#its wormed itself in there. its in my brai
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Finally got around to listening to Camp Here & There and. Im ill. Holy shit. I started this midday yesterday and now I'm on e23. I don't want to go to lesson. I need to finish this.
#camp here and there#ch&t#its wormed itself in there. its in my brai#also will wood is a genius and i fucking love the little motifs. and how ill they make me when i realise When Somebody Needs You plays#while Sydney and Jebidiah are gk#talking.#ah
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Symbiote AU Drabbles - 01
(AKA, I can’t switch my brain off. Might as well have some fun)
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Another day, another waiting creepy body. Waldo knew his day was about to be all kinds of bad when he let himself into his examination room and spotted the thick folder in his wire basket labelled 'Urgent - SI.'
“Heck,” he muttered, setting down his coffee as he booted the computer.
Initially his night was meant to be several bodies brought in following a bar fight gone bad, which had tallied up to four victims. Spotting Brioche's spidery handwriting on a file all its own meant he wasn't going to have the clean cut night he was hoping. The 'good' autopsies were taken, and something else was left. Heart sinking, and resigning himself to his fate, he decided to put off opening it for as long as possible as he prepped his room. He hoped Murphy had left a note, at least.
Surfaces wiped, tools arranged, new SD card in the charged camera, checklists done, email's skimmed... Waldo finally made his way back to the file.
Sure enough, there was plenty of weird inside.
“John Doe, estimated age mid-thirties, dead on scene... despite a lack of apparent surface tissue damage, several broken bones... appears hit and run. Oh damn.” One of the pictures brought him up short, and he squinted. There didn't seem to be any way that the skin shouldn't be broken from a snap like that, and yet.
Well, that was why it was his, after all. Because it was going to be a big damn mess, and his internal organs were going to be disgusting.
With a long suffering sigh, and wondering if he was going to get a visit later from the Sergeant and Harry Dresden, he headed for his apron.
John Doe was already toe-tagged and awaiting for him in a sky blue body bag in the cooler. Whoever had brought it in earlier at least had been kind enough to ensure he wouldn't need an assistant to lug it around, and had placed it in one of the lower units.
The bag didn't give much away, but Waldo still felt a touch uneasy. The way the body sat inside looked unnatural and made his stomach roll with unease.
Just get it over with. Nothing was grosser than that plague vic a few years ago.
With a deep breath, he got to work.
The bulk of autopsy work was always boring. Waldo made a few surface observations into a recording device before he got to work photographing. First it was pictures with clothes – for their own archives, the forensic analysists already had their own – and then came the cutting, removing, and bagging of said clothes. Each found their way into sealed plastic bags and onto a trolley, so Waldo could get to the less fun task of photographing once more, and gathering trace, fingerprints, and anything else he might need.
John Doe had been a fairly average looking guy. Waldo guessed construction, considering the oil spots and metal filings he found in his jeans, the rough look of his hands, the plain cut of all of his clothes. Hard to guess if he was in good shape, however. It seemed as though all the bones underneath the skin had been snapped, or warped.
“The hell happened to you?” he muttered, when the last of the clothing bags were set aside.
There was evidence of bruising, but for the most part the skin was merely distorted, twisted and pushed from underneath. A careful hand over his tibia – the bone twisted beneath it – suggested it had been snapped with considerable force, yet the skin remained unbroken.
Unease settled in Waldo's stomach as he tilted his head, gently shifting the skin and feeling the bone grind underneath.
He'd need to do X-Ray's. A lot of -
Without thinking, he yanked his hand away and leapt backwards, eyes wide and heart pounding. His palm felt wrong where it had been touching him, and he'd felt some kind of squirm and press in response.
He had to have imagined it. That was impossible.
Parasites? There was no way – but then again, this was one of his bodies, one of SI's. And Waldo believed all kinds of impossible things now. He just had to call Murphy, call Harry, and-
The examination table rattled as the cadaver heaved in a breath. Waldo screamed, watching the broken ribs flex as the lungs expanded. Wheeling trays clattered and tools hit the ground as he flailed back and away, nightmare memories in his head of zombies in the rain coming for him, reaching as the drum played endlessly-
There was no drum, though. Only his own frantic heartbeat as John Doe turned and launched itself off of the table and straight for him, moving like a stringless marionette that had no real concept for the way human joints were meant to behave.
His answering shriek was primal. The scent of decay was still weak on the fresh body, but there all the same. Fetid, trapped air that had been locked in unmoving lungs exhaled on his face and he felt his stomach turn in revulsion, unable to get away as bloodless fingers locked in his clothes and he met its eyes -
(Black. Coal black, shot with blue, no sclera, wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong)
- and the world tipped and all one hundred and ninety-two point five pounds of John Doe slammed Waldo into the ground. His skull clipped the hard metal floor and stars exploded in front of his eyes. The weight on his chest was unimaginable, and he screamed again, trying to break their grip, to squirm away, to think, when the cadaver let out a low, groaning exhale of air once more along with a writhing squirming sound that made Waldo think of horror movie sound effects, of twitchy worms or slopping entrails, so horrific it made him feel as though he were being washed with cold water, radiating from his chest and outwards.
As he gasped for air, the cadaver simply stopped and fell down on top of him. It felt like a leather bag full of sharpened sticks. The weight was that of any cadaver – unyielding and dead, and unable to be moved. His own arms were pinned beneath it, and he let out another braying yell of worry even though it was no longer moving.
He felt... funky. Wrong. Something. The skin of his chest felt as though it had been charged with some electric current, trembling at an unnatural speed.
He didn't stop screaming until the door opened and the security guard – David? It looked like David, sounded like David, hopefully was a very much alive David – arrived to haul the body off of him.
Waldo shot out from under the John Doe like a panicked cat, beelining straight for his cell phone before one of the other guards could catch him. He hit one on his speed dial as he tried to get his breathing under control.
Dead bodies don't do that. They don't.
The realization about how bad his day was going to get, between calling in the police and his supervisors, had not yet sunk in. He just needed help.
Magical help. Or at least the biggest ass kicker on the block.
He needed Harry. Now.
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Sleeper Simulant
Subroutine IKELOS: Status=complete. MIDNIGHT EXIGENT: Status=still in progress.
Type: Linear Fusion Rifle
Slot: Kinetic | Energy | Heavy
Element: Arc | Solar | Void
Perk: Dornröschen - This weapon's laser overpenetrates enemies. On hit, splits into multiple beams that refract off hard surfaces.
Masterworked Trait: Accelerated Coils - Speeds up weapon charge time.
Ornaments: Hypnopompic, Baikonur, Directive: Crash
Origin & Description: Once upon a time in the Golden Age humanity built an AI named Rasputin.
(Y'all knew this one was comin' so buckle the fuck up.)
Rasputin was made to think and he was made to learn and he was made to win. He cherished art and literature and music and drama, but humans asked of him other things. Humans called him war-mind and entrusted to him their defense. He did not want to take up the sword but knew that he was the only one who could and so he did. He watched over the Golden Age; he ruled a world of steel and fire. He called the other AI brothers and sisters but they called him Tyrant and made of him a tacit king. Not without affection. And certainly not without respect.
Rasputin was made to imagine the threats humanity couldn't imagine and face the enemies humanity couldn't face and one day out of the deep dark came the war they built him to fight. And he fought it. He fought against an enemy even he could barely define, he struck at it with aurora knives and the stolen un-fire of singularities made sharp and every other weapon at his disposal and it wasn't enough. Nothing would ever be enough to win the war Rasputin fought. And at the end of it he faced his enemy at the gate of the garden.
(There is a place called the Black Garden. It may have existed before existence itself. It is beautiful and verdant and wrong inside.)
At the gate of the Garden Rasputin faced Darkness, the flower-eater, the majestic final shape. Rasputin faced IT and IT smiled at him as IT devoured the blossoms with black flame and pinned their names across the sky. Everything died but Rasputin survived because he learned from IT, because IT is alone and IT is strong and IT always wins. So Rasputin cast off the shield and let the billions fall into ash and this is how he won.
In other words: he abandoned us. In other words: he ran.
For centuries he slept in silence and in pieces across the solar system. The eliksni harried him in the Cosmodrome where he baited a trap to kill the angel of his better nature and a deeper threat coalesced on Mars, a hungry Worm God and the Hive prince who fed it. The Worm God was called Will of Thousands but Rasputin was Will of One. He froze Hellas Basin under a mile of ice, hid himself and locked away the Worm and its Herald. But mostly he slept and when he was prodded awake he screamed and threw warsats at the problem until it went away and he could sleep again. He would live until the end of the universe. He would endure, him alone, and the names that lived immortal within him would survive.
And then the Traveler changed things.
Ana Bray did not remember who she was but Rasputin did. He knew her name and when he saw her alive again he knew he was no longer alone. Rasputin was made to learn. He learned from IT that IT was alone and IT was strong. He saw the way to win. But he learned from Ana too and he learned that even though the Spy was weak she made Ana stronger. That together they were more, not less. He saw a different way to win. And he began to try that way instead.
And long story short, my favorite homicidal art nerd AI is back in action on humanity's behalf. Now, Rasputin doesn't have a whole lot of ways to let someone know he wants to help, but number one on that list is "give them a sweet gun." Thus: Sleeper Simulant, his signature work. Object of mystery, favorite of players, icon of Destiny design, and my heavy of choice, even Sleeper’s exact weapon type is unclear - the game classifies it as a “linear fusion rifle,” but what does that even mean? Is it a railgun? Plasma beam? Laser, but somehow solid? The real answer is that Sleeper Simulant is an eraser. A problem solver. You point it at the problem and pull the trigger and hey. Problem solved.
(Personally I think it’s a handheld version of the orbital strike cannons on Rasputin’s warsats. It sure fucking hits like something fired from low Earth orbit. But I'm also partial to the idea that Sleeper was a vehicle-mounted weapon Rasputin made Guardian-portable by stripping off all that pesky radiation shielding.)
Sleeper Simulant shoots a laser instead of a projectile, but still fires individual shots rather than emitting a continuous beam like Coldheart or Prometheus Lens. Its bright red beam does a metric crapton of damage to whatever it hits, but after that the fun begins. D1 and D2 Sleeper have slightly different behaviors upon hitting a target or solid surface: in D1 a Sleeper shot then ricochets multiple times around the area; in D2 the original shot splits into four more beams that fan out at semi-random angles and ricochet again. Sleeper’s ricochets hit instantly, without the travel time of a bouncing grenade or a rocket with cluster bombs, and originally hit for a quarter each of the first shot’s already-hefty damage. Skilled players can aim Sleeper to bounce ricochets back into the target for extra damage, and it melted certain bosses with conveniently-shaped reflecting shields. Unfortunately it turns out to melt just a little too well; the nerf-hammer came down hard on the damage Sleeper's ricochets do against boss-level enemies. That's in addition to the nerfs to reserve ammo amount, distance falloff, aim assist, and charge time. Sleeper's been nerfed so often it's become a meme on the r/destinythegame subreddit. Fortunately for Sleeper fans, and friends of Sleeper fans who were going to lose it if they heard one more rant, our beloved heavy laser finally got a tuneup in mid-2021 that increased both precision and body-shot damage high enough to return it to top-tier service.
