#somehow I was able to render this while in a car and I am generally surprised to see it doesn't look like dog shit

[jaybrd-webtoons]

I'm going to see the inside out 2 movie tomorrow solely because I think Val is hot af.

[ladyyatexel]

I Went On A Manga Binge

So you don't have to

For those of you who have wisely avoided the shreds of it I've left around the blog thus-far, I had some weird notion to go re-experience Yu-Gi-Oh uuuuuh a week ago? We'll go with that. Time is meaningless.

I'd been able to read a good portion of the early manga at the end of highschool, and somewhere in my stacks and stacks of paper is fanart from this dark time, so you know I cared. I also still own a Dark Magician action figure somehow, so. I'd also watched a large portion of the anime with my brother because it had been laced with some kind of crack and we couldn't look away? I remember when we both were just like shit, wait, don't change the channel, I can't stop looking at it. And the next thing we knew we were waiting for new episodes and I was doing research on the Japanese original because I was that kid.

Anyway, unnecessary backstory out of the way, here are some... let's call them Observations and Consequences of having read somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 chapters (and growing) of a manga primarily hinged on card games from a spectrum of sources ranging from boringly lawful to sketchy as fuck.

Surprise actual character that develops in typical shounen fashion being Jounouchi. My limited experiences with the 4Kids dub and only early manga had not painted him in a particularly good light. I don't know if episodes were being aired out of order or if I had just missed the ones that established that he was making shit up as he was going along, but Wow I liked him a lot more going through the manga than I ever did watching the (dubbed, heavily edited and censored and thrown into a slurry machine) anime. I'd managed to come out with the impression that he was just as reasonably experienced with the game as Yugi back in the day. Wild.

I'm now reading every single comic-style post on Tumblr backwards.

Striking inverse to first point, wow, I don't like Seto Kaiba. Though he gets points for his general philosophy of the future, and the line I read in my sketchy online combo of scans and scanlations in which he said, "If God is in your way, you run him down," was Metal As Fuck. I somewhat shame-facedly admit to enjoying him a lot more as an Abridged Series character. (I watched Abridged as it came out back in the day! The experience of watching the anime with my brother had been so fresh that I got all the in jokes about the way things were edited and dubbed, it was great. Series remains influential part of my life to this day, which is hella weird.)

I almost understand how Duel Monsters works now. I don't want this.

That said, wow a lot of the decisions made in the anime made everything a lot more ridiculous than the admittedly already ridiculous original. I got the distinct feeling in the manga that the Duelist Kingdom stuff we were seeing was designed to be used and exploited in ways that don't make sense in an actual cardgame just played on a table like a normal person and this was part of testing everyone to think higher, differently. Maybe this is obvious to everyone already, I don't know. I had always liked that it was very, 'Not so fast, I'm going to blow up the moon to change the tides,' but I'm not really sure the anime gave enough explanation that this was an extra layer added to things for that event? You can see people actively getting used to it in the books, and people who aren't considering the real or 3D nature of it getting owned, but my memory of anime version is everyone just like, 'oh, shucks, fuck me, I forgot to consider the phase of the moon before i played this card, can't believe I forgot.' No one calls Yugi on any of this stuff because it's valid play in that situation. Plus Yami Yugi had mad trickster energy in the beginning and it suited him to think of ways to do things inside these little simulation boxes the way it suited him to set perverts on fire. I imagine the real card game trying to emulate this element as something that would be to its detriment, but I neither know nor particular care haha

Ryou Bakura.

Really, though. I think he became kind of casualty of 'wow, we have a lot of characters who really aren't able to do anything in this story anymore,' despite the fact that his whole inner life could have been as interesting as Yugi's. I always like thinking about the possibilities of stories in which main character falls into magical world and is given magical item and told they're the hero and then they find out they've been the bad guy the whole time. The first several volumes of manga were about the quiet weirdo kid that no one talked to who was always blacking out and turning into a fucked up version of himsef because he was so attached to his ancient Egyptian jewelry, so like, Bakura could have much the same shit going on. I want to know what's happening with him so much. He clearly doesn't love being possessed, but he's also so drawn to the ring. Despite it having stabbed him at least twice and him knowing it's a danger to him and his friends, he keeps being pulled back into it. You see so much more of him being like, 'Oooh, a creepy thing, I love that! :D' in the manga than ever in the anime, which I'm all about. Also more blood. I'm very about that as well. Though my memory of the anime also made it look very much like normal regular daily Bakura was just a weird facade in places before he ever would have been. I think that was it trying to compensate for what people didn't see from the Toei anime, but okay whatever, that I love everything about this guy is not news, I don't need to talk about Bakura excessively here, I'm pretty sure that's gonna show up on my blog by itself

On a related note though, damn, more of these people need to talk to each other. Can we have some existential crisis support clubs or something. Can we get like some apologies or something? "I respect you as a duelist." "Cool, but you literally built a tower designed to specifically assassinate me and my friends? You were supposed to get Better after I retaliated by putting you in a coma, but you kinda didn't." "Why would the coma have made it better" "I just told you it didn't" ---- "Sorry I went along with the plan of your evil parasite stabbing you, misled you, and then also jumped in and took up some real estate in your head too." "I understand, I also have an evil thing inside me that does things while I'm blacked out." "...no, I was conscious for all of that." "Oh." "..." "..." "..." "Do you like Ouija Boards?" "sure okay" ETC. Like damn we are reading shounen manga because no one is talking extensively about their feelings here and I'm tapping my foot angrily.

Holy shit there are so many mythologies happening at once. The ancient family guarding the Egyptian Pharaoh has a surname that's a Mesopotamian goddess. None of the god cards make any Egyptian sense except Ra, and just like. Baaarrrrely. Somewhere either Evil Ring Bakura or Mar/lik makes a reference to cremation and spirits being taken to heaven with smoke which several things, but definitely not Ancient Egyptian. Marik/Malik meanwhile is clearly trying to head Arabic, along with Rishid, but then, hey, our sister is just Isis. Goddess McGoddess. Sometimes they're the same goddess! Her name could be Isis Isis or Ishtar Ishtar. Meanwhile, all the obviously 'occult because Christians think it is freaky' stuff. ~ancient egyptian pentagrams~~~This isn't a complaint, I guess so much as a 'Wow, I can kind of see the cultural spot the author was coming from and where he was aiming' kind of thing.

Wonder where things would have gone if the card games had not been latched onto the way they were.

Managed to forget how gross the pre-cardgames stuff was on the sexual harassment front. I'm glad there was a sort of explanation of everyone drifting away from being dick heads and that that decision was made. It got way more comfortable to read after no one was bringing Yugi p*rn on VHS.

Yugi looks better with a nose, glad we got that upgrade.

Interesting to watch the series style shift as it goes away from being horror to being over the top cardgames and friendship (with blood!). The first picture of Mokuba is fucking Jarring. Also noticed that the nicer a character is, the less their teeth are defined.

Glad manga did not go as completely off the fucking the rails about Marik's face. I never got as far as seeing him back in the day because college occurred, but I remember seeing pictures and stuff and being like, "what in the Fuck happened to that dude, I think the house style has collapsed in on itself"

Things the author Really Likes: motorcycles, belts, SHOES, holy shit the shoes. These are some of the most lovingly rendered sneakers I've ever seen. All the detail on his characters goes straight to their feet and then it's stretched upward until it forms stiff peaks. Gently fold in 3000 years of trauma and bake face down in a crumb coat of scattered mythology. Remove when you roll two zeros.

Where the fuck am I going to put the extremely large omnibus volumes of this comic I purchased in order to balance out how much I would be reading for free on the internet. I should have grasped that a three in one edition would be Thick and yet somehow I was still :O when it arrived. Have I strategically purchased volumes that contain my favorite parts, maybe, what's it to you will i eventually get the whole thing because incomplete book series gnaw on my soul? yes

Wish the transition from "I've murdered several people in delightfully karmic ways" to "all you need is friendship in your heart and cards in your hand" Yami Yugi/Pharaoh had been discussed more/transitioned better. Buddy, where did you get this approved for television high horse? Please go back to strangling people with yo-yos or at least tell me why you stopped.

I still can't tell anything that looks like a big robotic monster apart from any other big robotic monster. My dude, I can't tell cars apart, all these monsters look the same.

Yami Yugi fascinated me way more in highschool? Maybe because it was still super early and the anime was like 'we need to torture you about his origins WeEkLy. Now I'm just like 'wait hold on, can we go back to Bakura and Marik for a minute, there's some extreme unpacking to do here?' Those two are paying so much more in baggage fees here my guy wow

Violently uninterested in any of the spinoff media

[loverofpiggies]

Gloomverse will not update for a little while: Important mental health break

Hey guys! I'm just coming by to let u know- I don't think I'm going to be able to update Gloomverse for a little bit. Long, LONG post under the cut

I feel horrible every time this happens, genuinely horrible, but. A lot of things have happened in quick succession of each other, and its kickstarted a nightmarish bout of depression that just hit me REALLY bad this evening.

I won't say everything, but a couple things that have hit, was:

- In the last two months, I have been on 3 long holiday trips, visiting family and friends. As an introvert, that is another level of effort I wasn't expecting, but hit me nonetheless. I was busier these last few months, then I've ever been on my busiest convention month.

-Because of all these surprise trips, and because of their length, I'd scramble in between them to catch up on all my comics, and everything I gotta do before my next trip would render me zero 'me' time. I can’t remember the last time I just, went to the park and watched birds. I love doing that.

-Also, I am usually very good about saving money through the year to pull me through the hard months of winter until cons pick back up- with them being my primary income and all. However, although I prepped for one trip around Christmas time, I didn't expect three. I wasn't financially prepared for three. So, I used a lot more money than I expected to, this holiday season. That is another level of stress.

- On Christmas morning, I woke up to find credit card fraud of over $700 dollars taken from my account. I have already contacted the bank of course, but the money has yet to be put back in- on an already, extremely, EXTREMELY tight month.

-Since I returned home from my Christmas trip, there were some Kickstarter issues I had to fix, and repack, which for anyone concerned, they're sitting snug on my floor as I type this, and they'll probably be shipped on monday- later than I expected, and I'm sorry about that. But yea, the moment I got back from an exhausting holiday, I immediately spent days upon days doing a variety of things, such as:

-Fixing up newer pages for Gloomverse on its newest website

-Prepping Gloomverse Volume 4 for printing through my small printing company (Which includes formatting around 200 pages)

-Prepping my old webcomic Mortifer Volume 3 for printing through that same company

-completely overhauling my display for conventions, because somehow over this holiday I managed to design around 30ish more keychains, and I had to find a way to display, and store them.

-Also overhauling my merchandise storage system since I had so much new stock

-Taking new photos and prepping etsy for opening

-and trying to edit new gloomverse pages, which were getting dangerously close to running out of updates.

....so I suppose I did most of that.... oh god within a week.

-I just went to the grocery store to refill my super important anxiety meds, and turns out- I have no health insurance. It disappeared on the first of the year. I couldn't afford my full three month prescription. I don't have that much in my wallet. So. I just got one month.

If I'm being completely honest, I went back into my roomies car in the parking lot, to cry.

I am literally at the end of my stress rope. It's taking all my energy to write this, but you need to know why I have to halt things for a little. I even have Gloomverse pages ready for the next week or so, but I genuinely lack the energy to schedule them on here and tumblr. After I finish typing and sending this out, I’m just going to lay down and not do a thing.

So, sorry for the long long post but. I wanted to be as clear as possible with everyone about what's been going on. I can handle a lot, I can do a lot, it comes with running your own business, but. I pushed too hard. And I need a break from screens, and the internet in general. Everything, really. Just. Man, the headaches I'm getting.

So I'm sorry, but, I have to get off all my social sites, and not worry about gloomverse for a little bit. I don't know how long, but.

Anyway. None of this will effect anyone's Etsy orders, or Kickstarter rewards, any of that. I wanna make that clear. I hope to ship out all the orders for everything on Monday. Just. No comics, no social media, no nothing.

Thank you as always for all your support you guys, I'll pull myself back together in no time and start getting content back out to you. Have a beautiful night.

[keywestlou]

Ho Ho Yogi Bear

DAY 11…..Greece the First Time

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Key West Lou

Ho ho Yogi Bear! I am having a terrific time!

Donkeys have become a part of my life all of a sudden. First in Navaro when I discovered horse meat and donkey meat were sold in butcher shops for human consumption. Donkey was viewed to horse meat as veal is to cattle meat. Now donkeys in Santorini.

Before I made the trip, many told me to be sure to ride the donkeys up and down the hill. The hill that in reality is a mountain of lava.

I saw the donkeys yesterday for the first time. I was taking a walk along the other road. The road that runs between the cave hotel apartments and lesser accommodations. Actually the other side of the road is where the working people of Santorini live. Much like Stock Island is to Key West.

All of a sudden, I came upon eight donkeys on the side of the road. All saddled up and ready to go. What beautiful animals! I am a horse lover of sorts. The horses that race at Saratoga. Especially up close. Magnificent beasts. So too were these donkeys. Beautiful shiny coats. Ears standing straight up. Big bright eyes. Muscular legs. Very muscular.

These donkeys carry people up and down the side of a nearby lava mountain. On a path running along the side. Along a five foot wide path has been constructed 2,000 feet plus long. It consists of 500 plus steps. The steps of varying widths. A short 3 foot wall on the ocean side.

The ride did not appeal to me. I did not wish to be an ass on an ass. I was fearful of either the donkey or me or both of us falling over the wall. I raised that issue with the man in charge of the donkeys. I think I insulted him. He told me very firmly that no donkey or person had ever even fallen off the path into the ocean.

The path was made of dirt and rocks.

I had Nikos give me a ride in his car down the mountain.

The volcano sitting out in the water is like a magnet. It draws me to it. I have decided to visit the volcano in the next few days. I want to look into the opening and its depths. I want to view the smoke and sulfur and whatever else my eyes can see.

The volcano is not too high. Most of it sunk into the sea. So I should be able to walk to the top.

There is an added attraction. There are springs periodically spraying water and smoke. Baths from the emissions are available on site. I want to bathe in these waters. Supposedly healthful, I will be doing it merely for the experience.

Santorini is the largest of the several islands which were born 3,500 years ago when the volcano had its major eruption. It is big. How large, I am not sure. Larger than Key West I do know.

The whole island has a mere 13,000 permanent residents. Compared to Key West which has 19,000.

Santorini is the name of the whole island. There are several villages and towns located on the island. I am staying in Oia, one of those towns. People are nice here. Just as in Key West.

Sociable, helpful.

I spoke of beauty parlor proprietor Catherine Risvani yesterday. Catherine owns the only beauty shop in Oia. One to a town, I guess. Called Hair & Soul. It is a beautifully done small place. Two chairs, two sinks, a manicure station and a counter. Two lovely ladies working for her.  Catherine gave me a manicure this week.

Catherine is lovely in appearance. A typical Grecian beauty. Tall, thin and blond. Hair swept up and somehow tied in back. Interestingly, I have yet to find a Grecian woman who wears her hair down. Catherine also has high cheek bones. Another trait of Grecian women.

The bill for the manicure was 20 euros. About $28 american money. I was out of euros. I asked Catherine if she took credit cards. No. So I took out one of my $100 bills and told her to hold it while I went to the ATM machine for euros. She would not take the $100. Strangers though we were, she trusted me. In a tourist town. Typical of the Greeks here.

Which brings me to Nikos and Maria. Proprietors of my cave accommodation. Nikos and Maria are around 60. Own the Filotera Cave Houses aka Filotera Villas. A superior accommodation. Consistent with historical Santorini.

They and their son Adonis work their asses off. They have staff, but work along with staff from very early morning to late at night.

When I first arrived and met Maria, she was in a dress and apron. Smiling always. She does not speak English. I no Greek. Yet we have had several conversations. Each of us has spoken our native tongue. We understood each other!

I figured after first meeting Maria that she was the typical Mama Mia. A dress and apron. Always cooking and cleaning. Always watching the grandchildren.

Was I wrong!

The next time I saw Maria she was in peddle pushers and a tee shirt. Directing the employees.

Nice people these two.

It was Maria’s birthday the day I arrived. She sent a piece of birthday cake to my rooms. Nikos picked me up at the airport. Nikos drives me where ever I have to go. And picks me up. Their caves are lovely and clean. Very clean. Take a look at them. www.filoteravillas.gr, www.filoteravillas.com and www.santorini.com/hotels/filoteravillas. These sites will give you a flavor of cave living. They will surprise you!

The second day here, their son Adonis showed up with a bottle of wine. He said it was from his father’s vineyards. A special brew. Please enjoy it. I did, the next day. A cross between a white and red. A distinctive special taste.

Yes, Nikos and Maria besides owning the cave villas also own a vineyard and wine producing facility on Santorini. They ship world wide.

Nikos and Maria live across that street I mentioned earlier. In a small apartment less accommodating than the caves. In November, it gets cold on Santorini. They move to their home on the other side of the island. When it gets colder, they move to their home in Athens. During the winter months, they generally take a one to two month trip to the Caribbean or South Pacific.

It gets better.

Santorini and the Greek isles are not the United States. Many amenities we are accustomed to do not exist or are not provided. Like my clothes getting washed and ironed.

I was warned before I embarked on this odyssey that such would be the case. I came prepared. Purchased shirts and shorts at Orvis. That special material that is light, easy to wash and dry. Generally requiring little or no ironing.

I wash my own clothes. For real. Easy. In the bathroom sink. Drop some dish washing fluid on the clothes. A bit of water. Wash with my hands. Then shake dry.

The clothes still need hanging. Dryers are not common place on the island. Could not hang the clothes in front of my cave accommodation. It would not look right nor would it be proper.

There are clothes lines across the street at the cheaper accommodation. I hung my first washing there to dry. When I returned that evening, Maria came out to greet me. She insisted on ironing my clothes. My savior in disguise!

If you ever plan to come to Santorini, stay with Nikos and Maria. You cannot do better. Their telephone number is 003022860 71110. Fax number 003022860 71555. E-mail Filotera@otent.gr.

Enough for today.

There is much still to share.

This afternoon I am going to a beach somewhere on this island. Where I am guaranteed seeing bare breasted women. And, if I am lucky, some bare assed ones.

Enjoy your day!

As I have said in the past, vaccine distribution to Monroe County and Key West is not good. We seem to be forgotten. It appears political pull helps in getting enough vaccine to take care of an area.

Monroe County and Key West seem to be lacking in that regard.

I am happy for the person in Pensacola who was reported to have had excellent service. Not the case here. And none of us are doing anything wrong!

This morning’s Citizens’ Voice had two interesting comments re vaccine distribution/availability.

“Citizens of Monroe County should be outraged that the Medical Center at Ocean Reef, a private club, was allowed to administer 4,000 vaccines that were not available to the public, only to club members. This represents over 85 percent of the vaccine provided  Monroe County.”

“Now I know why after five tries I am unable to get an appointment for the vaccine: politics trumps health.”

