#so a lot of people have seen something and just flat out forgotten it because it was too much and your brain just noped it

[temperate-rainforest]

,

making this one binary. no ghost agnosticism allowed. but explain the nuances in the tags if you want.

[miss-anachronism]

for requests. i need. valen x male magister merlin. im a sucker for this guy. anything really. thank you!

Ooh, I’ve never read an x reader/MC fic, let alone written one! New territory, as exciting as it is scary.

I’m not so sure I have a good grip on Valen’s character, but I tried to write it from his perspective. I hope this suits your needs! It gets a bit philosophical. And sorry if its OOC :,)

He isn’t sure what to think, really.

They’re sitting around a dying campfire, just outside the borders of the Dark Forest. Lorsan is pacing somewhere in the distance, muttering to himself, or to the wind, maybe. Trying to figure out what’s happened to his home. Korin leans against a tree, tending to his wounds- courtesy of Merlin. The magister himself is across from Valen, wrapping his own wound and chattering with his hamsters.

Logically, Valen knows that the lesson he should have taken from this scramble is a lot more profound than what’s been on his mind. He should be contemplating the Wilders, the forest, their next steps, how to protect the refugees. And he’s trying to, but it’s just that something- someone- keeps catching his attention.

He didn’t know Merlin could bleed.

It’s such a silly observation. But as Valen watches the angry red wound on Merlin’s forearm, his gut twists. It’s like seeing a god’s flesh tear, and seeing that its blood is the same bright red as his own.

Valen isn’t sure what exactly Merlin is. As far as he knows, no one does, not even Merlin himself. But to the average young Lightbearer, he’s a myth. A legendary figure that you might glimpse once in your life, but would never get to meet. Never speak with, let alone camp alongside. Fight alongside. Merlin throws his head back to laugh at something Chippy has said, and something stirs in Valen’s ribs, something he knows is dangerous.

All of this is dangerous. Merlin is not someone to be loved; Valen has seen what happened to Mirael. Forgotten about, left in the dust, accidentally as it was. The way she watches Merlin, her face made of mixed admiration, bitterness, and regret. He wonders if she would take it all back, if she could. Scariest of all, when she bid them farewell, the look in her eyes sent an ugly pain of jealousy through Valen’s chest. And he doesn’t want that to happen to him, selfish as that may be. Every time Merlin falls asleep, he risks waking up knowing nothing.

Besides, what is Valen to a hero of myth? His whole life has been barely a blink in Merlin’s. Whatever he is, there is no reasonable way Valen could ever mean something to Merlin the way that Merlin is beginning to mean something to him. Merlin will outlive him a thousand times over. And he’s probably met a thousand different people, fallen in love with quite a few of them. Someone who has experienced so much life, so much loss, can they still love? Could they ever?

And yet, he bleeds. It’s such a human weakness that it seems impossible. Valen knew heroes could bleed; he didn’t know gods could. Merlin does not go about the world serene and calculating, watching every moment with practiced ease. He stumbles, laughs, misses with his spells. He jostles Valen’s pauldron excitedly when they win a fight, he’s the last to flee when they lose, ensuring everyone else has disengaged safely. He has only one dimple, on his left cheek. Sometimes he speaks so fast his words blend together, and Hammie has to remind him to slow down. It’s endearing. It’s human. Valen doesn’t know what to do with it. Because it was so much easier, to write off affection as admiration. When the pieces had first clicked, he thought it all made sense. The natural pull that the magister gave off- yes, of course, it was just Merlin’s nature. But they’re a week into this camaraderie, and Valen keeps noticing things like the lick of hair on his neck that doesn’t sit flat.

Pretty fucking annoying, that’s what it is. Valen’s always prouded himself on his ability to swerve out of love’s path. He can flirt and charm all he wants, but at the end of the day all the love letters he receives are ink and paper, nothing more. Whenever someone seriously reciprocates- god forbid- he disengages as smoothly as he can, lest they get the wrong impression.

But Merlin has changed all that, somehow. Impossibly so. He supposes it’s in his nature, to take everything and turn it upside down. Valen doesn’t want to flirt with the Magister, to laugh as he flushes under his praise. Well, it would be nice, he always has liked the attention; but the thing is, that isn’t the point. With Merlin, he just wants to be. No performance, no elaborate courtship. Just… be. Together. All this, for someone who is more myth than man.

It seems like the scariest thing he’s ever faced.

“Valen?”

He jumps as the magister suddenly speaks, and realizes with mounting embarrassment that he’s been staring the whole time. Luckily, the magister grins good-naturedly- and ah, there’s that dimple again.

“Lost in thought?”

“You could say that.”

He leans back on his hands and forces his face into a smirk. It’s easier than he anticipated; despite everything, Merlin makes it simple to be around him.

“I’ve been meaning to say,” Merlin mirrors his position as Chippy and Hammie scuttle away, the former setting off on a quest to climb the nearest tree, “I really appreciate your help in all of this. Coming along, and aiding me- far past your assigned duties. It isn’t lost to me.”

Valen gives him a look. “Of course, magister. I’m not one to leave danger to fester; I’m sorry you ever had that impression of me.”

“No, it’s not that, it’s…” Merlin’s brow furrows as he collects his thoughts. “You know, you seem so… charmingly nonchalant. Like nothing bothers you. But that clearly isn’t true. You care a lot, Valen, and it’s really, really nice to see. You’re someone who is just… good, you know? And I appreciate it.” He grins sheepishly. “Sorry. Kinda cheesy compliment. I’ve lost all my memories, you know, but being around you- and Lorsan, Cassadee, Mirael- honestly, I don’t feel like I’m missing much of anything. Everything I need is right here.”

He shrugs and turns back to the fire, as if he has not sent Valen’s mind reeling. Functionally, Merlin has been aware for only a week- one week out of thousands of years. He’s wondered how he’s been so calm about the whole thing, and…

And it’s hard to believe, but it’s much harder to doubt what Merlin says, not as he stares into the fire with that soft smile. It dawns on Valen that he probably knows more about Merlin than Merlin does- all of the legends, at least. And yet, despite that insurmountable legacy, despite the name and title that bears unimaginable weight, Merlin is… content. Content in just moving forward, and hoping he’s doing the right thing.

And isn’t that all that Valen’s doing, as well? He doesn’t deserve all this praise; he always shies away from large displays of gratitude, loathing how awkward they make him feel. Because he’s just moving forward, and trying to do the right thing. It’s a simple motive, really. Faith, and what effort it takes to retain it. He always thought Merlin would have some deeper, existential knowledge of the world that would put all else to shame- access to the secrets of the universe, and what not. And, certainly, his magical capabilities are second to none- but his philosophy, the way he lives; it very well might be human after all.

Maybe the usual Merlin, the one with all his memories, is the knowledgeable, immovable sage that Valen grew to look up to. Maybe, once restored, Merlin will become that god-like fairytale hero, wisdom surpassing all others, power knowing no ends.

Selfishly, Valen hopes that never happens. That the Merlin in front of him stays the same, annoying dimple and all, and keeps looking at Valen like that. Like he sees something in him that Valen never knew was there. He hopes Merlin never raises above their quips, their banter.

He know’s it’s all in vain. But god, he hopes.

[problemswithbooks]

BNHA Ch. 429

So, I guess Toga is dead, and people are losing it.

I get why people liked her--she was actually queer, being pan/bisexual. She was representation for them and that's rare in shonen manga. But here's the thing--she was bad representation at best and insulting at worst. Nor do I think she was made queer because Hori really wanted to represent a queer girl. Himiko was always the author's poorly hidden fetish--she just was. She liked girls as much as boys because Hori wanted to draw a girl touching sexually on another girl. You can see this in how he draws her and Ochako in solo pics together.

I mean, people seem to understand this when it comes to Momo and her outfit being overly sexual or that both Himiko and Hagakure's Quirks either leave them naked or they have to be naked to use them. These are excuses to draw girls in a sexual manner. Himiko being into other girls is the same thing and that's the kindest interpretation.

Given how Himiko acts and her Quirk being heavily coded sexual desire, and therefore her use of it against someone unwilling being sexual assault, it could just being playing into harmful stereotypes of predatory gays.

As a queer person myself I just found Toga insulting. She was designed to be overly sexual and give the male author a female character that he could draw being suggestive with his other female characters. When he did flesh out her character, her backstory was eventually the trope/fear of straight people, that gay people will be so overcome with their lust that they end up sexually assaulting them.

In the end Ochako accepts this part of Toga and says she'll giver her blood forever, but as much as a lot of readers took that that as some deep lesbian confession, for me it really fell flat. Hori never really gave any of the main kids time to actually learn about their villain or show how that changed their minds toward them. Shoto only works because Touya is his brother (even though he admits he barely remembers him). But Ochako goes from not thinking of Toga at all pre-first war, to one thought about her during her speech, to suddenly caring about her so much she--given how Toga's quirk is coded, is willing to essentially fulfill Toga's kink for the rest of their lives.

It's weird and it comes out of nowhere. It's made even stranger because Toga doesn't actually change or show remorse for anything she did, which included personally hunting and murdering people before she joined the LOV. None of the death and destruction she is also partially responsible for is brought up either, something that Ochako was rightfully upset about during the first war when less people and property had been destroyed. Ochako just accepts everything about her suddenly and her past serious crimes are forgotten so they can cuddle and cry.

Am I shocked Toga died--a little. I didn't think Hori would have the guts to kill off a young girl character, especially one that he clearly got a lot of joy drawing in sexy poses. But at the same time, once he killed off Shigaraki and ended Touya's story with his slow death, I'm not surprised he went the same route with Toga.

This isn't Naruto--Hori isn't really kind to characters that do something wrong, especially if they don't try and change. Enji, Bakugo, Hawks, and Aoyama all sort of got punished for what they did. Enji is the worst off, being permanently crippled, missing an arm and burned everywhere. Bakugo's hand is damaged, his heart weaker, plus he feels bad that Izuku lost his Quirk so they can't compete the same way he wanted them to. Aoyama, despite doing way less wrong and even helping his class during the forest raid, still leaves school because he doesn't feel he earned being there yet. Hawks lost his Quirk and even though him running the HPSC could be seen as good for him, Hawks always wanted a break, but now he has one of the most time consuming and stressful jobs out there.

So, if this is what characters who actively did good things and even changed and fought to be better get, what would characters who never changed and never did anything positive for anyone but their friends/themselves get?

Before the last Arc started, when so many people said the LoV were 100% going to be redeemed I had doubts and always thought it wouldn't make sense with how the story presented redemption or treated other non-LoV villains in the past. That if the main LoV did get some happy ending where they were bffs with the main cast it would clash with how other characters had been treated.

That doesn't mean that I think how Shigaraki, Toga, and Touya ended up in the manga was well done. I think their endings fit far better then a last minute redemption would have, but at the same time you can feel how rushed everything has been since the end of the first war arc. Hori was done with this story months if not years ago, yet he was contractually obligated to finish it. Because of that I think he left out as much as possible. As much as I think he's written some pretty obsessive stuff, particularly towards women, I can't really fully blame him cutting corners or the story being shit at the end.