Sleeper's semi-random ricochets have another excellent side effect: while friendly fire prevention will keep them from killing your teammates, those lasers can and will happily murder whoever fired the shot in the first place. In Destiny 1 upgraded Sleeper shots could ricochet up to five times, leading to severe hilarity. Fortunately (or unfortunately) D2 Sleeper ricochets only bounce 1-2 times and seem to avoid reflecting straight back, making it far harder to accidentally headshot yourself from across the map. It’s still possible, though. Ask me how I know.
So why's it called "Sleeper Simulant"? Rasputin's a very well-read AI and he loves to pull names from literature and mythology. Sleeper echoes his running theme of sleeping/waking - possibly referring to how Rasputin himself has "slept" since the Collapse and is now reawakening to full strength. Rasputin's original weapons development program, DVALIN, was named for a dwarf in Norse mythology who forged multiple magical artifacts and whose name means "the one who slumbers." The IKELOS protocol under which he develops weapons for Guardians, including Sleeper, is named for the minor Greek god Ikelos, personification of nightmares, who also appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Sleeper's intrinsic perk "Dornröschen" is the name of a German opera of Sleeping Beauty. Its ornament "Hypnopompic" refers to the liminal state between sleeping and waking (the other ornament, "Baikonur," refers to his base in the old Cosmodrome). Interpreted literally the name “Sleeper Simulant" would mean something like "mimicking sleep" or "replacing sleep," which might be a pun since it makes people look like they’ve gone to sleep, except, y’know. They’re dead. It might also have something to do with the term "sleeper car," meaning a very high-performance vehicle camouflaged by an unremarkable exterior - but Sleeper's entire aesthetic is far from "unremarkable."
Destiny 1 “introduced” Sleeper Simulant as a hidden weapon locked behind a series of in-game puzzles that roped in the entire player community for days. Destiny 2 didn’t launch with Sleeper, but added it in the Warmind DLC; getting the new one is a more straightforward matter of following a questline Rasputin will give you himself (presumably after you explain to him how you lost the first one). Sleeper has been a player favorite since its introduction for its cool design, massive damage, and insanely long range, and has consistently ranked in the top tier of exotics. Since acquiring it in D2 was a matter of completing a fixed quest instead of grinding for a random drop, it became a staple in Guardians' arsenal. As of Year 4, with Mars now in the Content Vault, Sleeper has be purchased instead from the Monument to Lost Lights kiosk in the Tower for a heap of in-game materials.
Oh, right. Mars is gone now. The Darkness ate it. It's folded up into a pocket singularity, all its mass still present but compressed into an infinitesimal point. Darkness did that after Rasputin fired on it, but not before it also extinguished Rasputin. Hard shutdown. Meant to kill him, one imagines. And perhaps Darkness thinks it did. BUt as Rahool remarked, "An ancient figure shared his name. Someone notoriously hard to kill." Rasputin survived via the network equivalent of hiding in an airduct for three months before we could help Ana copy him down into an engram and a mess of the Destiny equivalent of USB sticks to bring back to the Tower, where she's been working on getting him up and running in the Seraphim Vault in the Cosmodrome, probably with an Exo frame linked in too so he can run around and kick ass personally. And maybe when he does he'll be wielding Sleeper too.
The Warmind Rasputin does not believe in a “proportional response.” He has a reputation for casually obliterating annoyances via orbital bombardment, and Sleeper follows this philosophy. When you really need something to Go Away Now, the Warmind’s got you covered. Sleeper Simulant: apply directly to the enemy's forehead.
Destiny 2 Compendium Armarum Exoticarum
[ Ace of Spades | Ager's Scepter | Anarchy | Arbalest | Bad Juju | Bastion | Black Talon | Borealis | Cerberus+1 | The Chaperone | Cloudstrike | Coldheart | Collective Obligation | The Colony | Crimson | Cryosthesia 77K | DARCI | Dead Man's Tale | Deathbringer | Dead Messenger | Devil's Ruin | Divinity | Duality | Edge of Action/Concurrence/Intent | Eriana’s Vow | Eyes of Tomorrow | Fighting Lion | The Fourth Horseman | Forerunner | Gjallarhorn | Grand Overture | Graviton Lance | Hard Light | Hawkmoon | Heartshadow | Heir Apparent | The Huckleberry | Izanagi’s Burden | The Jade Rabbit | Jötunn | The Lament | The Last Word | Legend of Acrius | Leviathan’s Breath | Lord of Wolves | Lorentz Driver | Lumina | Malfeasance | Merciless | MIDA Multi-Tool | Le Monarque | Monte Carlo | No Time to Explain | One Thousand Voices | Osteo Striga | Outbreak Perfected | Parasite | Polaris Lance | Prometheus Lens | The Prospector | Queenbreaker | Rat King | Riskrunner | Ruinous Effigy | Salvation's Grip | Skyburner’s Oath | Sleeper Simulant | Sturm | Sunshot | SUROS Regime | Sweet Business | Symmetry | Tarrabah | Telesto | Thorn | Thunderlord | Ticuu's Divination | Tommy's Matchbook | Tractor Cannon | Traveler's Chosen | Trespasser | Trinity Ghoul | Truth | Two-Tailed Fox | Vex Mythoclast | Vigilance Wing | The Wardcliff Coil | Wavesplitter | Whisper of the Worm | Wish-Ender | Witherhoard | Worldline Zero | Xenophage ]
#Destiny 2#Sleeper Simulant#Rasputin#y'all knew this was coming#my pride and joy#my dearest heavy laser#Warmind#Awake O Sleeper#ra ra Rasputin Mars' greatest war machine#what a delightful weapon you have gifted us#not pictured here: the story of why I love Rasputin so much#that's an entire other post for another day#bottom line is I love this sad angry computer so much#Destiny Compendium Exoticarum#this is the wager of existence#Destiny
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The Good Counselor - Chapter 2
Seventy years have passed since Elysion was created, and Persephone’s efforts to conceive a child with Hades have been in vain. But a secret rite on Samothrace might bend the Fates and give them all that they have ever dreamed of, or pave a path of untold suffering.
Chapter 2
Thesprotia was warm, even in the early evening. But that warmth didn’t penetrate the caves near the river. Here the chill of winter still clung to the rocks like moss .
In the palm of one hand, Persephone held an herb rooted in loose soil; her other hand trailed along the cool stones and damp roots of the cave walls. She followed the bend of the cave, the echo of a single drum’s steady tattoo joined by a lone piper's melody. A light flickered from the entrance of a great hall, and the smells of burning pitch and roasted venison wafted from within. Neither scent masked the stink of sex and sour wine. The tittering of dryads and naiads mixed with the braying laughter of satyrs, the pervasive chattering punctuated now and again by loud moans. The court was smaller than it once had been, so many years ago when mortal men and women had made the mistake of trusting its king— when Minthe had made the mistake of trusting her own father.
She reached the door, and the drum stopped, the pipes faltering a moment later, their last notes shrill. Whispers, then silence. Then the shifting and uncoupling of half clothed bodies, and knees dropping to the floor. Persephone didn’t look at the heads bowed to her, her gaze fixed on the dais at the rear of the hall. Her bare feet padded against the tile as she approached. “Kokytos.”
The king descended the dais and bowed low to her before resuming his place on his throne. “Well! An unexpected pleasure, Queen Persephone. When I heard you had been seen about Thesprotia I’d hoped that our paths might cross. Delightful to finally—”
“Leave us.” Persephone said.
With the barest murmur, Kokytos’s court, his musicians, and his servants gathered their instruments, their clothes, and cups. Most shuffled out of the hall; some disappeared in flashes of green— high order nymphs vanishing into the ether— until only the river god and the Queen of the Underworld remained.
Kokytos spied the bright green sprig in her hand. “So it’s true then? What Minthe did?”
“It is. Though not all of what they say.”
“Well, you can’t believe everything that gods and humans say. Gossips, to the last. Everyone worth knowing knows that Aidoneus is faithful to fault. And my sympathies for what befell you and your lord husband at her hand.”
“I was expecting something more akin to an apology. Not sympathy.”
Kokytos scoffed. “I had no part in what Minthe did. She brought her schemes with her, whispered in her ear by your illustrious mother, obviously.”
“Did she?”
“I took her in. That was all.”
“You let the men of your court violate her. They warped her, twisted her mind.”
He held up his hands. “Nothing she didn’t agree to. She knew the price of staying.”
“Your own daughter…”
Kokytos rolled his eyes. “One of many. If she was mine at—”
“She was,” said Persephone. “I know all souls, living and dead, just as my husband does.”
He shifted in his chair.
“You have much to answer for.”
Kokytos threw up his hands. “So I whored my daughter! What of it? Are you going to condemn the father of every hetera in Hellas along with me? Who’s next?”
“No.” Persephone said, with a soft smile. “She is the means by which you and I are unfortunately acquainted, but Minthe is not the reason I am here.”
“Then what?”
“There were human guests in your hall nearly fourscore winters ago…”
Kokytos paled.
“During the Great Famine. Do you remember them?”
“Humans— once, per-perhaps, long ago? H-how could I possibly recall? Decades have passed. And so have they, most likely.”
“Indeed they have. To the last soul.” She took a step forward. “You murdered them. You dined on their flesh. Your servants and guests feasted on them at your behest.”
His voice cracked dry as he choked out a laugh. “What nonsense… who in the world would tell you such a story?”
“The men and women you killed, Kokytos.”
His face fell.
“It took years for me to find them all in Asphodel. Decades, even. At first, there were rumors, nymphs who whispered to other nymphs, until those rumors reached my ears. I, too, doubted their awful tales. But the dead cannot lie.”
“My Queen, please… you know better than anyone that food was dwindling. Those mortals would have died anyway. I would have faced revolt from my men once my stores ran out… My court—” Kokytos coughed, and pulled at his mouth. He withdrew a mint leaf.
“Kokytos, son of Okeanos…”
“I am one of the ageless! Mortals are livestock. Flecks of dust! Only they need live by your father’s petty laws. I am your husband’s vassal! You cannot cond—” He spat out another mint leaf.
Kokytos choked around a sprig of mint clawing at his throat. He yanked it free, then stared at his hands, mint blooming from under his fingernails, the roots twisting through his veins. He stood with a shriek, his throne tipping backwards. Kokytos beat at his arms as though they were aflame, tearing leaves and buds from his skin, but the more he raked from his flesh the more grew in its place.
