#this also does not take most fictional takes on spies into account so there's a good bit of narrative salt you can take this with

[eorzeashan]

probably unpopular take, but I genuinely feel a good part of Theron's charm is that he's not the best spy. to me, a good if not the best spy is one who is completely inhuman-- spies are forced to do things everyday that are unthinkable to the common man. lying to their children. lying to loved ones. lying to everyone who thought they knew them. single-minded in their actions and completely if not utterly a weapon in the shape of a man. i've seen more horrifying iterations of spies that were worse than most monsters on tv. these are the ones that survive and succeed.

theron is not that. he remains halfway between worlds where he stays human, he has a heart that should *not* fit with his line of work and sounds borderline idealistic as pointed out multiple times in-game by more pragmatic souls, but he gets away with it, messy as it is by definition.. that's why he's great. it's because he won't be that spy.

[samwisethewitch]

Polytheism

Most pagan religions are polytheistic in nature, meaning they believe in multiple divine beings. This is one of the hardest parts of paganism for outsiders to understand. In a culture where strict monotheism is treated as the norm, it can be difficult to wrap your head around the idea of worshiping more than one god.

Ironically, monotheism — the belief in a single, all-powerful creator deity — is a relatively new invention. Zoroastrianism, the first monotheistic religion, is only about 4,000 years old. In the big scheme of things, that really is not a long time. Evidence for polytheistic religion dates back much, much farther (like, up to 40,000 years). We could argue that polytheism is the natural state of human spirituality.

Within pagan communities, polytheism is often described as a spectrum, with “hard polytheism” on one end and “soft polytheism” on the other. Hard polytheists believe that every deity is a distinct, separate, autonomous spiritual being. Soft polytheists believe that every deity is a part of a greater whole. As we’ve already discussed, extreme soft polytheism isn’t actually polytheism at all, but monism — the belief in a single divine source that manifests in different ways, including as different deities.

Hard polytheism is pretty straightforward. Norse paganism is an example of a hard polytheist system. Most Norse pagans believe that Odin is distinct from Thor, who is distinct from Freyja, who is distinct from Heimdall… you get the idea. Each of these gods has their own area of expertise over which they preside. If you’re dealing with a love matter, you’re probably going to seek out help from Freyja rather than Thor — unless you have a close, ongoing working relationship with Thor. (We’ll talk more about these types of close working relationships in a future post.)

Soft polytheism can be a little harder for people coming from a monotheist system to wrap their heads around. I think Jeremy Naydler describes it best in his book Temple of the Cosmos (here discussing Kemetic/Egyptian polytheism): “Shu and Tefnut are distinct essences dependent on Atum for their existence… The image often used in ancient Egyptian sacred texts concerning the gods in general is that they are the ‘limbs’ of the Godhead.” Shu and Tefnut, who are described in mythology as Atum’s children, are an extension of Atum’s creative power. However, they are also distinct beings with their own thoughts, feelings, and agendas. (It’s worth noting that we also have myths describing Atum’s birth. He is not a supreme being or a timeless force like the Abrahamic God.)

Monism is soft polytheism taken to its logical extreme. In her book, Wicca For Beginners, Thea Sabin describes it this way: “Think, for a moment, of a tree with a thick trunk that splits into two large branches. In turn, smaller branches grow from the large ones, and still smaller branches from the small ones, and so on. Deity is the trunk of the tree, and the God and Goddess are the two main branches. The smaller branches that fork off of the two big ones are the worlds gods and goddesses…”

If you’re not sure what the difference between soft polytheism and monism is, here’s a good litmus test: If you believe in the existence of a supreme divine force, you’re a monist. If not, you’re a polytheist.

Many pagans are somewhere in between hard and soft polytheism. For example, you may believe that Zeus and Jupiter are different versions of the same deity, filtered through the lens of Greek and Roman culture, respectively — but you believe that Thor is distinct and separate from Zeus/Jupiter, even though all three of them are gods of storms.

To make things even more complicated, there are some pagans (and some atheists, for that matter) who believe that the gods exist less as autonomous beings and more as archetypes within mankind’s collective consciousness. Their stories resonate with us because they serve as mirrors for different parts of ourselves. In this sense, we create the gods in our own image.

This belief is how we get “pop culture pantheons.” Some people work with fictional characters as archetypes in their spiritual practice. After all, if Sailor Moon is the ultimate representation of feminine power for you, what’s stopping you from putting her on your altar? Some pop culture pantheons have actually broken through into mainstream paganism — there are a lot of Wiccans who work with Merlin, believe me.

This interpretation is a bit different from polytheism, and could really be its own post (or several), so for the sake of keeping things short and sweet I’m not going to go any deeper into it. If this interests you, I recommend reading the work of Jungian psychologists like Clarissa Pinkola Estés and Robert A. Johnson. You may even want to check out The Satanic Bible by Anton LeVay for a particularly spicy take on the idea that we create our own gods and devils.

Just know that you can still practice paganism, even if you aren’t 100% sold on the idea that the gods literally exist.

Your take on polytheism doesn’t necessarily have to match up with the historical cultures you take inspiration from. For example, you may be a hardcore monist, but find that you’re drawn to work exclusively with the Norse gods. Or, you may be the hardest of hard polytheists, but find that the Kemetic gods are the ones who really speak to you. This is all totally okay! One of the benefits of paganism is that it allows for a lot of personalization.

Now that we’ve got the types of polytheism out of the way, let’s address the other big question that comes up when pagans discuss polytheism with monotheists: Does that mean you believe all those crazy myths are true? Once again, the answer depends on the pagan.

Just like some Christians are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is a factual historical account, there are some pagans who believe that their mythology is factually true. However, many pagans accept that these stories have fantastical or exaggerated elements, but still convey a spiritual truth.

There are multiple Norse myths about men being transformed into dragons by their lust for riches, the most famous of which is probably the story of the dwarf-turned-dragon Fafnir. (Yes, Tolkien did steal that plot point from Norse mythology. Sorry.) These stories aren’t really about the dragons, though — they’re about the corrupting power of greed. The stories are true in that they teach a valuable life lesson that resonated deeply with ancient Norse culture. But did dragons really roam the earth in ancient times? Probably not.

This is one of the most important skills for any pagan: finding the spiritual truth in a myth or story. If you read a myth about Artemis transforming a man into a deer because he spied on her while she was bathing, what does that tell you about Artemis? Next time you read or listen to a myth or folk tale, try to find the message at the core of the story. You may be surprised by how this changes your understanding of the mythology.

If you’re interested in paganism but aren’t sure where to start, it might be helpful to gauge where you fall on the polytheism spectrum. Are you a hard polytheist, a soft polytheist, or somewhere in between? Are you a monist? Do you believe the gods function more as archetypes? Write it down so you can look back on it later.

When we talk about specific pagan traditions in future posts, I’ll point out where they fall on the polytheism spectrum. If you’re looking for a path that is compatible with your own beliefs, this is one thing to keep in mind.

Finally, know that your beliefs about the gods might change as you continue to learn and grow. That’s a natural part of religious exploration, so don’t try to fight it!

[ao3-sucks]

An Archive of Someone’s Own: my experiences being groomed in fandom circles on AO3

TW: Childhood sexual abuse, grooming, mentions of incest and rape.

I used to be a big writer of fanfiction. It was the logical choice for me. I loved to write and create bold and immersive worlds, and I craved an audience who would enjoy my work as much as I did. Since my writing wasn’t actually good, I needed a community of other amateurs who wouldn’t mind that, and by tweaking my characters and settings into ones from canonical media, I got the audience I so craved.

I started writing fanfiction online when I was 14, posting initially on FanFiction.net and then moving to AO3 a few months later. As I got back into writing original fiction towards the end of high school, I lost interest in this community, and it’s been a long time since I posted anything much on AO3.

I’ve always struggled with the fact I display a lot of symptoms of CSA, and for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why. Throughout my teen years, I refused to get changed or bathe when anyone was even vaguely nearby, constantly paranoid about being spied on; I developed a severe touch phobia, and would have frequent panic attacks from something as small as brushing arms with a passerby; I resolutely identified as asexual and refused to get into anything resembling a relationship with others because the very concept disgusted and repulsed me.

Weird, considering I had grown up pretty normal and all of these symptoms had started around my early teens. It was only when I told my friends about my friendship with a 30 year old I had met online that the pieces started falling into place for me.

Child grooming is usually discussed in the context of one adult going out of their way to befriend a child with the goal of lowering their resistance to sexual abuse, through normalisation and friendliness. I’d like to talk about how that worked on the fanfiction website AO3. Since it’s an open website and most communication takes place between anonymous users or accounts in the comments section of a work, there is very little delineation between spaces for adults to discuss whatever dark topics they like and spaces for kids to do the same.

This frequently leads to pretty inappropriate conversations between people of widely varying ages and life experiences, which is how I ended up talking sex as a fourteen year old with people ranging from a couple of years older than me, who were generally okay, to more than twice my age. The 30 year old in question listed on her profile how many pedophilic ships she loved, and she knew my age but pushed me to keep discussing sexual topics with her. Sounds like a red flag, yeah? Well. I was 14, and very stupid.

This 30 year old woman, who I will call Aku (because it’s similar to her screen name and because it’s funny to name her after the bad guy from Samurai Jack) would start conversations with me whenever I posted anything to AO3 and would refuse to take no for an answer when I tried to back out of conversations with her, and since these conversations were public and occurring within comments, I didn’t want to be rude to her since this was taking place on content I was trying to promote.

I told her my age multiple times and she would either pretend she forgot from last time (saying her memory is super bad) or continue as though it was just trivia about me and not a sign she shouldn’t have been pushing me. My primary objection to what she would say to me (since most of it was just her being annoying) was her insistence on sexualising everything I wrote, and her determination to push me into writing pornographic content, which I eventually gave in to.

Yes, she was a terrible person. She emailed me using her personal email address, so I know her full name and place of residence, because she’s an idiot. These emails also contain sexually explicit materials. Nothing much ever happened between us except for these very creepy interactions and the fact we remained online friends for a few years. But here’s the thing: she wasn’t the only person pushing me into creating sexual content. Lots of people would comment on my writing demanding that I show explicit sexual content when I really didn’t want to.

After a while it felt like I couldn’t write a longer, romantic fanfiction without including explicit sexual content. Like my work wasn’t valid without it. Other, more popular writers were usually sexual in their content, and I wanted to be like them and bring in the views, right? So, when I look at my back catalog of works, I can see how my content moved from completely non-sexual to featuring sexual content over time, and the views usually came with. In this way, I was in an environment that was encouraging me on many levels to sexualise my own work, which impacted the way I thought about my creative process.

Here’s another example I remember. When I was a young sprout, I remember reading down someone’s list of fanfiction recommendations and seeing a work called Hug Therapy, which I promptly read. While the work is marked as explicit and containing the Loki/Thor pairing, the use of relationship and rating tags on AO3 is so poorly regulated that it didn’t really mean anything to me to see either of those. People tag hardcore material as non-explicit and tag friendships as relationships, because there’s no motivation to tag properly. Plus, someone I followed here on Tumblr had recommended it to me.

Now, you wouldn’t know from the listing, but while this piece starts out as comedy, it turns out in the end to include rape, incest, and BDSM in very explicit terms. The fact it was tagged as being explicit didn’t slow me down, because the liberal use of these tags could mean that an explicit tag was just there because sexual content was implied or mentioned, which I thought would be the case based on the rest of the listing. Out of curiosity, I recently tried to report this work to the moderators for containing no warnings about incest or rape, and I got this in response:

“Selecting “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” satisfies a creator’s obligation under the warnings policy. Users who wish to avoid specific elements entirely should not access fanworks marked with “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings”. Our Terms of Service note: “You understand that using the Archive may expose you to material that is offensive, triggering, erroneous, sexually explicit, indecent, blasphemous, objectionable, grammatically incorrect, or badly spelled. ….. This decision is in accordance with our policy of maximum inclusiveness; we have therefore closed this case and will not be investigating further.”

Which, yeah, I guess. The frustration comes from how ‘Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings’ is an extremely commonly used tag, and most things that it’s used on are totally harmless.

This fanfiction, which I was recommended by a friend, is hugely popular, in the top 60 most read fanfictions in the entire fandom. You wanna hear the kicker? The author, Astolat, is one of the founders of AO3. They’re not just some random author who isn’t following the rules. They’re a creator of the whole website, and they made the rules. This is pretty telling about how seriously the website actually takes protecting their users.

My final example I want to give is one of fetish content. People in fetish communities generally (not always) say that fetishes are probably something one should work up to after the onset of sexual activity, especially potentially harmful stuff like BDSM. In the circles I was running in, if you weren’t sporting a fetish or two (no matter your age) you were a boring bitch.

Maybe this isn’t true of everywhere in the fanfiction community, but I used to feel that bizarre pressure until I got out. Bear in mind that my main time in this community was from ages 14 to 17. I never made my age a secret, either. I told people outright I was that age, I was in high school, I was playing hockey and studying The Great Gatsby when I wasn’t online.

Since I was in the Avengers fandom and I liked Loki and the Asgardians, I was frequently exposed to incestuous content between Loki and Thor, and a lot of it came out of nowhere or was poorly tagged. This was considered the norm, and while I at first felt completely horrified and repulsed, within a year or two I no longer gave a shit. It’s only in the last few years as I’ve begun to unpack everything that I’ve started to get that strong revulsion reaction to incestuous content.

In the circles I was in, it was relentlessly normal. Normal to the point that people who disliked it were usually shouted down. Even to this day, debate rages on in fandom spaces about whether or not content like this normalises this kind of abuse. In my own personal experience, which I don’t usually like to talk about, it absolutely does.

In real life, this normalisation started to have serious consequences for my mental health and interpersonal relationships. In fanfiction, any occasion when you are alone with someone could become sexual, any familial relationship is possibly sexual, and it doesn’t matter if you like it or not. I became incredibly anxious around male family members for fear of being sexually assaulted, and my OCD, which I had been developing since I was a child, turned from thoughts of physical violence to thoughts of graphically sexually assaulted by anyone and everyone around me.

My fear of being touched got to the point where I would have panic attacks if anyone came anywhere close to touching me. I quit sports, fucked up my romantic relationships, and didn’t hug anyone, not even members of my family, for years. All the while, I had bought my first laptop and was consuming more fanfiction than ever before. I struggled with my sexuality growing up, as I am bisexual, and while fanfiction provided LGBT content to help me, the content was frequently so disturbing that I viewed any expression of sexuality as something evil and predatory.

The community on AO3, whether you like it or not, is often sexual, and provides no barriers between the casual user looking for content and extremely intense fetish material. It’s sometimes called the Pornhub of fanfiction, but considering the wide range of people who use it, it’s more like if you opened Youtube and saw niche hardcore fetish videos just on the front page, recommended and trending.

Sure, you have to click a little button to confirm you’re 18 before you can actually read a story, but the tags and descriptions of readily available works can be extremely explicit. Fanfiction also brings you into close contact with fellow readers and the author, and encourages you to become a content creator, which in some ways makes it more dangerous.

I was affected much more strongly by what I saw than most people would be, because I was already treading shaky ground. But I’m also not the only person out there who has been hurt in this way. Most of my friends who grew up in fandom can report the impact that fanfiction culture had on them. One of my friends from high school knew a panoply of porn terms at age 14 or so due to reading fanfiction, and another of my other friends at high school almost exclusively read rape porn because it was her favourite. I didn’t have friends who watched porn; I had friends who read fanfiction. These are just as troubling to me as any other accounts of young people consuming visual porn from a very early age.

It’s frequently cited that fanfiction gives minority groups the opportunity for creative outlet. It was a great place for me to cut my teeth as a content creator, and a source of acceptance and kindness when times were tough. Fanfiction communities have historically been the domain of women and minorities, and create a space for these people to tell their own stories.

It’s largely because of this that fanfiction communities fear censorship and strict moderation, as they have been attacked in the past on homophobic or misogynistic grounds, resulting in mass deletions of works or the shutdown of websites. But there must be some middle ground between total censorship and the kind of free rein that puts vulnerable people in danger, and I strongly encourage the board of AO3 to seek this middle ground out.

But it’s the community itself that needs to shape up; AO3 is, after all, a community-led website built by fans for fans, so the fact that this website has such issues is a reflection of the issues that run deeply within the people who created it. Aku didn’t talk to me with the intention of doing me harm, or so I believe at this time, and she didn’t pursue me as a lone wolf or in isolation.

She was simply a particularly brazen member of a community that was used to having inappropriate conversations with young people and sexualising everything they did. Even people my own age were jokingly pushing me into discussing and consuming extremely sexual content. It was just normal. That’s what I want to say here. Inside the world of fandom on AO3, the grooming of children with sexual content is normal. And that’s scary.

- Mod Daft

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ad-tech is a bezzle

There are lots of problems with ad-tech:

being spied on all the time means that the people of the 21st century are less able to be their authentic selves;

any data that is collected and retained will eventually breach, creating untold harms;

data-collection enables for discriminatory business practices ("digital redlining");

the huge, tangled hairball of adtech companies siphons lots (maybe even most) of the money that should go creators and media orgs; and

anti-adblock demands browsers and devices that thwart their owners' wishes, a capability that can be exploited for even more nefarious purposes;

That's all terrible, but it's also IRONIC, since it appears that, in addition to everything else, ad-tech is a fraud, a bezzle.

Bezzle was John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." That is, a rotten log that has yet to be turned over.

Bezzles unwind slowly, then all at once. We've had some important peeks under ad-tech's rotten log, and they're increasing in both intensity and velocity. If you follow Aram Zucker-Scharff, you've had a front-row seat to the fraud.

https://twitter.com/Chronotope/status/1078003966863200256

Time and again, everything in the ad-tech stack has been demonstrated to be fraudulent: fake audiences firing fake clicks at fake videos on fake sites that suck real dollars out of advertisers' accounts.

This was masterfully elucidated in Tim Hwang's short 2020 book SUBPRIME ATTENTION CRISIS, whose thesis is: we must deflate the ad-tech bubble intentionally, lest we get a messy rupture that destroys many of the good things the parasite has colonized.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

The ad-tech fraud is many-layered. On the surface, there's the counting frauds: fake clicks, fake sites, fake videos, etc. But there's a deeper fraud, a theory fraud, the fraud that with enough surveillance data and machine learning, ad-tech can sell anyone anything.

That is: even if we count accurately, ads are still overvalued and underperforming. This is also a lesson whose examples are coming with increasing tempo, as when Ebay simply stopped buying Google search ads and saw NO decrease in sales.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/06/surveillance-tulip-bulbs/#adtech-bubble

In a piece for Forbes, marketer-turned-antifraud-auditor Dr Augustine Fou rounds up some of the grossest things festering under the ad-tech log.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/01/02/when-big-brands-stopped-spending-on-digital-ads-nothing-happened-why/?sh=5a4f9c9a1166

Like that time in 2018 when Procter and Gamble - inventors of "brand marketing" - turned off $200m worth of ad-tech buys and saw no change to their sales. Or when Chase killed 95% of its advertising and kept all of its business.

Most interesting is the tale of how Uber allowed itself to be defrauded of $150m/year, for years, by ad-tech intermediaries. It's a story told in detail by former Uber head of "performance marketing" Kevin Frisch on the Marketing Today podcast:

https://www.marketingtodaypodcast.com/194-historic-ad-fraud-at-uber-with-kevin-frisch/

It starts with the revelation that $50m of its annual spend on customer acquisitions - money paid when an ad leads to a new Uber customer downloading the app, entering payment details and taking their first ride - was fraudulent.

Here's how that worked: scummy marketers fielded low-quality apps (like battery monitors) that requested root access. These apps spied on every app you installed. If you installed Uber, they "fired a click" to the system to report you as having been "converted" by an ad.

After clearing $50m of fraud, Frisch continued to dig into the system. In the end, about $120m of the $150m was being stolen, pocketed for fake clicks on fake sites by fake users.

In a fascinating turn, Frisch describes how his colleagues were indifferent or actively hostile to his efforts. Uber was in "growth mode," trying to beef up its numbers prior to the IPO where suckers would relieve its Saudi royal investors.

Uber is a company that will never, ever be profitable. It, too, is a bezzle. It only "works" if outside investors - marks - can somehow be convinced to buy the insiders' stock, which requires the appearance of growth - AKA "A pile of shit this big MUST have a pony under it!"

So execs like Frisch were required to "spend to budget" - to maintain the appearance of growth, including (especially) the growth of its "precision analytics" marketing, where ad-tech spends turned into directly attributable customer acquisitions.

This is the story that keeps on giving, because it all starts with Sleeping Giant's campaign to force Uber to stop advertising on Breitbart, and Uber's inability to get its ad-tech "partners" to definitively switch off Breitbart ads.

https://twitter.com/nandoodles/status/1345774768746852353

The system's layers of misdirection - there to hide the fraud - meant that it behaved nondeterministically and couldn't fulfil simple requests, which triggered the search.

