself emotional as well. Apart from that it’s what you’d expect from a cooking shounen, big moves, big reactions, huge twists and so on. One notable thing is that this show looks really, really nice. Production I.G seems to be establishing a sideline in taking stuff from the 90s and updating it with smoother animation and shinier lighting, while keeping the overall look intact; They did it for Mahoujin Guru Guru, and this looks much the same. Still, I’m just fundamentally not really interested in what appears to be a very straightforward cooking shounen from the 90s.

Assassins Pride

Straight from the Department of Chuuni, we have this light novel masterpiece about a cool as fuck teenage assassin who teleports behind u and nothin personells fools all day. He then meets a princess he’s supposed to off but just kinda decides not to, probably because she seems to be smitten by his m’lady act. Now he has to use his sick skillz to keep them both alive. It’s awful and terrible and no good and also kind of adorable. This truly is the most 13 AND A HALF MOM years old anime in a while, and it’s not even isekai! The writing’s just so amateurish and corny you can’t help but smile when princesses exposit their backstory for no reason while being accosted by pumpkin monsters (without knowing that Awessassin McCooldude happens to be listening in, which is certainly convenient). Or when the episode ends with the man just reading the synopsis of the show out again, in case you were too fascinated by this plot to pay attention to what it’s about. Yeah I’m not going to watch this in a thousand years, but it sure made me chuckle. Your mileage may vary.

Mugen no Juunin - Immortal

Speaking of 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔢𝔱𝔦𝔢𝔰 𝔢𝔡𝔤𝔢, another anime adaptation of Blade of the Immortal appeared! You know, the manga for the cultured and historically minded guro fan. The first episode of Blade of the Immortal runs with this and is an arthouse production that someone most definitely directed the shit out of. I don’t think I’ve seen this much directing since, well, Sarazanmai, but “Ikuhara amounts of directing” is pretty much the idea here. And most of the time it even works! The quickly edited, disorienting style gives episode 1 a feeling closer to horror than to a cool swordmen action show, and that really brings out the best in the material, which is grotesque splatter bordering on the comical - It’s somehow a better Junji Ito anime than the actual Junji Ito anime. I think it tries too hard in a few places, but at least it does try.

But then I watched the second episode and that one’s a fairly conventional splatter-comedy swordin’ anime. I am not at all pleased with this development. The third episode was better again and seemed to split the difference between 1 and 2, even if it mostly uses the tricky editing to save on effort in the action –  I would much prefer actually readable fights and the wacky mannerisms in the more psychological stuff, thank you very much. Based on episode 1 I thought we might have something special here, but as of episode 3 I’d already merely call it pretty decent. I guess I’ll still stick with it but man, that’s a real bummer.

No Guns Life

No Guns Life is a neo-noir thriller about a guy who has a gun for a head. That’s fuckin rad and exactly the kind of silliness I am totally down for. He also has a gun for a hand, and there’s also some battle nun’s who carry revolvers with two cylinders, so in short I think the title is false advertising. This sounds very wacky (and it is), but it also takes its noir very seriously, down to details more wannabe neo-noirs tend to neglect (like being set right after a big war). The look and feel is pretty excellent, with sharp design and high-contrast artwork, and the music goes all in on the moody saxophone as you’d expect. And there’s some really adorable “look mom, I’m writing” stuff about how Man With Gun For A Head really “needs someone to pull his trigger” and so on (which is, as the astute reader might remember, at the back of his head). It feels like a throwback but then I can’t really think of many 80s/90s shows like this, so it’s actually more like the sort of faux-retro idea Trigger/Imaishi would come up with on a lark. Trigger/Imaishi would, of course, make a far worse anime out of it, so it’s all good. Well, it has some pacing problems and as always it’s a fine line between amusingly camp and not so amusingly camp anymore, but No Guns Life seems to have enough real qualities that it can probably stand on its own even when its conceptual gimmick eventually doesn’t suffice anymore. I give it a two gun’s up.

Hoshiai no Sora / Stars Align

And finally, here’s an anime about middle schooler softboys playing a tennis just as soft as themselves, while being henpecked by the elites on the girl’s team. This is not an “actual” sports anime though: for starters, it’s not based on some shounen manga and is an anime original with quite some staff pedigree instead. It’s also more of a character drama that already goes to some surprisingly real places by the end of episode 1, reminiscent of the recent and quite good Run with the Wind. Furthermore, it looks delicious, with minimalist but distinctive and varied character designs and animation that’s both extremely detailed for a TV anime and also not trying to shove that fact into your face with flashy stunt cuts. In short, this show seems very simple at first glance but every aspect of it just oozes quality. If nothing else, it’s already worth watching just for the excellent ending sequence where the characters show off their “best” dance moves and the chunky student council president dunks on everyone. This one caught me by surprise and it’s an easy pick for most promising show of the season.

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [852]

“Well. I don't think this is the getaway boss-lady had in mind when she told us to pack our bags and get out,” Bull says, leaning against the car as they stare at the rather sinister looking cottage down the worn dirt path. “You think she actually wanted us to get killed? What did you do to make her that mad?”

“Bold of you to assume I’m the one who made her mad enough to send us to a literal murder set,” Ellana replies from inside the car.

“Are you coming out?”

“Of the closet? Every day of my life.”

“Out of the car, Lavellan. Out of the car.”

“I know you’ve only got the one eye, but the one should be good enough to see the definite murder site in front of us. No, I’m not getting out of the car.” Ellana, as if to strengthen her point, pointedly flicks the lock on her door. “You should be getting back into the car. Just standing there is painting a giant target on you. If you’re not coming back in give me the keys so I can get the hell away from here and live to tell your story of extreme stupidity.”

Bull crosses his arms, tilting his head little. “It looks like a fix-her-upper.”

“It looks like it needs to have its foundations ripped out and the entire area excavated for the shallow graves of missing persons.”

“Trevelyan booked this?” Bull asks. “Who arranged this?”

“Absolutely no idea. Whoever they are has a serious grudge or is seriously incompetent,” Ellana replies. “Evelyn said this was supposed to be a nice relaxing getaway. A nice holiday for us to celebrate being in each other’s company. I didn’t think she’d send us to get murdered so we could truly appreciate each other before we die.”

Bull sticks his arm in through the open driver side window and grasps for his phone. Ellana puts her hand in his.

“Cute, but I was going to text a picture of this in the group chat and bring shame on them.”

Ellana threads her fingers through his, leaning over to kiss the back of his hand.

“Babe.”

“Oh fuck,” Bull tries to pull his hand back. “You only call me babe when you want to start shit. We’re supposed to be on vacation.”

“Babe. Listen.”

“I’m listening. Not happy about it. But I’m listening.”

“I am in possession of one idea.”

“Shoot.”

“What if — “

“I meant shoot the idea. Or me. Both.”

“What if,” Ellana says, squeezing Bull’s hand in hrs. “What if we just don’t tell them.”

Bull turns away from the possibly haunted cottage that’s missing half its window panes and look at her.

“Don’t tell them what?”

Ellana jerks her chin in the direction of the decrepit looking structure. “We don’t tell them about it. Any of it.”

Bull narrows his eye, turning to fully face her, squeezing her hand back.

“Go on.”

“We’re not staying here, obviously.” Ellana’s eyes sparkle with mirth and excitement. “We go find a motel or something nearby. Chill there. Do our real vacation stuff relaxing, eating terrible food, doing hikes or whatever. But every day we come back here and pretend like this is where we’re staying. We don’t send any of those pictures back to the others. Just the ones of us on hikes and stuff. The super generic pictures you’d see on a really boring and typically social media profile.”

“I’m following so far.”

“We stage a few photos of us in the cottage as if we were actually staying there for real. Changes of clothes, drinking coffee in the window, the works. And when we get back that’s when we show those photos. I figure we’ve both got enough cash on us that we can keep the motel expenses off of our cards. If not we do micro-transactions at various ATM’s. No one would suspect anything. They would legit think we spent our two week vacation in a horror movie set.”

Bull looks into Ellana’s excited eyes.

“You are everything I could ever want in another person,” he sighs, sounding a little resigned and a lot happy. He gives her a crooked grin as he swings their hands a little. “We obviously aren’t going to acknowledge that this place is busted up and fucked up when they point it out, right?”

“Obviously not. Gods, no. In our eyes this is an average, decent vacation home that does its job of providing four walls, a roof, and a place to unwind.” Ellana replies. “It’s plain, kind of bland, pretty standard stuff. But there’s nothing wrong with it. Maybe a little overpriced. But it’s perfectly fine.”

Bull pulls his hand free and opens the car door, climbing in. “Okay, let’s head back. We’ll find a place and plan. Also we need to look up actual shit to do in the area.”

“I’ll get on that as soon as we’re out of line of sight from…that,” Ellana gestures at the cottage. “I don’t think I need to say this, but — we’re doing the fake photos in one day. I’m not going to be here longer than necessary.”

“Right. Let’s get that out of the way tomorrow. We’ll come early so we can get some shots at different times of day. Three or four changes of clothes should do it.”

“Two or three, we can just swap tops. It’s not like they expect us to be wearing something different every day. We aren’t doing laundry on our vacation.”

“We are definitely doing laundry on our vacation, I’m not carrying back any bad vibes bullshit. Or. Evidence.”

“Yeah, but no one else has to know that.” Ellana reaches across him and takes a picture of the house. “First contact. Day one. This’ll teach Evelyn to force us to go on vacation. Ha. Peace of mind my butt. For whom exactly? Let’s see how she likes seeing this piece of my mind at work.”

[fapangel]

Hey Planefag, I've been considering getting a gun for a while now, and one I keep coming back to is the CZ Scorpion EVO 3 S1 Carbine. I've always found myself more comfortable with rifles over handguns, though that might just be because I've actually shot rifles before and never handled a handgun that wasn't a dinky .22 single action revolver my dad found in my grandparents basement. What's your thoughts on this gun? Is it too much for a first time gun owner? Thanks.

NICE CHOICE MY BROTHER! 

Among the under-appreciated and unsung heroes of firearms engineering and manufacture, CZ firearms and their fantastic Czechnology™ are king. CZ has a long lineage (they’re responsible for the famous CZ.61 Skorpion submachine gun/machine pistol, which the EVO 3 carbine is named after,) and they make a wide variety of firearms, from their immensely popular CZ 75 double-stack 9mm pistols to hunting rifles that are beloved by hunters across Europe. 

As for the CZ Scorpion EVO 3 itself, you’re best served by watching some youtube reviews on the gun; as always Hickock 45 is a good place to start. He always has good feedback on how the gun actually handles and feels when you shoot it; as evidenced by his videos always featuring him having a blast knocking down steel in his backyard. But as far as this general kind of firearm as a first-time buy goes? I can say this is an EXCELLENT firearm for a first-time owner!

Carbines chambered in pistol calibers, such as 9mm, .45 ACP, etc. are commonly known (unsurprisingly) as “pistol caliber carbines.” Debates have raged over their “tactical usefulness” or home-defense utility versus other options, but what is hands-down incontestable is that they are tremendously fun guns. Handguns make a lot of trade-offs to get their small, portable size; both in accuracy and stability (due to lacking a stock) and in power (since they use significantly smaller, weaker cartridges than a rifle.) When you take a handgun cartridge designed to have manageable recoil in a handgun, and put it in a lightweight rifle, you get a firearm with almost no notable recoil, much greater accuracy (since you’ve got a much better platform that’s more stable due to the shoulder brace) and even generates more power (the longer barrel lets the gas from the gunpowder accelerate the bullet for a longer period of time and achieve higher velocities.) Carbines also have the benefits of dirt-cheap ammo (pistol ammo is cheaper than rifle ammo by a decent margin since it’s just smaller; compare and contrast over at ammoseek.com,) and they’re lightweight and handy compared to most normal-sized rifles. They have other applications too; they’re gaining popularity as a home-defense firearm (though people argue incessantly about other options being better, the simple fact is that these guns will work great for home defense if its the only one you own,) and then there’s hunting applications - I’ve actually been eyeballing a .45 ACP carbine for years because I’d like a “coyote gun;” something that can reach out and pop a coyote slinking around the property, but with a pistol cartridge that won’t ricochet off frozen ground or a rock and hit a neighbor’s house a mile distant. 

Ergo, a pistol-caliber carbine is a really, really fun gun, and is very forgiving for a first-time shooter. The only gun that could possibly be more forgiving is a .22 carbine, like a 10/22, which is also a fun target rifle with cheap ammo, but isn’t a reliable threat against anything bigger than a woodchuck and is hard to use past 50 yards or so due to the “rainbow” trajectory: 

5 inches of drop isn’t hard to compensate for; it’s more the rate of drop that makes things iffy. If your coyote pops up at 90 yards or 110 yards, your point-of-impact changes drastically. There’s also wind-drift; even a gentle breeze plays merry hell with that lightweight 40 grain bullet. 

9mm from a carbine shoots significantly flatter and further: (link or click the image to fullsize it and get rid of the damn blur:) 

So a 9mm carbine has most of the advantages a .22 plinker has, but with far greater practical utility as well. As the most common handgun round on Earth, 9mm is easy to buy and you can get plinking ammo dirt cheap. 

You’ll note that there’s competitors to the Scorpion EVO on the market in the 9mm blowback-operated carbine market; from the Sig MPX to the ugly, but perfectly functional and very affordable Hi-Point carbine. All these companies have legendary reputations (even Hi-Point, which has phenomenal customer service and after-sale support) so its hard to go wrong with any of them. 

My only complaints vis a vis pistol-caliber carbines is price. Yet another (theoretical) advantage of a pistol-caliber carbine is the ability to use a “simple blowback” method of operation; wherein the chamber is kept sealed until the gas pressure from the gunpowder drops to safe levels by nothing more than the intertial mass (i.e. weight) of the slide itself, after which the cartridge case itself being blown back by the equal and opposite reaction move the slide rearward and cycle the action (thus the name.) Most medium-caliber handguns above .380 ACP power or so use a fancier - and more expensive - locking-lug system to seal the breech because simple blowback would require too much weight in the slide and make the gun bulky. Hi-Point’s (in)famous pistols are so cheap because they use simple blowback even for normal-power pistol cartridges, which is why their guns look like a damn brick and have weight to match.

You know where that weight doesn’t matter, though? In a carbine! Simple blowback also has no moving barrel like the short recoil system most handguns use to cycle, so it’s also surprisingly accurate. But above all, simple blowback should be cheaper. 

And they ain’t. 

The Scopion Evo 3 is simple blowback and costs about a thousand bucks, retail. There’s multiple “entry-level” AR-15s on the market right now, chambered for an actual rifle cartridge, using a much more complex and expensive gas-operated recoil system... for about 600 dollars USD. That has never, ever not pissed me off, and has kept me from buying a PCC myself. The Hi-Point carbines are only 300 bucks or so, but they also look like a 300 dollar rifle - there’s no properly-priced “mid market” option for PCC’s and that just frosts my ass no end. 

But there’s good news! After years of bullshit, you can finally find 9mm AR-15 complete uppers for something approaching sane fucking prices. Check out the price drops over at Palmetto State Armory. (They mark ALL their stuff as “on sale” but typically not with $100+ price drops.) Everyone is lowering their prices because nobody’s fucking buying these at their previous rip-off bullshit pricing. And even better, the corona catastrophe hasn’t driven these prices up yet, and probably won’t for a while because, as you can see, these are for unassembled guns, not straight-off-the-shelf ones. 

Best of all, as far as AR-15s are concerned, “unassembled” basically means “you have to put the bottom part on the top part and pop two pins in with your thumb.” And that’s it. That’s quite literally it. It’s so damn easy I have no problem recommending it to a total newbie. What you do is, you buy a complete upper assembly (which means the factory guys screwed together the barrel and upper receiver for you and attached the wee flippy door and other stuff which is fiddly for you - they usually come with a bolt, too, but if they don’t that’s not hard to find separate and they just slide right in.) Then you go and find yourself a 9mm lower receiver; a complete one will look something like this. The lower receiver decides what kind of magazines you’ll use, and depending on compatibility with the upper may or may not have a working bolt hold-open interaction; you’ll have to do a little research to see if the combo you’re eyeballing works together. Fortunately there’s more than a few guides out there for this sort of thing, and you can also ask on forums like ar15.com to quickly get feedback from people with way too much disposable income who have actually built guns with the parts you’re looking at. This is all made a lot easier if you buy the upper and lower from the same company (they typically make sure their shit all works together, natch,) but even then research is prudent.