“Abandon all hope, Kokytos.” He fell and tumbled down the stairs of his dais, his cries choked and muffled, and crashed to the floor of the cavern. Kokytos writhed, flailing as fresh clumps of mint sprung from his mouth, his nostrils, his eyes. “For your part in the murders of your guests and the consumption of mortal flesh you are condemned— not to Tartarus, but to oblivion.” The screams were buried under a wellspring of green along with his twisted features. Mint burst through the fabric of his robes, the still limbs beneath a tangle of roots and soil. Roots wound about his fallen crown. “So say I, Persephone Praxidike Chthonios, Queen of the Underworld, Carrier of Curses cast on those who live, by the dead whom they harmed in life.”
Kokytos’s outline was indistinguishable. Only a sprawling patch of mint remained, pungent leaves overpowering the lingering headiness of the orgy that had raged in the hall only minutes before. Mint crept between the mosaic tiles as Persephone left the chamber, the single sprout still resting in her left hand. Persephone curled the fingers of her right hand into a fist as she walked out the tunnel. Rocks tumbled from the ceiling and dust billowed behind her.
She didn’t travel through the ether. She owed Minthe the walk to the poplar grove where her mother’s tree stood. Mud caked her bare heels. Her green peplos swished in the breeze and she sheltered the mint plant in her hand. The soil in her palm was warm.
“I forgive you,” she whispered to the sprig as she walked. “I hope that you can forgive me, wherever you are.”
The grove loomed ahead, and she slowed her pace, listening to the songbirds and crows. She reached a tree at its center, with great branches towering overhead. This tree had been here far longer than the others, and it didn’t sway in the wind the way the rest did..
“Leuce?” She stared up at the branches. “I come to return your daughter, and to atone.”
Persephone knelt and scooped aside some of the loam near a broad root, and dug into the earth. She gently planted the cupped handful of soil and mint next to the outstretched base of the poplar. The tiny sprig leaned against the tree in a spot of sunlight. As she stood again, she spoke to the outstretched branches above. “Please forgive me. Forgive my husband. Forgive my mother, and Hecate. That’s all I ask.”
Hera sprawled inelegantly on Hestia’s divan, her fingers plaited under her chin. She drew in a long breath, then sighed dramatically. “Why must I entertain that sea witch again?”
Hestia tittered and shook her head, then ladled a boiling cup of water from the cast iron pot sitting on the hearth, carefully weighing and swishing it until it stopped bubbling. “Oh, come now. She isn’t all bad.”
“Isn’t she though? All she talks about is the strumpets that she drags to her marriage bed. If I have to hear her extol their bedsharing one more time—” Hera’s face had grown flushed. “Fates preserve me. She’s worse than that eastern whore who wormed her way into my son’s heart.”
“Than Aphrodite? Surely not,” Hestia laughed. She shook her head, then emptied the ladle over a mix of ambrosia, sideritis, sage, and a bit of hemp flower. “Here. Calm yourself.”
Hera held the clay cup to her face and inhaled deeply. She closed her malachite dusted eyelids and every thought of Amphitrite evaporated. There were only the licking flames of Hestia’s hearth, the shadows dancing on the multitude of carefully arranged alabastron jars on the shelves, and her white-veiled sister tending to the flames. She took a sip of the tisane, and gone was the fury that still brewed over Zeus’s latest conquest, a dark-eyed Theban princess. Here, that harlot didn’t exist. Olympus itself could crumble to its foundations, and she wouldn’t care a whit. “How do you always know the best remedy for my mood?”
“Aeons of practice, dear sister.” Hestia smiled warmly.
Hera sipped. “It doesn’t get dull? Tending to the fire day after day?”
“I prefer it,” Hestia said, pouring herself a cup. “The quiet of the hearth suits me. The mortals offer me the first and last herb and drink of every meal, and I am free to peruse and take what I like. And roam further afield without a man’s permission.” She sipped from her cup, her gaze resting on a jar containing her latest acquisition— a sweet spice from the islands beyond the Valley of the Indus that curled up like a scroll and didn’t resemble any leaf or seed known.
“You could have been a queen, Hestia.”
“I could have. But the intrigue and theatrics of court are not for me. And wedding Poseidon… living at the bottom of the sea would be intolerable. Better he has that sea witch, as you call her, by his side.”
Hera nodded. Her sister had always been drawn to warmth. The ocean would have chilled and rotted everything that made Hestia content. She wondered what life might have been like had she too had decided to take the path of a perpetual virgin. A visit from Zeus, disguised as an injured bird, had ended that possibility…
“Why is Zeus summoning Poseidon to meet in private?” Hestia asked idly.
“He demands another needless report on Ilion’s wall; what else? Fates have mercy, it’s been millennia— aeons— and still my lord husband cannot let bygones be bygones with that man.”
“You know how he loves to stay on top,” Hestia replied. Hera looked over her cup and cocked an eyebrow. Hestia continued without noticing. “Surely he worries that letting them be bygones might precipitate another rebellion.”
“Of course he does.” Hera rolled her eyes. “It feels strange to even say these words, but I wish Zeus and Poseidon could be more like Hades.”
Hestia sputtered, nearly choking on her tea. “What?”
“He stays where he ought, and performs his duties with all the steadfast dullness we’ve come to expect of him. No scheming, no power games… Fates, he never showed his face until he came to claim his bride. He’s been so…” Hera scrunched her face thoughtfully. “Perfectly reasonable.”
“Reasonable? Hera, he plunged the world into famine and darkness over a girl. Courtly intrigues are tiresome, but never so disastrous as that.” She spoke low, as though the words themselves were a grave curse. “This flame nearly went out.”
Hera scoffed. “That was all Demeter’s doing. Had she behaved like a proper mother, not a stalk of wheat would have withered. The Stygian betrothal had been in place since the war. It was her folly not allowing Persephone to marry the husband chosen for her. A king no less…”
“Yes, perhaps if she’d considered what a fine queen her daughter would make. And what a faithful husband Hades would be.” Hestia set down her cup, her eyes sparkling. “You should send a summons.”
“Invite Hades?”
“No, not him… Zeus would feel upstaged. I mean Persephone.”
Hera ground her teeth. “Demeter’s bastard.”
“Did you hear about what she did to that girl who tried to—”
“Yes.” Hera said. “I know. She scared my poor Hephaestus with her theatrics. Nevermind the spectacle she made of herself in Ephyra!”
Hestia winced.
Too sharp, she scolded herself. She set down the cup and stood, brushing her peplos back into place. Hera meandered through the chamber, eyeing the various herb filled pithos as she went, taking in each heady scent. She searched along the wall and found a familiar jar, then glanced at Hestia contritely. She was Queen of Heaven, but this was her sister’s domain.
Hestia nodded and Hera pulled an alabastron of rosewater from the shelf, flecking some into her tea, then rubbing the rest on her wrists.
“Perhaps inviting her would make your afternoon less of a chore.”
“What, tomorrow? To Olympus? She’s not one of us. She’s a byblow—”
“Perhaps not, but neither is Amphitrite an Olympian. Persephone is Queen of the Underworld, and equal in rank to Amphitrite.” Hestia smiled wistfully. “A meeting of queens…”
Hera sighed, but then narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “All I ever heard after the Pomegranate Agreement was Persephone this, Persephone that. Most, if not all of them falsehoods. What do you know of her?”
“Only a little. But you may have more in common with Persephone than you know. You could learn more of her; ask her about this Elysion that she and her lord husband have built. Perhaps you could even strengthen the bonds between the Lands Below and the Heavens.”
Hestia had struck upon something, Hera realized. The rulers of the dead had only grown in influence since their marriage. With Persephone as her friend, the two queens could easily overrule Amphitrite. And if Hera proved her worth in forming a powerful alliance with them, what would Zeus say then?
“If I brought her into my circle, it would only strengthen us. And prove to him once and for all that I can make peace with his baseborn spawn.”
“You remember how he welcomed you back after… that ill-gotten plot with Apollo and Poseidon? It was a very long time before he strayed again”
“Sixscore years.” Hera allowed herself a smile of grim satisfaction. “The longest he’d been faithful since we were newly wed.”
“Less time you have to spend chasing a wandering husband, then.” Hestia ladled another cup of water over her herbs. “Another thing I don’t mind missing out on.”
“Ha! I should be so lucky,” Hera said. “If all goes accordingly, that would mean Hades would be Zeus’s closest example of proper marriage.”
“And we do know how he likes to be on top.” This time, Hestia smirked.
“I know him. He’d try instead to best his brother at the game of fidelity… He’d lose, of course, at first, but that would make him far less brazen about his exploits. Cowed, even. And who knows? Perhaps chasing flesh would lose its lustre one day.” The Queen of Heaven set down her cup and stared at the flames. She laughed softly to herself as the solutions to Amphitrite, that Theban harlot, and any whores that would follow fell into her lap.
Hestia shrugged. “I leave the marital intrigue to you, dear sister. It will be a royal event. The first meeting of the Queens of all three realms.”
“My lord won’t like being upstaged.”
“Oh, don’t hold it in the symposium. Invite them to your villa. If Zeus protests, just remind him that your hospitality is long overdue.” Hestia’s serene face cracked into a sly smile. “And remember, your home is your domain. You would have the last word.”
“I’d hardly have to get his permission. In his mind, nothing would humiliate Poseidon more than coming second to a meeting of goddess queens.” Hera wrinkled her brow and grew solemn. “What if Persephone is more trouble than Amphitrite?”
“I shouldn’t think so. They say she is closer to your temperament. She’s a quiet but strong ruler. I’m sure she has just as low an opinion of Demeter as you, given their circumstances. And she’s practically a paragon of wifely virtue.”
“So I win her over, and the feared Praxidike becomes my loyal pet. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Perish the thought. Finish your tea, and then send her an invitation.”
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Destiny 2 Thoughts
(To be fair, I never played D1 and knew virtually nothing of the game before playing D2)
- The base game was so forgettable all I remember was the bad guy was a fat bloke called Ghaul? Apart from that, nothing. In fact most of the time I felt like the bad guy invading these weird alien’s homes and murdering them all for a bunch of self-righteous freaks that won���t die.
- Curse of Osiris is nothing but a short questline to give some storyline to Ikora Rey and nothing else. A joke of an expansion - the fact they charged like £20 for this is insulting. Interesting premise but goes literally nowhere and feels like it just repeats itself. Sagira was nice.
- Warmind was cool though, the location looks great and Rasputin was a pretty cool idea. The Valkyrie spear thing was fun to use and the worm demon thing at the end was a really fun fight. Bit short though. Ana Bray’s derpwolf on her coat amused me.
- With Forsaken, I kinda understand when I read people say this is what Destiny 2 was meant to be from the start, as it’s considerably more fun to play. The Reef looks cool, the storyline felt meaningful and the Barons were really nice.
- In fact going on the Barons, they all were really fun. It would have been better to see more of them actually. Memorable personalities and fun fights. I loved the Fanatic, and the fight against the Rifleman was fun.
- Spider’s kinda hot.
- Ikora Rey is too edgy 4 u.
- Zavala is the fun police. He’s so boring. I want to push him off the tower.
