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jackstockhypno · 7 months ago

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Why Doesn't Hypnosis Work For You? (Ep.1)

In this first talk, I go in depth on why hypnosis might not be working for you, and what you can do to make it work.

There are common pitfalls and individual issues that prevent it from happening to you.

I also talk about using different types of content from different creators, and which ones will work best.

Subliminals could be a solution, but usually only for a particular type of person. Do healing frequency audios work?

To get a better idea on your ideal solution, we need to go deeper and talk about all of it in this audio.

Transcript:

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Let's start off by saying hypnosis is kind of hard.

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Well, at least it's hard to get right.

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It's one of those things that's actually surprisingly easy to get into, but surprisingly hard to master.

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So it's not always easy to create things that work for everyone and things that work every time.

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There's so many people that will come to me and say, it's just impossible for me to be hypnotized.

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They say it just doesn't work or that nothing really happens or maybe they feel a

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little bit of sensation.

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But it's nothing like the hypnotist ever says.

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I mean, the hypnotist might say 100 times more powerful and it certainly doesn't feel like 100 times.

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Perhaps you have been in that situation before.

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I mean, you probably have been, because most subjects are this way.

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It's only that small percentage of people,

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I don't know what percentage it is,

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but I do know it is a minority,

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that experience every single suggestion at this level.

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There are many that would love to get there.

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But I must ask you, do you really want to be there?

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Because that type of person is not just more easily hypnotizable.

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They have certain characteristics about them, certain traits.

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These people have a different purpose in life than you might.

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I don't know about you, but I believe that all people have a certain purpose.

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However, it is not always readily apparent.

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In fact, none of us ever really understand our purpose.

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So I would like to ask you,

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the listener right now,

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does being that hypnotically suggestible sound like it helps your purpose?

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Of course, it's not some matter of other people being more brainwashed than others.

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That's a totally separate discussion.

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All people are on their own paths and are influenced in different ways.

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They are reached in the way that they are reached.

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But I think that you want to be really susceptible.

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But you still want just enough control left to be able to cancel it out if things go a little too far.

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I think that this is the main thing that is preventing people from going into a state of trance.

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Of course, that doesn't mean everyone.

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And of course, that may not mean you.

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Because everyone is so particular, so different and unique

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And that means different techniques will work on different people.

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And for most people,

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I think they need to be felt into and understood to really go into that state of

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comfort of allowing your mind to let go.

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There are so many reasons that we have our own hypnotic and non-hypnotic patternings.

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But I hope that some of this explanation helps to clarify what's going on with you personally.

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Though I must admit, I cannot solve whatever is going on with you.

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I think it is solely up to you.

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I mean, there's hypnotists out there that could figure out anyone.

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They are absolute geniuses like that.

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That's not where my particular genius lays.

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These people are admittedly rare.

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I don't think that you and I will bump into one of them.

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All I'm saying is that if you want to know what's going on with you hypnotically

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that's preventing your trance,

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you gotta figure this out yourself.

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Because no one is coming to save us.

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The great thing,

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though,

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is that just you listening to this right now is training you to be more open-minded,

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thoughtful,

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and aware of what's going on with you.

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But not just that.

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You're probably quite used to hearing me do hypnosis on you.

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And you'll find this quite hypnotic.

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In fact, it's hard for me to talk about these things without speaking in that hypnotic tone that I have.

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Which brings up another point.

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Are you really aware of when you are going into trance?

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I mean,

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there's those points where you're driving down the highway and for a minute or so

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you go into a trance.

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Maybe for hours you go into a trance.

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You're still aware.

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You're not sleepy, hopefully.

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but the time seems to slip away at least you can't really remember what happened at

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those times there were cars that passed or you passed cars there was trees highways

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signs roads and not much else

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You don't think of it as trance.

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And that's what I want your experience of trance to be,

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so that you could be still walking around,

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going about your day,

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and still experiencing those lower depths of the mind.

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And this is what a movie is intended to do for you.

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Not only do you feel things,

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you see,

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you hear things,

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you are entertained by the movie,

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but it brings you into its world,

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into a sort of trance.

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But we wouldn't call it that.

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And so, at its best, I think that trance could be natural like that.

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And so it's important for you to identify what you really want.

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Is it this traditional sort of hypnosis thing?

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You know, a man dressed like a magician.

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Maybe he's got a stopwatch.

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Maybe you like it to happen like it does in the movies.

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Because, of course, it's not always like the movies.

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I truly want you to understand what's going on with you so that you can have your

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discussions with hypnotists or discussions with subjects.

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And once you figure it out, there is that wonderful aha moment.

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It's that moment where the subject says, I thought I could never be hypnotized.

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I tried so much until it finally worked.

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And that experience is bliss.

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When you go into that really deep hypnotic state, there's no way to really describe it.

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The nerve system slows down.

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You are on another frequency of existence.

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Yes, your consciousness goes to a different place.

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That means that it's aware of different things, and it's also doing different things to your body.

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I don't think I could describe a better sensation than that.

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If you've ever experienced it, you know that it is pure bliss.

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And for me, it's about the creation that can come from that.

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It's about the possibility to create whatever you want.

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It's that experience of creating what you want through a state of bliss.

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Who could blame you for going after something like this?

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I think you should.

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Let's see if we can figure that out so that you can experience anything you want,

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get anything you want,

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be anything you want,

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and achieve it through bliss.

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I'm going to speak mostly of content creation,

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but this all applies to in-person sort of hypnosis as well.

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Before you ask yourself, is there something wrong with me?

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Ask yourself, is there something not right about the content that you're listening to?

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Because most content will not work for most people.

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Most hypnosis content only actually works on the most susceptible subjects, the really easy ones.

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And I know they say anyone can do hypnosis,

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but that really just means that anyone could learn a script and hypnotize easy subjects.

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And in today's fast-paced world, I would say that people are less susceptible than ever to hypnosis.

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I mean,

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not only is our attention spans decreasing,

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but we all put this wall up in front of our minds because we know how many

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advertisers and scammers and manipulators are constantly trying to take hold of our minds.

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That makes us defensive.

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It's a whole other discussion of what makes a hypnosis file actually work and not work.

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But you can just ask yourself if the content is simply not it for you.

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Maybe there's another person or another file that will work better for you.

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Sometimes you just don't like a certain technique or a certain suggestion doesn't

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feel right to you,

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doesn't make you feel comfortable.

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And that's totally fine.

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That is totally normal.

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But real quick, there's a couple of things that will tell you if it's going to work right away.

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First is whether they direct things in terms of the present moment or happening in the future.

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Like,

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if I was to give you the suggestion that you will become smarter,

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at first that might seem like a good suggestion,

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especially if you're in a hypnotic state.

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I mean, simple as that, right?

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Well, there's a number of very unoptimized things about that sentence.

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That's putting it really lightly, because I don't think that that suggestion would work at all.

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Except on subjects that are both easy and quite intelligent already.

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there's that suggestion of you will and that is an implication that something's

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going to happen in the future the problem with that is that when we are working

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with hypnosis we're working with the present moment because that's the only thing

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that exists it might blow your mind if you're not a meditator but the past does not

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exist the future does not exist two nanoseconds ago does not exist

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One nanosecond in the future does not exist.

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You are a 3D human,

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which means your consciousness exists in one single point of time,

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and that is called now.

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So if you want that suggestion to stick, you have to say, you are smart now.

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I know it's as simple as that.

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It may seem like something so small, but it is huge.

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Because when we refer to things happening in the future, they stay in the future.

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And when the future comes, it's not actually the future.

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It's now.

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And that thing that you said is in the future, it's still in the future.

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And this will repeat over and over again, continually.

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Do not underestimate this.

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The present moment is everything.

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Now it's not just about the language, but the context.

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It would be great to say, you will become smarter when you do your test.

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Think about your math test now and imagine calculating the numbers correctly,

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understanding the concepts behind the formulas,

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and comprehending what it all means.

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That kind of suggestion has moved you into the present moment, imagining that the future is now.

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After all, your imagination is a preview of the future.

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Now it doesn't mean that the you will become smarter suggestion is a bad suggestion.

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It just means that most subjects will need it a little bit more ideal to be at its

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maximum effectiveness.

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Then there's the subjective parts of the content like, do you like this person's style?

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Do you like their attitude?

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What are their intentions?

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Are you trying to find a therapeutic thing or an erotic thing?

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a self-improvement thing?

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Is there a strong masculine or feminine aspect of this that you're really into?

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There's so many things that will affect it for you.

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Now,

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some might say,

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oh,

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I'd like to listen to subliminals because then my conscious mind will not interrupt.

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And that can work.

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Except subliminals don't work.

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Let me explain.

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The effectiveness of subliminals is so much smaller than the effectiveness of a

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regular dedicated hypnosis file that I don't consider it effective enough.

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I mean, do you want something that works with 15% effectiveness or 100% effectiveness?

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The great thing about subliminals is the placebo effect.

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Don't be afraid of that word, placebo, because placebo is a good thing.

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It is that one thing that all philosophies believe in, but we all call it something else.

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We call it karma, law of attraction.

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Resistance and persistence.

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We call it magic.

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A miracle.

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Acts of God.

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And for many of the scientific community, it's called the placebo effect.

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Or the nocebo effect, if it causes something negative.

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The great thing is that a placebo works even if you know it's a placebo effect.

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Isn't that incredible?

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I mean you can make pretty much anything happen using the placebo effect.

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That's why the gold standard of scientific studies is the double-blind, placebo-controlled test.

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The great thing about subliminals is that you can listen to it doing anything,

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and no one would question it.

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You can layer it over any of the nice sounds that you like.

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And most importantly, you can dedicate it to a focus on something.

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Let's say you wanted to grow your beard thicker,

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so you were listening to a beard growth subliminal,

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which will work,

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by the way,

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as shown by the placebo effect.

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which is so powerful that we have to do controls to get it out of our experiments.

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While listening to that subliminal,

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you are consciously choosing to have thoughts,

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feelings,

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sensations that relate to your own personal feeling of having a big thick beard.

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Maybe you associate it with masculinity, strength, fatherliness.

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Maybe you associate it with that feeling of growth, vitality, or expansion.

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Maybe you like to think of the new hairs sprouting thicker and thicker,

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and that's just a good feeling for you.

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And you can think about this throughout the entire subliminal,

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and you can think about it in your own way.

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And maybe there's parts in the background that relate to that,

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but they don't get in the way of any of that.

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Perhaps subliminals are perfect for people that like to do their own thing without

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too much instruction impeding it.

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I mean, we can't count on the instructions from the subliminals actually being any good.

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Just like I explained earlier, the instructions are not always worded as they could be best worded.

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Or worse, they could be using negatives.

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Like if the hypnosis file says,

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don't stress,

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or don't fear,

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or relax from all the difficulties and stresses of the day.

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That might work for some people, but a lot of us are going to get triggered by that.

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Because these are negative words.

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So a subliminal might ensure that even if the hypnotic language is not perfect,

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it's still going to work for you because you are consciously dedicating yourself to

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that one particular thing and the energy flows where the attention goes.

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Simple as that.

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If you focus on something with intention, a little hint of positivity,

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and a big force of precision, it must come to be.

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There are also some experts who create things based on frequencies.

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There are audio files, you find them all over the internet, of a certain hertz, Hz, or frequency.

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and they combine them with nice musical tracks and sometimes affirmations but not

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always these are these healing vibrational sounds and each frequency has a bit of a

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different tone of course a different flavor that does something different to the

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body lots of them very similar of course

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And overall, the frequencies go from relaxed focus.

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Maybe if you go higher than that, it's like intense focus.

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And if you go a little lower, it starts to become dreamy.

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And when you hit the lowest, it's like pure emptiness, nothingness, like completely unconscious.

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And there is some debate on the exact usage for the different frequencies,

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but getting your brain into them and aligning with them is a fantastic thing.

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And if a subliminal is combined with this,

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you can consciously direct that as the file that gets you the effects you want,

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even if there's no suggestions in it for that.

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Your intention matters,

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and when you intend something,

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the creation that comes from it can look a lot like what you intended.

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Now let's talk about allowing someone else into your mind.

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It's understandable that such a thing could make one apprehensive,

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because at our core,

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we need to be self-regulating to some level.

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And for many of us,

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we had a childhood where we had to self-regulate a lot more than a child should

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need to.

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After all, how do we adapt to situations that are not in our favor?

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We have to self-adapt to that.

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And perhaps you ran into situations where adapting to someone else did not turn out well.

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This is normal and natural.

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I expect all people have had this experience.

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You can't just trust everyone 100%.

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You would run into trouble very quickly, of course.

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So there is that part of your brain now programmed in to protect you from

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automatically following every suggestion of others.

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And that is a good thing.

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That is a fantastic thing.

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We need to give thanks and appreciation to this part of us that protects us.

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And to do that, we simply give awareness to that part of us.

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So that when it comes up and it stops a hypnotic suggestion from working, you say, hey, I recognize you.

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I see what you're doing.

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I know that you're protecting me.

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And in doing so, this part of you can finally let off.

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It's saying, oh, I'm recognized.

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Yes, you have to show this part of you that it has control.

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That it can step in any time that it feels uncomfortable.

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If it feels uneasy about it, it can step in.

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Yes, just the recognition of that.

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will kind of ironically make it go away.

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Because you are trusting first in yourself.

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And then don't force it.

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Allow suggestions to work as they work.

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And I know you really want to make the hypnosis work, but there's a reason that it doesn't.

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You are being protected by a part of you, so let it protect you.

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Whatever in particular the hypnotist said to you, it may not be really meant to work on you.

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Maybe there's something about this that isn't for you.

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Maybe it's just not your thing,

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or it's not in the exact way that it needs to be for you,

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and that's fine.

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Of course, you may or may not have these psychological things going on.

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It could be something else in particular for you,

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and it likely is because we are all so individual and unique.

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Now,

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many of us think of the psychological parts of why you might not be going into

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hypnosis easily,

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but I think one of the most important parts is the physiological parts,

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the body.

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After all, your emotions and thoughts, most of it actually stored in the body.

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Yes, I know your brain organizes it, but it does so by connecting it through the entire nerve system.

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A nerve system that is constantly reading what's going on within each part of the body, each organ.

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Every single millimeter of every finger, every muscle fiber.

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And then the way that the nervous system interacts with all of the bacteria natural of the body.

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It's complex, but it is in the body.

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So there's a few basics to check off to make sure that you are physically able to

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be hypnotized,

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able to focus in an optimum way.

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And perhaps this type of hypnosis you want involves relaxing and letting go.

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It doesn't have to, but it's usually so much nicer when it does involve those things.

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And you need your body in its optimum order in order to do that properly.

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And that means achieving the basics.

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Staying hydrated, eating good food, getting good sleep.

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I know, it's not exciting, but we all know it works.

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People that are doing more optimum things with their body are easier to hypnotize.

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They are functioning properly, tuned in, hydrated, well slept.

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They are feeling well.

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Simple as this.

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Drink some fresh juice.

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Go for a walk.

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Stretch.

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And then listen to some hypnosis.

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And watch how incredibly effective it becomes.

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And that's only the effect of half an hour.

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literally just 2% of the day.

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Imagine the compound effect of doing that every day, once a day, because it all adds together.

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Maybe you throw in some hard exercise every second day or even third day.

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You end up with not just a more easily hypnotizable mind, but a lot of fantastic knock-on effects.

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You live in better health and happiness and all of your goals become more achievable.

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It's all a big formula and everything that you do adds to the experience or takes away from it.

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Now what is the best format for you?

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Is it audio or is it reading?

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Or is it even video?

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Because for me, text hypnosis works quite well.

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I think for most, audio seems to work best.

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Maybe I'm just visual,

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or I find that the audio might interrupt with my mind,

(00:29:27):

or perhaps it's because I can go at the exact pace that I need to go.

(00:29:34):

All I know is that it works best for me, so what works best for you?

(00:29:41):

I think reading books is a fantastic way to enhance your experience of hypnosis,

(00:29:49):

no matter if you experience it by audio or by reading.

(00:29:56):

Because reading can train your brain to go into that brainwave level that is a bit lower.

(00:30:05):

And we want that lower brainwave level because it is closer to hypnosis.

(00:30:11):

it moves your natural state a little bit lower.

(00:30:16):

It gets you used to it, and then your brain wants to go down a bit all the time.

(00:30:24):

There's also that effect of the left-to-right motion of reading.

(00:30:30):

And not many people talk about this.

(00:30:32):

I find that fascinating.

(00:30:35):

But during REM, rapid eye movement sleep, that's when you dream.

(00:30:41):

Your eyes are going left to right, back and forth, back and forth.

(00:30:47):

and this is what you're doing when you're reading you read from one side to the

(00:30:52):

other and you switch back and you do it again you do this continuously over and

(00:30:58):

over again and because you are looking in both directions it signals to both sides

(00:31:07):

of the brain it wakes up both sides it encourages the brain to begin processing

(00:31:14):

things

(00:31:16):

using all of the brain power that it has.

(00:31:20):

This encourages you to do the same thing under hypnosis.

(00:31:25):

You are learning to learn when you read.

(00:31:29):

And hypnosis is learning.

(00:31:36):

Let's finish off by talking about your expectations.

(00:31:41):

Because I think a lot of hypnotists and maybe even subjects set this strangely high

(00:31:49):

bar for what should happen under hypnosis.

(00:31:53):

They say that they should be in control of your body,

(00:31:57):

or they say that you should experience something at 1,000 times level,

(00:32:04):

when it just doesn't make any sense.

(00:32:09):

You might be trying to get outlandish things to work on you immediately,

(00:32:14):

and then you might feel like,

(00:32:16):

oh,

(00:32:17):

I'm not such a good subject.

(00:32:19):

I think that's preposterous.

(00:32:23):

Remember that anything is possible, truly, but be reasonable with your expectations.

(00:32:32):

You may have some inner or outer work to do.

(00:32:36):

You may need to find different content or a different creator.

(00:32:43):

You may need to experience it in person or at least live with somebody.

(00:32:50):

You may need text or audio.

(00:32:54):

You might need someone to touch you physically and most likely it could be your own

(00:33:02):

unique thing and maybe a combination of the things that I've discussed here today.

(00:33:11):

I want you to figure out what's going on with you because knowing what's going on

(00:33:16):

is the most important part and will help you move forward.

(00:33:23):

If you want to listen to my hypnosis files,

(00:33:25):

I have a self-improvement,

(00:33:27):

self-transformation website,

(00:33:30):

transformhypnosis.com,

(00:33:33):

and you can find an awesome selection there to create anything that you desire.

(00:33:41):

Thank you so much for listening.

(00:33:43):

Let me know what's going on with you in a comment below.

(00:33:47):

Have you figured it out yet?

(00:33:50):

Let me know if you have or not.

(00:33:52):

Let me know if this has helped.

(00:33:56):

Share some tips for others,

(00:33:58):

because these discussions that you create there,

(00:34:02):

they help out a lot of people.

(00:34:04):

So please leave a comment.

Connect with me at TransformHypnosis.com

#jacksonstock #jackstock #male hypnotist #hypnosis #hypnotized #hypnotic #podcast #Jackson Stock #Transform Hypnosis #hypnotherapy #hypnotize #conversational hypnosis #hypnotism #hypnotist #Why Hypnosis Doesn't Work For You #TransformHypnosis.com #Youtube

12 notes · View notes

weepingfromacedartree · 1 year ago

Text

Ten Milestones: Travelling Together

Hi friends!!!

New chapter up for anyone interested! (It's a big one.)

CW: alcohol // drinking to excess

In an instant, Penelope knows that this one will be good. (Or even more likely — bad.)

Colin’s smile gleams with the reflection of his phone screen. He’s practically giddy when he recites the text in front of him.

“Number Five: Travelling Together. Nothing tests a relationship quite like taking it out of its typical environment. Just like marriage, there will be many highs and lows on your first trip as a couple. For as fun and exciting as a vacation may be, there are a million things that could go wrong during your time away from home. A holiday away with your partner will test how you handle communication, problem-solving, compromise, and more. If you are with the right person, even the most disastrous trips will be worth it.”

At those last few words, Penelope cannot help but laugh.

“Too bad I’m dating a seasoned traveller who always handles our holiday plans perfectly. If only something went wrong on one of our trips; now, we’ll never know how we react to disaster abroad.”

“Yeah.” Colin rolls his eyes, giddiness already abandoned. “If only.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Five Years Earlier: June 6th, 2018

Relationship Status: Not Dating

꙳

Day 0

Over the course of the last three years, finding Colin Bridgerton in a London pub has become an exceedingly rare feat. He spent most of that time in cities with different time zones than this one, and even his brief trips home left him little time for leisurely activities. This particular break from his travels, though longer than usual, has been as busy as ever.

He arrived back in London on April 7th. He was actually meant to remain in New York for two more weeks, but changed his plans at the last minute. This choice was fueled by a variety of reasons, one of the most salient being his fears of missing his first nephew’s birth, had he come early. In the end, Auggie showed up two days late, but Colin couldn’t complain about having the extra time at home.

The last two months were busy. Colin and Benedict found a flat together in Bloomsbury. (Colin needed somewhere other than his mum’s place to stay during his trips home. Benedict needed out of a toxic roommates-with-benefits situation he had found himself in.) Francesca graduated from Edinburgh. Penelope completed her postgraduate degree at UCL. Colin signed a freelance contract with a local travel magazine. Simon announced his upcoming Parliament campaign. Hyacinth starred in a surprisingly bloody musical production of Carrie. Just last night, Anthony informed Colin and Benedict of his plans to propose to his girlfriend Kate later this summer. (Gregory had been excluded from that conversation due to his abysmal track record at keeping secrets.)

Life in London has been so busy these last two months that this particular trip to the pub had to be rescheduled three times. But they’re here now, and Colin supposes that’s all that matters.

“I don’t have to get a beer, do I?”

Penelope is standing right beside him, and yet she has to practically scream in order to be heard. For noon on a Wednesday, the pub is surprisingly packed.

Colin looks around, taking in the pub’s antique style and limited selection of bottles and taps on the back wall.

“Honestly? I don’t know. Even water might be out of the question.”

Penelope doesn’t say anything to that. Instead, she pulls a face expressing her disappointment. A distinctive “V” forms in the centre of her forehead, at which Colin can only laugh.