Or you could say “fuck it, I’ve got money” and buy the EVO 3, which wouldn’t be a bad choice either. Yes, you’ll be overpaying a bit, but at least the EVO 3 is nice, and has bells and whistles and things. And the other big advantage of an AR PCC build is also with the EVO 3 - a fairly strong aftermarket. For instance, if you think the EVO 3′s trigger is stiff, there’s already aftermarket options for it. There’s also handling to consider; find a Friendly Local Gun Store with the Scorpion in stock and pay them a visit and ask to hold the thing; then you can compare to pretty much any shorter-barreled AR-15 rifle on the wall and you’ll have a pretty good comparison. You can look up youtube reviews comparing the two all day, but nothing tells you what you’ll like better than actually holding it. The advantage the Scorpion EVO has is, unlike people making Le Generic AR-15 Pattern Parts, is the freedom to customize the weight, balance and overall useability ergonomics while still retaining modular features like the standard picatinny rails (the carbine you’re looking at even has integrated M-LOK attachment points in the handguard!) There’s a fucking reason this carbine is getting so much attention despite 9mm PCC’s being a Thing these days. The prices on 9mm AR uppers finally dropping is relatively new, but even with that, CZ is typically considered to be of a quality comparable to the upper end of those AR manufacturers, which also narrows the price difference.

I know that’s a lot of ~words~ to fling at a newbie who’s highly unlikely to dive into the pain-in-the-ass journey of researching 9mm PCC parts, but I wanted you to know what your options were, and to start early in demystifying the ~building a GUN~ process; as with a completed upper it’s mostly about popping together a few simple parts, screwing this thingajigger onto that, and then pressing some of those fucking roll pins in with a c-clamp from your workshop. Yes, skip the 20 dollar roll pin punch from Brownells (and the six dollars and two weeks shipping) and let The Internet show you all the dirty tricks to make shit even easier. The AR market is so inflated and AR’s so popular now that there’s people selling fifty dollar tools to help install one part in the lower, and exasperated guys on youtube showing you how to do it with a fucking banana. 

So. the TL:DR:

* A pistol-caliber carbine is a REALLY nice choice for a first time shooter; it’s handy and easy to use, wonderfully affordable and fun for target shooting, and can be used for real practical uses like small-game hunting or even home defense if you want. 

You have multiple options on the market right now for these, and if you want to save some money or want access to the most insanely populated aftermarket parts market, you can build a 9mm AR-15 pretty easily now, if you do your research first. 

With that said, the CZ Scorpion Evo 3 is selling well and is quite popular despite how crowded the market is right now, and there’s a reason for that - everyone says its a well put together gun, its from a company with a legendary reputation for quality and design, it has all the bells and whistles you’re going to want (ambidextrous features, picatinny rails and M-LOK forward handguard,) and it has a sizeable aftermarket of its own, allowing you significant customization options to build on a known solid core firearm. IT EVEN HAS AFFORDABLE MAGAZINES. Seriously their magazines are the same price as you know, normal magazines from normal companies; you’re not being forced to pay out the ass for proprietary mags, it’s just

You know what, nevermind what I said, buy the Evo 3. YOU’RE GONNA LOVE IT BRO 

[the-light-followed]

THE COLOUR OF MAGIC (1983) [DISC. #1; RINCEWIND #1]

Rating: 5/10

Standalone Okay: Yes

Read First: NO.

Discworld Books Masterpost: [x] 

* * * * * * * * * *

Ask any Discworld fan, and we’ll all pretty much universally agree that The Colour of Magic isn’t the pinnacle of the Discworld experience.  Nobody really recommends that new readers should start here, even if it is the first book in the series chronologically.  I’m pretty much a writing-order-equals-reading-order purist, for reasons best discussed elsewhere, and even I would absolutely never start people off with this one.  (I tend to go for Going Postal or Wee Free Men—again, for reasons best discussed elsewhere.)

It’s not Pratchett’s best work.  It’s not even his tenth best work.  If I have to rate it (and I do, because that’s kind of the point, here), compared to the rest of Discworld, it’s down at the bottom of my list.

It’s pretty damn good, though, for what it is.

For me, it’s a genuine joy to read the early Rincewind books. This is because, in my head at least, it makes total sense that everything involved in them is baffling and strange when compared to the settled absurdism you get from other Discworld novels.  Further into the series, it all feels a lot more comfortable and fleshed-out: yes, the things Pratchett writes about are often genuinely ridiculous, but usually the setting explains those things and packages them up neatly enough to make them acceptable. And the characters treat everything as perfectly normal, business as usual, so the reader is gently encouraged to do the same.  

Thinking about it, I would argue that a lot of the Discworld shenanigans aren’t all that different from a lot of the real-world nonsense that we all just accept as totally normal.  Discworld nonsense and our nonsense just come from different places. For us, it’s stuff like the fact that some cops still ride horses for absolutely no good reason, or that tipping is part of a server’s pay in an American restaurant, or that water is usually free but we all let movie theaters charge us like $5 for a bottle, and what’s that even about?  In the Discworld, the thieves and assassins have unionized, and if you slip up, it’s entirely possible to just fall right off the edge of the world.  It’s weird, and it’s not exactly fine, but it’s not about to kill us right this second, so we all just let it happen. We accept it.

This is not at all the case for our unwilling protagonist, the original Discworld hero-who-is-absolutely-not-a-hero, Rincewind. He’s scared of everything.  He is a genuine, bona fide coward.  Absolutely everything that happens leaves him baffled, terrified, and/or dismayed, and to tell the truth I unconditionally respect all of this about him, because most of the absolute bullshit nonsense going down around him is baffling, terrifying, and/or simply Not Good, and he and the reader have to learn to live with that together.

Over the course of this one novel, failed-wizard-slash-reluctant-guide Rincewind is:

Involved in burning down large parts of the city of Ankh-Morpork, because he left his friend unsupervised and the city really wasn’t ready for the invention of ‘insurance’ without the accompanying understanding of ‘insurance fraud.’

Chased, threatened, and variously menaced by a sentient suitcase known as the Luggage, which canonically has huge teeth, a mahogany tongue, hundreds of little legs, and an insatiable hunger for the flesh of its owner’s enemies.  Also, it does your laundry if you leave it inside. Isn’t that nice?

Forced into a duel by dragon riders, where he must fight upside-down while wearing boots that basically Velcro-attach their wearers to the ceiling.

Captured, imprisoned, and scheduled to be sacrificed to the anthropomorphic personification of Fate in exchange for success in a scientific endeavor—specifically, checking the biological sex of the giant turtle carrying the Discworld on its back through the universe.

Dropped over the Rimfall, the waterfall at the edge of the Disc, which in Roundworld terminology is something like tripping and falling off the surface of the Earth and flying into the abyss of space.

Repeatedly almost forced to speak one of the Eight Great Spells that created the universe, which will do…something, possibly catastrophic, when spoken.  No one knows exactly what it does.  Rincewind certainly doesn’t.  This spell attached itself parasitically to his brain years ago, and, in the meantime, has shoved all the other wizard-y type things he could have been doing right on out of there.

So, basically, he’s going through a lot.  And this list isn’t everything, just the bits I pulled out by opening my book at random spots and reading a couple of lines.  It kind of makes sense, in my opinion, that things feel a little topsy-turvy.  Shit’s wild.

On top of that, I’d also argue that Pratchett is playing pretty fast and loose with plot and story structure in this book.  It can feel sloppy at times, more like a bunch of little vignettes that have been strung together than a single, coherent storyline. The plot loosely wobbles along the tightrope strung between Rincewind’s uncanny luck, good and bad, and cheerfully-blockheaded-tourist Twoflower’s unstoppable ability to trample through the middle of every single situation that could possibly try to kill him.  Very bad things happen, but somehow, they miraculously fail to die, and so Rincewind is still stuck shepherding Twoflower along through the next incident of someone or something trying to brutally murder them both.  There’s no real greater plot or driving need, just Twoflower with his little camera, wanting to take pictures of every beautiful and dangerous part of the Disc.

If a rabid wolf the size of a bus came up and tried to eat him, Twoflower would take pictures of the inside of its mouth and say, “Oh, wow, I’ve never seen teeth that big before!  Rincewind, won’t you take a picture of me with this magnificent beast?”  And Rincewind wouldn’t answer, because he’d be half a mile away already and still moving fast, with nothing but a cartoon cloud of dust left behind to mark where he’d been.

[Here’s the boys, Rincewind and Twoflower, just doing their best.  From the BBC two-part miniseries called The Colour of Magic, which actually spans the plot of both The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. Yes, that is Samwise Gamgee playing Twoflower, and yes, I did get distracted by that a lot while watching. Twoflower has all of Sam’s earnest faith and absolutely none of his common sense.]

Fun!

The whole thing actually is pretty fun, though.  It’s witty.  It’s got something to say, even if that something is just “hey, aren’t all these identical High Fantasy Adventure books all overdramatic and ridiculous in the exact same ways?”  Pratchett is writing this book as one massive joke he’s telling about the genre, the tropes, and the archetypes, and he does a pretty decent job even by today’s cultural standards, let alone the standards of 1983.  Chances are that any point he’s making here in The Colour of Magic is something he’s going to make again, better, in a later book, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the seeds of something here.

As a main example, I’ll point out Liessa Dragonlady, who has arguably the biggest role in one of the major conflicts of this book.  Liessa is initially presented as the quintessential High Fantasy barbarian warrior lady, which would typically be more about sex appeal than any actual skill—except that Liessa is actually highly intelligent, 110% more talented and qualified as a leader and warrior than her brothers or literally anyone on the protagonists’ team, and is aware the whole time that she’s struggling against the patriarchy and her society (and the tropes) in trying to take what should be her rightful place as leader of the Wyrmberg.  The sexism exists in the Discworld, not in the writing.

[Liessa from the BBC’s The Colour of Magic, wearing—no joke—a crop top armor chest piece.  Actually, I think it’s technically a bikini, based on the bottom half of the armor.  Or should I say the lack thereof?  Classic.]

Liessa is a decent example of Pratchett’s ability to look at the tropes and the reader’s expectations, and then go and take his writing somewhere else.  But even so, I’d absolutely point to Monstrous Regiment or even Equal Rites first for anyone wanting to read a really solid exploration of femininity and what it means to be a woman in a traditionally ‘masculine’ field.  Or I’d suggest just about any book starring the senior witches or Tiffany Aching for examples of well-rounded female characters that demand respect in a world specifically designed to not want to give it to them.

But that’s just one example.  The Colour of Magic has the seeds of quite a few really good ideas that Pratchett will explore in more depth later on.

I think those seeds are part of what makes The Colour of Magic worth a read at some point, even if it’s never going to be anyone’s favorite Discworld book.  I love seeing the foundations of Future-Discworld, that settled absurdism I was talking about earlier, in this.  We’ve got our proto-Vetinari, long before he had a name, being generically threatening and Machiavellian and as close to ‘cackling evil overlord’ as it’s possible to get without actually cackling, or at least without some sort of thunderstorm rumbling in the background.  Ankh-Morpork is a wonderfully scum-filled cesspit of depravity and immorality.  There’s no effective City Watch to kick things into a rickety and leaking approximation of ship-shape, so it’s probably a good thing that the river Ankh is so thick with pollution that you don’t need a ship to cross it—you can just walk.

There’s even some early conceptualization of Pratchett’s special brand of everyday magic, the kind that will show up over and over again in the Discworld: the idea that even with a reality full of gods and wizards and hyper-powerful, monstrous things, there’s still a lot of power in everyday, ordinary people.

Pratchett is all about belief.  He preaches the importance of the self, in terms of making reality into the place we think it should be.  In Pratchett’s world, the things we believe in matter, and not just in a philosophical sense.  Belief is a real, tangible form of magic—in this book, specifically, Twoflower manages to summon an entire dragon out of nothing, just because he believes strongly enough that dragons should exist the way he’s always dreamed them to be.  In later books, sheer belief and willpower are shown to create and fuel gods and spirits, to contain quasi-demonic entities of vengeance and darkness, and to form the backbone of every other more ‘traditional’ type of magic.  

It’s nice to see the early forms of it here.  I’m not going to get too into it, because it’s going to show up a lot in later books in more significant ways (I’m thinking Hogfather, Small Gods, and even Pyramids) and I don’t want to beat that horse to death just yet, but it’s one of the foundation stones of the Discworld.  It’s somehow comforting to know that it’s been here since the very beginning.

It’s also funny as hell to see the stuff that Pratchett will eventually change, soften, or drop entirely as he settles into the way the Discworld will work.  Did you know there are eight seasons on the Discworld?  And that in my 1985 edition of the book, the footnote where he explains these eight seasons takes up the bottom half of two entire pages?

That’s one single footnote there.  The first ever footnote, even, and it’s almost a full page long and utterly ridiculous.  It’s incredible, and I love it a lot.  I also love that almost none of the details here are ever mentioned again, and if they are, it’s never in a significant or memorable way—and Pratchett certainly doesn’t waste a whole page on any of them ever again.  Well, except for Hogswatch, because Pratchett knows when he’s got a real winner.  It might have taken him thirteen years, but he wrote a whole damn book about it, and we all can agree that Hogfather is a joy and a delight.

Not so much “Autumn Prime,” “Crueltide,” “Winter Secundus,” and blah blah blah etcetera whatever.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I forgot them while I was literally still in the middle of reading them.  And what the hell is “Reforgule of Krull”?  No clue. It’s total nonsense, never seen again, and I think we can all agree we are fine with this.  

On second thought, I think Pratchett does end up using Hubward and Rimward pretty regularly as directions.  But without this info-dump, when reading other books, I think that even I figured out how “Hubward” and “Rimward” work on a flat plate of a world with a Hub in the center and a Rim along the outside.  And I am so bad with maps and directions that I literally get confused trying to give people directions to the parking lot outside my work.

I’m no good at wrapping these things up, so I’m ending this post the same way that Pratchett ends the book: with Rincewind abruptly falling off the edge of the Disc.

[Originally, I was going to go hunt down some fanart or something, but I don’t have permission to use any of that, so instead you get my doodles off the scrap paper I steal from work.  Luckily for everyone, I’m an artistic genius.  The dot representing Rincewind obviously isn’t to scale, since one human person would be much smaller than that, but if it represents the size of his body and the size of his scream, then it’s basically accurate.]

* * * * * * * * * *

Side Notes:

Rincewind’s insane luck, good and bad, is because he’s a favorite of the goddess referred to only as ‘the Lady,’ since invoking her true name means she has to leave.  She’s the anthropomorphic personification of Luck itself, and she’s the reason Rincewind always survives whatever terrible situation he finds himself in—but also the reason he’s stuck in that situation in the first place.  

Everything that goes wrong, and the dramatic escape that inevitably follows, is because the Lady likes to play dice games with Fate, using normal people on the Disc as game pieces.  

Rincewind, it turns out, is the human equivalent of her favorite Monopoly token. (The iron, maybe?  It has the same sort of Looney Tunes cartoon-anvil vibe as Rincewind’s whole, well, everything.)

Death as a character makes his first appearance in The Colour of Magic.  However, here it’s implied he actually is involved somehow in the killing process, and his role can be filled in by apparently random low-level demons on their days off, whereas later books make it clear he just collects and shepherds the dead onward, and actually the issue of his replacement is a big deal, cosmically speaking.  

Pratchett sort of avoids this issue by claiming that Rincewind’s life timer is so complicated and convoluted (because of all the weird accidents and magical incidents) that Death just can’t tell when he’s actually supposed to die.  

I guess Death shows up every time it looks like Rincewind might kick the bucket, just in case?  And in that case, all the threatening stuff he says to Rincewind in these early books must be because he’s so irritated that he has to keep coming out for no reason, only to find that Rincewind has, once again, managed to survive.  And maybe the low-level demon showing up instead was just, uh, Death trying to scare him into actually beefing it, this time…?

