#I’d say it fucked with his previous established dislike of killing for his own reasons

[starlooove]

No bc fuck tim but it really really bothers me how people ignore his growth like he used to be an asshole and I’ll give tim Stans one thing: now he’s so so so stale but what I disagree with is that this staleness is bc nobody likes him like it’s in fact the exact opposite where everyone likes him so much they dont want to do anything. Even when it’s him surface level challenging Bruce it’s when everyone else is doing it too; but he’s still the backbone of the fam! Etc. and it’s so irritating bc him gaining more compassion and empathy even for people he doesn’t fw is so fun to watch and that’s why the captain boomerang thing was so out of character! (Not in a from the author way but in a tim wouldn’t do that and he and Bruce both knew it which is why it went down like it did. Same way dick killing joker was ooc; not in fanon sense but in a he would hate himself forever for this sense) and speaking of that it’s such an interesting mirror to Bruce who genuinely believes that everyone can grow vs Tim’s it doesn’t matter if they grow it’s not my decision to make like it’s the same but it’s not AND WITH CASS’ IT DOESNT MATTER IF THEY CHOOSE NOT TO GROW I WONT DO IT! like ugh. And anyways even when people acknowledge it they boil it down to “Janet and Jack taught him that the capitalist pigs that they are” like no. This is who tim was. Tim was the kind of guy who’d blame a dead kid for dying. That’s ok. Also Janet and Jack? Please reread anything involving them that’s not a fic like Jack had anger issues and they were both aloof at worst like relax.

#the Jack and Janet thing is both an understatement and an exaggeration but I don’t think anyone reads enough to care #some tim stan might get all pissy and be like ‘no look this is everytime jack yelled at him and boarding schools are abusive’ to which #and its like narratively that means nothing bc the tim you made up to justify the Drake parents you made up by blowing shit out of #proportion is also made up and if all of that was abusive there’d be smth to show for it besides ur homophobic Jack #too girlboss to care but still terrible Janet bc god forbid a woman have a personality from ur fics #anyways that’s also the reason I’m ignoring the council of spiders #well two reasons #first is that was just a moment to make tim look cool and did absolutely nothing for him or his character moving on #like at all #I’d say it fucked with his previous established dislike of killing for his own reasons #and while that COULD be interesting it’s not bc they didn’t do shit with it #and fanon doesn’t do fun shit with it either #nothing about how tim in his most manic state did shit he doesn’t want to remember shit he’d HATE other ppl for #just “’remember what I did to ur base Ra’s? mess with me again and see what I do next 😼’ #like ok can you be real and genuine? #anyways I think #AND NOT IN A HATER WAY #Tim would benefit from being humbled #like genuinely I detest the world can’t move without tim running it but the idea that tim thinks that way is so good to me #and #I think next step being him realizing that’s not true would be a BIG push for his character #bc like I said tim Stans are right in the fact that he’s stale as hell rn #but that’s bc there’s nothing to say bc there’s nowhere to go! y’all want a tim action story where he shows off how badass he is reread #the Bruce quest and maybe it’ll remind you he’s not ceo lmao but anyways there’s nothing internal to say about him atp bc nobody wants to #say anything that’s not propping him up. same with Bruce! Gotham war was such a copout but it’s like ppl are saying he’s stale and it’s bc #god forbid he makes a lasting fumble. and I’m not under the illusion this is new I’m just saying it’s weird that fandoms not clocking it #anywayyys I really do like thinking about the No killing rule and how different it manifests for each perosn #like the way each distinct difference tells u so much about them #UGH ONLY SLIGHTLY RELATED BUT DUUUUUKE BEING LIKE IDGAF ABOUT GUNS LIKE UR SO REAAAL #anyways enough tim positivity for today FUCK THAT NIGGA!

[rvb-is-gay]

ok so now that the final episode of rvb0 is out for everyone, lets get into some discussion about it! please note that post isnt a topic of debate but rather just my personal thoughts about everything, so dont go arguing in the replies

(fair warning ahead of time for any fans, this is mostly criticism and negative feelings about it, so keep scrolling if you dont wanna read it)

When RVB0 was first announced, I remember everyone was first upset that the Reds and Blues weren't in it, including me. But now that I've watched the whole thing, I can say with confidence that my only issue with RVB0 isn't the lack of the Reds and Blues, but rather everything. the dialogue, some of the animation, the characters, the delivery, the pacing, the ridiculous amount of clichés, etc. I don't dislike RVB0 just because there's no Reds and Blues. I dislike it because I just found the entirety of it bad.

When I first started watching it, I went in with an open mind that maybe this season could actually be really good. I’d also be lying if I said that there wasn't a single scene that I liked. There were actually a few, but they still didn't make up for just the overall badness of the season. But please note that I don't blame the voice actors for any of this or even just Torrian Crawford for the season coming out a giant mess. Many people worked for this season and always had the opportunity to improve or change things but didn't. But anyways, let’s get into some of the criticisms I have for this season.

1. Smaller and more opinion oriented criticisms

This isn’t really criticism or anything important, but rather just a few things I found a bit weird to me personally.

First, the term “ragtag team of misfits” was used to describe Shatter Squad (and was even actually said out loud by One in the last episode, which sounded just so cliché and dumb in my opinion). I don't think this describes them at all?? Everyone has, at the very least, decent relationships with each other (save for One and East who were competitive with each other (which I also fucking hate in RVB that all the girl characters are always competitive with each other)), but that still doesn't really fit the term ragtag) and they all fight very well. I think ragtag fits the Reds and Blues more than it does Shatter Squad; they're bad at fighting, they argue and fight all the time, they're idiots, and that's why we love them. If they had just stuck with “a team of misfits”, that would've made more sense, but again, this is more of a personal opinion than genuine criticism.

Second, I don’t really like the aesthetics this season had. Everything felt a bit too neon and bright and then some stuff just felt like it came straight out of World of Warcraft or something. It didn’t really feel like RVB.

Third, my feelings about Carolina constantly calling Wash David can be summed up by what Michael said in the first episode of Halo 4 LASO: “Now we’re just gonna throw his name around all willy nilly. It used to be a secret.” When someone is called by their real name in RVB or just any story in general where everyone goes by code names, it’s usually a big deal and indicates something serious. Carolina wore out Wash’s name the first time she said it and it just got more and more irritating from then on out and lost its value.

Fourth, who was the blue and purple soldier in the first teaser we got? Was that One? Did they decide to change her armour colour? I don’t know, I just randomly remembered that and thought it was weird but I guess it must’ve just been a colour change.

Now, onto the more serious criticism.

2. Animation and dialogue

The second thing I wanna talk about is the animation. Don't get me wrong, the fighting animation is probably the best compared to everything else and it was pretty good to watch, but the talking and idle animations and gestures were..... kinda yikes. I know that it could be chalked up to “well we’re not used to seeing animated gestures since all of RVB usually has everyone just holding their gun and using the regular Halo models” but there were still some pretty bad parts.

Take the scene from Encounter at 3:26 as an example (I uploaded the scene to YT to put here, but obviously it was blocked for copyright):

This scene is probably one of the worst when it comes to not only the animations, but the dialogue, pacing, and delivery. When I first saw this, I honestly laughed. Here's a list of my problems with this scene and what made it so laughable:

The overexaggerated hand gestures. I get that because everyone's in armour and a helmet, it can be hard to show expression, but this feels like a bit much. Especially when One says “what? You’re pulling us off the mission? You cant do that!” I think that one scene in season 15 when Grif stays behind on Iris while everyone leaves and it slowly zooms in on Simmons’ visor somehow does a lot better at expressing feelings than this.

East immediately making the connection between Axel and Zero feels weird. I don't know if its just me who feels this way, but I think it should've been a little bit longer before she immediately is just like “you know Zero don't you”

Axel saying “I... I do... I did”  also sounds weird and like he was trying a bit too hard to sound dramatic. I don't really know how to describe it its just such a weird delivery of the line.

The way they all immediately start yelling at each other.

One saying “Axe, I trusted you” right after saying “tell us the truth”. Girl, you gave him no opportunity to explain and just immediately jumped to not trusting him anymore. Speaking of which, I don't think this was ever really mentioned again and had no meaning or importance to it.

The echoing of “I trusted you” also feels cliché to me, but this is more of a minor thing.

I think this one comment on one of the episodes on the RT site that says the dialogue “seemed acted rather than natural. It didn't really sound like how people normally talk, more how actors talk in plays” is how I feel about all of the dialogue in RVB0.

3. The villains

Zero and Diesel both felt like they didn't really have any motivation at all for being villains. Phase is probably the best when it comes to this. She was essentially abused by her father as a child and forced to undergo being experimented on. This is an actual good and understandable motivation.

Diesel we know basically nothing about, and then on the other hand, all Zero wants is power. But for what? Why? I can understand that power is a pretty common thing for people to want, but it still kind of felt like there wasn't really anything there.

Some previous good villains in RVB include:

Temple: Temple witnessed his best friend be brutally murdered right in front of him by 2 soldiers who didn't give a shit and just left him to die, especially right after he told him he was having a baby. Of course it’s understandable that he has a hatred of Freelancers after this. Any normal person would.

Felix: Felix was probably the best villain of all of RVB, to be honest (right beside the Director). He was just somehow so likeable and had so much personality, despite being an asshole. His ultimate motivation was money and being rich, which is another thing I can understand; the more money you have, the more you can essentially do whatever you want and live in luxury. I mean, even so many people in real life do horrible things just for money. I don't even have to give examples for this. Felix in general is also just a psychopath.

The Director: The whole reason the Director did what he did was because he lost the person he loved most in the world: his wife. He was willing to do literally anything to bring her back, leading to all of his actions in the Project Freelancer saga. You can find many examples of movie/TV/book/etc characters/villains seeking vengeance as a result of loss of a loved one and grief. Despite being a horrible person, the Director actually managed to be a villain you could even sympathize with, making him even better.

Sharkface: Although a bit of a more minor villain, similar to Temple, Sharkface is a villain because he wants revenge on the people that killed his team, the people he considered to be the only family he’s ever had.

4. Tucker & the swords

The fourth thing I wanna talk about is the whole thing with Tucker and the swords. I always found it kinda weird how both Tuckers sword and now Locus’ sword in the chorus trilogy were the same, but then in RVB0, Zero’s sword looks and acts completely different, but that might just be a little nitpick of mine.

As for Tucker, it was so good to see him. Although I don’t know if it was just me, but he seemed a little OOC. What I didn't like about seeing Tucker again was that he did literally nothing the entire episode. He was useless. He said “I can fight” at one point but then all he does during the battle is get held at knife point, run away, and then get stabbed and have his sword taken. Tucker isn't an amazing fighter, but he’s definitely a lot more capable than just this. We’ve seen him in action many times and I just feel like he could've done a bit more. It almost feels like he was purposefully nerfed and tossed aside just to advance the plot.

Another thing that I and probably a lot of people are upset about is the fact that Tucker might not even own his sword anymore?? When East stabbed him, he apparently died and the sword was rebound to Phase, but it wasn't very clear that this was the case. Although the beginning of the next episode starts with hospital beeps and a flatline, I don't think it was still really clear enough that Tucker actually died long enough for Phase to reclaim the sword because I saw a handful of people confused in the comments and, like me, even thought it was just bad writing at first and that the writers completely forgot about the rules of the sword established over several prior seasons.

When in the hospital, Wash tells Tucker that he almost died. Although I actually liked this scene because it was nice to see wash and tucker bantering again, I think it could've been made better and made the plot clearer if instead of saying he almost died, Wash said something along the lines of “Tucker, you died. Your heart stopped, but they were able to bring you back thanks to their advanced medical tech” and then in response Tucker freaks out because that means his sword will now work for Phase and now they know how urgent the situation is.

I really really hate that Phase just has Tucker’s sword now and nothing is even said about it. If Tucker was to give his sword away to someone, I think many people would prefer that it was at least someone close to him, like Junior for example, but instead it goes to a random girl he hardly knows.

5. Pacing

The fifth thing I wanna talk about is the pacing. This season was definitely a lot shorter than normal and I think that’s one of the things that really prevented it from being good. The entire story just feels rushed and while I understand that it can be really difficult to build a good story and characters in such a short time, I think there’s still ways you can do it without it feeling like there’s so much missing. I think the long intros and outros are also responsible for less time and maybe they should’ve considered cutting them to give more actual episode time. Here’s a few things that were poorly done as a result of bad pacing:

The final battle against Zero: The whole battle just somehow felt like a typical video game boss battle that ends super quickly to me. Shatter Squad didn’t even defeat Zero, he just up and got disintegrated or whatever from Black Lotus.

