#never left the groundwork actually I have loads of notes

[dreamy-pill]

This is an AU idea for another Steven Universe Gravity Falls that I just wanted to illustrate.

I skipped ahead of the plot and instead just went straight for the comfort. 🥰🥰🥰

[kitkatopinions]

LyricAnon🎶

Look I am forever going to love “Hero” even with its problems. But my newest on (well actually an old on I’m just bringing it up now) is the reference to Ironwood’s semblance.

In the song we get this line “Mettle I'll deploy”

Mettle holds the championship belt for worst semblance ever but it shouldn’t be in this song.

The way it’s stated makes it sound we should know what his semblance is and be excited that he’s going to use like if Yang or Ruby’s semblance is mentioned in song. In this sounds like the actual definition for mettle: a person's ability to cope well with difficulties or to face a demanding situation in a spirited and resilient way. Which, btw CRWBY, doesn’t sound as negative as they want it to sound

They mess up or rather fail to describe Mettle’s presence in correctly (shocker). Ironwood doesn’t have a willing option in regard to his semblance and it’s such a damaging one in its execution. It’s passive and questionably more dangerous than Qrow’s. But we wouldn’t know because it goes 100% unaddressed in universe. One reason...the main reason being are the writers being lazy hacks; and two it would make Ironwood look more sympathetic (to in bias viewers) cause his semblance is basically invisible background brainwashing and would call fault into how he is treated.

Last; and this is more of a...low defense of the Mettle ordeal. Given how semblances occurs I can kinda get that Ironwood got his late in life. Like probably after the Fall of Beacon giving the conversation the inner circle where having during volumes 2 and 3

 Agfdeheafh the semblance that the show writers wrote for James is the worst one in the show to date and that’s not to say that it was a horrible idea, but rather that it was a horrible idea for what they did with it. Which is nothing.

Ironwood’s semblance has some strong elements of horror in it, and could leave James with a sort of imposter syndrome. The semblance could launch very interesting narratives and continue on with the (horribly bungled imo) themes of choice, redemption, autonomy, trust, love, bravery, hope, not letting a part of you control you, the importance of a support system and sharing the load and relying on others... Honestly, the fact that James had this semblance and it wasn’t used to redeem him is so so so weird based on the groundwork they did give James and their own freaking morals we were supposed to get out of the story!

You’re right about how weird that song’s framing is. The wide disconnect and miscommunication between all players is just... At this point, it’s kind of destructive towards them. ‘The songs aren’t canon, we didn’t make Jeff Williams write that’ is what they said when fans thought the BMBLB song was queer baiting. So we know already that the song isn’t canon to James, but that’s an excuse imo. They clearly didn’t properly explain Ironwood’s semblance to Jeff Williams if that’s how he uses it in the song, like something Ironwood can turn on at will and is going to use, when it’s passive. And side note, you’re totally right that the CRWBY writers villainizing traits like ‘the ability to cope’ and ‘being resilient’ is really strange. It reminds me of how they’re villainizing feeling fear and taking precautions and then praising recklessness and being brash.

But, back on track, now we have things like the voice actor for James not knowing about Ironwood’s semblance until a fan told him. Extra communication could go a long way. I mean, that would be like Alan Rickman not knowing that Snape was meant to be a spy until someone told him during the filming of the Half-Blood Prince. This is something so freaking important to the character of Ironwood and they just forgot to mention it to the man supposed to bring life to the role. That is beyond weird.

Honestly, I think there are three reasons why Ironwood’s semblance was invented, but not put into practice in the actual show.

A. The first one you mentioned. I think the writers made ‘Mettle’ as a lazy excuse to rush ahead his ‘fall to villainy’ and using it to insist that they didn’t make an inconsistent character, they didn’t make a non convincing arc, fans just needed to do the extra homework and hear about Ironwood’s semblance that explains the whole thing. Them assassinating Ironwood’s character is easily hand waved now as the affects of his passive semblance at work, that the audience was supposed to view as some sort of easter egg that they can use to justify the story, and fill in the blanks the writers seemingly purposefully just left.

B. The second one you mentioned. They wanted Ironwood to be viewed as evil by the general fandom (and, well, they succeeded,) and knew that putting the semblance in the actual show would make him much much more sympathetic. You know, since he was at least partially seemingly mind controlled into his actions. Honestly, the way they just made Ironwood’s entire personality ‘evil for the sake of evil stupid manipulator who will bomb for no reason’ seems... Vindictive. It feels like they finished volume 7, started hearing fans complain that Ironwood shooting Oscar was out of character, took that as a personal insult, and then decided to get back at their critics by turning their favorite character into a monster. That’s just how it feels, though. There’s always a strong possibility that the writers just liked the idea in the moment, and didn’t care about the previous character, just wanted ‘Ironwood opposes Team RWBY,’ and plowed through it whether or not it made sense. I mean, that’s what they did when they gave lines originally meant for Nora to Yang when she argued with Ren, that’s what they did when they changed the focus of the Nora-Ren conflict from ‘Nora is trying to force a relationship that Ren isn’t currently ready for’ into ‘Nora is getting swallowed by a relationship she isn’t currently ready for,’ and that’s what they did when they had Cinder act like she’d never worked with a team before during the Cindy-Neo-Watts team up, and that’s what they did when they had Winter spout lines that misrepresented her character and stances during V7 and the first half of V8. Ironwood is just this on a larger scale imo. It didn’t matter at all what Ironwood was even up to last season, the writers were writing him in a bubble, based on whatever the hell happened to sound big and sort of cool in the moment. And they wanted us to see him as evil this season, so they couldn’t put his semblance into the narrative.

C. I honestly think it’s a partially a commitment issue. Currently, I can��t get this out of my head.

This is Ironwood’s VA, teasing a possible V9 return for Ironwood. They left his death open ended and ambiguous and they’ve done ‘oh they’re definitely dead’ things at the end of a season only to reveal in the next season that the villain we all thought had died was actually still alive and kicking before.

There’s every possibility that Ironwood will return, and I think it’s possible that they specifically left his semblance out of V8 not only because they wanted Ironwood to be evil this season and wanted Ruby to be an indisputable hero (failed but I think that was their intention) but also because they wanted to one hundred percent convince their audience that he is fully evil... Even if they don’t want him to be. If they want to, they can use his semblance to ‘redeem’ him and subvert expectations in V9. Or they might want to keep him a villain. So they couldn’t bring up his semblance in V8 at all if they didn’t know where they were going with this character. Is he dead? Will they redeem him? Will they keep him a villain? All of those three are options and it’s very possible that they specifically kept any mention of his semblance from the season so they could have the possibility of doing any of the above options if they wanted to. This is obviously really frustrating to me and I already am itching to get to V9 because I just have to see if they bring James back and if they actually do go into his semblance and try to redeem him and if that could maybe lead to Ironqrow moments. But yeah, this wound up being yet another long reply because I am so long winded, but I just wanted to hit on your last note there...

It is possible that Ironwood’s semblance was one he got in V3. That’s interesting and I never heard that theory before. It makes sense, but it does just make me want to groan, just because if Ironwood had gotten a semblance during that time of trauma, why didn’t so many other characters? My dislike for soft magic systems, my dislike for ill defined magic systems, and my dislike for sporadically used magic systems all come together to make RWBY my ultimate foil. XD

[seafoamandvenom]

Devilman Crybaby: Ryo Asuka Analysis pt. 2

This covers pretty much everything from Ep 2-6, hopefully I didn’t miss anything. Spoilers as usual, view at your own risk. Part 1 can be found here.

-Ryo is heard before he’s seen, sending Akira a motorcycle from his hospital bed, suffering some injuries from being crushed but nothing too debilitating (Satanic regeneration abilities and whatnot)

-Claims Akira rushed him to the hospital, saving him, along with the other attendants of Sabbath by allowing Amon into his body and becoming part demon, thus creating the Devilman persona, a punisher/hunter of the demons that threaten humanity

Side note: As we know, Satan wanted Amon to merge with Akira so that he would survive on the side of the demons through the coming war. The “creation” of Devilman was more than likely something Ryo had to make some kind of reasoning for, as he himself hadn’t intended for it to happen. By giving a name to what Akira has become, and being the only one who knows about his current state, both placates Akira and creates an exploitable dependence for Ryo to use.

-Devilman’s debut is rocky, already getting caught on camera by Nagasaki

-Akira becomes despondent and Ryo swoops in with reassurance and a hug

Side note: Even though Satan believes there’s no such thing as love and sorrow, he’s very affectionate towards Akira. It’s probably a subconscious want to do so that they view as a means of manipulation, rather than a give-away of their true emotions.

-Akira is left even more dependent on Ryo now to handle the situation and, in doing so, protecting him

-Ryo is extremely calculated in how he goes about things: destroying the camera in Nagasaki’s room, uploading the computer exploding bug as a failsafe, listening in on conversations by hacking phones, and killing Nagasaki

-But he does all this with a hint of goodness to it, just shy of batshit, that mostly revolves around having Akira’s back and protecting their secret so that way there’s not much he can say to it

-It isn’t until Ryo threatens Miki that Akira takes true issue with Ryo’s disregard of human life

-But that issue is a strong one; you can see Akira’s inner struggle between trusting Ryo and coming thiiiiiiiiiis close to snapping towards him

“Either live with me… or die with her.” Ryo, Episode 3

Side note: Throughout all of Crybaby, Ryo tries his damnedest to separate Akira from those he cares about and humanity itself. It never works, but he takes every chance he can to give it a shot.

-A very well-timed call from Akira’s mother brings in Episode 4

-Ryo spares Miki at Akira’s insistence (and also because Ryo realizes that having Akira lose her at this point would do more harm than good)

-Makes himself appear “merciful,” letting Akira’s white lie “slide” as well

-It keeps Akira on the line either way, even with the creepy amount of tabs Ryo keeps on him

Side note: This is hardcore conspiracy theory but the timing is suspiciously good. What if Satan and/or Jenny set up his father’s possession? We’ve already established that Ryo wants to drive a wedge between Akira and humanity, and that losing Miki would be going too far. But losing his parents is much easier to explain away and serves Ryo’s purpose just as well… It’s a thought.

-Ryo is… not supportive during the Jinmen fight, but he doesn’t sit back and let Akira break down either

-Downloads all the photos of Akira’s childhood with his parents off Kaori’s destroyed phone

Side note: I wonder if he gives these to Akira or keeps them for all the times he likes to scroll through them later on in the series. Hmmm.

-For Ryo, Episode 5 starts off with immediate Satanic weirdness

-And while it could be attributed to Jenny, normal humans can’t read minds, Ryo

-Come on now

-Shows very little regard for Akira’s mental health and would rather see him abuse substances or go bury himself in woman than actually help, so long as Akira can perform as Ryo deems necessary

-Because, again, humans have exceedingly weak minds who allow their emotion to influence them too much

-Is always speaking as though he’s so far removed from humanity

-Upon finding Akira at the end of this episode he’s, I guess you could say, tender???

-Says demons are incapable of feeling anything outside of their most base of instincts to hunt, destroy, violate, and gain the power necessary to do so

Side note: In the following episode, Ryo explains that this is because demons lack a sense of consciousness. While having hearts, they cannot feel the way humans can. This is the whole basis of Devilmen being separate entities from demons. Jenny and the other demons confirm this in Episode 8, when Koda wishes to join their side.

-Episode 6 is where things start getting really, very bad

-From here on out, it becomes more difficult to distinguish Ryo and Satan separately

-This is probably due to how far Satan’s plans have progressed

-So, while Ryo claims to be on humanity’s side, his actions and dubious motivations require that he fan the flames of chaos

-And it isn’t subtle in any way

-His rhetoric is highly suggestive as to place mistrust in the hearts of every human, which leads to fear and suspicion of those around them

-We go from 0-100 real quick

-Any human in their right mind should have been wary of him and the loaded things he says

Side note: If there’s anything I don’t like about Crybaby, it’s how readily humans eat his words up. But that’s kind of Ryo’s thing. He laid the groundwork. Even as a 16 year-old brat, barely qualified to do anything, he built a name for himself as a studied professor. With help from the demons around him, of course… Regardless, he’s well-versed in the weaknesses of humankind and, paired with his extensive manipulation skills, it spells disaster in big, bright neon letters.

