#so episodes that survived the rest of their serials being lost just… aren’t there. So I know I’m missing things that technically exist

[nothinggold13]

Two so far:

“but YOU’RE the doctor!” “Oh, I don’t look like him.”

*reads his old diary*

*plays recorder*

*steps in a puddle*

*jumps over a boulder*

*wears a tall, lumpy hat*

*murders some daleks*

*that grin. you know the one*

I support him in all his endeavours. 💛

[devintrinidad]

I haven't watched it Akadama Drive the way through. But I have seen a lot of it. It's almost too gorey for me. But the visuals are a real treat and it definitely has the cyberpunk cool factor down. Swindler was a great main character! (I never shipped her with Cutthroat. I knew the psychopath was that. A psychopath and I bet he was going to turn on them at anytime. And he did! Never be distracted by the childish antics pretty boy serial killers!). 

I'm interested in the future of AD. I heard the last episode was getting a special Directors cut including a alternative ending. I also heard the AD creators were happy to hear AD is doing well in the west so fans are wondering if that means their hoping to make a S2? I don't keep up with AD news so I'm not sure if that's their intention or not. But I did hear a fan theory that S2 could be about the bad guys using technology to bring at least of the main characters back to life (considering Swindler had a religious themed death and both her and Courier's bodies could easily be recovered. Plus revival through tech is such a Cyberpunk staple) because Brother and Sister are still targets and they were would where to look for them. 

So maybe AD still has a bright future ahead with more content to explore the world (I honestly think Hacker could easily be a main character in any sequal). 

Onto the CAW/AD verse.

I could totally see 3803 being this epic biker chick.... Who gets lost easily. But because she does all these crazy stunts, her enemies (who don't know her yet) think she's planning everything to confuse them. X D 

I could see 1146's akudama name being Bodyguard. Because when he's not acting like one for 3803 and Platelet. He's taking up bodyguard jobs for anyone who needs them. For the right price and reason. If you're a scumbag who hurts innocent people, he'll kill you on the spot. But be nice enough to return the moneyto your corpse. Unless 3803 or Platelet needs something, then he'll strip you of all your dough and leave you penniless. He has a very ruthless rep. But he's so good at what he does, his help is in high demand. Ecspecially for someone who needs a bodyguard they can trust (and they know they aren't or won't act like scum around him to earn his wrath). He's fine with helping criminals. Just not ones who do a lot of harm to innocents or are involved in nasty business like trafficking or something.

Story wise things change up.

The way I see things here is that Cancer is the one secretly in charge and why things are so wrong. He's this absolute monster of a human being who gained immortality hundreds of years ago. He went nuts and caused wars and blew up the moon. He wants all the power and has created societies in his own twisted corrupted image (basically his dream in canon coming true here). But he's noticed after awhile things always go bad under his leadership and nearly everything dies. Instead of starting over again and again. He's decides to find a way to force everyone to become immortal like him so that even if they're killed. They'll have no choice but to come back to life like he does. If he has to suffer this, then so does everyone else. 

That's where 3803 and Platelet come in. For decades, Cancer has been collecting and experimenting on people in secret in order to figure out how to gift them with his immortality. 3803 and Platelet are surviving lab rats who managed to escape during a explosion happening in the building. 3803 is the closest he's come to achieving his goal. 3803 would later tell 1146 she has no idea how immortal she is and it scares her to death that she might be unable to die like Cancer. All she knows is that she can take a lot of damage and recover in time. She's been able to age a little. But she hopes she's not being paranoid about looking younger and smaller for her age (Macrophage, another Akudama who knows her secret, tells her it's common for girls like her to look younger then they are and that she has gotten bigger since they first met. But 3803 is still a little concerned). 3803 also has no idea about Platelets status in all this since she's never been badly hurt and she's aged normally. But she's also never gotten sick a day in her life and she was put in the same cell as her. The scientists saying all she needed was a little tweaking and they'd both be closer to becoming their goal. 

Ohhh, I didn't even think about 4989 and the others being 1146's enemies. I assumed they'd follow his lead eventually. Say they're dissapointed in him. Because yeah things are corrupt. But that's no reason to become a criminal and abandon their dreams of making the city a better place. They weren't there when he turned traitor so all they've been told is he got beguiled by some witch (3803 gets a very exaggerated and unpleasent rep along the Executioners for turning their top soldier against them. 1146 was already having serious doubts on his own but the organization puts the blame on her regardless). Eventually they get told by a superior officer if they can capture both 1146 and 3803 alive, they'll take 1146 back instead of executing or throwing him in jail. They'll strip him of his Akudama name and only punish him by putting a bomb collar on him until he redeems himself to them. It's not ideal. But for their friend they'll take it. They do eventually find and fight 1146 and even manage to knock him out and tie him up. They're prepared to fight 3803... Until they meet her face to face. From the rumours, they were expecting this buff scary woman who could rip their faces off. Instead they meet this determined but petite girl who looks like she'd hurt herself trying punch them. Even worse she's holding this little scared crying girl calling her big sis in her arms. They're the picture of defenselessness and it's suddenly making them not comfortable with this. This goes two ways: either they decide to cool down for a sec and let 3803 and 1146 explain themselves and then make the choice to leave and become akudamass too. Or, they harden themselves and take her anyway. 3803 promises to come quietly if they let her little sister go (they don't suspect Platelet is the Akadama Bomber). 3803 is hoping if she goes alone, She can at least convince Cancer Platelet died years ago and was a failed test subject. They agree and 3803 has to push Platelet away and yell at her to go (she knows she'll go to Macrophage so she'll be fine) because Platelet knows what's happening and is desperate enough to almost throws a small bomb at them (but 1146 would get caught up in the blast and 3803 glares at her to obey so she doesn't). The WBC squad does feel bad since they're not used to dealing with vulnerable women and children who can't fight back. 

When 1146 wakes up in a room with his superior officer telling him he's back and not getting a bomb collar. He's getting brain surgery and it's a surprise what that's going to be. Needless to say, 1146 is pissed beyond words. He's going to be forced to be their top dog somehow again. Platelet is alone and scared. 3803 is going to be carted off to Cancer so Cancer can make things even worse. Needless to say he manages to make his case to his friends who see definitely now know being a Akadama is better then this. Half of them go to rescue 1146 before he gets brain surgery and the others go get 3803 before Cancer can.

That's my idea of it anyway. Cause the WBC squad would actually be really good akadamas.

Now when it comes to 1146 fighting allies a lot. My initial idea was before he left, 1146 was the best of the best alongside NK and Killer T. They were the power trio that stood above the rest with a 100% success rate in missions once all three worked together. But unlike the WBS squad. They stick to their Executioner roles. I see this because in CAW canon, despite being softies inside, both Killer T and NK have this 'don't get chummy with civilians' mentality. Killer T ecspecially getting on 1146 for wanting to interact and go soft with them. In AD verse, NK and Killer T ultimately believe the Executioners are a nessecary evil at worst because the world needs them to be (Idk, you can keep the germs and make them monsters that Executioners have to fight to keep the city save too. Of course all of them are secretly made by Cancer to convince the most 'noble' of Executioners to keep the corrupted status quo).  When 1146 left, they took it personally. Particularly Killer T. NK keeps things more professional, but both want Roto resolve things with 1146 and see it as their duty to take him down. They don't believe 1146 about the whole conspiracy of a immortal Cancer ruling the world and doing all this other unbelievable stuff. Even when they see 3803 surviving a lot of damage, they chalk it up to her having access to some high tech she stole. Either way I'm conflicted on them being tragic villains who refuse to stop fighting 1146 and capture 3803 under orders or villains who get redeemed at the end. 

But Akadama Killer T. Tell me more? What's he like?

Other stuff-

Macrophage is called Hacker. Both because she can hack her targets into pieces with her axe and because she's a famous computer hacker. She found 3803 and Platelet years ago after they had escaped from the underground lab. She was reasearching for fun what the base was and discovered its use for making immortality. She took the two girls in to raise as if they were her own and trained them how to survive as Akadama (more so 3803 since she's older). When Macrophage isn't a assassin for hire, she's using her hacking abilities as mission control for 3803 when she's on the job. She helps her not get too lost and handles money transactions. They see her as the mom they never had despite that she's really only around 14 years older then them. 

Platelet loves blowing things up. She likes building things too. But bombing things helps her little family out more. She'll often plant tiny bombs all over the city and has Macrophage use her computer to keep track of them so she can detonate them when she sees a use to (like blowing up anyone chasing 383 while she's on her motorcycle). She adores 1146 and loves having him be part of her family. Partly because he's so strong and protective she doesn't have to worry as much about 3803 as much with him around. It's unknown just how much the experiments affected her too. All that's known is she's never been sick and barely needs any sleep to operate and always has nothing but energy to spare. She gets scared easily when 3803 might get taken away because her big sis has always been there for her and she's terrified of Cancer destroying her life and family again. If she lost 3803 she doesn't think she'd known how to live ob without her.

Cancer refers to all his experiments as his children. He calls 3803 and Platelet his daughters in particular and plans on having them back and fully like him so they can be his perfect family. He's actually known them since they were babies since, before they escaped, they've spent most, if not, all their lives in his care at the lab.

In this verse, 1146 is a much more aggressive pursurer of 3803's affections. He's still shy about making moves and acts stoic. But it's apparent he's interested in her early on and after awhile he makes no secret he wants to marry her. It always surprises her when he talks about wanting to marry her because he's too shy to flirt with her or even ask her on a date. He's both unable to make the first move, yet is very blunt about his desired intentions. She on the other hand is more hesitant. With her unknown immortality status, she's afraid she can't grow old with him and would deny him a normal wife. He simply says he wants her and no one else will ever do. 

3803 feels bad about him becoming a criminal. He's fighting his friends and comrades and has a huge life sentence on him all because he protected he. He tells her even if he has never met her. He knows sooner or later he would have left on his own and been branded a Akadama. Meeting her just have him another reason to believe in protecting others. Plus she does let him live with her and her for free. She still tries to pay him for his services when he protects her on the job. Initially he takes the money. But after too long she finds out all he does with the money is buy her things she was planning on getting later anyway. He basically was doing her errands for her. She gave up after that. 

 1146 is very protective of 3803's secret and has killed people over it to protect her. Those people being top high level Executioners who are in on Cancer's existence and his plans. 1146 knows the moment Cancer can get 3803 and confirm her ID. There's going to be a lot of trouble. He's made it a goal to either turn those people to his side or kill them all until there's no one left. When Cancer hears of this, he calls him a kind killer. 

Macrophage once jokes 1146 should be called Husband instead of Bodyguard because that's what he acts like with 3803. All overprotective and lovey dovey. He hates it when other men flirt with him and scared them off. 

Cancer is actually more aware of 3803 and Platelets activity then anyone thinks. It's just that he's immortal so time is a little for him. He kind of enjoys watching them hide and run and wondering how far he can push 1146 in his efforts to protect them. 

That's all I got I think. Putting in Cancer kind of changes things up but I also think he strangely fits in there very well. 

