#there's a special place for bears and bear adjacent identities

[sorin-sunchild]

Btw when I say bear pride I mean Ursula's too

[anntoldst0ries]

Everything else is just the weather

Book: Open Heart Pairing: Dr Ethan Ramsey x F!MC (Dr Noelle Valentine) Word Count: ~5.3k (I sinned!) Summary: Ethan takes Elle out on their “first” date. Category: Fluff Warnings: None

A/N: It has literally taken me ages to finish this fic. To the point that I couldn’t look at it anymore, but here it is. I had it in mind for a really long time and now that OH is back, I feel like I’m ready to show it to the world. As always thank you for your support and I hope you like it!

This fic is part 2 of birthday present for my friend, part 1 is the fan art which you can see here. Once you read the fic, the fan art makes more sense :)

This is my submission for CFWC Silly Love Stories, Day 12: Date night.

Loud knocks resonated throughout the room. 

"Come in!"

"Good morning, Mrs. Peterson.”

“Good morning, Dr Valentine. I think you are the only doctor in this hospital with some sort of manners, everyone else just waltzes in here as if it was a damn barn!”

“Hospital or no hospital, everyone has their right to privacy.”

“Thank you, child. Once again, please call me Faye."

"Alright Faye, but only if you call me Elle.” She smiled sweetly, and the whole room seemed to be suddenly lit by a thousand suns.

“How are you feeling? Are the meds making a difference?"

"They are. I am ready to be discharged today.”

"Not so fast. I am not ready to say goodbye to you yet."

“Why would you possibly like to be lumbered with an old nuisance like me for even a second longer than necessary?”

Elle just laughed and shook her head. The ‘nuisance’, as the elderly lady so lovingly put it, was exactly what she loved about her job. She loved spending time with her patients, she loved their stories and their worldly wisdom. It made her sad to see how many of them thought they didn’t matter or considered themselves and their lives boring. To her, they were anything but. 

Many of Edenbrook’s staff members kept asking themselves: what is it about her? She was a great doctor, no two ways about it, and she was a genuinely nice person. But what was the source of power she had over people? If she woke up one day and decided to start a rebellion, patients would have most certainly followed her, even if it meant they’d be leaving the premises of the hospital with naked butts or trailing their IVs behind them. Doctors, nurses, administration, cleaners and security would follow shortly. She only had to say a word.

And how on Earth was she capable of turning Dr Ramsey, the grizzly bear of Edenbrook, into a benign teddy bear with as little as one look? It was beyond everyone’s apprehension.

Had they spent more time actually observing her, rather than gossiping in the corners, the answer would have unveiled in front of them within minutes.

It was very simple.

Noelle was truly curious about people. She genuinely liked them and was determined to get to know their story, for it helped her diagnose them faster and also satiated the young doctor’s hunger for knowledge.

Patients never felt like “curious cases” or “numbers” in her presence. They were… themselves - people with hopes, dreams, fears, pet peeves and odd habits. They were human. 

So little and yet so much.

Those never touched by serious illnesses often failed to understand that sickness strips you of your dignity and becomes your identity. Your true self becomes covered by this weird, annoying sticker that wouldn’t come off no matter how hard you tried to remove it. 

But this young woman, despite the nature of her profession, somehow managed to notice what was hiding beneath this misleading layer.

Had all these gossipers spoken to her patients, that’s exactly what they would have heard.

"What's happening today?" The older lady asked with a flick of curiosity in her wrinkle-haloed eyes.

"What do you mean, Faye?" The young doctor sounded genuinely baffled by the out-of-the-blue question.

"Well, I am no diagnostician, but I believe I am rather observant and you radiate with happiness. Something special is happening today, am I right?"

"Yeah, you are right." Elle blushed like a teenager caught in a lie. "My boyfriend is taking me on a surprise date today, but he won’t say a word about it, so I'm super excited to find out what he planned for us. He usually isn't one for romantic gestures, so the secrecy is killing me."

"Do you think he's gonna pop the big question?" Faye’s eyes lit up with excitement.

"No, we're not there...yet." Elle faked a smile, but a tone of doubt and sadness coloured her voice. They probably never will be, those things weren’t in the cards for Ethan, as he already stressed once.

But once was enough and she didn’t dare mention the subject again.

"Well, I'm pretty sure he's got some big guns in store, I would if I had a lady like you." - a male patient lying in the bed adjacent to Elle’s patient added smiling flirtatiously. 

"Jerry, you were supposed to focus on getting better, not stealing my girlfriend." They all jumped when a deep baritone echoed throughout the room, hitting present company like a wrecking ball. She must have left the door ajar or Ethan could penetrate the walls soundlessly, because no one heard him coming.

Exactly how long has he been standing there for and how much did he hear?

"Dr. Ramsey, flirting makes your blood flow faster. Isn't it the very definition of life itself?” Jerry’s tone was brisk and lively.

"Well, it definitely isn't the definition of recovery after a heart attack." Ethan used his authoritative doctor’s voice but knew this wasn't a battle he was going to win. Jerry had something he didn't: a couple more decades of life experience under his belt and even the best medical school in the country couldn’t compete with this.  

"Besides, Dr. Ramsey, I don't think that the beautiful Dr. Valentine here fancies old farts like me." 

"That's where you are wrong, Jerry, looks like this is exactly the type I fancy." The two women laughed, however Ethan was far from amused. "Dr. Ramsey is 10 years older than me."

"10 years? What is 10 years in these times? Nothing. When I was getting married 40 years ago, it was something. But today? Look at all them playboys with girls younger than my granddaughter. 10 years is actually a very healthy difference. Men are immature and slower with growing up emotionally. So I'd say you've caught up, Dr. Ramsey, and the two of you are emotional peers now.”

“Thank you for the fascinating lesson in human psychology, Jerry. To think I’ve wasted all this time and money on medical school and no one taught me this.”

“Dr. Ramsey, it’s because schools and useful knowledge are mutually exclusive.”

Elle and Faye were on the verge of bursting out in laughter, but managed to keep their composure and used the non-verbal communication of exchanging glances instead.

Once they made sure their patients had everything they need, Ethan and Elle wished them a good day and promised to stop by in 2 days, as the following day was their day off.

The moment the door closed behind them, Ethan crossed his arms on his chest.

"I lose you from my sight for one second and this happens. 5 more minutes with Jerry and I'd be single again."

"At least no one wants to poke your eyes out for being with me."

"And someone wants to poke yours?"

"Where do I start... nurses, who had a crush on you long before I even set foot in Edenbrook? Female interns? Anyone, who has a pair of functioning eyes and ever looked at you?"

She was adorable when she was doing this, her whole body overtaken by excitement and her hands waving. When she was talking about something really important to her she wasn't just conversing with her mouth, she was doing it with her whole body.

Suddenly, his pager painfully reminded Ethan that this was neither the place nor the time to lose himself in adoration.

"I need to go, I'm completely swamped today and I have my favourite cherry-on-top board meeting. In case I don't see you for the rest of your shift - I’ll pick you up at 7."

He was gone before she was able to form a response. Was it just her or was Dr Ramsey weirdly… nervous?

* * * * * * * *

At 7pm sharp, Ethan Ramsey curled his palm in a fist and gently knocked. The door opened in an instant, as if someone knew he'd been standing there for the past few minutes.

"Ethan! I mean Dr. Ramsey...please come in!" Sienna squeaked with nervous excitement as she let him in.

"Outside of Edenbrook Ethan is just fine, Sienna. If you don't mind me calling you by your first name, of course."

"Mm..mme? No, yes, I mean... Elle is on the balcony." She tried to hide her embarrassment and motioned towards the tall windows surrounding the living room. Some time ago, he would have been oddly proud to have such an intimidating effect on people - nowadays, more than anything, he was amused. Has he really changed so much?

The answer to his question was leaning against the railing, glass of wine in her hand. Gauzy, flowery dress enveloped her frame and tanned skin. 

For Ethan, it was as clear as crystal: summer had the face and scent of Noelle Valentine.

Long before she started leaving her toothbrush in his apartment and sleeping in his old JH t-shirts, Ethan noticed that whenever he laid eyes on her, his whole body started acting in a very irrational way. His doctor’s instincts prompted him to think of all types of biological causes and chemical reactions in the brain. Then, when he sort of admitted to himself it’s not just pure science, Ethan leaned towards the forbidden fruit theory - the more he couldn’t have his drug, the more he was craving it.

But the feeling never disappeared. Whenever he wouldn’t see her for a while - be that an hour, a day, or just when she went to take a shower or make a coffee - the very moment her face came into his view again, he felt his stomach somersaulting.

Every. Single. Time.

It wasn’t any different now.

"Drinking without me?"

She almost dropped the glass when his voice stopped the train of thought in her head. But then she saw his face, the way too seldom relaxed muscles and a barely-there smile.

A perfectly tailored shirt clung to his torso marvellously. If not in medicine, he surely would have made a name for himself in the fashion industry. Fortunately for her, the idea never crossed his mind. 

The warm wind blew in her face, carrying the scent of expensive cologne which overwhelmed her nostrils. She didn’t know this one, so it must have been new. But she did know that smelling it for the whole evening while staring at his handsome face will be a pure torture.

Simply put, she was a goner.

"I don't know why, but I was quite nervous. Had to summon the courage somehow.”

“As you should be. After all, it's not every day that one goes on their first date."

She looked at him as if she’d just been told that a UFO landed on the roof.

“On a what?”

"Well, I was thinking a lot lately about how we never had a first date. Nothing was ever...typical with us. I promised myself I will do my best to fix things that caused you pain or deprived you of the things you deserved. Maybe I cannot fix some immediately, but this one I can, so I will."

Her eyes, overbrimming with affection struck him like thousand lightnings. Thank god a comfortable silence fell between them - had she asked him a question, it would have been clear that right now he is nothing but a simpering moron.

With this in mind, he took his hands from behind his back, holding a small bouquet of pink gerberas.

"These are my favourites." Her face instantly illuminated at the well known sight and smell. "How did you know?”

"I had some amazing helpers."

Elle instantly turned her head left and looked inside, where grinning, Sienna was showing her the thumbs up.

"Wow, now I actually wish I'd downed the whole bottle."

"I'm glad you didn't. I want to go on a date with a woman, not her lifeless body, even though the body itself is very appealing. Shall we?”

“King of compliments…”

* * * * * * * *

"You actually look like you are having a good time, Dr Ramsey.”

"Why wouldn't I? There is alcohol, sitting under the sky definitely has its charm and the company is acceptable." She playfully swatted his arm, the gesture a quick reminder of how comfortable they felt with each other, something he constantly remembered to never take for granted.

“Although I love this, I still don’t understand why you dragged me all the way outside Boston, I’m pretty sure the rooftop bars are pretty acceptable there, too. A bit more crowded though, that’s for sure.”

“Are you complaining about the fact that we have this entire place to ourselves? I know the owner and he was indebted to me.”

“Of course he was.” Looks like the whole town is indebted to Ethan freakin’ Ramsey.

“With regards to why I brought you here… you’ll just have to wait and see.”

Gosh. She couldn’t decide whether the mysterious side of Ethan Ramsey was hot as hell or annoying as hell. But she didn’t really have time to contemplate, because her companion asked her a question.

“Why did you become a doctor?” The ocean eyes pierced her to the core and she had a feeling that even if she was the best actress in the world, there was no way she’d be able to hide something from this man.

“That’s a terrible change of subject. Also, I must have told you like a million times already.”

“No, you never told me.”

When she looked at him and really, really thought about it… she suddenly realised Ethan was right. Elle told the story so many times she sort of… assumed she told Ethan, too. 

“Are you sure you want to hear it today? It’s a pretty sad story, a mood killer I’d say.”

“It’s what makes you you, so yes, I want to hear all about it - the good, the bad and the indifferent.”

“I’ll tell you, but I need to ask something first. Why now? We’ve known each other for a while and you just… I just sort of assumed this isn’t the type of conversation you’d like to hold.”

“You’ve hit the nail on the head.” Ethan’s expression was gentle, not a hint of irony in his voice. “I’ve known you for a while now, but there are still so many things about you that I don’t know. At first, I didn’t want to ask, because asking these questions meant admitting that there is something more between us. What a fail would that be, after I’ve mastered the art of denial.” He laughed, but it wasn’t a bitter or a nervous laugh, it was a genuine banter between them, as the British half of her soul liked to call it. “But you made me want to dig deeper.”

Was it the heat that made her catch her breath, or did it have nothing to do with the temperature?

“Plus, this is sort of what first dates are for, right? I’m sorry for skipping right to the more complex questions. It’s not that I don’t want to know what you were afraid of as a child, I want to know all the details… but it feels like the atmosphere calls for something…bigger.”

So she told him all about her friend, how she fell ill, how she couldn’t be saved and how the experience wreaked havoc on her whole life, tears glistening in her eyes at the mere memory of the events that shaped who she was today.

Ethan listened, his whole body tense and eyes transfixed. She was giving him one of the most fragile parts of her and he had to make sure his hands were there to catch, carry and care for this treasure.

“And that’s when I realised that if I focused on becoming the best doctor I could be, then maybe one day, I’d be that person who has an answer, who can solve a mystery and save a relationship that means the world to someone. Sometimes, people don’t realise that when a person dies, it’s not only them that’s gone. The part of someone who stays, who has to deal with the whole ‘me after you’ - that part is gone, too. So for me, in a way, this meant saving more than one life.”

For a couple of seconds he didn’t move. Then, without saying a single word and with an unreadable expression he got up and offered her a hand, which she silently accepted. He led her to the railing, where the sun was slowly sinking into the boundless waters of Quincy Bay.

His lips found the all too well known way to her forehead, placing a loving kiss on her delicate skin.

“I am so proud of you.” There was something so mesmerising in his whisper, sending a shiver down her spine.

“As a mentor or as a boyfriend?”

“Both. I want you to know that your dedication to people who rely on you is astounding and hardly present in doctors your age. Or any age, for that matter.”

“Wow, Dr Ramsey, smooth. Trying to hit on me with a recycled pick-up line used on a national TV? No wonder you didn’t have too many girlfriends.”

“No, I didn’t. But I believe everyone has a limit of luck they can get per life. And looking at you, I got a couple of lifetimes worth of luck.”

This was enough to render her speechless. She smiled and at this very moment he knew he would do anything to make her smile like this. She wrapped him around her pinky finger and suddenly his whole existence revolved around finding ways of seeing her curve these breathtaking lips as often as possible and making sure he is the reason she smiles… not crying her eyes out.

Although the other didn’t know, because none of them said it out loud, they both thought the same thing.

This feels so right. 

There isn’t a hint of awkwardness in the fact that they can go from being serious or emotionally vulnerable to funny and teasing in seconds.

In one effortless movement, Ethan spun her and pressed her back against his chest.  Then, he started placing a series of tender kisses along her jawline and the crook of her neck, slowly moving towards her shoulder. 

Come on, just say it Ramsey. It doesn’t get any better than this.

He wrapped her palm in his and pointed them towards the sky. 

“There they are - the Little Dipper and the Big Dipper.” Their intertwined fingers were jumping from one tiny flashing point to the other, as if they were playing connect the dots. “And that’s Orion’s Belt.”

“I really don’t get why at this point I’m still surprised that you’re good at everything.”

Elle was drunk on his every word, as this annoying trait of Ethan Ramsey being the know-it-all was actually one of her favourite things about him. 

As for Ethan, he couldn’t help but think that life wasn’t perfect and was never going to be. But this - this moment - it was in fact perfect. Why take chances of ruining it, when so many things can go wrong?

What if she doesn't say it back?

What if she's just gonna laugh at him or tell him he had it all wrong.

What if he misinterpreted everything and she never thought about him this way?

He was terrified of being this exposed. The last person he loved so much left him without batting an eyelid and disappeared for 25 fucking years.

Maybe it was better to live in a perfect illusion than a reality in which there was even a 0.01% chance she doesn't love him back.

So they both drowned in the moment, drifted in the sea of rapture, lost in the illusion that it can all last forever.

It was her who broke the silence.

“I’m getting a bit cold, is it ok if we call it a night?”

“Right, of course.”

“Thank you for the first date, I loved it.”

Handing her his jacket (her favourite, the dark green leather one) Ethan was furious at himself. 

Maybe he was broken. Maybe he will remain broken forever. Maybe that’s the way it must be.

“Do you want to spend the night at mine?” The question slipped his tongue before he was able to fully reflect on it.

“At yours? Unless you have some secret place I don’t know about, just a quick reminder - I live there too.”

“Since this was our first date, I thought it was a gentlemanly thing to ask.”

“In that case… I am afraid I have the ‘after the 3rd date’ sleepover rule, Dr Ramsey.”

* * * * * * * *

The morning came all too soon and the hot, ruthless rays of the rising sun announced that Ethan is now way past his regular wake up and get up time. He barely slept, tossing and turning, replaying every second of the evening in his head.

His hand mindlessly reached for what he hoped to be the familiar curves and softness of the body he adored so much. 

But his palm hit the mattress with a loud thud. The bed was empty. 

The all-too-well known feeling of hopelessness slipped into the doctor's mind with ease. What did he expect? He was acting weird the previous day. First date, what a stupid idea. She must have realised something is wrong with him and finally left.

But before he was able to fully wallow in the mud of pity, the feeling was soon replaced by an old friend Ethan haven’t heard from for a long time.

Panic. 

Where was she? Is she ok? What if something happened to her and he was just sleeping like a log instead of being there to protect her. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing her… again. Something grabbed his chest in a tight grip and wouldn’t let go. 

Scenes flashed before his eyes, vivid and bright. Their hands touching through the glass wall. Her hand cupping his cheek through the layer of hazmat suit.

He got out of bed at the speed of sound and started running around the apartment, but she was nowhere to be seen. 

Suddenly, he noticed.

The balcony door was opened wide. 

Shit.

Heart in his mouth, Ethan crossed the distance between his kitchen island and the balcony door in the blink of an eye. 

Elle was just serving pancakes outside. The goddamn pancakes. The only thing he couldn’t cook. The one thing she kept teasing him about and he rolled his eyes every time she did.

God, he promised himself he will never learn how to make them, if it meant she would just tease him forever.

She was smiling as widely as ever, putting the sun and everything else in the world to shame. Ethan was still a bit shaken and his uneven breathing gave him away. Elle finally noticed his presence.

“Good morning, I was just about to—“

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They both froze. 

The tension in the silence that had just set in was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

But the silence didn’t last long. As one man, with eyes full of disbelief, they both murmured simultaneously:

“What did you just say?”

This time, he felt obliged to break the silence.

"I...I...I mean, I…" 

Damn it, get it together, idiot.

"I didn't mean to…”

Great, Ramsey, keep digging an even deeper hole for yourself, then crawl in and stay there forever.

"You didn't mean to say it?”

"Yes. No. I mean, damn it, I am making things worse, aren't I?”

She didn’t set him straight.

"The thing is, I wanted to say it yesterday. I had it all planned, I took you for a first date and I wanted to say it for the first time yesterday.”

"Why did it have to be yesterday?”

“Give me a minute.”

She just rolled her eyes, but Ethan didn’t have a chance to notice before disappearing inside. A few moments later he re-emerged, his face and torso covered by a neatly wrapped, rectangle-shaped object.

"What's this?"

"Something you should have unpacked yesterday, but then... life happened."

Elle sat down on cold tiles, her hands trembling with a mix of fear and excitement. And just like he did months ago, he took her hand in his, only this time he cupped his own cheek with her palm and placed the most tender kiss on the inside of her hand.

It was her favourite medicine, a remedy for all things wrong. 

He sat beside her and nodded at the mysterious package. With impatience growing inside of her, Elle has torn the paper up.

Inside was a dark blue, framed print - the colour of it an instant reminder of her favourite set of irises.

She studied everything with intent. A circle must have been representing the earth and the irregular dots and lines must have been the stars and constellations. 

"A map of the sky? That's beautiful, Ethan."

He knew immediately that although her delight was sincere, she had absolutely no clue what she was looking at and why she was looking at it.

“It's not just any map of the sky.” Ethan explained gently, hints of pride colouring his voice. “It's a map of the Boston sky from exactly a year ago. Well, a year and a day.” He smiled faintly, now a shade of sorrow in his enchanting voice.

Silence. Was she supposed to know what that meant?

“Aren’t you full of mysteries today? Ok, you need to throw me a lifebelt here. What's so special about the sky from a year and a day ago?”

“For the world? Probably not too much. For me? Everything.”

At this stage of their relationship, she knew a lot about Ethan’s behaviours, triggers, his body language. And not just a relationship as a couple, but also everything that came before Ethan became someone she was running through life with (the life of two doctors in one of the busiest and most prestigious hospitals was certainly not a walk in the park).

But it still fascinated her how his demeanour changed whenever the subject was serious, whenever he was talking about something that truly mattered to him. It was as if he’d stripped down of all the layers and let her look into his bare soul. These rare moments of vulnerable intimacy meant more to her than any night of passion they ever shared.

Her eyes turned to him in pledge, because as much as she wanted to, Dr Valentine still couldn’t fully comprehend the scene unraveling in front of her.

“Read the description below the map.”

Dear God, did she actually hear shyness in his voice?

She skimmed through the image again, and there it was, right at the bottom. Elle was so focused on trying to decipher the meaning of the image that she didn’t notice the words below. 

The words which explained everything.

I WILL NEVER FORGET THE DAY 

THAT MADE ME REALISE

YOU ARE THE SKY

EVERYTHING ELSE IS JUST THE WEATHER

Her emerald eyes brimmed with hot tears as the meaning dawned upon her. Words were very unnecessary, but now that he summoned the courage to speak, there was still a lot he wanted to put into words. He gently took the frame from her hands and leaned it securely against the wall.

Taking her palms into his, he placed delicate kisses on her knuckles, his lips tracing the shape of these two tiny hands, which held all of him. Everything he had, everything he was and was going to be, he placed in those two fragile palms, with an unspoken hope that they will hold him and catch him if he falls. 

“Look at me.” The words were pulsing with care and affection, even though his voice coloured them in serious and desperate shades.

“One year ago… and a day from today…” He smiled and she felt the warmth spilling inside of her. The power he had over her was beyond the limits of understanding. 

Little did she know that the object of her affection was lost in the same thought.

“I was standing exactly where we stand right now. It was dark and the view wasn’t that spectacular.” He freed one of his hands, but only to make contact with her cheek to caress it slowly. In this moment, he had to touch her any way that he could. With his hands. With his eyes. With his soul.

“But I always found comfort in staring at the sky. When I was at med school, I had countless moments of doubt, I wanted to quit more times than I can count. So I used to go to a secluded place at night and stare at the sky. It made me realise how, in one respect, I am just a grain of sand in the universe and how little my problems are. Funnily enough, this thought actually brought me a sense of comfort. If I am as little as I think I am, then what is the harm in being brave and taking chances? A wise man once said… There are some things that are worth any risk.” 

She giggled through the tears, the sweet sound soothing his shattered nerves.

“I was standing right here and I never felt more miserable in my life. And I couldn’t understand why, for God’s sake. I was thriving at work. I had everything figured out and planned. I was pushing you to be the best you could be and I watched you turn into someone who would one day be far greater than me. But you looked so sad, so… broken. You already know I can’t just gloss over you feeling down. The sadder you were, the more miserable I felt. One evening, I was having a glass of scotch and I remembered some tiny exchange we’ve had earlier in the day, literally a chit chat. No idea what it was about. But I remembered your smile and your laugh. Every tiniest move of your muscles, your eyes, how your hair set around your face. It made me happy. Even if it was just for 5 minutes, knowing that you are happy in that very moment filled my chest with lightness. That’s when I realised I want to be the person who makes you feel this way.”   

She blinked the first time in a while, as if she was afraid to make the tiniest movement, afraid it will all disappear and turn out to be a dream. Giant teardrops rolled down her angelic face, trailing the path of joy.

“Noelle Sky Valentine, I love you. I have loved you for a long time but I was too stubborn to let myself give in. And that, as you already know, will always be one of my biggest regrets.” 

“Ethan, I don’t… I’m so sorry, I just don’t know what to say.” Her voice was saturated with emotions.

“I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for.“ 

“I love you too, Ethan Jonah Ramsey. You are by far the most complicated and stubborn person I have ever met. You are… everything I never knew I looked for in another human being.”

Once he heard her say it back, he couldn't get enough of it and a lifetime didn't feel like enough to tell her he loves her, as many times as he wished to.

“But I do have to mention this, Dr Ramsey… from the first date to a love confession in less than 24 hours? I’m sorry, I think this is moving too fast.”

“I’ll show you too fast…but I’m afraid we need to get inside, I don’t want the whole world and its wife to see how I teach you a thing or two.”

Ethan scooped her in his arms and carried her inside, despite her mock protests. He smiled and corrected himself. 

He wanted for the whole world to see.

Because the whole world was right there. 

In his arms.