Although the Unseen University Librarian exists and is human for the entirety of this book and only this book, he does not appear at any point.  He’s briefly referenced—or, at least, a librarian is referenced, but this is referring back when Rincewind was young and read the grimoire that left one of the Eight Great Spells parasitically attached to his mind.  There’s no guarantee it’s the same librarian, and based on the turnover (read: murder) rate of University wizards at the time, I don’t think it’s likely that anyone managed to hold onto their job that long.  On Google, I did find a thing where someone cut together some shots of him in human form from The Colour of Magic BBC show, so that’s pretty fun:

Once he’s changed into an orangutan in The Light Fantastic, he’s described as still looking a bit like the human Librarian: with that beard and hair combo, I think they nailed it.

* * * * * * * * * *

Favorite Quotes:

“Inn-sewer-ants-polly-sea.”

“She was the Goddess Who Must Not Be Named; those who sought her never found her, yet she was known to come to the aid of those in greatest need. And, then again, sometimes she didn’t. She was like that.”

“It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists’ houses and smashing their windows.”

“Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.”

“‘I’m sure you won’t dream of trying to escape from your obligations by fleeing the city…’ ‘I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord.’  ‘Indeed? Then if I were you I’d sue my face for slander.’”

“It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself.  But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.”

[prorevenge]

Psycho Ex gets my egoless revenge with a side of heavy-duty karma.

The following story occurred over the course of 13-8 years ago, and I apologize preemptively for the length, because it is a bit involved.

I was in a relationship for 9 years with a girl I met in college. We broke up on the cusp of my 29th birthday. While breakups and divorce are never trauma-free, this one was as close to that as I believe is humanly possible to get, there were no fights and minimal drama, and I moved to a new city to get a fresh start and be nearer my dad/stepmom/half sisters, as I'm close to them and it was nice to have family during this. Get an apartment, start over, everything's good. Then I meet "her."

Things with her seemed good at first. She was the polar opposite of my ex. She's quiet yet nice, had her life relatively together (my first wife was very unfocused and horrible with money), physically a complete contrast, wild in the bedroom--I thought I had hit the jackpot.

Anyhoo, I fall for her hard. We have a whirlwind romance, move in shortly, and we have this glamorous life where we make good money (she was a corporate accountant, I had a decent small business, we're pulling in 150K+ combined), renting a luxury apartment, one car paid and the other brand new, no kids. Things are great, except that we drink too much together and some other underlying issues I'm blind to at the time. We get soused one night and drive to Vegas, and get married on the strip after 6 months of dating and 9 of knowing each other. The ink is barely dry on my divorce papers from version 1.0, but no matter, I'm in love. My family likes her overall. Her family loves me. We adopt cats. We talk about trying to have a kid.

We upgrade our life and take on more debt, just as the housing bubble bursts and the economy tanks, she loses a couple jobs due to her inability to show up on Mondays, and I start losing clients as the ones I have start cutting their advertising budget (my field). Things start to get pinched, and she first starts complaining, then gets petulant, because now we can't spend the way we used to, the quarterly mini-vacations dry up, plus we're cooking at home instead of going out to eat 4x a week. We basically stop having sex a little more than a year into the relationship (didn't realize it then, because I was dumb and love-blind, but she cheated on me during this period).seRealizing what we're up against with our normal bills plus our credit cards, I go out and get a job bartending at a posh resort, the only other real skill I have at the time that's marketable. I get two other part time gigs to help make ends meet. She still complains, and throws me an ultimatum before I even start getting paychecks, laying the blame at my feet. I say fine, screw this then. Had we stuck it out even a few more months, things would have started to turn a financial corner. Instead, she goes full two-faced, mean-spirited bitch on me. The night we first fight, she "attempts suicide" by scratching her wrist with a leatherman, then calls 911, gets admitted to the hospital (I arrive home to cops telling me this), and has the security guard toss me when I show up to see if she's okay because she doesn't want to talk to me. I use the quotes because there was a small collection of firearms nearby I bought for her target shooting hobby which were untouched, so it was obviously just a ploy for attention.

We basically fight for the next week, I give her everything she wants, which includes leaving the house, signing over my new truck to her, and only taking stuff I brought into the relationship, basically enough to fill a small storage space. She's financially pinched so I sell my office furniture for cash and don't even touch the bank account, just take my biz money and one CC I got separate from her. I go to the Bay Area for a few months, financially struggle, don't get the job I was sure was on lock. During this time, I have this revelation one evening--I drink too much and that it's caused a load of problems in my life, so I quit, and I haven't touched a drop since.

Broke and realizing nothing I try is working, I come back to town, live with my dad for a month, find a roommate, then a shit retail job (my business has dropped from 7-8K per month at its height to now around 500/mo), I bike everywhere bc I can't afford a car, and my credit is toast partially due to her love of spending on plastic, so I'm facing bankruptcy. I'm 31, and this is really humbling, but whatever, I'm alive, have dealt with hardship before, this won't last forever. She has kept her house, declared personal BK on her debts, keeps her car, and has been dating a series of men starting a couple weeks after we split. While I never asked the details, apparently she's also reached out to a few of my friends and badmouthed me a bit. This would be mildly annoying, but add in two factors--she's dragging her feet on the divorce due to not having money to file, keeps up contact on the pretense of us needing to talk, but plays emotionally manipulative head games during the whole sequence ("I've realized I still love you, that's why you can make me cry so easily," and other bullshit Hallmark movie lines like this). Also, we live in a suburb that's smaller and tightly knit, so multiple places I go to like my church, the bookstore I frequent, and the coffee shop right by my place, she talks endless shit to people. Says I was a cheater and physically/emotionally abusive (complete crap, but whatever), I'm stalking her, I supposedly stole tens of thousands of dollars from her, the whole nine. Some people actually believe her, I even get threatened by a wannabe biker one night that's literally twice my age with violence, itself a funny story but not the point.

Finally, after some more bullshit and back and forth, she leaves town (more falsehoods around this, including her borrowing a bit of money she didn't end up paying back, and sticking me with a massive overage on our cell bill right before we split the account). My dumb, trusting heart hurts but I'm mostly relieved to see the last of her, realizing she's only nice to me when she wants something. She goes to NY to shack up with another guy, gets pregnant 15 minutes later. Finally sends me divorce paperwork. I sign it and send back quickly, all notarized docs, everything organized and flagged. She attempts to be "friends" and I want no part of this BS. I'm businesslike, she gets upset. She screws up filing, blames me. I say "whatever," straighten out the court issues. One week after the divorce is finalized, the kid is born. No word from her after that for two years, thank god. I get a new career, start advancing in it, and start dating a new woman that I'm still with 10 years later. Weirdly enough, they knew each other, and she didn't like her, partially because one of my ex's infidelity partners was her ex-husband, during a time they were exploring patching things up for the kids' sake (though there were multiple reasons for her distrust, apparently she always gave my wife an icky intuitive feeling).

So flash forward two years. I get a call from my current squeeze. She's just talked to a friend who was also a very brief roomie of "her" after our split. She's breaking up with the baby daddy. There's a custody fight. He's saying he doesn't know if it's his. Will I help her? Well, it's the right thing to do, so even though I don't trust or particularly like her, I say yes. I get the call, and a sob story. Most of it doesn't add up--he took the kid, but thinks it's actually mine, to prove paternity I'd need to come to NY and take a paternity test at one of their facilities, also he hit her, put a GPS tracker on her car, brother is a Russian mobster who threatened her, all very far-fetched. Needless to say, even without this fanciful tale, I generally assume if this woman is talking, it's a lie, so I'm suspicious. Her lawyer calls me, and seems like a clueless shmuck. I get a letter from him, very unprofessional and not even on a letterhead (every other legal doc I've seen has "from the law offices of blah blah" on it, but this is literally just off a laser printer), and says, verbatim "I, M___ K___, am the ex-husband of J___ K___, and was married to her from 6/07-8/09. I have no legal interest in the child." Super shady.

Not wanting to end up in a situation where I've allowed myself to be legally fucked over, I make my own lawyer consultation appointment. Before I can even go, the baby daddy finds me on Facebook and sends me a message. Between calls with him, his lawyer, and the impartial lawyer NY state appoints for the child's welfare, I get a very different story. He knows it's his, he had a paternity test done on the sly at birth because she had been promiscuous before they got together, and she was pregnant so quickly he was concerned. They broke up because she was drinking too much, he busted her with a bottle of vodka as she was driving with the kid in the car. She stood up in court, claimed I was actually the father, and she had no idea where to find me (he found me in 10 seconds online, I'm a tech guy with massive social media presence, a tech blog, multiple writing credits on publications, my frigging name as a domain, plus I've had the same cell phone number for 14 years). Also the other BS was just that, he's an IT guy for a university and his brother works for a carpet cleaning chain, plus just like in our relationship, he never hit or stalked her, etc.

So she, not knowing what I know, starts sending me text messages. I say "Filled out and on its way back to your lawyer," and toss it in the trash. I'm so tempted to send her some poetic message about how the truth is coming back to haunt her, but I resist, because I'm not doing this for her, but rather for the sake of their son and his father, so let's keep my ego out of it. I provide legal statements to all in the court. Tell them I know it's not possibly mine because I hadn't been with her since April 15 of '08, kid's birthday is in Sept of '09 (I remember the date because, due to taxes, I got fucked twice that day). Explain when she was in NY, which is the likely dates of conception, prove I was thousands of miles away on the west coast. Tell them to look through her social media, where she meticulously tagged herself and took tons of pictures of even their mundane locations. Provide a blood sample to a local lab. Tell them salacious details about her drinking and occasional drug use, including her abused prescriptions and a previous hospitalization where she was held for psych eval due to taking way too many pills.

Court comes, and she gets blindsided. Stack of depositions and a collection of statements from me were what sealed the deal, apparently, and the incredibly stupid game she was running is fully exposed. Gets no custody, no support, supervised visitation once a week. I run into her ex-roomie, upset, but instead of giving her attitude, I just calmly tell her the scam J__ was running, then let her "pull out of me" the truth about our split. She's flabbergasted, but also a horrible gossip, so it gets around town like wildfire. People I barely know, including the aforementioned biker, all come up to me and apologize for misjudging me. I'm years past the stage of having any morbid curiosity to check her social media, but every few months she pops up as a "suggested friend," and I notice bemusedly the number of mutual friends plummets from triple digits to eventually 3. Baby's father sends me a massive Amex gift card for Christmas, as much as I make in a week at the time. I call and tell him I don't know if I can accept it, I don't want him or anyone to think I did this for a reward. He virtually begs, saying "you helped save my family. This is nothing in comparison. Thank you." We break down crying on the phone, and eventually form an odd, distant friendship based on mutual respect for each other. I even had dinner with him a couple times when I had to go to NY for biz over the years, and I always buy, because the poor guy has done enough and gone through enough having to coparent with this train wreck.

To this day, she's apparently struggling to stay sober (alcohol and other substances), and has minimal involvement in her child's life due to her inability to show up when expected. Baby daddy tells me she's been in legal trouble, financial issues up the ass, and a string of boyfriends that never last more than a few months. I'm doing well, got married again three years ago, raised step-children, am reasonably financially successful, and rather like my life. Granted, a large part of this story is just karma in action, but I feel like I did the right thing, wasn't petty, and what I did do hit her where it hurts.

TL;DR: Ex-wife fucks my life, destroys me financially, tries to trash my reputation, then tries to use me as a scheme in her custody battle years later. I talk to the court directly, work with the baby daddy's lawyers, and get her exposed for the psycho, lying wench she is. She loses custody, struggles, and the good people live mostly happily ever after.

(source) (story by heymomo7)

[the-observant-frisbeetarian]

Chapter 11

The Tiger and the Dragon by George deValier

Chapter saved by fluffchemy ♥

Yao shut his door behind him, raced down the stairs, and nearly ran into Francis, Arthur and Alfred in the entranceway. He couldn't stop. If he stopped, he would start to think. He gave them a brief wave and tried to step around them, but was forced to a halt by Alfred's grip on his arm.

"Hey, Yao! Where are you going?"

"I am going to Ivan's and I am going to have sex," said Yao determinedly. Not thinking about it, not thinking about it…

Alfred's eyebrows shot up to his hairline. There was a silent pause as he turned and gave Arthur and Francis an incredulous look. Francis whistled. "Nice."

"Are you drunk?" asked Arthur uncertainly.

"Not yet. Excuse me." Yao again tried to walk past, and again Alfred held him back.

"Oh no, not before you explain yourself. And have you forgotten?" Alfred held up a large paper bag and shook it before Yao's face. "It's takeout night."

"Sorry, gotta rush…"

"You can't spare half an hour to eat?" asked Arthur.

"Yeah, apparently you are going to need your strength," laughed Francis.

"No because if I don't go immediately I might actually stop to think about this and then I'll probably freak out and then I may just never go at all so please move out of my way before I oh God, too late, now I'm thinking about it, aru." Yao closed his eyes and felt himself turn bright red. Oh God I said that out loud earlier didn't I…

"Yao," said Francis.

"Yes?" Yao refused to open his eyes.

"How are you even getting there?"

"I, um…" Yao opened his eyes to see his three friends staring at him as though he had gone mad. "I didn't think that far ahead."

"Okay," said Arthur. "Take a deep breath, turn your brain back on, and come have a burger."

"I don't think so, I really better, aru, leave, because now I'm actually a bit embarrassed and…" Yao broke off when Arthur grasped his other arm and, along with Alfred, hauled him into their apartment. "Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"That's it, we're staging an intervention," said Alfred, not releasing Yao until they threw him onto the couch. Yao groaned loudly.

"I've had enough of these."

"We're only doing this because we care about you. You have to admit you have a problem, it's the only way we can help you!"

"Alfred, what are you on about?"

"Ignore him, he's been watching too much Dr Phil," said Arthur.

"But he has a point, chéri," said Francis. "You have been late for work three times this week. And that's not counting the times you just haven't shown up. I am happy you're happy but really, Yao, this is taking over your life."

"You're not even like yourself anymore," added Arthur.

Yao narrowed his eyes in annoyance. "You mean I'm not boring and predictable? You were the ones who said…"

Arthur interrupted him. "We never said you could completely ignore us and we definitely never said you should start acting like a stupid teenager without a brain in his head." All three of them stood looking down at him. Yao felt like a naughty child being scolded. It was incredibly irritating.

"Please stop treating me like a child."

"Well then, stop acting like one."

"Would you rather me act like an 'old man' again? I know you're used to me always dropping everything for you guys, or rather having nothing to drop in the first place, but I have a boyfriend now, or, well, something along those lines, and…"

"That's great but that doesn't mean you can forget about everything else in your life. Now sit down, shut up, and have a burger." Yao caught the burger Alfred threw him then took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

"So," said Francis, dropping onto the couch beside him and grabbing a handful of fries. "You are going to Ivan's to… what was it?" Yao cringed in embarrassment. He really needed to think before he spoke sometimes.

The weekly takeout night was a tradition Alfred had introduced shortly after they had first moved in. One night a week Francis and Yao suppressed their culinary distaste and forced down greasy burgers and fries from one of the hideous fast food outlets that Alfred loved so much. Arthur didn't seem to mind, but he seemed to be able to eat anything. It was an opportunity to catch up and generally hang out… sometimes the only chance they got in their busy schedules. As he listened to Arthur discuss his thesis, Francis relate all the latest gossip from work, and Alfred recount all the heroic things he'd done that week at work - including rescuing an injured squirrel from a tree - Yao realized that he really had been sort of neglecting his friends. It was good to just sit and listen to them banter on again. But of course, after his earlier outburst, the conversation had quickly swung around to Ivan.

Yao already regretted the meal. Empty paper wrappers littered the coffee table and a faintly greasy smell hung in the air. Alfred lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling and rubbing his stomach mournfully. Five burgers was a lot even for him. Arthur sat on the floor, leaning on the coffee table and steadily adding scotch to a paper takeaway cup of coke while Francis drank Arthur's halfway decent wine out of a coffee mug. "So just how far have you gone, anyway?" asked Francis.

Yao paused, chewed on a nail, looked at his friends expectant faces, and wondered if discussing his concerns with his best friends was really a good idea. However, since Ivan had mentioned it, sex had become Yao's obsession. It was practically all he thought about, much to the detriment of his work and friendships, and much to his own amazement. When Ivan had rung earlier and suggested Yao come over, he had been out the door before he had any time to think.

"Well," said Yao, wondering how to answer Francis's question, "the thing is… aru… Ivan has the biggest… um… er…"

"Cock," said Francis gleefully. Alfred snickered and Arthur rolled his eyes.