There's a theory that the reason Big Tech spies on us so much is that they're really good at turning data into sales (and, by extension, influence, as in elections, referenda, etc). But it is increasingly apparent that Big Tech's spying is part of a bezzle.

That is, we're being surveilled, doxed, placed under automated suspicion and digitally discriminated against all to put on a show that separates marks from their dollars.

This is the theme of my 2020 book HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM:

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

Namely, that we are under constant surveillane because monopolies can get away with obviously fraudulent and dangerous conduct by mobilizing their monopoly profits to buy political outcomes that serve their ends.

This is also what happened with California's Proposition 22, the most expensive ballot initiative in US history: Uber didn't spearhead a $200m campaign to legalize worker misclassification to become profitable.

Uber will never be profitable.

All that money was spent to maintain the fiction, the fraud, the bezzle - it was an appeal to rescue the wholly fictional pony underneath that gigantic pile of shit.

[yetanotheremptypage]

Hi I always love your 100 ways to say I love you fiction. Can I request a high school "it looks good on you" prompt for Kathony?

Hi nonny! Yes, you may. I had to fiddle with ages here, and made them American since that's the school system I'm familiar with, but basically Anthony's a senior (18), Kate and Benedict are juniors (17/16, respectively), and Colin and Edwina are freshmen (14/15, respectively). Also Penelope isn’t Lady Whistledown because in this world she’d be, like, 10.

no escaping your love #12: winter formal (a high school au)  (Read 1-11 here.)

#32. It looks good on you.

Kate pulled down the hem of her dress, again. It wasn’t even that short, really, but the last thing she needed tonight was to get dress coded. As if she needed more reasons for Cressida Cowper to laugh at her.

Her and Edwina’s start at Mayfair Academy had been fine, mostly. It was painfully obvious they were on scholarship, what with Kate’s hand-me-down 2010 Nissan a stark contrast to the much fancier, newer models most of their classmates showed up in. The Sheffield-Sharmas’ clothes were from Target and Old Navy instead of Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters, though that hadn’t slowed down Edwina’s popularity or praises of beauty. Edwina had been asked by four boys to homecoming during the freshman frenzy, but they were all too late: Anthony fucking Bridgerton got to her first.

Kate hated Anthony practically on sight. They were in the same English seminar and AP Gov and, as the two most opinionated people in both classes, had quickly become enemies. Kate had also rather liberally stalked the Lady Whistledown Instagram, which spread gossip and rumors around the school like lightning, before starting and she’d gathered that Anthony was quite the heartbreaker. He was captain of the golf team, student body treasurer, on the honor roll, and attractive to boot. His family were well-known property developers and he was already being groomed to take over the company. It was almost guaranteed he would attend one of the Ivies next year.

When she’d befriended Benedict, Anthony’s younger brother, in her art class, she’d accepted the fact that she would have to see more of Anthony than she would like.

But then he’d had the gall to ask her sister, her fifteen year old sister, to homecoming, and she’d seen red. No eighteen year old should be sniffing around a fifteen year old, but Anthony fucking Bridgerton certainly shouldn’t be sniffing around her baby sister.

He’d tried to get on Kate’s good side, too, asking her to dance with him. She’d laughed in his face, but Edwina, the traitor, pushed her to accept. They’d argued, naturally, and she’d landed a good step on his toes. His thing with Edwina had fizzled out rather quickly from there, with him going back to his ex, Siena, but Kate still absolutely despised the fact that her sister’s first date had been with Anthony, of all people. What did he know about treating a girl well?

(He had, though, brought Kate a corsage as well, since she was attending less as a fellow student, dateless, but more as a chaperone for the two of them. No one had ever given her flowers before.)

(And, when Cressida had been mocking a girl in the cafeteria, he’d swept in and gotten Cressida to back off.)

(And, when he’d found Kate under a table in the back of the library just yesterday having a panic attack about her French test, he’d sat under the table with her and helped bring her back down.)

But, as her eyes scanned the room, she certainly wasn’t looking for him. And her heart certainly didn’t speed up when she caught him under the snowflakes at the punch table, speaking to Charlotte Hanover and Simon Bassett, the student council president and vice president, respectively.

And she certainly didn’t lose her breath when he looked up and made eye contact with her from all the way across the room.

She watched him say goodbye to Charlotte and Simon and cross the room to her. He wore a navy suit and a silver tie, looking absolutely take-your-breath-away handsome. She pulled on the hem of her purple dress again, half hoping he would walk right past her and half hoping he wouldn’t.

The latter, more traitorous part of her won, though, as he came to a stop in front of her, smiling in a way that made her feel all warm inside.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” She moved her hands up her dress so that she could wipe them on the skirt. When had they gotten so clammy?

“Your dress is lovely.” She froze, hands in awkward fists at her sides.

“Thank you.” That was what politeness dictated, right? He compliments her, she thanks him, she compliments him back. “I like your suit, too. I’m of the firm opinion white men need to stop wearing black ones all the time.” He laughed, fiddling with the knot of his tie.

“It was my dad’s,” he replied softly, and Kate’s breath hitched involuntarily. That was another thing she’d learned about Anthony Bridgerton via Lady Whistledown: his father had died when he was fifteen. Anaphylactic shock. As the eldest of eight, he’d taken on a huge amount of responsibility. It was, the account speculated, why he only played golf, why he wasn’t president himself, et cetera, et cetera. He was a family man at heart, even though he was barely a man himself just yet.

“It looks good on you,” she said, and his smile turned hesitant.

“So does yours. The dress, I mean. You— you look beautiful.”

“A good dress is all it takes,” she said with a wave of her hand, but he shook his head.

“It’s not just the dress. It’s you.”

Suddenly neither of them could look at the other anymore. She spied Benedict and the third Bridgerton brother, Colin, across the room and waved to them, even as Colin waggled his finger between her and Anthony and made a disgusting thrusting move with his hips. She rolled her eyes and turned back to Anthony, who hadn’t moved.

“Do you want to dance?” he blurted. She raised her eyebrows at him.

“Won’t Siena be jealous that her date is dancing with someone else?”

“She’s not— We broke up. For good.” He didn’t seem upset or embarrassed about it at all. “She and I aren’t good for each other.”

We could be a voice in her mind whispered, emboldened by the fact that Anthony offered her his hand. And even though her own hand was clammy and shaky, she took his, and it felt like sparks shot up her arm.

They danced the rest of the night, and Kate had the oddest feeling that she’d never dance with anyone but him (and maybe his brothers) ever again.

[warrocketpodcast]

Is the "professor x just made a bunch of child soldiers" argument as tired as the "If Batman donated all the money it took to become Batman he'd do more good" line?

.No, but I think there’s an interesting reason why it’s not, and it has a lot to do with textual intent. 

In Batman comics, Batman IS the solution to the problems with Gotham City, which we know because WE ARE READING BATMAN COMICS AND THAT IS THE PREMISE, AND IF YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND FICTION. Billionaires in the real world? Terrible, inherently immoral. Billionaires in the fictional universe that has shit like Green Lantern rings and x-ray eyes? Literally the only thing keeping a crocodile man from eating your face. Bruce Wayne is a philanthropist on the side, but, as I’ve written before, writing a check to the local school district or offering comprehensive health insurance to employees of Wayne Industries does not solve the problem of A Murder Clown Is Poisoning The Water Supply Right Now. I do not understand why people claim they want to see fucking Batman meet with his accountant and figure out if construction of the Thomas and Martha Wayne Memorial Humanities Building at Hudson University is a good tax write-off for 20 God damned pages every week, which I assure you they do not actually want, but that’s not the point, really. The point is disingenuous refusal to engage with the text. The actual text of Batman comics is that Batman is a good idea.

The actual text of X-Men comics is that Professor X gathered teenagers and, in the guise of a school, turned them into a secretive paramilitary strike force that went on missions where they were sometimes killed. The argument is whether that’s the best way to go about things, which is an argument that people have within those comics. The text tends to come down on the side that he was right to do so because the alternative is getting murdered by giant purple robots made of racism, but there’s still an exploration. It’s why Cyclops is an interesting character, because he’s The Most X-Man — the guy who found out at 15 that he had to learn how to be really good at aiming the uncontrollable laser beams concussive force blasts that shoot out of his eyes because the alternative was that he and everyone he cared about was going to die. Like, that’s something that’s gonna fuck you up pretty bad, but according to the past 50 years of X-Men comics, it’s also 100% true. 

With Batman, the question is not “why doesn’t Batman provide real solutions to to the real-world root causes of crime” — because that’s an astoundingly stupid question to ask — it’s “how is Batman going to solve the problems that are presented to him in this fictional universe that is uniquely built around him?” 

With the X-Men, the question is usually “how are the X-Men going to survive this experience?” The idea of questioning whether Professor X was wrong all this time is a core component of that. 

The former is refusing to engage with the premise. The latter is asking the questions the premise invites. If you don’t like the premise, you don’t have to engage with the media. There’s a lot of stuff out there and if you don’t like Batman because that idea doesn’t make sense to you, I’m not going to hold it against you. I will, however, hold it against you if you try to break the premise to make it worse. 

Here’s a huge tangent where I just know I’m gonna get lost in the woods: 

I actually feel a similar way to opinions I’ve seen about the MCU, and how it’s built around a very militaristic idea of superheroes, which makes some people uncomfortable. And, you know, that’s fair! Those movies are built around that idea, because they were built on the foundation of a movie that was the absolute embodiment of transitioning from traditional action movies (ie, stories about loose cannon cops, spies, space marines, Kurt Thomas, and other heroes who usually have the backing of a larger organization) and superhero stories (which are almost always about heroes acting independently of, and occasionally in opposition to, those same larger forces). Those movies never really get away from the idea that Tony Stark, the guy who sets the tone for the entire roster of films to follow, is fundamentally a dude whose primary character trait and fatal flaw are that he always believes he can solve his problems by building a bigger gun. The militarized aspect of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers spins out of this as both a structural result of the action to superhero genre transition, and as a convenience to get Iron Man (former defense contractor), Captain America (literal soldier), Black Widow (spy), the Hulk (military scientist) and Hawkeye (for some reason a spy like in The Ultimates and not a redneck carny like he should’ve been). The odd man out is Thor, which, for all the problems with those first two Avengers movies, is why he first shows up as an antagonist in the first one and then completely bails on the whole thing to go deal with his own stuff on the second one. The military structure is literal plot structure.

So yeah, that gets kind of weird when it filters down to Spider-Man. A lot of that weirdness has to do with things that are beyond the control of the universe, in that Marvel’s most beloved character, the second big success the company ever had whose popularity has endured much stronger than the first one, the flagship superhero who was literally on their paychecks and has never not been popular, had to be a late addition to a universe that already had, like, the Vision in it. 

But because they had to work within those constraints, they had to work within the premise they were already given. It makes perfect sense that in that universe, Peter Parker would look up to the world’s most famous superhero nerd, and it makes sense that Iron Man would see Peter as this blank slate that he could stop from making the mistakes that had defined his life. That, to me, is a really interesting dynamic, but it’s also one that requires Spider-Man to take a lot of cues from Iron Man, which is not a dynamic that those two characters ever had in the source material. It winds up giving them different consequences.

And like, if that’s not your thing, I get it. Spider-Man being recruited by the superhero military and having a high-tech suit that talks to him is a jarring shift, even if they do a good job of bringing in most of the core tenets of the character — something about responsibility and... I wanna say... muscles? Is it muscles? — which I think they did. But, if you don’t like that setup, which is a product of the larger universe, then you don’t have to buy into the premise. Like, yeah, it sucks that you’re fundamentally not going to dig this Spider-Man movie, but how do you think I feel? I’m a Batman guy and I literally have to see these movies with their endless terrible premises for my job.

Back when Far From Home came out, I remember seeing someone talk about how the MCU Peter Parker was fundamentally flawed because he didn’t have Uncle Ben, and I don’t think that’s correct. For one thing, Spidey pretty clearly has an Uncle Ben in that movie, it’s just that the reference to him in Civil War is a little less explicit than it usually is, presumably because we’ve seen Uncle Ben die on screen like five times since 2002. Second, it actually makes it make more sense that he’d latch onto the next influential father figure who walked through his front door. Third, even if we got way more Uncle Ben in those movies, it wouldn’t change the fact that the Peter/Tony Stark relationship and the way it played out was a function of the larger universe and the way those two characters had to interact within it. I don’t want to generalize too much or claim to know what people are thinking better than they do, but I’d suspect that if you don’t like that stuff in Spider-Man, the thing you really don’t like is the larger structure of this take on the characters. And that’s fair! 

That’s not to say that a premise can’t be bad, or that a twist on a character that posits a new premise is always good by nature of including some of the stuff that works. Again, I’m a Batman guy, and the last three movies to feature Batman are bad partly because the premise is fundamentally broken (the other parts are literally everything else about those movies because they are irredeemably terrible on virtually every level). But, you know, none of them have Batman writing a check instead of fighting crime, so that’s something.

--Chris

[greyias]

This one got… epically long. Like, over 7k words. Based on one of @grumpyhedgehog’s headcanons with her Jedi Lyra and the trash panda extraordinaire. Main pairing is Draike/Lyra (Smuggler/Jedi OC) pre-relationship, secondary pairing of Theron/Knight. I should also warn for a very brief foray into a M rating. For reasons that will become very clear about halfway through.

He didn’t care what anyone else in the Alliance said, Draike Highwind was in the very firm opinion that life on Odessen was boring. The pace around the base had practically slowed to a crawl the past few months, what with them officially laying low and trying to stay off the galactic radar while the rest of the galaxy started to ramp up back into their umpteenth war. Not that Draike liked the constant state of war they all seemed to live in, but at least out there things were happening.

A thin trickle of condensation ran down the side of his glass, and he flicked the droplet across the cantina table, watching it skip along the smooth polished metal surface. It wasn’t the most entertaining diversion — no, he still had a few hours left before that particular game started again — but hey. It was better than watching paint dry. Another trickle worked its way down the side of his glass, and he tried to see if he could get further distance.

“You do realize,” a pleasant voice chimed in, “they make coasters for that.”

Draike lifted his attention from the very interesting and oh-so-important glass of booze to see the familiar form of Lyra Dorn, standing next to his table. As usual, she was looking stereotypically Jedi, decked out in armor and robes even though they were just stuck here in this boring excuse for a base of operations. Her honey blonde locks swept back from her face as she arched a delicate brow at him. He spied a datapad in one hand, and in the other a platter filled to the brim with fried Capellan turg-root, roast gorak, and Ahrisa.

“I’m just livening up the place,” Draike said drolly, by way of greeting.

Lyra almost rolled her eyes, but seemed to catch herself before plopping down in the chair opposite him, delicately setting down the platter in the center as if it were some sort of offering. That was all the invitation he needed, and he snatched up a turg-root.

He was already halfway through chewing with when she let out a half-sigh, half-laugh. “Yes, those are for you.”

He just returned the remark with a crumb-filled grin, as if to say, “I know.”

That got past her internal defenses, and she was unable to suppress her urge to roll her eyes. The twitch at the edge of her lips let him know she found it amusing though, despite whatever airs she liked to project.

Summoning some modicum of manners, Draike finished off his bite and waved a hand at the plate. “You can have one too.”

“Oh, how magnanimous of you,” she said, but there was no sting to her tone, and she politely pinched off a piece of Ahrisa, setting down the datapad as she did so.

He eyed the device, disguising his suspicion with an easy smile as he snagged another turg-root, smothering it in one of the spicy sauces ringing the platter. “What you got there? Some spicy HoloNet fic? Apparently the latest trope everyone’s writing about is the poor betrayed rebellion commander and their traitorous spy lover.”

“How do you know that?”

“There is nothing to do here. I get bored.”

“Those are about your sister!”

“Look, it’s not my fault she professed her undying love to her stupid boyfriend in front of an open broadcast to the entire galaxy!”

“And that’s your brother-in-law now.”

“Don’t remind me,” he grumbled. “Okay, so if you’re not reading fictionalized accounts of my baby sister’s love life, what’s the datapad for?”

She shot him a look, as if to ask him once again why she would ever read trashy romance about a real person in her life, much less a relative of his. “It’s…”

“Yes?”

“For your reports,” she sighed.

“What? My reports?” he sat up a bit straighter. “Why?”

“Someone made me aware that you’ve been having difficulty getting your reports turned in on time,” Lyra said hesitantly, “and so I thought I’d help you out with them.”

Draike managed to summon his most offended face to bear. “So you bring me a giant platter of my favorite food as a ruse to trick me into working?”

“It’s not a ruse,” she was quick to reassure him, “it’s a… peace offering. And fuel for the brain.”

“It’s a bribe is what it is.”

“Oh, and so what if it is?” A little bit of haughtiness was beginning to creep into her tone, accent thickening ever so slightly as his combativeness managed to puncture her friendly demeanor. “You need to get your reports done, and I’m willing to help you write them because I am a good friend. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is I don’t need help writing my reports,” Draike said, crossing his arms as he leaned back into his seat.

“What... yes you do! Theron said—”

An almost maniacal grin spread across his face before he even realized it and quickly smothered it. Usually he was better at keeping a good Sabacc face, but for a moment, even that was eclipsed by the momentary and purely malicious glee that stole through him.

“What was that?” Lyra asked.

“What was what?”

“That look.”

“There was no look.”

“Yes, there was. I know that look—Draike.”

One of the most boring parts about living on Odessen was the rules—and the paperwork. On his own, he only had to do the bare minimum of paperwork to get his cargo runs in. Just enough legality to keep people off his back. It was annoying, but he did what he had to. And at some point he just let Risha take care of that sort of thing — he secretly suspected she enjoyed the tedium. Alas, those salad days were behind him. Here they liked to dot all of their i’s and cross all of their t’s. They wanted a flimsi trail and records for runs, but also stupid things like, incident reports. Which unless something really exciting happened was just an absolute snore fest.

So, he’d made a little game out of them.

Because of course the one person who was hounding him the most for all of this pointless paperwork was his new brother-in-law. If there was something Draike liked less than being told what to do — it was being told what to do by a joyless workaholic that was giving it to his baby sister every night.

“Your report was supposed to be handed in this morning. Do you need any help getting it—?”

“Oh no, help isn’t necessary. I’ve already got it done.”

An adorable little frown of confusion creased Lyra’s face. “Then why the delay?”

“No one, and I mean no one gives Draike Highwind orders,” he said proudly. “Shan will get the report when he’s good and ready.”

Bless her heart, Lyra always seemed willing to believe the best in Draike, even more than most people. That belief was getting tested at the moment, as he could see the wheels starting to turn in her head. She hadn’t put the pieces together yet, but she would soon.

“I’ve got, oh,” he made a show of glancing at the chronometer, “about nine hours and fifty four minutes to go before turning it in.”

As if in triumph, he picked up another turg-root and ate it with an almost perverse pleasure. This time he didn’t try to smother the big grin that blossomed in full on his face.

The thing about Shan was that he was way too predictable. Mister Super Secret Agent Man and dedicated workaholic was never too far from a datapad, whether it was in the war room or in his own quarters. If something were to come into his inbox tagged as urgent, his type couldn’t resist taking a look. No matter what they were doing. And hey, what could Draike say if maybe the message was perfectly timed to chime in right at the most, ahem, romantic portion of Shan’s evening? And if the report itself had been a little more exciting than expected, so exciting that it completely distracted Shan from any other plans, well that was just a side benefit. He was just trying to keep everyone entertained. And of course every report had a twist ending, because Draike was really giving like that. The twist being that the giant  cliffhanger he was building up to was all a sham, and that the incident report was really just a boring waste of time all along.

By his reckoning, Draike was pretty sure that he’d successfully prevented any nighttime activities between his sister and brother-in-law for at least a week now. If Shan was sending Lyra to do his dirty work, it meant he was probably getting desperate. Perfect.

Lyra let out a long suffering sigh, still acting as if she was trying to negotiate some all-important intergalactic trade deal instead of just trying to get her best friend to do some pointless paperwork. “Look, if it’s already finished, I could send the report in for you. Theron does need to sleep some time you know.”

He just snorted and shook his head. “I love you, sweetheart, but you don’t mess with a man’s data stream. If Shan has a problem he can come and talk to me—”

Draike’s statement ended in a lurch, his whole body going rigid as he suddenly processed his own words. He slid a look over to Lyra, who blinked back at him. The hints of a smile were starting to form at the corners of her mouth, something she tried to hide by taking a prolonged and yet somehow delicate bite of her Ahrisa as if she hadn’t heard anything at all.

It didn’t really matter how much she pretended though, because he knew what he’d said. It was as if the entire, expansive cantina had somehow managed to shrink in those few seconds, the natural carved stone walls closing in around him. His chest tightened, each breath a little harder to pull in than the last, as all of the blood drained from his face.

