#old ares can have my farm any day

[aesfocus]

aes' video game gif making tutorial 2024 Part 1

Using your own footage. While everything regarding photoshop can be applied to nearly all media, apart from long form videos(5+mins) and videos not in mp4 format; I am still focusing on walking you through making your own footage look as nice as possible.

Needed:

A game and potentially mods for said game

Camera tools for various games (optional)

OBS

Photoshop

My gif making actions so you too can be fast

This tutorial simply opens your recorded footage in photoshop, no other screen cap software is required. Lets fucking go!

[Part 2]

INTRO: From Skyrim to Destiny, recording your own footage of various games is the best method of making your own gifs.

The reason for this is myriad; 

+ less artifacting vs YT vids, as seen below

+ you’ll have more control over the content + you can have personal characters + you can alter the settings of the game to be better for gif making purposes

While this tutorial does walk you through most of the steps it is light on exactly/why I use various adjustment layers for coloring, mostly because tumblr began to block my images/links. Other folks have tutorials but I can make one if its something people want.

But the real purpose of this tutorial is to cut the time it take to make gifs down by just opening your file vs. screencaping and so on.

1. Select your game and edit game settings for gif making.

Because we are using OBS, and recording the screen and not the game itself(more on this later), what game you are playing matters little. 

Other paid programs like FRAPS still work, as do some free programs like Afterburner/RivaTuner, but when it comes to multiplayer, some may be caught by various anti-cheats and shut down. (ESO will not launch if afterburn is already open, for example). OBS has simply been my go to for around seven years.

Settings.

Please feel free to play around with your game settings to find what works, you may even play a game on different settings from what you record footage under. I do not play with DOF settings on in games but do record with them on.

Dropping your screen-size from and being able to turn on ultra vs medium settings may make your gifs look much better as another example. 

+ At least 30FPS, try to avoid stuttering, lower the settings if needed. + Avoid crushing of blacks or blown out whites, especially when giffing POC! Adjust brightness and gamma as needed, HDR isn't your friend here. + While dark nights maybe more realistic and challenging for you, it often produces a dark gif in which nothing can be seen. + Turn off motion blur and film grain, these both add needless file size and look off when scaled down in photoshop. If you want grain add some after. + 720p is about as low for footage as you want to go unless making gifs for very old games. Work with what you have with old games. + Using mods and things like reshade can make your game shine.

Example time; ENB only on top, heavily modded on bottom, no adjustments were made in photoshop.

Modding can really alter a game. 

Skyrim is very famous for it, but everything from Mass Effect to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous have visual mods! They can make your footage stand out immensely, they can make your FPS drop, or even make it better. 

Please be respectful of mod authors. As someone who made them in the past, we are not content farms, we are just folks with a fun hobby like gif making!

I highly suggest any mod that removes screen blur, vignette and film grain!

2. Camera Tools (optional)

So you have your game, now it's time to learn what camera tools exist, if any, for your game. Many games like Rogue Trader and Dragon Age, have free camera mods. Some games like Bethesda games and some Mass Effects, have built in, or partially built in fly cams.

I used to back in the day before DA:O had camera tools back myself into a corner and swing the over-the-shoulder camera around to get gifs, so you have to work with what you have.

If you want to go the paid route there are plenty of camera mods available from assassin’s creed games to BG3. These are generally of better quality and work smoothly, but check around for reviews before you dish out your hard earned money!

Each of these tools will have different commands that you will have to learn. 

3. Obtain OBS & set it up

Why OBS?

It's free, it uses very little of your computer's resources. OBS also allows you to switch between screen recording, what I always use, and recording a specific program. Many other recording programs will not record some very old games, some can't record specific games.

Add to that, some hardware recording software will not record shadows or can get light values wrong and you are fighting a battle game after game. So I just go for what's free and works consistently.

I've only known one person for whom OBS failed to work, and that I think was a version issue. 

Install OBS, and then make a specific scene all the way on the left;

You can rename this or duplicate it if you also intend to stream(right clicking scene will bring up the menu to do so), I don't use OBS when streaming so I leave this as is.

Right click on the source and ensure it is set as Display Capture. Because some, especially older games, won't work with Game Capture you are going to record the screen. Double click Display Capture if you have multiple screens(I have 2) and select which you want to record!

Next we need to go into settings, over there on the right under Controls. Once in settings, go down to Video and keep the base and output values whatever your actual display size is. I have a 1440 display so it's set to 1440, if you are running 720 make sure it's 720 and so forth.

Ensure 30fps is chosen. Anything more is overkill, for both photoshop and your rig!

Next go to Hotkeys. This will be different if you are using OBS to stream as well, but because I am not, I cleared everything but the recording hotkeys and I assigned them to scroll lock. This is because I've yet to encounter any game or mod that uses the key for anything. Use what makes sense for you, however.

Finally make your way to Output, this is important. Ignore streaming, look at Recording.

+ Pick a folder you want to save in + pick indistinguishable quality, large file size. + Pick MP4+ which encoder you use is up to your system! This is the one that made sense for me and my system. There are tons of videos on YT that go over each encoder. Also here https://obsproject.com/kb/audio-video-formats-guide is the official guide. We need to be able to open the file in photoshop so I tend to lean toward H.264.

3. Test OBS and your game footage together!

Go into your game, record a menu!

If you see something weird here, like your game footage not actually recording, troubleshoot!

With your recording you shouldn't see any stretching.

Now go into game and for 3-5 seconds record you playing, if something isn't recording well, again, troubleshoot. OBS takes a small amount of resources but for older rigs you may need to adjust settings in either game or OBS to get better recordings.

Once you are comfortable, it's time to go wild!

4. Record your gif footage.

+ 5 second clips are best for scenery gifs, + anything from 2-10 seconds can be used for a character talking + anything more than 10 seconds? You'll hit tumblr's limits instantly and will need to make multiple gifs. Which isn't a big deal, but do make note of it as it is much harder for older rigs to open a 5 min 1440p recording than 10 seconds. Depending on the rig it may not even open, so try and make several recordings rather than one long one.

5. Photoshop set up if you pirated an older version

If your gifs look weirdly stretched, check pixel ratio! If your photoshop is legit, or you know that it isn't stretching your gifs wildly you can skip this step.

I don't care how you obtain photoshop, but photoshop has had the ability to open MP4 videos for nearly 15 years. You do not need to, and I do not encourage you to use any screencapping software. That's great for long-form videos, but my computer 12 years ago could open a 5min music video fine and it was a potato.

Often photoshop 'portable' aka pirated photoshop comes with some wild settings, namely, pixel ratio changes. Please check this first;

And look at what default is actually set at, if your gifs always look stretched oddly when uploaded to tumblr.

It should be 1:1.

Then look at,

Again set it to square! Newer photoshop, and non-pirated versions often will let you look at other aspect ratios but won't save weirdly. so 2:1 will still save to 1:1, this hasn’t always been the case with cracked photoshop, especially the version from around 2014.

6. Open

Either drag in all your videos, or just... file → open.

This is why you saved as 5 seconds and MP4, so you didn't need any extra steps!

++Please be aware that older/weaker rigs and laptops can struggle, and if you are seeing crazy hot temps and such its an issue. Seeing Photoshop pause to open/play an action is normal but not chugging. I tell you this so you remember to dust your case and give your hardware some love, fiddle with settings and if this straight up doesn't work with your version of photoshop it might not be for you.

7. Crop your videos

Once you have your video/s open, select the crop tool. (it should be right here in the default setup. or Simply press C on newer Photoshops)

Step 1-  in the far left box you want to select Width by Height and then type what size you want to crop to. Height Matters little but Width does matter.

Here are tumblr’s current 2024 sizes again!

10mb is the max, anything more will have a new compression algorithm applied to make it under 10mb.

Please look at the sizes closely. I'll give you an example! Lets say you make your widest gif 1000 pixels, a common wrong size.

I could only fit 20 frames in this bad boy, and its squished, despite the saving compression used, tumblr eats the quality to make it pixelated/artifact-filled.

Compare that to this, 66frames

Slightly different cropping but you get the point.

Same thing with using 540px in the 268px spot.

Compare it to the gifs below which is a 4.83mb 133 frame image in the 268 spot. see how it's less pixelated?

Now back to that Image. Lets talk about... Step 2. Select a range from within the image, try to avoid going to the edges, otherwise you get a 1 pixel wide transparent line. It's hard to see on some blogs, and so obvious on others. Mobile users won't likely see it, but it does take a slight amount more file size as well.

This is what I mean.

Step 3. Time is money, friend. And by this I mean I am going to provide you with the means to skip a TON of steps in the gif making process and just use my action, I'm even going to help you figure out how to fix it when it fails. For the low price of free. If you want the how to, I can break down what all the action is doing, but I haven't even thought about these steps in about 8 years or so.

PART 2 THIS WAY

(because tumblr hates more than 30 images)

[myuni-moon]

(P.S just wanna let you know that this will be a long one and I just need to talk to someone about this)

I am concerned...

So context, I took a 2 day, 1 night vacation and the apartment I rented out didn't have stable WiFi, so I couldn't do the usual; farm primogems and ignore the quest to up my AR

When I got home I felt a bit rebellious and did the AR quest. Big mistake because I've been holding it off for about 2 months so I immediately jumped from world level 2 straight to 5, cue a slight mental breakdown because I wasn't ready for that.

When I got home I also realized that I had enough blue wishes for a 10 pull and I jokingly pulled, another mistake because I don't have enough XP books for another new character.

(I got Qiqi, so that's neat)

I level her up as much as I could (lvl 40) and started to do the old fashioned way of leveling up, so I put her in with my other low level characters that had to be put onto the sidelines.

And there I was with a Rosaria (C1/lvl 29), Xingqui (lvl 20), Mona (lvl 20) and Qiqi (lvl 40) in a world with monsters over lvl 60

(Rosaria was one of my first characters but unfortunately I didn't have a team that would've suited her at the time so she had to be benched for 4 months, I am ashamed)

As you can see, it was very slow... Not

Y'know why? Because Rosaria was being an absolute beast, destroying anything that gets in her way. She was doing some mad damage to opponents thrice her strength and I didn't even give her any (good) artifacts, she only had the Dragonspine spear which was at lvl 20 I think

So Rosaria my beloved was carrying everyone so well that I might've forgotten to use everyone else just as much as her and only used Qiqi for healing (forgive me Xingqui, Mona, Qiqi)

Thank you for coming to my TED talk-

Anyway, what are your thoughts?

you can ask help from friends who are higher leveled than you to do stuff like quests and comms until you’re able to do it on your own. i’m on asia server, so if you’re also on there, i’d be glad to help :))

as for the team comp, it looks pretty good. you have a solid permafreeze team, though i do hope you have other elemental characters built since you’ll really need it (trust me as someone who didn’t build a cryo for a long time and suffered).

rosaria’ sa really good phys dps, and i’d love to use her one day once i’m done fully building my other 4* charas. my current team comp is kaeya, fischl, zhongli, and kokomi; i’m trying to find a replacement for zhongli, and i can’t exactly find a character i want to build. maybe thoma once i get him.

i wish you luck on your genshin adventures, anon!

[kookie-doughs]

Y/N L/N AND THE HALFBLOODS

Percy Jackson X Reader -Y/N L/N met Percy Jackson and everything was now ruined.

CHAPTER 7: FIRST DAY OF CAMP

Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever we went, campers pointed at us and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet. She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough. Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins. "I've got training to do," Annabeth said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall." "Annabeth, I'm sorry about the toilets." "Whatever." "It wasn't my fault." She looked at us skeptically, and I realized it might've been my fault. I may have made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures and made the ground shake. I didn't understand how. "You need to talk to the Oracle, both of you." Annabeth said. "Who?" "Not who. What. The Oracle. I'll ask Chiron." Percy stared into the lake, I rested my head on his shoulder wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once. I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend. I didn't know what else to do. I waved back. "Don't encourage them," Annabeth warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts." "Naiads," Percy repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. "That's it. I want to go home now." Annabeth frowned. "Don't you get it, Percy? You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us." "You mean, mentally disturbed kids?" "I mean not human. Not totally human, anyway. Half-human." "Half-human and half-what?" "I think you know." "God," I said. "Half-god." Annabeth nodded. "Your father isn't dead, Percy. And one of your parent isn't your parent, Y/N. You are both a child of one of the Olympians. " "That's... crazy." "Is it? What's the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they've changed their habits in the last few millennia?" "But those are just— But if all the kids here are half-gods—" "Demigods," Annabeth said. "That's the official term. Or half-bloods." "Then who's your dad?" Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling we'd just trespassed on a sensitive subject. "My dad is a professor at West Point," she said. "I haven't seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history." "He's human." "What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?" "Who's your mom, then?" "Cabin six." "Meaning?" Annabeth straightened. "Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle." Okay, I thought. Why not? "And who's mine?" "You grew up with both a mother and a father. So only your Olympian parent knows." "And my dad?" "Undetermined," Annabeth said, "like I told you before. Nobody knows." "Except my mother. She knew." "Maybe not, Percy. Gods don't always reveal their identities." "My dad would have. He loved her." Annabeth gave me a cautious look. She didn't want to burst my bubble. "Maybe you're right. Maybe he'll send a sign. That's the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens." "You mean sometimes it doesn't?" Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. "The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don't always... Well, sometimes they don't care about us, Percy. They ignore us." I thought about some of the kids I'd seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never come. But gods should behave better. Whoever my Olympian parent better suck up and claim me or I will show him. "So I'm stuck here," Percy said. "That's it? For the rest of my life?" "It depends," Annabeth said. "Some campers only stay the summer. If you're a child of Aphrodite or Demeter, you're probably not a real powerful force. The monsters might ignore you, so you can get by with a few months of summer training and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. But for some of us, it's too dangerous to leave. We're year-rounders. In the mortal world, we attract monsters. They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they'll ignore us until we're old enough to cause trouble—about ten or eleven years old, but after that, most demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off. A few manage to survive in the outside world and become famous. Believe me, if I told you the names, you'd know them. Some don't even realize they're demigods. But very, very few are like that." "So monsters can't get in here?" Annabeth shook her head. "Not unless they're intentionally stocked in the woods or specially summoned by somebody on the inside." "Why would anybody want to summon a monster?" "Practice fights. Practical jokes." "Practical jokes?" "The point is, the borders are sealed to keep mortals and monsters out. From the outside, mortals look into the valley and see nothing unusual, just a strawberry farm." "So... you're a year-rounder?" Annabeth nodded. From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather necklace with five clay beads of different colors. It was just like Luke's, except Annabeth's also had a big gold ring strung on it, like a college ring. "I've been here since I was seven," she said. "Every August, on the last day of summer session, you get a bead for surviving another year. I've been here longer than most of the counselors, and they're all in college." "Why did you come so young?" She twisted the ring on her necklace. "None of your business." "Oh." I stood there for a minute in uncomfortable silence. "So... I could just walk out of here right now if I wanted to?" "It would be suicide, but you could, with Mr. D's or Chiron's permission." "I've never had anything weird going on. I had a perfectly normal life." "It's because you don't give much of a half-blood scent. Even Grover didn't knew you were one of us until you came here. Even now they still don't smell you." "I just... want to go somewhere... else." I could see that Percy was guilty. "They wouldn't give permission until the end of the summer session unless..." "Unless?" "You were granted a quest. But that hardly ever happens. The last time..."

Her voice trailed off. I could tell from her tone that the last time hadn't gone well. "Back in the sick room," Percy said, "when you were feeding me that stuff—" "Ambrosia." "Yeah. You asked me something about the summer solstice." Annabeth's shoulders tensed. "So you do know something?" "Well... no. Back at my old school, I overheard Grover and Chiron talking about it. Grover mentioned the summer solstice. He said something like we didn't have much time, because of the deadline. What did that mean?" She clenched her fists. "I wish I knew. Chiron and the satyrs, they know, but they won't tell me. Something is wrong in Olympus, something pretty major. Last time I was there, everything seemed so normal." "You've been to Olympus?" "Some of us year-rounders—Luke and Clarisse and I and a few others—we took a field trip during winter solstice. That's when the gods have their big annual council." "But... how did you get there?" "The Long Island Railroad, of course. You get off at Penn Station. Empire State Building, special elevator to the six hundredth floor." She looked at us like she was sure I must know this already. "You are a New Yorker, right?" "Oh, sure." As far as I knew, there were only a hundred and two floors in the Empire State Building, but I decided not to point that out. "Right after we visited," Annabeth continued, "the weather got weird, as if the gods had started fighting. A couple of times since, I've overheard satyrs talking. The best I can figure out is that something important was stolen. And if it isn't returned by summer solstice, there's going to be trouble. When you came, I was hoping... I mean— Athena can get along with just about anybody, except for Ares. And of course she's got the rivalry with Poseidon. But, I mean, aside from that, I thought we could work together. I thought you might know something." I shook my head. I wished I could help her, but I felt too hungry and tired and mentally overloaded to ask any more questions. "I've got to get a quest," Annabeth muttered to herself. "I'm not too young. If they would just tell me the problem..." I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth must've heard my stomach growl. She told me to go on, she'd catch me later. I left her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan. Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids that teachers would peg as troublemakers. Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to us as we walked in. Percy left me to settle at his spot while I sat at mine. Luke, came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance, too. It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact. "I hope you settle in just fine," he said. "And here, I stole you some toiletries from the camp store." He had a very friendly and welcoming aura around him, I couldn't help but giggle, "Thanks." "No prob." Luke sat next to me. "Tough first day?" "I don't belong here," I said. "From what I've heard about other campers. I had a perfectly normal life. Nothing weird... I-I don't even believe in Gods..." "Yeah," he said. "That's how we all started. Once you start believing in them? It doesn't get any easier." The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything. "So your dad is Hermes?" I asked. He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal. "Yeah. Hermes." "The wing-footed messenger guy." "That's him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, merchants, thieves. Anybody who uses the roads. That's why you're here, enjoying cabin eleven's hospitality. Hermes isn't picky about who he sponsors." I figured Luke didn't mean to call me a nobody. He just had a lot on his mind. "You ever meet your dad?" I asked. "Once." I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell me, he'd tell me. Apparently, he didn't. I wondered if the story had anything to do with how he got his scar. Luke looked up and managed a smile. "Don't worry about it, Y/N. The campers here, they're mostly good people. After all, we're extended family, right? We take care of each other." He seemed to understand how lost I felt, and I was grateful for that, because an older guy like him—even if he was a counselor—should've steered clear of an uncool middle-schooler like me. But Luke had welcomed me into the cabin. He'd even stolen me some toiletries, which was the nicest thing anybody had done for me all day keeping Percy's works. I decided to ask him my last big question, the one that had been bothering me all afternoon. "Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about me and Percy being 'Big Three' material. Then Annabeth... twice, she said I might be 'the one.' She said I should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?" Luke folded his knife. "I hate prophecies." "What do you mean?" His face twitched around the scar. "Let's just say I messed things up for everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn't allowed any more quests. Annabeth's been dying to get out into the world. She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her he already knew her fate. He'd had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn't tell her the whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn't destined to go on a quest yet. She had to wait until... somebody special came to the camp." "Somebody special?" "Don't worry about it, kid," Luke said. "Annabeth wants to think every new camper who comes through here is the omen she's been waiting for." I didn't know why... but I grabbed his hand, he turned to me surprised. "I-I... Uhm, I want to get to know you better... I... I'm here if you want to talk. A-As a thank you for helping me since I got here! I-I..." He gave a warm smile and ruffled my hair. "Thank you. Now, come on, it's dinnertime." The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Luke yelled, "Eleven, fall in!" The whole cabin, about twenty of us, filed into the commons yard. We lined up in order of seniority, so of course I was dead last with Percy. Campers came from the other cabins, too, except for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight, which had looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as the sun went down. "Percy," "Hmm?" "Are you okay?" I was about to grip his sleeve when he moved away. "I'm sorry... I'll tell you after dinner." I looked at him sadly while he thought to himself. We marched up the hill to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods— and when I say out of the woods, I mean straight out of the woods. I saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill. In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen assorted wood nymphs and naiads. At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but cabin eleven's was way overcrowded. I had to squeeze on to the edge of a bench with half my butt hanging off. I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr. D, a few satyrs, and a couple of plump blond boys who looked just like Mr. D. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic table being way too small for a centaur. Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with her gray eyes and honey-blond hair. Clarisse sat behind me at Ares's table. She'd apparently gotten over being hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends. Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. "To the gods!" Everybody else raised their glasses. "To the gods!" Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! Percy sat beside other kids of the Hermes cabin. My glass was empty, but Luke said, "Speak to it. Whatever you want—nonalcoholic, of course." I said, "(Favorite Drink; F/D)." The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid. Then I had an idea. "F/C F/D." The drink turned a violent shade of F/C. I took a cautious sip. Perfect.. . . . . I drank a toast to my loved ones. They're not gone, I told myself. I felt like I was forgetting something. Like I know I will get too them all soon. "Here you go," Luke said, handing me a platter of smoked brisket. I loaded my plate and was about to take a big bite when I noticed everybody getting up, carrying their plates toward the fire in the center of the pavilion. I wondered if they were going for dessert or something. "Come on," Luke told me. As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest strawberry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll. Luke murmured in my ear, "Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell." "You're kidding." His look warned me not to take this lightly, but I couldn't help wondering why an immortal, all-powerful being would like the smell of burning food. Luke approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of fat red grapes. "Hermes." I was next. I wished I knew what god's name to say. Finally, I made a silent plea. Whoever you better claim me, or I will come for you and you won't like what I'll do. I scraped a big slice of brisket into the flames. When I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn't gag. It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn't have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke. When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention. Mr. D got up with a huge sigh. "Yes, I suppose I'd better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels." A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table. "Personally," Mr. D continued, "I couldn't care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have a new campers today. Peter Johnson and (Wrong Name)." Chiron murmured something. "Er, Percy Jackson and Y/N L/N," Mr. D corrected. "That's right. Hurrah, and all that. Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on." Everybody cheered. We all headed down toward the amphitheater, where Apollo's cabin led a sing-along. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate s'mores and joked around, and the funny thing was, I didn't feel that anyone was staring at me anymore. I went up to Percy. "What's wrong?" He sighed. "I... I feel like everything... All of this," He signaled at everything, "happened because you met me. When you told Annabeth about your life and how nothing had been going wrong, while I had trouble following me every step... I couldn't help but feel guilty." I knew it... He felt at fault. Taking his hand I looked at him, "I chose to be with you at the beach. I wanted to follow you. I wanted to stay with you. Yeah, troubles came and I lost everything... I would rather have you with me through that. Please?" He rested his head on my shoulder, "Yeah..." Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. It was late at night some were asleep, while some were screaming around. I stayed up looking out the window since Luke had warned me about going out. "Long day, how was it?" Luke greeted taking the spot beside me. "Almost had my face flushed down on smelly toilets, so real fun I guess." Luke rested his back against the window and looked at the two boys wrestling each other few feet away. "You know how you told me you wanted to get to know me more?" "Yeah... I mean it. You're the first person I met here. From what I heard you helped me after getting here." "So you feel obligated to get closer to me?" He raised a brow at me with a smirk. "No, I think you're interesting. I want us to be friends. I want to be a person you can trust." "Why?" "I... don't know. I guess I just want to. I mean yeah I also low-key kinda have a crush on you but oh well." I joked. Hearing his laugh I was relieved he was a cool guy. "I'll keep you in mind." "Really now? Okay dream of me I guess." "For a 12 year old you're a flirt." He shook his head with a smile. "It's my mom, she told me the best way to make friends is by flirting. If they're cool with you flirting they're perfect candidate for a friend, if they aren't, you'll have an awkward friendship." "I don't know about that." "I know right? Imagine teaching a 5 year old how to flirt." We laughed. We continued to chat about little things until it got quiet in the cabin. Most of them were now asleep. Percy slept as soon as he lied down, after all. "Good night." Luke smiled. "Yeah, good night." I didn't realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed on the bed. When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep instantly. That was my first day at Camp Half-Blood. I already felt like I belong. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all...

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I am in love with Luke I'm sorry Here's another chapter Another horirble caphetr UwU -kookie-doughs

Taglist?

@gayer-than-the-gayest-gay @the-natureofme @booknerd-3000

[hermeticimp]

My Thoughts on The Gods - Part 5

Welcome to Part 5 with our dear Greek god of madness, fertility, religious ecstasy, wine, and theatre - Dionysus!

Loved the 60s through 80s in the States. The devil may care and intense energy during these periods refreshed him after another series of violent, turbulent wars 

Just as passionate about rioting and standing up for what you believe in as Ares. He understands better than anyone the power of a group, no matter who they are. (Just think about all the things the Maenads were able to do when they worked together!...However violent they were XD). 

Just as into music as his brother Apollo. He loves the way you can just lose control when the music gets into you. It’s a level of ecstasy that few things can compare to.

Clubbing every night? Hell yeah! Any time is party time!

Hangs around frat parties and the like, happily keeping the booze overflowing and the energy up. However, that doesn’t mean he’s careless. He keeps an eye out for everyone, making sure they don’t drink too much, overdose, or harm anyone. He has no problem arranging rides for people to get home safely, which some of the other gods like Apollo, Hermes, Hestia, and Demeter assist with (the latter two helping provide shelter for those who are too incapacitated to leave and taking care of them). Apollo and Dionysus also utilize some tricks that help ease hangovers in the morning

Throws parties randomly when he feels things are getting a little too stale. What fun is being bored? 

Can be seen in the quiet faith of a devotee, follower, spiritualist, or religious person

He is the experience of suddenly sensing and feeling the beauty and love of the gods

Visits mental institutions as a means of comforting those within, giving them a quiet peace of mind for a time

Advocates for mental health much like Hel and Apollo. Passionate about reform and destigmatizing having mental disorders

Loves the idea of mental health days. Just because it’s not as easy to see as a physical condition doesn’t mean that someone isn’t being effected

Enjoys going to open mics and poetry recitals with Apollo and The Muses. Applauds and gives compliments, along with constructive criticism, for each person

Loves slam poetry

Enjoys a mix of thought out lyrics and straight party songs with music

Looks out for children with Apollo, Artemis, Hebe, Hermes, Hera, Hestia, and Zeus. He watches over those who are unfortunately dealing with abusive households

Happy to step in when he sees others being bullied or disrespected. Nothing sets him off quicker than treating others inhumanely

Enjoys attending wine festivals and tastings

He is the burn of alcohol down your throat

Watches fondly over those having their first drink, giving advice on how to avoid overwhelming one’s self and getting sick 

Big supporter of programs like Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous. As fun as drinking and (safe, legal) drug use can be, it’s equally important to recognize and respect the intense consequences they can have. He admires the strength of those in recovery

Watches over those working at rehab and methadone clinics. It’s not an easy job, especially when those who need help leave and fall into old patterns. He helps to ease the burden of those checked in and those who work there

He is the dedicated energy of writing a psychological thesis

Celebrates the diversity in sexuality and gender identity that exists today. Considering his own fluid identity, it brings joy to see others able to do the same

Enjoys watching people explore different identities to see what fits them. Nothing wrong with learning, experimenting, and growing with labels over time

He is the kind doctor who gently explains all of one’s options at a fertility clinic

Keeps an eye out for women who are going through late pregnancies and fertility treatments. Understands the toll and fears that come with these situations and helps to allay them 

He is the whisper of a secret between close friends late at night

He is the impish smile of a stranger in a club

Can be found in the bright neons and city sounds during a late night drive

Advocates for the protection of endangered animals along with Demeter, Gaia, and his son Pan

Enjoys farming and survival simulators like Stardew Valley and Minecraft

Thinks games like Kind Words are brilliant! The idea of people coming together to comfort each other anonymously is heartwarming

Spends plenty of time hanging out with his brothers Hermes and Apollo. It’s never a dull moment with these three

Carves out time to explore nature with Demeter, Hera, Hestia, Persephone, Gaia, and Pan

He is the sound of dissonant voices coming together in harmony

Is the quiet contemplation of meditation that leads to sudden insights

The song The Other Side by Bruno Mars feat. Cee-lo Green and B.o.B. comes to mind when thinking about him, Apollo, and Hermes. The three often sing the song together

He is the friend who stays up to comfort and talk down a friend in crisis

Enjoys drama shows due to how over the top they can be

Brings flowers to those performing in their first stage shows, congratulating them on a job well done

He is the feeling of stage fright that morphs into confidence as one practices and leans their parts

ADORES film festivals. Seeing the vast variety, from short films, to documentaries, to full length indie films and the work put into them inspires him

Much like Aphrodite, he reps a variety of pride flags whenever he attends a pride parade

Is the gentle, comforting voice that affirms someone overwhelmed with their dysphoria 

Supports more access to mental facilities to the underprivileged, inmates, and those on the streets

Supports sex workers and keeps an eye out for them along with Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, and Eros

Attends a variety of productions, from elementary performances to Broadway. Enjoys each and every one of them regardless of how inaccurate or perfect they are

Enjoys playing Devil’s Advocate in Ethics classes

Gets into healthy debates with Apollo and Athena on a variety of subjects

Can be called on when dealing with introspection (along with Apollo… for the umpteenth time XD), especially with shadow work

Likes grapes, grape juice, wine, alcohol, chocolates, big cat imagery, dolphin imagery, devotional dance and song, art, acting, hymns, plays, movies, music, skulls, and ivy

Has connections with death via Zagreus and the Orphic Mysteries

[365days365movies]

May 6, 2021: The Martian (2015) (Recap: Part One)

We’re leaving lo-fi sci-fi, people. Kind of.

