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five-rivers · 2 years ago

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Ancestral 8

There were two more visitors after that. The Speaker for the Assembly, a woman whose popularity had been derived from her position as poet laureate many years before, and Father Gylefa, who wasn’t quite the head of the rather informal Church of Avlynys. Like Matthew, they wanted to go over coordination and what, exactly, would be said.

“Are you sure you want to do this before Alicia gets here?” asked Father Gylefa, tugging at his cross-and-eye necklace in a familiar nervous gesture.

Matthew gave him a long-suffering look.

Father Gylefa raised his hands. “It would be a reasonable excuse. I stand by what I said about you needing time to process.”

“The country can’t afford it,” said the Speaker. “We only stayed out of the economic crisis the Faroes are having by the skin of our teeth and the efforts of the School of Heroes.” She curled her lip. “And I just heard from the First Shadow that we have some billionaire tech mogul trying to bully his way through the flight lockdown.”

Danny felt his stomach drop. Vlad. Couldn’t he mind his own business for five minutes? The list of things that Danny didn’t want was very, very long at this point, but he had the impression that Vlad coming to Avlynys would be explosive one way or another.

(Especially given that harassing a princess was technically still on the books as a capital offense.)

The Speaker looked apologetic, but she continued. “We need a king. Or a queen. And a Secretary, which we can’t elect without a monarch. I’m a legislator and advisor, I’m not supposed to be directly receiving spy reports.”

“I know,” said Matthew. “God and all those gone before help me, but I know.”

Father Gylefa patted his shoulder, then looked past him at Danny and Jazz. “Ah,” he said, “it has been a while, Danny, Jazz. You’ve grown.” His expression grew a touch colder. “Madeline.” Then, frostier still. “Mr. Fenton.”

The Church of Avlynys came into being when, upon being given the cover of Henry VIII’s founding of the Church of England, the entire archipelago leapt gleefully into open heresy. As such, in addition to being only loosely organized, it was also distinctly heterodox… and had been a staunch opponent of witch trials.

That wasn’t to say it didn’t have problems and had never, ever, participated in any form of religious oppression (it had, sadly). But it could pull out a very plausible moral high ground now and again.

No one in the family had really approved of Maddie marrying Jack, a ghost hunter. The extensive background check turning up witch hunters in the family tree hadn’t helped.

Most of the family had… lost some of their hostility towards Jack over time. Father Gylefa hadn’t.

And, unlike the situation with Vlad, Jack was very aware of it.

“Mr. Gylefa,” replied Jack with the exact same intonation.

“Haha, yeah,” said Danny. “That’s us, just shooting up. Maybe we’ll beat the family height record, yeah?”

One of their medieval ancestors was supposed to have been seven feet tall, so… that was unlikely. But Danny wasn’t sure what else to say.

The Speaker sighed. “I’ll go get things started. It won’t be long before we call for you, your highnesses, lords and ladies, Mr. Fenton.”

Jack watched her go with an expression of resigned offense. From there, Father Gylefa made small talk with the rest of the family while Matthew fretted, Maddie watched silently, and Jack attempted to make friendly overtures.

It was so painful that Danny was almost glad when they were called out into the Assembly Hall, leaving Sophia, Irene and Jack to watch from the doorway.

The huge room resembled an amphitheater in some ways. There were seats in curved tiers around the sides of the room, and in the center was a circular raised dais with a small moat-like channel cut between it and the first rank of seats. The dias had a mosaic map of Avlynys set into it, the nine islands picked out in surprising detail.

The Assembly itself didn’t take up all of the seats. In less grim circumstances, the upper ranks would be filled with a wide variety of observers, from schoolchildren, to lobbyists, to would-be politicians, to ordinary citizens there on a whim. Right now, the only observers were local journalists and a singular camera crew.

(Danny hoped that no one he knew back in Amity watched the governmental news channels of tiny nordic countries as a hobby. This was the first time he and Jazz were publicly appearing as part of the royal family, and he hadn’t really thought through what that entailed.)

Behind the seats, the walls of the hall were filled with traditional Avlynyse heraldry. The Tree and Pond, nine stars picked out among the curling branches and reflected in the blue-green waters. The Ancestors’ Eye, bright green and multiplied. The Nine Sisters, standing on the islands they anthropomorphized like stepping stones. The Hero’s Arms, rendered variously as a spear and scroll or a knife and a book.

It was an impressive room. Not as big as parliament, or congress, but still impressive.

Also very intimidating.

The family gathered around the edge of the dais, with Matthew standing tall in the middle of their line.

The Speaker walked out along the walkway to the center of the dais and began to speak. “Hyr, todag, sy folk sal coronyn Mathyw Alfryd sy Bisige yf sy Hys Dyryse Avlynyse, Sunn Ynyse…”

Danny mentally translated for himself: Here, today, the people shall crown Mathyw Alfryd the Diligent of the House of Dyrys of Avlynys, Son of the Isles, Blood of Kings and Heroes. Are there any of the House of Dyrys who would oppose this? One who speaks would call those of the blood to bear witness.

There was a beat of silence.

“Athlyng Yonna Loryn Dyrys Avlynyse, do thou beryn wytnes?”

Lovely thing about Avlynys was that everyone born there had a completely legal English name, and an equally legal Avlynyse name.

Joanna stepped forward, spine ruler-straight, hands clasped in front of herself. “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn.” I bear witness and say nothing in opposition.

“Athlyng Madlyn Myra Dyrys Avlynyse, do thou beryn wytnes?”

Maddie took her place next to her cousin. “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn.”

“Ledyn Yugyn Kartyr Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

Eugene took his place significantly more gingerly. “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn.”

“Ledyn Lwys Theydyr Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

Lewis nodded before answering. “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn.”

“Ledyn Irys Yvlyn Dyrys, Ledyn Georg Lyk Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

The twins moved forward together. Born at the same time, they had the same rank in traditional rituals. “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn,” they said together.

“Ledyn Leo Alfryd Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

“Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn,” said Leo, his voice cracking. He looked past Lewis and the twins to where Vivian would usually stand during something like this.

“Ledyn Yazmyn Roz Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

There was some whispering from the Assembly, but Jazz stepped forward, leaving Danny alone at the edge of the dais except for Matthew, apparently unaffected. “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn.” She broke protocol by just a hair to look back at Danny.

“Ledyn Dannyl Ymaz Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

Danny, full of nerves, almost tripped over his own feet, but he managed to reach his assigned place. “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn,” he said, echoing all the others, but very aware of how American his accent was. What else was he going to say? That he should be declared king?

That was ridiculous.

The Speaker bowed to them, “So, kumyn, Athlyng Mathyw. Syon thy folk.”

Matthew walked past them, to the opposite edge of the dias.

“Athlyng Mathyw, wel thou sweryn…” Prince Mathyw, will you swear to your people to serve and defend them, in all ways written in the law, in body and spirit? To lead them in the dark and the light?”

As far as binding oaths went, Danny thought it was simple and elegant. The metaphor might be used by someone being a literal genie like, say, Desiree, but as far as humans went, it was understandable and clear.

“Yn wel sweryn so,” replied Matthew.

The Speaker nodded sharply, and called for the Cup of the Oath. The Cupbearer - yes, it was an official position, but it didn’t hold all that much responsibility… or at least, it hadn’t - hurried in from the wings, holding up the ancient gold goblet. Other aides followed in his wake, moving to distribute more modern glasses among the Assembly.

Danny hardly noticed them, however. His attention was on the furious and frightened-looking ghosts following the Cupbearer. Danny hadn’t even noticed when Vivian and Gwensyvyr had slipped away, too caught up with his own nerves, but now…

Vivian flew up into his face, teeth bared, cuts on her skin bleeding pink. Danny looked at her, looked at Gwensyvyr’s broad and exaggerated pointing at the goblet, looked at Matthew, who was even now reaching out to take it, reached a conclusion, and made a decision.

“Wait!” he said, stumbling forward, one hand raised. “Stop!”

One of the servers dropped a wineglass. Matthew turned to face him, every inch of his skin drenched in consternation. Maddie grabbed his elbow and dragged him back into line, albeit in the wrong spot.

“Don’t,” said Maddie, quietly. “You don’t want to expose yourself to the pol–”

“I’m probably just being paranoid,” said Danny, loudly, clearly, projecting his voice. He tried not to look at the ghosts, more than one of whom had taken on a distinct posture of relief. “But, cousin… Will you test it? Before you drink? Just in case.”

The Cupbearer’s mouth, already open, dropped even further. “I tested it!” he objected.

“Danny,” said Matthew, quietly, clearly trying to salvage the situation. “Dannyl, we’ve tested everything here dozens of times, after what… happened. It’s fine.”

The ghosts seemed to think otherwise.

Danny pulled away from Maddie and took a couple quick steps forward, wanting to make his case again - or be in a position to knock away the cup if Matthew suddenly grabbed it - whereupon the Cupbearer threw the contents of the goblet at Danny.

Wine dripped down his face.

Matthew inhaled deeply and pressed his hands together as if praying for patience. Danny wasn’t paying too much attention, having noticed something much more disturbing than Matthew reaching the end of his rope.

“Your Majesty,” squeaked the Cupbearer. “I’m so sor–”

“Not crowned yet,” said Matthew. “Danny–”

“I can’t feel my skin,” said Danny. Belatedly, he remembered basic lab safety - a common problem in his family, apparently - and started stripping off the clothes that had been soaked by the wine.

“Oh, god,” said Maddie, barely audible.

“What?”

“I can’t feel my skin,” said Danny. “I’m going numb. I can’t - ow, heck.” Formal clothes were hard to get off when your vision was doing funny things.

“Medics!” snapped Matthew and there was a small commotion that Danny could hear but not see. “Security, arrest this man!”

“Sir, we have to move you to a safer location.”

“I will not–”

“Danny–”

“Don’t!” Danny told Jazz. “I don’t want you to get any of this on you.”

“Danny, are you–?”

“Dad, don’t!” The words came out slurred. The wine was still on his face, on his hands, dripping and dribbling down his neck. Was it safe to use his clothing to try and wipe it off?

Danny could feel his heart and breathing start to slow. Not to the point where it was dangerous to him, but he didn’t like the implications.

“Jazz,” he said, “my kit–”

“I’ll bring it to you, as soon as I can.”

“Sir?” said someone. “My name is Emily, and I’m trained in first aid. If you could turn towards me…”

#tw: murder attempt #tw: poison #danny phantom #ectoberhaunt22 #ectoberhaunt day 21: coronation and coup #ancestral fic

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tamedgod · 2 years ago

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overwatch verse wishlist;

(i am also open to any other ideas, as well as ocs!)

haru;

Developed friendships with other Overwatch members; these can be further explored post her joining Blackwatch as her mental health declines, as well as post fall of Overwatch when she rejects the recall, and has isolated from said friends.

Literally all the Blackwatch interactions I can get my hands on — particularly with Jesse/Cole. With Haru’s hesitations about how the team operates and having the curtain pulled back, I just think the two of them might have similar ideals, and get along well.

In the same Blackwatch vein, I want ALL the interactions with Moira. Before joining Blackwatch, Haru really admired her work (questionable ethics aside) mainly due to the advances Moira was making so quickly with her medical studies. In a way, Haru shares her method of thinking in that “we aren’t entitled to patience” when it comes to helping those around them. This and Haru’s eventual (reluctant) agreement to be experimented on in the name of helping those around her, I feel like there’s so much to unpack with Moira. Maybe even too much.