Panic could take on many forms — it all depended on the person. Some people go rigid and weren’t able to move. Others hid theirs with anger or lashed out at others. Some didn’t hide theirs at all, going into full on hyperventilation. But Draike Highwind was none of those types of people. And so he scanned the room, desperately searching for salvation, and found it in the tall form of a Wookiee at the bar.

No actual coherent thought was in his mind as he leapt to his feet, Lyra, the datapad, and platter of food seemingly forgotten as he loudly proclaimed for every patron of the cantina to hear. “Hey, Bowdarr!”

The wookiee looked up with an inquisitive growl.

“You know I love you, right? I love all my friends!”

Bowdarr shook his massive furry head, neither confusion nor resignation registering on his face as suddenly the much shorter human had crossed the threshold, practically slinging his arm around the taller being. Without missing a beat, Draike slung his other arm around the Mon Cal that was also at the bar.

“You too, Guss!”

“Oh, Captain! This is so unexpect—”

“Hey, you! Droid!”

C2-N2 had been dutifully sweeping up a mess over in the corner of the cantina, and the protocol droid looked up in confusion, as if not expecting to be pulled into this of all conversations. “Oh, Captain Highwind, as flattered as I am by your affections, I don’t—”

“What? No. I don’t love you.”

“Well I never!”

“You’re taking good care of my sister, right?”

“But of course, Captain Highwind. I am the primary expert on comfort in all of—”

“Yeah, yeah yeah. You know how much I love her right?”

An audible and communal sound of confusion rippled through the entire cantina. Apparently, this was news to everyone on base.

“In fact,” Draike continued, broadcasting at the top of his lungs to drown out the dissenters of his brotherly affection, “you should go let her know that. Right now.”

The protocol droid practically saluted him as he scuttered off to do as he was told. Orders taken, Draike turned to give the next, and possibly most important person in his life, the good news, and proclaimed to the bartender on duty his undying love for the perfect glass of whiskey that he poured every night.

Off in the corner, Lyra sunk further and further into her chair the louder Draike got, eyes raising up to the ceiling. As if somehow, counting all of the flecks up there would somehow, magically, get him to stop.

This was the perfect plan, if Theron did say so himself. Not that he was really saying much at the moment. Just enjoying the slow, slick slide, the enveloping heat, and the low but appreciative noises filling the room. It had been far, far too long. That was, of course, a nice chunk of his good mood—just having some nice quality time with his wife. But it had the added benefit that he’d finally managed to outwit his stupid brother-in-law’s attempts to derail it. There was no way Draike and his late reports could screw this up. All it had taken was rearranging several meetings and some nonessential business to get the afternoon off.

And Theron was putting the time to good use.

His lips wandered their familiar route, starting just under the shell of his wife’s ear, slowly making their way to the hollow of her throat. Just the way she liked it, if the fingernails digging into his back was any indication. That’s right. Just like that. He let out his own sound of appreciation, and just a little more and he’d—

That thought, and the precious rhythm he’d been building up, was completely shattered as the telltale hiss of hydraulics cut through the room as the door to their quarters whooshed open. Both occupants in the bed went completely still, wide eyed and dumbfounded as a little breeze of recirculated air drifted in from the hall.

Before Theron could say anything, or even twist in what was now a very awkward position, a cheerful robotic voice called out from the doorway. “I have wonderful news, Master!”

A frown of confusion stole over Grey’s face, clearly perplexed by whatever was more important than their privacy.

Heedless to this breaching of protocol, C2-N2 continued on obliviously. “Your brother was just telling the whole of Odessen how much he loves you and how much you mean to him. He urged me to make sure I was taking the best possible care of you that I could!”

At this point, any glimmering hope of continuing their previous activities had now been shattered thoroughly. Theron let out an inarticulate growl as he disentangled himself, flipping and turning even as the bed’s coverlet, previously shoved out of the way magically flew up to cover both occupants propriety. Just about at the same time, Theron had grabbed the nearest pillow, and had chucked it as hard as he could towards the doorway.

It was a marvelous throw. One for the ages. Truly, Theron had missed his calling in Huttball. Unfortunately, pillows weren’t nearly as aerodynamic, and it flopped to the floor several feet away from its intended mark.

“Oh my!” Seetoo exclaimed.

“Close the door!” Theron’s snarl echoed across the expanse of the room.

“Oh, quite right!” Seetoo hit the button for the door to close, and it swished shut behind him. That task completed, he turned back to the bed as if awaiting further instructions.

“I meant for you to shut it with you on the other side!”

“Well, you must be more specific in your wishes if you—”

“Get out!”

“How rude.”

Theron flopped back on his pillow, or he would have, if he hadn’t flung it across the room. Instead his head hit the mattress with a slight spring and bounce back. The motion made him nostalgic for thirty seconds ago, when that bounce back had been for different reasons. He glared at the room in general, as if it had betrayed him. After thoroughly expressing his displeasure with his environment, he turned to look at his wife.

“First it was the manipulative Force parasite in your head interrupting us. Now it’s your brother.”

By proxy no less.

“Did you just compare my brother to Valkorion?” Grey asked. He couldn’t tell if she was offended or in agreement with him. At the moment he didn’t particularly care.

“If the evil shoe fits!”

At some point, Draike’s near maniacal effusion of love for every person and object on Odessen had finally run its course. Probably around the time that Bowdaar had practically shoved a bottle of whiskey into his mouth. It had been an effective measure of finally getting the endless stream of affection to stop.

It had been a little while since that point. So much so that Draike had migrated from his laze-a-bout in the cantina over to the Logistics Hangar. He wouldn’t have said that he was consciously avoiding Lyra or anything, but at some point he’d looked back to where he’d abandoned her at the table and realized that he may have made things a little awkward. There was an itchy feeling on the back of his neck as a tiny in voice in his head told him that he needed to apologize to her. That voice sounded a little too much like his mother for his own comfort, so he studiously avoided it.

Besides, a far more logical part of his brain said that he had nothing to be sorry for. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

He looked up from his contemplative perch to see his brother-in-law angrily storming in his direction. Draike took in Theron’s untucked shirt over rumpled pants, the lack of belt and mismatched slippers in place of the normal calf-high boots, bloodshot eyes, twitching brow, and a possibly new undiscovered vein bulging in his forehead. As an expert in the field, Draike recognized the all-too-familiar signs of someone who had dressed very hastily. That same wide, nexu-like grin spread across his face at the sight.

Okay. Maybe he had done one thing that was technically wrong. But why did it feel so right?

The open display of amusement did nothing to quell the spy’s rage, as he finished closing the distance and furiously poked a finger into Draike’s chest. He growled something distinctly unflattering in High Gammorese, and while Draike tried to hold his mirth in—he didn’t really try that hard, because he almost doubled over laughing.

This only egged Theron on, and the next string of curses mixed in several other languages. Who knew the man was a polyglot?

“I will have you know that my mother was a saint,” Draike managed to get in between wheezes, “and you better not let your wife hear you talking about her like that.”

That seemed to break through Theron’s sexually frustrated rage long enough to stem the seemingly endless, nearly incoherent tirade. But the anger was clearly still simmering. If looks could kill, Draike was pretty sure he would have been a puddle of incinerated goo on the floor of the Logistics Hangar. Of course, he’d been on the receiving end of far worse looks. Shan would need to bring his A game if he wanted to attempt to intimidate Draike Highwind.

Theron started again, in Basic this time. “You son of a—”

“Ah ah, a saint,” Draike reminded him, possibly a little too mockingly.

Theron’s mouth shut with an audible click, and breathed out a long whistling breath through his nose.

“You know, Shan, you really should put a little more care into your wardrobe. Tumble bunny slippers? Really?”

The spy wrinkled his nose, the newly discovered vein seeming to bulge again with a freshly ignited rage. “You sent that droid into our quarters on purpose!”

“Who? Me?”

“Yes, you!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Draike widened his eyes, the complete picture of innocence. How was he supposed to know that Theron was trying to route around his carefully crafted plans and engage in a little afternoon delight? Truly, it had just been a cosmic coincidence that had turned out in the smuggler’s favor.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Highwind! I know what you’re up to!”

“And what is that?” Draike blinked languidly.

“I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of saying it out loud!”

“Oh, no,” he tsked sadly, “is there some trouble in the bedroom with you and the misses?”

“Knock it off!” Theron snarled. “What the hell is your problem?”

That sort of language utterly wounded Draike, and he displayed that the only way he knew how, by dramatically clutching his chest and crying out in the most melodramatic fashion. “I’m just upset that I wasn’t invited to the wedding!”

“What?” Theron asked flatly.

“It was always my dream to walk my baby sister down the aisle — and your elopement ruined that!”

“…no it wasn’t, you goddamn liar!”

“I’m wounded, utterly wounded!”

Theron pivoted on his heel, letting out an inarticulate frustrated cry.

“You know what would cure that bad temper?” Draike couldn’t help himself. “A little good quality time with the little mis—“

The rest of his sentence was drowned out by another particularly vile High Gammorese curse as Theron stormed off. A final “Turn in your goddamn reports!” echoed across the hangar, and Draike couldn’t hold it any longer and broke down in laughter.

There was really only one problem with Draike’s plan to completely avoid any potential awkwardness with his best friend — and that was when you completely avoided someone, it had a tendency to compound the issue of not seeing them. In fact, Draike had been so successful in his efforts, by the time it occurred to him that maybe he’d overreacted a little, and the encounter itself had probably long faded from her mind, Lyra was nowhere to be found.

Which was just rude. People shouldn’t be able to use his own tactics against him. There had to be some sort of rule or code against that.

Naturally, all inquiries made in regards to her whereabouts were completely and utterly casual. As he had carefully cultivated an upstanding reputation of detached aloofness that had served him well. If he appeared too eager for anything, someone might get the bright idea in their head to saddle him with more responsibility — maybe mistake him for the other Highwind on base that seemed to thrive under that sort of thing.

And it wasn’t like Lyra was the most entertaining Jedi or Force user on base to hang around with, she wasn’t even the most entertaining person—because apologies to everyone, Guss would forever and always hold both of those titles. No contest. No contenders. It was just the cold, hard facts of the situation.

But if Draike was being honest… her company was missed some. Bowdarr didn’t laugh at his stupid jokes that he told in an attempt to cheat—er, strategically get the upper hand—at Sabacc. The wookiee just let out a non-amused growl and called him on it. And Guss just kept trying to palm the cards himself. It just wasn’t the same. He would hang out with Gault, but both Hylo and Theron had strictly forbidden it, as if they were convinced the entire base would erupt in flames if the two of them engaged in a battle of wits.

(And there was no way in hell he was ever going to sit at a table with that Rattataki, no matter how many lewd invitations she offered.)

So, Draike had been forced to turn to the very last place that he would ever dare to find answers: the duty roster.

“Who the hell is Houch Plehnt and why is he flying my ship?”

“Last I checked, the Khoonda was registered to Master Dorn, not you.”

Draike looked up to see one smirking and insufferable spy staring at him over the brim of a large mug of caf.

“Shan.” Any joviality in the greeting on Draike’s part was forced. “Nice to see you up and at ‘em. Still suffering from that acute case of prolonged sexual frustration?”

“Well, since you asked so nicely,” a wide, unrepentant grin spread across the other man’s face, “I’ve found that if I wake up early enough, there’s definitely enough time to fit in a quick bit of quality time with the little lady. Sometimes twice.”

“Gross! That’s my sister you’re talking about!”

“A wise man would know better than to ask a question he didn’t want the answer to.”

“Don’t think I won’t camp outside your door and bang pots at random intervals!”

“I think our guard droids might take issue with that.”

“HK-55 loves me and you know it!”

“Where are you going to find the pots?” Theron challenged, taking a long sip off his mug.

“I have friends in the kitchen!” Draike crossed his arms. “They’ll hook me up.”

“Don’t you think you’re going to excessive lengths to ‘protect your sister’s virtue’?”

“She’s a Jedi, I think she’s entirely capable of protecting her own virtue,” Draike sniffed indignantly. “Besides, this has nothing to with her, and everything to do with you.”

“And what did I do now?”

“You let some moon jockey take my ship out!”

“Again, not your ship.”

“Well, it’s the closest thing I’ve got to one until we track down where mine is,” Draike huffed.

“Guess it’s a shame you were off pouting somewhere when Dorn got her mission then,” Theron said a little too casually, taking another long, slow sip from his mug. “She had to go find another pilot since you were incommunicado.”

Draike tried not to look as put out as a he felt. Lyra knew that he was bored out of his skull and she had just left him here? And had gone off with some moon jockey? Who probably couldn’t even take off without scraping the paint? Houch Plehnt — what kind of name what that anyway? Man probably didn’t even know how to handle his blasters! (Pun partially intended.)

“You don’t just hijack someone’s crew, Shan!”

“Oh?” There raised those eyebrows again, another sip and a smirk. “Your crew, eh? I didn’t realize things were so… official.”

“They’re not,” he snapped back, perhaps a little too quickly. “We just have an understanding—she knows how bored I am! And she just leaves me here?”

“What she left you was this message.” Theron paused in his sipping and smirking long enough to produce a datapad. “Not that it’s any of my business.”

“It’s not.”

Theron shrugged, picked his mug back up and began to amble off. Presumably to his next meeting, or a rigorous and boring round of coding, or something equally dull and chaste per the elaborate fantasy that Draike was concocting in his head. 

“You still haven’t sent in your report for the Kathol Rift incident yet.” The spy didn’t turn around or even flinch at the silent, rude gesture sent his way. “Maybe you’ll have some time to finish it now, since you’re so bored and have nothing better to do.”

“You know, Theron, I never pegged you as some flimsi pusher,” Draike called after him, which seemed to break through the smug haze, because he saw the spy’s shoulders stiffen, as if that insult had hit particularly close to home. “I guess we all become the thing we hate, eh?”

“You’re the one with the problem here, Captain, not me,” came the sharp reply, before the spy stalked off.

Draike glared at his retreating back, and when that had finally disappeared off into the bustle of the Odessen crowds, he turned his ire back to the traitorous duty roster that had started this whole thing to begin with. He ignored the datapad in his hand for longer than was probably necessary, before finally flicking the thing on.

Hey you. Got a little job to do in Taris. Couldn’t find you to see if you wanted to tag along. Houch Plehnt volunteered — should be back in a day or two. Wish me luck, he’s… not as quick with his blasters as you are. If you know what I mean. See you later, friend.

He glared at the datapad and the text on it, trying to smother the rising and conflicting emotions welling up in his chest. The walls weren’t closing in like the other day, but that nagging voice was starting to whisper in the back of his mind. In particular he kept staring at the word “friend” over and over, as if trying to parse out if it was some sort of hidden message.

It was stupid, that’s what it was. If she wanted to get herself killed by letting some random person with lesser skill at the helm of her ship, then fine. So be it. See if he helped her steal it back again if the jerk decided to fly off without her. Of course, that might strand her on Taris, which was not exactly friendly territory to have to try and navigate a flight out of.

Whatever. It wasn’t any of his business. He had better things to do. Like go teach Guss how to cheat better at cards.

In between about the thousandth time of trying to demonstrate the proper way to palm a card, and Guss accidentally spraying the entire Sabacc deck across the table, Draike had to admit defeat on his latest venture. The game of 76 Card Pickup was only entertaining about the first three times in a row, and then it just became dull. Like everything else around this place.

While he was amazing at most everything he did, Draike would have to admit that maybe he could have been a more effective tutor if he didn’t keep getting distracted by trying to calculate the average duration of a roundtrip between Wild Space and the Ojoster sector. Granted, a talented pilot could shave off a little time from that route, but he was pretty sure Houch Plehnt was anything but. Did the man even know the front end of his blaster from the back?

Not that Draike was concerned.

Because he wasn’t. He just had to find some way to fill his time, and unfortunately he’d been reduced down to basic algebra problems that most school children learned in their third year. And he wasn’t put out. How could he be? It wasn’t like he and Lyra had any formal arrangement (no matter how much Shan tried to slyly imply) to not go on missions without each other… they just… hadn’t for a long time. It wasn’t an expectation exactly, it was just the way things had been for a while. Help each other on assignments, hang out in the down time. Keep the ever encroaching boredom at bay for a little longer.

He also would not define himself as moping about the Logistics Hangar, with Guss trying to pick up an entire Sabacc deck off the floor where he’d accidentally flung it for the umpteenth time, when the Khoonda made its landing again. The ship’s owner emerged down the boarding ramp, covered in something utterly foul. Draike had almost no warning before a particularly sticky and odious arm was flung around his shoulders, an unidentified muck slurping itself onto his jacket.

“Hi,” Draike said, one hand discreetly covering his nose. “Miss me?”

“Yes,” Lyra enthused as she laid her head on his shoulder, further smearing the gunk of whatever covered her onto his skin.

He valiantly did not cringe at the slimy sensation. “You know that you stink, right?”

“It’s your fault,” she insisted.

“I don’t recall smearing you with the most disgusting substance known to man. That you’ve now smeared all over my best jacket.”

“Good,” she said firmly, “ and it is your fault. You disappeared on me, forcing me to take Houch as a pilot.”

“What kind of name is that anyway?”

“Don’t change the subject,” Lyra wrinkled her nose. “He was so afraid of getting bit by a Rakghoul he refused to step off the ship. So I had to get samples for Lokin myself.”

“Wait, so this stuff is—”

“Yes,” Lyra said lightly, “Rakghoul guts.”

“This was my best jacket!”

“Was being the operative word. Now it’s just a jacket covered in guts. We match!”

Draike sniffed indignantly, which was a mistake because all it gained him was a giant whiff of the odious stench emanating from the Jedi. “Why did you not shower?”

“Because Houch was so afraid of being infected he quarantined me in the cargo hold. Wouldn’t even let me near the refresher.”

“It’s your ship!”

“Trust me,” she muttered dangerously, “I know.”

“He still in the cockpit? I can go give him a hug on your behalf.”

“You’d do that?”

“Bastard stole my ship and by proxy ruined my favorite jacket. He’s got it coming.”

“You do realize it’s technically my ship, don’t you?”

“Why does everyone keep bringing that up?”

“Well, you have fun talking to Houch,” Lyra said breaking away, “I am going to go take a shower and then burn all of these clothes.”

“Looks like I’ll be doing the same,” Draike muttered petulantly.

“And be nice to Houch.”

“No promises!”

The conversation itself was normal. Friendly side-hugs and spirited banter but… as Lyra walked away, Draike couldn’t help but feel something about the encounter was different. The barbs just a little more pointed, and Lyra avoiding catching his eye. She had usually been quick to follow up the banter with some sort of reassurance, but this time she just walked away. It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d been an ass, and she had always let him off the hook before. He wasn’t sure why this time was different, but it was.  

He watched her go, that same matronly voice in his ear starting up in its familiar scolding refrain.

The expletive slipped out on its own accord. His jacket was thoroughly ruined. It was a nice jacket. He’d just finished breaking it in. The sleeves were no longer stiff, and it had breathed so much nicer than the cheap synthleather ones that they kept in stock here on the base. Also, Houch Plehnt really needed a sticky Rakghoul gut hug. But mostly the man just needed to be kicked off and banned from ever re-entering the Khoonda.

Is that all you should really be thinking about right now? — the infuriating voice in the back of his mind asked.

He tried to come up with some excuse, some flim-flam to distract it, but arguing with one’s self was the first sign of insanity. He couldn’t give into it now, not after managing to keep his wits about him being stranded for five years on a backwater planet while the galaxy passed him by. That would just be insult to injury.

Fine. Fine. He’d listen to the stupid voice just this once.

It was much, much later when he found her out in the nerf pens. After a shower, burning his jacket, and covering one asshole Rodian pilot in rakghoul guts — not necessarily all in that order — he walked into one of the dirtiest places on base. It seemed almost pointless for Lyra to scrub herself clean and then go commune with the giant stinky beasts, but this was where she liked to hide out when she was trying to pretend she wasn’t upset. Like that time they had to steal back the Khoonda from the Corellian shipyards. Or the anniversary of dates that she’d never really explained the significance of.

Just like those other times, she was petting the nose of one of the giant, gentle creatures. Leaning in and saying something low. He spied a small smile playing at her lips, even if there was the air of something else about her. Like even with her big animal friends she felt she had to pretend that everything was fine.

Draike cleared his throat, and both Jedi and big nerf head looked up at him. He held up a bag from the mess hall as an offering, and her eyes lit up at the familiar sight. She gave the big beast another affectionate pat on the nose, whispering something before wiping her hands and ambling over. Just like all of the other times, they took a seat on one of the fallen logs that served as a makeshift bench.

They didn’t exchange a word, but he pulled out the to-go containers and utensils. She took his offering, removing the lid and inhaling the spicy scent wafting out. The smile that played at her lips was different from the ones she graced the nerf with, and she arched a brow at him. The noodle dish wasn’t her favorite Dantooinian variant, but it was the closest he could wrangle up. Thankfully, the grumpy cook wasn’t in the kitchen today, so he’d been able to negotiate a special order.

