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rosewood-writes-and-reviews · 9 months

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DMC Devil May Cry Review From the Perspective of a New DMC Fan (Spoilers!)

First, a TL:DR of Devil May Cry as a series. Devil May Cry is a Capcom franchise that falls under the Hack-and-Slash category and the story follows Dante, the young son of Sparda, who hunts demons for a living in Redgrave. Ninja Theory, the same people who made Heavenly Sword made an attempt at a reboot with Capcom and the reboot game was hated by a lot of DMC fans.

But do I think it deserved the hate? No, not really, it’s not too bad of a game to me, and it has its flaws which I will get into. The rest of this review will further explain my opinions. Also, right off the bat, my personal renaming of “DMC Devil May Cry” is “Nephilim Rage,” Reboot Dante is “Damien” and Reboot Vergil is “Victor,” because this game could’ve benefitted from having its own separate IP rather than the Devil May Cry IP slapped onto it despite the characters, lore and storyline being incredibly different, but from Ninja Theory’s perspective, I can understand why they did what they did.

Storyline (1/5):

Starting with the weakest part of this game, the intro to “Nephilim Rage” has Damien going to a strip club and banging two strippers. Interesting start.

Then a girl named Kat knocks at Damien’s trailer door telling him he’s in danger. He then gets dragged into Limbo and we get the first few fights in the game.

Later on, Kat tries to convince Damien to help her and the Order save humanity, but Damien doesn’t care at all and tells her that he didn’t need or want her help, then he changes his mind when he sees a police cruiser drive by. Then inside the hideout of The Order, we meet my least favorite character in this game, Victor who is also helping with The Order.

Then Victor is the one to convince Damien via telling him that he is a Nephilim and that his past was hidden from him for a reason and Damien explores his childhood home via a Wiccan seal Kat spray painted down and that’s where he gets his first angel and demon weapons as well as two different grappling hooks that either pulls objects or enemies towards him or pulls him towards said objects or enemies.

After going through every single part of the house in Limbo and getting cool new weapons Damien remembers that Victor is his twin brother and apparently instead of Sparda being killed by Mundus, Mundus instead imprisoned him for life.

There is a drink in this game that gets destroyed called Virility, which Victor calls Lobotomy in a can, and the Order destroys it with Damien’s help by killing the second most disgusting boss in this game, Succubus. Don’t let the name fool you. Look it up on the wiki or on Google, trust me.

Mundus is getting more and more agitated by Damien, which is what they want because the key to defeating Mundus and overthrowing his rule over humanity is getting him angry.

In the middle of the story, Kat gets kidnapped by the S.W.A.T team while Damien and Victor are trapped in Limbo, unable to help her. Mundus holds her hostage and asks Victor to give him Damien in exchange for Kat in a video. Damien then gets the idea to kidnap Lilith, his mistress who also carries his child. He got this information after helping an elderly demon get his artificial eye back.

After a reverse erection fight with Lilith, Damien then offers Mundus Lilith and her child in exchange for Kat, which leads to Victor wielding a sniper rifle to shoot at anyone who tries anything funny, which is weird because the original Vergil hates using guns so seeing this was strange. As Kat walks towards Damien and Lilith walks towards the S.W.A.T team, Victor pulls the trigger, first killing Mundus’s child and Lilith.

Here is one important element for Mundus: he is only immortal with his access to the Hell Gate. If it’s sealed, he’ll be killed by normal means.

This of course frustrates Mundus and towards the end, he asks Damien, “why did you kill my child?” Then knowing what to do next, as a way of pissing off Mundus as a distraction so that Victor can seal off the gateway to Hell Damien brags about killing Lilith and his baby and says that it was “priceless.”

After almost getting his heart ripped out, Damien fights Mundus and after he saves Victor from him, his grasp, he kills him for good.

Cool ending right? Well… no. Because the worst part of this storyline made me hate this version of Vergil. And I’m not even talking about Vergil’s Downfall yet.

Victor then reveals that since Mundus is dead, he and Damien can now rule the humans. Much to both Kat and Damien’s shock. He then in a very condescending manner talks down to humans, right in front of Kat, the same human who literally took a bullet and a beating to help them and risked her life multiple times. He even says, she was “useful,” and I can’t think of a more douchey way of saying that he just used her for personal gain.