Post fall of Overwatch, Haru travels the world. She starts small by sticking with Angela/Mercy, so interactions post Petras Act and post Haru’s brother’s death are greatly wanted while she processes her grief. I wanted her and Angela to have had some kind of falling out as well, which is why Haru eventually breaks off to travel alone.

Haru traveling comes with loads of possibilities, especially to meet literally any other member of anything ever. She has less experience in robotics/helping omnics but I would love love love for her to meet Zenyatta or Ram or just have more interactions with them/omnics in general. She would travel to the irradiated outback to help those in Junkertown, leading her to meet Junker Queen or Hog and Junkrat. She could go to Korea, meet Hana and the others on the mech team, then onto Russia to meet Zarya and better understand how they are working to solve their own crises. Haru wants to better understand all sides, especially since she’s terrible at picking sides in morally grey dilemmas such as the omnic crisis. All she wants to do is help, so she could meet anyone during her traveling period.

In an angst situation I’d love to write the fallout of her brother’s death? One of the few times she’d be openly emotional in front of people, where she unleashes hell on Jack and Gabriel (and Xiao) for what happened. She’d be kind of an open wound, and behave like an animal backed into a corner, but sometimes I just wanna write angsty shit what can I say

I’m on the fence about Talon, bc on the one hand she would know who some folks are just from working with Overwatch/Blackwatch in the past, and post fall of Overwatch she’d do everything she could to avoid them (to the point of mostly remaining off grid), especially knowing Xiao is amongst their ranks. She grows a very neutral nature after the Petras Act passes, burned out from everything that happened, and with her file having been one that had been taken by Talon in the past (see my ow verse info here), she isn’t keen on them having the upper hand on her. On the other hand, I’d be interested in interactions regarding either being invited to join Talon (based on Xiao vouching for her, and her work with Moira and Gabriel/Reaper in the past) or having them keep tabs on her (double whammy since that’s part of why Xiao joined Talon in the first place).

Based on talks with @femtaile recently, I would also be interested in writing interactions / her reaction to finding out Widow was the one who killed her brother. There’s a lot of avenues that interaction could take, but I won’t know which one Haru will take until we get there.

Someone convincing her to answer the recall...? 👀

xiao;

Early interactions with Overwatch members, with how reluctant he was to even join (and only doing so on Haru’s behalf). At that time he’d have a huge chip on his shoulder and feel he had something to prove. Could also write about being an informant for Overwatch and the organization’s interactions with his family’s enterprise.

More Blackwatch interactions… Xiao would have opened up greatly in terms of personality and really being himself while with Blackwatch. I think he and Genji would get along at that time in a weird destructive way, and he and Jesse/Cole would be INSEPARABLE. I do think though that when Blackwatch starts going downhill, esp when Haru deteriorates and after the group is made public, that he and Jesse/Cole would start to fight and their friendship would decline severely. There may even be a total fallout.

ROLE MODEL INTERACTIONS WITH GABRIEL/REAPER. Xiao idolized him as a role model and father figure since meeting him, and it only worsened with joining Blackwatch. Being unable to face Haru post her brother’s death, Xiao follows in Gabriel/Reaper’s footsteps when joining Talon post fall.

Interactions with Moira… even if he’s not a big fan. His experimental “death touch” ability changed a lot for him, but in sticking with Talon and considering it becomes sort of a curse to him, I feel he’d have regular interactions with Moira in regards to how his body and abilities progress. He’s also the one who officially introduced Haru to Moira, so I feel like that would be an interesting meet and greet.

Post fall, Xiao’s father and CEO of Long Enterprises has a sudden passing. His older brother, Jun, takes over all behind the scenes work for the company, while Xiao backs off from agent work to become the public face of his family’s corporation. In doing so, he falls more into a middle man role for Talon, allocating funds, weapons, resources to the group as a whole. I’d be interested in interacting with Doomfist for this especially, considering Xiao’s only requirement for this bargain was help in finding Haru (to coerce her to join Talon bc he’s selfish as fuck).

Found (dysfunctional) family???? Definitely definitely has a brother-sister vibe with Sombra, but also he’d be a good guy to Sigma, being honest. I feel like he’d be very protective of the old man. Awkward interactions with Moira for all his physicals, losing the rose colored glasses when it comes to Gabriel/Reaper… there’s a lot of potential here.

In saying that, there’s also the potential to flip Xiao from Talon. I think interactions with recalled members of Overwatch, esp if they were friends with Haru, would be interesting because Xiao is very much just going through the motions when it comes to Talon. He felt obligated to take a role in his family’s company when his father died, and obligated further to work with Talon considering all he sacrificed while with Blackwatch, as well as his idolization of Gabriel/Reaper. But with a hell of an offer, I believe he’d do a double cross… leading to all sorts of other avenues.

Everyone is his ex. That’s it, that’s the idea. Everyone with working eyes knows Xiao is in love with Haru, and yet he will date/sleep with any and everyone else to distract himself from her. Bonus points if someone he’s involved with or been involved with gets involved with Haru. Soap opera kinda shit.

#v. chasing echoes (ow)#m. wishlist #WELL HERE WE GO

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tobi-smp · 4 years ago

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you might be able to expand on this in a way that’s smarter then me, but honestly; i think technoblade apologists rely far too much on word of god for their analysis.

like, it feels like every time technoblade (the character) is analyzed in the context of the Text Itself, the fans will say “that’s not what techno intended” or “he didn’t think that when acting techno”.

this is probably because cc!techno cares so little for the the fourth wall. but as someone who analyzes techno it also annoys me. “cc!techno didn’t plan to kill anyone canonically during doomsday, cc!jack just challenged him” regardless of what your cc intends, c!techno still bombed a country and shot at other characters, and for him to think there would be no casualties in that is ridiculous.

this fourth-wall-breaking honestly gives quite a few issues like this; techno acts like killing tubbo was unimportant or even funny because “it’s minecraft” and anyone still angry at him about that is just irrational. obviously, because c!tubbo still has to live with the scarred body and the huge amount of trauma, this makes c!techno seem like a Huge Dick. but pointing that out always gets so many angry responses.

rivals duo enthusiasts make so much “techno heals and cares for dream” content, but in actuality techno wants his lore to be only funny so he says “i’m not getting tortured. that seems like a you problem.”

i’m not saying that techno isn’t nice— because he is, to ranboo and phil and niki— but because he participates is HUGELY SERIOUS topics (bombing a nation twice, tommys exile, terrorism and taking hostages, dreams torture) and then acts like he doesn’t care, it just makes him look…. Bad.

i dont really know where i was going with this. basically i just wanted to complain about how one of the most argued about characters doesn’t even seem to be serious about the serious parts of the lore.

perhaps you can somehow expand on this in a way that’s smart T_T

Honestly, techno apologism takes techno's word as absolute truth Way too often in general (both in character and out). which isn't unique to techno fans by any means, but it's particularly bothersome because it leaks out into how they talk about other characters, All The Time.

a quick example would be techno arguing that l'manberg was corrupt because tubbo was given presidency without an election. the reality of the situation was that they were in the middle of a crisis (a war that just came to an end, the death of the president with no one to take his place, and the destruction of the entire nation), so it Wasn't under normal circumstances. l'manberg would've then held elections every couple of months had they not been exploded before that could happen. (there's also the fact that nearly everyone that'd be a part of l'manberg was there and could've voiced their concerns, instead the crowd cheered. they didn't get a ballot but they still expressed their approval).

and of course things that he says about other characters being taken as word of god (him wholesale inventing the character flaw that tommy sees himself as a hero with the theseus speech despite the fact that tommy denied it right then and there. or cc!techno making the joke that tommy's only facing the consequences of his own actions, Twice.)

but more on the topic, there Is a massive tonal difference between techno's viewpoint and everyone else's, and that's completely on purpose ! but that creates some of the worst discourse this fandom has to offer Because techno involves himself in serious lore while still insisting on carrying his non-serious roleplay style.

when you take his word on it and Only his word on it it strips other characters of their nuance because he doesn't see or Care about their motivations or the context behind them. that's why it's so easy to paint the butcher army as purely evil from his perspective. Technoblade doesn't care about releasing withers on l'manberg, Technoblade doesn't care about having shot tubbo, Technoblade doesn't care that quackity is terrified of him, so why should they? why should anyone?

people refuse to see the butcher army as a response to technoblade's actions because technoblade doesn't treat his actions as if they have weight. and so quackity is taken to the fandom alter to be sacrificed as an uncomplicated villain (either alongside tubbo or while painting quackity as a manipulator who coerced the rest of the butcher army), and this Long before las nevadas was a part of the lore.

but then of course, if you look at his actions and attitude from any other perspective (minus philza) he just looks, Cold.

he's bombing l'manberg because of a failed execution and philza's house arrest but he won't even acknowledge that tubbo's execution or his destruction of l'manberg was something that he should've apologized for. he painted tommy as a dehumanizer because tommy chose to stand by his best friend, but techno is risking the lives of people who haven't wronged him without remorse because philza (his best friend) got hurt. he's angry at tommy for betraying him (to the point that he's indifferent to his literal death), when he refused to take tommy seriously over feeling betrayed with tubbo's execution and when He was the one who lied to tommy during their partnership.

he refuses to engage with other characters on an emotional level because that would suck the dumb fun out of his actions (and I don't mean dumb fun as an insult here, I love his roleplay style when it Isn't tonally dissonant from everything around it). but from the other perspective that comes across as indifference to suffering, willful ignorance, hypocrisy, or just outright cruelty.

which just isn't how his character Should be read with how its being acted, but it's the only way To read it in context.

techno wants his character to be the comic relief on the server but he still wants to involve himself with heavy lore, which would still be Possible if he was fine playing a villain (just look at jack and niki with their team rocket arc). but the problem is that he presents his character as emotionally disconnected from everyone around him outside of a select handful of people (and even then, he won't engage with certain things seriously for fear of being pulled into serious lore) while still wanting his character to be read as good (or at least lighter on the gray morality scale).

the solution to this would be a more careful implementation of techno's involvement with the lore. keeping him involved in conflicts in a way where his character doesn't bump elbows with the darkest aspects of the server. either by having him Not involved with things like doomsday or having him involved in a way where he isn't an instigator, Or by technoblade the content creator taking the L and taking his roleplay more seriously when he involves himself in serious lore.

instead we have the insistence that it's not technoblade's fault that people died when he killed them because it doesn't fit with how cc!techno wants to engage with those events.

#long post #dream smp #technoblade #c!technoblade critical #c!techno critical #tubbo #quackity #tommyinnit #I don't know if I added anything smart here #but I Did add 13 paragraphs so go team

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ranger-report · 4 years ago

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Opinion: DC and Marvel’s Multiverses Are Crucial To The Future of Superhero Film

Alright, buckle up kids, this is going to be a long one. Get some soda and some popcorn, or some green tea and avocado toast.

Back in the long-distant year of 1989, a little film called Batman released into theaters and became the film of the Summer. Directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson as Batman and the Joker respectively, it was a cinematic triumph that heralded a new wave of superhero films taking their source material seriously. Followed up in 1992 by Batman Returns, a sequel which increased the fantastic elements but was criticized for its darker tones, Batman’s role in movies was cemented in place by continued success. Of course, Keaton and Burton would leave to be replaced by Val Kilmer as Batman with Joel Schumacher directing for 1995′s Batman Forever, with George Clooney stepping into the cape and cowl for 1997′s Batman and Robin, a wild disaster of a film which nearly destroyed Batman’s chances in movies. But then, in 2005, Christopher Nolan brought a gritty realism to the caped crusader in Batman Begins, and continued this successful experiment with 2008′s Best Film Of The Year, The Dark Knight, and 2012′s The Dark Knight Rises (which was....fine). By this time the DCEU was beginning to get started, so a new Batman was cast for Zack Synder’s 2016 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and this role went to Ben Affleck. He reprised the role in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad and Joss Whedon’s Justice League, but bowed out of the opportunity to write and direct his own solo Bat-flick. So director Matt Reeves was tapped to direct a new Batman film starring a controversial choice of Robert Pattinson as Batman. With all of this, the question of the past 30-odd years is: which is your favorite Batman? Which one was the best? And how do these films fit into an increasingly convoluted canon in which a film series is rebooted every ten years or so?