“Smells spicy.”

“I’m surprised you can smell anything over that nerf,” he said.

She shook her head, lips pressing together lightly, but the expression was a familiar mix of exasperated amusement. Not the slightly edged smile she’d greeted him with in the hangar, so that was probably a good sign.

“I don’t recall this being on the menu today,” she remarked lightly.

“I called in a favor.”

“How big of a favor?”

“There’s an extra container of hot sauce in here. You’re liable to lose a few taste buds.”

“Ah, that was quite the favor,” she mused. “The kitchen never wants to make it spicy enough.”

“You just have to know how to ask nicely,” Draike shot back, “and also slip them a few credits when no one’s looking.”

She slurped up a noodle with more gusto and noise than was necessarily proper, but the genuine smile blossoming on her face counterbalanced the breech in manners. For a few minutes, they were content to munch on their food as they watched the giant stinky beasts graze. It was almost tempting to just let the companionable silence stretch on, but he was supposed to be listening to the stupid little voice in his head, so…

He took a little time preparing the noodles for his next bite, seemingly focused on getting the absolute perfect twirl as he spoke. “I turned in the damn report.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her pause in the middle of her chew, shaking her head almost in disappointment. As if that wasn’t the actual issue. He continued to twirl his fork slowly, gathering more and more noodles and sauce. She was the one that left him behind, and yet he had swallowed his pride and given that stupid smug spy the satisfaction of having his precious paperwork turned in on time.

You know that’s not the real issue here, that damnable maternal voice in his head whispered again.

He ignored the voice. It only got one good deed out of him per month. That was the deal.

“You left me here,” he said continuing to twirl the noodles into what was starting to resemble a monstrous bite.

“You disappeared,” Lyra shot back. “What was I supposed to do? Refuse a mission because you were pouting?”

“I was not pouting,” Draike said huffily.

“Then what were you doing?”

He didn’t have an answer for that, so instead of replying he stuffed his now epically sized pasta twirl into his mouth. It was a mistake, as there was hardly any room to chew, and the spicy oil of the sauce set his cheeks on fire. Gamely he looked at her and shook his head, pointing at his full mouth as if in explanation that he couldn’t answer her question with his mouth full. The effect was ruined by the fact that he could feel a bead of sweat start to trickle down his face, his traitorous body betraying the fact that he was not as immune to the level of spice that she enjoyed in her dishes.

Lyra quirked a brow at him, unimpressed by his obvious skirting of the issue, while an oddly satisfied smile threatened to quirk at the corners of her mouth. It made him feel as if he had stepped into some sort of well-planned Dejarik maneuver she had been planning from the beginning of the game. Although Lyra Dorn really wasn’t the evil mastermind type.

“It really stung, you know,” she said after a moment of literally letting him sweat, “that you’d avoid me instead of talking to me about whatever was wrong.”

He could have had a perfect follow-up quip for that to distract and derail the conversation, but his mouth was still both on fire and impossibly stuffed with noodles which prevented him from forming any coherent sound. So he just let out a muffled series of noises in protest.

“Chew your food,” Lyra said, that eyebrow quirking again.

He snorted out an annoyed breath and tried to find a way to safely chew his monstrous, ill-conceived bite. He felt not unlike one of the big, stinky piles of fur chewing their cud. In retrospect, perhaps this maneuver of stuffing his face to avoid questions had backfired, as he was now at the mercy of anything else the Jedi had to say.

“I’d never strong arm you into saying or doing anything you didn’t feel,” she continued. “The fact that you don’t trust that…”

He shook his head at her, still unable to form coherent words.

“No, you don’t trust me?”

He shook his head again.

“No, that’s not what you meant?”

He nodded.

She sighed. “Can we just both agree to not do that again? Neither of us goes incommunicado when something’s wrong and… you never leave me at the mercy of a Houch Plehnt again. Fair?”

Draike couldn’t sigh, could only snort out a very long and aggrieved breath through his nose and shrug in an exaggerated manner — but he nodded. That seemed… fair.

“Good.” Lyra shot him a small, almost mischievous smile. “You know you’re being uncharacteristically silent.”

He tried to say something, but his mouth of noodles prevented more than an impolite, disgruntled sound.

“Chew,” she reminded him again, that little smirk still blossoming further. “So, did you get up to anything fun while I was gone?”

He let out another incoherent noise of frustration, unable to form proper words around the fire on his tongue and the noodles trying to slip out of his mouth.

“It’s impolite to talk with your mouth full, Captain.” Lyra clicked her tongue, and took a delicate, small bite. “You know, these are really good.”

He wrinkled his nose at her and tried to communicate his plight with his eyes.

She just flashed him another wide smirk, leaning over so she could bump his shoulder with hers. “You want some of my extra sauce to help wash those noodles down?”

Her only reply was a disgruntled grunt.

[aion-rsa]

Top New Fantasy Books in August 2020

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It’s summer. Lots of people are staying home. It might be a good time for a book. Here are some of the upcoming books we’re anticipating:

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Top New Fantasy Books August 2020

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson 

Type: Novel  Publisher: Tor Release date: Aug. 11 

Den of Geek says: The Baru Cormorant series features as its hero a mentally ill accountant with the fate of an empire at its fingers. The third book in the series promises more dark, twisty introspection and grim, creative world-building. 

Publisher’s summary: The hunt is over. After fifteen years of lies and sacrifice, Baru Cormorant has the power to destroy the Imperial Republic of Falcrest that she pretends to serve. The secret society called the Cancrioth is real, and Baru is among them.

But the Cancrioth’s weapon cannot distinguish the guilty from the innocent. If it escapes quarantine, the ancient hemorrhagic plague called the Kettling will kill hundreds of millions…not just in Falcrest, but all across the world. History will end in a black bloodstain.

Is that justice? Is this really what Tain Hu hoped for when she sacrificed herself?

Baru’s enemies close in from all sides. Baru’s own mind teeters on the edge of madness or shattering revelation. Now she must choose between genocidal revenge and a far more difficult path―a conspiracy of judges, kings, spies and immortals, puppeteering the world’s riches and two great wars in a gambit for the ultimate prize. 

If Baru had absolute power over the Imperial Republic, she could force Falcrest to abandon its colonies and make right its crimes.

Buy The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. 

Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley

Type: Epic Poem  Publisher: MCD x FSG Originals Release date: Aug. 25 

Den of Geek says: Headley got an intimate look at Beowulf in the modern interpretation The Mere Wife. She turns the intellect behind that inventive, scathing novel about complex and furious women to a translation of the poem featuring new research. 

Publisher’s summary: Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf―and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world―there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements that have never before been translated into English, recontextualizing the binary narrative of monsters and heroes into a tale in which the two categories often entwine, justice is rarely served, and dragons live among us. 

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history―Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation of Beowulf, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation. Buy Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley.  

The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe

Type: Novel (Reprint)  Publisher: Tor Books Release date: Aug. 11 

Den of Geek says: Gene Wolfe is a modern master of fantasy. This reprint of a 2004 duology provides both original stories in one paperback package. 

Publisher’s summary: A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm consisting of seven levels of reality. Transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Sir Able of the High Heart and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, the blade that will help him fulfill his ambition to become a true hero―a true knight. 

Inside, however, Sir Able remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive what lies ahead…

Buy The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe. 

Top New Fantasy Books July 2020 

The Book of Dragons: An Anthology by Jonathan Strahan

Type: Anthology  Publisher: Harper Voyager  Release date: July 7 

Den of Geek says: I’m always looking for a good book about dragons, and this incredible list of authors promises adventurous and unique stories. Anne Leckie, Zen Cho, Seanan Maguire, J.Y. Yang, Patricia A McKillip, Brooke Bolander … it’s an astounding, literary-flavored list of people qualified to write cool creatures.

Publisher’s summary: Here there be dragons . . . 

From China to Europe, Africa to North America, dragons have long captured our imagination in myth and legend. Whether they are rampaging beasts awaiting a brave hero to slay or benevolent sages who have much to teach humanity, dragons are intrinsically connected to stories of creation, adventure, and struggle beloved for generations. 

Bringing together nearly thirty stories and poems from some of the greatest science fiction and fantasy writers working today— Garth Nix, Scott Lynch, R.F. Kuang, Ann Leckie & Rachel Swirsky, Daniel Abraham, Peter S. Beagle, Beth Cato, Zen Cho, C. S. E Cooney, Aliette de Bodard, Amal El-Mohtar, Kate Elliott, Theodora Goss, Ellen Klages, Ken Liu, Seanan Maguire, Patricia A McKillip, K. J. Parker, Kelly Robson, Michael Swanwick, Jo Walton, Elle Katharine White, Jane Yolen, Kelly Barnhill, Brooke Bolander, Sarah Gailey, and J. Y. Yang—and illustrated by award-nominated artist Rovina Cai with black-and-white line drawings specific to each entry throughout, this extraordinary collection vividly breathes fire and life into one of our most captivating and feared magical creatures as never before and is sure to become a treasured keepsake for fans of fantasy, science fiction, and fairy tales.

Buy The Book of Dragons by Jonathan Strahan on Amazon

Or What You Will by Joe Walton 

Type: Novel  Publisher: Tor Books Release date: July 7 

Den of Geek says: Jo Walton is a writer’s writer, highly praised but still generally skating under the radar. I found her 2014 My Real Children to not nearly live up to its very high concept, but she’s one of those authors with technical prowess who is at least worth checking out for context for women’s science fiction. The metafiction plot sounds fun. 

Publisher’s summary: He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god. 

But “he” is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author of thirty novels over forty years. He has played a part in most of those novels, and in the recesses of her mind, Sylvia has conversed with him for years. 

But Sylvia won’t live forever, any more than any human does. And he’s trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he.

Now Sylvia is starting a new novel, a fantasy for adult readers, set in Thalia, the Florence-resembling imaginary city that was the setting for a successful YA trilogy she published decades before. Of course he’s got a part in it. But he also has a notion. He thinks he knows how he and Sylvia can step off the wheel of mortality altogether. All he has to do is convince her.

Buy Or What You Will by Jo Walton on Amazon 

The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal

Type: Graphic Novel  Publisher: First Second  Release date: July 14 

Den of Geek says: The Adventure Zone is a wildly popular humorous fantasy podcast. It’s part of the big 2010s wave of Dungeons & Dragons coming back into the geek space. Especially for someone who might not want to listen to hundreds of episodes of a podcast, the illustrated version does a good job of smoothing out the story into a graphic novel format without removing the goofy chaos of the original podcast. 

Publisher’s summary: START YOUR ENGINES, friends, Clint McElroy and sons Griffin, Justin, and Travis hit the road again with Taako, Magnus and Merle, the beloved agents of chaos from the #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novels illustrated by Carey Pietsch, The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins and The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited.

Our boys have gone full-time at the Bureau of Balance, and their next assignment is a real thorny one: apprehending The Raven, a master thief who’s tapped into the power of a Grand Relic to ransack the city of Goldcliff. Local life-saver Lieutenant Hurley pulls them out of the woods, only to throw them headlong into the world of battle wagon racing, Goldcliff’s favorite high-stakes low-legality sport and The Raven’s chosen battlefield. Will the boys and Hurley be able to reclaim the Relic and pull The Raven back from the brink, or will they get lost in the weeds?

Based on the beloved blockbuster podcast where three brothers and their dad play a tabletop RPG in real time, The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal has it all: blossoming new friendships, pining for outlaw lovers, and a rollicking race you can root for!

Buy The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal 

The post Top New Fantasy Books in August 2020 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[contes-de-rheio]

Creating an army

For the needs of Rising Queens, I had to create an army. Since I'm an accountant and have never served in the military nor lived sometime between 1650 and 1820... I knew nothing about how to do that, so I researched, not a lot, but enough I think to give some tips and directions to anyone planning to do the same crazy thing.

Let's get started. Please note this is for fantasy writers, a number of elements do not apply to modern or futuristic armies. (words with a * are translated in French at the end, because I'm a little chauvinist)

1. How big is your army ?

So, if your army is a professional army, in clear if soldiers are soldiers all year long and paid for it, the size of your army is limited. Mostly because resources are not infinite, and your army depends on the rest of the population to be fed. This rule would also apply for mercenaries, as your nation must still be able to pay them.

In consequence, its size should not be more than 1% of the population. This number was true in the past, and is still true today. And 1% is the upper limit, it assumes your nation is able to collect taxes efficiently!! If it's not, your army must be smaller, or your nation will go bankrupt.

If your army is not professional, then the problem is a little different: your soldiers are no longer working all year long. The question is how big can your army be during x time? The longer the war/conflict lasts, the smaller your army will be, as your resources are limited and you need people to tend to the land. Or you can have a big starving army, your choice (or a starving population... or both...). After some research, it happens that number is 7% of the population for a period of 90 days (which was the length of a campaign season).

2. Support

So, yes, your soldiers are soldiering, or at least a part of them is... the rest is working as support, they are the spine of your army, without them everything could crumble. Without them you don't have supplies, or meals, or doctors, or clothes, or payslips or...

Among the various support departments in military, we will first start with one that probably was the biggest: Supplies (aka Furir*). They originally were in charge of housing and food for men and animals, but over time they came to be in charge of all supplies, including their logistics. In the French Navy, they once were in charge of payslips. Without them, you don’t have food, but you also don’t have uniforms, weapons, or munitions...

While we are here, let's note that most armies, while away from home, survived through plunder of the land around them. Which is great if you're not staying in the same place too long, and if your enemy does not decide to burn everything left behind. Mercenaries, who were not paid by their employer, also plundered the land of their employer as a form of revenge.

The Postal Service* is like a web, they have a presence everywhere in the military organisation (including schools, jails, navy...). Not only do they make sure the letters are sent to the right person, but they also take care of censoring the letters of the soldiers. This is a job that require discretion as you might end up in the confidence of secrets that do not concern you nor the public.

The War Commissaries* are in charge of the administration of the army, which includes: finances, human resources, audit and control, law assistance, accounting. In some cases, Furir and Postal Services are also incorporated under their supervision.

One of the support functions we probably don’t think much about are the surgeons. Doctors, especially, surgeons were a priority on a battlefield. Mostly they acted after the battle, but they also took care of the soldiers all year long in a professional army. Military hospitals were created, some of them were used as medical schools too, and not all of them were situated in a military base. I haven’t been able to find if any ancient military hospital was opened to the public, but I personally don’t see why not. Generally each company (about 100 men) had one surgeon.

I will not discuss soldier being soldier, if you want more information on this, I will leave some links at the end of this article, please refer to it.

3. Army or Not ?

Some people, depending of your organisation, of your country, may be considered part of your army, even though their role is unrelated to the protection of the country against foreign forces, such as: police, spies, customs...

It really depends on how you see your organisation as a whole, and also who pay who, or what Minister these people depend from. For example, the police might be paid directly by the city thanks to local taxes, while customs are under the supervision of the Finance Minister, and spies answer directly to the Crown. Or you can incorporate them in your army.

4. Equipment

The main question in regards to equipment is who provides what. There have been times, when each soldier was expected to procure themselves their own equipment: armor and weapons, horse, sometimes even food. You could tell a soldier's social background with just a look. 

In some cases, the obligation to procure one's own equipment was attached to citizenship. Only citizens were required by law to serve in the army, and to be citizen you were required to have a given level of revenues.

At all times, heavier weapons (for siege, and later canons) were provided by the State or the lords.

5. Hierarchy

There are two main type of hierarchies: hierarchical (or traditional) and flat. My partner could tell you all about the advantages and disadvantages of both in details (and how mixed/new models exist), but for our purposes let's keep it simple.

Here is a drawing of both systems:

The bigger your army is, the less likely your hierarchy will be flat, for the very simple reason that your general in chief (or king, or whatever their actual title is) cannot be everywhere at once and has to delegate their power to keep the whole system working. In fact, at some point, the higher men in the hierarchy become strategists and/or administrators. Furthermore, if the official leader of your army is indeed the king, they might still need to delegate as 1) they are running a kingdom, and might need the time for something else, 2) they are very bad at leading an army (not everybody can be Frederic II or Napoleon...).

Next thing to determine is the numbers of levels in your hierarchy. I would advise to keep it as simple as possible. As an example, in Rising Queens, my army has 7 levels of hierarchy (including the soldiers without rank). Each rank correspond to an unity (i.e. company, regiment...). I merely added some nuances to distinguish some Navy ranks: a General and an Admiral have the same rank, but the later serves in the Navy.

If you want to get an idea of what ranking system you can implement, I would suggest you hit Wikipedia, as they have the organisations of a few armies listed. Just never forget reality is always more complex than fiction.

6. Magic

If you have magic in your universe, consider how it changes war strategy and organisation.

And since someone wrote extensively on the subject, allow me to redirect you to @warsofasoiaf post, right here.

Don't hesitate to drop me a message for questions, clarifications or comments :)

Some Useful Links

On Demography

Medieval Demography made easy (French version)

Notes on Medieval Population Geography

Medieval WorldBuilding Mega-Tutorial (includes info about army, and many other details)

On Armies and fighting

@transcriptroopers is a great resource about the life of modern soldiers.

@writenavy for anything related to Navy, both ancient and modern.

@howtofightwrite advices for anything regarding fighting, in nearly any context.

Medieval Warfare

Writing a War

Vocabulary - French translations

Furir - Fourrière (du mot fourrage)

Postal service - Vaguemestre

Commissaries - Commissaires (du mot commission, dans le sens de paie)

[quoteablebooks]

Genre: Romance, Fantasy, Historical Fiction

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Synopsis:

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...1743. Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

*Opinions*

I did something a little different this time and wrote the review while I was reading since it was such a long novel. That has lead it to be a rather long review. 

I have had this book for almost a year at this point, but at almost 900 pages it was rather intimidating, especially with my inability to find time to read recently. However, I finally decided to take the bull by the horns and dive in. I was so pleased to see that most of the chapters are broken up into smaller segments, making it easier to move quickly through the book and not being locked into needing forty-five minutes to get through a chapter. I’m one of those people that really hates stopping in the middle of a chapter without a clear break in the action. There is also a good pace to the novel so that it's not that hard to convince yourself to go one more chapter break or make it to the end of the chapter. That being said, the overall plot of the story moves rather slowly, which would account for the novel's 850 pages. Still, after all the hype, I went in cautiously, not wanting to get my hopes up and be disappointed as I have been in the past. 

We started in the “present” of 1945 and even though we aren’t in 1945 long, Frank Randall finds the page time to be rather condescending and annoying. I do believe that is the point, his dismissal of his wife while he hunts down the family connection with Jonathan “Black Jack” Randall, to highlight the difference with Jamie, but it still bothered me. Now, I get it, I have family members who are very into genealogy, but to complete ignore your wife who you barely saw for six years to look at old records is ridiculous. Also, Frank’s view of adoption instantly made me sour toward him, but it’s a viewpoint that a number of people still hold. Not to mention how he reacted to Claire swearing. Now my viewpoint might be colored because I know that Jaime is the main romantic interest due to the television show, but still. Just saying you love someone doesn’t mean much when you’re a giant ass, Frank. To be honest, I don’t know why Claire tried so hard to get back to him. Getting back to indoor plumbing I understood, but not to get back to Frank. That coupled with his ancestor being the primary villain in the novel and I didn’t really give a damn about Frank. 

Something that I liked in regards to Jaime, which I hadn’t expected, was that he was younger than Claire. There was something so endearing about Jamie becoming flustered when Claire even suggested they sleep in the same room with absolutely not romantic intentions toward one another. Jaime has a lot of sweetness in him and while he has mysteries, he isn’t overly brooding, which is slightly overdone these days. Still, there are moments when he wants to be Claire's “master” that make him unlikable. Claire tells him no multiple times and they end up having sex anyway. While I am going to address this when it’s with males who aren’t Jaime, it is still nonconsensual sex (also known as rape) even if it’s a man that you are married to. You can argue that it’s the time and that makes it acceptable, seen a marital duty or whatever, but it doesn’t make Jaime likable. However, that doesn’t make me completely hate Jaime, due to his youth and inexperience, it just makes him a complex character. I just wish romance, as a genre, could stop pushing the no actually means a coy yes story line. It’s not sexy on the page or in real life. It’s rape. 

As with everything that is set in historical times, rape is spoken about, implied, and threatened on a number of occasions. It even happens to a male character, though I don’t want to spoil who. I understand, it is the truth of that point in time, but I personally feel that more of discussion needs to be had about it if you chose to focus on that part of history on so many occasions. I mean, Gabaldon has time travel in this novel, she could have toned down the amount non-consensual touching, kissing, undressing, groping, almost rape and actual rape in the case of Jaime taking Claire after she told him no on a couple occasions. Every male that runs into Claire either threatens to assault her or does assault her in some way and it’s just tiring. I thought that the novel was done with that particular issue once they had left the castle, but the minute that a male that was described as somewhat attractive and not crippled once again enters the narrative, Claire is forced into a position where she should be sexually assaulted. Then it is threatened again with a male that is mentally unstable. If that is the only way you can build tension in a scene with two members of the opposite sex, maybe take a step back and looking at how you’re crafting the story a little more carefully. This isn’t selling the romantic dream of every man wanting to be with you, it is reinforcing the knowledge that every woman has that we should always be on our guard and are never safe, which isn’t something I read fiction novels to be reminded of to this degree. 

