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mittensmorgul · 2 years

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Hi! I know that a lot of people ship Sam and Rowena. However, my viewing experience did not warrant the ship. I am now trying to actively parse out why people see them coming together. Do you have any episode recommendations that are foundational to the relation between Sam and Rowena? In case, you feel that this ask may get nasty or start discourse, you need not post it! Thank you :')

Hi there! I've been frowning at this for a couple days, wondering how best to reply. First off, back in December 2019 (when I was EXTREMELY distressed with Rowena's apparent fate as Queen of Hell, and absolutely convinced that she had earned redemption by the narrative-- not even specifically via some relationship with Sam, but for HERSELF, that she didn't deserve to be trapped forever in Hell after literally sacrificing herself to save the world... I mean... Sam escaped that exact same fate, yes? He got out of the Cage. He wasn't doomed to rot in Hell for the rest of eternity for literally doing the exact same thing to stop the apocalypse...), I wrote an essay called The Witch and the Winchesters that was more about Rowena herself than about Samwitch as a ship. It's how I think of her as a character, first and foremost. And I don't know if it's possible to understand how I see their relationship (or the potential for their relationship) without understanding how I see HER. For herself.

As to the rest, specific episode recommendations that set up her relationship with Sam, those go back to s10, when she was working with Sam (rather against her will, especially once Sam chained her to the table) to save Dean from the Mark. I think the best example of their relationship being something more from that era was 10.19 The Werther Project. Because even though Rowena is there for a lot of that episode, we also learn she was not real. She was the hallucination Sam suffered under the influence of the Werther box. She was, in other words, what the spell latched on to in Sam with the intent to drive him toward his own death. For Dean, that spell-activated bit of himself was represented by Benny. Parallels! She had already taken up residence in Sam's psyche by this point, whether for good or ill. The show has transitioned her to Benny-for-Dean status, at least thematically.

Obviously 10.23 should be on this list. This was the parallel to all the Love At First Stab nonsense re: destiel. She literally... stabbed... her first love... For Sam. Not like she had a choice, but this was the point where they truly became enemies instead of just mutually interested slightly antagonistic acquaintances. And yet... gradually over the course of the next four seasons (because they will have four more seasons to evolve their relationship), she experiences a character growth arc that roughly parallels Cas's entire arc of self-discovery, battling his past demons, choosing his own family, and finding contentment with himself. And I absolutely HATE that Rowena remained unredeemed, because that parallel with Cas? Yeah... there's a lot of reasons he got perma-shoved into the Empty...

11.03 has her reluctantly helping them save Cas (from the spell she'd cast on him in the first place, but she did save him), and the banter between her and Sam is just super antagonistic. Love that for them. It's very early Dean/Cas. Or maybe s6 Dean/Cas.

11.09 and 11.10 begin to show us a deeper look at Rowena, and how horrifyingly misguided her efforts were. After that, we don't see her for most of a season, until we find out about her resurrection spell. But when she comes back, she is Changed™ in some pretty fundamental ways, scarred by her experiences. Every episode with her beyond this point-- and I'd say especially those written by Yockey and Glynn-- demonstrate this change. This desire to redeem herself, and the kindness Sam shows her during this process.

12.11 Regarding Dean not only gives us a better look at her history in a more pointed way, it shows just how much he has changed and WANTS to change. For herself, but also because Sam just keeps putting his trust in her. She wants to be worthy of it, even if she doesn't feel she ever could be.

13.12 Various and Sundry Villains seemed to be going hard on building a common footing between her and Sam. Even as Dean protested, Sam continued sympathizing with her and doing whatever he could to support her. Even if it would eventually put them in danger.

13.19 Funeralia was the moment I personally began to see their relationship had fundamentally shifted. Sure, the final scene of the episode involved Sam, Rowena, and Dean... but the episode literally interwove Sam and Rowena's fates, which would become the eventual method of her self-sacrifice in 15.03 in the exact way Dean and Cas's fates were interwoven and came to fruition in 15.18.

And how can we leave off 14.14 Ouroboros? I mean, the entire episode has her paired with Sam while Dean's paired with Cas. And then she literally trades herself to Michael to save what she considers her family now? Very Winchester of her. Go figure.

15.02 and 15.03 are... heck to me in retrospect, it looks like bucklemming deliberately trying to stamp out the relationship between her and Sam in 15.02, and Bobo coming in for the kill with 15.03, in direct parallel to "breaking up" Dean and Cas. Can you see why I was absolutely DETERMINED that Rowena be saved from her fate? Because if she wasn't, neither would Dean and Cas be saved? Yeah... look how that turned out... >.>

She manages to have a lot of conversations with Sam about stuff even Sam says he's never talked about with anyone else-- including Dean. They get each other in profound ways. In ways that nobody else on the planet can really even understand.

I get how a lot of people chose to see her more as a "mentor figure" for Sam and his witchcraft abilities. She did leave him her worldly possessions when she died, after all, effectively handing over her legacy to Sam. But ignoring all the rest of it, the personal, emotional, and cosmic connection between them just... starts to look like forcefully denying the potential for a deeper relationship between them. Because 15.06 Golden Time looks a LOT different if you remove your Saileen ship goggles and watch it with the understanding that Sam was still mourning Rowena's loss even three episodes later, and KNOWING that Chuck was manipulating Eileen's return, that Chuck wrote that partial spell for Sam to complete to resurrect Eileen. Because just like Chuck was grumpy about Cas being helpful to Dean, he was grumpy about Rowena being helpful to Sam. I have no idea how it was even possible for people to watch that episode as a purely unproblematic return of a favorite character.

Please know that I adore Eileen, and that the narrative had convinced me by 15.18 that she and Sam would've been happy together, that he really loved her, and that they had been working on building a future together. And even independently of any ship, I was still angry about Rowena's fate. I mean, in my finale rewrite, Revenge of the Text, she was the first person Jack visits after deciding how best to put the universe to rights. It had zero to do with shipping her with Sam anymore, and I'll probably always mourn the loss of their romantic potential, but I do give her the chance at true redemption, friendship, and family that the narrative denied her.

So really, at the end of the day, I care more about her than I do the lost potential for a ship. But the ship would've been both adorable and cosmic...

#rowena #samwitch #saileen #but yeah... saileen is cute but this is profound...#lol that was an old old tag that popped up... i have no idea what it even linked back to but there you go #obviously as we watched the rest of canon unfold i saw saileen develop into a cute and happy potential relationship #but i will never really forgive the show for just abandoning rowena in hell and walking away...#i would've been content to know she'd been saved after everything even if she didn't end up with sam #but the way her rule over hell was portrayed for the rest of the series as tenuous and possibly not even legitimate... well #that just made it even worse. and because of four years of paralleling her personal arc to cas's...#well you can see why her failed salvation was one of the main reasons i can't accept that cas was ever saved from the empty #spn 15.20 #gotta stick that tag on there now i guess >.>

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hellstenglow · 4 years

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Fiveya Meta: they need to talk

Endure me, I am on a fiveya-train and my thoughts don’t shut up.

After watching the most recent behind the scene videos of TUA season 2 we can conclude that they did make senseless choices in the plot because in some cases they had to. For example in the case of the snow storm created by Harlan in the final episode, that was added to the script because suddenly there have been a snow storm on the outside set the days before the scheduled filming and they couldn’t clean the place enough, in time for the recording. The snow was added.

I also think they could have written some of the characters better and given them real development (*cough* Luther, Ben *cough*). I wasn’t even a fan of the whole “Vanya lost her memory” thing, but I’ve read that Steve Blackman (the showrunner) doesn’t want to diverge from the original content too much (which is a bit silly to say since they did make major changes since season 1, but okay). I guess that’s why Vanya’s amnesia was still there, although they treated it differently. In the comics it was Mom-Grace who helped Vanya to find herself again and her own value, in the show it was Sissy who did it. I thought it was kind of a hint to the comics the fact Sissy resembled Show-Grace a bit (blond, kind and a mom). Did I think it was unnecessary to have a love interest for Vanya right after season 1? I did, but I justified the choice by thinking that the show wanted to give Vanya a taste of what real love (not like Leonard’s manipulative and abusive love) is supposed to be. I also thought it was a way to show how Vanya needs to stop clinging to the first person who gives her affection, attention and treats her with kindness. I hope she’d realize that and work on herself and family in season 3, first and foremost.

Even with the evident flaws I enjoyed season 2, especially because I decided to treat it as a passing by (detour/digression) chapter in a longer story. All Hargreeves siblings in the ‘60s tried hard to make a new life and ignored their actual life (Allison, Luther, Klaus) or had a convenient amnesia (Vanya) or focused on something too much to lose track of what matters (Diego). Everyone except Ben (who was not treated once again as a full character despite the apparent level up the PR promoted) and Five (who once again was running around in panic mode to stop an apocalypse). Remember Vanya saying, “New timeline, new me.” And Five replying “That’s NOT how it works.”? I may give the writers more credits than it is due, but I hope those two lines were some kind of meta messages for the more attentive viewers. Those two lines can explain perfectly season 2 to be honest.

Nobody can know how long a tv show would run, a fact that expose us to uncertainty. It’s always a gamble trusting writers and showrunners to deliver a good story, but all it’s fair game and one has only to accept it. I do not trust any of them, but I cannot help myself and still hope that they will not ruin everything. With all this said, let’s talk about something I think the show has to tackle in next seasons: Five and Vanya are two points of a theme that needs to be addressed and solved. They need to interact, talk and close their open theme together.

This is not a cohesive meta and I probably will lose myself in too many details, but I hope the message I am trying to convey will arrive. This is only my reading of the show and theories, so you can disagree. I just hope you’d find something interesting and maybe help someone to have a different perspective on what’s going on and where (I pray) the show will go. Here the points I will talk about, if you are in for a very verbose essay, please click on the “keep reading” button. Meanwhile I’ll wear my tinfoil crown and sip some margarita.

Five and Vanya are a theme

It was mean to be Ben

Why the Fiveya’s tension in S2 EP 7’s iconic scene is a symptom of something

I dare to hope in fiveya (at least until proven wrong)

1. We have a theme: Five wants to stop the apocalypse and Vanya is the apocalypse

It’s a twisted joke of the universe that the very thing Five is obsessed about in season 1 (the apocalypse) was caused by the person he trusted the most (“I’ve decided you’re the only one I can trust” - Five in S1EP1). The red thread that linked Five and Vanya can’t be more evident, that’s one of the reasons why I started shipping them. The family’s dynamic, the siblings’ relationships and bonds are equally important, they add layers and motivations to the story, but if we strip everything else and look at the core, we all know Five and Vanya are at the centre of it.

It’s not a simple coincidence that Five said “I’m the four horsemen”. At first, it’s just a funny line, because Five is drunk and he described himself as those fearsome figures (because he is the best assassin of the whole world and time. Death incarnated in his humble opinion). You don’t take him seriously when he said that line, you don’t pay attention to it.

However, later it gains a certain degree of truth. Subtly the show tells you that indeed Five is linked deeply to the “apocalypse” (Vanya), as much as the four horsemen (they are the prelude and the bringers of the end) are linked to the apocalypse (in the biblical sense). He lived it. He was trapped there for 45 years. He is obsessed with it. The Apocalypse is his business.

Timid little Vanya is the first person he looked for in the middle of the doomsday’s ruins and arguably his closest friend. On the first day of his return Five only have meaningful talks with Vanya. Five sought her to confide the horror of his memories and share the burden of the truth. He trusted her above everyone else. Then the universe made a laughingstock of him when it was revealed that Vanya caused the Apocalypse. Five didn’t know he was running towards her, despite wanting to go back to his family (her) all his life.

In the first two episodes of season 1 they made clear that Vanya and Five had an intimate bond in their childhood and still cared for each other after so many years, then the show proceeded to separate them until the finale. They tried so hard to keep them far away from each other during season 1 and we all know everything would have been different if they had time to properly talk, process their situation and find a solution together. Of course, the show didn’t give them that chance, otherwise the show would have ended in episode 3 and goodbye drama!

They did not confront each other in the end of season 1, they let Allison take that role because the show built up their connection as sisters and I didn’t dislike the choice. Did it work thematically? No, Allison has no connection with the apocalypse. That’s Five’s business. He didn’t confront Vanya, he let others take the lead in the most crucial moment and with no surprise the apocalypse still happened.

The other apocalypse in season 2 was still connected to Vanya and again Five ignored the cosmic signals and focused on dead ends. Despite knowing perfectly that the butterfly effect can come from any source, he didn’t even think about Vanya’s being the cause of the apocalypse again. Five should have listened Klaus when he suggested that Vanya might have been the cause. Funny how Klaus told him in S1 that he has an addiction and Five aggressively denied it. Funny how saving his family and stopping the apocalypse are always his top priorities, but Five still deny himself (for a reason or another) the time to confront Vanya (the apocalypse).

We have a theme waiting to be resolved: Five wants to stop the apocalypse and Vanya is the cause of the apocalypse. If Five does not confront Vanya the theme will never have a closure. It’s still open right now. It is still there, waiting to be picked up again. There is no resolution.

2. Vanya and Ben’s goodbye

The scene between Vanya and Ben was one of my favourites from season 2 and after pondering for a while I concluded that it couldn’t have been anyone else but Ben the one who helped Vanya in that moment. My theory is that the show will walk backwards the breaking points of Vanya’s life: Ben’s death, Five’s leaving and Reginald’s abuse.

Vanya is not fixed. How could she when she was barely Vanya in this season? “New timeline, new me” she said, but that was just a convenient escapism mechanism. Years and years of mentally and emotionally abuse don’t disappear in one week. The Hargreeves have still a lot to process and resolve, individually and as family. That’s why I hope the show will progress the story in the right direction and actually work on them in season 3. Especially Vanya, who needs to confront her trauma. That’s why the scene with Ben in episode 9 was necessary.

From Vanya’s book:

[…] Our everyday existence was full of evidence that Dad had [...]-pped into treating us like experiments. Not as children, but like animals. And what happened to Ben was the last straw that finally shattered the illusion for the others …

Ben died long time ago and his death was the last straw that shattered the illusion (for the others) that their father cared about them (even in his own messed up way). Everything changed from that moment and each sibling drifted away from one another after that. Ben’s death was the moment Vanya and the rest of her siblings stopped being a family. The definitive step of Vanya’s alienation from her siblings.

There was no place in the group for her. With Five’s absence and Ben gone (he is a caring brother, with Klaus is like that and I can imagine him being kind to Vanya in their childhood too. Although, Ben is not Five and we have seen him being harsh to her in the flashbacks in S1EP10), Vanya was truly lost.

The tearful and important moment between Ben and Vanya was a reverse moment in my opinion. Vanya needed that from Ben, his death heavily influenced the course of her life (everyone’s life) and it was only fitting that Ben should have been the one helping her to start again. It’s symbolic in a sense, but also very factual.

“Sorry that I left without saying goodbye” – Five, S1 EP2

“At least this time I can say goodbye.” – Ben, S2 EP9

I’m using my fiveya-goggles, but we all thought that what Five said in S1EP2 (when Vanya tried to find him at Hargreeves’ mansion) wasn’t just about him leaving her apartment. It’s a very specific line that works on double levels: text and subtext. The subtext of course refers to the day he run out the house and time jumped. I highlighted these two lines from Five and Ben because I think they share the same theme: leaving her without saying goodbye.

Vanya wasn’t on mission with the team when Ben died, and I doubt she even saw his body (or whatever remains were left) when the Umbrella Academy returned. She didn’t even see his manifestation during the Icarus’ fight, too focused in her own power. The scene between them in Vanya’s mind gave both the opportunity to make amend of untold words and missed moments.

Ben is dead, he is the one he cannot return. His departure is permanent, there is nothing they can do about that. However, they can have a closure. Ben needed to be the one first patching to mend Vanya’s relationship with her family, to remind her that she does belong. This sort of second death (finally move on into the Light) has more meaning than the first one, this time Ben completed the mission. He saved someone he loved (he couldn’t stop Klaus from destroying his life with drugs and alcohol) and could trust his siblings to take care of the rest.

I still think Ben didn’t need to die-die, but in a sense it was time for him to move on into the light. He was afraid to go on, but if he could move on so his siblings. It is time for Vanya to move on her own trauma.

(Yeah, I know. I still have problem with the scene because they erased canon in a way and Ben could do a lot more as character. They erased the fact drugs stop their powers like in Klaus’ addiction and Vanya’s pills, so how Vanya was able to use them under LSD? I tried to explain that to myself by the fact “they needed to bs that canon fact in season 1 and ignored it”.

We can also argue that Ben could have prevented the apocalypse in 2019 by doing the same thing, but in their defence S1-Ben didn’t know he could possess a body. Yeah, how did he do that without Klaus’ power help? No idea, that doesn’t make sense to me either. Ahah. I just swam with the flow at that point and accepted it as it is. Call it the power of superpowered siblings’ love. I’ve seen worse plot holes in my life. I can live with this).

3. Pass me the knife, there is some tension here!

From Vanya’s book:

Though prone to arrogance and outbursts, even more than the average preteen, Five was my sole confidante in the years before he disappeared. It almost seemed fitting […] the siblings to leave us, it would be him who [I fully?] […] who fully trusted me.

I said that Vanya’s walking backwards her life’s breaking points. So, after Ben’s death, she needs to address Five’s leaving. Five was her only confidante in the years before he disappeared, as she wrote in her book. Five was very important to young Vanya (and old Vanya needs to remember that) and I bet when he left, that was a scar never healed.

Vanya missed him and hoped for his return, for a while she kept the lights on in the house every night and prepared for him his favourite sandwich. When Five did come back Vanya couldn’t process that fact properly in season 1, all she could think of was that she didn’t want to lose him again. Five on the other hand decided that he would save everyone on his own and for that choice he made a bunch of tragic rookie mistakes.

Miscommunication is their kryptonite and right now Vanya and Five aren’t able to fully communicate at the same level. Reggie did such a good work at parenting that they’re so unfit to deal with their emotions and relationships, that will always be the root of their mistakes.

Same story in season 2, meanwhile Vanya is on the verge to provoke another apocalypse (although indirectly), as usual Five was too obsessed with his own plans and was not even aware of the situation. He knows nobody is insignificant when it’s about altering the timeline, but he always ends to focus on the wrong lead. The show again did incredible summersaults to avoid the two to interact properly and when they interacted things still didn’t work for a reason or another. She didn’t remember her past, he was not entirely sincere with her. She wanted to start anew (having a family with Sissy, easy-peasy), he is trapped again in a run against time to save his family. They are still not at the same page and for the show that is convenient. They still can play with their open theme (my point number 1 in this meta).

I don’t blame Five in S1 for thinking that if the worse happens, they would need to kill her. I think he was in a very delicate state of mind in that moment, he didn’t have time to process the fact Vanya (his favourite sibling and we all know she is his favourite) caused the end of the world. It was disappointing and cynical, but time was ticking fast, and he had been in his “maniacal-panic” mode for almost eight days. I also think he wouldn’t really kill her; he was the one who convinced the others that they needed to take her with them in the time jump. They need to “fix her” (aka help her to never feel alone in the universe and prove her we do love her) or they’re going to make the same mistakes again and again.

Just to be clear I think if Five wasn’t one day from the end of the world and in a rush to stop Vanya, he would had had the same reaction as Old Man Five in S2. His 14-days younger version take it very well “Fair enough” he said and then proceeded to tell Luther how to save Vanya, no mention about killing her whatsoever. Old Man Five had time (10 days more than our current Five) and a direct clue on how to stop the apocalypse (thanks Luther). Nobody was going to kill Vanya.

“Vanya will always be the cause of the apocalypse, unless we fix her.” - Five S1EP10

“Vanya is the bomb. She will always be the bomb.” - Diego S2EP8

Vanya is the bomb and she will always be the bomb unless she heals. A fact that can be added to my number 1 point in this meta, there is an open theme and they need to tackle it. Five and Vanya need to confront each other and resolve it.

This takes me to S2 EP7: the iconic stare-power stand between Five and Vanya. THE TENSION was real, and you could cut it with a butter knife. The first time I screamed at my screen, I felt like Gordon Ramsay in one of those episodes of “Kitchen Nightmare US” when someone finally serves him good food.

Of course, the immediate reading of the scene is that Five needed Vanya to come along and Vanya didn’t want to go because at that point these Hargreeves are still strangers to her (amnesia is so convenient), Sissy and Harlan are the ones she knows and loves in that right moment.

They were still able to cut each other with sharp words and hostile glares though. Five let her have what she wanted, not because he feared her, but because as usual he cares more about her feelings than what he would ever admit. It’s the second time in S2 he let her go, his soft spot and favouritism for Vanya was showing once again! *fakes surprise*

I think the tension shown in this scene is a symptom that Vanya and Five are on the verge of something they will (they have to) confront soon or later. This is the subtext reading I came out with.

Even if you don’t look at it with shipper goggle, you feel there is something going on. They let the viewers feel there is a sensitive something whenever these two have an alone scene together. All their alone scenes have a specific grade of intimacy, they made it clear since the scene in front of Five’s portrait. They care for each other, they love each other (sibling love, platonic love, we-could-have-been-something love etc…) and it’s there. However, Five left and Vanya never truly recovered from that. They didn’t process that fact and I truly believe they can’t move on until they heal that scar.

Basically, S2 EP7 Fiveya’s scene = We have to talk, but this is not the moment because the show is only on its second season! THIS TENSION IS HERE FOR A REASON.

4. Hope is the last thing to die

I shouldn’t trust a show, I’ve been disappointed so many times in the past years and showrunners of popular shows tend to be unoriginal and cowards. However, I am an optimist at heart and until season 3 I dare to hope anyway. If proven wrong, there are always fanfictions who can do better job than canon.

