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ethanhuntfemmefatale · 1 year ago

Note

Okay, TC moving ranking update when

arc you know your wish is my command

disclaimer 1: the below ranking is not at all based on movie quality. It's based on aspects like "personal enjoyment," "personal investment," "TC hotness levels," etc. proceed at your own risk

disclaimer 2: the below ranking is very, very long. proceed at your own risk

bottom to top, babey!

21. Eyes Wide Shut

This movie’s one of the ones I definitely expected to like way more than I did. I’d never seen a Kubrick film before and I think I didn’t get the points it was trying to make—I kept getting torn out of the story by the way the camera treated women and female bodies. And the very slow-moving style of the movie, with lines delivered slowly, long still shots, etc., really didn’t work for me. I also just couldn’t help but feel like the movie’s general relationship with sex and sexuality was coming from a very specific perspective that I just don’t share or understand. TC is good in this, it’s not my favorite of his roles but his acting was by far my favorite part of the movie so naturally they put him in a mask and made him stand completely still. Favorite bits of the movie were 1) that shot in the beginning where he curls up on the couch in jeans and Ugg boots (amanda marisatomay gets it) and 2) the scene in the bedroom where he’s in his boxers and he looks really cute. To specify i didn’t like these scenes for plot reasons or character reasons I just liked seeing him look comfy. I do think that in terms of the movie’s discussions on sex and sexuality TC’s character probably has the most interesting and complicated relationship with sex and I think somebody with tastes in media more suited to a movie like this would probably be able to find some pretty interesting ideas. I had a hard time with this movie, but I can understand why somebody else might love it.

20. Jack Reacher

I have to be perfectly honest here. I didn’t finish this movie. I got up to the part where the young woman, I forget her name, is about to die, and I decided i didn’t want to watch anymore. So there is a chance that this movie gets really good after like the hour mark and I just don’t know that. The opening sequence of this film is fucking dynamite. I just really deeply hated this movie’s politics and I was willing to be patient with it for a while cause I wanted to see if there was anything redeeming in it, but my frustration won out. The movie in general spends a lot of time dealing with issues of criminality and the justice system, and imo it does it really clumsily. It also has a really weird treatment of women and female characters. TC’s performance of Jack Reacher is the only thing i liked about the character—I thought he did some really cool stuff with a lack of expressiveness, making the character really reserved, it went a long way towards likeability in a movie where the writing made him very unlikeable. The movie had a very action-hero-movie focus on making its protagonist badass and invulnerable, which was annoying to me and something that I’ve been spoiled in TC movies to not expect. To me even though I honestly didn’t like it much at all and couldn’t finish it I rank it above EWS because it’s entertaining, it’s a basically fun movie that’s well made, well acted, moves along at a nice clip and makes basic sense.

19. Oblivion

I had a strong emotional reaction to this movie when i watched it, anybody who was following me at that time probably remembers. This is another case of a quality film, well made, well acted, very entertaining, but it pissed me off. I felt like there was a ton of wasted potential in the concept, and in fact for the first third or so of the movie I was very invested and excited. To me Tom Cruise is not the emotional heart of the movie, that belongs to Vika, played by Andrea Riseborough, who has a deeply fucked up and compelling dynamic with TC’s Jack. Unfortunately (spoilers) the movie kills her, and that’s really the beginning of the end of my enjoyment of it. Meanwhile, TC’s other co-star Olga Kurylenko (Julia) is acting her heart out, but the script really gives her nothing to do. This film could have been a top pick for me, but it’s so thematically inconsistent and completely average in places it becomes almost unwatchable.

18. The Firm

The main sin of this movie to me is that I don’t have much to say about it. I think it didn’t totally mesh with me personally for some reason. Some just excellent acting all around, another kinda sucky TC guile hero protagonist which I always love, a conspiracy and emotional manipulation and plotting and suspense—but it just didn’t really do it for me. There were moments I loved. Some interesting compelling emotional beats. I could see why someone would really adore this movie. But it left me a bit cold.

17. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

I’ve talked before about my complex feelings on this movie and why I rank it lowest of the Mission Impossibles. This movie like all the MIs is very close to my heart. Ghost protocol ethan is one of my favorite ethans—his hair is my favorite of the ethan haircuts, which if you are an MI fan you know is significant. I love so much about this movie. It has some cool interesting twists on the classic action formula, I think it’s a significant point in Ethan’s arc, I think it’s a fun entertaining film. That being said ethan doesn’t feel like the heart of this movie in the way he normally does, and as much as I enjoy the team members I don’t feel that anyone steps up to take his place. The movie ends up feeling empty to me because of that, outside of the jailbreak opening where I feel ethan’s story and his character strongly. Anyway I do love this film, I just think this film and I have different priorities. And that’s why it’s not ranked very high

16. Top Gun

In retrospect I probably shouldn’t have had high hopes going into Top Gun but because of the fame of the movie I kinda did. I didn’t like the way the plane sequences were filmed in this movie—don’t get me wrong I’m sure that stuff was very difficult to capture well, but I always felt either too close to or completely disconnected from the action, and it was hard to tell what was going on. I expected to enjoy Val Kilmer as Iceman more than I did, I overall didn’t feel like the script gave him much to work with, although there were a couple excellent emotional beats and overall his acting is superb. The heart and soul of the movie was of course Goose, who completely outshone TC as mav in my opinion, which made his death hit really hard and mav’s grief feel very earned. Another main weak point of the movie was Charlie for me, I didn’t like her, I didn’t trust her, I didn’t connect with her. Overall I can see why the film is a classic, I enjoyed it but I didn’t love it

15. Mission Impossible 3

This movie is deeply special to me…it’s very frustrating in a lot of ways. Ethan’s relationship with violence here is almost entirely incoherent. This movie’s take on the IMF is deeply frustrating. That being said every moment between Ethan and Julia is lodged so deeply in my heart…and I’m obsessed with the way this movie kills its protagonist for 5 minutes and for those five minutes Julia is the star of the movie. I think action movies should do this more often. Julia and Ethan are what makes this movie for me, also Benji and Luther are fantastic here, specifically thinking of Benji’s scene at the end on the phone with Ethan, not the anti-God bullshit. Good movie, important moment in Ethan’s arc, feels like it inherently misunderstands MI in some ways and particularly Ethan. But good movie.

14. Jack Reacher Never Go Back

I think this movie is generally seen as worse than the first which I don’t understand. I actually really enjoyed it. I absolutely adored Danika Yarosh as Samantha, and her relationship with TC’s Reacher was far and away the heart of the movie. I’ve seen the “grizzled emotionally stunted action hero accidentally adopts a kid” thing a lot, and sometimes it works for me but sometimes it doesn’t. This time it really worked. Their relationship felt believable, complicated, earned. I loved every second they were on screen together. His other co-star of the movie was good (I think of her as Maria Hill always from my Marvel days) and had some solid moments, but IMO was overshadowed. Mostly I appreciated that this movie was thematically coherent and interesting, there was a solid arc, and TC’s acting was fantastic, taking the expressionlessness of the first film and holding onto that while using his microexpressions to their fullest potential. Really excellent work from him in this film.

13. Mission Impossible 2

I love this movie. I think it’s fun, I think it’s campy, I think it’s boring in places and deeply entertaining in others. I think it’s a well done action film that brings new and interesting ideas to MI and was crucial in MI becoming the franchise it is today. TC is standout in it, Thandie Newton is incredible in it. I like what it does for Ethan as a character, it pushes him down the action hero path while keeping this inherent understanding of his weirdness, his intensity, his almost dorky charm. I think there’s a lot of vulnerability for both Ethan and Nyah in this movie, and I really like that the very classic action movie style doesn’t take that away. It’s by no means a perfect film, and I understand a lot of the criticism of it (and have plenty of my own), but personally I think it’s a really important and fun part of the MI franchise and the TC filmography.

12. Interview with the Vampire

I really enjoyed…certain aspects of this movie. Tom Cruise as Lestat is an absolute unmitigated delight. My favorite TC roles in general (this is one of them, we’re going to start to get into them at this point) are usually his campiest, specifically because he brings a realness to them that makes them way more compelling even than pure camp, without sacrificing the campiness at all. His Lestat is a great example of that. It never feels as if TC is putting distance between himself and the role—Lestat is ridiculous and funny, but TC is always right there with him, never laughing at him if that makes sense. And there’s an emotional vulnerability and petty mundanity to Lestat that I just love. Antonio Banderas is also standout in this movie, as well as Kristen Dunst, both of whom commit 100% and have fantastic charisma on screen, while taking a kind of darker and more serious approach to the roles than TC’s Lestat. Brad Pitt is—brad what are you doing here. It’s so obvious he is not enjoying himself in this film. Go back to fight club my dude. The parts of the movie where we were following him only for long periods of time were honestly quite boring to me. Another issue I had with this movie was the way all the slavery elements were handled. Just very clumsy and racist handling of that stuff.

11. Knight and Day

I really really enjoyed this movie both times I watched it. It’s so fun, it’s so campy, it’s clever and interesting and compelling. TC is just magnificent as Roy Miller, and his chemistry with Cameron Diaz is fabulous—she’s also excellent in this movie, all of the meat of June’s character comes from her fantastic acting. Paul Dano is also standout as Simon Feck. Those core three characters are very well done, although I have some frustration with the way the movie consistently cuts June off from a substantial character arc and agency. There are hints of substance in her plotline that never fully materialize and mostly get pushed aside in favor of focus on her dynamic with Roy, which is admittedly dynamite. Anyway really good film, not perfect but would highly recommend

10. American Made

Anybody looking at my posts this morning already knows probably most of my feelings on this movie. This movie really sucked me in, I really loved it, it felt immersive and interesting and nuanced and heartfelt. It completely devastated me at the end. Barry Seal is another one of my favorite TC roles, there’s again a (more subtle) camp that’s portrayed very genuinely and feels human and real. He’s so deeply endearing in this role. I love his hair. I love his style. I think TC should wear that style of clothing more often if he so desires cause god he looks great in this movie. Barry’s dynamic with his wife Lucy, played by Sarah Wright, was the unexpected heart of the movie. This film also features one of the only times I have ever felt catharsis from a character’s self-sacrifice, mostly because this is one of the only times I’ve ever seen that plotline with a character who I genuinely believe would do pretty much anything to survive (I see it alllll the time with characters who already have a death wish). My main issue with this film is that…I don’t know what I’m talking about, to preface. But the portrayal of South America felt stereotyped to me. It didn’t sit right. I would be interested in the perspective of someone who knows more.

9. Jerry Maguire

I watched this movie on an airplane when I was younger and I didn’t connect with it. Then I watched it again and I got bored and I stopped. Then I started Again, 30 minutes in, and watched the rest of it and absolutely loved it. I think my placing of this even in the upper middle is probably controversial, since from what I’ve heard this movie is broadly considered to be TC’s best role. Personally I disagree. I think he’s very good in this, but it isn’t one of my favorite TC roles, and not just because he has short hair in it lol. I think his particular brand of earnest comedy works great in this film. I think TC does manic energy better than any actor I’ve ever seen, and his natural emotional vulnerability works really well too. I can see why people really adore this film. I really loved this film. I guess to me the ultimate message and sentiment of the movie feels…this is a personal taste thing, but I guess the bottom line is this movie isn’t subversive enough for me LOL. The message being “having a life and a family that you love is more important than being wildly successful” is a great message! It just isn’t something I totally connect with, it doesn’t feel like an end goal that satisfies all the (to me more interesting) emotional pain and dysregulation beforehand. I am an angsty bitch though, and very queer, so that’s probably influencing my perspective on this movie. It’s a very well done film, the thematic arc is well built and coherent and interesting, the emotional beats land, I teared up at the end, I loved all the characters and felt like they were all treated well by the movie and given interesting, great journeys. Very good film, I can see why it’s so beloved, it’s very good but not special to me in the same way as some others.

8. Edge of Tomorrow

Ugh I adore this movie. I watched it, wrote a fic the same day, thought about it for a few months, watched it again, and immediately started on a second fic (which I might not finish, but still—the sheer fic-generating power of this movie…) I love this movie for many reasons, one of them is Rita Vrataski, who is so fucking excellent, Emily Blunt does a masterful job. Another one is Bill Cage, who is another favorite TC role even though he breaks the “favorite role” mold a bit, simply because he is Also kind of ridiculous and campy in a way that underlies all of his action-hero-ness and makes him constantly so much more interesting than he should by all rights be allowed to be. His arc is incredibly excellent because it doesn’t allow him to grow a moral backbone, it just forces him into the hero mold without one, which makes for a much more fascinating movie-watching experience. TC is so good at (this is a repetition, but it deserves repetition) playing characters who are kind of not great people, or kind of ridiculous, without ever putting distance between his acting and the lived experience of the character—he’s never poking fun at his own role, he lets us laugh at him. Anyway I really love this movie, I think it’s a gem of a film and a credit to the action genre.

7. Top Gun: Maverick

Another really excellent older TC film. To be perfectly honest despite my deep and enduring love of young TC my tastes generally tend to TC’s later work, with a few notable exceptions. I love this movie, it’s sweet and honest and earnest, and TC’s Mav is endlessly endearing. It’s the kind of movie that I would really like to see one day if/when I grow much older, because I think it has such meaningful emotion behind it about age and legacy. To me a weak point of this movie was that I didn’t totally connect with the young pilots, and I didn’t connect with Jennifer Connelly’s Penny. I think that was a personal thing, I know a lot of other people really loved those characters, but I didn’t connect. For me, I was watching the movie entirely for Mav, and in one scene for Ice, and I still really loved it. So that says something about the film, I think. This is also a slightly difficult film for me because I know at least one kid who decided he wanted to be a fighter pilot because of this movie, and I have complicated feelings about that. Also this is off topic and i hate to even write this down but for some reason mav looks like my ex boyfriend’s dad in a way that is VERY off putting. Still, a very good movie.

6. Fallout

This is one of my favorite MIs, and MI in general is precious to me so you’re going to see a lot of them in the upper echelons of my ranking. I love so much about this movie, I don’t feel like I need to talk much about it here cause I’ve gotten into the intricacies of my feelings about it before. Fallout Ethan is probably my favorite Ethan, I love the place he arrives at in his arc in this movie, I love what this movie does to him and for him. I adore TC’s acting in this film it’s remarkable. The end of this movie is my favorite ending of the MI films, maybe one of my favorite film endings ever. I love all the characters in this movie and I love how much care they’re given by the script, by the actors, by the film. Just excellent. I don’t like Walker, I don’t personally find him hot or interesting, maybe if I did this would be ranked higher.

5. Rogue Nation

RN is just a really fucking excellent movie. Another MI, because I love them. I love Ilsa so dearly, I love Benji and Ethan’s arc in this movie. Again, I’ve talked about this movie more in depth elsewhere, so I’ll keep it brief here. I just think this movie is great cinema, it’s deeply compelling and entertaining, it’s well written, it’s well acted, it has some really interesting elements, it has the opera sequence which is just one of the most excellently constructed sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie featuring music that I adore. Anyway I love this movie

4. Dead Reckoning, Part 1

I saw this movie in theaters—it’s the only one of all these movies that I saw in theaters. That necessarily influences the ranking. I think this movie is just masterful. It’s so cinematic, it’s so thoughtful, it’s so well acted, it’s so well made. It drives Ethan’s arc in a compelling direction that feels significant and new despite also being something that’s been building for six prior films. I love the new characters it introduces, I love the thoughtful and careful treatment of the returning characters. I love Ethan’s sexy lawyer fit. This is just a really excellent movie that I feel like is a masterclass in Pure Cinema.

3. Rock of Ages

On the one hand I’m aware this is my most controversial ranking. On the other hand I don’t actually think anyone who knows me and my tastes is surprised by this. Stacee Jaxx is far and away my favorite TC role I’ve seen so far. I just can’t say enough great things about TC’s acting in this movie, it’s literally spellbinding. Not only the thorough commitment to camp, but the commitment to something way deeper than camp, to bringing out depth and genuine emotion through camp, and on top of all of that to stand on stage and perform a full song (training his voice to do so!) with all the panache and physicality and weird professional joy and manic eyes of a rock star, it boggles the mind. This movie is absolutely terrible in my opinion. But it’s just weird enough that it gives this backing of deep subversiveness to TC’s performance and to the ideas behind his Stacee. There are so many haunting moments in this movie and so many moments that made me laugh hysterically while also feeling deeply impacted. The ideas TC is conveying are weird, and dramatic, and not simple at all, and he manages to convey them honestly, dramatically, and with so much nuance, and so much fucking gravitas, and he does all of that without sacrificing comedy—in fact he elevates it, he heightens it. I think his work in this movie is absolutely masterful. I also love his romantic interest in this movie, Constance, played by Malin Akerman, who is a delight. Her scenes with TC are so dynamic and interesting and fun. Also I just love everything about TC’s look in this movie, from the particular build (which feels interesting to me, it’s a very specific build, muscled but not washboard, and solid but showy instead of tank-y, I know this is something he thinks about so I’d be interested in how he prepared physically for the role) to the hair to the tattoos to the leather pants to the trailing hankies, it’s all striking and fun while feeling somehow honest. Despite objectively being a caricature, and having all the flamboyance and drama of a caricature, TC’s Stacee never actually feels like one. He feels like someone who’s trying to become one, and I know several people like that, and he just…nails it.

2. Risky Business

Unlike Rock of Ages, this is an absolutely incredible movie. It’s weird, it’s complex, it’s sad, it’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s really fucking good. TC’s acting here is just fabulous, this is another favorite TC role for completely different reasons—Joel can’t be described as camp, although he is a bit ridiculous, but TC brings so much vulnerability to the role that it feels painful to watch in a very good way. This is an unusually special movie. All the acting is fabulous, TC is standout.

1. Mission: Impossible

What can I say about this movie that hasn’t already been said by my 10 times watching it and my countless textposts and rambling essays? This is my favorite movie of all time. MI1 Ethan and his arc in this movie is fascinating, unusual, grounded, arresting. He’s an unusual action hero, this is an unusual action movie, it’s creepy and compelling. The Jim/Ethan/Claire trio has captured my mind ever since I saw it—as well as the Ethan/Max interactions—Luther is also fucking standout in this movie he’s everything. I just adore this film, it’s incredibly close to my heart, I can’t watch it without losing my mind about 30 times and ranting about the same scenes on tumblr for the fifth time. Anyway. MI1, number one, least surprising ranking to anyone who knows me or follows me.

This has been the Tom Cruise Ranking So Far! I’ve got somewhere in the realm of…fifteen? Twenty? of his films left to watch. I started on Legend today and I think it’s going to land on the bottom. Overall I’ve learned so much about storytelling and performance and character from TC, every movie feels like a masterclass, especially the later films. Anyway I love thoughts and reactions, please feel free to disagree loudly. Thank you for attending my TC Ted Talk

#tc posting #cecil rankings #<-for blocking and sorting purposes #mission impossible #knight and day #iwtv #rock of ages #risky business #tgm #edge of tomorrow #jerry maguire #american made #eyes wide shut #jack reacher #top gun #oblivion #the firm #tom cruise #long post

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sob-dylan · 5 years ago

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I feel like pretty much every season starts with dangling the promise of closely pursuing Nacho's story in front of you and then slowly making you realise he just isn't going to get any screen time and you'll have to wait a year at best for that MAYBE to be returned to on screen. That scene between Nacho and his dad was so compelling and it is insane to me that it was pretty much it for Nacho having anything meaty to do for the WHOLE SEASON. Am I just dumb and missing the point lmao??

Okay, I’m gonna go off for a minute and it probably won’t end up being coherent.

That’s exactly what they fucking do! And they know it! I didn’t start listening to the BCS insider podcast until this season, but I’ve been going back to listen to ones about old episodes I like, (which, if I’m being honest, are mostly the more Nacho-heavy ones). They had Michael Mando on for the 1x09 podcast (and we hadn’t seen Nacho since 1x03 I think) and Vince Gilligan actually apologized to him and said “we didn’t plan on going for this long without seeing Nacho, it just kind of happened that way.” And of course Mando was very lovely and gracious and went on about how lucky he was to be a part of this project. But he also talked in depth about finding the character for the first time in that desert scene with Tuco, and it made me so frustrated to listen to because he puts just as effort and thought into Nacho as Bob and Rhea and Banks do with their characters. And, yeah, that’s his job and “there’s no small parts” or whatever, but it’s so aggravating knowing about all of the wasted potential of this character.

And look: I’ve considered that it’s me and not them. It could certainly be possible that I’m just sour about my favorite character not being on as much as I would like. I’ve been watching this show since it first started and I haven’t done a proper re-watch of any of it. I was 16 when it first aired. I didn’t love it as much then as I do now, and part of the reason was because I was primarily invested in the criminal part of the show and found Jimmy and Kim’s story slow. At 21, I’m still a dumbass, but I was a colossal dumbass at 16. I’ve changed significantly between now and then thanks to some major life events, and I think if I were to re-watch season 1-2 now I would have a greater appreciation for the less obviously titillating parts of the story. It’s a compelling story through-and-through if you have the patience for it.

BUT they keep doing the same thing over and over. They set up potentially fruitful arcs for Nacho early in the season and then if there’s any substantial follow-through it happens at the end of the season and often feels rushed, (season 3 may be an exception). Season 4 was the most disappointing in that regard, (I would have liked to seen some kind of comparison drawn between Jimmy losing Chuck and Nacho irreparably damaging his relationship with his father, not to mention that practically nothing came from the whole thing with Gus that season). The first 3 episodes of season 5 made me really excited because there was so much Nacho! And he was doing so much with his screen time! That scene with his dad made me think they were really ready to dive deeper into Nacho’s motivations, but it mostly just reminded of us of what we already knew about their relationship from seasons 3 and 4. I gotta say, as much as I adore Lalo, I am frustrated with how much he seems to have eclipsed Nacho in the cartel story line.

It’s insane just how protracted his stress has been. I think nearly a year passed between Gus killing Arturo and Lalo showing up. He’s due for a win. All that being said, I am hopeful for this finale. It’s definitely gonna be Nacho-heavy (relatively speaking, that is) and it’s definitely going to impact his story in a major way. My hope is that he finds a way to regain some kind of agency over his situation.

End of rant.

#i have flip-flopped sooo much this past week on whether or not he's gonna die #i trust the writers but i don't trust the writers ya know?#bcs #bcs meta #nacho varga #bloodyholly

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the-glitter-acetylcholine · 5 years ago

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Harry Potter characters that were criminally underused (in no particular order)

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

Luna Lovegood - literally only introduced like halfway through the fifth book, yet probably the most influential ravenclaw character. Her odd mannerisms and odder outlook would have made her a fabulous addition to the golden trio’s shenanigans, yet she only serves this purpose in one case

Mad-eye Moody - he’s “well-developed” in the fourth book, and we get a lot of content of him... only to discover it wasn’t him at all. Then, he briefly appears with the order and then dies. Great. What a wonderful use of a skilled fighter and mentor.

Remus Lupin - okay, so he does get the whole third book but then... he just fucks off? Ofc then he, too, returns to fight with the order, fall in love with a woman half his age, have a baby with her, and then die immediately thereafter. He’s just such a cool guy with so much to offer to Harry and to readers (when it comes to insight on discrimination in the wizarding community) and he just doesn’t get a chance to do nearly enough. What a wasted opportunity.

Pravati and Padma Patil - yeah, these are two different characters, but we know so little about them that I can’t even discuss them individually. They’re twins in different houses! How cool! There’s so much to be explored there, especially considering the competitive atmosphere among houses that Harry perceives. Not to mention the fact that they inexplicably agreed to go to the Yule Ball with Harry and Ron respectively despite a) apparently not knowing them very well and b) not even being all that desperate to hang out with them at the ball (I think Padma asks Ron to dance a few times and then gives up) (side note: this made me extremely mad when I was little, because I had I major crush on Padma). What compelled them to do that? What are they like? What are the differences between them that caused them to be sorted into different houses? Gah, they could have been so interesting!

Cho Chang - this is one that makes me genuinely a little mad (same goes for #6). She’s just so two dimensional, and that’s really not fair. She’s a decoration on Harry’s arm for what? A year or two? And she then cries, dates Diggory, and then she cries again (I think she dates Diggory first but you get the point). HER PURPOSE IS NOT JUST TO CRY OVER GUYS. She’s a ravenclaw. Let’s hear about that. Where do her interests lie? Is she an academic? Is she an artist? What kind of intelligence does she have, what kind of knowledge does she seek? What made her like Harry to begin with? Did Harry ever like her for more than her “sleek black hair” (not a direct quote, but I’m sure it’s described as something to that effect)? I want to knowwwww

Lavender Brown - aka... Ron’s brief, annoying girlfriend? The precursor to Romione? I mean, was this girl even in the D.A.? Maybe she was, but I don’t remember, and that’s the problem. She’s a Gryffindor. She’s brave, she’s headstrong, she’s proud! But she’s only ever portrayed as overbearing and clingy which SURE, may be some of her traits, because she’s allowed to have flaws, but that’s not all she is. I want to see her relationship with Pravati and Hermione, who she roomed with for six years (beyond her annoying Hermione when she dated Ron). But nope! I guess she’s just another accessory!

