#there's!!!!!! so much!!!!!!! how!!! how can you fit so many details into spacesuits that are!!!!!!! literally just a solid colour!!!!!!!!!!!

[maya-tl]

We're getting to meet the rest of the crew!! Yes!!

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[kittyprincessofcats]

She-Ra S5 E08 - Shot in the Dark

There might be spoilers for the rest of the season in this post!

I absolutely LOVE this episode, and at first, I couldn’t really put my finger on why I liked it that much. And then Noelle tweeted this:

And yeah, that’s what it boils down to. This is the first *happy* Catra episode since... basically since “Once Upon a Time in the Waste” - and back then, the happiness didn’t last long.

(I also just think that story of AJ being so worried about Catra and Noelle reassuring her with every script is so adorable. I love to see how much they all care about these characters.)

Now let’s get into the episode!

- “Why does space hate me so much?” Yeah Glimmer, as I’ve said before, your powers don’t work in space because otherwise things would be way too easy and this show would be over way too quickly.

- “So, your plan is to, what? Ram through an armada of ships?” “No! ...Maybe!” 😂 I love Adora.

- The way Catra’s hands are shaking when she tells Adora they’re going to get caught... oh, baby 😢. And how Adora suddenly looks so worried... gosh, these two.

- Catra and Adora playfully arguing over whether or not Catra ‘defeated’ them in the past is so cute. I love this kind of ‘former enemies’ bickering and it’s why I was so glad they didn’t wait until the very end of the show to redeem Catra.

Bow: “Adora, Catra’s right.”

[Everyone’s eyes go wide.]

Bow: ... “That felt weird to say.”

😂 Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Bring on all the ‘former enemies’ bickering, please!

- So, is this just because Wrong Hordak’s “brains were scrambled”, as Bow put it, or do all the clones randomly blurt out that Horde Prime has a weakness whenever they hear someone ask about it? I’m going to assume it’s the former. Also, the way he keeps blurting out more and then denying that Krytis exists is super funny.

- I like how they set Krytis up before with Catra having visions of it back in Taking Control - still pretty convenient that just hearing the name lets her make the connection, but I’ll take it. (Is it meant to be some lingering effect of being connected to the hivemind that she’s having visions of it again now, or is it just her remembering what she saw before?)

- I love the detail that Darla’s information on Krytis is locked and they need administrator clearance to access it. Shows again that the First Ones aren’t that different from Horde Prime - they were also ashamed of their failure to conquer Krytis and tried to hide the information on it.

- “In- In- In- Incorrect. It is located nowhere, because it does not exist, because Lord Prime destroyed it.” I honestly think this line should be a meme. When you want to hide something from someone (but you know it does exist), just quote that exact line (kind of like “There is no war in Ba Sing Se”). I once said it to my sisters when they asked about certain fanfics I wrote as a teenager. (“Nope, they are located nowhere, because they do not exist, because Lord Prime destroyed them.”)

- Changes in the opening: Micah, Spinnerella, Scorpia and Mermista are now standing mind-controlled around the Heart of Etheria in the villains’ shot. They’re also all missing from the final heroes’ card. In that final shot, Perfuma and Sea-Hawk both look sad now, and Netossa looks angry.

- Catra touching her neck when she sees the spire on Krytis... 😢. I’m here for the angst, but I also just need Catra to get lots of love and comfort after everything she’s been through.

- Can we talk about how absolutely ADORABLE her space suit is, though? Bow is absolutely right to coo over those ears. And when she tries to take it off with her foot? And Adora laughs about it? And Catra smiles when she sees her laugh? ❤️❤️❤️

- Wrong Hordak still denying that Krytis exists while currently being on Krytis is absolutely hilarious to me. It reminds me of flat-earthers or anti-vaxxers, or people who try to deny Covid exists (while others are currently dying from Covid) - not that any of those are funny, of course. I just mean that wrong Hordak nicely demonstrates how ridiculous they can sound.

- Catra calling out the Best Friend Squad on how dumb their plan is and then reacting with “Honestly, what did I expect?” is absolutely iconic. They really were missing her as the team’s braincell all along.

- Bow and Glimmer teasing Catra about her “first mission”, Catra grumbling that she’s going to kill Adora’s friends, Adora responding with a really calm “Please don’t” - everything about this is perfect. 🤣

- Also, small detail, but I love how Catra has a hard time walking in her spacesuit because she’s not used to wearing shoes.

- The remaining rebels looking around the destroyed camp is really sad. Frosta immediately trapping Castaspella in ice and checking her neck is great, though. That’s what they should have been doing all along. Why didn’t they also check Shadow Weaver’s neck, though? I know she’s intimidating and all, but there was no way of knowing if she’s chipped.

- “How did the rebellion lose so many of our finest members and yet we’re still stuck with you?” Castaspella’s asking the real questions! I like how literally no one in the rebellion likes Shadow Weaver. (Though honestly, I’m also glad she’s not chipped. Imagine how hard fighting a chipped Shadow Weaver would have been.)

- “But if you try anything, I won’t hesitate to strike you down.” Castaspella said ‘I won’t hesitate, b*tch!’

- Every single part of Wrong Hordak’s existential crisis (and Entrapta’s handling of it) is absolutely hilarious. I’m not going to quote all of it here, but pretty much every line of it is comedy gold. My favourite moment is probably “It seems Wrong Hordak has begun to question the meaning of life” (and everyone’s annoyed expressions at his crying) 😂😂. (On a more serious note, though: As much as it’s played for laughs, Wrong Hordak turning his entire worldview around in such a short amount of time is also pretty epic.)

- Catra just cutting through that door - damn, she’s strong! And I love Adora’s blush! (Yeah, the door was probably just an illusion, but my point still stands. She’s at least strong enough that it doesn’t seem completely weird that she'd be able to just cut through a door like that.)

- “You have an arrow that turns into a magnifying glass? I can’t believe we were losing to you guys.” 🤣🤣 Catra realizing the people she was fighting are actually idiots will never not be funny.

- It goes hand in hand with Bow realizing Catra is actually a cute kitty with an adorable sneeze. Good stuff. And the way her tail gets fluffy when she insists she’s not cute? D’awww. (Bow saying “The angrier you get, the cuter you are” reminded me of that scene in Steven Universe where Peridot loses her limb-enhances at the beginning of her redemption arc and Steven calls her cute and “an angry little slice of pie”.)

- Castaspella’s cape getting stuck in tree branches and the like is pretty funny, ngl. This is why Edna Mode said “No capes”.

- Shadow Weaver saying that her gifts are “far subtler” than mind-control is very fitting. Her thing is manipulation, after all. She doesn’t need to control people’s minds when she can just manipulate them and raise them in a way that’ll make them do what she wants. It’s scarier than mind-control in a way because it’s far more realistic. Mind-control doesn’t exist in real life, but manipulative parents (or just manipulative people) who will mess someone up emotionally? Very realistic.

- I like that you can tell that something’s off about Entrapta’s voice this time if you pay attention to it.

- “Seriously? How have you guys stayed alive this long?” Yup, the people you were fighting are idiots and you’re the braincell of the team now, Catra.

- I love the creepy music when Entrapta tells them it’s the first time they’ve talked since the last floor.

- Also, I love how Catra’s first instinct is to just launch herself at Melog, even though you could tell she was terrified just a moment earlier.

- I really like the moment where Glimmer realizes there’s magic on Krytis, especially since she doesn’t have her other powers right now.

- Melog bonds with Catra because they have the same sneeze ❤️❤️

- “Are you... are you petting the thing that’s been trying to kill us?” I love this whole moment 😹. I also love how Adora is so protective of Catra and immediately yells “Get away from her!” when Melog seems to get angry.

Catra: “I’m sorry. I got angry. It’s something I’m working on.”

Adora [with sparkling eyes]: “Aww, you are?”

Catra: “Yes! Now can you please...” [deep breath] “Yes. I am.”

I love everything about this. Catra genuinely working on her anger issues, Adora being so touched about it (remember back in Taking Control where she wished that Catra would ‘at least try’?), Catra having to hold back her anger because she realized Melog responds to emotions - perfect. ❤️😂👍

- Catra is so sweet when she calms Melog down. And the moment where they form their bond is really nice.

- So, can Catra understand Melog because of their bond, or because they’re both cats? I’m assuming it’s because of their bond?

- Melog’s backstory is really sad. But Adora offering to take them to Etheria is a really sweet scene.

- I like the parallel between the Best Friend Squad realizing that magic is Horde Prime’s weakness (and that the only planet he ever failed to conquer had wild magic) and Shadow Weaver telling Castaspella that the First Ones weakened Etheria’s magic and they have to set it free.

- “Stop me if I try to take the power for myself.” I’m not sure how I feel about that line. I like how SPOP has very much written Shadow Weaver as ambiguous so far. She’s not a good or nice person by any means, but is she at least on the side of the good guys and really trying to help now or is she still only after her own selfish goals? I very much did not want Shadow Weaver to get any sort of redemption or forgiveness, and I’ve always interpreted her as still being power-hungry. So, I have mixed feelings about this line. I like that it canonically acknowledges that Shadow Weaver is still tempted by power and might actually try to take the magic for herself, but asking Castaspella to stop her if she tries makes her look more selfless and like she’s taking precautions against it. (But then again, could Castaspella even stop her if she tried? I’m pretty sure Shadow Weaver is the stronger one of the two. So, you could still read this as Shadow Weaver being a master manipulator and only saying this so Castaspella will feel more inclined to trust her and go along with her plan - while knowing full-well that she could easily defeat Castaspella if it ever actually came down to it.)

Glimmer: “So, just to make sure I get it - We’re going to go running through a Horde blockade while relying on the magic of a creature we just met?”

Catra: “That about sums it up, yes.”

You know what this means - Catra’s a part of the Squad now!

- “Punch it, Darla!” I still love that the ship’s name is Darla. Also, all of their expressions when they fly through the blockade should be a “draw the squad” meme.

- Catra holding Adora’s hand and getting embarassed about it ❤️❤️ (while Adora is dumb and doesn’t even notice).

- I did not expect us to get a Glitra cheek kiss this season, but I’m not complaining! Also, Catra complaining while Glimmer and Bow are hugging her is such a cat thing; I love it.

- “We made it. We’re home.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is actually the first episode this season that ends on a happy / hopeful note and not on some kind of cliffhanger. And I really like that. This is where the “space arc” of season 5 offically comes to and end and I’m glad it has its own little happy ending. (And as much as I like the final episodes of the season, the space arc is still probably my favourite half of it.)

I love this episode, mainly because of what it means for Catra. She’s finally happy, she saved the day, she’s bonding with Bow and Glimmer and constantly flirting with Adora, and she has an amazing therapy cat now! I loved all the bickering between her and the others and how she’s starting to open up to them. Also, Wrong Hordak was absolutely hilarious in this episode and I commend Entrapta for having the patience to deal with his existential crisis. This was a really nice way to wrap the space arc up and bring the Squad back to Etheria.

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[zargsnake]

Leyr Burnridge and the Undead Star

Word Count: 3582

This is a story within a story. The framing device involves Star Wars characters, but if you don’t like Star Wars you can skip those parts and just read the main story. The framing device is indented.

   *   *   *

"They were older than our numbers can count, but not older than theirs could. A long time ago, they were just like us: petty, mortal, recycled, thinking from A to B, feeling from B to A, bound to an odd number of senses, and detached from answers to the biggest questions. They had found those answers -- some they figured out themselves, and some they had help from others...others who they had to leave behind. But that was a long time ago. Longer than we could count, but not longer than they could.

They knew everything, saw everything, held everything, controlled everything. They wanted nothing, guessed nothing, believed nothing, tried nothing. They boxed infinity. And for one of them, it was unbearable.”

   *   *   *

Jocasta Nu feels old herself when she looks at the name at the top of the "Year-16 [Adapted] Creative Writing Assignment." Serran's student's student's student, young Skywalker. With his light hair and quiet manner, the young man is a far reach from his great-grandteacher, that outspoken charmer who had bewitched the entire Temple. Back when the Ossus excavation was still well-funded, when the Students for Progress still held meetings with representatives from all levels of the planet, when the Jedi Exploration Corps had a full slate of planned missions -- back when things were good here, really good, because the future seemed so good, because people wanted it to be good -- Serran more than anyone.

She wishes he were still here in the Temple, with that desire and that action, because things are sadder now. The old projects were too ambitious, and people gave up. It turned out the sins of the Outer Rim were worse than anyone had thought. Now even the biggest thinkers assume controlling them is impossible. Determined capitalists can just hold important Mid Rim planets hostage now; people seem to just accept that. And what can you say against the Chancellor? It is seven years into his term, and though people are more miserable than ever, Jocasta thinks his detractors have become just as unreasonable and small-minded as his supporters. And worst of all, of course, the Sith are back. Just when the Mandalorians seemed quelled for good -- the Sith are back, lurking out there in the shadows somewhere. It is all too much. So people just don't care anymore. They just don't believe in anything.

But she knows that even if Serran were here, even if he could keep his legacy intact, so that he was not a stranger to his own direct line -- he wouldn't. Because he doesn't believe in anything anymore either. He told her so, before he left, but she knew before he told her.