What if the answer is: they’re all great and they all fit into canon?

Now, before we think too hard about that, let’s take a look at Spider-Man’s cinematic installments, which is almost more convoluted and in a more compressed amount of time. Beginning with 2002′s Spider-Man directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, the amazing wall-crawler enjoyed a fantastic amount of success on the big screen, followed up by one of the best superhero films of all time, 2004′s Spider-Man 2. But Spider-Man 3 in 2007 took all of that goodwill and smashed it into the ground with a failure almost as bad as Batman and Robin a decade earlier. Plans for a Spider-Man 4 were scrapped, and eventually in 2012 director Mark Webb and star Andrew Garfield would bring a brand new Spidey to life with The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014. Both films were lively and energetic, but criticized for trying to stuff too much into their films -- especially the second one. Sony Pictures was attempting to ramp up a cinematic universe much like Marvel Films was doing at the time, but it was too much too fast. 2017 brought another reboot of the moviefilm version of Spidey, this time directed by Jon Watts and starring Tom Holland, with Spider-Man: Homecoming, this time under Marvel Film’s banner (thanks to backdoor dealing), and another cinematic triumph in 2019′s Spider-Man: Far From Home. But, unlike Batman, Spider-Man’s dealings behind the scenes are nearly as convoluted as his series. Sony Pictures owned the rights to make Spider-Man flicks for years, until Marvel managed to make a ludicrous offer after Amazing 2 failed to catch on the way producers hoped. So Spidey came to the MCU under a joint production, which is how we got Homecoming and Far From Home, but also maintained a different universe with the Amazing films, and then 2018′s Venom, and a little animated motion picture also in 2018 by the name of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse.

Class, this is where I would like to direct your attention to the origin of the extraordinary events we are discussing today. Or is it the origin?

Into The Spider-Verse successfully proved that not only is the idea of multiple universes all connecting on screen a good idea, it’s an Oscar winning idea. Spider-Verse is hands down the best animated superhero film ever, and one of the best superhero films period. But here we must take note of certain ideas. The film provided much setup for a world where young Miles Morales begins to emerge with spider powers, but then Spider-Man is killed right in front of him before he can learn how to use them. Enter a Spider-Man from a slightly different parallel dimension, who not only turns Miles around, but find himself inspired to realign his own life. Spider-people abound through the film, all of them having equal weight and the possibility of spawning their own franchise without having to worry about impacting the canon of other universes. This is something comic books have done for literal decades, but Spider-Verse did it with such care and devotion that it won Best Animated Picture and became a mainstream smash hit. Marvel and Sony both sit up at attention; could this work with the major mainstream films they’ve been producing? So the experiment begins: we have a teaser trailer for Morbius, based on a vampiric Spider-Man villain, which features a cameo from the Vulture character first seen in Homecoming. And after dropping hints that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man could cross over with Tom Hardy’s Venom, Jamie Foxx recently posted about being cast as Electro -- a role he played in Amazing Spider-Man 2 -- for the third Tom Holland Spidey flick. Pictures went up on his Instragram seeming to confirm that not only was this the same Electro, but that all three previous Spider-Men -- Maguire, Garfield, and Holland -- would team up for the film. Multiple universes collide, a live action Spider-Verse, where everyone is crossing over with each other. Now, this lines up perfectly with Marvel’s MCU plans, as Doctor Strange has established in his film that multiple universes exist, and his announced sequel is even titled Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It’s here. It’s happening. Every Spider-Man film is canon, they’ve all happened, and we don’t need to worry about which of them make sense or belong. They all make sense.

But just before this announcement, a month or so ago DC let slip that their plans for an upcoming Flash movie are taking cues from the Flashpoint comic books, in which Barry Allen goes back in time and accidentally creates a brand new timeline that he has to correct. Michael Keaton has even been cast as Bruce Wayne, the same Bruce Wayne that he played 30-odd years ago, a casting choice many fans have been clamoring for for years. On top of that, once word was put out that Keaton’s role would be similar to Samuel L. Jackson’s role as Nick Fury in the MCU, Ben Affleck was reported to be joining the picture as Batman also, a team-up no one saw coming. Even Christian Bale is being courted to join the universe-spanning flick, but reportedly only if director Christopher Nolan gives his blessing. Multiple Batmen teaming up together in a Flash movie to combat crime? Of course I’ve already bought tickets. Batman is the biggest box-office draw outside of The Avengers. And this concept opens up plenty of opportunities for DC, who’ve done Elseworlds stories in the comic for years. Joker with Joaquin Phoenix proved that DC films not directly tied to the DCEU can and will do well on their own; The Batman with Pattinson will no doubt further confirm that. But now Batman Returns is once again a viable film mixed into a comic book cocktail of wonder and excitement? And what’s wonderful is that this isn’t DC’s first big attempt at this. Slowly and surely, The CW’s Arrowverse TV shows -- Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow -- have been doing multiverse crossovers for years, building up to 2019′s mega-event Crisis on Infinite Earths, which saw Brandon Routh reprise his role as Superman from 2006′s Superman Returns, which itself is a sequel to Christopher Reeve’s Superman and Superman II. And for one wonderful scene, TV’s Flash, Grant Gustin, got to interact with the DCEU’s Flash, Ezra Miller, confirming that these TV and film universes are indeed one big cocktail of parallel lives and dimensions that all interconnect while still being separate. Hell, we even saw Burt Ward, Robin from the 1966 Batman show, alive and well an in his own little world. Batman ‘66 is part of the wider DC Multiverse! How crazy is that? And we even got a small tease that Batman ‘89 is part of all of this as well, when we got to see reporter Alexander Knox look up to the Batsignal in the sky as Danny Elfman’s iconic score played. In one fell swoop, in as few as a casual couple of cameos, DC made all of their live-action properties canon in the multiverse, meaning no matter which version you like the best, they all work together and work from a franchising and audience standpoint. The 1978 Superman and the 1989 Batman both existed in worlds that ran sidecar to 2019′s Joker and 2011′s Green Lantern. It’s wild, unprecedented in cinematic history, and wonderful for fans of all ages.

Why is this the future of superhero flicks, though? It ought to be simple: no matter what movies come out, no matter how wild or crazy or outside “canon” they seem to be, they all can work and they all can coexist without having to confuse fans. Many people were feeling the reboot fatigue as early as 2012′s Amazing Spider-Man, and while there was a huge tone shift between Batman Returns and Batman Forever, the Bat-films were considered all part of the same line until Batman Begins started all the way over. Now we have Batman 89 and Returns in one world, Forever and Batman and Robin in another (which was already a fan theory, mind you). Sequels that don’t line up with their predecessors can just be shunted into a hidden multiverse timeline and left alone without the convoluted explanation of having to “ignore” certain sequels. Superman III & IV were ignored when Superman Returns chose to connect only to the first and second films, but now we can say that they definitely happened....just somewhere else. There is now a freedom of ideas and creation that can once again occur when making big-budget films based on superheroes. No longer do creative minds need to be restrained to the canon and timeline and overarching plots defined by studios years in advance; “creative differences” don’t need to drive frustrated directors away from characters or stories they truly love. Possibly -- just possibly -- good ideas can become the gold standard once again for comic book films, not just ten-year plans for how to get Captain America from scrawny Marine to Mjolnir-wielding badass. Remember when filmmakers decided to make Joker the same person who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents? Or when they decided to give Spider-Man the ability to shoot webs from his body instead of technology? That certainly wouldn’t fly these days; studio mandates would require adherence to previously established guidelines, or at least what has been seen in the comic. What if now we could get a three-episode limited series on HBO Max of Gotham By Gaslight? Or a big-budget adaptation of Marvel’s 1602? Simply trying to wedge old comic book storylines into existing Cinematic Universes no longer need be a thing! We could get some of the wildest interpretations of superheroes this side of Superman: Red Son. At least, that’s the hope, anyway.

When comic books can step away from canon for just a few minutes, worlds open up and expand. An entire multiverse of ideas can become a feast of entertainment for many. And when there’s already so many beautiful, well-told stories set in alternate universes as comic book precedent, so too can there be beautiful, well-told stories set in alternate universes for film. And the best part? Now they all matter. And I think that’s the future.

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qqueenofhades · 5 years ago

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I saw your post on the partisan lines drawn in the Trump impeachment case. Has congress always been this dysfunctional or is this a relatively new thing? Things feel very hopeless.

Aha. Aha. Ahaaaa. Hah.

I’ll tell you a tale of the bottomless blue, or in this case, American political dysfunction. As with many tales of recent American political dysfunction, this one starts with… Ronald Reagan!

(Man, Hilary, do you really hate Ronald Reagan that much? Answer: Yes, yes I do. Especially since public opinion has moved to ranking him as one of the greatest presidents ever, even Democrats tiptoe around criticizing him, and he is responsible for so much of the shit we are presently in! So much!)

For the younglings amongst us, Reagan was Trump before Trump was Trump: a popular actor who dodged out of service in WWII by making heroic propaganda films, found politics, ran as a Republican and almost swiped the nomination out from Ford in 1976, then ran again in 1980 and beat Jimmy Carter in a landslide. Reagan was, as we’ve discussed, a huge fan of voodoo economics, deregulation, ignoring the AIDS crisis, and massively pumping up the American military mythos and dangerously aggravating the Cold War. In the early 1980s, as the Soviet Union was collapsing from within and could barely feed its own citizens, Reagan was out there hyping it up as the most Terrible and Evil foe that America had ever faced anywhere, which therefore justified a giant surge in military spending and preparation for apparently imminent doomsday. Reagan was positive the commies were everywhere, especially in Central America, and had to be defeated. They were apparently particularly in Grenada (see the 1983 invasion of Grenada) and Nicaragua (the Sandinistas; remember them, they will be important.) The US/CIA has been absolutely shamefully imperialist and interventionist in Latin America for decades, but these were just a few of Ronald’s favorite things. All of this may sound like a diversion just to bag on him some more, because fuck that guy, but I promise, there’s a point.

See, the key difference between Reagan and Trump was that Reagan was nicknamed the “Great Communicator.” Unlike the barely literate Orange One, the Gipper sure could tell a great story, and by golly, he did not let the facts get in the way. He was also a huge advocate of untrammeled power for the executive branch. One thing that Reagan was not a fan of was informing Congress in any measure of what he was doing. The Iran-Contra scandal, which really should have destroyed Reagan’s administration in any just world and also gotten him impeached, was the revelation that he was running friggin’ illegal arms sales to Iran (in the name of freeing exactly seven American hostages who Iran never had any intention of releasing), arming right-wing anti-communist paramilitaries in Nicaragua with the proceeds, and had told Congress about exactly jack shit of any of this! Reagan was basically running his own private empire/byzantine weapons deals/fiefdom/whatever the goddamn hell he wanted, he was a big believer in the president never having to explain himself to anyone or ask permission for anything, while conducting illegal private wars, lying constantly, wrecking the economy, giving tax breaks to billionaires, constantly running off at the mouth about a mostly fictional enemy, and getting credit for ending the Cold War after he nearly single-handedly turned it hot. Sound familiar?

