#me: doesn’t do the six pages but damn well doesn’t do the short version either

[adhdeancas]

Dean Winchester (and the script leaks last night) possessed me to write this.

Dean happens upon Chuck's latest book: Carry On. Except it ends differently than it really went, and the ending? It's really fucking bad.

tw: suicide mention, transphobia (quickly shut the fuck down) 

Dean doesn’t make a habit of going to bookstores. Not because he hates books, contrary to what Sam might think; he just prefers to buy used books. There’s something comforting about a book that has already been worn and read over and over, that already shows how much the previous owner loved it. Plus, y’know, big corporations are evil and all that. And Dean only allows himself to overlook that when his stomach or his wallet wins over his hatred of the shitty mass-produced products. 

This time it was Jack who won; he’s obsessed with this new fantasy series and the new book just came out, so there’s no way he can hunt it down on Ebay. He makes his way to the fantasy and sci-fi section, eyes roaming over the displays of new releases, and his eye catches on something that turns his blood cold. 

“Supernatural: Carry On, The Final Book of the Winchesters’ Epic Journey” takes up a whole table, the generic and overly serious cover jeering out at him. 

He storms over to the display, anger covering up for the way his body feels light as a feather and like lead all at once, and picks up a book. “Why is Sam always fucking shirtless?” he mutters, the only thought that allows itself from the mess inside his head to his mouth. 

“Book sales.” A voice behind him says. He turns to see a teenager with their arms crossed over their work polo, pierced lip fixed into a customer-unfriendly frown.

“People want to see that?”

They snort, a small grin turning up the corner of their lips. It reminds Dean of Cas. “No. But that’s what advertisers think all ‘women’ want,” They use air quotes. 

He raises an eyebrow and asks. “Women?”

They shrug and uncross their arms, leaning back against the display table behind them. Their nametag says Jadyn. “Supernatural’s biggest block of readers is queer. I’d go out on a limb and say a lot of those the marketers think of as ‘women’ aren’t, or if they are, they aren’t itching to see Sam’s six pack.” Jadyn smirks. 

Dean takes a second to digest that, then grins down at the book, thinking past Sam’s apparently badly-received nudity now. “So how’d they like it?” he asks, waving the book a bit and looking up at Jadyn. Apparently they know a lot about the fans of the books, and for once, he’s proud of the way the story ended. 

Jadyn’s face sets into all hard lines. “Most people fucking hated it.” they say bluntly, then, probably remembering that he’s a customer, correct. “Sorry. I mean, it got some good reviews, mostly from people who like Wincest, but beyond that, it had some problematic plot points.”

Dean winces at the reminder of the ship between him and his brother, then scrunches his whole face together in confusion. “Wait, what? Why?” Why would Wincest fans like it? What was problematic about their end?

Jadyn shifts from foot to foot. “I don’t wanna spoil anything for you-”

“I don’t care about spoilers, just give me the short version.” Dean says quickly. A quiet panic is rising in him, and suddenly he has a horrible feeling that he’s not holding the truth in his hands anymore. 

“Uh, okay… Well, the most obvious thing is the bury-your-gays thing, then there’s the fact that it completely contradicted the rest of the lore. And it was ableist, misogynistic, and messed up, like, every character’s arc.” they take a breath, clearly worked up by it. “Even if they changed any of the details too, it was all built on Dean’s death, and that’s just bullshit. Sorry.” they apologize again, apparently mistaking Dean’s stricken expression to be in reaction to their rant and swearing. 

“No, nah, you’re… you’re okay. Uh, thanks.” he waves a hand and wanders away from them, only remembering Jack’s book when he’s almost to the register. He manages to make his way back and find the damn thing, but he’s still in a fog when he gets to the register. 

“Did anyone help you in the store today?”

“Huh?” he looks up and meets the middle-aged cashier’s gaze for the first time. Brent, from the nametag, looks at him impatiently. “Oh, yeah, uh… Jadyn. Jadyn helped me.” Brent scoffs and starts typing with a shake of the head. “Uh, is there a problem?” Dean asks, a little annoyed at this cashier’s unnecessary attitude. He usually doesn’t care if an employee’s rude, because they have to deal with assholes all the time and honestly Dean isn’t much better, but this one gives him a bad feeling. 

“No, no, sorry. It’s just - “Jadyn’s” got this idea that he’s a girl. Makes everybody call him that name now too. Just-” Brent shakes his head. “I mean, you get it. Their generation, everybody wants to be special.”

Dean glares. “No, I don’t get it, Brent.” He says through gritted teeth. “Seems to me like Jadyn probably deals with enough assholes like you that her asking for a little basic decency is the exact opposite of special. Sounds pretty normal, actually.” He can see the fear creep into Brent’s eyes, and he knows the cashier is reacting to the murderous look in his eyes more than his actual words. 

Brent hands Dean his bag of books with a quiet, “Here you go.”

Dean snatches it away. “Oh, Brent?” he checks over his shoulder to make sure they’re alone and then leans across the counter into Brent’s space. “You should find a new job, one where you don’t have to interact with other people. At least until you learn how to stop being a piece of shit.” He starts to ease away but thinks better about it. “And if you think that’s a suggestion, it’s not. My husband likes this book coming out next month that I’ll need to buy, and if I see you here when I come, well… it would be really embarrassing for you to tell all your little friends that you got your ass beat by a ‘special’ guy, huh?” He pats Brent on the cheek condescendingly and leaves with a huff. 

Damn transphobes. 

He only remembers the book once he’s back in Baby, and he takes the time to drive out of town before he pulls over to read it. It’s an old abandoned church, the cross long since fallen from the roof and the doors hanging off their hinges. He sits on the steps just because being in Baby seems claustrophobic for once in his life, and going back to the bunker to look at this is just… not happening.

Dean only skims the beginning to see that it starts the same. The ground erupting with bodies, hell spitting out its most-conveniently placed nasties, Rowena sacrificing herself, Cas leaving. His throat closes up at that, at Chuck’s description of Cas’s heartbroken expression as he climbs the stairs of the bunker. He clears his throat and skips to the end, right past Cas’s death that he doesn’t have the time to think about right now, past them defeating Chuck and then stops. He goes back a few pages, trying to find the disconnect. 

The story’s different.

After Jack takes on God’s power, in the book, he’s totally fine. Not almost vibrating out of his skin or anything, not crying like the three year old he is because he’s scared. Not like it really happened. He just smiles and leaves him and Sam, and they let him go. 

Dean scoffs, skimming over the story as it just gets more ridiculous. 

In the book, he doesn’t even try to save Cas. They barely even mention him. And they never mention Eileen, either. In fact, Dean notes disbelievingly, practically the only characters in the last few chapters are him and Sam. They’re hunting again.

“What, is Chuck trying to keep the series going?” he whispers to himself, anger flaring through him. They let Chuck live, and he decided to write obnoxious fanfiction about them? He’s gonna kill that shameless little fucker. For real, this time. He deserves it.

In the book, Sam and Dean torture some vampire mime, and they enjoy it. Dean cringes; this is really what Chuck thinks of them. Then they tussle with more vamps in a barn and- 

Dean’s brain stops working. He rereads the scene again and again. 

“There’s something in my… something in my back. It feels like it’s right through me.” 

Dean Winchester dies in a dirty barn, on a piece of freaking rebar. 

More than that, Dean realizes on his fourth read-through. This Dean? He tried to drag out his speech, Dean can tell by the way he pauses for fucking drama. He would never do that. He would never talk to Sam for fifteen hellish minutes when he could be trying. Trying to live, so he can actually get his life back on track, get his family back. No, he made that speech stalling. He made that speech so Sam wouldn’t try to save him. 

“You gotta admit, I had one helluva ride.” He was strangely calm.

Chuck made him kill himself.

Dean reads the rest of the book through blurry eyes, reading an ambiguous and nothing-ending, one where he’s somehow happy to be dead and driving around in heaven alone while Sam raises a kid into hunting and cries about Dean decades after he’s died. Eileen isn’t mentioned. Cas is mentioned once, and Bizzarro-Dean doesn’t even think about seeing him, apparently. The whole book ends with a hug between him and Sam, both dead. Both alone. 

Dean rips the ending up. He tears through the stupid paper covering and keeps ripping the pages up until they’re the size of confetti. His lower lip wobbles. He throws the whole thing against the side of the building, and it tumbles through the broken doorway and drops into a pile of dust and dirt. “That isn’t the fucking ending.” he grounds out, knocking his hand against the flimsy handrail. It gives a little under his fist and he kicks at it. “That isn’t the fucking ending!”

He’s having a panic attack. Again. He tries to take deep breaths, but they’re gulping, too big, they’re making him panic more. He scrambles back to Baby and grabs his phone, presses the first number on his favorites list and waits for him to answer on speaker phone.

“Hey Dean, what’s up?” Sam sounds like he’s been laughing. There are voices in the background, and Dean tries to convince himself one of them is Eileen. 

“Hey Sammy.” he chokes out, trying to sound normal. “You busy?”

There’s a pause, and then the sounds in the background. “Nah, Rowena’s just over.” he says casually. 

“So those voices in the background were-”

“Rowena and Eileen, yeah. They’re trying to convince me we need to go to Mexico. For the beaches.” A smile in his voice. Dean lets out a sigh of relief.  What’s up, Dean? You need something?” The smile drops, and Sam’s worried. 

Sam’s okay. Sam’s okay. “No, nah. Hey, you heard from Donna lately?” Dean just needs to triple-check.

“Uh, no, not since Sunday dinner… Dean, you okay?”

“Yeah, she just- she hasn’t been answering my texts. Just wanted to make sure.” Dean lies quickly. His breathing is still uneven, but his body is settling into uneven shakes. 

Sam sounds skeptical. “Yeah, well, she did tell us it’s been pretty busy at work lately. Y’know, everybody going out for the first time with COVID, getting stupid. Plus, y’know, nowhere’s drowning in EMTs right now.”

“Right. Yeah.” Dean takes a deep breath, a distant memory of Donna talking about that coming back to him.

“Pretty sure you were setting up a D&D session with Charlie while she was talking about that,” Sam laughs. Dean knows he means it as a subtle jab, but there’s too much relief flooding through him to care. Still, a string is pulled taut in him, and Sam can’t fix that completely.

“Gotta go, Sam,” Dean hangs up before Sam can say anything else, and goes to his next contact. It rings for far too long, and Dean’s heartbeat picks back up to thundering.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Cas,” Dean breathes out. “Cas, you know I love you, right?” He needs to test all the bounds of this, to make sure, just to make sure. Make sure Chuck isn’t still fucking with him. Because apparently, Chuck won’t let him be queer. Not in his story. Not out loud.

He can hear Cas’s eyebrow raise through the phone, and his chest is overcome with stupid fondness. “I would be a little worried if you didn’t.”

Dean grins widely. “Like, romantically. I’m in love with you. Because you’re the love of my life and I’m bisexual.” He says it all like it’s a checklist, like he expects some cosmic being to slap a hand over his mouth before he gets each next phrase out.

“Yes, Dean. We’ve been married almost two months.” Cas is smiling. It happens everytime he talks about their wedding. Dean adores it. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, now it is.” His whole body relaxes, still vibrating with leftover panic, but satisfied. “I got Jack’s book.”

“Oh, good. He’ll be so pleased.” Cas pauses. “Dean, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Dean eases off the ground and sends a last look at the dilapidated church before climbing into Baby. “Just- read a bad book. I’ll tell you about it later. When I get home.”

[castiel-left-his-mark-on-me]

“Oh -- thank God!”

So I discovered after writing most of this already that Misha said they were actually still on set when looking at the astrology book, but my  story was too far gone to change, so I just ignored that minor detail. Hope you like my version of events better anyway.

It’s certainly more fun and in depth than what we actually heard.

______________________________________________________

“Hey, Mish—what’s your birthday?”

Misha looks away from the TV to squint at Jensen? “What? Why? You know my birthday.”

Jensen grins at the book in his lap but he doesn’t glance up to meet Misha’s eyes.

“Where did you get that thing anyway?” Jared asks around a mouthful of room service hot-wing. The football game they’re watching plays on in front of them, and Jared is already sucked back in before Jensen can answer.

“Got it from the make-up trailer. Not sure who left it in there.”

“And you brought it with you?” Misha asks.

“Just threw it in my bag … wasn’t really thinking ‘bout it. Now, c’mon. Tell me your birthday, Mish.”

Misha rolls his eyes. “You c’mon. You know what it is … August 20th.”

Smiling victoriously, Jensen sits up in his seat a little, hunching forward as he scans his finger down the page. “Oh—thank God!” he says finally, flopping back against the couch with a bit too much drama.

“Thank God, what? What did it say?”

Jensen just continues smiling as he closes the book and pulls himself off the couch. “Alright, I’m gonna head back to my room and unpack.”

“Jensen!” Misha chuckles, albeit, a bit annoyed now that he’s being so blatantly ignored.

“I don’t get why you bother unpacking, man. We’ll only be here for a couple days” Jared says—still with his mouth full, and still barely present in the conversation.

“I can’t plan an outfit if I can’t see all my clothes laid out” Jensen huffs, as if it’s something they all do. As if he isn’t the only one in the room who is truly concerned about these things.

Jared rolls his eyes and Misha snorts, and Jensen flips them both off before turning to head out the door of Jared’s suite.

After he’s gone, Misha turns back to Jared and wonders at him. “What do you think he meant?”

Jared is wide eyed, watching the Longhorns charge against the Sooners, but they were blocked right at the fifty yard line. “No! C’mon! Damnit!”

“Jared …” Misha tries again.

“Huh?” Jared sighs, finally tearing his eyes away to look at his friend. “What’d you say?”

Misha chuckles and then leans forward—elbows on his knees, as if this was a matter of great importance. “What do you think Jensen meant after he looked up my birthday in that horoscope book and said ‘Oh—thank God’?”

Jared’s eyebrows pile down on the bridge of his nose for a second, briefly having no clue what Misha is talking about; and then all at once, they shoot up again. “Oh, that? He was probably seeing if you two were okay to bang.”

Misha spits out a laugh, more at himself than anyone—because he honestly thought that Jared might give him a sincere answer for once. “Okay, yeah … well, I guess I’ll leave you to your game.”

Jared is already engrossed again, and he barely raises a hand to say bye as Misha gets up to head for the door.

Once in the hallway, Misha sighs—not sure why he puts up with those two. But then again, he knows exactly why. They are his two best friends, and they know him better than almost anyone, which is why they know all the perfect ways to torture him. It’s unfair really, and Misha tells himself that he probably wouldn’t stick around if it wasn’t all so fucking hilarious.

He peers down the brightly patterned hallway  to see his room just a couple doors down from Jared’s, but then he turns his head the other direction to look at suite 509 … Jensen’s suite. And as if he can see through the door—he pictures Jensen standing at the end up his bed, six outfits spread out before him, four-too many for their short trip to Toronto. Inevitably, one of those outfits will end up in Misha’s bag on the way back, either because Jensen already wore it too many times, or because whatever Misha haphazardly threw together for this trip will not satisfy Jensen’s top-tier taste.  Misha can’t count how many times he’s walked out of his hotel room at one of these conventions, just to be marched right back in by his ever-suave costar.

“You can’t be serious” Jensen would say. “You look like a busted piñata.”

Misha used to argue, used to act offended (even though he really could not care less) but then he saw how happy Jensen would be after he dressed him. The pride on his face as he stood behind Misha as they both looked in the mirror. The happy murmurs, the intense scans of Misha’s entire body, the genuine compliments that Misha never knew he needed until he heard them come from his friend’s freckled lips.

“You look so good, Mish.”

“See how this shirt makes your eyes look amazing?”

And the ever-invigorating “Damn!”

Misha found himself really looking forward to their occasional games of dress-up; so much so, that the cons where Jensen couldn’t fly in until Sunday morning always left Misha a little down. He still doesn’t care what outfit he ends up in, but he does like the boost that his friend’s praise gives him right before he heads out on the stage.

The knock on the door surprises him—because Misha finds that he’s the one doing the knocking.

Jensen opens it, already smiling as if he knew who it was. He could have known. He could’ve looked through the peephole anytime in the last few minutes and saw Misha standing there, daydreaming like an idiot.

Misha blushes as he waves awkwardly at the other man.

Jensen just leans against the door coolly. “Hey—long time no see.”

Misha blushes more and sighs. “Yeah, um, well … I was just wondering if you had anything I could wear? I don’t even know what all I packed .”

Surprisingly, Jensen frowns a little at that. “Nah, man. Sorry, I didn’t have time to pack as much as I usually do either, and I know everything I do have will be too small ya.”

“Really?” Misha says, instantly embarrassed at how disappointed he sounds.

But Jensen seems disappointed too. “Yeah—I only have a few things, and since you’ve been working out so much …” he grabs Misha’s shoulder for emphasis and gives it a squeeze, “I think my shirts would all be too tight on you.”

Misha slumps a little, but still smiles at the round-a-bout compliment he just received. “Alright, no problem. I’m sure I have something semi-decent in my bag.”

“Doubt it” Jensen laughs as he leans back against the door.

With another sigh, Misha looks over Jensen’s shoulder and spots the book on the end of the bed; and before Jensen can invite him in, Misha is moving around him to go pick it up.

But Jensen doesn’t seem to mind as he shuts the door and follows Misha into the bedroom.

“So …” Misha begins, not able to wait one more second, “why did you want to look up my birthday in this thing anyway?”

Jensen smiles and then pulls up beside Misha—their shoulders brushing as he puts out his hand so Misha can give him the book. “Well, they got these categories … compatibility between the signs and shit. Like friendship compatibility, frenemies … romantic compatibility. That sorta thing.”

Misha nods as he watches Jensen flip through the book.

“And here …” Jensen continues, scrolling his finger down to the chapter titled “Leo and Pisces” he comes to a stop at the bullet-point for friendship. “Here it says that you and I are entirely different in character, but love the new aspects we bring to each other’s lives.”

With a smile, Misha relaxes his shoulders—relieved with the answer he finally received, but then all at once, he shrugs them up again. “But … you already knew that. Why the big exaggerated response at looking it up? Were you just trying to mess with me?” It’s more than likely, and Misha knows it.

Jensen grins as he turns around to sit on the edge of the bed—still grinning as he looks back up at Misha, thumbing over to the next page in the process. “And here … in the next category” he goes on, as if Misha hadn’t said a thing just a moment ago, “it says that the outward dominance of the Leo is willingly accepted by the Pisces, sometimes more than they let on. The Pisces’ submissive nature welcomes the Leo’s control, as long as it’s put forth with affection and love. These two are a rare match, but a good and strong one once paired.”

Misha tilts his head some, wondering down at the other man— suddenly noting that the category Jensen is looking at is for ‘sexual compatibility’.

Jensen sits proudly atop the bed, smugly smiling up at him, like he’s played the world’s best prank. “Huh” Misha says finally.