Eugene Robinson is one one of the Washington Post’s finest columnists. He also has a touch of Key West in him. Every year, he and his wife spend one month in Key West. Normally January. They were not here in January. Probably the virus.

Robinson’s Washington Post column this morning is titled “To Rebuild the Grand Old Party, First Tear It Down.”

A passage from the column: “Before a sane, responsible political party can rise like a phoenix from the ashes of today’s dangerously unhinged GOP, there must be ashes to rise from. The nation is going to have to destroy the Republican Party to save it.”

Biden has been impressive so far. As he will continue to be. I have faith in the man.

He is moving fast. The  stimulus package, foreign matters, vaccine, etc.

It is very true that you cannot please all of the people all of the time.

Biden spoke before the National Prayer Breakfast. Called out white supremacy and domestic terrorism. And a multitude of other things.

Brian Burch is the President of CatholicVote. After the Breakfast, Burch slammed him for backing abortion and transgenderism. I do not know if Biden mentioned either during his talk. I suspect not.

One old, the other relatively new. Burch forgets that Biden, as with any President, represents all the people and not just one segment.

John Kennedy had a similar problem. Directed primarily at his Catholic faith. His response simple and understandable: “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.”

Christopher Plummer died. An outstanding actor. His age at death 91. Did not pass away under normal circumstances. He fell and struck his head. The blow to his head resulted in his death.

One of Plummer’s most famous roles was that he performed in The Sound of Music.

His movies many. However, Plummer most enjoyed his Shakespearean performances. He considered himself a Shakespearean actor rather than a movie one. His famous Shakespearean parts were his performances in Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, and as Mark Anthony.

He won his first and only Oscar at age 82. He also was rewarded with 2 Tony and 2 Emmy Awards.

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men was published this day in 1937.

Steinbeck had a marked influence on my young life. My parents had purchased several volumes of Steinbeck’s works. For their enjoyment, not mine.

I was about 10. The books attracted me.

I would sit in a huge easy chair in the living room. A thick red dictionary at my side.

The first work I read was Of Mice and Men. Obviously I did not understand everything. One thing the book did however was to increase my vocabulary and expose me to a world I did not know. Some of which I was happy not to have experienced.

Over a period of time, I also read The Grapes of Wrath and several other Steinbeck works whose names at the moment I cannot recall.

Looking back, the reading I did probably was not uncommon. There were no television or cell phones in those days. Yes, there was radio. However radio did not particularly turn me on except for baseball.

Enjoy you day!

  Ho Ho Yogi Bear was originally published on Key West Lou

[diyunho]

The Joker x Reader - “John Wick” Part 3

Y/N left The Organization 3 years ago for the one reason strong enough to make her settle down: love. But after tragedy crushed her to pieces, she decided to leave The Joker and seek refuge with an old friend and mentor - John Wick. Needless to say The King of Gotham can’t accept his wife running away without a word, especially since he didn’t have a chance to tell her things she might want to hear.

Part 1     Part 2

The Joker listens at the bedroom’s door, impatient to have a conversation with you. It seems you are engaged into a fervent phone call with Winston and figured he shouldn’t interrupt.

“Please, anything you can discover would be a great help! U-hum… U-hum… Thank you,” and you hang up, which queues your husband to walk into the room.

You completely ignore him, scrolling through the numerous text messages you sent to your connections; several are already answering back and hopefully you can get some news soon. The more people are involved into the project, the more chances to find Kase and untangle the mystery of what happened to him after he was removed from the car.

“You left me there,” The Joker sneaks in and closes the door behind him. “Luckily we had Wick with us so he gave me a ride.”

No reaction. He takes a deep breath, trying to get your awareness.

“I didn’t sleep with Evelyn; sex wasn’t the reason why I kept visiting her. I know how that asshole made it sound and he was totally out of line!”

You quickly glance at him, busy replying to Ares since you feel you’re going to explode soon.

“The only skill I was interested in is the fact that she is an excellent painter and a popular art smuggler, OK?” J raises his voice, sort of annoyed you neglect to participate into his monologue. “I did not cheat, alright?” he approaches his wife. “First of all: I’m VERY picky! Second of all: why would I want a woman everyone else had?! I don’t like used toys. Third: nobody’s been polishing my gun as you tastefully addressed the issue! I have one Queen and I married her!!”

A little bit of doubt in your eyes and he utilizes the opportunity.

“You said you saw me going to her house? I did! The Bowery King asked if it was for the last 6 months? Yeah, I did! You know why?!”

At least now The Joker got your attention: you play it cool but he guesses you’re torn apart by his confession.

Many unfortunate events crammed in lately and hating the man you love made life infinitely more unbearable.

“Why…?” you barely muster the strength to inquire and he sees it as a possibility to mend a few broken pieces; although you can hide your emotions well, J can still read between the lines.

Maybe that’s why he answers with another question:

“Do you realize there are just three Monet paintings in circulation on the black market in the entire world? You admire his work and it took a lot of effort and a substantial fortune to acquire The Water Lily Pond painting. Evelyn Black helped with the transaction, then I had her make some modifications to the original masterpiece.”

You keep staring at The King of Gotham, uncertain about the stuff being tossed your way: is he lying or telling the truth?... In your line of work translating feelings is a huge part of the job; ultimately you had the best mentor to teach you the ropes when you started with the organization: none other than the legendary Baba Yaga. Despite his reputation and to your own amazement, John was one of the few hitmen with integrity and perfectly mastered the aptitude of not being a jerk. Such a rare gem… And blissfully unaware of it himself.

On the opposite end, The Joker is a jerk and flawlessly acquainted with his own “captivating” personality that made you fall in love with him anyway.

Also, doesn’t appear to be deceitful for the moment.

And you despise yourself even more for wanting to believe him.

“What… modifications?...” you throw him a bone and J is definitely not going to pass on the alternative of explaining his actions.

“I wanted to surprise you so I took advantage of Miss Black’s capabilities in the art field; I had her add small images to the authentic canvas: an evolution of you being pregnant, the nine frames culminating with a tenth: the new mother holding our son. Similar to a timeline,” he emphasize and you look intrigued, which might be a positive sign. “Needless to say it was tedious, difficult work, especially because she had to apply special pigments you can’t find at every corner of the street. Apparently you can’t mix old paint with contemporary shades, thus I had to order aged, special colors from Italy, Spain and France. That’s why I went to her place so often: I had to supervise the long process and make sure it turns out astonishing. Then…” and The Joker pauses,”…Kase was gone and I didn’t know what to do with my gift: bring it home or not? Would you have loved it? Would it make you sadder? I continued to drive to Evelyn’s and glare at the stupid painting for hours, undecided on what to do…”

J watches you bite on your cheek, then straightens his shoulders as you utter the words:

“… … … You ruined a genuine Monet?”

Your spouse might be a smooth talker when needed, yet he’s not wasting his versatility on this statement:

“I didn’t ruin it; I made it better!”

Silence from both parties. A good or bad omen? Hard to decipher the riddle with two individuals tangled into a relationship that somehow worked despite countless peculiarities meant to keep them apart.

“I have to talk to Jonathan,” you finally mutter and The Joker steps in front of you.

“Talk to me!”

“Unless you know the exact location of the suitcase full of gold coins he’s been safekeeping for me, I really have to speak to him. Or do you want to hammer the whole basement searching for it?”

Y/N walks out of the bedroom and J lingers inside, evesdropping on the conversation happening downstairs. He can’t understand the chat, but you are probably notifying John about the details your husband left out.

Might as well join the party, therefore The Clown pops up in the living room with a plea impossible to refuse:

“Hey Wick, can I stay here? I don’t care if you say no, I’m not going to leave.”

Your friend crosses his arms on his chest, focusing on the random topic:

“How could I deny such a polite request? Of course you can stay Mister Joker; my house is your house.”

You’re watching the free show unamused; usually it would make you smile…now you lack the depth for such connotations.

“Don’t get smart with me, Wick!” J growls and Jonathan pushes for a tiny, unnecessary quarrel.

“I’m not; although generally speaking, I fancy considering myself a smart guy.”

The Joker opens his mouth and you’re not in the mood for whatever the heck they’re initiating:

“I’m going to pump, then after you dig out the suitcase I’ll take half to the Bowery King,” you announce your plans to them.

“You can do that and rest; I’ll deliver the coins,” John immediately offers. “I can stop by Aurelio’s car shop and ask for his collaboration: he has a lot of associates, doesn’t hurt to get him involved. You have plenty of gold.”

“I have two more suitcases in the Continental’s safe and two more at The Penthouse. It doesn’t matter if it’s all gone as long as I can find my son.”

“I know gold coins are preferred; don’t forget we have a lot of money too,” J reckons with spite.

Is he reminding you or Jonathan?...

*************

Your husband spent the last hour in the garden, talking and texting with a lot of people; needless to mention he’s capitalizing on his network also. Winston disclosed Stonneberg’s contract is still opened, meaning the son of a bitch is out there; you have to scoop him before anybody else does.

“Y/N…” The Joker tiptoes in your quarters. “I thought you were taking a nap,” he huffs when he sees you at the edge of the bed.

You glare at the vial on the nightstand, sharing your idea for a future you wish will come true:

“I didn’t have my medicine in two days; I won’t take it anymore because if we get Kase back… I will nurse him. It all goes in the milk and I want to be able to feed my baby… Do you think his little heart is still beating?...” you sniffle and J is currently debating on a clever response since his mind is blank; one could deduce messing up is encoded in his DNA, but on such a huge scale… well, it gives new interpretations to the term even for him.

The grieving woman seeking reassurance for their loss is trying to make sense of the pointless occurrences that lead to Kase being an innocent victim and The Joker can’t render clarification: he has no clue why he asked her to marry him and why she said yes, it’s not that he’s husband material or a family man. Perhaps Y/N thought he could be… just enough to get by, that’s why she accepted his proposal.

Most women would have cringed at the concept. Most women. Not Y/N.

Most women would have flinched at the notion of having his baby. Most women. Not his wife.

Above all, she trusted J with their son and he treated the three weeks old like a trinket: didn’t drive him home because he had an important meeting, didn’t bother to assign escorting cars nor extra security. The King of Gotham took his child’s safety lightly and it definitely had severe consequences. Too late now to fix past mistakes... but he can attempt.

“You’ll be able to nurse him, OK?” he sits by you and hands over his cell. “Can you enter your phone number in here? Or am I not allowed to have the present digits?”

You’re hesitant and he slides the screen while you hold the gadget.

“Lemme help you,” The Joker sarcastically mumbles. “It should be the first on my list, right where the old number you canceled was.”

You exhale and fulfill his demand out of pure frustration when he squeezes in a second innocent petition.

“Chose my avatar.”

You grunt at his rubbish, scrolling through his folders for a picture anyway; J hopes the largest file will get your attention and that’s the point. How could Y/N miss it?!

Entitled “Baby”, the humongous cluster of pics contains 5,723 items. You open it quite absorbed by its size; what’s more puzzling is the collection depicting Kase’s ultrasounds, hundreds of frames with you being pregnant taken without you knowing: there’s a few when your ankles were so swollen you had to sleep with your feet up on 4 pillows, others with you munching on strange food you craved, more with you in the shower focused on your bump, a decent amount of couple selfies when you were sleeping and J had to immortalize the moment without waking you up and approximately 1,500 images of the newborn.

“You didn’t gross me out when you were pregnant,” The Joker reminds a teary Y/N. “Not sure why you would believe such aberration...” he pulls you on his knees and yanks the phone away, tossing it on the nightstand. “I would also like to underline I didn’t have an affair with Miss Black, alright?”

J lifts your chin up, forcing to look at him.

“Let’s put it this way: why would I fuck around with another woman when I have a wife at home that wants to kill me on a regular basis, hm? Where would the fun be? I mean, she didn’t pull the trigger yet but it’s exciting to hope she might. You know me: I’m a sucker for thrills!”

“Do I?”

“Huh?” J steals a kiss and you frown at his sleekness.

“Know you?”

“Yeah,” the green haired Clown acts composed while in fact his feathers are ruffled. Before you catch onto it he has to ultimately admit: “I’m sorry I didn’t drive the car… I should have…”

The Joker holds in his breath when your arms go around his neck very tight.

“I’m suffocating…” he grumbles. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to hug me or choke me to death,” J keeps on caressing your hair, prepared to block your attack in case you’re actually in killing mode.

This is the excitement he was speaking about: with you, one could never know until it’s a done deal.

“I bumped into Magnus at the Continental,” you give him a bit of space to inhale much needed air and The Joker is surprised at your revelation. “I had no idea about his scheme, otherwise I would have skinned him alive right on the hotel grounds! I wouldn’t have cared about the consequences!”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” J cuts you off and he can tell you’re getting mad; maybe you think he doesn’t give a damn but the reason is simple. “You would’ve been declared excommunicado for murder on neutral ground and I don’t want my wife to be the target of such punishment from the company she so proudly retired from. I need my partner!”

The King of Gotham touches your forehead with his as you whisper:

“I hate you!”

“Mmm, regarding this true love affirmation, I’m gonna need you to take a break from detesting me until we have Kase, then you can despise me full throttle again. Deal?” he extends the palm of his hand and you reluctantly shake it, not realizing you’re reacting to his nonsense. “Is that a smile?” J returns the favor with one of his creepy silver grins.

“No.”

“Liar,” he pecks your lips and can’t explain the weird feeling in his heart when you kiss him back.

*************

Jonathan enters the house and becomes suspicious after a few minutes: too much silence.

Omg! Did you and The Joker engaged into a brawling that ended up badly? Did you end each other?!

John frantically runs to the garage, nervous to see your car and J’s are still parked inside. Shit!

“Y/N?” he shouts, concerned about your fate; The Joker’s… irrelevant. Nobody in the garden, patio is empty also. Downstairs is deserted thus he rushes upstairs to your room. The door is not completely shut and he slowly pushes it, knocking.

“Y/N? Can I come in?”

The first thing he notices are clothes scattered on the floor, then he halts his movement at the sight of Y/N and her husband dozing off on the bed sideways: the naked bodies are covered with a blanket, but he can tell you’re snuggled in J’s arms.

Jonathan steps backwards, guilty of invading his guests’ privacy; he certainly didn’t expect to intrude in such a manner and softly closes the door, grateful it’s not what he feared.  

You and The Joker are so worn out the sound of your phones vibrating on the nightstand doesn’t wake you from the deep sleep. Your numerous contacts keep replying back to the text messages, the most important one showing up on his cell: one of the people J reached to is Evelyn Black and the two sentence conversation lights up the screen.

“Let me know if you see Stonnenberg.”

“He’s here.”

 Also read: MASTERLIST

You can follow me on Ao3 and Wattpad under the same blog name: DiYunho.

[caffeineivore]

Back to the Spirits

M/K.

**

All mortal passings are different and sad, Desirée thinks, but this particular one is sad on a whole different level.

That Douglas Townsend was dying of heart failure at the age of eighty-four, this in and of itself was not exceptionally unexpected. The man, who had been a real estate magnate in his heyday, was worth millions, and that point was made exceptionally clear by the lavishly-dressed collection of family members currently crowded into his hospital room. 

“I just don’t understand why this place doesn’t serve bottled mineral water that doesn’t come out of a nasty, filthy vending machine.” Veronica, the dying millionaire’s current wife, gripes as she taps long, manicured nails against the armrest of her chair. She doesn’t look a day over thirty-five, and her cardinal-red wool Gucci coat echoes the red bottoms of her Louboutin pumps perfectly. “I am on a strict hydration schedule that I absolutely cannot deviate from. Why, my beautician would eat me alive!”

“Even your beautician won’t be able to give you class, no matter how much you pay her,” Violet, the first wife, mutters from her spot by the window. Older, with deep lines of discontent bracketing her eyes and mouth, she shoots the dying man a venomous look. “I expected a midlife crisis out of you, Dougie. Made damn sure I was ready for it, but two of them in ten years? And with her? She’s a year younger than our daughter! How do you think that makes Clarissa feel?”

“I don’t give a shit, mom,” Clarissa pipes up from a few feet away in a bored tone. “That’s what the very expensive therapist I spend two hours with every week exists for. I just want to get this done and over with. Hunter and I are flying out to Bali in two days. Second honeymoon. I can’t wait.”

The second wife, Valerie, largely ignores the sniping and maintains an icy silence from her own chair, wrapped up in a full-length mink coat with the languid air of a fashionable invalid who could hardly bear to breathe in hospital air. Every so often, she’d emit a tiny, dry, singular little cough. Also scattered around the room in various states of boredom are members of the third generation, ranging from toddler to teenager, almost every last one of whom is fiddling with the latest model iPhone. One girl in her teens keeps roaming the room, searching for the best spot and optimal lighting to take a selfie. Another is engaged in a viciously hissed argument with perhaps a boyfriend. There are more than a dozen people crowded into a small hospital room, and not one of them seems to truly care about the dying man outside of what they would be inheriting.

The very air of the room feels toxic, a miasmic cesspool of greed and entitlement and snobbery, and Desirée shivers and wraps both arms around herself as she edges over to Douglas Townsend’s bed, carefully stepping around a knot of bickering family members speculating over the dying man’s will. He has been on life support for the last few days, but just as she sidles up to the bed, his eyes blink open for a moment. His had been a life full of luxury and privilege, but not, in the end, a life well-lived or at all well-loved. Perhaps he realizes it, too, because as his gaze meets hers, a single tear tracks down one sunken cheek. He doesn’t say anything, though, and for once, Desirée has no words of comfort for him. In the common idiom, he’d made his bed and now lay in it, alone to his final rest. His eyes close a moment later without a single word, and it takes several minutes before the acrimonious family members to register the source of the newest sound in the room-- the drone of a life support machine flat-lining. 

Suddenly, there’s a woosh of air, like a cold winter wind, lifting strands of Desirée’s golden hair and none-too-gently yanking off the baseball cap on one of the boys’ heads. Time seems to stand still in that moment, teenagers’ fingers frozen mid-movement over their phones, mouths still open mid-sentence with no words coming out, stricken silent. The machine drones on, but over it, as though through some invisible intercom, comes a voice-- deep and measured and familiar, yet somehow wrathful in its very calmness. 

“For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.” 

No one speaks; perhaps they’d been rendered mute, or perhaps they are, justly, terrified. All three of the dead man’s former wives share panic-stricken glances at each other, but no one moves. 

“Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.”

There are far too many people in the room; more than once, in the last few hours, harried-looking doctors and nurses had tried, in vain, to tell the family members that it was against hospital policy to crowd thusly in there, only to be told in very disagreeable tones that “our family owns half this building”. There should be no way for Kafziel to walk in, blindingly white wings unfurled, brandishing a sword aglow with fiery light, without crashing into people everywhere. And yet somehow he does, his face terrible and beautiful as he makes a beeline for her, mouth enunciating the words that echo about the cramped hospital room as though it had cathedral ceilings. His eyes gentle, though, once he reaches her, and the wings and sword blink out of view as he holds out his hand. Desirée lays her palm over his, and lets him lead her out, and it is only after she crosses the threshold that slowly, gingerly, the family members of Douglas Townsend seem to come back to life, pale and subdued now in a shadow of their former pretentious selves. With shaking hands, one of the former wives reaches for the call button to summon the medical team.