Pt. 3

[1989dreamer]

Chapter 23 of Looking for a Place to Call Home

LfaPtCH Tag

Please be aware that the groundwork for a potential Steter pairing is being laid. At this point it is a blink and miss it back and forth, but it will likely get more blatant as we get closer to the end. There was originally no pairing for this story and definitely no Sterek. If Steter actually occurs before the end, that tag and relationship will be added.

No edits again.

                                                                                                                     ~ * ~

Derek jumps into the passenger seat of Stiles’ patrol cruiser. It still smells like hamburgers in here, and it makes his stomach growl. He waits patiently while Stiles climbs into the driver’s seat and buckles him in. He also rolls the window down for Derek to stick his head out.

They start out heading for the hospital, and Derek sniffs as best he can, searching for his sister’s scent.

“Isn’t Peter in jail?” he asks.

Stiles yells, swerving to the side of the road and putting the vehicle in park. “For the love of God, you can’t just do that!”

“Do what?” Derek shoots him a look of feigned innocence.

“Never mind,” Stiles mutters. “Do you have any clothes or do we have to make a stop somewhere?”

“Um…”

“Noted.” Stiles sighs. “Can you stay as a wolf? We can find clothes for you after we find your sister.”

Derek nods. It makes sense to remain as a wolf in case any hunters other than Kate followed him to Beacon Hills. And Stiles carting around a naked kid can’t be too good for his reputation. He shifts back and then whines because he smells Cora’s scent. Stiles turns into the hospital’s parking lot.

Derek whines again when Stiles slips a harness and leash on him after parking.

“Sorry, buddy, but you’re a K-9 unit today.” Stiles steps out and then gently tugs on the leash until Derek climbs over the center console and drops onto the hot pavement. He pads after Stiles, relishing in the cool grass as soon as they step off the pavement.

Cora’s scent wraps around him, and Derek follows his nose, veering left at the entrance, heading toward an alcove of artfully cultivated flowers.

He stops short when he catches scent of the person sitting next to Cora on a bench tucked under the spread of a nodding row of mottled purple hollyhocks.

“Deputy,” Peter calls warningly.

“Unless you have clothes for him, he stays as a wolf.”

Cora slides off the bench and approaches Derek as if he’s a wild animal instead of her brother. He sits back on his haunches, holding still as she wraps her arms around his neck and hugs him.

“Listen, Peter, I didn’t come to arrest you,” Stiles says, annoyance wafting off his skin. “I’m just here to help locate Cora. Now that we’ve done that, we’re going to head out now.”

“Wait a minute, Deputy,” Peter says.

Stiles freezes, his heartbeat pumping loudly in his chest as his scent sours with sudden fear. “What?”

Peter stands up. He found clothes but they don’t fit, and the material sags as he moves. He hikes up the pants, hooking a thumb into the waistband to hold them up. “They are my family. Surely you wouldn’t take them away from their recovering uncle?”

“I’m sorry for what I said,” Cora whispers into Derek’s fur. Her apology sticks to him and he tries not to shake it off. he doesn’t believe that she’s truly sorry. Why would she say something like that if she didn’t believe it?

Derek looks up at Peter, wondering if he thinks Derek helped burn his house down and kill his family. Then, he realizes, if Peter had believed that at all, he would have already attacked Derek.

“Cora and I talked about her treatment of you,” Peter says to Derek, “and we agree that she was wrong and needs to apologize to you.”

“Which I did,” Cora points out, pulling away from Derek.

“Not sincerely,” Peter replies.

“How are you not in jail?” Stiles interrupts. “You confessed to murder.”

Peter spreads his hands. “Under duress, Deputy. And Kate was mauled by an animal. As you can see, Deputy, I am not an animal.”

Stiles’ lip curls in disgust before he shakes his head, the expression falling away easily. “Well, do you have somewhere to stay?”

“Why, Deputy,” Peter purrs, “is that a hint of concern I sense?”

Peter is mocking Stiles, but Stiles remains undeterred. Derek likes that about him.

“I would like to know that you are safe. Also, much as you probably don’t want to hear this, you will have to undergo a psychological evaluation.”

“Before what?” Peter asks, obviously amused.

“Well, I assume that you’ll want to seek guardianship of your niece and nephew.”

“I would.” Derek cocks his head at the wave of sorrow emanating from his uncle. “But I can’t come through the other side looking as if nothing happened. People will know that I’m not human, and the hunters will come back.”

Kate could come back? Derek whines, dropping low to the ground, hackles raising. On one level, he knows Kate is dead—he identified the body—but on a more visceral, animal level, panic is all he can think about. He whines again, panting, hunkering down as if that will protect him from the memory of Kate.

Peter freezes. “No, Derek, I’m sorry. There are no more hunters. I promise.” His words don’t register, and Derek keeps panting, hyperventilating. He’s going to get the remaining members of his family killed and his alpha has already rejected him, so he isn’t even a part of his pack anymore.

Two hands clamp down into his fur, digging into the ruff around his neck. Derek jerks upright, teeth gnashing, slobber running down his muzzle. He tries to break free from the hands, but they press him back to the ground, and suddenly Stiles’ body blankets his. His scent is a mix of worry and fear and something deeper, something that smells like coming home. Derek cocks his head. Why is Stiles worried? Does he think the hunters are coming back too?

“Hey, it’s okay,” Stiles says into Derek’s fur. He shifts slightly, moving so that he’s next to Derek. Stiles tugs at him until he lies down and then Stiles rolls him so that he’s curled around him again. “You’re okay. Everything is fine. No one is going to hurt you.”

Derek frowns, still heaving breaths, but already on the other side of his panic. Stiles isn’t worried about the hunters. He’s worried about Derek.

Peter kneels down, hovering a hand over Derek’s head until he dips his head, and then his uncle runs a hand over his head, scratching lightly behind his ears. “Derek, I promise you, no one is going to hurt you ever again.”

Between Stiles’ warmth at his back and his uncle’s truthful words, Derek slowly lets his guard back down and accepts their comfort.

                                                                                                                    ~ * ~

As soon as Derek stops shaking, Stiles gets him and Cora loaded up in the backseat of his cruiser. Peter stares at him with an intensity Stiles is sort of used to, being a cop and all.

“What the hell,” he mutters to himself, aware that all of them can hear him, can probably smell his decision before he consciously makes it. He opens the door so that Peter can climb in next to his niblings.

Peter had plenty of time to hurt or kill all of them and didn’t. So, either Peter is good or he isn’t seeking revenge right now.

Stiles glances in the rear view mirror, noticing that Peter has somehow squirmed between Derek and Cora and has an arm around each of them.

Derek is still in his wolf form, which is good because Stiles doesn’t need the repeated heart attack a naked kid in his cruiser would cause.

Stiles’ radio crackles, and he swears as he sees Peter’s ears twitch. He grabs it and steps out.

“Any updates on Cora Hale, Unit 5?”

“Cora Hale has been located and is currently en route back to her foster home.” Stiles glances at his car. All the Hales are listening, staring intently at him. It’s a bit unnerving. “Requesting an update on Peter Hale’s confession.”

“No-go,” Marie warns. “Inadmissible. Do not approach or engage.”

Too fucking late for that, Stiles thinks.

“Got it, Dispatch. Will touch base in one hour.” He hangs up his radio and turns so that he can lock eyes with Peter. “I don’t trust you around anyone. I don’t care that you’ll probably get away with it. Just know that I’m watching you, and the moment you slip up, I’ll be there to stop you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Peter leans forward. He smiles at Stiles and the only terrifying thing about it is how seductive it looks. “Promise? Better bring enough firepower to stop a werewolf.”

Stiles points at him, like his dad used to do to him, but Peter just smiles again, and Stiles swears he sees the tip of his tongue poke out. Oh, hell no. Stiles refuses to let Peter try to flirt his way out of a murder charge.

He’s faced down a lot in his time as an officer of the law. He’s probably encountered werewolves before and just didn’t know enough to realize it. Stiles isn’t even a stranger to having suspects flirt with him.

He sighs, climbing into the driver’s seat and cranking the ignition on. Erica will be glad to get her charges back, and Stiles will be glad to focus on other things, like Garrison Myers’ untimely death. Garrison Myers who died of an animal attack after being stabbed onto a tree.

Stiles glares at the road. Peter killed Garrison Myers. He’s positive. Myers was an arson investigator. He labeled the Hale house fire as accidental when it was definitely arson. Peter is killing the parties responsible for killing his family and abducting his nieces and nephew.

Well. That means Deaton is probably dead too. Stiles finds he’s not as upset about that as he probably should be. Deaton was enigmatic when Scott worked for him, and he was a bastard for what he helped orchestrate against the Hales.

“Should we see if we can order something to eat on the ride home?” Peter asks rather politely.

Stiles frowns. Is he still flirting? He glances in the rear view mirror, just a quick check. Cora is still curled into her uncle’s side, but Derek has pulled away, his head drooping. He still needs to be eating every few hours and remaining in his full-wolf shift is probably burning a lot of Calories, not to mention the fucking panic attack he just had. Yeah, they should definitely get him something to eat. Peter certainly has the caring uncle down pat.

“Yeah, any requests or is The Burger Joint okay?”

Derek perks up a little, letting out a little woof of approval.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, insincerely, Stiles thinks, “but I don’t have any money. I can’t pay you back.”

Stiles finds he doesn’t mind that at all. He shrugs. “No worries. I’m happy to help anyway I can.”

“Even if you’re planning on arresting our uncle?” Cora asks.

Damn werewolf hearing.

“He confessed to killing Kate Argent,” Stiles explains. “In front of a Sheriff’s Deputy and other witnesses. If, and it’s a very strong if, he isn’t arrested for that, then I will leave him alone.”

“And what if I don’t want you to leave me alone?” Peter asks.

Stiles nearly stomps on the brakes. What. The. Fuck. Why is Peter so insistent on flirting with him?

“Your father, once I’d healed enough for identification, would sit with me and tell me all about his son who was coming back to town and how he was going to pick up the investigation where he’d been forced to stop. And I’ll believe in you as long as it takes because your father has faith in you, and I have faith in your father. He was my sister’s emissary after all.”

“How’d Kate Argent die of an animal attack in a hospital equipped with security measures for their supernatural patients?” When Peter doesn’t answer, Stiles sighs. “Look, our interim sheriff pulled the hospital’s security cameras. What’s he going to find?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Peter answers tightly, jaw working like he’s chewing his lies. “I wasn’t there.”

No? Was that when you were attacking Lydia Martin?”

“Why can’t you accept that Kate was a bad person who should have been killed long before she abducted my nephew and killed my family? Why can’t you accept that sometimes an animal happens to kill people?”

“Are you an animal?”

Peter growls.

Stiles isn’t scared. “I don’t know if the responsible parties would have faced justice, but I do know that you shouldn’t have played your hand like that.”

“It took three years,” Peter says softly, “for my surviving family to come home. There’s nothing that can undo the hurt they suffered, but at least it won’t happen again.”

Stiles thinks he understands. If Lahey hadn’t been killed, he would have continued to cover up the murders and likely would have succeeded in pinning it all on Derek. And Kate? Someone like her can only be stopped by death.

He may not like it but Peter’s right: it can’t be undone, but it sure as shit isn’t going to happen again.

With a slightly lighter conscience, Stiles pulls into the drive-thru for The Burger Joint.

                                                                                                                    ~ * ~

[tentoriwrites]

You were trying to be romantic by throwing rocks at my window, but you broke it instead. + Yukimura for @wonky-glass-ornament

I have no excuse for this... When she asked for this, for some reason my brain went right to ‘80s teen romcoms. Like one of the ‘80s teen movie tropes is this idea that women are this mystical, awe-inspiring creature and that is so Yukimura. 

Normally he would go to Saizo with something like this. Saizo always gave great advice even if his delivery left something to be desired. But tonight, there was no answer to the incessantly ringing phone and none of the lights were on at his apartment. Yukimura scrolled through a streaming service trying to find some kind of inspiration. One section he scrolled through had some descriptions that jumped out at him.

“Teen romantic comedies…” He murmured with sudden interest. “Maybe these can help me figure out how to get her to talk to me again…”

Earlier that day his girlfriend had left him standing in the middle of the street after he said something he shouldn’t have. He’d spent the whole day stewing on what to do. Now he was marathoning every teen romcom while taking notes and drinking more than he realized.

