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vickyvicarious · 3 years

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Leverage by Character Emphasis

So, for fun over the course of my rewatch I kept track of who I considered to be the main character of each episode, or rather who got the most narrative/emotional focus. I kept track of all those in a list here. I got curious about how it all stacks up in the end, so I went to a pie graph website and stuck all those numbers in.

I only used the main character in each episode, even if on my original list I had put it as having secondary emphasis on another person or relationship. However, if an episode was split pretty evenly in focus between just two people (as opposed to the whole team), I counted it towards each person's overall percentage. And of course all these stats are based off of my own personal interpretation of the episodes. So this is by no means truly comprehensive. But I think it's still interesting to look at all put together.

I'm putting the overall breakdown here, but below the cut I've got individual charts per season as well - plus a bonus list of how many people we meet that the team already knows/whose past they hail from.

All Seasons

Percentage breakdown:

Team - 36.9% or 31/77 total episodes

Nate - 17.9% or 15/77 total episodes

Parker - 16.7% or 14/77 total episodes

Eliot - 11.9% or 10/77 total episodes

Hardison - 7.1% or 6/77 total episodes

Sophie - 4.8% or 4/77 total episodes

Parker/Hardison - 2.4% or 2/77 total episodes

Sophie/Nate, Tara - 1.2% or 1/77 total episodes each

The show is primarily team-based, and that's reflected in the largest percentage by with a 19-point gap before second place. Nate holds that spot, though Parker is right on his heels in third. There's a bit more of a gap between them both and Eliot, then similar gaps between him and Hardison, and then Sophie as the team member with the least number of dedicated episodes. (However, this doesn't reflect a lot of time spent in S2 on her). Then the pairings and Tara each get just an episode or two spent primarily focused on them.

Looking at it in pure numbers, you can definitely see that Nate as mastermind got a lot of attention, and that Parker becoming the next mastermind was built steadily with a lot of focus as well!

Season One

Percentage breakdown:

Team - 38.5% overall or 5/13 episodes

Nate - 23.1% overall or 3/13 episodes

Parker - 15.4% overall or 2/13 episodes

Sophie, Eliot, Hardison - 7.7% overall or 1/13 episodes each

It seems fitting that in the first season, most of the time was dedicated to episodes that don't focus on any one person in particular. Instead there's a lot of time spent establishing the team as a whole. We do see Nate in second place and Parker in third.

(I thought about counting the Juror #6 job towards Sophie and Hardison, but in the end I didn't since the main emphasis was still mostly for Parker. However, that would have bumped them up to the same number of episodes as her.)

Season Two

Percentage breakdown:

Team - 40% overall or 6/15 episodes

Nate - 26.7% overall or 4/15 episodes

Sophie, Parker, Hardison, Eliot, Tara - 6.7% overall or 1/15 episodes each

So there's a lot more secondary focus/running themes this season that don't show up as much in this chart. Sophie's storyline in particular gets a lot of focus throughout the season, but is rarely the main focus of any single episode, so it isn't as well represented here. (For example, the Lost Heir Job is team-focused, but specifically on the team coping without Sophie, so it could possible have been counted as a Sophie episode as well.)

Given the parameters I'm working with though, we see again team episodes first, Nate second, and then this time everyone else shares third place equally (including Tara!).

Season Three

Percentage breakdown:

Team, Eliot, Parker - 25% overall or 4/16 episodes

Sophie, Nate, Hardison - 6.7% overall or 2/16 episodes

It doesn't add up to 16 just by numbers because this season had several episodes I couldn't assign to just one character, but also seemed not really focused on the team. I gave Eliot+Hardison each a point for Gone Fishin', and Eliot+Parker each a point for the Underground Job.

This season bucks the trend of Nate getting the second-most episodes dedicated to him. Eliot and Parker actually get as many episodes as the team in general. They're all a lot closer together though in terms of numbers.

Season Four

Percentage breakdown:

Team - 27.3% overall or 6/18 episodes

Nate - 22.7% overall or 5/18 episodes

Parker - 18.2% overall or 4/18 episodes

Eliot, Hardison, Parker/Hardison - 9.1% overall or 2/18 episodes each

Sophie/Nate - 4.5% overall or 1/18 episodes

This season has a lot of episodes focusing mostly on just a couple of people so it was really a pain to break down. I ended up sharing credit for Grave Danger between Parker and Hardison as Parker/Hardison, and Queen's Gambit between the team and Parker/Hardison. The Night Out Jobs I just counted as team episodes since they divvied up the focus fairly equally between the characters who were in them. On my original list I put the Hot Potato Job as Nate and Hardison but on further reflection I think it's more of a team episode, so that's how I counted it here. Still, this chart is the one I was least certain how to break down, and I'm not really happy with it but I eventually just kinda gave up.

Nate is back up in second place, right after the team as a whole. Parker's right behind him, while the others trail a bit behind. The ships get a couple episodes dedicated to them, but Sophie doesn't actually get an episode of her own at all this season.

Season Five

Percentage breakdown:

Team - 62.5% or 10/15 episodes total

Parker - 18.8% or 3/15 episodes total

Eliot - 12.5% or 2/15 episodes total

Nate - 6.3% or 1/15 episodes total

I attributed the French Connection Job to both Eliot and Parker, and put the Rundown and Frame Up Jobs as being team focused since they split attention pretty evenly between the halves of the team each episode had. The White Rabbit Job had a secondary focus on Sophie which I didn't count; same deal with the Blue Line Job since for the most part it was still more team than Eliot focused.

This season bucks a lot of the usual trends. The vast majority of the episodes are team focused with no major emphasis on any one person; this is usually the biggest percentage but this season far more so than any other. The other major departure is that Sophie and Hardison both get no individual episodes at all, and Nate isn't in second or even third place. Instead we have Parker, then Eliot, then Nate. And if I had counted the Blue Line Job for Eliot, which I considered doing, he would've been tied with Parker.

Bonus - Known Associates

This chart counts how many people we meet from someone on the team's pre-show past. It does not count people they meet during their time on Leverage who later become important to them, such as Peggy.

Percentage breakdown:

Nate - 38.1% or 8/21 total

Eliot - 33.3% or 7/21 total

Sophie - 19% or 4/21 total

Parker, Hardison - 4.8% or 1/21 total each

If you want to know who these people are, that's listed right underneath here. Nate's people tend to show up more often, while Eliot has a lot but they're mostly one-off characters. Sophie and Parker not having a lot makes sense given that Sophie's true identity is a mystery, and Parker was a loner almost all her life. Hardison being at the bottom of the list is really at odds to how we know he has a large family and is such a sociable person.

Nate - An old friend in the Miracle Job, Blackpoole, Maggie, Sterling, the people from McRory's, Jimmy Ford, childhood friend Ed Kelly from the 15 Minutes Job, his old IYS colleague from the Van Gogh Job.

Eliot - Aimee from the Two Horse Job, Damien Moreau, General Flores, Vance, his grifter buddy from the Juror #6 Job, his buddy Shelley from the Boys' Night Out Job, and Vance from flashbacks/the Rundown Job.

Sophie - A friend in the Wedding Job (not sure they actually count since they just tipped her to the job but I don't think we met them onscreen), the mastermind from the Two Live Crew Job, the Duchess from the King George Job, and Tara.

Parker - Archie Goodwin.

Hardison - Chaos.

#leverage #leverage meta #my meta #again this is just for fun and i'm not particularly good at graphs and stuff #so don't take it as the be-all-end-all #but i think the general trends here are fairly accurate to the show #also my apologies to sophie getting a different color every time. it kept changing it for only her for some reason and i couldn't fix it

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austajunk · 3 years

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(Heyo, I hope you don't mind me sharing my thoughts in your inbox. I just think you're cool and have good opinions, so here I am.)

OK, so I love Komahinanami as an OT3. As friends, or romantically, or whatever. I just love them a lot.

What I reeeeally don't like about it, though, is (some of) the fans' portrayal of it. For some people, it's never Komahinanami as a three-way relationship, with them all caring for and loving each other equally.

It's either Komahina with Chiaki just "added on", or it's Hinanami with Nagito just "added on", or it's Komahina + Hinanami with no interaction between Nagito and Chiaki at all.

(Like... where's the Komanami love?)

And if they do interact, then it's almost always negative. Chiaki's made out to be the girl who Nagito hates more than anything else, the girl who gets in the way of Komahina. And Nagito's made out to be this jealous, possessive asshole who is disgusted by Chiaki and only cares about Hajime. Which is just 1) not true to the characters at all, and 2) really confusing to me, because I don't know where it comes from other than just projection.

People do realise that Nagito never showed one single hint of either hatred towards Chiaki or posessiveness towards Hajime, right? I don't know where this whole "Nagito hates Chiaki, is jealous of her, and wanted to kill her for the sake of Hajime" thing comes from. Maybe it's just some fans' projection, but... it's just not canon, and it's not part of Nagito's character at all.

And Hajime isn't the only person who Nagito is capable of caring about or developing a positive relationship with. Let him have friends and people he cares about other than Hajime, even if you only ship Komahina.

Bottom line: I love Nagito, Chiaki and Hajime, I love fan works where they interact, and I love it when they're actually in character, and not made totally OOC to satisfy fans' bad character interpretations and hatred of female characters.

(Sorry again about the inbox rant - just wanted to share my thoughts!)

Hooo boi. Hoooo boi. Oh anon, you just tackled one of my biggest pet peeves of this fandom right to its core. Also thanks for saying I’m cool. :3

Firstly, the denial of the Komanami side of KomaHinaNami, but honestly… that I could deal with. This is why I focus on a lot of the KomaNami side of things on my blog but I don’t mind so much the “Hajime has two hands” side of this ship because usually from what I’ve seen, people have Chiaki be Nagito’s best friend or wing lady with Hajime and he appreciates and adores her and confides in her about Hajime and shares Hajime with her and all three are happy. Like.. in a way, that’s still ultra pippity poppity cute!

But yeah, the KomaHina fans who like to portray Chiaki as just the girl who is in the way of their relationship, as if Nagito hates or is jealous of Chiaki… no, just no. It has never once been like that! Before he really got to know Hajime, Chiaki was the only person who accepted and tried to understand Nagito. She was kind to him and he seemed to appreciate her in turn, insisting that her being their class rep made her their biggest light of Hope. He even pleads with her not to take on Junko, that he knew they were no chance against them but believes in Chiaki anyways and is devastated to the point of breaking down and sobbing at her death. Of course, he twists things and beseeches Chiaki’s name, insisting that she can lift them up with her death… but only because he’s coping. In his own world in the Neo World Program, she is missing because the memory of her (and Hajime) hurt him so much that he had to block it out. His desire to see her along with the rest of the class brings her back to them as an AI that leads them all back to the right path.

As for the idea that Nagito is jealous of Chiaki… I think they get that from one scene in DR2 where Chiaki says she’s gonna go find Fuyuhiko in Chapter 2 to question him. She leaves and Hajime is irked about being left alone with Nagito, to which Nagito is like “Oh I’m sorry! You wanted her to stay?!” Honestly… people seem to ignore that before Chiaki left, Nagito expressed concern about her questioning Fuyuhiko and told her to not let him “get rough” with her. So… Nagito clearly cares. Out of everyone (including Hajime) in the main storyline, Nagito openly praises Chiaki and her talents the most. He will also politely oblige her and be quiet when she asks while he does not for anyone else. Also the thing is… Nagito is pretty protective of Chiaki. In Chapter 4, when Chiaki gets overwhelmed by Nagito being clingy, she runs away from him only for him to appear behind her five minutes later and urging her to remember that she could get hurt on her own and that she shouldn’t have run off.

More to the point, let’s pretend Chiaki and Nagito were like… rivals for Hajime’s affection like Chisa and Juzo were. That they directly mirror them (they don’t as much as we think). Even Juzo and Chisa loved and appreciated each other platonically. They were incredibly important to each other in this show while being in love with the same person. In the mangas furthermore, we have these scenes (So tell me, tell me to my face that Chiaki is the girl that Nagito somehow hates, that he never cared for her beyond a romantic rival. Just tell me. And yes yes I know the mangas are secondary canon, but when like two or three of them show all these moments of Chiaki and Nagito supporting each other, come the fuck on. I stand by that it enriches our current canon.):

#danganronpa #chiaki nanami #nagito komaeda #komanami #hajime hinata #komahinanami #komahina #danganronpa 2 goodbye despair #come on fandom #get it together #these three love each other so much #thank you for the ask!#<3

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quickspinner · 3 years

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Y’all I gotta complain about Zoe for a minute, and stuff like this always gets me into trouble, so please, please just keep scrolling if you don’t wanna hear it. IDK I guess I’m hoping if I just get some of the griping out of my system I can quit thinking about it. 😂 Spoilers for season 4 under the cut.

I want her to be a villain so bad. Why couldn’t they have given Lila a setup like that and then used her effectively? I mean you have someone who admits they lie to fit in, that they like to act, and they come in with the perfect setup to be seen as Chloe’s victim and get in good with everyone else, and then start to lie and manipulate things just a little bit to go their way, and pretty soon everyone’s twisted around and you have a really effective setup for a liar/user who’s not completely obvious, and if she does get get caught, she’s got an iron-clad pity play right on the table already. “I’m sorry, I messed up, I’m trying so hard to do better, please forgive me,” and with the family she’s living in, who would question it? I know they’re not gonna do it, because it would just be repeating Lila’s plot again (only better) and they seem committed to sticking it out with her but UGH WHYYYYYYY IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH BETTER. I’m not sure how you would actually work out her not knowing Hawmoth’s identity, unless she was a sentimonster, but also how amazing would that be? Hawkmoth creating a sentimonster, while the real Zoe never leaves her boarding school and just goes on, because you know nobody in the mayor’s house is checking on anything there. Maybe Nathalie’s last sentimonster so that HM can keep making his own. ugh that would have been so good. Now he’s got an inside agent that can manipulate things at school, goad Chloe, get close to Marinette if he still wants to target her.

To me that’s the only way to redeem the fact that you could find the exact same character in a thousand first-time-writer-self-insert fics--seriously she’s a freaking checklist. Long lost suddenly appearing sibling of a major cast member, mistreated by everybody, underestimates her own self-worth so that everyone tells her how great she is, being awesome enough to get even Chat’s attention for a millisecond, getting to tell Chloe off as the new queen bee, accomplishing previously impossible things that we’ve all wanted to see, for example the only one who can convince Mayor Bourgeois to stand up to Chloe, etc etc on and on--literally the only thing she’s missing is being crushed on by a secondary character so that she can be impressive and desirable without interrupting the main ship. I’m all for those things in fanfic, we all wrote that kind of thing at one point and I’m not judging anybody. But it drives me bananas when it shows up in a professional work that should know better (I am looking at you Heather from How to Train Your Dragon).

I know I’m massively biased, but I gotta be honest y’all the Zoeka thing mystifies me 😂 Setting aside all the issues above, we have a character who’s based around truth, sincerity, and perceptiveness/consideration of others’ feelings, and a character that straight up admits she lies to fit in (to the point of being cruel to others), who even after she reforms (so to speak) has no problem lying and manipulating her own sister (masterfully, omg, see above, why wouldn’t they use this), and generally is in the habit of not showing her true feelings or self. This is the exact opposite of what Luka is attracted to in Marinette (clear as a music note, sincere as a melody). I mean, they look cute, I’ll give you that, I think they’d have an interesting friendship dynamic and Zoe could learn a lot from the Couffaines. That’s fine in a friendship, but not great in a romantic partner. There’s a difference between supporting a partner who’s working through some hard stuff, and dating someone you have to fix, so. I don’t find it especially appealing. (I have this same problem with a lot of Adrien ships, to be honest; I ship Adrien x therapy 😂) IDK maybe five or ten years down the road when she’s learned how to separate herself from the roles she plays, but it’d definitely take some really good storytelling to convince me even then.

Ship and let ship, of course, y’all have a party, nobody needs my approval. Just don’t expect to see me jumping ships anytime soon. 😂

#quickrants #zoe salt #zoe lee salt #zoeka salt #ml writers salt #ml salt

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insertdeeplyrics · 4 years

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On the ending of Supernatural

Hi, I’ve never actually posted anything on Tumblr of my own creation (I mostly reblog stuff), but I’ve just seen the ending of Supernatural, and given that this is where I’ve been fed my SPN content, it felt right to share my thoughts here. I’m sure nobody is going to read this, but whatever, I just need to get this out of my chest. Sorry in advance if this is too long, but I have to type this out if I want to move on.