“Why would you choose this place if you loathe the taste of beer? We’re celebrating you, in case you forgot.”

Penelope keeps her eyes trained forward, as though she’s searching for something in the darkest corner of this room. With a deadly serious tone, she tells him, “They have the best fish and chips in Mayfair. If I go thirsty, so be it.”

Colin laughs again, but nods in agreement. She has a point.

While away on his travels, he misses his family and friends more than anything else. He would be lying if he said proper fish and chips wasn’t a close third.

Penelope opens her mouth to say something else, but shuts it when she sees the hostess re-emerge before them. She beckons them to follow her, then leads them to a particularly dimly lit booth in the back of the room.

“What can I get ya both to drink?”

Penelope opens her mouth to say something, but before she can, Colin clears his throat.

“Do you have anything other than beer available? Sorry — I know. I just loathe the taste of it. It always tastes like grass to —”

His words stop short when the tip of Penelope’s trainer collides with his shin. When he looks over, he finds that her eyes are verging on vengeful; he has to bite his tongue to prevent himself from giggling.

“We got vodka,” the waitress supplies skeptically. With knitted eyebrows, she looks to the bar over her shoulder. “I think.”

“Brilliant. Two vodka sodas, then.”

Penelope still appears cross when he looks over to her again. Thankfully, her frown is all but abandoned by the time the waitress returns with their drinks.

“To UCL.” He raises his glass. “And to those determined and lucky enough to survive it.”

After huffing out a single laugh, Penelope rolls her eyes.

“I graduated. I didn’t survive the Great War.” Before he can think up another quip, she taps her glass against his. “But thank you.”

“So, now that you’re free from the constraints of higher education… Any plans for the summer?”

Penelope shrugs, raising her glass to her lips.

“Not really. Just figuring out what to do next, now that uni’s over.”

“Next?” Colin echoes, genuinely confused. “What happened to working at Danbury’s magazine?”

“That’s not a done deal.” She shrugs again. “My final interview was yesterday, and I haven’t heard back from them yet. If I don’t get it —”

“You will. Obviously.”

Penelope picks up her glass, and Colin watches as her eyes roll from over the top of it. She takes a sip that drains about half her cup.

“Not necessar—”

“Pen, they would be mental not to hire you. The job is yours for the taking.”

Something new passes on Penelope’s face for a moment. Doubt, maybe. Or maybe it’s curiosity. In a brighter light, maybe Colin would be able to read her better.

“And what makes you so confident in that conclusion?”

“Because you’re accomplished, brilliant, and perfect for the job.” He takes a sip of his own drink, short and syrupy sweet. “Plus, you’ve known the CEO since you were born. That always helps.”

Penelope snorts in spite of herself.

“I pray nepotism is not the determining factor in their decision.”

“We both know you’re more than qualified. Does it matter what the determining factor is in a foregone conclusion?”

Penelope answers his question with nothing more than a simple shrug.

“And what of your plans for the summer?” she asks in a shameless attempt to change the subject. To take the spotlight off herself. “It’s unlike you to stay grounded at home this long.”

“Disappointed in the sudden lack of content on my blog?”

That statement was meant to be lighthearted, but when spoken aloud, Colin can’t help but detect an edge of bitterness to his own voice. If Penelope hears it too, she doesn’t let on. She laughs.

“No. As much as I love your updates, I can’t say I’m ‘disappointed’ in having you home a little longer than usual. I just thought you would be restless by now.”

“A bit. But you know… That’s inevitable.”

Penelope’s face shifts again. Even in the shadows, Colin can tell she does not know what he means.

“After three years of doing it nonstop, I’ve come to realise that the best parts of travel are the coming and the going. Arriving in a new location is always exciting and full of a million different possibilities, but inevitably that excitement fades away. No matter how fulfilling your experiences are in that place, there will always, inevitably come a time when you’re ready to leave. When you’re reminded that the place you’re in isn’t home — that your time there is up. Then you return home, and it’s refreshing and comfortable, and then it’s not. Life gets tedious and you grow restless and that inevitable cycle starts anew.”

Colin looks down at his drink, already growing watery due to the surplus of ice cubes in the cocktail. When he looks back up at Penelope, her eyes have grown even softer than usual.

“But I have spent far too much time away from home these past few years. I can stand a bit of restlessness for a little while longer.” He takes another sip of his drink. “Especially if it means having these sorts of conversations with you in a pub instead of over voicemail.”

Penelope doesn’t say anything in response to that. Her lips twist into a sort of smile, scrunched together and pulled to the side. When her lips finally part, she asks, “So when are you going again?”

Colin grimaces, suddenly struck by the fact that the date of his next flight is not all too far away. And due to the new contract, he couldn’t delay it even if he wanted to.

“About two weeks. Venice first, then I’ll be travelling around Italy for the rest of the summer.”

“That sounds exciting,” Penelope offers. There’s a far less complicated, albeit noticeably reserved smile on her lips.

“Yeah. Of course.”

It grows quiet between them for a second longer than Colin deems comfortable. He jerks his head to the side, glancing around the increasingly overcrowded pub. Though the room around them remains quite loud, he can clearly hear the growl of his own stomach above the chaos.

“Where the bloody hell is our food?”

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

Thirteen minutes later, two orders of fish and chips arrive at their table in the back of the pub. One minute after that, Penelope nearly chokes on a piece of beer-battered haddock when her phone starts buzzing in her pocket. Seven minutes after that, she hangs up and looks over to Colin. His smile is even bigger than hers.

“I fucking told you, Featherington.”

Her teeth sink into her bottom lip, an unconscious attempt to wipe the grin off her face. Her happiness is so overwhelming that it feels as though it’s pouring out of her.

“When do you start?”

“Two weeks,” she barely manages to get out between taut lips.

“That’s —” Colin lets out a shaky, happy breath. “We should celebrate,” he tells her after a moment.

Penelope barely registers his words before letting out another laugh and raising her empty glass.

“We’re already celebrating, in case you forgot.”

Colin raises his own drink (also empty and awaiting a refill) and clinks it against the one aloft in her hand.

“In case you forgot, we’re celebrating your graduation. Landing your dream job deserves its own celebration.”

Finally, Penelope’s smile begins to drop. Her eyes dart to the bar on the other side of the room.

“We already ordered another round. We can make another toa—”

“No, Pen. A proper celebration.”

“Wha—”

“You’re the newest columnist at Queenmaker Magazine. This is amazing — fucking massive, Pen! We should do something big to honour it.”

Penelope looks away from him again. This time, to the phone that has been gripped in her right hand ever since she accepted her dream job. She sets it face down on the table before meeting his eye again.

“And what ‘big’ thing do you have in mind?”

A few seconds pass before Colin answers her question. In that time, his lips form into a troubling smirk.

“Let’s leave. Take a trip out of the city. Or better yet, the country.”

Penelope also takes a few seconds to respond.

“What?!”

“I said, w—”

“I heard you, Colin,” she interrupts. “I just don’t understand. Didn’t you just say you want to stay rooted in London until your Venice trip?”

Colin considers her words for a few seconds, breaking her gaze to stare up at the ceiling in recollection.

“That’s not what I said at all,” he eventually replies. “Do —”

“Colin, I —”

“— you want me to call up Danbury and tell her how unfairly her promising new journalist just misquoted —”

“I’m being seri—”

“I’m being serious, Pen! You’re willfully ignoring my po—”

“There’s no time to plan a —”

“You just told me that you have no plans for the next few weeks. You know, save for landing the job that you just landed. Now that your summer is free, you can finally —”

Penelope has argued with Colin before. Not as often as she does with Eloise, but this is far from their first dispute. Usually though, he will at least let her get a full sentence in before interrupting. Usually, he is not quite this vexing.

“Good god, Colin! You’re leaving for Venice in two weeks. Which — in case you forgot — also happens to be the same time I start working at the magazine. Temporarily ignoring the fact that you just told me you want to stay in London in the meantime, there is no time for us to plan out — or actually go on — such an impromptu trip. It’s impossible.”

It’s only after Penelope successfully gets all her intended words out that she realises Colin’s demeanour has completely changed. The tips of his ears are tinged red. His left hand is covering the lower half of his face. He’s barely holding in a laugh. His eyes are round and darting to the side.

When Penelope follows his gaze, she finds that their waitress has returned. Wide-eyed, she silently sets down two glasses (a Guinness for him and another vodka soda for her), then disappears back into the crowd. Once she’s out of sight, Colin bursts out laughing and Penelope takes a generous gulp of her cocktail.

“As I was trying to tell you,” he continues, once the laughter has left his system, “I did not say I want to remain planted in London for the next two weeks. If anything, I was torn between my desires to stay and to go.”

Colin’s lips stop moving. It takes Penelope a few moments to realise that means he has graciously given her the floor to speak.

“I understand that,” she says slowly, as if speaking to a child. “I also understand that you decided to stay in the end. That you’ve spent too much time away from your family as it is.”

Colin laughs — short and sharp.

“Wrong again. Given your line of work, I would expect you to pay closer attention to people’s words, Pen.”

Penelope opens her mouth, then shuts it just as quickly. If she says anything, it will undoubtedly be delivered through a scream; she doesn’t have enough alcohol in her system to justify doing so in such a public setting.

“I didn’t say anything about my family,” he reminds her. “The only person I mentioned wanting to stay in London for is you.”

And just like that, something new rises in Penelope’s chest, swiftly killing the annoyance that burned inside of her. She doesn’t have the words to try and name it. She feels at a loss for words entirely; her lips remain paralyzed as Colin watches her in wait.

It only takes him a few seconds to realise she has nothing to say.

“At some point in the last hour, the scales have tipped towards leaving. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe you have any plans tying you to London over the next few days. So, if I am correct and there is nothing stopping us from leaving… Let’s go.”

Penelope doesn’t think there is a single person on this planet that she knows as well as Colin Bridgerton. After all, she spent the first sixteen years of her life studying him with the same insistence and fervour that a nun does a bible. (And the last seven inspecting him with the same shame and compulsion that an addict does their vice.) And yet, there are still times when he surprises her.

No. ‘Surprises’ isn’t the right word. She knows Colin has a talent for making the world around him appear far simpler than it really is. To bend the light in such a way that makes you see the world that way too — even if just for a moment.

There are still times when it overwhelms her.

“You make dropping everything and skipping town sound easy,” she eventually manages to say.

“Because it is. Do it once and you’ll realise just how easy it is. Especially when you have an expert like me involved in the planning.”

Something about that last sentence sparks a realisation in Penelope’s brain.

This is a game. Or, it could be.

Penelope sits up and sets her shoulders squarely.

“Fine. But I have a few rules.”

“Go on,” Colin encourages, clearly intrigued.

“1) I can’t be gone for the next two weeks. I need to be back by early next week. 2) I don’t want to leave the continent, so no surprise trips to Antarctica. 3) You have a max budget of £500 for transportation and housing — for each of us. If you can find something that fits my requirements, we can go on a trip together.”

Wasting not a single second, Colin whips out his phone from his back pocket. His smile gleams with the reflection of his screen. Excitedly, he mutters, “‘If’ I can meet your requirements? It’s like you don’t know me at all.”

But Penelope does know Colin. She knows he loves these sorts of challenges. That he thrives under this sort of friendly pressure. And while she could certainly afford to spend more than £500 on travel and a hotel, she’s intrigued to see what he can come up with when given such a budget. (And fears what he might come up with when given anything more.)

As Colin stares intently at his phone, Penelope feels her own demeanour start to shift. Before, she had been too distracted by the perceived impossibility of the offer to give it a second thought. But when she does…

It’s tempting. It’s almost certainly a bad idea, but it’s tempting for all the same reasons.

Though they speak on a daily basis, Colin and Penelope have spent so little time actually together over the last seven years. Even during his hiatus at home over the last two months, they spent more time talking on a phone than they did in person. To spend a few days with Colin and only Colin…

It’s tempting. It’s almost certainly a bad idea, but —

“Booked,” Colin announces, maybe 30 seconds after picking up his phone.

“What — already?”

“Yup. £497 each. We leave tomorrow and fly home on Monday.”

“‘Fly?’” she echos. Unsure if she should be more excited or scared, she asks, “Where are we going, exactly?”

“Costa Brava.” Colin says these words casually, in the same way Penelope would expect him to say “Brighton.”

“Costa Brava… as in Catalonia?”

“No, the Costa Brava in Wales.”

He laughs sarcastically. Triumphantly.

“Yes, Catalonia.”

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

Day 1

Penelope Featherington doesn’t have much experience with airports. She flew to Ireland a few times when she was a kid, but those trips fell off right around the time she started secondary school. She’s met or dropped off Colin at Heathrow a few times over the last three years, but rarely stepped inside on any of those occasions. She could count the total number of times she’s been in or around an airport on two hands.

Well, usually she could. Right now, her hands are too occupied wringing together incessantly to count imaginary numbers.

She is standing by a wall of windows, body facing the planes taxied outside. Her head is turned to the side, towards the man who dragged her here today. (Metaphorically. Literally, he got them both an Uber.)

Colin is by the stewardess desk, talking to the two women stationed at the gate. He’s just out of earshot, so Penelope can’t tell what it is that he’s saying. But whatever it is, it’s charming. She can tell by the way both women’s lips curl as he speaks to them.

Penelope doesn’t know why she’s so nervous. She’s flown on planes before — a decade ago, but still.

She shouldn’t be nervous about a two-hour plane ride. She shouldn’t be nervous about a few days in paradise. She shouldn’t be nervous about how so much can change in — she checks her phone — 22 hours.

She should be more like Colin; he’s never nervous about anything.

“Good news,” he tells her, walking up with two freshly printed tickets. “I got us a free upgrade.”

“Really?” she asks. Although really, she should have known. He got them two roundtrip tickets at the last minute for £97 each. Suffice to say, they were not very good seats. Penelope couldn’t have cared less, but Colin…

Before he can so much as nod, she steals one of the tickets from between his fingers. She gasps.

“How the hell did you manage to turn two middle economy seats into two first class seats?!”

“Jesus Pen, calm down,” he orders through a laugh. “We’re on holiday, remember?”

Before she can let out another huff, Colin mumbles something about being a “frequent flyer,” then turns his attention to the phone in his hand. Though Penelope would love to press him further on the subject, he magically receives a phone call from his mum and steps away to take it. He only hangs up when the flight attendants announce that it is time for them to board.

“Did your mum —”

“Come on. Don’t want to miss our flight, now do we?”

“Wha—”

With that, Colin puts away his phone and grabs the carry-on at Penelope’s feet.

“You don’t have to —”

“I got it, Pen,” he says nonchalantly. Then, without warning, he grabs her left hand and drags her towards the gate.

This is far from the first time that Colin has grabbed her hand over the course of their friendship, but this specific occurrence strikes Penelope as strange. His whole demeanour suddenly seems off; she would ask him about it, if he weren’t hauling them towards the plane like it’s threatening to take off without them.

His strange behaviour doesn’t cease as they continue forward. He practically pushes her past the flight attendant as soon as their tickets scan. His grip on her left hand only tightens as they walk down the boarding bridge. She tries to pull out of it when they step onto the plane and make their way through the cramped corner with the other flight attendants, but he just won’t let go. Through it all, she feels like a dog on a leash.

Colin only drops her hand after they find their seats, requiring both his hands to place their baggage in the overhead bins.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Penelope hisses once they settle in. She crosses her arms in front of her chest, out of Colin’s reach.

“Hmm?”

He shoots her a pleasantly oblivious expression, as if he genuinely cannot fathom why she would question his behaviour.

“You’re acting weird.”

“No, I’m acting excited. We’re on hol—”

“Holiday,” she interrupts. “Yes, I remember.”

“Good.” He smirks. “I was beginning to think you forgot.”

Penelope almost makes a kidnapping joke, then remembers that she’s currently sitting in a first class cabin and thinks better of it. Instead, she pulls a book out of her purse and ignores Colin completely. She reads three pages before he starts acting weird again.

Keeping his eyes suspiciously pointed at the front of the plane, Colin leans over and whispers, “Okay I may have lied a little bit.”

“What —”

“Well, a little to you. I lied quite a lot to the flight attendants.”

Penelope remains quiet for a moment. She really, really doesn’t want to ask, but…

“What the hell did you do?”

He meets her gaze again. His eyes look just as guilty as they do blue.

Dropping his voice to a whisper, he says, “I may have implied that we’re on our honeymoon.”

For a moment, Penelope doesn’t know if she heard him right. There’s a sudden ringing in her ears, but surely —

“What?!” she practically yells. “You ‘implied’ that we’re married?!”

“Yes.” There’s a sudden edge of annoyance in his voice and in that look in his eye — a reaction Penelope cannot even begin to fathom is warranted from him under the circumstances. “Then I remembered that I’m not wearing a wedding ring and that our two random middle seats in the back of the plane might be a bit of a red flag. So —”

“You think?!” Penelope cannot help but interrupt.

“Yes. So I clarified that we’re technically on our way to Catalonia to elope and —”

His words stop short and his eyes cast downward. They land on her left hand. Just as one could expect from a chronically single 23-year-old, it is quite bare.

“You don’t happen to have anything that could pass for an engagement ring, do you?”

“No, Colin. I do not happen to have an engagement ring on me. Seeing as I am not engaged!”

Though she tries to keep her words at a relatively low volume, she can tell that the boarding passengers to their left are not allowing their argument to go unnoticed. A small child snickers at them as he walks past.

“I’m sorry,” Colin whispers, but there’s a petulance in his voice that undermines any attempt at an actual apology. “I just wanted to see if they could switch our seats so we could sit together. I didn’t expect them to upgrade us — certainly not to first class. But apparently there was an actual newlywed couple that cancelled at the last minute. Now…”

When his voice trails off, Colin’s eyes shoot to the front of the cabin again.

“Now I fear they’ll kick us off the plane if you don’t go along with the bit.”

Penelope, who has apparently lost all ability to whisper, shrieks: “The ‘bit?!’”

Another small child passes them in the aisle. This one looks more scared than amused.

“We’ve come this far, Pen,” Colin whispers, seemingly unperturbed by her increasing panic. “Let's not risk it all now.”

Penelope bites down on her lip. She fears what she might say if her teeth ever unclench.

All of this is risky behaviour — starting with his proposition at the pub and ending with this fucking “bit.” And Penelope has gone along with all of it up until now. After so many years of carefully keeping him at a distance (both physically and emotionally), she had agreed to a trip she knew would entail more time by Colin’s side than she could handle. She knew this was risky from the start. She had braced herself for disaster. But this…

This is overwhelming. Pretending to be engaged to the person she loved, let go of, then — despite her best efforts — continues to love so ardently…

It’s too much for her to —

“Shit.”

Colin’s whispered expletive brings Penelope out of a thought spiral of massive proportions. Her teeth unclench. Her eyes look to him, then to the spot where his are pointed. The flight attendant who had scanned their tickets at the gate is walking over with two champagne glasses in hand.

“Shit.”

“Just follow my lead,” Colin whispers, then covers her left hand with his right. It takes everything in her to resist the urge to interlock their fingers and sink her nails in deep.

The flight attendant congratulates them on the wedding and hands them the little plastic flutes. Penelope (who had taken Colin’s instructions to mean “just sit there and let me do the talking”) extends her right arm across her body and silently accepts the champagne. If the flight attendant notices the awkwardness of her gesture, she doesn’t let on; she’s likely too distracted by whatever charming nonsense Colin is currently feeding her to push them past any remaining red flags in their story.

Penelope pours the entire flute down her throat before the woman disappears down the aisle.

“I’m going to kill you,” Penelope promises through a whisper. Her words don’t have any bite left in them, though. She simply sounds tired.

Before Colin can say anything, Penelope tunes him out with the headphones she had stashed in her purse. She doesn’t make it through the first verse before he pinches the little white cord and tugs the left bud out.

“Why are you so mad at me?” he asks, his voice equal parts annoyance and concern. “I apologise for putting you on the spot, but I don’t see why it is such a big deal. Am I really so awful that just pretending to be my wife could warrant this level of disgust?”

Penelope’s teeth sink down on her bottom lip yet again.

She wants to scream. She wants to point out his hypocrisy — to say it out loud. That he can announce to an entire party that he would never date her in a million years, but she can’t complain about being forced to play his pretend wife for the sake of a stranger.

But she can’t say any of that out loud, now can she? Not without unravelling everything else — the fragile net she has spun to maintain their friendship these last few years.

Pouring all of the willpower left in her body into a single smile…

“Don’t you mean your pretend fiancée? According to the backstory you crafted, I am not your pretend wife yet. I could still leave you at the pretend altar and live the rest of my life with a prince in the Catalonian mountainside.”

Thankfully, her facade seems to work. Colin laughs.

“I suppose that’s your prerogative. I don’t know how many princes are left in Catalonia these days, though.”

“Plenty of pretend princes, though.”

Penelope puts her headphones back in. She doesn’t hear the flight attendants’ instructions on what to do in the case of disaster. She ignores Colin’s sidelong glances when they begin to taxi. She closes her eyes when the engines rumble to life and the wheels below them pick up speed. She feels the plane lift into nothingness and tries her hardest to forget where she is. She moves her hand, intent on wrapping her fingers around the cool, silver divider between her and —

Suddenly, Colin’s hand is in hers again. Not covering it. Just holding on.

Any anger left in Penelope melts away. She squeezes the palm in hers gently.

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

Day 2

“I never knew the ocean could be this blue. Not in real life.”

In the past 24 hours, Penelope has made some variation of this comment to Colin at least a dozen times. In fairness, the water is insanely blue here. The weather is perfect. Everywhere you look, there’s something breathtaking and unimaginable to comment on. And like he always does when they’re together, Colin hangs on to her every word.

Right now, they’re walking along the edges of the Ruins of Empúries — a site Colin recommended they visit due to its history and beautiful views. To their left lies the ocean, as blue and breathtaking as it ever was. To their right lies the ruins — the archaeological remnants of two ancient cities. For the last hour, Colin has been playing the part of tour guide, filling the air with random pieces of trivia on the Greek and Roman settlements.

(Thankfully, Penelope doesn’t seem to mind the noise.)