Any other ideas you have?

~~~

Oh my! It’s been a while since you’ve made such a long and lovely submission! First things first, yes, Swindler is best girl!!!

Heheh, I found Cutthroat/Swindler to be somewhat cute, but I had a feeling things would turn out for the worst when the team ultimately separated after Doctor’s betrayal and the fight with the Executioners. It was a pretty cool dynamic and I love how Swindler ultimately turned the tables on him.

(I’m a bit leery as to why he could see her “red halo” from so far away, but I suppose it was due to insanity/supernatural influences).

And yup! There was going to be a director’s cut. A Youtuber actually translated the tweets that directors had regarding the director’s cut and discovered that it was going to be an extra seven minutes of footage and would feature scenes that would help flesh out the last episode more.

It’s super interesting.

LINK HERE

Ooohhhh, a season 2 where we can see best girl and Courier to come back??? To be honest, I like the series where it stands. It had a message, stuck with it, but managed to punch it all in with masterful animation techniques and storytelling. One of the characters that I think would definitely come back, should probably be Hacker. He was a god of cyberspace and savvy with technology.

Someone once speculated that he’s smart: he would definitely upload a backup of himself somewhere.

(Another person thought that Hacker must have saved himself on Swindler’s phone because his drone icon was there after his final parting gift).

I think the best way to add onto the series would be to revisit their backgrounds? Then again, I checked out the available manga chapters that have been translated thus far, and it seems they might delve a little into that territory.

Maybe a one shot episode where we get to see all the Akudama go about their daily lives where they sometimes interact (unknowingly) Durarara style (another great anime you should watch if you have the time).

Hacker as main character??? Yes please???

3803 would definitely do crazy tricks, hahah. She’s simultaneously skilled and unskilled with her bike. She’s like the... Captain Jack Sparrow of the series except instead of being drunk all the time, she’s somewhat clueless and innocent.

Bodyguard is such a lovely name. Like... I can picture it and it really fits. Not only does it satisfy his canon role of protecting, it actually helps him from actually killing too many people unnecessarily. He’ll do it if he has to, but his main goal is to protect his charge, not go after any assassins and whatnot.

Ooooohhhh, I love Cancer here! You make him out to be some terrible god of destruction and chaos and I absolutely adore it. And the motive for immortality makes more sense in this au then in the canon for AD, hahah. But yes, I imagine after years of destruction and infamy, he would definitely feel lonely and bitter.

So of course, why not drag the rest of humanity down with him?

3803 and Platelet both being somewhat immortal beings? Yes??? And Macrophage being one of their true confidants? Also yes??? (WHERE ARE YOU GETTING ALL THESE GOOD IDEAS???)

I know later on you’ll talk about Macrophage being a hacker (because of major hacking skills in tech and in killing), but what about this: she’s the Doctor from AD. Not a backstabber, but one who was somewhat affiliated with the idea of immortality. Maybe she was one of the scientists who helped raise 3803 and Platelet and after discovering that all the rest of the experiments died and only two remained, she decided enough was enough and got them out of Cancer’s hold.

Hmm... how about we combine Hacker and Doctor to create Scientist instead? She’s cold and ruthless underneath her ladylike vibes, but she truly does feel for the plight of 3893 and Platelet.

I don’t know, it would make for an interesting dynamic.

Oooohhh, I love the confrontation with WBC squad and 3803. They’re so geared and ready (4989 is definitely sweating bullets while the others reassure him). Also, you know how in AD canon that the Executions are always in pairs? Let’s have 2001 and 1145 the original pairing before he broke out. Then, 4989 with 2626 and 2048 and Eosinophil while 2001 gets stuck with Band Cell. Because, why not.

(Or, we go back to one of my most heinous friendships I ever created, 2001 and Dendritic Cell).

Can I also say that Bomber is such a bomb name for Platelet? (Pun completely intended).

And yeah, the WBC squad are definitely really uncomfortable when they undergo some cognitive dissonance here... perhaps it’s starting at this moment that they realize that Akudama aren’t that different from normal people... or the Executioners.

Bomb collars and surgery for 1146??? Ooohhhh, he must really be the top Executioner... I wonder if he’ll reunite with 2001 again as his partner or get someone new who can help control him. Because NK and Killer T are definitely partners.

On a side note you mentioned that they think that Executioners are a necessary evil. It’s like your acknowledging and somewhat hinting that they know this is wrong and that Akudamas aren’t inherently bad, but do so anyway because of a corrupt legal system. I love it. It really adds to the depth of the characters.

And yes, we need tragic villains with feelings.

As for Akudama Killer T... Maybe he went through some mental breakdown before realizing that the Executioners aren’t always right )if they were ever right in the first place). Perhaps he breaks like 1146 did, but instead of using his skills for constructive purposes, he goes all out and doesn’t care about the law anymore. He sort of becomes 1146’s foil. They’re both rear Executioners, both saw the errors of their ways, but while 1146 becomes a protector in his own way, maybe Killer T decides to become a mercenary.

I don’t know, I love parallels and showcasing how far characters have done.

(I REALLY WANTED PUPIL EXECUTIONER TO BECOME AN AKUDAMA OR AT LEAST HAVE A MOMENT TO HERSELF, BUT IT NEVER HAPPENED. AT LEAST THE DIRECTORS CUT IS SAID TO ADDRESS THAT).

Cancer as a father?

Cancer as a family man?

I... that’s a concept I never considered. Just, I can only imagine him playing with all of his experiments, knowing that one day, most of them will end up dying. He probably favors 3803 over Platelet because of how close they are in physical appearance/age and acts creepy about it.

(Is this my Abnormalities!verse writing urge acting up again, probably).

Hehehe, why but blunt 1146. That is so cute and adorable. He and 3803 constantly dance around the issue, especially due to the whole immortality thing, but he makes it clear that he doesn’t care. Though he doesn’t know it, he’s actually quite suave when he finally convinces her that it’s the time they spend together now that matters so they won’t regret in the future.

3803 swoons.

Husband??? Yes???

Macrophage as confirmed 3803/1146 shipper? Why not???

Ooohhh, Cancer is more aware than what was already expected... I HAVE ANOTHER IDEA!!!

So I know that I said earlier that Macrophage would be a combination of Hacker and Doctor, why not also make Cancer have Hacker elements? Think about it, he’s practically immortal and it was never truly confirmed how immortality works in AD canon. Maybe his immortality is due to a combination of high technology and organic stuff. Maybe, he can upload his consciousness at will so that he can “supervise” his children. It also adds credence to the whole “3803 had high tech to help her stave off heavy damage” that Killer T and NK think is what’s going on. I don’t know, I just think it would be cool to have Cancer be a god in the physical and technological world.

He would be so OP, but that’s what Cancer probably would want in CAW canon, so there, hahah.

Hmm, anything else? Let’s see, Killer T as an Akudama would definitely be more of a Brawler character... I don’t have anybody down for Hoodlum... But who do you think would be a best fit for Head Executioner? At first, I wanted Helper T, but I realized that he doesn’t get super utilized in canon, so why not make him Executioners alongside Regulatory T. Seriously, they don’t get enough screen time (especially Regulatory T).

As for the majority of Akudamas, most are definitely pathogens or germs, but I’m assuming some of them are actually Normal Cells... Normal Cells with benign mutations, but somehow get the attention of Executioners.

But yeah, this was an awesome little au. I’m down to read some action packed nonsense with these characters. You should definitely try your hand at writing this, hahah!

[stealinghero]

Okay so imagine this! The Lupin crew are relaxing at a cafe after a successful heist. The s/o says they have to use the bathroom and they leave. But after about five minutes, the s/o comes running out of the back door with a dehydrated body in their arms yelling that they need to go, there’s no time to explain and it’s not their fault, all while some shady looking people chase after them.

Finally.... after losing my first draft (about 4 pages) because of my stupid self overwriting it, it’s finally done!!

I did it a bit different than before to get the vibe of an episode, showing a few more aspects than just the view of the reader.

I hope you all enjoy it!!  It’s under the cut for length.

It had been a busy week. But now it was time to finally relax and come down. You were sitting in your favourite café, surrounded by your friends.

“I dare you to eat a whole Sundae in under 5 minutes.”

“Do you think I can’t do this?!”

“Hundred bucks against it.”

You snorted and had to laugh out loud when Jigen showed you the Sundae in question on the menu. It was huge!!

“Excuse me for a second. Don’t start without me!” You had to see Lupin try this dare, but nature called you with an urgency you seldom had.

“If I win, I’ll get a kiss!”

You turned around to your boyfriend and grinned.

“And if you lose, I get a kiss from Jigen!”

The gunman snickered and nodded. “Deal.”

“No deal! Don’t touch my precious love!”

You let the guys bicker while you made your way to the restrooms.

 A moaning was heard as soon as you entered. Some people had no shame! But something was off with it. Didn’t it sound painful? All stalls were open but the last one. Another moan, this time a man, more breathless but also kind of… breathless?

Curious about those sounds you got into the stall next to it and thought about taking a peek over the wall into the next cabin.

“That’s a good girl. Die for me.”

With a jump you pulled yourself up the wall of the stall and looked into the next cabin, only to see a black dressed guy with a syringe on the neck of a young girl.

“Unhand her, you freak!” you demanded.

He was quicker than you, already running out of the restrooms when you got down and hurried into the stall with the girl.

“Are you okay?!”

She was unconscious and very pale. The small holes at her neck almost looked like a vampire bite. Who was that freak?!

An uproar let you just get the girl out of the stall and run. Not a second too late as you could see the black dressed guy and a couple of his friends drawing their weapons, aiming for you.

 “Get up! We need to run!!” you shouted at your friends as you hurried past them with the still unconscious girl in your arms.

“What did you do?!” Lupin asked, already on his feet and fumbling for the car keys.

“No time to explain!!”

You heard a shot and felt the pain when the bullet hit you in the calf. Those guys were serious! Limping, you made your way to the car, followed by your friends, Jigen already shooting back and Goemon protecting you from a hail of bullets.

 Breathlessly you had told them everything on the way to the hospital where you had laid the girl in front of the emergency room. Just like the rest of the gang you were wanted so you couldn’t exactly just walk into any building without the fear of being arrested.

During the dressing of your wound, Jigen questioned you about the scene.

“This is crazy. Tell me again, did you recognize anything?”

With a huff you told him the story once more. You knew it was crazy! A side-glance towards your lover made you aware of the mess you had brought yourself into. He had decided to call Inspector Zenigata to get some information. It seemed quicker than to get into a disguise and just get to the nearest police station.

“A vampire? In broad daylight?” Goemon seemed incredulous.

“It wasn’t a vampire, Goemon! It was a man with a syringe. I saw it,” you replied.

“But where was all the blood? Even a kid her age should have at least 4 litres of blood. And she lost at least 2 of it.” Sometimes Jigen scared you with his medical knowledge.

With a grim face Lupin joined your round.

“You disturbed a serial killer. Pops says there were at least 5 different cases of this vampire. It’s always the same. A kid is lured away from its parents and sucked dry.”

You suddenly felt uneasy but you had to know.

“They survived, right?” you asked.

He shook his head.

“The girl is the first to survive. All of them had marks like a vampire bite. All of them sucked dry.”

Jigen spat and lighted a cigarette. A sure sign he was getting irritated.

“This is a disgusting thing to do to someone,” Goemon decided and grabbed his Zantetsuken. His own form of irritation.

“Pops is thankful for your information, but he also says there aren’t enough facts to get to a clear culprit. To think there were 4 of them...,” he left it unsaid, but you felt his uneasiness as he watched you.

“I will be okay. It’s not like they followed us.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Jigen slowly raised his hands, followed by Lupin. Both of them stared at a point behind you.

“I hate this,” you mumbled and turned around to find yourself surrounded by black dressed men, all of them aiming their guns at you.

 “I still don’t get why you don’t simply kill them.”

“It’s an order from above.”

“Fuck this. I know a bit about them. They can be dangerous.”

“Do you doubt your superiors?”

“No, Sir.”

“Then shut the fuck up and do your work.”

“Yes, Sir!”

You looked around in the dark cell to find something to get a clue where you were. After getting threatened you had to follow their orders. A blindfold, different cars, you were separated from the others. Were they in the same building as you? Were they already dead?

You swallowed your tears. Lupin wasn’t that easy to be killed. He would come and rescue you, right? He would hug you and kiss all those fears away. He would… maybe… surely… no! You had to get out of here! Think! What information do you have?

A dark cell, 3 metres long, 2 metres wide. A bucket in the corner. The door was solid metal, a small flap in the middle. No lock to be found. It had to be outside on the door. Maybe something simple as you hadn’t heard a key turn when you were thrown into this cell. You didn’t have a window. No blanket to cover yourself with. And it had to be soundproof, because the only things you could hear were the guards directly in front of the door even if you pressed your ear to the other walls.

 ~~~~

He gasped for air and coughed when he chocked on his own breath. Water ran down his face, soaking the bag over his head, making it harder to breathe.

“You will do as we say.”

He shook his head and tried to fight the strong grip on his neck as it pushed him down, into the water, once more. He was a good diver and counted the seconds with a clear head. But it was longer and longer, his lungs started screaming for air and he was still under the water. Two minutes had passed when he was pulled up again, again gasping for air in a desperate fashion.

“You will kill Lupin the Third.”

Again he shook his head. He was a stubborn idiot, getting drowned for his convictions.

 ~~~~

A sharp pain rushed through his whole facial nerve system as the wound opened and the nerves were exposed to the fresh air. Still, he wouldn’t admit it with a sound. It had be a short hit but still hard enough to rip open a huge gash on his cheek.

“It is easy, Lupin. You will steal the disc and we won’t hurt your little lover.”

He watched his partner through a monitor. They were collecting information on their cell, listening to sounds, checking the stability of the door.

“No.”

He had known it from the start. The whole day had been spent with an uneasy feeling. Why had he proposed a visit to the café?! By now he should know to trust his gut. But the face of his partner had been so gloomy and he had wanted to cheer them up… and he had endangered them with his recklessness.

“I will kill them,” the shadow promised.

Lupin shook his head. He had to trust them now. And he had seen a familiar face around those guys. What was more important to this person? Friends or the job?

“You’re right! I won’t kill them. He will,” the shadow laughed a bit while saying this, showing Lupin the familiar face getting tortured.

“Let them go!”

“Get me this disc and I will let your friends leave.”

The disc in question was unknown to him. Surely it was dangerous enough to destroy the world if people like the shadow wanted it. He had calculated the outcome and still hadn’t found a way out of it. Normally he would swap the disc with another, fooling those idiots. But with his friends in their hands? He would risk the death of his beloved ones. Manipulating the data on it was also out of the question, he had seen their work before. One or two skilled hackers were in this team, he knew. They would know any tampering before he could get away.

He had to trust his friends to save themselves. How could he gain time for them?

“Still no answer, hm? Fine. Then you’ll get to know the consequences,” the shadow threatened, pushing down a button.

Jigen appeared on the monitor. He was bound and gagged and seemed to be seriously hurt. Lupin snorted. It was likely the gunman had given his captors a rough time and got himself into trouble.

“Kill him.”

A gun was pressed to Jigen’s head. Lupin wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t.

The trigger was pulled and Jigen fell out of the reach of the camera.

 ~~~~

Was that a shot?! It had been too loud to be far away. Some clattering. You pressed your ear harder to the door but couldn’t hear anything. Silence fell. Maybe your friends came to your rescue??

After 5 minutes there was still silence and you fell down into sitting opposite of your prison door, staring at it, willing it to open with your thoughts alone.

 ~~~~

They had enough of drowning him. Wet and cold he was submitted into a cell, next to their other prisoners. He knew those cells. They were constructed specifically to be escape-proof. What a bullshit.

They had broken two of his fingers and this made it harder for him to work on the small gap between door and door frame. He was sure they watched him through the camera system. It was a game of time to get out of here.

A jolt of electricity rushed through his fingers and threw him on the floor, muscles cramping from the current. Damn, they had upgraded the security system.

 ~~~~

“One down, two to go. Get me the disc.”

He still couldn’t believe it.

“Your answer?”

They had shot him. Point blank, no room for tricks.

“Do you prefer to see the next death?”

“Don’t.”

“Get me the disc.”

He let his head hang and swallowed. They would kill the rest of his gang with him watching.

“Yes.”

“Good. Let me give you a gift before you go.”

Another button was pushed and he stared at the monitor. A hand, a leg…. A severed head staring back at him.

He threw up, emptying his stomach on the floor before him. He couldn’t stand the accusing stare of Goemon’s lifeless eyes.

“Please…,” he begged in a small voice.

The monitor went black.

“You have 24 hours.”

 ~~~~

You rubbed your temple as the flap in the door opened and a small tablet was shoved through, falling down, spilling all your food on the floor. A harsh laughter was heard and the flap closed. At least the water was bottled and didn’t spill.

You crawled towards the door, smelling iron. Blood on the other side of the door? You placed your face on the floor, trying to see through the small gap between the door and the floor. With a scream, you scrambled back to the opposing wall, shaking with fear. Did you… the… hi… you couldn’t understand what you just had seen. Lifeless brown eyes staring at you.

 ~~~~

It had been a matter of time until they had grew bored with him sitting in his cell, doing nothing. He was prepared when three of them came to get him. Two of them were entering his cell, getting him up on his feet, the third pointing a gun at him, ready to shoot without a warning. A really good work and he felt a small pride. He had been one of their instructors after all. And they were doing a good job, he had to admit.

“Are you ready to kill?”

He spat into the face of the man before him and earned a fist to the face for it. Blood dripped from his broken nose.

“Lupin is on the way already. There’s no need to be so hostile, old man.”

Damn. How had they made him go?!

The man before him laughed and hit him again, this time the fist hit his solar plexus, making him throw up in pain.

“You still have a chance to kill him if you’re fast enough.”

“I won’t.”

“I gave him 24 hours. And there is no rush.” A short gesture and the two men dragged him into another room, making him dread the things he and the other instructors had taught them, when he saw the instruments.

 ~~~~

Interpol headquarters. It would have been easier if they had allowed him to disguise himself as Zenigata!

Cursing he checked his uniform he had taken from a passed out officer. Well, passed out wasn’t that right, he admitted with a grin.

He would get the disc, bring it back and take his partner and get out of there. Far away from those maniacs.

“Officer, what are you doing there?”

He snapped back into reality, donning a smile and saluting in front of the captain.

“I was checking the premises as I was asked to do,” he answered.

A nod from the other man and he was free to go. He would need to be fast to get to the right floor. The shadow had told him the exact coordinates of the disc, making him suspicious. Why did the ICPO hide a disc with nuclear codes in their best guarded safe? Why did they have something like this in the first place? Something wasn’t right.

He thought about it the way through the building. Maybe the disc was something else? Briefly he remembered a different disc, containing the secret identities of all the MI6 agents. Maybe the ICPO had something similar?

No time to think. He had to get to the right floor and find a way to get into that safe, guarded by a difficult security system.

 ~~~~

You had enough! There had to be a way to get out of here?! Those bastards had killed Goemon! You threw yourself against the door for the fourth time when it swung open.

Shocked you couldn’t even react and fell to the floor, surprised by the sudden change.

“You wanted to get out?”

You blinked, silent – were you dreaming?

Zenigata grinned at you with a bruised face, missing two teeth.

“We need to get you out of here,” he told you, grabbing your arm.

You blinked again, and then the memories came back. Frantically you searched the floor for the head you had seen.

“It was a puppet. A scheme to break you. And Lupin.”

You shook your head. How!?

“Interpol’s special unit. They are specialized in anti-terror… well, I thought that.”

“Interpol?!” you had found your voice and were now eyeing the Inspector in front of you. He was a bloody mess, shirtless and bruised. Several deep cuts were on his body and you thought that a few fingers of his must be broken.

He growled before answering.

“I had a feeling about that case you were involved in. Seems I was right.”

“Inspector!”

You and him turned your heads towards the voice, seeing Yata dragging a half-conscious Jigen with the help of a hurt Goemon.

With a heavy weight falling from your shoulders, you rushed to your friends, hugging them and carefully looking over them for injuries.

“I found them where you told me. Inspector, what is going on?!” The young assistant seemed distressed.

“Doesn’t matter. Get Jigen and Goemon out of here and keep them safe,” Zenigata ordered, taking a short glance at you. “And you will need to help me here.”

You nodded. He had saved your friends and there was no sight of Lupin.

“They told me Lupin is on his way to steal something they want. We need to know where he is. And what they want.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Your brain was too slow to catch up.

“What bad feeling with the case I was involved in?!” you asked him.

He began to walk and you followed him, curious.

“After the second dead kid I had a hunch and followed a trace. A man of the Special Unit had been sighted near the crime scene.”

“They were 4 men,” you told him.

“Five. A sniper to keep trouble away.”

“But he didn’t shoot.”

“Then why are you limping?”

You stopped and stared at him. You were a sniper yourself and knew the priorities.

“Why didn’t he shoot me then?”

“He wanted to be found out.”

You shook your head in disbelief but Zenigata grabbed your hand and dragged you with him.

“His brother was the one to come to me after the fourth case. He was killed before he could confess his crimes. The sniper was the younger brother, I think he wanted to end the secrecy of this.”

“Why kids?! Why the blood?”

Zenigata dragged you into a room full of monitors and flicked through the different cameras, searching for something.

“To sell it to some rich guy. They all had the same blood type. Some special thing from India or something. I am not a scientist.”

“The Bombay Blood group.”

He turned around and looked at you surprised.

“Lupin is the same. He can give blood to anyone but he needs a donor from the same group to receive blood from.”

“And how do you know that?!”

You grinned a bit, remembering him telling you one evening and your search for a few pints of this blood group to have a stash safe if he would ever need it.