The night bled into the dawn and Yukimura had passed out at some point. He woke up with a start when the late morning sun started glaring in his eyes. A page of notes was still stuck to his face, embedded in some stubble as he rushed to get ready, yanking it off only once he saw it in the bathroom mirror. His shirt half tucked in, pants unbuttoned he took off out the door there were things to do, plans to make, groundwork to lay!

Of course, NOW Saizo shows up. “Where’s the fire, dear?” His quirked eyebrow was brief as he watched Yukimura fly past him at top speed.

“I have a relationship to save!” Yukimura called back barely slowing down until he ran right into a parked car. Saizo couldn’t hold in the laugh bubbling up from his chest before doubling over to let it run out.

“And who’s relationship are you trying to save?” Saizo asked after a moment to regain his composure. His skeptical eyes mocked Yukimura as he got to his feet.

“Mine! And I don’t need your help either! I have a plan!” He thrust the crinkled sheet of paper at Saizo. The skepticism on his face deepened as he took the paper. An almost constant stream of snickers passed his lips and his whole body shook with the effort not to laugh right in Yukimura’s face.

“And where did we get this plan?” He wondered as he looked at Yukimura in fond exasperation.

“From a movie! Well a couple of movies! But I pieced the whole thing together myself!” Saizo couldn’t bring himself to tell his friend how terrible his plan was when Yukimura seemed so proud of himself.

“It’ll be faster if you let me drive you around to get this stuff.” Yukimura’s face lit up.

“Thanks, Saizo!”

 Tink…

Tink…

Tink…

Nothing. Yukimura sighed as he looked up at the illuminated window.

“Maybe she’s at work?” Saizo offered as he leaned against the front quarter panel of his car.

“No… she’s always off on Wednesdays.” Yukimura answered shaking his head and looking a bit defeated.

“Then maybe you’re not throwing hard enough.” Saizo offered as a joke while taking pictures.

“Maybe…” Yukimura picked up another pebble and got down in a pitching stance. Saizo pushed off the car to stop him but it was too late.

Crunch!

“You just broke the window…” Saizo sighed rubbing his temples. Yukimura crumbled completely, eyes trained on the ground until he heard the window slide open. She looked down at him, flowers and chocolates on the ground by his feet and sighed, trying to hide a smile.

“Let me guess, you were trying to be romantic by throwing rocks at my window, but you broke it instead.” She stated more than asked. Yukimura blushed vehemently scratching the back of his head as he nodded.

“Sorry. I’ll get that fixed for you… but… uh… that wasn’t the romantic part…” He had been so confident before in his plan, but now that he was before her, he was suddenly bashful.

“Oh, it wasn’t?” She folded her arms on the sash of the window and leaned out slightly. “Well what was the romantic part?” Yukimura’s blush spread down his neck before bent down and picked up a speaker and his phone off the ground. After a moment a song started playing and Saizo smacked the heel of his hand to his forehead.

“Don't you try and pretend/ It's my feeling we'll win in the end/ I won't harm you or touch your defenses/ Vanity and security

Don't you forget about me/ I'll be alone, dancing you know it baby/ Going to take you apart/ I'll put us back together at heart, baby

Don't you, forget about me/ Don't, don't, don't, don't/ Don't you, forget about me”

She laughed and shook her head to start with but quickly started bobbing in time to the music. Her reaction was very encouraging to Yukimura, his face lighting up with a smile. Meanwhile, Saizo smiled and sighed as he leaned back against his car. It took a special kind of lady to handle someone like Yukimura. Naturally, only Yukimura could figure out a way to woo someone like her. He made a mental note to write a short story about this later. His followers on social media would eat this up. He snapped a few more pictures.

“Not the most romantic song you could have picked but I think I get the idea…” She called at the end of the song. Clearly, she wasn’t mad at him anymore.

“I’m sorry I upset you…” Yukimura looked crestfallen again. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“I know. It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I still have flowers and chocolates to give you. Can I come up?” He was back to bashful now.

“Sure, I’ll come down and unlock the door.”

“NO!” He snapped out quickly as he threw up his hands. “Just stay right there!” She looked at him a bit stunned. Stunned turned to confused as he tucked the flowers and chocolates in his jacket and zipped it up.

“He wouldn’t…” Saizo sighed exasperated as Yukimura wandered up to the vine covered trellising that run up the side of the house right next to her window.

“Yukimura! That’s dangerous!” She screeched on a whisper as she leaned out the window further.

“It’s fine!” Yukimura answered confidently as he neared her window.

“Ugh…” Saizo pulled out his phone and set emergency services on dial just in case before going back to snapping pictures. Remarkably, Yukimura made it to her window and off loaded his goods without any trouble.

“Thank you, Yukimura… now please get down.” She breathed out on a sigh of relief.

“I hope you sleep well.”

“You too.” She gave him the merest peck on the cheek but her leaning down to deliver it caused a gap in her shirt he could see straight down. Suddenly, his whole body seized, and he started to ooze down the trellis. About halfway down he lost his grip and fell straight down into the bushes like a rock. Saizo was right there snapping a quick picture, for posterity’s sake, of course.

“Are we done now?”

“She wasn’t wearing a bra…” Yukimura muttered absently, brain still staunchly refusing to operate.

“Have you tried wearing one of those things, dear? They’re very uncomfortable to sleep in…” Saizo sighed in exasperation before looking up at Yukimura’s clearly distraught Juliet. “He’ll be fine. I’ll have someone by to replace your window tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Saizo.” She breathed out in relief once more, hand firmly clutching her chest. Saizo hauled Yukimura out of the bushes and back to his car.

“I have to make this up to her…” He muttered once coherent sentences became possible again. “I got to second base with her on accident.”

“Yukimura… You have to actually touch her for it to be getting to second base. You’re still sitting in the dugout…”

[lgbtfalloutwinterholiday]

[fic] In Stasis, In Sun (Christine/Veronica)

Happy Holidays!

Here’s @heck1 ‘s submission for @dragonie.

Pairing: Veronica Santangelo/Christine Royce Summary: Written for the following prompt: “ Anything about Christine/Veronica post-game reunion <3 “ Work Count: 3,220 Rating: Safe For Work Characters: Veronica Santangelo, Christine Royce Warnings/Tags: Hurt/Comfort

Singing guts through the Sierra Madre.

Husky and dulcet. Gathers in satin folds. Noise clefts the fog as a beacon, sustaining a warning rhythm.

Foolishly, prospectors from the Mojave take the Sierra Madre to heart as a siren call.

No matter how the lone sentinel bares her teeth and shoulders her holorifle in a punishingly vivid burst of warning fire, every few months, a new fool clambers past the gate to try and pry apart the locked down inner chamber for gold. Without exception, not a single new body could penetrate the depths after the Courier devised the vault as an inescapable coffin to trap Elijah.

Christine didn’t bother to intervene beyond a cursory recorded warning supplied at the base of Vera Keyes’ statuesque hologram. Newcomers perished in the outermost streets.

Dumb as a pack of unrequited suitors. As all one-sided sexual attraction goes, few next to none are capable of gleaning that the ravishing myth of the Sierra Madre is based in concealing the amount of labor that it takes to make a mirage appear conquerable. The Sierra Madre is made soft and wet with gastrointestinal smaller intestine shining in the gaslight as his length stretches from northwest booth to southeast signpost. And like all else, even in deconstruction, the newcomer does not decay: All yardage of slick viscera becomes assimilated into the gut flora of the silent ville. Shanked and quartered by the distorted hazmat beasts that swept through the streets, antibodies constantly running on the lip of inflammation.

Between the last eviscerated fool and the next debt-riddled hopeful, clockwork stasis brings down an obliterating order upon the timeless inhabitants.

Perched on the ledge of a dilapidated balcony, Christine winds in another breath.

Exhales on a low note that sends a shiver down her spine.

Months have passed since the events that locked a dead woman’s vocal cords into her throat, but each time she renews her singing voice, she loses track of the weight in her soles. Everything from the shoulders down dissolves.

She stops again, which brings her back to her body.

Measures her breaths in.

Out.

Only her heartbeat remains, pounding thickly in her eardrums against the pressurized silence of the Sierra Madre Villa.

Slouching, she surveys the view below.

Dead whistles of a gambler’s tomb fills the air thicker than plaster dust from cheaply assembled structures. Each architectural limb of sprawling subsections broke apart in the same gaudy decay. A fumbling millionaire’s pastice of Latin-American opulence.

Without any requisite sunlight to drench the baked stone walkways and carefree arches, Christine wryly noted that the gated community could only slump as a post-fling catacomb, robbed of any energy to pay mind to the immeasurable undead wheezing across the distance.

She sinks to her knees. Scintillating colors are bursting across her vision, robbing her of sight briefly. Agitating, but nothing new.

This unannounced setback grew in frequency the longer she forced her lungs to adjust to the copper and sulfur-laced mist. With the migraine, she braced herself for the next wave of nerve damage.

Needle tips jab into the rope-thick scar that bisects her scalp. Pain receptors ring alive in calamity, based on old patterns of neural signalling more than any actual stimulus.

Phantom sensation made her jaw tense, grinding back teeth to ride out the wave of intensified body awareness. Stubble would never grow again. Scalpel and cauterization damage from the Auto-Doc damaged her scalp invisibly, even outside the rope-like keloids. This locked her in eternal symbolic pact with the Circle of Steel, an offshoot of home that would have long presumed her dead.

For good reason.

Her eyes began to sting and water. She exhales against the searing, throbbing migraine, letting herself ignore the biological ramifications of constant exposure to corrosive toxins.

“I’m bored with elegance,” vocalized Christine, shaky voiced draped in the lush tremble of Vera Keyes’ cords. Draped in the starlet’s voice, her whine turns into a velvet-boxed sulk.

An itch of rage began to snag. While Vera’s voice was an odd novelty at first, the opulence now became a cruel juxtaposition with her surroundings. Worse, it was a reminder of one more intrusion planted into her body.

Drive it deeper. Make it contort until it feels like home again.

Until her vision returns, she might as well continue to push the limits of her voice.

Start.

A mellifluous, low hum rumbles towards a howl.

Ramping up against the grain of a silky voice, Christine plucks at the edges and splits hairs over the notes, once-elegant tune blaring as ferociously as hooked fingernails sinking into a surface of soft skin.

Words fail to capture lost time.

Her borrowed voice pummels the dead air, emptying lungfuls of indignant rage.

No response follows.

Christine skirts her tongue against the back of her teeth; acrid stained rings of canned coffee. Her mouth is dry. She forces the cramped muscles in her hips to relax.

And though all her companions through this Hell have long since deserted their shackles, a slow clap begins to fill the space behind her.

Immediately, she pulls her holorifle and locks onto the target.

Two fists, one encased in a loaded pressurized mechanism, raise towards the air.

“Hold--” sputters Christine, splintering throat snagging against the smooth vocal grain, “I’ll shoot.”

A silhouette from the past held still.

Unearthed ghost, chewing nervously on a lower lip.

A pretty familiar lip.  

.

“I’ll catch,” Veronica offers, helpfully.

Christine’s eyes widened. A peppery flare in the middle of her chest burns out.

“I’ve been listening to you for the past couple. Five hours or so,” says Veronica. “Takes forever to get around without stirring up a horde. Plus, I’ve been cloaking my trail this whole time. Didn’t know if you were the only person I’d run into. Thanks for making yourself easy to find.”

There’s a  halo of exhaustion on Veronica, running deep purples in the sleepless pocks beneath her eyes, to the way that her arms won’t reach up without a noticeably elbow bent. Muscle exhaustion, complicated by the added weight of the forearm-secured mechanism that kept her life well within reach. Knees are held unnaturally stiff. Made sense. To bypass the shambling hazmats, any person would have to crouch and tread silently for well past any healthy amount of time.

Veronica continues, “I really like what you did with the vents. Great home renovation. Really keeps me from seeing this place with rose-tinted glasses.”

Christine takes note of the wispy quality to the intruder’s words. The rolling masses of red fog takes the harshest toll in the beginning. On top of lung damage, there was the added complication of the neurotoxins cooked into the Big MT emissions. Part of brain function was tempted to shut down automatic breathing altogether; surviving took very conscious efforts to force the body to intake and exhale. Without a respirator, Veronica was clearly struggling to get full oxygen capacity.