I mentioned before that films like Her are what I define as “lo-fi sci-fi”, which is a category that I’ve kind of made up. Basically, it’s the science fiction version of low fantasy, meaning it contains science fiction themes contained within an otherwise contemporary setting. In the case of Her, Joaquin Phoenix’s character, along with many others, live in a world and setting basically like ours, but with technology advanced enough to generate AIs (like Siri) that are intelligent enough to actually ascend our reality. Because we live in a society.

You give me Joaquin Phoenix, I’m gonna make a Joker reference; it’s in the contract of my existence. Anyway, that is admittedly kind of broad, right? I mean, that has the capability of crossing over with a BUNCH of sci-fi genres and themes. And, considering that we’ve already seen magic, speculative technology, time travel, monsters, and artificial intelligence, we’ve already touched on quite a bit.

And with science fiction, the sky’s the limit. Literally. So, I think it behooves us to re-examine lo-fi sci-fi a little bit. Specifically, we should note that it can also be defined as an extension of currently existing technologies and possibilities. Writers would call this “speculative sci-fi”, assuming in this case that it’s set within the present or a near and attainable future. Her definitely fits in this category, as does Westworld. But, let’s crossover to another genre by speculating upon another possibility. And it begins with this man. Probably.

Hey, Elon, what’s up? Now, Mr. Musk here is a...controversial figure, for COMPLETELY understandable reasons. Instead of touch upon the man himself, I feel like touching upon one of his recent focuses: space travel. With SpaceX and the various upcoming space trips and journeys that they’re planning, Musk has made it clear that he plans to shoot to the Moon. Again, literally.

In fact, this full plan is to go even further than that, and to fuel potential commercial space flights in the future, which is admittedly very cool. And of course, if you’re going to shoot for the Moon...

Guys...guys, that’s Mars. THAT’S FUCKING MARS

Is that not amazing? We have sound and pictures from FUCKING MARS! THAT’S A DIFFERENT PLANET, GODDAMN IT! It’s cooler than I have the ability to properly express, but it IS goddamn cool. And this means that, easily within my lifetime, we could (and likely will) land on Mars. Which is amazing. God, I really want to see that happen.

And so, landing on Mars is BARELY science fiction, but since we haven’t yet done so...yeah, it’s fictional at the moment. And so, any film about landing on Mars falls within this category. Well...to an extent.

2000′s Mission to Mars, for example, was a Disney-funded film (to my IMMENSE surprise; and it’s based off of an old Disney World ride, WHAT), and a movie that I saw a LOT when I was a kid. I also barely remember it, to be honest. But that film is straight-up science fiction because of, well...aliens. The idea of Martians is, as far as we know it, fictional. And most fiction involving Mars includes these aliens somehow. Whether it’s DC Comics’ entire civilization of Martians, as seen in Justice League, Supergirl, or Young Justice...

...Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s heavily mythologized civilization, as seen in the Barsoom series of novels (and another Disney film)...

...Or one of the best Looney Tunes characters.

Mmm. Yes. Isn’t that lovely?

But, yeah, Mars and aliens go hand-in-hand in our media. So, to properly look at lo-fi science and speculative science fiction in relation to the Red Planet, we’ll need a movie that goes to the planet, and doesn’t touch upon the concept of aliens AT ALL.

Enter...Ridley Scott?

Yeah, the director of Legend, Alien, Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner, Gladiator. Also the director of Kingdom of Heaven, Prometheus, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and...ugh, 1492: Conquest of Paradise. I’ve talked about his mixed record before, in my Recap of Legend right here.

In 2014, he was brought on to adapt a book by Andy Weir called The Martian, which is a great book! I’ve listened to the audio book, and I whole-heartedly recommend doing that. And because of that, I am VERY MUCH looking forward to watching this film, especially seeing as it’s often called one of the best science fiction films made during that year, and was critically acclaimed then and now. It got seven Oscar nominations (although it won none of them), amongst other awards. So, enough navel-gazing, huh? The Martian!

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

On Acidalia Plantitia, at the landing site of the Ares III mission, a group of scientists are gathering samples. These scientists are commander and geologist Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), pilot Rick Martinez (Michael Pena), systems operator Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), surgeon Chris Beck (Sebastian Stan), German chemist Alex Vogel (Aksel Hennie), and overly talkative botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon). 

The group seems to have a good dynamic, but that dynamic is interrupted by a massive dust storm, which is large enough to cause the entire crew to evacuate. However, in the chaos of the dust storm, Mark is hit by debris and lost in the shuffle. Although Lewis goes back to find him, she can’t get to him before they need to leave, and Mark is believed dead. This is reported (pretty callously) by NASA Director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) to the press soon afterwards.

But of course, that wouldn’t be much of a movie, now would it? Mark’s alive! And Mark’s alone. With his suit damaged, and low on oxygen, he trudges back to headquarters, which is intact and still contains breathable oxygen. He gets inside, and realizes that he’s been stabbed in the abdomen by some debris. He removes it, and stitches up his own wound. Which is...god, it’s fucking BRUTAL just to think about, nevertheless watch.

Once he’s finished, he records a log for the future, if he doesn’t make it. It’s day 19 of the 31-day mission at this point, and Mark’s basically screwed. He needs lasting oxygen, water, and food, and he might need that for 4 years, when the next manned mission can come to the red planet. Additionally, he has absolutely no way to contact NASA, leaving him completely stranded. Another dust storm rolls in that night, and Mark looks over the belongings of his colleagues, packing them up for their eventual return. It’s somber, to say the least. However, Mark affirms that he’s determined not to die on the planet.

After doing the math, Mark should have enough food to last him for about 300 days, especially if he rations it. Until then, he’ll need to figure out how to grow his own food, on a planet where nothing grows. Which is, of course, going to be a difficult feat to accomplish. But Mark Watney’s a botanist with botany powers, and he’s gonna do it.

It’s day 31, and Mark’s brought in dirt from the outside, and uses the bio-waste from the crew’s stay there for a form of compost. After 5 days, mostly full of him watching Happy Days on TV and trying to farm, he realizes that he needs water, both for himself and for the soil. To do that, he goes chemical and decides to use hydrogen-laden rocket fuel, wood from Martinez’s belongings, and good old-fashioned fire to make water! And since hydrogen + oxygen = water, it should work. With a minor side-effect.

So, yeah, he blew himself up. As as he records a video log, the sound mixing makes itself impressively known by subtly and realistically generating a tinnitus sound. It’s VERY well-done, holy shit. Anyway, he makes a stable fire, and the place is soon covered in condensation, moistening the room and the soil successfully.

We get to day 54, and Mark’s planted leftover potatoes from the crew in order to grow them. And while he’s being mourned at a funeral on Earth, and in NASA, he’s seeing the fruits (or shoots) of his efforts.

Back on Earth, Mars Mission Director Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is trying to convince Director Teddy to let him lobby for another Ares mission, despite the risk of bad press for the callousness of the proximity to Watney’s death. Meanwhile, satellite technician Mindy Park (Mackenzie Davis) looks down at the Ares III site, and realizes that the site has changed visually, meaning that Mark may actually be alive.

Shocked by this, she tells Kapoor, Teddy, and media director Annie Montrose (Kristen Wiig) about this, and they realize the absolute clusterfuck that this whole thing is. They can’t tell the other members of the Ares III crew about it, because it’d devastate them for the 10 months they have to get back to Earth, at the VERY least. They can’t tell the WORLD about this, because they just had a funeral for the guy, and they’d reveal that they left him stranded on Mars accidentally, destroying faith in the Mars Missions Program. And they can’t save Mark, who they’re sure will starve eventually. It’s a mess. And Kapoor also wonders what’s happening to Mark psychologically through all of this.

And yet, they reveal this to the world regardless, causing the clusterfuck reaction that they think it’s going to cause. But Mark’s busy on Mars, figuring out how to get to the site of the next Ares IV mission in 4 years, at the Schiaparelli crater about 50 days travel away. This is a struggle, as his Rover has only so much power and fuel, and he can only get more power by cutting out the heater is risking death by freezing. So, problems. However, he figures out a potential solution: radioactive isotopes! In a move that is, let’s face it, COMPLETELY INSANE, he digs up a radioactive generator from the ship in order to heat the ship.

On Earth, they try to figure out Mark’s moves, as well as how to resupply Ares IV sooner for Mark’s benefit. This is with the director of JPL, Bruce Ng (Benedict Wong), and the flight director of the ship Hermes, Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean), who insists that they tell the Ares II crew. They continue to monitor Mark, and note that he’s been travelling for 17 days in his Rover towards something. Kapoor figures it out, and flies to California.

See, Mark needs a way to contact NASA, and he believes that the way to do so is through Pathfinder, the first probe ever sent to Mars in 1997, lasting for 9 months since landing until they lost contact. Mark digs it up, and the people at JPL in California start their own efforts for contact. And despite communication being extremely rudimentary, initially limited to yes/no questions that use a still-frame camera, it fucking WORKS! WHOO!

To boost this communication hurdle, the two camps figure out a hexadecimal system for communication, allowing them to communicate using a circular table of numbers that represent an alphabet. That allows them to teach Mark to hack into the Rover, allowing it to piggyback off of its broadcast signal and send them messages via keyboard. Nice! Now that communication is reasonably possible, Mark’s able to ask how the crew is handling his death. But upon learning that they haven’t told him. He’s understandably a little goddamn enraged. And so, they FINALLY tell the Ares III crew about this.

The news breaks the crew, even though Mark continues to stress that he’s all right, and that it wasn’t their fault. Meanwhile, Mark’s able to survive for 912 days with his potato plants, and things improve with the help of technicians on Earth. They plan to launch a supply rocket to him in the next year, and things are looking fine! Unless, of course...something goes horribly HORRIBLY wrong.

Well...fuck. Good place to pause for Part Two, then?

[floatingcatacombs]

Evaluting Gatchaman Crowds Through Rui’s Outfits

12 Days of Aniblogging 2020, Day 1

Oh, I’m fashionably late to this one. Gatchaman Crowds is a 2013 superhero anime that serves as a soft reboot of the old tokusatsu franchise, only now with 21st century shitty anime tropes. From this painfully generic setup emerges a surprisingly layered evaluation of technological disruption in the smartphone era. For this reason, Crowds is a favorite amongst anime bloggers as a superhero work that’s actually trying to do something interesting.

Unfortunately I don’t care about any of these guys

But it’s also a favorite amongst all sorts of weirdos because of the character Rui Ninomiya. A horrifying amalgamation of the technolibertarian CEO and trans femme hacker archetypes, Rui is by far the most interesting character in the show, because they’re a surprisingly prescient look at how the tech industry will function throughout the 2010s. But they’re also a ‘boy’ who never leaves their house without dressing in the most girly clothes imaginable. Predictably, this is catnip for me. But the funniest part of the whole situation is that nobody ever addresses it. Rui never provides an explanation for their outfits and the rest of the cast just uses she/her until they properly get acquainted and switch to he/him.

I could tell you that Rui’s obviously trans and wrap up the post right there, but that’s honestly not the most interesting angle of attack here. So I’m just going to use whatever pronouns I feel like in the moment for them and focus on what really matters: fashion! Rui has a surprisingly large wardrobe throughout the show, so I’ll be doing the heavy lifting of ranking each of her outfits. Oh, and also maybe a little analysis of what she represents. Spoilers for the whole show, of course.

7. The Yellow Dress

Let me lay out Rui’s ideology before I lay into their fashion disaster. You see, they’re a tech disruptor who believes that governments and bureaucracies are too slow to achieve the monumental (yet unspecified) change that society needs. So, they preside over a smartphone app called GALAX that successfully predicts Pokemon Go’s geosocial AR gimmick three years early. GALAX is a technolibertarian’s wet dream – crowdsourced emergency response, interest-based meetups, and matchmaking for people who need specific help and the people who can help them, all deeply gamified.

Their outfit here is about as messy as their politics, but at the same time, what a look. She’s got blue-and-white-striped programming thigh highs on under her combat boots, which are both such trans iconography, you know? While they may just be a reflection of early-2010s 4chan crossdressing culture, it’s also totally possible that Rui directly influenced or reinforced trans girl fashion, like the accelerationist she is. What a prescient show, in all sorts of weird ways.

6. Lace-up Dress with Bunny Ears

It wouldn’t be an anime girl cosplay without some bunny ears, now would it? Rui spends 5 minutes in an early episode just wandering around the city in this outfit, listening to people’s conversations and feelings on GALAX. There’s something very funny about how nobody even notices them, like they’re completely invisible despite their ridiculous outfit. This actually factors back into the tech stuff! Like pretty much every tech company, Rui’s app and vision are both sleek and shiny but rely on tremendous amounts of dirty labor kept as hidden as possible. From Amazon’s inhumane warehouse conditions to Facebook’s trauma-inducing moderator farms to Apple’s child labor-tainted supply chains, there’s always suffering humans behind the too-good-to-be-true magic of tech companies. Rui’s lie by omission is failing to mention that the app relies on invisible extradimensional beings called CROWDS that are manually controlled by underpaid workers to assist its users. One of the workers comes to Rui challenging their vision and arguing that they should be sharing this tech with the movers and shakers of the world, not trying to keep it invisible. He threatens a collective walkout and Rui fires him. At this point, we’re not even operating on metaphors.

5. Green Business Casual

Sure, most tech companies have cruel labor underbellies, but there’s also the separate risk of moral rot. It’s what causes Microsoft to take on ICE contracts and Google to develop censored versions of their search engine at the whims of authoritarians. Many tech companies start off with an altruistic message, but without a serious ethical core, they will start doing a whole lot of evil as they bend to financial and other pressures. Rui’s version of this is extremely literal: she made a deal with the devil to gain the ability to use the CROWDS and launch her app. Except this devil is also a butch gender-noncomforming alien (there is a Lot of other gender going on in this show that I don’t even have time for) and the two of them seem to have an extremely fucked-up relationship. Like any good Faustian bargain or any bad attempt at raising more venture capital without a viable business model, eventually the whole thing comes tumbling down and now you’re doing something terribly fucked up. Rui looks good in a dress shirt, at least!

4. Whatever your abusive partner puts on when she body-snatches you

Of course the center won’t hold, GALAX is subject to a hostile takeover, and to nobody’s surprise, an app with the flimsy promise to change the world for the better can actually be way better at ripping it all apart. I guess the prescient social media parallel here is Facebook being used to propagate Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing, or really anything related to Twitter for the last 5 years. FuckedUpAlienMimic!Rui sure does have cute fangs and a way more refined fashion sense though. I don’t feel like looking into that one.

3. Business....Futch?

I know I’m not done outlining Rui’s arc, but I’m going to skip ahead for a moment to say that Gatchaman Crowds also has a second season! I’m largely ignoring it here because Rui is pretty much stripped of all plot relevance and most of her outfits are less exciting, but I had to include this one. For two episodes, she puts on bright yellow stirrup leggings and an oversized polo shirt, with a cute ponytail to boot. It’s a ridiculous look, but still feels really evocative to me. Sometimes a girl just has to put together completely uncoordinated outfits and see what happens.

Unlike the disruption-focused first season, Gatchaman Crowds season two, which aired in 2015, is about how unfettered technolibertarianism can easily descend into fascism. Goddammit.

2. The Bunny Ears Outfit Again Oh God Who Hurt Her

The weight of the world comes crashing down in Rui’s hands, she’s bruised and beaten in a surprisingly sadistic manner by her alien ex-business partner/girlfriend, and she’s locked out of her own company which is very quickly causing society to fall apart. So what does she do? She puts the bunny dress back on, and wanders the streets again until she has to call upon the powers that be to fix her own mess. It’s silly that the powers that be in this world are superheroes, but I bet you forgot that this was technically a superhero show at this point. Anyways, my extended metaphor is quickly drifting off course, but I guess this is the part where Rui gets grilled by Congress and slapped with an antitrust case.

1. Every Trans Girl Stereotype Rolled Into One

I’ve been incredibly harsh on Rui throughout this writeup, because I’m harsh on the industry she represents, but I’ll make it up with this section. Look at what she’s wearing! A choker, the gothiest Hot Topic dress imaginable, arm warmers, no less than three asymmetric garters not even holding up anything, and the tallest black boots she could find. It’s incredible! If the first outfit on this list was hinting at her relationship to stereotypical trans fashion, then this outfit just screams it. It’s the perfect goth femme hacker look, a style commitment I have no choice but to respect.

Gatchaman is a weird show. After spending most of its runtime thoroughly dunking on tech disruptors for being too optimistic and uncritical, it takes a last-minute turn into Lockean state of nature arguments. It settles on “the masses are inherently good enough that empowering people through technology shouldn’t ever be a problem”, ignoring all the suffering that happened due to Rui’s unwillingness to curate their own technology. I’d give Gatchaman Crowds an average rating, but it’s one of those interesting average ratings where instead of being milquetoast, they tried something and failed and wrote themselves into a corner. But hey, at least there’s an interestingly gendered character!

[skekshroom]

ooh what about skeksis/mystic of your choice, raising a smol human with their human partner? COuld you imagine the teen years? lol

this prompt made me so SAD bc i started thinking about it when i was on a hike missing my friends but oGHHh since i mentioned one of the gragoh kids was curious about his human parent’s home world its gonna be HimTM. I’m giving them names btw skekAr and urGi (argi is a name that means light or something in euskara iirc). He calls you “adre” as a gender neutral term for padre/madre.

This is VERY LONG, mostly happy, with some sad

[urGi & reader] (urgoh x reader x skekgra later)

“I’m bored.” urGi rested his heavy chin on your shoulder. His thick brown hair obscured your vision, and you blew a quick breath to get it out of your eyes. 

“Why don’t you go play with your sister?” You asked and paused in your sewing. “Or you can help me with this.”

“I’ll help you.” UrGi declared as he lifted up his head, sat across from you, and picked up a ripped tunic. He turned a spool of thread over in his hands. “I don’t want to hang out with SkekAr right now. She’s being a dick.”

“Don’t say that.” You tutted, shaking your head. “Honestly, I don’t know where you keep learning these from, I don’t even swear that much in front of you.”

“You said shit a couple of times.” You tossed him a look.

“But yeah, Dad said it.” UrGi shrugged. “Father said it was like ‘jerk’, but worse. It’s an Earth term, I know that... Why, is it a swear word?” You nodded, making a mental note to remind skekGra to not teach your kids any more curses. You continued sewing peacefully, urGi humming as he patched up a hole on his sister’s shirt.

“Hey, Adre?” urGi piped up you looked up to see your son’s eyes, so similar to yours, looking away. “What did you do for fun when you were my age?”

“Well, when I was around your age, there wasn’t much to do. We worked, wrote stories, drew, got high, stayed in the house, hiked sometimes. Kinda like what Dad and Father do.” urGi looked a little too interested in the part mentioning drugs. “Except you shouldn’t be getting high.” You raised your eyebrows at him, knowing him and his sister sometimes snuck puffs from urGoh’s pipe when they think no one will notice. 

“Right, yeah, with the plague and everything... But what about before that? Did you ever drive places?”

“All the time, yeah.” You sighed wistfully as you tugged the thread through the coarse fabric and began a knot. “My friends and I would pile into the car, the- the carriage things. You know what a car is. We’d go uh... well, we’d go anywhere really.”

UrGi looked enthralled, pausing in his sewing and staring intently at you. “Where?”

“Same places you and your friends go. Periss and the rest of you take Bennu to the beach and woods sometimes, right? And you guys go to market, it was like that.”

“Yeah, but it can’t be exactly the same! It was... what’s that word... Ni’ka and Yothi says Thra is too small to be as industeyes as Earth was.”

“Industrialized?” You chuckled, holding up a mended pair of trousers and moving on to the next. “That’s probably for the best, anyways. Thra’s got enough problems without greedy fracking corporations and poisoned air.”

“Is fracking another swear word?” urGi knotted the thread and looked over his work. “It sounds like one. But anyways... What did you and your friends do? Did you live in a city?” 

“Well, we didn’t live in one... But we’d go to them sometimes. We’d all hop in the car and drive for miles, just to have fun during the way there and walk around afterwards. We’d always go to this one diner in the middle of this seedy corner of the city you have to find by accident. We’d all mess around in the parking lot and drive home down the highway listening to old music.”

“That sounds like the kind of place you get killed at.” urGi said bluntly, shaking his head. You laughed.

“Yeah, it kinda was, buddy. But, hey, never said we were smart, just fun. Let’s see... we did all kinds of stuff. We uh, we used to go up in the hills and hike or explore the abandoned farms... Sometimes we’d drive out go explore sea caves or scrape together money and visit the stores in the real rich neighborhoods.  We’d ditch campus and just go to the cornerstore, or throw a party at one of our houses. Never mine, but we’d cook together and play video games and end up passed out on the couch.”

“Ronnis doesn’t even like us staying inside the house too long.” urGi giggled. You chuckled. His friends’ mother wasn’t one for guests, especially not a gaggle of rowdy childlings. “I wonder why.” He laughed gleefully and set down the needle and thread, resting his chin in his hands. The hand with five fingers tapped his cheek, a little tic similar to the way Gra seemed to always pick at his own face. 

“I wish I could see all that. That sounds like so much fun.” Your son sighed, grinning at your story. “I wanna go to a movie! And to that town with the lanterns... and the city with the festivals and big buildings! Y’know, I wish we could go see Dousan plays more often... Those are so much fun. Dad’s puppet shows are fun, but... Dousan plays have cooler effects.”

“Yeah... You would have really liked it... I wish I could take you and your sister there.” You looked up at your son. He smiled with your eyes and the dark face of an Urru. Even if you ever found a way back to Earth, the enchanting stories you told him would be a quickly shattered fantasy. 

Earth was no place for someone like him. He was so innocent to all the hate in that world. It was a beautiful place that you loved unconditionally, but it was just as unforgiving as it was home to you. You wanted to take him to the malls, hold him on your shoulders at a concert, take him to the hotsprings or the ferry docks where the sea lions loitered... You would never be able to show him the best parts of your childhood.

Adre?” urGi frowned, moving the piles of ripped cloth aside and scooting towards you. “What’s wrong?” You don’t know when you started crying, but you folded the little urru in your arms and held him tightly.

“I just wish I could take you there. I wish you could see all these things, not just have stories about them... I’m sorry, mijo I- I’m so glad you weren’t born there. You would have hated how stressful and dangerous it was but...” You let go, holding him at arms length in front of it. “But you would have loved Earth. I wish I could give you everything good about earth.”

“You are, Adre. You are.” urGi mumbled, hugging you again. You chuckled, wiping your eyes and muttering an apology for crying so suddenly. You never cried in front of urGi or skekAr. You didn’t think it was fair for them to have to comfort you, but you spared yourself this even as you took deep breaths and gave your son a smile to show you were alright.

 You weren’t sure your paltry stories really did any of it justice, but urGi seemed to think so. He was such a sweet boy. You petted his hair, holding him close to you. You didn’t want to admit you missed it as much as you did. Gi, Ar, Gra, and Goh were your world. Thra was your world, and you couldn’t be more thankful for that.

“Thank you honey.” You said and kissed his forehead. Right as you did, skekAr walked in followed by her fathers.

“Aw, what the hell, you made Adre cry? Now you’re the one being a dick!” SkekAr glared accusingly. UrGi quickly denied it and the two began to bicker. You chuckled, shaking your head as skekGra intervened between the two of them. 

“Hey.” You said and kissed urGoh on the cheek as skekGra picked the two of them up under his arms and declared they weren’t to move until they made peace.

“Hello.” He echoed as he watched the mayhem with an amused expression. “What were.... you and urGi... talking about?”

“Ah,” You shrugged. “Just old Earth things.”

“I see...” UrGoh said, taking your hand in one of his. You looked down at it, and up at him, sharing his smile.

Gi and Ar were so much safer here. They never went hungry like you did, hear gunshots in the distance constantly, or crumble under the stress of the academic system. Every day you thanked Thra for this. You were so, so grateful for this, all you wanted was for them to be happy, to have a better life than yours.

But you wanted to show them rock music, cartoons, neon lights and singing along to the car radio.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Black Swan bookgasm review #2: Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun (1917)

It is not uncommon for a writer to become more known for his reputation than actual work. Not that the work isn’t of quality, just that it is easier for the public to fixate on their extreme political beliefs or their tragic life than for the very work that writer should be known. Sylvia Plath is a perfect example, since many non-readers of poetry are aware of her taking her own life by sticking her head in an oven, yet are unfamiliar with her great poetry - the very thing for which she is deservedly celebrated. Such is the same fate of the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun who was well known in his day, for he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920 after having published Growth of the Soil in 1917. 

In the same way the French have come to wrestle with acknowledging the literary greatness Louis Ferdinand Celine’s in tension with Celine’s Nazi sympathies during World War Two - so Norway has had its own ‘Celine’ problem with Knut Hamsun. Hamsun was well known for having been a Nazi sympathiser, and upon winning the Nobel, he apparently mailed his medal to one of Hitler’s closest associates, Joseph Goebbels. Then, after Hitler’s death, sources claim that he made some sorrowful eulogy, lamenting over the dictator’s life and death. As result, readers have adopted ambivalent feelings for the write - hating him for his politics yet loving him for his work. It should be also noted that Hamsun was in ‘mental decline’ after the war, so one can’t be sure what he would have believed in a healthier state of mind. But all this should be no matter, for what counts is the work, and Growth of the Soil is a work worth the read.

Hamsun had his admirers in the literary world including H.G. Wells who wrote, “I do not know how to express the admiration I feel for this wonderful book without seeming to be extravagant. I am not usually lavish with my praise, but indeed the book impresses me as among the very greatest novels I have ever read. It is wholly beautiful; it is saturated with wisdom and humour and tenderness."

Though the novel’s setting is in rural Norway, civilisation and its discontents are never far off. There are telegraphs and newspapers. People read. It's not as though this is a bucolic idyll in a sheltered Eden. It is a novel full of contrasts - most obviously between the remote, traditional agrarian life and the rapidly encroaching modern world. This is a very typical Norwegian subject—and typical for many small countries that have gone through such dramatic changes in just a generation or three. Nostalgia looms large.