Jensen’s smile droops a bit. “Huh?”

“Yeah … huh. I guess Jared was telling me the truth.”

Now it’s Jensen’s turn to look puzzled. “What? Truth about what?”

Misha chuckles before coming forward and turning around to sit down next to Jensen. “I asked him why he thought you were looking me up in that book, and he said it’s because you wanted to know if we were fit to bang.”

Jensen throws his head back in a laugh, and Misha admires the view.

“He wasn’t wrong.”

Once Jensen settles, he shakes his head and agrees. “Nope. He wasn’t. Plus, he and I were talking about it before you even came into the room. I had already looked up Danneel and I; so Jared said I should look you up next, just to make sure that the stars weren’t pissed at us for being together.”

“Definitely don’t want to piss off those stars” Misha says with a laugh.

Jensen grins even wider. “Nope … sure don’t.”

“But, according to that book, they should be more than happy about my dominance over you in the bedroom.”

Jensen’s stare narrow as he sits up a little straighter—eyes flicking around for a moment before settling back onto Misha’s in front of him. “Well … we’re in a bedroom right now. Whatd’ya say we please some stars?”

Misha grins, reaching up to thread his hand around the other man’s neck, nodding enthusiastically as he climbs on top of him. “Oh—thank God!”

[calleo-bricriu]

what's the de sade ripoff book like anyway?

It’s like listening to someone who thinks they’re a genius but who’s really sort of–slightly below average at everything ramble on and on and on for over 400 pages about how they’re a genius and everyone around them is making their life horrible because they don’t understand how much of a genius he is.

Also, alcohol isn’t a stimulant at all, let alone a strong one. I guess, to be entirely fair, if I found out my Mum had a sex dungeon in the house I’d probably need a drink as well.

A lot of drinks.

And an Obliviator.

Finding out your mum has a sex dungeon is a pretty reasonable excuse to drink a lot.

Anyway, this author is allegedly a doctor, he ought to know damn well alcohol isn’t a stimulant.

I really do just love how it’s the same exact story, only with worse writing and set in Dresden–then Hamburg–then…New York City.

Some guy named Newcomber completely flips out any time someone says a woman’s name around him in his own house. It’s never explained why. I feel like that should have been an important plot point? Maybe he’s assuming everyone’s already read the book he blatantly lifted from.

Men just need to not be allowed to describe women in their books if they’re going to do it like this: “Seated in a large leathern chair was a dainty piece of pink-cheeked, dark-haired, ebon-eyed femininity. Her sealskin jacket fitted snugly her lithe form, and a fascinating toque rounded off the saucy, childlike appearance of the young woman.”

That’s the sort of description that makes you feel like you need to run a Scourgify through your entire brain.

I’ve read, as I mentioned yesterday, de Sade; all of his uncensored garbage and the difference is, de Sade knew he was a shite writer.

He was just one of those obnoxious people that feels the need to be edgy for shock value; to get a reaction. He wasn’t ever trying to be good at it, he just wanted to get a reaction and have people pay attention to him, which he got–usually in the form of prison.But, the end result of that is that his writing aged in a way that makes it so completely off the wall ridiculous that it’s more funny and less shocking now.

Like–right, if you’ve never read 120 Days of Sodom you should, because all it is is this list of increasingly improbable to impossible scenarios, in actual list form, that are discussed by the characters like they’re going over a list of chores they need to do that afternoon.

One involved mice and cannons, actual cannons, that somehow didn’t result in death or injury to anyone (including the mice), another had to do with somehow arranging it so a woman would give birth to a goat, which would then become a sex slave–the goat, not the woman, I think he forgot there was a woman involved in that one by the time he got to the impossible goat baby–and when you read something like that, you know damn well the person writing it was writing what they were writing as bait to see how mad people would get about it.

This idiot, however, didn’t appear to get the joke and is taking his own…version of Justine very, very seriously which leaves you more with a really creeped out feeling than a, “HA! I can’t believe anyone fell for this, it’s so obviously written as over the top with intent to offend people too stupid to get the joke,” sort of thing.

So, moving on from the creepy description of childlike femininity–and who says woman like that anyway?

Ms. Femininity gets up and gives the, “Never Say A Woman’s Name In My House For Any Reason Ever” Newcomber a kiss and he just sort of shrugs it off, which makes her concerned but since he never bothered detailing whatever backstory these two have I guess I’m just supposed to make one up. Guessing that, because it was described as “armorous” they’re lovers but, it might have had more of an impact if he’d–mentioned that previously at some point?

This is only page sixteen, as an aside.

She was gossiping with his mom and mom let slip that he was leaving Dresden and she’s upset but again, no backstory given between these two so we don’t even know how or why she knows his mother. All we know about that relationship is that his mom grosses him out probably because of the sex dungeon thing, which is a fair reason to not want to visit your mother’s house.

So he’s pretty meh about the kiss hello, she loses her mind about it and says he’s being cruel then flings herself onto the sofa for a good cry about which he doesn’t even care.

His name is Leigh, apparently, which is a perfectly common German name, as is Newcomber..

And she’s–Tahitian (but upper class, he’s emphasised that, can’t have him screwing around with a commoner from Tahiti, obviously) and grew up in…Honolulu and got married to a US Navy officer two years before she met the guy in Dresden that she just kissed and is now crying over while the author scrambles for a backstory.

Great, got married at sixteen, is now referred to as a “child-wife” and somehow his deployment from Honolulu landed her in…Dresden.

He should have known not to leave her alone in Dresden because, since she’s Tahitian, that means she’s just going to start cheating on him the second his back is turned (which appears to be what’s happening here).

An entire page later, we find out her name is Obera, and the guy whose mom has a sex dungeon who straight up ignores her is apparently the love of her life despite the fact that all we’ve seen so far is that he’s straight up not the least bit interested in her.

That finally ended and we’re back to her crying on the sofa and he tells her to knock it off because it makes him feel mean–when he was just mean to her not even two full pages ago. Leigh’s got a terrible memory, I guess.

“Finely-molded limbs”. Stop it.

A few paragraphs of Obera going on about how Leigh’s sister, Mizpra, is a complete and utter bitch and Leigh agreeing with her that Mizpra is, in fact, a complete and utter bitch. I might be too if my name were Mizpra.

At this point, in the middle of Obera trying to explain some theological lecture she attended, the author butts in to tell us that the lectures are FACTS then references some article in Popular Science Monthly from May 1989 called, “Witchcraft in Bavaria” right after Leigh starts talking about how Dresden has lousy weather and they’re going to the Rhine because the climate is that much different–five hours barely South and mostly West of Dresden, though it might be closer depending on where along the Rhine they’re going; its a river, and it’s not exactly a short one.

It also apparently has a climate similar to Honolulu which tells me he’s never been to either place but, it’s fiction, so why the hell not?

I’m only on page 22 now, as an aside.

Suffer with me, this is awful.

So he’s already planned this whole thing, someone named Frau Leidmann will lie to everyone and tell them that Obera is traveling with some old woman, he’s sending a telegram from…New York asking her to meet some made up person in Hamburg which, incidentally, is five hours North of Dresden and if you’re trying to aim for a warmer, closer to Honolulu climate here, you don’t want to be going North but okay, fine, we’re going to Hamburg.

Author really ought to have consulted a map before writing this.

“Was it right that he should take her with him and wreck her life?” Um–if you have to ask…

Wonderful, well, at least by now she’s 18 because she got married two years previously at 16.

By page 23 he’s essentially admitted he doesn’t like her much at all but she’s hot and young so he’s going with that. Not creepy at all.

“He would throw her aside as he would any other obstacle. Was this love?” …no. We established that two paragraphs ago when his thought was straight up that he didn’t love her.

Can’t take her back to the US with him but–he’s–that part was never mentioned at any point, as far as we’ve known until page 24 is that the guy lives in Dresden, his sister is a bitch, and his mom has a sex dungeon.

Nothing dignified about his appearance, likes his laboratory, doesn’t have a real job, nobody understands him, I’m starting to think it’s less that his sister is a bitch and more that he’s just kind of a whiny creep.

So, that’s the end of chapter 1.

Chapter two starts with him explaining why he named one of his dogs Bridget and why he’s mad that Obera could not possibly care less. I couldn’t possibly care less either but he explains it anyway in the weirdest possible way, “They do not associate the name with the beautiful, refined, and historically interesting woman who gave it such prominence. How can you associate a noisy, china-breaking, red-headed, befuzzled, opinionated ruler of the kitchen with Bridget the Goddess of Poetry, the Gaelic Muse, the sentimental, impulsive Sappho of ancient Ireland?”

Man, don’t talk about your dog that way, just don’t. I don’t like where you’re going with it.

Dagda gets a much shorter, “he was the all-king, almost the Zeus of ancient Ireland.”

Ah, and Obera is, of course, a princess. A Tahitian princess.

From Honolulu.

Which is famously in Tahiti and not a six hour flight–a thing that didn’t exactly exist in 1901 so I’m assuming it would have taken a hell of a lot longer by boat–North on an entirely different set of islands.

Okay.

You know, at least de Sade knew where physical locations of places were.

Do you know how bad something as to be that, not even 35 full pages in, you can not only recognise it as a direct derivative work of the Marquis de Sade but also have it be abundantly clear that it’s, like, a version of it so poorly done that the only reason you’re still reading it is because you kind of now want to see just how much more idiotic the story can get?

That’s what this book is like.

“He arose and went to her, took her on his lap, and talked to her as though she were a child.” No. No, stop that right now.

Four pages of him explaining that the reason why he ordered, ordered, her to read a childrens book was to prove to her how all folk tales are all the same and nothing is original and something about random Greek philosophers, then Why Catholics Are Right.

I might have been as bored reading that as Obera probably was having to listen to it.

HA! SHE FELL ASLEEP WHILE HE WAS TALKING!

She has a nap, wakes up later, and has somehow…uh…received a letter from that guy she married in Honolulu basically saying, “We both made a mistake. Divorce time.” and is somehow upset by this despite it being established in the last chapter that she wasn’t super interested in him anyway as the first thing she did when he ended up deployed was start fucking this idiot of a pseudo-intellectual.

…and this is somehow Mizpra’s fault, so I’m assuming she tattled, then he straight up jumps from, “Yeah I don’t love her, she’s just hot I guess” to “I LOVE YOU LET’S GET MARRIED DEFINITELY NOT TO SPITE MY SISTER!”

That’s not sarcasm. That’s exactly what it was. Right after he does the, “I love you! I’ll marry you!” (twice in a row at that, nobody talks like that) he moves right onto “the bitch can’t laugh at you getting busted cheating if we get married” which is not entirely sound logic but that’s where we’re going.

Robert Mesney hopefully got out of this stupid plot by realising what was going on and filing for divorce.

Actually, he doesn’t even ask her  to marry him he tells her that he’s going to marry her and doesn’t give her the option to object which I guess is just fine because at some point during his rant about his sister being a tattling bitch Obera fainted and he just…didn’t notice until he let her go and she fell over because of the being unconscious thing. Even then he didn’t really care, he just sort of went, “Oh.” and dropped her back on the bed.

Now she’s talking about his “aged countenance” which might be a little more fair if it hadn’t been mentioned that he’s 25. It’s not exactly old enough to count as “aged countenance”.

Apparently he’s also an alcoholic, which they keep referring to as dipsomania. Good idea, marry the 25 year old alcoholic who the plot has established doesn’t even love you (nor has he shown it at any point in their interactions apart from shouting it at her after finding out his sister told her soon-to-be-ex-husband that Obera was cheating on him), that’ll go well for everyone involved. I don’t see what could possibly go wrong here.

The servant at this place in Hamburg has been going on for five and a half pages about how Leigh is a drunk and how it’s his mother’s fault or something then just rambling on about his own family tree for no actual reason and how he’s somehow related to Leigh but also is looking forward to the time when the last Newcomber dies.

That’s chapter 2.

Chapter 3 starts with the fact that Leigh said he’d be back by lunch and it’s been three days and he’s still not back; I guess, to be fair, he didn’t say by lunch on which day.

He’s just out binge drinking in Hamburg.

Shows up four days later at four in the morning and immediately starts drinking again and none of this is a red flag for her.

Now they’re–he’s going to Paris, she’s going back to…the US from Havre, and he’s somehow decided it’s a better idea for him to not also go to the US via Havre but to instead go to Liverpool and leave from there. Okay.

This is only page 44 out of 408.

Mizpra wants to control their mother to snag most of her estate out from under Leigh, it appears as though she’s just his stepsister anyway, Mrs. Kassel is apparently a nice lady because the author hammers that point away for a good two solid pages and she’s going to New York with Obera because she apparently owns a house on Fifth Avenue.

All right.

She just randomly tells Obera that crooked noses and mental illness (sorry, “bad psychic quality”) runs in the family. Still no red flags for Obera.

Skips right to the wedding which has…no detail at all. Literally the only mention it gets after all of that build up is, “The wedding took place at Mrs. Kassel’s, who attended to every detail,” then moves right on to Leigh getting a flat in uptown and a job at a hospital and to mention that his mother’s letters were “curt, unresponsive, and insulting” for which he blames Mizpra.

Couldn’t be the fact that he ran off to the US with a still married 18 year old without telling anyone, why would that bother someone’s mother?

He either gets fired or quits at the hospital, it was never mentioned either way, and has irregular work so now they’re behind on bills and Obera’s “condition” requires quiet and rest and…Mrs. Kassel to take her on a vacation I guess. Time skip from spring to autumn and, to nobody’s surprise, Obera comes back with a baby and her idiot of a husband is still unemployed and also didn’t seem to notice or care that she was gone (because that’s never mentioned) for almost a year.

By this point, Leigh straight up hates his mom and Mizpra is a “moral criminal” but it’s not explained how, just that she is.

Mom, Mizpra, and a whole bunch of their maids suddenly turn up at an uptown hotel and he just–takes off to go and see them despite having spent the last few pages going on about how he can’t stand either of them.

Sister’s got masculine handwriting which is somehow important to know.

Oh, let’s see, what else are we learning about Mizpra: Large jaws, muscled neck, small hips, uncomely waist, large hands, bold frame, coarse features, a “masculine larynx” and she–author keeps refering to Mizpra as she so that’s what I’m going with here–tells him to fuck off and that she’ll call the police if he tries to see mother.

So, instead of trying to reason with her (also why did they come over from Desden if they didn’t want to see him?) he just tells her she looks like a man.

“Mother doesn’t want to see you.”

“YEAH, WELL YOU LOOK LIKE A MAN! CHECKMATE! I AM SUCH AN INTELLECTUAL!”

Great display of the long winded nonsense the author gave everyone about what an intelligent intellectual this idiot is; best he can come up with is to tell his sister she looks like a man.

He still doesn’t have a job.

It’s been almost an entire year, how have they not been evicted from that flat yet?

Oh, but he has money to go out and get trashed again, though.

And he’s rambling to the bartender about people staring at “crippled children” for some fucking reason while the bartender pretty much pretends to listen.

He drinks because he’s a genius. That’s it. That’s the reason. He’s a genius and nobody gets him so he drinks.

58 pages in and I can kind of see why this guy’s sister doesn’t particularly care for him. I don’t particularly care for him either and, so far, am kind of on Mizpra’s side on this one.

Random name dropping list of famous people who had epilepsy or who were alcoholics or drug addicts. For an entire five pages. Nothing else, just a list, until he gets to Edgar Allan Poe who apparently had a psychic incubus problem instead.

One long paragraph held together by semicolons that says nothing at all.

Five pages about how his drinking problem is literally just like lycanthropy only, instead of turning into a wolf, he just goes to a pub and does so more often than once every full moon.

Same thing though. Exactly like lycanthropy which we all know is caused by thinking you’re a genius then being mad that nobody else agrees with that self-assessment.

More internal dialogue about how everybody is an idiot except him, because he’s a genius that nobody understands.

Somehow.

A few more pages of comparing himself to Nero which is not strictly the best comparison someone could make unless he’s planning to burn New York City down.

Couple of pages of internal dialogue about how he shouldn’t have to get a job because he’s a genius and people should just pay him to grace them with his presence.

End of Chapter 4 and I can’t keep reading this anymore today. This might be the worst thing I’ve ever read and not at all for the reasons the author was intending; it’s not shocking unless you’re shocked by how badly it’s written.

It’s so bad it’s almost exhausting.

[panismightier]

Generation Three

"Generation Three" is the short story I wrote for my fiction workshop this past semester! It's about 13 pages long (double spaced), so be sure you have time for it! I'll reblog it a few times for a bit after this. CW: a brief mention of suicide.

------

I was born in a tin can to die in a tin can.

My name is Sylvia Chavez, and I’m in Generation Three of the Miranda mission. When my parents were kids, old enough to remember but too young to have a say, their parents signed up for the world-expanding, paradigm-shifting mission of interstellar travel. The Miranda mission will take hundreds of people, thousands by the time the ship arrives, to TRAPPIST-1e, and they’ll start a colony there. Build a brave new world.

I won’t be around to see it.

See, the TRAPPIST-1 system is nearly seventy light years away. The Miranda doesn’t travel at the speed of light, only about a third of it. It’s a two-century flight, give or take. One way. Of course.

My life on this ship is pretty straightforward. I won’t have any responsibilities until I hit breeding age around thirty, and then I spit out a few kids and help raise Gen Four.

------

I eat lunch every day with this girl Lauren. That’s it, just Lauren—she was born to very communal, “takes a village” people. Lauren didn’t get a last name, because she’s the whole station’s daughter.

It felt like it, too, when she was born. She’s only sixteen. She was born after everyone thought Gen Three was full, and then Marcus offed himself and Lauren’s parents jumped to fill his slot. I was only eight, but it’s easy to remember how everyone doted on her.

She’s tiny, and not just because she’s young, with pale skin and ratty blonde hair that makes two little ringlets in the front where she twirls it. She’s always in the same worn-out blue sweater, except for the days it’s getting washed, and she always eats applesauce.

Lauren works in fashion design. Not that it means much here. She’s on a team of five, and they make the clothes for everyone on the station. They get to define fashion. Lauren mostly makes pajamas and lounge clothes, though, so I don’t think she cares much how it looks.

She’s scribbling down patterns now. She’s finished her applesauce—she always scarfs the stuff—but she’s waiting for me today.

“Don’t you have a special desk for that?” I ask her, pointing my fork at her patterns. It’s hard, to my untrained eye, to work out what kind of garment it is, but her paper hardly leaves room on the table for my plate.

“Yes,” she says. Eli waves to us on his way out of the lunch hall, but Lauren either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

“Why don’t you use it?”

She shrugs, not looking up from the table. “You’re here. I like you.”

I grin. “I like you, too.”

“I want to show you something after.” Lauren pulls something from her bag that looks like a big, curved ruler and lays it on the table to trace.

“Show me what?” I move my plate to the bench next to me as she shifts the paper to cover the last clear foot of table.