If all was lost they could have eliminated Alluther too from the universe because of certain fans screaming “harcest is incest you weirdos”, but Allison and Luther’s situation still exist and still work on the parameter “will they or not”? I imagine for their shippers it was annoying to have such a regression in season 2, but they didn’t destroy it and they still gave them scenes.

Fiveya had even a more subtle situation than Alluther but they’ve been granted the same level of intimate interaction whenever they have an alone scene together. Until Five (the character) will gain an older body (which he can) the whole thing is suspended. However, I think they wouldn’t have been open about the possibility of Five changing back to an older body and spoke about in season 1 if they didn’t have an idea for that.

I brushed off the line Five said to Old Man Five about being forever trapped in his 13-years-old body. It’s canon that there is a way to gain an adult body for Five, the Commission has the technology and even if it’s not the Commission they can mambo-jambo the thing in a way or another. That would never work. The actor is a growing up teenager and from season 1 to season 2 he has already changed. I imagined he will change even more before season 3 will ever start recording (maybe very late due the COVID-19 situation).

Aidan is a fan favourite and I am one of those who can’t see anyone else playing Five, with this said there are still ways for the show to give us fiveya. Young fiveya flashbacks will be always an option to explore the idea of “they had a crush on each other when they were young” and make other viewers understand that it wasn’t all “sibling” love between them. Endgame in a distant season can always have an epilogue with an adult Five (another actor I mean) having a very non-platonic (let adult Fivey kiss please) moment with Vanya, meanwhile building up the longest slow-burn (kinda, deep down I believe those feelings for each other are there) of the century.

Maybe I am wrong, maybe my tinfoil crow is too tight, and my brain doesn’t breathe. Maybe the show will succumb to easy paths and angry bullies. I don’t know, but until proven wrong I dare to hope.

PS: This is a monster of a meta and it probably doesn’t make sense? I hope someone will get what I’ve tried to say. I hope you survive, brave readers. Here a glass of margarita for you. I’d love to hear what you think

#fiveya #five x vanya #vanya x five #my meta

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x688plsloveme · 4 years

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Companions React To Sole Giving Them A Present

ADA: When presented with an entire "spa-day" of sorts by Sole as a thank you, Ada was...shocked. She was presented with every kind of oil, paint, and polish that she could think of. Sole told their companion that it meant a lot to them that she decided to stick around after avenging her old boss. She was free to use the workbench whenever she wanted to, to apply whatever she wanted to. Ada didn't know what to say. She hummed in the way she does when she's indicating a smile. "Thank you Sole."

CAIT: What better present to give their rough and tough friend than a nearly new customized super sledge? Sole held it out to her while Cait could just look with her jaw on the floor in disbelief. Sike smiled smugly at rendering her speechless. "Go ahead and take it. It's getting heavy." Cait didn't need to be told twice. She snatched it from her friend's grasp and swung it around a couple of times to get a feel for it. "This is amazing! Where d'ya get it?" Sole shrugged. "Off of a gunner captain who didn't know how to use it right, and I knew just the person that could use it properly." They finished with a wink. Cait turned around with an almost manic look on her face and happily exclaimed, "I'm gonna go kill something. Don't wait up." Sole laughed. "Wouldn't dream of it."

CODSWORTH: Sole's faithful robot butler wasn't big on material items, but that wouldn't stop them from trying to get him the best present ever. And after many weeks of trial and error with a certain bedroom safe, they finally got it. But when they presented it to Codsy, he was confused, they knew he would be. He had plenty of bowler hats already anyway. "Sir/Madame... I truly appreciate everything you give me, but I don't think I need any more hats..." Sole tried and failed to surprise their smile. "Ah, but this isn't just any old bowler hat Codsy, this belonged to me/my husband. It's been cooped up in that safe with the rest of our nice clothes, but I finally cracked it. I wanted you to have it to remind you that no matter what, you'll always be apart of my family." If Codsworth could cry he would. He settled for his "crying voice" and loudly saying thank you while trying his best to hug Sole. They just let him go through it while patting his head and hugging him proper.

CURIE: As a scientist first and foremost, Curie was always interested in animals. But Sole knew that she also really really loved them. And they seemed to live her right back. She was like a modern day snow white or something, but at least that made it easy to decide what to give her for being such a good friend all this time. As soon as they held up the bunny, Curie grabbed it and started cooking over it in that famous baby voice of hers that gets even angry deathclaws to calm down. "Awwwww. Aren't you just precious! Mon dieu! You need a name! What about Cotton Tail? Or Koo Koo?" This went on for some time and Sole was just watching her, endeared to no ends by one of their best friends. It took a little while before Curie even remembered that they were there at all. "Oh I am so sorry!" She gave them a quick hug, careful not to squish the bunny in-between them. "Merci beaucoup mlle/m! I must go and tend to this little darling." She started to leave in a hurry to get everything prepared for her new little friend and waved bye to Sole. They knew she'd react that way, and they were glad she liked it so much.

DANSE: Being a synth was wearing down Danse. Sole and everyone else could see. He wouldn't eat or sleep, and he would hardly move for days. Everyone did what they could, but nothing seemed to help. But that little detail couldn't stop Sole from trying. They made a meal with all of Danse's favourite foods, deathclaw steak topped with muttfruit puree and a side of mashed potatoes, courtesy of their mutual friend, The Lone Wanderer. All Danse did for a long time was just stare silently at his food until Sole insisted he started eating. He broke down crying. "It doesn't matter! It wouldn't be real! My enjoyment, my full stomach, even these tears are fake! Just a program put in me. Nothing about me is real." Sole was heart broken to see their friend in this state. They hugged their friend and walked him through some breathing exercises until he calmed down enough for them to speak. "Don't say that Danse. You hurt, feel, and cry just like any other human. All your feelings are 100 percent genuine and if anyone says anything otherwise, they'll have to go through me!" Sole puffed out their chest and tried to look as tough as possible, which forced a laugh out of Danse. Even after crying, he still looked tougher than them. But he gets what they were going at. He pulls them in for a hug, his tears finally having dried up. "Thanks Sole. You're the best friend I got. Thanks to you I'm alive and thanks to your kindness I think I want to stay that way."

DEACON: There's not much that comes to mind when it comes to personal details on Deacon. He doesn't reveal much thanks to both his job and insecurities. There is one thing that they're sure of however. That Deacon really loves pranks. Or he just does them so much and laughs with such glee to completely fool everybody. Either way, he's gonna love his gift. If his laughing and hugs have anything to do with it, a prank kit really was the right idea. Sole gives themself a mental fistbumb and start brainstorming ideas with Deacon right away. This might start a prank war between everyone, but at least they'll have fun before Piper kills them all for replacing her shampoo bottle with a dead rat for the third time. Deacon and Sole snicker at that idea.

DOGMEAT: No dog will say no to anything you give them, especially not post-apocalypse dogs. So it's not very hard to spoil a dog, and boy is Dogmeat spoiled. With no shortage of wild, aggressive animals, he always gets fresh cuts of meat instead of kibble bits and bones to chew on. When they can, Sole collects bone marrow from deathclaws, arguably the best part, and dries them into dog treats for their dog. He can come and go as he pleases, but he'll always come to sleep next to Sole on their bed at night. He is their favourite person after all.

GAGE: Gage always seemed jealous that Sole had a dog and he didn't. He always dreamed about fighting alongside an utmost loyal companion that he could spoil rotten when they're not out killing things. After finding a beautiful pitti mutt scavenging on the outskirts of Nuka-World, Sole bought the information on when Gage's birthday is from the Operators, thankful that it was soon because they don't think they could keep the dog a secret for long. On his birthday, Sole brought in the dog and despite both parties' nervousness, they took to each other quite nicely. Gage started crying when she finally let him pet her. "Never tell anyone about today or I'll kill ya. Also... Thanks boss." Sole just laughed. "No promises."

HANCOCK: The only suitable present for a guy as wild as Hancock would be something as equally as wild. And what's better than a completely unhinged party with all the best booze and chems and closest friends? In the end, about 50 different people from all over the wasteland, including The Lone Wanderer and some of their friends from the Capitol Wasteland came to the party. It was the best the world's ever seen and by the end of it, Hancock was clinging to Sole drunken and high, telling them that they're the greatest thing that's ever happened to him and he's never been luckier to have such an amazing best friend.

MACCREADY: For such a scruffy looking guy, MacCready had a lot of caps saved up. He bought tons of stuff for his son and any other kid he comes across and wasn't lacking in necessities but there was one thing MacCready couldn't readily get with caps. And that was comic books. No one sold them, and a lot burned up or otherwise disenegrated during the last 200 years or so. Thankfully, Sole's collection of mint condition, first editions were still in tip top order when they dug them out of the safe they had burried a lifetime ago. They knew MacCready would flip when he saw their collection and they were right. He almost didn't believe that Sole would let him read these whenever he wanted. (as long as he washedhis hands first)

PIPER: Sole had never been short on caps after opening Nuka World back up to non sociopathic killers. It was about time to spend some of their excess wealth on one of their best friends. All Piper wanted was to expose the truth and give a better life to her sister. Sole decided that the sisters deserved something good. When Nat's birthday came around, Sole took her and Piper to a trip to the Capitol Wasteland where all the fancy clothing stores are. They let both of them pick whatever they wanted and introduced them to Lone while they were at it. Nat was in awe. She's heard stories about the famous Lone Wanderer, but to actually meet them up close? Was a dream come true. On the long trek back home, while they were setting up camp for the night, Piper came up to Sole and hugged them. "Thanks Blue. My sister hasn't had this much of a good time in a long, long while." Sole smiled at her. "Anytime Pipes."

PRESTON: Anyone who has spent 5 minutes with Preston knows that if asked what he would want for a gift, he would just say, "More food and water for the Commonwealth's people." If you haven't left within the next few minutes because he's asked you one to many times to help a settlement out, then you would know that he is completely genuine about it. He's just that kind of person. Enters Sole, who has absolutely no clue what to give him, so far he has been the hardest one to gift something too. 'If it was a material thing, he'd just donate it, so that's out. What about...? No. Too much excitement for him. He'd have a heart attack. Oh! I got it! I'll take him to Nuka World!" After liberating the raider base and giving it back to the settlers, Sole enlisted some help and fixed almost everything enough so that it wouldn't collapse immediately. Rollercoasters didn't phase Sole much, but the real entertainment was watching Preston's reactions to every loop or swirl that a coaster made. They don't think they've ever heard a man scream that high in their life. At the end of the day, Preston was smiling and couldn't seem to stop. "This is probably the best day of my life, thank you so much General!" Sole knows that feeling of excitement of being at an amusement park for the first time. "No problem Preston. It was my pleasure."

STRONG: Sole knew strong genuinely liked poetry even though he doesn't know how to read all too well. So when they found a cache of poetry books, Sole was quick to invite Strong so that they could read some to him. Needless to say, he didn't exactly like the idea of sitting still for a long time, but relented when they threw in a glass of brahmin milk as an incentive. To everyone's surprise, Strong actually really enjoyed himself, often acting out some of the more violent - and in his opinion, the best - scenes by himself. Sometimes the others would join in on their poetry reading nights and it would be a great time all around.

VALENTINE: Sole has been wanting to get Nick something since visiting Far Harbour an meeting DiMA. Today, they finally got together all the parts and are ready to present it to him. Nick I taken aback when he sees the storage room filled with memory hard drives just like the on this brother has. "Kid...I don't know what to say." Sole pats their friend on the back. "Don't think anything of it. I know how worried you are about forgetting important things. Like your friends..." They trail off for a bit like they were afraid of the exact same thing, but continue in a much more chipper voice. "This will make sure you don't! You can pick and choose memories you want to back up so it won't be clogged with how to make a brahmin steak or something useless like that. It was tough to get together, but definitely worth it." Nick smiles at Sole. "You're the kindest person I've ever met, you know that kid? And I know Preston!"

X6-88: X6 likes cats. X6 doesn't like dogs. What about reptiles? Hopefully he'll at least take care of it. "Dammit Lone! Always giving me weird things... It's fine. When you think about it, this tamed deathclaw that I'm currently dragging by a leash is just a really big chameleon. . I had one when I was young. They're friendly, and cute, and are funny cause they hold on to little swords and the like when you hand it to them-" The deathclaw snorts and Sole can clearly feel it's breath on the back of their head. "Yep. Nevermind. This is not going to work. I gotta get rid of this thing." When they get to X6's house, a little ways past Sanctuary's borders - he prefers being alone - they're met with the most surprise they have ever seen on their friend's usually stoic face. Sure, all X6 is doing at the moment is raising his eyebrows but it's not usually that high. He just silently waits, obviously waiting for this decidedly crazy person to say something. Sole coughs nervously. "Um... Surprise?" X6 just keeps staring, compelling them to keep speaking. "It-It was a gift, all right? I couldn't say no, I actually think he's kind of cute, but u do not trust myself to not accidentally get killed, but I don't want to just murder it without it giving me a reason ya know? It's perfectly tame though! My friend keeps one as well and they're not dead yet!" X6 releases a sigh. "Sir/ma'am. Why did you think I would want to take care of a giant lizard that may or may not try to kill me in my sleep?" Sole started scratching the back of their head and looking anywhere but at him. More nervous ticks. "Honestly you're the only person I can think of that could handle a deathclaw as a pet. Please~~~ X? It's kinda cute once you get past the razor sharp teeth and claws." They looked up at him with hopeful eyes and X6 sighed once more. "... Fine. Only because it's you. Having a trained deathclaw would be useful to have around too I suppose." Sole's whole demeanor lit up. They leaped foward and hugged their friend. "Thanks X! I knew I could count on you!" The courser rolled his eyes slightly, but despite what he was showing, he was actually rather excited about having a pet deathclaw. It sounded...fun. He pat his friend on the head. "Anytime Sole."

This was actually requested by @mysticfaust ! Their patience knows no bounds considering I think they sent that prompt in a year ago. I hope you see this and enjoy it! It's the first thing I've written in a while so I may be a little rusty, but there are some parts I genuinely like.

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magicofthepen · 3 years

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Gallifrey Relisten: Spirit

This reaction post is almost 4,000 words long, which, given the episode in question.....is very on brand for me. So here have a whole lot of ramblings, in which I go back and forth between “I love this so much” and “hmm yes I do think Spirit is overhyped by virtue of being The Romana/Leela Episode,” and back and forth between “I will be objective and not get overtly shippy about this” and “I’m definitely getting overtly shippy about this.”

(Includes discussion of The Apocalypse Element, the rest of Series 2, Intervention Earth and Enemy Lines, also a bit about Time War 3, but only in the last section.)

Things that are absolutely not overrated and deserve every bit of the hype:

1. The premise

Like, hold on. Hold on. Here we have an entire episode resting on the premise of “Romana wants Leela to stay on Gallifrey so badly that in spite of being y’know, the President of a planet, and specifically a planet currently undergoing major social changes and dealing with evil eldritch beings, the #1 most important thing for her to do with her time is take Leela on a private vacation off world to convince Leela why she should stay on Gallifrey.” (Hint: it’s. it’s for Romana.)

She also then proceeds to be very bad at using her words when it comes to this premise because Romana is all into grand gesture and very little into actually talking about her feelings. Of course. But in an episode that rests on the idea of Romana as the Rational, Logic-Driven One, and Leela as the Instinctive, Emotion-Driven One, it is very good that the premise of the episode is entirely driven by Romana’s emotions. (Wait. Am I going to talk myself out of the idea that Spirit creates these overly simplistic contrasts between Romana and Leela by arguing that it also muddies them at the same time? .....I still think the “overly simplistic” thing is true to an extent. But stay tuned.)

2. The core emotional story

I’m deeply into Gallifrey for the relationships between the main characters, so Spirit is vastly appealing on that front.

The central question of Spirit is: can Leela trust Romana? Leela’s been deeply betrayed by her husband, she feels lost and adrift and she’s doubting her own ability to judge people. (“He stood before me as Torvald, and I did not know him. I had thought myself to have a keener eye.” / “But is his the only trust I may have given in error?”) Leela’s doubting her own instincts specifically, which is why it’s so important that this episode has Romana move from being more dismissive of Leela’s instinctive, emotional approach to the world, to understanding where Leela’s coming from and appreciating her instincts and worldview. Leela needs to trust not just Romana, but also herself.

And it is 1. important to explore this! Shoutout to Gallifrey for not brushing aside the emotional repercussions of Andred’s betrayal on Leela’s close relationships in general and her own image of herself! and 2. intersects in super fascinating ways with Romana’s trust issues.

Romana gets a hard time for the “valuable asset” thing, which. Fair. But I think it is important to acknowledge the premise here — the whole vacation, everything Romana is actually doing screams “I care about you very much on a personal level,” and just because she isn’t saying that doesn’t mean she isn’t showing that. Because she has her own baggage when it comes to friendship and trust, and a lot of that does loop back around to “being imprisoned for twenty years and having no one come to save you really messes you up. on so many levels.”

(Also I have to mention the end of The Apocalypse Element because that last scene with the Doctor and Romana really established how I looked at Romana and her close personal relationships moving forward. Because yeahhhh maybe having the one (1) person who is specifically your Friend (and not your colleague, or advisor, or anything related to The Presidency) go “yeah you can clean up this mess right! cool bye!” after you’ve gone through decades of trauma immediately followed by needing to repel an invasion of your planet....maybe that might make you distrust that anyone in the universe is actually going to care about you as a person anymore, and not see you as The President of Gallifrey first and foremost).

Bottom line: Romana really, really likes Leela (.....we all can decide in what way....), but also has a whole lot of doubt that other people could care about her as a person, doubt that it’s even worth letting herself be that emotionally vulnerable with someone else, because what if they throw her trust and care back in her face? And so this whole episode, there’s this undercurrent of wanting to trust each other and wanting to care about each other simmering under the surface for the both of them, but they’re both having trouble really seeing and believing what each other is feeling and I love it. I love this kind of interesting, complicated relationship struggle so much, and I love how Spirit has a positive ending, where they both manage to convey to each other in one way or another that they really do want to be around each other. ( “I was so alone in the world of dreams when you left. The wildlands were dark and so quiet. I do not wish to be alone.” / “There will be a place for you with me, for always. Whatever face I wear.” ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

(Sure, the later episodes of the season fuck everything up again, but we are Not Talking about Insurgency/Imperiatrix here.)

(We are also Not Talking about Intervention Earth/Enemy Lines....okay I’ll talk a little about IE/EL, but only because when relistening to Spirit there’s this sort of elephant in the room with “There will be a place for you with me, for always. Whatever face I wear.” And that elephant is the writers deciding that when Romana regenerated, she would abandon Leela, which...hmmm. To be fair, I have lots of more complex, specific thoughts about what might have happened emotionally and literally in that thankfully jettisoned timeline, but the bottom line is that I was and still am very *side eyes* at that writing choice.)

3. The chair scene

Oh my god. Oh my god. This scene is actually brilliant and delightful on every relisten, I want it framed please??

I think it’s probably iconic because it’s just so happy, and it is so so wonderful to have a moment like that, with the two of them making up a silly story to Hallan about what happened to the window and laughing about it. And it is good! It’s so good! (A side note: Romana in particular in this episode has that “audibly smiling” tone of voice so so much more than usual, in addition to her overall tone having very clearly shifted away from “presidential” for the majority of the episode and y’all.....it’s so excellent to hear, that is such a rare thing.)

Also specifically, it’s the fact that Leela is like ugh this room is too stuffy :( and Romana immediately is like “I must fix this, I need to make her happy” and does something so ridiculous and impulsive just to please Leela.......again, this episode is pulling a Romana Has Too Many Feelings and is acting on her emotional instincts thing......yes.

“You’re a breath of it yourself in the Capital.” “Oh Romana, nice words will not make me stay.” I’m sorry but Romana’s delivery of this line is so flirtatious? (And Leela going ah no, you can’t flirt your way out of this.)

Things that are......not good:

1. The science vs. spirituality dichotomy (and how it makes the characters look)

The whole evolution vs. creation discussion thing not only feels too simplistic for the characters, but it also feels like it’s deliberately painting Leela in a negative light? To have Leela specifically going I don’t believe in evolution when the audience is going to disagree with her and bounce off of that....yeah. It also feels like the whole exaggerated ~super in tune with nature, doesn’t know or believe things about science~ thing is leaning into the racist indigenous stereotypes her character is too often linked to.

And on top of that, it doesn’t feel in character? Classic Who episodes don’t stick in my brain that well so my memory isn’t super clear on the details, but Leela was banished from her tribe for questioning their beliefs. Plus she learned that her society’s social divisions were based on misinformation and forgotten history (having more information was important, it changed things for her world). And she was the one who wanted to leave and travel, and also has always showed a lot of interest in learning new things. To have Leela so deeply clinging to the beliefs she learned when she was young, without any of that questioning or the nuance of weaving in new things she’s learned with the old......it feels reductive. (There could be so much more nuance here re: how living so long away from the Sevateem and having to defend her background so much on Gallifrey has affected her relationship with the culture and beliefs she grew up in, but Spirit has none of that.)

2. The mindswap’s lack of nuance

There’s a similar issue here with the mindswap, where Leela especially comes off as over-simplified. I don’t know if this was an acting choice or a directing choice, but the over-the-topness of Lalla’s performance during the mindswap really feeds that (the way Romana’s voice sounds so different when she’s “acting like Leela”, while Leela still sounds fundamentally like herself when she’s acting more like Romana — why the difference?). Also, Romana is a lot more helpless and distressed when she has part of Leela in her mind, which again, does not make Leela come off as especially competent (even though she is). There are times when this episode feels like it’s trying harder to put Romana and Leela into these boxes than it is at trying to break down those boxes and yeah, all around I wish there was more nuance.