It may help to explain the extended nightmare of the last several Republican administrations if you remember that they were/are basically one mutated Frankenadministration. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and others – aka all the later major players under George Bushes Sr. and Jr. – were all high-level Cabinet members of Reagan’s administration. This was all just part of one policy put into place by the same people at every chance they got when they were in power, and that was focused on making the (Republican) president basically able to do whatever he wanted. That checks and balances stuff, man, who needs that? As a result, Congress was deliberately designed to be either totally minimized/outright ignored (if held by the opposing party) or a slavish organ of lockstep devotion (if held by the Republicans). This was not always the case. When the Republicans won it back under Reagan in the 1980s, the Senate had been under Democratic control for almost 30 years. There were bumps, obviously, but there was still some sense that the legislative and the executive branches were both vital for government and should work together.

…yeah, so. Reagan junked all that, basically. When W. got to the White House, he then had 9/11 barely 9 months into his presidency, which meant that for a while, he also could do pretty much whatever and no one in either the House or Senate, regardless of party, really dared to oppose him for fear of looking anti-American. This was concurrent with the Republican Party abandoning even a pretense that they were interested in anyone besides rich white (nominally) Christian men. (The religious right also acquired its modern connotations/voting force under, you guessed it, Reagan!) Hence, they were absolutely furious when a brown Democrat with the middle name Hussein won the election in 2008. Mitch McConnell then decided before Obama was even sworn in that the congressional Republicans just flat-out weren’t going to cooperate with anything he did. Didn’t matter what. They were going to obstruct anything and everything, so Obama wouldn’t be able to deliver on his flagship campaign promises and the blame would fall on him. The Republicans were dead-set on making Obama a one-term president, again, before he had even set foot in the White House. Democrats also controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of Obama’s presidency, so this didn’t immediately matter. But then came 2010 and the Tea Party wave, and now the Republicans had a majority, and they did exactly as promised. They blocked everything. Consistently. No matter what.

We mentioned Merrick Garland before. I’m still mad about Merrick Garland. Mitch McConnell outright refused to hold any hearings to confirm Obama’s perfectly legitimate Supreme Court pick for almost eighteen months, betting on a Republican to win the 2016 election and do so instead, and he got away with it. That is why we have Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavarapist on the court right now. The Republicans have proven that they don’t give a damn about public welfare or any pretense of public morality or…. well, anything whatsoever except making themselves richer and more powerful. As bad as Trump is, he could still be out if the congressional GOP had any morals, backbone, willingness to go against their toxic lockstep ideology for the good of the country, or anything. Except… they don’t. They have voted time and again to enable him, shield him from prosecution, and support his plans, because as long as he’s in office, they’re doing well off the gravy train. I really cannot overstate how sociopathic and cowardly these people are. And half the country is still willing to vote for them!

So…. yes. The answer is, Congress, especially the Republican Congress, has been deliberately designed to act exactly like this since the 1980s, and it’s doing exactly what it means to. As to whether that is going to change, you, me, and the rest of America are the only ones who can decide that, and do that, you absolutely must, MUST vote, and not for them.

#politics for ts #fuck ronald reagan #should really be a tag i have #anonymous #ask

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blackswaneuroparedux · 5 years ago

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In the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing room.

- Clarissa Spancer Churchill Eden, Countess of Avon, on the Suez War 1956

Clarissa Spancer Churchill Eden, Countess of Avon turned 100 on 28 June 2020.

When she was born Lloyd George was Prime Minister and her uncle Winston Churchill was Secretary of State for War and Air. Her father Jack’s parents were Lord Randolph Churchill and the beautiful Jennie Jerome. Her mother was also a beauty, Lady Gwendoline Bertie. As an only daughter Clarissa felt over-loved and smothered.

Clarissa was never much interested in politics. Self-contained and silent as a girl, she would say, ‘I only spoke when I had something to say’. She made her debut with Deborah Mitford and Pamela Digby, but wanted more and was tutored by famed Oxford philosopher, Isaiah Berlin and Lord David Cecil.

She then joined a heady milieu of artists and writers - Lord Berners, James Pope-Hennessy, Edith Sitwell, Cecil Beaton, Greta Garbo. Her life was like an early volume of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. Evelyn Waugh and Duff Cooper were hopelessly in love with her.

But at 32 years old she went from High Bohemia to High Politics on maarrying Foreign Minister Anthony Eden - a surprise to many in high society. The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney and Evelyn Waugh protested that Eden had a wife still living. Much of Waugh’s moral outrage was down to personal jealousy and his unrequited love for Clarissa. Eden had indeed been a loveless marriage to his first wife Beatrice but in 1950 they finally divorced, and in 1952 Anthony married Clarissa.

Anthony Eden was no slouch as he sailed through Eton and, like many of his generation, he served in the First World War losing two brothers killed in action along the way. Eden himself served with distinction in the trenches and front lines of that bloody war. At the age of 19, he was the youngest adjutant on the Western Front and by 1918 because of his conspicious bravery, at the age of 20, Eden became the youngest brigade major in the British Army. He was awarded the Military Cross (MC) for her war time service. After the war, he studied Oriental Languages (Persian and Arabic) at Christ Church, Oxford, starting in October 1919. At Oxford, Eden took no part in student politics, and his main leisure interest at the time was art. Eden was in the Oxford University Dramatic Society and President of the Asiatic Society. Along with Lord David Cecil and R. E. Gathorne-Hardy he founded the Uffizi Society, of which he later became President. Possibly under the influence of his father he gave a paper on Paul Cézanne, whose work was not yet widely appreciated. Eden was already collecting paintings.

Eden read the writings of Lord Curzon and was hoping to emulate him by entering politics with a view to specialising in foreign affairs. He went into politics and became an MP at the age of 26 years old. In Parliament he quickly made a name for himself and was already being talked of as a future Prime Minister. He was gently mocked for his fussy self-image and was often regarded as the best-dressed, best-looking politician of his time - although one rival rival said of him, “half- beautiful woman; half- mad baronet’.

Clarissa was deeply in love with Anthony, and he with her. But she wasn’t quite prepared for the high stakes of politics as her husband climbed the greasy pole of political advancement. Eden was deeply ambitious and he eventually became Foreign Secretary in 1931.

Clarissa recalled, ‘My first visitor was the wife of the head of the Foreign Office, Lady Strang, who came to tea….I did wonder what I had got myself into when her opening remark was ‘I hope you are not going to denationalise steel – it is doing so well’ I had previously had no views about steel’

Within 3 years, Anthony at last achiecved his life’s goal and became Prime Minister, having at last succeeded Clarissa’s uncle, Winston Churchill who stepped aside for the younger Eden. Was she the most beautiful cultivated chatelaine of No 10 since Catherine Walpole? Many did then and many think so today.

A gall-bladder operation gone wrong and the debacle that was the Suez Crisis made for a short and unhappy time for Eden as PM and a trying time for Clarissa. She was famously quoted as saying ‘in the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing room’. This was said in a rare political speech at Gateshead on 20 November 1956, but picked up and widely reported.She later regretfully conceded that “drawing room” was perhaps an unfortunate metaphor.

Nevertheless the Suez War took its toll and Eden eventually found his health broken. His stellar political career lay in ruins as Haorld Macmillan plotted behind the scenes (a fact that Clarissa never forgave him for). Eden resigned in 1957 and in 1961 accepted an Earldom (of Avon). Both Anthony and Clarissa enjoyed 20 leisurely years between Wiltshire, Stratford, Paris and the Caribbean.

Her main loves are art and opera, she loved to travel and, though not one for discomfort, she would endure any amount of it to find an obscure chapel in Serbia. In later life she took up sub-aqua swimming, happily enjoying life in deep waters. Though she read serious classics, she took an unexpected enjoyment in soap operas like Dallas, greatly entertained by the antics of J. R. Ewing and Cliff Barnes with their huge Stetson hats, talking about their “Daddies”.

A great many people bored her and still do, but she takes a wry enjoyment from that. I heard an anecdote from a friend that once after a dinner, when she said, “I think we have exhausted the social possibilities of this evening, don’t you?” - a more elegant way of saying it was time to go.

In many ways Clarissa remains a reminder of a nobler age of Britain and who embodied many of the values that made Britain so great before the sunset of its empire and the dawn of counter culture of the Modern Britain of the 1960s. She has always remained enigmatic person, the soul of discretion but fiercely devoted to her loved ones. Above all, she has been a woman of substance in control of her own destiny.

#clarissa #countess of avon #clarissa spencer churchill eden #quote #femme #beauty #nobility #aristocracy #britain #society #culture #politics #history #icon

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philippmichelreichold · 4 years ago

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Home

Analog Science Fiction Science Fact is the oldest surviving Science Fiction magazine. As Analog's (then Astounding's) editor, John W. Campbell ushered and nourished the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Campbell insisted on science in Science Fiction. Today, Analog still contains hard science stories and has a regular Science Fact feature. I had not read Analog in years, and am absolutely thrilled with my first issue in far too long. In a world where I feel I would be better off without a television, It's refreshing to find drama and suspense that does not reek of violence, and comedy and humor that is not redolent with obscenity/profanity. At a time when the Discovery Channel has reached new lows in pseudo science, it is encouraging to read science popularizations that are actually based in science. The underlying motif to this issue is doing the right thing. In Buddhist terms-- Right Action. Of course, reasonable beings may disagree as to what Right Action might be in a given situation. And sometimes one learns after the fact that one's action was not the best choice after all.

Rejiggering the Thingamajig by

Eric James Stone

is a

wonderful story

about doing what's right. Never thought I'd read a story where a Buddhist T. rex was the protagonist. Bokeerk is a wonderful character, and her companion for her mission, a sentient gun, is a delight. The gun reminded me of the talking bullets in

Who framed Roger Rabbit

or Yosemite Sam. To get home to her children's imminent hatching, she must follow the Eightfold path. Neptune�s TreasureBy Richard A. Lovett is an AI story. Floyd has an AI living in his head name of Brittney. Reminiscent of the movie

All of Me

, only set in

Neptune

space and without Steve Martin and Lilly Tomlin. Floyd and Brittney have serious personal/autonomy issues. The science of the story is wonderful-- mass drivers and recovery vessels. And space bicycles as well. Also spracht Strattman

Thus Spake the Aliens

by H. G. Stratmann is a story about saving the world, complete with large red Doomsday-cutoff-switch-button. These aliens are in the same business as Clarke's

Others

with a more up close and personal approach. And they are quite implacable about weeding if the need arises. To say the story is rich in allusions to other works would be a vast understatement. The connection between the title of the story and of Richard Strauss's song, widely acclaimed for its use in

2001

, could not be an accident.

The key to the story is a problem that is not often addressed, or more to the point-- it's largely ignored. There is a dead line for establishment of a real presence in space-- the point at which we exhaust cheap, abundant sources of energy. Somewhere before we reach that point is the point where a struggle ensues for control of those energy sources that remain. Whether or not civilization survives that struggle will have little impact on what happens next. No alternative, renewable source will be able to fill the gap that will be left with the depletion of fossil fuels. Nuclear power will remain expensive, dangerous, and will only postpone the collapse. Fusion will remain as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp for some time. We have gigatons of Hydrogen, but fusion's most

promising process

relies not on Hydrogen but Lithium. Even if a Lithium-to-Tritium plant started working tomorrow, we have no way of foreseeing the consequences of eliminating any particular element from the biosphere and would need to work with highly radioactive Tritium.