Nymphadora Tonks - i.e. Tonks. She’s funny and brave and powerful, but we barely get to see her in action (yes, before you ask, i had a crush on her, too). She’s interesting, so interesting, because her emotions are often expressed through her appearance, and she undergoes like two full personality shifts throughout the books (it’s worth noting that she’s also introduced pretty late in the series, book five, i think). She’s depressed for a while, then she falls in love, gets married, and has a son (and then dies), and, while it seems like this is a lot of usage (which it is), I can’t help but wish we had seen a little more of it all, specifically of her falling in love and of her married life, of her motherhood, before she died.

Xenophilius Lovegood - literallly (i would argue) one of the most interesting characters in the series, despite the fact that (I think) he is only featured heavily in one scene. I would definitely call him a more complex character than Snape. In his one scene, Xenophilius offers the golden trio one of their most important lessons through the Tale of the Three Brothers, the story which ultimately wins them the war against Voldemort. And yet, it’s a trap. He’s stalling, keeping them around so that Voldy’s goons can come pick them up and presumably kill them, or at least imprison them until Voldy comes ‘round again. But, and here’s the important part, he does it to save his beloved daughter. His daughter, who is the only family he has left, after his incredible scientist-witch of a wife died doing what she loved. The Lovegood’s are a family of inherently good people, yet Xenophilius sides with the very people who took his daughter in a weak effort to get her safely back. His plan won’t work, they won’t return Luna. They DON’T return her, but Xenophilius is fundamentally weak, made weak out of his love, and his fear of losing the last person in the world he has to care about, to protect, to love. He’s just SO DAMN INTERESTING ughhhhh give me more Xenophilius pleaseeeee

Kingsley Shacklebolt - he’s??? so cool??? Literally he’s just awesome, but we barely see him. He acts as a spy, essentially, when the ministry gets taken over by the death eaters, and helps the order actually get shit done, but he’s just so underused. Idk, I don’t have much to say except that he’s awesome and I want more Shacklebolt content

Cedric Diggory - he’s actually talked about a fair amount, so I don’t think I need to say much, except that he is literally the nicest guy ever, and, despite Harry actively hating him for like a whole year, he helps him in the Triwizard Tournament and represents Hufflepuff beautifully as being more than just the “miscellaneous house”. But then of course he’s killed before he and Harry can become friends, and before readers get a chance to understand anything about his social status (is he the asshole popular guy or sweet quite guy???) or motivations. Of course.

Percy Weasley - aka MY FAVORITE WEASLEY KID. R*wling did my boy so dirty. He’s cool because he’s kind of a stuck up academic asshole stereotype, or at least Harry perceives him as such, and then he changes slightly over the years as he and Harry both grow and mature and then it all culminates in his great moment of emotion and humanity! Fred’s death is, without much contest I think, the most devastating death in the whole series (Dobby could admittedly give him a run for his money, though), in part because he’s just so damn sweet and funny and innocent, and in part because right before it we FINALLY get to see Percy smile. He smiles at a dumb joke Fred makes, and then Fred DIES (a well placed death, I’ll admit begrudgingly), and just the juxtaposition of the moment... *chef’s kiss*. And then we never really check back in on Percy, and we don’t really get enough closure on that moment. :/

Colin and Dennis Creevy - again, two characters stuffed together, this time because we actually know a fair amount about them and... they’re kind of the same character. Colin is obsessed with Harry, and so is Dennis. That’s about it. I just WISH we got a little more on these kids, on why they felt so drawn to him as this apparently untouchable hero among them. Were they abused? Orphaned? Abandoned? Did they have some sort of trauma in their lives that made them so attached to the idea of a savoir? Or did they simply regard Harry as most little boys might, as a cool sort of action figure character? The world may never know :(((

Susan Bones - God, I wish I had more to say about her. She’s sweet, she a hufflepuff, I think she helps Ron at one point in Herbology. Her aunt dies I think. Is she the one who had the rabbit at one point? Idk, she’s just one of those characters who’s so far in the background that she almost stands out, and I kinda just wanna know more.

Fawkes - yeah, I know he’s a bird or whatever, but he’s fucking cool, and we get a Fawkes-ex-machina in the second book and then he’s essentially inconsequential for like... forever. I want to know how he and dumbledore bonded, why his feathers in those two specific wands were so attracted to Harry and Tommy boi specifically, other than symbolism uwu. Does Fawkes have a moral compass, or does he simply follow Dumbledore’s orders? Could his loyalty potentially be changed?

Narcissa Malfoy - please, for the love of god, give the Malfoy’s a chance. At least Draco and Narcissa. Narcissa is essentially the flip side of Xenophilius’s coin. Her side of the family is shrouded in dark magic, but her priority is keeping her dear son safe. I just want to know her and her inner struggle more intimately, because she’s such a contradiction, she’s a death eater who loves and protects, a dark magic user who wants to create something warm and beautiful for her family. She’s scared for a husband, a top death eater, one of Voldemort’s personal faves, and scared for her son, who she knows is good at heart but who struggles through the first steps of death eater initiation out of a sense of duty, a duty to her and his father. She’s the intimate mother figure, yet she’s an antagonist, fundamentally speaking. Fascinating.

These are just some I thought of off the top of my head, I’m sure there are literally hundreds more, from the two guys from the Knightbus to Bathilda Bagshot to Nagini the legend (also wtf happened to her in the Cursed Child?? Nvm, I can’t even get into that shithole right now), and I have to admit that I still love Harry Potter, for its characters and it’s incredible world building, though R*wling is a massive piece of terf-y shit.

It’s important to note that I understand the purpose of flat characters, I understand the purpose of background characters, of undeveloped characters. What I’m pointing out here is that there was a lot of potential in these characters that was largely squandered because R*wling focused her energy on attempting to redeem Snape without a redemption arch, attempting to redeem Dumbledore with an inadequate one, and refusing to properly redeem Draco despite his well-developed arch, for some fucking reason. If you can’t tell, I’m salty, but I’m only salty because I care. Ily, have a good day!!

#harry potter #harry potter discourse #sorry i went off a little #but this is all i can think about rn #it’s 1 am #improving harry potter #percussion strings winds words #glitter goes off

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bellamygateoldblog · 5 years ago

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the 100 ofc!

— this gets a little rant-y and may or may not be coherent- currently pulling an all-nighter and it’s literally 5am- that’s it. That’s my excuse.

all time favourite character

IDK man IDK…I wanna say Jasper, maybe Raven

a character I didn’t used to like but do now

I’ll stick Octavia in this one. I actually did like her at first, then i didn’t then i did then i didn’t then i

a character i used to like but now don’t

[ insert every single character here ] Clarke and Bellamy. Clarke lost me very early season 3 and Bellamy is dead to me as of season 6. I’m throwing Miller in here- when he was that delinquent that wears the beanie I could go for that, but now i’m just straight up annoyed by his presence and want him to go away forever. My reluctant liking of Abby turned sour pretty fast, too. Arming a group of children and sending them out into a warzone to find your daughter, then abandoning them once she’s back is really SOMETHING. And hitting Raven while she’s acting Chancellor…i should beat your ass, Abby

a character i’m indifferent about

Wells: poor treatment of MoC and very valid anger aside, truely I don’t see the facination and borderline obsession fandom has with the character himself- he barely existed. Are you all in love with the idea of him, rather? Or the guy from the book? He was literally in this thing for three episodes, we never actually knew him, nor was he even given the chance to develop or have any sort of story. I see so so much hate about Echo and her lack of development and yet in the same breath y’all are talking about missing Wells and oh what a wonderful character he was. Spare me. He was a character full to the brim with potential and unfortunately that’s all he’ll ever be.

Anya and Lexa, too. I don’t really have opinions formed on either of them, nor do I really care to

a character who deserved better

I mean with that minor Wells rant aside and half a step into my hypocrisy boots…Wells did. Lol. I think he absolutely deserved better than to be killed off in order to push a white woman’s story forwards. I think he deserved better than to have been all about Clarke, his entire character about serving her character, even in death. This show has a history of criminally underusing/sideling/killing their most compelling characters, i think Wells would’ve been such a fun addition to the main band, i wonder how his personality would’ve expanded, what could his arcs have looked like? i think about how his dynamics would form and fair, what might he think of Clarke now?

Jasper deserved better than to have become a nihilist’s wet dream. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, i really do. The creators, some of the fans even, chat about how it’s a gritty reality, sometimes it’s just Like That, and in some ways that’s absolutely right, but in a show of such loss to have this bleak ending for a character like this is just…a bit of an overkill? What’s wrong with hopeful endings? I mean we literally already had a similar scenario occur with Luna a mere episode(s) before. A woman who strives for nothing more than peace loses her faith in humanity and so fights for death. Why they felt the need to kick a dead horse by doing the same thing with Jasper is beyond me.

Listen many character have demonstrated suicidal tendancies at some point or another: Clarke, Murphy, Bellamy, Octavia, Harper and so on, but Jasper is the only one that gets the actual suicide? The character who’s canon mental illness has been more on the explicit and expressed side, the first victim of the ground, the very character who we’ve watched struggle his way through four seasons with an inconsistent or otherwise absent support system, his story ended with suicide. It’s devastating and, frankly, disrespectful. As if he was too far gone to find his way back into the light.

We saw clearly Monty’s reactions to Jasper’s death, but we didn’t see him grieve- he was busy rushing to survive the end of the world. This show loves sidestepping the consiquences of big events they write- there’s always a new threat to face which means everyone gets to move on abnormally quickly. Nobody asked about Jasper in Becca’s lab, we never actually saw anyone except for Clarke find out about this, nobody in the bunker either, not Octavia, and no mentions of Jasper in season five besides Monty begging him to be wrong about humanity. This show isn’t great with handling their deceased either. They want to focus on a fresh plot and not be stuck dragging around that dead weight. Finn isn’t mentioned in relation to Raven despite his importance to her story and of the fact this specific death shook the whole show. Wells’ has been removed from memory despite Clarke being the protagonist who we should know most intimately. I feel most detached from her, honestly. We’ve had a fair amount of Lincoln, though, and a consistantly aggressive reaffirmal of Lexa’s existence. But Jasper just isn’t here. He isn’t talked about. Jasper suffered, and Monty was right there in front of him trying to hand him that peaceful life he always dreamed of, ready to lift him (literally) out of that pain, and he died. Harper got to change her mind last minute, so did Raven, but not Jasper, no, his body went up in flames with the rest of it. The way they filmed the scene was gut-wrenching because of the hopelessness and coldness of it all. And i think he deserved to be spacekru, to heal somewhat up there, and oh what fun would he have been in season five. What would he be like now? What would he think of what became of everyone else? Of Clarke and of Octavia? Again, such wasted potential.

Jasper was one of The 100 on a show named after them, his death brought that to 4, and i can’t emphasise to you enough how big a mistake it was to craft a show around a certain group of people and then abandon that idea entirely. Your show is named something that it isn’t even about!!

Lexa deserved a more respectful death.

Bellamy deserved better than to be murdered brutally by the writers during season 6.

a ship i’ve never been able to get into

Bellarke. Braven. Murven. Clexa. Wicken/Ravick(?). Octabriel. Kabby

a ship i’ve never been able to get over

Becho. Memori. Jasper and Octavia were very sweet

a cute, low-key ship

Linctavia. It was always more of a background ‘ship’ for me. And Marper!

an unpopular ship but i still enjoyed it

Becho and Murphamy

a ship that was totally wrong and never should’ve happened

Flarke

my favourite storyline/moment

favourite storyline(s): delinquents finding a way to live on the ground and mount weather!

Favourite moment: i don’t think i have one TBH

my first thoughts on the show

It was exactly what i was looking for; a post-apoc teen drama, a little corny, a little gritty. I enjoyed season 1, and then 2, but with the constantly rising stakes to absolutely obscene levels eventually, my interest dwindled. By season 4 there was an almost desolate feeling and all the potential this had was dead and buried. They could’ve gone so many ways, done so much more, but for reasons unknown they chose possibly the weirdest and least interesting route available. I really thought they’d exhausted all their story by the end of 4 and i was, of course, absolutely correct since s5 was…more of the same…a literal recycled storyline that had been done not once but twice before it. In season 1 and then again in season 2. Since joining tumblr and fandom and seeing things from a various new angles, reading of social implications and meta on how sections of the writing are flawed, i’ve crafted a more informed and complex opinion than i had as a casual viewer and now see most aspects of the show in a completely different light.

my thoughts now

I’m over it. I think it could be safe to say i hate what it became. Most of my opinions of it now are negative, or at the very least have a critical component to them. I haven’t genuienly enjoyed it since season four and it hasn’t been actually decent since season two. It has a lot of deeper issues engrained into it’s writing, and there was a before when you could criticise those choices and obvious flaws and still be able to enjoy the show as it’s own entity because it existed as one at that time. But now it feels like an empty shell void of all life. With how broken and goofy the writing has become i just can’t take it seriously anymore. Characterisation and consistency have been thrown out in favour of serving the plot many many times before, but season 6 brought this to a whole new low. Dialogue was clumsy and there was a LOT of information dumping, it focused much too heavily on new characters nobody cared about, things were swinging from one extreme to another in terms of character arcs (see: Octavia’s full redemption and transformation basically overnight, and Bellamy switching from set to commit genocide in Clarke’s honour and ‘[we let these people die because] it’s not my fault their delusional’ to ‘let’s do better for Monty i am suddenly King of morality’) and in relationships (see: Bellamy instantly forgiving Clarke and then abandoning everyone and everything to save her, meanwhile he’s demonising Octavia like he’s getting paid for it). The characters just aren’t people anymore, they’re wheels that move the plot forward (in any way that’s required regardless of whether or not it’s actually in line with canon), and let’s not even talk about the science that pushes the envelope too far and Clarke’s insane plot armour. I’ve beaten this rant to death at this point so I won’t get any more into it. But just know: what was once a genuine fondness of this show has turned poisonous since.

#the 100 #rosie tag: share with the group #tw suicide #anti tag: clarke griffin #the 100: we ask we answer #the100meta

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soullistrations · 5 years ago

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okay, @mithrilwren, since you expressed interest, here it is! (no need to respond--it’s just late and days later, so I figured you’d like to know)

my reactions to ep9 below the cut. spoilers, obviously.

Full disclosure before i go on: I read a spoiler that led me to believe finn was going to die in this one, so basically everything we got was an improvement to what i was expecting going in. The only other thing i knew was that KMT was criminally underused, as well. Other than that, blank slate with incredibly low expectations

I loved the theme of not being alone. It was heavy handed, sure, but the fact that each of the core trio started the film believing they were alone in some way (rey’s “i can’t feel them”, isolating herself bc she believes no one understands; finn’s “I thought i was the only one”; poe saying that last time they asked for help, no one came), and then each of them finds out they’re NOT, UGH let me tell you I cried. Actually, i started crying when Jannah mentioned her stormtrooper call sign, and basically didn’t stop crying after that. I’m just a sucker for that trope, y’all.

on that note, though, finn’s ‘believing he was alone’, like many other things with finn, could have been better executed/more obvious before the actual conversation with jannah--even just a mention in a previous scene, like rey and poe had, would make the parallel stronger

also, finn saying “you don’t understand, not like leia and I do”--I’m simultaneously so happy that we HAVE FORCE SENSITIVE FINN and so frustrated that it...didn’t go anywhere? i’ve had a couple days to think about it, and it’s so exciting, so vindicating that finn is force-sensitive, but at the same time, he only used those powers to sense when rey was in danger, but never once got the chance to help her out in those instances--or help himself out! Could you imagine how cool like a “danger-sense” thing on the battlefield would be? A half-second shot that shows that his connection to the force is more than just ‘Rey fell down a well!’ I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if rian johnson hadn’t nerfed finn’s storyline in tlj--would we have gotten more development of force-sensitive finn if there was more time for that development?

I get the sense that this is an incredibly new realization to him in tros, even though we’ve been seeing the evidence since ep7. I just want a scene where he got to tell rey. or something even more explicit then “how do you know?” “a feeling.”

but also, can you hear han solo screaming “that’s not how the force works!” from the afterlife, even as finn proves that that is, in fact, how the force works?

But looping back around to ‘you don’t understand, not like leia and I do”--HOW does finn understand? What is he feeling from the force? what pulls him? what does he notice? He can clearly sense both rey and kylo (even if neither of them can sense him....), but what else? Did he and leia talk about it when rey refused to talk to him about it? did leia sense something in him, but wanted him to come to her? was he going to tell leia after he told rey, but then never got the chance? there is so much wasted potential here, guys, and i know they were trying to tell some story about palpatine and skywalker bloodlines righting the wrongs of their ancestors or whatnot but....why bring in force sensitive finn and not give him that connection? why not do something other than just go “he’s got it! the force! yup!” and leave it at that? it would have been so EASY to do more! ESPECIALLY if tlj hadn’t had some half-assed rehash of finn’s emotional journey from tfa instead of like, a logical continuation of his character.

(can you guess my favorite character, guys?)

BUT REALLY, others have talked about it more eloquently than me, but finn deserved a more central role, because he is the emotional core of the movie. and has the most compelling backstory and character trajectory (that is sadly ignored). and is clearly positioned as a foil to kylo ren, but then NEVER GETS TO BE THAT FOIL after that first fight in ep7.

but seriously did you see that hug at the end? with finn in the middle, on the verge of tears, holding onto the two people he’s been trying to keep safe for the whole film? I’m gonna cry again.

poe and rey sniping at each other was very ‘i’m closer to finn’ ‘no i’m closer’ ‘finn take my side’ like did you see how rey looked when finn agreed with poe in that first scene? they figured it out eventually, but it was....unexpectedly great to see the growing pains in that relationship.

More things, unrelated (or less related) to Finn:

KMT deserved better.

Carrie Fisher’s lines were really shoehorned in in some of those scenes. The “be optimistic” line? That was a REACH. I know they’re working with what they’ve got but sheesh.

I may be one of the few people that did not enjoy Adam Driver’s choice of loose, almost flippant body language once he Decided to be Good. The way he shrugs when he comes face to face with the Knights of Ren? It was annoying. I thought that, even though he was trying to change, he shouldn’t have dropped the intensity Kylo Ren has had up to this point. It just...rides the line of being a completely different character, and that’s not fair to the narrative. because ben solo is not a different character. ben solo is kylo ren, and he killed his dad and committed multiple genocides. you don’t just like...shrug and huff and smile in life or death combat because you decided to toss your emosaber into the ocean.

other than that, i didn’t think that kylo ren’s ending was bad. giving his life to atone for his original sin? Resurrecting the future of the jedi after massacring all hope of a future for the jedi so long ago? and then promptly dying and not kissing anyone? i thought it was poetic. and let me tell you i’ve never been a fan of kylo, and i don’t think he was redeemed in this act, or absolved of his crimes. and yes i’m staying out of the main tag and have no idea what others are saying, but i thought it was a fitting end.

also....say what you will about the force bond, but that moment with the lightsaber? was undeniably awesome.

(okay okay, i was talking to my husband later, and he was like “i didn't see the kiss as romantic. I saw it as a moment of ‘i finally see you’ before he died” which i’ll go with, honestly.)

but also....the force bond shut out finn from the force narrative of this last movie. and it didn’t need to. which is annoying.

i’m confused about poe’s backstory (and also it’s racist). weren’t his parents heroes of the resistance? didn’t he grow up with the resistance? wasn’t this previously established? jj what are you doing.

I loved jannah and the defected stormtroopers. the fact that the whole battalion laid down their weapons together...just another ‘we are stronger together’ moment that had me weeping.

but also....why is jannah the one getting the moment about finding her parents, and rey gets like, sooooo many backstory dumps about her parents and no one even mentions the fact that finn’s parents are out there somewhere too?

red racer chick’s line ‘they took all the children years ago’ was just....so quietly heartbreaking. can she talk to finn? or jannah? or one of the others? do the people of the galaxy know that the stormtroopers that attack them are kidnapped, brainwashed child soldiers? do they know? do weeping mothers pull on stormtroopers’ guns during raids, pleading with them to bring their baby back? do stormtroopers know that they were once taken from loving families? do they know intellectually and just not realize what that means until they are deployed (and by that point in most cases it is too late)? i need more on these stormtroopers.

there was probably more to mention, but i’ve forgotten it...so summary: i enjoyed some of the themes, and extremely low expectations did a lot for my enjoyment of the plot. there was a lot of info dumping and strange pacing that could at least partially, if not mostly, be blamed on inconsistent vision from abrams and johnson, but like...you’re adults working on an enormous movie trilogy. freakin’ sit down and communicate, and don’t just try to undo what the other has done in the previous film. so i mean...i had fun with my dad and husband on a long holiday weekend, but it’s not like, a work of art or anything. and i’m not saying it has to be, but at least there was some attempt in this movie to continue threads of character development. ....for some of the characters. so. inconsistent, with crumbs of The Good Stuff, but not enough to make it an actually good movie.

also KMT deserved better.

#this is a lot but here you go!#rebamble #becca watches things #.#..#tros spoilers #star wars

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howsermax · 6 years ago

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Thoughts on Pet Sematary (2019)

So I saw Pet Sematary in theaters a few days back, and I’ve gotta say, I was deeply, deeply disappointed. While I love the 1989 film about as much as I love the book, with the screenplay for the film being one of the only good screenplays written by King himself, it was admittedly in dire need of an upgrade. From Louis Creed’s hilarious line delivery, to the obvious switching to a Chucky-style doll during certain scenes with Gage, to the cinematography, the problems with the 1989 version of the flick were only in execution. The story could have been kept entirely the same (with a more ambiguous, book accurate ending), and it could have been an amazing remake. But instead, we got a very disappointing film.

First, I’ll go over what I liked. The cinematography, while gray, was still pretty creative at times in terms of camera movement. All the actors do a pretty good job for the most part, however, Ellie only does a good job after she dies. The practical effects were all pretty amazing, even though Ellie could have used a little more rot. The score is also pretty memorable and interesting. Surprisingly, the movie makes a few changes to the source material I actually really welcome. For example, the Zelda storyline is changed up in a way where it makes more sense why Rachel’s feeling of disgust towards Zelda added to her guilt by making Zelda’s death directly involve Rachel’s reluctance to interact with her. The Zelda flashbacks also have very creative transitions. However, those are all the praises I can really sing for this movie.

The writing is the most noticeable flaw with this movie. The characters never once talk like real people, they simplify story concepts way too often (for example, Rachel’s feelings of guilt in the first place are barely explored), and the movie brings up it’s themes of coping with death and loss in the most amazingly ham-fisted and basic ways possible. After Ellie asks about what will happen when Church dies, Rachel and Louis share a conversation IN PRIVATE about whether or not they believe in the afterlife. The movie quite literally decides it’s going to directly tell the audience that the character who is a surgeon doesn’t believe in the afterlife. Keep in mind, this isn’t really written into any other aspects of his character. I really don’t think these writers passed Screenwriting 101.

But on the other hand, the movie also has a recurring tendency to forget to write about the themes of the story altogether. For example, Pascow is criminally underused in this movie. You may remember in the original movie, Pascow was extremely important, as he spent his screen time trying to stop Louis from trying to cross the barrier between life and death, so Louis can learn to accept death. However, Remake Pascow is the most vague, boring, cookie-cutter horror movie ghost you can imagine, complete with never explaining what he means, and not influencing the events around him. Pascow also doesn’t appear at all during the ending. The writers genuinely don’t understand the importance he serves to the themes of the story. But his underuse is the least of this movie’s problems.

Now, I don’t have a problem with just the concept of changing things from book/old movie to movie. It’s necessary at times, and this remake has some welcome changes up it’s sleeve. However, this movie is almost entirely full of unnecessary changes that make the movie worse in one way or another. The first one I want to talk about is the decision to have Ellie be killed on the road rather than Gage. This is something that was explicitly revealed in the trailer to anyone who remembers the original story, and what’s worse? They extensively spoke about this major plot point in the film industry press surrounding the movie before release. I get that the trailer thing is a topic for a separate nerd tirade, but I can’t describe how stupid it was of these producers to talk about such a big change pre-release. Even though it’s a remake, it’s kind of alienating to movie-goers who don’t know the classic Pet Sematary story somehow. The filmmakers extensively spoke about how they made the change so that the resurrected child could be bigger and more threatening, though I think they were too weak to give us the true depressing movie we came here to watch. Because I guess movie audiences are somehow more emotional than they were 30 years ago? Comparing this attitude to how they actually put the scene together, it looks more like they were trying to pull an ol’ switcharoo on the people who know the story. Which begs the question: WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT IT IN PLACES WHERE POTENTIAL MOVIE VIEWERS CAN SEE IT??