3. The interrupting of the vacation date, damn it, do you think I care about a “plot”?

Alright, alright this one is not in the same category as the other two. It is absolutely not a valid criticism, it is purely the “I want this audio to cater to me, personally” part of my brain getting disappointed every time I relisten when Wynter crashes the vacation. Specifically, when they’re all alone in the woods together having important personal conversations and Leela’s decided that they’re camping out for the night....maybe I just wanted to hear the overnight camping trip, y’know. Maybe I just wanted them to cuddle beneath the stars. (Also this will come back big time next episode, but I very much back away from horror of Wynter’s mutilation, I am a squeamish person and the Wynter thing is not my favorite plot.)

Misc liveblogging things:

“I’m sorry I had to have you dragged here to my quarters. I have requested an audience with you several times on a matter of security but have received no answer.” — It’s unclear exactly how much time has passed between Lies and Spirit, but not too long(?) and Leela’s been trying to track down Andred a lot during this time (which means that once again, Romana’s specifically taking Leela away from looking for Andred....).

Leela scathingly calling Romana “Madam President” oof. (I think this moment may have been what I was thinking of re: Leela only uses Romana’s title when she’s annoyed or angry, will have to note if/when it happens again.)

“It is your world and not mine. Although I have lived here for many years it has never been my home. And I am unhappy.” I know I’ve said this before, but Leela’s concept of home is very much the people she cares about and hhhhh so many feelings about this throughout the series.

Oof Darkel’s got Romana pegged with the “how far will she go” thing.

Is Narvin......being nice re: Romana having a trying time? Or sarcastic? Or is he just like oh thank god she’s off the planet for a hot sec I can take a breath.

Brax saying it was him that recommended Romana leave and insisting they don’t talk about it — he’s sooo covering for her, but also I want to know how that convo went....how exactly did Romana explain the “I’m going to take Leela on a private vacation off-world for.....personal reasons.....please cover for me slash be my emergency contact” thing?

“So I can only conclude from your recent behavior that you’re experiencing a considerable amount of pain.” — I mean, Leela did explicitly say earlier that she was unhappy. Still, it is a really good moment here — Romana saying I see that you’re hurting and I want to help.

.......and that’s right before “valuable asset” line. You were doing so good, Romana. (She does say friend though! I mean, she says it like it’s an ordeal, but she does immediately course correct to admit that Leela’s her friend.) Also....I’m having some kinda thought here about the “asset” line — how she compliments Leela in terms of her usefulness is icky, but I think Romana often judges her own worth based off of how useful she is to Gallifrey? I think there are several moments throughout the series that point to Romana basing her worth as a person off of her work and how successful she is at protecting her world and making it better, which is just an overall unhealthy mindset to be in (and this says something about the toxicity of Gallifreyan culture possibly but also something about the lingering trauma of Etra Prime and living for decades in a place where her life itself (whether she survived) was directly tied to her usefulness...going to mull this over more, but I think there’s something here).

Hallan is so awful about Leela, and he goes on for a bit about how he should be watching the president at all times — aka there is definitely resentment within the Chancellery Guard towards Leela for taking the role of bodyguard to the president. And this is mixed in with nasty comments about Andred, former member of the Chancellery Guard, for marrying an alien.

“A marriage is about maintaining the power of the chapters, strengthening alliances between houses” — it is interesting how more than once in the audios they talk about marriage as primarily a political thing in Time Lord culture (at least among the elite), with love being an exception and something disapproved of.

The “Leela’s been on Gallifrey for twenty-five years” math......does not work. Between The Invasion of Time and the Gallifrey audios, Romana left Gallifrey, ended up traveling with the Doctor for a while, stayed behind in E-space for a while, returned from E-space to Gallifrey, became President, got captured by the Daleks and held prisoner for twenty years, and according to Square One I believe it’s been “years” since The Apocalypse Element.......and apparently only twenty-five years have passed on Gallifrey? Even if we pretend that no time passed on Gallifrey during Romana’s adventures with the Doctor and in E-space, that timeline is still questionable. Leela has to be on Gallifrey for a lot longer than that.

“I’ve searched for [my purpose] in many places.” — It’s interesting that Romana lists off the places she’s tried to find purpose, but doesn’t say anything at all about Gallifrey — Leela is the one to say that Romana has found her purpose on Gallifrey, Romana never actually says that. (I have...lot of feelings about Romana’s very complicated relationship to Gallifrey.)

Romana mentions Pandora predicting that she would rule over Gallifrey, and predicting that Romana would let that happen — Romana is worried about Pandora in particular, and also there’s the implication that she wants Leela to stay to help her hold onto herself and prevent that future.

Just ahhhh the scene by the fire where Leela decides, after avoiding too much discussion about what she’s feeling, to be emotionally honest: “It frightens me to think that I have spent so much of my life with another in a trust that I believed was true and strong, one that could not sicken, and that I was wrong.”; “You are my friend. I know that, for all we disagree on. And yet, if tomorrow you grew sick, you could throw off your form like an old sheet and be a person I would no longer recognize, not with my eyes nor with my heart.” It’s a good scene!!

The whole “who is the broken man?” mystery is good on first listen I suppose, but I’ve never quite bought that they can’t ID him. Can the Time Lords not do a quick DNA test or something? (To be fair, these are the same people who missed that Andred was impersonating someone else for months, but at least here they actively know that they need to be figuring out who he is.)

The herbal remedy — “The outsiders use it when in pain or distress.” Confirmation that Leela does hang out with the outsiders on Gallifrey.

“I’ve been inside these things I don’t know how many times and I assure you nothing could go wrong.” Post-Etra Prime Romana trying to get some sleep for once tbh (also okay she does have some healthy coping mechanisms apparently).

“It speaks to your innermost wishes and wonders and indulges them while you dream” “There is a wild woman inside me” I’m so sorry but did they really not intend to making the sensory tanks and mindswap sound incredibly erotic because

“It is winter here.” *eyebrow waggle*

I do not like hearing stabbing sounds! (Also apparently this season has a thing for Romana kinda sorta killing people with knives.)

Leela wakes up a bit later than Romana (she stays in the dream space longer), and she says she heard Pandora’s voice — Romana dismisses that, but I do wonder what exactly happened in the dreamspace after Romana woke and what additional things Leela might have heard/seen??

Hallan is so shitty, kick his ass Leela.

I do wonder why the subplot with Melyin and Hallan was included? Was it to introduce Hallan as a character and flesh out the side characters so we know them a bit better when they’re around with the Wynter subplot? (Personally, I don’t enjoy how earlier in the episode they keep cutting away from Romana and Leela’s really important and interesting conversation to those two sides characters, so I’m not sure they needed that storyline?) But there is this sort of interesting moment where Melyin talks about freeing herself from this place where she’s isolated and Leela sympathizes — and yet at the same time is choosing to go back to Gallifrey. There is potentially an interesting parallel here, but I’m not exactly sure what the parallel is supposed to be saying about Leela.

“And what about you? Back to Gallifrey and your husband?” “I am returning to Gallifrey, yes. It is not yet time for me to leave.” Leela expertly dodging mentioning Andred in her response or referring to him as her husband. Actually I kinda want to pay more attention to when she does or doesn’t refer to Andred as her husband. I’m pretty sure she calls him her husband after he dies because that is who she’s grieving, but in this episode she talks about wanting to confront him and hurt him or make peace with him, and in A Blind Eye she was all “my husband is dead” (and I think there are some things in Insurgency about this) —there is a question here about whether or not she still considers herself married to Andred at this point.

How did the knowledge of events get out on Gallifrey? Brax says if people were watching his movements closely it wouldn’t be hard to put things together — but also he probably knows that Romana needs to return for Gallifrey for events to play out, so it seems quite possible that he essentially leaked the info himself (knowing that the events of Pandora are coming....oof).

Leela talks about returning to Gallifrey avenge the broken man — in series 2 and 3, she frequently turns to vengeance as something to give her motivation and purpose when she’s unhappy and grieving, but I forgot it came up as early as Spirit ahhh yikes.

The (shippy) elephant in the room:

(Includes vague mentions of Time War 3.)

As a final thing, I do want to mention that while this episode has a reputation of being really gay (because yep it so so subtextually gay)....I do always remember that it is only subtext. Specifically in a “isn’t it interesting that other ships between main characters get clearly teased as romantic possibility, but when it’s the core relationship of the show that just so happens to be between two characters played by women, they would never explicitly hint that there might be anything romantic going on there” way. (For a long time, I tried to convince myself this didn’t bother me. It does.)

Like don’t get me wrong, I adore their friendship and I am very cool with their relationship being entirely platonic in the audios. However, my feelings are also very context-dependent, and the context is an audio drama series in which the only explicitly queer characters are side/minor characters who die horribly (and also only exist in the very recent releases). There are no canon f/f relationships or canonically queer women in the entire series (no, Leela/Veega doesn’t count, they were pretty explicit on that being not canon), in contrast with plenty of canon m/f relationships. This is also why I say that I’d be 100% unbothered if Gallifrey really was equal-opportunity devoid of romance (I really genuinely enjoy the friendship-centric narrative of this series, it’s so good) or even had significant canonically queer side characters, but when there’s such a pointed ignoring of any queer subtext and a general ‘would never ever make any main character canonically queer’ vibe throughout the whole series (I am looking at you Unity) it’s.....hmmm. It just doesn’t feel good, you know?

To end on a lighter (ish) note, going to talk about shippy things for a sec — so I have many headcanon universes that float around in my brain, but generally speaking when I’m writing Romana/Leela fic or thinking about the possibility of their relationship being romantic at some point, I tend to go for things happening between them later in the audios (ideally post-Enemy Lines), with the early series just being endless unresolved tension. But gosh there is a part of me that’s interested in the disaster universe where they do get romantically involved with each other post-Spirit (because as far as the early series go, it does feel like it has to be post-Spirit, when Leela does make the choice to stay with Romana/for Romana on Gallifrey) because oh god that’s so emotionally messy. (It’s only been six months and change since Leela’s husband first disappeared! We’re only two episodes away from Andred’s death! She’s not in a healthy emotional space to be doing this right now, and neither is Romana, frankly! Especially given what’s going to happen in the next several episodes.....but oof wow there’s certainly a story to explore there).

This was not a lighter note, I’m so sorry. Anyways, friendly reminder that I’m always down to go on and on about Romana/Leela, I have....so many feelings about them. Also if you’ve actually read through this entire post, wow and thank you??

Previous Episode Reaction: Lies

#gallifrey audios #romana #leela #(i will be honest i had large chunks of this written even before i relistened)#(what can i say i will take any and all opportunity to ramble on about these two)#also i think this reaction post deserves the #romana x leela #tag #the relisten of rassilon #ramblings #emily listens to big finish

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soveryanon · 4 years

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Reviewing time for MAG172!

- I didn’t truly believe that we would encounter a Web domain so soon, since somehow I still pictured it as the very last thing standing between Jon&Martin and the Panopticon. It means that the domains that I was expecting to be the most “heavy” on the boys, the Lonely and the Web, are already behind us (we’re down to Hunt, Vast, Dark, Spiral, and Eye).

- The “thanks Alex” Fun™ Fact of the episode was that he used the sounds of spider mating calls in this one. Alex, why.

- With MAG170, this was amongst the most “empathetic” episodes of the season so far? Or at least as far as the Fears domains are concerned? It was closer to the way older statements were framed: it really felt like someone’s story, someone’s personal struggles and life, the horrible things happening to them. I’m a bit less fond of statements this season, overall, because they feel too voyeuristic (I know, that’s the point!), because it’s decontextualised people reduced to their fears and nothing more… but Francis’s story really felt heart-wrenching.

And it was an incredibly harsh episode, dealing with codifications, scripted situations, stage&audience conspiring against the “puppet” (the audience laughing at Francis’s misery), down to the audience call excluding the non-binary protagonist (“Ladies and gentlemen”), physical cruelty (the hooks, the spiders). I like how Francis’s “act” worked, both by highlighting that they had absolutely no chance of ever winning the play on their terms, since the Spider was deploying everything against them (physical restrains, pain, psychological torture and the voices of close ones for more pressure and impacts)… and yet, that we saw them still fiercely trying to reject what the Spider wanted, still able to tell that this was not what they wanted. It was also a good move that, in this one, Francis was a victim from start to finish: not pitted against others; the addiction wasn’t making them a danger for anyone else, it was first and foremost about them, what they wanted for themselves, how others’ casual cruelty was in the way and isolated them further, leaving them at the mercy of the Spider and its hooks. If there was someone “winning”, it was the Spider (managing to give birth to many others); all of this was solely for its benefit.

It seems to be part of The Web’s game to allow some resistance, to revel in internal conflicts, but it doesn’t remove the fact that Francis had been tortured for 48068 acts, and that they were still trying to reject it.

- We got a few interesting formats so far: The Stranger's poem (MAG165), The End’s Coroner’s report (MAG168), The Flesh’s botanical book (MAG171), and now The Web’s play (MAG172)… which was awful(ly clever), with the puppet/puppeteer’s dynamic.

Nothing new about The Web preying on vulnerable/isolated people, and especially people dealing with addiction, it’s been a reoccurring thing: Raymond Fielding had taken in kids that the system didn’t know how to handle (and nobody was suspecting anything when, as “legal adults”, they were disappearing); a Spider person had tried to get Trevor off her back by making old needs resurface; Annabelle’s first encounter with The Web, if she were to be believed, was through a victim who had suffered with drug addiction; there is a huge proportions of smoker characters in Web-related statements, and there is still Jon’s lighter and Jon starting to smoke again after he got it.

Same thing: nothing new about The Web having a knack for stories and the entertainment arts! We had two statements dealing with movies, Annabelle taunting Jon about having possibly lied during her own statements, Annabelle’s website searching for stories…

- WOW, did this domain come for Jon’s throat as the ~Apocalypse-bringer~

(MAG172) THE SPIDER: Oh, Francis… It’s such a shame, but I couldn’t do such a thing even if I wanted to! The man in the audience saw to that! [CHUCKLES] I am no more free than you are, little puppet. Ah! If only you could see the strings that bind me, that wind together as they pull me along my own path…! Perhaps then, you would not blame me so. But they are not the tripping threads that we are here to watch – no. So sit, Francis. It’s time…!

That gaslighting and self-victimisation from the monster who was pulling the strings and doing a show to generate more of itself (both fears and spiders). First time one directly referred to Jon’s presence, of course it would be a Web one, uh…

- There was an awful parallel between Francis’s story, the Spider forcing the consumption on them, and Jon… for the first time, getting stuck in a loop of stories as the next act was beginning. Is Jon reacting to the domain’s logic (since this one works on the long term, the accumulation, the fact that Francis knew that their torture would keep going and happen again and again)? Was it The Web purposefully trying to trap Jon here? Was Jon more susceptible to this domain given his own experience with The Web and his relying on statements? Would Jon even have been able to leave if Martin hadn’t been there to stop it…?

(Jon had already been vulnerable to the cabin, as he discovered in MAG162: the domains and the new reality can affect him. Jon had pointed out that The Eye didn’t want Jon to stay there; it’s not surprising, but incredibly bold to see that a Web domain tried to trap Beholding’s precious little Archivist…)

- Second time that Martin had to forcefully interrupt Jon mid-statement:

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: The photos on the wall of her family–”MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: “–whose faces seem indistinct but she knows–” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! ARCHIVIST: “–that she loves, begin to blacken, as the glass–” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! [COUGHS] ARCHIVIST: “–pops out of the frame.” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon, she’s here! ARCHIVIST: “Her home is being eaten alive by–” MARTIN: [CLOSER] Please come back! ARCHIVIST: “–this devouring Desolation–” MARTIN: JON! ARCHIVIST: “–and she–” [RESOUNDING SLAP] [STATIC FADES] MARTIN: She’s here! [COUGHS]

(MAG172) AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [LOUD CLAPS AND CHEERING] [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: “The tragedy of Francis. A comic puppet show in all acts. Act 48068.” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon? ARCHIVIST: “A stage that is a room that remains a stage.” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon, one is enough. ARCHIVIST: “The audien–” [RESOUNDING SLAP] [STATIC FADES] AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [CONSTANT MUFFLED LAUGHTERS] ARCHIVIST: Oh… Oh, wh–what? MARTIN: … Sorry. You were starting another and, I didn’t want to wait. We should get going.

And the trick definitely seems to be not being in Jon’s presence while he settles into statement-mode, or it prevents anyone from being able to interrupt? Martin wasn’t able to stop him during MAG167 (but that statement had been sneaky about its start), and he didn’t when they were in Jared’s garden either…

* Daisy listened to Jon reading two statements during season 4 (MAG133 and MAG136) and, although it was part of their deal that she would not interrupt, I wonder if she could have, back then? Jon had gotten interrupted a lot during season 1 and 2, but it was by people walking into his office while he had begun reading alone.

* … I’m still not sure that Basira could have stopped Jon in MAG141, when he forced Floyd to give his statement? Jon told her that she could have but hadn’t because she wanted to know too, but he was also, quite frankly, full of shit and trying to avoid his own responsibility with regards to his victims, back then.

* It’s interesting that Jon’s “statement bubble” is now constantly showing to muffle sounds from the exterior (/from an extra-diegetic level) when he’s giving the statement. The tape recorder only catches Martin’s voice muffled, far, as if behind another layer. But once Martin broke Jon out of it, the cheers, laughs and claps from the audience, which used to be very distinct and present, were the ones suddenly sounding far away (while Martin was on the same level as Jon). We’ve been told, again and again, that the tape recorders are not neutral, but I find quite interesting the fact that they’re “translating” the different levels around Jon in this way?

- On first listen, I had failed to understand that Martin was actually meant to stay around Jon – like in MAG171, and like he had done in MAG163 when they discovered Jon’s new need to pour out about the domains:

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: You probably want to wait outside. MARTIN: … Hum, no?! ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Well… Put your fingers in your ears then, I, I suppose. […] Martin…? [DRIP] Martin? [DRIP] Martin, I hate your tea, and wish you made coffee instead…! [DRIP] … Alright, then. […] End recording…! [CLEARS THROAT] [SHUFFLING] MARTIN: Mm? All done? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Yes. [EXHALE] MARTIN: Good.

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: We’re fine. MARTIN: A–are we? I mean, that place is– … I don’t, I don’t feel fine, okay, and you were there a long time doing your… y–you–your guidebook, which, you know, I get it, but that place is… I–it’s–it’s infectious, and, I don’t–

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: You, uh… [SHUFFLING] You might want to take a bit of a walk. This… feels like a strange one… [LOUDER SCREAMS IN THE DISTANCE] MARTIN: What does “strange” mean, with something like this? ARCHIVIST: Don’t think you want to know…! MARTIN: Good point. Hum, o–kay, well, uh… Good luck, I’ll be… uh, o–over there! [BAG JOSTLING] [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] … Right.

(MAG166) MARTIN: Do you need anything? ARCHIVIST: No. MARTIN: Fine, I’ll just… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] Ye–yeah, right. [BAG JOSTLING] [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE]

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: Now, if you’re quite done inciting me to murder? MARTIN: Not “murder”! Smiting. ARCHIVIST: [FOND SIGH] MARTIN: Right, yes, yes, of course. You… [INHALE] You vomit your horrors. [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: [REVULSED SOUND] Uh! I’m… not sure I like that metaphor…! MARTIN: “Puke your terrors”? ARCHIVIST: … Just go. MARTIN: Alright. Fine, I’m going. [BAG JOSTLING] [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS]

(MAG170) MARTIN: Why am I here? I… I, I fell behind. I was, I was too slow, and, and, and the fog caught up, I was… I was following, al–always following, never leading; never leading. Why did he leave me behind? Di–did he? […] I thought you’d left me behind…! Gone on without me. ARCHIVIST: No, never…! N–never, I–I just… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] I, I didn’t want to… look too ha–, I–I–I promised I wouldn’t… know you, and, and with the fog in all–all the rooms, I’ll, I just, I lost y–, I… I–I’m sorry.

(MAG171) JARED: [LONG MEATY INHALE, EXHALE] Cheers for that! ARCHIVIST: … Don’t. MARTIN: Jon, are you… alright? ARCHIVIST: Yeah, hum… Sorry. MARTIN: No, it, it’s alright.

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: If you’re bored, you could always… take in a show. MARTIN: That’s… That’s not funny, Jon. ARCHIVIST: If you say so…! MARTIN: Just… [INHALE] Just give me a shout when you’re done, alright? [BAG JOSTLING] [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] ARCHIVIST: … Good. Right. […] MARTIN: … Sorry. You were starting another and, I didn’t want to wait. We should get going. ARCHIVIST: Y–you were listening, I… I–I–I thought that you– MARTIN: No, I… Not for most of it. I just thought I heard… something. Whatever. I went exploring, alright? I don’t know why; I shouldn’t have. […] Can we just go, please? ARCHIVIST: Of course, but… You were safe here. And after everything that’s already happened, I… I–I just don’t understand why you would– MARTIN: [SHAKEY] Me neither, okay! ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: I mean, that’s it, isn’t it?! I don’t know! I don’t know why I went exploring!

So they’ve truly learned from the Lonely house: Martin had to stay in MAG163 when they discovered Jon’s new predicament; then starting MAG164, Martin began to leave Jon alone for his statements, not keen to listen to them. In MAG170, they lost sight of each other in the house – since then, Martin has gone back to staying around Jon, trying to not listen (except, precisely, that Martin went wandering off in MAG172, which he wasn’t supposed to do, and came back… just in time when Jon was beginning a new cycle). Trials and errors.