She smiles, but still doesn’t look at me. “It’s a secret.”

------

Lauren’s secret is a tour of where she works. I’ve been there before—I’ve been to every one of the Miranda’s 700-odd acres more times than I can count, and Lauren’s workspace is, frankly, one of the least interesting. Not nearly as fun as the 0-G rec center. Well, Lauren’s always had an odd idea of fun.

She works in a big room on the second floor of the community center, full of long, cloth-strewn desks, scattered dress forms, several mirrors, and a line of sewing machines. Lauren grabs my sleeve and tugs me to the second table from the back. It’s even more of a mess than the others, and she pulls out the pattern she was working on before and drops it over the top of everything. Silently, she pulls up her chair, picks up a pair of scissors, and starts cutting the pattern out.

I watch her for a while, uncertain of what I’m meant to be doing. “Not that this isn’t fascinating,” I lie, “but why did you take me here?”

“I thought you’d want to see. Here, hold this,” Lauren says, shoving a piece of the pattern at me. It looks like the front of a shirt, so I hold it up to my chest.

“See what?” I ask as Lauren starts tugging at the paper, pinning it to my t-shirt. “And what are you doing?”

“Measuring,” Lauren says.

It’s the closest thing to an answer I’ll get out of her. I’ve learned to trust her judgement despite how little she explains. I wait for her to make her marks and unpin the pattern before I ask again: “What did you want me to see?”

She doesn’t stop moving. “This.”

“This what?”

“This.” She lets go of her work long enough to make an expansive gesture around the room.

I follow her gesture, watching carefully for anything terribly interesting. “I don’t get it,” I admit.

Lauren shrugs. “Something. Just something new.”

“There’s nothing new here.”

Lauren doesn’t answer. She moves behind me to pin something to my back.

“Why’d you want to show me something new, then?” I ask, watching her work in the mirror across the room.

“You’re bored all the time,” she says. “You should do something.”

“Like wh—ow!” I flinch away from a pin prick. Lauren mumbles an apology and pats my shoulder where she pricked it. “It’s fine,” I assure her. “I should do something like what?”

“Something,” Lauren says.

I won’t get any specifics out of her, then. “Why should I do anything?” I ask instead. “I have everything I need. It’s nice not to have to do anything.” Like Grandpa’s always told me.

“But are you happy?” Lauren asks around a mouthful of pins.

“What?”

She unpins the pattern, sets it on her desk, and spits out the pins, then leans forward to look me in the eye. “Are you happy?”

------

Grandpa’s putting together a jigsaw puzzle on one of the greenhouse tables. He loves the things. I’ve tried to show him the app on our tablets that would give him thousands of puzzles, with the added benefit of never getting messed up by gravity fluctuations, but he insists on the physical version, something about how the pieces feel in his fingers. There are six jigsaw puzzles on the Miranda. Four are for toddlers, and the other two Grandpa has committed to memory. His favorite is missing three pieces. At least one of those, I ate as a baby.

“Don’t you get bored?” I ask him. The greenhouse is hotter than the rest of the station, so I’ve taken off my shoes and jacket.

He shakes his head, snapping in a new piece every few seconds. “I love that I can do what I want here. That never gets boring.”

“Doesn’t it?” I poke my fingers through holes in the table, even though I’ve gotten them stuck enough times that I should know better.

“Are you getting existential again?”

“Maybe.”

Grandpa sets down his puzzle piece and looks up at me. “Listen, Sylvia,” he says, “I don’t know if there’s some grand design. But I do know that you were lucky enough to be born knowing exactly what you’re for.”

I give a noncommittal grunt.

“Have I told you about the paradox of choice?” Grandpa asks, leaning forward over the table.

“Yes.”

“The more options you have, the less likely you are to be satisfied with what you choose,” Grandpa explains anyway. “You have one choice—”

“—so I have no choice but to be happy with it, I know. I try to gesture, but my finger is stuck in the table. “You know it doesn’t really work that way, right?”

Grandpa chuckles, like he doesn’t think I mean it.

“Lauren asked me earlier if I’m happy,” I say.

“Lauren’s a bit of an oddball.” Like I haven’t heard this from him before. “All the workers are.”

“I know,” I say quietly.

“Why work if they don’t get anything out of it? I’ll never understand them.” He’s gone back to his puzzle, placing piece after piece in neat rows. It’s a picture of the launch of the first Miranda capsule, the little pod that took the first couple families to the station. We use it as storage now. I wonder if Grandpa’s realized he’s just assembling and reassembling a broom closet getting thrown into space.

“What do you get out of puzzles?” I ask.

His mouth opens, silent. “It feels good to finish them,” he says eventually.

“Even though you take them apart again right after?”

“It’s not the same thing,” he says, catching on to where I’m going. “This is a hobby, not work.”

I scowl. “I don’t get it.” I catch sight of a gardener pruning back a hedge behind Grandpa, so I call to them, twisting my finger out of the table to wave them over.

Clive is short and stout, with brown skin slightly wrinkled with smile lines. They’re one of the younger Gen Two people: they were the youngest baby when the mission launched, and moderately famous until Zo became the first baby born on the ship and eclipsed them.

“Why do you do greenhouse stuff?” I ask them. Clive stows their shears in their overalls’ pocket and pulls an exaggerated thinking face.

“Sylvia won’t understand the difference between a job and a hobby,” Grandpa explains, “so maybe you can shed some light. I don’t understand you workers.”

Clive brightens. “Oh, I don’t think there is a difference, for me,” they say. “I work in the greenhouse because I love it, and if it makes other people happy, all the better.”

“So that’s the difference?” I ask. “Work helps somebody else?

“When you ask Lauren for dresses, it’s work,” Grandpa says, “but when she makes you one without you asking, it’s a hobby.”

“There’s no real difference for her.” I’ve asked, and she’s nothing but delighted when people commission her. “Besides, if an artist draws for themselves, but puts the picture up in public, is that work or a hobby?”

“Does it matter?” Clive slides on the bench next to me and folds their gloves on the table. “We only do anything because we want to. Nothing’s really work.”

“I watch you sweat out here every damn day,” Grandpa says.

Clive shrugs. “And I watch you put together those puzzles. Why don’t you glue one and have something to show for it, for once?”

“I’d run out of things to do.” Grandpa’s nearly finished with this puzzle. He can’t have been here longer than an hour. “Besides, someone made sure I wouldn’t have all the pieces.”

I give him a dirty look.

“The nice thing about gardening,” says Clive wisely, “is that you don’t run out of things to do. They stretch their arms over their head, showing the tight muscles in their arms. “That clear things up, Sylv?”

“Yeah,” I lie. “Thanks.”

“Any time!” Clive scoots back off the bench and tugs their gloves on. “Any chance of a new recruit for my greenhouse squadron?”

I force a smile, but don’t answer as Clive returns to trimming the hedges. Grandpa finishes the puzzle and I stick my fingers in the table.

------

Lauren meets me for lunch the next day with three bandaged fingers and a folded-up grey cloth. “Try this on,” she instructs me without preamble, pushing the cloth at me. “Over your shirt is fine.”

She drops her bag on her usual bench and goes to the kitchen. I shimmy out of my skirt and pull the new dress over my head. It fits impeccably, as always. It’s hard to make out the style from here, but it’s a heavy fabric, almost like canvas, with a loose skirt dropping almost to my ankles. Each side has a pocket big enough to stick my arms in nearly to the elbow. I twirl and smile as the skirt billows out

Lauren returns with applesauce. “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” I tell her, “Like always. What inspired this one?”

Lauren brightens. She loves talking about her process. “I like the gardeners’ overalls,” she says. “I wanted to make something to remind me of them, but the dress probably isn’t good to work in, so I thought, Sylvia looks like she should work, but doesn’t, so maybe she wants it.” She takes a scoop of applesauce.

For a moment, I’m reeling. The rough fabric scratches at the base of my neck. “What do you mean, I look like I should work?”

“You never answered me yesterday,” Lauren says. “Are you happy?”

I look at the table, one thumb tracing the inside hem of the pocket.

“I’m not unhappy.” “Are you happy?”

“No.” Suddenly, I’m irritated, a heat flaring under my skin. “Is that what you want me to say?”

Lauren swallows the last of her applesauce, and then swallows again, blinking hard. “I was just asking.” She lets the silence hang as she collects herself. “Do you want to get food?”

My stomach growls. “Yes,” I decide, and head towards the cafeteria, the heavy new skirt swishing around my legs.

------

It takes me another four days to visit the greenhouse again, even though Grandpa makes a visit without me. He says when he gets back that Clive asked after my “quest to understand the nature of labor,” so the next day I go myself.

Clive is still there. I’d say they sleep in the greenhouse, if I didn’t know better.

“Hi,” I say, almost nervous. Before Clive can turn around, I ask them,

“Did you mean it about recruiting me for the greenhouse...whatever?”

Their eyes light up. “Of course! Does that mean you’re interested?”

I hesitate, even though I’ve known my answer for four days. “I...think so, yes.”

Clive beams and bounces on to the balls of their feet. “I could hug you!”

“Go ahead.” I grin back and open my arms. Clive is warm and solid and hugs so tight they crush the breath out of me.

Gardening is harder than I thought. Clive is a patient, enthusiastic teacher, but they pile so much on me so fast I have no idea how to absorb it all. After a few hours and a frustrated threat of quitting, they tell me to scrap everything they’ve been telling me, dart into a shed half-hidden in the hedges, and come back with a dried-out pea. “We’ll start slow.”

I take the pea. “We’re planting this, then?” I ask, too exhausted by the past few hours to question them.

“Yep!” How Clive has maintained their enthusiasm is beyond me. “Put it on the ground.”

I do.

“Poke it in with your finger, about an inch deep.”

I do. The soil is cool, and fluffier than I would have expected before Clive’s boot camp.

“Done.”

“Done?” I look up at them. “It took you hours to tell me to stick a pea in the ground?”

“Done for now.” They grin and offer me a hand up. “Sylvia Chavez, that is your pea.”

I blink. “Yeah?”

“You’re its mother. You planted it in the ground, and now it’s your responsibility to water it and check on it and make sure it grows into a healthy pea plant, one that you can pick pods off of and eat right there.”

I gasp. “I’m going to eat my grandchildren?”

Clive snorts, then doubles over laughing. “A poorly-chosen metaphor,” they concede. “The point is, it really doesn’t matter if it’s a job or a hobby. That pea is your something, because it’s your something.” I pull a face.

“Listen, Sylv,” Clive says, their smile fading. “I don’t know you too well, but it seems to me like you’re aimless. Maybe gardening isn’t your calling, but just try it out, okay?”

I wasn’t really prepared to Clive to get serious on me. “Why?”

“In about a month, that pea is going to send little shoots up,” they say, pointing at my finger-shaped hole in the ground. “And I think you might understand then why I garden, and why your grandpa does puzzles.”

“And why Lauren makes dresses?” I ask.

Clive’s smile returns. “And why Maurice cooks, and why Zo cleans things, and why Pax likes singing better when people listen.”

Nervously, I smile back. “Seems like a big ask of a little pea sprout.” “Then you’re giving the pea sprout purpose, too.”

------

A month later, I have a surprise for Lauren. I swore Clive to secrecy, but the greenhouse is public and gossip travels fast on the Miranda, so I’m concerned she already knows. If she does, she hides it well.

I make her close her eyes as I take her to the greenhouse. It’s not a long walk—there are no long walks on the Miranda—and the heat and earthy smell of the greenhouse is strong enough that I see a knowing smile on her face as we approach. She still doesn’t say anything.

I take her to my plant and tell her to open her eyes. She doesn’t see it at first. It’s tiny, barely sprouted an inch out of the ground, and its tiny leaves don’t draw much attention. But when I kneel down to point at it, her face lights up.

“Sylvia!” she says. “You did something!”

“I did!”

She crouches down next to me, then drops to her hands and knees to give the plant a gentle kiss. “You made it grow all by yourself?”

“Clive helped me,” I confess.

“But it’s yours.”

“It’s mine.”

She leans back, sitting on the balls of her feet and looking somewhere over my left shoulder. “How does it feel?”

I look at the plant. How does it feel? This little sprout is alive thanks to me. Its soil is damp (too damp, Clive keeps telling me) thanks to me. How does it feel?

It feels like a lot. There’s been dirt under my fingernails for a month, because Clive’s thick gloves were too clunky for the gentle touch the pea plant needed. My back and legs ache from all the crouching I’m still not used to. A month was long, and more than once I wanted to quit, but Clive threatened to let the pea plant die if I did. To my own surprise, I found I cared too much about the seed to risk calling their bluff.

I feel beaten. I feel proud. I feel tired. I feel full.

I pat the little pea plant’s leaves and glance back up at Lauren. “I’m happy.”

[perlumi-delirium]

Parvulus

There are many chapters in Les Misérables that I love. Still, Parvulus holds a very special place in my heart, and in this post I will try to explain why it means so much to me. (or : I'm still not sure how to join Brick!Club and this is a very awkward attempt at jumping on the bandwagon, pls @pilferingapples confirm for my peace of mind)

What is striking about this chapter is how short it is : barely a page. It's an interesting way to start Paris étudié dans son atome, like swift paintbrush strokes across a canvas. The rhythm is quick, and each chapter helps to paint the portrait of the gamin. The listing of the many qualities and particularities of the gamin makes for the better part of the chapter, but that's not what I want to bring light upon. There are two words that I think are really essential to the understanding of this chapter : Parvulus, and homuncio. Both are latin words -not surprising given Hugo's love for latin- but here he subtly diverts from their usual meaning and use, and it makes the subtext 100% charming and painful at the same time.

Starting with Parvulus. I am fairly sure that most editions give the meaning for this word, but I do think that there's more to say about than just what it means in its most basic sense. I cannot be sure what English translators translate it into, but in French, it's 'le tout petit', aka 'the small one'. To understand how meaningful it is that Hugo made this the title of his chapter, I need to talk a bit about the word itself.

Parvulus is the diminutive form of the latin word parvus, meaning 'small' and/or 'not much'. Parvulus upgrades this meaning to 'very small'. As you can see, the most basic meaning of parvulus isn't what Hugo means when he uses it. That's because parvulus is not generally a noun. In latin dictionaries, it's listed as parvulus,a,um : it's an adjective. However here Hugo doesn't use it with any other word that could be identified as a subject. The word is alone, and it's clear that it's intended to be taken as such (tough latin loves to only imply words instead of stating them, it's clearly not the case here). So what Hugo does is that he takes the diminutive form of an adjective (which can already be taken as a small joke on his part : a diminutive word for a small being) and he makes it a substantive.

Hugo takes an adjective and makes a noun out of it, and it highlights the tenderness of this chapter, especially when we reach the end. The gamin truly is Paris’ child, and it’s said right in the title.

You cannot understand how much this means to me. Using the adjective would just be describing the gamin, as he spends multiple chapters doing. But to start his serie of chapters, he not only gives us a name for the gamin type as a whole ; he tells us how frail yet charming they are. Diminutives in latin can have two meanings, that strongly depend on context : either they have a negative connotation or they are affectionate. Here, it's definitely affectionate, and it warms my heart so much. Hugo has so much tenderness for the gamin, and he says so right from the start. Just, in a subtle, blink-and-you'll-miss-it way. Or rather, 'if you don't have extensive latin knowledge you'll definitely miss it' way.

Also, I like that Hugo brags to be the first one to use 'gamin' in a book six chapters later, then gives us another nice name for them, but in latin because it's even more pretentious and fancy. (and latin does convey connotation in nice, discreet ways).

Small digression while I'm at it : in III.3.7 Hugo says that the first use of gamin can be traced back to 1834 with Claude Gueux, and while it's already super funny that he advertises for his own book, I still can't believe that he so blatantly LIES. Hugo uses the word gamin in ch. II.5 in Notre-Dame de Paris. Which was published in 1831.WHY HUGO. I honestly don't buy that he forgot about Notre-Dame de Paris, so I'm left with two hypothesis : either he considers Notre-Dame to be too much of an early work, or he wanted to bring attention to a more political work, rather than just a Romantic Book with Nice Architecture Digressions. Either way I'm sure he had a true reason for doing this and not knowing for sure Bugs Me. (I need to reread Claude Gueux damn) (if you want to discuss this with me PLEASE DO)

ANYWAY moving on to the next point : homuncio. This word bugged me so much once I decided to make some research for this chapter, and it was a frustrating search, let me tell you.

The complete sentence I'm refeering to is 'Homuncio, dirait Plaute.' As Plautus would say huh, Hugo ? If you're not overly familiar with Plautus, in a few words : Plautus is probably the most famous latin comedy playwriter of Antiquity.

Why the reference to Plautus, then, you may ask ? Well I'm glad you ask, because there's a 50% chance that Hugo used it because References Are Nice. I checked all of Plautus' famous comedies, and I found only two uses of the word (and a slightly altered version of it, though it has the same meaning). Not much to work on then. It is possible, I guess, that Hugo was Truly Refeering to one of these two occurrences. I doubt it, and does it even matter ? In the grand scheme of things... no. It doesn't.

Hugo is always citing latin authors and great writers before him like a student name drops fifty authors in his essay in hopes that the teachers think he's clever and well-read. Though, admittedly, Hugo HAS read them. But still. The reference to Plautus is mostly for show.

What matters is the nature of the word. And guess what ? Homuncio... is another diminutive. To be precise, it's a diminutive of the word 'homo', aka man/human. Even if we all know Homo is also a nice wolf name. (listen, I needed to make this ref to L'homme qui rit, it's for my health thank you)

So Hugo took this short chapter, put two latin diminutives into it, all to talk about the Small Gamin character type. Way to lay it off heavy even in the STRUCTURE of the novel, thanks Hugo.

This chapter is mostly upbeat. The long, flowing sentences, the enumeration. All of it can seem strangely cheerful when truly the subject is child poverty. It's strange, because Hugo definitely feels for these kids who live in the streets and survive as they can in a hostile world, but he still paints them as cheerful fairy types, who laugh more often than they cry and make the most of any situation.

That's also what the word Homuncio implies, if one doesn't look more into it : Plautus is a comedy author, so it's easy to disregard the word (which I personally have never find explained by notes in any editions, please do tell me if some English ones do explain it) as a nice funny thing to call gamins and call it a day.

The truth is far from that. I haven't found much information in my latin dictionary, because this word is seldom used. I did manage to confirm that it's a diminutive, but it's its meaning that interests me the most : homuncio means 'poor little man', as listed in its definition in the Gaffiot. That's an interesting way to put it, right ? Where parvulus was really caring, homuncio carries the second use of diminutives : it's connoted negatively, and it's even sometimes pejorative.

Why, then, use this word ?

It may seem a bit far-stretched, but the fact that these two latin words are used mere sentences apart drives me to believe they can be taken as parallels. One is tender and kind ; the other is seemingly funny but ultimately denounces a sad truth : there are children in Paris who have neither food nor a home. Plautus is a comedy playwriter ; he's also known for his sharp pen, and his plays make fun of society's many flaws. That's why Hugo prefers him over Terence in this particular chapter.