Another huge issue I have with this movie is how fucking seriously it takes itself. The original had a very light sheen of comedy to it, think something similar to An American Werewolf in London. This is extremely prevalent in the scenes involving Pascow, where he casually stands around the afterlife, contrasting against everything and everyone as a walking corpse that nobody can see. The remake genuinely lacks all intentional comedy, which makes it really really hard to actually remember the experience, or care about it. It also ends up making certain parts of the movie unintentionally funny. For example, during the scene where Louis does his internet research on the Pet Sematary, he finds a fucking newspaper clipping about a literal fucking bison being implied to have been buried in and resurrected by the Pet Sematary. I subsequently chuckled out loud in the theater, as my mind was crossed with the mental image of a grieving child lugging an entire bison to the Pet Sematary, and struggling to find a place to bury it in the already cramped cemetery.

The editing and scene pacing is legitimately the most stereotypical modern horror film schlock ever put to screen. Firstly, jumpscares are all over this film, and it’s not a look. From the Orinco trucks, to Zelda in the dumbwaiter, to Church, everything in the film is given a loud THUD effect to accompany it, and I was supplied with many Silent Hill: Revelation 3D pop-tart jumpscare flashbacks through it’s run-time. The placement of the THUDs at times felt like watching one of my Spooky Guys episodes. Again, back to Pascow being utterly useless in the story, he instead spends this film being relegated to “look at me, I’m vague and say 3 spooky sentences I repeat over and over and I’m in a modern horror film and that’s my whole character I’m scary I say stuff about ghosts and death”.

Now here’s the big one. The ending. The ending is genuinely the worst thing about the entire film. Here’s a basic summary from what I remember. So Louis buries his dead daughter and waits for her to come back as his family tries to contact him, while Gage is troubled by visions of Pascow (who does nothing of note through the whole story). Ellie comes back and catches on to the fact that she died, but Louis denies that and gives her a bath. Jud goes over and suspects that Louis has brought Ellie back from the grave, and Ellie gets mad about it and kills Jud. Rachel and Gage arrive back at the house after Louis stops returning their calls, and Rachel is greeted by an undead Ellie. Ellie thinks that Rachel doesn’t want her around anymore, and tries to kill her, Gage, and Louis. Rachel manages to allow Gage and Louis to escape, but she’s impaled and buried by Ellie. Louis puts Gage in the car and tells him to not open the door for anyone, not even Ellie. Louis faces off with Ellie in the Pet Sematary, before being killed by the now resurrected Rachel. Rachel and Ellie resurrect Louis, and for some reason unlike Ellie, Louis and Rachel are big dumb traditional zombies. At daybreak, they approach the car with a can of gasoline, having burned down Jud’s house. However, instead, they decide to unlock the car for Gage. I have a lot to say about this.

First off, this ending is fucking weak compared to the original ending. In the original film, the process of Louis killing Gage with the lethal injection is so indescribably heart-breaking. It’s actually a high point for the actor’s performance, and he definitely sells the sheer emotion of the scene. The remake’s ending definitely suffers from how frequently it fails to actually capture the emotion of the original story and film. With that, let’s just say, this movie is the prime example of why horror movies with dead protagonists fail so often. If you aren’t both careful and skilled, killing your protagonist can result in your protagonist’s character arc not being fulfilled or completed. The original Pet Sematary story has a very strong and compelling character arc for Louis. In the final scenes of the original film, after Louis has begrudgingly put down Church and Gage, and has burned Jud’s house down, he carries Rachel’s corpse with him. Pascow tries to get him to no longer try and cross the barrier between life and death, and that he needs to let go of those he loves. He needs to learn to cope with death, and understand that dead is better. Louis, however, doesn’t listen, and finds a reason to think it’ll be different this time: because she just died. Pascow realizes that Louis has failed to learn his lesson, and shouts an admittely hilarious “NOOOOOOO” as he fades away. Louis waits in his home after burying Rachel, and as she walks in, now decayed and deformed, Louis makes out with the walking corpse, before being killed by her. What works here is Louis has completed his character arc. Granted the character arc consists of failing to learn his lesson, but it’s a powerful arc no less. It drives home how much the movie is truly about being as grateful for death as we are for life, and how a life spent yearning for those who’ve passed to return is a life spent suffering. While the more ambiguous book ending is more favorable, the 1989 film version still drives home this theme extremely well.

Overall, very bad movie. Don’t waste your money on this. Save your money for Endgame, that looks good. Or if you’re a King fan, wait for It: Part 2. Just... please no more ‘80s jokes guys, it isn’t funny anymore.

#pet sematary #pet sematary 2019 #pet sematary remake #stephen king #horror #movie review #horror movie review #critique

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lucyreviewcy · 6 years ago

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Hotel Artemis (2018) Dir. Drew Pearce

It’s 2028. In the midst of a riot that is sweeping through Los Angeles, criminals take refuge in Hotel Artemis – a hotel/hospital for criminals. Staffed by The Nurse (Jodie Foster) and Everest (Dave Bautista), Hotel Artemis faces a challenging night as organised crime leader Niagra (Jeff Goldblum) is checked in by his son (Zachary Quinto) and a gang of mobsters, alongside hitwoman Nice (Sofie Boutella), Bank Robbers Waikiki (Sterling K Brown) and Honolulu (Bryan Tyree Henry), and all-round asshole Acapulco (Charlie Day.)

I mention the entire cast of this movie in my summary. I think it is important to do this to demonstrate that the cast of Hotel Artemis is strong. So strong.

The intensity of Sterling K Brown, the implicit violence of Sofia Boutella, the Jeff Goldblum of Jeff Goldblum; this is a cast that should make any movie incredible, anchored by Jodie Foster who creates a character who is a complex balance of hardness and vulnerability. This cast is so good that the movie couldn’t possibly fail.

And yet.

It isn’t so much that Hotel Artemis fails completely. It just about meets the mark of a claustrophobic, chaotic action thriller, like David Fincher’s Panic Room (2002) – but the concept of “Hotel for criminals and hitmen” deserved more than this. Drew Pearce has presented a sub-par plot with an above average cast, resulting in the most middle-of-the-road movie I’ve seen since literally any Avengers movie. There are moments where the film is stylish. Jeff Goldblum’s dandy-like glamour contrasts with Jodie Foster’s aggressively drab nurse’s uniform, drawing our attention to the tensions between their characters – but these are alongside moments where the film is pedestrian and obvious. The mentioning of “The Wall” between Mexico and America seemed unnecessary and draws the audience’s attention to how far removed the picture is from reality. The Nurse’s continual references to the 80s and 70s are a little grating, too, as these suggest that she was born in at least the 60s, making her almost 70 at the time the film is set – this is a small bugbear, but it highlights what Hotel Artemis lacks – attention to detail.

The world of the film is built with a spade, not a chisel. Foster lists the “rules” of Hotel Artemis, hammering them home to the viewer multiple times during the film’s 94 minutes. The use of place names as code names for “members” of the Hotel is laboured and uninteresting. A hotel full of hitmen is fertile ground for clever writing, witty dialogue and unexpected violent punchlines – all of which Hotel Artemis failed to muster. Perhaps it is the Hotel setting that makes me think this, but I almost wished that the subject had been explored by Wes Anderson as a dark comedy, rather than this basic box-ticking action movie.

It wasn’t all bad; part of the problem was actually that the film was too short. The structure of “the night where everything goes wrong” felt disappointing with such a rich premise. I would have liked to see the Hotel running normally, and to have had the opportunity to start caring for the characters before they started killing each other. The dialogue wasn’t painful, just forgettable – I can’t remember any lines that stood out. Jodie Foster’s character was a highlight, and genuinely compelling, but Sofia Boutella’s was disappointingly one-note: we’ve all seen a hitwoman in a red dress. This was a wasted opportunity to present audiences with a new interpretation of “hitwoman.”

This was a fantastic idea for a film, with a mind-blowing cast, all squished into a stereotyped, predictable story that fails to realise the potential of its own plot.

#hotel artemis #movie review #jodie foster #sterling k brown #sofia boutella #jeff goldblum #zachary quinto #dave bautista #howhowhowhowhow

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rebels-cairn · 6 years ago

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The End

Trying to assemble thoughts on this game:

I seriously did not expect Sam to go out the way he did. I thought he would turn out to be a double agent and I’d have to kill him. Instead he got knifed at the poker table. RIP, Sam. I’ll always remember you complaining that your German accent made people too eager to believe you were a criminal. (I’ll also remember Hoyt passing the deck of cards to your corpse and staring expectantly in one of the most inappropriately hilarious displays I’ve seen in a long time.)

I’m still trying to figure out what Citra’s deal is because I don’t believe for a second that she was in love with Jason. This game is not so badly written that I will accept that premise. Maybe she just has a really fucked-up concept of love? Anyway, I bet Jason and Liza are going to have Words once they get back to the mainland.

It was super-weird and seemed out of character for Jason to suddenly renounce violence. He could have just been like, “WTF no I’m not going to kill my friends” and gotten the hell off the island. Instead, this guy who’s been having a grand old time shooting people and blowing shit up until five minutes ago abruptly decides that it was a bad thing? Whatever.

The whole reason I started playing this game was for Vaas. I was promised one of the most awesome, compelling, charismatic villains of the decade. And I was...kinda disappointed. I don’t find “periodically lapses into psychotic rages” to be a very compelling character trait. It’s not that he fell completely flat for me--I love the way he just keeps pulling the rug out from under you when you break into his compound, for instance-- but it seemed like the devs wasted a lot of potential in favor of having him yell crazy shit like a wino in a 7-11 parking lot.

Anyway, despite my disappointment in the villain and distaste for the hero, I had fun with this game. I’m going to play it again so I can A) get the other ending, and B) see how the story flows when I don’t spend shitloads of time on sidequests..

#I say I'll take it easy on the sidequesting #but we'll see how that goes #far cry 3

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itsawritblr · 3 years ago

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Michael Keaton's Morbius moment is everything terrible about Hollywood's IP decline.

Via GQ:

By Jack King

31 March 2022

Spoiler warning: Comic book movies aren't all bad, but they have contributed to a new movie-making default: the egregious, cynical mining of familiar intellectual properties. Morbius is the latest step in a potentially existential trend.

Morbius, as you might've already gleaned from the emphatic critical pans coming left, right and centre, is not a good movie. It is, in fact, the worst of the year so far. It has no redeeming qualities, from Jared Leto's monotonous, derivitive Blade rip-off — ah yes, another embarassing performance from the prince of prosthetics — to its absolute lack of formal imagination, inventive plotting, or technical acuity.

The final twenty-five minutes, a cookie-cutter duel between Leto's titular Decent Vampire and best friend turned nefarious bloodsucker Matt Smith in which they collide in the form of gaseous, amorphous blobs, could well be entirely digitalised. Jared Harris, perhaps the only innocent man across a rogue's gallery ensemble who have sold their artistic souls for a generous wage packet, is criminally wasted. At the best of times, it's akin to watching blood dry on a plaster; at the worst, it leaves you wishing for the oblivion the conflicting leads are so desperately trying to avoid.

Nevertheless, none of the above qualifies as Morbius' — nor Sony's — greatest sin.

When the first trailer came out back in November last year, attention was quickly drawn to the appearance of Michael Keaton, apparently playing some version of his Spider-Man: Homecoming villain Vulture. This was allegedly interesting because Morbius exists as part of a different continuity (in the present parlance, ‘universe’) to Homecoming, the latter being in Marvel's cinematic stable, the former in Sony's.

Spider-Man: No Way Home threw something of a wrench in the works with the introduction of the ‘multiverse,' a big ‘ol deus ex machina allowing said universes to overlap. Now, characters from each distinct brand can come into conflict — a new variant of Iron Man, for example, or Patrick Stewart’s twice-dead Professor X, or indeed three Spider-Men — the toys being mashed together by conglomerates desperate to milk as much as they can from an insatiable audience of foamy-mouthed fanboys.

As indicated by the trailer, this is what happens in Morbius. Sort of. For the most part, the movie is a self-contained story which, save for references to the Daily Bugle, could exist in a narrative vacuum: despite what we saw in that early trailer, there's no graffiti acknowledging the existence of Spider-Man, nor does it show much in the way of a sense of place. That is until after the film finishes, and we get the first post-credits scene.

As with the end of No Way Home, when the multiverse rips open and myriad villains threaten to enter Tom Holland's world, the New York skyline tears with a glistening shimmer. Cut to a prison cell: Michael Keaton's Vulture appears outta nowhere, apparently unperplexed by the fact that he has just been plucked from his own earth — and, y'know, his family, for whom his deep care and affection in the first MCU Spidey outting made him a compelling, well-rounded antagonist.

Because this universe has no record of an ‘Adrian Toombes' (another strike: what the fuck happened to the logic of variants?) he's immediately released. But wait! There's another post-credits sting, naturally — and this time, we find Morbius driving very fast on a dimly-lit highway.

Bear in mind that for most of the film, Morbius has been sold as a sympathetic anti-hero at worst, if not a somewhat flawed, virtuous protagonist. His impulse may be to consume human blood, but thanks to his own invention of a blue artificial replacement, he can quell his murderous instincts. He comes to a clearing next to the road: down swoops Vulture in his full MCU costume, which apparently also zipped over to the new world.

Cue Keaton going full Sam Jackson in Iron Man mode. “I've been reading up on your stuff,” he tells Morbius. “I'm putting together a team. You in?”

Yep.

Look, the Sinister Six has been inevitable for as long as Spider-Man has proven the most profitable intellectual property in the world. Sony already set up an attempt in the post-credits scene of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, eventually canned because that film was both a critical and commercial bust. The release of Venom back in 2018 signposted the intent to eventually return to the idea, and it has only been galivanised by the fervid fan reaction to No Way Home, and the reintroduction of Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire's old Spider-Men. As has been said numerous times, nostalgia is a helluva drug; but its close bedfellow, familiarity, is just as potent.

That is, after all, why the egregious mining of intellectual property has become Hollywood's default over the last decade and a half. Iron Man set the ball rolling in 2008, and once Avengers became one of the highest-grossing films of all time four years later, all bets were off: the more franchises you mash together, the more familiar faces that team up or otherwise come into conflict, the more butts you can get on seats. It isn't always an artistically vacant move, and even when it is, it can be enjoyable: No Way Home is a prime example of something you would consider a cynical commercial ploy at best, but you can equally appreciate the presence of demand, and that it was done in a reasonably interesting way.

No one has ever asked for a stand-alone Morbius picture; barely anyone asked for Venom, or a sequel to Venom, or something based on whoever ‘Kraven the Hunter' is. Not only is it cripplingly lazy to chuck IPs at a wall to see what sticks, it is nonsensical, and points to a deleterious lack of ingenuinity in Hollywood's pitching rooms and executive offices, rapidly transforming a once bountiful oasis of creativity into an intellectual desert. Once upon a time, the American movie business existed to challenge audiences, to stimulate debate, to make us feel something on a very fundamental level; now, the metric is finger-pointing recognisability.

Let's hope to god that Morbius flops. Because if it doesn't, that would imply that this is what audiences actually want. And if people really are willing to turn out in their droves and pay fifteen dollars a ticket for the filmic equivalent of an electric fly swatter being delivered, repeatedly, to one's skull, until the racket's wiry grid pattern becomes a permanent fixture: well, perhaps this is the cinema we deserve.

#Michael Keaton #Adrian Toomes #The Vulture #Morbius

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badgersprite · 7 years ago

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Fic: Desiderata (2/?)

Chapter Title: Aftermath

Fandom: Mass Effect

Characters: Miranda, Samara, Oriana, Jacob

Pairing: Miranda/Samara slow burn, strangers to friends to lovers

Story Rating: R

Warnings: Some graphic imagery people may find disturbing, allusions to past child abuse, references to character death.

Chapter Summary: In 2185, Samara joins the crew of the Normandy, and Miranda doesn’t waste time in evaluating her new squadmate. However, Samara soon picks up on the fact that Miranda is distracted by more personal concerns. In 2186, Miranda wakes up to confront the stark reality that awaits her after the war, including the extent of the injuries she suffered in the shuttle crash, and the question of whether anyone else from the Normandy survived.

Author’s Note: From this point on, the story is essentially going to alternate between the present (post-ME3) and ME2, with a few other flashbacks to various relevant points in Miranda’s life interspersed for good measure. Just to clear up any possible confusion, every single Miranda/Samara flashback is taking place in chronological order. All good? No worries!

* * *

A day never went by that Miranda didn’t update The Illusive Man on their status. It was essential that he was kept informed of all material facts at all times. That included any weaknesses Miranda observed in Shepard’s team.

Stopping the Collectors was paramount. Preventing more humans from disappearing was too important to be compromised by anyone. They had to remain on track no matter the cost. Hence, it fell to Miranda to identify whether the very individuals they were recruiting could potentially imperil that.

Fortunately, it seemed their latest acquisition’s integration with the crew was progressing smoothly so far. But that didn’t make her exempt from scrutiny.

Miranda distractedly typed on her datapad as she entered the Starboard Observation Deck, scarcely taking notice of Samara, who sat in the centre of the room with her legs folded beneath her, bathed in a blue biotic glow.

“Jacob told me you’d requested a room with a view,” Miranda said as the doors closed behind her, without raising her head. No thought was spared for whether she might be interrupting Samara’s meditation. That didn’t matter, and it wasn’t her job to care. “I assume this will suffice.”

“Yes,” Samara answered, content. “It is peaceful here.”

“Soundproof walls, for the library,” Miranda offhandedly explained, wishing her room shared the same insulation. Being right next to the mess hall meant she was frequently disturbed by chatter and ambient noise. Genetically enhanced hearing had its drawbacks. “But that’s not pertinent to why I’m here; I’ve nearly finished my mission report to The Illusive Man.”

“You work quickly,” Samara noted, her radiant aura flickering under the light. A shade over three hours had passed since they brought her aboard.

“I work to my ability,” Miranda brushed her comment aside.

In truth, she was running later than she would have liked. Her ordinary routine had been disrupted when she was ordered to sickbay to ensure she wasn’t suffering side-effects from Minagen X3 exposure at the Eclipse hideout.

“I just have a few questions to ask you,” Miranda continued, intent on making up lost time. “Have you seen Kelly Chambers and Doctor Chakwas?”

“Yes, both of them, separately,” said Samara.

“Good.” Miranda checked that off. She would chase them up for their preliminary assessments shortly. By now, they both knew the tight schedule Miranda preferred to operate under, so she didn’t expect they would keep her waiting long. “Do you have any issues working with Cerberus?”

“No,” Samara replied, as still as a statue

“You’re sure?” Miranda pressed, her tone conveying her mild scepticism. Cerberus had been branded a terrorist organisation. She wasn’t familiar with the Justicars and their beliefs but she doubted they looked fondly upon such things.

“I am aware that Cerberus is reputed to have engaged in criminal activity. However, rumours are not evidence. I intend to judge your organisation for myself, not based upon the word of others,” was Samara’s serene response.

“That makes you more reasonable than most,” Miranda remarked. Finally, someone who talked sense.

“Even if I do observe such accounts to be true, it will not interfere. Defending humanity from the Collectors is a noble cause. I could not have allowed myself to join you if my presence could place your mission in jeopardy,” Samara assured her, electing to address Miranda’s justifiable misgivings in their entirety. “I have sworn an oath to Commander Shepard. I am bound to her decisions, and must carry out her orders until I am released from her service.”

“Even if her orders violate your Code?” Miranda queried with an astute quirk of her brow, suspecting that risk factor couldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

“…Yes,” Samara answered without inflection, though her hesitation did not evade Miranda’s shrewd perception. She left that item unmarked, not convinced that she could rely on Samara to remain loyal if such circumstances arose.

“You’re aware that the team we’ve assembled consists of several criminals – assassins, mercenaries, thieves, whatever Jack is,” Miranda commented with casual disregard. She’d long since grown accustomed to the fact that criminal background was one area in which Cerberus didn’t discriminate, though she certainly wouldn’t have complained if they chose to be a little more discerning in future. “If you’re going to work with us, we can’t have any problems.”

“You are asking whether I might pose a danger to those persons, or if I would be tempted to kill them if provoked,” Samara inferred, having anticipated that inquiry. Miranda’s silence confirmed her intent. “I will not.”

“That makes one of us,” Miranda muttered under her breath. They tested her patience sometimes. Samara did not react, maintaining her perfect posture. “Unless you have anything to disclose, that’s all I had to cover.”

“Not at this time. If I become aware of any matter that may affect the mission, you have my word that I will inform you at once,” Samara vowed.

“Glad to hear it,” Miranda approved, holding her to that.

For a woman who had been willing to massacre her way out of a police station a few hours ago, Miranda had to admit Samara was surprisingly easy to deal with. She’d displaced Thane as the quickest, most painless interview to date.

“Do not hesitate to come to me if there is anything else you require,” Samara cordially continued, never changing her tranquil tone of voice. “You will not be imposing. It has been many years since I have worked in concert with others. I would be pleased to lend my assistance wherever I can.”

“I...appreciate that,” Miranda thanked her, an act that did not come naturally to her. She was not in the habit of expressing gratitude; it was a rarity aboard this ship that anyone warranted it. “But I’ve taken up enough of your time. I’ll leave you to it,” said Miranda, her focus already shifting to the dozen other tasks she had on her plate that she planned on finishing by the end of the day.

“I beg your pardon,” Samara spoke up when Miranda turned to exit, prompting her to pause and glance over her shoulder. “I do not believe you ever told me your name,” Samara pointed out, unoffended by the oversight.

Miranda blinked, quickly scouring her memory before realising that Samara wasn’t lying; she couldn’t remember introducing herself at any point. “Miranda Lawson. Operator of the Lazarus Cell,” she remedied her omission.

“Miranda,” Samara gave a respectful nod of her head, bidding her farewell.

Sensing the conversation was at an end, Miranda returned to her office, paying no attention to anyone else as she passed through the crew deck. She sat down at her desk, transferring her draft report from her datapad to her laptop.

Only one section remained to be finished: Miranda’s personal evaluation of Samara. That involved recording her overall opinion of Samara as a prospective teammate, and disclosing to The Illusive Man whether she perceived any risk factors that might make her a liability in certain circumstances.

Miranda revisited their short conversation, replaying it in her mind as she pondered her analysis. Her fingers rapped rhythmically on the desk, contemplating the sole unresolved question on her checklist.

Could she count on Samara not to stab them all in the back if they failed to adhere to her Code, even if violating it was necessary to save human lives? Nobody else on the ship knew what her Code entailed. It was entirely possible they could break it unwittingly, and that Samara might be compelled to take action against them for even the most innocuous of breaches.

However, Miranda wasn’t about to waste The Illusive Man’s time with baseless speculation. It didn’t assist him to be told of a hypothetical scenario which he had surely already foreseen. That wasn’t why he sought Miranda’s judgement.

Anyone could threaten the mission in theory. What he needed to know was whether that danger existed in reality. And did it? For the first time, Miranda wasn’t sure one way or the other. All she had to go on was Samara’s word, given her own observations of the woman were limited up to that point.

Samara had said that Shepard’s orders took priority over her Code when it came to stopping the Collectors. Normally, Miranda was predisposed towards caution, since it was better to be safe than wind up dead, but, in this case, she didn’t detect any deceit in Samara’s assurances of fealty. She didn’t strike her as a liar, nor as someone who lacked the insight to predict her own behaviour.

After a brief pause, Miranda reached her conclusion: ‘There is no indication that Samara’s subservience to the Justicar Code places our operations in jeopardy or compromises her in the field. I have no concerns about working with her.’

Comfortable with that answer, Miranda allowed her mind to wander as she jotted down a concise closing paragraph. It wasn’t often that she gave her companions aboard the Normandy a second thought, beyond their contributions to the mission. Not even Shepard. But Miranda had to admit, having someone like Samara aboard the ship was a refreshing change of pace.

Frankly Miranda wasn’t used to people being so cooperative with her. It was rare that her instructions weren’t met with some form of antagonism. And, unlike Thane, who was equally polite, Samara didn’t ask irrelevant questions or provide ambiguous answers when a simple yes or no would have sufficed.