- MMMMM, so this is the second time Martin did something, wasn’t exactly able to explain why he had done it, was questioned about it, and the matter was ultimately left hanging:

(MAG134) PETER: What does puzzle me, though, and I mean that genuinely, is… why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin, while Jon was in there. [PAUSE] It’s a question, Martin, it’s– it’s not an accusation. MARTIN: I don’t know. And I just… felt like it might help. He’s always recording, I thought… it–it might help him… find his way out. PETER: Interesting. Were you compelled? MARTIN: [SULLEN] … I don’t know. … M–maybe? I–I, I definitely wanted to do it… PETER: But? MARTIN: I’m… I’m not sure where the idea came from. PETER: You should watch out for that. Could be something dangerous. MARTIN: Sure.

(MAG172) MARTIN: No, I… Not for most of it. I just thought I heard… something. Whatever. I went exploring, alright? I don’t know why; I shouldn’t have. […] Can we just go, please? ARCHIVIST: Of course, but… You were safe here. And after everything that’s already happened, I… I–I just don’t understand why you would– MARTIN: [SHAKEY] Me neither, okay! ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: I mean, that’s it, isn’t it?! I don’t know! I don’t know why I went exploring! ARCHIVIST: Are you saying you were… compelled? MARTIN: I’m saying I don’t know, do I? I thought I was just curious, it felt like curiosity, but… given where we are, and with The Web everywhere, and Annabelle Cane still out there playing mind games with payphones, I just… [SIGH] I mean, how do you even know if it’s your motivation, you know? Being here… [SIGH] I–it just makes me second-guess all of it, and I�� I don’t like it, it… really scares me.

Regarding Martin putting the tape recorders on the Coffin: Jonah didn’t claim it to be his doing in MAG160 (I thiiink that Peter was suspicious of Elias influencing Martin then, since he also checked that Elias wasn’t overstepping in MAG158…), so probs wasn’t him. Annabelle pointed out to Jon that she had sometimes helped “to keep you safe” in MAG147, I still feel like it was most likely her doing?

Two things were interesting here: that Martin began exploring, and that he came back just in time to stop Jon. The first one left Jon vulnerable, allowing him to potentially get trapped in the cycle of Francis’s Acts; the second one… allowed Martin to make him snap out of it just in time. Or the wandering may have “protected” Martin from being trapped in Jon’s statement, too, because he could have accidentally begun listening if he’d hung around?

(A bit afraid about the fact that, twice, it was shown that as long as Martin didn’t slap Jon out of a statement, he wouldn’t stop: it makes Jon and Martin both vulnerable to their surroundings if they’re not together. Jon gets trapped in the statement, while Martin’s main protection is still Jon… That sounds a bit like a weakness that could get used against them at some point? ;;)

- SOB about Martin mentioning he was (probably) motivated by “curiosity”, since it has been hammered in that… it isn’t a good thing for Beholding-touched people to indulge themselves too much, tends to cause their downfall, and has even allowed The Spider to sneak in and weave its Web:

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “When Gertrude was appointed to the role, there was a single survivor left in the Archives: a woman by the name of Fiona Law. Fiona was the most fascinating combination of curiosity and cowardice, pushing forward and forward into the unknown, until the very first moment of threat… crystallised. […] She had never got deep enough into the mysteries that plagued her to slake that burning curiosity. And she never would. […] But Emma had a sickness. As much as she might have despised the ageing Fiona, it was the same one that plagued her: curiosity. That desperate, grasping need to know. […] There was a fire to Sarah Carpenter, perhaps the one which led to Gertrude hiring her, and Emma’s curiosity ignited once again, this time keen to find out exactly what it would take to break this brave investigator of the unknown.”

No wonder Martin Is Feeling So Threatened Right Now, after having learned about Emma (Beholding assistant taken over by The Web… and become a master at deceiving her Archivist).

- Martin rejected the Lonely house, so does it mean that other domains will be trying to seduce him, now? It’s interesting that he reacted to the theatre in a way that was very similar to the house, which was supposed to be “his” (but wasn’t “anymore”):

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: We all have a domain here, Martin. The place that feeds us. MARTIN: Oh. [PAUSE] Where’s yours? ARCHIVIST: [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLE] I mean, we’re… traveling towards it. MARTIN: Oh! Right, obviously. [CHUCKLING] Duh. Hum… What about me? ARCHIVIST: … Would you… like me to… ? MARTIN: No, no. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.

(MAG170) MARTIN: Do I have a home? This, this place feels like it’s all… for me, I think, but I don’t… [CREAKING OF A DOOR] I don’t like it here. […] I feel like there’s somewhere I need to be, but… But no, no; this is my house, [CHUCKLE] where else would I need to be? […] You, you are Martin Blackwood; yes. You–you didn’t choose to be here. Jon is coming. I am Martin Blackwood, and I am not lonely anymore, I am not lonely anymore! […] Jon, it’s… okay. I promise it’s okay. This place tried, it really did, and honestly I… I wanted to believe it. But I didn’t. ARCHIVIST: This… “place”, i–it… [STATIC] My God…! MARTIN: Yeah… [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: M–Martin, if you… did; i–if you wanted to forget… a–all of it, stay here and just… escape. I… I would understand. […] I, I just… I wanted to make sure that you knew what this place was. MARTIN: It’s The Lonely, Jon. It’s me. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Not anymore. MARTIN: Hm! No. [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] No…! Not anymore.

(MAG172) MARTIN: No, I… Not for most of it. I just thought I heard… something. Whatever. I went exploring, alright? I don’t know why; I shouldn’t have. […] ARCHIVIST: Are you saying you were… compelled? MARTIN: I’m saying I don’t know, do I? I thought I was just curious, it felt like curiosity, but… given where we are, and with The Web everywhere, and Annabelle Cane still out there playing mind games with payphones, I just… […] ARCHIVIST: Would you like to leave now? [BAG JOSTLING] AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [LAUGHS] MARTIN: … Yeah, screw this place. Never liked theatre anyway.

Interesting, too, that there are a few parallels right now with the situation in which Martin had initially encountered Peter in MAG108: while reading a theatre-related statement, isolated and scared. Even Jon’s way of describing The Lonely’s “seductiveness” was quite reminiscent of The Web (especially in Francis’s story):

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: The Lonely is… possibly the most insidious of the powers, I believe. Certainly it is the one that… most delights in having you do its work for it. Even the Spiders seem to have a hard time matching it for sheer seductiveness. [HUFF] “Time to yourself”, “self-care”, “putting yourself forward”… “not being a burden on those you care about”… [PAUSE] It doesn’t even need to tell you any lies; just waits for the lies you tell yourself.

So… a few similarities in the way The Lonely and The Web are shown trying to seduce Martin? Martin seemed to reject the theatre, but it could do a Peter with him and go… persistent.

(So obligatory “this is how Web!Martin can still win”, and it’s never not a good time to remind myself of:

(MAG138) MARTIN: I think he wants me to join The Lonely. ELIAS: Then it sounds like you have a decision to make. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … What? [HUFF] That’s it? No, no monologue, no mindgames? You love manipulating people! ELIAS: That makes two of us. MARTIN: [HUFF]

(MAG158) MARTIN: Oh, I’m getting there, but if this is the final test or something? Then bad luck. The answer’s still “no”. [FOOTSTEPS] PETER: … No. No! This isn’t fair, do you have any idea what you’ve done? You knew, he must have– MARTIN: Elias– … Jonah had nothing to do with it. PETER: No! That’s not– You can’t– ELIAS: You’ve lost, Peter. Admit it. [CHUCKLE] He played you like a… like a cheap whistle. PETER: No! Shut up!

Because gnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiiiih.)

- It was a bit of a (pleasant) surprise that Jon&Martin didn’t meet Annabelle in the obligatory Web domain of their journey! But it makes us go back to the usual question: where is she, why is she not showing herself directly, what does she want, why can’t Jon see where she is?

(MAG172) MARTIN: Jon, what does The Web want? It’s… I mean, we know it’s got a plan, can’t you just… see what it is? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] “Knowing”, “seeing”… i–it’s not the same thing as… understanding. Every time I try to know what The Web’s plan is, if it can even be called a plan, I see… a hundred thousand events and causes and links, an impossibly intricate pattern of consequences and subtle nudges, but I–I can’t…! … I can’t hold them all in my head at the same time. There’s no way to see the “whole”, the, the point of it all. I can see all the details, but it doesn’t… provide… context or… intention. I suppose The Web doesn’t work in knowledge, not in the same way. MARTIN: … Oh. Right. [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: Sorry. MARTIN: … And Annabelle? ARCHIVIST: Still can’t see her. If it wasn’t for the phone call, I’d have said she was probably already dead…! MARTIN: Yeah… [SIGH]

Jon had trouble seeing when inside of Hill Top Road, back in MAG147 (though he blamed it on having recently encountered The Dark). Could she be there? On the other side of the crack? Waiting inside of the Panopticon/Institute? On the back of Jon’s head? Being many many spiders, as an avatar, and thus impossible to locate because she’s plural? Technically dead already, but having planned and foreseen how the phone call with Martin would go, leaving a pre-recorded message that would play exactly as needed? That makes a lot of people that Jon has trouble seeing in the new world, with Georgie&Melanie, Jonah…

- I’m still laughing a lot that the beginning of the episode felt very much like Jon asking for a bathroom break:

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: Ah… Hold up, I–I need to, uh… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] MARTIN: Now, seriously? We’re almost out of here. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I’m sorry…! Not really up to me…! MARTIN: Fine. [SIGH]

Martin: When are we getting to the Panopticon!! Can’t we take another direction or a shortcut? I don’t like these places. Jon: Can we stop for a bit? I really need a break!! Right now!!

Awful kids, do not go on vacation with them.

- Eeeeeeh that Jon&Martin’s tastes in media are so different!

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: Hm. Neil Lagorio… You ever see any of his work? DAISY: No. Not really into films. ARCHIVIST: Oh, they were… Well, let’s just say that it’s not a complete shock there was something unnatural to them. Didn’t know we had copies in the Institute, though; let alone original cuts. [CHUCKLE] Records indicate they [PAPERS RUSTLING] ended up in… Artefact Storage. DAISY: Probably best that they stay there. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah. Yes, of course.

(MAG165) MARTIN: Was it a good poem? ARCHIVIST: I don’t know! “No”? You’re the poetry expert, Martin, not me…! […] Then I don’t know what you mean, Martin, I’m not a poetry person, I don’t… “get it”. I never have. MARTIN: That’s… That’s fine, I understand…! ARCHIVIST: Look. I’m better than I was; I used to think all poetry was bad. MARTIN: Sorry, what?! ARCHIVIST: I mean, I just thought of… [SIGH] I sort of thought it was pointless! Just… write some prose and stop… wasting everyone’s time! MARTIN: Hm! What changed? ARCHIVIST: I don’t know, I just… mellowed on it, I suppose. MARTIN: That’s… kind of weird. ARCHIVIST: In my defence, there is a lot of bad poetry out there.

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: … Methinks the Spider doth protest too much…! [BAG JOSTLING] MARTIN: Jon. ARCHIVIST: Joking! Just joking.

(MAG172) MARTIN: … Yeah, screw this place. Never liked theatre anyway.

I hope that Theatre Kid Jon felt personally offended by that last one. (I’m really waiting for Martin to learn that Jon has been listening to The Archers.)

- It had been highlighted in season 3 that Martin didn’t really get Jon’s sense of humour. The archival staff overall had a general tendency to resort to dark/insensitive humour to cope with their situation, but ;; I side with Martin on how right now, it doesn’t feel relieving or reassuring that Jon makes small jokes about the horror befalling people:

(MAG171) ARCHIVIST: It takes a skilled gardener to get them to grow like this. The curling, cascading intricacies of collagen and marrow… it takes devotion. MARTIN: Jon. [FOOTSTEPS STOP] [WHIMPERS IN THE BACKGROUND] ARCHIVIST: … S–sorry. MARTIN: You sound like you think they’re beautiful. [FOOTSTEPS RESUME] ARCHIVIST: Don’t you? [SILENCE]

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: If you’re bored, you could always… take in a show. MARTIN: That’s… That’s not funny, Jon. ARCHIVIST: If you say so…! […] Ticket for one, then, I suppose.

… because we don’t really know if Jon wants to make them stop?

(“Ticket for one”, tho, was INCREDIBLE and very “jON.”)

- … When Jon told Martin to try to not focus too much on which part of his actions/decisions could be due to The Web:

(MAG172) MARTIN: I’m saying I don’t know, do I? I thought I was just curious, it felt like curiosity, but… given where we are, and with The Web everywhere, and Annabelle Cane still out there playing mind games with payphones, I just… [SIGH] I mean, how do you even know if it’s your motivation, you know? Being here… [SIGH] I–it just makes me second-guess all of it, and I… I don’t like it, it… really scares me. ARCHIVIST: I, uh… MARTIN: Oh, don’t say that’s what it wants, I know. ARCHIVIST: I, I wasn’t going to. […] Don’t do this to yourself, Martin. This is what it wants, the, the paranoia. [SIGH] Trust me, I, I know. MARTIN: … Fair.

… he indeed reaaaally knew from experience. MAG147 had visible effects on him, to the point that Melanie directly addressed it and Annabelle became a regular potential culprit in Jon’s mind alongside Peter and Elias:

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: I’m sure the flares will work fine. … I mean, un–unless it’s all some… elaborate… plot… to have us… burn this place down again. BASIRA: So what if it is? ARCHIVIST: I don’t follow…? BASIRA: I mean. Anything we do could be part of the “Grand Master Plan”. So – what, we do nothing? Just… sit on our hands, and hope that’s not what the spiders want? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH]

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: Melanie, could you… could you describe your therapist for me? MELANIE: [CHUCKLING] What? You think I wouldn’t notice if she had cobwebs down her face? ARCHIVIST: … No? […] It’s just… The Web can be subtle, you understand? MELANIE: And? For all you know, its plan is to paralyse you with indecision…! ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] MELANIE: Leaving you… sitting here, terrified that… everything you do is somehow all part of its Grand Plan… And who do you think that fear is gonna feed? ARCHIVIST: Yes, well. [INHALE] You are… not the first, to make that point.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] This… tape was left on my desk. I don’t know by who, but to my mind there are… three options. Martin has left it here, to let me know that… whatever the situation is with Peter Lukas, it is entering its final act and he needs my help. Alternatively, Peter may have left it here to… goad me into action? Or just to gloat, to highlight my helplessness and everything. [SIGH] Or Annabelle Cane is trying to manipulate me into thinking it’s one of the other scenarios. Previously, the Spiders have made their presence clear when they’ve sent me… “hints”, but I can’t take that for granted. I don’t know what to do…!

(MAG158) ARCHIVIST: And I don’t keep any of them with the key to the tunnels. It’s been left for me. DAISY: And it says “Play me.” Kind of suspicious. BASIRA: So Elias left it? ARCHIVIST: Or Martin. O–or Peter, or… Annabelle!

(And we still don’t know who had left the tapes and Adelard’s last statement. Peter and Martin didn’t mention them, nor did Elias, which indeed leaves The Web for these ones…)

I love that since season 4, Martin’s answer tends to be “screw it, I hate this, bye”: with Peter and Elias’s live-divorce, with the Lonely house, now with The Web doing… something to him. Trying to call to him? To make him hear “the music”, as Simon’s allegory had described it?

- So Jon has trouble seeing ~the big picture~ of The Web:

And how ~convenient~ that the Vast grandpa wasn’t dead by the time of season 4, and is probably Enjoying Sky Blue in a domain of his own:

(MAG151) SIMON: Peter, however, seems to think that it will upset the balance that we all have an awful lot invested in. And he’s not at all certain the world as we understand will come out the other side. MARTIN: And let me guess – you think he can’t see the “big picture”? SIMON: [INHALE] I see why he likes you! MARTIN: [SIGH] SIMON: It’s all a matter of perspective, you see. My patron has gifted me with… quite frankly, an absurdly long life. An appropriate gift, and one that serves to provide a certain distance from things. Of course, a paltry few centuries is nothing, really, but it’s more than most get. And even in that brief time, I’ve seen all sorts of ebbs and flows to balance off things.

We’ve yet to cross a Vast domain, Jon said he REALLY didn’t want to meet Simon ever, Simon was incredibly smitten with Martin… there is still hope for Meeting-Simon-in-the-Vast-domain.

(- Sounds like Jon remembers Helen’s point about “knowing” and “understanding” being two different things (with Jon adding “seeing”):

(MAG164) HELEN: And please: my name is “Helen”. ARCHIVIST: Like you said, I can know everything now. Including how much of a lie that really is. HELEN: Don’t mistake “complication” for “falsehood”, dear Archivist. ARCHIVIST: [AGGRAVATED EXHALE] HELEN: And remember, that knowledge is not the same thing as understanding.

And now I’m remembering that The Distortion used to be curious about the house on Hill Top Road, but not really able to tell what The Spider was doing there… Did Helen get her answers in season 4?)

- Oufft re: Martin&Jon’s discussion:

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: I was going to suggest that… I could… maybe… “know”. I could look. Just a quick peek, to, to see if it was just curiosity, or… something else. … Well? MARTIN: I don’t… If you look, and I was… “influenced”, then how can I trust anything else? How can I believe any of my thoughts and feelings are really mine? ARCHIVIST: U–uh, well… I–I–I’ll still be here to check, I–I’m not leaving you. MARTIN: Sure, but you’d be looking through the details of everything that ever crosses my mind? I don’t want that! Y–you know I don’t want that. ARCHIVIST: … I know. […] So… Do you want me to? To, to tell you if…? MARTIN: No. [SIGH] No, I’ll just have to live with it, I guess. Hardly the worst thing I’ll have gone through since– … I, hum. I–it’s fine. [SIGH]

I really liked how it absolutely didn’t feel like an argument (and wasn’t one!): Martin has objections, has the power to make a decision, and gets the last word… since it primarily involves himself. I appreciate that Martin was able to tell the main flaw of Jon’s offer – knowing what is happening could provide a temporary relief… but wouldn’t offer a sustainable existence for him (if The Web isn’t trying to manipulate Martin now, it doesn’t mean that it won’t try later, which means that Jon would have to check regularly; and if Martin is under influence… indeed, Martin couldn’t trust himself anymore, and depending on Jon’s power to check everything would turn Martin’s existence into a half-life. And it would still feed The Web in the process). Kudos to Jon for his restraint, too, because given his insistence, he’s probably curious/afraid about it, but he hasn’t broken his promise of avoiding to “know” about Martin and he laid out Martin’s options, leaving the decision to him. On that front, they’re doing fine!

Title for MAG173 very much screams “Dark, duh?!” but it feels very easy, so is it a trap. I could see the link if it were Vast or Hunt, too, but really, it just screams Dark. … And it could work for a character death episode, but I feel like every title can read like a character death episode one way or another. (Worried about Daisyyyy…)

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #the magnus archives #tma liveblog #mag172 #tma spoilers/#long post/#tma season 5

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siarven · 4 years

Note

Happy STS! No specific question today, just take this as free opportunity to ramble about one of your favorite things in your WIP! Have a good day! :)

Awww, you sent me two asks (from 2 weeks and 1 week ago) about this and tumblr just didn’t tell me I’d gotten any?????????? I only stumbled on them by accidentally clicking on the ask box???

Thank you!!

I haven’t participated before because I was too busy at home (and hate tumblr-ing from my phone) but I will try to do it in the future

What is one of my favorite things in my WIP…. I can’t decide on a wip, or a thing, so I’ll just scream about all 3 of my currently active WIPs and everything, sorry, thank you :D

First of all, I am very much in love with everything about my 3 recent WIPs :D. As Dreams Collide and Like Dragons of Old are both in the dark epic fantasy area, so while they’re also going to be aggressively hopepunk, they’re in general a lot darker than Hope Beyond, and also more epic and … well, fantasy xD And I love that! Hope Beyond is the first story that’s not set in a fantasy world of my making. Which, funnily, makes it so much harder for me. I love imagining everything xD But I feel like Hope Beyond needs that, to be a bit more grounded?

My WIPs are first and foremost written for me, with the things in them that I love :’) So I just take everything I like and throw it into a pot and hope that others will like it, too. But if not that’s okay. I will still love it :3 So that’s why my WIPs usually have a ton of creatures in them, creative worldbuilding (with lots of nature in it), and a mean magic system XD. And a lot of platonic love, between friends, family members, found family members… that sorta thing. And they also hurt a lot, in all the creative ways, while still refusing to give up hope and fighting for a better world ;D It’s gotten very hopepunk nowadays. I’ve come to actively dislike grimdark, even if a lot of my old wips fall more into that category (it’s probably the asoiaf influence..).

So this escalated a lot, I will just put it below a cut…

Hope Beyond is very small and personal and private, it’s all about the characters and probably won’t have an obvious villain. It’s more about personal growth, so internal conflict (and external conflict between the characters, but not necessarily with a villain in it). And I love it for that, and I love that it’ll be a comic, too! Even if that is so much work ahhhhh

And I love that it’s about recovery, and about three women and their conflicting recoveries, and how they help each other grow past their trauma, and how their pains are all so different but also similar. :’)

AND THE CREATURES!!! I can have all the creatures, and they don’t have to make physical sense, they can just be ghost creatures, and they can have stupid pun names, or heartfelt ones, or–

With As Dreams Collide, it’s kinda similar, but for very different reasons :’) I’ve been working on that thing since Nov 2014 (when I wrote the first draft during nanowrimo) and it’s come so far?? It’s the third draft now but it could just as well be a totally different story. There’s a huge, huge jump even from the second to the third draft! In the first draft, Elinor didn’t even exist! It was set somewhere in England! It had some fantasy in it, but not a lot. When the original story was supposed to be done, I hadn’t reached 50K yet so Ava got randomly promoted to main character, and the low-fantasy story turned into one with more magic in it… and more danger, and an actual villain xD And Ben wasn’t just a ghost-boy anymore, he was a ghost-boy with some sort of magic. Originally all the magic wasn’t magic, it was just something ghosts could do! And in the second draft, Elinor was only mentioned in passing and appeared once in the epilogue, and now she’s a main character!