"Thank you, Francis… that I have ever seen. And before you say anything smartassed, I have seen a few, because last month I spent a night with Kiku and Feliciano watching Ludwig's porn collection." A contemplative silence followed.

"Huh," said Alfred finally. "You're a braver man than I."

"What was it like?" asked Arthur, leaning forward with a look of horror on his face.

"There are certain images that will forever haunt my darkest hours, but that's not the point here, is it. We're talking about Ivan's… um…"

"Enormous cock." This time Alfred burst into a fit of giggles and Arthur kicked him.

"Thank you, Francis." Yao could not quite believe he was having this conversation.

"Lucky you, I say," said Francis.

"No, you don't understand. It's really quite..." Yao could not bring himself to continue the sentence. He really could not believe he was having this conversation.

"I stand by my statement. And I don't want to say I told you so, but…"

Yao interrupted quickly. "What am I supposed to do?" He couldn't help feeling embarrassed at the question. He felt like the only 21 year old virgin in the world.

"You've seen Ludwig's porn and you still need to ask that question?" asked Arthur.

Yao glared at him. "You know what I mean."

"Just get completely smashed, old chap." Arthur raised his cup and took a deep swig as though to demonstrate.

Yao rolled his eyes. "That's your answer to everything."

"Why don't you just fuck him, then?" asked Arthur.

"Um… I get the feeling that's not an option." Yao cringed in embarrassment. I am not having this conversation. I am too mature for this conversation. 

"I'll get you a can of mace," said Alfred. So far he had not contributed much to the conversation except to offer Yao defense options. "I don't trust that commy bastard. I reckon he's an undercover KGB agent." Yao stared at Alfred incredulously. And only the other day he had been so close to the actual answer.

Francis shrugged and reached for more wine. "I don't know what your problem is. Isn't this a good thing?" When Yao raised an eyebrow skeptically, he sighed and continued. "Look, just relax and tell him to go slow. I must say that I'm really not surprised, especially after he texted me the length of his ring finger."

Yao wasn't sure he had heard that correctly. "He texted you?"

Francis nodded around a mouthful of wine. "Yes, he did say he would let me know, remember?"

Yao wasn't even all that surprised in the end. "What is all this about the freaking ring finger anyway?"

"You know. The length of your ring finger is a direct percentage to the size of your…"

"Oh that is such bullshit," interrupted Yao. Although Ivan does have very big hands… He looked down to find Arthur and Alfred staring at their hands.

"Hey Arthur, compare." Alfred grabbed Arthur's hand and tried to hold it against his own.

"Bugger off!" cried Arthur, pulling away.

"Hey, Yao, you should ask Arthur for advice," grinned Alfred.

Yao shook his head. Sometimes he really did not know why he hung around with these people. "And why is that?"

Alfred waved his hand at Yao. "Baby, have you seen the size of this ring finger?"

Yao covered his face with his hands. He was too mature for this conversation... but he also couldn't help laughing. "I knew I never should have brought this up."

.

Yao stood at Ivan's front door clutching his bag to his chest. It contained a bottle of rum, a can of mace, and a packet of strawberry flavored double extra large condoms. The only thing Yao had packed himself was his toothbrush. He had only realized halfway to Ivan's that he had left his lucky Buddha in his work pants, and so was feeling distinctly nervous. This would be his first time seeing Ivan without it. He glanced uneasily over at a black limousine parked in the driveway, its driver leaning against the car and staring curiously back at him. Yao had left Francis' car at the front gate. He hoped it would be safe... it had taken him an hour to convince Francis to let him borrow it. Yao took a deep breath to calm his nerves and rang the bell for the fourth time. What could possibly be taking so long... he'd been buzzed through the front gate only ten minutes earlier. He stared at the door and willed it to open. When it didn't, he hesitantly reached for the door handle and, finding it unlocked, he let himself into the opulent front entrance. He headed towards the living room but stopped at the sound of an unpleasantly familiar voice speaking. Yao shuddered at the cold and disturbing tone, yet edged closer to the living room entry to better hear the words.

"I do not think you are taking this as seriously as the situation warrants, Ivan. Someone is accessing incredibly sensitive information on our activities. This is what, the fourth attack on our online operations?"

"The fifth." That sounded like Eduard. Yao listened, holding his breath. He had heard them talking about something like this before, but had no idea exactly what they meant.

"Thank you, the fifth. If the names and details contained within these accessed files fall into certain hands, we may find ourselves in a very, very dangerous situation. You not least of all. There are certain clients who, if implicated with us, will be most upset. And must I even inform you of the risk of these details coming to the attention of the law?" Yao's eyes widened at that. He looked behind him at the door. Should he leave? Walk in as though he hadn't heard anything? He was growing increasingly nervous.

"Eduard is working to be finding the responsible person," said Ivan. Yao's chest leaped at his voice. "We know is someone close involved in the business. I assure you, once person is found, they will being disposed of." Yao's body went rigid and his fingers tightened around his bag strap. Disposed of… "So what, now, do you wish that I do?"

"I will tell you what I wish you to do. I wish you to narrow down a list of suspicious persons, and allow me to do what I do best. Get the information we need from them."

Ivan laughed. "Ah, General, you just wish to torture someone." Yao felt his stomach churn. He knew he should be backing up now, but could not make himself move. To know what sort of business Ivan was involved in was one thing. To hear him speak of it was something else entirely.

"Not at all. That is simply a pleasant additional benefit. Now let's have a little think about some suspicious persons, shall we? There is your sister, for one."

"Yes, Natalia could be suspicious. Do you think Natalia suspicious, Eduard?"

"Sir, I don't believe she would have the knowledge or the means," replied Eduard.

"Someone could be helping her." Winter's voice contained an accusation. Yao could feel sweat rising to his forehead.

"I assure you, Toris would never betray me. Would you, Toris?"

"Sir, I would die first."

"There you are, General. Toris would die first." Something about the way Ivan said it made Yao shudder. He tried to force himself to move. He couldn't. "Do you know, General," continued Ivan, "I think actually the one with most to gain from this information would be you. You agree?"

Winter laughed cruelly. "Oh I agree completely. But you know, Ivan, that I am not nearly so stupid as that. In fact, I have a little suspicion of my own. There is someone who I believe you may have reason to be wary of. Someone who came into your life recently. Very interesting timing, no?" Yao's breath caught in his lungs. Move, move, move...

It took Ivan a long moment to respond. When he did, his voice was far less cheerful. "Be careful, Winter."

"Perhaps it is he who should be careful. He is standing listening in the entrance right now."

The shock of fear that ran through Yao left him frozen still. He could feel a bead of sweat snaking down his temple. "Come in, Mr Wang!" Yao's eyes darted again to the door, but he knew it was too late. He forced his unsteady legs to move and carry him into the living room. Toris, Eduard and Raivis all leaned against the bar, their expressions a mixture of worry and surprise. Ivan sat rigidly on the couch. His eyebrows shot up and he looked genuinely shocked. Yao looked at him almost pleadingly. Please get me out of here...

"You did not tell me Yao had arrived, Toris."

"I swear I didn't know, sir. The gate should be locked, I was waiting until..."

"So it seems you invited the boy around again," interrupted Winter contemptuously. He leaned casually back in an armchair, a glass of vodka in his hand. Ivan stared at him warily.

"This is my house, Winter," he said, warningly.

"He should not be here."

Yao felt sick. This felt wrong. He didn't know if he should speak, or even what he would say. Why the hell hadn't he turned and left when he had the chance... General Winter stood abruptly and Ivan immediately did the same, his eyes not moving from Winter. Yao tried to edge closer to Ivan. Raivis started stammering.

"Maybe I… maybe I should show Yao through to the…"

Toris took a few steps forward. "I will see Mr Wang out immediately..."

"Still, this is not entirely an unfortunate incident," said Winter smoothly, ignoring them both. "I think perhaps I may take full advantage of this opportunity to test my little suspicion."

It all happened so quickly. Winter smiled, his eyes flashed, and then he advanced quickly on Yao. Yao dropped his bag, felt his chest constrict, and took a few frantic and clumsy steps backward until his back was against the wall. Ivan shouted and lunged but Winter was closer, and before Ivan could reach him he had his cold, iron hard hand wrapped around Yao's throat. Yao reflexively reached up to grasp Winter's wrist. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think.

"Stop where you are, Ivan, or I will snap this boy's neck like a twig."

Yao's head swam with a terror unlike anything he had ever felt before. It felt like his entire body was shutting down, leaving him numb except for the icy heat that spread across his skin and the painful cold iron that gripped his throat. He would have shouted but he barely had enough air to breathe.

"Winter, you hurt him, I swear your death will not be quick," growled Ivan.

Winter ignored him. "Tell me, Mr Wang. What interest do you have in Mr Braginski's operations?" He loosened his grip enough for Yao to speak. Yao gulped for breath.

"I don't know what you mean. I don't know anything. Ivan!" The hand closed on his throat again and Yao saw blackness flash before his eyes as Winter lifted him from the ground. Pain shot through his neck and down his spine.

"Please stop it!" cried Raivis frantically. From the corner of his eye Yao saw Ivan take another step forward.

"Step back, Braginski," said Winter threateningly. Yao tried to look at Ivan but could barely see through the fear clouding his head. "So am I to expect, Mr Wang, that you are simply interested in Ivan for his pleasant company? For his conversational skills? For nothing to do with his operations whatsoever?"

"Sir, please stop this. Mr Wang has nothing to do with the attack, there is no possible way..."

"I am asking the questions here, Eduard!" shouted Winter. "I will thank you all to shut up, calm down, and..." Winter was interrupted by a smooth, subtle clicking sound. Yao focused his sight enough to look past Winter's shoulders and see Toris holding a gun calmly to the back of the General's head.

"And I will thank you, General, to take your hand off Yao's throat and back off." Toris' words were slow and even. The room spun around Yao as he looked back slowly, tense, terrified, into Winter's eyes. They were dead. Cold, evil. Dead.

"Toris." Ivan's voice sounded like it was coming from far away. There was a shuffling in the corner of Yao's eye and then the butt of the gun smashed into Winter's skull. Yao fell heavily to the floor, relief mingling with terror, and forced himself to look up through the waves of darkness that pounded through his head. Ivan held the gun and was staring at Winter with the most terrifying expression Yao had ever seen. Yao barely noticed Raivis running over to crouch beside him but just watched, transfixed, motionless, as Ivan again slammed Winter with the gun, this time sending him crashing to the floor on his back. "This was stupid of you, General."

And then Yao saw it. What everyone meant when they said Ivan was terrifying. It was as though something had been unleashed - those violet eyes blazing, the normally serenely smiling lips twisted in a snarl, Ivan's very presence overwhelming the entire room. Everything had happened too fast, this brutal sudden violence when only moments earlier they had been sitting talking calmly over glasses of vodka. It was utterly surreal. Ivan cocked the gun, pointed it at the ground, and Yao clapped a hand to his mouth to keep from screaming when Ivan shot a deafening bullet into the ground only inches from Winter's head. "Do you hear me, Winter? Very, very stupid."

Ivan slammed his boot into Winter's ribs, an audible crack filling the room. He kicked Winter over, face down, before swiftly kneeling, grabbing him by the hair, and ripping his head back. He growled a few words in Russian then smashed Winter's face into the floor. Yao's stomach tightened as bile rose in his throat. Raivis was speaking to him but he could not understand the words. Again Ivan wrenched Winter's head back and shouted. The carpet was already stained with blood. Winter just laughed and spat a few words. Ivan's laugh in response was even more frightening than the previous violence. Yao didn't want to know what the men were saying. When Ivan pounded Winter's head into the ground again, he did not move. Ivan grabbed Winter's hand, pressed the barrel of the gun into his palm, and to Yao's horror he could not make himself look away.

"Sir!" Ivan paused at Toris' panicked shout. After a long moment he very slowly turned, stared first at Toris, then Raivis, and then finally at Yao. Yao shrunk back into the wall behind him. Then Ivan seemed to come back to himself. He stood slowly, straightened his jacket, adjusted his scarf, and walked over to Toris.

"Thank you, Toris," said Ivan calmly, handing over the gun. "I apologize, gun may need cleaning. Eduard, please see if the General is needing medical assistance. Yao. You are all right?"

Yao didn't know what to think. He didn't want to think. Nothing seemed real. He was unable to believe that this was the same Ivan before him. When Ivan took a step towards him, Yao flinched away and pulled himself shakily to his feet. Raivis tried uncertainly to help him. "Don't stand so fast, Yao. Breathe deeply."

But Yao barely heard him. He could not tear his eyes from Ivan's face, those blazing eyes now concerned and even slightly confused. "I have… I…" Yao could barely speak. "I have to go." He swayed on his feet. Ivan reached out as though to steady him and Yao recoiled. "Don't touch me," he snapped.

Yao nearly gasped at his own words. He did not know who was more shocked, him or Ivan. But he just turned his head from Ivan's confused expression and ran for the front door, ignoring the dizziness rushing through his head. He had to get away from here. Away from the unconscious monster on the floor, from Toris and his gun, from everything. It was all suddenly too real. Everything he had tried to ignore had just hit him in the face.

Yao ran out the front door, gulping the cold air into his lungs. He barely made it halfway down the driveway before his legs went weak beneath him and he stumbled and fell heavily to his knees. He placed a hand before him to steady himself. When it brushed a flower he realized that he had landed in one of the sunflower beds that lined the drive. He sat back and tried to pull himself together. If he had not been stopped, what would Winter have done? What would Ivan have done? This was too much. Yao reached up to touch his throat. It throbbed painfully. As he breathed deeply and tried to stop shaking, the flowers before him were suddenly thrown into shadow. He looked up apprehensively to find Raivis smiling nervously down at him.

"Um. Mr Braginski told me to drive you home. I know this is kind of a stupid question but, are you all right, Yao?"

Yao shook his head and tried to laugh. "Not really, Raivis. But driving me home sounds like a very good idea. Thank you."

.

Yao walked slowly into his apartment, still feeling slightly unsteady on his feet. He hoped the others had not heard him come home early... this was not something he wanted to have to explain. He looked at himself in his bedroom mirror – his throat was red, purple bruises starting to form. He found himself suddenly rethinking a few things as he gingerly touched the sore and throbbing skin. So this was what everyone meant when they said this was dangerous. Again Yao wondered just what might have happened if Toris had not had that gun - and quickly decided not to think about it.

Yao reached for his work pants, pulled out his lucky Buddha, and sat him carefully on the dresser. "Could've used you today, buddy." He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and fell back onto the bed. He wanted to fall asleep. Wanted to forget. Wanted to get that image of Ivan slamming someone's bloody head into the ground out of his mind. He realized he was still shaking and buried his head in the pillow. Maybe when he woke up, this would all have been a dream.

What seemed like minutes later, but could have been hours, the sound of a knock at his front door startled Yao from his light sleep. He swore to himself as he dragged himself out of bed. It was probably Francis wondering what he was doing home already. So he would have to explain this after all.

"Yeah I know, Yao ended up home alone once again..." Yao trailed off as he opened the door. His heart sped up and pounded rapidly. Ivan stood at the door, his expression a mixture of guilt, concern and, strangely, fear. He smiled uncertainly.

"I will leave immediately if you wish."

It took Yao three seconds to decide. "No. Please come in."

.

Next Chapter

Disclaimer: This story belongs to George deValier. Hetalia belongs to Hidekaz Himaruya. I own nothing.

THANK YOU FLUFFCHEMY FOR SAVING THIS CHAPTER!

[slashertalks]

So I really just want to bang this out— you’re gonna have to forgive any sloppy organization with what I’m about to throw at y’all.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a thousand times over: I firmly believe that the Rob Zombie remake of Halloween is the superior Halloween film. Out of all of them. It’s a darker, grittier, edgier version, yes; it’s a Rob Zombie film. It’s also a film with much more emotional depth than any of the others, and I feel that the second one in particular treats Laurie with more fairness with regards to her mental state and the expectations of others around her. I’ll expand on this in a bit.

Right, so, clearly that’s an example of a remake surpassing (in my opinion) the original. I respect any differing opinions and will happily acknowledge that the original John Carpenter version is a classic, but I stand firm by my own opinion that it’s a classic film that happens to suck shit compared to its remake. What, then, about the other main focus on this bit of writing? My Bloody Valentine 3D. So, I said in the little preview thing that I thought My Bloody Valentine 3D sucked shit too; it’s a remake that fell completely flat compared to its original, a reverse of the Halloween situation. But then, there are other remakes than Rob Zombie’s Halloween that have outshined the original; John Carpenter’s The Thing is a clear example. Why have I specifically chosen Rob Zombie’s remake? Three things: gritty tones, vulgarity, and mental health.