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

If you’ve gotten this far, I need you to know you are absolutely amazing 💗

Tag 🏷 list: @jamespotterthefirst @romewritingshop @romereadingshop @genevievemd @starrystarrytrouble @terrm9 @mrs-ramsey @maurine07 @gryffindordaughterofathena @mercury84choices @lovingramsey @qrkowna @openheartfanfics @choicesficwriterscreations @lisha1valecha​ @oldminniemcg​ @iemcpbchoices​ @tsrookie​ @fayeswiftie​ @levinsdowneyy​ @brooks-eden​ @poudredevie​ @queencarb​ @caseyvalentineramsey​ @lucy-268​ @tenaciousdeputydreamfriend​ @alwaysmychoices-sideblog​ @whippedforethanfreakingramsey​ @schnitzelbutterfingers​ @the-pale-goddess​ @lem-20​ @wingedhairstylemusicweasel​ @liaromancewriter​ @ohchoices​ @archxxronrookie​

[rkin413]

All 77 of my current AUs

I’m probably going to instantly regret making this post but it’s four in the morning and also I desperately want to talk to people about these things.

This is just. Copypasted from my AU list page. Some stuff might be outdated in a week. Who knows. Not me.

Star Vs The Forces of Evil:

Monster Carvers (link) - Main Star Vs AU. Stomco endgame + Tom stays with Marco + Star raised by Monsters (specifically Buff Frog). The titular antagonists were originally going to disappear after the prologue what the heck happened???

Pretty Cure vs the Forces of Evil (link) - Exactly What It Says On the Tin, Pretty Cure x Star Vs.

unnamed Pirate AU - Star Butterfly has a perfectly nice, unbearably boring life as a high-class lady, with little to do other than wait to be married to her arranged fiancé that she’s never even met. A week before her wedding she sneaks on board a shipping vessel in the hopes of having an adventure. She gets a little more adventure than she bargained for when the ship is attacked by pirates.

“"Cannon”“ - A cannon-adjacent AU that started as a crossover with Monster Carvers

unnamed Infinity Train AU feat. human!Star and human!Tom.

unnamed Post-Cleaved AU featuring forced humanizations, amnesia, and one small time hiccup. Also Dave and Wrathmelior are missing, so that sucks for Tom.

unnamed AU where Marco goes to live with Tom for a while instead of Star during Lint Catcher

How to Train Your Dragon:

Outsiders (link) - Main HTTYD AU. Instead of watching the entire Berk fleet sail off to their dooms with Toothless, Hiccup and Astrid free the arena dragons and take Toothless while he’s being brought to the ship and then they all get the heck out of dodge. Dagur accidentally set himself adrift with Heather back when they were both small. Snotlout learns the hard way that being the Heir/responsibility kind of really sucks actually??? Stoick has to deal with his son going rouge. And Gobber and the Berk Teenagers have to deal with Stoick and Snotlout respectively.

Modern Riders/Time Travel AU - Modern!Hiccup is dragged by his cousin into an unwanted camping trip with the other riders and one electrical storm later, they find their cell phones aren’t working any more. Also are those flipping dragons?! On Berk, Stoick and the other vikings are shocked to find a group of teenagers in the woods who bear a shocking resemblance to some of the members of a dead generation of children.

Unsevered Bonds - Modern Riders (minus Hiccup) meet a time displaced Hiccup who recognize them as his reincarnated friends, even if they don’t remember their former lives.

How To Train Your Lusus - Everyone are trolls on Alternia. Hiccup is a brownblood who’s probably the only troll in existence to get a second Lusus (Toothless) after his first one (Stoick) is killed. Astrid is an oliveblood that Hiccup is flushed for, Fishlegs is a yellowblood, Snotlout is a blueblood, the Twins, Dagur, and Heather are all purplebloods. Dagur killed both his and Heather’s lusus so now he’s trying to take care of her even though she absolutely hates him (and not in a black way), and he had an unrequited pitch thing for Hiccup at one point before they flipped pale (and are actually Moirails now). That’s pretty much all I have for this one.

unnamed Harry Potter AU - Does not actually take place at Hogwarts. Everyone attends Dumstrang (possibly) and the topic everyone avoids is Care of Magical Creatures, because the local Dark Lord is Drago Bludvist. Main trio is Hiccup, Snotlout (Pureblood cousins), and Fishlegs (Muggleborn)… somehow.

Dragon Gang (link) - Mob/Mafia AU set in the vaguely 1920s in a Fake Country so no one can call me out on inaccurate geography.

Rebuilding Bridges - Set in a Multiverse where RTTE and The Hidden World are mutuality exclusive. (Pt.1): After dealing with Drago but before dealing with Grimmborn, Hiccup and Toothless once fought a witch intent on ‘harvesting’ dragons. Now ten years after the dragons have left her apprentice seeks revenge and kidnaps Zephyr and Nuffink, and a panicked Hiccup and Astrid are contacted by the Very Retired and Very Much Done With This Kid witch. Meanwhile in the RTTE-verse, The Dragon Riders only just got back from informing Berk about Johann’s treachery, when some crazy lady spontaneously appears in the middle of the Edge with two terrified children she intends to feed to dragons. Yeah, that’s not happening.        (Pt.2, spoilers for this AU I guess???): Zephyr and Nuffink and their parents have safely returned to New Berk, but their world has been shaken by what was and could have been. Zephyr and Nuffink, after bonding with Dagur in the other timeline, decide they want to try and help him in theirs. This was perhaps not their best idea. Meanwhile, the Nightlights escape the watchful eye of their parents to go exploring outside the Hidden World, and quickly meet the hatchlings of their dad’s brother! (so… their cousins, then?)

Something Wild (name subject to change) - Several years after Berk (along with most of the Archipelago) is attacked and taken captive by a far more advanced foe, Stoick is able to free most of his people but what he finds when they get manage to regroup back to their island is less than a relief- Berk ravaged and their elderly and children, left behind by their captors, missing. To make matters worse, the dragons are still out there, now with some kind of devils riding and aiding them. Now Stoick, Gobber, and the rest of the people of Berk must find safety and a way to fight back against they’re new foe, find what happened to those who are missing, and figure out who these dragon riders are and whether they’re friend of foe (gee i wonder where the Berkians went and who the dragon riders are golly what a mystery). (aka the feral/semi-feral!dragon riders au i keep trying to create)

Lost (name subject to change) - Alternate attempt at the feral/semi-feral!dragon riders au. Several years before the events of the movie could happen, a raid on Berk not by dragons, but by other people, leads to the destruction of an entire generation when the raiders manage to capture the Teenagers of Berk and ship them away. While in captivity, they meet and ultimately befriend the dragons that in another life would be their partners and together they all escape. Unfortunately, they’re Thor-knows-where, and with no one they can trust (or understand) except each other, getting back to Berk might take a while…

The Lego Movie:

Hero with Two Faces of Yellow - Another ‘Emmet and Rex share a body like Good Cop Bad Cop’ AU

Peacemaker AU - Main Lego AU. About a year after the Duplo aliens attack, Emmet is attacked and presumed dead, but he’s actually been taken by General Mayhem to meet Queen Watevra Wana'bi, who remembered and missed her ‘father’. Later, Rex ends up jumping into an entirely different timeline by accident (this one) and decides to try and play the long game by befriending Emmet, who’s now living in the Systar System. That probably won’t work out for him the way he wanted.

Miraculous Ladybug

MiracuClass Knows AU - Prior to Volpina, each member of the MiracuClass finds out the identities of Ladybug and Chat Noir, and just sort of collectively become their secret keepers. Inspired by Epiphanies by PFTones3582 on Fanfiction.net.

Miraculous Sburb AU - The MiracuClass play Sburb and end up dragging a good chunk of Paris in with them when they enter the Medium. Marinette is a Light player, Adrien is a Doom player, and that’s all I got. Gabriel probably definitely dies.

One Is Silver and the Other Gold - aka the Marikimno Brot3 AU. I headcannon that Marinette, Kim, and Nino were close friends as little kids that drifted apart a few years prior to the start of the show. In this AU, that never happened. Also, Alya becomes Adrien’s best friend instead of Nino, and Nathanel becomes their friend too somehow? (someone help Alya, she’s an extrovert and both her friends have social skill levels in the single digits.)

The Ladybug and the Monkey - Main Miraculous Ladybug AU. My take on the ‘Fu chooses Kim to be the second Miraculous wielder instead of Adrien’ AU that I’ve somehow seen multiple times.

Sleeper Miraculous -  AU where instead of the Miraculous being handed out, they’re transported magically to their wielders after they’ve proved themselves somehow. The Miraculous still need to be ‘activated’ by the Guardian to be used on either a permanent or temporary basis, so Ladybug still has to go to Master Fu at first before she becomes the new Guardian, but she knows literally none of the other members of Team Miraculous’s identities. They have a chat group, too, where Ladybug updates team members on whose Miraculous she’s going to activate, and both Chloe and Kagami never blow their identities. Contains both mild Classmates + (even milder)Adrien salt and sugar. (define irony: wanting to punch someone in the face for being an a-hole only to realize that said a-hole is you).

Miraculous! Pretty Cure! - Another Pretty Cure AU. Yep.

Mesapia AU - Butterfly!Marinette AU with a few twists - 1) instead of just facing the villainous user of the Ladybug Miraculous, all of the Miraculous have been lost to villains (save for the rabbit). Marinette frequently empowers her classmates (+Adrien, who’s still under house-arrest in this AU, Luka, and Kagami) to fight the Miraculous Villains, who are also all fighting each other; and 2) This isn’t so much a Kwami Swap as a Kwami Scramble, no one uses their canon Miraculous here (except for Fu briefly, and Emilie had the peacock before what happened to her)!

Boys vs Girls AU (name subject to change) - Marinette vs Lila with the Boys (+Kagami) on Marinette’s side and the Girls on Lila’s.

Labyrinth - Almost the entirety of the MiracuClass go missing (+Lila, Luka, & Kagami, -Chloe) and on a related note, eight very young children wake up in an ever-shifting, monster-filled underground labyrinth and grow up together. And two of them have some special, appearance-shifting jewelry…

Mad Gabriel - Miraculous Ladybug x Mad Father, starring Adrien as Aya, Marinette as Dio, Gabriel as Alfred Drevis, Nathalie as Maria, and everyone else as the doctor’s victims (Lila is Ines).

Miraculous Royal AU - A fantasy AU starring the MiracuClass (shocker) spread out across three fantasy kingdoms.

Quartz Butterfly AU - AU in which Jagged Stone takes the role of (a significantly nicer but still villainous) Hawkmoth as Quartz Butterfly, with Penny taking on Mayura’s role as Songbird. (yes i know peacocks aren’t songbirds SHHHH).

MiracuTrio AU - AU based on fanofanimation’s submission to terrible-miraculous-ladybug-aus, where Kim becomes a permanent member of the team after Party Crasher.

Mitterlicht - horror-ish AU inspired partially by various horror games, Lucidstuck, and Underbright (no, really).  After receiving their Miraculous for the first time, the temporary heroes start having less-than-restful nights. Things quickly go from bad to worse when fragmented, panic-inducing dreams turn into nightly (and solitary) trips into a dark world full of monsters that want to take something referred to just as their ‘light’- a bright light that acts as both a beacon to the hostile creatures and the only way to return to consciousness every night -which just so happen to be in the exact spot (and in many cases, are also vaguely the same shape) of their Miraculouses.

Mirakatsu - Aikatsu AU

Ladybug: Don’t Deal With Hawkmoth - (aka the result of listening to the Cuphead Rap Battle 50 million times) Cuphead AU where Ladybug and Chat Noir have to go around beating up akumas and collecting their butterflies to avoid getting akumatized by Hawkmoth.

Miracle Thieves - a phantom/gentleman thief au where Marinette and Adrien (who have been thieves for years) unwittingly steal a pair of magical artifacts and decide to team up afterwards. Includes Fox!Nino, Journalist-determined-to-expose-their-identities!Alya, and possibly Tiger!Markov.

Homestuck:

unnamed AU inspired by To Live a Normal Life

unnamed Harry Potter AU

Merged Sessions AU - An AU where our favorite trolls and the Beta Kids are all part of the same session

Same Side of the Scratch AU - AU where the Beforus Trolls replace the Alternian ones, and when both sessions get scratched the Alternian Trolls end up in communication with the Alpha Kids

Same Side, Same Session AU - Combines both of the two immediately above AUs, The Beta Kids and Beforus Trolls have a session together that fails and gets Scratched, then the Alternians and Alphas play the game together while the pre-scratch players (all alive) travel to their session and have Meteorstuck Shenanigans.

Relief Was Just a Dream (name subject to change) - aka the mandatory Troll Rebellion AU, inspired by a fic I don’t remember the name of on A03. Sweeps after Karkat and Feferi are (seemingly) culled, Ace Legislacerator Terezi Pyrope -one of the best despite knowing she’s one wrong move away from being culled for her disability- is called in to investigate a series of traitorous attacks on more and more ships. Weirdly, the trolls seen most in the attacks don’t even seem to exist, all seem to bleed a painfully familiar cherry red, and have powers that even Her Imperial Condescension doesn’t seem to have. (not a no-game au)

Freetime AU (name subject to change) - AU where Bro leaves Dave on Dad Egbert’s doorstep, and Dave and John grow up as brothers.

Megaman:

Pokemon Network - Hub lives Pokemon AU with at least two protagonist teams. Team A: Lan, Hub, Mayl, Dex & Yai in Kanto. Team B: Roll, Glyde, Gutsman (Gus) in Kalos. What are Chaud and Protoman/Blues up to? ~Secrets~

Sailor Moon:

Inverse Corruption - When Beryl scours the Earth looking for her reincarnated generals she fails to find them, but she does manage to find the senshi instead. Sailor Moon has to unknowingly face the very girls who were supposed to protect her, fighting side-by-side with the Shitennou instead. (the boys are highschoolers to the girls middleschoolers)

Hazbin Hotel:

Infernal Relations - Why did Lucifer and Lilith wait so long to have a child? Simple; they didn’t. Unbeknownst to Charlie, her parents both had and lost a child thousands of years before she was born, a fact that will have far more of an effect on her hotel than she could possibly realize (even if she had known).

Apprentice Charlie AU - AU where Charlie gets into a fight with Lucifer and leaves before she ever thinks to create her hotel and Alastor ends up finding amusement by taking on an apprentice. (inspired by Helluva Teacher by Sol_Victoria on A03)

Phineas and Ferb:

Cursed Cats AU - AU based on the song Black Cats of Halloween. Phineas, Ferb, and their friends are cursed by a demon who turns them into black cats, save for on Halloween night. They’re then thrown into a world of magic and have to find each other, their way back home, and a way to break their curse, preferably in that order.

Danganronpa:

Online Gamer AU - no one dies/non-despair AU where no one is a super/ultra highschool level anything, no one has met each other in person, and they all play Among Us together. Junko always dies first and she’s low-key going to hurt someone over it.

unnamed AU where the murders of the killing game happen differently (aka the mandatory dr au)

unnamed AU inspired by ask-the-dr-reset-kids - After an incident that forces Hope’s Peak to temporarily close it’s doors, Class 78 all transfer to a different school. Junko is in jail, Mukuro is coping, Izuru is looming somewhere, the Ultimate Despair are waiting like sleeper agents to cause the The Most Despair Inducing Event in History, and Makoto is straight up not having a good time (and has very good reasons not to tell anyone).

unnamed AU where both Class 77 and Class 78, including both Junko and Mukuro but without Chiaki end up playing the Killing Game together.

Double Mastermind AU - similar to the above, both Class 77 and Class 78 wake up one day with no memories of their school lives. They’ll have to work together, somehow, to find out where they are, how to get back to civilization, and how to get back their memories. Meanwhile in the control room, Makoto and a sort-of-but-not-really-reformed Junko are working together as the Masterminds behind the mystery. Well, Makoto’s working, anyway. Junko just kind of wants to give Makoto daily migraines. Contains Junko/Makoto hateshipping.

unnamed Taka Lives AU where instead of switching roles with Hiro during the third trial he just manages to survive the murder attempt. He does not, however, get out unscathed…

another unnamed Taka Lives AU where Makoto, at Kyoko’s urging, decides to stay with Kiyondo the night he would have died, throwing a huge wrench into the would-be-blackeneds’ plans.

Asassain!Makoto AU: The Killing School Life - an au where Makoto is secretly the Ultimate Assassin.

Assasain!Makoto AU: The Killing Mystery - au that’s basically the one directly above but takes place in a non-despair (or maybe averted despair would be more accurate) timeline. After receiving and turning down a job to assassinate a certain up-and-coming politician, The Black Mask (Makoto) alerts his would-be victim, an old former friend, that someone is out for his life.

Remnants of Hope AU - AU that takes place after the end of School Mode, with the class not being picked up by the future foundation right away. (does this. does this actually qualify as an au i’m not sure.)

unnamed Class Swap AU

unnamed AU where Makoto and Kiyotaka are brainwashed into Ultimate Despair in addition to Class 77. Contains both sweet and very effed up Naeishi, as well as Despair!Makoto+Izuru friendship (or as close as Izuru can get, anyway). Technically another 2 (or 3, sort of) masterminds au.

Soulmates AU - In a world where most people are colorblind until meeting their soulmate, Makoto Naegi walks into Hope’s Peak Academy colorblind, blacks out, and wakes up to color. As it turns out, the same thing happened to everyone else!

Scrapbook AU - After entering into Hope’s Peak Academy, Makoto started a scrapbook/photo album of himself, his classmates, and eventually even the class above his own during their time on and off school. It soon became a class diary of sorts after being discovered, shared among everyone… then a chronicle of the events leading up to Class 77 going missing, The Tragedy starting, and Class 78 sealing themselves inside the school bunker, before returning to it’s original purpose as Class 78 lived inside their homemade bunker. In canon, Junko found and burned it. In this timeline, it’s an amnesiac Makoto and his classmates who find it, hidden under the floor in Makoto’s room.

Amnesia AU - A boy wakes up in a school(?) with no memories of where he is, how he got here, or even who he is. As it turns out, there are fourteen other people here… and all of them have the same memory loss he does! (may or may not be an IF Bad End AU)

Polychain AU - Another different Victims and Blackends au, that extends well beyond the original Killing Game. The Tragedy occurs very differently in this one… initially. Also features Junko escaping after the Killing Game, and Hajime and Shuichi being half-brothers and kids of the survivors.

Unnamed AU where Leon and Taka also attended Makoto and Sayaka’s middle school.

Ghost AU - After being killed, the victims and blackened are forced to stick around and watch the Killing Game happen, believing they'll be allowed to move on after they leave. Turns out, they're very much wrong- but at least after it's over their classmates can see them! Too bad they're the only ones.

Teachers Assistant AU - inspired by a fic I don’t remember the name of on fanfiction.net. After Nagito blows up a building and gets suspended, Chisa is forced to take a Teacher’s Assistant or be fired. Somehow, a very reluctant Makoto gets the job, despite being in the class below her own. Cross-class shenanigans ensue.

Unnamed Timetravel AU inspired by a fic I don’t remember the name of on fanfiction.net where Makoto and Alter Ego, the only survivors of the Killing Game, are sent back in time to Makoto’s first day attending Hope’s Peak - Makoto mentally and Alter Ego physically. Not as dark as the premise sounds, at least theoretically.

Crossover

Dagla!Adrien AU - Adrien isn’t the son of Gabriel and Emilie Agreste, but instead his parents are a Modern Dagur and Mala. He still works for Gabriel as a model, but otherwise has had a very different upbringing (most notably the inclusion of a lot of people who have cared about him for his entire life, such as his best friend Zephyr Haddock) and acts more like Chat Noir both with and without the mask. He still befriends his canon friends, becomes Chat Noir, and falls in love with Ladybug. (HTTYD x Miraculous Ladybug)

unnamed Adventure Time x Star Vs AU

Miracutale - Lila pushes Marinette down a hole, Adrien tries to catch her but fails. Undertale ensues. (Miraculous Ladybug x Undertale)

Sailor Bella (name subject to change) - AU inspired by some art from Turning-the-Tides, Princess Serenity reincarnates not into Usagi Tsukino, but Isabella Garcia-Shapiro, and her Senshi are reincarnated into the boys. I have no idea who Endymion became if he exists at all in this AU. (Sailor Moon x Phineas and Ferb)

unnamed three-way crossover between Harry Potter, Miraculous Ladybug, and How to Train Your Dragon.

unnamed Steven Universe x Undertale AU - After returning from the Jungle Moon, Steven and Connie end up stranded in an alternate timeline where they meet what appears to be another half-gem going by the name of False Topaz (Frisk). Things get a little more tricky when it turns out that gems and humans coexist somewhat… on one side of a giant, seemingly uncross-able mountain range live humans, on the other gems, and after a war between the two a few centuries ago, both cultures have a kill on sight policy. To make things more complicated, gems seem to be very different in this timeline. (note: Frisk is not actually a gem, just disguised as one)

unnamed Undertale x Star Vs AU - There’s a new face at the Silver Bell Ball - Frisk, heir and ambassador for the Kingdom of… Monsters?! Star and Frisk are quick to befriend each other, but despite that, Star can’t help but feel that Frisk doesn’t like her… And Frisk may have more than one secret to share… or maybe to keep.

unnamed Miraculous Ladybug x Danganronpa AU - The Worst Most Despair Inducing Event In History was localized to Japan (but the effects are spreading), and the six survivors of Hope’s Peek, aided by Kagami’s father, whom Byakuya naturally has connections to, immigrate to France to pick up the pieces of their lives. Meanwhile in France, Ms. Bustier’s class gain five new transfer students after the events of Miracle Queen.

Games -  (everything)

Wild Things - (everything)

[thiscastielhasflown]

day two of j&kcreatorfest (with @expectingtofly)— prompts: thunderstorms and hurt/comfort just wanting to spend some time at their local park, dean forgets to check the weather and there's a lot of rain — trust me. (1.5k)

"Can you pass me over another beer Cas?"

The sun begins to set over a Lebanon, Kansas public park during a warm summer Friday night. Families gathered around the biggest baseball diamond watching a cut-throat game between the local Little League team facing off with their out-of-town opponents. This isn't necessarily the "ideal" group of people the Winchester/Leahy family would normally associate themselves with — but puts aside their differences to become more integrated into the community they live in.

It is also used a constant schedule for all of them — no matter what happens during the week, Sam, Eileen, Dean, Cas, and Jack can meet up with each other for some well-needed family bonding time. This week is especially special, Claire and Kaia had come to spend the past couple of days at the bunker while they passed through town before going to their next hunt location. They both were more than willing to join their family at the park, even going out of their way to pack them all individual sandwiches and various other picnic foods.

Cas reaches into a cooler by the side of his chair, wiping off the now melted ice residue before handing it over, "It's root beer Dean, quit pretending that it's actual alcohol."

Dean looks down at the label and pretends to read it, but ends up laughing and leaning over to clink it against Sam's identical bottle, "You're right Cas, cheers to our night together."

Claire, Kaia, and Jack swing next to one enough on the playground adjacent to the diamond, their laughs so infectious that Cas has a hard time trying not to chuckle along while looking over to check on them. He then lets his gaze linger on Sam and Eileen sitting on a blanket on top of the grass signing to each other (from what Cas could understand, it seemed as though they were discussing updates on the game).

Ending off with Dean next to him in a matching lawn chair slumped back with his eyes droopy with sleep, Cas reaches down to grab his available hand and kisses the back of it softly. This awakens Dean right away, who instinctively moves in to place a peck against the other man's lips — quickly interrupted by the sound of fake gagging. Dean pulls away first, both looking over to see Sam and Eileen laughing in response to their faces. Dean flicks them off but Cas swats at his hand, shaking his head in embarrassment.

Soon after, Cas notices something suspicious when people in the audience begin to pick up their items and head towards their parked cars. He looks down at his watch (one given to him by Dean for their anniversary — with an inscription of "Together — We are One"), eyebrows furrowing when realizing the game has at least an hour left. Shrugging this off, Cas tells himself it must be because the team they want to win is currently losing.

"I think we need to head out soon."

Cas jumps when he hears Claire's voice ring out from behind him, "What do you mean? What's going on?"

"Look—" Claire points to the sky off in the distance, dark storm clouds rolling in with strands of rain falling from them.

"Dean, didn't you double-check the weather before we left?"

With a mouth full of root beer, Dean shakes his head and swallows, "No, I thought that was your job."

"Seems like there's a pretty bad storm headed this way," Sam speaks up while looking down at the phone in his hand, "We'd better get out of here before we're fully drenched."

Sam signs to Eileen, the both of them standing up from the blanket and folding it into a compact shape, leaning down to pick up the rest of their belongings.

"Alright—Claire, Kaia, Jack—go help pack up the car with Sam and Eileen. Dean, make sure you have everything you need and grab whatever is left. I'm going to go give the other parents a heads up in case they weren't aware."

