#recrimination season 1

[starwarsrecrimination]

Star Wars: Recrimination Season 1 Episode Titles/Subtitles and Full Descriptions [LEAKED]

Episode 1: The Law of Identity

After nearly a year gone, a man returns home. 

Released from quarantine and intelligence meetings after his return from behind enemy lines, human officer Eli Vanto is restored to the command of his own ship, the Ratite. The episode follows him as he navigates through his final debriefing with fleet high command, reunion with his family, a social gathering with military associates, and the beginning (and abrupt derailing) of his first mission back. 

Episode 2: The Law of Noncontradiction

Two not-quite-strangers brave the woods and the wars waging around them.

After his smaller craft is shot out of the sky above a war-ravaged planet on the verge of seismic collapse, Eli must work with Mirri, a Grysk elite enforcer who he recognizes from his capture, to get off the planet before it’s too late. As the pair make their way through the woods over the course of three days, flashback-dreams to their shared past are interspersed to provide context. The episode culminates in their arrival at the safehouse where Mirri’s Force-sensitive daughter Jona is hidden, and Mirri sacrifices herself after extracting Eli’s promise to protect her child at the cost of his life. 

Episode 3: The Law of Excluded Middle

A new variable disrupts an established order.

Eli returns to the Ratite with Jona, encountering resistance to his adoption of the alien child, whose species he is able to keep secret from all except the admiral he was captured alongside prior to the events of the series. He convinces her not to expose the lie, but even after calling in favors his choice strains the faith of his fellow command officers as well as that of his other children. The previous harmony of ship and captain is tested as a difficult operation forces all passengers and crew to rely on each other. Eli is able to demonstrate his loyalty to the Ascendancy despite his recent (perceived) betrayal, and his family closes ranks as his second daughter, at first the most hostile to the newest addition due to her own trauma, begins to warm up to the youngest girl. Eli experiences the first of many strange dreams.

Episode 4: The Law of Large Numbers

Concerns mount as patterns take shape.

Roughly three months have passed since the previous arc. Jona continues to acclimate to her new surroundings, and the crew are beginning to behave more favorably towards her, especially when her self-appointed twin sister Idsvey is around. Eli has been being sent on more missions that appear to be increasingly dangerous. This episode jumps between the four girls on the ship in a “slice-of-life” look at how they have adjusted and some of the challenges they are facing and Eli’s mission as it draws him into a desperate fight that threatens his return home and suggests that he is being sent into deliberate peril. 

Episode 5: The Law of Inverse Consequences 

Dark forces reveal themselves.

On a joint military operation to confront a burgeoning attack force, poor strategic decisions as  result of inter-Family conflict allow the opposition to gain a stronger foothold in the Chaos. Jona and her sisters experience strange visions that suggest a growing threat with extraordinary power in the Force. The end of the episode, which functions as a “mid-season finale”, reveals this threat to be a dark sorcerer, a conceptual variant on Legends’ Joruus C’baoth. 

Episode 6: The Law of Total Expectation

After not nearly enough years gone, a woman returns home.

In this episode, the first one after the “mid-season finale”, Chiss Navigator Vah’nya is facing her impending 28th starday– and 21 years of service to the Expansionary Defense Fleet–  with cynicism and hostility. Prompted by a bizarre dream that she believes to be a result of her Third Sight abilities, she returns to her birth planet and the Shadehouse facility there and reconnects with some of the veteran and junior staff, as well as members of her original Family. While the episode mostly follows Vah’nya, the goings-on of the Ratite are featured as the young woman calls to check in on things “back home”. The episode ends with Vah’nya experiencing another strange dream, and waking up at the entrance to a cave. 

Episode 7: The Law of Total Variance

Mystical revelations lead to startling encounters. 

Vah’nya returns to the Shadehouse after her sleepwalking adventure, resolving to return to the cave with appropriate supplies and investigate it despite the warnings of the staff. When she enters the system, she must face spectres from her past and frightening portents of the future. Upon facing these challenges, she locates a crystal which has been calling to her in her dreams, taking it from the cave and keeping it hidden as she journeys back. When she rendezvouses with the Ratite, she does not tell anyone about the crystal, but notices Jona staring at her with a curious expression as she locks herself in her quarters and begins sketching out schematics.

Episode 8: The Law of Detachment 

Decision and indecision make for dangerous roads. 

The enemy attack force from earlier, strengthened by the previous conflict, begins advancing on neighboring territory. Eli and his allies petition for a response force, but are denied. Vah’nya feels compelled to travel to a planet on the edge of the threatened system and sneaks off the Ratite to journey there alone, where she encounters the dark sorcerer revealed at the end of the mid-season finale. He appears to be a wise teacher at first, helping her to refine her lightsaber design, but as her “training” progresses he reveals himself to be unstable and controlling, warping the navigator’s mind. Eli becomes aware of Vah’nya’s disappearance, but is unable to investigate further before a highly coordinated attack is launched by the enemy, prompting the fleet to fully engage. 

Episode 9: The Law of Syllogism

Fire rages among the stars.

Vah’nya battles the sorcerer’s control over her mind as he influences the forces engaged in battle high above them. Unable to break her will completely due to the protective influence of her crystal, he casts her aside and focuses his efforts on the three eldest daughters on the Ratite above, who follow his call and attempt to leave the ship while the crew battles the furious and faultless enemy onslaught. Unnoticed by and immune to the sorcerer’s influence, Jona makes her way to the turret controls and fires a laser directly at the sea of the planet below. The impact distracts the sorcerer long enough for his hold over the children and the enemy forces to break, and Vah’nya engages him with her saber. Before she can strike him down or incapacitate him, the sorcerer takes his own life by means of fire, his last words a warning that “only perfect order can hold back what is to come”. The fleet wraps up the battle, and Vah’nya returns to the Ratite as it lands to assist with relief efforts, embracing Jona and showing her family her saber.

Explanations: 

Law of Identity- each thing is identical with itself 

Law of Noncontradiction- contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time

Law of Excluded Middle- for every proposition, either it or its negation is true 

Law of Large Numbers- the average of the results of a trial becomes closer to the expected value as more trials are performed 

Law of Inverse Consequences- a choice can have the opposite of the expected result 

Law of Total Expectation- expected result is dependent on in-group and between-group expected results  

Law of Total Variance- variance in the total result is dependent on in-group and between-group variance 

Law of Detachment- given true hypothesis of a true conditional, the result must be true

Law of Syllogism- if two statements between three variables are true, so is the third 

(Discrete arcs, as indicated by the episode titles, are color-coded)

[nohaijiachi]

Why I Think The Fandom Has Been Doing Aziraphale Dirty Ever Since Season 1 And It's Only Gotten Worse With Season 2 And It's Killing Me Inside

Before we get into the subject matter of the title let me preface a couple of things:

1- All that will follow is, big surprise, my opinion and my interpretation of this character. Do I think I am The One And Only Who Gets The Blorbo Right and that my ideas are 100% the way the author(s) intended to convey the character? No.

More likely than not the way I see Aziraphale could be intensely different from the way Authorman sees him, or Actorman sees him, and I don't think that my interpretation is necessarily any more correct than anybody's else.

That said, if I also did not think that I am, in fact, correct on a certain level, I wouldn't have bothered forming such a thought out opinion of Aziraphale in the first place, nor would be sitting here, writing this post that I can already tell is going to be entirely too long and might probably ruffle some feathers.

So I'll be writing the rest of this post with the caveat that I while I do think my interpretation correct, I'm also not trying to change anybody's mind nor to discredit anybody's else interpretation of Aziraphale. We can sit here in the sandpit and hold different opinions and still be able to build sandcastles together, it really isn't that deep at the end of the day; I can assure you, I'm not here to fight nor cause fights with this one.

2- With the above point, comes also the fact that I won't bother continuously saying "In my opinion" for the rest of this post. You already know that. So, if something will come across as a bit caustic, do know that it is very much tongue in cheek and I am poking a bit of fun at general fannish habits that I am also very much quote-unquoute 'guilty' of having partaken into, and will partake into again plenty of times in the future, I'm sure.

So, with that: Here's Why I Think The Fandom Has Been Doing Aziraphale Dirty Ever Since Season 1 And It's Only Gotten Worse With Season 2 And It's Killing Me Inside

A large part of the people comprising this fandom prefers Crowley. There, I said it.

This fandom's preference blatantly skews toward Crowley. Can we admit that openly? Let's admit that openly.

To be clear, this isn't meant to be an accusation or recrimination or any other -ation you can think of, I am merely stating matter-of-factly a phenomena I've observed in the last four years.

It is also not a wrong nor bad thing in any way, shape or form. I adore Crowley myself. I love them both so much it's unreal.

But I started with that because I think it is very much a symptom of the fact that a lot of people don't get Aziraphale.

I remember back with S1 there had been plenty of times when I found myself reading discussions and opinion exchanges about Aziraphale and Crowley, their dynamics, all the things that went unsaid behind the things that were said, and found myself genuinely surprised by seeing how some people interpreted certain moments wildly different from how I personally saw them.

I look back at that and I think "Oh, sweet summer child". Nothing could have prepared me from the onslaught of takes about Aziraphale that make me go "Good lord, what???" in the wake of S2, and the infamous Last Fifteen.

Now because I don't want to be pointing fingers at specific things and risk upsetting somebody more than I already am by being open in admitting that, guys, yes, some of the takes y'all have been sharing make me go "Yikes(tm)", I'll move on the interesting part and what I would actually love to discuss, aka cracking Aziraphale's head open and see what that actual fuck is going on in there.

Another preface: Because this duo is intrinsically linked and woven together it is downright impossible to only focus on Aziraphale without also mentioning Crowley, so... Let me circle back to our fav demon bae for a sec, here.

I think the reason why it seems that a larger part of the fandom favors Crowley is because I feel like Crowley is a much easier character to grasp. He is very open in his thoughts and feelings, at any given moment us, the audience, have a much easier time watching a scene and sort of ruminating in the back of our heads about Crowley's motivations for saying the things he says and doing the things he does.

That isn't to say Crowley is a less complex character than Aziraphale. They are very much equally complex and multifaceted individuals with their strengths and weaknesses, their issues and the way they each cope with them, how differently they approach their existence and so on and so forth.

But whereas Crowley as a character presents itself with a certain dynamism and a far more outward openness about his complexity, Aziraphale does the exact opposite; we can say Aziraphale is downright hermetic about it.

For us, the audience, he presents a challenge that requires a good deal of thought being put into him to see over the facade he presents at a more superficial level; he requires time and effort to fully dismantle him in our minds to try and see what makes him thick (other than his thighs), and thus I think it is entirely natural that more people latch on the far easier to identify-with, and relate-to, Crowley.

And that is the inevitable consequence of everything that makes Aziraphale... Well, Aziraphale.

So, where to start? Let's try and jot down what Aziraphale truly is at his core.

He is a contradiction.

This man-shaped being is a walking contradiction, constantly existing in a state of being coated in three thousand layers of misdirection and obfuscation and double thinking.

Why is that? Well. He's an angel.

Aziraphale loves being an angel. It is a tenet of his entire existence and something he cherishes. He wants, so very much, to be his ideal of what a good angel is: An entity who is kind and loving and understanding and forgiving.

Of course us, the audience, know that is utter bullshit, because we know angels can be individuals just as complex as the humans Aziraphale loves so much, with all their inherent flaws and capability for cruelty. And, on a certain level, Aziraphale knows that too.

So there we have it, one element of contradiction: Aziraphale wants to think that angels are always Good and Righteous and Never Wrong; Aziraphale knows that angels aren't, in fact, always Good and Righteous and, by god, can they make plenty of mistakes, too.

What else? How about Aziraphale sitting there, being in love with a demon, fully knowing that at the end of the day demons really ain't that different from angels, and also desperately hanging onto the concept of Good vs Bad.

And he sits there, existing with these two contrasting idea equally taking space in his mind, neither side ever capable of taking over the other.

What else do we have? Aziraphale loves God and wants so hard to believe in Her love for humanity and Her ineffable plan, and Aziraphale also time and again does things that very blatantly go against Her will, lies to Her face, and Doubts. He Doubts, a lot, and that requires the capital letter because those Doubts are what spur him in going against everything he's ever told to believe in order to do the right thing.

Aziraphale's very existence is a constant push-and-pull of things he wants to believe and things he knows are real; things he's told to do and things he wants to do. That's how we get "My side" and "there's a bit of good in you" and "you are the bad guys".