“The name comes from the word ‘emporium,’ which means ‘market.’ Before the Second Punic War, the Greek traders thrived here. They set up ports on the beaches, then sold all sorts of goods here for about 300 years.”

Penelope stops walking and pulls out her phone. She points the camera in the direction of a nearby stonewall, then chuckles.

“What?” Colin asks after a moment, desperately wanting to be let in on the joke.

“Nothing.” She places her phone back in her pocket. “It’s just crazy to think about all that time. In 200 BC, someone laid these stones down in this particular way, just so I could take a picture of them with an iPhone two thousand years later.”

Very suddenly, a laugh hits Colin so hard that he has to place a cautionary hand on Penelope’s shoulder, so as not to risk doubling over and destroying this piece of history forever.

“Thank god for the Greeks,” he says through a giggle. “Building such an innovative, thriving marketplace, just so Penelope Featherington could take a picture of its carcass two millennia later.”

Penelope laughs too, though hers is more embarrassed than unrestrained.

“That came out wro—” she starts, but her words are interrupted by the sound of something high-pitched behind them.

Colin turns around. Penelope jumps. A teenage girl with hair the colour of butter stands behind them, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open.

“Oh Christ, sorry! I just —” The girl’s eyes settle on his, squinting. “Are you Colin Bridgerton?”

Thoroughly confused, Colin gives the girl a quick once over. She has pink-tinted Ray Bans resting on the crown of her head. She has a gold chain around her neck with the letter “L” dangling off it. She’s wearing a burgundy “Oakham Hall” t-shirt, which is tucked into her jean shorts. He’s searching for any little detail that might clue him in on this girl’s identity; he comes up empty.

“Um, yes. And, sorry — who are you?”

“No one. I mean —” She laughs. “My name is Hermione. I just meant that you don’t know me. I’m a huge fan of yours, though. I, like, love your Instagram.”

Instantly, Colin’s eyes glance down and to the side, because of course this would happen with Penelope standing right next to him.

Over the last three years, Colin’s work has accumulated more of a following than he could have predicted at the start. Between his blog, Instagram, and occasional freelance work, he has built somewhat of a recognizable name for himself. However, given the type of content he produces, his face is not quite so recognizable.

Not once in three years has a fan picked him out of a crowd in public. Until now, of course.

“Lovely to meet you, Hermione.” Colin leans forward and offers his hand for her to shake. Though he is thoroughly baffled by this encounter happening in the first place, he does his best to not allow such skepticism bleed through to his voice. “It’s so nice to hear you enjoy my stuff.”

“Oh, I do! You go to the most wonderful places and write about them so beautifully! I never get to travel. Well —” She laughs. “Except now, of course. But usually, I just live vicariously through your posts.”

Colin, suddenly filled to the brim with an emotion he can’t quite name, does not know how to respond to the teenager’s words. His first instinct is denial, but Penelope speaks up from beside him before he can open his mouth to express such a thing.

“I’m the same way. I’m not sure I would have made it out of uni with my sanity intact if it weren’t for his blog. Sometimes, a bit of escapism is key.”

Hermione smiles at Penelope’s words, but as soon as she stops speaking, the girl’s eyes go wide.

“Oh! How rude of me. I just realised I never asked for your name.”

“Oh, please,” she chuckles softly. “Don’t apologise. My name is Penelope.”

The smile returns to Hermione’s face. Her eyes dart back and forth between him and Penelope. Before she has the chance to ask…

“Pen and I have known each other forever. She edits all of my posts, actually. So if you enjoy my stuff, you should really be thanking her. She’s more miracle worker than editor. I mean — you should see the bullshit I type up before she spins it into something readable.”

Penelope glances up at Colin with a wry smile on her face. Through gritted teeth, she says, “I’ve never known you to be so humble.”

Colin laughs just as Hermione asks, “Oh! Do you two always travel together? I never really thought about it, but I suppose I assumed that you travel solo.”

“No,” Colin answers. “I’m always trying to get Pen to abandon her responsibilities and run off with me somewhere, but you know…”

When he looks down to Penelope, there’s a very confusing look on her face.

“I, um —”

“You assumed correctly,” Penelope cuts in, setting her gaze back on the girl in front of them. “He always travels alone. This trip is an exception.”

Before Colin can say anything else, Penelope steps away from him and towards Hermione. “I can take a picture of you two together,” she offers the girl. “If you like.”

“That’s so nice, thank —” Hermione cuts herself off and looks back at Colin. “If that’s okay with you, of course.”

“Yes. Of course.”

He nods his head to indicate that Hermione should stand next to him. She does, and just as Penelope lifts the phone to take their picture, she chuckles nervously and says, “Sorry for being so weird. I live in the middle of nowhere; I never see famous people out in public like this.”

At the same exact moment that Penelope presses down and takes their photo, Colin unwittingly pulls a face. (How else is he supposed to react to someone saying that?) Thankfully, Penelope notices and, stifling a sudden plight of laughter, continues snapping photos until she gets something acceptable.

When Hermione receives her phone back, she seems pleased with the results. Smiling, she looks over to Colin and thanks him for the photos. Then, without a single ounce of hesitation…

“Do you want me to take one of you and your girlfriend?”

Though that last word may be incorrect, Colin doesn’t see the point in correcting a random stranger on such minor terminology. But at the very same moment that he answers “Yes” to the question that was asked, Penelope answers “No” to the one that wasn’t.

“We are not dating,” she clarifies at the very same moment that he says, “We would love a photo, thanks.”

Before she can say another word, Colin hands Hermione his phone and pulls Penelope into his side.

After so many years of friendship, there are certain routines that naturally form between two people. Movements that flow between them, automatic from so much practice over time. For example, when Penelope and Colin take a picture together, his hand always goes to her side while hers always goes to his back. Always.

Until now.

While Colin’s hand does land on Penelope’s waist, both of hers twist together down her front. Where she usually leans into him, she stands straight. And while she technically has a smile on her face, it’s not the one he’s used to seeing in their photos together; it’s strained at the edges.

When it’s all over, Penelope removes herself from the embrace, Hermione says goodbye, and Colin wonders what the hell just happened. He briefly considers brushing it all aside and just resuming his tour guide responsibilities, but can’t seem to find the words.

He’s too annoyed.

He’s been annoyed since the moment Penelope said “No.” Since she said that word in that emphatic, decisive way — as if clarifying the true nature of their relationship to a stranger was the most important thing in the world to her. As if being mistaken as his girlfriend was a fate worse than death. As if —

“So…” Penelope says suddenly, her voice noticeably lighter than it had been a moment ago. “How does it feel to be ‘famous?’”

With that, she steps back onto the path and resumes their trek forward. As he always tends to do, Colin follows close behind.

“Don’t start with me, Featherington,” he warns, trying his hardest to match her tone of voice.

“Oh, come on. She was sweet.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t sweet. She simply misspoke about the ‘famous’ bit.”

“Well —”

“I’m serious, Pen. That has literally never happened before. Not once in three years has anyone ever recognised me in public. I mean — she probably only noticed me because of you.”

Still walking right beside him, Penelope cranes her head and throws him a confused look.

“What are you talking about? She didn’t know who I was.”

“Well, no. But…” Smirking, Colin reaches over and flicks a strand of red hair off her shoulder. “This tends to get people’s attention. I, on the other hand, am rather unassuming. It’s —”

Penelope scoffs, interrupting him.

“You are not ‘unassuming.’ You’re so… tall. I find it hard to believe you go unnoticed in a crowd.”

Colin shrugs. He tries to examine another strand of her hair, but Penelope swats his fingers away.

“Agree to dis—”

“Regardless of how she noticed you — she still recognized you. Even though your entire Instagram feed is sunsets and food. It’s —”

“Hey, that’s not strictly —”

“— cool that she recognized you,” she interrupts, looking up at him again. “Isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he supposes. “It’s nice to know my work has had an impact on someone. You know…” He looks down to her again. “Someone who isn’t biased because they’ve known me their entire life.”

“I can be unbiased,” she claims with little confidence in her voice.

“You —”

“Have you decided on a narrative for your story yet?” she asks him, providing no context for the swift change in subject.

“What story?” he asks after a few seconds.

“The Catalonia story.”

“Oh,” he says after a few more seconds. “I’m not writing one.”

After throwing him a bewildered look, she asks, “What wouldn’t you write a story about this place?”

“I’m on vacation. Why would I work?”

“Well… That logic might apply to someone whose job doesn’t require them to go on vacation, but —”

“Excuse me,” he interrupts, mock offence heavy on his tongue. “My profession requires me to travel. Even travel writers need a vacation every once in a while. A break from having to spend each waking moment of my day constructing narratives and meeting deadlines and memorialising every little detail of my experiences.”

Penelope nods sympathetically at his words, but is quick with her response.

“What about your two-month hiatus at home? Wasn’t that supposed to be your break from paradise?”

“Yes — but this is an extension of that break. And in case you forgot, we’re only in Catalonia because of you and your accomplishments.”

A scoff that nearly sounds like a laugh escapes her mouth.

“I seem to recall the planning of this trip very differently than you do.”

“Agree to disagree.”

“Getting back to the point… Don’t you owe it to your readers to write about this place? To memorialise just a little bit of paradise for those who aren’t lucky enough to experience it themselves?”

Feet still propelling him forward, Colin takes a moment to consider her words. He thinks of Hermione. He thinks of the little black and white follower count attached to his Instagram. He thinks of his dreams. He thinks of Penelope on that night in December.

Something to propel me forward and set me free.

“No,” he tells her. “I think that’s bullshit.”

Penelope gapes at him, clearly caught off guard by his bluntness.

“Pardon?”

“The more time you spend worrying about what you ‘owe’ the world, the more you risk losing sight of what matters to you. I’m elated to know that people enjoy my work, but I can’t let that pressure me into becoming a slave to my purpose. I can’t let it stop me from running off for a weekend with a friend just to enjoy myself.”

A moment passes by with no words between them. It’s not silent, though; the ocean is too loud. When Penelope finally speaks, the crashing waves nearly drown her words out.

“I thought the only reason we came here was for me. I don’t remember your enjoyment being a factor in this at all.”

Colin can’t help but laugh.

“Yes, well… I suppose my pleasure is an added bonus.”

Penelope laughs, too.

“Even then… What if you wrote something just for yourself? So twenty years from now, you can remember how the water reflects the sun here . Or how you spent an hour describing the differences between the Greek Empúries and the Roman Empúries.”

Stifling a laugh…

“Technically, the Roman settlement was called ‘Emporiæ.’”

“Regardless,” she murmurs. “Maybe you can write a different kind of story. One that isn’t meant for anyone’s eyes, except your own. I mean — twenty years from now, wouldn’t it be nice to have a written account of this stunning place? To hold onto moments like these,” she raises her hands towards the scenery around them, “long after our feet carry us away from them?”

Colin considers her words for a moment. A very brief moment.

“No, I don’t think that’s necessary for this trip.” It’s only after Penelope throws him a questioning glance that he continues, “If I were alone, then sure — I might worry about forgetting certain details about this place and be tempted to jot them down. But I’m not alone. If I want to come back to this moment twenty years from now, I’ll just talk to you about it.”

When Colin looks over to Penelope again, he finds that her cheeks are burning a bright shade of pink. He would blame the sun, if it weren't for the colour’s rather sudden appearance on her skin.

“Are you —” he starts, at the very same moment that she blurts out, “Do you ever get lonely on your trips? It just — it seems like a lot of time spent by yourself.”

Involuntarily, Colin’s lips twist together — as if his body is preventing him from answering such a complicated question too quickly.

In truth, he does get lonely on his travels, but that word doesn’t have the sting it once did. There’s an inherent loneliness to this job — especially for someone like Colin, who cannot focus on things like narratives and deadlines and details unless free from distraction. This particular trip has made that abundantly clear; he hadn’t even thought about writing until Penelope brought it up just a moment ago.

For Colin, finding success over the last three years also meant finding a way to live with the loneliness. To turn it into something good.

“Sometimes,” he finally answers. “But it’s a necessary evil. Writing, travelling, returning home — those things make the loneliness easy to live with. For now, at least.”

“For now?” Penelope echoes, suddenly sounding far away.

Colin shrugs.

“A man can’t travel forever.”

Just as those words leave Colin’s lips, the two of them reach a fork in the road. They could turn to the right, towards the ocean. They could turn left, towards the ruins. They could even turn around, back to where they began.

Penelope decides for them both in the end, her feet walking to the right. As he always tends to do, Colin follows close behind.

Their footstops halt when the pavement meets the sand. Both sets of eyes point forward, towards the breathtakingly blue water.

“You know, if you’re so worried about our feeble human memories being unable to do this place justice, you could always write about it. Last time I checked, you’re also —”

“No,” she interrupts. “You were right. I’ll remember this.”

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

Day 3

The most difficult part of being in love with your dearest friend, Penelope has come to realise, is having to look at them. When she and Colin are apart — separated by school or a job or Penelope’s better judgement — being his friend is easy. It’s easy for her to be his friend over an email or a voicemail or even a Skype. It’s easy to keep her true feelings below the surface when their only connection is through a screen. There are times when it’s easy to trick herself into thinking friendship is not so different from (or inferior to) a romantic relationship. But when they’re separated by nothing more than a bit of air…

It’s difficult. Especially on days like today.

Today was a beach day. They’ve been here since breakfast. Penelope spent much of that time hiding from the sun under the safety of a giant beach umbrella, unwilling to risk showing up to her first day of work with a sunburn the same shade of red as her hair. But (unsurprisingly), Colin had coaxed her out of the shadows more times than she could count today.

Today was a test of Penelope’s strength of will. And her ability to keep her eyes trained upwards (an especially difficult task, given that her eyeline just so happens to fall directly on his bare, tan, surprisingly hairy chest).

Now, she is back in the shadows, pretending to read a book while Colin is a little further down the beach. He’s playing volleyball with a group of strangers who just so happened to need a sixth player. He’s shirtless, just as he has been all fucking day. He’s serving the ball. He’s laughing with a teammate. He’s running a hand through his hair, his —

Fucking hell. Are his biceps larger than they were yesterday?

Shaking her head, pushing her oversized sunglasses even closer to her skull, she looks down at the book uselessly sitting open in her lap. In hindsight, The Scarlet Letter was far from an optimal choice for a beach read. But still…

She should be able to get through a single line without her eyes wandering off to places they shouldn’t go.

When she looks back up, she finds Colin scoring yet another point in his impromptu game. He’s laughing with that familiar, carefree refrain that always falls so naturally from his lips. He’s flexing muscles she didn’t know he had. He’s shining like gold beneath the sun’s reflection. He’s looking up towards the sky, a frown suddenly marking his otherwise pleasant face. He’s walking away from his new friends.

He’s six metres away. Five metres. Four —

Fuck.

Once again, Penelope tilts her head down and pretends to be enthralled by the book in her lap. If Colin had noticed her staring, he doesn’t say anything about it when he closes the distance between them.

“It looks like it’s about to rain. You want to head back to the hotel?”

Suddenly struck by just how dry her throat is, Penelope only manages to smile and nod in response. It isn’t until she and Colin are halfway back to the hotel that she realises how long it’s been since she’s said anything at all.

“I can’t believe I slept through sunrise again this morning.”

Colin laughs in that easy, reassuring way that practically makes Penelope’s blood boil after her day under the sun.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” he says. “Under normal circumstances, a 6 AM wake up call is difficult for an insomniac such as yourself. Taking into account that your body still thinks it’s an hour behind back in London…”

You have no idea what my body thinks, she wants to say. But she doesn’t say that. Obviously.

“Perhaps,” she says instead. “But we have such a prime view of it from our rooms. It would be a shame not to see it with my own eyes at least once.”

“Well, I have faith that you can manage it.”

“Thank y—”

“And when you do, perhaps you can bang on my wall a few times so I can enjoy the sunrise too.”

Feeling much lighter than she had just a moment ago, Penelope giggles. “Perhaps,” she says, picking up her footsteps. They remain light the rest of their trek, even when the rain inevitably pours down around them, transforming their walk into a run.

When they arrive back at the hotel, Colin immediately turns left towards the elevators. But Penelope, suddenly brimming with a very good idea, turns right towards the reception desk.

“Good afternoon,” she says to the woman behind the desk, an older lady with a cherry blossom tucked behind her ear. Isabella, her name tag reads.

“Hello,” the woman says brightly. “What can I help you with, dear?”

“Can I order a wake up call for tomorrow morning, please?”

(If ten alarms can’t wake her at the crack of dawn, perhaps the terror-striking sound of a phone call will.)

“Certainly! I just need your room number.”

“Of course. It’s 301.”

As the woman types away at her computer, Penelope turns towards Colin. He’s leaning against a pillar, a few feet back. He’s smiling. There are undoubtedly puddles forming in the soles of his sandals at this very moment, but still, he’s smiling.

Penelope can’t help but smile back.

“There you are,” the older woman says beneath her breath, just loud enough to bring Penelope’s eyes forward again. “So Mrs. Bridgerton, what time should I schedule your call for?”

Penelope doesn’t register the second half of Isabella’s question, her mind suddenly overcome with the sounds of alarm bells.

Mrs. Bridgerton.

Mrs. Fucking. Bridgerton.

“What?!”

The word shoots out of her mouth before she can stop it. She regrets it immediately. This kind woman doesn’t deserve such displaced aggression. That aggression should be aimed directly at the man standing behind them both.

“I’m sorry, dear. I was saying —”

“No, I’m sorry, truly. I just —” She takes a shaky breath. “I’m not Mrs. —”

She takes another breath. She says a prayer. She pretends to be a normal person — one who would have no reason to crack under the sheer irony of being mistaken as Colin Bridgerton’s wife.

“I don’t need that wake up call anymore, but thank you so much for your time. Sorry again.”

When she turns around, Colin isn’t smiling anymore.

“A word?” she hisses as she stomps past him on the way to the elevator.

“Pen, what are you do—”

She stops short in the middle of the lobby. So short, in fact, that Colin nearly runs right into her. Thankfully, Penelope has a lifetime’s worth of practice getting out of other people’s way; she dodges him at the last second.

“What did you do, Colin? Did you tell them we’re on our honeymoon, like you did at the airport?”

She tears her eyes away from his to quickly glance at the room around them.

Their hotel is gorgeous. It used to be a historic Spanish villa, but was renovated and transformed for lodging just a few years ago. It is not the type of place you can snag for just £100 a night (especially with the views they have from their rooms upstairs). Penelope realised this fact the very moment they walked into this lobby Thursday night, but after the stressful flight and initial pretend wife debacle, Penelope had chosen to overlook it then. Suffice to say, that instinct has long since left her body.

“Is that how you were able to get us this place for so cheap?”

“No. I didn’t do that.”

Colin’s eyes don’t look away from hers as he speaks. She knows that he isn’t lying, but…

“How the fuck did you, then?”

She doesn’t yell, but she doesn’t disguise her words with a whisper, either. Colin doesn’t make any attempt to disguise his emotions, either. He’s looking down at her with a disbelieving, bitter look — as if he is the wronged party here.

“I —”

“And why did she call me ‘Mrs. Bridgerton?’” she interrupts. Her voice is neutral in volume, but biting in its tone.

Colin takes a breath and wipes that bitter expression off his face. (For now, at least.)

“I know the owner,” he admits. His tone reeks of a nonchalance that Penelope feels is unwarranted, given the present circumstances. “I didn’t even make the reservation. He probably put my name down on both rooms and the receptionist got confused.”

“You know the owner?” she asks, incredulous.

“Family friend,” he clarifies, stunning Penelope back into silence.

After twenty-three years of living in such close proximity to the Bridgertons, she should be used to this by now. She doesn’t need to be reminded of the family’s seemingly infinite web of connections or be surprised at their ability to pull from them to get whatever it is that they want or need. But even now, it’s difficult for her to fully grasp.

At her silence, Colin decides to change tactics. Smirking, he continues, “I mean — how would I even pull that scheme off? We have two adjoining rooms. That would be a rather large red flag for a supposed honeymoon.”

Much quieter than she was a moment ago (but just as vexed), Penelope tells him, “I have faith in your ability to get around such minor details. If it means getting what you want.”

“Hey — if you didn’t want me to use any special discounts on this trip, you should have stipulated that in the rules of the game.”

After cringing at his use of the term special discounts, Penelope decides to give up. Turning her body towards the nearest elevator, she tells him she’ll “remember that for next time.” Before she can step away though, Colin stops her with a hand gripped tightly around her elbow.

When she looks up, she finds that bitter expression has returned to his face.

“Tell me, Pen,” he whispers, leaning in close. “Which has been the most painful blow to your ego — being mistaken as my girlfriend, my fiancée, or my wife?”

“Excuse me?”

Penelope feels as though she’s outside of her own body; she isn’t sure if she whispered those two words aloud or simply screamed them into the deepest caverns of her mind. It must have been the former, though. Colin’s eyes are wide.

“Honestly, Pen? It’s a bit upsetting to know that my best friend would raise hell before allowing a random stranger to think that we might be —”

He pauses for the briefest, longest second of Penelope’s life.

“Involved.”

Penelope stands silent for several seconds. What is she supposed to say to that? What platonic explanation is there for that?

You’re being a hypocrite. You’re being cruel, she wants to say. But she can’t say that. Obviously.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles instead. Then, she slips her arm from his grasp. “I — I’m just in a bit of a mood. I think it’s the sun.”

Her words reek of utter bullshit. They both know it. But at least Colin has the grace to let the issue go.

“Come on.”

His hand quickly finds its position around her elbow once more. This time, his grip is loose. Five tentative fingers tethered to her skin.

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

Day 4

“What the hell are you doing?”

Given the notable height difference between them, Colin always has to be mindful of where his eyes land when standing right beside Penelope. But when crammed into small spaces like the elevator they’re currently sharing, his eyes inevitably start to wander. Now, they’re pointed at her phone screen. (Which is an invasion of privacy. Which is bad, but the lesser of two evils, given his current perspective in relation to his best friend’s shirt.)

She looks up at him, but only after setting a 25th alarm.

“Tomorrow is our last morning here. I am not missing that sunrise.”

She looks down again, resuming her all-important task. By the time they reach their destination and the elevator doors swing open, she has set at least ten more alarms. Her eyes remain locked on the screen as she steps foot into the lobby.