"Cas, leave them be. Just come with us. If they haven't noticed the clouds by now, then they're out of luck."

"The kids. They're in danger if a storm like this is coming," Cas scowls at his love, "I'm not going to leave unless I go say something."

Dean grabs both of their chairs in each hand and shakes his head, "Fine, but make it fast. I may have to high-tale it out of here without you."

On cue, thunder rumbles through the park confirming the storm's true closeness, immediately halting the remaining innings of the game and causing the kids to go running for their parents.

Before Dean and Cas get the chance to argue any more about it, Sam yells out from beside their car, "Come on you two! Hurry it up!"

Dean runs off first, trying to hold up the chairs from having them brush up against the ground, making a beeline towards the trunk of the Impala parked under a large shady tree. Cas follows with a backpack slung on his back and heads directly for the passenger’s side door. Within moments of hearing the trunk door slam shut, rain droplets begin plopping onto the windshield as Dean rips open the door to the driver's side covered in tiny water patches.

The rain begins to pick up speed after another rumble of thunder and crack of lightning, causing a whimper to emanate from the back seat — its origin coming from Jack. Eileen wraps her arm around his shoulders and pulls him in close while Sam rubs at his arm to keep his mind off the sounds.

Turning the key in the ignition and flicking on his windshield wipers, Dean using one hand to reverse out of the spot before shifting quickly driving out of the parking lot. He looks up to see if Claire is following behind him and smiles to himself, as any proud father would do, before putting on his left turn signal to indicate which way she should follow.

A streak of lightning lights up the car once again and Sam leans forward from the backset whispering, "Jack is crying pretty hard back here, do you have any tissues up there with you?

Cas opens up his bag on the floor in front of him, pulling out a tiny package of tissues and a packet of gummy bears, "Give these to him too, it should help him calm down."

The farther Dean follows the main road towards the bunker, the worse the weather escalates — they pass by cars stopped at green lights, many even pulled off to the side of the road, while others still trying to trek onto their intended location. The outside world is blurred through the windows by the pouring rain, the windshield wipers unable to keep up with the pushing the water off.

"Can't you just, use your angel powers or something to stop the storm?"

"Dean, I'm not the Norse God Thor. I don't have that ability"

"Well, you're certainly no Chris Hemsworth."

Cas squints his eyes, "Excuse me?"

Dean shakes his head, "Forget about it."

"Kaia just texted me that Claire pulled into a parking lot not too far back from here, maybe we should find a place and wait this out."

Dean grips tightly onto the steering wheel, "I can get us back to the bunker Cas, nothing that a little storm can keep me from doing."

"These flooded roads keep getting worse. It would be smart to just pull over."

Suddenly, Dean hits a patch of the road with standing water causing him to momentarily lose control of the car, pumping his breaks and squealing the tires against the wet pavement.

"Pull over!" Cas yells out, flustered.

With the car finally stopped, parked on the shoulder of the road in one piece, everyone seems to let out a collective sigh of relief. Sam, Eileen, and Jack huddle into a hug, while Cas and Dean share a quick kiss in comfort for being stopped safely.

Giving each person a moment to breathe and calm down, Dean finally speaks up asking, "Anyone up for some 20 Questions?"

****

Roughly about 30 minutes later after the storm has run its course, Dean pulls back onto the road and starts heading back with minimal rain to worry about. He holds onto Cas’ hand and places it on his lap, sighing contently. After multiple games of 20 Questions, Jack had fallen asleep with his head resting on Eileen’s shoulder, now talking to Sam about a hunt she had been researching.

When Dean pulls up to the bunker, he’s shocked to see Claire and Kaia waiting there in front of the building, waving at them. Rolling down the window, he leans his head out, “How did you two manage to beat us?”

“We left just shortly before you, slowpoke. Haven’t you driven in rain like that before?”

Dean shakes his fist at Claire and laughs, “Go inside and start getting dinner ready, we’ll be in shortly.”

“Fine, dad,” she emphasizes sarcastically.

“Our children—” Dean remarks to Cas while pulling into Baby’s designated parking spot, “what would we do without them?”

Cas looks back at Jack recently awoken with messy hair and a droopy smile, “We got lucky, just like the chance of getting hit by lightning twice. Once in a lifetime chance that struck us twice.”

[bbq-hawks-wings]

BBQ gripes about fanon Hawks

Not even gonna put this in the character tags aside from the spoiler one I use just for the anime-onlies on my blog. I'm salty. I just wanna vent. I want to keep the general character tags fun because it was awful when I went looking for new content and found so much Not Fun material a while back; and I don’t want to become what I hate. Basic point - my blog, my vent, and unless it’s reblogged (which you are welcome to if you like) this post dies here.

Please know this isn't a callout post or me claiming that others are being fans of Hawks "wrong" because they disagree with me. I am a huge proponent that (with very few exceptions) fiction and fandom should be free to be enjoyed, reinterpreted, or otherwise indulged in however the individual fan prefers; and if I don't like it, I let them have their space and go do my thing elsewhere and leave them alone (hence why this not going in character tags). I just have been annoyed with the rampant mangling of Hawks' canon  personality/characterization - that is, confusing common fanon interpretations of him with how he’s actually written/portrayed and then getting angry (like, actually-angry-spilling-into-publicly-dragging-real-people, not just disappointed) when he acts like canon Hawks in canon. Non-canon is open season and by and large has my blessing, it’s just frustrating when it gets dragged into discussions about the manga. 

This has been going on a long time, but I just want to get it out of my system in my personal space. All this is, is my "Overthinking Tumblr blogger Shakes Fist at Cloud" moment.

#1 Hawks is a sociopath/unempathetic.

I just... I... You can't be reading the same manga I am if you genuinely come to this conclusion about who he is in canon. A man with nothing to gain by looking like this when considering the depths of the suffering inflicted on others that he bears some amount of responsibility in...

...cannot be called unempathetic.

"But he killed Twice and Best Jeanist!"

Twofold counterargument to this one, starting with BJ - we don't actually know he's dead. There's a body, there's a disappearance, and we have no idea wtf happened, but we also don't know wtf happened. It's drastically ooc for Hawks to murder someone in cold blood. For someone who places emphasis on speed specifically "because when two sides keep fighting and won’t give up, someone eventually has to die" it makes no sense for him to not have had a plan and simply ambush a man in his own home - this goes doubly since he was in contact with the HSPC and had time to "premeditate" anyway.

And as for Twice: Hawks ran out of options. He wanted to detain Twice and keep him from escaping and helping the MLA. He was able to do so when alone, but the moment Dabi cornered him Hawks had a choice to make - probably die in the fight and let Jin go or make absolute certain he can’t and still probably end up dying because he's in bad shape and still probably won't make it out of this, regardless. I don't need to harp on this - it's been said a couple different times now by several people. Even in 266 when Dabi initially ambushes Hawks, Hawks thinks to himself that he’ll carry Jin out of the building to keep himself and Jin safe before Twice retaliated and Dabi literally forces Hawks into a corner.

Jin's loss was a blow, but the chips on the table being wagered are human lives, not feelings. Up until that point, Hawks did everything he could despite the weight of his decision. Human life is human life, and Jin’s life isn’t more important than the may more who will be saved by quashing the MLA’s revolution. Simply equating “could kill someone” with “unempathetic” is fundamentally flawed, and mistaking someone who is pushed to kill despite every attempt to avoid it as unempathetic and even sociopathic has missed the point to the extreme - the mere fact he avoided lethal force for so long alone proves he possesses empathy.

#2 Hawks is a compulsive liar.

He is a good liar, but he does not like lying. He does twist the truth, but always when forced to keep a secret. Even then, his lies are predominantly spun from truth and omitted details instead of outright fabrications. He doesn’t gaslight, and he doesn’t make up stories/details if he can help it.

When Hawks told Endeavor his dreams for the future, that was the truth. When he told him he thought he was cool at the hero billboards, that was the truth.  When he tells Tokoyami to focus on his strengths instead of merely covering his weaknesses to be a better hero, that was the truth. When Tokoyami asks Hawks for his weakness and even why he took him on as an intern in the beginning just to ignore him, he tells him the truth.  When he tells Jin he "doesn't belong in a cage" and that he considers him a good person, that was the truth. When he recognizes he’s profoundly wounded Jin for deceiving him for months, he tells Jin the truth. When confronted by Dabi and he doesn’t need to lie anymore in this fight to the death, he tells him the truth despite not actually needing to in hopes to learn the truth behind Dabi and Shigaraki.

I don't have a better segue, so I'll just mention that a lot of folks who believe this also believe the next point.

#3 Hawks is unapologetically emotionally manipulative.

The context makes a huge difference and we need to look at when and why he manipulates others as well as the fact that he does.

At the hero billboards, Hawks plays the heroes on stage as well as the crowd. He's trying to shift the mindset of, "oh yeah, just another hero ranking" to "wake up, mf's, things are changing and you better be ready to change, too!" Rocking the boat is a huge no-no in Japan. Despite being part of his “persona” there is still real social risk involved with this move but one that he deems necessary to turn heads and get gears turning. This is not just an elaborate ploy to get under Endeavor’s skin, but an effort to reach a wider audience while he has them captive.

He does use the public crowd around him and Endeavor before the Hood fight as an excuse for its appearance, but the original intent was to mentally prepare Endeavor for what was potentially (and proved to be) the fight of his life without outright telling him so he could maintain his undercover status. When he realizes he’s part of the reason for Endeavor’s permanent scar and life-threatening injuries, he feels remorse.

He lies to Jin to get information out of him, but linking back to #2, when calls Jin a good person and offers him a way out, he’s telling the truth. He does feel guilt for having to manipulate an otherwise well-meaning person and betraying them, especially given his long-running history of being used and the ongoing issues he suffers from because of it.

When he meets up again with Endeavor to drop his clues about the League’s movements, he squirms when he realizes the interns don’t know him well enough to know he’s blowing smoke because he does NOT want these kids to actually buy what he’s selling. This espionage mission is hard to navigate, and he has to tread carefully lest he setup the dominoes in the wrong places.

This is all to make the point that Hawks is more than capable of emotionally manipulating people, but it’s not in his nature or something he does to any and every person he comes across just because. We haven’t had much opportunity to see him operate outside of the HSPC’s orders which is where the bulk of the instances of his manipulation comes from - those orders requiring him to operate covertly and thus, by nature, necessitate lying, manipulation, and strategically withholding information. 

If anything, when he’s making an appeal to someone else as his own person - not as a hero on a mission- we actually see a level of vulnerability and transparency we don’t otherwise catch.

Though it’s technically canon-adjacent and not necessarily canon in and of itself, in My Hero Academia: Team Up Mission where he works with Bakugo and Midoriya he operates on a level of transparency with them we’re not used to seeing; and my theory is he took it as an opportunity to operate without ulterior motives and build report instead of bucking back against “training up the next generation of heroes” like he initially did with Tokoyami.

Which now actually segues better into the next point.

#4 Hawks never lets people get close to him.

There’s a surprising amount of evidence that Hawks wants the ability to be an open book. Back at Team Up Mission, the restaurant staff note he regularly takes people he likes to their establishment - so we’re basically told outright this is a special place to him reserved for enjoying himself and only people he likes get to share it with him - so we already know what that says about how he sees those two despite their sparse interactions. We already know he’s taken Endeavor there when Endeavor made no move to input as to where he wanted to have the lunch meeting.

Though he kept Tokoyami at arm’s length initially, we have at least three canon instances of him sharing personal interactions with him with other canon-adjacent indications he cares for and values his intern. We’ve readily established that while Endeavor may not consider himself close to Hawks, Hawks does hold Endeavor as near and dear to his heart. While his only mission regarding Twice was to get information out of him, he still made a genuine effort to help and save him because he wanted to and considered him a friend despite the circumstances.

We still don’t know very much of Hawk’s past, his personal relationships outside of work, etc.; but despite the HPSC’s extensive efforts to strip him of his identity he not only possesses a faceted, complicated personality but seems to want to share that with others readily when and in the ways he’s able. Getting into the truly squishy, vulnerable parts of him may take a while, but on a scale of closed to open, he seems to lean towards open.

#5 Hawks is hopelessly in love with Dabi and will abandon everything up to this point for him.

This isn't to throw general DabiHawks shippers under the bus. Most of them know VERY well at this point that canon has sunk that ship, and they're just having fun with it at this point - and you know what, power to you! They look great together! In another life, the character chemistry could have been incredible. There’s a lot of great DabiHawks shipping content I thoroughly enjoy despite not shipping it myself.

It just isn't canon. It never was and never came close. Even now, with the Endeavor reveal being very much imminent, Hawks' view of Dabi is one of a lying, malicious, callous, murderer. Though he’ll likely be crushed at the revelation of what Endeavor’s done, that doesn’t equate to him defecting (especially not immediately) and falling into Dabi’s arms.

And Dabi hates Hawks just as much.

Again, this is not anything against the ship or the shippers - just an annoyance I have with some who were so wrapped up in the ship they were genuinely mad when the ship sank and they dragged that frustration out into the real world against real people when canon didn’t align with fanon. 

Ships are some of the most stupid things to rail against creators and fans over, and the amount of harassment they receive now over shipping has me ripping my hair out when I know it’s a mere fraction of the total pool of shippers who are frothing at the mouth while the rest are super cool and happy doing their own thing and keeping to themselves.

Ship what you want, regardless of “validating evidence” and have fun. Don’t make it others’ problem when it isn’t canonically validated.

#6 Hawks is a dirty cop.

Only half upset with this one because it comes down to the nuance and lack of precise definition of this phrase I have a problem with. Lots of people hate cops for very real, legitimate reasons. Police forces - being a voluntary, government-employed force enforcing government rule - are notoriously prone to corruption of every kind.

It's implied the HPSC is itself corrupt, though to what extent we don't know. (Granted, buying a young child from his family to raise as your personal puppet is pretty high up there.) By continuing to follow orders from the HPSC and not vehemently fighting back, many see him as reinforcing a corrupt institution and at least partially liable for their continued hold on society. 

Fair enough, but... The issue I have with this is it reduces Hawks to his job.

I believe a huge chunk of this take comes from my experience as an armed service member spouse, but it's easy for me to empathize with a guy

Who was promised the moon for himself and his family in exchange for his service not realizing what was actually being asked of him

Is praised outside the organization for "being a hero" and "upholding this country's core values" while first-hand witnessing the corruption of it when inside

Is viewed as a cog valuable only in services rendered instead of being treated like a human by said organization and worked into the ground because of it

Is frustrated by the insistence to keep the status quo instead of improving procedure/infrastructure/environment because egos need to be padded over real, human problems being solved

Has his autonomy or otherwise ability to operate under his own judgement restricted in favor of maintaining organizational control at the cost of effective action

Has DEPENDENTS who rely on his continued work to provide for them and is thus unable to refuse an order, even when it's morally reprehensible and even outright illegal

Whose cries, both those calculated and desperate, to the organization (who have placed themselves as the sole resource he can turn to) for help (even for his own body/mind) fall on deaf ears until he breaks to the point of becoming unusable or dangerous - and even then minimal effort/responsibility is taken in favor of keeping him functioning in the organization as long as possible.

Hawks fights back against the HPSC constantly. He raised concerns over letting civilians suffer to get him in with the League of Villains and then still defied orders by reducing casualties to zero. Despite orders to keep his mission top secret, he's informed Endeavor of his motives/movements independently from the rest of the heroes. He had long refused to take an intern (read: fresh meat for the machine) to train until this year, and even then sought to minimize his encouragement of Tokoyami for as long as possible until he realized Tokoyami was made of the real mettle people needed in a hero and not just another youngster endangering himself on a pipe dream.

He even takes initiative to keep his personal to-do list from the HPSC to a minimum by squashing problems before they come knocking asking him to fix it for them. He knew of the League of Villains and anticipated the escalation of their movements immediately after the USJ incident as well as has a network of informants and connections with local police forces to stay in the know.

His methods for apprehension of criminals are, and continue to be, to react and detain them so quickly they can't retaliate or endanger others in the struggle, thus minimizing human loss and injury despite the insinuation the HPSC has told him that gloves are off in the current situation.

He might be "a cop" depending on the definition we go with, but he isn't a dirty cop. He doesn't plant evidence. He doesn't shoot first and ask questions later. He doesn't blindly take orders. He largely doesn't see "villains" as dirt under his shoe but as people pushed to extremes. He's a morally convicted individual trying to rebel within the system instead of tearing it down outright. He may be wrong in the assumption, but he genuinely believes he can do more on the inside of the system than outside.

#7 Hawks is a manwhore.

Ok, this one is not serious and actually just to end this all on a lighter note after ranting until I'm blue in the face. 

I'm 100% guilty of this myself. Something about that chicken makes me and many others salivate - either for themselves or to watch him with someone else. We love dressing him up slutty, portray him as flirting unashamedly, and placing him in as many overtly sexual scenarios possible.