Rob Zombie movies make heavy use of grit and dark color palettes, and his remake of Halloween is no exception, but he balances this all out with bright colors as well. The opening scene of Halloween (2007) makes use of a lot of nice blues, oranges, whites, and pink. It IS muted, but not gray— this is important: you can have a muted color palette without turning everything a dull grayish-[insert color]. He maintains his visual aesthetic while keeping the colors distinct, letting them pop just enough to signify that things are, to some extent, normal. Even when the film turns dark and Michael begins killing, there are a lot of blues and teals, not browns or flat grays, which keeps things visually interesting and prevents anything from looking overly washed-out. 

On the other hand, in My Bloody Valentine 3D, from a beginning scene in a bar to the end confrontation in the mine, it’s.... brown. Not that there’s anything wrong with brown, but as a muted color palette it becomes boring. Blue is a color that clearly conveys a mood, and the brown of the leaves and purple of Laurie’s shirt can still come through as a pop of color. Warm browns can also contain a lot fo really nice, welcoming shades, and really dark browns can be equally pleasing. The main issue with the use of a mainly brown color palette with My Bloody Valentine 3D is that it’s a muted brown, and it doesn’t allow for the combinations of colors that Rob Zombie uses. It’s a muddy, grayed-out mess that tries and fails to be a moody, muted palette. They do switch between a grey-blue and a grey-brown, but it doesn’t do much to help except make the ugly mud brown of Jensen Ackle’s “Bland Horror Protag” costume stand out even more.

The one pop of real color in that bar scene? A tiny little neon sign. The original My Bloody Valentine also uses a muted color palette (the weather is pretty grey and a lot of the scenery is dark, so it’s kind of a forced palette), but there are lots of bright(!!!) reds from Valentine’s Day decorations (versus that muted brown-pink of the hearts pictured above), and bright colors on the miner’s clothes— Sylvia has a pretty lavender top, Howard wears a lot of red consistently, John’s got ginger hair, so on and so forth.

As for grit, I find it seriously amusing that the original My Bloody Valentine had much grosser gore than its remake, which was clearly trying to up the “grit.” Where Rob Zombie makes use of blood and gore, of grit, as an aesthetic, it feels much more natural coming from his films; same with the gore in the original My Bloody Valentine. The remake tried to make everything grittier, with their obligatory naked woman kill and their hospital scene where the room is entirely drenched in blood, it all winds up losing its shock value. Its main point wasn’t to successfully scare, it was to outdo its predecessor. Rob Zombie wasn’t fighting back against the original Halloween, he was making his own movie. By using a system of aesthetics already established in his films, one that he works well with, the heavy gore, nudity, and vulgarity in the Halloween remake wind up coming across as natural.

On the topic of vulgarity, I found the swearing in My Bloody Valentine 3D laughable. It’s not as if people don’t swear, but it’s another thing that comes across as forced, as if the film is trying to be “My Bloody Valentine But Edgy” instead of a good movie. Casting is also important here. They may only try to pass Jensen Ackles off as a teenager for a few minutes, but there’s something hilarious to me about seeing a thirty year old man trying to be eighteen, and then seeing the same thirty year old man acting his own age, and the movie expecting me to go “yeah, that was absolutely a teenager and this is absolutely an adult, and they’re not at all exactly the same but in slightly different clothes.” Rob Zombie cast an eighteen year old to play Laurie Strode, and while she does swear more and make sexual jokes it doesn’t feel forced— teenagers do act like that, but it’s just totally laughable when an adult tries to act like a teenager. Casting an actual teenager, even if only for a short prequel scene, makes all the difference in the world when it comes to believability.

Then, there’s mental illness. Both of the originals, John Carpenter’s Halloween and the 1981 My Bloody Valentine, don’t really tackle mental illness. Yeah, Michael’s been in a mental hospital, and yeah, Axel clearly has some issues after watching Harry Warden murder his father, but it’s not the main issue of the film. Rob Zombie’s second Halloween movie (2009) and My Bloody Valentine 3D both explicitly tackle mental illness, and again... My Bloody Valentine 3D fails. Horribly.

I think the reason I don’t have a problem with Laurie’s mental issues being so explicitly discussed in RZ’s Halloween 2 is that he doesn’t expect her to hold herself together. She’s a kid who went through something traumatizing and has no idea how to cope. Her main support network, both of the Bracketts, are ALSO trying to cope in different ways. The Sheriff is trying to move on without really confronting that he almost lost Annie; Annie is also trying to move on, and maybe she’s succeeding a little more than her father since she isn’t as uptight about Halloween coming around again. It also isn’t that Laurie’s not trying to move on, but that she’s explicitly struggling and acts out the way someone who feels trapped in a corner often does. Her breakdown isn’t scary, it’s tragic. She’s sad, scared, angry and confused and her death isn’t meant to shock. Sheriff Brackett doesn’t call for Laurie to be shot when he sees her at the end, he shouts for his men to stop shooting but they don’t listen. Sheriff Brackett, even seeing his adopted daughter so unhinged, doesn’t condemn her; it’s the actions of other people that cost him both of his daughters in the same damn night.

My Bloody Valentine 3D also tackles trauma following a set of murders, but instead of presenting Tom’s trauma as something sad, it’s a cheap shock opportunity. “He’s not who you think he is.” “Get out of the car.” Tom is presented as dangerous because of his mental illness; someone to be avoided, to be killed. Why incapacitate the mentally ill man when you can just shoot him instead? It’s not surprising that mental illness is used as a cheap scare in horror movies, but it was particularly upsetting in light of this remake because the original My Bloody Valentine is SO charming. The original is such a deeply enjoyable, original slasher film that having such a cheap shit “plot twist” is angering. I noted that Axel obviously has issues in the original, and it’s worth noting that when he’s buried and one of the rescuers shouts that he’s alive Sarah rushes back to him and tries to help pull Axel out. Again, as with RZ’s Halloween 2, she doesn’t demonize Axel or call for him to be killed, she tries to hold his hand and help uncover him— he’s still redeemable in her eyes, still worth being saved. My Bloody Valentine 3D’s Tom, though? Who is explicitly mentally ill? Screw it, let’s kill him.

Good remakes can absolutely be made. Good edgy remakes are possible, if more difficult, but this? These pitfalls of overly-muted, cheap shock-filled movies whose big twists are “ooo look we made a character mentally ill and that makes them SCARY” with no other substance behind them? That ride on the coattails of superior films without ever attempting to stand on their own two feet? It’s hot bullshit, man, and horror as a genre deserves better. The original My Bloody Valentine deserves better. We, as viewers, and especially mentally ill viewers deserve so much better. My Bloody Valentine 3D epitomizes everything I find infuriating about modern horror remakes, and this piece doesn’t even touch on the absolutely bland, flat performances from all of the actors. I’ve never been so bored, disappointed, and angry about a remake like this. I generally either avoid them or hold some hope that they’ll be halfway decent, but this? Fuck this movie.

[the-skooma-den]

threw together a couple headshots of Syke cause i wanted to do a proper profile of her, so anyone curious about the character i spend so much time ranting about and drawing thats gonna be under the read more

Part 2 here 

directory to all posts about her and her siblings are here

Real Name: Ava Aurelia Cassia Camoran Tharn Latona. she has an untold amount fake names and identities for a wide variety of purposes, Nowadays she mainly goes by Syke Ivywood, and thats what most of the Dominion knows her as (and is also her in game name)

Age: turned 28 right around when the main plot started. I assume years pass through the DLC’s, including one year where she does the mages and fighters guild quest as well as a bunch of quests.

Race: Imperial. Her father was a bosmer and she takes heavily after him. Her grandpas a Khajiit, which is only relevant here because her dad took heavily after his dad. Hence syke’s weirdly golden eyes and slightly to sharp teeth. 

Class: Nightblade, focus on siphoning magic

Personality: One might look at her usual scowl and her serious demeanor and assume she's the typical lone wolf edgy assassin, and they’re only really half wrong. She’s not a loner by choice,she doesn’t hate people really, shes just not great at interacting with people. Anyone who knows who she actually is tend to be scared of her (even other members of the brotherhood) and that's not great for ones self confidence. In a few words, she’s just awkward and extremely introverted. That being said she is kinda grumpy, but if an evil god stole your soul you would be to.

As for the series Demeanor, that really just her face. She’s just not a smiley person ya know? She just as an incredibly flat affect and it either takes really strong emotions or a lot of effort on her part to break it. She’s actually pretty damn nice, even if she doesn’t really “get” a lot of social norms.Being raised in a assassin cult worshiping the void can do that to a girl.

What also does not help the usual perception of her, is her Bad temper and very very low bullshit tolerance. She’s not hard to piss off and it can be explosive. Usually not the yelling and screaming explosive but the getting right up in your face out of nowhere and quietly informing you that if you say one more word she’ll individually break every bone in your hand type way.

She’s what her mother would kindly call “strong willed” and what everyone else would call debilitatingly stubborn . Keeping in mind this is a woman who was wronged by what is essentially the demon god king of domination and then decided “I’m going to kick his ass” and then did. For good or ill she rarely if ever gives up.

Due to the fact she is technically a noblewoman, she tends to be extremely private as well. The other Cyrodilic nobles know of her and her family, but just know them as the family that for the most part gave up their titles and have no intention of trying to get them back, they have no idea that theyre a whole family of assassin in the Dark brotherhood. That does not mean that they ignore her or her family as even if her family doesn’t want the titles the fact they exist can mess up others claims to the throne.Especially Ava who suffice to say has a pretty decent claim to several very important titles. This has lead her to take on a variety of different fake names and wearing different masks to avoid being recognized both in her daily life and in jobs for the brotherhood...at least at first.

As it turned out she's a natural actor with one hell of a flair for the dramatic. She may have issues interacting with people as herself, but she finds it easier when pretending to be someone else. She got so into it that she has whole characters that she pretends to be for all kinds of purposes, like say if she needs access to mages or fighters guild resources or if a particular job for the brotherhood calls to act as a maid for a little bit.

as for how the Dominion crew know her, well they actually come closer to knowing her then most. When Raz dragged her out of the ocean at Khenarthis roost she was so out of it she was barely able to come up with a fake name let alone a whole character, so they all end up genuinely knowing her as she truly is. Turns out she doesn’t mind that as much as she thought she would.

Backstory (before the main plot): She’s a third generation member of the Dark brotherhood, and most of her direct family (siblings, parents, aunt and one set of grandparents) are apart of it. Her grandmother, A Bosmer noble named Cassa, married an Imperial nobleman when she was pretty young. Cassa wanted to get out of Valenwood and her husband was looking for a way to rebel against his family and found it in a hot bosmer lady. They ended up having one kid together, Lara

A few years later Cassa ends up falling in with and getting pregnant by a khajiiti baker her husband hired, and her husband is not to happy about that to say the least.  He fires and sends the Khajiit away and Cassa is less then happy about that as well. She kills her husband and so convincingly makes it look like an accident that if the brotherhood hadn't already had a contract out on him no one would have ever known it was murder. 

So Cassa ends up joining the brotherhood after her second kid by the khajiit man was born. She never really connected with the bosmeri pantheon or the Green pact, and she ends up taking to Sithis real well. She also as soon as she was able went to find her love and they were married as soon as possible. They all lived in Valenwood for a number of years and both her kids grew up in the brotherhood as well. 

 Eventually the younger one son, Tanis, marries an Imperial woman,Livillia. Also a runaway noblewoman,her mother was friends with Cassa and she was seeking sanctuary with her. Livillia is specifically one of Abnur Tharns kids, who no longer wanted to deal with the Tharn family drama. 

They have a kid together (That is of course Ava). Tanis’s older sister and Cassa’s first child, Lara, has a one night stand with an Altmer and has her own kid who she names Ceryneian (or Nia for short). And they all live pretty happily for a while, as far as anyone knew the family was just a bunch of nobodies, rich nobodies who kept all hours but still just nobodies. They had for the most part completely abandoned all noble titles, even if the nobles weren’t done with them.

When Ava was about 10 years old her great aunt Cilvia tharn found out that Livillia was still alive. She was well aware that if she tried to do anything to Elsweyr Livillia would likely act against her. Livillia may be a member of the brotherhood, but she wasnt completely evil. Cilcvia sent assassins after Ava’s parents, they missed her but her parents were taken by surprise and sadly killed. None of her family felt right staying in valenwood anymore, So Lara took Ava in and moved to the Gold coast where she had spent her early childhood and had inherited some estate.  Her grandparents Moved to Elsweyr and both Ava and Nia would spend summers there as kids. 

So Ava ends up “officially” a member of the brotherhood ,after toddling around the sanctuaries her whole life, at about 15 years old, and was never prouder. Normally they wouldn’t have let someone so young in but once again, she had literally been toddling in sanctuaries, they figured it was fine.

On one of her first genuinely dangerous missions, to kill a necromancer in Northern Elsweyr (chaperoned by her grandma of course), she came across one of said necromancers future sacrifices. This sacrifice happened to be a 13 year old khajiit boy named Thera (later going by Jo’Thera)  with some odd fur patterns, and fuck man he was just a kid (granted shes only a couple years older then him) and Ava couldn’t just leave him there alone. Ava saved him and took her back to Anvil with her after she killed the necromancer as according to the kid, he didn’t have a family or anywhere to go. Lara hears the kids story and is just like…. Welp… guess i got a 3rd kid now.  (as Thera grows up if there's one thing he gets from his adopted family its a love for drama and dramatic irony. He takes to necromancy pretty quickly)

That peace continued for a few years until she was about 19. At 19 years old she got the offer to join the Psijic order, Not because she was particularly powerful or even all that good at magic (at the time of course, she gets much better later), but due to her lack of formal teaching she had her own odd way of casting and working with it that caught their attention. Basically imagine that she did a really complicated math problem wrong, but ended up with the right answer and somehow accidentally discovered a new much easier formula to that particular problem, she did the magic version of that and showed a lot of potential even outside of that.

Then she said no, she was happy in the brotherhood and her current life and she saw no reason to leave

When Ava was about 20 years old, Nia ran away because, well she wasn't as fond of the brotherhood as her mother or cousin, and its not exactly something you can just quit and walk away from. It broke the whole families heart of course but Ava took it particularly hard. She had considered her and had been referring to her as her sister even before her parents death

What really set it all off though was when Nia popped up again alive and well in Valenwood using the last name of their grandmothers family. She didn’t send them a message or anything, it just got to them by word of mouth because Nia had disowned them and been talking shit about them. After she ran away she went back down to Valenwood to claim the title that was rightfully hers, it turns out that she had found proof of her birthright and between that and her uncanny resemblance to her grandmother she barely had to be questioned. 

So Nia is in Valenwood with her relatives and had completely disowned the entire rest of her family. Her grandmother, Her mother and her (now deceased) Aunt and Uncle, and Ava and their brother as well. she never made any concrete statement as to why per say outside of “Not wanting to go down the same path as the rest of her family” which most people assumed meant completely abandoning their noble heritage and titles, not to mention their bosmeri heritage as well (which was partially true, but it was mostly about the whole murder cult thing). So yeah, Lara was heartbroken and Ava was pissed off to oblivion and back and Jo’thera....he was just hurt, but all decided that if that was where Nia wanted to be they weren’t going to drag her back.

At about 23 Ava met her first real significant other, A Dunmeri noble. It didnt go well for either of them really, lots of drugs, lots of unhealthy coping mechanisms, lots of secrets. not a good time. 2 years later, The Dunmer actually proposes to Ava, and Ava not only says yes but Ava tells her everything about the brotherhood, her own noble status, all of it. The Dunmer seems okay with it at first, and admits she kinda suspected who Ava’s family was based on the little she spoke about it, The brotherhood was the real surprising part there. The knife in Ava’s stomach later that night Makes it clear what she thought about that. So it was a messier breakup then most.  