- Cayde was really interesting and I liked him and then he died and now there’s like 1 interesting character left.
- Which despite looking like a Poundland Harley Quinn, is Mara Sov.
- Her brother, Uldren Sov listens to far too much My Chemical Romance than is healthy for any normal person. Perhaps controversially, I didn’t agree with killing him.
- Every time I see Petra Venj I just think of Miss Vanjie and it’s ruined her.
- I didn’t get what the significance of Cthulu turning up was. Like is this a new villian or an old one, I have no idea. Nobody seems fussed about it either.
- Gambits are fun but Crucible is not.
- The lore is simultaneously brilliant but also a pile of shite. There’s so much lore and story going on but its so shockingly represented in game it’s difficult to glean what’s actually happening. Huge details are skipped over that I only learnt through the wiki pages. That’s poor game design right there.
- The guns are fun but forgettable. I mean you’re a sci-fi shooter! Where’s the lasers? Where’s the bizarre and memorable weapons?! Like you’ve seen one shotgun/submachine gun/whatever you’ve seen them all and then you see them over and over again with increasingly underwhelming stats. Disappointing.
- Bungie should never do driving sequences. Why does every vehicle drive like a milk float with a flat tyre? I can drive a real car but I can’t drive this shit.
- Why are all the characters in the customisation menu shockingly ugly? Why is there no real difference between playing Human, Exo or Awoken? Where are these races racial identities? Who are they? WoW, a 10 year old or so game does racial and cultural differences so much better. And that’s a shame as according to the wiki all three D2 races are full of fascinating story. It’s just not in the game.
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ice
it’s always nice to know who’s in your corner
The ice and snow created a divide in Guardian’s mind. The Mars they knew was dry and windy, red sand covering the city of Freehold and every trip through the buried city was a challenge. The part of Mars they were on now was eerily still, far emptier than the they thought the red planet could be. If they blocked out the cries of the Hive and the machinery of the Cabal then there was nothing. No howling wind, no shifting sands, nothing to let them pretend that there used to be humans living on Mars.
The Mars that cradled the Black Heart was not the Mars they stood on now.
Water dropped into ever growing puddles from melting icicles. Snow was pushed into the corners of the foyer to clear a path deeper into the facility, and while the room they were in was warm, the open door let in a chill that seeped through their armor. Guardian bumped the back of their heel against the stack of boxes they were sitting on, and made a point to not listen in on the heated conversation between Zavala and Ana. They had a feeling that if they let it slip that they could hear they would get pulled into it regardless of their own wishes, and besides, there was history between the Titan and Hunter. Whatever had those two gnashing at each other’s throats was not something Guardian wanted to get caught up in.
The harsh whispers stopped, and when they didn’t start up again Guardian took that as their cue to finally ask what the plan was. They hopped down from the boxes, ice water splashing up their boots, and climbed the stairs to where Ana had set up her equipment. Wires led into servers that led into the data stored inside the Bray facility, which were kept separate from the amount of space Rasputin needed to even function as a complex set of algorithms stacked on algorithms. A jewel of the Golden Age that forced itself into dormancy for its own selfish reasons. Ana was standing at her computers, hands balled into fists atop the keyboard and her brow furrowed like she had more to say. Zavala stood by the window gazing out at the frozen desert, hands behind his back as if to keep some modicum of professionalism because he knew Guardian was standing at the top of the stairs.
The Hunter stayed quiet, they could outlast both Zavala and Ana when it came to being silent. The air was tense, bearing down on them when they decided to once again sit and wait. They removed their guns from the straps on their back, leaning their scout rifle and shotgun against the short wall while their sidearm stayed strapped to their leg. They hopped up onto the railing, hands curling around the cold bar to hold themself steady, and waited. Either Zavala would give in first, or Ana would, and Guardian didn't know enough about either of them to make a solid bet on who would break the silence first.
Zavala didn’t speak, but he did move. He turned away from the window, moving his unrelenting stare from the ice and snow to Guardian. The two locked eyes, and if Guardian knew him better, or knew him at all really, they would know what to do with the piercing gaze. It bore into them, as if he could find the answers to unasked questions with a single look.
So they were caught off guard when Ana spoke first. “We have to stop Xol,” she said. She kept her eyes on her computer screen, refusing to look up at Zavala or over at Guardian. “If it gets out of those chasms and tunnels then it won’t hesitate to destroy Rasputin, and the facility.”
Guardian wished they had it in them to care.
They were only on the planet because of the Hive. They didn’t care about Rasputin, not after the orbital strikes, the general lack of care about humanity, and seeing the aftermath of SIVA. Whatever Ana saw in the A.I. wasn’t enough for Guardian.
“Which is where you come in, Guardian,” Zavala said. He didn’t want to be on Mars either to deal with Golden Age technology and the ramblings of a Warmind that closed itself off from humanity for centuries. He could see the dangers Rasputin would bring, and it seemed like he wished Ana would too. “You defeated the Taken King Oryx, a God in his own right. A Worm should hold no challenge.”
Guardian stared at Zavala. He knew what they were like during the Taken War. They were strung out and paranoid, falling apart at the seams and their only saving grace was Ira holding them together. “I didn’t do it on my own.”
“You won’t be alone, Rasputin will help,” Ana said, confident in her decision to trust the Warmind. “The Valkyrie will be instrumental in stopping Xol once and for all.” Guardian bit their tongue to keep from replying, allowing Ana to continue talking without a clue. “Which will be easier once I access more systems.”
Zavala’s stare was still focused on Guardian. “If you feel that you cannot—”
“I can do it,” they said. Their voice no longer shook, there was no more stuttering, but it was still raspy and quiet. It barely reached above a whisper, but it echoed off the walls. It even made Ana look at them. “But,” they continued before they could be interrupted, “but, only to stop Xol. I don’t care about Rasputin. I’ve seen too much of the aftermath of his decisions to give a damn about his safety.”
Ana’s jaw clenched, and Guardian silently dared the older Hunter to try something.
They were almost disappointed when nothing came of it.
Almost.
“Okay,” Ana breathed. Her hands relaxed, fingers stretching out over her keyboard. “Okay. But I’m not going to let you fight a Worm without some pretty powerful weapons at your disposal. The Valkyrie is going to be essential. We can deal with everything else after Xol is gone.”
Guardian accepted the hand they had been dealt with a silent nod. A giant Hive Worm was far more important than their personal feelings over a frighteningly powerful A.I., and they were more readily prepared to handle the Hive in general than Golden Age technology. They hopped off the railing and picked up their guns, returning them to the proper straps with quick hands. The guns were a welcome weight on their back, heavy enough to keep them grounded in the midst of an oncoming storm. “I’ll be outside. You two can keep talking.” They threw a half hearted salute at Zavala, and a lazy wave at Ana for good measure, before walking down the stairs.
The frigid air surrounding Clovis Bray was sharp, but it wasn’t the same kind of frost that happened on Earth. There was no needle like sensation against their skin, nothing to make goosebumps rise along their arms, and when they breathed out there were no puffs to show for it. A frozen Mars was nothing like a frozen Earth. Felwinter’s Peak put Hellas Basin to shame.
Guardian’s feet carried them to the ledge of the dam. Far enough away from the actual facility while still being close enough to burst into action if need be. They sighed heavily through their nose, and tucked their bangs behind their ear. The wind would obstruct their view when it kicked up, and Guardian didn’t want to put their helmet back on quite yet.
Heavy footsteps, the familiar comfort of Titan armor clunking along stone, reached them. The good soldier inside wanted them to stand up and properly greet the Commander. The Hunter in them kept them seated, heels bouncing off the dam wall. They patted the space next to them, and couldn’t keep the smile off their face when they saw Zavala sit next to them in their peripheral.
Silence overcome the pair. Both were grasping for words to say now that the division between Commander and soldier was shelved.
Zavala kept his eyes trained of a point far in the distance when he asked, “Are you prepared to fight a Worm God?” Guardian hummed, and brought their hands together to hold them between their legs. They stared out at the same point Zavala was, eyes focused on red, red rock.
“More or less. Xol isn’t like Oryx. I had help killing him because he went into the Ascendant Realm.” Guardian remembered the disbelief and the rage that followed them back to the Tower. In hindsight, it seemed childish to yell so loud their voice cracked as tears fell down their cheeks, but in the moment it seemed right. “But… I do wish Eris were around.”
“Her knowledge would be invaluable,” Zavala agreed softly.
“Her way might involve a lot more Hive magic though,” Guardian said. “And after Crota and Oryx and that huge Shrieker on Titan, I’d rather just… not.” There were other Guardians that could handle the Hive, that knew more about the intricacies of Sword Logic; Shaxx had unwound the mysteries long before anyone else did. Meanwhile, Guardian simply made their will to live stronger than the Hive’s will to kill them because they had to, because death to the Hive was unacceptable.
Their death was unacceptable.
And it seemed to work in their favor more often than not.
“Have you come to regret the things you’ve done, Guardian?” Zavala tore his eyes away from the far off point to look at the Hunter. To him, they were impossibly young for such an accomplished Guardian. Time was not their teacher, but the never ending battle they were risen to fight, and they learned the lessons without complaint.
Guardian looked at him. “Do you?”
The question didn’t catch Zaval off guard as much as Guardian hoped. The Commander answered with a prompt, “No, I do not.” Which left Guardian to flounder in their own head.
“Do you think I do?”
That earned Guardian a contemplative silence.
“No,” Zavala said quietly. “No, I don’t think you do. You’ve done many things since you were risen what seems like a lifetime ago. You destroyed the Black Heart, defeated Crota and Oryx, and contained the SIVA outbreak to the Plaguelands. Aside from a few understandable moments, there was never a time where you walked into the Vanguard Hall with nothing less than pride. You are remarkably unshakeable, Guardian. A rare trait to come across.”
The Hunter hummed to let Zavala know they had been listening as they turned his words over in their head. Zavala rarely saw them outside the Tower when it still existed and wasn’t more than a pile of bent metal and a gaping hole in the old Tower. He never made late night food runs for Ira and Jai and Apollo or sat on the highest point of the City with Hemlock and Ronin or wandered tight alleyways with Sadik and Roksana just to find the best noodle shop. He didn’t know their favorite color, their favorite food, their fears and worries that grew steadily over the months. To Zavala, they were Guardian, a dutiful Hunter that’s done the impossible time and time again as if the impossible was the only reason they were risen in the first place.
They winced inwardly. Remembering that there was more to life than being a Guardian was a concept they still struggled with.
“Not much else I can be,” Guardian said. “Guess I learned it from you.” The corner of Zavala’s mouth quirked up in the smallest smile Guardian had ever seen, but it was enough to make them cheer on the inside. “Really though. You’re always so… so-” they puffed their cheeks out, trying to find the word they wanted. Strong was cliche, as was inspirational, even if those words were true. Moments like this was when Guardian missed Ira the most. He always knew what to say; a word or six tucked away to use.