We know Manga authors, particularly those that work with Jump are treated like shit. That they suffer incredibly long hours at times not even getting to go home for days. We've gotten messages for Hori saying he's sick quite a few times. On top of that, weekly story telling is not a great way to tell a cohesive narrative. Ideas probably change week to week or at least month to month and you can't go back and change the last chapter no matter how much you need or want to. Then you remember he also gave a lot of ideas to the people who made the movies, which would also change his plans for how he wanted the main story to go.

The story is bad--it has been for a while, but I think a lot of people put their hopes on their favorite characters getting a happy ending, even when there were signs that probably wasn't going to be the case. I know how much it sucks when a character you love gets a shitty ending (Stain was my fav, but he got an absolute dogshit ending) but at least, knowing what I know about the industry I can't really blame Hori the way I see some other people doing. Criticize it, sure, but saying Hori hates his readers or is horrible writer isn't true. BNHA was popular for a reason--he's great with characters and the beginning of the story had some great pacing. We'll never know, but I wouldn't be surprised if BNHA could have been amazing if Hori had been treated better and the story hadn't needed a chapter every week.

If anything BNHA has taught me how much a story suffers when authors/artists are treated like crap and forced to work past burnout.

[glitterypin]

Harry the Best Friend update (with unnecessary background lore!)

Harry arrived precisely one hour later than he had originally estimated he would.

Apparently the traffic was horrible (we totally believe that, I've heard a dozen different people commenting that traffic in our city has been terrible for the past couple of weeks and my few excursions to the outside world confirm this).

There is a very specific "beep" Harry's car makes when he locks or unlocks it. My uncanny ability to hear it and recognize it at great distances has been a subject of discussion in the past. Essentially, the beep functions like a reverse homing beacon for me. I hear it, I get up and go stand by the door, within three minutes Harry shows up.

One time my ex and I were sitting at a cafe waiting for Harry and I very suddenly went "he's here" because I thought I heard the Beep. Two minutes later I thought I heard it again, so I said "no, wait, maybe that was it". My ex hadn't heard anything at all. Five minutes passed and Harry hadn't shown up yet, so I was forced to admit it was a fluke and sometimes a beep is just a beep and not necessarily The Beep. And then I heard it again but I was rather dejected to have been fooled twice so I was modest in my hope that maybe this time I got it right. Harry did show up three minutes later.

He had forgotten his jacket in the car and gone back for it. The Beep had sounded indeed three times.

So here I am, full of anticipation, waiting for the doorbell to ring, walking out to the balcony every now and then to see if maybe his car would appear in the corner of the street, wondering precisely how fucking bad can the traffic be after all and suddenly... The Beep.

A pavlovian reaction; the Beep brings a huge smile to my face. The Beep beeps twice more; he had forgotten to take the bag with my Christmas gift with him.

I go sit by the buzzer. And finally, he rings, I buzz him in and run to the front door and I'm on ground level so there's no more waiting time, it is over, I open the door and Harry is THERE! In the flesh!

We hug for a couple of minutes. Granted, we always hug when we meet. Never this long. At some point he tenses as if to pull away but I hold on to him and he relaxes again. I make a move to pull away and he holds me instead. So far the words we've exchanged are mostly our names, "ahhhhh", and "awwww".

And then it's just a normal evening with Harry, as if he hasn't been away for nearly four months. We drink tea. He tells me about his trip (it was bad, the overnight ship was crowded as fuck and he's only slept an hour and currently running on fumes. I feel sorry for him but I also feel a bit special that he's dragging his corpse all the way to my flat to see me even though he should be passing out somewhere comfortable instead.) I tell him about my week. We don't have proper "haven't seen you for four months" news because we talk on the phone and with video calls every weekend. We're also both saving the big stuff for another day. We don't talk about feelings and dawning realizations much. We hug a lot and that's the only concession to our time apart. We don't usually hug in the middle of hanging out. Half the time I sit on the bed next to him instead of in my desk chair.

I got him two Christmas mugs, which makes him laugh and exclaim something along the lines of "fucking yeah" - it's one of our longest running jokes, buying each other mugs. I have more mugs than any of my flatmates (my ex last year and now my brother) are comfortable with, to the point that if they are all washed, they do not fit in the cupboard. Harry only moved out of his parents' home last spring, so his cupboard still has room but he already owns more mugs than is sensible for a person living alone (several of which I got him myself). So, knowing that neither of us needs any more mugs and that if new mugs are to be added to our collections it ought to be mugs we really really want, every now and then we buy each other random mugs just to be annoying and laugh about it.

But anyway, he did complain about not having Christmas mugs (whereas I have five - two of which he got for me last year!), so I got him two. One of them has a silicon lid and he can take it with him in the car. The other one is Very Pretty, he loved it just like I knew he would. How nice to know someone's tastes so well.

I also got him a book. I haven't read it but I've read something else by the same writer and I have a feeling he'll enjoy his style. I asked him beforehand, I said "have you read anything by ..." and he said "no, but I think I would like him". So, the gift of the book isn't a surprise either but it's still appreciated.

He got me a mousepad that reads "I'm too pretty to work". Weirdly, I love it. I don't need a mousepad at home but it will be a good addition to my laptop bag because I've often found myself in offices where I've had to tape A4 papers on desks to get my mouse to work. And I appreciate the sentiment. I feel like it belongs with the mug my brother got me three years ago which read "it's not my fault I'm angry, it's your fault you're all stupid". Harry agrees that I'm building myself a profile there. Suddenly I'm even more eager to start working again.

He also got me a handmade lip balm that tastes like melomakarono, which is hilarious to me. It does smell like melomakarono (or at the very least any spicy winter-y biscuit), the taste on my lips is mostly cinnamon, though. I love it. The gift wrap includes two tiny novelty soaps, a sticker of an elk in a rocking chair with a blanket and a hot beverage, a funny postcard relevant to the island where he works and a smaller card that reads "hit me over and over 2025". The sticker is on the side of my bookcase (where all my other stickers are). The two cards are already taped on the wardrobe door. I'm turning 30 in five months and yet my room is suddenly beginning to look like a teenager lives here. That's alright.

Anyway, we get food and we make mulled wine but only drink half of it. My nephew is here and wants to show him something his teacher gave him at school. He's always been pretty good with my nephew when their paths crossed but now it's just effortless. (I haven't mentioned this but the job he went to the island for is elementary school music teacher. His entire job is dealing with kids around my nephew's age now. I laugh at the stories he brings. Sometimes I wonder how the fuck he manages it, I can't stand kids. He's relatively happy with it. He shows me videos of a bunch of seven year olds singing along to Deck The Halls. I can hear his voice in the background guiding them. I can't fucking believe the clown I went to middle school with is now a proper Teacher.)

We watch a video of a comedian he loves and I like. He has already seen it, it's been out since October and he's been waiting to come home and show it to me. We go out for a smoke a couple of times but the third time we both agree to skip it. We're both enjoying the illusion of making a healthy choice every time we decide to not smoke a cigarette. We both know it's an illusion. We've silently agreed to keep up the pretense.

There is some awkwardness. It feels like last he was here was yesterday but also like it's been years. It's been four months (three and a half actually) but these are very sensitive times for both of us, we are both at turning points in our lives. It scares me that we're not witnessing each other's changes up close but I have faith in our friendship and our honesty. Whatever happens, we're not losing each other - at least not now.

He leaves and for once I do not protest because I know he's tired (and I am, too, tbh). The goodbye hug also lasts longer than usual. We'll talk tomorrow. As soon as he starts making plans with everyone else we'll figure out where and when I can fill the gaps. He's promised to give me a haircut this week. He's stopping by on Christmas Day after the big family lunch. I've promised to go hang out at his place at least once. I try not to think about how many days are left 'till he's back on the island. He'll be back for the Easter holidays and maybe even in May for my birthday and then he'll be back at the end of June for the summer vacations and if we're lucky next September he'll get a teaching position in our city or at the very least somewhere closer than that island.

I didn't mean to write so much. But I guess I want to remember. I've been a lonely person my whole life, largely ignored and unloved by the people around me and Harry is a fairly cool, artsy extrovert. That he somehow ended up choosing this particular sack of wise turnips to be his best friend still amazes me when I think about it too hard. I'm very lucky to have him, he's the most reliable grounding force in my life and one of the very few people I can be totally myself around - even when myself is a pile of depressed garbage. (He's also lucky to have me, because he absolutely needs brutal unapologetic honesty in his life and I bring that to the table, wrapped in empathy and humour.)

Anyway. I could write twice as much and keep going, there's a lot of lore here, we've known each other for fifteen years now. But I'll stop. Other opportunities will arise to talk about Harry, I'm sure.

[its-jaytothemee]

to find balance - chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Descent

Characters: Arabella

Word count: 1,637

Rating: Teen and up

Read on AO3

Summary: From surviving Elturel's descent into Avernus, to facing peril after peril on the road to Baldur's Gate. At the ripe old age of nine, Arabella truly thought she had seen it all.

But when she touched that idol in the druid's grove, something in her changed. She'll have to learn to navigate this bright new future ahead of her after so much pain and loss. Luckily for her, she'll make plenty of new friends to help her along her journey.

Tags: Arabella POV, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort, tiefling shenanigans, anti-tiefling racism, multiple BG3 characters will be making sporadic appearances throughout the fic.

A/N: The brain worms just won't stop wiggling for this stupid game. Enjoy my take on Arabella's experiences through the events of Baldur's Gate, starting with the descent of Elturel into Avernus, going many years past the end of the game.

A lot of things are canon compliant, but the pre and post game things are just my own personal headcanons and the result of many forgotten realms wiki rabbit holes. It was very much inspired by my other ongoing long fic and my OC/Tav from that story will make a few appearances in this one alongside the rest of the tadfools.

Arabella squeezed her eyes shut while letting out a scream.

She’s falling. Falling further than she’s ever fallen before.

Further than the time she climbed on the roof of their house and broke two of her fingers when her foot slipped on a shingle. Further than the time she stepped on a broken branch while scaling a tree in the park, causing her to fall flat on her butt and sprain her tail.

But this time, someone’s holding her. Two someones.

She opened her eyes to see mum and pops huddled around her, hugging her tight between them as the entire city plummeted below the ground. They were kneeling in the street as strange looking winds rushed past them, all three of their tails coiled together.

The air was hot. Hotter than the sweatiest summer day she can remember. And it smells funny, like the time she threw a rotten egg at Umi’s window.

“Close your eyes, Bella,” mum shouted to be heard over the wind.

“I…I’m scared…” she sobbed into their arms. The air was so hot she swore her tears boiled on her face.

Was there another word for scared? One that’s scarier than scared? Because that’s the word she needs to tell her parents how scared she is right now.