Lowering her rifle, Christine tries not to betray any emotion.

Hard luck. There was always a twist to the right of her mouth, a sour grimace.

“Why the fuck,” she says softly; hoarse enough that it almost passed for her own, prior to the transplant, “Why would you slip in here? Did you come here to find Elijah?”

“And do what?” Freed of the obligation to raise her hands like a dolt, Veronica rubs at her red-rimmed eyes. “I only got his last recorded message from the Courier months after she’d left this place. And even then, I had to play bodyguard to a manchild ghoul for a couple of weeks before I could get the rest of the coordinates for the bunker. Courier didn’t want to tell me. Father Elijah, he--”

Grief steals over, and Veronica begins to cough in quick succession. Wheezing, she shudders, a thin line of spittle running from the edge of her mouth to the dip in her cowl.

“--Unless he eats gold, you know, he died of starvation,” she finishes, absentmindedly brushing away the line trailing across her lip. A rueful look crops up, pleading for the topic to move on.

“Then you’re here because. Let me guess. You are. A born-again masochist,” says Christine, drier than a bone.

“Thought I wasn’t, ‘til I saw you again. Dunno, maybe it has something going for it. Listen to you. Like some old-world starlet,” says Veronica. “I’d try to wink, but I think I’d just end up closing both eyes. I’m in a lot of pain.” She’s grinning. She looks beat up to shit.

Shouldering up her weapon, Christine beckons.

“Over this way. I have a stash of stimpacks and rations. Let’s catch up somewhere safer.”

---

Marching through the dilapidated hotel, Veronica drinks in the sight of ruined splendor. During the entire trek over, she avidly drank the babbling water of Christine’s new voice as she recounted all of the calamitous events, from their separation to the present. Each pain filled stretch of time was recounted with chilling detachment. Time had supplied Christine with more than enough self-reflection and bitter closure to know better than to attach fixation on top of the burden that PTSD already shouldered onto her daily routine.

The premier suite was the safest place of rest and operations. In a strange fit of pragmatic sentiment, on her way to the final confrontation with Elijah, the Courier had taken Vera’s bones to the square’s fountain and arranged them in a final nod to the woman whose legacy laid the groundwork for the Sierra Madre. As close of a burial as there could be in a sealed world, remnants placed below a flickering hologram that would forever loop her angled chin; the come-hither sharpness of a quizzically plucked brow.

Immediately, Veronica spotted the scarlet taffeta dress folded over the chair. Even in her sickly state, her eyes narrow in a lock-down.

“I’m wearing that,” she says, seemingly revived by a burst of manic energy.

Food and meds out of mind, Veronica peels off her hooded garment. All earth toned and layered, made for camouflage and inconspicuity; shapeless, in other words.

Hands traveling to the hem of the dress, Veronica pulls it over her head without ceremony, wriggling it as much as she can.

Without meaning to, Christine audibly smirks. Watching the dishevelled uncombed bob of brunette hair submerge into rich scarlett satin, then re-emerge like bobbing for air, was a hell of a sight. A lot of twisting ensued. Whoever Vera Keyes was, she must have been built like an amazon. The posters were no exaggeration; judging from the dress alone, and the amount that puddled around Veronica’s shins like a poorly conceived trail of fabric, the starlet could have inhabited a good six feet or more in luxuriant height and stature, posing atop glossy high heels.  

“Hey,” Veronica calls out, “Get this zipper in the back.” “Mm. No,” came the reply, as Christine fusses open a stimpack and two curling packets of RadAway. “Arm out first.”

Obliging with a whine, Veronica complies with the order to allow Christine to administer the kit and remove irradiation. Then, Christine reaches over places her fingertips on the sides of the open zipper maw.

Veronica’s back muscles tense up, anticipatory. Christine steadily draws up the zipper over Veronica’s tawny shoulder blades, fingertips brushing carefully to stay on the fabric. She knew Veronica hated cold hands. The corsetry hung off her ribs like a loose cage.

“This is a bust,” murmurs Christine,

“No, it’s not. I’d need two extra busts just to reach halfway.” Veronica pulls both her arms into the top of the garment, folding them across her chest to exaggerate the cavernous space. Even with her scrawny elbows sticking out to each end, the corset barely held tension into some odd facsimile of the intended structure.

Against her trauma-hardened stoicism, Christine burst out laughing. Already, this felt like the warmth of their old give and take, a natural beat that grew pride between the both of them. In better times. But even now, after eons.

“That’s-- Don’t move, you’ll trip.” she pleads.

“Now you can give me some food,” says Veronica, primly, before letting the gown fall to the floor in a noisy mass of ruffles, and stepping neatly out of it.

After redressing in her regular clothes, she went with her guide to the extensive food locker outfitted in Vera’s personal room. Between the two of them, they split a pack of artisanal salami and wax-sealed cheese. Other odd luxuries included freeze dried fruits, dessicated pistachios, and electrolyte infused mineral water.

Stifling a belch, Veronica ventures a new topic.

“Alright. So one percent of the time, this place isn’t hell on earth. But the other ninety-nine percent of the time, you’re singing to ghosts?”

Crumpling a piece of wax paper between forefinger and thumb, Christine replies, “Don’t judge. I only do that on occasion. Kills the time after the latest prospector refuses to take a warning, runs into the fog, and bites the dust.”

This was an opening made for Veronica to climb in with another one-liner.

Not to sit there and look genuinely anxious.

“This is bad.”

Christine was about to speak, but was cut off.

“--I get it, I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through.” The plain sincerity in Veronica’s voice could push stress forward like nothing else. “And I know your job is done, and it would be Armageddon 2.0 if anyone could really split open this place and engineer the fog for mass death across the Mojave and, odds aside, the rest of civilization.”

Armageddon. Now they were getting well and truly old world.

“Everyone who comes in is too dumb to know how to release the fog without dying. Father Elijah was the only one who came close, and he’s gone. This sounds awful, maybe, probably, but I think there’s no point in playing sentinel for rich ghosts if you’d just going to die in a few years of neurotoxin exposure regardless.”

Christine scowled, retorting, “Sure, and there’s no point in promoting anti-murder laws if people are just going to murder anyway, right?”

“I don’t-- That--” A frustrated high huff. “I’m not here to play government philosophy with you. I can’t tell you what to do with your hard fought freedom. I don’t even know if I’m making any sense.”

“Why did you risk your life to come here?”

“We used to be something.”

Christine’s expression was unreadable.

Veronica kept going. “I know time and calamity changes that. We aren’t going to be the same people after what we’ve been through. But if I’ve gotten anything from splitting from the Brotherhood to see more of the world, it’s that no one has time to be a machinery cog for a dying cause. This isn’t what we’re made for.”

She balled up a wrapper and opened her palm, where it slowly flattens back into the original shape. “This doctor I travel with. He said something that keeps me up, in a bad way. He was telling me. There wouldn’t be a point, evolutionarily, in having a consciousness if you couldn’t pursue higher ends than the circumstances you were forced into.”

Christine shifted uncomfortably. “Hypocrite. Thought you said that we weren’t going to play government philosophy.”

“I mean, I’m allowed to do that because I have a life. That’s all you’ve done for the last year by monitoring this hell cave.” Veronica closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Hey. Christine. If nothing feels good to you anymore, then I won’t bother you. If you want to pummel your voice, your liver, your lungs for a bunch of dim prospectors who’ll never crack up the safe that killed off Father Elijah, of all people, maybe it does something for you I’ll never understand.”

She scoots forward, closing the distance between them.

“But I’m here. I came here to see you again. I don’t know that love can happen the way we are now, but you’re the only person I know who could help me guard so much more of the world out there. That’s your mission, right? Keeping the world safe?”

Just the rise and fall of their breaths together. Filling the small room, where Vera’s dying message still shrouded the wall facing across from them.

Veronica continues, “Between the two of us, we can push west and try to reach the other Brotherhood of Steel members. It isn’t too late to push the case for opening up knowledge. And look, if they’re already sharing out their technology, great. Mission accomplished. But if they’re as stingy and bullheaded as our bunker, then they must be thinning out in their ranks, too. They could use our skills. We could influence them to keep this stupid, beautiful world pumping along for a few more decades.”

She looks ready to keep that tirade launching, but Christine cut her off shortly.

“Nothing here changes,” she says, in her borrowed voice. “A perfect stasis since the Courier left. I’m so tired of upheavals. Going from place to place to extinguish genocidal maniacs. Getting more of me ripped up along the way whenever my body is convenient, or forgotten. Since my lobotomy, I can’t even read or write. I used to be a scribe, Vee. I used to know what I sounded like.”

Veronica seemed to wilt. Spontaneously, without smiling, Christine brushed aside a few locks of Veronica’s bangs out of her eyes.

“You really need a haircut.”

“You’re not coming back with me,” Veronica says, sounding like tinfoil crumpling.

“As long as I sleep in this ventilated space, there’s barely progression on the neurotoxin’s effects. RadAway helps. I’ll live longer than you think. The supplies in this place were meant to last for a lifetime. Several of them.”

“I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you that bad again,” says Veronica.

“Me neither.” Christine stood up, picking up discarded packaging to toss out. A bizarre gesture to think about, now that there was another flesh-and-blood human being to reference for some standard of normalcy. Putting objects in wastebaskets seemed a little nonsensical without a furnace disposal system. The least it could do for now was to occupy her hands and glances, away from Veronica’s expression.

“What does your good life look like?” asks Christine, distantly, as Veronica bites back a sob.

“It hasn’t changed since the last time we spoke.” Years ago. “I can’t stand by and watch inefficiency. It’s actually physically intolerable. That’s probably why I was such a good apprentice for Father Elijah. We could-- I could, engineer so many better possibilities for the world to use.”

“Vee, come here.”

When they kissed, Christine’s cheeks took an imprint of the tears running down Veronica’s face.

“You will move on,” Christine says, simply. “You always do. I liked that about you the most. I was really crappy at that. Still am.”

Veronica swallowed painfully, as though the pain rose like fumes and crackled her words from transmitting clearly. “You’re one of the best things about my life.”

“Stay the night,” says Christine.

“There is no night!” sob-laughs Veronica.

Christine studies Veronica’s face intently, brushing a knuckle down the side of her face slowly.

“Then there’s just the sun. This place was built around the sun. And since you arrived, I can finally see that the Sierra Madre looks right, for once.”

[jonboudposts]

1990s

My reasons for hating the 1990s as a decade are intertwined across a number of fields; the personal, the political and the cultural sum it up best as categories.

On the personal note, this was a time that gave me a great deal of mental trauma that I have never really fully reckoned with.

On a cultural note (and also a personal), I thought the culture of much of the 1990s was dire (and for sometimes/always deeply political reasons).  Even the alternative was always trying to prove itself; how clever it was written and underappreciated in it's smartness – like Brian the dog from Family Guy, a classic 90s archetype who is 'smart' for no reason, as it does not change anything.  

On the political front, we saw the take over of our daily lives by management culture.  There was no more ideology we were told; just 'what works'.  This showed itself in the crushing of working class representation and power and all that would happen now is the present order would be managed in mildly different ways, which were in fact only surface value.  Politics became a performance that you were excluded from and had no ability to influence.  

To protect from this political wasteland, irony became a weapon and a shield of protection.  Individuality was emphasised but the removal of real creative opportunities and no alternative to the economic status quo meant everybody became the same.  Today, we see a virtual inability to produce anything original; everything is a variation of the same in culture and until the recent resurgence of the left (and vicious attempts to suppress it), in politics and power.  This suppression and attack is characteristic of the left overs from this era; claiming to be beyond ideology but seeped in it to the point of immobility.  Their hatred of the left so severe they character assassinate one of the most moral politicians Britain has ever seen; their inability to see their times have passed, they live in constant nostalgia.    

Everything in the 1990s was managerial and performative and carried no real power.  Feminism became corporate on one end and reduced to behaviour traits on the other; individualised in other words.  Now you could drink and fuck like the boys but still lack economic independence or fair pay.  Neo-liberalism dominated and destroyed everything.  Now Blair could display a half-female cabinet to the press, but they were all ideology-checked so none were going to cause him problems and little interest was shown in real equality, just representation. Exploitation was not challenged; public participation shrunk; unity was cheapened at best to 'patriotic' crap that gave us nothing.  

