#miserable meat sack alive.

[milk-lover]

Trying to exercise more because it’s ✨healthy✨ and I need ✨ endorphins ✨ or some shit so I signed up for a conditioning class and a yoga class, but there’s an hour between the conditioning class and the yoga class, so I thought that I could use that hour that I’m already on campus in workout clothes to go walk a mile on the treadmill which is great! Look at me I’m ✨exercising regularly✨BUT I forgot that when you burn a shit ton of extra calories by suddenly distributing your incredibly sedentary lifestyle with ✨activity✨you need to Eat A Lot More. FUCK! I’m so hungry! I already struggle to feed myself and now I gotta eat MORE?? I’m already sore and tired haven’t I been punished enough? I feel like I should be rewarded for exercising, since I hate it so much, but instead the universe decided that instead my prize is still being hungry after eating my normal sized dinner :(

[yes-i-write-fanfiction]

I feel like messing with tfp soundwave a tech savvy human manages to plant a bug within soundwave’s visors able to hear and see everything around him for at least a couple months. They manage to leak the info to the autobots before the bug is discovered. During that time the autobots are able to plan successful counter attacks and relic retrievals. For Soundwave that is a direct blow to his pride how does he react?

The first emotion is anger. An intense wave of rage that causes Soundwave's spark to coil like a snake and his processor to itch. This pathetic, worthless human dares make a fool out of him? A sack of meat, blood and bones with a brain the size of a bolt? He'll kill them, he'll crush them underneath his pede and erase them from the face of this miserable planet, he'll-!

He calms down. Restrains himself. Hands clenching and unclenching into fists. He's not used to feeling this level of emotion, this level of rage and it leaves him feeling unbalanced.

The second emotion is shame because he should have noticed. He's Soundwave, Megatron's confidante, the decepticon spy-master. Yet he was tricked? Spied on for months. He had known there was a security leak somewhere. The autobots had been too effective, always one step ahead. So Soundwave had looked for the leak. Who or what was the cause of this recent failure? He had been so sure that it was someone else's fault that he hadn't even considered it might be his.

It was Megatron's reaction that hurt the most. That scalding look of disappointment. It was a look Soundwave was familiar with but had never been on the receiving end of. And it hurt. Millions of years of dedicated service, flawless work, all of it ruined. Oh, Megatron still trusted Soundwave but from now on there would always be this lingering doubt in his mind, the memory of failure.

The third emotion is a new feeling of respect, albeit a reluctant one. As much as Soundwave loathes to admit it, he was bested in his own game. This human achieved something that no one else has ever done, something Soundwave had been arrogant enough to think impossible, and that was impressive. They deserve his respect, as one professional to another. That's to say, they are on his radar now. They have proven themselves a problem, a risk to security, and that can't stand. The human better stay hidden because next time Soundwave sees them he's not going to let them walk away alive.

[praublem-child]

Fuck my body. I want a different one. Idec what it looks like, but I hate this sack of meat that barely gets pushed into functioning on a good day.

(This was in my drafts from August? Idk why I didn’t post it but here ig)

I had a college event today that was mandatory for freshman, and I went despite my nonexistent ability to function. I felt like I was dying the whole time, and the scary fucking thing is that idk if I could have actually died or not. My next cardiology appointment isn't until Friday and idk what's safe to do and what's not. Keeping up with the group had my heartrate hitting 188bpm, and it didn't go below 115 a single time during the whole thing.

The "meet your success coordinator" section was right after it hit 188 and I was so nauseous and close to passing out that I don't even remember anything beyond being asked my name and giving it. The next thing I remember after that was me almost falling getting out of my seat and losing the teacher in the halls when I went looking. I was supposed to work out my plan with her for the coming semester today.

Everything after that is kinda a blur. I know I spent it with my best friend and that I lost my phone at some point, but I don't even know when I lost it. I didn't make it to the class picture because I had to stop before I puked and my vision was so blurry and spotty that I couldn't see the ground in front of me. I sent him ahead of me and I don't remember anything again until he was handing me my phone and sitting with me. Then I called my ride to pick me up instead of even attempting to walk back to the parking garage across campus. I laid down once I could move again and managed to get my hr down to 123 before my ride showed up, and the trip home was slightly more coherent.

I threw up once we parked at home, and idfk what came up. I can't remember if I even ate anything other than breakfast and the smarties I was basically forced to eat on the trip home. I know I didn't eat dinner because I remember being nauseous and when my friend went through line for me anyway my hands were shaking too much to hold the fork. I had a few sips of water at some point that made me gag, and I think he might've gotten a few bites of a cupcake into me? That was just after we sat down though and I wasn't thinking clearly enough to remember it.

I got almost shoved into the shower after I got sick, and I passed out on the couch with everything feeling like hell and a migraine that was keeping me from focusing on anything else. I was put for almost four hours, and while I'm feeling a lot better, there's a strong chance that's because my heartrate finally got back down below 100 while I slept and I just finished a sandwich and took some meds. My whole body is still shaking, I still have a mild headache, and everything is still sore, but I'm coherent and not about to collapse. I'm also still jumping between 95-110bpm, and I really hope that that gets back into the 80s range by tommorow, otherwise I'm in for a miserable rest of the week.

Also, fuck anyone who ignored me stumbling and shaking. My friend said I looked like I was dying the entire time and only one person even gave me a second glance, and apparently it was someone he asked about my phone that I almost collapsed in front of. He said he also had to pull me out of the way of others like three times because I couldn't think fast enough to move and they were walking directly toward me without giving enough space to not hit me, let alone my crutch that was keeping me upright.

I doubt he's ever going to see this because he doesn't have tumblr and doesn't even know this blog exists, but like, I'm so fucking sorry. Neither of us wanted to be there and you spent the whole thing babysitting me which probably made it even more miserable for you. Ily, and you're my best friend. Thank you for keeping me alive today.

[accursedkaleeshi]

Depressing Grievous Headcanon: Separatist Control Measures

        So, I think it is canon that the Separatists did A LOT of horrible shit to Grievous in his abominable rebirth to ensure they had as much control over him as possible. Obviously Sidious put a lot of stock into his capacity for extremely efficient murder. They wouldn’t just build an unstoppable rage machine & let him loose in the galaxy. That bitch is expensive & full of secrets. Did I mention he was EXPENSIVE.

        The Separatist control measures in place for General Grievous were all internal. They built him to be unstoppable from the outside. Dooku could see where he was at all times. There was hardware deep in his head casing that transmitted all of his readings to the sith in charge. His location, his bio & mechanical readouts, his comms which could have extended to splicing into his voice modulator & knowing everything he ever said. Yikes. There were signals he gave off & received that were encrypted specifically so that Grievous would not intercept them himself.

(Maybe he tried to break past the firewalls in his own fucking body once & it alerted the goths. I could write an entire fic about this, what is wrong with me.)

        Other things in his head included a number of neural inhibitor chips like directly in the brain meat. There were definitely 2 that he knew for sure were there that, if he were paying attention, he could pinpoint when & why they activated. There were probably more. The inhibitor chips get their own post bc I use them to explain pieces of TCW Grievous that makes him a bitch ass & its fun.

        I have a headcanon that Grievous usually only slept in a vat (bactavat? You know, evil scientist human-sized vats of mysterious fluid & plot devices) at scheduled times. The Separatists did this as another layer of control like when your parents tell you to call them every 2 hours. They used cyborg naptime to plug stuff in, gather readings, & make sure all of the other control methods were operating. Maybe on occasion the Count would take the opportunity to do some Sith Inception shit (like “You know what would be a great idea? Steal the Chancellor” lol). Grievous was actually perfectly capable of sleeping outside of government mandated patch day, but they gaslit him into thinking he shouldn’t.

        I have pointed out that Grievous’ frame was built to maximize damage in combat & not specifically for longevity. He was the face of the Clone Wars to burn bright & fast. He’s a weaponized Apple product in that was overdesigned on purpose to encourage planned obsolescence. He required very specific parts made from one very top secret set of molds & materials. His bacta vessel (that I am still refusing to call gut sack, thanks) & the specific mixture of bacta & nutrients that kept him alive were top tier secret. Grievous was not allowed to know its composition. Even his punk ass doctor droid was not allowed to know its composition. The Separatists did this to try & ensure that if Grievous ever DID manage to go rogue, if all of their control measures failed, that he was in for a slow, miserable death in which there was no honor. (Sidenote: he would definitely be smart enough to adapt but he definitely already wanted to die so, it’s a toss up.)

        Last thing I will bring up: I think there was almost definitely a remote kill switch. Like it’d be dumb as shit to build a killer robot with anger issues & 4 laser swords & NOT put a kill switch in it, right? Palpatine probably had the button. Grievous just assumed there was a kill switch, bc he’s not stupid, so being instantly nuked on the whim of Sidious was usually enough for him to follow orders he might not have wanted to. (Save Nute Gunray’s ass, save Dooku’s ass from the same witch two times, etc.) Grievous also operated under the assumption that if he crossed his sith masters hard enough, not only would they just body him, they would turn their turrets on Kalee.

        Super secret collab headcanons about the kill switch that you get for actually reading all of this (& a kiss bc ilu): The kill switch wasn’t anything sophisticated, just a little charge. Planted right on the back of his heart. If activated it would fuck up all of the pumps in there, shorting everything into overdrive until catastrophic failure. Best case scenario for him: someone kills him while this is happening or something explodes. Otherwise, if he just stopped running it’d take like 5 to 10 minutes for his brain to starve & die. He’d have enough time be fully aware that Sidious didn’t even have the decency to grant him a swift death & be pissed before loss of functions.

@37-battle-droids, my cohort at Sad Star Wars Dudes University, suggested a hypothetical plot point wherein Wat Tambor may have been so proud of his work on Grievous that he sabotaged the kill switch. Which, in the context of the Battle of Coruscant, would be hilarious if Grievous decided “What if I just killed this old guy in front of his grand republic army” & Palpatine lowkey frantically clicking a button like, “shitshitshit”.

[welcometoels]

Session Twelve - Monthend

Among the entrails of a giant lizard creature and an undead Dragonborn, the victorious party stands.  The skies have cleared, and off to the south, a huge tower stands - Monthend.

This is a matter for tomorrow, though, since cleaner-turned-publican-turned-mayor Tiatha Rowe is standing in the doorway of the Jaunty Skinner, furious about the gore that slicks her entryway.  She fetches buckets, mops and brooms, and gets Normal Leg Barty on the case.