The best part about all of it, though, is that it’s almost the exact opposite of how he dresses/conducts himself in canon. His clothes are loose fitting and high-coverage. He’s personable, but never gives any indication he’s romantically/sexually involved or interested in anyone. The asscourse is real only because we cannot confirm either way due to his baggy clothes. His overall figure/body shape has been hinted at, but only recently confirmed; and his jacket had to be literally be burned off to get a good look at the pattern of his shirt under it!

~~~~~~~

And with that, I release the frustration and move on. 

Enjoy fanon as much as you like - even I do! Just be aware of where canon and fanon diverge, and definitely don’t take the difference out on real people. Please also be aware of how others hold their favorite characters dear before flooding the general tags with negativity and creating a hostile environment for them. People latch onto their “comfort characters” for a plethora of reasons, and when they lose that character to the plot, the fandom, or otherwise, they should still be allowed to grieve and celebrate what they had in a safe environment. 

Retaliation in response to others coming against your favorite is also not acceptable behavior. It sucks, but the most mature thing to do is step away from the general fandom, stick to blogs/spaces you know are safe, and let the storm blow over. Comfort characters do not justify mistreating real people no matter how much they may mean to you.

When “canon gets it wrong” is where fanfiction and pockets of the fandom community comes into play. Leave those people alone and let them be. For those who aligned themselves with canon, they are not free game to take personal frustrations out on. Leave those people alone and let them be. Unfollow the people/tags you need to for your own sake and others’, and the fandom will be a better place all around over time. Venting belongs in controlled spaces away from the rest of the fandom and with enough warning for those who not only don’t want to endure it but who for their own safety shouldn’t.

Fandom is a community, and healthy communities do not endorse members lashing out when they don’t get their way.

[popculturebuffet]

Tom and Jerry 2021 Review: It’s Almost Adequate!

Hello you happy people, and welcome to a surprise review! While this was on my schedule, I moved it out to make room for my new Patreon Sponsored review. Yes at the 5 dollar tier you too can get a review a month.. but enough shilling. Point is I had some thoughts on the film, and felt I could squeeze a review of it into the schedule since my review for yesterday, the 90′s Tom and Jerry movie, got canceled as I both had to finish up my tex avery birthday review and hadn’t noticed it wasn’t on HBO Max like I thought. I could’ve sworn it was once but not anymore. Gee it’s almost like they removed their overtly awful Tom and Jerry movie from the service so people woudln’t be reminded of it when they watched the mediocre  new one. Or it was never on there because HBO wants to bury that mistake in a hole. You make the call. 

Point is I had some room in my schedule, so if I can’t cover the 1990 movie this weekend, though I FULLY intend to still do that at some point as it still fascinates me, might as well cover the one everyone’s actually watching. So join me under the cut with spoilers to go into why this film is .. ehhhh. under the cut

Tom and Jerry follows, as you’d expect, our working boys up to their ass in shit, what is this buisness. In this case Tom literally rides in on a rail with his keyboard wanting to be a big musician one day, while Jerry is shopping around for a home but can’t find any in his bracket. The two end up fighting, as you’d expect, when Tom performs as a blind cat in a park, a great gag, and Jerry first steals his customers by dancing to his music, but then when Tom tries to stop him, not only exposes his scam, but gets Tom’s beloved Keyboard broken. 

In the process of Tom trying to get Jerry back for runing his day, Tom ruins the day of Kayla, a cynical young lady played by Chole Grace Moretz who like Robin in the last theatrical film, is a blonde girl who takes up way more screen time than our heroes for some reason. Tom accidently destroys the clothes she was sent to deliver, and she gets fired from her Task Rabbit esque job... despite the fact that TaskRabbit is app based, entirely built around how you do jobs for hire as needed, and that at most she’d get a bad review and that the app dosen’t actually hire people. I know this both because i’ve seen the apps and parodies of it show up on tv shows I watch, most recently Close Enough, and because I took the 2 minutes it took to google it , read some of the Wikipedia article and do the bare minimum that me, a paid only by commissions and patreons reviewer, did to prove a point, and that the writers of this film, who likely got paid at least 10000 for a rewrite, and more for whoever wrote the treatment, which is about 30,000 at lowest as told to me by this article on what screenwriters get paid I looked up solely to prove a point. So they got paid tens of thousands of dollars, probably more than standard... to not spend 5 minutes looking up what task rabbit is, becuase they wanted to give her a “hip” job instead of just having her work for a dry cleaner. Then again they got thousands upon thousands to half ass it and i’m getting paid nothing to go on a rant about how they half assed it, so maybe i’m the dumbass, I dunno, but at least I take pride in my work. And i’ve had trouble spellchecking at times so take that as you will. 

But so far the film is not bad: the slapstick is blended really well, the action is pitch perfect and our heroes are given good motivations: Kayla’s to find a job, Tom to play piano professionally and Jerry to find a proper home. You ready for some letdown?!

 All three of our heroes converge at the Royal Gate Hotel, a prestigious hotel that’s been host to popes, dignitaries and Drake. Jerry sneaks inside, and soon finds himself at home and making himself home, Tom TRIES to and ends up getting on the wrong side of Butch, the black cat from the shorts played in this film by reggaton performer Nicky Jam. Why they choose him over a comedian or anyone who could actually act, especially since Butch dosen’t have a musical number or anything, is a riddle for the ages. My best guest, as it always is, is that Tim Story owes him a Wookie-Style life debt. Not only that but even more bafflingly Butch’s gang, who to the films credit like him are all his gang of cats from the classic shorts, are played by Kevin Hart’s Improve Troop, The Plastic Cup Boyz. I got a preview for what passing a kidney stone’s going to feel like just typing that name. I thought I had no explanation for this, not even a wookie life debt can explain how Kevin Hart’s posse, because he has one for some reason but at least unlike Adam Sandler he’s helping his smaller named friends get big instead of just promoting guys who really shouldn’t have a career or dragging poor guys like Shaq or Terry Crews into your bullcrap because they like you., can explain how this happened. But I forgot I looked up Tim Story’s filmography when I first found out he was director here, more on him later, and found out he directed both Ride Along films, both think like a man films, and one of Kevin Hart’s specials, so the two presumably are friends or at least have a solid working relationship, and given how successful the first Ride Along was for both men, I doubt Tim would turn down a favor from him and vice versa. 

And while I find the Plastic Cup Boyz inclusion in this film bizzare and wish it was fellow comedy troupe and starkid adjacent wonderkinds the Tin Can Bros so I could get Joey Richter voicing an animated cat, they at least try their best, their just not given much to do and I don’t get casting them in these side rolls or not giving the butch role to one of them as Nicky Jam just sucks in the role. And I get Butch isn’t the most solid or complex character, but it still isn’t THAT hard, with the 80 drumloads of great comedians out there, to find SOMEONE better, and it’s weird Kevin Hart himself isn’t in the roll. If it wasn’t a wookie life debt i’m betting Hart was going to play Butch, had to back out due to scheduling conflicts or whatever, and Tim found the first guy he could who’d take almost nothing instead of an actual actor. 

Kayla meanwhile somehow takes herself from sympathetic to wholly unlikeable in the span of the scene by maniuplating and terrifying a poor woman into not taking the job, outright STEALING HER RESUME, meaning if she screwed up this might go on the poor woman’s record, and lying her way into the job. And if the woman had been you know a classist dick or something, i’d understand but this is a perfectly nice lady who worked really hard, and who looses out on a job because some little bitch talked her out of it and then stole her identity. This one act really just makes me not care: It’s one thing to do what you gotta to get a job, I myself have never lied on an application but I get new york’s insanely expensive. Even if she presumibly lives in a hole that’s cramped, has roaches or rats, who given this unvierse probably have tiny tv’s that are still way too loud and binge watch way too much Jersey Shore at 2 in the morning, and is probably haunted, probably by Droopy wearing a bedsheet going boo but still, and yes he’s also alive here but he has identical cousins. Not the point. Point is even if she has sympathetic motives.. what she did is not okay and when she get flashes of guilt throughtout hte film it’s never long enough to feel like it’s not her simply feeling bad she didn’t get this herself and not that she STOLE IT FROM ANOTHER PERSON. Again if she’d FAKED her resume, this would’ve been fine, simply set up some websites, and it would’ve worked so why they went with this elaborate setup that takes her into outright crimes is beyond me. 

Point is she gets hired by the manager/owner, Mr. Dubrois, played by Rob Delany, but since his name isn’t used enough i’m just going to call him Mustache Manager. Her direct superior whose against her being hired is Terrance, the Gate’s Event Manager played by a way too good for this film Micheal Pena, who sadly is given nothing to work with. Terrance.. is supposed to be the bad guy because he distrusts kayla. And while one of those reasons is stupid, she makes a joke about the goldfish being an aquatics manger and he takes it dead seriously, he’s rightfully supscious she’s not who she says she is, since one of the places on her resume is a place he knows people from. The only way the film manages to make him the bad guy is he is COMICALLY out of touch: he dosen’t get sarcasm, as seen before, dosen’t want people posting jerry to “snapgram or instaface”, and seems to have trouble relating to his guests. What makes this not work is that he’s manger at a ludicrously expensive hotel. As such a good chunk of his events would be for Celebrties, since New York’s a big hub for them, having tons living there and visiting for films, apperances on late night talk shows, SNL and what have you and being a prime spot for events and it’s clear part of his job is talking to the guests as the two the film focuses on, more on that in a minute, know him and have met him before. He also mentions Drake having stayed there... he would NOT have kept this job. 

You’d need to do through research on these kinds of celebrates and social media is the easiest way to do that, to get what they like, what they don’t, what they don’t want to talk about, what scandals or gos might be going on to keep paparazzi out. I don’t even know how this business works nor did I google it.. and I didn’t to prove a point.. that even with no real idea how this works.. I still get what you’d probably need to know to make events for rich famous people. I’m not convinced Terrance knows how an internet works.  And given writer Kevin Costello wrote the well received and weird film I still want to see Brigbsby Bear, I get the sense a lot of this nonsense was added in rewrites demanded by executives and credit him more for what works in the film. More on that in a moment. 

Kayla is hired on because the Royal Gate has it’s biggest event ever, the wedding of Ben, played by Colin Jost, and Preeta, played by Pallavi Sharda. Why is it big? What do they do exactly? Are they trust fund babies? Did Ben invent an app? Did Preeta cure global warming? Did they both help defeat Galactus DEVOURER OF WORLDS?!... I dont’ know. If the film told me at all why their big names, even if it’s just because their famous for being famous which would be fine, why this is bigger than a fucking pope visiting, I missed it and I actually went back to their first scene and the scene where Mustache Manager brings up the wedding in the first place to Kayla, and found nothing. We just know their rich, their getting married, Ben doesn’t listen to Preeta and is insufferable, and that they own two classic Tom and Jerry characters: Ben owns spike whose played by Bobby Canavale who isn’t bad but dosen’t try to sound like spike at all and that annoys me given unlike Tom and Jerry, the former of whom’s signature noises from the cartoon were used archivally and otherwise dosen’t talk and only sings on occasion or does that wonderfully weird “don’t you belivie it” thing., has a distinct voice they could’ve got someone to imitate. The other is Preeya’s cat toodles, that white cat Tom is always trying to bang, who got a neat less anthro redesign. 

Toots, Toodles whatever you call her the redesign works, making her more of a cat, and only speaking in meows for some reason, and combinging the two female cats tom’s liked, but while still being just funny animal enough that him wanting some pussy, so to speak, isn’t too creepy. 

And this is where the film undergoes a bit of a shift. While the 20 or so minutes are rightfully focused on our boys with a bit of focus on Kayla, from here on out she’s our defacto lead. Given the last film did the same damn thing of making Tom and Jerry not the main leads in their own movie, you can see the problem.  I will say to the film’s credit it is still LEAGUES better in a lot of other ways than the 90′s film in that the plot is actually centered around them: Jerry, when stealing some cheese, and runs afoul of the tempermental Chef Jackie played by Kim Jeong. Though i’m 100% not convinced Ben Chang didn’t just lie on his resume at some place and has now somehow become a michline star canditate. He finds Jerry, and Kayla volunteers to catch him to help her own career and validly points out her doing this discreetly with only the staff knowing about the mouse will keep it from becoming a social media nightmare. 

The 90′s film could work without them, replacing them with any animal sidekick for Robin, since nit’s so far removed from Tom and Jerry their really an afterthought. Here the film DOES feel like a tom and jerry plot at it’s core, Jerry’s somewhere he shoudln’t be, Tom wants to chase him either due to personal greivance or his job depending on it, in this case both. The small side cast are all involved, and given decent if thin justifications for being there: Butch is an ally cat and Spike and Tootles are the pets of the happy couple. 

And honestly the slapstick portions, the portions that are tom and jerry focused or use the humans well, are BRILLIANT. No really, it’s good stuff once in a while using a bit from the classics but mostly coming up with new gags and the animation is gorgeous. I won’t lie and say it’s always perfect, sometimes the models are a bit off and look unfinished and that’s not forgivable when you delay your film two months, and thus have extra time to work on that. But that’s a few shots here and there versus the majority of hte film where the various animals all blend perfectly. Unlike most Live Action adaptations of an old cartoon, this one actually seemed to have good reason, as they’ve taken the basic roger rabbit tech of decades ago and expanded on it well. Just like that classic you often wonder how the hell they pulled this off, and outside of one egregrous sequence where tom sets up an elaborate trap we spend far too much time on, when they do use CG for any props, you can’t tell. This is best highlighted by what I consdier to be the film’s best sequence and what brings Tom into the plot proper after lurking on the fringes for a good 15 minutes: Tom, miserable in the rain, finds jerry living it up in an empty room, and after some fun shenanigans trying to get in, finally succeds leading to a good 2-3 minute sequence of the two chasing after each other in the room. There are no actors, no one else and the room is empty, but perfectly gimmicked to time with thier movments. Wether they used cg and I couldn’t tell or just simply timed things great, it’s utterly fantastic and shows why this film is live action: while i’td be fine animated they cleary ahd the tech and ideas to do it live and thus did it this way. Naturally Kayla meets Tom again, and after finding out the room was trashed by both him and Jerry gets Mustache Manager to hire him. 

But this is the problem: While there are great set pieces like this, or a REALLY damn impressive one later where Terrance gets dragged into a ball of violence while walking Spike for Ben and we see INSIDE IT, with Terrance not moving as fast but that being okay. And I love the movie’s commitment that ALL animals are animated. So it has it’s charms and gets a LOT right.

It’s clear to me from this strong core that the script was messed with, either by director Tim Story or the execs. Some misguided and stupid bits I get even if it was a bad idea: Tom does do the piano at one point, after he thinks he’s gotten rid of Jerry thanks to again an unwieldy overly long bit of CGI that’s a down spot on the usually good just tom and jerry stuff. And he STARTS singing a 40′s jazz song, and I thought “Okay they really got this and are doing something like is you is or is you ain’t my baby this will be fun”. Then T-Pain started using autotune, because of course, and Tom’s shoulder devil started scratching next to him...

By the way Tom’s Shoulder Devil and Angel are played very well by Lil Rel Howrey , aka Rod from Get Out. So good on you man, one bit of non miscasting.  There’s one or two cringe inducing moment of trying to be hip here or there though for a film like this it isn’t nearly as bad as you’d expect. Still bad but i’ve seen so much worse at this point i’m not going to bother getting mad or upset over it. I’m used to this kind of thing from kids movies. 

But while the film dosen’t really lack Tom and Jerry, it sidelines them way too often> There’s just too many scenes  just about Kayla, whose not only not a great character despite Chole trying her absolute hardest god bless her. Her hitting it off with the bartender, her arguing with Terrance whose even more insufferable and her bonding with Preeta and Ben being annoying, we’ll get to him.. WE’LL GET TO HIM. But they aren’t funny or interesting, there’s nothing THERE to really get me interested, nothing new or fresh that we haven’t seen done better before. There’s just nothing, it feels like large parts of blank space. And to illustrate this my Niece, who I watched the film with and really loves Tom and Jerry after I showed it to her... played with other stuff during most of those scenes. And she’s young, her attention span is not great.. but noticably during the actual scenes of slapstick she was glued to the tv, just like she was when I showed her the classic shorts. It’s not just old farts like me who remember tom and jerry from their youth.. it’s the kids your TRYING to appeal to that don’t want this. If you can’t get kids, who in general and speaking from my own personal experience will watch just about anything, to pay attention YOU. HAVE. FAILED. 

Okay took a second to compose myself, let’s move on to the rest of the movie. So after T-Pain stabbed music in the throat, we get to the worst section of the film as Kayla brokers peace between the two to get Preeta’s ring back after the three end up in the aformnetioned violence ball with Terrance, who she ducks his claims that she didn’t catch the mouse.. which she did not but for once she’s sympathetic as Terrance is much more likeable either, though gaslighting him and getting him put on leave is a bit extreme. Bafflingly, Kayla gets his job as event cordinator for now, and thus has to broker peace between the two warring factions.. and does so in the strangest way possible: by booking a day for them in new york to hang out and be BUDDIES!. This isn’t bad as the last film as it dosen’t last, but it is just.. surreal seeing the two having a hanging out montage around new york. Like the film just took a really weird turn with this, the montage itself isn’t weird, it’s standard shenanigans minus the fighting but still good stuff. Unlike the 90′s movie instead of singing about being palls or helping a small child, they just get into cartoony shenanigans together. More proof the film could’ve been so much better just with them. 

Speaking of proof the film would’ve been better without them , Ben fucks around with a drone for the wedding, after Preeta confided in Kayla the wedding’s getting to be a bit much. So let’s talk about Ben shall we? While Preeta is just nice, friendly and down to earth, Ben... is a dumbass, a jackass and just an ass. His whole schtick is that he keeps escalting the wedding despite her wishing he’d stop, and i’ts just.. not funny. A guy ignoring his partner’s wishes, constnatly doing big gestures in large part to try and win over her dad who RIGHTFULLY hates, and in general just sucks. I do not blame this on Colin Jost: He’s perfectly charming on SNL, and Weekend Update is usually damn fun under him and Micheal Che. But like with Pena and Mortez, he’s given NOTHING to work with, and furthe rmore can’t improvise.. aka the skill most SNL cast and almnus walk away with. So it’s no suprise he instead comes off like an anoying plank of wood you want to see fall down a manhole and never return so Preeta can marry someone else. I dunno the Doorman’s a pretty cool guy, and if he’s taken or something there’s always Droopy. Droopy’s the smoothest motherfucker and we all know. And if HE’S taken there’s mustache man. The point is we have a Dating Game’s worth of elligble bachelors and the film tries to sell a plank of wood who clearly wants to bang Preeta’s dad more than he wants a genuine equal relationship with Preeta. 

So that dosen’t help the final act.. which is started with something REALLY weird to round off tom and jerry’s day as Tom catches a ball, interupts a play and get.s. thrown in the pound for it?

I don’t know how tha’ts a crime, I don’t get it either, point is the animal control guy is a creep who shows them off as they pass some angry dogs.. and.. 

MY BOY. There was an earlier joke with him taking the place of The Joker, and I thought that was it sadly but nope there he is! While, given they don’t really have much to do with each other, it is a tad weird he’s been grafted onto the tom and jerry legacy.. I really don’t care because it means Droopy gets to show up every so often in other stuff like this.. And hopefully the spinoff series coming in the summer. I”ve talked before about how much I love this dog so having him show up here was a HUGE delight and easily the higlihgt of the film and the gag is perfect. WHy is he in prison? I don’t know. But given who we’re dealing with I also assume he just disappeared later and showed up at the Wolf’s place again to get the evidence to clear his name and to help a young brodway hopeful played by Peyton R LIst get to her audition in time. And yes I just imagined another live action film with a classic character.. but admit it you’d rather be watching that one. They also run into butch who tries to force him to eat Jerry or they’ll kill him. 

Terence saw the arrest on the tv though, so he bails the two out, pits them against each other, and sets them loose at the wedding. This goes how you’d expect. the two cause chaos and thanks to Weekend UpDumbass there’s pecocks, tigers and elephants, and Jerry naturally spooks the elephants, Spike, who has it in for tom as usual, goes after tom the tiger goes after him and the wedding is destroyed. Preeta breaks up with Ben and leaves, and Kayla is fired.

Less good is that Tom gets thrown out because Terrance backed out on his deal because he’s a fucking asshole. So while Kayla gripes to her sorta loveintrest bartender man, and wishes she could fix things, T and J show up, both realizing it’s their fault and both with a plan to fix things leading to our climax. Kayla goes back to the hotel, and while Terrance tries to boject she rightfully blackmails him. Sadly neither get their commupance and while Mustache Manager puts two and two together, he’s all for ending this PR Nightmare and helping with Kayla’s plan to get ben to stage a wedding in central park that Preeta actually wants while our two actual heroes go to stop her and do some light kidnapping of toodles to get Preeta to stop. 

So it ends how you’d expect: Preeta makes a huge mistake, seriously Droopy go to their honemoon I guarantee Ben will wonder off into the ocean because he thought it looked sick bro, Kayla gets her job back and in a move that makes her almost tolerable hires the woman she stole from who Terrance clearly wants to bang, and Tom actually catches Toot’s eye, but then Jerry mucks it up because cockblocking tom has been his job since the 40′s, they fight, Kayla tells them to cut it out, they put an the end thing over it. Roll credits. 

As you could tell I had issues with this film and had more the more I thought about it. So it’s not very good.. but I still recommend watching it if you have Max right now. Yes really. While the human parts are pretty awful as you could tell, you can have some fun mocking them, and it’s worth suffering through them for the bits with our boys, as those bits are geneuinely energetic, fun and what you came for. If you like tom and Jerry, you probably won’t like this movie.. but you’ll enjoy those bits. Hopefully if there’s a sequel, and this film was a suprise hit so their probably will be, they’ll learn their lesson from this one and focus less on the humans and more on the hyjinks but overall this is just a medicore waste of some really great technology and slapstick. This is just one huge ball of dispaointment instead of cartoon violence and i’m sorry it ended this way.  If you liked this review, you can follow me on my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. Even 1 dollar a month helps and my next stretch goal nets a Darkwing Duck episode a month, so if that excites you, please sign up. And if you can’t afford to that’s fine and feel free to stick around anyway. Times are hard and I get that. And I will see you at the next rainbow. 

[its-flicked-switch]

The One They Deserved

3.5K | William Arc | The Story We Deserved | Post-MS4

William emerges from the harbor.

I know I can't be the only fan out there who was deeply disappointed by how William's character arc was handled in S11! So, for those of you on team #notmyWilliam, stick with me — I got you. 

—

"And maybe what growing up really means is knowing that you don't have to be just a character, going whichever way the story says. It's knowing you could be the author instead."

― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

—

JACKSON

Returning to Wyoming was a decision made on a whim — an instinctual impulse. Because when battered and broken, animal instinct predominates, driving the incessant urge to return to a place of comfort and security.

When Jackson emerged from the harbor, he knew he needed to seek refuge somewhere far removed from Virginia. Returning to the place where it all began just seemed fitting somehow. Poetic almost. For the beginning was also the end.

Of all the places he has lived over the course of the last seventeen years, this is the only place Jackson has ever considered to be home. As he crouches down in the tall grass behind his former home, he becomes enthralled with how quickly and slowly time can pass in the same instance. Saying goodbye to his childhood home seems like something that happened a lifetime ago to someone else, yet it happened only yesterday, and it's strikingly familiar.

Having risen from the dead once before, he knows that not finding his body in the harbor will put his pursuers on edge. Only a fool would accept his death as fact without a body at this point, and those who pursue him are not fools. With that being said, coming here was a risk, but his lack of confidence in his ability to manipulate video feed and hide his identity in larger crowds kept him from attending his parents' funeral.

As a child, he always dreaded attending funerals, oftentimes begging to stay home or to sit outside because he found them to be too unbearably sad and uncomfortable. But now, having been kept from attending the funerals of those closest to him, he has a greater appreciation for their purpose. Funerals aren't for the dead. They are for the living. He understands that now.

The circumstances surrounding their deaths prevented him from seeing their bodies. He wasn't there to watch their caskets being lowered into the ground, nor was he ever able to return to their home in Virginia, where he would have certainly been faced with blood-spattered walls and silence. Any or all of those things would have helped to ground him into the reality that they were really gone, and that he would never see them again. Ultimately, that is what he hoped to gain by coming here — closure. But as he settles in the tall grass behind his childhood home, all he feels is sorrow.

The Van De Kamps' former home hasn't changed all that much in their absence. The new owners have painted, changed up the landscaping, and added on a garage, but overall, the rustic farmhouse where he spent the first twelve years of his life has remained relatively untouched by the passage of time.

Jackson wishes he could say the same.

His early childhood was happy, carefree, and uncomplicated. Although they didn't live in a standard neighborhood, other families lived within a reasonable walking distance. The Brooks family, who owned the land adjacent to theirs, had two boys around his age — Ben and Zak. The three of them spent nearly every waking hour together in the summers. Collectively, their families owned a little over 6,000 acres of land, which, in turn, gave them quite a bit of terrain to roam and raise the kind of hell that only little boys are capable of concocting. Their more notable transgressions included but were not limited to: hitting a baseball into a busy highway where it shattered the back window of a brand new four-door Chevy pickup, a magnifying glass mishap that escalated into the incidental burning of an entire wheat field, and poking a hibernating bear. Yes. You heard right. Poking an actual bear. Suffice it to say, the old saying 'don't poke the bear' holds an entirely different meaning to him now than it did before.

Poking of bears aside, the majority of his childhood, although interesting at times, was fairly unremarkable — until the day that it wasn't.

He was nine when it started.

Phase one came in the form of nightmares. Intense night terrors that propelled him out of his bed and sent him screaming into the night. Twice his parents found him in fields behind their home staring up into the sky with his heart racing, clothes soaked with sweat, and tears streaming down his face. When it occurred a second time, they installed latches at the top of all of the exterior doors, in fear that he would end up in the middle of the highway or in one of their irrigation wells before they could wake and calm him.

The doctors had assured his parents that it was only a phase, but when weeks turned into months and months turned into a year, it became apparent that what he was experiencing was more than just a phase. The drugs the doctors prescribed were successful in sedating him, but they did not curve the frequency, intensity, duration, or nature of his dreams.

Phase two began shortly after his tenth birthday. His hair and eyes had always been fair, but in January of 2011, he woke up to the reflection of a boy he didn't recognize. His blue eyes and sandy brown hair had disappeared overnight, transitioning into a deep charcoal brown. Nobody in the medical community had ever seen anything like it, nor could they explain how or why it had occurred. Test after test confirmed that he was healthy and otherwise unaffected, but a sense of unease filled their home nonetheless.