Just as Zavala turned his head, Guardian settled on a word. “Resolute,” they said, then whispered to themself, “yeah, that seems right. Right?”
“It’s kind of you to say,” Zavala commented lightly. “There are those who would say the opposite of me, especially during the Red War.” Guardian snorted softly, turning to meet the Commander head on. Bright orange met with ice blue as they stared each other down.
“When I saw you on Titan, I felt relief.” They had felt calm when Willow announced their arrival to the Rigs, but seeing Zavala walking up to them in the rain made their knees weak and tears well up. “I woke up in the City in a crater. By all rights, I should’ve died when Ghaul kicked me off his ship, but I didn’t. I got my Light back from the shard in the EDZ because a vision told me to, and was given the runaround to help refugees to the Farm. I was told that the City, my home, was gone, and that I shouldn’t go after you, but I did because— because I needed to make sure you were okay.” Guardian tore their eyes away from Zavala’s. Saying things out loud made them too real, and it made Guardian nervous. Added with the fact that they couldn’t read the Titan at all, they were fighting to keep the ball of anxiety stay in the pit of their stomach. “Even if you don’t feel like it, or you think that your time on Titan was a waste, seeing you there gave me a lot of hope. And I really needed it.”
Guardian kept just how much they needed that hope seeing Zavala gave them a secret. In the blur that was those first few days of having their Light back, even hearing the Titan Vanguard was soothing. He made things seem normal, like they could pick themself up from the dirt and move on just because they knew he was alive. He might not have been on Earth, but hearing his voice had been enough.
Zavala had an unreadable expression on his face as he mulled over Guardian’s words. Then, he smiled. Nothing so grand as a full blown grin, or fake as a slight quirk of the corner of his mouth, but an honest smile. The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly, the grooves around his mouth deepened momentarily as he smiled. His eyes seemed to glow a touch brighter, and his posture relaxed marginally. “Thank you, Guardian.”
If Zavala were Shaxx, they’d lean over and slug him in the arm, but he wasn’t and that left Guardian scrambling with what to do with the thanks. They managed to whisper a weak, “You’re welcome,” then looked anywhere but at Zavala.
The conversation stilled, leaving Guardian to grasp at straws. They wondered if they should continue onto a new topic, or let it end where it stopped. This was a moment where they missed having Ira by their side. He was a natural at keeping a conversation going, but he had other matters to attend to and Guardian-
Guardian went off on their own like they always did.
Bad things happened when they went off on their own.
Like apparently the emergence of a Hive Worm God.
The ground below rumbled, rocks and ice cracked as something moved beneath the surface. Guardian watched as the ground splintered and listened to the Hive screech louder and louder in the distance. Xol, it seemed, was not going to wait.
“Do you think I can beat Xol?” They asked softly.
“I have every confidence that you can.”
Guardian’s heart squeezed in their chest, anxiety making their limbs tingle as they imagined what fighting a Worm would be like. Frightening, yes. Necessary, absolutely.
Alone, maybe.
They needed to put a call in to Rime and Ira.
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Today! On Unpopular Opinions: Destiny 2, Warmind
Destiny 2′s newest DLC, Warmind is borderline trash. Now, when I pre-ordered it, I, initially, went through the usual rigmarole. Foolishly placing my hopes and expectations that this $20 DLC would right all the wrongs that have plagued D2 since its outset, and then coming to the cold realization that by the time Bungie was willing to entertain listening to its Destiny fanbase, Warmind was likely all-but completed. Meaning that it would either be the same as DLC1, Fall of Osiris or negligibly better.
I realize there’s a lot of reasons for this. Bungie agreed to a ridiculous content schedule with Activision, where they were forced to pump out new content and games on a schedule that disallows for proper development and growth. That, the new direction of Destiny is Call of Duty w/Space Losers. That, because, for the second time, Bungie changed D2′s game direction in the eleventh hour; brought in new people who did not understand the lore or what the game was supposed to be, etc, etc, etc.
And yet, here we are.
The campaign Warmind is alright. And I mean that in the loosest of senses of the term ‘alright.’ I have many problems with its story direction. Some of them, a lot of you have previously heard before: silent protagonist, uptight, kiss-ass ghost, stiff character development. There are other issues I take up, however. Issues that just left me scratching my fucking head in a general mystified and annoyed manner. (Note: there be spoilers)
1) Once again your Guardian follows along with some half-assed plan to save the universe. (Which, if I’m being honest, the Universe never felt threatened during Warmind. It’s more of a, “hey, can you help me get rid of these guys who’re crashing my place? They smell bad, eat all my food, don’t clean up after themselves and are generally ungrateful jerks.”) This plan, borders the epitome of asinine, mind you. It amounts to:
Zavala: “Hey, let's take a piece of the Traveller and bait this giant-ass snake-god thing.”
Ghost/Guardian: “...”
Ana: “Then, what?” (Ana, who is suddenly an expert in the Hive asks curiously. Meanwhile, your ghost, who should have wised up and remembered that you fought ORYX, the Black Garden, Skolas, SIVA (which, were, generally betterish plans) should have had concerns.)
Zavala: “We wing it.”
Ghost/Guardian: “...” (Both of you should have protested, citing how we winged it with the Almighty and Ghaul and that didn’t really work out. The Almighty is still slowly destroying Mercury, but NOBODY mentions that. The next time you’re on Mercury, stop what you’re doing and look around. The planet is still being ripped to chunks and pulled into the Almighty.)
Ana: “What? We could use Rasputin--”
Zavala: “No! Absolutely not.”
We use Rasputin.
How? His “relic weapon” a super-heated/conductive spear that we literally chuck at a god. I mean, why not, right? We took down Oryx who was (pre-”established D1 canon is hearsay and folklore and not fact”) literally the strongest God we’ve fought since the quasi-para-casual tentacle thing that was supposed to represent the Darkness embodied. At least, in the Black Garden, they had the good sense to have us beat the damn god by proxy. Defeating Xol was just lazy writing. He’s a fucking Worm God! You know, the thing, Auresh/Oryx took/consumed to become the taken King and literally lead the Hive out of the Fundament/Deep.
But, hey, it’s cool in the end. After all, Xol was the weakest, puniest Worm God of the bunch. It's not like it/he had power only rivaled by the OTHER WORM GODS. Let’s chuck a nuclear spear at it. That’ll kill it. Because science!!
2) Your Guardian is sent to the Deep/Fundament by a fucking God. Xol literally transports you to another plane of existence, cutting you off from the Traveller’s Light (because your plan is so asinine) in order to kill you slowly. Mind you, this place is a horror show of horror shows. The Deep makes Hell look like a vacation to Mazatlan. There are things there that preyed on the Krill/Hive, things that we, humans and guardians could not comprehend without the Books of Sorrow/Toland.
Do you understand the wasted potential for story this was? It was monumental. Monumental! Me, an Exo, was transported to the Hell of Hells by a literal God, because I wasn’t worth its time. I’m there, floating around for, I don’t know, minutes? My annoying ghost is freaking out. Meanwhile, Xol has had enough of our shit. He’s gone to destroy Rasputin (which, he might have done anyway, but hey, nothing like 3rd party intervention to up the timetable). With the Warmind removed from the gameboard, Xol has a clearer line to solar conquest. Why? Dunno, it's never mentioned why a God would wish to conquer Sol. It never really seemed to care that the Traveller slept above Earth before it awoke.
It didn’t seem to care that the Traveller had.
Meanwhile, my Exo titan is floating in something that vaguely looks like blood. There’s some weird stills of probably torture? Good thing, I’m an Exo. Don’t feel pain, because robot. Don’t need to breathe or eat, because robot. Don’t get tired, because robot. And, then, miraculously, my guardian climbs up from a crevasse, obviously drained and near death. My ghost is quick with the first aid and I’m good to go.
...Seriously? Okay. Okay. I can kind of see how that works if your guardian is an Exo. Because robot. But, human? Awoken? How? Just how? You were in literal mortal danger *again*. Presumably, you needed to figure out what the Hellscape the Deep was and how to navigate it. You would need a way back to your native dimension, which would require you to seek aid from the natives. Except, the natives have never seen your kind and they all want to kill you. And this would take time. Somehow, against all odds, you find someone who’ll help you escape and you make the journey together, because let's be realistic: there’s always that one person who knows the way, but was too chickenshit to go it alone. That person dies getting you to the “portal” which’ll take you back to your dimension. By the way, you’ve got no Ghost. No Light. Limited ammo. No food. Nothing to repair your weapons and armor. No oxygen to breathe.
Somehow, you climb your way out, just like the Kratos climbed out of Hades. Or, from an actual literary standpoint how Orpheus and Eurydice. Dante and Virgil.
Except, not, because you get treated to a 30 second cut-scene of flashing images and your guardian clawing their way up a crevasse.
Kudos, Bungie. Good job. If the fanbase of Mass Effect could flip shit over the ending of ME3 to such a degree that they had the game’s actual ending redone (via post-production patch that was FREE) to better please them and work with the meta of the MEU, what do you think the fanbase of Destiny will do? Don’t answer. I know its buy shit from Eververse.
3) Rasputin. The titular reason we’re even on Mars. The whole reason Anastasia Bray (Clever, Bungie. Clever. Rasputin and Anastasia.) has gone to the Hellas Basin. She didn’t go there to go home. Not really. She went there to connect to a thing that she built that transcended all known laws and bounds. It was alive, but alive in a Godly sense. Not bound by the constructs of Human morality. Oh no. Ana might not initially know for sure why she was drawn to Clovis Bray. Sure, she awoke to her second life with her name badge on her person. And then was summarily told not to investigate her past. As if she were an Exo or concerned about DER. She might not have consciously known she was seeking Rasputin, but she always was.
Meanwhile, Rasputin is a God, created by man to protect Us All. Given sovereign to do so as he saw fit. Think about that. Think about Humanity as a whole currently. In what universe would all of Humanity greenlight the creation of something like this? Never mind that, think about Humanity collectively since the dawn of science fiction writing. When has it ever benefited Humanity to place their safety in the hands of others? My Skynet senses are tingling. But, wait, it's okay guys. Moon X/the Traveller is here! None of us understand what it is, but let’s go meet it. While they’re doing that, let’s sanction a civilian company to build a guardian that thinks for itself, learns independently, is prudent, wise and plays the long game. Let’s make it so its not bound by Human morality so it can make the hard choices, us Humans would flinch at. Nobody knows how a Moon is moving on its own or terraforming whole planets! But, we’ll put our faith in a machine.
By the way, none of us truly understands or can comprehend this thing that we’ve built. Oh, and there’s no way for is to. All of which, happened during the Golden Age, before the Collapse. Interestingly GA mankind already knew of the Vex, so most likely reverse engineered Vex tech went into the creation of Rasputin.
Oh, and it's just Rasputin. Whose always been on Mars. Sure, they retcon/bungiesplain it away well enough, but still. Where the hell is Charlemagne, Jys or Virgil? It was established that Charlemagne was the Warmind of Mars, but now its a submind. They’re all Submind. In other words, the children of Rasputin. Story potential!