And nothing he's lived through has managed to break him out of this unhealthy way of existing quite yet; that's why he acts the way we see him act in the Edinburgh flashback in S2, or at the start of S1 when Crowley has to ease Aziraphale into the idea of trying to stop Armageddon with the usual song and dance of "temptation" and "plausible deniability" and "you'd be thwarting me", even though from the start we can tell there's a little part of Aziraphale who is clearly not at ease with the idea of the end of the world, and once he's been given 'permission' by Crowley nudging him, he is all the way in with the whole saving the world business, not take-backsies.

Both the moments I mentioned here are very important for different reasons, but of the two is very much the Edinburgh flashback that gets a lot more flack by the fandom and is blatantly misunderstood, which I think is the inevitable consequence of that minisode immediately following the glorious, beautiful, heartbreaking piece of art that is the "A companion to owls" minisode.

I've seen a lot of people lamenting that Aziraphale acts obnoxiously in the Edinburgh flashback and, yeah. He does. But I feel like the fact that we are seeing this after watching Aziraphale struggle his way through saving Job's children, even being willing to go to Hell for it, is a though act to follow and probably soured Edinburgh-Aziraphale for a lot of people, made them think that the character had regressed instead of progressing.

But, see, the way he acts is wholly congruous with who Aziraphale is and has always been and keeps being up to the very end of S2. Yes, even after what he does for Job's children.

If you get down to it, Aziraphale had been ready to give up and let the children die, in episode 2. For a brief moment, after Crowley told him he 'longed to destroy the blameless children', Aziraphale was walking away, having tried all he thought he could try to do to stop this senseless act. That was until Crowley tested him by making the crows bleat, cuing Aziraphale to the fact that his impression of Crowley wasn't wrong, and the he could count on him to do the right thing.

To be clear, I don't want to undermine Aziraphale's action by only giving the credit to Crowley but... It is, also, only thanks to Crowley cajoling him and giving him the right excuses, that Aziraphale feels safe in doing what he's always wanted to do all along.

He'd wanted to save Job's children, and thought he couldn't until Crowley threw him that hell of a lifesaver. He wanted to save the world and thought he couldn't until Crowley nudged him on the path of plausible deniability.

He wanted to save Elspeth's eternal soul, blinding himself to the hardships she'd have to endure in her not-eternal life, and was smacked right in the face by the reality of human suffering multiple times.

The way Aziraphale acts in that flashback can't be a regression, because there never was a progression in the first place: He'd always walked the line between Heaven's and God's will and his own, personal morality and sense of justice.

By all means, if we look at Uz-Aziraphale and modern-day-Aziraphale at the start of S1, his reticence about the whole saving the world business should, by all means, appear as a regression as well. You mean to tell me that he'd been ready to become a demon for the sake of three mortal children, and then suddenly a handful of thousands years later when faced with the prospect of the whole world going up in flames he'd just be all like "Heaven will triumph over Hell and it will be all rather lovely"? Like, fuck off, Aziraphale, you lying double-thinker, you (/pos)

Aziraphale constantly exist while being at war with himself. Circumstances have allowed him to rebel the will of Heaven and God more or less safely time and again, but he never quite managed to break free entirely. He'd always ended up being reeled back in, being fed the party lines, being made to feel shame for his independent thinking, until it all becomes too much and he is forced to step back from that freedom he'd been inches away from grasping.

Back and forth, back and forth, never stopping.

And all of this, all of what he is, makes it so hard for us, the audience, to truly see him. To truly grasp him. To truly watch any given scene with him and figure out what he might be thinking or feeling.

To understand Aziraphale is to understand what he is not saying when he says something, which is a good deal harder to do than it is to understand and relate to a character like Crowley, who very much revel in saying exactly whatever the heck he thinks whenever he damn well pleases.

All those layers of obfuscation and misdirection and double thinking that Aziraphale coats himself in are as much an armor that makes it harder for the audience to understand him as they are his very own downfall because, good lord, if you exist like that, if you exist forced to keep things hidden from yourself, well... It's inevitable that at some point you are going to stumble into pitfalls of your own making.

And I love him for it.

So, there? I hope I managed to explain something with this post, and that it wasn't just the rambling of someone who spends way too much time thinking about her blorbos. To be clear, I don't think people who haven't spent as much time as me trying to dissect and better understand Aziraphale's character are like, dumber than me or anything. It's just that this pair of angelic-demonic blorbos take too much real estate in my mind, lol.

Feel free to let me know your opinion and if you think I am wildly off mark and my Take Is Bad. I might answer, I might not, it all depends on time and my mood ◝(ᵔᵕᵔ)◜

[oddlittlestories]

Would somebody be willing to summarize iwtv for me? I don’t have time to read every episode’s recap but the only other summaries I can find are actually just the premise

Here’s a token “what I think happened” for fandom funsies and I’m not going to even try to nest the frame story properly bc it’s just not happening

Frame:

Reporter (Daniel?) meets a vampire (Louis) who he met once in his youth and asks him back to his place to do an interview. The reporter thinks they fucked when he was young but somehow that was vampire hypnotism(?) I do not know what really happened back then. Louis tells the story of his life as a vampire, and then brings in someone else (Armand) who lies about his name at first and then reveals who he really is. Louis and Armand try way too hard to convince him their relationship is functional. There are moments where Daniel is very much in control, calling out their bullshit and owning the stage. And there are moments where he seems very small and vulnerable in the face of two creatures of the night who can manipulate his mind.

Then he gets turned and abandoned by Armand?

Interior story:

Louis (pre-vampire) meets Lestat, a wealthy businessman who doesn’t care he’s black and is super sexy. He thinks he’s sympathizing with another outsider but Lestat uses and manipulates his body just like the other white guys. and turns him. Somehow this results in Louis's brother's death. Lestat is happy Louis is a vampire but Louis feels Guilty. When he finally indulges, it's a blowout, with cycles of recrimination and death.

There's a house burning down and they save the thirteen-year-old from the fire by turning her, despite that being illegal. If the vampire courts (?) find out they will kill Claudia. Claudia grows up but her body stays young. Lestat's abuse of Louis and Claudia escalates. They decide to kill him. To do so, they poison him and slit his throat and drain him of blood, but Louis refuses to burn him. They bury him. Louis begins hallucinating him, and he and Claudia escape to France, terrified Lestat will resurface.

Claudia loves France. It's wild and horrific plays in all the most self-indulgent vampiric ways. She wants to develop her own performance. Just like Lestat did as an actor, as a musician who loved music. She finds a seamstress who unfortunately sees through her age disguise but fortunately decides to help her & they strike up a friendship. …Claudia turns her? Louis gets a new BF and Claudia is excited at first until the new BF threatens her and Louis refuses to believe her.

Something something Claudia is found out and the French council burns her to death.

…? Lestat comes back just as Claudia is dying??

Louis and Armand get together. It’s messed up and messy, especially the way they try to pretend it’s perfect. Armand gives Louis a will to live in the face of Claudia’s death. But then Armand abuses Louis? And gaslights him about it?

And Armand has some sort of horrible backstory where his maker passes him around like a joint?

Idk. I feel like I followed along pretty well for season 1 but with season 2 I think I’ve lost the plot. Help a friend out?

[darkshrimpemotions]

People who say Stede doesn't care about the crew in season 2 or is uniquely careless with them in season 2 compared to season 1 baffle me.

Stede in season 1 can be thoughtless and a little selfish, and often is! But that's tempered by genuine care and a desire to be kind to others as well. Small but pertinent example from season 1? The petrified orange.

Stede outright SAYS he didn't want to give it up, but he still offered it to Jim without hesitation, because he felt it was right as it came from their childhood home. I don't think him admitting he didn't want to give it up after they gave it back undermines that, either. If anything, he did something he REALLY DIDN'T WANT TO DO in an attempt to be fair and kind to a member of his crew.

There are a ton of examples like this throughout season 1, where Stede is oblivious to others' needs or feelings until he isn't, until he makes the conscious effort to stop and think and choose to exercise care.

And season 2 shows that this is still very true of Stede. If anything, he puts his needs aside MORE often and faster, with even less hesitation than he did in season 1. Especially when it really matters.

If he didn't care, would Stede have gone straight to Zheng Yi Sao to ask for mercy for the crew's mutiny against Ed? Would he have postponed allowing himself to grieve for Ed in order to RESCUE the very people he thought had killed him?

Like...we moved past that little fact SO fast because of the merman of it all, but genuinely. Let that sink in a bit. STEDE THOUGHT ED'S CREW HAD VIOLENTLY MURDERED HIM. And he still cared enough to see that they were acting out of desperation, and offered no recriminations or condemnation even when Izzy literally asked him for it. He put his grief on hold and came up with a plan to help them all escape execution.

He was also initially willing to go along with exiling Ed from the ship to make the crew feel safe! Even though he clearly didn't want to, at all. All season, all he wanted was Ed back, and yet he put the crew's needs first again. He only asked them to reconsider once he realized Ed would be sleeping alone in the woods, and worked with Ed to make sure all their stipulations were met when they agreed.

He is literally the ONLY person to express direct and obvious concern about Izzy's drinking all season, even when he and Izzy still weren't on the best of terms. He went to Izzy for help becoming a better pirate captain, and I genuinely think that was as much for the crew as it was for Stede himself. After his talk with Ed about how he could repair some of the damage he'd done, Stede immediately sought out someone he thought could help him overcome his own inadequacies and avoid doing more damage there.

He also got rid of the suit despite not believing it was cursed, just to make the crew feel better. He encouraged Ed to find ways to be helpful and rebuild trust with the crew. Convinced him to go along with Calypso's Birthday to help the crew de-stress and have some fun. When he killed Ned Low his first stated reason for that, what was it? "You tortured my crew."

(And his last was "you fucked Calypso's birthday," which we know he knows was just an excuse for the crew to have some fun.)

How does anyone watch all that and think Stede doesn't CARE enough?!

Thinking of others before himself may not be his first instinct all the time, but whose is? And in his case, how the hell would it be? When you've spent your entire life--prior to the last few months at most--never being thought of and being mocked or rejected for your every attempt at reaching out to other people, is it any surprise you'd withdraw into yourself and stop bothering?

So it isn't a skill Stede has built, and it isn't something that comes naturally to him, but it's still one he makes an effort to use. It may not be his first instinct, but it's still what he DOES when he stops and thinks about his actions. That's so important! He cares! On purpose!

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Utsukare S2E2 & relationship themes - making some progress!

OK, so after I wrote an entire dissertation about relationship dynamics between Hira and Kiyoi in season 1 and the first episode of season 2, where do we find ourselves in episode 2? Well, there’s definitely been some movement in the right direction. They’re also continuing to illustrate some of the tendencies that have not been serving them well. One way to sum up my take on this relationship is that they’re both incredibly ambivalent about intimacy--both having intense needs and intense fears--but that historically, Hira is more of a pursuer and Kiyoi more of a distancer. Both pursuers and distancers are always supposed to “fail” some of the time (by design) so that even distancers will experience some closeness and even pursuers will get the independence they need. But Hira and Kiyoi have been too entrenched in these roles at times. And Hira’s, um, shall we say, quirky ways of pursuing have had a fail rate that’s a bit too high even for avoidant Kiyoi.

Kiyoi made some overtures in Hira’s direction in episode 1 of season 2, but he had an unfortunate tendency to do things like kick him afterwards. Hira made an effort to persevere in a social situation but was so dense about it that it bit him in the butt, then pulled out a partial victory by being sincere.

The story episode 1 was based on is actually set closer to the beginning of their relationship, and it shows. So episode 2 starts out feeling a bit more settled in a vague way before we even get to much of the specifics.

One of Hira’s themes for this episode is massively overreacting because he thinks he’s failing in his duties as a “servant” to the “king”--while Kiyoi stands by, mystified. Once it’s because he ran out of ginger ale, and then he loses it because he failed to stay awake while waiting up for Kiyoi after a late night at work. This way of relating to Kiyoi is convenient because Hira can do things for Kiyoi, which makes him feel useful to him and like he’s earning his place in this relationship he’s convinced he’s unworthy of, but he doesn’t have to take the same kind of risk of rejection or feeling inadequate as he would if he tried to relate to Kiyoi as an equal. Of course, there are also huge downsides to this. Among other things, Hira treating him like a “king” almost alienated Kiyoi from him completely before their relationship had even gotten started. And of course, that kind of contact is never going to lead to the authentic connection they need to keep their partnership going.