“He’s my love after all.”

Zenigata rolled his eyes and turned back to the monitors.

“Stupid love-bugs,” he grumbled.

 ~~~~

There hadn’t been a problem so far. The guards were wearing masks but he still had gotten around them and used the sleeping gas he preferred. Right now they were in the land of dreams, leaving him the peace to deal with the security system.

Modern electronics, an elaborate laser system and an old fashioned safe that was safe from the newer generation of thieves because it was too outdated to be used anymore. Luckily his grandfather had taught him his first steps in cracking a safe with a similar model. Even then this model had been old.

“Show me your secrets…,” he said to the computer as he was cracking the codes and disengaging one system after another. The instructions of the shadow had been precise and worked. He must be an insider. But still the main thought of the thief went to the disc. What was on it?!

 ~~~~

He had found a camera in front of a door that he wanted to investigate.

“If I’m right this is the main office. And we will find our…”

His voice was drowned in a siren.

“Don’t tell me we were discovered,” you said, growling. He said he knew the Unit! Then he should know their security, right?!

A gun was thrown into your hands.

“You have the permission to kill.” His voice was toneless and you knew how heavy this decision was on the Inspector.

“Because they won’t hesitate to o the same to you,” he explained and loaded another gun.

“Are you really okay?” you asked him, eyeing his still bleeding wounds.

“I won’t back down now.”

 ~~~~

“My, aren’t you a beauty…,” he purred and let his fingers caress the metal of the safe. A quick glance on his wristwatch told him he still had 12 hours. He would need 5 to get back to his captors. 2 hours were planned for escape and getting on a plane or hijack a helicopter. Something like this. This left him with a good few hours to crack this safe. And he would need them.

Kneeling in front of the safe, he got out his equipment. Those old models were often rusted but this was clean and cared for. The lock would be easy to pick, but any mistake would reset the code of the safe, making it harder to crack each time it was resetted. Those old safe makers sure were a crazy bunch.

A brief thought to his lover made him smile. He had to be extra gentle with this lock, just like with them.

 ~~~~

So far you had killed 3 men and still hadn’t left the floor. The office was still far away and those men pestered you with their skills.

“Trained by the best.”

“Didn’t you say you trained them?”

He had the nerve to grin at you.

“I taught them…” his grin vanished as he remembered who he was talking to.

“We should hurry.”

You nodded and took cover in another room, watching out for any guards. Gaining metre by metre you made your way to the stairs, followed by Zenigata.

 ~~~~

The door swung open without any sound. He whistled by this care. Whatever was in there must be really important if they took such good care about the safe and the security. Maybe his theory on the missile codes was right after all?

He stopped in his tracks when he saw the contents of the safe. There was nothing. Just the disc. No money, no important documents, not even a weapon. What the hell was on this disc?!

He took it and turned around.

“This is as far as you go, thief.”

He grinned at the guards in front of him.

“I am not a thief. I am THE thief,” he told them as he activated a button on his shirt, enveloping them with a smoke screen and slipping past them.

“The great Lupin!” he added as he activated the security system behind him and trapped the guards inside the safe room.

 ~~~~

Zenigata pointed to the door in front of you and you nodded. The plan was simple. Storm the room, get as many hostages as possible and try to find Lupin. Or at least a way to communicate with him.

After counting down, you two moved as one as Zenigata kicked in the door.

A single man lifted his gaze from the papers on his desk, watching you two.

“I underestimated you, Zenigata,” he simply said as a shot cracked through the room.

He didn’t say anything, he didn’t move much. He just broke down on his knees, falling forward, leaving you to catch him before he hit the floor.

“Zenigata!” His name escaped your lips as you held his heavy body. The blood flowed from the wound and in a few seconds there already was a pool of it under him.

“Do you care to follow him?” the man asked you. You stared at him. He hadn’t even flinched!!

“Who are you?! What do you want?!”

“Of you? Nothing. But I need your lover to get me something that is mine.”

The way he spoke the word ‘lover’ was disgusting. He seemed emotionless.

“My friends will come back and you will….”

He snapped his fingers and a huge curtain was lifted behind him, revealing a cage with Yata, Jigen and Goemon inside of it.

“Will do what exactly?” the man asked with a raised brow.

“Fuck you!” You raised your gun and shot at him without properly targeting. Even if the magazine was empty and the gun just clicked at your efforts, you couldn’t stop yourself to pull the trigger time after time at this unmoving man.

“I spared you from torture in order to get this stupid thief to move on my will. But now that he’s moving, I don’t need you anymore. Do you know what that means?”

You growled.

“Your men are dead!” you told him.

“Do you really think I need help to deal with you?!”

He got up and walked around his desk towards you, pointing the gun at you which he had use to shoot Zenigata with.

“You pissed me off. I won’t give you a quick death. And there won’t be tricks anymore.” He turned and shot in the direction of the cage, hitting Goemon in the shoulder.

“I will deal with you properly.”

You screamed your frustration out of your system and launched yourself against him.

 ~~~~

The whole building was in high alert and he had to change his disguise three times to leave it without raising any suspicions. What a work! He scratched the Interpol headquarters from his list of buildings for a planned heist. He would never get into there again if he could avoid it. Too much trouble.

By now there had to be a warrant for him to all the officers on patrol, right? He should avoid the crowded streets and stick to the alleys to get away unnoticed. This would cost him another hour at least! Slowly it was becoming a hassle to work in such a short time.

He cursed and quickened his pace. From a man he stole the hat, a woman lost her scarf while passing him. A new shirt was snagged from a clothes line and he changed while running though the streets. He would need to steal a car to get to the airport on time.

 ~~~~

Everything hurt. You had trained with the gang on most days and you weren’t weak either, but still you were struggling to keep up with a trained soldier. He was fast and stronger than you, but you used your quick reflexes to avoid the heavy punches. He had lost his gun during the fall and had resorted to a fist fight with you.

A punch hit you on the side on your head, making your ears ring and your head spin. This would leave a bruise… or worse. You felt the nausea and tried to ignore it.

A knee to his side had him grunting in pain and you threw your weight on your side to roll him over and get him under you.

His fist punched your side and left you breathless while you worked on his face, landing a few hits there.

Was he a monster?!  You were sure you had broken his nose and most of his ribs and he was still beating at you like a fresh man!

“Kill him.”

You heard the order from behind you and nodded. There was no other way anyway!

Slowly, with a bit hesitation, you placed your hands on the throat of your enemy and pressed them into the flesh.

 ~~~~~

He had seen the roadblock from far away and decided to test his luck. After all this would bee the fourth time he turned the stolen car around to find an unblocked road. He would never mess with Interpol again, Lupin swore. How could someone like Pops join such a stupid thing?! He would need to talk to him about that.

He accelerated and held the steering wheel in an iron grip with the eyes glued to the roadblock. Hopefully the officers there would get out of the way of his car… he closed his eyes in the last second and broke through the roadblock.

 ~~~~

He didn’t move anymore and still you pressed your hands on his throat until your knuckled turned white.

“He’s dead. Let him be.” A bloody hand reached for yours and when you looked up you could see Zenigata’s pale face mere centimetres away from yours. Slowly he eased every finger each away from your victim. You had shot people. You had seen them die at your hands. But you never had killed someone so closely. It changed you and you could suddenly understand why Jigen had sometimes scoffed at you for saying killing was quite easy. You would never say that again.

“The others. Help them.”

Blood ran over the Inspector’s chin and you wiped it away with your bare hands. He flinched a bit, leaving it to you to judge the reason.

The nausea had started to push into your consciousness and left you crawling towards the cage to free your friends. Where was the key…?

 ~~~~

From then on it was easy. Get to the airport, steal an unguarded helicopter, start it. He still had enough time to make it back to them, to give them the disc and just run. He felt like shit. What would happen if he came back? His partner would hate him for obeying those terrorists. For letting his friends die… Jigen’s execution and Goemon’s dismembered body came to his mind and made him sick to the bones. He was scum for letting this happen. The lowest point in his life had been reached today.

With numb fingers he tipped the coordinates of the hideout into the GPS and let out a sigh. He had seen Zenigata on the monitors. At least the Inspector was still alive to arrest him for his sins.

 ~~~~

You watched the sunset with a cigarette and the hip flask of Yata while the man himself cared for the injuries of the others. You had seen enough blood for today.

The alcohol burned its way from your mouth into your stomach, making you feel alive and to warm you from inside.

You got up when you heard the helicopter and strolled back to the makeshift sickbay.

Yata looked at you and you had to stifle a laugh. His hair was a mess and his clothes had stains of blood and grass.

“Seems like the missing thief is back,” he said, also hearing the helicopter.

You nodded and kneeled next to Goemon, placing a hand on the bandage around his shoulder. The Samurai huffed and said nothing. He was ashamed of being caught like that and had a puppet made of him to make Lupin believe he was dead.

“How’s Jigen and Zenigata?” you asked the officer opposite of you.

“Jigen’s stable and I stopped the bleeding of the shot wound of the Inspector… what about you?”

He had offered to take care of your wounds but you had dismissed him to care about the more severely injured.

An engine roared and several cars appeared on the horizon.

“And here’s the cavalry,” you said surprised at how slow Yata’s colleagues showed up after his cry for help before storming the secret base of his former associates.