They’re on the way to the hotel bar, a suggestion Colin made after an unusually tense 24 hours between them in paradise.

Well, tense might be too strong of a term to describe the atmosphere between him and Penelope. But still, the atmosphere has been different ever since he let his ego get the better of him in the hotel lobby yesterday. Different enough to scare him. Different enough to prompt him to call in the big guns to set things right again.

(Alcohol.)

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

Two tequila shots into the night, Penelope is not having a good time.

She had spent the entire day trying her hardest to force a smile on her face and keep her bad mood at bay until they land back on English soil. This had proved to be difficult — not just because of the insistence and intensity of said bad mood, but also because of Colin’s not-so-subtle attempts to uncover the true reason for her outburst the day before. (And the day before that.) (And the day before that.)

His line of questioning has only become less subtle since walking into the bar. Logically, this realisation should have prompted Penelope to make one final toast then go hide in her hotel room, but…

Alcohol has a tendency to make good ideas sound bad and bad ideas sound good. The latter is why she’s currently standing at the bar waiting for another round.

Maybe another drink will make us both forget what happened.

“Here you go, miss.”

On the other side of the bar, the handsome bartender slides two clear glasses with lime green liquid sloshing inside. Penelope unconsciously licks her bottom lip at the sight.

Only after securing the glasses in each hand does she realise that she never technically paid for either drink.

“You can put these on 301,” she shouts over the music.

“No need,” the bartender answers in a low voice that somehow cuts clear through the chaos of the room. He winks at her. “Those are on the house.”

“Oh! Um. Thanks!”

With that, Penelope turns on her heel. The abrupt motion causes one tiny stream of syrupy tequila to trickle down her fingers and onto the floor.

Determined not to spill any more of her free drinks, Penelope walks to the table in the back of the bar with an abundance of caution. During the treacherous journey across the room, she keeps her eyes pointed intently on the glasses in her hands. When she finally looks up, she’s shocked by what she finds.

In the chair beside Colin sits the most beautiful woman Penelope has ever seen with her own two eyes. The two of them are turned towards each other, talking about something Penelope can’t hear from where she stands not four feet away. She stands there awkwardly hovering above the table for a few seconds before Colin notices her return. When he does, he shoots her an aggravatingly endearing smile.

“There she is!” He turns back to the girl on his right. “Paris, this is Penelope. Pen, this is Paris.”

God. Even her name is beautiful.

“Lovely to meet you, Paris,” Penelope says, taking the seat directly across from her instead of the one facing Colin.

Paris, in turn, throws her a smile that could rival Colin’s. Even in this dim corner of the bar, it manages to catch the light.

“You as well, Penelope! Colin and I were just bonding over our most harrowing solo travel stories.”

She’s American, her voice betrays.

“Do you travel much?” Penelope asks after taking a long, greedy sip of her drink.

“Not as much as I’d like to,” she admits, sighing a little. “But I had a few weeks free before my grad program starts, so I decided to say ‘fuck it’ and booked a flight over here.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Penelope sees Colin open his mouth to say something. Before he can manage to, she leans towards their new, very beautiful friend and says, “That’s amazing. Where else have you been?”

Over the course of the next few minutes, Penelope practically forgets about Colin and the unresolved tension between them. She’s too busy listening to their new, very beautiful, remarkably interesting, extremely funny, perfect friend Paris. (While also finishing her two free drinks.)

“Enough about me,” Penelope’s new favourite distraction eventually orders. She flicks her eyes from Colin to Penelope and back. “I meant to ask before, but how did you two meet?”

Penelope opens her mouth to answer, but Colin beats her to it, speaking up for the first time in several minutes. Still grinning…

“You know, that question is surprisingly hard to answer. We’ve always just known each other.”

His response is the most infuriating string of words Penelope has ever heard uttered aloud in her life. Across the table, Paris looks as though she’s about to melt.

“Awwww, that is so —”

“I believe what Colin meant to say is that we grew up across the street from one another,” she interrupts, just barely able to keep her tone pleasant enough to not scare away Paris. “His sister is my best friend.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Penelope watches as Colin’s grin finally drops. She nearly looks at him for the first time since sitting down, but then her new friend says something that immediately dislodges the impulse from her mind.

Specifically, Paris delivers the funniest joke Penelope has ever heard in her life.

“You two are childhood sweethearts? That is so sweet!”

Penelope snorts. Her reaction is so loud and unladylike that she fears her mother will be able to sense it all the way back home in London.

“No! We’re —”

She snorts again. Somewhere in the distance, she thinks she hears someone say her name like a warning, but it barely registers.

“We are not dating,” she continues, just barely able to keep in another round of giggles. She keeps her eyes trained on Paris, who suddenly looks rather wide-eyed in her seat across from Penelope. “I mean — my god! Colin would never.”

She hears her voice called out in the distance again, but refuses to heed its warning. She can’t stop now. She’s too close to the punchline.

“You know, he said that once. Literally. That he would never date me. Not in a million years!”

“Pen!”

Finally, she hears him. Her eyes snap to Colin. His face is made up of an emotion she’s never seen there before.

Betrayal? No, that’s not —

“A word?”

Before she can even register that he has moved from his chair, Colin stands above her. His hand is on her elbow. He’s pulling her out the nearest door.

The breeze outside is bitter. Though the nearest beach is at least a half-kilometre away, Penelope swears she can feel little bits of the sea spraying on her cheeks. Neither of those sensations are cold enough to distract her from the warmth wrapped around her elbow.

“What was that, Penelope?”

“I…” she starts, with no intention of finishing the sentence.

“What were you talking about at the end?”

The first question had been delivered to her with fury. The second, concern. The next one that falls from his lips…

Misery.

“What did you — what did I say? I don’t — I don’t remember…”

All night, knowingly or not, Penelope had been using alcohol to fuel the pyre of her own misery. But seeing it reflected on Colin’s face now…

“It was nothing,” she lies. “Just forget —”

“No. Whatever it is, it is not ‘nothing.’

“Colin —”

“Pen, please,” he begs. “Just tell me.”

Penelope wants to summon the strength to be honest. She wants to destroy her disposition towards bullshit and tell him the truth. She’s not certain if that’s a strength she possesses, but she knows for a fact that she won’t be able to summon it with Colin tethered to her skin.

Stepping backwards, Penelope untangles herself from his grip. She crosses her arms in front of her chest before he can attempt to take hold again.

“Honestly, Colin, it was nothing. It happened years ago — before you even left for Cambridge. At that party at Fife’s house, I overheard you talking with some of your friends. They must have seen us hanging out all night and got the wrong idea about us. They — they asked if we were dating and you told them we weren’t, that we would nev—”

She sucks in a breath. She chances a prayer. She tries her hardest not to bullshit.

“You were just correcting them. That’s all.”

Colin doesn’t say anything for several seconds. He stands before her with twisted lips, like he’s desperately trying to hold something in. Then, he parts them.

“Kind of like how you were ‘just correcting’ that girl inside?”

“Yeah,” she says, speaking 100% truthfully for the first time since they stepped outside. Honesty is hard, but his comparison is too apt to even try to deny it.

When Colin takes a step towards her, Penelope takes another step back. The motion is enough to make her dizzy and, thus, remind her of the tequila currently sitting in the depths of her stomach.

“Pen, I’m so sorry. I —”

“No,” she interrupts, her voice definitive. “Don’t apologise. For anything. I was being rude inside, but you — you were just being honest that night. You didn’t even know I was there — that I could hear what you said. You —

“I hardly think that mat—”

“You should not have to apologise for simply speaking your mind.”

“That’s bullsh—”

“Colin! It was forever ago, can we please just leave it be?” She takes a breath. “Can we forget about this whole mess?”

“How can you say that? It’s been —”

Raising his hands into the air between them, he uses his fingers to count off imaginary numbers. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six…

“Seven years! Seven, Penelope. I can’t even remember saying it, but I —” He takes a breath. “I wish I could. If for nothing else, just to properly apologise to you for being such a dickhead.”

“Col—”

“But you remember. And after what just happened in the bar — after what’s been happening all week — don’t you dare try and pretend like it’s nothing. If it was truly nothing, you would not be holding onto it seven years later.”

That look — the one that appeared out of nowhere following her outburst inside — appears on his face again. The lighting is a bit brighter out here due to a nearby streetlamp, but it doesn’t make it any easier for Penelope to identify that emotion. It’s not betrayal. It’s not quite guilt. It’s —

It doesn’t matter.

Resisting the urge to drop her gaze from his, Penelope finally accepts that there are some things in life that defy definition. One of those anomalies is currently staring right through her, and there’s nothing she can say to make him see her. Bullshit or otherwise.

“Fine. Apology accepted.”

She turns to leave, needing the conversation to be over. But yet again, Colin’s hand wraps around her elbow.

“Can we please just talk about this like adults?”

“What is there left to say?” He opens his mouth, but she isn’t done. “You were right. I was hurt, but now I’m choosing to let it go. Seven years is far too long a time to take issue with a few words overheard at a party.”

“That is not what I meant, Pen.”

“I know. But it’s the truth.”

“Pen —”

“It’s late, Colin,” she interrupts, turning her back to him as she begins to step away. “Perhaps we can discuss it tomorrow.”

“Where are you going?” He’s already beside her again, footsteps in line with hers.

“Back to my room,” she huffs. “I wish to be alone.”

“You’re not seriously suggesting I let you run off by yourself right now, are you?”

“Yes —”

“Pen, you’re drunk.”

He certainly has a point but…

“You say that like you are not also drunk.”

“Yeah, well…” He runs a hand through his hair, then promptly finds her elbow again. “At least I’m not as drunk as you.”

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

On the way back down to the bar, Colin takes the stairs.

After ensuring that Penelope got back to her room safely, he wanted nothing more than to crawl into his own bed and end this cursed day once and for all. But when he fished out his wallet to retrieve his roomkey, he realised that a different card was missing. That his credit card was sitting behind a bar downstairs, along with an unpaid tab.

He takes the stairs slowly, step by reluctant step. His mind is elsewhere, unwittingly replaying the night over and over again. He’s trying to make sense of it all. Of any of it.

Not in a million years!

He said that once.

He doesn’t doubt it. But god — he doesn’t remember it either. He remembers that night. He remembers sitting on the roof with Penelope, then dancing with her in the back garden. He remembers laughing. He remembers drinking. He remembers being eighteen. He remembers what a massive arsehole he could turn into when surrounded by other arseholes like Fife.

He doesn’t doubt that he said it — but he can’t quite explain it either. Lord knows he can’t justify it. The words just sounded wrong, especially when repeated back to him from Penelope’s lips.

That he would never date me.

Not in a million years!

Even in his own head, Colin struggles to explain why those words feel so wrong to him — why they reek of such potent bullshit. His dilemma is not made any easier by Penelope or anything she said tonight.

Fine. Apology accepted.

The way she looked at him when those words left her lips…

It was like she disappeared. Her eyes didn’t leave his, and yet it looked as though she was suddenly staring at something far in the distance. Like she was staring through him. Like —

“Can I help you, mate?”

Colin blinks three times, taking in his surroundings as he comes back to reality. His feet must have been on auto-pilot the last few minutes; he’s back at the bar.

“Mate?” the smug bartender repeats.

Not in the mood to dignify that with a response, Colin mimes a pen squiggle in the air. Thankfully, the man takes the hint and disappears down the bar to retrieve his check. Before he can return, someone on a barstool clears their throat.

It’s the girl from before. The American. The one who sat at his table to make small talk, then unintentionally fucked up his entire night. (And possibly his entire friendship with Penelope.)

Brooklyn? No, that wasn’t it.

“So… What the fuck was that before?” she asks, her voice teetering somewhere between faux-enthusiasm and genuine annoyance. “Some weird foreplay between you and your girlfriend?”

“No. We’re not…”

He could finish that sentence, but he doesn’t see the point. This stranger has already received a lecture on the true nature of his and Penelope’s relationship — what else needs to be said?

The girl rolls her eyes, dropping the fake enthusiasm entirely.

“If you two aren’t dating, why did you tell me your ‘girlfriend Penelope’ was grabbing drinks from the bar when I first sat down?”

“No, I —”

His voice trails off again. This time, his mind is kicking into overdrive, desperately attempting to relive that moment of the night. Surely, he didn’t —

“No,” he says again, this time more sure of himself. “I said she was my ‘good friend,’ not my ‘girlfriend.’” But as the words leave his lips, Colin’s short-lived confidence crumbles.

Good friend. Girlfriend.

The bar is loud and he’s consumed quite a bit of tequila tonight. Maybe he did misspeak.

Good friend. Girlfriend. Good friend. Girlfriend. Good friend. Girlfriend.

“Whatever,” the American says, pushing herself off of the barstool. “I hope you and your good friend can work out your issues.”

Colin gulps, because Lord knows that he hopes for the same.

꙳ ꙳ ꙳

Day 5

The first alarm goes off at 5:50 AM. Colin was technically asleep before it wrung out, but restlessly so. His body never fully settled into sleep that night, so it’s quick to wake when those artificial bells drift over from the wall behind him.

Another alarm starts at 5:51, then stops just as quickly. From his own bed, Colin can’t help but picture Penelope muting said alarm with her eyes scrunched shut, hungover and still 90% asleep. For the first time in what feels like ages, he smiles.

At 5:52, another alarm rings out as Colin sits up, wide awake. He runs a hand across his face as memories and realisations from the night before come back to him with startling clarity. They fit together in his mind like evidence for a cold case he didn’t realise was a mystery until yesterday. A few more alarms ring out as he pieces everything together.

Seven years ago, Colin left for Cambridge and Penelope left for Cheltenham and, for two years and three months thereafter, their friendship wasn’t the same. In those two years and three months, he lost the one person he could always and truly be himself around. Throughout those two years and three months, he assumed the shift between them had been an inevitable part of growing up and growing out of their younger selves. But now…

Now he can see it all clearly.

Seven years ago, Colin invited Penelope to a party, occupied her time all night, then claimed that he would never date her in a million goddamn years. He said those words in a crowd full of people — so crowded, in fact, that he couldn’t tell that she had been there to witness it all firsthand.

It all seems so obvious now. Of course she heard him. Of course the shift had been intentional — on one side, that is.

At 6:05, another alarm rings. Colin barely hears it, his mind occupied by the question that had been plaguing him all week.

Why is Pen so put off by the prospect of us being a couple?

He knows the answer now, but it’s of no comfort to him.

At 6:06, a new question rises to occupy that space in his mind.

Why aren’t I put off by the prospect of Pen and I being a couple?

Perhaps that is the question he should have been asking himself from the start. At no point during any of the many misunderstandings that occurred this week had Colin ever been put off by the titles others had thrust upon them. Strangers seeing Penelope as his girlfriend, his fiancée, his wife…

None of it put him off.

The 6:07 alarm seems to rewire his brain. More questions come to him.

Is it normal to be enraged by the idea of dating your best friend? Is it more or less normal to find the idea… nice?

At the 6:08 alarm, Colin asks himself another question. One he should have been asking himself for several years now.

Is it normal to be so preoccupied by the sight of your best friend’s cleavage?

At the 6:09 alarm, long after assuming Penelope would miss her final chance at viewing the Catalonian sunrise, he hears something new from the next room over.

“Siri, cancel all alarms.”

After that, he hears the faintest evidence of movement from her end. Rustling sheets. Footsteps. A barely audible “Fuck.”

By 6:10, Colin stands stiffly, inches away from their adjoining door. By 6:11, he actually knocks on it.

It only takes a few seconds for her to swing it open.

“Hi.”

Penelope is looking up at him with the eyes of someone who had four shots of tequila last night. Her hair has been twisted into a long red braid down her side. She’s wearing a matching set of pink and white chequered pyjamas and slippers in the shape of little white rabbits. Colin can’t help but smile.

“Morning.”

Without another word, she nods her head to the side, signalling for him to follow her out to the balcony.

The sky is navy blue, save for the thin streak of maroon rising up from the edge of the world. It’s still dawn. It will be dawn for another few minutes, until the sun inevitably rises.

Colin and Penelope stand side-by-side, hands on the railing, pinkies inches apart. Without a word spared between them, they watch as twilight bleeds into daybreak. As red turns to pink. Pink to orange. Orange to yellow.

The sea reflects it all like a mirror. Colin sees it all with his own two eyes.

“Is it everything you thought it would be?”

“More.”

When quiet falls between them again and yellow bleeds into blue, Colin can’t stop himself from asking and answering a new question. It’s the one that’s been hiding in the shadows of his mind for most of his life.

Am I in love with Pen?

Yes, you fucking idiot. Of course you are.

The realisation doesn’t come with any amount of shock or denial. It just feels…

Inevitable.

This was always going to happen. He was going to reach this conclusion sooner or later.

Tempting fate, Colin lifts his left arm and places it across Penelope’s back, hand settling gently on her shoulder. Both of her hands remain locked on the railing.

As much as it consumes him inside, Colin cannot bring himself to voice his inevitable revelation aloud. Not after last night — after realising the pain he has obliviously inflicted on Penelope over the years. Not after this week — which had been planned in celebration and is currently teetering on disaster. Not after an entire lifetime of getting it all wrong.

He can’t bring himself to voice his revelation aloud. Instead he asks a simpler, albeit similarly difficult question.

“Are we going to be okay?”

“Yes,” Penelope says, perhaps a bit too quickly. “Of course.”

Colin isn’t sure he believes her. He isn’t sure things will ever be the same.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

“You know, Catalonia is beautiful this time of year. Perfect destination for a honeymoon.”

“Don’t skip ahead,” she orders, while also making a mental note on the topic in the back of her mind. “What’s next?”

#I thought this chapter was going to give me a hernia #right now there are THREE 10K+ chaps in this fic #and that’s three too many #bridgerton #fanfiction #polin #weepingfromacedartree #ao3 #fanfic #ten milestones #penelope x colin #penelope featherington #colin bridgerton

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ordinaryschmuck · 10 months ago

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What I Thought About The First Doctor's Run

Salutations, random people on the internet who certainly won’t read this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and sometimes draw comics and cartoons.

So, I’ve made a discovery…Almost every episode of Classic Doctor Who is available FOR FREE on Tubi! You know what this means?!

“More people can watch the early beginnings of the most iconic sci-fi series of all time?”

That AND I can finally review Doctor Who as a whole!

I won’t lie, this has been something I’ve wanted to do for a WHILE. Either as a ranking of each Doctor or a ranking of their best episodes, I’ve been wanting to go in depth with this series for SO LONG. And since the odds are I WON’T become a writer for television like I’ve always dreamed, I might as well talk about my favorite TV shows! Starting with the son of a bitch who started it all: The First Doctor.

Here’s what I know about the First Doctor: Next to nothing. My experience with The Doctor as a whole started all the way with Number Nine, with the only taste of One being through that Christmas Special a few years back. He’s definitely more cynical and rude than present Doctors, but this is way back in his early beginnings. NO ONE knew what direction this character would take years later and just focussed on making an interesting character NOW. Er, then? Now? Then?

Eh, bibbly-bobbly.

The point is that I’m going to TRY and not be biased with One, look at him as if I were right there in 1963. Unfortunately, unlike everyone ELSE in the sixties, I don’t have access to all the episodes. During 1968-1978, most tapes that held Doctor Who episodes were reused for new film or deleted completely for space, leaving NINETY-SEVEN episodes erased from time forever and causing twenty-six serials either gone completely or incomplete. It’s basically what streaming services and studios are doing nowadays, but without pirating sites as a safety net to preserve the art from being COMPLETELY lost. Now, there are some audio tracks saved for commercial release that feature still images or commissioned animation, but that’s not the case for every episode, unfortunately. So things are going to get a little…weird for this review. For now, I’ll say that I’m going to stick to what’s on Tubi and improvise with what’s NOT on there. Also, I’m not going to go through every single episode. Just share my thoughts on each serial as a WHOLE, mainly because those practically add up to modern episodes anyway, just an hour or two longer.

Now, with that said, let’s take a step back in time as we discuss the first adventures with our first Doctor.

Decades Old Spoilers Below

THE SERIALS

We’ll begin by going in order of each serial, starting with his first adventure and ending with his last. Helps go through this journey together.

The Unearthly Child: Okay, full disclosure, this one’s NOT on Tubi, so I had to look it up through…other means. But to be fair, it’s not like I could just IGNORE The Doctor’s very first adventure. It’s here we see a sort of formula that still remains constant to this day. The Doctor meets new companions, they become shocked by how the TARDIS is bigger on the inside, they go to a place that’s filled with a temporary cast of disposable characters, and are forced to solve a problem for them or die trying. Of course, some things are different, and not just the inside of the TARDIS. The fact that The Doctor had a granddaughter was mind blowing and left me wondering what happened to her since she never showed up ONCE in the revival. And The Doctor was…surprisingly inactive despite being the titular character. He caused more problems than fixed them, like being the reason everyone was trapped in the Stone Age and later becoming the person who needed to be rescued. Honestly, Ian proved himself more as the leading man than The Doctor did throughout the whole ordeal, calling the shots and even being the one who came up with the plan that got them OUT of danger. Even when taking account that this was just the show starting out, it seems weird that the titular character isn’t the one who leads the group and is instead the whiney bitch that the others just tell themselves to ignore. As for the adventure, it’s pretty dull. Granted, you need to introduce audiences to the concept of time travel by showing them something easy to grasp like going back to the stone age. You gotta save weirder stuff for the future episodes. But the characters getting chased around by cavemen isn’t really that engaging, and it REALLY drags down a lot by part four where the conflict feels stretched out to meet the full twenty-three minutes. Overall, not that great of a first introduction but most of the best series of television rarely start off perfect. The question is if it makes me want to see more, and…it honestly doesn’t. If not for the knowledge of what the series would eventually become, I’m not sure WHY someone would stick around. But the Doctor Who fan in me is strong so I say we keep charging on.