Needless to say, Miranda was an excellent judge of character. She trusted her instincts. And, when it came to Samara, her first impressions were largely positive. And why wouldn’t they have been?

Samara was intelligent, composed and rational. Focused. Disciplined. Humble. Courteous. Restrained. Temperate. Dedicated, self-sufficient and competent, with nearly a millennia from which to draw wisdom and insight. And, unlike some asari, she didn’t come off as smug or condescending when interacting with other species. Nothing about her demeanour struck Miranda as false or insincere.

Miranda could respect a woman like that. Those were the sorts of qualities she would have liked to have seen in more of her teammates, given the option.

As if to drive home the point, her reflections were immediately shattered by raucous laughter outside her door. Miranda’s jaw tensed at the nuisance, the latest in a long line of repeated incidents. Her tolerance wore thin. She got up and stepped out into the mess hall to see what the fuss was about.

Several crew were hanging around the table, including Garrus, Donnelly and Joker. Judging from one of the gestures she saw, they seemed to be trading raunchy anecdotes. Miranda folded her arms across her chest, annoyed.

“Am I the only one who does any work around here?” she asked, cutting through the conversation like a knife, attracting several stares. “What are you doing? Why are you all sitting around making arses of yourselves like human colonists aren’t being abducted as we speak?”

“It’s called dinner, Miranda. Have you heard of it?” Garrus wryly remarked. It was hard to tell with turians, but he seemed to be smirking. “Some of us even require it to live. Maybe you don’t.”

“You can’t eat while you work?” said Miranda, ignoring his jibes. That was what she did, and she didn’t make a commotion doing it.

“Actually, no, I can’t,” Joker replied, gingerly adjusting himself in his chair to sit more casually. “EDI would lock me out of flight controls if I worked through a mandatory break. She says it ‘affects my performance.’”

“I just worked my third eighteen hour shift this week,” Donnelly pointed out, mildly intimidated though he was by Miranda. “Err, not that I’m complaining.”

Miranda rolled her eyes, recognising that she couldn’t kick them out, even if they were being disruptive. “Fine. Take your break. But if any of you are still here at one minute past the hour, I’m writing you up,” she warned them, making certain they knew she was serious before returning to her office.

“You know, she’s been on so many field missions lately, I almost forgot what a massive bitch she is,” Joker muttered in an aside.

“Did you also forget water is wet?” was Garrus’s reply, eliciting chuckles.

Miranda didn’t care, sighing in irritation and running a hand through her hair when the door closed. Why couldn’t everyone on this ship do her a favour and collectively agree to never talk again? It wasn’t like it would be any great loss.

Come to think of it, maybe Miranda did have good cause to go back to the Starboard Observation Deck sooner rather than later. If nothing else, at least it was quiet there, and she could probably rely on Samara to keep it that way.

Besides, anything Samara had to say would surely be vastly more interesting than the drivel that most people on this ship had to offer, even if that wasn’t a particularly high threshold to exceed.

* * *

“There's no time! We have to get her to the OR!”

Movement.

Miranda's head spun. Groggy. Flat on her back. Racing. Surrounded. People.

She couldn't open her eyes. Couldn’t breathe. Could barely hear. She tried to tell them, but her lips didn't move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn't ask for help.

Or, maybe she did, but the ringing blocked it out.

“We need intravenous antibiotics, stat. And someone get the ultrasound. We've got to get this medi-gel off.”

Where was she? What was happening?

Confusion clouded her thoughts, faint echoes of memory stirring to the surface. Desperation. Desolation. A crash. A crater. A glow. A glimmer of hope.

Samara. Where was Samara?

“Shit. Her pulse is dropping. We're losing her again.”

The world was creeping further and further into darkness. Slipping away. Diminishing. Fading. Waxing and waning like the phases of the moon, or the ebb and flow of the tide. Threatening to surrender her to eternal silence.

Kuh-hhhhh.

What was that noise?

Kuh-hhhhh.

Her ear was still ringing. Loud. So loud that what little else she could hear sounded like it had been crushed beneath the deepest trenches of the ocean.

But she detected speech. Muffled. Scarcely intelligible.

Kuh-hhhhh.

“We may have been too late. Her system is on the verge of shutting down. Even with a full course of antibiotics, I can't promise her body can fight it off.”

Kuh-hhhhh.

“You don't know her. She’s no ordinary person.”

Kuh-hhhhh.

That voice. Who was he?

Kuh-hhhhh.

“You’ve seen the state we’re in. We don’t have enough resources to spare. We have to make the hard choices. Even if we do keep treating her, her chances of survival are...maybe ten percent, at best. Think of how many other lives—”

“Don’t you dare talk about other lives like they’re already worth more than hers! She’s alive right now, and you’re willing to write her off like she’s as good as dead over a one in ten? No way. You can’t give up on her like that!”

Kuh-hhhhh.

Recognition seemed to dance past the edges of her fingertips. Miranda tried to reach for it, but it eluded her grasp. She fell under the waves, swallowed beneath the surface, adrift, stranded on the sea of shadow.

Kuh-hhhhh.

She couldn’t tell if she was awake or asleep. Everything faded in and out like half-remembered dreams. A million faint drops would coalesce into one constant stream of noise, rushing by so fast that she couldn’t keep up, and yet it seemed to be frozen in place, making it appear as though no time was passing at all.

Kuh-hhhhh.

Her mind filled with fragmented visions that just as swiftly scattered into dust and vanished into thin air. Collectors. Cerberus. The Normandy. The Citadel. Shepard. Her father. Oriana. Niket. Jacob. Samara. The war.

Her entire life. Her past. Her future. Everything she ever could have been.

Memories. Fantasies. Reality. She couldn't distinguish one from the other.

Kuh-hhhhh.

Faces leered at her in the mists. Her team. The ghosts of their demise.

She relived it all in gruesome detail, watching the people she’d led to Earth perish under her command. Unable to intervene. Cursed to lament everything she could have done differently. Powerless to put right her mistakes.

Bright eyes turned to ash, incinerated in flames. Skulls exploded under sniper fire. Flesh and bone burst like grapes beneath rampaging brutes. Viscera poured from gaping holes where banshees impaled their victims, lifting them off the ground, ripping their jaws clean off their skulls while they screamed.

Kuh-hhhhh.

“Ms Lawson! Stop! Don’t leave me!”

She turned and looked back, realising a member of her crew had fallen behind, tripped up by the debris, but it was too late. Husks descended on her like a pack of wild dogs, clawing her limb from limb. They literally tore her apart.

Her harrowing howls marred Miranda’s very soul, emblazoned on her conscience like a branding iron. The ringing in her ear grew louder.

Kuh-hhhhh.

“Help me...” the wounded soldier begged her, clutching at her with the last of his strength, strapped into his seat. “Please. Please help me. Please.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry,” she told him, knowing it was futile.

“You could have saved me,” he mumbled, his throat gurgling as his hand clamped down on her wrist. His skin began to rot, every inch of his tissue withering and decomposing. Maggots crawled from his eye sockets, wriggling down to his thin, desiccated lips. “You just left me there. Why didn’t you help?”

Miranda had no answer for him.

Kuh-hhhhh.

“Goddess, heed my prayer.” Miranda emerged from her daze, roused by a familiar presence. “Do not call her to your embrace. Not yet. Not now.”

Miranda felt a tender touch on her left arm, below her shoulder. She tried to stir by flexing the tips of her fingers but to no avail. She couldn't move her hand.

Was this real?

Why couldn't she feel her fingers?

Kuh-hhhhh.

“I came to Earth expecting that you had chosen this to be where I met my end, as the rest of my order met theirs on Thessia. Yet here I stand, unscathed, while Miranda...” Samara’s breath faltered, unable to say it. “I do not understand.”

Kuh-hhhhh.

Miranda heard her speak, yet she could barely comprehend the words that left Samara’s lips. It was as if language held no meaning, or she had forgotten how to make sense of it. Her mind felt so heavy inside her head.

Kuh-hhhhh.

“I beseech you: if you must take a life, take mine. I offer it freely, if it would spare hers. My life for her life. My years for her years. Please. For my many sins, I deserve none of your mercy. But...Goddess, if you would grant me any wish, I beg of you, do not take her. She is young, and has so much...”

Samara's voice faltered. Her words failed her. Her hand was trembling.

Kuh-hhhhh.

Miranda tried to take a breath to tell her it was okay, but couldn’t. She couldn’t even swallow. Her throat hurt. Her limbs felt as heavy as lead.

Kuh-hhhhh.

“Why do you do this? For centuries, I have asked you, and yet you never answer my prayers. Why am I spared? Why do you punish those who least deserve it when I am right here? Why do I survive while all around me perish?”

Kuh-hhhhh.

“My daughters. My bondmate. My Order. My friends. So many innocents. They all suffered for my failure. Yet I linger on. Weak. Weary. And for what purpose?”

Kuh-hhhhh.

“It should have been me...It always should have been me...”

Miranda didn’t hear Samara utter anything more.

Her awareness dissipated into the aether, until it was altogether gone. And yet, when it returned, it felt like only the merest blip of a moment had passed.

Kuh-hhhhh.

That strange sound stirred at the fringes of her consciousness.

Kuh-hhhhh.

What on Earth was that? And why wouldn’t it go away?

Kuh-hhhhh.

No. No, this wasn’t right. She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t lie there like this.

Kuh-hhhhh.

It all came back to her at once. The shuttle crash. The pilot. The wasteland that stretched on forever, toying with her like a predator toyed with its prey.

Kuh-hhhhh.

Hopelessness. Despair. Death loomed over her, an ever-present spectre, taunting her with the imminence of her own impending doom.

Kuh-hhhhh.

There was no escape. No food. No water. No rest. No relief from the pain.

She wouldn’t last another day. Not like this.

Kuh-hhhhh.

Adrenaline coursed through her veins, compelling her not to submit. Not yet. Not now. Not after she had come so far in her desperate fight for survival.

Kuh-hhhhh.

She had to find help. Fast. She would die if she didn’t keep moving. Enough bodies littered the streets to emblazon that harsh fact on her nightmares.

Kuh-hhhhh.

She tried to raise her arm, to no avail. Her cheek twitched, contorting in discomfort. “Nnngh.” Her throat tightened on an obstruction. Was she choking?

Kuh-hhhhh. Kuh-hhhhh.

Instinctively, she resisted, aching to remove the blockage from her windpipe, but her body wouldn’t respond. When her head shifted, it felt like the whole planet collided with the moon, sending her equilibrium spiralling into orbit, unable to gain a sense of balance, of which way was up and which was down.

Kuh-hhhhh. Kuh-hhhhh. Kuh-hhhhh.

Panic mounted in her chest, her heart rate spiking, immobilised, paralysed, unable to break free from what felt like a ten tonne weight on top of her.

Why couldn’t she move? Why couldn’t she breathe?

Kuh-hhhhh. Kuh-hhhhh. Kuh-hhhhh.

“Easy, Miranda,” a voice came to her. A man’s voice. Familiar. Comforting. Someone gently gripped her right hand, as if in a promise that she wasn’t alone. “Take your time. You don’t have to wake up yet.”

“Mmnh....” Her fingers tensed. She couldn’t open her eyelids.

Kuh-hhhhh. Kuh-hhhhh.

“It’s alright,” her nameless vigilant assured her, sensing her distress. “Don’t worry about anything. You’re safe now. And you’re going to be okay.”

Strangely, when he said it with such softness, she believed him.

Kuh-hhhhh.

“I’m right here,” he whispered to her, almost too quiet to hear beneath the ringing that lingered unrelenting in her ear. His thumb stroked the back of her hand. “And I’ll be by your side when you wake up later. I promise.”

Tentative though she was, she allowed her body to relax and sink into the clouds, trusting that someone was watching over her, and wouldn’t let her go.

Kuh-hhhhh.

A sense of peace emanated from her core, chasing away the restlessness.

And then all was still.

Until...

Kuh-hhhhh.

Light.

White light.

Kuh-hhhhh.

Why was it so bright?

Kuh-hhhhh.

That noise was back, but it was fainter now.

Kuh-hhhhh.

Her right eye fluttered open. An indistinguishable haze filled her sight.

Kuh-hhhhh.

She blinked, and blinked again, the blur above her gradually coming into focus.

Kuh-hhhhh.

A ceiling. White walls chipped and degraded, but intact. Beams of sunlight filtered in though a window, maybe ten feet away. It was dim and dull, but it hurt to be met with the rays. Miranda groaned and avoided looking that way until her vision adjusted, keeping her head squarely tilted to the right.

After being on the run from Cerberus, assessing her surroundings was an instinct. It didn't matter that Miranda's skull was pounding; her addled mind figured out exactly where she was almost as soon as she took it in.

She was in a hospital. That didn't take a genius to deduce. A quick glance confirmed that other patients shared this makeshift medical ward. There were eight, including her, crammed into the one room.

There was a drip hooked into her arm, and something was covering her left eye.

Kuh-hhhhh.

Ah. That explained the sound. Three patients had ventilators beside their beds.

Not everyone was comatose, though. She made eye-contact with the patient directly across from her, but he rolled onto his side and went back to sleep, ignoring her. Apparently he wasn’t in the mood to answer her queries.

Miranda wasn't intubated, but there was something attached to her nose. A nasal cannula? A quick touch confirmed her suspicion as correct. Why did she need one of those? She wasn't having any trouble breathing.

She winced, cobwebs and a pulsing headache preventing her mind from operating at full speed as she tried to piece together what had happened. She couldn't remember, or differentiate the memories from the dreams.

Ugh. What time was it? And what day? She couldn't see a clock anywhere.

Miranda attempted to get up, but the only response from her nervous system was pain, which forced her to abandon that idea before she had moved more than a few muscles. Every bone in her body hurt. Some worse than others.

Then it dawned on her.

Visions returned to her in a flood. Her last waking moments emerged from the fog. She remembered Samara gathering her in her arms, rescuing her, like something out of a fantasy.

Miranda inhaled sharply. There was no way that could have been real. The odds of Samara finding her were a million to one. Smaller, actually. But there Miranda lay, in a hospital bed. How could she explain that, if not by Samara’s intervention? By all rights, she should have been dead.

Come to think of it, how was she alive?

Miranda glanced down, keen to evaluate her condition. She hadn't been able to properly examine any of her injuries after the crash, much less tend to them. Still, she was under no illusions about how serious her wounds had been. She didn't imagine the damage to her limbs had miraculously healed overnight.

Her right arm was fine, hooked into a drip and a heart monitor. She couldn't see either of her legs well enough for her liking, what with both of them covered by the blanket, which was a little frustrating. But they seemed okay.

Her left arm was...

Miranda’s eye widened, and her mouth went dry.

She didn't have a left arm. Not anymore. It was cut off above the elbow.

...Oh.

Shaking off her shock, Miranda tried to inspect the amputation site, but her shoulder ached too much to raise even that reduced weight off the bed. The stump at the end of her bicep was wrapped up in a dressing. There were some slight blood stains on the bandages. Leakage. Seepage, from the stitches.

Huh. Well...this was new.

Once she got over her initial stunned reaction, Miranda had to confess that this outcome wasn’t unexpected, given the mangled state her arm had been in before she lost consciousness. It had gone too many days without treatment. For the rest of her injures, it was much harder to predict how bad they might be.

She couldn't hear out of her left ear, or see out of her left eye. A definitive diagnosis as to why would have been preferable. In light of her missing limb, Miranda was braced for the worst. God, her face stung on that side, though.

She reached up to touch her brow, wincing when her fingers met gauze. It covered her eye, her ear, her cheek down to her mouth. That was discouraging.

If there was one thing Miranda detested, it was feeling powerless – like she wasn't in control, and couldn’t do anything to seize it. Being in the dark about the status of her own body? Yeah, that amounted to being out of her comfort zone.

She didn't know a damn thing about where she was or how she'd gotten there or how many days had passed. All she could remember was Samara's voice, and the shape of her silhouette above her as she lifted Miranda up out of the crater.

Was it true? Had Samara really discovered Miranda's broken body? Or was that encounter nothing more than a figment of her imagination as she lay exhausted, on the verge of death? They’d spent a lot of time together on the Normandy, more than any of the others knew. If Miranda was going to conjure up false visions of a saviour, Samara would have been a leading candidate.

Either way, the only thing Miranda was sure of was that she had to get out of that bed as fast as possible. Other mysteries could wait. She had to get back out there. She had to know what kind of world she'd awoken to, and find out if anyone else from the Normandy had escaped the battle with their lives.

Shepard. Jacob. Samara. Everyone. Anyone.

Miranda tensed, her throat tightening on mounting bile and dread.

When they stood together for that photo in Shepard’s apartment, Miranda knew chances were slim that she would live to take another. At most, only a scant few of those faces would remain after the dust settled. It was simple maths.

Miranda had come to Earth certain that she wouldn’t be counted among the lucky ones. It was too much to expect that they’d win, let alone survive. She’d accepted her death long before she ever set foot on the battlefield.

Yet there she was, on the other side of the vanishing point. So many things that should have killed her...somehow hadn’t. She was still here.

But what about the others?

If Miranda was alive, despite the odds, did that mean...?

No. She couldn’t be the only one left. She’d already lost her whole team. She couldn’t go through that again. Not with them. She just...She just couldn’t.

Suddenly, a shadow at the foot of her bed caught her attention.

Miranda turned her head, causing the figure to jump, startled by her movement. A medic stood there, a hand to her heart. Miranda hadn’t heard her enter, thanks to the constant piercing tinnitus that resonated in her right ear.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise you were awake,” said the woman, calming her nerves after that surprise. Miranda scanned the stranger, gauging her. She didn't look like a doctor or nurse, nor a member of the military. A volunteer? “Can you hear me?” the medic asked. A fair question, if she’d been out for a while.

“Yes,” Miranda answered, trailing into a cough. Her voice sounded different, unfamiliar to her. Raspy. Scratchy. Her throat was sore, which indicated a tube must have been inserted recently. It wasn't pleasant. She cleared away the discomfort before continuing. “But you’ll have to speak up. My ear’s ringing.”

It was good to hear herself say that, even if her left side did seem deaf as a post. At least her mental faculties were more intact than her body.

“Wonderful. I'll go and fetch the—“

“Before you say anything else, I need information. Don't interrupt me. Just tell me what I want to know. And keep it concise,” Miranda commanded brusquely, despite her fatigue slowing her speech, determined to gain insight into her current circumstances. That was where Miranda was in her element.

“Uh...okay?” the medic stammered, evidently compelled to comply. Even confined to a hospital bed, Miranda possessed that air of authority that prompted obedience. Good to know she hadn't lost that trait.

“We're still in London, correct?” Miranda ventured, believing it safe to assume they wouldn’t have flown her elsewhere.

“Yes. You're in St. Mary's,” the medic confirmed.

“St...What...?” Miranda wondered if she’d misheard. Bloody hell. Just how short of a distance had she covered in her efforts to crawl away from the crash site?

The medic nodded. “Given the high number of casualties, our first step was to occupy the centre of London and reopen as many medical facilities as we could. For the most part our efforts have paid off.”

“The most part?” Miranda sharply echoed. That was a faint endorsement.

The woman sighed. “In truth, most hospitals are in ruins. The majority of people who need help are out on the street in field hospitals because we're short of beds. But you were a high priority patient. So it’s...lucky you were so unlucky.”

Miranda chose not to respond to that. “How long have I been here?”

“A week, I believe,” the young woman replied. “You've made a remarkable recovery. Given how poorly you were when you arrived...well, the average person who came to us in your condition would have been out far longer,” she said, oblivious to the guarded expression her words elicited.

The average person would have been dead. But Miranda wasn’t average.

Her genetic code gave her the edge. It always did. There was no mistaking that it was the sole reason she had withstood her wounds. Her father’s perpetual legacy. It made it hard to process the appropriate reaction. She couldn’t feel proud, since she couldn’t take credit for it. So was she supposed to feel guilty that other people didn’t have the same undeserved advantages? She didn’t.

Perhaps that ambivalence was why Miranda couldn’t find it in her to form any particular emotional response to her survival at all. Not happy. Not sad.

She didn’t feel anything. It just...

It was what it was.

“Yes, that’s right, your chart says you've been here for eight nights, Ms Lawson,” the medic continued. “I remember when they brought you in. Even a few minutes later and you would have...” She trailed off, evidently reconsidering whether it was wise to disclose that to a patient who might find that news distressing. “All I can say is thank God Justicar Samara found you when she did.”

At her name, Miranda froze.

“What?” she spoke breathlessly, not daring to believe it.

“Justicar Samara,” the woman eagerly repeated. “She's incredible. Her efforts to look for survivors out beyond where anyone else dares to tread have been tireless. Dozens of people owe their lives to her. Hundreds, even.”

“...Including me,” Miranda quietly acknowledged. The medic didn’t address that, but it was etched on her face that that was beyond dispute. "Where is she?”

“Out there, as always,” the medic told her, gesturing to the window, and the destruction beyond. “She said her Code demands that she must not rest while she is capable of averting the suffering of innocents. Or words to that effect.”

A relieved smile slowly unfurled across Miranda’s lips, all lingering incredulity evaporating. Yep. That was definitely Samara.

Miranda was a woman of facts, not emotions, but words couldn’t describe how she felt then, rendered speechless to realise that it hadn’t been a dream. It was confirmed. Samara was alive. Miranda wasn't alone.

Honestly, that meant far more to her than her own survival ever would. It wasn’t even close. Miranda couldn’t be happy for own sake. But for Samara? For her friend? Bloody oath, she could. And she was. No confusion. No ambivalence.

“Don't feel too bad that she’s not here,” a warm voice followed from the doorway. She recognised it instantly. Miranda would have sworn her heart stopped when she heard him, only to start again when she spied him standing in the corridor, watching her contentedly. “She stayed as long as she could."

The sheer gratitude that coursed through her veins at the sight of him was beyond compare, almost beyond comprehension. “Jacob...”

He flicked his fingers at her, halfway between a wave and a salute. “Hey.”

In that moment, she was glad that she had never been the most expressive individual. Were she any different, Miranda didn't imagine her response to seeing Jacob there unharmed would have been in any way dignified.

“It's okay. You don't have to say anything,” Jacob assured her.

“Right,” Miranda murmured through the gravel in her throat. He didn't need to hear it because Jacob already knew. Everything she felt now was no doubt exactly what he’d experienced when the doctors told him Miranda was going to make it.

Words weren't essential. They couldn't tell each other anything they didn't already understand. And Jacob knew Miranda better than to permit redundancy.

“Ugh. My face hurts,” Miranda half-groaned, recovering the wherewithal to speak, briefly touching her bandage between her cheekbone and her eye.

Jacob snorted as he stepped inside. “Yeah, you think?”

Miranda sent him a feigned glare as he approached. In retrospect, it was probably best to try not to smile until her burns healed a bit. “Could you leave us?” she addressed the medic. She and Jacob had a lot to discuss. Privately.

“Um, now that you're awake, I should call the doctor in to see you.” Aside from getting a full update on her health, waking up likely meant they would be keen to shuttle Miranda out of there as soon as they could manage it. After all, the medic had made it plain that they needed every available bed they could get.

“Don't worry about that,” Jacob said, casually folding his arms across his chest. “I won't be in your way for very long, I promise. Just give us thirty minutes to catch up. That's all we need.” Miranda nodded, silently vouching for that. Perhaps some people would have wanted longer, but half an hour would suffice.

Jacob and Miranda had been friends for...was it coming up on four years now? Perhaps that wasn’t significant to an ordinary person, but that was the longest continuous bond Miranda had formed with anyone, by quite a large margin.

He wouldn't sugarcoat the truth or tiptoe around the facts. Not for Miranda. He understood her like few others did, if any. No matter what she asked him and no matter how hard the reality was to confront, she knew she would get an answer she could trust. For that reason, Jacob was exactly the right person to field her myriad questions, and there was no one she'd rather hear it from.

“Well, alright,” the medic acquiesced, not cruel enough to deprive them of their reunion. Friendly faces were a rare thing following the devastation the Reapers had left in their wake. It was only humane to grant them this small solace.

The medic stepped out into the hallway, leaving the two of them alone. Well, aside from the other patients. But Miranda didn't care if they eavesdropped.

“So what happened to you?” Jacob ventured first, taking up a seat on the right side of Miranda's bed, which was closest to the door. It must have plagued his mind ever since Samara found her out in the wasteland.

“I got caught in a shuttle crash. The Reaper guarding the Conduit shot us out of the sky,” Miranda calmly filled in the blanks, piecing together the seconds before the explosion. “If it had hit us straight on, I doubt I'd be here. Luckily, it just grazed the pilot's side. Her body must have shielded me from the blast.” Miranda paused, glancing down at her left arm. “Well, not all of it, obviously.”