Shatter Squad giving up on their mission: After receiving the silly deep voice filtered message from Zero, everyone on Shatter Squad just immediately gives up on finding him.

One’s speech: One’s speech wasn’t awful or anything and I didn’t really have any problems with the speech itself, but rather just how quickly the team went from “we can’t do it.. it’s over..” to “you’re right! I’m in! Let’s go get them!” Compare this to Doc and Sarge’s speech to the Reds and Blues after Church and Carolina leave in season 10 episode 20. It just felt a lot more genuine (this is probably because the Reds and Blues had a lot more time to be developed, though) and was only given after some time passed rather than 2 seconds later. The scene and context also transitioned well into it and at first, nobody was on board with what Doc was saying, which is more realistic in my opinion. People’s minds won’t just instantly change, they’re still gonna think about it and maybe have a few doubts at first.

Phase and West: During their fight, West talked a lot about how he regrets giving Phase away to Starlight, that he won’t hurt her, and is even willing to die for her. Their scene together ends with Phase punching him in the head and then leaving to join the others and nothing else about them is mentioned. We don’t know if Phase forgave him or not, we don’t know how West feels, etc.

Tucker’s sword: Phase still has Tucker’s sword and like the scenario with West, nothing about it is mentioned. We don’t know what she’s going to do with it, if she’s going to keep it, if Tucker’s gonna do anything about it, etc.

6. Clichés

Clichés aren’t inherently bad and can be really impactful and good if done right. But when it comes to RVB0, it’s jampacked with clichés that aren’t good. Here are a few examples:

Everyone gives up until a speech is given: All of the points for this are the same as above, but I wanted to include this scene as a cliché as well.

Every female character is competitive with each other: RVB falls into this a lot, like I mentioned earlier. It happens again with East and One, although luckily they seem to resolve it, but not until literally the end of the season.

West’s fit about East: All of the lines and delivery in this scene were just atrocious and cheesy. I think West’s dialogue just could’ve been a bit more original, but instead we’re given this boring predictable “I won’t lay a hand on her. I promised her. I promised her mother. I promised she’d be safe” spiel that has no emotion to it in his voice.

The whole “I got this, you go ahead” thing: This isn’t like a super cliché thing, but I found it pretty interesting how it happens twice in the same episode.

I think this is pretty much all I can think of at the moment. If I think of anything else, I’ll add onto this. Overall, I think RVB0 would’ve done a lot better as just an RVB spinoff so that it could have more episodes and seasons dedicated to developing characters and a good plot. I’m really disappointed with this season and I hope whatever comes next is better than what RVB0 was. I hope the team that worked on it can learn a few things that come from the good and valid constructive criticism given to them. And if I had to pick, I think I’d say Raymond was my favourite out of all the new characters. He just felt the most relatable and realistic to me.

#rvb crit #rvb0 critical #rvbz critical #post #mod sol

[adarlingwrites]

Absolution

Summary:

noun: formal release from guilt, obligation, or punishment

The Capital Wasteland lauded the Lone Wanderer as a hero, a Messiah, a savior who's willing to give her life for the Good Fight. Beyond the legends, the propaganda, and the mythification that surrounded her legacy, there is only one person who knew her bare soul. She gave him his absolution, and now he will fight for hers.

I

September 5, 2277.

That night was the night I learned her name.

Business was slow, with only a few customers dragging their feet in. Patchwork stumbles in and tries to get yet another drink. Ahzrukhal wasn’t amused in the slightest, not at all. Patchwork’s tab already exceeded what he deemed acceptable. So, he turned to me.

“Charon?”

“Yes.”

“Teach our friend Patchwork here a lesson.”

“As you command.”

The poor bastard tried to backpedal away when I advanced on him and grabbed him by the collar. I dragged him out the door, and without warning, threw him over the balcony. The ghouls beneath steered clear, knowing better than to intervene. As I went down the stairs to torment him further, he tried screaming for help, but nobody came. This is our normal.

As I walked over to break his fingers, a shout rang from Tulip’s shop. The voice isn’t a ghoul’s.

“Whoa, what the hell?!”

It’s Vaultie, holding a baseball bat and running towards us. The kid had stuck a few bits of armor over that stupid bright blue jumpsuit and a rusty assault rifle lie holstered on her back. She still hasn't discarded the bright red cap, though, and her dark hair was tied in a loose bun. Still a combat hazard.

“Smoothskin,” Tulip rasps, running after her. “Don’t. It’s better you stay out of it.”

She whirls to the ghoulette. “Why would I? You’re telling me you guys just let people get beaten up in the open around here?”

“Keep your voice down, Percy,” Tulip warns, placing a rotting hand on Vaultie’s forearm, and Vaultie didn’t flinch when the ghoulette touched her.

So, her name is Percy. Sounds right for a rough little tomboy like her, but I have no reason to say that out loud. I stayed silent.

“Charon doesn’t act on his own accord. He’s under Ahzrukhal’s orders.”

The kid brushes Tulip off, but the action is without malice or disgust. I was in the middle of pulling Patchwork’s middle finger off when she barged over. “Hey. What did he do to deserve that?”

“Not your business,” I grunted, dropping the finger to the ground. “Talk to Ahzrukhal.”

“Hhhrkn- I asked for ‘nother drink but I forgot I didn’t pay my tab,” Patchwork gurgles, limply hanging as my free hand held his arm up.

“All that for a bar tab?” Percy remarks, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the bat harder. “How much does he owe?”

“Ask Ahzrukhal.”

That bleeding heart of hers will get her killed one day, but I felt some relief as she ran up the stairs and into the Ninth Circle. I stopped beating up the sorry drunk and hauled him back up to the bar. Inside, Percy had her palms pressed against the bartop. Ahzrukhal has a smug look plastered on his face as he counts caps.

“Well ma’am, it’s certainly enough to cover Patchwork’s tab here, yes.”

Vaultie turns her back from the bastard and looks at Patchwork, then to me. “You heard him. I’ll take him to Doc Barrows.”

“Oh, and Charon?” Ahzrukhal rasped with that grin that I wanted to punch off of his damn face.

“Yes?”

“Give Patchwork a parting jab.”

"Very well."

I can’t disobey. My fist connected with the drunk’s face and the only satisfaction I can get out of it is from imagining it was Ahzrukhal’s. Percy, quick on her feet, caught him before his body could hit the floor, setting him on one of the chairs.

“You’re quite an ass, Mister Ahzrukhal, you know that?” The glare she was giving him made my fingers itch for my shotgun out of reflex. Ahzrukhal is my contract holder, so if Vaultie here rips his throat out with her teeth like the provoked animal that she looked like at the moment, I’d be forced to shoot her down.

“Miss, let me make some things clear here,” Ahzrukhal starts, holding a shiny cap against the light. “This is my bar, and I will do as I please to keep my establishment free from riffraff. Patchwork here is one of them, and I will utilize Charon if necessary to remind him that I do not tolerate such things. Perhaps this will serve as a lesson the next time he tries to drink without pay.”

The vaultie only scoffed in response and hauled the bleeding ghoul to his feet and supported him with one shoulder. How she could not gag after breathing in the combined smell of rot, blood, and alcohol from Patchwork is beyond me.

“Utilize? You make him sound like a… like a machine,” she mutters in disbelief. She doesn’t even flinch when Patchwork bleeds on her relatively clean jumpsuit; her eyes were trained on my employer.

“We are not having this conversation about Charon again, Miss.”

“Whatever. You’ll have your day of reckoning.”

Those words sounded like fucking music to my ears. Yes, he will, I thought to myself. Vaultie has guts, I’ll give her that.

It almost makes me want to like her.

As she left, I returned to my usual corner. “Feisty girl,” Ahzrukhal pipes up as he neatly lines up his caps in the cash register. “You know, Charon, that girl has been rooting around for information on how to obtain your contract.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t feel the need to.

September 14, 2277.

Within the span of two weeks, Percy is becoming a regular sight in Underworld. I heard the patrons talking about how she would come to trade with Tulip with the items she scavenged from the Wasteland. How she can find all those supplies is a mystery. Maybe she’s just born lucky. At night, she spends an hour in the Ninth Circle despite her dislike for Ahzrukhal, smiles and waves at me as she leaves, but I don’t acknowledge her, and the little frown she makes when I ignore her tells me about her dismay.

Tonight, she walks in the Ninth Circle with new gear and a bag of caps. She finally got rid of that ridiculous blue jumpsuit and the red cap, switching to a dark, form-fitting armor. I can’t put my finger on it, but my brain itches further the more I look at her. Then I see it, the red star behind her nape against the black.

It stirs something in my decrepit mind.

Gunfire, smoke, powder. Snow. A foreign language I can’t understand-

A bark from Ahzrukhal snapped me out of my thoughts.

“Charon. Get your thumb of out your ass. I said, accompany Miss 101 out of Underworld.”

Percy is bristling at him, glasses sliding to the tip of her nose. “You said a thousand caps, you rat bastard.”

“I’m sorry ma’am, Charon’s contract is far more valuable to me than a thousand caps. Unless, you want to reconsider the offer I gave you previously?” the fucker rasped, mockery dripping from his voice.

“Screw you,” Percy spits at him, gathering her caps. She walks away, shoulders tense as I follow her out of the bar.

“No need to throw me over the balcony, big guy. I’m going,” she snaps at me. Big guy. That was the first time she used that nickname.

With her back turned on me, I follow the curve of her spine down to her legs with my eyes and regret doing so. The previous itch I had in my brain when I see her armor-clad body is replaced with something more primal. Fuck, how old is this kid? If there was any doubt on whether I was going to burn in hell, it’s gone.

Then, the conditioning kicks in, and I tear my eyes away from her. No time for thinking. No time for imagining. Follow your orders.

Flailing and cursing when I carried her over my shoulder, she uselessly beat my back with her fists as I started carrying her out of the city. The onlookers knew better than to get involved, as usual. Ironic, how she intervened on behalf the well-being of one of Underworld’s citizens, yet they didn’t grant her the same courtesy. Later, I’d learn that this is just the beginning of her tendency to get into one-sided dealings, where everyone else just takes from her.

“Hey! Get your hands off me, my legs still fucking work,” she growls, trying to break free from my grip.

“Can’t you hear me?” she asks again as we are halfway through the concourse. “Oh, right. Ahzrukhal doesn’t like you talking to us strangers. Figures.” She stopped beating my back and just pressed her elbow against my shoulder and propped her face up with her hand. From an outsider’s point of view, we probably looked amusing.

Willow, the city sentry, lets out a tut when I tossed Percy out the door like a ragdoll, and she landed on her ass.

“Pissed Ahzrukhal off, tourist?”

“Yep. I’ll be back,” Percy hisses, rubbing the sore spot on her body. Again, I regret looking. I should’ve just slammed the door right there. “I just need another thousand freakin’ caps.”

“Good luck with that,” Willow chuckles, and resumes her patrol.

With Vaultie gone, the usual peace and quiet came back, save for the crackle of the radio on Ahzrukhal’s bartop. The usual music ends, and a news broadcast comes in.

“Men and ladies, boys and girls, prepare to be astounded, bedazzled, and otherwise stupefied! I am Three Dog, your master of ceremonies! Seems we've got - dadadadada - a bit of news, Just listen to this!”

Just great. What settlement got fucked over by raiders now?

“Remember that kid from Vault 101? Apparently, she ran into some trouble with what little law they had in Megaton. The gal beat the proprietor of the local saloon, Colin Moriarty, to death, with a baseball bat. Whaaat?! But wasn’t this the same gal who deep-sixed the live atomic bomb in the center of town out of the kindness of her heart? Why did she murder one of the town’s residents? Well, here’s the catch! When town sheriff Lucas Simms came to apprehend her, the bar employees came to Miss 101’s defense and claimed she was protecting one of them from the owner’s brutal beating. Hey, you stepped in when you thought it was necessary, 101. Some folks would rather turn their heads away at the sight of injustice, but you didn’t. No judgment here. And now, for some music.”

Huh.

For the next few hours, images of her danced behind my eyes. I imagined Percy executing Ahzrukhal with a baseball bat, just like she did to that other bar owner in the news. Me putting a boot print on his face and Percy smashing his shelf of Centaur piss while the worm whined. Unloading shotgun shells into Ahzrukhal’s ugly mug as Percy poured alcohol all over the countertop and setting it on fire. All of it involves ending Ahzrukhal in a variety of satisfying ways with the vaultie at my side. It’s a dangerous pastime. I should not feel any attachment to anyone but my employer. The contract holder has my absolute loyalty, but she’s not that person.