Oddsock is discomforted by the idea of cleaning and hides himself behind some barrels, but Julius mucks in with gusto, using his druidic magic to help sluice the worst of the detritus away from the pub.

Once everything and everyone is looking cleaner, Tiatha locks the pub doors, fetches all the bedding from upstairs, and invites everyone to enjoy ale and food on the house.  Barty fetches out a roasted two-faced pig from the back, along with some grilled fish for Julius.

A squeak is heard from Oddsock’s pack, and beside him appears two barrels, both marked in Infernal with their names - Elvish Juice and Jackies’ Hammer.  Accompanying them is a letter - also in Infernal - and a little bag of treats.  Oddsock wolfs down the treats before reading the letter, which is just as well, since that is what the letter instructs him to do.

The treats taste of Oddsock’s favourite meats - a mixture of imp and beholder flesh - barbecued and mixed with a variety of warm spices.  He feels a pleasant burn in his throat, which gives way to a gentle tingle of power.

Barty, spotting the barrels, fetches them over to the bar and taps them.  The sheer number of revellers proves to be a problem, however - the pub is short three clean mugs.

X produces her bejewelled Cup of Sune, and Oddsock his iron dog bowl.  Talion, after a moment, remembers the simple wooden cup in his pack, and produces it.

Barty - a man of the world who has seen many a magical thing - feels sure he recognises the cup, and asks for one of the party’s potions.  Filling the cup, he passes it to the clearly wounded Freginald.  Supping it down, the burly fighter reports that the potion seems to be at full potency.  Furthermore, he can sip what he needs from the potion, and leave the rest for another person.

At this time, what he needs is the whole lot, so he chugs it down before getting an ale.

Oddsock, meanwhile, has a chew on his dragon toy Tim, and requests an audience with his patron in his domain, rather than just at the edge of unreality.  It’s his first time in his patron’s lair, and he finds it rather comfortable - a small bar with a single beer pump dominates one wall, while the rest of the cosy space is bedecked with cushions and low tables, with howling dog head lanterns on the walls, spitting balls of fire from their mouths.

The two enjoy a nice chat over a fresh IPA, while Oddsock quizzes the black-robed figure about various things - mostly about the meanings of terms like “core competencies” and “vertical integration”.  The patron is unsure, and advises him to seek out a more evil being for these answers.

Back in regular reality, Julius carves a couple of his pebbles - one in the likeness of Barty, and the other as he imagines X’s goddess Sune.  Both turn out quite well, and he decides to offer them up as parting gifts in the morning.

Talion, meanwhile, begins a new composition - a stirring number that details the events from his arrival in Dogwood to the final defeat of Slathiel.  Even at these early stages, it is a fine song, and one that will doubtless get even better with successive renditions.

Kadis sits apart from the fun, contemplating the gear that was planted in his hand by mysterious forces.  It is made from a smooth material, with a suggestion of unknown magics.  In this respect, it is just like the egg that hangs next to his idol, but he feels no connection to it.

The drinking and eating continues with much joyous revelry, until the air is filled with the sound of steam-powered hooting.  Aberron - who had secreted himself in a corner with the remains of his brass owl Dominique - holds aloft his repaired companion, who spreads her wings in celebration.

The night draws on and the food and ale dwindles until nothing remains but sleep.  Oddsock gets the best place for himself - right by the hearth, in a pile of racoons.

The party has strange dreams of a creepy house filled with unknowable horrors, though Kadis finds that his usual writhing tentacles are confined behind a locked door.

After a moment, he finds himself on the other side of that door.  Before him is a single, glowing egg.  A dark tentacle slinks up and around it, clutching it tighter and tighter until the shell breaks.

Then, he sees a face.  Though it is older by some margin than the last time he saw it, it is definitely his own, with the strip of material bound around his eyes.

After a couple of minutes, he comes to a realisation:

He is no longer asleep.

As he reaches up to touch his face, his vision blurs and skips, until he can see himself from an elevation, lying on the inn floor with his friends.

Taking a moment to gain his bearings, he begins to move to where he believes the vision is coming from.  Understandably disoriented, he stumbles over Julius, who awakes with a hiss and a grumble.

Assisting each other, the two find the source of the visions - a tiny little floating green ball with a single eye in the middle, and four miniscule flickering tentacles.

Based on their encounter at Mansion de Mortesque, Julius identifies it as a beholder - probably a newborn, and much more alive than the one they fought before.

Julius gives Kadis a once-over, and finds nothing new or different about him that would explain his connection to the creature.  He does, however, notice that the mysterious idol is gone, and shards of it are across the monk’s chest.  The only thing that remains on Kadis’ necklace is the egg that was once a black-green lantern.

Feeling the bond with this creature, Kadis holds out his hand and beckons it to him.  It floats warily over, before nestling into his palm and purring gently.  Julius takes copious notes, and observes that the beholder’s connection to Kadis is similar to his own link with the fey weasel Rupert - who, upon hearing his name, pops up from under Julius’ potato sack robe, squeaking curiously.

By now, the rest of the party has awoken.  After a series of disgruntled borks, Oddsock accepts the new arrival, though Talion remains unimpressed.  The baby beholder, a little overwhelmed, tucks itself into Kadis’ clothes, peeking out with its little bulbous eye.

Now that the sun has risen, Tiatha unlocks the doors and Barty brings out the breakfast - porridge, and eggs in various styles from a farm in the north.  Oddsock tucks in to the eggs, and Julius enjoys the porridge, though Kadis and Talion are rather more wary.

After breakfast, Julius hands over his carved pebbles to their intended recipients.  Barty is moved almost to tears by the gift, but he keeps his cheeks dry through the sheer power of swarthiness.  X is also delighted, though she does mistake the woman in the carving for Em.  In either case, she is enchanted.

And so, the time comes for departures.  Aberron and Freginald decide to stay in Dogwood to pursue their new trades of artificery and tattoo artistry respectively.  38/12 also opts to stick around for a while to assist Aberron with his research into... whatever 38/12 is.

X and Gyder, unsurprisingly, decide to move on, having unfinished business elsewhere.  Barty also chooses to leave, to return home to his Polly - the most beautiful bird there ever was.  To fill his post at the Skinner, Tiatha recruits Dandy Bianco, former castle guard and horse testicle enthusiast.

Also leaving town today, though with very little fondness, is Eno Greysect.  Tired of his home being pissed upon and his nose being punched upon, he hangs up a sign reading “God Does Not Live Here” and strides miserably south.

Oddsock, naturally, changes the first word to “Dog” as he trots over to bid farewell to the Jackies.  His firm raccoon friends have committed themselves to keepings Oddsock’s beers brewing, and will share the profits next time he visits.  They also ask that he spreads the word of Dogwood to the Monthenders, so they they can grow the town and eventually start a proper Chamber of Commerce.

Oddsock agrees, and wonders how long it will be before the Jackies become mayors of the town.  Jackie Face mulls this over with a peculiar look upon his face while Oddsock exits cheerfully, a four pack of new raccoon-made health potions in his pack to share with the party.

Having bid farewell to their new friends, the party leaves town.  Then, after a moment, they return, having forgotten that they have two horses.  Then they leave town.

On the way to Monthend, a couple of things break up the journey.  Firstly, as evening draws in, the team arrives at the southern farm - the journey being much quicker with horses and without displacer beasts.

As they arrive, they see a familiar, unconscious Dwarf being loaded into a wagon, and being shuttled off to Monthend.  Apparently, last night, an undead Dragonborn burst out of the ground, shouting about a monk that had stolen his lantern, startling former trading post manager Grum Swabspud half to death.

The party feigns ignorance as they join the farmers for some simple food (no porridge) and some beds for the night.

Shortly after departing in the morning, they encounter a group of mounted High Elves, on their way to investigate the town that had suddenly appeared in the woods around (and owned by) Monthend.  Embracing the opportunity to quiz some of the new town’s residents, they join the group on the road to Monthend.

Many questions follow, most of which are answered by another stirring rendition of Talion’s new song.  The Elven guards vow to pass on the information - especially the addition details regarding new trading opportunities with several individuals named Jackie.

At the gates of Monthend, a miserable little horse administrator takes down the details of their steeds so they they can be kept in the stables until they leave.  When asked for the names of their horses, the team freezes - they never named them.  Fortunately, Oddsock uses his broken knowledge of Domestic Animal to speak to them and ask them.

Turns out they’re both called Horse.  Who would’ve thought?

After receiving a receipt made out to group leader Mr O Sock, the adventurers find themselves in the luxurious, high-end sprawl of Els’ unofficial capital, with nothing on their schedule.  This can mean only one thing...

Shopping!

Over the next couple of hours they put some serious damage into their communal funds.  Kadis purchases a new cloth to cover his eyes - one that can be carefully adapted to secrete an infant beholder, with a little slit for it to peek out.  Julius also opts for clothes, but something in a thicker hide than his current clobber.

Talion and Oddsock have their sights set on something more magical.  The dog goes sniffing around for magic ink, to transfer some Necromantic cantrips from the Mortesque books to his magical codex, while Talion attempts to chat with girl at the counter - a surly High Elf of no more than 90 years, with a tag that reads “Hello!  My Name Is NUNYA”

His conversational gambits are rebuffed, so he tries a little magical charm.  Suddenly, a crystal on the counter flashes with a lightning bolt that he barely avoids, and the girl taps a little sign on the counter which says “Do Not Charm The Staff”

Chastened, he browses the shelves an finds a copper bracelet within his price range, which slightly improves his weak constitution.  The High Elf rings up the sale with the same sullen disposition, tapping the sign reading “Do Not Bother The Staff” when Oddsock demands to speak to their raccoon.

Threats to speak to a supervisor follow, and the girl taps her Supervisor badge, and then a sign simply reading “No”.  The two leave the shop under a cloud, but take their revenge in their signature ways:  Talion playing a vicious polemic about poor customer service upon his lyre, while Oddsock pisses in the doorway.

On their way to rejoin the others, Kadis and Julius encounter a harried Tabby Tabaxi trying to wrangle two kitten-aged Persians out of the gutter where they’d found a rat, whilst also pushing a third kitten in a pram.  Julius goes over to introduce himself and offer assistance, but the Tabby panics and ushers her young charges away.

The group as a whole is a little put out by their experiences in Monthend, but a little cheer follows as a crow-like Kenku rounds the corner, shouting about happy hour at The Wayward Alchemist.  He hands the group some flyers filled with food and drink offers, and they notice a sign around his neck reading “I Repeat Your Message For One Gold A Day.”