I still need to take some time to process everything that’s happened, because it is a lot. I did have my hopes up for the finale, thinking that Cas would at least show up, but like many of the fans, I was let down.

So I guess that would be the first issue I had with the episode. Regardless of what Dean felt towards Cas, if he reciprocated his feelings or not (which he totally did, I mean, we have all been watching the same show for 12 fucking years, and if you don’t believe me, there are plenty of metas that would support this statement), he still is his best friend and it doesn’t sit right with me the fact that he doesn’t even try to find a way to rescue Cas from the Empty. And okay, maybe he didn’t, make Cas got resurrected by Jack, then why the hell wasn’t he on the final episode? He was a pivotal character for the series, I mean, the proof is in the ratings: Season 7, when he was killed off to apparently never return, the ratings were at their lowest. The show may have started as just Dean and Sam, but over the years it became much bigger than them, and it is so disappointing that the show runners failed to acknowledge it. But I’ll get back to this point later.

Okay, I need to talk about Dean’s death, the only part of the episode that made me cry, because my poor baby had to suffer so much! Like, when he started saying that Sam never put up with John’s crap (which reinforces my headcanon that John was abusive towards the boys) and how much he admired him for it, my heart just shattered. I just love Dean Winchester so freaking much, and they did him so dirty... Don’t get me wrong, Jensen and Jared’s acting was 10/10, like, I thought I had a grip of myself and then Sam started crying and tears came back to my eyes. Nonetheless, I felt that the scene was so freaking long! I mean, Dean was dying, and he had time to make a 10 minutes-long speech! C’mon! Also, I get that Sam and Dean’s relationship is quite deep and strong and whatever, but I felt a bit unconformable watching it: it didn’t feel like a brotherly goodbye, more like a lover’s one. They were too touchy and intimate, and, overall, their relationship from this point on was coded as a romantic one, in my opinion. And Chuck, did I hate it! I have an older brother and I know what it is like to be close to your sibling and to love him more than anything else in the world, but the way they portrayed their relationship on this last episode felt incest-y, which makes me believe that this scene was originally written with another character in mind (cough CAS cough) or the writers don’t know the difference between romantic and brotherly love. To finish off, the way they killed off Dean??? I mean, I did expect Dean to die, but this was such a horrible and ridiculous way to go... I would have accepted it if he died actually fighting, but impaled??? After all he’s been through, after fighting so many demons, angels and deities, that’s how he dies??? That just felt cheap and rushed. Dean did not deserve that ending and I refuse to accept it. In fact, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of this whole fucking mess of an episode. Also, I just can’t believe that no one showed up to Dean’s funeral. I just can’t. I get that maybe it was difficult to bring in a lot of actors due to the pandemic, but they could have added them on post-production...

Next, we have Sam’s ending. He quits hunting and finally obtains his white-picket fence life. I did like the fact that he honored all of his friends and family that he lost along the way, especially Dean. Like, yes, if my brother died, I would like to keep a token (don’t know if that’s the actual word for it, my first language is not English), to have something with me that reminded me of him and to have him with me wherever I go. And I did like that he named his son Dean, in honor of his brother. However, we don’t know how he met his wife, we don’t even know who she is. They set up Sameileen for what?? Like, Sam and Eileen deserved better, tbh. And, again, even with Covid restrictions they could have done something to signal that Sam got married to Eileen, you don’t need the actor there. In fact, we never actually found out what happened to her, and just like I can’t believe that Dean didn’t even try to save Cas from the Empty, I can’t believe that Sam didn’t reach out to Eileen. Furthermore, the montage with his son felt cheap and a way to try to appeal to the audience’s emotions... (Btw, as a side note, the grey wig and the glasses, my god, they did Jared dirty 😂😂). But it wasn’t doing it for me, I didn’t care much for the kid, and while I do believe that was always going to be Sam’s ending, I didn’t like how it was executed.

And the worst part of it all: that suuuuuper long scene with Dean driving in Heaven, waiting for Sam. They could have used that time to show something more meaningful, even to develop a bit more Sam’s new life, how he adjusted to domesticity and fatherhood and all that crap. Or, I don’t know, A TEAM FREE WILL 2.0 REUNION??? And I guess this is my biggest issue with the whole episode. I get it, Sam and Dean are the central characters, the ones that started it all, but family don’t end with blood, and they were not the only ones who deserved a goodbye. They had formed so many bonds and friendships over the years, and to not have them address them on the final episode just feels infuriating. Especially Cas. His arc was not finished, he deserved to be on the finale. We never got Dean’s reaction to his confession, we don’t know how he felt about him, nor did Cas get to say goodbye to any other character. How did he get out of the Empty? What is he doing now? Is he still an angel? Also, he gave his life to save Dean, only for Dean to be killed not long after. My headcanon that is helping me cope with Dean’s death is thinking that he was so quick to accept his death because he was hoping to reunite in Heaven with Castiel. A girl can dream, ok??? But also, what about Jack? He is the new God, but I highly doubt it that he won’t drop by the Bunker from time to time, after all, Sam and Dean (AND CAS, ESPECIALLY CAS) raised him. And Charlie? Did she get back with Stevie? Did she and the boys go for drinks from time to time? And Jody? Donna? Claire? Sorry to be so repetitive, but I just can’t understand why the writers thought that these characters weren’t important enough to deserve a spot on the finale, and not just an off-hand mention (and not even all of them got that). Of course, the brothers are the main characters and their goodbye must be the longest and the most emotional of them all, but like I said before, the show stopped being just about the Winchesters on season 3, when Bobby was first introduced, maybe even 4, with Cas.

Overall, the finale left a lot of questions unanswered, most of them regarding secondary characters (but not less important for that!), completely destroyed Sam and Dean’s character development (Dean never got to be free, like he had been fighting for all season, probably all his life; Sam’s development is non-existing, as he ended up as he would’ve if he never had gotten on that hunting trip with Dean 15 years ago), and completely disregarded all the themes they had been setting up this season, probably on previous ones as well. It is sad knowing that the writers, either don’t know the show good enough to give it a proper goodbye, or they just didn’t care to do so. I don’t know who’s to blame here (definitely not the actors, though, probably someone higher up the chain), but I just know that I am so fucking disappointed. I expected more from the last episode of a 15-season TV show, one that has been part of my life for 7 years. I guess, that despite all of it, I can’t hate Supernatural. Maybe I was not a hardcore fan like some people on this site, but I did care for the characters and what happened to them. This is the show that introduced me to the world of shipping (Destiel will always hold a special place in my heart, it doesn’t matter how badly their relationship was treated, as well as the characters) and I got to discover one of my favorite characters, Dean Winchester. He is just such so complex, one that I relate to on so many levels, and his relationship with Cas has been the source of many short stories that I’ve never posted anywhere, but that have made me take up writing again. That’s the reason why I love the show so much, it has helped me tap into my creativeness and go back to writing, a passion of mine that I seem to have forgotten over the years. Anyways, maybe one day I’ll publish some of those stories, and maybe even write my own fix-it fanfic, but right now, I can’t deal with anything that has to do with the show, I am too hurt. Maybe once the five stages of grief are over, I might give it a try and read all of the amazing codas and fanfics that I’m sure will be posted here or on AO3. But for now, Supernatural is dead and gone, and I don’t want to talk nor think about it anymore. I’m done wasting my time here, because I feel like that’s what I’ve been doing this past 7 years after watching this crap of a finale.

To finish this long rant off, I just want to say thank you to some meta-writers, the true heroes of the fandom. Thanks to them, I carried on watching the show, because they made me have hope that things will get better. They are the ones that have made this experience worth something, and even though I’ve never spoken to any of them, I see you and I love you. Thanks for everything ❤.

@tinkdw @charlie-minion @dotthings @heliodean @verobatto-angelxhunter @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover

#supernatural #spn s15 #spn #carry on #destiel #supernatural finale #personal rant #dean is bi #dean winchester #sam winchester #disappointed #dean winchester deserved better #destiel forever #jack also deserved better #every fucking character deserved better #character development who? don't know her #castiel #spn spoilers #spn 15x20

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taiblogcomics · 3 years

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I Can’t Pet Force You To Read This One, But...

Hey there, high school crushes. Well, it's finally here. Can you believe it? Yes, counting from the original Xanga site (which, yes, still counts. It's like our own Golden Age publication or apocryphia), this is our 10th anniversary of reviewing comics. That's fantastic. I'm excited, can't you tell? I can tell, since I'm writing this preamble a good two months before the actual anniverary~

So, last year we reviewed the absolute pile of dreck that is Heroes in Crisis. And while that was worth ripping into, I'd rather not spend the 10th anniversary hating on something. I'd like to do something actually meaningful to me. I've teased about this one for many years, probably for as long as I've been doing this blog, and I think it's time we stopped pussyfooting around and reviewed some Garfield. But not just any Garfield. It's finally time, my friends. This... is Garfield's Pet Force.

I dunno how many people will remember this one. Maybe you recall the direct-to-DVD movie adaptation from 2009, or at least advertising for it. I never saw it, but apparently it differs a bit. They also appeared a few times in those Garfield comics from back in the day. We even reviewed a couple (some were on the Xanga blog). But what we're looking at here are the original novellas published between 1997 and 1999. So yeah, these really are from my childhood. And since I've long espoused that Garfield was always funnier 20 years ago, this must be actual premium Garfield content, yeah? By golly, I hope so, because we got five whole books here today. So we should probably get into them~

Book 1: The Outrageous Origin

This is a classic sort of superhero cover. Standard team shot of poses, and that's fine for a first volume. In fact, that's great. Later editions of this would replace the lightning-filled gradient background with a pure white one, but I have this original version. We'll get to specifics about these characters in the meat of the story, but let's talk about the costumes for a bit. Very classic early-'90s sort of look, before the Dark Age kicked in. Reminds me a lot of Jim Lee's X-Men designs, actually. Making all your characters visually distinct is important in a team book. The heavy lean into secondary colours is unusual for heroic characters, but not unwelcome.

So we actually start with a cold open in the superhero universe. This is pretty much to introduce us to the characters as soon as possible, and thus I'll do the same for you here.

*Garzooka, team leader, super strong, has a razor-sharp claw, and can shoot radioactive hairballs from his mouth. That's... at least a unique power, I don't think anyone on the Justice League can do that~ *Odious, the dumb muscle with the accent on the "dumb". Possibly even stronger than Garzooka, and possessing a "super-stretchy stun tongue", an elastic tongue that can scramble the minds of whoever it adheres to. *Starlena, the team girl. She can fly, and she has a siren song that can put those who hear it into a hypnotic trance. Garzooka is the only one immune to its effects, for reasons that are never explained. *Abnermal, the kid-appeal character. He has ice powers, forcefields, and an ill-defined "pester power" that means he can annoy people on a greater scale than normal folks. It's pretty much only used for comic relief, but that could be a brilliant power in the right hands. *Compooky, the brains of the operation. Other than flight, his powers are limited to super intelligence, which means he's usually the exposition guy. There's probably a reason they left him out of the movie adaptation~

You got all that? Don't worry, we'll introduce you again later in the book. What actually happens in the intro chapter isn't really important, it's just setting up the universe. In fact, it's all taking place within Pet Force #99, a comic just enjoyed by Nermal. Yes, we quickly cut over to the main Garfield universe ("our universe", the narrator calls it), where Pet Force is just a comic book. The Garfield gang is all outside, enjoying a cookout prepared by Jon Arbuckle. Nermal is extremely enthused by his comic book, and brags about how he has all 98 previous issues sealed and polybagged, and this one will soon join them. Sorry, Nermal, this came out in 1997, the speculator boom already went bust~

Garfield dismisses comic books as stupid because you can't eat them or use them as a blanket, and declares that none of the stuff that happens in the comic could possibly happen in real life. Uh oh, irony! Because these things can happen, and do! It's a parallel universe, baby! This might be one of my earliest introductions to a "parallel worlds" concept. Much like Earths 1 and 2 in pre-Crisis DC, the events of the comic are essentially the real life adventures of their super-powered counterparts in another dimension. Most of the action in these stories will take place there~

So here's the setup: Vetvix (the parallel equivalent to Liz the veternarian) is an evil sorceress and scientist, who essentially wants to experiment on animals in peace, and possibly subjugate the universe while she's at it. You could argue that Liz is an odd choice for villain, since our universe's Liz isn't particularly evil. But then, our universe's Garfield isn't particularly heroic either. She operates out of a deadly space station called the Orbiting Clinic of Chaos, and at present she's waiting for the arrival of her henchman, Space Pie-Rat, who is a six-foot-tall anthropomorphic rat dressed in stereotypical pirate getup. Vetvix has just finished inventing a levitation ray, and she'd like Pie-Rat to go out and use it to steal all the food in the universe. Vetvix doesn't think small, is what I'm saying.

The counter to Vetvix is Emperor Jon, ruler of the planet Polyester. He's kind and benevolent, even if he's a little dippy and his fashion sense atrocious. Having gotten wind of Vetvix's latest plan, he contacts Pet Force in their ship, the Lightspeed Lasagna. Upon learning the problem, Pet Force gives chase to Pie-Rat. They eventually corner him on some desolate planet, landing and entering an abandoned factory. Unfortunately, they're not safe amongst the dangerous machinery, because this turns out to be a trap. Vetvix has been busy as hell, because she's also invented a metal that's impervious to their powers. And that's not all, because she's also basically invented the Phantom Zone, where she traps Pet Force forever. It specifically mentions it doesn’t kill them, because it wouldn't be kosher to murder the heroes in a Garfield book~

The Lightspeed Lasagna has both onboard cameras connected to the heroes' belts as well as automatic return protocols, so within two days, Emperor Jon knows exactly what's happened to Pet Force. He needs help, so he calls upon his most trusted and powerful advisor: Binky the Sorceror. Binky's just as loud and obnoxious as in the main universe, but he's also a powerful magician. He conjures up a spell for Emperor Jon that lets him pierce the veil between universes. It's basically Equestria Girls rules: parallel universes have similar characters between them. So to replace Pet Force, they need the nearest genetic equivalents from another universe. And that's the versions of Garfield, Odie, Arlene, Nermal, and Pooky that we know and love~

Back in the main universe, it's another day entirely. Another cookout is taking place, and Nermal has received his special anniversary issue of Pet Force #100. The cover's really special, dripping with '90s cover gimmicks like glow-in-the-dark and embossing. A rarely used one, though, was "portal to another universe". That was pretty expensive to print, so you won't find many comics like Nermal's. Maybe he had something there with the collecting after all. The cover glows, and while Jon is distracted by the grill, Garfield and Friends disappear~

They reappear in Emperor Jon's wood-paneled throne room, now transformed into Pet Force. Emperor Jon and Sorceror Binky try to explain the situation, but Garfield--now Garzooka--is disbelieving of the whole thing. In fact, even the idea that Jon can now hear him talk absolutely floors him. Since he's about to deliver the exposition for everyone, can we talk about Compooky for a minute? This spell has just granted sapience to Garfield's teddy bear. I don't expect deep philosophy from a children's novella, but the ramifications of this are really under-explored. Like, never mind the whole idea of a teddy bear having the same genetic makeup as an alternate universe equivalent. He goes from inanimate object to fully conscious being, and he just rolls with it.

Anyways, once everybody gets caught up on what's going on and accepts the new reality, a training montage ensues so the group can all learn to use their powers without killing each other. Once at least reasonably trained, the reborn Pet Force is sent out to stop Pie-Rat. He's gotten sloppy in the times with Pet Force dead, so they track him down easily. After a brief scuffle where Garzooka takes his eyepatch, Pie-Rat flees in his ship. They follow Pie-Rat back to the Orbital Clinic of Chaos, but they can't go in the front. That led the original Pet Force into a trap. Finding an unguarded maintenance hatch--standard on any big space station--they enter Vetvix's lair for a final confrontation!

