#rather than being at the top level which will take forever to get promoted to the next level

[carltonlassie]

Getting promoted at my job and immediately getting demoted two levels down from my current title because they decided to readjust the levels to match the the rest of the industry...... WHY NOW

[ineffable-aurelia]

Why Aziraphale’s choice 100% makes sense, even if it breaks our hearts.

I have now watched the entire second season twice through, and here's what I realized in the second watch:

1) Aziraphale wants to protect everything he loves. In season 1 he keeps trying to reach the right people in order to protect the world, and to protect humans, and most of all, to protect Crowley. When he speaks to the Metatron in Season 1, you can see the powerlessness on his face when he realizes no one in the higher ups will listen to him, and that speaking to God is actually impossible. So then he finally calls the one being in all of existence who will listen. He finally chooses to directly go against his orders, rather than toeing the line in subverting them, but he still thinks he's doing what's right, for the sake of the world, humans, and the demonic being he loves. He thinks Heaven is mistaken, not that Heaven is as bad as Hell. Aziraphale didn’t actually witness them telling him to "Shut his stupid mouth, and die."

I don’t think the decision to accept the Metatron’s offer is out of left field at all. Here's his chance to fulfill his purpose as a protector. Aziraphale thinks this is his chance to never be powerless again. This is his chance to make sure the earth never gets destroyed on a whim or because of the ignorance and callousness clearly demonstrated by the other angels who don't consult him on policy decisions. This is his chance to protect Crowley from Heaven and Hell, forever. This is his chance to be listened to and FINALLY make a difference.

Of COURSE he is going to take it.

2) Aziraphale knows Crowley ALWAYS circles back after "walking away." We see it in season 1 repeatedly. We see it as a whole scene on Ep 1 of season 2. All it takes is a sniff of a threat and Crowley is driving that Bentley as fast as possible and willing to humiliate himself with a little dance in order to protect and help Aziraphale. So it’s natural to assume Aziraphale knows Crowley will aways come back. The lines of their Ep 6 break up is a direct parallel of Ep 1′s fight. 

Ep 1: “No I would love you to help me. I’m asking you to help me take care of him. But if you won’t, you won’t.”

Ep 2: “Come with me to heaven... Work with me. We can be together... I need you! ... Well, then there’s nothing more to say. Crowley ALWAYS threatens to leave, walks out, and then comes back to his angel. So I think, even with all the devastation, Aziraphale thinks Crowley just needs time to rage and then will come to his senses and return, just like he always does.

3) He is 💯 being blinded by the love bombing/opportunity being presented to him by a horribly toxic indoctrinating institution from which he just barely managed to get out. He’s had far longer than 6000 years of conditioning. He’s only had 4-5 years of freedom. Aziraphale lost faith in Heaven, not God. Of course as soon as someone from that institution shows up, rebuking his abusers, lavishing praise, and promising if he just comes back everything will be different is going to make him question, once again, what is right. Abuser handbook 101.

But even with unconsciously reacting from an conditioned place, Aziraphale is still very intelligent, and knows what’s being offered to him. Which leads me to... 4) Even after going against Heaven, even after indirectly lying to God about the sword, even after directly lying to his angelic superiors about Job’s children, even after thwarting Armageddon, Aziraphale never Fell, and so he must, on some level, assume this was all planned for a reason, and this is a reward for doing what was right and not losing faith (a direct parallel to Job). And on top of that he's rewarded with forgiveness and power not just for himself, but his demonic counterpart who, we know, previously wouldn't ever be forgiven by anyone but Aziraphale himself.

By accepting the promotion and returning to heaven, Aziraphale can ensure: They get to be together, they get to run Heaven, they get to protect the planet and the humans. They will be safe, they'll be on the same side, and both of them will be loved and forgiven by God and Heaven.

How, in Heaven, Hell, or Earth could Aziraphale say no to that?

[mintbaby1012]

Felix ♥ Sleepover

You and your best friend felix see each other for the first time in awhile

dom!felix x fem!reader

WARNINGS: SMUT, fluff, daddy kink, praise, dirty-talk, slight degradation

Word count: 2318

——————————————————————————-

It had been a long day, a Friday. The best day of the week that seems like the longest day of the week. My best friend Felix from when I lived in Sydney as a kid was at my house staying the night as my parents and I just moved to Korea. My mother trusted Felix since she has known him since we were little tots.

"I'm going out with your father for a business dinner we'll be back around 11 PM or 12 AM as always depending on his boss," yelled my mom as she was walking out the door. I was just really happy to be with my bestfriend again for the first time in 6 years he left Sydney to be an idol which I understand. I just missed getting to see my bestfriend and crush in person everyday.

Currently we were sitting on my bed playing Clash Royale together and streaming their comeback shows to get in more views. Felix's group Stray Kids just had a comeback with the title song Side Effects and damn, it's a fucking bop.

Right as me and Felix won a battle their newest comeback show came on and Felix begged, "Let's skip this one I rather not watch this promotion show pleaseeeeee y/n pleaseeeeee let's skip this one"

Felix was begging and blushing he looked embarrassed honestly which intrigued me. "No I want to watch this once as seeing your reaction I'm interested," I stated while watching the TV intensely

"HOLY FUCKING HELL, SHIT SINCE WHEN FELIXXXX!!! WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK YOU HAVE ABSSS!?!?! I WANT TO SEE THEM LIVE NOWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!" I exclaimed as I saw him rap and hold his shirt up a good five seconds. He had just faceplanted into my pillow and groaned in embarrassment while replied to me blushing, "No I will not show you my abs, it's embarrassing... Ahhhh I didn't want to watch this one I'm so embarrassed now!" I just pouted and exclaimed, "Come on Felix~~~~ all the stays there got to see them why can't I see them live too!"

Felix just sat on my bed looking out the window blushing and ignoring me. So what do I do, I get into a play fight with him. We toss and turn on my bed fighting to become the champion. Felix was tickling me as his tactic, and I was kicking for my tactic.

In the end Felix ended up underneath me while I sat on him in victory. I took the chance while he was catching his breath, and I was on top of him to quickly lift his shirt and see his abs.

Felix's eyes widened with disbelief and I started blushing while staring at his abs. I honestly didn't think I would got turned on by seeing his abs. I've seen him shirtless many times as a kid.

"Y/n, y/n don't. Stop please y/n!" I didn't hear his pleads for me to stop whatever I was doing, or more I was to focused on his abs I forgot he was there; my hand was slowly going torwards his abs and I couldn't stop myself I was drawn to them.

I finally touched them, but I was a blushing mess. My fingers instinctively started tracing each abdominal muscles and gliding over his skin, till I was knocked out of my hypnotized state by my wrist being grabbed and pulled away.

I looked Felix dead in the eyes, he was also looking into my eyes. I started scanning his body from his eyes, to his neck, to his abs, back up to his arms, then his hand that was attached to my wrist. I gasped and pulled my wrist away, pushing myself up trying to get off of Felix but failing and landing somewhere bad.

As I landed I felt him, it, his hard on, or his dick. I froze and my entire body heated up as I heard Felix grunt deeply. I looked at his face and was hypnotized by his flushed cheeks, dark, and now cloudy eyes.

The next thing I know is he grabbed my wrist again and pulled me down on top of him. Our faces were barely an two cenimeters apart and my hands ended up grabbing his shoulders as our bodies were pressed together.

"May I?" Felix said in his deep voice while looking at my lips and I just nodded my head and within a second our lips were connected. At first our lips were just touching then, Felix started actually kissing me and I started returning the favor. The kiss grew more intense and passionate, biting and sucking on each others lips. Then our tongues, they moved together insync, connected as one desperately needing more and more.

I started getting frustrated with how needy I was and my lower half started moving on its on, grinding against Felix's clothed manhood. "Mmm fuck~~~" Felix moaned out as the heat between us grew.

Within two moments Felix was ontop of me kissing down my neck, gropping my clothed breasts, and grinding down on me desperate for friction. "Ngh~ Felix I want m-more than just this make out session," I moaned out breathily as I tugged his shirt over his head. Felix then pushed my shirt up revealing my stomach but not all the way to the point my breasts would be revealed and he said while kissing and leaving marks on my stomach, "Y/n, I really have been waiting forever for this, but I don't want to go too fast but if it's want you want as well, then screw taking time I can make you a mess right here and now!!"

I was a mess as he said I had never been kissed and touched this way before, I have never had someone leave hickies all over my stomach, and make me feel this way. I looked down at him with hooded lustful eyes and he was looking right back at me admiring every expression and reaction I made in response to his heavenly touch.

Before I realized it, he had pulled off my joggers and panties;  his tongue was instantly on my core. I moaned out loudly and my body tensed while my back arched.

Felix's left hand was gripping my waist while his right was holding my right leg over his shoulder. "F-F-Felix!!! It feels so good!" I exclaimed in pleasure. His tongue was working magic licking between my folds, stimulating my clit, and exploring as far as it could reach into my pussy. My hands were tangled in his hair while he was making me feel, oh so good!

Before I could do anything else a knot formed in my stomach it was unbearable, "I'm gonna cum, D-Daddy I'm gonna cum!" I yelled in pleasure and Felix looked up to me shocked and said, "Then do it cum in my mouth just like you're supposed to." Him saying that triggered something and I came, releasing all my fluids into Felix's mouth as he made sure to lick it all up and swallow it.

"You sure do taste good princess." He said as he came back up to kiss me. As he finally lifted up my shirt over my head and took off my bra. I unbuttoned his pants and he pulled them off after he was done with declothing me.

Felix took one of my nipples into his mouth and the his other hand was playing with and sending jolts of pleasure through my body making me whimper out my thoughts, "Felix you haven't came yet, let me make you come."

Right as I said that he flipped us back over and grabbed my hair and pushed his dick into my mouth. At first I was a gagging mess but after him thrusting into my mouth a few times I took over. He threw his head back moaning in pleasure and squeezing a fistfull of my hair as I took in his cock, slowly taking in all of it deepthroating him, sucking he tip kissing and licking up and down his hard dick. "Fuck baby you're so good at this, this can't be the first time you've done this your making me so weak" The desperate man moaned out and I hummed in response while taking him in. Which caused him to release and shoot his seeds down my throat with no warning, but I did my best to swallow ever ounce of his sweet cum.

Felix pulled me up to face level and said, "I really want to fuck you, i want to make you mine forever, I want you to be the one I crave everyday, I want, no I need you to be my girlfriend, and I can't fuck you unless you say yes. I wouldn't want to take something another man is supposed to take that's not mine to have." I just kissed him in response and said, "Of course I'll be yours I've had a crush on you since we were ten!"

With that being said Felix flipped me over and lined up his dick with my entrance and told me, "This is gonna hurt tap my shoulder three times when I can make a next move after I'm inside you, I don't want you to hurt too much but it's unavoidable." Finally he pushed in and instantly I was tearing up it was like I was being ripped it hurt and burned so bad and tears were falling down my face. "Shhhh, it's okay I'm trying to not hurt you, I love you so much baby, it'll feel good soon I promise, you're so beautiful, I can't believe someone so beautiful as you is now my princess." Felix stated while wiping away and kissing my tears, and kissing my neck leaving more hickies to distract the pain.

After a few minutes I tapped on his shoulder three times as he said to do when I was ready. He instantly started to move slowly; looking into my eyes for signs of pain. To no surprise he was right the pain was fading and I started to crave for more so I moaned out of breath, "I want more daddy, give me more, I want to feel all of your cock pounding me!" He quickly sped up his pace and penetrated deeper making both of us a moaning mess. The sound of skin slapping, moans, grunts, whimpers and words of love filled the room making a symphony.

"You are so fucking tight princess. I fucking love you!" Felix grunted as he pushed as deep as he could inside me yearning for more pleasure. I whimpered in response unable to talk for Felix pounding into my pussy.

While he was fucking the life out of me he pushed his tongue back into my mouth making us completely one, he then sucked on my tongue before moving to my earlobe biting and licking making me moan out even more.

I was sad once he pulled away and pulled out his dick but he then demanded, "Get on your hands and knees now my little slut!" So I did as he said.

Right as I did so, he pushed my back down and perked my ass up, slightly spreading my legs apart and pulling on my hair he thrusted into my vagina full force using his one free hand to pull me into him as he thrusted into me. His actions made me scream out in pleasure and weak; my thighs felt like they were gonna give out and Felix noticed so he supported my body but kept thrust into me with all his might.

That one knot in my stomach was forming again and it was way more intense than the last time so I whimpered out, "I-I'm close I need to cum again" Felix moaned out, "Hold on just a few more seconds I'm close too princess I want to o-orgasm with you...." Three seconds later he yelled "Now!" We both came together, he pulled out and came all over my back and I released my juices that were now dripping onto the bed.

Felix cleaned himself and I, putting back on our clothes, then cleaned the bed and mess he and I made. "I want to cuddle... Don't go to the guest room stay with me daddy!"

He just giggled and got under the bed covers with me while saying, "I never said I was going to the guest room but right now I want to know.... since when did you have a daddy kink hmmmmm?!?!?!?" I instantly flushed red and he snicker while I stuttered out, "I-I-I called you daddy? I didn't realize fuck I need to control my mouth, your disgusted aren't you, I'm sorry I won't do it again."

I pouted and he just laughed and pulled me close to him holding me in his embrace as he said, "No, princess I loved it you can call me Daddy whenever you please, and we should really have sleepovers more often when your mom and dad are out for business a few hours, now that you are mine, I really enjoyed this sleepover!"

[sanstropfremir]

pls do talk more about b*s and their current image (censoring because if you don’t have great things to say i don’t want you to be attacked by their crazy stans :))

i always bring this up when i talk about them but it’s really :( that they are the way they are now. like i was a fan because of their hyyh era and their songs about the troubled youth. and of course they can’t stay in that image forever (because we all grow up and it would just be v fake if they tried to continue it given their status and wealth now.) it’s just disappointing that they went down the ‘safe, disney image’ and are releasing generic mainstream pop songs people will forget after a couple listens. i’m no longer a fan of them now but yuh.

also not to mention how they essentially made kpop boring for me now lol i wish companies had fun with their music selections instead of aiming for whatever b*s has. like we will never get a group like orange caramel again (i know wjsn chocome’s concept was similar but it just didn’t feel the same. you talked about it before and i wholeheartedly agree with ur points.)

thank you for the consideration of censoring the name but honestly i'm not that worried about it. i do however find the increasingly creative ways people censor it to be extremely hilarious so keep it up if you would like.

i addressed most of the first part of your ask in the second part of my response here, this is now the third installment in a series, somehow. (the first part is here).

not to level this at you in specific anon, because i know a lot of people share this sentiment of kpop being 'boring' now, and while there is an element of this that is influenced by bts, and although it is true we aren't getting the same level of wild that produced orange caramel, there is actually interesting and kinda weird stuff happening in kpop; it's just not by the groups that are getting the most attention. dreamcatcher has been out here doing horror rock since their debut in 2017. onf has put out two excellent summer pop tracks with fun and stupid genre mvs. i love this recent ghost9 track. i'm obsessed with the instrumental in the chorus of bdc's moon walker. just b debuted last month with a strange bang yongguk track and a very 2013 feeling mv. here's another weird and fun boy group debut, blitzers. a.c.e have put out favourite boys, the fave boyz remix, down, and higher as their last four releases which all have the most coherent and well designed concepts in the last year. and while i'm at it i might as well include take me higher and undercover. oneus put out a mad max themed performance video randomly for no reason like three weeks ago. the rest of the industry were cowards for not following up on to be or not to be with a shakespeare comeback wave. rip onlyoneof but they gave us a whole three week comeback of dick grabs. hanya brought my attention to this weird as shit debut track from a group that has now totally disappeared. knk's sunset exists. we moved on way too fast from the mv because taeyang was being cunty on music shows but sf9's teardrop has probably some of the most interesting shots in a kpop mv in the last several years. and we definitely moved on too fast from my favourite just some guy and goofy movie character woodz's feel like.

i think it's pretty fatalistic to view bts as having singlehandedly made the industry boring because honestly......i don't think they have. if you want to talk about the downturn to plainclothes styling....well that's shinee's fault. and the general trend to less dramatic fashion and visual tastes is not exclusive to the kpop industry, it's been a whole cultural trend. the mid to late 2010s were the rise of 'normcore' and we haven't burst the bubble yet. bts is just reflecting trends happening in the wider world, and in particular the western one. for the most viewed kpop mv of 2020 dynamite did....what exactly? it didn't really spawn any significant copycats in terms of sound or aesthetics, with the exception of maybe superm's we do if you look at it a bit sideways. although this is one of bts' better styled mvs, 70s retro did not make any resurgence in kpop styling, EXCEPT in magazine and fashion shoots, which it was already doing in the west. taemin's criminal was significantly more influential; i can think of at least three different male soloist mvs that borrowed heavily from it. honestly i think stylists and groups are trying to steer as clear as possible of whatever aesthetics bts uses, lest they accidentally doom themselves to a (perceived) slighted fanbase. plus, there's been a pretty sizable resurgence in contemporary hanbok styling, so even though there is a lot more outward attention going to things like international promotions for other groups and whatever the hell sm keeps trying to do with nct, i think a fair amount of companies are interested in maintaining the koreanness of kpop while facilitating broader global access.

and honestly, bigger acts have also put out interesting things in the last year. we did all see taemin's back to back release roster for ngda right? criminal? idea???? advice???????? fuck, chocolate was barely a year ago. whatever your opinions on yunho are, thank u is fucking brilliant mv. sunmi's tail. lie to me and tell me the mv for you can't sit with us isn't fun as fuck. i dunno what the hell the new nct127 song is gonna be like but the teaser photos and mood sampler are weird as hell and i'm absolutely interested. he's only kpop adjacent at the moment but jackson's 100 ways and lmly are really sharply produced low budget mvs with clean and interesting visuals. maniac shot to the top of my most listened immediately after it dropped because lia kim AND those slick horns in the instrumental???? ten's paint me naked was not at all what i was expecting but it's still fun as hell and has a pretty unique aesthetic.

the tldr of this whole three parter is this: bts has always been reactionary to wider cultural trends and that's been how they've made it this far. yes their influence on the industry looms very large because of the predominence of them on the scene, but it's mostly in the perception of kpop rather than in the artistry of it.

i don't think any company is going to be able to achieve what bts and hybe have, which i think is fine. they're the scale tipped too far. hopefully by now most companies have probably noticed that they don't need to cater to the western market so hard, and that it's probably not a good idea to offer their artists up on the racist chopping block of the western pop scene. you can market to an international fanbase without trying to gun for a grammy or for billboard or whatever. creating interesting art should be at the fore, not numbers goals. but we're just gonna have to wait and see what happens in the next year or so.

[awkwardpenguinproductions]

Rebellion

Part 8 of Dragon of the Yuyan

Read on AO3 | Series Masterpost

The prisoner is tiny.

That’s the first thing Zuko notices, when Banli Squad returns triumphant from their mission with a figure wrapped in heavy iron netting like a landed fish. Tiny, and young. Zuko would be damned if the kid was a day older than eleven. The top of their bald, tattooed head barely comes up to the middle of Zuko’s chest.

White hot rage shoots through him as Zheng shoves the Avatar down the corridor ahead of him, radiating smugness like a fucking peacock. He wants to rip that netting off and carry the kid away from here, away from Zhao who acts like the entire Stronghold and everyone in it is his to do whatever the fuck he wants with.

The plan, dum dum, remember the plan, he chants to himself, and holds onto his control with both hands and every ounce of stubbornness in his body.

+

Do you think it’s true? The Avatar’s returned? Zuko had demanded, barely waiting for the Commander’s office door to close behind him. The announcement had been made twenty minutes ago, and Zuko had immediately followed the older man to his office when he’d left the mess hall.

Commander Toshiaki hadn’t replied immediately, but had reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of rotgut. He’d poured two cups, knocked one back, and pushed the other toward Zuko, who sipped at it warily, grimacing at the taste.

The Commander had dropped into his desk chair and tilted his head back for a moment before beginning to sign. I can’t imagine the Fire Lord making an announcement like that unless there was some truth to it. Either way, it changes things.

No kidding! Zuko had snapped. The Commander shot him a Look, and Zuko had winced and signed a quick Sorry, sir.

The Commander had sighed silently. If anything, all it does is move the timeline up rather a lot. It shouldn’t take the Avatar very long to gather followers and allies, and as the main aggressor in the war, the Fire Lord will be their main focus.

Instead of waiting for Azula to come of age and then to get impatient, we just cut her out of the line completely, Zuko had realized. Instead of the war dragging on for another four years or more, the Avatar can help us end it sooner. Within the year, even!

The Commander had nodded. We need to stay alert for opportunities slip away and rendezvous with the Avatar and their followers. I have a list of Troop members who are willing to defect. When the opportunity presents itself, you will give the signal, and the Yuyan Archers will disappear.

+

Zuko meets the Commander’s eyes, and blinks. The Commander blinks back.

Zuko slips down a service corridor, and races back to the Yuyan dorm. He grabs the bag he’d kept prepared for this exact scenario and his dao, and shimmies up into the ventilation shaft. With his most recent growth spurt, it’s a bit of a snug fit, and Zuko suddenly has to wrestle back the panicked thought of oh Agni what if I get stuck. He pauses, breathes a few deep breaths, and continues on to the bathroom, where he gets his Blue Spirit uniform on as fast as he can. His hair gets tied back into a braid, the length of which is tucked under his tunic and hood. His dao go on his back, every single throwing knife he owns is strapped somewhere on his body, and he carefully burns the clothes he was wearing in the brazier that heats the water for the ofuro. The bag his Blue Spirit materials were in gets folded up as small as Zuko can possibly make it and tucked into the back of his belt. Could be useful later.

He fastens his mask as securely as he possibly can, and Cadet Zuko of the Yuyan Archers disappears. In his place stands the Blue Spirit, ready for war.

By now the Avatar will have been secured in one of the cells at the top of the Central Tower, where the most powerful benders are kept for holding. Zuko ensures that he has left no trace of his presence in the bathroom, and makes his way upstairs as fast as he can, employing every shadow-walking technique he knows to avoid detection.

It’s caution well spent, because the upper detention level is crawling with Stronghold guards. At least a dozen of them. Zhao may be a pompous ass and a creep to rival Koh themself, but he’s not completely stupid. These guys must be new, though, or they came with the Admiral, because they are not nearly as wary of dark corners and high shadowed ceilings as they should be.

It’s quick work knocking the idiots out and looping lengths of chain around their ankles to hang them from the rafters like freshly hunted game. If this were a training exercise, he would’ve just left them where they had fallen, but Zuko can’t afford the possibility that they’d wake up and be able to come after him and the Avatar. Getting out of the Stronghold is going to be hard enough, no need to alert anyone to the breakout any earlier than necessary.

Only one of the cells has a guard at the door, who is reaching for the signaling horn as Zuko peeks around the corner. Zuko grabs a bucket of water kept for the guards to drink on duty in one hand, and throws one of his knives with the other. The horn is knocked out of the guard's hand, and as Zuko rushes him the man shoots a rather paltry plume of flame at him. Zuko doesn't miss a beat as he throws the water into the strike, then whips the bucket into the man's leading foot to break his root.

Thank Agni for Mika's "learn-to-fight-with-any-kind-of-random-shit" lessons, he thinks a bit hysterically as the man goes crashing to the floor. He binds the man with his own handcuffs, borrowing a second set that had fallen from another guard's belt to bind his ankles, and ties a length of cloth he finds in the last guard's pocket into a gag.

He takes a minute to retrieve his throwing knife and to breathe, and he can very distantly hear Zhao's ridiculous speech echoing up from the main courtyard.

+

Zhao had arrived about two weeks after the Winter Solstice, just in time for the Fire Nation Armed Forces' rumor mill to have built up a full head of steam. He had swept into the Stronghold like he'd owned the place, towering over Colonel Shinu in a ridiculous attempt to intimidate the much shorter man, but he had still been a Commander at the time and the Colonel had quickly put him in his place. The complete 180° turn the man's personality had taken at that point had completely creeped Zuko out, had reminded him uncomfortably of Azula, and he'd done his absolute best not to be caught alone with him.

A few days after Zhao's arrival, Commander Toshiaki had indicated that he'd wanted a meeting, and Zuko had met him in his office.