Jacob chose not to indulge that remark. “I'm going to take a wild guess and say your landing didn't go too smoothly either.”

“Can't say. Wasn't conscious,” Miranda spoke frankly, forcing herself to sit partially upright, resting her back against the headboard. Sore as she was, even that minor adjustment hurt. Jacob knew her too well to bother offering assistance, correctly anticipating that she would have refused. “Given how the shuttle looked when I woke up, I'd say that's an understatement.”

“I can imagine,” Jacob mumbled, plainly drawing his own conclusions about the severity of the crash. The proof was permanently scarred into Miranda’s flesh. “How in the hell did you survive out there for days in the state you were in?”

“With great difficulty,” Miranda muttered, gingerly clutching her shoulder.

Jacob shook his head at her in amazement, not quite ready to laugh but managing to summon a small smile. “Somebody should have warned the Reapers it takes more than that to keep Miranda Lawson down.”

“Not much more,” Miranda conceded. This had nearly been enough.

“Yeah, but you made it. Who cares about anything else?” he said, resting his hand on her uninjured shoulder. And he was right, she supposed.

There was nothing to gain from fixating on how close she’d come to death, or on why so many others had been slain while she hadn’t. What mattered was that she'd pulled through. Now, she had to focus on more pressing concerns.

For starters... “...What happened?” Miranda asked him, keen to unravel the many facets of the recent past that remained totally shrouded to her. “How did it end? I was knocked out; I didn't see anything but the aftermath.”

“I don't know for sure. Nobody does. I'll tell you everything I've heard, though.” Jacob leaned forward in his seat, tenting his fingers together. “The Reapers were destroyed, right down to the last husk. I bet you figured that out days ago. But it wasn't without a cost.” He took a deep breath before reluctantly expanding on that ominous statement. “Something went wrong; the Crucible backfired.”

“Backfired?” Miranda repeated, arching the eyebrow that wasn't covered in gauze at his ambiguity. Jacob’s gaze was evasive. “Tell me,” she urged.

He shook his head, his expression grim. He looked tired. Resigned, even.

“There was this...explosion of energy from the Citadel. Pretty much any ships that couldn't get out of Earth's orbit in time got annihilated. And on the ground? I saw entire buildings obliterated, like that.” He snapped his fingers to illustrate what he’d witnessed. “Hell, people too. When the wave hit, they just...disintegrated. All we find are their shadows. Sometimes not even that.”

“I don't understand,” Miranda interjected, struggling to wrap her head around this. “I wasn’t that far from the Conduit. We were all right below the Crucible. If it caused that level of destruction, how is it that any of us survived?”

“Don't ask me; you're the smart one.” Jacob shrugged.

“I was being rhetorical, but you seriously can’t even volunteer a theory?” Miranda retorted, not particularly impressed by his blase response.

“I don’t know. It only seemed to get people who were out in the open. Maybe it's because you were sheltered by the shuttle, maybe not. But we didn’t...” Jacob hesitated, his posture drooping, staring at his feet. “Nobody thought anyone was left after that. Not where you were. Not when we saw whole buildings fry.”

Miranda regarded him strangely, not sure what he was getting at.

“Samara was the only one who looked for people that close to ground zero. For a while, anyway,” Jacob elaborated, audibly regretting his role in that. “It wasn’t until she started bringing back survivors that our rescue teams joined her.”

A shiver ran down Miranda’s spine. “You mean me?”

“Nah, you weren’t the first she found.” Jacob lifted his head, grateful for Samara’s persistence in the face of scepticism. “But it makes me wonder how many people died because nobody listened to her. Because you could have been one of them,” he finished, remorse glinting in his eyes, blaming himself for having written Miranda off when she was out there on her own that entire time.

Miranda swallowed pensively. So that was why she had crawled for so long without any sign of another living soul. No shuttles. No tanks. No voices.

If not for Samara, nobody would have come for her.

Miranda already knew she owed Samara her life, but it made her wonder. Maybe it wasn’t coincidence that she had stumbled upon her. Samara would never have searched for her to the detriment of anyone else, of course, but maybe she had deliberately concentrated on scouring the areas near where Miranda was last seen, committed to either finding her, or else confirming her demise.

That was the sort of thing friends did for one another, wasn’t it?

“That doesn’t answer my question, though,” Miranda pointed out, staying focused. “A shockwave that powerful should have killed everyone in London. Surely somebody can explain why we aren’t all a pile of ash right now?”

“No, they can’t, and I don’t care,” he countered, his tone taking Miranda aback. “We're stretching ourselves thin enough as it is. We can’t even begin to count the dead, much less figure out why some died and others didn't. Scientists can debate it and get their PhDs off the back of it later, I guess. But I don't give a rat's ass. Not when I'm still pulling the corpses out of the mud.”

“Fair point,” Miranda acknowledged. They were in crisis. Their cycle had nearly ended, and they were all who were left to pick up the pieces. There were crucial priorities to contend with before they could ponder more abstract issues.

“Sorry. You had every right to ask. I'm just...” Jacob trailed off, shaken by the horrific events he'd been exposed to over the past fortnight. He soon elected to get back to business rather than ruminate on it. “Most of our galactic forces were wiped out, but we have a lot of folks stranded here from every species. Well, every species except the geth,” he corrected himself. “There are no geth.”

Miranda’s brow creased. “No geth?” He didn't say, 'All the geth are dead,' or 'We haven't found any geth.' Jacob's exact words were, 'There are no geth.'

No ships. No platforms. No programs. Nothing.

“How does an entire species cease to exist?” Miranda asked, baffled by the sweeping implication. “You're telling me they've been...what, erased?”

“Yeah, that about covers it,” Jacob matter-of-factly confirmed. “Whatever the Crucible did to the Reapers must have taken them out as well,” he reasoned, though it was clearly speculation on his part. “Shame, too. You know I was never the biggest fan of the geth, given my experiences, but we could have used them. I mean, they can work non-stop and they don't tire or get sick or need to eat.”

“But the Reapers are gone,” Miranda pressed.

“All of them. For sure,” he gave his word.

At that, Miranda dared to release some of her tension, relaxing against the wall behind her. Perhaps it was harsh to deem the loss of the geth insignificant but, when it came to stopping the Reapers, no sacrifice was too extreme.

If one species had to die in order to preserve the fate of every other species that would ever come to exist in this galaxy, then that was a price that had to be paid. Even if that meant wiping out humanity, Miranda would have said the same thing. They all knew that peace would come at a grave cost, if it would come at all. What mattered now was protecting those who had prevailed.

“Good,” Miranda said, bolstered by the knowledge that they were safe from any further cosmic threat. “With the Reapers exterminated, we should see an influx of aid from the other homeworlds. Yes, they have their own problems, but they can afford to send it. There are survivors from every Council race here; they have an obligation to provide disaster relief, if not for us then for them.”

“Miranda...” Jacob sombrely cut her off, looking her square in the eye, bearing a heavy burden. “The Crucible didn't just destroy the Reapers and the geth. It also destroyed the mass relays. They have no way of getting to us.”

His answer made Miranda's blood run cold. The mass relays? No. That couldn’t be right. Oriana was on Horizon, thousands of light years from Earth. Without the mass relays, how would Miranda ever get there? How could they...?

Oh, God. If the mass relays had been destroyed, then...

“Jacob. The Alpha relay...” Miranda felt her heart pounding, the most horrible thought imaginable stirring chaos in her mind. “When the asteroid hit it, it took out an entire system. If the Crucible did that to every other relay—“

“No. That didn't happen,” he assured her, firmly quashing her fears.

“How do you know?” she challenged through gritted teeth.

“Because we’ve received messages from other systems through the comm buoys, though the network is shot to shit so bandwidth is extremely limited. By all accounts, only ships that were very close to the mass relays when they blew apart were destroyed. Your sister should be fine,” he told her.

Miranda ran her hand through her hair amid a heavy sigh, willing an unshed tear not to trickle from her eye. If all but a few ships were intact then that meant Oriana shouldn't have been in any danger. For that, she was infinitely thankful.

Nothing was more terrifying to her than the prospect of life without Oriana.

“Hey, it's okay.” Jacob clutched her right arm in reassurance. “I know. Believe me, I do,” he murmured, fully grasping what she was going through.

Of course, Miranda thought. Jacob had a child on the way. A child who, without the mass relays to bridge those colossal distances, Jacob might never get to see, or speak to, or hold in his arms. This must have been killing him.

If only they'd spent more time perfecting the Crucible, gathering more intel—

Miranda stopped, regaining her wits before grief got the better of her composure. Facts first. Feelings could wait. Now was not the time to let paralysis set in.

“What about the others?” Miranda spoke up, her tone professional, endeavouring to leave her fear of being separated from her sister temporarily to one side. “Samara's alive. I know that much.” Miranda counted her blessings on that, thinking back on their conversations on the Normandy, and the rapport that had evolved between them. “How is she? Does she seem alright to you?”

“If I was half as strong as she was, I’d be doing good. Nothing bends her. Nothing breaks her,” Jacob said, admiring her for that. Miranda gave a short nod. It meant a lot to know Samara was okay, not just physically but emotionally, to the extent that anyone could be given what they’d endured.

“Did she say when she’ll be back?” Miranda wondered, eager to see her. Not only was Samara her closest friend from the Normandy apart from Jacob, but she owed Samara her life. That was a debt that could never be repaid.

“No, she never mentioned. Both of us are always coming and going without notice. I haven't bumped into her in a few days, though,” Jacob nonchalantly answered, unable to give specifics. Miranda's features twinged beneath her bandages. “Don't take that as a bad sign. It just means she's busy rescuing people.”

That response wasn't sufficient to dismiss Miranda's apprehension, but she chose not to dwell on it. Maybe Jacob was right; maybe Samara had been visiting her bedside every day, just at times when Jacob wasn’t around.

“Have you found anyone else?” Miranda asked.

“From our crew? No.” He shook his head. “I mean, there's Wrex from the original Normandy. He's keeping the krogan in line. And, uh, you know...I can't confirm anything, because I haven't heard from her, but I have to figure Kasumi's fine. She never got anywhere near the fight. She just worked on the Crucible. Other than that, everyone else we know is MIA for the time being.”

“But no confirmed deaths?” Miranda noted, inferring as much.

“We haven't found any bodies. Or, if we have, we haven't identified them.” Jacob's voice didn't betray it, but Miranda could tell he was keeping the faith that the others would turn up alive. Maybe he hadn't believed it before, but Miranda's survival appeared to have rekindled his hope for the best.

“...Alright, then.” Miranda nodded, not so heartless as to deny him that small mercy, even if she knew it wasn’t realistic. With anyone else, she would have been brutally honest, but she cared about Jacob too much.

Besides, Earth was a big planet, and there were thousands of ships strewn throughout the solar system. Other members of their old crew could be out there, living on stored food and water, too far away to have made contact. Not all of them, of course. But one or two, maybe. That was better than zero.

...Great, now Miranda was starting to fool herself into becoming a bloody blind optimist too. False hope didn't suit her.

“Yeah, well, that's half the story, anyway.” Jacob muttered humourlessly, earning a curious glance from Miranda. “When I say everyone is MIA, that’s...You should know, Admiral Hackett confirmed that Commander Shepard was in the Crucible when it fired. Right at the centre of the blast. Admiral Anderson too.”

“Makes sense,” said Miranda. "I always thought that, if anyone was going to stop the Reapers, Shepard would be the one to do it. That’s what she does.”

“I know. That’s not why I’m telling you.” The sobriety on his face spoke volumes. She hadn't been awake when the wave of destruction devastated the city. She hadn't seen what he had. “Believe me, I don't say this lightly: there is no way anybody could have survived being on the Citadel when it went off.”

“Isn’t that what you thought about me too?” Miranda pointed out. “Shepard has accomplished things nobody thought she could before. She can’t...”

Jacob didn’t argue with her. He didn’t have to. His stark silence said it all.

The gravity of the situation rapidly sank in. Jacob wasn’t lying.

Miranda’s stomach churned, triggering a sharp pain in her chest. So, Shepard was gone. That was...difficult to comprehend, despite the fact that Miranda knew firsthand that Shepard's life could be snuffed out as easily as anyone else's.

Shepard had died once before. So why didn't the possibility of that happening again seem real? It wasn't a surprise. It wasn't unexpected. But it felt wrong.

Shepard was dead. Miranda couldn't help but feel like the universe had been fundamentally and irrevocably diminished. Yet the Earth was spinning normally. Life went on. The sun rose and fell as if nothing had been lost. But it had.

People like Shepard were...

No. There were no other people like Shepard.

“I'm afraid that's not all.” Jacob clasped his hands together, prepared to deliver more bad news. Miranda signalled for him to go on. Things could hardly get any worse than what he’d already told her, could they? “The Normandy is lost.”

Miranda paled. “Lost?” she said, struck to the core by his admission.

Miranda was as far from sentimental as could be, but it didn't seem possible. Miranda had gone into the fight expecting to die, and she had absolutely believed that every last member of the crew would willingly make the same sacrifice if it came to that. But to lose the ship hurt more than she'd anticipated.

And then there was EDI.

People often talked about ships as if they had a mind of their own. The Normandy actually did. Miranda had never previously believed that an AI should be considered a person, but EDI was the counterargument that had altered that view. Irrespective of any abstract concepts of what constituted ‘life’, EDI was unique – an individual unlike anyone else, before or since.

After everything the Normandy had steered them through during the suicide mission, this was how it ended? It wasn’t fair. And what about Joker? What about Garrus? Liara? Tali? Chakwas? Daniels? Donnelly? Adams? Traynor? Vega? Cortez? Losing EDI was bad enough, but everyone stationed aboard—

“Lost as in lost,” Jacob intervened, sensing she had assumed the worst. “We have no idea where it is, and we haven't heard a peep. They've just...vanished,” he said, not sure what to make of that. “No wreckage, no bodies that we know of. But we lost all communication with it after the Crucible fired.”

“What?” Miranda's one-eyed stare narrowed in abject confusion. “They're linked to Hackett’s ship by quantum entanglement. If the Normandy exists at any point in the universe and has power, they should be capable of sending messages.”

“Yeah, but they aren't, though.” Jacob reiterated, stumped for an explanation. “I don't know what else to tell you. Until we hear otherwise, that's the situation.”

That didn’t exactly lend itself to a positive interpretation. Either the Normandy had been destroyed, or it was too damaged to function, which was as good as a death sentence unless they’d landed on Earth. There was nothing to say where they might have ended up, or if anyone would ever discover the wreckage.

“What about me?” Miranda asked at last, unafraid to broach that grisly subject. Gingerly, she pushed herself forward into a proper sitting position, wincing as she did so, adjusting to only having one arm with which to balance her weight.

“Take it easy; you just woke up,” Jacob noted, respecting her space, but keeping watch in case she was expecting too much from herself too fast.

“I can manage,” Miranda assured him somewhat stonily, resenting her frailty. She hated being sidelined, which made being injured an inconvenient state of affairs. The sooner she bounced back and could go contribute something useful, the better. Jacob was glad to see she hadn't changed. “How am I?”

“You weren't doing so hot when Samara brought you in,” Jacob admitted, a shadow momentarily flickering across his features. “Nothing the docs couldn't handle, though. They patched you up nicely.”

Miranda fixed him with a stern look. “Jacob, you do realise that I have, in fact, noticed my arm is missing?” she deadpanned, unimpressed by his efforts to soften the blow. “I have tinnitus in one ear, I'm deaf in the other, and half my face hurts like hell. Don’t coddle me; save your understatement for someone else.”

Jacob chuckled at her scolding. Of course Miranda didn't need to be comforted. She wanted to hear the full extent of the damage she'd sustained in the crash, and her prognosis for how quickly she would recuperate.

“Well, your face hurts because you suffered some nasty burns there, plus minor ones to other parts of your body. But you knew that,” Jacob straightforwardly began, aware that Miranda would rather be slapped hard by reality than patronised. “Could have been a lot worse, but your eye wasn't so lucky.”

“I probably should have mentioned, I think I got shot there at one stage,” Miranda casually chimed in, as if they were discussing the weather.

“That must be why it couldn't be saved. They had to remove it.” Miranda nodded, perfectly fine with that. “You haven't got much of an ear on that side either. A lot of the outer cartilage was burned off, and your eardrum was perforated. I'm guessing that's the ear you meant when you said you're deaf on one side.”

“Sorry, can you repeat that?” Miranda facetiously cupped her intact ear.

Jacob snorted, lightly punching her in the arm. “Fuck off. I’m just going to assume I always need to talk to you from the right from now on.”

“At least I finally know what my good side is. It was always a curse being so symmetrical,” Miranda dryly quipped, unfazed. Jacob smirked, glad to see she was taking it in stride. He probably hadn't expected anything different.

“You tore your rotator cuff in your left shoulder. That'll take some healing,” Jacob continued, listing off everything he could remember. “As for the rest of the arm, well...the problem was, by the time they got to it, infection had already set in. Your arm was basically dead below the elbow. Amputation was the only course.”

“I anticipated that,” Miranda acknowledged. "I could have lost a lot more.”

"Yeah, you could. But your forearm got twisted around so much that it had virtually detached from your body. That might have been what saved you,” Jacob postulated. “Anyway, it's not going to hinder you in the long run. You know how far cybernetic limbs have come in the last couple of years.”

“Not by choice, but Kai Leng was quite eager to acquaint me with his enhancements. But prosthetics can wait,” Miranda filled in on his behalf. With Earth in disarray and countless casualties, that wasn't a priority. “Keep going,” Miranda encouraged, not forgetting that there was more. She wanted a full report, from head to toe. “How are my legs?”

“Better than the rest of you,” Jacob summarised. “Your right one is fine, but your left knee is busted – torn ligaments, stuff like that. Problem is, that falls under the 'elective' category. Hopefully, the worst of it will heal up by itself. But, put it this way, I wouldn't make plans to start wearing heels again any time soon.”

“Slap a pair of crutches on me and I'll be right as rain,” Miranda practically scoffed as she spoke. A busted knee barely warranted mentioning after all of that. “Well, one crutch,” Miranda belatedly added.

Jacob’s expression shifted, like he couldn’t decide whether to be amused or bemused. “This isn’t a criticism, but...you’re processing all of this way too well.”

“Why shouldn’t I? It’s not like I can change what happened to me,” Miranda noted with a nonchalant shrug, perplexed by the implication that her reaction ought to be otherwise. “Besides, disability and disfigurement are hardly the end of the world. They’re a fact of life that have formed part of the human experience for as long as there have been humans. There’s no need to be melodramatic.”

“Maybe not, but I think you owe me an apology for snapping at me before. You're the one brushing off these injuries like they're nothing,” Jacob commented, crossing his arms, not that he was shocked by her hypocrisy.

“They are nothing. I’m fine,” Miranda insisted.

“Whatever you say, Two-Face,” Jacob countered.

Miranda dismissively rolled her eye. “Okay, so my left side isn't what it used to be. So what? I'll cope. Other than what you've already told me, what else is there to keep me here? Superficial cuts and burns?”

All levity fell from Jacob's face, his complexion turning pale grey.

“What?” Miranda prompted at his stark silence, beginning to grow annoyed.

“...Miranda, you had sepsis,” Jacob solemnly revealed, his features deadly serious. He swallowed, finding it hard to confront those stomach-churning memories. “You’re recovering, but you...You nearly went into organ failure.”

His words were strikingly bleak, and his directness left Miranda appropriately chastened. She hadn't realised it was that dire. For the first time, Miranda grasped just how terrified Jacob had been that he was going to watch her die.

“Samara told me you’d stopped breathing when she got you to the paramedics,” Jacob went on, dodging her gaze, no longer able to deny how close he’d come to burying his best friend. “Any slower, and it might have been too late to resuscitate you. Hell, even after you got out of surgery, you were so far gone that the doctors were going to take you off life support, until Samara stepped in.”

Miranda creased her brow. “Stepped in how?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, suddenly remembering the bitter taste of ash and dust in her throat.

“She said, if they stopped your treatment, they would be sentencing you to certain death. Her Code would consider that attempted murder, and she would be compelled to prevent it, by any means,” he recounted, oblivious to the bewildered look that befell Miranda. “I made sure they knew she wasn’t joking.”

Miranda glanced aside, troubled. Her insight into Samara’s Code was limited, but...threatening doctors didn’t sound like something she would do. Then again, Samara would never act other than in strict accordance with the Code, much less misrepresent it. Maybe Miranda had misjudged its tenets.

“That’s three,” Miranda softly muttered, prompting Jacob to utter a confused hum, not following her. “Three things Samara did to save my life.”

“Yeah, well, you ever scare me like that again and you’re gonna answer to my left hook,” he warned, with the kind of tone that only came from a genuine bond. “Seriously, the way you stress me out can't be good for my heart.”

“Really? Mine's fine,” Miranda remarked, tilting her head at the monitor as proof.

“One of these days you're going to be the one worrying about me. And when that day comes, you're going to be – what would you call it? – a blubbering wreck,” he playfully teased her, imitating her accent, poorly.

“First off, that was cockney; that’s not even close to how I sound. And, secondly, I don't think 'blubbering' is in my genetic sequence,” she replied.

“Liar.” Jacob wore a knowing smirk, wagging a finger at her. “I was there on Illium, when Shepard talked you into meeting your little sister.”

“Clearly you're an unreliable witness,” Miranda persisted with a mock huff. “I recall being perfectly composed that entire time.”

“Your concussion must have been worse than I thought. Looks like your memory isn't quite as sharp as it used to be,” he joked, tapping her lightly on the head. “Excuse me, nurse, the patient is exhibiting signs of delusional thinking—“

“Get out of it.” Miranda swiftly swatted his hand away. “On second thought, Jacob, I can guarantee that I won't be a blubbering wreck if you end up on an operating table because, at this rate, I'm going to be the one who put you there.”

Jacob snickered. “I’d deserve it, too, but it’d be worth it.”

Miranda tried to feign vexation, but she couldn’t. Having Jacob’s company made a world of difference in these dark times. Their relationship had never been simple, especially after they broke up, but after all they'd been through together they were practically family, with all the ups and downs that entailed.

As a consequence of her upbringing, companionship was exceptionally rare for Miranda. In thirty-six years, there were no more than five people with whom Miranda could say she had formed any kind of intimate personal connection: Niket, Jacob, Shepard, Oriana, and Samara. That two of them were alive and on Earth with her meant far more than she would have thought up until a year ago.

And yet, there was one absence that could not be so easily overcome. The most important person of all. Even the other four combined could never fill that aching hole. Not through any fault of their own, but because they weren't her.

Her sister – her genetic twin.

She couldn't banish the thought of Oriana, stranded out there on Horizon. With the mass relays gone and the comms down, the colony must have descended into total panic. It set her teeth on edge to imagine what she was going through.

Fear. Confusion. Grief. Mourning.

“Jacob...” Miranda sat forward, a horrible heartache swelling inside her, making her nauseous. But she couldn’t let herself faint. “Does Oriana know I’m alive?”

“I sent a message to her as soon as Samara found you, but public email service isn't a priority. Military and diplomatic channels take precedence when it comes to bandwidth. We're trying as hard as we can, but...” He trailed off.

There had been no progress. They were no closer to contacting the people they loved. And he couldn't tell her when that was likely to change.

Suddenly, the vast distances of the galaxy had become so much greater.

It had barely been a month since Miranda had wrapped her arms around Oriana outside the spaceport on Horizon, letting her thumb gently graze across her forehead, brushing stray strands of hair out of her sister’s eyes as she told her that this wasn’t goodbye. Was that the last time she would ever hold her?

With the Extranet crippled, there was no guarantee Miranda could get through to her. Even if she could, who knew how long it would take to reach Oriana?

Until they knew the answer to that question, time would be her prison. Through all her crushing isolation, Oriana could only sit there, held captive by the clock, waiting day after day for a call that may never come. And it was Miranda's fault.

Even if they lived another two hundred years, they might never set foot on the same ground again. If the mass relays couldn't be fixed, then they would never get to start that new life together that Miranda had dreamed of for so long.

“I lied to her, Jacob,” Miranda murmured. Vacant. Distant. “I promised I’d come back to her. But I was lying.” She shook her head, tumultuous emotions stirring inside her. “Our father killed her adoptive family. I'm all she has. I knew that. And I left her. I only just found her, and now it's possible I’ll never see her again.”

Jacob put his arms around her, letting her head fall on his shoulder. Miranda didn't cry. She almost never did, and this was no exception. But she felt a tightening in her chest that wouldn't go away. The guilt was suffocating.