It’s changed so much, and even if I still love the original concept (and will probably use it for something visual, one day, it’s just perfect for a visual novel, tbh), Dreams as of now is just so different, and I love it to death

I love that Merreadon, the city, is a huge tower-like mess of a structure, built around a few magical trees that connect Aelaris to Nevaeh, the space between worlds (that connects most of my WIP-worlds ;D); I love that the whole world is populated by a ton of small sorta-intelligent dragons, some of which are bird-adjacent and do bird things, some mammal-adjacent, some reptilian, insectoid, amphibian… I love that dogs are called wolflings cause the domestication isn’t that far off in that world. And that people tried to make spies out of dragons by bribing them with food, except the dragons took the food and ran. XD

I love that there was an apocalypse in the past, that there are long forgotten secrets simmering everywhere, that the gods are alive and well and very inhuman, and that they’re not even actually gods. I love that i made two religions that don’t even feature in this book xD I love the religions that are actually important in the story! I love that none of them are “obviously right”, that it’s pieces that fit, while others don’t fit.

I love that my characters feel like people to me, that they’ve gotten so important over the past 1-2 years that I’m having serious second thoughts over some parts of the plot xD

I really, really love about all of my stories that they’re interconnected, and while it’s incredibly frustrating (and delves into the most spoilery spoilers ever) to explain my magic system (that all individual ones are part of a “big” one), that it all works and makes sense even between all of these worlds, and that some characters will show up in other stories…

And now, Like Dragons of Old!

Like Dragons of Old is similar to Hope Beyond: Both of them are composed out of the things I love, from the very beginning. While Dreams grew organically, LDOO is the best planned story yet.

It will 100% kill me.

I absolutely love my worldbuilding, the magic system, the characters–

The Library!! The Broken Continent!! The Mean Tree Gods!! I love these concepts so much, I can’t wait to write all of it!!

I love that all 3 books of The Song of Aunae Trilogy cover 10 years each, that the characters grow up, and that the story grows up with them. That the first one will be cute and sweet, but also set up the pain from the later books… and it starts with a genocide. Whoops. XD

I love that the first book is Selandri’s POV, the second one is Onii’s, and the third one is Timbre’s. I love that Onii is a chaotic trickster phoenix in chicken form. I LOVE ONII AND TIMBRE AND SELANDRI SO MUCH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Literally everything about these books makes me happy, even the romance aspect! Normally, I don’t like writing romance, and just ignore it from the get-go or make my main characters aro-ace. But in this case, while Timbre is ace, she and Selandri do fall in love and it makes the story so much more heartbreaking, cause it’s their story, how one small stupid choice when they’re children ends in them being on different sides in a kind of eternal war, and how they still love each other after all these years, even if.

I love that Timbre is the low empathy hero, while Selandri is the high empathy antagonist, I love that they’re so different but still so similar…

I love that I’ve decided to write three different endings (cause the grey one was planned, but now that I know them, I wanna write three versions, I want to let people decide which one they need the most–): the white one, the happy ending. The grey one, the bittersweet ending, that’s still more sweet than bitter, but will still make you cry. And the black one, the bittersweet ending that’s more bitter than sweet, which will kill me, specifically.

Strike that, all three will kill me.

I love that Like Dragons of Old is still going to be incredibly hopepunk, even if there’s so much pain and destruction and loss.

I’m so sorry, this got s o l o n g

It was a lot of fun though

if you made it this far, here’s a smol cute book monster

#ldoo #hopebeyond #dreamshadow #storyteller saturday #thank you for asking <3 #this got so much longer than I expected #apparently I needed to let out all the love???#ettawritesnstudies

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sailor-cresselia · 5 years

Text

Zi-O 43: Σ(°ロ°)

Previously, on Zi-O: Everything went to hell. This time, on Zi-O… well. Everything continues to be terrible, and quickly gets worse.

––

Hiryuu mocks Sougo for not being able to protect Tsukuyomi, which… okay, valid. But Sougo’s going through a lot right now, and he was kinda stopped by Woz. There’s just too many battles on too many fronts right now.

And then Hiryuu proceeds to kick the collective asses of Sougo, Geiz, and Tsukasa, the last of whom realizes that they are out of their depth, and yanks them away via a dimensional wall.

Man, those things are handy.

(continued under the cut)

––

After Woz’s recap, we head back to that ballroom/throne room that Hiryuu was lounging in earlier, with Swartz, Uhr, and a bound Tsukuyomi.

So the time stopping ability? Is supposed to be hereditary – it runs in his and Tsukuyomi’s family. Which, uh, remembering the time that Swartz dragged Sougo to when the kid was eight? That’s! Not helping! At all!

(Please don’t have Tsukuyomi be related to Sougo PLEASE don’t have Tsukuyomi be related to Sougo)

Swartz… intends to be the one on the throne. Uhr justifiably questions that – they were supposed to be finding someone to sit on the throne instead of Oma Zi-O. Except… well, technically speaking that’s what Swartz is doing. He just never told you the full story.

You know how I’ve been saying he’s had his candidate all along?

YEAH THAT SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN EVEN MORE ACCURATE THAN I THOUGHT.

And then he knocks Uhr to the ground, and Hora shows up – telling Uhr that Swartz gave Daiki the same powers that he gave them. (At least Daiki has the ‘decency’ to pretend to be embarrassed. “Was that supposed to be a secret?” indeed.)

Hey. Hey Swartz.

Screw you.

What can be given can also be taken away, as he so easily demonstrates…

Last episode he grabbed Daiki and forcibly implanted the time jacker powers into him.

Today he grabs Hora, and forcibly drains them from her, leaving her to fall to the ground, where Uhr barely manages to catch her, trying to back away. Hora’s not here right now – she’s incredibly limp, barely conscious, and I’m scared for her.

Good tactics on Uhr, though – using Tsukuyomi’s blaster to shoot at Swartz, who, as usual, deflects the blast without even looking. That’s just a distraction, though, so that Uhr can get the two of them out of there.

I’ve been telling you two kids to run for months now. He has never had your interests at heart, has never had the same agenda as you.

You really should have caught on during Kikai.

…Daiki, do not go along with Swartz’s orders to eliminate them. Don’t do that, you’re not going to get whatever he promised you. He just attacked his underlings, why on earth do you think he’ll follow through on any promises he makes to you?!

So, Daiki takes off, and now we’ve just got Swartz and Tsukuyomi.

…Is he going to give us actual LORE?! Are we ACTUALLY GETTING THE PLOT?!

Well, maybe. Only after the OP, though.

––

Or maybe not, because we jump back to 9-to-5.

Tsukasa admits that Daiki’s never had that particular power before, despite his sizable grab bag of powers – uh. Tsukasa. You just. Left all of that bread. In the helmet. Why are you using the helmet as a bread bowl. Tsukasa please.

…Junichiro PLEASE. NO. You can’t go save Tsukuyomi, you would DIE. Just… please, just go make dinner, okay? Please stay here, and save, and not making a fool of yourself like literally everyone is aware that you would do. You would not survive fighting these people, not when your ‘armor’ is sauce pans and veggies.

Oh no, poor Sougo – people still don’t remember him, including his uncle, so here comes the minor breakdown over Junichiro saying he’s never cooked for him before.

Geiz just pats him sympathetically on the shoulder.

––

And now back to Uhr and Hora, who are hiding out in… some abandoned restaurant or other, which for some reason still has all the tables set? Sure, whatever. Toku apocalypses are weird.

Uhr’s pissed that they’ve been being used – again, really should have caught on when he forcibly turned you into Another Kikai – and swears that he’s going to take Swartz down… and Hora doesn’t look like she’s doing so hot.

Even less so when Daiki shows up.

Yeah, I didn’t expect that he’d actually try to kill them. He’s in this for himself, first, foremost, and only. (I miss the photo studio polycule. Natsumi, Yusuke, please come ground this asshole.) So, he’s… just… okay, so he’s clearly got his eyes on a bigger prize than the Grand Watch, because he tosses it to Hora.

Of course, he has to make this whole ‘totally being the guard dog’ scam he’s pull look convincing, so… Daiki no. He calls in the two Another Riders who were searching for the two former time jackers – Another Faiz and Double.

––

As they’re running away, and even just as they’re in the restaurant, Uhr is his usual slightly bouncy self, albeit more furious than usual, but Hora’s not nearly so active. Yeah, she usually kind of lounges around, but she’s exhausted. We can see this even clearer when Another Faiz and Double have them cornered – Hora’s got eyebags under her eyebags, and looks like she had difficulty running however far they did, going by how she leans on the platform/loading dock they’re backed up to.

Geiz thinks this whole thing is a trap – why would Another Riders be chasing Time Jackers if it wasn’t – but Sougo’s still going to help them, even if it is a trap.

He’s too nice, but it’s also very necessary right now. At least he acknowledges the possibility of this being a trick, so that’s something.

Sougo’s gotten a lot more clever since we met him, and I’m proud.

The Another Riders are dispatched easily enough, and somehow by their respective RideArmors. Which. Uh. Shouldn’t those be part of the Grand watch right now? To say nothing of how altered-timeline Geiz probably shouldn’t have the Faiz watch anyway. …You know what, whatever. Not gonna question it any more than that.

Sougo asks why the Another Riders were after the pair, and Uhr tries to dismiss the whole thing as none of their concern, attempting to leave.

But Hora wants to ask a favor.

(Careful, guys. Last time she asked you for a favor, it was so that she could properly make the Another Kikai watch.)

(I’m more willing to trust her right now, though.)

(Although I trusted her back then, too.)

––

(TERRIFIED SCREAMING ENSUES ON THE PART OF THE BLOGGER)

OKAY I ACTUALLY WATCHED THIS SCENE COMPLETELY THROUGH BEFORE COMING BACK TO THE NOTES BECAUSE HOLY SHIT

holy shit

Okay so by “the power runs in their family” we apparently mean “the time powers are a trait in a ROYAL BLOODLINE.”

And by “Swartz and Tsukuyomi are part of a ROYAL BLOODLINE” we mean “one from a completely different timeline.”

And also mean Swartz is the sibling with the most power and he feels it would have been logical for him to be next in line for the throne.

But the role was going to go to his sister.

You know.

Tsukuyomi.

The amnesiac.

Who was not rendered that way accidentally.

No, because Swartz, the petty bastard that he is, erased her memories and dropped her in another timeline.

The Oma Zi-O timeline.

He didn’t expect her to survive.

But it’s nice that she did, and that her powers have awakened.

Because now he can take them from her.

Mind you, as he is saying all of this, he is losing his usual composure, and becoming increasingly visibly unhinged.

When she tries to run, he force lifts her in the air and starts painfully draining the power from her.

She’s saved by Woz timely (heh) running in and using a green burst of energy to break his focus, and she falls to the ground. Woz looks scared.

For all that he’s on umpteen levels of subterfuge, Woz might genuinely care about the trio. I hope. Please.

After all, he calls her ‘Tsukuyomi-kun’ and runs up to try and help her.

He doesn’t make it, unfortunately, because Swartz hurls him bodily into the wall – the part by the ceiling. The very high ceiling, and then he drops.

This is not fine at all.

Swartz: It was pretty blatant that you switched sides to get info, you know.

Woz: And yet you still revealed your plan. (ow) Thanks. (I am in so much pain)

Doesn’t matter to Swartz. He’s just going to take her power, and nobody will be able to stand in his way.

And he does. He force lifts Tsukuyomi again, and Woz can’t stop him, and he drains her power from her before letting her drop. She’s not moving. Woz scarf-teleports the two of them the hell out of there.

Swartz doesn’t seem to give a damn. He’s got what he wanted – and the aura of purple energy that surrounds him is scary. Not as scary as the laughter, though. Or as scary as the way his eyes glow purple right before the scene transition…

With the sound of an Another Watch activating.

––

Hora gives back the Grand watch, making Sougo swear that he’ll take down Swartz with it. And at least now we’ve got people on the same page – she and Uhr told Sougo and Geiz that Swartz intends to become king.

I think this is the first time everyone has had the same information, actually. Well, once we get back to 9-to-5, and a bedridden Tsukuyomi tells them that apparently her and Swartz are siblings. But even if they are related, she won’t let him do as he pleases.

Tsukasa says that he gets what’s going on… more or less. “No, I can’t actually tell you, Geiz, because I only mostly get it, and I have to keep up my chill demeanor somehow.”

And yeah, Woz was siding with Hiryuu to get information. Which makes sense – area man is on multiple levels of playing fields at all times. But Sougo, you really shouldn’t have had faith in him. I mean, I know that you don’t know that he’s most likely more loyal to Oma Zi-O than Kamen Rider Zi-O, but still.

So. No matter who it is – Swartz or Hiryuu – Sougo isn’t about to let them rule. Not like this. The first order of business, then, is that they have to take down Hiryuu and repair the timeline.

––

Time to storm the castle…

Or. Uh. Walk up to it through the woods, and stand in a line, seeing all the Another Riders there. Including Another Kuuga, of all things, hulking above the rest of them.

(Most of the another riders are being super generic, but I still noticed Another Fourze doing the hair straightening thing in the shot that included him, and that still makes me giggle a little.)

(Also, Tsukasa, if you could stop appearing so lackadaisical about this? We are entering a pretty decently sized fight here. I know you’re a veteran at this and all, but there’s a lot of enemies, and you have been getting your ass kicked lately. I’m just saying.)

Hiryuu goes on about how Sougo ruined his life, so he’s going to ‘wipe out Sougo’s very existence.’

Okay, so. Cool motive, still murder. Also your motive is wrong, because it’s all the fault of the guy what gave you the power in the first place, and this is very definitely not okay. I mean, you can’t just. Take over the world because of this. You can’t just change peoples entire histories for revenge.

Sougo agrees with most of my points. All except the one where it’s not Sougo’s fault in the first place. No, Sougo apologizes, saying he never meant to hurt Hiryuu.

(He never actually did, anyway, he saved his life, but… I mean really.)

When Sougo says that he’ll beat Hiryuu, and set things right… he’s so quiet. Subdued, even, especially compared to how he shouted that what Hiryuu is doing is wrong.

Huh.

––

THIS IS TOO MANY JINGLES AT ONCE.

MY POOR EARS.

I’M NOT EVEN WEARING HEADPHONES.

––

BWAHAHAHAHA!

They’re about to go attack, but-

Woz: IWAE! MY OVERLORD IS GONNA BEAT AN IMPOSTER DOWN, AND RECLAIM HIS RIGHTFUL THRONE!

Decade: …oh dear lord, he’s still doing this?

Geiz: He’s done this before?

Tsukasa: Oh, my sweet, summer, altered-timeline child…

––

So, we’ve got some fights going on here. Sougo and several Another Riders head for the woods, namely Ghost, Den-O, Hibiki, and Ryuki. Then Hiryuu shows up, trying to use the Zi-O II future-vision to get the drop on Sougo… who. Flashsteps out of the way?

Saying that it’s his power?

Huh.

––

And then over with Decade… he’s able to take down Another Double and Agito with Attack Ride: Blast.

Another Faiz, Kabuto, and Gaim manage to temporarily stall him, before he takes them out with Attack Ride: Slash. Also, I noticed Another Faiz doing that lean that Actual Faiz sometimes did, so that’s nice.

That’s five down, since we didn’t see Sougo defeat the ones he’s against.

But then Tsukasa gets shot in the back.

Diend: Hey again. You get to fight me.

…Has Daiki always used ‘boku’? I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that before.

(What? I’m doing an Ex-Aid rewatch. I’m now contractually obligated to try and pay attention to which pronouns people use.)

Tsukasa knocks Daiki down-

Daiki: NOPE! freezes Tsukasa mid-attack prep

Tsukasa, internally, because he’s frozen: Oh shit

Daiki, to Swartz, who has been looking on like a creeper: How’s that?

Swartz: Sweet.

He then proceeds to take out a blank ridewatch.

Wait.

Shit.

A blank watch. With a rider present.

We’ve only seen a few Another Watches formed.

There’s only two Another Riders we haven’t seen.

Drive.

AND DECADE.

Swartz shoves the blank watch against Tsukasa’s chest, breaking the time stop.

And draining Tsukasa’s power. Painfully.

His armor goes grey, similar to the color as when he first puts it on, and seems to dissolve into smoke as he drops down offscreen, struggling in pain.

––

SURE, cut to a clearing! Not like that was REALLY IMPORTANT OR ANYTHING!

But it’s to see Woz Ginga and Geiz Revive Typhoon fighting a whole bunch of Another Riders.

Namely Build, Fourze, Kuuga (who’s a bit hard to miss), OOO, Blade, Ex-aid, and Kiva.

And the two riders are so confident that they’re having a nice little chat as they fight.

Namely, Geiz – still with his memories altered – asking if they really worked together in the other timeline.

Woz: Oh, yes, of course. You were my completely loyal underling, we both worked for our overlord.

Geiz: That’s bullshit. Quit lying.

Woz: …How’d he know? Well, it was worth a shot.

A pair of finishers later, and we’re down another seven Another Riders. That’s twelve confirmed down, and four seen in action, but with unconfirmed status, leaving sixteen Mook Another Riders – seventeen total, with Hiryuu. …Where the heck is Wizard? He’s the only one I haven’t seen yet… well, outside of the obvious two that we haven’t had yet.

Also, Woz’s finisher was him literally raining METEORS onto the battlefield. Because Woz Ginga can never be too over the top, apparently.

––

Back to the Zi-Os…

Sougo takes out his allotment of non-boss Another Riders, still with no sign of Wizard, I went back and looked and he hasn’t been on screen since the battle started.

But they’re down, and he’s started to lay the beat down on Hiryuu, who’s intensely frustrated that he can’t win.

Also, he’s fed up with all the speeches.

Sougo says that it’s because Hiryuu’s too focused on the past, while he is trying to forge a new future.

Finish Time! Grand Zi-O!

All Twenty!

Grand Zi-O leaps into the air for his finisher, and – HOLY SHIT.

THAT SURE IS ALL TWENTY HEISEI RIDERS.

BEING SUMMONED INTO THE AIR. IN THE CLASSIC RIDER KICK POSE.

Notably, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to the particular order they appear in, but they are located in the same places they are on the Grand Watch.

THAT SURE IS A FINISHER THOUGH.

It launches each rider in rapid succession, starting with Kuuga and going in order. As each one lands their kick, his respective emblem appears behind Hiryuu, finishing with Sougo landing a reality shattering kick.

Waves of rainbow energy expand outward, fixing the city, erasing the commemoration statue, and leaving Sougo…

––

And leaving Sougo, untransformed, having just landed a Rider Kick. And in a park, presumably the one they were in in the altered timeline, but where everything is repaired and normal.

Everything is very repaired, since Geiz and Tsukuyomi remember him again. But where…

Ah, there’s Hiryuu, collapsed on the ground a little ways away, reaching for his still intact Another Zi-O watch for crying out loud what will it take to destroy that thing?!

Well, I guess we’re not going to find out, since Daiki just up and takes it!

Oh, look, here’s Swartz, letting him take it! And telling Hiryuu that he’s served his purpose, and that he’ll meet up with the others again.

I can’t tell if he says this aloud, but… he says that Decade’s powers are his, and walks off.

Revealing a very unconscious Kadoya Tsukasa on the ground behind him.

––

The last shot of the episode…

Swartz, on a roof.

Holding the Another Decade watch.

“Now… let us begin.”

––

the endcard is Another Zi-O II (center), Another Decade (upper right) and… Another Hibiki (lower left), who are quickly replaced with Zi-O, Geiz, and Woz, respectively.

Why Hibiki, though?

––

Next time, on Kamen Rider Zi-O!

Another Drive appears!

Uhr and Hora are looking for protection!

A good water boy appears! Hi, Miharu! We’ve missed you! I can’t say that any of us expected that particular rumor, about Kamen Rider Aqua showing up, to be true, but here you are!

Yay!

And, in the significantly less ‘yay’ department…

Swartz appears to plan to be turning himself into Another Decade.

Whether that’s him under there or not, Anotehr Decade looks powerful, going by that wall of explosions he’s setting off.

––

So. One problem – Hiryuu’s reign of terror – has been dealt with, but now we’ve got a whole NEW set of problems! FUN TIMES!

#kamen rider zi o #sailorcressy says #this is fine

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megwritesfanfiction · 6 years

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Disclaimer: I do not own Boku No Hero Academia/My Hero Academia. This is a work of fiction that I am not making a profit off of.

A/N: Writing a slow burn has been a challenge to be patient, so thanks to everyone who has left me love or commented! It really encourages me to keep going, so let me know what you think! ;)

Chapter One: Tumblr Chapter Two: Tumblr Chapter Three: Tumblr Chapter Four: Tumblr

CHAPTER 5: “It’s not a marriage proposal-” Chapter Summary: She sighed loudly, pulling the hood over her eyes. “So what? I find him aesthetically pleasing, and I think he smells nice!”

“Soo…”

Uraraka yawned leaning against the wall as her head tilted back against the wall behind her. “Soo…?”

Midoriya nodded slowly as his fingers drummed against his thigh. Green eyes tilted toward the ceiling as he rocked back and forth in the desk chair, his lips twisting awkwardly.

She tilted her head, hands resting on her ankles as she waited for the inevitable questions after the retelling of her late night adventure. At least he had the decency to wait until she’d slept, showered, and somewhat washed her face before questioning her.

Uraraka had apologized profusely, but Midoriya had forgiven her before she had the chance to utter the words.