“Better late than never,” he replied but you could see the disappointment clearly written on his face. He had to be saved by someone of Lupin’s gang instead of the police. That must have hurt.

 ~~~~

He was surprised to see the small group on the ground after landing. And two of them were supposed to be dead…

Not caring about the police cars coming at him, he went straight for his friends. He wanted nothing more than to hug his partner and never let them go. He would never let them go again. His walk broke into a run and he closed the distance to them.

 In the end the Police let them go. There would be no case regarding this slip-up. The disc was safe with them again and they had other problems than to deal with a third-class thief and his band of misfits.

All of you were checked into a hospital with completely false names and history, courtesy of Interpol. The cracked skull of yours would need some time to heal up, but when you saw Lupin standing in the doorframe to your room holding a huge get-well-basket, you had to smile. The time would fly faster than you would like.

[fallenqueen2]

Truth Will Out Chapter 2 [Prodigal Son/TWD]

Jesus thought he had left his past as Malcolm Bright buried in the remains of New York. He thought wrong.

Fandom: Prodigal Son, Walking Dead

Ao3 Link

The Truth Will Out Tag

Warning: spoilers for up to episode 10 of Prodigal Son

~~/~~

“I’m sure you guys have a few questions,” Jesus said quietly from where he was curled up in the back seat of the car they had taken from Alexandria on this scouting mission that had gone sideways. At least they had found some supplies before all of that shit went down. He still had his father’s blood splattered over his face but he was facing the window as trees blurred past them. He had a blanket draped over his shoulders to ward off shock when things finally hit him.

“Only if you want to talk about it,” Rick said as he glanced up in the rearview mirror to check on Jesus while Daryl resisted the urge to do the same. He was curling and uncurling his hands from where they rested on his thighs.

“I honestly didn’t think I would ever have to explain all of this again once the outbreak began,” Jesus admitted softly as he rested his head against the window, feeling numb as the death of his father replayed in his mind over and over.

“You don’t gotta tell us anything,” Daryl grunted, he knew how much he hated talking about his past so he wasn’t about to force Jesus to talk about his obviously horrific past.

“My real name isn’t Paul Rovia, it’s Malcolm Whitly until I legally changed it to Malcolm Bright. When the outbreak happened and I was alone… I became someone else, a survivor, a scout; I became who I am now.” Jesus wet his lips before wincing at the tang of copper before he used a corner of the blanket to scrub his face clean of his father’s blood the best he could. Rick and Daryl stayed quiet, they knew this much from the conversation Jesus had with his father before.

“You know…When I was a kid I adored him, I wanted to be just like him… That blinded me in a way, trusting him so completely until…” Jesus shook his head as he squeezed his eyes closed as flashes of the girl in the box appeared, of his father drugging him, of lost time.

“I went into my dad’s workshop one night, I found, I saw… There was a girl in a box… I’m still not sure how much time passed between that, having my father drug me to forget and when I called the cops…That will never leave me, my father taunting me about that, having everyone tell me that the girl didn’t exist, finding out she did…Fuck.” Jesus clapped his hands to his face with a moan as his shoulders shook as all those emotions came rushing back from all those years ago.

It was a different life.

“Shit man,” Daryl whispered to Rick quietly, trying not to twist around and stare at Jesus who was taking ragged breathes as he tried to calm down.

“You were just a kid, you did nothing wrong, you called the cops to save lives and I have no doubt you did,” Rick said simply, he was remembering more and more about the Surgeon horrific case.

“Thanks, Rick,” Jesus sighed as he closed his eyes.

“Fast forward a bunch of years, I became a profiler for the FBI and then one for the NYPD where I was forced to interact with my father again. That’s when memories I had repressed began to surface and I began to chase them.” Jesus moved his head off of the window and tugged the blanket tighter around his body as a shiver wracked his body even under all the layers he wore.

“It didn’t turn out well, I got lost in that rabbit hole and it led to being kidnapped by a serial killer and all the fun stuff that goes with that. I was on so many medications and had night terrors every night that I barely got a few hours every night. When the outbreak hit and everything went to hell I honestly thought I would end up as a Walker, thought that without my meds I wouldn’t make it a week. Knowing my father was dead did wonders to my mental health…Funny how that works.” Jesus rushed through his explanation; leaning his head back with his eyes closed. He needed to focus on the now, focus on survival and not think about his past anymore.

“So now you know, what is gonna happen now?” Jesus now just sound exhausted from where he was curled up in the back seat.

“What do ya mean?” Rick felt confused, he was still trying to process everything he had just been told and a grunt coming from Daryl let Rick know that he was in the same boat.

“You’re going to tell everyone, aren’t you? You have to and then you’re all going to vote along with Hilltop and I’ll have 10 minutes to pack up and get out if I’m lucky.” Jesus’ voice was flat and defeated sounding like he had been through this many times before.

“That’s bullshit,” Daryl said fiercely, his stomach turning at the idea of banishing Jesus, of leaving him out there alone and trapped with the ghosts of his past.

“No one is gonna know unless you tell them. If they ask why we’re late we just ran into some Walkers is all.” Rick said firmly, also loathing the idea of leaving Jesus out to fend for himself until his luck ran out.

“We won’t even bring it up again unless ya want ta,” Daryl promised and Rick grunted his agreement.

“…Thank you, just… Thank you.” Jesus sounded stunned as he shifted so he could curl up properly in the back seat, unknown tension lifting from his shoulders.

“Thank ya for trusting us with that Jesus,” Rick countered and his lips quirked up when a small smile appeared on Jesus’ lips at the obvious use of his chosen name before his eyes slid shut as he gave in to sleep, clearly exhausted from the events of the day.

“What a shit show,” Daryl exhaled as he lit up a cigarette once he was sure Jesus was fast asleep.

“You’re telling me, fuck Daryl. I was briefed on his father back in the day, it was sick and twisted what he did to those people. It doesn’t sound like he physically hurt Jesus, but fuck the mental and emotional damage he caused.” Rick shook his head and took a drag from the cigarette when offered, needing something at this moment in time.

“Don’t matter now though, he’s still that prick who stole our truck and then somehow made our worlds bigger than ever before,” Daryl said as he exhaled the smoke through his nose, glancing back at Jesus who was still asleep.

“If he needs help we’ll help, it’s what family does right?” Rick side-eyed Daryl who lifted the cigarette back up to his lips, watching the motion before turning his attention back to the road.

“Damn right,” Daryl grunted as the walls of Alexandria came into view. Rick whistled and Tara opened the gate with the familiar creaking of metal. Rick was just grateful it was still day, he hated unloading in the dark as he pulled into the usual place they parked this car.

“Jesus, hey, wake up we’re back.” Daryl twisted around in his seat and shook the longhaired man’s knee, not stopping until Jesus’ eyes flew open. His whole body was tense and his teeth gritted but he soon relaxed when wild eyes settled on Daryl and then Rick.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m awake.” Jesus scrubbed his face with his hands before he opened the door and clamoured out as both Rick and Daryl followed suit.

“Hey, we got this. Head to my place and take a shower ya?” Daryl grunted as Jesus swayed a bit on his feet as he went to help unload the car.

“…Yeah, okay, thank you, guys… Thanks.” Jesus sent them a small smile before he turned on his heels and headed towards Daryl's house in Alexandria, where he usually crashed when visiting.

“Where’s he going?” Denise asked curiously as she came to poke around what they found on their run.

“Ran into a herd of Walker’s, it got messy and he wanted to take a shower to get rid of the stench,” Rick said easily as he picked up a crate from the trunk, Daryl grunting his agreement.

“I feel that,” Denise hummed as she took Rick for his word.

“We’re gonna have to keep an eye on him, sounds like he was real messed up before all of this and seeing his father again and killing him may send him spiralling,” Rick muttered to Daryl lowly when the two were alone, stacking the crates.

“No shit,” Daryl grunted and Rick smirked he knew Daryl well enough to know what those words meant. Jesus would be in good hands with the two of them and they would be damned if they let Jesus fall prey to the ghosts of his past.

[virmillion]

Ibytm - T minus 48 seconds

Masterpost - Previous Chapter - Next Chapter - ao3

Words: 2,053

Logan hisses gently as he pulls the bowl of popcorn from the microwave, setting it on the counter as fast as he can manage to shake the burning feeling from his fingers. “Popcorn’s done!”

“Great, now come pick a stupid show already, so I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my Friday,” Virgil calls back. Remembering to check his pride this time, Logan scoops up the bowl with two objectively safer napkins and peers around the corner of the kitchen wall.

Virgil’s head just barely peeks over the top of the couch, a tuft of pale purple hair sticking out opposite the rest. Beyond him is a daunting list of movies and shows scrolling beneath the Netflix logo. A fifteen second trailer loops for the movie Wreck-It Ralph, but Virgil stubbornly refuses to press play. The tuft of hair vanishes as Virgil leans forward and clears off a space on the table for the popcorn bowl.

“Careful, ’s hot,” Logan warns, dropping the bowl on the open spot.

“Noted.” Virgil, after acknowledging Logan’s words (which really ought to be heeded), proceeds to completely ignore them in favor of grabbing more than a fair fistful and popping the whole mess in his mouth. “Ha her he hah king?”

“You want to run that by me one more time?”

Virgil swallows around the lump of butter and grain with a grimace. “What’re we watching?”

“Great question. No more scary movies, you’re cut off from those, but that’s about our only parameter.”

“Puh- leez, it’s not my fault you couldn’t get to sleep last week. You’re the one that kept me up with nervous texts, ’member? I would’ve expected you to be grown up enough to survive watching Nightmare on Elm Street . Guess I was wrong, if laser tag was anything to go off of.”

“Laser tag was barely two months ago, and already you’re having delusions about my lacking bravery?”

“Hey, hey, you’re the astronaut in training here. I’m not the one with explicit and express intent to fly a hundred hours of pilot-in-command aircrafts before I turn twenty-seven.”

“A thousand hours, or three years of related professional experience. And if I want to break any records, it has to be before I’m twenty-six. Try to pay more attention when I lecture you about my internship next time.”

“I have to endure a next time?”

Logan shoots Virgil a pointed look, the effect of which is lost to the popcorn kernel lodged between his right molars. He prods at it with his tongue.

“In my defense,” Virgil continues, “this is pretty much the longest a relationship of mine has ever lasted.”

“Oh, is that what we’re calling it now?” Logan isn’t quite sure where all this bravado came from, but it’s doing wonders for keeping his voice even, so he won’t jinx it by digging deeper right now.

“It’s faster to say ‘relationship’ than ‘that dorky guy who hangs out at my apartment every Friday night to make fun of movies because we have nothing better to do as self-respecting adults,’ but I’ll gladly switch to that absurd and overly expository title if you prefer.”

A pout tries to crawl onto Logan’s face, which he promptly ignores. “Point taken. Did you pick a movie yet, or are you just that obsessed with watching a pixelated handyman smile on your television screen?”

“Neither. There’s no good bad movies left on here, so at this point, we’re better off watching something one of us has already seen—”

“Out of the question.”

“—watching nothing—”

“No thank you.”

“—or binging a series show.”

This gives Logan a moment’s pause. “That could work.”

“Right, because watching half an hour of an unending show every week without fail is how I want to spend my next three years’ worth of Fridays.”

“Well, why not?”

“What would we even watch? There’s, like, no serializations that normal people haven’t seen. Everybody’s watched The Office —”

“I haven’t.”

“— Brooklyn 99 —”

“I haven’t.”

“—and Parks and Rec .”

“I haven’t.”

Virgil slams the remote gown on the couch and gapes at Logan. “You haven’t seen Parks and Rec? ”

“Have you even been listening to a single word out of my mouth?”

“You are an absolute monster. You disgust me. We’re through, no more movie nights. I can’t hang out with someone whose true colors are so monochromatic.” Logan is not entirely certain whether Virgil is kidding at this point. ���I’m kidding.” Logan is not entirely certain whether Virgil is about to add the caveat ‘mostly’ to that statement.

After an uncomfortably long silence wherein Logan looks absolutely anywhere that isn’t Virgil, the speakers proudly announce the sound of Leslie Knope introducing herself to a small child playing in a sandbox. “This isn’t very funny,” Logan murmurs. “I mean, what child would say they were having a moderate amount of fun and somewhat enjoying themselves to a stranger? I suppose I might if prompted, but still.”

“Shut up ,” Virgil hisses, “this part is hilarious, stop talking. ”

“Ha ha,” Logan says dryly. “I love watching drunks hide in swirly slides. Ha.”

“Shut up. ” This command is accompanied by Virgil swatting at Logan’s shoulder.”

“Well, hey, can’t we skip the theme song?” Logan is almost hoping he’ll say no, just so these movie nights can be that much longer. Series show nights, now.

“Nope, out of the question. Skipping the intro is cheating and an act of cowardice to the nth degree. Be quiet and enjoy the upbeat music.”

A few weeks later, Logan finds himself enjoying watching the theme song. Maybe it has something to do with how they’re sharing one bowl of popcorn, their fingers brushing against each other every so often, rather than Virgil hogging the whole thing for himself. Maybe it’s how their knuckles linger when they reach in at the same time, neither pulling away instantly, but neither vocalizing what’s happening. Maybe it’s how, when Virgil is distracted by people assuming Leslie is dating Ann, he absently lets their fingers link together loosely, too intentional to be a thoughtless mistake. When the scene shifts to some guy named Anthony waving, they both yank their hands away from each other. Logan swears he can feel his nerve endings burning.

Upon the premiere of season two, the distance between them has closed ever so slightly. Rather than being at opposite ends of a three cushion couch, Virgil leans on one armrest and Logan arranges himself on the next cushion over. And if Logan’s fingers wander over to Virgil’s when Leslie marries the two gay penguins (despite the popcorn being well out of reach on the table), and if they hold on long after the credits for the episode have passed, well, that’s nobody’s business but their own, isn’t it?

When the Galentine’s day episode rolls around, Logan has abandoned all pretenses of slowly inching closer, instead taking Virgil’s hand as soon as they’re both seated with their respective mugs. Both cheap water steepings from a broken keurig, of course, but at least they’re enjoying them together. Well, enduring, enjoying, same difference.

“Hey, that’s what you said the first time we went to the museum together!” Logan exclaims, watching the sweater swap moment between April and Andy. Okay, so he doesn’t really exclaim it, per se, so much as say it suddenly and without warning—it’d be rather difficult to literally exclaim it, what with his head resting heavy on Virgil’s shoulder and all.

“Oh, right, on our first date, you mean?”

“Our first what?”

For those of you keeping track at home, yes, Logan has managed to go about six months without realizing that their first date was, in fact, a date.

By the time Chris asks Tom and Jerry to come up with a new logo for the department, Logan is literally sitting in Virgil’s lap with an arm slung around his shoulders. You might liken the position to that of a koala, but then again, Logan didn’t ask you. Full disclosure, they started watching more than one episode a week somewhere along the line, but this was spurred in some part by the need for background noise while they packed everything Virgil owned into a small mountain of cardboard boxes.

“Something to celebrate the occasion?” Logan asks tentatively, holding up a bottle of champagne. This kitchen certainly looks much nicer than the last one, but the leniency of adding paint to these walls was a buffer Logan had sorely missed at Virgil’s old place.

“If you want,” Virgil replies, craning his head over the back of the couch. “But you’re paying damages if you spill it all over my clean floors.”

“Well, duh, I’m paying half the rent, of course I’d fund repairs.” Logan holds back what more he wants to mention, still wary of the sore spot surrounding Virgil’s careers.

“In that case, plop your butt down on the couch we need to replace—speaking of which, we need to figure out a day to descend on IKEA for some upgrades.” Virgil pats his lap and gestures toward the screen—longer and thinner, purchased with some of the funds they’d pooled from their respective savings when picking a place together. “Now, c’mon, we’re about to see the squad go to London. I know you’re all about the architecture over there, aren’t you?”

“As if you even need to ask.” Logan grins, plopping himself down on top of Virgil and whistling along with the theme song.

Living together, unsurprisingly, does wonders for powering through the last couple seasons at a much more efficient pace. In what seems like the blink of an eye, Logan is watching the futures of the main squad playing out as they do one last project, and it’s not a stretch to say he’s holding back tears. As the credits fade to black and The Office pops up as a recommendation to watch next, Logan lifts a hand to his cheek and is baffled to find it come away wet.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Virgil murmurs, slipping an arm around Logan’s back and rubbing circles on his arm. “This is the worst part, I know. You’ve never been this attached to fictional characters before, huh?” Logan hiccoughs. “Yeah, I got you, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

Between shuddering breaths that aren’t quite laughs, Logan manages to get out, “It’s like the end of an era. I don’t know, I mean, it’s really over.”

“Oh, I know, sweetie,” Virgil mumbles, pressing his lips against Logan’s hair. “It just means moving on, and I’ll be here for you through it all.” Slowly but surely, Logan’s hiccoughs turn into giggles as the ridiculousness of the situation dawns on him. Why should he be getting so emotional over the end of some tv show? He literally went into this knowing the series would have a finale. He says as much to Virgil.

“True, but we sank a couple years into this tradition. You’re allowed to mourn a tradition, even if you think it’s silly. There’s no rules for what you can or can’t grieve, and even if you lie to yourself enough to believe there are, I’ll be here to help you through it.”

“First off, you can’t spell believe without ‘lie,’ and second, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, hon. What would you get out of dealing with nonsense emotions?”

“Besides knowing I get to wake up every morning to see your face?” Virgil pretends to ponder this for a moment, only breaking into a grin when Logan elbows him in the side—not intentionally, mind you. It’s more of an effort to bury his nose in Virgil’s neck, but unfortunately for Logan, Virgil is ticklish right around there. He laughs loudly and announces, “I want the moon.”

“The moon?”

“The moon, spaceman.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll bring you the moon. Is that all?”

“One more thing.”

“One more thing besides the moon, you mean?”

“Well, yeah, you have to know how much the moon costs.”

“How much does the moon cost?”

“The stars.”

“The stars?”

“It’ll cost you the stars.”

Logan shakes his head and smiles, wrapping Virgil in a tight hug and drying his eyes against his boyfriend’s sleeve. His words are no doubt muffled, near unintelligible, but he’s sure Virgil can make it out well enough. “Okay, love. I’ll bring you the moon.”

[possiblyimbiassed]

Good pill, bad pill

I think it’s interesting to compare BBC Sherlock’s initial episode ”A Study in Pink” (ASiP) with the original ACD story ”A Study in Scarlet” (STUD), to have a closer look into what Mofftiss have chosen to include or exclude, and try to figure out their possible intention with this. 