I really want to like her.

September 16, 2277.

When she returned two days later with a thousand more caps, I decided that I do.

Percy, brimming with enthusiasm, walked over to my corner, and before I could dismiss her, she held out my contract, my paper soul, right in front of my eyes. Then, she speaks.

“Slow down, big guy,” she chuckled, smiling. That damn smile again.  “I have good news. I’m your new employer.”

It was good fucking news indeed.

“You purchased my contract from Ahzrukhal? So, I am no longer in his service. That is good to know,” I tell her, barely containing the relief in my voice.

“Please, wait here. I must take care of something.” A knowing smile spreads across my new employer’s lips as I whip out my shotgun.

“Ahzrukhal, I was told that I was no longer in your service,” I rasp, a pleasant sensation blooming in my chest.

“That’s right, Charon. Have you come to say goodbye?”

There it is again, the fucking mocking tone in his voice. Knowing how much he pissed Percy off, he’s probably planning something, the fucking cheat. My new employer would probably turn up dead and face first in the dirt as soon as I stopped watching her. I can’t let that happen.

“Yes.”

Two blows to the head. I unloaded two shells on that asshole, one to kill him, and one out of spite. It felt fantastic. My hands were still shaking when I returned my shotgun to its holster.

“Alright, let’s go.”

Percy saunters over, eyes wide, and takes in all the carnage before her. She whistled and pats my arm almost too affectionately.

“Wow. Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

#lone wanderer #female lone wanderer #charon #fallout charon #charon fallout #oc: percy zhou #fanfic: absolution #series: through river acheron #fallout 3 #fallout 3 fanfic #fallout #fallout fanfic #writers on tumblr

[engagemachine]

@valyriansword and I have been talking about TLJ and it’s been the most rewarding/validating conversation and I’M SO GRATEFUL to have someone who is able to express how they feel (AND HOW I ALSO FEEL) so articulately. I’m just so excited because walking out of that theater was such a conflicting experience and I didn’t know how I felt or how I was supposed to feel or what to make of what I’d just seen, but I feel more at “peace” after discussing so thoroughly the film’s high and low points. I’ve also just come back from seeing the film for a second time and feel that I’m better able to express a lot of my thoughts.

So with all of that being said, SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF THINGS KATRINA SAID and then my own additions added on at the end (spoilers ahead):

“what I really disliked was the little “oh I feel the force” joke, mostly because it felt like I was seeing Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill fooling around then actual Rey and Luke. I don’t know, the humor did not work for during a lot of parts.” –This is something I echoed several times to different people after seeing the film, because there were a couple points in the film where the humor felt entirely misplaced and even inappropriate at times. The scene where Rey is meditating on the rock and thinks she is feeling the Force (when in actuality it is Luke waving a plant over her hand) was one of those scenes that felt overtly comical. I don’t appreciate humor when it feels so forced. There were moments meant to be funny that simply did not feel genuine. Maybe the humor felt oddly placed at times because there wasn’t really time to properly laugh over it before the characters were moving on and were back into serious mode. The “reaction time” felt cut short, in a sense, and I’ve never seen that happen in a film before.

“Yeah the pulling her [Rey] around the room stuff was weird. He [Snoke] was the most one-dimensional character in TFA but I liked him so much better back then? I liked how mysterious he was? But here he was SUCH a twirling-mustache villain in this movie, and he talked way too much. Actually, everyone in this movie talked too much. what made TFA so great was the subtext, the things /not/ said, like the interrogation room scene, peppered with so many ambiguous moments “don’t be afraid I feel it too” “I see it, I see the island”…so ripe with tension because of that, and so magical. But this movie kinda broke the fourth wall a few times and was very self-aware and I was not a fan of that.” –I firstly wanted to address Snoke, because I agree full-heartedly with what Katrina said about him being such a mustache-twirly villain in TLJ. He was mysterious in The Force Awakens, and while I don’t think anyone really liked him much in TFA, he was, at least, much more threatening and scary than he ever was in TLJ; I think there was some initial disappoint in seeing him in non-hologram form—before, he was only this crackly, large shadow figure. Now we’re seeing him in all of his full glory, and not only is he wearing this sparkly, gold bathrobe, (which: what the FUCK?) but he’s talking way too much. The speech he delivers moments before he is killed probably bothers me more than anything else he said. He goes on and on about how he sees everything, that nothing surprises him… and then is killed by the lightsaber sitting next to him. It was too easy. I also thought him pulling Rey around the room was very strange, perhaps it was the way it was filmed, but there was just something off about it to me.  

About characters saying too much—I’ve never agreed with a comment more. There was so much dialogue that was just flat-out bad, so many moments that felt so strangely out of character. I think my biggest grievance with the dialogue was that a lot of it felt so circular. (The whole film felt circular, but I’ll save that for later) in that it never actually accomplishes anything or establishes a theme that we didn’t already know. Certainly the most revealing dialogue came from Kylo and Rey’s shared moments. But I’m still scratching my head over some of the dialogue between Rey and Luke, and the scene on Ahch-to where we’re led to believe that Rey’s parentage is about to be revealed, and then… isn’t. What was the point of the multiple reflections of Reys? Even the moment between Yoda and Luke wasn’t as impactful as it could have been—the piss-poor dialogue being the causative factor, in my opinion.

There are several other moments where I wished the actors had been given the ability to just act—this is one of the most talented ensembles of actors in a single film, and their freedoms to do what they do best have been stripped from them, and they’re instead forced to spout all this useless dialogue that doesn’t really advance the plot, and that doesn’t reveal to us anything we don’t already know.

Yoda’s speech wasn’t all bad—what he said about failing to teach your failures, and how that can be just as harmful as hiding them completely was very poignant, I thought. 

“Rian just seemed weirdly obsessed with the Resistance storyline when it was a much simpler, off-to-the-side thing before. I came in ready to see a movie about Rey’s growth as a person, learning the ways of the force, learning about balance, having mixed feelings about Kylo. instead it was more like… “you’re a MONSTER… but I forgive you and I want to save you and I’ll recklessly give myself up to the first order just to be with you, baby” which. was so. out of character. I had way more issues with that than with the force bond itself. And then the rest of the movie was a cheesy story about how heroic the resistance is and a tiny subplot about Rey bickering with retired Luke. Who apparently disconnected from the force but then reconnected with no issues?” –I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: there was no forward momentum in this film, no real advancement in the plot beyond what happens to Kylo, and I’m so baffled as to why. The Resistance spent the entire film running away from the First Order (all on the premise that their fuel supply was running low, which… what???), a storyline that could have been effectively told in under 15 minutes.

I’m also crushed by what was done with Finn. Such a central character in TFA, in TLJ, he was reduced to completing some side quest that ended up having no relevance to the film. And why the fuck did Rey and Finn NEVER EVEN SPEAK? They hugged, yes, but the fact that no dialogue was shared between them practically kills me. If Poe and Rey can share a split-second of dialogue, surely that same courtesy could have been extended to Finn and Rey, who share one of the most beautiful friendships in the Star Wars universe.

Katrina pointed out something else that I would have loved to of seen, which is more of an internal struggle within Rey, specifically her growth as a Jedi, and my desire to see more conflict between her and the Dark side. There was so much conflict driving her in TFA, and in TLJ it felt as if her conflict was presented and then solved within an hour into the film, tied off with a neat little bow on top, and that was that. I just feel very sad for her character. I wanted more for her story.

As for Luke, which I’ll get to more in a minute—it goes without saying that I am sad about what became of him in this film as well, everything from his portrayal to his subsequent death. (Which, by the way: WHY MUST THIS NEW TRILOGY KILL OFF EVERY SINGLE TRIO MEMBER FROM THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY. W H Y.)

“Yeah Luke was extra and I feel like that Fashion statement was the only truly in-character moment for him. I feel like they did not do him justice, certainly not enough justice for him to be offed in the end like that. It’s weird because with Han I felt his death so, so deeply, even when I didn’t know anything about him, but with Luke I was just way too “the FUCK” to really react emotionally.” –This is exactly how I felt about Luke’s death, which was so jarring in a way that’s difficult to even put into words. Luke deserved a proper burial, something commemorative, something honorable, something more than just a split second scene of him disintegrating into dust, and his Jedi robe mystically blowing off into the wind. Darth Vader got a proper burial, it just stands to reason that Luke should have gotten one too. I felt like I’d been robbed of the moment to properly mourn Luke’s loss, Luke—the character who is arguably the centerfold for the entire Star Wars universe.

Some of my other grievances include whatever the fuck that casino scene/subplot was supposed to be, which was just so messy and jarring inside the Star Wars universe that I didn’t feel like I was watching a Star Wars film at all. I hate admitting to experiencing boredom in a Star Wars film, but both times I’ve watched that scene, I found my thoughts drifting to ways they could have better utilized that time and space in the film. It’s such a tragedy to me.

Another thing that I strongly disliked—and I wasn’t able to put my finger on this until the second viewing—but some of the transitions are so poorly done, I couldn’t help but notice how much they stand out, and not in a good way. There’s something very clunky and awkward about how the scenes cut from one to the next, it doesn’t feel smooth and organic like in TFA. I felt as if I was being tugged from one storyline/set of characters to the next and then back again, leaving me with a sensation that felt almost like whiplash.

Which brings me to my final point, which is that TLJ is simply not a cohesive film within the Star Wars universe. It doesn’t feel like a Star Wars film to me, and that perhaps is what saddens me more than anything else. I know a lot of fans criticized J.J. for what they assumed to be his apparent lack of imagination, or his lack of risk-taking within the Star Wars universe when it came to TFA, but what I appreciated were his subtle nods to the previous SW films, I appreciate him reinventing the Star Wars universe while still maintaining the feel and tone of the previous films. It felt honorary and appropriate.

To me, TLJ falls into a pitfall that I’ve seen too many times before, which is that it is extremely difficult to carry on a story and trilogy of films that is cohesive when you have different directors overseeing them. Regardless of the decisions that were already predetermined at the time that the plans for this new trilogy were mapped out, there’s no doubt that the director oversees and greatly affects the overall tone and feel of the film.

And look, this isn’t a totally awful film—I think we can all agree, collectively, that while the prequels are pretty bad, we like them because they’re Star Wars films, because we grew up watching them and there’s a pretty strong sense of nostalgia we’ve tacked onto them. Maybe in some years’ time, The Last Jedi will acquire that same sense of nostalgia. One can only hope. 

#Star Wars #The Last Jedi #spoilers #don't want this to wind up in the SW tags but do wanna have my bases covered so I don't spoil anybody #was going to talk about all the high points and the things I loved but this is almost 2k so like... #maybe in a separate post #there are lots of things I Loved #namely Adam Driver's incredible performance

[mysticdragon3md3]

I'm not ready to stop hating Akechi, but I like seeing people get over their hatred of Akechi.  I like seeing more positivity in the world.   And I would say that "it gives me hope that maybe I too will stop hating a character and maybe will like Akechi when I play P5R, or at least not be enraged by Akechi so that I will be ABLE to be play P5R"

[Hey, Tumblr. Why aren’t you showing my cut?  There’s supposed to be a cut here.  I don’t want to traumatize people who love Akechi!  Don’t show them my Akechi-hate under this cut!  Damn it!  Let his fans go unhindered by my madness!  BTW Akechi has 2 Figma and 1 Nendoroid, if you guys could go buy them, GoodSmileCompany might be encouraged to make more P5 figures, and I’d really like that. ^.~]

...But truthfully, when I remember WHY I hate Akechi, that he hits one of my biggest pet peeves, that he's a bully, that he's unnecessarily malicious, and I remember HOW MUCH that behavior out of any character instantaneously ENRAGES me, I can't wish to stop hating Akechi.  He acts like an asshole, so he is an asshole, and I don't want to get to like him.  ...But I also want to someday play P5R.  Maybe not on the Western release date.  Maybe not even after I buy it during the following Black Friday sales.  Maybe I'll wait 2 or even 3 years to buy P5R on a Black Friay sale.  That's how little my excitement for P5R became when I learned the story changed to mostly be about Akechi.  (And I just wasn't hyped for Kasumi and she was just taking over all the promo for P5R, and addmittedly, I was getting jealous of the spotlight being taken away from Joker.)  