The Daleks: The first encounter with The Daleks, the Doctor’s WORST enemies, and the serial is much better because of it. It’s actually interesting to see how these villains began with how simple they are to fight, the fact that they don’t INSTANTLY kill others they attack, and how they actually keep PRISONERS. And the serial does a great job at showing how they’re definite menaces to be feared, but not impossible to defeat, creating decent tension as the characters try to fight back literal killing machines. I also love how every character throughout the serial does something important, especially The Doctor who manages to do much more this time than whine and complain as he actually uses his intelligence to help his companions out of this troublesome situation. Although, he’s still the jackass that got them all trapped in this situation all for the sake of exploring a town that they know NOTHING about. There’s definite improvements to his character this time, but The Doctor being the cause for their current conflict is not one of them. And while we’re on complaints, this serial STILL feels like it stretches its adventure out for the sake of making the serial longer than it should be. There’s some definite excitement in the first half with our core four characters trying to escape the Daleks, but this serial still didn’t need to be seven gosh dang episodes long. I feel like there’s some meat to be cut out with making the Thals stand up for themselves, conceiving a plan of attack, and invading the Daleks’ base. Other than that, this is still a pretty decent serial filled with great tension from the Daleks and strong chemistry and dynamics between our core four. It’s definitely stronger than the last serial and a MUCH better introduction to the series. No wonder it’s the one that Tubi has.

The Edge of Destruction: A nice, short mystery where the first half does really well in making you feel as disoriented as the rest of the cast. There’s this solid unease where you’re not sure what’s going on and you’re left to pick up the pieces, bit by bit, to figure out what happened and if there’s anyone or anything responsible for this mess. Although, part two tends to fall a tad short because most of the clues we got were then explained to the audience and then given this big explanation that came out of left field because the biggest clue wasn’t revealed yet. So as a mystery, it definitely isn’t strong. Though, I do like how The Doctor is the one to figure things out and save the day in this serial. Sure, him being antagonistic towards the others wasn’t great but I enjoy how The Doctor has finally warmed up to his companions and that it’s implied that he no longer chooses to be suspicious of them. So while the mystery fell short, I can’t complain when it improves The Doctor’s character.

Marco Polo: Unavailable on Tubi due to the BBC deleting episodes. Yeah, unfortunately, this is our FIRST serial that can’t be seen in its entirety through official means…Though, no one said anything about using transcripts.

HAHA! Loophole! Because while I’m not going to steal audio-only episodes for the sake of reviews, who’s going to stop me from READING. It’s not stealing episodes if I’m just reading what happens! Although, unfortunately, it only gives me a PART of the picture. I won’t understand performances or fully grasp how characters look, but it’s no different from strictly LISTENING. There’s a lot that unfortunately goes missing when a visual media loses its visuals, and for a case like this it’s best to work with what we have. And what I have is the story pretty much described to me by someone else. It’s not preferable, but it IS what I can do for these times. Remember this every time a studio deletes episodes or entire shows off its platforms.

With that said, based on what I’ve read…Yeah, this one DRAGS. It’s The Doctor and company being forced to move from place to place and dealing with Marco Polo as they do. Doesn’t sound too bad, but each place they go to follows a specific formula: Someone does something Polo doesn’t like, he voices displeasure about it, The Doctor and others argue their case, Tegana points out how they’re actually evil, and Marco Polo, who flips from being reasonably cautious and unreasonably stupid, constantly tells them to get out of his face while still dragging them off to the next location. This goes on for SEVEN EPISODES, each one making the whole serial feel way too long and way too repetitive. I kept hoping this would be the end of the serial and we could move on to the next, only for it to KEEP. F**KING. GOING! It’s so dull that I needed TWO DAYS to read through the damn thing. But maybe that’s the problem: I had to READ it. There might be subtleties in the VISUAL performance that better conveys Marco’s personality, even if it DOES seem to flip/flop on paper. Plus, there are some things like the set designs and special effects that a transcript could gloss over and not properly convey. And there are SOME nice bits like The Doctor trying (and failing) to win the TARDIS back in a game of backgammon, which is all kinds of fun. And Susan made an endearing friendship with Ping-Cho. Those two are surprisingly adorable together and it’s nice to see Susan make a connection with someone her own age. Other than that, though, if this wasn’t that great of a story on paper, the original serial better have some MIND BLOWING execution to make it great. Otherwise, maybe fans aren’t losing much if this serial is lost to time.

The Keys of Marinus: A pretty clever idea with this one. The story for this serial is that The Doctor and his companions are out searching for the titular Keys of Marinus, presenting a story that’s a fetch-quest, with each episode dedicated to the characters finding one key. It’s smart because instead of stretching out one adventure to make the serial longer, it connects four adventures through this loose thread, keeping audience interest up as everyone tries to get out of the danger of the week. It’s fairly effective, filled with great moments like Barbara trying to save the core four from being brainwashed into mindless zombies, the entirety of “The Snows of Terror,” and The Doctor solving a murder. It’s all good fun, but not without some problems. An episode like “The Screaming Jungle” feels like it needs more time as there’s a lot of ideas that don't live up to its full potential or come out of nowhere. Like, a living jungle SOUNDS cool, but it only really comes into fruition until the end. There’s also the fact that the search for the last key feels stretched out because the writers didn’t realize soon enough that the finale for this serial was too short so they made the final hunt longer to compensate. But what bothers me the most is that The Doctor just…leaves the hunt just to spend time in a more civilized society. It works out for the murder mystery, but it also feels weird that the titular character bows out for two whole episodes, leaving his companions to do all of the work he neglects. Honestly, at this point, I’d say Ian should be the one the show is named after with how well he leads the party and even comes up with a clever plan to stop the big bads. And I know I keep harping on it, but why name the show Doctor Who when that same doctor hardly helps? Still, “The Keys of Marinus” is a fun serial that leads to solid short tales, even if there were some rough steps along the way.

The Aztecs: Oh, this one’s racist, isn’t it…? You know what? I’m as white as a ping-pong ball and have the patience of a goldfish to do proper research myself to make any judgments to decide something that I have no official standing on. So I won’t be the one to say what is and isn’t racist…Aside from the fact that those are obviously WHITE people playing the Aztecs.

But possible racism aside, this serial is more on the dull side. I do like this conflict between The Doctor and Barbara, where Barbara tries to change history for what she thinks is for the better (Which means changing the history and culture of Aztecs–Let’s not get into it) where The Doctor tries to convince her that there’s no way to change history. Future episodes continue to dive deep into the idea that history cannot be altered no matter what the characters want, and it’s interesting to see one of the first instances where the characters learn this the hard way. I also love how it ends on this idea that while they couldn’t change what happened, they still touched the lives of those they’ve made relationships with, meaning that it ALL wasn’t a loss. It’s a shining light of optimism within the tragedy that becomes a reoccuring theme through a lot of future episodes, and I love it each time. But other than that, this serial is another one that DRAGS. It’s just The Doctor and his companions screwing around with Aztecs for two hours while this boring subgroup conspired against them. It makes the whole serial feel like it’s running in place for too long, and I feel like if it cut out ONE episode or maybe shorten it down to two, the serial could be stronger for it. It’s also weird how Barbara is, like, a different person in this. Like, I get it, she’s acting like a goddess, but she seems TOO good at her performance, almost as if the writers wrote her as an ACTUAL goddess and not a character PRETENDING to be one. It feels off a lot of the time, and it’s just one more thing that makes this serial weak. Even though I like the idea of characters trying to fight hard to change history, that’s something done MUCH better in the future. It’s a charming first attempt, but not one I’m willing to revisit.

The Sensorites: A pretty…substandard serial. The titular Sensorites start off pretty scary and intimidating, being unlike anything the show has produced so far in this run. It presents a bit of uncanny horror for a good while…But then the serial reveals that they’re mostly peaceful creatures, aside from a few devious outliers, who actually need help. It’s a decent twist that also leads to The Doctor being the most active he’s ever been. The way he goes about finding a cure for this mysterious illness and taking charge in dealing with any dangerous Sensorite made it feel like, for the first time, he deserves to have the show named after him. I like it…but it doesn’t stop the serial feeling like it’s a little aimless at times, almost as if it’s drifting by for six episodes. We get some good stuff from it, but storywise it feels like we’re just bouncing from scene to scene as if the writers are making stuff up as they go and presenting coincidences that foil some villains’ plans. And then there’s this out of nowhere idea that this subgroup of humans lived under the Sensorites for so long, but there was never any indication of this and it’s presented in the VERY LAST episode, making it an almost pointless idea that went nowhere. I’m glad to see The Doctor become more of a leading man, but I would have preferred it in a better, more coherent serial.

The Reign of Terror: MOST of the serial is intact…aside from two episodes. Meaning that it’s incomplete and not available on Tubi, so…ONTO THE TRANSCRIPT!

On paper, this whole thing seems like a drag. It starts interestingly enough with The Doctor being separated from his companions as they’re taken prisoner during the French Revolution. It leads to Ian, Barbara, and Susan trying to escape while The Doctor tries to reunite with them (instead of pissing off for half the serial), creating this situation where everyone’s putting in the work as they share the same goal. The problem is that, like the REST of the serials before, the characters fart around for too long just to stretch the story out to reach a goal. They will escape and then get recaptured for the sake of forced tension, and by the time Susan and Barbara were in prison again I just wanted the serial to come close to an end. Thankfully, by then, there were two episodes left, but it doesn’t change how it’s all two episodes too long. The only thing to catch my intrigue later was Barbara wishing they could help Robespierre from getting killed and The Doctor reminding her that they can’t change history. I still love an idea like that, but here, it happens near the very end and there’s barely enough time to appreciate it or dive deep into it. In fact, this could have been a great “Can’t mess with the past” episode, but it’s just…the characters trying to escape a situation and spending too long on it. The worst part is that this is the Season One finale, the time to go for broke, and it’s just…the same old thing with the same old problems as previous serials. Maybe it worked better visually or even through audio, but on paper it’s just as slow and boring as ever. Hopefully the next season starts big.

Planet of Giants: Huh. Guess it did. Just…literally.

Jokes aside, I am impressed with the set design in this serial. I can tell everyone worked so hard to set the scale, making you feel how small these characters are. Sure, you can tell exactly HOW it was done, but for the sixties this all must have been mind blowing work, especially for a TV show. As for the story, it’s…adequate. The characters are trying to prevent these two men from making an insecticide that could do more harm than good while also trying to find their way back to the TARDIS to reverse their size. It’s not the BIGGEST (ha) danger in the world and it’s something they could have stopped easily at normal size. If they focussed on growing again, they could have stopped the main evil prick within seconds, so the majority of the serial is just them messing around by trying to stop him while they’re an inch tall. And there’s also the fact that Barabara held the idiot ball throughout the serial, touching something in a lab when she shouldn’t have and keeping that information to herself for far too long. Like, WHY didn’t she tell the others she was infected with the insecticide? We never got an answer for that and it’s kind of frustrating as it adds unnecessary tension to a serial that doesn’t really need it. The characters trying to get big again is more than enough, we don’t need a nefarious plot about an insecticide gone wrong or one of the characters getting sick from it. But while the story definitely could use some improvements, the set design really does carry it, being an impressive visual display even if it’s for an inferior serial.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH, so THAT’S what happened to Susan…Anyways, the best way I could describe this serial is two steps forward and one step back. The cinematography is impressive, looking like a feature film at times with dynamic shots and cool ways that the camera follows the characters. BUT the direction seems to be all over the place. Most of the time, it’s fine, but then you get stuff like actors interrupting or talking over each other or moments where peripheral view is…not a thing. There’s even a part where a Dalek is looking RIGHT AT THE DOCTOR as it’s moving away…and it just continues moving onward as if nothing happened. It’s actually kind of hilarious at times. And speaking of the Daleks, this serial did a great job showcasing how threatening and evil they can really be. The twisted way they used humans as slaves to destroy a planet is sick and seeing how that broke the human mind and ruined their families proved that the Daleks are nothing to be messed with. The problem is that the serial shows how easily they can be messed with. Like, even if they doubt the intelligence of normal Earth people, it’s not a smart plan to have a way for them to escape their prison cell WITHIN THE CELL ITSELF! And how is it that they can blast away people no problem but struggle with the robot slaves they made? I don’t know how it’s possible, but this serial manages to make these tin salt shakers MORE and LESS terrifying. On the upside, our heroes are at least competent in this adventure. Much like the last encounter with the Daleks, everyone does something of value, only this time they’re all split up to accomplish their own task that actually helps the others in a way they wouldn’t expect. It DOES feel like some plot lines are a little aimless with some of our cast waffling about a little longer than they should, but it all leads to a great ending when they reunite once more.

And, of course, there’s the sad departure of Susan. It’s performed well and does a decent job of making me FEEL a little sad when The Doctor allows Susan to leave so she can live a life of her own without being forced to travel everywhere with him. I liked it…though I do have issues with how the reason that she wants to leave is because she fell in love with a man she’s known for a few days. It’s part of the writing of the sixties, I know that, but it doesn’t change how WEIRD it feels that Susan is willing to give up everything she knows for someone she recently met. So while I enjoyed the scene, it felt very flawed, which is the same for the whole serial. I enjoyed it a lot, but there were a few imperfections here and there that made “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” a messy, albeit fun, serial.

The Rescue: This was a blessedly short serial. The big twist was fairly easy to figure out after Part One, and if this serial was stretched out for more than two parts it would hurt it significantly. We don’t need four parts of the characters farting around, picking up little clues, and then solving the big crisis within minutes. So having the story last for about two episodes leaves for a brief adventure that works well on its own while also introducing the audience to Vicki. And I’ll admit…I’m not too sure about Vicki in this serial. She comes across as a less competent Susan who cries more and doesn’t have the same intrigue Susan did as being The Doctor’s granddaughter. It’s obvious that she’s there as a replacement for the “The Young One” in the group and it doesn’t work for me. What DOES work is how The Doctor is presented, as he acts much more like The Doctor I know now. He’s active towards figuring out what’s going on, caring towards Vicki and consoling her when she needs it, and is the one to confront Bennett in the climax of the serial. I do like how it’s sort of a slow burn with The First Doctor, showing him eventually grow from the bitter old man who couldn’t care less about anyone else to a more kind and proactive character due to the adventures he went on with his companions and the people that they meet. I still say it was off to name the show after the guy who didn’t do much, but The Doctor’s slowly earning his role as the leading man and I enjoyed that this is one of the earlier starts of them becoming the hero we know now. So while this is a standard serial, it does give us one of the better presentations of The First Doctor.

The Romans: *INSERT DATED ROMAN EMPIRE JOKE HERE*

Anywho, this one’s pretty entertaining. There’s basically two sides of this serial’s story: The Doctor and Vicki hanging out with Nero and his hysterical nonsense and Ian and Barbara being stuck in the slave trade…Yeah, probably sounds like the tones would heavily clash with this one, but it surprisingly flows well. You laugh at the hijinks of The Doctor acting as a close friend towards Nero while feeling empathy for Barbara and Ian as they’re forced into the worst possible position in Rome. There’s even equal attention to both plotlines, making them balance each other out fairly well that leads to the serial feeling fast but fun. The only thing that drags it down is how it begins and ends. The cut between the TARDIS falling and The Doctor and Ian chilling out in Roman attire felt jarring. Same goes for the reveal that they willingly stayed in Rome for a whole month instead of focussing all attention on fixing the TARDIS. I suppose it would come across as a pleasant holiday, but then they say they’ve been hanging out in someone else’s house while they were away and that’s…odd. It’s odd that it worked out like that for a whole month. Same goes with the ending, where The Doctor feels giddy at causing the fire of Rome. Even for the First Doctor, it doesn’t seem right that they would take joy in causing such destruction and mayhem. But aside from the problems in the beginning and the end, everything in the middle of the serial offered great entertainment for a pleasant viewing for me.

The Web Planet: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! MY EARS! For whatever bizarre reason or another, SOMEONE decided to give these giant ants the most ear-piercingly irritating sound for how they communicate. It was already grating by the first episode, yet they still thought it was a good idea to use the same sound, continuously, FOR SIX EPISODES! Halfway through the third, I genuinely considered skipping the rest of the serial entirely because I couldn’t STAND those f**king ants! Thankfully, I remembered that subtitles were a thing, so I just played the rest of the serial on mute and just read the subtitles. Trust me when I say that is the only way to make the damn thing watchable. And even then, it’s not that great of a serial anyways. It’s the characters helping these anthropomorphic bugs with slightly less annoying (but still pretty annoying) voices in a rebellion against the ants. I’m all about it, because screw those things, but it’s still a bog-standard adventure with some admittedly impressive costumes and effects for the time. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I couldn’t stand LISTENING to this episode, but I would have been completely fine if this was one of the few serials lost to time.

The Crusade: Speaking of which, HALF of this serial is missing and not on Tubi either. So ONTO THE TRANSCRIPTS (Gosh dang it…)

I think the problem with this serial is made clear with how it begins. We have new characters talking about political nonsense as if we, the audience, should already know the context of what they’re saying. Then when we’re introduced to the core four, they’re thrown into the middle of a battle with no proper set-up that their conflict of Barbara getting kidnapped happened so fast that it barely registers. This slow pace of boring politics with characters we don’t know and fast paced attempts of Barbara trying to escape her kidnappers remains throughout this whole serial. MAYBE it was handled better visually, but the way the serial constantly introduces new characters to discuss politics while The Doctor and his companions are barely there makes the whole thing feel like its priorities are disjointed. There should be more focus on Barbara trying to escape while the others go out to save her, but there’s so much attention on the politics and trying so hard to be historically accurate or whatever and it…doesn’t keep my interest. Not to mention that the constant new characters to keep track of as they steal attention is not all that entertaining and causes the whole serial to seem like it forgets who the show’s really about. I just wanted it all to end, as I feel like this is one of those serials that aren’t better on paper nor through execution.

The Space Museum: This one starts off pretty confusing, first intentionally and then unintentionally. I’m just as lost as the characters are, wondering what happened to them and what’s to come of it. It effectively puts me in the mindset the serial wants me to have, but then they give this explanation that just makes my brain hurt when I try to think about it too long and hard. Thankfully, the premise that the serial tries to sell is simple enough to shrug off the nonsense of time and relative dimension or whatever the hell. Basically, The Doctor and his companions saw a vision of what COULD BE their future, and the whole serial is them trying to make sure that never comes to be. It’s a solid premise that’s effectively tense in a lot of scenes as the characters seemingly get closer to what could be an inevitable future. Added with some fun moments of The Doctor being a giggly old goof as he screws with his enemies and it’s a fun time. The only weak part is this subplot involving the most ineffective rebellion I’ve ever seen, where it’s a miracle that they survived this long until they received help from Vicki of all characters. Though, even then, the subplot does well to show how independent Vicki can be in a situation AND adds to the theme that a person’s future can be changed if they changed the lives of others. It’s a decent message that helps make the serial a surprisingly good time. And yeah, that ending sting made me excited for the next one. Speaking of…

The Chase: This was…not what I was expecting. In the last two encounters with The Daleks, it was a big, tense adventure with the characters struggling to find a way to beat them. Here, it’s more like “The Keys of Marinus,” a collection of small adventures as the characters are chased through space and time as they try to escape The Daleks. It’s less of an epic adventure and more of a mixed bag of fun escapades and…awkward distractions. For example, watching the characters get stuck in a haunted house or fighting a robotic Doctor can be entertaining, but them interacting with this weird, underground civilization or this man from Alabama just drag it to a halt. Thankfully, the worst of it is only in the first half, making it a serial that starts slow but picks up momentum as things go on. There’s also some decent money put into this, having some impressive sets that change each episode, some crazy special effects for the sixties (the part where there’s two Doctors still looks good), and some creative camera angles that give a more cinematic feel. I dare say that this would be an impressively put together serial that is mostly fun despite some awkwardness.

But the real meat of this is that “The Chase” ends with the departure of Ian and Barbara. I will admit, the pacing upon their exit felt a bit too fast, with their decision to leave coming out of nowhere and their return home not giving us enough time to appreciate them appreciating Earth. Although, as weird as the pacing is, The Doctor’s heartbreak to see them go is well-acted and believable. You can tell that he’s less upset about the risk that comes with using The Daleks’ time machine and more upset about the idea that they want to leave in the first place. It’s odd that he feels more upset over two humans than his granddaughter, but this is still a moment that introduces the tragedy of The Doctor. They’re a character that’s always on the move, going from one part of the universe to the next and having to say goodbye to every friend and companion they ever make. They WANT to keep company, but know that their companion’s departure is always inevitable. Yet it breaks their heart just the same. I FEEL that tragedy here way more than with Susan, where The Doctor seemed more than willing to let her live her life. But with Ian and Barbara, these two humans who left an impact on him, they’ll stick with The Doctor’s heart for a long time.

The Time Meddler: The premise of this one is great. A time-traveler disguised as a monk is screwing with time to make himself the most important person in the universe. And The Doctor, being the biggest defender of time and space, tries to stop him. It’s a perfect idea that fits perfectly with who The Doctor is while giving him a true foil that he won’t have again until meeting The Master. It’s actually a ton of fun watching what’s basically the Beta Master trying to mess with history just for the pure selfish reasons of self-importance. And I do say that the serial perfectly captures that idea…by Part Four. Yeah, the majority of the first three parts are about hinting at what The Monk has been doing and padding out the runtime with characters screwing around in the woods or the monastery. By the time we get to Part Four, it does work well with the premise, having The Doctor and The Monk try and outsmart each other for victory with The Doctor, of course, coming out on top. And I’ll admit that it was great seeing The Doctor take charge without someone else stealing the show as the leading man. What, do you think that the new guy STEVEN is going to take Ian’s place as the take-charge companion? Get the hell out of here…

But, yeah, while the first three parts DRAG, “The Time Meddler” at least ends on a high enough note where I say it was worth the watch. I’ll likely only return to that final episode instead of watching the whole thing, but what are you gonna do?