Hira also got challenged on a version of this in a way that seemed fruitful. When Kiyoi praised his cooking ability (”you’re incredible”) after his own cooking mishap reminded him that “cooking is hard,” Hira responded that he was “just a small pebble.” Kiyoi’s response--”You’re my man. Don’t call yourself a pebble”--was effective in part because it put Hira in a position where calling himself a pebble would be casting aspersions on Kiyoi, which is basically against his religion. Arguing someone out of deeply held negative beliefs about themselves isn’t always likely to be fruitful, but in this case it was so earnest and done with so much knowledge of how Hira’s mind works that it was a worthwhile effort.

Kiyoi was working on his stuff even more in this episode, probably in part because it was from his point of view. In addition to parrying Hira’s “pebble” comment, he attempts to show him some spontaneous affection. The first time, he wakes Hira up and triggers a torrent of self-recrimination. The second time, his smooch attempt gets cockblocked by a phone call from Koyama. But he tried! He even tries using humor to get around Hira’s defenses, with a jokey, gentler version of his old insults--a strategy which, interestingly, reminded me of suggestions I’ve often seen coming from parenting experts.

Kiyoi also makes a fairly valiant effort to be civil to Koyama and mostly succeeds. Even when he admits to himself that he “can’t be mature” about Hira’s continued relationship with Koyama, at least he’s showing some self-awareness and acknowledging that being mature would be preferable if he could just pull it off. But the biggest thing is that he’s able to take Koyama’s criticism to heart in a constructive way (is it just me or does he show a surprising degree of respect for Koyama’s opinion?) and even tries to act on it by cooking for Hira. The food may have ended up being horrifyingly bad, but at least he gained an appreciation of things Hira normally does for him. And he actually voiced it! Season1 Kiyoi would never. How much of all this was due to shotgunning a bunch of pork-flavored wine? Some of it, probably, but it I think he should still get an A for effort. 

The high point of the episode for me was Kiyoi talking to Hira about entering the photography contest. He does pull rank and use his status as royalty to order Hira to do it, but it seems like that’s the only way he’ll listen. Then he goes into persuasion mode and does a really admirable job. It’s hard to tell how much of this is sinking in for Hira as he mostly just seems stunned. But Kiyoi makes a good argument, gives Hira a lot of direct praise in the most convincing way possible, and shows vulnerability in a way that gives his perspective a lot more weight. The part where he tells Hira that he looks best in his photos was really affecting.

I mentioned in a post earlier that the blocking for the post-hotpot fiasco conversation scene seems really meaningful. As I’ve mentioned before, the show’s director, Sakai Mai, is on the record as making a point of following yaoi manga conventions that place the seme on the left (and, where applicable, the upper portion) of the page/frame and the uke on the right (or lower) portion. The show’s leads even use this placement almost every time they do social media posts and it’s followed in most of their promo photos as well. Sakai has talked about strategically switching up this placement and how it’s often a signal of roles shifting (though she also says she likes to “trick” the audience by doing so). Well, in that scene, Kiyoi sits above Hira (he’s on the couch while Hira sits on the floor) and on the left side of the frame. He later gets down to Hira’s level when he starts talking in a serious way about the photography contest, but he remains on the right. This seems to be meant to signal that Kiyoi is behaving in a seme-like way here, and he is definitely doing more pursuing in a way that bodes well for getting his relationship with Hira to a more balanced place.

So, yeah. Growth! Progress! But not so much progress that is seems unrealistic or un-earned. It seems inevitable that more wrenches will be thrown in their path soon but here’s hoping they will lead to more growth in the long run. it’s been really interesting to see the way this second season is shaping up. It is so distinct from season 1 in a way that seems appropriate. The stakes feel so different. Not higher or lower, but different. There’s so much more humor, in a way that fits. The show has changed but it seems like a change that is appropriate and earned. I’m really pleased with it so far. 

[vashti-lives]

My unpopular and uninteresting mandalorian season 3 opinion is that Bo Katan is fun and I don't hate the thought of a Din/Bo romance. Its not my favorite but I actually prefer it over the show writers clinging so tightly to the status quo, which is what they did for all of season 2 and what it looked like they were going to keep doing for season 3. I suspect it won't happen, but I wouldn't be mad if it did.

My unpopular but potentially more interesting hot take is that I don't think the Children of the Watch's actual behavior shows many signs of actual destructive cult shit and people's reaction to them as if they were a harmful cult is purely based on a) the line of a character who is clearly unreliable and has an axe to grind* and b) all the aesthetics that make them uncomfortable.

*and again I like Bo Katan, but she's not an unbiased source here.

When you look at their actual behavior? The first thing that happens is that Din shows up with a baby Jedi, the Armorer recognizes him as Jedi, and tasks Din with returning him to his people EVEN THOUGH the Jedi have been at odds with the Mandalorians for centuries. They must return him to his people, it is the morally correct thing to do, and they believe this SO MUCH that they straight up sacrifice everything to make it happen. They could just commit a little light cultural genocide and say, oh the Jedi are gone so he's a Mandalorian now. But they don't! Some of them straight up die to help a child OF THEIR ENEMY. I can tell you right now that fundie christians would fucking never. Even Paz Visla, who is constantly clashing with Din, is on board with helping the baby.

And yeah, the whole exile thing once Din removes his helmet sucks, and is definitely the closest they get to really negative cult-y behavior but even that kind of falls apart under a closer look. Like, even after Din is considered apostate he is allowed 1) to keep his ENTIRE SUIT of beskar armor even though it both has SIGNIFICANT religious value AND actual monetary value 2) KEEP THE FUCKING DARKSABER and 3) to take a fucking-- again beskar-- CHAIN MAIL BABY ONESIE for Grogu even though as far as they know Grogu is a Jedi now. Plus the task the armorer gives to Din is so easy its literally accomplished in one episode. I kinda low key think she knew the mines were accessible already and only said they weren't as a test.

Then once he left he was pretty clearly still in contact with them because the covert in season 3 is really obviously not located where Din shows up in BoBF. Like... this is not how being shunned from the group looks in fundie christian circles.

Once Din completes the task and proves it he's back in, no questions asked, no recriminations, no guilt trips. Not only that but Bo Katan is welcomed as well even though we know that previously the armorer knew of her and did not like or respect her. Bo Katan completed the ritual and that alone was enough. And yeah, she's in a vulnerable place right now that might make this sketchy but the invitation is extremely straightforward, includes immediately the fact that she can leave at any time, there's no reason to believe they know about the night owls leaving her, and they absolutely don't know her home has just been blown up.

They are absolutely pretty fanatical and aren't perfect by any means but I think a lot of the really negative impression people in fandom have about them is not actually supported by their actions in the show. This is a group of people that have been deeply traumatized by genocide and are reacting to it in perhaps unhealthy but honestly very logical ways. The DnD alignment chart has its issues but its hard not to see them as really hardcore lawful good here.

Also, although there's less textual evidence for this, I very strongly believe that they are a splinter group from Death Watch that left for moral and religious reasons, probably including rejecting the practice of kidnapping and indoctrinating children. (And I don't know how much of the legends backstory they're going to keep for Bo Katan but uh... yeah not an unbiased source of information about Children of the Watch IMO.)

Also I am aware that there are fundamentalist religious groups that aren't christian but since most of the fandom is western/American that's what I see people pull from the most and Children of the Watch are one million percent more ethical and less hypocritical than even the most mainline of evangelical christians are, let alone the ultra fundie groups.

[thequietmanno1]

TheLreads, Vigilantes ch 106, Replies Part 1

1) “And the journey continues! Last time we had an All might scare- two of them in fact, also there was some less important stuff about koichi awakening his potential by realizing that he can and must win this fight.”- He’s awakening so much potential his power is practically evolving into a whole new ability before Nomura’s very frustrated eyes. 2) “…

Self-preservation is definitely not their strong suit I must say”- Look, when the kids want to play with the lit dynamite stick, you have to consider whether or not Darwin had a point, and it’s better for the species overall to let things play out. 3) “Ah dammit, and here comes the other one… Well, I suppose he do need to set up the previous mentioned nuclear bomb to get rid of McBee and all that…”- Soga really is fitting all the archtypes for “cool badass sidekick” even if it’s all undercut by the fact that’s he’s Soga, and thus can’t be that no matter how hard he tries. 4) “And I suppose this means that Soga is about to use the Bastardbike to chase after them and provide support.

Good fucking luck with catching up with the two hyper speedsters”- Seeing as Nomura needs to stay within the darkened blackout area to avoid easily drawing hero attention to his chase-fight with Koichi, there is only a limited area that can actually speed around, as opposed to the whole city being a battlefield. Therefore, it is possible for Soga to catch up, if only because the fight turns around and heads back towards him. 5) “No, let them keep throwing stones at the bipedal bombs, I want to see blood being splattered on those walls”- Your interior decorator is showing…in that you want to decorate with their interiors. 6) “Oh yeah, this is definitely gonna be a game of cat and mouse

Except that the mouse is chasing a cat he has no chance of beating”- Even more than he knew. He and we thought Nomura only needed one direct hit on Koichi to win, but it turns out even Koichi’s perceived “weakness” of projecting the repulsion from a limited area on his body doesn’t actually apply, meaning Nomura has no actual way of landing a hit, even if he succeeds in getting Koichi dead to rights, unlike himself. 7) “MY GOD MAN DID FIRES GEORG IMPRINTED YOU WITH A BIT OF HIS DNA, CAN YOU CALM DOWN WITH THE DESTRUCTION OF PUBLIC PROPERTY? WE’RE STILL TRYING TO REBUILD THAT STREET HE INCINERATED”- I have to wonder how much is Nomura intentionally missing and how much is Koichi using his finer control to bait him into making near-miss swings in the hope of his enemy exhausting himself. 8) “Oh boy… I feel that someone is gonna have to pay for this damage, and considering McBee is gonna bite the dust by the end of the story… I hope you’re ready to work for the rest of your life to pay for the repairs Koichi”-Pretty sure this is meant to be a visual shout-out to the posters for the first season of The Flash, highlighting just how fast our two bois are going at it.

9) “Thank you Captain Obvious, but I think I prefer when you were a tulpa more concerned with giving bad advice.

I mean, if McBee doesn’t realized that you guys have crossed half the neighborhood then that’s on him, no need for you to point it out.”- At this point Nomura’s need for approval and self-validation through that has turned into recrimination and chastisement for allowing himself to be so baited by Koichi, which is honestly sad. The O’Clock Tulpa can’t outright disparage Nomura because he made it to give himself positive feedback, but even it has nothing really good to say about his choices here, which means that Nomura knows he’s made a joke of himself and is still continuing on with it out of stubborn pride and spite against Koichi. 10) “But why are you still thinking about All Might coming in? Koichi had the chance to leave to call for help, and he didn’t. You can believe that he came back to try to talk things over and since he couldn’t his plan changed to going after All Might, but again, HE CAN FUCKING FLY AND YOU KNOW THAT WHY WOULD HE NEED TO LURE YOU TO ALL MIGHT?”- They knew Koichi well enough (and have personally just witnessed him blow a perfect opportunity to end Nomura) that both of them are aware that Koichi running to somebody for aid is a far more likely scenario than him standing his ground at any point to take Nomura down himself, which to be fair does seem to be Koichi’s intent more or less. Avoiding actually striking back so long as he baits him into wasting precious seconds lashing out at him, even if it would be far simpler to just blast Nomura between the eyes and call it done. 11) “Yeah, but unfortunately for you, you’re not quick enough. You’ll never be quick enough.”- Can’t move faster than Koichi can sense you coming. Nomura’s bloodlust is both driving him to go faster and counter-intuitively letting Koichi know how to react to his attacks no matter how high he revs the engines. 12) “And another miss there. Yeah, see, you can’t catch him. Hell, the only reason you’re seeing him is because he wants you to, otherwise he’d zoom away so fast that your head would be left spinning”- In a straight road Nomura may have some advantages, but in these twisting streets and lots of grabble surfaces on the buildings, Koichi excels at outmanoeuvring any attack he throws his way.