Julius and Talion try to engage him in conversation, but all he does is repeat what they say back at them.  Realising what is going on, Talion pens a short missive, hands the Kenku a gold coin, and reads aloud:

New trade routes have opened up to Dogwood!  Come and visit the best new town in Els!

The Kenku pauses, then repeats it word for word, before offering them a chance to change the message if needed.  Most of the party members are satisfied, but one adds “Presented By Oddsock” to the message before accepting the final draft.

The Kenku waddles on, alternating between his new Dogwood message and the one for The Wayward Alchemist.

Since they are now at a loose end, and since the position of the sun as it descends behind a clock tower suggests that it is now happy hour, the party decides to check out this tavern.

The handy map on the back of the flyer leads them out of the well-heeled streets of central Monthend, and into the less salubrious (though still adequately-heeled) outskirts.

Oddsock takes a minor detour after spotting a church of Commerce on the mini-map, and after sullying their windows with magically hurled dog eggs, soiling the curtains and placing anti-capitalist propaganda runes on the steps, he skips cheerfully along to join the rest of the crew.

The Wayward Alchemist is a large, stone building, with a large, stone doorman.  Julius introduces himself, and the Golem returns the greeting, indicating the name carved into his chest:  Stopdick.  He opens the door for the party, and they enter.

The interior is bustling with customers enjoying two-for-one Jinn & Tonics, and waiting staff in very little clothing.  Kadis and Oddsock are slightly overwhelmed, but Julius takes in every detail with great clarity, from the fancy High Elf at the bar, to the stern Tiefling standing before a door at the back, next to a wide flight of stairs leading up.

As Julius heads off to introduce himself to the Tiefling - having never met one before - Talion regards the place with a lesser eye for the details, but a greater understanding.  With liquor in the front, and probably poker in the back, plus several scantily clad servers, he does the mental arithmetic and comes up with the most likely answer: brothel.  With a sly smile, he heads for the bar.

As he does, Julius engages in conversation with the Tiefling, whose name is Tabitha.  He boldly asks what she is, and she informs him that she is a bar manager, which Julius takes questionably accurate note of.  She asks if he plays cards, and, accurately judging the confusion on his little otter face, guides him gently towards the safety of the bar.

Down at the other end, Talion tries to gain the attention of a barman, but instead attracts the High Elf, who introduces himself as Herrington.  Pointing to the dragon scale on Talion’s necklace, he sidles in close and tells him that he and his friends are hunters too, and may have taken down a dragon or two themselves.

Unable to stop himself, Talion prepares to take a swing at Herrington, and is stopped at the last moment by a pressure on his elbow.  Beside and somewhat below him stands a very glamourous Halfling carrying a bottle of aged Goodberry wine on a tray.  She tugs at his arm insistently, and guides him back over to his friends, and then over to a nice quiet table at the back.

She introduces herself as Zanthia, and drops off the bottle on the table, along with four glasses.  She says that they are on the house - better than the watered down Happy Hour swill - and that she has a lot to talk to them about after her performance..

Before they can ask any questions, they are interrupted by a drunken hand across Zanthia’s buttocks.  A leering customer demands that she go and fetch him another drink - which, with a barely perceptible flash of something across her eyes, she does.

She then takes to the small stage at the far end of the bar.  Throughout the room, the candles dim, save for those that illuminate her.  Fetching up a saxophone from beside the stage, she performs a slow, haunting number - one which Talion finds strangely familiar.

The tempo has been slightly adjusted, and the key is different, but there is no mistaking it - The Ballad of Araniel: his signature composition.

Once the applause has died down, Zanthia returns to the table and invites the group to join her upstairs for a private conversation.  She knows who they all are, and needs their assistance.

The party remains silent - a silence only broken by the lecherous customer behind, as he snores face down into his drink.

[boarix]

2020 Creator Wrap

2020 Creator Wrap: Favorite Works

I was tagged by @incognito-insomniac ! Thank you, daaarling! You’re a peach😊

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought to the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

Whew! I’m gonna have to do a combo as I only managed to eke out three chapters of Wraith in the Ruins last year.

I will tag @lookbluesoup @theartofblossoming @its-sixxers @thenightmotherwrites @bluegrasskitty @mayihavethisdanse @daddyfuckinlonglegs @makkuromurasaki @oberlan @monsterboynyx @marvilus73 @of-devils-and-drawings @vaultgirl2077 @trekkie-in-space @so-i-did-this-thing @ghoulja @kimbureh @nuclearmu5hroom and literally anyone who reads this and wants to play. @ me an’ everything! As always, no obligation (and I apologize if you’ve been tagged already or if being tagged stresses you out. If the later, please let me know. I won’t be offended I promise. I care ‘bout ya!)  =^..^=

….

I posted my third Wandering Gardens piece, EARTHA early in the year. I’m pretty happy with the original but it can be difficult to find the right lighting for taking pictures. All my drawings are traditional and I used a combination of pencil, colored pencil, glitter pen and fine-point Sharpie for EARTHA.

….

In April I posted chapter 18 of Wraith in the Ruins, Lighthouse:

Harkness yawned and waved at her by way of greeting. He was sitting in an office chair with his feet up on the desk of one of the former Flynn brothers. “Those are some fancy duds there, General Dragon-Lady.”

She removed the helm and wrinkled her nose at him, “Nice. You two just get here?”

“Nope.” Groaning, he stood, stretched and removed a pot of steaming water from a hotplate, “We headed out from Goodneighbor as soon as I got back. Sun called ferals to him the entire way; it was pretty surreal.” He waved a mug at her, “Tea?”

“Actually, yes, thanks.” She accepted the mug and idly played with the steeper. “You said he called to them?”

“Not very many and not out loud. He says that when you’re done, he will lead them to the Glowing Sea.”

“Like a Pied Piper, huh?”

“I actually think I know that reference.”

“As do I. And I approve.”

Sun of Atom swept into the room with a floating grace that left Wraith green with envy. Almost immediately the prickling sensation returned and she outwardly flinched away from the ghoul.

“Apologies, Mother’s Chosen One; I’ll turn down my intensity.” He smiled warmly at her, “It is extremely gratifying to learn that you are so receptive. Perhaps this training will go swiftly and we each can return to our chosen paths.”

….

In August I posted chapter 19, Harbinger:

“Tch,” They waved a hand dismissingly, “their light has returned to Atom. The meat sack is unimportant. Besides, it’s hot and wet out here and I have a particular loathing for swamp ass.”

As Harkness did his best to mend himself he could feel the ghoul watching him. It annoyed the shit out of him, “What makes you think I’m going to answer any of your fucking…”

“Did you ever ask him?” Their lip curled in amusement, “Sun. Did you ever ask him about your light? Or, did you assume that you must have one. After all you are alive, right?” Their voice deepened and came as the lowest of whispers, “Are you alive, Harkness?”

“I will not play, Infamy.” His eyes mirrored the iron in his voice.

“You’ll play. After all, you’ve curiosity of your own to quench.” They brought a hand up under their chin, propped their arm on a knee and bat their eyes at him, “Don’t you want to know how I knew where you were? Hmmm? Don’t you want to know ‘why now’?”

“No. I figure… you heard Sunny… or one of you did. Why are you so interested in Wraith? What is she the Harbinger of?”

They made an indelicate noise and waved a hand dismissively, “It’s not her I’m interested in any longer. I imagine she was the Harbinger of Death for Sun of Atom…”

“NO!” Furious, Harkness pound his fist on the ground, “You fucking… uncaring monster! It can’t be as simple…”

“Wraith is up to Atom. Whether or not she’s ‘The Harbinger’ is up to the Mother of the Fog and I don’t pretend to know their Holy Plan. And I’d be careful thrashing about and opening your wounds, brother; you’ve only got so much of that red fluid left.”

“Red fluid?! It’s blood, you fuck! I am alive and I have blood!”

….

In late November I posted chapter 20, Call My Name:

Tipped on its side, the trailer’s interior was narrow but devoid of monsters. Wraith gently lay Deacon down atop the scattered shipping tubs and glanced around for an additional light source to supplement her Pip-Boy, “Keep pressure on it, I’m going to hop back and grab some of those lanterns…” Once she returned she pulled shut the truck’s cargo door and got out her knife. However, when she turned back to Deacon he was nowhere to be seen. “Did you just… are you using a Stealth Boy?!”

“I don’t want you t’ cut my jeans!”

Blinking rapidly, she looked down at her combat knife and then back up to where his voice came from, “Deacon… you might bleed out! I’ll make you new pants!”

“Imma try to get out… OW! Huuurrgn… of them…” Failing, he phased back into view with a miserable expression on his face.

“There’s nothing wrong with showing a little leg. Or… a lot… damn, Deacon.” She made an attempt to school the worry from her face as she worked, “Looks like you’ll need to wear skirts for a while.”

“I have the calves for it.”

She couldn’t disagree, “Actually, you have better legs then me. Turn a little more on your side…”

“Why don’t you like the way you look? I think you’re pretty.”

“Well, I think you’re pretty too, Deacon. So I’ll throw that right back at you; why do you want to change your face again? Seems a more… dramatic solution than sticking on a false mustache. What’s th’ matter? Can’t grow facial hair?”

….

On the same day I posted the fourth of my Wandering Gardens, HaRDy (with Lanny and Leonard the radstag). This was the first time I used actual wasteland fauna: fever blossom, blight, glowing mushrooms, the giant lichen (non-harvestable) found near the Abandoned Shack/Federal Supply Cache 84NE, brain fungus, and wild gourd/ash blossom. This piece took me months to do and I’m pretty happy with the level of detail I was able to achieve. I strongly encourage you to zoom in on any of my robot pieces. Also, I was listening to the Little Shop of Horrors soundtrack around the time I was working on this so I threw in a Mean Green tagalong.

Thanks again for the tag @incognito-insomniac! =^..^=

[believerindaydreams]

me: oh I guess I'm doing that Survival fanfic I always wanted to do

Me: sweet

Meat's soft. Soft, with blood in.

Others don't think that's strange, they're hungry so they're eating. I'm hungry, but this seems wrong.

She pushes me towards the body, cuts into the flank. Strips come away soft amd juicy, my mouth waters.

We had a hard fight downing this one. He had to shoot, he doesn't do that so much now. Doesn't need to with blood-sight. We can take things other ways now.

Sun's hot. Gets in my eyes funny, with these glasses.

Glass. Yes.

That seems funny, they'll just block my blood-sight. I shake my head, trying to get them off.

It's hard, until I lie down and catch them on a rib spur; then they come away and I feel light, the sun's brighter than ever.