Kafziel walks quickly, up and down the brightly-lit corridors, though not so quickly that Desirée can’t keep up. “Where are we going?” 

“Away from here for a bit.” He doesn’t quite touch the main doors, but it springs open, and then they’re out in the starlit night. It’s wintertime and the wind lifts her hair, and by all rights, she should feel cold, but standing at Kafziel’s side, the chill is nothing but a breeze. “Death can be a mercy for some, a terror for others. And sometimes, it’s nothing but a meaningless end to a meaningless life.” His somber gray eyes meet Desirée’s blue ones. “Do not let them sadden you, little one.”

“It’s just that... he could have had such a wonderful life. He wanted for nothing. All of them wanted for nothing,” Desirée sighs as they made their way down the sidewalk. At this late hour, though there are still people, it is not at all crowded. No one makes any eye contact as he leads her down the street. “Ultimately, all he might have accomplished in life is in there being divided up like a side of pork at the hands of an army of merciless butchers all out to get the fattiest piece. Do you think he saw this as his end?”

“I don’t think that he wanted for nothing,” Kafziel says reflectively. “He certainly had money, and power, and perhaps even respect at times. But love passed him by-- both the giving and the receiving. Ultimately, he died a poor man in what ways truly matter.”

His hand is warm and sure against her lower back, and he gently ushers her down the stairs of the nearest subway station. At this hour, it isn’t too packed, and the car they get in has enough room in it that there are actually open seats. Neither of them take one, though, and a heavyset woman trundles into the one closest to where Kafziel is standing. 

“She works at a very popular pizza parlour.” Kafziel follows Desirée’s gaze towards the woman, whom, upon closer inspection, seems to have a smudge of flour on one cheek. and wears sensible non-slip shoes. “She’s been there for the last twenty years. Her husband works the first shift at a factory. She takes the kids-- they have three-- to school in the morning before heading to work, and he picks them up when he gets back. It’s not an easy life, but they’re happy with it.”

The train rolls from one station to the next, and in the quiet, soothing tones of someone telling a cherished loved one a bedtime story, Kafziel gives her bits and pieces about the people that come on and disembark. The teenaged boy, all bravado under his Yankees beanie and headphones, was taking classes at the local college, studying to be an engineer. He was meeting up with a few friends that night, and there was a girl that he liked who might be there. The grizzled old man reading the newspaper owned a corner store, and the highlight of his week was seeing his grandchildren at church every Sunday, after which they’d go have lunch at a diner and play checkers. 

It’s fascinating and strangely comforting, all these miniscule slices of eclectic mortal life, and as the train car goes on, Desirée gets caught up in the fun of it, and makes her own speculations about the people. She’s usually wrong, but Kafziel simply gives her a faint smile and tells her the truth about them. 

“She’s a teacher, or a social worker-- some profession focused on helping people find their best selves. Happy in love. Not a New Yorker born and raised, but she’s come to love this place as her home. No children yet, but she’d love to have them someday, have a cozy home with a daughter and perhaps a cat.” With almost a giggle, Desirée rattles off her imagined version of the life story of the latest passenger-- a trim blonde in a pink peacoat with a pretty, friendly face. But as soon as she’s done, she catches Kafziel’s eye, and he’s looking at her rather speculatively.

“You’re right about everything with her,” he says, after a moment of almost-awkward silence. “Her name is Angela Schein-- though, Angela King, now. She’s actually the wife of one of the doctors at the hospital. One of the intake physicians at the ER, whom you like fairly well.”

Desirée’s startled gaze meets his. She knows instinctually which doctor Kafziel is referring to-- the young, dark-haired one with the kind blue eyes-- and for that, she gives the blonde woman another look. If kindness and goodness were visible, she’d all but radiate it like a glowing beacon. It’s almost a breath of fresh air in spirit, clearing away the stench of materialism and selfishness from Douglas Townsend’s deathbed, and she wonders for a moment if Kafziel knew that Angela would be on this train at this hour. She wouldn’t put it past him. 

“So you see, do not despair.” Kafziel’s voice is softer than ever, a far cry from the ringing, unearthly wrath he’d unleashed upon the ears of the Townsend clan. “There is good left in the world, greater and stronger ever than the evil. Do not let the unworthy ones dishearten you.” His hand draws her just a little closer, and between that and the steady rhythm of the train, she finds her comfort. 

An indiscernible amount of stops later, they disembark with the last passengers at the final stop, walk at a leisurely pace through the subway station. They pause in front of a ragged dirty-blond urchin of a young man, strumming a guitar and singing in a surprisingly sweet and tuneful tenor. 

“Sail on silver girl Sail on by Your time has come to shine All your dreams are on their way See how they shine Oh, if you need a friend I'm sailing right behind Like a bridge over troubled water I will ease your mind Like a bridge over troubled water I will ease your mind...” 

The last time she’d heard someone playing music in front of her had been in a ballroom, at a society event where she’d danced with several eligible young men. It had been before her marriage to Antoine, and waltzing about in a pretty gown had been exciting for a young girl full on the lease of life. The present is nowhere near as elegant, and yet, with Kafziel’s hand clasping hers, it feels warmer and more intimate, the words sung seeming just for her. It’s neither the time nor place to stand up on tiptoe and twirl, and Desirée does neither. But she knows, without him saying so, that he’d understand if she did. He says nothing, but drops a crisp hundred-dollar bill in the young man’s battered guitar case, not to be noticed until later, and they walk away as silently as they had approached.

When they make it above-ground, it is to the majestic sight of the Brooklyn Bridge, a brilliantly-lit focal point at the forefront of the Manhattan skyline against a backdrop of ink-black night. There’s a brisk breeze coming up from the water and Kafziel draws her close, wrapping both arms around her shoulders. “Hold on to me,” he whispers into the crown of her hair, and she clenches her fingers around the soft material of his shirt as his feet leave the pavement with a rush of wind. Desirée untucks her face from his shoulder a few moments to see that they’re at the very top of the bridge tower. Underneath them, both pedestrian and motor traffic cross the bridge in both directions, a terrifying height below. The water below is dark and undoubtedly cold, and the spot they’re standing must be precarious at best.

And yet, she has never felt safer. Perhaps that, too, had been a plan on Kafziel’s part. The song of the busker, the unspoken message in the strength of the arms holding her. Desirée isn’t facing him, but she hopes that he can see her smile, nonetheless. 

In the morning, perhaps, there will be another death at Bellevue, bringing with it more sorrow and pain, or perhaps relief and rest. It would be another day. 

She would think, though, of the beauty of another sunrise. 

[markrichardson]

My Year in Spotify Listening

Like a lot of people I checked out the Spotify year-end summary thingy, and since Spotify is only a certain percentage of my listening, the results were surprising, and I tried to figure out what it meant. In general, I listen to new music via iTunes, if I am sent promos. That only encompasses a certain amount of new music of course, but if I’m sent a download, I tend to use that for my listening all year long. Often, I’m “done with” an album more or less by the time it comes out, but sometimes I’ll keep listening (as w/ DJ Koze this year) and I do that with my promo files. My Spotify listening tends to be a mix of things I stick on a few different playlists based on mood or genre, and they could come from anywhere (but they aren’t usually new). 

In terms of my favorite artists (Bill Evans wound up in my top spot, somehow, followed by Joni Mitchell) it was hard to figure out how it’d happened, because I didn’t spend the year obsessed with either. Then I looked at my 100 most played songs, and that did bring back a few things. I’m not sure if the whole list is in order, but the first 5 songs in the playlist are the 5 listed when Spotify gave me my most-listened-to tracks of the year, so I think so? Anyway, that’s what I am going with here. This is how my Top 10 songs show up on the playlist, in order, with one exception: in the middle of the list was Bow Wow Wow’s “See Jungle,” which I already wrote about on Tumblr 8 years ago (and about which I have very little to say now, except that yes I do still listen to this song a fair amount), so I’ve omitted that and included No. 11. 

Wussy: “Runaway” This was my favorite song of the year, it has 600 plays on Youtube and 5,400 on Spotify, which makes me a little sad. Technically it’s not from this year—Wussy put this out on a small-release tape or CD-R a few years ago—but I’m still counting it. This is the rare case where the streaming media playcounts tend to match the responses of folks I’ve talked to about this song—I mentioned to 4 or 5 people, and in each case they said “Yeah that’s kind of nice I guess...why do you like it so much?” I’ll try to answer that here.  

First I should say that I have no real interest in or knowledge of Wussy. They’re an indie rock band from Ohio, most notable at this point for the fact that Robert Christgau loves them, and has written rapturous reviews of their work over the years, which surely has helped them to achieve whatever small amount of notoriety they have. I checked them out here and there but they didn’t make much of an impression on me. I wish I could remember how I came across this particular song, but I can’t, probably either Twitter or a streaming media algorithm. But I loved it immediately, like, stop-what-you-are-doing-and-listen kind of loved. It just clicked. 

The first thing that comes to mind is the chorus: “I love you, let’s run away.” That’s the theme of so many of my favorite songs, I mean, the first album I bought in my life was “Born to Run,” and if you could sum up the first three Springsteen albums in in 6 words, “I love you, let’s run away” wouldn’t be bad. And I think I liked that this song didn’t try for poetic phrasing, just said it in the simplest way possible.

But the romance of a song like this has a shade of darkness to it, and that draws me in even more. Escape is never a long-term strategy. Eventually you have to figure out how to make life work when you’re in the thick of it. So while it’s such an appealing dream to exit the world with someone you’re crazy about, there is a shelf life to that sort of gesture. I relate to this idea of being fed up with everything in the moment and wanting to jump in the car with the only person who gets you, but eventually, the car is is going to need gas. What then? 

I didn’t know when I first heard this song that it was a cover, so the immediate impact of it was as a Wussy song. But I learned that it was written and recorded by another Ohio artist that people in the band had known, a woman named Jenny Mae. She died last year. Pitchfork did a news story on her passing. She was 49. And when I found that it was her song, I listened to her version and I loved it almost as much (but not quite), though her take also made my Spotify Top 20. I did think enough of her version to order the 7-inch, which was her first release. When I read about Jenny Mae’s life, the song took on another layer of meaning. She suffered from mental illness and self-medicated with alcohol. And she was described by people who knew her as brilliant and creative and hilarious but also impulsive and self-destructive. Which for me gives a sentiment like “No one likes us anyway / I hate my job / Sweet, sweet are the innocent / I love you, let’s run away” and “40 ounce between your legs/ Shakin up my heart / Turn around and look at me / Light another smoke” a different tint. These are the kinds of things you say when in the throes of a rush of feeling, but they’re not impulses you can safely follow for a lifetime, even though goddammit, sometimes I want to.

Bo Diddley: “Nursery Rhyme” In Richmond early this year I bought an old Bo Diddley album called The Originator. I saw it in a used bin, it was $20, and, it was pure instinct, I had a feeling it was interesting. For me, buying used records, $20 is a fair amount of money, I don’t pay that for something I’ve no idea about, typically. But something compelled me to pick it up. I was intrigued that it had none of the hits I knew. And I took it home and when I put it on a short while later it blew my mind. This surprised me because on the one hand it sounds so much like the idea of “Bo Diddley” I keep in my brain, the one rhythm we know from the song he named after himself, but this was just so controlled, so well rendered, with so much atmosphere. The whole thing is brilliant. I became particularly obsessed with this cut from the record, and then I started exploring the “Bo Diddley” beat in general, reading whatever I could about it and listening to examples. This kind of random deep-dive is the best thing about the internet era for a music fan. 

Mulatu Asatke: “Tezeta (Nostalgia” At nights when I hang out with my Mom at her condo in Michigan I play music over a Bluetooth speaker I bought a year ago. My Mom’s default has for a while been to put the television on, but at some point I asked her about playing music instead so we could talk or just hang out, and she grew to like it. Sometimes we’ll chat about stuff, and sometimes she will play Candy Crush on her iPad while I do things on my phone, which sounds distant but is actually very comforting to me. One of the things I’m doing on my phone during these evenings is finding songs to play. It’s quite fun (and interesting) for me to say to myself “What is a playlist that would make my Mom happy?” and then try and figure out what that might be on the fly. She was never really a music person so I don’t have a lot to go on, mostly her age, a story or two about a song she liked, and a vague knowledge of what she might have heard on the radio in my lifetime. 

In September, my Dad died, and I stayed with my Mom in her condo for a number of days that month. I felt a strange mix of feelings. On the one hand, he was father, I missed him, I thought about never being able to talk to him again, to not be able to share the things in my life. I thought about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to learn more about his life, my knowledge of which is pretty sketchy. There were all the usual things a person would be sad about. But then there was the fact that he had a severe and debilitating case of Parkinson’s disease for the last eight years, and at times he suffered so terribly. I remembered how on a few occasions he called me while he was delusional, he would tell me that he was sure he was going to die. One time, he told me that he saw someone in the driveway who was going to kill him. Another time, he said that it was hard to explain but that he had been split into two people, and he couldn’t take it, he was terrified. I told him that it would be better tomorrow and he yelled, “I’m going to be dead by tomorrow!” I would get calls like this while I was walking to work in Brooklyn 700 miles away, and I would feel so helpless. And so when he passed, I thought about him during situations like that, and also felt like maybe not he had some peace. 

A night or two after my Dad died I was sitting with my Mom, talking, and playing music. She dug out some old photos and we were looking at them, pictures from her in high school that I had never seen. I wanted to see everything, learn every detail. And over that Bluetooth speaker I was playing some random playlist I had found called something like “Jazz for late night.” I wanted background music. And while we were hanging out and talking, this song came on, “Tezeta” by the Ethiopian jazz bandleader Mulatu Astatke. And man, it’s hard to describe, but the mood of this song so perfectly captured the exact feeling I had. The phrase that comes to mind is “bombed out,” that’s the way it seemed, like I’d been beaten up and thrown in a ditch and my ears were ringing and now I was trying to reorient myself after all that had happened. There was a feeling of weariness and sadness but also a feeling that life continues, that we have to gather our memories and keep on. And this impossibly beautiful song captured every bit of that, the one-chord riff moving ahead, in spite of it all, while the sax line captures all the sadness dripping off everything at the same time. I listened to it constantly in the weeks afterward.  

Galaxie 500: “Fourth of July” (live) One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite band in my favorite version. This song is indicative of how (as with all songs on this list) when I’m in the mood I can listen to one track over and over. On a couple of occasions in 2018, I listened to this maybe 8 or 9 times in a row, immediately hitting “back” when it had finished. And the thing I was typically listening to was Naomi Yang’s bassline, which to me holds the lion’s share of the song’s feeling. Her bass playing in Galaxie 500 is so incredibly emotional to me, and it was never more so than here. 

Pusha T: “Infrared” The one truly “new” song on here.” I didn’t have an advance of this record so I listened on Spotify when it came out and I loved it. And this song in particular seemed so perfect, the carefully constructed rap, executed as if it’s coming off the top of his head, the sample—I listened to this many times in a row on a few occasions, and it also sent me to revisit Clipse, which brought me a lot of joy. 

Joni Mitchell: “Carey” Another song about freedom, but here it’s real. Blue is a perfect record but I probably revisit this one more than any other single song because I’m so in love with the production—that bass, that hand percussion...sonically, an album recorded almost 50 years ago simply cannot be improved upon. I remember hearing this one on AM radio when I was very young. It was a single, b/w “This Flight Tonight,” one hell of a 7-inch. I’ve always thought the picture it painted was so incredibly romantic—”Maybe I’ll go to Amsterdam, maybe I’ll go to Rome / And rent me a grand piano and put flowers 'round my room.” Hey, why not! And if Carey is indeed keeping her in this tourist town, we know it’s only for another hour, another day, another week, whenever she’s ready, she can’t be tied down. But then, that’s the future: this night, now, is a starry dome, and we’re alive, inside it. 

Arthur Russell: “That’s Us/Wild Combination” Sometimes w/ my favorite Arthur Russell songs you can hear the strain as he creates a new genre trying to get a particular unnamable feeling across. But not this one. Sitting in a room with his friend Jennifer Warnes he made a song that feels as natural as a breath. 

Carole King: “Pleasant Valley Sunday” I’m in awe of Carole King’s ability to write songs that sound perfect on the radio. Even if her prime hitmaking years only lasted a bit over a decade, the number of her songs with her name on them that left a huge mark on culture is staggering. Her demo for the Monkees hit “Pleasant Valley Sunday” shows how perfect everything was before the artist who would bring the song to the public got anywhere near it. I found this one on Youtube 8 or 9 years ago and it’s been in regular rotation since. 

Hank Williams: “The Angel of Death” In February and March I was doing research my Pitchfork Sunday Review on Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. It’s one of my favorite records, and I’ve wanted to write something long on it for years, so spending time w/ it as the winter wound down was an intense pleasure. It’s common knowledge that Springsteen was listening to a lot of Hank Williams when he was writing the album, and when I came across this song, I became obsessed with it. One, the melody sounds right off Nebraska, and “My Father’s House” (another song I listened to a lot this year) especially seems directly modeled on it. But this song has so much going for it on its own. It’s about death and the moment of judgement, but Hank’s melody and phrasing don’t sound frightened. It’s hopeful, a prayer instead of an admonishment. 

Guided by Voices: “Motor Away” I’ve loved this song for years but I listened to it intently around the same time I was playing the Hank Williams, when I was thinking about leaving Pitchfork. I’ve never been a big fan of Robert Pollard’s lyrics (though I love many of his tunes), but he second line here is the one I couldn’t put out of my mind: “When you free yourself from the chance of a lifetime.” That’s where I felt I was. Editing this music magazine that I cared so much about was the culmination of a dream that took a long time, a ton of work, and a fair amount of luck to realize. When the chance of a lifetime comes along, you’re supposed to hold on to it as tightly as possible for as long as possible, until someone finally pries it away, which will happen eventually. I knew that. And yet, deep down, I knew that after 11 years, I wanted to try something else. Run away, motor away, drive away. Sometimes a song can give you the tiniest push.

[ifyouresure]

for the girl who had everything

a little post-season add-on.

spoilers for the season 2 finale of supergirl.

AO3

—

A day after Lillian Luthor takes credit for saving the planet, the Tribune publishes an article that names Lena Luthor as Earth’s saviour.

An anonymous source lets slip to the press that it was really L-Corp that dispersed the lead that drove away the invaders – the DEO agrees that keeping that particular secret isn’t worth all the support and good press Cadmus would receive if the truth didn’t get out.

Kara pens the article, and conducts the interview with Lena. With the destruction of National City only barely avoided and everyone wanting to know exactly what happened, it ends up being the most desirable exclusive since Cat nabbed that interview with Supergirl all those years ago, when people didn’t even know who Supergirl was. When Lena Luthor was just a footnote in the stories about her brother Lex.