Much of the text below will be based on my own speculation rather than evidence, so I can’t claim to really use Holmes’ methods of deduction here. But I still believe that these initial stories are significant for learning about deductive reasoning, since the creators in both cases take the opportunity to introduce the audience to the famous detective’s methods.  And this might be very important if we want to try to decode signals and interpret the meaning of the rest of the stories – both regarding text, subtext and meta level perspective.

So let’s start with a simple comparison between STUD and ASiP:

Similarities

• The story’s name is similar, although the colour reference in it differs slightly (‘scarlet’ vs ‘pink’)

• This is also the story of John Watson’s first encounter with Sherlock Holmes.

• The perpetrator’s name is Jeff(erson) Hope and he works as a cabbie.

• Hope is guilty of more than one murder.

• Hope knows that he will probably die soon, since he suffers from an aneurism.

• Hope literally makes (by coercion) his victims commit suicide.

• Hope offers his victims a 50-50 chance to survive by having them choose between a ‘good pill’ and a ‘bad pill’. The bad pill contains a potent poison that will instantly kill whoever swallows it. The good pill is harmless. Hope will eat the remaining pill.

• The word ‘Rache’ is written at the crime scene.

• Love is shown to be a ‘vicious motivator’ for murder.

• Hope dies before he’s brought to justice.

• Holmes explains his methods in detail to Watson, while obviously also using them to impress him.

(The interesting thing in this TRF scene is not Sherlock’s obvious lie about not having used deduction on John when they first met, but his admission that he was indeed trying to impress John ;) )

Differences

’A Study in Scarlet’ refers to “the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life”, as Holmes so poetically puts it, while ’A Study in Pink’ refers to the “frankly alarming shade of pink” (according to Sherlock) that one of the victims uses in clothing and accessories.

While the perpetrator in STUD has a very personal motive for killing two particular individuals, in ASiP he is a serial killer who targets anyone, and he is actually payed (by Moriarty) to kill as many people as possible.

In STUD the readers are presented a long, dramatic and rather sentimental backstory that takes place in Utah, USA, about atrocities committed by the murder victims to innocent people in the past (X). 

The fair Lucy Ferrier is kidnapped and forced to marry her kidnapper. Lucy dies out of broken heart and her adoptive father is murdered, while her fiancee Jefferson Hope is left to avenge their tragic deaths. This detailed backstory appears written to make the readers sympathise with Jeff Hope and his mission of revenge. Moriarty has nothing whatsoever to do with it. 

In ASiP, on the other hand, the only back story we get are the short words that Sherlock hears or deduces from Hope: that he murdered anyone (in the Unaired Pilot it’s explained as “anyone who didn’t know where they were going, ’cause they were drunk or lost or new in town”) for money and for the sick satisfaction of having ‘outlived’ them. That his kids, whom he wasn’t allowed to see, would inherit the money didn’t exactly make his motive easier to sympathise with.

In STUD the word ‘Rache’ – written in blood by the perpetrator - turns out to refer to ‘revenge’ in German, illustrating the perpetrator’s motive while at the same time misleading the police to put the blame on organized crime. Lestrade’s men, however, think the writing refers to the name ‘Rachel’.

In ASiP it’s exactly the other way around: Anderson claims ‘Rache’ - written by the victim - is German for ‘revenge’, but it actually refers to the victim’s still-born daughter Rachel and is also a password. And Moriarty – who has a crime network – pays for the murders.

In both cases Holmes gets the police on the right track again by revealing the meaning of the code.

One of Holmes’ most remarkable deductions in STUD is when he proves that there’s a bad pill and a good pill by testing them both on a dog that is already dying. This is the first time the dog theme appears in canon. But this part is excluded from ASiP, and the audience cannot be sure that there really is a good pill, since we never see anyone swallow the good one. 

In STUD Jefferson Hope dies from his aneurism before the trial, and seems satisfied with his own end after having reached his goal of revenge; the violence is over. In ASiP, however, Hope is shot by John Watson, 

and then Sherlock steps on Hope’s wound to make him reveal information before he dies.

But the most important difference is, I believe, that Sherlock gets personally involved with the case in ASiP - the serial killer starts playing his deathly game with the detective too, trying to make him swallow one of the pills. And Sherlock hooks on, out of sheer curiosity and a death wish an urge to prove his own cleverness in making the right choice. He is mere seconds from a likely, self-inflicted death when John Watson steps in and saves the day with a next-to-impossible shot from his army gun, like a true action hero.

Nothing remotely like this ever happens in STUD, where Holmes seems personally rather detached from the whole case, managing to capture the culprit with a clever manoeuvre right in front of Lestrade and Gregson. One might indeed wonder why Mofftiss chose to distance themselves so much from canon in this case?

More canon in TAB

An interesting alternative version, more similar to STUD, however, is to be found in The Abominable Bride (TAB). In the part of the Victorian version (which takes place inside Sherlock’s head) where Watson’s first meeting with Holmes is depicted, some lines are even taken almost verbatim from STUD, for example:

"...the second Afghan war had broken out”. 

“The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster”. 

“...and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined,..”

“Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained”.

Emilia Ricoletti, who is guilty – or supposed to be guilty in her ghost form – of several murders, also knows that she’s dying (from tuberculosis). Emilia – the ‘abominable bride’ - seems to have a righteous cause and/or some ‘higher purpose’ for what she’s doing, but we’re never actually told the details of it. 

She doesn’t choose her victims randomly; it’s all about avenging abuse from the past, connected to events in the US. One of Ghost!Emilia’s victims, Eustace Carmichael, is stabbed to death, just like one of Jeffferson Hope’s victims in STUD. Emilia’s case seems strangely similar to Jeff Hope’s, in my opinion. But the name ‘Emilia’ seems taken from another ACD story; Emilia Lucca in The Red Circle (REDC; X ). 

And just like with Emilia Ricoletti, there’s a back story from the US, involving threats of vengeance from a criminal organization. But in REDC it’s Emilia’s husband who kills the abuser, not Emilia herself.

Now, I actually don’t think ACD had a clear, intentional, ulterior motive with his story in STUD (at least not on this stage, having just written his first Holmes story), other than to show a) what an extraordinarily clever man Holmes was, and what a mesmerizing effect he had on Watson, and b) that things aren’t always what they appear to be; love can, for example, work in mysterious ways. This is just my personal view of course, but I don’t see very much of a story arc in canon. The material is so very extensive (60 Holmes stories, of which 4 are novels and the rest short stories) and so variable (the stories quite often take place in other parts of England, in the US, at sea or in other parts of the world), that the author seems to have problems remembering names and making the timeline work. But the main characters are very consistent and recognizable as persons, and they do seem to develop personally as the years pass.

Subconsciously, however, there could be many things going on with ACD, as often happens with brilliant writers. As far as I can see, there are lots of ‘mirrors’ and repetitions of certain themes that seem significant. And there are lots and lots of examples of a queer subtext in canon.

Mofftiss, as opposed to ACD, have a very consistent format on their story. There are three 90 minutes long episodes in each series (TAB and MHR being the exceptions, but they aren’t presented as parts of the regular series) and the idea that the story will end with S5, representing a play in five acts, isn’t exactly taken out of thin air (X). 

Deductive reasoning

As for ACD’s description of Holmes’ methods, I think this quote from STUD is particularly interesting (my bolding):

“In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.”

“I confess,” said I, “that I do not quite follow you.”

“I hardly expected that you would. Let me see if I can make it clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backward, or analytically.”

So, if we try to apply this method to subtext and symbolism, what might we deduce about the name ‘Hope’ in this context? 

Well, it might simply mean that the murderer offers the victims a certain degree of hope by saying that they have a 50-50 chance of survival. Which also can be interpreted as cruel, since he’s playing with their lives. But in STUD we know that this ‘hope’ is real, since Holmes tests both pills (on a dying dog. Hmm...) and finds one of them harmless. And Jefferson Hope says he relied on Providence that his victims (who are murderers) would take the ‘bad’ pill and leave the ‘good’ pill for him: “Instead of grasping at the chance of safety which that offered him, he sprang from his bed and flew at my throat. In self-defence I stabbed him to the heart. It would have been the same in any case, for Providence would never have allowed his guilty hand to pick out anything but the poison”. 

Which gives this a slightly religious touch; Hope apparently had faith that God would support him in his vindictive mission. And he died satisfied of having accomplished his mission, very much like Emilia Ricoletti in TAB.

In ASiP, however, we don’t even know if Hope is lying about the ‘good’ pill or not, so this ‘hope’ might be a false one. So why did Mofftiss still choose to keep the name Hope for the cabbie? Later on (in TLD) we learn of another character named Faith, who leaves an emotional imprint on Sherlock, but (allegedly) then disappears into thin air. 

In ASiP Sherlock wins Hope; John kills the cabbie and a great opportunity opens for Sherlock; he now has a friend, and he might even be loved. But in TLD, after John has left him and doesn’t seem to want him in his life any more, Sherlock loses Faith (she was an illusion and John attacks Sherlock instead). 

Maybe the answer lies in the meaning of ‘the bad pill’ and ‘the good pill’? I’ve said before that I believe BBC’s Sherlock is playing a game of chess with Death. Even if John saves him in ASiP, he is still constantly drawn towards The Game in the rest of the show. In TRF he’s offered a choice between playing Moriarty’s game and staying with John. And he choses to play and leaves John behind (because he believes this will protect John). But Sherlock is very wrong there, isn’t he? In leaving John, he might (metaphorically) have chosen ‘the bad pill’, and to me he certainly seems to be dying in S4. So, my speculation for S5 is that Sherlock will wake up and finally try to correct this mistake, leave his reckless game with Death and choose ‘the good pill’ instead - Johnlock. ;)

Tagging a few people who might be interested: @ebaeschnbliah @sarahthecoat @raggedyblue @gosherlocked @tjlcisthenewsexy @sagestreet @loveismyrevolution

[maddie-grove]

Bi-Monthly Reading Round-Up: November/December

Playlist

“When I’m Gone” by Brenda Holloway (Gone Girl)

“I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston (At the Queen’s Summons)

“Doctor My Eyes” by Jackson Browne (The Ask and the Answer)

“I Can Love You Better” by the Dixie Chicks (Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow)

“The Bad Touch” by Bloodhound Gang (Storm)

“Suspicion” by Terry Stafford (Trapped at the Altar)

“Smokey Places” by the Corsairs (The Diamond Slipper)

“You’re My Best Friend” by Queen (Someone to Trust)

“Praying” by Kesha (The Hostage)

“Castle Rock” by Barnaby Bright (Bledding Sorrow)

“The Circle of Life” from The Lion King (Monsters of Men)

“Disturbia” by Rihanna (I’ll Be Gone in the Dark)

“It’s All in the Game” by Tommy Edwards (Doomed Queen Anne)

“Locking Up My Heart” by the Marvelettes (Beware, Princess Elizabeth)

Best of the Bi-Month

The Hostage by Susan Wiggs (2000): In the chaos of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, backwoods trader Tom Silver kidnaps heiress Deborah Sinclair, hoping to make her industrialist father compensate the victims of his greed and negligence. Nothing goes according to plan, however, and these two people who should be enemies become anything but. I absolutely loved this book; the combination of slow-burn romance and action-packed non-romantic plot was perfect, and Deborah’s arc is just beautiful.

Worst of the Bi-Month

Bledding Sorrow by Marilyn Harris (1976): The cash-strapped heir of an ancient Yorkshire estate, his improperly medicated American wife, and a working-class coach driver are forced to reenact a Tudor-era tragedy, because of...reasons, I guess. I wasn’t too disappointed when I realized that this was Gothic horror instead of Gothic romance--I like scary stories, too--but this isn’t so much a novel as a long parade of pointlessly dismaying incidents. The characters are generally powerless to avoid their fates and, what’s more, they don’t have the opportunity or inclination to struggle very hard. Their helplessness might work if there were a compelling explanation for it, but Harris only makes a few vague suggestions (i.e., “Reincarnation?” or “House evil?”). Also, one of the supporting characters is such an egregiously offensive gay stereotype that he would probably make Jack Chick exclaim, “Whoa, tone it down!” The style was decent, though, and I had a few good laughs along the way.

Rest of the Bi-Month

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (2018): In this posthumously published true-crime book, McNamara details a series of burglaries, rapes, and murders that plagued Sacramento and Southern California during the 1970s-1980s, believed by her and many others to be the work of one man, dubbed the Golden State Killer. McNamara does a wonderful job capturing the strange false tranquility of Californian suburbia circa 1980, and she presents the (often convoluted) facts clearly but never salaciously. The good taste and empathy of her style kind of undercuts any passages along the lines of “perhaps researching serial killers is deeply unsavory,” but that was my only issue with the book.

The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness (2009): In the first sequel to The Knife of Never Letting Go, young Todd Hewitt, having left behind the world he knew forever, deals with increasingly morally complex and traumatic situations. Meanwhile, his new friend, [redacted], wrestles with similarly thorny and upsetting issues. This is a worthy sequel to one of my favorite books I read this year. I missed the road narrative of the first installment, but the complicated ethical dilemmas and the ever-switching power dynamics very nearly made up for its loss.

Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness (2010): In the final book of Ness’s trilogy, [redacted]. This was the weakest installment, but only because of some fairly minor structural issues, such as some initial narrative choppiness, that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if the first two books hadn’t been so well-structured as well as thematically fascinating. The payoff is pretty fantastic, in any event. Also, Todd’s whole...thing with the Mayor is one of the most gloriously weird, fascinating relationships I’ve seen in a YA novel.

Someone to Trust by Mary Balogh (2018): In Regency England, twenty-six-year-old Lord Hodges decides to do the proper thing and get himself wed; however, his narcissistic mother, not content with the significant emotional damage she’s dealt him over the years, keeps interfering with his search because she’s worried he’ll marry someone who’s not hot enough by her standards. Meanwhile, his thirty-five-year-old BFF, Lady Overfield, has resolved to accept the suit of a staid but pleasant acquaintance...but something just doesn’t feel right. You know what does feel right, though? Waltzing and talking about deep shit with Lord Hodges...and the feeling is mutual!!! This isn’t the most action-packed romance, but it’s super-cute and I was 1000% sold on Lady Overfield’s subtle awesomeness.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012): Unhappily married and resignedly living in his Missouri hometown, Nick Dunne suddenly finds himself as the prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance and apparent murder. What the fuck is going on? I spent like five years of my life debating with myself whether to read this book, and I’m glad I did (long after its relevancy had peaked, of course). It’s easily the weakest of Flynn’s three novels--its sense of place isn’t as strong as Sharp Objects or Dark Places, although I understand that’s somewhat intentional, and neither main character works as a representation of an actual person--but it’s a propulsive read and it’s pretty damn funny. 

The Diamond Slipper by Jane Feather (1997): Lady Cordelia Brandenburg travels with her BFF, a teenage Marie Antoinette, so they can get hitched to the Austrian ambassador to France and the Dauphin, respectively. Two problems: Cordelia’s new husband is a fucking monster, and she’s fallen in love with the grieving brother of the husband’s mysteriously dead first wife. This novel probably isn’t to everyone’s taste; it kind of zigzags between a semi-cutesy fairy-tale feel and depictions of horrific abuse, and the effect is somewhat jarring. I enjoyed its use of historical details, though, and I liked the heroine a lot.

Beware, Princess Elizabeth by Carolyn Meyer (2002): In this historical YA novel, Elizabeth I narrates several incidents in her life from cradle to throne, focusing on all the times that her half-sister Mary came super-close to having her executed. Although I found the structure of the novel somewhat choppy, I really liked the portrayal of Elizabeth’s complicated relationships with her pious, increasingly suspicious half-siblings, plus the plot had plenty of action. 

Doomed Queen Anne by Carolyn Meyer (2001): In another installment of Meyer’s Young Royals series, Anne Boleyn explains her journey from awkward child to unconventional, controversial courtier to VICTIM OF TOTAL RAILROADING. This novel was even choppier than Beware, Princess Elizabeth, mostly because Elizabeth’s story is better-suited to the episodic plot structure, but I have to say I love this portrayal of Anne Boleyn as much as (if not more than) I did at twelve. Her motivations aren’t high-minded or altruistic, but she’s got feelings, damn it, and she has a right to fight against being treated like shit! Also, Meyer gives her a sixth finger on one hand, which was probably not the case historically, but it’s cool that Anne is portrayed sympathetically while also having a body that’s stigmatized by society.

Trapped at the Altar by Jane Feather (2014): In the early 1680s, Catholic Lady Ariadne Daunt and Protestant Sir Ivor Chalfont live in Daunt Valley, a makeshift community of loosely related lawless aristocrats who lost their lands in the English Civil War. Ariadne and Ivor are force to wed by the community “elders,” who hope to send them to the royal court as a religiously flexible power couple. This already-tense situation is made more awkward by the fact that Ariadne is in love with another man, while Ivor is in love with Ariadne. This novel is part of a small subset of romances that would be better as historical fiction. I loved the unique (albeit nightmarish) setting of Daunt Valley, the exciting journey to London, and the well-portrayed court intrigue. I even quite liked Ariadne. However, Ivor was such a shit. Ariadne is upfront with him about her love for another, but, because Ivor “loves” her, he acts like she’s morally obligated to go along with the whole thing. He never really forgives her for not being a virgin on their wedding night, and his reaction when he finds out she’s been using birth control is bloodcurdling. Also, Feather throws away an interesting dynamic where Ariadne has genuine feelings for two complex men in favor of making Ivor’s rival a creepy stalker (but also an embarrassingly ineffectual sissy). 

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George (2008): A  nameless Norwegian girl who can talk to animals agrees to live with an enchanted polar bear for one year in exchange for her family’s deliverance from poverty, secretly hoping to find the answer to her beloved brother’s sadness as well. She finds herself way in over her head, though, with a curse that goes back centuries or longer. I enjoyed this retelling of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” and I thought a lot of the concepts were really clever (hint: this is neither the first girl nor the first polar bear). In execution, though, I didn’t like it as much as Edith Pattou’s retelling, East, which has a stronger sense of place and better-developed minor characters.

Storm by Donna Jo Napoli (2014): Sebah, a sixteen-year-old Canaanite girl, loses her home, her family, and her entire way of life in a sudden deluge that drowns the whole world...almost. After weeks of surviving in trees and on rafts, she manages to stow away on Noah’s Ark, where she rooms with some bonobos and learns way too much about Ham’s marital problems. I thought this was a very creative book with some delightfully weird earthiness, but it becomes somewhat static once Sebah boards the ark and meets a character who kills too much of the tension.