Unless Stratman's aliens show up soon to terraform Mars and Venus, and hand us the keys to the secrets of the Universe, tough times are ahead of us. We will have to use less energy per person or reduce the number of people using energy. We would eventually return to subsistence farming with limited manufacturing powered by wind and solar power-- essentially back to the 17th century. Perhaps the answer to the

Fermi-Hart paradox

is that no civilization has been able to solve the energy crisis and overcome the energy gap. (It takes a huge amount of energy to go from planet to planet. Witness the huge fuel tanks of the Saturn V's needed to send

Apollo

to the moon.) Even if one used

the Orion nuclear pulse drive

to establish a local system space program, the unavailability of cheap, abundant energy would make it difficult to maintain the necessary level of technology. Once nuclear fuel became the mainstay of the economy, space exploration could be sacrificed as having a lower priority than meeting needs back home. Perhaps we are not the first civilization to see the stars not quite in our grasp and then to watch them slip away forever. The Possession of Paavo Deshin

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

has a profile in this issue of Analog. I'm impressed by the thoroughness of her stories. Rusch builds her characters in a believable and sympathetic manner that leaves me yearning for more.

Possession

is one of her

Retrieval Artist

� stories. Retrieval artists are bounty hunters in a convoluted universe, and Miles Flint is among the very best. Paavo was adopted after his birth parents fled to evade some outstanding alein warrants. But his birth parents have made sure they can keep in touch, naturally.

Paavo's birth parents are Disappeareds-- essentially outlaws in the old sense of the word. Flint is hired by not one but two clients to locate the birth parents. His adoptive parents are well to do, powerful, and tainted by underworld connections. And they adore Paavo as if he were born to them. Maybe more so. Rusch make quite plain her view on the subject of birth parents that re-enter a child's life wreaking havoc as they assert their rights. She equates them with terrorists, while Paavo's adoptive father is in his eyes, regardless of how others see him, the ideal and epitome of fatherhood.

(Uncle Orson review of the Retrieval Artist stories.)

Shame by

Mike Resnick

Lezli Robyn

is a fairly straight forward example of what not to do. Given the colonists's mindset and attitude toward Satan, their actions should not have been unexpected. Perhaps that's the real shame of the story-- that as atrocious as the colonists's appear to the author and to his moral authority figure, given human nature they were unsurprising.

Simple Giftsby

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

is a story about the stereotypically greedy corporation out to profit on the simplicity's and naivety of the primitive, non tech natives. What could be more innocuous than a race that closely resembles (in appearance) the

Who's of Whoville

. The ethnologist and linguist sent to learn about the alien's language and culture implore the company to slow down on making a deal with the aliens and are disregarded as obstructionists. The outcome is inevitable, but the suspense building makes it all worthwhile. On Rickety Thistlewaite by

Michael F. Flynn

is about the prison that is public service. Making oneself indispensable can be very rewarding and satisfying. Then it becomes an obligation not taken lightly by those who depend on you. As Harry Mudd exclaims to the

Enterprise

command team in

I, Mudd

. . . . A War of StarsDavid L. Clements writes a crisp and interesting story about questioning values and making choices. The concept of intelligence housed in celestial bodies-- the cores of planets and stars-- is reminiscent of

Rogue Star

in the

Star Child Trilogy

by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson. I would have hoped though that anyone advanced enough to use stars as weapons would also be advanced enough to not do so. Perhaps I'm just excessively naive.

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Essentially, my work is Creative Commons Attribution-Required, Share Alike.

Adapted from their Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license summary--

You may Share-- copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt-- remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. I cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Attribution-- You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests that I endorse you or your use. No additional restrictions-- You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

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Copyrighted images are presented here under fair use. You would need to contact the copyright holder to use them. They are not covered by my creative commons licensing.

Coverart from ISFDB for Analog 2010 Jan-Feb

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feelieking · 5 years ago

Text

Series 12

A somewhat belated post - I started typing up my thoughts about Series 12 shortly after it ended, but only found the energy for a sustained bout of typing while taking a few days off work.

Season 12 of Doctor Who is now over. Readers may recall that I felt season 11 was pretty lacklustre. Season 12… has been an improvement, but a lot of the issues remain. The cast are great – Jodie Whittaker is fantastic, and I honestly cannot understand the vocal subset of fandom who insist on saying she can’t act – but there are too many regular characters, which means that none of the three companions get a decent share of screen time or character development. There’s been an improvement in the number and development of the guest characters, but many episodes have really suffered from the problem of scooping up all of the NPCs into the TARDIS and carting them along. As a consequence, a lot of episodes really struggle to cultivate a sense of location, and having guest characters in the TARDIS becomes run of the mill.

It’s also very interesting to me that, after making his first series almost entirely continuity-free, Chibnall’s second series is probably the most fanwanky we’ve ever had. Spoilers for all of the episodes follow.

Spyfall is a strong start to the series. The aliens were far scarier and better realised than anything for the preceding series, and part one benefitted from a strong sense of style and place, a slow build of the plot, and a genuinely shocking and tense cliffhanger. Part two floundered a bit by comparison, choosing to rattle through both Ada Lovelace in Victorian England and Noor Inayat Khan in Nazi-occupied Paris. Either one of these pairs of characters and settings would have been strong enough for an episode on their own; smooshed together, neither was really given a chance to develop. Still, the Doctor/Master scene on the Eifel Tower was very well done.

Orphan 55 seemed to go down very badly with my friends when it was transmitted, but I rather enjoyed it. It was a very trad base under siege story with a proper cast of supporting characters and some genuinely tense and scary moments. The “twist” of it being Earth all along, however, fell very flat – it’s a bit of a cliché by now, added nothing to the story, and has been done better before by earlier Doctor Who stories! The Doctor’s moralising speech at the end also made me grind my teeth – as others have said, it’s not that I disagree at all with the moral, but that we were bright enough to work it out from the episode without needing to have the Doctor break the forth wall to address the audience directly. I also question the logic of the Doctor taking the entire supporting cast, including a frail elderly lady and a young child, with her on her monster hunt, rather than leaving a group behind at the more defensible holiday camp.

Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror was really good, and felt like the most Doctor Who-y story of the Chibnall era by some margin. Great cast, great monsters (despite the usually reliable Anjili Mohnidra hamming it up as the scorpion queen) – all three of the main human guest cast were proper, fleshed-out characters – and a strong sense of location. The thing that struck me afterwards, however, as I rhapsodised about how much I’d enjoyed this episode and that it was the best new Doctor Who story in ages, was that in a Davies or Maffatt season, this would have been a good middle of the road episode, and not the showstopper it was here.

What can I say about Fugitive of the Judoon? The whole episode is one big slight of hand, which is pulled off very well – but as a consequence, it’s difficult to think on the plot as a whole. The Judoon are back as a returning monster at least in part to distract from the surprise reappearance of Captain Jack, which I suspect in turn was at least in part to keep the audience’s mind off of who Ruth could really be. The pay-off to that, when it comes, is a satisfyingly shocking moment that raises a lot of intriguing questions.

Praxaeus, sadly, was a bit of a damp squib. It’s one of the worst offenders for the Chibnall-era trope of gathering all of the guest cast in the TARDIS and setting big chunks of the story there. The idea of the Doctor and her companions investigating a global crisis at different locations around the world had a lot of promise, but because the Doctor was able to just swoop in and scoop them all up in the TARDIS whenever needed, that idea never really came to fruition. Because the guest cast were all thrown onto the ship, a lot of them never really got the chance to shine – and it’s never explained exactly how captured astronaut Adam is able to text his location to grumpy policeman husband Jake – though at least kudos goes to the episode for a really down to earth portrayal of a same-sex marriage.

Can You Hear Me? was hugely frustrating – this could have been a gem of an episode, but as it is it sinks like a lead balloon. The problem is that the writer has thrown far too many ideas at the story in the hope of seeing what sticks. A mental hospital in Fourteenth Century Aleppo being terrorised by monsters from the nightmares of one of the patients would have been a really good episode. The Doctor’s companions and their friends being trapped in their dreams in modern day Sheffield would have been a really good episode. A ship full of experiments orbiting two colliding planets would have been a reasonably decent episode – but by trying to do all three at once in fifty minutes, nothing is given any chance to breathe and develop. Again, supporting characters are just thrown into the TARDIS and moved from arbitrary location to arbitrary location, and then the monster is defeated by… the dialogue saying that they’ve been defeated. It’s such a shame, because there’s so much good stuff here – Ian Gelder is superb as Zellin, and could have easily been a great recurring villain if they’d chosen to make more than one episode from these ideas – but sadly the whole thing is so much less than the sum of its parts.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati, by contrast, is superb – one location, really well developed and realised, a strong, well-drawn cast of supporting characters (and some very handsome gentlemen as well!) and no TARDIS scenes. The early parts of the episode are fantastically tense and creepy, with the horror of being trapped in a moebius strip of a house very effectively portrayed. Like any haunted house story, it loses some interest once the reason for the “haunting” is revealed, but the second half remains strong not least because Ashad the emotional Cyberman is superbly well portrayed.

Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children is very much a game of two halves. Part one is pretty effective – Ashad continues to be an excellent villain (his big virtual confrontation with the Doctor is superb) and the grim reality of the Cyber Wars is very well conveyed. Showing the potency of the Cybermen by having them effortlessly destroy all the Doctor’s clever gadgets and scatter her companions is an excellent touch, and Graham and Yaz’s fight for survival is compelling and convincing. The wheels very much come off in part two, however – I like Dhawan’s Master (more on him later) but the fact that he perfunctorily kills off the far more interesting Ashad is a mistake, as is halting the episode for what feels like half an hour of tedious Gallifreyan story time. The “Cyber Lords” are a bad fan fic idea, look derisible and do absolutely nothing before they’re dispatched. The actual Cybermen, terrifying in small numbers last week, are unable to hit a single human with dyspraxia running away from them in their dozens this week. The big questions of the episode – why is there a magic portal to Gallifrey? How did the Master destroy the entirety of his own race singlehandedly? – are never even asked, let alone answered. And as for the awful deus ex “death particle” suddenly jumping out of the plot with no set-up – eugh! Pretty much the only thing this episode has going for it are the excellent Graham/Yaz scenes.

The two things this series is likely to be remembered for are the new incarnation of the Master, and the revelations about the Doctor. Sacha Dhawan is great in the role – his Master feels genuinely unhinged and properly dangerous, with a real predatory cunning – but given how perfect Missy’s arc and final scenes were, I’m genuinely a little disappointed to see the character back, especially in full-on villain mode. However, I will concede that jealousy over discovering that the Doctor really is “special” is a very in-character motivation for him to renew his vendetta.

As for the shock revelations – the idea of a secret incarnation that the Doctor herself does not remember is intriguing, and Jo Martin really makes the role her own. There was a lot of speculation at the time that she’s the “Season 6B” Doctor, between Troughton and Pertwee, and that’s still the idea that I like, and seems ripe for development. If she’s pre-Hartnell, then why does she call herself the Doctor, and why is her TARDIS a police box?

The whole “Timeless Child” nonsense however – why on Earth did anyone think that a protracted subplot to explain away a moment from the Brain of Morbius (transmitted forty-four years previously!) was a good idea? How alienating must this have been for casual viewers? As an idea, I think it stinks, not out of a slavish insistence that the Hartnell incarnation must have been the first but for the fact that the Doctor only really became the Doctor – the hero – as the series was starting. Chibnall tries to have his cake and eat it by erasing the Doctor’s knowledge of her previous lives, and reminding us on screen that the interesting thing about the Doctor is not her origins, but who she is now – but as that’s the case, why are we supposed to care about her Timeless Child incarnations? What was the point of it? Even if you subscribe to the idea that “who is the Doctor?” is an interesting and worthwhile mystery, the Timeless Child isn’t a mystery answered, just a mystery deferred. If I had to sum up my feelings in one word, it would be “meh.”