Ava doesnt like to speak much of the relationship, but it hurt her more then she lets on and makes her more nervous then ever to be in a real romantic relationship 

Well after that mess Ava threw herself back into the brotherhood hardcore and also into hardcore drugs and alcohol.for about 5 years. Over those 5 years between the Dunmer incident, a lot of self reflection, and all sorts of anxieties she’s an unstable mess. Like verge of a mental breakdown type of mess. 

When she was kidnapped and later sacrificed by the wormcult many who knew her assumed that she had offed herself for good. She was gone for long enough that even her own family started to assume the worst

[mannatea]

incoherent ranting below

so i’ve been in this constant ‘i hate men’ mood for like, weeks, probably because a coworker of mine works nights at the bar sometimes and men are unsurprisingly disgusting and hateful creatures who prey on women who dare to exist in any space, especially if that space is one that demands she serve him in any capacity, no matter how professional

and i realized something i hate about shows that are dark & gritty and claim to be (by the fans or creators) “realistic for the time” which of course everyone wants to claim = superior writing

first of all NO it’s not better just because it’s “realistic” and LOL at “life just blew chunks back then that’S JUST HOW IT WAS” like??? can we stop pretending that everyone was miserable always that’s your shitty modern air conditioning loving ass talking through your overlarge facehole. 

secondly history is written by the winners, which we know, so we mostly have rich white men who obviously still don’t have a fuCKING CLUE what goes on in their OWN GODDAMN HOMES let alone what goes on around them like are we really going to believe that what they say was real was not only real for them but like, commonplace???? lol

but even if a show managed to be 100% historically accurate, there’s no need to adhere to history because (and CHECK THIS OUT, it’s WILD) this is

a

fictional

fucking

story!!!!!!!!

anyway what i hate about gritty grimdark “”””realistic”””” pieces of media is this: 

i’m tired of them!!!!!!!!!!

and hey, maybe because they all subscribe to the same newsletter, which has some kind of nutty philosophy: to be dark and gritty we gotta deal with Controversial Awful Topics preferably in ways that feel like they cOULD be historically accurate just to acCENTUATE how terrible life can be

like man i love realism as much as the next guy, but when it’s piled on too thick it’s just a drag to stick with, you know???

i watch a mediocre tv show that wants very badly to be a wholesome family western drama. it’s called when calls the heart and it lacks diversity. it lacks good writers. it lacks a good budget. it has its good moments of course. there are some amazing characters, some lovely moving scenes... but it’s not The Family Western Drama, and so a number of fans put it down because they think it ought to be more like The Family Western Drama of the 90s: dr. quinn medicine woman. 

which was one helluva brave show for its time!! don’t get me wrong here. it dealt with scary topics for the 90s: homophobia, racism, domestic violence, and the most controversial topic they dealt with (according to lashback from viewers): hitting children is abuse.

but the characters in dr. quinn are downright HATEFUL when you look away from the main cast and their bffs. the townsfolk are all extremely racist, bigoted, sexist, violent, women-hating pigs who want to shoot literally everyone for any possible reason they can come up with. they don’t change. all they do is hate, have an episode arc of learning something or maybe some backstory that makes you feel something for them, and they go right back to being hateful again. 

and look, i do wish wcth had more courage. i do. i rEALLY do. the structure is sound. it could be so good if it tried and it had the budget. but it doesn’t, and it isn’t, and honestly? i’m okay with that.

sometimes it’s nice to have a piece of media where the men aren’t all irredeemable fuckwads!!! where i can pretend the town is made up of open minded loving people who usually mean well and aren’t hateful!

it’s soothing to watch a show where i don’t have to see men treating women with blatant disrespect, where i don’t have to look at them being viewed by the characters as property. where the saloon in the show DOESN’T HAVE whores at all, let alone whores that are OWNED BY THE OWNER and regularly treated like shit throughout the series. 

like look i get it, yall like dr. quinn cause it’s “”””realistic”””” but it’s hard to enjoy a show that’s just more of the same irl stuff i deal with AND it never gets better AND the characters all remain civil and friendly AND it’s just accepted that that’s how those characters are AND--

i mean, i get having to be civil to your neighbors because you’re the town doctor and this is now your home and you have kids to take care of!! but how can you love a town where nearly everyone in it wants your cheyanne friends dead and would shoot them themselves if given half a chance? like, i can’t love that town. and i want to love a town a tv show centers around.

gilmore girls featured stars hollow and it was a nice town. not everyone was wholesome and good but there were people to like. the town means something to the characters = it should mean something to me by proxy. who didn’t fall in love with avonlea in anne of green gables, right? hope valley is likable. colorado springs in dr. quinn is not. it’s hateful.

anyway i just wanted to vent. dr. quinn is a decent show. sometimes it’s really good. but most of the time i just sit there and prefer mediocrity. i want to like the town! i want to like the featured male characters! i want to like the world these characters come from, even if it’s not always kind to them. but in dr. quinn it’s like??? i can’t. i hate the town. it’s shit.

as a writer i want flaws. i like seeing characters change and evolve. but in dr. quinn it’s like they don’t ever change. they’re still nasty and evil and willing to turn on one another at the drop of a hat. the fans say it’s good, realistic writing. i say it’s trash writing on a good budget. again, “””dark””” material doesn’t make the writing good. if i’m gonna watch mediocrity i’d rather it be something that gives me characters and a town i enjoy seeing on the screen, even if it’s “not realistic” or “fake.”

and like, i’ve dissed when calls the heart for trying too hard to be “feminist” and accidentally going in the other direction, but at least they made an effort? at least they tRIEd to give us strong characters? sure they failed and disappointed me but i can tell there was an effort. and their failure generally didn’t ruin the characters for me, either.

it’s painful watching dr. mike forgive the evils of her fellow townspeople every single episode only for them to be fine letting her or her kids or her beau or the cheyanne or the immigrants die because of one (1) minor thing happening

(and hey i know shit like typhus was a big deal but maybe actually write the fear in there and make a real episode about it? it stops meaning something when your characters fly off the handle about lITERALLY everything. like at this point neal and i start a new episode with: who’s gonna be irredeemably evil today? hank, jake, or loren?)

dEEP BREATH

maybe i’m being a little unfair. it’s interesting to have a town of characters where some are just completely terrible people and that’s just how it is because they’re There and It’s Their Town Too and so on.

but that doesn’t mean i want to watch it. and i don’t think it necessarily means it’s a better written show, either. it’s just exhausting to me. i don’t need to see more anger. i’m tired of it. it’s everywhere.

okay okay at its core this was a rant about the bullshit fake ass “realistic media” = better media thing but also...

why would i want to subject myself to 30104012 hours of nonstop violence against women, when it’s been a part of my everyday life from the moment i stepped out of the womb?

no thanks. i hate men as a general rule but i like to indulge in the fantasy that there could be a town made up of mostly good ones!! so sue me if it means i like a shittier piece of media!! i don’t care!! I DO NOT CARE!!! i just want to think ‘hey this is a nice place these people live in and everyone has their faults but they’re not waving guns around beating up people.’

i literally don’t care how “unrealistic” that makes the show. do not care. i give...no fucks about that. let me indulge.

and also, you know what? other shows were brave in the 90s, too, but i don’t see people talking about touched by an angel even though it handled all the same topics that dr. quinn medicine woman did AND MORE

lol but i guess it’s embarrassing to admit you got something out of tbaa huh

again, don’t get me wrong. there are things i enjoy a LOT about dqmw. but boy does it piss me off to see wcth compared to it as if dqmw is this paragon of good writing that all other period dramas must aspire to, and if you don’t do literally all of these grimdark things that dqmw did, you’re not good enough...is just so exhausting. there’s nothing wrong with a show choosing to skirt the horrible things for a lighter fare. sometimes that’s just what the audience needs.

and like lmao none of this is real it’s ALL MADE UP!!!!! so who cares if abigail’s a female mayor in 1915 like

that’s the magic of fiction, babe!!!!

[banesbottombitch]

Headcannons of the bowers gang as single parents?🤔 btw, love your writing!

Fuck it, lets do this. I’ve got so many feelings about this. For disclaimers sake, the boys are 20-25, so college age. This is long.

Henry “You are my Sunshine but you’re also a Pain” Bowers

First of all, he was’t ready. Nothing prepared him to end up alone, with a baby that was his newest and most precious responsibility.

The mothers either DIED, or straight up left the baby in his arms and was  like “your problem now” either way, he does not consider adoption. 

Called Vic first, actually crying, because how the fuck does he do better for this kid than his dad did for him? He has no idea how to nurture, to care, to help something grow and thrive. He confesses his fears, and Vic gets Belch and the three of them drive to the closest department store, picking out baby shit.

Has no idea how bottles work. Gets the cheapest kind possible, and is so upset when the baby wont drink from them (texture might be off, his dumb ass didnt warm the milk, his dumb ass gave the baby COWS MILK, the list goes on) and screeches in frustration when they leak because, yet again, he got the cheapest fuckers possible

He’d be out of his dads house by this time, probably college age (about 20-25) but he has made a point to not let his dad know of his child’s existence, because lets face it, Butch would wanna see his grandkid (especially if its a boy). So, Henry keeps the information that he’s a new dad on lock down

Calls Mama Huggins weekly for advice, and actively looks at parenting hacks online. He’s trying his best to be a good dad, and would take extra shifts for work to make ends meet. His kid would probably go into daycare sometimes, but he doesnt like leaving them with strangers and just tries to get one of the guys (or Mama Huggins) to take them for a few hours.

Uses his kid as a chick magnet. Goes to parks and hits on the single moms while he helps his toddler roam around. Gets a lot of ass because of this, since he comes off as a very caring dad (he is, surprisingly).

Dresses his baby girl up like bad asses. His daughter wears his old bandanna with her princess outfit (claiming she is a cowgirl princess, because of course she is) or gets a jean vest with decently kid friendly patches on it, and parades her around when he gets the chance. Insanely protective of her, and follows her when she plays at the park and later as she gets older, he makes her text him where she is at all times. Low key helicopter dad. The type of dad to clean a gun in front of her new boyfriend, 11/10.

 His son’s hair gets styled into a fohawk daily and he’s encouraged to wear cool printed shirts his uncles (the rest of the gang) get him that have various metal bands on them and stuff. Teaches him sports, and drags him along to baseball games when he can. Was a bit torn when he heard his son was causing trouble in school, but decides that he cant have his kid doing the same shit he did and nips the bullying in the bud. His son got his temper, and it upsets Henry sometimes how easy it is for them to snap at each other once he gets older.

Takes his kid fishing, hiking, rides on motorcycles, ect. Lots of out door activities. His favorite is to take his kid out fishing, because they’re TRAPPED with him and he gets to spend the day with his mini-me, making crappy jokes and teaching them how to do proper techniques, like he always wished his dad would have done with him.

Gets really stern with his kid though. Takes no fucking bullshit from them, and lives the line “because I said so”, expecting his kid to listen. He loves them, he would NEVER raise a hand to them, but he’s not above a sit down and heavy glare if they mouth off to him or act up in public.

Lives his life better to make his kid’s life better. Goes to anger management if he thinks he’s starting to emulate Butch, and he’s explained to his kid why they’re so distant from his family. Doesn’t articulate what Butch has done to him, but makes it a point to focus on the fact that they Do. Not. Talk. To. Butch.

Makes a point to take his kid to school every day. Tells his kid how much he loves them. They do not go a day without a clap on the shoulder and a small little smile that he wears just for them.

Reggie “GET THAT OUT OF YOUR MOUTH RIGHT FUCKIN’ NOW” Huggins

He was a little shocked when he ended up with a baby. Dazed, confused. He just sat there with this bundle, all soft and small, and held them close. He didn’t know what to do, but does anyone when they become a single parent without word?

If his s/o died, he would be heart broken, but pull through for the kid. If his s/o dumped the baby on him and ran, he’d be fucking furious and vow to never let them within arms reach of HIS child.

The best at easing into parenthood. He told his mama that adoption wasn’t an option, and that he was going to take care of the baby. “I can do it,” he told her, “I’m a man, and men take care of their kids.”

Mama Huggins is overjoyed to be a grandma, even if she claims shes a little young to start being called Nannie, but she spoils that baby rotten. Reggie has to fight to keep her from buying the kid so many different outfits, as she goes overboard and buys too many, and they grow out of them before they can even be tried on.

Leaves the kid with his mom to work, which is fine for Mama Huggins, but Reggie feels like he’s ghosting his kid when he does it. So he works harder and advances in his career as much as possible, wanting to get to  place where he can maybe get extra days off to be with his kid.

Wakes up early to make them breakfast. Every morning he sits down with them, from infancy till they leave his house (read as, his moms, he never moves out lets be real). He wakes them up gently, or flicks on the lights and heaves a great big “UP AND AT ‘EM, KIDDO!” But its all with love.

Doesnt seem interested in dating for the most part, but ends up meeting someone with kids at some point in time, and is happy to have his kid get a new sibling. He always wanted one himself.

Gives in too easily if his kids misbehave. If they cry, it HURTS him, and he just lets them do as they please. Had to nip this in the bud before they got into school though, because he wasn’t going to deal with a spoiled brat for 12+ years.

Straps his kid into the backseat of the Trans-Am, and has a Dad Bag under the seats for bottles, toys, and general baby shit. Patrick likes playing peek a boo with his kid, and Vic only complains a little bit of he has  to feed the baby.

Stops going out with the guys, and is worried that it will dampen his relationship with them It doesnt, they just start  coming over to his house and hanging out. Henry was scared to hold the baby at first, but Reggie eased him into it, and now Henry’s the first one to grab the nugget and bounce them on his knee to calm them down.

If he had a daughter, jesus christ. Jesus H Christ. His most precious gem, his princess, the light of his life. He spends free time doing tea parties, letting her “help” him with fixing Amy, and lets her run wild in the neighborhood. She is fierce, she is the wilderness- NO, HONEY, DONT PICK THAT SNAKE UP PLEASE- DROP IT. DROP IT. NO, DONT ARGUE WITH DADDY. DROP IT!

His son would have a very healthy and loving relationship with him. Everything is open for discussion, and he tries to lead his son into a better light than bullying or the like. Lots of sundays are spent in the front yard, tossing around a football while his son asks the craziest, but most wonderful shit he has ever heard. “Dad, whys girls gotta be so.. weird?” “Dad, do you think Luke Skywalker would have been cooler if he was a sith?” “Dad, if we die, do we meet god, or do we gotta wait in line with our guardian angel?” Loves his boy, cherishes him. He can do no wrong.

Goes to every single parent/teacher conference, and puffs up in pride when they praise his kid. Because, of course they’re praising them! He raised them right!

Victor “Pinterest saved my life” Criss

Legit hid the baby from his parents/bros for a good week before he ran out of excuses as to why they hadn’t seen him for days. He’s at a loss of what to do, and considers adoption. He isnt a paternal guy. he thinks, this wont work out.

Already moved out, like, come on. He’s a rich boy, his parents set him up in a nice apartment/condo in Bangor for school.

If his s/o was still alive, he’d have given the baby back to them. This only works if they ghosted town, or are dead. Otherwise, he’d have been like “fuck no”

Finally figures he’ll give fatherhood a shot, and quickly realizes how much he did NOT bargain for.

Reggie turned up to help one day with Vic holding his baby and sobbing back at the baby while it shrieked and squirmed, the poor guy having no idea what to do. Vic was escorted to the bedroom, and given a nap whole Belch attempted to get the baby to sleep.

Buys all the nicest shit the baby could ever need or want. Lots of sleepless nights are spent with him rocking his baby and scanning amazon, thinking that yet another Sophie the Giraffe is exactly what his demon spawn needs to keep from sobbing through the night

Turns to online archives and pinterest for advice, and slowly becomes a better dad. Lots of trial and error, trips to the emergency room from Patrick convincing a half-dead Vic that his baby’s cough is from the baby black plague, and some angry sobbing of his own leads to a decent routine that makes him and his kiddo happy.

Instagrams his kid, because to be fair, he made a gorgeous baby. Sends lots of photos of the kid to the guys, and Patrick uses some of the most unflattering ones as reaction memes, because he is a dick. Vic has laughed at them, despite being furious Patrick would dare to make his baby a meme.

Literally cried when his kid called him “Dada” for the first time. On the floor. Sobbing. He called Reggie and made him come over. Henry and Patrick came around and tried to get the bay to say swears. They got them to say “sheet” which is pretty close to “shit” so they called it a win.