And because… this is an attempted reboot of Devil May Cry that didn’t do too well, it feels like this story felt obligated to have Damien and Victor fight just because a fight between two twin brothers builds drama, and that’s not all there is to it when it comes to Dante and Vergil’s rivalry. It’s only scratching the surface. Not to mention that Damien and Victor’s relationship went from loving brothers to Victor absolutely despising Damien for “being better than him.” A far cry from what Dante and Vergil’s relationship is actually like. Also, this takes place on the 20th and final mission. Which is why I say that this came out of nowhere and was forced.

TL:DR about the game’s story: Weak storyline with a badly executed twist at the very end.

Gameplay (4/5):

Gameplay is this game’s biggest strength. The combat is so much fun in this game, and yes, even in Vergil’s Downfall, which is the only redeeming quality of that DLC. But Damien is the most fun to use in this game because oh my god, I love his Angel weapons so much.

I especially love the angelic scythe even though it’s the very first Angel weapon you get.

I also love the grappling mechanic, with the demon grapple, you pull objects and enemies towards you, and with the angel grapple, you pull yourself towards the objects and enemies.

His demonic weapons are also cool, and I use those attacks sparingly when it comes to tougher enemies, just like what I do with heavy attacks in fighting games and in hack-and-slash games like this.

Now what are the downsides of the gameplay? Only the fact that you can’t manually aim for some reason. Even though Damien straight up uses guns, you literally can’t aim. You’re basically forced to auto-aim. Out of all games I’ve reviewed so far, this game is the most dependent on auto-aiming. I even looked through my options to see if I could turn off auto-aim to a more manual aim, but to my disappointment there was no way to turn it off. Which is why I always dreaded having to fight off tough enemies on the ground and then dealing with annoying flying enemies setting up traps to smack you and interrupt your combo. Could be a skill issue on my part, but either way, it shouldn’t take making a definitive edition to put in a feature that should’ve been in the game to begin with in my opinion.

Other than that, I let the forced auto-aiming slide for now because the gameplay and how different Damien and Victor are in terms of how they play makes up for it.

Characters (2.5/5):

This section I’m the most mixed on. On one hand I’m glad Damien isn’t 100% an asshole the entire time. On the other however, he ain’t Dante. Hence why I named him Damien because he is completely different from Dante. It’s insane to me that the most hated video game character in video game history has the best character development in this game. In fact, dare I say, he benefitted the most from the bad writing.

Damien starts out being a typical asshole anti-hero protagonist and shows off his anti-social and deviant personality, until he meets Kat, who I will get to in a second. He goes from, “I don’t need your help, I didn’t ask for your help,” to, “I only met Kat for a day and a half, and if anything happened to her, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.” Actually, Damien reminds me of Jake Muller kind of. Hear me out. Jake Muller is also another character who starts out a selfish asshole, but then becomes a jerk with a heart of gold when he meets Sherry. Resident Evil 6 aside, Damien is also shown caring about his brother Victor. He does tease him but it’s in a more typical older brother way. And yeah, Damien is the older twin of the two in this universe. He used to not care about humanity, but after Mundus was defeated and Victor attempted to rule humanity with an iron fist, he made the decision to protect humanity from guys like Victor. Also, in my opinion Damien is the most overhated character in video games. Yes, the cliches and typical tropes are there, but he’s not the worst character in this game specifically. That would be Victor.

Again, if he was named differently, he wouldn’t have so much hate. I mean he would still get hate because of the usual cliches, but it wouldn’t be as bad as it was when this reboot was fresh in 2013.

Kat didn’t really change too much character wise in this story, but I do like how she was written nonetheless. I love how even though she’s not a combatant like Damien or Victor, she’s still hyper competent. I’m talking planning things out, using old Wiccan recipes for seals, guiding Damien through Limbo and the fact that she has helped The Order several times.