Zhao has been trying to convince Colonel Shinu to allow him to use the Archers in his hunt for the Avatar, the Commander had signed as soon as the door was closed behind Zuko. The tension in the older man's body had been obvious, his signs rigidly composed.

There's no way the Colonel will go for that, Zuko had replied, trying to decipher the Commander's body language. Disapproval, maybe? Or anger? Either were rarely seen from the stern but kind officer, and therefore hard to recognize.

He may no longer have a choice. The Commander's jaw clenched. Anger, then, and Zuko had felt proud of himself that he'd felt no unease at all around the Commander as he'd struggled to hold his temper. A messenger hawk arrived last night. Zhao has been promoted to Admiral by the Fire Lord.

Fuck, Zuko had stated into the whirling chaos of his mind. With that wonderful piece of news, it was only a matter of time before the Avatar was captured.

My Prince, I also have reason to believe that your safety could be compromised should Zhao discover your identity, the Commander continued. He has been overheard making… comments… about your performance in the Agni Kai against the Fire Lord, as well as voicing theories as to your current location and opinions of how you should be treated when returned to royal custody. A small, distant part of Zuko had mused that if the Commander had been a bender, he would’ve seared the top of his desk black in his rage.

I believe, Prince Zuko, that it would be prudent of you to consider vacating the Stronghold sooner rather than later. The Commander had looked  like every sign he’d made had been physically painful, which had eased the pain in Zuko’s own heart of being ousted from his home again. This time was not for someone else’s gain or convenience, but for Zuko’s own safety. And it wasn’t going to be forever, like his abandonment. No matter what ended up happening, Zuko knew he would see his Troop, his family, again. Kai would hunt him down, to say nothing of the rest of Chihese Squad and the Commander himself.

I understand, Commander, Zuko had replied, smiling at his commanding officer. Depending on how quickly the Avatar is apprehended, the Blue Spirit should be able to escort them away without too much effort.

+

Famous last words, Zuko growls silently to himself as he picks the lock on the cell. It’s a new model, something Zhao had installed in the last couple of weeks as he prepared to imprison the Avatar, and Zuko hasn’t had enough opportunity to practice picking it between avoiding Zhao and smuggling supplies and his belongings out of the Stronghold with his squad under the guise of “wilderness training”.

It takes forty-seven seconds more than Zuko really cares to admit, but he does finally get the cell door open, and he slips inside and shuts the door behind him.

The Avatar is chained hand and foot in the center of the cavernous cell, arms held out and fastened to the two huge torches that provide the only light in the room. Their odd yellow, orange, and brown clothes are tattered and splashed with mud, and their skin is ghostly pale. Their stormy gray eyes are huge in their face as they stare at Zuko.

Zuko draws his dao, and rushes forward in a form meant to build momentum. The Avatar screams and cringes back, squeezing their eyes shut. Zuko’s blades slice cleanly through the chains holding their arms, and it takes the Avatar a moment to realize that they aren’t hurt and to stop screaming and open their eyes. They stare in bafflement at the manacles on their wrists, which Zuko also slices off. He finishes with the cuffs on their feet, and strides back to the cell door.

“Who are you? What’s going on?” The Avatar’s voice calls out, high with prepubescence and stress. “Are you here to rescue me?”

Duh, Zuko thinks, opening the door and making sure the coast is clear before turning back and making a vague come on gesture.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” the Avatar mumbles, warily following him. Their footsteps are barely audible against the steel-clad floors, and Zuko has to listen extra hard to make sure they’re still with him.

“My frogs!” The Avatar gasps, and Zuko has just enough time to think what? before those nearly silent footsteps go pattering off in another direction. He clenches his teeth behind the mask and follows, catching up as the Avatar is kneeling on the floor trying to catch a bunch of half-frozen wood frogs. He grabs the kid by the collar of their weird tunic and hauls them away, and cringes when the little idiot hollers for the entire Stronghold to hear, “But my friends need to suck on those frogs!”

Zuko switches his grip on this absolute moron of an Avatar from their collar to the front of their tunic, (gently) pushes them against the closest wall, and flicks them between the eyes hard with his free hand. Then he puts his finger against the grinning mouth of his mask for quiet.

The Avatar has the grace to be chagrined, at least. “I’m sorry,” they whisper. “It’s just— I got captured ‘cause I was gathering those frogs ‘cause my friends are sick and the crazy old lady on the top of the mountain said that they needed to suck on the frozen frogs to get better and I’m really worried about them— my friends, not the frogs— but I know I gotta be quiet so we can get out of here, right?”

Great Agni and all the stars, how is this kid the spirits-damned Avatar? Zuko bites back a sigh, nods sharply, and makes a note that the Avatar has ill companions that need treatment. The Avatar nods back, eyes huge in their pale face.

Zuko leads the way to the main sewer line, which the pair of them follow out of the Central Tower and to the back courtyard. A quick peek through the bars above their heads reveals that the coast is clear, and Zuko points upward to indicate to the Avatar that they need to pull themselves up through the bars. The Avatar follows without a word, and they break for the rope that hangs from the top of the Stronghold’s innermost wall, left there by one of the Archers on Commander Toshiaki’s orders.

They’re halfway up the rope when the alarm sounds. Zuko can hear Zhao shouting that “the Avatar has escaped!”, and some bootlicker responds with “There! On the wall!”. Zuko has five seconds to curse his fucking luck before the rope in his hands goes slack and they start to fall.

The Avatar does something, and with a roar of wind Zuko feels himself slowing down in midair, and they both land gently on their feet. Zuko draws his dao and points with one to the gates starting to close. As one he and the Avatar start running for the gates as Zhao shouts "Close all the gates immediately!" like the gatemen don't know how to do their freaking jobs.

"Stay close to me!" The Avatar tells him, and all Zuko can do is nod and try to keep up as the Avatar zooms towards the gate, faster than a normal human can run. Zuko's no slouch, racing against Jiyoti will ensure that, but after airbending a line of guards out of the way, the Avatar seems to forget that Zuko can't run as fast, because they book it for the gate and leave Zuko in the dust.

He gets cornered, surrounded by guards with spears, and it takes everything he has to keep from bending, because if even the slightest spark slips from his blades he’s done for. Abruptly the guards disappear, blown away by the Avatar’s airbending, and Zuko has a moment to wonder why they don’t bend any of the other elements before the Avatar swings a broken spear like a trebuchet and Zuko goes flying.

He lands on top of the innermost wall and immediately tucks into a roll to bleed off the momentum. He hears the clomping steps of the guards approaching and snaps to his feet, swords out and held at the ready, and then something slams into his upper back and a steel band wraps around his chest under his arms, and with a jerk he’s flying again.

They land with a crash on the intermediate wall, and Zuko’s blades clatter away. He doesn’t have time to grab them, though, because the Avatar’s been cornered by a guard at least twice their size. Their makeshift staff has been knocked away, and Zuko doesn’t think before he grabs the guard around the middle and throws him off the wall.

They reach the other side of the wall just as more guards come up the bamboo emergency ladders. The Avatar blows the first two ladders clear with their airbending, and Zuko just finishes clearing the third and barely has time to sheath his blades before the Avatar is handing him one of the ladders with a hurried "hold this!". They have the second ladder in their arms, and they jump onto the parapet of the wall and step onto the third ladder, pushing it away from the wall.

"Jump on my back!" The absolutely wolf-bat fucking crazy Avatar calls at him, and Zuko can do nothing but obey. His momentum and weight are what tip the ladder over fully away from the wall, and the Avatar maneuvers the ladder in his arms so that the pair of them stilt-walk across the no-man's land between the intermediate and outer walls. However, some really intelligent person decides to set fire to the last ladder. Zuko and the Avatar are forced to jump for the outer wall, but Zuko can't keep his grip, and they tumble to the ground just in front of the outer gate.

Dazedly shaking his head, Zuko struggles to his feet and draws his blades as the guards converge upon them. Four firebending guards (I trained with you! a tiny part of Zuko sobs upon seeing them, I sparred with you and you laughed when I beat you!) blast at them in unison, and Zuko is ready to deflect the flames with his blades when the Avatar spins them around and defends them with airbending.

"HOLD YOUR FIRE!"

The flames die away as Admiral Zhao himself strides forward, hands clasped behind his back as calm as can be. "The Avatar must be captured alive," he orders, scowling, but there's a triumphant light in his cold bronze eyes that Zuko immediately hates. Then his words hit, and Zuko immediately knows what to do.

Sorry, kid, just trying to get us out of here alive, he apologizes silently to the Avatar, as he crosses his blades under their chin, razor-sharp edges each a hairsbreadth from the delicate pale skin of their neck. The Avatar makes a strangled "ulp!" sound, and Zuko presses himself against their back and stares Zhao in the eye.

A vein throbs in the man's temple as he grits his teeth in frustration. "Open the gate," he grits out, after a moment of attempting to glare Zuko into submission. Compared to Mika without her morning black tea, the guy's a rank amateur.

"Admiral, what are you doing?" Colonel Shinu hisses from his position at Zhao's shoulder.

"Let them out," Zhao snaps. "NOW."

The gate creaks open behind them, and Zuko carefully walks backward, keeping his blades rock steady at the Avatar's neck. He doesn't take a single eye off of Zhao.

They're in the middle of the last crossroads before the forest when something zings through the air and everything abruptly goes dark.

+

Zuko had reported to the medbay at Dr. Atsuko's order, and the Chief Medical Officer of the Stronghold had ushered him into her office at the back of the ward.

"Zhao's just sent out Banli Squad to retrieve the Avatar," she'd said brusquely. "Are you ready? Do you have all of the supplies you need, all of the things you're going to take?"

I'm as ready as I'll ever be, Zuko had replied. The Commander gave the signal for everyone who's leaving to be ready to disappear after Banli gets back. I'll be meeting up with Kai at noon the day after the Avatar and I escape to get my bow and quiver from him, since I can't exactly carry them with me as the Blue Spirit. Are you leaving too?

Dr. Atsuko had nodded. "It's time," she'd said, and for once the steel had melted from her expression and she'd actually looked sad. "I've done all I can here, but it's time to go where I can do some real good."

Where will you go? Zuko had asked.

"Here and there," Dr. Atsuko had shrugged. "I've got options. A doctor, especially one with my skills, is always in demand. Before you take off, though, I've got something to teach you," and she'd handed him a Pai Sho tile, the Lotus.

Five hours later, Zuko had been leaving the mess hall after dinner when Banli Squad had paraded the Avatar through the Stronghold.

+

Zuko wakes up to early morning light filtering through tall trees, a full range of vision due to his mask being gone, and the Avatar sitting curled up in a little ball on top of a huge tree root. He also wakes up to a splitting headache, and bites back a groan that's half pain and half frustration. He doesn't have time for this, the Avatar's a fucking kid, and probably doesn't know any bending besides their native element, and Zuko somehow has to get them ready to… what, overthrow the Fire Lord? Get Zuko's throne back for him?

His temple throbs, and Zuko can't quite bite back the hiss that he makes as he sits up, rubbing his forehead.

"Oh, you're awake!" The Avatar exclaims, voice piercing in the stillness of the surrounding forest. Zuko winces, and thankfully the Avatar seems to notice, because their voice drops several levels of volume until they're almost but not quite whispering. "I never got to thank you last night for getting me out of there. That Zhao guy was kinda creepy. What's your name? I'm Aang."

My name's Zuko, Zuko signs, slow and sluggish with pain and the stiffness that comes with not cooling down properly after excessive exercise. What're your preferred pronouns? I don't want to assume anything.

The Avatar is watching him with huge gray eyes, and Zuko knows without them even opening their mouth that they have no idea what he just said.

Oh damn me to Koh's lair, he thinks, heart sinking. Not only does the spirits-damned Avatar not know any of the other elements, they don't know hand-language. Honestly, Zuko doesn't know why he'd assumed that they would, the Yuyan guard their language with the same ferocity that they hunt their quarries.

"Is that… talking? With your hands?" The Avatar asks, eyebrows sliding up the blue arrow tattoo to the sky. Their voice is hushed and full of wonder. "Can you teach me that?"

Ah, a yes or no question. Zuko nods, then gingerly gets up, glancing around for his mask and picking it up where it lies next to the bed of green leaves that he'd been resting on. His blades are there too, and Zuko huffs slightly in relief as he slings them across his back. He looks at the mask, noting the large scratch in the lacquer on the left side of the forehead. That must've been some shot, he reflects, and kind of wishes he'd been able to see it.

"Uh, so I gotta get some frozen wood frogs for my friends, 'cause they're really sick," the Avatar, Aang, says awkwardly. "You want to come along? Do you have anywhere else to go? Katara could probably give you something for your head, if it's hurting you."

Zuko tugs his braid out of his shirt, cracks his neck, and gestures for Aang to lead the way.

Previous | Next

[jacklifewilliams]

Five Top Habits For Financial Independence

Is there almost always too much month at the end of your money? Are you living on credit and not paying your bills in time?

If you answered yes to these questions, something is unmistakably amiss with your financial management skills. Not your fault, we don't get taught money management at school and neither did the people we admire, our parents. The outcome is that we realize what they realized, that money doesn't grow on trees or that it is the course of all evil. We get indoctrinated into accepting the best way to make money is to go to school, get passing marks which will prompt a great job and if you work hard at it, you may get pay rises and resign with decent benefits.

You are never appreciated financial independence working this strategy on earning income. If you're going to be fiscally free, you need to earn the majority of your money through leveraged income and passive or residual income.

Better to receive the benefits of 1% of 100 people than 100% of just your own as John Paul Getty once advised. Also, this remains constant more now than it could do. Gone are the days of jobs for life, most company pension plans have huge deficits and it does take teamwork to make the dream work.

Several habits need to be followed to work towards your financial independence.

1. Focused Vision

Regardless of whether it's financial independence or being a champion basketball player, you need to start giving a dream. Where are you heading and have you define goals to get there? Jom Rohn said that the same wind blows on us all. The same economic wind, political wind, winds of change, opportunity, challenge, etc. It is how we set our sail that determines where we end up and that is something we can all do.

So set aside some effort to consider your life and what you need to accomplish and afterward set a few objectives to move you towards your vision. Set goals in various parts of your life for example financial goals, spiritual, health, and wellbeing, family and fun goals, and so on. The important thing to work out is the reason for this goal being a must rather than a want. For example, my goal is to have the time freedom to work when I want, where I want and the reason is so that I can spend time with my beautiful grandchildren whenever I want. What is yours why? Set out your vision, you're why, a time frame, and most importantly, what you are going to do to achieve it.

Keep your goals on hand where you can look at them every day remind yourself what you need to do and why.

2. Invest your money wisely

As Robert Kiyosaki says, most poor and middle-class people will never find financial independence because they buy liabilities that they believe are assets. You must educate yourself in investment vehicles and set aside a portion of your income to become your golden goose. This never gets spent, but eventually, the golden eggs that are produced can be and it is these that change your lifestyle forever.

For most people, the cost of setting up a traditional bricks-and-mortar business or purchasing a franchise is prohibitive. He, along with many other leading businessmen like Donald Trump and Warren Buffet, promote Network Marketing as the vehicle which allows almost anybody to buy into a proven business system with a minimal investment. There are points to consider when choosing a company like the product, the market, the training, and support, etc, but in the main, network marketing gives the masses access to their own business which can lead to leverage and residual income.

The dependable guideline subsequently, is to place a level of your income into resources that produce residual income. The goal is that these eventually exceed your expenses and you become financially free.

3. Spend wisely

Each dollar is a soldier in your army fighting for your financial independence. Don't spend everything you earn. Buy only things that you need. If you kept a journal of all the money you spend and review it at the end of the week, I think you'll be surprised at the things you spend your money on that you don't need. The amount may startle you too, so tighten those belts for now as you work towards a more secured future. Choose to live simply and forget about showing off your stuff. This stuff is a liability, not an asset, if you want to achieve financial independence, you must buy assets and not liabilities.

4. Keep contingency plans

I don't mean saving for a rainy day because if you focus on rainy days, that's what you will get. I mean having some long-term savings but rather than being your golden goose that never gets spent, this can be spent as and when the need arises. It is great to know there are funds available should your car break down or your washing machine springs a leak. So set aside a portion of your income for future spending.

5. Take care of yourself

Health is wealth. If you aren't fit enough to function, what is the point of it all anyway? Think about your diet and exercise regime. Use the stairs instead of the elevator sometimes. Review your goals, if you remember, I suggested goals for all aspects of your life, not just financial. So set your health & wellbeing goals and stick to them.

[ashdoesfandomarchieved]

Valentines Day shenanigans with the ship of your choice? Or maybe board game/poker night with the main four?

(Direct sequel of midnight revelations)

It starts like this:

Mariner is teaching Tendi poker. Or well, Mariner is teaching Tendi her version of poker which involves no pants—for some reason—, various pointy objects that Sam is keeping his distance from and an abundance of multi-language profanity that is rather impressive for two women outside of the linguistics department.

Really though, Sam is impressed

Tendi, who has absolutely no poker face, is somehow winning and Mariner is somewhere between proud mom friend™ and shoving her throwing stars at the first person who pokes fun at her losing streak. Somewhere in all of this, Mariner runs out of credits and contraband, so with a sigh and a characteristic half-smirk, she tosses her last chip on the table.

“I’m going all in.”

“Your all in would be scarier if it literally wasn’t your last credit,” Sam remarks sarcastically from where he’s nursing a beer.

Mariner flips him the bird. “Whaddya you got for me, D’Vana?”

Tendi, trying to hold back her shit-eating grin and failing—again no poker face—shoves her huge pile of chips into the center of the table.

“Oh, I’m all in, baby.”

“Good,” Mariner grins back.

“Good,” Tendi replies, crossing her arms.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“I’m glad you went all in.”

“So am I.”

“Please stop flirting and finish the game,” Sam mutters, rolling his eyes.

Mariner doesn’t flip him the bird this time but gives him a side-eye that would have been its usual level of pee-your-pants-terrifying if not for the light blush that dusts her cheeks.

Tendi giggles. “Wanna raise the stakes?”

“Have you met me?”

“That’s fair,” both Tendi and Sam say in the same voice. Mariner rolls her eyes but can’t suppress her smug grin.

“Loser has to ask out the next person who enters the room,” Tendi says, dramatically steepling her hands in front of her face.

Mariner snorts. Loudly. “What are we, fucking twelve?”

“You got a better idea?” Tendi taunts.

“Actually,” Mariner lets a smirk crawl across her face. “As long as we’re going with sleepover levels of dares…loser has to get the next person who walks through that door to date them for three weeks without cracking.”

Tendi cackles, throwing down her cards.

“Full house,” Sam absentmindedly notes. “Not bad, Tendi.”

“Yeah, not bad,” Mariner says, revealing her hand to be royal fucking flush. “Enjoy that date, D’Vana.”

Sam chokes on his drink, while Tendi groans. Mariner laughs psychotically. “Work on that poker face, baby girl. You’ll get it eventually.”

“Ugh, you were just letting me win.”

“Maybe,” Mariner grins innocently. Tendi scowls at her. “Oh, come on,” she laughs. “Whoever comes through that door next can’t be that bad.”

This was the exact moment that Sam realizes that the universe has a sense of humor, because Brad fucking Boimler walks through the door.

Tendi turns a little blue around the cheeks—the Orion equivalent to blushing, Sam guesses—and smiles at him, waving.

“Fuck,” Mariner hisses. “Abort mission!”

Sam and Tendi frown at her. “What?”

“D’Vana, you cannot date Boimler,” Mariner whispers furiously.

“That was the deal!” Tendi hisses back, throwing her hands up in the air.

“Babe I love you, but you can’t fuck with him like that.”

“And it’s okay to fuck with other people?”

“Yes!”

Sam slaps a hand to his face. “You fuck with Boimler every day of the week, Mariner.”

“That’s different!”

“How?” Tendi demands.

Mariner—the woman who had been promoted and demoted so many times that her file was longer than a goddamn Britannica, jumped head first into anything that remotely whispered of danger, fought with the Captain daily, snarked at superior officers, gave zero fucks about Starfleet protocol, and had probably, at some point, flipped off the devil—is rendered completely speechless.

Sam begins to rapidly connect some dots.

“It’s only for three weeks,” Tendi continues. “And Brad’s kinda cute, in like, an intense I have crippling anxiety way.”

“Brad?” Mariner repeats, looking horrified. “You call him Brad?”

“Yes?” Boimler says, coming up behind her. Mariner lets out an uncharacteristic shriek and jumps about a foot in the air.

“Dude what the fuck.”

Boimler looks very very confused. “What?”

“What?” Mariner repeats loudly, eyes widening.

“Brad, wanna go out?” Tendi chirps, smiling innocently at him.

Aw, and now Sam has two adorable friends who are blushing, well, adorably at each other and one friend who is having a complete mental breakdown in the background.

“What, really? I would love to—why aren’t you guys wearing any pants?” Boimler asks, exasperated.  

Tendi lets out a snicker. “Mariner.”

Boimler gives Mariner an unimpressed look. Mariner tries to glare back, but it’s weak for her standards.

“I actually just finished my shift,” he says, turning back to Tendi. “Do you want to hang out?”

While Tendi cheers enthusiastically, Sam discreetly eyes his other friend. Mariner is kind of hyperventilating in the background, hands twitching toward the half-filled bottle of vodka she and Tendi had been chugging earlier. Sam carefully inches it away, unsure if she’s going to chug the rest of it or attack someone with it.

She makes a wounded noise at Tendi, who grabs Boimler by the arm and drags him out of the room, unreservedly talking a mile a minute about something that Sam’s already lost track of.

“What the fuck just happened.”

“I think Tendi asked Boimler on a date,” Sam replies, calmly. Mariner whips her head around and stares at him. The look behind her eyes is deranged.

“We have to break them up.”

Sun, moon and stars, the next three weeks were going to be a Mariner sized nightmare.

“I don’t get it, she’s completely out of his league—”

“Not true.”

“—they have nothing in common—”

“Sometimes opposites attract.”

“—and she’s just stringing him along! She’s going to dump him in two weeks!”

Sam sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. They were about a week into Mariner’s dare and he already was ready to throw Mariner, Tendi and Boimler—poor, clueless Boimler—out of an airlock. Mariner had already tried to break the two up somewhere around two dozen times and had only succeeded in bringing them closer together.

This of course made Mariner even more determined to sabotage her friends.

“It��s not the end of the world, Mariner.”

“Of course, it is!” she hisses at him. “They break up and then I have to deal with Boimler being sad forever while also not shit-talking my best friend and not letting him know that I was the person who set them up!”

“Or they have an amicable break up and go back to being friends. Dude, they haven’t even progressed past basic hand holding. I don’t think it’s going to be a huge heart wrenching dumping.”

Boimler and Tendi enter the room, holding hands. “I feel like you’re the only one who understands me, sometimes,” Boimler says.

Mariner’s eye twitches.

“What should I get Brad for Valentines Day?” Tendi asks five days later, apropos to nothing. Mariner sits up so fast that she hits her head on the top of her bunk.

“WHAT.”

Tendi frowns over at her, looking up from her data padd. “Valentines Day? It’s a Terra Prime holiday that humans generally celebrate yearly around the Terra season of—”

“I KNOW WHAT VALENTINES DAY IS.”

Sam winces, along with the few unfortunate ensigns who happen to be in the cabin, at the volume. “You and Boimler are celebrating Valentines Day?” he weakly asks.

Tendi grins, her tongue sticking out between her teeth adorably. “He told me about it last night and asked if we could exchange gifts!”

There’s a dull thunk as Mariner repeatedly hits her head against the wall.

“Do we need to talk about this?” Sam asks, watching Mariner chug half her weight in alcohol at the bar.

“My liver, my rules.”

“Not your alcoholic diet,” Sam sighs, taking a seat and signaling to the barman. “Although I would lay off the tequila if you want to be functional tomorrow morning.”

Mariner scowls and raises the bottle to her lips again.

“I’m talking about your feelings for Boimler.”

Mariner chokes. “My fucking what.”

Sam rolls his eyes. He had hoped—for about a millisecond—that when Tendi had joined their group that someone else would finally, perhaps, have some braincells to go around, but no, it seems that Sam Rutherford is the only rational fucking person in their dysfunctional foursome.

“Don’t be the idiot you pretend to be,” he replies, calmly taking a sip of his own drink.