Throws the biggest birthday parties for his kid. Confetti? Everywhere. Cake? Three layers and professionally made. Presents? Out of this world.

Most stylish child of the group’s kids. Sunglasses, designer clothes. That kid dresses better than you do by the time they’re five. They own it too, and flaunt it for the camera, because Vic takes 89,005,467 photos of his child on the daily.

Taught his kid Beastie Boys songs, and there are videos of his kid rapping along to “Intergalactic”. Vic is so proud of his kid.

Friend dad. Has a hard time punishing his kid if they do something wrong, and sometimes makes up for his own mistakes (raising his voice, getting to upset) by giving them gifts. Its not an amazing system, but his kid is humble…ish.

Having a daughter, that boy is her best friend. She can tell him anything, it wont phase him. Willingly talks about boys, clothes, music. Loves to take her to the park and watch her knock the boys down a peg or two. she inherits his sharp tongue, and its scary how fast she goes from 1 to 101. Blunt child, that one.

A boy? Vic’s son is given the coolest shit, there is no need for want with this boy. Probably some awful mix of fuck boy and wanna be rapper, but Vic loves him anyhow. Shows him off to the gang CONSTANTLY, and shows up in almost matching outfits without realizing it. Its cringey, but it could be worse. Teaches him how to throw a punch and encourages him to kick ass if people step up against him.

Puts his kid in after school tutoring, and thinks bonding time is shopping or watching TV together. Fills their schedules with sports, dance, and music. Expects a lot out of them, academically.

Loves his kid, even if they’re being an asshole, not matter what.

Patrick “You’re Demon Spawn and I adore that” Hockstetter

Was not here for this dad shit. Considered chucking the baby into the system, and would have done it too, if his mother had’t made him face the music.

Total “This is what you get for having unprotected sex, Patrick” rant from her. It ended with him being forced with a baby and his mother’s watchful eye on him. Shes not going to have another Avery on her hands.

Hates the baby the first few MONTHS. No love. Nothing there. Lets it cry itself hoarse, barely remembers to feed it, the type to forget an infant in a shopping market. Considers the possibility of it being real, since it came from him in one way or another, and feels a little threatened.

Drops the baby off with his parents 99% of the time. the 1% is when his parents force the baby back with him.

The first time he feels a little something for the kid is after getting them back from his parents and sitting in his apartment, with him screaming at the kid to shut the fuck up, (the baby is sobbing, lets be real) and they just stop. Right then and there, silence. 

They lock eyes, and Patrick swears he sees a flash of something behind their little baby eyes, almost as if they are betrayed he’d treat them that way, before they quietly sniffle. And then Patrick Hockstetter, the man, the myth, the self proclaimed Literal Satan, feels guilt for the first time.

He picks them up and calms himself down, bouncing them on his hip and softly talks to them. No hate, no love really, just apathetic words that a baby couldnt understand. He does that for hours, until the baby is sleeping, and even then he keeps going. Pours out every thought he’s ever had to this little version of him, and the next time he puts them in their crib, he does so gently. 

Lowering them down and tucking a blanket in around them. He decides they’re worth something to him that day, and everyone in his life see a drastic turn in his reactions towards his child.

Kind of a distant dad, but his kid knows that Patrick is their father and that he, yes, loves them. He’ll still drop his kid off with his parents sometimes on weekends, but as the kid grows up and he starts seeing more and more of himself in them, he’d be more attentive.

Goes on philosophical rants with his kid, and expects them to keep up. Raises his kid to question everything, and they grow up almost just as creepy and weird as him. He’s proud that they’re a little freaky, otherwise he’d be worried they weren’t his.

Patrick wouldn’t do too well with a daughter. He’d make it work, but there would be some issues. He has no idea what common ground to go off from, and would force his daughter to be more tom boyish and enjoy the same shit he does. Wouldn’t care if she was a bully in school, actually encourages it. Hands her cash, shares his weed stash with her once she’s older, and bids her good day. Doesnt see reason to punish her for misbehaving hopes she doesn’t end up dead in a ditch somewhere from her smart mouth. Grades are the least of his concerns. Will kill anyone who hurts his daughter though, and makes good on his threats too.

Patrick thrives with a son. A mini-me, that is almost indistinguishable from himself. Same creepy little smile, same predatory tilt of the shoulders and with eyes that pierce your damn soul. Praises his son to the high heavens, calls the boy a genius, and 100% thinks of him to be the Jesus to his God, if you feel me. The promised one, type of shit. Think of a young Trick from Black Mirror, and thats the kind of son Patrick hopes to have, if not MORE edgy.

Halloween is his favorite holiday as a dad, because he takes his kid out and scares the shit out of other children and teaches them to steal the candy.

The family photo of him and his kid is them out with the gang, with his kid (about 7) wearing his jacket by a bonfire and flipping the camera off, him squatting beside them and doing the same damn thing with the biggest shit eating grin. Ah. Parenting. Patrick’s a natural.

[the-desolated-quill]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Quill’s Quickies (No Spoilers)

This year, Star Wars has been almost mired in controversy. From the loot box controversy in EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II to the noticeable lack of non-white characters in The Last Jedi’s marketing. Rian Johnson making a total prat of himself by claiming that Kylo Ren is a dual protagonist with Rey, and now the reviews are in it turns out Episode 8 is the most divisive movie in the whole franchise, with critics clambering over themselves to praise the movie for its ‘bold new direction’ while the fans decry it as the arse-raping of their collective childhood. On the whole, I’d say this has been a complete and total cock-up.

I had no idea what to expect going in. I’m sure you all know how lukewarm I was about The Force Awakens. It didn’t surprise me in the slightest that the critics were praising the hell out of The Last Jedi considering they were doing the same thing with the previous film, which in my opinion was mediocre at best. The fan reaction surprised me. After all the blind (and arguably undeserved) praise The Force Awakens got, if even the fans are struggling to find good things to say about this movie, something must have gone spectacularly wrong.

So what did I, diehard Star Wars fan and professional arsehole, think of The Last Jedi? Well honestly I’m disappointed I didn’t hate it more. Truthfully I liked this movie about as much as I liked The Force Awakens, which is to say not very much. Like The Force Awakens, it’s a competently made movie and it’s possible to derive some enjoyment from it if you switch your brain off for two and half hours, but otherwise it’s just yet another tired retread of the original Star Wars movies that brings absolutely nothing new to the table. Not for the first time, I feel a real disconnect from the rest of the Star Wars community here. I have no idea why the critics are praising this movie for being a game changer because there’s genuinely nothing very revolutionary or groundbreaking going on here, and I’m confused as to why the fans have chosen to fling their bile and venom at a movie that, in my opinion, is the very definition of average. I mean sure, The Last Jedi isn’t very good and there were some bits that did kind of annoy me, but there’s nothing about it that’s outrageously offensive as far as I can see.

Let’s start with the things I liked. The biggest, shiniest gold star has to go to Finn. He was quite possibly the only new character I was in any way invested in last time around, and he’s just as brilliant here. We see him slowly embrace his new role as a hero of the Resistance and we also see him get the chance to stick it to his First Order oppressors, which I thought was quite emotionally satisfying. He’s joined by Rose, played by Kelly Marie Tran, who I thought was a nice addition to the cast and who undergoes the traditional everyman turned hero journey. I really liked her relationship with Finn and their scenes together are by far the highlight of the film, which makes their subtle erasure from the Star Wars marketing campaign all the more offensive to me because, as far as I’m concerned, they’re the main characters. They were the most developed, the ones I was most invested in, the only ones that actually grow and develop over the course of the film and who pretty much drive the plot.

The other thing I liked (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) is Kylo Ren. I really wasn’t impressed with him in The Force Awakens because he was pretty much just a shitty rehash of Darth Vader, and I mentioned in my review at the time how it might have been better to embrace the more weaselly and slightly pathetic nature of the character to help better distinguish him and give him his own identity. So I’m extremely pleased to see that’s exactly what this film does and it’s great. There’s no pretence anymore. Kylo Ren is this spoilt, impotent man-child that desperately craves power and attention, but doesn’t really know what he wants to do with it, and that’s glorious. That’s just the burst of inspiration the character sorely needed and Adam Driver does a great job with this new material. I’m actually looking forward to seeing where he goes in the next film and if they handle it well, he should make for a very unique antagonist (that’s antagonist Rian Johnson. AN-TAG-GON-NIST).

It’s just a pity that in order to prop up Kylo Ren, Rian Johnson felt the need to completely warp Luke Skywalker’s character into something wholly unrecognisable.

Yes now we come to the bad stuff, and there’s quite a bit. My main gripe is with Luke’s characterisation. In order to justify a lot of the plot, they have to make Luke this cynical halfwit and there are loads of moments where he says or does something that just simply doesn’t ring true with what we already know about him. His reasons for his exile are utterly out of character for one thing and his reasons behind his provocative statement that ‘it’s time for the Jedi to end’ are even more ludicrous. What’s worse is that the majority of the movie is dedicated to Rey trying to persuade Luke to come out of exile and rejoin the fight. Remember the scene in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke tries to persuade Yoda to train him? Well imagine that dragged out for an hour and a half. That’s pretty much the movie in the nutshell. I think that’s part of the reason why I loved Finn and Rose so much. Because it was a blessed relief to get off that fucking island for a while. There were several moments where I came close to dozing off.

I’m sure it’s no secret to anyone by this point that Rian Johnson has played pretty fast and loose with the Star Wars canon. Luke’s odd characterisation is one example. There are a few others. None of them truly insulting in my opinion. But the most notorious is a scene involving Leia, which I will hereby refer to as ‘The Scene.’ This got a lot of Star Wars fans riled up, but I personally thought it was absolutely hysterical just because of how random and idiotically daft it was. I’m not going to tell you what happened in ‘The Scene’ because this is a non-spoiler review. All I can say is you’ll know it when you see it.

Of course this was Carrie Fisher’s last film before her untimely death and that’s incredibly sad. Does The Last Jedi offer a fitting tribute to Princess/General/Queen (she’s a a Queen in my eyes) Leia Organa? Not really. In fact, outside of ‘The Scene’, Leia doesn’t really do anything worthy of comment. Some say she was mischaracterised too, but I don’t think so. At a push, I could see Leia doing some of the things she does. I just wish Fisher could have been given something with actual substance.

My views on Poe and Rey remain virtually unchanged. Poe Dameron is still a one dimensional cardboard cutout and I’m still continuously baffled as to why people like him so much. He doesn’t have a character. We’re two movies in and we still haven’t learnt a single sodding thing about him. Frankly I’ve seen fossils with more life in them. Rey meanwhile is still quite possibly one of the blandest protagonists I’ve ever seen. I’m struggling to find any reason to actually give a shit about her. Why should I be invested in her Jedi training? Why does she even need Jedi training when she seems capable of pulling any random superpower out of her arse at the convenience of the plot? At no point have these films ever given me a reason to care about her. Maybe if they focused more on her looking for her missing parents, I might be slightly more invested. And that’s another thing. In The Force Awakens, her missing parents are basically used as sequel bait. Here (without giving too much away) they’re pretty much just swept under the carpet entirely, which begs the question why was JJ Abrams wasting our time with them in the first fucking place (yes I am blaming JJ Abrams instead of Rian Johnson because Abrams was the one that actually came up with this shit and it’s very much reminiscent of his bullshit ‘mystery box’. The principle where an audience are naturally drawn to some big unknown or mystery and that he frequently utilises in his projects, most notably the TV series Lost. What he often forgets however is that good mysteries tend to have a satisfying fucking answer at the end).

And that’s pretty much all I have to say really. No doubt some of you are disappointed I haven’t quite given The Last Jedi the vengeful pummelling you’ve come to expect from me, but honestly I can’t work up the energy to get properly angry at it, and that’s largely because I’m past caring about this sequel trilogy. I think I’ve made my views on the sequel trilogy quite clear by now (that they’re a soulless cash grab concocted by studio execs who wouldn’t recognise a decent script if one jumped up and bit them on the arse) and I think it’s my total lack of interest that kind of shields me from some of Rian Johnson’s ‘creative’ decisions. These movies don’t count as far as I’m concerned. I’m not especially bothered by Johnson’s ‘reimagining’ and there’s nothing truly terrible going on here. The only crime The Last Jedi is really guilty of in my opinion is that there’s large swathes of it that are just really, really boring. And the main reason for this (apart from the obscenely long running time and a plot that drags its feet) is because, like with The Force Awakens, a lot of this stuff has been done before and done better in the original trilogy. While The Force Awakens ripped off A New Hope and a few elements from The Empire Strikes Back, The Last Jedi rips off The Empire Strikes Back and a few elements from Return Of The Jedi. What makes it slightly more egregious here is that The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi are both very emotionally charged stories that rely on three films’ worth of character development and buildup to make an impact, whereas The Last Jedi just blunders in, trying to replicate these emotional moments, but fails to recognise what made them so powerful to begin with and hasn’t done any of the legwork to make us feel truly invested in what’s going on, and thus it has all the impact of a feather duster.

So that’s The Last Jedi. A pointless and mediocre middle chapter to what has so far been a pointless and mediocre trilogy. The one bright side is that now it appears they’ve finally rehashed all they can from the original trilogy, there’s a chance we might finally get to see some original ideas in Episode 9. Unless they’re planning to ripoff the prequels next. In which case Disney must be more creatively bankrupt than I thought.

[misadventuresofthatoregongirl]

A little background... I am 27 years old. I have a 9 year old. I have been with his father since I was 12 years old, I have never “dated” anyone else. I have seen others, but never been in a relationship with anyone else. in January 2019 my little brother (we were 4 years apart and very lose) was left for dead by police after he got in a car wreck and had a head injury. He had a pulse for 30 minutes yet was never taken to the hospital, that was 10 minutes away. A week later some rich yuppie blew their entire head off with a shotgun, 80 miles away from the hospital, had no pulse, but was air lifted to the hospital. I strongly feel my brother was left for dead due to the fact he had unpaid fines. Mostly due to no car insurance or “driving while suspended” over no car insurance. But I know only blacks matter in this country, not some mutt who is half native american half white. That has been made ABUNDUNTLY CLEAR. 

If you are one of those stupid cunts with the “driving is a privilege” bullshit mindset, (driving to work should not be a privilege should be a basic human right and “ride the bus” only big cities have busses and many people have to commute to larger cities in Oregon) when basic liability insurance is about $300 a month for people who are never on mommy and daddys insurance, please kindly fuck off. Housing in Oregon is insane, already, most people have half or more of their money going to rent if they can manage to get somewhere to rent to them at all, they should not have to have another 1/4th or more of their income going to basic liability insurance when they have never even had a ticket. I went through the same shit. Eventually police would just wait in the parking lot for me to leave work and just ticket me over and over, I was denied a hardship permit that is also such a scam. Pay a bunch of money for something you aren’t even guaranteed to get. I drove 1000 miles a week just to get to work, because I could not find work in the rural area I live in not could I afford the $1500 a month rent in the city that has jobs (that’s basically how much I made a month) it is what is is. I had no choice. 

Paying for car insurance crippled me financially. I was actually split up with his father at that time but had to come crawling back begging for money due to my $300 basic liability insurance. The tickets are not even on my record anymore, for driving with no insurance and driving while suspended but its still $260 a month. Absolutely sickening. I don’t have a fucking dime left over after i pay bills, and my boyfriend works and we STILL have no fucking money. Ever. We don’t get to go on vacations, we live in the shittiest neighborhood in the entire county, in a shit trailer, drive shitty cars, I assure you we have nothing nice. Nicest thing he had is probably his work boots which were paid for by his boss, working your ass off in Oregon does not pay off. “Get a better job” no shit sherlock, did it ever occur to you its difficult to not get fired from your job you are currently working, and still go to interviews? Employers be like “I know you have a job currently but can you drop everything and come in an hour?” Oh yeah, totally. And if you try and schedule it for a time maybe you won’t get fired its usually “Nevermind.” And the interview process is a begging a groveling process like you’re a god damn peasant. Why do I want this job? MONEY! Why else! Why does anyone want any job? I worked at a staffing agency for 4 years and I can not tell you how many people did well at those stupid cookie cutter questions but were shit workers. I wish places would just let you work a day or two and see. 