“You aren't the only one breaking promises,” he said, perching on the edge of the bed beside her. “It's fitting. My father was gone for ten years. Longer, actually. He was never the most present guy, even when he was around. After I saw what he'd become, I swore...Well, no, I didn't swear not to be like him; I knew I wasn't. How could anybody be like that? Except here I am.”

“Jacob, don't say that,” Miranda protested, pulling away. How could he even think that? “You're nothing like your father. Not what he became.”

“Why not? I might be away from Brynn and our child a damn sight more than ten years,” he pointed out, gesturing at his surroundings indicatively. “I'm abandoning them, just like he abandoned me.”

“Your circumstances are somewhat different from his,” Miranda noted. Sympathy wasn't a trait she possessed in any great abundance, but she did demonstrate it occasionally. This was one of those moments. “You’re not your father and I’m not mine. He was a manipulative criminal. You’re not. He could have activated that beacon at any time if he wanted to come home. You can't.”

“Doesn't change the fact that I chose to leave. I knew I was risking a lot coming here to fight the Reapers, but I chose to be here instead of with them. Maybe I shouldn't have,” Jacob confessed his doubts, getting up and moving away from her bedside, his hands perched on his hips as he chastised himself.

“You don't mean that.” Miranda sat forward to try and catch him by the sleeve, but he stepped out of her reach, refusing to be consoled.

“I'm not sure what I mean,” he shot back, unable to distinguish between fleeting manifestations of grief and what he really believed. “You made the same choice. Are you telling me that you're certain it was the right one? If you could rewind time, would you still say that coming here to fight the Reapers was worth leaving Oriana behind? Is that how really you feel?”

“...I can't ask myself that. Not yet,” Miranda quietly conceded, a rare glimmer of vulnerability. “I’ve lost a lot to this battle, Jacob. Not just what you can see.” She glanced aside, not ready to talk about watching her team die. “Call it cowardice, but I'm not keen to examine the issue only to decide it was a mistake.”

“No, you're right.” Jacob sighed, regretting the tone he’d taken with Miranda then. “We are where we are. We're stuck here, and we can't change that. Beating ourselves up won't get us any closer to our families.”

“Would that it could,” said Miranda, her fingers combing through her hair. She and Jacob, they really were in the same boat, weren't they?

She wouldn't wish these regrets upon her worst enemy, much less her best friend, but that was out of their control. Jacob couldn't stem his pain, nor Miranda hers. They had both been separated from their only family, possibly for good.

If their grief was going to consume each of them, at least they could endure it together, sharing the load. Perhaps the despair wouldn't hurt so much if they faced it side by side. Or maybe carrying each other’s burdens on top of their own would make it hurt twice as much. But hey, misery loved company.

* * *

There was a rumour on the Normandy that Miranda never stopped working, but to perform basic necessities like sleeping and showering. Anyone who claimed to have witnessed her out of her office for anything other than a strictly functional purpose was assumed to be lying, or delusional.

While Miranda did nothing to dissuade the myth, there was one person who could have attested to the contrary: Samara.

Apparently nobody else noticed that, over the past several days, it was becoming increasingly common for Miranda to find herself wandering over to the Normandy's Starboard Observation Deck when she was finished for the day, or in the rare moments when she forced herself to take a break, or when she knew intellectually that she needed to sleep but couldn't convince her body to do it.

Why not? Miranda could hardly relax in her office, with her desk right there, judging her for not working while the bustle from the kitchen and mess hall filtered through her walls. She had to do something with her spare time, what little she had of it, and she wasn’t exactly inundated with myriad options.

The ability to be social was one trait her father had not instilled her with. In fact, he’d actively discouraged it. As a consequence, Miranda had grown accustomed to solitude and she never saw the purpose of rectifying that. Most people weren't worth her time, and giving them the benefit of the doubt usually proved that, if flotation devices ran on intelligent thoughts, theirs would sink like lead.

She doubted the Normandy’s crew would be surprised to learn that ‘mingling’ with them was something Miranda would typically only have done if forced at gunpoint – even then giving some weight to the merits of the bullet. She loathed idle chit chat, and almost everyone on this ship got on her nerves. Even the ones who didn’t began to grate if they lingered too long.

But Samara? She was the exception.

Unlike the others, Samara never forced her into a conversation. She was content to meditate undisturbed by Miranda's presence. She never felt obligated to fill the tranquil silence with superfluous small talk. They had spoken when the mood struck, of course, but it was never an essential requirement.

She could drift in and out when she wished. Samara wouldn't question her, or demand a reason. There were no expectations. Miranda could just exist, even more comfortably than in her own quarters, which was a welcome change.

Not to mention that Miranda quickly grew to appreciate why Samara had chosen this room as her sanctuary. She was right; it was peaceful. The view across the vast expanses of the cosmos compelled one to a contemplative mood. It was quite relaxing to sit back on the lounge with a cocktail in her hand and slip into introspection, gazing out at passing stars, planets and nebulae.

On that particular night, sleep eluded Miranda for another reason, and she sought harbour there again. It was late. Much later than any prior visit. Only a skeleton crew was awake to operate the Normandy's basic systems.

Miranda had opted to bring her work with her, burying herself in tasks she ordinarily would have finished hours ago, since she thought the pristine silence might help her concentrate and...distract from other things. Her typing didn’t seem to bother Samara, taking the absence of any objection as tacit consent.

In truth, Miranda was barely paying attention to her screen. Alas, taking refuge there wasn’t calming her nerves. Then again, what would?

She'd heard word that Oriana’s location had been compromised. Her father knew where she was, and he would stop at nothing to recover his lost investment. Luckily, Cerberus caught wind of the breach and had arranged to move Oriana out of harm’s way. But Miranda was tense nevertheless.

How the hell had he managed to track her down? On Illium, of all places? This didn't add up. She'd been so careful. But she supposed it was too late to worry about what she’d done wrong. All that mattered now was keeping him at bay.

That was why she had to be there. She had to ensure the transfer went without incident. She had to oversee it in person to make absolutely sure any risk to Oriana was quashed. She wouldn’t be able to stop fretting about her until she knew her sister was out of her father’s reach.

If her father got his hands on Oriana...No. Miranda would sooner die than let that happen. She would never fail Oriana like that. She would never forgive herself.

That was why nothing could be left to chance.

“Ah, fuck me dead,” Miranda cursed under her breath in frustration, realising she'd made a critical mistake in her work. An uncharacteristic lapse. Again.

Samara blinked. “What?” She turned her head in confusion once her words registered, the first time Miranda had seen her trance involuntarily disrupted.

“It's a...saying where I'm from. Don't worry about it.” Miranda waved her off. She hadn’t thought Samara was listening but evidently that harsh whisper directed at herself had not been so quiet as to escape detection.

Samara's mildly bewildered expression did not fade immediately, but she chose not to question that, regaining her poise and returning to her meditation.

Miranda hastened to proofread her analysis for more errors. It was no mystery why she'd faltered, preoccupied by her fears for Oriana’s safety that dominated her mind. And her mounting stream of mistakes only added to her stress.

This didn't bode well for the mission. Miranda couldn’t afford to be inattentive when Oriana was in imminent danger. If she was missing things now, what chance did she have of being in a better frame of mind tomorrow, operating on no sleep?

It was stupid. She shouldn't have been anxious. It was a simple relocation. Cerberus were already one step ahead of Henry Lawson. They knew he was planning to abduct her, and they would have made the necessary preparations to avoid him and his agents. Everything was going to be fine.

But what if it wasn't?

“Miranda...” At the sound of her name, she glanced up to find that Samara’s glow had faded, her energy dispersed. “Would you care to join me?”

“Join you?” Miranda echoed, unsure what she meant.

“In meditation,” Samara clarified, indicating a spot on the floor next to her. She seemed to have picked up on Miranda's unusually troubled countenance, despite how closely she guarded her thoughts.

“Why?” Miranda arched an eyebrow. “What purpose would that serve?”

“There are several benefits,” Samara calmly replied, unoffended by Miranda's curt response. “It may help you focus, providing you with a means to channel extraneous energy, which will aid in sharpening your mind.”

“Is that why you do it?” Miranda asked. When she wasn’t in the field with Shepard, Samara's entire life aboard the Normandy seemed to revolve around her meditation. It was only sensible to wonder what she gained from it.

“Not primarily, no,” Samara admitted, “But I did not expect you would find spiritual enlightenment to be a compelling motivation.”

“You thought correctly,” Miranda acknowledged. But, despite her misgivings, Samara did have a point; there were practical reasons for attempting it.

Miranda couldn't afford to not be thinking straight tomorrow. Snowing herself in with work was failing horribly, and at this rate she certainly wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night. Perhaps Samara’s meditation exercises would settle her down enough to alter her anxious mental state, like a form of self-hypnosis.

“...Sure, why not?” Miranda unenthusiastically acquiesced, moving to sit beside Samara, who seemed pleasantly surprised by that her suggestion had been heeded. Miranda didn’t think it was polite to announce that she was only giving in because she had no better ideas. “I have to warn you, this probably isn't going to work. The ability to switch off my thoughts was not programmed into me.”

“Thought is distinct from mindfulness,” Samara advised. “The goal of meditation is not to cease the former, but to obtain the clarity that allows the latter to flourish. And, if this does not come naturally to you, perhaps that is an indication that you would benefit more than most from learning the technique.”

Miranda didn't lose her scepticism, but she couldn't argue with that.

“If you're willing to teach me, I'm willing to try.” Miranda straightened her back, emulating Samara's cross-legged position.

Samara re-adopted her perfect posture, enveloped by a luminescent shroud. “Clear your mind and let your biotics flow through you. Sustaining them will assist in ridding you of distractions. I choose to do so by forming a ball of biotic energy, but perhaps you would prefer to levitate a small object to begin.”

“No. I can do it,” Miranda assured her. Her biotics weren't as powerful as Samara's but, in theory, she was capable of all the same feats.

Miranda surrounded herself with a comparatively faint biotic field, enhancing her senses, forming a tight sphere of energy between her palms, confident in her ability to hold it together. She soon understood what Samara meant; it took a great deal of willpower to sit stone still while keeping her biotics simultaneously charged and reined in. She couldn't afford to let her thoughts wander too far.

“Wait until your mind has quietened,” Samara continued when Miranda had stabilised her energies. “Then, you can shift your consciousness away from the physical, and reflect on that which has true meaning to you.”

Miranda's brow subtly twitched. She knew what had meaning to her, because there was only one thing that ever had: protecting Oriana.

She had sacrificed so much to get Oriana far away from her father, and she would do it a million times over in a heartbeat. She pictured Oriana confined to that gilded cage, forced to endure echoes of the same abuse Miranda had suffered at their father’s hands. Emotional. Psychological. Sometimes physical.

Miranda was never allowed to be a child. Not allowed to cry. Not allowed be frightened or angry. Some of her earliest memories involved her father’s endless dissatisfaction that his ideal creation hadn’t been born free of those innate emotional responses. Over the years, he’d set about drilling them out of her with ruthless efficiency, until they almost completely ceased to exist within her.

It wasn't like it was any better if she smiled or laughed. Whenever Miranda found something that brought her a shred of joy, her father would sneer at her, accuse it of being frivolous and take it away, denying her anything that he hadn't granted her or given her his express permission to partake in.

She’d never been held. Never been hugged. Any emotion Miranda expressed, she was punished for and taught to suppress, because it displeased him.

Her father never wanted her to develop her own feelings. She was simply meant to be an obedient machine, with no likes or dislikes that he had not instilled in her. In his twisted view, she was his property, right down to her very thoughts.

Miranda existed solely to be an instrument of his will. His restrictive rules and rigorous training were all designed to mould her into fulfilling his vision of a perfect clone who would parrot his beliefs and perpetuate his legacy. Vanity had compelled him to create her, because it was the closest he could come to influencing the future by ensuring his ambition continued after his death.

That Miranda was not a mindless vessel primed to be filled with her father's beliefs was surely his greatest disappointment. For the longest time, Miranda had thought that must have been why he'd decided Miranda had outlived her usefulness and elected to grow another. But, of course, discovering her infertility made it obvious that discarding her had always been his intention.

A replacement for a failed prototype. That was what Oriana was created to be. That was her purpose in his grand designs. Nothing more, nothing less.

Miranda imagined Oriana following the path their father had planned, being tormented by him until she became what he wanted her to be – exactly what Oriana could have been had Miranda not seen through his deception in time to escape with her. Barely less of a puppet than the Collectors.

Even if he didn't manage to brainwash her to bring her to heel, Miranda knew precisely what living under her father's relentless control could do to a person. He would take everything that was beautiful about Oriana and crush it because, to him, those qualities would be flaws. He would savagely punish failure and never reward success, because perfection was the minimum he expected.

Nothing Oriana did would ever be good enough for him. He would criticise every single thing she did, forcing her to adhere to his strict, often arbitrary demands until he finally erased every shred of her identity.

If she had grown up like that, there was no guarantee Oriana would have survived. Maybe she would have failed even earlier than Miranda. Not that the outcome would have been much better if she managed to achieve her father’s goals.

Instead of the happy, vibrant young woman that Miranda had seen in the limited glimpses she allowed herself from afar, her father would have raised Oriana to be cold, aloof, detached. He would have kept her isolated, friendless, deprived of social bonds, permanently hindering her ability to communicate with others, relate to them, or form normal emotional responses to interpersonal situations.

Just like he’d already done to Miranda.

All of a sudden, Miranda's bubble of energy burst, throwing her off-balance, though she instinctively stuck her arms out behind her and caught herself before she fell. The small blast didn't rouse Samara from her trance. It was almost like she'd expected the premature detonation.

Miranda cleared her throat, trying to regain some dignity. “I did warn you,” she uttered, disgruntled with her ongoing propensity towards failure as of late.

“It is alright. You saw something you do not wish to confront; something you cannot accept,” Samara stated, understanding why Miranda lost focus. “I will not ask you to discuss it. Your thoughts are your own. But learning to meditate on that with which you are not currently at peace rather than resisting it may aid you in attaining harmony. That is, if you choose to pursue it, as I have.”

Miranda sighed. She wasn't so sure she wanted to stare in the proverbial mirror any longer than she had. That part of her life was years ago, and it didn't accomplish anything to dig up the past. She couldn't afford to when such critical tasks were at hand. It would only disrupt the mission

Letting such things run rampant through her psyche when she had long since moved on with her life was irrational and, given her position as second-in-command aboard the ship, irresponsible. There was no sense dwelling on it.

“This isn't the best time,” Miranda declined. She was never going to be able to clear her head while her concern for Oriana dominated her subconscious. “After tomorrow, maybe. I might be in a better place. We'll see.”

Samara considered her response, but took Miranda at her word, believing it wasn't a mere excuse. She gave Miranda too much credit, because it was.

“If it would interest you, perhaps I could instruct you in the use of some of my biotic abilities,” Samara offered, maintaining her field with no strain whatsoever. She made it look effortless. If Miranda were pettier, she might have envied her composure. Instead, she admired it. “I do not know if we will have time to develop them to a combat-effective state. However—”

“I’m not averse to that idea,” said Miranda, “Though I can’t make any solid time commitments.” The jury may have been out on meditation, but taking the opportunity to improve her biotics was an objectively sensible decision.

The Collectors had nearly killed Miranda on Horizon. Shepard and Mordin too. Given what they were up against, she would have been foolish not to accept. And, considering that Samara was, so far, the only person on this ship whose company never vexed her, spending more time with her to gain the benefit of her biotic expertise wasn’t an unpleasant prospect.

“Very well. I look forward to it,” Samara sincerely replied, leaving it at that.

Miranda didn't realise it at the time, but that was when their friendship truly began.

* * *

“Jacob…” Miranda said warningly, her one-eyed stare unwavering.

“Miranda, no,” he steadfastly refused.

“Hand me the box, Jacob,” she commanded, holding out her arm expectantly.

“Look, I brought you a change of clothes and a crutch like you asked me to because I thought it would make you more comfortable here. But I am not going to help you escape, Miranda,” he told her, keeping a tight grip on the box. “You’re leaving this hospital when you’re good and ready. Not a moment sooner.”

“Good thing I heal fast, then,” Miranda remarked, smirking. “Besides, escape makes it sound like they have the authority to keep me here. I prefer to think of it as discharging myself.” Jacob was unamused. “Come on. This bed is uncomfortable, anyway. And the combination of boredom and tinnitus might actually drive me to strangle someone if I have to stay here another night.”

“Miranda, you can’t even handle food in your stomach yet. The only thing they’ve been able to give you to eat these past two days is…” Jacob trailed off, pointing at the untouched bowl beside her bed. “I mean, I can’t even call that soup. It’s water with flavouring. And you’ve still thrown up every single time you’ve eaten.”

“I’ve been lying here staring at the ceiling for over a week while they pump me full of morphine, sedatives and antibiotics. Lo and behold, they all cause nausea,” Miranda dismissively explained, brushing that off.

“Why do you hate being here so much?” Jacob asked, at a loss.

“Because I have nothing to do except lie here listening to my ear ring!” Miranda snapped, on the verge of losing her mind. “They won’t even let me walk to the bathroom under my own power. It's six metres away! But instead I have to press a button and call a nurse to take me there in a wheelchair like I’m a bloody dementia patient,” she grumbled, detesting that lack of autonomy.

“You don’t understand the concept of being sick, do you?” Jacob commented, unable to fathom that someone so intelligent was so staunchly committed to wilful ignorance when it came to her own limitations. “You’re not over your sepsis yet. If you were well enough to be outside, you wouldn’t be in hospital.”

“I’m more qualified than any of these doctors to declare myself fit,” Miranda retorted with an irritated huff, not at all entertained by his opposition.

“Not from any accredited university,” Jacob pointed out, earning a glare.

“Everyone who brought someone back from the dead raise your hand,” said Miranda, doing exactly that, confidently cocking her head. “How many people with a legitimate medical degree can say that?”

“Alright. Fine. Jesus.” Jacob sighed, reluctantly surrendering the box.

“He didn’t raise the dead; he rose from the dead. But I appreciate the comparison,” said Miranda, incredibly satisfied with herself, examining her fresh clothes. It wasn’t anything fancy, just some black pants, a grey t-shirt and some boots, but she supposed she couldn’t be choosy. Casual would suffice.

“This isn’t funny, and neither are you,” Jacob protested as Miranda carefully shifted her legs over the edge of the bed, removing the cannula from her nose and the sensors from her chest, which wasn’t easy with the drip still hooked into her arm. “You are nowhere near ready to get involved in post-war operations.”

“I’m injured, I’m not bloody useless,” Miranda insisted with an irritable scoff. “You need my help. You know you do. I’m not going to spend all my time confined to a bed like a vegetable just because I have one arm, one eye, one ear and a limp. That’s ridiculous,” she said, shaking her head at the absurdity.

Miranda possessed enough self-awareness to concede her cold-hearted reputation was not wholly undeserved, but she didn't require a great deal of empathy to recognise that there were countless others out there worse off than she was – people whose survival hung by a thread while vital resources, life-saving drugs and medical personnel were far too scarce to cope with demand.

The reality was that Miranda was not at death's door, and that meant she should no longer be a priority patient. Frankly, she wouldn't have had it any other way. Even one-eyed and one-armed, she could make a difference. She didn’t plan on hanging around waiting for non-urgent care before taking action.

Jacob paused, moving over to crouch beside Miranda, his fingers tented together. She peered at him, briefly halting her sensor-removal, annoyed.

“What?” she asked.

“Miranda, you need to admit you have a problem,” Jacob counselled her, putting his hand atop hers. “You are a workaholic; you are addicted to work,” he informed her, staging an intervention. “Seek treatment.”

“Have you ever noticed that it’s only humans who talk about people doing their jobs too well like it’s a problem?” Miranda observed, intrigued by that nonsensical mindset. “That’s what’s holding us back as a species,” she astutely declared, returning to the business of peeling off the last of the nodes.

She couldn’t stand this hospital. Every time Jacob left her alone, she grew restless. She couldn’t relax because there was nothing to distract her from the constant ringing in her ear. It was driving her insane. She needed something to do – something to take her mind off it. Anything. Or at least anything other than the memories of her dead team, or her misery at being separated from Oriana.

If Samara had come and visited her, that might have helped. But she hadn’t. Nobody had seen Samara in nearly two weeks, which was...well, Miranda was sure she’d have a good explanation for that when she ran into her.

Jacob stared at her, evidently realising that he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of stopping her. Once Miranda’s mind was set on a particular goal, she was virtually impossible to deter, even when said goal was contrary to reason.

“…You are literally the worst person I’ve ever met. And the only reason I’m still helping you is because I know you’re just going to climb out that window if I don’t, and I refuse to be responsible for you plummeting to your death,” he acquiesced at long last, gently taking hold of her wrist and extracting the drip and cannula from her arm, which she obviously couldn’t do on her own.

“You’re a good friend, Jacob,” said Miranda, her lips curling into a slight smile, glad he’d been persuaded to offer his assistance.

“If by ‘friend’ you mean 'accomplice’,” he remarked disapprovingly.

“Stop whinging and help me get changed,” she instructed.

He handed her some underwear, which she slid on, followed by pants, cautious not to aggravate her knee in the process. After that, she took off her hospital gown and gingerly pulled the t-shirt over her head, cautious of her amputated arm. The last thing she needed was to show Jacob she was in any pain.

“If you get stuck, I’m leaving you that way,” Jacob stated.

“I won’t get stuck,” Miranda insisted, wishing he would stop complaining so much. And, sure enough, she didn’t, guiding her stump through the sleeve while putting as little pressure on her torn rotator cuff as possible. That done, she slipped her right arm through and rolled down the hem of the shirt to cover her torso. A thought occurred to her. “Jacob, hand me your jacket."

“What for?” he asked, suspicious.

“Look, I know I’m not the only amputee walking around at the moment, but I’d rather not attract attention,” Miranda pointed out. On top of the limp and the facial bandage, she didn’t want to make it too obvious she hadn’t been cleared to check out yet. The more she could disguise it, the better.

Jacob cooperated, draping his jacket over her shoulders, concealing her missing arm, and buttoning the collar around her neck to stop it from falling off. Once she zipped up her boots, she was all dressed and good to go. She flexed her fingers on the handle of her crutch, tucking it beneath her shoulder.

“You ready?” Jacob asked, standing back, letting her do this by herself.

“Won’t know until I try,” Miranda said, hiding her hesitancy.

Despite what Jacob may have thought, Miranda wasn’t being rash or foolish. This would be her first attempt to walk in over a fortnight. Neither leg had been able to properly support her weight by the time Samara found her. She could only hope that she had recovered enough to manage this.

She got up, leaning on both her right leg and her crutch for balance. It felt odd, finally standing upright again. But that had been the easy part. Tentatively, she moved her left foot, readying her crutch for the act of taking a step.

Her left knee flared with pain, threatening to buckle. The shock of it prompted her to shift her weight back to her right foot as quickly as possible, overbalancing in the process. Fortunately, Jacob reached out to catch her by the shoulder, allowing her to lean on him as she regained her footing.

“Agh. I think I did that wrong,” Miranda hissed through clenched teeth, willing the ache in her knee to subside before her second attempt.

“This your first time using one of these?” Jacob asked out of curiosity.

“No. I just haven’t walked in over two weeks,” Miranda spoke sharply, frustrated with herself, and running low on patience. “Give me a minute.”

“I don’t suppose this will convince you to change your mind about staying here?” said Jacob, doubtfully. Jacob had seen her get beaten and tortured before. She hadn’t looked vulnerable then. She didn’t look it now.

“Not a chance,” she replied, refusing to be defeated by a god damn sore knee. “My grand escape might just be…slower than I’d planned.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t an escape,” he said, detecting the contradiction.

“Plans change,” Miranda quipped.

Jacob snorted. “Just so we’re clear, you owe me big time on this,” he told her, putting an arm around Miranda’s waist to steady her, although she didn’t require his assistance for more than a few shaky steps before she got the hang of it, after which point he let her carry on unaided. “No, seriously. I’m talking, 'indebted to me for the rest of your life’ kind of big.”

“Yes, extort the disabled woman,” Miranda remarked, rolling her eye as they came to the doorway. “You really want to do that, Jacob?”

“When it’s you, definitely,” he happily confirmed.

Miranda frowned. But, alas, she lacked alternatives. “Alright, fine. I accept your terms,” she surrendered, grimacing slightly as she shuffled forward. “Now show me the quickest way out of here, and fill me in on what I should know.”

“About London?” Jacob asked.

“That’d be a start.”