Mariner narrows her eyes at him. “I don’t have feelings for—”

“I’m not an idiot either, Mariner.”

“Look,” she snaps, “I’m vaguely attracted to almost everyone, it’s just who I am. I do not have feelings for Boimler, I’m just aware that he’s. Aesthetically pleasing and nice to be around.”

“Then stop acting like a crazy person whenever he tries to date anyone,” Sam snaps back. “If you’re not interested, then you need to back off.”

Mariner is quiet for a long moment. “Do you think he and D’Vana—”

“I think they enjoy each other’s company and that they’re both kind of lonely,” Sam replies, before she can finish. “If you want to know more, talk to Tendi.”

His friend nods, soberly. Sam feels kind of bad for snapping at her, but also knows that she appreciates his honesty.

“There’s worse things then falling for Boimler,” he says, nudging her encouragingly. “Even if he is a complete spaz.”

This coaxes a weak grin out of her. “He is so fucking awkward.”

“You should tell him.”

“That he’s awkward? I have, he got all fussed up and started—”

“That you like him,” Sam specifies, grinning.

Mariner, seemingly forgetting that she had just been denying her crush on their friend, protests, “He’s dating Tendi, dumbass, I’m not going to—”

“Hey, trust me on this one,” Sam says. “Just follow your instincts.”

“My instincts are telling me to desert him on an alien planet before I become too attached.”

“Follow my instincts.”

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Mariner does not, in fact, follow Sam’s instincts.

He isn’t there for what happens next, but hears about it from an amused Tendi who swings up into his bunk that evening to give him the lowdown.

“So, Beckett has a crush on Brad,” she says, hugging his pillow to her midsection.

Sam puts down his data padd and watches Tendi very carefully. “Oh?”

“Yep. She cornered him in the cafeteria, told him his eyes were pretty and that she liked him and then left, screeching something about sitcom-b plots and Starfleet alumni. I think she has inside jokes with herself? I’m not sure what that was about.”  

Sam can’t suppress the laugh that bubbles out of him. “God, she’s crazy. Are you okay?”

Tendi frowns, confused, at him. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“Your best friend has a crush on your boyfriend?”

“My—my what? Wait, oh nine hells YOU GUYS THINK BRAD AND I ARE DATING?”

Sam has a sudden moment of clarity where he realizes that he does not, in fact, have all the braincells in their group.

“You aren’t?” he dumbly asks.

Tendi starts laughing. She laughs so hard she almost falls out of his bunk—he thankfully catches her in time, but it’s a close one. “Rutherford. Sam,” she wipes a tear away from her eyes. “I’m aromatic, you absolute complete dumbass.”

“You are?” Probably not the best reaction to his friend coming out, but Sam hardly has time to apologize, before Tendi is laughing at him again.

“Brad—well, I probably shouldn’t tell you, it’s his thing—but he kind of understands where I’m coming from. We were having friend dates.”

“But…Valentines Day,” he stresses.

Tendi rolls her eyes. “I asked Brad about Terra traditions and holidays and he gave me a fucking history lecture it was so boring. I did like the idea of Valentines Day and asked if I could partake in it with him. He suggested gift giving.”

Sam stares at her. “I am a dumbass.”

“You are,” she agrees. “But I need your dumbass brain to help me get Brad and Beckett together.”

“Oh, so you do have all the braincells,” he says, grinning.

Tendi’s smile is sharp. “I have no idea what you’re on about, but yes. Yes I do.”

Getting Mariner and Boimler together is way easier said than done. Mariner is avoiding everyone like a goddamn plague and Boimler is fluctuating between literally vibrating with anxiety and being depressed as shit.  

“Well they definitely don’t have the braincells,” Sam says, after another failed attempt to trap the two of them in a room together.

“You need to stop talking about braincells,” Tendi sighs. “Why don’t we just tell them that they like each other?”

“We can’t do that!”

“Why?”

“It’s too easy that way!”

Tendi stares at him.

Sam stares back.

“I’m telling Brad that Beckett has squishy feelings for him,” she deadpans. “And you’re going to try to catch Beckett and tell him that I don’t have squishy feelings for him. And then we’re going to lock them in a goddamn turbolift until they get their freak on.”

Tendi either has all of the braincells or none of them.

Their plan surprisingly takes a whole lot less subterfuge than Sam was expecting and a lot more—well—emotions. He did manage to find Mariner and after guiltily admitting that he may have been a bit wrong about the nature of Boimler and Tendi’s relationship, she was off in a shot, shrieking some nonsense about “third-act bullshit” and how she didn’t sign up to be the “pawn in a romantic subplot.”

Mariner might, actually, be certifiably crazy. 

Brad hears about one of the turbolifts breaking from another ensign in his department. He and Tendi subtly high-five.

Six hours later—“if there was ever a time for buffer time, that time is now, Tendi”—a grinning Mariner and a mildly disheveled, exit the turbolift.

It ends like this:

Tendi is attempting to teach Sam poker. Well. It’s not actual poker, more like a hybrid of Mariner’s version of poker and a card game from Tendi’s home world, but it’s close enough and they’re having fun, so it really doesn’t matter.

Mariner is drunk as fuck, alternating between casually hitting on a flustered Boimler and insulting the shit out of anyone who even looks in their direction.

Tendi lays down her cards. Straight flush. Sam moans in despair. Boimler lets out a shriek of stop doing that we’re in public you moron and Mariner cackles in that unhinged way of hers.

None of them have the braincells.

[popculturebuffet]

Hickman’s X-Men Line: One Year in Part 1: Prelude, House and Powers of X, X-Men and New Mutants (Hickman)

Under the cut is an explination of how hickman’s run happened (the mass decay will be covered another time probably), and dives into his x-books: house of x, powers of x,x-men and his breif run on new mutants and what i thought. Pax Krakoa baby. 

One year ago, I breathed a sigh of relief as I read the utterly masterful house of x #1.  See for the past few months, i’d been waiting on baited breath for this comic with a level of anticipation not matched by any before or since. Even the debut of a spinoff to Chew, one of my faviorite comics of all time that i deftnetly need to do a retrospective on, this week got within the same galaxy and it still wasn’t on the same level. This was big, grandiose and everything I hoped for. And whatever issues I had as House and it’s sister series came out slowly died out as the full story unfolded, my jaw dropped and my faith in Hickman to save the x-men was  fully delivered. At last the x-men were back on top. And it was going to be one hell of a ride.  

As you probably know the x-men had been treated pretty badly at marvel due to fox having the movie rights, a move that still baffles and frustrates me. Instead of making money to rub in fox’s face by promoting the hell out of them in merchandise, animation, video games and of course comics ALONGSIDE the avengers, they basically ignored the x-men and fantastic four to give fox less to work with to spite them while fox.. entirely ignored this as since both franchises have been around since the 60′s and the x-men had had mountains of spinoffs to give them mountains of characters. So in short: a decision to spite and hurt their compeitors only cost marvel money, pissed off fans and fox’s eventual absortion as far as I can tell had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. 

Thankfully marvel DID stop being stupid eventually and relented: The Fantastic Four came back a year before house of x with a decent run by dan slott, which is thankfully more like earlier spider-man work and ff work, and less like what his spider-man run became from superior onward despite the ocasional misfire but i’ll talk about both runs another day. I mostly bring it up because with this revivial, marvel also slowly reintegrated the four back into the marvel universe and made their return feel like a big deal.  The X-Men however took a bit: while they got an earlier shot at returning with ressurxion. Buuut with the idea of having hickman return in their back pocket, marvel apparently refused, at least according to cullen bunn who I fell has no real reason to lie, to let the writers rock the boat too much and the era perdictably was just meh, especially flagship book X-Men Gold which was written bafflingly by Mark Gugenhiem and outside of one or two good ideas basically felt like the comics equivlent of one of those party store albums where every song is a cover done by someone who couldn’t give half a damn. There were bright spots though with Cullen Bunn finishing out his awesome x-men tenure with x-men blue, Sina Grace’s wonderful iceman that took the wonky execution of Bendis’ decision to make bobby drake gay and made it work beautifully, and the decent if somewhat baffling x-men red. But overall it just felt like a missed opportunity and with the fox deal in bloom and a new EiC, marvel NEEDED something bigger, bolder and grander to do with marvel’s strangest heroes of all. After all all eyes would be on them while Marvel’s Movie department took a few years, probably longer now thanks to the pandemic, to let things cool off before bringing the x-men into the mcu.  Enter Jonathan Hickman: Writer of another one of my faviorite runs of all time, his Fantastic Four run, along with an enjoyable but heavily flawed avengers run, a secret warriors run i’ve read half of that was a hell of a ride, tons of ultimate comics, and a bunch of indies I haven’t read but are probably great. A wordy weirdo and i’m convinced the second coming of grant morrison, and I hope one day the two work together on something tha’ts equal parts weird and amazing.

The morrison comparison is also apt as both came into the X-Men at a time when the x-men badly needed them: Just like Hickman morrison had to deal with a largely stagnant x-men and changed them to fit the times. And yes unsuprisngly i’ll also be covering morrisons run, warts and all, and it’s also one of my faviorite comics of all time. However Hickman was given a huge advtange his spirtiual predecessor, and really few comics writers EVER have gotten: full control of the x-men line.  Unlike morrison who wasn’t even allowed to use certain characters despite writing the main fucking x-book, Hickman got full creative control: full say in the direction of the story, full say in who came on board and to let them pitch whatever they wanted to do. And honestly it’s an apporach that’s not only reovlutionarly but makes the books FEEL like their actually occuring around the same time. Sure their all still seperate entities, but it DOES feel like one coheisive universe. Contrastingly with the avengers Black Panther’s solo has had him on a year long sojurn in space, before returning to earth.. while also running the avengers over in jason aaron’s run and having his own spinoff team, without any fucking clue as to when intergalactic empire of wakanda takes place in relation to everything else. Tony Stark is currently just taking back both his own damn name and the iron man name in his own book, but is also a major player in avengers, and empyre with no mention of his seeming drunken spiral (itw as a ploy) or arno taking up the armor and I feel these issues rather than the neglect the x-men once had are why krakoa’s impact isn’t being felt more in other titles. I’m not saying don’t let books do their own thing, but I am saying let them have fucking consequences and weight instead of just acting like one isn’t happening or at the very least have a character be absent for an arc so you can fit the other stories into continuity easier. As X-Men’s shown it dosen’t stifle inovation and hell even immortal hulk easily fit into no road home with a fucking note saying “this takes place before x issue” it’s not that hard.  This advantage was likely part of Hickman’s terms for coming back. See the x-men were the one thing at marvel he never got to do. The Gillieon and Aaron runs and Bendis runs meant the spot simply wasn’t open and by the time he was leaving it was clear marvel wanted to bury the x-men not praise them, so his ideas had no run. But the X-Men were what got Jonathan into comics. A shocking fact I learned at last years comic con, during which most of the dawn of x titles were revealed, was he WASN’T a fantastic four or avengers fan as a kid, not hating them but like me with the avengers for some time, not really caring about them. But with both runs, he did his homework, read as much as possible, and BECAME a fan, and it shows as both runs show a deep love for both marvel and the teams present. With X-Men they were his dream, his golden goose, his windmill, he just never was in the right place at the right time... but with Marvel needing his starpower and creativity and having nothing to loose with the x-men and badly needing a big run to hlep keep intrest in the x-men till the new movies, he finally was. So seeing the company needed him and he could get his dream and the control he needed, while dc had just taken bendis, didn’t need him and until very recently was ran by a moron, his choice to come back to marvel instead of go to dc as he’s admitted, was obvious. And it ended up being the right one. House and Powers of x were massive creative and commerical hits and the following titles have all been mostly praised. The new direction has been a boon for the franchise,k the fans and marvel.  So being a fan of this direction, as you can tell by the massive intro, to give my thoughts on each book so far: what I think their doing right, where some went wrong etc, since I’d rather wait another year or so befor ediving into these and let some more of hickman’s plans and future story hints spread throughout his books pay off first. WIth that all out of the way it’’s time for a deep dive of x.So grab some plant based snacks, your x-shaped helmets, and your krakoan coffee, it’s time to finally get into hickman’s era of x-men. 

HOUSE OF X AND POWERS OF X The opening salvo and just with two mini series that are one, though why he DIDN’T just have them be one big mini series I genuinely do not know, probably to justify having two diffrent artists to carry the load, is an utter masterpiece. Plain and simple. Let’s get the status quo the series set up out of the way so I can dig into it more: Magento and Xavier were revealed to have been working together for years behind the scenes.. with Moira Mactaggert, one of my favoirite x characters who the series changes utterly and forever. See instead of being the one human who consitantly is on mutants side and one of the x-men’s staunchest allies who sadly hadn’t been resusrected in 20 fucking years, she was a mutant herself, her ablility being reincarnation.. and thus had lived through 9 of her 10 lives seeing mutantkind always loose so told xavier and magneto about this in the hopes of breaking the wheel and letting mutantkind live this time.  However hickman , while revealing the alliance does brilliantly still make it work in continuity for me: it’s clear from moira’s notes in one issue, as house and powers and any following titles love having charts or text based sections that I feel give the comics a unique flavor and really help boost most issues, that Charles optimism she was trying to break him of and faith in humanity took years to fully shatter: he plotted and schemed with her to protect his species but it was clear he probably felt it woudln’t be necessary that humanity would prove her wrong.. and by this series it’s clear, no they haven’t changed, the majority of them just want to genocide mutants and have tried again and again and again while the rest who don’t necessarily want it, paticuarlly the superheroes did nothing while Magneto chaffed against her after the whole “alter his infant self after he was deaged by a mutant he made into a baby to be more pacificsitc which naturally pissed him off when that wore off”. Yes that’s a thing that actually happened pre and post retcons it’s why a survivor of the holocaust is , while not a YOUNG man, still healthy and vibrant. It’s a clever way to not undermine those stories while still telling this one and this retcon is a move I like as unlike most retcons it’s both there to tell a good story and excuted in a way that outside of moira dosen’t undermine anything. The Moira retcon I was and to a degree still am mixed on. While the new version of her is brilliant, creative and intresting and I can’t wait to see what happens with her next time she shows up, I do mourn the old as the x-men had few human allies and now their only big one is now a mutant herself, but it IS in service of a really damn good narraitive and the twist that the bad futures presented were in fact other lives of moira was brilliant, and it’s nice to see SOMETHING done with her. I’d rather something that i have a small problem with lead to really great things and be worth the sacrifice of her former character, than just changing things because “fuck it I want to do this and their letting me do this’ as a lot of retcons tend to be. Hickman’s story needs moira and her cycle of defeat to truly soar to the heights it’s reaching, and to make Charles and Xavier’s back alley actions make sense, so i’ll glady sacrifce one version of a character that I really liked for another version of her that’s also really good.  The other big swing though I was completley on board for: Hinted at early on by serveral dead mutants being alived, after a sucidie mission against new big bads and mutant hating extermists orchis, who are far better written than other extermists,   it’s revealed just why death has seemingly taken a holiday: the big plan that has been decades in the making for xavier and co? That will reshape mutant kind and required working with mr sinsiter of all people? Revivie all dead mutants.  See in a brilliant reveal Cerebro isn’t just a mutant tracker; It’s a copier, copying their essecnes reaguarly and storing them for later, updating them every so often and thus meaning any who died can come back. Why it took Chuck so long to do this is also explained as he needed 5 specific mutant power sets to do it and thus had to wait till they had everything they needed: Goldballs, yes goldballs, spits out his giant golden balls, phrasing, which hickman in an insane and awesome turn revealed to be EGGS. Yes EGGS. Proteus, Moira’s son and former villian whose now pacificed since this body cloning process means he has an infnite suply of xavier bodies to burn through and thus isn’t killing people, warps reality to mamke the eggs viable. Elixir, a healer whose been through some shit the poor guy,gives the eggs , once injected with the mutant in questions dna via syringe because of course, life, and Tempus, goldballs former classmate fellow bendis creation and mistress of time, speeds it up a bit so they don’t have to wait a good few decades for some mutants to rerez. The fifth that makes all this possible is hope summers, mutant messiah and adopted daughter of cable returned to promence once more, whose power is revealed to be power maniulation and thus can boost their powers to the degree neded for this. it’s a BRILLIANT turn that not only undoes all the pointless deaths mutants have undergone, but changes the game: Genocide is now near impossible, as humanity has no idea bout any of htis, and instead of mutant lives going down, they can only go once.. as one man once put it...

And as an x-men fan having watched characters I love die again and again for stupid reasons, especially int he placeholder run right before house of x, this was so satsifying. Everyone the x-men had lost, every character I loved who was gone and forgotten.. they were back or would be back.  And thanks to Krakoa they were thriving: By giving mutantkind a homeland instead of a headquarters, a nation given to one of their own because he demanded itbasically, or an island fortress designed to give a dying species refuge, they have a goregous sentient island (I’ve always loved krakoa for the record though I wonder what happened to his clone son), with abundant food, teleporting gates across the world to visit wherever they like or live in the various worldwide habitats if they please, and peace and security they’ve neve rknown. No more being woken up to get to a panic room because a sentienl attacked. No more having religious maniacs blow up busses containing your tine. No more having the vast majority of the superhero community do nothing as a fucking plauge cloud wipes out your species. Anything apporaching krakoa now has hundreds of the most powerful beings alive defending all mutants.. and that includes the worst of the worst, all given amntesty.. but they must tow the line or else be given a fate worse than death. After years of pain and suffering and misery mutantkind is free safe and happy. They still have to fight to get the rest of their kind out of racist hands and to saftey, the fight’s not over.. but now the odds are in mutantkinds favor. It’s paradise.  And yet this mini, and this whole run dosen’t run from tough issues; The mutants are now isolationists and only mutants are allowed on krakoa itself.. on the one hand this is a bad idelogy and potentially dangerous, instead of fighting for harmony fighting for my land alone.. but it’s also see why Mutantkind has taken to it. The X-Men have tried for at the least a decade in universe and at the most and most likely 15 years to live in harmony, fight for mankind and make peace with them.. and only a small chunk has acutally tried to help them with that. The other large fraction? They either build death machines to try and wipe out all mutants, and in the case of Cassandra NOva who while not a human is still a racist genocidal bitch, SUCCEED in wiping out a large chunk, or do nothing while mutantkind suffers.  The series forces you to think about the implications that marvel comics themselves previous ignored: That with all the superheros in this world who arent mutants.. more often than not htey’ve done fuck all when terrible shit happens. When Genosha died, not a one asked the x-men what happened or tried to hunt down those responsible. When Decemation happened, the avengers were more concerned with helping the x-men cover it up than helping them move on and did nothing as the goverment made xavier’s into a reservation, even after regrestration happened and the goverment had more heroes than ever to spare to helping them. When the T-Mist happened years later instead of stopping terrigin or asking the inhumans to stop it for the good of another race, the rest of the heroes just did fuck all. Sure the avengers were on a budget and the ff were asbent, but there were enough heroes in the world still and enough teams to do something about it and only the ones with mutants on them did!. IT’s hard to say “well you shoudln’t exclude them”.. when the rest of superhero kind has been subtly doing it their whole lives.  But it dosen’t shy away from the claims of racial superiority the isoaltion or the fact the x-men basically sued for nationhood by making requiring recognizing their nation hood the price for trading for their life saving and extending, world changing drugs, which you would still need to buy. There’s other issues, one that i’ll get to in a moment as it was only revealed in x-men. Various characters, Corsair in issue one of the ongoing, the fincial summit in issue 4 and the ff both in house of x #1 and ff/x-men, all question this and some of the ethics. Hickman brilliantly decides instead of just painting the x-men as absolute moral rights, to show their new nation warts and all: the genuine good their doing and trying to do but also the price they have to pay for it and the mistakes they may be making. And the compromise necessary to build a nation. It’s all chiling, compelling shit that’s even more releveant in a time when bigotry is piling up like crazy. Both house and x-men, which i’ll get to in a second, ask questions with no easy answers and it makes them a compelling read.  Also compelling is the two mini series use of flashbacks: The two previous moira timelines, which we learn are just that as we go, are compelling with the apoclaypse timeline having loveable heroes were are heartbroken to see die in the struggle, while the last timeline seemingly sees the mutants turn as bad as the humans.. only to peel back a layer at the end and reveal humans are still very much the real monsters, and them evolving via machine is a threat to mutant kind's natural evolution. It was a good story twist and of course there’s FAR more to dig into in both books, and I defintely will at some point in the future as I said. But there’s tons of great ideas here: Sinsiter not only being a mutant but a reluctant ally, the same of apocalyspe, the heavy questions I got into above, the idea of machines being mutants greatest threat which makes a ton of sense, and the various ones I already went into. I can’t gush about this book enough, but since this is already long enough i’m trying. The point is both mini series are great and how you do a self contianed event perfectlY plenty of consequence, plenty of scope but enough character and brilliant ideas and a FUCK TON of quotable and iconic lines, all blend into one of the very best series i’ve ever read. And lead directly into..

X-Men I talked about a lot of what this book represents above as it’s a direct continuation of the above, but the book on it’s own is still something diffrent. while it continues setting things up, playing with the new toybox hickman set up, and asking the tough questions, x-men does it in a diffrent way. House and Powers bounce around through time while all telling one huge story and one huge bundle of setup for this status quo.  X-Men instead is a bunch of single issues. It’s still a ton of setup, though with enough payoff to house and powers that it at least so far hasn’t become tedious, especailly since hickman specifically has plans for all of it and has shown in the past he’s a long game man when it comes to storytelling, but through more action packed stories that, with the exception of mistque’s spotlight issue so far, have one shared element: Cyclops, aka Scott Summers, who as grand captain of krakoa is the nation’s ruling council’s go to guy for missions and who he himself can form any team he once for any mission.  Cyclops, like the x-men hadn’t been treated well for years; Various characters lambasted him after the phoenix force drove him mad and lead to him killing charles xavier, and before that his run as leader of utopia, not helped by x-force painting him as a cold heartless dickweed, had him forced to make questionable decisions that made fans turn agains thim despite the hard position he was in. But now with the burden of absolute leadership of mutantkind in other hands, HIckman writes scott beautifully and has restored him to his proper place.  WIth Xavier taking over as absolute leader of mutantkind and his race no longer hanging by a thread for the first time in years scott can relax and ENJOY himself. As the first issue shows he has everything he ever could have possibly wanted: A healthy marriage with Jean again, and an open one at that with him free to still see emma and Jean openly seeing Logan. Logan himself no longer trying to murder scott for his mistakes or kill his teenage self due to bad writing, but being his best friend again and also living with him and presumibly having threeways because they have connected bedrooms and of course jean would want both at once. Maybe they also just fuck each other sometimes again the details haven’t exactly been clear but it’d explain the tension disappearing. Maybe the schism would’ve ended quicker if Cyclops and Wolverine just fucked each other after children of the atom. Hey not every question is a deep personal one on krakoa sometimesm it’s just “Are these two fucking and could it have solved things faster in the past if they did?”. Also I almost forgot to mention, and added this near the end of writing this, in additoin to everything else scott now lives ON THE FUCKING MOON, on the blue area with a breathable atompshere, on a moon house with his family and fuckbuddy and Vulcan’s buddys. It’s fucking amazing. But moving back to other things scott’s gotten besides logan’s wang up his butt, as seen in issue one thanks to the gates his dad can now visit anytime, his brothers live with him with Vulcan going from genocidal dickweed to weirdo thanks to his experinces between his “death’ and this series, and he’s just. happy. And as a leader he takes the x-men on thrilling missions: the series combines action with character and worldbuilding and it is great.  The worldbuilding part has been tremendous; we’ve seen new foes in the returning children of the vault and horticulture, aka what if the golden girls were tv ma, and also plant based  supervillians plotting a better future for mankind that krakoa’s drugs clash with. We’ve seen nimrod creeping close, charles and magneto not playing ball with mystique start to backfire, the return of krakoa’s lost love, and in my faviorite arc, we’ve seen broo, one of my faviorite x-people and intellegent brood, eat an egg and thus become god emperor of the brood, not only giving the vicious race a chance to reform but giving the x-men a huge advatange in space, doubeldby events we’ll get to in a second.  And biggest of all we saw the crucible: Since those depwoered by the decimation can get power back by dying again, and to prevent overworking the five with mass sucidies krakoa came up with a nasty solution,: earning resurection via ritual combat. And like the above there aren’t easy answers to this: mass sucidie isn’t better or faster, but having mutatns forced to EARN repowering by dying brutally isn’t a great solution either and is kind of sick. And it also opens up questions about ressurectoin that Nightcrawler feels made need reegion to answer htem. It’s again good heavy instreating stuff.  We also got my faviorite issue #4 where the x-men go to a fincial summit, and while security detail cyclops and gorgon fight off hired goons...