I checked as many uses of the word homuncio as I could. It was... difficult, because the word is really rarely used, but it was enough to confirm that it's definitely a negative word. Plautus can use it to mock ; Cicero uses it to pity. Both of them use it to denounce.

From here, I can only wonder if homuncio could, potentially, be a subtle way for Hugo to make the readers remember that the gamins too, belong to the Misérables of the human kind.

[ghostmartyr]

"and give her fucking themes a chance to actually fucking matter to the fucking plot you fucking fucked up story" thank you for being a constant voice of reason in this fucking fandom i'm never Not going to be mad about historia's story playing out beautifully and then having it all be undone. sometimes it feels like the CD skipped and reset all the progress in the story so we have to learn, AGAIN, that freedom is good and raising kids to serve you and your ideals is BAD, etc etc

Technically I left the fandom my home is the void.

(To no one’s surprise, this got angry. I should maybe consider shutting up about this, but as you can see by the number of times I use the word “fuck” in the quoted material, I have lost the self-control battle here many times.)

The part of it I always come back to when I’ve made the mistake of thinking about it and getting angry all over again is that if we learn that lesson again this arc, what we’ve really learned is that nothing that happens to these characters matters.

If their arcs can be undone by a time skip, there is zero reason to believe that any of what happens to them will stick. The entire Reiss cavern debacle is this exact thing, of Historia telling tradition to go fuck itself because it’s not a tradition worth keeping. That’s the watered down version, but for crying out loud, Historia’s whole damn arc leads to her changing the world.

Not because of any noble reason. Because she doesn’t want to die. She wants to stay herself, and for that she obliterates centuries of children eating each other. She’s her family’s bastard child who refuses to take part in what’s kept them broken for so long.

Yes, let’s have that character be shoved back into the cycle off-screen. Let’s have the girl who grows up unloved and unwanted, who breaks her family’s curse because she finally feels in her bones how wrong it is, go along with a plan to curse another child.

Historia being. fucking Historia enough to snap out a yes to cutting her life short if it saves the world does not bother me. The girl is a dumbass Gryffindor; it takes up until she’s taking her first step off the bridge to realize oh hey, maybe this is actually bad. She’s not an Idiot Hero, but try telling that to some of her decisions.

But her whole arc, as it is introduced and as Ymir’s soaks in, is about how if fate’s fucking you over this badly, maybe consider telling it to go fuck itself and use your own good qualities to carve out something better.

Nine seconds later we’re scrubbing that lesson off because the stakes have clearly changed.

Same story, only bigger. Now that it’s bigger the rules are different. Let’s have one page of Historia not looking miserable to remind everyone how the story’s shooting her directly back to being miserable.

There is no point to this. The one person who knows what it’s like to be seen as a curse and a tool, turning another child into a curse and a tool? After her entire character denouement is about picking up unwanted orphans and treating them as people?

Forget every single other part of this:

If things are as written, Historia has consented to selling away a child’s future. Several more generations, actually. She’s consented to passing on that feeling Frieda has when the weight of the world crushes her and she’s collapsed in tears in between a fence and her baby sister.

The torture that Frieda goes through is not the driving force of Historia’s resolution to give a damn about her life, but it’s something she knows just as keenly as her own pain, and it helps guide her speech to Eren. Her raison d'être comes from her entire family’s exploitation at their own hands.

There are ways to have characters become everything they hate. Those stories can even be interesting and very well done.

Interesting and well written ways do not include the literary equivalent of a character checking the Yes box on becoming everything their arc says they never want to be. Historia has like. Twenty pages where she’s drawn in between her arc’s conclusion and 107. Six of them have her saying anything, and four of those six are her reacting to Ymir’s letter and telling EMA she sure is golly chuffed to see how they aren’t permanently scarred.

Then 107 happens.

You can’t hit the undo button on a character’s arc that efficiently and still pretend like anything they go through has a lasting impact. Ymir’s choice to turn herself in is cut from the same contrived cloth, with every single new thing we find out about the world only making her decision somehow looking worse in addition to the character mutilation thing.

There’s a lot to what’s going on that skeeves the ever-loving fuck out of me. In the realm of squick, this is where my brain will never willingly live.

But it’s the complete bastardization of Historia’s arc that pisses me off.

Would the stupid kid agree to die in thirteen years five seconds after hearing that’s an option?

Yes, she’s a fucking idiot. All the growth in the world won’t ever undo that.

Would the stupid kid agree to have a child so its child, and its child after that, could eat their parent to become a tool of war?

…

“Everything That My Personal Arc Stands Against, I choose you!”

Thank you, I’m so glad we sat through all your parental and existential angst to have land you in a place that would come much closer to making sense if those pages had never been written. Brava.

-takes a very deep breath-

And that’s why I’m still clinging to hope that things aren’t as they seem. Because this story has always cared about character. When something doesn’t make sense, it’s because something is missing, not because the story didn’t care.

In theory.

Historia’s thing is the strongest test to that theory since Ymir’s thing, and as loud as I am about the latter, that hasn’t actually been resolved yet either.

Paradis agreeing to use children to fuel their survival is the kind of permanent marker stain that is hard to go back on, but it’s also nearly impossible to move forward with, because it would mean that Our Heroes’ one truly heroic trait is bunk.

They are the ones meant to break the damaging cycles, no matter the personal cost.

This is where they’ve chosen perpetuating them to escape personal cost.

Hence my growing opinion that they can all go ahead and die if this is where they’re at. If they’re growing more of these cycles, they’re just another villain, and I’d rather watch them all be wiped out while they’re still trying to be heroic and failing than what comes if they keep up with this.

So.

I’d like to think the story isn’t really doing this.

That it is threatening this, and driving itself deep into the muck, but will ultimately call out the illusion of this much darkness as an illusion.

I really don’t want to read a story where it goes, “our themes matter! …unless we don’t think the plot progresses the way we want when we let them matter.”

Character should determine story, or story should determine character. Pick one, but they shouldn’t ever be at war. If a character’s arc is about telling fate to go fuck itself, but fate fucks them, you can’t expect the audience to buy it when any other character fights fate–but for real this time!!1!

Hell this makes me so frustrated.

I really, really would like to believe it will turn out fine, because you legitimately could not write something that flew more in the face of everything Historia’s grown into, and despite this story’s eccentricities, its character work is some of the best I’ve ever seen.

Eren’s out murdering children and making Mikasa cry, and it’s a given that something more is behind it.

Historia’s pregnancy breaks essential themes of the entire story, but yeah, it is totally what it looks like.

(inb4 it’s not what it looks like but somehow manages to be even worse because that’s the kind of bloody trail it’s been)

I don’t mean to keep beating this horse, because I’m guessing most everyone is sick of me losing my temper about it by now, but it drives me up the wall. I obviously have a personal interest in Historia’s arc, but I like the manga, and part of the appeal of Historia’s arc is how it is singing directly to the beauty that’s to be found in the cruel world instead of bowing to that cruelty.

Now one of the voices of that appears to be on bended knee and just. pleeeeease be a ploy. Please don’t turn into one of those series where I have to get out MS Paint and draw a bad graph about where a really great story gave up on itself.

Honestly, one of my dearest hopes is that I’m going to feel like a massive idiot for getting this worked up over this because it’s all going to be fine.

Time will tell, I guess.

For the time being…

-twitch-

[neotrinitythinker]

Brush off The Grime Of Yesterday (And Begin Again) Chapter 4.

Hank's never really done Spring Cleaning. Even before everything that happened. Cleaning was time consuming.

Something shifts in April. Someone intensely hopeful and new.

In five months, it will have been four months since the car flipped over in practically slow motion and he lost Cole forever. And Isobel, though he lost her entirely on his own.

Hank's been up since 8 cleaning waking with the rest of the world as he hears the birds sing a unceasing, if not slightly annoying, melody. Each moment getting closer to opening Cole's room before walking away again. time. He needs fucking time. Even if the whole point of this was to get around to his room. He isn't avoiding, he tells himself. He isn't.

Connor hasn't noticed his hesitance towards going into Cole's room yet. Or if he has he hasn't said anything. Hank isn't sure how he'd talk to Connor about this anyways. What he even wants to say to him.

Connor's been busy cleaning himself, seemingly taking solace in the task. He's bumped into him a few times, exchanged a few greetings as he's scrubbed and discarded throughout the house.

But mostly he's been in his bedroom, he's had a lot of stuff just lying around the past couple years. He still isn't avoiding.

Maybe he's avoiding, just the tiniest bit.

He hasn't been in Cole's room since the week after the accident, he's drunkenly ripped off the wooden name sign with his name off the door that he bought him for his 5th birthday and broke it into several tiny little pieces, but he's hasn't stepped foot inside the room in four years.

Isobel couldn't either, he thinks. But he doubts she had time to even try with all the unceasing yelling and blaming they did in the following four months before she moved out.

He doesn't want to go in it. Going in feels like an invitation to finally move on. To embrace the fucking healing process. He doesn't want to have to move on. He doesn't want to be the parent that fondly remembers a bittersweet memory of their long dead daughter or son before resuming whatever they were doing before the memory hit them. Like a functional grieving parent. He wants to remember every moment with him.

Maybe there is no functional grieving parent. Maybe it's a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

There's a part of him that does long to move on. Wants his heart to hurt less, not think about playing a game of Russian Roulette with a bottle of whiskey and a pistol every time something reminds him of Cole. It feels...so possible. The thought of being alright again. It fades in and out of the realm of possibility like breath on a mirror more times than he'd like to admit.

He was tired of being angry with the world.

Then Connor came. Every moment with him felt like the moment the android doctor came back to tell him his son was dead all over again. That *he* had to done all he could do because the real doctor had been in some hospital closet getting high of Red Ice.

And Connor had come in and stuck. He had torn down those accusatory, grief fueled walls that overflowed with beer and spite that told him every android was the reason his son was dead.

He doesn't know what he did to deserve Connor appearing in his life.

Androids have had the right to move into their own homes for a month now.

Connor chose to stay.

They haven't talked about it. He just sort of stuck around. Stayed.

Hank finds that he doesn't actually mind. And he's been drinking less.

And in a way, it's another chance. However reluctant he is to talk about it with Connor, it feels like a second start. A reason to try.

Maybe they don't *need* to talk about it. He thinks. Maybe it's unspoken.

Family.

Eventually he manages to clean up or throw away all the things he didn't even know he had, trinkets, clothes he never wore anymore. Junk.

Except for the album.

He's kept the photo album shoved far into the deep recesses of the closet, like it's some sort of skeleton for him. And he supposes it is one. Even if he moves on. He's not going to throw it away. Not ever.

It's a baby blue colored, daisy decorated thick mass of a book. However short his time was with him, there was so many memories of him. So many moments he felt so unbelievably goddamn lucky to be privileged enough to even have. To even have the honor of witnessing. being a part of.

He runs a shaky hand over the outside of it, sighing. The daisy decor is still as scratchy as the day Isobel and Cole made it. They wanted it to be so special

Slowly, he heads to Cole's room, a shaking hand opens the handle.

His room is still the same way he left it the morning he left forever. Aside from the old whiskey bottle he left on the floor when he came into the room drunk the week after the funeral. Isobel had been so angry.

He doesn't know why he chose today to try and move on. Shit, why he chose today to be the day he finally went in the room. But he's here.

It's a room decorated by blue and green walls, walls joined by posters of this show Cole never stayed quiet about. In a way this room is deceitful, he's half expecting Cole to come crashing into it, asking him why he's in it and if he come with him to watch his shows.

He won't. But Hank can dream.

He has two bags with him. One for the things he can bear to get rid of, and the things he isn't sure he's ready to get rid of just yet. Maybe with time he will be, but this isn't the day.

Sluggishly, he moves forward to grab various things, it feels automatic. Like he's the android.

He takes the bag of things he kept with him, setting it down on the table next to the album as he sits on the couch with it.

He sees Connor out of the corner of his eye, a look of confusion, and then slight concern as he glances at the open door of what he can only assume is Coles room. And then back to him.

"Hank? What are you doing?" He asks softly.

Hank breathes in. "Spring Cleaning, kid."

"Are you okay?" Connor questions.

Hank scoffs. "I don't know. You know Cole helped make this?" He asks, holding up the album. "He was so proud of it."

"It looks very well made." Connor says simply. He's trying Hank thinks. He knows Connor sometimes has trouble with emotional support. He sure as shit was himself.

"Yeah. Yeah it sure is." He laughs bitterly. He holds up a toy he didn't end up throwing out. "I got this for his 3rd birthday. He was so....happy." Hank never wanted a drink this badly. But a month sober can't be all for nothing.

Connor moves, sitting down next to him. "Is that a photo album?" There weren't that many people that used them. At least physical paper versions nowadays.

Hank smiles. "Yeah. five years worth of memories in 'em."

The android doesn't say anything, and Hank continues.

"You know...the day Cole was born.. I thought I was the luckiest person on the goddamn planet." He starts. "He was one of the few great things to have happened to me. He was so...small and...happy. I didn't know what I did to deserve him. This...chance, I was given."

Hank opens a page of the album to a series of photos. His eyes set on one of them. A exhausted but grinning golden haired woman with grey eyes and a crooked nose held a blanket wrapped newborn. Next to them, a younger, less grizzled Hank stood nearby, a smile formed on his features.

"Those were the happiest six years of my life." Hank explains. "Until I took him for an afternoon drive and only one of us came out it."

Connor looks how Hank feels. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant." He doesn't bother to correct him with 'Hank.'

"Yeah...Me too."

Hesitantly, he closes the album with a heavy sigh. He needed to say it now or the room would just continue to collect dust. Cole loved the room. It didn't feel right to just let it suffer that fate.

"Look, Connor." He starts, shifting his body so that he was facing the other man. "I cleaned out the room...well, because it felt...like the right thing. Cole didn't deserve for it just be a ghost town.  But...also, maybe you deserve to use it now. Cole fucking loved androids. Only feels right that you use it now."

Connor's eyes widen slightly. "Hank, I... I'm perfectly alright with going into stasis on the couch, I don't even require a bed, I don't even need to go into stasis at night. I couldn't possibly take Cole-"

"Just say yes. Alright, you've been living here for five months, kid. And you don't even have a bed." Hank interrupts.

"But..it's Cole's room Hank. Are you sure your ready for that?" Connor asks.

Hank runs a hand over his face. "No, if i'm honest. But I need to fucking...do this someday or other." Moving on.

Both of them sit there for a good five seconds.

"You aren't Cole, Connor. But you're still...family." A son.

Hank continues. "You're family, now. Take the room."

Connor stays silent, expression thoughtful, before nodding.

Hank stands, walking towards his room.

"Where you going?" Connor asks.

"To bed, I need a damn nap." Hank says in an empty voice.

"I think of you as my family too." Connor says suddenly.

Hank turns. Connor's eyes shine in the living room lamps light next to the couch, his expression is warm, content. It's the happiest he's ever seen him.

"Good. That's good." He says, gently shutting the door.

Good.

[wlwinry]

Fae and Feline

for @itsyaboimilk

----------

"He's a cat."

King rolls his eyes from where he lies sprawled across bar, tail flicking in mild annoyance as Ban prods at him with a look of delighted incredulity. Diane swats the immortal's hand away (and thank the gods for that, because the imbecile was about to rub his fur the wrong way on top of it all) and scratches him behind the ears gently. "Yes, he's a cat, and don't poke at him, Ban!" He lets out a meow of surprise as Diane scoops him up, but swiftly goes boneless in her arms, purring to let her know of his appreciation. She giggles, before shooting a sharp look back up at Ban. "He hates that when he's normal; imagine what it would feel like now?"

A cackle escapes the mouth of the Sin of Greed, and King hisses at him, flattening his ears. No need for him to ruin everything, he thinks sulkily, teeth bared. Really, everything had been fine. So what if he'd poked around Merlin's lab while looking for Oslo and ended up activating a protective charm that left him as a cat? It would wear off--at least, Merlin had implied as much.

Gods, he hopes it wears off. But maybe not quite yet, because Diane's petting feels absolutely amazing and this is probably the most relaxed he's been since the war ended. He purrs as her fingers massage his scruff, letting his eyes drift closed--

"Meliodas, no!" He opens one eye as the Captain makes a dive for the window, Elizabeth grabbing him by the back of his shirt to keep him from removing himself (in the most dramatic way possible, as per demon prince prerogative, apparently) from what he'll admit is a rather bizarre situation. Meliodas grumbles, and King's purr turns into a genuine snort of amusement--he might actually be a cat, but sometimes Captain actually acts like one. I would know, he thinks, sitting up in Diane's arms as Meliodas gives Elizabeth a look of pure pleading, one that he knows quite well as the "dear gods get me away from this madness" look. He feels a bit of vindictive pleasure--normally he's the one who employs it, and it never ends in his favor after he does. Sure enough, Elizabeth only gives him a kiss on the cheek and a look of complete and utter amusement at his plight before glancing at Merlin. "When will it wear off?"

The warlock tilts her head, looking smug. "Oh, about a month or so."

A month. King resists the urge to caterwaul in fury at that; a few days would've been fine, a few weeks tolerable, but an entire month?  He hisses again, lashing his tail, before springing out of Diane's arms and trotting over to Merlin, who merely looks even more self-satisfied. Damned witch, he thinks crossly, glaring at her. She shrugs in response. "I did warn you not to look through my things."

Ban cackles again, and before King even knows what he's doing, he whips around and bites the immortal hard on the ankle. The snarl that earns him seems to be more a reaction of surprise as opposed to genuine pain, but it doesn't stop Elaine from scooping him up and scolding him again. He sees Diane rolling her eyes over his sister's shoulder, though, so he doesn't feel contrite whatsoever.

"This month is going to be hell," he hears Meliodas mutter, and he can't stop a feeling of wicked glee from running through him.

This month is going to be fun.

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

"Why is King on the chandelier?"

King peers down at the others as Ban raises an eyebrow at him. Why not? he suggests, knowing full well the others can't understand him. It's just as well, though. If they could, then they'd know that Oslo had spooked him and he'd somehow sprung up here to escape his Black Hound's scrutiny. As it is, he can pass it off as a deliberate action and they'll be none the wiser.

It's certainly a nice change of pace from the usual "let's all laugh at King", at any rate. And, if he's being honest...it's rather warm and comfy up here, with the lamps so close by and the ability to see everything happening in the Boar Hat. He quite likes it, and he purrs and stretches out even more ostentatiously over the bars of the light fixture. Meliodas just shakes his head with a huff that seems to be more fond exasperation than anything else, turning to leave. Diane shoots him a grin and a thumbs-up (his tail curls in response and he purrs even harder) before darting outside. Gowther scribbles something down in that notebook he's taken to carrying, before giving him one of those guileless smiles and hurrying back to the stairs, presumably up to the attic-turned library (King has already started crafting a nest of sorts up there, with one of those soft throw pillows and a few torn pages that Gowther will probably gut him for once he's back to normal). And Ban...