The same cannot be said about Victor. So, where do I even begin with this guy? First of all, he is a FAR cry from what Vergil is supposed to be as a villain. Vergil is a complex antagonist who was blinded by his trauma of losing his mother, being victimized by Mundus and being imprisoned as Nelo Angelo and nearly dying and being obsessed with gaining more power. He despised being a victim and not being in control of himself hence why he sought more of that power. Granted, his actions are depicted as him being well reckless and being just as impulsive as his twin brother, and rightfully he’s labeled as an antagonist and villain. I mean, when he was introduced as himself pre-Nelo Angelo, right off the bat, we knew he wasn’t even a hero, like not even close.

Victor on the other hand only did the things he did in the game because he wanted to rule over the humans because he thought of them as helpless little children. Alright, you fedora wearing, r/niceguy lookin’ inferior complex dude, why would I trust someone like you to “protect” humanity? Keep in mind too that Victor before Mission 20 was being heroic up until that point and him becoming a villain basically ruined all of that. He gets so much worse in Vergil’s Downfall somehow. He just keeps getting more and more evil and for what? Because he thinks that Damien is better than him. Because he thinks Eva loved Damien more than him. And finally, because he is just yet another one-dimensional villain that is lusting after power and he leads an army of demons to try to take over humanity. But more on Vergil’s Downfall in a different post. Victor is the worst version of Vergil I’ve seen so far. Hence why Victor is renamed Victor by me. At least his design looks nice.

As for Mundus, another typical one-dimensional power hungry villain.

Lilith is also just Mundus’s mistress with an ego bigger than Mount Everest.

All of the villains are generic evil characters, with Succubus acting as literal toxic chemicals to harm people and literally and figuratively spewing toxic stuff at Damien and whoever that reporter demon guy was being a meta type of villain, which is obviously taking a jab at attention seeking news channels and news websites that also lie and stretch the truth.

Graphics (4.5/5):

The graphics of the game aged well, but then again, Ninja Theory did a solid job on their good looking and ugly character designs and translating them well in renders. For Vergil’s Downfall, for the cutscenes, a 2D animation plays to depict the dark story of Victor falling further and further down into madness, which I do like seeing and that is the ONLY element I loved about Vergil’s Downfall.

Capcom also had a hand in this an as usual their graphics back in the 2010’s also looked pretty nice.

Voice Acting (4.5/5):

Solid voice acting. Especially since with how the story and dialogue is written, the voice actors made it work. Bad voice acting and bad vocal direction would’ve made the execution of the story and character writing even worse.

I think the best voice actors would have to be Damien’s voice actor, Victor’s, Mundus’s, Lilith’s, and Kat’s. Also, if someone knows about a mod where you use the DMC Devil May Cry style announcer for Devil May Cry 5, let me know because I also enjoyed hearing the “SAVAGE!,” and “SADISTIC!!,” lines so much whenever I got an S or SS rank.

Did this game deserve the hate it got?:

In my opinion, the game has its flaws, obviously, the story is the weakest part of DMC Devil May Cry. I am also going to be one of many people that will say this this again and again: if this game had its own IP, like what I nicknamed it, “Nephilim Rage,” and renaming Reboot Dante and Reboot Vergil into Damien and Victor, with a lot of tweaks to the storyline, this would’ve been a good game and fans would’ve viewed it differently.

Otherwise, no. Despite how much I hated Victor and like I said three times at this point, the weak story, I think this game is okay. It’s not terrible. This is already long enough, so I’m not going to rant about it here, because the DLC will have its own separate review.

Score: 16.5 out of 20. The story was the weakest part of the game and I don’t care about (in Victor’s case, he’s a character I despise) the characters except for Damien and Kat. The gameplay and voice acting made up for the flawed writing.

But you want to know one element I outright loved about DMC Devil May Cry? The soundtrack. Could be the casual metal listener in me saying this, but I love the soundtrack and I think I’m gonna get more into Combichrist. The metal music in the game fits the edgy tone the game was attempting to go for and it works.

Also, Damien is the most overhated character in video games in my opinion. Again, yeah, he ain’t Dante, but with a simple name change that I did, he now has his own identity separate from Dante. All I gotta do is just rename his weapons, lol.

That aside, TL:DR… DMC Devil May Cry May have a badly written story with equally badly written characters, at least the game is fun to play with the usual flashy combos courtesy of Ninja Theory and Capcom and has a sick soundtrack.