...Never mind, that’s not D2’s development team’s prerogative.
Fast forward to the present and Rasputin has become active because the Traveller has awoken. His old foe, his biggest threat. The one thing Rasputin still doesn’t comprehend. Its awake/alive again. Its parasites (guardians) have been doing a terrible job of policing Sol and protecting Humanity. Not their fault, their still human. Rasputin was fine with letting the parasites struggle. It could focus on (presumably) the triangle ships, holding back the Red Legion, Eliksni colony convoys, Tomb convoys and other nightmares. It was smart, cunning. Playing a very real and deadly game of chess. He couldn’t reveal too much of his might or himself, that would draw unwanted attention. Then the Traveller awoke and the rules changed. So, he throws off his disguise and swings into full production/activity. Warsats activate that have been dormant for centuries. Orbital strikes occur all throughout Sol, hammering the Legion, Hive, Vex, Fallen, Taken. And Xol thaws.
Yet, still, Rasputin is incomprehensible to us. And we, “the” guardian, aid a shortsighted, single-minded Doctor in unshackling it. Yup, we did that. Nearly killed him in the process, but we did the damn thing. Doesn’t matter, though, in the end, right? Because Rasputin is a machine, built for us. Except, not. No. He’s more than that now. Now, Rasputin is completely Free and he proclaims that he’s going to protect his ants. Yeah. Good job, Ana. Oh, and Zavala still has complete faith and trust in us. Despite! Despite having solid reservations in utilizing Rasputin. Despite the fact that we ignored our Commander and leader. It’s cool, though, right? We’re celebrity status. We’ve taken down 2, count ‘em, 2 Gods. Crota was a Demigod at best. (But, he got his own Raid... Nokris.)
Does Anastasia know this? Nope. She never mentions it. Never mentions Oryx or Crota or the Black Garden or how we did what no one else could. And we did it with no plan and 3 to six other insane guardians with annoying, uptight ghosts. To her, we’re just a guardian with a ghost that has a stick up its USB port. Weird, right? We’re Iron Lords for crying out loud! Young Wolves. Bounty Hunters for the Reef Queen. Prison of Elder gaolers. Emissaries of the Cult of Osiris and now the Nine. Oh, and some of us are Faction Heralds. Standard Bearers for Dead Orbit, Future War Cult or New Monarchy. If you got the exotic class item from DO, FWC or NM in D1, youse a Herald and Standard Bearer.
Is there ever mention of this? Nope.
4) The Hive finally gets snipers/sharpshooters and shield-wielding swordsman. Both of which seem like obvious no-brainers to have always been incorporated. Except! That goes against the Sword Logic. So, sincerely, you get a plus for adding them to the heretical, “cowardly” faction of the Hive.
Question for you, though. Why would you knowingly (God, I hope it was knowingly) honor previous canon in this instance, but not with others? Like, where Xol is concerned? Or the Deep/Fundament? Or Rasputin? Why the cherry picking?
5) Why even bother naming yellow-bar area and mission bosses or units if you won’t bother explaining who they are, what they do and what they want? Because, I honestly, lost interest in reading the named enemies once I realized there was no information about them in or out of the game.
From a Gameplay standpoint, it's what you’d expect from Destiny 2. Up-tempoed action with moments of intensity and hopeful triumph. If you play smartly, it rewards you. If you overextend yourself, prepare to get ganked. Horribly. Progression is more inline with its predecessor, which might make the casuals pause. Thankfully, it isn’t like Day 1, Vanilla Destiny, where it was impossible to reach Light Level Cap solo and without completing Raid/Nightfalls. Except, no one would take you if you didn’t have G-horn or Icebreaker. Ah, the Good ol’ days of the Grind and the Loot Caves. My point? The action is more reminiscent to that feel, just with all the current bells and whistles, which is a good thing.
Exotic weapons finally feel fucking worthwhile. I played the whole Warmind Campaign with the combination of Sweet Business and Actium War Rig and I absolutely love it! Add the Galliard-42 or the Kibou AR3 for some added fun and thrills. Pairing the Tractor Cannon with Sentinel is immensely satisfying. That punk, Nokris didn’t stand a chance. And neither did his minions. Melts the opposition. Plus, its just really satisfying to watch 5 charging Knights (with sword and/or shield) get punted halfway across the room or into a wall or over a ledge. I finally feel like how those damned Taken Phalanxes must feel. The Borealis is a fun choice, too. Although, I haven’t spent much time with it. The payoff for matching damage types and busting shields is well worth it.
The added cosmetic gear is neat. My new favorite jumpship, hands down, is Currus Gloriae XLII. As a Titan, having a spaceship that looks like it can go to war and do some damage is a welcomed plus. The sparrow, Azure Azazyel looks really awesome. Even though it doesn’t have an interesting contrail effect, it still is fun to ride. It feel like it belongs in Akira or Bladerunner and I dig it. What I’ve seen from the new emblems, they’re decent.
The updated effects of the new guns is much needed. Dragonfly on an autorifle? Yes, please. Rampage on a Handcannon that you don’t have to grind for? I’ll take it. The new Ghost shells are blase at best. The emote wheel is a nice touch, but seems a bit late.
Hoo boy, Override Frequencies and Memory Fragments. Gotta hand it to you there, Bungie. I could not figure out how to get those until you unlocked them. And those Fragments? I didn’t even figure out how to unlock them. Or I did, but it didn’t work? Don’t try shooting them until after you unlock Hellas Basin. Found that out by accident. Thank you, random Guardian who was just shooting at a ledge!
So, like I said on the outset: Warmind, as an expansion is alright bordering on trash. It is entirely redeemed in its Gameplay, but woefully drops the ball where the story is concerned. Is it worth the $20? Eh. You’d probably still be better off waiting for the comet expansion to drop and for Bungie/Activision to repackage and re-release Destiny 2 this fall/winter. There will be some that will find it a $20 well spent and others who won’t, who’ll swear off the franchise completely. As for me? Its an investment. Like investing in Roseart and hoping they turn into Crayola. One day, they just might.
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i’ve finished warmind already. thoughts under cut
campaign itself was..... kind of disappointing. i mean, i finished it in like, two and a half hours? and half of that was spent just exploring and fucking around and messing with new emotes and picking up my friend every time she died. and it didn’t really... give us... more? theres nothing THAT new, and the characters were so disappointing. Like, why was Zavala so against Rasputin, but caved when Xol showed his ugly worm face? That could have been great character for Zavala! have him get upset, not just “you’re not supposed to be here” and all that junk. Have him say something like, “I’ve been pleading for help from every higher power and greater being since the day my Ghost found me, and none of them have responded. Why would Rasputin do anything for us now, after leaving us all to suffer and die?” Like! have him express betrayal! whats with the whole “vanguard treating him like a primitive weapon” thing?? tf?? no character ever treated Rasputin as less than a terrifying, sleeping god of an artificial intelligence in complete control of a massive, galaxy-wide arsenal of superweapons. not in either game.
and ana... love her. she’s great. lovely, incredible. but god i wish they did her better! she’s a fucking legend! her legacy deserves more than “reminds me of my gunslinger days” and “we couldve used a guardian like you at twilight gap” come ON!!! her Light was so powerful, so intense, that wherever she used her golden gun, pools of Light formed permanently on the ground around the walls in the battlefield. and then she just vanished. she should have had more explanation on who she was. osiris got as much. a powerful warlock exploring the taboo, so obsessed with the vex that he hurt people, got himself ostracized and exiled, amassing a cult following with his research and radical ideology questioning their very existence. they talked about all this in game! why didnt they give ana the same? ghost, learning that the ana bray was alive after all? explaining who she was with awe, apologizing for his haughtiness in their initial conversation? they did her dirty.
and im still confused about xol. how did they know? how did zavala know? sure, the hive, pretty obvious, but like. how did they know it was a worm god hidden under the ice? there could have been a whole mission with us going through the bray facility uncovering data from before the collapse and finding out they flashfroze around the warmind in an attempt to kill/imprison xol and nokris, and some big cool reveal of that information? even having ana say “ive got a hunch, but we need concrete proof before we do anything too risky yet” or something. the worm gods and the hive have been our biggest, scariest threat, directly serving the darkness, our greatest enemy. there could have been something with eris, or with toland, or something!
and the facility is “clovis bray exoscience” which implies that there’s something about exos. but nope! all our hopes for lore about exos, totally dashed. i was really hoping, and so were a lot of us, that maybe, just maybe, we’d get something. anything.
but after all that. the post-game stuff? the collectables, the new weapons, the special quest locked gear? it’s a LOT of fun! i’ve got the seraph hand cannon (which i LOVE its very satisfying to use and looks awesome), i’ve unlocked my first... little singing box thing with the override key. some other cool shit. it seems like a lot, and way more in depth and unique compared to the drag of prophecy weapons! protocol is SUPER hard but really cool! and fun! i love the swords, and i LOVE valkyrie, and i love the return of warsat public events. and the emotes are all great!
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Show review: THE ULTIMATE THRILL RIDE
Epic clashes on the grandest stage of them all! Surprise returns from beloved figures! Title changes! And VIDEO PACKAGE AFTER VIDEO PACKAGE AFTER VIDEO PACKAGE! Let’s look back at Wrestlemania 33: Orlando Furioso!
Neville def. Austin Aries via pinfall
I didn’t see this match. I missed most of the pre-show, to be honest. I really watched too much wrestling over the long weekend. I went for a walk instead, actually three separate walks on Sunday. It’s the first nice day we’ve had all year here in southern New England, and I took full advantage of it. I mean, it fucking snowed on Friday and Saturday. So, anyway, Neville won. The cruiserweight division is full of talented men with almost zero connection to the audience. It’s only a matter of time before there’s another Swoggle winning the title and it gets retired again. There will be a lot of blame to hand out then, but I’ll blame Vince. It’s usually a safe bet.
Mojo Rawley wins the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal
Rawley joins Cesaro, Big Show, and Baron Corbin in the winners’ circle of this particular honor, although unlike them, he needed an assist from New England Patriots tight end and human game of beer pong Rob Gronkowski in order to win. I missed almost all of this, because after my third walk of the day I went to Starbucks. You have to give yourself little gifts. It helps keep you normal. That’s my advice, although why anyone would take life advice from me is a mystery. I mean, I’m not living in a refrigerator carton or anything, but I’m exactly the kind of person who might as well not exist at all. Much like this battle royal, in fact, crowded as it was with wrestlers for whom no storyline or narrative currently exists: Sami Zayn and Dolph Ziggler tossed in among lower-midcard-for-lifers like Curtis Axel and Epico. What a fate. What a bleak way to further the preshow, which is really just “the show” when you think about it.