Ban reaches up to poke him again, and King does what comes naturally--he jumps, landing lightly on the Sin of Greed's head and digging his claws in. A stream of curses erupts from Ban's mouth and King barely resists the urge to cackle in petty, vindictive glee. And so the tables are turned, he croons cheerfully, sheathing and unsheathing his claws as the swearing stops and a full-on death glare is unleashed instead. It seems almost half-hearted, though, and he realizes why with a faint thrill of excitement--Ban doesn't want to hurt him while he's a cat. And it makes sense, hilarious though it is, because Ban has always been easily attached to cute things. As much as King hates to admit it, he's good with kids and fond of animals (when he's not killing them--the animals, not the children. Even Ban would never stoop that low), and out of all of the Sins, their most abrasive and seemingly-superficial member is the one most likely to click with a stray. It's a bit...sad, almost, considering what little he knows of Ban's past, but it's also funny in the most ridiculous way. A six-foot-eleven monster of a man who can kill without blinking and suffer the most agonizing torture imaginable, who literally walked through hell, won't hurt stray animals and is secretly excellent with children.

Either way, it's a victory, and King settles down onto Ban's head for a nap with a contented sigh, grinning inwardly at the defeated grumble the act earns him.

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

As it turns out, small, dark spaces are excellent for taking naps if you happen to be a creature small enough to fit inside one. Empty jars in the pantry swiftly become some of King's favorite spots to settle down for a nap; after all, no one bothers to check in the empty containers--at least, not the one person who's actually supposed to be in the kitchen. It's really Meliodas's fault, what happens before he gets banned from the kitchen entirely. It happens while he's dozing in one of the containers, snapping abruptly awake as the pantry door opens. King settles back down, though--he's taken plenty of naps like this before and Ban's never figured it out once. He'll just go back to sleep after the bastard's gotten whatever he needs. 

Except the soft click of the tongue and the scent of smoke and spice and a well-masked note of sweet definitely don't belong to Ban, and he stiffens in the jar as it's picked up, the lid coming off--

King screeches as the jar is tossed suddenly, thrown with shocking force and shattering on impact; it has to be an effect of Merlin's spell or his true faerie nature that he doesn't break his ribs when he ricochets off of the wall and manages to land (with surprising grace) on his feet. He shakes out his pelt indignantly before hissing at the culprit--at Meliodas. The Captain's eyes are blown wide with shock, his shoulders shaking, and King almost feels bad before he bursts out, "What the ever-loving actual FUCK!"

That, of course, sends the whole damn household scurrying in. King swiftly sits down, washing his paws innocently. Might as well take the opportunity to pile on the indignation factor while he still can; after all, it's not often that Captain is so visible shaken, especially if it's by something so small.

"He's a cat," Elizabeth feels compelled to point out after a trembling, furious Sin of Wrath explains the situation (King feels smug to the point of impossibility), clearly barely resisting the urge to giggle at the more-than-traumatized look on Meliodas's face. "He's going to hide in places and jump out at you, it's what cats do." 

"He's a DEVIL and I'm going to KICK HIM OUT OF MY FUCKING HOUSE," Meliodas seethes, eyeing King with a mixture of respect and fury, mostly the latter. The Faerie-turned-feline merely rolls his amber eyes and leaps onto Diane's shoulders, purring softly.

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

Normally being stroked feels quite good; it sends a rush of warmth through him and he tends to just collapse into a boneless puddle right there, especially when Diane's the one petting him. Not when Gowther does it, though. No, when Gowther does it, it takes a physical effort for King not to claw his eyes out in frustration, because poor, sweet, oh-so guileless Gowther, knowledgeable Gowther, the same Gowther who researches almost everything he's interested in the point of exhaustion, has not yet figured out that you can't stroke a cat's fur backwards.

King bites down on a hiss as Gowther hums in delight, running slim fingers through his short fur. He doesn't want to upset the doll; ever since getting his emotions back, he's been sensitive and cheerful and King likes this version of him much better than the apathetic memory-stealing (highly misguided, he'll admit) one from before their training with Gloxinia and Dolor (he pushes down the memory of his and Diane's teachers, knowing that he'll be up all night with nightmares if he thinks of them). They've become close friends, and he doesn't want to mess that up.

But goddamn if it doesn't get annoying when (like right now) Gowther's petting him so absently, so naturally, and it's the wrong fucking way.

King settles into the doll's lap and lets out a miserable sigh, enduring it.

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

The change from cat to faerie is as swift as the original shift was, except this time his instincts don't quite have the time to catch up. King finds himself hissing at Ban, purring when his hair is ruffled, and jumping on things when he ends up startled. It's unbecoming for a Faerie King, for any higher being, really, but Merlin says there's nothing he can do, so he decides to wait it out.

Except it's not really bad, he decides, a soft rumbling noise escaping his throat as Diane runs her fingers through his hair, propping himself up on his elbows in order to kiss her cheek. She giggles and kisses him back, and he feels his face heat up as he blushes, his purring increasing in volume. Not that bad at all.

[tomfooleryprime]

The illogic of a logical philosophy

The pilot episode of Star Trek: Discovery was titled “The Vulcan Hello,” and Michael Burnham was all about giving one to the Klingons.

Unfortunately, the Vulcan hello she was referring to looked a little less like this:

And a lot more like this:

Apparently, this shocked some fans, but I’m not really sure why. There are a lot of perpetuated ideas that Vulcans are strict pacifists because, after all, war is illogical. But if we really peel back some of the canon, the reality is that Vulcans probably prefer peace, but they’re certainly not above violence, and that’s the problem with living by logic.

Is violence illogical? Who’s to say? Even a philosophy based on pure logic is doomed to be convoluted because spoken language is imprecise and no philosophy is absolute. Yet Vulcan philosophy is often treated as though it must be, as if for any single issue, there is only one perfectly logical solution amid a sea of half-logical alternatives and utter irrationality.

So, what is Vulcan philosophy? Over the years, it’s expanded into a belief system that has two giant scoops of Greek stoicism, a pinch of Jewish mysticism, a dollop of utilitarianism, and a rationalism cherry on top. I would actually argue that this Frankenstein philosophy is whatever it needs to be, so long as it can be defended with a reasonably sound argument delivered in monotone, dispassionate speech. And therein lies the problem. How do we decide what is “reasonably sound?” Worse yet, what is logic?

Believe it or not, there is no universal agreement on the exact scope of this particular discipline. The ancient Greeks studied logic in philosophy, but logic also has more discrete applications in mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. I could type thousands of words dissecting the different branches of logic, but Wikipedia did it so much better than I ever could. Bottom line is, if you’re not using logic to defend mathematical proofs or write code, there’s a whole lot of gray area for what can be considered “logical.”

Me too, Amanda, me too.

So how do stoicism, rationalism, and utilitarianism fit into the Vulcan narrative? Stoicism goes back to the ancient Greeks and championed the idea virtue was based on knowledge, and that wise and virtuous people lived in harmony with reason and were able to accept reality and not allow themselves to be controlled by pain, fear, or desire. If that doesn’t sound like the first page of the Vulcan playbook, I don’t know what does.

Rationalism is a philosophy that sort of bridges ancient stoicism with the modern world and asserts that reason should be the chief source and test of logic rather than religious belief or emotional response. And lastly, utilitarianism is a doctrine that asserts that actions are right if they are useful or benefit a majority. Sound familiar?

If it doesn’t, you’ve never seen The Wrath of Khan. Or shopped at Hallmark.

But the thing is, not one of those philosophical systems says, “No violence.” If The Teachings of Surak has strict rules prohibiting violence, all the Vulcans we’ve ever met across six different series are really shitty Vulcans. 

We see many instances of Vulcans preferring to avoid violence and killing—Vulcans often employ a nerve pinch to subdue aggressors rather than smack them around—but they are capable of worse. In the TOS episode, “Journey to Babel,” a Tellarite ambassador is murdered by someone who “knew exactly where to apply pressure to snap the neck instantly,” according to Dr. McCoy. As Kirk ponders who could have possibly committed such an act, Spock is all too quick to throw his dad under the bus and say, “Vulcans.”

While he quickly adds that “Vulcans do not approve of violence” he also mentions that “it would be illogical to kill without reason.” And so:

Backpedaling at warp eight.

Sarek knows how to kill because he’s skilled in a deadly martial arts technique called tal-shaya. The fact that Vulcans train in martial arts, possess weapons like the lirpa and the ahn-woon, and cruise around the quadrant in ships outfitted with weapons suggests they are at least prepared to defend themselves if necessary, which would disqualify them from being absolute pacifists. But that doesn’t necessarily make them warmongers either.

So, what about actually instigating a war? In Enterprise, we got a view of Vulcans that a lot of people weren’t comfortable with. We saw Vulcans spying on their Andorian neighbors, we saw religious factions fighting one another, and we saw a Vulcan High Command that seemed remarkably belligerent. Some fans might argue that after the discovery of the Kir’Shara in the Enterprise story arc that included the episodes “The Forge,” “The Awakening,” and “Kir’Shara” led to a new reformation, Vulcans returned to their true logical roots, ditching their semi-violent ways. 

But it’s evident that Vulcans believe that sometimes logic requires violence. Recall those utilitarian principles woven throughout Vulcan philosophy. One of the most well-known philosophical thought experiments is referred to as The Trolley Problem, and it’s a test of utilitarian judgments. There are many variations, but the short one goes like this:

There’s a trolley hurtling down a track with five people on it. The brakes are shot and it’s going to crash, killing all on board. You happen to be standing next to a switch that would divert the trolley onto a separate track where it would gently crash into a sandbank, saving the lives of those five people. The only problem is, there is a person tied to the tracks you want to divert the trolley onto. If you pull the switch, you will actively kill one person to save five. If you do nothing, you will passively allow the person tied to the tracks to live at the expense of the five on the trolley. And so, if we are capable of acting, do we have a duty to act? (Here’s a fascinating quiz if you’d like to explore your own beliefs on the subject.) But what would Vulcans do?

Rather than spend time debating it, I can tell you exactly what most Vulcans would probably do. In the TOS episode, “Operation, Annihilate!,” Deneva colony is infested with neural parasites and Dr. McCoy can’t find a way to kill them. Kirk is struggling to find a way to prevent the spread of these parasites, and Spock points out the only logical solution, though it is “understandably upsetting,” is to destroy the colony and its one million inhabitants because there are billions of people living beyond Deneva colony to think about. McCoy didn’t handle it well.

A real dick move, Mr. Spock. A real dick move.

Now, to his credit, Spock was also infected, so he was willing to die for his principles, but he didn’t bat an eye at the idea of killing a million people. The good news is, it’s old-school Trek so of course they found a solution that didn’t end with the tragic slaughter of a million colonists, but Spock’s initial recommendation was that it was logical to commit an act of violence against one million people to save the lives of billions. 

Maybe you agree with him, maybe you don’t, but that being said, is it really such a wild notion to believe that the Vulcans would prefer occasional small acts of aggression against the Klingons if there were sufficient reason to believe it would prevent a war? 

When explaining to Captain Georgiou what a Vulcan hello was, Michael Burnham didn’t say the Vulcans slaughtered every Klingon they encountered, simply that they “fired first” in order to “say hello in a language the Klingons understood.” If anything, it sounds like the Vulcan policy was more in line with a warning shot than a Klingon genocide, and from my own simple-minded human perspective, that sounds pretty damn logical if it prevents real and prolific bloodshed.

But that comes back to the initial question of “what is Vulcan philosophy?” Perhaps we should ask ourselves who is the ultimate judge of what is logical? In theory, it should be Surak and his teachings, right?

Surak’s a smart guy who obviously knows a bargain when he sees one, as illustrated by this ensemble that looks a 6th grade home economics project met the clearance rack at the local craft store. 

Unfortunately, just because something is written down doesn’t mean everyone is going to agree on the same interpretation, otherwise, the U.S. Supreme Court would be about 99% less busy and history wouldn’t be littered with the bodies of billions of people desperate to prove their version of the God of Abraham is the right one.  

I don’t know why Vulcans are so often portrayed as being a culture of homogenous personalities, beliefs, and values, as though logic is logic and there’s no room for variation. Imagine what the series would have been like if we played switcheroo with Spock, Tuvok, and T’Pol. Picture the moody and somewhat emotional T’Pol trying to give advice to Captain Kirk, or the wise and experienced Tuvok trying to talk Archer out of half the shit he did in the Delphic Expanse.

Tuvok’s eyes are clearly asking if it’s too late to go back to the Delta quadrant and get assimilated by the Borg.

The point is, individual Vulcans aren’t interchangeable, and I don’t think their beliefs are either. Just look at what happened in the Enterprise episode, “Carbon Creek.” Three Vulcans are marooned on Earth in the 1950s and are facing starvation when they encounter a pair of deer. Despite the fact that Vulcans eat plant-based diets because their tenets about non-violence extend to animals, Mestral suggests eating one of them because:

A Vulcan Mrs. Donner.

Stron is Vulcan-horrified at the idea of resorting to “savagery,” but thankfully T’Pol/T’Mir agrees to violate the Vulcan version of the Prime Directive instead so they don’t have to murder Bambi’s mom. But that scene raises an interesting point. Who was right, Mestral or Stron? Or both? Or neither?

Put 100 Vulcans in a room and ask them when war is justifiable, I’m sure they’d all spout off some Vulcan version of Just War Theory like the smug, walking information databases that they are. But put 100 Vulcans in charge of making a real-world decision about going to war, and we’d get 100 different answers, some which directly contradicted others, but each defended by iron clad logic.  

To wrap this drivel up, Vulcan philosophy is a really bizarre hodgepodge of conflicting ideologies. They believe in infinite diversity in infinite combinations, which means they celebrate the beauty of the countless variables of the universe, unless it’s a Klingon bird-of-prey, in which case, they shoot that shit up. Pacifism is great when it’s convenient, killing is bad, except for when it isn’t, it’s not genocide if you have a really good reason, and eating animals is wrong, except for when it’s necessary. Yeah, logical.

I’m of the opinion that Vulcans are no better than humans—they do their best to grapple with complex issues according to a chaotic and occasionally contradictory set of beliefs. Even if they swear they aren’t driven by emotion, they are still at the mercy of their life experiences and world views when it comes to decision making. Logic is a tool that can help them arrive at answers, but it isn’t the answer. Most importantly, like any tool, logic can be abused or corrupted.

Given the weight of the evidence, I would re-assert that Vulcans are happy to declare anything as being logical, so long as it suits their agenda or personal beliefs. Or perhaps it’s better to say that the writers of Star Trek will call anything logical if it adds to the dialogue or advances the plot.

What say you, T’Pol?

[starcitizenprivateer]

One Good Deed: Part Two

Be sure to read part one of the story here .

Umar was quickly realizing just how difficult it was to focus on doing repairs when you have a gun aimed at your head. Of course, it should have been obvious from the start that being held hostage would be stressful, but it was one of those truths that doesn’t completely sink in until you experience it first hand. Sort of like how those ‘Slippery When Wet’ caution signs seemed redundant until you were skidding around in a rainstorm.

“Easy on the comms,” instructed Umar’s captor in a steady, even clip. “This is just a normal emergency repair, right?” The man might as well have been casually asking Umar to pass nuoc cham, for all the current situation seemed to be stressing him.

“Right.” Just your normal, everyday emergency repair where someone has hijacked your ship and is looming right behind your terminal in case they need to put a plasma bolt through your brain. Totally normal.

Umar took a deep breath and pushed all that aside. He needed to focus. His life wasn’t the only one hanging in the balance. With a practiced few presses on the console, Umar launched the repair drone Shake towards the source of the emergency beacon — a Terrapin, adrift and giving off a worryingly high IR signature.

With the drone en route, Umar hailed the Terrapin with his most professional, calming voice. “Dr. Hostan? This is Umar from In-A-Fix.”

The response came immediately. “Power plant’s experiencing a critical cascade and my coolers are about to give,” reported Dr. Hostan, breathing heavily. The temperature must have been unbearable inside the craft. Even wearing a protective suit and helmet, her hair was plastered with sweat to her head. “Geiger’s ticking fast and loud. I don’t think there’s much time.”

Umar appreciated the doc’s information efficiency. He didn’t blame people when they panicked in an emergency, but it sure did help when they kept their heads. It gave him an extra tool to work with rather than an extra problem to solve.

“Drone’s almost there. As soon as the full diagnostic scan is done, we’ll know what’s causing the cascade. In the meanwhile, I’m gonna have you do a full flush on your coolers. It won’t do much, but it’ll buy us some time.”

“Just tell me what to do.”

Umar began walking her through the process to circumvent the coolers’ safety protocols. The doc was an apt pupil and it wasn’t long before she had managed the tricky manual override. The maneuver was one that his boss, Jess, had taught him when he was first starting out. A fine example of the philosophy, “sometimes you got to break a ship even more if you want to fix it.” If they got the Terrapin up and running again, the coolers would have severely limited functionality compared to their normal operating parameters. But that was a problem for later. The first priority was not exploding.

“The temp’s dropping a bit,” said Dr. Hostan, clearly relieved. “You’re a miracle worker.”

“Naw, Doc. You did all the heavy lifting,” replied Umar. A pop-up on the terminal indicated a new data-packet had arrived. “Looks like the diag scan just came in, so I’m gonna have you drink a hydro-gel real quick while I go over the data. Don’t want you passing out on me.”

As Dr. Hostan turned to find a gel pack to feed into her suit, Umar silenced his audio and video while still listening in on the channel.

“That was a neat little trick,” said the shipjacker once the comm had been muted.

“Yeah,” said Umar, distracted as he pored over the report that Shake’s scanners had sent back.

“I mean you probably just saved her life and what? You’re getting your standard repair rate for this?”

“You mind not talking? I’m trying to figure out how —” Umar let the sentence hang there as he frantically cross-checked the numbers he had gotten from Shake.

“What is it?” Asked the shipjacker, leaning over the terminal to look.

“Grab that datapad,” said Umar, gesturing to where a clunky three-gen-old model was strapped to the wall. “Open up the DayBreak power plant manual. Should be right there in the folder.”

If Umar had been watching instead of directing Shake to do a deeper scan on the Terrapin’s axial power conduit, he would have seen the jacker hesitate. Using the datapad would mean having to holster his weapon. Keeping a wary eye on Umar to make sure this wasn’t a ploy, the man stowed his pistol and pulled the datapad free. After it booted, he found and opened the manual. “Okay, now what?”

“Here,” said Umar as he grabbed the pad. Scrolling, he found the section he was looking for and quickly read it. Then, cursing under his breath, he read it again.

“Enough,” said the jacker. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Umar tossed the datapad down onto the console. “You know anything about reactors?”