“It’s alright my love,” pops yelled back and held her a little tighter. “Just stay close to us.”

Arabella had just been playing outside, chasing a small frog that was hopping along the stones leading up to their house.

Then the ground started to shake underneath her. She had been lucky that mum and pops were home that day. Arabella remembered them running outside as the quakes took over the city. They had barely made it to her side when the city started to fall.

The sun faded with every passing second, giving way to smoke and ash and rock. She saw weird looking meteors rush past them and even weirder creatures flying in the sky.

And then suddenly, she wasn’t falling anymore.

“Komira, run!” She heard pops yelling, but just barely. Her ears had a funny ringing sound in them, like there’s little bells being rung by a tiny pixie inside her brain.

Now she’s in pops’ arms…and he’s running. Their horns were clinking together in a soft rhythm as he sprinted down the road. Arabella had her tail wrapped tight around his waist as she clung to him

“Mum!” she yelled but had to cough a lot afterwards. The air tasted funny too, like the times she stood too close to a fire and the smoke filled her lungs.

“I’m here, Arabella,” mum called back to her, but it was hard to hear past the little pixie ringing the bells in her head.

Mum and pops aren’t the only people running. Everyone was yelling and cursing as they ran past them. She heard pops say something about the High Hall, but she didn’t think they’d ever been invited there.

The High Hall was a place for lords and ladies and other rich folks. Even a duke from Baldur’s Gate was staying there when the city started to fall.

Surely a duke would be a good fighter, and those guys tend to be the hero types. He would help save them, right?

When Arabella finally dared to look up again, she saw a giant black ball hanging in the air where the sun should have been. If it was so dark, why did it still hurt her eyes?

Even though they weren’t falling so fast anymore, the city was still moving further toward the ground. Which really didn’t make sense because she thought they were already standing on the ground.

A groan from pops startled her. She looked at his cheek and saw a big cut running down his cheek.

“Pops! You’re hurt!” she screamed to be heard over the chaos.

“I’ll be fine, Bella, just close your eyes!” he yelled back.

Lightning started to rain down on the city. Each strike summoned a creature that started to chase everyone who was running through the streets. Some of them looked like people but they were twisted and their skin looked kind of gross.

Then she started to hear more screams. Not the same terrified sounds she had heard before, but like the people making that wound were hurt. Really hurt.

She cracked one eye open with the rest of her face buried in pops’ shoulder, immediately wishing she hadn’t.

One of those strange demon zombies had just bitten into someone’s neck, sending a big spray of blood across the stone walkways.

Arabella let out another shriek and started to cry. She turned her head so pops’ neck would help cover her eyes.

I don’t want to be eaten by demon zombies. Why are we even here?

“Bella, love, keep your eyes closed.” Pops squeezed her just a little tighter as he continued to run. She could hear his breath getting heavier, and she hadn’t heard mum say anything in a while.

It’s okay. She’s probably just saving all of her breath for running.

She kept a tight hold on pops, her arms secured tight around his neck while her legs and tail kept wrapped around his waist.

“We’re almost there, Locke!” Finally, mum yelled at them.

“Where are we going?” Arabella yelled through her tears.

“The High Hall.” Pops had a very tight grip on her hips and the back of her head as he ran. “If we can get behind the walls and into the stronghold, we’ll be safer.”

So, they were going to the High Hall. They’d never been there before, she didn’t think–

A scream from mum startled her.

Arabella opened her eyes to try and find her. She had tripped behind them on a broken rock.

“Mum!” she screamed and pointed over pops’ shoulder.

“Shit,” she heard him hiss.

Pops skidded to a stop to go back for her, helping her off the ground just before another strike of lightning burnt the stone where she had been laying. It also brought down another one of those zombies. When he had turned around, Arabella could see the giant stone walls that protected the High Hall over pops’ shoulder.

But it looked like they were closing the gate.

Why would they do that when there were still so many people out in the streets?

Her tears came faster now. If the High Hall was the only place they could be safe, what would happen if they were locked out?

Mum and pops just kept running, even as Arabella screamed into his ears, even as she heard mum let out more infernal curses in one breath than she had ever heard her utter in her life.

She wanted so badly to yell out those curses too. Her parents were far too busy running to care about her cursing.

But she was too scared. No words came out of her mouth, only sobs and screams.

“Hold onto me tight, Arabella.” Pops turned and kissed her temple before squeezing her so hard she thought she might snap in two.

“Why what are you–”

Suddenly, they were flying through the air. For once in her life though, she listened to pops and kept her eyes closed as she clung to him.

Then, they hit something hard. It was the ground. Pops dove through the small gap left between the giant doors that blocked out the courtyard. Mum had landed not far from their side.

On the other side of the doors, Arabella could still hear the screams of everyone else who couldn’t make it in time.

“Everyone, in the keep. Now!”

A bald, dark-skinned man was shouting at them and pointing his sword toward the big doors of the High Hall. He wore armor with a strange symbol on it. It looked like a fist, but it was on fire.

It was chaos trying to get inside. Everyone was pushing past one another, throwing others to the ground to get ahead of them. Arabella was extra grateful pops was still holding her, otherwise she was sure she’d have been trampled to a pulp.

Once the courtyard was cleared, all the guards started stacking things in front of the doors. There were four giant planks of wood that slid into some brackets, but they also piled chairs and tables and chests in front of it as well.

Pops set her down, but Arabella kept her arms wrapped around his waist. Her tail was curled tight around her own leg.

BANG!

The main doors to the keep rattled as the creatures outside tried to claw their way in.

“We’ve almost secured the way forward, Duke Ravengard!” A guard came running into the main hall.

The bald, armored man gave the guard a nod. “Finish clearing it and get these people out of here!”

BANG!

She could have been imagining it, but she could have sworn that one was louder than the last one.

“You’re going to have to be brave now, my sweet girl.” She sniffled before wiping away Arabella’s tears.

BANG! BANG!

Mum and pops knelt on either side of her, wrapping their arms around their shoulders and resting their foreheads against her horns.

Each loud knock against the doors made Arabella flinch away, causing her to dig her claws into their arms. She could hear the shrieks coming from the creatures on the other side.

“But no matter what happens, so long as we’re together, everything will be just fine, my love,” pops whispered to her.

The guard came sprinting back into the room.

“The way is clear. Everyone, this way!”

With that, pops picked her up in his arms again and started to run deeper into the High Hall…just as the doors broke into splintered pieces and the demons broke through.

[aparticularbandit]

We Were Never Friends With Darkness And Would, In Fact, Prefer It Leave Us Alone: Chapter Two

Summary: The problem with running from your problems before they become problems is that they don’t just disappear. They’re still there when you return, and as it so happens, sometimes they’ve gotten bigger than you can handle (if you could even handle them before).

Or: Kyoko makes good on what she told Yui and runs away before Yui can be used against her by the Victims’ Relief Committee. But running away and remaking herself and hiding doesn’t fix anything, and coming back later to a class full of people who might want to be friends with her only makes things worse.

Especially when one of those friends might just happen to think that she’s kind of cute.

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: T.

AO3

previous chapter

Yui sits at her desk like she was always meant to sit there.  She doesn’t have any papers scattered about, but she finds a stack of them, straightens them, and then places them to one side before placing both hands on its end.  “How have you—” she starts to say, and then, “Where have you—” and then stops herself, clears her throat, gestures to one of the mismatched chairs on the other side of her desk for Kyoko to sit, and says instead in a clear attempt to be professional, “How can I help you?” as though there’s nothing else that needs to be said between them at all.

“You look different,” Kyoko says instead as she sits, because it’s true.  Although Yui looks nearly the same as Kyoko remembers, there are a few changes.  She wears pants now instead of shorts (more professional, for someone attempting to run an agency), and her hair has grown longer.  Half of it is pulled up and back with a cream ribbon, but her bangs – and that streak so blonde as to be white – are swept to one side, out of her eyes.  But her glasses are still red, and her eyes are still green, and for that, she looks like Christmas.

At least this time it isn’t snowing.

“You were…you were gone a while.”  Yui laughs, an awkward sort of chuckle, and pushes her bangs further back.  They must have been longer recently, long enough to be tucked back behind her ear, or maybe she normally doesn’t wear her hair like this, or—

Or a lot of things that Kyoko could have seen in person if she’d still been here.  If she’d stayed.

Yui twirls a few loose strands around one finger.  “You look different, too, you know.  You’ve grown up.”

“That’s…that’s what happens between middle school and high school.  People grow up.”

There’s more to it than that.

Kyoko’s done a lot of things over the years to make sure that she’s hidden, that she’s separate.  Her hair is darker now, dyed to a purple so deep as to almost be black (but lighter, somehow, than the ribbons she still wears, which is how it can truly be seen as purple and not black), and it’s cropped shorter, a bob with its ends lingering just around her chin.  She no longer wears braids in her hair, often wears the ribbons not there but wrapped elsewhere – on occasion around her hands but more often than not around her neck – like bandages either way.  Right now, they’re tight about her neck in a sort of noose.

Growing up just means growing up and filling out.  Kyoko’s still thin, but she’s not as flat as she once was.  She’s still pale, but she seems even paler with how dark her hair is now, almost unhealthily so.  (Junko, even drunk, called her a ghost (if she was truly drunk at all and not drugged with something else by someone else); sober she often called her transparent.  But there’s a point to that: transparent lets her be forgotten, and Kyoko wants nothing more than to be forgotten by the people who see her.)  She still prefers her white button-up with black pearl buttons, but she’s traded the short skirt and high socks for a much longer beige skirt.  Her sleeves have cufflinks now, and her tie matches her skirt. but she wears no tie, instead letting the ends of her ribbons trail down her chest as though they were one untied.

Perhaps not immediately forgettable, but enough.

“I…I guess that’s true.”  Yui gives that awkward short of chuckle again and rubs the back of her neck.  “Do you—”  She cuts herself off again, gives a little shake of her head.  “You need my help?”

The black envelope burns in in Kyoko’s pocket.  She ignores it.  “One of my classmates has gone missing.”

Yui’s green eyes widen as her mouth forms into a small oh.  She pulls a notebook out from one of her drawers and a pencil with a tiny purple bow tied at its top.  “What’s their name?”

“Junko Enoshima.”

At her words, Yui blinks twice.  She doesn’t write Junko’s name down, only glances up and meets Kyoko’s eyes.  “Junko Enoshima the fashion model?”  Then a smile lights up her face.  “So you got into Hope’s Peak!  What’s it like?”  But before Kyoko can so much as begin forming an answer to the question, Yui waves a hand between them.  “Don’t answer that, sorry, we’re not—”  Again, she cuts herself off.  “You said that Junko Enoshima is missing?”

“Yes.”  Kyoko doesn’t meet Yui’s eyes.  “She wasn’t in class today, and as far as I know, she didn’t have any interviews or photoshoots scheduled.”

This is a lie.  Already, she is lying to Yui.