Galaxy 4: Unfortunately, this is another that’s been deleted from history. HOWEVER, it’s still on Tubi…Sort of. Because the audio logs are still intact, they had the whole serial reanimated by Digitoonz Media & Entertainment. And it’s…distracting. Not because the animation is bad. I mean, yeah, it’s not GREAT, but what’s distracting about it is that the animators tried their hardest to give this serial a cinematic feel, having grandiose backgrounds and doing things the actors and set designers wouldn’t be capable of doing. It’s entertaining to see, but leaves me questioning what the original episodes would have looked like. Because there is NO WAY this animation is an EXACT reenactment of what happens. But I’m not really complaining because there are some good stuff that comes from making this serial animated, like having all of Maaga’s forces exact copies of one another or actually seeing the destruction of the planet as Maaga is forced to watch it fall apart around her. I like a lot of this stuff, despite the distractions. As for the story, it feels blessedly quick, albeit simple. I saw the twist of Maaga and her weird ass clones being the real evil a mile away, but this WAS likely one of the first instances when a story presents the nice looking creatures as evil where the ugly looking ones are good. I can give it a little leeway for that, especially since “Galaxy 4” makes it clear that it’s MAAGA who’s the real villain whereas her clones are more or less drones following orders to appease their crooked master. There’s actually a bit of tragedy to the clones where they don’t get a chance to think on their own and do what their master says because it’s all they know. It effectively makes you feel bad for them as you also feel grateful that Maaga dies knowing it was all for nothing. And, again, it all goes by fairly quickly, making a serial that feels short and to the point. I couldn’t ask for better and I REALLY wish there were more lost episodes that were animated. Would have at least made for a more unique experience than reading transcripts to ones that are lost.

Mission to the Unknown: Speak of the devil! At least it’s only ONE episode…And a pretty decent one at that.

This is the first time where we don’t follow The Doctor or any of their companions, but instead some one-off characters. This would happen on occasion, with one of the most popular examples being the episode “Blink,” showing great tension as we watch these characters try to survive without a Doctor to save them. It’s no different here, as “Mission to the Unknown” features two men trying to warn the galaxy of a master plan of the Daleks, setting up a future serial while also standing well on its own for a quick adventure that ends in unfortunate death. It doesn’t give us enough time to really CARE about them, but that might have something to do with me reading it too fast. It’s still a solid episode that leaves one fearing for what’s to come later.

The Myth Makers: And another for the transcripts. Son of a bitch…

It’s not easy to tell strictly through text, but I think this is meant to be a more comedic adventure. In past serials like “Marco Polo” and “The Crusade,” they bore me by forcing in politics and dull characters, likely for the sake of “Historical accuracy.” Here, it’s The Doctor and his companions dealing with idiots on both sides of the Trojan War, with historical accuracy most definitely thrown out the window as people are more familiar with the version in Homer’s Odyssey. It is much more entertaining to see The Doctor try to appeal to the whims of a meathead like Odysseus and watching Priam and his family bicker about Cassandra and the legitimacy of her visions, rather than getting lost in the politics. It’s fun, but I’m curious if it’s meant to be. You have obvious comedic moments like Steven’s quickly failed rescue attempt and Menelaus wanting a drink after hearing The Doctor’s Trojan Horse plan, but the majority of the lines also don’t strike me as TOO humorous. That’s largely because the way an actor delivers a line versus how it’s written can give two different reactions, and it’s why READING the lines doesn’t leave as big of a comedic punch as hearing an actor say it in a funny way.

“Well, then listen to the audio versions.”

I’VE READ SO MANY TRANSCRIPTS AT THIS POINT! I’M IN TOO DEEP NOW!

But I will say that if the point WAS to make this adventure more comedic, then it makes the inevitable fall of Troy feel all the more tragic. I didn’t want the Trojans to die! They were FUNNY! And because they made me laugh a little, it hurt seeing them killed, even if I should have expected from the beginning.

One thing I didn’t expect, though, was that this was Vicki’s departure. Which I wouldn’t have minded if not for how it’s weirdly unceremoniously done. There’s no final goodbye and it feels like it breezes past The Doctor saying he’ll miss her. And her reasoning is just…dull. She leaves because she liked a boy, much like how SUSAN left. I guess there WAS a bit of foreshadowing given how Priam changes Vicki’s name to Cressida, a female character in retellings of the Trojan War who famously falls for Troilus. But even then, it still feels weak and even strange that Vicki would willingly choose to stay in a time she doesn’t live in for Troilus, a boy she knew for about two days. I know it’s something that just…happens back then in 60s fiction, but makes for an off addition to an already entertaining serial.

The Daleks’ Master Plan: SWEET MOTHER OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, this is the LONGEST serial yet! Possibly the longest serial in the show’s history! And the weirdest part is that only three episodes of it still exist, which is crazy not only because of the length but also because it features The Daleks. Even back then, it’s pretty clear that The Daleks are the fan favorite villains of the series, with the writers inserting them in when they can. And you would think that major characters such as them would be more valuable to protect, but no. All we have are mostly audio logs…And transcripts for yours truly.

Which is a shame too, because…this is a frickin’ GOOD one! Quite possibly the best serial I’ve ever read yet! The plot is basically characters playing keep away from each other, chasing after this insanely impressive element that The Daleks want to use for another doomsday weapon. And I just loved that the second The Doctor saw The Daleks, he knew that they needed to be stopped. He wasn’t forced into it or was trying to survive The Daleks attacking first. After three whole adventures of dealing with them, The Doctor finally put two and two together to realize that The Daleks just existing is enough to know that nothing good can come from it. So he takes charge on an adventure that’s definitely a little too long but reads as incredibly grand. It’s sort of a repeat of “The Chase,” where The Doctor and company go from place to place, planet to planet, so they can avoid The Dalek’s capture, but there’s some things that make this serial stronger. For one, the stakes feel real this time, with characters who assist The Doctor and Steven on their journey getting killed unceremoniously or tragically. You’re given enough time with Bret, Katarina, and Sara that when they meet their end for the sake of saving the group, it makes you feel a little something. The whole serial comes to a close with this idea that while victory was met in the end, The Doctor and Steven still take a moment to reflect on the lives they lost to win. It really sets how grim and deadly this adventure was, showing characters could die whether they’re ones you care about or even enemies to The Doctor. Speaking of, this serial also works in giving more unique foes outside of STRICTLY The Daleks. You have Chen, an arrogant and egotistical dilweed who’s maniac drive to be ruler of the Universe and doing anything to get it makes you enjoy his untimely demise all the more. There’s even a surprise return of The Monk, who sets himself more as this pathetic failure of a villain as he stumbles constantly to one-up The Doctor only to be outsmarted every turn. Both mix things up well while also making it clear that The Daleks are the real threats as Chen and The Monk follow every command due to fearing for their safety. It helps make the serial feel like a more unique adventure compared to past ones with The Daleks, adding more life, energy, and intensity to it. The only time I was taken out of the whole thing was this random Christmas special that got inserted halfway through. It distracted from the plot way too long and was filled with jokes that were probably funny VISUALLY and maybe AUDIBLY, but not so much when you’re reading it…like I did. Still, that’s ONE episode in a twelve episode long serial. Being entertained with eleven out of twelve episodes is still a great feat that makes “The Daleks’ Master Plan” a masterclass serial. Now can we go back to actually WATCHING these episodes again?

The Massacre: Guess not…

And this one’s one of the worst, if not THE worst. “The Massacre” has the same problems as “The Crusade.” So much of this serial is focussing on the politics of the historical event taking place, watching these characters you barely give a shit about with the main cast you love getting pushed to the sidelines. Except that while “The Crusade” had the charming cast of THE DOCTOR, Ian, Barbara, and even Vicki, “The Massacre” focuses on Steven. And I’ll get into the specifics in a moment, but I do NOT care for Steven. So to have four episodes focusing on boring historical politics and a character I do not like, it’s pretty easy to pick up why I dislike this serial the most out of all of them. I’m not kidding when I say that the best part about it is the moment where it seemed like Steven was leaving. Before you say anything, it’s not because it gave me hope that Steven was gone for good…Okay, it’s partially because of that, but it’s mostly because of this moment where The Doctor reflects on the people in his life and how he misses them. He even corrects HIMSELF when getting Ian’s last name wrong, showing us that he cares enough to get it right now because he misses his friend. It’s a bittersweet moment that proves how much The Doctor loves each companion they’ve made, even the first few people they’ve met in this first life. It was beautiful…and then it got undercut immediately to introduce Dodo and shove Steven back in as he changed his mind. The one thing I liked about this serial, and it’s ruined by itself. Yeah, this one’s definitely the worst, and I’m not missing it.

The Ark: FINALLY, something I don’t have to READ!

“The Ark” surprised me for a second. I knew going in that it was a four-part-long serial, but by the time Part Two met its end I was confused. It seemed like the story was wrapping up as The Doctor and company cured a ship of the common cold and went off to a new adventure. Only for the TARDIS to appear in the same exact spot many years later with a new problem caused by their actions in the past. Already, I love this premise. We almost never return to the same place twice with The Doctor, where after they save people from this great threat they always head off, assuming everything is fine. This is the first time we actually see what happened to the people that The Doctor saved, only to find out something worse happened to them. It’s a solid premise with good enough execution. I like that this whole thing started with an accident. Dodo just happened to have a cold and didn’t expect the consequences that could come to a species that never experienced it. It puts The Doctor and company in a situation where you don’t BLAME them for what happened but you understand that they have to clean up this mess they caused. I also find it brilliant that the first half of the serial has The Doctor and his companions dealing with rouge Guardians and the second is rouge Monoids, giving this message that both parties aren’t innocent creatures and that peace can only be made when they learn to live together instead of treating one species as slaves. It’s a bit muddled as we don’t really see much of the extent that the Guardians treat the Monoids and how disrespected they are. It gives the idea that the creepy-looking creatures who look different are more at fault, especially since the human Guardians are the ones who assist The Doctor in both halves. There’s never any assistance from the Monoids, which makes it feel like peace might not be the best option. I wouldn’t harp on it if not for the fact that several serials back in “Galaxy 4,” we had the same message of “The ugly ones aren’t evil” with decent results. Still, the idea and meaning is clear as no one’s really, wholly good. Just could have used some cleaning up on showing the good side of the Monoids, making “The Ark” having a strong story ARC.

HAHAHA–Kill me. Next one!

The Celestial Toymaker: All but the last part of this serial is missing, so…onto the transcripts.

I mean it, kill me.

(I don’t actually mean it. Just…been doing this for a while)

This serial introduces The Toymaker, a character that would only reappear once more…fifty-seven years later with the incomparable Niel Patrick Harris playing the role. And speaking as someone who got introduced to this character through NPH doing random accents and a random ass dance sequence to “Spice Up Your Life,” I wasn’t sure what to expect from the version in the sixties. Turns out, while he’s not as bombastic and jovial as Niel Patrick Harris, The Toymaker is still the most unique villain that The Doctor and others have come across so far. The Doctor isn’t kidding when he says that The Toymaker loves using people as his playthings, sending out dolls, board games, playing cards, and all sorts of other traps to entertain himself with The Doctor and his companions. And while Steven and Dodo aren’t the best duo in the world,, they’re at least paired up with despicable and hilariously incompetent antagonists as The Toymaker sends out his toys against them. You’re entertained by them, but at the same time you feel bad for them when they fail because they’re all trapped souls captured by The Toymaker. Or are they? The serial cleverly keeps you guessing whether or not these toys were once people, leaving it up to interpretation on if it’s all a part of a trick he’s playing. It adds a bit of tragedy to the goofs and gags, which I certainly appreciate. Then you have The Doctor’s game with The Toymaker that adds intensity, as he’s trying his best to stall to win the game until Steven and Dodo find the TARDIS. And, sure, I would have loved MORE to actually SEE The Doctor beat The Toymaker in a battle of wits as opposed to watching Steven and Dodo going through a goofy, silly adventure, I’m not complaining too much for the end result. “The Celestial Toymaker” is still an incredibly entertaining serial that has every character working well together to survive and being competent as they win their own game. Although, I do have to call nonsense towards Fourteen in “The Giggle.” Saying that cheating is the last thing The Toymaker would do when that’s all he does in this serial…Nonsense.

The Gunfighters: This serial finds the characters in a wild, wild west adventure, and this one’s definitely meant to be a more entertaining ride rather than an epic adventure with huge stakes. You’ve got fun stuff like Steven being forced to sing at gunpoint, an outlaw playing dentist as he rips out The Doctor’s tooth, Dodo fainting as she attempts to hold a man at gunpoint, and British people trying to do western accents. It’s definitely a good time, but it also feels like the writers leaned too hard into this being a western. All the tropes and cliches seem present and it’s definitely enjoyable, but it doesn’t feel like a Doctor Who story. The characters are pretty much in the background as we follow the narrative threads of these outlaws and a sheriff. Sure, they’re entertaining as well and don’t make the serial drag like “The Crusade” and “The Massacre” did, but at the cost of abandoning who we really follow this series for: The Doctor and his companions. What’s crazy is that ten (eleven?) regenerations later, The Doctor would go on another wild west adventure, facing down a space robot playing bounty hunter as The Doctor protects a town that’s inexperienced with this kind of threat. Not only does that episode have a concept that works perfectly for this show but it makes the story revolve around The Doctor and his companions trying to save this town. In “The Gunfighters,” The Doctor and company are pretty much absent for most of the story, either being dragged along by characters with more narrative importance, or stepping out of the entire climax. And yes, there are instances when the show follows random characters for the entirety of a story, but that’s still done in a way that it feels like it matches the show. Like how in “Mission of the Unknown,” where we follow characters trying desperately to stop The Daleks. Goofy or intense sci-fi nonsense and seeing The Doctor and co. reacting to history is what makes Doctor Who one of the most engaging science fiction shows ever made. While a western can be entertaining, something like “The Gunfighters” tends to make you forget what show you’re watching.

The Savages: Deleted. And a shame too, because this is another good one. The concept of this civilized society using living people as an energy source is already chilling, and the serial does well in showing how messed up it is for the supposed Savages. Though, if this was written in Modern Doctor Who, I feel like the results of this power draining would be MUCH darker. Especially if Steven Moffat wrote the episode (The sick bastard). As is, it’s still great with how they made the power draining as dark as it could be for the sixties, all while adding a classist message that still manages to work NOW with its themes of the high and mighty sucking the life of what they think is savage. I love it and I also adore how The Doctor quickly picked up on how sick this whole idea is, wanting to shut the whole thing down immediately. THAT’S The Doctor I know, and it’s pretty fun that what saved the day is their leader taking some of The Doctor’s essence. Even when temporarily beaten, The Doctor still wins.

It’s all pretty great, but do you wanna know what’s better? STEVEN! IS! GONE!

Again, I’ll get to WHY later, but I am so glad to see Steven go. He wasn’t really the best companion out there and it is pretty nice that in his last adventure with The Doctor it’s all about Steven finally learning how to be useful. It’s to better sell that he’d be a capable leader to these people and…under his leadership, they’d probably die, but I can take it. Seeing Steven gone makes me willing to accept any nonsense of making him a leader and it’s nice that the show lets him leave with dignity. Even with the worst companions, it’s great the show at least treats them as people and lets ones like Steven leave happy enough instead of injecting him out the airlock or something. His departure is very welcomed and makes this serial stand out a little higher.

The War Machines: The final serial available on Tubi, and it’s…alright? Yeah, I honestly have no strong feelings one way or the other towards this one. The premise itself is what I love to see in Doctor Who, as this machine meant to help humanity ends up wanting to conquer it, with The Doctor being a key factor in securing the victory only to become the machine’s downfall. It’s all decent enough, with actors doing well at portraying these disturbingly obedient human puppets and there being some impressive puppetry on display with WANTON’s war machines. But as decent as it all is, none of it really WOWED me. The techno babble that The Doctor used to explain how he outsmarted and bested the war machines lost me due to how convoluted it was. Same goes for how WANTON was able to hypnotize human beings. I don’t even know if it was ever explained because of how much non-scientific science was thrown in this entire serial. It’s the central part of this entire premise, and it makes little sense how a computer was able to hypnotize anyone, even if it was supposedly advanced.

Another thing that bothers me about this serial is that this is supposed to be Dodo’s exit. She’s out for half the adventure and doesn’t even get to say goodbye in person. She just takes a nap, lets her replacements do most of the work, and then she’s gone for good. It feels cheap and gives her the weakest exit out of any companion in this run. Possibly the weakest exit ever. It’s another little aspect that makes the serial not BAD but not outstanding, either.

The Smugglers: Not much to say about this one. Just a fast romp as The Doctor and his companions fend off pirates in their hunt for a legendary treasure. It drags a little bit and there’s a lot of flip-flopping in terms of certain characters’ loyalty, but it has some fun moments, like The Doctor outsmarting opponents and Ben and Polly proving their worth as companions fairly quickly. Not a spectacular adventure, but entertaining enough.

The Tenth Planet: Here it is. The final serial in the First Doctor’s run…And it’s incomplete.

Yeah, the final adventure with William Hartnell’s Doctor, and you can’t see it in its entirety. You can watch the first three parts, but the fourth? Not a chance. It’s quite disappointing and, you know what? If I could cheat with his first adventure, I can cheat with his last. Let’s use “other means” than Tubi to watch those first three episodes and read what happens next.

And I’ll just say…it’s ALMOST perfect. It has a STRONG premise, introducing the Cybermen, a longtime enemy of The Doctor. It was so fascinating to see how humanlike these monsters began, moving and speaking like everyday men just with a slight robotic lean to it. It actually makes the more robotic, emotionless Cybermen more chilling in the modern age as it now becomes clear that the Cybermen perfected their goal to be more robot than human. The serial also cleverly makes it where the Cybermen aren’t the ONLY threat. I truly love that the bitter and impulsive General Cutler is just as much of an antagonist as the Cybermen are, with his desire to kill them before they kill Earth being potentially more damaging if he ever got away with his plans. It goes along with a recurring theme of this show in the modern age where those who try to be the victor in an unnecessary war tend to destroy themselves. Cutler dies because he attracted Cybermen attention with the warhead and the Cybermen die because their planet burned up when they could have asked for assistance with their problem instead of destroying the Earth for survival. It’s handled really well, with Polly and Ben still continuing to be useful additions to the cast as they do all they can to stop both Cutler and the Cybermen. Mainly because they have to with The Doctor checking out for when things get their most deadly.

Speaking of, the one thing that holds the serial back is The First Doctor’s exit. This was his final adventure, and he doesn’t do much aside from telling people what to do and taking a nap. By the time his regeneration begins, it all goes by so fast that it feels like he’s being rushed out the door. In a way…he kind of is. Due to age catching up with him, William Hartnell was forced to leave the show because his memory problems and exhaustion were getting difficult to film around. So now they had to get him out of the show for his own good, all while making one last serial as a final goodbye to this actor. However, it doesn’t change how…off his farewell feels. He’s not the triumphant hero who stopped The Cybermen and he didn’t get any final words to make his goodbye feel haunting or bittersweet. Future Doctors got this chance, even ones who decided to leave on their own accord like David Tennant or Matt Smith. It’s actually kind of sad that William Hartnel didn’t get the same treatment and that the writers would only learn their lesson for FUTURE generations. His flawed departure is the one thing that holds back what is admittedly a well-made serial.

And that’s it. That’s the last adventure with The First Doctor. But before I talk about my overall thoughts with this man, I should first discuss some other characters. Characters who are important to any Doctor no matter WHO (haha) they are…

THE COMPANIONS

Doctor Who would not be the show that it is without the companions. They’re frequently the audience surrogates, experiencing new adventures alongside The Doctor while assisting them across space and time. One thing that Chris Chibnall did correctly is point out that the companions are the true power of The Doctor and are worth talking about within the same breath. However, it DOES get a little tricky on who’s considered a companion or not. And trust me when I say it’ll get trickier as time goes on. So, for the sake of sanity, I’ll say that a companion is a recurring character who travels with The Doctor in the TARDIS and is there for more than one episode (Or serial, in this case). With those rules that I’ll probably break in the future out of the way, let’s begin with each companion as they left us.

Susan: I have…complicated feelings towards Susan. She had great chemistry within the group, did well as the wide-eyed, naive child who was excited for everything, and I was truly sad to see her go…But while my heart was sad, my ears were eternally grateful.

Yeah, as sweet a character as Susan is, she wouldn’t. Stop. F**KING. SCREAMING. Every time danger happened, she would always go, “AH! AH! GRANDFATHER! IAN! BARBARA! AH-AH!” Everytime. And when Susan was part of the group, having fun with them, being just as silly as the others, THAT’S when Susan worked. She was “The Young One,” acting as someone who the others would look after but still treat with respect as they knew Susan was capable of so much more than SCREAMING. As a member of the group, Susan worked great. As someone who could face danger…Let’s just say that my ears will be bleeding less now that she’s gone.

Ian: It’s weird that a college professor has more of a hero’s heart than the titular character of our show, but I’m not entirely complaining. Ian was a solid companion, willing to take charge for the sake of the group and having some great interactions with The Doctor. You could tell he wanted to strangle the old man, but also enjoyed The Doctor’s company as they shared a similar spirit. They both consider themselves leaders of the party and find conflict when one has an idea they believe is better than the other’s. After a while, they learn to work together and you feel that trust they have thanks to them realizing they’re basically the same kind of men who want the same kind of things. It DOES tend to feel that Ian steals the show at times, but it doesn’t change how much of an entertaining and perhaps even inspiring character Ian can be. He went through so much for The Doctor and the others, being the hero that they need and being charming as hell when doing it.

Barbara: Barbara’s sort of the character that has a well-defined relationship with everyone in the TARDIS. She’s a supportive, motherly figure to Susan and Vicki, treating them with respect while calming them down during intense times. With Ian, she’s a good friend and ONLY a friend. I’m actually glad that she was never forced into a love-interest role with him. There were so many moments where that could have been a possibility with how often those two are paired together, but it’s nice that they remained as close friends who can rely and help one another when the time comes. Not every man and woman needs to end up dating in the end. As for how Barbara is with The Doctor, where Ian and The Doctor are the same in a goal-driven level, The Doctor and Barbara are the same through an INTELLECTUAL one. They often share the same kind of thoughts and curiosity for each adventure they go on, and when they argue, you can tell it’s between two people who are of the same mind but with different opinions. It’s done well and I appreciate seeing these two interact the most. I also appreciate that Barbara stood strong in the face of danger, being just as valuable of a helping hand as the others are and not being a damsel in distress. Sure, she was like that SOMETIMES, but for the sixties this was likely the most independent a woman could get on television. Barbara was a strong character, and likely my favorite amongst the original companions.