Now how you chose to review this time can be varied – you could just put it down that this was a decade full of shit music, smarmy culture (smarmy because it was powerless) and things that look like no one bothered while slapping themselves on the back for their originality and cleverness.  There was still great stuff and artists who knew how bad it was; many produced art that reflected and satirised this; low-stakes action by people unlikely to last into the next era, if there was one.  But certainly it was not universally embraced, but resistance was mostly de-toothed.  The everyday reality culturally in The End of History was we ground to a halt and slowly rolled backwards.  

Britain in particular acted like it really had reached the end of everything, so the only thing to do was pilfer the past and present it in flashy ways like you invented it. The 1960s was raided to prop up the present times and hope no one noticed how little was happening. While there was still possibilities for working class people to get a foothold, this era laid the groundwork for our times now where we have been all-but removed completely from cultural production that is allowed entry into a wider sphere.  Meritocracy was sold; you could only get to the top if you tried hard enough and harder than the next bloke – and if you changed that accent, kept your opinions to yourself if they did not fit the mainstream and made sure you embraced a notion of manners that must never, ever be broken.  

The 1990s seemed to be the first decade of over-educated people working in crap jobs at best and feeling rather lost and wasted in their educational endeavours.  This is something that has been normalised today.  Also the notion that working class people were well represented in the 1990s is a lie.  At best people were laughed at (Lad Culture, the emergence of the nasty 'Chav' caricature).  At worst, we had middle class people pretending they knew what hard times were and dressing in expensive copies of cheap clothing, while everyone pretended to be hard.  

From the 1980s until around five years ago, we have been subject to the complete hegemonic dominance by one way of life, with no options to break the stranglehold.  Our ability had been removed from us and the culture reflected that.  The 1980s was the assault; the 1990s was the cementing of the damage done; where the vicious abnormality of the previous decade was solidified, made the only reality.  Disagreement and protest was dismissed, could be dismissed and overlooked.  The 1980s made it possible to remove so much history of resistance and alternative, but not everyone was willing to go quietly.  The 1990s used all these new cultural powers to wipe out even the resistance you had lived through and commodify the output.  

The last meaningful youth culture was (still is) rave, which had upset the establishment to the point of making laws against it.  Of course, they realised it was better to take it indoors and charge a fee, then let a gaggle of record flippers become 'superstars'.  This de-toothed manner ran into politics, where everything became too much of an ask, even basic needs and decency.  Our working rights were curtailed and our lives sold the the lowest corporation to abuse at will.  

The 1990s was so intolerant of difference and ruthless in attack that it became difficult to even like the good stuff while it was happening; instead feeling in a constant state of siege.  In the early 2000s, I was only just getting into Elliott Smith and realising that Public Enemy's Muse-Sick-N-Our-Mess-Age was actually a really good album (where it had sounded tired in 1994 to those of us suffering the dredge of the decade).  For all the new film makers of the 90s I loved, it was still their older work or older film makers I loved more (and return to occasionally today).  

That state of siege I describe culturally is now the economic life of the majority; zero hours nowhere-life of bullshit jobs that make it impossible to even build the most basic human needs (like housing) or desires (like bands worth listening to that get played somewhere that allows you to find them).  It seemed like at least the terrible decade had a little less of the intense stifling of the 'end of history' but again, this is a product of that time – not the good, but the less-terrible.  

Not everything I did like then I hate now however, nor is diving back into older culture – like musicians you missed the first time perhaps because you were not born – is inherently bad; far from it. It has as much relevance as anything that can still inspire someone to make great work themselves and is just plain enjoyable, which is never a bad thing. I also enjoyed loads of stuff at this time.  I watched a lot of films, listened to quite a bit of music (again, mush of it old).

I must admit that many things from this time do have a triggering effect on me.  The 'wrong' song can send me into a spiral that effects my mental well being for some time.  I forget so much that has happened since this time; forget I have managed to keep employed for twenty years or have maintained some meaningful relationships.  I immediately return to being the unemployable loser from suburbia who knows nothing of any worth and cannot function properly.  

This was the decade directly after the working class had seen a terrible war waged upon us.  Deindustrialisation was so extreme there is a case to argue it caused PTSD to entire communities.  The places referred to in Britain as 'left behind' were purposefully deconstructed and desecrated.  

In the US, the deindustrialisation was no less savage.  Bill Clinton sided up to Newt Gingirch in the House and they preceded to cut welfare, attacking the poorest and most vulnerable people.  They bragged about kicking so many people off the welfare roles, while no one seem to ask where they went next.

They privatised the airwaves, giving us a model for endless terrible music to be pumped out all day with no alternative.  This was a model wholly embraced by Britain, where today the majority of radio pap is an endless cycle of shit (and cheep) songs from the 70s, 80s and 80s and 90s that attempt to lull you into a living coma.  This is the sound of the end of history; Heart FM and Magic tell you there is nothing better, so just put up with this.  

The 1990s was a decade of self-aggrandisement and ignorance; looking back and failing to look forward.  The arrogant ruled with zero talent and this was reflected in what was produced.  Nothing was ever really new – even the good stuff.  Everything was horrible, yet was determined to force you to see it all as 'nice'.  All of this is true and yet most of it can be over-ridden and ignored.  

We get lost in a downward spiral and cannot moor ourselves with the one identity that best described us all in some way – class identity; because it was eviscerated during the 80s and 90s while everyone was telling you to have a good time.  Now when a white cis man gets angry about his life, he has less options to turn to except those on the right doing the worst kind of performative politics – pretending to be the victim when they have all the power; pretending to be the outsider when they are the centre.  

The 1990s was a decade that denied the future.  Everything we suffer from today comes from the great terror of the 1980s and the inertia of the 1990s and 2000s.  Britain is a moribund culture and while it seems to be the opposite of the times I discuss here, Brexit makes perfect sense as the final conclusion to all this.  A country ignoring it vile history and puffing itself up as the great imperial power of a new era, while in fact it is a broken, bitter land of spiteful failures incapable of imagining the future.

[paharvey99]

No Waitrose October - Days 12-13

Day 12

Today was a Great Day – the plumbing got fixed.

The plumber called at 8am to say he’d got stuck on a big one (don’t be childish) and would be arriving about 10am. This gave us time to tidy up a bit and have breakfast and do a bit of work and stuff.

Then it was 10am and I got the call from the plumber to say he was downstairs, so I went and let him in. In case you’re interested, and if you’ve got this far I have to assume you are, the downstairs buzzer for our flat doesn’t work. So every time we have a visitor they have to call us to go and let them in. It’s never worked in the five years we’ve been here. There’s a note on a noticeboard downstairs with the number of a firm to call if your buzzer doesn’t work, a buzzer-fixing firm I imagine, but we never have. We like people not being able to buzz us, I suppose. Even though it’s a pain having to explain to literally every potential visitor and delivery person that the buzzer doesn’t work and you have to call when you’re outside, it’s worth it to avoid people being able to buzz the buzzer

Anyway, I let the plumber in and explained the situation, which you may remember was that the cold water tank had been removed, the shower wasn’t working and there was a tiny leak in a new joint. He took a look and worked out that the shower wasn’t working because the original plumber had forgotten to turn it back on. He turned a screw with a screwdriver and the shower came on. Then he tightened up the leaky joint. Then he announced that the water in the bathroom was being fed by a second cold water tank, hitherto unmentioned by our two previous plumbers. He worked out where it probably was, but seeing as looking at it would have involved dismantling a wall, we decided not to look at it. He showed me how to stop the water if there was a leak, declared the whole thing safe, and only charged me £20 as he said he hadn’t really done anything. I gave him £20 from the four year-old I live with’s birthday money, as it was the only money we had in the house. I really need to give her that back. Then he left, and there was much rejoicing. Best £20 I ever spent. (Actually that’s not even close to being true.)

By this time it was lunchtime, there were some weird things hanging around in the fridge, so I rustled something up out of those. It turned out to be one of those meals that accidentally turned out to be totally delicious – Thai fishcakes on a bed of vegetable fried rice. I slarted sriracha all over the top of mine as a bit of a cheffy touch.

In the afternoon there were some more meetings and work and playing with the four year-old I live with and then it was time to make tea. I made a shepherds pie in a cast iron casserole, to see if I could make the whole thing in one dish. I could.

Didn’t go to Waitrose.

Day 13

Tuesday, which in our house means it’s the first nursery day of the week. The four year-old I live with is a bit pitchy when it comes to getting up and out of the house in good time, you have to prepare her the night before if you want her to be out before 9am. I hadn’t laid the necessary groundwork for the early start I was hoping for, which meant that my plans to do a load of work in the morning were thrown all out of goose. After some grumpiness (mainly on my part) we eventually got to nursery at just before 10am and I did my first Teams call of the day from the nursery car park.

On my return home I did actually get to do a load of work, which made me feel better. The person I live with and I had last night’s shepherds pie for lunch, followed by a slice of apple pie from the weekend at about 3pm.

At 5pm I went to collect the four year-old I live with from nursery. We’ve got a big shop planned for tomorrow, but we were running out of milk so I decided I ought to nip into M&S Food at Hollingbury for three big milks. It’s not the most convenient shop to go to, but I quite like it, mainly because of the massively reduced stuff that often pops up. Today there was a reduced fancy burger meal kit, down to £6 from £10, which isn’t exactly cheap, but I’ve often been curious about those meal kits, so I decided to give it a whirl.

I picked up the four year-old I live with, got home, gave her a bath and then the other person I live with started putting her to bed. That’s still going on, actually, it has been from the time I started writing Day 12. After finishing writing Day 12 I went and made a start on the meal kit. Turns out it’s a right swizz. I had most of the stuff in the house already. I chopped up some potatoes and put them in the oven as wedges, then I put some onions on to slowly fry, then I came back and started writing Day 13. (Shining a little bit of light on the magic of the creative process there for you, hope you liked it.)

Now I’m going to finish writing this blog, and go and try to cook the fancy burgers to coincide with the four year-old I live with falling asleep.

Didn’t go to Waitrose.

[gd512676]

White space

White space , or negative space is the space between screen elements.  

Active white space - intentional and included in design for emphasis. Is included to give more focus to the elements on the page.

Passive white space- Naturally occurring space surrounding a word or line.

During this exercise I will mostly be exploring Active White space, but will be aware of using passive white space to my advantage.

I began this exercise by looking at some established designers that have used white space within their work.  

Research

I looked at a range of posters, webpages and magazines for research.  I have made notes on each of the pieces that I have found.

How are the designers using space in their work?  How does it draw the eye, support you’re reading or convey a sense of luxury?

The sense of luxury is something that is  something that is desired when selling a product, a lifestyle or an idea. The use of white space is something that luxury designers utilise to a varying degree.  

There seems to be a distinction between ‘Heavy white space’ . Heavy White space is seen to be luxurious. Used by the elite, for example Chanel and Apple. We are taken on a journey with white space. It begins at the amount of white space used on the page.

Our eyes are drawn in by the focal point, often at the centre of the page. Where the product or idea is placed. Wide margins Draw the eyes in. Looking at apples website for example is a masterclass. The first time you click on a product, it’s all you see when the web page loads. Looking at the iPad Pro’s bright focal point against the white space is such a contrast. All the writing is out of the frame.  There are also no adverts in the white space on a luxury website, it screams “We have the money to make this look however we want”.  

Keeping with the idea of the luxurious website is Squarespace. Squarespace is an “attainable luxury” its not as expensive as an apple product and looks to communicate that it is a high end contender through showing its worth. The white space communicates that this could be yours, that you could make a website like this. It draws the eyes and only has the most important parts of the website are visible and wide amounts of space between everything.

Looking at magazines and advertisements was eyeopening. I saw a brand use a 4 page spread for 7 words.  Si on Rêvait ? La Haute Couture in vogue. The bold simple font opposed to the white space creates intrigue and creates a legibility. We ask, what is this? What is so important that it needs to take up 3 pages on a few words? This screams luxury. Unlike a website where you can just make more space if needed; Print media is more strictly controlled and having a white page is more work and expense to include. Pure Luxury.