#doctor who #thirteenth doctor #DW #review #writings

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northoftheroad · 6 years ago

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All about Alfred

I’ve come to realize I’ve got some mixed feelings about Alfred. One one hand, I love reading (and writing) his dry snark as much as the next person.

Nightwing vol 2 # 86. By Devin Grayson, art Patrick Zircher, Andy Owens and Sean Parsons.

Nightwing # 141. By Peter J. Tomasi, art Rags Morales and Michael Bair.

Throwing away an empty dish to make a point to Bruce. Priceless. I mean, who can not love this chap?

Batman/TMNT Adventures # 1. By Matthew Manning, art Jon Sommariva.

On the other hand, I think he gets far too much credit. Especially in fanfic. For one thing, it is not humanly possible for one person to take care of the Manor, the cave and everyone in it and, on top of that, bake cookies every day. (Anyone who has ever had an old house knows they are a lot of work, and the Manor and the cave are huge!)

More importantly, if Alfred had been an okay caretaker for Bruce, there wouldn’t be a Batman.

Initially, of course, Alfred (then Beagle) came to the Wayne household after Dick. This was retconned after Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985��1986). Since then, Alfred Pennyworth has raised Bruce after the murder of his parents. And clearly, failed at helping the boy to heal mentally.

Dark Victory has a nice panel where it’s clear he feels he failed Bruce when he was a child, and that he want to do better with Dick.

Dark Victory. By Jeph Loeb, art Tim Sale.

It should also be noted that Alfred originally was nothing like the competent and sassy character we know today. He was more of a blundering, comical figure and when he managed to solve a crime, it was down to pure luck.

To be fair, Alfred has, at times, questioned Bruce.

Nightwing vol 2 # 53. By Devin Grayson, art Rick Burchett and Rodney Ramos.

Batman Chronicles: The Gauntlet. By Bruce Canwell, art Lee Weeks.

But what Alfred mostly does is enabling Bruce, and his taking children into the war on crime. He can be passive-aggressive all he wants, as long as he tidies up the Manor and the cave and cooks and takes the kids to school, he is still making it possible for Bruce to spend his life as Batman – with sidekicks – fighting crime in tights.

Detective Comics # 523. By Gerry Conway, art Gene Colan and Tony DeZuniga.

Batman # 340. By Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas, art Gene Colan and Adrian Gonzales.

Batman vol 3 # 58. By Tom King, art Mikel Janín.

Once, Alfred actually had enough and left Bruce. Not because he kicked Dick out and told him to leave the key, not when he let younger teenager Jason become Robin shortly after he deemed the position too dangerous for Dick, not when Jason was killed, not when he fired Tim and made Stephanie a very temporary Robin, or any other time when Bruce has been an ass to one of his fellow humans.

No, the tipping point for Alfred is when Bruce does not take care of himself.

In Batman # 440, when Bruce is shattered after Jason’s death and is careless and gets hurt a lot, Alfred threatens to leave. ”I do not intend to spend the rest of my life playing nurse.”

Batman # 440. By Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, art Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo.

Now, we all know that Tim turns up and becomes Robin, and Batman needs a Robin, so things look up for a period. However, Alfred finally carries out his threat to leave during Knightfall. Once again, the reason is that he thinks Bruce is self-destructive. After Bane broke his back, Bruce and Alfred travel to the Caribbean and England to search for Jack Drake and Shondra Kinsolving, Bruce’s physical therapist and current love interest. Finally, while in England, Alfred has had it with Bruce’s refusal to rest and recuperate; he resigns.

Shadow of the Bat # 31. By Alan Grant, art Bret Blevins.

Incidentally, you didn’t think that Bruce actually would search out Alfred and have a heart-to-heart about this, did you? Didn’t think so. (In Dick’s words, Bruce has too much respect for Alfred even to try to find out where Alfred went. Not unlike how Bruce wants to respect Dick’s wishes to have nothing to do with the family after he was shot in the head, recently. Now, you can discuss if this is respect or emotional cowardice. But that is another story.)

Of course, it’s Dick who goes to London and talks to Alfred. Possibly Dick wants him back because he doesn’t want to be stuck cooking, washing, and taking care of the Manor again, as he did when he and Tim were Batman and Robin in Knightfall Prodigal…

Batman # 513. By Doug Moench, art Mike Gustovich and Romeo Tanghal.

Anyway, the Alfred and Dick duo averts an anti-European Union terrorist attack and a military coup in the United Kingdom. In the end, Alfred goes back to Gotham.

Nightwing: Alfred’s Return. By Alan Grant, art Dick Giordano.

Alfred also leaves Wayne Manor another time, this time on Bruce’s order, to live with Tim at his boarding school Brentwood Academy. He leaves Tim and returns to Gotham when Bruce is accused of murder in ”Bruce Wayne: Murderer”.

Robin # 98. By Chuck Dixon, art Pete Woods and Andrew Pepoy.

Now, I’m not saying that he didn’t have his priorities right, in this instance. But Bruce always comes first, second, third and fourth for Alfred. The Manor probably takes a measly fifth place.

This boils down to that Alfred is a flawed character. Which is good, right? It makes him more relatable and interesting. He can be cool and sassy and still have done a poor job of helping Bruce to heal after his parents’ murder, and he lets Bruce get away with far too much in his relationship with the family. I still have a lot of love for Alfred. I’m just a teeny bit annoyed when he is put on a pedestal.

And damn it, Bruce. Get some more hired help to take care of Wayne Manor. At least hire a few gardeners and take in some cleaning staff. Alfred isn’t getting any younger, you know...

This blog post is dedicated to Lightsider, who has written some of my favourite Batman/Young Justice the tv version-fics (do give them a try, you’ll find them on fanfic.net and AO3). It was exchanging comments about one of them that I got the idea to write this.

#Alfred Pennyworth #Batman #Dick Grayson #Bruce Wayne #Nightwing #Robin #Tim Drake

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kootenaygoon · 6 years ago

Photo

So,

My new therapist looked a little bit like Margaret Atwood.

She was an older woman with an exhausted smile, recovering from a recent surgery. A few light grey hairs were beginning to alight on her otherwise black curls. I’d finally gotten around to signing up for counselling through Black Press’ mental health program, and now I was sitting in her office, which happened to be within sight of the Star building. It seemed like Nelson was getting smaller and smaller each year, like I was running out of people I didn’t already know somehow.

“You know, I took some pictures of the ferry the other day. It got stuck on shore, beached like a whale, and it delayed everyone for about an hour. I’m pretty sure it’s happened more than once now,” she said.

“I should send you the pictures. I bet that would make an interesting story for the paper. What do you think?”

I gave her a weak smile, and waited for things to start. Instead she launched into some complaints about the parking issues caused by the Stores to Shores project, and apologized repeatedly for the inconvenience, even though I’d walked over during my lunch break. She couldn’t believe the decision-making going on at city hall, that they could greenlight something this disruptive, and she shook her head as the noisy paving work continued below her window. Finally she sat down and pulled out a small spiral notepad. I already felt like this wasn’t working, like she couldn’t be my Dr. Melfi, but I sat there obediently anyway, taking her through my litany of complaints one by one.

“I feel like I got really cocky while I was in university, when things were going so well, and I really believed I’d successfully solved the puzzle of my depression. I felt like I was never going to be depressed again and I just drowned myself in my social life, and writing and traveling and everything else,” I said.

“But now with Paisley and the dogs, settling into just like a normal, routine life, I guess I’m not really handling that transition really well. I mean, we’re both terrible with money and we don’t really have a social life here or a proper support network and we’re fighting a lot. I’m one of eight kids, you know? So being isolated like this isn’t normal for me.”

“One of eight? And where are you in the pecking order?”

“I’m the oldest.”

She smiled warmly. “Of course you are.”

After we covered my depression history, and my meds, we starting talking about geography. I was very much committed to making Nelson my home, the same way I was steadfastly committed to Paisley, but it was seeming more and more unsustainable everyday. We had published multiple stories about the affordable housing crisis at the Star while meanwhile we were barely making rent and wondering if we should downgrade to a smaller place. Maybe a one-bedroom. This was a town for wealthy retirees, black market cannabis growers and entrepreneurs willing to risk huge amounts of capital. If I wasn’t working as a reporter, I couldn’t see any other legitimate opportunities beyond lifeguarding or delivering pizza. This whole newspaper experience was a dream turned into reality, but I couldn’t make the numbers add up.

“So why don’t you go somewhere else?”

“Like where?”

“Somewhere new?”

I sighed. “That’s been my solution in the past. I never let myself get established, I’m always bouncing off to Whitehorse or Nova Scotia or wherever and I’m jettisoning friends like crazy and I think that’s part of the problem why I’m so lonely and fucked up. This is supposed to be our refuge, our home, the place where we can finally settle down and just live.”

“And you’re questioning that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, yeah.”

That night I fell asleep in front of the TV drunk, partway through an episode of The Wire. I’d been re-watching from the start, fixating particularly on Omar’s storyline. He was a gay street robber who wielded a shotgun and was willing to give false testimony to implicate a drug trafficker. The scene where he faces off with the opposing lawyer in court was my favourite. I loved how Omar was unapologetically himself, existing outside the law, but still lived by a very specific moral code. President Obama called Omar his favourite character, despite his lawless ways. For me, it was a hetero man crush in full bloom, but it still didn’t touch what I felt for the show’s creator David Simon. In creating characters like Omar, and depicting Baltimore with such raw honesty, he’d deeply impacted my worldview. I wanted nothing more than to tell stories like him, to touch lives like him, to tell the truth in ways it’s not normally told.

When I blinked open my eyes, I was standing on the sidewalk across from the Nelson Courthouse. I squinted into the afternoon sunlight, lifting one hand to shade my face. A police siren squawked beside me, and I jumped, watching as Nate Holt climbed from his cruiser and reached for his sidearm. He was gesturing to his partner, pointing in the direction of the credit union. Inside I could see a dark figure darting past the windows. Andrew Stevenson. I reached down for my camera, but it wasn’t there.

“You don’t need your camera, Will. You just need to watch,” Cass said, appearing beside me. “When the time comes, you’ll remember what you need to remember.”

I turned to her. “But I need a picture for the Star.”

“Some stories aren’t for the newspaper. You have to think bigger than that.”

Behind her Andrew Stevenson came banging out of the bank’s side-door, directly below a blue-faced man with loonies for eyes. The barrel of his shotgun was sticking upright out of his backpack, wagging like a chastising finger as he jumped on to his bike and pedalled frantically down hill. I looked over at Nate, who was clambering back into his car, while Paul Burkart appeared at an absolute sprint, pounding across the pavement and hurtling after the bank robber at full tilt.

Shit, I thought. Paul can run.

Suddenly I was in Cass’ passenger seat as she rumbled out towards the highway in a jacked up truck. She was the one who had made all of this possible, the one who had lured me to the Kootenays. Everything I’d done, everything I’d experienced, she’d already been there and done that. I could tell she missed it, the rush of journalism, and she still haunted my email inbox to talk about potential stories and remind me of upcoming events. Like a reformed junkie still craving a whiff. As she drove, the landscape rushing by behind her began to take flame. Raging fires swept across my viewscape as the sky darkened. This was starting to feel like a real emergency.

“I already covered this story.”