One thing that I will give Gabaldon a small bit of credit for was how she dealt with the male rape victim in the novel. I don’t want to spoil who it is or the specifics surrounding the assault, but I believe she gave enough page space and emotional weight, Now this wasn’t just an assault, but torture as well, but the feeling of helplessness and shame that surrounded the character in regards to sex afterwards I believe was well done. However, that leads to another issue I have with this novel, that both homosexual characters are portrayed poorly. One is a villain and it is implied that he raped his younger brother, the other is a caricature and literally only in the novel for a while as a sort of comedic character, who also attempts to rape young boys. You can’t claim historical accuracy in this poor representation. While it might not have been written down, I highly doubt that every non-straight individual in the Scottish Highlands was a pedophile and/or rapist. 

Moving on from that, Gabaldon got the sibling dynamic between Jaime and his sister Jenny down pretty well. While we may live in a more civilized time, this is basically how arguments between me and my older brother go down, sans the whole kilt incident obviously. While it was frustrating that Jaime didn’t give her a chance to explain herself, especially when he already knew about Randall’s issue from Claire explaining her experience, it is a pretty accurate representation of sibling stubbornness. Jaime had years to form a picture in his mind of what had happened and it’s hard to listen to reason, from anyone, when that happens. Jaime’s interactions with his namesake nephew were also painfully adorable and it was a nice respite from the constant danger that they faced while at the castle. I really enjoyed this whole section of the novel, though the weird sexual display when describing what it’s like to be pregnant seemed a bit odd to me. Still, it was easy to understand the mood of the room and it was a rather wonderfully written section. 

Now to address the criticism that Claire is a Mary Sue that I had seen on a number of occasions. The knowledge that she had of medicine from her time as a nurse during the war makes perfect sense for the time period that she was living. The interest in herbs would also make sense if she had learned so much medical knowledge, hell I am interested in herbs and I have zero medical knowledge. While, I will admit, the whole traveling around with her uncle on archeological digs was a bit much, it’s no different than Indiana Jones and no one has a problem with him. While I don’t think that addition was necessary, most people adapt to roughing it when there is no other choice, it wasn’t something that pulled me out of the story. Honestly, I think what saves Claire from being insufferable is that she makes stupid decisions and is not a perfect person. I’m alright with a very knowledgeable main character as long as she also has flaws, which Claire has many. She is a very alive character and I appreciate that about her, even if I don’t like her all the time. 

It was a brave move on Gabaldon’s part, is that she lets the story take a very leisurely pace. There are whole sections that don’t move forward the plot, but they do give us the personality of the Scots that Claire is traveling with or meeting during her trip into the past. It is probably why the novel is almost 900 pages, however I appreciate learning to care about and getting complex characters to fall in love with or loath. While I do think that some areas could have been tightened up a bit, you are pulled with Claire into the Highlands and it is rare that you find yourself thinking that Gabaldon should just speed it up already. While it does seem as if the plot becomes a little repetitive, Claire finds herself in danger, is saved, becomes comfortable in her surrounds, and then the cycle is repeated, I never forced myself to pick up the book and dive back in. The only section that I found completely unnecessary was the entire battle with the wolf near the end of the book. The injuries from that encounter really have no bearing, nor does the actual killing as Claire is forced to kill humans a little later on. It was too long and I found myself really not all that interested. A couple paragraphs could have neatly wrapped up that section and moved the plot forward, but it was the only time I felt that way. It really is well situated to a television format, and it’s easy to see how sections could be broken up into episodes. I might search out the show now that I’m finished with the novel. Overall, I enjoyed my adventure in the Highlands and will continue with the rest of the series, but I don’t see this becoming my favorite series. There are just too many problems with it that I find hard to overlook or ignore.

[swampgallows]

hey so i’ve always been a staunch believer in still being able to love a character without condoning their actions, but i’ve always been curious of what your thoughts are on garrosh’s bombing of theramore? do you think it was as heinous of an act as it’s made to be in the lore, considering all citizens were evacuated?

it’s kind of funny/stunning to me that people care about my opinion on this stuff… im really flattered actually!!! haha i just feel like “oh, you’re actually asking me to talk about Garrosh? well, by all means…”

I can understand the logistics of wanting to take out Theramore. Northwatch Hold is an extension of the Alliance forces troubling the east coast of Kalimdor, which are stationed at the stronghold of Theramore. Northwatch Hold and the humans there have been putting pressure on the orcs for years, and the trolls in the neighboring isles ages before that. Sometimes people forget, I think, that the humans and the trolls have been at war longer than Thrall’s Horde had even existed. Some of your first quests as a Horde character starting in Durotar (back when the tauren, trolls, and orcs all started in the Valley of Trials and were directly funneled into the Barrens, resulting in the notorious Barrens Chat of yore) are to combat the units stationed at Northwatch. And, unfortunately despite Jaina’s efforts, many of the humans of eastern Kalimdor still sought to drive the Horde out, so it was still a matter of the Horde defending their new homes.

If you visit Cataclysm’s Theramore, there is a lot of talk of …not necessarily mutiny, but a budding kind of nationalism and yearning to “return to the old ways”. Just as the orcs who were loyal to Garrosh were itching to return to the version of the Horde that preceded Thrall’s, there were plenty of humans sharpening their blades and talking about “the good old days”. There is even a questline on the Alliance side in Theramore to expose these deserters. Traitors Among Us is one of the first quests you complete. Morgaledh quotes some of the “deserter” NPCs in the WoWhead comments, while adding their own echoed sentiments:

“These people will know Admiral Proudmoore for the true hero he was”“You can’t stop us from exposing the truth about Jaina’s cowardice”“It’s people like you who weaken the Alliance and invite the Horde to take away all we’ve fought for”I’ve done this quest on many characters over many years, and I completely agree with the Agitators. That Thrall-loving @#$% Jaina needs to be deposed, the men-at-arms of Theramore turned to valiant deeds against the animals of Orgrimmar, and this pretense of peace with the green-skins done away with once and for all.

Additionally, Theramore has spies out by Brackenwall, an ogre village allied with the Horde, and was actively sending troops further into the Barrens in the name of King Varian.

I mention this only because, from both Alliance and Horde standpoints, Theramore was by no means a neutral ground, nor lack of a threat. Theramore, whether by Jaina’s decree or not, was already actively brewing resentment and making moves against the Horde.

Garrosh’s plan was good. Parking the Horde ships just outside Theramore’s waters to intimidate—as well as prepare—Theramore for an assault is pretty clever, in my opinion. They had a chance to clear out civilians as well as gather enough Alliance forces to combat the estimated number of Horde units. He also had the Horde march in, engage in a skirmish, and then retreat; it gave the Horde a chance to fight a true battle and sent a direct message to the Alliance about what they were up against. But this was not the whole of Garrosh’s plan, and that is where it gets bad. Everything I just mentioned was only for appearances, as Garrosh’s true intentions were unbeknownst to everyone but his closest associates (Malkorok, some Kor’kron, etc.).

Literally everything else following this is completely fucking obscene, unethical, dishonorable, grotesque, cowardly, and whatever the hell else you want to call it. Even if Theramore hadn’t been nuked, per se, and it was just the enslaved elementals or just the barrage of siege weaponry, the travesty and crime of Garrosh’s attack on Theramore was that it was dishonorable. It was unjust, and it was dishonest. He deliberately withheld information from his own people, including the other racial leaders, and threatened them with treason and/or death if they were to question his methods. He lied to the Horde AND the Alliance. They say all is fair in love and war, but Theramore wasn’t warfare. It was extermination, and Garrosh used every ounce of deception and abuse that he could to screw everybody over.

The bombing of Theramore fucking sucks. Stealing the Focusing Iris is fucking dumb (still have no idea how the Horde managed to pull that shit off, by the way), and reading through Tides of War was a grueling experience. From a fiction standpoint, it is one of the lowest, most non-rewarding experiences I’ve had in WoW’s storytelling. It is similar to a gripe I have with the majority of Pixar films: sometimes the low that is hit is so low, so hopeless, that there is emotionally a point of no return in which, I personally feel, the story has been fatally wounded. Maybe it’s because of my own experiences with trauma or whatever, but reaching an “emotional dead-end” in a story like that completely negates whatever sort of redemption buds from that conflict; it may heal, but it leaves a scar. Maybe it’s because I’m a pathetic softie grown on Disney movies that can’t handle more than two seconds of a bad time, who knows. But I hate knowing shit can be irreparably damaged in stories with zero hopeful outlook, especially when I myself as a viewer, or in identifying with the protagonist, am held accountable. I don’t glean entertainment or enjoyment from stories that infuse me with guilt and tell me that everything is my fault and that I let this happen and deserve to be punished or killed.

Theramore was the death knell of a thousand things. Anything Jaina does from now on is going to be seen as irrational because of her own people standing against her and players trying to justify reasons for why Garrosh did what he did and how he, technically, was blah blah blah. Jaina is put through a meatgrinder and made to feel some of the worst pain anyone can ever feel. Jaina has already been through an entire shitshow. She has lost her father, her fiancé, her people, her home, and anyone she could have ever trusted. She has lost everything she has sacrificed these things for: peace. It’s gone. In the blink of an eye. Jaina built Theramore. 

Everyone jokes about death knights giving the Illidari a side-eye when they ask “I’ve sacrificed everything—what have you given?” How does it feel to be the woman who, maybe, she’ll never know, might have been able to prevent the rise of the Lich King? Was she wrong to reject Arthas at Stratholme? To reject Kael’thas in Dalaran? To reject her father Daelin and stand with Thrall? People take pity on Illidan, who even gets a redemptive arc in Legion and is literally a demon, yet accuse Jaina of being a dreadlord because of the justified anger she feels and pain she has endured. Theramore is now a scapegoat for all of her sorrow as people conveniently forget the rest of her history.

Garrosh’s character was executed with Theramore. Anything after that must have been emotionally exhausting beyond belief. I can’t imagine having to play through Pandaria with that piece of shit as Warchief. He let everyone down. How could anyone say “for the Horde” proudly with anything but hatred in their hearts? Who could condone that? Bringing the enormity of something like that to a video game that is supposed to be fun and interesting and certainly have a bit of storytelling conflict, sure, but not to that degree, ultimately sucks the fun out of it. Theramore didn’t need to happen the way it did, and personally I think the dropping of the mana bomb/nuke, and all of the deaths associated with it, and how graphically it was recounted in Tides of War—Jaina sifting through the rubble of her home, touching the remains of Kinndy and having them burst into arcane powder in her hands, dedicating the length of the book to building up to the event—was incredibly fucking tasteless. It could have been a barrage of bombs, even, like the goblins do all the time, or, like I said, it would have sealed the deal enough to have Garrosh abuse the elements and lie to his people to paint him as a villain. 

I mean, I guess they wanted to tie in Dalaran’s neutrality somehow and create conflict there (for some reason, even though both the Horde and the Alliance are back there in Legion, I guess because Jaina left the Kirin Tor), and Rhonin could have died in literally any other imaginable way. It didn’t have to be from a “magical” nuke. If it was supposed to somehow “forward” WoW’s standard technology (which is indeed one thing that Garrosh did, pulling the Horde into the industrial age), they fucked up by making it a one-time resource like the Focusing Iris and using it in such a grisly, abominable way that even the Forsaken’s stomachs turned. From a gameplay, story, and even lore perspective, it was absolute overkill. 

tl;dr Garrosh’s attack on Theramore was absolutely heinous and was the death of his character. I don’t know how anyone took the Divine Bell as a threat after the Theramore scenario, and literally the only way they could have upped the evil ante for Garrosh at the end of Mists was to have him seize the heart of a dead Old God, the only thing more evil and more powerful than the demons he apparently so reviled. It fucked up everything, including the overall storytelling tone of the Warcraft franchise. Nobody won and nothing about it is entertaining in the slightest. It’s incredibly tasteless and, in my opinion, a huge smudge on the lore, and one of Blizzard’s most—if not the most—flagrant cases of “bad writing”. People still talk about it, sure, not because it was emotionally gray and compelling like the mak’gora between Garrosh and Thrall, but because it was outlandishly inappropriate for the setting.

I love Garrosh as a character, but Theramore is honestly one of those things I basically just block out of my mind. I am more comfortable with him stealing the heart of Y’shaarj than the extermination of Theramore.

[mybukz]

Review: Cold East by Gabija Grušaitė

Title: Cold East Author : Gabija Grušaitė Publisher: Clarity Publishing Genre: Fiction Format: Paperback, 232 pages Price: RM39 Released: October 2018 Reviewer: Leon Wing

With the premise of a murdered Mongolian woman and her connection to a former Malaysian Prime Minister and his wife, Cold East could only have been published here in Malaysia after the last major general election, in which he lost to Mahathir. Cold East is translated into English from the Lithuanian, and is published by Clarity Publishing, a Penang-based publisher. It won the Penang Monthly Book Prize for 2018.

Stasys Śaltoka, or Stanley Colder, as he sometimes calls himself, is an Eastern European living in New York. The character smacks, at first reading, of the men in those New York novels of the 80s: full of angst, money and looks. Stasys is good looking enough to draw women from Tinder for sex. He has published his first novel. He is a veritable social media being, with followers and fans on Twitter and Instagram. He constantly checks for new tweets and loads pictures to his Instagram.

He likes living on his own, hates sharing, hates humanity, hates getting out of bed, enjoys his sofa any time of day, and enjoys eating when he wants to. He has enough money for luxuries, like expensive shoes, for one. But all these are not enough. He thinks positive and acts as if he already has everything: “.. I’m failing to remind myself why I love life and just how lucky I am. …my brain in arctic cold.” He is at the cusp of his 30th birthday, he is steeped in ennui, he is jaded, and he questions the things he desires. He considers his to-do list as “complete and utter shit”.

Stasys is not happy with his life at all. Thus his desire to get away from all those things—all the way to the Far East on a one-way ticket, via an invitation by friend Kenny. He lands in Khao San, Thailand, where he meets a Russian at a bar, Aleksey Lemontov. They share a commonality of expensive clothes, “Eastern European accents, marching hairdos and love for whiskey”, the same Nespresso machine, hatred of people around them, and cynicism at the world in which only they are important, at home only in high class places like 5-star hotels. They get along well, staying at the Russian’s hotel, then at his, enjoying the islands in the south, just the thing for his Instagram. While waiting for Kenny to arrive, he listens to Alex reminisce about bygone days in Russia with his wealthy family, the ups and the downs when things went sour with the mafia, Chechnya, about being traumatised by a friend’s suicide. Like him, Alex also needs to get away from all this, usually to places like Paris, and devote his life to “searching and not giving up”.

About the Malaysian aspect in all this, it so happens that Alex’s father has connections in Malaysia close to Naqib’s wife. (The author alters the man’s name by a ‘q’.) Alex suggests Kenny does a documentary about the wife, who apparently runs the country, not the prime minister husband. Also, Alex used to know the Mongolian woman who was murdered in connection to the politician.

However, Kenny, who heads the documentary, is more interested in the ISIS angle of a story, rather than one about a murdered Mongolian’s connection with a prime minister, even when Alex argues the corruption angle of it. Kenny is convinced to take on the story only after hearing about the Muslim majority of the population in Malaysia.

If a reader sympathizes with the former prime minister and his wife, prepare to flinch at some of the unsavory aspects of Malaysia pictured here. Stasys comes to Malaysia knowing nothing about it but wanting to expose lies. Typical of Stasys, as much as he hates Thailand, he hates the first thing he encounters upon landing in Malaysia. To him, Putrajaya is “designed by middle-aged neurotics on meth” and the Pullman hotel is like a Barbie house. When they interview taxi drivers about the corruption in business and politics, one man high on meth quips: “..it’s Malaysia. This is how things are done here”. In the course of their investigation, a government informer named X discloses that all immigation records of the murdered Mongolian are wiped out.

The men are determined to make a documentary that divides the good, “beautiful, strong woman”, with the bad, the corruption. As they shoot their film, Stasys questions why he even considers joining the others who only want fame and the thrill. He is drawn only to the secrecy and the romance, particularly the romance of a stream in the jungle carrying a fragment of the spine of the murdered Mongolian and the DNA results. For someone who doesn’t care a jot about happenings around him in the world, he doesn’t care about bringing justice.

With everything going on, the novel somehow jacks in some gothic or supernatural elements. One day Stasys thinks he spies a girl from New York, who has been stalking him. It could well be something psychedelic because he fears he is hallucinating.

Besides the politician, his wife, and the Mongolian, the story weaves in some real events and people, with names altered. While they break from filming in Penang, The Sabah Report and WSJ break the news about the minister’s private bank account. They find that their documentary will be relegated to old news, making it difficult to sell. They have to decide what to do next, whether to abandon the project and look for a new one, or just continue as normal, hoping for the best, or just tweak the topic. Stasys is surprised that the locals carry on as usual, not protesting, and that the local press never report the scandal. The friends opt to share their research and interview with one Anna White of The Sabah Report, reasoning that the world would want to watch their documentary, especially when it focuses on Altansarnai, the murdered Mongolian. But Anna replies to their email: “you’re a fraud.” Later, she surprises them when she wants to know more about Rosnah’s jewelry. They are relieved, thinking all is not lost with their documentary.

Despite this, and Alex thinking life is beautiful because he is rich, Stasys still feels apprehensive, imagining “the nightmare…in the shadows, in a parallel reality…right in your head”, when things don’t go their way. Stasys realises that “People don’t care about living things—animals, forests, oceans, even other people.” People like him are triggered more by an animal’s death than a human’s, like the Mongolian—they are only interested in the thrills and the fun their making the documentary gives them. He likens all this to a “nostalgia you haven’t experienced.” He wants his life to make sense.

They try to sell their documentary to Al Jazeera, but when they start editing it, they find inconsistencies and a lack of focus. Though it is about a murder, their story is not unique and is similar to other stories already available. Al Jazeera will consider it if they interview the Mongolian’s father in person.

It is only when Kenny gets deported from Malaysia that their documentary becomes a success, so much so that Al Jazeera and other channels want to work with them. But the thrill of fame is short lived, as they have to look for another project. For Stasys, it is back to boredom, as usual. They return to Thailand, and as luck would have it for them, Thailand gets flooded—this is their next ticket to fame.

Near the end of the book, Stasy rethinks his philosophy about life: “Maybe beauty (of a human being) lies in making peace with reality”. He thinks he has found his perfect partner in Kenny’s ex-wife, Isabel. However, he knows himself better than anyone: “you need to know how to love in order to do that”. He admits that “we are always looking for the worst, most photogenic scenario. We don’t have souls.” While the locals flee from Bangkok as the waters rise, they remain so that they can film the flood. At one point, Kenny gets kidnapped. Stasys thinks it is up to him to be strong for the others. This vulnerability makes Stasys think that running out of time will make him feel alive.

With Kenny gone, and only he and Alex remaining, and it is near his birthday, the two men decide to go to Chiang Mai, to celebrate, and also to bury Kenny’s watch as a funeral. Stasys, by this time, has decided to write his next book, a love story, or rather three love stories. He thinks back to his time in New York, and wonders if anything has changed at all. When he loses his wallet full of credit cards, he thinks of them as sentimental junk that he can easily replace.

The way Stasys finally sees reality sums up he and his friends as “white, privileged men, not entirely happy, suffering from first-world problems; hoping for enlightenment at some point in the near future.” Stasys still haven’t found happiness at the close of the novel, but he has found something.

Cold East is written, or rather, translated, in a lean, a straightforward, almost stripped-down, noir-like, style, with no long descriptions or adjectives. An example: “I go out to the street. Dark. Hot. The smell of food and rubbish. Soy, rice, fried bananas. Shrimp. Ginger. A soft smell of coriander. Fried chicken. Rotten souls. My soul, if I still have one.” Those sentences are not typical of the rest of the novel, but you get the idea how images fast cut from one to the other cinematically.

Even if the picture painted of Malaysia in the novel is no tourism guff, remember it is merely fiction. Or something rendered as fiction.

*

Gabija Grušaité is an author and curator; Cold East is her second novel.   A graduate of Anthropology & Media from Goldsmiths College, UK, Gabija’s creative pursuit is defined by the relentless search of new horizons through travel. In 2009, she settled in Penang, Malaysia where she cofounded an independent, contemporary art centre – Hin Bus Depot – where she was curator-in-chief.   She currently lives in Vilnius, Lithuania with her two Malaysian dogs, Gorgeous and Hazelnut.