The night terrors and physical transformation each snapped something within him, unraveling him into a child no one recognized. Within a year, he transitioned from being the light-hearted, jokester with lots of friends into a fearful, shy, and awkward isolationist. It was as if he was a completely different person altogether — mentally and physically. The friendships he had developed within the first ten years of his life slowly dissolved. One by one, they all eased away until there was no one left. Then the bullying began.

First came the inquisitive stares and whispers, which were quickly followed by finely pointed questions that only rude children ask.

"What are you? Some kind of alien?"

It was fairly common knowledge that he was adopted, which only served to make matters worse.

"Jack wasn't born, he was hatched. That's why he can change his coloring like an iguana. What color will you make your hair and eyes tomorrow — Jack?"

"I hear that he hangs out in the fields a lot. He's probably waiting for the mothership."

The digs were endless, and he didn't cope with any of it well. At first, he cried a lot, but he learned very quickly that ten-year-old boys can't cry on playgrounds. Witnessed tears added a whole new layer to his misery. It was if he had opened Pandora's Box to hell.

Jerry Marriott was the worst of the bunch. He coined the name Alien Jack — AJ for short, and it stuck. Soon, nobody other than the teachers called him by his given name.

Thankfully, summer arrived, providing him with a much-needed reprieve from hell.

His parents had hoped that the summer would bring Ben and Zak back, but it didn't. When he wasn't helping his father on the farm, he would walk through the fields alone, which troubled his parents far more than it ever bothered him. The silence was far more favorable than the alternative. School had taught him that much.

Midsummer, his father returned home from an errand with a large box. Since it was the first time he had seen either of his parents genuinely smile in weeks, he knew immediately that whatever was in the mystery box was a much bigger deal than the new dirt bike they had given him for his birthday. They had been placating him for weeks. Making special meals, renting extra movies and video games …any and everything they could think of to try to lift the depressive fog that hung over him. But that day had been different, their smiles were confident and infectious, and when he opened the box, he understood why.

Inside the box was a small wiggling ball of energy. A chocolate lab puppy with large animated brown eyes and tan tipped paws. To this day, Jackson still refers to that moment as being the happiest moment of his life.

He named him Abe, after Abraham Lincoln, because he ended the period of misery and loneliness that had enslaved him by offering him true and unbridled friendship. For the first time in over a year, Jackson looked forward to getting up in the morning. His mood and overall outlook brightened considerably.

His mother's allergies had always prevented them from having pets, which was why Abe's sudden appearance had come as such a surprise. After his arrival, new kleenex boxes appeared in nearly every room. Her congestion and sneezing fits worsened as Abe aged, but she never once complained. Jackson never really thanked her enough for that. Kids are kind of assholes in that respect. They don't truly grasp the meaning of sacrifice.

Unfortunately, for his family, itchy, watery eyes, and nasal congestion would be on the low end of the totem pole in comparison to the sacrifices that would lie ahead.

Phase three was the most troubling for everyone except him. For him, phase three was the glorious redemption that typically only exists in a bullied preteen's dreams. It began with an excruciating headache and a low-grade fever that kept him in bed for nearly three days. When it waned, the world was different. He's since been asked by numerous medical and mental health professionals to describe it, and the best analogy he has been able to come up with is hibernation. When he woke up on that third day, he felt as if he had woken up for the very first time.

Initially, the difference was subtle — something he could sense but not entirely identify. As the days passed, however, the subtlety faded, and the awareness that he possessed unnatural abilities became more and more apparent. For example, he could gain access to people's innermost thoughts, secrets, and fears by merely making eye contact with them or by being in close proximity to them. He wouldn't call it mind-reading per se, because the information was far too pointed to be ramblings of the mind. No whispers, no visions… just infinite knowledge that would appear in his mind as if it had always been there. He would just know.

Ten-year-old boys aren't the coyest creatures on the planet, and Jackson had been no exception.

Returning to school following his summer reprieve had been difficult. The only thing that got him through each day was the knowledge that Abe would be sitting at the bus stop waiting for him, so the timing of his mysterious illness couldn't have been better… or worse, depending upon your perspective.

His ability to obtain sensitive information was a game-changer. As it turned out, Jerry Marriott had an irrational fear of clowns, slept with a night light and stuffed elephant named 'Snuffy,' and hated the father who abandoned him and his mother to go live with his boyfriend in Nevada.

It was at this juncture that Jackson's name transitioned from being Alien Jack to Alien Jackass.

While his tactics didn't win him any humanitarian of the year awards, it leveled the playing field and facilitated camaraderie. Jackson wasn't Jerry's only target. Lewis Weedin and Jessy Scott were also victims of Jerry's unrelenting treachery. Lewis ate every booger he could find, and Jessy rarely bathed properly, but they were both kind, troubled souls whose home lives were miserable. They made an awkward trio and didn't have a tremendous amount in common aside from their mutual hatred for Jerry. But the knowledge that Jessy's stepfather molested him and that Lewis's mother was a worthless drunk made Jackson all that much more determined to make their time at school more tolerable — and he did.

Exploitation worked for awhile. Instead of calling him names, tripping him in the halls, and smashing his lunch, his peers gave him a wide berth.

What Jackson hadn't anticipated was Jerry's resolve. Revealing Jerry's deepest secrets had taken the terror level down a few notches and given Jackson some breathing room, but beneath Jerry's seemingly calm and avoidant exterior, he was seething and biding his time. Alien Jack was child's play. Teasing him about being an alien, from Jerry's perspective, had always been just that — teasing. All in good fun.

Jerry kept his distance for months, leading Jackson to believe that it was over. It wasn't until Jerry ended up on his bus buddied up with Ben and Zak that he knew something was amiss, and he wasn't wrong.

It started as soon as the bus pulled away.

Abe had been waiting for him in his usual place with his body wiggling from head to toe in anticipation as the bus stopped.

"Nice dog, jackass."

Having already weaponized all the intel he had gathered from Jerry's psyche, there was little left for him to say that hadn't already been broadcasted. Ben and Zak remained silent at Jerry's side but looked rather pleased with themselves for acquiring a new and powerful friend. Abe, oblivious to their tone and intentions, had approached him with his typical after school enthusiasm — wiggling, jumping, and nudging along his side to be petted.

Jackson considered telling Jerry to bug off but thought better of it since he was still a good ten minutes away from home and outnumbered three to one. So instead of commenting, he regarded the three of them as if they were cockroaches and turned to walk away.

Neither he nor Abe saw the rock coming.

The jagged, medium-sized rock struck Abe in his hindquarters, causing him to stumble and yelp. The hurt, confused, and terrified look in Abe's sweet, gentle eyes filled Jackson with a sense of rage that he had never experienced before. And turning to find their snide, taunting smiles and hands filled with rocks only served to intensify that rage.

As he watched them chuckle and tauntingly toss the rocks up into the air, an eerie calm settled over him. In that moment, Jackson felt a lot of things but fear was not one of them.

"Time to see how fast you and your friend can run, jackass," Jerry said, giving Ben and Zak a slight nod before arching to hurl the second rock.

Abe, at this point, was no longer oblivious to their intentions and had begun to growl, but it didn't matter. Before the rock could leave Jerry's hand, he hit the ground — hard.

Ben and Zak immediately dropped their rocks and ran away in terror, leaving Jerry to gasp, sputter, and writhe around in the gravel along the side of the road alone.

Without batting an eye or taking a step in his direction, Jackson had sent Jerry hurling backward with such force that it knocked the wind out of him and broke three of his ribs.

"No," Jackson told him as he moved to stand over him, "you are the one who is going to run."

And Jerry did.

The jagged rock left a gash on Abe's hindquarters right along his hip that required several stitches. But true to his nature, Abe remained standing, wagging his tail and licking Jackson in the face as he knelt down, removed a layer of clothing, and cleaned up the wound as best he could before walking them both home.

The events that followed the bus stop brawl changed all of their lives forever. Within a year, Abe was gone, and his parents were forced to sell their farm, farmhouse, and a good portion of their possessions to avoid bankruptcy.

As he watches the sunset over the top of the trees, Jackson knows he has to get moving. He's already stayed longer than he intended, but it's taken more time than he anticipated to gather the courage to visit the very spot he traveled all this way to see. Rising from his obscured position in the tall grass along the tree line, he makes his way deeper into the woods that line the south side of the property.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, he approaches the clearing where he and his father had laid his one and only true friend to rest. Getting down on his hands and knees, Jackson brushes aside layers of leaves until he finds the flat stone that marks Abe's resting place.

Abe was a true light. The year he spent with Abe was the happiest time of his life. Abe's eyes had always been gentle, loving, and hungry for adventure. Even after all of this time, Jackson can still feel the coldness of his nose, the sloppiness of his kisses, and the sharpness of his toenails. It's been nearly six years, but the emptiness, sorrow, and furry that filled him following Abe's death has never truly waned.

He doesn't stop the tears that stream down his face as he traces the outline of Abe's name chiseled into the stone. His tears aren't for just Abe. He can feel his parents here too. Abe's death took something out of all of them. It was like being struck by lightning: nothing was the same afterward.

In the years that followed their move, he allowed vengeance to drive and shape him, destroying everyone and everything around him. Being powerful is cool, until the day that it isn't. Now, as he kneels in half-frozen leaves overlooking a grave, he realizes that the one ability he longs for the most is one that he doesn't possess. He can't turn back time. If he could, he would rewind to the day he lost Abe with the knowledge that he has today. If he could do that, he wouldn't be kneeling over Abe's grave in the forest. He would be sitting at the kitchen table inside their farmhouse ordering graduation invitations with Abe snoring at his feet.

At the times of their deaths, he wasn't who they deserved.

Now, all that is left of them in this world are their graves and the imprints they've left on him.

His parents had been sweet, gentle, and loving people, who despite everything, never once resented him. They gave him everything they had, and in return, all he had given them was trouble and heartache. And Abe… Abe was just Abe. Always loving. Always happy. Always looking to him to lead, because where Jackson was — was exactly where Abe wanted to be.

Wiping at his tears, he makes a promise to each of them, one he should have made years ago. From this day forward, he's going to be the one they deserved. They may be gone, but they will not be lost for their imprints will now fall on him.

Moving the leaves back to cover Abe's resting place, Jackson blankets his one and only true friend with as much warmth as the environment will allow, comforted by the fact that he will no longer be buried there alone.

:

Moonlight guides him alongside the highway. The night is silent except for the distinct jingle of tags and clicking of nails against the asphalt. Should somebody happen upon him tonight, they will find a quick friend in a lively chocolate lab with tan tipped paws, a green collar, soulful eyes, and a smile that begs for adventure. What they won't see is a troubled teenage boy or a monster.

Cloaked in a true spirit of light, William heads due south in search of the man who is referred to in his visions only as Praise.

:

AN: This is a chapter from a larger work you find here. 

I'm not going to lie, this was an emotional chapter for me to write. In S11, we were introduced to a young man who was insanely powerful and a bit of an asshole. After 18 years of buildup, I expected more and was devastated that we didn't get it, which is why I made the decision to write a more William-centered story. His arc was important to me. There was a story there that wasn't told, and I'm determined to tell it. For those of you here strictly for the MSR, don't fret... without Mulder and Scully there are no X Files ;)

And, as always, a HUGE thank you to my betas @kikocrystalball​, @admiralty-xfd​, and @suilven19​ for their edits and encouragement… because nobody gets there alone ;)

[prairiedust]

The Folklore of Supernatural

Part two of a series I started with this post.

I’m reposting this as the second installment of my midseason hiatus “The Folklore of Supernatural” series, even though it was originally written as kind of a long cracky way of looking at the “sleeping beauty trilogy” of episodes in season 14 (The Scar, Mint Condition, and Nightmare Logic.) The original question I was tagged into was “Is Dean actually dreaming?” and I can not find the original post about this, so I won’t tag anyone in particular (you know who you are and I love you because this was fun to write.) I posted it once in the dead of night with no tags, but I’m republishing it as part of my larger take on folklore as a theme in season 14 of Supernatural. Bear in mind that this was written before Optimism, when it became clear that these were not part of an extended dream-sequence, BUT ALSO before The Spear when it was revealed that Michael could repossess Dean. (I’m going to talk a little bit about timing and writing meta, further on.)

I want to say a couple of things before the cut, too. This is a big old Sleeping Beauty post. I know there’s a lot of SB ideas out there in the metasphere but I’ve deliberately avoided them because I wanted to get my thoughts out here and I am Very Slow. Feel free to tag me into other posts, send me asks, whatever, because I think it’s fun to talk about. However, just because this is a “sleeping beauty” meta does not mean I want to go all the way to the end of that metaphor in this series. This particular post is general audience meta. I can’t tell anyone who might read this that no, you aren’t allowed to see a DeanCas parallel in a meta which relies heavily on a romantic fairy tale and one that was a destiel fandom in-joke after Cas died, at that. I will say, though, that I see it, so if you want to duck out now because I’m a lowkey shipper feel free. Also, I can’t endorse predictions based on meta, either, even my own, even when I think there is a big neon “Texan Star” sign saying “destiel goes here;” there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone involved in the show from making a hard left when the signs said we were going right. So rather than seeing this as a defense of DeanCas subtext, let’s call it an experiment in close reading. If nothing else, it will be fun. (Bear in mind that I am a massive dork so my definition of fun involves Charles Dickens.)

Aaand... here we go.

Is Dean asleep, and have the last three episodes (The Scar, Mint Condition, and Nightmare Logic) been a dream? How can we possibly “answer” that question at this point in the show?

We’re trying to speculate about a text that is a constantly moving target. If, for instance, you start to read the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and you know from a blurb on the back of the book that she was an anthropologist who collected African-American and Caribbean folklore, and you get to the place where the protagonist Janie’s second [redacted] ends, but there are a lot of pages left ahead of you, and you think, wow if this happens a third time, I have a theory that the third [redacted, go read this book] would be special based on what I know about folklore and the “rule of three,” well by the end of the book you will know whether or not you were right. Janie either finds a third [redacted], or she doesn’t, and it’s either special, or it’s not.

Supernatural has not ended, so there is no way of saying “Oh, the main theme we are supposed to take away from this show is ____.” I mean, we can put big money on “family” but still. With a television show, it’s hard to even say, “The over-arching themes in this season are____” until the season finale, because it is a text that is being written, filmed, and published serially. The fluid nature of subtext in serial literature was something I studied under a Brit Lit professor– she said, when we set out to read David Copperfield, that sometimes themes in Dickens concluded early or evolved late, or didn’t pan out, because Dickens changed his mind or was pressured by readers to maintain a character that he hadn’t planned to keep around (I think that character was Micawber but I can not find a shred of evidence anywhere, even in my notes from my Brit Lit class, because she kind of mentioned it in passing and I didn’t like Dickens very much when I was younger, so obviously I didn’t learn it well.) And even when you get to the end of a Dickens serial, you still might not get closure– he totally rewrote the conclusion of Great Expectations because his friends wanted angst with a happy(ish) ending.

But this particular “sleeping” symbolism that has been pointed out is really, really structurally sound and can be very well supported. What it means is (shrug emoji)

Going back to the first post in this series, the support for this reading comes from an understanding of folk tales. I’ll be primarily using European Sleeping Beauty stories, as that is what is most accessible to an American/Western audience. And, it was deliberately alluded to in the text of the show. But first let’s talk about formula tales in more depth because that is what sets this theme up in the very first episode of season 14.

Michael met with three different beings in the season opener Stranger in a Strange Land and asked each of them “What do you want?” This is in no uncertain terms a formula tale found in folklore all over the world, and you know about the rule of three even if you’ve never actually acknowledged it. In Goldilocks and the Three Bears, for instance, Goldilocks tries two bowls of porridge before finding one to her liking. She tries two chairs before settling on Baby Bear’s chair. She tries two beds before falling asleep in the one that was “just right.” There were three challenges, two of which failed and one that satisfied her. Goldilocks is an original work (and please read the Wikipedia article, it is fascinating how many revisions this story has gone through, and in fact “Goldilocks” wasn’t even the original main character) but it was based on a folk formula and has entered American oral tradition. Similarly, in the German folk tale The Three Little Pigs, the first pig’s house is destroyed because it was made of straw, the second house failed because it was made of sticks, but the third house was made of brick and withstood the huffing and puffing of the wolf. So the pattern in the rule of three is often two challenges that fail or are flawed and one that finally succeeds or satisfies the necessary conditions. For short, I’m going to call this grouping 2/1. In the Michael story, 2/1 is human, who fails, then angel, who fails, then monster, who Mikey likes. In addition, there is a primer to the rule of three in that first scene, just to make absolutely certain that the audience notices it-- Michael has Jamel guess his identity three times.

This 2/1 formula could be just something Dabb did because he wanted to do it. It’s ancient, and Michael is an ancient being. But. Can it also mean that “folktales” is a theme on the show now?

As the saying goes, “Once is an occurrence, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.” Folklore continues into the season in many different ways.

In Gods and Monsters, the scene where Dean shakes loose and punches the mirror probably lit up everyone who saw it with “mirror mirror on the wall” vibes, from the story of Snow White. The enchanted mirror is such a common “trope” in folklore that it has an index number that folklorists and others use to refer to it in their scholarship– it’s Aarne-Thompson index number D1163. So, another solid subtextual reference to folk tales. There is so much more in that episode about storytelling and retelling and  the concept of sequels, but that’s for another discussion.

We get to The Scar and Jack mentions Sleeping Beauty and no lie I ascended for a full minute. “Sleeping Beauty” is Aarne-Thompson-Uther Classification of Folk Tales number 410 because this is another story that is found freaking everywhere. (I have to make an aside about the use of the term “folk tale” just because it is in my nature not to leave things like this ambiguous– it isn’t completely certain that the Sleeping Beauty we know of Brothers Grimm and Disney fame is 100% for shore an oral tale, or at least isn’t a tale that got a little finessed when it was first written down. See, a guy in pre-Renaissance Naples named Giambattista Basile included a version of it in a collection of child’s tales hundreds of years ago (it’s horrifying btw, cw for non-con at the very least if you go looking for it) then Charles Perrault (of Puss in Boots fame) got hold of it and rewrote it in French, and folklorists are pretty certain that the story of “Briar Rose in the Forest” that the Grimm brothers collected was the Perrault story that had made its way back into oral tradition in Germany. And, like, it’s not a huge reach to say that the history of the Sleeping Beauty story that is explicitly mentioned in the show’s dialogue by Jack is more subtext about how stories are transmitted, how they are told, what happens when they get loose in the wild, etc. That’s how allusions work, and that’s coming up in my third post.)

So, three times means green light to consider “folk tales” an official thing this season, at least for a while. And the cherry on top is that Sleeping Beauty was the third story referenced. It’s neat.

But NOW. On to THE question the OP posed:

Have the last three episodes been Dean’s dream?

I’m going to pass up surface mentions of dream states and solely focus on the actual “sleepers” in these episodes in order to get at the allusion’s architecture.

In Nightmare Logic, the sleeping beauty OP has identified is Sasha’s father, who is locked in a dream-state by a djinn. In Mint Condition, the sleeping beauty is Stuart, who is in a mysterious coma-like sleep after an attack by a possessed chain-saw. In The Scar, Lora is in a sleep-adjacent death-state after being hexed by a witch. (I saw that her name on the iTunes subtitles is “Lora” which is a variation of Laura but spelled this way evokes “of lore” and that was pretty neat. Another tiny detail that bolsters the theme.)

Is Lora really a sleeping beauty, though, and why is that important?

Remember our rule of three pattern that we were given in the premiere– 2/1. Two people in this group will be more similar to each other than to the third. Both Stuart and Sasha’s father are alive, while Lora is technically all the way dead when she is in the sleep-like state. Superficially, Stuart and Sasha’s father are men, whereas Lora is a woman. Just throwing that out there. If I were writing this post for a grade, that right there is called “padding for word count.” But it is also a valid point, so we’re going to use it. Neither Stuart nor Sasha’s father are shown to resume consciousness by the end of their episodes– Stuart not at all, and Mr. Rawlings only stirs fitfully. Lora is revived when Jack breaks the spell. On the other hand, Stuart is never in continued danger in Mint Condition after his “touch and go” operation (he’s presumably safe inside the salt circle) and is expected to recover naturally, whereas both Mr. R and Lora will die/stay dead if the threat against them isn’t neutralized. Mr. Rawlings is similar to Lora because they are both under “medical care”– Mr.R is ostensibly in hospice and Lora is in the Bunker’s sick bay, and to top things off Stuart is the only one who was treated by an actual doctor: Mr. R‘s nurse was a djinn and Cas is not a doctor he just played one on TV.

The thing about close readings is that anything you can argue is probably valid, but one thesis might be better supported than another. I’m really really tired and there might be more differences and similarities that I am missing. But when you’re gathering the evidence to support a theory about a text, you can end up going a bridge too far and you’ll find yourself staring into the void, completely unable to make any progress, so at some point you just have to stake out your foundations and start digging. (Yeah, I mixed metaphors, I mixed three of them, it’s awesome, get off me.)

So. There is more evidence that Stuart and Mr. R are more similar to each other than either one is to Lora. If we apply the 2/1 template, Lora is the character who satisfies the parameter of being “odd man out.” That still might not make her a sleeping beauty for the purposes of answering the “Is this Dean’s dream” question, and here’s why.

(This is the speculation part. I love this stuff, but again I offer the caveat that using subtext to make plot predictions in Supernatural is like trying to write on a cloud with smoke. Anyway.)

If she’s the sleeping beauty, the subtextual message is that Dean might actually be dead (or might have to die to satisfy the condition that Michael is destroyed.) That possibility was brought up in both 14x01 and 14x02, before Dean came back. And eugh no one wants that. It also means that we had to have read these three episodes backwards to find the character that fits the template, because if Lora is a sleeping beauty, and if she is “the” sleeping beauty for subtextual purposes, she actually came first in the series, and you have to run the episodes backwards to get to the 1. That is subverting the trope. However, if you get the thing you want the first time why go on to the other two challenges? There is a lot in this season about calling back to earlier parts of the narrative to contextualize the present– for instance, in Gods and Monsters, Michael says to the werewolf, “You think you were picking me up in that bar?” or something to that effect and then revealed that he was, in fact, the one stalking her. In Mint Condition, we are introduced to the Janitor Victim as a Dean mirror, but we do not know for certain yet that Hatchet Man is a post-Azazel John Winchester mirror, so that scene is given greater meaning by information that is revealed later in the episode. Structurally speaking, it would be fair to say that the information we have now, that Lora the dead girl is “the” sleeping beauty, based on having seen the other two candidates, means a dead Dean reveal has been primed by the subtext. And like, no thank you?

The other possibility is that Lora, since she was dead and not unconscious, is not “the” sleeping beauty. The third “sleeping beauty” (IF there is one) would show up in 14x06 Optimism. (That title is really stressing me out.) Why would that be Dean and not some other random character? Because if we exclude Laura, the pattern resets from 1/2 to 2/1 beginning with Stuart. Stuart is a Castiel mirror, though, which is not quite right. Mr. R is a John mirror (although that episode is a lot murkier and I’ve said before if someone wants to say he’s a Dean mirror because of the djinn connection I’d agree, in which case BLAM we already have a winner.) [editor’s note, I only left Jack out because we already knew he was dying and thought this subtext was priming a twist, more at ten, this aside has been brought to you by the letters LOL.]

But then, where have the last three episodes come from? If he is dreaming, it could be one reason why the djinn couldn’t wring a nightmare out of him, and that the moment before he killed the monster with a bookend was his subconscious trying to signal to him that something is wrong…

I have said a couple of times that subtext isn’t always predictive. Some authors will have multiple subtexts or will use subtext to straight-up fool you (*waves to thriller writers.*) But the exception proves the rule here– we as readers/viewers rely on subtext to prepare us for what might be coming next. Subtext helps provide that slow build to climax that makes, say, Neville Longbottom’s absolutely stunning house cup win in The Sorcerer’s Stone such a stand-up-and-cheer moment, or that makes Harry Potter’s realization that it is his patronus, not his father’s, that saves his past self in the Prisoner of Azkaban so satisfying. Lack of subtext is the reason there is so much grumping over Mary/Bobby. I mean, they what? Had a walk in the woods together? She called him “old man” once, is that even a term of endearment??? [full disclosure I never liked those two together until after Nightmare Logic.]

And scene!

That up there is where I stopped, and now it’s clear that the person who all this was pointing at was Jack, who fell into a dramatic swoon at the end of Optimism. There were two “sleeping beauties” in that episode, too in the 2/1 pattern of the folktales we’ve discussed– the zombie, who is in sort of a dream state, and Charlie, who is knocked out by fly guy. (Again, fully dead is a red herring and doesn’t count. That’s some positive subtext.) That was basically a lot of words to be able to summarize that, yes, sleeping beauty and dreamstates is a thing so far, but where it was going was hard to predict.

There is something really important that can be taken out of this close reading, though, that is carrying throughout the season.

Jack was the character who actually said the words “Sleeping Beauty.” Jack sort of volunteered himself as tribute. Another theme this season that was made explicit by Subtext Primer aka Mint Condition is that the words characters are saying are more important than they ever have been.

AND ONE MORE THING! The above was written before Unhuman Nature and Byzantium and The Spear! Dean has been put back to bed by Michael! But but Castiel stepped into the Sleeping Beauty deal! Where are we going! There’s no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going…

Anyway in the next installment of this really long meta that will probably never end I want to explore what the history of the Amero-European Sleeping Beauty brings to bear on this season.

[aliceparsons22-blog]

How to Design a Million Dollars Playing Video Poker

Ill level bearing in mind you  if I knew some ordinary method for making a million dollars on video poker, I wouldnt be blogging right now. Id be in the Alaskan wilderness catching salmon or just sitting on my urge on porch cracking gain access to a beer.

So how can you become a video poker millionaire? The unchangeable is, there is no one unnamed method scr888 malaysia that will slant you into a video poker millionaire. Im suspicious of get-rich quick ideas of any variety. As a general rule, the less do its stuff something requires, the less full of life it is.

I can think of a few outside-the-box ways to put two commas in your bank account playing video poker:

