#this one just seems to be tacking on the first clause

[stuffgoeswrong]

Here's the actual text of the bill for that clause for anyone wondering. So if you want to know what qualifies as a terrorist supporting organization in their book, I suggest looking at section 2339B of title 18, cause that's what they're going to go by.

And there is a recission part in the last 3 images.

Readers, make sure you have all your favourite Ao3 fics downloaded.

Writers, make sure you have copies of all the fics you have posted on Ao3.

I don’t want to be alarming, but things could get really bad really fast. OTW shared this today on Twitter, and I'm a bit worried about it 😅

Ao3 is a non-profit organisation. If they have to start paying taxes, I have no idea what will happen.

[judesmoonbeauty]

Licht Klein Act 2 - Chapter 1 Summary

Not 100% accurate. Cybird owns everything. This is a summary only. Expect grammatical errors.

I'm finally getting around to this. I'm not going to rush though, so please be patient.🐺

The chapter opens with the single rose that in the glass jar in the middle of the garden that symbolizes the love of Licht & Emma. There are flashbacks of Licht's romantic route CG, and their engagement ceremony. Licht promises to make her happy even though their love will come with pain. The more the light of their happiness grows, so does the depth of the shadows of their love. They both choose to ignore this and remain in their blissful dream.

Licht runs into Nokto in the corridor. It's the middle of the night and Nokto is worried by how much sweat Licht is drenched in. Licht says it's no biggie and Nokto calls him a liar. Nokto tosses a burlap sack to him. It's drugs that Nokto got from Jade. They are controlled and he even fudged the books so no one finds out that he obtained them – especially Sariel – because let's face it like Licht says: He'd be more than pissed. It's a powder that Licht is skilled at taking and he downs it in front of Nokto. Licht is about to down another when Nokto stops him because it's a stronger dose than normal. Nokto says that he is getting worse by the day and asks if he dreams about their mother that much.

Licht says no, it's a more terrifying dream than that. Nokto is still squeezing his hand and grips it more tightly, much so that Licht's face contorts. He asks why Licht is the only one who gets this way, and says that Licht should be happy already. Licht tells Nokto not to get him twisted because ever since he's met Emma he is happy everyday. Nokto is confused by this. They stare at each other trying to find the right words until Licht says that this isn't like Nokto, and Nokto agrees releasing his brother.

Like none of their exchange just happened, Nokto asks how Licht going to hide it when he leaves Court? Licht says he isn't sure because Emma is sharp as a tack, but he'll figure it out. Nokto hands him one more thing – a book. A diplomacy manual that's packed with fine print. Nokto mentions Licht sucks at diplomacy at Licht admits its true. Emma will be handling the diplomacy and Licht will be the escort, which Licht thinks isn't cool. He asks why Nokto is being so nice, and Nokto says he'll take the book back. Licht is like: Just kidding, thanks. Nokto tells him to bring back souvenirs, and he says that he heard a rumor via Silvio about the country he is to visit, and tells Licht to be careful.

Emma's transition from commoner to royal fiance is a busy one. Classes all day long, but because of the abolition of Clause 99 she can see Licht everyday. Then one day, Licht surprises Emma with their very own villa. He's finally built her their home that he promised her in a previous event. He hates that there are so many things that keep them a part and he wants to keep her for himself as much as he can.

He places the blame mostly on Jin, Clavis and Leon for always taking him to drinking parties he doesn't want to go to, traps, and so on. It seems they're doing whatever they can to be close to Licht. (Cuuuuute).

He gives her a key to the villa and they go inside. He brought in the bare necessities, but wants Emma to furnish it fully. He kisses her sweetly at first, but then pries her mouth open with his fingers and delves deeper with his tongue. They slowly lose themselves in the kiss, until their lips part with a silver strand of saliva still connecting them. If it were nighttime Emma thinks that she would've begged for more. She mentions to him that it's a shame that they won't be able to come to the villa again for a while since they will be going to Tanzanite.

Flashback to a few days prior, Leon calls Licht and Emma to the throne room. Since they are teaming up with Obsidian. In exchange for a military alliance/protection and some advanced technology, Rhodolite agrees to cooperate in trying to obtain information on the alliance between Ruby, Achroite, and Tanzanite.

Gilbert had personally made his way to Rhodolite to ask for their cooperation. To respond in kind, Leon, Chevalier and Yves traveled to Obsidian. Leon plans to send Licht to the most dangerous country. Which Licht thinks he is referring to Ruby – which is overrun by civil wars. But Leon says it's Tanzanite. Leon is sending Licht because no one knows what is going on in Tanzanite, but it's easily accessible due to it's large tourism industry. Licht mentions there is a clear boundary between the common people and the royal family as they are known as, “messengers of God.” Leon is impressed that Licht has done his research as he doesn't usually care about what goes on in other countries.

It seems a painting that contained a certain place that a certain person used to talk about all the time to Licht sparked his interest in the past. The picture contained the desert. Emma started to look for clues about that place and eventually she finds out the person who talked about it was from Tanzanite. Licht says that it is a strong possibility as they welcome dancers and singers of all sorts there, and his mother was a songstress. And it was his mother who told him about it.

Leon mentions that if Obsidian is having trouble obtaining information then someone is concealing it very well. Emma and Licht agree to go despite the danger.

Back to the present – Licht sits on the bed with Emma and combs her hair. He tells her that he brought her there because they will be gone for a while. He promises to protect her, and hugs her. He tells her:

“I won't let anyone.....take you away from me.”

Fast forward a bit and they are at Tanzanite via the Benitoitian sea route, and they notice that they market is a lively place. Emma is wide-eyed like a child and Licht thinks she's cute. However, many people have been staring and whispering about Licht and the color of his hair. Licht grabs her hand because it's packed with people and drags her to the middle of the square. There is literally a large statue of Azel in the middle of the square.

Emma wonders if it is of someone who is famous in Tanzanite and then she walks up to it because the face looks familiar, but can't quite put her finger on where. Licht is literally jelly of the statue and pulls her back to him. Emma kisses him out of his childishness.

[Next] [Master List]

[hurricane-heatt]

i think you would really knock out of the park a fic featuring martian + politics, like something to do with a politician in campaign and the guy writing his speeches/polishing his image, like the dude that tells you what tie to wear because it would show your allegiance to x cause. (sending you much love, xoxo)

oh my god GOOSE ur a genius.

u may ask which political system is this to that i respond what political system! this is based off vibes. there are some uk references tho!

hope u like it!

Mark rests his glasses on the bridge of his nose, looks up from the latest clause he’s working through, to see Sebastian in the doorway. He sets his pen on the desk, the sound of it tapping reverberating against the rest of the room.

He tries not to laugh at Seb, leaning against the too-tall door in a picture of exasperation. He fails, and Sebastian scowls at him.

“It’s the stupid tie, you know, the one that’s a funny length.” Said tie is slung around his neck, wonky and crumpled, a stark contrast to the fitted and pressed shirt, tailored trousers, shiny shoes. Every single part of him is slick and presentable, bar tie and, as always, his hair. Ever unruly, curls poking out from the ponytail.

“I’m sure it’s the tie that’s the problem. Listen, I think the maroon one-“ Sebastian tuts.

“Come on, Mark. You’re no amateur.”

Seb’s got a point, and besides, years of doing this means Mark knows when to pick his battles. Ties aren’t one of them, hasn’t been since that first election attempt. Neither are professional titles - Mark hasn’t called Sebastian ‘sir’ in years, and Sebastian hasn’t called Mark ‘Mr Webber’ since the day they met.

“C’mere, then.” Mark stands from his chair, the legs scraping awkwardly along the floor. “Can’t wear the red one-“ Seb continues on, as Mark wraps an end of the tie around the other. Mark knows why, but lets him ramble on. Besides, the tie is maroon.

“-because the right honourable Ferrari fucks will get pissed about it.”

Mark raises his eyebrows, just a hint, enough for Sebastian to read it, wince and retract his statement, as practised over and over. “The Ferrari party and I reached an amicable agreement-“

Mark isn’t the press, or the other members of the house. “Don’t start, I wrote you that speech.”

He did. Sebastian blushes a colour nearly the rosso corsa of the opposition, and swats Mark on the arm. The tie is tied, sits snug and tight at his neck. He smiles. “Better?” It’s black, with a single silver bumblebee pin tacked to the tail of it. It’s Sebastian’s new thing, new passion project. It’s doing well with voters, particularly the young.

Mark’s fingers tug at the lapels of Sebastian’s blazer, puts a knee between his legs. Seb looks up at him with wide eyes, wanting, but then seems to remember himself.

“These are ironed, for once, so no.”

Fine, maybe later. He leans down slightly to instead kiss Sebastian on the cheek, where the embarrassed blush is fading to his usual pink tinge. “Handsome. Can we run over this?”

Another eye-roll, but he’s smiling at the compliment, lips spread wide and pulling at the corners. “I’m plenty good at reading through your boring stuff on my own.” But he still moves towards Mark’s desk either way.

[c0rpseductor]

trying not to think about the verbs and failing listen ok i am going to be driven to madness

i have decided in my zygerrian conlang that tense is not like, part of the verb; past and future just get tacked onto the start of the sentence or clause as a totally separate word to indicate what’s going on.

the main thing happening with verbs is this insane game of who’s allowed to do what as determined by class stratification and stated permission from a superior. the pattern for a verb in many situations is [subject pronoun]-[verb]-[y/n][object pronoun].

so like, use cases. i do not have a big chart on my phone and I cannot be assed to get up so these are all going to be weird English lexicon zygerrian grammar sentences. bear with me.

He left my house without permission (I’m in charge of him, or we’re equals): Past [third person low status]-leaves-[no][first person high status] house of [first person high status].

He left my house without permission, and he’s boss of me: Past [third person high status]-leaves-[first person low status] house of [first person low status].

I don’t get to add the little bit indicating my permission up there because he’s boss of me, he can do whatever he wants. Including “without my permission” in the above sentence contrary to the pecking order would imply I thought he was acting wrongfully and it’d be a whole Thing.

My example sentences in the doc so far have mostly included verbs enacted on either people or other people’s belongings for this reason (as above, where technically the house is the object here, but the pronoun suffix indicates the owner of the house as hierarchical object because it’s my property and therefore doing shit to it is doing shit to me).

but the structure here works for objects owned by no particular anybody, too, bc there’s an object pronoun, and permission can just be ignored in that case. like, I eat an apple would be [first person whatever social standing]-eats-[third person object] apple.

i guess i’m thinking now what about plurals? what about if me and my friend both eat an apple. what if i eat two apples. what if i eat two of YOUR apples. that’s kind of important information and it can’t go on the verb (that thing’s already bogged down to fuck with prefixes and suffixes).

i could, in theory, add more pronouns. number seems like kind of an important thing, right? i think i read that in some languages it’s optional or not included but it seems like you should include it. i said earlier this language has 21 pronouns, which is only sort of true; there are 7 sets demoting status with 3 forms each (first, second, third person). i could add some kind of something to bump that up to 6 forms each (excepting the one that’s exclusively for the queen of the planet bc i cannot imagine she’d ever need to pluralize that and in referring to another like planetwide queen or like sheevy palps the proper pronoun would likely be, like, the one reserved for sort of mid-to-high-tier nobility and honored foreigners). i guess if you count separate forms english has a lot too though

honestly i might need to go ground up for plural pronouns bc there’s also mixed-status groups to account for. like a whole second system. blegh

as for like what if i ate two of your apples. that just requires pluralizing the noun. so my precarious verb arrangement for sick and insane people is safe

[papaya-inspiration]

This is really interesting! I hope you don't mind if I do a bit of analyzing of your loglines, because this is also something I struggle with and I'm interested in seeing what I can learn by breaking down the ones you've posted.

Some quick context first: I haven't read any of your longform fiction. I know from my sister (she's a fan) that they would probably be right up my alley (and I fully intend to read WtC, it's just long and I haven't quite gotten to it yet.) So I can't how accurately these capture the actual stories, but I can analyze them from the perspective of someone in the target audience who might pick up one of these books on the strength of the logline.

The thing that stands out to me most is that nearly all your loglines break up nicely into two parts: the first clause sets up the context of the story and the second clause provides the main thrust of the plot. In your stronger loglines, it is immediately apparent how those two things play off each other. In the weaker ones, the two parts feel disjointed or don't have an immediately obvious connection, and thus are missing the "twist" or "hook" that draws potential readers in.

Let me explain through some examples. I think your strongest logline here is the one for Shadows of the Limelight. The set up is both clear and snappy ("In a world where fame gives you power") and the plot hook immediately sets up several dramatic questions (what is protagonist going to do with all this sudden and unexpected power? what expectations come with it? how does the hero he saved feel about this? how does the protagonist's status as a "fanboy" affect with that?) The relationship between the set up and the plot is immediately obvious and it comes with the "twist" built in.

On the other side of things, I think several of your other loglines suffer from the same issue, particularly The Dark Wizard of Donkerk and Millenial Scarlet. Both have a set up and a plot hook, but the relationship between the two isn't clear. For Dark Wizard, how does "being raised by dark wizards" affect going on an adventure? Does it hinder the protagonist, or prepare them to approach their quest in a particularly unique way? Does it make them a particularly unlikely duo with the wayward princess? Are adventures a normal thing for this world? I think a stronger logline would tie the protagonist's unique background to how their quest will go down, which also has the added benefit of preparing the reader for what the tone of the story will be.

Similarly for Millenal Scarlet, the logline would be stronger if we got some sense of how the dead mother's plans came into conflict with the protagonist's job. I love the set up--"gig-economy demon hunter" is an inherently interesting premise (at least to me) and it sure seems like the kind of job that could bring you into conflict with a loved one's last wishes. But the logline doesn't actually tell us enough about the nebulous "plans" to show that there is a conflict, or what it is going to be.

So yeah! I hope something in there is helpful to you, or at least minimally annoying to receive. It was fun to look over your examples and think about why some of them jumped out as more appealing to me than others (and hot damn I really do need to read WtC one of these days.)

Also, in the spirit of practicing and improving I'll tack on attempts at loglines for two of my own stories (though they are currently not available to read publicly anywhere, alas):

Zivanka at Baytown - In a harbor town ravaged by unpredictable storms and unfriendly to outsiders, an orphan girl discovers the lengths she will go to secure a place for herself.

Death and the Doctor - Accompanied by the personification of Death itself, a plague doctor must free a village from a strange malady with otherwordly origins.