[toniwilder]

Narrative Family Therapy in Thor

The following is an essay written regarding the application of family therapy techniques in a fictional setting:

In Marvel Studio’s 2011 film, Thor, the fantasy and super hero aspects of the film surround worth. While we hear the mantra, “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor,” regarding the physical action of the film (respectively in relation to Thor’s legendary weapon Mjolnir), we also hear testaments from both our protagonist, Thor, and his brother-antagonist, Loki, of expressing a desire to be worthy in different, more abstract ways. The film follows their journeys to become worthy as heirs to their fathers’ throne, but, more importantly, worthy as sons.

The film splits equal time between Thor and Loki’s origins, along with their relationship with their father. On the day of Thor’s coronation, the enemies of his kingdom of Asgard break into a highly secure weapons vault. Later, it is revealed that Loki allowed the spies to enter the vault as a cunning and underhanded way to express to his father that Thor is not ready to rule the kingdom in his father Odin’s stead. Just as Loki expected, Thor’s temper gets the best of him. As a warrior, Thor has been taught and congratulated for being violent and brash. Odin chastises Thor for trying to instigate a war onto the rival kingdom, Jotunheim, and postpones the coronation temporarily.

The flame of Thor’s temper is further fanned when Thor decides to take his comrades of warriors to Jotunheim to threaten the rival king. Loki humors him lightly and expects Thor to get caught once again making brash plans, but not to actually conduct any true damage. Loki’s schemes to frame his brother in a poor light, though, are knocked aside when they arrive at Jotunheim before Odin can stop them. Thor attacks the kingdom and kills citizens in the false name of nationalism. The most important thing to gain from this fight, aside from Thor’s temper, is that, during the battle, Loki is grabbed by a Jotun frost giant. The Jotuns are a race of monsters to the Asgardians and a touch from one should have given Loki immediate frost bite. However, Loki’s skin turns Jotun frost giant blue instead. Loki, it turns out, is not Thor’s brother after all. He not only adopted, he is a Jotun.

There are various moments throughout the film that build up a clear picture of the negative implications associated with being a Jotun. To name only one example: The very opening prologue of the film is Odin telling young Thor and Loki a story of the Jotun. The first words spoken in the film are, “From the cold and darkness came the Frost Giants.” Odin describes Asgard as a “beacon of hope” in comparison to the monsters that they protected every realm from. A young Thor, maybe nine years old, exclaims, “When I'm king, I'll hunt the monsters down and slay them all! Just as you did, father.”

Just by this prologue, we understand many instrumental aspects of the Asgardian culture. Jotun frost giants are not only less than Asgardians—they are feared, hated, and inhuman. They’re referred to as monsters more-so than their true designation. It’s deep-rooted racism that Odin implanted into both of his sons, and, even though he tells both Thor and Loki that they are both meant to be kings, he gets teary-eyed when faced with the pride he feels for Thor at his coronation and he constantly accents that Thor is first-born, along with being worthy. Now, taking this into consideration and layering Thor’s blatant inexperience as a ruler with the insistence that he must rule on top of Loki’s discovery that he is a monster, it is no wonder that Loki takes to his heritage in an extremely volatile and dangerous way.

Thor, Loki, and Thor’s friends are dragged back to Asgard by Odin before any more peace treaties can be ruined. Thor is then stripped of his power and title and banished to Earth with the task of becoming worthy so he can reclaim what Odin has taken from him. Odin does not explain what dictates worth, only that Thor is “unworthy of these realms [sic] unworthy of [his] title” and “unworthy of the loved ones [he has] betrayed.” It is with this cryptic and vague mission that he sends Thor to an unfamiliar world and turns him into a human. It’s also important to note that an human lifespan in relation to an Asgardian lifespan is minute and humans are incredibly weak in comparison. Odin could very well have sent Thor to his death in his show of temper that is comparable only to Thor’s temper while attacking the Jotun giants.

Odin’s inarticulate parenting only gets more volatile when Loki confronts him about his heritage. Loki’s first thought is that he might be cursed, because the thought of Odin housing a frost giant from infancy is so foreign to him. Loki goes on to describe himself in a multitude of self-deprecating ways (“I am the monster parents tell their children about at night.”) and Odin admits that he took Loki from a Jotun battle for future political leverage. When confronted with Odin using him, Loki lashes out and asks why Odin never told him. As a final nail in Loki’s identity coffin, Odin claims he wanted to “protect” Loki from the truth. It’s one of the last things Odin says before entering a coma, and solidifies the racism throughout the entire first portion of the film that being Jotun is something to be ashamed of and an identity that makes Loki unworthy of holding the throne of Asgard.

Ironically, Odin’s coma and Thor’s banishment now allow Loki to reign over the kingdom in their absence. It is in place of power that Loki schemes so that he can kill his birth father (which he succeeds in doing) and the rest of the Jotun race while keeping Thor banished. His hopes are resolutely defined in the final battle between Thor and Loki when Loki explains that his actions of genocide against the “race of monsters” will show Odin that he is the worthy son and true heir to the throne.

Thor’s worth is found when he protects his friends from Loki’s wrath and it is then that Thor is able to truly fight his adopted brother. Odin arrives at the end of the fight and saves the brothers from toppling over a cliff-face. It is in Loki’s final moments that he is rejected by his father for his attempt to make him proud. When Odin says Loki has not made him proud, Loki jumps over the side to kill himself.

Odin’s obsession with worth and his inability to explain to his sons the reasoning behind ruling, diplomacy, and what actually dictates that worth are what set this film in motion. It seems natural then that the therapeutic technique used for this family, minus the mother who is mostly absent from the main conflict, would be narrative therapy. So many of the problems within the family do surround worth, but semantically it’s no different if the word worth was replaced with the word character. By constantly undermining the character of Thor and Loki, Odin places the weight of every mistake they make onto them as people. It’s not temper that controls Thor, it’s Thor’s temper that ruined the entirety of the political atmosphere. It’s not heritage that Loki discovers, it’s that Loki discovers he, personally, is a manifestation of a monster that exists within the scope of that heritage. The two sons are unable to separate what aspects make up who they are from their actual, whole identity. It’s because of this that narrative therapy is the best fit for the conflicts shown in the film.

The first step in using narrative therapy with the family would be to start externalizing the problems. Already, the relationships among and surrounding this unit of three is extremely based in scape-goat tactics. Odin actually explaining himself would go a long way to giving both sons enough information to actually make decisions that are not based in unsure hopes of making their father proud. Loki explaining his lack of self-worth paired with Thor not understanding why Loki suddenly snaps, thus alleviating the blame that Loki places on Thor (since Loki believes that Thor knows Loki is unwell and does not care) would also help in clearing up a large amount of the misconceptions within the family dynamic. With all three perspectives now articulated, a motion can be made to interlink the three stories into the most objective story possible.

After removing blame and guilt from the equation, the situation can be assessed in an unbiased way while maintaining a path to achieve all the assumed goals. Odin can gain “worthy” sons by allowing Thor and Loki the autonomy to not be owned by their emotions and impulsivities. Thor and Loki also gain by achieving that autonomy and independence away from what their father deems as “worthy”. This technique allows Thor and Loki the freedom to exist as themselves, which is especially important given Loki’s new, learned origin.

Now that there is distance between identity and the problems within the family unit, the externalization can be viewed in various social, cultural, and political ways. The three can explore why Loki varies so much from the more violent Asgardian culture and what that means for him as a functioning individual within the unit. It’s important to understand the demonization and black and white thinking that Odin has imprinted onto his sons, especially in relation to other races. (Odin uses Earth as a punishment, and talks down to everyone who does not adhere to the strict societal expectations of the Asgardian culture.) This will call into account the racism associated with the Jotun and how Loki may or may not differ from these ideas that Odin has upheld. It requires a re-examination of past, less-problematic moments. By having the three look into the more positive aspects of Loki’s character, they can readdress the racism and temper relating to the Jotun held by all three, but especially by Thor. The negativity has now been changed into more meaningful and accepting ways (a drastic contrast to the constant affirmation seeking that code the relationships until this point).

From here, Odin, Thor, and Loki can explore futures utilizing more positive aspects of what they previously considered negative. Maybe Odin’s idea of using Loki to create a bridge between Asgard and Jotun is explored in a more culturally sensitive way and, instead of using Loki as leverage, it’s frame as being a learning experience that shows the race as being multi-faceted, thus allowing Loki to be multi-faceted as well. Loki no longer becomes Odin’s pawn, and the contentment in his role can connect to his ability to rule in Odin’s place should he ever need to. His worth is no longer connected to being on the throne, but to the skills that would make him a prospective ruler. Thor’s temper and warrior tendencies can also be examined in this same way as, instead of being volatile, as being a passionate jumpstarting position for Thor as a political figure. By turning his anger into passion and placing him in a position that truly focuses on doing what would be best for Asgard as a kingdom, Thor can also develop his skills as a ruler.

With future orientation in mind, it would be the hope that establishing connection through narrative therapy for the three would allow Loki the comfort to stay with his family instead of attempting to take his own life at the end of the film and that Asgard could be ruled without grand assumptions on the character of its throne’s heirs.

FOR MORE ON NARRATIVE THEORY, SEE THE POST A Look Into Narrative Theory

[arplis]

Arplis - News: The old Green Lantern battery is running on low, as we’ve almost reached the present, so it’s time to wind down this review of non-career superheroes and their various exploits and follie