After dealing with the Waiting Room of Doom, which slowly fills with outdated magazines, they enter Vetvix's inner sanctum. Frustrated with Pie-Rat's failure, she uses her magic to turn him into an ordinary mouse. Vetvix then attempts to use her same weapon on this new Pet Force, but thanks to story contrivance, it only works on beings born in this universe. As other dimensional visitors already, they can't be banished to another dimension. She then pulls a Dr. Claw and runs off cursing Pet Force's name while her base self-destructs. Vetvix is a very "discard and draw" sort of villain, it seems. Pet Force, of course, makes a harrowing escape just in the nick of time.

Returning to Emperor Jon, they vow to be ready to return whenever they're called on, since evil never stays dormant for long. Odious even gifts Emperor Jon with the mouse-ified Pie-Rat as proof of their victory. Well, I'm glad they remember that, so they didn't accidentally murder a major villain in their first superhero outing. They're returned to their own universe, and the time differential between them places them back with Jon having not had time to even look up from the grill. Garfield begins to doubt the adventure even happened--until that night, when he finds Pie-Rat's eyepatch still on his person. Ah, definitive proof of... eyepatches, I guess~

Book 2: Pie-Rat's Revenge!

You have to wonder where, in a space-faring superhero setting, Pie-Rat got the inspiration for his classic pirate motif. It's a little incongruous is all I'm saying. And hey, remember when I said earlier that Garzooka's purple-and-green colour scheme was odd for a hero? Well, here he is as a villain! That'll catch your eye. This would be a terrific comic cover, which is what you want in a series like this.

The book opens with a brief recap of the previous story's events, then moves into the new plot. See, Emperor Jon has opted to keep the polymorphed Pie-Rat as his pet. How very Ron Weasley of him. That's pretty apt, actually, because similarly Pie-Rat has maintained his intelligence in his new mousey form. Pie-Rat gets sick of being Emperor Jon's pet and plans a daring escape, exploiting the emperor's dimwitted and loving personality against him. Pie-Rat jams the lock with a food pellet and makes his escape that night.

Once free from his cage, he encounters Binky's cauldron, still left in the throne room from when the sorceror summoned Pet Force from Garfield's universe. Figuring he has nothing to lose, Pie-Rat jumps in the leftover brew. Suddenly he finds himself growing. He returns to his original anthropomorphic state--but with a twist. He's now twice his original height, a staggering twelve feet tall. He scoops up the rest of the remaining potion for later, and sneaks out of the palace as best as a 12-foot rat can sneak. Desiring revenge on both his former employer and his longtime foes, he steals Pet Force's ship and makes his escape from the planet, headed for Vetvix's newest base.

After his guards help Emperor Jon put the pieces of the problem together, they decide they must once again call upon the powers of Pet Force to recover their missing vehicle and stop the newly embiggened Pie-Rat. Fortunately, Garfield and friends have been watching movies all weekend, so Jon doesn't notice when his pets disappear from the living room in a bright flash. Of course, once returned to the alternate universe and the situation explained, they still have a problem: how do they give chase to Pie-Rat when he's got their ship?

And speaking of Pie-Rat in their ship, he's followed the trail of a mysterious energy output, and it's led him right to Vetvix's new base, the Menacing Moon of Mayhem. See, this is why you don't blow up your base: the backup base is never as good. if it was, it wouldn't be the backup. Given that it's such a shoddy base, Pie-Rat is easily able to get inside and get close to Vetvix. She's expecting a technological attack, so she's unprepared when he pulls out that vial of magic potion and sprinkles her with it. And naturally, the potion that made him grow 12 feet tall makes Vetvix shrink to 5 inches. It's magic, we don't have to explain it!

Pie-Rat takes the magic crystal that Vetvix uses to fuel her powers, which of course didn't shrink because magic is just bullshit. See previous paragraph's last sentence. And while Pie-Rat takes over the base and begins plotting a further revenge against Pet Force, we cut over to them. They're at Sorceror Binky's own castle, and it's clear he's a bit of a hoarder. This is to their advantage, though, as they eventually piece together a working spaceship out of old car parts and other things, all patched together between Compooky's know-how and Binky's magic. This seems like the sort of book where I could use that "it's magic" quote every other paragraph. But craft a new--if small--ship they do, and speed off in the newly christened Planetary Pizza.

The rickety little ship does eventually find its way to Pie-Rat's base, saving him the trouble of being proactive as a villain. The magic thing keeps happening, and Pie-Rat basically becomes Discord for a bit while he fights them, doing things like turning Starlena's siren song into actual living music notes. One by one, the members of Pet Force are taken out, with only Garzooka is left. He and Pie-Rat struggle, while Pie-Rat tries to aim the magic crystal at Garzooka. Garzooka uses his claw to rip the crystal from Pie-Rat and defeat him.

Unfortunately, here's where the cover comes in. It seems the moments Pie-Rat was focusing the crystal during the struggle affected Garzooka's mind. He puts the crystal around his own neck. which turns him evil. He helps Pie-Rat to his feet, and the pair escape in the Lightspeed Lasagna. While Pet Force pursues them in their ramshackle ship, the new criminal duo strikes the storage planet of Deli to steal their food. Pet Force manages to catch up as the villains celebrate their spoils, and use a magic blast from the systems Binky installed to short out the Lightspeed Lasagna. This enables them to dock with the ship and climb aboard for a contfrontation.

The group fights, and once again the bearer of a bullshit magic crystal subdues the heroes easily. Annoyed now, Garzooka takes hold of Starlena and prepares to kill her or something. She taps into the one thing she has left: she's not fighting just Garzooka, but Garfield in his body. She drops some heavy put-downs, which resonate with Garfield, and he hesitates long enough for her to cut the crystal off him. The crystal hits the floor and shatters, undoing its evil magics on Garzooka's mind as well as on all his teammates. With Pet Force reunited, Pie-Rat is easily subdued and locked up.

The group waits for the ship to power back up, then speed off to apologise to the planet Deli. Following that, they head back towards Vetvix's moonbase. That night, though, the magic that was making Pie-Rat 12 feet tall wears off, and he escapes from his cell. He steals the remaining shards of the crystal, climbs into the Planetary Pizza, and makes a getaway. As a bonus, he also repeats the power-down spell against the bigger ship, giving him ample time to escape. And he's not the only one. Over on the Menacing Moon of Mayhem, Vetvix also returns to her proper size, and abandons this base as well. And when Pet Force fails to find her, they simply return to their own universe, ready to be called on once again in the future~

Book 3: K-Niner: Dog of Doom!

Another very basic comic book-style cover. K-Niner is a much more typical villain in style. This one's actually a wrap-around, and features the rest of Pet Force reacting to K-Niner on the back cover. Which is good because, other than the first cover, the covers all have a heavy Garzooka focus. Which makes sense for a book series, I suppose, you wanna assure the kiddos that Garfield's gonna be in the book. But as a comic book series, this would be a bad look for a team book~

So after our standard introduction and recap, we start off with Vetvix in yet another new base, the Floating Fortress of Fear. I'm sure it's very intimidating, if she can keep hold of it for more than a single book. She's picking up from the epilogue and putting the last touches on K-Niner, mostly enhancing his intelligence. Now, you look at the cover and tell me what kind of voice you'd expect. Some sort of German or Austrian accent, like the doberman on Road Rovers? Does anyone remember Road Rovers~? Anyways, but no: he speaks with a posh British accent. You know, the "I say, good chaps, looks like we're in a bit of a sticky wicket, eh wot?" type. Trust me, you can tell. But just because he sounds refined doesn't mean he's not evil.

I also love that after the initial "trapped them in the Phantom Zone" bit, the villains just go whole ham. K-Niner here demonstrates that he is indeed evil by threatening to rip out Vetvix's throat. Let your villains be villainous is all I'm saying. She's pleased he's so vicious, but feels he needs to learn his place as well. She force-chokes him until he complies. She then gives him his assignment: she thinks dogs should be liberated. The Boy Mayor of Second Life would approve, and so does K-Niner. Turning pets on their masters is just his style.

K-Niner takes a portable evolution gun, and immediately sets off. He begins on the planet Kennel. Isn't it neat how every planet is named after an English word that describes its function? K-Niner quickly takes over the dog population and turns them against their masters, because boosting their intelligence also makes them evil, of course. They use enslavement collars on their former owners, and within a few days, the dogs now run the planet. We cut over to Emperor Jon on Polyester, where a man has crash-landed a ship. He's an escapee from Kennel, and he's here to report the events so we can get the plot moving and once more summon Pet Force!

And summoned once more they are, Garfield and Friends once more conveniently disappearing in a split second while Jon's back is turned (this time they're outside playing volleyball). And once back in the parallel universe, Emperor Jon fills them all in on K-Niner's dastardly doings. Garzooka, naturally, takes great offense to dogs being in charge, and takes his duties as a hero completely seriously for once. Pet Force takes off for a confrontation with K-Niner in the Lightspeed Lasagna. And speaking of Pet Force's ships...

The Planetary Pizza, piloted by Pie-Rat, plants its pads down on polar planet Glacia. Pie-Rat is here seeking a way to restore his magic crystal and regain his mighty magic powers. He's sought out the home of a legendary evil wizard, who's known by the name of... Barfo. I see why Barfo keeps his location a secret. But anyway, Barfo is the one who made the crystal, so naturally Pie-Rat reasons he can restore it as well. Suprisingly once on Glacia, Barfo's evil lair is pretty easy to find. His manservant, Hobart the Gnome, brings Pie-Rat before the wizard, and within moments the crystal is restored! Pie-Rat turns to thank Hobart, but Hobart suddenly turns into Vetvix!

Yes, Vetvix knew all along that Pie-Rat's quest would lead him here. And as she was once Barfo's student in the ways of evil magic, she knew she could get the old coot to go along with her plan. Barfo returns the crystal to Vetvix, restoring her powers. And so Pie-Rat, a recurring villain in three whole books, is unceremoniously done away with, as Vetvix teleports him inside an asteroid, trapping him in solid rock. Even if the asteroid were hollow or he displaced the interior when he teleported in, no doubt he'll suffocate within moments. That's pretty harsh.

With that over, we rejoin Pet Force as they approach Kennel. K-Niner's battle cruiser spots them incoming, and shoots the ship down, even in spite of Abnermal's forcefields. Pet Force bail out of the ship, and Abnermal uses his powers to make snow to cushion their fall. Upon landing, a contingent of mutant animals attack. The mooks aren't much, but K-Niner himself puts up an impressive fight. However, one of the mooks pulls a gun and points it at Compooky. This is why Compooky usually stays aboard the ship, but that wasn't an option. Rather than let their friend get hurt, Pet Force surrenders.

Pet Force is held prisoner separately from Compooky, with both the cell's technology making it freeze-proof and threats of "don't break out, or we'll shoot your compatriot". Their imprisonment is not long, though, as suddenly the power goes out. Pet Force takes advantage of the situation and make their escape, quickly running into Compooky. K-Niner didn't think the hyper-intelligent teddy bear needed a high security cell, and just locked him in the basement. It was easy for him to then break out and shut down the local power grid. This also has the side effect of turning off the control collars the humans were wearing. How convenient!

With control of the planet now tilted in their favour, Pet Force now has time to both fix their ship and reverse the polarity of the brain-boosting weapons, turning the dog population of Kennel back to their normal selves. Though the experience did change the pet owners of Kennel. Having experienced life in their pets' shoes (so to speak) for a bit, they've resolved to treat their canine companions a bit more equally. More being allowed on the furniture, less stupid tricks for treats. Still, Pet Force can't stay long, and they head off in pursuit of K-Niner's battle cruiser. This is why most superheroes don't have spaceships (Jedis don't count): if your enemy also has one, they can flee way more easily than on foot.

Not willing to let another place go to the dogs, as it were, Pet Force catches up with K-Niner. With his previous success, Vetvix has stepped up the timetable and sent him after Polyester right away. Emperor Jon is in danger! They enter the planet's atmosphere, and are attacked by fighter craft. They fend them off, but their weapons system is damaged in the fight, so they can't simply use the reverse brain-rays and solve it quickly. The team splits up instead: Garzooka and Abnermal will go after K-Niner, while the other three will find the planet's power source and knock out the collars, since that worked so well the last time.

The two heroes quickly make short work of K-Niner's guards, and then turn the battle to deal with the Dog of Doom himself. While the struggle goes on, the rest of Pet Force reach the planet's power grid. Using a clever tactic, Compooky overloads the power and causes and electrical storm that simultaneously undoes the brain-boosting effect and shorts out the enslavement collars. There's only a few pages left, after all, and we have to wrap this up. K-Niner is reverted back into an ordinary dog, and the emperor is reverted to an ordinary non-enslaved person. The day is saved!

And now once again, Pet Force prepares to return to their own universe. However... when the spell clears, the five heroes are still standing there. Something is blocking the passage between dimensions, and Pet Force is trapped. And while Pet Force's adventures have taken place between mere moments in their own universe, they have always returned quickly enough that Jon didn't notice a thing. But this time, as Jon retrieves the volleyball and turns around to his pets, he's surprised to find they've all vanished into thin air...

Book 4: Menace of the Mutanator

This one's very striking because of its more painted look compared to the heavy black outlines the rest of the covers have. Does this one count as having the whole team on the cover? Because, spoilers, that's what the Mutanator is: the rest of Pet Force mashed up into a villain. Again, though, that's definitely a striking image that'd draw in readers to a comic cover. In fact, while Garzooka may be over-used as a cover focus, several of these also show him imperiled in some way, and that's nice for character stuff. That helps balace it a bit~

I wanna say, before we start, that I'm impressed by the continuity for the series as a whole. They could've just written each story as a standalone, but for a series of 100-page children's novellas starring Garfield characters as superheroes, things happen in these books. Like, maybe not sweeping status quo changes, but events affect the plot of each next book down the line. And that's where we pick up! Right where the last book left off, with Pet Force now stuck in the alternate universe, unable to return home to Jon. But if they can't go home to Jon, well, maybe then events will conspire to bring Jon to them~

Yep, because Jon happens to wander into the room where they keep the copy of Pet Force #100 that acts as a portal to their universe, he gets transported into the Pet Force universe. And since Emperor Jon is still an extant entity, there's just two Jons now. Jon, of course, is a bit freaked out, and it takes several pages to explain the whole deal to him, and also have a showcase of all their powers to pad out the book some more. Eventually, they decide to call in Sorceror Binky to examine the problem. When he has a go of it, a sudden tornado emerges from the cauldron and whisks away Pet Force--save for Garzooka, whose prodigious strength keeps him anchored.

Garzooka heads out in the Lightspeed Lasagna to track Pet Force's signature, glad to get away from a double trouble Jon. And while he's searching, the scene cuts to Vetvix's Floating Fortress of Fear. Hey, one of her bases actually lasted more than one book! This is where Pet Force has been transported to, once more in a power-proof cell. Vetvix monologues to the heroes, as she is wont to do, explaining that she's the one who cast the spell to keep them from returning home. And further, she's brought them here to mutate them into her servants.

While Emperor Jon exposits about his backstory (turns out he is not of royal blood, and has about as much legitimate claim to the throne as you or I do), the search continues. Sorceror Binky detects Pet Force, giving them all a view of what happens next. The trapped members of Pet Force are literally broken apart and reassembled: Odious' body, Compooky's brain inserted into the chest, Abnermal's hands, and Starlena's head. She christens this beast "Mutanator", and it is soullessly obedient. I also wanna say, Mutanator's kind of a non-binary icon, aren't they? (The comic uses "it", but it was 1998 and alternative pronouns weren't really a thing yet.) Muscular, masculine body, but confident enough to still wear lipstick. It's a look, is all I'm saying~

Mutanator continues to possess the combined powers of Pet Force as well. Vetvix sends them to attack the planet Armory to gear up before attempting to conquer Polyester. And meanwhile, thanks to the convenience of being able to scan all of Compooky's memories now that his brain is part of Mutanator, Vetvix has the perfect trap to spring on Garzooka--or should she say Garfield. Yes, she really knows the whole origin for Pet Force now, and now she knows all Garfield's weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and probably blood type and other dating profile stats~

Thus, when Garzooka receives the coordinates from Emperor Jon and arrives at the Floating Fortress, he finds himself menaced by giant spiders. Vetvix couldn't think of a way to get Mondays to attack him, so the Giant Spider Invasion will do. Spiders are apparently very formiddable foes, Garzooka's personal fears aside. They can swat gamma hairballs out of the air, they can construct webs as quickly as certain Marvel heroes, and their hairy exoskeletons are resistant to both claw and strength. But despite his fear and Abnermal's running commentary, Garzooka manages to trounce the spiders with a carefully applied flame--taking Vetvix's blueprints with them.