Save the Cat is a snappy read, and only 8 chapters, so I'm just doing a liveblog of them unless I get bored or distracted.

Chapter one is about the pitch, the logline, the title, what you put on a poster and how you sell it. It doesn't necessarily come first, but I get the sense that for Snyder this would be his preferred way of doing it. (A logline is just the one-sentence "what is it about" that you use to sell people on the idea.)

Snyder says that writing loglines is awful, soul-crushing work, and I agree there. I'm awful at it. But Snyder also says that if you don't have a good logline, maybe there's something wrong with your movie, and that I don't agree with.

I think there's a fairly wide set of stories that have good, snappy, easy loglines, and are also good stories. But I think there are other stories that are good stories and don't have a great way to pitch them. The lack of a good pitch can exist for a lot of reasons, and sometimes it's just that it's more complex than can be summed up in a single sentence, or even a handful of sentences. I think in practice writers will often dumb down the story for the logline, lying about what's contained within, just to make sure that it will sell, that people will want to know what's inside.

One of the other main points of the chapter is that a good logline has irony to it, a twist inherent in the title, some kind of thematic tension, and I disagree with that too, maybe not from the standpoint of selling a script, but from the standpoint of storytelling.

Why does everything have to have an irony to it? Why does everything have to have a twist? Why can't we have stories that are just well-told explorations of conflict and character? It's like at some point people decided that they only wanted Distinct Pieces of Media, so if you wanted to tell a story that's been told before, something with its own unique texture, you're just shit out of luck.

I find this all the more irritating because often the twist/irony/idea/pitch is good, and then the execution is shit, and then people don't want that idea again. It's not like you can say "like that thing that flopped, but good".

Blake Snyder is trying to tell good stories, but he's also trying to sell stories, and this is a good thing for authors to know how to do. I accept this. I just don't like it.

So as a writing exercise, here are some loglines for things I've written, without the amount of care and polish and revision that a good logline needs:

Worth the Candle - A teenaged dungeonmaster gets thrust into the worlds he's created, where his recently deceased friend is a historical figure. (This is bad, not short and snappy enough.)

This Used to be About Dungeons - Five young adults team up to delve dungeons and bake pies. (I don't know man, I said I was bad at this.)

Thresholder - A man travels through portals to different worlds and genres, gathering powers and skills as he fights other people just like him.

Shadows of the Limelight - In a world where fame gives you power, a fanboy saves the life of the world's greatest hero in full view of the public.

The Dark Wizard of Donkerk - An orphan raised by two dark wizards adventures north with a wayward princess.

Millennial Scarlet - A gig-economy demon hunter grapples with the death of his mother and the plans she set up before she passed.

Alright, I found that less soul-sucking than usual, but I don't think that these are the oiled, muscular, perfectly toned and smiling loglines that are necessary to sell, just to be clear. The marketing unit of written fiction is not really the logline, though that helps, it's the blurb, and I am equally awful at writing those. I just don't agree with Blake Snyder that a blurb or logline coming poorly is a sign that you don't know the story.

[photo1030]

Leather and Lace - Chapter 7:  A Most Special Gift

*Full disclosure, I do not know a whole lot about horses. I know people who raise the Gypsy Vanner breed (GRIN Ranch in SC), which is known to be very personable and highly intelligent. They are bred for their strength (mainly to pull the gypsy caravans), but they are not necessarily known for their speed. So I invoke the “suspension of belief” clause for my story. (This is fiction, after all, right?)

Summary: Arthur finds the perfect gift for you while he is out

Warnings: Mild swearing, fluff

**This is NOT my image. This belongs to the Lex Lin Gypsy Ranch. They are a breeder out of TN. Check them out! https://www.gogypsy.com/news/horses/blue-steele/

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

   For once, Arthur could say he is having a good day. He is out and about, finished with the latest scout and taking his time to head back to camp. He doesn't get much time for himself, so he's more than happy to take the long route home. The weather is warm, and the sun is in and out of the most billowy white clouds in a crystal blue sky. The breeze dances across his exposed skin, with his black shirt rolled up to his forearms and the first few buttons undone around his neck and chest. 

   It's quiet as he leads his horse over the meadows. He inhales deeply, picking up hints of the wildflowers that are scattered about. He is trying to see if he can remember what some of them are. He's been taking you out of camp lately to forage for the plants and herbs you use in your medicines. Any excuse to be alone with you, really, so he may bring you out here. The little yellow ones are Lady's Bedstraw, he thinks. He remembers that one because its fragrance reminds him of hay. The white ones are wild carrot. "Looks like a bird's nest, doesn't it?" you had asked him once, showing him the delicate plant cradled in your hands. Arthur smiles to himself as he remembers the conversation. He finds it adorable that you will share any topic of conversation with him, whether you feel he'd be interested in it or not. Hosea had always tried to teach him about these plants when he was young, but he never really cared too much for it. But now, the subject seems all the more interesting...or maybe it is the teacher?

   As Arthur comes up over a small hill, a flash of something catches his eye off in the distance to his right. As he turns his head, he quickly realizes its a horse. A lone animal, no rider, no tack on its back, just by itself. Arthur halts his own horse to look at the one he has just found. Its rather large, a beautiful silvery grey in color. He quickly notices the long mane and tail it has and the shaggy feathering that starts at the knees and hocks. "Where in the hell did you come from?" he quietly wonders out loud. He watches it as it prances about, almost skipping. Every once in awhile it rears up slightly to almost hop about. He swears its dancing if it was a person. Arthur watches it in bewilderment. This is the most striking thing that he has ever seen. Well, almost...there is one other thing that has recently captured his attention like this. And his lips pull back into an ever-so-slight smile as he gets an idea forming in his mind.

   Arthur pulls his rope off of his saddle, keeping his movements slow and fluid as to not spook the horse. He slowly dismounts and walks tentatively forward in the horse's direction. It notices his approach now, its head jerking up sharply to watch him. "Woa, now....easy does it", his voice low and calm. His hands start to work the rope into a loop, creating the slack he'll need to throw. He moves quietly, circling around to the side of the horse, never taking his eyes off of it. The horse's ears twitch backwards and it stomps it massive hoof into the ground. As he gets closer, the horse twitches and bolts, but just far enough out of Arthur's reach. The horse stomps its hoof again, its ears still tilted backwards as if in annoyance. Arthur goes in again, and yet again, the horse darts away, just out of his reach. This back and forth exchange between them goes on a few more times. The horse could have just ran off altogether by now, but for whatever reason, it keeps stopping short and stares Arthur down each time. "Are you messin' with me, mister?" Arthur huffs.

   He gets closer to it once again, and before it can bolt again, Arthur's hands shoot out from his body, throwing the rope towards the horse. The lasso hits its target, landing around the silver horse's neck. Immediately the horse pulls back, causing Arthur to lurch forward. He regains his footing, digging his heels into the ground to try to reel the horse in. As he pulls the rope in towards his chest, the horse suddenly rears up on its hind legs, pulling Arthur over completely to land right on his face, dragging him several feet on his stomach over the ground as the horse backtracks. Arthur considers himself quite good with horses, but this one may seem to be smarter than he is.

   "God damn it", Arthur sputters, spitting the dirt out of his mouth as he peers up at the horse. But, fortunately, he manages to keep his grip on the rope. Its a good thing he has his riding gloves on, or the rope would have cut his hands up something fierce from the force. He turns himself about on his ass on the ground, managing to get himself upright before the damn horse decides to jerk again. "Alright, then, that's the way you want to play it?" he asks, glaring at the horse. The horse nickers and snorts in his direction, almost as if he is answering him. Arthur gets to his feet and wraps the rope around his back side, and flicks the tail of the rope at the horse. The horse starts to canter about in a circle, with Arthur keeping a strong grip on the rope, leading him around. He keeps the horse moving, letting the circle get wider as needed, but continuously flicking the rope at its feet. His plan is to tire the horse out before trying to lead him back to camp. "I can wait you out, my friend, if that's what it takes," Arthur calls out to the horse, suddenly feeling quite smug. "This may come as a surprise to you, but I can be just as stubborn as you."

   Back at camp, you are sitting with the girls at the tables. Chores are done for now, so you are all relaxing for a brief moment. You and Tilly have a domino game going, Mary-Beth is reading her latest book from the general store in town, and Abigail and Karen are content to just sit with their coffee. Idle chit-chat and soft laughter are a welcome comfort, as it doesn't come often.

   By now, Arthur has come back into camp, casting his eyes about until they finally land on you. He smiles, hardly able to contain himself. He briskly makes his way across the open area, slowing as he approaches you, trying to collect himself and not to seem too eager. You notice him out of the corner of your eye and instantly lift your head in his direction, a soft smile involuntarily crossing your lips.

   "Hey you," you greet him warmly. "Where you been all this time?" "Hey you", he smiles in return. "Oh, I've been out and about," he says nonchalantly, slight wave of his arm. "Listen, you busy right now?" "Just losing to Tilly", you giggle as you motion to the tiles in front of you. "Oh", he says slightly disappointed, looking down at the table. "If you're busy, this can wait, then," his smile faltering slightly as he shifts his weight to his other hip, dropping his head down a bit. "No, no, its OK. Tilly will always have time to embarrass me at dominoes. What can I do for you?" you add quickly, turning yourself on the bench to give him your undivided attention.

   Arthur picks his head up again. "Uh...do you mind comin' with me for a second? I have somethin' to show ya." Suddenly, for whatever reason, Arthur is rather nervous, as his hand comes up to rub the back of his neck. Maybe it's because your eyes are whole-heartedly on him right now, or maybe he's not so sure if you'll be as excited about this surprise as he is.

   "Sure. Tilly, you mind if we pick this up later?" "Nope, not at all," says Tilly, a huge smile on her face as she rests her chin into her hand. You are intrigued as to what Arthur could possibly be up to. You notice his sudden awkwardness and smile to yourself. The girls notice it too, and try to stifle their giggles as you stand up to follow him.

   You look at Arthur curiously as you walk with him back across the camp. You can see him occasionally look at you out of the corner of his eye. He walks close to you, but yet still far enough to prevent his hand from accidentally brushing up against yours. As you come up to the edge of camp where the hitching posts are, you coyly ask "so are you going to tell me where we're go-..." and your words are halted in your throat as you see the silver horse tethered to one of the trees. It is pacing back and forth frantically, nervous and jittery. A breathless "oh" escapes your lips as your hand comes up to your chest. Your eyes stare, unblinking, at the horse. This is one of the most beautiful things you have ever seen and you can't take your eyes off of it. Arthur watches you, his gaze darting back and forth between you and the horse, his mouth turning up into a smile.

   "Where did he come from?" you ask in wonder.

   "Found him when I was out. He was roamin' around all by his lonesome. You like him?" Arthur pauses to gauge your reaction.

   "Oh, Arthur he's stunning!" You can't help but stare at the horse as it prances about. Every time it tosses its head about, the horse's mane cascades through the air as he snorts and paws at the ground. You've never seen a horse like this. You've seen plenty of prized animals in the stables as you grew up, and all kinds of breeds since you've been out here in the countryside. But nothing like this one.

   "Good," says Arthur. "'cause he's yours now." With a sharp inhale of astonishment you are finally able to break your gaze away from the horse to let it fall onto Arthur's face. "What? You can't be serious?" Your eyes wide and questioning.

   “I figured it’s about time you have a horse of your own." Arthur says with a nod towards the horse. "This way you can come and go from camp as you please. Javier don’t have to share his horse with you. And, not that I mind sharing a saddle with you or nothin', but this way maybe we can take longer rides out together now if you got a ride of your own.” And he casts his eyes down to the ground at this last bit, not sure how you're going to react to such an implication.

   You are enamored with the horse itself and totally taken aback by Arthur’s gesture at the same time. You stare blankly in disbelief at him for a brief moment before you leap at him, throwing your arms around Arthur's shoulders, squeezing him into the biggest hug ever in your excitement. A smaller person might find the force with which you are squeezing a bit painful, but not Arthur. Its an embrace that he lingers onto. He dips his face down to hover in the space between your neck and shoulder, closing his eyes and inhaling your scent, his hands tentatively resting around the small of your back. Arthur's heart soars at the sound of your happiness, your laughter more of a squeal in his ear. "Oh, Arthur, thank you!" And suddenly, in your excitement you kiss him on the cheek. The act of appreciation startles him, making him blush. His eyes shoot open in shock, as he freezes at the feeling of your soft lips on his stubbled face. And before he can stop you, you break away from your embrace and turn to proceed to walk towards the horse. Arthur's demeanor instantly turns from blissfulness to alarm, though, as he watches you head straight for this horse that is still jumping about nervously. He's afraid he's about to witness you getting trampled right before his eyes. He reaches his hand out to grab your arm, about to rush over to stop you, but immediately halts, as he doesn’t want to spook the damn thing any more.

   "(Y/N), wait!" he whispers sharply. He carefully watches you as you slowly glide toward the horse, hands slightly lifting as you move. Arthur's body is wound as tight as a spring as he keeps his eyes on you. The horse has its eyes on you now as well, but slowly begins to calm, drifting back and forth, nickering as you approach it. You're almost within arm's length of the horse now and Arthur freezes as you suddenly crouch down at its feet. Your skirt bunches around you as you sit back on your heels, arms lifting up over your head, reaching up to it. Arthur's hand is nervously running over his mouth at this point. You're going to get trampled for sure now. Jesus, here he thought he was going to do something really great and now he's going to end up getting you killed!

   But amazingly, the horse eventually stops its nervous antics, eyes you up again, and then slowly reaches its nose down to you. You lift your hands up even more and run your fingers ever so gently along the velvety skin of his nose and muzzle, causing the horse to shudder. Arthur stares in disbelief. You slowly rise up to your feet and run your hands down the horse’s neck, as you speak softly to it.

   “I’ll be God damned," Arthur mutters under his breath as he slowly walks up behind you, careful not to spook the horse again. “How the hell did you do that?” You turn your face over your shoulder, eyes twinkling at Arthur now. “I guess I got a way with the grumpy ones," you say with a wink. He huffs out a laugh at that, dipping his head down again, nodding in acknowledgement. He takes a moment to watch the two of you interact together. The horse seems to have taken an instant liking to you. Of course, thinks Arthur. How could it not? “After dinner, we’ll get him all brushed down and cleaned up”, he says. “Maybe we'll take him out tomorrow once he's settled and see how he does.” “That would be great, Arthur, really," you say turning to him now, your eyes almost glossy with happiness. "Thank you so, so much." You turn back to the horse, running your fingers along its neck again, playing with the long hair of its mane. It turns it's head and nuzzles into you, snorting softly. "I think I’m going to name him Blue.”