The book tells the story of Isak and Inger, a married couple seeking to make a living off land that many believe to be a bad business move. We begin with Isak's first steps to create a home in the Norwegian wilds: 'The wilderness was inhabited and unrecognisable, a blessing had come upon it, life had arisen there from a long dream, human creatures lived there, children played about the houses. And the forest stretched away, big and kindly, right up to the blue heights.' He finds a woman, Inger, initially a simple soul, whom life gradually makes more complex. Inger is physically disfigured, but Isak is devoted to her, and the couple works to raise a family and make a life off their land, furrow by furrow, ax blow by ax blow, grows a life. He is the first, the trailblazer.

Gradually other settlers move in  - the idle, the industrious, the promiscuous - creating over decades a community of sorts. This includes the self-seeking Oline, “Never in life would she give in and never her match for turning and twisting heaven and earth to a medley of seeming kindness and malice, poison and senseless words.” One of the most enigmatic characters is Geissler, originally introduced as a decent official with whom Isak has dealings; he helps him at other times and made me wonder if Hamsun was equating him to some Viking deity, “I’m something, I'm the fog as it were, here and there, floating around, sometimes coming like rain on dry ground... There's my son, the lightening.” Years later, men come for the stringing of telegraph wires, the mining of ore in the adjacent mountains. Hamsun presents the incursion of man into nature, the imposition of will on a pristine Nordic first world.

There's a ‘worldly’ balance to the drama, yet Isak's simple virtues prevail - although he's constantly challenged by events, some beyond his control. There, to a degree, he's protected by his guardian angel of a friend, Geissler, a man as complex and mysterious as Isak is simple - but a man equally as virtuous.

Hamsun’s lovely prose pulls the reader into this pioneer ethic where you rejoice which the construction of a new hay loft and dismiss with contempt the inept farmer who sees to his own comfort before that of his stock. On more than one occasion our protagonists easily reject the offer of a few days’ work for ready cash to tend to the more pressing business of hay that needs cutting or timber that needs hauling, much to the puzzlement of the befuddled capitalists in search of local labour.

Many a Scandinavian will recognise Isak’s inscrutable personality, his lack of expression, his need for time to consider a change. And while Isak plods on in life, prospering by the virtues of hard, unceasing labour, those gathered around him demonstrate every other variation of humanity. There’s the flighty and the money-grabbing, the gossip and the fearful… all stand in contrast to his unerring purpose. By the end of the tale our lone walker has become a wealthy and well-respected margrave, patriarch of the richest farm at the heart of a growing agricultural community, whilst the more speculative endeavours of mining and commerce have boomed and busted around him.

The novel is full of biblical motifs from the Old Testament but it’s not a religious themed story. Rather the book is somewhat critical of city life and culture, especially when it threatens the preservation of land and family values. Hamsun’s far right roots poke through at times with his attitude toward the indigenous Lapps, “maggots”, and fairly non-stop jabs at the less than intellectual bent of the otherwise admirable peasantry.

Hamsun convincingly writes of a beautiful celebration of the rural life: “Nothing growing there? All things growing there; men and beasts and fruit of the soil. Isak sowing his corn. The evening sunlight falls on the corn that flashes out in an arc from his hand and falls like a dropping of gold to the ground. Here comes Sivert to the harrowing...Forest and field look on. All is majesty and power - a sequence and purpose of things.” One of the most fascinating aspects of the story was the prevalence of infanticide in Norwegian rural culture (the extent of which is truly shocking as much as it is known by Norwegians today).  

Although Hamsun is never preachy, the lure of the city is something that recurs throughout the tale, and although the city itself is not something shown to be evil, it is more or less, just like the rough parts of nature: indifferent to human happiness and fulfilment. And in some sense, the imposition it can cause is inescapable. Though when asked which will outlast, land will always live without the need for humans, for the city is nothing more than peopled wilderness, or: “the wilderness was peopled country now.” Without the people, the wilderness will always return.

Growth of the Soil becomes the growth of generations - the passage of time and the growth of land that makes its way within the creases of one’s face and hands. The people become their land, and by the end of the novel, Isak is balding, and what the narrator calls “a stump of a man.” He is older and not as physically strong as he once was, but he is not beaten. He continues sowing his grain. “Growth of the soil was something different, a thing to be procured at any cost; the only source, the origin of all.” Later this point is expounded further: “’Tis not all that are so, but you are so; needful of earth. ‘Tis you that maintain life. Generation to generation, breeding ever anew; and when you die, the new stock goes on. That’s the meaning of eternal life.”

In many ways, reading Growth of the Soil is like reading a preview for the later great writers, for one can see American writers like John Steinbeck and Thomas Wolfe have picked amid the themes in this work and made them their own. Yet there are moments when Growth of the Soil can feel a bit verbose for the impatient reader. Yet Hamsun is worth reading because there is no way around him. In the same way what Louis Ferdinand Celine did for French literature, Hamsun tore apart both the grammar and the lexicon of our Norwegian language, mixed high and low, dialect and aristocratic speech, and put all the pieces beautifully together again - in the totally new fashion we call contemporary Norwegian literature. As every Russian writer is rolled out of Gogol’s coat, every Norwegian one is an offspring of Hamsun, admittedly or otherwise.

One can wonder how the story of Norwegian peasants in the 19th century can be relevant today? But as we live so far removed from nature, are so surrounded by words and noise (mostly meaningless) and spend so much time worrying about our psyches, "Growth of the Soil" provides the exact antithesis of our world. It provides a perspective of what is really necessary for life and contentment and what needs to be let go of and what needs to be retained. It is a simple story of simple people, but it is far from shallow. The writing is beautiful and conveys so well the nuances of relationships and the impact of nature on humanity. In all, this is a a very Scandinavian work. Like an iconic Viking ship which combines beauty and simplicity with function, and is capable of navigating both rough seas and shallow rivers, Hamsun's writing has a biblical simplicity that narrates elegantly both life's small and meaningful events as well as its epic arc.

[murasaki-murasame]

On the one hand, we’re getting Ilia in the next banner as part of a prize showcase that’d be worth summoning on just for the extra rewards alone, but on the OTHER hand, I didn’t manage to get Gala Zena from any of the free summons, and then the worms in my brain went brrr and I think we all know what happened next :)

Also now that I’ve had time to experience the 2.0 update for a week or so, I’ve got a lot of thoughts on that to talk about too

First of all, I got absolutely no 5-stars of any kind from my free summons on the gala banner we got before the Zena banner, so that sucked, lol. I was genuinely tempted to at least go for a pity-break, but I decided against it, since that banner in general was so unappealing to me.

Then for the Zena banner I at least managed to sit back and see how the free summons went, and I got Meene and Midgard Zero off of them, which was nice. But of course that meant that I didn’t get Gala Zena, and I just couldn’t hold myself back from chasing her, lol.

Thankfully I managed to get her after an extra 70-ish summons, so I didn’t have to spend THAT much to get her, but I almost immediately got a dupe Meene from my ticket summons so that kinda hurt, lmao. I also got a dupe Andromeda [who’s now at 3UB], and I think those are the only 5-stars that I’ve gotten from these last two banners. The 5-star dragon ticket from the log-in bonus gave me a dupe Gilgamesh [who’s at 1UB now], though.

In general my summons were a bit more barren than I’d like, but I can’t really complain since most of them were free summons, and I managed to clear out the whole Zena banner, lol.

If I remember right, I had about 270 summons before this, and now I’m at around 200. We’ve still got some anniversary related wyrmite coming in the near future, though, on top of the free summons, so I might still be able to spark on the mid-month gala remix banner if I want to. But I’d probably only do that if Gala Alex is featured and I don’t get her from my free summons. She’s now the only gala unit I’m missing, so she’s a pretty high-priority spark target.

Which is also a big part of why I’m not really that interested in summoning on the Ilia banner, and by extension why I decided to go ahead and chase Zena now. I mean, that was still a dumb decision since if I ended up needing to spark her, that would have drained my entire stash, but still, lol. Ilia’s non-limited, and she seems to be the only new unit on the next banner, so if anything I’d mainly just be summoning for the extra rewards. Also I don’t really have any high-priority dream summon candidates anymore, since I got I-Nefaria and S-Mikoto a little while ago, and I got Meene from this banner, so I could just dream summon Ilia later on anyway.

But mainly I’m just kinda salty about how she’s basically a direct improvement over the new Joe alt, lol. I was hoping she’d at least be flame or wind or something, or even have a different mode type, but she’s literally just Joe but better, which is lame, since I really like Joe, and even if I got Ilia I dunno if I’d want to replace him on my light team. So that on it’s own kinda deflated a lot of the hype I had about Ilia.

Anyway, at this point my main priorities are to be able to get Gala Alex whenever she’s available again, and to hopefully get any new gala dragons when they come out. I’d also really like to go into the New Years banner with a spark saved up, just in case. Even though that’d probably require skipping Christmas. So we’ll just see how that pans out, lol.

All that aside, the 2.0 update has been out for a while now, and boy has that sure changed how the game feels, lmao. I think it’s an almost entirely good update, but there’s a lot of awkward growing pains going on as we have to adjust to all these new and changed systems.

I know that the new wyrmprint system gives us more flexbility than the old one, and that it at least gives a reason to want to use a lot of the 4-star prints, but I really hope they implement some sort of preset option soon, because having to keep setting up 4-5 wyrmprints on every single character is really awful. I’m also not a huge fan of how expensive it is to get extra copies of prints, but I get the logic behind it, and thankfully event prints are extremely cheap to get extra copies of. Which at least means that new players can pretty easily get four copies of Plunder Pals before eventually getting specialized skill damage prints, but I feel kinda bad for anyone who didn’t get all the Megaman event prints, since they cover basically every single important wyrmprint ability, lol. 

Also it’s kinda awkward how the change to having every print just give one ability means that a lot of prints got indirectly nerfed, like Fires of Hate and Resounding Rendition, or Chocolatiers now just being 50% skill prep. Not to mention how so many prints are almost identical, down to the fact that even the affinity bonuses for a lot of similar prints aren’t even different either. So that’s kinda weird. But ultimately I do think this was a good change for the game. I’m also thinking now that one type of new endgame progression they might add eventually is 6-star wyrmprints, since it seems really noteworthy to me that the new wyrmprint UI is a 2x3 grid with only five slots taken up, and the other just being empty space. So they might introduce 6-star wyrmprints to fill in that extra slot later to add even more flexibility to the system.

Then there’s all the changes they made to the weapon system, which I think are gonna take a fair while for me to feel truly familiar with. There’s a whole lot to take in, and even though I think it’s more streamlined and easy to understand at the end of the day, it’s such a huge change from what i was used to that it just feels kinda overwhelming and strange. But I think the only part of it that genuinely feels bad is how it’s now WAY more expensive to fully unbind Agito weapons than it was before, since you have to now buy all of the last four unbind levels, like with HDT weapons, instead of it just being a one-time upgrade cost that gives you an automatically MUB tier 2 weapon if you had a MUB tier 1 weapon. So that really sucks, and I think it really screws over anyone who was holding off on upgrading their flame and shadow Agito weapons until this update hit, since now it’s extremely expensive compared to before. But apparently it’s an intentional design choice and not just an oversight, so I guess we’ll just have to deal with it. I'm also kinda annoyed at myself for dismantling all my 5t3s before this update hit, since now they’re actually worth getting for the weapon bonus system, but that’s not as big of a deal.

And on that note, I know lots of people don’t like how expensive the weapon bonus system is, but I’m just viewing it as a super long-term, end-game grind that intentionally gives relatively minor stat upgrades that nothing in the game is actually balanced around. It’s basically just an extension of the weapon dojo system for people who want to have something to keep grinding for once they hit the end-game.

I do really like how they condensed all the niche void weapons into just one weapon per element/type combo, though, and how their unique weapon abilities are now passively applied to all similar weapons once you unlock them. It gives you a reason to care about getting them, and grinding void battles in general, without forcing you to use super weak weapons if you need their unique ability. I dunno how much I’ll actually grind Void Agni after this, but it feels really nice to just have the scorching air res ability on my Agito/HDT weapons, lol. It’s also really nice that they let you do the same thing with the HDT Bane abilities, since that makes it way easier to grind them, and this update gives us a whole lot of reasons to want to get back into grinding HDTs again.

HDTs are just way easier now than they used to be, which is great. I think Cygames has accepted that they just weren’t very fun or well-designed as endgame co-op raid type content, and that people just want to be able to farm them solo for their drops. And this whole update makes it way easier to do that. On top of the earlier change to nerfing their opening blasts and reducing the damage that AI characters take, it feels like they only slightly raised their stats to compensate for the huge balance patch update, which makes them feel way easier to beat than they used to be. And they also reworked the fights a bit so that they actually have purple indicators for [most] of their attacks, and some mechanics like HBH’s volcanoes now actually work properly in solo, so that’s neat.

The introduction of solo versions of endgame fights is really nice. I think at this point it means that you can go through the entire game’s progression system without touching co-op [outside of events, I guess], which is nice, since I know it’s always been off-putting to a lot of people that co-op is basically mandatory for endgame content.

We also now have PVP [kind of], which is something I never expected, and I ALSO never expected that it’d actually be . . . really fun and well-balanced? It’s genuinely shocking to me that they actually managed to pull off PVP properly in this type of game, lol. This has always felt like the most anti-PVP gacha game out there, if that makes sense, so I never thought PVP would work, but the whole battle royale set-up actually works really well. Mainly because everyone works off of the same blank slate, and your account progress outside of the battle royale mode has absolutely no impact on how strong you are in PVP. It’s more of a skill-based thing, where you’d have an edge over newer players just because you’re more familiar with how to move around in the game and do stuff. There’s also the fact that there’s barely any difference in the points you get between first and last place, so you don’t feel like you’re missing out on much if you keep losing. And most of the stuff you spend points on are just cosmetic skins for the character you play as, but there’s also some genuinely good rewards like sunstones and testaments that you can fairly easily get even if you just grind for it by dying as fast as possible every round. I really hope they keep the rewards the same for each season, since having a fairly consistent supply of 2 sunstones and 4 of each testament every five weeks or so would be really good.

The whole balance patch also happened, and that ended up being a lot more of a big deal than I thought it might be. Even though they only tweaked everyone’s damage mods and not any of their abilities or anything, basically all of the buffs feel like what you’d expect from a mana spiral. A pretty huge amount of characters got their damage mods doubled or even tripled, and then there’s cases like Gala Euden who effectively had both of his skill’s damage mods quadrupled, lol. I was wondering if they might use this as a chance to effectively give mana spirals to old gala units without actually giving them mana spirals, and that’s basically how this went. On top of Gala Euden now being even stronger than before, Gala Mym got basically all of her damage mods doubled, along with a new strength buff on her S1. Gala Sarisse also got her S2 improved so that it always gives a team strength buff instead of alternating effects. And Gala Ranzal got what seems to be a really big improvement to his damage in general, along with his gauges now being easier to fill, so now I think he might at least be on the same level as Leif, if not stronger, which he really deserved.

They even buffed a lot of the weaker shadow units, which I wasn’t expecting, but I’m glad about it. Obviously Norwin was one of the first units whose changes I looked into, and I’m glad that he’s better than he used to be, but it’s kinda awkward to me that he has poison punisher effects on his skills now, when they didn’t change the fact that he has a blind punisher ability, and another ability based around inflicting blind. I think he still needs a proper spiral to fully morph him into actually being about poison, but he’s a lot better than he was before. They also buffed S-Norwin’s S2 for some reason, even though he was really good before this update, lol.

Vice also now has the honor of being the first unit to get straight up nerfed in the game’s history, but even with the nerf, I think he’s still one of the strongest 3-stars in the whole game, and he’s still worth investing in as a low-budget DPS option. I also actually like the fact that he inflicts poison on his S1 now, since it makes him a more consistent source of poison, but it also means he’ll be constantly afflicting poison, which might not always be good. I think it’s a good balance change, though. At the very least I’m able to easily solo eHJP in like one and a half minutes while still using him as my main DPS unit, while also having everyone equipped with gold fafnirs. So he definitely still does his job just fine.

Anyway, we’ve also got the whole second anniversary event going on, and it sure is a doozy. I think I liked Fractured Futures more, but this is still a good event in it’s own way. It’s not as intense or depressing, but I like the focus on lore and world-building, and it’s also just really refreshing to get an entire event where Zethia’s the protagonist for once.

A lot of what the event’s gone over has felt sort of predictable, but it’s still nice to get all this stuff explicitly spelled out, and it also means we get to see Ilia as a socially inept punk biker with a giant rifle, so that alone makes the entire event worth it, lmao. I figured we were gonna get something like this from all the increasing glimpses at how ancient civilization used to be technologically advanced, but seeing it play out like this is still really fun.

It’s also interesting to get the origin story for Morsayati. It’s not quite as interesting as I would have hoped, since it turns out that the Other is just Mordecai’s disembodied hatred, but still. Mordecai’s a surprisingly adorable character, and for a free unit he also feels surprisingly strong, which is nice. Although it does suck that he just straight up outclasses Hanabusa, lol.

One of the more surprising things about this event is that we’re also getting new world-building about the fairy kingdom, which seems to be setting up for how they teased at the main story moving over there soon. It’s pretty clear that sometime after chapter 18 they’re going to release Notte as a playable character [either as a welfare unit or as a gala unit], and I think Meene is kinda like the template for how they’ll handle Notte as a playable character.

We also now know that we’re getting a free character from chapter 16, and like most people I think it’s probably going to be Leonidas as a flame gun unit going by the preview from the digest, but it’s possible that he’ll be the next gala adventurer instead. I also think they might do something with Chelle soon, since I think they teased her showing up in chapter 17, and we also know that she’s apparently the one who introduced manacasters to the world.

The latest This Month post also talked about how we’re getting a new Halloween event for the middle of the month, which is kinda surprising. I think we’re still getting a Halloween event at the end of the month, so I wonder how this upcoming one will go. My current guess is that, since they didn’t say anything about the banner that’ll be run along with it, they’ll just be rerunning the old Halloween banner for it, and the event itself will just be based around the second year Halloween units, since they didn’t get their own event last year. At least that way we’d get two new Halloween events without having to deal with the stress of getting two differently entirely new Halloween banners in one month. I’m also hoping that they make the old Halloween units non-limited like they did with the Valentines ones.

They’re also apparently going another rerun of Accursed Archives [plus the Akasha event], which is kinda surprising, since I thought they’d just add it to the compendium. But at least this means we’ll get an extra set of rewards once they add it to the compendium later, lol.

We didn’t hear anything about a new Halloween event/banner at the end of the month, but we’re probably getting one, and unless Gala Alex gets featured before it, that’ll probably be what I save my next spark for. I’m not sure exactly how they’ll work it now, but I’m hoping that they’ll bundle the new Halloween units into a gala banner that also introduces a new gala dragon, since that’s also something I want to get, so it’d be nice to knock out two birds with one stone.

[constellationsadvocate]

The Constellations Advocate

Book One

Prologue  

“Time is always a fickle thing when you’re running against it and it’s already beating you to the punchline. It’s really not something to laugh at, but the idle irony of the stars aligning and time freezing- coming to an absolute standstill- just for the mere amusement of one's boredom.”

“Boredom?” An amused, deep and half-laughed question asked. “I don’t believe it was so. Maybe, out of coincidence, it was out of revenge?”

“Well, then it took them awhile. To plan revenge just so you can fix your own fate because one may or may not have been, shall I say, screwed over.”

“Not screwed over, friend.”

“No? Then, dear, what would you call it?”

“Double crossed.” They gruffly, briskly called back. They laughed lightly, a charming smile on their lips. “But, do continue, doll. The story is just beginning to get good.”

“Now that you’ve shut your big mouth, I will gladly do so.” The first voice coolly replied. “Like I said, Time came to an absolute standstill for the sake of one’s boredom. It wasn’t always boredom, no, but it was anger. Anguish. Pain, grief, heartbreak, guilt, longing. Our story didn’t start at the beginning, but at the start of the end.”

“This isn’t some children’s story is it? You know, the one with the colorful pop-up pages?”

“Just because your one molecule brain can’t break down big words, doesn’t mean you can’t follow along.” A third voice chimed, causing the other two to look back at the mysterious being.

“Why I oughta-!”

The first, smacking the back of the second’s head, reeled their hand back again only to stop and grab their cup of whiskey. “Put a sock in it before I knock your teeth out. We have a story to tell and I will gladly do so by myself if it’s by the means of removing your teeth and cutting out your tongue.”

“Whatever.”

“Anyways, it all began when it ended.”

“Doesn’t it always?” The third laughed softly, only to go quiet as a killing glare was sent their way.

“It was a destructive timeline. There wasn’t an end to finish and a start to begin. Therefore, something more constructive, crucial, was born.”

“Didn’t it fail?”

“Honestly, the first three thousand times it did.” The first signed disdainly. Then smiled mischievously. “But, what’s the harm in one more chance?

The other’s glaced to one another, then smiled cruelly. In harmony, “Născuți din focul Fenixului, constelațiile vor avea protectorul lor.”

Adeodatus, Patavium

“Aye, cad e mar a bheifea ag suil le fear dall a asal a fhail san aimsir seo?!” An aging, balding, middle aged man with refined attributes of a square jaw, straight nose, and oblique pale once blue eyes yelled out to a young man. The man, a simple farm hand stumbled through the rain and mud behind the old man, Maddox, looking frantically for the lost mule. Maddox, the blind man, stopped in his tracks causing the farm hand to slide to a stop. “Erivan!”

“For the last time, sir. People will think you’re a mad man yelling out in your old language!” Erivan sternly warned. He calmly walked to stand beside Maddox, placing a firm hand on the mans shoulder. “The mule can’t be far at all. You know how he gets during thunderstorms.”

“I know this. But that stubborn mule is getting on my last nerve.” Maddox replied briskly, tired of the same old routine. “And yes, I know what you’ll say. ‘He’ll find his way back home, Maddox.��”

“Aye,” Erivan smiled warmly, slicking back ebony wet hair from his forehead. “Now, can we please go inside before we both get sick again?”

Maddox nodded, turning back the way he came from. Erivan smiled assertively and followed behind. Only a few steps in, when in a short distance behind them, a mule brayed and stomped  it’s hooves in the thick mud. The pair turned sharply, Erivan’s eyes landing on a cloaked figure and the mule itself.

“Maddox,” An enchanting, smoky female voice called out. Maddox smiled brazenly, chuckling.

“Aye, Taarini.” Maddox greeted warmly. “What are you doing in this horrid weather?”

“Ag feachaint ar asal do dhuine dall.” Taarini laughed warmly as she answered in the old language. She turned her amused gaze to Erivan. “You shouldn’t assume there isn’t a fair share of people who still speak the old language. It may be dead or dying, but nothing stays dead forever.”

“Of course, Taarini. How foolish of me.” Erivan sassed, sarcastically rolling his eyes. “Thank you, oh great one.”

“Sarcasm. Funny most of the time, but when it comes from you it's just simply rude. Maybe if I cut your tongue out, it’ll stop rolling off.” Taarini sneared, smiling devilishly as she walked the mule to Maddox. “Do you not remember the last time I gave your ass a lesson?”

“Children,” Maddox chimed. “This is not the time. Maybe when the weather is better and we can have spectators on a warm, sunny day. Aye?” 

Maddox laughed robustly, taking the reins from Taarini and turning back for the farm. “Come on, Erivan! I can’t always walk by myself. So, kiss the pretty lass goodbye and move your feet.”

“You’re a mad man!” Erivan shouted after him, scurrying to catch up. A few feet behind Maddox, Erivan turned around to gaze where he once was standing with Taarini. She was still standing there, the rain seemling becoming heavier and something unnatural hanging in the air. His gaze rested on her for a moment longer. Taarini everything is shrouded in mystery and questions. No one knew exactly what she looked like, except the bold, rosy pink lips, the slender and strong jaw and jawline. The high cheekbones and the gray and gold mix-matched eyes that rested upon them. Everything else was covered with the hood of a cloak and a black fox mask.

In a blink of an eye, Taarini disappeared behind a caravan passing through town. Erivan blinked rapidly, searching around him before he sighed and shook his head. “You’re going crazy Eri. You’ll go completely insane hanging out with Mad.”

He continued mumbling to himself, breathing easier as the rain and air lightened up in the surrounding area as he hastened for the farm.

A scream erupted from the inside of Solas De Danaan as Jericho, Armazi, and Gemini reigned in their paint mares and gelding. The three snapped their attention to the guild, unmounted and tied the reins to the post, busting through the front door of the guild. 

Inside the fortified guild, the pale ashen oakwood floors were spacious with dark red mahogany tables and chairs. A bartop that had a matching wood stain, the shelves behind it, just as dark with mirror essence casted behind them. From the main floor, pale ashen oak stairs spiraled to the second floor and led to the library and a secondary storage room and office. Magical orbs of pure light floated and bobbed above the heads of the guild members who had immersed themselves in the situation at hand.

Asena, a sun kissed woman with golden blonde hair that curled at her mid back and eyes that could set your world on fire. Her fiery hazel eyes rested upon soft cheekbones that were dusted with freckles. Her physic was lean and curvy, but be no fool, she can out drink any man and leave him under the table. Despite her feminine and goddess like beauty, she can and most likely will put you in your place. Lesson, never dirty your hands if it means crossing someone who can literally light your ass on fire. 

Asena shrieked again as the figure of Taarini glitched out of sight again, appearing next to her. Arealla, the assisting bartender and right hand to the master of the guild, gasped as she quickly grabbed the bottle of bourbon from in front of Asena before she got coated in the sticky, fraganted liquor again and rapidly took a few steps away from the fiery woman. 

“No! Stop it!”Arealla yelled abruptly, looking from Asena to the glitching figure of Taarini. Asena glared at her desperately.

“You act like this is my doing!” She snapped. “Make her stop tormenting me every time she comes around!”

Armazi, Asena’s brother, scoffed. “Sister, are you sure the drink isn’t finally going to your head?”

Armazi,who has the build of a boxer, a strong and sharp jaw, golden brown shoulder length hair, the same fiery hazel eyes as his sister’s, bold cheekbones and a well kept beard. He leaned forward over the bar, taking the bottle from Arealla. Asena and Arealla locked baffled glares onto the brother, questioning his own sanity. 

“You know damn well, very well, it takes us both to have downed the whole store to get even remotely drunk before our bodies burn it off!” Asena growled. “So either someone else makes Taarini stop or I will burn her alive!”

Like speaking of the devil, Taarini appeared physically behind Asena with a bucket of water and ice mixed with thick honey. Followed hastily after, she dumped a sackful of white feathers on the sun magic mage. Asena screamed like a banshee once more. Golden flames licked up her calves, slowly. Within milliseconds, her whole body was engulfed in the pure flames. Armazi clapped amusedly as everyone dove from the bursting flames. 

“You vile vixen!” Asena screeched, the hatred rolling off of her tongue. “How dare you!”

“Cool it, hothead.” Taarini laughed coolly, strolling to the other side of the bar nonchalantly. “I thought you just needed to be a little cold to feel the burn of the drink.”

Asena growled, blasting golden flames at the mage who became consumed by them. The surrounding guild members gasped, only for confusion to cross their faces as a shadow figure of Taarini pushed Asena against the bar. The flames died down from Asena and Taarini, the masked mage coming out unscathed.

The shadow figure dissipated in a puff of smoke that traveled along the ashen oak floors. Taarini sighed doubtfully, “We do this every time I come back to the city. We used to be friends. What happened?”

Asena frowned disapprovingly. “You kept leaving.”

Taarini grinned cheekily. “But I got you something this time.”