Garzooka heads out once again to track down the Mutanator, leaving his less-than-all-together friends in the safety of their forcefield prison. While he's off, we return to the perspective of his target. Using their combined powers, the Mutanator swiftly conquers the planet Armory and sets their sights on Polyester next. It's not a bad plan, honestly. With the stockpile from Armory, not only will the Mutanator be more powerful, Polyester won't be able to use the planet for backup. Fortunately for the two Jons, though, Garzooka intercepts the Mutanator before they can leave Armory.

The fight's actually pretty good. Very back and forth. But even despite Garzooka's great strength, the Mutanator wins in the end. Thankfully, Vetvix puts her conquest of Polyester on hold to take the time to retrieve Garzooka and add his power to the Mutanator. This, of course will be her undoing--in a completely ridiculous way, of course. For back in the palace, our universe's Jon is watching Pet Force's struggles with the scrying cauldron. And he leans in a bit too close. Sowhile Vetvix is prepping the machine to divide Garzooka's body like she did the rest of Pet Force, Jon suddenly tumbles through the dimensional warp caused by the cauldron and lands on Vetvix, which causes her to put the machine in reverse. A real Jonnus ex cauldrona there, eh?

The Mutanator disappears, their existance as a unique being wiped out as their pieces return to their proper Pet Force owners. With Pet Force reassembled, Garzooka takes out Vetvix with one of his gamma-radiated hairballs while she's distracted by Jon. Pet Force decides that the vile veternarian should have a taste of her own medicine, and stick her in the body-splicing machine with some of her guards. This divides them all up and mixes them into bizarre combinations. It also has the side effect of disabling Vetvix's magic, so they can return to their own universe now.

The book wraps up here. Pet Force first returns to Armory to both return the stolen weapons and also make repairs on the buildings that were damaged in Garzooka's fight with the Mutanator. That's the sort of thing I'd like to see in more superhero stories in general. The two Jons part ways, with the Emperor believing the other Jon's heroism to have been deliberate. And thus are Garfield and friends returned home. And just like the end of their first adventure, where Garfield couldn't be sure if it really happened, so too is Jon's memory fading. Had he really witnessed all that? Only his pets know for sure--and in this universe, they can't talk~

Book 5: Attack of the Lethal Lizards

This one's another wrap-around, showing the rest of Pet Force engaging the remaining Lethal Lizards on the back cover. This is one advantage books have over comics: a front and back cover you can use for your story-telling. The Lizard designs are pretty good for a villain group too. Like Pet Force, they don't adhere to a particular theme, but they do look good individually. Garzooka roasting a hot dog on a stick might be a bit too comedic for a superhero story, though. It sets the tone wrong. How "lethal" can they possibly be if Garzooka is out here roasting hot dogs in the middle of battle?

So here we go, last book. After the usual recap, we open with Jon explaining to Garfield and friends his latest plans: they're going to WackyWorld, a theme park dedicated to Jon's favourite cartoon, The Wackies. Both Garfield and Nermal think the show is lame, and if those two agree on something, you know it must be so. In less lame universes, however, trouble is once more a-brewing. So it turns out Vetvix's Floating Fortress of Fear has been orbiting the swamp planet Reptilius this whole time. And her various experiments in the last two books have been radiating the planet in magical energy...

From that magical power, three reptiles find themselves uplifted in intelligence and granted fantastic powers. Please say hello to our three main villains for this book: Snake, an enormous snake (the only one without an anthro design) with stretching powers; Chameleon, who can shapeshift; and Dragon, a komodo dragon with fire breath and the bad attitude to match. While Snake and Chameleon figure out their powers, Dragon declares himself the leader as he's clearly the smartest, strongest, and most powerful. They name themselves the Lethal Lizards and start plotting how to rule the planet.

After that exciting intro, though, the book kind of slows down. First we get a whole chapter of Emperor Jon also deciding to go on vacation, to planet Funlandia. With Vetvix out of commission for a while, there's no better time. In short, he's out of the castle and Sorceror Binky is in charge. This is followed by a chapter of Jon and his pets at WackyWorld. It's certainly an accommodating amusement park to allow pets on its grounds. Garfield at least gets along with the food, but if you know anything about amusement park food prices, the amount Garfield eats will make your wallet weep. Jon takes his mind off it by dragging the pets along to a ride. Surely they have to be under the height restriction~

Fortunately, we get back to the actual stars of this book, and we see a bit more of their dynamic. Snake is the sort who sucks up to whoever's calling themselves "Boss" at the moment. Dragon is power-hungry, and it's clear he'll sell out his allies at the drop of a hat. Chameleon is Starscream. Anyway, they trek through the jungles of Reptilius until they find a downed spaceship. Reviewing the logs reveals it was a scout ship from Vetvix, and they also learn of Vetvix and her mission. However, they don't know where Emperor Jon lives, so they crowd into the the newly christened Rapacious Reptile and set course for the stars.

The first planet they come across is a world called Klod. Quickly the Lethal Lizards beat up the populace and find the local government. Chameleon shapeshifts into a dignitary, pretending to be an advance entourage for Emperor Jon, schmoozing with the governor until he learns both what Jon looks like and the name of his planet. With this information secure, Chameleon nips out suddenly, and the trio sets forth towards Polyester. Governer Klutz calls up the palace as soon as the reptiles depart, and reports the incident to Sorceror Binky.

Binky wastes no time, and he dials up Pet Force. Since all five are in one place, he's able to pull them through even without them being near the gateway through issue #100's cover. Convenient! Pet Force, however, does waste time, as a lengthy comedy scene eats up several pages before we just get on with it. Eventually, the situation is conveyed, and they figure it's safer to keep Emperor Jon on Funlandia for the time being. Compooky stays behind to help plan some strategies, while the rest of Pet Force boards the Lightspeed Lasagna to intercept the Lethal Lizards before they even arrive.

Pet Force spends the next few minutes both scanning for incoming ships and bickering with each other, so I'm very glad when the Rapacious Reptile appears on their detectors before too long. Dragon threatens the ship, telling them to move or he'll knock them aside. It's a spaceship, dude, you can move in three dimensions. The ships trade shots, and while Chameleon's piloting is actually pretty good due to his independently-rotating eyeballs, eventually both ships crash land on whatever planet is nearby.

Both ships crash right next to each other, which is improbable but less ridiculous than some of the contrivances in these books, so I'm okay with it. Now you'd think what with the enemies being reptiles and Abnermal having freezing powers that this battle would be over really easily, but no. In fact, Garzooka and Dragon are pretty evenly matched. Snake turns out to be immune to Starlena's siren song because snakes don't have external ears. See, now there's a contrivance I find a bit weird. Snake swallows Abnermal whole, and Chameleon and Odious get literally tongue-tied. The Lethal Lizards actually live up to their name pretty well.

As the fight continues, half of both sides are laid out when Compooky comes rushing up, saying he has an urgent message from the emperor. And that's when he sucker-punches the team. It was actually Chameleon in disguise, having gotten knocked away when he and Odious separated. So yeah, round one goes to the Lizards, and they make their escape first. Pet Force regroups, and they give chase. The Lizards have enough head start to really lay siege to Polyester before Pet Force arrives, though. They even get access to the palace using Chameleon's shapeshifting, leading to Sorceror Binky letting slip the real location of the emperor just as Pet Force arrives.

Another fight ensues--see, now it's really a superhero story--and the Lizards leave again 2 and 0. This time Snake uses his venomous fangs to attack Starlena. This leads to the weirdest contrivance yet. Maybe not the worst, but definitely the weirdest. They have only minutes to save Starlena. So how do they do it? Well, they notice that Odious drools quite a lot. It's very "fluid output". So they have Binky magically reverse Odious' drooling, so that he has "fluid input" on his tongue instead. It becomes a big suction sponge and sucks the poison out of Starlena. They then restore the drooling, and he just harmlessly drools out the poison. What.

With their teammate saved, Pet Force pursues the Lethal Lizards to Funlandia. They get there just in time to rescue Emperor Jon from their clutches, with Garzooka and Odious combining their strength to literally rip a kiddie ride out of the ground. Starlena corners Chameleon in a hall of mirrors, turning his own trick against him. Snake is undone by Odious' strength. And Garzooka fights Dragon to a standstill, finally trapping all three on a roller coaster still operating. When the ride comes to an end, Abnermal freezes them all until the authorities can retrieve them.

Naturally, Emperor Jon thinks it's all part of the show (because Jon is dimwitted in any universe). The Lizards are sent to a lizard-proof prison (seriously, it specifies this), and Pet Force returns to their own universe. As usual, Jon didn't notice his pets go missing during the dark amusement park ride. The book concludes on an ominous note, however, as the ship carrying the Lethal Lizards makes its jump to lightspeed just as it passes the Floating Fortress of Fear. The shockwave knocks over some debris that reactivates the combining machine, restoring Vetvix to her full evil might once more!

The end!

No, really. Those five books are all there was. I hear it may have continued into the comics, but I don’t know how accurate that is. I didn’t really look into it.

But boy, what a ride, huh? Let’s dissect the books one at a time, since it only seems fair to take them as individual stories.

The Outrageous Origin: It’s a fairly basic origin story, I’d say. It kind of has to be. I guess my main gripe is that, like Rita Repulsa’s entire run on Power Rangers, the heroes never fight the main villain directly. In fact, there’s barely even an evil plot in this one. You have henchmen and some traps, and that’s about it for the menace.

Pie-Rat’s Revenge: A cautionary tale about why you treat your minions with respect. This one’s pretty good, but the events depicted on the cover make up such a small part of the book. Wouldn’t it have been more fun if Garzooka was turned at the beginning of the story? Book 4 would at least do the reverse of that, so it’s not a major complaint~

K-Niner, Dog of Doom: I think this one’s about as middle of the road as you can get. What a coincidence that it’s also the middle of the series! Like I said in the recap portion, it’s a shame that Pie-Rat’s story ended here. This one definitely feels more “villain of the week” than most.

Menace of the Mutanator: This one might be the best book in the series. Garzooka, alone, battling against the best parts of his team? That’s gripping stuff. I guess the main problem is that the Mutanator isn’t really a character in and of themselves. Like, K-Niner, he may have been a generic rent-a-villain type, but he had a personality. Mutanator is little more than an extention of Vetvix’s will.

Attack of the Lethal Lizards: I’m a bit split on this one. The bits with the titular Lizards are great. They steal the show! But the parts where it focuses on either Jon kind of drag, and Pet Force is a bit too jokey here. Like, I get the point is that they’ve relaxed into their roles now, and there’s not much point of doing it as a Garfield story if they don’t actually use the character personalities, but... I dunno. It’s good, but it could have been better~

And that’s it! Like, I dunno how to wrap this up. Pet Force was neither my first exposure to superheroes nor my first introduction to the Garfield brand (you can thank Saturday morning cartoons for both of those). But for some reason, maybe just the absurdly goofy premise, it always kinda stuck with me. And I think that’s a good enough reason to make it my 10th anniversary review, don’t you~?

#books #reviews #Garfield #Pet Force #Garfield's Pet Force #Taiblog

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entomancy · 3 years

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(Fic) One thing we can agree on

Title: One thing we can agree on (Wattpad)

Setting: The vampire nonsense / Vegas Masquerade

Warnings: Gore. I am having fun with my crayons.

Words: 1401

Summary: Flashback into the 'Moonlight Flush' part of the timeline. Which is the framing of the events of ~twenty years ago in the Vegas Masq. setting (which set up the current ‘rules’) as an urban fantasy police procedural; where Joplin would have been the secondary main / intro to the supernatural world and Belton the Season One antagonist who ended up Sort Of Befriended(ish).

This would have been in approx. Season Three, when bits from Joplin's past come back to bite him (er, again, I guess), and involves the first time he'd actually had to team up with Belton against a larger problem.

The larger problem being: more werebears, but asshole ones.

Indulgent, but I enjoy Belton being a dramatic irritation, and ~27yr old Joplin's permanent state of exasperation. And I wanted to explore an important (?) difference in the way the vampires and were(s) of this setting work.

(Also neither tumblr nor Wattpad has any sensible way to use footnotes, so there's one just... there, in the middle. Like this is FFN cira 2003 or something.)

---

The real difference between vampires and werewolves is how they bleed.

Clearly it isn't the only difference. There are the big, obvious - hairy - ones; and you could spend lifetimes comparing technicalities of characteristic amongst the supernatural set, searching for links or diversions or even a root cause. How magic plays in. How inheritances work, or the fundamental incompatibility of cross-siring. How sunlight, direct or orbitally reflected, could possibly trigger the different effects that it does.

But for Denis Joplin, as he'd scrambled to make sense of the extraordinary left turn his last decade had careened into, somehow the thing that really seemed to underline it all was the way they bled. Maybe because he'd always had such a damn knack for getting into situations that showcased it.

That last round of gunfire had really screwed up his right arm. He'd wedged himself in place against the thick struts of a heavy-duty shipping container - splattered almost as much now with crimson as it was with spraypainted Cyrillic – and tried to breathe quietly. The enormous bastard wielding a goddamn helicopter canon had fucked off to yell 'roided nonsense into a different part of the warehouse, so they probably had a few minutes pause before he realised his targets had dodged.

Not dodged as well as Joplin'd have liked, but there y'go. You worked with what you got.

Most of the bullets had gone straight through – since he wasn't an armour-plated van – but he could feel a few wedged points of pain even within the jellied miasma of broken flesh that hung unpleasantly from his torn shirt.

"Jesustapdancing-" he bit down on the mismatched curse as he grabbed his messed-up limb with his other hand and twisted, pushing it up against himself and the steel wall behind, and tried not to go blind.

It squelched.

"Don't like that," he muttered, then glanced up at the wet snort of amusement from just down the container row. "Hey, he nailed you to the fuckin' wall about as well as I've seen; don't get lippy."

Not that his extremely temporary partner was in much shape to be more actively sarcastic. The brunt of the recent salvo had hit taken Belton pointy-ear to hip, ripping the big grey fuck open like a side character in chainsaw splatter, which – somehow – made the look of dazed amusement on the bits of his face that weren't hanging off even more aggravating than usual. He shifted position, bringing his torn-up arms out in front of him as if holding something narrow and invisible in both hands, and –

Joplin blinked.

Pull... yourself...

"Oh fuck off," he growled – and it was a growl, a sound that started deeper than his chest actually went and brought the pull along with it; a bestial reverb that went beneath his bones. Joplin gritted his teeth – which felt about ready to start moving in his jaw as it was, aching with something beyond nerves – and had another unpleasant feel around where his elbow used to be. It helped if everything was in the right place. Last thing he needed right now was having to rebreak a limb because he'd managed to shift over all wonky.

That'd have to do. Very pointedly not making eye contact with Belton as he did so, Joplin Changed.

There have been a lot of renditions of a lycanthropic* transformations over the years, and there have even been some that have come close to the actual reality of seeing it happen. The exact visuals tend to vary person to person, but however it looks, the world bends – just a little, at the seams – as something that was only ever the thickness of breath away steps forward. Joplin always thought it felt like stretching should do – an all-over, unfurling release of physicality, like every fibre of you stopped hunching its shoulders all at once.

________________________________________________________________

* There's an argument that 'ursanthropic' might be a more technically correct term when the reader is considering Denis Joplin himself – or even the bellowing figure currently firing 30mm rounds into what will turn out to be a container of tinned garlic pallets – but the linguistic side of paraphylogeny isn't a popular field. 'Actually, it's wereBEAR' is only a helpful correction under certain circumstances, and this isn't one of them.**

** Yet. ________________________________________________________________

The arm took a bit more effort. A transformation that added several feet in height, width, and summed-up hair length didn't exactly have a problem fixing a half-mulched limb, but there was clearly an additional process going on. He wondered how people had explained what it looked like before timelapse film had been developed.

It... healed. Torn vessels sealed over; bone shards scraped and swelled together within muscles that bulged crimson-purple as they knitted close. Tissue bloomed, bruise-blossom hues racing through tattered skin and dragging raw pallor behind them; black-bloody tears welled up pink and grey and pink again, threaded with ribbons of tendon herded into place by a lightning flash of sudden scars, gone as fast as they appeared. Then the fur broke surface like desert flowering, and a heartbeat later there was nothing to show for the damage that a slight extra paleness in the iron-grey pelt, as Joplin flexed his bulked-out fingers carefully.