Xavier, Magneto and Apocalypse discuss with world leaders about the implications of krakoa’s policys, with Magneto not hiding his love of flexing his superiority. And Charles ends the confrence, after it’s revealed one hired them in an utterly masterful moment: Taking off his helmet to reveal no this is charles, this is him and that even after they tried assintating him he has and always will love humanity he’s just sick of being treated like crap and suffering for doing it and his people suffering for it and he won’t tolerate this sort of shit again. See it for yourself it’s an absolute triumph:

 It’s a great scene. Overall an utterly great title that really keeps the momentum moving and I feel is only setting up for even more things.. the only real issue is that A) the title’s been slower at coming out than the other dawn of x titles, though in the case of the empyre tie in’s it’s not hteir fault but the rest sure as shit are, and B) that it has mostly been just setup but it’s been good enough and enjoyable enough and I feel payoff is coming, so I truly don’t care. At long last we have a main x-men  book that’s not only fantastic but uttterly engaging and I read most issues multiple times. An utter slam dunk

Giant Sized X-Men: This one is incomplete, so I can’t fully say what the full picture is.. but for the three released so far it’s a mixed bag, though the art in all three is gorgeous as Hickman brought on the best artists in the buisness but it’s telling that while New Mutants bellow had issues that bugged me but was still kinda fun, and the above havem y utter priase I nearly forgot to include these issues. None of them are bad and all have gorgeous art as I said, these are some of the best in the buisness, they feel padded. These were supposed to be annuals, but when they decided to change this to one shots.. they shoudl’ve just made them regular length instead, as there simply isn’t enough story here to fill them and so far only Davis’ issue has both had huge setup (both revealing doug’s fusion with warlock is a secret for some reason and that he is indeed still fully alive and revealing what happened to the x-mansion), and due to Davis background as a writer/artist the pacing to fill one issue and even then it could’ve been trimmed. Not bad and I don’t fault the artists for not being used to being writer/artists or having to do so while also conforming to a larger narriative which likely didn’t help or in the third one’s case having to take over for someone else entirely, but it’s , while not bad no ton par with the two above books and I expect better from hickman. 

New Mutants (HIckman’s Issues)  I’ll cover Brisson’s issues next time as they feel like a diffrent run entirely, but New Mutants was.. a disapointment. I was utterly pumped for this title going in being a huge fan of the team thanks to finally reading the claremont and sikenwitz run and before that re-reading abnett and lannings utterly great run and hey jonathan hickman who’d already done gangbusters was writing it! It had a great roster! 

And it starreed one of hickman’s faviorite mutants and one he’d taken a shine to on avengers, and one of my faviorite superheros, Roberto DeCosta, aka Sunspot. On Avengers hickman took Roberto , already a decent character and made him amazing. He was still rich, young and a playboy as ever.. but he used said wealth and his love of fun wisely. When undercover at an AIM casino instead fo throw down, he offers the agents a free day of partying and gambling on his huge dime, then puts them on payroll as his undercover agents. So to recap Roberto DeCosta won the avengers two valuable double agents in what at the time was one of their biggest threats.. by buying them tons of beer and gambling and presumibly hookers. And later got the loyatly of the rest of AIM through these guys, and when Steve found out tony betrayed him and went off hte deep end hunting him instead of stopping the end of the goddamn world, TOOK OVER AIM HIMSELF IN COMBAT WITH THE AIM SUPREME, and then formed his own avengers. 

Literally. He got his own avengers team, most of which left after the apocalypse but he simply found younger and hungrier replacements, and aim.. with blackjack and hookers. The man is a legend. And knowing Roberto if hookers were actually involved he probably treated them with respect and overpayed them because he’s a class act. Then under Al Ewing’s mighty pen, Roberto not only formed another avengers team since most of the avengers he formed to stop the end of the world were busy elsewhere, of young and great avengers, while dying of the aformentioned death cloud, but became an utterly brilliant chessmaster, only failing ONCE becaue of hydra cap getting into his head while AIM was working for the us goverment towards the end as the USAvengers. And yes that’s a real team. It’s as insane and beautiful as it sounds. And his new avengers once fought american kaiju, a godzilla with a flag painted on it chaning usa. Al Ewing is the best and I love him. But he also became a master stratigest and schemer with schemes within schemes within schemes, his crowning one being faking his own death and using his fake funeral to clear out any remaning enimies in AIm, and only quitting AIM to keep it out of goverment hands and in the hands of a trusted friend. He was and still is one of the best avengers there ever was and ever will be.  But here, as the new mutants go on a road trip to get sam? He’s a fucking dumbass who hires the worst space laywer possible, only gets off trial because Sam and his wife save them, glad they weren’t broken up by the way,  and is utterly useless most of the time. It’s like HIckman forgot the last part of his run.. granted time runs out isn’t very good but still, that wasn’t a good thing to forget and like Hickman wants to ignore ewing’s work for no damn reason, even though Ewing did great things with Roberto and kept him relevant when marvel was choking the x-men to death. It’s fucking embrassing and disapointing to see.  The rest of the New Mutants aren’t much better mostly being happy but also not really acting like themselves, with only mondo really standing out since he gets great moments and hasn’t done anything in a while. And Doug, who I negelcted to mention above is one of my faviorite mutants and thanks to being krakoa’s primary method of commuincation, is now one of krakoa’s most important mutants, has a seat at the council with krakoa, and weirdly has his best friend warlock hiding on his arm for reasons that haven’t been explained yet. In Short doug went from beign forgotten to being used awesomely again. Roberto instead of getting the same is set back as a character and ends the arc deciding to stay in space because he misses sam, and will likely become third in his marriage i’m sure, and wants to bone deathbird, x-men villian and frequent shiar usuper. But while rahne actually being happy is a good sight to behold they , except Dani, really dont’ do much. Though Magik gets a fucking amazing scene where she asks the various assasians sent ot kill them if they want to make out , not only revealing she’s bi, but that she’d prefer that to killing them all but does so when they dumbly refuse .. I mean seriously who, whose not in a relationship that’s open or way older than her, not take her up on that?  The plot their thrust into isnt’ great either, mostly just more setup but not present as well as in x-men about Gladiator giving the shiar empire to xavier’s daughter.. yes charles has a daughter that was created from his and his ex wife lilandra, whose still dead’s dna, and letting DEATHBIRD Of all people teach her instead of his damn self. Xandra taking over isn’t a terrible idea it’s just handeld poorly. It just feels disapointing.. like hickman WANTS to do a JLI style book here but the combination of him only doing one arc and not really wanting to write the characters as they should be, an issue that only pops up here and in the new mutants cameo during x-men proper and not for doug ever, that makes it fall falt.. I mean there are utterly great moments like the above, and hte image i used to lead off their just stifled by misusing roberto and everyone else. 

But overall hickman’s works on x-men  are fucking great, intresting and engaging. I’ve read the issues a ton and will again. One small mistep dosen’t take away from all the large good he’s done and he’s made the franchise feel alive again and hopefully the MCU take on it will take after this run, as it’d be a great way to break from the endless xavier vs magneto battles of the fox universe. So yeah overall 2 great books and a thankfully short misfire, HIckman’s on top. And next time we’ll see who he picked to help him carry the x banner home to us all, and who did well with it and whose stumbled a bit as part two delves into the rest of the dawn of x. For now subscribe for more comics stuff as I plan to get back on that, including I hope a restrospective on the fox era x-men sometime soon, animation reviews, and more fun stuff. And until then, courage. 

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, KYLIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of RICHARD III. Admin Cas: You put it best, Kylie—Ronan is a Machiavel through and through, but he’s also far more than that. He’s known suffering, more intimately than most, yet rather than allow it to shape him, wear him down, he sharpened it into a weapon. Yet again, you captured everything critical to Ronan’s character, from his scorn and ambition to his insatiability, his pride, his precision. Your writing itself is just enchanting to read, and we’re so thrilled that you’ve returned to us. We cannot wait to have you grace our dashes with your deliciously scheming and delightfully avid Ronan once more! Please review the CHECKLIST and send your account in within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Kylie

Age | 26

Preferred Pronouns | She / Her

Activity Level | 5-6. I like to be on at least once every day, and manage some type of content.

Timezone | MST

How did you find the rp?  | i missed it :)

Current/Past RP Accounts | ronanivarsson.tumblr.com

IN CHARACTER

Character | Richard III, Ronan Ivarsson

What drew you to this character? |

ableism tw

there is something that will always be intriguing about the machinations of a machiavel, that will always be attractive, always be intriguing, which is what first drew me to ronan. however, i think it’s difficult, and dangerous, to label him as simply a manipulator, a prince in search of power and a throne–to me, he’s far deeper, far more layered than that. from the moment he was born, life put ronan ivarsson in a position to know nothing apart from weakness–he was born a pawn for his parents to play against one another, only for his father to stroll past the room where the board sat, to overturn the table and cast the pieces to the floor. he would remain forever trapped in the ivarsson villa, unwanted and loathed, never strong enough to fight for himself, to run from the horrible cesspool that made him, that twisted the hearts of the people that lived there–he should have been no better than the monster that frankenstein abandoned, the wife that wailed and gnashed, locked in the attic of the victorian manor house, a creature doomed to shadows for the whole of his life.

but ronan refused that life–and that’s the endlessly fascinating thing about him. he is a machiavel that should have never come into being, that tore the pages from the book and cut out only the passages that were useful to him. god reached down to him and showed him the path, the divine right of kings, and ronan, with his halting steps, with the black and poisonous blood that runs through his veins, walks it with precision, with the intent to wrestle the crown from the hand of the divine himself.

ronan took his emptiness and weaponized it, refused the shadows and instead forged them by his own hands into a kind of armor–look upon that which you would scorn, he says as he strides through verona a kind of caesar, a kind of richard, a lurching colossus, and kneel. i love that about him, but the thing that really got me in the end, is that he cannot successfully hide the weaknesses which still plague him–he ignored machiavelli’s greatest advice, that to be feared would better serve the prince than to be loved. he fell in love, with a beautiful mystery of a man. he still feels his pulse race when the cameras all come to train on his face, when he has every citizen of verona eating like lambs out of the palm of his hand. he looks at the only surviving gallo twin, and he feels something gentle curl around the corners of his mouth like perfumed smoke. he is cold, but he is not yet corpse.

it remains to be seen if that will be his downfall, in a place that so easily tears the heart from the chest cavity, if it takes a man or a monster to wear the crown, when the battles are finished.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

KINGS IT MAKES GODS, AND MEANER CREATURES KINGS

So far the path to the Montagues has been messy and bloody for Ronan, has left a trail of bodies behind him. Since he is now nothing more than a soldier, where such behavior, such wanton ambition won’t be tolerated, I want to see how he adapts his methods. Will he continue to kill whoever stands in his way, because such is the divine right every king should possess? Or will he learn to temper himself, to hide such business in the shadows? In the same vein, I would love to explore how much he’s capable of tolerating such a thing being asked of him–how long will it be before he bites the hand that feeds him? Until his patience for following orders starts to wear thin, and the divinity that guides him becomes impatient, insatiable?

A WORD THAT COWARDS USE

Love is an indulgence that Ronan knows he should cast aside, and yet he finds himself locked in a kind of constant craving. It’s the one thing in his life he’s never been able to buy for himself, never been able to take from the hands of someone else–so how does a man who so easily casts aside life’s gentler aspects, learn such an art? Is it part of his need for validation, for recognition from the public that would so easily cast him aside and speak vitriol towards him if he were anyone else? Or is it something deeper, something that would actually salve some of the wounds he’s carried his entire life? So far, he’s only known it as mistake, a wound that despite being stitched closed continues to hemorrhage blood–but then he looks at a man like Santino Gallo, and sees the potential for something that almost feels gentle. If such a thing were to make itself available to him, would he open himself up to it? Or would he make the decision once and for all to remove the cursed organ that beats in his chest?

EVERY TALE CONDEMNS ME FOR VILLAIN

Ronan holds no particular loyalty to the Montagues–he could have easily bent the knee to Cosimo Capulet, had the man approached him first. The Montagues are simply a means to an end, and I could see him being willing to sell them out if the right prize were offered to him. I want to see him be treacherous, silver tongued, the consummate politician, and flirt with the temptation of easy success. Would his pride keep him from taking such a way to a promotion, to an accolade? Would he really be willing to betray those few who he deems worthy enough for his time or glance? I could also see it working in the reverse–that perhaps he could use his talents to win recruits or information for the Montagues.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Of course! It’s probably what he deserves!

IN DEPTH

Please choose between the interview or the para sample (or both, if you like!)

ONE.

It begins with a question, posed by a handsome mouth, sealed with fingertips that come to gently lift the hem of ronan’s shirt, to curl themselves around the curve of ronan’s hipbone.

“Tell me your favorite place, in all of Verona, and take me there right now.”

He grins, like a knife slowly being pulled from its soft leather sheath–all glint and sharp edge. He wraps his fingers around the young man’s neck, digs his nails into the short hairs there, until he gets a hiss that could either indicate pleasure, or pain, for his efforts. He coos, clicks his tongue and placates his plaything with the tender caress of lips against well muscled shoulder, neck. The young man makes another noise, something guttural and unprompted from the back of his throat, and ronan laughs.

It’s almost too easy–like digging his fingers into the scruff of a wild cat, expecting teeth and claws, only to have it purr in response. He contemplates disposing of him then and there with a clean cut across the throat that bares for him–but to leave empty handed, simply because there was no challenge in it, no cunning required, would surely be wasteful, return him to a state of excruciating boredom and restlessness.

So he hums in mock thoughtfulness, sinks his teeth into skin and licks over his mark, before he speaks. “As beautiful as you would look, pressed up against the brick of the arena, all of the blood and bravado of a gladiator roaring through you, I hardly see the need to travel so far away. Perhaps the library, would be a better location for such things as you desire?”

There it is, he thinks to himself, as the muscle pressed up against him comes to fall still for no more than a fraction of a second. All of the confirmation he needs, so unwittingly given. He hopes the rest of the Montague stock aren’t so impossibly dimwitted, or easily swayed by the promise of a more carnal method of persuasion. Where would the fun in that be?

He takes squared off chin in hand and kisses the soldato one last time, before the blood spills onto Ronan’s chest and subsequently the ground underneath his feet. He becomes the first of them to kneel.

TWO.

Lucien rolls off of the top of him, and Ronan immediately feels the muscles in his hands twitch, send the command to his shoulders to reach out, keep the seemingly endless expanse of pale skin from ever travelling where he cannot touch. Unfortunately for the memory of meat and tendon that has never properly obeyed his command anyway, ronan shuts the notion down in favor of watching–it’s all he feels he can do, when it comes to the man who now leans against the railing of the yacht. Watch, in the hopes that an answer of some sort may reveal itself–or perhaps even the question, that Ronan knows he should ask and yet cannot find the language to form. Strange, to be so willingly robbed of his best weapon.

He suspects Lucien is aware of where Ronan’s eyes come to rest, most of the time, and chooses not to comment. Perhaps he even enjoys it–being caught but not captured in the jaws of the predator, having the power to command him to wait, to stay until he is willing to give. If Ronan were to be honest with himself, in a way that has never been his policy, he would have to admit that he enjoys it as well–being compelled, by force of nothing more than want, wrapped in the candy coating of desire and attraction.

The man turns, and the breeze rustles his dark hair across his forehead. his eyes are hidden behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses, but Ronan can imagine the familiar spark of heat, of mischief, that flickers there like a matchstick flame. “You live like this every day, Councilman?” He drawls, one corner of his mouth drawn up into a smirk.

Ronan grins and leans his head back with a pleased sigh, crooks a finger to indicate that Lucien should come close again, should let Ronan show him just how decadent things can truly get, and shrugs one shoulder casually. “Occasionally there is work involved, but given the right incentive i’d be willing to throw the whole thing away. Perhaps you have an offer you’d like to make towards that end, Doctor?”

He doesn’t open his eyes when the deck chair bends with the weight of another, when lips are pressed against his own. He just slides his hands down each delicate rib bone, digs his fingers into flesh already marked with purple and blue blossoms that Ronan had planted there the night before, and tries to communicate without ever speaking, that this is only the beginning for the two of them. That when he’s finished with the work, he’ll ravish this man on a throne made of gold, decorated with jewels and the head of any who would dare oppose them.

THREE.

His sponsor is a weak-willed man, that reminds Ronan far too much of his own father–or at the very least, the passing glimpses and vitriol laced stories of his father that had fallen carelessly from his mother’s lips, after one too many glasses of wine. He comes upon ronan walking through the hallways of the library, wraps an arm around his shoulders as if to prove he is unafraid of touching a thing so malformed, so clearly repulsive to the eyes of others, and he smiles. “You have done well so far, Ronan.” he says, personably, as such men who would describe themselves as such always are. “Tell me, no big mistakes to report of? I won’t hold them against you too harshly–there is always room to grow, to learn, in a business such as this.”

He resists the urge to speak through gritted teeth that he is in the middle of running for office, and not some schoolboy in need of guidance and direction–instead his eyes catch on the silver band that sits, gleaming as the day it was put there, on his left hand. “I don’t believe in mistakes, signore.” He says, more quietly than he had intended. He bites down hard on his bottom lip, before schooling his expression into something more neutral, that feels less to him like exposing an open wound to the particles of a dust storm. “I make choices, and I live with their consequences–for better, or for worse.”

FOUR.

He stabs the man a month later, sinks his blade into the heart up to the hilt.

Someone Ronan thinks might be the capobastone comes to stand next to him, after the news of the dead Montague being found on the steps of the cathedral begins to circulate, and rests a hand on his shoulder. He resolutely does not think about breaking the bones in each of his fingers, one by one, for such a presumption. “You’ve handled yourself admirably, in the wake of such a personal blow.” He says, with an exhale of breath that causes the skin on Ronan’s neck to crawl. “It is the most difficult thing asked of us, to continue to live after another is gone.”

Ronan bites down hard on his bottom lip, by all appearances to staunch the overwhelming feelings of grief that must clearly threaten to spill forth from him, but in reality to stifle the laugh that threatens to give him away at such a ridiculous statement. He forces a slight tremble in his hands, as he brings them to scrub at the back of his eyes. “He taught me so much in such a short time–made me a better soldato.” A sharp inhale, shake of his head. “It is hard to believe, that I will never get the chance to thank him for such a kindness.”

The man nods his head in understanding, and squeezes, despite the pain that radiates all the way to the tips of Ronan’s fingers. He clenches his teeth. “We have watched you, the work you have done. And while it has at times been sloppy, and reckless, Don Montague believes that in the wake of Richard’s unfortunate demise, you should step up to take his place.”

He can taste it, in the back of his throat then. Blood, mixed with saliva, something distinctly more honeyed. Divinity, in all of its raw form–he half expects to open his mouth and see it spool out before him like ribbon, blinding everyone else in the room, rendering them nothing more than ash for him to step over as he walks towards the crown, the throne, the destiny that has been planned for him since he was nothing more than a young boy. He touches the hand on his shoulder and half expects it to be pulled away and burned. “I would be honored, signore, to serve the Don in such a way.”

FIVE.

“Tell me councilman,” the reporter shouts from the crowd, phone recorder thrust into the air like some sort of trophy or other holy object. “What are your thoughts concerning the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?��

He shakes his head, schools his face into an expression that is solemn, serious–the grim line of an Alexander or a Caesar, his heart bleeding into the streets of the city he has built, for the people who populate it and offer him devotions for their continued success and survival. “I think there will be no winners, in this conflict. And that whoever remains standing, will prove himself to be the more cruel, the more bloodthirsty, the more willing to do unspeakable acts in order to secure his own power–an honor i do not wish on even my worst enemy.”

And why would he? It is an honor he wishes for himself alone.

Extras: N/A

[thecorteztwins]

I love how you care so much about obscure characters. Who is your favorite underrated female X-men character

Awww thank you! I love bringing them love, so it makes me really happy for you to say that! My absolute fave is Haven, but I read “faves” as plural so I wrote down a bunch...my faves can bounce around a bit but here’s a list of some of them! It’s under a cut because it’s long, I really like to explain who these gals are and why I like them so much! Warning, there is some description of pretty horrendous sexism and racism for some of these, since nothing makes me latch on to a woman harder than wanting to defend her from the SHITTY THINGS WRITERS DID TO HER! I kinda wrote novels for Haven and Madelyne, then I did links to previous things I’ve written about others. This is a LOT, I’m so sorry, I just love sharing!! Thank you for asking!!