At the Queen’s Summons by Susan Wiggs (2009 update of 1995 original): Pippa, a street performer in Elizabethan England, claims the patronage of Aidan O Donoghue, a minor Irish king, in order to save herself from arrest. Aidan, a goodhearted fellow, goes along with it. This was a pleasant story, but I can remember almost nothing about it. I love Susan Wiggs, but her Tudor Rose trilogy is kind of a snore.

[timeagainreviews]

An Unearthly Comparison

Before we begin, I would like to start by saying- I know that "An Unearthly Child," is considered part of the Cave of Skulls serial. I've chosen to treat it as it's own separate story, due to the fact that it has very little to do with the other three episodes. As far as I am concerned, you could have put any story at the end of An Unearthly Child, and the results would have been the same.

In the last two days since "The Woman Who Fell to Earth," aired, I've had discussions as to why the Doctor lost her TARDIS, and what that might mean. A worry I had was that the TARDIS had rejected Jodie, and was making her prove she was still the Doctor, which would suck for obvious reasons. But my friend suggested something else- it's just a plot device. And it makes sense. Why would Yasmine leave behind her job to travel with the Doctor? What better way is there to keep Graham and Ryan together as a family? The Doctor can't just kidnap people can she?

Watching "An Unearthly Child" can be really jolting for a lot of modern Doctor Who fans. The Doctor is cantankerous, aloof, unhelpful, and contumacious. Sure, we've seen these traits in all of our modern Doctors, but with William Hartnell, it's so prevalent. Which is why it's hard to believe there was a version of him that was even more unpleasant! So naturally, I had to find out for myself.

For those of you not in the know, when "An Unearthly Child" (or AUC) was originally filmed, BBC's Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, was unhappy with the results. He told producer Verity Lambert to reshoot the episode in its entirety with a few changes to the characters and script. Ironically, with all of the official episodes of Doctor Who that were destroyed, this unaired pilot still exists! The episode lived another sort of double life, as it was aired two weeks in a row, due to the Kennedy Assassination the day before the premiere. Or as Terry Pratchett put it- "because of public demand and that pesky business with the grassy knoll."

The beginnings of the two different versions of aren't all that different. There is an audible "bang," sound in the opening music that I had never noticed before. And oddly enough, the picture quality in the unaired version is a bit crisper. You can actually read the I.M. Forman written on the gate of the scrapyard on Totter's Lane. Though I will say the camera work in the aired version is much snappier. I'm not sure if it's just the version I have, or if it has anything to do with the 16 mm telerecording. Who knows?

Try to imagine, if you will, what it was like to watch Doctor Who back then. Science fiction was still a thing of ire. Spaceships were stupid looking, and the stories were hacky. But this was something different. Something like C.S. Lewis (who also died the day before the episode aired). No matter what programs Doctor Who has inspired since, there's still nothing quite like it. Nothing that gets so borderline surreal. Nothing that has so much staying power.

We're introduced to Ian and Barbara. Two teachers at Coal Hill School in London. Barbara is concerned about a mutual student who perplexes her. In rewatching these episodes, I was reminded of the scene in Donnie Darko when Drew Barrymore and Noah Wyle discuss the titular character, a student of theirs that seems to stand out from the rest. In comparing the two versions of AUC, the biggest difference is that Ian and Barbara are sitting down in the aired version, which seems like a good choice. There's a more intimate, less rushed feeling. They feel more familiar with one another. Evidently, the original script had indicated a romance between them but was later toned down. I don't know why. I ship it.

It's through this interaction that we meet Susan. I've always had some rather conflicted feelings about Susan. On one hand, she's kind of endearing, and in other ways, she's downright annoying. When we meet her through the lens of Ian and Barbara's perspective, she's brilliant, enigmatic, and strange. Possessing knowledge no person her age should actually know.

The Susan we meet moments later is a bit more of a kid you'd expect in the 1960's. She listens to surfer music by the fictional "John Smith and the Common Men," while sort of strumming along with the music. This marks the first appearance of the name John Smith in Doctor Who, by the way. The impression I get is that Susan was supposed to be kind of "hip." Even her hairstyle was designed by Vidal Sassoon, which is actually still pretty cool.

After surreptitiously trying to learn more about Susan's home situation by offering her a ride home, we're left alone with the young girl. One of the things I'm kind of sad they scrapped in the aired version, is Susan's little inkblot Rorschach test she reads like tea leaves. It was a very "I Ching," moment, that I thought made her seem almost mystical. Instead, the scene ends with Susan looking through a book on the French Revolution (all white with big black letters like it was produced in the Repo Man universe), and exclaiming- "That's not right!"

Ian and Barbara follow Susan to the address in her school file, 76 Trotter's Lane, the same scrapyard from the beginning of the episode. They follow her in to find nothing but a bunch of junk and a large blue police box. Upon touching it, Ian describes the box as "alive." It is at this point, that the two versions of the episode begin to diverge the most.

William Hartnell's initial portrayal of the Doctor is almost villainous. Where he's supposed to come off as mysterious, he comes off as scheming and methodical. Instead of thinking he has some great secret he's worried about getting out, he appears more to have some horrible secret he's hiding. You almost side with Ian and Barbara, that Susan is in danger. It's easy to see how this is wrong for the character. You want the Doctor to be independent, and at times, contrarian, but never to the point that he seems like the antagonist. Dr Smith in Lost in Space comes to mind. His initial portrayal was one of a villain, but over time, his strength was found in being a sort of anti-hero, and friend to Will Robinson.

The way they solved this? Well, he appears more curious. More aloof. Less direct and confrontational. There's a bit more twinkle in his eye the second time around. Vague threats turn into goading and daring. As Ian interrogates the Doctor, the Doctor takes interest in some of the random junk around him. His curiosity, mixed with his blasé attitude toward their concern gives him the right mix of intrigue and mischief. You can tell he's hiding something, but it feels less to evade justice, but rather to protect himself, Susan, and even the two interlopers.

A lot of the beauty in capturing this balance is in the name of the show. Who is this Doctor? Why is he in a scrapyard? What is the deal with that police box? These are the right questions that the audience should be asking. You should wonder about his intentions, but not be able to say outrightly- this man is a criminal. But Ian and Barbara are still unconvinced, as they push forward into the big box, and like a C.S. Lewis novel, into a whole new world.

Some of the best moments in Doctor Who are the big reveal of the TARDIS. It will never not be cool. But the unique element to this reveal is it's the first one that was a big reveal to the audience as well. That's actually rather unique when you give it some thought. Usually, we're all in on the joke, waiting for it. We know about the wide-eyed expressions, mouths agape. "It's bigger on the inside!" they'll say. You know something is weird about the police box. They've framed it in the middle of the shot. The episode begins around it. We've been beckoned toward it since the beginning of the story. Even with the red herring of seeing a policeman walking past it at the beginning, the low hum it emits betrays any sense that it is merely common.

Ian and Barbara, have at this point, seen too much. It's still early, days and our Doctor doesn't like showing off his special ship. We learn it's name, given by Susan as an acronym for "Time and Relative Dimension in Space," (later to be changed to "Dimensions," for no apparent reason). One of my favourite aspects of this scene is the Doctor explaining the TARDIS's dimensional capabilities by comparing it to television's ability to shrink a large object down onto a screen. It's sci-fi mumbo-jumbo, but I love it.

Another big difference we see here is that in the first version, Susan explains that she was born in the 49th century. It's a little too on the nose. Explains a little bit of the "Who" in the title too much. Another thing is the hum of the TARDIS is much more abrasive in the original version. In reviewing it just a moment ago, my cat gave me a rather cross look from the shrill noise. Like Ian said, “I have... a very sensitive ear.” Though this is not the last time the Radiophonic Workshop will pierce your eardrums.

It's in this scene that we see the greatest disparity in William Hartnell's performance. He's angry, confrontational, and even calls Susan a stupid child at one point. His temper is evident and not at all endearing. It makes his decision to kidnap Ian and Barbara less one of survival, and more of one of control. While it has never made a whole lot of sense what danger two school teachers knowing his secrets could present, the Doctor chooses to kidnap his new guests. We never know why he was in the scrapyard (though we do find out in later episodes) or why Susan wanted to attend school. Susan's "why," may be self-evident, in that she's a child who wants to be around other children, but the Doctor's reasons are less evident. Either way, the scene fares far better in the aired version.

What comes next is one of my favourite shots in the history of the show. There's something exhilarating about the TARDIS among a rocky terrain, and the approaching shadow that cuts a long menacing shape against the horizon. It's pure science fiction and yet another big reveal. The Doctor wasn't lying. This ship of his really can move through space in an instant. It's a beautiful beginning to one of television's greatest sagas.

Thanks for reading! I won't be writing the Cave of Skulls retrospective until maybe next week. I have a convention to attend this weekend, so I probably won't have the time. You should probably expect more series 11 coverage around then too!

[incurableweeabootrash]

Top 10 Anime That Doesn’t Shamelessly Sexualise Women With Fanservice

The most awkward and annoying thing about anime is that little thing known as ‘fanservice’, moreso fanservice that creeps it’s way into shows otherwise focused on other things. It’s what I like to call ‘doing a Game of Thrones’.

In my experience there are honestly quite a few shows that actually have confidence in their own writing, and don’t feel the need to add softcore erotic moments disguised as jokes in order to desperately snag viewers and make their money back. But unfortunately, the shows that do have fanservice are now the predominant preconception of anime to outsiders, and female viewers especially can be turned off by this.

I’ll admit I’ve been guilty in the past of developing a ‘fanservice filter’ for shows like Kill La Kill, where I taught myself to tune out at certain moments until the show got back to showing the things I liked about it (The fights, the crazy fun tone, the characters, the intensity, and even the story eventually. It’s not my favourite show, but I cite it as an example of me overlooking and ignoring awkward bits because there were other aspects of the show that I liked). But not everyone is willing to do that, and it really puts a barrier up to new anime watchers who understandibly just aren’t comfortable with that. So with this unfortunate blight potentially lurking in any show to a new viewer, I thought I’d make this list to make sailing these uncharted waters a little easier. I'm going by memory, so apologies if any of these shows have something in them I've forgotten about. But here’s the top 10 anime that doesn’t have panty shots, breast-orientated ‘gag’ moments, or other ‘male gaze’ unneccesary sexual content. I’m also excluding shows that had a moment that made me uncomfortable with any attempted ‘funny’ moments that crossed boundaries, e.g. Meliodas’s inability to keep his hands to himself in ‘Seven Deadly Sins’. (Needless to say, I hated that character).

In no particular order:

1. Princess Jellyfish / Kuragahime

“Instead of becoming a princess, I became a freak.”

…Yes, that title sounds a tad dumb in English. But Princess Jellyfish is great character driven show about a young woman named Tsukimi with a passion for drawing and marine wildlife, specifically jellyfish, who feels that she hasn’t really blossomed into the beautiful woman she was told she would grow up to. Living  in the fashionable Tokyo district of Harajuku, Tsukimi sees people more beautiful than her everyday. But her life starts to be shaken up a little when she befriends a beautiful woman who isn’t all that they seem.

Princess Jellyfish has the advantage of being written by a woman for a grown female audience, so there’s no sexual pandering to teenage male viewers to be found at all here. It’s also only 12 episodes, although the manga continues the story further. I really do recommend it for it’s likable characters and it’s simple but effective narrative.

2. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

“In order for something to be obtained, something of equal value must be lost.”

FMA:Brotherhood is the story of two brothers living with the consequences of their failed attempt to bring their mother back to life with alchemy. Seeking to gain back what they lost from that attempt, Edward and Alphonse Elric join the military as State Alchemists, becoming a tool for whatever purpose the military desires in exchange for access to their expansive library on alchemy. However, they soon discover alot more than they intended to, along with some things they never wanted to discover.

Probably one of the most popular anime out there, with an exciting and twisting plotline that carries you through to the end of it’s 62 episode run. Now, that’s admittedly a lot of episodes, but I can safely say that the story is worth it. Be warned that you actually have to skip episode 1 due it being a filler episode designed only for fans of the original 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist. Yes, really. The very first episode is a filler, and it even contains a subtle spoiler. So yeah, skip it, as well the recap episode halfway through. It’s all on Netflix btw.

One slight flaw is how it occasionally jumps into a jarring cartoony art style whenever it tries to be funny, which doesn’t really fit with the rest of the show, but it depends on your sense of humour whether this is a problem or not.

I recommend this show if you like adventure, action, a bit of fantasy, and suspense and mystery.

3. Death Note

“This world is rotten, and those who are making it rot deserve to die. Someone has to do it, so why not me?”

Another popular and well known anime within the community, Death Note is the story of an overachieving high school boy named Light (it probably sounds less pretentious if you’re not English) who discovers a notebook that will cause anyone who’s name is written in it to die. With such power in his hands, Light decides to use it to reshape the world and rid it of criminals and injustice. But what he holds in his hands is a murder weapon, and prodigal young detective L is soon on his case in the hunt to find the cause of all these mysterious new killings.

Death Note is very much a psychological thriller. In fact, there’s basically no action scenes at all in it. The tension instead comes from the cat-and-mouse battle of wits between Light and L as they constantly try to outsmart each other. But what makes it interesting is the fact that you’re following the story of a protagonists who is pretty much a serial killer, and you actually weirdly kind of root for him. This show is also all on netflix, and is 37 episodes.

EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that the character of Misa, who works as a model, could be considered as sexualised at a few certain moments, although I would say she’s in control of her own sexuality. You’re welcome to your own opinions on this. But nevertheless, it’s a show that isn’t riddled with fanservice shoved in your face.

4. Golden Time

“Accident or amnesia, you can’t rewind your life and start again. If you struggle, you’ll just hurt yourself, and the people around you.”

Due to a tragic accident, Banri Tada is struck with amnesia, dissolving the memories of his hometown and past. However, after befriending Mitsuo Yanagisawa, he decides to move on and begin a new life at law school in Tokyo. But just as he is beginning to adjust to his college life, Mitsuo’s ex-girlfriend Kouko Kaga dramatically barges into Banri’s life, and their chance meeting marks the beginning of an unforgettable year. However, the buried memories of the Banri before the accident sometimes resurface, transforming him into the person he was before with none of the memories of his current self.

Golden Time is a great mix of drama and romance, with the drama not neccesarily revolving around the romance. What I also like is that the romance isn’t just a ‘will they, won’t they?’, as it actually shows how the relationship plays out and how it copes under the pressure of Banri’s problems with amnesia. Plus it’s just another good story set in real life. It’s 24 episodes

5. Attack On Titan

“And just like that, everything changed. At that terrible moment, in our hearts, we knew. Home was a pen. Humanity, cattle.“ 

Living in a walled city hiding from giant strange humanoid monsters known as Titans isn’t the cushiest of lives, but the struggle and fight to survive in this show is a thrilling ride. Honestly, it has some of the best action scenes that visual media has to offer, all brilliantly directed and animated. It’s 24 episodes, though most will tell you to get to episode 5 before you write it off.

6. Madoka Magica

“Remember this… and take it to heart: kindness sometimes leads to even greater tragedy.”

I literally can’t say anything about this without spoiling it, but make sure you watch until the end of episode 4 before judging it. It’s also only 12 episodes in length. The best part about watching this show is that you can then show it to other people and grin evilly as you watch their reaction to it…

As per the theme of this list, it doesn’t have anything awkward, sexual, or immoral. All you need to know is that it’s really quite a good story, and it’s a fun cute show about magical girls. Honest!…

7. Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions

"I am the eye of the wicked lord, member number zero, Rikka Takanashi!“

An entertaining show about high schoolers who’ve watched too much anime and now think they have superpowers, and have invented characters and backstories for themselves. This phase is known as ‘chunibyo’ in Japan. Also along for the ride is our protagonist Yuuta, who’s already grown out of that phase but still finds himself roped into the ‘Far East Magical Society’.

It all starts off silly, but there is actually a bit meat to the story as it goes along. Best of all, it eventually leads to a really sweet relationship in the second season that actually shows a very good demonstration of consent. Yuuta won’t do anything his girlfriend isn’t ready for, even if it means they can’t kiss or even hold hands initially. Her delusional ‘chunibyo’ state also adds an interesting element to the relationship. Basically, I came out of this show all ‘OTP’ for them xD

Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions is 24 episodes long in total, including both seasons.

8. Ouran High School Host Club

“Listen, Senpai, I don’t really care whether you guys recognize me as a boy or a girl. In my opinion it’s more important for a person to be recognized for who they are rather than for what sex they are. “

As the only lower class student in a school for the incredibly wealthy, Haruhi has nowhere near the money to pay for the vase they accidentally breaks in the schools ‘Host Club’. (a service unique to Japan where you can basically hire time with an attractive man at a cafe and have him treat you like a lady. Yes, really.) As such, Haruhi is contracted to work off their debt at the host club and is given the job of making the female customers swoon over them. However it’s only after Haruhi is hired that the rest of the men at the host club realise that Haruhi is biologically a girl. Nevertheless, the customers don’t seem to notice.

Ouran Highschool Host Club is a fun entertaining show with great likable characters, and Haruhi is the perfect neutral foil to all the personalities in the show. It’s actually kind of funny as well, though of course humour is highly subjective. The show seems to be quite popular with female audiences, but I would say that anyone can find enjoyment from this show. This anime is 26 episodes long.

9. Wolf Children

"You might think this sounds like a fairy tale. You might even laugh at my story. You probably think that stuff like this just doesn’t happen. But everything I tell you is true. This is the story about my mother, and the wolf man she fell in love with." 