Belton clapped. Just once, with a softness that hands tipped with inch-long claws shouldn't be able to achieve, and it was the most sarcastic fucking sound Joplin had ever heard. He bared his considerable teeth in a silent snarl and waved his own padded hands towards the old bat.

Hurry. Up.

Belton's black eyes crinkled at the edges, and then he pulled himself back together.

The real difference between vampires and werewolves is how they bleed.

Belton's blood was dark, with a strangeness to its consistency that would have baffled splatter analysts on a fundamental level, but it also didn't tend to stay where it landed. None of him did. Metal gleamed naked against the pitted concrete as pools of inky crimson pulled away from the bullets that had torn them loose, flowing back along their own path like a retreating tide - rivulets of reversing gore that snaked and whipped back up their origin form, trailing back into ruptures that folded seamlessly shut around them. Belton stood up, even as his chest cavity was still closing, and gently pushed his hanging jaw back into place, smoothed like fresh clay.

Vampires don't heal – you see – so much as 'rewind'.

He held Joplin's gaze, half a heartbeat longer than he needed to, and grinned.

There was a spotless bullet held between his rows of teeth.

"Oh, fuck off," Joplin repeated – before he was drowned out by a guttural roaring, and the sound of a minigun barrel being smashed through something unfortune enough to be inside its turning circle.

"Little pigs, little pigs! I hear you!"

Both men visibly winced.

"See, someone with that little self-awareness just shouldn't be this much of a problem," Belton muttered, flicking the bullet aside like a cigarette butt. "It's genuinely a bit embarrassing."

"Yeah, well," Joplin whispered back, as he scanned the roof, taking in the environment with an eye to traversal options he hadn't had five minutes ago. "I won't tell if you don't."

Another roar burst the air, and Belton started edging down the row again, clearly doing his own version of the calculations.

"Pity he doesn't take after your side of the family, really."

"This isn't a family situation," Joplin snapped back, readying himself to move when the oncoming footsteps got a bit closer. If he could get around, then maybe he could deke out the...

He glanced back, about to signal a go, and realised the old vampire was still looking at him, one of those impossible-to-read expressions on his weird bat face for a second, before he spoke softly.

"See, that's the thing with monsters. It's always going to come back to blood, one way or another."

A shiver danced down Joplin's extended spine, strong enough to stir the fur. That was a bit close for comfort – and from sodding Belton? He shrugged dismissively, only partly to himself.

"Yeah, well, this ain't gonna be the worst it gets. Try not t'get cut in half again."

Then the shipping container exploded in a nightmare of burning metal. Belton went right; Joplin went up; and everything else went on from there.

----

#Entofic #urban fantasy #The Vegas Masquerade #Knockoff Manbat lookin' bastard #first team up is a bitch #Denis Joplin

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ramblinganthropologist · 3 years

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N7 Challenge 25 - Lost

Summary: The Shepards get lost on a strange planet. So, like the siblings they are... time to ask how it’s going with your love interest I guess?

---

“Some N7 you are...”

“Hey, you're lost too you know.”

“Yeah but I'm not the one with the hyper-modded omni-tool.”

Ok, fair... but at the same time, no.

Alistair sighed as he tapped his omni-tool. All he got out of it was a lot of static and a headache blooming behind his eyes. He would have taken his helmet off to massage the pain, but... well, they weren't in the atmosphere for it.

Oh the joys of on-planet missions going to shit.

“I think the storm's causing interference.”

Bo, also in full armor, snorted as she crossed her arms. “Of course it is.”

At least they weren't being exposed to the elements. Instead, they were in a ramshackle building that had probably been an outpost for the illegal mining setup they had been sent to investigate. It might not have been the nicest, but it was built to withstand the elements. Right then that was a bonus, because outside was hell on earth.

He had heard the planet had super concentrated acid rain, but the report had stated it was a rare event. How shitty was his luck?

“Maybe the guys we're looking for got caught in it and are out melting there now.” Bo peered out the window. “Nope... don't see any melting corpses.”

Alistair shook his head as he kept trying to get his omni-tool to connect. “We probably would've heard them screaming first. Acid isn't a pretty way to go.”

“Eh, don't ruin my daydream with facts.” She waved her gloved hand in his general direction. “Whatever, here's hoping they pick up our signal soon. I don't know how strong this roof is, but I'm pretty sure our armor can't hold out long.”

Actually, it could hold out five minutes... though the joints were the weakest part of that. Not that he had tested it or anything...

In the end, he gave up on his omni-tool. With any luck, it would clear up when the storm did. So until then, they were both effectively grounded in the small building they had sprinted towards when the skies had opened up. At least it wasn't anywhere animals could get to – this was the perfect opportunity to get eaten by a bear.

Given they had both survived a thresher maw, that would've been really embarrassing.

“So... since we're stuck here... what are you planning to do to Saren once we catch up with him?”

Alistair picked up his head. Bo was still leaning against the wall, glancing out the window in the hopes of spotting the storm clearing up. Outside there really wasn't much to see as the colorless rain fell. Rocks got pitted, the puddles were toxic, and anything organic caught outside that wasn't native was going to get a nasty surprise. Basically it was like regular rain, only more toxic.

So it was boring to watch.

He shrugged his shoulders as he took a seat on a somewhat run down chair that barely held his weight. “Turn him in, I guess? Though I doubt he's going to go quietly, especially since he's been working with the Reapers.”

Bo snorted at his assessment. “God, you're such a boy scout.”

“Oh, and what are you planning to do to him, headbutt him into a paste?” He chuckled. “Maybe that'd knock the implants out of him.”

He could almost picture Saren splatting against the wall like a cartoon character once Bo got a hold of him. If he really closed his eyes and focused, seeing his implants go flying was almost comical. At the same time... probably wasn't going to happen.

But it kept him busy.

“No, I'm going to rip his carapace off and beat him with it until he stops breathing.” She made the motion of cracking her knuckles, but the effect was impossible with gloves on. Maybe she realized that, because she frowned as she looked down at them. “It's the least that bastard deserves.”

Alistair nodded at this. “It's going to be hard to get his carapace off with the implants, though. You might tear it.”

“I'm not trying to pop him out in one piece, I just need a big enough chunk to beat him over the head with. That part on the back of the neck should do just fine.”

Apparently, she had been studying turian anatomy in her spare time. Good to know, maybe it would prove useful when they actually caught up to the rogue ex-Spectre and took him to task. Of course, that felt like light years away as they sat there, watching acid melt rocks and turn dirt into a biohazard.

At least the rocks were in cool shapes...

“So, speaking of turian anatomy... you got a plan on how you're getting into Vakarian's jumpsuit or what?”

Bo's sudden question rose above the hissing of the acid outside. Alistair's face immediately turned crimson, and he was glad for his helmet's visor hiding that. No doubt it showed on his body language, though – he was shit at hiding that.

“You know, I should really be focused on if the weather c-”

Bo snorted at his response. “So that's a no.”

…

Yeah.

Her brief bark of laughter rang out across the small room, which made his face burn even hotter. Even worse, he didn't have an omni-tool to dick around with to help process that. Right then, he was getting his XO at full power.

And he hated it.

“He's part of the crew, and we're barely ok with each other. I should respect that.”

The other Spectre in the room shrugged that off with one of her patented bored gazes. “He's not part of the Alliance, so if you're worried about fraternization you're good.”

Yes, but that wasn't the point. He was still pretty sure the turian hated him, and more importantly they were trying to nail another turian to the wall before he fucked the entire universe over. Whatever he had going on, it was secondary to that main goal of catching Saren before everything went to hell. After that, maybe, he could consider it.

But like... shit, how?

“We've got other stuff to worry about right now.” He tapped his omni-tool. “Damn it, come on. It's only a little acid rain, why are you so fussy?”

His XO rolled her eyes as she shifted her position. “You said that the last time and then our entire unit got eaten by a thresher maw. If that's not an indication you should jump on a situation, I don't know what is.”

Proof the universe hated them? Alistair didn't know, and he didn't care to question it as he sat there, praying his omni-tool would finally connect so he could call the Normandy. Anything would be better than this, possibly even getting hit by acid rain.

Yeah... that was how much he hated discussing his love life or the lack thereof. Maybe that was why he was single.

“Proof that I shouldn't even consider this until I'm out of the military.” He shrugged. “Besides, I could ask the same thing to you. How are things going with Tali?”

Not that he hadn't seen plenty of awkward moments between the two before this moment. After all, he hung out in engineering plenty when he had nothing better to do. Maybe that made him a massive nerd, but it also made him the perfect audience for watching human and quarian interactions play out in a military ship.

So... yeah he enjoyed it a little bit. Just a little.

Bo's posture shifted a little. “Fine.”

“Why does it sound like you're at the same impasse I'm at?”

She shot him a blank look. “Your problem is a combo of generalized anxiety disorder and a possible curse by the universe on anyone you have a crush on. My problem is that I'm scared I'm going to break her in half or breathe on her too hard and give her the flu.”

He was pretty sure that last one wasn't going to happen, quarian enviro-suits were well supported to keep nasty humans from giving them the flu. Once the visor went up, he didn't know. Quarian biology wasn't his specialty.

The former... well... he was going to think the best of her.

“You have good control, and she's pretty healthy.”

Bo groaned at that. “Yeah but I keep freaking out about it! I know she can handle it, she's tough and gorgeous and smart as hell but it's always in the back of my fucking mind that I'm going to get her killed!”

And this was why he kept trying to get her to go -

“I know what you're thinking and fuck off, if I didn't go to therapy after Akuze I'm not doing it for this.”

Apparently she was also a mind reader. He made a mental note of that as he checked his omni-tool one more time. It was still not working, but the static wasn't nearly as bad. It was probably due to the rain – there was a little less hissing. Maybe it was passing over.

Excellent, they could get out before they delved too deeply into each other's pathetic excuse for a romance resume.

He shrugged off her attitude regardless, though. “You already know my recommendation there, I'm not going to say it. But I think she knows what she can handle.”

“I know...” another groan. “Is this how you feel all the fucking time?”

Alistair checked his omni-tool again. “Worried about things with logical answers? Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well it fucking sucks and I want off the ride.”

That made two of them, which was why he took medication for it. It didn't always work because Saren had replaced quite a few things as his top anxiety producers over the last couple weeks, but it helped. It wouldn't help her, though – he didn't even want to think of the dosage she would need at her size.

Did pills even go that high? Maybe he'd ask the doctor about that the next time he saw them if he got out of this alive. Talk about motivation.

After that little outburst, they were quiet. The rain was definitely starting to slow, though. Even better, the sky was beginning to clear up as the sudden storm began to pass the area. It wasn't completely safe yet, but they were getting there.

“Is that thing working yet or what?”

Someone was testy. Alistair gave her a shrug as he tapped it one more time. Much to his relief, this time the static cleared. He could hear something on the other end beeping softly. A connection had been established.

“Yo is anyone out there? Matt, Waters? You two better not have fucking died out there, I swear-”

Nope. That wasn't Joker.

Bo's eyebrow lifted as she looked over at her CO. “I feel like a little stress relief, how about you?”

“I mean, we did come here for a mission.” Alistair was already working to locate the source of the call. It was probably nothing, but at least it would keep them busy until the Normandy could dock safely to pick them up. Maybe they could finish this mission after all.

At the very least, running around would clear both their nerves a little. He was feeling more than a little twitchy, and no doubt his XO felt the same. Maybe a little head smacking would help them settle down for the ride back.

If not... well, they'd work that out before she got back to Tali. It wouldn't do to accidentally break her in half or anything.

#n7month #ramblinganthropologist's writing #Alistair Shepard #Bo Peep Shepard

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emisfritish · 4 years

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𝚃𝚊𝚐𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚐𝚊𝚖𝚎: 𝚃𝚘𝚙 5 𝙱𝙻 𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚖𝚊𝚜/𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 5 𝚑𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚛𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚍

Rules : Jot down your top 5 BL Dramas/Series that have made their way to your heart and five honorable mentions you would recommend to newcomers. Tag ten users you think would like this game.

So I’m super late into doing this, but I figured it would be fun ! So thank you @ohbabycupcakes for tagging me ! Also you would think this would have been hard for me, but I actually love making lists like the crazy person I am, so my TOP 10 has been ready for a while ;p

Top 5 BL dramas

Okay fair warning, these won’t be in order because picking 10 was already kind of difficult when I first made the list, you can’t ask more of me !

1. Until We Meet Again

To the surprise of absolutely no one that follows me, this masterpiece had to make it into the list. It had it all : Amazing plot, a perfect ship, brilliant acting, enjoyable side pairings, great secondary characters, positive female characters. This show really took me by surprise with how much I ended up loving it, and I absolutely adored every single episode. It makes you feel every so many different emotions and although I get how some people thought it was a little too long, each and every episode flew by for me.

2. Theory of Love

I’ve loved OffGun since Puppy Honey, and it was so amazing to see them again in this brilliantly written drama. Gun always takes my breath away with his acting, and this show was no exception to that. Off also brought his A Game and I loved the evolution of their relationship throughout the show. I absolutely loved the fact that this BL was filled with references to so many movies and thought its production was amazing. I loved the entire gang of friends, and it’s honestly one of the only Thai BLs that has managed to blindside me with a pairing that I ended up loving to, so kuddos to them !

3. Great Men Academy

This one had to make the list because GMA is truly one of the shows I adored this year. The acting is amazing, I absolutely love both leads and the main couple, and I just found myself thoughroughly enjoying myself throughout all 8 episodes of the show. It’s another show where you go through so many different emotions, so many of the characters are amazing, and I loved the way they developped not only the relationship between the two leads but other types of relationships like sibbling relationships and friendships. If you haven’t watched GMA yet ? Go do yourself a favour and watch it now ;)

4. Sotus / Sotus S

I know this one can be a little bit of a controversial choice today, but Sotus / Sotus S (I know, I’m even one of the weird ones that loved Sotus S!) were the first BLs I watched, and for that they will always have a special place in my heart. Those shows aren’t perfect, but Sotus is so damn addictive, I absolutely adored Kongpop, and it’s one of those shows that I binged in two days because I needed to see more NOW. Had it not been my first, I’m not sure it would have been part of my top 5, but as of today it’s still a classic in the genre and the show I can go back to whenever I want a pick me up.

5. HIStory : Make Our Days Count

I really hesitated on which HIStory show to add to my list because they are honestly so many I adore, but because of my love for Yu XI Gu, this one had to be it. In spite of the awful ending (that I shall go back to pretending doesn’t exist right after this post ;)), the rest of the drama is amazing and the development of the relationship between the two leads is amazing. This drama made me go through so many different emotions and is yet another one that genuinely managed to surprise me several times throughout the show (including that time they wrote awful episodes that made no sense to end the show). I loved all of this drama as much as I hated its ending (and again if you follow me, you know that was A LOT), and because this main couple owned my heart, because the show had a great secondary pairing too, because of their band of lovable idiot friends, this show remains in my Top 5, and I would strongly recommend it !

5 honorable mentions

1. Love by Chance - Although I didn’t love everything about this show, both AePete and TinCan stole a bit of my heart and it’s one of those shows that I just couldn’t stop watching. I got so emotional when the announcement for a season 2 came, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone.

2. HIStory 2 - Crossing the Line - This show is honestly one of my absolute favourite ones, and so much of it is perfect. This show is truly flawlessly written and is a must for anyone that hasn’t seen it before. The only reason it’s not higher up on my list is because the number of episodes didn’t allow them to develop some of the characters as much as I would have liked, and in spite of this it remains one of the show that I would gladly watch again and again.

3. Dark Blue Kiss - This show is another one that isn’t perfect, but that I ended up loving anyway. PeteKao are everything (and I’m a sucker for established relationships), MorkSun were amazing, the production, costumes and cinematography of the show were amazing and TayNew managed to suck me in like always.

4. He’s Coming to Me - Yet another show with Acting King Singto, need I say more ? Seriously though, this show has it all. An amazing cast, a great plot, a lovable group of friends, so many important scenes, and is another one that will rip your heart out and make you laugh out loud in the span of an episode.