“Just enough not to touch one.”

“Then the short version is, thanks to the geniuses at Sakura Sun, the good doctor is pretty well and properly screwed. See …,” said Umar as he rotated the scans of the Terrapin displayed on the terminal. “The DayBreak was designed with these so-called performance improvements that will most likely make the power plant overload faster if I try to fix the problem. And not doing anything isn’t an option since the whole thing’s gonna blow in a few minutes anyway. So, yeah. Screwed.”

“Damn,” replied the jacker, leaning in to look closer. He pointed to the axial conduit. “And if you try to bypass it, these backups will just kick in.”

Umar raised an eyebrow, a bit surprised at his captor’s quick grasp of the issue. “Yeah, that’s right. Ninety-nine out of a hundred times the setup would be ideal, but damn if that one exception isn’t a doozy.”

The man straightened to his full height, resting a hand on his hip near the gun. “So, what are you going to do?”

“It’s what you’re gonna do,” said Umar, eyes flicking towards the jacker’s holster. “You’re the one threatening to shoot people.”

The response came with a heavy sigh, “You want to her to EVA over here before you start the repair.”

“It’s too dangerous to do it with her still on the ship, but with her onboard the Vulcan, we can pilot to the edge of the blast radius and still be able to control the drones. Maybe I can repair it in time. Maybe I won’t be fast enough and the thing will blow. But either way, the doc gets to live.”

“Fine. Do it.”

“You serious?” asked Umar, halfway through preparing the mental argument he thought he’d have to make.

“Yeah. Don’t know how much safer she’s going to be with me around, but it’s stupid to let her die now just ’cause I might get her killed later.” And leaving it at that, the jacker went to the pilot’s chair to bring the Vulcan’s hatch around so the doctor would have a straight-shot EVA.

Umar opened the comm. “Doc, you hear me?”

“Yes,” Dr. Hostan replied. “What did the scans say?”

“I’m gonna need you to EVA over to the Vulcan.”

“Am I losing the ship?”

“Can’t say for sure at this point, but I don’t want to take any chances.”

“Do I at least have enough time to pull my research drives?” asked the doctor. It was the most concerned Umar had seen her so far.

“Yeah, but fast, doc,” said Umar against his better judgement. “Take a minute to grab what you can, but you got to leave after that.”

Not even bothering to reply, the doctor rushed to grab the data she had gathered with the Terrapin’s sensors.

“Tell her to forget it,” said the jacker as he swung the Vulcan wildly away from the Terrapin.

Before Umar could ask what the hell was going on, the entire ship shook and the shields flared from a direct laser hit.

Umar frantically paged the doctor, “Plans changed, doc. Need you to stay put. We’ve got company.”

“How’d these bastards find me?” said the jacker as he evaded the next volley.

Umar checked the radar and saw there were two ships rapidly approaching their position. “Who are they?”

“A couple low-rent hitters.”

“And you thought you could lose them in my ship?”

“That was the plan.”

“Would have worked a lot better if you hadn’t left my drone behind.”

“You’re kidding me. The damn thing was tagged?”

“Six ways to Sunday … wait, where are you going?” demanded Umar when an out-of-range warning popped up for Shake.

“I’m getting us the hell out of here.” Another laser barrage just barely missed the prow of the Vulcan.

“No. We’re staying and fixing that ship.”

“I’m not dying for her.”

“Neither am I, so be sure to keep the ships off her and away from us.”

After a letting fly a string of curses, the jacker pulled the stick back and steered once again towards the Terrapin. “You’re damn lucky I’m a fantastic pilot.”

Umar keyed the comms. “Doc, since EVAing isn’t really an option any more, I’m starting the emergency repairs.”

The doctor took the news in stride. “Good luck.”

“Same to you, doc. If you got any messages to pass along, feel free to send them over.”

“I’ll do that. Thank you.” And with that, Dr. Hostan ended the comm.

Quickly, he opened the bay so that he could launch his last drone, Spear. It wasn’t really set up for this kind of delicate work, but Umar could use all the extra hands he could get. “Drone’s heading out. Can you give it cover?”

“On it,” replied the jacker, rolling the ship hard to one side. He positioned the Vulcan between the two attackers and the doctor. Switching his controls over, the jacker used the remote turrets to lay down a wide field of suppressive fire, forcing the ships to alter course. One of the would-be assassins saw this as an opportunity and attempted to sweep up on the underside, but the jacker was ready for them and let loose with the main guns, clipping the attacker’s port wing. The damage wasn’t enough to take them out of the fight, but it’d give the pilot something to think about.

Meanwhile, Umar had managed to cut open the access panel in the Terrapin’s thick armor and reach the inner workings. Controlling both drones in conjunction, he began the tricky process of halting the cascade and siphoning off the excess energy. Right on cue, the axial conduit kicked in, and as predicted, the power plant responded by increasing its load production. Now it was his turn to cuss up a storm.

Focusing his energy on the injured ship, the jacker switched to the offensive. This would have worked well if the two pilots had been a team, since harassing one would hopefully cause the other to react, but no such luck. The more distant attacker completely ignored the plight of the other and took advantage of the Vulcan’s push, scoring a direct hit. Smoke began to fill the ship’s main chamber. Fantastic pilot or not, the numbers were against them. “How’s it looking back there?”

“Almost done, one way or another.” Umar had about half as much time as he needed before the whole thing was going to blow, taking the Terrapin and the doc with it. What he needed was a way to quickly disrupt the power output all together, without triggering the explosion itself. He ran through the few options he had remaining, dismissing them as fast as he thought of them. Maybe if he had a full complement of drones he could have done something, but with Liam back with the jacker’s Reliant and his own stubbornness to blame for holding off on replacing Wil after the accident — his mind suddenly flashed on something. Wil.

A few years back, the drone had been lost along with a crew of four when what should have been a simple repair had gone catastrophically wrong. While patching the piping to one of the maneuvering thrusters, an unexpected static discharge had caused a feedback surge along the plasma conduits. In that case the surge had been deadly, but with the doc’s power plant already suffering a critical failure, there was a small chance that if he could trigger it and use one of his drones to act as an auxiliary breaker, he could interrupt the cascade before it went critical. Well, Spear, let’s see just how lucky you are.

The jacker had just launched the last of the Vulcan’s chaff, narrowly diverting a missile that detonated nearby. An inadvertent grin spread across his face. After the life he had led, it was a little hard to believe there was a good chance he was going to die doing something this stupidly heroic. Suddenly, there was a second explosion nearby. Something had blown on the hull of the Terrapin. He squinted his eyes in preparation for the blinding light that would follow the whole ship going boom, but nothing else happened.

“It worked! I can’t believe it worked!” Umar had lost his drone, but had saved the ship.

“Not to cut your celebration short, but I really could use a hand right about now.”

Umar’s attention was drawn back to the ongoing dogfight. When did the ship fill with so much smoke? “Pass the turrets to me.”

“You any good?” asked the jacker.

“Line me up a shot and find out.”

With a dedicated gun operator, the true combat capabilities of the Vulcan emerged. The jacker would chase a ship with the main guns getting them into position for Umar to let loose with cannons mounted on the remote turret. Working together, they manage to remove the wing on the ship that had been crippled earlier. Down a weapon, and barely able to maneuver, the ship fled. The remaining assassin, its advantage lost, made the sensible choice and followed.

Umar placed two cans of flavored sparkling water on the table. It had taken about an hour more of work before the doctor’s ship was ready to fly again and the effort had left him parched.

The jacker, sitting on the far side, cracked his open and drank deeply. When he finally came up for air, he smiled. “Guess I do like etrog flavor.”

“All right, spill it. Why do you got a price on your head?”

The smile left the jacker’s face. “Might be better if you don’t know.”

“Yeah, well, it seems a little late for that.”

The two sat in silence for a bit as Umar patiently drank his water.

Toying with the tab on the can, the jacker finally began, “I was working for the Dranton Family, smuggling off of Carteyna, when I got tagged by the Cano authorities. Wasn’t going to get out clean, so I dumped the cargo and ran. Turned out there was enough evidence in there to get most of the Drantons locked up for good. Guess that didn’t sit well because Luke Dranton put the hit out on me himself. Spent almost every last credit to his name making sure I get dead. That was about a month ago, been running ever since.”

“So, we should be expecting more company?”

“Greedy bastards will probably keep the news to themselves till they can come after us again, but yeah, they’ll be back.”

“Right.” Umar tilted back and finished the last of his drink. “We better get going then.”

“Thanks. If you drop me off at Pox, I can make my way from there.”

“I was actually thinking we could make a stop first. See, I came across a recent wreck a little bit before I grabbed you. Told Jess about it, but since In-A-Fix runs salvage there’s a good chance no one knows it’s there except me and her. We get there in time, should be able to make it so the registry shows you sadly passed away in a tragic accident.”

“Seriously? You’d do that for me?”

Umar shrugged, “What can I say, I like fixing stuff.”

THE END.

[spac3ang31]

I’ve been murdered again

So I don’t know if I made a post about what happened between my friend that was avoiding me or not so I’ll recap everything in a short version here.

We dated for six years and ten months. He broke up with me around Christmas because he fell out of love with me. I fell into depression but we remained as friends because we cared about one another. I started dating another guy despite still not being over my ex. My boyfriend at the time was... not a good fellow but that doesn’t mean I’m a victim or a saint because let’s be honest here, I wasn’t. My ex was seeing other people without telling me. Even though it’s rightfully none of my damn business, I was heartbroken all over again and I obviously couldn’t tell my boyfriend at the time what was up. Although my depression has gotten better, I sometimes had relapses and my boyfriend at the time didn’t make things better or easier for me. But then one day my ex stopped seeing other girls as far as I was concerned and was more focusing on his friends and himself which is good. My boyfriend at the time dumped me on my sister’s birthday and the only regret I have was that I pretended to be heartbroken over it for his sake. I talked to him a month later but it was only about him picking his shit up. Other than that we haven’t talked. I tried to meet up with my ex just as friends and to just hang out and I guess I should’ve been more upfront that I wanted to hang out with him and his friends whenever they get together but I felt (and still do to this day) that they don’t want me around. I mean, I try to hang out with one of them one night. I think we were to go to a hockey game or whatever, I can’t remember. I only know that I was really excited about it and I messaged him my phone number and waited all night for him to call/text/email me about it there was a change in plans or something. He didn’t reply till the next day in the morning saying that he changed his mind about going out. I mean, if something happened I would understand but the least he could’ve done was tell me earlier and something tells me that he was just lying and just didn’t want to hang out with me. I mean, I understand that it would be weird since we don’t know each other that well but wouldn’t it be a perfect time to get to know one another better? I remember while I was dating my ex, we were all in the car and I think he was asking me to do something about the radio or whatever but I was kind of lost in thought at the time and didn’t hear him and when I snapped out of it, I overheard him say in a annoyed tone that I don’t do anything. I don’t know what he meant by that but it did not feel good to hear. It’s probably not a big deal but sometimes I wonder if it really is. I’m not the best at conversations and I come off as a fake when I do try (according to my ex). I’m not good at subtle hints and apparently I’m not good at keeping friends. On the outside, of course I have others that I could hang out with and talk to. But in reality, I don’t. People avoid me, are usually too busy, live too far away, we were never that close to begin with and the ones that “I am close with” have a history of being mean in a subtle manner or at least come off as not putting me in their true friends circle; only a sub. I did not have time with these “friends” in highschool because I was kind of pushing them all away because I didn’t want to deal with them, I was going through some stuff at home and I honestly did not have the time. But come to think of it, I did but I did not make the time. I would rather play games or spend hours online reading manga or pretty much being an anti-social weebao. I mean, I spend time with some people in highschool who were more or less quiet like me but I don’t talk to those people anymore... We’ve drifted and I feel like it’s too late to get back in touch with them because of all the stuff that has happened in their lives. I mean, they either have kids, getting married or moving somewhere far away. I’m not saying it’s their fault because I’m sure I probably did something or acted in a way that would have these people not wanting or caring to be around me. Anyways, earlier this year, my ex was slowly not responding to my texts and soon enough stopped replying all together. I asked what was up and if I did or say something to upset them. I wanted to apologize and fix whatever was going on. They said everything was fine and that they were going through things. I’m thinking ok, I’ll give them space and they’ll come talk to me if they feel like it. Over a month in, I wanted to check on them and they started to ignore me again and tbh I got pissed and I was not in my right mind to start talking to them in such a aggressive manner. I guess?? But my ex eventually replied and has stated that they no longer wish to be friends and they I need to stop talking to them. Yeah, I was outrage and I tend to get overemotional, sometimes overdramatic (I think), I overthink things a lot and I might’ve overreacted to the situation. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. I must’ve done or said something to upset him. I must’ve said something that didn’t help my case when he told me that. I don’t know. He won’t give me the satisfied answer and even if he did, I most likely wouldn’t believe him because I feel like he’s been lying to me this entire year and why should I trust whatever he has to say if he doesn’t trust me? And when I say trust me, I mean trust how I’ll react, trust what I’ll say, trust me with information and trust me to be a friend and respect his wishes? It doesn’t sound fair to me. We’ve stopped talking and well I’m showing signs of being depressed again and it’s not just because of him but because of many things. He’s just the straw that broke the camels back. He apparently hasn’t blocked me or deleted me off of his friends list or as far as I’m concerned stopped following my tumblr account. So sometimes I get to see whatever he posts/reblogs when I’m scrolling through the app. His latest reblog is a post of a picture that said to let go of toxic people. Now chances are this doesn’t mean it’s about me but as far as I know, I’m the last thing he’s thrown away. It just does not sit right with me to call me toxic. I do not believe that I am a toxic person but what if I am? Would that explain everything? But instead of talking to me about my behavior and give me a warning and explain, I am left to just be alone without a reason as to why whatever happen happened. I am left to not learn from my mistakes and to not grow. I know it is not anyone responsibility but if you want to make the world a better place and to avoid anyone getting hurt the same way you gotten hurt, should you not try to change/solve the problem? I’ve tried this online thing called 7cups (of tea??) that’s basically online therapy. But for some reason, my payment won’t go through as if there’s something wrong with my account. So I can’t get the full experience but I was talking to someone but then they’ve stopped talking to me when I was showing signs of feeling better. My old laptop had my account information on there and it died. I think it has been years since I was on the website but I’m pretty sure my account has been deleted due to inactivity. A friend that I have been talking to recommended that I go to my local health department because he went there for therapy and he said it was free. Let’s just hope it’s the same for me... I’m going there tomorrow.

Jeez... I said that I would keep this short but it’s still a long ass rant...

oh in case some of you are wondering who my ex is... Here’s his tumblr page: https://zanthros.tumblr.com/

I’m split on wanting him to get hurt and being a better person and let it all go. Either way, there’s nothing I can do about it now.

SO here’s an update. The blog is still active but he has unfollowed me and blocked me. Why??? Chances are that he found this post. But this has been up for a couple of days so why now?? Idk. This is just a blog that I normally rant on to get things out of my system. This blog isn’t seen by my usual followers unless my main blog reblogs it or if they happen to stumble upon it. I DON’T want people to after him because it won’t solve anything, it’ll make things worse (though to be fair it can’t possibly get any worse), and it’s not fair.

[balancingbookact]

Best & Worst Books of 2017:

I had a pretty great reading year in 2017 and read quite a few bangers. Some honourable mentions go out to the Sensational She-Hulk series, Jessica Jones: the Pulse, The Stand, The Drawing of the Three, American Gods, Scott Pilgrim (a re-read so it doesn’t count), The Dark Prophecy, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and It Devours! All good books but now for the actual list.

Best:

1. The Hammer of Thor (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 2), by Rick Riordan.

I could easily put The Ship of the Dead here either, but while I think that book had more crowd-pleasing moments, this one has better pacing and an over-all more engaging plot. This series is great. Not only is Magnus a great lead, but all the side characters are fleshed out and have their own stories to tell. The Norse mythology is so readable in Rick Riordan’s style and I don’t care what people say, I will read anything this man writes. Keep ‘em coming, Rick!

2. Islam and Contemporary Civilisation by Halim Rane.

I had to read this for a class at uni and I have never enjoyed a text book more. This book reminded me of what reading is all about: learning something from another person’s perspective. I learned so much about the Islamic religion and culture through this book and Professor Rane’s tutes, and it was one of the most enriching classes I’ve ever taken.

3. Noteworthy by Riley Redgate.

Everyone stop what you’re doing and read this book about a girl who disguises herself as a boy and joins an all-male a cappella group at her prestigious art school. With a premise like that you’re probably expecting some Pitch Perfect/She’s the Man hybrid, and while it is funny, it’s also very heartfelt and delves into conversations about sexuality, gender, and gender performance that often get over-looked in cross-dressing stories. Jordan, our protagonist, is such a real person, and all the connections she forms are touching in their own, unique ways. I haven’t read a book that made me feel so connected to a character since Fangirl. Read it.

4. Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Saenz.

I also read Last Night I Sang to the Monster, which could have easily made this list as well but I think I like Sammy and Juliana just a little bit more. Anyone who thinks Aristotle and Dante was a fluke is wrong. This man is not some one-hit wonder. His books all hold such a soft tenderness, and even when he doesn’t shy away from some of the brutalities of life, there’s always hope for the characters. Sammy and Juliana is about a town of mostly Latinx people living in the U.S in the 60s. It paints such an amazing picture of what life was like for these people, and is one of the best coming of age (I guess?) stories I’ve ever read.

5. The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente.

I already wrote a glowing review of this on my goodreads (check me out here) but this book is everything I’ve ever wanted. It takes a look at the ‘Women in Refrigerators’ trope in superhero comics, which involves female characters being killed or otherwise brutalised for the development of a male characters story and blows it wide open. It looks at looks at six female characters (with the names and stories altered slightly): Gwen Stacy, Jean Grey, Harley Quinn, Karen Page, Queen Mera, and Alexandra DeWitt, and tells their stories and how pissed they are about being dead. It’s great commentary on the genre and Valente’s writing is just so raw and passionate. It evoked many emotions in me and I will die if more people don’t start reading this book.

6. How to Train Your Dragon, books 10-12 (How to Seize a Dragon’s Jewel, How to Betray A Dragon’s Hero, and How to Fight A Dragon’s Fury).

I finally finished this series after years of reading it and let me tell you right now, this is one of the best series ever written, period. The first seven books can be read as individual adventures, but it’s only once you get to the later part of the series that you see all the threads that have been carefully left to be woven together in a feat of masterful story-telling. This series has one of the greatest Heroes Journey stories ever put to page. I will fight anyone who says differently. I can’t pick a favourite out of these three, they’re all amazing. I just implore you to look past some of the outward silliness and read these books. You won’t regret it.