   The next morning you wake up as excited as a little kid at Christmas. You quickly get yourself dressed and cleaned up for the day, and hurry out of your tent. It was early yet, so the camp was still calm and quiet. Everyone was just starting to stir. You head straight over to the hitching posts again, anxious to check on Blue before Ms. Grimshaw gets ahold of you. You find that the evening has done him well, as Blue is much calmer now. He's grazing on the hay that was set out for him, his movements much more slow and relaxed than yesterday.

   "Hey there, Handsome," you say softly as you approach. The horse lifts its head at the sound of your voice. "Got something for you." You lift your hand up to hold out an oatcake. Blue hesitates a moment but slowly meanders over to you. You want to earn his trust, so you let him come to you at his own pace. He stops just short of your hand, though. He stretches his neck, trying to grab the cake with just his lips. He's still a little hesitant and doesn't want to get too close. "Ah, ah", you scold. "Come on. You want it, you have to come and get it." Your voice is soft and sweet, like you're talking to a child. You continue to hold your hand out, waiting patiently with a smile. Blue shifts his weight as you can tell he's weighing his options, his tail swishing behind him. But he only hesitates a moment before he takes another few steps to get close enough to take the oatcake from you, his lips and whiskers leaving slobber all over your hand. You giggle as it tickles, so elated that this beautiful creature is allowing you in its presence.

   "Figured I find you over here." The all-too familiar gravely voice makes you smile even bigger. You turn to see Arthur standing with 2 cups of coffee in his hands. "Didn't even get your coffee this mornin'. My, this horse must be special if you're willin' to skip your mornin' coffee for it." He reaches over to hand you a cup, a little smirk on his face.

   "Thank you," you say with a giggle, gratefully taking the cup from his hand. "I just wanted to make sure he was real, you know, that this wasn't some sort of dream." The statement makes the smirk on Arthur's face turn into a full-fledged smile. Such a rare thing to witness, but admittedly happening more often since you have come to join the group.

   "So I did good, then?" he asks, his eye brows lifting in anticipation. "Very good!" you say. Your own smile beams brightly back at him, making his heart beat faster. He nervously taps the side of his coffee cup, unable to hold your gaze for too long. "Right, then," he says softly to himself, shifting his gaze to his boots. He walks a little closer so he too can reach out to run his hand along Blue's muzzle. The horse jumps back a bit, though. Blue has started to warm-up to you, but apparently he's still leery of Arthur. "Woa, woa, boy. Easy now..." As gruff as Arthur can be, he is surprisingly gentle with animals, especially horses. "You're not gonna hold that lasso-in' thing against me are ya?" His voice is low, pleasant to the ear. You watch Arthur as he tries to make friends with Blue by simply holding his hand up so Blue can see it, letting him inspect and sniff before he attempts to rub along the horse's jawline. Arthur keeps his movements slow as he keeps his voice in low tones. His calmness is soothing, even to you. God, you could listen to that voice all day.

   "So, when we goin' out?" Arthur asks you, going back to sipping his coffee. You purse your lips, trying to contain your excitement again. "I don't know. I have to check in with Ms Grimshaw this morning first, or I'll never hear the end of it. In fact, neither would you." You give him a knowing look. "Ah, I ain't afraid of her," he says, waiving his hand dismissively. "Oh, OK", you say scoffing. "I'll remember that when she goes on a rampage. You ain't hiding behind me next time." Both of you chuckle a bit at the thought of it. Ms Grimshaw could be a harpy, for sure, but where would you all be without her? "Yeah, alright, point taken," he says. You continue to run your hand along Blue's face and up around his ears, reluctant to pull away. "OK, let me go and get her taken care of and then I'll come find you and see where we're at. Sound good?" you ask brightly. "Sure," he answers you. "You just holler when you're ready." "OK" and he watches as you take one last look at Blue before you turn to head back to the common area of camp to find Ms Grimshaw before she finds you. As his eyes follow after you, Arthur is already counting the minutes in his head. He himself can't wait for this. He gets to spend time alone with you, riding horses, out where its quiet and peaceful. It doesn't get much better than that in his mind.

    By late morning, you manage to complete your tasks that Ms Grimshaw needed done relatively quick. Now that you are free, you immediately go in search of Arthur. You find that he and Charles are working on repairs on one of the wagons. One of the wheels is starting to come lose and one of the floorboards is cracked. "Hey, guys, what you got going on there?", you chirp as you approach them. Smiling as they both look up at you, you hand each of them a cup of water that you brought over for them. Charles reaches up gratefully. "Hi, (Y/N) ...thanks." He takes a long gulp of the cool water, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "So I heard Arthur found you a horse." "Sure did", you reply, your eyes darting over to Arthur, smiling. "He's going to help me take him out today, too." Arthur takes his hat off and sets it down next to him on the ground where he is kneeling, running his other hand through his hair before he takes the other cup of water from your hand. As he does, his fingers linger ever so slightly on yours that are wrapped around the cup. He too takes a long gulp, looking up at you as he does. He's hoping the cup hides his big smile, but the twinkle in his eyes betrays him. "That's right. I did promise you that, didn't I?" he teases. "Yep!" Like a little kid, you stare at him excitedly. "Go on, then, Arthur. I can take care of this from here," says Charles. "You sure?" asks Arthur. He wants so badly to leave with you right now, but doesn't want to leave Charles in a bind. Knowing as much, Charles gives him a smirk. "Looks like you got more pressing business to tend to," nodding his head at you. Arthur claps him on the shoulder in appreciation, rising to his feet and looks over at you. "C'mon, girl. Let's get to it, then."

   Once back at the hitching posts again, Arthur helps you get Blue saddled up. "We'll get you some proper tack but for now this old saddle and bridle will do," he says. Blue is a little skiddish when the saddle goes on, so Arthur suggests that you walk the horses out of the camp first. He doesn't want to risk the horse taking off with you on him and tossing you into a tree. So with your hands around Blue's reins, and Arthur with his own horse in hand, you both proceed to casually walk out of the camp together, leaving the bustling activity of the gang behind. 

   Once you get out in the open, Arthur holds the bridle from the ground while you mount up. Blue skips around nervously a bit at first, but with Arthur whispering in his ear, he remains calm enough for you to get your bearings. Fortunately, you are a seasoned rider and can handle yourself quite well on a horse. When you are sure Blue is ready for it, the two of you head out over the meadows, letting the horses casually carry you two about. Blue takes to you quickly and seems to be at ease underneath you, allowing you to relax and enjoy the moment. Admittedly it is not just your time with Blue that you are excited for. You rarely get time alone with Arthur, so you want to enjoy your time together as much as possible while you have it. The conversations between you and Arthur are varied, from the mundane to the profound, much like your usual outings together. You find it so easy to talk to him for some reason. You discuss everything from how Blue handles, to Jack's excitement at finding a frog in the river while you were out playing the other day, and even to the latest philosophy book that you and Hosea have been discussing. You both always find great comfort in each other's presence. Even peaceful silence is easy.  

   At one point, you look over at Arthur and ask, "How fast do you think Blue can run?" "What?" And with an arch of your eyebrow and a curl of your lips, you nudge Blue in the sides, spurring him to take off. The horse practically explodes into motion underneath you. "(Y/N), wait!", he calls after you. Arthur quickly drops behind you but you can hear the thunder of his horse's hooves as he starts to move. Arthur tries to keep up, but this horse of yours is like lightning. All of a sudden, Arthur's heart catches in his throat as he sees you lift to sit up in the saddle, stretching your arms straight out to your sides like a bird's wings. Your head tilts back, eyes closed, while holding on to the horse with your knees. Your body aligns with the gait of the horse beneath you and you move as one in a flowing motion. Your hair is blowing back in the wind behind you, blurring with the mane, tail and feathers of Blue. Its as if the two of you are flying. Blue is off at top speed for quite some time before you eventually let the horse slow at his own pace, letting Arthur catch up. Arthur is left totally speechless as he eventually sidles up next to you on his own horse.

   "You're crazy, you know that?" he says to you, a hint of exasperation in his voice. You look over at him, grinning ear to ear, your cheeks flush. You're out of breath from the adrenaline and excitement, as you reach down to rub Blues’s neck before bending in half to lean over completely to hug him from above. “Did you see that, Arthur?! He’s something else, isn’t he?!” Arthur is still trying to calm his nerves since he practically just had a heart attack. “Sure is,” he says slowly, as he rubs his chin with his thumb and forefinger.

   “I can’t thank you enough for him, Arthur. Really. No one’s ever done anything like this for me before”, you say excitedly. You absolutely beam at him. Your smile is sincere and genuine, and only for him right now. And to him, it is worth everything in his world. He can feel his chest tighten at the overwhelming feeling of joy that you bring him. "You are...most welcome, (Y/N)" he says, his eyes locked onto yours, truly humbled by your gratitude. He is still amazed at the interactions between the two of you. You have no expectations of him. No demands of him. No assumptions. No judgments. Just innocent gratitude.

   Arthur has spent his whole life taking advantage of anyone who crosses his path. Survival has taught him to always look out for himself. Anyone else is a liability. At best, his connection with Hosea and Dutch have trained him to at least look after the gang. History has proved to him "no personal ties, it only ends badly". But now, his mind has started to open to the possibility of more in the world. Maybe life doesn't have to be so hard and cruel after all. You know his faults, good and bad, yet you do not turn your back on him, or sit in judgement. You are not like anyone else he's met before. And the realization starts to hit him: this could very well be...a new beginning.

[inventors-fair]

One Fish, Two Fish: Poet Winners

Congratulations to this week’s winners: @hiygamer, @ghoulcaclulator64, and @helloijustreadyourpost​! Lots of good designs were had this week, but these swayed my heart with their rhythm and rhyme.

Severn, Fablespinner by @hiygamer​

Ahhh, legend tribal makes me nostalgic for Dominaria. It’s weird that that was so long ago, honestly. Severn is a really neat card that feels right at home in AFR, but with some work could slot in many different planes! It’s vaguely reminiscent of Door of Destinies, but focused on legendary creatures and with some extra card draw tacked on. I really like the slot that this card occupies in a legend tribal deck. Your previous version was nonlegendary and 5 mana, both of which were strikes against it, but you neatened it up nicely. At 5 mana, you run into the issue of people holding their legendary spells in order to get more value out of them, which isn’t an ideal pattern. At 4 mana, that problem becomes much less egregious (again, see Door of Destinies). Severn being a legend is also great, so that he isn’t just a random payoff, but can also help turn on your other legend-focused abilities. The flavor text is sorta the obvious choice for a card like this, but honestly? I think it works. Even if the legends die, they still leave a lasting effect on your creatures, and I think that’s an amazing mesh of flavor and function.

Decades Aflame by @ghoulcaclulator64​

This one made me audibly go wow. Red extra turn spells/end the turn spells with severe downsides are some of my favorite cards, and this one just hits all the right notes. It’s so close to ones that have been done before, but the difference between “your next end step” and “an opponent’s next turn” is such a small change that makes such a huge difference in playing. If you manage to get all four of your copies of this in your hand, or have some copy spells, this becomes crazy good. It takes some work to get there, but boy is it worth it. The exile clause might have been primarily created to fulfil the rhyme, but it is a natural part of this card that needs to be there, especially with how easy it would be to recur otherwise. The end result is a natural-looking card (with some absolutely bangin’ flavor text, by the way) that could easily be printed in a funky draft innovation set.

Valti, Sword of the Hero by @helloijustreadyourpost

I’m gonna get this out of the way: “Zero” and “Hero” was a rhyming pair that I was REALLY hoping someone would do, and this does it in the best way. The A-B-B-A rhyme scheme is also pretty neat, and it looks pretty natural as well! The floor of this equipment is that it does nothing, but it’s offset by the free equip (at least it’s probably free in the decks you want to play this in), and by the fact that the first +2/+2 comes into play before that first set of damage is dealt. It scales fast, but I don’t think that it’s overpowered, especially since it’s legendary itself so you’ll likely only have the one. The flavor text drags on a bit, and the middle part could probably be removed entirely while keeping the same zing, but I like the direction it was going. Also, time to get on my soapbox just the once for this week: Valti deserves some art/art direction, especially since yours is so often a highlight of the submissions each week. However, Valti is an excellent card that seems super fun to play with. I would like ten of them please.

And that’s that! Congrats, and see you in a hot second for our runners-up!

[lovelylogans]

the warmest hello (to the coldest goodbye)

once a spy, always a spy forever, forever the warmest hello to the coldest goodbye remember, remember -spies are forever, the tin can bros

warnings: undercover spy work, mention of weapons, drugging someone into unconsciousness/giving someone a roofie, essentially the start of an enemies to lovers fanfiction

pairings: virgil/logan, offscreen roman/patton

words: 4,465

notes: this is for day 7 of @analogicalweek! the prompt of the day is “free day” and i have decided to write a combination soulmates and rival spies au! please enjoy!

⁂

Not that Virgil would admit it, but, like literally every other marked person, he's tried to imagine how he might meet his soulmate. He just didn't ever spare any thought on what he'd do if it happened on the job.

His official cover to his friends (which was mostly his cousin Roman and Roman’s husband Patton) was that he was an analyst—he was always vague about what exactly it was he analyzed, but since neither of them were particularly mathematically inclined, and both were maybe a bit too trusting for their own good, they took him at his word.

Even when he was sent off on various unusual "business trips.”

It’s not like Virgil’s mark is very specific about when and where it’ll happen. Virgil knows that variations of "sorry about that” make for a large percentage of common soulmarks. 

There’s protocols in place, of course, but Virgil had never really paid attention to those classes while training to be a spy. The Lewis clause is the kind of thing Virgil didn’t pay as much attention to, because it didn’t seem as useful as understanding the technology or how to make a cover. The Lewis clause is what to do when someone meets a soulmate on the job—there are specifications for if the soulmate is a target, a team member, or an enemy.

Virgil hadn’t really cared at the time. He’d kick himself for that later.