Cass laughed. “You think just because you cover one forest fire, then that’s it? What difference does that make? What’s the point of that?”

“People need to feel safe.”

“But it’s the people themselves that are causing the fires with climate disruption, just like Naomi Klein said. We need to be thinking about our complicity, Will. It’s not enough to tell people something happened, you have to tell them why it happened.”

“Why does anything happen, though? I don’t believe in God anymore.”

“And I never believed in God. You know that.”

When we were in university, Cass was notorious for being uncooperative and combative both with her subjects and the other staff at the Martlet. She was absurdly blunt but hyper-perceptive, so she was good at offending people and telling the truth. She was one of my first journalism role models, and I wanted to be more like her. I wanted to be fearless in blurting out uncomfortable questions and then exploring them with my prose, purposely crossing lines and challenging taboos. Like a journalist version of Omar.

Cass batted her blinker and turned left off the highway, leading us down a winding hill towards the Columbia River. Ahead of her I could see RCMP cars blockading the bridge. The fires cast black silhouettes across the concrete as the cops waited for the next moment to happen. Cass parked on a switch-back overlooking the bridge, leaning over to share in my view. Then she sat back and lit a joint, the glow bathing her face for a moment. I remembered that short time, years ago, when we were a thing. It had been a poor idea and hadn’t ended well, but I didn’t regret it.

“I thought you didn’t smoke pot.”

She took a long drag, then exhaled luxuriously. The smoke lingered around the truck’s cabin, enveloping me. “This is your dream. You want some?”

I took the joint. I watched it smoulder for a moment. “Sometimes this is how I feel, you know? Like my life’s on fire and everyone’s all calm about it. Nobody knows, nobody can see.”

“That’s melodramatic.”

I shrugged. “I’m a melodramatic dude.”

The Kootenay Goon

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akar0ku · 6 years ago

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Right now I’m working on a 100 theme challenge and a 30 kink meme, both for Radiata Stories. The first one I’m trying to get a variety of stuff and am trying to stock pile about 25 fics at a time before posting them over a 25 day period. The kink meme is just for fun and to give me a break since I’m not taking it to seriously. It’s also 100% self serving sooooo I’m just gonna dump a bunch of smut for my favorite character everywhere. If you haven’t guessed this is a part of the kink meme.

p.s. I’m seeing if I like posting the whole story to tumblr better than just sharing the AO3 link. Here’s the AO3 version if that’s easier.

Prompt 1: Cuddling

Summery: Jarvis and Jack find navigating the aftermath of a hook up to be both awkward and a little more guilt ridden then they thought.

Warning: Implied underaged sex, also I did a poor job following the prompt. Cuddling is literally the only one I had a hard time making a plot for, go figure.

Now he’d really done it. Of all the stupid things he had done in his life, in all the ways he had inadvertently fucked himself over, this really took the cake.

“You gonna be okay there?”

No, he wasn’t going to be able to talk his way out of this one. As soon as tomorrow hit, everyone would know. The kid would realize how messed up this was and tell everyone they worked with. Hell he’d probably go running to the castle guards over what happened.

“Um, Sarge?”

His life was over now. They’d throw him in the dungeons and leave him there to rot for eternity. He’d forever be known to the world as a degenerate and a pervert. People would tell stories of him to their young ones, of how his wandering soul would abduct them into the night if they didn’t behave.

“So like, is the massive panic attack a common thing for old people after getting laid or is this just a you thing?”

“Aw, can it will you! You have no idea what kind of a predicament this puts me in!” Jarvis hissed as he rolled over to face his bed mate. A huge mistake when he was met with the sight of a young lean naked boy; laying on his side and propping his head up on an open palm, the blanket barely draped across his waist, and large innocent brown eyes staring at him like he was a chore...well the boy wasn’t so innocent anymore, no thanks to him.

“Right, should have guessed it was a you thing. What’s the problem? You seemed into this a few hours ago.”

“How do you NOT see the problem?! I’m twice your age. I just deflowered a damn child.”

“Last I checked I was legally an adult. Also don’t say deflower, I’m not some virgin maiden from a story book.” Jack argued, pouting in response to the older man’s choice of words.

“Well you certainly weren’t experienced by any means.” Jarvis couldn’t help scoffing. He took a small amount of satisfaction in how Jack’s face practically glowed red in the dim light.

“Still doesn’t change that I’m an adult…”

“Hardly!”

“Hey I’m trying to help you feel better!”

“Fine! So maybe I’m not going to jail but people are still going to give me dirty looks. Plus I’ll lose my job now. You’re still my subordinate remember.”

“You’re saying that like we have to tell everyone.” It was probably the most observant thing Jack had said since they met. The thought honestly hadn’t even occurred to him.

“You’re not going to tell anyone or make some story about how I forced you into this?”

“No, why would I want to? Even if I did, who would ever believe that you could MAKE me do anything.” The look on Jack’s face was a mixture of confused, annoyed, and blissfully ignorant. The kid had no clue how precarious the situation was or how easily he could screw him over. Though despite their bickering, Jack had never proven to be the malicious type, not to his coworkers at the very least.

“Don’t paint your flagrant disobedience as a positive quality.” Jarvis huffed. Contrary to the scolding nature of his words he was very clearly relieved.

“Whatever, so what do we do now?”

That was a good question. Typically the people Jarvis brought home left not long after the fact, or if they did end up staying he had no perception of it, usually winding up passed out and waking up long after they had gone. He realized with some degree of embarrassment that this is the first sober hook up he’s had in a long time. Digressing, the sun wasn’t fully set yet so it was kind of early for them to go to sleep. Kicking the kid out seemed a bit crass and cold hearted though.

“Dunno, what do you wanna do?” He supposed he’d just roll with whatever the kid wanted. A part of him wanted Jack to stay...but the thought of vocalizing that felt awkward and needy.

He watched as Jack averted his gaze and stared upwards towards the head of the bed. The look of uncertainty was alien on his usually confident face but clearly showed that the boy did indeed have an idea of what he wanted but was struggling to spit it out. Eventually the boy moved to crawl across the short space separating them. He nuzzled his face into the older man’s bare chest, wrapping one arm around his torso and struggling for a moment to find a place for the other before settling on leaving it awkwardly curled between them.

Despite being well toned, the boy’s body felt oddly small and out of place against him. It’s not the filled out body of a fully grown man yet but he can't really compare it to the feeling of a woman either. His stomach churns when he remembers it's the build of a child, just entering into the realm of adulthood. He knows Jack is of age and is certain he won’t say anything, but he wonders if his conscience can handle keeping this between them. He hasn’t always made the best choices in life, but he wanted to believe he wasn’t so unscrupulous.

“Please stop it with the moral crisis. It’s making you tense up and I’m never going to get to sleep with you making things so heavy.”

...On second thought, why exactly was he feeling so bad about what he’d done to this brat? Whatever, if the kid was going to act so cocky and like he was doing him a favor by staying then he was going to reap what he wanted from this while he could.

He grabs a hold of Jack and rolls onto his back, bringing the younger man with him so he's laying against his chest and straddling his waist. The indignant yelp from the brunette is worth a good laugh and for the moment he’s almost completely forgotten about the guilt he had been struggling with moments ago.

“What? You ready for round two already?” Jack's tone is intended to be snarky but the red flush across his face and the slight waver in his voice clearly betrayed the mix of excitement and nerves he was trying to cover up.

“Tsk, I wish.” As if to mock him, his still overly sensitive cock gives a sad and painful twitch. “I’m not young enough to go at it so soon. You’re just going to have to settle with cuddling.”

“Didn’t think you were such a cuddle bug, Sarge.”

Jarvis knows his face is burning red at the accusation and he covers it with his free hand to hide the fact from the snickering teen. It doesn’t help either that the brat keeps referring to him in that casual honorific.

“Yeah, well I never knew you were such a pervert.” He says to draw attention to the the obvious erection he can feel twitching against his stomach. Wait the kid was seriously ready to go another round? Jeez, if only he were about a decade younger.

Jack’s laughter stops rather abruptly and when Jarvis pulls his hand away to look, he sees Jack’s face burning equally as hot. The flush is clearly not from embarrassment though, he can recognize the look Jack makes when he’s thinking hard on something from a mile away.

“You know…” Jack starts, pushing himself up with his hands against Jarvis’ chest and smirking down at him in a way that Jarvis can only guess is intended to be sultry. “I could always...I dunno, be the one...to...” Jack doesn’t need to finish the sentence for Jarvis to catch on to what he’s trying to ask. The rapid shift from cheeky confidence, to apprehension, and finally sheepish uncertainty makes it even clearer. Jarvis can’t help the patronizing smirk pulling at his lips or the laughter bubbling up from his chest.

“Hey! Stop laughing.”

Jarvis’ barely contained snorts escalated into full on laughter the moment he’s been called out. A part of him feels bad, the boy’s face is so red, he’s surprised his head hasn’t blown up and he could already feel the new erection wilting fast against his stomach. He really shouldn’t be laughing at the fumbling of a sexually awakened teen...but it was just too funny.

Now rife with embarrassment, Jack sunk back down until he was laying flat again. He glared off to the side, a pout on his face and his chin resting against the other man’s still heaving chest. The first thought that came to Jarvis’ mind was that of angered puppy that just had its ball taken away. He had to admit, it was kinda cute and fitting to the boys temperament.

“Nice try,” he ruffled the teens hair with a bit more force than was necessary, earning a disgruntled groan. “But no.”

Jarvis didn’t pay much mind to the younger's continued pouting and settled back into the mattress, keeping one arm firmly wrapped around Jack’s waist while throwing the other up over his head. He busies himself with tracing formless shapes into the younger's back, finding it oddly hypnotic to the point that he’s starting to doze off.

Jack must have found something soothing in the action as well, eventually easing out of whatever indignation he was feeling. He shifting so his cheek was pressed against Jarvis’ collarbone and hooked his arms underneath his shoulders.

Jarvis closed his eyes and savored the intimacy as he started to drift off.

“Hey…” Jack’s voice brought him back from the edges of sleep, making him hum in mild annoyance. “You’re not uncomfortable like this?” He shook his head ‘no’ in reply. If he were honest, he kinda liked the reassuring pressure of another person's weight pressing into him.

“Kay…” A long pause stretched on before Jack admitted with a slightly nervous chuckle. “This is kinda nice, actually.”

Jarvis snorted in amusement. He brought his free hand back down and affectionately combed his fingers thought messy brown hair. The action seemed to elicit a different response then expected though, bringing a sad sigh from Jack’s lungs.

“You still regret doing this?” Now that was a question that had some weight to it. Enough to fully jar the older of the two out of the half asleep state he was in. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, struggling to figure out exactly what to say. Here he had been feeling sorry for himself and worrying about the repercussions of his actions, he hadn’t really thought of how Jack could interpret that on his end. It hadn’t occurred to him that maybe Jack was looking for him to show some sign that this was something he had wanted as well.

Did he really regret what he had done? He thinks back on all the times he had caught himself staring for a little too long. The occasions where he felt confusingly overjoyed and shamefully embarrassed to the point of anger when the young corporal would occasionally drag him home when he’d had a few too many. All the moments he’s denied that maybe he felt something a little more than just distaste or at the very least amicable annoyance towards Jack. He’s pretty sure there’s substantial enough evidence to prove he’d do it again if presented with the situation all over. Maybe it’s about time he actually started looking into the nature of whatever attachment he’s been feeling lately. At the very least he needs to admit he’s physically attracted.

“I just feel bad I was your first. You honestly could have done better.” It’s not until he speaks it that it fully dawns on him what had make him so upset earlier. He’s sure if Jack had been more promiscuous by this point he may not feel as torn about the situation.