Cat is back—and wow, Kara will never get tired of saying that, Cat is back—and she probably wants to break the story herself, but with that little smile she gets on her face sometimes, and a brisk “chop, chop”, she sends Kara on her way. Kara would like to believe it’s because Cat thinks Kara is really coming into her own—to be fair, she is, and Cat does think that—but Kara is certain it’s actually because she’s the only one who’s been able to get Lena to agree to an interview.

In the morning, Kara had called the number she has for Lena’s office three times, and each time the line had been busy – publications clamouring for a quote, probably. Only when Jess had texted her with a Just call her personal number, had Kara finally given in and called Lena’s cellphone.

Lena picked up on the first ring. Her voice had been so soft, and kind, and it had been so much, too much, not enough. Kara still shivers, when she thinks about it, still gets that racing warmth up her spine, like curling up under a blanket at home after a long day away.

That’s how Kara feels now, with the article published, alone in her empty apartment after being shoo’d away from work, with nothing but the thought of what happened two days ago and the memory of her name in Lena’s voice for company.

J’onn warns Kara and Cat himself that the DEO is not to be mentioned in the paper, and Winn returns to L-Corp to tell Lena the same. Even still, when Kara asks Lena what everyone’s been wondering – how she did it, how she saved the world, Lena puts on a humble smile—she’s always so humble—and says in that tone that’s just a little self-deprecating: “I had a lot of help.

“You wouldn’t believe how many people are out there every day, trying to protect this city,” she tells Kara, all the while staring straight at her, leaning forward, her head tilted just so. “People who jump into the path of danger and face it head on, just so the rest of us can feel safe.” Lena, Kara notes, does not include herself in that group of people. “The citizens of National City also deserve praise for their enduring courage and strength. And of course,” she says, lightly now, but serious, “the Cat Grants out there who inspire the rest of us to be hopeful.”

Last Thanksgiving, Lena had saved the aliens in National City when she rendered the Medusa virus that was spread across the city inert; this time, with a weapon in her hands that could exile her brother’s greatest rival, that would drive Supergirl away, she chose to do what was best for the Earth instead. Kara thinks that’s sort of poetic, in a way she can’t really put into words; not in this article, at least.

Off the record, as if she knows what Kara’s thinking, Lena says, “My mother synthesized a virus that would have gone on to kill most of the aliens in the world. My brother created a weapon that would have rid it of the rest. Sometimes,” she confesses, “I worry I’m not so different.”

“You saved us,” Kara counters, before clearing the ache from her throat. “You saved all of us.” Lena had smiled oddly at that, and said nothing.

Fleetingly, Kara wondered, in spite of what Lillian had said, whether Lena knew. Whether, when she’d given Supergirl the remote that might decide the fate of the planet, she’d also given Kara the ability to choose her own personal happiness.

(“Did you know he was dating Kara Danvers?”)

If Lena had known … Kara didn’t know what to think of that. So she didn’t.

At the end of the interview, when Kara is just Kara, when she’s just Lena’s best friend, when Kara loves Lena—and she loves Lena, always—Kara tells her how sincerely proud of her she is, how she thinks Lena is absolutely incredible, how Lena is so unfailingly good.

Lena smiles again, and says, quietly, “Thank you, Kara.”

When the elevator to bring Kara back down to the lobby arrives on Lena’s floor with a ding, and only after the doors have shut behind her, she hears Lena whisper to herself, so softly that even Kara has to wonder whether she’s imagining it: “I’m selfish. I am so, so selfish.”

Along with the interview, Kara includes a little addendum wherein Supergirl enthusiastically praises Lena, just as Lena had been so eager to praise everyone but herself.

Lena is on the cover of CatCo magazine the very next day. The issue sells faster than any issue ever printed before it, second only to Supergirl’s debut.

There’s something poetic about that, too.

-

It’s funny, how the city only ever seems to sleep when Kara wishes it were awake.

National City is calm in the aftermath of the attempted alien invasion – it’s like somebody actually slipped law-abiding serum into the city’s water reservoir this time. That, or there’s just something about catastrophe and suffering that brings out the best in people. After Myriad, there had been a period of calm, too, one that had lasted for weeks and weeks, up until the celebration at Kara’s apartment, when the pod—

Kara is at a standstill. It’s like time has stopped, and nothing she does will ever make it move again.

L-Corp and CatCo band together to organize the downtown restoration effort. Between the popularity of Lena’s interview, Supergirl’s fight with Rhea, and Cat’s speech, the three of them manage to attract half the city to help. It’s something, at least, something that sits warm and alive in Kara's chest, when she arrives in her supersuit and watches the citizens of National City work together to rebuild it, humans and aliens alike, working side by side.

They carry on until the sun is purple and bruised in the sky. Cat does what she does best, directs people when they’re lost, tells them what to do when they aren’t sure. Kara gathers the other aliens with super strength to do the heavy lifting, brings people together like she does metal with her heat vision.

And Lena – Lena keeps everything in order, provides support whenever it’s needed, does absolutely everything within her power to help.

Kara doesn’t think Lena has ever done anything for herself, not once. Not when she betrayed her mother, or, Rao, when she pressed that key and sacrificed Jack to save Supergirl.

From a few yards away, Lena catches Kara’s eye as she’s talking to a group of volunteers. She smiles prettily, and Kara stares and stares, until she’s not sure if the sympathy she finds in Lena’s face is real or not. Kara can’t imagine what Lena could possibly mean when she calls herself selfish.

When the sun sets and everyone turns in for the day, after Kara watches Lena shake hands with as many people as she can, a car drives Lena back to her office. That’s where Kara finds her later, when she lands on her balcony: Lena at her desk, bent over her laptop with a mountain of paperwork. She gets up to let Kara in when she knocks.

“Isn’t the work ever done?” Kara teases after stepping inside.

“For a Luthor?” Lena grins, and she pauses just long enough for Kara to wonder. “I’m afraid not.” She sits back down at her desk and shuffles her papers. “There’s still so much to do, and National City won’t rebuild itself, Supergirl.”

“Not if you don’t rest, it won’t,” Kara replies gently. “You must be exhausted, Lena. You should get some sleep.”

Lena smiles, distracted. “I should,” she says, even as she scrolls through a document on her laptop. They don’t say anything for a while, and a companionable silence settles over them.

“Thank you, by the way,” Lena says after some time, holding up the latest issue of CatCo magazine, “you flatter me.” Kara tenses up, not at all expecting those words while wearing her supersuit. She only relaxes a little when she remembers the quotes.

“Of course,” Kara replies. “I was just telling the truth.”

“You were very generous. At any rate, I think this will go a long way toward regaining the city’s trust after I brought about the invasion,” Lena says dryly.

“None of that was your fault,” Kara interjects quickly. “Everything you’ve done has been to help others.”

“And yet, I always seem to be doing such a poor job of it,” Lena says, only half-joking.

“Don’t say that,” Kara insists. “All we can do is our best, and I know you’re doing everything you can. You’re a hero, Lena.”

Lena looks unconvinced, but she purses her lips uncertainly and nods, looking back down at the work on her desk.

“Can I ask you something?” Kara asks, after the rigid shape of Lena’s body has softened.

“Yes,” Lena answers.

“Why did you give me the remote?”

It’s about as close to asking Lena what she meant without asking her outright, and Lena seems to realize that – that Supergirl had somehow heard what Lena said to herself after Kara Danvers left her office. That, if she liked, she could take the out Kara’s given her. That this is about as close to a confession as she’ll get from Kara. For now, at least.

“Besides the very real possibility that my murderous mother would jump the gun?” Lena jokes weakly. Kara doesn’t say anything, and Lena stares for a moment, silent, before nodding slowly, like she had expected nothing less. Her watch clicks against the surface of her desk.

“You know,” Lena whispers quietly, as if the room would shatter if she spoke any louder, “I still think about that night last year. When you begged me not to turn the key my mother gave me. When the fate of the city rested in the palm of my hand.” She closes her eyes. “When you told me to be my own hero.”

Kara nods even though Lena can’t see, listening intently. Lena eases her laptop shut, and when she opens her eyes again, they’re almost black in the absence of light.

“Then, there was Jack, and you were dying, and you—you both kept calling my name.” Lena stands, stepping out from behind her desk and walking over to her bar so that Kara can only see her profile. She braces her hands against it, hunched over. Lena laughs bitterly. “And then, god, the remote.

“I never asked for any of this,” she says. “I never asked for all these choices and all this power. I’ve had the whole world in my hands more times than I can remember, and I don’t understand why.” The wood under her hands groans under her weight. Kara wishes, briefly, that she’d turn around. “Every time I try to do the right thing, it’s never enough. It’s like I’m being tested over and over again, and nothing I say or do will ever prove that I can be trusted. I’m so tired, Kara.”

Kara startles at the use of her name, then shudders as that familiar warmth prickles up her back. “Lena—” she begins, without really knowing what she’s going to say.

“And they’re right,” Lena goes on quietly, so that Kara almost doesn’t hear. She stops speaking immediately. “I can’t be trusted. Because it’s so tempting, each and every time, to make the choice that would bring me happiness, to do the selfish thing.” Lena grips the ends of the bar tightly, her frown heavy on her face, her shoulder blades protruding sharply from under her blouse; she’s still wearing the dirt-stained one she had on earlier. “To do what my mother wants so that she’ll finally love me,” she says, breathing harshly, “to let you die so that Jack and I could be together.” She turns away, so that Kara can only see the back of her head, her hair sweeping softly across her shoulders; even now, as sad and angry and despondent as Lena is—as sad and angry as Kara is—Kara can’t help thinking of how lovely that motion is, can’t help remembering the last time they’d hugged, hyperaware of her arm around Lena’s neck, Lena’s hair brushing against it.

Kara doesn’t know what to say; she can only think of how determined she had been, when she was fighting Superman, how determined she was to live, how tightly she’d held Alex in her arms when she flew the three of them to the Fortress of Solitude.

How Kara has not once in her life protected Kal-El the way her mother had wanted her to.

“And, worst of all, the remote,” Lena says again, her shoulders scrunched up around her ears.

“You wanted to kill us?” Kara guesses, voice kind and not at all accusatory. “Me and Superman?”

Lena laughs, loud and sudden. “No,” she says. “No. What I wanted …” She doesn’t move or speak for a minute.

“I couldn’t have that temptation in my hands again,” she says instead. “To click that button when there was another option. To click it too soon because I … because if he was gone, then maybe I …”

Without a single word of warning, Lena swipes her hand roughly across her bar. A decanter of scotch and several glasses fall in an earsplitting cascade of crashes against the floor, and Kara would jump, if she wasn’t frozen on her feet, as if, one by one, Lena’s words had pinned her to the spot.

Golden liquor splatters around the room, against the walls and Lena’s desk and even Kara’s boots. A million shards of glass skitter in every direction; a few jump back at Lena and scrape her legs, but she pays them no mind.

“Because when we touched,” she says finally, facing Kara again, and all of Lena is resigned – the droop in her shoulders, the tone of her voice, the sad little curl of her lips, “when we hugged, it was like the world was in my hands again, and the temptation was too much, and I could have it all, I could have it all, I could have it all.”

Kara swallows hard. She remembers the sparring session with Clark, before the fight. For a brief, shining moment, she’d had everything she ever wanted—family, friends, a job she enjoyed, people she loved—and she had been so afraid of losing it all.

Lena had already lost it all.

Blood trickles slowly from the cuts on Lena’s shins, and she looks at Kara, smiling ruefully. “I wouldn’t be able to bear the praise, if people knew. If I had clicked that button to save the Earth when, all the while, I would know I was also doing it for myself. So, I was selfish. I gave you the remote, so that I wouldn’t have to make that choice, so that I wouldn’t have to bear that burden. So that, when the time came,” Lena says, taking an unsteady breath, “you could bear it instead.”

An eternity passes before either of them moves again and, even then, it’s only Lena, who walks carefully back to the balcony door and leaves it ajar, glass tinkling beneath her feet on her way over. Then, she gathers her things at her desk, folds her jacket carefully over her arm, and slings her purse on. Lena passes Kara on her way out, and only when she’s halfway out the door to her office does she speak again.

“So, forgive me,” Lena says, her voice smooth and calm – beautiful, even, “if I don’t want to be called a hero.”

-

Kara doesn’t call Lena for five days. Lena doesn’t call at all.

Weeks and weeks pass, and Kara goes through the motions. She goes to work during the day, writes little puff-pieces about the new dog shelter on Parada, because National City is still in nearly crime-free stasis. At lunch, Kara walks past Cat’s glass office to eat on the sunlit terrace, and Cat throws her this look, this pinched grimace; it’s only a matter of time before she calls Kara into her office and asks her why she looks like someone ran over her four cats.

In the summer, the sun sets at about eight in the evening. Kara sits in her window to watch it every day. Five minutes after the sky goes dark, Kara texts Lena. She tells her about her day, tells her something funny Winn did at the DEO, relays one of Cat’s more impressive insults. Then, she asks Lena about her day, how she’s doing, how work on the transmat portal is going, because Kara hasn’t allowed herself to go see Lena, not when Lena so obviously doesn’t want to see her. She wishes Lena well, and doesn’t say anything else after that because, even though it’s late in the evening, Lena is probably still at her office, working.

At the end of the day, Kara goes to sleep. The sun rises at about six in the morning, and Kara lies in bed to watch the sky light up, and she repeats her routine all over again.

Every night, the sun sets a little earlier than it had the day before, and rises later the next. Some days, Winn is off in his own little world, grinning at a text from Lyra on his phone; on the days Carter visits the office, Cat’s words soften. Some days, all Kara says is good night.

Lena never texts back. It’s the single thing that never shifts in Kara’s life, the constant point around which everything else revolves.

“Kiera!”

“Yes, Ms. Grant?”

“Why does your face,” Cat says without looking up, her hand twirling in a vague circle, “look as if someone ran over your cats?”

Kara sighs. “I don’t have cats, Ms. Grant.” Cat waves her hand dismissively. “It’s, uhm, I’m just …”

“Surely you aren’t still moping about your boyfriend. From what I’ve heard, he’s not even worth your time.” Kara doesn’t say anything, and Cat looks up. “Well?” she says, gentler now.

“It’s …” Kara doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know how to explain to Cat how, the more Kara misses Lena, the less she seems to miss Mon-El. Like Lena’s absence has gradually replaced his. Like the hole he left in her heart has morphed and changed, and there’s only one thing that can fill it now.

And she misses Mon-El, she does, but she also doesn’t think he’s ever cared so much, felt as bad about something he did as Lena does. And Lena didn’t—Lena hasn’t done anything. She literally gave Kara the remote so that she couldn’t do anything. And if that’s Lena’s version of selfish, well, Kara has to wonder who raised her to think like that.

Then again, she really doesn’t.

But Lena doesn’t answer Kara’s calls, and Lena doesn’t reply to her texts, and Lena is just gone, where, before, she was everywhere, and Kara doesn’t think she was taking Lena for granted before—she’s not sure she will ever take anything for granted, not when it can all be gone in a second—but it’s different, now that Kara doesn’t have her.

The truth is, Kara has never had a friend quite like Lena before, either. Family, sure – in fact, Alex and Lena are startlingly similar in so many ways: so unwilling to see the best in themselves, never doing anything in their own self-interest, and always, always thinking of others, and thinking of Kara. But friends?

Kara has never had friends like Lena.

Cat has that look on her face now, the one that’s half concerned that Kara has been standing in her office and hasn’t said a word for an entire minute, and half irritated that Kara is still in her office and hasn’t said a word for an entire minute. Kara almost tells her that it’s nothing like that, but that would feel a little like a lie.

“It’s nothing,” Kara hastens to say instead, and that’s a lie, too, because this is everything. Cat raises one eyebrow. “It’s … it’s nothing.”

“Well, fix this … ‘nothing’ of yours. I don’t pay you to make sad puppy faces and to stand still. Move along.”

And, Rao, that’s … Cat is spot on, as usual.

-

The problem is, Kara doesn’t know where to go from here.

She’s standing at the centre of the world, with everything just beyond her reach, and it’s all spinning around her.

(Standing on the pile of her unanswered texts, maybe.)

Kara doesn’t know what she’s allowed, doesn’t know because she hasn’t felt this out of her depth before, not for a long time now. Even her daily messages feel like this gross intrusion, like Lena would ask if she wanted to know about Kara’s day. Like Kara wouldn’t have to read L-Corp’s press releases, because Lena would want to tell her about all of it in person over brunch.

“Just go talk to her,” Alex says.

Kara groans. “I can’t.” She grabs two drinks from her fridge and places one in front of Alex before sitting down.

“Why not? You’re great at talking yourself out of stuff.”

“This isn’t just some problem I can talk myself out of. This is …” Kara makes a frustrated noise, “this is my life, this is important.”

Alex nods slowly. Her nails catch against the label on her drink. “You know,” she says carefully, “before Maggie and I started dating, we had a lot of problems, too. We weren’t sure about what we wanted, and that led to a ton of misunderstandings, and, for this huge chunk of time, I felt like I’d never get anywhere. But then, on Thanksgiving, Maggie got shot, and she came over and she told me what she was thinking, and now we’re here.” Alex smiles brilliantly. “And we’re getting married. Not tomorrow, and maybe not even ten years from now. But I know that she’s the one for me, and I told her that. I told her that I was in it for the long run, and I told her what I wanted.”

“But we aren’t like—” Kara’s mouth clamps shut, her words sticking in her throat like they had talking to Cat. Alex leans forward to grab Kara’s hands, and Kara wants so desperately to squeeze back as hard as she can.

“Miscommunication is killer, Kara,” Alex tells her earnestly. “Do you know what you want?”

“I …” Kara thinks suddenly of Mon-El, and her first thought is of how she may never see her mother’s necklace again. Then, she thinks of Lena, and wonders if she also feels as if her happiness is hinging on this one thing.

But then, she must. That’s what she told Kara the last time they saw each other. It’s Kara who hasn’t been saying anything this entire time.

“Yeah,” Kara says. “Yeah, I think I do.”

Alex nods again. “Do you think Lena wants the same thing?”

“Yes,” Kara answers, and her certainty sits sweet and lovely in her chest, “I think so.”

“Does she know?” Kara shakes her head. “Maybe you should tell her,” Alex says gently.

-

Kara calls Lena only once. Lena does not answer.

“Lena’s phone. Please leave a message after the tone.”

She leaves her message. Life goes on.

There’s this new clarity with which Kara views and understands everything. Kara still watches the sun set, but now she texts Lena in the afternoon. She still watches the sun rise, but she flies up onto the roof of her building to do it, because she likes to let the warmth envelop her, thrives in the feeling of the entire city coming alive around her. Kara tells Lena about her day, about her herb garden, about how Lena would like how the basil has sprouted today, how the undersides of the sage in her garden are precisely the colour of Lena’s eyes.

Once, in a press release, L-Corp announces that they’re exploring new uses for the transmat portal, and the possibilities of interstellar travel. Kara suggests in a text that it could be used to help aliens seeking refuge on Earth. In her next public appearance, Lena hints at a new project L-Corp is working on in collaboration with President Marsdin herself, and says, “The inspiration for this project came from a very close friend of mine. I hope to share it with you soon.”