Any number of meetings occurred accidentally—knocking something over, bumping into someone, or, like his cousin Roman's soulmate did, take Roman's coffee thinking it was his own hot chocolate. They got married two winters ago, just so they could serve hot beverages in cold weather.

He thinks the iteration stamped in black along his left inner arm, "I'm very sorry about this," with the addition of "oh no, it's you” tacked on at the end of his makes it likely that whatever he says will, A, likely be first, B, be somewhat unique, or unique enough to be immediately recognizable, and C, be in the aftermath of some kind of accident.

He ends up being partially right. What he says is first and it is somewhat unique. What his soulmate apologizes for is no accident, though.

Virgil does undercover work, sure, but it's very rare for him to enter the James Bond style locale he's at today, and that he’s been working for the past couple months; the marble ballroom he's circling is dripping with gold chandeliers and matching heavy, velvet curtains that accent the floor-to-ceiling windows. There’s a string quartet in the corner, barely audible over the chatter of rich socialites. Virgil, deeply uncomfortable in his white-tie attire, is circling the room in an attempt at looking like he attends charity balls all the time.

He sucks at it.

As if on cue, his earpiece crackles to life.

"How the fuck did you ever qualify to be a spy?" Janus, his tech man and eye in the sky, snickers into his ear. "Your acting skills are horrendous. If you auditioned for The Room right now, they wouldn't let you into the cast.”

"Fuck off,” Virgil fake-coughs into his shoulder.

"Christ, at least try to look like you're mingling, not like you've stalked the target here."

Unable to stop himself, he glances toward the target he's meant to be watching.

The target, who is so staggeringly wealthy it could make Virgil, who is trying to pay off his student debt on a spy's salary (not as high as one might think) burst into tears. Or, much more likely, start ranting about the myriad flaws of capitalism. If so inclined, he could honestly probably steal the amount of money necessary from one of her offshore accounts, and it would be as unnoticeable as someone taking a penny from him.

Mary Lee Truman is standing amidst a flock of suited men, like a dove amidst a flock of dour crows; her dress is slinky silk, a shade of champagne that glimmers rose-gold in the right shade of light. She’s standing leaned to one side, her hip popped out and an arm crossed over her stomach, a crystal-cut champagne flute dangling in her fingers as if she was born to hold one.

Her husband, Lee Truman (fuck if that wasn’t confusing, it was really easier to think of them by their codenames) is off by the bar, seemingly getting himself another drink. 

His eyes stray to Mary Lee again; he can tell a couple of the suits are hired muscle, bodyguards, which makes sense, as the Trumans are allegedly a massive crime family, doing their dirty dealings in plain sight. A couple of the suits he recognizes from dossiers; one is a business partner of Lee’s father, who might not even know what the Truman family really gets up to; one absolutely knows what the Truman family gets up to, as Virgil’s read his rap sheet and knows he’s been in and out of jail due to his assignments from the mob.

There’s one suit there that really doesn’t seem to fit the mold of either category.

For one thing, he’s around Virgil’s age; for another, he isn’t rippling with muscle. Not that he doesn’t look fit; his well-tailored suit shows off his broad shoulders, his biceps, his lean waist. He’s dark-haired, and pale, and blue-eyed, and he’s standing next to Mary Lee with a look that Virgil would think of as dour, but now that he’s looking closely, the blue-eyed man looks almost... calculating.

This man wasn’t in the dossier.

Almost everyone at this ball was in the dossier.

Virgil looks away from Mary Lee and the handsome man, and instead decides to start taking up Janus’ advice; he slowly moves through the room.

Well. He's doing it to get closer to Mary Lee, but sure, he can attempt to mingle.

He traverses through the room, his fancy shoes clicking on the marble floor, mindful to not step on any dress hems—he has it easy, as his directive was simply to wear his white tie with his hidden weapons, his ear piece, and his lapel pin that records everything he's seeing. The women in the room provide the only splashes of color outside of the black suits and white shirts of the men, the gleaming marble, the gold- accented glasses and dishware. Even what little art he's seen follows that color theme -- white marble busts, abstract black and white paintings in their gilded frames, a gold statue outside the front steps, as if to greet the partygoers.

But the women of the party aren't beholden to this strict color scheme. Gowns of pink chiffon, red lace, blue taffeta, deep violet velvet, Virgil passes them all, keeping one eye out for rose gold silk.

He ends up instituting himself in a ring of people listening intently to an art history professor talking about the architectural significance of his building—he introduces himself with his cover name, James Walker, to the man next to him, who Virgil already knows is a Truman cousin. He gives a fake first name too—he says his name is Alex, when Virgil knows it’s really Bruce. Okay. Something to take note of.

He listens to the art history professor talk about art deco with just one ear, the other straining to eavesdrop on Mary Lee and her suits.

“Do you think our beneficiary approaches?” Mary Lee murmurs to the blue-eyed one, the one that wasn’t in the dossier.

“Oh, I know he does,” the blue-eyed man says to her. He has a pleasant British accent, the kind of voice that would be right at home on a nature documentary calmly narrating the eating habits of wolverines, or something like that. “According to all my research, our previous beneficiary is no longer within our purview. A new one will have been instilled in hasty time. As a matter of fact, I believe I would be able to point him out to you right now.”

Mary Lee sighs, a little, and the man continues talking about their charity. Virgil’s mind races. He knows the Truman’s “charity work” almost always acts as a sieve to run dirty money through, so what would it mean, that they got a new beneficiary? A new target, maybe? A new directive?

Either way, this is almost definitely some kind of code they’re talking in. He tunes a bit more into the art history professor’s impromptu lecture—he’s taking a brief tangent into talking about Tamara de Lempicka—as he ruminates on that particular conversation between the blue-eyed Brit and Mary Lee.

Then he ends up in conversation with an elderly woman beside him, who wants to know who he is—James Walker, I run a business a state or two over, I’m interested in diversifying my assets—and if he’s been to any art museums in town. Both he and the man he is meant to be have not, but it turns out she’s a curator and has numerous suggestions for him.

He also knows this woman, Ida Kelly, has been paying into the Truman business for quite some time, and has potentially ordered hits using the Truman’s muscle.

“Madam,” a suited waiter shows up at her side, as if on cue, and hands her a small glass full of what looks like a gin-and-tonic.

“Oh, yes, thank you,” she says, taking her drink immediately.

The waiter turns to him. There is a singular champagne flute on the tray. “Sir.”

“I didn’t order anything,” Virgil says stupidly, before he realizes that almost everyone here is taking champagne flutes off of trays, and he supposes this waiter just wants to clear his before he has to double back and get more. “Oh, all right.”

He takes it. It’s a delicate, crystal-cut glass. He’s almost a little afraid that if he holds it wrong, it’ll break.

“Really, we’re doing an Impressionism exhibit, and it is positively divine,” she says.

Very suddenly, there’s a hand on his shoulder, emanating warmth through his suit and Virgil jumps, a little—he hopes whoever it is didn’t feel one his knives. Or, God forbid, his gun.

He turns to see no one, when a hand touches his opposite arm, and he turns again. It turns out to be the blue-eyed Brit, who is staring only at Ida, brushing past him, allowing his hand to trail down Virgil’s arm, touching his hand as if to say, please stay there, I do not want to bump into you.

At such a close range, Virgil can smell his absolutely incredible cologne, see his defined jawline, the way his blue eyes gleam.

Ida brightens. “Darling!”

“Ida,” the Brit says warmly. “I visited that display myself, it was simply wonderful.”

“Oh, you’re too kind,” she says, clearly drinking up the praise. Virgil looks between them, feeling even more awkward than he has all night.

“Wait a goddamned minute,” Janus murmurs in his ear, after such a long stretch of silence that it makes Virgil jump again. There’s the sound of rapid typing.

“A victory!” The man says, lifting his glass—it looks to be full of whiskey. “A toast, to your latest triumph.”

“Oh, now,” she says, but when the other surrounding suits start lifting their glasses, Virgil lifts his, as well.

“To Ida Kelly,” the Brit says. “One of the finest artistic minds to walk the earth at our time!”

Virgil takes a sip of his champagne at the same time as everyone else; another woman in a deep green gown with a shawl edged in feathers takes Ida’s arm, rhapsodizing about the Impressionism movement and the latest event that her art gallery had put on.

It takes about a minute for Virgil to notice his vision going blurry in the corners.

It takes him about ten seconds of blinking hard and rubbing his eyes, hoping to clear it, to stumble over his own two feet.

It takes five seconds for Janus’ voice to buzz to life in his earpiece, urgent, “Virgil, get out of there, get away from that man, that’s Lo—”

It takes him about two seconds after that to notice that the blue-eyed Brit is looking at him with an expression clearly lacking remorse.

It takes him about half a second to realize the finger tapping one shoulder, his hand at his hand—the same hand that had been holding his champagne flute. He hadn’t been looking at his drink. The Brit had made him turn away from his drink.

The Brit put something in his drink.

Virgil’s been made.

“Good God, man,” another suited man says, when Virgil stumbles over his own two feet, “had enough of the bubbly, have you?”

Virgil ignores him; even as his vision is growing blurrier and blurrier, his eyes are intent on the Brit, staggering towards him, and he doesn’t even really know why. He’s been made, he should be running, but—

"Did you just fucking poison me, you fucking asshole?" Virgil slurs, and his sudden lack of physical control resoundingly answers the question before the Brit can; the arms that catch him before he can full flat on his face are muscular and warm. He’s distantly aware of the crystal-cut grass slipping from his hand and shattering on the marble.

The warm, muscular arms are more pressing than that. And, for a dirty rotten criminal who has probably killed people, the man is quite handsome. His bespectacled face swims in Virgil's vision.

"'I'm very sorry about this," he says smoothly, before his eyes widen in alarm. "Oh no.”

As Virgil is on the verge of unconsciousness, he hears, "It's you."

His last three thoughts before he slips under: did he just fucking say what he thought he said, then, good God his eyes are so blue, then, fuck, I should have paid way more attention to the Lewis clause.

⁂

Virgil is aware of three things as he wakes up: one, he feels like he has a dreadful hangover. Two, he’s pretty sure he’s in a plane or train or car or something moving, which makes him feel motion sick.

Three, he’s been stripped of his earpiece and his weapons.

He blinks his eyes open slowly, squinting; it’s night time, but even the low light is making Virgil’s eyes hurt.

This is a limousine, he can tell that much off the bat; the partition is closed, the glass tinted as dark as it legally can be, the interior leather light-colored, the bar fully stocked with different sodas and crystal-cut decanters full of various liquors, which makes him wince in memory of the champagne.

He feels like shit, but when he looks over and sees the blue-eyed Brit—his soulmate—his soulmate who had fucking drugged him and was working with the mob—it makes him feel even shittier.

“Ah,” his soulmate says. He’s sitting with one ankle resting on his knee, a squat glass of whiskey in hand. He has glasses on now that he hadn’t had on before. Also, his accent is no longer British; he’s got a nice Italian lilt to his voice, now. “Good. You’re awake.”

Virgil stares at him. He doesn’t say a word.

“I’ll admit this,” he gestures between them, “rather put a cinch in my plan on how to deal with you.”

“Would you have killed me?” Virgil asks. His voice comes out a croak. “If we weren’t...”

He trails off.

The man’s eyebrow arches, before he shrugs, and rolls up his sleeve. His soulmark is in the same place as Virgil’s—stamped across his left inner arm, in the spiky handwriting Virgil only uses in his personal notes, not the more uniform one he writes reports with.

Did you just fucking poison me, you fucking asshole?!

Undeniably a matching soulmark to his.

“My parents were quite bemused by it, when it showed up,” the Brit—or American?—the blue-eyed—his soulmate says. “I suppose we have our answers now.”

“Do we?” he says. 

The man takes a sip of whiskey. Then, he says, “Your predecessor was FBI. Are you the same?”

Virgil tenses. The man rolls his eyes again.

“Please,” he murmurs. “For an organization meant to be secretive, your lot are quite obvious when you trade moles in and out. One comes in, goes out, and coincidentally someone new is knocking on the door within the week. It’s absurdly simple to pinpoint who’s reporting back to your government. So. FBI, CIA, military...?”

“Who gives a fuck,” Virgil says.

“One should know what one’s soulmate does for a living, shouldn’t they?” he says. “This is a very unique situation. I’m simply trying to find out—”

“What do you do for a living, then?” Virgil snarls. His head is pounding, his mouth is dry and it tastes dreadful, his soulmate is an asshole working for the other side, and he’s being carted off to God knows where. This day is one of the worst of his life. Why couldn’t he have had a nice little café meet-cute, like Roman had had?

The man smiles at him, not particularly kindly. “I diversify.”

Virgil pulls a face, because he knows that’s poking fun at his cover.

“What,” Virgil says, “poison people on Monday, go to Ida Kelly’s resort on Tuesday, with a fun little Friday jaunt of killing people who cross the Trumans?”

“I’ve never actually been to the museum Ida Kelly curates,” the man admits. “It was an easy way to insert myself near you, to put it in your drink. And for goodness’ sake, it wasn’t poison.”

“Roofie. Drug. Whatever.”

The man’s eyebrows pull together, in a rather petulant expression. “I designed that myself, you know.”

“Well, it’s shit,” Virgil snaps. “I feel like I have the worst hangover of my goddamn life.”

“Yes, that was part of the design,” the man says, and offers him a glass of water.

Virgil stares at him. “Seriously.”

“No trust between soulmates?” He says.

“Yeah, well. Fool me once.”

The man shrugs, putting down the glass of water into a cupholder, before digging out a sealed water bottle. Virgil takes it and places it into a cupholder near him. No fucking way he’s accepting any food or drink from this man.

His lips quirk up into a smile.

“Where are you taking me?” Virgil says, ignoring the way that smile makes his heart pound.

“That rather depends,” he admits. 

“On?”

“Well.” He says. He uncrosses his legs, planting both feet on the floor. “I’m assuming that now the man in your little earpiece—he was rather rude—is aware that you have been, what is it you say? Made?”

Virgil nods.

“Well. Now that he, and therefore your employer, knows that you are made, you won’t be poking your nose into Truman business anymore, will you?”

Virgil grits his teeth. “Not undercover.”

The man ignores that. “And I know that no matter which you work for, the Lewis clause has been adopted across every arm of that government, and as such you’ll be prohibited from any mission that might bring you into contact with me.”

God damn it. How does he know the spy lessons better than Virgil does?