An excellent film that’s great to just get lost in for the duration of it’s admittedly lengthy runtime. Wolf Children is the story of a woman raising two rather different children after a romantic encounter with a werewolf in human form. Unsure as to whether to raise these children as wolves or humans, the mother does her best to support them no matter the challenges. Honestly a really enjoyable movie. Recommended if you like Studio Ghibli.

10. Clannad

“I was only living because it was too much trouble to die. I got up in the morning, went to work, I ate dinner, and then I went to sleep at night. It’s like my body was doing it out of habit.”

Clannad is probably most well known for being most anime fans first experience with the ‘feels train’. The first season of delinquent student Tomoya’s adventures in helping out anyone he comes across in school while ditching class, and it’s all good slice of life stuff with the occasional good moments of drama. But most people will tell you that the second season, Clannad: After Story, is where it gets into the real meat of it.

Clannad is another character driven story, with drama, romance, and a slight hint of the supernatural.

And there we have it. Overall, it was an interesting challenge making this list. There are a lot more than 10 anime that fit this criteria, but I only wanted to include the ones I thought were in the top 10. The challenge came from the fact that I chose to exclude any show that had even one instance of an uncomfortable moment. By that logic, I had to exclude Future Diary even though I love it, as well as Steins;Gate despite it’s eventually thrilling story. I even had to exclude ‘Love Live! School Idol Project’ in spite of it mostly being the most innocent thing ever, all thanks to Nozomi’s imfamous ‘washi washi’ scene that was basically sexual harrassment disguised a ‘mischievious’ joke. (Fans actually complained about that and in response, she didn’t do it at all in season 2).

However, I still recommend those shows, especially Future Diary and Steins;Gate for their plotlines, but you have to be willing to overlook just a single awkward moment in each. (maybe 3 moments for Future Diary) Anyway, I hope this was helpful :)

[drink-n-watch]

  Genre : Supernatural thriller, suspense, action, drama

Movie: 50 minutes

Studio: Ufotable

  This is a story of a lonely girl and a determined doll. It is not a very happy story but sometimes stories just go that way. It is a story about how pain and yearning can make monsters out if us before we can notice it at all. How simple wishes can curse those around you. It’s also a story about finding a way to fill the emptiness within us all. Sometimes you succeed for a little while a soar, sometimes you fail and do your best not to drown. At times this is a sad story but there’s also hope hiding in the shadows. What you get out of this story, will depend on you.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to describe a 50 minute movie without giving too much away. The problem here is slightly different. The Garden of Sinners: Thanatos plays out mostly in subtext so a plain description of events won’t give you much of an idea. I tried my best though.

well I tried…

First let’s get the logistics out of the way. You can watch Garden of Sinners on Crunchyroll, where it is presented as a 10 episode series. They are in fact 10 movies of varying lengths which is why I included the runtime in this review. So far I have only watched Thanatos (the first movie made) so I can’t tell you how closely related they are and if they are better watched all in a row. Binge watching 10 movies (some over 2h) is a bit much for me. I’ll get into it more later but the atmosphere and narrative style of this first movie also doesn’t seem suited for rapid successive consumption. I’m working on my vocabulary. Please let me know if I’m using words wrong as I’m going about it pretty randomly.

Visually Thanatos is interesting although a bit unpolished. It uses this technique that makes the edges look like very wet ink wash. I’m not sure how to explain it and unfortunately it doesn’t show much in the stills. It’s a bit as id the lines waver.

just take my word for it…

The action comes in bursts, and everything is quite still the rest of the time. Shiki’s (the main character) small movements, like walking or sitting down, look jittery but I’m sure it’s a choice.  On the other hand, action scenes are fluid and we’ll choreographed. Voice acting is wide ranging and varies from character to character with some pretty intense delivery choices but it fits with the writing…

Are you bored yet by this plain list of technical features? It’s quite dull isn’t it? There’s a reason for that. I’m trying to bury the lead here. I’ve always been quite bad at not immediately blurting out everything that’s on my mind.

I usually discuss the non narrative aspects of anime separately as a way of structuring my reviews. But here, it’s completely impractical. By far the most impressive element of The Garden of Sinners is the masterfully integrated visual storytelling. Maybe I’m reading too much into is, but from what I could overanalyze, every design, visual, animation and even sound choice made in the movie, contributed to the narrative.

don’t get me started on the light and shadows!

The story itself is a rather straightforward thriller with some supernatural elements. A string of sudden suicides rocks a small community and we catch up with a woman named Shiki that seems to want to stop the deaths. She believes there is something unearthly going on and she herself is more than meets the eye.

It’s presented in a very purposefully mysterious way. For instance, characters aren’t introduced. We don’t even know their names until we’ve seen them a few times. Their backgrounds and relationships to one another are never really established and you’re left to infer everything from conversations. It can be a touch destabilizing, but it was done well enough for me to follow along the course of events even though it left a lot open to interpretation.

Because of this, the characters could be considered underdeveloped. However, they are written in a way where the lack of information seems deliberate rather than bad writing. The same can be said for most of the events. There’s an ambiguity and a lack of context. At times I was reminded of Serial Experiments Lain, although The Garden of Sinners obviously doesn’t have the time to delve in too deep in its own mythology. Future movies may solve that.  

what’s with the eyes? I dunno…

It won’t be for everyone. The wrap up can feel unsatisfying since it really didn’t teach us all that much. If you’re not a fan of vague narratives, you may find this movie annoying. On top of that, the actual plot is not that special, for the little we know about it. I would describe it as Suicide Circle condensed in a single hour and devoid of both it’s extravagance and wry humour.

But visual integration in the storytelling made it all worth while for me. Let me give you an example. The story tackles deep themes of existential questioning, emptiness and suicide. The idea that a person just sort of floats along life until they find themselves confronted to circumstances where they must choose to either fly or fall. Those moments that make you confront your very sense of being. The plot is simply an allegory of the idea. Both the protagonist and antagonist spend the movie facing this question in their own way.

Beyond that though, everything else reinforces the structure of long dead stillness punctuated by explosion of violent existence. Like I touched on above, movement is extremely subdued for the most part, except in those pivotal scenes where it becomes frantic. Characters are often silent and a lot of scenes have no dialogue but the few conversations that happen are tense and deeply meaningful.

it must be such a pain finding the right remote

Visually, there are repeated cluster motifs. And empty sky with a flock of birds. A bare wall with half a dozen clocks arranged together. A cluttered room where the feature is a wall filled with tv sets for no obvious reason. Shiki’s apartment is almost completely bare, her fridge empty, but she visits Touko in a cluttered, almost hoarder like office. Streets are either almost completely empty or heavily crowded. It’s a repeated all or nothing notion that goes hand in hand with the larger themes.

Another, more immediate element is the outlines. For the most part, they’re those thick and wavy watered-down lines. It makes everything seem slightly unsubstantial and ill-defined. Once again, there’s this element of unbearable lightness. Like nothing is really quite there, like it could just flitter away at any moment. But whenever the action or tension ramps up, those lines sharpen into fine well-defined clear edges. Everything comes into sudden focus. It subconsciously grabs your attentions and tells you this is an important moment. It also has the practical side effect of making action a lot clearer and easier to follow.

something’s about to happen

The color palette is subtly but completely redefined just about every other scene and more direct color cues are thrown in. Shiki wears the same blue kimono every day, but she puts on a red jacket over it once she decides to settle the score.

No one has pupils. This isn’t mentioned at all and could be dismissed as a quirky design choice to make things more *dark*. But I believe it’s an illustration of the general idea that people are empty shells and it takes personal strength and courage to find something to fill them with. That one is responsible for creating their own soul, lest they find their sense of self float away.

For me, this movie shined through its insistence of using every possible tool of the anime medium to add to its narrative, even though the narrative itself was not that stellar. And for this alone, I am more than happy to see what the other movies have to offer. It won’t be for everyone, but if it’s for you, it has a unique appeal.

if you do, could you tell us?

Favorite character: Touko

What this anime taught me: Thanatos is a minor figure in Greek mythology and a personification of death. I guess Shinigami… However, I think the title refers to Freud’s theory that humans have a “death drive”. Basically, an odd instinct towards risk and self-destruction that fights with our survival instincts. He called this drive Thanatos.

If you walk a mile in my shoes, you’ll end up in a bar

Suggested drink: Floating Goddess

Every time we get a close up of anyone’s eyes – take a sip

Every time the color palette switches – take a sip

Every time we see a body – shiver

Every time we see a ghost – liquid courage

Every time Tuko smokes – take a deep breath

Every time we see a doll or doll parts – take a sip

Every time anyone says “flying” – take a sip

Every time we see the news – pay attention

Every time anyone says “suicide” – take a sip

Every time we see Shiki’s apartment – get some ice cream

the little sketch at the beginning was funny!

I’m disappointed by how much is lost in the screen caps. The actual anime is more impressive.

    The Garden of Sinners: Thanatos -The First Bloom   Genre : Supernatural thriller, suspense, action, drama Movie: 50 minutes Studio: Ufotable   This is a story of a lonely girl and a determined doll.

[theconservativebrief]

It has not been a great year for television so far.

There have been plenty of treats, to be sure, and even some real treasures. But compared to the way 2017 seemed to haul out new classics with astonishing regularity (to the degree that I couldn’t rank them when it came time to make a list), 2018 has featured a lot of shows where my recommendation comes with a caveat, or where I love it but plenty of my critical comrades despise it, or something like that.

This is fine, in many ways. TV criticism was defined too long by the idea that there were a simple handful of good shows, and critics could mostly agree on them. It’s exciting to get away from that era in some way, to argue about if Westworld is magnificent or malarkey, to discuss whether The Handmaid’s Tale is incisive or exploitative.

But it also means lists like these require far more grains of salt than they might have in the past. So here, presented alphabetically, are 24 TV shows from the first half of 2018 that I gave four stars or more and that have stuck around in my memory in the time since they aired. I hope you like them! But maybe you won’t! And since the TV year typically features more good shows in its first half than its second (due to the Emmys falling in September), my year-end list will likely feature almost all of these shows.

(A few caveats: I typically use the summer to catch up on stuff I missed, so some shows that aren’t here almost certainly will be come December. And I’ve tried to limit this to shows that aired six or more episodes in 2018 so far, cutting out some other favorites. I’ve made a list of things that missed due to one or the other of these caveats at the bottom of this article.)

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One of the best final seasons I’ve ever seen, the last 10 episodes of The Americans circled back to what the spy drama had always been about — whether this unlikely marriage between two KGB spies pretending to be ordinary Americans could survive all of the things threatening to rip it apart. The series finale is a pitch-perfect cap to six years of bleak but beautiful television.

How to watch it: The Americans is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be on Amazon Prime.

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The second installment of American Crime Story after 2016’s The People vs. O. J. Simpson was less immediately arresting. But its depiction of ’90s America is just as impressive, tracing the circuitous route of serial killer Andrew Cunanan backward from his most famous victim through a gay scene struggling not to be forced back in the closet. Darren Criss’s work as Cunanan is masterful.

How to watch it: American Crime Story is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be on Netflix.

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Donald Glover’s laconically loopy trip through the titular city grew bolder and more confident in its second season, as the characters endlessly debated ideas of what it means to be “fake” versus “real.” The season’s standout was the darkly funny horror tale “Teddy Perkins,” about the legacies of child abuse, but every episode stands as a pitch-perfect, beautifully honed gem.

How to watch it: Atlanta is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be on Hulu.

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So far, 2018 has been a year of uneasy comedies, of stories that are ostensibly funny but hide something dark and sad at their core. No “comedy” embraced this idea more than Barry, about a hitman who would be an actor, played by Bill Hader. The show is terrifically funny, especially in its depiction of the fringes of show business, but what sticks with you is Barry’s inability to change.

How to watch it: Barry is available for digital purchase, or on HBO’s streaming platforms.

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A riotous trip through the deleterious effects of income inequality, Billions had its best, most cutting season this year, as the show blew up its own premise (by burying the investigation that had always been at its center), then spent the rest of its season vamping for time by digging into the ways those with money and power seem utterly oblivious to those without those qualities in the 2010s.

How to watch it: Billions is available for digital purchase, or on Showtime’s streaming platforms.

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You like fish? This has so many fish!

How to watch it: Blue Planet II is available for digital purchase, or on BBC America’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Netflix.

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A deeply funny dark comedy about the cost of working for a terrible company, Corporate is one of the most visually audacious shows of the year, turning the workplace comedy into an excuse to indulge in gray, chilly frames, in the style of David Fincher. Somehow, that only makes the jokes, about the dehumanization inherent in trying to hold down a corporate job, even funnier.

How to watch it: Corporate is available for digital purchase, or on Comedy Central’s streaming platforms.

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For whatever reason, 2018 has been full of terrific spy dramas, but this one seemed to get a bit lost in the shuffle. Starring Oscar winner J.K. Simmons, it tells the story of a world that split in two late in the Cold War, with the second universe, initially a copy of our own, slowly becoming more and more different. Forget just having one great J.K. Simmons performance. Counterpart had two.

How to watch it: Counterpart is available for digital purchase, or on Starz’s streaming platforms.

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This satirical comedy, set on the campus of a predominantly white college, but focusing primarily on the school’s black students, hit another level in its second season. The show crystallizes Trump-era racism — just a new face on a very old American horror — through its storytelling and especially its visuals. The eighth episode, structured as one long conversation, is a marvel.

How to watch it: Dear White People is available on Netflix.

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I include the “season one” here in hopes that it’s unnecessary. Netflix has made noise about following up this dark British comedy with a second season, but doing so would be self-defeating, as this first season tells its story so perfectly that to tack on more would feel wrong. So watch this gem of a miniseries about a teenage sociopath and the girl he can’t bring himself to kill before it gets all screwed up.

How to watch it: The End of the F***ing World is available on Netflix.

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The space-faring political drama tightened the screws and ratcheted up the tension in its third installment, which collapses a full novel and a half from the book series it’s based on into a single season of television. Complete with memorable guest arcs from David Strathairn and Elizabeth Mitchell, the series finally dug into the true nature of the mysterious alien presence in our solar system.

How to watch it: The Expanse is available for digital purchase, or on Syfy’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Amazon Prime.

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The comedy about women wrestlers and the basic cable TV show that broadcast them to the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area has a bit more sprawl than it knew what to do with in its second season. But the show is so open-hearted and generous to its characters that it doesn’t matter. Its stories of women navigating men’s spaces and womanhood as a kind of performance make for riveting television.

How to watch it: GLOW is available on Netflix.

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Already brutal and bruising, The Handmaid’s Tale became even more so in its second season. It removed some of the cold comforts of the first season to examine how living in a totalitarian society inevitably means that you become complicit in at least some of its horrors, even as those horrors are being visited upon you. Elisabeth Moss and Yvonne Strahovski are fantastic as they navigate a society set up to oppress them.

How to watch it: The Handmaid’s Tale is available on Hulu.

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This stand-up set is a must-see, as Australian comedian Gadsby sets up a long series of punchlines that then resolve into a complete deconstruction of jokes and who gets to tell them in a society filled with fatal power imbalances. It’s funny, yes, but also filled with a scorching fury that finally resolves in a sense that to do better, we have to tear apart every assumption we have.

How to watch it: Hannah Gadsby: Nanette is available on Netflix.

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I’ve always enjoyed this rural noir about two best friends who solve strange mysteries in and around the American South. But the third season, which features the two of them taking on the Klan, felt like the show turning a corner into its examination of how much America is defined by its gruesome past and how little any of us are willing to pay attention to that. Naturally, Sundance canceled it after the season aired.

How to watch it: Hap and Leonard is available for digital purchase, or on Sundance’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Netflix.

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The CW’s daffy and inventive telenovela has always been some of my favorite TV comfort food. But in its fourth season, it somehow became something even more, leaning into storylines that underlined the show’s themes of family, perseverance, and love. It’s rare for a TV show to do a “character might have cancer” arc that doesn’t feel like a cheat, but Jane more than pulled it off.

How to watch it: Jane the Virgin is available for digital purchase, or on Netflix. Some episodes are available on the CW’s website.

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Here’s another terrific spy drama, this one focused on a bored spy (Sandra Oh) who finds herself intrigued — and then maybe even more — by her new quarry, a mysterious assassin (Jodie Comer). Killing Eve takes tropes you’ve seen a million times and makes them feel new again, and it’s the first TV show in ages to remind me of my beloved, dearly departed Hannibal.