13) “He doesn’t need to O'clock. McBee may be incredibly predictable, but Koichi doesn’t even care about that, he’s just moving out of the way as the punches come, no pattern recognition there, just sheer reaction.”- Izuku would analyse his tactics, but Koichi just reacts to the blows as they come using his honed senses, making him similar to Bakugou in a way. 14) “And at which point did he even looked back? He is not using visual cues to counteract you, he’s going far deeper than that. And by that I mean he feels your bloodlust and moves away from it.”- This would meant that ironically, the best means Nomura has of hitting Koichi is to not want to hit him, but that would mean having a presence of mind that wouldn’t be baited like this, meaning Nomura’s dammed if he does, dammed if he doesn’t. 15) “You know what else is an unconscious mental process that shonen mangas like to use? Detecting bloodlust.”-Koichi’s ability to react to intent to harm borders on having a muted Spider-sense, which is thematically appropriate given the Spiderman influences in Izuku’s powerset and Koichi’s wall-crawling ability. 16) “OH MY GOD IS HE GONNA START RUNNING ON ALL FOURS LIKE A CRAZY ANIMAL CHASING A PREY?!”- It both makes sense for increasing his running speed and showcases how nutty he’s getting in trying to catch up to the real fast boi on the track. 17) “Yes McBee, give in to the animal side, become a beast to be slain by the dashing hero, show us how far you’re willing to go, how much of this mask of humanity you’re wearing you you’re willing to discard to kill himI’ll be waiting… Watching…”- In trying to overcome Koichi, he’s pushing himself to become more monstrous and inhuman, which in fact showcases how  strong and powerful Koichi naturally is, that his foe has to discard parts of himself that mattered greatly to him – his pretention of being a humanistic hero – in order to match or exceed what Koichi can do…and even then, Koichi just whips out another new tactic to shut him down on instinct! @thelreads

[milfglupshitto]

the totally real star wars animated series Star Wars: Recrimination Season 1 episode titles/subtitles and full descriptions (LEGIT LEAK) (NOT CLICKBAIT) (TRUST ME) (DARLING YOU MUST TRUST ME)

Episode 1: The Law of Identity

After nearly a year gone, a man returns home. 

Released from quarantine and intelligence meetings after his return from behind enemy lines, human officer Eli Vanto is restored to the command of his own ship, the Ratite. The episode follows him as he navigates through his final debriefing with fleet high command, reunion with his family, a social gathering with military associates, and the beginning (and abrupt derailing) of his first mission back. 

Episode 2: The Law of Noncontradiction

Two not-quite-strangers brave the woods and the wars waging around them.

After his smaller craft is shot out of the sky above a war-ravaged planet on the verge of seismic collapse, Eli must work with Mirri, a Grysk elite enforcer who he recognizes from his capture, to get off the planet before it’s too late. As the pair make their way through the woods over the course of three days, flashback-dreams to their shared past are interspersed to provide context. The episode culminates in their arrival at the safehouse where Mirri’s Force-sensitive daughter Jona is hidden, and Mirri sacrifices herself after extracting Eli’s promise to protect her child at the cost of his life. 

Episode 3: The Law of Excluded Middle

A new variable disrupts an established order.

Eli returns to the Ratite with Jona, encountering resistance to his adoption of the alien child, whose species he is able to keep secret from all except the admiral he was captured alongside prior to the events of the series. He convinces her not to expose the lie, but even after calling in favors his choice strains the faith of his fellow command officers as well as that of his other children. The previous harmony of ship and captain is tested as a difficult operation forces all passengers and crew to rely on each other. Eli is able to demonstrate his loyalty to the Ascendancy despite his recent (perceived) betrayal, and his family closes ranks as his second daughter, at first the most hostile to the newest addition due to her own trauma, begins to warm up to the youngest girl. Eli experiences the first of many strange dreams.

Episode 4: The Law of Large Numbers

Concerns mount as patterns take shape.

Roughly three months have passed since the previous arc. Jona continues to acclimate to her new surroundings, and the crew are beginning to behave more favorably towards her, especially when her self-appointed twin sister Idsvey is around. Eli has been being sent on more missions that appear to be increasingly dangerous. This episode jumps between the four girls on the ship in a “slice-of-life” look at how they have adjusted and some of the challenges they are facing and Eli’s mission as it draws him into a desperate fight that threatens his return home and suggests that he is being sent into deliberate peril. 

Episode 5: The Law of Inverse Consequences 

Dark forces reveal themselves.

On a joint military operation to confront a burgeoning attack force, poor strategic decisions as  result of inter-Family conflict allow the opposition to gain a stronger foothold in the Chaos. Jona and her sisters experience strange visions that suggest a growing threat with extraordinary power in the Force. The end of the episode, which functions as a “mid-season finale”, reveals this threat to be a dark sorcerer, a conceptual variant on Legends’ Joruus C’baoth. 

Episode 6: The Law of Total Expectation

After not nearly enough years gone, a woman returns home.

In this episode, the first one after the “mid-season finale”, Chiss Navigator Vah’nya is facing her impending 28th starday– and 21 years of service to the Expansionary Defense Fleet–  with cynicism and hostility. Prompted by a bizarre dream that she believes to be a result of her Third Sight abilities, she returns to her birth planet and the Shadehouse facility there and reconnects with some of the veteran and junior staff, as well as members of her original Family. While the episode mostly follows Vah’nya, the goings-on of the Ratite are featured as the young woman calls to check in on things “back home”. The episode ends with Vah’nya experiencing another strange dream, and waking up at the entrance to a cave. 

Episode 7: The Law of Total Variance

Mystical revelations lead to startling encounters. 

Vah’nya returns to the Shadehouse after her sleepwalking adventure, resolving to return to the cave with appropriate supplies and investigate it despite the warnings of the staff. When she enters the system, she must face spectres from her past and frightening portents of the future. Upon facing these challenges, she locates a crystal which has been calling to her in her dreams, taking it from the cave and keeping it hidden as she journeys back. When she rendezvouses with the Ratite, she does not tell anyone about the crystal, but notices Jona staring at her with a curious expression as she locks herself in her quarters and begins sketching out schematics.

Episode 8: The Law of Detachment 

Decision and indecision make for dangerous roads. 

The enemy attack force from earlier, strengthened by the previous conflict, begins advancing on neighboring territory. Eli and his allies petition for a response force, but are denied. Vah’nya feels compelled to travel to a planet on the edge of the threatened system and sneaks off the Ratite to journey there alone, where she encounters the dark sorcerer revealed at the end of the mid-season finale. He appears to be a wise teacher at first, helping her to refine her lightsaber design, but as her “training” progresses he reveals himself to be unstable and controlling, warping the navigator’s mind. Eli becomes aware of Vah’nya’s disappearance, but is unable to investigate further before a highly coordinated attack is launched by the enemy, prompting the fleet to fully engage. 

Episode 9: The Law of Syllogism

Fire rages among the stars.

Vah’nya battles the sorcerer’s control over her mind as he influences the forces engaged in battle high above them. Unable to break her will completely due to the protective influence of her crystal, he casts her aside and focuses his efforts on the three eldest daughters on the Ratite above, who follow his call and attempt to leave the ship while the crew battles the furious and faultless enemy onslaught. Unnoticed by and immune to the sorcerer’s influence, Jona makes her way to the turret controls and fires a laser directly at the sea of the planet below. The impact distracts the sorcerer long enough for his hold over the children and the enemy forces to break, and Vah’nya engages him with her saber. Before she can strike him down or incapacitate him, the sorcerer takes his own life by means of fire, his last words a warning that “only perfect order can hold back what is to come”. The fleet wraps up the battle, and Vah’nya returns to the Ratite as it lands to assist with relief efforts, embracing Jona and showing her family her saber.

Explanations: 

Law of Identity- each thing is identical with itself 

Law of Noncontradiction- contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time

Law of Excluded Middle- for every proposition, either it or its negation is true 

Law of Large Numbers- the average of the results of a trial becomes closer to the expected value as more trials are performed 

Law of Inverse Consequences- a choice can have the opposite of the expected result 

Law of Total Expectation- expected result is dependent on in-group and between-group expected results  

Law of Total Variance- variance in the total result is dependent on in-group and between-group variance 

Law of Detachment- given true hypothesis of a true conditional, the result must be true

Law of Syllogism- if two statements between three variables are true, so is the third 

(Discrete arcs, as indicated by the episode titles, are color-coded)

[rcmclachlan]

@microcomets​ This takes place post season 1.

Camelot is attacked by a group of magic users who have the ability to turn midsummer to winter. After Merlin uses his magic to very publicly save the kingdom, Uther orders his head knight to slit Merlin’s throat in front of Arthur, who is then placed under house arrest for aiding and abetting a warlock.

Days after Merlin's death, the Courts of Spring, Summer, and Autumn—led by Lord Nardual of the House of Oak, Keeper of the Turning and Queen of the Aequinoctium—convene at Camelot to castigate Uther for what he has brought upon the world by murdering Merlin. 

Nardual explains that Emrys was the rightful lord of the Fifth Court, the only thing that stood between the realm of men and magical chaos. The Winter Court, led by Lord Vetrardag, King of the Solstitium, Prince of the Endless Night—who has been at odds with the other Courts since the start of Uther's reign—has declared war on the world of men.

Fic outline below the cut (she’s a long one, so strap in)

Act 1

Camelot is attacked by an unidentified group of magic users and Merlin uses his own magic to save Arthur and the kingdom. Uther, having borne witness, has his guards immediately go after a barely-conscious Merlin. Arthur, in a state of shock, hesitates when Merlin breathes his name, but it's all the time the rest of Uther's knights need to restrain Arthur as he snaps out of it and tries to get to Merlin. A wildly-thrashing Arthur is forced to watch as Uther's head knight, Sir Egramore, holds Merlin by his hair and bares his throat. Merlin looks at Arthur through dazed eyes, but Arthur can't find any recrimination there for what is about to happen. Merlin whispers something, then the knight cuts his throat. The other knights drag Arthur, struck silent and horrified, away as Merlin gurgles through the blood. Arthur can hear the sound of it as he's forced, kicking and screaming, down the hall. He is not with Merlin when he dies.

Three of the four magic courts (Autumn, Spring, and Summer) congregate on Camelot to castigate Uther for killing Emrys. They warn the fourth court (Winter), led by Vetrardag, King of the Solstitium, Prince of the Endless Night, is out for blood and aims to destroy the world of men with an endless winter. Nardual invites Morgana, who has been suffering under the weight of her powers alone, to join her Court. Morgana accepts. Gwen volunteers to go with her. Nardual offers Arthur her condolences for Merlin's death, then asks if he will join their cause to stop the coming winter. Arthur, who no longer wants a part in his father's legacy, casts aside his birthright and vows to fight. Other members of Camelot's court vow to join them, too, including Gaius and a handful of knights.

Nardual brings Arthur to the Consultation, a hallowed hall where the four courts convene. There are four thrones that sit before a higher throne.

- The Autumn throne is made of oak, with red and gold leaves

- The Spring throne is made of dogwood, with pink flowers that shed blossoms

- The Summer throne is made of beech, with vivid green leaves

- The Winter throne is made of yew, with no adornment

- The High throne is made of raw crystal quartz and stone (This is the throne upon which Emrys would have sat)

Morgana begins working with others to help control her power. A specialist is brought to help keep her from buckling under the weight of her many gifts, as Sight is not her only gift. She continues to struggle against the mental strain, but she has support now, so the future in which she turned evil is averted. However, she begins seeing a boy out of the corner of her eye, who watches her from the shadows and sings little songs, driving her slowly mad.

In Arthur's dreams, Merlin begins revealing everything, from the Questing Beast to Nimueh to the light in the cave to Kilgarrah. Arthur begins opening up about how much Merlin's death affected him. Since Merlin is known as a sorcerer and Arthur is no longer Camelot's prince, they decide to begin again.

Act 2

The three courts argue about how to proceed with the fourth. It is decided that they will meet with Vetrardag in a neutral zone to try and treat with him. Lord Zomeran, King of the Summer Court, volunteers to take a contingent and attempt to make his old friend see reason. Arthur volunteers to go too, along with his band of misfits. 

Arthur is shunned by most of the magical beings and ridiculed by people who hadn't followed or believed in Camelot's magic ban. Lancelot is loyal to a fault but he's too devastated by Merlin's death to grant Arthur forgiveness for it; despite that, he doesn't shun Arthur. Bedivere is the first new face to offer his friendship. Galeas (Galahad) beats the shit out of Arthur at every chance, but she quietly becomes his right hand fighter. Gwaine fights his admiration for Arthur every step of the way. Lemorak joins the group.