And then it occurs to him: Janus knew that man. He warned Virgil to get away from him, to get away from Lo—

He rolls this information around in his head. The Lewis clause isn’t exactly a widely advertised part of being a spy; there was a whole trilogy of novels that got adapted into secret agent movies, years ago, that concerned opposing agent spies coming to face each other again and again, and the secondary soulmate agents teamed up together. Which the Lewis clause would prevent, but the public who went and read those novels or saw those movies wouldn’t know that. 

So either this man—Lo? Lo what?—either knows a lot about spies, because he’s one of those know your enemy types, or...

Or he sat down and learned about the Lewis clause the same way that Virgil did, except he actually sat down and listened. Maybe he defected, maybe he’s dirty? Or maybe Virgil’s just overthinking it.

Look. Virgil’s got a lot of questions here. Chief among which:

“Where are you taking me?”

“Away,” the man says vaguely, looking at him. “Are you gay?”

Virgil gapes at him.

“I’d be perfectly fine with a platonic soulmate, but for the sake of disclosure, I am gay.”

“For the sake of disclosure,” Virgil repeats disbelievingly, and pinches the bridge of her nose, rubbing it. God, his head hurts terribly. 

“Bisexual, or pansexual, perhaps?” He prompts. “Asexual? Or... you could be straight, I suppose.”

“Ugh,” Virgil says reflexively, then shakes himself. “I’m not—okay. Fine. Yeah, I’m gay too.”

“All right,” the man says, as if noting it. “What’s your name?”

Virgil snorts.

“What?”

“Okay, I don’t—” he gestures to the limousine around them. “Again, you just drugged me. I don’t know where you’re taking me. You probably would have killed me if I hadn’t said those words.”

The man makes a moue of distaste.

“Or had someone kill me, I don’t know,” Virgil amends. “Either way, you’re working with that family, who I’m assuming aren’t pleased at having a spy getting caught trying to work himself into your ranks, so I’d rather you not know all that much about my life, thanks.”

“It’s not like I’m asking for your,” an infinitesimal pause, as if he’s wracking his brain, trying to remember something, “social security number or anything. A name.”

Virgil stares at this man. Lo—. Lo something. Lochlan? Loyd? Or was it a codename?

“Yours first.”

The man pauses.

“You drugged me,” Virgil says.

He smiles at Virgil. “Will you hold this over my head for the rest of our lives?”

The rest of our lives. Yes, that’s meant to be the fairytale ending for soulmates, isn’t it? A nice little meeting, the swell of overdramatic violins in the background, falling into each other’s arms and forming a life together. That’s the popular answer.

More and more recently, though, people have been advocating for choice; that soulmates are not always the best person for you.

Virgil doesn’t know which camp he and this man will fall into, just now.

“Yes,” Virgil says quietly. “Yes, I think I will.” 

The man sets aside his whiskey.

“Logan.” He says at last, and his accent has changed again; it’s vague, almost indecipherable, but if Virgil had to guess he’d say Midwestern American. Virgil wonders if it’s his real one. “My name is Logan.”

Logan.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Since discovering you’re my soulmate? I haven’t lied to you at all. Not a word.”

“Except for the accent.”

Logan laughs.

“Habit, sorry. It’s a long story that perhaps the man screaming in your earpiece will be able to tell you one day.”

Virgil jolts with surprise. “You know—?”

He cuts himself off before he can say Janus’ name.

“Reputationally,” Logan says, and, as strange as it is, Virgil believes him. In this, at least.

His soulmate’s name is Logan.

“Virgil.”

Logan smiles, his blue eyes glittering. “It’s nice to meet you, Virgil.”

There’s the sound of a soft knock on the partition, and it lowers; Virgil can’t see the driver.

“Sir? We’re here.”

“Right,” Logan murmurs, shaking himself. He reaches into his jacket and withdraws an envelope, offering it for Virgil.

Virgil hesitates.

Logan rolls his eyes. “It’s not like I’ve laced it with anything. I’m holding it with my bare hands.”

Virgil huffs, but he takes it, opening it and pulling out a thin piece of paper.

It’s a commercial flight ticket to Washington, D.C.

“Why D.C.?” Virgil says quietly.

“Most of those organizations are based there,” Logan says. “Is it too far a jump to assume that you are, as well?”

It is actually too far a jump; it’s not even remotely close, he lives in an entirely different part of the states. But. To be fully honest, he doesn’t want Logan to know the state he lives in, and therefore the state that Patton and Roman live in, until Virgil knows if he can be trusted or not.

Logan opens the limousine door from inside, revealing they’ve pulled up to the local airport.

“What, no private plane?”

“I assumed you wouldn’t trust that,” Logan says with a shrug. “The Trumans may be powerful, but you know as well as I that manipulating a flight of this nature is well outside their purview.”

Logan’s right, he absolutely wouldn’t have trusted that, but. This limo’s pretty swanky. For the time he wouldn’t have been obsessively running over every crack and seam in a private jet and interrogating the pilot, he probably would have had a pretty swell time.

Virgil swallows, looking up at Logan. “There are programs, you know? If you wanted to be a witness. Be in service to—”

Logan smiles at him in a way that’s almost pitying. “I left that life behind a long time ago.”

Virgil looks to the airport, then back at Logan.

“Will I see you again?”

Logan shrugs again, almost delicately. “Who’s to say?”

Virgil nods, once, and he says firmly, “I’ll see you later.”

Logan grins at him. “Not if I see you first.”

Virgil slips out of the limo, slams the door shut, and, with what feels like Herculean effort, manages to get into the airport without looking back to see if he can see Logan through the tinted glass.

He does exchange the ticket for another that’s an hour and a half later, though. He’s not a total idiot.

He gets through security pretty quick, and sits in one of the incredibly uncomfortable chairs, his brain pounding with his headache, the questions swirling around in his head making it even worse. Virgil puts his head in his hands.

He just met his soulmate.

His soulmate is working for a mob family.

He just met his soulmate.

His soulmate is apparently smart enough to specifically engineer a roofie.

His soulmate, though!

Janus knows his soulmate. Janus recognized his soulmate.

His soulmate knew about the fucking Lewis clause.

Was his soulmate a spy too? Was his soulmate in deep cover? Had he betrayed his organization? Was he a good person, or had the universe seen fit to hitch Virgil to someone awful?

How had Logan gotten entangled with the Trumans in the first place? Why wasn’t he in the dossier? 

Where was Logan even from? Did he like coffee? Hot chocolate? What had he studied in school? What was his favorite food? If they were normal people, would he have asked him on a date and not drugged him and dragged him off in a limo? 

Who was Logan?

Whatever the answers to his questions are, though. Virgil knows himself enough to know that he isn’t about to let this case go. Not the Trumans. Not him.

Lewis clause be damned.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

More Insights About the Holiday Special

@wdway:

I went back up and watched the video of the song Emily sang and I just noticed that it's a song with an eye reference. The part about give her a dolly that opens and shuts its eyes. I would say we could read into not only a returning Santa Clause but a female doll that opens and closes its eyes.

I was thinking about the song lyrics and double-checked when I came back in but the little girl who gets the doll that opens and closes its eyes is named is Nell. Which made me think of nervous Nelly the horse from season 2 that threw Daryl.

In that episode, he found Sophia's dolly and ultimately had his hallucination of Merle. The other thing that was nagging at me was all the references to the chimney and it made me think of season 9 finale episode, The Storm. The scene where everyone had to gather together in one common place at Alexandria and there was some type of explosion in the chimney, which forced them to go out into the storm, dog ran away, and Negan rescue Judith.

I remember there had been a lot of discussion about the symbolism of that scene and the fireplace, I just can't remember what all it was now. It just seems that this particular song, as sweet and innocent and fun as it was, holds a lot of symbolic references for us. But as always, I'm sure it's just a coincidence that that song was chosen for her to sing. And I'm also sure that tptb had no influence whatsoever in what she sung (sarcasm).

I was just thinking how music is never a random selection as far as TWD goes. Even though this was a fun, light-hearted special, I think it was well thought out and planned and edited. Not that all of it points to Beth but I think anything said or done in terms of Emily's part in it can be scrutinized.

Again, she is a former cast member and yet she was featured singing a solo for the special. And we've heard Emily talk about when they were choosing music for Alone that she Gimple had long conversations about song selection.

Also, remember Norman has talked about wanting a different song, pleading his case to Scott for a different song he wanted for the end of Still, and lastly, even though Angela wrote Norman's The Cell episode, the song that played, Crying Over You, was not her selection but Scott's. So, I don't think we're overreacting on this particular thing.

@twdmusicboxmystery: 

I completely agree with all @wdway’s points here. These are some excellent insights. I just wanted add two more small things.

1) Emily’s song, The Turtle and the Monkey, was also featured in the show. So, this is twice now that they’ve featured her music. And if not for the pandemic, the two instances would have actually come very close together.

2) I forgot to mention this yesterday, but I was curious going into the special to see if they would mention all the hype about Emily and IronE maybe being in the S10 bonus episodes. We still don’t know for sure if they will be. The writer on Twitter said no, but as I said HERE, I’m not sure I trust that. 

The thing is, you would think, after the fandom pretty much had a meltdown over it, that they would take this moment to clear the air, tell us for sure (especially if neither of them will be in the bonus episodes, it’s not exactly a spoiler) and maybe even poke fun at the rumor. Specifically because both actors involved in the rumor (Emily and IronE) were in this special.

But nope. Not a word was said. Kinda side-eyeing that as well.

Up On the Housetop Lyrics:

Up on the housetop reindeer pause Out jumps good ol' Santa Claus Down through the chimney with lots of toys All for the little ones' Christmas joys

Ho ho ho, who wouldn't go Ho ho ho, who wouldn't go Up on the housetop, click, click, click Down through the chimney with good Saint Nick

First comes the stocking of little Nell Oh dear Santa fill it well Give her a dolly that laughs and cries One that can open and shut its eyes

Ho ho ho, who wouldn't go Ho ho ho, who wouldn't go Up on the housetop, click, click, click Down through the chimney with good Saint Nick

Look in the stocking of little Bill Oh just see what a glorious fill Here is a hammer and lots of tacks A whistle and a ball and a whip that cracks

Ho ho ho, who wouldn't go Ho ho ho, who wouldn't go Up on the housetop, click, click, click Down through the chimney with good Saint Nick

[beatrice-otter]

Just Married exchange is open!

Go read, because there are a lot of really great fanworks. I wrote one, which I think is pretty obvious given what I've recently written for ficathons, see if you can guess which one it is! I received a delightful Black Panther fic: Steady as the Lake, Ever-Changing as the River (3626 words) Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther (2018) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Nakia (Black Panther)/T'Challa Characters: Nakia (Black Panther), T'Challa (Marvel) Additional Tags: Wakandan Wedding, Future Fic, Celebrations, Wedding Fluff, Family Feels Summary: In theory, he was going to have a pleasant chat with Nakia's parents and spend the rest of the day dancing and feasting and sweeping Nakia off her feet to carry her back to the palace for their wedding night.

In theory, there was no need to be nervous.

In theory.

I really love Nakia's family in this story.

Moar recs behind the cut.

With This Demon Artifact, I Thee Wed (2460 words) Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Rupert Giles/Buffy Summers Characters: Buffy Summers, Rupert Giles Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Accidental Marriage

Summary: “There seems to have been a, um, minor translation issue. The binding spell doesn’t just work to safely bind the artifact’s power; it also… well, it also binds those carrying out the ritual to each other.”“Like, ‘til death do us part’ binding? This ancient demon cult tacked on a quickie Vegas wedding clause to their stop-the-apocalypse spell?”

Trust Buffy's instincts, indeed.

We Could Be Anyone (6181 words) Fandom: DCU (Comics), Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd Characters: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Kon-El | Conner Kent Additional Tags: Future Fic, Woke Up Married, Character Doesn't know or remember that they're married, Amnesia Makes Person Forget Their Marriage, Ambiguous/Open Ending

Summary: This is not Dick's beautiful house. This is not the Jason that he left behind.

Zhas and Zhasan Fandom: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Csethiro Ceredin/Maia Drazhar Characters: Maia Drazhar, Csethiro Ceredin Additional Tags: Art, Weddings

Absolutely STUNNING artwork of their wedding

First Dance Fandom: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Gimli (Son of Glóin)/Legolas Greenleaf Characters: Gimli (Son of Glóin), Legolas Greenleaf Additional Tags: Fluff, Weddings, Art, Dancing

Port Out, Starboard Home (15286 words) Fandom: Thor (Movies) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie/Loki (Marvel) Characters: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie (Marvel), Loki (Marvel) Additional Tags: Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Mpreg, Space Road Trip, Marrying Someone Pregnant Knowing the Baby's Not Yours to Protect Them Both, Fuckbuddies To Lovers, Intersex Jotunn (Marvel), Dual Genitalia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Past Loki/Grandmaster

Summary: Loki was, as it turned out, pretty far along, as the Jotnar reckoned pregnancies. They carried for fourteen standard months and only really started to show in the last five, and it was those five months, apparently, that Loki was in now.

His Aesir body had hit a point where it was no longer equipped to carry the child, and some unconscious reflex had shifted him to a shape that was more accommodating. Apparently—magically—his two forms usually coexisted somehow, which was how he’d managed to get knocked up in the first place.

“They have similar instances on Earth,” Thor said, almost absently. “Something to do with waves and particles—and they have a breed of undead cat, you know, it’s both alive and dead at the same time. It’s all very interesting, the way things coexist.” He cleared his throat. “What are you going to do?”

I especially like Valkyrie's perspective on Asgard past and present.

[Art] a house of dreams untold Fandom: Wonder Woman (Movies - Jenkins), DCU (Comics), Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Diana (Wonder Woman)/Elizabeth Swann Characters: Diana (Wonder Woman), Elizabeth Swann Additional Tags: Themyscira (DCU), Lasso of Truth, Just Married, Actual Ceremony Not Depicted, Holding Hands, Art

Summary: You are invited to celebrate the wedding of Diana, Princess of Themyscira & Elizabeth, the Pirate King

steps towards destiny (3390 words) Fandom: Mulan (1998) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Fa Mulan/Li Shang (Disney) Characters: Fa Mulan (Disney), Li Shang (Disney) Additional Tags: Marriage Arranged Because of Matching Soulmarks, Alternate Universe, Destiny

Summary: Fa Mulan is born with a mark of the dragon that covers her entire back.