5. HIStory 3 - Trapped - YES I am going to go with another HIStory, you can’t stop me ;p ! Seriously, this is the show where I was literally counting the minutes until a new ep would come out. Shao Fei is amazing, the show is so damn addictive with a great plot, both couples (the main one and the side couple) are amazing and it’s a show I loved from start to finish. In spite of its dark theme, it was super funny and I would take a sequel or a movie instantly.

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I love reading other people’s opinions on BLs, so I’ll tag : @bl-fan @gmmtvmother @yihwas @princessoftheshadows @pallyson @earthfluke @lookattheredredchangesinthesky @weilongfu @iplann and whoever else wants to do it !

Don’t forget to go and follow the amazing gifmakers that made all of the ones in this post, and to reblog all of their work, and I can’t wait to read your opinions =)

#bl shows #tag game #until we meet again the series #theory of love #great men academy #sotus #history 3 : make our days count #sotus s #history 2 : crossing the line #history 3 : trapped #he's coming to me #dark blue kiss #love by chance

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ajoblotofjunk · 4 years

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Before I leave the warm cocoon of Brynn’s house, I am going to write out ALL MY FEELINGS about New Amsterdam. Most of which can be summed up by: this show had a lot of great individual elements and did not know what the fuck to do with them at all.

Here are the things I SHOULD have expected going in but for some reason did not and was continually surprised by:

1. Nik is in the show ALL THE TIME. That was like 7 hours of concentrated Nik we just consumed and it was wild. (This fact will, funnily enough, be the reason behind one of my biggest issues with the show later on.)

2. Nik is very tall! And lanky! He’s around a lot of tall people in Game of Thrones I guess and the armor makes him look bulkier. I was just very surprised by his profile all the time.

Huh I thought there were more but I guess not. Moving on!

I’ll start with the things I loved:

1. Since it was so much his show, let me give credit where it’s due: Nik was GREAT. I have many issues with the character John Amsterdam but NCW took what he had and did excellent work with it. There were a couple of flat moments but they were either genuinely unsalvageable dialogue or because the show was relying on chemistry between him and the doctor that just was not there no matter how hard he tried. And he had amazing chemistry with MANY people on that show so I think it was just one of those weird mismatches you can’t overcome. You can’t fake chemistry! Someday casting directors will learn that. Anyway, I was very proud of him.

2. The supporting and one-time cast are incredible. (This is ALSO lead-up to my biggest issue with the show!) Eva Marquez is a TOP TIER character, a woman cop who is great at her job, quick and witty, has some hinted at emotional depth, and deserved her own show tbh. If I were re-writing this show I’d make HER the focus and saddle her with John and come at it from that angle. Omar is ALSO AMAZING and every scene he was in SPARKLED. The lady sergeant walked the line sometimes but could have been good and that white guy detective who seemed to have no partner of his own was developing in an interesting way. The one-time guest cast were all also really good and there was a surprising amount of casual diversity that I really appreciated! I did not appreciate how Indian culture was used AT ALL in the already atrocious rape episode and frankly Nik’s past-John hair in that was also an offense so you miss literally nothing of value if you skip all of it except the last five minutes and even that, turns out, means nothing by the end of ep 8. MORE ON THAT LATER.

3. All of the past stories (except the rape episode one) were really interesting and I am like 50/50 shipping John/Lily and John/Eva mostly because Lily canonically died and Eva is GREAT. The conceit of using a new past life moment to tie to the present day case would have gotten very old even 20 episodes into this show, but for 8 it was neat.

4. The IDEA of the show had a lot of potential! That is the nicest thing I can say about it!

The things I did not like:

1. As I alluded to above: John is in this A LOT. ALL THE TIME. They surrounded him with this amazing secondary cast with whom he had incredible chemistry (every Eva and John and Omar scene was GENUINELY DELIGHTFUL and I would watch a supercut of this show of just the three of them in whatever combination). But the hyper focus on John was frustrating BECAUSE they had all these other characters. And like, this was 2008 and the show is about him and they needed to hook you into the main character I get all that. But because the other characters were always just props to John’s pain, including the ACTUAL VICTIMS OF CRIMES, it got very cringe-y very fast sometimes and also left behind so many opportunities to expand on the secondary characters even more. Like the rape episode: EVA should have been spearheading that, but because the show is All About John, he stepped in and it became about him getting revenge for a missed opportunity to get revenge before (even though he did actually get that revenge before? You can’t have your cold revenge cake and eat it, too, show), and it stopped being about the victim at all. It was gross. I cannot stress enough you should not watch that episode. Y’all know I love Nik but the focus was too much on his character, especially by ep 6 when it would have been reasonable to expand more. The worst part is the show walked to that edge MULTIPLE TIMES and then walked back again. So frustrating.

2. My overall problem with the show can be summed up by: they were SO CLOSE to greatness in so many ways and they just couldn’t pull the trigger. FOR EXAMPLE. The show is about John finding his soulmate so he can become mortal again (which.....more on that in minute too) and in one of the later episodes he and Eva go to this dating service (that’s a front for something else but they don’t know that at the time) called Soulmates and the lady who runs it talks about the questionnaire everyone takes to join and your IMMEDIATE THOUGHT is: they’re gonna take the questionnaire right?? RIGHT?? Readers, they do not. No one talks about it, no one mentions it, the only important thing about this place is it’s a front for crime and also it’s called Soulmates which is basically only there to make John look angsty and confused about the situation he is in with his. SO CLOSE TO GREATNESS. What I REALLY want is for fandom to get their hands on this show and make it better. Fans would have KILLED with the set-up they give us.

3. Soulmates. I actually LOVE soulmates tropes. I know a lot of people don’t and I absolutely understand all the problematic elements to soulmates but I love it anyway. And I very much did not love the soulmates stuff going on in this show. Mostly because John Amsterdam is 400 years old and he’s learned a lot of skills and nothing about how to live and that could have been an actual choice by the writers but I don’t think it was. I think THEY were so focused on John finding his soulmate they forgot to make him a person beyond that. WHICH IS WEIRD given he gets together with The One (sigh) like halfway through the episodes we have and then breaks up with her by the end of the last one and yet they did zero work to show that relationship at all instead ONLY relying on the “they’re soulmates!!!!” connection. Combined with the actors’ lack of chemistry (honestly Sarah felt more like his mom than his girlfriend and that’s NOT GREAT) it killed that whole plotline. They had way better chemistry at the beginning of the series when they were just flirting; once they got together it went to hell. Which I guess worked since they ended up breaking up! But the show seemed like it wanted me to be upset that they did and not relieved which was how I actually felt.

ALL THIS BEING SAID. I do not regret watching the show! It was fun to see Nik as a new character and getting so much screentime and in all the different get-ups. I have adopted Eva and Omar into my Fandom Characters I Adore family and am happy to have them there. I kiiiiiiinda want to write fic that uses the elements in ways I want but that will probably never happen since there are tiny fandoms and then there are nonexistent fandoms and frankly I have enough JB fic ideas to last me for years at this point. So if you’re an NCW fan, I DO recommend it! Except episode 4 which is offensive! Heh.

Also John swims naked in the YMCA pool at night multiple times and they never explain WHY and I need an answer. I wish I could ask the showrunners what their long-term plan was because given what happens in 8 episodes it is NOT AT ALL clear. Maybe they were going to make it Eva/John endgame?? Who knows! I’m not sure they did!

Plus there’s this:

They had VERY good chemistry. It’s a shame the show didn’t even give us very much of them being partner-y. Their banter was so good and so limited. We didn’t even get late-night bullpen talks where John kind of casually has his tie loosened!! COME ON.

#new amsterdam #meta #spoilers but you shouldn't care about that #as brynn and i discovered #this show gave us the things we wanted but always in the worst possible way #props to nik's face though

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 4 years

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What if Star Wars had tanked?

May 1977, 20th Century Fox distributes a really WEIRD movie. It’s a science fiction fantasy story about medieval knight samurais in space with laser swords and fighter pilots. Nobody expected it to be a hit, it seemed to be such a niche movie, one that would garner a small cult following then be swept under the rug by the other summer tent poles like “Smokey and the Bandit” or “The Spy Who Loved Me.” To everyone’s surprise, it became an instant success, rocketing no name George Lucas from a no-name bush-league indie director into the echelon of A-list Blockbusters. His idea for a decade spanning six part saga (two sequels, three prequels) was greenlit then and there, and the budget for Star Wars 2, now called Star Wars 5, was double what he was given for the original. Star Wars 1, nor 4, was given the subtitle “A New Hope” to let audiences know it was just the beginning of a series, and the rest is history.

But in 1977, George Lucas was not as confident in his vision as he would soon become. He figured, as every producer did, that his film would be a flash in the pan genre piece, something that would play in theaters just long enough to make it’s budget back, then disappear into obscurity. In 1976, he planned for the worst.

Star Wars, like many other films of the day, was being given a novelization. Before home media became ubiquitous, the only way people could experience the film was to see it in theaters or buy the book version. Lucas hired a ghostwriter, Alan Dean Foster, to write the novelization of Star Wars 1, AND to create a tentative Star Wars 2 that could be adapted to the screen if the original film failed to meet his high expectations. Star Wars 2, titled “Splinter of the Minds Eye,” was written to be as low budget as possible; no big set pieces, and for that matter no big sets. Every scene had to take place in a set that the studio already owned, and couldn’t include any major space battles because there was no guarantee that the special effects would fit into the budget. On top of that, it meant that none of the characters played by big name actors would be included; no Harrison Ford, no Alec Guinness. Splinter was a bare bones story set entirely on what would essentially become Dagobah, and would have taken the franchise in an entirely different direction. None of the story elements from Lucas’ dream sequel were included, and none of the plot twists either; there is no connection between “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” and “Empire Strikes Back,” and in fact, once Empire was released, Splinter was relegated to secondary canon because the official sequel had overidden it so the story no longer made sense.

But if Star Wars 1 had flopped, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye would have been made into the official sequel, and the story would have had to pick up where it left off; Lucas didn’t plot out a low budget version of Star Wars 3, so we can only speculate as to what may have happened.

In Splinter, Luke and Leia are going on a diplomatic mission to convince some neutral star systems to join the rebellion. Their ship crash lands on a backwater swamp planet (called Mimban, a name eventually used for the World War I trench planet in the Disney movie Solo), which is roughly analogous to the Dagobah we saw in Empire. Stranded on the swamp planet, Luke and Leia find their way to an imperial mining colony, get into a scuffle, and escape with the help of a Jedi witch named Halla. The titular “splinter of the mind’s eye” is a broken fragment of a magical crystal, because this was the 1970s and crystals were a big thing in fantasy (the splinter was called the kaiburr crystal; this name would later be re-purposed in canon as the crystals used for lightsaber and Death Star laser construction). The splinter is said to focus the force, allowing the wielder to become more powerful or something; it’s a MacGuffin, the book is vague as to what it actually physically does. After a confrontation with locals, and a duel with none other than Darth Vader (in which Leia wields a lightsaber and Luke cuts off Vader’s whole arm), Halla takes over the role of Luke’s mentor to train him in the ways of the Force.

At this point in the series, Luke and Leia were never intended to be brother and sister. It was clearly supposed to be a chivalric romance between a knight errant and his courtly love. He is the royal bodyguard to the Queen of Alderaan (the entire Royal Family was destroyed in Star Wars 1, so Princess Leia should by all rights have been coronated as Queen Leia). George Lucas added the twist that they were brother and sister well into production of Empire; in fact, in Empire he shot two scenes of Leia kissing Luke (one was to make Han jealous, the other was near the end, right after she rescued Luke from cloud city; I’m glad they cut the second one, because it undermines the fact that she literally just told Han that she loves him). Han Solo himself is mentioned in passing, not even by name, just as some pirate Luke used to know who took his reward money from the first movie and went to pay off some debts. If this movie had been made instead of Empire, there’s no guarantee that a Star Wars 3 would even be greenlit.

But if it had been, here’s what would have happened.

Darth Vader is not Luke’s father in this version; that too was a twist Lucas invented after the series took off. So, in this version of Star wars 3, which I will call “Revenge of the Jedi,” Luke goes on a quest to slay the evil Emperor. It’s a fantasy movie, in any other setting the point of the franchise would be to kill the main bad guy; imagine if Lord of the Rings had ended without the heroes destroying the ring and defeating Sauron, that would have made no sense. In this version of the story, Darth Vader is just the archetypal Black Knight; tying back into the Japanese influence on the series, he is an evil Shogun, appointed by the Emperor to be the military dictator. There would be more emphasis on fight choreography in this version, drawing influence from the works of Akira Kurosawa. The word Jedi comes from the word for the Japanese film genre Jidaigeki, meaning ‘period piece,’ featuring samuri and ronin (for western audiences, “Ronin” are nomadic heroes, like Clint Eastwood’s man with no name, or the Road Warrior).

Revenge of the Jedi would end with a climactic fight scene in the Emperor’s palace, with Luke battling his way through the many levels, defeating wave after wave of imperial soldiers and those red guards fans love to care about even though they do literally nothing on screen. The prequels we got in canon were bogged down with boring politics about trade federations and unions and guilds and alliances, but politics can be interesting if done well (and written by someone who isn’t George Lucas; the original trilogy we got was good DESPITE him, not BECAUSE of him). Revenge of the Jedi would see Leia building an army, the rebellion becoming an actual superpower in the galaxy; the New Republic wouldn’t just be restored after the Empire was defeated, it would be restored during the war with the express intent of rallying neutral systems behind an actual government body against the Emperor.

Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke’s father, but more importantly he committed genocide against Leia’s people, the survivors of which now live in diaspora. Sound familiar? “The Rebellion” isn’t a great name, but “the Alliance” is perfect because it evokes the Allies of World War II and shows that it is a galaxy-wide phenomena, not just a single splinter cell as depicted in the films in our timeline. Luke wants to avenge his father, but if you’re insistent that the good guy isn’t allowed to kill the bad guy, you could have Vader go out the way he did in “Return of the Jedi,” turning back to the light side and sacrificing his life to kill the Emperor. Everyone loves a redemption story, but Darth Vader really was a piece of shit and didn’t deserve to just get a free pass into Jedi Ghost Heaven because he decided to stop being evil five minutes before he died.

Maybe in this version of Star Wars 3, Harrison Ford returns for a cameo as a favor to George Lucas. If so, he dies; Ford wanted Han to die in “Return of the Jedi,” and only agreed to do “The Force Awakens” if they finally killed him off then. If he returns for “Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Jedi,” he will sacrifice himself for the Alliance, going out as a hero. After the Emperor is defeated, the threat doesn’t just go away; suddenly there’s a power vacuum, with all the admirals and regional governor’s vying to replace him. In both pre- and post-Disney Star Wars, the Emperor had a son (Triclops in Legends continuity, and Rey’s dad in Canon), so he would be heir to his father’s throne; perhaps he is propped up as a puppet for the military leaders, or maybe he surrenders to the Alliance and allows his Empire to be balkanized into dozens of independent powers, as with the fall of every great Empire; Rome (East and West), Mongolia, China, Austria-Hungary, Britain, the USSR, the list goes on.

This Star Wars trilogy would not be the enormous franchise we know today, it would still be a very niche series with a cult following. It would be a step up from the Planet of the Apes series; sure, people have heard of it, and there have been attempts to revive it in the modern day, but it’s not even close to being a tent pole of the modern cultural zeitgeist. Nobody looks forward to the new Planet of the Apes movie every year, it’s not a multi-billion dollar multi-media enterprise, there’s no dedicated “Planet of the Apes Celebration,” no cartoons, no streaming service shows that everyone geeks out about online, no triple-a video games, nothing. This version of Star Wars would be just another weird artifact of the 1970s. Maybe there would be a push to release a sequel, Star Wars 4, in like 2007, but that would be closer to Rambo IV or Superman Returns or Tron Legacy.

There are dedicated fans, but it’s not the biggest movie of the year.

Star Wars (1977)

Star Wars 2: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (1979)

Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Jedi (1982)

Star Wars: Journal of the Whills (2011, a prequel set during the Clone Wars mentioned in the first movie)

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mittensmorgul · 6 years

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This may seem like an odd question, but how do you think destiel originated in the narrative? Was it always written in? Or do you think it was the chemistry between misha and jensen that instigated it? (Or maybe some other reason...?) I'm kind of curious how Jensen, a seriously good actor, would let the "eyesex" we see just happen accidentally... There had to be some level of intentionality in the early seasons, right? Idk, im sure there's a lot we cant know there, but im curious what you think

Hi there! And first off, I think I need to stamp a big flashing disclaimer label at the top of this one, because I see a lot of well-intentioned but often cringingly misinformed or outright stabs in the dark or assumptions presented as “obvious fact,” and heck...