So, Kara doesn’t stop texting. The world spins a little slower around her.

Every few days, Kara has movie night with Alex; three or four times a month, she hosts game night with her friends. The crime rate starts to ramp up again in the city, which isn’t good, but Supergirl and Guardian are always there to save the day, and Snapper starts giving her more interesting stories.

Family, friends, job.

Unbidden, Kara thinks again of the events of last year, of Myriad; remembers how time had stopped, as it has now. She remembers how the pod landed in National City. How, only two days later, Kara met Lena Luthor. How time had started again.

At the end of the summer, someone knocks on Kara’s apartment door, just once. It’s eleven; Kara has already texted Lena good morning. She goes to answer the door.

Lena stands on the other side. She smiles awkwardly, holds up her phone, and says, “Good morning, Kara.”

Kara shivers, just a little, warm and familiar, and she moves.

[some-triangles]

PART 4

Utena has turned into a car.

I think it is incumbent on the viewer at this point to try to unravel both why this makes sense as a gesture and why it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Point 1: It’s a magical girl transformation sequence.  Ikuhara, having worked on Sailor Moon, knows all about this stuff.  The beats of a transformation sequence are as follows: upon activation of an arcane device, a girl loses all her clothes and emerges clad in fetish gear.  The ideal transformation sequence from a commercial perspective ends up with a girl wearing an outfit which appeals as much to young girls as it does to grown men.   As has previously been established, grown men like cars – but this car is hot pink, shaped like a uterus and is trying as hard as it can to be a horse.  Or two horses.   It is a “car” in the same sense that Sailor Moon is a “high school girl”.   It has been optimized to serve all of the needs of the academy at once.

Point 2:  What we are dramatizing here is the fact that despite her avowed wish to leave the academy Utena has still been socialized in patriarchy and therefore cannot fully transcend her status as a player of the academy’s game.   When she took Anthy’s hand and led her in the general direction of “out” she was still playing prince, saving the damsel in distress.  This gesture does not work because the academy owns it.   When she attempts it, she is revealed as what the academy forces her to be: an object.  An exciting, ambiguously-gendered object, admittedly, an object which is absolutely up to date and this year’s model, but an object that is nonetheless made to please a particular audience.  As long as Utena can still be the receptacle of male fantasy – as prince or princess – the story cannot work.

Point 3: Back in the old academy Anthy’s role in the final confrontation was to get stabbed a whole lot and lie in a coffin.   Of course, something important and transformative did take place there, and the gesture that changed the academy did come from Anthy in the end; but she didn’t look cool doing it.  Utena did all of the on-screen work.   If Anthy is retelling the story here she wants to emphasize that despite all of Utena’s princely self-sacrifice the most difficult thing anyone did in that room was reach out of that coffin.  She also wants to emphasize that she’s the top.

Akio killed himself earlier because he was unable to find his “key”.  He lost it when he realized that Anthy was, if not enjoying herself, at least tacitly “consenting” to what he had been doing to her, which was, as far as he was concerned, not nearly as hot as the whole drugged princess routine. Anthy, however, already has Utena’s key. Get it?  What we are emphasizing here, in case anyone got the wrong idea from the TV-mandated chasteness of the original series, is that queer desire is actually an integral part of the revolutionary moment.  Anthy is able to go through with this because she really, sincerely wants to fuck Utena’s brains out.

So Utena’s sex car is saved from rusting away from disuse.   The shadow puppet girls arrive to give Ikuhara’s old buddy Anno a shout-out and the race is on.

It’s worth considering whether there might have been a way to do the car metaphor without going full bananas zany with it – whether we might have found some kind of tonal harmony between Touga in the cabbage patch and Anthy in the driver’s seat.    It would probably not have worked but I would have loved to see an attempt.  As it is, the narrator has gone manic and we are flying, buddy, we are up in the clouds.

The shadow puppet girls (who apparently all have pink hair in this universe – emphasizing their artificiality, I suspect) complete their setup and a new challenger enters the race.

Shiori’s car looks kind of like Soundwave from Transformers.  I always liked Soundwave.  Her car is also considerably more phallic than Utena’s, having as it does a cycloptic bull for a figurehead.   Shiori is acting as an agent of the academy here simply by making this a race, rather than an obstacle course - the idea that only one special person gets to leave the academy at a time plays right into the prince/princess narrative.  It’s not a part of the story that Anthy particularly wants to dispel, either, which may be telling.

Shiori says the line of century, which I’m going to render literally for maximum effect: “It’s a big mistake to think that you were the only one who was able to turn into a car.”

Behind the bull Shiori is a big ol’ Chrysler station wagon with frilly upholstery. She underscores the crabs in a bucket motif by saying that only she is cool enough to do something as neat as escaping the world before crashing into a retaining wall and exploding in a completely unforced error, which makes sense when you consider that nobody’s driving her.

Anthy has a nasty sense of humor.

Next up are the thousand drone tanks of the world’s resentment.  The jokes are flying thick and fast now – the shadow puppet girls pick up the encroaching horde on a “vegetable scanner” which superimposes the danger on a picture of a salad, and the three filler dudes who were so fillery that I never mentioned them once in my recap of the original series show up with radar guns. The drone horde also makes a lot of really high-pitched honking sounds.  The director wants us to know that he knows that this is stupid.  The viewer may well ask what all that trauma from before was about, in that case, but there’s no time, the drones are attacking.

Utena’s chassis is effed up in much the same way that her uniform was back when she fought Touga that one time.  Like the opening theme says: “what I want is to find my place in life and my self-worth, taking who I've been up until today and heroically stripping her down until she's bare, like the roses whirling in freedom.”  Cast off that magical girl fetish gear, and be free!  And nude. While we continue to film you.  Trust us, it’s all very liberating.

Just as our heroes are about to be splatted by the biggest drone of them all, a tow hook shoots out from nowhere.  It’s our heroes’ friends!   Or… people who we can assume they made friends with, off screen, at some point!

Ikuhara shouting in the distance: “Oh, the whole bandminton game thing was too subtle for you, huh?  Need to have everything spelled out for you, huh? FINE”

They are driving Wakaba, a Jeep.  (The utility vehicle is truly the plain friend of the motorsports world.)  Explaining their presence, Juri says that high ideals attract noble companions. (I like overtly conceited Juri, and wish her incarnation from the original academy had had a little bit more of that going on.)  Miki tells Anthy that they will definitely follow her outside at some point.  I do not believe him.

The final challenge approaches.  It’s a giant Disney castle on wheels.

Thanks, Ikuhara.  I am beginning to see a Point 4 emerging to complement points 1 through 3 above, straight from the director: “If I make this as shiny, noisy and overt as possible, maybe you idiots will pay attention this time.”

The castle hoves massively into the lane in front of them as somewhere in the distance the bongo player goes nuts.   The shadow puppet girls implore Anthy to turn around and head back, but she’s not running anymore.  Suddenly, the car is wearing a dress.  Car Utena gets a secondary transformation - like, that wasn’t even her final form – like, you got your DBZ in my Sailor Moon, you got your Sailor Moon in my DBZ – like, we are now somehow even more uterus-shaped –

The extended dance mix of Rinbu Revolution starts playing, and let me just say that it is an incongruous choice for a car chase/demolition derby.  Anthy makes it through the castle, to general rejoicing, but there remains one final obstacle.

Point 5: to make all this masculine bullshit appear as silly as possible.

Akio tells Anthy that if she goes out there all she’s going to find is the end of the world.  Which is true, of course – the point of the whole castle palaver, the point of all this fetishizing of youth and innocence, is to keep death at bay.    If you can’t grow, you can’t die; but of course if you can’t grow, you can’t live, either. 

Akio tells Anthy to go back to being a living corpse.  (He can’t find his key, otherwise.)  Anthy tells him to fuck off so he squeezes them between some giant tank treads.

 Utena there, getting denuded again, of course.

Then this happens.

The prince is very, very dead.  The castle collapses in a hail of rose petals and eurodisco.  The shadow puppet girls lose their animating essence and become straw dolls named “Tenjou Utena” and “Himemiya Anthy.”  Cause they were puppets the whole time, see?

“Real” Anthy and “Real” Utena chat about how there are no roads in the outside world and so they will have to make one themselves.  They say this as they are literally driving on a road.   Still on screen and still being filmed, the two girls recline naked on a speeding motorcycle and make out, as you do once you have been freed from the male gaze.  

We end on a shot of another castle in the distance, which seems like a hopeful sign but should be the most ominous fucking thing in the world, if you’ve been paying attention.

The only possible conclusion is that they have not actually escaped.

In the end I can only interpret the last act of this movie as a titanic shrugging of the shoulders, an admission of a failure to envision what escape from this milieu actually looks like.  In this failure it invited other authors to take a crack at the same problem using the same kind of symbol language, which is how we got Madoka and its “let’s reframe choosing to be the Bride, who is still absolutely necessary to the functioning of the universe, as a revolutionary act in and of itself” thesis, among other things.   Ikuhara has a lot to answer for.

The problem of course is that a genuine escape from the academy should probably not be written by someone who has a vested interest in the academy’s continued existence; and so I think if anyone does end up writing the Utena story with an ending that works, it won’t be Ikuhara, or, not to put too fine a point on it, dudes generally.

Then again it’s possible that outside the academy there are things besides writing and rewriting the same old story to worry about.

[dvddggs]

To the Four of Us (Part Twenty Two)

premise: modern AU chronicling the squad as they make their way through college and deal with general life things. soundtrack song: Impossible Year - Panic! At The Disco full soundtrack: x (request songs and if I use it i’ll dedicate the chapter to you!) words: 2,155 (this was actually v emotionally draining to write so its a bit shorter oops) warnings: kinda strong warning for this one!! ptsd, anxiety, alcoholism, death mention (if i missed anything please let me know!!) a/n: scream at me. all chapters: x tags: @heythereitsloey @anitheunicorn @newyorkyoucanbeanew @lafbagxette @justafangirlwithanavy @iamgrayfox @ordinaryornate @schuylerjoon @angelica-peggy-eliza @trashyperson101 @crazydragon15 @but-if-you-had-to-choose @geespilots @marvelous-hamilfan @5p00kygh05t @panda-powers @and-maria @lafeyettegunsandships @schokoobananaa @allthegoodurlshavebeentaken @aphboi @hell-yes-puns-and-ships @aham-threw-his-shot-away @hesitantcat @nonstopspook @hamrevolution @writethewayout @alexander-did-you-know @allthegoodurlshavebeentaken @sun-tree @angelizaandpeggy @isis278 @idk-destiel @engulfedinstars @hamiltrashuniverse @ahrupe @just-me-an-asshole dedication: this isn’t specific but i hit 1.5k tonight so this is dedicated to all 1.5k of u that’s so amazing thank u so much 

It is dark. I am…alone? No. Not alone. Someone is with me. Someone is driving the car. I am in the backseat. Why? The streetlights illuminate the road ahead of us. Where are we going? Who is driving? Who is with me? I crane my neck, trying to see. Trying. His face hides. His? Hers? The dark face. There are no details. It is just a stretch of blackness, of emptiness. No eyes. No mouth. Something is wrong. The mouthless face turns to speak.

“John.”

One word. My name. Something is very wrong.

We are still driving. But something has changed. The faceless person is not watching the road. The hands are not on the steering wheel. We are swerving. Swerving. Speeding up.

We do not stop. We cannot stop. We are not going to stop.

I cry out. I am scared. I do not know what is happening. What is happening? Why is this happening? Why won’t it stop?

We are hurtling down the road. There is nothing to control the car. Why won’t it stop? Why won’t we stop?

I am frantic now. I try to push the faceless person. Turn around, turn around. Watch the road. Steer the car. BRAKE.

Please, for the love of god, brake.

Please. Please. Stop the car.

Am I saying this aloud? I cannot hear myself. The radio. The music is blasting. Too loud. I cannot hear.

“Turn it down,” I scream. Or maybe I whisper it. I cannot tell. I do not know.

The faceless person continues to watch me. Its head tilts side to side, studying me. Its nonexistent eyes bore into my frantic, wide ones. I am panicking. My heart is pounding.

Headlights.

There is a car coming.

I must be screaming at this point. I must be. I can feel my throat going raw. It hurts. My seatbelt is locked. We are going too fast. The tough fabric cuts into my chest. I am stuck. Trapped. Pinned to the seat.

I begin to cry. I am pleading. I am begging.

Watch the road. Steer the car. Brake. Save us.

“Put down the drink,” I hear myself say.

A violent flash of light. A horrific sound. A deafening crunch. A shattering of glass. A mess.

It is too late.

Too late.

My eyes ache. I am bathed in lights. Flashing.

Red. Blue. White. More red.

Loud squeals. Sirens.

I am laying on something hard. Cold. Wet. The road?

How did I get here?

I turn my head to the right. Beside me, the faceless person. Unmoving. Hurt.

I turn my head to the left. There, a young girl. Her eyes are closed.

People surround her. They move quickly. Scissors. Stethoscope. A look at each other. Palms on her chest. Pumping. Down, up. Down, up. Rhythm.

I breathe in. I feel fine. Why do I feel fine?  

I am standing up. No one notices me. No one acknowledges me.

No one sees me.

I am not here.

I am watching. Watching a horror movie. But it is right there. Right here. It is real. Is it real? How can it be?

“John.”

The voice again. I turn my body. The faceless person is, somehow, staring at me. Calling out to me.

Slowly I approach. I am afraid. I am shaking. I do not know what to think.

Who is this? What is this? Why am I here? Why won’t this stop?

“John.”

I try to respond. I try to yell. Who are you? Why is this happening?

“John.”

I feel myself start to cry. I fall to my knees. I do not feel anything. I am so, so scared.

“JOHN.”

Alexander shook John violently until his eyes flew open and he jumped up, wide awake. He was shaking, sweating, cold, crying. John looked around the room, dazed, while he caught his bearings. His chest rose and fell rapidly as Alexander rubbed his back.

“Holy shit,” Alexander whispered through the darkness. “Are you okay?”

John pressed his lips together and inhaled shakily. Before he could stop himself, he began to cry. The sobbing was almost hysterical.

“Shh…it’s alright. It was only a dream, baby. Only a dream…”

Alexander stroked John’s hair and whispered empty reassurances in his ear until his breathing slowed to normal and the shaking began to subside.

“What was it about?” Alexander asked after awhile.

“My—dad,” John managed to choke out. “Car crash.”

“It was just a dream,” Alexander repeated softly.

But it wasn’t. He didn’t understand. John couldn’t really blame him either—he would never expect him to understand, but still. He took another deep breath to steady his voice.

“What time is it?”

He prayed that it was late enough to justify getting up.

“It’s around three,” Alex replied gently.

Fuck.

“I don’t want to go back to sleep,” John whispered, voice wavering.

Alexander nodded and pushed the sheets back so he could sit up beside John. He pulled him into a tight hug and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“Then we’ll stay up,” Alexander declared. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Slowly, John choked out what happened in his dream between the faceless man he now realized was his father, the car crash, the girl…

By the end, Alexander looked horrified.

“I’m so sorry, John,” he said. It was barely a whisper.

Alexander had no idea what to say—he had never been good with dealing with his problems and usually favoured shoving them to the side and forget about them. This, however, transcended the classification of “a problem” and jumped right into the category of “suffering to which words cannot do justice.”

He had no idea what to say. Alexander, the man of hundreds of thousands of words, had been rendered speechless by the tear-streaked, wide-eyed puppy boy who sat beside him in his bed. He was at a loss for words. John had been through so much during his life. So much suffering, so much hardship, and the car crash with his father had brought it all to a head. This was John’s breaking point. This was it.

“Can I tell you something?”

John nodded, wiping a tear off his cheek.

“When I first came here—when my dad first got me—I was a fucking mess. My mom had just died, I was sick…the doctors thought I was going to die too. And you know what? I pretended that I was fine. Every single fucking day I pretended that I was fine. John, it was exhausting. I was not fine. I was a wreck. One day, my dad came into my room—right here—and sat down on my bed and found me crying. He hugged me and you know what he told me? He told me that it’s okay to not be fine. I’ve never, ever forgotten that. You’re allowed to be a fucking mess right now, John. You have every right. This isn’t going to be easy, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s about to come your way, and everything is going to be really shitty, and it might stay that way for a long time. And you know what? I’m going to stay here by your side—I’m not going anywhere—and we’re going to keep on going until everything gets alright again, okay?”

John studied Alexander’s wide eyes. There was something new in them; he looked almost haunted. Alexander didn’t open up about his past very often—the speech shocked John into silence.

Finally, he spoke the only words he could think of.

“I’m just…so tired, Lex.”

And that was it.

John broke down in tears. They were not pretty tears—they were ugly, heavy, thick tears that splashed down his cheeks and soaked his shirt. There was nothing romantic about this kind of agonizing grief; it was suffocating. It was excruciating. John clung to Alexander while his nose ran like a tap. His entire body shook and his head pounded, entirely overcome with uncontrollable sobbing. Though it was three o’clock in the morning, he was not quiet. The crying continually omitted gut-wrenching gasps and pained groans. Once in awhile Alexander would swipe away one of John’s tears with his thumb, but each one was replaced by countless others.

They stayed like that for god-knows-how-long. Alexander holding John. John forcing his eyes to stay open so he could never again see the dream that had branded itself onto the insides of his eyelids.

“Everything hurts,” John whimpered after a short bout of silence. He had cried himself dry. There was nothing left in him—nothing.

“I know,” Alexander whispered, pushing his head softly into John’s neck.

He hated watching John in pain. He hated not being able to sugarcoat the situation. He hated holding him while he cried. He wanted it to stop.

If his life had taught him anything, though, it was that healing took time. Lots and lots of it. Even now, once in awhile Alexander found himself missing his mother, longing for her, remembering her hugs, wondering what his life could have been…

But over time, the pain had eased. The thought of his mother used to cripple Alexander into anxiety attacks, long and seemingly endless bouts of depression, and a fear of letting others love him. He was afraid of loving—afraid that anyone he loved would leave him. But now he had his John. He had his friends, and he had his father. He had found a way to live through it, to live until the next day…the next month…the next year…

And now it was John’s turn to heal. Alexander had vowed to be there for as long as it took, for as hard as it would be, through anything and everything.

“It’s going to hurt for a long time,” Alexander said softly, brushing John’s long hair to the side. “But I am promising you right now that it is going to get easier. Slowly, everything is going to get easier. You’ll see. But for now we don’t need to worry about that. For now, you need to cry.”

The sky began to lighten as a hint of the sun peeked in through Alexander’s curtains. “Do you wanna try and get back to sleep?”

John thought about it, then nodded slowly. He let Alexander lead him downward until his head hit the fluffy pillow with a soft thud. Through the darkness, he watched Alexander smile sympathetically. It was not the pity that John had so often feared he would receive regarding his father—it was loving sympathy, complete with a warm body wrapped around him, a squeeze of the hand, and a soft kiss on the cheek, which forced the last few of John’s tears out of his body.