   *   *   *

“Leyr Burnridge sat on her windowsill, looking out at the stars, wishing one of them would fall and die. She had an idea that the stars -- for all science says about gases and gravity -- were actually another type of people, a powerful and mysterious alien people -- and if one of them died and you saw it, then they would survive and become your slave forever. She couldn't tell you where she'd gotten this idea -- from a story, maybe, or a dream, or just a wish she'd come up with herself.

If she had an almighty starperson, the first thing she would ask for would be a ship. She did not like to stay in one place. The next thing she would want would be clothes -- she hated to look just one way. She wanted to be anywhere, looking like anything -- fitting in as well or as poorly as she pleased. If she wanted to meet the queen, the snooty courtiers would see her in her finery and let her straight in. If she wanted to plunge into a black hole, she would simply wear a strong enough spacesuit.

Leyr imagined more scenarios like that. She thought it was a very good idea. But she did not break her concentration on the stars. They were as still as her mind was wild, until -- a strike -- a fall. She saw it and smiled.

And then she felt a hand on her shoulder."

   *   *   *

Jocasta remembers the Year-16 CWAs she and Serran wrote. As with all the important or interesting projects of that time, they did them together. The assignment asks Jedi students to reach out through the Force, through all of space and time, and then try to imagine something that is perfectly and utterly impossible. Something that never has happened and never will, not even in the most obscure corners of the galaxy. The very furthest thing from reality -- to imagine that, to the best of their ability.

It is a strange assignment, but a beloved one, and quite traditional. She had asked her master, a shrewd Echani named Menoc Thebe, what the purpose of the assignment was. They told her that the assignment teaches Jedi to separate fact from fiction -- an exercise of surprising importance to their way of life. After all, between prophecies, visions, and universal compassion for every form of life from microscopic organisms to space-faring superbeasts, a Jedi's sense of reality must be bigger and more flexible than that of an ordinary person. Master Menoc had clarified that this heightened awareness has been known, historically, to take a toll on the mental well-being of Jedi knights.

She remembers recounting this exchange to Serran, and his response; he had laughed and said, "The things they do to keep us from going mad."

   *   *   *

"Leyr looked over her shoulder, expecting to see her roommate, but instead she saw a strange man. He was tall, with long silver hair and a young, sad face. His eyes were dark against his shimmering skin, and they seemed more real than the rest of him. Tiny bits and pieces of him disappeared or flickered around, and he faded away altogether half a foot before he reached the floor. Despite all this, he was quite fashionably dressed. Like a prince. Or a devil.

Leyr was not easily scared, and though he must have meant to startle her, she did not let it show. She pushed his hand off her shoulder and shifted her position on the windowsill to face him.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Your star," he replied, "The one you saw die... You have me now."

His voice was a chorus of sounds -- different winds blowing through different tubes, none of them quite like a throat -- more like flutes and low whistles -- and soft percussion, like rain, or static.

"Do -- do you have a name?"

"... No... I am your undead star."

"Are you telling the truth?"

"Yes," he said, after a pause.

"Prove it."

"Look outside. Look down this time."

Leyr didn't like to take her eyes off the alien, but she could not resist. Outside, on top of her roommate's garden, was a sleek and beautiful spaceship -- almost exactly like the one she had been admiring in last week's catalogue, but with the improvements she had imagined in her head.

"You'll find the walk-in closet full, to your liking," he said.

She looked back at him, unable to hide her awe.

"Infinitely full, in fact."

   *   *   *

Jocasta finds great joy in reading the short stories. Over her many years as leader of the Year-16 CWA Committee, she has read thousands of them. While she does not have as much experience with the creative writing abilities of non-Jedi children, she can't imagine that they could possibly compare. Jedi reach out to the rest of the universe every day; their imaginations are, by necessity, extremely advanced. At the annual ceremony in which Jocasta explains the assignment, she always says, "Reach out into the Force, as far as you can. And then look even further, to the preposterous beyond."

She is still, even now, proud of the story she wrote herself. It was about a book which had no writer nor publisher; it simply appeared one day, on the desk of an unassuming clerk. The clerk, curious, opened it up and saw his own name there. He hesitated but kept going, and read his fictional self gamble on a fathier race and win. He looked up the next race on Canto Bight's channel, and saw every animal's name, just as it was in the book. He gambled and won, just as he was told.

He used the book as a guide to make the perfect life, and it even told him how to win the love of the man of his dreams. When they were married, he finally told his husband his secret. But when his husband read the book himself, his fictional self became sick and died. This fiction came to pass in reality, too: the young man did not last a week.

Jocasta thought it was a rather scary story, and quite clever, because it was about a story. And it was certainly impossible. Books cannot come from nowhere -- neither can fortune, nor harm. In reality, everything has a source. And it is foolish to put too much trust in a source that you do not understand.

   *   *   *

"For Leyr it was a year; for the undead star, it was barely a moment. He remembered every detail, far better than she did. He even felt it all, which he had not expected. He felt the cold of space and the brilliant sparks of her feelings -- anger, joy, drunkenness, sadness, longing. He could smell the filth of her garbage as he vanished it from existence; he could taste her lips when she kissed him. He could even burn his hand on the ship's stove or exhaust port, though it healed instantaneously. He still felt it. He could almost care.

Anything Leyr could imagine came true, even before she could finish thinking it. Her undead star knew her perfectly, better than anyone ever had, even her own family. Her silliest dreams, her darkest thoughts, her solemnest ideas.

She went around and around on accepting his gifts. Of course, it wasn't fair. She was not the worst-off person; she did not need so much help. And she was not the best person, either -- she didn't deserve it. Not like other people did, surely. But he would always say that she was the one who saw him die, and so he belonged to her.

She would ask what he wanted in return, and his answers would change, and she realized that he was only ever saying what she wanted to hear. He would say "nothing;" but when she grew uneasy with that, he would say "your company;" then after she told him she loved him, he would say "your love." Over time, she realized he didn't mean that. That realization hurt worse than anything ever had. And so she stopped asking him, but she did not stop loving him.

He felt like a breathing lightning storm, always flickering, every part of him a different heartbeat. He weighed as much or as little as she remembered he did. He arranged for her any lover she could think of -- even imaginary ones. But after a while, she stopped caring for others. All she wanted was him.

She felt they were like an electrical circuit. He was the current, and she was the ground. She realized, slowly -- slowly for her -- that he was nothing more than voltages. He had no will of his own, no direction. But she would still absorb the shocks -- if no one else was going to!"

   *   *   *

Jocasta remembers Serran's story, too. He wrote about utopia. In his perfect world, there were no rules; people did not need them. People were good all on their own. It was a world of constant change, without any loyalties at all. It was a world of absolute freedom.

The story was flimsy, something about a family escaping tyranny in their rickety ship only to crash land on his perfect world. Most of the text was the family getting shown around the planet in a grand, beautiful tour. It was inspiring. Even thinking of it now brings tears to Jocasta's eyes. The peace and happiness, the tenderness and trust.

But it will always break her heart to think that, when tasked to create something impossible, Serran created something happy.

   *   *   *

"One day she brought it up again -- that he was lying about wanting her love. He said all the right things, but she was beginning to get too smart for that. So he kissed her and held her, and though she knew she should see through that, too -- she didn't, not as well.

They lay in silence in the night, deep into nowhere. She felt alone. He felt alone, too.

"There is something I want," her undead star said, avoiding her gaze.

"Oh, really?" replied Leyr, not believing.

"Sort of," he responded. "The truth is, my people do not want anything. We evolved past that long ago, before your people existed."

"Oh." She thought about that for a while. "Do you remember when that happened?"

"Yes."

"What do you remember?"

He thought for a few minutes -- not about his answer, but how to explain it to her.

"My creator. We used to have beginnings and ends, like you do. I remember the other being, the one who created me."

"So, like your mother."

"Not really."

They were silent again.

"Did she die before you evolved?" Leyr asked.

"No," he replied. "But after we evolved, we were not related to each other like that anymore... We were unrecognizable."

"That's rough," she said. "I'm sorry."

"I appreciate that," he said, and he meant it, though she didn't think he did. He had said too many lies in the past.

"So what do you 'want,' then? As much as you can want anything."

He was silent. She felt him breathing, louder than before. It sounded like distress. It sure seemed real. She held his hand, and the feeling calmed him. She prayed that it was real.

"Do you want to die?" she asked, sadly.

"No," he said. "I don't want to end myself... I want to begin something else."

He turned to look at her.

"I came to you because you, of all people, had so many wishes. I tried to give them to you."

"You have," she said, stroking his hair. "...But they all seem so trivial, now."

"Perhaps."

He held her face and kissed her again.

"Will you have a child with me?" he asked her.

Leyr had dark eyes, too, and the alien gazed into them. He knew every thought and feeling behind those eyes; he saw her secrets plainly, churning around in chaos at his strange, abrupt question.

He thought her eyes were beautiful. He wouldn't have thought that a year ago.

"Is that possible?" was the question she prioritized. A silly question, but necessary for her linear, agitated mind.

"Anything is possible," he answered, smiling. She played the endless game, guessing if his expression was real or not. This smile seemed different than any other -- perhaps a clue to its authenticity. Certainly this conversation was different than any other. He had never asked for anything before.

"What would our child be like? Like me, or like you?"

"Definitely like you…Partially like me."

"What do you mean? How much of a part?"

"I don't know," he said, after a pause.

"What do you mean, you don't know? You know everything."

"Not this. This is the one thing I don't know."

"How?"

"Because none of my people have done it before." He had never held her hand so tightly. "Because we decided to be through with beginnings and ends, risks, love, all of it. It is forbidden. And I'm the only one of us who can't stand it anymore."

"But what if something terrible happens?" She freed her hand from his grip and held him more gently. "What if such a baby can't make it? What if its life is miserable? What if your people find it and take it away, and make it unrecognizable, anyway?"

"Then, perhaps, I would want to die."

She cradled his head.

"...You have to tell me what would happen," he continued. "I do not know. And what I don't know, I don't know. I can't guess. Only you can guess."

She supposed that made sense, though it felt very unusual.

"Was this your plan all along?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, his breath warm on her skin. "Just as you wished for me, I wished for you."

Leyr gazed up at the stars through the spaceship's great window above their bed. What kind of a choice was this? He held every advantage. He could make the whole ship vanish in a blink. But she wasn't afraid of him. She never had been. She trusted him. She loved him. He was asking to move forward in their relationship -- it was the least alien thing he had ever done.

He could not imagine, but she could. She imagined their child, its every wish granted, its every moment perfect -- just as her life had been perfect this past year. Had it only been a year?

And the alternative? To go on like this, knowing what she knows now of his great misery -- though he wouldn't call it that. Now that she finally knows the truth -- she can't just ignore it. She can't just keep wishing and adventuring, chasing whims and fantasies forever. It's one thing to have an unfair advantage over everyone else in the world -- but to have one over the person she loves most?

"Yes, I'll have a child with you," she said, after this short mental exercise. "I love you."

It was the one of the last things she ever said to him. She woke up in a small apartment in a large city. The sparse, clean rooms had no trace of her lover or anyone else. The son she had shortly after did not look alien. He didn't behave especially strangely, either -- at least, not as strangely as his father.

For a creature who knew all the answers, the undead star had left Leyr with only questions. Perhaps these are the sorts of questions we need to ask, in order to evolve beyond mortality ourselves. Perhaps this is their way to guide us along, to bring us closer to themselves. Or perhaps they will only ever leave us behind.

Leyr Burnridge sat on her windowsill and looked at the stars, wishing one of them would fall and die -- though she knew now that that whole scenario was entirely made-up to seduce her. A godlike alien read her mind and took advantage of her silly idea, all for some great, elaborate ploy to burden her with his little parasite.

Why did he bother? She wished that was the question that kept her up at night. But it was not.

The only question she really cared about was this: Did he leave her, or did they take him away?

In her nightmares, they punished him. They demagnetized the fragile bonds holding the gossamer particles of his body together. They washed the clarity out of his eyes, and ground his soul into wires and glue. They killed him, or assimilated him into whatever horrible, unfathomable thing they are.

It would be simpler to say that she was angry, but that's not the kind of person she was. It would be good to say that she was hopeful, that she believed, that she waited -- and that is a little closer to the truth. But I can't say either of those things. She was afraid -- afraid for her lover and afraid for her son, afraid of impossible creatures who she couldn't explain.

That fear sunk deep under her skin. Deeper than they could feel, but not deeper than we can.

The son of Leyr Burnridge and the undead star could fear just as deeply as his mother could...and he could count for as long as his father could.

His father was lost and his mother was forsaken. But he was born to find the answers, and, this time, to leave no one behind."

   *   *   *

Anakin wonders what to do with the second half of the story. He only sent in the first half, of course, ending at the electric circuit metaphor. It is a bit of an abrupt ending, and makes the story rather short, but he knew the old lady wouldn't mark it as incomplete since it was already getting way too inappropriate. That was a trick Aayla taught him to get away with sending in shorter projects: just make them kind of sexy. It works on most of the teachers here, though you have to be careful not to use it too much because they will tell your master.