Then I got laid off as soon as stupid corona hit in March, they already fired my office manager and a sales person “over discounted bill rates”. Kinda like how the Dollar Tree stays in business because its cheap but more volume is sold (worked there before too that was horrible) so they have just as much profit if not more, as say Walgreens or something. With corporate clowns coming down and saying to clients basically pay the full rate or we are taking you to court, to 3/4 of the clients, sales tanked. They tried to blame corona but the sales were complete shit before that as soon as they fired the two people who had most of the sales, with discounted bill rates. I am still friends with someone who managed to not get fired. They said in a conference call this week they announced they would be lowering bill rates. *Face palm* now that you fired hundreds of people, you are lowering bill rates. How many lives did you ruin before coming to your senses? Companies here are just so fucking awful!

A few years ago I decided I wanted to move out of the country. However if you have a child, both parents have to sign a passport form unless you don’t have the father listed on the birth certificate. Norway in particular I like, its beautiful, free healthcare, minimum wage twice that of Oregon with cheaper rent and free healthcare, they also help with childcare. They claim they do in Oregon but your “copay” is usually so high you might as well just pay out of pocket and not deal with all the states controlling bullshit you have to deal with when you get state assistance. People like to say “Norway has higher taxes” please shut up and go look at Oregon’s income tax rate. One of the highest in the country. Expensive gas, INSANE housing, its just not possible to have a decent life here in Oregon. I love the ocean also. Norway is beautiful and comes in the top countries for quality of life every year, meanwhile USA is at the very bottom. 

Everyone called me paranoid all those years, I just had a bad feeling that something bad was going to happen also and I needed to get out while I still could. Next remark “how can you afford to get there if you are so broke?” Simple don’t pay my outrageous rent and insurance for 1 month problem solved. My child’s father finally agreed to sign the passport form now that its too late and Americans are banned from basically every country in the world, once the racism and virus bullshit started. Super awesome. He will never hear the end of that from me. Its been months and I still do not even have the passport. Even if I did I AM TRAPPED HERE!!!!!!!!!! I can not even go to fucking Canada!

I decided ok, I will try and move to Montana/Idaho/North Dakota or something. Give up my ocean in attempts to get the hell away from all this mask and the non existent “racism” bullshit. Go somewhere with a lower cost of living, more jobs with higher wages. I absolutely can not stand wearing the face masks. There is no evidence they work, just go look at Sweden. Or the states I just named which have no mask laws. Also a lot of rural areas in Oregon do not wear them seems like the entire populations would have been sick or dead. I am not looking to argue with scared little sheep over this. Before you say “I hope your grandparents die” because I don’t wear them, something that I have seen many people say to myself and anyone else without a mask, my grandparents have said many times they would rather be dead than be completely isolated over some bullshit virus with a higher survival rate than the flu. Plus the media has lied so much, how can you believe a word they say? Seriously? They are all left winged biased. I am not even a conservative and I can see it. But people just eat the shit up. That 26 year old who they claimed died in Oregon from coronavirus, turns out did not even have the virus the CDC medical examiner said. So you choose for yourself what to believe. 

I did get a job in Montana very easily. In six fucking months in Oregon I had maybe 5 phone calls for a job, all minimum wage no benefit shit jobs. I did 2 years of business and law classes, 4 years of heavy payroll and accounting for work so its not like I have absolutely no experience in anything worth a fuck. Plus 8 years total of customer service or more I have been working since I was 18 with gaps here and there between jobs. But with my boyfriend and son back in Oregon, 900 miles away, it was really difficult. I had never been alone like that or even stayed a night away from my child. Never in 9 years. First of all staying in some shitty hotel... I hate hotels in general I like my little nest, as shitty as my house may be, even at a nice hotel I would rather sleep in my own shitty bed. I lasted 2 weeks, only having $100  week leftover for food and other bills spending $400 a week at the cheapest motel I could find, before I gave up. I could not save money for a deposit or loan and my boyfriend has absolutely no credit so he could not get approved for a loan or rental either. He also had absolutely no one to watch our child back in Oregon with everything being closed so he could not work during that time and almost lost the job he had. Done landscaping for 11 years and still only makes $2 above minimum wage because companies treat employees like such shit in Oregon. I was so close, had a decent pay (way more than I ever made in Oregon even though Montana has a lower minimum wage) with benefits, but it was impossible to move into a rental. My credit is good enough for a loan, but I could not save money for a down payment staying in a hotel. Plus I was so lonely and miserable. Now winter is coming and we will not be able to go back and forth in that snow in little cars anyways.

If we would have succeeded, I would have gotten us into a rental and then quit as soon as he got a job because we never have anyone to watch our child and the cost of living is so much lower we would not HAVE to both work like we do here in Oregon. Especially now. Seriously, what the fuck do they expect people with kids to do? Schools are closed and even if they weren’t there is no way in hell I would send my kid wearing a mask all day. SO bad for you! They have to wear them all day “except at lunch” ok so might as well just take the damn things off the entire day. These rules don’t even make sense how do people not see that? Or in a restaurant you have to wear them if you walk to the bathroom but not at the table what logic is that? How do people not see through this bullshit? And children are gross they touch everything masks are going to do shit at schools. Notice the schools that did open, masks or no masks still had a shitload of cases. Single parents are especially screwed in particular. I guess if you could somehow both find employers willing to work with your schedule (good luck with that) you could constantly work opposite shifts as your partner/spouse and never seen them and work. 

Anyways, jobs for him paid more up there too, rent is fucking half of what it is in Oregon. Their average rent is the price of “low income housing” in Oregon. But we just could not do it. I tried. I tried so hard. I even learned Norwegian jeg snakker norsk und ich spreche auch Deutsch because Austria was another country I was interested in. You can try and try and try here, but unless you get lucky, or your parents help you, I do not know how people do it. All the old people I know here don’t have enough money to live off either after working 50 years. Its so sad.

I am no perfect person either. I am pretty bitchy, I have horrible anxiety I quit public school at age 12 and finished online, yes I have a high school diploma. I actually did all my high school schooling in 2 years after skipping 3 years of school with no problem. I never even really went to middle school and still managed. I am not stupid. I just have a hard time doing things I am absolutely miserable doing.

I will go into more detail, year by year on what a shitshow it is to live in the USA but in particular Oregon. The entire west Coast really. I hate it here and I just want out but I have tried everything. 

[theworstbob]

the thing journal, 6.11.2017 - 6.17.2017

capsule reviews of the pop culture i took in last week. this week: venice, witness, 1989, gilded, punch-drunk love, sucker, bloody bloody andrew jackson, gone now, boomiverse, melodrama, before sunrise, pinata, whiplash

1) Venice, by Anderson .Paak: Paak might be really close to Greatest Living Songwriter status. Like, Malibu and Yes Lawd! are both undeniable classics, but this is ALSO so solid, solid enough that I feel like, if we get someone in the room with Paak to say, "Hey, dude, maybe don't put a bad butt pun in this one?" Paak could be running the world. Every second of this album is wonderful. Like, .Paak makes songs that make an indoor kid like me wish he was at the beach, that's like the only thing I can say about this album. .Paak' great. I don't have enough words to describe what makes him great.

2) Witness, by Benjamin Booker: ...So, this is the last thing I'm writing? And this was a nice, bluesy rock album that made a Sunday morning slightly doper. I liked it, it was nice, listen to it if you like nice rock albums.

3) 1989, by Tay Tay: I sure do have a lot to say about this album that wasn't said two and a half years ago! I liked it. The first five songs are as good as any five songs on any album that's ever been, and then the rest of this album... Exists? Like there's no way I'm going to call an album with "Shake it Off" and "Bad Blood" on it a classic, and after hearing Lana del Rey songs I can't get behind the Lana del Rey impression that is "Wildest Dreams," like it was already an enh song but knowing it was ripping off an enh thing gives it a firm "no," but any album with "Style" and "Blank Space" and "Style" deserves plaudits, and the album does pick up with the last two tracks, which are up there with the first five tracks as the best stuff Tay Tay has ever done. End of the day, though, To Pimp a Butterfly still should have won Album of the Year, and if at the end of 2014 Catch-Up 1989 is still in the top ten for 2014 (#9 as I write this), I'd be stunned.

4) Gilded, by Jade Jackson: This? was somehow recommended to me by Amazon because I enjoy the music of Paramore. I cannot claim to have heard the Paramore in this. I heard a pretty decent if slow-moving country album! That was a fun surprise! One of my favorite things about country music in 2017 is how, like, we typically associate rebellion with punk and rap, y'know? Loud music that moves fast and is always shouting. And rebellion in country is sitting with just an acoustic guitar and singing sad songs about small towns. Like, a lot of country music is about what a small town home town dirt road party it is to be in the sticks, so the outlaws have to slow it down and reflect on whether they're truly happy where they are. So like, this album has incredibly little in common with Paramore from a music standpoint, but they share an attitude which has to manifest itself differently because of their respective genres. Basically, I'm incredibly down with this album.

5) Punch-Drunk Love, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson: hey. hey guys. did you guys know about this paul thomas anderson dude. he's pretty great. like, everything about that scene where he asks the woman out, the warehouse collapsing, the calls from the phone sex scammer, his sister haranguing him, the woman not knowing how to respond to this, him clearly not knowing how to handle the situation, the pudding the so much pudding, the score building as everything falls apart, it's so fucking good. i remember, when i was 12, this movie had like two whole shelves at hollywood video, and when my dad and my family were looking at this movie, we were like "we love little nicky! but this might be more serious? and poor innocent caralin," and i just, i wonder what a younger me would have thought about this film. i wonder how i would have reacted to this, if we actually had pulled the trigger on punch-drunk love before i was anywhere near ready to handle it.

6) Sucker, by Charli XCX: hahaha i need to do theme weeks or something like i'm supposed to think about a paul thomas anderson joint and then try to come up with a decent opinion about a fine, just a tich below great pop album. i should've eased myself into this, it should've gone punch drunk love, the kimbra album i added to provide the bridge from film master class to pop, and THEN charli xcx. i mean, i enjoyed this a lot, i had a solid, solid bus ride, but like i just need to structure the sequencing of thing journal better. like, maybe don't put the slap-hitting second baseman after the cleanup hitter, but the jason kubel type in the fifth spot, the chunky dude who kinda sucks at baseball but hits dingers more often than not. gotta think about my lineup, guys!

7) Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, wr. Michael Friedman: Well, this was good stupid fun. I think "Ten Little Indians" is a standout track, so clear a standout that it honestly belongs in a better work. It's a distillation of Native American history that doesn't seem to have any place in a musical recasting one of the shittiest presidents as a vain, morose emokid rock star, but then again, I listen to soundtracks and don't watch the shows, so fuck do I know about context. So, yeah, I dug "Ten Little Indians," and then everything else was fine and silly and took itself just unseriously that it never felt like American Psycho. Theatre in general isn't a good home for irony, but at least here, the sarcasm wasn't subtle, it was waving a giant flag the whole time saying "THIS IS DEF JOKES."

8) Gone Now, by Bleachers 9) Melodrama, by Lorde See, if I were a decent listener, I might have tried following up Gone Now with Melodrama. These reviews aren't being indexed in chronological order; I listened to Boomiverse before I gave Melodrama a spin, and looking back, I should've saved Gone Now for Friday to do a Jack Antonoff Power Block. I wonder if my opinion on these albums is colored by the interview I read where Jack Antonoff says he originally imagines all his songs for female voices, he writes his songs for women, then pitches them an octace down should they become Bleachers songs. And I found both Strange Desire and Gone Now to not really resonate with me, neither album really hitting me in the way an entity such as Bleachers should hit me. Bleachers is fun, '80s-inspired pop music -- I love that! But there's this weird disconnect I feel between the voice and the music, and I can't tell if that's a conclusion I arrived at on my own or if it was informed by that article, because while I didn't like Gone Now, I really loved Melodrama. Lorde and Antonoff work perfectly together, her voice gives life to a lot of things I heard but wasn't enthralled by on Gone Now, and they had a vision for this album -- songs have part twos! There's a reprise! ("Liability" is DOPE in the context of this album, y'all) -- which they executed sublimely. It's a complete, cohesive album that feels so much bigger than 11 songs, so full of weird ideas, and while I'm not sure how the mainstream is gonna react, I thought this was dope as hell, "dope as hell" being the highest praise my limited vocabulary has to offer.

10) Boomiverse, by Big Boi: One benefit of being just a dude on tumblr chronicling his experiences is that I didn't have to listen to and write a thinkpiece about a 70-minute Lil Yachty album. I only have to experience Lil Yachty through his features on other people's songs, do not have to contend with the totality of his vision. But, it is disappointing that professional music people DO have to write extended thinkpieces about Lil Yachty, when those words and thoughts and energies would have been far better spent on this album. This album is just good. There's no frills, minimal use of the obligatory Atlanta trap beat, clever rhymes, only occasional misogyny, and maybe the most jubilant rap track of 2017, "All Night." I honestly can't remember the last time I heard a hip-hop joint as joyous as "All Night." So much of my favorite hip-hop of the last few years hasn't been happy, and not even the justifiable "shit's fucked up" unhappy, the "sadness is the only valiid emotion" unhappy, and "All Night" is a statement that darkness is nothing without light.

11) Before Sunrise, dir. Richard Linklater: "Hey! I've been up since 1 AM, and it is presently 4:30! I'm going to put on this quet movie about a quiet night in Vienna so I can watch Before Sunrise before sunrise, LOL!" Yeah so I fell asleep during this one, team. Not long enough to feel like I missed a lot, not long enough for this film to lose its impact, but enough to feel like I failed this film. What I was able to see was great. It was like someone shot a podcast in Vienna, and that sounds like an insult, but I'm into movies that are just two people talking to each other, and I'd be into a podcast where two strangers try to fall in love in two hours, two people bullshitting about love and relationships and the future while wondering if they could be happy with the other person outside of the podcast. It didn't feel at all tempered knowing there's a sequel in the queue. Like, knowing these two people see each other again is disappointing, only in the sense that I don't get to live with the ending for 10 years before learning about the sequel, but at the same time, the characters don't know they're going to see each other again, and that last goodbye at the train is so heart-wrenching, the way she disappears behind the wall and the guy just follows her, trying to stay as close to her as possible.

12) Pinata, by Freddie Gibbs & Madlib: I will let nature review this album for me: I live in a garden level apartment, and outside my bedroom window, where I stationed my new computer, there's a bucket beneath the gutter in which water rests. Squirrels will occasionally come through, take a sip, and bounce. But as I was listening to this album, I saw that the squirrel was lingering outside my window. I assumed it was responding well to the vibrations created by Freddie Gibbs' pleasant, deep-voiced flow and the low-key production, and that it was enjoying the things it was feeling. This is music squirrels can enjoy, man, what more do you want. And then a Danny Brown feature came on, and that squirrel RAN, man. Like, I get it? I wouldn't expect a squirrel to respond well to Danny Brown, but I still feel that squirrel is missing out.

13) Whiplash, dir. Damien Chazelle: When I listen to music, I've found I connect to the drumming more than anything but the lyrics. Part of the reason I still listen to pop/punk is because literally every single pop/punk drummer is amazing, drumming so so fast every time. I also watch sports and speedrun streams, and one of the things that fascinates me is the maniacal drive to be great, this obsessive need to push yourself to some limit most would find unnecessary. So of COURSE I'm into a film which would marry the two, and which had the performance of a lifetime from JK Simmons, JK Simmons deserving all the plaudits he got for playing Malcom Tucker's long-lost American twin. I think Miles Teller was cat perfectly for the scenes where he's with JK Simmons, an arrogant nothing-boy who can convey talent and cluelessness, but Miles Teller is such a zero that the scenes with his family and girlfriend, where we're supposed to say "no nice boy don't isolate yourself from your loved ones to drum so good," just felt like "god shut the fuck up you whiny jerk." The film also didn't really address a couple of questions I thought might be relevant to the JK Simmons character. Does music still retain its meaning if you obsess over it to the extent that Fletcher does, do people still respond to his performances on an emotional level, or do they appreciate it on a purely technical level? There's that dinner scene, where someone in Miles Teller's family asks, "How can you have a music competition? Isn't it subjective?" and Miles Teller says, "No," but it never explores the idea of what chasing the parts of music which can be judged objective does to the music. The other question is, what right does Fletcher have to the next Charlie Parker? How does this white dude think he can own jazz? But I've spent more words finding what's problematic about the film than I did on what I liked, which is usually the sign of a great film, one I wanted to spend a lot of words thinking about.