But sometimes I think about what it would have been like if my introduction to Akechi was not him bullying Makoto for no reason, if it wasn’t his presence constantly threatening and endangering Joker’s friends with his suspicions.  I wonder what my experience of his character would have been like if he had only the introduction from the anime adaptation of P5. Would the me in that parallel universe only focus on how much I love Soichiro Hoshi, since he voiced my favorite character from my previous OTP before P5's AkiRyu?  Would I have gone so far as to ship Akechi with anyone????  I honestly can't extricate Akechi's personality from his introductory scenes.  And those scenes were all about him being a bully and a threat to my friends (I mean, after establishing that he's high school prodigy consulting for Sae).  To me, his personality was established as being a malicious little bully, and every word out of his mouth was just so fake and plastic (thank you, Robbie Daymond, for so perfectly conveying that with every line), that WHO Akechi is is nothing but terrible to me.  Why would I ever want to like a character and personality like that?????  

Maybe the best I can hope for is to just keep cheering on the Akechi fans to enjoy their character and enjoy their ships.  Naw, I also wish, on top of that, to be able to play P5R without feeling icky.  

And I know that some fan of his is going to come up to me and say that “No, once you get to see his sad sad backstory full of angst, you’ll totally be on his side!”  And I’m sorry, but I’m firmly in the camp of “Cool motive; still murder.”  (Which is ironic for me, since I’m ok with characters who murder. I’m just not ok with bullies and people who make the hell that is living, additionally unnecessarily horrifying for people.)  A cool, sympathetic backstory isn’t a reason to get on someone’s side for me.  That is a SUPERVILLAIN’S backstory.  Practically every Batman The Animated Series villain was someone clearly sympathetic and unjustly wronged.  It was a reason for Batman to show them kindness, and I fully believe in the idea of Compassion that Batman TAS embodied (in those first 2 seasons), but it doesn’t mean I’m now cheering on the villain and they’re my favorite character(s) now.  I love martial arts and samurai anime, and there’s this concept of still showing kindness to someone, even while you’re killing the on the battlefield. You can still show sympathetic understanding to a character and not want bad things to happen to them, while continuing to dislike them.  And I save my empathy for real people in real life.  But a fictional character, if I hate their personality and every moment on screen they do something to make the moments more unkind and more horrible, then I don’t care what kind of backstory they’ve got.  Tug at all my heartstrings that you want; if you’re still choosing to act like an asshole, then you’re an asshole.  There are plenty of characters who have equally tragic backstories, who choose to do good and be kind people in “retaliation”:  Batman, Natsume Takashi, Ryuji Sakamoto---hell, ALL THE PHANTOM THIEVES EXCEPT AKECHI.  

Here's an interesting case study.  I used to fucking hate Tsukishima Kei from Haikyuu.  He's a bully and that is my pet peeve.  I mean, I'm maybe 7 episodes into the 4th season of Haikyuu, and I still don't like Tsukishima, but he doesn't bother me so much that I can't watch Haikyuu.  Tsukishima isn't a series-dropper, like Bakugo was for me and Boku no Hero Acaemia.  I can tolerate Tsukishima.  And it really helps that the series put him in his place.  It not only made the underdog that Tsukishima was picking on, into the star of the team and the series, propping Hinata up on a pedestal of his own skills in his own right, but aside from the directing/framing of the series itself, Tsukishima himself learned his place.  Season 2 has him state several times himself that he recognizes that Hinata out-shines him and even intimidates him.  Maybe I'm not so bothered by Tsukishima anymore, because his fangs have been ripped out.  He's not a constant threat of bullying.  More often than not, he's just inconspicuously making snide, but objective comments in the sidelines.  I think that objectivity was key.   It's something I could agree with, even if it was coming out of Tsukishima.  And especially in season 3, when Tsukishima was MVP, I could cheer for him, because his tactics were objectively good and benefited the group.  I didn't grow affinity for him as a person, but as a tool to advance/help the characters I did care about.  But though my tolerance for Tsukishima was growing in terms of utilizing him as a valuable tool, vs liking him as a person, still, my tolerance for him was growing.  And though he was introduced as bullying, _enjoying_ his malice, and often speaking with a superior, condescending tone, after he learned his place, his tone more often became just subdued.  Every word out of his mouth was not jabbing at everyone's weaknesses.  And even when they were, it was now framed with so much comedy, that even in the season 4 ep I watched yesterday, Hinata immediately shut him down.  ---It was pretty funny!  Tsukishima jabbed at Kageyama's weak point, then Hinata immediately jabbed at Tsukishima's weak point.  And maybe that was part of why Tsukishima became tolerable.  He was no longer attacking characters that could be truly emotionally debilitated by his bullying.  Now he mostly pokes at Kageyama, and though Kageyama can angst, I feel like his insides are less fragile than Hinata.  Hinata is Feeling and Emotion at 100%...Kageyama meanwhile, is a little too stupid for that level (which is part of why we love him).  It makes Kageyama more resilient than Hinata.  So for most of the scenes after Tsukishima's character introduction, he bullies Kageyama instead of Hinata, who he bullied during his introduction.  Now, for most of the series, when Tsukishima bullies, he's got equal chance of being bitten back, because his target is Kageyama, not the more vulnerable, "don't you dare hurt my cinnamon roll sunshine child" Hinata.  And Kageyama is more resilient and equally dangerous to Tsukishima.  Nowadays, Tsukishima is just that tall brat off to the side, who is useful sometimes, and I don't resent so much anymore being forced to have bought his Nendoroid out of obligation just to get a full set of the Karasuno team.  

I wonder if I could ever feel that way about Akechi.  (Because I certainly don't want to ever see him as a person enough to ship him or make him an OTP.)  But I wonder if I could ever tolerate Akechi enough, to not be scared-off from playing P5R.  Could P5R even make Akechi tolerable for me?  o.o?????

#confused with myself #rambling #get out of here akechi #please ignore my idiocy #pet peeves #tsukishima kei #processing thoughts

[casualarsonist]

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story review

When Rogue One was released around this time last year, I wasn’t going to be caught dead watching it at a midnight premiere as I had for The Force Awakens. A deep disdain for TFA had settled in during the previous year, and news of reshoots and studio meddling during Rogue One’s production sent the message loud and clear that Disney had finally collated their data following Episode VII’s release and were now using its formula as a template for all further releases; aiming for what I believe to be a lowest common denominator approach had been a massive financial success, so why, as a business, would they want to change that approach? I know that in releasing a stand-alone film, Disney were indeed doing something out-of-the-box, so I can’t reasonably shit on them for EVERY decision they made, but it seemed that even then, my greatest fear was coming to bear - not that they would make shitty Star Wars films, but that they would make middling Star Wars films. And sure enough, the reviews largely bore out my premonitions, describing Rogue One positively but calling it disjointed, unnecessary, and lacking in significance in the same way that Episode VII did (although I would argue that the only thing of significance in TFA’s plot was when it disposed of a pivotal character).

But remember in the last review when I mentioned that hope? That terrible hope drew me back in. For no matter how simpering or weak a live-action Star Wars may be and no matter how hard I resist the pull, my curiosity always gets the better of me in the end. I wasn’t excited for Rogue One - Disney had managed to kill that for me - but I decided to see it none-the-less. And as I walked into the cinema I had this weird sinking feeling in my stomach (Christ I really am a fanboy, aren’t I?) as visions of half-finished plotlines, inconsequential Macguffin superweapons, and so. many. fucking. gags swam in my head. I mean really, the idea for Rogue One is about as safe as one could get given the supposed new ground that was being tread - it’s essentially a recreation/retconning of a backstory that has already been long established, and of which the entirety of the audience knows the end result (my treatise on why prequels are a universally garbage idea is for another article). And as I said, I wasn’t afraid that it would be shit, only that it would be boring and predictable, for again I find myself playing a role I never thought I would play in siding with the George Lucas prequels by asking the question ‘who could have known what any of them were going to be like before they were actually released?’ No-one. 

Who could possibly have seen this coming?

So I sucked it up and went to see Rogue One in a cheap cinema that only charged me six pounds for the pleasure. And after all the build-up and the let down and stupid melodrama regarding an intellectual property that hadn’t released a good film in forty years...I was surprised. A bit. 

I was a bit surprised. 

I was surprised by Riz Ahmed’s genuinely affecting character arc. I was surprised by Darth Vader’s really actually terrifying display of power in a penultimate scene. I was surprised by the narrative stakes established in the latter half of the film. I was surprised by the risk the filmmakers took in deciding the fates of the central characters. And of course it had a lot of problems, and some of the things I liked may be just as easily disliked by others, but when I left the cinema having actually felt real feelings because of the things I’d seen on screen - more than once - I was surprised that Rogue One had actually managed to exceed my expectations. I’ll expand more on this in a second, but first, a snarky plot synopsis:

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (ugh) is the immediate prequel to A New Hope. It opens on an isolated planet on which engineer Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) lives with his wife, and daughter Jyn. Galen is a reknowned polymath and committed pacifist, although you will learn almost nothing of this unless you read the wiki: Rogue One is a Disney Star Wars film, so of course large chunks of important character-building are omitted (because who needs to understand the people in the movie when there’s a blind guy hitting stormtroopers with a stick). Ben Mendelsohn phones in the beta-villain character of Orson Krennic, and kills Jyn’s mother in order to coerce Galen into working on what will be the Empire’s greatest weapon - the Death Star (ugh). Cut to a decade later and Jyn (Felicity Jones) is a stroppy young woman with all the charisma of moist denim. She is reluctantly required to care about the fate of the galaxy, but apparently this is a big problem for her because IGN says she ‘put up walls’. She’s freed from an Imperial labour camp by the dashing and committed rebel Cassian Andor, and brought to Saw Gerrera - a veteran of the clone wars, a close friend of her father’s, and the man who raised her after her Galen was taken. Saw is a character from the Clone Wars animated television series, which every person the audience of this film will definitely have seen, so therefore his backstory is all but omitted as well. Saw is holding captive an Imperial defector who brings word that Galen has left a weakness in the design of the Death Star. The rapidly expanding group of misfits are then tasked with venturing deep into the better half of the film to procure the plans to this superweapon. 

Now to be clear, Rogue One is not at all consistent - certainly less consistent than The Force Awakens. But it does quite a few things that TFA failed to do: be a complete film that managed to successfully close its own story whilst remaining a worthy stepping stone to a larger narrative, for example, or have tangible stakes and a final battle that feels like a genuine struggle against insurmountable odds. It also succeeds in taking a different approach to its tone than Episode VII, not in terms of 'darkness’, but in terms of emotional realism. The characters still have their one-liners and moments of charm, but Diego Luna’s Cassian is a life-long member of the rebel alliance and has a wonderful scene in which he attacks Erso’s flippant attitude towards the work they’re doing, and it feels real. He isn’t gurning like a cartoon character, or trying to be another cooler-than-cool Han Solo - he understands the weight of their mission and that its importance stands above their own individual concerns, and when he convinces Jyn of its importance, he convinces us as well. So too does Riz Ahmed’s defecting Imperial cargo pilot exhibit the characteristic signs of being a real human, and while his background is passed by faster than it ought to be, over the course of the film he undergoes a clear transformation from someone doubting his choice to turn against the Empire out of fear for his own life, to someone who comes to embrace his convictions and find strength in the act of doing what he knows is right. 

Bruh.

Not every character is as well-realised, though. As mentioned, the film’s focal point - Jyn Erso - is as likeable as a cracked plastic toilet seat. Her endless cynical brooding is exhausting, and Jones fails to encapsulate the complex emotional broth that is supposed to be feeding her sanguine emotional state. She is joined in this limbo by Saw Gerrera whose motivations are hidden almost entirely in the animated series. I still can’t figure out why the hell Disney would waste time in reshoots fiddling with the tone of the film instead of fleshing out the characters upon which the entire first half hinges on? In any case, his words and choices carry little weight because we don’t know who the fuck he is or why he makes the decisions he makes.

‘Save the Rebellion! Save yourself!’

The rest of the motley crew also lack the collective core strength of The Force Awakens’ central characters, but that isn’t to say that they are entirely redundant. The second half is widely recognised to be superior, and I believe that’s because it successfully manages to establish a set of compelling stakes, and makes us care about at least some of the characters that are putting themselves at risk. Either that, or it’s because there’s more shooty-bang-bang.

<sexual moaning>

I found I could forgive a lot of this though, because, despite the odd bump in the road, the film ends on a high, and you can’t forget what Rogue One is required to do in its run-time either:

Introduce an ensemble cast and make the audience care about their individual and collective fates,

Simultaneously re-establish certain older characters for a new generation of viewers,

Introduce and acclimate both older and newer audiences to the backstory of this film,

Introduce and acclimate newer audiences to the backstory of the older films,

Provide a self-contained and entertaining narrative that is cohesive with the established canon and appeals to people who wish to enjoy the film on its own merits,

...all in the space of two hours. 