Sitting on the couch and listening to the breathy snores of Todoroki snoozing next to him had given him plenty of time to think. Midoriya decided first and foremost that he wasn’t angry at her lack of communication. During his two years at U.A., he’d grown to think of Uraraka as the little sister he’d never had.

There wasn’t any doubt that he’d forgiven her but that didn’t mean she was off the hook.

Three hours of waiting had given him plenty of time to craft a lecture that would bring Iida to his knees. His well-planned speech was forgotten the moment he saw her snatch the apple from the hands of his childhood bully.

“Kacchan…” His face twisted into an unreadable expression as he tried to decide where to start.

“Bakugo?” She repeated unsure as she blinked owlishly, lashes still sticky and coated from last night’s mascara. Mina wasn’t kidding when she said this stuff was waterproof.

Green eyes narrowed as he studied her face and body language. “You two…” he trailed off, raising his brows to encourage her to fill in the blanks.

Uraraka shook her head, shoulders climbing to brush against the tips of her ears as she pretended to be confused. Apologetic or not, she wasn’t really sure what else to say about her late night adventure with Bakugo, but she could see the long list of misconceptions rolling through her friend’s head. “No,” she chuckled nervously.

“But-”

She shook her head as her laughter grew, “No.”

“But-” Midoriya paused as he sorted through his mental catalog of proof. “You’re still wearing his hoodie.” Not the most compelling piece of evidence but it was tactile and present.

“It’s warm.” She looked down at black hoodie pooling over the leggings and tank top she wore.

Midoriya’s stare hardened as he tried not to laugh.

“And it smells nice,” Uraraka mumbled. Cheeks reddening, she wrapped the material around her body as she buried her face in the soft fabric.

Well then. “Oh! So-”

“Noooo,” she groaned, growling in frustration as she pulled the hood over her eyes in frustration.

“You just said he smelled nice-”

“No! I said the hoodie smells nice!” Bakugo, too, had a pleasant aroma. The glycerin in his sweat combined with the explosions he emitted left the blonde boy with a smoky sweetness that almost reminded Uraraka of sugar cookie crumbs lightly burning in the oven.

“You’re wearing his clothes and you guys were out until three in the morning together! What am I supposed to think?” There was also their friendly banter in the kitchen and her stealing his snack.

“Not that I’m hooking up-”

Whoa, he definitely hadn’t jumped to that conclusion.

“-with Bakugo,” she frowned.

“I didn’t say that,” Midoriya told her wide-eyed. “But since you bought it up…”

“Deku!” she flushed, holding her hands over reddening cheeks.

“Oh my-”

“I did not ‘hook up’ with him!” She wasn’t exactly sure what her friend was implying, but she hadn’t done much of anything with anyone. Her best friend was well aware of that fact. There was that guy from her internship she went out for coffee with but nothing happened beyond awkward conversation and stale muffins.

“I’m just saying, if you look at the evidence-”

“I already told you what happened,” Uraraka insisted shaking her head as a blush still stained her cheeks. “We danced for a bit. We got something to eat, talked, got some dessert-, ”

“Until three in the morning?” he questioned, raising a curious brow. “Sounds suspiciously like a date to me.”

“How would you know?”

“Because if it looks, sounds, and acts like a duck then its a duck.”

“What? Why does it have to be a duck?” She really wasn’t sure where this was going. Honestly had that series of events happened with any other boy, Uraraka would have probably jumped to the same conclusion as her friend but they were talking about Bakugo. “Maybe we’re talking about a different bird that just so happens to commonly be mistaken for a duck? Why can’t it be a goose or a loon?” Outside of Bakugo’s family, Midoriya probably knew Bakugo better than anyone so why had he concluded their encounter had been a date?

Unless…

No. “What if I had been with Sero?”

Midoriya paused, “Why would you be with Sero?”

“I don’t know, but let’s just pretend I was. Would you still think it was a date?” she probed.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He didn’t really know enough about Sero to make that call. “I mean, your activities were definitely coupley.”

“What about Kaminari?”

He snorted, “Then you definitely hooked up with him.”

Okay, she’d clearly set herself up for that one. “Kirishima.”

“Not a date.” Kirishima was friendly enough to hang out with anyone platonically but Bakugo… “This is Kacchan though.”

“He’s a person just like anyone else in our class.”

Midoriya wasn’t too sure about that.

Person? Yes definitely.

Like everyone else in their class? No.

Bakugo was easily the most antisocial member of their class. He literally seemed to dislike anything that involved him interacting with anyone around him outside of a fight. There were times he tolerated his group’s antics, but he never went out of his way to socialize.

“You got him to dance, stay out late, eat mochi, and have a water fight with you in the fountain.” As far as Midoriya was concerned, these events might as well be signaling the apocalypse. “I don’t think you realize how big this is.”

“It’s not,” she dismissed giving a little yawn.

“You’re telling me you didn’t want it to be a date?”

“Um,” Uraraka frowned, feeling her cheeks warm at the thought. “It wasn’t.”

“That’s not what I asked you,” Midoriya chuckled, leaning back the chair as a satisfied grin curled over his lips. “Don't avoid the question.”

“I’m not!”

“You like him.”

She sighed loudly, pulling the hood over her eyes. “So what? I find him aesthetically pleasing, and I think he smells nice!”

Midoriya nodded, a grin splitting across his face, “You like Kacchan.”

“Uh,” she whined, looking at him pathetically. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s stupid. I’m allowed to think he’s nice to look at.”

“And talk to?” he pushed as he curled a few thoughtful fingers underneath his chin. “I mean, Kacchan definitely respects you. Ever since you guys faced off at the Sports Festival our first year-”

Good to know.

“I think you’re the only person he calls by their name. I mean, he occasionally calls you round face or pink cheeks, but those names are kind of cute-”

They weren’t. She preferred her name.

“The fact that he danced with you shows that he did something he was obviously uncomfortable with to make you happy because that definitely wasn’t for him. I mean, dancing is physical like fighting is so maybe he wanted to as well. It could also be because he’s attracted to you-”

What?!

“And dancing was the easiest way for him to get close to you casuall-”

“Whoa! Deku!” Uraraka shouted, leaning over and placing her hands out in front of her to signal her friend to stop. “Bakugo isn’t into me.”

“But he-”

“No.”

“He-”

“No. Stop. He isn’t.”

“I think it’s likely he is. I think you should talk to him-”

“What?!”

“Kacchan isn’t really good at dealing with his feelings.”

“Really?” Uraraka snapped back sarcastically.

“So, you’ll probably have to take the lead on this,” he nodded, folding his arms across his chest.

“You want me to do what exactly?” she asked, sitting up on her knees and pushing the hood off her head.

“See if he wants to hang out again, maybe go out to eat-”

“Nope, no way.” He had to be kidding. “Bakugo has the emotional intelligence of a carrot, Deku!”

“I mean, yeah,” he snickered, “but, you like him, soo….” What did they say about her? Midoriya decided it was best to leave that alone for now.

“Not to mention, I don’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to falling for one of my classmates.”

“Ouch,” Midoriya winced at her little jab.

“It’s true though.” She hadn’t meant to hurt him with that comment but it was a valid point. After she had blurted out her unrequited feelings at the beginning of their second year, Uraraka had spent months avoiding him before coming to terms with just being friends.

Clumsily dancing around someone as unpredictable as Bakugo wasn’t an option.

“You’re my best friend. I love you dearly, but this is completely different,” she chuckled, shaking her head frantically. “The only way anything is going to happen between me and him is if he takes the lead.”

“That’s unfair.” It was also not going to happen.

“I don’t even know if I really like him. I just think he’s attractive, and we had fun together.” And he smelled nice. Uraraka was keeping this hoodie for as long as it smelled of that sweet smoky aroma or until Bakugo asked for it back.

“Which is a good start,” he urged. “It’s literally the foundation for dating someone.”

“True.”

Midoriya gave a triumphant little nod.

“But,” she sighed, shrugging her shoulders, “It doesn’t matter.”

xxxxxxxxxxxx

“You realize if you want to talk to someone, you might want to call them instead of staring at your phone right?”

Bakugo felt his face redden, slamming his phone on the table. He folded his arms tightly across his chest as he slunk down in his chair. “Mind your business, old man,” he snarled, shooting a glare at his father chopping vegetables at the kitchen counter.

“Or you could text them,” Masaru chuckled as he continued preparing dinner, unbothered by his son’s temper. “Your choice.”

Bakugo growled loudly, slamming his fists against the table as his nails dug into his palms. It had been four days since his little adventure around Tokyo with Uraraka and about three days into the break.

He’d left the dorms before the sun rose after fifteen minutes of sleep. Bakugo had arrived at his family home as his parents were leaving work. Pushing past his father’s confused expression and his mother’s shouting, Bakugo stomped up the stairs, slammed his door, and collapsed into bed.

If given the chance, Kirishima would have been in his face bright and early wondering why he’d left and have questions about dancing with Uraraka. Then there was Midoriya. Sure, the nerd wouldn’t say anything, but he didn’t need those stupid green eyes trying to figure him out. He didn’t owe anyone an explanation.

“Are you alright?”

Bakugo scowled, leaning his head back against the chair, “I’m fine.” He positioned his arms tightly around his chest once more.

“You seem angry about something.”

“I’m always angry,” Bakugo snorted.

“You’re not,” Masaru shook his head, picking up a tomato. “You’re like your mother-”

“Yeah, fucking angry all the damn time.” Bakugo knew his father was--for some reason beyond his understanding--devoted to his psychopath mother. Blindly in love or not, anyone could see that his mother had some major anger issues.

“No, you and your mother are-” Masaru started, knife pausing as he tried to search for the right word.

Bakugo’s eyebrows raised in anticipation for the adjective his father was searching for. He had quite a few suggestions. There had been a variety of words thrown at him for the last seventeen, almost eighteen years, of his life.

Arrogant.

Psychotic.

Destructive.

Obnoxious.

Rude.

Loud.

Some applied more to him than his mother, but he had to get it from somewhere. It certainly wasn’t from his father.

“Unique.”

Bakugo rolled eyes.

Masaru shrugged. “You both are very loud. The only time you or your mother are quiet is when something is on your mind,” he told him as he resumed chopping. “You and your mother haven’t argued in three days.”

“So what?” Bakugo figured his father would be happy for the peace and quiet.

“Something’s bothering you,” Masaru tilted his head down, glaring at his son from the top of his glasses.

“Tch.”

“Have you tried talking to that friend of yours? The one with the red hair,” Masaru suggested as he finished up the prep work. “Kirishima?”

“Shitty hair?” Talking to Kirishima meant admitting that he’d lied and he wasn’t in his room. Not that it had really mattered, but Bakugo wasn’t about to call him and whine on the phone like a middle school girl. “I don’t wanna talk to him.”

“Okay…” Masaru drawled, picking up the cutting board and sliding the chopped vegetables into the pot. “Do you want to talk to me about it?”

Bakugo grimaced.

“You don’t have to.”

He certainly didn’t have to. Bakugo couldn’t think of the last time he carried on an actual conversation with his father. He and his mother regularly screamed at each other but that didn’t work with his father. Bakugo would scream, and Masaru would smirk and give a little nod before continuing on like normal.

“I’m just saying if something is bothering you...” Masaru untied the apron around his body, throwing it on a dining room chair as he chose a seat across from his son. “I’m here.”

It was a better idea than talking to Kirishima, but-

“You can talk to me about it.”

His mother wasn't home.

“Maybe I can help you with whatever is upsetting you?”

Bakugo huffed loudly. His brows furrowed as he gnawed at his lower lip.

“It doesn’t hurt to talk about it.”

Fuck it. “I want immunity.” Bakugo had already spent enough of his break in his head. Plus, who was his father going to tell? “And you can’t tell mom.”

Masaru frowned, “What did you do, Katsuki?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

Masaru wasn’t on a first name basis with the fire department and the local carpenter's favorite customer for no reason. “What did you burn this time?” At least, he wasn’t injured. He often wondered how his son survived the early years of his quirk. Masaru’s own quirk had been hard to manage, but Katsuki was downright reckless. “You didn’t put a hole in the roof again did you?!”

“What the fuck?” Bakugo gawked at his father. “When would I have the time to do that?!”

“You’ve been home all day for the last few days” Masaru could remember turning his back for a second and then there being smoldering holes polka dotted all over the walls and ceiling. It didn’t take him long.

“Not putting holes in the roof!”

“We just got a new roof-”

“I didn’t fucking break anything!” This time. Bakugo sighed loudly, “I didn’t get into fight. I didn’t break my bones or someone else’s. I’m not in trouble-” To be fair, he could have gotten in trouble staying out past curfew and sneaking into a club with his friends. “But you can’t tell mom, and I want immunity.”

Masaru shook his head, inhaling deeply, “Fine.”

Bakugo nodded.

“In return-”

“What?”

“During the school year, you have to come at least three times per term for dinner,” Masaru decided with a firm nod.

“That’s bullshit!”

“I don’t know why you want immunity. And,” he started lowering his voice. “This is your last year at school. “Your mother and I want to spend as much time with you as we can.”

“Fucking fine,” Bakugo groaned, slamming his arm to the table. “I went to a club with some friends and-”

“How did you all get into a club? What club?”

Immunity wouldn’t absolve him from future crimes. “That’s not the point…”

“Were you all drinking?”

Bakugo exhaled slowly, eyes widening as he tilted his head to answer. “No one was drunk. I had a couple of beers, not a big deal.” He wasn’t going to admit to the shots.

Masaru’s eyes widened, tightening his lips as he reminded himself of the deal he’d struck with his son. “Alright.” He had to let it go. For now.

“There was this girl from my class-”

A girl? Since when was his son interested girls?

“Round face,” Bakugo spat, feeling his tongue dry at the thought of her. “She’s one of Deku’s friends, and she’s got these stupid pink cheeks-”

“The girl from the Sports Festival?” Masaru questioned, eyes widening in surprise. “The one who almost dropped a meteor shower on your head?”

“How the hell do you remember that?!” Bakugo barked.

His father chuckled, “You complained about that girl until you were blue in the face.”

“You saw that shit she pulled!” Bakugo hollered. “I wasn’t expecting that girl to nearly crush me, and then to go on to a shitty final match with some scar-faced idiot with daddy issues!”

Clearly, it was still a sore subject.

“Anyway,” Bakugo grunted returning to matter. “I uh-” It wasn’t a big deal. “She kept bugging me to dance with her, so I did to shut her up-”

Masaru held his breath to keep from reacting. He folded his hands in front of him, giving a little nod as his lips remained in a firm line.

Bakugo had never done anything to just shut someone up. Even when he and his mother were in knock down drag out screaming matches the only way Bakugo backed down was when it served his best interest or he was bribed.

Masaru was pretty sure that girl hadn’t bribed him.

His son was lying to him.

“We went and got some food-” Bakugo sputtered trying to recount the events as casually as possible. “She wanted mochi so we got some, and we stayed out pretty late.” He wasn’t about to tell his father he’d chased this girl around a water fountain. There was his dignity after all.

“So what’s the problem?” Masaru questioned trying to control his amusement at the situation. “It sounds like you guys had a nice little date.”

“The fuck?!” His heart pounded uncomfortably at the assumption. “I didn’t want to get food or damn mochi! The only reason I followed that little space cadet was to make sure she didn’t get hurt or lost!”

Oh. “Well that was very nice of you, son,” Masaru smirked, reaching across the table to pat his son on the hand.

“I didn’t want to fucking hang out with her!” he hissed, slamming his hands on the table.

“So why did you?” his father asked simply.

“Because-” He’d been trying to figure that out. “I don’t know! What else was I supposed to do?!”

“Weren’t you guys in a group?

“Yeah!”

“So you could have told one of your friends,” his father shrugged casually. “They could have gone with her or tried to stop her.”

“No! Those idiots are just as irresponsible!”

“Katsuki,” Masaru sighed unable to keep the smirk off his face. “Did you have fun?”

Bakugo scowled sinking down in his chair as he looked at the ceiling. “I-” He tried not to think about how good Uraraka felt pressed against him while that god awful music played. Or how silly she looked stuffing that burrito in her mouth. “No.” It didn’t matter how much his ears enjoyed the howl of her laughter as he splashed water at her.

“You don’t have to be honest with me,” Masaru told him smirking. “But at least be honest with yourself.”

“I, goddamnit-” Bakugo spat. “I enjoyed it okay? Is that what you wanted to hear?!”

Masaru chuckled getting up from his chair, placing an affectionate hand on top of his son’s head, “I’m happy when you and your mother are happy.”

“I’m not fucking happy.”

“Okay Katsuki,” he cooed, ruffling his hair. “You know, if you had fun you should give her call. Ask her out on a proper date.”

“Dad, for fuck's sake, stop! Please!” Bakugo glowered, trying to move away from his father’s hand.

Masaru laughed, “It’s not a marriage proposal-”

“Tch,” Bakugo growled his face reddening.

“You enjoyed being around her,” his father started simply. “So be around her.”

That sounded easy enough.

“So, do you think she’s cute?”

Bakugo growled, hands igniting and scorching the wooden table.

“That was a yes,” Masaru sighed, shaking his head at the damage as he ignored his son’s cursing. “And you’re telling your mother about the table!”

Of course he was.

To be Continued...

#kacchako #kacchako fanfiction #bakugo x uraraka #katsuki bakugou #uraraka ochako #bnha fanfiction

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brilliantyears · 6 years

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hey so i saw you talking about zombies, run! and i'm so confused what it is. can you explain. i stalked the tag, and i can't figure it out.

Hi Anon! I absolutely can. You see, Zombies, Run! is only one of my favourite things on the planet. So here goes :D

Zombies, Run! is an app that combines fitness and an awesome immersive (podcast-like) story. The site for the app is here: https://zombiesrungame.com/

The app is first and foremost a running app (but you can also use it when you walk, bike, drive, sit quietly at home, etc.). Like a podcast, there are episodes (missions) in seasons. (There are also some ‘specials’ aka side missions.) You just begin with season 1, episode 1.

When the story begins, you’re in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, you arrive by helicopter (which gets shot down, no spoilers), and you are adopted by Abel Township as their new Runner 5. Each mission unfolds more of the story (making it super addictive). The story is really fun (if you enjoy podcasts you’ll like this a lot!), and the characters are great! I may or may not have shed a tear or two now and then. It’s very diverse too, lots of POC and LGBT+ characters!

Basically, while you listen to a mission, you run (or walk or bike etc). The app doesn’t tell you where to run or how to run, you just go at your own pace, taking your own route. (There is also a couch to 5k program though, which helps you get started if you’re not a runner yet!) You can set either the time or the distance for your run (for example, 30 minutes or 5k), that’s the time/distance it’ll take for the mission to be finished. Personally I like to set time and distance as low as possible and then I run multiple missions in a row. You can also run one mission and then automatically listen to Radio Abel when it finishes, which is a fictional radio show (or run and only listen to Radio Abel, which is what I’m doing sometimes).

The app can track all of your run stats, so in that sense it really functions as a fitness/running app! There’s also the option to get chases by zombies, which you can turn on or off. When you turn it on you sometimes have to run x % faster when you’re getting chased by zombies.

While you run, you can listen to your own music (either in the Zombies, Run! app or with your normal music app) or listen to in-app music. The story clips play every few minutes (quite often, actually) and inbetween you listen to music (or to nothing).

During your run you will also pick up supplies (automatically, the app will tell you when you’ve picked something up) with which you can build a base. It’s a fun little thing in the app, but doesn’t influence the story.

Oh and, let’s not forget, very important: you are always the perfect Runner 5. You don’t have to run fast, or perfectly, or even run at all. Sam Yao (Abel Township’s communications operator, who guides you on most of your runs) is proud of you no matter what you do.

Honestly this app is the only reason I am still enthusiastic about running lmao

Long story short: If you like podcasts and running, get this app. It’s free, but I’m throwing yearly money at it (which gives you a little extra functionality and lets you run any mission whenever) because damn I love it.

#zombies run!#zr!#zombies run #zombies #podcast #podcasts #podcast app #fitness #running #abel township #runner five #runner 5 #runner5

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kynthosmojo · 6 years

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Was the DDE really only in 2017? Angels vs hunters :) I kinda wish the whole of the fandom: Hets, Hats, wives fans... would get on the same page and push those fuckers out. What is your take on this War that makes the Apocalypse look like child's play?

OOOH! My first ask and it is a really awesome question! Thank you anon! A favorite moment in history, not in J2 history per se, but inliteral history.I have other many, many favorite J2 moments! OK, this is my first ever ask, but forgive my long answerbecause it is something that has been on my mind a long time. I don’t exactly know how to do that “under the cut” thing, so …

(update: Figured it out!)

~Was the DDE really only in 2017?~ Yes, that spoken invalidation of that particular ship aspart of CANON, meaning actual part of the plot, story-line, etc. in the show,happened a mere year ago, if even. It was during JAXCON 2017. It was taken, inmy opinion extremely out of proportion by many sides, but mainly, by the sideof the fandom that is EXTREMELY invested in that ship.This war, though, has been going on for way longer thanthat, and Jensen has been vocal earlier than that about it. That moment was, asthe saying goes, “the straw that broke out the long guns and sank that“problematic” battleship.“There is a Tumblr that has all the moments Jensen spoke outagainst Destiel. If I can find it, I will link it here, but you may have seenit before.

Anyway, in reply to your wish, I agree, but solemnly thinkTHAT would be too much like perfect.

One problem is IMHO, there are so many factions, so manyindividual agendas, and so many opinions clashing, there is hardly, rarelyeven, an honest opportunity for people to come together on even the broadesttopic in the fandom. There are some people claiming to be multi-shippers, open-minded people who respect wives and family members, fence-sitters, etc. whenthey’re not.