How to watch it: Killing Eve is available for digital purchase, or on BBC America’s streaming platforms.

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The Looming Tower is dry and occasionally impenetrable. But I ended up loving the way this miniseries about the build-up to 9/11 slowly but surely built its case for how US intelligence agencies failed to spot what was right in front of them, leading to one of the biggest tragedies to ever occur on American soil. It’s not an argument for more intelligence work; it’s an argument for smarter intelligence work that remains relevant to this day.

How to watch it: The Looming Tower is available on Hulu.

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The middle stretch of this season reeled off classic episodes, like the show was in a groove it was never going to leave. What’s more, those episodes are all so recognizable as episodes — from a magic-inflected hour of short stories to a musical — that it became hard not to get caught up in the inventiveness. And the series’s emotional core about sad 20-something magicians trying to bring back the thing that makes them sad (magic) remains rock solid.

How to watch it: The Magicians is available for digital purchase, or on Syfy’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Netflix.

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The second season of the remake of the 1970s sitcom of the same name is perhaps the most joyful show of the year, as the Alvarez family at its center struggles through life in these United States with heart and hope. You’ll see few TV performances as terrific this year as the work of Justina Machado and Rita Moreno, as a mother and daughter who are never defined by their conflicts.

How to watch it: One Day at a Time is available on Netflix.

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Ryan Murphy’s final series for FX (before leaving for Netflix) is this delightful, warm ’80s period piece about drag ball culture of the era and the idea of found families among people all across the LGBT spectrum. In particular, the show tells stories about trans women like few TV shows ever have, allowing them to have full lives and desires beyond their transition narratives.

How to watch it: Pose is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms.

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My favorite workplace comedy had maybe its best season with its third run, which both deepens the show’s interest in social issues (including age discrimination, something few TV shows would even think to touch) and also serves as a master class in how to spin romantic and sexual tension across an entire season of a TV series. When all of its stories came together in the finale, it felt almost magical.

How to watch it: Superstore is available for digital purchase, on NBC’s site, or on Hulu.

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More than 100 men sail into the Arctic in the mid-1800s, sure they’ll win glory for the British crown by discovering the Northwest Passage. None of them return, and this miniseries (the first in a new anthology series under the banner of The Terror), based on a Dan Simmons novel, imagines what might have happened to them, utilizing both historical research and a mighty monster to tell its tale. It’s grim and unrelenting but also starkly beautiful.

How to watch it: The Terror is available for digital purchase, or on AMC’s streaming platforms.

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Two sisters return to their Los Angeles neighborhood in the wake of their mother’s death, then vow to keep the bar she ran open to preserve their neighborhood in the face of gentrification. This lively half-hour drama examines ideas of identity, sexuality, and class consciousness, but never in a way that feels didactic. Instead, it offers heart, humor, and a touch of magical realism.

How to watch it: Vida is available for digital purchase, or on Starz’s streaming platforms.

The Good Fight CBS All Access

12 Monkeys and Channel Zero are other Syfy treats I’ve highly recommended in the past, but I’ve been able to catch up with neither so far. The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend technically aired six episodes in 2018 (exactly six), but I really want to see where it’s going with its current story arc. CBS All Access’s The Good Fight is one I just haven’t caught up with yet, to the consternation of my friends. NBC’s The Good Place will surely be on my year-end list but only aired five episodes in 2018 so far. I loved HBO’s The Tale, a searing story about the aftermath of sexual abuse, but it already made our “best movies of 2018 so far” list. And someday I will finish Netflix’s Wild Wild Country, but I liked what I saw.

Original Source -> The 24 best TV shows of 2018 so far

via The Conservative Brief

[timeagainreviews]

Marco... Polo!

Greetings friends! Real quick, I wanted to say thank you to all of the people who read my "The Witchfinders," review. It means a lot! Finally had the time to settle down and rewatch "Marco Polo," only to remember I had a doctor’s appointment. Well, I saw one Doctor at least! 

Recently I got into an anime known as "Konosuba." People close to me would know how rare this is, as I don’t usually watch anime. Excited by my newfound fandom, I got inspired to read the manga. Which brought me to light novels, mangas, spin-offs, volumes, and chapters! My word there is a lot to learn! I had to get my wife to explain it to me. For many fandoms, entry is a simple Netflix view away. But for other fandoms, where to start is not as simple. When starting Discworld, a 41 novel series, people often get on Reddit saying "Where do I start?" Comic books can be just as daunting with their thousands of issues already established over the course of decades. Doctor Who is no different.

My friend Tino told me recently that he would have watched Doctor Who by now, but he’s such a completionist, he would want to start at the First Doctor, which would mean watching everything from the beginning. Which I get. Before my friends sat me down to watch the Eighth Doctor, I had looked into the First Doctor. What I discovered is that I was in way over my head. Not only was this cheap old black and white series hard to track down, but it was also rife with missing episodes! The idea of such a thing perplexed me to no end. Having grown up with VHS, and into the digital era, I couldn’t imagine a network destroying old episodes.

When I came into Doctor Who, there were 108 episodes of the show missing. Since then, eleven of them have been recovered. Alas, not one of them was from the 1964 serial "Marco Polo," which to this day, is missing in its entirety. So what’s a girl to do? Reconstructions of course! Various sources have reconstructed lost episodes. The BBC had even animated some of them. For the most part, the BBC frowns upon third-party reconstructions, but isn’t that a bit rich? If I toss a diamond in the bin, I can’t get upset when the rubbish man repurposes it.

For those of you watching along with me, I decided to go with the Loose Cannon reconstructions. I opted out of the colour version, as I was looking for something as close to the original as possible. I also avoided the Mark Eden reenactments for similar reasons. Now then, if you recall, we last left the TARDIS crew on a snowy mountainside. Susan had just found a giant footprint. As I was going through this episode, it somewhat donned on me that we never really get a very satisfying conclusion about this footprint. Ian attributes its size to the sunlight melting a normally sized footprint. But more than just a red herring, the true point of the footprint is to alert you to the fact that our friends aren’t alone on this mountain.

The TARDIS seems not to be working, which is odd considering all of the fault locating Ian and the Doctor did in "The Edge of Destruction," but whatever. Ian and Barbara are sent off to find fuel, which is funny because the show is still looking for excuses to be the show we know now. I guess I’m glad they earned it at least. And they really have earned quite a bit by this, their fourth serial. The TARDIS crew has really come together as a group. The Doctor is still a curmudgeon, but he’s our curmudgeon. Instead of a simple kidnapping situation, Ian and Barbara have gone full-on Stockholm Syndrome with the Doctor. So when they see a man dressed in full 13th Century Mongolian apparel, they go running back to the safety of the TARDIS, their newfound home. By this time the Doctor realises the fault with the TARDIS is in its circuitry, which has knocked out the heating. If they’re to survive the night, they’ll need to come down from the mountain and find a camp.

The Mongols, having seen the crew arrive, want to kill them for being evil spirits. But a white man they will come to know as Marco Polo interrupts the proceedings. Now, when I say “a white man,” I mean "a supposed to be white man." Because most of these “Mongols,” are also white men.  I’m not going to pretend to know how many Asian actors were active in 1960’s London, but I do know all but maybe one of them had a speaking role. I find it hard to believe they couldn’t find more. That being said, I’m going to proceed with things on a story level. Yellowface is bad. It’s not my place or desire to excuse it.

Marco invites the Doctor and his companions into his company. They’re travelling across the Gobi Desert to see the great Kublai Khan. Among his fellow travellers are Ping-Cho, a sixteen-year-old girl arranged to be married to a 75-year-old man. And there is also Tegana, a peace emissary from Khan Noghai. He, along with his other Mongol brothers distrust the Doctor, seeing him as some sort of sorcerer with his magic box. Of all of the new characters introduced, I rather liked Ping-Cho. Part of me was thinking what a good companion she would have made, but this is the only story where she makes an appearance. Another great thing about her is that she’s one of the few actors of Asian descent, and she’s really good. Even in a reconstruction, she shines.

Over the next few episodes, not a lot really happens. The company travels across the Gobi desert. Susan and Ping-Cho become friends and get lost in a sandstorm. Tegana spends most of his time plotting against Marco Polo. Marco Polo takes the Doctor’s TARDIS away from him as an acquisition for the great Khan. Doing this causes the Doctor to sulk by himself for the better part of an episode. Lots of things early on give William Hartnell the option to take a rest. Perhaps they were writing around his health, but the Doctor spends a lot of time sitting, or having altitude sickness. Marco tries to get the Doctor to understand that if he can bring the Khan a great gift, perhaps he will permit him to leave back to Venice. The Doctor’s aversion to explaining the TARDIS, mixed with Tegana’s distrust of him, causes Marco to bar the Doctor from entering the TARDIS.

Planning to poison the water gourds, Tegana goes off into the night. But Susan and Ping-Cho follow and get lost in a sandstorm, causing Tegana to have to hastily slash open the gourds instead. With not enough water to finish the trip, the travellers face hard times. Where they travelled fifteen miles one day, they travelled ten the next, then eight. I’m not sure the writer, John Lucarotti, understands the desert as he depicts it as hot, even at night time. With this kind of heat, they’ll need water, and fast! Tegana rides ahead to find an Oasis, where he finds water, but only for himself. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Susan, having been let back into the TARDIS, are able to supply the company with water condensed on the TARDIS walls. I was impressed with the good people at Loose Cannon for digitally adding in water droplets. Those small bits of animation act as an oasis in and of themselves. At first, Marco thinks the Doctor has been lying to him about their water reserves, requiring the Doctor to explain the concept of condensation. It’s an edutainment moment.

Speaking of Marco, he’s a hard one to pin down. In many ways, I rather like Mark Eden’s portrayal of him. He’s a rather dopey, but lovable character. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about the real man himself. Though the script does endeavour to make him realistic, as John Lucarotti used actual diary entries from Polo as a reference. I did, however, find myself constantly frustrated with his uncertainty. I understand that it’s helpful in creating believable characters to give them flaws. But in a lot of this serial, I felt like Marco Polo was a bit naive and indecisive. It made it hard to really like him, which I get, to a point. He needs to be a bit of an antagonist at times. He’s taken the TARDIS, he’s siding with Tegana’s awful lies, and he kowtows to Kublai Khan like a cheap suit. These things are supposed to aggravate the audience, but it happens so often, it begins to feel like padding. We can’t have Marco Polo being more assertive. That would turn this seven-parter into a four-parter!

One of the things I love about this serial is its use of the Marco Polo diary entries as narration. Along with overlays of a map of Northern China, we get nice little interludes from the great traveller. In many ways, it reminded me of "Star Trek," with the Captain’s log. It’s a rare opportunity to get narration in Doctor Who, much less by a character that isn’t either the Doctor or a companion. Like many map montages, this one is used to plot our journey across the Gobi desert. Renewed with their TARDIS water, they arrive at a way-station in Tun-Huang. Here they restock and Ping-Cho recites the story of Aladdin. As a fan of Ping-Cho, I was saddened not to be able to see this performance acted out. I’m sure it was rather charming. During the performance, Tegana slips out to see about some shady shit he’s up to, but Barbara, who’s been onto him for a while now, tails him all the way to "The Cave of Five Hundred Eyes." Tegana meets with a couple of men named Malik and Acomat. Evidently, Khan Noghai has an army on it’s way to Karakorum. Barbara gets kidnapped, but the Doctor and co. are able to rescue her, while Tegana is able to avoid association.

Looking for another way to rid himself of the busybodies from the TARDIS, Tegana tries to draw a wedge even further between the Doctor and Marco. He convinces Marco that Susan and Ping-Cho have an unusual bond together, causing him to separate the two friends. His trust is even further tested when Tegana is proven correct that the Doctor has a second TARDIS key on his person. More than ever, the TARDIS crew are more like captives than travelling companions. Tegana plans an assassination with Acomat to finally rid himself of these pests. But Ian is able to escape Polo’s internment, only to discover their guard is dead.

I’ve learned a bit watching this serial. Like Ian throws bamboo on the fire to scare off their would be assassins. Bamboo under intense heat explodes, evidently. I also learned that the word assassin comes from the Arabic “ḥashshāshīn,” or “eaters of hashish,” making this the first mention of narcotics in Doctor Who history. Neat! Now, either it was the sound of exploding bamboo or the killing of their leader Acomat at the hands of Tegana, but the raiders leave the camp. Tegana, once again, has enough plausible deniability to avoid any sort of recourse from the great Marco Polo, wet blanket that he is. However, after taking swords against a common enemy, our friends seem to have regained Marco’s trust, allowing Susan and Ping-Cho to talk again, and freedom to roam.

The TARDIS is about to get split off from the rest of the caravan, which would separate them even further. Out of options, Ian tries to explain that the TARDIS is the only way home, even going as far as to tell Marco about its time travelling capabilities. But it’s no use. Having seen where he hides them, Ping-Cho gives Susan one of the hidden TARDIS keys. The Doctor and his friends head off to leave under the cover of night. But Tegana nabs Susan as she’s entering, and uses her as leverage to get the key back from the Doctor. Ping-Cho, afraid of the repercussions of revealing the key, runs away. Ian discovers her and the TARDIS have been kidnapped by one of Tegana’s men. Tegana pulls a sword on Ian and Ping-Cho, but one of Polo’s men arrives with a band of soldiers. Even then Tegana smooth talks his way out of things.

Finally, at Peking, the great capital of China, we’re introduced to Kublai Khan. Much like "The Witchfinders," relieved a lot of tension with it’s take on King James I, "Marco Polo," finds its foil in Kublai Khan. Played as a decrepit old man with twinkly eyes, he adds a bit of humour to the proceedings. The Doctor refuses to kowtow to the Khan. Perhaps it’s due to a lack of respect, or from a bad back, or just a case of the old. Either way, he can barely muster a bow. It’s a pretty classic moment, that I’m sure was even more charming when you could actually see it! I get the feeling that the two of them bond over mutual achiness. The Doctor and the Khan play rounds of backgammon, which the Doctor uses to win back the TARDIS, but ultimately fails, despite earlier winnings.

Unimpressed by Polo’s gift of the Doctor’s TARDIS, which was not his to give, the Khan seems in no hurry to bestow the boon of returning home. Ping-Cho and Ian tell the Khan of Tegana’s machinations, but Tegana claims they are evil sorcerers. Not sure who to believe, the Khan decides to hold court. It’s all very tedious, this constant back and forth of trust and distrust. Tegana is really wearing out his welcome. While the Doctor and his friends are taken into custody, Ping-Cho learns that the elderly man to whom she was to be wed has died suddenly after taking an elixir of life. Basically, old boy overdosed on ancient Viagra because he was worried about his vitality. I shit you not. It’s such a "by the way," random turn of events. At least her character got closure?

The Doctor and his friends escape by tripping the world’s dumbest guard. They make their way back to the throne room where Tegana has just slew the Khan’s Vizier while attempting to kill the Khan. Using this as a chance to grow a spine, and maybe regain the Khan’s favour, Marco draws his sword against Tegana. Now I know old Doctor Who is not going to have great sword fights. At best we can hope for some fight choreography, but nothing too flashy. And let me tell you, friends, I would take that over still images of a sword fight any day. After what I assume was a gallant battle, Marco disarms Tegana, and he is taken into custody. However, unwilling to be taken alive, Tegana throws himself upon a spear, thus ending his own life. I was actually a bit shocked, in all honesty.

Having gained the favour of the Khan again, we’re left with the knowledge that Marco Polo will once again see his home of Venice. Ping-Cho no longer has to pull an Anna Nicole Smith. Tegana’s plan has been thwarted, and Kublai Khan is prepared for whatever forces Noghai has planned for him. But what about the TARDIS? Feeling benevolent, Kublai Khan simply gives the TARDIS back to the Doctor. Or maybe it had something to do with an unfinished game of backgammon that was tipping in the Doctor’s favour. Susan and Ping-Cho say goodbye to one another, and like in "The Witchfinders," a great ruler and his subjects watch as the TARDIS disappears into thin air. Marco ponders whether the Doctor and his companions are now in the past or the future.

Final Thoughts: Hoo boy. Let me tell you. I am really glad I don’t have to watch another reconstruction for a while. As reconstructions go, this is one of the worst. Literally, every episode is missing in this seven-part serial. Not even a snippet of footage exists. But none of this is really the fault of the story. I will say, however, that large swaths of the storyline were very tedious and repetitive. It was basically a constant trade-off between kidnappings. If it wasn’t Barbara, it was Ping-Cho, or Susan, or the whole team. You could have devoted two episodes to the travelling, and two episodes to the stuff in Peking and the pacing wouldn’t have killed you.

On the plus side, I was happy to see the Doctor in China. As series 11 has proven, it’s nice to see the Doctor visit other parts of the world than the U.K.  There are parts when the music and atmosphere come together to make some truly creepy stuff. The singing sands were pure Radiophonic bliss (see: a bunch of noise). The costumes and sets were brilliant. This also marks the first time in Doctor Who when actual animals were used on set with the horses. So that’s kinda cool. It all lent a lot of credence to the setting, though I can’t speak to any level of historical accuracy. However, a lot of the realism and setting is thrown under the bus with the constant and all-pervasive yellowface happening onscreen. 

Carole Ann Ford once said this was her favourite episode to shoot. Perhaps it was the fun costumes and sets, or maybe she formed a bond with Zienia Merton, the girl who plays Ping-Cho. For me, I don’t really see it. There’s not a lot of plot, for starters. As I said earlier, it could have been edited down considerably, and nothing would have suffered for it. I do appreciate the sheer spectacle of it. On a level of classic Doctor Who, it’s a feat of design. I’m also really glad to have watched it a second time because I didn’t pay much attention the first time around. I wasn’t looking forward to a seven-part slideshow, so my investment level was pretty low. Even still, I’ve not got a lot to say about it. Basically, unless they find the episodes intact, I don’t plan to watch it again.