This captures Mulan perfectly

Here’s hoping we collide (2261 words) Fandom: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Bodhi Rook/Luke Skywalker Characters: Bodhi Rook, Luke Skywalker, K-2SO (Star Wars), Jyn Erso, Baze Malbus, Chirrut Îmwe, Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, Wedge Antilles Additional Tags: "We Could Be Dead Tomorrow So Let's Get Married Today", Unexpected Marriage Proposal, Marriage Proposal, Cultural Misunderstandings, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, 5+1 Things

Summary: Five times Luke thought he had made his feelings for Bodhi absolutely clear + One time Bodhi finally got a clue  

Nothing's fair in love and war (4906 words) Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Lando Calrissian/Luke Skywalker Characters: Lando Calrissian, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron, Chewbacca (Star Wars), Finn (Star Wars) Additional Tags: Mutual Not-Actually-Unrequited Pining for Spouse, Reunions, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Implied Poe/Finn, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Treat, Guilt, Banter, Ambiguous/Open Ending

Summary: When the remnants of the Resistance arrive on Bespin, Leia tells Lando where to find his husband.

Lando doesn't know how he feels about Luke meanwhile Luke knows he loves Lando but also knows he doesn't deserve him after fifteen years of hiding.

[zamgoods]

Rider Die:  Life Insurance for Megan Thee Stallion

Saturday November 11.21.2020     Megan Thee Stallion, I know very little about. 

But her relevance to this keyword RIDER aka RYDER just upped the ante for  Corona Election Apocalypse poker.  She just may be one of the 4 horseman of Revelation 6:8 ‘s last days, well in this case, she rides the green or pale horse. DEATH is it’s name and followed by Hades, King of Underworld.

Her 11.19. 2019 music video “Ride or Die,” fits into the Rider matrix that seems to exist in November releases which includes Tangled and Alex Rider recently streaming on 11.11.2020 on Amazon Prime.  Note that the release rode along the day of the Corona Patient Zero in Wu Han, China and International War Games at the same place.  Also 11.19 is 9111 reversed. Mirror image of that day.  Cherish the Day also released with these numbers and basically spell out the plan 8 years ahead of the event.  

It’s an unassuming name.  Rider.  To be a rider on a moving vehicle that is going somewhere,  arriving at a destination.  Taking a ride for amusement, or sexual pleasure, or toward duty as a warrior on a trusted steed is a universal experience; we are all riders. So why is it chilling to see that the movies on the top of collage are all linked to the US 11.3.2020 Presidential Election?  Why do these ryders/riders relate to crime, money, brutality, espionage, and the sacrificing of lives?  All of these “riders” are wanted.  Sought after, targeted.  

Like U-Haul, Ryder rents you a van or truck for moving/boxing up things.  As seen in Cherish the Day by Sade, released on  9.11.1993,  after the helicopter hits the building there is a sequence of events and a Ryder van seen prominently.  The visual just never sat well and seemed too random.  But not anymore.

Tarot Card deck by Rider Waite Smith over a hundred years ago illustrated the major arcana Death 13 card with rider on a horse.  XIII.  Endings and beginnings.

 Ride or Die. Sounds like Rider Die which brings us to life/death insurance...  In the above movies, the spoiler is, Rider usually dies in the end.  With Incredibles being the exception, at least directly.  Many Supers die in this so called children’s Disney movie franchise.  And it is remarkable to mention that Mr. Incredible is an insurance employee in the first movie and an insurance risk in the second.  

Understanding Riders Insurance Term  Some policyholders have specific needs not covered by standard insurance policies, so riders help them create insurance products that meet those needs. Insurance companies offer supplemental insurance riders to customize policies by adding varying types of additional coverage. The benefits of insurance riders include increased savings from not purchasing a separate policy and the option to buy different coverage at a later date. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rider.asp

“Riders are purchased separately from health insurance policies. Riders can be added for many conditions or ailments. Pregnancy and indemnity riders are the most popular.  Riders can be used to add or eliminate coverage from a policy.”https://www.healthinsuranceproviders.com/what-are-health-insurance-riders/#:~:text=To%20put%20it%20simply%2C%20a%20rider%20is%20an,designed%20to%20provide%20applicant%E2%80%99s%20the%20coverage%20they%20need.

 Etymology Online finds that a rider (n.)"one who rides," Old English ridere "rider, trooper, knight, mounted warrior," agent noun from ride (v.). Meaning "clause tacked on to a document after first draft" is from 1660s.

So this Sibill blog does follow the money by using clues from life to divine answers to real life answers. After all money means warnings of future danger. Look into purchasing insurance riders which help you and loved one save money in the long run.  

I was saddened to learn that the  young lady, Megan Thee Stallion, loss both of her parents and grandmother in recent years just before her tremendous success.  She studied health care administration in college so she I hope she is familiar with riders in the life and health insurance sense of the word.  Who knows she may become a health care legislator or owner of a HMO in the future.

My gut tells me that Kamala Gopalan Harris and Joe Biden have something to do with this Rider Code.  Is she riding him or the other way around?  

[eldunea]

Lmao I play as a young/just started out trainer with NO CLUE on what they're doing. They want to prove themselves, /somehow/. Nothing too special about them. Just a kid with their Pokemon flailing aimlessly in the wilds. They're doing their best. And even they know its basically suicide to try your prussian (sp?) League - anon

first of all i want to congratulate your muse on being smarter than lotor in spite of his 200+ IQ, because they were smart enough to never go into preuzien and he wasn’t. you’re absolutely right that for 99.9% of people, going into wilhelmine preuzien is SUICIDE because unless a character and their pokémon are psychologically ready to be put in near-constant life or death situations? no matter how good of a strategist the trainer is are or how much they want to prove themselves, they are not going to make it. indeed, the league gets fewer foreign trainers coming in than any league other than north korea’s, so yeah, in hindsight i’m surprised any mun would have wanted to go through it at all.

i will say however that in lotor’s preuzien, the prussian league being “suicide” is more figurative than literal. it’s still dangerous to be in some of the cities because the trainers haven’t yet learned not to beat the shit out of each other, but with team blade as a well-trained police force, and with trainers now being able to afford all of their necessary resources instead of having to rob and kill random strangers for them, the streets are a lot safer than they were. the battling is also safer, since the fight to kill clause has been amended--you’re only in danger if you choose to challenge lotor or if both you and your opponent agree beforehand to wanting to kill each other during the match. some people might still call it “suicide,” however, because holy heck, the thing takes 36 wholeass badges to complete (i have it at 35 in lotor’s bio but with 18 typed badges and 17 strategic badges i felt like tacking on one more strategic one for evenness’ sake). going through the league is called running the gauntlet for a reason: even without the killing aspect, it is no doubt THE most difficult league in the world, one where even if you think you’re good enough, there’s a 9 in 10 chance that you’re wrong. i have to go in-depth even more about exactly why it’s the hardest in another post but yeah, i’m an overachieving asian who fetishizes difficulty and accomplishment, don’t @ me. 😂

i just wanted to close this post by saying i really admire you for being willing to play a pokémon muse who is just an average person. this may seem extremely hypocritical coming from me, who just spent an entire post talking about why my league is Teh Most Unbeatabul!!!1! but consistently playing muses who are super OP is something that i want to branch out from because doing the same thing over and over again is super tiring. and since i have started to find the abundance of OP-ness annoying sometimes and wish for more “average person” muses in the rpc, i have to lead by example. in fact, i’m releasing a new OC soon who is also just an average person making their way through the pokémon world and given what you’ve said about your muse, i think she’d love to meet them. if you’re interested in interacting by any chance, keep your eyes peeled!

[i2neo]

Pillars of Card Design #3 | Card Protection

Are your boss monsters too strong? Or worse, do they never seem to stick? How are you protecting your cards, and how are you getting around those of your opponents?

In this article, we’ll explore different kinds of protection effects, and what exactly warrants a hard-to-kill boss monster.

It is a general principle of Yu-Gi-Oh!, like any card game, that you not only want to play more cards than your opponent, but that you want those cards to stay, or otherwise have a lasting impact. So, it might be reasonable to include protective clauses and effects on those cards, particularly the more powerful, and therefore more risky ones. However, this can quickly become a detriment to the creativity of your design, taking up text space or ultimately making the card or cards unplayable overpowered.

So what constitutes protection? There are several different clauses and effects that can “protect” a card from any number of things. Some of the more common (for better or worse) examples include:

This card’s Summon cannot be negated.

This card’s activation and effects cannot be negated.

Cards and effects cannot be activated in response to this card’s Summon.

Cards and effects cannot be activated in response to this card’s activation or effects.

Cannot be destroyed by battle.

Cannot be destroyed by card effects.

Cannot be destroyed by your opponent’s cards (by battle or card effect).

Unaffected by other cards’ effects.

Cannot be targeted for attacks.

Cannot be targeted by your opponent’s cards or effects.

Cannot be targeted by, and is unaffected by, other cards and effects.

Altogether, a card with these effects would be an unstoppable force. Naturally, no card should ever have all of this protection tacked onto it. But how much is too much? What does that even mean?

If a card, even a so-called Boss Monster has too much protection, and is too hard to remove, it can become obscenely overpowered very quickly, regardless of what its stats or other effects might be. Although there is no set standard in measuring how much protection a particular card deserves, we can glean some context clues based on the kinds of cards that do have lots of protection.

[Picture of “Infinitrack Fortress Megaclops,” a Link-3 EARTH Machine Link monster with 4000 ATK.]

In general, determining the amount of protection a card should have relates to how much work it takes to play that card, just as much as what it does. “Infinitrack Fortress Megaclops” requires 3 Xyz monster to be summoned. At the time this was printed, the game existed under Master Rule 4, and so Xyz monsters could only be summoned to the Extra Monster Zone, or to a Zone(s) a Link monster(s) pointed to. For that time, this card took a considerable amount of effort to summon, needing not only the 3 materials, but also, at one point or another, at least one Link monster to provide the space to summon those Xyz monsters. Therefore, “Megaclops” earns the protection of being unaffected by monster effects, and battle protection, with the exception of Xyz monsters in both cases. For the amount of effort it takes to summon it, this card earned two protective effects, however, even both of those are not final. They both have the shared exception of Xyz monsters, and the first effect only protects it from monster effects, rather than all card effects.

Let’s look at some other monsters that are easier to summon, and explain why, for different reasons, they both can earn the same protection.

[Pictures of “Ancient Gear Howitzer,” a Level 8 EARTH Machine Fusion monster with 1000 ATK and 1800 DEF, and “Lyrilusc - Independent Nightingale,” a Level 1 WIND Winged Beast Fusion monster with 1000 ATK and 0 DEF.]

Both of the above monsters have the same level of printed effect protection: “Unaffected by other cards’ effects.” This is a well-regarded powerful protective effect, limiting its ability to be removed exclusively to battle with monsters that have a higher ATK. So, what did these two cards do to deserve this boon?

For “Ancient Gear Howitzer,” the answer is twofold. First, it has low bases ATK and DEF. No matter what position it is summoned in, “Howitzer” is a fairly easy target to be destroyed by battle. Secondly, its effects are not game-ending. It isn’t a boss monster. In fact, for “Ancient Gear” decks, it’s often an easy first-turn ending board, as it can inflict that first bit of damage without the Battle Phase, and serves as a threat to a more powerful monster when it does get destroyed. However, that effect combined with the protection is only balanced due to the limited strength of its targets; “Ancient Gear Golem” or “Ancient Gear Golem - Ultimate Pound” are the biggest things one is likely to get with its float effect, and they are not overpowered in this day and age, either.

“Lyrilusc - Independent Nightingale” also has a twofold explanation. Like “Megaclops”, this card has a not-insignificant summon requirement. It, like “Lyrilusc - Assembled Nightingale” is not difficult to summon, but to summon it and make use of its full effect requires a lot of materials--enough that one would have to put in significant setup to reach. “Independent Nightingale” also requires that you either be maintaining that position after its material has been summoned, or perform its Fusion Summon on the same turn as that Xyz Summon, in addition to having another Lyrilusc monster available for material. Achieving that with maximum effort still yields a powerful card, but a niche one. This boss monster’s last effect can burn the opponent for a lot, but that is the most that it can do. If the opponent has a bigger monster, they can sweep “Independent Nightingale” up next turn, leaving its owner with no recovery options.

So what does this tell us about the custom cards we design, boss monster or not? As we said above, there is no set standard; there will always be exceptions to every rule, and as a TCG, Yu-Gi-Oh! handles those exceptions accordingly when they become problematic to the health of the game. As custom card designers, though, we can errata our cards on a whim, changing them to be more fair as soon as their unfairness becomes apparent. Taking that into account, there are a few design principles we can consider when deciding how much protection to give a particular card, and from what.

Should be proportionate to the effort it takes to play. This can be a combination of the number of materials; the difficulty of those materials to play; additional costs (such as the requirement of a fusion or ritual spell, and its conditions and costs); the board presence being sacrificed; any “float” effects the monster has (by itself or by way of other cards). This is especially important as you test your designs--you might find that your boss monster that you expected to never hit the field is able to be summoned the majority of the time. Maybe, in that case, you can sacrifice some protection in exchange for more ways to replay them, like playing more than one copy.

Should not be all-encompassing. “Unaffected by other cards’ effects” and “Cannot be destroyed by battle” should not be paired together, unless both have an exception of particular timing or card type that can get through it.

Should be realistic or in-theme with what the card and deck does or expects the opponent to be doing. This can sometimes be better understood as “Protection effects should not cover inherent and primary weaknesses of the deck, but should highlight those and force the opponent down those avenues only.”

We’ll look at some other card protection in the next article, where we will specifically go over targeting in both protective and removal effects.