“Is that really it?” Jack looks both relieved and incredulous. “I already told you, I can make my own choices. So stop feeling bad.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jarvis chided, not fully convinced that Jack wouldn’t change his opinion sometime down the line. “I suppose there’s nothing to be done about it now. Just do me a favor and remember how adamant you were about making your own choices before you decide to report me down the line okay.”

“Stop saying that!” Jack pushes himself back up again, this time glaring down at Jarvis with that angry puppy expression again. Again Jarvis feels laughter bubbling up from deep in his chest. God, when did he have such a soft spot for the kid. Must be some post sex magic heightening the already dubious attraction he’s been harboring.

“Just get back down here and shut up already. You're so needy.” He doesn’t really want to get too involved in the topic at the moment. He’s tired and all he really wants is to bask in the warmth of post-coital intimacy before he winds up falling too far into a guilt trip again.

“How is that being needy? Plus you're the one smothering me right now!” Jack fought against the arms pressing down into his back, but the effort was fruitless as he was simply squashed down into the other man’s chest. The only thing Jack could do at that point was glare and stick his tongue out, an action reciprocated by the second of the pair.

“See, now who’s acting like a kid.” Jack mumbled, almost getting cut off with a stifled yawn.

Jarvis doesn’t even bother with a rebuttal, instead running a hand through Jack’s messy hair, down the length of his back, and repeating the process as if the boy were little more than a tired pet. He watched as Jack struggled to keep his eyes open before eventually succumbing to his fatigue and finally drifting off.

It’s a sweet sight. One that does little to assuage the guilt that’s fighting to rear its head again. He tries with all his might to swallow it back down and has some success. But he can’t get over the fact that this was the boy’s first experience. He’d forever look back on this and even though he’s okay now, there’s little doubt Jack would eventually regret it. There’s nothing special to be had here, just a casual hook up and nothing more. Regardless of what happens further down the line, this instance was driven by little more than lust.

“Too tight.” He hears Jack mumble in his sleep and he realizes he’s stopped petting the sleeping brunette and has been clutching him to his body far too tightly to be comfortable. He eases up on the pressure but doesn’t release his hold. Again he focused on the pleasant feeling of being intimately close with someone, on how warm Jack’s body is, the gentle pressure of his chest expanding as he breathed, the tickle of unruly hair against his neck and face.

It seems to work for the time being. At least well enough that he can start feeling the fog of drowsiness overtaking him again. He supposes he’ll worry about it tomorrow instead, there’s not much he can really do about it now anyway.

#Long post #Fanfiction #Radiata Stories #Jarvis #Jack #sfw #more or less is #don't look at me tumblr

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hellyeahheroes · 7 years ago

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I wasn't in the fandom at the time but what exactly did identity crisis do to the dcu?

As the book’s editor has revealed on Twitter, DC Higher-Ups used that book to, an actual quote supposedly said by Dan DiDio, “take the smile out” of DC Universe. It was a gritty murder story that used fridging to a horrible extent with both death of women as well as rape being used only to push forward stories of male characters. It killed several less popular characters like Firestorm or Elongated Man due to writer seeing them as expendable but also killing human characters like Sue Dibny.

It had given a great push for gritty, “realistic badass normal” characters huge push with Deathstroke suddenly beating the living shit out of Justice League members, including overpowering Green Lantern’s own willpower and having Flash more or less run into his sword like a moron.

It also had portrayed heroes as morally corrupt with a group of them using magic to mind-wipe supervillains, mind-wiping Batman when he found out (with it being implied Superman knew this was happening and just let it) and other superheroes torturing members of the Rogues for information, Jack Bauer style.

Identity Crisis is seen as a point where DC started actively becoming more and darker. Things like the death of Ted Kord at the hands of Maxwell Lord, all the violence Geoff Johns could get away with like Superboy Prime tearing people’s limbs or Black Adam pushing Psycho Pirate’s mask through his head all the way up to Roy Harper on drugs talking to a dead cat, thinking it’s the ghost of his dead daughter, killed by a supervillain. While DC had many, many darker stories before Identity Crisis is seen as a point where whole company policy was pushing towards more of that. And this finally lead to the idiotic mix of 90′s and 00′s with few Silver Age elements thrown in, that was the New 52.

- Admin

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mitigatedsix · 2 years ago

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Okay, so here we go.

Objectively, Ultimis Dempsey is the Player Character, meant to bring in players and have a way for them to connect to the story and the other characters. It was a design choice when Ultimis was introduced to get others interested into the at-the-time brand new group for this rising gamemode that was nesting in the background. It could be argued that this is why he’s kind of a blank slate and left the most up for interpretation. The fourth wall breaking meta that he has keeps him with the ridiculousness of the other guys (like, how can you compete with an insane German doctor, a perpetually drunk Russian, and a Japanese warrior shouting all these things about honor and spirits? Not much.) So as a character, Dempsey is kind of left to his own little corner of interpretation. The tidbits that we do get only give context clues to who he was before but it is safe to say that he has been in the marines for a while and he has a five year old back home from what he can remember. Not much there.

BO4 was able to give some more insight into his past and who he is. Biggest example is his interaction with McCain in Alpha/Omega. This leads me to believe that he does remember more than what he leads the others to think. If his mind was truly turned to mush from alien chemicals and factory reset to stereotypes, then he shouldn’t have been able to remember that much about McCain and Phoebe, based on his track record before. He might be a lot more aware of everything going on than players or the other characters know of, he just doesn’t have a clue on how to even interpret it so he stays out of it, like his Primis counterpart.

Primis, on the other hand, has a little bit more going from him from the quotes that we do manage to get. Like, how he isn’t a huge fan of flying by Wundersphere, how he had a curious cat, how his mom was one for manners, or how he’s a sharpshooter that shot the wings off a fly. His calmer demeaner lets him be able to analyze situations a lot more critically and he’s not one to shy away from questioning the others if he thinks that something is off. His calmness also helped him in Gorod to pretty much rally the others into locking it down and finishing everything. He checked in with all of them and gave encouragement where it was needed after he was able to pull himself together just enough after Zets at the thought that it will all be over. BO4 also gave insight to him about where his morals lie and that he would not cross them no matter what, unlike his counterpart. Leadership shines bright with this one.

It could also be said that he enlisted with the war effort when America joined and did something spectacular at the Battle of Belleau Wood to be promoted and get his nickname. As well as be selected as a spy for the American military to infiltrate the excavation site.

It’s very safe to say that with how the story played out in all versions that Richtofen and Nikolai take the spotlight and the other two fall onto the way-side. Even then, Takeo outshines Dempsey a little bit with his personal connections to the emperor and the spirits. Both Dempseys are kinda just there with jack and shit.

Also, Samantha’s Zombie Blood lines in Origins?? The cyphers that saw Ultimis Dempsey be thrown away by Pernell in Classified??? Primis Nikolai divulging the information of the repeating time loop to Primis Dempsey??? Idfk what he was trying there but it worked to give Primis Dempsey an existential crisis.

There was so much that Treyarch could have done with his character but were too chicken shit to really go too deep into it without contending with the group leader, whoever the fuck it is at the time. Cause my boy was absolutely shafted and left too much to interpretation even though he isn’t the standard jarhead marine that almost everyone thinks him to be.

Can we talk about Dempsey? I mean really. REALLY talk about Dempsey? I'm going to do it anyway. I'm not even talking at this point, I am just ranting. Beware: long, meandering post ahead.

Disclaimer time. I only play Black Ops and Black Ops 2, and even then very casually. I don't do the ciphers or extract and listen to every voiceline. On top of that, as for everything in 3 and 4, I only have the most tenuous grasp on. If I get something wrong, I beg pardon.

With that out of the way, let's get into the meat and potatoes: This Bitch has a lot of weird shit going on with him, so I'm going to try and (record scratch) break it down for y'all. This Bitch is a Main Character. One of the staple Four Motherfuckers. And we know next to nothing about him.

Nikolai and Richtofen both speak about having a family. Ultimis speaks about a sister(with him generally antagonizing her for his own amusement) and Primis had both of his parents die. Nikolai speaks about having a sister who made dolls and that she was, apparently, "a bitch" with brother in law and, potentially, unmentioned niece(s) or nephew(s). Takeo frequently mentions his ancestors, so he very obviously has a family.

Dempsey? He has a one-off line about a five year old daughter. She isn't even given a name. And she's never brought up in any significant way.

Then there's nationality. None of the characters explicitly go out and say where they grew up, but we can use context clues and inferences to at least headcanon where they could possibly be from. Nikolai in Gorod Krovi doesn't know the layout of the city and could very possibly have grown up on a farm. Takeo is close to the emperor and at least his Primis version was from a noble lineage, so he probably lived in Tokyo. As for Mr. Tofen, he probably had lived in Berlin at least at one point in his life since between World Wars it was The Place for gay people.

Dempsey? Uhhhhhh. He's American??? He has an Irish last name?? He knows like one or two Spanish words?? I have no fucking clue. I can't even reach for straws to grasp, there's abso-fucking-lutely nothing here.

Past Friends? Lovers, even? It's certainly implied that Dempsey is a slut, but? Actual receipts? Names? That one vague Phoebe mention in Alpha Omega with McCain. That's the closest thing we get and even that is so open-ended and vague we can't be sure. As for friends, Ultimis was at least friends with McCain and, presumably, the rest of the Marine Extraction Party at Verruckt. Did this Bitch just not exist before the marines?(Damn this Mf was amab[assigned marine at birth])

And then there's the thing all of the other three have where there's a big off-screen character that one of the Motherfuckers is heavily tied to and is vital to their backstories and character. Takeo has the Emperor, Nikolai has his wife, and Toffens has Group 935/Maxis(and in the case of Ultimis, the Voices).

But Dempsey kinda,,, doesn't? Primis has his field reports, but that's only in Solo and the American government is very uninvolved with the Crew directly. Also I don't think they ever received any of the reports and it's mostly some kind of routine/coping mechanism for the Bitch. The only sort of stand-in I can think of is the Player, as absurd as that sounds. Dempsey talking to Us(and Treyarch) is brought up by both the Shadowman and Samantha in either a manipulative or taunting fashion, so it has to be important. Or not.

(I would fucking die if a metanarrative was explored in Call of Duty: Zombies of all places. And the main character being Tank Dempsey of all people.)

My question is a bit of all of these things and a bit of more. Why? We don't even have his FIRST NAME. and that's literally lampshaded. Dempsey himself jokes about it. Why doesn't he have a name, or a life before the marines? And if not why, then what's stopping him from having one?

(To digress a bit and jump into something purely personal[more so than this already is], I'm pretty upset over the waste of it all. All this potential and we get fucking nothing. He's just killed off with no resolution. You could tell me that Dempsey is actually a Keeper construct built specifically to help fight against 115's influence and at this point I could fucking believe you. You could tell me that the Shadowman went down on Dempsey's non-existent mother and that Dempsey is actually the Apothican-equivalent of the Antichrist whose sole purpose is to spread death, destruction, and disorder wherever he goes and I'll go "that's absurd!" but take it anyways since it's better than the nothing we got.)

But even worse is we'll never get an answer. (Probably. I mean something is going on in COD:Z: Mobile, but I don't think it's canon to the main story.) Dempsey just shows up in the marines one day, does something absolutely wild to get the nickname Tank, and then he eventually(inevitably) meets Richtofen and the other Fuckers and it's all downhill from there. That's it, stripped to the barest of bones, that's all we know about Dempsey.

#I got more but it's getting long #cod zombies

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