I am not affiliated with the staff of the show. I don’t know what the inside of any of the writers’ or showrunners’ heads look like, you know? All I know is what I’ve heard from their own mouths over the years, which I’ve tried to piece together logically. I’m not here to present this as some sort of “document of absolute, unassailable fact,” but “this is what logic would lead me to believe personally.”

But there are some important facts to bear in mind while asking oneself how destiel came to be, and how (and why) it evolved.

First off, there’s this assumption which is arguably incorrect that Kripke began Supernatural from the pilot episode with some Grand Vision of a complete five season arc. And he himself has made numerous statements invalidating that belief. We know for a fact that his “original vision” for the show boiled down to “star wars in truck stop america” where two plucky ghost hunters drove around confronting urban legends and myths that were real in their universe. I mean, just look at the first half of s1. It’s all MotW style episodes that lay out the groundwork of the universe’s mythology.

At the start of the series, Demons were so far above the Winchesters’ pay grade, and Kripke joked about how he would never introduce Angels as part of that universe. It was a running theme in the writers’ room from the start of the series. No angels.

And then the writers’ strike happened, leaving them with a truncated s3 and no room to write themselves out of the corner they’d backed themselves into. Dean landed in Hell, and Kripke relented, with “okay, angels, but only if they’re dicks.”

I think it was likely only part of the way into s4 where Kripke stopped fearing that they might or might not get a renewal for s5 when he set about the whole Apocalypse Arc, with 5.22 as a theoretical end of the series. He has said this himself, that it was Misha joining the show that finally gave him a little breathing room to plan for the future of the series in this way.

And remember also that Misha was originally only scripted and contracted to appear in three episodes. At the beginning of s4, even Kripke hadn’t planned out the fate of his universe beyond that.

So while viewers saw 4.01 and the barn scene and immediately began shipping the thing, because that’s what shippers do, I don’t believe that Castiel was (even in Kripke’s wildest imagination) scripted to take on such a large role in canon.

So while Shipper Zero (waves hi at @k-vichan) was already making a case for destiel, Kripke was still focused on making the ratings to even THINK about planning a two season arc to stop the apocalypse. It just so happened that Castiel-- a character that Kripke had never intended to write (NO ANGELS!)-- became the hook on which his vision for the theoretical end run of his little series hung.

From his first appearance, it was clear that Castiel’s closest tie was with Dean. He pulled Dean out of Hell, and as we see unfold over the course of s4, Cas had been charged by Heaven to essentially shepherd Dean through all the necessary paces to make sure that Heaven’s will was served. Even Cas had been misled on what Heaven’s true objectives were, leading to that HUGE moment in 4.22 where Cas was forced to choose a side, and because of Dean’s influence, he rejected Heaven and chose Humanity.

Now, I don’t believe that was written as some sort of great romantic gesture, you know? Because we all know that despite what Dean and Cas struggle through together over the rest of s5, Cas’s duty returns to Heaven as soon as the apocalypse is thwarted. If Kripke’s “original vision” for the end of s5 had stood as the series end, that would’ve been the last time that Dean ever saw Cas. So... not exactly the stuff of shipper dreams, you know?

But Kripke passed the reins to Sera Gamble and s6 marched onward. The intent was to write Castiel out permanently, and thanks to Ben Edlund and 6.20 for giving Cas a voice before his inevitable demise, we end up with this bit of canonical personal betrayal and heartbreak between Dean and Cas.

Granted, going in to s6, Gamble was planning for and writing a single season arc, because she no longer had that assumption of continuing past s6. I think a lot of the romantic tropey stuff in s6 only slipped in because there was the belief at the time that a) Castiel wasn’t intended to survive the season and this is all swell but it’s never going to amount to anything but Manpain for Dean, and b) there was no guarantee they’d even be picked up for s7 to have to deal with the consequences of these choices anyway.

but then... whoopsie... they had s7 to deal with. Including spiraling ratings. By 7.17 when Cas miraculously came back, I think they’d sort of written themselves into this particular corner. Yeah, choices were made in how Cas’s return happened, but after 15 episodes of Dean mourning Cas (and Bobby, and pretty much everything else in his life up to and including Sam by 7.17), the one thing he got back first was Cas. And Cas was the key to beginning to rebuild Dean’s entire life, starting with Sam. And yet... in the same breath Cas returned Sam to him, Cas also disappeared into his own head. He was RIGHT THERE, but he had nothing else to give to Dean right then. All of that led into the buildup to s8, and I think that was really the point at which the narrative began treating Dean and Cas’s relationship as something different, and something more serious.

I’ve been watching early s8 for the last two days, and here’s a little snippet from my angst-ridden chat with lizbob this morning:

mittensmorgulI hate this. Cas, confused: So you think this was your fault?I.e. the moment when it stopped being just Dean and Cas preventing themselves from finishing a conversation, and the narrative itself took over preventing them from finishing a conversation.

mittensmorgulIt may have begun because it was starting to get implausible that they were just that stubborn about talking to one another honestly and openly, but whoopsie that actually made their relationship issues structural to the narrative

elizabethrobertajonesYeah, Ms Tran is like HEY HOW DAREYOU CAN'T FINISH A CONVERSATIONBEEP BEEP

mittensmorguland then in a few more minutes it's Interrupting Moose's turn

elizabethrobertajonesknock knock

elizabethrobertajoneswho's the-INTERRUPTING MOOSE

mittensmorguloh noooooo... go away mooseman! STOP INTERRUPTING.NO SAM, THEY ARE VERY NOT OKAY

elizabethrobertajones:

And their issues went from being a sort of sidebar to the actual narrative structure of the series and became inextricably linked with the larger narrative.

So, fun as it is to go back through the entire series and look for all the destiel along the way, I think that’s most likely when it became a factor that drove the plot, rather than something secondary to the main plot, at least from a structural perspective.

And now, after s13 and going into s14, their relationship and feelings toward one another have become foundational to the actual cosmic structure in their universe. Dean’s grief was powerful enough for Jack to ride across dimensions into the Empty, where even God was unable to tread? Yeah, that’s cosmic. And now Cas is in a similar position dealing with a cosmic, interdimensional dilemma focused on Dean. I mean... it’s literally the foundation of the narrative structure of s13 and s14. Not only are the writers taking their relationship seriously, they’re using it to support the rest of the narrative.

I think this is kinda what you asked, at least? I’ve been typing for a really long time now. D:

#destiel #the scheherazade of supernatural #how the heck to i even tag this otherwise? D:#Anonymous

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blueplayskh3 · 5 years

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Big update post #1

So! So far I’ve been in:

- Olympus

Excellent tutorial, I’m glad it was short and areas we haven’t explored before, it was a super good intro to the game and a gorgeous world

- Twilight Town

I’m sad it’s so small (we can’t go in the clock tower area or inside the mansion...) but god. It’s beautiful. It’s lively. The NPCs give me life. It’s the world i’ve completed the most (all treasure chests+almost all lucky emblems), probably because it’s so small.

- 100 Acres Woods

The mini games were so fun and Winnie and Sora always make me cry. 10/10.

- Toy Box

Super fun level design (I kept getting lost but that’s on me), I REALLY loved the getting inside the toys bit and the characters were so loveable.

- Kingdom of Corona

I LOVE RAPUNZEL??? SO MUCH??

Kingdom of Corona is definitely a world I have to revisit because it was so big and right now I’m so focused on the story that I rushed through it and missed a bunch of stuff. It’s so beautiful though (I keep saying that but the game is gorgeous), and I love the interactivity with the environment. Also I love Rapunzel.

- Monstropolis

So i kept getting lost because a lot of the factory looks the same, but I liked the maze aspect of it nonetheless. It felt a bit more linear than other worlds, like Kingdom of Corona (and upcoming worlds), that are so big and open.

- Arendelle

I was afraid it was gonna be cheesy and suck, but it was actually pretty well done (except the bit with Olaf but that’s on me, I have beef with him and his stupid snowman face). Same as Kingdom of Corona, I rushed through it and I have a lot of stuff to go back to. The snow landscape is so incredible and it holds a special place in my heart just for:

“The snowstorm can’t get us here

A”

- The Carribeans

My least favorite world so far, probably because of the realism aspect of it, and also because I majorly sucked at the boat minigames. I did like the underwater part of it (the moving around was well done as well as the underwater combat) and I do need to go back and especially explore 1. the docks 2. the open sea on my beautiful Leviathan boat. This world is my least complete so far, I’ve missed almost all the treasure chests and lucky emblems.

- San Fransokyo

It’s where I am right now! It’s one of my favorite worlds so far, even though I think the fluidity mechanism and the PRESS SQUARE mechanism are painful. The city is gorgeous, everything is detailed, I’m having a blast exploring it. I’m gonna have a hard time finding every lucky emblem and treasure chest in an environment that big (especially since I still don’t have a map of the city?) but I plan to stay there after I’m done with the world’s story to level up a bunch, so that will give me plenty of time to explore.

Overall so far the plot has been great, and it’s really nice and satisfying to see all the dots being connected to each other. Although so far we’ve have like 80% Disney worlds stories and 20% original KH plot story, since San Fransokyo was the last officially announced world, I imagine that once I’m gonna be done with it, things are gonna get pretty wild.

The Disney plots have been all good and well and they’re actually much more daring than in other KH games (deaths were actually shown on screen! Multiple ones!). My favorite plot was probably the Toy Story one (it’s even better knowing that it’s canon to the Toy Story timeline) and my least favorite one has been the Pirates of the Carribean one (I thought it was confusing but then again I didn’t enjoy the world very much).

The story so far has been 90% Sora, and the rest of the characters share the scraps of the remaining 10%. I’d say Riku and the Org are the lead when it comes to secondary characters so far. I wish we had more Kairi, and that we could see her training with Axel instead of having 2 minutes cutscenes of them talking about it. Also I wish we could explore more of the Realm of Darkness with Riku and Mickey. Getting to play as Riku was *so good*, but it only lasted for like five minutes. I need more. Give me playable Riku (and Kairi I beg of you).

A lot of the KH original characters have yet to have screentime but I guess we do have a pretty large cast. Though I’m 23 hours into the game and we’ve barely seen Aqua, and Terra hasn’t even appeared yet (except in flashbacks, the poor soul). So many things have been teased and I know the story is gonna get wild as hell soon but I’m getting a little bit impatient I guess? Idk. I just wanna see more of the original characters I love. Also, I wanna mention the fact that I’m 23 hours in and no Final Fantasy character has made an appearance yet. I’m sad about that.

In terms of pure gameplay, my favorite Keyblades so far have been 1. Frozen keyblade 2. Toy Story keyblade 3. Tangled keyblade. I still have not tried the Monster Inc keyblade, but in terms of Keyblade transformation, the Frozen keyblade is unbeatable. I mean... Ice skating. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. The attractions transformations are super good and make the interactivity of the game really next level.

I also wanna mention the sheer number of details and extra shit to do in that game. The interactions between the characters (when Sora, Donald and Goofy have little conversations while walking...), their idle animations, the gummiphone?!?!?!? I’ve yet to try to play the Classic Kingdom games, I’m probably gonna do that when I’ve actually beaten the main story. The gummi ship open world and missions and all the stuff to do there is just... Overwhelming. My gummi ship is a car right now and i plan on making it the best goddamn race car the world has ever seen. I’m still laughing when I think of that person who made their gummi ship a toilet sit... god I wish I was that fucking funny. Anyway, there’s a shitton of gummi missions and I need to spend more time working on my gummi ship but....

the story

it’s calling my name.

I do still want to complete this game 100% and Platinum it, so that’s probably gonna take me 150h, roughly. I took a quick look at the trophy list (and didn’t even get spoiled!) and yeah... there’s a lot to do.

But I’ll do it. For Jim🅱️o Cricket.

I’ll probably do another update when I’ve put another 20 hours in the game (maybe finished it by then, hopefully?).

May my heart be my guiding key

#big fat update #1

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originaldisneydescendants · 6 years

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So some time ago I had a kind of weird Tangled dream... and it turned into a theory... I won’t tag for spoilers since it IS all just a hypothesis but if you don’t like them then I might suggest you keep scrolling just in case.

Before you start reading though, keep in mind that if you think I ship these two in ANY way that is inappropriate for their current ages or Disney in general, I will PERSONALLY put together a large southern gospel choir to knock on your front door and sing you a very loud and glorious “NO.” I don’t even ship Rapunzel and Eugene that way and we KNOW they get married. SO WIPE THAT FROM YOUR THOUGHTS RIGHT NOW!! THIS. STAYS. INNOCENT.

EDIT: Please read the WHOLE thing before sending me messages.

After I had noticed how many parallels there were between Rapunzel and Eugene with Cassandra and Varian (both in Great Expotations and in general: EX. both involve an older character that starts out rather cynical and guarded who began life as an orphan then slowly lets down their defenses with the younger, perky, passionate, creative, buck toothed, freckled, son/daughter of some influential leader, (that’s not even all of the similarities) and if Eugene really IS 26 and that’s what the show seems to be suggesting with him appearing with his adult design in a flashback that takes place 8 years prior, and if Cass IS 22 as I suspect she is, then that would mean they have the EXACT same age gap and all four characters are four years apart from each other). I... don’t think that’s sheer coincidence. Along with what could be read as possible foreshadowing (Ex. Andrew calling Cassandra “Cassie” in an episode set immediately after Great Expotations and “venomous cobra man” is a lot more suiting now than it used to be, etc.), I started to wonder if maybe it was possible that they could end up someday, being a foil pair to our romantic leads?

HEAR ME OUT.

I didn't think much of it at first because I’ve been way off on predictions before, I wasn’t in full favor of shipping them yet, and I thought I could simply be misreading and the parallels are all just coincidence until the very night that this occurred to me, I dreamed of the episode 'What the Hair?!' and everything was the same except when everything came crashing down the dialogue was switched so it was now Cass and Varian saying Raps and Eugene's lines and even making the same expressions, holding hands etc. but they were still in the same locations that they actually were on the show (I've had a lot of theories for a lot of shows but as far as them making it into my dreams, this is a first).

I woke up very confused because I thought it was canon and was wondering why fans weren't paying any attention to it. You'd think they'd be losing their minds! After I woke up a little more I thought...

"Wait! That never happened! It couldn’t have! 1.) 14 and maybe-20-something? They can't get away with that! This is Tangled, not The Garden of Words! 2.) They just met like five minutes ago! YEESH! That’s fast even by Disney fairytale standards!!"

^^^That boy's face says "I LIKE you, but not in a 'You mean the world to me' kind of way, more like a 'Wow, I just noticed how attractive you are. Are you free this Friday?' kind of way."^^^

I almost outright dismissed it as disturbingly nonsensical but didn’t because the more and more I thought about it, the more the possibility of them ending up together at some point down the road actually started to not only seem plausible... but actually make perfect sense for a LOT of reasons!

Think about it! First off, if the show itself is centered around Rapunzel and Eugene's romance then wouldn't you expect any secondary relationship on the show to be just that? A foil? A complimentary opposite? Classical music vs Rock and Roll? The very earliest they could really even suggest that Cass maybe starting to reciprocate or that she could someday have romantic feelings for Varian would probably be at the very end of the show when he is likely to be more matured both physically and emotionally and all conflicts have been resolved. This would also explain why it seems like it's always hinted at that Cass could have a romantic interest in the future, but a real one hasn't been introduced yet (at least not one that we'd recognize right away). This also makes sense in that the crew behind the show might not want to develop another romance on-screen and risk overshadowing the main pair with new characters.

"Besides, I don't have time for dreams. My dad taught me at a very young age to focus on the here and now." - Cassandra in Cassandra v Eugene.

I read her keeping the rose Andrew gave her at the end of Under Raps (especially after her earlier expression of distaste in the idea of romance) as her saying "Yeah, the whole thing was a total charade, but I actually kind of enjoyed it and I might not be opposed to having a REAL romance with someone SOMEDAY."