“And let’s see if Asena can be bought back.” Jericho laughed out, taking a seat at a far corner table, Gemini joining him.

“I don’t know whose side I’m on.” Gemini chuckled lightly, watching intensely. “I love them both dearly.”

“Hon,” Lyra, a fellow guild mage with a curvy body, tanned skin, long white hair with ombre gold ends and silver eyes with flecks of black in the iris, full lips and a slender profile. “I don’t even think you know what side of you you’re on.”

“Aye, I second that.” Jericho and Armazi agreed in harmony. Gemini gasped, looking between both men.

“I’ve been good!” She squealed. “I promise!”

“Here, Gem.” Arealla smiled genuinely. “Have a drink.”

Gemini slid her gaze to Arealla, who handed the girl a bottle of ale. She smiled appreciatively and took a long drink from the neck. 

“Or you can just continue to hate me for something I have no control over.” Taarini mused, sliding her mix-matched eyes to Asena. “You also have the option of brawling it out with me. It’s not healthy to bottle your emotions.”

“Says the one that never vents to anyone about anything.” Lyra shot back in an undertone.

Asena grinned maddeningly, standing from her seat. “Oh, I’d really love the chance to burn that mask away.”

“I’d like to see you try, firebreather.” Taarini replied confidently, removing her hood from around her head, revealing her silver hair and gold streaked dreads. “I’ll even make it easier and more tempting for you.”

“Oh,” Kaimana, a male mage with silver and blue hair and aqua eyes muttered. “This just got interesting.”

“I don’t know what you want.” Faolan chuckled. “The flames to lick them or you to lick the flames.”

Kaimana looked at him with a perturbed glare. “Neither, you perv. I want the fight.”

[chrisgoesrock]

Howlin' Wolf - Howlin' Wolf (2nd Album US 1962)

In the history of the blues, there has never been anyone quite like the Howlin' Wolf. Six foot three and close to 300 pounds in his salad days, the Wolf was the primal force of the music spun out to its ultimate conclusion. A Robert Johnson may have possessed more lyrical insight, a Muddy Waters more dignity, and a B.B. King certainly more technical expertise, but no one could match him for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits.

He was born in West Point, MS, and named after the 21st President of the United States (Chester Arthur). His father was a farmer and Wolf took to it as well until his 18th birthday, when a chance meeting with Delta blues legend Charley Patton changed his life forever. Though he never came close to learning the subtleties of Patton's complex guitar technique, two of the major components of Wolf's style (Patton's inimitable growl of a voice and his propensity for entertaining) were learned first hand from the Delta blues master. The main source of Wolf's hard-driving, rhythmic style on harmonica came when Aleck "Rice" Miller (Sonny Boy Williamson) married his half-sister Mary and taught him the rudiments of the instrument. He first started playing in the early '30s as a strict Patton imitator, while others recall him at decade's end rocking the juke joints with a neck-rack harmonica and one of the first electric guitars anyone had ever seen. After a four-year stretch in the Army, he settled down as a farmer and weekend player in West Memphis, AR, and it was here that Wolf's career in music began in earnest.

By 1948, he had established himself within the community as a radio personality. As a means of advertising his own local appearances, Wolf had a 15-minute radio show on KWEM in West Memphis, interspersing his down-home blues with farm reports and like-minded advertising that he sold himself. But a change in Wolf's sound that would alter everything that came after was soon in coming because when listeners tuned in for Wolf's show, the sound was up-to-the-minute electric. Wolf had put his first band together, featuring the explosive guitar work of Willie Johnson, whose aggressive style not only perfectly suited Wolf's sound but aurally extended and amplified the violence and nastiness of it as well. In any discussion of Wolf's early success both live, over the airwaves, and on record, the importance of Willie Johnson cannot be overestimated.

Wolf finally started recording in 1951, when he caught the ear of Sam Phillips, who first heard him on his morning radio show. The music Wolf made in the Memphis Recording Service studio was full of passion and zest and Phillips simultaneously leased the results to the Bihari Brothers in Los Angeles and Leonard Chess in Chicago. Suddenly, Howlin' Wolf had two hits at the same time on the R&B charts with two record companies claiming to have him exclusively under contract. Chess finally won him over and as Wolf would proudly relate years later, "I had a 4,000 dollar car and 3,900 dollars in my pocket. I'm the onliest one drove out of the South like a gentleman." It was the winter of 1953 and Chicago would be his new home.

When Wolf entered the Chess studios the next year, the violent aggression of the Memphis sides was being replaced with a Chicago backbeat and, with very little fanfare, a new member in the band. Hubert Sumlin proved himself to be the Wolf's longest-running musical associate. He first appears as a rhythm guitarist on a 1954 session, and within a few years' time his style had fully matured to take over the role of lead guitarist in the band by early 1958. In what can only be described as an "angular attack," Sumlin played almost no chords behind Wolf, sometimes soloing right through his vocals, featuring wild skitterings up and down the fingerboard and biting single notes. If Willie Johnson was Wolf's second voice in his early recording career, then Hubert Sumlin would pick up the gauntlet and run with it right to the end of the howler's life.

By 1956, Wolf was in the R&B charts again, racking up hits with "Evil" and "Smokestack Lightnin'." He remained a top attraction both on the Chicago circuit and on the road. His records, while seldom showing up on the national charts, were still selling in decent numbers down South. But by 1960, Wolf was teamed up with Chess staff writer Willie Dixon, and for the next five years he would record almost nothing but songs written by Dixon. The magic combination of Wolf's voice, Sumlin's guitar, and Dixon's tunes sold a lot of records and brought the 50-year-old bluesman roaring into the next decade with a considerable flourish. The mid-'60s saw him touring Europe regularly with "Smokestack Lightnin'" becoming a hit in England some eight years after its American release. Certainly any list of Wolf's greatest sides would have to include "I Ain't Superstitious," "The Red Rooster," "Shake for Me," "Back Door Man," "Spoonful," and "Wang Dang Doodle," Dixon compositions all. While almost all of them would eventually become Chicago blues standards, their greatest cache occurred when rock bands the world over started mining the Chess catalog for all it was worth. One of these bands was the Rolling Stones, whose cover of "The Red Rooster" became a number-one record in England. At the height of the British Invasion, the Stones came to America in 1965 for an appearance on ABC-TV's rock music show, Shindig. Their main stipulation for appearing on the program was that Howlin' Wolf would be their special guest. With the Stones sitting worshipfully at his feet, the Wolf performed a storming version of "How Many More Years," being seen on his network-TV debut by an audience of a few million. Wolf never forgot the respect the Stones paid him, and he spoke of them highly right up to his final days.

Dixon and Wolf parted company by 1964 and Wolf was back in the studio doing his own songs. One of the classics to emerge from this period was "Killing Floor," featuring a modern backbeat and a incredibly catchy guitar riff from Sumlin. Catchy enough for Led Zeppelin to appropriate it for one of their early albums, cheerfully crediting it to themselves in much the same manner as they had done with numerous other blues standards. By the end of the decade, Wolf's material was being recorded by artists including the Doors, the Electric Flag, the Blues Project, Cream, and Jeff Beck. The result of all these covers brought Wolf the belated acclaim of a young, white audience. Chess' response to this was to bring him into the studio for a "psychedelic" album, truly the most dreadful of his career. His last big payday came when Chess sent him over to England in 1970 to capitalize on the then-current trend of London Session albums, recording with Eric Clapton on lead guitar and other British superstars. Wolf's health was not the best, but the session was miles above the earlier, ill-advised attempt to update Wolf's sound for a younger audience.

As the '70s moved on, the end of the trail started coming closer. By now Wolf was a very sick man; he had survived numerous heart attacks and was suffering kidney damage from an automobile accident that sent him flying through the car's windshield. His bandleader Eddie Shaw firmly rationed Wolf to a meager half-dozen songs per set. Occasionally some of the old fire would come blazing forth from some untapped wellspring, and his final live and studio recordings show that he could still tear the house apart when the spirit moved him. He entered the Veterans Administration Hospital in 1976 to be operated on, but never survived it, finally passing away on January 10th of that year.

But his passing did not go unrecognized. A life-size statue of him was erected shortly after in a Chicago park. Eddie Shaw kept his memory and music alive by keeping his band, the Wolf Gang, together for several years afterward. A child-education center in Chicago was named in his honor and in 1980 he was elected to the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame. In 1991, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A couple of years later, his face was on a United States postage stamp. Live performance footage of him exists in the CD-ROM computer format. Howlin' Wolf is now a permanent part of American history.

01. Shake for Me   02. Red Rooster Howlin' Wolf   03. You'll Be Mine   04. Who's Been Talkin'   05. Wang-Dang-Doodle   06. Little Baby   07. Spoonful   08. Going Down Slow Oden   09. Down in the Bottom   10. Back Door Man   11. Howlin' for My Baby Howlin' Wolf   12. Tell Me

[faveficarchive]

At a Distance - Part 3

by Melissa Good

Pairing: Xena/Gabrielle

Rating: PG-13

Synopsis: This is a novel-length fic, and a classic in the community. Xena and Gabrielle start to explore the changes in their relationship, Gabrielle is recalled to the Amazons where she has to deal with a bit of treachery, and Xena is, as always, there to protect.

Amazon Village - Council Chamber...

Ephiny kept a close eye on Gabrielle’s face as the scout made her report. The queen’s pale green eyes didn’t disclose her reaction to the news, neither did the set of her body, which already held lines of tenseness as she sat behind the council table.

"So, in sum, the border posts report that the rumors appear to be accurate." The scout finished, glancing at Ephiny. "There is some kind of army being built at or around Amphipolis, and there have already been skirmishes with two of the local warlords."

"Who won?" Gabrielle asked, in a quiet voice.

"Not the warlords." The scout answered, with a grim smile.

"No question of who’s responsible, then, I guess." Ephiny gave a forced laugh. Giving the queen an uneasy look. I don’t like that look. But then, I haven’t liked that look for a few days now. Something’s up with her.

Gabrielle nodded, and looked down at her hands. The weight of responsibility settled heavier on her shoulders, and she grimaced to herself. What on earth was Xena up to? "I find it really hard to believe Xena is building an army. More likely, she’s just giving them a few pointers on self defense." She said, leaning back with a smile. "She did mutter something about getting bored out there."

Arella narrowed her eyes, and stood up. "That’s not a risk we can take, Gabrielle, and you know it. Despite whatever she’s done in our behalf, a major army that close to us is dangerous." She looked around, sensing support for her views. Xena was an uneasily trusted ally at the best of times, and there was more than one Amazon who was spooked by the whole coming back from death thing. Not to mention her well known connection with Ares. "You can’t guarantee that she’s not just going back to old ways."

Can’t I? The bard mused. "Oh, I think I can guarantee it." she chuckled lightly. "I know her better than you do."

"Are you willing to risk your life on that?" Arella countered, feeling a sense of excitement building. At last, an issue she could override their surprisingly tough queen on. It had been a long four weeks, and she had lost every encounter so far - personal as well as leadership. And when she tried to hate Gabrielle for it, she found, frustratingly, that she couldn’t.

Gabrielle smiled, a real smile this time. "Arella, I have. More times that I can count." She hesitated. "But, I can see you have a concern." She looked up. "Ephiny?" The Amazon leaned forward. "I’m sending you as an..." her mouth quirked. "envoy to this new army. I want you to conclude a treaty with them, to provide a mutual defense of territory." She tried really hard, and managed to keep a grin off her face.

Ephiny nodded. "All right." She said, slowly, dragging the words out. "If that’s what you want." A deep breath. Wants me to check things out, I guess. She seems pretty sure, though...

Arella cleared her throat. Not this time, green eyes. "Excellent idea, but I think, for Ephiny’s protection, we need to send along someone to escort her. " Behind her, she felt Erika stir, and she grinned to herself. "My best crossbow, Erika, will make a good escort."

Ephiny and Gabrielle exchanged glances. No way to gracefully refuse that offer, the bard thought. And I suppose it won’t hurt for the opposition to get a chance to see the truth for themselves. "Ok." she nodded. "Dawn, then." She pulled over a sheet of parchment and picked up a quill. "I’ll write out a treaty." And a note, for private delivery. For me to get some of this stuff I have bottled up off my chest, for someone to read who I know I can trust. Who trusts me.

Her usual after dinner walk to the lake left her sitting on a stony projection, staring out over the running water with unseeing eyes, and letting her head rest back against the cool stone. It had been a productive four weeks, she mused, a treaty concluded with the centaurs, a trading agreement with three villages to the south, and a cooperative defense plan with the two farming centers to the east. The villages were willing to trade supplies and foodstuffs for crafts and the Amazon’s protective services. Not bad, actually. She had every right to be very pleased, and somewhat proud of herself.

But the constant pressure was getting to her. She sighed. She could feel it, in her lack of patience, in the strain that left her back and neck aching at night so badly she could hardly lie down. In the constant questioning of everyone’s motives. And the persistent need to be on her guard against the words and physical touches of Arella. And it’s not like I’m not a touchy kind of person. she scowled to herself. After all, I can hardly keep my hands off.... A pause, then a helplessly silly grin. Well, that was different. But Arella just made her feel... ugh. Creepy.

Ephiny knew there was something wrong. Had gently tried to question her on it, but Gabrielle had resisted confiding in her, knowing Ephiny felt guilty enough about calling her here. Knowing if Ephiny knew how bad she felt, the Amazon would feel it her duty to do something. And there was only one something that would help. One someone, and that would ruin a lot of what she was trying to do. She groaned, and let her head slip forward, trying to release some of the tension in her neck. Having the sudden desperate craving to feel a familiar pair of strong hands clasp her there, and with a few knowledgeable kneads, bring relief. After a moment of indulgence in misery, she took a deep breath, and leaned back, squaring her shoulders. I can do this. I may not like it, but I can do it.

I wonder if any of them know just how much I would pay to be the one going to check out the new Amphipolis army? She laughed helplessly. Except, I think... if I did... I’d never come back. I think? No...I know. That’s really why I haven’t sent word to her...why I won’t admit to Ephiny why I can’t sleep at night...because if she rode into this village, she’d take one look at my face, and just lift me up onto Argo, and ride out. And I’d go...and I wouldn’t look back. And.. she sighed. That wouldn’t be the right thing to do. Right now. But I can’t do this forever. It’s killing me.

A sound at her back raised the hair on her neck, as she recognized the footsteps. Oh great. "Hello, Arella." she said, not turning around. Another reason I can’t send for Xena. Drawing and quartering a fellow Amazon at sunrise in the middle square of the village will really upset some of the negotiations. She turned to see the tall redhead sauntering down the riverbank, stopping when she reached Gabrielle’s rock, and leaning on it with an air of complacent familiarity.

"Ah, my queen." she said, in a bantering tone. "I’m glad you accepted my offer to send Erika along to Amphipolis. I do hope there won’t be any trouble needing her services." She smiled at the bard, who wrapped one arm around her knee and remained silently listening. "Look, I know you think you know best about this, but I’ve asked around...and you know it wouldn’t be out of the question for your friend to be building up another army. She’s done it before."

Gabrielle sighed in annoyance. "Arella, the subject is not up for debate." She let some of her anger show in her glance. "I’m not going to justify, either to you or anyone else my faith in my best friend. You’ll just have to see for yourself."

"What if you’re wrong?" Arella countered softly, laying a hand on the smaller woman’s shoulder, and capturing her eyes with her own. "What then? Do we sit here and wait for an attack, based on your...faith?" Her voice left little doubt of what she thought that faith was based on.

Gabrielle went very still, and felt a seldom indulged deep anger trying to work its way to her calm surface. She bit her lip until the urge to lash out at the tall Amazon subsided, then drew in a breath. "Well, then... you won’t have anything to worry about." she was amazed at how calm she sounded. "Because I’ll no longer be the queen of the Amazons."

Arella started, and jerked back, not expecting that response. "You’d step down?" she asked, incredulously.

The bard smoothly stood, and stepped up to her. "Yes." She enjoyed the look of confusion on Arella’s handsome face. Because if that happened, I would no longer trust my own judgment. And they couldn’t either. "But I know I’m right."

"I think you’re judgment is a little...clouded." Arella responded, but she sounded unsure. "But I guess we’ll see." She removed her hand from the bard’s shoulder, and backed off, giving her a little smile, then turning her back and walking up the path to the village.

Gods. Gabrielle groaned to herself. I can’t take much more of this. One of these times, I’m going to lose it, and do something I know I’m going to regret, because she can definitely beat the tar out of me. And I’m supposed to be the non violent one. Well, Xena...I just got an up close and personal understanding of that little look you get, you know, that narrowed eye, lip twitching one, when you really want to just bap someone, and you can’t. A whole new perspective, yes ma’am. And I am totally ashamed of myself for desperately wishing I could see you just lay her out with one of those right from the shoulder power hits you’re so very good at. Ashamed. Yep. Bad bard. Bad bard. Suddenly she giggled at the thought, bringing a little relief. And turned as she heard yet another person approaching. Ah. Ephiny. Of course.

The Amazon approached cautiously, with a raised eyebrow. "You’re standing in the middle of the riverbank... giggling. Should I be concerned?" she queried, with a hesitant grin.

Gabrielle shook her head. "No...just doing some therapeutic visualization."

"Huh?" Ephiny blurted.

"Picturing Xena dumping Arella into a pile of centaur droppings." the bard rephrased.

"Ah!" Ephiny exclaimed, then chuckled. "That’s not very queenly of you."

"No." The bard answered. "But I’m enjoying it." She turned to walk back to the village, waiting for Ephiny to fall into step next to her. "You just missed her."

Ephiny turned and put a hand out to stop Gabrielle from continuing to walk. "Hey... is she getting too much for you? Because if she is.."

"You’ll do... what?" the bard countered, serious now. "What, Ephiny? Hit her? She can take you, or almost anyone else. Here, anyway" She wouldn’t release the Amazon’s gaze until Ephiny sighed. "You don’t think I’ve thought of that? Do you know how hard it is to just put up with it when I know with one..." She stopped. "Anyway. I can cope with her. Just go find out what’s going on over in Amphipolis" Turning, she started walking up the path again.

Ephiny squared her shoulders, and caught up. "OK..OK...but it’s damn hard to watch. I gotta tell you that, my friend." Upset made her voice wobble. "I don’t like feeling helpless, Gabrielle, I just don’t. And...I do care, you know."

Gabrielle glanced at her sidelong. "I know. And I appreciate that, Ephiny. It’s all right - I’ve dealt with worse than her. She really hasn’t done anything, it’s just that....ugh..."

"Attitude?" Ephiny provided, knowingly. "Yeah."

"Yeah." Gabrielle agreed. "The I’m too sexy for my skirt attitude."

Ephiny lost it, doubling over in laughter. After a minute, the bard joined her. "Oh.. I’m sorry.." the Amazon gasped, leaning on a tree. "that just struck me so funny..." She took a breath, still chuckling. "I’m glad you’re immune to it. I was.." An embarrassed shrug. "kind of concerned about that. I know you’ve not had a lot of...er...experience."

Gabrielle blushed. "Ephiny" she muttered. "I hadn’t realized just how naive you thought I was until right now." she glanced around. "What am I supposed to tell her, that her ‘appeal’ pales in comparison to what I’m used to?"

Now it was Ephiny’s turn to blush. "You keep surprising me." she admitted, "and you know I don’t really like to pry into your personal business."

"Mmm." the bard agreed. "Well, I need to go write that treaty. Pick it up in a few hours, will you?"

And just what will I write? Gabrielle thought to herself as she settled at the desk, quill in hand. She thought for a long time, then nodded a little to herself, and started writing. For a very long time the only sound in the hut was the sound of her quill scratching against the parchment. First, the treaty. Then, a longer missive, with pauses for thought between the words. At last, she settled back, and reviewed her work. Satisfied, she sanded the ink, blew the parchment dry, and folded it carefully, adding a wax seal. It read:

Dear Xena,

Sorry about sending Ephiny with this dumb treaty, but your reputation is getting out of hand, and there are rumors that you are taking over the world. Again. Please treat her gently, and try not to beat up the person traveling with her, who is one of Arella’s stooges, and is there to make sure Ephiny tells the truth about what’s going on.

I hope you’re OK, and not busy building blackberry fortifications. I told the Amazons you were probably teaching your people there how to defend themselves, as I’ve seen you teach others. As you’ve taught me. But they’re hard to convince. I guess they don’t know you as I do. I feel sorry for them.

I promised myself I wasn’t going to put anything sappy in this note, as I know you hate that sort of thing, but the temptation to just say I miss you more than anything is just too great. The Amazons are treating me OK, and we are making progress, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish you were here. Sometimes I just want to hear your voice, or have you raise your eyebrow at me. That’s pretty sappy, isn’t it? Sorry about that.

Anyway, assuming you’ve finished conquering the world by then, there’s a festival coming up here during the next full moon, and I thought if you weren’t doing anything else, maybe you could drop by. It’s the fall harvest celebration of Dionysus, and I have a funny feeling that I’m going to be in need of championing.

There...that was a nice polite way of saying I need you, wasn’t it? Because I do.

Be well.

G

The bard sighed, and leaned back in her chair, feeling a sense of weight being lifted off her shoulders. By the festival, she should have just about everything sorted out, and if not.. well, it didn’t matter. Idly, she realized that she never even questioned herself as to what the response was going to be to this note. When did I become so sure? Her brows creased. I mean, it’s possible that she’s happy where she is now, and won’t show. But her heart laughed at her, and try as she would to feel apprehension, the only thing she came up with was a bubbling surge of happy expectation.

Ephiny found her half asleep over the table when she stopped by an hour later, to pick up her charges. "Hey." She said softly, so as not to startle her.

"Oh." Gabrielle responded, a little foggily, rubbing her eyes and blinking at the Amazon. "Sorry." She grinned sheepishly. "I was sort of out of it there for a minute." She held up the sealed packet. "Here, I finished the treaty. It’s a little on the short side, but I don’t think you’ll need more."

Ephiny came forward and grasped the packet, tucking it away in her belt pouch. "Why don’t you get some sleep? You look wiped." she pronounced, with a sympathetic look at the bard. But more relaxed than I’ve seen her in two fortnights. I wonder what’s in this packet?

"Yeah. Good idea." Gabrielle answered, muffling a yawn. "Have a good trip. Try not to kill Erika, and..." her face creased into a grin. "Give my regards to the conqueror of the world, will you?"

Ephiny chuckled. "All right, I will. Any messages?"

"There’s one in there." Gabrielle nodded at her pouch. "But thanks for asking."

Ephiny grunted. "Very well. Good night, and see you in a week or so." So... that’s what I’m carrying, is it? She laughed to herself, as she walked out into the night G’wan, Ephiny... you are a romantic thing, aren’t you? She spotted Erika, who changed direction to move towards her, and wiped the grin off her face.

"Erika." she greeted the woman. "We leave at dawn."

"I know." the dark haired Amazon answered coolly. "And I hate being late. Don’t worry, I’ll be there, with bells on." She gave Ephiny an amused look. "Won’t this be fun? At least you won’t have to worry about eating on the way there." She plucked her bowstring in emphasis, then sauntered off.

"Aurgh." Ephiny growled, low in her throat. "Just what did I ever do to anyone to deserve this??"

"I dunno." Granella chuckled, slipping an arm around her. "Maybe if you’re lucky, Erika will annoy Xena when you get to Amphipolis, and your trip back will be more pleasant." They walked along for a few minutes, then Ephiny laughed. "That’s a nice thought." She wrapped an arm around Granella’s shoulders, and pulled her close. "Thanks...I’ll keep that thought in my mind when I have to spend three days on the road with her."

"You don’t really think there’s an army brewing there, do you?" Granella asked, curiously.

"Nah." Ephiny shrugged. "I think Gabrielle is right on there. I’ll be glad to see the old war horse, though...maybe I can get a handle on what’s been bugging our queen. "

Granella snorted. "If you call her an old war horse to her face, she’ll get a handle on you, Ephiny... and toss you into the manure pit, more than likely."

They both laughed, and walked towards the scout’s campfire.

Amphipolis, three days later...

"Here’s the crossroads." Ephiny said, gesturing ahead. "It’s not far up the road from here." She moved forward, not waiting for a response. It had been a long three days.

Erika strode easily next to her, in silence. She glanced ahead, seeing the first edge of fields that meant an upcoming village, and sighed to herself in relief. Traveling with Ephiny had been nerve-wracking, since neither of them trusted the other, and she hadn’t had a decent nights sleep in three days. Nor had her traveling companion. Conversation had been limited to discussion of the path, the weather, the general condition of the lands around them, and that was about it. Erika was looking forward to getting to Amphipolis, army or no army just to have someone else to talk to. And she was pretty sure Ephiny felt the same way.

The fields they passed were well tended, and they began to spot villagers working out in them. Occasionally, one of them would raise a head, and observe them as they passed, but there was no overt hostility there, just mild curiosity. "Looks pretty peaceful." Erika admitted.

"Hmm." Ephiny murmured, then jerked her head towards the fields again. "Maybe, but look again. Word’s being passed on us." Then she noticed the casual scattering of staves around the workers, and spotted a half asleep boy on the wall facing the road, whose lidded eyes followed them. Her spine began to prickle.

Erika moved closer to her in pure reflex. Now that Ephiny had pointed it out, she could see small subtle signs of an uncommon awareness around the hard working field hands and trudging villagers. Still, she saw no armor, no slyly hidden weapons. No fortifications. Puzzled, she glanced at Ephiny, whose face reflected a similar confusion. "Well, that makes me feel better." She commented wryly. "You don’t know what’s going on here either."

They walked on, approaching the village proper, where they got polite nods from the passer’s by, and a cheerful hello from a few who apparently recognized what they were. "Well, they don’t hate Amazons, anyway." Ephiny muttered. "There’s an inn. Let’s go find out where we can find Xena." She directed her steps to the door, and pushed it open, peering inside.

"Hello." Came a voice from within, drawing their attention. Ephiny moved inside, and blinked a little in the gloom coming from the sunny courtyard. It was a nicely appointed inn, with good solid tables, and an appearance of doing well. She turned her attention to the man standing behind the service bar, and jerked a little at the unreal sense of familiarity he stirred in her. Who? What...??? Then she realized it was the eyes. Fiery electric blue, like only one other person she had ever known.

"Hello." He said again, coming out from behind the service bar and moving towards them. "You’re Amazons." Stating the obvious. "Are you looking for Xena?"

Ephiny and Erika looked at each other. "Yes." Ephiny said, tilting her curly head at him. "And you are...?"

"Toris." He extended a forearm. "Her brother."

"Ah." Ephiny breathed. "That explains why you look so familiar." She chuckled. "She never mentioned.."

"She never does." Toris answered, cheerfully. "But here we are. And she’s out in the practice yard running some drills - you can go through the back door there if you like."

"Thanks." Ephiny said warmly, and motioned Erika to go before her towards the door. "Nice meeting you."

"I’m sure we’ll be speaking again." Toris answered, with an amused look on his face. "Watch yourself when you go out there, sometimes those staffs get swung a little wildly."

Ephiny nodded, and moved on. "Wow.." she said in an undertone to Erika, ignoring her dislike for the woman for a moment.

"Yeah.." Erika answered, with a sly grin. "I guess the looks run in the family."

For a moment, an understanding of a sort existed between them. Then they were at the door, and Ephiny was pushing it open cautiously. The sound of wood smacking against wood could now be clearly heard. They peered around the doorjamb, and froze in place, just watching.

The practice yard was a cleared area in back of the inn, with a packed earth floor, and strategically placed hay bales. Xena was in the center of it, armed with a long quarterstaff, and facing 10 villagers, mixed men and women, who were taking turns coming at her, and trading blows. The tall warrior was in a sleeveless white belted tunic, and boots, and was patiently explaining to each villager what they were doing wrong, or right, whichever it happened to be, as they came towards her and practiced smooth swings and parries.