He hadn't meant to keep writing, really, after that. He'd meant to keep it all in his head. But it just spilled out so easily and now he's got it, right here, on his stupid computer and Obi Wan -- or worse -- could access it anytime, because Padawan security locks are worthless.

Would that be so bad? ... Yeah. It would.

He wants to just delete it. The only problem is he likes it.

He downloads it onto a datarod, deletes the source document, throws the datarod under his bed and forgets about it until he gets knighted years later and has to thoroughly clean his room so he can move to a bigger one. When he rediscovers it then, at twenty, and remembers what it's about, and how it ends, he tells Artoo to blow it up. Artoo happily obeys.

[eirabach]

Backlash [5/5]

The last bit of Gordon + Used as Bait for @godsliltippy and @badthingshappenbingo and on ao3 here. I absolutely need to make these things more concise.

It's not -- it's not great. Not even a little bit. Not at all. But Gordon's -- Gordon's faced worse, hasn't he? He can still swim, blinded. Still move. Still walk and talk and feel and touch and kiss -- it's been worse.

Kinda.

"Alan?"

There's a noise, a echoey, scuffley, heavy sort of noise, like someone dragging anchor chains out of dry dock, and Gordon hasn't spent enough time on Three to know what it is, other than it's gotta be Alan. There's no one else here after all.

"Yeah?"

Alan sounds wrong too, all nasal and wet, and Gordon's blown his eardrum right out but he still recognises the misery behind the word. Still knows it's his job to fix it - even if it's his fault it’s there in the first place. Sorta. Maybe.

He’s pretty sure that Alan’s not all that pleased at having him cluttering up his ‘bird, half deaf and blinded and with a head that feels fit to burst. He’s just kinda hazy on how he got that way, if he’s honest. It's probably his own fault though. It usually is.

But there’s another nasty, throbbing ache that he does happen to know he didn’t come by honestly.

"I'm still mad about the elbow."

The clattering pauses, and Gordon strains his one goodish ear until he hears the little huff of breath that means his little brother’s turned his attention toward him, until he’s sure Alan’s words are stained more with irritation than sadness.

"Don't you have more important things to worry about?"

Yes. No. Deflect. Wind him up because Gordon’s good at that. Wind him up and maybe -- just maybe -- it won’t hurt so much to shake his head. "Spoken like a true child."

Alan scoffs. "Just because you spend all your free time mooning over Lady Penelope doesn't mean the rest of us are as hopeless as you."

Gordon fakes a cry of outrage, but the gasp that follows is real. Three’s moving, swaying beneath him, and when Alan speaks he sounds further away, deeper and more muffled and Gordon pitches his own voice higher, louder, an attempt to compensate for something he can’t quite name. The clattering and banging starts up again and God, but his head hurts.

"I am sure you can't possibly be referring to yourself there Alan Bartlett Underage Tracy?"

"Well I'm sure as hell not talking about John."

"You don't know that. He's a dark horse, out in space all alone -- could be up to anything."

'Have you met John?"

"He wears a super tight spacesuit."

"I'm not sure what you're trying to say but please, don't ."

"They say it's always the quiet ones."

"That's only because they haven't met you ."

"Poor souls."

There’s a final sort of slam sound, and Three launches herself forward with a shuddering, violent jolt. Unsecured and unsteady Gordon founders, his hands scrabbling for a grip on something anything as Alan yelps from -- from somewhere.

Oh God. Oh God, he can’t see . He can’t see and Alan -- Alan .

If anything happens to Alan, he’s fucked.

If anything happens to Alan, he won’t even know.

“Gords? Oh crap Gordy I’m sorry, that was a bit -- I was swapping over Four’s power cells -- get us some extra -- extra kick. Too much kick, maybe. I’m sorry. I should have warned you -- I should --” Gordon feels the neoprene of his gloves being tugged and pulled and then, then there are two warm hands wrapped around his own. Bigger than the last time he’d held them, rougher, but still, unmistakably --

“Allie,” the childhood nickname’s half choked out, two syllables almost two too many for his pounding head, his frantic heart. “This is shit .”

---

“This is shit.”

“There aren’t tow trucks out there, Scott.” Virgil, of course, remains infuriatingly soothing even now. It's the habit of a lifetime and Scott wonders, sometimes, if it would be acceptable to smack him. “There’s no-one coming to help. When you’re in trouble that far out, we’re it ."

“So that’s it then? We just sit and watch?”

The little red triangle that represents a solid 33% of Scott’s entire heart moves, achingly slowly, across the arc of space that now hangs in their living room. Above it John hovers, not down, not like he would be in any other family emergency, but still far above them all in Five. Still way, way too close, but Five can’t get there. Can't come to the rescue of the would-be rescuers. No one can.

“Believe me, Scott. I’ve run the figures, if there was any way --”

“Don’t give me the platitudes, John! I’m not some -- some weeping widow you can fob off. This is Gordon and Alan, and we can’t just leave them out there!”

Virgil and John exchange a look, and Virgil sighs. The likelihood of that smack is increasing by the second.

“Grandma’s certain the blindness is only temporary, and they’re making good progress Scott. They’ll be home within a fortnight, and then you’ll be wishing they hadn’t got back so quick."

Scott spins on the spot, fear making his finger shake as he jams it into his brother’s chest. “What the hell are you trying to say, Virgil?”

“I’m not trying to say --”

“No, spit it out. You think this is no big deal, do you?”

Virgil holds up his hands, eyes wide. “I never --”

“Because this is my call. I sent them out there, and if -- if anything else happens --”

“Scott. They’ll be okay. They will.”

Scott shakes his head, frantic. “And if they’re not? If Grandma’s wrong?”

“Don’t let her hear you say that."

“Virgil!” Scott crumples, collapsing onto the sofa with his head in his hands. “What if ."

---

Virgil doesn’t have an answer for Scott, but John does.

He’s run every conceivable outcome through every parameter he can think of, staying up on Five as a small, useless concession to the distance between older and younger, safe and wounded. It means he knows, now, what if.

He’s figured it all out; what if Alan runs out of fuel, what if Gordon’s concussion takes a turn for the worse, what if Three sustained damage or a freak meteorite hits her engine core. He’s considered them all in every teeny, tiny, detail. Knows the likelihood down to a millionth of a percentage point and it ought to help, hadn’t it? Knowing how utterly unlikely such things are.

It doesn’t.

Not when he knows what would come next. The self loathing, the recriminations, the horrible, baffling concept of Gordon, blinded. Hurt. Worse. Gordon, who has always seemed the most determined to live life to the fullest of all of them, and for whom life has always been almost brutally, unfairly cruel.

He’d adapt, of course, if Grandma’s wrong. He’s that way inclined.

The numbers suggest that the rest of them would not.

Perhaps he’s being unfair on Virgil, really. Perhaps Virgil knows as well as John does the way the guilt would eat at them from the inside out. Does. Is. The way it burns in the fingertips that pressed the button, chokes the throats of those who said “Go.” Perhaps that’s why he’s letting Scott snap and snarl at him, John wouldn’t know. He’s always left that sort of thing to Virgil after all, but it seems like the sort of thing that Virgil would do.

Distract.

Reassure.

Offer hope.

John’s decent enough at the first two -- it’s sort of his job after all -- but hope, hope rarely comes from the numbers and the numbers are where John puts his faith, sticks his certainty.

The numbers, he tells himself, don’t lie. Lying benefits no one. It’s just a sticking plaster, a minute or two of relief borrowed from the pain yet to come. He’s never really understood the point of it before.

But then he opens his comm, opens the line, opens his mouth, and John -- John understands, now.

Sightless eyes turn upward, a guess that doesn’t quite work, followed by a smile that’s far too broad turned bloodless and grey in the holographic light.

“Gordy. It’s John. You’re going to be okay.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He has twelve days til the backlash.

[maxg-longform]

Outer Wilds

A new frontier for the interactive experience

Moments in gaming which are truly ground-breaking are rare, and they are only getting rarer. A dual axiom of diminishing technological returns achieved by the jumps between console generations and the rampant predatory monetisation of the games as a service modal have had many despairing and looking to games that denounce photorealism and market trends for inspiration , in much the same way those in the art world despaired at the first cameras. As they could no longer make art more detailed technically, meaning and artistry moved from technique to statement. Why is it not photorealistic? The question posed today is the same. You could make a game that is an accurate reflection of life – or a biased reflection of a certain kind of life (Military-industrial complex funded shooters I’m looking at you) – so why have you chosen to instead create something with a particular art style? What is the combination of your narrative and design choices trying to say? 

In the case of Far Cry 5, when particular attention is paid to the fact that the cultists are under the influence of drugs for the game’s entirety in addition to Obsidian’s claims that their new game concerning corporate exploitation of space colonies is written apolitically with empathetic and ‘good’ characters on both sides, the aim is all too often to actively stop you from drawing any meaningful conclusion at all, or at the very least to give the impression that there is nothing to draw.

What is the aim of this spiel then? In reality, you don’t need context to enjoy Outer Wilds, but only within the nexus of the modern games industry can you see why I’ve grown to love it so much. It also lets me talk about the game in more abstract terms without spoiling it – as it is very hard not to spoil it in talking about it, as knowledge is the only progression system within the game. The game itself, mechanically, is very stripped back. You have a spaceship to explore the solar system with, a spacesuit with thrusters for exploring each of the planets you can land on, and a translation device, which allows you to understand the language of an ancient alien race which inhabited the solar system many years prior. The story orients you as the first of your race to explore the stars with this new translation device. Explorers has previously visited each planet in the solar system, but contact with them has been lost, and they cannot translate the language there. Your objective, insofar as you are given one, is to find them and learn about the ancient aliens. In an age where open-world games have quest markers and some, such as Skyrim, have a spell which paints a trail on the ground in the direction of the next objective, the handhold-free nature of Outer Wilds is charming and arresting.

Whenever you discover anything important, it is stored in your ship’s log at the back of your small spaceship. In a way, it reminded me of Morrowind, one of Skyrim’s forebears, with the journal giving hints as to where you ought to look, but no real help beyond collating what you already know so that you can easily reference it in future. You are free to explore any of the planets at any point, and follow any lines of inquiry you see fit. In a lesser game, this would lead to a disjointed narrative experienced so out of order that it would give Tarantino a headache. However, this leads me into talking about the level design. I could not laud any higher the way in which the planets are designed. Every planet has a dynamic twist to it you need to learn in order to be able to understand how to access information on it and each planet has areas that require you to piece together learnings from around the solar system in order to access. In every sense, the game rewards exploration and understanding as a means of progress, rather than giving you new tools and telling you how to use them. This is evident in each of the planet designs – which I will briefly explain in the order I visited them (there is no ‘proper’ order).

 Giant’s Deep 

 A swirling, green water planet with four islands, which are continually tossed around by an endless stream of cyclones which make the planet hard to navigate. The pole is protected by a ferociously large cyclone and a strong current prevents underwater exploration of a porous, but fiercely electromagnetic core. The sheer size and oppressive atmosphere is compounded by the strong gravity making it almost impossible to jump, incentivising careful exploration.

 Brittle Hollow

A hollow planet built around a black hole and beset by fiery meteors from its volcanic moon. With an inhospitable surface, much of the challenge comes from discovering how others adapted to these conditions previously, and how to use the gravity of the black hole to navigate a planet that slowly falls apart and disintegrates as the game goes on due to the constant meteor bombardment.

 The Wanderer

A frozen comet with an elliptical orbit that takes it within a lethal range of the sun, and covered in mysterious ‘ghost matter.’

 The Hourglass Twins

Two planets orbiting each other as they orbit the sun. One starts as a bare rock with many caves to explore; the other as a perfectly round desert planet, with absolutely zero to explore. Then, a large column of sand starts flowing through space from the desert planet ‘Ash Twin’ to the bare one, ‘Ember Twin.’ This means areas of each planet are only accessible at certain times, and you need to beware of the sand level when exploring caves.

 Dark Bramble

A planet consisting purely of thorny branches wrapped around a core that pulses with white light. Enter the hole, and caverns that bend the laws of space and time fill massive areas within. A Tardis of horrors, this planet scared me like no jump scares could. A truly eerie vibe – a memorable and haunting level unlike anything I’d ever played before.

 While every one of these planets is in its own way unique and memorable, as are the moments when you discover how to access parts of them you couldn’t before – the best example of the game’s genius comes in the form of a location known as the Quantum moon. Before you go to this location, there are three pieces of key knowledge you need. Without them, you shouldn’t even be able to land on it. Nevertheless, I accidentally managed to land on it early in the game. However, because I hadn’t yet solved how to get into the tower of Quantum knowledge on Brittle Hollow, I didn’t understand how to access where I wanted to go. The moon has a secretive ‘Sixth Location’ you wish to explore, but every time I tried to leave the control room, the way was blocked by rocks until the moon moved back to one of the five locations in our solar system. It wasn’t until a few hours later, when I was following a different lead on another planet that I figured out how to avoid the rocks, and also where I needed to go once I had made it out.