In Arthur's dreams, Merlin tells Arthur not to go. There is something he is missing, something he can't see, but he knows that trouble awaits the contingent. Arthur tells him about the Consultation and the fifth throne, marveling that someone like Merlin could be considered royalty. He then realizes he could have treated with Merlin, as one royal to another. He could have married him. Merlin tries to get Arthur to walk into the lake to get what is rightfully his, but Arthur wakes up before he hits the water. The night before he meets Vetrardag's contingent, Merlin comes to him in his dream and they share their first kiss. 

The contingency goes to the meeting place but Vetrardag is not there to meet them, setting them immediately on edge. They are attacked shortly thereafter, and Arthur is separated from his group. He comes face to face with Vetrardag, who places the blame for Merlin's death (and all other magic users and creatures) on him. Vetrardag says that magic and mortal men can't coexist—Arthur's father proved that well—and vows to wipe out the mortal realm in order to remake the world.

"Do you know why winter is so hated by men? To a man, cold is death, but what they refuse to admit is it is as a fire is to a forest. It destroys what has been allowed to grow too high, too much, and returns the world to a resting state. It blanks the canvas so a new hand might paint the picture. And men fear it because what is born of it will be better than what they were given leave to make."

Arthur challenges Vetrardag's numbers, saying the three courts far outrank the winter court in terms of soldiers. Out of the woods comes a familiar boy who shows Arthur how he can form fighters and monstrous creatures from the earth. They are ten thousand strong. Vetrardag murders Zomera for aligning himself with the mortal realm. Arthur charges at the boy, who swats away Arthur like a fly. The boy remembers that Arthur granted him mercy once, and so the boy will do the same. He allows Arthur to live so he can warn Nardual of her impending defeat. He also bids him to tell Morgana that he's thinking of her fondly. 

A defeated Arthur meets up with Galeas, Lemorak, Gwaine, and Lancelot. Bedivere is dead. They bury and honor him. At night, in his dream, Arthur breaks down in Merlin's arms for his part in the deaths of so many, including Merlin's. Merlin whispers that Albion knew what sacrifices had to be made in order for Arthur to assume the throne. They were supposed to have had time to change the world together. Arthur begs his forgiveness, but Merlin doesn't give it, because there's nothing to forgive. He always knew he would give his life for Arthur. Arthur notices that the lake is starting to freeze over. Merlin says that Vetrardag’s advancement is affecting even this place. If Arthur doesn’t take what’s rightfully his, it will be lost to the ice. 

Upon Arthur's return, he relays to Nardual what happened, and then drops the bombshell to Morgana that Mordred has allied himself with Vetrardag. 

Act 3

Arthur and Morgana discuss Mordred and his power, and the hold he's had over Morgana. Now that she can name the force menacing her, she can keep him out. They discuss Uther and their childhood, and how his law kept them apart for so long. Arthur is devastated Morgana felt she couldn't come to him when she first began to develop her powers. She smiles sadly and reminds him that he watched and did nothing while his father burned men, women, and even children alive for something beyond their control. He protests that he ever fully agreed with his father's law, but Morgana says his silence was his complicity. She whispers how sorry she was that she couldn't warn him in time about Merlin's fate. They reconcile.

Vetrardag's second-in-command, Eirahome, defects from the Winter Court to the Autumn Court. She originally went along with Vetrardag's campaign out of grief for the loss of Emrys, but she has seen the folly of the war and believes Vetrardag is blinded by his hate and bias—much in the way Uther is. She reveals that Vetrardag’s army is much closer than previously thought and they must prepare sooner for the final battle. She tells them everything she knows to give them any kind of edge.

The courts convene and appoint Morgana as the new high priestess. Gwen works with Gaius to forge enhanced weapons and medicine born of both mortal and magic techniques. Lancelot becomes Gwen's test dummy, and they begin a romance. Gwen gives Arthur a magic shield called Pridwen, which Morgana blesses.

The night before the battle, Arthur and Galeas have a long talk. She reveals that Uther executed her children at the start of the great purge. They had gone to Camelot because they wanted to glimpse the man who would someday be Albion’s high king and were sidetracked by a farm experiencing a horrible blight. They used magic to kill the blight and the farmers turned them in for using magic. They were burned alive. Arthur weeps, and Galeas swears fealty to him because he has proven himself worthy.

Arthur dreams one last time of Merlin. They have sex for the first time on the shoreline. It begins to snow. Merlin finally leads Arthur onto the nearly-frozen lake to where Arthur must break the ice to claim what’s his. He stomps his foot until he falls through and nearly drowns, but he eventually finds what’s his: Excalibur. When Arthur closes his numb fingers around the hilt, he’s infused with almost unbearable warmth and the lake melts. He walks out of the lake with his sword and a golden crown on his head to where Merlin is waiting. Arthur wakes up to find Excalibur in his hand.

At dawn, Vetrardag’s army sweeps across the world, destroying entire regions, and eventually hits the Consultation like a tidal wave. The battle that ensues is absolutely devastating. Gwaine is killed. Their numbers are dwindling under the onslaught. Morgana faces off against Mordred; she loses an arm, but she defeats him, which puts a damper on Vetrardag’s upper hand. 

Vetrardag and Arthur face off again, and it goes much the same as last time. Arthur is exhausted and half frozen, and even Excalibur’s might isn’t enough to withstand winter’s king. Vetrardag stabs Arthur in the shoulder with his ice sword, putting him on the ground. In a state of shock, Arthur watches his forces being slaughtered among the snow, and he breathes Merlin's name and buries his fingers into the snow until he touches the earth. 

Across the world, in the frozen town square of what was once Camelot, a small spark becomes a fire becomes a conflagration, and from it bursts a spring. Out of the water walks Merlin, wearing a crown of quartz and glowing with golden and white light. Uther, mortally wounded from Vetrardag’s army’s attack, bears witness. Uther asks Merlin if he’s come to kill him, to which Merlin replies, “No. But neither am I here to save you.” He and Merlin stare at each other, then he begins to weep for everything he's lost, particularly his children. He begs forgiveness for how he repaid Merlin's unwavering loyalty to Arthur and Camelot. Merlin doesn't grant it, but he does give Uther the mercy of a gentle death. Uther, as he drifts off, asks if Ygraine is waiting for him. Merlin places a kind hand on his shoulder and murmurs that she is not.

Merlin joins the battle just as Vetrardag is about to deal the final blow to Arthur. When Merlin arrives, he heals Arthur and they face Vetrardag together. Merlin gives Vetrardag an ultimatum: there must be a lord of the Winter for balance to be kept. If he swears to give up his campaign against the mortal realm, Merlin will allow him to claim his throne once more. Vetrardag refuses, on behalf of everyone he lost to the Pendragon line. Merlin infuses Excalibur with power and Arthur defeats Vetrardag. Merlin then offers the yew crown to Eirahome, who accepts and is made the Lord of the Winter Court.

In the end, Arthur becomes the High King of Albion, and—before all four Courts and his own—marries Merlin, uniting the worlds of magic and men.

[thecloserkin]

fic rec: Less Than Dirt. by ulexite

fandom: Supernatural

pairing: Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester

word count: 40k

Is it explicit: no

Bottom line: when they say “go hard gencest or go home” they are referring to this fic, which went so hard that it ground up my insides and fed them back to me in a tube

In this early-season AU, Sam is beset by visions and the boys are keeping it from John. Who knows what John would do if he knew, right? That’s present-day 2006. In 1997, fourteen-year-old Sam and eighteen-year-old Dean tangle with some hunters who turn out to be bad hombres. I think either plot thread could have stood on its own—the 1997 story is entirely self-contained—but when ulexite braids them together the impact is like an airplane landing. This fic is about Sam defending Dean, and Dean defending Sam, against all comers. “All comers” unfortunately includes John. There is some violence done to John’s canon characterization but in service, I think, of a good cause. If you’re familiar with ulexite’s other work it’s probably If Gold Rusts…, which is a fantastic fic. It’s also 130k long lol which is why I wandered away before finishing. Luckily this one’s more digestible.

In 1997, while John is off on a case, the boys have been left to rusticate in a motel in Nowheresville, USA. John deliberately leaves Dean behind to punish him for fucking up on a recent hunt. We are told baldly the nature of Dean’s fuckup: his actions proved that Sam’s safety—not killing monsters—was his top priority. As a consequence his father is putting him in the equivalent of kiddie timeout. In the aftermath, there’s a lot of discourse between the boys about who John’s favorite is. From Dean’s perspective:

“Look after your brother,” Dad had said, “since that’s what you’d rather be doing.”

And from Sam’s perspective:

Might as well have said: “Look after this burden of mine so I don’t have to.”

This is classic they each think the other is John’s favorite, and it’s just as aggravating to me, the reader, as it’s intended to be. So this whole ball of recriminations is sitting between them at the beginning of the 1997 arc. Sam and Dean are not on the easiest of terms with each other.

Enter the bad hombres.

They’re hunters. They’ve worked with John before. They’re looking for backup on a werewolf hunt, and since John is unavailable, they’ll take the next-best thing, his teenage sons. Yeah you heard right these guys just press-ganged a fourteen-year-old into forced labor, all the while relentlessly belittling him. It’s frightening how simple it is for a pack of complete strangers to drive a wedge between Dean and Sam at this fragile moment. All they’ve got to do is treat Dean like one of the guys—like a grownup—and ice Sam out by treating him like a useless hanger-on kid. Here is Dean defending his unilateral decision to 1) join these randos on a hunt and 2) lie to John about it:

“Yes, Sam, I lied to him, and you better not even think about calling him again to tell him we’re going on a hunt. You’re still my little brother, and I’m still in charge until Dad gets back, so do as you’re told for once.” He doesn’t feel like pointing out how infrequently he doesn’t do as he’s told. Everyone’s always accusing him like he makes a habit out of disobedience.

This is grossly unfair! The charge is that Sam has a “disobedient” temperament rather than that he has done xyz “disobedient” thing…which makes it impossible to refute. Again and again canon shows us Sam being punished for what he is rather than what he does—“freak” is an epithet that targets his nature which he cannot control rather than his behavior which he can—and it hurts extra coming from Dean, the person whose opinion he values highest. Sam is gravely wounded by Dean’s betrayal. Still, even hurting as he is, when the chips are down you will never find Sam anywhere but in Dean’s corner:

Outside, Donovan lines up empty beer cans along the stack of firewood and tells Dean: “Time to prove you ain’t all bark, Winchester.”

He’s both proud of Dean for making every shot even with his eyes bleary from the early morning and his hangover, and also wondering why he couldn’t just tell this man “I don’t gotta prove shit to you” and walk away. But then he understands it when the gun’s put in his hands, and the cans are lined up again, and he’s being told to give it a go.

As soon as Dean says “Show ‘em what you got, Sammy,” the need to impress makes all the sense in the world. Just that Dean’s the only one here whose opinion matters to him, and letting his brother down, especially now when he needs Sam on his side the most, even if he doesn’t know that? He makes damn certain he doesn’t miss a single shot.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in this section of the fic Dean is 18, the age of majority, the age at which he might assume legal guardianship of Sam were the worst to befall John (an eventuality he has definitely contemplated more often than is healthy). It’s not clear to Dean what Sam’s role is—is Sam his charge or his peer—and that flare of pride he gets every time Sammy does something well? Some skill Dean taught him? Muddies the waters even more. But we’re not done with this scene yet! We have to see with our own eyes exactly why these bad hombres are bad news:

Sam holds out the gun, but before Dean can make a step to start setting the cans back up, Donovan takes the gun and turns the opposite way from their makeshift targets, aims his gun over top of their heads, and shoots a starling right out of a tree overhanging the driveway. “That’s what it means not to hesitate,” Donovan tells them, sickly pleased that Sam can’t even bring himself to look at the felled bird wherever it landed. “You’ll learn, kid. Or you’ll die. One or the other.”

This dude just shot a living creature dead for NO REASON wtf?!

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Ok so long story short our boys get separated, the bad hombres stake Sam out for werewolf bait without even bothering to arm him with a weapon, Dean shows up to clean up the werewolves but is obviously livid about the way they deemed Sam expendable. Dean feels an obligation to stay and finish the hunt, but he won’t countenance Sam remaining if it will endanger Sam (which it will, since these dudes are psychos). So Dean deliberately picks a fight. He says the only thing he can to get Sam voluntarily onto the first bus to wherever-the-hell-John-went.

“Sam… I’m staying, alright? I’ve gotta see this through. I can’t keep fucking up and getting people killed, and you’re a distraction for me. Dad’s right about that.”

“…I’m a distraction?”