Erika and Ephiny traded glances again. "Guess Gabrielle was right." Ephiny smirked. "Sure looks like a defense class to me."

Erika snorted. "Maybe." she grudgingly admitted, though she was privately convinced the queen had been right all along. That wasn’t the reason she was along, and what Xena was, or was not doing wasn’t really relevant. Of course, Ephiny didn’t know that. But she would find out. A smile curled Erika’s lips. She turned to watch the class, as Xena, stepping back, now motioned for all of the villagers to come at her at once. Raising an eyebrow at what she saw.

"She’s pretty damn good." The dark haired Amazon muttered.

Ephiny snorted and rolled her eyes. "Pretty good. Yeah, right. " She watched as Xena, moving with a powerful grace managed to disarm most of the villagers in one dazzling series of movements, then just jumped over the other three, and took their legs out from under them with a backhanded sweep. "Oh ho! I just saw where our queen got one of her moves from."

"That reverse sweep, yeah." Erika admitted. "not bad."

Ephiny rolled her eyes, and looked back at the practice ground, finding her eyes held by a pair of burning blue ones. Xena immediately stopped what she was doing, and loped in their direction, tossing an instruction over her shoulder at the villagers. Ephiny realized the sudden alarm she was causing, and made a quick hand signal to the fast approaching warrior, seeing relief flood Xena’s eyes, and her tense shoulders relax.

In a brief moment, she was slowing to a halt opposite them, extending an arm to Ephiny, who grasped it warmly. "Hello, Ephiny." She shot a glance at Erika, then looked inquiringly at the blond Amazon.

"Hello, Xena. This is Erika." Her grasp tightened on Xena’s muscular forearm for a second, and she saw an answering quirk of the warrior’s eyebrows.

"Erika." Xena drawled. "What brings you two here?" She released Ephiny’s arm, and nodded for them to go back inside the inn. "Go on in." She held the heavy door for them, and followed them inside, grabbing a pitcher and a few glasses on the way to an empty table, and setting them down before pulling a chair up and seating herself. "Help yourself. The ale’s cold, but I warn you, it’s potent."

They poured themselves glasses, and sipped tentatively, then more enthusiastically. "Nice." Erika purred, glancing at the dark haired woman over the top of her glass. Ephiny nodded agreement.

"Tell it to my mother." Xena commented, settling back in the chair with her own glass. "Now, what brings a pair of Amazons to Amphipolis?"

"Your mother?" Ephiny asked, distracted.

"Yeah, Gabrielle hasn’t been telling that story where they found me under a rock again, has she?" Xena’s voice was amused. "This is my mother’s inn." She glanced around. "You’ve already met Toris, I take it."

Ephiny just shrugged. "Honestly, Xena, nobody knows much about you, so I guess it never occurred to us that you had a family somewhere. You’ve kept pretty quiet about it."

The warrior shrugged. "Safer for them that way." She leaned forward. "You still haven’t told me what brings you here." Pinning them both with a baleful blue glare.

"Ah.. yes." Ephiny started. "Sorry. Here." She untied her pouch, and handed Xena the packet Gabrielle had given her. Watching the warrior take it gingerly, and glance at the wax seal, then let a brief grin quirk her lips. "Well, there are these rumors.."

Xena raised an eyebrow at her. "Rumors?" Then she laughed. "Oh... let me guess. I’m out to conquer half of Greece again." She sighed, and took a long sip of ale. "I’d figured that would start. Didn’t think it would start so fast, or go so far." She shook her head. "And... the Amazons were concerned?" Her voice held equal parts annoyance and chagrin.

"Well.." Ephiny glanced at the floor. "Some of them were. Gabrielle, on the other hand, had this pegged exactly for what it was." She glanced up at Xena. "She does know you pretty well." Saw the momentary answering gleam in those ice blue eyes.

"Yeah, she does." Xena answered, quietly. "So.. what’s this?" She indicated the packet.

"Oh.’ Ephiny grinned. "It’s a mutual defense treaty."

Xena burst out laughing. "You’re kidding." Ephiny shook her head, smiling. "Oh this is just like Gabrielle." She broke the seal on the packet and pulled out the contents, putting the treaty to one side, and glancing at the second, sealed piece of parchment. Her eyebrows quirked, and she put it down quietly on the table, then picked up the treaty and read it. "Oh.." a laugh. "Wait a minute." And she got up and reached behind the service bar for a quill and ink, bringing it back, and dipping the point in. She grinned, and made a few notes in the margin of the treaty, then a few more. Finally, she signed the bottom with a flourish, and pushed it back towards Ephiny. "Here. Take it back. You’re protected."

Ephiny scanned the document, and chuckled herself. "Very funny. But what’s this bit here? I can’t read it... what dialect is that?"

Xena grinned. "Don’t worry about it. The Queen can read it. " She took a breath, and her eyes dropped to the table, where the second parchment waited. Casually, she picked it up and broke the seal, unfolding the sheet and scanning it.

The first two paragraphs made her smile and roll her eyes. Then she got to the third, and the smile turned from amusement to something else. She reread it twice, trying to ignore the chills chasing up and down her spine. Then realized the two Amazons were watching her with interest. "Well," she said, folding the parchment up. "Gabrielle says things are going fairly well." She glanced at them. "And that I should treat you two to a night in a real bed and some decent food."

"Thanks." Ephiny nodded, letting the warrior off the hook, having watched her usually inexpressive face react to the note she was reading. Had seen that fondly amused look change, the eyes widen, and that smile...Ephiny would have paid dearly to know just what it was Gabrielle had written to have gotten that response...then she mentally smacked herself. Cut that out, Ephiny. It’s not your business. "We’d appreciate that. It’s been a tough march out here. The weather’s been really unpredictable."

Xena nodded, and stood up, draining her cup and putting it behind the service counter. "Let me tell Johan you’re here. Be right back." She padded through the door in the rear, heading further into the inn. And as soon as the door closed behind her, she slumped against the wall, suddenly weak in the knees, and leaned her head against the crosspost letting a totally unexpected avalanche of emotion just take her.

Was it just that easy? She unfolded the parchment again, and reread it. In a single, simple paragraph, the bard had laid her heart out open, and, honestly, as she did everything else, reaffirmed their bond. And that last line...Xena realized she must have a very silly grin on her face, and shook herself, pushing off from the wall, and glancing around. C’mon, Xena, you’re way too old to act like this. Get a grip on yourself. C’mon, c’mon... tough warlord act. You know that one. Let’s go... let’s go.. you can melt into a puddle later. Much later. With a deep breath, she settled her shoulders, and went in search of Johan, who was glad to set aside two rooms for the Amazons.

"Are you sure... two?" Johan asked, giving her a sly look.

Xena raised both eyebrows at him. "Johan...whatever could you mean?" She grinned. "But in this case, yes, I’m sure. These two have no love lost between them." She chuckled, and cuffed his arm. "Troublemaker."

"Not at all." Johan protested, but smiled at her.

"OK, all set." The warrior said, as she swung back through the doorway, seating herself again. "rooms and dinner, as requested by your queen." She propped one booted foot against the table support and leaned back. "Mother has a bathing room upstairs also, if you’re interested." She saw the appreciative gleams in two pairs of eyes. "Go on and enjoy yourselves. I have some drill to finish, then I’ll join you for dinner. It can get a little...crowded in here, but folks are polite, and they’ll know who you are."

Ephiny raised her eyebrow at that. "Is that good or bad?" she asked, only half joking.

Xena gave her a tolerant look. "It’s good. Mother and Toris and most of the folks here know Gabrielle, and they’re familiar with the Amazons, with you lot being so close."

"Fine." Ephiny said, then jerked her head at Erika. "I’m going upstairs. You?"

Erika put her cup on the table, and nodded, then gave Xena a tolerably respectful nod, and followed Ephiny towards the stairs.

Xena watched them go, then snorted and shook her dark head. "Amazons." She sighed, glancing at the ceiling. "It never ends."

"What doesn’t, dear?" Cyrene asked, walking over to her, and peering up the stairs. "Were those the Amazons I heard were here?"

Xena glanced at her. "Yeah."

Cyrene nodded. "Hmm. And how is Gabrielle?" She asked, watching her daughter’s face with a small smile. Seeing the gentle sparkle appear in her eyes at the mention of that name.

"Fine." Xena answered, quietly. And managed, somehow, to not break into that stupid grin again. "Well, I have things to do." she said, and hoisted herself out of the chair. "They’ll be staying the night." she added, as she stood up and moved around her mother towards the door. Aware of the fond smile following her out. Damn.. am I that transparent?

Dinner, as she suspected, was crowded, but the two Amazons seemed to enjoy it anyway, watching the villagers with amused interest, and being watched in return. They asked, and she related the truth behind the rumors of her army building.

"It was not a big thing." the warrior sighed. "Look, a bunch of the younger guys came to me, and asked me to just provide them with some basic defense skills. You know, some staff, some hand to hand...so, I did." She shrugged. "They took to it... better than I thought they were going to, in fact. So then, one of the local warlords decided to run a raid on the village." She stopped and took a sip of ale. "And we stopped them."

"Just like that." Ephiny grinned. "with a little help from you, personally, I would guess."

"No." Came the very surprising answer. "That wasn’t the point. We all know I can fight." She grinned in self deprecation. "They did it themselves." She glanced around. "And then they did it again. So... that’s how the rumor started." Another sip. And then she sat back and regarded the crowd. "They’re not bad people." A quirk of a grin. "Most of them even talk to me now."

"I noticed you aren’t in armor." Ephiny commented, leaning back in her chair with a sigh. "Whoa... that was good. Compliments to your mother."

Xena quirked a grin. "Yeah, I leave the armor off because it makes people a little nervous." She glanced at Ephiny. "I’ll pass along the compliments, by the way. She enjoys stuffing people." she snorted. "I’d be in real trouble if I didn’t spend half my day sparring and the other half hunting for the table." And half the night doing drills. I like her cooking way too much.

Ephiny smiled. "Worse things could happen to you. " She yawned, and noticed Erika was nodding a little sleepily as well. "I think we’ve about had enough for today, though." She stood, and Erika did the same, having said very little during the meal. "Thanks again, Xena. I needed this." She gave the warrior a quiet smile.

"Anytime." Xena nodded at them, and stood as well. "See you in the morning." She added, as she stepped around the back of the table, and left them to go upstairs.

The barn was cool and quiet, and Xena spent a moment just breathing in the familiar scents of hay and horse and dust before she stepped in and shut the door behind her. Argo whickered at her, and she crossed to the mare, glancing around before pulling out the parchment and letting the horse sniff it curiously. "Recognize that, Argo?" The mare whinnied. "Thought you might." She went towards the loft, almost bowling over Ares as he catapulted out from under the tack table and attacked her boot. "Hey, watch it." she muttered, lifting the puppy up and tucking him under her arm, then hoisting herself up one armed into the loft, and laying back on her bedroll.

"Roo." Ares protested, wriggling out of her grasp, and climbing up her arm onto her chest, sniffing at the parchment which she held in front of her. She lifted it out of his range, and just read it again, this time just letting the wash of giddy emotion happen, and quietly closed her eyes, basking in it. I don’t deserve it. I really don’t. But if it’s happening, well...I’m going to let it. I’m tired of fighting this. She rolled her head one side, and regarded the puppy. "I bet you’ll like her, too." she murmured to the animal, who cocked his head at her. "Well, I have to get up and do some sword work, Ares. So be a good boy, and go to sleep, OK?"

She rolled out of the loft, and stripped out of her tunic, putting on the quilted gambeson she used to practice sword work in. It had padding in the shoulders and arms, where she tended to smack herself when in the middle of working out flips and turns in mid air, and saved her from some annoying bruises. It also had clips and buckles to hold her sheath on, and was cut high on the sides to allow for some of her more complicated kicks. She adjusted the straps, and clipped the sword on, then ducked out the door and headed down the path towards the tree line, sucking the cool air down into her lungs and breaking into a run just because it felt good. She threw a few running flips in just for fun, and arrived at the clearing in record time, bouncing a few times on the balls of her feet to get the sword and gambeson settled into the right places.

Damn, I feel good. A long rolling wave of happiness cascaded over her. She drew the sword, and hurled herself into a wild series of mid air passes, letting the emotion work itself out slowly as she settled down to some complicated and frankly, overly fancy sword attacks, which featured twirling and releasing the blade while in the middle of doing reverse moves. It was really hard. And she loved every minute of it, feeling the moves slip into a familiar, comfortable groove. Gods, that’s sweet.

She grinned to herself, then switched gears, and started a more normal set of standard passes, which got faster and faster until the blade itself blurred. Then, then she added the aerial maneuvers, starting with easy forward flips, and progressing to the more complicated ones, which involved twisting in mid air, and the to the really hard ones, the backflips, which she had to do mostly blind, trusting her instincts to place blade, and body, and feet on landing. She’d been having some trouble with those, but tonight.. tonight it all flowed so easy...like everything just slid into place without effort. She laughed out loud, doing a wild backward toss, then bouncing forward into a forward tumble, then up and around into a mid air extended leap that was almost, almost like flying. At last, she relaxed on her back in the grass, arms extended fully, just looking up at the stars. Feeling the dew soak into the gambeson, cooling her off. Just breathing in the scent of the pine forest, the water soaked grass, and the damp earth.

A faint sound came to her, and her defenses came back full force. She bounced to her feet, and slid the sword into it’s sheath, moving into the trees and out of the moonlight. Her senses found a moving body - and she stepped towards it, stopping in the shadow of a large tree to concentrate on the forest in front of her. Her nostrils flared and caught the fitful wind, bringing a faint scent to her, along with the barest hint of a crackle of floor debris underfoot. She stayed where she was, until the intruder passed her still, silent gaze, then rolled her eyes. Ephiny. Would the woman never learn? Sighing, she slid out from behind her tree, and moved into position behind the Amazon, who was clearly following some trail. Hers, she realized, which she had taken absolutely no pains to conceal. Amused, she followed Ephiny until the woman came to the edge of the clearing and looked out, laying one hand on the rough bark of the last tree before the open space. Finally, Xena just cleared her throat, and crossed her arms as the startled Ephiny whirled.

"What is it with you?" The warrior exclaimed, leaning against a nearby tree. "Can’t you just say, "Hey, Xena... can we talk?" Do you have to go sneaking up on people..?" She straightened up, and walked over to where the Amazon was standing, hands on hips.

"Like you never do that either." Ephiny retorted, laughing a little. "Sorry." she said, sheepishly. "It’s a habit. You know us. Never walk when you can sneak." She gazed at Xena. "What are you doing out here, anyway?"

The warrior blew out a breath, and flexed her shoulders. "Sword practice." She nodded at the clearing. "Plenty of space, no villagers to scare."

"Practice?" Ephiny asked, quizzically. "I didn’t know you had to."

Xena scowled at her. "You know, that always amazes me." She said, with a touch of annoyance her voice.

"What does?" Ephiny asked, moving closer and cocking her head, regarding the taller woman in some confusion.

"Why does everybody just assume I just wake up in the morning being able to do things like jump over my own height and catch arrows?" Plaintively, she looked at Ephiny. "Do you really think Ares just steps out from behind a tree, sprinkles me with dust, and there I go?"

Ephiny stood, shocked, and tried to think of something to answer that with. "Uh...Well...Hmm. It’s your own fault." she replied, crossing her arms. "You make it all look so easy... I guess everyone just assumes...I mean... I don’t know what they assume. I guess I always...oh, Hades, Xena. I have no idea what I thought. You just do things." she finished, giving the warrior a little shrug with both hands. "You do things I’ve never seen anyone else do."

Xena sighed, and rubbed her upper arms, "Do you have any idea how long it took me to build up my body to the point where I can do those things?" She gave Ephiny a little grin. "And it takes constant working at it to keep it that way." She chuckled. "So, yeah, Ephiny. I practice. I even hit myself in the head sometimes. Just ask Gabrielle."

She looked at the Amazon, letting serious look take over her face. "What’s on you mind, Eph? I doubt you came out here to watch me do backflips."

Ephiny crossed her arms and leaned back against the tree. "It’s Gabrielle." She said, finally, glancing up and into Xena’s now guarded eyes. "I’m worried about her." She pursed her lips. " Something’s really bothering her, and she won’t talk to me. Or anyone for that matter. "

Xena’s brow creased in some consternation, caught between worry and the realization that she probably knew perfectly well what the bard’s problem was.

"It’s...she’s not sleeping. And she thinks I don’t know it. I think the tension of this whole thing is getting to her. And Arella isn’t helping." She didn’t meet Xena’s eyes. "She’s... putting a lot of pressure on Gabrielle. And she’s not being very subtle about it. " Now she finally looked up. "Don’t get me wrong, she’s handling it just fine. Frustrating the heck out of Arella. " A faint grin from Xena. "But... it’s wearing her out, Xena. And it hurts me to see it. " She paused. "She needs a friend."

"Aren’t you that, Ephiny?" Xena asked gently, her pale eyes searching the Amazon’s face intently.

"I’m one of the people looking to her for solutions." Ephiny sighed. Then bit the arrowhead, and continued. "I really think the friend she needs is standing here in front of me." She took a breath, and glanced at the ground. "Look.. it’s not my business, I know that. But... I like Gabrielle. And I don’t like seeing her the way she is now. She’s in need of something...something we can’t give to her." The Amazon looked up into a pair of still, quiet blue eyes. "But I think you can."

Xena let out a breath, regarding her with a thoughtful expression. About to speak, she suddenly stiffened, and held up a hand, cocking her dark head to listen.

"Crossbow." she mouthed at Ephiny, whose eyes widened. "Pointed at my back." she barely breathed, every sense tuned and alert.

"Who?" Ephiny breathed back, shivering. There was no panic in the eyes facing her, but she could see the sudden sharp edge of readiness tense Xena’s muscles, and her nape hair lifted.

"Question is, which one of us is the target?" The warrior responded softly, then looked intently at the Amazon. "Ephiny, do you trust me?"

Ephiny stared into those compelling eyes for a long moment. Then took a deep breath and nodded. "Yes, I do."

"Then don’t move." Xena warned softly. "Not one inch, not one bit." She closed her eyes, and focused every fiber of her being behind her, feeling the tremor as the crossbow was released, sensing the movement of the air as the quarrel headed towards her. Time compressed, as she let trained instinct take over, and dropped to one knee, and whirled, and caught the quarrel as it blazed past her left shoulder then the second as it passed her head. Freezing her muscles into place, turning her head and checking the flight of the arrows, at the target several inches to her rear. At Ephiny’s heart.

For a heartbeat, she held Ephiny’s gaze, then she dropped the quarrels, and stood up, putting her body between the trees and the Amazon. "They’re gone." she said, turning to look at the blond woman. "What’s going on here, Ephiny? Those were aimed at you...aimed by someone who knew I’d not only hear them, but be able to get out of the way."

Ephiny sank down the tree trunk until she was seated on the forest floor, and rested her head in her hands. Xena crouched down next to her, concerned. "Sometimes, you know, Xena.." she finally muttered. "It’s just not worth the trouble." She let her arms rest on her knees, and leaned her head back against the tree. "It had to be Erika. Crossbow is her specialty, and she’s the only one in the area who I can even remotely think has a motive."

Xena’s dark brow creased. "Erika? Why kill you? If they’re out after the queen’s mask, it makes more sense to kill me." She seemed unemotional about this. "After all, if they want to take that away from Gabrielle, they have to go through me to do it."

"True." Ephiny gave her a wan smile. "But what if they can make it look like I went here for a parley, and you killed me?" She almost laughed at the dumbfounded look on Xena’s face. "Bam. We have a situation where Arella can push through almost anything in the way of a challenge, and you wouldn’t be acceptable as a champion, because...well, you’d have killed me. "

Xena let a slow, feral, lazy smile cross her face, sending a chill down Ephiny’s spine. "Ephiny. If anyone threatened her, do you think I’d let Amazon law stand between me and them?" Her eyes bored into the Amazon’s. "Besides, crossbow isn’t my style. I wouldn’t have killed you that way."

Ephiny took a deep breath, and tried humor. "Well, if Gabrielle was here, she’d have said you wouldn’t have killed me. In any way." She swallowed. "By the way, thank you."

Xena rose smoothly to her feet, and reached a hand down to help up the shaken Ephiny. "Anytime." she said, then added. "And.. Gabrielle would have been right. As usual." She grinned at Ephiny. "Thank you. For being concerned about her."

Ephiny glanced down at the ground, then peered off into the forest. "We have a festival coming up, Xena.."

"I know." the warrior chuckled lightly. "I got a written invitation."

"Oh." Ephiny blushed. Then laughed. "I should have known. Will you be there?"

"I’ll be there." Xena replied, giving her a push back towards the village. "It’s Dionysus’s festival. Someone has to protect her innocence from you Amazons."

Ephiny started, and glanced back at Xena in surprise, then snorted in laughter, shaking her head as they made their way back to the inn. Instead of heading for the tavern, though, Xena steered her towards the barn. "Safer, I think, though not nearly so comfortable." she muttered, sliding into the doorway with Ephiny right behind her. Who stopped short at the sight of a boisterous wolf puppy who stumbled furiously across the floor and flung itself on Xena’s booted foot. "Oh, hi Ares." Xena said, absently, moving the animal aside gently and crossing over to the tack table.

‘Ares?" Ephiny said, her voice rising in astonished question. "You must be kidding." She peered at the wolf. "Where in the world..."

"Long story." Xena said, pulling a piece of parchment to her, and sitting down with a quill and an absorbed expression. "If Erika was the person behind that crossbow, just how safe are you going to be on the way home?"

Ephiny seated herself on a convenient lump of hay, and considered. "I’m not sure."

Xena studied her hands. "Well, I may have a solution. A...witness, more or less, for you." She paused thoughtfully. "We have an orphan here...named Cait. Her parents were killed by a roving warlord band." She sat back and regarded Ephiny. "She makes her living hunting small game, and selling it to the locals. She’s good - and she’s only 12 years old."

"That’s young to be alone." Ephiny mused.

"Very." Xena agreed. "She begged me to teach her sword when I got here. I convinced her it probably wasn’t a good idea. But.." She nodded at Ephiny. "she’d make a good Amazon."

"Does she want that?" Ephiny asked, considering. "You know we don’t just adopt people just because they’re orphans, or whatever."

"She wants it." Xena stated, flatly. "She asked me to take her to your village, in fact. I told her I’d think about it... when I went." She leaned forward. "It’s a risk, I know...but she’s tough, and she’s not a complete innocent."

Ephiny nodded. "All right. I’ll take her."

"Good." Xena sighed. "Now, roll up in the hay and get some sleep. I need to write a note."

Ephiny smiled. "Sounds like a good idea. To both." she said, getting a startled response from Xena, and grinning. Then she grabbed a spare horse blanket, and curled up in the soft fodder, asleep in minutes.

Xena watched her a minute, then laughed gently herself. Then concentrated on the parchment in front of her. Oh... this wasn’t going to be easy. Words aren’t my thing. But....let’s see. She wrote,

Dear Gabrielle,

Well, yes, I’m out to conquer the world. Again. And I started here in Amphipolis. On to Potadeia next. I’ll give your regards to your family, since I’m sure they remember me fondly. It was nice to have Ephiny visit, and get word on what was going on there. I did keep from beating up Erika, but you might want to when they get back, because we think she tried to introduce Ephiny to a pair of crossbow quarrels.

Never a dull moment when you’re involved, huh? Mother and Toris send their regards, and Ephiny will be carrying something from mother to you that I think you’ll like very much. I do. The place has been OK with me so far - besides the world domination plan, that is.

Yeah, as a rule I don’t like sappy stuff. But didn’t I once tell you you’re the exception to the rule? I think I remember doing that...besides, I miss you too. I wouldn’t miss your festival for anything - count on me being there.

Hang in there, my bard - keep your head down, and be careful. And you can tell your friend Arella if she lays one finger on you, I’ll scatter parts of her up and down the road to Athens so small they’ll have to use tweezers to pick them up.

I mean it.

X

Well, she thought, artistic it isn’t. But I think it gets the point across. She folded the parchment, dripped wax on it, then paused a moment, thinking. Gabrielle had sealed hers with an Amazon seal, naturally...so I guess I’ll have to drag this thing out. She walked over to Argo’s saddlebags, and dug around, until she came up with a small pouch, from which she extracted a signet ring. Hers. From the bad old days, when sigils marked with this insignia struck terror across the countryside. She looked at it thoughtfully, then crossed back over to the table, and pressed the signet into the warm wax. About time that sealed something that...she left the thought unfinished, and blew out the candle, grabbing Ares, and climbing to the loft.

She stretched out, floating in a pleasant tiredness that made the loft seem like a feather stuffed mattress. Thinking. This time not wanting or needing sleep to take that away.

Erika was sullen the next morning, Ephiny noted with a grim smile. The dark haired Amazon ate in silence the excellent and large breakfast provided them by Toris and avoided meeting Ephiny’s eyes. Ah... she’s very young. Ephiny considered, though not by any means ready to use that as an excuse for murder. So’s Arella. Maybe that’s part of the problem...She darted a glance across the room to where Xena was seated, forearms braced on booted knees, talking softly to a very young girl seated across from her. Taller than average, pale, pale blond and very slim - the girl had a short bow slung over her shoulder, and a quiver depended from her wide belt. A traveling pack slumped bonelessly at her feet as she listened intently to the warrior.

"Cait, you know you don’t have to go if you don’t want to." Xena said, quietly. "You can stay here, mother said there would be a place for you in our.." here she smiled a little. "home, if you want that."

Cait regarded her solemnly with her almost colorless gray eyes. "I want to go. I...there’s things I want, that I can’t find here." She let a half grin cross her face. "I think you understand."

Xena nodded. She did. And what she hadn’t told Ephiny was that after her parents were killed in the raid, this little girl slipped into the enemy camp, and slit the throat of the raid leader. A dangerous girl, was Cait. One whom she had a rather unique understanding of.

"All right. Ephiny will take you to Amazon country, and get you fostered. She’s OK, you can trust her. " She lowered her voice. "But the other one isn’t. We think she tried to shoot Ephiny last night."

"She did." Cait answered carefully. "I saw her, and followed her out when it looked like she was headed to your usual spot."

Xena gave her a grin, knowing for a while that she had a silent watcher. "And have you been enjoying the show?" she asked, a wry note in her voice.

Cait grinned, unashamed. She’d been very annoyed with Xena when the warrior had refused to teach her sword work, but over the weeks, she’d developed at first a liking, then a true and enthusiastic appreciation for her. For the one person she felt she could talk openly to. The one person she had met in all her short life who understood exactly where she was coming from. "Last night’s was the best ever." she breathed, eyes lighting. "It was like...magic."

Xena looked at her, bemused. "Yeah, it was a pretty nice workout." she drawled. "I was in a really good mood."

"I could tell." Cait answered softly.

"You could, huh?" Xena replied, grinning. She straightened up. "There’s something I’d like you to do for me."

Cait nodded. "I’ll try."

Xena picked up two items and slid them across the table. The first, a sealed parchment packet, she handed to Cait. "This, I want you to give to the Amazon Queen. That’s Gabrielle. Do you remember her?"

Cait nodded vigorously. "Oh yes. Your friend, with the red gold hair. The storyteller."

"Yeah, that’s her." Xena let a grin flit across her otherwise serious face. "Just hand it to her - she’ll recognize the seal. " she held the other item, turning it over in her hands. "This, I need you to carry, and give to her also. Can you do that?" She handed over the item to Cait, who took it cautiously, and examined it. A cunningly wrought knife, cast in the same mold as her long sword, with a seal embedded in the hilt. A seal that matched the parchment wax. Cait drew it gently from the leather sheath, and examined the razor blade, and the twin engraved channels down either side. She looked up at Xena, with a knowledge past her 12 years, then looked back at the blade and slid it back home.