You could win a million dollars playing higher video poker. Of course, youd have to win an unlikely number of future jackpots to sum $1,000,000  video poker later jackpots are considerably smaller than slot machines, resetting to with $500 and $1,500, and rarely paying off more than two or three time the reset amount. Dont forget how scarce difficult video poker games are  you wont find a single cutting edge video poker game on the Vegas Strip or anywhere in Atlantic City. You could sit on putting child maintenance in the machine until you hit an uncanny streak of luck. Lets say youre betting max, $5 per tab and $25 credits per hand. If you could string together sufficient $30 payouts in a row, youd eventually win a million bucks. It would endure 200,000 straight 6-credit wins (to offset the coast of each rounds maximum bet), and would totally lift some eyebrows at the IRS, but I suppose its technically (given plenty decimal places) possible. You could have a essentially gnarly slip-and-fall accident though playing a video poker machine. If its found that the casino was negligent in inspecting and maintaining their property, youll be entitled to compensation, damages, and (in rare cases) a punitive praise expected to tutor the casino a lesson they wont easily forget. Its within the realm of possibility that you could win a million-dollar settlement. Of course, this is abuse of the system, and it would make you a horrible human being. It may backfire too  the court may toss the warfare out, especially if there is no evidence of negligence. Those three ideas are beautiful far outdoor the realm of possibility. otherwise of slipping in a spilled drink, waiting for a mathematical miracle, or losing your shirt chasing progressives, I recommend a more level-headed approach.

The Three Basic Tenets of the Video Poker Millionaire The three tenets listed under arent exactly secret. Theyre freely-available every over the Internet. I can vouch for this fact, as Ive written dozens of blog posts upon these topics beyond the years.

Once youve moot how to function video poker, every you need to realize to (one day) create a million bucks playing the game is follow these three easy rules:

Learn Basic Strategy If you desire to have fun in Vegas and dont mind eventually giving your entire $100 bankroll to the casino, you dont habit to badly affect roughly strategy.

If your plan is to earn a million dollars from video poker, you have to become a graduate student of gambling. It helps if you have a fine library near your home, past some of the books youll desire to get into arent all that genial online. In fact, if you rouse close a own up the academy next a decent research library, youre a step ahead.

While youre at it, subscribe to some gaming magazines. If youre mostly going to gamble in Vegas, subscribe to some Vegas content, too. belong to a couple of forums. Depending upon where you live, you may be accomplished to find seminars in your area teaching legitimate video poker and additional game strategies. By the way, this isnt something you can attain when or twice a year for a couple of years and be curtains as soon as it. subsequently new games arrive extra strategies, and past additional casinos arrive new opportunities for advantage gambling. Youll essentially obsession to become a lifelong student of gambling and game strategy.

Choose Player-Friendly Games Unfortunately, the heyday of +EV video poker is long gone. You can yet locate a few high-paying titles that make a special trip to a specific casino or website worth your time. Specifically, theres plenty 10/7 Double extra and full-pay Deuces Wild upon casino floors in the gambling Meccas of America to save things interesting. If you are absolutely determined to earn a million bucks from video poker, you should probably stick to these titles only, past any new titles are going to keep too much of your maintenance more than time.

If you dont mind gambling a little (or waiting a few new years to earn your million), you can accomplishment some of the 99%+ titles that casinos still host. These are generally available whether youre online, in Vegas, in Atlantic City, or elsewhere in the USA. The so-called Not consequently ugly Deuces games (which we call 25/16/10) is well-liked and gives the casino a less than a quarter-percent edge, as complete most casinos versions 9/6 Jacks or Better, and the venerable 8/5 other Poker next a recompense of approximately 99.1%.

Casinos love to put sub-99% video poker games sharply adjacent to identical games set high. This is especially legal in the few casinos where you still locate full-pay titles. This means you absolutely have to inspect every pay table since you play.

Manage Your maintenance (and Earn Comps) The nice of dedication it takes to become a gambling millionaire means that it shouldnt be hard for you to rigorously control how much you spend on video poker. But past you should always bet maximum, your wager size and scope are lovely limited. instead of unbearable roughly bet sizing, focus on earning those crucial other relief casinos have enough money their loyal customers. That means joining the players club, exchanging club points for cash, scoring multiple-points promos, entering raffles and drawings, playing in video poker tournaments, remembering to mail in those bounce-back rewards clipping coupons, and pretense every those irritating things that tend to make a casino trip less fun.

In exchange for a tiny bit of what always feels afterward wasted time, youre putting a big dent in the casinos edge. If youre already playing +EV games, using comps basically extends your tiny edge. Not a statistically-significant amount at first, but more than time, it makes a huge difference.

[ladle-hime]

Fragments of a Sovereign - (Loki x OC) Chapter 1

📷

The house looked modest in size, and although you wouldn’t go as far to say that it was run-down, there hadn’t been any special effort to properly maintain the street-facing facade, giving it the same unassuming look as its neighbours. The everyday passerby wouldn’t give it a backwards glance.

Forseti retrieved from the pocket of his cloak, a piece of paper with an address written in eloquent script. He checked it once, looked at the iron number plate and with a confirmatory nod, slipped his hand back in his pocket and swapped the note for a paper envelope, bearing an elaborate seal in a vivid green. He then looked up and down the quiet street once before he rapped smartly on the plain wood.

A few moments later the door opened a crack, and a balding, round face peered at him through the few inches of space in the doorway.

“Hello,” the voice was gruff, wary.

“You are known as Drian?”

“Who’s asking?”

“We have recently been in correspondence,” Forseti held out the envelope, “I trust this is satisfactory?”

The man—Drian, if Forseti was correct about his identity—snatched the envelope  through the door and turned his back to it. Forseti could see him reading the contents in the shadows of the house.

The door was opened wide 10 seconds later, a grin taking up the whole half of Drian’s face. Perhaps the smile was meant to be hospitable, but it reminded Forseti a little too much of the carved squashes he had seen on Midguard, a popular way of decorating for one of their quaint Autumnal holidays, or so he had heard.

“My apologies sir,” Drian’s tone had turned servile, if not simpering, “I have to consider the safety of those I house here. I’m sure you are aware of those crazed revolutionaries who oppose the trade.”

While he was speaking he had led the visitor through a door into what Forseti assumed was the heart of the house. Emerging from the dimly-lit foyer, he was momentarily blinded by the bright colours of the room; every surface seemed to be adorned in glitter and gilt, a faux luxury tackiness that was common occurrence in places like Elmside.

“Of course,” Forseti nodded, and let his cloak be taken by a scantily-clad brunette, bowing her head subserviently and fluttering her lashes up at him.

“Was there anything else you wanted sir?” Her voice reminded him of a female he had purchased on behalf of his master some 150 years ago, and he had to train himself to keep the polite smile on his face, despite the knee-jerk need to wince at the grating high-pitch.

He relayed his denial and she nodded and stepped away, presumably to hang up his cloak somewhere.

“We have the pick of suitable girls here,” Drian said, leading the way to a pair of golden leather sofas, “—it was a girl you wanted?”

“A woman, yes.”

“Ah, yes, yes, a woman. Do sit down, refreshments will be served while I make preparations.”

Drian disappeared through a door on the right and Forseti was left to sink into the seat, the cushions sagging underneath him. Already he was feeling doubts about the expedition. Drian was like any other pimp he had met, and if they were all like the one that had taken his cloak, they would be unsuitable. His master tended to go for the bolshy types, but after a recent run where none of the women brought to him lasted a month, it was time for a change.

“I’m so terribly bored,” the king had pouted a few days ago, lounging on the chaise, “Go and find me someone new to play with.”

And so Forseti had sought out a new house to make a deal with (Not one in Elmside, as far as his master was concerned they were all cheap whores), a letter of interest was sent and now here he was, finding a new pet for the king.

Presently the door that Drian had exited was opened and a young woman stepped out, bearing a silver tray with glasses and a bottle. She bobbed a curtsy as she entered, then set the tray down on a dark wood coffee table and went about pouring the drink, a rich red wine into the two glasses.

Forseti studied her as she went about the work. The tight short purple dress she wore didn’t leave much for the imagination. Her hair was blonde, tied up in a bun and showing off her unadorned neck. When she was done she took up position in the corner of the room, hands clasped in front.

Forseti turned away from her when Drian returned, setting his portly self down on the adjacent sofa.

“We are ready.”

And so it began.

Forseti watched as one by one, the females entered through the door, walked in a circle then waited in front of him as he asked some questions. What was their name? (“Don’t give me her if her name is something ridiculous. I can’t perform if I have that to moan that every night,” his master had said.) What do you like to do in your free time? Why do you want to serve the king?

They were all the same. All the same simpering smiles. The same skimpy outfit. The same sycophantic rhetoric about how much they adored the king and would do absolutely anything for him.

Forseti took a tentative sip of the wine and grimaced. Just as he thought. An old trick. Ply the client with strong wine and drive a hard bargain. He waved over the slave in the corner.

“Sir?”

“You couldn’t get me a cup of tea could you?”

“Yes sir, of course,” she nodded and went out.

“Would you like to see one of the girls closer?” asked Drian, who had been scrutinising Forseti’s reaction to the line-up.

“No need. I can see perfectly well from here.”

“Of course,” Drian replied, though his smile was strained.

The woman returned a few minutes later with the silver tray, this time holding a china tea set with a burgundy and gold chevron pattern.

“What’s your name?” Forseti asked as she delicately poured the tea.

“Sylubelle, sir.” Pretty, if not a little whimsical.

“How long have you been here?”

“300 years sir.” A long time, but some of them did start young. There were no laws against it, the poor sods. Though most of them were at least 16 before they started any carnal activities.

“So you are experienced?”

“Yes sir. I have been doing this a long time.”

Her voice was soft. Forseti was thankful for it, given that he would be the one kept up by their screaming in the middle of the night. He decided to press further, seeing that the tea was poured as she was straightening up the tray to ready her return to her post.

“If you were to serve the king, would you be willing?”

She looked up at this line of inquiry and Forseti noted her eyes, a pale shade of grey.

“Of course, but I do not believe I would have the honour.”

“You may well do.”

The woman named Sylubelle nodded. “Would that be all sir?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She bowed her head and retreated with the tray.

Drian, who had been watching the exchange with keen interest, asked

“Anything you like?”

“There may well be,” Forseti replied, taking a sip of his tea, “To confirm, they are all for sale?”

“Yes,” Drian’s smile was magnanimous, “One in particular has caught your eye?”

“Let us discuss after the show.” Tea first. Business later

[architectnews]

PRATIC 2 HQ in Udine Headquarters Italy

PRATIC 2 HQ Udine, Italian Factory Architecture, Commercial Architecture Images

PRATIC 2 HQ in Udine

Manufacturing Building Development, Italy design by GEA Gri e Zucchi Architettura srl

post updated 19 Jan 2021

GEZA Architettura wins Special Mention in Industrial category

This Italian architecture practice has been selected as the 2021 Architizer A+Firm Awards Special Mention for Architecture in the Industrial category.

Architizer A+Firm Award is the world’s largest architectural awards program which has a judging process designed to reflect the multi-faced qualities of architecture.

2 Apr 2019

PRATIC 2 Headquarters

Design: GEA Gri e Zucchi Architettura srl

Location: Udine, north east Italy

The reflecting and iridescent facade ensures a continuous variation depending on the time of the day and weather condition

The PRATIC 2 Headquarters dialogue with the earth and the sky, with light and shadow.

The mirroring of the panels also ensures a continuous color variation of the facades: depending on the time of the day and varying in light intensity the building may appear black, golden, glossy, infinitely variable

The productive and directional functions relate to the landscape without mimicry. The spaces are designed with the aim of establishing a constant relationship between interior and exterior. Thus Pratic becomes the landmark of the landscape.

The facade panels consist of two different type of polycarbonate combined together: the rear side has an opaque compound which impedes the light to pass through, while the front is “frozen”

The Pratic Spa, a manufacturer of solar shading systems, is an industrial site where the architecture for production becomes a contribution to the landscape and reinforces its identity.

The intervention involves and integrates industrial volumes and vast open spaces. The buildings are related to the earth and the sky, with light and shadow.

The load-bearing structure is completely hidden behind the cladding system

The productive and directional functions relate to the landscape without mimicry, and the spaces are designed with the aim of establishing a constant dialogue between inside and outside. The building thus becomes a comfortable and functional landmark.

The polycarbonate panels are customized in order to obtain a reflecting facade when seen from afar and “deep” when observed closely

The typological plant includes an office building, a showroom, research and innovation laboratories, spaces for production, painting and warehouses, a wellness area for employees. All these functions are linked by the design of open spaces and parking lots, defined by the embankments modeled along the roads, by the spaces dedicated to relaxation and meeting, by the control of the views on the landscape. It is an industrial building in constant relation with the natural landscape.

The rhythm of the windows repeats and declares continuity with the existing facade

The headquarters were built in two phases: the first in 2011 and the subsequent expansion in 2018.

The concrete facade “dissolves” northwards becoming a reflective facade

PRATIC 2 . Production complex enlargement (2018) A few years after its inauguration, the Pratic doubles. Same customers and same architects who believe in the same values: simplicity and efficiency.

The first lot, black and grainy, looks like to arise from the ground, the second lot, always black but reflective and iridescent, mirrors the landscape and the light with images that are always different due to weather conditions

The building is infused with a strong desire of simplicity

The enlargement of the Pratic, built in adherence to the industrial building of the first lot, is a complex project, despite apparently showing an essential character. This is a rectangular building of about 9.000 sqm that completes and improves the existing production department built in 2011. The functional program is almost the same of the previous building: offices, services, canteen, wellness area, production, warehouses, painting plant, as well as parking areas and service areas included in the rigorous design of the open spaces.

General view of Pratic 1 (2011) and Pratic 2 (2018)

The new building consists of two simple elements: the rhythm given by the windows, which repeats and declares continuity with the existing facade, and the reflecting skin, which dissolves the new volume in the sky. The first lot, black and grainy, seems to arise from the ground, settling the building in place; the second lot, always black but reflective and iridescent, mirrors the landscape and the light with images that are always different due to weather variability. The first one is “heavy” and permanent, in search of eternity, the second one is “light” and changeable, ready to dissolve in the sky: the building completed the molt of its skin.

The polycarbonate panels are customized in order to obtain a reflective facade when seen from afar

The facade consists of a single material, of a unique size: a 4 centimeters thick polycarbonate panel, about 10 meters high, fixed to prefabricated concrete structure. The polycarbonate panels are customized in order to obtain a reflecting facade when seen from afar and “deep” when observed closely. The panels consist of two different types of polycarbonate combined together: the rear side has an opaque compound which impedes the light to pass through, while the front is “frozen”.

In this way the load-bearing structure is completely hidden behind the cladding system and the verticality of the new facade sets up an interesting dialogue with the black concrete panels of the existent building. From afar the building reflects the sky and appears cladded by huge glass plates, while close up it looks “lighter”, maintaining a dialogue with the pre-existence. The mirroring of the panels also ensures a continuous color variation of the facades: depending on the time of the day and varying in light intensity the building may appear black, golden, metallic, opaque, glossy, infinitely variable.

The facade consists of a 4 centimeters thick polycarbonate panel, 10 meters high

The entire settlement is included in the architectural design of the landscape and open spaces. Places designed for relaxation, pedestrian paths and parking lots are enclosed in the design of the “modified embankments” that insert subtle variations of slope with respect to the roads and access roads. In this way, the project is inserted in the ground in a clear way, highlighting the shape and geometry of the territory. The building demonstrates that industrial architecture can add value to the landscape and improve the quality of the workplace. This is a great opportunity to rethink the relationship between architecture and nature, putting man back in the middle.

PRATIC 1 . Offices and production complex (2011) The complex placed adjacent to the provincial highway that leads from Udine to Spilimbergo. The intervention is composed principally by a parallelepiped volume with a surface of approximately 9.000 sqm that houses the main productive core and a second volume of about 1.000 sqm placed adjacent to the first but rotated in order to align with the highway is dedicated to the offices.

The area, anchored in the industrial zone of the town, is also intimately tied to the surrounding agricultural landscape and is framed at north by the mountainscape.

The project is infused with a strong desire for simplicity. The volume housing the offices becomes a striking sign even to those driving by on the highway, one that seeks to establish a dialogue between the concepts of stasis and movement. The production core’s more pronounced verticality is characterized by a striated facade dominated by alternating glazed surfaces and solid panels of diverse widths that are always ten meters in height. The differing dimensions of black marble stone and dark cement that make up the finish of the panels allow for a varied facade alive with the interplay of sunlight, shadow and changing atmospheric conditions.

The office core is protected on the south side by a dark concrete beam of grand dimensions (approximately 80 meters in length) that highlights at a larger scale the horizontality of certain elements of the project. The beam, parallel to the ground, projects beyond the building’s perimeter as if to indicate a confrontation between itself and the landscape. Its reflection on the glazed facade yields a great “floating shade” that serves a climatic function by mediating temperature within the work spaces.

This simplicity can even be understood in terms of the project’s interaction with the surrounding context: the cultivated terrain opens towards the southern and western fronts of the complex, merging it with the landscape. The two main buildings straddle the garden, a semi-private area that reconciles the production core with that of the administration. The materiality and nature of the space interrupts the fluidity of the office core, thus creating a more intimate relationship between nature and man. The area reserved for vehicles is situated within a circular perimeter slightly buried in respect to the highway in order to buffer the visual impact this has on the project.

The new building consists of two simple elements: the rhythm given by the windows, which repeats and declares continuity with the existing facade, and the reflecting skin, which dissolves the new volume in the sky

PRATIC 2, Udine – Building Information

Location: Fagagna, Udine, Italy Client: Pratic f.lli Orioli Spa, Italia Chronology: Design phase: 2016 Construction: 02.2017 / 04.2018

Dimensional data Intervention area: 30.000 sqm Production: 7.520 sqm Offices and services: 730 sqm Loading area: 1.800 sqm Landscape: 22.000 sqm parking lot: 70 places

Architecture and landscape design: GEA Gri e Zucchi Architettura arch. Stefania Anzil (project manager) arch. Alessia Dorigo arch. Matteo Compri arch. Elisa Mansutti

Structural design Ing. A. Nutta, Nuttassociati Mechanical and electrical design E4F Srl Acoustic comfort advice Studio Musolla Contractors Pre-Systems Spa (prefabricated structure) Slurry Srl (landscape and building works) Vaportermica Commerciale Srl (Mechanical plants) Impresa Tonon Spa (Electrical plants) Pavarin F.lli Snc (Window frames and facade cladding) Iron+ Srl (carpentry works) Multitema Srl (Interior finishings and furniture) Adotta Italia Srl (System walls)

The existing facade (first intervention of 2011) is now inside the enlargement

Photographer: Javier Callejas

PRATIC 1, Udine – Building Information

Location: Fagagna, Udine Client: Pratic F.lli Orioli Spa Chronology: Design phase: 2008 – 2009 Construction: 2009 – 2011

Dimensional data Intervention area: 33.000 sqm Production: 10.000 sqm Offices and services: 1.000 sqm Showroom: 550 sqm Loading area: 2.700 sqm Landscape: 33.000 sqm parking lot: 120 places

Architecture and landscape design: GEZA Gri e Zucchi Architetti Associati – arch. Stefania Anzil, arch. Fabio Passon

Structural design: Ing. A. Nutta, Nuttassociati Mechanical plants design: Studio Bulfon Associati Electrical plants design: Studio Battista Contractors: Spav Prefabbricati Spa (prefabricated structure)

Edildri Costruzioni Srl (building contractor) Slurry Italia Srl (landscape) Multitema Srl (office and tailored furniture) Moroso Spa (office and tailored furniture) Vaportermica Commerciale Srl (mechanical plants) Elettrica Ducale Snc (electrical plants) Sataenergy Spa (photovoltaic plants)

Photographer: Fernando Guerra FG+SG

PRATIC 2 HQ in Udine information / images received received 020419 from v2com newswire

Location: Udine, Italy, southern Europe

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Messner Mountain Museum Corones, Mount Kronplatz, South Tyrol, northern Italy Design: Zaha Hadid Architects photograph © Inexhibit Messner Mountain Museum Corones

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Trieste Airport, Trieste, northeast Italy Architect: Lombardini22 photo : Dario Tettamanzi Trieste Airport Building

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Comments / photos for the PRATIC 2 HQ – Italian Architecture page welcome

Website: Udine

The post PRATIC 2 HQ in Udine Headquarters Italy appeared first on e-architect.

[literate-passion]

Letter 9A

My darling L,

I know that our correspondence has been spotty in the last few months. Work has required more focus. Therefore, forcing me to spend more time finding comfort where I can. Lately, it has been in various forms of self-medicating, or pursuing whatever distractions can make themselves available to help my mind and body wind down from all of the stress. I have never stopped thinking about you. And I have wanted to contact you, but I had feared that our schedules wouldn't sync up. Damn this 7 hour time difference.

I'm writing you today, because I heard that you passed away. I've spent the better part of most of the day, just staring at the text message that told me. Just trying to contemplate it all. Trying to understand how something so permanent could happen to someone so strong. So full of life. And so fucking tough. I don't get it, and I probably never will. I just know that it has raised a mixed feeling that I'm not entirely ready to resolve. Part of me, L, just feels numb. Absolutely fucking numb. Another part of me wants to be sad. Wants to cry. Wants to mourn.  And there's another part that just wants to go out, drink myself into oblivion, and make a mistake.

Clearly, there's been a large gulf in my life. I haven't really felt inclined toward writing. I haven't given a damn about photographing. Nothing has really fit, since I was summoned back to this prison. And now, my biggest support is gone. My rock is gone. My muse. All of it. Just poof. To say that I have been overcome with a weakness, would be a gross underestimation of how much I love you.

It is the next day now. I went out last night. To the little bistro adjacent to my flat. I had a meager dinner. Then proceeded to drink myself absurd on whisky and Coke. It only seemed fitting to drink your drink of choice. They didn't have the bourbon you liked. Thus, I had to made due with what they had. It was good. It was strong. It was catharsis. But not in the way I was expecting. I saw Clara again. She eventually joined me, to keep an eye on me. Because I was obviously in a bad way. She was at the bistro alone. Ramon was working. She sat down next to me, and I told her about why I was in such a grotesque state. Upon me finishing catching her up, she got up and went to the bar. She got herself a big glass of wine. And she got me another drink. She got something a bit more festive. She got me rum. She felt that I had mourned enough into the drinks I had before. She wanted me to celebrate you. Your life. And who you were to me.  

Clara, God love her, just sat there against me. Listening to me drone on about you. About our history. About our adventures. About how you were the single most inspiring woman I had ever known. How you were fiercely independent. But you were completely devoted to me, and to us. How you had fought adamantly against feeling like I possessed or owned you, but never failed to tell anyone who listened, that you belonged to me. You were a wonderfully, beautifully, constructed design of conflict. You would relish in the dissonance and the confusion. And in it, you forged this amazing identity. Clara rested her head on my shoulder, and wrapped her arms around me. And she held me tightly. As I would simultaneously cry and laugh about you. Or speak with such fiery passion. Or lust. Or frankness. My guard was down, and I didn't hold anything back. And I felt safe with Clara. She's taken care of me before.

We talked about the last time I saw you. When you had that little party. And when you stepped outside for fresh air, you made sure to bring me with you. And how you wrapped my arms around you, as you leaned against the railing, kissing me in between taking hits off your clove cigarette. Or turning around and pressing your ass into me, and bringing my hands up to your breasts, as I kissed your neck. How, after we thought everyone had left, and we started to play with each other; we were interrupted by one of your friends staggering drunk looking for the toilet. Or the night we went to the bar to play pinball. And drink, a lot. You dressed in red. And I couldn't take my eyes off you. Frankly, I didn't want to. Or how you would huddle into me, because it was cold at the bar, and you wanted to keep warm. How we went to the park to talk, and ended up walking around for a bit. And realised that there was more of a spark between us, than we were prepared for. How I pinned you against the car and kissed you. And we both knew, in that instant, that we had to have each other. How we would both easily be caught up in those moments, and in each other, and we'd completely lose track of the world around us. There were so many, but those two stand out immediately.

After a few hours of drinking, and stories. We caught a taxi home. As we were in no shape to walk the few blocks. As we got into the back seat, she cuddled into me, just like you would. I wonder if she sensed that I needed that familiarity. That comfort. Or if I needed that feeling of being needed. Either way, if only but for that brief window, Clara felt like home. And in my state of drunkeneness and mourning, I could have very easily fallen in love with her. But she knew I was vulnerable. And she knew I was hurting. And she wanted to make sure I got through. And for that, L, I will love her forever. When the taxi got to the back gate, we both got out, and she paid the fare. She walked me up to the backdoor of my flat and got the door unlocked so we could enter. Somehow, with all that I had to drink, it was at this point that I blacked out. And I don’t remember what happened next.

I woke up naked and the sheet and blankets were tossed everywhere. I was laying on my left side, facing away from the center of the bed. But I felt a presence. A weight on the bed. However, due to the massive hangover I felt, I was afraid to roll over. I eventually turned over slowly, and saw dark hair framed against a modest pale figure. I was relieved to not have spent the night alone. But I was also very concerned that I had done something that I may regret. So I finished rolling over and wrapped my arm over this stranger's body. At which point she entwined our fingers and pulled me closer. I whispered a thank you, for keeping me company last night, and helping me get home safely. The stranger burrowed her body deeper into mine, and wrapped my arm tightly across her chest. I could feel the weight of her full breast against my palm, and her nipple growing stiffer with my touch. I leaned in whispered the thank you, again. I could feel this stranger arching her back and pressing herself against me. Before she turned her head, and kissed my cheek, and told me I was welcome. We made brief eye contact, and it was then that I realised that it was Clara pressed against me. I pulled back slightly, realising that we were both naked, and that Ramon may be wondering where she is. The thought of this panicked me. Because I didn't want to ruin another man's marriage, because I was in mourning and made a stupid decision. Clara pulled me close again, and wrapped her arms around my arm. Eventually, I settled down, as she reassured me that Ramon knew she was with me, to keep an eye on me, in case I got sick. Gradually, she released her my arm, and rolled over to rest her head on my chest. I had lots of questions. And was still acutely aware of our state of dress. As well as my state of arousal.  

Clara explained that she had gotten me into the flat. She'd undressed me. And she made sure that I got ready for bed. Once she knew I was comfortable, she got herself ready for bed. She undressed herself and crawled into bed, laying agaisnt me to make sure I was on my side. She's a special woman, and an amazing friend. And I'm glad that she was here to help me get through this rough 24 hour period.