I ONLY say this because they have an obvious preference when theygive their opinions, and they feel the need to defend that preference at allcosts. This results in extreme behaviors from all sides Surprising as it may seem, whether they are hats, wifestans, hets, etc. Destitutes have actually infiltrated every branch of thefandom, even Wincest shippers.

There are some fans who are reasonable, logical, and not soinvested in THAT ship that they go out to harm others, but those folks are notwhat I call Destitutes.

Where is that same defense for J2 and Wincest, or fuck it,just J2 if that is all you like?!

Everyone claims to try to be inclusive, to allow people newto the fandom and its many branches to learn, but realistically we cannot agree oneverything. And some people just can’t leave shit alone that they don’t agreewith. I get that not EVERYTHING can be 100 percent agreed upon.But if you don’t agree, then how about just leave the conversation as anoption, if not that particular SM group?

Hatters, if they so chose, could still enjoy het groups, and vice versa, ifthey each left certain convos, debates, and discussions alone. But other peopletend to make it intolerable. I will never understand the immediate jump todefense, or the unnecessary comment that someone doesn’t like or agree withsomething.

No one really needed to know that because this is a public forum,not your house.

It is one thing to not allow hate, bashing, or bullying withoutdefense, a totally different thing to push a one-sided view upon others.

Another thing that is a huge problem is dishonesty in theseSM groups due to fear, OR malicious intent. Yep that still happens. Ask questions and get answers, but they are not how that person really feels, they were just trying to get in, for whatever reason

I’d love to know WHO exactly is fence-sitting and wants to really learn about things, WHO is justshipping and enjoying the lucky gifts we get in real pics and things, and WHO actually believes due to the proof that is just there.

Yes, there isa difference in shipping and believing. Neither one is entirely wrong. But people lie when they feel like they’re in trouble, orwhen they want to cause trouble. These are GROWN people, meaning over the ageof 10, and they’re lying like kids under the age of 5.

A precious, dear friend of mine once said to me, "Ijust wish we could stop attacking first and asking questions later…”

I fully and totally agree and wish we as humans first andforemost could do exactly that.

As an example of differing opinions WITHIN common ranks,factions, branches, whatever:

There are believers who think J2 are Bi, that’s cool. Thereare believers who think they’re married to each other / not married, buttogether / not together, but will be after everything is done / in an open relationship, but ultimately loyal to eachother.

ANY AND ALL of the above are completely OK, because NONE ofus know the entire truth of anyone’s situation unless we are in it and makingthose same exact decisions daily. But all of the believers have 1 foundation in common. THEYBELIEVE J2 ARE MORE THAN JUST PLATONIC BESTIES.

It is not just a ship to imagine and write fictional stories about, it is notjust a wait and see situation, it is an internal belief based on things we’veseen over the years.

It’s the rest of the factions that I get real wary andsuspicious of. What kind of proof are they looking for, shit is so obvious andso consistent, what else do they need in order to stop denying and startaccepting?

A friend of mine said this to me: "I say they fuck on the regular and are on the DL causeof US the Fans. I don’t think that it would hurt them in the least if they weretogether and out, career wise. This isthe most popular reason WHY though!“

My response was, "That is the thing though. I am notlooking for people’s why’s. I don’t care WHY people believe, just whether theybelieve and in what capacity. Then I can have a decent conversation in thatcontext alone.

So, all those deeply personal relationship types I listedabove, those are all valid, those things can happen in every day life!

I think it is important to acknowledge the situations peoplethink are going on, but not the actual why’s. When we get into the why’s andexamining motivations, people start projecting their own personal, emotional,moral, and ethical standards and experiences on someone none of us have anyidea what is in their heads.

That skews all opinions! I say we LEAVE THAT PART OUT!

I know it is a challenge not to personalize things, and notto project your own life onto someone else’s, but that is IMHO the answer tonot having so many fights and so much vitriol within a fan-base that has splitso very, very extensively.

I hope my novel of a soapbox answer did not put you tosleep, and hopefully it will reach others and give them something to seriouslyconsider.

I want our fandom to thrive and NOT be the joke of all fandoms, orknown as the fandom to avoid, or be careful before you enter. I want a diverse fandom (yes with all its multitudes ofopinions) I can be proud of!

#j2 tinhat #j2

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notchaoticiswear · 6 years

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The Legendary Event

This is strictly for people who follow me. I will only reblog/post from those who follow me. If you want to partake in this event, follow me! Thank you to pandaboiiiiii they were my 2000th follower!!!!!

Hello, darlings! I reached 2,000 followers, and to celebrate I thought I would make an event in which you guys send in your work to me, and I post it here! I might make a whole separate account for this. (If I did, link HERE)

You don’t need to ‘sign up’ for the event, just submit your work or tag me in it and I’ll post/reblog it! The tag for this event will be ‘The Legendary Event’, so please tag that in your tags as well! If you don’t want me to post your work, but still want me to see it, message me the post or in the tags put ‘please do not reblog/post muk’ and I’ll just read/look at it!

Now, I bet you’re wondering. What are these days? Well, the list is below the cut, sorry! First and foremost, these days are all up for interpretation! And any voltron character can be included! If you really like Olia - go for it! Or Kolivan, or Kaltenecker, or Bi Boh Bii. ANYONE!

The point is to have fun! Be indulgent! Let your kinks shine through on the NSFW day! (there’s an alternate sfw option for those who don’t like nsfw) There will be no hate tolerated during this event! (in fact, no hate tolerated PERIOD.) JUST HAVE FUN!

Days listed below the cut!

Day One: Mythical/Magical

For this day, you will create your work based around myths, mythical creatures, magic, or magical creatures. However, you may interpret you like. You can draw this prompt, write this prompt, or whatever you’d like! Have fun with it! Show me stuff that someone may not expect - like, an obscure creature that no one really knows about.

Day Two: Artistic

For this day, you may decide what kind of artist you want your paladin of choice to be. Personally, I’d love to see some photographer!hunk with model!shay or pidge. Some ideas: musicians!character, actor!character, writer!character. Anything! I just love to see works with this stuff!

Day Three: Memory Loss

Who am I to deny you guys angst? I personally can’t wait for this day, to see what you guys come up with. Also, while I know I’ll get a lot of Lance with memory loss, please remember the other characters! What would happen if Coran lost his memories? Or if Kolivan did? What about Matt?

Day Four: NSFW / Soulmate AU

Day four can either be any NSFW (which will be tagged appropriately), or a soulmate au. You may combine both of them, of course. I expect some fluff for the soulmate au. Of course, angst is welcome too, and I’ll love it regardless. Any ship is welcome. Maybe for the SM au, everyone is gifted with a unique necklace/ring/other jewelry that matches with their soulmate. I don’t know.

Day Five: Artificial Intelligence AU / Corrupted AU

We all know that one artist who has drawn your favorite as an AI. Now think about it, why wouldn’t I want to look at this? I’ve had so many moments where I almost wrote an AI!au, but didn’t because I didn’t have time or I couldn’t get a good idea down that I wanted to do. I want to see your take on it! Maybe langst, but I wanna see some good angst with the other characters of Voltron too.

Day Six: Dystopian AU

I’ve been thinking about making a dystopian au for a long time now, I even have a few ideas that would be fun! I’d love to see your take on this. I don’t know any ideas I could give without telling you my ideas that I’m gonna write in the future. ;D hit me with your modified bodies, brainwashed people, just straight up zombie apocalypse if you want.

Day Seven: Favorite Trope

I’ve been self-indulgent and given you reign over my favorite tropes/things I love reading or seeing art for. Now, it’s your turn! Show me your hanahaki disease aus, show me your modern aus, show me your witcher aus. Show me that one thing you don’t even want to think about, but it’s your favorite. Indulge! No judgement will be placed here.

EDIT: The offical week will be November 25th - December 1st, but I will accept days at anytime!

#the legendary event #tle #please do not reblog/repost muk!#pdnr/rm!#my 2000 follower event!#excited to see what you come up with!

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oscopelabs · 7 years

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Lie To Me: The Multiple Personalities of Tom Waits’ Acting Career by Chris Evangelista

“I ain’t no extra baby, I'm a leading man.”

— Tom Waits, Goin’ Out West

Tom Waits lights up the screen. The minute the singer appears in a film, he brings with him a sort of atmospheric baggage—we may not know what character he’s playing, but we know him. We know that no matter what the film is, Waits will lend his own distinct, off-kilter brand of weirdness to it. Waits has been playing characters all through his musical career, the boozy troubadours and raspy-voiced noir loners who populate his songs are all engaging Waits creations.

Using his distinct, gravel-caked voice, Tom Waits conjures up boozy ballads designed to be played low at 3 a.m. and melodies that might echo off the broken-down rides of an abandoned, haunted carnival. His is an eclectic style, combining blues, jazz, cabaret, Spooky Sounds of Halloween sound effects tapes, and more. This distinct, unmistakable style goes beyond Waits’ musical accomplishments, finding its way into his acting in the two dozen or so film appearances the singer has made.

Waits doesn’t consider himself foremost an actor. “I do some acting,” Waits tells Pitchfork. “And there’s a difference between ‘I do some acting’ and ‘I'm an actor.’ People don’t really trust people to do two things well. If they’re going to spend money, they want to get the guy who’s the best at what he does. Otherwise, it’s like getting one of those business cards that says about eight things on it. I do aromatherapy, yard work, hauling, acupressure. With acting, I usually get people who want to put me in for a short time. Or they have a really odd part that only has two pages of dialogue, if that.”

Waits’ first film appearance was in Sylvester Stallone’s 1978 directorial debut Paradise Alley. It’s a small part, with Waits essentially playing a version of himself, or at least the self he presents in many of his songs. The character, Mumbles, shows up at a piano, twitching and crooning. “When was the last time you was with a woman?” Stallone’s character asks him. “Probably before the depression,” Mumbles says. “What are you saving it for?” Stallone shoots back in that garbled manner of speaking Stallone has perfected. “I dunno,” Waits replies. “Probably a big finish.”

In the grand scheme of things, this is a nothing part; it was intended to be a bigger role, but Stallone cut it down to little more than a cameo. Yet what made it to the screen is distinct because Waits makes it so. Stallone is very still in the scene, leaning on Waits’ piano like dead weight. Waits is a study in contrast, never sitting still, his eyes half open. It might even be considered too much acting. When asked if acting came naturally to him, Waits replied, “It’s a lot of work to try and be natural, like trying to catch a bullet in your teeth.”

Waits’ career was at an all-time-low following 1978. He had grown tired of the music industry in general, having released six albums with very little commercial success. Battling depression and alcoholism, Waits left Los Angeles for New York and began a period of reinvention. “I just got totally disenchanted with the music business,” he would say. “I moved to New York and was seriously considering other possible career alternatives...the whole Modus Operandi of sitting down and writing, and making an album, going out on the road with a band. Away for three months, come back with high blood pressure, a drinking problem, tuberculosis, a warped sense of humor. It just became predictable.”

Waits’ music became more avant-garde, more eclectic. And his film career and personal life took a distinct turn in the 1980s. In 1982, Francis Ford Coppola hired Waits to write the music for One From the Heart, a romantic fable that Coppola wanted to make as a sort of palate cleanser following the troubled production of Apocalypse Now.

“I looked forward to the challenge,” Waits said. “I needed something to stimulate my growth and development. The sole process of making music that would adhere to film was still something new to me. So it was a little terrifying. But working with Francis seemed like a good opportunity.”

It was on the set of One From the Heart that Waits would begin his relationship with future wife and musical collaborator Kathleen Brennan, who worked as a script analyst for the film. The two had previously met at a New Year’s Eve Party, but it was during One From the Heart that the relationship blossomed. “She was a story analyst. Somebody told her to go down and knock on my door and she did and I opened the door and there she was and that was it,” Waits said. “That was it for me. Love at first sight. Love at second sight."

One From the Heart would be a financial disaster for Coppola, but Waits and the filmmaker continued to collaborate. Coppola would cast Waits in small parts in his back-to-back S.E. Hinton adaptations The Outsiders (“I had one line: ‘What is it you boys want?’” Waits told Rolling Stone in 1988. “I still have it down if they need me to go back and re-create the scene for any reason.”) and Rumble Fish (“got a chance to pick out my own costume and write my own dialogue. Gotta nice scene with a clock.”)

Little by little, Waits was building a bit-part filmography, showing up in the background of films and stealing the show with little to no dialogue, catching the eye with his lanky frame and coiffed hair. Coppola would cast Waits again in 1984’s The Cotton Club. Waits plays the club’s MC, but most of his scenes were cut from a film that became more and more bloated during production.

Waits’ first big role would come courtesy of Jim Jarmusch’s 1986 Down by Law. Set in Louisiana, the film follows three convicts—John Lurie, Roberto Benigni and Waits—who escape into the bayou. Once again, Waits seems to be playing a variation of himself, or the self that he built through his musical career, although he insisted the character not be a musician. Instead, he’s a DJ. Waits’ inaugural scene kicks off with him creeping into his bedroom, trying hard not to wake up his sleeping girlfriend, played by Ellen Barkin. But Barkin’s character isn’t really asleep, and when we next see these two characters, she’s tossing Wait’s belongings out of their New Orleans apartment, disgusted with his philandering.

Waits spends the scene sitting on the bed, mostly silent as Barkin rages, tossing one vinyl record after another and hurling curses at Waits. Waits doesn’t fully spring into action until Barkin is about to toss his clunky, pointed, steel-tipped shoes. “Not the shoes!” he protests, sounding generally horrified. Later, he sits at the curb, his possessions scattered around him, slipping those shoes on. It is an overall commanding performance, illustrating that simple cameo appearances from the singer, while memorable, waste his natural hipster charisma. To put it simply, Waits is cool—the type of old-school cool that would likely come off as posturing if you caught someone trying it in public. Yet Waits makes it sing. His characters are perhaps never as cool as they think they are, yet the coolness is undeniable. These are the types of performances people want to emulate when young. You look at Waits’ ridiculous Frankenstein shoes in Down by Law and briefly think, “Where can I get a pair of those?”

In the somber, autumnal Ironweed, Waits plays Rudy, the physical embodiment of every boozy balladeer Waits has ever sung about, particularly in “The Piano Has Been Drinking.” (“And you can't find your waitress with a Geiger counter/ And she hates you and your friends and you just can't get served without her.”)

“I have a red nose, and I had a toothbrush in one pocket, a sandwich in the other. I don’t know why I got it, but I’m glad I did,” Waits said. The part found him playing alongside acting giants Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. “Nicholson is really a diamond cutter,” Waits said. “He's a bank president and a bronc rider. He has a million stories; all of them are true. He’s a very generous actor, and he’s responsive, like a good musician.” The pair play off each other beautifully, with Waits not just holding his own alongside Nicholson but occasionally outshining him.

“At rehearsals, Tom Waits looked like any moment he might break at the waist or his head might fall off his shoulders onto the floor,” Nicholson said. “I once saw a small-town idiot walking across the park, totally drunk, but he was holding an ice cream, staggering, but also concentrating on not allowing the ice cream to fall. I felt there was something similar in Tom.”

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Waits, who eventually would go to AA and get sober, likely was able to draw on his own alcoholism for the role. “[O]ne is never completely certain when you drink and do drugs whether the spirits that are moving through you are the spirits from the bottle or your own,” he told The Guardian. “And, at a certain point, you become afraid of the answer. That’s one of the biggest things that keeps people from getting sober, they’re afraid to find out that it was the liquor talking all along...I was trying to prove something to myself, too. It was like, ‘Am I genuinely eccentric? Or am I just wearing a funny hat?’”

At this point, Waits began to become highly sought after for film work. He would continue to take on eclectic, eccentric parts, like as a rough-and-tumble bush pilot in the 1991 drama At Play In the Fields of The Lord and an uncredited role as a disabled veteran in Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King. “He was a friend of Jeff Bridges, basically,” Gilliam said. “[Bridges] said, ‘You ought to meet Tom.’ It’s funny because when I met him and even in the course of making the film, I’d never heard a Tom Waits record. I’d never listened to them at all. I just met him and liked him immediately. So into the film he went, and he was great. The studio was trying to cut him out. They felt it wasn’t advancing the narrative in any significant way so they thought that was things that could go. They were totally wrong.”

In 1992, Francis Ford Coppola made a play to save his struggling American Zoetrope studio with a lush adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The gothic costume drama gave Coppola and Waits an excuse to work together again, with Waits taking on the role of bug-eating madman Renfield. It was a distinctly un-cool part for Waits, yet he manages to steal almost every scene he’s in. He rants, he raves, he wears bizarre metal devices on his hands. Yet there’s a distinct humanity underneath the over-the-top madness, such as a scene where Waits’ Renfield disobeys his master Dracula to warn Winona Ryder’s Mina that she’s in danger. “Got to have a really meaningful scene with Winona Ryder. Not how I imagined it would be, though. Bug juice dripping from the corners of my mouth. Unshaven. Totally gray. Screaming behind bars. Not how I saw our scene together. But I tried to rise above it,” he told Image magazine.

At this point in his career, Waits was aging gracefully beyond his hipster youth into his 40s, in a sense turning into the older-seeming, more lived-in man his songs portrayed. In Robert Altman’s 1993 Short Cuts, adapted from the works of Raymond Carver, Waits plays a washed-up version of the younger, cooler individuals he had excelled at. He’s aging, alcoholic limo driver Earl, married to waitress Doreen (Lily Tomlin). “He seemed like someone I knew very well on a soul level,” Tomlin told The A.V. Club. “We did one thing I recall that would never read on camera: We ‘tattooed’ on our hands, at the base of the right thumb, the image of half a heart and when I’d pass him at the counter, we’d touch that part of each hand to the other and he’d say under his breath, ‘’Til the wheels come off.’” Waits also went method for the role, according to Tomlin: “Tom called me the first night after shooting, in his character of ‘Earl’ and spent maybe half an hour talking to me as ‘Doreen,’ as he supposedly drove around in the limo, which was Earl’s job. Tom did that for two or three more nights after work. Thinking he’d never do it again, I never was prepared to tape him and, each time he called, he was nothing if not filled with poetry as Earl.”

From there, Waits’ roles only grew more and more bizarre. He had wondered, “Am I genuinely eccentric? Or am I just wearing a funny hat?” around the time he quit drinking, but now he seemed to be firmly entering the “funny hat” zone of his acting career. In Mystery Men, he plays an inventor of non-lethal weapons who spends his free time trying to pick up women at nursing homes; in Domino, he appears as an exposition-dumping character known only as the Wanderer; Wristcutters: A Love Story finds him as commune leader in the afterlife; The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus reunited him with Terry Gilliam again to play the devil himself; and Seven Psychopaths had him playing a serial killer who loves rabbits.

The older Waits gets, the more he seems comfortable playing such wild weirdos. Perhaps he’s always been comfortable growing into that weirdness. Waits’ musical career was filled with sea change. He went from the lonely-heart, tears-in-my-beer crooning of his earlier albums to the banging-on-a-trashcan hullabaloo of 1983’s Swordfishtrombones. In 1999, Waits released Mule Variations, an album that, according to Rolling Stone, “rounded up his multiple personalities—barfly poet, avant-garde storyteller, family guy” into one place. Those multiple personalities spilled over into his acting career as well.

Waits is known for intriguing and eccentric choices as a musician —and that’s a recognition that should bleed over into his acting career. “I think most singers, when they start out, are doing really bad impersonations of other singers that they admire,” Waits once told NPR. “You kind of evolve into your voice. Or maybe your voice is out there, waiting for you to grow up.” For Waits, changing and evolving was like second nature. “The person that I saw changed every year,” said music producer and Waits friend Dayton “Bones” Howe. “His philosophy was, if I keep being a moving target, I can't get hit. He never wanted to be the same again in any way.”

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kinetic-elaboration · 7 years

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April 23: Jasper and DNR

I wrote this weeks ago, toward the beginning of the hiatus, but didn’t post it for Boring Reasons, so here it is I GUESS. Even with weeks to ruminate I’m still not sure what my point is but w/e.

This was inspired in part by this post by @jontyaxefive (cited again below) and this post by @falafel14 which I know are from weeks ago, but so is this, if you want to be technical about it.

~3300 words in 3 parts (DNR Specific thoughts in Part III)

I've been thinking a little about Jasper, his story in season 4, and the DNR kids in the 4x09 promo. These thoughts are really scattered so I'm not sure what they're going to look like in written form or what conclusions I'm going to come to, but basically, here is my reading of Jasper in Season 4 and my hopes for him and the DNR story line in 4x09.

A lot of these thoughts are based on reading I did for my Health Law class in law school, in our unit on end of life decision-making (triggered by the phrase DNR). I won’t go into details about that reading, but that's the basic background of how I got to thinking about this.

I. Jasper as Rational Actor

First, I know that I have personally had a certain contradictory reaction to Jasper's story this season, one that's coming into sharp relief with the hints we've gotten at 4x09. On the one hand, I do believe he's a rational actor and that his decision to let the radiation take him isn't just a knee jerk reaction but carefully considered and, in its own way, sensible. We hear his philosophy in his conversations with Clarke (in 4x04) and Bellamy (in 4x08), and we see it in the consistency of his actions over the course of the whole season.

On a semi-related note, I personally suspect that he has delineated his thought process off-camera to Monty as well, perhaps as early as the space between 4x01 and 4x02 (Monty doesn't seem terribly surprised by Jasper's non-sequitur "I'm not going to kill myself" in the 4x02 shower scene) and at least by 4x04 ("You're the one who's decided he's not going to be saved. You're the one who's leaving me alone."). Monty's smart and Jasper's not subtle; it's possible he's just context-clued his way to this understanding of Jasper's plans, just like the audience has. But my personal feeling is that they've actually had a discussion about Jasper's plans, which is why, or part of why, Monty seems to accept so easily that Jasper wants to end his life—or at least, that Jasper is willing to passively let himself die, which is, admittedly, different. (More on the other why's below.)