#video game review #game review #review #gaming #ninja theory #capcom #dmc devil may cry #devil may cry

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blackswaneuroparedux · 3 years

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Anonymous asked: I enjoyed reading your posts about Napoleon’s death and it’s quite timely given its the 200th anniversary of his death this year in May. I was wondering, because you know a lot about military history (your served right? That’s cool to fly combat helicopters) and you live in France but aren’t French, what your take was on Napoleon and how do the French view him? Do they hail him as a hero or do they like others see him like a Hitler or a Stalin? Do you see him as a hero or a villain of history?

5 May 1821 was a memorable date because Napoleon, one of the most iconic figures in world history, died while in bitter exile on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon Bonaparte, as you know rose from obscure soldier to a kind of new Caesar, and yet he remains a uniquely controversial figure to this day especially in France. You raise interesting questions about Napoleon and his legacy. If I may reframe your questions in another way. Should we think of him as a flawed but essentially heroic visionary who changed Europe for the better? Or was he simply a military dictator, whose cult of personality and lust for power set a template for the likes of Hitler?

However one chooses to answer this question can we just - to get this out of the way - simply and definitively say that Napoleon was not Hitler. Not even close. No offence intended to you but this is just dumb ahistorical thinking and it’s a lazy lie. This comparison was made by some in the horrid aftermath of the Second World War but only held little currency for only a short time thereafter. Obviously that view didn’t exist before Hitler in the 19th Century and these days I don’t know any serious historian who takes that comparison seriously.

I confess I don’t have a definitive answer if he was a hero or a villain one way or the other because Napoleon has really left a very complicated legacy. It really depends on where you’re coming from.

As a staunch Brit I do take pride in Britain’s victorious war against Napoleonic France - and in a good natured way rubbing it in the noses of French friends at every opportunity I get because it’s in our cultural DNA and it’s bloody good fun (why else would we make Waterloo train station the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening in 1994? Or why hang a huge gilded portrait of the Duke of Wellington as the first thing that greets any visitor to the residence of the British ambassador at the British Embassy?). On a personal level I take special pride in knowing my family ancestors did their bit on the battlefield to fight against Napoleon during those tumultuous times. However, as an ex-combat veteran who studied Napoleonic warfare with fan girl enthusiasm, I have huge respect for Napoleon as a brilliant military commander. And to makes things more weird, as a Francophile resident of who loves living and working in France (and my partner is French) I have a grudging but growing regard for Napoleon’s political and cultural legacy, especially when I consider the current dross of political mediocrity on both the political left and the right. So for me it’s a complicated issue how I feel about Napoleon, the man, the soldier, and the political leader.

If it’s not so straightforward for me to answer the for/against Napoleon question then it It’s especially true for the French, who even after 200 years, still have fiercely divided opinions about Napoleon and his legacy - but intriguingly, not always in clear cut ways.

I only have to think about my French neighbours in my apartment building to see how divisive Napoleon the man and his legacy is. Over the past year or so of the Covid lockdown we’ve all gotten to know each other better and we help each other. Over the Covid year we’ve gathered in the inner courtyard for a buffet and just lifted each other spirits up.

One of my neighbours, a crusty old ex-general in the army who has an enviable collection of military history books that I steal, liberate, borrow, often discuss military figures in history like Napoleon over our regular games of chess and a glass of wine. He is from very old aristocracy of the ancien regime and whose family suffered at the hands of ‘madame guillotine’ during the French Revolution. They lost everything. He has mixed emotions about Napoleon himself as an old fashioned monarchist. As a military man he naturally admires the man and the military genius but he despises the secularisation that the French Revolution ushered in as well as the rise of the haute bourgeois as middle managers and bureaucrats by the displacement of the aristocracy.

Another retired widowed neighbour I am close to, and with whom I cook with often and discuss art, is an active arts patron and ex-art gallery owner from a very wealthy family that came from the new Napoleonic aristocracy - ie the aristocracy of the Napoleonic era that Napoleon put in place - but she is dismissive of such titles and baubles. She’s a staunch Republican but is happy to concede she is grateful for Napoleon in bringing order out of chaos. She recognises her own ambivalence when she says she dislikes him for reintroducing slavery in the French colonies but also praises him for firmly supporting Paris’s famed Comédie-Française of which she was a past patron.