He doesn't like it, though. He bites them in his teeth, pokes them at my face. I move away; he growls in his throat.

She nuzzles him, takes the things- she's clever in ways we aren't, always poking and prodding with her hands. Now she knocks over sour drink on the glass, licks them clean.

Everything is much clearer when she puts them back on me.

He grunts, presses happily against me. He's warm and protective, makes sure we're safe. Loved.

But the meat, there's still something wrong there. I whimper, push it away.

She doesn't understand, tries to encourage me by eating herself; but he can see there's no moving me. He coughs a few times.

"You're gonna have to say what's wrong."

"I'm not eating human flesh!"

He squeals in his throat, drags her away from the meat. She looks puzzled at him, a tender bit dangling from her mouth.

Words don't seem to matter so much now I've said them. I find a dog steak in a pouch and settle down to gnaw it.

*****

Silly boys. Silly, silly boys, making a fuss about nothing.

They aren't tired and dead-looking any more, they're healthy and sleep soundly. Long still favors one arm, Short is healing from the fight I had with him, but I can see them recovering every day.

We'll fight anything that fights back, the blood-sight likes it. I think it knows we need it; and it needs us, to catch for it. We eat the meat, it takes the deaths.

It doesn't like the words, though. The words are like the ice on the water, you have to keep running or you'll find out what's underneath. I want it to stay cold, always.

The silly boys, they want to find out. I guess they will. When they find a scent, they track it home.

But I can try to help them be strong enough to survive it.

*****

Christine

There really isn't anything worth staying for, at this point.

What's left of Rivet City isn't worth speaking of, and Nacochtank had been flattened comprehensively even before a giant robot collapsed on top of it. The survivors- there had been more than she'd expected, mostly due to a good evacuation program having been carried out at the first sign of Liberty Prime- have scattered, mostly to the Temple of the Union. There's a Followers tent there now, according to Three Dog, and that one she suspects won't be going anywhere.

Some of the others went to Megaton, a few hardy survivors to Point Lookout. They took what they could with them; the site has been looted bare down to scrap metal.

She's moved into a subway car in the Anacostia station, ready to bring her to the Pacific Flyer whenever she's ready.

She isn't ready. For the first time in her life she is directionless, weightless; and the course of the conflict so eagerly reported on radio is one in which she takes only academic interest. They'll find her if they want her.

Perhaps she'll kill them if they do, and move on; waiting here forever, a ghost haunting its own corpse.

She shakes the thought away, and leaves the car's tranquil safety for one more midnight patrol. Just to be on the safe side.

It's good she does. The trio she finds curled up near the old Mutant camp are cold, shivering miserably in the ocean winds.

"Gannon? Arcade Gannon?"

He twitches at his name, then tries to bite her. She leaps back, startled.

"You remember me. Christine Royce. I know you, I know Boone. We're friends."

She keeps her tone even, unhurried, as though she's talking to an animal. He seems to respond to that, moving towards her in the cautious crouch-sneak that any Mojave fighter could do in their sleep, but now unpleasantly reminds her of a creature from the Divide. They hadn't seemed human any longer either.

"I have a fire at my camp. Clean water, food. Would you follow me, do you know how?"

He pauses. Shakes the others awake, with hands instead of teeth; so he looks nearly normal doing it.

Christine repeats her offer, patiently and slowly. To her surprise, it's Boone who replies.

"Okay. They're gonna need help."

"What kind of help?"

"Got deeper into the blood-sight than I did. Gonna take time for them to come out."

He fumbles in a pocket, pulls out a cracked and badly abused pair of sunglasses. She doesn't ask why he wants them at night.

Veronica would have asked.

They get back to the subway car, more quickly than she would have expected- they're in good shape, whatever else is happening to them- and she arranges a nest of subway cushions for them. At least it's warm down here.

They're all three unexpectedly thirsty, and make inroads on her purified water that won't be easy to replace, but never mind. Food's accepted too. Boone whacks Arcade with a spoon when the latter tries eating mirelurk cake with his fingers; he looks confused for a moment, then accepts and uses the utensil.

"You better all remember that shitting is an outdoor sport," Christine mutters.

Carla makes an indignant sound. "I'm from a vault."

If not for certain prior experiences, she would have no patience with this whatsoever; but seeing as she has, the knowledge that they retain some language makes her change her mindset, looking for communication instead of threats. By that metric, what she's witnessing is almost unsettling; there are significant looks, grimaces, no end of small touches. If she hadn't regained her voice, had been forced to interact with Veronica in other ways, it might have turned out like this.

Terrific. Boone's apparently figured out how to spread his morose lack of speech; she can only hope it isn't contagious.

"You three going to be all right there for the night?"

Nobody says anything.

"Okay. I'm going to sleep now."

The situation probably should keep her awake, but she's too old a campaigner for that.

***

When she wakes up again, it's later than she would normally have slept, and Arcade has stolen her best frying pan for mutfruit pancakes.

"Good morning. I'm sorry if we're dipping into your supplies too much, but we had a look around and you seemed to be the only source of supply."

"You'd be correct about that. Also- using words now, I see?"

Arcade flips a pancake onto a plate, starts oiling the pan for another. "Coming out of- call it a fugue state. We'd all been through a bit too much, too many nightmares piled on too fast. Something had to give for a bit, at least temporarily."

"Doesn't seem to have affected you much."

He cracks a smile. "I was getting to miss linguistics. Not that there's much need or opportunity for it while travelling through a barren hellscape whose main feature of interest is roving Deathclaws."

There's a knock on the door; it turns out to be Carla, with an armful of sack.

"We're in luck. Nobody did touch the safe I buried, score one for me distrusting tents as storage- here, catch. It's your doctoral thesis."

Arcade fumbles it, but picks up the book and hugs it affectionately. "You're a marvel, Carla."

"And Boone's beret- not the one I made, just the generic one the NCR gave him. Happily-" she pulls something heavy out of the sack. "I can make a new one with my sewing machine, if I can get some decent material. And we have some caps."

"I hope it's a lot of them," Christine says, feeling slightly odd that she's delivering good news for once. "Manny and your daughter are at Point Outlook, you can still get there by riverboat."

Carla screams ecstatically and runs out.

"Ah. Okay."

"Boone's trying to salvage what happened to his guns after a lot of shooting but forgetting to repair them. Hearing Daisy's alive may be the only piece of news capable of clearing that funk- do you want your pancakes crispy or plump?"

"Make it half and half."

It hadn't occurred to her that she might be as broken in her own way, as they had been in theirs; but when Arcade casually asks that afternoon if she'd care to accompany them to Point Lookout, she says yes.

Veronica, she thinks, would want her to carry on.

And look after this terribly accident-prone Follower.

[austinpanda]

Dad Letter 022121

21 February, 2021

Dear Dad--

The past week was mostly filled with concern about everyone without power in Texas (and, I believe, Oklahoma too) and how awful that made life at home! I’ll get to that in a bit. I hope you and Elaine are warm and have power and haven’t had any interruption to your water service or burst pipes or any other such excitement.

The most interesting thing that happened to me personally last week was a song. Zach, being a young person, carries his phone around and plays music from it all the time. And Zach’s musical tastes don’t have a lot of overlap with my musical tastes. A lot of what he listens to could best be described as experimental. But he listened to this one song just enough that it lodged in my brain and I began listening to it on my own. The song is While You Were Sleeping by a guy named Elvis Perkins. And the song might not seem like much at first; it’s kind of odd, and he sings this weird “Uh-OH,” part a few times, just to have a couple of notes to end a phrase. But the meat of the song is really catchy and it became an earworm, and now I listen to it a lot.

Then Zach told me about the guy who wrote and sang it, Elvis Perkins. Whenever I see the name “Perkins,” I think of Anthony Perkins from Psycho, and sure enough, that’s his dad. Anthony Perkins, whose first few relationships were with male movie stars like Tab Hunter (surprise), eventually did the nasty with Victoria Principal, his first experience with a female, at the age of 39. This is all on Anthony Perkins’ Wikipedia page. After that, I suppose he sort of converted to the Church of the Vajayjay, and he found this female photographer and actress named Berry, and they got married. They had two sons, Oz and Elvis. Anthony Perkins later died from AIDS-related pneumonia, and I couldn’t believe what happened to wife Berry Perkins, the mother of his boys; she died on 9/11. She was in the first plane that hit the World Trade Center.

So now, every time I listen to the song, which got me started on all this, by way of being a kick-ass song, I think of this singer and his Psycho dad and his 9/11 mom and appreciate the song even more.

But! As I mentioned, most of the last week was spent fretting about all my friends to the south. Stacy, and everyone else I know who doesn’t live here in Maine, lost power about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning last Monday. No biggie in itself, except it stayed off, and because it was so cold outside, it quickly became cold inside. I went through this with Zach after we’d lived here for a couple of months; we lost power for a couple of days during a cold snap in November, and we got to learn the special joy of that kind of power outage: Do we die from hypothermia, since it’s 40 degrees inside, or do we die from boredom, because there’s still no power? After a while, Austin decided to increase the degree of difficulty, by having enough of its water treatment facilities go offline that the water was no longer safe to drink.

Not that everyone even had access to the undrinkable water! So many pipes burst, that the fire department couldn’t respond to all the emergency calls to shut off water. I’ve read that maintenance guys are noticing some pipes didn’t just burst, they exploded. They’re finding shards of pipe nearby, flung outward by the force of the burst. Texas just wasn’t ready. I read elsewhere that the whole of north Texas has about 40 snow plows in it, about as many as every neighborhood has in a place like Chicago. So I get on the internet and all my friends are cold, they’re all miserable, they can’t sleep, and half of them have flooding to deal with. They can’t reach their landlords or property managers. Cell service begins dropping. I have to wonder if everyone in Texas with a fish tank didn’t just lose all their fish. Stacy had to keep her pet snake alive by wearing it in a cloth sack around her neck.

Took about four days, but by now, everyone I know seems to have power again. And they have internet again, but they still have to boil their water. That’s such utter bullshit. Zach and I had to do that for a while in Austin; there was some issue with sediment, and for a week, all the tap water in the city was no longer potable. To have to deal with that on top of having no electricity, and in the freezing cold...I would have given up and fled town to the nearest hotel that wasn’t gouging the guests too badly, and just put the whole thing on a credit card. I just wonder how far I’d have had to drive. Probably have to leave the state. And now all the finger-pointing begins, it’ll be investigated, ERCOT will get a lot of attention, and maybe stuff will change, maybe not.