Dean Ambrose (c) defeats Baron Corbin via pinfall to retain the WWE Intercontinental Championship
I did watch this perfectly serviceable matchup that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the first hour of a fair-to-middling Smackdown episode. The Intercontinental Championship is almost an insult at this point. The WWE giving you this belt is like your boss putting you on a performance improvement plan at work. It’s to “enhance your capabilities” but it’s like a dunce cap. This was defended on the pre-show, on free TV: the USA Network broadcast it before the start of Wrestlemania proper. Honestly, Epico had a less humiliating day. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.
AJ Styles defeats Shane McMahon via pinfall
This was a pretty good match, I guess, although the thing I liked best was the ref bump: AJ Styles really looked like he kicked Mike Chioda square in the fucking head. That was beautiful. Occasionally you’ll see a ref bump where the official basically gets lightly jostled and then pretends to be out cold for two minutes, but this was a ref bump you could put your full faith and credit in. Good ref bump. Anyway, a good match. I saw people online saying “Match of the Year,” which I guess is indicative of the environment of Plaudit Inflation in which we’re currently living. This will almost certainly be the best match of the year to feature Shane McMahon. But I’m tired of the McMahon family in general, and sick of seeing them on TV. AJ Styles should have been in the main event, not the curtain-jerker. Still. At least they haven’t put the Intercontinental Championship on him yet. Kiss of death. Rating: Three Ultimate Thrill Rides.
Kevin Owens defeats Chris Jericho (c) by pinfall to win the United States Championship
A solid match here, although it lacked the raw emotion of Owens’ best matches, and the extra spark of brutality you’d expect from a match that was ostensibly the culmination of a bitter falling out between two “best friends.” This story was all about the buildup, with the blowoff leaving a little something to be desired. A fine match, though, perfectly acceptable as a Raw main event. If that’s damning with faint praise, it’s because I expect a lot from these guys, who are two of the very best. This was better than Jericho’s lackluster match with AJ Styles at last year’s Wrestlemania. Faint praise again, I guess. Rating: Two and a half Ultimate Thrill Rides.
Fatal Four-Way Elimination Match: Bayley (c) defeats Nia Jax, Charlotte Flair, and Sasha Banks to retain the Raw Women’s Championship
They got rid of Nia early, which was crucial. Nia can’t do very much inside a wrestling ring. From that point, the big expectation was for Sasha Banks to turn heel and betray her weird hug-prone friend Bayley, a possibility they had been advancing on commentary for weeks, but it didn’t happen. Instead, Charlotte pinned Sasha, somewhat unexpectedly, sucking the air out of the arena. Bayley won with a flying elbow from the top rope in tribute to Macho Man. I buy that Sasha was a huge Eddie Guerrero fan as a kid, but Bayley’s supposed childhood love of Randy Savage is puzzling to me. She was born in 1989, how much Macho Madness was there really from the mid-1990s onward? Were there a lot of kids in like the year 2000 saying “I want to be just like ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage”? Maybe there were. I was not a kid by then, so I didn’t spend a lot of time talking to kids about their favorite wrestlers. But when I was a kid I liked Savage a lot. I seem to have wandered from this match, which had its moments but was kind of lackluster. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.
Fatal Four-Way Ladders Match: The Hardy Boys defeat The Club (c), Enzo Amore & Big Cass, and Sheamus and Cesaro to win the Raw Tag Team Championships
Big surprise return from Team Extreme! Listen, I’m never going to adopt the WWE spelling convention that insists we identify them as the Hardy “Boyz.” First of all, the mid-1990s are over. Second of all, they are grizzled middle-aged men. It was fun to see them back. Genuine pop from everyone watching at my house. I’m not sure how much of the “Broken” gimmick they’re going to be able to do; Kevin Dunn hurriedly cut the cameras away from Matt as he was doing the “delete” thing, but that could be standard Kevin Dunn incompetence. Anyway, this match was fun, with a truly insane Jeff Hardy Swanton Bomb from the top of the ladder capping it off. Astonishing to think they had a ladder match for the Ring of Honor tag team belts just the night before this. Them North Carolina boys are tough, I’ll tell you what. I have gripes and grimaces to share about this kind of thing overall, but for now it’s fun to see these dudes back in the WWE for the first time since 2009. And I’m relieved Enzo and Cass didn’t win the titles. God, I am tired of them. Rating: Three and a half Ultimate Thrill Rides.
John Cena and Nikki Bella defeat the Miz and Maryse via pinfall
This was a weirdly lowkey match, most of it focused on the Miz working over Cena with brawling-type offense, until the Queen of Strong Style Nikki Bella got the hot tag AND CLEANED FUCKING HOUSE, hitting a sick tope suicida on the Miz and whaling on Maryse. Maryse basically did nothing in this match. Mike Chioda took more bumps than Maryse during Wrestlemania. Anyway, the real winners of this match were you and I, because we got to see John Cena propose to Nikki Bella (he used her real name, EXPOSING THE BUSINESS!!!) in the ring. Cena actually sounded like a human being during this segment; it was very sweet and came across well. Some people booed. You’re going to boo love, my friends? If so, for what will you cheer? Rating: Three Ultimate Thrill Rides for the match, Seven Ultimate Thrill Rides for the proposal.
Non-Sanctioned Match: Seth Rollins defeats Triple H via pinfall
I love a good non-sanctioned match. What a weird holdover term from the territory days. What body are we to believe “sanctions” matches, and is it different from the body that permits a “non-sanctioned” match to be televised to a worldwide audience? This was also very old school in terms of the match itself, which was focused almost entirely on Seth Rollins’ ailing knee. The crowd was very quiet for this perhaps, despite the insistence of Jim Cornette et al, people don’t really want to watch old-school wrestling matches in 2017. It was OK, but it felt very slow. Rollins won, which was the right decision. Stephanie got knocked through a table, prompting the biggest pop of the match. The best part for me was Triple H’s hilarious entrance, where he came down the ramp AS A BAD-ASS BIKER ON HIS BAD-ASS THREE-WHEELED MOTORCYCLE surrounded by indie wrestlers dressed as highway patrolmen, also riding motorcycles. One of the great visual flourishes of the territory days was the spectacle of the hated villain being led to the ring by a phalanx of stone-faced Southern cops protecting the wrestler from enraged fans, a scene that sent the unmistakable message This Is For Real (even though it was obviously not), one of those sweaty, smoky aspects of wrestling that’s lost forever. Triple H, weirdly sentimental about wrestling history, tried to revive that aura of county civic center danger, and it came across like a campy musical version of “CHIPs.” I loved it. Rating: Two and a half Ultimate Thrill Rides.
Randy Orton defeats Bray Wyatt (c) via pinfall to win the WWE Championship
I had been pretty excited for this match, but it felt weirdly truncated, with a truly abrupt finish. They were running long (the goddamn show ended at midnight) so maybe these guys were told to keep it short. One thing that kept happening is that every time Bray would do his Exorcist bend-over-backwards thing, the lights would dim and images of giant worms, maggots, and cockroaches would appear on the ring canvas, apparently because Bray was possessed by his late sister, Abigail. “He’s channeling the full power of Sister Abigail now!” JBL yelled, referring to an imaginary ghost. Even the power of an imaginary ghost was not enough to prevent Randy Orton from hitting his finisher “out of nowhere,” but actually out of somewhere: out of the midst of a rushed, unsatisfying match. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.
Brock Lesnar defeats Goldberg (c) via pinfall to win the Universal Championship
This was a fucking blast. I was a total skeptic coming into this, but they did it just right: five minutes of these two big boys pulling out the crowd-pleasingest parts of their arsenals, German suplay after German suplay after German suplay from Brock, verses spear upon spear from Big Bill. It was like watching two rhinoceroses collide on the savanna and fight over rights to a watering hole. Magnificent and brutal. Big Bill threw himself around that ring with abandon, including maybe the best “Oops I missed the spear now I’m hitting the ring post” spot I’ve ever seen on a WWE show. Good for Big Bill. Good for Bork, who is now the indifferent holder of a championship belt. This was fun. I have not liked much of the Goldberg stuff, but this was fun. Rating: Four Ultimate Thrill Rides.
Naomi defeats Alexa Bliss (c), Carmella w/James Ellsworth, Becky Lynch, Mickie James, and Natalya to win the Smackdown Women’s Championship
This was in the Death Spot between the Bork-Bill showdown and the main event, and the crowd was not overly hyped. There was also an abortive Pittbull concert at some point. Maybe prior to Bork-Bill? Anyway, this match was kind of a cluster, with a lot of disconnected action and a vibe of being made up on the fly. My favorite part was when Becky Lynch - sporting truly abominable dreadlocks for some reason - hit Ellsworth with an exploder suplex. The rest was meh. Mickie James had #Problematic ring gear, unless she’s Native American (she may be). Alexa Bliss was good in her role as despicable brat-fetish heel. Naomi, the hometown girl, won via submission. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.
Main Event: Roman Reigns defeats the Undertaker via pinfall
Maybe the best part of this match is that they brought Jim Ross down to do commentary on it, indicating it was almost certainly the last Undertaker match. The match itself was about as good as it was going to be: Roman is a really good wrestler, but the Undertaker is 52 years old and long past the point of keeping up in a wrestling ring. He tried hard. Lots of kickouts of finishers, etc. The drama felt forced, honestly, as did the whole buildup, like at some point in February they just decided they were going to have the Undertaker fight Reigns and then even later said, “Hey, this is it for ol’ Taker.” After he lost, Taker took an extended curtain call, which was nice. I have never been a fan of the Undertaker as a performer, but his popularity and contributions are undeniable. Rating: Two Ultimate Thrill Rides.
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remembering my mother as a sea creature
The Highlands near Skye were bitterly cold in February. Winter there had always been miserable, high and frigid over a sparse wasteland of rocks and dead grass. Pap used to say that the yowling wind was really the keening call of the black-as-death Cat Sith, trying to lure you out into the snow. You would go out searching for the poor lost kit in the blizzard and it would wait until you died from the cold so it could slink up, dark but for the white beat on its chest, and steal your soul as it left you.
Pap was a hardened man on the outside, rough-handed and browned from his toil at sea. He sailed from port to port through the East side of the Hebrides, setting nets for the hundreds of fisheries encrusting them. He would say that if the nets he cast did not have holes, he'd have scooped out all of the ocean by now. Over a warm cup of tea, he never ran out of stories to tell, of monsters and mythological fauna that stalked the mountains. His eyes flashed in the firelight as he spun his tales, chin blue with stubble moving in constant recount.
"My Uncle Kieran saw the Cat Sith once," he always said as he disappeared behind a cloud of acrid brown smoke from his pipe. "He was the only one to ever see it and escape the curse."
"The curse?"
I never found out the curse of the Cat Sith, because at that point Mum came in and knocked his cap off his head with the tattered dish towel she always seemed to carry. "Hush, up, now, Finny," she scolded, "or she won’t likely fall asleep again until next winter!”