Now let’s look at what The Force Awakens had to achieve:

Don’t be shit. 

Have mass appeal. 

Be a self-contained story that can be enjoyed on its own merits. 

Be a meaningful continuation of the classic character’s stories. 

I’m sure there are many that would disagree with me, but I’d argue that while Rogue One is probably a less cohesive film overall, it achieves more complex goals with greater success than The Force Awakens.

But look, let’s be honest - obviously it’s not Citizen Kane - Rogue One is a film with many faults: the first half, for instance. And while I’d say that even the first half isn’t without merit, it needs to be understood just what you’re getting with this new breed of movies. At the end of the day, no matter how interesting a concept they may have, they’re always going to be tampered with by the studio; no matter the talent of the writer and/or director, they’re always going to fit a certain mandated mould. But the light in the darkness is that we will occasionally get big-budget, live-action films that fall outside the central narrative canon just like this one - films that Disney won’t obsess over quite as much because they don’t ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO MAKE A BILLION DOLLARS IN THE FIRST EIGHT SECONDS OF THE OPENING WEEKEND - and maybe, just maybe, they’ll be alright. And Rogue One is alright. At certain points it’s really good. And it ends whilst riding a wave of energy and emotion that makes you feel like you just watched a decent fucking film, as opposed to The Force Awakens, which feels like a tv serial and you’re supposed to tune in next week to get to the good part of the story. And I think that’s something worth commending. You might disagree, but I think that makes it a good film. 

The CGI Moff Tarkin is a fucking joke, tho.

7/10

Good

#rogue one #star wars #film #review #mads mikkelsen #felicity jones #forrest whitaker #riz ahmed #death star #rebel alliance #empire #darth vader

[acetokens]

My (post game) opinions on the ndrv3 cast

Alright, before the game came out I made this post where I basically vomited out my opinions on how I felt about the newly revealed ndrv3 cast onto a post and it was 50% jokes, 50% venting at fangirls. But now I've actually played the game, delved into the fandom and looked at the changes between the Japanese and English versions, I feel I can make a more genuine list of how I feel about all these good kids that deserved better. I realize my opinions are just that, and I’m probably yelling into the void here. But I felt I had to do a followup to the last post because MY GOD WAS I WRONG ABOUT (MOST) THINGS. I've listed every character in ‘favorite to least favorite’ order for convenience sake. Also this post will contain Spoilers. You have been warned.

Placed under a break for your skipping convenience. Ya’ll are welcome.

1. Himiko Yumeno - I absolutely adore everything about Himiko. Her design, her lazy attitude, her voice (NYEH), her development across the game to become a more driven and energetic person...I found her really funny, really cute and oddly relatable. Himiko is probably in my top 5 DR characters of all time. Which is even crazier when I remember she’s one of the few survivors. I've never had a favorite character who survives a killing game before. So unlike past Dangan Ronpa games where my interest sorta dies off by Chapter 6, Himiko kept me fully invested in everything until the end. She’s a special bean and I love her.

2. Gonta Gokuhara - Continuing the DR trend of a Big Guy who’s a Big Friend, Gonta was so good and so pure and so friendly and deserved so much better. He was always trying to do his best and protect everyone until the very end. R.I.P Gonta. You were a true gentleman. Chapter 4 can suck my ass.

3. Tenko Chabashira - I literally D E S P I S E D Tenko when she was first revealed. I hated her stupid, sexist guts. But come Ndrv3′s release and Tenko turned out to be a dorky, kind, protective and strong willed girl who was skilled enough to be admirable but pathetic enough to be pitiable at the same time. I loved her undying adoration of Himiko (even if it was a bit creepy at times) and the two make a really cute ship. I was expecting some kind of tragic backstory in her FTE’s to explain why she hates men (I believe she mentions a drunken father at one point, and I really wish they went more into that), and the lack of a reasonable explanation for such a strong hatred is what prevents her from sharing (or even taking) the top spot in my book. But misandry aside, Tenko is a Great Gal and I wanna hug her. Although she’d probably bodyslam me.

4. Kirumi Tojou - Kirumi was my favorite when all the characters were revealed at first. I made multiple posts about how I’d die for her and how she was beautiful and whatnot and I was confident about two things when the game came out: 1) She’d be my favorite. And 2) She’d die - following in the footsteps of all previous ‘best girls’ before her. And well, I did really like her. Just...not as much as I thought I would. Kirumi is efficient, brave, elegant, caring and has a really cool design. But her talent occupies most of who she is as a person, and she isn't too dissimilar to most maid characters in anime or manga. So it made her quite predictable at times and I feel they could’ve done so much more with her..ah well. Kirumi is still a super awesome maid and a great Mom. Even if she hates being called that.

5. Kaede Akamatsu - Ahh...I remember when I was wishing someone else would be our protagonist when she was first announced...I think I cursed it. Because Kaede was just *incredible*. She was headstrong, perceptive, kind and left such a big impact on me after Chapter 1. You know that ‘Do It For Her’ meme? Yeah, that about summarizes the rest of Ndrv3 for me. Also Kaede is a huge gay and all the Ndrv3 girls are her girlfriends, pass it on.

6. Ryouma Hoshi - Congratulations to Ryouma for being the only non-standard design character not to be terrible. Far from it, in fact. Ryouma is a badass! A lil’ badass with such a depressing backstory and death that when they showed his motive video, I let out a single manly tear. Or several. Or many. I just...I just want this man to be happy...

7. Miu Iruma - Miu has zipped up and down my lists more than any other character. I had her ranked highly pre-game, lowly during the game, and mid/high post-game. Her design and talent are really cool and she makes several neat inventions over the course of the game, but her personality was so damn prickly and vulgar that I found her really offputting while she was alive. It was only after finishing her FTE’s and seeing her Love Hotel scene that I realized holy shit this girl has some serious trust and abandonment issues. It put all of her behavior in perspective and I began to feel really sorry for her all of a sudden. The hurt/comfort potential here is just WAITING to be uncovered but, alas, most Miu fanfics I've come across are just smut or crackfics. Out of all the Ndrv3 girls, Miu deserves the most headpats. Lots and lots of headpats.

8. Kaito Momota - A good, supportive friend and an effective comic relief. His optimism was a bit grating for me now and again (I never like it when DR plays the ‘’Oh we should just believe in him/her because s/he’s our friend :)’’ card because of how biased it always is. Like, DR will sometimes bend over backwards and completely 180 its own rules to make sure certain characters survive. In a game where finding the truth by objective evidence and fact is key, the times where it just says ‘’nah fuck the truth who needs proof just b e l i e v e’’ just feel so...stupid). But criticisms of the series aside, Kaito is a bro and he’s great. Who doesn’t love the luminary of the stars?

9. Kokichi Ouma - I realise putting the most popular character at 9th is going to make hoards of fangirls despise me but!!!! I don’t dislike Kokichi. In fact I like him a lot. His character is probably the most enjoyable to analyze out of everyone, his interactions are hilarious but also disturbing, the Kokichi memes are funny, and I too think the changes they made to his dialogue in the English translation was utter bullshit (almost as greater character assassination as Mukuro in the DR3 anime). But, I really love most of the characters in the game which leaves characters I’m torn on (like Kokichi or Kiyo) hovering at a position which makes it seem like I dislike them when actually I enjoy them immensely. Just...not as consistently as some of the others. Also Chapter 4 was an kick to the nads that I can’t get over. Sorry Kokichi.

10. Korekiyo Shinguuji - I was prepared to LOVE this guy so much. Seriously. I was ready for the moment where it would turn out creepy noodle man would be turn out to be a Wholesome noodle man. But uh, I think I’m with the rest of the fandom when I say that Korekiyo’s reveal as the SHSL incestuous serial killer made me drop him faster than Kirumi dropped in her execution (sorry). So, now I've establish Kork is the *real* Worst Boy...why did I put him at 10th? Why not 15th? Especially considering he killed Tenko? Truthfully, it’s the memes. Just...the Kork memes. And the fact he’s such an awful person and so obviously a murderer that it becomes genuinely hilarious to me. And his design is my favorite out of all of them. I’m so split on him. So, so split...

11. K1-B0 - Keebo made me laugh a bunch of times, and I enjoyed him more than I thought I would initially. Also his upgrades in Chapter 6 were badass as fuck. But I just don’t really feel the same affection for him like I do other characters. I’m afraid cute robot girls will always be my weakspot. Cute robot boys...not so much. (Although I’m all for Agender! Keebo that’s my jam).

12. Shuichi Saihara - This is the point in my list where I finally reach true neutral. I have no feelings on Shuichi either way. He’s deeper and has a more interesting plot arc than Makoto, which makes him a more effective protagonist in my opinion. But Hinata will always be the best protagonist in my book. And I just keep picturing what it would’ve been like if Kaede survived instead...

13. Rantaro Amami - I never understood why he was uber popular before the game came out and I don’t think I understand why he’s so popular now either. I have no negative feelings on the guy; he’s mysterious and has a ‘big brother’ attitude that I like. But the poor dude just died too quickly for me to feel anything for him. 

14. Maki Harukawa - I only dislike three characters in this game. Maki is one of them. I knew *exactly* what kind of character she was going to be and I knew I wouldn’t like her much and I knew she was going to survive. I didn’t guess she was going to be an assassin! But outside of that, There isn’t much going for me for me. The tsundere is never an archetype I like and the fact the deaths in Chapters 2 and 5 are partly her fault and no one calls her out on it is kinda frustrating also. 

15. Angie Yonaga - Angie’s creepiness is her most appealing trait to me. That should explain how low the bar is set here. Its difficult to write what I feel about her without coming across as a salty atheist (because most of her problems revolve around her use of her god to manipulate people) so I’m just going to leave it there.

16. Tsumugi Shirogane - Y’know I distinctly remember labelling Tsumugi as ‘’Hifumi but likable’’ on my previous Ndrv3 opinion post. I was wrong. She was hovering around mid/low level for me while I played the game, and I often forgot she existed (kinda funny considering her self admitted plainness) and her references were quite obscure a lot of the time so I didn’t find her funny either. I didn’t dislike her, I just forgot her. Then Chapter 6 happened and everyone knows the rest. It’d be difficult to truly ‘like’ Tsumugi after her reveal as the mastermind, after all. Although she was certainly entertaining when she started cosplaying as all the previous characters and I did like how her eyes glowed when she went all DanganRonpa crazy. I did actually consider putting her above Angie for those reasons, but if I dropped Kokichi’s placement because he killed Gonta then I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t slamdunk Tsumugi into last place for technically being responsible for everyones’ deaths as well (well, responsible as part of Team DanganRonpa. I understand it wasn’t *entirely* her behind it all). You know there’s a problem when *Hifumi* looks pure in comparison...

If you read through all of this, then congratulations? I don’t know how to end long ass posts like this...just pretend I said something witty. 

I need sleep.

#Opinions are subjective #no seriously I am so tired #I think my logic trailed off at the end there but you get the picture #Hopefully

[sage-nebula]

I was wondering if you have any thoughts/feelings/theories about Keith from Voltron? I've been reading a few theories on him and his mother and other family members. Do you think there are female galra? Or that Keith and Lotor might be related? Why would Keith's mother leave him but not be with the blade of Marmora? Do you think Keith will have a galra form/power of some kind? I always love to know your thoughts.

Sorry for the late reply! I’ve been busy the past few days, haha. I’ll take these one by one.

“I was wondering if you have any thoughts/feelings/theories about Keith from Voltron?”

Yes.

“Do you think there are female galra?”

Yes, and I think the fact that it was believed (by Allura et al) that Haggar was Galran this entire time supports that theory. I mean, I guess perhaps they thought “the druids” were another alien race, but to my knowledge we don’t have confirmation of that. To my knowledge, it was believed that Haggar was Galran, and that being a “druid” was simply a point to her powers / status / abilities. Allura wouldn’t believe that Haggar was a Galran if it was impossible to have female Galra. So to that end, female Galra do (understandably) exist, and the only reason why we haven’t seen them yet is because pretty much everyone in 80s Voltron was male (to the point where the VLD writers made Pidge female just to put another lady in the cast), and we haven’t had new female Galra introduced yet for whatever reason.

“Or that Keith and Lotor might be related?”