With a deep breath, he closed his eyes. He was asleep before he could count to ten.

Alexander lay in the darkness, mind spinning. He thought about his mother, about his father, about John’s father. About the girl in the car crash…

He was wide awake.

He picked up a phone to check the time. 5:12 AM.

Alexander sighed and sat up slowly, so as not to wake John. He looked so beautiful in his sleep, so peaceful. His hair feathered around his head in a sort of curly halo, and his long, dark eyelashes fluttered as he drifted through states of consciousness. His eyes were swollen and his cheeks were still red, but at least for now he could take a break from his busy mind.

Carefully, Alexander pulled the sheets back and headed downstairs to grab a glass of water from the sink. He heard the floorboards creak a bit, but it was nothing out of the ordinary in the old house.

The air itself seemed still and slow. The world was asleep. People were out of harm’s way…until they woke up and began their days and had to face whatever horrors would be awaiting them. But, for now at least, they were safe.

He tip-toed his way back upstairs, avoiding the steps he knew would creak more than others, and climbed back into bed. Right before he closed his eyes, however, a flash of light caught his attention.

John’s phone. A picture of the two of them. His lock screen. A message.

Alexander picked it up, curious as to who would need to get in touch with him at this time. Lafayette, maybe? He was six hours ahead, after all.

A missed call. A voicemail. A text.

After thumbing in the passcode he’d easily memorized (2-5-3-9, or ALEX), he opened the messaging app.

It was John’s brother, James.

Something was making Alexander uneasy. He hesitantly tapped on the name, causing the message thread to blossom open.

When he read the missed message, his breathing hitched in his throat.

James: Dad is dead.

[alldenspa]

Voices From The Hedge - Chapter 19

My reader count continues to drop. A real shame, because this is the part you’ve been waiting for. Seriously.

Chapter 19 - The Social Insurance

They made their way out of the Grey House as silently as possible. Eos didn’t know who else was still in the building — The only other agents were Elettra and Rekkar, who both knew about their plan despite having declined to come. Liberty and Emerald were never in the house during nighttime — They probably had a private residence somewhere nearby. Igsher’s automobile was more of a rusty metal box of doom than a working means of transport, and it made strange noises every time the young man adjusted the Movement spells that propelled the vehicle forward, but it somehow managed to hold all eight agents and move them (more or less) safely towards the inner city. The region around the Ilierka airport was stuffed with large prestige buildings that each served as some minor corporation’s headquarters, and the occasional government building that pierced the night sky just like the other towering structures. The Social Insurance Tower, as it was called, was in itself a fashion statement. Perfectly in line with the general idea of the company’s public image, namely that of a modern and stylish newcomer group that did everything so refreshingly different when compared to any of the ‘old players’, the whole tower was colored in various bright shades of green that made it stand out against the other buildings so obviously that Eos would have been able to identify it from the window of a sky-high airship. In fact, he had done just that on his flight into Ilierka a few days ago. Igsher stopped the automobile one street away from the tower and the group walked the rest of the way in silence. Osrakey and Benx stayed in the car with Intergard’s maps — The two of them would lead the mission from there. The rest of the agents stealthily made their way towards the tower, careful not to bump into any other nightly travellers. They truly were a strange sight to any possible onlookers, Eos thought — Then again, the bright hairstyles of Igsher and Ienge probably assured that they would have no problem passing as Social Insurance employees to any uninvolved passer-by. Searching for a rear entrance, Intergard led them around the building. At the backside they found two small delivery terminals — Both were unguarded. “Careful for hidden alarms,” whispered Igsher as Intergard approached the Lock mechanism of one of the doors and tried a handful of codes. It didn’t take her long to find the right one. With a satisfied “Easy!” she pulled open the heavy door and the group was just about to enter the building when the Professor let out a sharp “Stop!” that made the other agents freeze with shocked expressions on their faces. Without a word, Ubtra kneeled down and pointed towards the doorframe with a concerned look: A thin tripwire was suspended a hand’s length above the floor between the posts of the entrance, and Intergard already had her foot dangerously close to it. She and the Professor exchanged a worried nod, and carefully the group stepped over the trap, Intergard already looking for more unpleasant surprises in the narrow corridor behind. “Likes it traditional, the dear Djoutunhaim,” said the Professor as he carefully pulled shut the entrance after all six of the agents had stepped in, “You’d think it goes against his style, but really — In a world where nobody does the old things any more, tradition suddenly becomes fashion.” They looked down the poorly lit corridor; There was nobody in sight. “Let’s split up,” commanded Intergard, nodding towards a small side door to the right that led to a staircase, “Everything according to plan. Operators, we’re in the building.” “Good,” came the immediate confirmation from Osrakey. Indeed, with so much raw expertise combined on this mission, he probably wouldn’t have to do much. Frankly, this squad didn’t need much directing. And in general, thought Eos, Osrakey and Benx were rather poorly equipped in this case, with only a map of the building and no other information to go on. “Did you bring the list of SI agents that might be in the tower, Kurdibt?” asked Intergard, indirectly proving Eos wrong — Apparently they had material to work with after all. “Yes, Madam, but I couldn’t get lower than fifteen possibilities,” replied Benx, accompanied by quiet rustling of paper. “That’s alright, just have the info ready so that you can brief us when we come upon any of them.” “Yes, Madam!” The Professor and Ienge had already left towards the basement to start their search, and Igsher was ready to get in position, too. Intergard gave Eos a look, and he nodded. Everything was set. A couple of minutes and a great number of stairs later, they reached what needed to be the eighth floor — Eos was panting, but of course Intergard seemed just as untouched as usual. She stealthily approached the door leading from the staircase, peeked around the corner into the main corridor, and immediately pulled her head back. “Two groups of guards,” she said plainly, “They’re circling the hallway.” “Two?” asked Eos, his look genuinely puzzled. They had come upon no indication of guard presence at all while making their climb towards this floor — Why now? Intergard could see what he was thinking. “I think we’ve hit the jackpot, junior.” She raised her hand and spoke silently into the comlink. “Intergard to Operators, two squads of security on the eighth floor. No indication as to the reason so far.” “Confirmed, Intergard,” replied Osrakey, “The Professor is dealing with a similar thing in the basement. It seems SI only guards the floors where they have valuables stored.” “Copy that. We’ll take a look.” She lowered her arm again and peeked around the corner for a second time. “We might have an opening to switch to one of the rooms on the other side,” she said, pointing down the hallway, “…Or we just take them heads-on.” Eos didn’t respond — He was too busy thinking. “What about silencers?” he asked after a pause, and they both leaned towards the door of the corridor, listening intently. Eos could hear nothing apart from the security guards’ footsteps. “No silencers?” he asked, turning to Intergard with a confused look. “Could be muffled — Djoutunhaim likes those,” she replied, pulling out a small artefact from her pocket. “Let’s test it out.” Hearing in to the guards’ steps and counting silently, Intergard stood motionlessly at the door for almost a minute, before suddenly dashing into the corridor at the right moment, holding out the artefact and trying to cast the spell — The token flashed brightly, illuminating the empty hall in yellow light, and with a confirming look to Eos she quickly returned to him, pulling shut the door just in time before at the far end of the corridor the squad of guards reappeared. “There’s no silencers,” she admitted, rather confused herself. With a frown, she turned to Osrakey on the comlink. “Operator, do we have any indication of this being a trap so far?” There was a short pause. “No, Madam,” came Osrakey’s response after some whispering between him and Benx. “There is no disruption devices on the eighth floor,” continued Intergard, “What am I supposed to make of this?” Osrakey took another second to double-check with his assistant, then replied: “Apparently some of the guards know basic spells. They use flashbang devices as well, according to the Professor.” “Oh, great,” muttered Intergard, rolling her eyes as she returned her attention to the door. “There’s no opening!” whispered Eos, who had been listening in on the guards’ movements himself while Intergard had been talking to Team Zero, trying to find an opportunity for them to take one of the squads by surprise without being threatened by the other. Intergard nodded. “Either none of the squads, or both. We can’t reposition either, the side rooms are probably all locked.” They stood silently at the door for another moment, Intergard deep in thought about what would be the best move here. Eos couldn’t help but wonder what the other two teams were doing right now — The Professor and Ienge had supposedly already confronted the security forces. If that was the case, why was the building not on alert? Had they succeeded in taking them out stealthily, perhaps? Eos’ wanted to ask Osrakey, but his line of thought was interrupted when Intergard finally came to a conclusion. “Ok, this is the play here: We move in—” She searched her pockets for something specific, and found it soon after, holding up a small but intricate metal object for Eos to see, “—I activate this Invis bomb and we ambush the first squad at the end of that corridor. At that time the second one will still be far enough away that we have time to reposition and get ready for them. Roger that?” Eos admittedly had to take a second to visualize the plan, but he understood it quickly. “Confirmed, Madam,” he replied eagerly after a moment, failing to hide his excitement about getting to use an Invis bomb. Intergard approached the door again. Slowly, she raised her hand, and when both of the security patrols had disappeared around their respective corners, she pulled open the door and the two agents jumped out into the corridor. There was nobody in sight. If Intergard’s counting was correct, they had about seven seconds until the squads reappeared, which was more than enough time for the massive woman to hurl her small gadget onto the ground, where with a melodic fizzle and flash of yellow, the complicated spell circle on the device activated, and a moment later Eos’ sight was tinted in pink, confirming that he had indeed been rendered invisible. Intergard didn’t intend to lose any time. Her shape, hardly discernible but still kept mostly visible to Eos by the advanced modulations of the spell, ran down the corridor towards the point she had mentioned, and Eos followed her quickly, careful not to make too much sound with his footsteps. In his head, he was still counting down the seconds until guard contact, and they reached the corner of the long hallway not a moment too early. As the three security men appeared, Intergard was already more than ready, the effects of the camouflage spell stopping immediately as she delivered a massive punch to the stomach of one of the guards, but it was already too late for the unfortunate man, and before anybody knew what had happened he was knocked out on the ground. Meanwhile, Eos was trying to do the same to the smaller of the remaining two, and although his bodily might was no match for Intergard’s he still succeeded in delivering the takedown, and just as his partner sent the last man crashing into the wall with two quick strikes of magic lightning, Eos sealed the deal on his own target with a hastily drawn Sleep spell. The silence that followed was almost as instant as the noise they had made with their ambush. Eos looked up to Intergard, who was about to shout a command when at the far end of the corridor, the second squad of guards appeared two seconds earlier than anticipated. With a shocked look, Intergard dashed to the side, dragging Eos with her into cover, and just a split-second later two bullets went into the wall right where they had been standing, accompanied by alerted shouting and the sound of three men sprinting down the corridor towards them. Intergard sighed, a mixture of concern and frustration. “Operator, we have a situation here,” she yelled into her comlink, “Send another team up to the eighth floor!” Osrakey didn’t respond immediately, but when he did, the message was disheartening: “Operator to Intergard, no other teams available — There are fights breaking out all over the building!” Intergard let out a frustrated hiss, wildly gesturing with her hands before regaining her composure a moment later. She turned to Eos, eyes switching back and forth between him and the opposite wall, where faint shadows signaled the approach of the guards. “We can take them down if they make a mistake, but there will be reinforcements coming in for them very soon. We need to move quickly,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. Eos nodded nervously. For a few seconds they both stood in silence, leant against the wall right next to the corner of the corridor, when the shadows on the white surface across of them revealed that the three guards were taking positions, firearms ready. “They’ll try to storm us with a flashba—” began Intergard, but at that very moment a small object was thrown around the corner, landing on the floor in front of Eos. A flashbang artefact. “Look away!” yelled Intergard, and Eos jerked his head around, eyes buried in the sleeve of his shirt, just in time before a blinding flash erupted from the small cylinder. For a moment, Eos didn’t dare to look, and the only thing he could hear was the three guards shouting and jumping out of their cover to storm around the corner, but Intergard sent a pair of massive bolts of lightning across the hallway to stop their advance, and although they were blindly shot, they still managed to keep the security forces at bay. Hesitantly, Eos looked up from his sleeve again, unsure of how long you were supposed to cover your eyes against a point-blank flashbang grenade, but luckily the flash was already over. Intergard leant back against the wall next to him again, letting out another, this time more annoyed sigh. Eos shuddered. Ambushing lone guards was one thing, but giving them a full-scale shootout was a different one entirely. Intergard might be a top-notch wizard, but against armed and highly alert opposition that even outnumbered them (and, by the way, had the advantage of the surroundings here given that their reinforcement would come from the opposite direction and cut off the agents’ escape route), fooling around would not do the trick, and as each of these guards was ready to fire on sight, any mistake might very well cost one agent’s life. “Can you shield me from their bullets?” asked Intergard without looking to Eos, her eyes checking the shadows on the opposite wall as well as the staircase at the far end of the hallway. Eos swallowed hard — He had defended against a number of things now, but bullets? Then again, it was true that he had been able to pull it off against Sarc a few hours earlier — once. “Yes, Madam,” he said after a brief pause. “I’m counting on it, because we’re running out of time,” replied Intergard, pointing to the end of the corridor, where at that very moment a door was kicked open, and a second later four figures dashed out of it, yelling. “On my command, junior.” Eos took a deep breath. Intergard hadn’t said what her plan was, but he knew. Against the newly arrived reinforcement squad, their position provided no cover at all, so they needed to move around the corner within the next couple of seconds. But they would only have one chance. “Now!” yelled Intergard and jumped away from the wall, speeding to the side and directly into sight of the three surprised guards around the corner. Not a moment later, Eos followed, dashing in front of his partner with artefact ready. In the split-second that he had the chance to catch a glimpse of the three guards, he saw their startled faces quickly change into determination, and without losing any more time he pulled up the Reflect just as the guards opened fire on them. Intergard ducked down behind him, the metallic screeching of bullets crashing into the layer of magic harshly echoing down the hallway and mixing with the angered yells of the reinforcement squad running towards them. But the shield didn’t break. From behind the cover of Eos’ defense, Intergard delivered a bolt of lightning that hit the leftmost of the three guard right in the head, launching his body backwards onto the floor where he slid for a few steps before lying motionless. Eos shuddered and looked away — His hedging deity was really not taking any chances here. In a similar way, Intergard took out the two remaining men, and although (to Eos’ horror) one of the bullets grazed her arm and pierced the fabric of her shirt, ripping off a piece of metal chain under it, both of them stayed unharmed — And their victory over the three guards came not a second too early, as now the rapidly approaching reinforcement squad was opening fire. “Move!” yelled Intergard, and the two of them sprinted down the hallway, passing the three security men in their cover spots as they fled from the shots and angry shouting behind them. “What’s— the plan— Madam?” panted Eos, trying hard to sound relaxed and professional, but the fact that Intergard could see him struggling to keep up begged the question why he was even trying. “Keep running!” commanded Intergard in-between sending bolts of lightning over her shoulder to keep the pursuers at bay, “We need to find whatever they’re guarding on this level. It can’t be far!” They dashed past the entrance to the opposite staircase and continued down the corridor around the next corner. “There!” shouted Eos, pointing towards a large steel door halfway down the hallway. “That’s the target — Charge!” commanded Intergard and gestured Eos to continue while she stopped just behind the corner to send another blazing surprise the guards’ way. Eos ran down the corridor, already pulling out the Norkis Algorithm and taking the last few steps sliding on his knees before starting to work on the door. Behind him, Intergard was shouting into her comlink. “Intergard to Operator, our situation’s more or less under control — Keep those backups, I’d love to talk but right now it’s a bit diffi—” She interrupted herself as around the corner the four guards came into hearing distance, and quickly leaning over to the side she shot two bolts in quick succession, dashing back into cover just in time to avoid the bullets that came flying her way instantly. “I’ll talk later, just keep an eye on the other teams!” She pushed herself off the wall and sped down the corridor towards the steel door, but the Norkis decryption was far from done. “Madam, the unlocking—” began Eos, but Intergard only brandished her hand in his direction, pulling out a rather large bronze plate from one of her trouser pockets. “There’s no time, just get back!” she commanded, and Eos quickly pulled away from the door while Intergard slammed the plate onto the steel surface, throwing quick looks over her shoulder towards the corner of the corridor, but the guards had not yet appeared. Eos took another step back, just to make sure. “Intensity!” yelled Intergard, and the thin engravings on the plate flashed orange for a split-second before the whole door burst into pieces, sending large chunks of metal and brick all across the corridor while an ear-shattering sound rattled the air. When the dust settled, a gaping hole was all that remained of the fortified entrance. Behind it, an amazed Eos could see a scarcely decorated empty room with water dripping down the unplastered walls and an old chair in the corner as the only piece of furniture. On the chair, with his long robes almost completely covering it as they reached down to the dirty floor, sat Ketten of Ilierka, looking up at the exploded door with a surprised expression that quickly turned into a satisfied smile. From his lap, the startled cat jumped down to the floor with a meow and snarled at Eos — He wanted to say something, but Intergard grabbed his arm and rushed into the room as down the corridor the security men came around the corner,  and bullets hit the walls outside the cell not a second later. “Intergard to Operator!” she yelled into her comlink while giving a quick but respectful nod to Ketten, “Is the room layout the same on all floors? Quickly!” It took a second for Osrakey and Benx to respond — Eos couldn’t blame them: Given the chaos that had broken out not only for Team One, but the other teams as well, it would have been a miracle if the operators had even the slightest idea what was going on inside the building. “Eos, cover the door!” commanded Intergard. “What!?” Eos jerked around to his partner, “I can’t shoot back!” Intergard gave him a look that could have exorcised a demon, but quickly reconsidered. “Can you draw up a portal to get us up to the ninth floor?” She pointed at the ceiling, coal pencil already in hand. “Uhm—” Eos hesitated for a moment, not having expected that, “—I think so?” “Then do it, quickly!” she replied, handing Eos the pencil while dashing past him and Ketten to take position at the blasted-away entrance to the cell. “The layout is roughly the same on all floors except the basement!” came Osrakey’s delayed response, echoing between the comlinks on the two agents’ wrists, “But can somebody please report to me what’s going on, for heaven’s sake? Speak the words!” His voice didn’t sound angry, but very concerned. “Well,” began Eos as he sat down on the floor, realizing that his partner was too busy shooting bolts of lightning down the hallway to talk to Team Zero, “We found Ketten of Ilierka, repeat, we found Ketten—” He had a hard time shouting over the noise of an explosive from the security men detonating in the hallway after Intergard had just barely managed to push it out of the room with a quick Movement spell, “We’re trying to set up a portal to the ninth floor to get distance between us and the guards — Lethal action here at the moment, but Agent Intergard has got everything under control, it seems—” Most of his report was drowned by angry shouting coming from the corridor, where Intergard had just used a Frost spell to turn the polished floor outside into a slippery track of ice, and the sound of guards falling over already echoed down the hallway. “How long until extraction?” she shouted with a satisfied smile and a quick look to Eos as she hurled another bolt in the guards’ general direction. “Ten seconds, Madam!” replied Eos immediately, doing his best to complete the spell as quickly as possible, but not daring to leave out a circleclearing modulation to cover their tracks, “Mister Ketten, Sir, if you and your cat could kindly—” Ketten, who had until now sat calmly on the barren chair, watching the spectacle with a mixture of amusement and genuine interest (or worry?), stood up with a knowing nod, called back his cat and walked over to Eos and the almost-finished circle. At the same time, Intergard shot out a last barrage of lightning against the guards, who were slowly but surely making their way over the ice towards them, and hurried across the room just as Eos finished the circle. “This is Keros to Operator, we have the package. Evacuating to the ninth floor now!” “Good copy,” replied Osrakey, “I’m sending the Professor up there to meet you!” With a quick tap of her foot, Intergard activated the portal and the three of them (plus one cat) were engulfed in the familiar blue flash that accompanied every teleport. A second later, the light faded as instantly as it had burst out of the circle, but the agents quickly realized that Eos’ skills at improvising portals were not exactly perfect yet: As it seemed, he had overestimated the distance to the floor above, resulting in the three agents and Ketten’s cat materializing not on the floor of the room directly above the cell, but in mid-air and much closer to the ceiling than Intergard would have liked. They crashed down violently and the swirled-up dust made Ketten and Eos cough hard. “My sincere apologies, Madam,” stuttered Eos in-between gasps for air as he tried to get back to his feet, having a hard time even seeing his surroundings clearly because of the dust in his eyes. “Uhm— If I may be so bold,” began Ketten slowly, but Intergard already knew what he was going to say. “Operator?” she said loudly into her comlink. “Operator listening,” answered Benx, and Intergard let out a confused sigh, apparently overwhelmed by whatever it was Eos could not yet see. “We have— a situation.”