Then I read an article that pointed out it’s not that hard producing electricity in extremely cold weather. The article said that people in Alaska, and Russia, and Maine do it every day. It occurs to me that we haven’t lost power at all this winter, and I’m very, very grateful. We also haven’t had much snow this winter, which, ironically, pisses me off. All the snow we’re not getting seems to have been delivered to Texas, by mistake. We’re ready for the snow here; I WANT the snow. I just looked at the Washington Post photo essay about it, and it had pictures of the HEB grocery store where I used to buy my groceries. The photo was taken from a nearby hillside that featured a homeless camp covered with snow. I’ll include it with this letter.

This week I think I’m going to spend a little time planning on things I’d like to do once the plague is over. For the moment, I still don’t know when I’ll be able to get vaccinated, but it occurs to me that we won’t have to wear masks outdoors forever, and that’ll be a glorious day, when we’ve finally defeated Covid-19, and we can have Chinese buffet restaurants again. Aside from those, and movie theaters, and book stores, I’m most looking forward to being able to visit friends again. It’s terrible watching a friendship begin to grow malnourished because it can only happen with text messages. On the plus side, the number of new Covid cases here in Maine, which had been approaching 1,000 per day, is now lots closer to 100 per day. I suppose something must be working! Perhaps now the vaccine will be more available and I can sign up for it soon.

In the meantime, I’m watching a movie called The Midnight Sky in installments. Some movies, even when they’re good, simply can’t hold my attention that long, and I can only watch them a few scenes at a time. I’m doing that with this movie. And it’s interesting so far; George Clooney is a scientist with a terminal disease, working in an Arctic research station. And there’s a nuclear war, and everyone at the research station leaves to be with their families, but George Clooney stays behind because (a) he’s dying anyway, and (b) he hasn’t anyone to return to. After a couple of days he discovers a little girl stayed behind when everyone else left, and now he’s got to take care of her. (Having a child in your movie is a treacherous thing, but the potential negative effects of this one are ameliorated somewhat by the fact that she doesn’t speak.) Meanwhile, there’s a spaceship returning to earth from deep space, (This is a science fiction movie!) and they’re wondering why the hell they can’t raise anyone on earth by radio. I’m about halfway through the movie now. Based on the movie’s tone, I don’t think George Clooney is going to find a miracle cure for whatever’s ailing him, but I am curious to see what happens to the little mute girl. Will advise!

I really hope you’re staying safe and warm, and have plenty of water and electricity! I’m about to get my day started, watch another ten minutes of movie, and do laundry. All my love to you both!

[dlkardenal]

After the Gods - Chapter 1.

1.

A relic from the past

Asgeir heard the first thud well before the fog crept in, yet he chose to disregard it. He thought it superstition, one of the many shadows plagueing every soul since the serpent’s rise. There was no reason for him to abandon this field so ripe with the remains of a bloody battle. Shattered spears, torn shields and dented blades lay everywhere Asgeir could see, some of which could still fetch him a day’s rations in the Nook. He couldn’t understand why people clung to these rusted mementos, but they did. They sought some salvation from the blunt axes and bent bows, a spark of hope hiding withing these weapons. A chance to fight the terrors that befell humanity.

The next thud was louder and more clear, and when Asgeir raised his head, the blood froze in his veins. The horrid figure emerged from the milky mist and trampled on several half-eaten corpses while turning its blind sockets towards Asgeir’s racing heart. It was larger then the tales told, standing almost thrice his height and many times his weight. The fog swirled around it and froze into solid, tinkling gems that covered its entire arm, from thumbs to shoulders.

There was no hiding now—the jotun saw him. Or rather sensed that he didn’t belong there, between the lifeless cadavers of once mighty warriors and heroes. He was way too alive for that. Asgeir lept back just before the colossal fist smashed down where he previously stood, shredding a wooden shield to pieces and flinging pieces of bone to all directions. Nobody knew what drove the children of Ymir into such a frenzy, but people told about them in every hideaway. Life slipped from them the moment the Gjal sounded, and so did the tolerance for any living thing. They smashed apart villages, uprooted glades and massacred anything that crossed them.

Asgeir rolled to the side, avoiding the massive foot crushing him like a bug and looked around for a weapon. There was nothing that could save him from the jotun, but by Odin, he wasn’t going down without shedding blood.

He caught something glistening under a mound of rotting flesh and heavy leather cuirasses. Asgeir didn’t hesitate, he just rushed towards it and grasped the handle with both hands. He heard the jotun thudding behind him, crossing the distance with a few steps and casting a deathly shadow over him. The weapon wasn’t giving. The chilling presence of the giant bit him all throughout his body, but he couldn’t run away. There was no use. He’d only die a coward, and he refused even now, when no god was alive to judge him.

The jotun raised his hand to swipe Asgeir to the side, most probably shattering every bone in his body, but that moment something got unstuck in the pile of flesh and the weapon swung upwards, meeting the giant’s palm head-on. It was a spear, sturdy and thick with a rune-carved head, which somehow survived the massacre. Time slowed to a halt, the dry muscles strained around the jotun’s arm, and in that moment, Asgeir was ready to die. Valhalla was no more, Odin’s halls lay empty, so only uncertain darkness awaited him, but he didn’t care. Life was miserable as it was, he could settle for an emptiness.

Yet, death never came. The runes inscribed into the spearhead glowed in dark, ancient colors and the jotun’s hand split. The small, barely fist-sized blade cut the giant’s hand clean off, more akin to a headman’s ax, spilling crimson blood across half an arrow-shoot. The creature roared in agony, while Asgeir just stood there, grasping the spear, not daring to even blink. This was surely a dream. A last feverish phantasm as his skull split, just like the jotun before.

He had no time to decide wether he believed his eyes, because the giant leaned forward and smashed down, trying to crumble him between his dried out fingers. Asgeir hopped back, twirled the spear around and jammed it clean into the colossal arm. Bones creeked and tendons popped under the blade, and when Asgeir pulled the weapon back part of the jotun’s forearm came with it, spinning free from the joint and smashed onto the ground between two warriors’ remains.

Blood rushed into Asgeir’s mind. The runes almost burned on the tip, and the heat covered his arms and legs, crying to give into the bloodlust. The wounded giant coiled up like a worm and threw his leg forward, trying to sway the troublesome human away. Asgeir jumped upwards to dodge the attack, then kicked himself forward, closer to the colossal torso. The omen of dread that clouded his mind until now dissipated, the force driving him towards escape let go and nothing but an instinct remained. He was no berserker, yet in that moment, he understood them better then all his life.

The jotun swung the snag that remained of his right arm at Asgeir, and he could barely block it with the weapon’s shaft. The force of the blow sent him flying clean across the field, and eventually onto a shieldmaiden’s corpse. The air escaped his lungs, but the crimson haze didn’t clear. A familiar metallic taste rushed onto his tongue, his chest stung like fire and when he tried to rise, his limbs forsake him.

The runes on the spear brimmed again. A cold, salty wind swept over Asgeir and his vision blurred, obscuring the giant slowly rising to it’s feet. It was barely more than a corpse; maybe it never was more. A mountain of frosted meat and tendons, bristle bones and a cold killer instinct that drove him to squash Asgeir even crippled and near its end.

Asgeir clenched his teeth in anger and forced himself to rise, then spun the spear around and planted his feet for a last charge. He heard drums from somewhere, strong and agitated beating like a warchant. When the jotun howled at him, he cried out too and lunged forward. Time crawled like a melting glacier, every heartbeat took an eternity, and every move heralded a victor. Either the raging monstrosity with unearthly strength, snapping the warrior’s spine like a twig, or Asgeir, mystic spear in hand, aiming for the jotun’s empty eyes.

The warrior won. The weapon thrust into the giant’s skull, pierced through the layers of bone and emerged through the back of its head with a wet plop. The colossal body curled, its abdomen fell against the ground while the spear got stuck in the mud and held the lifeless head looking ever forward. Asgeir wheezed like a horse, his shoulders trembled and unwilling tears ran down his face. He couldn’t control the panic that came over him as the battlerage left, so he gave in. He fell down his knees and covered his head with both arms, shaking on the miry ground until he was too tired for that.

He faced a jotun. A jötnar denizen of Jotunheim, an ice giant akin to the god Loki and he won. There was no man since the starts faded that could befell a giant, yet he did just that with a spear he just requisitioned amidst junk and rubbish.

Asgeir slowly opened his eyes and looked at the weapon still sticking out from the gian’ts eyesocket. A normal spear would have snapped already from the weight, but this not only withstood and stayed firm, it radiated some wild beauty. An ancient perfection, something from the oldest tales told by the völvas during their sacrifices.

“What… are you?” Asgeir wishpered barely daring to speak. It was clear the spear was far more powerful than he was, and it made him uneasy. People told about relics, adorned armament of the Einherjar that fell to Midgard in the battle, but he never seen one carried around. Warriors would give anything for those relics and some gatherers like him made a fortune from them. Not that fortunes mattered these days, but this thing—this had real power. This wasn’t a simple Einherjar weapon.

Asgeir grabbed the shaft and fighting his disgust, he yanked it free from the skull. The runes still glowed, shifting from blood red to nightshade, but the light shrunk weaker with every pulse. Almost if the weapon knew the battle was over and it had no duty anymore. The giant’s head knocked against the ground and a fang broke from its horrid jaw. Asgeir’s eyes narrowed as an idea came over him, then set the spear onto the ground and grabbed the skinning knife hanging from his belt. There wasn’t a chance he would sell that weapon for anything, but he still needed to eat that day. He knew how much would Hrothir give for the remains of an ice giant?

* * * *

The Nook grew somewhat since Asgeir departed three days ago. Refugees came pouring in from every direction, mostly from the south where the waters rose the fastest and they settled in to count the days left. It was a pathetic sight for what was supposed to be the harshest survivors mankind had to offer, but nowadays getting here was a feat in itself.

A lean, dark-haired man winced at him from atop the guard tower, but seeing he was just a human, he nodded. Asgeir walked past the stake fence, resting the spear on his shoulder and hanging his spoils form the end of it in a brown sack, catching many an eye. He was seemingly the only one walking straight with some confidence among the hunched husks and darkened glimpses, and that stirred into the murky depression. He couldn’t walk three steps inside the walls before a woman rose up from a shadowy corner and walked up to him.

“Oy. You a peddler, right? What you got there?” she asked. She spoke flawless norvegian, yet her colours were much more reminiscent of the celt warriors they battled with on the western raids. Or so they told.

“Nothing. Hunt was unsuccessful,” Asgeir replied but it didn’t startle the woman.