[daleisgreat]

Lockdown 2009

Greetings all and welcome to my fifth installment of marching through every TNA/Impact Lockdown PPV. Catch up on the previous entries right here! As I watched this PPV it reminded me of where I was with enjoying Impact in this era of April of 2009 when Lockdown emanated from Philly. Even though this was about a third of the way into infamous head booker Vince Russo’s eight year run with TNA, I think I was near the peak of my TNA/Impact fandom. They maintained a solid X-Division lineup and former X-Division stars were becoming mainstays in the World Title picture like Samoa Joe and AJ Styles. TNA was getting a lot of momentum with its Main Event Mafia faction consisting of former ‘Monday Night Wars’ stars like Nash, Sting, Booker T, Scott Steiner and Kurt Angle. TNA’s ‘Knockouts Division’ they established when Impact went two hours in 2007 put WWE’s then ‘Diva-Search era’ to shame and I feel it was the predecessor to the ‘Women’s Evolution’ era in the WWE for the past few years. This came to a halt when Eric Bishoff and Hulk Hogan arrived in TNA by the end of 2009 and within a year Impact went from must-see programming to becoming a chore and largely ignoring it by the end of 2010. There will be more on that to look forward to in future Lockdown entries. Here are some key takeaways I had from the 2009 Lockdown before I breakdown the matches…. -I think this is the final Lockdown with Don West announcing because Tazz at this time in the midst of his no-compete clause after finishing up with WWE after nine years. Don West did an entertaining short run as a heel announcer a couple months prior although he largely played it straight on this PPV. Sure enough, Tazz debuted in TNA a couple months later and West was gone from the announce desk. West was an affable and authentic voice for TNA in these early years for the promotion and while Tazz was always a solid announcer, I could not help but feel the announce desk permanently took a dip with the removal of West. -This was year two or three of TNA leaving the safety nest of the Impact-Zone Arena at Universal Studios for a bigger arena gate on the road. Lockdown was one of just a handful of PPVs that TNA took on the road per year and it paid off with a big-time atmosphere, especially with this 2009 card taking place in a city known for its passionate fan-base in Philly.

-Yearly props again go out to TNA promo-package voiceover guy, Barry Scott for delivering powerful narrations for all the storyline recaps before most matches yet again. His poignant voice makes any rivalry and PPV no matter how weak or strong at that moment seem must-see. WWE or AEW needs to hire this guy!!! -The 2009 DVD has a decent smattering of just over a half hour of extras. Aside from the pre-show match, there is a recap of the TNA Interaction fan fest, post-match interviews with Sting, Kevin Nash, Team 3D and a in-progress-of-being-stitched-up Mick Foley. Sting has some kind reflections after his match, Nash is a riot enjoying a post-match brewski, and they get so up close to the medical staff working on Foley that they have to issue a graphic content warning. A Smashing Pumpkins music video and a photo gallery I once again borrowed a few pics from for this entry round off the decent amount of extras. -TNA head honcho Dixie Carter made one of her first on-screen appearances for the company giving a quick interview to Jeremy Borash in the pre-show thanking the fans for their support. She started to make some PR appearances around this time to help promote the recently released Impact game on PS3 and 360 and I believe this was her TNA on-air programming debut. Regrettably, Dixie would go on to make more regular appearances in the years to come as an on-air authority figure much to the displeasure of viewers.

-I liked the frequent quick backstage interviews with talent before their matches and them combined with the aforementioned Barry Scott recaps served as a nice refresher on the rivalries going into this, and none overstayed their welcomes unlike a lot of modern WWE rivalry recap packages. I think Lauren was probably the fourth or fifth backstage interviewer for TNA at this point, and she did a fine good job with her reactions and adding in a quick take relative to the storyline’s after most of the interviews wrapped which added a nice ‘fan’s perspective’ view on the feuds. -Also worth noting is future TNA president and current top brass of NWA, Billy Corgan made an early TNA appearance in the music video hype package for the PPV, which is also a DVD extra, with him lending TNA Bullet with Butterfly Wings for use. Speaking of Corgan, you guys should really watch NWA Powerrr!! It and NXT are my current top two shows of the overcrowded 2019 wrestling bubble in America. -Before we begin (I know…sorry), I have to touch on the Suicide character making his Lockdown debut. He was a masked wrestler that debuted in the previously touted Impact videogame. The Impact game was ridiculously over-promoted on TV each week, eventually culminating in the videogame character becoming an actual wrestler. As of this writing, six different individuals have donned the Suicide gear for various stints for the character in TNA up until earlier this year when his most recent run ended. Worth noting is Suicide’s trademark fingers-to-the-temple pose. That same pose would coincidentally become the well-known cover art of the far better performing game, Borderlands when that game first released the following year. Naturally, having fans chant ‘Suicide’ and having him face off against opponents named ‘Homicide’ stirred controversy and TNA answered the criticism and would change his name to Manik…..before ultimately changing it back to Suicide due to presumably fan demand/creative resentment? TNA! TNA!

-Last year I noted how Lockdown 2008 had a shockingly low blade-job count with Brother D-Von being the sole wrestler who bled throughout the card. 2009 exponentially upped that number with six wrestlers donning the crimson mask with Abyss, Matt Morgan, Bully Ray, Mick Foley, Sting and Kevin Nash all doing the honors. Unlike WWE today, TNA did not change the mat canvas after a match if a wrestler bled so gradually throughout the night the mat transformed into a blood-soaked mess as you can see by the cell-phone photo I took with an overhead camera shot of the main event near the end of the PPV. -Ok, enough babbling, onto the matches of this 2009 Lockdown! The pre-show match is included as a DVD extra and has Eric Young squaring off against local Philly radio personality, Danny Bonaduce. Danny tries some slimy antagonist antics against fan favorite EY, and even sneaks in a little offense before Young surprised him with a roll-up for the win. Danny tried to avenge his loss by beating down Young afterwards, but Rhino came in for the save and gore’d the smithereens out of Bonaduce! The first official match on the PPV card was the annual X-Title, X-Scape contest. This saw champ, Suicide defending against ‘Black Machismo’ Jay Lethal, Sheik Abdul Bashir (formerly WWE’s Daivari), Kiyoshi and Consequences Creed (a pre-WWE Xavier Woods). I will give Vince Russo credit for accidentally stumbling into a legit thrilling finish for this X-Scape matc! It is probably one of my favorites of them so far. After a lot of trademark X-Division high-flying and a few pinfall eliminations, it came down to Suicide and Bashir to escape in order to win. Kiyoshi tried to climb the top of the cage to prevent Suicide from climbing over, but security intervened and pulled him down while Bashir attempted to sneak through the door during the distraction. Before Bashir could sneak out however, Suicide surveyed the surroundings and did a dive from the top onto the security and Kiyoshi outside the ring for the instant victory! It played out very convincingly and I was popping just as big for it as the crowd! -The second annual queen of the cage bout took place next between Sojourner Bolt, ODB, Daffney and then-Beautiful People intern Madison Rayne. Rayne would become a big player for the Knockouts division so it was interesting seeing her quite early in her TNA run. Unfortunately the Knockouts could not quite gel in this match and after several minutes of unremarkable action ODB hit a powerslam for the victory. The IWGP JR. Tag Titles match faired much better though with Motor City Machine Guns defending against LAX and No Limit. It was a bit on the spot-fest side of things, but a good one at that with the Guns successfully defending after hitting their Made in Detroit signature finish for the pin.

-Abyss and Matt Morgan squared off next in the uniquely titled ‘Doomsday Chamber of Blood’ that saw its stipulation being a wrestler cannot score a fall unto they make their adversary bleed. With that, we saw the use of tacks, glass shards and chairs resulting in the expected bloodbath. This Lockdown also took place while Abyss was a little ways into his ‘escaped mental facility’ version of his character and he referenced in a pre-match interview seeking therapy to stop weapon violence from one ‘Dr. Stevie.’ That Stevie turned out to be a TNA-debuting Stevie Richards fresh off his WWECW run who distracted Abyss by taking away a chair from him that caused Morgan to hit his finish for the win. This match gets the honors of being my annual induction for being a solid lock for the eventual WWE home video release of ‘Top 50 OMG Moments of TNA/Impact.’ -The Knockouts Title was on the line next in a triple threat with Awesome Kong defending against Angelina Love and Taylor Wilde. Unfortunately a freak concussion happened to Angelina Love a couple minutes in after she took a cross-body from Wilde. She looked on auto-pilot while Wilde tried to bide time with a hold, but eventually they got the call to go home and Wilde took a weak kick from a handcuffed Kong for the awkward sudden victory. Hate to see it whenever this happens, but this was still a few years before the concussion controversies gained steam in the NFL and before WWE and TNA banned head chair-shots, so part of me was surprised TNA did the right thing and quickly ended the match when they realized something was not right, so good on them for that.

-Both the TNA Tag Titles and IWGP Tag Titles were simultaneously up for grabs next between Team 3D and Beer Money. The announcers and promo package did a tremendous job hyping up this match for who would be the king of the tag teams and making this match have the vibe of a homecoming for Team 3D due to their ECW roots. All wrestlers left the cage within seconds of starting the match (they would be among many to do so throughout the night) and did a ECW-esque brawl throughout the crowd for old time’s sake! Eventually the action came back inside and saw a few good highspots that got the crowd and me rolling and finishing with Team 3D getting the feel good win after hitting Roode with a 3D through a table. -TNA’s version of War Games, Lethal Lockdown, happened next. It saw AJ Styles, Jeff Jarrett, Christopher Daniels and Samoa Joe team up against Kurt Angle, Scott Steiner, Booker T and Kevin Nash. Seeing how worn down Kurt Angle looked in his farewell match earlier this year it is remarkable how much better he looked ten years prior. He looks about 30 years younger! Highlights of this Lethal Lockdown see Steiner hitting impressive top rope suplexes and Franken-steiners to a big crowd pop and Scotty responded by doing an aggressive flurry of bird flipping motions to the Philly crowd before they could conjure up a ‘You Still Got It’ chant. After Jarrett entered last and the roof of the cage locked down with weapons on top, AJ and Angle quickly ascended on top of the cage roof with a big spot coming from AJ doing a splash through the roof of the cage onto a few Main Event Mafia members to a big reaction. The finish occurred when AJ got the pin on Booker T when Jarrett hit him with a guitar after Jarrett teased turning on AJ. TNA had another former WWE-debut immediately after the match though with Bobby Lashley having an odd motorcycle-themed tron and theme-song package as he posed to the crowd and did…..nothing else of note. This would be the first of two runs for Lashley in TNA where he eventually evolved into a pretty decent act before he went back to WWE last year.

-The main event saw Sting defend his world title against Mick Foley. I recall not being into Foley’s ‘executive shareholder’ authority figure character here where he was squabbling with Sting for calling him out for being inactive and being portrayed as losing his marbles. He continues that characterization by pounding his forehead to bust himself open at the very beginning of the match. Foley looks like he got himself in decent shape in time for this match, but he could not go like he use to by this point in 2009 as this was mostly a kick and punch affair until in a baffling booking decision, Foley attacks a cameraman for being in his way, only moments later to demand that same cameraman to hand him an out of reach barbed-wire bat from outside the ring, to which the cameraman who just got pummeled by Foley quickly acquiesces to. After beating down on Sting with the bat for a while the two engage in a anticlimactic climbing-over-the-cage affair that Foley gets the best of to become the new TNA World champion in an underwhelming headlining bout. The two put on a good effort, and I hate to slight Foley, but he and the odd booking dragged things down a couple notches to the ‘alright’ quality level. -This was a 50/50 night for the eight PPV matches. On one hand we had the off night for the women and the mediocre Doomsday and world title matches, but on the other we had two standout tag title matches, easily the best X-Scape match yet and better-than-usual Lethal Lockdown bout. Overall I would have to say the good outweighs the bad and will give 2009 Lockdown a solid thumbs-up. Join me next time as we enter the first of four Lockdowns that transpired during the not-so-highly-regarded Hogan/Bishoff run! Past Wrestling Blogs Best of WCW Clash of Champions Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 2 Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 3 Biggest Knuckleheads Bobby The Brain Heenan Daniel Bryan: Just Say Yes Yes Yes DDP: Positively Living Dusty Rhodes WWE Network Specials ECW Unreleased: Vol 1 ECW Unreleased: Vol 2 ECW Unreleased: Vol 3 Eric Bishoff: Wrestlings Most Controversial Figure Fight Owens Fight: The Kevin Owens Story For All Mankind Goldberg: The Ultimate Collection Hulk Hogans Unreleased Collectors Series Impact Wresting Presents: Best of Hulk Hogan Its Good to Be the King: The Jerry Lawler Story The Kliq Rules Ladies and Gentlemen My Name is Paul Heyman Legends of Mid South Wrestling Macho Man: The Randy Savage Story Memphis Heat NXT: From Secret to Sensation NXT Greatest Matches Vol 1 OMG Vol 2: Top 50 Incidents in WCW History OMG Vol 3: Top 50 Incidents in ECW History Owen: Hart of Gold RoH Supercard of Honor 2010-Present ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Scott Hall: Living on a Razors Edge Sting: Into the Light Straight Outta Dudley-ville: Legacy of the Dudley Boyz Straight to the Top: Money in the Bank Anthology Superstar Collection: Zach Ryder Then Now Forever – The Evolution of WWEs Womens Division TLC 2017 TNA Lockdown 2005-2016 Top 50 Superstars of All Time Tough Enough: Million Dollar Season True Giants Ultimate Fan Pack: Roman Reigns Ultimate Warrior: Always Believe War Games: WCWs Most Notorious Matches Warrior Week on WWE Network Wrestlemania 3: Championship Edition Wrestlemania 28-Present The Wrestler (2008) Wrestling Road Diaries Too Wrestling Road Diaries Three: Funny Equals Money Wrestlings Greatest Factions WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2015 WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2015 WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2016 WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2016 WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2017

[edh-a-to-z]

Modern Horizons - Blue

Ah, a new take on Modern Masters.

And you know what that means! New toys and reprints for EDH!

Gotta grind these before the next set spoilers come out…this week.

Archmage’s Charm

Grade: A-

Home: Most Blue Decks

Range: Very Wide

Ah, charms. Who doesn’t like 3 options!

Feels like Cryptic Command lite, and you can do a Cancel, Divination, or steal a nice Mana rock. She’s never the best counterspell, but she’s a swiss army knife most of the time.

Bazaar Trademaster

Grade: C

Home: Blink Decks, Graveyard Decks

Range: Narrow

Getting some draw, filling the yard, and having a solid body makes for an attractive creature. I don’t like net card loss, but EDH makes use of a lot of graveyard strategies, so there’s some serious potential here.

On the other hand, beware of net card loss if you can’t take advantage of it, and at the end of the day a 3/4 Flyer isn’t huge for EDH.

Echo of Eons

Grade: A-

Home: Sadistic Blue decks

Range: Average

Doing this twice feels mean.

I love messing with other players, and stocking up on a new hand of cards. On top of getting a ton of discard triggers (Leovold would have loved this, but other mill or discard commanders will love it to) and draw triggers, flashback for 2U makes it even more fun to play out of the yard - that’s if you’re not already casting it for free.