THE BIG ONES Basically my consistent mega-faves I’m always ready to talk about! RADHA “HAVEN” DASTOOR - This lady has been at the top of my list for over five years and counting! She just really resonated with me on a deep level. She’s this mysterious woman who turns up in X-Factor for seven issues, and though she’s very benevolent towards them (even when they attack her) she is technically a villain, as she’s trying to destroy 3/4 of the world to bring about the Mahapralaya, a sort of Hindu apocalypse that will bring about an age of peace and end to suffering. So, her motives are very compassionate, and as it turns out, the horrible things she’s trying to do aren’t actually her fault. She’s being posessed by the Adversary, a demon of the highest order and an entity of cosmic evil. Or more specifically, her unborn child is. See, Haven was a really, really good woman. She was not a mutant, but she was sensitive to the pain and suffering of others from an early age, and she devoted her life to helping the poor and needy. She’s incredibly rich, so she could have helped just from afar, but instead she not only used her wealth to help others, she herself went out in the streets to attend to the poor and sick with her own hands. She bathed lepers, cradled dying babies, everything. She actually GOT the name “Haven” from a children’s hospital that she renovated, the kids started calling HER that instead. What a villain, huh? It all goes super wrong when she fell in love with a guy. After he took her virginity, he took off, leaving her pregnant. This was in 1970s India, and she was a very a religious woman, she felt INTENSE shame and horrible guilt and sunk into a deep depression, now living on the streets herself she was so broken. And then...then her fetus started talking to her. Yeah, see, technically she wasn’t posessed by the Adversary, her unborn child was. It incubated in her for twenty years, corrupting her mind, making her its pawn, all basically for its own amusement til it could be reborn into the world, killing her. And the guy who knocked her up? Got off scott-free. Basically she had sex ONE time and she had to be punished for it by being stripped of her agency, forced to betray everything she loved and believed, and then finally killed in the mud while a Marvel deity stood over and told her how she brought this on herself. It’s a slut-shaming Victorian morality tale of how no matter how good a person you are, you’re tainted forever if you violate purity culture just once, and we’re expected to AGREE with this narrative as readers. It’s sick. It gets even worse in how X-Factor treats her. She first appears RESCUING Polaris from government agents who are trying to kill her, because despite WORKING for the government at this time (X-Factor was a government team during this period) Polaris’s energy signature matched Magneto’s. Haven is the one who saved Polaris by teleporting her away. Polaris was distrustful and threatened Haven. Haven tried to talk her down, but also opened her arms and said that if Polaris truly did not believe her, then she would not resist. Polaris decided to “give trust a try” but I also truly believe that if Lorna had attacked her, Haven indeed would have let her. Haven is a human but the Adversary gave her INCREDIBLE power, she could WIPE PEOPLE FROM EXISTENCE by THINKING ABOUT IT, but she was a pacifist every step of the way, even as a villain. X-Factor would REPEATEDLY attack her later...she NEVER retaliated. The worst thing she did was, once they kept on attacking her, she just kinda put them in her pocket dimension as a time-out, but didn’t hurt them any. I really don’t think she COULD, possessed or not. Anyway, after meeting Lorna, she ‘ports Lorna back to safety and leaves her be. She is interested in recruiting Lorna and the rest of X-Factor to her cause, but she’s very moral about it, and never uses situations like these as leverage; for instance, when she heals Rahne of the Genoshan bonding process and gives her back her free will and her ability to resume her fully human form, Rahne is ECSTATIC and ready to do ANYTHING for her. And rather than exploit this, Haven just hugs her and tells her that her joy is thanks enough. Again, what a villain! Anyway, it turns out this Haven lady is also an activist! She’s big on promoting peace between warring groups (which I think makes it very significant that she’s an Indian character from Mumbai, then Bombay, who was created in 1992, the same year when Hindu/Muslim tensions in India resulted in the Bombay Bombings and subsequent riots, and she indeed mentions Hindu/Muslim tensions in her pro-peace speeches) and she emphasizes accepting MUTANTS in particular. It is very rare we see humans who are pro-mutant, though they had happened before, but this is the first time we see a human who is pro-mutant WITHOUT any affiliation or friendship with the X-men, and who is a public figure who seems to have some real social power---she’s a best-selling author, lecturer, and apparently her being a very wealthy woman has made some very wealthy people listen to her. She is basically the perfect ally for mutants if you take out the demon-possessed part, and I always found this super interesting and wish more had been done with it. So, she’s speaking at Brahma Hall (Brahma, notably, is the Hindu creator god) and...THIS happens. It’s...it’s really distressing. I’m sure it’s bad enough in its own time, but reading it NOW, in a post-9/11 world, a world where POC are routinely slaughtered by law enforcement (they always were but social media has made us more aware) it’s chilling. And we, the reader, are supposed to see X-Factor as JUSTIFIED in how they treat this unarmed, non-threatening, apparently-human-for-all-they-know woman who is promoting peace. Because no matter how nice she is, the US government says she’s an evil terrorist, and the US government turns out to be right! Yay, America! This might be a good time to mention Haven was the first Hindu character in X-Men comics, and the philosophy that the Adversary is manipulating her with comes directly from Hindu cosmology, and that is WAY IFFY to say THE LEAST. Holy xenophobia, Batman! And in an X-MEN comic of ALL PLACES! Oh yeah, and our good guys also describe her beliefs as “New Age psychobabble” and make fun of her temple decor as "very 60s" when BOTH ARE FROM HINDUISM, WHITE USA HIPPIES DID NOT INVENT IT, YOU IGNORANT SHITS So anyway, Haven’s very interesting to me as someone who is so deeply pacifistic and compassionate, that even when she’s being steered by a literal demon that has been talking in her womb for 20 years, she’s still someone who is perpetually polite, who won’t hurt the HEROES even when they want to hurt her, who SURRENDERS during a FIGHT in order to HEAL ONE OF THEM, and...who ends up with an abruptly aborted arc where she’s killed by her own “child” and victim-blamed in her last moments by Roma, the Omniversal Guardian Goddess and foe/counterpart of the Adversary. It’s made all the more tragic by the fact that Haven’s last pleas to Roma weren’t for herself, but for Roma to stop the Adversary, as she had realized now what her “child” really was. Even in her final moments, Haven was thinking of others, of the world. It’s just....awful to me that a character as interesting and unique as she was was thrown away like that, and that she was treated in such a sexist, racist, xenophobic way by both the HEROES and the story itself. I stan Haven 4 life. MADELYNE PRYOR- She’s maybe not “obscure” per se, I think most X-Men readers have a basic understanding of who she is, but the problem is that “basic” is not enough. What most people know is ”she’s Jean Grey’s evil clone” and some might know that “she was married to Scott Summers and went evil when he ditched her for Jean”. But that’s so far from the whole story, and it really does Madelyne a disservice, and canon has done her ENOUGH disservice already. Madelyne was originally created by Chris Claremont to truly be just a human woman who looked just like the dead Jean, with whom Scott would settle down and have a kid, and leave the X-Men. It’s a pretty nonsensical notion, the idea that this woman just happens to look exactly like Jean and meet Scott and fall in love, but this was his plan, he has confirmed it. And like...that’s pretty sexist from the start, in that she’s very literally created as a replacement for Jean on a narrative level, there’s NO REASON that she should have to look exactly like Scott’s dead ex besides as a way for Scott to still “get” Jean in a way. But Maddie rises above that swiftly by being a super strong, super cool character in her own right. She’s a pilot, she’s fearless, she’s adventurous, she’s got a mean right hook, and she’s got a tragic backstory when she crashed her plane and cost the lives of over three hundred passengers. She gets involved with Scott and by extension the X-Men, and she holds her own despite having no powers. Weird fact, this means that some of the X-Men, like Rogue, met Madelyne before they ever met Jean. She also gets a cool story where she gained healing powers, and the reason her powers specifically took the form of healing is because they were what she wanted them to be. She’s a good person, and also a total badass. Then, Jean came back, and the Powers That Be wanted her back together with Scott. But Scott was married to Madelyne. Rather than have them get a divorce or something, it was decided Madelyne had to be very literally demonized and then murdered, because we can’t just have two women co-exist, no, they must be divided into a “good” woman and a “bad” woman and fight over a man. Actual quote from Chris Claremont: “ Then, unfortunately, Jean was resurrected, Scott dumps his wife and kid and goes back to the old girlfriend. So it not only destroys Scott's character as a hero and as a decent human being it creates an untenable structural situation: what do we do with Madelyne and the kid? ... So ultimately the resolution was: turn her into the Goblin Queen and kill her off.” So, after something like EIGHT YEARS of being a character unto herself, Madelyne gets retconned as actually having been Jean’s clone all along! Which, okay, does make sense, certainly more sense than ‘this woman just happens to look EXACTLY like Jean and hook up with Jean’s ex” but then the REASON that Sinister cloned her...is nothing to do with Maddie or Jean themselves. Madelyne’s creation isn’t ABOUT her the way so many other clone/created-in-a-lab type stories are, like Laura Kinney. She wasn’t important. She was made literally just to have a baby with Scott, the BABY is what’s important. She is REPEATEDLY called a “brood mare” in fact (a female horse used specifically for breeding) So basically, her only value, her only REASON for existing, is her reproductive capacity. A lot of people think that Madelyne either found out she was a clone and went crazy-evil, or she went crazy-evil when Scott went back to Jean. That’s not what happened. Madelyne goes through a long, long series of arduous tragedies that piece by piece dehumanize and violate and traumatize her, and even then she doesn’t become evil until she’s TRICKED into being infected with demonic energy. Being “evil” was NEVER her choice, and everyone forgets that. See, first Scott walked out on her and the baby. Then, the Marauders attacked her, nearly killed her, and stole her baby and left her for dead in a coma for months. When she woke up, her baby was still missing, and she rejoined the X-Men to help them while they also helped search for her son. She sacrificed her LIFE alongside them to defeat the Adversary (yes, the same one Haven was pregnant with!) and then was resurrected with them too by Roma (yes, same Roma). She continued to work with the X-Men, despite the fact Scott had left her, and used her tech expertise to be the X-Men’s computer gal in Australia. When she saw X-Factor on one of the news monitors, including Scott with Jean, she realized why he’d abandoned her. She punched the screen and the explosion knocked her unconscious. While she was knocked out and dreaming, the demon Sym invaded her mind showed her a few different reflections of things she could be, one of which was a demonic reflection of herself. She chose that one, saying “What the heck, it’s only a dream.” And then Sym infected her with demonic energy. So she literally JUST found out her husband left her and their now-missing son for another woman, and she thinks she’s dreaming so yeah she picks the idea of being a demon IN THE CONTEXT OF A DREAM, A FUCKING FANTASY, WHEN SHE’S GOT EVERY RIGHT TO BE PISSED and oh well now you’re gonna be evil for real honey you don’t get a choice. Serves you right for being angry even for a moment, woman! But even then, she didn’t instantly turn evil. Horrible shit had already happened to her, but she still held out…so of course, more shit happened to her. While she and the X-Men were trying to help an escapee from Genosha (which was still enslaving mutants at that point) she ended up captured herself, and since their readings indicated she was not quite human (though what exactly she was, they didn’t know) they tried to put her through the “mutate bonding process” that would enslave her too. As a result, her latent psychic powers finally manifest, and she telekinetically explodes the place. From there, we start seeing big hints that something is going really wrong with Maddie, she seduces Havok and she’s entered into a secret bargain with the demon N’astrih, who promised to help her find her still-missing son (whom she still wanted to find and save at that point because she was still mostly herself) and of course, that bargain transformed her into the Goblyn Queen. After this transformation, though, she STILL had not gone past the point of no return. That didn’t happen until she met Sinister and she found out the truth of her origins—-not only was she a clone of Jean Grey physically, the few memories that she had also came from Jean, and her emotions from Scott had been PROGRAMMED into her (meaning she never had a choice at all in the man she loved) and it was all to be a brood mare, to produce a child with him. Only then did she go off the deep end completely, and agreed to N’astrih’s plan to sacrifice her own son (who he now found and gave to her, as this was his plan all along) because it was the absolute BIGGEST fuck you she could give to Sinister and to Cyclops. And like, yes, that’s evil, but given at that point she was not only magically infected/corrupted with demon energy AND insane with trauma that had been building up for months if not YEARS of development…she basically had a better excuse than ANYONE in all this who was also corrupted by Inferno. Yet she’s the one who doesn’t get a break. The unfairness is just…staggering, really. Even her death isn’t without indignity, violation, and depersonalization---she tries to commit a murder suicide, linking her mind with Jean’s and killing herself so that Jean will be dragged down into death with her. Jean, who really is the kindest to Maddie, urges Maddie to live instead, but Maddie’s last words are “not in the same world as you”. Jean survives. Maddie does not. And then...Jean takes Maddie’s memories and psyche into herself. It’s meant as beautiful, but to me it’s a heinous violation. Maddie wanted nothing more than be APART from Jean, so much so she KILLED HERSELF, and now Jean has made her a part of her forever, and we’re meant to applaud this? It’s DISGUSTING. Madelyne gets resurrected in the 1990s by Nate Grey, but it turns out that was an accident on his part, his mind was subconsciously seeking...Jean Grey, of course. And we he finds out he’s the one who brought her back to life, HE TRIES TO KILL HER. Jean stops him, but it’s no wonder to me that poor Maddie runs to the arms of Sebastian Shaw...who, of all people, actually treats her as an individual from the get-go and ends up being a pretty good boyfriend to her. Never even tries to use her in any evil schemes, it’s crazy. Madelyne has come back and died again and come back a few times since then, but she’s never really been “Maddie” again, whether it was brave adventurous Badass Normal pilot Maddie who just wanted to help people, or the bitter, conflicted, morally grey Maddie of the 90s. No, she’s just....she’s not even Goblyn Queen anymore, she lacks the pathos, she’s just this sexy evil misogynist caricature of herself and I hate it. I really love Madelyne Pryor. She came into this crazy world as a normal human, and when she got pulled into superhero shenanigans she held her own. She was a badass, she was a spitfire, she had a huge heart. She deserves a lot better than just being a gross Sexy Evil Lady with no personality, especially since she no longer has the whole “demonically possessed” issue going on. It’s just stupid and sexist at this point. I personally love original 80s Maddie, and also 90s Maddie where like...this shit has happened to her and she’s darker for it now, and understandably so, but she’s also still HER. Like, she leaves Sebastian Shaw not because he ever treated her badly, which he did not, but because he was doing things that could hurt OTHER PEOPLE, and that was where she drew the line. She was an enemy to the X-Men now or at least really hated them, she killed Threnody for bringing up her past as being “bred to breed”, but she also wasn’t about to be with a man who would risk the lives of millions of innocent people with his schemes, no matter how well he treated her, no matter if he was the one man who ever saw her for HER. Real Maddie is INTERESTING and Real Maddie is GOOD and I want Real Maddie back so she can call everyone on their shit and then go off and live her best life instead of being eternally dragged back into pointless villainy by authors who can’t think of anything better! MEGGAN PUCEANU - As with Madelyne, she’s maybe not UNKNOWN per se, I mean she’s one of the lead characters of Excalibur, but I also don’t think she’s an A-lister at all either. I’ve written about her HERE and HERE and her relationship dynamics with Brian Braddock/Captain Britain HERE so I feel like those links will probably be better than another novel like I did for Haven and Maddie! CATSEYE AKA SHARON SMITH - The deaths of all the Hellions were a tragedy, but Catseye is the one I found most interesting and with the most potential! I’ve written about her HERE and the Hellions in general HERE with a segment on her. She’s just so cute and innocent and INTERESTING, I want to know so much more about how she behaves, how she perceives the world and interact with others, how she gets on with her teammates, how she reacts this and that, I just love her! MINDMELD - Appears for only one issue, is arguably the first transgender mutant in Marvel, and also a total badass who I think is really sexy. I write more about her HERE and HERE. HONORABLE MENTIONS I’m not freaking out over these girls AS MUCH or AS CONSISTENTLY but they all have a place in my heart!! Really all it takes is someone MENTIONING them to get me revved up all over again!

THRENODY AKA MELODY JACOBS- Another Marvel gal who can’t catch a break, when she’s remembered by anyone at all. I wrote about her HERE prior to her most recent return in Deadpool, then HERE about said return. I just really, really want Threnody to be happy. She’s suffered enough. Admittedly, that could be said for most women on this list, maybe all of them. GOSAMYR- Wrote about her HERE! Most people who know of her at all typically hate her but I find her extremely interesting. She’s like everything people HATE about women, every stereotype of “toxic femininity”, but then this is explained as part of her culture and biology, and this is, to her, what is normal, and how is she to KNOW that everyone acts nuts around her when she has no basis for knowing how they act when she’s NOT around? She interests me in the questions and dilemmas she raises, and I just kinda have a thing for women we’re supposed to hate because of their feminine traits. KWANNON- The Japanese woman whose body Betsy Braddock had for years. I was very excited when she was brought back to life and given her own series, I wanted for her at last to be a CHARACTER with her own PERSONALITY and LIFE that wasn’t just an excuse to give a white woman a ninja makeover, and then I got...Fallen Angels. And she’s just...she’s literally just 90s Psylocke. I was very disappointed. But I still like Kwannon HERSELF in terms of potential, and now that she’s back maybe she’ll become a real person sooner or later. SATURNYNE AND SAT-YR-9: Wrote about them HERE! I really like Sat-Yr-9 as a villain (I especially enjoyed her short stint in the Hellfire Club as White Queen with Viper as her lieutenant and not-so-subtle girlfriend) and I like Saturnyne as a sort of celestial bureaucrat, someone who isn’t a force of good or evil but a force of ORDER, like the opposite of “embodiment of chaos” type characters. MURMUR AKA ARLETTE TRUFFEAU: I have not written about her before but HERE IS HER WIKI ARTICLE. As with Gossamyr, she seems like the “sexy shallow slut we’re supposed to dislike” type, so of course I like her. BIANCA LANEIGE- A Generation X villain who bore a grudge against Emma Frost from her days in the Hellfire Club, I wrote about her HERE. She’s pretty comedic as a bad guy, but that’s not a bad thing! I’d like to see her around again one day, either as silly as ever or made more serious. LIFEGUARD: Wrote about here HERE. She was in the first X-Men graphic novel that I bought and I’ve always had a soft spot for her since. I really liked that she didn’t give a shit when she found out who her bio-father was, it’s such a refreshing reaction compared to the usual “what if I’m just like my father/I can’t believe I’m adopted/etc” angst. Comparatively, she’s super upset about her Shi’ar lineage, because that actually altered her INTERNAL self when it manifested, she started seeing everyone around her as PREY and I reckon that’s pretty distressing for someone like her. Always wanted to see her come back; she’s in the background at a Krakoa party! SILHOUETTE CHORD: Wrote about her HERE and HERE. I just like her I guess! She’s maybe not obscure per se since she’s a main cast member of The New Warriors, but I’ve never really seen her get any attention. BLACK MAMBA AKA TANYA SEALY: Wrote about her HERE! THE ASP AKA CLEOPATRA NEFERTITI: Wrote about her HERE! SKEIN AKA SYBIL DVORAK: Wrote about her HERE and HERE! She was on the “Woman Warriors” team with Black Mamba and Asp, and I like the idea they just hang out as friends a lot!! ANACONDA AKA BLANCHE “BLONDIE” SITZINSKI: Wrote about her HERE! I just want her to hug me...really, really hard :) SHARADA DARTHRI: A minor villain that shows up during the “all female X-Men” team era in...2013, I think? Wrote about her HERE. DRAGONFLY AKA VERONICA DULTRY: Wrote about her HERE MANTIS : Despite the fact that she’s very well-known for her film version in Guardians of the Galaxy, most people don’t seem to know much at all about her comics version even though she’s been an Avengers member since the 70s. Wrote about her HERE and HERE and HERE, someone else writes about her HERE PENDING These are characters that I have not had the chance to personally read up on myself yet, but I want to! Their names link to their Marvel wiki articles! TOPAZ FIREBIRD SNOWBIRD SILVERCLAW There are honestly countless others I’m probably not remembering but this is a good handful I think! Oh, yeah, and also...COOTER. Because her name is COOTER oh my god.

[diaryofasupergroupie]

Retirement Doesn’t Exist

The trouble is with being a retired groupie the scene and the industry always tries to seduce you back into its clutches. Once you know what it is to have such talented, beautiful people and have them know you it isn’t easy to stay away forever. They show you an entirely different world where bills, nine to five jobs and commitment doesn’t exist. How could anyone ever leave that entirely behind? My relationships with the bands and crew are intoxicating but those I made with the other girls are made of steel.

My absolutely beautiful and loyal friend M is perfect and unapologetically a groupie devoted to the scene and her love of music. For those who don’t know she is as American as it is possible to be, big hair and bigger personality. She came from the South and was as sweet as it was possible to be. She has always been over the top and that was part of her charm. When she decided she would see in November with a party not only did I get roped into attending despite my apparent retirement I also got roped into making banners and setting the table the night before.

I was tired when I walked inside and counting the numerous places I wanted to be besides there – my bed was top of the list. I convinced myself I was past all of this and far too old for it all but when I saw all these people who were so wonderful and all knew me I knew I was in the right place. I love the noise that buzzes just under the surface when you see a guitarist or singer or drummer who thousands of people love yet when they see you they wrap their arms around you and whisper they have missed you in your ear.

By chance a band I know well were there, they are American and are probably in the top three funniest bands I have come across since being in the scene. I have a long history with the lead singer and we haven’t always liked each other as we do now. For those who have been following me for a while you will remember K from the time I threw a drink all over him and was escorted out of the venue by security. But I nicknamed him K because out of all of the men I have met he is probably the only person who is like me the most. We clashed massively and I didn’t understand that when he was being a complete arse he was actually joking and being funny. This is rather surprising considering my sense of humour matches his exactly so you would like to think I would have been able to notice this. But no, instead I hated him with a passion and was banned from all his gigs for years before he let me borrow his hair straighteners at a festival and fast forward a year and I was on tour with them in Europe and tattooing his cock. It’s funny how things happen.

K opened his arms for me and kissed my cheek while he got us some drinks and told me all about his tour that was starting. At any party he was always watched by a gaggle of new girls who had somehow gained entry. He was too good looking for his own good, he had such an angelic face. I had one up on the other girls though, they hadn’t seen him with no pants on. We got drinks and he sat me down in a secluded little corner of the party where we were hidden away. We had a drunken hook up in the summer but it was nothing more than one night and we hadn’t kept in close contact really. K had sent me a naughty picture of himself several days ago but I had shot him down and told him it all looked rather sad.

This is where I try to tell you that being a groupie isn’t all about sex. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. I have been kept around a lot longer than some of the others and that is because a pretty face, good body and fun sex will only last you so long. Some may disagree and perhaps it’s the counselling degree in me but I believe that these musicians just want to be listened to. They are normal people who need to be listened to and by doing that I have somehow been kept afloat while bands and girls alike have gone under. K told me what had happened and how rough things had been. He told me a lot but I just listened and held his hand and told him I understood and everything was going to be okay. I saw a change in him, he was a lot more chaotic and scattered. All I could do was let him know I care and sometimes that is enough.

I’m careful how I write the next part of my evening for various reasons. Not everything is crystal clear and I don’t want to glamorise or promote binge drinking. I am very open about the fact I have struggled with alcohol dependence and to some extent I still do. The amount I drank isn’t something I want to promote so we shall say a lot and leave it there. I stumbled across another good friend of mine who for a long time worked as part of the crew of some of my top favourites. What I write next is some kind of assumption because as I said it is a little blurry. The next morning I awoke to see I attempted to call my honorary brother A five times and seven hundred pounds poorer. He had recently invited me to a party and gig he was throwing in America and I suppose in my drunken state I decided I just had to go and book a flight.

What I do remember is at one point in the night I had decided that at the top of my priorities was to dance with M to Bohemian Rhapsody on the stairs – to which I promptly fell down the stairs. The level of drunk I was must have been astounding because I pride myself at having a high tolerance and providing I’m not drinking and taking drugs at the same time I am a true English groupie who has been well trained to hold their drink since falling into a lake at a park while drunk on cheap vodka at 14. Everyone seemed to be worried about me which I can only assume convinced me I must be injured. Somehow I was convinced enough to let K take me to the hospital for my non-existent broken leg which was all very sweet but also very unnecessary.

I shall skip the whole dramatics of it all and K being extremely concerned about me. After an hour of sitting in A&E on a busy Saturday night I finally came to my senses that I was in fact fine and just had a flair for the dramatics. K wasn’t exactly pleased but I did try to sell it that I had made a full recovery apparently. Instead I took K to a fish and chip shop and we ate food together. I remember watching him and realising how sad he was. He was hurting and reaching out to anyone who would even pretend to care. I held his hand and smiled to him while he was so close to sinking lower and lower. K, he whispered and I felt chills, this time is make or break for me, this tour has to go well but I can’t do it without the drugs. I told him he could but he didn’t believe me. I’m not trying to tell everyone how his life is so hard because he has money and a lot of it and people love him but circumstance and sadness aren’t always linked. He should be fantastic and I’m sure some days he is. But some days that doesn’t matter and I think that is okay too.

We went back with each other and I felt I really understood him. Some men you meet in the scene and they’re there for a good time and a night with them is something you tell your friends about because they are exciting and it all seems like a whirlwind. But then there are others – like K – who just want to be held. The next morning I had to leave for work and he had to leave for a gig. But in some kind of twist I got a call from his tour manager telling me that he had finalised the arrangements and he was sending a car for M and myself. In my drunken state I had agreed to come on tour with him and his band – this sudden invitation was pretty typical of him and I had gone on tour for two weeks in Europe with him in the same way. Sometimes these things happen and you just have to go along with them. The truth is no matter how many times I say I am retired there is something alluring about the music, the travelling and the not growing up mind-set. Perhaps I am having a crisis of some kind where I’m trying to relive my youth. But I am in love with it and if I have the opportunity to travel and be with these people who are so so talented then I will, each and every time.      

[sainathsen-blog]

How to Build an Awesome eCommerce App? A Complete Guide to Developing a Mobile Application

A Complete Guide to build an eCommerce App

Shopping Spree, Shopaholic, Fashionista, and what not! All thanks to Social Media Platforms for bringing in the fact that people love to shop; irrespective of the time; irrespective of the place. With the touch of digitization, the entire brick and mortar commerce arena revamped itself into eCommerce, wherein people started shopping online with the very ease provided by their devices, that too in the very comfort of their home.

eCommerce website, what once was a revolution has been commemorated by eCommerce mobile application. Indeed! eCommerce mobile apps with the slogan, “Shop on-the-go” are reigning over the smart users and their smartphones today. Amazon, the biggest player in the eCommerce game along with its counterfeits Alibaba, Myntra, Snapdeal, have become an integral part of people while malls and supermarkets are being lowered to “Selfie zones”, “window shopping fads”, and “Check-in” hangouts.

Who would want to spare the precious time of their weekends, standing in long queues at the billing counter, waiting for their turn while France is playing against Croatia! Well, with eCommerce mobile app, all they could do is shop and yet never miss the game. So, an eCommerce app is an awesome game-changer in so many different ways.

That’s eCommerce mobile app for you!

Who doesn’t have a dream of running a successful business with customers crowded all over the shop? eCommerce mobile app can be your dream come true business as you can target the customers from across the world and you don’t have to travel to market for your brand; that’s an added advantage.

Recently, there has been a great rise in the demand to build an eCommerce mobile app. Every single day, startups are getting into the eCommerce business and all they target is mobile-first, website-second!