“You know, lyin’ is fruitless when you show off the truth. That’s a spear, right?”

Asgeir took a deep breath and looked into her eyes as cruel as he could. “It is. Not for sale, though. It’s personal.”

“Yeah, right,” the woman smirked. “What would you do with a weapon, peddler? You ain’t a warrior.”

The conversation caught the attention of more people and they slowly cornered Asgeir. He felt like prey, and he didn’t like that at one bit.

“How much?” a staunch men said simply. He looked quite sickly, with a shrunken face and a spreading black malady on his fingers. He must have spent a long time in the snowstorm heralding the end times, and the frostbite chewed his flesh and bone. He couldn’t hold the spear properly even if Asgeir was willing to part with it.

“Not for sale,” he replied more agitated.

“Come on, peddler,” the woman pushed on. They threw the word around like a jest, a mockery to humiliate him for living on instead of charging head-first into a wall of jötnar like many did. He was “just” a peddler in their eyes, someone to cowardly to die a warrior.

“Alright, so be it. I’ll just pluck it from your corpse,” the staunch man said raising a rusted axe onto his shoulder.

“Hey!” the celt woman shouted and grabbed the man’s shoulder. “Did the frost scoop out your wit, you moron? You want to kill a man, here?”

“So what?” the man replied confused. “You wanted to take it too, Fenris.”

“Yeah, with coin. Or whatever he asks. Kill a man and you’ll bring the giants on us.”

“That is just saxon horseshit,” the man grunted. Fenris struck out like a fox, clever and precise, grabbing the man’s neck and twisting it backwards until he lost his balance.

“Say that again, you sack of piss and I’ll rip out your throat right here. I’m no saxon, Geirolf, and I do not speak nonsense. Understood?”

The man squeezed a weak ‘yes’ through the grasp, so Fenris let him fall on his arse, then turned back to Asgeir, who just stood there silent, bearing the interlude.

“Now, peddler. You sure you won’t sell me that? I could pay well.”

“I told you twice already,” he replied. “It’s personal. I need to defend myself as well.”

“I could defend you with it. How’s that? You give me that and we’ll share food until you find something else.”

It was obvious they were getting nowhere, so Asgeir threw the sack onto the ground, unfolding half a dozen frosted fangs and a hearth larger then Geirolf’s head. He didn’t know which part was worth anything, so he went after his instincts and old tales.

Fenris and Geirolf both took a step back, while a third bystander, a young blonde kid nearly jumped away from the sight.

“Is—is that…” the celt woman gasped.

“It is. Jotun fangs and its heart. Those I’d gladly sell for a week’s rations. You think I need protecting?” Asgeir asked looking at Fenris. The woman’s lips curled into a grin, but her eyes still stuck to the remains.

“How… How did you kill that?”

“Wait. Don’t tell me this peddler coward fell a giant!” Geirolf shouted, and the words ran across the Nook like a warhorn. Every begging cripple, every malnourished child and wounded warrior sprung up and swarmed at them so tight even Fenris got agitated.

“Hey! Behave, you mongrels!” she cried, but it bothered no one. A grey warrior lumping around with a crutch tried to touch Asgeir’s spear, only deterred by another woman grasping his hand and pushing him back.

“Did you really? You killed a giant?” a juvenile boy asked. A slim, crooked man knelt down next to the fangs and slowly picked one up then dropped it immediately. A veteran-looking man shoved away another, shouting about something and not before long almost a hundred tired souls tussled around Asgeir and his spoils.

“Someone killed a giant. There’s still hope!” the grey man said shedding tears. “Odin might still be with us.”

“Enough!” Fenris cried out so ferociously the buzz died out in an instant. “Shut your claps before you get more hurt than you’re now. You…” she said tilting her head towards Asgeir. “Come with me. Without a word.”

Asgeir just sighed and packed up the giant remains, then walked after the celt followed by the renewed cacophony of eleven dozen people spinning the tale of a yet unkown giantslayer. He didn’t intend to put himself as a hero, nor did he want to show off, but he was left with little choice.

Fenris struck through the mass and lead him towards a hiding, half carved into the rockface that served as the backwall to the whole Nook, half built from stakes and split shields. It was surprisingly large considering how fast people had to build hovels for themselves, but it seemed Fenris didn’t cut corners. The inside was separated into two rooms with a board wall, one that was suppsodely where the woman slept, while the larger was packed with different hunting trophies and half-prepared meat.

“You’re a hunter?” Asgeir asked, but Fenris didn’t answer. Instead she lit a large way candle on a wall-mounted shelf and closed the door shut. She even covered the windows with some pelts, so the candle was the only source of light in the whole hovel.

“So, peddler,” she said sitting down by the rough table. “How did you come across those horrible trophies?”

“I told you.”

“No, you didn’t. You just htrew them on the ground and let those dumbasses believe you killed a fucking jotun.”

“Why do you think I didn’t?” Asgeir said, sitting down opposite Fenris. The celt just grunted and stood up again, making the whole scene a bit awkward.

“Because that’s impossible. You know, I’ve met one. Fought it, even, and by sheer luck I could escape with my hide,” she said while tampering among the junk piled on a counter until she found two drinking horns. “So don’t speak nonsense to me, boy.”

Asgeir tried not to remark, just shrugged. “If you say so. You can believe whatever you want.”

“I’m not much for believing, peddler,” Fenris said while sat down and threw a horn towards Asgeir. It was just water in it, but he would have been much more surprised if she’d waste ale on him—if she had any. Not many did. “I want to know things. At first I thought you just happened upon the most intact weapon on this side of the sea, but after that little stunt… Now I don’t wanna buy it. I want you to tell me about that giant.”

Asgeir took a big gulp from the horn to bide his time a little. There was no point keeping anything from her, since laying low was no longer a possibility. He’d suspected he couldn’t keep something this unearthly a secret, but a bit more peace would have been nice.

“If you insist,” he said eventually. “I was scavenging a day’s walk from here, around the Coal Woods.”

Fenris suspiciously narrowed her eyes. “That’s where the Serpent’s blood dripped onto the earth. Are you mad, boy?”

“Perhaps. But I found no curse, no poison, just a battlefield. It was so vast I could tread half a day and still walk inwards. I wandered around there for two days at least, until I was covered by a fog.”

Fenris looked lost in thought, at least the way she wiggled her drink said as much. “A giants’ spell. Something that even fooled Thor once. So you were ambushed.”

“You believe me now?” Asgeir said with a smirk. “But you’re right. A frost giant emerged from the fog and almost killed me if not for this spear,” he said glancing over his shoulder at the weapon’s cloth-covered tip.

“How could a spear stop a jotun? I saw even varg fail to penetrate their skin.” Fenris asked leaning back. This woman grew more interesting with every word, and somehow that reassured Asgeir. It was good to know he wasn’t the only one experiencing the impossible.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I wasn’t thinking much, I just grabbed something and held it towards the jotun as it tried to flatten me. But it didn’t, instead the spearhead cut its palm in half and tore the other arm off by its elbow.”

“What?” Fenris said even more confused. “Alright, you’ve stalled enough. Show me that spear.”

Asgeir was still reluctant to reveal anymore of something he himself couldn’t fully grasp, but for some reason he didn’t oblige. The runes carved into the tip were peaceful now, almost like they were sleeping inside the metal, but it still hummed with the strange, archaic power.

“I can’t let you take it, but you can observe as you like,” Asgeir said as he held the weapon towards the celt. Fenris tried the blade’s edge with her finger, then caressed every rune carefully until she stopped.

“Don’t… Don’t tell me… This can’t be—,” she muttered, almost grasping on the spearhead.

“What? You know this weapon?”

Fenris looked up in utter dismay. Her eyes stared forward with a sickly pale shimmer and she even flashed her teeth at Asgeir, while the woman’s hand twitched and her fingers curled.

“How can you not know? How can you not recognize the symbols?” she asked. Asgeir pulled the spear back and stood up, unsure if the woman would jump at her or collapse.

“Tell me. What is this?”

“That is Gungnir, boy,” she said in a deep growl. “You found the place where the gods fell.”

[catnip-smuggler-radio]

Business

Two eyes opened. One blue as the cold ice of the Coerthas glaciers. The other solid black as the abyss. And below these mismatched eyes spread a sneer filled with razor sharp teeth covered in fresh blood. Smoke streamed from the nostrils as lungs filled with acrid moko smoke tensed and squeezed the clouds from the porous sacks of meat locked behind bruised ribs. Muscles rippled beneath the tattooed flesh that covered the naked torso as the blades in calloused hands spun slowly, the fresh blood and gore on the swords dripping onto the floor as the red-haired miqo’te rose up and flicked his pierced tail. He cocked his head to one side, the bones in his neck popping as he cackled at the thugs staring back at him. These fools had dared to step against him.  This pathetic excuse of a street gang had dared to dream that they could oppose him.  They had refused to work for him.  They had refused to relocated and stop peddling their drugs in ‘his’ territory’.  They had refused to respect him as he had begun to reassert his control over the back allies of the world.  Once ‘his’ Triad had been -the- name in drug distribution.  These alleys and lanes were a kingdom.  For far too long the king had been lost to revenge, weakness, and foolish notions. But the beast inside was free again.  The world was his to infect.  A kingdom to control. His kingdom. He was a cancer spreading, leeching, and infecting the world with his products.  The masses needed their drugs to forget and deal with their miserable realities.  Someone was going supply the masses and someone was going to grow disgustingly rich off these sheep, so it might as well be him and his organization. Explosions rocked the apartment complex behind the fools steeping up against him.  Flames and smoke danced as chunks of masonry rained down around them.  Through the swirling mists of destruction emerged figures dressed in black and wielding blades with a sinister intent.  Tray eyed his ‘Veiled’ and smirked as a certain raven-haired male of his sprang into a murderous dance of whirling death and began to butcher and rend with a gleeful abandon.  Clearly it was was time to commence the dance most macabre.  Tray nodded and the rest of his ‘Veiled’ began to slice through the mass of gathered fools that thought they could oppose Tray’s return to power and rise. These fools would serve as a wonderful warning to others.  Tray walked forward. “Restraint Level Three.” he whispered. Somewhere a hand waved and the magic seal in his black eye spun. A dark laugh filled the air as Tray and his ‘Veiled’ showed the world the meaning of the word ‘brutality;. They left one survive alive to ensure that Eorzea knew that Mad Moko King was back on his throne.

[homoerotixx]

Oh, The Inhumanity!