Vicki: I was very worried that Vicki was going to turn out to be Susan 2.0, and in a lot of ways, she is. She was very much the young one who was commonly paired up with The Doctor or Barbara as she oozed with childish naivety. Even her exit was nearly identical to Susan’s, except that Susan’s was handled better because The Doctor at least said goodbye. Still, while very similar to Susan, there were some things that I did like a little more with Vicki. For one, she didn’t scream as much…thank FRICK! And two, she was a bit more proactive. Instead of screaming for Ian, Barabara, and The Doctor, Vicki found solutions herself and was frequently the one who helped save the day. I appreciate that, as it helps set her apart more from Susan and gives fans a different kind of naive character that’s endearing in her OWN way. I will say that it feels weird that The Doctor treats Vicki with more respect than his actual GRANDDAUGHTER at times, but this one isn’t screaming too often, so I don’t blame him. Vicki’s a little too much the same, but in some ways, I’d definitely say she’s a bit of an improvement, as mean as it is to admit.

Katarina: Does she count? She doesn’t really go past a single serial…Aw, screw it. She traveled in the TARDIS and helped the group for some time. I’ll say she counts.

And there’s not much to say about Katarina. She was along for the ride for such a short time, not really given a chance to stand out between the young characters like Susan or Vicki. There is this bit of naivety due to her seeing technology for the first time and mistaking The Doctor as a god, but there’s not enough time to develop that idea further and show her capabilities. I will say, though, that she gets the DARKEST exit of any companion I’ve seen. It’s sudden and unceremonious, dying because of some stupid maniac trying to escape his personal Hell. What’s worse is that it’s left to interpretation as to whether or not her death was an accident. Because she was from the distant past and had no knowledge of technology or buttons, it’s unknown if she sacrificed herself to stop the others from going back to The Daleks or because she didn’t know what button opened the door. A character that got to see the universe for the first time, thinking she was a part of something perfect, only to die in an unpredictable circumstance. She had a short amount of time, but I’m with The Doctor. I hope she found that perfection.

Steven: I. Do. NOT care for Steven. It feels like the writers were trying to make him Ian’s replacement as the heroic figure that was often at odds with The Doctor. Except that Steven is very much NOT that. He’s more like this bumbling buffoon who caused more problems as he constantly needed to be rescued by The Doctor and even Vicki at times. The very SECOND that proves how useless he could be was during his introduction when he ran to get back his teddy bear during a grueling escape from The Daleks. You COULD make the argument that the writers wanted to slowly develop Steven into a more heroic character, but there was barely any progression with him constantly being the butt of every joke. The only time he felt useful was during his last appearance, which I can appreciate. Again, they let him leave with some dignity intact and I’m grateful that he and The Doctor left on good terms. The two of them had a lot of one-on-one times with Steven having a great amount of trust towards The Doctor despite the constant jabs The Doctor gave. The Doctor admires every companion he lets tag along, and I love that it’s no different with Steven, even if I was more glad to see him gone.

Dodo: I…am incredibly indifferent towards Dodo. I don’t HATE her, I guess I could say that. She never really made my ears bleed like Susan did, but, at the same time, she wasn’t really the most useful companion. Dodo was either a damsel for The Doctor to save or someone that CAUSED a problem instead of leading to a solution. In a way, she’s more of what I expected Vicki to be: A downgrade rather than an upgrade who never really got a chance to shine as a worthy member of the group. Even Steven seemed more proactive than her, and that is a crime. And I’m pretty sure even the writers weren’t sure what to do with her either, given how they just…kicked Dodo out of the series without any proper exit. If Steven could get a proper ending, then so could Dodo. Regardless, I wouldn’t exactly say I’m going to miss her. Not too much, anyway. I didn’t mind her existence in the show, but I won’t lose sleep with her being gone. Sorry.

Ben and Polly: Yeah, might as well lump these two together. They weren’t on this run for long, and I assume they’ll be more dynamic characters when we talk about Number Two. For now, I’ll say that they’re fairly useful, saving the day with cunning and bravery. I wish Ben was a LITTLE less whiny and Polly a lot less of a damsel, but who knows? Maybe they’ll improve with The Second Doctor.

But that’s enough with the companions. Let’s finally talk about the man who started it all…

THE DOCTOR

The Doctor, no matter the iteration, is one of my favorite fictional characters. I ADORE a character who solves problems through wit, prefers not to use violence but will if pushed to their limits, and is the kindest being in the universe who will also destroy you if you hurt anyone they love. The Doctor is a being of many contradictions, who’s personality may fluctuate throughout the generations but still, at their core, is a caring being who won’t let ANYTHING stop them from doing what’s right.

…So to see The Doctor start off as this old fart who constantly complains while everyone does everything, causes problems for others, and sometimes cowardly bends to the will of enemies was a definite SHOCK to the system. The Doctor did NOT start out as the nobel hero I know them now as. It was actually kind of frustrating to see him stand off to the side while Ian took charge of everything. THIS would be the person who defeated countless enemies all over the universe? The person who sets out to save lives and regrets the ones they lost? That all started with someone who purposely trapped him and his companions on a distant planet just so they could explore? I couldn’t believe it, but thankfully the writers knew this neat little trick to storytelling: Character development.

Slowly but surely, The First Doctor does become more and more like the character I now adore. He fought Daleks after knowing how dangerous they are, weeped for the friends he had to let go, and outsmarted enemies rather than overpower them. He even gained The Doctor’s silliness and sense of humor. Just look at his grin as he scared enemies off after pretending to be a Dalek. The man relished in the chaos he brought, and it was fun to see…Except when he got giddy for being the one who caused Rome to burn down to the ground. Still have no idea what that was about.

Now, things weren’t always perfect. The First Doctor, while improved over time, still never became the heroic badass I know him NOW as, relying on his companions to do most of the work while he’s off having his own fun. Still, that’s where him being the FIRST comes into play. I can absolutely buy that it would take a few regenerations before he became The Doctor I know and love. As is, I’ll say that The First Doctor is an interesting, albeit off-putting, look into what The Doctor USED to be. It wasn’t always good, but I had my fun and I’ll miss this goofy old man.

And with that, we close off The First Doctor��s run. Most of it was fun, a lot was more dull than I expected it to be, and there were both good and bad surprises given to me through this journey into The First Doctor's adventures. It was great to finally see how this show I love started out, and it’s only the beginning from here. Tune in next time when it’s out with the old and in with the…significantly less old as we talk about The Second Doctor’s run.

#doctor who #classic who #classic doctor who #the first doctor #the doctor #doctor who susan #ian chesterton #barbara wright #doctor who vicki #long post #it was nineteen pages on one google doc #sorry #what i thought about #doctor who reviews

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neuxue · 1 year ago

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hello, fellow liehuo enjoyer here, and I have been making forays into 无限流 lately — I have been sitting on the edge of the qqgk cliff kicking my feet idly for a while, would it be too presumptuous of me to ask you to push me over? (in less flowery language, would you recommend qqgk to a fellow liehuo and 无限流 reader?)

hey! always good to hear from another weapons enthusiast liehuo enjoyer.

And sure, I can certainly try to push you wuxia-style off the qqgk cliff; it's no leap into a fiery abyss of agony but it was a fun read. (as an aside, now that I think about it there is technically a cliff-jump in qqgk, for what that's worth).

Honestly I wouldn't usually think to compare the two, and I probably wouldn't put qqgk on an 'if you enjoyed lhjc, read this next' list because they sit in different spaces in my mind, but there's no reason you can't enjoy both; I certainly did!

The main thing I'd say first, just to set some tonal expectations, is that qqgk feels like a much lighter read, in terms of both prose and content, and it does not have anywhere near the knife levels of liehuo. (though let's be honest that's not actually saying much).

Whether that's a good, bad, or neutral thing is obviously a matter of taste, but I'm going to go out on a limb (like a little bird) here and assume that if you enjoyed liehuo you probably enjoy some heartrending agony angst or pain in a story. To which I will say, qqgk does in fact have some knives; not as many and not as agonising but well-executed and in a way that packs a kind of surprising punch, in part because you're not entirely expecting it (or at least I wasn't, after the first couple arcs). Similarly, there are some moments of genuine beauty and pathos in a way that feels not unlike those little flashes priest sometimes drops in the midst of an otherwise lighthearted scene, though again on a different scale.

Sort of relatedly, another thing I liked about qqgk is that while it starts off feeling like just a light fun read and like a lot of the details are throwaway decoration, I was again surprised by the degree to which the loose ends or 'throwaway' details or character traits that initially seem just there for the aesthetic get tied up or tied into the larger whole in a way that's more satisfying than I anticipated.

But now for the fun part, which was me going 'huh, now I kind of want to make a list of similarities between the two in an if-you-liked-this kind of way'. So! Some things you get in lhjc that you can expect to see in some way in qqgk:

two extremely competent protagonists initially using that competence largely for the purpose of antagonising each other as they are forced under protest but by circumstance to collaborate

blood... drinking? bloodplay? unclear. anyway, that.

Who Gets To Be A Person (to a lesser degree than liehuo, yes, and qqgk leans more into 'tool' than 'weapon' but it's definitely there)

ensemble cast shenanigans (again, qqgk takes a lighter tone here and I cannot in good faith promise you a Gu Yuexi analogue but once again there are some that turn out kind of surprisingly... more than you initially expect)

Wow That Sure Is A Healthy Mother-Son Relationship, Yikes

character(s) who hide their pain or past (or both) only to have it forcibly revealed by circumstances outside their control in the most visceral way possible

memory shenanigans (which are hit or miss for me, but I liked the way these were done in both cases)

characters fighting over who gets to self-sacrifice for whom, the realisation that your beloved has a death wish, etc.

undead interactions on a boat

character(s) whose approach to problem-solving is 'if you set it on fire enough it will cease to be a problem, or will at least become a different problem'

Anyway, I really was pleasantly surprised by qqgk because I didn't know what to expect and the first arcs felt like 'okay this is fun and entertaining but I'm not sure I'm completely on board' and then it went 'okay hang on let me just--' and went harder than I thought it would. I will admit there are aspects of the ending that I didn't love, but in a way that honestly doesn't impact my overall enjoyment of it, or my satisfaction with the closure of the story.

I don't know if I have done a very good job selling it or presenting a coherent image of it but that's what I've got, so if that sounds like a good time to you then I'd be curious to hear what you eventually think!

(I'd also be interested in any 无限流 that you would recommend to a fellow liehuo enjoyer, as it's a genre I'm enjoying but have also not read extensively in)

#asks #anon #recommendations #this is such an incoherent recommendation but I'm sticking with it #jump off the cliff the water's fine!

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candlecoveisland · 5 months ago

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Episode 3: Love and Hate

Oh shit.

OH, SHIT--

NEW MIIS

As promised, I added Calvery, Dr. Heartfelt, Ms. Laughingstock, Sunny, Hoody Hans, and ManBearPig.

ROMANCE

We have our first crack ship of the game!

Of course, I helped this poor lovestruck fool and gave him advice on how to woo Sunny using his best assets.

The man can hit those high notes.

Admittedly, I'm not sure how this will work out long-term seeing that they have opposite personalities (Skin-Taker is outgoing and Sunny is independent) and there are (unverified) claims in the TL community that opposite personalities don't make good couples, but I don't know. You can really never know what'll happen in this game. In any case, they currently seem very happy together.

FRIENDSHIP

Percy wanted to "introduce" Poppy and Milo, but for some reason, they were deeply confused by each other, so they didn't become friends that time.

Milo met up with Poppy again later, so they did eventually end up making friends.

Janice and Calvery are best friends?? I have no idea when this happened.

Percy and Skin-Taker had a MASSIVE fight. What it was about, I have no idea.

Thankfully, Janice intervened, and they made up.

Poppy told me that he and Percy don't seem to be getting along that well. I told him that his and Percy's friendship was nothing special, and (surprisingly to me) he said that he wondered if there was a way for them to become closer, so I have hope for them.

Skin-Taker tried to make friends with Milo, but they didn't really hit it off. He asked me later if I thought he and Milo would make good friends, and I told him that their relationship wouldn't be anything special. (I did this for Milo's safety.)

I predict ManBearPig and Hans will become best friends. They've been each other's only friends for quite a while (two people tried to make friends with MBP and failed, and nobody has even bothered trying to make friends with Hans), and I always see them hanging out together.

They're my broTP.

EVERYTHING ELSE

Basically everything is open now that I've accomplished most milestones in this game (add 10 Miis, solve a decent amount of problems, have a decent mix of males and females, have someone confess their love).

Also, more rankings on the rankings board have been unlocked.

Orange is the popularity ranking (which is based on how many friends a Mii has), and green is the pampered ranking (which is based on how much attention I give a Mii). (Percy, Skin-Taker, and Horace are at the top because they're the ones always asking me to buy them shit--)

Oh! And another thing that has been unlocked is Quirky Questions!

What is it with people asking me for grits?? Janice asked me for grits too last episode. Is CandleCove Island in the south???

On the topic of food, Skin-Taker seems to have a problem with candy.

I feel like Milo is turning into a finance bro. I gave him this snazzy jacket, and he's always talking into this cell phone I gave him, and one time he asked me to look into his head (this a normal Tomodachi Life occurrence btw), and he was thinking about graphs??

(Oh, he also asked me for hair dye btw, that's why his hair is green.)

Speaking of looking into people's heads, Calvery was pondering a cactus (?), and Ms. Laughingstock had no thoughts, head empty.

Also, short announcement: I left out a lot of less-interesting stuff relating to friendships and food, clothing, etc. that I give the Miis just because the huge blocks of text are kind of unsightly (and they're HUGE blocks of text now that I have so many Miis), so I'll start recording that information in separate logs. Also, like last time, bonus footage will be its own post, and that's probably going to be the usual for this series.

Anyway! Next episode, Sea-Dog, Salty Jojo, Banana King, Phillip Fly, Joe Shortlegs, and Susan Siren will join in on the drama. See you then!

#gonna add a new group of miis each episode i think because people are getting chummy with one another really quickly #like we already have 2 pairs of best friends and 1 couple. i didn't think those would happen so quickly #and i don't want the early-added miis to form cliques. and for the newcomers to have problems assimilating #cci episodes #candle cove #janice #pirate percy #poppy #milo #horace horrible #the skin-taker #calvery stankoff #dr. heartfelt #the laughingstock #sunny #hoody hans #manbearpig #also i know laughingstock has been canonically male for a while and i am technically using the wiki versions of the characters #but i thought it would be beneficial for there to be extra women because; since this game is heteronormative; more women = more couples #and more opportunities for drama and crack ships and ugly babies #and i figured that mostly everyone still headcanoned laughingstock to be female; so it wouldn't be that jarring

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tobiasdrake · 1 year ago

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Here we are. No employees, no jobs, and the mafia shaking us down for rent money. I'm surprised Yakou even made it to Blank Week.

Don't mind me. I'm just having a long, poetic depression at the spot that will one day become the location for the submarine I'll be so proud of, symbolizing how far I've come from this moment. Well, my homunculus will. I don't actually know if I'll get the sub before or after I'm torn to pieces in gruesome, apocalyptic violence.

I hope he enjoys it.

If you're the coroner, you should know that you're a day early. I still have until the end of the day to get the mob boss his cash, so you and I won't have business until tomorrow.

D'aww, is this going to be the story of how Yakou and his wife met? I thought it'd be the story about how she died, but I like this better. We know enough about how she died. I want to hear about how she lived.

What I'm hearing is that if you turn out to be a sketchy fucking bastard and I decide, upon knowing the facts, not to solve this case out of spite, I still get paid a cool 100k.

That's a good deal. Given the look of you, your stern-sounding voice, and the context of being an old man hiring a P.I. to hunt down a young woman without explaining anything about who she is, what her relationship to you is, or why she's ghosting you? I'd say there's a strong chance of this being sketchy.

Like. Best case scenario, this guy's her dad who she bailed on because he's a domineering prick. Worst case scenario, he's a romantic stalker who she ghosted because he's a gross asshole who won't take no for an answer. Maybe it's more complicated than that. Maybe she stole something of value from him or something. I dunno. But those are the immediate kneejerk assumptions that leap to my mind.

There are very few good reasons for wealthy old men to go to these lengths to track down young women that vanished from their lives. He's gonna pay Yakou a million shien to un-ghost this woman. That's not a great sign. We should look into him as much as we are looking into her.

Yakou, of course, smells nothing out-of-place with this business transaction because a) he's desperate and b) his values are too patriarchal to even consider anything amiss about this. It just doesn't occur to him.

He even knows her place of business, but can't approach her himself. He wants her brought to him.

We're literally taking on the role of a paid thug.

RED FLAG

Yeah, this guy's definitely the bad guy here. Yakou's going to have a change of heart when he meets her. You can feel it.

And when he does, we still get paid 100k! ~( ˘▾˘~)

WHAT THE FUCK IS OUR RENT!?

I'm sad now. ._. If a million only covers six months, then that 100k won't even cover one. The math doesn't work out to that.

Maybe, if we play our cards right, we can trick the mob boss and the client into murdering each other.

Wow, he found her fast. To be fair, this is his specialty. He's highly trained in tracking down lost pets and cheating spouses, and both of those vocations offer skills that are transferrable to finding a "missing" person that's just out living their life.

The hard part's going to be convincing her to come with us. I'm pretty sure the client is expecting us to simply club her over the head and stuff her in a van. But you know Yakou's going to talk to her instead. As he should. This is sketchy as fuck.

Good man. Get her perspective before you decide what to do with the case.

ABORT. ABORT. YOU HAVE FAILED THIS SOCIAL INTERACTION.

It's such a... rare treat for Kanai Ward! A ha ha ha ha I'll leave you alone forever now.

There we go. Coming right out with it.

There's no subtle way to bring up in casual conversation, "Do you know why someone might hypothetically want you dragged in front of them against your will?" Especially as a stranger. If we want her story, this is the only way to get it.

She's surprisingly chill about this. Is this encounter more harmless than I'd suspected? Or is this simply the resignation of someone who has been harassed multiple times and is used to it by now?

I appreciate how forthright Yakou's being here. Laying all the cards on the table. If the job's harmless then I'll see it through but if this is shady then please tell me and I'll bow out. That's his position, and it's exactly what he's conveying with no room for misunderstanding.

It's. Refreshing to see such clear and open communication happening in a story.

Alright, that's a fair reason. By "rival organization", she's probably referring to the Unified Government's own homunculus research lab. We're five years after both labs began their experiments but two years before UG's lab will create their first successful homunculus, and Huesca will manslaughter the entirety of Kanai Ward trying to keep up.

Oh, I hope she is an unparalleled visionary in the field of homunculus research. Just for the bitter irony of Huesca having her killed and then dumbassing the experiment so hard that he killed himself and everyone else in the city.

"An ass" is underselling how awful Huesca is. It's nice to know that even before this became a fascist police state, Amaterasu was still just as awful as--

HOLY SHIT SHE'S WEARING PANTS.

Y'ALL. Y'ALL.

SHE'S WEARING PANTS.

I. Think. This might be the first female Kodaka character in history to wear pants. This DLC is a momentous occasion.

Still doesn't have a name, though. She may have had to trade her name for pants.

#master detective archives: rain code #drake plays rain code #yakou furio

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moviemunchies · 9 months ago

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This movie’s pretty great, but it reminds me of how disappointing the third movie is.

Berk has adapted well to having dragons, and are now a part of everyday life. Hiccup has been using his time to map out the world around Berk, while his father Stoick wants to train him to take up his role of Chief one day. Everyone’s plans go to heck, though, when Hiccup hears of a new threat: Drago Bludvist, a warlord capturing dragons for his own personal army. And it turns out that there’s another dragon rider out there: Hiccup’s long-assumed-dead-mother, Valka.

[Quick disclaimer: I don’t know how well this fits into continuity with the television serieses; I’ve never seen them, and given how movie serieses tend to have television or comic tie-ins, and then ignore those, I don’t see much reason to.]

This, like the first film, is something that I think a lot of people expected me to go nuts for by virtue of the dragons. Dragons are Awesome. This is well-established. And to be clear, that alone makes this movie very memorable and interesting. I love that there are a butt-ton of different kinds of dragons all over the movie. Apparently to get a lot of the varieties of background creatures, they mixed and matched designs they already rendered. It looks pretty good overall.

I really thought that Astrid did more in this movie? She’s a character who does things, but it isn’t as if she has a distinct arc. Part of why I didn’t mind her role in the first film when rewatching was that I thought that she did more here that developed her character. She’s still cool, and all, don’t get me wrong, I just thought she deserved a subplot that really developed her as a distinct personality.

Valka has good development as a character when she arrives; there’s a large chunk of the movie that’s just good stuff between her and Hiccup, and then with Stoick. She’s a fantastic character. It’s a bit of a shame, then, that she doesn’t really do much in the climax of the film. It feels a bit like she was going to do more, but then the last third of the movie was rewritten for another purpose entirely.

[Also, “The Dancing & the Dreaming” is better and more romantic than any pop love song on the radio. There! I said it!]

Stoick’s death is heavy and carries a lot of weight. It’s an important beat in this movie, and it works, although! Minor quibble! He gets blasted by dragon fire, and the body’s not even burned? I remember pointing out to my friend in college after I saw it, and she pointed out that they obviously can’t show realistic maiming, but there aren’t even burn marks on his body. Again, a minor issue, but something that stuck out to me.

I also hold that the conclusion, with Toothless gaining power to be the Alpha over all the dragons and glowing and all? Is a deus ex machina. I remember TV Tropes saying that it’s not because Valka says something like, “Well, we don’t know everything about Night Furies!” as if that explains him suddenly having the exact power to solve all the problems right now, becoming the ruler of all dragons. There’s no foreshadowing or buildup of that. We like it, because we like Toothless; that’s not the same thing as it being a well-developed Plot Point.

Hiccup’s development in this film goes pretty well, though. The movie knows that it cannot just stagnate; the next film in the series needs to do something with the protagonist. Hiccup’s father is trying to prepare him to be the next chief, but he doesn’t want to deal with that. But he HAS to accept that change will happen, and with it, new responsibilities. It’s realizing that he has what it takes, even if he has to be suddenly forced into the role, that

“Drago Bludvist” is maybe an incredibly corny name for a villain, and yet he’s surprisingly well-executed in the film? Supposedly there were plans to bring him back after this movie, and those were canceled, which is a shame because the third movie’s a mess. Drago, though? He’s menacing, original, and actually kills a main character! Dang, he’s a good villain for a Dreamworks movie.