Ways that they would be a foil could probably include how it takes years for them to develop into anything romantic rather than just a day or two, it’s an older girl with a younger guy rather than the other way around, nocturnal animal friends vs diurnal which I pointed out in a linked post above as part of a sun vs moon motif (I've noticed a lot of background imagery tying Cassandra to the moon so there's some theory fuel for ya), and how, while we already know that Rapunzel and Eugene live happily ever after, almost NOTHING is certain about the future for Cassandra and Varian at this point in time like whether or not they’ll even end up still being friends. Neither of them are in the Ever After short so there's that too.

Something else I noticed is when this show tends to emphasize something, it seems like it is subject to change and contrast seems to be a major theme in this show. ( @starxapple ) As ‘Kevin’ pointed out, Varian’s cuteness/sweetness was very played up in the first episode and he called out how this meant Varian would became a villain. By that logic, it’s really played up on how Varian is a kid and, accordingly, how Cassandra sees him as such. Varian isn’t an adult, but he isn’t exactly a child either. He’s an adolescent in that confusing and emotionally turbulent stage right in between. He’s old enough to be held responsible for his actions, but not necessarily mature enough to take that responsibility himself.

This to me suggests that we will most likely get to see him really grow up on this show, backed up by the fact that it is set over a few years and no doubt Varian is FAR from a static character with a great deal of potential for growth.The whole point of his character might be to make a point about maturity and at what point should someone be truly considered an adult? 18 isn’t just some magical age when someone goes from naive kid to wise grown up because, in reality, people mature at different rates and it all depends on individual experiences. Someone lacking emotional maturity enough to be honest about their own faults and limits definitely wouldn’t be ready for a serious romance with anyone, much less an older person like her.

(My friend, Chi and I both explained why the fact that they meet before he is an adult isn’t really a problem in this post here. In fact, if they ever WERE to become a romance in the future, it would actually be essential for SOME emotional connection to be made BEFORE he became a villain for the reasons stated.) Sorry if this chart is hard to decipher but hopefully my earlier explanation helps it to make sense.

When the show is nearing its end, I wouldn’t be surprised if they started playing up how Varian has grown up (a lot taller, more responsible, calling Eugene by his real name, they may give him facial hair etc). This growth may also be emphasized by Cassandra’s view of him changing from ‘kid friend’ to 'dangerous enemy' then finally to ‘potential romantic interest’ at some point in the future. By the time the show is over, Varian should be at least around 16-17 which (again if I’m right about Cass’s age) would place them both at only slightly younger than Rapunzel and Eugene were in the movie so I wouldn’t be too surprised if the possible foreshadowing became a lot clearer near the end, like the bouquet at Raps and Eugene’s wedding landing in Cassandra’s hands and her realizing that Varian happens to be standing right next to her.

Of course I don’t expect any kind of confirmation or denial on this outside future episodes since, again, that would be a massive spoiler if it were true, but it’s still very interesting to think about.

Also this makes me wonder what other Rapunzel/Eugene things they might paralle--?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! DON'T YOU DARE!!

But... DANGFLABBERGASKIT that ALSO kinda makes sense!! We've seen twice already that Varian feels an impact whenever Cassandra saves his life. The first time likely being what caused him to start crushing on her to begin with (seeing as how before that point, if anything, he was probably more intimidated by her and otherwise didn’t pay much attention to her at all in favor of the princess and his believed-to-be-hero) and the second time he voiced how it moved him that she chose him over her guard duties to Dr. St. Croix. This is purely guessing but how much do you think it would impact him if she got HURT saving him a third time even after EVERY terrible thing he did and in the same way that caused his dad to get encased in the first place?

I've seen other redemption arcs for other characters and it's not uncommon for their turn around to be triggered by the hero(ine) making a selfless act on their behalf despite everything they did. In fact, if they HADN'T done such terrible things, the scene where they apologize would be nowhere NEAR as powerful. Storytelling 101. If Yukine’s stealing a skateboard didn’t contribute to his friend facing painful death and his careless disregard for that fact didn’t happen then his weeping/screaming apologies would have come off as a bit overkill rather than emotionally powerful. 😝

And since there are no more healing powers and Cass isn't in the Ever After short, the stakes are high enough that it could still have a huge impact on the audience as well. Not to mention what it would say about Cassandra's growth as a character since it's emphasized in Not In The Mood that the area she could use the most growth in is compassion.

Both of their individual relationships with Rapunzel are the ones that get the most focus, which is fitting since she's the main character, so I'd be hard pressed to imagine that she isn't directly involved in some way.

GAAAAHHHH HAVE MERCY!!

For those who argue that what he felt for her was a puppy crush, I’m not going to say that isn’t the case but here’s the thing. After Varian becomes a villain, it’s pretty obvious that he no longer feels the same affection for Cassandra that he did before. If he did, safe to say he probably wouldn’t have tried to crush her. This is emphasized by how he calls her Cassandra when ‘Cassie’ was clearly meant as an affectionate nickname for her. If there was a puppy crush, it’s most likely gone already. Whoosh! Bye-bye! This would leave room for more mature feelings to become a new foundation after a redemption arc. A relationship built more on that common connection they shared in Great Expotations, rather than an action she took that may or may not really mean anything.

I can actually imagine this all happening and when the show is over, we'd be hearing things from the production team like "This was the idea all along. We didn't just decide to throw them together halfway through because people seemed to like it enough, it was always going to be part of the story. Just like how we always knew Varian would become a villain, when the episode What The Hair?! was being written, we already knew how it would end with these two."

Huh... this would actually put my dream into perfect context if true. After all, it is a complete story and Chris has said that the course of each characters' story has been planned out from the beginning. There is freedom for the writers but the backbone was set before casting, character designs etc.

I'll be honest, I wasn't that surprised to hear that it sounded like there WAS an answer but I wasn't going to get it directly from him. The fact that it seems implied that SAYING Cassandra’s age could potentially be a sort of spoiler leads me to wonder if this might be why? I mean, it is assumed that Cass is somewhere between Rapunzel and Eugene in age. Maybe I’m reading too much into it but why bother with not having a clear, direct answer, instead suggesting that it will be hinted at, unless there was real significance behind the exact number? I wonder if by "hints" he means more flashbacks since, again, The Return Of Strongbow seemed to hint at Eugene's age.

With all that said, I am 100% in favor of us getting to the series finale and having Varian acknowledge that he is STILL NOT ready for a real relationship with Cassandra just yet for two reasons. One, it would show how much he has matured with him being able to recognize that he isn’t emotionally prepared for something, and two, it would be another Rapunzel/Eugene parallel with the series premiere where Rapunzel tells Eugene that she isn’t ready to settle down and marry him just yet. I would expect Cass’s response to parallel Eugene’s with her now more developed patience and understanding giving him time to catch up with her.

All in all, I see the possibility of a romance between Cassandra and Varian as being like an acorn. Someday, after years of growth, it could be a beautiful oak.

But for now it's just nuts.

Yes, I know shipping slow burn romances is torture but because I’ve managed to convince myself that their chances of being canon in the future are actually pretty good, I signed myself up. *Puts on helmet* Bring on the pain.

#romantic foil theory #cassarian #tangled the series #tts #cassandra #tangled cassandra #varian #rapunzel #eugene fitzherbert #long post #tangled dreams #tangled theory #possible spoilers?

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ask-de-writer · 6 years

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GONE TO SEA : World of Sea : Science Fiction : Part 7

GONE TO SEA

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

WORK IN PROGRESS (Word count unknown at this time)

Writing started 2005

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

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Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions. All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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Chapter 04. Children at Play

As is the case everywhere that there are children, they play. In some of their playing, they imitate their elders. They also do another thing that children have done since the dawn of time. Because the only toys that the adults thought to bring or make were educational, they raided the trash for fun things to play with.

Cora Halyn dug the pan out of the waste stream dumpster. Grinning, she held it up for the others to see. “What good is that?” asked Mikal Novotnoy.

Cora grinned some more and threw out several used twenty centimeter air filter disks made from the dried skin of the Strong's shark. She said happily, “I was there when the cooks made this mess out of some Moreson's eels. They tried to soak it out, scrape it and even chip it loose. Since it melted once, I don't know why they didn't try to melt it again. If it will melt, we can squish it into these disks and make Frisbees!”

Jason Torres asked her, “Did they chuck out any of the Shark's teeth or bones?”

Cora promptly dove back into the dumpster. The sound of things shifting and thumping about followed. Several large pieces of bone and some ten to fourteen centimeter long razor sharp and naturally serrated teeth cascaded out of the trash bin. Cora vaulted out after them.

“Why did you want the teeth and bones, Jase?” she asked curiously.

Jason cut a finger as he gathered up the teeth and bones that Cora dug out for him. He paused long enough to suck the cut a moment before commenting, “Those teeth are sharp! I thought that it might be fun to try doing some scrimshaw with them. Maybe even make my dad a present that he can use, like a paperweight or something.”

The children gathered up their booty of trash and went to the recycle center. Mister Makle looked over what the children wanted and asked, “What do you want with the pan? The rest is no problem but that pan is aluminum. We can remelt it and make new things from it.”

Cora grinned and pointed out, “True, but we already get all of the new aluminum that we want by processing seawater. What we really want is the goo in the pan. I think that we can melt it and work it into the used filter disks. If I am right we can make Frisbees out of them! Those eels are pretty common so we can make lots of toys like that if it works.”

Shrugging and smiling, Mister Makle signed a release for the children's salvage and said, “Be sure to let me know if that trick works! I'd like a Frisbee too!”

The next day, Cora and the rest of her crowd brought Mister Makle a home-made Frisbee.

Cora proudly explained, “The goo by itself was way too brittle when it hardened in the disks. We fixed that by mixing in some oil that we got by rendering the waxy stuff. Now it is strong and somewhat flexible. Here, try it!” She expertly flipped the disk to him.

Mister Makle caught the disk with a delighted smile and did try it. He flexed it some and then tossed the disk so that it bounced off a wall and examined it again. He smiled even more as he said, “Keep me and the rest of the waste management and maintenance team in Frisbees and you can have anything that you want from the trash if it isn't dangerous. OK?”

Jason grinned back and said, “Sounds easy enough. There's lots of those used filter disks. We have another idea that you might like.”

Interested, Mister Makle asked, “What is that?”

Seeing that there was an adult who wasn't too busy to pay attention, the assorted children of Cora's crowd gathered around and said, “Fishing! When we saw how tough that Strong's skin and eel goo is, we made a pole out of some of it.”

Mikal added, “We figured out that if you cut a big mussel loose and just set it in some seawater, it will put out the attachment foot to start making new holdfast strands. We put a little chunk of bone near where the foot comes out. As soon as it stuck the holdfast thread to the bone, we started to pull real gently. We got over five meters of line from it.”

Mister Makle said, “I'd like to see that. What are you going to use for a hook?”

Cora said, “We are going to try several things to see what works best. The dense bone from the Strong's shark will be the base for most of them. A few will be carved out of shell from the mussels. Got a piece of paper? Mala'klea will sketch them up for you. Her folks were in the Polynesian Back to the Ocean movement. She's learned all sorts of neat stuff from them.”

Black haired little Mala'klea silently took a pen and began sketching quickly. It only took a few moments for her to hand Mister Makle the paper with a half dozen different hook designs on it, complete with notes about materials and the glue applications where necessary.

While she was sketching Mister Makle asked Cora, “Doesn't she talk?”

Cora gave a half grin and replied, “Yes she does, when she has something to say. It is worth listening when she does speak because it is always good.”

Mala'klea did suddenly look up at Cora with a smile and said, “We can overlap disks to make laminated planks. We could make a sailing canoe from them.” She fell silent again and took another sheet of paper.

Her nearly flying pen sketched rapidly. A simple dory built design for a long, deep keeled and moderately wide canoe-like boat took shape. It had a large outrigger or secondary hull and a deck on struts between the main hull and the smaller one.

Mister Makle looked at the paper and commented, “Sweet design. This is all done with equal angles for the ribs. That will make the fabrication easy. You kids will need a formal adult supervisor for a project this big. How long do you actually plan to make it?”

Cora grinned in relief that their idea wasn't just being blown off by a man whose department was critical to building it. She replied, “We thought that about twenty meters should make it safe from Strong's sharks and most of the other big fish that we know of.”

Mister Makle studied the drawing and sections seriously for a moment and said, “That will be way too large to manage easily with paddles. Will it have a sail?”

Cora agreed, “It will have two masts and three sails. Mala'klea has that all figured out. Her mom was the captain of the Mona Loa. It was a sailing ship of the Polynesian Back to the Ocean Movement.”

Mister Makle grinned widely and said, “You do know that this boat is as big as the two ships that the station engineers are planning to build, don't you?”

“Sure we do,” Cora replied confidently. “Size is a relative thing. Theirs will be wider and deeper in the hull and have two masts. Those round ships will be able to carry a lot more than our voyaging canoes and will have a longer range. We figure that these will be way faster, though.”

Mister Makle asked, “Would you be willing to practice on a smaller boat or two using the same principles, just to test your ideas before you commit to building the big one?

“I know that the maintenance crew would be willing to do the supervision in their off time. They want a chance to play about with boat building but the shipyard is being a real prat about it ever since Mister Angerson got put in charge. This will be a big job because of all of the Moreson's eels that you will have to catch. I can set the recycle folks to salvaging all of the filters that come through.”

Cora got a faraway look and then suggested, “That would be great. We could use a test boat to catch the eels that we will need. If everything works as well as it should, we could even help the maintenance team to make some boats for their own use.

“I think that Pele Barant would be our best senior supervisor. Not only is she Mala'klea's mom, she knows all about primitive tools and things because she was in the Polynesian Back to the Ocean movement. She's also a top flight mechanical engineer.”

Mister Makle promptly placed a call through his computer. “Mrs. Barant, this is Mister Makle down in the Waste Management office. Your daughter and some other children are down here.

“What? No. There is nothing wrong. In fact, I think that they want to do something very right. It will need a senior supervisor who understands so-called primitive tools and materials.

“They told me that you were in the Polynesian Back to the Ocean movement on Earth and that you might make a good person to supervise their work. Oh, did I forget to say what it was? They want to make a surprisingly large sailing canoe based on a Polynesian voyaging canoe.

“Yes, I thought that you might like to see how they plan to do it and the materials that they have found. Recycle has turned up a few other native things that might be useful in the project as well.

“So, we will see you in a few minutes? Excellent! We will be waiting.”

He turned back to the children and told Mala'klea, “That really got your mother's attention. Do you kids know that this is the first proposed project to use only things and materials from Sea?”

Cora grinned and held up one of the flying disks. “Not quite. We made these first. To do them right we had to make a knife that would cut that Strong's shark skin. It is really tough stuff.

“Jason, do you have those knives that you and Mala'klea made? If you have them handy, we could show them to Mrs. Barant. Mister Makle might like to see them, too.”

Mister Makle leaned back in his office chair and said, “I would like to see them. My department got stuck with making those filter disks and you would not believe how fast that skin will dull a knife. Thing is, Pele is on her way down. Save the knives and show them to both of us at once. She is the expert on things like this.”

Several of the maintenance crew came into the office. One of the women exclaimed, “Boss! How did you get Frisbees? I applied to engineering to make us some for recreation and they turned their noses up at the job. Said that they had more important tasks than toys!”

Mister Makle grinned and tousled Cora's hair as he replied, “They turned me down too, Molly. The kids here made these out of old air filter disks and some sort of glue that they made out of Moreson's eels. They work really great. Here, Molly, catch!” He flipped a disk at the woman who had spoken.

Startled, Molly reflexively caught the disk. She paused long enough to examine the disk carefully. She said quietly, “This looks like it was press molded. How did you guys make it?”

Cora smiled in delight at the recognition of their work and replied, “We made one that worked really well. We used it to make a form that we do press them into. All that we need to do is wax the form and our hands. Then we work the glue into the disk and push it tightly into the form by hand. It needs about twenty minutes to set up and then we can pop it out and make another. That's about all that there is to it.”

Molly happily flipped the disk to another of her crew, even though the range was short. It never got to him. A small Black haired woman dived in from the door and caught the disk before he had a chance at it. She bounced energetically off one of the office walls and stood, examining the disk intently. She flexed it and said, “Here, Klea! Catch!”

TO BE CONTINUED

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#GONE TO SEA #World of Sea #Science Fiction #written by Glen TenEyck #Part 7

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