Cutting it short, if you are an aspiring eCommerce businessman, you have landed on the right page. Let me tell you, developing an eCommerce mobile app is not a very big deal today, especially with the nascent of tools and technologies playing around.

And the future of eCommerce, AI and VR technologies are decked up to renovate the eCommerce ecosystem completely with unforeseen features like virtual changing room. Must say, even the future of eCommerce is way too bright and now is the time you should seriously consider building your very own eCommerce mobile app.

To start with, it is important that you define your eCommerce business goals with utmost clarity. What type of eCommerce mobile app do you want to launch your business – Android or iOS? What is your product going to be? Who is your target audience? Which brands are you targeting?

Once this is sorted, you can move to the next important step which involves defining the right features for your eCommerce Mobile Application.

Features are the reflection of your USP. That is going to make all the difference for your target audience, when it comes to an eCommerce app. Basically, they are but the deciding factors of whether your revenue grows or flows away to your competitors. Hence, it is important to plan the features for developing your eCommerce mobile app. Below is a list of features extracted from the successful eCommerce Mobile App and you cannot afford to miss any of these:

A Simpler Registration Process

As easy as this sounds, it can be an exhaustive one for your customers and they might simply choose to uninstall the app with pages and pages of information to fill in. Who’s got time anyways! Ensure an easy registration process. With everybody having a Social Media Account today, you can enable sign up and login with two clicks at maximum and your customer is on-board! Plus, an extra brownie point for learning their preferences through their digital age on their Social Media Accounts!

Supports Multiple Payment Options

Let’s say, you have a big fat customer who mostly shops online and visits your eCommerce mobile app to give it a try. After dumping his stuff into the cart, he realizes you do not have the payment option that he prefers. You just lost a big customer. And many more who prefers the payment option that your app does not offer.

To play safer and smarter as an eCommerce businessman, you have to open the doors to the most popular payment methods. Credit card, debit card, net banking, and eWallets being at the top, ensure that you subtly push your customers towards using your app’s in-built wallet.

Push Notifications

Your customers have their needs and want, you have the required supply to fulfill them but how to bridge this gap of communication? Push notification is the key!

Push Notification is one of the most important features that map the success of an e-commerce mobile app. They enhance the customer engagement as it keeps them informed about the referral, discounts, sales, promotions, and offers, to keep them coming back for more. This, in turn, provides you with the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell for getting you better profits.

Social Media Integration

Don’t tell me that you do not want ALL the attention of your customers. You even want their social media time. And your demand is justified considering the fact that you are running a business.

Not only for one-tap login, Social Media integration will ensure that your eCommerce mobile app is right in front of your customers wherever they are; chatting on Facebook, Tweeting on Twitter, or pinning on Pinterest. This will also help them easily share your special discounts on their social media accounts. What better than word-of-mouth marketing and user-generated content! An eCommerce app that taps the power of social integration works – It’s as simple as that when it comes to an application of eCommerce.

Complete Synchronization

You have your eCommerce website and an eCommerce mobile app. You have come up with a very exciting feature that is sure to strike a chord with your targeted audience and take their buying experience to the next level. But you have to launch this feature before your competitor does. You want better time-to-market but with edits to be made in both the portals separately, time seems to have stopped. What would you do?

Speed up the process by getting our eCommerce mobile app synchronized with the website. Save plenty of time, beat the competition, and increase your sales.

Google Analytics

It’s just been a while since you launched your eCommerce business. You think you are faring well so far. But keeping your gut feeling aside, how do you gauge what is working for and against your business?

Ok, like every time, Google has the answer you want with Google analytics. Optimize the use of Google analytics to find out how your customers are really finding to be on your mobile app with the help of real-time data. Know which product of yours need a different packaging, what offers can make an appealing combo, and which demography is resonating well to your business, all this with Google analytics. Your application of eCommerce will definitely grow from strength to strength.

Review & Rating

Don’t shy away from the fear of getting bad reviews and poor product ratings. A wise businessman is the one who is open to both criticism and learning.

Empower your customers to review and rate your app and its features. The possibility is, the products that you are offering are nowhere in the wish list of your buyers and reviews will help you achieve this sense of realization. Again, after improvements do not delete the negative feedbacks, rather thank them and show what steps you have taken. This will make them feel important and who knows they will stick to your brand like forever!

Wishlist Button

It’s the end of the month. The salary is one week away and your customers don’t want to miss out on what they have recently found out. They want to buy it, not now but definitely after a week. Let wish list play its share.

Wishlist, at times, can be a savior to your sales. It helps your customers to save products they wish to buy later. Plus, you get an edge over knowing the preferences of your buyer and personalized offers and SOLD!

Easy Checkout

All the enthusiasm and energy of your customers is gone in making their choices and adding items to cart. Now’s the tough part – the payment!

To ensure that they do not abandon the cart, build your checkout process as easy as possible. Help them save their card and e-wallet details and take them faster through the payment gateways. As said earlier, your customers hate to wait in the billing queue, don’t let them wait with virtual billing system as well!

There are myriads of eCommerce mobile apps already in the market. You need to stand out from the crowd and these features will help you make a move. If you follow a customer-first approach by providing them the utmost ease to shop, you will easily be able to retain your customers. On the other hand, when your competitor has an amazing experience to offer in reference to features, your customers will be inclined to them.

In this situation, the smart way is to build an eCommerce mobile app with the right features and avoid any fluff that could possibly take away your customer engagement rate. Make them feel that you understand the issues they face while shopping with other mobile app and the solution. Give them the value of the time, energy, and money they spend using your mobile application. This is the only important key to win over your customers and has an upper hand over your competitors.

Things to Take Care of While Building an eCommerce Mobile App

Right from conceptualization of what USP of your eCommerce Mobile app is going to be to launch a Beta Version, there are many important aspects that are to be taken care of.

With time, experience, and analytical skills, I have collated a complete guide with elaborated information on the important aspects of app development.  

If you are a first-timer, you might feel the hardship right from the beginning. You might even end up scraping the entire business idea. But do not drop yet. We are here to help.

The basics of any eCommerce mobile app remain the same. All you need to add is that pinch of your branding and the spark of your USP to make your business stand out and stay at the top in the Google search engine results. Some of the fundamentals that you should consider basic while building an eCommerce mobile app are:

· Easy navigation

· UI/UX with right features

· Visual appeal

· Brands integration if at all you are into multi-store eCommerce

· Inventory management

Here is an ideal step-by-step process for creating and launching an eCommerce Mobile app that you should follow in your trail to run a successful eCommerce business:

Keep in mind your eCommerce business goal even before you begin with the development process. Know what uniqueness you bring in or what issue you are going to solve for your customers with your eCommerce business. Do not go “all in” with the launch of your business. You need to know what works and what doesn’t. You need to know your real-time buyers. You need to know what gender you should target. You need to know a lot! Start small but concrete. Make expansion only when your business is ready. Get help from talents and app development experts to upgrade your business version. Take a look at this guide to outsource the best app developers.

In the urge to following the ABCs of your eCommerce business, do not forget the M for Marketing. You need to reach out to your potential customers to help them reach out to you.

Attract them with onboarding referrals, convert them with your USP, close your sales by keeping them engaged, and delight them with information about the products they need and your offer.

Ultimately, it all depends on the quality of development. Hire experts that are passionate about their work as much as you are about your dream eCommerce business. Retain them by providing them the perks and incentives that are best in the industry.

Trustable Ecommerce App Development Companies

Key Aspects for eCommerce App Development

Before proceeding any further, let me give you a detailed glimpse of the key aspects to focus on while developing an eCommerce mobile app:

Market Analysis and Buyer Persona:

The basis of an eCommerce mobile app development lies in determining the buyer persona for your business. Ask yourself, “ Who are you selling your products to?” Accordingly, carry out your research for your target audience. Analyze the behavior and patterns of your target audience. Know their digital age and their likes & dislikes. This will help you create your app as relatable as possible for them.

Know your Competitors:

Extract a list of your competitors. Create a separate list of what they are into and what makes them the obvious choice for the buyers. Do not duplicate their features or their business model, rather research well about the business model and make the maximum out of your analysis.

Choosing Technology:

Know the ins and outs of your business so as to decide on the technology to create your eCommerce mobile app. Keep an eye on the budget of development, know your inventory and select the CMS, database, framework, and most importantly the backend and frontend languages to code your app.

If you want a better time to market, go for the hybrid app, if you want sustainability, go for a native one. Similarly, you have to decide whether you want to launch an Android app, an iOS app or both at the same time, keeping in mind the device usage of your target audience for designing your application of eCommerce.

UI and UX Design:

Give your brand the voice it deserves by soothing color schemes, appealing visuals, and smooth transitions for your customers from one page to another. Create options for your logo and leverage it to the optimum. That is going to be your business’ identity for your target customers. Play with the subconscious mind of your customers by leveraging smart branding tactics for creating a lasting impression.

Cost of Developing an eCommerce mobile app:

Ultimately, it narrows down to whom you are investing and how much you are investing. Without a doubt, the budget is the front of the mind concern for the app development. To save you from this budget dilemmas, I have created some pointers for you to remember while going forward with app development:

· Features: Whether you want to launch your eCommerce app with MVP, or a mixed bag with MVP and advanced features, or a full-fledged eCommerce mobile app with advanced features.

· Android or iOS? The price tag of iOS is on the higher side, decide what device you want to be primary for your business. You can always scale your business later.

· The low maintenance of expensive backend development or the low budget high maintenance third-party APIs.

· A better time to market with hybrid app development or better sustainability with native app development? Make your choice wisely, you are in the business game for the long run.

Outsourcing the resources have a visible effect on your budget and so you need to be very careful hiring them.

Again, a number cannot be projected with respect to the react native app development as there are variables. However, to be as helpful as I can, I have put down an estimate on the basis of the trends I have witnessed considering the generic app development scenario.

· If we consider the most basic version of the app with only the MVP features and simple UI/UX design, the projected price can go to $60,000 just for development. However, there is very little support and maintenance required.

· If we consider a mixed bag of basic features including a few advanced features, the price an go up to $60,000 to $80,000.

· If we consider the app to be developed with advanced features, then the price can be as high as $80,000 to $120,000.

Outsource Developers for eCommerce Mobile App Development:

On the basis of your scope of work, you would want to outsource resources and skilled developers for building your eCommerce mobile app.

There are many different types of pricing models that you could choose from – time-based, scope based, fixed price and fixed time pricing model, or dedicated resource hiring.

Dedicated Resource-based Hiring

When opting for a dedicated resource based hiring, ensure that you know the scope of work and that you are not paying for an extra resource, when it comes to eCommerce apps.

To develop a basic version of your eCommerce mobile app, you will need –

· UI and UX designer

· 2 – 4Developers

· Quality Assurance Engineer

· Backend Developer

· Project Manager

To develop an advanced version of the eCommerce mobile app, you will need –

· Team Manager/Project Manager

· UI/UX designer

· 3 – 4developers for each platform

· Quality Assurance Engineer

· 2–3 backend developers

· Admin panel developer

After this virtual tour to developing an eCommerce mobile app, are you ready to step into the real world with real hiring of skilled resources for your to-be-real eCommerce mobile app?

Having helped in weighing all the angles of your eCommerce mobile app, we can be the partners in your endeavors with our rich experience worth boosting. We believe in work than words. Have a look at various case studies that are being written every time we faced a new challenge and the creative solution we provided.

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[magog-on-the-march]

How Lorne Lanning re-imagined Abe’s Exoddus as Oddworld: Soulstorm

By Dean Takashi, VentureBeat.com,  MAY 13, 2019 7:15 AM

Under the cut is an interview between Lorne Lanning and GamesBeat regarding the development and gameplay of Soulstorm, as well as the looting/crafting system.

It’s a lengthy but informative read, and has been copied here for the sake of posterity (this stuff disappears all the time).

GamesBeat: Tell me what you’re doing.

Lorne Lanning: Last time we talked was when New and Tasty was just announcing, I think. We were at a GDC. It’s been a while. Since 2008, when we started the business digitally, self-publishing the library–that’s when all the rights had reverted, so it became easier to do that. Steam let us do that. From that, we were getting tens of thousands of dollars from old titles. Abe’s Oddysee was 10 or 11 years old and still selling. That led to us being able to start making things like converting Munch’s Oddysee to PS3. But we were it the organic way, purely from sales.

The sales were always a little bit exceeding our expectations. We didn’t have high expectations, but it was amazing that 11-year-old games were still selling. That led to us being able to get to the point where we made Stranger HD. That got really good Metacritic. We were surprised. It had pretty good sales. Then we got to where we started to be able to spend millions of dollars, and that’s how we got New and Tasty.

New and Tasty then became our largest venture, self-financed, paid for the old way, the business building organically from sales and not borrowing any money or doing publishing deals. New and Tasty moved 3.5 million downloads. That was a surprise. It treated us well and helped us set up ground zero here, with a new distributed development model. New and Tasty was largely done under one development house, with a couple of others coming in to solve various problems. We learned from that and went all cloud-based. We control all the data through many development houses.

Right now we have people in Vancouver, in Seattle, in San Francisco, in San Diego, in Los Angeles, in Washington D.C., in Quebec City, in England, in Scotland, in Ireland, and in Australia. That’s our day. Managing the time zones is pretty fucked. But we’re able to control costs a lot better. It’s operating more like film development, where you set up the company for development and use all contractors. If you want to keep on going, you keep on going. You swell as you need it and thin as it makes sense. That’s the way we’ve been doing it.

It’s tough finding anyone who has the highest bar. It’s easier when we’re getting animation talent, because then we get them from the film industry, or we get them from top-tier experience. Lighting, modeling, rigging tend to go more film, less game. Then you get into level design, you’re really in a hybrid of being able to contract out. Depending on the skill set it’s easier or harder.

Traditional outsourcing companies haven’t really worked for us because they want architectural specs, basically, and then they can function on that. We’re still looking at more of a distributed development team rather than hiring outsourcers. More like contractors who know how to build games versus — if you look at the history of India and China for outsourcing, it’s very, “Tell us exactly what you need and we can get you that.” But if we have to work together to shave cycles or figure out solutions, outsourcing groups get harder.

GamesBeat: How many people do you work with now?

Lanning: When it comes to individuals, right now it’s about 30 on the project. That will be higher eventually. They’re all spread out. At times we’ll scale down and scale up. As we get through the rest of the project we’ll scale up a little, because we have your systems established and code and things like that.

Where we are with it, we started this about three years ago. We told the audience — we’ve had a lot more conversation with the audience on social, since we haven’t been at retail. We said, “If we’re successful with New and Tasty, what would you like us to do next?” They said, “Redo Exoddus the way you did with New and Tasty.” That brought us back to — Exoddus was this emergency game that we had to get done for GT Interactive because we had a hit in 1997 and they needed another hit in 1998. Other games that were supposed to ship for that publisher, like Duke Nukem Forever and Unreal, they all slipped Christmas. Being the one title that delivered for Christmas, that was our curse.

What I had thought was going to happen, I was hoping to have a hit with Abe’s Oddysee and then be able to take a couple of years and build a sequel. It would be this big five-part epic series. We put that on the back of the box. This is the first part of the Quintology. Then we got derailed from that right away because we needed to ship a game in nine months to be a good partner. It changed the story I had intended. Then I felt like the property started to get off course from that initial vision point. You know the history of the industry, the history of Oddworld.

From there, when they said, “Redo Exoddus,” we said, “Huh. We’re not sure if we really have enough money to do a new game.” It’s one thing to reskin and rez things up and re-envision. It’s another thing to do a brand new game, all new everything. We decided to bite the bullet and said, “If we’ll do that, let’s go back to the original vision of the Quintology and focus on what that second game, ideally, was supposed to be. Let’s reboot the idea of that five-part epic, where we’re at number two. If we can do that well, if we can keep the trajectory of Oddworld growing again and get more into the triple-A space where we had been, and get there on our own with the audience’s help, that would be a much different and better existence.”

We started this one about three years ago. We had the legacy of doing New and Tasty on Unity. At the time, Unreal was still a million-dollar engine. We didn’t have the money to throw at that. Unity was basically free. We continued on Unity. That had a lot of legacy code for various reasons. So we started building up, and fortunately Unity started getting better and better. We started pushing Unity in places it hasn’t gone yet. You saw a little clip the other day. All of that was rendered in real time in Unity. It’s not the highest of highlights, but we’re showing a little bit.

We have to be careful about how we’re showing the insights into the single-player story. We need the reviews come release. We’re still a year or more out.

GamesBeat: And your script is basically done?

Lanning: Oh, yeah. We built all the systems. We did a lot of code work. We expanded on what is Abe substantially. We’re riding the latest versions of Unity, so that we can help them to build into their engine the things that facilitate better building of games like this, rather than mobile games. We have a lot of caching, taking advantage of multiprocessor, various thread optimizations that they just weren’t doing because the mobile space wasn’t demanding it. How their portaling data, how they’re caching in and out. A lot of that streaming needed to get better. Various rendering things that needed to get better.

GamesBeat: Is that how you got on stage [at Unity’s event]?

Lanning: Yeah, we caught their attention early on this project. We contacted the CMO and he saw it and kind of flipped out. They’re chomping at the bit to show more. We agreed that we would only show this much, and only if it said sneak peek. It’s not a teaser and it’s not a trailer. We’re trying to be careful with that language so we’re not sending the wrong messages. But it seemed to work, because it’s just that video from the other day on a few channels that have covered it, including ours, but well past a million people have viewed it. That’s a good indication. Better than we’ve done in the past.

From there we’re going to stagger this out across the next year. We’ll try to get it done across the next year. I can’t say exactly when. There’s a lot of new systems in there, a lot of new tuning to do. We need the whole thing running synergistically. We want to do it right. It has to be a great game. But I think we’re in the zone.

GamesBeat: You’ve already been on it for two years?

Lanning: Three. It’s three years in, with another year to go.

GamesBeat: The original took nine months, and this is four years.

Lanning: Right. We’ve just ignored the original. This is a completely new game. It’s what Exoddus was inspired by, but couldn’t be. This gets back to the true inspiration. We’re able to run it better on 21st-century technology and do things I was thinking of before, but we’re probably lucky I didn’t try to do, because I would have shot myself in the foot.

GamesBeat: So a much larger game?

Lanning: Much larger. Probably the biggest game we’ve built. Definitely more sophisticated. This is why we’re going to the crowd. We’re still going to want to get physical deals. We’re still going to want to have promotional partners, various types of partnerships. We just don’t want to be at the typical end of that shortish stick, in terms of — you know how publishing works.

We wanted to take it to the crowd. Really the crowd is what got us here, because it’s the profits that allowed us to build this. It just wound up being more expensive than we expected.

GamesBeat: Does the title mean something?

Lanning: Soulstorm? It’s the essence — it means a lot of things. It’s the essence, the mystery of this one, the Soulstorm Brew. The Brew gets into, what is the Brew? The spoiler is, the Brew is the ultimate employee performance and retainment solution. What it is, it’s an energy drink. You get two a day if you’re an employee and you work in the factories. That’s great. They hype you up for optimal performance, and then to go to sleep they give you a Snoozie at night. Brews and Snoozies.

But the Brews — one of the by-products is, they’re highly flammable, which becomes an advantage. Another is, the mystery of it — what’s happening in this game is, it picks up where the last game left off. A ripple effect in the underground — all these other factories, they know they’re slaves. Think in the outlying parts of China, big factories, factory farms, pharmaceutical companies, whatever. They know they’re screwed. They just don’t have a way out. What happened in the mythos is the success of the destruction of Rupture Farms, Abe causing an uprising that frees the employees, it’s starting to spread the word across the land. Now we have employees starting to flee factories and catch up with the guys responsible for the uprising, trying to find Abe.

As they’re still just trying to keep themselves alive, Abe and the guys, now that they’re free from the farm, they’ve caused a lot of economic damage to a big — it’s like Oscar Mayer just got shut down. Imagine the impact on Wall Street. These guys are on the run and they start encountering more slaves from other factories that have fled to try and find the group that was responsible for the uprising. But all the ones that they find are sick and dying. They don’t understand yet that the Brew is designed so that you’re addicted to it for performance. If you ever try to flee the factory, the withdrawal will kill you in 48 hours. That way you’re not going to make it to the second world and talk to the labor unions and defense attorneys and human rights organizations. They keep them where they products are being built, safe away from the standards of the modern world.

That’s the theme of the game, the theme of the Brew, how the game works. That’s the initial start of it. We wanted to focus on a single-player story game. We know that’s not chasing all the trends, but we built a lot more in, a lot more RPG capability. Abe was always begging for it. Stranger took on a little more it. Here we’re going to do a lot more of it in terms of ways to exploit the environment and empower Abe to have a lot more abilities. He can deal with the world in more interesting ways and be more powerful. We’re turning the Mudokons you’re saving into less like beasts of burden and more like allies with AI mob dynamics, gang dynamics. They can have various benefits as well.

GamesBeat: Politically, you’re still pretty right-wing, then.

Lanning: [laughs] We were always considered pretty severely left. It’s funny. Someone asked me recently, “Are you a socialist?” I said, “Fuck no! My relatives were killed by the Bolsheviks. That’s not going over either.” It’s interesting, our demographic. It’s really wide. It’s misfits, right? Huge LGBT base. We’re big with women.

But sometimes I meet these guys — in England in particular, these big dudes who come up with Abe on their chest, Abe on their shoulders. What the fuck? They look like thugs, like hooligans. There were these twins, two brothers that both looked like MMA fighters, covered in Abe tattoos, and they’re like, “Dude, you don’t know, my brother and I, the shit that used to go down in our household, this is what kept us together. This was the only thing we could be successful at in our life, was playing Abe’s Oddysee. We played it through the most horrific part of our life. It meant the world to us. If we kept on trying, we could succeed.”

I met another guy who had an Elum and an Abe on his asscheeks. He wanted to show them to me. I still can’t figure that out, to this day.

GamesBeat: The new teaser looks nice.

Lanning: We’re investing a lot more in the expression of the characters and the emotional connectivity. We spent more time on the rigging and all that.

If we live long enough and have enough success, we finish the Quintology. This is part two. In that, we’re setting up — you don’t need to have played part one. They’ll stand alone. But we set up Abe’s condition — opening movies are getting shorter. People are trying to dial more for the free-to-play audience. We went the opposite direction. We want an eight-minute opening movie. We dialed in more on Abe’s dilemma, which is he’s waking up to the fact that this game is not over. It’s just beginning for him. His shit is just about to really hit the fan.

I’ll show you the opening movie. This is all rendered in real time in Unity. It’s about 12 hours for a straight playthrough if you’re playing like a speedrunner. Here we’re taking you back to where you’re actually going to begin to play. That’ll be the first screen of the game. In a traditional Oddworld flavor, we do the first screen last. [laughs] That’s where it’ll start, in that burned-down condition. He’s learning the basic moves in a burning-down hideout facility. We wanted to have destructible playing fields and more forces, like liquid, flammable liquid, and fire as true play elements that were more organic and spreadable.

Let’s go to a compilation of some gameplay. One thing we wanted to do — New and Tasty delivered in 2.5D. We were monitoring the audience and asking them about it a lot. What we found was that compared to POV or over the shoulder, they liked being directed through the narrative experience. They liked not having to steer. They liked seeing their character on screen. They liked being able to aim, do whatever they had to do. But it took them out of the traditional — it might not have been looking in the right direction, the camera showing what you should be seeing. They liked those aspects of it.

We focused in on that. We wanted to expand on that with something we call 2.9D. We’re using it as a little marketing hook. We are going into the world. We can be on curved paths around stuff. We can move in full dimensional space. But we keep it on rails, so the play style stays in sync with the evolution of the side-scrolling platform. We dial it up in the dimensions of the world, the feeling of being in the world and how deep the world is. What you’re seeing in the distance is something you’ll come to play, which is also an Oddworld thing, even back in Abe’s Oddysee. We took that a few pumps higher.

This is a compilation of some of the play that’s happening. First, a big change is we wanted to bring more RPG-ish elements. It’s not a real RPG. It’s still an action-adventure platformer. But we wanted to bring in a wallet, an economy, a crafting ability to allow Abe to have what we call a sort of homeless economy, a scavenger’s economy. He finds recycled bottles, bottle caps. He can sift through lockers or get change out of phones, pickpocket sleeping guards. He can cash in things at recycling machines and use that scavenged cash to start buying vending machine products, food products.