Another French neighbour, a senior civil servant in the Elysée, is quite dismissive of Napoleon as a war monger but is grudgingly grateful for civil institutions and schools that Napoleon established and which remain in place today.

My other neighbours - whether they be French families or foreign expats like myself - have similarly divisive and complicated attitudes towards Napoleon.

In 2010 an opinion poll in France asked who was the most important man in French history. Napoleon came second, behind General Charles de Gaulle, who led France from exile during the German occupation in World War II and served as a postwar president.

The split in French opinion is closely mirrored in political circles. The divide is generally down political party lines. On the left, there's the 'black legend' of Bonaparte as an ogre. On the right, there is the 'golden legend' of a strong leader who created durable institutions.

Jacques-Olivier Boudon, a history professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and president of the Napoléon Institute, once explained at a talk I attended that French public opinion has always remained deeply divided over Napoleon, with, on the one hand, those who admire the great man, the conqueror, the military leader and, on the other, those who see him as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the gravedigger of the revolution. Politicians in France, Boudon observed, rarely refer to Napoleon for fear of being accused of authoritarian temptations, or not being good Republicans.

On the left-wing of French politics, former prime minister Lionel Jospin penned a controversial best selling book entitled “the Napoleonic Evil” in which he accused the emperor of “perverting the ideas of the Revolution” and imposing “a form of extreme domination”, “despotism” and “a police state” on the French people. He wrote Napoleon was "an obvious failure" - bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was booted out into final exile, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. What's more, Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies. Some of the legacies with which Napoleon is credited, including the Civil Code, the comprehensive legal system replacing a hodgepodge of feudal laws, were proposed during the revolution, Jospin argued, though he acknowledges that Napoleon actually delivered them, but up to a point, "He guaranteed some principles of the revolution and, at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it," For instance, Napoleon reintroduced slavery in French colonies, revived a system that allowed the rich to dodge conscription in the military and did nothing to advance gender equality.

At the other end of the spectrum have been former right-wing prime minister Dominique de Villepin, an aristocrat who was once fancied as a future President, a passionate collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, and author of several works on the subject. As a Napoleonic enthusiast he tells a different story. Napoleon was a saviour of France. If there had been no Napoleon, the Republic would not have survived. Advocates like de Villepin point to Napoleon’s undoubted achievements: the Civil Code, the Council of State, the Bank of France, the National Audit office, a centralised and coherent administrative system, lycées, universities, centres of advanced learning known as école normale, chambers of commerce, the metric system, and an honours system based on merit (which France has to this day). He restored the Catholic faith as the state faith but allowed for the freedom of religion for other faiths including Protestantism and Judaism. These were ambitions unachieved during the chaos of the revolution. As it is, these Napoleonic institutions continue to function and underpin French society. Indeed, many were copied in countries conquered by Napoleon, such as Italy, Germany and Poland, and laid the foundations for the modern state.

Back in 2014, French politicians and institutions in particular were nervous in marking the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's exile. My neighbours and other French friends remember that the commemorations centred around the Chateau de Fontainebleau, the traditional home of the kings of France and was the scene where Napoleon said farewell to the Old Guard in the "White Horse Courtyard" (la cour du Cheval Blanc) at the Palace of Fontainebleau. (The courtyard has since been renamed the "Courtyard of Goodbyes".) By all accounts the occasion was very moving. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoleon of his powers (but not his title as Emperor of the French) and sent him into exile on Elba. The cost of the Fontainebleau "farewell" and scores of related events over those three weekends was shouldered not by the central government in Paris but by the local château, a historic monument and UNESCO World Heritage site, and the town of Fontainebleau.

While the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution that toppled the monarchy and delivered thousands to death by guillotine was officially celebrated in 1989, Napoleonic anniversaries are neither officially marked nor celebrated. For example, over a decade ago, the president and prime minister - at the time, Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin - boycotted a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon's greatest military victory. Both men were known admirers of Napoleon and yet political calculation and optics (as media spin doctors say) stopped them from fully honouring Napoleon’s crowning military glory.