Flusterstorm

Grade: A-

Home: Any deck going into multiplayer

Range: Very Wide

EDH faces far more Instants and Sorceries that can be game ending out nowhere, or board wipes to interrupt your lovely board state, or a pumped up Fireball about to kill your weakest opponent - and put you on the chopping block. 

Optimally you can make this cost more than your opponent has available to deal with. Usually this will be a minimum of (2), but can be higher from other players interacting - some may help you if they know you have a Flusterstorm, or you can play cheap spells first.

It can whiff (it always seems to whiff for me) as it can’t deal with creatures, planeswalkers, enchantments, artifacts, so there’s plenty of scenarios where it fails you, or your opponent has extra mana up to deal with your tax, but (U) is a fair cost for an occasional ace in your sleeve.

Fact or Fiction

Grade: C+

Home: Any Blue Deck

Range: Very Wide

Usually a draw 2-3 at instant speed for 4 is fine. I’ve even done 4-1 splits when I know something is an opponent’s combo piece.

And even if they get put in the graveyard, so what? That’s basically your second hand in EDH.

Force of Negation

Grade: B+

Home: Blue Counterspells, Combo Decks

Range: Narrow

While it doesn’t replace Force of Will due to the limited card types, having a second free counterspell is never a wrong choice. Exiling the counterspell is occasionnaly useful, but doesn’t really make the card. Being at Cancel cost makes it okay to hard cast as well as a backup use case.

Future Sight

Grade: C

Home: Spellslinger Deck, Any Blue Deck

Range: Very Wide

Always a nice toy for EDH decks that want to cast a lot. And I mean a lot of spells. Functionally at least an extra card in hand, it lets you really play out of your library well. And if you can remove all your lands and make your spells free...well, you’ve already broken the game, and this just makes it smoother.

Marit Lage’s Slumber

Grade: C+

Home: Snow Decks

Range: Narrow

Solid usage in a Scapeshift deck that can cheat out extra basic snow lands, as well as a deck that recur the enchantment and utilize Mirror Gallery effects to pump out Marit Lage tokens.

Honestly, if your opponents can’t deal with one big token, they didn’t bring the right removal.

Mirrodin Besieged 

Grade: B

Home: Artifact Decks, Cheerio Artifacts

Range: Narrow

An artifact synergy spell is nice, and not having a clause that limits it to once a turn helps a lot. Then you can blink it and choose Phyrexian and have an alt win con ready to go.

In an artifact deck that can really spit out cheap artifacts (and some back from the graveyard that you’re stocking), it makes a great alternate win-con alongside Mechanized Construction.

Rebuild

Grade: C-

Home: Cheap Mana Rocks, ?

Range: Sideboard

Nice removal against artifact heavy decks, good at recycling mana rocks, good for dodging mass artifact removal against you.

Probably has some wicked combo I’m not capable of thinking up.

All that on top of the option to cycle it out makes it a solid choice to have in your collection, if not in any particular deck.

Tribute Mage

Grade: C+

Home: Any Artifact deck needing 2 CMC tutoring

Range: Very Wide

Two mana is the right size for Signets, which every multicolor deck can utilize, as well as fun equipment like Illusionist’s Bracers and Nim Deathmantle. Fun 2 CMC artifacts include Baleful Strix, Ethersworn Canonist, and the Mana Myr cycle.

A solid swiss army knife to have.

Urza, Lord High Artificer 

Grade: A

Home: Artifacts, Combo Decks

Range: Wide

The high synergy with artifacts, ability to combo out a ton of mana, and being able to dump that out into your library, Urza is a butt-kicking card.

Decent target for blinking a Karn-made token.

His second ability feels like something like Opposition-level power - just tapping artifacts (equipment and creatures doing double duty) instantly, and color fixing to Blue if you need. It’s not game breaking, but certainly is powerful.

With shuffling, it’s a lot harder to cheese this ability - assuming you haven’t exiled all but 1 card of your library, a la Doomsday.

POSSIBLE

Choking Tethers - I really like the utility of opening up one player to get pounded on by the rest of the table, and Cycling makes sure it’s never dead

Cunning Evasion - Feels like a Blue Reconnaissance, which I occasionally like for fun shenanigans

Everdream - Tacking on a cantrip for 2U feels weird, but when you’re doing a ton of 1 CMC Instants, it might be worth it

Faerie Seer - Small fliers can find some play, ETB is fine, creature types are relevant 

Iceberg Cantrix - Might have some Snow fun Scapeshift style, but I’m including it for the memes

Man O’ War - A workhorse even in EDH. Not spectacular, but fun for Blinking decks, or the padding out the fist version of a deck shell

Mist-Syndicate Naga - Not sure how good it’ll be unless it’s constantly swapping out for Ninjas, but it has some potential. Extra bodies is always good, but 3/1 doesn’t impress me much

Moonblade Shinobi - Decent Ninja, and adds a Flying Illusion that makes follow up attacks with Ninjutsu work

Phantom Ninja - An unblockable creature with a relevant creature type. Nominal usage in the gimmicky Ninja deck

Rain of Revelation - Instant speed triple draw and beats Sift now, makes for a decent Blue card for slower decks that want to play on other players turns

Oneirophage - In draw heavy decks, an evasive creature that can have explosive growth makes it much better than your average big dumb flyer

Scour All Possibilities - Sorcery really hurts this, but doing it twice helps. Digging three deep can be interesting.

Scuttling Sliver - Weak for a Sliver IMO, as tapping rarely seems to be relevant, as you’re always kinda snowballing anyway, and Untapping for tricks and extra abilities doesn’t seem to compare to flooding the field with bodies.

Smoke Shroud - More fun for Ninja Tribal - evasion, cheap recursion of an aura and a buff

Spell Snuff - Strictly better Cancel, so decent

Watcher for Tomorrow - Draw this slow feels week, but okay for a 2 drop

NAY

Blizzard Strix - Weak ETB with a condition on meh stats

Chillerpillar - Too much of a hoop to jump through for too little rewards

Exclude - It’s fine, but limitations on

Eyekite - Weak best case scenario

Phantasmal Form - Trick not worth a slot or cost

Pondering Mage - Expensive for a 3/4 with Ponder

Prohibit - Two weak cases for EDH, and paying more without a hard counter, this is trash

Scour All Possibilities  - Weak double draw is disappointing

Stream of Thought - Unless it’s part of an infinite mana combo, not worth it. Even then, there are better options.

String of Disappearances - Cute call back, but not for EDH.

Twisted Reflection - Tricks bad for EDH

Windcaller Aven - Even with cycling, it’s meh

Winter’s Rest - Meh removal with conditions

That’s all for now campers!

[sol1056]

Do you think they couldn't make other characters queer cause of copyright? As far as my knowledge goes (correct me if i'm wrong bc I'm confused) Shiro belongs to the first itineration of Voltron, Go Lion! and Koplars are the owners of the American version. The post-s8 tea on Twitter said they weren't given permission of changing last names, what if was the same with sexualities? Koplar's Shiro, Sven was coupled with Romelle but I think Go Lion's Shiro didn't have anyone, so it was an easy pick?

That’s not really the way copyright works. 

Shiro belongs to DreamWorks, full stop, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. The same goes for Allura, Pidge, Hunk, Keith, Lance, Coran, Kolivan, Krolia, Zarkon, Lotor, Haggar/Honerva, and any other iteration of the characters as they are presented in DreamWork’s version. 

Note: I’m not saying that Shiro wasn’t a character in GoLion. I’m saying that the Shiro-of-GoLion is a character copyrighted by Toei Animation; Shiro-of-VLD is a character copyrighted by DreamWorks; Shiro of… well, any other iteration would be copyrighted by whomever created that iteration. 

It’s a complicated and heavily-legislated area of the law, but here’s the core idea boiled down into a single statement: your creation is copyrighted the instant you “fix it in a tangible medium of expression”.   

That is, you cannot copyright an idea; you can only copyright a distinct implementation. Furthermore, copyright is always owned — automatically upon creation — by the person or company who did the work of setting that idea into its concrete state. 

Behind the cut: copyrighting characters, withholding character information, cultural hot buttons, and where do we go from here. 

note #1: there is one exception, known as “work-for-hire,” where employees create something on behalf of an employer. This must known beforehand and made explicit via some kind of agreement. If you read the fine print, there’ll be a work-for-hire clause in most employee or contractor agreements.

note #2: yes, this does mean you could create a mecha series where the robots are all big lions, or a mecha series where animal-based mecha combine. It would probably end up in court anyway ‘cause companies get prickly about protecting their IPs, but afaik the court’s decision would hinge on whether your implementation is different enough.

(this is why I scoff so much at the EPs being so open about where they steal ideas from: there’s a reason writers talk about filing off the serial numbers. it’s not because we don’t want you to think we get ideas from everywhere. it’s because distinct is also a necessary ingredient for plausible deniability of plagiarism.) 

copyrighting characters

The ‘no last name’ claims are frankly a lot of hot air. 

First, you cannot copyright a character name; you can only copyright the specific and fully-developed character as a whole. (A Meg Murry who’s a South Asian marathon runner? Not a violation of L’Engle.) You could trademark a character name, but only if that name appears in the title; frex, Indiana Jones was able to be trademarked because his name is part of a series of works that all begin with “Indiana Jones.” 

WEP could trademark Voltron (as the mecha’s name), but doesn’t look like WEP chose to do so. Recent research seems to indicate WEP actually embraces and supports non-media products (that is, things that are obviously not their adaptation-of-an-anime) using the name, possibly on the theory this wide usage increases the name’s recognition and cultural cachet.

Second, consider Devil’s Due Publishing (DDP), which gave every character a full name, new biography, age, height, and family history. It retains its copyright over those characters, but only as whole characters. You could make your Keith Kogane an orphan in his mid-20s who’s distinctly anti-social, and you’d probably be fine, because that description is still more of a stereotype than a distinct/unique character. 

To quote the legal encyclopedia:

Judge Learned Hand of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit established the standard for character protection in a case called Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp., 45 F.2d 119 (2d Cir. 1930), when he stated that, “the less developed the characters, the less they can be copyrighted; that is the penalty an author must bear for marking them too indistinctly.”

For example, alien characters stranded on Earth is a popular and recurring theme as portrayed in My Favorite Martian, Starman, Alien Nation, Transformers, District 9, Predators, and The Man Who Fell to Earth. The idea of a stranded alien character, without embellishment, is not protectable.

[…] once a stranded alien character acquires more distinctive features or aspects—for example, a big-headed, long-necked alien with a glowing finger who murmurs “Phone home”—it becomes distinct enough to merit protection and its owners can prevent others from using the character’s image and expression.

If you make your misanthropic orphan named Keith also a former Marine, and an expert in hand-to-hand combat, and grieving a dead fiancee… He’s no longer a stereotype, but a character with a unique combination of features. DDP probably would have grounds to send you a cease-and-desist. 

However, if you say Keith Kogane is a lonely kid from Texas with an alien mom and a fireman dad, who’s the best damn pilot of his generation, and is generally awkward and whose silence hides a whip-smart intellect… again, a unique combination that fleshes out generic ‘Keith’ into a very specific and distinct Keith. Who is not, it should be noted, a carbon-copy of DDP’s Keith.

And the real nail in the coffin: if you’re going to argue that it’s a copyright violation to use Keith’s or Lance’s or Hunk’s last names, then why wouldn’t the same apply to using their first names? Or using names like Daibazaal, Sincline, Lotor, Honerva, Haggar, Alfor, Yurak, etc. Pretty sure ‘Zarkon’ isn’t a name you see everyday. I mean, it’s not, say, ‘Bob.’ 

withholding information

I’ve seen staff from another DW project say they can’t specify character ages until marketing decides. Which is… truly bizarre. If DW really is having marketing make such creative decisions, it’s not just putting the cart before the horse, it’s putting the cart in the jewelry store and the horse in the attic. 

If marketing or PR is anywhere in the mix, perhaps that’s because someone with social media savvy has realized topics like ethnicity and age will bring out the vitriolic teeny meanies of the Fandom Purity Police Brigade. Thing is, that doesn’t hold water, either: Trollhunters gave us ages and grade-in-school.

There could be another layer, too. The EPs I saw in those earliest interviews clearly had little firsthand experience with fandom, and seemed startled to hear fans actually care about those details. Two years of their interviews, and I have the strong sense they don’t like losing what they see as a battle of wills, no matter who their opponent is. Fandom cries out for surnames? Fandom will never get it. Fandom likes this couple over that one? Fandom is heading for severe disappointment. And so on. 

That’s ignoring the praise the EPs enjoyed for fandom’s conflation of a Korean-American VA and a Korean studio’s aesthetics, to see Keith himself as non-white. The EPs got representation points, and didn’t have to do a thing; the fandom did it for them. Why mess with that?

But no, copyright has nothing to do with that. 

cultural hot buttons

Sexuality, gender, and ethnicity are three places that a franchisee could run into problems, because these are hot buttons in the US. If the franchise owner feels a particular tangible form (this specific character in this specific iteration) violates the franchise’s ‘family-friendly’ aspect of their brand… I’d bet the contract between the parties does give the franchise owner some right of refusal or revision. 

Set aside what you think of VLD’s beginning, middle, or end. For all LM’s other faults, that sketch she did so long ago highlights all three: gender (Pidge), race (Keith and Allura), and sexuality (Shiro). We may’ve had to wait for an unfortunately tacked-on epilogue to get explicit confirmation*, but in the end, VLD was a significant break from previous Voltron iterations. 

Where, exactly, is anyone getting the impression that WEP is so terribly upset about its princess no longer being white, one of its pilots no longer being male, or another pilot no longer being straight? Whatever Bob Koplar might think of VLD’s end, his statement on the day of S8′s release made clear WEP is eager to continue their partnership with DW. 

Sounds to me like WEP is okay with DW’s creative and cultural approach. Otherwise, why go back for more? 

* edited to clarify, per @inklingdancer‘s tag

moving right along

It ultimately doesn’t matter what a previous iteration did. So long as DW’s creation is fully its own, copyright is neither barrier nor impetus to providing (or withholding) any information about that creation. 

What DW creates, DW owns. Which means DW is free to tell us last names, middle names, heights, ages, family history, race, gender, sexuality, love interest, even most hated food or favorite color — or nothing at all.