The game is filled with eureka moments, and the lack of handholding makes you feel like you have genuinely accomplished something when you solve a puzzle. For example, I discovered a much quicker shortcut to a key area called the Black Hole Forge. The game doesn’t penalise you for this; much of the beauty of the game comes in the journey. Translating the alien scriptures in each area contains hints as to the overarching story – which I won’t in any way spoil, except that it is moving, inspiring and heart-breaking in equal measure – but also contains deeply personal stories about the people who made these structures, these homes, these technologies. The tension among the clan as they tried debated their plans to achieve what they came to our solar system for. The romance and feeling amongst those who worked on their projects. The jubilation of breakthroughs and the let-downs of defeat. The struggle for life and the joys of overcoming the hostile worlds of the system. The heart-wrenching story of the Quantum moon. All pieced together in bitesize chunks, out of sequence, displaced. Abstractions anthropomorphised because we don’t know enough about them to truly contextualise them. You never even find out what these aliens looked like. But you discover their hopes, their aims, their dreams and their death – as you, the traveller from an antique land, stare at the vast and trunkless legs of stone.

Rather purposefully, I have been abstract in my descriptions and generalised the experience. In a game where knowledge is the means of progression, and real detail would be a spoiler, and its best to come into this game blind. So, I’ve chosen to focus on the feeling the game instils in you. It has a charming art direction, understated yet distinctive music that complements every area perfectly and a real warmth and passion that oozes from every pixel. In a world where every new innovation is immediately copied and run into the ground by every game in the same genre – the camp clearing from Far Cry 3 is now a chore in every vaguely open world game- or climbing the conveniently placed towers to gain map vision a la Assassin’s Creed – or that very same game series doing its very best Witcher 3 impression in Origins and Odyssey – there is an incorruptible heart to Outer Wilds. There will be games inspired by it, no doubt, but there won’t be other games that weaponise knowledge in quite the same way, or use it to explore the same themes. It’s a game about futility, about facing death but choosing to explore and challenge yourself and improve and, most importantly, to enjoy the little things and cherish the detail, to find pieces of light in that endless, futile dark.  

Games like this have always been few and far between, and are becoming even rarer now. That’s why it’s essential we cherish games like Outer Wilds. There is no formula for creating a masterpiece but when a game really connects with you, you know it, you feel it. My list of favourite games I’d consider a masterpiece is quite incongruent – SSX 3, Tony Hawk’s Underground, Assassins Creed 2, Halo 4 to pick out a few of the rather different ones –  but Outer Wilds has topped all of them, and I only spent around 12 hours with it. It strips gaming back to its essentials, while bringing new ideas to the table and presenting them in charming and arresting ways. You will never have another 12 hours like it. Its heart, soul and message are inimitable, and I sincerely urge you to open up to it and give it a try.

10/10

Played on Xbox - the game is available through Xbox Game Pass

@CoreLineage on twitter

[pikkish-moved]

Best of Both Worlds ~ 5

In which Olimar and Alph consider the ways in which one becomes an expert in xenobiology

Chapter 5

Olimar and Alph reached the Drake’s cargo bay with ease, but from there, things got a little trickier. When they got there, Alph activated the computer terminal beside the door and tried to check how bad the damage was.

“This… isn’t good,” he said quietly. “It looks like the entire cargo bay is already saturated with nitrogen and oxygen… it’s almost equal with the atmosphere outside.”

“So just opening the door will let a considerable amount of it in here,” Olimar responded, already putting on his helmet. “We’ll have to get in and close the door fast.”

Alph just nodded, then hesitated. “Olimar-...”

“Mh?”

“You’re- awfully calm about all this.”

Olimar just let out a small chuckle, shaking his head. Mentally, he was just about screaming. “Not really, to tell the truth. You just learn to not panic when your suit’s malfunctioning forced sleep mode could send you into a weeklong sleep at the slightest shock.”

After a second, Alph smiled and nodded. “Oh! Right. I guess you were pretty happy to get a new suit, then.”

For as fond and sentimental about his old spacesuit as he was, Olimar had to admit he had been more than willing to accept the Koppaiates’ offer of a new one. It was a little strange to be wearing white instead of beige, to have such a lightweight life support pack on his back, as opposed to his own bulky, old unit, and to have a suit that actually fit, rather than the slightly baggy, chafing ill fit of his old suit.

So yes. He had been happy to get a new suit. Even if the design, while still fitting with his preferred red color scheme, was Koppaiate, the suit was comfortable, and thankfully lacking in a forced sleep mode.

“Still,” he said, smiling wryly back at Alph, “having a faulty suit taught me to keep a level head, and considering our current situation, I think that’s a rather invaluable asset!”

“Ha, yeah! ...Anyway, I’m ready to go, I think. Are you?”

Olimar nodded. “There’s another control panel on the inside of the door, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Here’s how we’ll do this: open the door for me, and close it as soon as I’m through. Then, once you’re ready, I’ll open the door for you from inside. We’ll have to open the door twice, but I think we’ll be able to get it open and closed faster than if we both try to go through at the same time.”

Alph just nodded.

Minutes later, the pair were walking into the cargo bay, peering out at the array of crates and boxes. A number of said storage units had also apparently come loose from the various straps and moorings meant to hold them in place and broken in the crash, resulting in a mess of a variety of supplies and debris scattered about the room.

For a long moment, Olimar and Alph just stood near the door. Then Olimar turned to Alph. “Any idea where the medical supplies are?”

Alph looked away sheepishly. “N-no. Not really.”

Olimar’s brow furrowed. “I thought you said you saw the boxes in here?”

“I did!” Alph gestured defensively. “There were just-... a lot of them. And I don’t know which one the crates the medicine we’re looking for is in!”

...Of course. Olimar just looked back at the rows of stacked crates. He couldn’t say he was surprised, not really. This wasn’t horribly unexpected. Still, when he had been traveling to and from the planet- or on any trip into deep space, being a freighter pilot and all- he had kept his cargo much better organized, especially the vital things like medical supplies. And this was mildly disappointing, even for Koppaiates, for a mission to save a planet.

Eventually, he just sighed and shook his head. “Oh well, not much we can do now. You start on the left, and I’ll start on the right.” He started forward.

Alph followed. Then, “Oh! And remember to keep an eye out for the damage that’s causing the leak! The sooner we know what it is, the sooner we can get it fixed up.”

“Right.”

And then they got to work, checking the crates.

It wasn’t a particularly difficult business, searching for the medicine. Most of the crates were labeled, and those that weren’t could be opened up relatively quickly, and only the those that contained anything health related had to be searched through, anything else could be closed back up and stowed away.

The problem was the sheer size of the cargo bay. It was meant to be able to carry astonishing amounts of fruit and seeds in addition to everything already there. And there was quite a bit already there, and the contents of the broken crates had been scattered all across both sections of the cargo bay. Eventually it was decided that they should search what was in the crates first, and if the medicine didn’t present itself, they would attempt to hunt it down in the sprawling mess of the wreckage, and maybe try toclean up a bit in the process.

As the stacks of crates were quite high, and they were both starting on opposite sides of the cargo bay, they couldn’t see each other, and with the crash having created a breach in the ship’s hull, they didn’t know what other hazards might have also sprung up since. So they kept their comms on, keeping up an idle chatter about nothing in particular. At some point, Alph tripped over a PikPik carrot from a crate of such that had broken, which, at his questioning of Olimar as to why the Hocotatian had packed so many carrots, launched into Olimar explaining how, as he had been asked to come on the mission primarily to keep the crew informed on the wildlife on PNF-404, he had to also do research on any new lifeforms they came across, and how exactly he did that using carrots.

“So basically,” Alph said over the com, and Olimar could practically hear the goofy grin in his voice, “what you’re saying is, you just throw carrots at giant bugs.”

“Yes, basically,” Olimar replied, laughing, as he pride open a crate. Inside was a variety of miscellaneous research equipment no doubt meant for Brittany’s use. He carefully replaced the lid and moved on to the next crate.

“Hah! You mean to tell me that all you have to do to become an expert in xenobiology is throw some carrots at some aliens?”

Finding the next few crates normally labeled, Olimar continued on. “Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. It also requires taking detailed notes, and not getting eaten by said alien while you’re throwing carrots at it.”

“Oh,” came the response. “I guess that does sound very complicated. What a shame, I was going to try to become the next leading alien expert, but taking all those notes sounds just a little too hard!”

Olimar laughed, and was about to respond, but Alph spoke up again, this time, his voice much more somber. “Olimar? I- I found the breach. I think you’re going to want to see this.”

A sinking feeling in his stomach, Olimar replaced the top of the crate he was investigating, and turned to go find Alph.

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[empressxmachina]

Welcome Home, Sasha - One. by Imperial-Radiance (aka me)

To set the mood: 

Alexa, play this video containing simulated spaceship bedroom ambiance and featuring a fairly complementing background fitting for the first half of this part.

As for this preview pic that resembles the helm in the second half of this part, it's this picture off Pinterest, I think.

Now, the story...

   “So, can you tell me anything about why the hell they were getting emulsified by Commander Martin back there?”

   “Yes.”

   “Uh, will you?”

   “In due course, sure. But everything you need to know, for now, you already do.”

   “Well, fuck.”

   If you oversleep, then don’t expect to get work or pay during the day. That was one of the general, unspoken rules aboard the space station Novis, and Lieutenant Sasha Keeling had prayed that the team with whom he was meant to scout would be as apathetic as usual and not catch him arriving late to training. Or, they would at least allow him to pull some sort of overtime to make up for the time lost: not much, considering all he had done for them already just trying to fit in.

   Washing up and putting on his suit in record time, Sasha had zipped out of his quarters and through the space station’s corridors, hoping to catch up with his presumed partners before they made any bold decisions without him. But they had.

   Where he had expected to find them in Hangar C, conversing by and packing gear into the eldest’s parked spaceship, he instead found an empty parking space that had run cold. Any other day, Sasha would’ve just figured that its owner was out for a test run with his partners being elsewhere in Novis doing other things. But, the lack of message left for him, them not answering his calls for verification, and the teasing expressions and chuckles from those in the hanger that caught sight of him set in stone that they not only left him in the space dust but used him, never going to bring him along in the first place.

   Sasha hadn’t had much time to wallow in his embarrassment, though he definitely lived up to his given nickname of Sasha the Sheepish. As he turned around to head back to his quarters to nap and drink his shame away, he was stopped by a familiar but a nowadays not-so-frequent face.

   He, a superior on various levels except for height, had known all too well that Sasha had no business being in the hangar. He wasn’t enlisted for any mission at the time, yet there he was, ragged looking with his auburn locks going in all directions and his deep-set chestnut eyes no better but everywhere else suited up like it should’ve been.

   Sasha easily saw the judgment on his senior’s face, watching his facial muscles squirm and lift the textured, ebony hairs above and on it. But rather than being scolded on the spot as he and all the now silenced onlookers expected, the higher-up just guided him away from all their eyes to his haven with no questions asked, where he could take him in all for himself.

   It wasn’t the first time Tshepo Azikiwe, a Novis admiral, had brought him into his laboratory, finally greeting the shy subordinate with a “Glad You’re Back” upon arrival, but Sasha never thought that particular meeting then – one predicted to be another one-hour lecture on how he shouldn't be so susceptible to first-time kindness – would eventually lead to him taking the role not of just a passenger but of his Mission Specialist and potential copilot in Tshepo’s own ship, the Demeter, light years away from Novis and headed to… to…

   “Can you at least tell me where we’re going?” the now lackadaisical lieutenant probed in the present from down the hall, voice floating through the cracked open, milky glass doorway dividing the helm from the rest of the dark and dim ship.

   As far as he could tell, there was a blur on all the windows, and all the mapping systems in the Demeter except those in the cockpit were shut down. Sasha had no way of detecting where they were in the caverns of space, and there was no way he was going to be able to get Tshepo's lenses off him that did.

   To combat the boredom and Tshepo’s silence on the matters ensued, Sasha wondered to himself, lain with one foot on the bed of his cold cabin, twiddling and examining a miniature of a NASA Space Shuttle from years – decades, a century – past he’s had since childhood between his fingers. He gazed at it intently, still enamored by its attention to detail and maintained quality for something so small and ancient. He could even imagine almost undetectable, tiny navigators inside the orbiter, fiddling with the controls at the helm.

   As fun as it was to wonder, it wasn’t long before a wave of angst came through, making him reminisce of its and thus his own origins: his home world he hadn’t seen for over a decade.

   Every day, he wondered what his life could’ve been if things didn’t go as they did. Perhaps, he would've been an Earth-based astronaut for NASA rather than the distant affiliate he was now, helping and being a part of humanity directly rather than perusing the galaxies for the unknown just to keep the peace. It would sure be less hectic than potentially starting a war every moment solely by existing.

   “Have you finished setting up the mods on your suit?” Tshepo tested back from the driver’s seat, glancing at the rearview mirror propped to aim back toward the lantern-lit dormitory.

   It was a simple yes-or-no question: one of the few static binaries in the ever-expanding universe. So, how would a non-answer such as the one Sasha gave for a duration fit into the equation? The jab-less silence from Sasha was telling enough on its own, but with the distant footsteps and rustling and creaking of the bed that followed, along with another verbalized “Fuck”, Tshepo knew his authority still held its strength.

   “I thought so,” he chuckled, focusing back on the expanse in front of him. “I figured you would’ve at least tried to get it calibrated, but there’s no use worrying about that now.”