“You are.”

His eyes are burning, white-hot emotion, sadness disguised as fury. “So I’m just in your way, is that it? You want me to leave?”

“This entire time you’ve been nagging and nagging at me that you wanna go home, Sam. I’m saying if you wanna go then go. But I’m needed here, and they’re right. You’re not a little kid anymore, you don’t need me to protect you like you used to.”

I am a kid, Sam thinks, enraged, and so are you!

“I want you to come with me, Dean! I don’t trust these people, I haven’t trusted them from the minute we met them!”

Sam leaves. Then he changes his mind and returns, because Dean sent him packing with their only gun, and Sam can’t bear the thought that he left Dean alone without a weapon. Thank god he does, too, because the scene Sam walks in on is one of these psycho hombres murdering Dean. It’s the real unhinged one, Donovan. Donovan is hurting Dean for fun, just like he shot that bird for fun. Dean is badly injured and unarmed but still fighting back because the son of a gun has said he will go after Dean’s little brother next, and THAT threat never fails to make Dean see red. Of course he’s losing badly until Sam shows up and shoots Donovan cleanly in the back. Aaaaand scene.

What stands out to me about this episode is not that fourteen-year-old Sam killed someone, but that the two of them tacitly agreed to let Dean take the rap for it (Sam was after all not supposed to be there). They let the victim’s relatives believe for nine years that that’s what happened, that Dean killed Donovan. When the inevitable reencounter occurs in 2006, John is entirely in the dark—the boys never told him what happened back in 1997—so John is caught off guard when Donovan’s brother and nephew draw their guns on Dean, and Sam gleefully claims credit for Donovan’s murder (“you’re pointing those at the wrong guy”), and then uses telekinesis to turn the guns on the other two. It’s hard to tell if John’s madder that he’s been kept out of the “Sam is manifesting psychic powers” loop, or madder that two dudes just tried to murder his son. One of these things is maybe a slightly bigger priority, John! It seems worth noting that Sam’s psychic powers are triggered, as usual, by a bodily threat to Dean’s life or limb. Also that John seems to assume that if people are trying to kill Sam, they probably have a good reason (instead of that people are fucking psychos). It’s this unwarranted presumption of guilt that steams my beans. There is not a shred of evidence that Sam is endowed with an evil nature or doomed to walk an evil path, and yet John’s conviction is nigh unshakeable. The visions that Sam was having at the beginning of the fic? Those were premonitions of his own death at John’s hands. He’s been seeing visions of plenty of people getting murdered, he just didn’t realize it was himself he was seeing. Omg when the dashboard read 3am I should have known I should knownnnn. ulexite is good at a lot of things but this descriptive passage stood out to me because it is BUSSIN:

Trees. He sees trees. A grey morning, barely out of the pitch of night, only knows it’s morning and not evening because of the dew clinging to the earth, the sense memory for a thing that hasn't happened yet telling him he shouldn't be awake. Dirt and mud, rotting leaf litter, new blood. He can smell it all, iron and loam. Yet, as soon as he tries to turn his head to look around, that’s when the pain hits, a needle from one temple to the other, straight through the cortex like his premonitions are killing him.

Dw John does not put a bullet in Sam because Dean shows up at the last second and he puts a bullet in John instead. And that’s our story all tied up with a bow.

Now, do I think ulexite’s characterization of John is true to canon? No, I think this is a very selective and unsympathetic reading of John. I think in this fic the boys are conflicted in their feelings for John, but John is never shown to be conflicted, up to and including when he’s about to put Sam in the ground he’s certain that he’s doing the right thing. Canon!John would never. That’s fine though, as long as the fic’s John characterization is internally consistent I’ll buy it. What really sits at the core of it though, the thing that sank a grappling hook into my heart, is the evolving relationship between Sam and Dean and the different roles they occupy for each other as they grow up:

The weight of his amulet, a constant reminder that Sam loves him the most, feels like a noose around his neck all day long, until finally he gets the courage to apologize to Sam

and

It’s not Sam’s fault Dean conspired to keep him young forever and has just now changed his mind. It’s really not. But sometimes Sam grates on him and it’s not because of any real discernible reason other than that Dean thinks sometimes he was made into a parent at four years old and that just kinda sucks

Idk this may just be my own hobbyhorse, maybe y’all don’t care and it’s just me on my soapbox watching these boys agonize about whether I’m parent or peer of what. But I mean:

“Do you hate me?” he asks, not even meaning to, it slips out insecure and irrational, unchecked.

Dean is quiet for a few beats too long for comfort, but he wraps an arm around Sam’s shoulders and he’s pretty sure Dean kisses the top of his head, and he says “You’re my little brother, you know I love you.”

He wishes that answered his question, but in this one instance, it doesn’t. It really doesn’t.

My first thought was: When Dean put a bullet in John that pretty definitively answered the question, wouldn’t you say? “I choose you, Sammy” is what I thought that bullet was saying. But on my second readthrough I’m not so sure. “I choose you” is not the same as “my love is unadulterated by other, more complicated feelings.” I think what Dean’s bullet does establish is that there’s no room in the SamDean relationship for anyone else, even the man who raised them.

[twwpress]

Weekly Press Briefing #75: November 25th - December 2nd

Welcome back to the Weekly Press Briefing, where we bring you highlights from The West Wing fandom each week, including new fics, ongoing challenges, and more! This briefing covers all things posted from November 25 - December 2. Did we miss something? Let us know; you can find our contact info at the bottom of this briefing! 

Challenges/Prompts:

There are no open challenges/prompts that we know of this week. Do you have a challenge or event you’d like us to promote or know of one we’re missing? Be sure to get in touch with us! Contact info is at the bottom of this briefing.

This Week in Canon:

Welcome back to This Week in Canon, where we revisit moments in The West Wing that occurred on these dates during the show’s run.

Season 6, Episode 7: A Change is Gonna Come aired on December 1, 2004.

Photos/Videos:

Here’s what was posted from November 26 - December 2:

Allison Janney posted a photo of herself backstage with Ricky Martin. 

Allison Janney posted a video for her niece Petra’s non-profit, Amelia Air Rescue, for Giving Tuesday. 

Dule Hill posted a video of his daughter Kennedy playing college volleyball along with a sweet message. 

Josh Malina posted a video about Jewish actors in American theatre related to a New York Times article. 

Marlee Matlin posted a photo from the Media Access Awards, encouraging everyone to tune into the 2023 Media Access Awards, airing Sunday December 3 at 9 pm on KCET in Los Angeles and December 15 at 8 pm PR on PBS SoCal with streaming on both websites and on the free PBS app.

Marlee Matlin posted a photo of herself and Henry Winkler eating out at 7 Adams restaurant. 

Peter James Smith posted photos from his theatre trip to NYC.

Peter James Smith posted some baby photos of himself. 

Peter James Smith posted a photo of himself in an ornament on The West Wing Teen’s tree. 

Rob Lowe posted a photo of a rainbow on the Unstable set. 

Donna Moss Daily: November 26 | November 27 | November 28 | November 29 | November 30 | December 1 | December 2

Daily Josh Lyman: November 26 | November 27 | November 28 | November 29 | November 30 | December 1 | December 2

No Context BWhit: November 26 | November 27 | November 28 | November 29 | November 30 | December 1 | December 2

@twwarchive: November 28 | December 1 

Edits/Artwork:

#donnamoss: princess face, killer body, samurai mind by @nacejisbon [VIDEO EDIT] #joshdonna: you're losing me by @nacejisbon [VIDEO EDIT] #joshdonna: new year's day by @hvnleia [VIDEO EDIT] #ABBEYBARTLET: but it’s me who’s been making the bed. by @livsbenson [VIDEO EDIT]

Editors’ Choice: 

Chanukah begins this coming Thursday evening, so we rounded up some fics to celebrate. We did our best to prioritize works by Jewish authors; if we missed any of your favorite stories, please feel free to reblog with links! Happy Chanukah! 

what else can I give him, poor as I am? by park_all_covered_with_cheese | Rated G | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | Complete | It's been a long time since Josh Lyman celebrated Chanukah properly, in his own home. But Sam needs cheering up, and Josh needs an excuse to find out what's wrong. Sufganiyot and Other Declarations Of Love by eowyn_of_rohan | Rated G | Josh Lyman/Sam Seaborn | Complete | The way to Josh’s heart is through his stomach, so Sam has planned accordingly this holiday season. (Obligatory Hanukkah fic! Chag urim sameach!) Bless Us As Well by altschmerzes | Rated T | Josh Lyman & Toby Ziegler (Gen Fic) | Complete I It's the first Hanukkah after Rosslyn, and Toby has a gift for Josh. “It’s a tallit,” Toby tells him stiffly, and Josh nods. “I know what it is,” he says, voice soft and lacking any recrimination. He may not be an observant Jew, but he’s seen a prayer shawl before. “Why did you… What?” “It’s the tallit that I wore when you were shot. I wore it while I prayed that you would live. That you’d be okay. And I want you to have it.”

This week's fics will be reblogged onto this post in a moment!

[starwarsrecrimination]

Scripts for Episodes 1-3 now LIVE!

This is what I've been working on for the last couple of weeks (not the site, the site was put together in two minutes). I was considering waiting to publish this on the anniversary of my starting Albatross, but ultimately decided against it. Together, these three episodes run about the length of a feature film, and serve as a solid introduction to the world of Recrimination. I hope you enjoy!

[mariacallous]

Foreign Policy Situation Report: The midterm madness edition

By Robbie Gramer and Jack Detsch

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! Robbie and Jack here, recovering from a long week of watching the U.S. midterm elections. If you’re reading this, please send us coffee urgently (for Robbie only, Jack is off the sauce).

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: How the midterms will shape U.S. national security, Biden and Xi plan to meet in Bali, and the U.S. military reveals the Russian death toll in Ukraine.

Midterm Madness

Well, midterm season is (mostly) over, meaning it’s time for the time-honored traditions of the party that underperformed angrily recriminating itself and pundits churning out hot takes about how the midterms will shape the presidential election in two years.

We at SitRep have a little tradition of our own, which involves frantically calling a bunch of congressional sources and political junkies to sort out what impact the midterms will have on U.S. foreign policy. Here are our top five takeaways, before we know with 100 percent certainty which parties will control Congress.

1. No big jolts on Ukraine policy, but… There has been plenty of buzz about how the midterm results could shake up the massive amounts of military and economic aid that Washington is delivering to Ukraine, with some of the most vocal MAGA acolytes in the Republican Party calling for a halt to aid and some recent polls showing public opinion shifting in their favor. The consensus from people we’ve spoken to is that it’s not going to happen. There’s still significant bipartisan support across the House and Senate to keep up the aid, and that’s not changing.

One caveat we’ve heard, though: The slimmer the Republican majority is, the tougher time pro-Ukraine Republicans will have keeping their party in line. If the Republicans take the House with just a slim majority, it will give outsized power to the fringe elements of the party (as U.S. President Joe Biden himself learned the hard way with a 50-50 Senate time and again).

2. Investigations, subpoenas, impeachments, oh my. House Republicans are champing at the bit to launch investigations into what they see as Biden’s mishandling of foreign-policy issues such as Afghanistan and the U.S.-Mexico border. In the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul plans to use his likely soon-to-be role as chairman to expand the investigation into Biden’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.

Some Republicans also say they’re preparing impeachment trials against Biden’s homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, over increased crossings at the U.S. southern border. (It’s not something that would ever get through the Senate, but it would shine a new spotlight on the situation at the border.)

3. Shutdowns. What better way to showcase to the world how dysfunctional Washington is than with government shutdowns? The last shutdown at the end of 2018 lasted over a month, over an impasse between former President Donald Trump and Democrats on Trump’s policy toward Mexico and ill-fated plans to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The next one could be just around the corner if Republicans take control of the House, as they seem poised to do.

The military and critical national security apparatuses keep running in the event of a shutdown but are still hobbled by an overall shutdown in federal government operations, including the Defense and State departments and other national security agencies.

A big issue for the Republicans that could trigger a shutdown is what they see as runaway federal spending and the alarming scale of the national deficit (though they didn’t bring up the national deficit during the Trump administration, funnily enough). Biden reduced the federal deficit by $1.4 trillion but added $400 billion in new debt with a nationwide student loan forgiveness plan.