Junko wasn’t in class today, but Kyoko didn’t stay long enough past that realization to see if she would show up later.  She didn’t ask her sister if Junko had anything planned, didn’t even check to see if Mukuro was frightened or worried at all.  She’d only gotten the envelope, seen Junko was gone, and left with the thudding footsteps of the Shinigami ringing in her ears.  But she can’t explain any of that to Yui without bringing up that black envelope, and she can’t, she won’t—

Yui takes this in.  Nods once.  “Have you checked her social media?  Instagram, Twitter, some people still use Tumblr, but it’s not really a place for celebrities outside of—”

“N-no.”  Kyoko blushes, and her gaze drops.  “I don’t…I don’t use any of that.”  She didn’t think of that.  It isn’t that she doesn’t know social media exists, but she’d been so intent on keeping herself gone and hidden that she’d never gotten an account set up, never really been interested in following anyone enough to have one.

“Hibiki-chan,” Junko whines, “how do you know what the best movie-centered fashion is going to be if you’re not following—”  She prattles on, naming a bunch of different people (or not people because there’s no way some of those words are actual names) and ticking them off on her fingers as she goes, only glancing up when Kyoko doesn’t respond with a frustrated look.  “You’re not paying attention, are you.” A statement, not a question. Kyoko shakes her head.  “Why would I need to know any of that?” Junko grabs her arms and shakes her.  “Why! Would! You! Need! To! Know! That!”  She stops but keeps her hands on Kyoko’s arms, gentle but firm.  “What if you’re investigating a celebrity, Hibiki-chan?  What if you have to piece together a timeline based on which movie they needed to red carpet lately?  What outfit they’re wearing?  What if it’s—” And again, that rambling on a topic that Kyoko doesn’t understand and doesn’t think will ever be useful for research.  So instead of pretending that she’s following at all, she places a hand on Junko’s shoulder and says, “If it ever comes to that, I’ll find you, and you can be my fashion expert.  How does that sound?” Junko’s eyes light up, and a huge grin spreads across her face.  “Really?”

Maybe she should have made an account when she had the chance.

(She still has a chance, but what’s the point in making an account to follow Junko when Junko is already gone?)

“Here.”  Yui pulls a flip phone out of her pocket.  It’s an old model, probably should be on its last stand, unless it’s one of those nuclear cockroach bricks that will last forever (similar to her desktop, maybe), and fiddles with it for a few minutes before she sighs.  “Sorry.  Battery’s real low; Seiko’s been texting me all day about—”  She cuts herself off again, shoves the phone back in her pocket, and then starts up her desktop.  “It’ll take me a few minutes, but, um.  If you can tell me the last time that you—”

“Who’s Seiko?”

Kyoko knows better than to waste time when it comes to a kidnapping.  (Missing person, it might not be a kidnapping, although she’s certain that it is.)  The first seventy-two hours are crucial, and since she doesn’t know when, exactly, Junko disappeared, that means she can’t know when that countdown started, only knows that she’s in it now, that every moment counts.

And yet here she is, asking Yui a question about her personal life, as though that’s the most important part of this scenario.

(It isn’t, and it is.  This isn’t something she can quantify.)

“A friend,” Yui answers in the tone of voice that suggests that Seiko is more than a friend.  “My roommate,” she clarifies, then, finally, “An ex.  But we’re still friends, you know?”  She flashes Kyoko an awkward smile, one that only grows more awkward as she says, “Or, uh.  Maybe you don’t?”

Kyoko doesn’t say that she doesn’t know, even though that’s true.  Instead she ignores that information, files it away to examine later when she doesn’t feel so completely shocked by the idea of Yui having a girlfriend (even if she doesn’t have one now), and says, “The last time I saw Junko, she was drunk, and she kissed me, and I ran away.”

Yui stares at her.  Blinks twice.  “So you do know.  Maybe.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Kyoko says, flushing a bright red and dropping her gaze to her hands where they fidget in her lap.  “She’s just a classmate.”

“Yeah.  Right.  Mmhm.”  Yui turns away, clearly uncomfortable, and focuses on her monitor.  “Sorry, this’ll…this’ll take a little bit to load.  You said she was drunk?”

“Or drugged.”  Kyoko doesn’t glance up.  Her brow furrows.  “She didn’t smell like alcohol.  And when she kissed me, she didn’t taste like—”

“Oh, here we go!”

If Kyoko didn’t know better, she would think that Yui interrupted her just because she mentioned Junko’s kiss.  But that doesn’t sound like the Yui she….

She knew.  It’s been years.  The Yui she knew might not be the Yui sitting before her now, no matter how much like her she might seem.  She doesn’t know Yui anymore.  Maybe she should quit pretending that she does.

Yui glances over from the monitor and gestures with one hand for Kyoko to join her.  “Here.  It’s—”  She slaps the monitor a couple of times; it flickers, freezes, flickers again, and then sputters before letting what looks like a social media site focused on pictures show up.  “Instagram,” Yui says by way of explanation.  She barely scrolls through anything before saying, “She hasn’t updated this since last week.  She probably has a secret one for her friends; this is all curated for fans.  You wouldn’t have any idea who—”

“Mukuro, maybe,” Kyoko interrupts, hovering over Yui’s shoulder as she scans the pictures.  “Her twin sister.  If this is all corporate, then you won’t see her in any of these.”

“Oh.”

Still, as Yui moves the cursor to close out of the page, Kyoko says, “Stop.”  She doesn’t know why she does it.  There’s nothing important to be found in any of these pictures; in fact, a good half of them seem to be things that could just as easily be found in one of the many, many magazines with Junko’s image plastered all over them.

And yet.

Yui glances up at her.  “Is something wrong?”

“No, I—”

Junko looks familiar.

….

Of course, Junko looks familiar.  Junko is her classmate, and even if she wasn’t her classmate, Kyoko would have seen her face on a million magazines everywhere she went.  Her image is insidious.  People who have never met Junko or read any of her interviews probably still have her pop up in their dreams from time to time, just as a face that is familiar to them, even if they don’t know why.

Her brow furrows.

It can’t be important.  She’s just…something.

“You said we should check her other accounts?  Is this the only one she has?”

Yui clicks out of Junko’s Instagram page and switches over to her Twitter account.  As Kyoko scans the latest tweet, she points to the date.  “She’s still been posting; this one’s from just a few minutes ago.  She must be fine.”

“No.”  Kyoko shakes her head.  “That’s a cry for help.”

“Blue raspberries are the bestest flavor of candy in the whole world, and you can’t make me believe otherwise!” Yui reads, confused.  “Isn’t blue raspberry Junko’s signature perfume?”  She flushes a bright red and avoids Kyoko’s gaze.  “Or, um.  I’ve heard that’s the case.  I can’t walk into a clothing store without seeing one of those things front and center.  They even come in a cute little raspberry-shaped vial!”

Kyoko nods.  “The scent is a clever marketing ploy; it allows Junko to take something that isn’t real and associate herself with it; it gives another layer of fantasy to her as a person, making the impossible possible.”  She brushes her hair back out of her face and just neatly tucks it back behind one ear.  “But blue raspberries aren’t real, and so they can’t really have a scent – or a taste.  Junko will promote her fake scent all she wants, but anyone who knows Junko – really knows Junko – knows that she hates the taste.  It’s too artificial, she says.”  She nods to the tweet.  “Whoever has her will think just like you did, Yui onee-sama, but to me, it’s clear.”

Something is wrong.

Just like she thought.

And now, from the way Yui is looking up at her, Kyoko’s certain that Yui believes her, too.

[fellbeastie]

Doctor Who 1.1 - Rose

I found this post in my drafts, where it’s been for 10 years.

*****

So, the Doctor blows up the department store.  What about the security guard who was locking up just minutes ago?  How long was Rose wandering around the basement?

Rose brings the plastic arm into her flat.  Why hasn't she tossed it out a window or something?

Mickey comes to make sure she's alive, then immediately wants to go see a match at a pub.  Can't criticize, since I'd do the same thing.  And Rose doesn't seem to mind.  

News says no fatalities, but they can't possibly know that yet.  We know Wilson's dead in there somewhere.  Maybe they mean no bystanders died in the explosion?

The arm crawls out of the bin, and back up to Rose's flat.  Why?  The Doctor only shows because he's tracking the arm, so what is it hoping to accomplish in Rose’s flat?  If it just wanted the Doctor it could have stayed in the bin until he got there.  It went to a lot of trouble to get up the stairs and unscrew the cat flap, for what?

"That won't last, he's gay and she's an alien."  How does he know that?

He's never seen his face before, so must have recently regenerated.  

The plastic arm can fly.  So why can't the other mannequins?

Rose won't let the Doctor leave without explaining WTF is going on.  He half-explains, acts very mysterious, and disappears.  Rose decides to research him.

Rose conveniently finds someone local who's looking for the Doctor.  

Clive says the Doctor turns up all over the place, but he only has pictures of his current face. Convenient.

Mickey gets eaten by a garbage bin.  This always amuses me.

Rose apparently sees nothing amiss with Plastic!Mickey.  

Rose has decided that Clive's insane and the Doctor's not worth chasing.  She's discussing job possibilities and considering going back to school.  Plastic!Mickey tries to interrogate her about the Doctor.  She still sees nothing wrong with him.  Perhaps Mickey always acts a bit dim and jealous?

The Doctor shows up and Plastic!Mickey goes on a rampage.  

"The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan can't get through those doors, and believe me, they've tried."  I WANT TO SEE THIS.

The Doctor is using Plastic!Mickey's head to trace the Nestene consciousness, which he couldn't do with the arm earlier.  Why would the plastic people have their control mechanisms in their heads?  Deep in the torso would make more sense; much harder to hack off.

The Doctor starts explaining what the TARDIS is and Rose starts crying, thinking Mickey is dead.  The Doctor doesn't spare a moment to tell her Mickey's probably alive.  Of course, he's busy trying to save the planet.  In his mind they don't have time to worry about one person.  Starting to see Time War damage here.

Rose says she'll have to tell Mickey's mother he's dead.  Isn't Mickey supposed to have no family?

The Doctor's forgotten about Mickey again.  That war really fucked him up.

The Doctor tries negotiating with Nestene whatever.  Rose finds Mickey.  Doctor puts up very little fight when things go wrong, Rose saves everyone.

I've seen a lot of people saying Rose was a useless whiner obsessed with the Doctor, but I can see why he took a liking to her already. 

[thefoxtrot008]

Dialogue Prompts

Alright, you guys. Here is part 9 of the dialogue list! I had created a bunch of plot lines here, so they're all sporadic. Like the others, these are not categorized, but it is long, so enjoy!

"I think it you're trying to leverage that, then your son is worth a lot more than you're wanting to admit."

"I mean, I suggested that we dump his body far in the lake, but no, nobody ever listens to me."

"I thought I told all of my guests that this was a forbidden area."