Optics is everything. The division of opinion in France is perhaps best reflected in the fact that, in a city not shy of naming squares and streets after historical figures, there is not a single “Boulevard Napoleon” or “Place Napoleon” in Paris. On the streets of Paris, there are just two statues of Napoleon. One stands beneath the clock tower at Les Invalides (a military hospital), the other atop a column in the Place Vendôme. Napoleon's red marble tomb, in a crypt under the Invalides dome, is magnificent, perhaps because his remains were interred there during France's Second Empire, when his nephew, Napoleon III, was on the throne.

There are no squares, nor places, nor boulevards named for Napoleon but as far as I know there is one narrow street, the rue Bonaparte, running from the Luxembourg Gardens to the River Seine in the old Latin Quarter. And, that, too, is thanks to Napoleon III. For many, and I include myself, it’s a poor return by the city to the man who commissioned some of its most famous monuments, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Pont des Arts over the River Seine.

It's almost as if Napoleon Bonaparte is not part of the national story.

How Napoleon fits into that national story is something historians, French and non-French, have been grappling with ever since Napoleon died. The plain fact is Napoleon divides historians, what precisely he represents is deeply ambiguous and his political character is the subject of heated controversy. It’s hard for historians to sift through archival documents to make informed judgements and still struggle to separate the man from the myth.

One proof of this myth is in his immortality. After Hitler’s death, there was mostly an embarrassed silence; after Stalin’s, little but denunciation. But when Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821, much of Europe and the Americas could not help thinking of itself as a post-Napoleonic generation. His presence haunts the pages of Stendhal and Alfred de Vigny. In a striking and prescient phrase, Chateaubriand prophesied the “despotism of his memory”, a despotism of the fantastical that in many ways made Romanticism possible and that continues to this day.

The raw material for the future Napoleon myth was provided by one of his St Helena confidants, the Comte de las Cases, whose account of conversations with the great man came out shortly after his death and ran in repeated editions throughout the century. De las Cases somehow metamorphosed the erstwhile dictator into a herald of liberty, the emperor into a slayer of dynasties rather than the founder of his own. To the “great man” school of history Napoleon was grist to their mill, and his meteoric rise redefined the meaning of heroism in the modern world.

The Marxists, for all their dislike of great men, grappled endlessly with the meaning of the 18th Brumaire; indeed one of France’s most eminent Marxist historians, George Lefebvre, wrote what arguably remains the finest of all biographies of him.

It was on this already vast Napoleon literature, a rich terrain for the scholar of ideas, that the great Dutch historian Pieter Geyl was lecturing in 1940 when he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. There he composed what became one of the classics of historiography, a seminal book entitled Napoleon: For and Against, which charted how generations of intellectuals had happily served up one Napoleon after another. Like those poor souls who crowded the lunatic asylums of mid-19th century France convinced that they were Napoleon, generations of historians and novelists simply could not get him out of their head.

The debate runs on today no less intensely than in the past. Post-Second World War Marxists would argue that he was not, in fact, revolutionary at all. Eric Hobsbawm, a notable British Marxist historian, argued that ‘Most-perhaps all- of his ideas were anticipated by the Revolution’ and that Napoleon’s sole legacy was to twist the ideals of the French Revolution, and make them ‘more conservative, hierarchical and authoritarian’.

This contrasts deeply with the view William Doyle holds of Napoleon. Doyle described Bonaparte as ‘the Revolution incarnate’ and saw Bonaparte’s humbling of Europe’s other powers, the ‘Ancien Regimes’, as a necessary precondition for the birth of the modern world. Whatever one thinks of Napoleon’s character, his sharp intellect is difficult to deny. Even Paul Schroeder, one of Napoleon’s most scathing critics, who condemned his conduct of foreign policy as a ‘criminal enterprise’ never denied Napoleon’s intellect. Schroder concluded that Bonaparte ‘had an extraordinary capacity for planning, decision making, memory, work, mastery of detail and leadership’. The question of whether Napoleon used his genius for the betterment or the detriment of the world, is the heart of the debate which surrounds him.