4. Big wins and losses. Here’s some news in key races for the foreign-policy wonks: Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer and centrist Democrat in Virginia with heavyweight national security credentials, narrowly won her reelection bid in what was seen as a bellwether race for how the Democrats would do nationally. Tom Malinowski, a New Jersey Democrat and former State Department official who played an outsized role on foreign policy and human rights issues in Congress, lost his reelection (even after ziplining into his wedding to the sound of violins playing the Indiana Jones theme song this summer). Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia, the vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee and a vocal critic of the U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding strategy, lost her race to Navy veteran and Republican challenger Jen Kiggans.

On the Senate side, Indiana Republican Todd Young cruised to reelection. Young, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a leading voice in the Senate on some top foreign-policy issues, including strategic arms control talks and curbing presidential war powers.

5. We don’t know what we don’t know. On the 2024 buzz that has already started, just remember two things: First, two years is a really long time. And second, the pundit class is really, really bad at predicting a presidential race two years out (though it confidently forgets this fact every cycle).

After the 2014 midterms, all the seasoned pols in Washington agreed that Jeb Bush and Chris Christie were the clear-cut front-runners for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and well…we all know how that turned out. Right after the 2018 midterms, Democratic pundits were confident that Amy Klobuchar and Sherrod Brown were going to be the front-runners in 2020.

Yes, Trump is still a major political force in the Republican Party even if his brand took a beating on Tuesday. But let’s not pretend to know with certainty what these midterms mean for the next presidential race.

Let’s Get Personnel

Roya Rahmani, a former Afghan ambassador to the United States, is joining the Albright Stonebridge Group, as is former Mexican Deputy Foreign Secretary Julián Ventura.

Linda Robinson is joining the Council on Foreign Relations as a senior fellow for women and foreign policy, coming from the Rand Corp.

On the Button 

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Xi’s just not that into you. Biden is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, on Nov. 14, the White House confirmed on Thursday, despite rising tensions between the two countries and Xi’s recent criticism of U.S. foreign policy.

It’s hard to say what’s specifically on the agenda for their meeting, given the quintessentially vague gobbledygook press release language from the White House: “The Leaders will discuss efforts to maintain and deepen lines of communication between the United States and [China], responsibly manage competition, and work together where our interests align, especially on transnational challenges that affect the international community. The two Leaders will also discuss a range of regional and global issues.” OK then, regional and global issues it is.

Anyway, relations between the two countries have gotten even rockier than usual since U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Taiwan in August, a visit that incensed China and caused some headaches back in Washington.

The cost of war. The top U.S. military officer, Gen. Mark Milley, said on Wednesday that about 200,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded in the eight months since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, the highest estimates offered by a Western official so far. Milley, speaking in New York, added that about 40,000 civilians had been killed in the fighting.

The estimates come as the United States has reportedly tried to push Ukraine further toward the negotiation table in recent weeks, despite Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson city, one of the crown jewels of its military campaign.

Le strategerié. French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled France’s new national defense strategy on Wednesday, which will see French troops maintain a wide presence in sub-Saharan Africa and see Paris embark on a new plan to combat fake news and disinformation, as Russia has used the presence of Wagner Group mercenaries to force governments in Africa to adopt more pro-Kremlin positions.

Macron also called on France to maintain a “credible” and modern nuclear deterrent to deter Russia. France is the only nuclear power in the European Union.

Put On Your Radar

Friday, Nov. 11: Biden takes off to North Africa and Asia for a five-day trip, starting in Egypt for the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, before traveling to Cambodia and Indonesia to attend ASEAN and G-20 meetings.

Monday, Nov. 14: King Charles III of Britain turns 74.

Quote of the Week

“Before the next election, you might want to find a better way to poll anyone under the age of 30 since they would rather pick up a pinless grenade than a call from an unknown number.”

—NBC News senior reporter Ben Collins on one hypothesis for why Democrats outperformed poll numbers in the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday.

FP’s Most Read This Week

• The Cult of Modi by Ramachandra Guha

• 6 Wrong Lessons for Taiwan From the War in Ukraine by Franz-Stefan Gady

• The U.N. (as We Know It) Won’t Survive Russia’s War in Ukraine by James Traub

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Reaping, meet sowing. A top U.K. employer and leading proponent of Brexit, Simon Wolfson, is now complaining that he can’t get enough foreign workers because of, well, Brexit. Huh.

Should’ve used a Reuben instead. This headline from Virginia’s ABC 8News says it all: “Nuclear engineer, wife who tried to sell Navy secrets in peanut butter sandwich sentenced for espionage.”

That’s it for this week.

For more from Foreign Policy, subscribe here or sign up for our other newsletters. You can find older editions of Situation Report here.

[newstfionline]

Saturday, June 17, 2023

Tornado devastates Texas Panhandle town, killing 3 and injuring dozens (AP) A tornado tore through the Texas Panhandle town of Perryton on Thursday, killing three people, injuring dozens more and causing widespread damage as another series of fierce storms carved its way through Southern states. First responders from surrounding towns and cities and from neighboring Oklahoma descended on the town, which is home to more than 8,000 people and about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of Amarillo, just south of the Oklahoma line. Mobile homes were ripped apart and pickup trucks with shattered windshield were slammed against mounds of rubble in residential areas.

US purchases of Russian uranium (NYT) In 1993, in the pursuit of wrapping up the Cold War in a capitalist bow, Washington and Moscow inked a deal where the United States would buy and import the vast amount of Soviet weapons-grade uranium lying around the country, which would then be converted to nuclear fuel for power plants. This gave Americans cheap atoms to crack, Russians money, and the world some peace, but the side effect was that it pretty much wiped out the American uranium enrichment business. For decades, rather than invest in upgrading American centrifuges, the country just kept buying Russian uranium, which means that right now a third of enriched uranium used in the U.S. is imported from Russia, to the tune of around $1 billion a year. Naturally, this has posed a bit of a geopolitical pickle given the invasion of Ukraine and needed to stop, and the U.S. now needs to line up a new supply of enriched uranium, which will take years.

Mexico swelters as ‘atypical’ heat wave grips nation (Reuters) Mexican authorities urged people across the country to take safety precautions on Thursday as an unusual late Spring heat wave sent temperatures soaring, with cooler days possibly weeks away. Health ministry data through June 9 shows that at least six people have died this year as a result of the higher-than-normal temperatures. “The heat is intense!” said Abigail Lopez, a nurse in normally sunny but temperate Mexico City who said she was drinking more water and wearing lighter clothes to try to beat the heat. Mexico’s national meteorological service forecast temperatures over 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) on Thursday in all of the country’s 32 states, with highs at least 10 degrees hotter in 23 of them.

Scathing report finds Boris Johnson deliberately misled UK Parliament over ‘partygate’ (AP) A committee of U.K. lawmakers harshly rebuked former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Thursday, saying he lied to Parliament about lockdown-flouting parties and was complicit in a campaign to intimidate those investigating his conduct during the coronavirus pandemic. The release of the Commons committee’s scathing 77-page report Thursday touched off an angry exchange of recriminations. Johnson repeated his claim that the panel was a “kangaroo court” bent on ousting him from Parliament. The committee said the defense he had provided was an after-the-fact justification and “no more than an artifice.” The report and reaction to it highlight the battle over Johnson’s legacy as Britain prepares for elections that could radically alter social and economic policy in a nation struggling to overcome a cost-of-living crisis and complaints about government services ranging from healthcare to law enforcement.

Drought and rising heat bring unusual wildfire warnings in northern Europe (AP) Summer is wildfire season in southern Europe, but this year the continent’s north is also at risk, with forest fire warnings in effect across the Nordic and Baltic countries. A lack of rain and rising temperatures have led to dangerously dry conditions in the region, leading to worries of a repeat of the summer of 2018 when major wildfires swept across Sweden in particular. Small wildfires are already burning in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland and experts worry it could get much worse unless there’s significant rainfall in coming weeks. Unlike the sun-soaked Mediterranean countries, which have to deal with wildfires every summer, the phenomenon is rare in the countries of northern Europe, where summers are normally cool and wet by comparison.

Russia’s labor shortage (WSJ) The war in Ukraine has fueled Russia’s worst labor crunch in decades after hundreds of thousands of workers fled the country or were sent to the front lines, weakening the foundations of an economy weighed down by sanctions and international isolation. Two waves of emigration last year, the largest since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the mobilization of around 300,000 men have exacerbated an already tight labor market plagued by long-term demographic decline. Russian businesses are short of everyone from programmers and engineers to welders and oil drillers, professions needed to boost the economy and support the war effort in Ukraine. To stem the tide, last month, President Vladimir Putin ordered officials to develop measures to reverse the population outflow.

Retaking Villages Leaves Ukrainian Troops Exposed and Diving for Cover (NYT) After months of preparation and bolstered by hundreds of Western-donated tanks, armored vehicles and howitzers, Kyiv has notched small successes in the first week and a half of a counteroffensive to drive Russian forces from southern Ukraine. In fierce fighting on the plains, the military said it had broken through a first line of Russian defenses and reclaimed seven villages. But with each step forward, its soldiers become more vulnerable—removed from the safety of their own trenches, closer to Russian artillery, maneuvering through minefields and unprotected from airstrikes. “They are attacking with rockets, howitzers, mortars, helicopters and drones,” Sgt. Serhiy Gubanov said in an interview while taking cover in a basement as explosions boomed outside. “It’s the complete collection of intense experiences,” he said.

Tropical Cyclone Biparjoy: Power disrupted, heavy rains lash India and Pakistan (Reuters) Roofs were blown off houses and trees and electric poles uprooted, leaving thousands without power as a severe cyclone made landfall and rain lashed both the Indian and Pakistani coasts early on Friday. At least two people died in India's western state of Gujarat after being swept away by flood waters just before the cyclone hit. More than 180,000 people were evacuated in India and Pakistan in the last few days as authorities braced for the cyclone, named Biparjoy, which means 'disaster' or 'calamity' in the Bengali language.

China seeks to expand its role in the Middle East (Financial Times) China has offered to mediate between rival Palestinian factions and facilitate peace talks with Israel, in the latest sign of Beijing’s intent to expand its diplomatic role in the Middle East. At a meeting between Chinese president Xi Jinping and the head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, in Beijing on Wednesday, the two leaders also said that they had signed a strategic partnership. Beijing has ramped up its political presence in the Middle East, hosting talks this year that led to the surprise resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Analysts say Beijing hopes to rival the US as a broker in the region, and replace Russia’s waning influence.

Students meet under trees as schools shelter villagers displaced by Philippine volcano (AP) Nearly 20,000 people have fled from an erupting Philippine volcano and taken shelter in schools, disrupting education for thousands of students, many of whom are having classes in chapels and tents or under trees, officials said Friday. The Mayon volcano in northeastern Albay province, one of the deadliest of 24 active volcanoes across the Philippine archipelago, began expelling lava late Sunday in a gentle eruption that has not caused any injuries or death. But it could drag on for months and cause a prolonged humanitarian crisis, officials warned. Evacuees were directed to more than 20 emergency shelters, which are mostly grade and high school campuses. Every classroom has turned into an overcrowded sanctuary for several families with sleeping mats, bags of clothes, cooking stoves and toys for children. More than 17,000 students in five Albay towns are among affected by the displacements for the eruption. About 80% are continuing their daily school lessons through an emergency system in which parents teach their children at home or elsewhere using school-provided “learning modules.”

Thousands of Sudanese fleeing fighting with no travel documents trapped on the border with Egypt (AP) When fighting in Sudan erupted in mid-April, Abdel-Rahman Sayyed and his family tried to hold out hiding in their home in the capital, Khartoum, as the sounds of explosions, gunfights and the roar of warplanes echoed across the city of 6 million people. They lived right by one of the fiercest front lines, near the military’s headquarters in central Khartoum, where the army and a rival paramilitary, the Rapid Support Forces, battled for control. Three days into the conflict, a shell hit their two-story home, reducing much of it to rubble. Luckily, Sayyed, his wife and three children survived, and they immediately fled the war-torn city. The problem was, their passports were buried under the wreckage of their home. Now they are among tens of thousands of people without travel documents trapped at the border with Egypt, unable to cross into Sudan’s northern neighbor. More than 120,000 Sudanese without travel documents are trapped in Wadi Halfa and surrounding areas, according to a Sudanese migration official.