Some seconds passed before Eos managed to rub the dust out of his eyes and perceive clearly what situation they were in. The room they had ported into was roughly similar to Ketten’s cell below, with unplastered walls and a dirty floor, no furniture and overall giving the impression of an unused storage room. However, an additional row of thick steel bars spanning the whole length of the room divided it in two, with the agents next to a heavy steel door leading outside into the hallway while on the other side of the massive bars, a large man laid sunk into a corner at the far end of the cell, his coat ripped to shreds in multiple places and a dirty hat covering his face. Eos gasped and made a step towards the prisoner, but Intergard pulled him back. “Careful, junior,” she said quietly and sneaked up to the door, putting an ear against the steel to hear if there were any guard patrols covering the corridor outside. Eos looked at the prisoner — Whoever that was, he was looking dreadful. Ketten at least seemed as if he hadn’t been suffering too much in his captivity, but this person, whatever it was he had done to displease Djoutunhaim and the Insurance, looked like he had been in here for a long and terribly trying time. Intergard returned from the entrance and inspected the iron bars separating the room. Eos noticed only now that there was no door in them — How were you supposed to get into and out of the cell? “It’s a portal cell,” answered Intergard his unspoken question, “Without doubt, this prisoner is not a wizard…” She began pacing the room, her foot sweeping the dust off the floor at various places in search of something that was apparently buried underneath. “Operator, we found another prisoner,” she said into her comlink, “I’ll give you information on his appearance as soon as we reach him, prepare to hand me his identity. Confirmed?” There was a short silence on the comlink, and Eos could almost hear Osrakey and Benx exchanging confused looks. “Confirmed, Intergard,” replied Osrakey finally, “Professor and Alagdi are on their way but there is fierce opposition.” Great, thought Eos. They were probably running into those same guards that had fought Intergard just a minute ago. And what about Igsher and Leit? Were they having troubles getting out, too? “Ah, it’s here,” said Intergard and pointed to a spell circle on the dusty floor. She wanted to continue speaking, but was interrupted when all of a sudden the prisoner at the other end of the room rolled over and let out a loud grunt. The agents jerked up at the noise, and Intergard approached the bars to take a closer look at the miserable-looking man. With another croaking noise the figure tried to get to his feet, but failed and sunk back to the dirty floor of the cell. His hat fell to the ground, revealing thin grey hair and a large scar running across his forehead and down into his face. With two exhausted eyes staring from deep within a wrecked face, the man looked up to Intergard and slowly opened his mouth. “…Kwifeldis, is that you?” Eos hadn’t recognized the man, but he remembered hearing this voice, and when the thick eyebrows, the ripped-out beard, the scar over one eye, and the croaking of the man’s question found each other inside his head, he suddenly knew who this prisoner was. Intergard let out a hiss. “So they took you in,” she said with a dismissive frown, “What a pleasant surprise coming across an old friend in a place like this — Isn’t is, Sarc?” Kelem Aretz-Sarc was only a shadow of his former self. His bent figure on the floor of the cell gave such a weak and wholly spent impression that Eos needed a second to convince himself that this was the same man he had dueled at Kengnatz not more than four hours earlier, but there was no doubt. Overwhelmed by sudden anger, he rushed to the iron bars. “Traitor!” he hissed into Sarc’s face, pushing hard against the steel with both hands, “How could you do this to us? I wanted to believe you were better than Sibrodi! I believed in you until the last second! And you let us down, you filthy swine!” With a growl he spit on the ground in front of Sarc, his eyes sparkling angrily. From behind, Intergard pulled Eos away from the exhausted prisoner, whose tired look slowly went from Eos to her, then to Ketten and his cat, and back to Eos with an expression of confusion and general weakness both of body and mind. “What— what are you talking about, kid?” he finally managed to say, creeping closer to the bars. Eos jumped back in a mixture of fear and disgust. “How much did she offer you?!” he barked, still gripped tight by Intergard, “How much did Lephon need to pay you to make you sell your friends?!” Furious, Eos fought himself out of Intergard’s grip and turned away to face the wall. “You were one of our best men — And that’s how much we’re all worth to you. Shame… Shame!” Intergard was not in any mood for jokes, either. She went to her knees and lowered her head towards the bars, until she and Sarc were so close to each other that she could have touched his face. “You’ve obviously been tortured for information after the SI captured you from Kengnatz earlier — Pity that I wasn’t there, I would have loved to put you to the ground myself.” She smirked, her expression a rare hint at the pure disgust hidden behind her façade of professionalism. “These four hours must have been rough for you,” she continued, “But mark my words: Don’t expect that I will go any easier on you because of that!” She threw these words at him like an insult, but Sarc didn’t respond — Eos couldn’t tell if he was just too weak to talk or trying to act all strong and fierce, but frankly he didn’t care either way. Intergard reached into the inside of her jacket, and from the depths of her lowest pocket she pulled out a piece of metal that she had not used in a long time. But that wouldn’t keep her from using it now. “I will only give you one chance, traitor,” she hissed, “Tell me why you deserted to Kengnatz and what you told them about the agency, how you got into our raid at H-E and what you told Djoutunhaim and his underlings about us!” She raised her hand with the small, diamond-shaped token. “Speak now!” Sarc slowly looked up at the artefact, then into Intergard’s eyes, and sunk back onto the floor. “I— have no clue what you’re talking about, Kwifeldis,” he said weakly, closing his eyes, “I didn’t desert to Kengnatz— They captured me when we fought for headquarters—” His voice was so quiet that Eos could hardly hear it. “They didn’t capture you, you deserted to them!” yelled Intergard, “I saw it myself, Sarc! Lephon was there herself, she led the raid! And you went over to them when you hadn’t even been injured yet!” Sarc opened his eyes again, a puzzled frown on his face. “Kengnatz? No… Not Kengnatz…” Achingly, he rolled over to once more face Intergard, the iron bars being the only thing separating them. “The Insurance— They were there… They captured me and put me into this cell, I’ve been here for weeks—” “What?!” yelled Intergard and stood up. Sarc rolled over, slowly realizing something. Then all of a sudden, he burst into weak, but heartfelt laughter. “Oh, you’ve been played, Agent Intergard,” he said, giggling. His amusement was short-lived, though. Intergard let out a frustrated roar, and with a yell of “Torment!” a bright spark of red light sped out of the pointy artefact in her hand and into Sarc’s body. Sarc let out a cry of pain, but caught his composure quickly. “Your torture won’t help you, I’m speaking the truth”, he said, turning around to look her in the eye, “I’m not the villain you seem to think I am— I didn’t abandon you—” His words were cut off by a series of violent coughs, testimony to his miserable state. “It’s hopeless, Sarc,” said Intergard, lowering the Torment artefact, “I saw you join their ranks! You ambushed us at H-E! You knocked out the Professor just to throw insults at Emerald! Elettra saw you, she confirmed your identity! Heck, you even learned Reflect in secret to have something in reserve that Central didn’t know about!” She took a deep breath, then continued more calmly. “And needless to mention, you dueled Eos when we attacked your beloved Kengnatz to rescue the quartermaster, not five hours ago! You can’t seriously think this was all —I don’t know— somebody else?” She shouted those last words directly in Sarc’s face, but he only continued giggling. “I’m sorry, Kwifeldis,” he said finally, his hands slightly shaking, “I shouldn’t be laughing, but— You’ve never been so wrong, my dear.” Intergard only hissed. After a moment, Sarc looked to Eos, then to the comlink device on his wrist, then back to her. “Tell me,” he said, trying his best to rise at least a bit from the dirty floor, “Did you really fall for it? Did any of you, really?” There was a pause, and Sarc sighed. “I can’t do Reflect spells, Kwifeldis. Never could, never will.” Intergard didn’t respond. For a second, she seemed to be thinking, then all of a sudden she raised the Torment artefact again, just this time not against Sarc — but Ketten. The cat let out a panicked cry. “Tell me, information broker,” said Intergard slowly as she approached the young man, the artefact pointing to his chest like a gun, “Is there any wizard in the Social Insurance’s employ specializing in Illusions and Shapeshifting?” Eos eyes widened. Surely she couldn’t be implying— Intergard and Ketten stared at each other for a long and dreadfully tense moment. Ketten was petrified. “…There is,” he finally answered with a sigh. Intergard flung the artefact to the floor in frustration and turned to the wall with a savage roar. There was a pause — Eos couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “His name is Glen,” said Ketten into the silence after a few seconds, “To Djoutunhaim, he is like a son — His ultimate secret, you might say. The boy’s a prodigy — He does exclusively Yellow Magic and is rumored to be able to copy not only how somebody looks, but also— their voice.” He exchanged a look with Eos. “In fact, it was this very information that earned me my imprisonment here. Naturally, Djoutunhaim couldn’t afford me selling this knowledge to Liberty and with it leave your leaders to figure out the rest for themselves.” Eos couldn’t believe it. Was it actually possible that none of those Sarcs they had encountered— had actually been Sarc? “So it’s true,” said Intergard slowly and returned to the bars, her expression frustrated and tired. “You are not the traitor, after all.” Sarc smiled weakly and shook his head. He didn’t have to say anything — Ketten’s testimony, his very presence here at SI, proved that he was right. Intergard stepped away from the old man on the floor, raised her wrist to call Osrakey, but then changed her mind and lowered it again, all the while gazing onto the wall in deep consideration, visibly unsure what to do with this stunning new piece of information. Finally, she nodded and unmuted her comlink. “Intergard to Operator, my apologies for the lack of updates, it has been a bit confusing here.” “Operator listening,” replied Osrakey after a pause, “I’ve been hearing really weird things, so could somebody please explain?” Intergard gave a sideways look to Ketten and Eos, then one to Sarc on the floor. “We found former Agent Sarc on the ninth floor. He was captured by the SI about a week ago.” “What?” There was another pause as Osrakey and Benx sat speechless in Igsher’s automobile — Intergard had to explain some things, but in the end everybody seemed to understand that Sarc’s story was trustworthy. When Intergard mentioned it, Osrakey could confirm that he had heard rumors about a shapeshifting expert that had been surprisingly quiet in recent days. But nobody had known he was apparently able to imitate voices as well, so Central had discarded the idea of an impostor early. “Anyway, we need to take him in, he’s been tortured since the White Cave Defense,” concluded Intergard, “How many more days will it take for the other teams to get here?” Osrakey chose to ignore the sarcastic comment and coordinated briefly with the other teams, then informed Intergard that the Professor and Ienge were well on their way to Sarc’s position — Igsher and Leit on the other hand were still held up by a so far unknown enemy that kept them from coming to help. Not a dangerous situation, as Osrakey assured them, but Eos couldn’t help but worry. All of this was happening way too fast for him to comprehend. “One thing I don’t understand, though,” he said slowly, “Why do this? I mean, setting up an impostor for Sarc and letting him defect to Kengnatz? That sounds so… elaborate?” Intergard lowered her arm in thought and looked to Ketten, who said nothing and looked to the floor. The cat meowed. “Why take all this effort just to make sure we think Sarc is a traitor?” “Perhaps Djoutunhaim wanted to destroy our morale?” suggested Benx on the comlink, now being able to listen in on everything after Intergard had un-muted the connection. “No, it’s not worth it after Lephon’s raid — White Cave is gone, many of our people captured, some killed — Our morale is bound to be terrible anyway,” she replied, and already wanted to continue speaking when all of a sudden her eyes widened in alarm. “—But of course…!” Eos gave a puzzled look to Ketten, but he just shrugged. Intergard turned around, now wide awake and worry written all over her face. “It’s because of the moles,” she said, “Central knew there were moles within the agency. Sibrodi showed himself, but there had to be another one, somebody selling our intel away to the corps behind Central’s back. That’s the reason!” On the comlink, Osrakey gasped, but Eos still didn’t quite understand. He opened his mouth to ask, but Intergard saw it and continued. “Sarc was never the traitor, Eos! Djoutunhaim set up this shapeshifter to make it look as if Sarc was the obvious second mole, when in reality he was here all that time!” “But why would he do that?” replied Eos, “It doesn’t make any sense!” Intergard took a deep breath, her expression still one of grave concern. “Yes, it does,” she said, “Djoutunhaim had to do it. He had to make Sarc look like a traitor to conceal who the real second mole was.”

Silence fell in the cell and on the comlink. Intergard’s revelation was as shocking as it was plausible. But if she was right, then it would mean that not only was there another, undiscovered mole within the agency, virtually unopposed since Central had concluded Sarc was the culprit, but also —and possibly even more concerning— that this second double agent was not under Kengnatz’ command, as everyone had assumed. It had been the Insurance pulling the strings all along. Intergard pulled up her comlink again. “Operator, secure the assets, I’m going in to confront Djoutunhaim and clear up this devilish mess once and for—” She wanted to continue, but a sudden crash from outside the cell interrupted her, and a second later the heavy steel door flung open.

[smis-five-creedmoor]

Rant about the shitty Economy

(below cut)

Keep in mind this is largely coming from Canadian experience, though I would not doubt it being also the case in the US and other places.

Now, I’m fortunate to have found a place that’s (somewhat) affordable, so it may seem (at first) that I have no room to complain. I even have just enough to keep myself entertained. And I truly am grateful. That said, the fact that I had to be lucky to reach my position is perhaps the shitty thing about all of this.

Now, I live in Toronto. So, naturally, costs of living will be fairly high unless you rent out a room or whatever. Okay fine. I know a few people that do that. Problem with that is these days less and less landlords are interested in renting out individual rooms to different tenants. Actually, a lot of them would rather have one person pay for the entire unit, even if it’s a 3-room apartment. With rent being anywhere between $1500 to $3500 per month, you’d have to be making big bucks to be even close to being able to rent for yourself.

So the next logical conclusion is to rent outside of the city. There lies another problem: the commute to work. That $600 room you were able to score out in Brampton? Welp, now you have to travel 2-3 hours to get to your workplace by a really shitty bus system that seems more concerned with shiny gadgets more than actual function and usability. Not just that, but given that each subsection of cities have their own non-connected transit systems, you’ll very easily rack up $10-20 per trip. At best, you’ve used up one and a half hours of your meager minimum wage per day on transit alone. At worst, you’ve used up three.

Oh, you’ve managed to find yourself a nice car? Well congratulations. You’ve saved about half an hour or so on the commute. The problem now is that you have to pay for the car, which is at least $400 a month.

So the solution is to find a job and keep it, all the while working hard at it so you get a raise, yes? Herein lies another problem: actually finding that job. I won’t attribute anything to why there’s so few jobs (that’s a whole other can of worms I won’t touch), but very few places are actually looking for more employees. Especially the more specialized roles. The few places that are looking for more employees tend to be more along the lines of General Labourer or similar. No skills, nothing. However, the turnover rates there are ridiculously high (be it because of shit conditions, or physical strain rendering people helpless, etc. I’m looking at you, Amazon) and, once you try to look for work again, oops, you’re suddenly back at the bottom of the totem pole. So much for climbing the corporate ladder.

But let’s say you were fortunate enough to find and accumulate experience to add to your resume. Welp, now you’re “overqualified”. Go look elsewhere. Oh? You can’t find any work elsewhere? Back to the drawing board, except you’re even more screwed because you’re (somehow) simultaneously “overqualified” and “lacking in experience.” Word of advice: the less you think about the logic behind this paradox, the better it is for your mental health.

Are you a budding businessperson wanting to begin your Big New Thing to share to the world? Well too bad, because not even starting a small business will get you anywhere unless you already had a massive stash of cash to work with. Because not only do you have ridiculously high overheads to work with thanks to all the licenses and equipment one has to acquire, but the tax system that only really favours the Big Conglomerates (Thanks, Reagan!) will oftentimes milk these budding systems dry before they even have a chance to sprout.

Seems like these days in the West the only way to truly make the American Dream come true is to have already been way deep in it.

So yeah, it’s kinda unsurprising the phrase “Eat The Rich” has become a meme of sorts. Or that the Long Guillotine is a meme response. Or that communism has somehow gained traction in the West (despite it doing more harm than good).

This also results in more people still living with their parents, resulting in less homes bought, less involvement in the economy, more strain on the parents (at best), more people stuck in parental abuse, less desire to move upwards in life, more suicides, more gang violence, more mass murder, and just a whole other list of really shitty things that makes all of what’s been happening in the past decade come to be.

All of that results in basically a bigger and scarier cultural and financial divide between the Rich and the Poor.

But hey, apparently we’re the lazy ones.

[restoftheowl]

Becoming undoomed

This is the second follow up on Does Culture Need Humans, originally published as an addendum to the book Encyclopedia of Internet Memes and Phenomena. In that paper I argued that memes control genes, and since culture is the main force driving the evolution of homo sapiens, it is a quasi-living entity that is also the pinnacle of evolution. Here I am looking at a scenario in which culture changes due to external factors.

I remember being perplexed finding out futurology was actually about determining possible futures. For me all of science and technology seemed to be pretty occupied with the future, so I expected futurology to be about why there are no masses of chimney pot hat wearing bearded men flying around on planes that seem to be made out of sticks and bed linen, since once that was supposed to be the future, or maybe find out what it was those people did who were better than most at foretelling what was to come.