Chanel is Luxury personified and every single advert is could finding’s print is bold. Chanel is the logo and is often placed on a page by itself. A clear emphasis on the name and the product. Much like La haute Couture, Chanel does not share space. It breathes. Wide margins, the product placed in the centre all to achieve the most amount of white space, the most amount of luxury. This is the same for Dior and any other luxury brand, we find out eyes looking at the logo or title, all while soaking in the white space.

I also looked at some poster designs for this research point, Saul Bass’ posters are all about white space. They are memorable and stylistic, sleek and uncluttered and have a very simple image at the centre. The rest is all white space and I feel that this gives a sense of focus and intrigue.

I also looked at a campaign by the mental health coalition, created by Paula Scher. The campaign uses the white space as an object to reflect the mood of the page ( The pages eventually turn white at the bottom) and this in opposition to the bold big text really shows that this is an important subject worth talking about. Its given Importance by giving it a large amount of white space.

*Further research*

I also wanted to research /Artist books and catalogs/, to see the type of thing that I should be designing and made some small sketches of various pages that I came across.

This led me to sketching out a few Pages that would let me explore what I wanted some of my pages to look like. There were parts of other artist books that really piqued my interest and inspired me.

There are  some gallery exhibition pdfs from the MOMA and Tate modern as well, trying to get some feelings of what a professional looking design should look like.

I found all of this research to be really instrumental to the making of the artist catalog.

*Creating stage*

The next step was to find an artist, Some of the artists that I had wanted to use were not available to the VADS, Oxford library or the Bridgman educational library.

Eventually I decided on an artist named Sara Hayward. I felt very attracted to her artwork and that it would be appropriate for a gallery like this.

I found a range  of images that showed a collective of her work, from portraits to still life. In all of my research, there seems to be a general consensus of showing a range of the art instead of just one area of their work.  I collected the images and took my sketches of layout and moved to Affinity publisher.

I looked at the images that I had and began to sketch out mock ups of pages that I wanted to include. 

I did change some images around and move the text boxes a bit, but overall I ended up keeping many of the sketches.

I made a grid, that would encase all of the images and the text.  I had to move around some of my sketches and adjust things for the image sizes. Eventually I made a 20 page document, including a front cover and back cover.

This is a list of observations that I made about my Design document:

- *Black Bold Title* & Lighter Grey Description (Contrast) -  Limited Palette for writing, the focus is the artwork -  White space to let the artwork “breathe” on some of the pages, some pages can be left blank all together - One experimental page where the image takes up the whole page, apart from the borders (Pages 10/11) - 2 columns seem to be the standard for writing an amount of text. - Using Avenir as the main font - as it is clean and resembles all the artists books that I have looked at.

Below are the pages from the book I made on affinity publisher. It shows the small grid that I used for all the pages, I wanted to show my working process a bit more.

I wanted to make something that looked sophisticated and encapsulated the feeling of “white cube status”.

I will include my booklet as a pdf when submitting but below is the mock up and jpeg files.  I can’t show the individual images as I am not allowed to show Bridgman images on my blog.

*Final thoughts*

This was a fun exercise, I have always liked the idea of making a book like this and learning about margins/grids and layouts in general really helped me to plan things out.

Up until now I had found positioning and ordering things to be personally difficult. I never knew where things should go, and why designs elements should work in a certain way.

Now I feel that I am beginning to get a groundwork in understanding why things work in graphic design. I have a long way to go,  but this is one of the first exercises where I feel like I am actually designing, instead of just trying to work my way through the exercise.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Spider-Man: Homecoming Review Part 1

Goes without saying but there will of course be SPOILERS

Story

Adrian Toomes runs a salvage company that’s cleaning up after the Avengers battle with the Chitauri in Avengers Assemble. He’s put out of business by Tony Stark’s new company Damage Control. Consequently he and his gang use some of the alien tech they salvaged and become criminals.

 8 years later we follow Peter Parker chronicling an exuberant personal video diary during his trip to Berlin and his battle with Cap’s team from Captain America: Civil War. After he comes home Tony Stark tells him he’s not yet ready to be an Avenger but that he can keep the high tech suit he made for him.

 Two months later Peter has been fighting crime in Queens as Spider-Man (reporting in to a frustrated Happy Hogan seemingly every day) and claiming he’s working under a Stark internship as cover.

 During an encounter with some of Toomes’ men trying to rob an ATM Spidey notes the high tech weapons they were using. Later that night he comes home and inadvertently reveals his identity to his nerdy Lego loving best friend Ganke Ned.

 The next day at school Ned blurts out to Peter’s crush (Liz Allan) that Peter knows Spidey. After being goaded by his school rival Flash Thompson, Peter agrees to bring Spider-Man along to Liz’s party. However just before he makes his grand entrance Peter spots weird lights in the distance and goes to check it out.

 There he finds Toomes’ men (led by Jackson ‘Montana’ Brice/the Shocker) selling weapons to a man named Aaron Davis. Spidey distrusts the deal and give chase to the criminals but is attacked and dumped underwater by Toomes (who is sporting flight technology). However thanks to the tracking device in his suit he is saved by one of Iron Man’s suits that Tony Stark is remotely controlling. He is lectured by Stark to leave the situation alone and ‘stay on the ground’ but later Peter recovers some Chitauri tech that had been misplaced during the battle.

 Toomes fires Brice for his incompetence but when Brice threatens to talk Toomes kills him and gives his ‘Shocker’ weaponry to Herman Schultz. Schultz tracks the Chitauri energy core (which Peter and Ned removed) to Peter’s high school. Peter manages to evade Schultz but tags him with a tracking device and he and Ned learn Schultz is in Washington DC.

 Coincidentally this is where the school decathlon team are heading for Nationals so Peter and Ned tag along. Together the pair disable the tracking device in Peter’s suit along with enabling the full features of his suit, including his own personal A.I. (Karen). Peter fights Toomes on a Damage Control truck but (partially due to his inexperience with the new abilities of his suit) winds up imprisoned within it and consequently stuck in Damage Control’s warehouse, missing the Nationals.

 Learning from Karen that the Chitauri core in Ned’s possession is unstable and dangerous he escapes from the warehouse and tracks the decathlon team (sans the silent and cynical Michelle Jones) to the Washington monument. Unfortunately the power core goes off and damages the elevator in the monument prompting Spidey to climb up it and enter through a window near the top (scouting the area out with a drone released from his chest).

 He manages to save the team and back in NYC tracks down Davis in order to locate Toomes, trying (and failing) to intimidate him using the suit’s voice modulating feature. Davis is concerned about the weapons being on the street since he has a nephew in the neighbourhood (a reference to Miles Morales) so he informs Spidey that Toomes will be at the Staten Island ferry.

 On the ferry Spidey identifies Toomes’ new buyer as a gangster called Mac Gargan and proceeds to intervene. However Toomes and Schultz get away whilst one of the weapons goes haywire and cuts the ferry in half. Spidey tries to save it but lacks the strength to do so. Thankfully Iron Man is on hand and manages to rescue everybody.

 Stark (now in person) rakes Peter over the coals for his screw up informing him he set up an FBI sting on the ferry that Peter ruined. Peter claims he was just trying to be like him but Stark retorts that he wanted him to be better (admonishing himself for sounding like his own father) and demands the return of the Spider-Man suit. Peter protests that he is nothing without the suit to which Stark replies that if that’s true he shouldn’t have the costume at all.

 Peter returns home to an angry and upset May, gets a talking to by the school faculty about cutting out on class and generally accepts his life is on a real downer. However Liz agrees to go to the Homecoming dance with him and after May helps him prepare he heads over to Liz’s home. However he is greeted by Liz’s Dad who is in fact Adrian Toomes himself. Whilst driving Peter and Liz to the dance Toomes figures out Peter is Spider-Man and threatens to kill him and his loved ones if he interferes in his business again.

 Peter however cannot let Toomes walk free and after informing Ned of what he is doing heads off to stop him. He is however confronted in the school parking lot by Shocker who Ned helps take down.

 Garbed in his original homemade costume, Peter (directed by Ned from the computer lab) confronts Toomes at his lair where the villain tries to persuade him to his side. He cites how guys like Tony Stark step on normal folks like them. Peter doesn’t buy it and Toomes promptly buries him in the ruins of his base. Toomes, aided by his tech guy Mason (the Tinkerer), heads over to Stark Tower where Happy Hogan is loading tech onto an automated plane headed for the new Avengers headquarters.

 Meanwhile Peter buried under the rubble thinks about what Stark said after the ferry, screws up his will power and frees himself finding his way onto the automated plane mid-flight and battling Toomes. The plane crashes on Coney Island and eventually Toomes is defeated, Peter having saved his life.

 Days later at the school Michelle (whose friends call her ‘MJ’) becomes leader of the decathlon team; she also stares a little too suspiciously after Peter as he leaves. Her promotion is due to Liz’s family moving away in light of Toomes’ arrest. Happy Hogan shows up at the school to thank Peter for what he did and also takes him to see Tony at the new Avengers HQ. Stark congratulates him on his efforts, tells Peter he has a press court waiting to announce him as the newest Avenger and presents him with an all new armoured Spider suit.

 Peter is elated before ultimately turning the offer down and reaffirming that he should probably stick to the ground as a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man for now. He leaves Stark at a loss as to what to tell the press when Pepper Potts walks in and Happy gives them an engagement ring he’d been holding onto since 2008.

 Back at the Parker residence Peter finds that Stark has returned his old suit to him. As he dons it though he doesn’t notice May behind him. She then exclaims in surprise.

 In prison Toomes meets up with Gargan who asks if the rumours that he knows Spider-Man’s identity are true. Toomes affirms that they are not.

 The movie wraps up with a Captain America clip that I dare not spoil because it is simply amazing.

 Review

When it comes to comic book films (or any films that adapt previously existing source material) there are three key points of view to evaluate the movie from.

·         The experience of actually watching the movie.

·         How the film works just as a story unto itself.

·         How the film works as an adaptation of the source material.

 For old dinosaur fans like myself it can be sometimes hard to divorce the third point from the second, so married are we to the source material.

However this isn’t to say it is impossible and I am going to try my best to be objective going forward. To help myself I’ve divided this review into two parts. Part 1 will cover my thoughts on the film as just a film. Part 2 my (much lengthier) thoughts on the film as an adaptation.

However, even when doing this evaluating this movie no easy task.

As an experience I’m not sure I ever walked out of a Spider-Man movie more fundamentally mixed in my feelings. Not disappointed exactly, but then I wasn’t exactly hyped when booking my tickets (by the way don’t bother seeing this in 3D like I did).

Okay to begin with let’s put things into context. This film had a Herculean job on its hands as it had to accomplish four key tasks:

 1.    Be a good stand alone film (or as stand alone as MCU movies can be)

2.    Showcase new possibilities from presenting Spidey in the context of the shared Marvel Cinematic Universe

3.    Lay groundwork for future Spider-Man movies

4.    Rehabilitate Spider-Man’s standing in the public eye following the Marc Webb Spider-Man films which left audiences fatigued and disenchanted with the character.

 And it did accomplish all of those...mostly.

 I could never in my heart of hearts call this a bad movie. It isn’t. It’s a good movie. It’s fun. It has action, humour, solid special effects, a perfectly serviceable story and strong performances all round.

 Last year after Captain America: Civil War I felt that I’d need to see more from Holland to determine how suitable he was for the role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man and how he measured up to Garfield or Maguire.

 This film has now convinced me Holland is perfectly qualified for the role. As for how he measures up...that’s a little hard to determine.

 His performance is much closer to Garfield than Maguire’s but ultimately the script is asking very different things of him than either of the two previous Spider-Men. As such it’s a little hard to compare their performances.

 He absolutely sells you on everything he is doing. The problem is everything he’s doing is kind of...atypical for Spider-Man. As such how he measures up as the character is tricky. Garfield’s Peter Parker/Spider-Man in comparison to Maguire’s essentially emphasised certain traits over the other. For example his Spider-Man was the superior quipster though this wasn’t wholly devoid of Maguire’s version of the character either. Meanwhile Maguire’s Peter Parker was most assuredly more introspective and nerdy than Garfield’s even if there were less examples of him operating as a scientist. Holland’s Spider-Man is in large part just a different animal altogether.

 Here Peter Parker and Spider-Man both are defined by their youthful inexperience and desire to play in the big leagues with the grown-ups, a league they aren’t yet ready for precisely because of that youthful inexperience.