Out of the things he’s finding in the world — scraps, wires, paper, dirty rags, things that don’t seem to have much relevance — he can combine them through the crafting system and start making weapons a la the Anarchist’s Cookbook. You’re buying Pepsi and Mentos and putting them together to create your little sticky bomb. In our case it’s Fizzy Pop and Explos. That system allows much greater exploration in the world, much more of a slow-down pace — find, discover, create things with meaningful uses to the player. It gives the player more agency.

The other thing that’s happening, the Mudokons historically — Abe’s always about saving others. He’s an empathetically driven hero. But those others were always really beasts of burden. They had some value. In Munch’s Oddysee it was different. But they were basically hard to get out alive, and that was the challenge. We wanted to give them more agency as well, more power to the player. It’s more like you’re building up your gang. If you’re crafting things that become available in your inventory, you can gift them to your followers and set them to aggressive or passive. They can start fighting and defending for you in a myriad of ways.

That’s what will be happening here. The first thing you’ll run past is vending machines. I’ll speak to that as we play. All of our vending machines are in the light animated look. This is 2.9D. Here I can pickpocket some sleeping slaves. It’s still the same basic controls. Instead of hiding in steam vents and shadows, now you can hide in the lockers, and so can your followers. What you see in the distance, you’ll be playing later. You move through in a more Z way. It has a lot more depth. But you can still play in that classic platformer tradition.

You’ll find a lot of cases in the environment where you can set up industrial-scale accidents that you use as weapons. The Mudokons are armed as well, fighting for you. Extra powers come to Abe if he has followers that give him more benefit, more abilities. Here we’re taking down an end boss on a moving train. We wanted that physics, that overwhelming feeling of little vulnerable characters against a really powerful world, this industrial environment. Abe’s followers can defend him, and he’s the main targeting system. They follow through. We did the effects in all these candy colors because they’re built out of consumer products. We wanted these crazy effects to showcase the abilities.

Then every level has a tallying system, leader boards, and different achievements and badges and karma. There are lots of different ways to play it. We estimate that on this game, people will get their 100-plus hours’ worth, but it’s not like the first playthrough is 100 hours. It’s definitely there to be milked through the systems, though.

We’re running toward the very latest versions of Unity, which means this might crash. If we were sane, we would have locked it off earlier in the development and said, “We’re sticking to this version.” But if we did that we wouldn’t get Unity to be doing features in their source code that we made. Hence, if it crashes, that’s my excuse. [laughs]

We have a new UI system with lots more controls, but everything Abe always did is still there. The rest is built upon that. Every level is self-contained as a single story, with an intro and outro and tally. We’ve done a lot more hint systems in this game. You can turn that on and off depending on your needs as a player. There’s a log for objectives, where you are on missions.

This is more of that 2.D effect. You can see where you will be playing in the world. This is case where we wanted to have environments, particularly in the backgrounds, where you can come in and scope it out and spy around and see what these things are to understand what you’re going to face before you actually face it. This is one of those sniping spots, where we give the user controls to preview the level before engaging. If there are workers in a zone, you have to get them out of there.

In this case your mission is you want to get up and out to terminal 2 and free your guys along the way. The heat really starts picking up. The scavenger economy includes rummaging through these garbage cans. Let me say, you’re about 60 percent into the game here, but with the hints system none of these things have been activated yet, so you’ll see a lot of windows coming up. There’s not as much as that when you play the real thing. Every item is new because this is a fresh playthrough.

He’s picking up seemingly useless things half the time, but they actually have a lot of depth once we start applying them. There are destructible floors, destructible platforms. These things add up. You get a changing playfield based on action. We wanted to have that, so the environments didn’t remain static. Here’s where you go to cash in your recycled bottles and bottle caps. You don’t have enough right now, but you do get some of our cheesy music.

These are vending machines. Each gives you a description of what they do. These are Jawbreakers, and they can be thrown. Lockers can be looted, and you can also hide in them. If I have followers — you see that they drop their hats right away. Now, if Abe goes in a locker, they’ll go in with him. At the same time you get the benefit of — expanded followers equals an ability to loot faster, and also the additional powers they bring.

You get a sense of the scale of these levels and how they operate. We have lots of characters running around. Even off in the distance you can see people operating back there. All of that you’ll play, even when you have huge trains passing in the background that you might see going by. We’ll be playing all the way through that. I’ll come to lockers that I can’t get into, but I can do things like pickpocket the security guards, take whatever he’s got, and get the keys.

As long as I hold the sneak button, all of his moves are quieter. Now I have the key to the locker. You can get that health power-up right there. You have an extra ability in this case, so now let’s look at the inventory system. This is what I just bought. What it does, just as a base model, I can use this to knock guys out when I throw it. We’ll do that real quick. That’ll knock them out, the Jawbreaker, but he’ll wake up in a few minutes. It’s limited, non-lethal. But if I go into the crafting system and take this and add some rubber bands to make it bounce, and some tape that can secure it, I can craft a new thing.

When I get back into the game, now this guy is waking up. Aw, I didn’t get him. But I can do this old trick. I can possess these guys. I have that full round of capabilities. Then I can choose to de-possess him and knock him out or blow him up. That gives you different bad karma or good karma possibilities.

Let me cheat on some stuff to add more cash, some fire extinguishers, some Brews, some Jawbreakers, some Fizzy Pops, some rubber bands, some more tape, general crafting components. Now, these are some of the scenarios where these things — the ammo is sort of puzzle-ish. I have to summon this elevator so I can continue deeper into the level. These guys, who will have a lot more voices and humor in them by the time we release, they’re like, “Not on my watch. Not before 5PM. Not before the bell. Not while I’m here.” He’ll keep sending this shit back.

But if I’m using this, my bouncy Jawbreaker, I can add rubber bands, and each band I add will give a bounce to his capability. This is where it works well for the side-scrolling platformer style. These will go plink-plink and bounce around. If I get it in there, that’s a non-lethal takedown. It could have been lethal.

We spent a lot of time on the camera system so it’s more informative to the player. It has a more choreographed way about it. We’re able to have that sense of gameplay that’s familiar, but expand the dimensions of it with more of a Z and curved entrance into it.

GamesBeat: It’s a little like the latest Trials game. It’s still side-scrolling, but it has more of a Z dimension to it. A train comes at you from that direction.

Lanning: Yeah, we do that too. That’s coming up. With Brew, the thing about Brew is that we wanted to have a really flammable type of force that you could control and manipulate. If I had just a bottle cap, that would provoke a spark here. That’ll start to burn. I can spread this through ceilings, through other areas. At the same time, this is one of the reasons I have fire extinguishers. I can also spray my guys and make them fire-repellent.

I can take my fire extinguisher into the crafting and add some Brew, add a lighter, and add a battery and some wires. That gives me a flamethrower. Now I can put my fire extinguisher here and a flamethrower there. Flamethrowers are very dangerous. They have an amazing ability to stick to most everything. Here’s another case where I can’t go any further. If I try to open that electrical gate, that guy would keep it firing. I have to deal with him.

Let’s make one of these, assign it here — got him. Now I can go onward. With puzzles we’re learning to get more into action as part of the puzzles, rather than just twitch timing. We want you to be able to explore these environments, even though these are the guys you’re supposed rescue. You can walk around, navigate it all, figure out what’s going. You’re not under any real threat.

Each of these things up here is a guard tower. If it has a number five, there’s five guys in there that could be summoned out under certain conditions. We wanted a more emergent level. You have the ability to explore and do all these things, but once you start rescuing guys and pulling them off their jobs, everything changes. Once they drop their hats and they become followers, the whole place starts lighting up. Alarms, scary lights, scary guards coming out. The world starts emerging on you.

Anything I’ve crafted, if we go back into this, I can take over to my followers. Say I want to give my followers a bunch of Brews to throw. I’ll give them a bunch of bottlecaps to throw and start fires. I want to craft some Molotov cocktails, so I can take a bottle and a dirty rag and a lighter and craft a bunch of those. I’ll gift those to my followers real quick and then make a few for myself. I’ll craft up some Fizzy Pops too. I can increase the power of these by adding Blastos. And then of course I can keep powering these up through more and more levels, but this is good enough to demonstrate.

Some of this stuff, you can have fun trying to figure out how far you can get into different areas. These things have a lot of capability. One thing I can do is assign my guys to become more aggressive. Even if I’m not fighting, they’ll fight for me. When threats come along they’ll start to throw stuff and take them out. I have a mob that I’m working with now. There, they got him. The world stays more persistent in that respect. I’ll blow away some of these floors. My goal is to get as many of these guys out alive as I can.

Now I’m going to go through a gauntlet. This elevator has what we call air supply delivery cannons. Then I suddenly have an air cannon, like a potato cannon. Anything you’ve got in your inventory, you can use with that. You, as the player, have the inventory cannon, but the Mudokons you’ve armed are your support cover. As I go through here, the world’s going to wake up again. All the alarms go off. We wanted to get this real feeling of mayhem going on, a storm of visual effects from all the consumer products, lots of pinks and greens.

Each of my Mudokons also has keys, so they get me further into the level. I’ll grab some more of these guys. You notice that they have much more agility than in our previous games. I’ll blow a hole through the floor and let them shoot on out. My guys can find their own way, or I can leave them anywhere, like in a tower defense situation. Now I’ll pull this down and take them into the next level.

I’ll go through another one of these gauntlets, so I’ll want to arm these guys up real fast with more of these. I’ll gift those to my followers. First I need to take away these bottlecaps, take away water. We don’t need that. Instead I’ll give them all of my Fizzy Pops. I’ll get by with crafting up some more of these. Not as sensational, but they work. Now you see that all of my followers are represented by this icon on the lower right of the screen. I lost one guy in that battle. That didn’t work out so well.

Here I come to the train crossing. Recruit a couple more guys here, let’s go. C’mon, hurry up, hurry up! Just keeping that pressure on. Oh, shit! No! I’m so sorry. God, that was just brutal. All that work. C’mon, guys, hurry up! Get out of the way! And then this gets us into terminal 2. Here I’ve gotten a cheat charm. These open up a different store, which is basically the metaphysical store.

At the end of each level, if you choose to have this display on, it’ll give you a full tally of your stats, the achievements, whether you found the secret areas, everything that’s happening. Each of these saved and you can go back and play each level and master the achievements, master your karma, do your speedruns. There’s a whole series of bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond. Then, if you get all diamond, we’ll open up a couple more achievements per level.

The first playthrough, we estimate that to be viable it has to be a minimum of about 12 hours. But the people who are milking it, there’s more than 100 hours that you can spend.

GamesBeat: How much of it is in that kind of environment, the factory? Is it a lot of the game? Or do we see different places like the train?

Lanning: Oh, yeah. We start off in a hideout, with some more native environments. You escape that towering inferno. Then we go into old, abandoned towns that are a little more like Stranger, these old mill towns and mining towns. We have ancient ruins, pretty spooky-looking areas. We wind up at gas stations for trains, big fuel depots. Then we go to a Slix barracks and the Necromines, a mining factory that’s built on top of a graveyard, basically. They’re mining the bones. That’s the other secret ingredient in the Brew.

You need to hijack the train in the train level so you can carry your 300 guys from the previous game and keep them safe while you’re on the run. You’re stacking them all up. At the end of the game, if you played it perfectly, you’ll probably wind up with about 1,300 saved Mudokons. But you could have zero. The idea is you could play the game and kill everybody, with a really terrible karma count, or you could play the game and kill nobody, with the ultimate, most positive, new-agey type of friendly touchy-feely run.

GamesBeat: How similar would you say this is to the original gameplay?

Lanning: With the original gameplay, Abe could sneak, run, jump, and do the basic moves he was doing here. But he didn’t have an inventory system. You could only play through with one guy at a time in the original game, too. When we remade that with New and Tasty, all the guys in the level could follow you at one time, which was really taken from Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus.

In the original game, you could throw something, but it was just like, “I need to solve this puzzle. There’s an item I have to find in this room and then I can throw it.” But it wasn’t an inventory item you could carry with you to other places. It had no accounting system either, no wallet. It was really about what level you’re in, how fast you get through, and how many Mudokons you could save. That was the basis of it.

Now we’ve really gone off on the collecting, the exploring, finding secret areas, and community. Healing guys you find that are dying, crafting antidotes, crafting things with medicinal properties.

One thing you’re not seeing here, if you’re a completionist, the leaderboards that come up at the very end — if you want to get perfect platinum badges and compare that to the rest of the community, or zero deaths for slaves, or zero deaths for yourself, all of those things are different verticals you can play along and explore. That’s one of the big motivators. I want to see how I beat everyone.

This is what we’ve been doing. We thought that were in a fairly good position to make a more unique offering to the crowd, because it’s this far along. We don’t plan on giving out a playable. We just plan on dosing them with more information throughout the year, without blowing too much about the world.

[crashnbxrn]

「 you think yourself above the wolves, above the makers and the destroyers of the world, above the gods. and yet, little lion, you have so far to go before you are above yourself.」

―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――

what’s up, what’s up ladies n gents n everybody in between! my name’s skye, mun here of the lovely not apollo choi (fc. jackson wang)! i’m very excited to be here, i’ve been eyeing this roleplay for about a month now I believe (??) and have been wanting to join tenfold, which I finally decided to go through with! below the cut you’ll find out some more of my boy here ― if you would like to plot, my discord user is sunnyburst#8001 or you can hit me up in tumblr PM’s! can’t wait to get to know you all, MWUAH 💗💗

( JACKSON WANG. MALE. ) Aleksander’s coven is intimately familiar with ( APOLLO CHOI, ) a dedicate Death Dealer for the coven. ( HE) is a ( 622 ) year old vampire known throughout the New World Coven for being ( CLEVER + STEADFAST. ) However, those who are familiar with them also know that they are very ( MANIPULATIVE + CRUEL. ) They’re known for being the ( LION. ) Though they are technically disbanded, they are still dedicated to their cause.

  ⤹ ―――――  ⤸

～ INFORMATION

full name // apollo choi [ it should be noted that his birth name is kept closely guarded ] 

nickname(s) // leo, heatstroke

age // 25 622

gender // male

species // vampire

title // the lion

birthdate // august 6, 1397

birthplace // hanyang, korea (modern-day seoul)

occupation // ex-death dealer, ceo of a major movie studio

ethnicity // korean

orientation // bisexual, although he’s scared to admit it and keeps it under wraps

status // single

languages // korean, english, spanish, french, cantonese

―――

fc // jackson wang

hair // dark brown

eyes // chocolate/hazel - gold

height // 6'3" ft

weight // 183 lb

body // muscular, slim

style // suave and modern, always clean-cut, fashionable but doesn’t experiment too much

defining features // besides his canines, speckled hazel heterochromia in his left eye

tattoos // n/a

scars // n/a

―――

horoscope // leo

zodiac // ox

element // fire

moral alignment // neutral evil

type // ESTP - the entrepreneur

house // gryffindor

religion // none - atheist

fears // really only one; to have his secrets be outed without his wanting

chronic // n/a

positive // insightful, clever, reliable, articulate, charismatic, level-headed, hard-working, incisive, authoritative

neutral // determined, distinctive, passionate, romantic, complex

negative // blunt, manipulative, crafty, hot-headed, cruel, vengeful, presumptuous, twisted

⤹ ――――― ⤸

～ PAST

it’s long af whoops

[ TW: mentions of physical abuse, slight gore, death ]

apollo was born to a high-class noble family in hanyang, korea on what we know as august 6, 1397

growing up in the peak of the joseon dynasty and one of the country’s golden ages, there was not much the young boy needed, but rather everything that he wanted

his father was a high-ranking member of the city’s caste system, one of the generals that assisted in ushering in the new era

his childhood is spent alternating between school for preparation in aristocracy and basking in the social standards of the time ― while he isn’t old enough to begin more ‘dangerous’ tasks, the patriarch implements training in everything from horseback riding to whittling for apollo to enjoy

life isn’t good for him, it’s great ; he doesn’t have to worry about much, and when he does there’s people around him available to clear up any ‘misunderstandings’ in a heartbeat

still, as he grows older, a superiority complex begins to take hold of the young boy, coupled strangely with a boredom he had yet to experience before

the result? a horrible combination that begins to warp his personality in tidbits, before he fully ‘sinks in’ so to speak

by 12 his father has deemed him ready to embark on more trials outside of simple pleasantries. never mind the golden age of science and art ― apollo’s father was a militaristic man through and through, and he knew war would come one way or another

so the youth begins to learn of the knowledge of battle; how to wield a sword, proper fighting techniques, the instinct of survival ― such is beaten into him in more ways than one, excuses for failure reaching deaf ears and perfection being the only goal

this type of treatment does well to cause both vice and virtue for apollo; the once happy boy is twisted in a grasp of frost and cruelty, and yet he finds himself training ever harder and hardly taking heed to words outside of his father’s opinion

he’s 16, young and ablaze, a fire coursing through his veins despite his frigid approach. apollo’s beginning to make a name for himself, partaking in whatever challenges present themselves, discerning towards talks of a bright future when all he wanted was blood

his elders begin to take note of this and, under pleased recommendation from his father, ascend apollo to become apart of the high-ranking royal guard ordered to protect the king and his family

while he would rather be out on the battlefield (despite the age of scientific expansion, there was also trifles to be meddled in), apollo took the opportunity with steadfast determination and took his job as seriously as one could

he finds himself betrothed at age 18 on consideration by his father who is eager for a lineage, a fragile noble girl in all sense of the word being chosen as a ‘perfect fit’. apollo could hardly care, however  ― if he had his way, he would be married to his sword, yet he supposed a woman would do for the time being

still, time goes on with little interruptions; the beast marries the beauty, he’s promoted to personal guard of the youngest prince, and his often-times anger is allowed to be sated on whoever is unfortunate enough to end up in chains that day

yet, soon trouble begins to brew, although not with him ― tensions between korea and japan begin to rock the state, rumors of war falling over the distant hills being drunk up by the common rabble. apollo is eager for such to arrive, hoping to take part in what he sees as ‘festivities’, despite being obviously chained to protection over the 13 year old boy all considered ‘prince’

and yet this boy was the cause for much of his frustration ― opposed to when apollo was young, the prince was futile and weak, eager to take part in more pleasantries rather than learn of his future duties to the dynasty

such often enraged the elder, forced to bite his tongue in earnest of stepping out his ‘boundaries’ despite having much to say

trouble, however, spirals downwards quickly within his life ― with the prince turning 20 and him lingering atop 25, apollo would hope that the 5-year continuation from him first being assigned would only shape up the younger. however, it seems to be quite the opposite; the prince spends his time ‘play fighting’, as apollo calls it, and dragging his guard through the forest in daily hunts that hardly often accounted for anything due to his skill. on top of that, it is found that his young wife is infertile, and despite hardly caring for any child at all, she is cast out of the marriage and lowered within society’s eyes

yet one such hunting trip results in tragedy ― after the two embark on their routine that apollo had become all-too used to, they come across a herd of wild boars the prince is eager to slaughter. after attempting to quell his lineage to no avail, an argument ensues; the prince comments on how apollo is out of line, and he likewise comments that the royal is going to get himself killed ― unfortunately, it results on the attention of the boars being caught, and apollo hardly has time to get out of the way before he’s being battered and speared through with bone

the prince, in retaliation, runs away

spine broken, bleeding out on autumn leaves, apollo shifts back and forth through consciousness enough to make out an approaching figure before everything goes dark ― such a figure, unknown to him, would change his life (and death) forever

he awakes a day later in a home hidden by the shadows of the treetops, not far from hanyang. he believes he is dead, and yet the being waiting there for him discerns otherwise ― he is alive, just not in the traditional sense.

apollo spends a month with the mysterious figure, who he comes to know as his ‘sire’, and learns of his existence. of how he was destined to die, and came by much more powerful and much stronger. of how the figure had been stalking them for the perfect moment to strike, only to find another opportunity instead. the realization of him being ‘vampire’ surprisingly comes easy to apollo; he approaches his existence as a gift more than a curse, especially considering the abilities that come along with it.

when he returns home he is met with shock, remorse, celebration, and guilt, particularly from the young prince who had abandoned him. his story is simple― after being left to die by the royal, apollo managed to crawl to a nearby stream and patch his wounds with mud and leaves, obviously leaving out the ‘broken spine’ detail. his explanation as to how he had healed completely back to his healthy self? blessings from the gods, that of which was good enough to deem him fit for society

much to apollo’s pleasure, the prince was chastised and punished in a dutiful manner for his cowardice and betrayal. becoming used to his usual bloodlust that came from not feeding went easier than he expected as well ― the ‘lepers’ cast out provided well enough sustenance for apollo, and not a single soul bat an eyelash at their deaths. 

ageing, however, was a different issue ― he could not stay 25 within the city for long, and yet religion played enough of a part in hiding such a fact. years passed and apollo gave praises to the gods for his ‘youthful’ appearance even at 32, noble families falling over him in an effort to obtain being part of his lineage, and yet he hardly cared to give them a glance ― to apollo, there were better things on the horizon, and he wanted to experience it all

so, what was the best thing to do? fake his death, obviously. superstition ran high in his community, so he simply walked off into the woods one day and never returned ― they would fret, apollo knew, but overtime they would simply reason that he was ‘reclaimed’ by the deities. in truth? he returned to the home he had first woken up to, only to find it empty ― his sire was nowhere to be found.

did he break down into tears? cry out in the dark? hardly; for a newborn vampire, apollo had nerves and determination of steel, and simply ‘set up camp’ for the time being. if he couldn’t live in the city, he would live where he could be free

apollo’s world is about as interesting as it can get after that ― he alternates between staying in woods to returning to hanyang after he’s sure every other generation has died out. the same story of being a ‘newcomer’ is told regardless, and no one ever questions it because they hardly know him. this sort of ‘schedule’ he has allows him to be both separated yet still grow with the times. he admits that the future was not exactly what he expected, and yet all-too exciting for vampire. time passes in the blink of an eye for an immortal, watching as his home of hanyang shifts in the modern city of seoul ― such a sight triggers something within apollo, and he realizes he too must change with the world

new york city is not the first choice on his list; rather, the vampire changes his name and attempts to travel to london as a more ‘immediate’ deviation. however, he is not received well ― altercations involving vampire covens within the city eventually push him out, solace within the european countries not found for long. the united states is next; it’s a melting pot, and exactly what apollo is looking for, yet new york catches his eye above most. deviating from his original plan of los angeles, the vampire is pleased at the anonymity of the city and the opportunities presented with it greatly

a chance encounter with 3 lone vampires including himself results in meeting aleksander and eventually being inducted into his coven. at first, apollo is thrown off by the sudden influx of ‘sociability’ that is expected, yet he soon finds it endearing enough and something he admires, even. he is one of the first to join up as a death dealer when the role is announced ― although his seductive nature and sadism is not attributed to only one species, apollo is all-too eager to sate the never ending lust for war and blood he finds the opportunity of in hunting with his  newfound brothers and sisters. even after the death dealers ‘officially’ disbanded, he still heeds the call of aleksander whenever needed, more than pleased to assist in whatever is required of him.

⤹ ――――― ⤸

～ FACTS

his birth name is not apollo choi, and has been kept a secret and on the backburner since he was turned ― he sees it as his ‘past’ self and a chain to his current identity

after arriving in nyc, he’s since found a love for film (or rather ‘entertainment’ as a whole) and began his own movie studio, that of which skyrocketed in popularity and is now among some of the top ones in the country. he keeps himself separated from the majority of his employees so that he can ‘hand down’ the company to himself ― those necessarily close to him are fellow vampires, who he knows he can trust with his immortality

sometime after he was turned he came to realization that he was bisexual rather than straight. while he is a rather romantic individual and wishes for a lot, he’s scared of dedicated love with the way he is, and keeps his sexuality under wraps for fear of someone possibly using it against him

his overall personality is very sadistic and twisted ― he finds joy in the pain he causes others, depending on who they are, and isn’t one known for mercy among the death dealers

apollo believes in ‘ability’ more than ‘possibility’. it is partially one of the reasons he no longer is religious; he finds the belief in the supernatural on earth and the immortality they possess to be far against any idea of ‘god’ or ‘gods’

he was nicknamed ‘leo’ by aleksander due to his fiery passion and his bravery in what he does. he’s attempted to get tattoos of lions on his body, but finds that they forcibly heal due to his abilities

[sauntered-vaguely-downward]

Last Names. Chapter One

Okay so... I used to write fanfiction all the time and took a break from it a while ago. Ive decided to start it up again and I have decided that I’m going to do so by writing a series of George Weasley x Reader. So Here it is... Chapter one.