Anyway, here’s an attempt that goes both ways: determine a possible future and a suggest a more efficient approach to determining it. The original thesis is that life creates the reality in which culture created humans, to carry on the project of expansion and taking over the universe, thus the following is also an attempt at cultural futurology. Our thought experiment is a doom scenario with a twist, and it will be presented with a twirl. The premise is the following:

A cosmic event in the Solar System will render the Earth inhabitable. (An asteroid is about to or has already hit a planet or a moon, causing a cascading effect, changing the orbit of planets, maybe a planet was outright blown to pieces for a shower of megaton asteroids, or maybe it’s a black hole moving in at great speed.)

We find out that we have some 10 to 20 years to make an escape.

Aren’t we lucky?

Midday

All we have to do is move all of humanity into space except those who cannot or will not move. Fortunately we have about ten thousand nuclear warheads lying around, which are no longer useful for their original purpose - that is blowing each other up -, but could be excellent for propulsion, putting really huge vessels into orbit. Background radiation and environmental concerns don’t matter as much at this point. There is some time to manufacture some more nuclear bombs, develop more efficient ways of using them, so we could eventually launch tens of thousands of ships into space. We would like to bring some things with us too, not as much as we could though, since people are priority, so no elephants or sculptures.

At the same time we can set up some serious operation on the Moon, build a few mass drivers, start constructing space habitats of the O’Neill cylinder variety - they are spacious tubular constructions that spin to create comfortable artificial gravity inside. Alternatively we could colonize the Moon and somehow move it out of the endangered region. Also we could do both the space habitat and Moon colony.

A planetary evacuation is costly, but then again a couple of decades worth of military spending, infrastructure building and maintenance, carbon dioxide credits have just become available for funding the great project. People need to be informed, prepared and moved into place in en masse. It’s the greatest undertaking of human history and we can cope all of it with our present technical capabilities.

Day One

Well, nobody expected the whole remaining humanity to fly by Voyager 1, but here we are. The new place is small but cosy. We watched the last spaceships leave and the big farewell party. Now we are on our own in space, gravely depressed for the loss we suffered. Most people lost loved ones on Earth, our planet is gone, our home, our country, history, art, and all the holy places too.

It’s a new life, with new rules. No fire outdoors, no shooting, absolutely no wars (unless we wish to go medieval), no cars. No rich or poor, no growth. Asteroid mining for profit, wiring money through light years, megacorporations, colonialist logic make no sense. Return on investment can wait a couple of centuries. It’s not a sci-fi social commentary metaphor with light makeups, it’s a lifeboat, where you don’t want eat one another.

Most aspects of society needs to be balanced and controlled. A number of things that we considered basic until now are no longer accessible in reality, however we can have them in virtual world. In fact we will probably need to matrix ourselves in an organized way to avoid a total mental breakdown of society. Some mercyful artificial intelligence may help us during and after the evacuation, supervising the efficient dissemination of knowledge, keeping up individual psychological composure.

We have now centuries before reaching another star system and with so much time on our hands and for lack of better things to do, humanity may turn to total spiritual rebuilding. Old religions were tied to our planet in so many ways, most of it had to be left behind, now we need to start anew, incorporate actual Earth-shattering events that went down, the human effort and emotions, integrate our new virtual life, and the holy reality our fleet is drags with itself into the cosmos.

Day Zero

In our cultural futurology thought experiment we now return to the day we find out about the impending doom. Are we better than dinosaurs?

As the news breaks, people realize they don’t really need to keep saving for their pension or pay mortgage. Shortly all stores of value go to zero, stocks, gold, money. General loss of focus and motivation follows. Some panic, some say they were right all along and then panic. Kingdoms fall, all power is lost. Now we are trying to save ourselves, while the whole society is racing down the slope of regression towards disintegration. Some systems, disciplined factions manage keep their act together and evacuate, losing a lot of time and life in the process, for a fraction of effect, meaning serious risk to their actual survival.

Even though societies may have various contingency plans, everyday operation includes the repression of the thoughts of doom and rightly so. Liberal democratic capitalism too is based on the repression of the fact that all turns to dust within an undefined period of time - emphasis on undefined. We need to distort our view of the future in order to be operational.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

What do we do now? You are a leader of your country in live video conference with your colleagues. The news is not out yet and you have two choices. One we call Suppression, the other Unity.

In the Suppression scenario we apparently decide on not letting the news of impending doom go public. The population is kept in ignorance, all available resources are channeled to the evacuation project, all work done behind the veil, until everything is prepared for a full disclosure. Benefits of this approach are: disorder avoided, stress delayed, with tolerable level of efficiency. Downsides are: depriving people of the knowledge is depriving them of pride of being part of the effort, resulting in tension, and the possible burden of those who could have been saved while mankind was kept asleep. The single biggest obstacle to overcome is suppression itself, not only because it eats into your resources, but because what you do involves masses of workers, heavy lifting and numerous nuclear detonations.

How about Unification? You decide to go ahead with the full disclosure. Tell people something like this: “Look, we have a hundred and fifteen months to leave the Earth. It’s terrible news but we can make it. We will work together and try to save every single person. The worst we can do is panic. So we need to carry on with life as if nothing happened. Which will be hard since everything is lost and nothing has value anymore. Only survival has real value, so right now we introduce a new global currency: evacuation karma coin or spacebuck (any odd name will suffice) which will be backed by the effort that goes into saving humanity. You might turn out to be too old, dead or otherwise unfit to leave when the time comes, but with the evacuation karma coin you will be able to save your family or anyone you choose. Learn something that will be useful off the planet, help and encourage your fellow men.”

Quite a sound bite there. We hope we didn’t misjudge mass psychology and the efficiency we gained by openness will not be negated by the insanity and anarchy induced by stress. Also we expect our newly invented emergency currency to soak up fleeing capital preventing total financial meltdown, even better: we use the momentum to turn from growth to post-scarcity.

Now, whether Suppression or Unity would produce better results is up for discussion. As a closure, for such an event I’m offering an opinion and a slogan. Whatever the decision will be, we should choose wisely what we try preserve from the Old World, lest we end up holding on to something in vain. And then our slogan shall be: We are no dinosaurs!

[kingroot-apk-stuff]

from Flesh-Coated Technology http://ift.tt/2DtWKpo for more please visit Read More

Rich people in Bristol install anti-bird spikes in trees to keep shit off their cars, rendering trees "literally uninhabitable" by local wildlife

Two trees in a fancy neighbourhood in Bristol, UK have had strips of anti-bird spikes nailed to their branches, rendering them “literally uninhabitable” by local wildlife, according to local Green Party councillor Paula O'Rourke.

http://ift.tt/2yYNFBB

[lilynoellerogers]

Cuba, Libre

From the moment the plane hovered overhead, fought back by warm sweeping winds, I could tell we had entered a different world. Already the 5am wakeup, the disorientation of being alone on a voyage I had envisioned for two, and a five hour flight had left my head a bit spun out. But landing in Havana, and all that followed that day, gave me a sense of being suspended in time and place. It was pure magic. In the final miles that the plane descended on the lush tropical landscape of Cuba, small scenes caught my eye: a group crossing a green plain on horseback to check the crops, exuberantly bright old cars barreling along a highway going about 50 but looking like they were pushing themselves to the brink, pockets of dense jungle scattered within a mile or two of Habana Centro. The plane landed smoothly, despite the strong gales of wind,  and a ramshackle faded yellow airport building appeared. We were bussed over to it and were ushered in, where numbered cubicles that looked like small wooden phone booths were the vessels we would pass through to a land that felt like the Wild Un-West. A few quick questions from an immigration officer and then a mystery door, opening up to Cuba. An immediate rush of people appeared, some well intentioned, some not as much. In the bathroom a cleaning lady hoped to do an unofficial currency exchange with me. I navigated through the crowd to get a taxi, which ended up being a new vehicle with AC rather than the 51 Chevy convertible of my dreams. But those pushed along the road with us, some looking as though they had been worked to the bone and others as though they hadn’t exited a garage since whatever year in the 1950’s they had been made. An occasional pink Cadillac would sidle up alongside us. Men selling mangos rushed to do a quick exchange with a car in front of us on the highway - “only in Cuba,” my driver said with a chuckle. Cuba by and large felt safer than many places with a similar demographic, though some opportunists were emboldened by the recent rush of tourism. My driver began to tell me about trips I could take to the countryside, and I started to prepare a kind but firm defense, knowing that the pitch for his services was forthcoming. Instead, he surprised me by suggesting that I take the bus for a couple CUC, or to walk through Habana Centro rather than taking a taxicab. He really wanted me to have a good time, and that made me smile. Somehow it felt like everywhere else we had slipped into the era of young capitalists seeing the chance for a quick buck rather than the simplicity of people who loved their country and wanted others to experience it’s beauty too. Walking down the streets also felt safe. The only frustrations were people begging for money and men hitting on me in Spanish (for which I didn't have a full enough Spanish vocabulary to adequately warn them off). I arrived to the building where my homestay was located, and a man smoking a cigar lingered in the doorway. He grunted a bit and directed me where to go. Another ancient looking man with a bulbous nose was slumped on the stairs, and his eyes smiled at me. I found my host, Magalys, who I exchanged excited noises of greeting with in lieu of a common language. My mind flashed to google translate - but there’s truly no service anywhere in Cuba. Not even easy wifi. It’s complicated. So with no raft to save us, she rattled on in Spanish, I caught every fourth word and the general gist, and smiled inside at how much I appreciated the simplicity of it all. This was a different world. The lack of technology and virtually no internet was one of the most striking things I first experienced in Cuba. I used a paper map to navigate and made educated guesses. I gestured a lot with my hands and employed a broad smile. I seemed to over-rely on the word “perfecto” for everything. Low-tech seemed to change the nature of everything. Even the fact that I pushed through a writer’s block the minute I arrived was telling. When I first found Magalys I walked past apartment doors, all mostly open but some with a barred door just to stop people from walking in. Small windows into small worlds, and again a different era. Ancient TV sets and photos of granddaughters alongside renderings of Jesus were the pretty vignettes through the bars. Beams of golden light, brightly colored walls, overgrown plants, and indoor/outdoor living abounded. I was loving Cuba. My apartment was clean, bright, and perfect. Twin balconies overlooked the streets of Havana. The capital shone in one direction and Plaza Vieja in the other. An old cherry apple red Ford convertible idled below while a group of men chatted. Stray kittens mewed and meandered across the street while street puppies play fought beside them. I ventured out in the world after unpacking a bit. I ended up At El Del Frente, a place I could tell would be my new home base. Fresh juice and a welcoming environment, as well as some young English speaking Cuban guys who told me I was their “favorite customer ever.” I’m a sucker for feeling special. I had baked plantain chips, a sweet potato puree, and some incredibly fresh cold lobster tacos. I met an English couple from Yorkshire who were incredulous I was alone, and the woman in particular seemed to feel a bit of motherly responsibility for me. As we ate on a small terrace one floor up, able to somewhat invisibly observe the happenings down below, a Michael Jackson impersonator very enthusiastically (but not too adeptly) performed some renditions of “Black or White” and “Thriller,” complete with sparkly glove. I became lost in my own imaginings of this man as a young boy, watching the only VHS tape in the house of a Michael Jackson concert, drilling himself on the moves and sounds so that someday he could voyage out with a very particular set of skills. My new friends from the UK, Shelley and Rick, took me afterwards to a bar they had been to before dinner, where there was live music. A group of women ran through songs that seemed every Cuban person in the room knew, and brayed along drunkenly. People were salsa dancing, smoking, imbibing in the crowded but pulsing space. This felt like Cuba. “Stand by Me” was also thrown into the mix and we had a chance to sing along. My usual judgments or self-consciousness in this was nowhere to be found. A city, colorful and alive, was allowing me to feel like me.

But it’s funny how days can go. The last line of this, both poignantly true and utterly false on day two. The thing I thought would be tough about traveling as a single woman alone in Cuba, my (lack of) safety or being an easy target, was only partly true. I felt pretty safe, even on blocks that looked as torn apart as Aleppo, but I was constantly catcalled and targeted for the scam du jour. Every block I walked, multiple no’s. The interaction exhaustion I experienced after only one hour “out” forced me back to my apartment to recoup. It reminded me of parts of Asia or Istanbul, for slightly different reasons. Third world with a side of being hit on constantly made it tough. The language barrier was the cherry on top. There’s not many creative ways to couch “NO” when you don’t speak the language. And sometimes they don’t listen. Yesterday a guy followed me home for 30 minutes babbling drunkenly while I completely ignored him (full disclosure: I spoke to him for a couple sentences as “nice American”) before starting to completely ignore him. But that’s the problem with going full “feminist at a frat party” NO. I feel vulnerable here. This is not my country. A way I might feel safe communicating in LA, with a full grasp of the English language, a car in clicker shot, my complete bearings of where I am…that doesn’t apply here. So in a way, you put up with it. “Nice American” it is. It’s brought up a lot of internal questions about feminism here. Sometimes I think many of our male-dominant culture issues are American ones. But as I think about it, there’s really not a single place I’ve been, with the exception of maybe Australia and New Zealand, where that’s not an issue. For some reason, I imagine Tokyo might be the same. However, everywhere else I’ve been catcalled, treated as lesser than, touched without permission. Yesterday, even my well-meaning driver touched my leg an awful lot over my virgin Mojito and his Cuba Libre - and I was the one who felt like it would have been impolite to ask him to stop. It’s truly a global issue. And I’ll be honest, in the case of Havana, it’s making me want to jet to Cancun sooner than later, as much as I also love it here.  I think being a single woman traveling here is truly not an easy task. Despite all this, yesterday was still fun. I found an old flea market near the Plaza de Armas with loads of precious small things: pins, old books, sentimental trinkets. This was nothing like the tourists markets with maracas, cheap drums, and Club Havana t-shirts. I bought a pin that spoke to me - 1972 Blood Donor - as well as an old 1988 Dave Stewart baseball card. Funny to travel all this way for that! The rest of the day was spent wandering out of old Havana and into other areas on the outskirts. I got caught in a sudden tropical rainstorm and kids emerged from every door in underwear, dancing and yelping. I took refuge in a dark corner of Cafe Miglis and had some meatballs that seemed a million miles from Cuba. I took a wander after the rain died down to the nearby Ocean Wall, the Malecon, where young lovers canoodled and fisherman sat on the wall, kicking, looking for the catch of the day while simultaneously hissing at me with approval. I made my way up to the Hotel Malecon, a grand decaying old Hotel but well worth popping in to spend time in the rolling gardens with a drink or a cigar. I exited the hotel quickly and immediately met Michael, a driver with a pink Chevy who beckoned me to come on a city tour with him. I hadn’t planned on this, but why not. I was tired and could use to take a rest and see some sights. So out we went, past the old University with the broad stairs and broken windows, through Revolution Square, a bleak places with a couple outlined portraits of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, and up to the somewhat mythical Bosque of Havana. The bosque is a forest right in Miramar, on the outskirts of Havana, and though I cringed a little at parts of it being trashed, it still felt like something out of Avatar. People were even bringing dead things down to the river for a Santeria ceremony. We rolled home through Miramar and after a mojito on the Malecon. I fell into a deep sleep at 8pm and slept for 13 hours, exhausted by the stimulation of it all.

[theclarkystuff-blog]

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

So here we go, I decided about the time that the Nintendo Switch would launch that I wanted to keep a public gaming diary so I could keep track of my thoughts and trends in gaming and to see if my opinions ever really change, expand or stay the same. As you may have figured out by now, I fucked that up by not really taking any notes on The Legend Of Zelda - Breath Of The Wild so let’s hope second time is the charm.

Mario Kart 8 is a game I first experienced on launch day back in May 2014 originally for the Wii U, I played this alongside my wife and brother in law as we messed around with finding out which racers and kart combos worked best. We played for what feels like a summer unlocking gold cups, racing among strangers and friends getting better with each race, then hackers found cool icons which would lead to 2 DLC packs which between themselves would contain 4 more cups and for free Nintendo even chucked in a new 200 cc mode which made it insanely fast, me and my circle of friends would further enjoy this game for a long while after the DLC and I recall saying to a friend if Nintendo wanted to chuck out a third DLC with extra tracks or modes I would be down for it, so I guess in some round about let’s pay retail price again kind of way it did become true.

Now my biggest surprise for me when I start up this version of the game is how much faster it loads up compared to when I would play on the Wii U, I almost had a perfect timeline in my head starting the game up and waiting for the sound of a screeching car  zooming by before the opening menu would even pop up, but we get into the game quick and soon start picking favorite characters and karts without evening paying too much attention to new characters like King Boo or the Splatoon kid the cut this time although the Girl Inkling would soon become a regular of mine. The game now renders at a full 1080p as opposed to the 720p the Wii U version would output at, when i first laid eyes on the game I could swear some parts of the tracks had been touched up, maybe with new lighting effects or something, but according to Digital Foundry there appears to have been no extra work done, so that full HD rendering must have really cleaned up the image. 

As we settle into our first race we notice something isn’t right, despite trying to use shortcuts I am aware of the game is forcing me not to be able to race the way I want, doing a little detective work I find out about some options in the pause screen, one is like an auto correct which will allow the game to steer you from driving off road, the other is motion controlled gyro turn and the last is auto accelerate, while I am sure many can benefit from these controls like younger or newer player I found them to be a hindrance and had to turn them off, I was surprised there seems to be little mention of this anywhere where the game should make it more apparent but problem solved, we are racing again at our best and we are having a great time for all the hassle it was worth. Controls for this while varied don’t always work out as nice as I would hope, I first played this with a single Joy Con and while it worked I found depending on which Joy Con you had you would either have a analog stick out of comfort zone or the face buttons being placed in an awkward zone but I guess it serves as a do-able way to be able to play this with friends locally in a bind, while the dual Joy-con set up or even using it in portable mode controls the game is still very playable although I found myself using the Switch Pro controller mainly during my time. 

During races i happen to notice the game is actually using HD rumble to give off some distinctive rumbles such as the controller feeling like a toy car being run across a floor although for some reason the feedback feels weak? I ponder in my head if this was intentionally done as to maybe save battery life for longer play sessions or more likely a case if it dialed down to not be so distracting while racing, although you would think the option to disable rumble would suffice if that was the case. 

With the new battle mode we are treated to a returning mode which many had cried at Nintendo to bring back, and it is here it all it’s glory, the battles are fast and intense as well as additive. You are giving 8 maps to fight it out on, some of which have returned from previous entries in the series but you have a range from huge outdoor arenas to smaller and closer indoor areas with corridors. You are given a generous amount of options to configure the game with which include the time of each match and and how many matches before the end of a cup. 

Initially I was afraid of going back to this game for the fear that I would either not find the game as much fun this time around or that the new elements introduced would somehow make this worse off compared to the Wii U original. After extensive play of this game I can only say I have come back to this much like a treasured memory and it hasn’t let me down, I am finding myself having if not the same amount of fun, then more. Mario Kart 8 has gone from being one of the Wii U brightest jewels to becoming the best multiplayer on the Switch as it stands right now, if you own a Switch you owe it to yourself to buy this game. Hope to see some of you online soon.