[ONESHOT]

pairing: ...wontaek? notes: requested by @fluffsik​ on twitter, from the spoopy fic prompts list! #24, zombies! so you know this can only end badly! i’m gonna kermit!!! // i only edited through this once jsyk :^) words: 1,932

He wouldn't turn him away of course—a big man like this? It was too much of a waste to do that.

It was the sound of the door trying to be opened. Taekwoon had the alarm—not much of an alarm actually, more like a pretty chime that rang throughout the house three distinctive times—installed first thing after discovering this place. He smiled knowingly to the cage in front of him.

"I'll be back, alright? Behave until then."

He received a groan in reply.

Taekwoon trekked up the basement stairs and through the house until he reached the front door. The small screen next to the door displayed a stranger looking around for a way in. They were about to head to the back of the house, but to save them from a terrible fate, Taekwoon undid his locks. The screen displayed them freezing next to a worn wicker chair and slowly turning to look at the door.

It was a man, pudgy and reddened from the summer sun, and Taekwoon didn't envy him in the least bit. He looked exhausted.

"So it's true." the man said when Taekwoon greeted him through the screen door. He wouldn't stop him if he tried to punch through it, there being an electric current alive in its thin wires and all.

"Have you been looking for me?" he asked coolly.

The man barked a laugh, adjusting the weapons strapped to his back. His canteen was popped open, meaning he had no water left. Taekwoon had just retrieved a new tank from the shut down laboratory ten miles away.

"Not at all." He wiped at his swollen face and Taekwoon wondered how much sweat the folds of his neck could hold. "Heard there was a doctor around here that holed up in a fancy house, but them rumors spread like wildfire and turn out to be nothing but urban legends." His accent was thick and slurred, and Taekwoon discerned that he was from somewhere south. It was a miracle he made it all the way up here. The nearest sanctuary city had been half sacked just two weeks ago and was under heavy quarantine; Taekwoon knew those big city quarantines to be near-impossible to get through.

"Do you suppose that I would let you in?" Taekwoon asked, not bothering to glance at the shotgun prepped under the screen. There was a bang from the basement that made the man jump, and his belly bounced with him. "Don't mind that." Taekwoon smiled pleasantly.

"Wouldn't if I was you, son." the man eventually said, not trying to hide that he was peeking into the house in the least bit. "But I would appreciate it a good deal if you did."

For a moment, Taekwoon looked him up and down. He wouldn't turn him away of course—a big man like this? It was too much of a waste to do that. If he was too inviting however, suspicion would rise. (He had this process down to a science at this point. Invoke doubt, put through trial, then concede.)

"Don't step out of line, please." he eventually said. "I'll have to kill you."

A smile broke on the man's cracked lips and he nodded, relief clear on his expression.

Taekwoon turned off the electric current and undid the lock to the screen door. He stepped out and held it open for the man to walk in first, and then followed.

After redoing all the locks and resetting the alarm, he turned at the man's low whistle.

"Sweet little setup you got here, huh?" he asked. Taekwoon counted the supplies strapped to his back; a crossbow, a shotgun, a quiver of arrows, a whip, and plenty of rope. There was a backpack, probably a sleeping bag and a collapsible tent in it.

"You're probably thirsty and hungry, hmm?" he said, walking around the man. Their awe and curiosity was routine, but he never indulged it. No use in fostering familiarity.

The man, who wouldn't give his name, was sensible enough to keep questions to himself about the occasional banging that came from the basement. Taekwoon considered himself a hell of a trainer, but there was some things that simply couldn't be taught—such as patience.

"Tell me," he asked as he prepared a modest meal for the man, "what's the situation like out there?"

The man rubbed tiredly at his face. "Blockades," he heaved, obviously exhausted by them, "they've been setting up blockades every five miles and getting around them alone is a pain in the ass. Seen them been shooting up normal folks, mistaking them for the dead just for being on their own."

"Everyone has to take precautions." Taekwoon said more to himself than the man.

"Suppose so. What's that your putting into the food?"

Taekwoon looked over his shoulder and held up the saltshaker filled with a peppery powder. "It gives it a little kick." he responded. "I like to keep little luxuries like this when I'm feeling particularly down."

The man guffawed and poured himself another glass of water from the jug. Taekwoon thought that if he wasn't around, he would simply drown the whole thing into his round belly.

After serving the food, they spoke more of the situation in the surrounding areas, about the infected animals that were all too easily spreading the disease, and whether or not national scientists were any closer to discovering a cure. It wasn't as if an ocean of test subjects was at their disposal. Taekwoon did his own research too, but it was often emotionally taxing and he needed breaks consisting of multiple days.

He watched the man shovel the food into his mouth like he hadn't eating in weeks, and wouldn't doubt it if he hadn't. Everyone deserved at least one good last meal in this hellhole of a time they were living in. No use sending down an empty stomach.

"You're a good cook, son." the man said as Taekwoon collected his plate and turned to the sink. "It's hard to find a good meal these days, not knowing which animals are safe to eat and all." He sighed and Taekwoon sympathized a little. He refused to eat meat these days on that account, and since the epidemic, had taken to growing his own little garden out back, despite how dismal his green thumb was at first.

Before he could run the water to clean the plate, he heard the cock of a gun. A pistol, it sounded like, standard eight millimeter bullets. the man sighed again.

"Hate to do this to you boy, but we all got to survive out here these days."

A shiver ran up Taekwoon's spine, but not of fear—of thrill. He glanced over his shoulders with darkened eyes. His lips quirked.

"I understand." he replied. The man's round face didn't look regretful in the least bit. Taekwoon truly did understand; they all had to do what they needed for survival, and that meant him too.

The man coughed, a little thing at first, and then again. And again. The pistol started to shake in his grasp and his face reddened even more than before. The pistol dropped to the table with a noise so loud that a bang and a groan from the basement was its response.

"Are you alright?" Taekwoon asked, stepping forward. The man gurgled, and red was turning to purple, along with his eyes bulging out, glassy and afraid. "You seem sick."

The table scratched across the worn wooden floor with the man's collapsed weight and Taekwoon walked around it to watch him writhe, scratching at his throat and choking on his own bile. Taekwoon glanced at his watch. A few seconds longer...

While he waited, he pushed the table back to where it was and set the chair properly, returning to the sink to wash the dish. He was happy he hadn't wasted more than a few vegetables and ounces of rice on the ungrateful fool.

By the time he'd set the dishes to air-dry, the commotion behind him fell dead. He wiped his hands and went back to the other side of the table. Hands on his hips, he sighed at the thought of having to haul all of that weight down to the basement. Thank goodness he decided not to keep the cage in the attic.

A wipe down of the floors would be in order too, since the man's grime was everywhere. He rolled his eyes. That was what being nice to guests costed.

After a thorough stripping of all the man's weapons and clothing and tallying up the new inventory, Taekwoon pulled out a black tarp to roll the dead weight onto. With a tug, he grunted and began dragging the naked body down to the basement. This one should last at least three days. There was still that unfortunate woman from the day before, but she hadn't served as much of a filling, he figured.

"Look what I brought." Taekwoon cooed after kicking open the basement door. The body thumped on every step and he wondered if the skull was fractured yet.

Chains rattled, followed by nonsensical grunts and growls.

"Are you hungry?" Taekwoon asked, and he glanced to the mangled body in the far corner of the cage. "I suppose she wasn't filling enough, was she? Wonsik?" He flicked on the light.

In the cage was Wonsik, collared and chained to a post in the middle. Bones and torn rotting flesh were scattered about, and Taekwoon noted to himself that he would have to clean it again. Maybe Wonsik wouldn't try to bite him next time. The thought made him miserable. He didn't like having to use the muzzle, but that was a necessity in order to bathe him and change his clothes. There were already various rips and holes in the black and white striped shirt he wore, along with the black pants that didn't fit him quite right.

Ignoring the clawing at the bars, Taekwoon dragged the body around, heaving his breath because goodness, this one was heavy, to the glass container that lead into the cage.

"Don't be wasteful." he reminded Wonsik, even though he likely couldn't understand. A small part of him hoped he still could, but at this point, that was mere wishful thinking. It could be years of research that were still needed to return an infected human to a comprehending mind. He could barely stand more than a day of it.

Taekwoon shoved the body onto the rolling conveyor and slid it through the glass. As soon as it was within arms reach, Wonsik snatched it with inhuman strength and began devouring it. The squelching churned Taekwoon's stomach, but he watched on fondly with a certain sense of pride.

He alone had discovered a system that worked to keep both himself and Wonsik safe from the outside world and each other, even if it was at the cost of Wonsik's freedom. He did what he needed for them to survive together.

Wonsik yanked off an arm and the muscles snapped apart.

He was no longer human and Taekwoon worked every day to reverse that despite knowing that there was no going back from this. Putting a stop to the research was impossible. It would break him—or maybe it already had.

But when he would see Wonsik stare at him and catch even a glimpse of clouded recognition in his colorless eyes, it spurred him on like never before. Nothing could be done. He would never stop. He could never stop.

Wonsik was no longer human... And as he watched him feed on the humans he lured and murdered, Taekwoon supposed he could no longer call himself that either.

[twopointthreeninetoone]

The Empire Strikes Back (1980) (or, Yeah, This Sounds Light-Hearted)

So, A New Hope made a record-breaking amount of money, and George Lucas has been given a carte blanche to do whatever he wants for The Empire Strikes Back. Where does he have his movie begin? In Fargo, North Dakota, that’s where! Well, it looks like Fargo, anyway.It actually takes place on Hoth, an ice planet. We return to the characters of Luke, Han, and Leia (and the rest), who are working diligently in a Rebel fort. What is there to do in a Rebel fort on an ice planet, you ask? Well, nothing really, except wait for the Empire to track you down, and get frostbite. Which is exactly what happens. Luke is able to endanger himself in record time—stupidly deciding to go check out a meteor (Luke, Luke, Luke—surely your people have learned that going to investigate something is a sure sign of danger), which somehow leads him and his poor little tauntaun (a kind of llama-kangaroo-horse creature) to be struck down and carried off by a creature that looks strangely like the Yeti in the claymation version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. And let the mating begin…

But first, let’s look at these tauntauns, shall we? These have to be the most miserable creatures in the Star Wars galaxy (even more miserable than whoever was in A Star Wars Christmas). Firstly, they’re kind of cute—well, cute enough for me to want one when I was a kid. They’re nothing more than brainless animals surely—the only sound they seem capable of producing is something like “burgle burgle”; I imagine they’re indigenous to the planet Hamburgler—but they could have been treated much better. Luke’s tauntaun is ultimately eaten by the Yeti-but-not-a-Yeti creature, and Han’s…well, you’ll see what happens to Han’s in a second (“oh what a dark and dismal fate”). One wonders where the ASPCA was in all of this.