* * *

The doors to the Observation Deck slid open with a soft hiss. “Miranda,” Samara greeted her arrival, not needing to turn to confirm her identity.

“Good evening, Samara,” Miranda responded, her tone abnormally upbeat.

Evidently, it didn’t go unnoticed. “It would appear that what I have heard is true,” Samara deduced. Miranda tilted her head. “You spoke to your sister.”

Miranda snorted as she stepped inside. “Nothing can stay private on this ship, can it? Let me guess: Kasumi told you?” Samara's silence served as tacit confirmation. Miranda exhaled, unable to be mad about it. “It wasn’t planned. I always thought it would be selfish to interfere in her life. But then Shepard took me aside and said maybe it isn’t so wrong for Oriana to know she has a sister who loves her."

“And was Shepard correct?” Samara asked.

Miranda couldn’t fight off a smirk. “She can be.” The hint of a smile on Samara’s lips betrayed that she was pleased with that news. “Oddly enough, I don't think Oriana was even surprised when I walked up and told her who I was.”

“She shares your intelligence,” Samara noted, not shocked to hear that. “You have watched over her all her life. With such an astute mind, I do not expect she would have failed to perceive the evidence that she was not alone.”

“Nor do I. I don't think much gets past her.” Miranda chuckled under her breath, amused to discover that her sister's cheery demeanour belied a cunning wit no less incisive than her own. “We're alike in many ways. Identical twins often are, I suppose. But, at the same time, she's absolutely nothing like me.”

Miranda approached the window, gazing out at the stars as she replayed her conversation with Oriana in her head. Her skin still tingled, mesmerised by how it had felt to hold Oriana in her embrace for the first time in nineteen years. She could scarcely believe that this wasn’t a dream – that nothing was going to pop her bubble and prove her stolen shard of joy to be ephemeral.

“Oriana's just...she’s an amazing person,” Miranda all but gushed. “She's kind-hearted and funny, and I'm neither of those things. Which is good, because it means everything I did for her was right, despite what Niket said.”

“You mean keeping her away from your father?” Samara surmised.

At the mention of him, Miranda tensed imperceptibly. It was then that she remembered her place, coming to her senses and realising how much she was divulging to a colleague she'd known for less than a month.

“What am I doing?” Miranda shook her head at herself, conscious of how foolish she must have appeared in that moment. “I apologise. I shouldn’t be commandeering your time blathering on about my personal life.”

“You commandeered nothing,” Samara assured her, letting her biotic field fade. “It was freely given.”

Miranda didn't know if that was sincerity or courtesy. Nevertheless, she couldn't help but feel that to behave so casually with a work colleague bordered on inappropriate. Miranda was there to do a job. The Illusive Man expected her to be professional, and, more importantly, she expected it of herself.

“Look, I appreciate you helping me clear my head yesterday, but I'm not here to gain anyone's sympathy with some big sob story about my childhood,” Miranda spoke frankly. “Everyone has problems. I deal with mine on my own.”

“As you should, and as we all must,” Samara affirmed, respecting her independent streak for the admirable quality it was. “However, it is not folly to speak truthfully about oneself, nor is it selfish to accept advice when it is offered voluntarily, though I will refrain from doing so if you do not wish to hear it.”

“I didn't say that.” Miranda frowned, not wishing to create that impression. She enjoyed Samara’s company, and she didn't intend to carelessly toss it aside. “I’m just aware you have better things to do than listen to me talk your ear off. It's not why you're here. I'll go to Kelly Chambers if I want a therapy session.”

“Have you spoken with her about this?” Samara asked, curious.

“No, not yet,” Miranda answered. Frankly, she didn't like going to see Kelly, even though it was compulsory to do so when events warranted it. Events such as reuniting with a long lost sister and watching an old friend die in front of her.

It was hard to trust that a grown adult could be that bubbly and optimistic without hiding some kind of ulterior motive. Her relentless cheerfulness rubbed Miranda the wrong way. But as long as Kelly gave the tick of approval that Miranda was competent to perform her duties then it was fine, she supposed.

“Will you write to The Illusive Man about today’s events?” Samara inquired.

“I always do. I report everything to him,” Miranda confirmed. Up to and including the contents of everyone’s mail. But that wasn’t to be publicised.

“I am aware,” Samara acknowledged, accustomed to Miranda’s routine, given how often she brought her work over. “For reasons that may soon become apparent, I will be speaking with Ms Chambers shortly. Will you be including my subsequent psychological evaluation in your correspondence to The Illusive Man?”

“Yes, and I sent him your first one after you came aboard,” Miranda stated the obvious, seeing no reason to deny that fact. There was no boundary she wouldn’t cross when it came to keeping The Illusive Man informed as to the strengths and weaknesses of his team. “Is that an issue?”

“It is not,” Samara replied, unperturbed. “You are obliged to carry out your duties, and you would fulfil them even were I to object, as I would mine. As you should.”

“Good,” said Miranda, glad to hear Samara appreciated what it meant to have responsibilities, unlike most of the other people Shepard had recruited. Every time Miranda did her job, they seemed to interpret it as an act of malice.

“I do not believe I ever properly thanked you for your assistance, on the day we met,” Samara continued, arising from the floor and moving to stand beside Miranda, her posture tall and upright, hands clasped behind her back.

“For helping you find the name of that ship? I can't claim much credit,” Miranda admitted. It wasn't humility, just reality. “Shepard makes those choices. My role is to ensure her decisions are carried out successfully, and to give counsel that perhaps isn't heeded as often as it ought to be. But I can't complain. Commander Shepard has proven to be an effective leader, by any measure.”

“Indeed. And the information she uncovered with your aid has been invaluable.” Miranda looked at Samara then, but there was no joy or righteous determination in her expression. “I have tracked the Demeter’s course. The criminal I have been hunting for the past four hundred years disembarked on Omega. I intend to inform Ms Chambers of this shortly, and Commander Shepard.”

“But you’re telling me first?” Miranda noted, somewhat surprised by that. Nobody ever told her anything first. Even Jacob didn’t always seem to fully trust what she’d do with the information.

“I gave you my word that I would bring it to your attention immediately if I became aware of any matter that may affect the mission, or my role in it,” Samara reminded her. Needless to say, Miranda remembered that conversation clearly. “I do not give my word without intending to keep it.”

“Huh. I didn’t think you meant that so literally but...thank you. I appreciate it,” said Miranda, impressed. Samara was nothing if not principled. She’d long since proven that Miranda’s initial instinct to show faith in her was well-placed. “I could pass this on, if you wanted,” she offered, since it would save Samara the trouble.

“No,” Samara politely refused, her speech devoid of inflection. Almost...hollow. “This is something I must discuss in person.”

“If you insist,” Miranda accepted that, even if she did find Samara's solemnity incongruous. That being said, Samara’s reasons for taking her pursuit so seriously were none of Miranda's business. She didn't need to interfere.

She was a Justicar, after all. Maybe they were always like this.

“Since we’re on the subject, there’s something I still haven’t managed to figure out about that day: would you really have killed Detective Anaya if we hadn’t secured your release?” Miranda asked, finding it eerie to ponder that the serene woman before her was capable of resorting to such extremes without remorse.

“Yes,” Samara answered plainly, as if that should have been self-evident, making eye-contact with Miranda. “Would you not be compelled to do the same if you were detained, thereby preventing you from obtaining crucial information concerning the Collectors, or from saving your sister from your father?”

Miranda arched an eyebrow. Was that a rhetorical question? “If there was no efficient alternative, yes. I would do whatever was necessary to escape. Of course I would.” Except, unlike Samara, she wouldn't have given them a day.

“Then you understand why I could not have done otherwise, though I would deeply regret each life I was forced to end. In those circumstances, to be merciful would be misguided. To deviate from The Code would tacitly permit a grave injustice,” Samara explained. Rational, not emotional. Much like Miranda.

“I guess that's my next question; what constitutes grave injustice according to your Code?” Miranda inquired, folding her arms across her chest, gauging Samara. Even though they'd spoken several times, she ultimately knew very little about her and the strict way of life she adhered to. “You remember that Eclipse mercenary Shepard let go – against my judgement, I might add. Would you have killed Detective Anaya if you were hunting her?”

“No. In most situations where pursuing a criminal would cause an innocent to come to harm, I would be required to break pursuit to save the innocent,” Samara told her, much to Miranda’s approval. It was a relief to hear that The Code was amenable to reason on that account. “Do not mistake my candour for ease; if ever I must resort to taking an innocent life, know that it is because the consequences of failing to do so would cause many more to be slain.”

“Is one, lone criminal that dangerous?” Miranda wondered aloud, inclined to be sceptical. After all, if she was some sort of terrorist or mass murderer, her reputation would have preceded her.

“Yes. This one is.” A faint shadow of sadness crept into Samara’s tone. Her gaze dipped, her eyes avoiding Miranda's once more. “Had I cowed in the face of my duty, the innumerable deaths that may have followed would be my responsibility, to an even greater extent than they already are.”

“What do you mean?” said Miranda, intrigued by her strange choice of words. What cause did Samara have to blame herself for the actions of another?

Samara remained silent for a long, heavy moment, visibly struggling with her thoughts, and whether or not to speak them. Eventually, she did.

“There is a rare condition, affecting only pure-blooded asari like myself, known as Ardat-Yakshi Syndrome,” Samara began, without facing her. “It manifests at maturity, rendering its sufferers unable to meld without fatally attacking the nervous systems of their partners. This experience is intoxicating – more addictive than any narcotic. Once an Ardat-Yakshi has tasted that euphoria, she inevitably craves it above all else, and will stop at nothing to attain it. She seeks out more victims to mate with, ensnaring their minds, feeding on them like prey.”

“How come I've never heard of this?” Miranda asked, perplexed. Surely this phenomenon would have been well-documented.

“That is no accident. Asari rarely speak of it, even among our own kind. Because of the danger they pose, Ardat-Yakshi are isolated from society. As such, the chances of encountering a rogue are negligible,” Samara replied, her tone unchanging. “Nevertheless, if other species were to become aware that there are even a minute number of asari who will murder any and all who meld with them, one could only begin to imagine the fear and hostility that would engender.”

“That's hardly a consolation for the people who get drained dry. I mean, these asari are sexual predators, in every possible sense. Their potential victims can't protect themselves from something like that without knowing the risk exists. Yet you make it sound like you condone this secrecy,” Miranda inferred, taken aback by that. She would have expected better from Samara.

“What I do or do not condone is irrelevant,” Samara responded, continuing to stare ahead, avoiding Miranda’s direct line of sight. “What I described is merely the prevailing view.”

“I see.” Miranda withdrew her objection, dropping the issue. It wasn't fair to blame Samara for the attitudes of other asari. After all, Samara seemed determined to ensure this wasn't swept under the rug, and that innocent people were protected, regardless of their species or what corner of the galaxy they were in. “So, the criminal you're hunting is an Ardat-Yakshi?”

“Yes,” Samara removed any doubt.

“You said you’ve pursued her for four hundred years. How many people has she killed?” Miranda asked, intrigued to learn more about Samara’s quarry.

“I cannot answer that question. However, if I provided you with a conservative estimate, the number would be so high that you would swear I was deceiving you,” Samara stated, her melancholy eyes remaining firm as she spoke.

Miranda knew better than to suspect Samara of exaggerating. It had already become abundantly clear that speaking falsely was counter to her nature.

“Only pure-blooded asari can have this disease,” Miranda recalled, glancing aside as rather a grim prospect occurred to her, one that might have explained why Samara took this hunt so personally. “Are you an Ardat-Yakshi?”

“No, I am not.” Samara shook her head. Miranda unconsciously relaxed a tiny bit. Not because she would have thought any differently of Samara if she did have such a condition, given that she obviously wasn't a danger to anyone who didn't deserve it, but— “However, I am a carrier of the syndrome.”

“A carrier?” Miranda echoed, blinking as the puzzle pieces swiftly fell into place. “She's your daughter,” Miranda voiced her abrupt realisation aloud.

“That is correct,” Samara regretfully confessed, letting her head dip slightly, her features reflected in the window against the vast, cold void beyond.

“...Oh,” was all Miranda could utter in reply. Not that she was particularly shocked, she was just...blank. She didn't know what to say. How did people normally react to being confronted with a private revelation of that nature?

“You are the first person I have shared this with aboard this ship,” Samara continued, saving Miranda from having to stitch together an appropriate choice of words at that news. “I would prefer that this remain between us, until such time as I can explain my circumstances to Commander Shepard. It is crucial to me that she appreciates why I can not afford to delay.”

“Of course. You don't even need to ask,” Miranda assured her. It went without saying that this story wasn't hers to divulge. “Nobody will hear about this from me without your consent.” Not even The Illusive Man, Miranda added internally.

“I thank you for that, most sincerely,” said Samara, genuinely grateful that Miranda took her confidence seriously. “Take heart in the fact that you will not have to keep your silence for very long. This matter is of the utmost urgency.”

“Yes, I gathered that,” Miranda responded, certain Samara would not abide any needless delay. Every moment she waited was giving her daughter another opportunity to snatch an unsuspecting life away. “I still have to finish my report about what happened on Illium today. If you'd rather speak to Yeoman Chambers right away, I can put off my appointment until after you’ve seen her.”

“Very well.” Samara bowed her head, an indication that she would take advantage of that offer. With that, Miranda turned to head towards the door, prepared to leave Samara in peace.

“Miranda?” Samara stopped her, prompting her to glance back over her shoulder. Samara’s upright stance remained unchanged from the first moment she had adopted it. “Do you feel as though I have wasted your time by telling you this?”

“No,” Miranda replied without hesitation, her crinkled brow betraying her confusion that Samara even felt the need to ask that. Of course she didn’t.

“Then I ask you: why would you presume my feelings would be any different when our roles are reversed?” said Samara, a perceptive spark twinkling in the reflection of her sage stare. Maybe that was just a glimmer of starlight.

Miranda blinked, Samara's meaning swiftly sinking in. “...Apparently they're not.”

“Indeed.” Samara elegantly drew back from the window and folded her legs beneath her, resuming her meditation. “Farewell, Miranda. May we speak again.”

Miranda didn't really know what to make of that, departing the room in silence. Suffice it to say, she was still rather stunned to think about how much that conversation challenged her preconceived notions about Samara – notions Miranda hadn’t even known she had, consciously or otherwise.

In truth, she’d never really asked herself those questions about Samara’s past – what her background was, what motivated her to become a Justicar, whether she had a family or children. Miranda hadn’t pondered it because she hadn’t thought the answers were pertinent to the mission. But maybe they were. And, more so, maybe it no longer mattered if they weren’t.

Clearly, there was a hell of a lot more going on beneath Samara's cool exterior than Miranda had previously contemplated. And perhaps Miranda was doing her a disservice by not endeavouring to get to know that side of her better.

* * *

#fic #miranda lawson #samara #mass effect #femslash

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hahaha1d0that · 3 years ago

Text

Let me start by saying that I apologize for the coming post. I know a lot of people love the Star Wars sequel trilogy and characters, but I’m angry about this right now.

Disclaimer: This argument is based solely on the movies, NOT Resistance/comics/books/etc.!!

As a Star Wars fan, I am very disappointed in the sequel trilogy. There are many problems with it.

The fact that J.J. Abrams admitted that the trilogy would have been better if they had a plan

The three movies are not very cohesive in telling one story/there seems to be no one superior goal in mind to accomplish by the end of the trilogy

The characters development is nearly nonexistent and honestly pathetic

The characters had so much wasted potential

The amount of fan service was astounding and it still doesn’t make up for the other atrocities of this trilogy

The story wasn’t very compelling

Making money was the primary objective

There are many good things in the trilogy and things that I liked but overall it is my least favorite part of Star Wars. It makes me angry simply because its so repetitive and confusing.

Was Snoke a Sith Lord? If he was, why wasn’t it made clear to the audience in the movies he is supposed to be a major villain in? If he wasn’t, then bringing Palpatine back breaks the Sith Rule of Two. How did he rise to power? Who is he? Where was he throughout the franchise?

These are questions about one character, that anyone might have after just watching the movies.

Who formed the First Order and when? How did it become as powerful as the Empire? How was the New Republic reduced to almost nothing over a couple decades?

The storytelling is so incomplete. There are so many gaps and plot holes.

The antagonist across the trilogy is whiny, not very intimidating, has a poorly developed origin story, and questionable motives that are so vague that it is difficult to inderstand his reasoning and beliefs. In the end, he is redeemed only to die after some slight consideration and persuasion from the main protagonist. So he rethinks his entire life and trauma because a woman told him he could do better? That’s not how real disturbed people think…

The main villain of the third movie wasn’t even present (or even known to be alive) for the first two movies in the trilogy. The movie starts and all of the sudden “somehow…palpatine returned.” That’s it?? That’s the explanation? How did he survive? How did he get to Exegol? How did all of those star destroyers get on Exegol? The Empire was gone, his army was dismantled, few lotalists remained. Was he cloned? Because honestly, I’ve seen the movie several times and I’m still confused. It doesn’t make any sense.

Not only is Palpatine alive, but the main protagonist is his granddaughter. So much for ‘you don’t have to be somebody to be important, as long as you work hard, you can achieve anything.’ Now Rey has force abilities that she never had before (or that didn’t even exist in the franchise before this)?

Rey’s character is so tragic because she had so much potential and it was wasted. She was abandoned as a child and is forced to scavenge around dangerous wreckage to make a living supporting herself on one of the worst planets in the galaxy. Does she hold that against her parents? No, she hopes that her parents will come back for her. She gets anxious when she’s been gone for a while because she’s afraid they’ll finally come when she’s away. She never let herself become bitter or hateful. She was hopeful, innocent, and passionate. However, her character develops to make it her personal mission to take on the First Order and Kylo Ren if it’s the last thing she does and she’s plagued by stubbornness and self awareness of her power and strength as a Jedi.

This annoys me deeply. Her character never really progressed from this from TLJ to ROS either. It’s almost like its a different person from TFA Rey, despite TLJ immediately following TFA in the timeline.

I’d also like to point out that Poe’s character was also shit on by the writers, especially in ROS. For the first two and a half movies his entire character can be summed up as: I’m a hotshot flyboy; I want to fight no matter the consequences; I fly X-wings; I have an adorable droid that I am highly protective over. That’s it. And then, in ROS, suddenly its revealed that he was a former criminal and drug smuggler?? Poe? Poe Dameron?? What?

How about Finn’s character only being in the background to yell “REYYYY” whenever she puts herself in harms way (which is often). The amazing lightsaber duel against Kylo Ren? In which Finn held his own for a decently long time considering he had little to no training with a weapon of that kind against someone proficient in the ways of the dark side (which typically made force users more ruthless in their attacks)? Doesn’t matter. The hints of his force-sensitivity? What hints? Finn, a Jedi?? Hahaha, no.

Dont even get me started on Rose. Great backstory, sister sacrificed herself for the cause during a desperate hour and saved the day, but in doing so left her grieving sister behind. Beautiful. Rose was such a big part of TLJ’s plot and then she’s just kinda there for ROS...it’s sad. Not to mention the romance between Rose and Finn that was never developed??

You know what, all of the protagonists were done dirty, as well as their actors. It’s clear what Disney’s goal was: making money, and lots of it. How do we convince people to buy movie tickets/merchandise/toys/etc.?? Well, let’s cast some minority actors/actresses to make people think they’re going to be represented only for the white man‘s character to be the most developed by the end of the trilogy. Daisy Ridley (a woman), John Boyega (a Black man), Oscar Issac (a Latino man), and Kelly Marie Tran (an Asian woman) were cast as protagonists. And who got the most attention/praise/development? Adam Driver (a White man). Dont get me wrong, Adam Driver is a great actor and he did an amazing job with what he was given, but really?

Even the returning characters were poorly handled. Luke’s character development is controversial so I’ll stay away, but Han?? So they decided after ROTJ that Han was the type to leave his wife and son to travel with his best friend?? Uh ok

The sequel trilogy’s plot, if you can even say that, is so repetitive to the original trilogy it’s embarrassing. A force-sensitive main protagonist, whose parents abandoned them and left them to live on a desert planet to avoid the truth about their family heritage, met an old guy that was significant earlier in his life, went on a quest with him which effectively roped them into fighting the fascist dictatorship controlling the galaxy that they previously didn’t give a shit about, teamed up with an ex-imperial deserter along the way, was trained by a different old guy that was also significant earlier in his life but decided to exile himself and live in seclusion because some of his padawans were murdered by the Skywalker villain, learned the truth about their family and the darkness within their blood, became a great unofficial Jedi knight anyways, destroyed weapons capable of obliterating entire planets, and eventually defeated Palpatine by teaming up with the main Skywalker antagonist that sacrificed themselves to save the main protagonist’s life. Sound familiar?

It’s truly sad. If you look into George Lucas’ plan for the sequel trilogy before he sold Star Wars to Disney, you’ll find that it’s much better different from what we got and it is actually pretty similar to what The Mandalorian is trying to portray. (Maul was brought back from the dead to be the sequel trilogy’s big bad guy but we never got it)

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 7 years ago

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The Best & Worst of 2017

It has been a WEIRD year. Nintendo’s dominating the video game scene again, the seemingly eternal presence of Adam West is no more, Taylor Swift somehow got even bitchier, DC finally made a good movie, and they let a chimp in a suit into the White House again (you think they would have learned their lesson after Reagan). But we’re not here to look at the world in a broad sense, no; we’re here to take a look at movies, because that’s what I do. And let me tell you… This was a fine year for films.

You often see people say years like 1999 or 1939 were the peak years for cinema, but after this year, I’ve gotta say 2017 is my favorite year in cinematic history. Let me put it this way: The list of movies here was originally a top 20. In fact, I only saw a handful of movies I’d say were genuinely bad this year. At least 6 of the movies I saw are easily in my top 25 films ever made, and even my favorite movie ever came out this year. So yeah, this year was FUCKING AWESOME for movies.

Now, there were some really tough cuts, so let me give a few honorable mentions before we dive into the top 10 films: Spider-Man: Homecoming, the best Spider-Man movie in a decade with perhaps the most compelling villain in the MCU; Get Out, Jordan Peele’s racially-charged horror film that deals with condescending positive discrimination and other kinds of left-wing racism, and is one of the strongest directorial debuts I’ve ever seen; Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie, the long awaited finale to the adventures of Arnold Shortman, and a truly satisfying one to boot; Kingsman: The Golden Circle, a kickass sequel with a great turn by Sir Elton John of all people; and Power Rangers, a very character driven sci-fi movie that has a rather slow pace but still manages to ooze heart and charm. And those are just the ones I really wanted to spotlight; there are quite a few other movies I enjoyed this year.

Now, on to the first list!

TOP 10 MOVIES OF THE YEAR

10. Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie

TRA-LA-LAAAAAAAAA! Dreamworks finally delivers the film we’ve been waiting for for years, and it’s every bit as good as we could have hoped. Combining the best elements of the first four books was a great idea, as it allows for much more interesting character interactions, character development, and concepts, not to mention the franchise’s best villain (Professor Poopypants) gets to show up early. Pray we get a sequel, because the creativity showcased here cannot be squandered! We need more of the Waistband Warrior!

9. Baby Driver

You know, in light of everything that happened this year, is it really right to place so high a movie in which a character played by Kevin Spacey takes in a young boy and tries to control him into being a criminal? Yeah. It is. This is a damn good film, with some truly great Mickey Mousing and an excellent soundtrack, as well as fantastic performances across the board. It’s one of the least Edgar Wrighty films in Wright’s filmography, and all the better for it.

8. Wonder Woman

Is this the perfect, ultimate superhero movie? Hell no. Does it finally break the DCEU trend of crappy final villains? Um, nope. Is it an uplifting, hopeful, optimistic superhero movie with an idealistic, badass protagonist, a solid supporting cast, and an interesting setting? Fuck yes it is. Wonder Woman fans can rest easy that she got the treatment she deserved on the silver screen.

7. Logan

Rarely has a movie that is just so bitterly depressing from the get-go been so damn good. Hugh Jackman and Sir Patrick Stewart turn in their (possibly) final performances as Wolverine and Professor X, and by god what performances they give. But they face some seriously steep competition in the acting department from Dafne Keen, the newcomer playing Laura, Logan’s ‘daughter’ after a fashion. This is easily the best X-Men film ever made aside from Deadpool, and definitely the best serious one.

6. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

You know that one friend you have who just pisses you off to the point you want to punch their teeth out, yet at the end of the day you still love and appreciate them and they’re still your friend for life? That’s basically what this movie is. It does SO much aggravating, frustrating bullshit, tosses out so many potentially interesting plot points, wastes so much potential… but on the other hand, it delivers some of the most stunning moments in the entire saga, the best performance yet from Mark Hamill, a bunch of interesting surprises, and lets Kylo Ren and Rey come into their own. Never before have I loved a film I hate so much of.