Mum wasn't a beautiful woman by any stretch of the imagination, but I loved her all the same. She was taller than Pap, long and thin like the tufted hair-grass growing all over the countryside. She laughed like a braying donkey, baring her greying teeth and tossing her head back in wild abandon. Her hands were small and knotted, as rough as Pap's and never still. They were never empty. She always said that God graced us with the gift of hands so they may roam all over the earth and touch all that had been left for us. So I ran my fingers through her dry hair as she patched quilts, washed clothes, sometimes when she only had a single piece of twine she turned over and over.
"Your Mum was born at sea," Pap said, making sure she was in earshot. "That's why her hair is so light. The salt dried it near clean out of her head in the summertime."
"Come off it, you old sailor!" came her laughing reproach from the kitchen.
I loved hearing their story over and over again. Pap never tired of telling how he and Mum first met. Every time, the story changed in some small way, more splendid than the last. On days he felt loving towards her, Mum became a mermaid from the farthest stretch of Atlantis, all shells and pearls and shimmering fins. On days they tired of each other, she became a brown shore crab hidden among the boulders, pinching anyone who dared poke their fingers close enough. But still, he fell in love with her every single time. Today he sat in the living room in the armchair by the window, staring out over the water as he chewed on his pipe. It was one of those quiet afternoons when the clouds huddled around the sun and sat over the shore, soft and palpable as rabbit pelts, and the shore seals nestled in the warmer spots around the boulders. Mum lay resting in the bedroom and I sat by Pap, sifting through hundreds of shells and bits of sea glass he had collected since before I was born. I knew all of my favorites by heart, but they always seemed to surprise me in ways I’d never known. I found the largest one of all, a white conch with a deep blush inside, worn smooth from the waves, and held it up to the window. Pap looked over at me.
“I found that one the very day I met your Mum,” he said.
“You said she brought it up from the underwater palace where all the mermaids live.”
He leaned forward, eyes flashing. “Oh, did I, Helen? I must have been mistaken. No, your Mum is a selkie. She didn’t live in an ocean palace. The mermaids and selkies didn’t get on too well, so the selkies took to land and the mermaids took to sea. They had great stone caves, far mightier than any castle ever seen.”
"What's a selkie, pap?"
He smiled wistfully. "They're rare, them," he sighed, and sat back. "I only ever met one of them, and that was your Mam. They're seal-people, see. Men and women that live in seal skins and keep to the darker waters of the North. They sleep in the caves by day, and when dusk comes, they work some sort of white magic and walk these beaches as the loveliest people you ever saw. They shed their seal skins, just jump out of them and hide them there in the water, and come creeping out of the sea to explore the human world. They bring good luck to the houses they touch. Every sailor boy in town wanted a selkie for a wife, strong, young women with the darkest eyes. They said if you stole a selkie's skin when she wasn't looking, she became your wife for as long as you kept it.”
Ever since I was little, I have always been enthralled with the seals that would come up to the beach during the summer and lay on the sand, dozens of them in scarred brown pods. Their barking was so amazing and deep and strange that I would join them from behind the kitchen window, yelping at the ocean. Pap teases me relentlessly about it now. I wonder if he’s thinking about that, too, as he sits and talks and talks from behind his pipe.
"A selkie will come for a human only if he visits the ocean with his deepest, darkest wish in his heart. The lads from my old freighter days told me so. He had to go to the beach as soon as the sun touched the water, whisper his secret into a pink whelk filled with the whitest sand on the beach, and throw it as far as he could out to sea. If the wind was right, and by Jove did we all pray it was, it would blow your wish right into the hands of the selkie and, lo and behold, there she would appear right in front of you. Just like a wave had pushed her there.”
Pap was silent for a moment. The smoke from his pipe rose in gentle ropes around his head, and for a moment, they seemed to lap at him like sea foam.
“I made my wish at dusk and sat there on the beach. See out there? On that little outcrop on that boulder? I sat right there for hours, waiting for your Mum to appear. Even when the sun was completely gone and nothing could be heard but water. I fell asleep out there, and mind you, the wind gets cold at night-time. You remember the time I took you to Brynn’s port? The wind was worse than that, I promise you. Like a thousand frozen breaths. Soon, morning came, and you know what I found? Someone had come in the night and laid the finest, heaviest seal coat on me as I slept. Rich stuff, I tell you. The deepest brown and softer than heather. When I sat up and looked around, there sat your Mam on the sand, water as clear as ever and staring at me with her big, black eyes. Next thing I know, I married her and here we are now.”
I didn’t say anything, just rolled the whelk between my fingers as I leaned into Pap’s legs. He turned his head to stare out the window again. “When a man goes searching in the ocean, he never stops finding things, Helen.” He smiles and ruffles my hair. “My seal girls.”
It was a strange symbiosis that Mam seemed to have with the ocean. The sea seemed to follow them both, riding on Pap’s boots and clothes and hair, Mam reeking of salt every time she walked by. The storms brought sand to the front step, a fine sugar dusting everything left unattended. In the mornings, the fine grit of it crunched underfoot and no matter how much Mam swept, it never seemed to go away. I came to think of the ocean as a newborn baby, the way it wormed itself into our lives. It cried for attention, the spray making the air cold and heavy. When the gales blew hard, the sound of it whistling and screaming against the water made faint wailing noises resembling the mewling of a hungry infant. It greedily nursed at the sand bar, spitting up thousands of white shells that littered the beach like dead stars.
Above all things, my Mum was a strange woman. In the morning before Pap left on the trawler for port, I caught sight of her out there in the water, wearing nothing but her dressing gown and a worn pair of boots from the shed, letting the water whip the snow around her legs, her hair wild and unkempt as a ship’s flag.
The way her dress billowed around her, I was afraid she would lift straight off the ground and sail away. Back into her ocean, riding the water into a distant cave untouched by man to comb her hair with corals and forget everything she's left on shore. I loved my Mum too much, too much to trust her to stay with us on land forever.
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Macabre Melodies...Haunted harmonics...Creepy crescendos...
A lotta alliteration
It's an alternative Halloween playlist! 👻
I often describe myself as a plainclothes Goth. I know the ennui, I feel the gloom, it’s just that I’ve opted for a slightly lower maintenance wardrobe. As such, I await the arrival of autumn’s mellow fruitfulness and accompanying mists each year with considerable anticipation. The russet foliage and plummeting temperatures signalling clearly that Halloween is almost upon us.
Yes, Halloween, that absurdist, heavily corporatised pagan harvest festival we all know and love. A time of year when it’s traditionally said that the gap between the realms of the dead and the living narrows to its thinnest slither and, in more contemporary terms, the time when both children and adults can express their inner ghoul, indulging their lust for macabre theatrics and processed sugars.
Yet, no matter how shallow and materialistic the holiday becomes, Halloween will always have a place in my heart. The moonlit boozing, extravagant costumes, the preponderance of men in eye liner, the unbridled freedom of expression, all happening ‘neath an acrid cloud of classic Goth tracks and other dark, synth driven ballads of an 1980’s vintage. Songs like Echo and the Bunnymen’s ‘Killing Moon’, Siouxie’s 'Spellbound’… or almost anything by the Cure, all heavy scented with incense and festooned in cobwebs and romance.
But can we expand the typical Halloween playlist beyond Goth, New Wave and the occasional blast of the Monster Mash? I attest that there are unexpectedly ghoulish numbers in almost every genre!
Below are 10 of my picks for your perusal!
1. Maud Gone - Car Seat Headrest. With its dusty organ shuffle, love sick lyrics and hollow, reverb drenched vocals this track comes off as a haunted slow dance at a zombie prom. 'I know there’s a full moon every night, and when I dress in black it snows white’ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7E-h7j32uSk 2. Angie Baby -Helen Reddy This number may come off about as 70’s smooth and sickly sweet as a bowl of butterscotch Angel Delight but don’t be fooled, the dated orchestrations belie a seriously creepy tale of a mentally challenged girl who may not be quite as sweet and defenceless as we think… 'It’s so nice to be insane… No one asks you to explain’ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u8mGsis9nNo
3. Stinking Cloud - Thee Oh Sees There are quite literally dozens of Thee Oh Sees tracks eligible for this list based on creepy title points alone… but the charmingly named ‘Stinking Cloud’ wins out for me with its fatalistic message hidden in its carnivalesque arrangement and demented sing song melody. 'But it’s dead, dead, dead to the top of its head… But we’re dead, dead, dead as I’ve already said…’ Okay think we’re getting the picture mate… https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PRRaTHVvR_Y 4. Tenebre remix 1982 - Goblin As the indisputable Kings of the 1970’s horror sound track, no Halloween play list would be complete without throwing a track by Italian Prog creepers, Goblin in the mix.
Tenebre is a demonic floor filler, as terrifying as it is funky!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s_aejM_HEy0
5. Down by the River - PJ Harvey This slinky number released in 1995 rides a lazy river of soft distortion and slithering strings that sound somewhere between sumptuous and nauseating.
The songs catching tune lures us in as Peej recounts a charming tale of infanticide by drowning. 'Little fish big fish swimming in the water’ 'Come back here man give me my daughter’ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lbq4G1TjKYg 6. Long pig. Perfume genius With a synth line straight out of the Dawn of the Dead series, Perfume Genius beckons us into some disquieting territory on Long Pig (reportedly a Maori term for human flesh, just FYI).
His fey boyish voice repeating the baffling phrase: 'Long pig We buried the meat for Mama’ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=14b8dVUdgCE
7. Get out of my House! -Kate Bush The final track from Kate’s experimental and somewhat inaccessible 4th album sees an increasing desperate woman try to defend her house from unknown demonic intruders. The drama takes place over a din of slamming doors as Kate’s plainly mental vocal lines overlap and compete with one another for space as she plays every character in the tale herself, including but not limited to the terrified protagonist, the would be intruder, a French concierge and possibly the house itself!?
Things come to a head when she starts to aggressively bray like a possessed donkey…
Enough said! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aMDgvxbsvPw 8. Dark night of the Soul - Sparklehorse feat David Lynch As horrifying a sonic result as you’d expect from the meeting of Mark Linkous’ and David Lynch’s beautifully cracked minds! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wbtUAlFN8po
9. Excitable boy - Warren Zevon Yes… Zevon’s track 'Werewolves of London’ may seem a more obvious choice for the season, but I try my best not to do obvious. 'Excitable boy’ the tale of a dangerous psychopath whose deranged and violent behaviour is continually ignored and put down to 'boys will be boys’ hijinx. The track’s pitch black humour and ear worm melody make this a Halloween classic you didn’t know you needed in your life. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4-pexSVWzM
10. A Night Like This -The Cure. Okay enough of my bullshit… Time at last for an actual classic. The Cure’s ’ 'A Night Like This’ is for my money one of the greatest songs of the eighties. Swooning, dark and velvety not to mention stuffed to the gills with melodrama and romantic tension.
I can think of no better song to sum up the peculiar beauty of Halloween! 'It goes dark It goes darker still…’ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KE1nu67-U2I
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