"I can do that." the girl said, with quiet finality.

Xena nodded, and touched her hand, lowering her voice. "I want you to keep an eye on Ephiny, Cait. It’s important that she gets home." her blue eyes bored into the gray ones.

Cait kept her gaze, but brought the blade up to her lips, and pressed it there. "I will." she breathed, as two feral souls exchanged an understanding. "I promise."

"OK, so when you see her," Xena added, sparing a glance to the waiting Amazons. "Give that knife to Gabrielle. Tell her it’s from me. For...emergencies. And give her one more thing for me."

Cait stood, knowing it was time to leave. "What’s that?"

"Come here." Xena said, and as the girl moved closer, she reached out and pulled her into a hug, which, after a stunned moment, Cait returned with vigor. "Just like that." Xena said, releasing her. "OK?"

Cait grinned. "I think she’s going to like that better than the knife." She said, wisely.

Xena chuckled. "Oh, I think you’re right. But give it to her anyway." The knife.. that was still revolving in her mind as to whether or not it was a good idea. Not that she expected Gabrielle to use it, no... how the bard felt about drawing blood was something Xena was passionately aware of. No.. but the arrow incident had left her anxious about her safety, and had almost driven her to throw caution and everything else to the winds and just.. go.. herself to the Amazon Village. In fact, standing in the wind in front of the barn at dawn, she had felt a sudden urgent pull in that direction and had actually taken several steps before she caught herself, and stopped. No, Gabrielle wouldn’t use the dagger.

But she was wise enough to know that wearing it on her belt just might, might give a potential threat pause. And...the seal made sure everyone who saw it knew exactly who stood behind the beleaguered Amazon Queen. I could just go...but she said she needed a little more time...and by Ephiny’s analysis, any challenge is still in the planning stages. I don’t want to mess things up for her, but I sure don’t want her getting hurt, either. Or worse. A little more time, my bard? All right, but not much more. I don’t think I’m going to wait until that festival to pay you a little visit. she grimly decided. Not... mind mocked her gently. like you need an excuse, right?

"Oh wait... almost forgot." Xena muttered, with a quickly suppressed grin. "I’ll be right back." She disappeared into the kitchen, and quickly found Cyrene, who was standing over a mildly bubbling pot. She looked up when she heard her daughter’s distinctive footsteps.

"Good morning, dear." she smiled up at her.

"Hi." Xena replied, leaning against a wooden support. "I don’t suppose you have any of those cakes around, do you?"

Cyrene laughed. "I think I have an new addict." she teased, "all part of my plan to keep you here."

Xena smiled fondly at her. "Not for me. For a friend."

"Oh, sure." Cyrene snorted, then paused and looked up. "Ah... wait!. For Gabrielle?" She watched her daughter’s face with a twinkle in her eyes. The grin on Xena’s face answered her. "Well, in that case, I’ll pack some up for you."

"In that case?" Xena queried, raising an eyebrow.

Cyrene reached up and caught her chin, and chuckled. "Well, she’s part of the family, now, isn’t she?"

Oh. Xena felt the blush creep all the way up her neck to her cheeks. No point in lying. Not to her, anyway. "Yeah, I guess she is." Came the quiet answer, with a light chuckle following.

Her mother smiled, and patted her on the belly. "Love becomes you, my dear. " She went behind a storage case, and pulled out some wrapping, giving Xena time to compose herself, then reemerged with a neatly wrapped bundle. "Here you go."

"Thanks" the warrior replied, with a little grin. "I know they’ll be appreciated."

Cyrene waved her off. "Away with you. I have stew to attend to." She waited until she heard the door close, then chuckled to herself. If someone had told me this was going to happen a month ago, I would have chased them out the front door with a broom. Now look - business is stronger than it’s ever been, and the village is...renewed, with a self confidence that came straight from her. I think she’s finally paid off that debt. At least to me she has. I think I love her, again. No, I know I do.

"All right." Xena said, walking back to the table and guiding Cait over to the Amazons. "Everyone ready?" Cait smiled shyly at the two women, having already tucked the blade away and out of sight. "This is Cait, and she wants to go with you. Cait, this is Ephiny and Erika, and they’re Amazons." She handed Ephiny a packet, with a grin. "Give that to her majesty, please. With my mother’s compliments."

"Hello, Cait." Ephiny smiled warmly. "You all packed?" Erika just nodded at the girl.

"All ready." Cait said, hefting her pack.

Ephiny patted the girl on the shoulder, and guided her towards the door. She turned as she opened it, and glanced back towards Xena, who was standing, arms crossed, watching. "Take care." She called, with a nod.

"Be seeing you." Xena replied, raising an eyebrow, and giving her a ghost of a wink. Seeing relief follow comprehension across the blond Amazon’s face.

Amazon Village - Evening, two days after...

Gabrielle put her head in her hands, taking deep breaths to try and calm herself. The scene in the council chamber today had scared her more than she was willing to admit, though she had held her ground, and won the point. Again. But how much longer could she keep on doing this? First, the rumors of centaur invasion in their territory. Proved wrong. Then word came that there were brigands from the neighboring village raiding the fields. Again, proved wrong. Each time, peace prevailed. Calm prevailed. The other morning, she thought sure Arella was going to call challenge on her, right there at the breakfast hall. The pang of pure unreasoning fear had been difficult to deal with. But she had. Now, word came that Ephiny was inbound, with Erika in tow, and an unknown young girl.

"Gabrielle?" Came Granella’s soft voice at the door. She looked up, to see the slim Amazon looking at her in some concern. "Ephiny’s at the gate. Thought you’d want to know."

"Thanks." the bard said, taking a deep breath, and pushing herself up from the desk. Crossing the room, she paused in the doorway, spotting the blond immediately, and watching as Erika stalked off towards Arella’s encampment with a very dour look. She cheered up, realizing that meant only one thing, not that she’d had any doubt. Ephiny caught her gaze, and moved in her direction, motioning for the third member of their party to join her. Who on earth...the bard mused. She seemed vaguely familiar, but Gabrielle couldn’t remember from where for a minute.. though her memory cleared as they drew close and she did recall. Huh…

"Gabrielle!" Ephiny called out, looking tired, but relieved. "You were right on." Her lips curved in a smile, matched by the one on the queen’s face. "and I have a signed treaty for you from the conqueror of the world."

Gabrielle moved towards them, feeling some of the tension drain out of her. "I bet she rolled her eyes when she saw it." the bard laughed, then gazed at the young girl. "Hello, Cait.. long time no see."

The girl’s eyes lit at being remembered, and she gave Gabrielle a shy grin. Gabrielle grinned back, and ushered both of them inside her quarters. She’s gotten taller, but still looks like a ghost.

"It seems Cait here wants to be a part of our extended family, Gabrielle." Ephiny drawled. "Xena recommended her."

"Well, that recommendation’s good enough for me." The queen replied, winking at Cait.

"I have some things for you." Cait replied, moving forward a little.

"Do you?" Gabrielle asked, a bit puzzled. "Like what?"

She held out the parchment first. "This."

Gabrielle took it, glancing at the seal, then smiled easily. "I can see who this came from." she laughed. A warm glow started in the pit of her stomach.

Cait smiled too. "Yeah, And this...she said to say it was in case of emergencies." the girl tugged a long item out of her pack, and handed it over solemnly.

The bard slowly reached out and took it, running her eyes over it, and gently touching the seal in the hilts. Her eyes darted to Ephiny, taking in the exhausted rings under the blond Amazon’s eyes, and the troubled gaze. "Thank you." For emergencies...what could have happened that had gotten Xena shook up enough to send this?

Cait waited. "One more thing." She intoned, softly.

Gabrielle dragged her attention back to the girl. "OK, what is it?" she asked, forcing a patient, cheerful note into her voice.

"This." And the girl stepped forward, and hugged the startled bard, trying to squeeze as hard as she could. As hard as she knew that warrior back there wanted to. Because this friend of hers really seemed to need it.

Gabrielle took a long shuddering breath, and hugged the girl back. "Thank you, Cait." she said, as she released the girl, ruffling her hair. "That was the best thing."

Cait let a half grin onto her face. "I told her you’d think so." she said.

"All right, Cait, let’s get you settled." Ephiny sighed, glancing back at the doorway, relieved to see Granella waiting there. "Gran, can you..."

"Sure." The scout laid a gentle hand on Cait’s shoulder. "Come on, Cait...I bet you’re hungry." She exchanged nods with Ephiny, and led the girl out.

Gabrielle watched them leave, then turned to Ephiny and pulled her arm. "Sit down before you fall down. What’s going on?" she asked, crisply, perching on the edge of the desk. "What happened that caused me to get this.." She lifted the knife. "From my generally level headed, though overprotective best friend?"

Ephiny told her. "So, we think, and now Cait confirms, that Erika was trying to set it up so that Xena couldn’t champion you. I was just a convenient...excuse." She gave the queen a sardonic look. "However, your champion was quick to point out to me that Amazon law wasn’t going to apply to her if anyone messed with her Gabrielle." The Amazon grinned privately at the quick blush that passed over Gabrielle’s fair features. "And, by the way, she sends this." She handed Gabrielle the wrapped package. "Said it was with her mother’s compliments."

Gabrielle took the bundle curiously, and unwrapped it, an unexpected grin appearing on her face. "She does know me." she said, laughing softly, as she exposed the pastry. The smell was wonderful, and she immediately taste tested, eyebrows rising in appreciation. "Oh wow.. these are great!" She offered one to Ephiny, who suppressed a smile and accepted, munching thoughtfully. "So.. how are things there?" the bard asked, casually.

Ephiny gave her a knowing grin. "Fine, I think - she’s won over Amphipolis, by the way. And... oh yeah, she’s somehow found this wolf puppy that follows her around all over the place."

Gabrielle giggled. "A puppy??? What I wouldn’t give to see that." Oh.. how true that is. Like right now.

"Yeah, she wouldn’t tell me the story behind it, but he’s a cute little thing. She calls him Ares." The Amazon drawled, watching the queen’s attitude lighten considerably. "And I got up during the night last night to rearrange my straw mattress, and caught her sleeping with him tucked into the crook of her arm, all snuggled up. It was unbelievably precious. If you tell her I saw it, though, she’ll probably kill us both." The delighted grin on Gabrielle’s face was worth the danger.

"Not a word, I promise." the queen giggled. "She hates it when people get under that coldhearted warrior act of hers."

"Except for you." The words were out before Ephiny could stop them, and she held her breath, waiting to be told off.

Gabrielle looked at her for a minute, then grinned, and shrugged a bit. "Except for me." She agreed cheerfully. "But that took a lot of time and effort." she paused. "Not that I minded."

Ephiny chuckled. "I bet." she continued with her report. "And although she’s got a couple of brand new scars on her arms that look a lot like panther marks which she also wouldn’t explain, otherwise she looks really good. I think this little time with her family has been a good thing for her." She watched the queen absorb this like a sponge.

Gabrielle nodded. "Thanks.. it’s good to hear that. Not that I was worried...you know Xena. She’ll find a way out of almost any situation."

Ephiny grinned agreement. "That’s true. She’s pretty unique."

The bard grinned in agreement. "Among other things." She picked up the parchment packet and broke the seal, scanning the contents curiously. Then she read it again, and this time a slow smile crossed her face. The treaty had been amended in a few pretty funny places, and added an addendum about protecting Potedeia for an extra few dinars. And the sign off... written in a dialect the warrior knew darn well only she’d be able to read. And she said she didn’t like sappy stuff. She traced the words with a fingertip. A giggle, inappropriate to the seriousness of the situation, forced itself to the surface. "Sorry. She’s pretty funny here." She glanced up at Ephiny, who was watching her face with an air of weary amusement. Then on to the second parchment, which made her burst out laughing. "Oh.. that’s good." She read the last paragraph to Ephiny, who found the strength to chuckle as well. "I wish.."

Ephiny looked up when the bard’s voice fell silent. The queen was turning the parchment over in her hands. "Gabrielle.." she said, hesitantly.

"Yeah." The green eyes looked up and blinked. "Anyway, I’m glad you made it back safely." She managed a reassuring smile. "Why don���t you go get some sleep - you look pretty wiped out."

The Amazon heaved herself to her feet. "I am." She sighed, "Hard sleeping with one eye open, although.." she mused "I noticed little Cait keeping a pretty tight eye on me. " She gave the bard a sly grin. "I think a certain overprotective friend of yours might have given her some private instructions."

Gabrielle considered this a moment, then laughed softly. "Xena doesn’t like leaving things to chance." And I wish I had her overprotective arms around me right now. "So I wouldn’t be surprised."

"G’night’ Ephiny sighed, and gave her a little wave. "And try to get some sleep yourself, OK?" She gave her a mock glare, and left, shaking her head.

"Yeah, sure." The bard muttered, sitting down on the bed and looking down at the parchment still clutched in one hand. She read it through a few times, lips twitching as she imagined the words, complete with intonation, coming from Xena. Especially that last bit, because she could hear in her mind the deliberate drop in pitch, and the faint growling tone that would go with it. Two weeks until the full moon. I don’t think I’m going to make it.

She lay down flat on the bed, and stared moodily at the ceiling. I’m tired. I’m really tired, and really exasperated, and I just want to...gods. She closed her eyes, and focused every bit of that wanting on it’s subject, putting all her energy into the sending. Xena... I know you can’t hear me. I know only the dead can hear our thoughts. But I don’t know what else to do, so I’m going to pretend that you can. Please. I need you.

Then fitfully, she dropped into sleep, waking only when the worst of her dreams, the old familiar nightmare of Xena dying, taking half her soul with her and leaving emptiness behind grabbed her, and tossed her up into a waking world, where the past and the present melded and left her not knowing if it was a dream. She sat bolt upright, heart pounding, taking in her surroundings with a sinking heart. Until a rustle of parchment made her look down at the sheet clenched in her fist. Until her eyes took in the words and made her remember that this was now, and Xena was very much alive, and she was here to help straighten out the Amazons, not because she had no better option.

"Oh gods." She said aloud, waiting for her heartbeat to settle down. Ok...ok.. deep breaths…C’mon, Gabrielle, it was just a dream, you’re not a kid anymore. Shuddering, she got up, and walked over to the pitcher on her desk, pouring a glassful of water and drinking it in long gulps. Then carefully, precisely, she set the glass down, sank into the chair, and put her head in her hands. Oh well.. almost dawn anyway. Her brain mused foggily. Guess a cold dunk in the water couldn’t do any harm.

Amphipolis - Same evening...

"Xena." Cyrene called, softly, then reached out and touched her daughter’s hand. The warrior had stopped in the middle of chewing, and was sitting silent, with an absorbed expression on her face.

"Hmm?" Xena started, shaking her head a little to clear it. "Uh, sorry." She put down her fork and sat back a minute, taking a deep breath. What was that??? Gods... I think there’s something really wrong with me. I’ve been doing this all night.

Cyrene leaned closer to her. "What’s up with you?" she whispered, concern now audible in her voice. "that’s the second time tonight you’ve just gone out on me."

"I...don’t know." Xena admitted, shaking her head slowly. "I just keep getting the feeling that something’s wrong somewhere."

"Is it Gabrielle?" Cyrene asked, rubbing her thumb against the back of Xena’s hand.

The warrior didn’t even bother to try and dissemble. "I don’t know." she answered, staring ahead, to where Toris was moving back towards the table with another glass of ale.

Toris saw the look on her face when he approached, and quickly settled back at her side. "What is it?" He flicked a quick glance at Cyrene, who gave him a little shrug. "What’s wrong?"

"Listen, I think I’m just tired." The warrior said, pushing back from the table, and standing. "I’m going to go relax for a while." She gripped her mother’s shoulder, and gave Toris’ head a pat. "Have fun." She left the tavern, and walked out into the cool night air, which was heavy with the thick smell of rain. Far off, she heard the rumble of thunder, the quick flash of lightning on the horizon.

A deep breath did nothing to dispel the sense of panic she’d been feeling for the last few hours, a feeling without obvious cause, but which was as real as any she’d ever felt. Was it Gabrielle? Admitting that meant admitting that Jessan was, in all probability, right, and they shared a connection that she wasn’t sure she understood. Or was this just her own imagination, working over the incident with Erika and Ephiny’s unease?

Funny... I’ve always trusted my instincts before. She mused silently, leaning on the hitch rail in front of the tavern. She heard the door open behind her, and turned as Cyrene came up beside her, and also leaned against the rail.

"Still worried?" Cyrene asked, glancing up at her. Not really needing to ask. Feeling the tension almost radiating from the tall form next to her.

"I can’t shake this." The warrior answered, staring pensively into the darkness. "It’s twisting my gut up into knots." She shook her head as if to clear it. "It’s nothing solid, just...this sinking feeling. "

Cyrene bit her lip a minute, then put a hand on the arm next to hers. "Xena... sometimes our minds, and our hearts try to tell us things that we’re not really ready to listen to. " She met the startled gaze evenly. "And I think you should listen."

Xena turned her gaze back out into the night. "I know that." She finally answered, in a low voice. "I’m just not sure if it’s telling me something I need to know, or something I just want to hear." She shook her head, and stood up. "But I don’t think I can risk not finding out."

Cyrene smiled. "You’re going."

"Yeah." Came the answer, as the warrior stood and turned towards the dimly seen barn.

"Be careful." Her mother warned, reaching out and giving her a quick hug.

Xena nodded. "I will." And moved purposefully down the path, and through the door, shutting it behind her. Now that the decision was made, her movements turned deliberate and decisive. Shucking her tunic, she traded linen for leather, and buckled the shoulder straps with smooth precision. Lifting her shoulder armor, she ducked her head into it, settling the plates with a soft chime of metal on metal, clipping the retaining buckles into place with a satisfying snick.

She walked over to Argo, flipping a saddle blanket over her shoulders as she raised her head, already restive, knowing that arming for what it was. Cinching the blanket, then lifting her saddle off the stall divider, and settling on the horse’s back, tightening the girth with one smooth practiced tug. Sliding the bridle over her head, tucking her ears under the headstall and pushing her forelock through the strapping. Buckling the chin strap and easing the bit into her mouth. "Easy girl" She murmured. "Come on." Kicking the door open. "Back, now." Moving out of the way as Argo obediently backed out of the stall, and followed her towards the door.

Xena grabbed her bracers, and sat down briefly to buckle on her leg armor, stamping both booted feet to settle the protective grieves. She looked up as the door opened, and her mother poked her head in. "Just about ready." she said, standing up and reaching behind her to clip her sword sheath into it’s buckles, and settling the chakram at her waist.

"So I see." Cyrene breathed. "You look a lot...bigger... when you wear all that." She said, moving inside the barn, and reaching out one hand to touch the gleaming armor plates.

Xena looked down at her, with an affectionately amused grin. "Like I’m not big enough already." she remarked. "Looks like I’m going to get wet tonight, on top of everything else." A supply bag went across the mare’s withers, buckled to one of the extra saddle rings.

"Here." Cyrene said, handing her a packet. "I doubt you’ll have a chance to stop and eat."

Xena laughed. "Mother." she said, but took the packet, and gave her a quick hug. "Thanks. Wish me luck."

"Good luck." Cyrene said, obediently. "And do me a favor?"

Xena glanced at her, raising an eyebrow. "If I can, sure."

"Bring Gabrielle back here with you." Cyrene said, laying a hand on her arm. "I want to get to know her."

The warrior took a deep breath, then released it. "All right." Smart, Xena -you get the two of them together, and you’re dead. Oh well. "I will." she promised, and lead Argo out the door, mounting in one smooth movement, and turning her head to the road.

Amazon village, that same night...

Erika strode impatiently into Arella’s quarters, startling the tall redhead. "No go." the dark haired woman spat. "And let me tell you something, you’d better think twice about that challenge."

Arella, looked up from the map she was studying, and cocked her head. "First off, welcome home." She said, walking over and giving the smaller woman a hug. "Second, it was worth a try, don’t feel bad." She smiled. "I made some progress here, though damn, that woman is tough." Her brow creased. "Now, what’s this about the challenge?"

Erika sat down with a thump, resting her forearms on her knees. "What a week in Hades. The way out there was nerve-wracking. That Ephiny and her damned eyes. Then we get there, and sure enough, our little queen is right. As you suspected." she sighed wearily. Arella walked over to her small table, and poured a tall glass of crimson liquid into a glass, and handed it to Erika, crouching down next to her, and patting her knee.

"Thanks." she accepted the glass, and took a sip. "OH.. that’s good." She rested her head on the glass for a moment. "So, anyway - I spotted Xena taking off into the forest late that night. I followed...wanted to know what she was up to. And my gods...Arella, what I saw wasn’t human. She shouldn’t have been able to do the things I saw her do."

Arella tired of crouching, and sat down in front of Erika cross legged. "What do you mean?" She propped her chin on her hand. "I don’t understand."

Erika shook her dark head. "She did... I don’t know, sword drills, I guess. But she did them so fast I couldn’t make out the blade, Ari. And then she started doing them while doing flips, and in the air maneuvers...she would just...Look, just don’t, OK? I know you’re really good, Ari, really good - but this wasn’t just good. It was something beyond."

Arella chewed on her lip thoughtfully. "I could challenge now...she won’t be able to get here in time."

"Won’t work, you know that. She’s a named champion. They’ll make you wait." Erika replied, flicking a lock of hair out of Arella’s eyes.

Arella sighed. "Well, then we have to prevent her from getting here at all." She glanced up at Erika’s startled face. "Listen, I tried and tried to get through to our so called queen. She’s absolutely determined to follow her course of running us into the ground. Every turn I make she counters. Every rumor I stew up she squashes. I swear, the woman is..." She shook her head. "Anyway, she concluded a treaty with both of the northern villages, and that tears it. They’ve started putting homesteads in the northern woods." She gripped her temples. "I don’t understand why I can’t make her see what she’s doing to us. She doesn’t understand what we are, Rika. She thinks we’re farmers, or something . After her living with Xena for two years, you’d think she’d get a clue as to what makes a warrior. I guess not. Maybe she thinks she can change Xena like that too."

Erika gently massaged the burly shoulder next to her. "I know. But let me tell you, that fire runs very deep - she doesn’t know what she’s playing with there. " She grinned wryly. "Anyway, so I wait until Xena’s finished with this impossible display of technical talent, and then I realize Ephiny’s followed her out there too. A perfect opportunity I think...so I get behind them. They’re talking, see.." she wove the tale, aware of Arella’s appreciative eyes. "Because Xena heard her too, though gods know Ephiny’s not a bad tracker, and got behind her. Startled her, too, it was kind of funny to watch. So they’re talking, and I get my crossbow cocked, and then I realize Xena heard that. I swear, that woman has the ears of a wolf, Ari, my crossbow mech is quieter than two blades of grass rubbing, you know that. So I see her go real still... and I figure, well, you were right - if the stories are true, she can dodge my quarrels. So I shoot. And, damned if she doesn’t move out of the way."

Arella leaned forward. "You missed???? I don’t believe it.!"

"No!" Erika threw up her hands in disgust. "the damned woman catches the damned crossbow quarrels! Out of mid air! And believe me, I had to take a minute to drag my jaw back into place before I took off out of there." She took a long sip of the wine. "Ari, she scares me." She looked into Arella’s eyes. "She really does. I got to have dinner with her, and I couldn’t look her in the eyes for more than a second. She’s so intense."

Arella looked thoughtful. "As long as she’s alive, we’re trapped, Rika. She looked grim. "As long as she’s Gabrielle’s champion, then it’s Gabrielle’s rules we live by. I can’t live with that. I’m no farmer, and as a people, we’ll die without the need for fighting. You know that. We’ll become just another group of villagers. Do you want that? I don’t. I can’t live with it. I have the taste of battle on my tongue... and I can’t give that up. So I guess I have to put my body where my beliefs are. She glanced at the floor. "Is she coming here?"

"I think so." Erika said. "I think Gabrielle asked her to, in that note Ephiny was carrying." She grimaced. "And, Ari...whatever else...there’s something between them. Xena’s a hard read at the best of times, but even she couldn’t keep from reacting to whatever was in that note."

Arella nodded. "Then we have to stop her. At the mountain pass. If we put enough of us there, we can catch her off guard, and I don’t care if she’s Ares himself, she won’t be able to fight off all of us." She looked up, and into Erika’s eyes. "This is my own destiny, Rika. And if I have to take on Xena, then that’s what I have to do. Our heritage is too important to lose."

Slowly, Erika nodded. "All right. I’m with you. We all are - none of us wants to be dirt grubbers for the rest of our lives. And I don’t want any daughters I have growing up like that either."

"I’ll gather us up." Arella said, stroking her cheek. "You get some sleep. You look like Hades." She walked to the door, thinking An ambush...that would work. And she’d stir up some trouble with the damned centaurs to keep everyone’s attention of what was going on in the pass. If she knew Gabrielle, and she was beginning to think she did, the woman would jump to the centaurs defense. And maybe, just maybe, she could use that betrayal of Amazon interests to drive a final wedge between the stubborn queen and her people. I feel...sorry for her. she mused, staring off into the darkness of the forest. Because she doesn’t understand just how strong this need of ours is...she has no experience with it. How does Xena put up with that, I wonder? It’s kind of sad...little Gabrielle with her morals - determined to reform the old warlord. Silly...doesn’t she see she has no chance? I guess not... because she’s sure trying it with us. Well, little Gabrielle, I’m afraid you’re not going to have your chance at reforming your friend, because I can’t let her live. She’s too dangerous to us. Pity... because she’d make one damned fine ally. Better than you, at any rate.

Somewhere between Amphipolis and Amazon country, later that night...

The only sound in the air was Argo’s steady hoofbeats, at a ground eating canter that almost lulled her rider into a half sleep. Xena’s mind was racing, though, and the steady sense of unease in her gut kept her triggered. Jessan’s words kept echoing in her head, keeping her company the weary miles before the mountains. Gods... what if he’s right...the thought gnawed at her. Admit it. He is. He can see what’s going on, but you can feel it, you know you can. You have for a long, long time now. You always know when she’s in trouble. She reached down and took a long pull from the waterskin, then set it back into place. What if I’m too late? The thought struck terror in her gut. Damn... it’s too far. I should have gone that night. I knew I should have. I waited because she said she needed more time...but my gut was telling me to go. I should have listened. Now...she closed her eyes and gripped Argo’s mane for support, hearing a snort from the running mare. if... something happens to her because I was stupid and didn’t listen to my own long, long tested instincts...I won’t survive it. I can feel that, lurking in my gut, too. I had one taste of it, back in that healing temple. She’s stronger than I am, that way. I wonder if she realizes that? She would have recovered after I died, would have gone on, continued her life. I won’t.

The miles slipped by, until she came to the road turning that curved around the mountains, and pulled Argo up, resting the sweating mare, and thinking hard. The road lead around the long way, but to go over the mountains was lunacy. She thought about the crags above her, and then about the price. "Come on, Argo. You’ll go with me as long as you can." she whispered to the mare, and turned her off the road.

They moved through the shadows of the trees, following her sense of direction, passing silent cots deep in the forest, past sleeping beasts startled by Argo’s hooves, and sensing the quiet hunters which, perhaps deferring to their scent, slunk out of their path.

Two streams, forded with ease, and a river, which Argo swam in snorting protest, and Xena waded, and then they were in scrublands, where she had to watch Argo’s footfalls. Dawn caught them as they crossed another river, and Xena paused to rest the lathered mare. "I know, girl. I know. This is rough." she murmured into a flicking ear. She rinsed off a square of linen, and wiped the lather off Argo’s flanks, letting her graze for a short while, and breaking into her mother’s packet.