"This party is so lame. The champagne is flat and the food is bland."

"Doesn't anyone else think it's weird that we haven't seen our host all night?" "I could throw a better party than this."

"You're staying for dinner and that's final."

"Maybe if you're good, you'll get the best of treats."

"I love you, but I need you to shut up and shoot!"

"That's how you throw a punch! That's my girl!"

"Can you not hit me when I'm driving!"

"Did you... did you get the job?" "Oh, honey... If it's any consolation, I'd hire you."

"Because I'd know you'd be the best damn agent there is."

"God... you're just... you're just the best baby."

"Give me the keys! I'm driving."

"Since when did you learn how to fight like that?!"

"I'm overruling that." "Oh, really? Then what's the point of voting?"

"Looks like we got all the evidence we need." "We call this in right?"

"How are you so calm about this?" "It's not illegal unless we get caught."

"Yea and look how that turned out."

"I respect that." "You're not helping!"

"That's twice now we've let them slip past."

"How are we over thinking this and under thinking it at the same time?"

"It doesn't get any better than this."

"This is the real world. This is how they deal with things, okay? They kill people who are problems. Get over it."

"You're choking on your own blood!"

"I just remember a bright light and then poof! All gone!"

"The last thing I need right now is for you to tell me how to hold my weapon."

"Why didn't we do that in the first place?!"

"Since when have I never kept a secret?"

"Tell him, that I need a little bit of space here."

"Well, maybe fulfilling the prophecy isn't something that you have to do!" "The prophecy pertains to me. Not to you, in case you've forgotten. So, you have no business here."

"Just admit that you both were wrong!"

"It is my duty and I will not abandon it."

"For that, you'll have to face the wrath of my brothers."

"The curse has been lifted. I am free."

"On behalf of my ancestors, I apologize."

"I'm assuming your guest will not like my being there."

"It haunts me just like it haunts you."

"So, you're not here to get your usual then?"

"It's short notice. How do you know he won't kill me upon arrival?"

"And you're sure that will prevent me from dying?"

"You weren't supposed to eat that!"

"I've hit that stage three times already!"

"Is that you in the cell next to me?"

"I did what I came here to do. I broke the family curse."

"And you got all of it?" "Yes, I think so."

"They were just dumb enough to get caught."

"Back! Get back! This is a diversion!"

"Here, you can share this blanket with me."

"We should set them up together, I think they'd be cute." "They're total opposites, so, no. Not the best of ideas."

"I thought your apartment was on the other side of town?"

"that's a win in my book."

"I'm going to break one of your anger walls on of these days and it's going to be great."

"Oh, guess who figured that out?"

"What? You're bringing civilians into your case now?!"

"Of course it is! You're basically offering us money for not doing our job."

"You're here illegally and without a warrant."

"I swear, I'll take a look at it." "Something tells me you won't."

"It's so cute when he tries though." "It's hard not to laugh."

"He's older than he looks."

"It's like I'm running a nursery here. Absolute childish nonsense."

"This is my brother. You've guys got two seconds to explain yourselves."

"One more strike and you're out."

"Hate to bring it to you guys, but, in case you've forgotten, I got fired."

"Well, surely, you won't let a little thing like that stop you." "Yea, you've broken the rules before."

"Did you say weeks? You've known for weeks now and you're deciding to tell us?" "Would you rather have me not tell you at all?"

"I can't believe you kissed him." "I've kissed a lot of frogs back in my day, no big deal."

"I'm not letting you get in that car."

"I'm not big on musicals, but that particular one was amazing."

"You are not going to go see him." "And you want to what? Let him get away? That's what I thought."

"Here's the papers that you asked for."

"Of all the times you decide to lecture me, you decide nows the best time?"

"Were you thinking fresh start?"

"I like him. Can we keep him?"

"Thank you sweetheart."

"No, not her. Please tell me it's not her."

"Do you want to listen to the tape or not?"

"Hey. I'm the only one that can insult him like that. Take it back."

"This is serious!" "They took our shoes again!"

"Not going to lie, that was so hot."

"Tag them and bag them."

"Do you have that on your person at all times?" "As you can tell, it's very useful."

"Even I knew what that meant!"

"You speak chinese?" "I'm fluent in at least three other languages."

"How'd you learn to drive like that?"

"How many times has he told us to lay off?"

"Oh, come on, sweetheart. We both know you don't have it in you."

"No, I'm serious. Are you going to tell me who that is?"

"I think I agree with that statement."

"That's the same reaction I had." "It's only protocol."

"They took us off the case."

"I'm pretty sure they don't have this place bugged."

"We're missing the bigger picture."

"Um, I was dropping some stuff off?" "You've always been a terrible liar you know that right?"

"What happened to being my partner in crime?"

"Turn on the news man. No one cares."

"No way! They'll be looking for us too."

"Not at the same time of course, that would be wrong."

"So, stop pointing it at us!"

"You brought her into this?" "What was I supposed to do? Leave her at home?!"

"If you touch me, I swear to god, I'm going to punch you in the face!" "Duly noted."

"This is not suspicious at all."

"I forgot about those blokes."

"It was fantastic and you undersold it."

"Quit trying to be cool and let's go!"

"Exactly, they're the good guys!"

"Oh come on, I didn't mean it."

"I'm sorry, alright? I apologize. I was outta line."

"No! Are you even listening to the story?!"

"Let's settle this right now!"

"Did you really have to say it like that?!"

"I'll talk to you, you're reasonable!"

"Don't look at them, look at me!"

"He still doesn't understand the concept."

"Oh! It's you. Not that I'm not pleased to see you, of course."

"I haven't had the time to clean it up, okay?"

"We started this thing together and now we're finishing it!"

________________________________________________________

And that's a wrap folks! :)

[bloodgulchblog]

googling suggests that Brian Reed was the lead writer for Halo 4... what specifically about the story of H4 makes him the villain? It's been a year or so since I've played h4 so the details beyond the broad strokes have been forgotten.

that said i will agree he's the villain for halo 5 that story is Not Great TM

(i just like hearing your opinions on stuff and am totally not trying to mine ideas for what might be changed in a post halo-3 rewrite because i do love the covenant civil war aspects of 4. or the implications that there has to have been one because conflict drives narratives)

Thanks.

Full disclosure, I really don't know what was going on behind the scenes on Halo 4 or 5 and the most I can do is offer rampant speculation, usually based on my biases and very little evidence.

My impressions are these:

Halo has always always had trouble on story, mostly around having strong leadership and a definite idea of where everything is going. There are too many stakeholders with ideas and teams have struggled to get to unified ideas and then to have enough time to implement what they finalize. This was true during Bungie days and definitely feels like it's been true during 343. (I'm more confident on what I say about 1-3 because I actually have a book with a lot of old interview details that speaks to that.)

They'll build up a lot of interesting stuff around the games, even though my opinions on the quality of that stuff vary widely. I had problems with Halo 4, but the stuff that was coming out around 4 where you had multiple stories interweaving touching each others' threads... that was interesting! That was neat! And they got Greg Bear to write three whole novels for us!!! Fuck Karen Traviss, but like... dude!!!!

...And then the campaign was just. What we got. Don't get me wrong, there are things in Halo 4's campaign that are cool and interesting, but like... there will always remain a part of me that is still pissed that they killed Cortana.

Full stop.

I accept new Halo lore as it comes to me and try to do my best to take my lumps and integrate even things that I don't like, but I am still mad that they killed Cortana in the first place and have never really stopped being that.

....Anyway. I'm getting sidetracked.

Aside from CE, which was intended to be self-contained and thus is pretty straightforward and ends with a clear conclusion, Halo game plots have never really been necessarily good. That is just the nature of the beast. Halo 2 ends on a massive cliffhanger because they literally could not finish putting the whole story they wanted to in that game. Halo 3 is a mess because everyone was so violently burned out from Halo 2 that the leadership problem was even worse.

[Suspicious silence re: Reach goes here because I still can't motivate myself to replay Reach]

Halo 4 falls very flat for me with some things that were good and mostly other things that I had to make my peace with and come to be okay with. I will grouse about things, but we've Halo cycled our way around to a lot of people (including me) acknowledging that not everything about Halo 4 was horrible.

(I guess my big things that piss me off about it are: Cortana, as discussed, wasting the Didact, and the weird fucking pivot on Catherine Halsey's character.)

Anyway, Brian Reed. My comment there was kind of a flippant attempt to respond to something I wasn't sure how to feel about, but here's what I got:

Reed wasn't actually the lead writer on 4, that was Christopher Schlerf. I don't know much about either of these people! But after Schlerf left, Reed was the lead writer on 5 and did a lot of work on the comics (that I still haven't read because blah blah blah my usual excuses.)

It's hard for me to pick out what exactly I think his fingerprints are in different parts of Halo, because I don't know the guy or his work particularly well. I'm better at identifying what I think (no guarantees I'm right) was Staten back in early Halo because I've seen enough solo work from him to kind of know what I think he liked, and I've seen enough of Frank O'Connor talking about stuff in interviews to (rightly or wrongly) blame a couple specific Chief things I hate on him, but I don't have that with Reed.

However, I have read Reed's short story in the Fractures anthology. Opinions may vary on this, nobody's gotta agree with me, but I really had to pause with myself after reading Rossbach's World because... it was thoughtful?

So looking at Reed, who had to take over for another lead writer and try to come up with a following act for Halo 4... I still hate Halo 5. A lot. But like, I get it. Of course it feels like a weird pivot hail Mary to find something to focus on, because it was.

I think it was stupid and I hated it, but I do have some sympathy for the pressure on the person who ended up taking the fall for it. Anything where you are working for a highly opinionated nerd audience with tons of pressure is going to be very difficult.

I feel like they should've borne out the Forerunner story threads instead of pivoting to the Created, and maybe gotten to those ideas after the plate was clear. I also think Cortana deserved to live. (If you want to see what inspired some of my thoughts about that, you should look into Bungie's previous series: Marathon. But it has been too long since I personally dug around in Marathon for me to be terribly helpful about it anymore.)

...But I also think that Reed is just a dude who had a job and produced a story I really don't like. I've heard he's been pretty much harassed off the face of the internet? And like... nothing is worth that, man.

People with more insight and background details about what was going on actively might have more information than I do and better reasons to hate him, but I was really really checked out of Halo for the better part of a decade and I'm honestly pretty soft when it comes down to it.

[dcwnthercbbithcle]

Lemme suggest Adiris, Lisa Sherwood & Pyramid Head for the muse suggestion meme!!

OHHHHH THIS IS INTERESTING! Thank you so much for the ask Ladybug! Let me think, hmmmm.