Back to our story though. While Luke is doing a fine job of getting himself killed, everyone’s standing around the Rebel base asking, “Where’s Luke?” and shrugging their shoulders.Finally Han, Man of Action that he is, decides to go out looking for him. Let me note that Han has a terrible habit of making a big point of saying, “I’m going now. I’m leaving. I have to go. I must go now,” and never doing it. This time he’s trying to get Jabba the Hut the money he owes him, but decides to go find Luke instead. So he takes a tauntaun and goes searching for him. Luke, meanwhile, has found himself trapped in the Yeti-thing’s lair, his feet frozen to the ceiling (I want to know how that Yeti-thing did that. Did he have a blowtorch in his possession?) and his tauntaun eaten. He’s smart enough to use the Force to get his lightsaber (which is just out of reach) and cut off the Yeti’s arm, but not smart enough to kill the beast entirely and stay in the cave (which, while cold, is still out of the elements, and hey, there’s probably leftover tauntaun meat to last a couple of days). Luke does a good job of falling down in the middle of nowhere, in the freezing cold, and losing consciousness, before the Real Hero (i.e. Han, Man of Action) finds him. But not before his tauntaun dies of exhaustion. Oh, and Obi-Wan visited Luke in a vision and told him to go see Yoda. Han decides that the most respectful thing to do is to slice open the tauntaun’s stomach and stick his friend inside. Because that’s just the kind of guy Han is, I guess. Smart, yes. Pleasant, no.And then they’re saved.

Luke is apparently dead. That’s the only reason I can think of for the medical staff to stick him in a diaper and put him in a vat of water while sticking little electronic doohickeys into him.Either he’s dead or he’s near dying of exposure. Or they hate the little sod and just want to humiliate him until he wakes up. And wake up he does, in a diaper, in a vat of water. Did I mention that Han and Leia hate each other even more than they originally did in A New Hope? Well they do. At least, Leia hates Han, and Han (dumber than a sack of hammers) mistakes her hostility towards him for flirting. He’s the kind of guy who’d say, “Aw, c’mon, you know you like it” just before a woman brings out the can of mace. Anyway, Han comes on to Leia more times than is humanly possible, and Leia shows her disgust for him by kissing Luke. Everyone laughs. Han’s pissed.

The Empire finally builds the courage to ask the Rebel base out—no, wait, the Empire finally gets the courage to attack the Rebel base, and does so with the least useful machines on the planet, AT-ATs, which are about twenty stories high and slower than molasses. The designers apparently believed that elephants were good models for war transport, and based their AT-ATs on them. Before going off to attack the Imperial forces, Luke’s copilot mentions that he feels like “I could take on the whole Empire myself”, thus insuring that he will be killed within the next ten minutes. While Luke and the Rebel fighters are able to knock down two—count them two—AT-ATs, Han is somehow able to lure Leia into the Millenium Falcon and thus save her from the Empire. She thanks him by bitching for the next thirty minutes. C-3PO comes along to make sure that the whining quotient in Han’s life does not lower to less than three hundred negative remarks per minute. R2D2 goes off with Luke, who makes off to visit Yoda, who’ll help him become a Jedi, or to knock some sense into him, or something. I’d like to note that, just before an AT-AT completely destroys the Rebel base, it makes a point of picking off one poor foot soldier running away. Spiteful bastards, those AT-ATs are.

Meanwhile, Darth Vader plays a game of Let’s See How Many Admirals I Can Choke to Death With My Mind—something that we’ve all done, I’m sure. He’s very good at it.

Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C3PO hide on an asteroid. Leia continues her bitching until she realizes that Han Solo is being played by none other than Harrison Ford. They somehow manage to fight and realize their love for each other at the same time. Let me just say that, from now on, Han Solo isn’t nearly as bad-ass as he was when he was single. This generally happens in movies. While the others are sittin’ on asteroids and fallin’ in love, Luke makes his way to a swamp planet in the Dagoba system, where he quickly makes a point of crashing his ship into a swamp. So Luke is in top form then. He meets a cute li’l creature whom he demeans and patronizes, only to learn later that this creature is Yoda! Aren’t you surprised that such a small, seemingly defenseless creature who only speaks Pidgin English could turn out to be an incredibly wise and powerful Jedi? Yoda in turn demeans and physically abuses Luke for the next half hour, which is all that I’ve ever wanted. This doesn’t stop Luke from whining. In fact, it probably incites whining. He whines about basically anything and everything, while R2D2 putters around, nearly gets eaten by swamp monsters, probably trying to find a lightsaber or, hell, even a rock that he can off himself with.

Vader wants Han and Leia in his possession, and decides to make a hunt of it by gathering up a bunch of bounty hunters (including the enigmatic Boba Fett) and telling them that he’ll pay good money for whoever captures them alive. Han & Co. fly off to Alderan, a mining city in the sky, which actually doesn’t make a lot of sense if you think about it. What do you mine in the sky? Carbon dioxide? Birds? Gases that form clouds? This is never explained. There they meet Han’s old frenemy Lando Calrissian, who (unfortunately for Leia) is the only other man in the universe smarmier than Han. It turns out that Lando was the original owner of the Millenium Falcon, but that he lost her to Han in a card game. Gee, this wouldn’t create some feeling of animosity by Lando, would it, Han? Oh, don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Han. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Right? Han doesn’t see the Writing on the Wall, even after C3PO is found dismembered in a trash heap. Luke does sense danger, however—turns out he can sense danger, but only danger happening millions of miles away, to people other than himself. He wants to save Han and Leia, but Yoda tells him that going to save them would only harm everyone in the long run. He goes on a spiel about destiny and the Force, but I think he just knows that Luke is an incompetent dipstick that can’t even save himself, let alone save others. To prove how incredibly inept Luke is, he tells him to pull his ship out of the swamp—with his mind. Luke can barely use a television remote, let alone use the Force to pick up a ship, and so he fails completely and goes off to pout. Yoda hands his ass to him by using the Force to lift the ship out of the muck. See, even though Yoda is small and seeming powerless, he can do things that big lugs like Luke can’t! Aren’t you surprised?

Han and Leia have a couple of hours to look around the Cloud City, visit the gift shop, etc. before discovering that Lando has actually made a deal with the Empire and Boba Fett. Han, Leia, and Chewie (poor C3PO is out of action until Chewie can repair him; naturally, as soon as Chewie gets C3PO’s mouth working, C3PO starts complaining) are imprisoned and tortured, for no reason other than the fact that Vader’s really Evil, and can torture whoever he wants without fear of reprisal. I’d like to note that the torture device used on Han looks eerily like a dentist’s chair, but with electric shocks and needles in it. This is why people are afraid of dentists. Thanks, George Lucas. Afterwards, Han notes that “They didn’t even ask me questions.” It’s because they’re all evil, Han! They have to keep their evil quota up somehow.

Lando breaks the news to them, that Darth Vader is going to carbon-freeze Luke Skywalker and bring him to the Emperor. But to make sure that you can actually freeze someone in carbonite without killing them, he’s going to try it out on Han beforehand. Han’s reply to this is a punch to Lando’s jaw. Chewbacca’s reply to this is, “Aaargh! Aaarghh Roooar!”

Luke, going against the advice of visions of just about every dead Jedi out there, goes off to save his friends, but vows to return to Yoda so he can finish his training. He doesn’t seem to notice Yoda and the ghost of Obi-Wan rolling on the ground laughing maniacally as he flies away (with R2D2, of course).

Now here, in my opinion, is the best scene in the trilogy. Most will tell you that the best scene is between Luke and Darth later on in the movie. But I think it’s this one. Han (in handcuffs) & Co. are led to the carbonization room by Darth, Lando, Boba Fett, and a bunch of Storm Troopers. Just before he goes into carbonite machine thingie he and Leia have some words (good words, not bad words), he kisses her, and while he’s kissing her he’s dragged away by guards. As he’s being dragged into the machine, Leia tells him, “I love you,” and his response is “I know.” And thus Han Solo’s emotional maturation is complete. So he’s being lowered into the machine, exchanging looks with Leia, and then there’s a cloud of smoke and he pulls his chin up and tada—he’s gone. They pull up the carbonite slab he’s become, and there’s an outline of poor Han’s sad little face. The other half of a million female audience members swoon. Best scene ever. It tugs at your heartstrings, it does. Fortunately however, he’s still alive, but in a state of hibernation, kind of. Boba Fett whisks the carbonite slab to Jabba the Hut’s. Lando seems to realize that this guy Vader is up to no good, starting to make trouble in his neighborhood, and runs off with Leia, Chewbacca, and C3PO to the Millenium Falcon.

Luke naturally gets there just in time to see Boba Fett and Han off, and for the next ten minutes fights with Darth Vader (R2D2, small, unintelligible, but apparently profoundly more intelligent than Luke, hooks up with Leia & Co. and gets on the Falcon). After exchanging witty barbs about destiny, evil, and the Force (and after Darth Vader cuts off Luke’s hand), they find themselves on a ledge about a million feet in the air. I imagine that Darth Vader’s mental process is as thus: “Hmm, I’ve killed his family and his mentor, I’ve harmed him and his friends dozens of times, I’m trying to destroy everything he stands for, and I just cut off his hand. Now would be a good time to tell him I’m his father.” And so he does and tells him that they can have some sort of father-son bonding experience by ruling the universe with their dark powers. Luke, naturally upset about this (and the whole cut-off-hand thing too, probably) decides that he really can’t make that sort of decision while suspended a million miles above the ground. And besides, his dad is really evil, and he’s already paid tuition to learn to become a Jedi. So he jumps (the drama here, kids, is that Luke would rather die than be evil like his dad; this, along with the bombshell that Darth just delivered, is why this scene is considered the best of the trilogy, and one of the best movie scenes of all time).

The lucky sod somehow ends up in garbage/laundry/air chute of some kind, and finds himself hanging onto an antenna beneath the cloud city (George Lucas wasn’t incredibly clear about this; it doesn’t matter in any case, because no one really believed he was going to die in the first place. Hey, there’s still a third movie to be made). He calls Leia—with his 

mind

—and Leia, Lando, & Co. save him. The movie ends as Luke and Leia are in a Rebel ship, recuperating, while the audience wonders what the hell is going to happen to poor Han Solo. They’d have to wait three years to find out.