Shame about the name, though.

And I love the final message of the film: that we’re all stronger together. I like that; it still hurts a bit hearing it, though, because the third movie decides that actually the dragons need to go away for the story. That was Dumb and I hated it. This movie, though, while not a perfect masterpiece, is a very good dragon movie, and I really enjoyed watching it. Even if all the elements don’t get their chance to fully shine, it still holds together really well, with memorable characters, a good villain, and lots and lots and lots of dragons.

#Movie Munchies #reviews #Dreamworks #HtTYD #How to Train Your Dragon 2 #Hiccup Haddock #Toothless #dragons

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ihni · 2 years ago

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First Lines of 10 Fics Game

Rules: share the first lines of 10 of your most recent fanfics and then tag 10 people. If you have written less than 10 fics, don’t be shy and share anyways :)

I was tagged by @writerwhowritesao3, @strangerqueerthings, @harringroveera and @dragonflylady77 (thank you guys! Sorry I'm so slow)

(And I'm going with "the first lines", plural, like @writerwhowritesao3 did, because it's more fun. For me.)

1. Taking Notes (Harringrove bodyswap, WIP - but finished, just gotta read through the chapters before posting)

When it happened, it happened out of the blue. One second, Steve was carrying a plate of lukewarm leftovers from the kitchen and into the living room – where he had planned to spend the rest of his Friday night lounging in front of the TV – and the next, he was lying on his back on a lumpy bed and staring up at the cracks in the ceiling. There might have been a brief flash of white, but if there was, it was gone instantaneously.

He blinked.

Cracks in the ceiling. Actually, cracks in an unfamiliar ceiling.

2. Tumblr ficlets (Harringrove so far, short one-shots)

The hospital room is surprisingly cozy, for a hospital room. The walls aren’t white, but a light green. There’s a small plant in a pot on the windowsill, and a pile of newspapers on the table by the wall. One of them is open on the crossword page. It’s only half done, a pencil lying on the page, forgotten, as if whoever tried to solve it gave up halfway through.

There’s a chequered blanket on the bed, and an unmoving man lying under it. He’s been there for a long time. The nurses haven’t mentioned the blanket, or the newspapers, or the plant. They know not to fight a dying man’s family on the little things that might bring them comfort.

And the man in the bed is dying.

Neil Hargrove is dying.

3. Patience (Billy-centric, Flo POV, oneshot)

Flo ran out of patience twenty years ago.

For eighteen of those years, she’s been working for Hawkins’ Police Department. People have come and gone during her time here, but she has remained, through thick and thin.

Besides Flo, Jim is the one who has been here the longest, with his five years. Calvin came in a year later, and Phil only started two years ago when his family moved to Hawkins from Montana.

This means that Flo has been here longer than the three of them combined, which gives her seniority. Sure, on paper they all outrank her, but in reality, she is the one who keeps things running around here and they wouldn’t dare cross her. They all know that Flo has no patience for bullshit.

4. Here we are (Mungrove, last part of a loose series)

Eddie never thought he’d end up here; in California of all places. While many of his classmates had often talked about going to live at the sunny coast, he’d never dreamed of going. Had never felt the need to see the ocean or frolic in the sun. Back when he used to plan his campaigns for game night, he always had his head in the clouds, but when it came to real life, he hadn’t ever dreamt that big. Sure, he’d entertained the thought of someday making it; becoming one of the great musicians of his time and get to travel the world … and yes, maybe California had been a part of that, vaguely. But he’d never actually thought he’d make it out of Indiana.

5. Where do we go from here (Mungrove, same series as above)

After coming back from Darktown, Billy can’t sleep. It’s a problem.

It’s not surprising, that he can’t sleep. He’s being kept in a lab he doesn’t know the whereabouts of, having samples taken with or without his consent, and having to submit to various testing on the daily. All of those are perfectly good reasons for a person not to be able to sleep. But Billy has slept a wall away from monsters, both the literal and the figurative kind. He’s slept next to certain death. The lab is not the reason why he can’t sleep.

No, the reason why he can’t sleep – and the reason why it’s a problem – is Eddie.

6. A piece of meaning on your skin (Harringrove, oneshot)

“This is stupid,” Steve said, because it was. It was monumentally stupid. “We shouldn’t be here. None of us really won the bet anyway so we shouldn’t have to do this!”

“Correction,” Billy said, not looking up from the folder he was leafing through. “Both of us were right, which means that both of us won the bet, which means that we’re both going to get our prize.” He held up a picture of a stylized snake that was wrapped around a sword. “What do you think of this one?”

Steve groaned. “I hate it. Billy, please. My mom will kill me.”

7. Love in the ER (Harringrove first meeting, oneshot)

It was a busy night in the Hawkins’ Memorial emergency room, which meant that the waiting room was almost full. Almost half of the people there had been guests at the Wellingtons’ wedding where they had been served bad shrimp (two of them had thought to bring their own puke buckets, and the rest took turns running to and from the only bathroom). Then there was an old couple, a drunk man with a nail through his hand (and the wife who kept berating him under her breath) a mother with a sleeping toddler and a sweaty eight-year-old, and four teenagers.

Robin, who was – unfortunately – one of these teenagers, could think of about eighty-four things she would rather be doing than accompanying her friend to the ER after having a reaction to his new allergy medicine.

“’obin?”

She rolled her eyes and tried to tell herself it wasn’t his fault. “Yes, dingus?”

“I wow yo.”

“I know."

8. Mr. Peterson next door (Harringrove, one-shot)

Billy was already waiting by the mailbox when the postman came. It was the third day in a row he was standing there, and today the mailman just raised his eyebrows as he handed Billy a small stack of envelopes. Billy didn’t do more than grunt in thanks before he started rifling through the letters. There were bills addressed to his dad, one letter that looked like an offer to start a magazine subscription for Susan – and nothing for Billy. As usual.

“Fuck,” he said under his breath and went inside to prepare for work. He was alone in the house – Neil and Susan had left for work already and since it was summer, Max was already out, hanging with her friends. Billy worked the late shift at the pool this week, which was why he had time to wait by the mailbox. And after that, by the phone.

At five to eleven, the phone rang, just like he knew it would.

9. Over the edge (Harringrove, oneshot, one of my own personal faves, I had so much fun with this! :D)

“This is going to be so awesome!”

Billy rolled his eyes from behind his aviators and glanced over into the backseat, where Lucas, Max and Dustin were seated, and where Dustin was visibly about to vibrate through his seatbelt in excitement.

“Chill, kid,” Billy said and put his boot up on the dash. “We’re literally going to spend a weekend in some cabins in the middle of nowhere. I don’t get what the fuck is going to be so awesome about that.”

“Feet off the dash,” Steve said, without taking his eyes off the dirt road they were on. Billy left his foot where it was for a couple of seconds, until Steve slapped at his knee and the car swerved a little. Billy reluctantly put his foot down.

The kids tittered excitedly in the back seat.

“What?” Billy growled.

“You don’t have to be such a grump!” Max said, rolling her eyes. “We’re here to have fun! Everyone else is looking forward to this!”

“Well, everyone else fucking chose to be here."

10. Sharing clothes (Harringrove, oneshot)

Neil Hargrove up and left his wife and his wife’s daughter four months after his son died in the mall fire. Three months before that, though, he emptied out his son’s room and got rid of his belongings.

Steve only found out about it because Max was upset and told the Party about it. She said that she had pilfered some things away but that Neil was hell-bent on clearing out Billy’s room and wouldn’t listen to her pleas. So they all rallied, and about an hour after Neil had put all of Billy’s things in boxes and donated them to Goodwill, they were there, sweet-talking the staff into letting them go through the new arrivals. Max got some of it back simply by looking tearful and explaining the situation to the lady behind the counter, and the rest of them chipped in (Steve, most of all) to pay for and salvage the rest.

They brought the boxes to Steve’s house – Max couldn’t very well bring back Billy’s things to the house on Cherry Lane, and Steve had the space to store them.

He put them along the wall in the guest bedroom that no one ever slept in, and tried to forget about them.

~~~

Now, when that's over and done with, I'm tagging ... (and listen, I don't care if you've done this before; if you have, then pick the NEXT ten on your list, or do a random quote from your fics instead of the first couple of lines, I don't care!): @lazybakerart @mikajupiterjonesingtimcurryfeet @platypanthewriter @callieb @billyharringson (I know for SURE you've done this before, but eh, you have lots of fics to choose from!), @bentnotbroken1fanfiction @peaceheather @missroserose @mourntheantagonist and @keziahrainalso - and also if you got this far and I didn't tag you, consider yourself tagged! I've officially tagged you. I wanna see what you've done. Show me.

#tagging games #ihni writes

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luchicm04 · 10 months ago

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lost in the forest - part 7

Masterlist

Summary: Karen is forced to go through a lot, from hallucinations to withdrawal.

Pairing: Senju Tobirama/Original Female Character

Tag: #lost in the forest fic

posted on ao3

Word Count: 2.8k

I come from Spain so I tipically measure the temperature in Celsius. If you measure in Fahrenheit, I recommend you use a conversion factors web to look up the data.

Overall warnings: canon-typical violence, adult content, time skips, angst, kidnapping, depressive thoughts, delirium

It’s cold. She was never the type to like snow, much less certain degrees below 10. She sighs... She lived in a warm area where the lowest temperature was –2. Now, however, she only snuggles in the wool blanket they have brought her.

She doesn’t come out. If she was antisocial before, now she has more reasons to be locked up without moving, unwilling to leave in this temperature. She sneezes loudly... Karen doesn’t like how the weather does its thing, according to what she knows, she’s been here for a few months.

Without solving anything.

Without daring to confirm and see a map with her own eyes, although the latter is not certain noting how paranoid her kidnappers are.

She sneezes again.

“[...]” The woman who always comes does strange exercises for her and judges her in silence. She gives her a sufficient gesture when she notices her lying tangled in her covers. It’s a shame she doesn’t have pants... At least they could cover part of her legs, now with light hairs from the time that has passed without removing them.

She sighs. Those discomforts no longer bother her, especially at this moment. Karen is skinnier, her skin has softened due to the lack of sunlight and her hair is already far beyond its original cut.

Evidence of time.

“I don’t want to go out,” she snapped when she saw the assistant standing next to the bed saying other things that she stubbornly ignored, but it was the pull that made her frown. She noticed that this woman had little patience. Her feet were shaking because of the exhibition. “Let me go!”, she complains.

The woman simply snorts to follow her fixed schedule. The day before they heated water to bathe her. Today will not be different but she feels it is colder. She wants to resist but surprisingly, and despite the difference in height, she does not beat her.

She’s not that tall but she does tower over her caregiver by a few centimeters.

She sneezes once again. She is shivering when she sees that someone stops walking. She doesn’t say anything and sneezes again. The woman simply stops to snort so many things. The men who regularly visited her almost do not exist in her routines, but when they do it, they do so as cold as possible.

At least this person, Hashirama, is the one she sees the least since that time.

“[...]” Tobirama says many other things. She doesn’t know if she looks angry but he is just as cold as always. She sneezes. She is cold enough to sit down trying to keep warm. She wants to move but she shakes enough to notice that it is starting to snow lightly outside.

She has never been to a snowy area. On her travels she always avoided those places.

They are not good for her bones and warm blood.

The woman leaves, leaving her alone. “Walk,” the faded man orders harshly.

“I am cold,” she validly states without any intention of getting up. The yukata is not enough to cover her which makes the kidnapper more irritated.

“You are not walking?” He is heard in disbelief of her actions but she glares at him, gets up and pretends to be trembling.

“I have few clothes,” she explains with the logic of something that only she understands.

“And?”

“I am cold.”

“[...]” Tobirama says other things in his native language, one she wants to discover soon. Without success, at least her scrolls are no longer stolen nor have her supply of paper and brush have been cut off. “It is not very cold,” clumsy and with his always harsh accent he comments with a flat tone.

“It is snowing, it’s obviously cold,” she comments squeezing her hands. Oh she never thought she’d have to go through this as the steps became longer and longer. Her bare feet, exposed along with the light clothing, make her sneeze again. “Snow doesn’t fall back home.”

“...?”

“It does not snow in my home,” she exposes better for the tough man. “It is not that cold... not like this.”

“Not snou?”, he frowns. “What is snou?”, he asks with dignity.

“Snow.” She passes right next to the big door. The whiteness begins to be a little stronger, but she does not dare to touch that white beauty with her bare hands. “What falls... white... snow,” she explains clearly. After all it’s good that she told him the colors.

Although this world lacks so many... it’s a shame, but there are the basics.

Tobirama frowns in disbelief. “Snow,” he repeats harshly and she swears she saw a slight movement in his hard jaw and sighs. He may be the toughest of the kidnappers, intimidating if she were a less confident person, but of course Karen sneezes hard again.

The man gets tired and frowns only to take her carelessly. She would fight again if it weren’t for the fact that he is so warm. She snuggles into his chest, leaving the idea of complaining about such audacity. Her cold was bigger than her pride, so she takes advantage of this to steal some of the warmth. The man doesn’t say anything, she sees his strange red look but she is more focused on cuddling.

Why is he so hot? Does he have a better circulatory system than her? ...Oh, maybe they are more used to these kinds of temperatures.

Not like her.

She mocks herself internally again seeing how her dignity is shattered when she is left on the bed. She curls up wrapping herself in a blanket, not caring about his gaze. She sneezes the same, waiting for her body temperature to rise.

However, she doesn’t expect it to go up too much.

She had a fever for the next few days.

The outings harmed her.

──

She is delirious. She sometimes feels at home the few times she wakes up... She’s sweating. She’s hot. Very different from the days of cold hell she went through. It’s been a while since she’s been sick like this. “Mom?”, she asks opening her eyes a little when she feels a warm hand on her forehead. She hears voices and smiles slightly. “Mom... I’ll be fine,” she complains because she knows how worried the woman is.

The last time she got a fever like that, it was during a freezing winter where she decided to go out with her sister to see the snow for the first time. Although it didn’t snow for a long time, their house was surrounded by that temperature of –7, an anomaly typical of their region due to global warming.

“[...]” The voice does not comment much.

“Tell my sister to buy me something when I get better,” she explains, still in her own world, coughing again. “I would like a coke with pizza,” she remembers with zero hunger, but she knows if she doesn’t say something about food, they will end up more distressed than normal.

“Mom?”, she frowns when in a fleeting clarity the current temperature makes her focus. The long black hair was not her mother’s... it is straight and quite thick, which makes her almost scared, but without any kind of strength she does nothing but blink hard. “Hashi?”, she doesn’t say the full name.

She coughs again... she is not feeling well.

Much less when she remembers it’s not her mother who is treating her... She wants to cry.

“Rest,” the man says in a soft tone. She wants to complain about many things... How he has left her at the mercy of unkind people, only seeing that faded man whom she would be able to see at the door if she focused further away from his position. How they used her to learn her language without finishing and leaving her alone.

“I wanna go home,” she explains in a ray of hope to be understood... for the first time getting it off her chest not caring if the daring cuts off her few freedoms. “I wanna return home... see my family.” She feels weak and cries slowly as she realizes that she is sick, lying down.

Again remembering her situation.

“Karen...” Hashirama doesn’t say anything. He looks at her strangely but she just closes her eyes.

“I wanna be back home,” she sobs lightly showing part of her weakness in the eyes of strange people who are not her friends, who she foolishly thought they were... These are not the best days, despite her better view and pride big enough to be a department head at work, this is overcoming her. Weakened by her illness, by the days that have turned into months.

She wants to go back... back to her house, to her normality away from these people she doesn’t understand.

She cries... She cries, covering her face not caring about the pain and fever, getting out of her system what she contains and tries to ignore to pretend to be strong, overcome this and continue on her way home, knowing that it will be impossible because the stars do not match those of her world.

If she were looking around, she would see the discomfort of a Hashirama who didn’t know what to do... Tobirama doesn’t move, like a gargoyle always frowning.

Falling asleep after a short time, her temperature does not drop. She remains sick for the next few days being treated with light bitter teas and things that they feed her gently. Now it is another woman who sees her, Hashirama and Tobirama do not appear... She doesn’t see them the few times she’s awake.

Going through a hard winter like this... a difficult week.

Full of bitterness and illness...

──

Her days arrived when planned. It is the only thing that warns her that another 28 days have passed, almost a month with this being three times that she has to deal with the doubt of her assistants who bring washed rags every time they can... Karen doesn’t comment anything. She can now get up with a perpetual sore throat from that strange treatment they have given her for her fever.

It’s still cold, but they no longer force her to go out.

There she bathes, she changes and goes to the bathroom.

She doesn’t say anything... like the first few days she remains silent without exanging more than her simple loneliness in her eyes, looking at herself more burdened with a life she misses.

She no longer asks about her kidnappers. She gets up reluctantly seeing how the rags are already in their place. She doesn’t know how these people manage to guess her needs without telling her... She growls under her breath, all depressed about her business, leaving forgotten much about her plans to get out.

The parchments are still unused and the ink has dried due to the lack of use.

They have been hard days of cold and illness that now that she is better cause her another setback... leaving the excellent leader of a work team behind. Her family... she misses her people, and has shown with her fever that she is alone.

She changes and adjusts the yukata absently without any intention of doing anything else. She lies down thinking about her house tangled in her sheets, a pitiful thing that must seem content as the seconds pass. The colic doesn’t help her state of mind either.

She never had them in her house... Could it be because of this extreme type of cold? She doesn’t know but she remains like that.

“...Must go out.” Someone knocks on the door. It is surprisingly Tobirama, who gives her a flat gesture.

“...” She ignores him, before she tried to speak but now she simply doesn’t comment anything.

“Can not stay like this.” The man is firm without any kind of extra emotion. She does not bother to acknowledge his presence or correct the blatant mispronunciation that is thrown at her ears. She is no longer their teacher, she has not taught them for a long time and she knows it’s silly to think about optimistic things when there’s clearly a line.

The exchange is not mutual.

“...” The man gritted his teeth.

“I’m bleeding,” she explains without any kind of guilt or shame who has approached before she tries something abrupt, remembering that woman who took her out that day... and how hard that person was against her. “So I will not move.”

“Bleeding?”

“Yes,” she speaks without emotion. “So don’t bother...”

“...” Tobirama does not seem disturbed by the justification, much less uncomfortable with expressing her state without any care. “Fine.” He leaves, leaving her alone. She sighs relieved at not being forced out... but she hardly cares. It doesn’t matter if something is planned, if they are looking for her or if any kind of thing happens.

Depression is a bad advisor.

She knows it... she hopes she doesn’t fall any lower.

Spending some of those days like this.

In the absence of these people, she was locked up without any desire to comment... until one night, a book with strange gibberish appeared on her table.

──

It is not unusual for Tobirama or Hashirama to appear again. Her maids are coarser and the whispers are less discreet than before. Karen ignores them since she does not understand much without showing her own annoyance. They made it clear before how little her presence matters.

She is a prisoner.

Because at the end of the day she doesn’t understand these people.

She sighs after a bath. Karen has changed her clothes, they have picked thicker ones compared to the rest and she can’t help but envy, despite her depression, how the other people look calm in their light clothes. She doesn’t understand how they can withstand the low temperatures.

Unlike her, they look healthy... On the other hand, the prisoner has lost weight and muscle mass due to her lack of food based on rice and water, because the bread is too hard for her taste and although her treatment is better than in a beginning, she keeps ignoring much of the outside.

The intentions of the two men who only used her... that’s how it feels.

Looking at that book of gibberish that someone brought... She frowns because she doesn’t see why it is on the bureau next to her scrolls. She doesn’t understand it. The letters are rarer among oriental features that are more marked and tighter than the Korean ones... which gives her a headache.

Stubbornly, for her own mental and physical well-being, she has forced herself to get out of bed more often, even for the initiative to start planning a way to get out, so she sits in front of her work desk and sighs because she doesn’t know where to start when the previous analysis was stolen.

There are no longer any kindergarten level signs posted in her bedroom, she has stopped being a fruitless teacher when her two students stopped taking interest in communication. She clenches her lips not wanting to focus on things that did not exist from the beginning. Right? So she begins to look.

The drawings are colorful and rustic as always, so she begins to invent a funny story in her mind in an effort to get out of her sad state of mind. It is delicate, so she starts to ramble... Find some factors that can give her an indication of what she is doing in a first instance.

She rambles as hours pass without any success when she realizes someone is looking at her from the door. The woman who usually helped her looks irritated which makes her happy because she thought she would no longer see her. She hadn’t seen her since the day they forced her out into the cold and got sick.

“Yeah?”, she frowns when she snorts a few words. She gets up from her chair and frowns, and although she tries to kick the woman, she is stronger and skillful, leaving her out in a matter of seconds. Karen realized that her intentions where not benign.

Although waking up in the middle of the forest in the shadows of the night... was something that scared her a little.

She’s sure she no longer is at that house... Where was she? She gulps thickly before the shadows that cover her. She listens to the forest and for a moment she imagines that horror movie where they filmed in the darkness of the extensive undergrowth. What was its name? Oh, yes... the witch of something... She shakes away her thoughts because it’s silly to think about things that don’t exist.

“Hashirama? Tobirama?”, she stupidly calls for her kidnappers. Only the noise of the fauna around her responds, alarming her. It is different from when she got lost... she doesn’t know where she is and her clothes are not even prepared for long walks. She doesn’t even have her cell phone!

Now she was more than lost... What exactly happened?

A/N: Karen has finally come out but not in the way she wanted. Could it be...? She don’t know, especially when she noticed that someone did something that perhaps their leaders knew about... we won’t know until next chapter.

Thus demonstrating how vulnerable she continues to be.

Thank you for reading, the muses are crazy now more than ever, inspired and half-crazy about it, even more for making our beloved isekai suffer XD. Will she be okay? Will they miss her? Will they look for her? We don’t know... Karen doesn’t think so, since she greatly underestimates the bonds she may have made.

Even if she doesn’t believe it.

Author-chan out!

#lost in the forest fic #warring states period #angst #senju tobirama #tobirama x reader #tobirama x oc #ocs #hashirama senju #naruto #naruto shippuden #naruto fanfiction #luchipuchi's writing

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