The Plague / Adiris : I should state, I really, really don’t hate the plague conceptually or from the snippets of her character that we’ve seen. I haven’t loved her from the beginning, mainly because she fell flat for me and a lot of her themes seemed recycled from Sally at the time (little did I know they really recycled a lot of Sally’s old character and seemingly distributed it around to different characters, c,:) BUT STILL, my dislike for Adiris is attributed like 90% to her gameplay. Call me wrong, but she is, to me, one of the least fun characters to go against. There is no outplay for her vomit other than just avoiding it. Her games are essentially running No Mither without any benefit and it’s so annoying. I hate it! You get puked on? Health state gone. Touch something? Health state gone. Heal someone? Health state gone. Fucking EXIST, health state gone. but Bun! You can cleanse! Well, when you cleanse, she gets damage for her massive reaching exorcist vomit and guess what! Health state gone, your down, your time is down, game over. It just isn’t fun and I will dc most times rather than try and put up with it. Sweaty Ghostface’s are more fun to go against and this is my hill to die on. So this all said, I will not ever be playing Adiris or the Plague because of my weird outstanding hatred for the way she functions in game and the Dev decisions regarding her outside of the game!

I will say though, FOR THE RECORD, even though I dislike all of the above, my position on Adiris has softened A LOT because of the wonderful work of my mutuals who write her. She isn’t my cup of tea obviously but watching them put so much skill and love into her makes me lessen my stance and come to love her in a different way! It’s sort of weird but the Adiris’s on my dash aren’t the Plague from the game. They have been redistributed to people who will love her and give her depth and love and make me forget all about the Dev’s ‘Doing A Pretty Good Job So Far,’

The Hag / Lisa Sherwood : MY DAUGHTER, I love she!! I’m sad they removed the fact you could banish her hexes in game with flashlights but still! She’s still so interesting and tragic to me. I adore her and I do feel like both her and Sally are slept on far too much by the fandom! This being said though, when it comes to writing her, I think I could. But I don’t know. Would people want to interact with her and hear about her? I would never want to add a character just to have them forgotten and fade away. Especially when they have as much potential for interesting dynamics as she does! I want to end this with like a definitive ‘I would’ or ‘I would never,’ but Lisa?? She’s an ‘ask me again later’ haha!

NOW PYRAMID HEAD, you’re gonna be mad but I have never played a single silent hill game ever and I have no idea about him or his deal! I was under the impression that he’s like… kind of a mindless monster executioner formed out of the main characters need to punish himself?? But I’m probably very wrong! I just don’t know about the man, though I am curious! All I do know is the Devs took his cake and it was a tragedy!

[quicktimeeventfull]

15 and 18 for the weird writers ask?

hello and thank you!! sorry, this took me longer than i'd intended!

15. do you write in the margins of your books? dog-ear your pages? read in the bath? why or why not? do you judge people who do these things? can we still be friends?

i love to write in books!! i always keep a highlighter and pen on hand when i’m reading. it makes the experience of reading much more tactile & it feels like you’re in conversation with the book. i don’t generally dog-ear pages, but i don’t care if other people do. the only thing i’m a bit neurotic about is breaking the spines of books because it causes damage over time. i’d much rather dog-ear a page than lay the book flat. 

18. choose a passage from your writing. tell me about the backstory of this moment. how you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. spicy addition: questioner provides the passage. 

oh this is such a fun question, thank you! i am going to pick this one from bargaining power:

“[Near]was thirteen, then. He was young and everything he knew about the world had come from the few years with his mother, which he has cut out with a scalpel and forgotten as best he can, and from the impenetrable walls of the Wammy House.

When he finally draws Light into the cold and the dark of the warehouse, he is eighteen.

He’s older. He’s different. He’s seen more things. His life is still quite constrained but he’s been through three different airports and watched the clouds from above. He’s drunk a glass of pink champagne with Anthony and Stephan and Halle and laughed at the texture of bubbles on his tongue. Once he’d sat at the edge of a beach in the dark with the black water lapping at his legs and his hands buried deep in the sand and he’d thought of nothing except the night dragging him deep into itself and he had known quite viscerally that he was owned by the earth and that he owned it in turn. The seasons have passed and he has been carried through them, sloughing off the old parts of himself and gathering new pieces.”

bargaining power was originally just the first half, which is about near being furious that L is abandoning his duties by being in love with light, but i felt that it presented an overly harsh image of near. i personally see him as being a really angry and somewhat cold person, but not a heartless one. for example: he definitely enjoys batting light around a bit while they play their cat-and-mouse games, but when light is actually dying there’s absolutely none of that. he just answers light’s questions very calmly while everyone else is (understandably!) content to let him writhe around disoriented and terrified — imo there’s a certain degree of compassion in the straightforwardness of that. so!! i pulled this out of the ao3 editor and wrote the second half, where he grows a little older and a little softer. something which fascinates me about near & which i wanted to draw upon is that he’s approximately the same age light was when the series started. in a lot of ways, they’re really similar people — very idealistic, very black-and-white in their thinking. in a lot of ways, death note is really a deconstruction of coming-of-age stories, and i think one of the great tragedies of death note is that light never really grows up. he spends his whole life from 17 onwards in a series of hotel rooms and then locked up in his own apartment, forming no meaningful connections even with the people he’s closest too, acquiring no new experiences whatsoever. i wanted to contrast that by giving near a different life. (and the suggestion that he won’t live the same way light does, in the future.) light closes himself off from the world, and near gets to allow the world inside of him. more very specific details: pink champagne was the first alcoholic beverage i ever had so i’ve always had a particular fondness for it. also i absolutely love beaches at night! i used to live next to one and found it genuinely kind of terrifying because you absolutely could not see where the sky met the water or the water met the ground — it was just this pure black space. but it was the sort of terror you wanted to be part of. anyway! that’s how near and light feel about getting older. the difference is light runs from it and near wants to join it. so that’s the little metaphor in this story. 

[thenightling]

I feel H. P. Lovecraft is overrated

Confession:   I am not a fan of H. P. Lovecraft. I don’t hate him.  I’m just not a fan.  

It's not just that H. P. Lovecraft was a known antisemite, racist, and xenophobe (even by early twentieth century standards he was extreme).  

I just never liked his writing style.

Years ago I had been part of a Facebook group called Super Scifi Saturday - which was based on MeTV's Saturday night programming block, including the horror host Svengoolie.  (If you've ever seen the 1985 Fright Night he's sort of like Peter Vincent only in ghoulish makeup).

One day one of the group admins posted a thread "What is one of your scifi or horror unpopular opinions?"

So I said that I think H. P. Lovecraft is overrated.  

It's not that I think he is a bad writer.  It's not that I don't think he influenced and inspired a lot of people. I just felt he was overrated.

Even the world Eldritch today (which just means "weird or mysterious or sinister") has come to mean "Lovecraftian to most people.

I also notice he gets credit for a lot of tropes he didn't actually invent such as the forgotten primordial Gods. See "The Mothers" in Goethe's Faust Part 2 for a pre-Lovecraft example.

And we reached a point where anything with tentacles is associated with Lovecraft.

Well, one of the group admins really didn't like me saying this and suggested that I probably couldn't follow Lovecraft because he uses too many "Big" and "archaic words" that aren't common anymore.

As a book lover I tried to swallow my pride and not be offended at this assessment.  I tried to assure him that I read many books from that era and the chosen words do not bother me though I admit to not being a fan of his particular writing style.

He then suggested that I needed to read more stories in the genre to appreciate Lovecraft.

I, again, attempted to remain calm and polite and said that I have read many storied from that era *and* genre.   And that there are authors who use Lovecraftian characters and concepts that I like better than Lovecraft, like Neil Gaiman.

The group admin again suggested that I just "Don't get" Lovecraft. That I don't appreciate him because I don't understand his writing.   It was very much sealioning.  Very politely suggesting- again- that the words were too big for me and that if I studied more and read more I'd come to appreciate it.

Finally I snapped and asked him to stop with the condescension.   He had asked for an unpopular opinion and that was mine.   I told him he was being rude and disrespectful in assuming that just because I don't like something it means I'm not well-read enough, or my vocabulary is too limited, or that I'm not familiar with that genre.   I told him flat out that he was treating me like the only reason I could have for not liking Lovecraft is if I'm too ignorant or stupid to appreciate him and it was starting to offend me.

He said "I'm sorry you feel that way." and I thought he was genuinely apologizing but immediately after he said that I was blocked from the group.

[hewholivesinhisname]

The Creepiest Trip Ever

So, Daniel pretty much out of the blue decided that he really wanted to go out and see this eclipse. Daniel likes to go out and drive and it gets his mind off of his son who was stolen from him by the State. DCF and the people behind it are fucking crazy and awful people and they conspired with his ex-wife to take his kid away. So, he's really traumatized and he needs something to do and he loves to drive.

He had been kidnapped as a kid himself and brought to the Grafton WymanCorp which is a military facility and while he has forgotten most of the memories from there, it is pretty clear that a lot of extreme child abuse went on their. Grafton also has this big huge facility called the Grafton JobCorp which is just a big fenced off building and you don't know what goes on inside or outside. It seems like an "invisible prison" for the poor where they send people to train them with "job skills."

So, he decides to go to this other place MiraVista hospital which is right in the back of the Holyoke Mall and which he labels as "Calvary" and this place is ultracreepy. There's a few religious cemeteries on the outside of this hospital and it's just unclear why they are their, but one of them has a bunch of stone markers, the alphabet just strewn about the place with a statue of Mary. The first "B" though is turned upside down and at the end is 2 stone markers "a" and "b b" marked into them. Why they are there is totally unclear to me at all, but the feeling of this place is just that bad things happen here. Daniel has a knack for finding these weird masonic places and he showed me, just a bunch of these stone masonic buildings in Worcester.

Then we start to drive East to Cleveland because I looked up where the Solar Eclipse would be and it was right over Cleveland and this is where it starts to get really weird which is that we go past this place in Ohio called "Seven Hills", now in the Book of Revelations it talks about the city of Seven Hills being the place where the Whore of Babylon rules from and....well, I don't know, but I had this sense we should check it out and it was only like a village of 11,000 people or whatever, but it is an ultrabuilt up mall. There's a Coptic (Egyptian) and another one called living word of god. What's weirder is that even though the name is seven hills, there are....no hills. it's basically flat. None of this seems too, too weird, but right next to it is a town called "Parma" and in Parma there's a LOT of pizza places and a panda express and a place called Master Pizza. In case any of you don't know, all this "pizza" references can be references to child trafficking.

Anyway, when we drove back I noticed that there was all these houses with different colored lights on. Each of them had a different color or maybe two colors and one house had a giant skeleton in front with lights on....and, well, I think this is the place. Like, the real place where the entire system is run from. There were signs around here too that said "Ohio, the heart of it all."

So, one thing we know is that they use blackmail to control people in the system. People, in order to rise always have to have something on them of some sort or another, and, well, maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but I think that this place in Ohio might be the place where it's all run from.