Doubtful. Not only were they not related in any of the previous iterations (though Keith wasn’t Galran there, but still), but I don’t think there’s really anything to be gained by having them be related here. This doesn’t mean that Keith can’t have a Zarkon-supporting mother, of course, but I think that when it comes to Lotor specifically they can still have a very interesting relationship without having them be long lost brothers or something. That said, I would love for Lotor to be a bit like Dagur from the Dreamworks Dragons television series, in the sense that Dagur was always calling Hiccup “brother” and was obsessed with teaming up with / defeating him for the majority of his time on the show. Having Lotor treat Keith similarly purely because Keith is part Galra / a worthy adversary would be fun.

“Why would Keith’s mother leave him but not be with the Blade of Marmora?”

People are complicated (and Galra are people), so there could be a myriad of reasons, and I have a lot of different thoughts on the possible identity of Keith’s mother. A few theories:

She was a member of the Blade of Marmora, and also potentially the original pilot of the Blue Lion (though I prefer to think she was the original pilot of the Red Lion for a few reasons), but she was killed after Keith was sent to Earth. Therefore, while she had the knife and was able to put it in Keith’s possession, she wasn’t alive to explain what it meant.

She was a member of the Blade of Marmora / Paladin of Voltron, but while she wasn’t killed, she had to go into hiding. Keith was sent to Earth (with his father?) while she fucked off to who knows where in order to do … whatever it was she was doing. (Some have speculated that perhaps she was the Galra that Keith saved in the Weblum, so maybe she was trapped there for god knows how long? It’s possible.)

She was a Paladin of Voltron, and specifically the pilot of the Red Lion. When Zarkon betrayed Alfor and defected from the Paladins, she pretended to defect with him in order to be a double agent and help the Altean Kingdom fight back against the Galran Empire. In the midst of this she met and fell in love with (or at least had sex with) a human—Keith’s father—and had Keith. Not wanting Keith to be in danger, she sent him (and his father?) to Earth where he would be away from Zarkon, the Empire, the war, and therefore safe. It’s possible that she intended to go back for him someday. However, when she went back to Zarkon’s ship with the Red Lion in order to continue acting as a double agent, the fact that she was not sincerely following Zarkon was discovered (potentially by Haggar?) and she was put to death for treason. Thus, Zarkon came in possession of the Red Lion, the Red Lion was traumatized over her previous pilot dying (hence her protective behavior over Keith), and Keith’s mother is dead. (This would also explain the Blade of Marmora’s knife: If she was acting as a double agent, then it would make sense for her to also be one of the Blades, much like Thace later on.)

Alternatively, most of the above is true, except that Keith’s mother was legitimately loyal to Zarkon, and may or may not still be alive. She still wanted her son to be safe and as such she still sent him to Earth, but despite her motherly love for Keith, she still believes in Zarkon’s ideals and acts as a loyal soldier for him. Why she stopped piloting the Red Lion then is unknown (perhaps Zarkon doesn’t fully trust her?), but if this is the case and she is both alive and loyal to Zarkon, it means that there is room for conflict between her and Keith later on down the road, which could be hella interesting. (It would also make her similar to Visser One from Animorphs, given how Visser One loved her original children and then later developed a sort of affection for Marco thanks to Eva, so there’s that as well.) 

I’m personally most fond of theories 3 or 4, but 4 will only be worth it if we actually see her and see the emotional conflict that comes about as a result of Keith having to reject / fight his mother because he can’t allow the universe to be destroyed, even if it means going up against his own mother—whom he has always had questions about and has longed for—in battle. (As well as the reactions of the rest of the Paladins + Allura when they discover that Keith’s mother is a willing agent of Zarkon … but that Keith himself is willing to do battle against her anyway, even though he’s obviously emotionally wrecked by this.) But I’d be happy with theory three as well.

“Do you think Keith will have a galra form/power of some kind?”

Hahaha …

Okay, so as a disclaimer: I’m not trying to stop anyone from having fun, or discourage fanworks of any kind. I think it’s great when people can be creative and I fully encourage people to creatively engage with this show however they choose. Just because I don’t personally enjoy something doesn’t mean others have to stop making it. As Steven Yeun said, “you do you.” If creating this kind of content makes you happy, then by all means, do it. 

However …

As far as personal taste goes, I really, really dislike all of the “Galra Form!Keith” things I see around on tumblr. Things where he, for absolutely no explicable reason, despite being 100% human in appearance for his entire life, suddenly has purple fur and Galra ears and a tail. It doesn’t make sense. It makes no sense. It would be like if Tobias (from Animorphs) had suddenly sprouted Andalite features because his father was Elfangor. That’s just not how biology works, bruh. He’s not going to spontaneously mutate into a Galra because he discovered he has some Galra heritage. Keith looks human. Keith, for the most part, acts human except for a few odd quirks that appear in only very select circumstances, potentially because of experiments done by Haggar (more on that in a second). There’s absolutely no reason for him to magically gain a Galran form, and so on a logical level I reject it because I don’t see how it could plausibly fit into the established canon of the show.

I also tend to reject it because I sometimes find that it has some … unfortunate implications behind it, perhaps. Like, not to start Discourse™ (so please don’t start Discourse™), but in my experience this fandom already has a history of racial erasure when it comes to the Asian characters (Keith and Shiro), insisting that they’re white (yes, even in Takashi Shirogane’s case), or saying that they’re “white-passing”, or what have you. So to take one of the Asian characters (and yes, I’m insisting on this, since he was Asian in literally every other iteration even when other characters weren’t and so the staff will be white-washing him if they remove that) and insisting that he has to be the one to suddenly look like a Galra, feels … off, to me. It especially feels off since it’s usually done as a form of objectification / fetishization for shipping purposes, to make him “more interesting”, or to give another character reason to fawn over him while he’s uncharacteristically vulnerable or some such. I feel like I’m not explaining this very well, but most often I see these kinds of fanworks not because it would make any sort of logical sense or because it would do something interesting for Keith’s character, but rather in order to fuel some sort of fetishization / objectification while simultaneously removing one of the Asian characters from the cast (or rather, race-bending him so he’s not Asian anymore, he’s just an alien). It bothers me and I’m not a fan. (And again, I’m not saying that’s everyone’s motivation, but sometimes unfortunate implications can be there even if someone doesn’t intend for them to be. It’s something to think about.)

So to that end, no, I don’t think Keith will have a “Galran form”. The most I think that could happen (that I think would be neat to see) is that perhaps his eyes get a lot brighter, nearly to the point of glowing, when he gets very emotional (not necessarily just furious, but true fury could potentially trigger it). I don’t mean that he’d lose his irises, mind you, but you know how Danny’s eyes glow in ghost form in Danny Phantom when he gets furious? Something like that. His eyes are already a neat purplish-gray color, so I think that it would be cool to see something similar with Keith, where they look even brighter and more eerie when he’s being pushed to an emotional limit.

Other than that, I think the way that Keith’s biology is affected by his Galra DNA is more subtle. Quintessence obviously affects him when he’s hit with it, but that could be more of a result of the quintessence itself (+ whatever the Empire / Haggar did to it) than his Galra DNA. I also think that he heals quickly as a result of his Galra heritage, and I headcanon that he basically never got sick on Earth as a result of his Galra heritage, but that the few times he did get sick, he got very sick—like, “needs to be rushed to the emergency wing” sick. One time he didn’t show up for a training session and Shiro went to check on him at his room in the Garrison, only to find him curled up on the floor after vomiting blood. It was bad. Keith recovered, but it was bad. Thanks for that, Galra DNA.

So yeah, I think he has things like that as a result of his heritage, but he’s not going to spontaneously turn into a Galra one day because of it. People are free to do what they like, I don’t want to harsh anyone’s fun, but I’m just not personally a fan of mutating him into a Galra (physically). It’s not my thing.

#a blade of storm and fire #starlightprincess17

[merry-melody]

long prompt i will eventually write

I present...fixing Misfits S3. (I will literally do anything but the work I have due in at this point.) 

So, S3 is...not great. 

Apart from my boi Curtis finally getting an episode of his own again, in the pro column; you’ve got dumb time-looping end, shit powers, limited ideas (I think every episode basically ends with ‘they killed the bad guy and buried them in the increasingly full forest!’, apart from the one where the bad guy was already dead.) Kelly getting farmed out from the group with Seth, Alisha getting dirt as far as character development goes (unless you count revelations that including AUs, she’s literally fucked every male lead. Really giving AT a meaty role there, not.), and Simon...idk, making faces at Rudy? Deciding on a murder-suicide pact? 

Fixing it clearly has one solution - make everybody gay! (Hear me out.)

So Curtis/Rudy? Since they got to be bf in S4 anyway (obvs the creators didn’t know they’d be writing out quite so many of the cast in the S3 finale as they did), here’s kind of an interesting pairing. 

Rudy’s pairings with women in this season are so much ‘been there, done that’ (’I’m insecure so I treat them like shit!’ Wow, groundbreaking.) as are his mystical STDs.  But he’s always suggested as being potentially bi, anyway, and specifically being into Curtis. 

It also continues the theme of Curtis having horrendous taste for dubcon relationships starting with him and Alisha; playing into what the girl in 3x2 says about him being a masochist. (I’ve only read like, one fic with this pairing, but I love that right away the author was like: let’s bring up that parallel, Curtis in 3x2 and 1x3 with a friend who doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.) 

It could also be super interesting with the other dream S3 pairings like Kelly/Alisha - imagine the scene where he asks Alisha about how he was in the sack, where she’s implying Kelly’s better (which tbh, I’d believe - you’ve got the girls understanding girl’s bodies better parallel with how Curtis’ sex with Emma is better when he’s a girl; but also, I really think it’s a leap to go from 2x7 with Simon looking like he’s gonna cry post sex and horrified at being touched, and her sort of passively waiting for him to singlehandedly make sex successful to The Best Sex Ever.) 

Triple points, if you keep Nathan off-screen, or yank Sheehan away from the high art that distinguishes everyone’s post-Misfits careers (I’ve sat through The Good Doctor, Geostorm, and Inhumans; so I think I get some kind of medal for bravery, or at least self-hate) but have a Nathan/Simon pairing with the former  doing guest roles - you can have the cute Curtis/Simon psychiatrist scene with even more depth! Gives Curtis a reason to talk with Simon about his ‘sexual confusion’ as Rudy terms it, since they don’t really have a ton in common otherwise. 

Also! You could have Curtis actually referencing Nikki. Like if you had Nathan offscreen but still a presence, presumably we wouldn’t have to pretend Nikki never existed. You could even have him saying ‘Don’t tell Nathan or Alisha or whoever’ (about his power) as he does in the episode itself, as 

a) a parallel to the only other conversation Curtis and Simon had, in 1x5 and 

b) some kind of residual bitterness. 

(The bullet hitting Nikki was due to Nathan ducking because Simon warns him he’s mortal, and the gunman’s aim then shifting. Totally unfair to expect anyone to do anything different there, but there we go…given Curtis a reason not to discuss her with the group and why he’s got a ‘cloud’ over his head, bickety-bam.) 

Kelly/Alisha so S3 has Alisha taking over Kelly’s role with an empathic power, but this is the season where the meaning behind any of these powers gets stripped. 

So instead of just randomly using it when she needs to see where someone is; this could have been really interesting character development – Kelly started off as someone who cared what people thought, hence why she got her original power; but she also cared about people in general from the beginning, so her power didn’t help her becoming more empathic so much as soured her on people by hearing their negative thoughts. 

Alisha didn’t really care much about people beyond herself in the beginning. 

We never got an exploration into her beyond how men react to her (even in the Nazi AU; they rely on how Shaun’s forcing her into sex, the one pattern they seem to fixate on with her) but it could have been really interesting to see her develop unwillingly due to seeing through other people’s eyes, even a commentary on a meta-level on how reliant the earlier seasons were on the male gaze of her; and a good way to do that is to draw a parallel with Kelly’s previous power. 

(Having her begin the season outside of an established relationship, and exploring a new take on her sexuality could also be interesting, since the Xmas episode briefly touches on her being able to have some kind of normal life and intimacy outside of sex, like Curtis holding her hand in an echo of 1x6, but really just boils down to furthering Simon/Alisha as a pair - we don’t find out how it affected her beyond this in terms of non-sexual intimacy, like whether the power worked on literally anyone: girls, children, family... Would she become touch-y, having missed it; or stay reserved, as her personality suggests?) 

It also brings Kelly back into the group where her pairing with Seth separated her. And without the Alisha/Simon pairing, you could get the return of Kelly and Simon’s friendship (since that got dropped in the wake of A/S and Kelly/Seth). 

Nathan/Simon wise... Simon kind of retraces Nathan’s steps in some ways in this season. His first vision is himself falling off a roof when practicing his parkour. He ends with the life/death loop, echoing Nathan’s old power. He’s the first to ‘see dead people’ in the finale, and for it to be Rachel is significant. 