It's my instinct to accept Jasper's reasonable conclusions in the same way that I accept all reasonable conclusions, and to respect his personal decision (a decision deeply rooted in individual bodily autonomy, one of the highest values in my society) in the same way that I respect all personal decisions. And honestly...he makes compelling points. The Sky People have expended incredible effort and made great personal sacrifices in order to survive. And for all that, they have seemed to gain very little. Most obviously, of course, many of them haven't survived. It's all well and good for the people who are still standing to say 'yes we did all of this, but it was worth it'--was it worth it for the delinquents who died at the dropship? Who died in Mt. Weather? Was it worth it for Maya or Monroe or Lincoln?

I also think, maybe this is reading a little too much into things, that Jasper has a unique awareness of just how easily any one survivor could be just one more dead body. I can't remember who said this, what meta I read it in, but I remember someone once pointing out that when Jasper was speared, the injury to him wasn't just in being physically hurt, it was in being completely surprised by what was happening. Later injuries and deaths, even the sudden ones, occurred in the context of an ongoing war (or war-like situation) with the Grounders: everyone was on high alert because of what had happened to Jasper. He had no comparable warning. He WAS the warning. Combine that with his later experiences--his life in Mt. Weather (not just being held as one of the prisoners there, but acting in a leadership role, truly believing during that time that he could save everyone, and then having that naïve belief dashed), and his s3-s4 suicidal ideation—and you have a character who, more than the average bear, recognizes how quickly all of one's survival efforts can come to nothing anyway, coming radiation or no.

The sacrifices haven't just been in lost friends and loved ones, though. They've sacrificed their time and their effort. They've even sacrificed their sense of morality, perhaps even something of their humanity. Jasper has only brushed against this in himself (in setting off the dropship-rocket in the S1 finale, a decision he briefly reconsiders in 2x01: "Should I not have done that?"), but he's seen people he loves and trusted make truly horrific decisions in the pursuit of survival, most notably his best friend and Earth parents committing genocide in 2x16. Were those decisions worth it?

Maybe he could come to the conclusion that they were, if it weren't for the radiation coming. Another huge factor in Jasper's rational conclusion is that they are all going to die anyway. But not only that: since they first came to Earth, they were all going to die, and die young, and die horribly, anyway. This entire time, they've been gunning for survival, making sacrifices for survival, putting themselves on the line for survival, with the assumption that survival meant "if you're really, really lucky, into old age itself." But that was never what it meant! It meant, "survival, for another few months." That's almost funny, in a sick, dark way.

Further, as jontyaxefive pointed out here, the rationale behind the DNR kids' decision to stay at Arkadia might be even more expansive than just 'the end is coming anyway, let's accept it,' if they foresee in the bunker an Ark 2.0. For Jasper (et. al.) survival at all costs hasn't just been the mantra since they came to Earth. It's been standard operating procedure their whole lives. I've talked a little bit here about the consequences of a community-first/humanity-first society and the toll it takes on individuals. But it's not like it's hard to understand how children who've lived their whole lives hungry (see Jasper and Monty's 2x01 conversation at Mt. Weather dinner), who've seen loved ones executed, or left to die of illness or injury, who've been themselves imprisoned, who've been told over and over and in every conceivable explicit and implicit way that their lives are worth nothing except as vessels to the next generation, might prefer to go out their own way than to be shoved back underground, literally, because the general concept of 'survival' is worth more than their own (individual) lives.

My point is that Jasper's behavior this season is in line with a coherent, consistent, rational philosophy about life and death and that this philosophy, as well as his human right to his own bodily autonomy, should be respected, both by the characters in the show and by viewers analyzing Jasper. His reason for accepting death isn't simply 'well it's going to happen anyway, fuck it all.' Unlike most of the other characters, he's actively interrogating what a worthwhile life is. He's recognized that they are all almost certainly facing the end of their lives and that there is a decision to be made: one between doggedly pursuing any chance of survival in the hope of a last-minute miracle--and giving up everything else in that pursuit and that hope--on the one hand; and prioritizing quality of life in the time left, on the other. Characters like Clarke and Monty don't see the choice at all, but Jasper does, and he's chosen quality of life.

II. Jasper’s Cries for Help + Other Characters’ Reactions to Him

For all of this, though, I've also had the exact opposite reaction to Jasper in S4, a visceral reaction in which I don’t view him as rational actor taking control of the last months of his life, but as a scarred and damaged child on a path of self-destruction who no one is making the least effort to save. The trauma that triggered Jasper's PTSD occurred in the pilot. He's been openly and actively suicidal since 3x01 (when he tried to commit suicide by Grounder in front of a half-dozen witnesses). And he wasn't contemplating the coming Apocalypse 2.0 at the beginning of season 3, or even in 4x01 when he came within a hair's breadth of killing himself. If the radiation weren't coming and Jasper were talking so openly and so consistently about death, I'd think, I'd hope, that finally the people around him might recognize how severe his illness is. (By 'people' I mean 'people who aren't Monty' because imo he did all that one person could do to help Jasper in early season 3, using the resources available to him and within his own limits. Everyone else seemed quite frankly to have given up by the time we get to 3x01.)

Despite everything I just said about respecting Jasper's autonomy (and I do believe this!), it also shocks me when I hear characters supposedly close to him simply accept 'Jasper's ready to die, that's how it is.' My personal values in real life veer very strongly toward quality of life, bodily integrity, and personal autonomy, but I still have a gut reaction in favor of life, too; I mean I am human. To say 'this fifteen-, sixteen-year-old kid easily accepts, even welcomes, his own death and that's not a problem' is a deeply troubling position to take. When you consider, first, just how strong the survival instinct in humans is (meaning that either Jasper doesn't have that instinct anymore, which is a huge red flag; or that he does and he's going to come to regret his decision at the too-late last moment if he's not veered off of his current path), and second, that Jasper has an illness that has been putting the idea of suicide first and foremost in his head for months now (which means that his rational decisions aren't totally rational, but tainted by his disorder), it seems disgustingly irresponsible for his friends and loved ones to treat Jasper as a lost cause at best, a nuisance at worst ("Grow up!").

In defense of everyone around Jasper, there are some good reasons for not trying to save him. First, they have other stuff to do. For most of the season so far, the majority of Arkadia has been running on a very tight deadline to make their shelter livable: this is hard, time-consuming, physical labor, and it takes all available hands. Those who are a bit more on the brain-trust side of things (aka most of our mains) are also really busy. Plus, most of them have known or suspected for a while that not everyone is being saved anyway, and there are plenty of people who want to live. Being rational again, those people are the priority. I may be a hardcore Jasper fan, but that's fair.

More to the point, I think most of our characters have taken one of two positions about the end of the world (other than Jasper's position) and neither of them is conducive to seeing Jasper's situation as urgent.

Bellamy is of the position that they are probably going to die, but he's going to do what he can to make sure as many people survive for as long as possible—and hey if there does happen to be a last minute miracle, that's all the better. It's the 'we save who we can save today' philosophy. If he’s right, and the end is inevitable, well there's no reason to save Jasper because he's not going to actively kill himself, he's not in any other immediate danger, and when it does come time to save him, not only he, but Bellamy and everyone else, will be beyond saving.

I think most of the other characters are like Clarke and Monty. They are 100% Team Survive. And being Team Survive means believing with unerring optimism that a solution WILL appear. Clarke's been the most obvious proponent of this view. She encapsulates the philosophy every time she says something along the lines of "I'm not stopping until I save everybody." But Monty is just as clearly and decidedly on her side. He's been at the forefront of survival brain-storming efforts and was the mastermind behind the now-defunct Ark-as-metaphorical-Ark idea. He was instrumental to opening the bunker door. He is, in general, one of the characters most associated in the audience's mind with survival efforts. And in his scene with Harper at the beginning of 4x08, he explicitly takes the Trust in Survival view, opposite her The End Is Nigh position.

From this, I take two main lessons about Monty. First, he may rationally know that Jasper has chosen death, but if his optimism is wide enough to encompass a belief that the apocalypse itself can be staved off, it's wide enough to encompass a belief that, when the time actually comes, Jasper can be saved, too. And second, his own survival instinct is so deep, so overwhelming, and so much on the forefront of his mind, that he probably cannot actually fathom that Jasper's view point is something totally different, that he either does not have that instinct, or he's very effectively buried it.

In essence, I think that Monty attributes Jasper's ready-to-die attitude solely to Jasper's conviction that the end is inevitable anyway. And Monty simply doesn't share that view. I think when his view is vindicated, as it now appears to be, he'll turn to Jasper and he'll say, essentially "okay, you were wrong, here's the solution, you don’t have to be all ‘let’s party in the face of our doom’ anymore, time to come inside." In fact, I think that's what he's saying in that scene from the trailer in which he and Jasper are on opposite sides of the Alpha Station door. Even if they have talked off-screen about Jasper's decision (as I head canon), I don't think that the full breadth of Jasper's philosophy has sunk in for him. It's not just about making the most of what time is left. It's about taking a hard look at what it means to live in the first place.

So in other words, Monty is refusing to treat Jasper's obvious desire to die as an urgent problem, not only because there are even more urgent problems, but because he thinks the problem will solve itself. When Jasper sees the possibility to live, he'll take it, because that's what people do. They survive at absolutely any cost.

III. Overarching Moral Questions and 4x09 DNR

These questions: what it means to live, what it means to survive, what value we place on life, what value we place on quality of life, the place and the limits of personal autonomy and individual choice, the importance of bodily integrity, the responsibilities we have to other people and to our overarching human values, and the places of stress where these values clash, are all of considerable interest and importance to me, and I thought about them a lot in law school. Part of the reason I've been interested in Jasper this season (besides that he's my fave, ngl that's reason number one) is because I think he's been situated to bring these questions into the narrative. And I've been disappointed by how much he's been underutilized, by how much his potentially complex personal philosophy has been presented as one-note through the season so far, again not just because I love him as a character but because these themes I'm invested in have been pushed to the side right along with their representative. Personally, I would rather have watched my hypothesized Jasper + Monty conversation than the allegedly tense tinder box scenario or the supposedly heart stopping hydrazine race (both of which I found boring and predictable personally but maybe that's just me).

But now at last, with 4x09, it looks like maybe this conflict will come to the fore. I am both excited and nervous about this.

Here is what I would like: for the narrative to acknowledge the contradictory feelings that Jasper has inspired this season so far, delineated above. For the show to demonstrate that he has BOTH a rational and coherent viewpoint AND a damaged psyche that has never been given any chance to heal. For the viewer to get the sense at last that these two strands are not opposites but part of one complex whole. The second influences the first (and should influence our reaction to the first), but doesn't invalidate it.

It would be a good idea for the Arkadian society to reckon with the concerns that Jasper and the DNR kids bring forth, both because their philosophy is a legitimate one in its contours if not in its ultimate conclusions, and because these concerns are born from a very real and very severe pain. Surviving to live in constant misery is simply that: surviving, not living.

At the same time, reckoning with these concerns does not mean accepting that they want to die and leaving them to it. Any society that values life itself has a moral obligation not to throw up its hands when one or more of its members says 'life as it is now is just not worth it, I am choosing death instead.' This position isn't a problem because life itself is the goal no matter what, or because all life is good no matter what the cost and no matter what its quality, but because anyone who is choosing death in this way is in a dire position and deserves help and compassion.

Further, any individual who values his friends, as Monty does, should be deeply distressed when one or more of those friends outright declares life unlivable, even rationally, even with reason. Jasper's been constantly sending out flares and crying for help since Season 1. No one's ever really listened. The cry absolutely doesn't get any louder than being part of, let alone leading, a DNR group. I'd like someone to listen at last.

Sometimes, just acknowledging someone's pain and taking what steps one can to alleviate it goes an incredibly long way.

At the end of S3, Monty promised Jasper that he would feel happiness again, that his life would get better, and that Monty would be part of that journey with him. Obviously, he couldn't predict the quite legitimate Humanity Saving distraction that was about to pop up in front of him and push his friend's concerns to the back burner of his mind. But the radiation isn't the only obstacle in front of the fulfillment of Monty's promise. Even before anyone in Arkadia knew about the coming radiation, and probably mere hours after that conversation, Jasper was ready to commit suicide. It's very easy to make promises like the one Monty made, and very hard to follow through on them. I'd like Monty to take the position that it isn't, even in their current circumstances, impossible. I don't have a ton of hope that we'll ultimately have a hopeful ending to this story (or at least, not one that includes Jasper, who deserves it most, because it's his story), but it would be nice if, for once, we did.

#jasper jordan #the 100 meta #my writing #mine #the year 2017 #2017: the 100 s4 #s4 reactions #this meta does not discuss jasper's death bc lalalala i cant hear you

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Text

Seduction Of The Gun

BATMAN: SEDUCTION OF THE GUN FEBRUARY 1993 BY JOHN OSTRANDER, VINCE GIARRANO AND STEVE MATTSSON

SYNOPSIS

Batman helps the GCPD bust a series of illegal deals between gangs between two states where the currencies in use are drugs and guns. To do this, Batman will need to disguise as a “straw man” providing the guns to local band NZN, while Tim Drake goes to a high school protecting the daughter of the “straw man”.

But things go south when the straw man is discovered under police custody and all hell breaks loose.

CONTEXT

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN OSTRANDER, FROM COMICMIX

July 22, 2012. After the shootings in Colorado during the premiere of Dark Knight Rises.

In the wake of the terrible shootings in Aurora CO during the midnight showing of The Dark Night Rises, I was contacted by television station WRTV in Richmond VA to comment about my Batman anti-gun violence book, Batman: Seduction of the Gun, that was first published in 1993.

The stand-alone Batman story was done in response to the killing of John Reisenbach, the son of a Warner’s executive. DC wanted to respond at the time and it was felt that Batman was the logical choice for the story as his own parents were victims of gun violence and had a well-known aversion of handguns.

Denny O’Neil was the Batman editor back then and offered me the writing job, knowing I had once worked with an anti-gun organization. Denny emphasized that we couldn’t just preach; first and foremost we had to tell a good story. We could make our points but they had to be part of the story. I had no problem with that; it’s one of the lessons I learned from studying Shakespeare – theme should be hardwired into the plot.

I took what I knew and then researched more. One of the things that I learned was about “straw men sales.” If you lived in a state or municipality that had strict laws about the sales of firearms, you could get around it by having someone in another state buy the gun(s) for you, even in bulk. Gangs in New York City were doing that down in Virginia. I used that as a small section of the overall story, but it resonated. Virginia’s then-governor L. Douglas Wilder used the comic to help get his modest but controversial gun control law passed – buyers could purchase one gun a month. You could have belonged to a “Gun of the Month Club” and still been perfectly legal.

I was and am proud of the book. I’ve been asked recently if I thought that DC might or should reprint it in light of the events in Colorado. I’ve thought hard on it and I’ve come to my own conclusions.

I want to say, first of all, that I have no idea whether DC has any plans to re-issue Seduction of the Gun. They haven’t said and I haven’t asked or suggested it. I don’t think they will re-issue it, however, and perhaps they shouldn’t. There are reasons why not.

First of all, it would be months before it would get out there. It would have to be solicited in the Diamond Catalog and that’s planned way ahead. I don’t know as it would appear before next year and one could question the relevance.

Second, even if the book was re-published tomorrow, this is an election year and everything gets politicized. Putting Seduction of the Gun out there now would be characterized as a political statement and I don’t think it’s one either DC or Warners wants to make. The Dark Knight Rises is already connected with those terrible murders and I can’t see Warners wanting to keep reminding people of that. They want to sell tickets. It’s hard enough these days to get people to come to the movie theater instead of just waiting to see it at home. This wouldn’t help.

Third, what audience would the book reach? There’s no stomach, no political will these days, for a further conversation about gun control or banning guns. None. Sales of guns in Colorado spiked following the tragedy. Furthermore, in the comics community, any time you do a story about an issue these days a certain very vocal percentage of the comics’ blog-o-sphere dismisses it automatically as an “Afternoon Special.”

Finally, and I don’t want to seem too bleak here, but what good would it really do? Yes, Governor Wilder used it at the time to pass his gun control legislation but that law was repealed not long ago. You can once again buy as many guns as you want in Virginia. I heard one leader in the VA government claim the law wasn’t really needed now – that they had background checks and such to prevent bad things from happening. Tell that to the victims of James Holmes. He was able to legally get all the guns he wanted.

Let me be clear: I’m not in favor of banning guns and never have been. At heart, the country is not prepared to go for that and I think you would create the same sort of situation that the government did when it banned alcohol, that it does now in banning marijuana – people wouldn’t/don’t obey resulting in a large sub-rosa underground market that would make plenty of money for Organized Crime. There are also plenty of people with a legitimate reason for guns and rifles – hunters, for one example, and on farms and ranches there’s a need for pest control. That’s always been true.

On the other hand, what need does any private citizen have for an AK-47 or similar attack rifle? Explain it to me, please, someone. It might be argued that people have a perfect right to own them and its guaranteed by the Constitution. I’ve read somewhere that your Constitutional right to self-expression ends where your fist hits my face.

I’d say the same thing applies to a bullet.

When I wrote the story, I thought it was important for the reader to have characters who were sympathetic who became victims of gun violence. I wanted the reader to feel for them, to identify with them, so they would feel some sense of loss at their deaths. You can’t argue with a closed mind but you might be able to reach people by engaging their hearts. In the Aurora shootings, there are stories of people dying to protect ones they loved, shielding them with their own bodies. There was the single father who was out with his kids for the day. There were the very young children who were shot or killed. If these true stories don’t engage the heart, I don’t know what my fictional story will do.

I would love if Seduction of the Gun became anachronistic; my fear is that it will remain relevant. The cycle will resume – more gun shootings, more hand wringing, more passionate defense of perceived Constitutional rights, and nothing more will happen. That’s the life we live.

REVIEW

When I first read this story I was around 12, this was the first comic-book I read where Tim Drake was wearing the Robin costume. Gun control is not even a discussion in my home (third world) country. Criminals do have guns, but the situation has never been as complicated as in the United States.

This is not about mass shootings at all. Back in 1993, mass shootings weren’t that common. The problem was more about gun violence in common, and it seemed to struck on those with less privileges more. You can watch “Dangerous minds” as a good example of what the problem was. Of course, as I said, I wasn’t born or raised in the USA, so I can only connect with the situations depicted in this comic.

After all these years, the statements made in this comic are still valid. Every now and then there will be monologues with useful information, but it is in the context of the story, it doesn’t go out of the blue to explain it and most importantly, it doesn’t preach on you.

Because this is a very complicated conversation to have in the United States (as it is specified in their Constitutional rights), Ostrander relies on something different (as he is not asking for the banning of guns). He says here that there is no law that can fix this problem. The human heart or mind need to open first to give up the guns. Guns are not the solution. This sounds simplistic, but it’s how it works in any other country in the world. We can access guns (with proper paperwork), but we know that using a gun has usually bad consequences for all the involved. And I am not going to have a gun around just in case. This is not the zombie apocalypse. So, yeah, it is a constitutional right for Americans, it doesn’t mean they actually NEED semi-automatic guns around. And this all may seem like a very intellectual conversation until someone innocent dies because of a poor decision somewhere. And that is the point of the whole thing. It’s not about laws, it’s not about rights, it’s not about self-defense. This is about victims. And I think that is where Ostrander nailed it. This comic wouldn’t be possible without the many different experiences of those kids in high school. They all have different stories about being victims of guns. About growing up in an environment where you can die at any time. To me, this feels like a continuation of the cold war state of mind. You can die any time, but the enemy is no longer on the other side of the world.

And then there is the gun manufacturer. That guy is not exactly a villain, but his decision to neglect certain truth in order to make more money made him one of the bad guys of this story. Of course the obvious bad guys are the NZN gang. Their motivations are not very clear out of context, you actually need to do some research to understand them.

Now, going to the story itself. There are many plot threads in this story and they all majestically explode in the climax (as most stories should). You have Lisa carrying a gun, making you wonder what she is going to use it for, you have Tim Drake trying to protect her, and you wonder if he will be able to save her. You have Batman trying to bust the NZN gang, Lasker trying to survive the deal with Gordon. There are so many things that are “about to explode” since before we started reading, and when it does is amazingly written.

Now, some may complain that Batman shouldn’t need this much help to bust a small gang. I don’t think that’s the point. First of all, he is helping the GCPD, as these criminals do not last long in jail (thanks to the gang’s lawyer). Also, Batman in 1993 wasn’t exactly bullet proof (it was more recently that Batman started wearing mythical armor against everything). And because this case involves both drugs and guns, I can imagine the FBI was involved. I do think that the gang is quite small and it really shouldn’t have been this hard. But they are very well armed.

Should this be a Batman story? Well he is another victim of a crime involving guns. And there is something Batman says here that really resonates:

“Guns don’t kill people”, some will tell you; “People kill people”. But I knew my father and I later met the man who killed him and I’ll tell you something. He never would have been able to kill my father without a gun.

Man, that was a powerful statement. In a nutshell... guns gave cowards an excuse to commit crimes.

Vince Giarrano has a very unique style, which I normally don’t enjoy. In this case in particular it looks good. The expressions look desperate and there are very close shots to eyes and faces. Very relate able emotions for the readers.

If you wonder about the organization profits went to, it ‘s called The John Reisenbach Foundation and it still exists.

In the end, this is a very specific tale for the nineties. Problems with guns have escalated since then, affecting even more innocent people. One thing seems to be true about this story. We may never solve the problem if we don’t look at the victims of these crimes.

I give the special a score of 10

#batman80 #batman #seduction of the gun #jar #gun control #gun violence #shootings #dc comics #comics #review #1993 #modern age #robin #tim drake #dave dorman

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