   Sasha set his toy down on his bedside table with a groan and hoisted himself off the bed to do as he had been instructed (after volunteering) to do. He began to stretch, attempting to revitalize his limbs and loosen his muscles, simultaneously scanning what practically was his second home – third, counting his quarters on Novis.

   A quaint hovel, his cabin was: a mobile, cup-sized, soup can of a capsule containing bits and pieces of him, old and new. Although the technological intricacies of his intergalactic escapades were worthily glorified – the inner, emerald luminescence and trackers of his spacesuit, prototypes and mockups of Tshepo’s various experiments, including those to which Sasha contributed, cycling through a Holo-Display and its cyan figures on his desk, the marvel that was the Demeter itself, etc. – the images of the relatively domestic side of his life overshadowed them through their simplicity and wholesomeness.

   Many scoffs and looks of confusion were always sent Sasha’s way about his suit and all of the old-school references and icons of Earth-centric media scattered on its chest plate via decals, but he never batted an eye at them, not ashamed of his roots one bit. Those sentiments spread to more than just absorbed culture, exemplified by all the pictures and video clips of Sasha’s various achievements, large and small, Tshepo pasted across the walls, ranging from his first time completing the Zero-G Hero’s Course as a wee kiddo with bruises for days to the recent ceremony locking in his promotion to Chief Atmospheric Engineer.

   Being just twenty years old and hand-picked by the commander, it was an honor in numerous aspects. He had quite a lot for which he could be celebrated, even if his so-called peers took heed to never acknowledge it. Tshepo had every right to be proud of him, but Sasha always wished for the recognition from someone else: two specific people, actually.

   Right next to the head of his bed, now behind the Space Shuttle model, was not a hologram or 3D print but an actual paper-printed and framed photo of a preschooler-aged Sasha and his parents together back on Earth. A smaller print also found itself pinned by his heart in his suit, adding to the tradition of having one within every uniform he had had over the years. Looking at the picture, no one would’ve been able to tell the magnitude of the global chaos lingering in its background and out of the frame that eventually led to Sasha’s relocation: just a sweet, happy, space-loving family unit he dearly missed.

   Although Tshepo was great in filling the void of his needs and most of his wants, Sasha knew it wasn’t what he wanted deep down. He was never totally sure why his parents couldn’t come with him, let alone why he had to go in the first place. With the fancy gadgets, doodads, and documents they kept around the house as far as he remembered, they had to have been qualified to study the stars and all they held, much more than where he was now. But, what could he do about it, a galaxy or several away? All current worries about them would be produced in vain.

   Eventually, his stretching session ended, his eyes shined from familial remembrance, and his hands went for his helmet sat at the foot of the bed. Upon grabbing it and staring into its innards, though, Sasha’s humility toward his abilities and its complementing worries were reignited and heightened as a recollection of Tshepo’s remark burrowed itself deep into Sasha’s consciousness, not for what he said specifically but what was inferred.

   “Wait, what?” Sasha muttered to himself, looking back and forth between the helmet and the rest of his suit, trying to remember how to even do the procedure. “If the calibration should’ve been done before landing, then why shouldn’t I be worried about doing it now?”

   “Because we’re here.”

   Before he could combat Tshepo’s sudden statement, Sasha could sense the truth enveloping under him, feeling and hearing the vibrations and power of the rockets and engines transitioning into the settings needed for a soft landing. As gravity began taking effect on the ship with its descent, Sasha took the moment to look over his shoulder to whatever he could see through his window. Out of all places to which they could’ve been headed, Sasha was shocked to find primarily warm reds, oranges, and browns in view: a spectrum of a hazily familiar planet that usually didn’t require any secrecy to reference.

   Perhaps, his eyes were deceiving him, trying to give him a sense of comfort being thrust into what would probably be a challenge. After all, there had to be some reason why Tshepo chose him over someone else with more experience in, well, anything. To see if he truly earned his engineering chiefdom? To test his accuracies as the biogenesist he had been building himself to be through years of lab and class study? Just because he’s a favorite, more or less like a son or brother? With the almost missed plop and anchoring of the Demeter’s landing gear onto an apparently land surface, boosting his hypothesis of their location, it was time to find out.

   Feeling confident in where they were, Sasha didn’t bother putting on the helmet just yet, walking out of his cabin with it in one arm while the other tapped his breastplate right above his tucked-in family portrait as both a goodbye and a wish for luck to himself. However, rather than seeing Tshepo doing the same with his suit, approaching him from the helm, Sasha found him still sitting there in the pilot’s chair, not having moved and looking as though he wasn’t going to move, either.

   “Uh, are you not coming, Ki?” Sasha queried, stepping across the metal flooring past the lavatory and little lounge area for eating and through the foggy-glassed doorway to his friend/mentor/caretaker with a knock upon entrance.

   Tshepo perked up at the polite signaling along with the endearing nickname. While he didn’t feel that Sasha’s feelings toward him had changed since boarding the ship, it was still nice to hear them being as strong as ever, even if they had a sheer veil of sadness over them. The youngling’s sideward approach, leaning close by on the copilot’s chair – his if he wished to contribute – to see his doings hammered their veracity in deeper, making keeping the confidentiality alive all the more difficult with him right there.

   “I will if necessary,” he chided, not looking at Sasha as he adjusted the switches, buttons, and screens at the helm.

   Only seconds later, Tshepo felt Sasha bend toward him, breaths passing along the bushel of hair across the underside of his chin as the young adult gazed, trying to comprehend anything in sight. He was nervous momentarily, but the worries subsided when Sasha admitted defeat, ultimately sighing and returning to standing position, unable to read the respectively alien language everything was set to. Luckily, their orientation allowed for Tshepo to pull a smirk without notice, glad that his translation scheme actually worked.

   “But, right now, I have to make sure levels stay in order,” he continued, finally glancing up at his youthful familiar. “The connectivity to Novis, the Demeter’s power bank, the mods on your suit…”

   “And, why can’t you come with me to do that?” Sasha considered through an almost childlike whine. For one, his Ki to the cosmos wasn’t as locked down as he usually was. Or, maybe he was too much so. Either way, it was weird. “Surely, this mission of yours, whatever it is, isn’t time sensitive. You would’ve brought more people with us if that were true.”

   “Well, you’re right about the timing. This is a mission searching for accuracy and detail of the ecosphere rather than time being of the essence. Though, being punctual is never a bad thing. After all, your current timeline would be totally different if you had followed that rule, wouldn’t it?”

   Sasha caught the reference of petty, partner neglect immediately and couldn’t hold back an audible groan, earning a giggle from Tshepo.

   “Anyway,” the youngster tried putting the conversation back on course, “I can wait for you to do your domestic thingies first or even help you with them, and then we can do whatever bio-survey we need to do with you moderating the mods as needed.”

   “My suit can only protect me, not monitor you,” Tshepo prompted him, “and the mods are only on yours. They’re still on a test run for which you’ve accepted being the lab rat, so I can only do my part from here.”

   Completely disregarding the lack of protection implied, Sasha conceded,

   “Fine. Whatever you say, Ki.” He tossed and spun his helmet in the air, catching it like a basketball and observing it like a crystal ball. “I did say ‘Yes’ and all, so I don’t want you to turn me in for insubordination or some shit like that. Not that you would, but I’m not risking it with this secrecy schtick you’re playing right now.”

   Tshepo expelled a moan of disappointment, hearing his apprentice of sorts somberly drag him through the ground for what had to be one of the biggest miscommunications in the universe. “All I ask of you is to trust me when I say that everything will be clear as soon as you get out there. Okay?”

   Rather than addressing him back directly, Sasha, against his instincts, started setting and securing his helmet on its proper place on his collar, hearing the clicks and suctions of locks and beeps of computer systems turning on to standby, waiting for further instruction. He then turned his gaze away and resumed his ranting through a mutter to himself, given Tshepo’s new, closer proximity,

   “You’re already delaying clarifying stuff I was a witness for – what I saw and heard, so I guess it’s not that much of a stretch to think you’d hide stuff I don’t know, too.”

   “Sasha, you know I always try to have your best intentions in mind,” Tshepo reminded, rising from his seat and setting a gentle hand on Sasha’s shoulder with an equally endearing soft, russet stare.

   Doing so kept the youngling from walking toward the entry latch and expanding both the physical and emotional distance between them just yet. The young man already had enough to be sad about as is, and while the truth would just make it worse, Tshepo didn’t want it holding him back until it was right in front of him with no yield.

   “I didn’t think I had to explain how this actually wasn’t a mission for you,” he added with a lecturing cadence, “and I wasn’t supposed to bring you with me but did anyway.”

   From the gasp and look Sasha made back, it was obvious to Tshepo that his apprentice wasn’t aware of the helmet’s microphone’s immediate powering on upon placement along with that tiny truth. His slender suit may have been built fully in crimson with an almost radioactive glow of green in every vent and sliver inside and out, it didn’t dampen out the blushing that crept on Sasha’s cheeks through the viewing window.

   “Really?” Sasha finally replied after a pregnant pause, to which he received an authoritative nod. If his helmet wasn’t mushing his wispy locks down, then he would’ve been combing through or twirling the ends of them with a hand out of embarrassment: a habit burned into him since he was tween-aged. “Then, why in the fuck did you bring me? Why am I here at all?”

    “I already said I can’t test and check at the same time. I have my other reasons for breaking my binds, but don’t tell me you can’t do something as simple as making sure the mods work on the field?”

   “Whoa, hold up,” Sasha breathed, not expecting an interrogation, let alone one so seemingly lighthearted. “What are you implying?”

   “I don’t know, perhaps that your savant-like styles of science and surveying are bounded by walls.”

   As quickly as it came, Sasha’s shame was soon lifted, catching the challenge within Tshepo’s now-apparently friendly berating all the fatherlier. Little did he know that his eventual acceptance of it was falling right into Tshepo's plan. When fitting in a place of comfort, Sasha's cockiness and confidence weren’t hard to pop out.

   “No, no. You and I both know that's not true!” Sasha announced, playfully scoffing. “If the commander himself had enough faith to get me promoted – something I'm still not sure I deserve but am grateful of, nonetheless – then I can do a little scan or two. Watch me; I won't let you down.”

   “I never thought you would,” Tshepo smiled, patting his youngster's back as he headed for the entry latch to head out. “Just make sure the mods are functional.”

    Silence filled the airwaves as Sasha loosened the suction of the heavy latch and trekked down the pebbly path of the exit. He expected to hear winds or animals of the environment or voices of technicians waiting for his arrival, but, surprisingly, he heard nothing on the outside. There was only him, his thoughts, and the beeps and dynamics of his suit. If they weren't the medley of sounds that he was used to on the daily, having never really been talkative with anyone except those of the few positions higher than himself, then he would've thought it was weird.

   The young engineer had just made it to the external opening, just about to be exposed to the mystery destination one-on-one, before he heard Tshepo’s voice again.

   “One more thing before you go,” he directed through the microphone. “As much as I want you to be quick and correct…” He struggled to find the right words, not wanting to give away the truth about their reason for usage prematurely. “…tread lightly.”

   “I, uh…” Sasha caught the hesitation in his voice, frazzled by the strange instruction, but not wanting to restart another uncomfortable back-and-forth, he brushed it aside. Instead, he looked to the metallic, light tessellated walls and ceilings for the camera Tshepo had to have been using to see him, found it, and acknowledged him with a promising salute as he signaled for the doors to open and the exit ramp to be unraveled. “I’m on it.”

   Before either of them knew it, the sensors were set off, and the Demeter opened its maw to reveal its insignificant, human inhabitant and release him to the vastness of the unknown, outside world.

[abutterflyobsession]

Doctor Who AU: Part 24

prelude/one/two/three/four/five/six/seven/eight/nine/ten/eleven/twelve/thirteen/fourteen/fifteen/sixteen/seventeen/eighteen/nineteen/twenty/twenty-one/twenty-two/twenty-three/ao3

“Look, it is not a new face—it's the only face I've had so far! Barring unfortunate accidents I imagine I'll be sticking with this look indefinitely!”

Dawn looked with disgust at the armed and armored soldiers surrounding the TARDIS. Sunny would have gone right back into the TARDIS again if he wasn't afraid he'd be shot if he moved. He hadn't realized Dawn planned to put down right in the middle of a secure government lab and expect them to take her word that she was a friend.

“I'm not my sister or someone pretending to be her. Why anyone would even try to impersonate her is beyond me.”

A few men and woman in business-wear murmured together behind the wall of soldiers. Sunny could just catch a few words, something about “the earliest in her personal time line we've ever seen,” and slightly louder demands for someone to “get UNIT on the line!”.

Dawn pulled her glasses off and pinched the bridge of her nose, “Still not my sister! Still not the Doctor! Well, yes, I have a doctorate or two kicking around, but I'm not the Doctor. Just a.”

“The intelligence UNIT has shared with us about the Doctor has allowed us to form certain guidelines for collaboration should the need arise,” one of the business wear people spoke up, “But if you are not the Doctor then--”

“Nope. Not,” Dawn reached into the inside pocket of her suit jacket.