Also...how much would you pay to see the horror on Sally’s face at that revelation? ‘How the hell did that happen?’, indeed. Since the dislike with her and Nathan was much more personal, and him being a ‘twat’ becoming her ‘in’ with Simon, and the video of him that she finds that ends with her death... You could have her and Rachel’s appearance having way more relevance, and you could retell the S/A resolution with N/S, or fuck, send ‘em back to Vegas. 

Kelly/Alisha! These two! Getting brunch. A pair that don’t need to be written out bloodily, or at least pointlessly - you could send them off on holiday together (Las Vegas, then Marrakech and Uganda.) 

Alisha getting a scene jacking in the bar job to parallel with Kelly quitting the cleaning at Xmas. 

You could switch up the scenes with the bodyswap in 3x5 from Alisha’s reaction to Simon’s weirdness in 3x3 to reacting to Jen being in Kelly’s body and going back to men by way of Dom. 

Curtis/Rudy the pregnancy storyline still works, you know Rudy’s be like ‘I’ll raise it!’ like he was with Jess, and telling Curtis how much he misses Melissa’s lovely pussy, to Curtis’ disgust. 

Quadruple points - make it a plot point how useless the powers are, like what if Seth’s capped them. Could even be a more villainous figure, what with him forcing Curtis to resurrect his ex (which could be a lead in of Curtis telling Rudy why he mistrusts Seth, and mentioning Nikki; which is referred to as occuring offscreen in S4)  

#misfits #meta #alisha x simon is the worst #misfits is a bare wasteland for femslash #alisha x kelly #curtis x rudy #nathan x simon #prompts #misfits meta #misfits tv

[winterverses]

Walking Wounded - Chapter Eighty-Three

Waking up had been a nightmare. One moment he'd been passing out in that escape pod and the next, everything had been chaos. The triage had been extensive, half the med bay having been moved to bring them in. “What’s our status?” Kirk had asked almost as soon as his eyes had opened. People bustled around him, the vaulted ceiling of the shuttle bay overhead, the sounds of intense activity nearby. Hayes was swearing vehemently under her breath.

“Ship’s status is satisfactory, Captain,” Spock had said smoothly. “The Sorte has been reduced to wreckage. No life signs, and evidence of organic material matching Loche’s genetic pattern spread through the remains of the ship.” Spock paused, then added, “I am pleased to see that you are relatively intact, Captain, however Ms. Hardesty is still in jeopardy.”

Kirk gingerly pushed himself up from the stretcher they had him on, swinging his legs over the side. Everything hurt. His ribs had been gashed open by that pipe; he hadn’t really felt it at the time. McCoy, working busily with Hayes, scowled at the movement, but didn’t make any complaints. He knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on.

“Condition?” Kirk asked, raising his voice a little, giving the doctors a chance to answer.

They were too busy to take it. “Critical,” Spock said. “The hypoxia compounded her injuries due to increased heart rate. That accounts for her physical condition, however she is not responding to treatment.”

Just then, Hayes’ swearing reached a quiet crescendo. “--waste all those hours I spent trying to fix your stupid head, I swear I will find you in the afterlife and choke you to death with your own issues,” she snarled, her hands busy with her medical implements.

It was the first time Kirk had taken a good look at Anne. Her face was so bloodless that her skin was almost blue, her lips purple, cheeks and eyes sunken the way they had been when he’d first seen her. Kirk felt the muscles in his jaw clench. He couldn’t go over there. He would be in the way and if that pushed her past the doctors’ reach...

McCoy glanced up at Hayes. “This isn’t working. You keep her oxygen and brain going and I’ll start repairing the small stuff before I work on the bigger injuries. She’s overwhelmed. If we can take enough of the load off her, maybe she’ll start to pick herself up.”

Hayes gave him a sharp look, then dropped her protoplaser and moved to the machines at the head of the stretcher, performing checks and adjustments with confident grace.

Spock interrupted his black thoughts. “I have already ascertained that transporting them to the med bay would not assist them at this stage. They are aware that they have only to ask. Mr. Chekov is standing by.”

“Good,” Kirk said absently, then shook himself, tearing his eyes away. It was a hell of a lot harder than watching, but he made himself do it. A nurse approached him, holding a protoplaser, and he let her begin work on his side. “Bring me up to speed, Spock,” he said.

Nodding, Spock began to speak, and Kirk tried very hard to ignore the activity nearby. “When you did not arrive at Lieutenant Sulu’s apartment, the assumption was that you had decided against attending. As Loche had intended, we did not immediately ascertain the seriousness of your absence, ascribing it to Ms. Hardesty’s mental state. Lieutenant Uhura was contacted by a reporter while at Sulu’s home, however, a Ms. Anastasia Yu, who informed us that you had not, after all, been followed by any of her profession.”

“That damn reporter.” She’d been useful after all. Kirk pressed his lips together, emotions mixed. Now they’d have to give her another interview. If Anne made it. He pushed the thought out of his head.

“She was very insistent. She would not reveal how she had obtained Lieutenant Uhura’s comm code, but she informed us that not only had you been watched by seemingly unconnected civilians since you had arrived at Yorktown, the surveillance on the lower deck entrance of the Justice building had been tampered with, and thus your departure from the building was not recorded anywhere.”

“And that was enough,” Kirk said. He knew his crew. If Uhura had gotten a call like that, Spock would immediately have raised the alert with both Command and the ship’s crew.

“It was indeed. Commodore Paris’s previous investigations coincided with some of the civilians Ms. Yu named. We quickly realized that Loche had intended the media excitement to act as a cover for his agents to gather information about your whereabouts and create a plan to inflict some harm on you. Within the hour, we had also found Loche to be missing. Several officers are under investigation regarding both his release and the means of transporting you unnoticed to the Sorte.”

“Commodore Paris must be furious,” Kirk said. He knew he would be.

“It is possible that some of them were duped, but not likely. The disappearances from the station happened over a long period of time, more than two years. The subverted officers will face charges and rehabilitation. It appears that Loche used the last of his resources to perform your abduction; many of the actions taken were already coming under scrutiny.”

“One last gasp, huh? I can guess the rest. You recalled the crew and tracked the Sorte.” It was immensely satisfying to know his ship had performed admirably even without him. Even if he hadn’t been there, he knew his directives and his wishes would have been followed.

“I am afraid we did not receive permission to leave the base from Commodore Paris,” Spock said. “I will take full responsibility for the decision.”

Case in point. Kirk couldn’t imagine any of his crew trying to object that they should have sat around waiting for permission to go out and search. It was exactly what he would have done. “You were acting in accordance with previously established guidelines,” Kirk said dryly. “I think I can share some of that responsibility.”

“I would like to add that the Farragut-A--”

“Finally,” Hayes said, and Kirk’s attention snapped to her. “Get your shit together, Anne,” she said, her voice relieved.

McCoy, too, seemed less concerned. “Spock, get us into the med bay,” he barked over his shoulder, his hands frozen on Anne’s arm. Everyone stilled.

Spock flipped his communicator open, “Mr. Chekov, at your convenience,” he said.

Chekov didn’t even acknowledge. The shuttle bay dissolved away, the open, vaulted space replaced by the closer quarters of the med bay. The nurse resumed her work on Kirk’s side, murmuring, “Glad to have you back safe, Captain.”

“Glad to be here,” he said, giving her half a grin. It was that pretty one he’d borrowed the nail file from.

“The Farragut-A has notified us that they are standing by with any assistance we may need,” Spock said. “They departed Yorktown with us, and aided in our search.”

“Give the Farragut-A my thanks. I’ll speak to Vergne personally once we’re on our way back,” Kirk had said. The relief was starting to be almost palpable. He’d snuck a look at Anne.

Her color had improved. She hadn’t looked so corpselike. Kirk had felt himself relax.

It had felt like everything was going to be all right.

And now, days later, waiting just outside a specialized med clinic on the base, he couldn’t help thinking back to all the times the best thing to do had just been to stand by and watch while others bore the brunt of events, dealing with the consequences as best they could.

It was something he could recognize as part of being Captain, but it was hard to swallow, and almost unbearable when it came to his personal life. He wanted to say something about it to Uhura, who was leaning against the wall beside him, but he couldn’t justify it, not when he could talk about it with Anne later and know that she didn’t have to compartmentalize it away to follow his orders. And definitely not in present company. Moving restlessly, he glanced over at Mason.

The man was perfectly still, perfectly composed. Kirk kept his expression neutral, but he was really beginning to dislike Mason. He wasn’t sure if the guy was carrying a torch for Anne or if he was just naturally territorial or what, but there was no reason for him to be in Yorktown, let alone patiently waiting to see Anne after this sort of thing. A bird flitted down, hopping around on the deck near Mason, searching for food. Mason didn’t react.

Suddenly, Uhura laughed, a brief, almost soundless noise. “It’s a good thing those women are locked up. I think we’d just have to have Chekov beam us back onto the ship if there’d been another huge crowd.”

That teased a smile from Kirk. In the couple days since they’d been back, the media issue had died down somewhat, going back to manageable levels. There was still interest, of course, but it wasn’t so intense anymore. Then again, no one had broken the news of the abduction, not even that reporter. “I would have brought the bike,” Kirk said.

“Show-off,” Uhura laughed. “You made everything worse with that, you know that?”

He knew that was true, but he couldn’t help finding it funny. “I promised her I’d pop a wheelie. You want me to break my promises?”

“I wish you would,” Mason snapped, going from stillness to irritation in nothing flat.

“Oh, fuck off,” Kirk said, embracing the sudden hostility he felt. Now if he could just get Mason to take a swing at him, he could kill two birds with one stone-- blow off some steam, and clean that smug prick’s clock. “I’m not the one who let her get kidnapped in the first place.”

Uhura sighed heavily, stepping back and out of the way.

Mason never turned a hair. “While you are undoubtedly a better man than I in every respect, I’m not sure even you could have prevented it from happening, although you would most certainly have had the resources to find her before she became such a shadow of herself.”

Taken aback, Kirk stopped himself from letting loose with more of his anger. The man sounded as dryly factual as a textbook. Well, maybe a trace of disdain, but not where he expected it-- Mason seemed to be directing it at himself. “You have got to be kidding me,” Kirk said, not trusting this turn of events in the least.

“No, Captain. I’d hardly joke about Ms. Hardesty’s safety. I have always taken my duty to her extremely seriously; that is why I wish you would prove yourself more fallible than you have thus far.” Mason looked him over dispassionately, dark eyes guarded. “I have known Ms. Hardesty almost since she reached her age of majority. In that time, I have never seen her so preoccupied and dependent on one single person. I have also never once witnessed this sort of catastrophic inability to write on her part. The two are connected.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Kirk said, although he had a sinking feeling that Mason had a point. If Anne was putting all her energy towards him, what did she have left for anything else?

“I have absolutely no doubt of it, although I understand your misgivings. But I must ask you this-- do you wish to find out how true it is by removing her from everything she knows and expecting yourself to make up for any lack, indefinitely?” Mason’s lips thinned. “You are both extraordinary people, but that is too much to ask of anyone, in every respect.”

Kirk fell silent. This was not something he wanted to confront right now… but waiting until it was a done deal could be a disaster. 

“What exactly are you suggesting he do aside from leave her behind?” Uhura asked, her voice cautious, though not as suspicious as Kirk felt.

“I wouldn’t presume to give advice on such a delicate and personal matter,” Mason said. “I am paid well, but not that well. And not by you.” His dark eyes remained guarded.

So what, just dump this in his lap and expect him to solve it? 

Then again, it wasn’t as if anyone else could.

“Your opinion is… noted,” Kirk said. He couldn’t quite bring himself to say ‘appreciated.’ “I’ll take it into consideration.”

“I hope you do, Captain,” Mason said. He glanced over toward the door, seeing some movement behind the glass pane, then looked back at Kirk. “Despite our differences, I assure you, it has been a pleasure to see Ms. Hardesty so content.”

The man’s obvious sincerity only made Kirk resent him for pulling the rug out from under his hostility. “Noted,” he said as the door slid open, a nurse beckoning them in.

“She’s recovering nicely, given her recent medical history,” the nurse said as she escorted them down the hall. “She’s still a bit weak, and she’ll need to take it easy. We’ll arrange for one of the doctors to check on her in a few days.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Kirk said. “She has a physician who’ll be in contact with her daily.” Hayes would do all the checks. He didn’t even have to ask to know that.