Indianapolis is the most Masonic city I have ever seen. There's a big Scottish Rite Castle, but if you go to the public library there is what is clearly 2 enormous demon statues right in front of it. One is a big black donut which Daniel insists is a raped anus and the other though....the other is a giant humanoid black statue, no head with arms and legs that spindle down something like a few hundred feet. I've linked it here. in the image on search it's somewhat hard to see on the left, but this figure is ENORMOUS. Opposite the library is a big war memorial museum, a giant obelisk topped with a giant pyramid and ominous giant buildings to either side.

Indianapolis public library statue - Search Images (bing.com)

Mammoth Caves, Kentucky. That's where we went afterwards and maybe we should have stayed there but I had this court date and needed to come. Anyway, when we stopped at a rest stop there was a bunch of weird flashes of light, a train started moving and then we started to hear something in the woods. This was not lightning. it was just something flashing by the way.

On the way back we went through New York City and we had another weird experience which was that the cops were blocking traffic in these bizarre vehicles in the middle of the night. I am sure they would say something about road work, but there was not a lot of road work but this vehicle with yellow flashing lights was zig-zagging in front of us. then another one of these vehicles starts turning on cop lights and the guy pulls us over, starts yelling at us to put the keys on the dash....then he just takes off. The way he was yelling, I was thinking that this guy was going to pull out his gun and go after us or something.

Like, just zigzagging in front of traffic is extremely dangerous, so why the fuck would a car do this? Anyway, we drove off....

[drearymiddle]

To boldly go where many blogs have gone before: A Star Trek series analysis (Part 1)

Originally written by Mr_Turnabout on 20 February 2020 over on the old Dreary Middle website. This was the only article we ever published so we thought it would be nice to preserve it as a reminder of what once was, so enjoy!

I have seen many Sci-Fi shows, but there is something special about Star Trek that makes it stand out among the rest.

Yes, Star Trek is quite the franchise. Spanning currently 7 different series, 13 movies and hundreds of episodes, you can't complain about lack of content. I feel recently Star Trek has had a weirdly negative wrap to it. I know that sounds weird defending one of the most profitable franchises in the history of Television and one of the Father's of Sci-Fi, but hear me out.

I think that people have forgotten how great Star Trek truly is, there is this misconception that it's just a silly Sci-Fi show for nerds and....while yes that may be true it is also so much more than that. Star Trek is an incredibly well written franchise, containing some of the best episodes of a series I have ever seen, even managing to hold up against the best shows that we have today. Writing wise a lot of Star Trek has aged like a fine wine, managing to still be relevant despite some series being decades old.

Now is Star Trek perfect? No, at the worst of times you question how some episodes can even be from the same show from how awful and flat out stupid some of the episodes are. The next generation has an episode where a character has sex with a ghost. Deep Space Nine had an episode where the crew get sucked into a game board, while one of the main cast has to play the game that has them trapped. Enterprise famously has a finale that is considered one of the worst episodes in the franchise. It's stuff like this that makes me black out for 45 minutes and makes me wonder if what I was watching was even real, that being said this is the minority of the franchise and is in no way a representation of the franchise.

Now with me gushing over this franchise you would think that I grew up with it or something right? Well that's where you'd be wrong as it turns out, I myself avoided Star Trek for so long because of its representation, I thought it was the typical Sci-Fi show that didn't age all that well, quite like classic Doctor Who....or modern Doctor Who, anyway I didn't truly give Star Trek series a chance till I was 19 and even by then I was reluctant to try it out, but when I started with The next Generation, I was hooked. This post will be talking about what I like about each individual series as well as the order I watched them in, now I will like to preface that I have not seen all of Star Trek, heck many hardcore fans would say I'm not very far at all. I have finished The next generation (twice), 5 seasons of Deep Space Nine, 4 seasons of Voyager, 8 out of 10 of the original Star Trek movies, the 3 Kelvin timeline movies, the first and last episodes of Enterprise, about 2 episodes of the original series, 4 episodes of Picard and none of discovery, so this post is definitely subject to change and may require a follow up. Regardless I have at least seen enough to tell you why it is great and that you should see it if you haven't.

The Star Trek movies are a mixed bag, but when they're good they're really good.

My first real exposure to Star Trek as a whole was from a little underground YouTuber called 'The Nostalgia Critic' (irony fully intended), he was doing a marathon of the "bad" Star Trek films and my little 14 year old self, laughed and slapped his thighs together at this funny man making comments about how silly these movies were, but it had the unintentional effect of actually getting me interested in the films. My friend in secondary school was a big Trekkie (or is it Trekker?) and I asked him if I could borrow some of those films on DVD, before streaming services were the norm we had to watch our films in physical form kids. So I marathoned those films and at the time I thought some were great and some were really bad, so let's go over the quality of each one real quick.

I. The Motion Picture: Beautiful looking movie, but really boring. Great at introducing you to the main cast of the original series, especially for someone like me who has never seen it. Decent start 6/10.

II. The Wrath of Khan: One of the best Sci-Fi movies ever, tells an excellent story about one of Kirk's old enemies coming back for revenge and a very powerful ending. 9/10.

III. The search for Spock: Not a bad effort here, but it suffers from being in between two of the best movies in the franchise. Kind of undoes the ending of Wrath of Khan in quite a strange way but overall still pretty fun. 6/10.

IV. The Voyage Home: Excellent time travel story that's one of the more fun entries in the series, it's just great to see these characters go back to the past (to play those s* games that suck ass) and interact with people from the 80's. 8/10.

V. The Final Frontier: What does God need with a starship? 3/10.

VI. The Undiscovered Country: Great sendoff for the original cast, great villain introduced in this one too. 8/10.

VII. Generations: The proceeding movies goes on to ruin said great sendoff and instead shows Picard looking at an old photo album and having a little cry. 4/10.

VIII. First Contact: Very fun Sci-Fi movie, weird characterisation for Picard in this one but overall I like the horror atmosphere of this one and that soundtrack is fantastic. 7/10.

If you want my ranking personally I would rank them II > IV> VI > VIII > I > III > VII > V

And what about those characters? Well I'll go into the next generation cast later but the Original series cast are all very fun to watch and have great chemistry. It's no wonder that Captain Kirk and Spock became cultural icons, they are always great on screen together and characters like Bones is one of the funniest characters in the series for his more down to earth characterisation compared to the rest of the cast, these characters aren't particularly deep or anything but they are well written and I would recommend the movies for someone's first exposure to the series, it worked for me.

So what about those Kelvin timeline films?

Shortly after checking out those original movies, I went on to watch the Kelvin timeline movies as at the time into Darkness was on it's way out in 2013, so I thought I may as well check out the 2009 one. Here's the thing I don't think these movies are bad, in fact I find them rather enjoyable, not so much with into Darkness, but the other two are pretty good summer action movies. The characters are, again quite likable, being a reboot of the original series they captured elements of the original characters well, while putting a little twist on them. Captain Kirk was known for being a ladies man in the OG series so now we get to see him actually have THE sex I've heard so much about on the big screen, when I first saw this my eyes bugged out of my head in a cartoon like style, that's for sure.

Into darkness unfortunately has the issue with remaking an all time classic so it was going to suffer as a result, I don't think Cumberbatch captured the more spite filled performance of Ricardo Montalbán's take on the character of Khan and it reeked of "You know this right? Remember this?" That being said the other two films I do enjoy, they are more action packed than your average Star Trek and are filled with Lens flare for some reason, but I would check them out if I were you, they're enjoyable romps, but if you don't like them you didn't hear it from me.

The Next Generation is as good as your mother says it is.

When I said the Kelvin Timeline movies were my next introduction to the series, I meant it. I didn't touch a Star Trek series at all until the year of 2016, after I had saw Beyond in cinema. I felt like it was time to check it out, if I enjoyed the movies, surely, I could enjoy the series that they spawned from, right? Well to say that the Next Generation is a good series would be understatement of the century. The next generation really is something special, its characters are fantastic, the episodes tell some of the best stories you will ever see on the silver screen and it has some of the best writing I have had the pleasure of seeing.

The characters are so diverse and are more interesting than the OG series, which I already enjoyed from the movies. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (played excellently by Patrick Stewart) is the best captain in the series, not only do most the best episodes revolve around him, but it's his ideals that make him one of the more interesting characters in the series. Picard tends to follow orders from Star Fleet and for the most part even if it may seem like a bad thing to do at the time, Picard will follow orders, quite unlike a Kirk, that broke the rules all the time. It's this element of Picard that makes him really fascinating to watch, a by the books captain was the best way to go for a series like this, most the time Picard will not resort to violence and will choose to talk his way out of a situation instead. He's stern but also fair and seeing his interests in the performing arts and literature just adds more to this already interesting character.

The rest of the supporting cast are great too. Data, an android with no emotions but wishes to understand them is another great character rivalling Picard in popularity, watching him be put in situation that revolve around his lack of emotions and if he counts as a lifeform makes for some of the best stories in the next generation. First officer Riker, is also another great character to watch, he's everything you want from a first officer, he's more fair than Picard most the time but he can be quite stern too when he needs to be and a lot of great episodes revolve around what he decides to do when Picard isn't there to give him orders. The final character in this series I want to touch on is Worf, the security officer who is also a Klingon who was raised by humans. This added an element of an outsider on the crew to the series, there are many episodes where he has to deal with his culture as a Klingon vs his place on Star Fleet, this really was progressive writing for the time it came out.

I will go over some of the episodes in the show that really show off how fantastic this series really is.

The Measure of a Man (season 2): One of the, if not the most famous episode of the show. Data's identity as a lifeform comes into question when a scientist wants to take him apart. A hearing is ordered, with Picard defending that Data is indeed a lifeform. This is the episode that won me over on the series and showed me that The Next Generation was truly something special.

Yesterday's Enterprise (season 3): A fantastic episode, where the Enterprise gets caught in a different timeline where they are at constant war with the Klingons. Shows that Star Trek could tell these alternate reality stories extremely well.

The Best of Both Worlds and Family (season 3 and 4): The Borg show off how deadly they are by taking Picard and turning him into one. One of the greatest cliff-hangers is the history of television, please watch this. Family shows the aftermath of the situation and shows an emotionally weakened Picard.

Clues (season 4): A fun episode where the crew of the Enterprise wake up after blacking out for what they think is a small period but actually turns out to be longer than expected, this turns into a mystery to find out what's going on as one of the crew might be holding back some information from the others.

The Drumhead (season 4): One of the best episodes in the series for how it, for lack of a better term tackles racism. Picard has to defend a member of his crew who is Romulan, which is an enemy of the Federation. "Have we become so… fearful, have we become so cowardly… that we must extinguish a man? Because he carries the blood of a current enemy?"

I Borg (season 5): A Borg is taken aboard the enterprise with the intention of infecting the rest of the collective, but the longer the Borg stays on the enterprise, the more of its humanity it gets back. Picard has to decide whether it's right to kill this Borg or if it has the right to live like everyone else.

The Inner Light (season 5): Picard lives out an entire lifetime of someone he does not recognise, he grows close to the family of the person he is living out the life of and it becomes a rather emotional and sad tale. Don't miss this one.