The guns snapped up.

“Get a grip,” she rolled her eyes and pulled out a Polaroid, “I'm not going to assassinate any of you with my snapshot of evil. Really, no wonder my sister complains about soldiers and their guns. You figure if you're holding them you've got to use them.”

“Hey, look, Dawn,” Sunny said, having just about dived back into the TARDIS when the guns went up, “Maybe you're from some enlightened planet where this sort of thing isn't a problem, but I am a black dude living in America and I get a little nervous around police-looking guys with guns.”

“Ugh, seriously? I thought we left that behind in the sixties. Hey, would you all just be at ease or stand down or something? I will slowly hold up this picture of me and my sister on our eighty-sixth birthday. You will see we are twins. Now, I will oh so slowly reach into my pocket for another picture—darn it!”

More snapshots, too many to have possibly fit in Dawn's pocket, fell out onto the floor.

Sunny raised his eyebrows.

“Pockets are bigger on the inside,” Dawn shrugged a shoulder, “Put them in myself. Had to. Do you know how impossible it is to find a woman's suit jacket that has actual pockets and not just those little flaps made to trick you into thinking there are pockets?”

The women behind the line of soldiers all nodded in agreement. One man asked if it was really a thing and a hushed discussion about pockets in women's clothing started in the background.

“My mom has the same problem,” Sunny said, “Dad fixes all the pockets for her.”

“Good man,” Dawn sat down on the floor, floor, crossed her legs, and began to sort through them. She patted the floor next to her and Sunny joined her, still keeping one eye on the guns.

“Mom had her purse snatched twice in two months. Well, they tried to snatch her purse. She nailed both of them in the eyes with pepper spray. Anyway, she got fed up with purses.”

“Purse are the worst,” Dawn spread the snapshots out over the floor, “There's no place to put them in a spacesuit and it's so awkward when it gets snagged in the airlock and you're left dangling in the void of space.”

“There's a story there, I can tell.”

“It was my sister's idea to crash that space pirate ball—oh, these pictures are from Xylox 23. Marvelous vacation spot when the atmospheric filter is working and the mountains aren't melting from the sudden global warming. It was a whole thing. Anyway,” she held up the first picture, “Sisters. Our academy days, nostalgic times all around. Now, this,” she held up a recent picture of herself and the Doctor that Sunny knew, both of them wearing fezzes and standing in front of what looked to be a giant squid, “this is last week on Xylox 23. Hopefully you have her newest, most delightfully sullen face on file for confirmation. Now, can we get on with the antitoxin? You've only got five weeks, six days, twenty-one hours, and sixteen minutes. Do you want me to do seconds, too? Because I can keep running count and drive you all mad.”

“Sisters?” Someone asked dubiously after sharply shushing the discussion about the lack of proper pockets in women's clothing.

“Sorry,” Dawn patted down her coat, “haven't got our birth certificates on me. All I've got is a police box, a viral of antitoxin, and all five seasons of Wander Over Yonder.”

Dawn pointed her screwdriver at a monitor hanging on the wall and a twangy theme song started to play. The soldiers looked uncertainly from Dawn to the monitor, trying to figure out which of them to watch.

“I thought it got canceled after two seasons?” one of the suits asked, then immediately looked ashamed for knowing what Wander Over Yonder was. The other ladies and gentlemen in business wear carefully did not look at him.

“Got revived in 2019. Something for you all to look forward to. If you're nice I leave them on your hard drive.”

“What's this about an antitoxin?”

“Yes, I'm here to give you five weeks, six days, twenty-one hours, and thirteen minutes advance notice on a medium-sized alien incursion that will include some unhealthy levels of alien plant toxins. Got a friend to whip up a little something for that, then popped back here for you bunch to test and hand out. You've kind of already done that because of a closed time loop, so if you  could just . . . stop pointing those guns at me and my friend?”

For all that Dawn was a small, skinny woman sitting on the floor, she still managed to make the request sound commanding. The soldiers all looked to their leader for instructions to back down.

“Okay, okay!” A woman pushed through the gaggle of agents and soldiers, taking a cellphone from her ear, “I just talked with UNIT and Stewart confirms there's a sister. Stand down!”

“Hurrah for Stewart!” Dawn bounced to her feet in a twinkle of pink high tops, “Whoever they might be.”

“You said it,” Sunny took Dawn's offered hand and stood up, heartily relieved that the guns were headed out of the room, “Next time can we just call ahead?”

Bog was watching forests rise and fall, mesmerized by the pulsing of data about plant diseases jumping species and wiping out native crops before it was shouldered out of the way by the history of Cheem architecture. All of it was crammed into his brain, pushing against the inside of his skull, trying to crowd out the Doctor's voice.

Roots were pushing her hands away, growing over Bog's face again, but before she was pushed away completely her voice slipped through to him again:

“You write what happens next and I can help you. What happens next?”

What happened next? His head was going to explode, that was the gist of it. Bog was sure the Doctor would have fancier terms to describe the process, but, in the end, his head was too full and it was going to burst when it couldn't hold anymore of data streaming into it.

The roots had moved and twisted around him so much that he didn't not recognize the touch of the Doctor's hands on his face. Roots twined around his heart, tighter and tighter, squeezing when his heart jumped. When he realized that someone was touching him. Someone real.

He was laying against the wall of Roland's TARDIS.

He was kneeling in the void.

In both places the Doctor was there, pulling vines and cables out of the way until there was enough space cleared for her small hands to frame his face.

“C'mon, you grouchy pine tree, this is your story. Nobody gets to write their story entirely by themselves. Someone else always comes along and scrawls over your notes with a marker. But the important things, the really important things, you get to decide. Is dying really the decision you want to make? End your story with a sad little scribble? You've got better stuff than that in you, Broden Broderick King.”

Bog didn't think this was true.

But it was nice to hear.

And if he died he wouldn't get to make the Doctor eat her words about him being only a “decent” guitar player.

Pinpointing information about the plant army was like trying to find a specific raindrop during a hurricane. Even with the Doctor doing something—Bog was sure she was doing something because he felt like he was briefly surfacing in the middle of drowning—there was too much information. Details of the accelerated growing process, the selection and distribution of toxins, the modifications to the AI, a built-in GPS that aided the plant soldiers in traveling to the most heavily populated areas in the city.

“Good, good. Very good. Keep at it, Bog, you're on the right track.”

Bog continued to fumble around, doing the equivalent of pressing random buttons on a keyboard and hoping the computer would somehow unfreeze. If the keyboard was red hot and the monitor so bright your eyeballs sizzled just looking at it. The information was snatched away and shoved into some corner of his already overcrowded head. The brief semblance of control was gone and Bog was dragged back under the churning mass of information.

Too much.

Too much and no room for it.

No room.

No room inside of him.

The interfaces had been bypassed. The interfaces that kept anyone accessing the primrose pendant from being burned up from the inside.

So what was needed was a new interface.

The roots tangled in his bones and woven around his heart were what connected him to the database and poured the contents into his brain. Something needed to redirect them, filter the information, slow it back down to a manageable trickle.

“Yes, yes!” the Doctor agreed with Bog's unspoken thoughts. He had thought they were, anyway, but there was only the smallest bit of his thoughts left that weren't being slammed with the relentless overload, it was hard to say for sure he hadn't said anything, “A conduit! Not a container! A new interface! That's good, that's very good. That's thinking positive. None of those sad artistic downer endings here! This is the kind of story I want to see!”

The old interfaces were still there. They had detoured around them, not destroyed them.

“Forests grow back stronger after a fire,” the Doctor said, “let it all burn.”

Bog's heart had been desperately pounding against its cage of roots. He did something . . . he let something in. The roots spread fine white hairs into the walls of his heart, the crevices of his bones, into the folds of his brain. Delicate strands of them merged with his blood vessels, flowing with the golden amber liquid of the pendant's data, siphoning it from his head. Now it just needed somewhere to go.

Out.

Outside was nothing by the empty black, a veil that hid the ravaged remains of the forest, the clinging traces of the corrupted AI wound into its roots. The trees were choked by the metal tendrils, dry and rotting, a framework of dead wood held up by a cage of metal.

“Burn out the dry rot and let the new growth take root,” the Doctor said, her comment bringing images of the burning forest to the surface of the chaos. The Time War had tried to burn down the forest in the primrose seed, but then it didn't happen. Time was in a snarl and the forest had burned, but history continued as if it hadn't. It was time to finally set it right, let the fire eat it all away so that the new growth could take root.

The roots burst out of Bog, exploding into the black like networks of lightning, taking to the black as if it were rich, dark soil. The data that had been stuffing itself into his head streamed out of him in a burst, like a can of soda that had been shaken and then opened. The roots carved new channels and the data rushed through them, crashing through the old interfaces, burning them up and tossing off the ashes. Bog was sure he heard Roland abruptly cut off in the middle of indignant exclamations. The kill switch exploded into tiny fragments of red, sparkling for a moment before melting into the fire.

Data streamed out of Bog's head now and into the roots. The primrose that had blossomed from the broken seed rested in his hands while its roots ran riot in the dark, chasing on the heels of the cleansing fire. Trees burst out of the ground and dripped sap that hardened into amber. Amber, trees, roots, all networked and filed the data away. He was lightheaded with relief, his head echoing with newly vacated space, but he didn't allow himself to relax. He lurched forward, calling back some of the data.

It streamed through his head, golden and warm instead of white hot and burning, the information he was seeking coming easily to view. He grabbed at the streams of data pertaining the plant army and gave something a yank, like pulling a plug, bringing the footage from the soldiers' eyes up for viewing at the same time.

All across the city the plant soldiers froze in the tracks, as still as the trees they resembled. The footage bounced as the soldiers fell, then stabilized again, showing Bog more sideways angles of pavement then even he and his routine drunken encounters with the ground had viewed before. The background noise of the city chattered in Bog's ears, screaming and shouting dying away when the soldiers remained mobile.

A gentle prompt to the new system and Bog found out how to neutralize the toxins so that when he ordered the army to die they did not release anymore poison into the air. The army had fallen, their wooden bodies drying out now that the pendant was no longer running the program that helped them pull moisture out of the air and ground.

The footage blinked out when the soldier's eyes became too dry to function.

Just like that it was all over.

The planet and—more importantly—his family were safe.

The data was humming gently through his veins, circulating through him and back out into the new network. Kneeling, he was curved over the primrose. It was growing out of his chest and held in his cupped hands.

Hands he couldn't move.

His skin was bark, even here in his mind, and his fingers had grown together, his arms fused to his sides, legs rooted into the ground, eyes cast down toward the primrose. Cautious fingertips brushed his face and he couldn't look up to see who it was.

“That should have been scored with drums and electric guitars,” the Doctor said, fingers on the rigid surface of his cheek, “You did it. Thank you.”

He couldn't reply. If he could have he would have insisted on finally having a drink, plant or not. He had earned that much. Though the sincerity of the thank you from the Doctor kindled a glow just as well as any shot of whiskey.

“You're probably a little stiff,” she continued in her usual brisk manner, “You'll get the hang of it. Being the new interface.”

No, he wasn't the new interface. The glow was dimming and his tired brain trying to wrestle the facts into order. He had directed the information to create a new interface. Right?

“I think we'd better wake up now, Bog.”

The roots released Bog and he fell forward.

Right out of the pendant and back into the TARDIS, his body sliding down sideways from where he had been sitting against the wall. The breath was knocked out of him completely by the heavy weight of pain and he made no attempt to catch himself.

The Doctor caught him.

“You smell of flowers,” Bog mumbled into her shoulder.

“That's not me, champ.”

“Okay,” Bog sighed, not really hearing anything she said. Everything was so beautifully quiet and the Doctor was small and just . . . one person. Just one person instead of thousands. He would never had described her as quiet, but everything was relative. She was talking, but all he could hear was the strange double rhythm of her heartbeats. Four beats for every two of his.

“I'm not a hugger,” she said loudly, indicating she had spoken the statement several times, increasing the volume with each repetition.

“Okay,” Bog agreed, not moving.

“I understand you've been through a difficult time and that this might be reassuring for you, but . . . oh, whatever. There, there,” the Doctor patted the back of his shirt.

“My head didn't explode,” Bog managed to wrap his arms around her in spite of the cables handicapping his movements.

“Goodness, you get very Scottish when you're tired. Yup, your head is still there. Well done. And . . . and we're continuing the hugging. Right. You burned out the old interface and made a new one to replace it. You probably missed it, but the AI was making quite the fuss right before the roots snapped his neck.”

“Sorry to have missed that. We did it, then? Stopped the plants, saved the world? All done and good.”

“All done and good.”

“Now you unhook me from this and set me to rights?”

“Hm, well--”

“Boom, baby!”

Dawn and Sunny tumbled into the wreckage of the erstwhile art gallery, glowing brightly enough to live up to their names.

“Guess who delivered antitoxin to all the hospitals, clinics, and emergency rooms simultaneously?” Dawn, who was wearing sunglasses for some reason, demanded.

“It was us!” Sunny held up a hand.

“It was us!” Dawn high-fived Sunny, “And since outside they are making the galaxy's biggest compost heap out of dead plant soldiers I would venture to say that you guys have been busy too—why are you hugging Boggy?”