“It really would be better to let our doctors do it,” the nurse said firmly. “Our doctors know what to look for--”

“I’ll have her physician contact you for a briefing. You can establish credentials and such then,” Kirk said just as firmly. This was a semi-anonymous affair, and he wanted to keep it that way. Mason had handled the paperwork, and he’d said it was all very discreet, the surrogate mother well-informed of the biology and the requirements for care, but unaware of Anne’s actual identity. And Kirk’s name wasn’t involved. There was no reason he should be. Hopefully the precautions that had been taken were enough to keep this one under wraps.

“With respect, I can’t allow that on your request,” the nurse said carefully.

Right. His name not on anything meant he didn’t have any authority either. He was so used to his rank and reputation carrying weight everywhere, even in the civilian world, that he hadn’t even considered that. He wondered if the nurse recognized him, and if she was following regulations and pretending not to. Maybe he could leverage that?

“Don’t be tiresome. I’ll authorize it, and if that’s not good enough, she herself will do it in a moment,” Mason snapped.

Whether she had given up or gotten angry, the nurse said nothing more. Maybe Anne had a point about Mason’s confrontational attitude.

Uhura calmly sailed past them into the room the nurse indicated, settling herself on the side of the bed and smiling down at Anne. “How you doing?” she asked, her eyes searching Anne’s face.

Anne was pushing herself up into a sitting position, her skin pale, her limbs shaky. Even so, she looked a thousand times calmer than she had been, her eyes no longer holding that flickering fear. “Better,” she said. “Definitely better. What am I authorizing?”

Mason quickly filled her in, and she immediately nodded to the nurse. “Yes, I’d much rather see my doctor. I’ll have her contact you.”

The nurse didn’t look pleased, but she nodded. “I’m arranging for your discharge records now. Do you need us to call a car?”

“I’ll handle it,” Mason said smoothly.

Kirk stood back, letting the other two satisfy themselves that Anne was all right. Would she really be that dependent on him? Was she already?

He wasn’t sure. How much was too much? And would it get to be too much the longer they were together?

After a few moments of soft conversation, determining whether she was ready to go and whether she needed anything, she said, “You’re quiet, mon étoile.” Her eyes had been darting quick glances at him the entire time, growing more and more puzzled the longer he stayed silent.

“Just trying not to overload you,” Kirk said, feeling his questions start to dissolve under that misty gaze. But was that right? How much of it was selfishness? He abruptly stood away from the wall. “If you think you’re ready, we should get home.”

“Oh, yes,” Anne said fervently. “I’m so ready to put this behind me.” Uhura moved out of the way as she slid her legs out of the bed, and Kirk couldn’t help a little flare of affection at the hesitant way she came to her feet, like a fawn testing its legs for the first time. Before he’d realized it, he was at her side, supporting her as she slid on some soft shoes, helping her from the room. The shift she was wearing could pass for a dress, and once they’d picked up the paperwork, there was no reason to linger.

The car Mason had called was already there, and Kirk helped her into it, the others getting in after him. She leaned warm against his side as the car rose, talking sleepily with Uhura about the party they were still having in a few days, glancing up at him every now and then for his opinion or approval. Mason stared out the window, for once keeping his barbed comments to himself.

Once they had landed, Mason excused himself, citing a need to make arrangements for… something. Whatever, he was always arranging something. Kirk tried to ignore the calm, pointed look Mason gave him when Anne stumbled and Kirk caught her. It was a relief when the car lifted him away.

“What’s your plan, gorgeous?” Kirk asked as the elevator rose. He knew what he’d prefer-- but Anne probably wasn’t up to anything like dinner in the garden or any potential heavy conversation. She still looked too white and shaky, too fragile for much of anything.

The look she gave him was apologetic. “I should rest. I’m afraid I’m not quite all here yet.”

“You do what you need to,” he said. “Uhura and I will scare up some food and check out your plants.”

The smile she gave him was perfect. Open, trusting, brimming with the warmth she felt for him, stealing his breath and a tiny bit of his peace of mind.

Was it really one or the other? Did it have to be such a shitty choice? Was Mason even right?

“I’ll be right back,” he said over his shoulder to Uhura as he escorted Anne to the bedroom where she could rest.

They were quiet as he helped her undress and got her settled in bed, with a few remnants of a brunch they’d had and a glass of water sitting nearby in case she woke up hungry or thirsty. The kiss he’d given her had been relatively chaste, at first, but despite her fatigue and his misgivings it gained momentum, turning tender and sweet, sweet, sweet. Breathlessly sweet.

Which made it all the more awful when she pulled away, her eyes searching his face, feeling like a hand laid on his heart. “What’s wrong, Jim?” she asked.

It wasn’t fair for her to know him that well. He grinned crookedly, unhappily. There was no point in concealing it. “Now’s not the time for it. We’ll talk later.”

Those beautiful eyes of hers continued to search, unsatisfied, worried. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked, the words almost painfully unsure.

“God no,” he laughed, kissing her quickly. Well, it was supposed to be quick, anyway. It lingered more than he’d meant. “Rest up, gorgeous. We’ll talk when you’re up to it. I’ll be around, so if you need anything, anything at all--”

“I know,” she said, and he knew perfectly well that she was resolving not to bother him if she could help it.

“I mean it,” he said, pulling the blanket up over her shoulders, brushing her hair away from her face, running his thumb over one of those cut-glass cheekbones of hers. Silver locks gleamed against the dark blue pillow. “If you have a nightmare, or even an itch you can’t reach, you call me, okay?”

That coaxed a smile from her. “Fine.”

Stealing one last kiss, he left her to rest.

Uhura was out in the living room, wandering around the place, her fingers brushing over the banks of flowers that overflowed everywhere, looking as fresh as they had been the day they were delivered. Stroking the soft petals of one of the red and white striped roses, she shook her head, and Kirk realized he hadn’t warned her about them. He hadn’t told anyone. “Let me guess,” she said, looking up at him as he walked in, the twist of her mouth ironic. “Someone brought you flowers.”

“She doesn’t half-ass things,” he said. He couldn’t even be embarrassed about it, it was too-- too flattering, too ridiculous, too affectionate, something he didn’t know how to define that nevertheless warmed his heart to think of. “Want a beer?”

“Yeah. Sure,” she said. He knew she was more of a wine person, but it didn’t feel like a wine sort of evening.

They scrounged up some food in the kitchen, bits and pieces of things Anne had made. The refrigeration unit was overflowing with food. Anne had been cooking to take her mind off the kid, so they’d ended up with curried this and pie that and just anything she could make. And there had been some things she couldn’t-- a couple of the dishes had burned, or curdled, or otherwise messed up when she attempted something beyond her skills or attention span. Those had all gone down the disposal. Kirk grabbed himself a stray chicken breast and made a sandwich out of it, while Uhura took the rest of the salad he’d used as sandwich fixings and threw a couple skewers of shrimp on it.

“Garden?” Kirk asked, glancing over at her as he’d pulled the beer out of the liquor cooler.

“Sure.” She was watching him with a mixture of concern and caution. It wasn’t until they were outside and seated that she spoke again. “So spill it already. I’m getting tired of waiting.”

Kirk paused, then sighed, looking away. “Not much to spill. You’ve been around this entire time, you’ve seen it all.”

“Captain--” she began, then chopped herself off. “Jim. You should talk to someone, even if it’s not me.”

“That, right there, is why I can’t,” he said. “Captain. Everyone I know has to live with that and take that rank seriously.”

“Except McCoy,” Uhura said, but she knew she was grasping at straws.

“Even if I thought he wouldn’t hit me with the biggest I-told-you-so in history, he’s exploded, what, three marriages now? He wouldn’t get this. Or at least, his point of view wouldn’t be any help.”

“Sometimes it’s not about fixing things. Sometimes it’s just about getting it out and getting a different perspective,” Uhura said, her mouth twisting. “But yeah. I guess I know what you mean. Even without your rank it’s hard to let anyone get that close when you know you have to see them every day for years. Things you say can crop up in the weirdest ways and affect the running of the ship.” She pushed some of the salad around on her plate. “It’s been good having Anne around. She’s not part of the structure we all have to live in. And, to be honest, I have to confess I’ve been wishing she’d come with us partly because of that. It’s selfish, I know, but it’s good to have someone around that isn’t invested in the system and the ranks and all that. Especially someone so easy to talk to.”

“Yeah.” On some level, it was good to know he wasn’t the only one feeling selfish. “Maybe Starfleet should make an effort to have more civilians aboard ship. Hell, maybe even families.”

“Sulu would love that,” Uhura said.

They ate in silence for a time, watching the bubble overhead slowly fading into its night cycle, the breeze sending wafts of orange blossom and other green scents their way. Eventually, Uhura asked, “You gonna be okay with it if Sulu says he wants the kid and she’s gone?”

Kirk had to think about that one. Just another one of the things he’d been avoiding. Those were really starting to pile up. “I think… he’ll be Sulu’s kid. And by the time he’s old enough for me to play with, I’ll be over it. God, if I wasn’t, there’d be something really wrong.”

“And you think she won’t…”

“Nah. She’s terrified of all that, I can’t see her getting attached. She’ll come to visit Ben and Sulu, but she’s got too much going on to do much more than act weird around the kid.” Kirk laughed humorlessly. “It’ll be harder knowing she’s keeping in touch with you. If she does. I think she will.”

“If she doesn’t stay,” Uhura pointed out. “You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“At this point I don’t even know if that would be better or worse. If Mason’s right. If I’m part of her problem. If I’m not, and that itself is a problem.” Kirk glanced sharply at Uhura. “Well, that was sneaky.” He hadn’t meant to get into any of that.

Uhura sat back in her chair, a little smile playing on her lips. “Sorry. It’s kind of a habit. Blame Spock.”

That figured. He couldn’t think of anyone that would need more finessing into talking about feelings than Spock. Deciding the subject was better changed, he asked, “Why does Spock like her so much anyway? It’s so weird.”

“I honestly couldn’t tell you for sure,” Uhura said. “I asked, but I got some stiff answer about how she’s smart and respectful of his culture and all that. Personally, I think… I think he relates. She doesn’t try to be emotionless the way he does, but they both have a lot of strong impulses and emotions that they have to keep under control. He’s been in her head, and I think he understood what he saw there on a more visceral level than usual.”

“I can see that,” Kirk said, and then suddenly found himself snickering. “Suddenly Bones’s attitude makes a lot more sense.”

“And yours,” Uhura said mischievously, taking a swig of her beer.

“Oh my god, don’t say that,” Kirk said over Uhura’s amusement. That was an angle he had not considered. “We’re dropping this subject right now.” That couldn’t be it. Nope, no way. Spock was his friend, yeah, but… nope. They were married enough already just because of how closely they had to work together. He didn’t need to feel like he was dating a Spock substitute. Uhura was still trying to suppress her laughter, so he added, “That would explain you too, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I did notice. It just doesn’t bother me,” Uhura said.

“By the way, you have some sprouts over there,” Kirk said, motioning to the little row of pots that were precisely placed to have some ratio of sunlight to shade that he knew nothing about. Anne had explained it at some point. He’d listened because she was talking, not because he’d ever need to know. She was so beautiful when she was talking about something she loved.

Uhura smiled, letting him change the subject. “I’ll check them out when I’m finished eating. I hope they adapt to shipboard life, it’d be nice to have a bit more greenery on board.”

“I wonder if we could get one of the labs converted into a garden?” Kirk mused. “They took that seriously when they built Yorktown, so I don’t think the fleet would object.”

“Not that you plan on asking,” Uhura said dryly.

“Nope,” Kirk said, fishing his communicator out of his pocket. “Scotty. Figure out which lab we use the least and how much work it would take to convert it into a garden.”

“What?” Scotty said.

“Just do it. It’ll be useful for morale. And for taking samples of things like those damn mind control flowers. Oh yeah, make sure there’s an airlock section. We don’t want alien samples affecting the crew.”

“Have ye ever thought about saying hello before ye launch into some crazy request?” Scotty asked, exasperated.

“Why?” Kirk asked. “Kirk out.” He flipped the communicator shut and stowed it in his pocket.

Uhura was shaking her head at him by that time. “You ass. You do that on purpose and it drives everyone nuts.”

“Well, yeah.” Kirk felt himself grinning. “That’s the whole point. Gotta keep you all on your toes.”

“Trust me, Captain, you do,” Uhura said.

A/N: Little bit of personal trouble lately, small car accident (no injuries, thankfully), but things are getting better. Sorry about the delay!

#James T. Kirk/OC #Jim Kirk/OC #Star Trek #Star Trek Fanfiction #dark romance #fanfic #Star Trek: Walking Wounded #ST:WW