An alien world with all the elements needed for life (Washington Post) Saturn’s moon Enceladus has enticed scientists for years with its plumes fizzing their way up from an ocean beneath a thick crust of ice. Now there’s a new element to the story, literally: That cold, dark ocean appears to contain a form of phosphorus, an essential ingredient for life as we know it. That means Enceladus has the only ocean beyond Earth known to contain all six elements needed for life. The claimed discovery of dissolved sodium phosphate, announced in a report published Wednesday in the journal Nature, makes Enceladus all the more intriguing in the search for habitable worlds beyond Earth. The report is based on data from an instrument on board NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which explored Saturn in its moons for 13 years before engineers sent it plunging into the gas giant’s atmosphere in 2017.

After only an hour (Science.org) Tech experts have been sounding the alarm that artificial intelligence (AI) could turn against humanity by taking over everything from business to warfare. Now, Kevin Esvelt is adding another worry: AI could help somebody with no science background and evil intentions design and order a virus capable of unleashing a pandemic. Mr. Esvelt, a biosecurity expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently asked students to create a dangerous virus with the help of ChatGPT or other so-called large language models, systems that can generate humanlike responses to broad questions based on vast training sets of internet data. After only an hour, the class came up with lists of candidate viruses, companies that could help synthesize the pathogens’ genetic code, and contract research companies that might put the pieces together.

[odrseasonone]

Severax Season 1

THE BASICS: 

Character’s name: Severax

Role in story: Nemesis

Physical description: Smaug w/ Drogon coloring

Age: Unknown (his egg finally hatched when cassius was around 16/17ish??)

MBTI: ENTP-T (the campaigner)

Enneagram: Type 4 (the individualist), 4w3, 478

Zodiac: Leo

PLOT POINTS:

season one:

1.01: gathering dragon more egg(s); a dragon egg hatches (can he sense this?)

1.02: severax sets charles and his barn on fire (and possibly smells/senses arya?)

1.07: dragon fight! probs including severax @ arya w a 'we're not all that difference/join me and together we can rule the galaxy world' kinda speech (either that or a 'lol these humans are so much drama just do whatever' one -- he ~is a chaotic being after all)

misc: presumably asp severax realizes that helena is also able to hear him and he FINALLY has someone else to talk to (besides arya who he knows probs hates him bc yknow he killed off basically their entire species alkdjsflkjsdf)!!!

future plots:

s2: burning of the eastern woods; goes north w cassius; rescue of helena; other eggs hatch and continue to do so for the rest of his life etc

s3: fighting in the south alongside rowena and army; death of charles

s4: final showdown w arya; final battle w various other dragons; severax dies trying to save cassius and/or with cassius if killing riders still kills dragons? (note: unless we keep the dragons die when riders do thing, severax turning to fight for cassius is his last selfless act and he dies for it)

TRAJECTORY:

Overall Arc: goes from a deluional being intent on recriminating everyone else in order to obfuscate blame from himself to someone rejecting fear and applauding himself for his achievement of embracing his flaws (yet still internally grappling w this choice bc all of these are choices made from fear), coming too late to the revelation that he hates the monster he's made himself into -- and can still change

Season 1 Arc (Step 1 of 3): from a delusional being intent on recriminating everyone else in order to obfuscate blame from himself, to someone staring down the darkness in themselves

Season 2 Arc (Step 2 of 3): from someone staring down the darkness in himself to someone embracing it as the only way to survive in this savage world

Season 3 Arc (Step 3 of 3): from someone embracing their inner darkness as the only way to survive in this savage world to someone -- who now that he finally has the ability to escape his loneliness! -- isolating himself to protect himself from getting hurt again now that he is emotionally investing in his greatest fears (it is true that i am flawed beyond change etc)

Season 4 Arc (Step 4 of 4): from someone isolating to deal w the embracing of his greatest internal fear, to someone rejecting fear and applauding himself for this achievement yet still internally grappling w it bc all of these are choices made from fear. he comes too late to the understanding that he hates himself for being a monster -- the monster he's made of himself -- and he can still change

ENGINE OF CHANGE:

Internal goal/desire: To find himself and his significance (to create an identity); to be unique and to experience deep, authentic emotions; to prove himself an individual worthy of respect and appreciation

Why can’t they get it? Severax's whole world is defined by something that he helped bring about 15 years ago -- smth that also doomed him to be, in all the world, only able to speak to cassius and dezod (and possibly rowena, depending on how all that works idk) -- possibly until helena appears in the east, which def makes it tough to prove yourself in any way!! also the 'i killed most of my own species' isn't really the authentic him and is def not the identity he wants (tho he will deF lean into that persona and its ferocious aspect esp when he's feeling frustrated...which is most of the time, and can be quite cruel as a result) plus he just really feels super alone in general and he's v depressed its fun being him <3 fortunately he'll always have his snark and his sweet style ;D

Internally-motivated external goal: to reestablish and protect dragons in this world -- but this time not in a servile relationship to humans -- this time, he wants that the other way around tbqh -- since the dragons extend human lives and give them magic etc, they deserve more respect right!! (esp if they have to die when the rider does!)

Why can’t they get it? there aren't any other dragons (except maybe some wild ones somewhere but lbr they probs despise him ngl) since he killed them all oops

What are they afraid of: Being too flawed to function

How character views the world: Hopeless -- hedonism is the only joy so take what you can get and give nothing back

How character views self: This is a complicated question. If you asked him, he would say that he is the perfect being, marvelous and glamorous in every way and utterly above all these insects around him. This is smth that, in his arrogance, he does absolutely feel. However, he also deep down believes that he's profoundly flawed and can never overcome that bc he's got some hole inside himself where good things ought to reside. TL;DR: self image: god complex vs self-hatred

INTERNAL: THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER

What is his/her greatest fear?  That he has no identity or personal significance, that he is fundamentally flawed; that he is too alien to ever be loved or appreciated by others and/or seen as anything other than a curiosity

Inner motivation: Want to express himself and his individuality, to create and surround himself with beauty, to maintain certain moods and feelings, to withdraw to protect his self-image, to take care of emotional needs before attending to anything else, to attract a "rescuer"

Kryptonite: Being told what to do

What is his/her misbelief about life (to be challenged ~this season)?  His insecurities are due entirely to the fact that he is alone and this is the only thing wrong w his situation not yknow the genocide of his own race or anything like that which HE helped enact,no its just his loneliness which is btw the entirely beyond his control and he's frankly such a martyr to put up w all of this hell just for cassius' sake

Lesson he/she needs to learn (this season): He's responsible for himself, his own actions, and his own pain, and thus he's just as responsible for that slaughter as cassius and rowena are -- it wasn't some misplaced noble loyalty, it was his own decision: smth rotten inside of himself that he will have to face down in season 2

What is the best thing in his/her life?  for all that he whines about him, it is cassius and their connection, toxic as that has turned, (partially bc cassius just accepts all the wrongs of the past as his own burden from both rowena and severax, but that's neither here nor there)

What is the worst thing in his/her life?  The Purge honestly and the host of awful emotions that come out of it as well as the profound loneliness that has been, for severax, the ~unforeseen consequence~ in the aftermath

What does she/he most often look down on people for?  Honestly a lack of personal style -- and im not just talking appearance, im talking vibes(tm), this dragon thrives off drama (you can see why he and cassius were paired bc severax is the type to set the spot cassius is standing in on fire just for the drama and cassius is the sort to grimly walk out again and dramatically fling his still burning cloak off before him and then make some understated comment as the flames billow behind him etc for a combined bamf moment for them both ;D)

What makes his/her heart feel alive?  Inside jokes, shared warmth and laughter, drama <3, excitement and action, fire <3, ppl being impressed by him tbqh

What makes him/her feel loved, and who was the last person to make them feel that way? Being understood, feeling seen -- really seen -- and appreciated for who he is, being sought out just for some shared quality time, not simply impressing others with his majesty (smth he always enjoys immensely) but also to share deep and meaningful moments w others. Cassius was the last person to make him feel like this

Top three things he/she values most in life?  Cassius, dragonkind, the drama genuine and true moments of connection with others

EXTERNAL: NOT NECESSARY, BUT GOOD TO KNOW AND SAYS A LOT ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER

What’s his/her favorite book, movie, and band? God, I honestly feel like it'd be Paradise Lost or smth dramatic af like that alkdsjfakjdsf he'd identify w Lucifer sdlakfjdksjf, fav movie would def be an action movie, preferably one w lotsa fire ;D ummm imma say The Dark Knight Rises but I also gotta list the last two Hobbit movies bc all the Smaug moments would def be his style ;D, Is Imagine Dragons too on the nose for fav band? ;D, he'd also really enjoy Zayde Wolfe. Linkin Park. Queen.

Is there an object he/she can’t bear to part with and why? Cassius umm honestly not really? but he probs would enjoy hording gold old school dragon style but idk that he'd get attached to any one particular piece or anything

Describe a typical outfit for him/her from top to bottom.  He mostly goes around naked bc he's a dragon dslakjflksdf he does often have a saddle on tbf -- between his and cassius' fashion sense, it is def 100% black ;D

What names or nicknames has he/she been called throughout their life?  Sev, the black dragon, the last dragon

What is his/her method of manipulation? omg he's dramatic af and snarky af and demanding af and if that still doesn't work he will def be giving smaug style threats ("my claws are spears" etc)

Describe their daily routine.  Severax doesn't really 'do' routines except whatever cassius' need for routine demands of him (he won't admit it but he'd do anything for cassius, they're def codependent but esp on severax's side ngl) this boy's here for the chaos, but he's def a night owl so usually when cassius appears in the mornings he has to wake the dragon (heh) bc severax is def sleeping off his night of revelry which probs includes hunting and then devouring a whole herd of deer and then rolling around in their charred carcasses like a dog smdh (this is btw another reason for the starvation of the ppl bc severax's artificially massive size -- thanks rowena -- sees him eating a tonnn just to live etc), anywayyy he then groggily flies around and annoys cassius w his every thought and irreverant quip while cassius is just tryna get in some good brooding time; mostly he just sort of goofs off and annoys cassius all day till its time for the moon to appear and then he starts a differenct kind of obnoxious, not just oversharing, but also looking for distractions

Their go-to cure for a bad day? A feast! probs hording stuff, lowkey pranking others, snark!!!!!

CURRENT CHARACTER GOALS:

How is your character dissatisfied with their life? He feels utterly alone and blames the one remaining person he loves for it so that he doesn't have to blame himself

What does your character believe will bring them true happiness or contentment? Connections with others! Not simply a restoration of dragons but a revolution of them wherein they take over the world basically w human pets sdlafjsdjkf

What definitive step could they take to turn their dream into a reality? Since dragons only hatch for humans (so dumb, he hates it), collect all the eggs and subjugate all the humans and then file them through etc! This way he can prove hs own importance and mastery by reestablishing the order of things and freeing his kind, thus proving that his action of destroying it was really for the greater good (bc deep down he knows he's responsible for it too)

How has their fear kept them from taking this action already? If he really is as flawed as he fears, he truly will destroy both his race and humanity by going through with this! plus, he knows cassius would set himself against this, seeing it as the enslavement of humanity, and then he really, truly would be alone...perhaps forever

How does your protagonist feel they can accomplish their goal while still steering clear of the thing they are afraid of? If he takes his time and simply gathers up all the eggs, ppl will come voluntarily to them, surely, and thus cassius will have nothing to set himself against! its the perfect plan!

THE BACKSTORY SCENES THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

moment #1: the purge

What does your character go into the backstory scene believing and how are they surprised by the outcome? i think severax thought that they'd submit after a lil persuading! he wanted, even then, a new dynamic and felt rejected etc by the others and he wanted to prove that he could take them all down. what he didn't expect was that he'd have to go through with it. o ver. a nd over. a nd over again. i mean, couldn't the other dragons seee why this was a good thing even if their silly humans couldn't????

How does your character struggle to hold onto their old beliefs? Severax is frankly still lowkey tryna do that to persuade himself that he was in the right when so many so violently ojected!

What is their conclusion/new belief? That he did all of this out of loyalty to cassius! a nd not at all for himself!

[alexjcrowley]

I saw a post where you talk about succession 1x03 so here I asking: why the hell was THAT scene never talked about again in season 1? Will it be talked about in later seasons?? I’m new to this show

I am honoured you think I have the answers to your questions, but I don't. Here's what I can tell you, in order:

1) I have no idea, I think because the only people who could talk about it are Stewy- who clearly doesn't care enough- and Kendall- who even when that thing happened basically said nothing, so why should he recriminate later?

2) This is the only question I can truly answer and the answer is no, it will never be discussed again.

Also I am very happy more people are watching Succession, I hope you have a blast!