Warnings: Some violence, a few swear words, and a lot of poor English.  

Pairing: George Weasley x Reader

Plot: Not everyone is born to a family with a name to be proud of. As the daughter of two infamous serial killers, Y/N is happy just to be herself, and defend herself and anyone else. Her mysterious and general badass behaviour doesn’t go unnoticed by one of the Weasley twins.

Some people suited their last names. Malfoy and Potter were brilliant examples. Malfoy was just like his family: stuck up, wealthy, racist and a coward. Draco used his last name to his advantage. His name alone made people fear him, knowing the power his father had. Malfoy was perfectly suited to his last name. The story is the same for Harry Potter. While until he was 11 Harry had no idea how important his name was, he lived up to it every day of his life. He was braver than any Malfoy could ever be, smart like his mother, fierce like his father. Potter was every bit a Potter, no doubt about that.

Not everyone matched their last names. Percy Weasley. His family was forever a bundle of laughs, jokes and giggles. His family were not full of themselves, or overly proud, his family were a humble family. Percy was not that. Yes he was just as lovely and as good as a person as his family, but Percy Weasley was not a barrel of laughs and believed himself to be far too important when promoted to position of Prefect. Far too serious for a Weasley.

Y/N was another one who didn’t match her family name. If Y/N had matched her last name she’d be similar to Malfoy. She’d be proud of being a pureblood, believe herself superior. Her idea of a good time would be inflicting pain on the likes of people like Hermione Granger, just because she could. If Y/N was like her last name and the others who bore it, she’d not use her level of intellect to assist others but much rather use it to take over the world and spread nothing but hate. Y/N was not like this.

Y/N like her family name suggested was confident, sure of herself and cunning to the core. With a quick tongue and a sharpened wit, Y/N was similar to her family, but that was where the similarities ended quickly. Y/N was a model student. She spent her Saturdays tutoring the younger students on all subjects from Potions to Arithmancy. On Friday’s she was often seen with Madam Pince in the Library, quietly working away at reorganising the books left in disarray by students studying. Tuesdays and Thursdays were her own revision days where, weather permitted, after her classes were done she’d quietly sit by herself by the lake or in the courtyard, books around her, quill in hand and notes messily written across parchment. It was fair to say Y/N was not much like her family name would suggest, perhaps being raised by her aunt and uncle, the Tonks, had something to do with it. Maybe Y/N was just simply not like her family.

However, no matter how nice of a person she was, some people failed to see past her last name, failed to see past the damage that her mother and father had done to innocent people. In her third year it became more apparent that not everyone saw her as the nice person she was, when both had reportedly broken free from their prison, much like Sirius Black. While many had simply not cared about who she was, some of her fellow students, many within her own house, held her personally accountable for any damage that her family had done. Those in her own house of Slytherin often called her a traitor, saying not only was she a blood traitor but a traitor to her own family. Y/N by this point in her life was over it, listening to the wise words of her cousin and adopted sister, Nymphadora (or Dora to her), she had decided long ago that as long as she was happy and a good person everyone else's opinions were meaningless to her.  Which is why what happened to her did not phase her much.

“Oi, Lestrange!” A voice shouted from behind her as she walked towards the great hall. “Your gonna be just like your parents one day! Wait and see! You’ll be killin’ people left, right and centre.” The young boy laughed among his friends, failing to notice the girl who he had tried to engage with stop quickly in front of them, hand her bag to the girl who had been walking with her and turn sharply on her heel. The laughter continued until before anyone had realised what had happened, the boy was pushed to the nearest wall pinned down by her leg and arm as it pressed against his neck. Without missing a beat, her heart racing in her chest, she spat,

“If you really believe I’m going to turn out like them I’d keep your thoughts to yourself.” She edged her knee further into his groin, got in closer to his ear and said, “pissing off a potential serial killer is not a smart move. You’re now top of my list.” Without even a second glance she released him from her vice like grip, letting him fall to the floor as she spun back around, smiled at her friend and continued onto the great hall.

While she had been careful to make sure no teachers were present to witness her sudden outburst, she had not been paying attention to the students who were around her. To her, the students who saw just received their warning. Do not fuck with me. However one of the students who had seen the scene unfold as he as his brother walked towards their dinner, had not taken the hint. Much rather he took it as a challenge.

Y/N was well known around the school. People were either talking about her good deeds or the last student who had crossed her path and how they had been flawed and utterly humiliated, often left crying on the ground.  It was hard not to know who she was, but damn near impossible to get to know her. Although that hadn’t yet stopped George Weasley from trying.

In his third year, George and his brother had watched as the then first year Y/N had taken a fellow Slytherin student, Pansy Parkinson, by the hair for calling her a blood traitor. Later that same week he’d seen her comfort a weeping Neville Longbottom after the loss of his toad once again. In years to come the infamous Weasley twins had watched Y/N as she defended herself and those around her, incapable of doing so themselves. George alone had watched as she studied by herself in the courtyard, telling his brother he just wanted some alone time so he could watch the mysterious girl silently or without judgement. Y/N intrigued George, she seemed to be the sweetest girl when she was helping teachers or helping first years with Transfiguration homework, but suddenly became a vengeful warrior when the time called for it.

George on many occasions, sometimes with Fred, sometimes alone, had tried to talk to Y/N. It never ended in a conversation longer than five minutes. Often Y/N had places to be or felt as though the pair were up to something, so politely left the conversations. Since the first time he had seen her he had simply wanted to get to know her, but had yet to have the pleasure.

“George mate, close your mouth, you’re starting to catch flies,” his brother chuckled as he began to walk towards the great hall much like he had originally intended before stopping to see what was going on. “You’ve got to stop staring at her all the time, you’re gonna freak the poor girl out.”

“Oh shut up, I was not staring at her. Well not in that way anyway,” George hit his brother on the shoulder as he caught up, “I was simply shocked by what happened. It’s not like its every day you see a kid get shown up like that. I was impressed.”

“Georgie, you’re impressed every time you see that Lestrange girl. Don’t think I don’t know that your purposely go to the library on a Friday to see her packing away books,” Fred may not have said anything until know but that didn’t mean he didn’t realise what was going on with his brother. He had a crush. A crush on a girl two years younger than him. A crush on a girl who could bring him to the floor with one well planned kick. A crush on a Lestrange. “Do you really think I’m stupid enough to believe that the reason you wanted us to talk to her all those times was simply because she’d be ‘good to have onside.’ What kind of fool do you think I am?” Fred laughed as they sat down at the Gryffindor table, opposite of their friend Lee.

“Hey,” Lee beamed at the twins, “Quidditch season starts soon. You two excited?”

“Of course,” smiled back Fred through a mouthful of chicken. George on the other hand was not really thinking about the conversation at the table he was sat at, much rather the one on the furthest side of the hall. Y/N was sat there, not really with anyone, but not really alone. Rather than joining in the chit chat occurring around her she simply ate her meal, listening to the chatter of others instead of being a part of it. George wondered why she decided not talk, her friends clearly wanted her to be involved in the conversation.

George continued to watch Y/N until she got up to leave, not the first in the hall, but certainly the first from her end of the table. With only a nod to her friends, she got up, flattened out her robe and skirt and made her way out of the hall. George watched as she left, right up until the point he could no longer see her around the corner. He wanted to know where she had gone.

“Erm… I’m just gonna go to the toilet. I’ll meet you back in the common room … yeah,” he spoke quickly to his brother as he got up to leave, not really waiting for a response from his twin. Fred and Lee watched as Georges pace picked up towards the door, watching until the last flash of red hair had disappeared from sight.

“He’s smitten and he’s only ever said three words to her,” Fred laughed as he ate another slice of cake from the stand in front of him, a stand that never seemed to empty.

“Clearly. Does he know how pathetic he looks? And trying to say he’s going to the toilet just so he can follow her, does he think we're stupid? I can’t believe he’s gone and fallen for a Lestrange too. Can you believe it?” Lee mocked a offeded voice, as he fanned himself with his hand. Fred chuckled,

“I can actually. Trust my brother to fall for a girl who has no interest in him and whose parents would kill him in a heartbeat.”

Outside the great hall, George tried to follow her path, or at least the path he had imagined she would have taken. For a fourth year girl she was unpredictable, hard to find because of her random approach to life. His pace picked up, his heart hammered in his chest, his lungs began to work harder take shallow breaths, as his walk became a jog, and the jog became a run. George began to forget even where he was, just trying to imagine a path in which she may have taken.  For one moment George forgot to look where he was running, only quickly glancing into open rooms and down smaller passageways. It was in this moment he found himself very quickly bumping into something. No, someone.

His body has ran full speed into someone considerably smaller than himself as he went to turn a corner, knocking not only himself onto the floor with a thud, but who ever the innocent victim was.

“Fuck,” he said as he landed awkwardly on his leg. After dislodging himself from the human pretzel shape he had landed in he began to get up, brushing off the dust as he went. “Ugh I’m so sorry, I was looking for someone but clearly was not looking where I was actually going. I am so sorry. Here let me give you a hand,” George, still brushing himself off said, still without knowing who it was he had just ran into. As he looked away from his now crinkled robes, he looked down to see who it was that was also on the floor, starting to dust themselves off.

“No its okay I’ve got this,” the girl giggled. George said nothing as the girl slowly stood brushing herself off in a similar fashion that he had done himself. “Accidents happen, I’ve often ran full speed into other people before, normally knocking them down on the way. No big deal,” Georges heart raced as he looked down at the now smiling Y/N, still brushing herself clean.

“Oh my … Y/N right?” George stammered, his heart throbbing in his chest.

“Thats me,” Y/N smiled up at him. George was inwardly kicking himself. In an attempt to catch up to this mysterious girl, play it cool and maybe get her to actually talk to him, he had managed to nearly knock her out on a wall. “You’re one of the Weasley twins right? Fred and George isn’t it?”

“You know who I am?”

“Everyone knows who you two are,” she laughed. “I’m sorry I have to admit I’m not sure which one you are though.”

“George. I’m George Weasley, the better twin,” George smiled back at her. Slowly George regained his composure, heart still beating in his chest, he was able to gain a little bit more of that Weasley charm he had been known for. “The much better looking twin.”

“The clumsier twin too clearly. Who were you looking for that was important enough to make you run that quickly?”

“My brother.” He lied.

“Which one? Aren’t you like one of 7? That’s a very big family,” she smiled up as him as she collected her bag from the floor. “I bet family dinners are fun at yours.”

“Yeah there's a few of us,” George replied. “Bill and Charlie don’t live at home anymore though so it’s currently just the five of kids, and mum and dad. It’s certainly never quiet in our house.” Y/N laughed with him, that soft kind of laugh, one one where the subject matter is not really funny but a small laugh makes it sound like you understand.

“Thats nice. My family is kinda small, so its relatively quiet at ours. I bet you have lots of fun stories about your family to tell,” she smiled, her eyes looking right into his. George had calmed down somewhat not, and while his heart was still beating awfully heavily, he had regained enough composer and confidence to simply smile down to her and say,

“I do. So many. Maybe I could tell you about them sometime, over a butterbeer? Maybe this weekend?” For a moment everything stopped slightly, as he waited impatiently for her response. He knew his idea for a day together had been rather sudden, probably worryingly sudden for her, but he couldn't not ask. If there was a chance that she would say yes to spending a day with him then he’d take the risk of being rejected. “My treat.”

“You’re in luck Mr Weasley. Usually I tutor on Saturday’s, but they wanted to go to a Muggles study extra class to watch a film so I’m free. I would like very much to hear more about your family over a butterbeer this weekend,” Y/N said with a beautiful smile, a smile George would love to see again and again. George couldn’t have been more pleased than he was in that moment.

“Perfect.”

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

I too am in a TWW rewatch, because well I enjoy torturing myself by watching competent articulate political types. (That and the great tv) I'm really struggling with Will. He seems like such an creep the further it goes on yet all the female characters seem to like him. I feel like I'm missing something. Do you have any views on him?

I have views on everything!! :D Seriously though, nobody’s ever asked me about Will so what a great chance for an essay. (This got REALLY long, fair warning.)

First, a disclaimer. I’ve never been very active on Twitter, but when I started using it, I mostly followed TWW actors. I occasionally tweeted at them, and I never expected responses, because they were amazing actors from this show I revered, and I was a random fangirl on social media. But two of them did, and were SO nice, and it shocked me so much back in the day to realize how kind and down-to-earth TWW cast is, when I had just seen the series and hadn’t yet found tumblr or watched interviews. It really made an impression on me. Richard Schiff called me ‘very sweet’ and won my heart forever, and Joshua Malina was also totally friendly and nice, so much so that I felt bad for never really liking his character much.

That’s right, I too used to think Will was obnoxious. But once I realized the actor was kinda awesome, I reconsidered his character and gave him a chance. So I’m glad you asked me, as I’ve been on both sides with Will and really love him now.

IMO, Will Bailey came in not just as a replacement for Sam, but also as a character with very different values, who was meant to contrast with our heroes at a crucial time.

Mid-S4, when Will is first introduced, we meet him as a skilled, idealistic writer who’s also got strong organizational and leadership skills. That’s different from any of our faves, since both Sam and Toby are talented wordsmiths, and both are idealistic in their own ways, but they’re also both oriented towards behind-the-scenes work. Toby is very team-focused and loyal but he would like it if everyone would leave him alone and let him do what he’s good at–messaging and writing and trying to nudge the people around him onto the path he thinks is best. When CJ is promoted above him to become COS, he cares even less about the professional snub than Josh does, because it’s not something he wanted.

And while Sam has political aspirations, he never really shows leadership qualities. He’s an excellent second to Toby and even for Josh when needed, but he’s also shown to be the least canny and experienced of them all, and you could argue that being in front of the camera as a candidate for office doesn’t always equal being a leader, if your staff is really running the show for you, which is what Sam’s campaign looks like. Everyone around him coordinates the details and runs things to leave him space to just be The Guy. But Will Bailey is both the guy running the show behind the scenes AND the guy who can get on camera and speak about the politics and ideals of his campaign because his family and professional background made him much more well-rounded. Heck, he’s even in the armed forces on top of all that! He’s portrayed as good at all the things he does.

Now, what’s interesting to me is that Will, as he’s first introduced, is much more confident and idealistic than he is later on. Early Will goes through a serious transformation, from Toby’s new second to an independent operator who lacks the loyalty the others have to a man more than to a party. To some extent, Will’s rebellious, ‘you need me more than I need you’ attitude was there from the moment Sam showed up to his winning campaign, but I think that who Aaron Sorkin (who had worked with the actor a lot before) conceived him as changed after Sorkin left. The showrunners for S5-7 saw an opportunity in his character’s feisty campaign background and turned him into someone with even less personal loyalty and more detached pragmatism.

The fact is, that’s not what Sorkin-era TWW is about. One of the reasons the later seasons are so different is their clear-eyed look at campaign chaos and shifting loyalties and all the small on-the-ground work that we didn’t see with President Bartlet. The earlier seasons are very much about our found family of staffers and the First Family and watching them fight the status quo that constrains them because they won. They always want to do better, and be better, and as much as they acknowledge the reality that you have to win in order to change the world, the show still promises us that it’s the change that actually matters, and it isn’t worth winning if you have to sell your soul to do it.

So if there’s a spectrum along which everyone falls, based on how much they’re willing to ‘go along to get along’ versus making trouble for the sake of their beliefs, Will Bailey is on the exact opposite end from say, Amy Gardner, with our core characters in the middle. I’ve rambled about Amy before, about how her values and priorities are so different from our heroes that she’s an antagonist even as she works with them a lot of the time. Will has the same complicated relationship with the people we’ve been rooting for for years, but for drastically different reasons. Amy is at odds with the West Wing because she’ll do whatever it takes to win the argument and get what she wants, pulling the Democrats to the left whenever possible.

Will, though–especially in S5 and beyond–is at odds with the West Wing even when he’s in the West Wing, because for all his ideals, he has no problem with compromise. He sees nothing wrong with moving to the middle if it helps you win, if it gets you more power. He’s willing to look like an idiot for the White House, he’s willing to go in front of the press core and be beaten up for days if it will help the cause, he doesn’t hesitate to jump to a new campaign that he thinks could win, because winning is how you get the things you want. Probably, being a diplomat’s son has something to do with how accommodating he is, and how able Will is to justify any position, any choice. We’re told he’s very good with words, but he was probably also good at Debate in school, because he can clearly turn any situation around as needed.

Which means that while Will’s instinct is to adjust and Amy’s is to dig her heels in, they share the one quality that makes any TWW character harder to like: they answer only to themselves. Above all else, their ‘constituency of one’ is themselves rather than a specific politician or even the party. Will is a Democrat, but he’ll happily buck the party wisdom in favor of what he thinks will win. And that puts him up against Toby, the President, Josh, etc, at different times because he bases his choices on his own ideals and they’re just different from those of the Bartlet Administration, which spends 8 years fighting to stay progressive and deciding it’s better to go down fighting than do or say things they don’t believe in.

Will is also an interesting foil for Donna after she leaves the White House, and not just because they become coworkers and good friends. Along with the fact that she left Josh and struck out on her own, most of her post-Sorkin conflict with Josh is actually based on WHO she went to work for and how differently she and Josh see that decision/what it says about her and her time working under Josh. By going to work for Russell, Donna shows that she’s less concerned with finding the perfect underdog candidate and more interested in a future that keeps up Democratic progress after President Bartlet leaves office. She is never dedicated to Russell as a man, and over time becomes visibly concerned with his flaws as a man and a candidate. But tellingly, Will isn’t any more personally loyal to Russell than Donna is–and he’s the one running the man’s whole campaign!

It says a lot about Will that for all the moments when Russell shows himself to be less than honorable, Will clearly disagrees with his actions…but he stays. Because Russell was never why he left the Bartlet Administration, or why he took on the new campaign. He took it on because he’s good at winning campaigns, and in Russell he saw someone who could win, and he may have even admired the antagonistic streak that came out once Russell became VP. Russell also had no interest in the ‘cult of Bartlet’ and quickly proved that he wouldn’t even have the level of respect that Hoynes had for Josiah Bartlet as a man. Most of the characters on TWW consider that strike one against Russell and a major character flaw, but Will doesn’t. He respects the President and the office but he didn’t know Jed before the MS reveal, he sees him from more of a removed distance, and his White House job is a JOB to him more than a calling.

Again, some of this was less true during the Sorkin era. The Will Bailey who lost the ability to speak when he was officially offered Sam’s position is much more in awe of the gravity of it all, and it’s hard to see that guy jumping ship to support a moderate candidate that nobody in the White House even likes. But the hints of who he ends up as were there from the beginning, the way he tells off Sam and Toby even before he works with them–he’s always an outsider.

So the outsider factor, that makes it harder to like Will or any TWW character that doesn’t automatically get along with the others. Ainsley Hayes may be ‘the enemy’ as a Republican, but she is amiable and smoothly tries to change minds–and when she isn’t able to, she opts to live and let live. Will is harsher, more combative at times, and I don’t know if it’s just me, but that makes me feel defensive and protective towards the staffers he’s arguing with. After all, I adore them and I barely know him, how dare he?

But of course, his actions and his beliefs make perfect sense from HIS perspective. He’s had a successful career, and being a part of the Administration was never a goal of his, so he doesn’t need to go out of his way to defer to their judgement or stay quiet in the face of their superior wisdom. He was raised to know how to work people and get his way, but he was also raised with incredible privilege and confidence and if he was banished from TWW inner circle it wouldn’t be much of a loss for him. Being an outsider isn’t a problem for him, he spent his life that way as a diplomat’s son, so he never feels the need to conform the way he would have to in order to really become a part of the gang.

Honestly, the only reason he ever gels as a part of the group is because Josh leaves and Toby is fired and they need Will to speak for the White House–finally he’s the ultimate insider, he’s the Bartlet mouthpiece, and the only original senior staffer left is CJ, so once Will and Kate bond they’re the center of the staff that’s left, and he has somebody on his side. (And once he’s off the campaign trail, the show goes back to highlighting his neurotic and geeky side, because he can’t be the ‘win at all costs’ guy anymore and needed a new focus.)

So here’s why I think it can be hard to like Will: he often seems like an entitled, immune-to-criticism, antagonistic opportunist. At his worst he seems to think the means justify the ends, despite his progressive beliefs in general, and that means he’s the guy who could get almost anybody elected–which is great when it’s S3 and Bruno Gianelli is on Bartlet’s side, but less so when Russell seems like not much of an improvement on Hoynes in terms of decency and intelligence and Will has the skills to actually make that guy President.

BUT, (and I can’t guarantee this will help you but I think it’s important because Will does exist as a complex, multidimensional character, and that’s a good thing even though it means he has flaws) at his best he is an adorable dork who wants to make the world better, will take jobs because he believes they need doing even if they’re not his own personal dream, is willing to put himself in danger to save and protect others, and is not just talented but also very knowledgeable about the same kind of geeky Constitutional and political history that Jed Bartlet is.

What I’m trying to say is that Will, as much as anyone on TWW, is the product of his good and bad qualities, and both sides of that equation come from his core traits. His ability to ignore others’ criticism because he’s secure in who he is can be annoying when it’s Toby or Josh trying to talk sense into him, but it also means he survives hazing with friendly ease and stands up for the White House’s positions like a pro. He cares more about winning than fighting the narrowest version of the good fight, but he’s not wrong that winning is better for progressive goals than losing for the sake of ideological purity (hi 2016, I have not missed you). He isn’t loyal to the Bartlet Adminstration above all else–but if everyone were, then the President would be a dictator. Intra-party fighting can weaken a party but it also allows for diversity rather than a cult mentality.

So, here’s what it comes down to. Will isn’t Sam, and that means Toby could never really like or trust him, even if he had become more loyal. Will is a political relativist, which means Josh was never going to agree with his choices, as Josh has always put people first and hates having to compromise. Will is a privileged white guy (played by a Jewish actor, but never canonically established as Jewish) so CJ tolerates him but doesn’t genuinely like him for some time, because that’s just how she rolls. Leo leaves Will under Toby’s purview, and Jed has even less direct interaction with him. He spends a lot of his time battling a group of young female interns we never see again (tbh I can’t stand those scenes and if that’s where you get your creep factor, I get it). Given how disconnected he often is from the central cast, is it any wonder he’s mostly underappreciated and ignored by fans as well?

As for why the female characters on the show don’t seem bothered by him, even when you are, I think there’s a couple of possible explanations. First of all, TWW is a show that doesn’t show us that much–we have to assume that all of these characters, who practically live at work, spend a TON of time together offscreen, just by the nature of their jobs. If most of that time is similar to Will’s comedic scenes, where he’s a giant nerd with bikes in his office whose response to stress is the fetal position, then presumably his coworkers see his flawed human side, in an endearing rather than annoying way.

And secondly, we as viewers don’t have that perspective. We don’t even have the benefit of being these characters living in the early ‘00s, when it was a given that the government would be full of overconfident oblivious men and that’s just what women were expected to handle with poise and sweetness. Clearly things haven’t changed much over the years when it comes to White House staff and a backdrop of misogyny at work, but for a lot of us as viewers the world has progressed.

So Donna gets along with Will as her boss who can be kind of dense or morally ambivalent sometimes, but she’s also spent almost a decade dealing with the most powerful men in America. As an assistant, for most of that time. To her, even Will’s worst moments are barely a blip in the grand scheme of things. And CJ is totally unimpressed by Will’s smarts and talent because she works with the smartest and most talented men she’s ever known, but he serves a purpose and doesn’t get in her way, so she has no problem with him. Kate rose to power through the ranks of military men and has definitely seen, and probably injured, worse guys than Will Bailey. All the women of TWW have spent their careers dealing with men of varying character. I mean, even compared to some of Sam’s comments, Will must seem downright harmless.

TL;DR Can Will Bailey be a patronizing know-it-all who puts his own interests before party and found family? Absolutely. Is he a bad guy? Not at all. He’s just a different kind of good guy than those The West Wing conditioned us to admire and root for.