 In this regard the film succeeds at most of the above points as this is undeniably something fresh and original for Spider-Man on film and it takes advantage of the possibilities of Spider-Man existing within a shared universe. Similarly Peter’s high tech suit definitely gives audiences something they’ve never seen before for the wall-crawler and it is firmly rooted in the wider MCU.

 In fact the whole movie can be said to be defined by the guiding philosophy of using the MCU at large to do something different. The characters are firmly rooted in showing you the ground level of a universe that in previous films has mostly showcased much larger stakes. Though this doesn’t apply to the whole movie as the inclusion of Ned as Peter’s friend and confidant and a greater emphasis upon Peter’s school mates help give the film a different flavour to what’s come before.

 And it does work...up to a point.

 Confession time. Back in 2016 when BvS: Dawn of Justice was released I dismissed just about everyone who ever tried defending that train wreck with the argument that the film was refreshing because there was a formula to the MCU films that employed light hearted goofy comedy. However between Doctor Strange and this film I have to admit that I’ve changed my tune.

 More than once in this movie Spider-Man is involved in slapstick comedy usually at his expense. It’s like advanced superhero clowning where the characters bumble and trip around. Now whilst this is fairly new to Spider-Man on film it’s actually not that uncommon for the MCU at large. You can see it for example in Iron Man 2008, Ant Man and Doctor Strange. That last one is particularly poignant because if there is one character who really does not lend himself to slapstick or goofy humour it is the ever enigmatic Doctor Stephen Strange.

 That sort of bumbling is cranked up in this movie because the point is the lead is inexperienced and learning the ropes. And when looked at on its own its honestly not insufferable or anything but along with the rest of the winking, quippy, jovial humour of the film does kind of feel repetitive of other MCU films. I think it’s definitely time for that formula to change if not be abandoned entirely.

 It doesn’t kill the movie though.

 Really there are only a few really serious marks against this movie as a film I have.

 To begin with the promotional material egregiously misrepresented Iron Man’s involvement (and spoilt way too much) but that’s not exactly the movie’s fault.

 The climax is not that satisfying as Spider-Man doesn’t beat Vulture so much as survives against him. The romance was kind of just there and existed more to serve other plot points rather than be its own legitimate subplot (a by product of trying to be different to previous movies I suspect). And the timeline with the other MCU films makes my head hurt. Seriously Avengers Assemble was 8 years before this movie? How does that make sense?

 The worst moment though is when Peter claims he is nothing without the high tech Spider suit Stark gave him. I have more problems about this when we get into part 2 but just in the context of the movie and the MCU this doesn’t really add up.

 Peter was operating as Spider-Man in Queens for something like a year before Stark showed up. Before unlocking the other features of it, the Spider suit he wore amounted to giving him an easily adjustable body suit, some high tech lenses and an advanced tracer. He used that for 2 months straight and only unlocked the added abilities of the suit a few days before Stark took the suit away (abilities that he couldn’t fully control).

 So he really didn’t need the suit to do what he’d been doing mostly up until then and he said it himself earlier in the movie, he was a kid who could stop a bus with his hands. He still has immense super powers and it seems illogical that he’d honestly not be able to recognize that. By extension the scene where he lifts the rubble to prove how he is more than a fancy suit doesn’t make much sense because of all the problems I just outlined.

 These hardly ruin the movie though.

 As for setting up future instalments, there is admittedly not too much done in this regard. The film is surprisingly self-contained for an MCU feature. There is a little tease of the Sinister Six but it’s very up in the air, it’s more likely we’ll simply be seeing the Scorpion in the next movie and maybe some more of Toomes. Other than that we have May learning Peter’s secret which may or may not turn out to be a really big source of drama going forward. We will have to wait and see.

 So as a movie that’s the latest instalment of the MCU I’d award this film a solid B. It’s a good movie about Spider-Man but probably not the best, but definitely not up there with the likes of Iron Man, the First Avenger, the Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy and most certainly none of the large scale team up films like Avengers Assemble, Age of Ultron or Civil War.

 I’d recommend you go see it as a fun entertaining time killer.

 However...as an adaptation...well, that’s a different matter entirely.

[thecoroutfitters]

Written by Guest Contributor on The Prepper Journal.

Editors Note: A guest submission from Brian John to The Prepper Journal. Time to start prepping for swim suit season. As always, if you have information for Preppers that you would like to share and possibly receive a $25 cash award as well as being entered into the Prepper Writing Contest AND have a chance to win one of three Amazon Gift Cards  with the top prize being a $300 card to purchase your own prepping supplies, then enter today!

As preppers our most important tool, and our single point of failure, is ourselves and the shape we are in so many people have been wondering whether boot camp is an efficient way to shed off some weight. You may be one such person and that is why you are looking for information about this topic. There are a lot more, only that you will never hear them talk about it publicly.

Boot camp fitness can be equated to military training (though the editor recalls being called things in military boot camp that no paid instructor would dare say). The grunting and sweating which soldiers do experience while sprinting and jumping is probably the best way to get rid of some calories. The exercise is not always meant to determine how much torture one can sustain but rather meant to gain some fitness which includes losing weight.

In the same way, boot camp draws a lot from the military training. The concepts of interval workouts that are followed by the exercise of slower paces apply to both boot camp and military training. The boot camp will also equip you to be fit, hardy and acquire the necessary shape, body size and form that will be useful if you are thinking about dry camping.

Is Boot Camp Effective in Losing Weight?

Can you imagine that it has already been proven that boot camp is the best way to lose weight compared to the routine gym? The former is known to help in losing fat and calories within a short duration. Doing away with too much fat in the reservoirs is all that is needed for weight loss.

The fact that your muscles are allowed to work by themselves without any machine supporting the body makes boot camp more efficient. More calories are burnt as the core muscles are engaged.

Video: The Workout

Activities to Undertake During Boot Camp

Not all activities undertaken during a boot camp are efficient when it comes to shedding off the extra pounds. You need to only focus on the most efficient activities in order to get it right.

These activities are:

Cardiovascular Activity

The step to losing weight starts by identifying boot camps that have programs that you are sure will meet your goals. The best boot camp is, therefore, one that supports some advanced amounts of cardiovascular activities. You can always do some research prior so that you are well equipped with options to choose from.

The best way to do it is by having at least 150 minutes of aerobic exercise in a week, that is less that 22 minutes a day – done right. You can start from moderate and change gradually to the vigorous levels as time goes by. The vascular activities can take the form of a jumping rope, sprinting, jumping sacks, navigating obstacle courses as well as running stairs.

Strength Training

There is no way you can lose weight without gaining some strength. The strength is usually gained on the muscles, core, lower and upper parts of the body. Multiple joints, tendons and muscles usually derive their strength from compound exercises like dumbbell lifting while doing triceps extensions and deep squats.

Remember to have the triceps extensions and lunges paired together. Some of the activities that are extremely good when it comes to gaining strength include:

Cycling

Squat jumps

Pushups

Pull-ups

Abdominal crunches

Jumping jacks

Burpees

As you gain some strength, the muscles gained replace fats which result in a raised metabolism. The end result is more burned calories. Do note that muscle is more dense than fat so a gain in weight can be a positive. Let common sense be your guide.

How Intense is it to Lose Weight?

There is no need to lie here. Losing weight is not child’s play. Exercise has to be intense to achieve the desired results. Nothing comes easy, remember that. This is not to scare you away, just to ground you expectations.

The boot camp workout should, however, be possible for any person. If it happens to be an impossible process, then I bet nobody will ever consider it as a way to lose weight. It is always a great idea to start by building your strength to endure the coming activity. From here, increase the effort gradually to get the best results.

It actually becomes easier as you progress. The challenge can, however, be felt. You should burn less fat and calories when the body starts to take the routine positively. Always try out different workouts to prevent the muscles from enjoying some comfort.

Important Tips That Should Be Followed

There are some basics that most people can ignore but they are very important. In this section, we are going to lay them bare and discuss them in details. It is only through this that no room will be left for mistakes.

Take Lots of Fluids

The first tip is to keep yourself hydrated. You are likely to sweat during the workouts. This means that a lot of water will be lost while undertaking the activities. The only way to keep your water levels balanced is by drinking some more.

Again, you need to remember that bouncing around with a belly full of liquid is difficult. Therefore, it is necessary that you take only a small amount of water. Otherwise, you won’t enjoy everything boot camp puts you through. But it is advisable to carry some bottles of water with you to the boot camp.

Build the Right Attitude

Secondly, weight loss is all about attitude. If you have the wrong attitude, you will not manage the activities involved. However challenging the workout is, just motivate yourself. At times, your muscles should burn and your heart should be racing. All you need to do is just laugh to release the tension so apparent on your face.

Obey the Instructor

Thirdly, listen keenly to your instructor. Listening is a virtue that can take you places. Do not concentrate on the pain. Quitting should never be in your vocabulary. Just keep going even if you are told of the next difficult steps ahead of you. If you keep your mind on your instructor, you will get your mind off the pain.

Take Deep Breaths

Breathing and working the abs/core are other important aspects of boot camp fitness so even though the toughest of exercises make sure to catch some breath. It should be a simultaneous process that also involves contracting your abs to protect your back.

At first, it appears uncomfortable and very awkward. Your body will, however, adjust itself with time to make deeper breaths whenever your abs gets engaged.  Your body needs a lot of oxygen at such a time.

Be Active and Always Try to Perform Well

Being the first during any fitness session is very encouraging. It does not only give you a clear view of the instructor’s directions but also makes you not feel lethargic. Whenever you are at the front, you will not be prone to the ideas of giving up.

Do not stop moving if you experience muscle soreness. Other serious health conditions like plantar fasciitis can take you down in the process of taking the routine activities. You will need the best boots for plantar fasciitis to help you work without any strains on the tendon and ligaments.

Avoid Mini Breaks

Mini breaks must be avoided to ensure that fresh blood is pumped into the muscles to prevent any kind of unwanted condition. Coming out of the boot camp injured is unrealistic. The aim of the boot camp is to lose weight and nothing else.

Take Some Electrolytes After Every Workout

  Last but of equal importance as the rest is the need to load up electrolytes into the body after every workout. Sweating causes loss of essential electrolytes in excess quantities. The best you can do to your body is to ensure that the lost electrolytes are replenished by taking electrolyte-filled snacks and staying in a cool tent if you were undertaking the boot camp activities in the wilderness.

Proper Attire for Boot Camp Aids in Weight Loss

Regular workout clothes such as shorts, tank tops and t-shirts are just fine with boot camp fitness. You can always have clothes that you are not attached to if one of the activities you are likely to have is about groundwork such as rolling on the ground.

Your feet are also not left behind. Make sure that the footwear is good-fitting and breathable. This is the only way to reduce cases of having blisters on the foot while at the same time ensuring that you are comfortable during the entire sessions.

  Another important thing to consider while choosing the right gear for boot camp is the weather. In the scorching sun of the summer, choose sweat-wicking and light fabrics. With such, you will surely feel like the hot sun is non-existent.

Additionally, during the snowfall during the winter, you need to stay warm and the best way is to ensure that you have heavy clothing with you. You should not overheat nonetheless.

Wrapping Up

Your desire to shed off some pounds will be like a drop in the ocean if you fail to choose an appropriate diet. Poor eating habits are what lead to your weight gain meaning that even if you perform perfectly well in the boot camp activities and maintain the usual meals, then there are high possibilities that you are not losing the weight.

I believe the tips on boot camp for weight loss have been of great help to you. Nothing has a lot of fun as enjoying an outdoor activity which at the same time doubles up as workout process.

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Author Bio

I am Brian John, I am very passionate about camping and any other outdoor activities. I take pride in interacting with nature in more special ways like camping, hiking, mountain climbing among others. I love sharing my experiences and ready to interact with other people who share the same passion with me through Enjoy The Wild blog.

  The post Is Boot Camp for Weight Loss Ideal for Everyone appeared first on The Prepper Journal.

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[ranger-of-estel]

Legends of Rogue One Ch3

Sara comes face-to-face with the man who raised her; and the message they were sent to retrieve. Leonard is forced to improvise, and rescue his growing team 

Read it on AO3

                                             Worlds Shaken

              By the time Sara’s hood is removed she is separated from the others. Not that she’s surprised, keeps risks to a minimum. She’s escorted down steps, a room full of rebels; some resting at tables, others stretching, cleaning their weapons, filling their rare downtime. Some of the faces are somewhat familiar, but most are strangers. Her shackles are removed and she is all but thrown into the next room.