7. Turtles All the Way Down by John Green.

After five long years John Green has finally come out with a new book, and let me tell you, the wait was worth it. Some people may fight me on this but I think this is John Green’s best book he ever done wrote. His books have always been personal but seeing the thoughts and feelings Aza has when dealing with OCD, you can’t help but see the heart that has been put into this book. The portrayal of mental illness and the hopelessness one can feel when confronted by this invisible, seemingly unstoppable force, is so genuine, and anyone’s who’s ever suffered with something similar will see their experience reflected back at them with such clarity it’ll break your heart a bit. A damn good book.  

Worst:

None of these books were really terrible, I was just expecting more from them, and I didn’t get it. This list is short though, so there’s that at least. Sadly, here we are:

1. We Go Forward by Alison Evans.

I picked this book up almost solely for the ace rep, and while I have no issues with how that was done, everything else was just so ‘meh’. A story about two Australian girls who meet while traveling in Europe and decided to keep going together sounds like a good time, but instead it was an aimless, meandering mess. We have a basic understanding of these characters from vague backstories, but it never amounts to anything. There’s no real plot, no driving force and no conceivable aim in sight. It’s just a couple of girls, who have some baggage, strolling around Europe and not really focussing on the budding friendship. Just a bit of a let-down, really.  

2. Illuminae (the Illuminae Files, book 1) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.

This was probably the biggest disappointment of the year. I was so hyped for this book and waited specifically so I could listen to the audiobook and when I did I quickly discovered it just wasn’t really all that good. A book about a colony of people fleeing from a menacing company that destroyed their planet, mixed in with a zombie plague on the spaceships sounds like it would be awesome! Unfortunately so much of the potential was sacrificed for the alternative format, which didn’t really do anything for the story and just seemed like it was there to look cool. When you have a man with saw raw, visceral prose as Jay Kristoff and you limit his narration, you are doing a disservice to the people. Jay flies better as a solo operative, in my opinion. 

3. We Awaken by Calista Lynne.

Another book with ace rep that I was excited for that let me down. This story of a girl who meets a beautiful woman version of the Sandman, and their ensuing romance sounded so promising, unfortunately this book lacked direction. Our characters mill about like some couple in a domestic fanfic (which are great but that’s not what I signed up for), and the book tries to throw in some obstacles at the last minute, but everything is resolved so conveniently that it pretty much made no difference. The writing was sub-par and read like a first draft, which hurts me to say so, but it’s true. 

Here’s to another year of reading in 2018! *releases party-popper*

[piratekane]

nevergiov asked (and i answered privately, instead of posting)...

This is, hands down, one of my favorite questions. Okay, okay. Buckle up. It’s a longish answer. 

Well, the short answer is: find a plot partner who fits.

The long answer still is: find a plot partner who fits. 

But I’l expand: I’ve actually known @iamthegaysmurf for years - and we didn’t know each other, but we were in the same fandom back in the dark days. I’m talking before Glee. Yeah, you weirdos. There was life before Glee. (Glee broke us all but it wasn’t where all of us started.) I mean back when I was still writing (horrendously) in second person. (SECOND PERSON. THANK GOD I DROPPED THAT SCHTICK.) Anyway, ten years later, I make a seemingly-innocent text post about needing a beta and there’s Smurf.

Cue the heavens opening. Cue the choir of angels. Cue the panic. 

Because now I had a beta, but was the idea behind ‘i wish you’d live like you’re made of glass’ any good? (My answer: hell to the mother ever loving no.) (Smurf’s answer: tell me more.)

I was planning on that particular story being ~32k, if that. I had six chapters planned out. It was going to be A to B to C and it would be a good way to try out multi-chapter fics, right?

Wrong.

Because Smurf wanted to know more. She had great questions. She had great ideas. She pointed out when something needed to be explained or reeled back in. She told me to trust the readers to be smart enough to put two and two together, but to give them enough to work with. And what I ended up with was 90k, ten chapters, and three plot arcs - all fleshed out, and all mostly separate from each other until they converged at the finale. 

And I was so proud of that.

[Side note: I had a fantastic beta during my active Glee years, too. The best thing (I think) I ever wrote for Glee (Caught Between Trusting You and Knowing Me) was all thanks to @dealanexmachina; without them, I wouldn’t have been able to even put anything on the page. I was just talking to them the other day and they were saying how funny it was that I wrote four or five distinctly different make out scenes for Wayhaught in ‘it’s like i wrote every note with my own fingers’ because writing anything at all like that in CBTYAKM was painstakingly difficult.]

So cue me pitching this (what I thought was ridiculous) idea about Wayhaught in the 80′s, a high school AU that is basically a more grownup version of a songfic, but Smurf was loves it. More than that. She was like, WRITE THIS IMMEDIATELY.

And here’s where the answer comes back in: find a plot partner who fits.

Because Smurf was like, take this idea and run a hundred laps with it. Pretend you’re in home ec and this idea is the sack of flour you have to pretend is your baby. For every one idea I had, she had ten breakaway ideas. And then I had an idea off of that. And she had ten more.

You see where this is going?

Back back to your original question, which I think was something along the lines of: “how do you do it?”

And the answer is: find yourself a plot partner who fits.

Smurf is a fucking genius. You can call me a suck up or a brown nose or tell me that I’m tooting this horn way too much, but I will kindly tell you to let the door hit you in the ass on the way off my blog. Smurf. Is. A. Genius. Admittedly, we have our fair share of planning that is just a bunch of those emoji faces where the person is, like, sobbing. But we also have this incredibly detailed outline of a shit-ton of songs/scenarios we’re fleshing out and writing down.

That’s the crucial piece. (That’s the part I suck at - the planning and the sticking to the planning) That’s how it gets done every week - that, and I somehow managed to get Smurf to agree to let me post every week, if the predetermined criteria is met. Without the outline, without all of that pre-planning, we’d be up Shit’s Creek. 

Because - and I speak for both of us here - this world, this ‘verse, deserves it. It deserves the detail and the consideration and I’m ridiculously in love with readers who go through the oneshots and go, “damn, nice callback to (minuscule moment in another part of the ‘verse that we didn’t think people would notice).” [I’m looking at you, @socallmedaisy] This ‘verse and it’s incredible music deserves the meaning we try really hard to put into it. It totally helps that we’re madly in love with it, too, of course. And so, when it’s planned out like that, it’s easy to write it - in theory, obviously. I still get stuck sometimes, but surprise surprise - Smurf can get me out of a jam. 

When it’s planned out like that, it’s easy to sit down and spew out a couple thousand words while my kids eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and talk to each other in their own weird toddler language. It’s easy to jot down 500 words in my 10-minute pee break during class.

I’m not going to lie. I’m a busy person. I work full-time with some really hands-on special needs kids. I have two kids of my own at home. I’m in a Masters program that is much harder than my first one. I’m married, and own a house, and have a dog, and sometimes I don’t kiss my wife “hello” until we’re about to go to bed.

So the planning is important. Because I’ll write when I’m sitting in traffic. And I’ll write during teacher’s meetings. I’ll write when everyone else in class goes out to smoke. I’ll write while my kids destroy their playroom, one toy at a time. I’ll write during any free minute of any day. This ‘verse means so much to us that, honestly, and it would kill me, but I would rather not post than post something mediocre just to meet the crazy schedule I backed us into. But with all of our planning ahead, writing becomes more streamlined. It’s easier. I don’t have to worry about forgetting anything because it’s all right there. (The fact that you guys seem to really like it doesn’t hurt, either.)

Smurf is on quality-control. Actually, she’s on comma-control, but we call it “quality” so it sounds nice. And that’s how it gets done.

tl;dr - find a good plot partner, plan ahead, write furiously in the dead of night when you should be sleeping.

[markoftheasphodel]

When Xmas Cavs Grow Up

Just to get all my thoughts in one place, especially as a) I haven’t talked about Seth & Orson in a long time and b) FE15 happened.

One of the (cough) archetypical hallmarks of Fire Emblem casts is the “Cain and Abel,” meaning not murderous siblings but a pair of matched knights who are friends or friendly rivals. One wears red and one wears green, one is loud and the other is quiet, one is serious and the other is fun-loving, often one whacks things with a sword while the other spears things with a lance. It’s a consistent enough trope to get its own page (70) in the 20th anniversary artbook.

But what happens when these bright young things grow up? Well, a couple of FE games have given us a glimpse of it.

Spoilers for Archanea, Jugdral, Magvel, and Valentia follow.

Archanea: Cain and Abel

“I work with a knight called Abel. I tend to get carried away, but he balances me out with his calmness.”

“When there are two precious things in your life… you must choose between them.

So, during the War of Heroes (FE3 Book II/FE12), Cain and Abel aren’t "the Cain & Abel” anymore. A new pair of trainee knights, “rowdy” Luke and “steady” Roderick, fill those roles with Roderick’s love interest Cecil rounding them out as a trio of cavaliers. So what’s become of the OG Christmas Cavs?

Yeah, OK, I think everyone here knows this story. If you don’t, FE Heroes gives you the Cliff’s Notes versions. Cain stayed at Marth’s side, trained a new crop of knights, and per FE3 Book II was trusted enough to help govern Altea when Marth went on missions elsewhere, and became Marth’s advisor after Jagen’s iron bones finally rusted out. Cain’s loud, he likes training, he’s nicknamed The Bull, he’s basically got no life outside of serving Marth.

Meanwhile Abel, the suave Panther to Cain’s Bull, retired, got married, opened a shop, and got dragged back into the war when his wife Est got held hostage by the bad guys, betrayed Marth, got forgiven for it, and then disappears forever after the war, chasing after an equally forever-disappeared Est. We know he and Cain are BFFs because Fire Emblem lore consistently tells us they’re friends, not because they actually have any scenes together or anything. They’ve been imitated, echoed, expied, et cetera.

Cain joins the party in FE12 as an unpromoted Level 9 cavalier, Abel joins many chapters later as a Level 1 paladin. (Don’t ask me how he got that promotion.)

Highlight: You get a better sense of Cain&Abel’s eternal legend from their expies Sully and Stahl in FE13 than you do from the originals.

Jugdral: Glade and Finn

“Glade, this is just the beginning. We still have a long way ahead of us.”

“Yes, we must return to Lenster and restore the flag of the Gae Bolg… That’s when we can finally have a drink together again.”

Archetypes weren’t really a thing during the SNES era but there were definitely call-backs even in the first five installments and FE5 had more than a few callbacks to FE3 specifically (hi, Asvel! Hi, Shannam!). Enter our next pair of veteran BFFs. If you only know Glade as the punchline to the Choose Your Heroes poll them I recommend reading this on Reddit as a primer.

Glade fits into what’s generally seen as the “Cain” archetype– maybe not as naturally talented as his BFF but known for his hard work and enthusiasm. He’s outspoken enough to criticize allies– even (allegedly) royal allies– who are letting down the cause and he’s openly affectionate with his wife Selphina. Life in the resistance has been hard and he’s accumulated a lot of regrets but he’s still in there trying. Finn is the more introverted of the pair, less willing to go on the record about his opinions, less able to demonstrate affection– which impacted his relationship with his own MIA apparent-love-interest Lachesis and is contributing to a strained relationship with his daughter Nanna. His sole passion, if it counts as one, appears to be geopolitical. “Another Abel with the same shitty taste in women,” one member of the FE Subreddit called him in a thread where passions were running high, and while that phrasing isn’t really fair to anyone involved, the underlying connection is legit IMO, though maybe not in the way that poster thought.

Glade and Finn aren’t polar opposites so much as they are variations on a theme (they even use the same weapon), in large part because Glade appears to be Finn’s deliberate foil, spun off to do the exact things FE4!Finn was doing that didn’t gel with where his FE5!characterization was taking him. They’re both loyal, patriotic, and so forth, and they’ve both suffered hardship for the cause of Prince Leif and Leonster, but whatever stroke of fate let Finn catch Prince Quan’s favor when they were kids while Glade stayed behind in Leonster has put a gap between them that friendship can’t bridge 100%. Glade’s doing his job and accumulating worldly success, Finn’s on a crusade that entails high personal sacrifice. Glade’s got his regrets, Finn’s outright broken inside. Glade’s a leader; Finn’s a hero. Glade makes history; Finn becomes a legend.

Unlike Cain & Abel they have actual in-game dialogue, plus the Leonster’s Fall short story in the Thracia artbook to give a sense of who they were as young knights before everything went to utter shit. There’s a lot of emotional build-up to their mid-battle reunion, which itself isn’t that emotional a scene but does include the “we’ll have a drink later” line that seemingly evokes the dialogue between Sigurd and Eldigan early in FE4. Given how that friendship played out, this would seem ominous… but, as it happens, fate has pretty much done its worst to these two already. There’s no betrayal, no falling out. After the war Glade enjoys his hot wife and promotion and makes New Thracia into an efficient and modern war machine. Finn disappears into the desert for three years because Reasons but he does come back. Remake plz?

Finn’s in Leif’s starting party as a Level 7 unpromoted unit, Glade joins in Ch13 as a Level 2 promoted unit.

Highlight: In spite of all the ways in which Jugdral is hell this is the only world in which our Veteran Cav BFFs might have the chance to continue their friendship later in life.

Magvel: Seth and Orson

“If Orson can turn his back on Renais… We remaining knights will have to work all the harder to prove ourselves!”

“You’re an impressive knight, Seth. You would sacrifice your life for king and country. Not even a moment’s pause. It’s a pitiful, unrewarding life, through and through.”

One of my contentions about FE8 has always been that, despite the mechanical similarities to FE2 (dual lords, monsters, etc) that the plot was a reworking of the War of Heroes, with more emphasis on character development and far less on the overall heroic myth. Given the shit that dedicated knights go through for their Lords, it was only a matter of time before we got to see what happened when somebody actually snapped. Abel betrayed Marth and all but he didn’t mean to, and Marth forgave him, and he’s just kind of an incoherent mess (see: FE Heroes) thereafter of his loyalty and his love for Est and his regrets for his treason. Finn breaks inside but keeps going on his impossible path despite a wasteland of collateral damage (including Glade at one point) around him and stakes that rise from “stay alive” to “reclaim Leonster” to “unify all Thracia” to “liberate entire continent from Dark Lord” because well, that’s what he does. Either way, they lose the girl (to say the least). Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. 

Enter Orson, who looks at this particular bad deal being offered and says “to hell with that.”

So Orson and Seth are knights of Renais. Orson seems to be the older of the two. He’s got a quiet and serene personality (so, he’s the Abel) and he’s got a wife named Monica. Seth is the commander of the Knights of Renais, is renowned as The Silver Knight, has the other young knights looking up to him. He’s not boisterous like some of the Cain-types but he’s got the red hair, the training-freak personality (see: FE Heroes), and so on. Seth in typical Cain fashion doesn’t have a ladyfriend… yet. Hold that thought.

Long story short, Orson doesn’t betray Renais because Monica’s being held as a hostage. He betrays Renais because Monica’s already dead and in the grave six months and Grado’s dark powers offer her back in some horrible fashion. He sells out his country to enjoy alone time with the ghastly puppet of his wife, and when Seth finally confronts him mid-game Orson’s just sane enough to offer a concise and brutal takedown of the whole knighthood thing. And this hits Seth hard, because Seth’s been keeping his own secrets– specifically, his improper feelings for his liege lady princess Eirika– and FE8′s story is an entire gallery of bad examples of what twisted love can do to a person. Orson, Carlyle, Lyon himself– this roll call of the mad and the damned is what’s held up to Seth as his fate should he give into his heart: “there but for the grace of god(s) go I.”

But Magvel is surprisingly kind to Seth, offering him a happy ending with Eirika in spite of his own protests or a union with the lovely priestess Natasha. Orson gets a dirt nap in the company of what’s left of Monica.

Seth joins at the start as a Level 1 Paladin, Orson joins in Ephraim’s first chapter as a Level 3 Paladin before turning his colors.

Highlight: This is the only case in which the Veteran Cavs are not in some sense a retcon onto the source material.

Valentia: Clive and Fernand

“Enough, Fernand. You’ve suffered enough. You needn’t flog yourself any further.”

“Good… I am…rather tired. Tired of despair… Tired of rage… But Clive…I’m glad I got to see you one last time.”

FE2 didn’t have anything mapping to the "Cain & Abel” Xmas Cav archetype because it wasn’t an archetype yet and definitely didn’t have any take on the adult version thereof. FE15, besides retconning Forsyth into the ambitious Green Knight to the stolid Red Knight played by Lukas, plum invented an entire “veteran cav BFFs” tragic subplot for us to enjoy. Nice.

So on the one hand we have Clive. Clive’s the leader of the rebel group known as the Deliverance, has impeccable breeding and a glowing reputation, a sizable chunk of the playable cast has the hots for him, etc. He’s got a canon love interest, the glamorous paladin Mathilda, so you might expect based on the above that the plot-gods are about to take a wrecking ball to Clive’s life.

Except Clive also has a BFF and his BFF has problems. Orson at least has the pretense of being on the lords’ side before Seth unmasks him as a traitor. Fernand’s a prick from the moment he shows up on screen and promptly flounces from the Deliverance all in a froth over being led by a “farmboy” like Alm and lends his services (such as they are) to Rigel’s Lord Berkut. There’s also a hint that Fernand is actually into Mathilda himself (oh noes), but the entire Deliverance scene is rife with homoerotic subtext[*] and Fernand’s got a pretty bad case of it. Since Clive still cares a lot about his BFF we then have to make the attempt to redeem Fernand, which of course fails, so this particular version of the veteran cav subplot ends with a big dramatic death scene with a CG and lots of ellipses and everything. 

Their whole subplot is wrapped up in an interesting if maybe not entirely successful take on what knights exactly are for– what kind of ruler is a legitimate ruler? How is that ruler best served? Unlike all of the previous examples, Clive and Fernand started their careers as knights sworn to a shitty, useless, negligent king, one whose bloodline was apparently extinct by the start of the game. There’s never any question that Cain serves Marth, that Glade and Finn serve Leif, that Seth serves the twins of Renais. If Abel and Orson waver it’s not because Marth or the twins are not the right lords to serve, but because Abel and Orson have personal weaknesses. But Clive and Fernand both have to make an actual conscious choice as to whom they are going to serve, and Clive makes the right choice (with a lot of second-guessing along the way) and Fernand doesn’t, the end.

Clive joins as a Level 6 cavalier; Fernand is not playable in the main game.

Highlight: These guys get their own prequel in the Rise of the Deliverance DLC, wherein Fernand is playable .

* Xmas Cavs and their grown-up equivalents generally do have some measure of that goin’ on (Seth and Orson being an exception), but the Deliverance is pretty hard to overlook.

[illuminating-dragons]

Nesting (4/?): Profoundly

Summary:  The lead up to a wedding isn't always peaceful, but people come together in the end.

Read it on AO3

           Sam grimaced as he heard another dish hit the kitchen wall. “You’d think with two grooms we’d avoid the wedding crazies.”

           “It’s your idjit brother,” Bobby grumbled, turning the page of an old ledger. “He can’t shut up to save his damn life.”