I asked her if anything had happened. She said no. There were points where we would shift and I'd spoon her, and she could feel the heat emanating from my body, but made sure that nothing happened. She appreciated my warmth. And the feeling of my skin against hers. And the comfort of knowing that to me, she felt like home. It was everything I needed, at that time. And I appreciate that she was so good to me.

The coming days and months are going to be rough, my love. The concept of processing my life, in any way, without you being a part of it; I can't bear to. I'm preparing myself for the disappointment of the plans we had, all falling by the wayside. Of all of the everything we said, now dissipating into the ether. But I know that you'll always be with me. I'll carry you forever. And I'll never forget the ways you helped me. In sparking my creative side. Making me want to take more photographs, usually of you. Or wanting to write. Or how you made me feel like more of a man than I knew I could be capable of. You, more than anyone I had met to this point, understood me. On a level that few will ever truly grasp. And not having you around, to be able to talk about stuff with, is going to be a rough adjustment. I'll get there eventually, but right now, everything looks bleak. But as long as I have the love of friends like Clara, I should be able to make it through.

I just spoke to work about getting time off for bereavement, to be able to pay my respects. They've cleared it. I just have to get a flight now. I've invited Clara to come along, pending Ramon's permission. I want to show her some of the places that were special to you and me. And I want her to be there with me to celebrate you. It seems only fitting to have the person that I'm closest to, here, to be with me to share in this.

I will see you soon, sadly, for the last time.

I love you...

I need you...

I'm lost with you...

You'll be a part of me forever...

Yours forever,

H

[mafsdndrefs]

Period weapons from an 1890 Egypt campaign

These are period- and setting-appropriate weapons I created for the 5e campaign I’m running set in 1890 British-occupied Egypt. Included are firearms commonly available at the time in the area, as well as some unconventional non-firearm weapons inspired by the unofficial Steampunk Adventurers extension by Tribality Publishing. There are also some rebalanced swords for the setting.

This post contains 14 firearms, 8 other new weapons, 4 setting-rebalanced swords, custom rules and weapon properties, and brief background information for each. The names are also linked to video clips of the weapons in action. This is a pretty long post, so the main content can be found under the cut.

I also run these items together with my custom fumble table system, which is only really noteworthy because one of the guns has an extended critical fail range, and the potential to jam is part of how guns are balanced.

Note: My campaign (and thus this post) uses the Egyptian pound (£) in place of gold, and piastres in place of copper. They use a 1:1 conversion rate and are therefore interchangeable.

Gun-specific rules

Firearm weapon properties:

Bolt-action: Fire once per turn.

Repeating action: Whether lever-action or revolving, you can use a bonus action to shoot again with disadvantage after making an attack with the weapon.

(X) triggers: This weapon has (X) barrels, each with its own trigger; they can be pulled separately or together. Triggers pulled together all use the same attack roll.

Spread: Attacks with this weapon can hit targets (enemy and allied) adjacent to the main target for ¼ of the weapon’s damage on a failed DC 10 Dex save.

Reload (X): After firing (X) shots, you must reload using an action before firing again. Both hands are required to reload a weapon. Unless otherwise specified, a reload action completely refills the weapon.

Quick load: You can reload this weapon using a bonus action.

Bayonet: This weapon can mount a bayonet. See “Bayonet” in melee section. Total weapon weight with a bayonet attached = gun weight + blade weight.

Ammunition

Calibers: Each weapon in this list denotes its caliber. How ammunition calibers are handled is up to the DM. You can enforce individual calibers, break it up by weapon type (rifle cartridge, pistol cartridge, shotgun shells/slugs, ball and powder), or just have generic all-purpose ammo.

Ammo types:

Cartridges – Most conventional guns use these. Consists of a brass casing full of gunpowder with a round/projectile of some nature on the end (bullet, slug, buckshot). £10 for 40 rounds. DM can consider increasing the price for larger, higher-powered shots like those for the Martini-Henry and elephant gun.

Ball and powder – The technology of yesteryear, consists of a spherical lead ball and loose powder that you have to pour into the gun with each round. £5 for 40 balls and enough powder for each.

Special ammunition:

Lightning rounds – Ammunition with an iron core magically charged with electricity. Deals extra +2 piercing damage and extra 1d4 lightning damage. Looks badass when fired from a shotgun. £10 for 10 rounds.

Silver rounds – Has the Silvered property. Good for killing demons. £100 for 10 rounds. (This price is from the official rules)

Conventional firearms

2-handed weapons

British service rifle: Martini-Henry lever-action rifle (American production available in Ottoman circulation)

Price: £150 Weight: 8 lbs Ammunition: British .577/450 Damage: 2d12 piercing Range: 110/1100 Properties: Ammunition, Reload (1), Quick load, Two-handed, Bayonet

This lever-action rifle entered service in the British army in 1871 as the replacement for a stopgap breech-loading conversion of the 1853 Enfield musket. While it can only load a single round at a time, its breech-loading falling block mechanism was designed to enable rapid reloading of its large, easy-to-handle cartridge, allowing a trained soldier to sustain a high rate of fire over time. The weapon proved itself in the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War, when a garrison of 150 British soldiers famously defended a mission against a two-day assault of 3,000-4,000 Zulu warriors in the Battle of Rorke’s Drift. Ottoman outlaw and folk hero Hekimoğlu İbrahim was also renown for his use of the rifle in his gang’s Robin Hood-style raids against those who abused their wealth and power over the poor.

Ottoman service rifle: Mauser M1887 (Mauser Mod.71/84) bolt-action rifle

Price: £115 Weight: 10 lbs Ammunition: 9.5 x 60R Damage: 2d10 piercing Range: 90/900 Properties: Ammunition, Bolt action, Reload (8), Two-handed, Bayonet

The Mauser Model 1871 and later Mod.71/84 bolt-action rifle was the first rifle produced by the Mauser brothers, and became a well-known weapon in its day with operators and export customers across the globe from Serbia and Russia to Korea and Ecuador, as well as being the standard service rifle of the new German Empire. The M1887 “Turkish Mauser” is a special Ottoman version which featured Arabic-language lettering and numerals as well as additional quality-of-life features like a second locking lug and side-mounted cleaning rod. The Ottoman variant also used a small, high-velocity round that is commonly considered the peak of black powder cartridge design; unfortunately, at the time of its introduction, the world was already transitioning to smokeless powder, and the Ottomans would soon replace their stock of M1887s with a variant of the more modern M1893 “Spanish Mauser” after witnessing its devastating effectiveness against the U.S. Army in Cuba.

Winchester 1866 lever-action rifle (Ottoman service weapon, retired)

Price: £110 Weight: 8 lbs Ammunition: .44 Henry Damage: 2d6+1d2 piercing Range: 70/700 Properties: Ammunition, Repeating, Reload (17), Two-handed, Special* *Due to this weapon’s large magazine which can only load bullets one by one, a single reload action will load half (8) of the maximum. A full-round action can be spent to load all 17.

The 1866 “Yellow Boy” was Winchester Repeating Arms' debut rifle, a significant improvement over the Henry Rifle before it and the first in what would become a long line of weapons featuring the now-iconic repeating lever action to bear the brand that was about to become a household name. Between the simple weapon sights and relatively small .44 Henry rimfire cartridge, the Winchester Rifle wasn’t especially powerful at long range, but it did have a new, much more reliable loading system for an impressive 17-round tube magazine that gave a single man the firepower of ten armed with just about anything else anywhere inside 200 meters. The Ottoman Empire adopted this weapon within a few years of its introduction, and with its high capacity and rapid rate of fire, the Winchester Rifle’s efficiency over its contemporaries spoke for itself in the 1877 Russo-Turkish War, in which the Ottomans inflicted several times greater casualties than they received.

Winchester 1873 lever-action rifle

Price: £125 Weight: 9 lbs Ammunition: .44-40 Winchester Damage: 2d8 piercing Range: 85/850 Properties: Ammunition, Repeating, Reload (15), Two-handed, Special* *Due to this weapon’s large magazine which can only load bullets one by one, a single reload action will load half (7) of the maximum. A full-round action can be spent to load all 15.

The Winchester 1873 lever-action was one of the most popular weapons of its day, marketed in America as “The gun that won the West”. Its .44-40 cartridge was Winchester’s first centerfire cartridge, which boosted accuracy and range significantly over the rimfire round used by the Model 1866 without increasing size or weight. The relatively small caliber again allowed for an impressive 15 rounds to be loaded in its tube magazine, and steel construction improved durability over the otherwise identical brass receiver of the 1866. Although variants were made targeted towards military customers, this weapon was vastly more successful worldwide in the civilian market, especially thanks to the plethora of customization options Winchester offered in its catalogue.

Winchester 1886 lever-action rifle

Price: £145 Weight: 9 lbs Ammunition: .45-90 Sharps Damage: 2d10 piercing Range: 100/900 Properties: Ammunition, Repeating, Reload (9), Two-handed

With an entirely new interior mechanism designed by the prolific John Browning, the Winchester 1886 was practically state-of-the-art at its introduction. Capable of not only firing the most prominent and powerful American military-grade rifle cartridges of the era — a goal that long eluded Winchester’s older designs — the rifle was also able to easily transition into the high-powered smokeless powder era mechanically unmodified, with only the addition of a stronger nickel-steel barrel. Although ammunition capacity was decreased versus earlier models due to the larger caliber, the 1886 enjoyed significantly higher range and stopping power, comfortably filling the market gap for a high-powered rifle left by the recent discontinuation of the respected but aged Sharps rifle.

Generic militia bolt-action rifle (fictional)

Price: £30 Weight: 8 lbs Ammunition: 11mm rounds, bolt action Damage: 2d4 piercing Range: 80/800 Properties: Ammunition, Bolt action, Reload (5), Two-handed, Bayonet

Generic cheap weapon for use by low-level NPCs. I like to give militiamen-type NPCs using this weapon a “bayonet charge” ability that lets them shoot, run forwards, and stab with their bayonet all in one turn, both for flavor in interesting battle scenes as well as for the sake of granting a small buff to an otherwise deliberately mediocre rifle.

Double-barrel shotgun

Price: £150 Weight: 7 lbs Ammunition: 12g buckshot Damage: 2d8 per barrel Range: 30/90 Properties: Ammunition, 2 triggers, Reload (2), Quick load, Spread, Two-handed

Simple, iconic. The specific manufacturer is less important than its mechanical simplicity and raw stopping power.

Sawn-off double-barrel shotgun

Price: £150 Weight: 5 lbs Ammunition: 12g buckshot Damage: 2d8 piercing per barrel within 15 ft, 2d6 between 15-45 feet Range: 15/45 Properties: Ammunition, Light, 2 triggers, Reload (2), Quick load, Spread*, Special** *Spread Dex saves roll with disadvantage **This weapon does not normally roll with disadvantage when attacking adjacent targets. Characters that already don’t roll adjacent firearm attacks with disadvantage instead roll with advantage.

Shortened for weight, what this weapon lacks in range it makes up for in ease of use. Indeed, a sawn-off double-barrel is virtually impossible to miss with up close, and is also significantly easier to conceal.

Elephant gun

Price: £300 Weight: 12 lbs Ammunition: Elephant slug Damage: 3d8 per barrel Range: 80/400 Properties: Ammunition, Heavy, 2 triggers*, Reload (2), Special** *If both triggers are pulled, make a DC10 strength saving throw to avoid falling prone. **This gun always rolls with disadvantage when shooting an adjacent target, regardless of user size or abilities. It can, however, also be used as a club with club stats if needed.

Before the advent of high-power smokeless cartridges, the European solution to defeating big game in the African wild was simply to bring a bigger gun. Heavy, unwieldy, inefficient, and short-ranged, the massive smoothbore slugs fired by these so-called “elephant guns” still had unparalleled stopping power compared to its contemporaries.

1-handed weapons

British service pistol: Webley Mk.1 Revolver

Price: £140 Weight: 3 lbs Ammunition: .455 Damage: 2d6 piercing Range: 45/120 Properties: Ammunition, Light, Repeating, Reload (6)

The Webley was one of the first replacements for the unsatisfactory Enfield Revolver in Commonwealth service. Firing a heavy .445 cartridge, the Webley made up for its fairly unimpressive muzzle velocity with raw power. With better construction and more reliable design over the Enfield, it wasn’t uncommon for officers to already privately own some version of the Webley by the time it was adopted in the British military, with whom it was well-received and ultimately kept in service for the better half of the 20th century.

Enfield Mk II Revolver (British service weapon, retired)

Price: £100 Weight: 3 lbs Ammunition: .476 Revolver Mk II Damage: 2d6 piercing Range: 40/100 Properties: Ammunition, Light, Repeating, Reload (6), critical fail on 1 or 2

Although the Enfield fires a powerful round and was initially well-received as a significant technological upgrade over its predecessor, it was still difficult to load and, worse, soon showed signs of rapid wear and tear as hinges and actions became noticeably loose after only a couple years in active service. This frequently resulted in mechanical problems and worsened accuracy, even when properly maintained, and quickly drove Commonwealth operators to search for a replacement as officers privately purchased their own alternatives.

Ottoman service pistol: Smith & Wesson Model 3

Price: £150 Weight: 3 lbs Ammunition: .44 Russian Damage: 2d6 piercing Range: 50/150 Properties: Ammunition, Light, Repeating, Reload (6), +1 to attack rolls

The popular export version of the S&W Model 3 fired the innovative .44 Russian cartridge, progenitor to the legendary .44 Magnum and renowned in its day for its high muzzle velocity and record-setting accuracy. The Model 3 and .44 Russian saw widespread use at home and around the world in both civilian and military service, commonly found at the side of outlaws, police, and officers alike. Proliferation of unlicensed foreign-made copies of both gun and cartridge was so large that Smith & Wesson actually almost went bankrupt over one of its most popular products.

Colt 1851 Navy Revolver (Ottoman service weapon, retired)

Price: £75 Weight: 3 lbs Ammunition: .36 Navy lead balls with cotton/grease and powder Damage: 2d6 piercing Range: 35/95 Properties: Ammunition, Light, Repeating, Reload (6)* — Cannot reload in combat (4 minutes outside combat)

A classic Old West revolver favored by the legendary law enforcer “Wild Bill” Hickok, the 1851 Navy Revolver still managed to find its way into Ottoman service in the Russo-Turkish War of the late 1870s despite its marked obsolescence versus the S&W Model 3 used by the Russians — indeed, the Colt Navy soon saw itself replaced in Ottoman hands by the very same Model 3 firing .44 Russian cartridges. Using the ball and cap ammunition of yesteryear, this weapon requires the user to carry separate pouches for lead balls, cotton patches or grease, percussion caps, and a tube of black powder to load — a rather arduous and infeasible process in the heat of battle.

Ottoman knife-gun (firearm, simple melee)

Price: £100 Weight: 3 lbs Ammunition: 11mm Damage: 2d6 piercing (ranged), 1d4 piercing (melee) Range: 30/90 Properties: Ammunition, Light, Loading

Handsomely engraved on every surface and sheathed rather than holstered, this ornate weapon fuses a single-shot pistol together with a dagger extending from underneath the barrel. Arguably more beautiful than it is functional, but as far as conversation pieces go, it’s still pretty deadly.

Conventional blades

Bayonet (martial melee)

May be affixed or removed from a compatible rifle as a bonus action. Characters proficient with both bayonets and rifles wielding a bayonet-equipped rifle get +1 AC against melee weapon attacks while in single combat (i.e., fighting 1v1 against another creature attacking them with a sword or other such weapon).

Price: £9 Weight: 2 lbs

Unattached: Damage: 1d4 piercing Properties: Light, Finesse

Attached: Damage: 1d6 piercing or bludgeoning Properties: Two-handed

A knife- or short sword-sized blade of nearly universal issue in contemporary militaries, the bayonet gives the frontline soldier both a survival tool as well as a deadly melee-range weapon that effectively transforms a regular rifle into a two-handed spear with which they are trained to use both offensively and as a defensive parrying tool.

There’s no explicit rules disadvantage to just keeping the bayonet on the rifle all the time, although it may be dangerous or awkward during acrobatics/athletics checks or similar, and NPCs may be wary of somebody walking around wielding a bayonet out of combat.

Khopesh (martial melee)

Price: Generally unavailable from vendors Weight: 4 lbs Damage: 1d4 slashing or bludgeoning Properties: Light, Special* *The Khopesh has advantage in disarming attacks due to its hooked tip.

The khopesh sickle-sword was more or less the only sword type commonly used in ancient Egypt. The blade featured a unique hook shape derived from the battleaxe, bladed on one side and blunt on the other. This made it ideal for disarming opponents and defeating the light shields of its day, but also increased inertia and made it harder to make rapid consecutive attacks. A standard infantry weapon in the ancient Egyptian army, the khopesh was also a symbol of power, often wielded by the pharaohs themselves — although the design didn’t outlive the Iron Age and modern steel productions are rare, an entrepreneuring “archaeologist” may just find a magically enhanced specimen used by some great figure in millennia past, if they look in the right places...

Sabre (martial melee)

Price: £35 Weight: 3 lbs Damage: 1d8 slashing or piercing Properties: Finesse, Light

This lightweight cavalry sword is common among British officers and sailors. The sabre is a marriage of the Turkish kilij scimitar with the European style of backsword, an evolution that began with the adoption of the kilij by Hungarian cavalry in the 15th century. Unlike both of its progenitors, however, the lightly-curved British Pattern 1890 sabre features both a bladed cutting edge and sharpened tip, allowing for both slashing and stabbing attacks — the best of both worlds in each side of a highly contentious debate among cavalry sword users at the time.

Scimitar (martial melee)

Price: £10 (only change from official rules) Weight: 3 lbs Damage: 1d6 slashing Properties: Finesse, Light

The iconic scimitar has a thousand-year history in the region, dating back as early as the 9th century. Although traditionally a cavalry sword, it’s as ubiquitous as it is varied, found commonly throughout the Ottoman Empire among civilians and militias both on foot and horseback alike, even as the national military transitioned to the European sabre — a blade itself derived from the Ottoman kilij scimitar.

Shortsword (martial melee)

Basically the same as in the official rules but it costs £25. All I really did with the scimitar and shortsword was flip the prices for the setting due to regional availability, since weapons in D&D aren’t solely priced just by their stats.

Special weapons

Bola (martial ranged)

A set of weights attached to interconnected lines, thrown to tie up a target’s legs. If a large or smaller target is hit, it falls prone and makes a contested Dex check against the thrower. If it fails the check, it is restrained. It or an adjacent ally can make a DC10 strength check to free the restrained target, or an AC10 attack with a bladed weapon or tool. Bola is destroyed if escaped from.

Price: £1 Weight: 2 lbs Damage: 1d4 bludgeoning Range: 10/20 Properties: Thrown

Boomerang (martial ranged)

This thrown weapon returns to the user on attack rolls other than a 1.

Price: £1 Weight: 1 lb Damage: 1d4 bludgeoning Range: 100/300 Properties: Thrown, Are you sure you know how to use this?

Brass knuckles (simple melee) Gives bonus +1 damage and critical range to unarmed strike. £10, 1 lb

Cane (simple melee)

How dapper.

Price: £10 Weight: 1 lb Damage: 1d4 bludgeoning Properties: Light

Cane pistol (firearm)

A small pistol concealed in an ornate walking cane that looks like an ordinary cane when inspected. A DC 15 Investigation check reveals the hidden weapon. Attacking with the cane itself uses cane stats.

Price: £200 Weight: 4 lbs Ammunition: .22 Damage: 2d4 piercing Range: 15/45 Properties: Ammunition, Light, Reload (1), Quick load

Cane sword (martial melee)

A shortsword concealed in a walking cane that looks like an ordinary cane when inspected. A DC 15 Investigation check reveals the hidden weapon. Attacking with the cane itself uses cane stats.

Price: £50 Weight: 3 lbs Damage: 1d6 piercing Properties: Light, Finesse

Whip (martial melee)

If hit, target and attacker make a contested Dex check; target is knocked prone if it loses.

Price: £5 Weight: 2 lbs Damage: 1d4 slashing Properties: Light

[joescanlan-blog]

Classism: An Introduction

They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented. — Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte We admire the work, but despise the workman. — Plutarch, Life of Pericles

Art has a long tradition of Class-ism. It will become clear to the reader (and clearer still throughout the pages that follow) that by Class-ism I mean several things, all of them, in my opinion, interdependent. The most readily accepted designation for Class-ism is an academic one, and indeed the label still serves in a number of academic institutions. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches popular culture—and this applies whether the person is an cultural critic, sociologist, historian, or economist—either in its specific or its general aspects, is a Class-ist and what he or she does is Class-ism. Compared with American Studies or area studies, it is true that the term Class-ism is distasteful to specialists today, both because it is too vague and general and because it connotes the high-handed executive attitude of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European colonialism. Nevertheless books are written and congresses held with “ pop culture”  as their main focus, with the cultural critic in his new or old guise as their main authority. The point is that even if it does not survive as it once did, Class-ism lives on academically through its doctrines and theses about the political economy of culture.

Related to this academic tradition, whose fortunes, transmigrations, specializations and transmissions are in part the subject of this essay, is a more general meaning for Class-ism. Class-ism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between “ popular culture”  and (most of the time) “ fine art.”  Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists and museum curators, have accepted the basic distinction between pop culture and art as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions and political accounts concerning pop culture, its people, customs, “ mind,”  destiny, and so on. Class-ism can accommodate Aeschylus, say, and Victor Hugo, Dante and Karl Marx. A little later in this article I shall deal with the methodological problems one encounters in so broadly construed a “ field”  as this.

The interchange between the academic and the more or less imaginative meanings of Class-ism is a constant one, and since the late nineteenth century there has been a considerable, quite disciplined—perhaps even regulated—traffic between the two. Here I come to the third meaning of Class-ism, which is something more historically and materially defined than either of the other two. Taking the late nineteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point, Class-ism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with pop culture—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Class-ism as a sophisticated style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over pop culture. I have found it useful here to employ Michel Foucault’s notion of a discourse, as described by him in The Archaeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish, to identify Class-ism. My contention is that without examining Class-ism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which the art world is able to manage—and even produce—pop culture politically, sociologically, aesthetically, ideologically, critically and imaginatively during the twentieth century. Moreover, so authoritative a position does Class-ism have that I believe no one writing, thinking, or acting on pop culture could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Class-ism. In brief, because of Class-ism, pop culture was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action. This is not to say that Class-ism unilaterally determines what can be said about popular culture, but that it is the whole network of interests inevitably brought to bear on (and therefore always involved in) any occasion when that peculiar entity “ popular culture”  is in question. How this happens is what this article tries to demonstrate. It also tries to show that art gains in strength and identity by setting itself off against pop culture as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.

In the most benign sense, Class-ism is a way for art to come to terms with popular culture and the special place it holds in daily life. Indigenous or “pop” cultures are not only adjacent to art; they are also the place of art’s greatest and richest and oldest traditions, the source of its imagery and its languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring specters of the Other. In the United States in particular, pop culture has helped to define art (and its institutions) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Yet none of pop culture is merely imaginative. Popular culture is an integral part of visual art’s material organization and context. As a mode of discourse, Class-ism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically through supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even bureaucracies and styles. In America, the understanding of pop culture is considerably more complicated than in Europe, although the influence of China, India and global consumerism in general is creating a more sober, more realistic awareness of the cultural power of consumers. In response, the vastly expanded political and economic role of art museums and international biennials makes great claims on our understanding of exactly where art originates and how its cultural value is determined. This expanded role—and the assumed usurpation and dominance that is inherent to it—is what I call Class-ism.

Historically and culturally there is a quantitative as well as a qualitative difference between the art world’s involvement with popular culture and—until the ascendancy of the Independent Group and Pop Art after World War II—the involvement of every other middle class consumer. To speak of Class-ism therefore is to speak mainly, although not exclusively, of a detached, ruling class cultural enterprise, a project whose dimensions take in such disparate realms as the imagination itself, thewhole of America and Madison Avenue, cinema and Hollywood, consumer products, fashion and a long tradition of taste makers, a formidable scholarly corpus, innumerable pop culture “ experts”  and “ hands,”  a pop culture professorate, a complex array of “ pop culture”  ideas (glamour, gender, camp, sensuality, “ dumbness” ), many popular subcultures, philosophies and wisdoms domesticated for local use—the list can be extended more or less indefinitely. My point is that Class-ism derives from a particular closeness experienced between the “detached” class and popular culture, which until the early twentieth century was an extremely local affair, its broad definition being largely limited to common knowledge of the Bible, Greek mythology and archetypal notions of Nature. Out of that closeness, whose dynamic is enormously productive even if it always demonstrates the comparatively greater strength and performance of the ruling class, comes the large body of texts and strategies I call Class-ism.

It should be said at once that even with the generous number of books, artworks, authors and artists that I have examined, there is a much larger number that I have had to leave out. My argument, however, depends neither upon an exhaustive catalogue of texts dealing with pop culture nor upon a clearly delimited set of artworks, authors and ideas that together make up the canon of Class-ism. I have depended instead upon a different methodological alternative—whose backbone in a sense is the set of historical generalizations I have so far been making—and it is these I want now to discuss in more detail.

II

Pop culture, or even indigenous culture, is not an inert fact of nature. It is not merely there, just as art is not just there either. We must take seriously Vico’s great observation that men make their own history, that what they can know is what they have made, and extend it to economics: as both economic and cultural entities—to say nothing of historical entities—such communities, locales and economic values as “ popular culture”  and “ fine art”  are manmade. Therefore, as much as art itself, pop culture is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the ruling class. The two economic entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other.

Having said that, one must go on to state a number of reasonable qualifications. In the first place, it would be wrong to conclude that pop culture was essentially an idea, or a creation with no corresponding reality. When Hal Foster said in his exhibition Damaged Goods that appropriation strategy was a career, he meant that to be interested in commodity display was something bright young artists would find to be an all-consuming passion; he should not be interpreted as saying it was only a career. There were—and are—nations and cultures whose daily lives are organized around sites of commerce, be they Vancouver, the Niger River or suburban shopping malls. Their lives, histories and customs have a brute reality obviously greater than anything that could be said about them in the