s. While time, however, is running out, the creative spark still continues to flow through several recent productions, bringing back classic characters in new powerful misadventures. To start things off on a highly positive note, we’ll first review a couple of episodes from Pink Panther and Pals, the most recent (and one of the best) revivals of the DePatie-Freleng franchise. While Panther is visibly modified into a junior adolescent form, his spirit and pantomme humor remain intact, and comic inventiveness continues to excel. This is also true of the revival of his stablemates, the Ant and the Aardvark, one of whose episodes shall be the first examined. In Zeus Juice (3/7/10), Aardvark is having more trouble than usual keeping up with Ant (who in this incarnation has the personality of a wise-cracking Chris Rock instead of a Dean Martin drawl, though Aardvark retains his Joey Bishop persona), as ant prides himself on working out, and claims to be the speediest thing in the jungle. Before he can build up his muscles, Aardvark realizes he must develop muscles to build up. So he goes on line looking on the web for a quick-fix muscle builder. He encounters an ad for a super-juicer – a mixmaster with recipes guaranteed to provide super strength and vitality. Purchasing the product, Aardvark first tries a mixture to produce legs of steel – a concoction of fruit juices and fish oils. At first, nothing – then his legs begin to swell, and his feet start pounding the turf of their own volition. His legs take off like the Road Runner, with Aardvark’s long nose trailing helplessly behind on the ground. He finally manages to come to a stop, conveniently at the door to ant’s anthill. A pound on the ground from his “thunder thighs” jostles Ant out of his bath and up the hole, where he sees the new physique of his adversary. Racing for dear life, Ant looks back and reacts, “He’s a freak of nature. I can’t outrun that freight train.” Instead, Ant hides begind a rock – a few feet from the edge of a cliff. Aardvark sees the cliff coming, and tries his best to stop, skidding until he is hanging onto the cliff with his arms, his legs danging over the edge. “You know what he needs?”, comments Ant, “Ant-i lock brakes.” As Aardvark grabs Ant with his nose, Ant climbs up Aardvark’s face and yanks on his ear, which acts as an ignition key to stat Aardvark’s legs again. Aardvark is pulled by the sheer speed of his legs off the cliff face and onto mid-air. Looking down in horror, Aardvark tells us, “Next time, I’ll use flying fish oil.” As he falls, Ant meanders home, stating “I better call somebody to clean that up.” If at first you don’t succeed. Aardvark’s next recipe is for super-vision. His eyes develop red swirls – and suddenly fire a laser beam at his front door, leaving a charred hole. “Suddenly I’m in the mood for a barbecue”, he says. He arrives at ant’s home, and invites him to come out to observe his “new look”. Ant believes Aardvark’s been eating too many jalapenos, which would account for the red swirlies in his eyes. But a blast from Aardvark’s lasers blackens the surface of the anthill. “After all this time, it looks like you finally got me”, says Ant. “Go ahead, fry me.” Aardvark revs up his eyes for a fatal blow, but Ant produces a mirror at the last split second – and the reflected beam chars Aardvark’s head to a powder. “I’d stay out of the sun if I were you”, retorts Ant. “Your head looks a little well done.” Recipe #3: Super smell. Aardvark’s already pronounced nose develops biceps of its own, prompting Ant to inquire if his sinuses are acting up. Aardvark turns on his vacuum power at super level – but only succeeds in sucking himself into his own nose, rolling him up like a pill bug. “Hey, you need a ride home?” asks Ant, giving him a kick to roll him back to his cave. Recipe #4: Since physical strength has failed, how about a super mind? Aardvark returns to Ant’s hill with lobes swollen five times their normal size. Ant inquires, “It looks like that hurts.” “Well, a little”, responds Aardvark, “…but enough already! Now you’ll never outsmart me.” So ant instead poses him a question he’s been pondering for years: “Why can’t you ever catch me?” The old unanswerable question trope strikes again, and, as Ant produces an umbrella to avoid the splatter, Aardvark’s head explodes. Aardvark is finally through with the juicer, dumping it in the trash can. He returns to the ant hill, vowing to get his meal the good old fashioned way. Turning on his vacuum nose, he miraculously sucks out the Ant on the first try. “I did it. It’s a miracle”, shouts Aardvark. Suddenly, from inside his nose, Aardvark is repeatedly judo flipped. Out of his nose emerges Ant – buffed like a miniature Hercules, thanking Aardvark for turning him on to the juicer. Aardvark lays prone on the ground, and closes with the line, “Next time I’m hungry, I’ll order pizza.” Pink! Pow! Kaboom! (Pink Panther and Pals, 8/13/10) – Pink Panther faces the same dilemma as Bart Simpson in an earlier post in this series – an irresistible collector’s comic in a comics store window – and only a buck to his name. When proprietor Big Nose (who’s priced the collectible with a tag reading “$$$”) sees Pink’s single bill, not only does he respond with humiliating laughter, but for the price hands Pink a stack of blank paper and a pencil – draw your own. Ponk returns home, and sets to work from the inside out – leaping onto the paper itself, drawing a box around him, and filling in the details as he goes. He draws in a city – but finds it inhabited by a humongous green monster, who begins a destructive rampage. Pink realizes he holds the upper hand, as his pencil is equipped with an eraser, and begins to erase the giant’s toes. The giant flings him into the skies with a snap of his fingers. Pink counters by drawing a super suit around himself (some padding might have helped, as it deflates from muscular build to his puny skinny form the moment after it is drawn). Pink begins some playful fun with the monster, drawing two windows in mid-air so he can pop in and out of them. When the giant looks in, Pink pencils his face with clown make-up, then holds up a mirror to emphasize the embarrassment. Pink next pulls a “Duck Amuck” tribute, changing the backgrounds behind the monster in mid-chase, causing him to slide on ice into a snowdrift (leaving a hole in the snow in the silhouette of a jackass), then coming out the other side as a giant snowman. Pink changes the background again to a desert scene, and melts the giant’s snow away. He draws and offers to the perspiring giant a huge glass of water – then renders his need totally unnecessary by drawing him into the middle of the ocean. Pink flushes him away by pulling a plug, returning the background to a cityscape. The giant returns from the sewer, but Pink crosses him out with the pencil and redesigns him as a baby in a baby carriage. But even a baby monster has powers, and the creature lets out with a super-bawl that has the power of an atom bomb – sending the entire comic book blasting through Pink’s roof, to land outside on a city sidewalk. Back in the comic, Pink finds himself prone on the ground, and the giant somehow regrown to his original form. On top of that, the giant has taken Pink’s supersuit, and tears the suit in half. The giant generates a force field from his fists, which encircles Pink – and from which emerge an army of giants like himself. Still wielding the pencil, Ponk faces the situation with determination, and a heroic glint in his eye, as the camera angles change to a tribute to anime. Swinging the pencil like a Samurai, Pink erases giant after giant in a ferocious battle – until the street is cleared, save the original monster, for a final showdown. With a roar, the monster charges at Pink, and Pink charges at the monster. They meet in the center, Pink wildly swinging his pencil. Pink lands unharmed, but the point breaks off his pencil tip. The giant chuckles fiendishly – but looks down to find his parts separated from each other by broad strokes of emptiness from the eraser. With a clatter, he disassembles and falls in a heap of parts to the ground. Pink has reached the last panel on the comics page, and exits the completed book. As fate would have it, the sidewalk on which the comic landed is right outside Big Nose’s shop, as Big Nose returns to open up. He spies the new comic on the ground, and is impressed by its artwork. He reaches into his pocket for some cash for a purchase – but Pink insists on a trade – for the collector’s item in the window. Reluctantly, Big Nose can’t resist, and the rare prize becomes the panther’s own. Inside the shop. Big Nose settles down to read Pink’s masterwork, when the huge green hand of the monster emerges from its pages and hauls Big Nose inside, the pages closing as thuds, thumps, and leaping pages denote the battle resuming all over again within. Then there is Garfield (as promised from last week’s article). He’s undergone some considerable changes in recent times – the first being a move to CGI (in a few feature films, and then in a series of direct to video features starting with Garfield Gets Real). Garfield’s Pet Force (6/16/09) is one of these, and not very super at all. Some primary problems of this feature series were as follows. First, instead of keeping Garfield rooted in reality, he, Jon and Odie are now residents of Cartoon World, outwardly aware of their fictional nature, something like Heckle and Jeckle. (One particularly good line results from this, in a scene where Garfield is twisted like a spiral in a torture device, but feeling no pain – “I’m a cartoon character. I do squash and stretch for a living.”). Instead of being a career cartoonist, Jon now takes Odie and Garfield to a TV-like studio, where they “film” a comic strip for each issue. And the various animal characters actually talk, and Jon and Liz can understand them, instead of merely being heard by the audience through thought projection. The whole thing is rather unnerving for old-school fans of the show. Top that with the fact that the personalities of two of the principals are altered or watered-down. Garfield still gets jokes on food, fatness, and laziness, but seems to have lost the power to insult or belittle, making no particular zingers about canine stupidity or even Nermal’s ability to aggravate. And Nermal, instead of playing the innocent or thriving on reputation as world’s cutest kitten, now seems to have swapped personalities with Scrappy Doo, just generally diving into trouble. Egad! Plotwise, it’s a convoluted tale of a parallel universe, in which an animal superhero squad are the guardians of the kingdom of a Jon-lookalike monarch, who shares with Jon a complete lack of talent in attracting women. Garfield’s parallel (Garzooka) talks in a resonant superhero voice, is muscular in build, stands about four times taller than Garfield, and is leader of the Pet Force – his powers being super strength, and radioactive hairballs. Odie’s counterpart specializes in stunning blows with his tongue. The counterpart to Arlene (Garfield’s new girlfriend) gives icy stares that freeze her victims in place. And Nermal’s counterpart has super speed. Enter a counterpart to Liz, visiting from another planet. King Jon falls for her instantly, babbling out an instant proposal of marriage. Oddly, she accepts – only for purposes of getting her hands on a set of keys to the royal arsenal, to obtain the kingdom’s latest invention – a molecular scrambler gun that not only mutates its targets into combinations of each other’s parts, but renders them mindless zombies under the shooter’s control. Three of the Pet Force are so mutated, and only Garzooka escapes, nabbing away the Klopman crystal (a counterpart to the original series’ recurring references to the Klopman diamond), which is the scrambling gun’s power source. With the assistance of the gun’s inventor, Garzooka also obtains vials of serum to endow the powers of his mutated comrades to new replacements, and the space coordinates of the only other residents of the galaxy with DNA matches to his fallen comrades. He takes off in a space ship to find the “matches” – Nermal, Odie, and Arlene. Garfield himself gets rather left out of the superhero action (since Garzooka is still in charge), while his friends take the serum and acquire the powers within. Garfield’s only real connection to the storyline is a brief assignment to guard the Klopman crystal – which, despite slipping it into a glass of lemonade as an “ice” cube, is eventually discovered by the villainess who follows Garzooka to Cartoon World. The villainess zombifies most of the population, and orders them to obliterate the Pet Force. The Force heads for a tall tower in the center of town, in hopes of using the structure as a giant harpoon to spear the villainess’s ship, while the zombie army pursues and corners them for a showdown. Garfield finally decides, against his nature, to become “involved”, and, standing on the shoulders of one of the co-workers at the comic-strip studio, devises a Garzooka disguise, luring the zombie army back to the studio to march en masse into a trap door opening to the cellar. The diversion allows the Pet Force to harpoon the ship. The villainess counters by mutating half the buildings in town into a giant metallic monster. Garfield somehow survives the chase, trips up the monster, obtains the ray gun, and mutates the villainess into a “good” girl who apologizes and accepts the position as loving queen. The film tells a story, yes – it’s just not a Garfield story. The Garfield Show, a more recent revival, at least returns the characters to the contemporary suburbs. However, it retains from the prior incarnation the animal characters continuing to talk with actual lip movements. It compromises a bit back toward the old days, striving for a halfway poont between the original and the non-abrasive Garfield, and between the “cute” verses the proactive Nermal. Super Me (12/21/09) – Garfield and Nermal watch the television adventures of hero “Ultra Powerful Guy”. Garfield as usual won’t share his snacks with Nermal during the viewing, and yields the bag of potato chips only when its contents have been emptied. Nermal stands up for himself, telling Garfield he doesn’t need his snacks, as he can get them all by himself. “This I gotta see”, said Garfield. Nermal seats himself on the sidewalk, and puts on his most adorable cute-kitten face and irresistible meows. A car stops abruptly, its occupants mesmerized by Nermal’s cuteness – and they just can’t resist handing over to Nermal an entire pepperoni pizza with mushroms and Canadian bacon. Garfield’s jaw drops in amazement, as he races over to get a share of the take. But now it’s Nermal who claims to have nothing left to share. Garfield complains that he’d bet Nermal would share if Ultra Powerful Guy were around – then states to the audience, “Idea happening.” Fashioning a supersuit out of old clothes from Jon’s closet, Garfield follows Nermal to a phone booth where Nermal is looking up local cat shows to win, and props a broom against the booth door, trapping Nermal inside. He then dives on the broom from the roof of the booth in his outfit as Ultra Powerful Guy, making a “rescue”. Nermal reacts in disbelief that Ultra Powerful Guy is so short and round in build, but feels indebted to him in view of the timely rescue. Garfield convinces Nermal that superheroes need to eat, too, and suggests as a reward that Nermal turn on some of his “cute” magic to drum up an entree. Nermal repeats his performance at the curbside, and stops another motorist in his tracks, who just happens to have a heaping plate of spaghetti and meatballs. This reward suits Garfield fine. After devouring it, he notes “You know what goes great after spaghetti for desert? Anything!” He rigs another rescue of Nermal, pushing a trash dumpster to roll down a steep hill. Garfield rides atop the dumpster to issue a timely warning for Nermal to get out of the way. At the foot of the hill, two would-be bank robbers debate holding up the bank, but are fearsome that Ultra Powerful Guy might be in the vicinity. On cue, Garfield’s trash dumpster reaches the end of the line, and Garfield falls inside the trash. Garfield emerges with a banana draped over his head, noting that this never happens to Batman. He removes his soiled mask – and the crooks believe they’ve just witnessed the hero’s true secret identity – a fat cat. Unafraid, they decide the time is ripe for bank robbery after all. Garfield meanwhile returns to Nermal, demanding a reward of a banana cream pie with chocolate sprinkles. Nermal’s best “cute” face only reaps a chocolate cream pie with banana sprinkles. “Close enough”, saus Garfield. An alarm nearby reveals the crooks making a getaway from the bank. Nermal pyshes a reluctant Garfield forward to apprehend the culprits. The crooks state they are not afraid, as they know Ultra Powerful Guy’s secret and his weakness. They drop before Garfield a catnip mouse. Nermal sees instant hearts, and flips onto his back to play with the toy. Garfield isn’t affected in the least, and states that nect time, they should try stuffing the mouse with lasagna. Their plan not working, the crooks head for their getaway car, catching Garfield’s cape in the door. Another predicament Garfield insists would never happen to Batman. Garfield is dragged down the street, frantically yelling for assistance and to let him off at the earliest opportunity. But who should arrive to stop the getaway, but Ultra Powerful Man himself, thanking Garfield for delaying the crooks long enough for him to arrive. Nermal catches up to congratulate the hero on the amazing capture – then notes that there are now two of them. He asks which is the real one, and both Garfield and the hero chime in unison “I am”. “Now c’mon, that’s not fair”, says Nermal, and asks them again. “I am” comes the simultaneous reply. “Aw, really, which one of you is it?” Garfield and the hero exchange winks, as they are starting to enjoy this, and for the remainder of the night, continue to frustrate Nermal with their united response of “I am”. The Amazing Flying Dog (12/22/09) seems more aimed at the younger viewers than usual, attempting to build a meager plotline about Odie’s daydreams of being a caped superhero and flying to the rescue of a cute poodle he has his eyes on. His daydreams include a rescue of the pooch from a burning building (using flying power to pull her from a fiery balcony, and ice breath to blow out the fire), and from the passenger seat of a car careening without brakes backwards down a steep hill. Garfield keeps waking him from his dreams, and eventually breaks it to him that “Dogs can’t fly!” Then Garfield tries to cross a road under construction, and his feet get caught in fresh asphault. The poodle tries to rescue Garfield, and gets stuck too. Here comes the steamroller. Odie hears the calls for help, and gives one last try to jumping off the roof. His ears extend, and he soars aeronautically like Dumbo, swooping in to make a nick of time rescue. Garfield turns to the audience, asking in complete puzzlement, “Did you see…” – and then awakes from his own dream about Odie. The episode peacefully ends, with the nagging question of what is life, and what is reality? The Caped Avenger Rides Again (9/10/12) – Jim Davis expected a long memory from his viewers, harkening back in this installment to his original “Caped Avenger” from 1988 previously reviewed in these articles – without barely so much as a recap to establish Garfield’s previous venture into superherodom. Jon is making a personal appearance at a comic book store to sign autographs, and Garfield brings along his Caped Avenger outfit just in case. To no viewer’s surprise, nobody shows up for Jon’s nom de plume. The store proprietor, an old-timer in the business, is disappointed at the lack of turnout, and says he’s tries everything to drum up buisiness, but attendance has slipped off drastically. He even has a rare first edition comic on display as another attraction, but still no interest. The comic isn’t even his – only there on a loan from its owner, with the condition that an armed guard be posted on duty at all times. Mysteriously, when everyone is engaged in conversation, a crash is heard. The front window is broken, and the guard seemingly knocked unconscious, with the rare first edition gone. Upon reviving the guard, he claims the assailant wore a mask, and can provide no detailed description. Garfield reverts to his Caped Avenger costume to play amateur sleuth, and Odie joins him in the same Superman style outfit used in the 1988 episode, as his sidekick, Slurp (Garfield lifting a line of dialogue straight out of the original cartoon, that the sidekick must never dress better than the superhero). They skulk through some back alleys for clues, as the film suddenly becomes slightly 2D for a flashback to provide an origin story (much in the way cutaway sequences were used in some of the “Power Pig” episodes for side-trips in the storyline of the original show). A few reasonable gags appear in the flashback. Garfield searches for an image that will strike fear in the hearts of the criminal element, so fashions his first costume as his own scariest nightmare – a pizza with anchovies. Not very effective. Converting to proper attire, the Avenger and Slurp hit the streets. Hearing a citizen’s cries of a despicable – and dangerous – villain robbing the bank, Garfield decides this is a job for – his sidekick, and tells Odie to look him up when it’s over in Bermuda. But the robber (a lobster-clawed supervillain) blocks Garfield’s attempt to exit carrying a surfboard. Garfield tries to convince the villain to give up, in view of Garfield’s devastating super powers. Garfield demonstrates super speed by running clear around the world – arriving back about a minute later, completely winded, and complaining that he was held up in a traffic jam in Luxembourg. Garfield demonstrates super strength by lifting the heaviest object in the vicinity – himself – eventually losing his grip, as he acknowledges “Jon was right, I do need to lose a few pounds.” Instead of surrendering, the villain throws Garfield through a brick wall. As Garfield notices the stray bricks on his side of the wall, something clicks in his memory, and he reverts back to reality, returning with Odie to the shop. The glass of the broken window is outside, not inside the store, indicating that the thief nroke the window from the inside. The security guard is spotted attempting to sneak out of the store – with comic book hidden inside his coat. An obligatory chase (in which Garfield uncharacteristically runs at a speed far beyond the expected velocity of an overweight cat) leads to a blind alley, with an inclined board the only route over a fence. Garfield and Odie find it first, and lay a trap. As the guard mounts the board to leap over the wall, Garfield and Odie position a trash dumpster on the other side, then slam its lid down as the guard lands inside, Garfield sitting on the lid to prevent the guard’s escape. The police make the arrest, the comic book is retruned, and the comics store has a new attraction that finally draws customers – the Caped Avenger in person. Garfuels asides to the audience, “Batman, eat your heart out.” The Superhero Apprentice (9/10/12) – Last time, we were expected to remember an episode from 1988. This time, we’re unbelievably supposed to forget a central plot point from the previous episode in the same half-hour! All memory is supposed to disappear that Odie has already been used twice as a sidekick. The comic book store has been saved by the publicity of the Caped Avenger’s solving of the comic book mystery, and its proprietor has invested in an expected shipment of Avenger action figures, which has fans lined up around the block awaiting delivery. Footage of the Avenger’s capture of the criminal (now how did they happen to have camera shots of the dumpster capture in the blind alley?) has gone viral, only eclipsed by a #1 video of the world’s cutest singing kitten – Nermal. But Nermal fears the Avenger’s popularity is striking too close to home, and might topple him from the #1 berth. Meanwhile (ignoring Odie’s previous involvement in the chase and capture), the comic book guy reveals in a news interview that consensus of fan opinion is that the Avenger should take on a sidekick. Garfield ponders this as a serious issue, realizing all the past great heroes had sidekicks. Odie prances around, demonstrating his willingness to join up – but choosy Garfield instead holds open interviews for the position. All applicants disappear after Garfield lets slip that they’ll be placing their life on the line for no pay. One runaway (a Chihuahua) encounters dejected Nermal, and the dog’s costume gives Nermal the idea that the only way to counter a superhero is with a supervillain. Nermal recruits the dog as his own assistant, and acquires a wrestling mask and cape as a disguise for himself. That night, the newly-evil duo doctor a “bat-signal” for the Avenger outside the comics store, to make the Avenger’s image paunchy and ridiculous. They also show up at the unveiling of the action figures. Garfield, however, also arrives, having seen video footage of the attack on his signaler, and, sensing a need for assistance, has finally relented and hired Odie as his partner “Slurp”. The delivery of the figures is interrupted by the Chihuahua nipping at the truck driver’s heels, while Nermal commandeers the truck, with just one catch – he doesn’t know how to drive. The truck takes off on a downhill road, with puny Nermal clinging to the spinning steering wheel, unable to reach the brakes. Garfield pursues, stumbling on a street trash can and running atop it like a log roller, finally thrown onto the roof of the moving truck. The truck crashes into the fence of a trash collection center, throwing Garfield and Nermal over the fence and into a chute for trash disposal. Inside, they face a conveyor belt of chopping and shredding contraptions, with a flattening wheel at the end of the belt. Garfield and Nermal race against the speed of the belt to keep from being pressed into pizzas. Odie appears, looking through a hatchway above. Garfield calls him for “doggie tongue”, and Odie lowers his long appendage down the hole, where Garfield grabs it like a rescue rope, and also grabs Nermal, with Odie hauling them out to safety, a split second before Nermal’s cape would have dragged him into the machinery. For all their effort, the action figures fail to sell, as now all public attention has shifted to Slurp, with footage of his rescue taking the #1 web slot, knocking Nermal’s video out of the lead once and for all. Nermal decides to take his meow-singing act to the streets, and Garfield, also through with superheroing, joins him. The Looney Tunes Show was all about a tenuous marriage of media – the Looney Tunes gang, in a contemporary “Friends” style new millennium sitcom? While occasionally generating a winning situaion, there usually seemed to me a certain uneasiness at pressing the characters into “everyday” situations. (I’ve wondered if the group might have been better-fitted to a 1960’s sitcom. Imagine Bugs and Lola Bunny as Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. Daffy and his girlfriend as Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie. And Elmer Fudd as Richard Deacon. For a son, we could even revive Clyde from “His Hare-Raising Tale”.) However strange the series may have been on the whole, the writers found a combination of genres that clicked for their series finale – Super Rabbit (5/23/13) (not to be confused with the original 1943 classic of the same name). Daffy’s looking for quick cash, so raiding through Bugs’ stuff for something to sell. Bugs attempts to guard an old knick-knack (a glass carrot) with a tall tale. “I’m not the bunny you think I am. My real name is Kal El. I was born long ago on the planet Krypton.” Daffy stops him cold. “Krypton? That’s Superman’s home planet. I fell for that once, but I’m way too smart to fall for it again.” Bugs qualifies his statement – “That’s ‘Crypton’ with a ‘C’” – and Daffy buys into the tale, hook, line, and sinker. Bugs spins a yarn of his exploits guarding the city of Metropolis – an adventure unique in its presentation, retaining much of the zaniness of the Looney Tunes stars while telling in the background of the action a pretty straightforward Superman story, complete with all the dark backgrounds and elaborate special effects that have become standard to the Warner DC Universe. It succeeds in coming off as the best of both worlds. Bugs has a comic exploit outwitting Marvin the Martian as Braniac (including a visually-inventive scene with Bugs taking pot-shots at Marvin with his own miniaturizing-enlarging ray, until every part of Marvin has eigher expanded gigantically or shrunken substantially. ‘I’m a regular Pablo Picasso”, says Bugs. He next tackles Elmer Fudd as Lex Luthor, eventually blasting him out of his supersuit and leaving him only a pair of striped shorts, and kicking the remains of Luthor’s armor into space. But Elmer informs Bugs that he has just succeeded in launching a radioactively unstable generator within the suit into deep space. The suit turns out to be on collision course with the Phantom Zone in which General Zod (Daffy Duck) and two minions (one his girlfriend, the other a robot) have been imprisoned. The blast frees the prisoners, and Zod and his companions plot the conquest of Earth. Amidst a ticker-tape parade, Bugs’s enjoyment of the side-perks of being a hero is interrupted by Zod’s trio. Battling is work for underlings, so Zod leaves his companions in charge to make short work of Super-Rabbit, who is forced to surrender beneath the foot of Zod’s robot. Zod sets up a palace, complete with huge golden idol of himself, and a chorus of slaves who attempt to compose for Zod a new national anthem (“My Country Tis of Thee” played in a minor key with new lyrics hailing Zod). Bugs meanwhile visits the Fortress of Solitude, where the spirit of his father states he had his defeat coming, as he had softened under the effects of showboating for the attentions of fame rather than fighting for the right. Bugs is advised to learn the adversaries’ weaknesses, and make them his own strengths. Making an entrance at Zod’s palace as reporter Clark Kent, Bugs deduces that Zod’s girlfriend is constantly being put down by him, while the robot is treated by Zod as a brainless infant. Revealing himself for battle, Bugs puts in the right words of flattery to each of the minions in the course of the fray, acquiring friends among Zod’s ranks. He finally confronts Zod polishing his statue, and when Zod orders his cohorts to attack, they step away, leaving Zod to battle alone. An epic confrontation on a Superman scale follows, with laser eye beams cutting buildings in half, vehicles thrown as weapons, and a flying chase through the tunnels of a subway. Bugs finally outmaneuvers Zod upon his emergence from the tunnels, grabbing Zod’s cape from behind and flinging him into his own golden statue. As Zod lies dazed at the foot of his own image, Bugs says, “Hey Doc, kneel before yourself”, then uses his laser vision to cut through the base of the statue. As the statue collapses, Zod, seeing it about to topple, screams “I’m going to hurt me!” Then crash! – and Bugs stands alone. Concluding his story to Daffy, Bugs claims he banished Zod and his minions to another Phantom Zone, then gave up his powers, realizing power corrupts. This is where Daffy suspends his belief in the story – feeling that no one would give up such power and super-goodies – and leaves to hock Bugs’s stuff anyway to finance his date for the evening. The scene changes to a movie theatre, playing “The Mark of Zorro”. Daffy and his date, dressed in what appears to be period attire, decide to save a ridiculously small number of seconds getting back to their car by going down a dark alley. Fans of Batman can see what’s coming a mile away – a Crime Alley accosting by a hoodlum. Who should arrive to save the day but – Bat-Rabbit. The hero hands pearls back to Daffy’s date, while Daffy offers no reward, since he didn’t specifically ask to be saved anyway. As the ducks leave, Bat-Rabbit reveals himself to us as Bugs, delivering in his best impersonation of Kevin Conroy his own signature line, “Ain’t I a stinker?” While I’m usually a fan of Rowan Atkinson in his appearances in person on big or small screen, I’m rather underwhelmed by his “Mr. Bean” animated series. Superhero Bean (2/22/16) is little more than a time-filler, with no actual powers whatsoever, merely chronicling Bean’s costumed attempts to trail a domestic burglar on the rooftops. Not a genuinely funny moment in the whole slow-paced episode. Super-Wacky (Cartoon Network, Wacky Races (revival),10/29/18) tries to pack a lot in, but forgets entirely that the premise of the show is to conduct races – instead devising a far-out plot on the personalities of the show’s characters alone. Peter Perfect rules the roost as the superhero guardian of a city, until one day he faces the challenge of – superhero oversaturation. Suddenly, all the current Wacky Racers (excepting Dastardly and Muttley) have transformed into superheroes too, and want in on a piece of the city’s action. In competition with Petet’s super chin-laser, Penelope Pitstop flies, turns everything she touches pink (as she admits, more of a curse than a power), and carries a radioactive lasso that makes anyone caught in it utter bad puns. I.Q. (junior counterpart to Professor Pat Pending) is half cyborg, with a robotic arm that often acts out of control with a mind of its own. The Gruesome Twosome have bat powers and invisibility. Meanwhile, Dick Dastardly is Wackopolis’s resident super villain, with a head swollen with psychic powers to control minds, and Muttley possesses a sonic snicker that can bring down walls. Dastardly hypnotizes the mayor to outlaw super-heroes, but the racers plot their strategy to bring her out of it. Part of the plan is to round up “the best team of heroes the legal department will let us use on this show”. The open auditions attract an overflow of old Hanna-Barbera stars, including Snagglepuss, Rosie the Robot, Space Ghost, Hong Kong Phooey, Winnie Witch, and Jabberjaw (this on top of a one-shot cameo for Quick Draw McGraw as El Kabong in the opening scene). All the applicants flunk out (Snagglepuss even exiting stage right), leaving the original racers to forge on alone. They head for the mayor’s office, and battle an army of flying Muttley robots (a harken back to Muttley’s rotor tail flying in “Dastardly and Mettley in Their Flying Machines”). Then, taking the battle to Dastardly’s lair (which Peter had a map to all the time), the group, except for Peter, succumb to Dastardly’s mind control, until Peter reminds them of the greater strength of their super-friendship. Muttley carries Dastardly to an escape as the racers break freee of his brainwashing – but Dastardly returns in the final frames of the episode at the helm of a giant town-stomping robo-Muttley. The racers launch into the fray again, and are stopped in a freeze frame for “The End” and a last insertion of a merchandising advertisement for their super products. Snowball, the rebellious rabbit who led a revolution against the human race in 2016‘s The Secret Life of Pets, undergoes a nearly complete personality transformation to keep him in the storyline in The Secret Life of Pets 2 (6/7/19). His new little girl owner is into superhero shows, and dresses him in a miniature mask, suit and cape as “Captain Snowball”. Snowball adapts to the new role, now determined to be the protector of the world rather than its overthrower, and incorporates his love of kung fu moves into the act. A short 2D segment provides the closest to superpowers he demonstrates, including socking a bad guy through the side of several buildings, and an ultrasonic roar. In real life, minus anything but his own speed and fight moves, he becomes involved in a rescue mission to save a rare white tiger who is being abused by a sinister circus owner determined to train him to perform death defying feats. Snowball must outwit a quartet of wolves who serve as guards to keep the tiger in and strangers out (including a humorous chase through various midway attractions), release the tiger from its cage, and attempt to find the tiger a hiding place in the apartments of the big city. Eventually, the whole cast of the franchise are drawn into the action, as the wolves and circus owner close in, and tranquilize the tiger, transporting him back to the circus train. Snowball uses an RC vehicle to catch up with the train, and engages in a battle of fisticuffs with the circus owner’s maniacal monkey, climaxed by shooting the monkey out of a cannon. Snowball and several of the other pets, together with the tiger, gang up on the villain in the engineer’s cab, and the tiger is eventually freed, and finds a new home amongst the flock of felines in the apartment of a neighboring cat lady. Just as Snowball is content and confident in his life as a superhero, his little girl changes his outfit to fit her latest craze – dressing him as a fairy godmother. Snowball surprisingly accepts the role with glee, confident that he can face any new challenge after surviving the last one. (A direct to video short, “Super Gidget”, released on the home editions of the feature, was unavailable for review – anyone with nformation on it is invited to comment below.) DarkBat (8/29/19), from New Looney Tunes, is an interesting character mashup. Hubie and Bertie (together with an unknown fat mouse who seems to be new to the series) run a fruit stand for mice with the spillage from a human fruit stand, trading for cheese as currency. They are set upon by an unusual posse of cats – Sylvester, Claude Cat, and Pete Puma, in what may be their first onscreen meeting. But to the rescue comes the unexpected arrival of a small winged caped crusader – DarkBat. The deep-voiced vigilante, runs the cats a brief merry chase, landing alternately on their “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” in mimic of a children’s game-song to draw stick blows from the other cats upon whoever he lands on, then playing a game of “whack-a-mole” among the produce with Pete, armed with what DarkBat guarantees is a mallet that will only bash bats, but manages to hit only the other cats instead. Darkbat finally tries the mallet himself, smashing Pete on the head, then declaring, “You’re right. Defective.” With some banana peels, DarkBat caises the three cats to slip into a packing crate, which DearkBat nails shut and labels for delivery to Nome, Alaska. Hubie and Bertie thank DarkBat, but inquire as to his true identity. DarkBat is quite eager to share, pulling off the cowl to reveal the most unlikely choice for a superhero among the classic warner toons – Sniffles the Mouse! In his “can’t sop talking” mode, Sniffles babbles on how isn’t it something, that he can put on this costume, and it lets him do all sorts of crazy things. “Pretty cool, huh?” he asks. “It was until you took the mask off”, aays the fat mouse. But Sniffles flies off into the night (interesting that he would choose to become a bat, when a real bat was the cause of his change to talkative personality in The Brave Little Bat in 1941), while the mice comment that there goes another superhero who’s just a little batty. Writers will again be writers, trying to milk a good one-shot idea for extra episodes. Bonjour, DarkBat (8/29/19) pits Sniffles’ super-alias against Blacque Jacque Shellacque. Unfortunately, with the “cat out of the bag”, so to speak, as to DarkBat’s true identity, the element of surprise for an ending is gone, so the episode has to rely entirely on its gag content to justify itself. Actually, it manages to not fare badly on such count, dealing with a war inside Shelacque’s cheese shop when he wrecks rivals Hubie and Bertie’s curbside cheese wagon. A duel sequence uses everything in the shop as weaponry, from French breads to kitchen utensils down to tasting toothpicks. And the dialogue packs in every bad cheese pun the 4 1/2 minutes can handle – including using a high-pressure Brie dispenser to turn Shellacque into “de-brie”, and DarkBat telling Hubie and Bertie that only the Gouda guys win. Not too shabby an effort. Still funny, but becoming formulaic, is a final installment. Smoothie Operator (1/30/20). Same premise as previous episode, different villain. Yosemite Sam shuts down the mice’s smoothie stand to stop competition with his own. More bad puns on fruits and vegetables. Battles with alternating hot and cold ingredients, and a final chase with a jet-propelled motorcycle. A lot of action, but not as original. I’m sure there’s a few I’ve missed along the way. If anyone has any favorites that didn’t receive print space here, your input below is as always appreciated. The holidays (such as they are) are nearly upon us, and next week, it’s time for celebration – as the song goes, “if only in our dreams”. The post Reign of the Supertoons (Part 11) appeared first on . #Garfield #PinkPanther #AnimationTrails #DaffyDuck