Chain of Command (season 6): Patrick Stewart shows off some of his best acting, when he is taken away and tortured. This shows the psychological torture Picard has to endure and the final few minutes of the episodes are as chilling as they are brilliant.

Tapestry (season 6): Picard has a chance to redo his life after his artificial heart gives out and Q offers him to go back in time so that he never needed an artificial heart at all. Great episode that shows us not to regret our actions but instead learn from them and better ourselves.

All Good Things… (season 7): A fantastic finale that brings the series full circle with the very first episode in the series, where we get to see 3 different versions of these characters from different time periods. Excellent finale.

To wrap up what I have to say on The Next Generation, it really is a fantastic series and they don't make them like this anymore. Sci-Fi has lost a lot of the intelligent writing that went along with it, nowadays the genre needs to have action and explosions in it to appeal to a mainstream audience. No one wants to see an episode that questions what we consider a lifeform or an intelligent discussion on if we should follow orders all the time even if it's not always the right thing to do. Why watch that when we can see starships blowing up. Hahaha, I love space pew pew pew shoot the lasers KA-BOOM HAHA IS THIS SCI-FI YET? IS THIS THE GENRE YOU ALL LOVE SO MUCH? IS THIS SCI-FI YET?

Originally written by Mr_Turnabout on 20 February 2020 over on the old Dreary Middle website

This was the only article we ever published so we thought it would be nice to preserve it as a reminder of what once was, so enjoy!

[alligatorjesie]

What do you fuckin' Mean brav?

Did you, much like JJ and Terrio when making episode 9, just fucking forget the last two movies exist?

These movies have not one, but multiple instances of Rey and Ben being Very Intimate with one another so who the fuck knows maybe it's just this fat bowl I smoked but it seems like you have legitimately forgotten large portions of 2 whole ass movies that exists in this trilogy.

Rey and Ben share that saucy shirtless scene in which a very flustered Rey asks Ben to put something on but he just stands there like 'bro, this is my bedroom'.

She listened to and considered his perspective of that night with Luke because deep down even she smelt Luke's story has some bullshit in it.

Her and Ben sit quietly in a small fire lit hut and both of these intensely lonely people tell each other they're not alone anymore.

They then hold hands impossibly across the stars, see what we can only assume was the most intense force vision either of them ever experienced. Ben's killing Snoke and Rey beating up Luke and shipping herself to Ben happens 110% Because Of These Visions.

They're torn apart by Luke, who Rey then straight up fights her childhood folk hero To Defend Ben.

She then washes her hair and puts on some nice clothes and does her makeup to ship herself to Ben in what can I only describe as the most Disneyesque Sleeping Beauty ass looking coffin/escape pod where her and Ben AGAIN stand VERY CLOSE in that elevator talking about that very intimate force vision they had with each other.

Ben kills Snoke here not as a power grab but because he had such a powerful force vision involving Rey he was willing and ready to alter his entire alignment to accommodate her.

Rey grabs Ben's thigh as they fight, not against each other but WITH each other  back to back for the next many minutes

After Throwing Her Own Weapon to Ben

Ben then PORPOSES TO REY

Listen to what he is saying here:

He's saying he's willing to go fully neutral here. He's willing to abandon the dark and the light. Whatever the fuck she wants, he's willing to do it. This isn't Ben committing to the dark side, this is Ben committing to ruling with Rey by his side, whatever that means To Rey, she gets to decide. But this isn't healthy. Ben is just going from one person who told him what to do to another person who he is expecting to tell him what to do.

And only then after a tearful realization that what Ben is offering is for her and not for himself and that he isn't ready to leave all this and she's unwilling to stay with him she regretfully has to tell him no.

She doesn't look glad she had to do this to him. She looks heart broken.

Even the last scene isn't either of these characters filled with malice.

Ben is regretful. A face we've seen before.

Rey is disappointed. A face we've seen before.

This isn't the hateful 'Go Fuck Yourself' scene everyone makes it out to be.

This is like...what? 10 overt instances of reylo in one movie alone so saying shit like 'the reylo came out of nowhere' is disingenuous at best or just flat out incorrect at worst.

Not to even mention the multiple instances of reylo in TFA also even I will admit at this point the infatuation is entirely from Ben's perspective because at this point Rey still hates his guts but Ben does a lot of dumb shit only a lovestruck moron would do and he does it many times with her exclusively.

Like bridal carrying Rey to his ship when he has a bunch of lackeys there to do it for him.

Then interrogate her so gently it's hardly a interrogation at all and she even bests him at the end of it he's doing such a bad job.

Or perhaps it's the nearly full fucking minute he gives her to consider when offering to teach her how to use the force at the end of the movie instead of yeeting her off the cliff like he had ample opportunity to do.

I counted by the way. Honest to fucking God this scene is

27 Full Fucking Seconds

from the end of his proposition to the time it takes her to react.

Listen, the relationship is right there and getting on the fan's dicks about your unobservant ass ain't on us.

This is like watching the prequels and not noticing the Anakin/Padame love plot then getting salty with the fans for noticing and enjoying it.

It's the whole point of the story being told here. Ben isn't a mindless murder. He's shown many times throughout the two more consistent movies to be filled with conflict and a inability to stay committed to the dark side.

Snoke notices it and calls him out on in multiple times in multiple movies.

Hux notices it.

Rey notices it.

Luke notices it.

Leia notices it.

Fuck me, Even Ben Himself Notices It.

He has a whole scene in the first movie where he has to have a pep talk with grandaddy's melted helmet because he, and I quote, keeps feeling that pesky pull to the light.

Listen. You can hate these movies. That's fine. God fucking knows I hate The Rise of Skywalker so much I just left that theater years ago and said to myself 'i can literally do better' and have been working on that since.

But I don't make up lies and post bullshit about it openly in the fandoms tags because I hated it.

I may say how much I hate this fucking line:

or how I hate this unnecessarily long this pointless sword fight goes on for:

but I'd never mock the fans who enjoyed it. I'd certainly never post anti shit openly to the fandom's tags to complain about not understanding it, that's for fuckin' sure. I hated TROS but I did watch it all the way through at least. A few times actually but admittedly I was fucking hammered one of those times. Nothing brings friends together like shitting on a movie for it's entire runtime, but I digress.

It's wild to me you didn't notice the painfully obvious romantic not-even-subplot. What do you mean you felt the redemption of the fallen only son of Leia Organa, Han Solo, the nephew of Luke Skywalker, grandson of Anakin and Padame came to you by surprise? In the same movie series that redreamed Darth Fucking Vader?

You not noticing the very obvious connection between these Two Main Characters in a movie series about light side/dark side dichotomies sounds like a you problem, because the evidence is so painfully in the open not noticing it is like standing in a forest and not noticing the trees. And I get it, art is subjective but even on that stance this isn't bad acting between Adam and Daisy. There's very real emotions in these scenes with these actors playing these characters. Rey's tears and frustration never feels forced. Luke's blind determination never feels out of character. Ben's stunted ability to express himself in a healthy way feels like it's coming from a place Adam knows too well.

You didn't notice the reylo because you were not paying attention to these movies does not mean the pairing was not there. It doesn't mean the movies were 'bad'. It just means you hated these movies and didn't care to notice, which again is fine but man it's fuckin' wild to even have an opinion about something like this if you hated it so much. For example: I really didn't like the antman and wasp movies and you know how much I care about that pairing? None. Not enough to comment that's for fucking sure. The fuck does my opinion on it matter? I ain't in this fandom and even if I feel like the movies ain't good, the fuck does being negative to the entire fandom accomplish? I know somewhere out there that shit is someone's number one thing and that's cool, let them enjoy it. I'd just rather leave that dog lie.

Anyhoots, smoke the rest of this fuckin' bowl with me and let's watch some star wars since you seem like you need a fuckin' refresher.

Please do the movie ships with the worst chemistry. I would like to see the world burn. 🥺

I will not include romantic comedies because pretty much all of them are actually terrible people in those movies and the dysfunction is kind of why the movie takes so long to work.

But if I had to pick which Canon couple had the worst Chemistry I had ever seen. I will have to pick two.

The first is Scott Lang and Hope Pym in the First Antman movie

Because my goodness, that was the most out of no where forced romance I have ever seen and it didnt feel right. Its not awful but its just so... out of left field that I was actually surprised. There were NO hints that there was romantic chemistry until the scene where the dad walked in on them. And I am still like wtf.

I havent seen the sequels so I dont know if it gets better, but to this day, I am still confused by it.

and for the second one. Its Rey and Kylo ren of Reylo from Star Wars

The most unbelievable thing in the Rise of skywalker wasnt Palpatine some how being alive, or even the fleet of star destroyers being beaten in the dumbest way possible. It was the writing that thought that having them kiss was a good idea. I know the fandom speculated about them being together, I was not one of those people. I still stand by the disney sequels being the biggest tragedy to star wars franchise and this was just the cherry on top of that Crap sundae.

[kdinjenzen]

Im so sorry people have always given you shit over playing May. You deserve recognition and respect.

I hope you know, May's role in the show, the amount of love and care put into her screentime, the dedication you had to playing her, it meant the world to a lot of people. I've met so many trans rwby fans that have talked to me about how seen and represented they felt, and that will always mean something huge.

Hell, I was in tears when I watched V8C7. I'd flat out never seen a trans woman (or a trans character in general now that I think about it) just outright directly represented outside of... like... fanfiction and stuff. And fanfiction can be amazing, but when that's the only place you can find rep... well, you know.

People suck, and you don't deserve the treatment you've gotten. Thank you so much for all you put into the role.

I don't think people realize just how difficult it is to get ANY queer representation in media.

Y'all are seeing like... one or two or three characters every so often, but you have no idea how many are PITCHED and PUSHED FOR and then SHELVED.

On top of that, and this is a huge discussion in the VO world right now especially in queer circles, but Trans Women DO NOT GET BOOKED FOR VO ALMOST AT ALL!

Like we just don't. Even in the grand scheme of like "you only book less than 1% of what you audition for" - trans women book even less than that and it's BECAUSE of how people view trans women that makes that happen.

The trans women VAs I know (myself included) are some of the most DEDICATED and TALENTED people in the industry and... we just don't get work. At all.

A lot of my trans masc VA friends speak to this as well because they all book things just fine, and have been really suspicious as to why the trans women in the industry are finding it so hard to get booked for LITERALLY ANYTHING AT ALL.

So when a character that is A TRANS WOMAN SPECIFICALLY IN CANON and is VOICED BY A TRANS WOMAN... it's so rare y'all... you have no idea...

And I legit don't think I've ever heard an intersex character voiced by someone intersex either... which also sucks as someone who is also intersex.

So like... fam, it's so hard to get any wins at all. We're struggling.

And then when those few moments actually happen... we're harassed or made fun of or... just forgotten... it sucks.

You wanna talk about "feeling invisible"... cause... damn... I still feel that way.