“He won't let go,” the Doctor said in tones to indicated she had suffered greatly but with saintly patience.

“Uh huh,” Dawn said with great skepticism, “Your usual tolerance is about fifteen seconds. I timed it once with a stopwatch.”

“He's had a rough day. And, again, he won't let go. Why do you have a tan?”

“Why are you patting his shoulder?”

“It is a subtle gesture to let him know that the hug is over and he should let go. It isn't working. I may have to poke him in the eye. You're tanned. You didn't make another side-trip, did you?”

“Don't you dare poke him in the eye! He looks all done in. The flowers are nice, though. What are they for?”

“Sunny,” the Doctor redirected her interrogation, “Where did you go?”

“Uh,” Sunny tried to hide a drink with a tiny umbrella in it behind his back.

“One or two tiny things might have come up,” Dawn admitted, “Lava monsters melting icecaps, that sort of thing. After we got the antitoxin sorted, of course.”

“Of course,” the Doctor agreed, a dangerous edge in her voice indicating that there was about to be a heated discussion.

Bog just leaned more heavily on the Doctor and closed his eyes.

[captainignatiuspigheart]

Oosh, where has the time gone? It’s hard to figure out whether it’s the weeks or the weekends that go by faster. Either way, they’re going nuts and I’m waaaay behind on my weekly updates. I’ve noted this for the last couple of weeks, sighed, and discovered that it’s now Thursday or something equally ridiculous. And of course, the longer this goes on, the more I have to write and the more impossible it becomes. I guess I’ll have to draw a line under it… This week you’ll only be seeing the things I gave a damn about from the last couple of weeks because otherwise I’ll never finish!

A Rare Moment of Self-Reflection

What I should do is to think a little about why I’m now struggling to do this. In part it’s because this exercise was great at the beginning of lockdown, and gave me a focus. Now, of course, I have a fucktonne of work to do and things are sort of ramping up in other areas of life, like occasionally seeing people in the flesh and stuff. A number of things have helped me keep it together for the last 129 days (I think) of working at home: work, obviously, is my primary routine and aiming to go for a cycle ride beforehand really frames my day. Every Thursday for ages (forever? Who knows) I’ve been hosting a virtual pub for our MissImp weekly regulars (and folks from further afield too, which has been amazing) which has filled my regular evening out slot nicely. Then there’s been the fortnightly We Are What We Overcome webcasts, and the quick chats we have on the off weeks. That handful of regular activity has been great.

I try to keep these posts going because of something we talked about in one of our podcasts: if I’m depressed, I can’t remember any good things I’ve ever done, and if I’m all perky and up then I don’t care about remembering what I’ve been doing. Right now I’m mostly pretty chipper, largely a consequence of being busy and having acquired lots of LEGO recently, so this doesn’t feel important in the same way it did a few months ago. That’s a tricky place for me to be in, because despite occasional dips into glum days, I think I’ve been upbeat for a while now. The longer I’m upbeat, the less likely it feels that I’ll go down, or that I’ll worry about crashing. And that’s actually a decent indicator that I’m going to have a bit of a crash. Keeping track is the whole damn point! Must make more time. 

Anyway… what have I been up to? Well, we’ve seen real live humans on both the last Saturdays, partly in attempt to normalise the new normal, or whatever the pre-second wave era is called, and partly because it turns out that folk want to see us, which is very nice and reassuring. Messing about with my sister and nieces at Highfields Park was a rather fun afternoon, as was eating and drinking at Dovecote Lane park last weekend. That bandstand is perfect, other than it’s brutish tarmac flooring. As I have alluded to earlier, I’m also quite busy at work as we race for the print deadlines for October titles, commission more and more artwork and do general bookstuff. It’s ace really, but is certainly filling my days tightly. We’re not likely to see the office for another month, and that’s OK with me.

I’ve been a rather busy LEGO person too, albeit more “busy” in the sense of “buying” than making much. I did join a LUG though, the Brick Central LEGO User Group. I’ve thought about it a lot over the last couple of years, and though I’m not sure how much time I could feasibly put into big displays and conventions, I’m interested in finding out. Also I got neat printed bricks and bits and pieces when I signed up, so I’m happy with that. I took advantage of the LEGO double VIP points last week to pick up a “few” things, from cute little LEGO Dots and baby dinosaurs to the massive Pirates of Barracuda Bay set. It is all very exciting! I’ve got some random builds I need to take some decent photos of and share them too.  

Big Stuff

Little Stuff

Big Stuff

Watching: The Order, season 2

I can’t deny that this is a low-rent Teen Wolf crossed with the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, themselves low-rent versions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and so many more.  I remembered nothing of the previous season, even when we saw the “last time on this thing”, and would have sworn I’d never seen it at all. Nonetheless, this proved to be effective brain chewing entertainment while eating, in the sense of it noticeably degrading one’s braincells. Daft witch academy with neighboring anti-magic werewolves (who turn out to have previously been the witches’ bodyguard or something), but the wolves have all been tricked into being witches, or something. It doesn’t really matter – the entire show is redeemed by the delightful relationship between the four werewolves, which feels very much like how I felt about my university housemates: loving, occasionally fighty and laced with sarcasm and alcohol. Shame the lady werewolf ended up in hell this season. I’m sure I won’t remember this next time either, but if I can be persuaded to watch season 3 I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. 

Reading: The Kingdom Beyond the Waves by Stephen Hunt

Continuing the really quite wacky steampunk series set in a far-future with multiple species of human (Craynarbians are splendid shelled folk, for example), steammen, and wild action adventure. I have insufficient time to summarise this one, but it covers an Atlantis-alike ancient city in the sky, infernal plots of genius industrialists to take over government, a frightening Borg-like jungle species, savage feral robots, submarine journeys, and so much more. The whole series is an absolute blast and I’m enjoying re-reading them enormously. Get on it.  

Building: LEGO Overwatch Watchpoint: Gibraltar #75975

While I still have almost no idea what Overwatch is (yeah, yeah, I know it’s a game, and my friend Sam has a nice summary on Overwatch here), but I adore the LEGO sets. I’ve had my eye on this one solely because it features a gorilla in a spacesuit. Now that it’s reaching the end of its shelf-life “Watchpoint: Gibraltar” has become more affordable, and on a midnight whim (always the best time to buy LEGO) I ordered…

The minifigs are an utter delight! Check out Pharah (in blue) with that gorgeous gold visor, and Mercy (admittedly with the usual pink-printed-on-black face which never really works that well) with a lovely hair/hat element and lovely printed torso and legs, plus the rather ominous Reaper. I’m guessing he’s the bad guy. The gorilla is apparently named “Winston”. I hadn’t noticed that he’s wearing glasses, but he’s rather charming either way.

The build is pretty straightforward: you make a spaceship, which has a couple of separating sections, and the cool but not very exciting gantry/rocket leaning post thing. The spaceship itself is a satisfyingly sleek affair, with cleverly connected sections and very neat work on making the hatch fit flush. Building it felt like a wonderful flashback to my childhood, making largely flat spaceships that feel a little like this, but much less good.

The whole thing looks very pretty, but is inconveniently tall for anywhere I want to put it…

Watching: Derry Girls, season 2

Just marvelous. I can’t recommend this show enough, and I’m thrilled that there’s a third season on the way. Set in, um, Derry, in the 90s, this teenage sitcom is pretty much perfect. In keeping with non-American TV shows about teenagers, this lot actually look like real teenagers – the scowl game is extraordinary. The relationships and dialogue are brilliant, and you can’t help but love them all a little bit. The parents are savage and equally funny (finding Bill Clinton is a particular joy). The costumes are bang-on 90s-hideous and the soundtrack makes me unusually nostalgic.  My only complaint is that there aren’t enough episodes. Not even close. Apparently Netflix screwed up and released this early, so it’s not available any more. Sorry folks!

Building: LEGO Jurassic World Dr Wu’s Lab: Baby Dinosaur Breakout #75939

Jesus Christ, baby dinosaurs! How was I ever supposed to resist? Reader, I did not. Clearly. 

Like many of the licensed sets, especially the Jurassic World theme, there isn’t a lot to this. That said, the build is drawn out by the usual agony of applying stickers to transparent elements, and my desire to get them mostly straight had me turning on extra lights and teasing them into place with a scalpel. The egg turning machine is pleasing, and although I was complaining about applying the stickers, this is a set where they really do shine. The details in them are lovely, from the laptop screen to all the heads up displays, they’re adorable, and I’ll have to find more uses for them.

The figures are reliably cool, and I really like the LEGO Friends elements such as the baby feeding bottle sneaking into the mainstream LEGO sets.  Dr Wu has the most cunning expression, just like in the movies! But none of this matters – all shall be recycled for parts except for the ADORABLE baby triceratops and even babier ankylosaur. Just so goddamn cute. I couldn’t be happier. 

Watching: What We Do in the Shadows, season 2

A show that completely revels in its own stupidity with enormous commitment, we caned this in a single sitting too. Colin, the energy vampire, continues to be my personal favourite, but they’re all pretty great idiots. I’m delighted that the main storyline has turned out to be Guillermo’s, as he learns of his vampire-hunting past and wonders about his future, killing vampires while still being a dedicated familiar. Wonderful nonsense.

Doing: We Are What We Overcome – Fortnightly Mental Health Check-In

We reflected a little on how life has changed with a whole fortnight of being allowed to go to the pub… And here’s the link for next week’s chat.

Watching: Warrior Nun

This is dreadful. OK, that’s not entirely fair, but it’s definitely mostly fair. This is the story of a bunch of nuns who are warriors (duh), fighting demons and stuff. One of the nuns always has an angel’s halo embedded in their back, which makes them a sin-fighting superhero. When a mission goes badly tits up, the warrior nuns rip the halo out of their dead leader and stick it in a recently dead girl… She comes back to life, no longer paraplegic, but certainly perplexed about why she’s alive, why she has superpowers (kinda), and why she should give a shit about the Catholic church. Sounds fun, right. The trailer looks pretty fun too, and there are about 25 minutes of great stuff spread across the entire show, with some fun fights, laughable CGI demons, the one good character (Shotgun Mary) who appears to be in another, much better, show. But the rest of it is bogged down by impossibly tedious exposition where characters literally open books and read endless passages from them, or an agonisingly dull romance, in which the most exciting bits are them sitting on a ferry. The show almost redeems itself with a final heist episode but by that point it’s so laden with cack that I couldn’t bring myself to care. You may enjoy it though.

Doing: MissImp’s Virtual Drop-In – Roberto Lewis

More great and splendid video content right here, on one of my favourite topics — coming in with nothing! (I mean, favourite because I cannot plan…)

Last Week: The Order, The Kingdom Above the Waves, Warrior Nun, Derry Girls, LEGO Overwatch and Jurassic World, We Are What We Overcome and more… I’m quite behind. #books #tv #LEGO #stuff https://wp.me/pbprdx-8GV Oosh, where has the time gone? It’s hard to figure out whether it’s the weeks or the weekends that go by faster.

[thewickedbohemian]

Thoughts on the Anniversary Legendaries

Academy D.va - The discourse over whether or not it broke the Internet (be it for NSFW reasons or not) is breaking the Internet more than it. Also, this is not just the “D.va in me” (because I’m kin) talking but I really want that game mentioned in the flavor text to be made into a real thing, if they can do it (or at least announce they’re going to) for Lucio’s freaking cereal they can do it for the game that brought D.va to where she is today. Also, minor quibble, but if this is meant to depict past!her and be a “pseudo-Archives” skin, she must either be wearing contact lenses now or the glasses were just a fashion accessory with no corrective value (or she got corrective surgery for whatever reason) because otherwise I rhetorically ask you to explain how the hell she was wearing big Harry-Potter-ass glasses in high school but just up and ditched them by the time she was 19 (when we first “met” her). Also, I refuse to believe this is “sexualization and infantilization” just because she’s wearing a school uniform.

Gargoyle Winston - Holy shit, talk about a thing I wasn’t expecting until it happened (but when it was announced it was the one I was using to combat people who thought because of Academy D.va and Honeydew Mei that the theme of the event was going to be fanservice/vaguely-rule-34-bait) but now that I see it I think it totally works. Also, despite different skin color, wings (since he’s supposed to be a gargoyle not a demon) and only one broken horn, I still for some reason get total Hellboy vibes off of this skin, maybe it’s his face.