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/the-old-green-lantern-battery-is-running-on-low-as-we-ve-almost-reached-the-present-so-it-s-time-to-wind-down-this-review-of-non-career-superheroes-and-their-various-exploits-and-follie

[zenosanalytic]

DS9: Political Writings IV: Klingon History(and Worf, Again)

So First: The more I think and read about Worf’s life story, the more similar to a Fantasy Hero Narrative I realize it to be u_u

Second: A List of events in Klingon History that, according to DS9, happened “1000 Years ago” or there abouts:

Molor rules over all of Qo’noS as a tyrant, but emphatically NOT a “Warrior-King”, as Kahless is the first of these, who give to the Klingons “the laws of honor”.

Kahless rebels against and confronts Molor, killing him, creating “the First Empire”, and beginning the Imperial Dynasty. Which: how does this make sense when Molor is already ruling over a unified Qo’noS? idk: Maybe Memory Alpha is wrong on this one <:T(I DO have a potential explanation, though)

Kahless dies or leaves.

A Group of Klingon Warriors seek out the Klingon Gods, then kill them as being more trouble than they’re worth.

The H’urq Invade and pillage Qo’noS.

The Klingons(at a far more primitive technological stage) rise up and kick the H’urq out.

Kahless gets a different timeline in TNG(and, I think, TOS) so there’s some fuzziness there, enhanced by the timeline for the Sword of Kahless which is supposed to date back 1400 years, and the imperial line was supposed to last uninterrupted for 1,100 years which doesn’t make much sense with the H’urq invasion, but regardless it makes for one heck of a busy “1000 years ago”. I find this fishy, and it fills me with the desire to headcanon neat reasons for why Klingon history seems so compacted. Some suggestions:

(Easy)The H’urq pillaged Qo’noS, stole many important Klingon artifacts, and are remembered by the Klingons as the greatest threat their culture ever faced. The memory of them marks the Klingons to the present: their word for “alien” is H’urq, and they uniformly respond to meeting new forms of life with violence, conquest, and attempted extermination. It’s not much of a stretch to assume the H’urq not only left the planet devastated but also Klingon historical records and Memory. “1000 years ago” just means “Before/during the H’urq Invasion”, which is as far back as they can reliably date most of their history.

(Sociological)The Klingons aren’t actually saying “1000 years” as an accurate accounting, but as an idiomatic expression meaning “a long, long time”. Kor’s a good source for this argument as he uses the “1000 years” construction a handful of times and outside of historical contexts; for instance, when talking about how longs songs will be sung of his, Jadzia, and Worf’s quest to recover the Sword of Kahless. Perhaps this goes further and, outside of specialist professions like Historians and astrophysicists, Klingons, as a culture, keep a more impressionistic understanding of time: “1000 years” could be like the European Medieval constructions “living memory” and “time immemorial”, or certain Earthican impressionistic approaches to numbers and distances.

So what about Molor? How can he rule as a tyrant over all of Qo’noS without having established an empire? Who are the Fek’lhri? How could Kahless leave Qo’noS for outerspace if, at the time of the H’urq invasion, the Klingons lacked starflight and so much as gun-powder-level technology?

Here are my ideas:

1)Molor wasn’t Klingon. The Fek’lhri were another species that the Klingons shared Qo’noS with and Molor was their final surviving leader, and Kahless’s conquest of them(and possible overthrow of their hegemony over Qo’noS, though given the tenor of post-Kahless Klingon society, this “tyranny” may have been a later justifying fiction for genocide) and killing of Molor was the starting-point of the Empire.

2)Molor didn’t conquer Qo’noS; he politicked it into submission. Much as the Hapsburgs were never great warriors but were excellent marriagers, Molor’s family could have engineered, over generations, a unification of Aristocratic titles within their House; an objective Molor completed through similar unwarriorly means. Kahless isn’t just a Conqueror, he’s also an Egalitarian and Philosophical figure; his contention that all Klingons have the heart of a Warrior and can lead a Warrior’s life could have been more important historically than his mythologized deeds. Kahless could have objected to this unegalitarian Aristocratic system Molor’s family manipulated to attain power, and led a revolt against it for the sake of his egalitarian ideals.

Similarly, perhaps the Klingons saw a period of State-building and Capitalism much like Humans did, and Molor was a product of this period; someone who leveraged Capital and international governance to rise to a position of ultimate authority(official or otherwise) over Qo’noS. Kahless then could have been something of a renaissance figure, one who masked a radical egalitarian message within an appeal to the “glorious” feudal Klingon past, who led a rebellion against Molor and the order he represented, defeated him and it, and drastically changed the course of Klingon history thereby.

Given the mythic quality of these stories, perhaps “Molor” didn’t even actually exist, but was a later narrative personification of Kahless’s philosophical foe, Capitalist Aristocracy or Blood Aristocracy, in this cultural revivalist movement. The Kahless narrative might even be mythologizing this cultural struggle, though built around real people and real events(which would jive with his whole “Klingon Joshua(Jesus)” vibe). The problem with this idea, of course, is why would he keep the Houses? Maybe he couched his rebellion as a return to their more egalitarian past? There were -in very rough summary- two major legal bonds in Feudal Medieval Europe: kinship, and vassalage. Kinship’s your family; they’re expected to take care of you, and you of them. Vassalage was more mercenary: a Vassal agreed to follow you and protect you in exchange for protection and wealth. Perhaps he appealed to something like this kinship dynamic in the history of the Houses? That Trek writers chose to call them “Houses” is very convenient to this headcanon owo

3)This is the one I like the best. Basically: a lot of this stuff did, actually, happen at roughly the same time. Molor was either a H’urq or a H’urq collaborator, and the Fek’lhir were the troops he was given to keep Qo’noS pacified; the later separation is basic historical drift. These troops may have themselves been collaborators, and the similarity between the name for them and the name for the Klingon warden of the Hell for the Dishonored Dead(Gre’thor) could be taken as a sign of this: these are the Most dishonorable and terrible people in Klingon history, so terrible as to be stripped of the name “Klingon” and remembered only by the most despised, shameful, and feared name the Klingons have to give.

When the H’urq invaded, the Klingons were despondent, and a religious movement began, slowly moving among the scattered Klingon survivors(such processes of cultural “flattening” tend to be seen among peoples faced with more organized and destructive societies; the Sun and Ghost Dance movements are two examples from Native American history), to hunt down their gods, ask why they let this happen, and demand their aid. The story of the warriors killing the gods mythologizes this movement, and its failure. Kahless may have been part of, or an heir to, this movement. With the unhelpful gods “killed”, Kahless begins preaching that the only thing that can help the Klingons is themselves; that “You are Klingons. You need no one but yourselves”. He begins building a resistance. Molor and his Fek’lhir eventually begin hunting for him, a task of escalating difficulty and importance as his movement gains momentum. Qam-Chee was the turning point in this resistance, wherein Kahless and Lady Lukara(his lover, and possibly an ally from the old Aristocratic Houses? Qam-Chee IS also their wedding, afterall) lured Molor in person to a chosen battlefield with the promise of their vulnerability, then sprung their trap and slew him. After Qam-Chee, the collaborationist regime fell apart and the H’urq occupation was exposed directly. The Klingons take the fight to the H’urq colonialists, no doubt in a Metal as Hell war involving bat’leths and looted laser-rifles/hover bikes, and finally drive them off.

The nature of anti-colonial rebellions, especially those consciously built around a single charismatic figure or story, tends to promote hierarchical, inegalitarian political structures in their aftermath. Thus the empire: while Kahless was an egalitarian figure, the building up of him as THE Movement and the militarization of society(with it’s related “discipline”) created a structure where he, and those closest to him, essentially dictated strategy and policy to the wider rebelling masses(one could draw an interesting parallel from this period to the Klingon practice of promotion through murder: collaborationists and spies could be anywhere, and in a struggle for survival incompetence can’t be tolerated. Only Kahless is “Unforgettable” i.e. “Indispensable”). Reinforcing this process is the historical fact that interaction between polities will naturally lead to borrowing and emulation, and the more intense the interaction(such as occupation or war) and the more unequal the polities(such as between a State and non-state society, or Invaders and the Invaded), the more intense the emulation will become. So, simply by fighting off the H’urq, the Klingons would have become more like the H’urq they experienced; more rapacious, more violent, more colonialist, more hierarchical(because all colonial regimes are justified by a hierarchy of conqueror and conquered and, as extractive schemes, tend to also be top-down to maximize profits), more Imperial.

But here’s the thing: Kahless never ruled. In “The Story of The Promise”, he leaves the Klingons once his work of uniting them and teaching them the ways of honor is done. Which means, since the Imperial line is descend from him, that the Imperial system, while potentially rooted in the necessary dictatorship of the rebellion’s military struggle(quick note, “Emperor” comes from Imperator which literally translates roughly to “one who gives orders” -ala “perEMPtory” and “IMPerative”- and was originally a temporary military dictatorship Rome granted in times of severe military threat), was built after he left, by Lady Lukara and his children.

So: Kahless united the Klingons with an egalitarian anti-colonial, anti-aristocratic message, destroys the global collaborator-state set up to rule over them, then drives the H’urq off Qo’noS and cleanses it of remaining “Fek’lhir”(collaborators), then never rules because he leaves the planet. Kahless was no ruler; he was a warrior and a warleader. If we’re going to go this far headcanoning Klingon history, we might as well headcanon that they manage to capture at least one functional H’urq ship, and Kahless -with a select band of warriors- went after them to insure they could never again threaten Qo’noS and its people. Perhaps the Klingon’s “early” possession of warp-technology in the 1940s was also the result of finally reverse engineering old H’urq technology, or perhaps finding a new, functional, derelict.

Anyway, there’s my present take on Klingon history :p

[tessatechaitea]

Cerebus #5 (1978)

It seems improbable that this comic book would run for 300 issues.

The United Kingdom has way too much history for such a small island. And being American, I know about 3% of it. I know there were some kings and queens, some named Elizabeth and others named George and then some guy named Oliver who fit in there somehow despite not being a king or queen. I know there are four nationalities that make up the country: Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and the boring one. I know there's a dragon on the Welsh flag and their language has too many consonants, probably because they spent so much time in mines. I know the Scottish only eat deep fried Mars bars. I know the Irish had some troubles because some of the Irish aren't British or something. And I know all the stupid political crap the American Republican party are going to do because they simply follow the Tory playbook a few months to a year after the Tories have pulled some racist bullshit. And it's not just the Tories! Seeing what the centrist Labour party members did to sabotage their own party is simply a window into what our centrist Democrats would love to do to the Leftists (and may have done! But they just haven't been exposed yet like the jerks in the Labour party). Also, and this might not seem like British History so much as a personal experience, I once fist bumped Jimmy Carr after he made a joke about me fucking pigeons. That was only one of the many times he took the piss out of me at the show. But I knew what I was getting into when I purchased front row tickets for Jimmy Carr. All that being said (terribly summed up and horribly accounted), I knew even less when I first read this story at 21. I didn't know the "Pigts" were a pun on "Picts." I just thought it was a stupid name for a loin cloth wearing tribe of people named after breakfast foods. That was good enough for me! But maybe this issue will be even funnier if I read the Wikipedia entry on Picts! Or scan the entry, at least. Or, at the very least and the most probable option, click on the link, read a few sentences, and realize I don't really care that much. I should probably read more non-fiction so that I actually know things about the world rather than reading another Lando Calrissian book until I know all the rules to Sabacc. In "A Note from the Publisher," Deni Loubert explains how this issue of Cerebus caused a lot of stress between the publisher and the artist due to money concerns. But in the end, Deni put in a lot of her money and solved the problem. I guess one of the few things Dave found possible to believe before breakfast was that his spouse would support him both financially and emotionally while he pursued his dreams. Dave's Swords of Cerebus essay went on for more than one page in its original printing and whoever reprinted it here forgot that there were a few extra paragraphs. So it's reprinted incomplete. That's okay because the bulk of it is about all the shortcuts he takes in drawing rain and shadows and how it's evident, as you progress through the story, how much sloppier and lazier his art becomes. But at the end, Dave Sim supplies a Gil Kane quote which made him think long and hard about how he was developing the story of Cerebus. I'd like to scan the quote but it's cut off halfway through because, as I said, somebody forgot the second page of the essay. Luckily I just happen to own the second volume of Swords of Cerebus, so I'll just type it out in a block quote.

"The difference between a comic book and a novel is not labor, not effort, it's the values. In other words, there are no meaningful values in a comic book. The people in comic books are two dimensional people going through the most elementary kind of situations, not enough to sustain anybody's interest beyond an adolescent. A novel has characterization, it has suspense, it has a structured situation full of substantial values that will hold the interest of an intelligent person. That's what I mean. Those values, if they're properly translated — Harvey Kurtzman translated them into comics. His comics were literate, they were intelligent, they were humane, they were interesting, they were funny, they were everything."

There's a second paragraph to the quote but it just brings up more inaccurate things that can be debated ad nauseam. I could argue with a lot of what Gil Kane says but he sort of argues my point at the end anyway with his discussion of Harvey Kurtzman. Basically, it depends on the author and what the author wants to bring to the comic book. Sure, characterization of a character that isn't really supposed to change much because the fans want what the fans have been getting (Batman, for instance) can be tough to pull off. But Gil Kane gets at my main problem with comic book fans who follow characters, buying any story their favorite is a part of: the characterization and story are entirely dependent on the current writer. And some writers just don't fucking care about anything except shitting out another script so they get paid. You'll find a lot of good examples of those kinds of writers in the beginning years of DC's The New 52 as they pretty much hired all of the worst writers from Marvel to launch some of their New 52 titles. Comic books make it easy for writers to write two dimensional characters and be satisfied with the garbage they produce. Fans just want another Batman story. Just stick Harley Quinn in there and it'll sell fifty thousand copies easy. Who cares who writes it as long as they always make their deadline. But that's not a flaw of the medium of comic books! That's a flaw of the writers and/or fans! The main takeaway with the Gil Kane quote is that it was nice that Dave Sim read it and thought about it and applied it to Cerebus. Maybe, at later points, he applies it too much! But if it got Dave to thinking about a larger story and a greater world chock full of characters with different ideologies and beliefs and motivations, I'll allow it to exist without being too hard on it. That's a lot of words. I need to shove a picture in here already.

This is what Page One of a Cerebus comic book looked like before Gerhard. "Pretty fucking awesome," you curse like a sailor. Later, by page four when the horizon has disappeared and the rain is simply ruler-straight vertical lines, you'll be thinking, "When the fuck does Dave hire Gerhard?"

Cerebus has found himself in the Red Marches where he's about to learn a little something about Cerebus from a bunch of long haired shirtless dudes. It's almost like when I was 17 at my first Iron Maiden show surrounded by sweaty shirtless men while I listened to Iron Maiden sing "Sun and Steel" and I thought, "Is this history?" Then later they sang "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and I was all, "I am learning!" I'm so glad I'm writing on the Internet so I don't have to hear anybody say, "What are you talking about? How are those two things alike, you moron?!" Besides, I said it was "almost" like, imaginary jerkos! The nearly naked men convince Cerebus to follow them back to their underground kingdom so he can meet Bran Mak Mufin, the greatest military leader in all of Estarcion. Plus he has an aardvark fetish so he's really going to want to meet Cerebus, no matter how badly Cerebus smells. See, the joke in this issue (which Dave mentions at the beginning of the essay I didn't scan) is that Cerebus' fur smells terrible when it gets wet. It's pretty funny if you think about how bad that could be! Like, really bad! Ha ha!

If he's so fucking great, why is he only the penultimate swordsman? My guess is because of Cerebus!

Look at that rain! That's the rain of an artist who doesn't fucking give a shit! When the fuck does Dave hire Gerhard? Bran Mak Mufin takes one look at Cerebus and has the kind of orgasm you have when you realize the prophecy has finally been fulfilled. Man, those are the best orgasms.

We could use a few good Pigts these days.

I'd forgotten this aspect of the Pigts. One thing I do remember is that Bran Mak Mufin was my favorite member of Cerebus's cabinet as Prime Minister. Wasn't he the only one to ever try to do the right thing? And doesn't he eventually walk away because of how terrible they're all acting? Or does he only finally leave when he believes they're going to be defeated, thus exposing the weakness of his own faith? Bran mentions the Black Tower Empire which, I'm assuming, is an empire which first caused the Black Tower to ascend, something Cerebus will manage later. We learn Cerebus is 26 which probably made me feel good when I first read this in that way you feel youthfully immortal when the protagonist of the story is older than you. Now I'm twenty years older than that and I can tell you the feeling is best described as enervating. Bran Mak Mufin offers to let Cerebus rest so they can talk refreshed in the morning. While trying to sleep, Cerebus hears some strange noises and heads off to investigate.

Notice the Cerebus-shaped heads on the walls. The Chosen One is about to discover he's the protagonist of this story.

I know there's a shot of a huge aadvark statue coming up that I could have scanned instead. I'm working my way up to that revelation! Cerebus spies on a large gathering of Pigts (no more than fifty since that's the size of Bran's army) to learn that he's the reincarnation of some ancient God-King worshiped by the Pigts. The prophecy even says that he will come to them in his 26th year! Holy smokes! You couldn't write this kind of prophecy! For a moment, Cerebus is tempted to assume the role of the Pigts' Redeemer God. I guess this is his "last temptation" moment. But his narcissism wins out over his greed. He would rather be Cerebus the Unique than Cerebus the Guy Who's Just Another Version of that Other Long Dead Guy. He smashes the statue that I forgot to mention and flees the Pigts' nonsense, heading towards Iest. Nothing to say about Aardvark Comment. Just some aardvark lovers getting their aardvark love on. It was embarrassing. Cerebus #5 Rating: B+. This issue is the first to give an inkling of something bigger happening across a longer story. It's still before Dave Sim decided he was going for 300 issues dedicated to the growth of the titular beast. But any time you can make the scope of the protagonist's world bigger, it makes for a more compelling story. I'm definitely more compelled after this issue!