Off again, this time trotting across rising grasslands, as the mountains which separated Amazon country came into view. The weather was worsening, dark clouds piling across the peaks of the mountains, and the wind, which had been blowing steadily since the dawn changing fitfully every short while, and causing the mare to fidget. "Easy, Argo. I see em" She kneed the mare forward, wanting to get to a place of safety, since Argo, at least, would not travel in the kind of storm that was fast developing. But I will.The anxious feeling in her gut had gotten worse, building with every mile she moved towards the mountains. That, more than anything else, sparked her to keep traveling with an urgency that would not be denied.

At last, she crossed the last of the grass, and the long rolling foothills, and the mountain loomed over her. The thunder was getting louder and closer, and Argo was getting nervous, her ears plastered back on her head, and her nostrils flared. "Come on, just a little further." Xena coaxed her, feeling the first drops of rain touching her back. They rode around a tall crag, and Xena pulled the mare up short, her heart sinking. So. Here was why everyone used the road. Ahead of her was a sheer escarpment, running off into the distance, as far as her eyes could follow it. No path up, no path around. "Damn." That single word echoed off the rocks, mocking her.

She rode Argo to the foot of the escarpment, and glared at it. To double back now meant a days lost traveling time. At the top of the escarpment, she remembered, the road itself looped lazily, bringing itself through the high pass, and down into Amazon territory.

Xena swung down off the mare, and walked to the edge of the cliff, staring up. Most of the surface was sheer and unbroken, without hand or footholds. I can’t climb this. Her eyes studied it, and balanced it against the aching pull in her guts. Or am I stubborn and stupid enough to try? In the rain? In the coming dark? She closed her eyes, and tentatively explored the nerve wracked fear assaulting her...fear, she realized, with a sudden startling clarity, that truly wasn’t her own. That had a familiar flavor, that woke images in her mind of the short time she had spent in control of Gabrielle’s body. When she fought Velasca. Oh gods... she glanced up. "Yeah, I am that stupid."

She looked around, spotting a protected rock outcropping, and led the mare over to it. "Sorry to do this to you, Argo... but I have no choice." She stripped the mare of her tack, and tucked it neatly away under the outcropping. Then she took what essentials she needed from the saddlebags, and using one as a backpack, settled them on her own shoulders. Lastly, she grasped the mare’s face in her hands, and looked her in the eye, letting her lips brush the downy soft skin of her nose. "Be good, Argo. And if I do something really dumb up there, and don’t come back, well... take care of yourself, all right?." The mare whickered, nuzzling her. "Yeah, I love you too." she said softly, hugging her neck.

She walked to the wall, took several deep breaths, rubbed her hands on her leathers, and started looking for a place to climb.

Amazon village, next morning.

Ephiny rolled over, blinking blearily into the sunlight pouring into her quarters. Cursing, she sat bolt upright, and started scrambling out of her bed, rattled at having slept so late.

"Ah..ah..ah.." Solari said, wagging a finger at her. "Queen’s orders. You sleep." She pushed Ephiny back into her bed with one strong hand. "And I’m not going to argue with her. She’s in some kind of mood this morning."

Ephiny sighed and let her head drop, stifling a yawn. "OK... OK...." She smiled. "Is everything all right??"

Solari waggled her hand. "All’s quiet so far today. Arella’s sent a big bunch of her lot out on an extended hunting expedition, so that’s a good thing. At least we won’t have them underfoot." She gave Ephiny a sly grin. "And it looks like rain, so I wish the best to them."

Ephiny grunted in amusement, letting her body relax back onto the bed. "That’s good." she said idly. "Maybe we’ll have a quiet day for a change. A rumble of distant thunder vibrated in her ears. "On second thought, maybe not."

"That’s coming in over the mountain." Solari commented, I feel sorry for anyone caught out in it. The wind’s picking up something fierce." She watched as Ephiny let her eyes close again. "That’s better." she chuckled, as she left the hut, and walked towards the dining hall, feeling the wind whip her hair in what seemed like two directions at once. "Oh yeah.." she muttered to no one in particular. "this is going to be evil."

"What is??" Granella asked, falling into step next to her. "Oh, the weather?" she shrugged. "Good day for sleeping in." With a sly poke at Solari. "Which is where Eph is, I assume?"

"At my orders." Came Gabrielle’s voice behind them. They turned to see the queen moving up the path, a somewhat grim look on her face. "Good morning, by the way." she added, with a friendlier look. They continued on to the dining hall, where most of the village was already seated. Gabrielle went up to take her usual place at the head table.

"Gods, she looks twitchy today." Solari muttered in an undertone to Granella. "I wonder what’s up?"

The bard sat down, surveying the room. Noticing the missing Amazons, and mentally counting. Twenty people for a hunting party? Her brow creased. If they were successful, they’d have enough game to last weeks. Maybe that was Arella’s idea...or maybe she thought her bunch were getting a little slap happy, and she though this was a good way to diffuse tension. Gabrielle liked that idea, and it even made her feel a little better about her chief nemesis. A little. But not much, because sure enough, here she came for her usual morning debate.

"Good morning, my queen." Arella greeted her, raising an eyebrow at the chair next to the bard, and receiving a little wave of her hand towards it. "Thanks." She seated herself, and murmured to the Amazon who came over with a pitcher of herbal tea. "Wind’s rising" She commented to Gabrielle.

"That’s true." The bard answered, trying to concentrate on her porridge. She had a sudden overwhelming wave of nostalgia for one of Xena’s odds and ends breakfasts, which, though unpredictable, were always tastier than this. "Is the hunting party going to be all right out in this weather?" More for something to say than because she was really curious.

"Sure" Arella reassured her. "There are boltholes throughout the hunting territory where they can take shelter." She took a bowl of the porridge from a server, and liberally poured honey into it. "Have you tried this in your breakfast?" she inquired, holding out the jar with a friendly grin. She knew by now that Gabrielle was not a morning person, and it was the best time to annoy her. In a nice sort of way.

The bard looked up, and grimaced. "Arella, I’ve tried every possible thing in this stuff, and it still tastes like ground up leather bits." She gave her a glance. "But thanks for asking." She took a long sip of tea to wash down the stuff, and gazed across the room. "Did we really need 20 people for a hunting party though?" She flashed a quick glance at Arella’s face, seeing the eyes go wary.

Well, well...so green eyes is more observant than I thought. "Well, we’re going after big game this time " And isn’t that the truth? I’m going to enjoy presenting the fruit of our hunt to you, my queen. "And the more people you send out when you do that, the safer they are." There, argue with that, storyteller.

Gabrielle cocked her head, and regarded her, those damnable eyes picking up her slightest reactions. "OK, if you say so." she answered, mildly. What is she up to now? A growing sense of unease made the thought of any more porridge unfeasible. "Well, that’s enough for me." she said in a normal voice, and pushed back her chair to stand up.

Arella stood up with her, and gave a nod of her head. "Careful of the weather, my queen - there’s a bad storm brewing... you don’t want to get caught out in it." Now, what made me say that? Do I still have a sneaking liking for this woman? I think I might. Pity.

Gabrielle leaned forward, and caught her gaze, surprising the redhead. The green eyes seemed especially intense, as she leaned even closer, and refused to release her for a very long moment. Then.. "Thanks for your concern, Arella. But storms and I are old acquaintances. It takes more than that to scare me off." And then she did a scary thing. For no reason that Arella could see, the queen smiled right into her eyes. Then she backed off, and left the table, and only then did Arella notice the new addition to the queen’s garb. A leather sheath, well worn, holding a finely crafted dagger, whose hilts were knicked by a dozen deflected sword strokes, and marked by a round distinctive seal

So. Arella thought, watching the queen stride out of the dining hall. So...she dons steel at last. And just where did she get that lovely, lovely piece of work? That’s no showpiece. That’s a killing blade, if I’ve ever seen one. Huh. Only one place that could have come from...I wonder... I better send word out to the Pass for them to be on their toes. And I’d better get my diversion started. She got out of her chair again and walked quickly to the door, almost colliding with Erika who was just coming in. "Watch it." she said, sliding past her.

"Hold on." Erika said, pulling her aside. "Did you see what she’s wearing?" She kept her voice low.

"Yeah, nice piece of work. Why?" Arella answered, keeping her voice down as well.

"You know whose that is?" the dark haired amazon hissed.

"Relax." the redhead soothed. "Yeah, I figured that out. I was about to send someone to the Pass. You up for it?"

"I’m gone." Erika said, ducking out of the door.

So. The tall Amazon mused. You like storms, do you, Gabrielle? All right. I’ll give you a storm. She strode across the middle ground, collecting a few of her favorites with a glance. They casually crossed over to meet her as she arrived in front of her quarters.

On the escarpment, in the rain...

At least twice an hour, Xena was convinced she had gone totally out of her mind. Just don’t look down. she kept reminding herself. Cautiously, she freed one hand grip, and reached above her for a new one, finding a bare crack to curl her fingertips into. Gaining a secure hold, she shifted her weight, and reached up with her other hand. For aching hours, one hold after another, she’d made her way up the sheer wall, mostly without incident, but there were several close calls, and one slip, which was very painful until she reached out and grabbed for a hold. And got lucky.

Two places where she could brace her back against the wall, and take a breather, for water, and to rest her arms and hands. Stubborn, huh? Oh yeah, am I ever. I gotta be nuts. She reminded herself once again, as she found her other hand hold, and lifted herself up, catching a foothold on a lower rock and moving further up the wall. If she had looked down, she would have seen that she was halfway, an unbelievable climb in wind and weather, and lack of sleep. But she didn’t look down. Down wasn’t important. Up was important. And up right now was an overhang, which was looking impossible to get over. But at the worst of times, it only took a moment of letting that cold nervous feeling that wasn’t hers surface, and somehow, she found a way.

I am going to do this. Her mind said, fiercely. I said if all the legions of Hades were between us, that wouldn’t stop me. What’s a little mountain? Move, Xena, before you get hit by one of those lightning bolts. She spotted a gnarled root extending from above the overhang, and stared at it. Let’s just see how stubborn I really am. She gathered herself, and sprang forward, releasing all her holds at once, and relying on just momentum, and her hand strength to save her.

It did, to her mild surprise, as she grabbed the root, and hung on, waiting for her body to stop swinging so she could pull herself up. And over, onto a tiny ledge, which gave her a moments respite. The wind cascaded around her, lashing her with rain from the lowering clouds. She sat quietly, letting the stinging water revive her. OK, let’s go.

The Amazon Village - midmorning...

"So, you’re up." Gabrielle said, as Ephiny walked into her quarters, looking rested, if still a bit sleepy.

"Mmm." Ephiny responded, then glanced at her. "So, I see you have a new adornment." She jerked her chin at the knife hanging from the queen’s belt.

"Yeah." the bard answered, absorbed in a treaty scroll. "I’ve been telling everyone that Xena found out I didn’t have a parchment opener, and this was her way of taking care of that little problem."

Ephiny snorted in laughter. "Really?"

"Yeah." Gabrielle answered, letting a weary grin cross her face. "It makes a good story."

She finished scribbling some notes on the treaty, and sat back, wincing at the stiffness in her back. Too much sitting around does that to you. Isn’t that what Xena always says? Gods, I hate when she’s always right. And how would she know? When does she ever sit still for more than an hour or so? She laughed to herself. Wonder what she’s up to right now? Probably whacking poor defenseless villagers with a staff, I bet.

They both looked up at a sudden commotion outside.

The escarpment...

Xena was in real trouble, this time. She had two decent handholds, but the rock she had been using as a foothold had cracked out from under her, and left her hanging, with no possibility of getting another grip. She closed her eyes, trying to ignore her strained breathing, the stinging rain, and the fiery ache in her shoulders. Well...now what? Her mind panted. She looked up, Nothing. A sheer wall, with no breaks in it. To her left, was a cleft, but there were no sure holds there, either. And above this section...she gritted her teeth. One last ledge, and she was at the top. So. Does it stop here? She took the chance and glanced down, barely able to make out the general shape of the forest below, let alone individual trees. Oh.. that’ll be deadly. Yep. I’ve come this far, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to just let go and die here. She looked up again, giving her head a quick shake to get the wet hair out of her eyes, and concentrating on the cleft.

One chance. One reliance on her ability to move her body through the air with precision. After a day and a half of non stop traveling. And in the rain. And...damn. I can do this. She closed her eyes, and centered herself, reaching down deep, and calling up reserves of strength. And of confidence. And, it was simple, really, just a winding up of the body, and a release, and...

And she was there, and had both feet in a secure hold, and could rest her screaming arms. Oh boy. I’m going to pay big time for this. But she didn’t care, because right above her was that last ledge, and before she had time to think about what she was doing, she leaped for it, and twisted in mid air, and there she was. Just like that. Like Ares had stepped out from behind a tree, and sprinkled her with dust. Whoa. She rested there for a few minutes, breathing hard, and pressing her body against the cold stone, to leach some of the trembling heat from her.

Then she stood, and hopped over the last rock, and there, before her, was the road. Gently winding up to the pass, which she could just make out through the trees. Sighing, she just stood on the side of the path, and let the now pouring rain run over her, rinsing off the rock dust, and rinsing away her fatigue. Then a wave of sudden fear almost took her knees out from under her, and when she could stand without shaking, she broke into a steady run, and headed for the pass.

The Amazon Village...

"Centaurs!" Came the yell from the middle ground, and both Ephiny and Gabrielle jumped to their feet, and headed for the door. Arella was striding across to meet them, holding a crossbow. "It’s happened." She spat, throwing the crossbow down at their feet. "Tell me that’s a mistake, then. Three arrows in one of our scouts, and from that bow."

Ephiny glanced at it. Centaur, no doubt there. "Maybe there was a mistake." she said quietly, tensely.

Arella laughed. "Yeah, our mistake, in trusting them. Look, if you want to have a chit chat with them, go ahead. I’m taking a force in. "

And she was gone, and they were looking at each other, as Arella’s forces moved out at a trot, leaving behind a bewildered group of Amazons.

"They can’t do that." Gabrielle fumed. "We have to stop them." She ducked back into her quarters for her staff, and took off after them, but Ephiny grabbed her.

"Just where do you think you’re going?" She yelled, pulling the bard to a halt. Not as easy as she had expected, though, and she found herself being dragged a few steps. "Gabrielle!"

The bard whirled on her. "I’m going to stop Arella. What does it look like? Does anyone else here want to go?" Her green eyes flashed, and there was a fire about her that Ephiny had never seen before. "Let me go." she growled at Ephiny.

"All right.. all right.." Ephiny yelled. "Let me get my weapons, for the sake of the gods, Gabrielle, you can’t do down there alone. Don’t be crazy!" She pelted for her quarters, being joined in a run by Granella and Solari, and a few others who now started moving.

Gabrielle didn’t wait. She had marked the direction Arella’s group was moving in, and took off after them, running lightly, and keeping her staff out in front of her. After a moment, she realized someone was shadowing her, and turned her head. "Cait! Go back!" she said, startled.

The blond girl kept pace, and shook her head. "It’s all right."

"NO.." the bard snapped, stopping, and grabbing her shoulders. "You’re just a girl, Cait - you don’t belong in this."

Cait reached out and touched her, meeting her eyes. "You’re wrong... it’s you who doesn’t belong." She drew her own knife, and met Gabrielle’s eyes, letting through in her gaze what she thought of as her true self. And saw, not a cringe, but a recognition dawn in the bards eyes. Who had seen that look before. And knew it’s source.

Gabrielle took a deep breath, then sighed. "Come on." she said, quietly, and started running again, Cait at her shoulder.

The Pass...

Xena loped up the path, keeping a steady fast pace up the trail. Before her was the pass, and after that, it was downhill to the village, and she knew she could make some real time there. She was just inside the inner pass wall when her senses came full alert, and before she had time to think, long honed reactions had her sword out in her hand.

Because a net dropped over her head, and only the slimmest chance kept the sword upmost, and it sliced through the hemp like butter as she whirled, and the netting settled around her broad shoulders.

A quick bouncing jump, and it cleared her legs, and then she was under a dozen bodies, and being borne down to the ground. But as her hand hit the earth, she coiled under the weight, and pushed back up, tossing bodies off. A sharp pain in her back was a knife, she knew, and she reached around with her left hand and got a grip on fabric, and pulled with all the power she had in that arm. The pain stopped, and a body hurtled over her head and thudded onto the ground.

Now she could see her assailants. Amazons. A burning fire woke inside her, and the next move was a sword slash, which caught one of them in the belly and nearly cut her in half. A quick elbow took out a second, and she heard bone crunch as she kicked at third into a tree. Another sword slash, and blood was flying, and she had an arm in her grasp, which she wrenched and heard a popping sound as the shoulder it was attached to dislocated.

A jump, and kick, and now there were only 10 facing her, and she whirled her sword, and laughed, and dared them to come at her. And the rain exploded in a deluge, as she bolted towards them, and they ran, and she caught two of them, and knocked their heads together with a sickening crack. And then she was alone on the path, chest heaving, blood now coloring the rain running off her back. And the fear rising in her made her heart pound even faster, and she took off running again.

The Centaur Village...

"This is chaos!" Gabrielle yelled, as she and Cait rounded the corner into the village, and found it a nightmare of blowing rain, and fighting centaurs and Amazons. She saw an Amazon about to fire a crossbow at a Centaur, and bolted forward, slamming her staff across the Amazon’s back and sending her to the ground. The Centaur looked at her, then nodded in recognition, and dashed off.

Oh gods... what am I doing here? She stopped thinking, and started reacting, as another Amazon came at her with blood in their eyes, and then she had dropped the staff, and was grappling with the woman, thanking the gods for every single second that Xena had patiently spent teaching her how to wrestle. She grabbed her opponents arm, and twisted it over her head, throwing the Amazon to the ground with a heavy thud. One down. She grabbed her staff and ran on, targeting another archer.

The Amazon Village...

"Oh, I don’t think so, Ephiny." Erika sneered, as she cocked her crossbow, and pinned Ephiny and her group to the wall with a line of crossbows. "Not this time. Now is our time. Just stay still... you won’t have to do a thing." She jerked her head at two of her subordinates. "Tie them up."

"Erika.." Ephiny started, but Erika turned suddenly, and cracked her across the jaw with the butt of her crossbow, tossing the woman back into the wall.

"Shut up." She grinned. "I’ve been wanting to say that to you for a long time." She watched as they were tied, hanging from a pole outside the dining hall. "And, when our ‘hunting’ party gets back, we can have them tell you all about the hunt..." she smiled. "You’ll love it. Do you know what the quarry was this time, Ephiny? Do you?"

Solari grimaced. "You’re itching to tell us, so why don’t you?" She spat. "You’ll never get away with this."

Erika chuckled. "Oh yeah, we will...because our hunting party was out for ex warlord...and you know what that means...our little queen has no champion. " She walked over, and poked Ephiny. "And so... we’ll have a new queen."

A high pitched whistling sound interrupted her. Ephiny heard it, and felt a wild hope jump in her chest. I know that sound....an impact thudded above her head, and then she felt her ropes give way, and she dropped to her knees in reaction, along with the rest of her group, but looked up and over their shoulders, to see, through the curtain of rain, and briefly highlighted by a nightmarish lightning bolt a fast moving, dark clad form bounding towards them.

Erika whirled, and her group brought up their weapons, but her eyes widened in recognition when another lightning bolt lit up the sky, and reflected off an upraised sword, and glinted out of a pair of ice blue eyes.

"Come on." Ephiny growled, and jumped forward. "She doesn’t have time to play with these idiots. Get them." And herself took out Erika, with a kick that lifted the dark haired Amazon up and tossed her into the growing mud lake. Her group fell to with a vengeance, and she headed for Xena, and grabbed hold of her armor, pulling the warrior to a stop.

"Centaur Village." She yelled, seeing comprehension dawn in those wild eyes. "I’ve got this here... for the love of the gods, GO!" She shoved Xena in the right direction, and picked up a staff, wading into the fight with a will.

Centaur Village...

Gabrielle ducked under a wildly thrown punch, and countered with a quick staff blow, then a second, and went on to the next fighter. Suddenly she saw her nightmare - a group of centaur children, backed against a tree, frightened. Her heart stopped, when she saw what was facing them.

Arella, face red with bloodlust, holding a sword already dripping with Centaur blood. She laughed, and advanced towards them, enjoying the fear in their eyes.

"No." Gabrielle breathed, and started running. She caught up to Arella as the woman was about to take a first swing at the eldest, who crouched in front of his charges, pale eyes wide and unbelieving. The bard braced herself, and swung, a short, powerful stroke that took Arella’s legs out at the knees, and dumped her on the ground.

She howled in rage, and bounced back up, this time facing her attacker. And laughed. "Ah...so you do have guts, after all. I wondered about that." She picked up a staff and sheathed her sword for the moment. "First, let me get that thing away from you. I have no desire to be dumped on my ass again." She swung forward, slamming her staff against Gabrielle’s expecting it to fly out of the bard’s hands.

"Sorry, Arella." the smaller woman breathed. "My usual sparring partner can do better than that."

Arella grunted, but then smiled. "Sorry, little bard, your usual sparring partner will be dead by now... because that’s what my hunting party was after." She smiled, seeing the change in Gabrielle’s face. "Yeah, that’s right... you’re all alone now...so drop the staff, before I mount you on it."

Was it possible? Gabrielle felt a sick feeling in her gut. Anything was. But..."What with.. .twenty Amazons?" She peeled her lips back in a grin. "You think that could stop her?" she laughed softly. "You have no idea." And she parried forward, knocking Arella’s staff out of position, and getting in a hit on her shoulder.

"Oh, I have a good idea." Arella growled, and came back, slamming her staff into the bard, and driving her back a step.

"No.. you don’t." Gabrielle panted, knocking that blow aside, and thrusting forward to catch the redhead in the knee. "You’re a coward. You didn’t dare challenge her, so you found another way to get what you so desperately want." And I so desperately don’t want. It would be funny if it wasn’t so dire.

A low growl was her only answer, and then the redhead moved forward with a fast series of attacks, driving Gabrielle back towards the Centaur children. But the bard was stubborn, and kept turning her blows aside, and countering with ones of her own. I can’t keep this up forever, though. Her mind whirled. I’m getting really tired. Then what? Hades.

Arella sensed her tiring, and bounded forward, at last getting the staff out of her hands. She whipped her weapon around, catching the bard across the head, and taking her down. She stepped over her, and raised her staff for a savage stab. And a small flying form drove against her, knocking her back, and making her stumble. She roared, and slammed a fist against a small blond head, smashing her against the nearby tree.

Gabrielle felt a red wash come over her vision, as she struggled to get up, and felt Cait’s form slide down the tree next to her. She shook her head to clear her vision, and then wished she didn’t. Because Arella was bracing herself, and cocking a Centaur crossbow. Oh...her mind went into shock. She’s going to kill me.

"That’s right, green eyes. " Arella said, getting the quarrel cocked. properly. "I am, and with a Centaur weapon, so we won’t have any more of these treaties, and peace, and good will. We’ll have war, and that’s what we want, Gabrielle... why can’t you understand that?"

"Because violence isn’t the way." She answered, rising up on her knees, and motioning the centaur children to keep down. They cowered around her, gazing up at her with frightened eyes. "Because there’s a better way to live."

"No." Arella answered, raising the bow. "You’re wrong. There is no better way, no better feeling than this." She aimed, expecting the queen to beg. Expecting her to flinch, or duck, or turn her head from the cruel arrowhead. But the eyes never turned from hers, never blinked, and she held that gaze as Arella’s finger tightened on the release, and squeezed.

[supervaluenow-blog]

12 Gauge For Deer Pursuing 2019 Year

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[trashyeggroll]

Xena Final Season Rewrite

ANON SUBMISSION BELOW THE CUT: PLEASE READ!! THE BRILLIANCE!

This is galaxy brain. I got progressively more amped about the possibilities reading this, and I have zero notes because YOUR MIND.

Ok so here’s my pitch for a redone S6 and thus series end…

S5 ends on “Looking Death In The Eye”, I know “Another death fake out?” but hey it’s the final run so just go with it. It’ll just be a 20 episode season. I realize LDITE is episode 19 so we’d need another filler episode in the season to make it even which I’m not a fan of but I do like even numbers and what’s one more filler like episode? Depending on the quality it could be good; maybe there’s an unused “Hercules” plot left they could use for the season before all the Twilight stuff happens or they can do another filler idea they had specifically for “Xena” since I’m knocking out 5 episodes from season six, just no religious episodes please as they don’t do well execution wise on this series! The worst that happens is we get another MWF which was horrible yes but 2 completely garbage episodes out of 130 is still a pretty good track record!

S6 opens with “Livia”, “Eve” and then goes into “Motherhood” thus to set up the season of the old themes really winding down towards the end. An important note: the opening title sequences doesn’t change because really team why are you going to mess with that in the last year?!

Episode 4 would be “Coming Home” to reestablish the Amazons and it’s followed by “Who’s Gurkhan?” because while it’s not a great episode I’d argue it does show the impact of the time jump on Gabrielle so it’s not just a Xena thing.

Episode 6 is “Legacy” but without Gabrielle questioning her life path yet again; she’s still upset about killing the kid and accepts death as her punishment but it’s not this whole round 23 of this plot if you will. She explains her side and says she was blinded by the sand which plays to the tribes being blinded by hate for each other a bit they almost didn’t get together to fight the Romans. Episode 7 is “Send In The Clones” because it’s filler and each season has to have at least one filler episode if it’s almost 20 episodes long plus it’s close to the death episode of “Looking Death In The Eye” so timing wise it feels like it fits versus being near the series end and feeling even more like the filler it is.

Episode 8 would be “When Fates Collide” to play on the fact Hades is gone and to give Karl Urban one last goodbye. Also this was a strong episode so even if people thought the start of the season was just okay to good this would be an episode that would hopefully keep them watching! Also this is the best “Joxer” episode and lets Ted go out on a high I feel because he plays a character more could stomach than the Joxer we saw most often.

Episode 9 - 11 would be the Beowulf arc for schedule filler more than anything but also set up a time lapse later to explain why a clock has run out. Plus this has a legit kiss so you got to have that in the final season! :)

Episode 12 is “Old Ares Had A Farm” because it’s arguably the best episode of the season and plays into the depowered gods plot.

Episode 13 then by extension has to be “The God You Know”; I would do a rewrite script wise also to say Michael appears at the start to tell Xena about Caligula but then he disappears because he really screwed that up for her and made no sense the more he popped up in the episode. Xena would lose her god killing power still in here so you have her having to trick Caligula at the end but it’s due to a time limit running out, instead of being able to kill gods as long as Eve is alive it’s like a one year thing or even 30 year thing from the time she was born because of her destiny so at that point you can say the time is up and she lost them not because of any issues with Michael.

E14 would be a “You Are Here” type episode but not that episode; I love the questions the reporter asked don’t get me wrong but the episode just doesn’t work genre wise, it’s too much of a mash up. This position is close to the Beowulf arc to make it seem not just random filler but also gives some space for those who didn’t like the episode and would end that plot here with Xena having to talk Odin into giving her the apples so love can still exists. You can still do the scene where she gives Ares his powers back also and explains why you need the balance of them thus ending the gods arcs on “Xena” in a sense for the most part but also still keeping Aphrodite, Ares, and Celesta around to have it feel like “Xena” still to a small degree versus being more modern with the Eli stuff most episodes. If you liked the religious stuff fine, but to me it always felt heavy handed execution wise even though it created some interesting discussions so I lean towards limiting the episodes featuring it because again quality wise it just felt forced more often than not. If you still want the reporter in here for questions just make him a scribe or bard like Gabrielle following along and asking the questions to keep the genre consistent.

E15 is “Last Of The Centaurs” for one last Ephany send off and again to bring back in the Amazons before the end.