5. Thor: Ragnarok

I never in my life thought I would enjoy a Thor movie. Historically speaking, Thor’s movies blow; I was expecting mediocrity at best. Ah, but what a fool I was! Truly I underestimated the power of Taika Waititi, Led Zeppelin, 80s aesthetic, and Jeff Goldblum, because this is easily one of Marvel’s best films, not just of the year, but ever, and is 100% the best Thor film.

4. John Wick: Chapter 2

While my opinion of this has slightly softened – I prefer the first film more after some thought – don’t think for a second this film isn’t as awesome as I previously stated. This film has some of the best worldbuilding I’ve ever seen, some of the most exhilarating action, and some of the most engaging Keeanu Reeves acting. Plus, Reeves shares the screen with Laurence Fishburne again; what’s not to love here?

3. The Disaster Artist

Oh hai James Franco! Seth Rogen’s wacky BFF managed to bring the story of Tommy Wiseau and his quest to film the infamously awful film (that just so happens to be one of my all-time favorite movies) The Room to life. I didn’t doubt that a big fan like Franco would fuck up telling this story, but the way he portrayed the intriguingly strange man that is Wiseau was better than anything I could have imagined. While the filmmaking techniques are rather simple and it’s not like the movie reinvents the wheel, it truly showcases a fascinating man and the creation if his equally fascinating film in way that both fans of The Room and Tommy as well as newcomers can enjoy.

2. It

Joining the ranks of Watchmen and The Lord of the Rings in the category of “Unfilmable Works with Amazing Film Adaptations” is Stephen King’s classic tale of a group of children fighting back against a nightmarish abomination that devours children and takes the shape of a clown. Finally, that travesty of a miniseries from the 90s can be scrubbed from memory, and replaced with this much scarier, much funnier, and much more visually interesting version of the story. It changes things here and there, but through all the changes the spirit remains the same, as should be the case for a good adaptation. Best of all: No Sewergy!

1. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Maybe it’s the stronger character arcs and development on display here. Maybe it’s how absolutely awesome and complex Yondu became in this movie. Maybe it’s the inclusion of the oddball villain Ego, played to perfection by Kurt Russell and helping give a MCU villain that’s actually interesting and complex. Maybe it’s the killer soundtrack, and how all the songs are deftly woven into the story so that the songs tell the story without the characters needing to explain things. Maybe it’s all of that and more that add up into making this my favorite film in the entire MCU, my favorite film of the year, and my favorite film of all time.

TOP 10 CHARACTERS

This year had a lot of really great characters in the movies. Here are the ten best and brightest; again, this was really hard to narrow down, this list was also originally at twenty. There was no shortage of great, enjoyable new characters this year.

10. Ahmanet

The Mummy

The Mummy movie has gotten mixed reactions; the mummy herself, Princess Ahmanet, has not. She is pretty universally agreed to be the best and most interesting part of the movie, with Sofia Boutella giving a fantastic performance. It’s a shame so much of focus on her was cut for more Tom Cruise… in a movie called The Mummy, Ahmanet truly deserved the most focus. At least what she got lead to some pretty cool shit.

9. Tempest Shadow

My Little Pony: The Movie

The one big thing that ties the Friendship is Magic movie together and makes it great is its awesome villain, Tempest Shadow. She has an awesome concept in a unicorn with a fractured horn that causes her magic to be unstable and dangerous, she has an awesome design, and Emily Blunt gives her such a wonderful performance. The fact she gets an incredible villain song is icing on the cake.

8. The Grandmaster

Thor: Ragnarok

It’s Jeff Goldblum as a hedonistic overlord of an alien planet in a Marvel movie. This is literally the greatest thing ever to happen to the MCU.

7. Billy

Power Rangers

Billy is, without a doubt in my mind, the heart and soul of the new Power Rangers, the glue that binds them all together. He’s also pretty unique in that he is a character with autism and is never really treated any differently than anyone else by the other characters. Gotta give major props for that, they never boil him down to his bare essentials and instead make him a fleshed out and likable character. Here’s hoping there’s a sequel so we can see more of him.

6. Pennywise

The world’s most terrifying clown is here, and he is played to perfection by Bill Skarsgard. He’s terrifying, monstrous, creepy, and just disturbingly bizarre. He really brought the character from the books to life, and definitely managed to do a good job at being different enough from Tim Curry’s performance to stand on his own. The only drawback is that he doesn’t get as much character to him as he deserves, but the sequel can fix that up. Until then, we got all those funny dancing memes to laugh at.

5. The Vulture

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Marvel absolutely annihilated their run of weak, unengaging villains this year; Adrian Toomes was the final nail in the coffin for that trend, being one of the most fascinating and awesome villains yet seen in the MCU. Taking a really dopey villain from the comics and turning him into basically Walter White with an alien jetpack while still calling back to the cheesy original design was a real stroke of genius. Michael Keaton’s performance really sells things, particularly in the car ride scene; just the facial acting as he puts two and two together, the tension in the air so thick it’s oppressive… I’m glad Toomes is alive by the end, because he DEFINITELY needs to come back.

4. Ego the Living Planet

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

The best villain of the year from Marvel is also one of the strangest, most unexpected characters to ever pop up in a superhero movie: Ego, the Living Planet. His physical avatar that interacts with the cast is played by Kurt Russell, who is oozing fatherly likability and charm to Peter, a charm that belies his selfish and – ahem – egotistical nature. Once Ego’s plans and actions are revealed, he truly comes across as one of the most complex villains out there; his motives, while selfish and awful, do seem to come from a place of profound loneliness, albeit loneliness exacerbated by an extreme case of arrogance.

3. Richie Tozier

Even in the face of his worst nightmares, even in the face of impending death, Richie never stops doing what he does best: being a little shit. He has a line for every occasion, some crude joke for any situation, and is constantly making jokes about banging Eddie’s mom and how big his dick is. For a character that so easily could have been annoying… he’s easily the funniest fucking character in the whole movie. We NEEDED someone like Richie to brighten things up; if he wasn’t here, well, things might just have been a tad too bleak.

2. Sir Elton John

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Celebrities playing themselves in movies tend to be very brief cameo roles or one-scene wonders, which is sort of what I expected from Sir Elton John; he’d just walk on for a scene, maybe score a laugh, then vanish from the movie. But boy was I wrong; John is spouting profanity across at least two scenes, berating his captors, and more than that… he plays a major role in saving the world. AND EVEN MORE! He offers Harry the same reward Eggsy got in the first film. The moment I saw Sir Elton John deliver a flying kick while dressed in a gaudy drag outfit, taking a man out, I knew for a fact 2017 was my favorite year of cinema ever, hands down.

1. Tommy Wiseau

The Disaster Artist

Somehow, some way, James Franco was able to do the impossible and convincingly pull off a portrayal of cinema’s oddest anomaly, the enigmatic loon known as Tommy Wiseau. The accent is well done, the mannerisms are pretty spot on, and it is perfectly evident that Franco has a great deal of respect for the man himself. This is truly a performance that can stand alongside Johnny Depp’s Ed Wood. Anyway, how is your sex life?

THE 5 BEST RETURNING CHARACTERS

It’s not just newcomers who impressed; there were plenty of great turns from previously established characters. Here’s the five best, most improved characters:

5. Kylo Ren

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Finally, Kylo Ren gets to establish himself once and or all as a true successor to Vader in ways other characters don’t get to do. This movie truly portrays him as a cunning individual, and Adam Driver’s performance at times reminds me of Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Good on ya, Driver!

4. Thor

Thor: Ragnarok

Incredible. A feat I thought impossible has been accomplished: I actually liked and gave a shit about Thor, a character who has been the weak link in the MCU for a long time. A new haircut, a new set of powers, and a new look really help make Thor into a character worthy of being an Avenger. His great chemistry with Hulk/Banner, as well as Valkyrie and his brother Loki, really helps, as does his cheerfully arrogant nature. I still can’t believe I care about Thor.

3. Luke Skywalker

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

This ain’t your dad’s Luke Skywalker! This Luke is jaded, bitter, and hilariously cranky towards Rey, due to a moment of that trademark Skywalker impulsiveness leading to some truly harsh consequences. This is easily Mark Hamill’s strongest performance as Luke, truly giving it all even if at the time of filming he wasn’t too keen on the direction Luke took – though of course he came around, how could you not with a performance this good?

2. Merlin

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Merlin was a bit of a bit player in the first movie, but here he gets to come front and center for quite a good chunk of the film, though this is mostly due to everyone else in Kingsman dying due to the actions of the villains. Mark Strong’s performance here is one of the strongest performances in the series so far, and he really makes Merlin into a fun, engaging character. He even gets to sing!

1. Yondu

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Much like Merlin, Yondu was a bit player in the first movie, acting as a minor antagonistic force and getting a pretty badass scene where he singlehandedly annihilates Ronan’s soldiers. This time, every good quality about Yondu is cranked up to eleven. His character as seen in the first film is truly explored, his reasons for taking Quill are expanded upon, and that scene of him kicking ass from the first film is absolutely NOTHING compared to what he does to Taserface and the mutinous Ravagers. Come a little bit closer indeed! And I’d be remiss to not mention his incredibly memetic line “I’M MARY POPPINS, Y’ALL!” But that aside, Yondu gets a lot of excellent lines in this film, and he really helps hammer home this movie’s message about family in one line he gives Peter when he saves him from Ego: “He may’ve been your father, boy, but he wasn’t your daddy.” Yondu went from being a cool and interesting character in the first film to, well… my favorite character ever here. He’s that damn good. Talk about improvement.

THE 10 WORST CHARACTERS

Not all characters are good, unfortunately. Here are the ten characters this year who did nothing but grate my nerves and bring down their movies with their mere presence:

10. The Storm King

My Little Pony: The Movie

What a waste of Liev Schreiber’s talent this guy turned out to be. Sure he was funny, and sure he wasn’t the worst thing EVER, but he was really a letdown in terms of a villain, and this is a series that gave us great villains even when they were firmly grasping the Villain Ball (Discord, Chrysalis, Tirek). He comes off as even less impressive because he’s in the same movie as a really great villain: Tempest Shadow. The Storm King just ends up being a pretty weak generic doomsday villain who happens to have some good voice acting and animation behind him.

9. Rose Tico

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Jar Jar, meet your new wife! Rose is one of the most unnecessary additions in the entire Star Wars series, or if she is necessary, they sure bungled her to the point she feels less like a character that belongs and more like some fanfic writer’s OC created specifically to get on Finn’s dick. Her moments in the latter half of the casino subplot are really what drag it down, and she utters what may be the most cringeworthy, narmy line in the entirety of the history of the franchise: “We’re going to win this war not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.” Not even Anakin’s sand line is this cloying and obnoxious.

8. Nick Morton

The Mummy

What is the movie called again? Is it called “The Nick?” “The Tom Cruise?” No, it’s called The Mummy, and the best character is Ahmanet, the titular mummy. But her screentime got shafted quite a bit for this generic, boring Tom Cruise performance. It doesn’t help that Nick is a bit of an arrogant tool. Cruise proved he could be likable and charming as an amoral scumbag later this same year in American Made, so I have no idea what he was thinking here.

7. Ares

Wonder Woman

David Thewlis is a great actor, but not even he can make a Surprise Twist Hidden Villain character work. Disney has done this to death, so you’d expect this to pop up in the MCU or something, but nope! DCEU pulls Ares out their ass for the finale, and it was the guy who was in a couple of scenes helping the heroes out earlier. So now Ares, who is the god of war, is a skinny British dude with a big, honking mustache covered in really lame CGI armor, and it makes the final battle sequence a lot funnier than the epic finale of an epic superhero movie should be.

6. The Wardrobe

Beauty and the Beast

This movie’s living furniture are already really weird, overdesigned, and uncanny, but then we get the Wardrobe, which had a very nice, pleasant design in the original movie. Not so here, where her new face is a flapping curtain and she hollers like an opera singer all the time. She’s annoying and hard to look at; not a good combo.

5. Victor

Leap!

One of the main characters of Leap!, Victor is obnoxious, unfunny, and kinda creepy and possessive of Felicie. He’s easily the absolute worst character in the movie, and worse, the only character I can’t see being better in the original French version.

4. Hi-5

The Emoji Movie

Hi-5 is the epitome of every annoying comic relief character ever seen in cinematic history. He’s the archetype distilled to the barebone essentials for the character and slapped on the screen. There’s not even much to say; just imagine the most obnoxious comic relief ever, but remove any saving graces and make him ten times the hindrance to the plot. There you go. Hi-5.

3. MJ

Spider-Man: Homecoming

After all the bullshit rumors before the movie came out and the “Is she or isn’t she?” routine, finally the movie comes out, and Zendaya’s character is not Mary Jane! She’s just… MJ. It’s such a fucking stupid reveal for a spectacularly stupid and pointless character, it feels so tacked on and pointless. It’s almost as dumb as the photographer who gets killed in the beginning of BVS being Jimmy Olsen is, it’s just slapping an iconic name on a shitty, underused, unrelated character just for that fan recognition. Hopefully we get a real Mary Jane Watson in the MCU eventually, but until then, we’re stuck with this snooty, condescending bitch.

2. Jailbreak

The Emoji Movie

The Emoji Movie managed to boil so many characters down to their bare essentials that it’s impressive they managed to get even worse than that by boiling a character down to her gender. Jailbreak is a strong, independent woman who don’t need no man. That’s her whole character. Her character is just “Tomboy stereotype that finds happiness by embracing her true self as a feminine stereotype.” Nothing about her character, from her derivative, weird, jarring design to her hamfisted spouting of feminist rhetoric, do her character any favors and only serve to make the movie even more insufferable.

1. Belle

Beauty and the Beast

Belle is one of Disney’s best princesses, a smart, headstrong woman who doesn’t take shit from the curmudgeonly Beast. This Belle played by Emma Watson… is none of those things. She’s a hollow, empty caricature of the character I grew up loving, a weak pantomime of a beloved, strong character from Disney’s past. If there is anything that makes this live-action travesty even worse than it already was, it’s Watson’s undercooked performance. Belle is not supposed to be a less engaging character than Lefou.

TOP 10 MOVIES I WISH I SAW THIS YEAR

Look, I’m not rich, I’m not drowning in free time… I just can’t feasibly see everything. Here are the ten films I WISH I got a chance to check out before the year ended. No explanations, just a quick rundown:

10. Jesus, Bro!

9. A Monster Calls

8. Kong: Skull Island

7. Split

6. Atomic Blonde

5. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

4. Gerald’s Game

3. Justice League

2. Coco

1. The Shape of Water

TOP 10 MOST ANTICIPATED MOVIES OF NEXT YEAR

Hell yeah I’m hyped for next year! There’s a lot of great-looking films coming out next year… but which ones am I looking forward to the most? Here’s the top ten I’m excited to see:

10. Ready Player One

You’d think people would trust a tried and true master like Spielberg to distill what was good about the original book (and despite what the annoying twats on the internet might tell you, there’s a lot; you see, I actually read the book) into a great film. From the trailer alone it’s evident a lot of stuff is changed, so I’m interested to see how Spielberg does. As long as they keep in Rush as a major plot point, it’s all good.

9. Pacific Rim: Uprising

FUCK YEAH GIANT ROBOTS! WOO!

8. Ant-Man and the Wasp

Ant-Man is one of Marvel’s weirdest, yet best films. Now that we’re getting Wasp added into the mix, not to mention Michelle Pfeiffer is joining the MCU, I’m excited to see where they take Ant-Man in this movie.

7. The Predator

I am fucking THERE for more Predator movies. The Predator films are some of my favorite sci-fi action films (okay, I haven’t seen Predators, but the first two movies are great), so seeing a new one come out is exciting… let’s just hope there’s more practical effects than CGI.

6. Bohemian Rhapsody

How on Earth could I NOT be excited for a movie about one of my favorite musicians and bands? What I want to know is, why the Hell did it take so long to make a movie about Queen? This seems like a no-brainer.

5. Aquaman

Considering Aquaman is finally cool again and plaid by certified hunk Jason Momoa, I am totally here for this movie… not happy I have to stomach seeing that fucking nasty bitch Amber Heard, though. Oh how I must suffer to see superhero action.

4. Black Panther

Considering how he stole Cap’s third and final outing right out from under his nose, I’m excited to see how T’challa holds on his own. It’s also going to be nice to see Andy Serkis playing a villain who hopefully won’t be totally shafted for screentime and end up wasted in the end. COUGH.

3. The Incredibles 2

Honestly, if you’re not excited to see this, I really have to question your priorities. This is the first Pixar movie in years I actually genuinely want to see.

2. Untitled Deadpool Sequel

Considering how great the first film was, this film with its goofy marketing and teasers, cheeky title, and addition of Josh Brolin to the cast has easily won me over. I have faith this will be just as good if not better than the original, especially if it ends up somehow tying in to the MCU, what with Disney devouring Fox.

1. Avengers: Infinity War

Of course this is my #1.

10 WORST POP CULTURE MOMENTS OF 2017

And now we have the absolute worst bits and pieces of film and pop culture this year! We had some… really, truly awful moments. Let’s hope next year we can try and do better, because god, some of this shit is just disheartening…

10. The half of The Mummy not focusing on Ahmanet

Okay, so The Mummy was no necessarily a bad movie… when it focused on Ahmanet. She’s easily one of the coolest and most fascinating fantasy villains in recent memory, and yet, the movie seems to think we care more about Tom Cruise and his antics than the thing the movie is actually named after. I hate drawing comparisons to the Brendan Fraser series as the two are so tonally different it’s stupid to compare them, but at least those movies gave the titular mummy an equal chunk of screentime alongside the protagonists. Hopefully Ahmanet fares better when she inevitably returns.

9. Johnny Depp

It’s hard to deny what a shit year Johnny Depp has had. His messy divorce lead to his awful performance in the latest bloated mess of a Pirates film, and then he spent the rest of the year having every bit of acting he was announced to do being belittled and mocked. Of particular note is Grindelwald, who J.K. Rowling had to come to defense to because people are still backlashing against Depp over the bullshit abuse allegations that have been pretty safely shown to be false. I guess Hollywood will never have a shortage of Fatty Arbuckle stories.

8. Smurfs: The Lost Village

People were so busy ranting over The Emoji Movie that they ignored what is undoubtedly the worst animated film of the year. Gorgeous animation aside – which, really, is what is the born for every theatrically released movie these days so it’s hard to count this as a plus – we have a dull, standard story, average to okay voice acting, a surprising amount of sitcom-esque sexism, and most egregiously, absolutely no Smurfing at all. I’m not kidding. In this, a Smurf movie, there is not a single example of Smurfing. Smurfing is, of course, the trademark smurfing style of the Smurfs; it’s when they smurf the word “Smurf” into the sentence in place of another smurf. See what I mean? There is NONE of this in the movie. What a load of smurfing bullshit.

7. Beauty and the Beast

Tale as old as time

A bunch of rehashed songs

Barely anything changed

Servants overdesigned and strange

And Gaston’s played all wrong

Awful performances make this film

On arrival quite deceased

A tale as old as time

A remake that’s a crime

Beauty and the Beast

6. Those we lost…

We lost a lot of talent in the world this year. Tom Petty, Chris Cornell, Chester Bennington, Adam West, June Foray, J. Geils, Malcolm Young, Fats Domino, Hugh Hefner, Jerry Lewis, Martin Landau, Peter Sallis, Heather North, and so many more people who helped shape and define pop culture and change the world with their work. Tom Petty and Adam West hit me the hardest; I’m sure some of you were hit hard by one of these losses too.

A moment of silence for all of these great men and woman who have left us.

5. The first half of Rick & Morty season 3 (and the last few minutes of the finale)

Rick & Morty is usually a great show. Seasons 1 and 2 were fantastic, and the opening episode of season 3 was hilarious and awesome… and then quality took a nosedive with a bland Mad Max parody, an overly gory forced meme episode featuring Pickle Rick, and then the absolute shitfest that was the Vindicators episode, a mean-spirited potshot at superhero films that featured the worst writing the show has ever seen. Bu hey, after that, the season started looking up! We got a good Jerry episode, Evil Morty returning (in the best episode of the show), and some really great and funny moments. And the last episode was pretty great and funny too, but then… it came to an end with a rushed resolution of the season’s plotline. The whole season feels like a letdown becaue of this, and it’s a damn shame, because some of the best episodes yet came out of it… it was just bogged down by some truly awful ones and really poor writing.

4. Salty Star Wars fans

Star Wars ‘fans’ (I hesitate to even call them fans, since at this point they hate more Star Wars media than they like. They’re not Star Wars fans, they’re original trilogy fans) have always shown themselves to be one of the most cancerous nerd fandoms ever. With the release of the latest film, they’ve taken this to absurd levels, to the point where they have gotten a petition to have the new films stricken from canon. This is a new level of pathetic pettiness; just ignore the movies and go back to jacking off over your crappy EU novels, you fucking dorks.

3. Pennywise getting repurposed as a gay icon

Apparently, the face of the LGBT community should be a predatory clown that devours children and has very pedophilic vibes to how he lures them in to be devoured. This is the kind of image the LGBT community has been pushing very hard to rid itself of for decades, so obviously making Pennywise the Dancing Clown as the new gay horror icon in a forced attempt at repeating the Babadook’s joking LGBT icon status is a great move! It’s really not. This is some of the cringiest shit the internet has ever done, and only showcases how tone deaf fandoms can be.

2. The reaction to The Emoji Movie

The Emoji Movie is not a good film. At best, it’s “so bad it’s good” or even “okay” if you’re feeling charitable. But that’s not what seemingly every reviewer or comment section on the internet would tell you! Apparently this film is the animated apocalypse, and is the end of cinema and the most horrifyingly awful film ever made! EVERY big reviewer got in on this hyperbolic bullshit. This movie is JUST a bad film, it is NOT the end of all cinema, it is NOT some sort of sign of the death of creativity in the world… hell, it’s hard to even CALL it a film, it’s more like a really shitty, overly-long advert. Usually people overreact to good movies. This is the first time I’ve ever seen people overreact to a shitty one.

1. All the sexual harassment in Hollywood

Oooooh boy. Harvey Weinstein being revealed to be a massive, disgusting pervert was bad enough, but then beloved actor Kevin Spacey, beloved Pixar mastermind John Lasseter, bitter comedian Louis C.K., and even GEORGE TAKEI being accused of past sexual misconduct? And while some of these accusations sound like absolute bullshit (the story against Takei is really fucking fishy), Kevin “I choose to live as a gay man” Spacey and John Lasseter’s are sadly likely, and C.K. actually came out and gave an apology for doing shit. I guess it’s good to see that this shit won’t fly anymore, but knowing how awful these formerly admirable men have treated men and women working for them is just disgusting. And let’s not even get into the numerous accusations leveled against the president… that’s something else entirely. At least from all of THIS bad, something good can actually come out of it.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

Did you all actually think I was going to end things off on such a dour note? Nahhhhh. Let me tell you about some other great things this year, at least things I’ve personally been able to witness:

Bayonetta 3 was announced, baby! Get right on aboard that hype train!

Pokemon’s latest game, while a mixed bag in terms of the redone story, has one of the most epic postgame adventures I’ve ever seen. Fighting every single villain in the franchise really makes this feel like the grand finale of the series’ time on wholly handheld consoles that it is. Also, Blachephalon is amazing, and Light That Burns The Sky is the greatest attack in the history of the franchise.

Doki Doki Literature Club came out, and while it’s not a game I’d exactly play again, it is a pretty interesting (and free!) indie game. It has an excellent cast of characters; I see a lot of myself in Sayori.

Ducktales got one of the raddest reboots I’ve ever seen. That pilot was fuckin’ beautiful.

Charles Manson is now where he belongs: EATING DEMON DICK IN HELL.

Filthy Frank released the dankest album of the year, Pink Season. Give it a listen here:

The greatest song ever created by manking was released:

Let me be frank though, the entirety of Mouth Moods is a modern masterpiece. The outtakes are masterpieces too… particularly this one. And this one. AND this one.

QotSA released a fucking awesome album, containing fucking awesome songs like this one:

The funkiest summertime jam ever was released:

As for me personally, well, my fiancee @lilmissrantsypants and I finally moved into our own apartment, and things are really looking up for us. Our 2018 is looking to be brighter than ever; I hope all of yours is just as bright!

Alright, one more masterpiece before I go, the Song/Music Video of the Century:

#2017 #list #Best & Worst #year #MCU #DCEU #It #Star Wars #Dreamworks #movies #best #worst

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