world of art. About that fact this study of Class-ism has very little to contribute, except to acknowledge it tacitly. But the phenomenon of Class-ism as I study it deals principally, not with a correspondence between Class-ism and its ideas about pop culture, but with the internal consistency of Class-ism and its ideas about pop culture (appropriation strategy as a career, etc.) despite or beyond any correspondence with, or lack thereof, a “ real”  popular culture. My point is that Foster’s statement about appropriation strategy mainly refers to that fabricated consistency, that regular constellation of ideas, as the pre-eminent thing about pop culture and not to its mere being, as the Wallace Stevens’s phrase has it.  Pop culture only exists to the extent that it conforms to what the art world thinks of it.A second qualification is that ideas, cultures and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied. To believe that pop culture was created—or more precisely, “ aestheticized”—and to believe that such things happen simply as a necessity of the imagination, is to be disingenuous. The relationship between the art world and pop or indigenous culture is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony, as is quite accurately indicated in the title of William Rubin’s classic, Primitivism in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. Pop culture—and we would be prejudiced to think of Rubin’s “ primitive”  African artifacts as anything other than just another form of popular culture, as examples of a particular society’s daily objects, no more or less fetishized than our cars and stoves and handbags—has been aestheticized not only because it was discovered to be “ popular”  in all those ways considered commonplace by the Baby Boom generation, but also because it could be—that is, submitted to being—made popular. There is very little consent to be found, for example, in the fact that Jack Kerouac’s encounters with jazz music produced a widely influential model of the African-American man. In On The Road, the black man never spoke of himself, he never represented his emotions, presence, or history. Kerouac spoke for and represented him. Kerouac was white, comparatively wealthy and male, and these were historical facts of domination that allowed him not only to possess that musician creatively but to speak for him and tell his readers in what way he was “ typically black.”  My argument is that Kerouac’s situation of strength in relation to the jazz musician was not an isolated instance. It fairly stands for the pattern of relative strength between art (in this case, literature) and popular culture and the discourse about popular culture that it enabled.

This brings us to a third qualification. One ought never to assume that the structure of Class-ism is nothing more than a structure of lies or myths which, were the truth be told about them, would simply blow away. I myself believe that Class-ism is more particularly valuable as a sign of curatorial-theoretical power over pop culture than it is a reliable discourse about pop culture (which is what, in its glossy or scholarly form, it claims to be). Nevertheless, what we must respect and try to grasp is the sheer knitted-together strength of Class-ist discourse, its very close ties to the enabling socio-economic and political network of high-powered commercial galleries, trade journals and museums and its redoubtable durability. After all, any system of ideas that can remain unchanged as teachable wisdom in the United States (in academies, books, congresses, universities, biennials) from the period of Jasper

Johns in the late 1950s until the present must be something more formidable than a mere collection of lies. Class-ism, therefore, is not an airy, ivory tower fantasy about pop culture, but a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment. Continued investment made Class-ism, as a system of knowledge about popular culture, an accepted grid for filtering pop culture through and into high art consciousness, just as that same investment multiplied—indeed, made truly productive—the statements proliferating out of Class-ism into the general culture.Gramsci has made the useful analytic distinction between civil and political society in which the former is made up of voluntary (or at least rational and noncoercive) affiliations like schools, families and unions, the latter of state institutions (the army, the police, the central bureaucracy) whose role in the polity is direct domination. Culture, of course, is to be found operating within civil society, where the influence of ideas, institutions and colleagues works not through domination but by what Gramsci calls consent. In any society not totalitarian, then, certain cultural forms predominate over others, just as certain ideas are more influential than others; the form of this cultural leadership is what Gramsci has identified as hegemony, an indispensable concept for any understanding of cultural life in the industrialized world. It is hegemony, or rather the result of cultural hegemony at work, that gives Class-ism the durability and the strength I have been speaking about so far. Class-ism is never far from what Reyner Banham has called the pretense of Art, a collective notion identifying “ us”  cultural authorities as against all “ those”  mere consumers, and indeed it can be argued that the major component in high art is precisely what made it hegemonic both inside and outside the art world: the idea of art appreciation as superior to the everyday actions of consumers, however similar (indeed, identical) their preferences often are to those of art professionals. There is in addition the hegemony of art world ideas about pop culture, themselves reiterating aesthetic sensitivity over commercial crassness, usually overriding the possibility that a more independent, or more skeptical, thinker might have different views on the matter.

In a quite constant way, Class-ism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the art professional in a whole series of possible relationships with pop culture without ever losing the relative upper hand. And why should it be otherwise, especially during the period of extraordinary artistic ascendancy from World War II to the present? The artist, the critic, the curator, the collector, or the viewer is in, or thinks about, pop culture because he or she can be, or can think about it, with very little resistance on pop culture’s part. Under the general heading of knowledge about popular culture and within the umbrella of high art’s hegemony over pop culture since World War II, there emerged a complex pop culture suitable for study in the academy, for display in the museum, for reconstruction in the artist’s studio, for theoretical illustration in art historical, curatorial, linguistic, pictorial and racial theses about mankind and the universe, for instances of economic and sociological theories of development, revolution, cultural personality, national character or religious affiliation. Additionally, the imaginative examination of things popular was based more or less exclusively upon a sovereign art consciousness out of whose unchallenged centrality a popular world emerged, first according to general ideas about who or what constituted popularity, then according to a detailed logic governed not simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires, repressions, investments and projections. If we can point to great Class-ist works of genuine scholarship like Lucy Lippard’s Pop Art or Dave Hickey’s AirGuitar, we should note that Lippard’s and Hickey’s ideas come out of the same impulse (as did a great many postmodern novels by the likes of Donald Barthelme or Don Delillo). This impulse, by turns respectful, awestruck or contemptuous, recognizes the shiny, lurid, delusional, melancholic absurdities of popular culture, marvels at them and  resigns itself to them, and even makes use of them. Ultimately, though, such uses, however skeptical or sympathetic, can only have the consequence of proposing that this or that fragment of popular culture is worthy of consideration as Art. In other words, is a worthy subject of Class-ism.

[aldreaoakley]

Kissed by the Baddest Trainer! [KBTBB Pokemon!AU]

(Based off a lot of @maidofstars’ and @catchthespade’s posts. Just a warning, I will be jumping back and forth in time. I'll denote that when it happens.)

MEETINGS OF FATE PART 3

Soryu scribbles away on some papers and scans some reports when he hears panicked feet. Four pairs of them. He glances at Beartic, who had been helping by moving some of the taller stacks of reports, who sends back a look that he understands. Soryu already knows that he's shy a Poké Ball and he needs to catch another one. Fast. The door bangs open seconds later. "Boss! Did you loose a Poké Ball," Ryusuke worries while his Poocheyna whimpers. "Did anyone steal it sir," Samejima asks as his Pawniard balances the tray of Poké Balls. "No," Soryu responds with a leveled tone. "It got handed to someone who can use it more." "But Boss you just caught Deino," Ryosuke complains. "Why did you give it away? You don't do this," Samejima notes. Soryu takes a deep sigh and explains to them why he handed that Poké Ball away. ~Five Days Ago~ Soryu mumbles under his breath, thinking. Breeding Pokémon isn't easy and getting a legendary to work with them can mean bigger trouble. When one of his men put the suggestion of using a DNA splicer, Soryu shots it down fast. That is not a way to create the ultimate pseudo-legendary to accomplish what his grandfather had in mind. But now he has to devote his resources into stopping the poachers and hunters, including tracking down Magikarp sellers. The las one was a curtesy info from Eisuke. A series of loud shouts and hard vibrations moves his focus to a scene he'd never imagine. A young girl with a small Pokémon fighting a poacher with a Pokémon almost five times the size of the girl's. Soryu whips his Pokédex out and points it to the girl's Pokémon. He already knows what Pokémon the poacher is using. The Xatu obviously is going to be stronger than whatever the girl has. When he sees that it's a Normal type, he can't help but feel worry. Normal types aren't resilient to any types and can easily get clobbered by a Fighting type. Soryu makes a quick run of his Pokémon on hand that will work with the Minccino. His usual Beartic? Nope. The bear would scare the little Pokémon off. Gallade? Oh wait a second that won't do. Gallade would only make it a standstill as he is a Psychic/Fighting type. Salamence? Not a good idea. Many Pokémon tend to run from him and his goal is to help the girl. Axew? Not gonna happen. His Axew is still a bit battle skittish. Snorunt? Scratch that! That one is a recent addition to his team. Deino? Perfect. Deino is twice the size of Minccino and knows the attack Dragon Rage. He reaches for the Poké Ball. "Deino, go," Soryu orders. "Aim at Xatu! Use Tackle then Dragon Rage!" "Deino! Dein Dein Dein Dein Deino," the little Pokémon yells as it darts from the underbrush full speed at the Psychic/Flying Pokémon. Bull's eye! Deino hits Xatu right in the midsection. The cry of shock from the poacher is worth it. "Minccino Tickle its head," he hears the girl shout. "Min... CCINO," the little Pokémon cries out while jumping onto the Xatu's head. Soryu watches in amazement as the little tail quickly moves on the head causing it to not only laugh but also sit down! Thankfully the Minccino escapes before Deino fires Dragon Rage. That manages to weaken Xatu but he is surprised at the girl's next order. "Minccino Sing!" "Min~ ccino~" Soryu whistles so that Deino can get out of range. He knows that Sing puts any listening Pokémon to sleep. He notices that the girl has some level of relief that Deino has gone out of hearing range. "Deino, retreat," Soryu whispers as he recalls the Irate Pokémon. "Now use Slam!" "minCCINO!" Now Soryu cannot stop the stunned look on his face. The force behind that Slam is amazing... and it was enough to knock the poacher's Xatu out cold. "You'll pay for this brat," the man snarls as he retreats with his injured Pokémon back in its Poké Ball. "Nice work Minccino~" the girl laughs. "Minccino," the Chinchilla Pokémon laughs. Time to make an entrance. He's not Eisuke but Soryu knows how to do it his way. As he strides out from his hiding spot, he observes that the girl realizes who he is. He's not too surprised at all. The KR logo on his belt aren't that hard to miss. "An impressive Pokémon," he comments and begins petting the Minccino. The Minccino freezes for a few seconds before happily rubbing itself into his gesture. He watches the girl from a corner of his eye. She seems confused. He had no idea that his scary outlook being suddenly countered by him petting her Minccino like it's not a problem is causing it. "Min~ Min~ Minccino~," it chirps with happiness. Soryu stops and looks at the girl. "You, what's your name," he questions. The Minccino deflates from the lack of attention and scampers back to the girl, hopping onto her shoulder. The girl blinks a few times before nodding. "My name is ___," she replies in a gentle yet trembling voice. "What's your's? Are... are you associated with Team KōriRyu?" Sharp girl... Soryu will have to give her credit for that. "Soryu. I'm the leader of the team. We currently have changed the direction of our goal. The poachers are our new focus now," he replies in a serious tone. "It was a brave but foolish thing that you did when fighting that poacher. Why did you battle with your Minccino?" "Minccino is the only Pokémon I have on hand who can really fight," ___ sighs while the Minccino makes a few cute poses. /This isn't good if she only has one Pokémon who is able to fight,/ Soryu frowns in his mind. /Wait a minute. That's it./ He pulls out a Poké Ball from his belt with a small smile. "Then take this Pokémon for future battles with poachers," he suggests. "Deino, go!" He watches as the Deino gets all friendly with ___ and Minccino. ~Present~ "Wow... she sounds so cool," Ryosuke admires. "Going in with just her Minccino... I wonder when I'll get to meet her..." "I doubt you will at this point since we are all working still," Samejima points out. "Like you have room to talk," Ryosuke challenges. "You've been busy and worried since you saw that missing Poké Ball!" "Not as busy as you taking care of the Pokémon. Your cooking is terrible," Samejima snarls. "ENOUGH," Soryu roars with his Beartic. Both subordinates' Pokémon were snarling at the other while their trainers argue. All of them stop. Soryu knows that this is normal to them but right now is not the time. "Inui, look into these areas with a few squads and report to me within an hour," Soryu orders as he hands Ryosuke a paper with the locations. "Yes sir," Ryosuke nods and exits with Poocheyna behind him. "Samejima, take these locations and do the same," Soryu orders the other with another list. "Yes sir," Samejima acknowledges then sprints off with Pawniard at his side. Once his office is quiet again, Soryu lets out a sigh. The issue of the illegal movement of Pokémon is now picking up in popularity due to Ota's and Eisuke's influence as top coordinator and CEO respectively. Even that detective they had manage to keep quiet about them is working on it instead of chasing his team and Baba. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs again. "I'm sorry grandfather," he whispers. "I can't accomplish that dream until we solve the problem with the illegal killing and selling of Pokémon." ~*~ Baba watches ___ from his view on Swanna's back. He slips his mask back on as he observes her pedaling her way to a gym. He was for sure a goner had she makes him a promise for helping him in trade for keeping his identity a secret. To the rest of the world, he's not Mitsunari Baba but Lupin the masked Pokémon Thief. He fingers the Lustrous Orb hidden in a satchel that is suppose to head to a lab for safe keeping. He chuckles at the memory of meeting her. ~Six Days Ago~ Baba tiptoes past a few security measures inside a museum to where the Adamant Orb rests in its display case. According to the rumors he heard and his information network, the Orb had been wrongfully stolen from its resting place and passed down as an heirloom-like object in the family who stole it originally. The Ueta family had nothing to say about it other than it's passed down from father to son but withheld if a daughter is born. But Baba knows that the family also specializes in Steel Type Pokémon and uses the Orb as a cheating boost. That is the explanation to how the Ueta family is able to keep their iron fist on the city. He needs to get it out now! He sees Zoroark posing the day guard next to the case. He was almost to the case when some soft feet moves towards him. He pauses to take his mask off in order to not be Lupin but he wasn't ready for the reaction. "Who are you," he hears a gentle whisper. Baba turns to see a young woman with the cutest Minccino on her shoulder. Then her eyes widen and Baba raises a finger to his lips to indicate that she should be quiet. She recognizes him and he then remembers where he sees her before. Without his mask at a small cafe a few hours prior when he was scouting. Oops on his part. "Please don't tell anyone," he whispers his request. "I'll explain if you help me out." "How," she worries. Baba gestures that she acts like she didn't see anything while he takes the Orb. She nods with apparent reluctance then goes to study a map in an adjacent room. He swipes it without a problem and puts a fake one into place before leaving with Zoroark, who changes into a Liepard, to get the young woman's attention. He recalls her name but pretends not to know her "Hey pretty lady," he laughs in greeting. "Shall we go to a cafe for a bit?" ___ pauses then nods with a forced fake smile and leaves with him. Once they reach a few streets and an alley away from the museum, that Baba tells her what he is doing. "That Adamant Orb had been stollen long ago," he tells in a serious tone. "The family who owns the gym refuses to acknowledge that it belongs to the legendary Pokémon Dialga. If used with the Lustrous Orb and three legendary Pokémon, Dialga and Palkia will appear and lead to more trouble than one can imagine. If on its own, the Orb can augment the strength of Dragon and Steele Types. Are you going to battle the Ueta family for the Metallica Badge?" "Yes. Even if it's just me and my three Pokémon, I believe in us and we can make it," ___ answers with a determined expression. "Alright. But be careful. The family specializes with Steel types," he warns. "Then shouldn't you be going too," ___ worries. "If what you say is true about the Orb then when they find out it's not the real one, it will be trouble!" Baba nods, "Then find another town to challenge their gym. If the Ueta family finds out while they are battling you that the Orb is gone, you'll be in trouble as well princess." ~Present~ Baba smiles as he guides Swanna to take him to Luke's lab. The Adamant Orb is already safe someplace inside the professor's house... or was it his clinic... Baba can't be too sure as Swanna flies to the Foster residence. He knows from his information network that the Foster siblings have many passageways and secret spaces between their living areas. Baba can't help the frown on his face at that last thought. It was as far as his information network can get when it comes to the two siblings. He has no idea about the blueprint to the houses or much about the siblings other than what is already known. "I hope Lu doesn't ask me to steal a fossil from someplace... and why doesn't Iris never pay attention to me," he frowns. Little did he know that his arrival is already anticipated, curtesy of Iris' Gothitelle.

Author's Note: Hopefully I can wrap "Meetings of Fate" in one to two more parts... I'd like to get into the fun details of contests and battles. I had to research Japanese last names and make up the town for this story. I am not familiar with Japan's setup as I am with America's so I can't really do the same thing as an address here or a city. But then again... Pokémon is basically an almost parallel world to ours. 

[aurelliocheek]

A Year of Rain: Writing Strategies

How to build a new world for an RTS Game.

So, you wanna write this? A question I’ve been waiting for. When Nick, the captain of our daring endeavor, approached me, A Year Of Rain was supposed to become a Fantasy RTS based on a well-known IP; and to be honest, I was more than fine with that. See, I like that IP, I am very familiar with it and just from a cerebral logistics standpoint, I’ve always been comfortable settling in an established system and give it my own spin. All I’d have to do was looking for one of the more ­obscure places and events of that world, work with that foundation, and tell an interesting tale.

Which I did. Vigorously.

Then we had to discard that approach. The world for our game would not be an established one. We needed to build it from scratch, every nook and cranny. And here’s how we did that, or rather, my first-time experiences with RTS narrative design and maybe some survival tips on how to navigate that minefield.

Super rough worldbuilding draft.

A new IP. Well… We took that turn of events in stride. After all, even if existing worldbuilding provides you with nomenclature, systems, a fan base and many more convenient tools in your box, it’s all double-edged: you can’t slip on lore, the systems restrain you, while gameplay and game design boundaries are sneaking up from behind. You also owe the fans maximum accuracy anyway to avoid alienation. Put like this, building your own world from scratch sounds a lot more appealing, doesn’t it? It’s a gorgeous blooming field of nearly endless possibilities and free of any veto you wouldn’t give yourself.

Right…?

The whole world in your hands I’ve done this for plenty tabletops and homebrew Pen & Paper systems. It’s important to have an interesting world for an interesting tale you want to tell. Doing this for a very specifically tagged game is a different beast altogether. To keep the field analogy going, when first thinking about a world for a Fantasy RTS game, I felt like I arrived a week after the harvest.

Staring into the abyss of fantasy intertextuality made me uncomfortable right from the start, when I was asking myself: ‘What kind of world is this going to be?’

Creating a new, compelling world for an RTS game is a challenge.

Standard globe, massive Midlandia continent where all the people hang out and fight each other or whatever? It’s been done – ad nauseam and to death.

A shattered world, with drifting pieces and… Shit, this has been done. Pocket dimension? Done. Flat, you could say, a disc-like world? Yeah, good luck.

Okay, but what if it has layers like an onion… Septerra Core? Who even remembers that?! I do, it was a very charming game, actually. Anyway, a world needs people. People are easy! Species, races, cultures, there are so many cool fantasy folks… which… have all been utilized to exhaustion.

Even as I am writing this, a game cropped up that is so eerily similar to the core ideas I eventually developed for my world and story that it snaps the credibility of parallel evolution and makes me reconsider my general stance on psychic spies. I came to terms with the notion long before that announcement, but it confirmed my take on worldbuilding I had to adapt if I wanted to keep my sanity: There are many, many worlds out there and chances are high you won’t reinvent the wheel. Take solace in the fact that you can craft a very efficient, aesthetically pleasing wheel!

For here comes the twist: Intertextuality is a good thing. Since I’m throwing that word around like I think I know what it means, here’s what it is… “The relationship between texts, especially literary ones.”

It’s the reason why references work. For example, why Pride & Prejudice & Zombies exists, and you still get what that title implies. It’s why Banner Saga doesn’t need to explain the language, cultural setting, or apparel of the world they created because we have read about or seen media featuring Vikings. Darkest Dungeon draws a lot of its appeal from weird fiction, gothic and cosmic horror and you understand that connection. It’s why many people love it when fictional characters or worlds reference the real world, or pop culture or even quote from other ­movies and works of literature. ­Because we get what that means. Because it’s a nod to what we, and probably the creator of that fiction, love (the latter being strictly speaking an allusion, but it fits under the same umbrella, bear with me here). In broad strokes, it means that people understand connections and baselines without your explanation, because someone, at some point, did a very similar thing and established a widely known convention with it.

Yes, we’ve made a papercraft map.

It seems like the bane of innovation You may feel like everything has been done already, or even get conflicted because a line you wrote is similar or identical to something that already exists. However, just like tropes, archetypes, and cliché, it’s a boon for your world’s foundation if you swing it with precision. Best case, whatever you decide: On a very basic level, your audience will have a fond connotation to many of the things you do. There’s a catch, of course. You’ll need a lot of lipstick for your intertextual pig. The real work for me started after laying the foundation when I decided what type of world I wanted and who populated it. Both choices, at a glance, weren’t too special, admittedly.

What I hoped made them special was thoroughly fleshing out every race, species, and culture, applying some twists here and there… I tried generating credible systems and all the bones and beams that not only support the worldbuilding but also telegraph and highlight what made this world compelling, comfortably familiar, yet also refreshing.

You can do a lot if you stick to some fantasy guns and bolster them with nuances. In A Year Of Rain, for example, dwarves are the most competent spellcasters and considering how this world is designed, it even makes sense, though it’s not something you see very often. And it escalated pretty easily from there: What are the consequences for other species? What is their strategy? And how would that other adjacent fantasy race act or evolve and so on? I did that for, I think, 16 species concepts and there was a point when there were more connections and ideas than I actually wanted.

After fleshing out all the cultural dynamics, historical angles, rules of magic, justifying dwarven rune-powered railguns, establishing how many terabytes of memories a sentient fungus could store compared to divine lichen and what kind of weed lizardfolk prefer to smoke, I was finally ready to apply all this to the game itself.

Or not.

Strategic Writing Turns out, an RTS has comparatively limited narrative space. I would go as far as to call it claustrophobic. Design and format of an RTS tend to isolate the parts of the world you build. You have one single map at a time to establish whatever you want to transport narratively. And you only get one shot, because there usually is, by design, no backtracking.

It’s fair to assume that’s one reason why this genre often struggles with thorough worldbuilding and story in its campaign and multiplayer. Everything you can show, tell and narrate has to fit in roughly 15-30 minutes of tiny people murdering each other in real time. Then, you move on to the next area where, you guessed it, you train tiny people and have them murder each other for 15-30 minutes.

There is little room to breathe, or significantly manipulate the game flow, or show the inhabitants of your world doing anything other than fighting and killing to do more fighting and killing. That’s where the majority of anything you’ll write will be focused on. The units you command have no narrative agenda, almost no space to reflect on what they’re doing or want to do; they fight and die and obey the great cursor.

“But Blizzard!” you say?

Campaign is a different horse. It’s easier there. You can, to a certain degree, pace what happens, insert cutscenes and design a fantasy, a goal, and establish what drives this narrative… And at least your characters get to talk and express opinions, motivation, broader personality and all that, so: Yes, Blizzard cracked the code in most of their campaigns and will probably remain on that throne till the flippin’ sun burns out. But looking at virtually all other RTS games, there’s a trend to keep the world simple, the greater worldbuilding or story potential unexplored (Warlords RTS, Grey Goo) or exaggerate other aspects enough that they tilt from ludicrous to awesome and thus make for a satisfying campy story (looking at you, Command & Conquer). There’s a reason why even master craftsmen like the folks at Blizzard preach the mantra: Gameplay first in RTS.

All that doesn’t mean you can’t tell a compelling story, it doesn’t mean you can’t build a fantastic world, but it means that it may feel awkward at first. It’s a much greater challenge than in an RPG, an adventure or something similar where you can weave both things easier into a nice colorful ­tapestry. For our game, there is no after-mission hub to talk to characters, no codex to look up things like history and lore, no audio logs, books or scrolls, no close-up first- or third-person perspective to do advanced intrinsic storytelling. RTS has a fast, relentless pace. Your opponent, be it a human or AI, won’t wait for you to absorb subjects declared second priority like a narrative or worldbuilding details. So, whatever you tell is ideally right there when you play.

Some rules and tools you know still apply accordingly. For example, each of our units has 17 standard response lines. You better believe I tried to cram as much character as I could in there, tried my best to give them personality you can relate to in a few clicks and with allusions to the world around them.

Daedalic’s development team is building the A Year Of Rain world.

Then there are our phenomenal art, design, sound and SFX people Worldbuilding is, of course, not only writing. How characters look, what gear they carry, how their magic or tools of trade manifest and interact, their body language, animation, and voice work… all that blasts open a welcome breach into the walls you run into with an RTS, just like with any other game. Though the world is delivered in chunks in this genre, you can still do plenty of environmental storytelling, be it through biomes, architecture, weather, or ambient sounds and how the whole palette interconnects through the game. The tools are there; they just need lots of attention. The more you have prepared, the better. Whatever you came up with, whatever your vision is, don’t use a crowbar. Listen to the other departments and let them work their magic, even, or especially when that means letting go of your brainchild because they came up with a cooler solution. I’m a writer. What the hell do I know about shapes and the right visual impact, or the finer points of ability synergies and level design? Try to trust people as they trust you.

This is a good time to point out that 50% of all my conceptual resources won’t make it directly into the game. Some things are just too intricate/niche and have no business being there considering the very tight space that’s rightfully conceded to the gameplay. Adjust that percentage further north, actually, since some visual ideas don’t make good silhouettes for in-game models, because they’d be too small, too noisy or just a pain to animate you could never justify. It’s fine, though. Compare it to an actor who’s told to come up with a backstory for a bunch of tiny props on their costume. They’ll never get any big reference in the movie, but they help the actor getting into the role.

As I’ve mentioned, the characters’ role is basically to fight and die, above all else. It creates a dissonance, intuitively. Telling war stories is no hard sell, but it adds a new layer to the worldbuilding itself. Is this a new conflict? Where will you locate it? Is it a flashpoint or a global affair, and how much sense does that make? How do you plan for the future, i.e., at the end of your campaign, is your world fixed or broken, and where does it go from there? Or is it even beyond fixing and stays in a constant, vicious cycle of warfare?

The one luxury I had here was that I got to have my cake and eat it too: I made a world that’s broken, and I elected to focus on one conflict on a very specific piece of land. It leaves enough breathing room to tease a much bigger playground around the elaborate nice sandbox we’ll ship with this game.

Narrative Design for an RTS is a wild ride. And despite the pinch of salt in the lines above I definitely enjoy the chance I’ve been given with this. This article is honestly a slapdash work of professional opinion, advise, and direct dirty development experience. It’s a rough field guide for those treading these grounds for the first time, informative entertainment, or a good foundation for discussion.

See you in that world we’ve built, if you’re so inclined!

Ben Kuhn

Ben Kuhn is a writer and narrative designer at Daedalic Entertainment. Seven years sailing for Daedalic, mostly as a translator, dialogue writer, and voice director, packing a Master of Arts in English literature and creative writing acquired at the University of Bremen and Maynooth. Signed up due to his love of the medium and good stories and continues to be happy about that choice.

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