Coming back to the Amazons for the last time 16 and 17 would be the episodes featuring Varia and company but with some script changes; “Dangerous Prey” would still happen but Varia wouldn’t be as sidelined in this - she and Xena would work together at the end showing she can listen to take down the prince. Maybe it was just me but I really felt they handicapped Varia skill wise compared to how smart she was in “Coming Home” to point out Eve just based on hearing about a move she did and then seeing it so I would make her more like her CH self but still green enough Xena could show her some things to help her become queen and a better fighter to protect the tribe that way. This also allows Renee one more good go at directing like she wanted. Next would be “To Helicon And Back” so in this version Varia isn’t queen just yet but she’s clearly next up, people are still looking to Gabrielle for answers as the senior most queen; this episode is one of the final pay offs to the Twilight arc which started the season and is now ending the series again to feel like time has past but it’s still “Xena” at its heart. It plays out pretty much the same way with them fighting Bellerophon because if they don’t kill him then he’ll just keep coming after them; Varia is still kidnapped and she is sent to die with her people he thinks because maybe she does agree to his terms but the big thing is she doesn’t betray them so there’s no Gabrielle questioning her, Varia is meant to be the hope of the Amazons so her betraying such a core element doesn’t really make sense as that would kill them in a different way - she explains what Bellerophon said but replies with that just shows why he doesn’t understand his mother’s love for the Amazons. Gabrielle still has her great run scene but Xena just sees the bomb incoming and yells at her in time. I place this episode here because I think this episode shows the weight of the Amazon title wearing on Gabrielle and sets up Xena taking issues maybe with them even if she says nothing because the culture Gabrielle loves but she’s just not cut out for day to day queenship and this arguably calls back to her hinting at settling down in previous episodes most recently OAHAF.

E18 is “The Abyss” honestly for filler because it gives a break of time between Helicon and Vengeance for that story to work this way; it does have a great cave scene in it though so there’s that!

E19 is “Path Of Vengeance” which works as the wrap up for multiple things, namely Eve, Varia, the Romans, the Amazons, and Ares as well. It plays out much the same way we see originally; Ares uses a desperate to rebuild the Amazon numbers Varia and feeds even more on her rage when Eve returns and we learn the backstory for the new Amazon queen. Varia hasn’t seen Eve since “Coming Home” so her rage over her return to their lands makes sense still and if she’s being used by Ares it works to explain some continuity issues one might feel from how she should have grown from Xena’s teachings in “Dangerous Prey”. Eve still wants to make amends but has things complicated by the Romans show up to protect her given some in Rome still view her as a plus, Gabrielle still challenges Varia to a fight to be queen of her tribe in an attempt to save Eve so we still get that awesome fight, and Xena still saves the day in the end helping Varia see she’s being played by Ares and that people can change so she doesn’t have to become the thing she hated. I would also want some way worked in that we’d still get the line “I thought you might have sprained it on my face” from Gabrielle about the fight because I did love that tease. And with that we say goodbye to the ones listed above.

Finally episode 20, because it’s another 20 episode season only in the name of hopefully bettering the season and series, is “Many Happy Returns”. It’s more of a comedy yes, but it ends with a developed arc for the heroes - Gabrielle becoming someone more than just a small town girl and Xena back to how she was before Cortez arguably corrupted her so in a way redeemed with more work to go because she never feels redeemed; also they save a virgin which is how the series started with Xena saving Gabrielle. Also you have Aphrodite heavily in this which feels like old “Xena” compared to the modern religious vibes of this season. They literally fly off into the sunset together which is a much better way to end things I feel!

[girl4music]

Madman/Viavision AU DVDs

Cheapest you will find this box set anywhere online. This is where I bought it.

BUY: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Xena-Complete-Series-Ultimate-Collection-DVD-New-Sealed-OFFICIAL-AU-RELEASE/332766132434?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l9372

This is a breakdown of all the special features and additional footage that comes with this box set. There is a lot so I thought I’d make a post about it. The discs come in 9 parts which represent the 9 cases. 2 of the audio/video commentaries from season 2, ‘A Day In The Life’ & ‘Destiny’, are not in my box set. This may be because the audio/video commentaries and cast/crew interviews are taken from the old Anchor Bay releases. However, you might get them because not all the Anchor Bay releases missed them out. Please check with the seller before buying the box set!

Part 1 - Season 1 - Disc 1

- Still gallery

Part 2 - Season 1 - Disc 7

- “What You Didn’t Know About Xena” - 60 minute featurette from the directors of season 1

Part 2 - Season 2 - Disc 1

- Still gallery

- Weblink

Part 2 - Season 2 - Disc 2

- Lucy Lawless & Renee O'Connor - ‘Return Of Callisto’ audio/video commentary

Part 3 - Season 3 - Disc 1

- Rob Tapert & Liz Friedman - ‘The Furies’ audio/video commentary

- ‘The Furies’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Been There, Done That’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘The Dirty Half Dozen’ cast/crew interviews

- Still gallery

- Weblink

- Credits

Part 3 - Season 3 - Disc 2

- ‘The Deliverer’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Gabrielle’s Hope’ cast/crew interviews

- Rob Tapert & Lucy Lawless - ‘The Debt (Part 1)’ audio/video commentary

- ‘The Debt (Part 1)’ cast/crew interviews

Part 3 - Season 3 - Disc 3

- ‘The Debt (Part 2)’ cast/crew interviews

- Ted Raimi - ‘The King Of Assassins’ audio/video commentary

- ‘The King Of Assassins’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Warrior...Priestess...Tramp’ cast/crew interviews

Part 3 - Season 3 - Disc 4

- ‘The Quill Is Mightier’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Maternal Instincts’ cast/crew interviews

- Lucy Lawless & Renee O’Connor - ‘The Bitter Suite’ audio/video commentary

- ‘The Bitter Suite’ cast/crew interviews

Part 3 - Season 3 - Disc 5

- Lucy Lawless & Renee O’Connor - ‘One Against An Army’ audio/video commentary

- ‘One Against An Army’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Forgiven’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘King Con’ cast/crew interviews

Part 4 - Season 3 - Disc 6

- Steven L. Sears - ‘When In Rome...’ audio/video commentary

- ‘When In Rome...’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Forget Me Not’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Fins, Femmes & Gems’ cast/crew interviews

Part 4 - Season 3 - Disc 7

- ‘Tsunami’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Vanishing Act’ cast/crew interviews

- Hudson Leick - ‘Sacrifice (Part 1)’ audio/video commentary

- ‘Sacrifice (Part 1) cast/crew interviews

Part 4 - Season 3 - Disc 8

- Season 3 revisited - 30 minute featurette with cast/crew

- Season 3 bloopers

- ‘Sacrifice (Part 2)’ (alternative/extended scenes)

- ‘Sacrifice (Part 1 & 2)’ - A retrospective

- Hudson Leick - 'Sacrifice (Part 2)’ audio/video commentary

- ‘Sacrifice (Part 2)’ cast/crew interviews

Part 4 - Season 4 - Disc 1

- ‘Adventures In The Sin Trade (Part 1)’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Adventures In The Sin Trade (Part 2)’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘A Family Affair’ cast/crew interviews

- Still gallery

- Weblink

- Credits

Part 4 - Season 4 - Disc 2

- Lucy Lawless & Renee O’Connor - ‘In Sickness & In Hell’ audio/video commentary

- ‘A Good Day’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘A Tale Of Two Muses’ cast/crew interviews

Part 4 - Season 4 - Disc 3

- ‘Locked Up & Tied Down’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Crusader’ cast/crew interviews

Part 5 - Season 4 - Disc 4

- ‘If The Shoe Fits...’ cast/crew interviews (this is actually just Lucy and Renee)

Part 5 - Season 4 - Disc 5

- Rob Tapert & Chris Manheim - ‘Paradise Found’ audio/video commentary

- ‘Paradise Found’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Between The Lines’ cast/crew interviews

Part 5 - Season 4 - Disc 6

- ‘The Way’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘The Convert’ cast/crew interviews

Part 5 - Season 4 - Disc 7

- ‘Endgame’ cast/crew interviews

- Lucy Lawless & Renee O’Connor - ‘The Ides Of March’ audio/video commentary

- ‘The Ides Of March’ cast/crew interviews

Part 5 - Season 4 - Disc 8

- Season 4 bloopers

- Bringing Monsters To Life At K.N.B. EFX Group (Part 1) featurette 

- “Cabin Fever” (with Bruce Campbell & Ted Raimi)

- Renee O’Connor - ‘Déjà Vu All Over Again’ audio/video commentary

- ‘Déjà Vu All Over Again’ cast/crew interviews

Part 5 - Season 4 - Disc 9

- “Adventures In The Sin Trade” - An Exploration

- “Between The Lines” - Director’s Cut (alternative/extended scenes)

- “A Good Day” - Director’s Cut (alternative/extended scenes)

- “Locked Up & Tied Down” - Director’s Cut (alternative/extended scenes)

Part 6 - Season 5 - Disc 1

- R.J. Stewart & Eric Gruendemann - ‘Fallen Angel’ audio/video commentary

- ‘Fallen Angel’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Chakram’ cast/crew interviews

- Still gallery

- Weblink

- Credits

Part 6 - Season 5 - Disc 2

- ‘Animal Attraction’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Them Bones, Them Bones’ cast/crew interviews

Part 6 - Season 5 - Disc 3

- ‘Back In The Bottle’ cast/crew interviews

- Lucy Lawless & Renee O’Connor - ‘Seeds Of Faith’ audio/video commentary

- ‘Seeds Of Faith’ cast/crew interviews

Part 6 - Season 5 - Disc 4

- ‘Lyre, Lyre, Hearts On Fire’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘God Fearing Child’ cast/crew interviews

Part 6 - Season 5 - Disc 5

- ‘Eternal Bonds’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Married With Fishsticks’ cast/crew interviews

Part 6 - Season 5 - Disc 6

- ‘Lifeblood’ cast/crew interviews

- Lucy Lawless, Renee O'Connor, Rob Tapert & Michael Hurst - ‘Antony & Cleopatra’ audio/video commentary

- ‘Antony & Cleopatra’ cast/crew interviews

Part 7 - Season 5 - Disc 7

- ‘Livia’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Eve’ cast/crew interviews

Part 7 - Season 5 - Disc 8

- Lucy Lawless, Renee O'Connor & Rob Tapert - ‘Motherhood’ audio/video commentary

- ‘Motherhood’ cast/crew interviews

- Gabrielle’s wardrobe test

- Bringing Monsters To Life At K.N.B. EFX Group (Part 2) featurette

Part 7 - Season 5 - Disc 9

- Season 5 - Exclusive interviews with cast/crew

- On set: The 100th episode

- “Motherhood” - Director’s Cut (alternative/extended scenes)

- “Animal Attraction” - Director’s Cut (alternative/extended scenes)

Part 7 - Season 6 - Disc 1

- ‘Coming Home’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Heart Of Darkness’ cast/crew interviews

- Still gallery

- Weblink

- Credits

Part 7 - Season 6 - Disc 2

- ‘Who’s Gurkhan?’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Legacy’ cast/crew interviews

Part 7 - Season 6 - Disc 3

- ‘The Rheingold’ cast/crew interviews

- Joel Metzger - ‘The Ring’ audio/video commentary

- ‘The Ring’ cast/crew interviews

Part 8 - Season 6 - Disc 4

- ‘Old Ares Had A Farm’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Dangerous Prey’ cast/crew interviews

Part 8 - Season 6 - Disc 5

- ‘You Are There’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Path Of Vengeance’ cast/crew interviews

- Lucy Lawless, Renee O'Connor, Rob Tapert & Michael Hurst - ‘To Helicon & Back’ audio/video commentary

Part 8 - Season 6 - Disc 6

- ‘Last Of The Centaurs’ cast/crew interviews

- Lucy Lawless, Renee O'Connor & Rob Tapert - ‘When Fates Collide’ audio/video commentary

- ‘When Fates Collide’ cast/crew interviews

Part 8 - Season 6 - Disc 7

- ‘Many Happy Returns’ cast/crew interviews

- ‘Soul Possession’ cast/crew interviews

Part 8 - Season 6 - Disc 8

- Lucy Lawless, Renee O’Connor & Rob Tapert - ‘A Friend In Need (Part 2)’ audio/video commentary

- ‘A Friend In Need’ - Director’s Cut (this is also included in the bonus footage)

- Bringing Monsters To Life At K.N.B. EFX Group (Part 3) featurette

- “To Helicon & Back” dailies (behind-the-scenes raw footage)

Part 8 - Season 6 - Disc 9

- Season 6 - Exclusive interviews with cast/crew

- “Dangerous Prey” - Director’s Cut (alternative/extended scenes)

- “To Helicon & Back” - Director’s Cut (alternative/extended scenes)

- “Legacy” - Director’s Cut (alternative/extended scenes)

- Final episode b-roll footage

- Xena convention 2004

- Xena season 1 original series promo

- “In The Beginning” - Original interviews from season 1

- Season 1 & 2 bloopers

Part 9 - Bonus Disc 1

- Lucy Lawless & Renee O’Connor - ‘Sins Of The Past’ (only audio commentary)

- Fan reenactments (narrated by Robert Trebor) (Salmoneus) 

- Comic relief (with Robert Trebor) (Salmoneus)

Part 9 - Bonus Disc 2

-  ‘A Friend In Need’ - Director’s Cut (includes audio commentary with Lucy Lawless, Renee O’Connor & Rob Tapert as an optional watch feature)

- Behind-the-scenes raw footage of “A Friend In Need”

- Still gallery

- Screen saver (if you can access CD/DVD-ROM drive on your PC)

Part 9 - Bonus Disc 3

- Xena’s Hong Kong Origin’s (with Rob Tapert, Liz Friedman, Doug Lefler & David Pollison)

- Mythology vs. Xena (with Alexandra Tydings (Aphrodite), Sheila Briggs & Amy Richlin)

- Seeing Double - All about the stunt doubles (Xena’s stunt double; Zoë Bell)

- “Extras” - A Documentary

- “B” is for Bruce

I’m done! Well... not quite yet. @markthexenaaddicted asked me to explain what the ratio looks like on the episodes. It’s a concern because the original ratio for the Anchor Bay DVDs is 4:3. In these DVDs, it’s 16:9 widescreen full height anamorphic. I’m assuming to achieve that, they would have had to knock off some of the image. But the episodes look fine. Season 1 & 2 look a bit grainy but that’s expected considering they were broadcast in 1995-1996. 

I’m afraid I can’t do any screenshots because the 16:9 ratio only shows up on my TV and it doesn’t have a screenshotting feature. You’ll just have to trust me.

[floggingink]

Riverdale, “Chapter Thirty-Eight: As Above, So Below”

Day At Least Seven Solitary Coif: struggling

Alice’s thigh: stunning

Sexy, aesthetic Southside: FP’s jellybean tattoo: incredibly, tenderly sad

Certified pedigree: “I’m glad the Farm opened you up to the possibility of us”: either Alice thought about this to herself, or she (absolutely) asked the rest of her cult what they thought. what they THOUGHT about her sleeping with FP again. “What d’you think, girls?” Alice wine clubbed FP Jones’s dick!

who has more game, FP or Jughead? FP a) is a grown man, b) is oftentimes gainfully employed (I’ve forgotten if he’s employed right now), c) is strong enough to carry a high school boy out of the woods, d) was VERY smooth with his seemingly instinctual “Then don’t. Tell him,” e) did that thing where he took the gum out of his mouth when Alice came to his trailer, and f) looked pretty good in his crisp Pop’s uniform when he was employed at Pop’s. however FP also a) tends to drink when not employed and b) is fucking obsessed with Toledo, a town I will burn to the ground if I ever set foot in it. meanwhile, Jughead a) climbed up a fucking ladder to Betty’s bedroom, b) ABSOLUTELY KILLED IT when he and Betty almost fucked each other in the kitchen, c) KILLED IT AND BURIED IT in the moments before fucking her on the couch when he was all, “Or you could stay,” and fucking touched her dress like she was an angel of the Lord and he was just a humble shepherd boy whose eyes were not worthy to gaze upon her countenance, d) only strategically removes his hat, and e) rides a motorcycle. the hat is not a con, necessarily, and being a writer in high school is a cross some of us simply have to bear, but he is like, kind of a pain sometimes and a little squirrelly, but w/r/t the love of his life, he has tailored himself to her every need almost perfectly

OH AND I FORGOT WHEN HE KISSED HER SCABBY BLOOD KNUCKLES! OH SHIT!

Veronica has the most game on the entire show

I like when they have Jughead use words like “modicum”

“Ben’s death haunts me, Jug. He didn’t scream. Why not, I wonder?”: writing credits this episode go to Daphne de Maurier

YYEEEAAAAAHHH THE BLUE & GOLD CRIME BOARD BABY

I would almost expect something more from the warden’s tie, except that I know plain clothing is, in and of itself, a warning sign

anything that gets Veronica in her reading glasses is okay by me, and this includes Pop’s hemorrhaging money

Jughead can wear just a T-shirt sans jacket or flannel any old time he wants, I’m just putting that vibe out there

“Of course we’re calling it a speakeasy.”

Jug’s suspender game is strong, so really Betty should know she has nothing to worry about

his stupid dumb round face looking at her when she pulls him aside is pretty. remember when he kissed her hands? fucking Jughead sometimes, dude

“Evelyn...creeps me out.”

I like Betty’s overalls and Evelyn’s romper thing

what I expected when Kevin dialed the phone was for the whole booth to sink into the basement like a surprise elevator

Kander and Ebb wrote the music to, among much else, Cabaret and Chicago, those being some of their most gay

I LOVE VERONICA’S WHITE SHIRT. IT’S JUST A FUCKING PLAIN WHITE SHIRT, SHE IS SO BEAUTIFUL

Every triangle has three corners, every triangle has three sides: is there some heat between Veronica and Reggie? am I crazy?

the foursome of Reg, Ronnie, Josie, and Kev is basically just as strong as the cour four strictly in terms of hair

I don’t know that I like Penny’s sleeveless Ghoulies vest more than her leather Serpents jacket but I do know I like it at least the same amount (oodles)

Fwoopy hair is the best hair: Day One Lifted Bag Off Head Hair: GREAT

OH MY GOD, JOAQUIN!!!! WHEN WILL JOAQUIN REST. DOES EVERY TERRIBLE THING HAVE TO HAPPEN TO JOAQUIN BEFORE IT HAPPENS TO SOMEONE ELSE. IS JOAQUIN IN THE FARM

does Archie have a scar on his head? is it KJ’s? have I lost track of something?

Gay?!: BABY TEETH is an absolute twink and he was tapped to save his life

I’m suspicious of Peter because his name is, simply, “Peter”

Gay.: Cheryl and Toni are just like lounging in a single chair together and that’s the bisexual agenda

Veronica was rich: Veronica’s heavy card stock IS very nice

Ethel’s cute yellow cardigan is back, which matches her thermos and lunchbox

I enjoyed when Betty sits down and you think she’s going to apologize for being there at Ben’s death but instead she just fucking grills Ethel some more

“...G&G.”

OOOOOOHHHHHHH JUGHEAD’S TURNING IT ON WITH THAT PRINCESS SHIT

Please protect Betty: Betty’s entire expression at being told she’s “not worthy,” God bless her

The female gaze: I don’t know why Reggie’s shirt is off. probably Reggie doesn’t even know

Reggie’s panicked JJ face is one of the top five panicked faces of all time. he’s tied at least with the girl in Jurassic Park when she sees the raptor shadow and her hand holding that green Jell-O starts shaking

Minetta doesn’t even pretend he’s looking for something other than whatever was in those boxes. cold, Minetta

REGGIE’S SALUTE

Reg simply being aware that Minetta and the Ghoulies work for Hiram almost brings me to tears. not only is he a walking sculpture with a pair of lips that would make Sarah Steller throw herself off the Hoover Dam, but he is also a genius

VERONICA IS SO BEAUTIFUL. “Not until I’m properly armed.” just look at her!

Ethel didn’t even come to the first meeting of the Farm Club? cold, Ethel

Evelyn offering Betty a pizza slice comes off as her genuinely wanting Betty to have a piece of pizza if she wants, which is the first non-creepy thing she’s done (Jughead would take the pizza)

she of course follows this up with “that darn medication”

Archie looks like a corpse in the blue light

tell me “wakey, wakey” is a Kill Bill reference. TELL ME IT IS

the guy they have fighting Archie looks just enough like Khabib Nurmagomedov that I was like, is this an unconscious wish on someone’s part to do a rematch of red-haired McGregor vs. Khabib except it’s on Riverdale so it’s in something called “the Pit” which is a drained swimming pool and they’re in juvie? (it’d have to be a fantasy in that Conor McGregor would get his ass beaten by Khabib Nurmagomedov in any rematch in any universe, in the universe)

dude does his best but, as Sweet Pea and Vintage Reggie can tell you, you cannot let Archie land a) a right hook or b) an uppercut or he will end this fight

who’re the rando white women watching? their fucking wives? goddammit, white women

I think Baby Teeth could take Reggie jawline-to-jawline

Veronica’s kittenish heels sinking into the dirt as opposed to her striding effortlessly as Moses parting the Red Sea

Cheryl’s a chaos angel from hell: “THAT VIPER BITCH”

Antoinette Topaz is fluent in many languages, including Veronica’s

God bless jingle-jangle: the fucking cat burglar sequence set to “Jingle Jangle” just about fucking did it

Ethel’s candle game is reaching midnight mass-levels of mastery

so did Betty and Jughead get their ad hoc sex den (good band name) out of the bunker before Ethel got there? or was it there the whole time but for Ben and Ethel?

I feel I want to write down that Ben abandoned Ethel to ascend prematurely with Dilton otherwise I’ll forget and will be tricked by something later on

POLLY’S KNITTED HALTER

closed captioning capitalized the Shady Man, the second strangest Riverdale skull

Alice really just did Betty like that! maybe Betty DOES need to live in a bunker

50 Shades of Betty: “The wig. The webcaming.”

I love how Betty always gets very sarcastically OH, OKAY THEN when she decides to start laying out some truths

Alice stands up and her dress has some sort of insane asymmetrical hemline and she’s also got an ankle bracelet!!!!!!

Dilton Doiley Ethel Muggs is a canonically great dancer the DM: Ethel’s little crush on Jughead circa his birthday party has not abated. even when he was being insane about the Serpents I bet she entertained sweet fantasies of buying a pleather jacket off ModCloth and Jughead “inducting” her. so she found herself a coterie of pliable boys who were also gangly and weird and obsessed with details and pacts and she became their princess. so THERE. you fucking bet she’s gonna get a kiss out of Jughead before she fucking poisons herself

Ethel’s dungeon master voice is giving me a sort of ASMR vibe

I don’t want to veer too wildly but she is wearing a crown, her character has “a crown”

dog, was she about to kill Jughead right then and there? Ethel goes hard. Ethel might go harder than Jughead

“You’re asking me to play Russian roulette!” “I’m asking you to play Gryphons and Gargoyles.” THIS BITCH (in context it’s very smooth and bitchy)

GOD BUT JUGHEAD DID DRINK IT. VERY WELL KNOWINGLY, HE DID IT

Jughead eats: Salud is just the sort of thing I’d expect Jug to say before maybe drinking cyanide (or skol, if he had been watching Ingmar Bergman)

I don’t know if I could drink that much Kool-Aid that fast. Kool-Aid and Sunny D always made my teeth feel filmy. I could definitely down that much Capri Sun, if it were in a pouch the size of my shin

anyway Ethel’s sick move telling Jughead he has to kiss her first got an emotional reaction from me at almost the level of when Cheryl came down to Jason’s wake in that white dress

Jughead and Ethel are almost of a height, which is weirdly lovely

These students are legally children: maybe Ethel put the poison in after Jughead had chosen. I maybe doubt she would’ve just fucking assassinated Jughead

Jughead was reading next to her when she woke up, which is just a specific kind of daydream you have, sometimes

Sixth period is Intro to Film: HEISENBURG

Toni’s pictures are certainly shot with a mind to lighting, depth

is blue light the light of evil? Hiram’s study, the warden’s office?

Archie > Dawson: of course Archie imagines talking to his father and of course he imagines his father telling him to “take one.” I love Self-Sacrificial Lamb Archie (or just momentarily self-sacrificing). better than Fascist Archie!

well, Betty’s room has blue light too. fucking forget it then

although she is SURROUNDED BY EVIL at all times

Mädchen Amick, MÄDCHEN AMICK: “I trust them more than I trust you” is season one-level Alice-shade

Cheryl’s sheaths: I like very much Cheryl’s bosomy sequin thing and Toni’s back jewelry

I also like the RROTC boys in their like WWII uniforms, which may be anachronistic but still hard vintage, and the cigar girls

Jughead doubts it: there’s so much going on when Betty goes all melty and wipes some of the Fresh-Aid off Jug’s lips and Jug, who is not smiling, looks at Sweet Pea helping Veronica

Best costume bit: Veronica is in magenta, because I deserve it

I can’t wholly endorse Reggie’s non-black plaid trousers paired with a solid black blazer but I CAN endorse Reggie as a whole

Cheryl’s Hiram’s pins: I think Hiram has a fucking octopus pin! I think it is!!!!!!!!

the wallpaper behind Hiram downstairs is...interesting. it’s like a cutout from that Disney cartoon for “Winter Wonderland”

we stay on Veronica’s face for sort of an extra beat, so I can confirm a) she’s still beautiful and b) she has a sparkly thing in her hair

The 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie was a masterpiece: Josie’s got that thing going on where you gem up the part in your hair

God I love a good Riverdale music/mayhem montage. like what were they playing when Jughead ran the gauntlet? fuck sometimes this stuff is just still so good (“Mess Around” when Reggie lunged for Jughead also counts, though not performed live somewhere else in Riverdale at the same moment)

“Anything Goes” is in fact not Kander and Ebb but Cole Porter

I’ve seen Brick like thirty times: I love a good bead of bloody spit dangling from someone’s mouth during a slow-mo fight sequence

I’m writing a scene where it’s gay.: “THAT KID…..IS A STAR.”

that fucking rum, can you believe it? the fucking shade of it all

Fifth period is AP English: OH MY GOD. THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. OH MY GOD, THE FUCKING HAMMER. THE COUNT OF MONTE MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMN YES GOD HOLY BITCH

“Damn good coffee”: the goddamn shot of FP and Alice standing together flanked by the flames of their righteous destruction of the G&G manual

Summer + Blair = Veronica: Veronica is pretty fucking brave to still be living in Hiram Lodge’s HOUSE. and of course that’s what her dressing gown looks like

oh my god, Joaquin is still alive? Joaquin’s STILL HERE?

ARCHIE’S GONNA BREAK OUT OF PRISON AND I MUST CLEANSE MYSELF OF SIN TO BE WORTHY OF ITS GLORY (I trust Riverdale a lot more again at the moment)

so wait, Jughead put the cot BACK? are these two different bunkers? is it the same effing bunker???

“It’s over”: you fucking fool

yes, it’s the same goddamn bunker. the candles are still there! I guess I thought the wicked juju from Ethel’s ~SUICIDE ATTEMPT~ would deter the two of them from FUCKING IN THE EXACT SAME BUNKER but Betty and Jughead literally do not give a single damn where they do it

Jug’s headphones!!!!!!!!!

Cheryl’s expression at reading the G&G manual is appropriately be-Blossomed

The Blossom spawn: she still has a photo of Jason in her locker and I think a sticker that says “Literally no one cares”

What damn high school in America: those manuals have a QR code on the back, so you can play on your phone! GIVE ME THE APP, RAS

who unsheathed Ethel? LORD, WHO LET HER LOOSE?

GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

NEXT WEEK: Camila Mendes wears glasses the entire time