           Dean and Cas’ wedding was in a week, and it was turning into an enormous headache for anyone within three hundred miles of the Bunker. It wasn’t the guest list, it wasn’t the food, it wasn’t even the damn venue.

           It was the grooms themselves.

           Since returning from Hell, Sam had witnessed Dean and Cas arguing only a handful of times. They were quick and intense, years of a profound bond soothing the worst of the anger. But ever since Jody and Donna’s wedding six months ago, ever since Hannah asked innocently when they would get married…

           “What are we up to?” Sarah asked.

           “Seventy four arguments,” Sam reported. “Since the start of July.”

           Sarah groaned and hit her head off the desk.

           He heard Cas’ raised voice now. Great. That meant a longer argument. Sam dearly wished that either Ben or Gabriel were here—they could knock sense into the couple better than anyone—but both were away from the Bunker.

           Bobby glared at Sam. “It’s your turn.”

           “It is not, it’s Charlie’s!”

           “She and Anna are in Moondor,” Sarah reminded him. “Come on, Sam. I’ve got to finish the playlist anyways.”

           Sam knew there was no point protesting. He got up and went down the hall towards the kitchen. His brothers’ voices were lower now, but no less intense. Hoping he wasn’t going to have to pull them apart (again), Sam froze in his tracks when their voices rose again.

           “I swear, Cas, it feels like you don’t want to get married at all!”

           “Don’t be ridiculous, Dean, of course I do!”

           “Then why do you keep picking at me?! Everything I suggest you shoot down!”

           “You aren’t asking for enough!”

           “What the fuck does that MEAN?!” Another crash. “I’m asking for what I want, Cas. It’s one fucking day of our lives, it doesn’t have to be perfect!”

           “Nothing in your life has ever been perfect!”

           The silence was louder than the crashes.

           “What do you mean?” Dean’s voice was terribly quiet.

           “You’ve been dragged around your entire life,” Cas replied. “You’ve rarely had an opportunity to make choices, and they haven’t been good ones. I want to make sure you can choose whatever you want, Dean.”

           “I am choosing what I want, Cas,” Dean said. His voice was much gentler now. “I love all of the ideas we’ve come up with, and the ones I picked out are the ones I think are the best. It’s not the French Riviera, but it’s what I know. It’s what I want. I don’t want our wedding to be something completely out of my experience. It’s about us, about our life, our family…” There was another pause. “But that’s not really what you’re worried about, is it baby? You think I might not have chosen right when I picked you.”

           “The thought had crossed my mind.” Cas’ voice was thready.

           Sam risked stepping closer, close enough that he could see the kitchen. Dean and Cas were standing amid a bunch of shattered glass and china, and Cas had his head bowed.

           “You are the Righteous Man,” Cas said. “You were made by Heaven itself to fight Hell, and you defied them both. You are better than anyone dreamed you would be. You could have anyone.”

           “I want you.” Dean stepped forward and took Cas’ face in his hands. “Castiel, I want you. You are the Saviour of the Righteous Man. You were built to love God, and you chose to love me…to love me too. I love you, Cas. You’re perfect as far as I’m concerned. And if anyone thinks different—that might actually be a good thing. I get you all to myself.”

           Cas laughed, but it was more of a sob, and Sam realized it was time to leave. He retreated to give them some privacy, but not before he saw Dean enfold Cas in his arms.

           There were no more arguments that day, or the next five days. Which was good, because Charlie’s dress went missing, Kevin came down with the flu and they found out about a shifter in Topeka, running around in the guise of the dead (they’d been grave digging).

           But by the day before the wedding, the shifter had been taken out by Samandriel, Kevin was healed after he actually admitted he was sick, and Charlie’s dress had been rescued from the trunk of the Impala. A vigorous washing got the smell of gunpowder out.

           Most of the wedding guests were already there. Every ‘claimed’ bedroom was full, people chattering with excitement and finding “my damn pantyhose!” “You don’t need that shit!” “It’s the pair Gabriel made that doesn’t rip!” “…I’ll help you look.”

           Dean and Cas sat in the middle of the chaos, told sternly not to help at all. Ben stood guard proudly, arms folded. He was taking his best man job seriously.

           (Not all the arguments in the last six months had been between the grooms-to-be).

           At last the kerfuffle died down, and the bachelor party began.

           Cas had vehemently protested against this idea, and even Dean didn’t see the need. “I don’t want to be hungover on our wedding day, and besides, I am not taking my kid to a strip club.”

           “Indeed not,” Cas agreed. “I don’t want you dead on our wedding day.”

           With Ben as best man, however, Dean agreed to try a party, so long as Ben planned it. Ben had enlisted the groomsmen and groomsgals to help plan bits and pieces, but the twelve-year-old had kept most of the details close to his chest. Only Gabriel seemed to know the whole story, but he’d barely been in the Bunker in the last month.

           Which Sam thought, given the chaos, was really a smart thing.

           The first part of the party was a buffet. Everyone got their favourite foods, and they ate picnic style in the main room, curled up on cushions and bean bag chairs Gabriel had snapped up. Sam stole a few of Sarah’s grapes—to make up for it, he fed her the last of his strawberries. Dean and Cas were arguing playfully over which burgers were best, and the conversation rose and fell as everyone digested.

           Then there was pie. Lots of different kinds, and Benny beamed with pride as everyone ate up. “Told you it was better than that magic food, Tricky,” he drawled.

           Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Listen, Ex-Fangs, you just got your sweet tooth back. Give it some time to adjust.”

           Benny rolled his eyes and bared his completely normal teeth. “Sure thing, sugar.”      

           Once the last bites had been scraped off the plates, Gabriel clapped his hands. “Alright, listen up everyone.” He turned to Ben. “Want to explain your idea for entertainment tonight, kiddo?”

           Ben shuffled nervously. “Okay.” At Gabriel’s encouraging nod, he dashed out of the room.

           “What’s he doing?” Dean asked.

           “Patience, Dean-o. All will be revealed.”

           Ben returned with a wrapped package and a strange looking video camera. It looked like a camera from the eighties had a baby with a telescope.

           “What’s that, son?” Dean raised his eyebrows as Ben sat down in front of him and Cas.

           “Well, I thought it would be nice to talk about memories from when you were younger—not just with each other, but with other people in our family. And that’s easier when you’ve got some visual aids, so…”

           Dean opened the package carefully. It was a photo album.

           “What—we didn’t—we don’t have all that many pictures, buddy.” Dean said gently. “You don’t need this big a—” He opened the album and fell silent.

           “Dean?” Sam asked. He scooted so he could see the pages, and his jaw dropped.

           Every page was crowded with pictures of him and Dean, and Bobby, and Ellen and Jo and Cas and Ash…Sam spotted pictures in college, and pictures with Pastor Jim, pictures with random hunters and survivors…

           “Ben suggested this and I thought it was a great idea,” Gabriel explained. “I went back and took all the pictures that were ever taken of the two of you and anyone you call family and stuck ‘em in. I’m working on the rest of you, but I thought the newlyweds would go first.”

           Dean leaned over and hugged Gabriel and Ben tightly. He was shaking. “You have no idea how much this means,” he said, voice thick.

           “It was no trouble,” Gabriel assured him. “Just promise me you’ll keep taking pictures. That album’s not going to fill itself!”

           Dean laughed. “Promise.” He picked up the strange camera. “Is that what this is for? I’ve never seen one like this.”

           “Nope.” Gabriel snapped, and suddenly everyone had popcorn and candy on their laps and they were all facing a screen hovering just in front of the staircase. “That is a memory projector, patent pending. Kali helped me make it.”

           “A memory projector?”

           Gabriel snapped again, and the camera flew out of Dean’s hands to hover just behind them. “Ben asked me about home movies. I know you guys didn’t make too many, so I made some.”

           Sam blinked. “How?”

           “Short version is I followed you around in the past whenever you did something mildly interesting and ‘filmed’ it. I’ve got some memories of Cas from when he was a fledgling too.”

           Both Cas and Dean’s eyes were wide.

           “And don’t you worry, Cassie,” Gabriel added. “Bal and Anna gave me some more…recent ones.”

           Cas groaned. Dean took his hand. “Come on babe, it’ll be fun. It’s a great idea, Ben. And thanks for your help, Gabriel.”

           “Like I said, it was nothing. Now let’s get this film festival going.” Gabriel paused for effect. “I call it ‘The Profound Bond’.”

           “Balthazar!” Cas tried to launch himself at his brother. “You weren’t supposed to repeat that!”

           But it wasn’t nothing, Sam realized as a clip of him and Dean as small children started to play. Time travelling was difficult for angels, even archangels; and now a tiny version of Cas popped up too. Gabriel had somehow managed to convert his own memories of his fledgling’s true forms to tiny children who looked like their current vessels. And he’d done it all in time for a wedding, refusing to take credit for the immense amount of effort.

           And Sam watched Cas lean his head on Gabriel’s shoulder for a minute, and Dean smile over Cas’ head, and knew that the to-be-weds knew it too.

           It was late when they stopped watching videos (the one where Sam was chased by a goose at a petting zoo, forcing Dean to rescue him by dragging him on top of the Impala’s hood got an annoying amount of laughs), and Sam carried a sleeping Sarah to their room. He crawled in next to her and cradled her in his arms, and for a moment dared to dream of maybe someday…maybe someday they would have a wedding eve. They weren’t ready for that yet—he wasn’t ready for that yet—but for the first time the idea seemed possible. A future with her.

           And with that thought, Sam fell asleep.

           He woke to a gentle touch to his shoulder. Confused, he looked up and gasped, yanking Sarah closer.

           His mother stood over him. “Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

           Sam shifted as Sarah stirred. “No problem,” he whispered. “Are you all here?”

           Mary nodded. “We came as soon as we could. We thought you could all use a hand first thing in the morning.”

           Sarah was awake now. “Hi Mary,” she said sleepily. “We’ll be up in a minute.”

           “What about Dean?” Sam asked.

           “JO GET OUT WHAT THE FUCK?!”

           The outraged shout rang through the Bunker.

           “YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SPEND THE NIGHT WITH YOUR GROOM, EITHER!”

           “FUCK THAT!”

           “Who thought Jo was a good idea?” Sam muttered. Sarah giggled.

           Mary’s eyes danced. “No one.”

           And with that, Destiel’s wedding day began properly.

[jewishaxelwalker]

Axel Walker, as a character, is a real mess. As he was pretty much only written by one person prior to 2011, and that one person was Geoff Johns, it’s no real wonder why. My complaints regarding every book Geoff Johns has ever worked on could fill a book roughly the size of the bible, but that’s neither here nor there right now.

Of all the new villains Johns created during his underwhelming run on the Flash, Axel is the one that’s lasted longest. Hunter Zoloman’s Zoom is a close second, but all bets were off with that guy once Johns was given the go-ahead to bring back Eobard Thawne, who hasn’t gone the hell away since 2009. But despite showing up regularly throughout his Flash run, making an appearance in his Teen Titans run, and just generally existing in Rogues’ Revenge, Blackest Night: The Flash, and the Brightest Day Flash series, Geoff Johns never actually bothered to give this kid a personality. No, really.

Axel has personality traits, most prevalent among them being annoying and young, but seeing as Johns was pushing 30 when he created Axel...the “youth” aspect of the character seemed overly exaggerated. For instance, here’s the panel that gives us the best guess as to how old he is:

“Dropped out of high school a few years ago” is a real shitty timeline. How many years is a few? Did he drop out as a freshman, a junior? Between how damn small he is (DC Encyclopedia cites him as being 5′7″, but I’ll eat my hat if he’s over 5′2″), the rest of the Rogues referring to him as “kid” all the time, and the way he kept being set up as one of Bart’s villains in the short time he was Kid Flash, I feel like we’re supposed to think of Axel as 16 or 17. However, Axel is shown being sent to Iron Heights on multiple occasions. That’s big boy prison, not a juvenile detention facility. So it’s entirely possible he’s 18 or 19. But we will never know.

So okay, back to those character traits. Early on, it was established that in addition to being young and annoying, Axel was also highly inventive, having created a bunch of tricks and gags that James Jesse, his predecessor, hadn’t used. He also utilized modern technology in a way that only someone written by a 30+ year old in 2005 could:

Is this even possible? I know about as much about computers as the next Amish person, that is to say, next to nothing, so I can’t tell you. But it’s possible according to Comic Book Hacking!

Anyway, when he first hit the scene, Axel was working with Blacksmith’s new Rogues. That didn’t last long, and he eventually jumped ship with Mark and Evan, who vouched for him with Len for whatever reason, and then Axel was a true and proper Rogue.

And here’s where it all goes a bit hinky.

During Crossfire (183-188 if you want exact issues), Axel had a glossy sheen of “golly, gee whiz!” about him. He was new to this whole villainy thing, eager to prove himself, and ready and willing to cause some chaos. Chaotic Neutral, if you will. The Identity Crisis tie-in issues (214-217) and Rogue War (220-225) introduced a weird little quirk that hadn’t been present before: sadism, and a need for said sadism to be corrected. 

In 214, Axel obliviously offers to whip up some poison gas to lace the flowers Len wants to send in sympathy to Ralph Dibny. Not knockout gas, or some other harmless gag, poison. We’d already seen that the other Rogues had a habit of insulting Axel in previous issues, but in 216, Len one-punches him to the floor for making fun of Digger when news of his death was reported.

The next panel shows that he is deadass unconscious. 220 gives us another fun panel of weird sadism that comes out of left field:

Now, where did this come from? I like to trace it back to a couple of panels from 188:

-words of advice from Weather Wizard, which are later parroted back in 221:

Again, it has previously been shown that of all the older Rogues, the one Axel is closest to, sees as a sort of mentor even, is Weather Wizard. Which brings me to Rogues’ Revenge.

Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge is possibly my least favorite comic of all time. It’s the one that paved the way for the return of Eobard Thawne (my least favorite villain) and killed off Thad Thawne (my absolute favorite villain)...but it was also the place where my favorite version of Axel was born.

Axel’s part in Rogue War ended when James beat the hell out of him, stole his mask and shoes, and tossed him in a dumpster. Between Rogue War and Rogues’ Revenge, Axel showed up in all of one comic, where he murdered a quartet of college students in the Detective Chimp: Helmet of Fate issue:

It’s one of those comics that really doesn’t make a ton of sense out of Axel’s characterization, what little there was to begin with. When we next see Axel in Rogues’ Revenge #1, he’s put together his own little gang. While his Trickster gang dresses like him, Axel is the only one who actually uses tricks, the other guys use guns. They’re disposed of, and Axel is folded back in with the Rogues. After Len beats him up a bit, of course:

But what else is new, right? After a whole rigamarole about the Rogues going to Gambi’s workshop to give their costumes back, but they find him beat all to hell by a group calling themselves the New Rogues, who’d also kidnapped Len’s father. The Rogues find them. There’s a fight. And then, this:

Followed very closely by this:

And quite literally immediately after, this:

And this is it. This is my favorite version of Axel, born from what might be the shittiest comic of all time. My favorite version of Axel is the underutilized “scared rabbit covering it all up with false bravado” version, which we would now see in everything following this issue, up until the New 52. After Rogues’ Revenge, Axel’s speaking panels were cut to practically nothing. He lurked in the background of scenes, helped out, had a one-liner or two, but did Johns ever again attempt to give him any kind of depth? Nope. All his character development from this point on would come from Scott Kolins:

This page baffled me for the longest time, when it came out. Len has just had Mick kill his father for him. Third panel, Axel’s expression is very neutral, not giving away anything. Fifth panel, peeking out from behind Len, his expression borders on worry, but by panel six right next to it, he’s schooled himself back to neutrality. Then we get this page:

“Us”, Axel says. As if he actually did any murdering of his own. That’s why the past sadistic streak and the Detective Chimp issue never sat well with me. Where did these traits spring from? I know I said earlier that the whole “no conscience” thing might be to blame, but it was never consistent. 

Scroll back up. Look at those facial expressions. Kolins might draw Len craggier than a mountain peak, but his Axel is definitely the most expressive. Look at the page with Mark causing faux-Abra Kadabra to explode. Look at that bottom-right panel. You can literally see him being terrified of the people he’s with, finally understanding exactly what they’re capable of, and realizing that he’s in too deep to get out unharmed. But at the same time…he doesn’t want out, because these guys are all Dad now. He idolizes them and he fears them. So he digs deep for the set of balls that got him into Blacksmith’s circuit, and uses the fact that none of the others have really tried to get to know him to his advantage. Bad jokes, ignorance, bratting it up…hiding his fear. After the page above, Axel spends the rest of Rogues’ Revenge making some of the silliest expressions he ever has in a comic when he’s in focus, but out of focus, he’s all frowns and neutral faces. He does end up aiding in Inertia’s murder...somehow

Seriously, what the hell is he shooting at him, a spring? It’s coiled too loosely to choke him, and though the shot of Thad’s corpse shows it still wrapped around his throat, there’s no bruising there like on his face and body.

The next place Axel, or the Rogues for that matter, show up is in Blackest Night: Flash, another Johns disaster. There, he’s the comedic relief from start to finish. He’s not particularly interested in fighting zombies, so his expressions tend to range from a very fake-looking full-face grin to straight up terror:

And of course, the pit. I’ve got a whole other laundry list of ways comics failed Owen Mercer, but that’s not for here. When the horribly out of character Captain Cold confronts the even more horribly out of character Owen about his actions in trying to bring back his father, it’s bad. But is it “copying every line and forehead wrinkle from Mark’s face onto Axel’s face” bad?

Bam. After Blackest Night, the Rogues would show up only once more before Flashpoint, in a couple of issues of the Brightest Day Flash series. Here, he actually has a few panels of dialogue and is actually shown to be doing things for a change. 

One of his only panels worth mentioning, though, is this one from issue 6:

So...if Axel is a millennial, then that means he was born between 1981 and 1997, making him at most 29 and at least 13 back in 2010. Release this kid’s age, DC. The world wants to know.

So. You’d think a character study on a Trickster would end with a bang, but I don’t really think it can. Axel is honestly a pretty weak character, whose goals and motivations are either bland or entirely nonexistent. We never got a real backstory for him other than a few thoughtboxes in the Flash 1/2 issue, we never got to see how he’d blossom under a competent writer pre-New 52, his entire existence seemed to be one of those famous Johns dropped plots. He feels like he should have a bigger role than he does, and is in fact the legacy Rogue with the least number of pre-New 52 appearances. Which is ironic, because he’s the only legacy Rogue that escaped erasure with the rest of the old universe. His few appearances in the New 52 Flash title, the Rebirth Flash title, and non-canon books like Injustice have given him more of a character than all of his time under Johns, and he’s better off for it. Except for the Injustice universe, where he’s dead.

I guess all I can say is, the kid was interesting enough to deserve better, but it took his old universe being wiped out and replaced for him to get it. Bummer.