               She glares at the alien who’d shoved her, “Sara?” The voice draws her attention back into the room, “Is it really you?” Ra’s al Ghul approaches, though Sara hardly recognized him now. The years had not been kind to him; his dark hair is graying, and where once had stood a proud man was now a body nearly encased, or replaced by, metal. “I cannot believe it.” Still, the eyes are the same. Dark and piercing as he stops a few feet from her.

               “Must be quite a surprise,” she offers a half shrug.

               “Are we not still friends?” He asks, head tilting slightly to the side, voice rasping.

               Anger bubbles in her chest, seeping into her voice. “The last time I saw you, you gave me a knife and a loaded blaster, and told me to stay hidden until morning.” She had waited for the extraction point, the backup call that never came.

               “I knew you were safe,” he countered.

               “You left me behind,” she schooled her voice, trying to focus back on the mission.

               “You were already the best soldier in my guard.”

               “I was sixteen!” She cries.

               “I was protecting you!” he snaps.

               “You dumped me!” She lurches forward, part of her screaming she attack and the other half begging she flee.

               “You were the daughter,” he hesitates, glancing at the door before adding. “Of an Imperial science officer! Some of the men were beginning to figure that out, wanted to use you as a hostage. You think I wanted you gone?” his voice drops, quieting as he watches her. “After Nyssa died…you were my daughter Sara. And not a day goes by that I have not thought of you.” She sees the wheels turning, the brilliant mind putting together pieces of a puzzle she could not see. “But today, of all days….” His eyes returned to hers “It’s a trap, isn’t it?” he chuckles depreciatingly, “The message, the pilot, all of it.”  She watches as he pulls a breathing mask from his breastplate, taking in a long breath. When his eyes return to hers she sees a mix of horror and pain. “Did they send you…Did you come here, to kill me?”

               She wants to ask questions, but not as badly as she wants to get away from this place, away from the memories. She’s thrown her walls back up, anger safely tucked away once more. “The Alliance wants my father. They think he sent you a message about a weapon.” She says dryly, “I guess, that by sending me they think you might actually help them out.”

               “And you, Sara?” he asks, hands folding on the cane before him. “What is it that you want?”

               She ignores him, avoids meeting the eyes that are watching her with affection. With the love she’d once clung to in place of the father who betrayed her. “They wanted an introduction, and now they’ve got one.” She takes a step back, hands coming up before her, “I’m out now, the rest of you can do what you want.”

               “You care not, about the cause.” It’s more statement than question, spoken quietly.

               “The cause?” She fire’s back, shifting toward him once more. “Seriously?” she wants to laugh, or maybe to scream. She thinks of her Father, taken to build a weapon for the defeat of rebellion. Of her mother, shot down when she refused. She thinks of the friends she lost while fighting under Ra’s herself. Of every time she has changed her identity to keep from being hunted. “The Alliance, the Rebels, whatever it is you are calling yourself these days, all it has ever brought me is pain.”

               “You could stand to see the Imperial flag, reign across the galaxy?” He asks

               She shrugs, “It’s not a problem if you don’t look up.” She states simply.

               For a long moment he just watches her, then he shifts his weight. “I have something to show you.” She’s not sure why she follows him, not when her freedom is so close. But she does, watches as he places a holodisk into his projector. “This is the message I was sent.”

               The cool blue light flickers, and a man is standing before them. Imperial insignia on the shoulder facing Sara. “Ra’s, if you’ve received this message then we may be able to save the Alliance.” She begins making her way around to the front of the figure. “Perhaps there is a chance for me to explain myself, and perhaps, there is a chance for Sara. If she’s alive, if you can find her,” Sara looks over at Ra’s al Ghul, then back to the man speaking. “Tell her my love for her has never faded, and how I miss her.”

               While her memory is fuzzy she knows the man now directly before her. Sees a lot of her own features on his face. But there are a lot of foreign things. Lines and wrinkles the man she remembers did not have…and he seems so much more fragile than the farmer she remembers. The figure shifts slightly, and Sara swears he’s turning to face her. “My little Canary; I can’t imagine what you think of me. When I was taken I faced some, bitter truths. I was told, that soon enough Darhk would have you as well. As time went on I knew; you were either dead, or so well hidden he would never find you.” Sara can feel Ra’s’ eyes on her, but cannot tear herself away from the glowing figure. “I knew; if I refused to work, if I took my own life, it would only be a matter of time before Damien realized he no longer needed me to complete the project. So I did the one thing nobody expected, I lied.” There was a moments pause, “I learned to lie. I played the part of a broken man, resigned to his work. I made myself indispensable; and all the while I laid the groundwork for my revenge. We call it the death star.” He shakes his head slightly, “There is no better name, and the day is coming soon, when it will be unleashed. I’ve placed a weakness, deep within the system. A flaw so small and powerful they will never find it.” His tone became more urgent. “But Sara, if you are listening. Baby girl, so much of my life has been wasted.” Sara feels the tears that have been blurring her vision beginning to roll down her cheeks. “I try to only think of you in the moments I am strong. Because the pain of not having you with me, your mother, our family.” His voice chokes slightly, “The pain of that loss is so overwhelming I risk failing even now. It’s just so hard not to think of you. Think of where you are. My little Canary”

               The emotion leaves his voice, and he shifts slightly once more. “Ra’s, the reactor, that is the key. That’s the place I’ve laid my trap. It’s well hidden, and unstable. One blast to any part of it will destroy the entire station. You’ll need the plans,” The image flickers slightly, “The structural plans to find the reactor. I know there is a complete engineering archive –“ another ripple of static, “In the data archive kept at the citadel on Scarif.” His voice is firm, almost commanding. “Any pressurized explosion to the reactor will start a chain reaction that destroys the entire-“ the image cuts out, and Sara collapses to her knees with a sob. Her father is alive. Her father has tasked her with the destruction of the weapon.

               Leonard feels the edge of a rock dig into his shoulder as he is shoved into a cell, bag coming off his head as he falls. He pushes to his feet, but is quickly kicked back against the wall, rebel gun pointed at his chest. He just smirks at the other man, but makes no further attempt of escape. He notes that the Guardians have been put in the cell alongside him, but Sara is nowhere to be seen.

               The moment the guards exit and the cell door locks into place he’s on his feet. Moving to inspect the door and surroundings. He can reach through the bars easily enough; but there’s a team of guards playing a game on a nearby table, and several more spread around the room. He returns to inspecting the lock, trying to recognize anything about the mechanism.

               Behind him comes a steady chant from Raymond; “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.” He blocks the noise out after the first couple minutes, a trick he learned long ago at the base.

               “Are you praying?” The deeper voice draws his attention from the guards, back to the men behind him. “Really?” the man’s tone is almost mocking. “He’s praying for the door to open.”

               Raymond stops, and Leonard turns to find the blind man looking in his direction. “He’s angry because he knows it’s possible.” At this the larger man does laugh, “Mick Rory was once the most devoted guardian of us all.” Raymond adds with more conviction.

               Finally, the guards have all moved out of sight, or are preoccupied with their game. Len kneels down, opening the pouch on his boot to pull out the lock-picks he’s decided will work best. “I’m beginning to think the Force and I have different priorities.” He replies offhandedly.

               “Relax Captain,” Raymond is stretched across the outcropping of rock about the height of a bench. “We’ve been in worse cages than this one.” Len can see that there’s a story there, but not one that he has time to pursue.

               He raises, “This is a first for me,” he says, one tool in his mouth and the other in his left hand. He goes back to watching the guards, waiting for an opening long enough to open the lock.

               “There is more than one type of prison Captain,” Ray’s voice is calm, and a little too knowing for Leonard’s liking. “I sense that you carry yours wherever you go.” He tenses some, glancing back and meeting Mick’s curious stare. He forces himself to relax, to ignore their probing and stay focused on the task. Make a plan to not only get himself out but to find Sara and get them back to Gideon on the ship.

               He not sure how long it is before the younger guardian breaks the silence once more. “Who’s in the next cell?”

               “What?” Mick huffs, walking to where there’s a small opening to the cell beside them. “An Imperial pilot?” There’s a moments pause, the man’s voice filling with rage, “I’m going to kill him!”

               It takes a moment for Leonard to really hear him, “Pilot?” He turns away from the door, “No, no wait!” He rushes over, pulling the larger man from the barred opening. “Back off!” he manages to position himself in a way that blocks Mick, “Back off!” He turns, peering through the bars. There’s a young man sitting on the stone, mud smeared across his dark skin. “Are you the pilot?” he whispers, but receives no response. The other man seems almost in a trance, swaying slightly and looking down at his hands. “Hey, I said are you the pilot?” he repeats. “The shuttle pilot.”

               “Pilot?” the young man straightens some.

               “What’s wrong with him?” He hears Raymond, but simply motions with one hand for them to remain quiet.

               “Quentin Lance, do you know that name?”

               “I brought the message, I’m the pilot.” His voice is quiet, but he turns to look at Leonard. “I’m the Pilot.” There’s recognition on his face now, as if he’s broken free of a dream.

               “Good,” Len’s voice becomes a little firmer, “Now where will I find Quentin Lance?”

               “Um,” The young man frowns, “He’s at a base on Eadu, it’s where all his research is done. He’s –“ he cuts off as the structure shakes violently, parts of the rock falling around them.

               The guards shout, and quickly grab weapons before leaving the area. Leonard runs back to the door, overriding the lock and just managing to pull his arm back through the grating as it lifts open. “Go, go,” he moves to where their belongings have been tossed in a pile, searching for his communication device. “Gideon, where are you?”

               “There you are!” She sounds pleased, “I’m standing by as you instructed. Though there appears to be a problem on the horizon.” She pauses a moment, “There is no horizon.”

               “Locate our position,” Len ducks another section of falling rock and sand. “Get that ship in here now!”  Once his bag is shouldered and weapon in hand he moves toward the door.

               “Where are you going?” Raymond asks

               “I have to find Sara,” he walks backwards toward the door. “Get the pilot, we need him.” He looks at Mick.

               “Alright,” the man grins, “I’ll get the pilot.” But Leonard doesn’t have time to make sure he does as instructed. He takes off, navigating the crumbling structure as best as he can.

               Rebels swarm past him at first, the occasional body lying in the hall. He slides to a stop as he enters a room to find her kneeling on the ground, a man -who he assumes is Ra’s al Ghul- standing at her side. “Sara!” He looks warily at the other man, moving slowly to her side while prepared to deflect an attack at any moment. “Sara, we have to go.” He kneels down, struck by the lost, empty eyes looking back at him. But he doesn’t have time to question it right now. “I know where your father is.” He urges.

               He pulls her up beside him, Ra’s speaking for the first time. “Go with him Sara, you must go.” She tugs against his arm, turning to face the other man.

               “Come with us!” She pleads

               “I will run no more,” he grasps her free arm,

               “Come on,” Leonard tugs, eying the growing cracks in the roof.

               “You must save yourselves,” Ra’s continues.

               “Now Sara,” he growls, pulling her more forcefully, “We don’t have time.”

               “Save the Rebellion!” Ra’s voice calls after them, “Save the dream!” This seems to snap Sara back to reality and she runs beside him; jumping fallen pieces of structure or avoiding debris as it falls. As they make it outside he’s struck by hot air and dust. What should be empty planes before him is a wall of earth rolling like a storm.

               He notices the pilot is still standing, and grabs him by the shoulder with the hand not still holding Sara. “Come on, let’s get out of here!” He hears more than sees their ship. And is once again immensely grateful for his droid partner. He’s the last one to jump into the ship, “Get us out of here!” He pulls himself into the Captain’s chair, Sara closing the bay door behind them.

               “I’m not very optimistic about our odds,” Gideon states over the noise

               “Not now,” he snaps, allowing a sideways glance before returning his focus to flying. He’s navigated a lot of storms, but nothing quite like this. The waves of dirt and rock are now arching over them, and they won’t reach the opening at this speed. “Punch it,”

               “I haven’t completed my calculations yet,” Gideon cautions.

               “I’ll make them for you,” he growls, flipping switches and throwing the ship into hyper speed.

Chap 2 (x) Chap 4 (x)