Honeydew Mei - I share the opinion of some of my YouTuber acquaintances that it’s nice to have a Mei skin that actually “shows off her figure”, not as in sexy (since I’m not the sort of person who’d think this sort of thing is sexy, being a-spec) but as in her being dressed for warm weather instead of always just being in either flowing/baggy outfits and/or about a metaphorical trillion layers whenever a Legendary skin changes her outfit. Also, it’s actually neat to hear this skin got actually legitimately leaked before the event instead of the weird “preview pseudo-leaks that ruin the surprise” they do sometimes and on the Reddit thread where the leak was revealed I saw somebody making a Waitress The Musical joke which proves that it isn’t just me that’s the Venn Intersection between Overwatch and Broadway fandoms which means my ideas for crossover skins are that much more likely to happen

Orbital Pharah - Now why didn’t I think of that, it’s yet another made-it-work-so-well-it’s-obvious-in-hindsight one. Also, it totally fits with a lot of the 2017 Anniversary skins (specifically Sentai Genji, Cyberninja Hanzo, Cyborg: 76 and Cyberian Zarya) and even somewhat Riot Police Brigitte in that (more so than the rest of the skin batch they came out with) they look like they very easily could be action figures. Also, the fact that there’s apparently still Helix Security insignias and crap on her spacesuit opens up an intriguing lore direction if (just like Academy D.va) it is to be taken as a depiction of something she got up to in canon and not just an AU thing like the rest of them (e.g. whether or not you think cops are heroes, Brig’s not a cop). I would have shrugged it off as a similar sort of “AU” if there wasn’t canonical permanent presence on the moon in that universe. So now I rhetorically ask the writers (if this is to be acknowledged as canon like I said), what the fuck was Pharah and co. doing all the way up there?

Riot Police Brigitte - Should have expected all the discourse to happen from the sort of people who think things like “a realistic cop drama would depict cops shooting unarmed minorities and then finding ways to pin the other crimes the cops themselves did on those minorities posthumously to justify the shooting [because apparently according to them cops in all countries never do good things and white people who aren’t cops never commit crimes]”, it’s gotten so heated in the short time since the skin was revealed that not only do we have people saying it’s “out of character” for Brigitte/”makes her evil” but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone responded to one of the “acab brigade”’s dark-humor jokes about Soldier and Tracer tasering her while chanting about gay rights by saying they wouldn’t do that not because of her being a good guy but because being white gays they’d be too privileged to oppose her. Also, it doesn’t take thinking “blue lives matter” to realize that not only are not all cops in America the same (and no they aren’t all as bad as the bad apples for not at least immediately reporting the misdeeds (that some of them might not even see) if not overthrowing the government to make it anarcho-communist and making everyone perfect so we don’t need cops or whatever any more than artists like Lil Dicky or Bruno Mars who’ve collaborated with artists who have atrocities to their name might as well have been accomplices to said atrocities for collabing with them) but not all cops around the world act like even the bad cops (however many of those you think there are) in America and there are situations where riots are bad things (riots aren’t all “innocent protest by underprivileged minority is turned violent by agents provacateur to give an excuse to break out the pepper spray”) so stopping them would be as heroic as what she normally does. Also, if you think she’s automatically “not a hero anymore” for taking on the aesthetic of a riot cop, boy do I have some news for you about what (some but not all, just like with the cops) knights have done throughout history, even if dragons existed it wouldn’t have been all “save princess from dragon” and that sort of thing. I see why they gave her that aesthetic Doylistically (best way to translate her shield and armor into a cop skin without butchering it) and if they’re going to keep the law-enforcement theme going with future skins, why not (if they have enough of a “uniform” that it could be translated into a skin) give a scientist hero like Mei, Moira or Winston a CSI skin (same sort of thematics without more discourse unless people think forensics people are “in on it”)? And even if you hate cops and think she would too, there’s precedent for heroes getting skins that “make them what they hate”, look at last Anniversary and robo-Torb. Also, why is it only the cop skins people flip their shit about and you didn’t see e.g. people yelling online about how pirates are evil murderous probably-bigoted bastards when some pirate skin came out (be it one that “came with the hero” like Torbjorn’s or Baptiste’s or an event skin like Ana’s or Junkrat’s) because the worst pirates have done things even worse than the bad cops people like this call out. TL;DR nacab (especially when they’re fictional characters from another country) and not all riots are good (and methinks this is just a perfect storm of online anti-cop toxicity meets anti-Brig toxicity because “now they have an excuse to hate her because she looks like a cop”)

Toxic Roadhog - Most yikes-worthy Legendary I’ve seen Overwatch ever do, both in terms of the sheer amount of “wouldn’t want to run into that in a dark alley” and the sheer amount of detail work that went into it (heck, even if I liked Roadhog enough to want to make fan skins for him I wouldn’t have thought of “hook filled with thing needle at the end injects into people” never mind the whole him-not-actually-having-face thing, although the shutoff valve on the belly is kind of hilarious). Also, this skin kinda makes me sad because one of my favorite Overwatch YouTubers isn’t really doing that much Overwatch anymore (mostly freaking Monster Hunter which I do not like) but when he was, he was a big Roadhog fan and while I know he probably still plays the game and is probably still overjoyed that this skin exists, I feel like I can’t share said joy

[fashiontrendin-blog]

FashionBeans’ Top Stories Of 2017

http://fashion-trendin.com/fashionbeans-top-stories-of-2017/

FashionBeans’ Top Stories Of 2017

5 Ideas That Will Change The Way You Wear Clothes

Dress shirts made from spacesuit material. Synthetic spider silk. Genuine leather grown in test tubes. These things might sound like they’re from tomorrow’s world, but they’re happening today. The next generation of wearable technology and smart textiles is about to revolutionise the way clothes are made and worn. Here are five of the biggest projects underway right now.

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What Smart-Casual Means & How To Dress For It

Trying to find the true meaning of the phrase “smart-casual” can quickly turn into a nightmare. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “neat, conventional, yet relatively informal in style, especially as worn to conform to a particular dress code”. But these days it’s quite common for smart-casual to be the dress code. Here’s your ultimate guide to what it really means, so you’re never over- or under-dressed ever again.

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The Right Colours To Wear For Your Skin Tone

Colour can be a cruel mistress. Most of us know that we could stand to win some serious style points by giving colours outside our comfort zone a go, but finding hues that work with your complexion is often easier said than done. Thankfully, FashionBeans has compiled a blow-by-blow guide to seeking out the shades that work for you.

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8 Pieces Of Menswear That Will Last A Lifetime

Fast fashion has its advantages (mainly when next-day delivery gets you out of a sartorial pickle the week before payday). But it’s quality that lasts. From a Barbour waxed jacket to Dr. Martens boots, these are the pieces of menswear that will last a lifetime thanks to the brands’ warranty or repair service.

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5 Modern Shoes All Men Should Own

After the black Oxfords, brown brogues and white low-tops, where do you turn? To build a solid shoe rotation (and up your style game in the process), consider adding these five modern footwear essentials to your collection.

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What To Wear With Every Shade Of Denim

Denim: so easy to put on, so easy to get wrong. Unlike corduroy and velvet, which appear difficult (and indeed are), denim on the surface seems simple enough but can be perilous to a man’s sartorial reputation. With that in mind, here’s how to wear the five most common washes to make sure you stay on right side of history.

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How Much To Pay For Every Piece Of Menswear

More money doesn’t always mean more style, and it can be far too easy to pay over the odds for everyday staples like T-shirts and knitwear. To help, here’s a garment-by-garment guide that reveals when price stops reflecting quality, and a couple of brands doing each at the right price.

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10 Future Men’s Wardrobe Classics

The Oxford shirt, the trench coat, the desert boot – just a few examples of how great designs can transcend decades, even centuries. But what about today’s items? Which contemporary garments have the potential to remain wardrobe staples 50 years or more from now? We’d put our money on these 10.

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12 Menswear Pieces That Only Get Better With Age

In a world of disposable fashion and fleeting fads, it’s comforting to know that some staples are in it for the long haul. From the buttery wrinkle of fine calf leather to the body-hugging warp of raw denim, say hello to your newest old friends.

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20 Subtle Style Upgrades You Can Make Right Now

All stylish men understand that the smallest details can have the biggest impact. To save you the effort (and potential awkwardness) of scrutinising the whims of well-dressed men, we’ve put together 20 subtle upgrades that will instantly improve your sartorial standing.

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12 Style Epiphanies Every Man Goes Through

Every day the brain absorbs gems of new information, sometimes without you even noticing. Some of these will be microscopic realisations (don’t stare at the sun, don’t touch dog poo, don’t tattoo your neck), some may unlock the answers to bigger philosophical questions, and some will just be simple lessons about how to dress correctly. Like these.

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The 20 Greatest Trainers Of All Time

Some trainers blaze a trail and burn-out. Some never go away. From feats in feet-protective engineering to cultural icons, these are the cream of the crepes or, more simply put, the 20 greatest trainers of all time from the biggest names in the game.

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How To Pick The Right Suit For Your Body Shape

They say that in life, you have to play the hand you’re dealt, which is true. However, you can also stack the deck in your favour with some tactical tailoring. Because not all suits are good for everybody, or indeed every body; whether you’re short, tall, skinny, large or athletic, here’s how to pick the right suit for your body shape.

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The 50 Best Men’s Fashion & Style Instagram Accounts

Instagram is good for a lot of shameful things. But one useful thing you can use it for is improving the way you dress, square by stylish square. To save you sticking your thumb where it’s not wanted or needed, FashionBeans has curated the 50 best accounts. Each one worthy of a double tap.

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14 Men’s Grooming Habits That Women Hate

From a female’s perspective, male grooming tends to come in wild extremes: we either get it really right or really, really wrong. To avoid getting up your other half’s nose (in every sense), these are the grooming habits that irk women the most and how to fix them, pronto.

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8 Of The Best Luxury Fragrances For Men

We all know that a hefty price tag doesn’t automatically equate to a superior product. Nonetheless, there are still plenty of reasons to splash out on a luxury fragrance. From Hermès to Creed, here are eight of the best high-end scents for men.

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How To Pick The Right Beard For Your Face Shape

Much the same way not every hairstyle will suit you, beards are not a one-size-fits-all facial addition. So here, with the help of London’s best barbershops, brush up on your knowledge and trim any chance of picking an unflattering style.

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Why And How You Should Embrace Male Baldness

What do Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Jason Statham and Vin Diesel have in common? They’re bald, immensely successful and regularly top ‘sexiest men’ lists – proving you don’t need hair up top to get there. Here, we make a case for why you should embrace baldness, and how to do it in style.

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The Right Grooming Products For Your Complexion

Although skin is fundamentally the same whatever its colour, there are a few differences that determine how best to look after it. Our guide to complexions breaks down the right grooming products for your skin, whatever its colour.

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Grooming Treatments Every Man Should Get

Forget outdated stereotypes of what it means to be a man. Blokes now make up one in five salon customers and, as a result, testosterone-fuelled treatments are popping up all over the UK. From the tan that’ll give (the illusion of) gains to the sports massage to fix a niggling knot, here is the ultimate edit of grooming services every guy should get.

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A Complete Guide To Men’s Cosmetic Surgery

Ever looked in the mirror and desperately wanted ears that didn’t stick out so much? Or spotted a bald patch you wished wasn’t there? While we’re not ones to endorse whining or, worse, beating yourself up over appearance, we do applaud a proactive approach. So here’s the why, how, and how much of nips and tucks – from your nose to your nutsack.

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Men, Isn’t It Time We All Accepted We’re Inadequate?

In the last couple of years, it’s been reported that suicide is now the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK. Anxiety, depression and eating disorders have also skyrocketed over 600 per cent in younger men over the last decade. FashionBeans explores how we could all benefit from breaking free from outdated definitions of masculinity.

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An Etiquette Guide For The Modern Gentleman

Chatting about etiquette seems a quaintly old-fashioned concept, like courtship, landline telephones and Myspace. But there’s an argument that it’s more important than ever. So here are 70 etiquette rules that will make you a better man – covering how to behave in the gym, at work, on a date and beyond.

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15 Ways To Become A More Interesting Man

The world never stops turning, and as men we should never stop improving. Which leads seamlessly to this very simple guide containing 15 easy ways to becoming a more interesting bloke. Follow it to the letter, and you will be intriguing the pants off people (figuratively and probably literally) in no time.

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31 Things No Modern Man Should Ever Do

Being a modern man means many things. It means being kind, open-minded and able to look at another person without immediately thinking “me want sex” like the Neanderthals that went before us. It also means not committing any of these 31 cardinal sins, from sulking to sending a dick pic.

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10 Everyday Habits Of Ripped Men

A short-lived resolution list and gym membership gathering dust is not the answer to your body ambitions. Instead, try adding these daily habits of ripped men into your regimen to see your waistline shrink and muscles grow.

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50 Hobbies For Men That Are Worth Taking Up

In a world that’s always on, always charged and where to-do lists are never-ending, we could all do with a distraction or two. So we have compiled no less than 50 hobbies for men, each designed to tackle an unwanted symptom of the rat race.

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47 Fashion And Style Books Every Man Should Read

Fans of menswear in its printed form, rejoice. FashionBeans has painstakingly ploughed through a local library’s worth of hardbacks and paperbacks in the selfless pursuit of creating the ultimate reading list of fashion, style, grooming and lifestyle books. Consider this reading material to make you smarter, more attractive and just generally better at life.

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7 Mistakes You’re Probably Making With Your Watch

Contrary to the old expression, you can’t judge a man solely by his shoes. A watch is just as telling. To save your wrist from any wrongdoing, we enlisted the experts to reveal the most common mistakes men make with their timepieces, from not getting them serviced to overlooking second-hand models.

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What Makes A Watch Good Value For Money?

A watch has two kinds of value. First, there’s the pounds and pence you spend, and then there’s emotional value. Whichever you favour, you’ll want to get the best horological bang for your buck by looking for these key features at every price point.

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