France's foremost Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard, put forward the thesis that Bonaparte was the architect of modern France. "And I would say also pâtissier [a cake and pastry maker] because of the administrative millefeuille that we inherited." Oddly enough, in North America the multilayered mille-feuille cake is called ‘a napoleon.’ Tulard’s works are essential reading of how French historians have come to tackle the question of Napoleon’s legacy. He takes the view that if Napoleon had not crushed a Royalist rebellion and seized power in 1799, the French monarchy and feudalism would have returned, Tulard has written. "Like Cincinnatus in ancient Rome, Napoleon wanted a dictatorship of public salvation. He gets all the power, and, when the project is finished, he returns to his plough." In the event, the old order was never restored in France. When Louis XVIII became emperor in 1814, he served as a constitutional monarch.

In England, until recently the views on Napoleon have traditionally less charitable and more cynical. Professor Christopher Clark, the notable Cambridge University European historian, has written. "Napoleon was not a French patriot - he was first a Corsican and later an imperial figure, a journey in which he bypassed any deep affiliation with the French nation," Clark believed Napoleon’s relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent.

Did he stabilise the revolutionary state or shut it down mercilessly? Clark believes Napoleon seems to have done both. Napoleon rejected democracy, he suffocated the representative dimension of politics, and he created a culture of courtly display. A month before crowning himself emperor, Napoleon sought approval for establishing an empire from the French in a plebiscite; 3,572,329 voted in favour, 2,567 against. If that landslide resembles an election in North Korea, well, this was no secret ballot. Each ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was recorded, along with the name and address of the voter. Evidently, an overwhelming majority knew which side their baguette was buttered on.

His extravagant coronation in Notre Dame in December 1804 cost 8.5 million francs (€6.5 million or $8.5 million in today's money). He made his brothers, sisters and stepchildren kings, queens, princes and princesses and created a Napoleonic aristocracy numbering 3,500. By any measure, it was a bizarre progression for someone often described as ‘a child of the Revolution.’ By crowning himself emperor, the genuine European kings who surrounded him were not convinced. Always a warrior first, he tried to represent himself as a Caesar, and he wears a Roman toga on the bas-reliefs in his tomb. His coronation crown, a laurel wreath made of gold, sent the same message. His icon, the eagle, was also borrowed from Rome. But Caesar's legitimacy depended on military victories. Ultimately, Napoleon suffered too many defeats.

These days Napoleon the man and his times remain very much in fashion and we are living through something of a new golden age of Napoleonic literature. Those historians who over the past decade or so have had fun denouncing him as the first totalitarian dictator seem to have it all wrong: no angel, to be sure, he ended up doing far more at far less cost than any modern despot. In his widely praised 2014 biography, Napoleon the Great, Andrew Roberts writes: “The ideas that underpin our modern world - meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on - were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman empire.”

Roberts partly bases his historical judgement on newly released historical documents about Napoleon that were only available in the past decade and has proved to be a boon for all Napoleonic scholars. Newly released 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote that still survive are now used extensively to illustrate the astonishing capacity that Napoleon had for compartmentalising his mind - he laid down the rules for a girls’ boarding school on the eve of the battle of Borodino, for example, and the regulations for Paris’s Comédie-Française while camped in the Kremlin. They also show Napoleon’s extraordinary capacity for micromanaging his empire: he would write to the prefect of Genoa telling him not to allow his mistress into his box at the theatre, and to a corporal of the 13th Line regiment warning him not to drink so much.

For me to have my own perspective on Napoleon is tough. The problem is that nothing with Napoleon is simple, and almost every aspect of his personality is a maddening paradox. He was a military genius who led disastrous campaigns. He was a liberal progressive who reinstated slavery in the French colonies. And take the French Revolution, which came just before Napoleon’s rise to power, his relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent. Did he stabilise it or shut it down? I agree with those British and French historians who now believe Napoleon seems to have done both.

On the one hand, Napoleon did bring order to a nation that had been drenched in blood in the years after the Revolution. The French people had endured the crackdown known as the 'Reign of Terror', which saw so many marched to the guillotine, as well as political instability, corruption, riots and general violence. Napoleon’s iron will managed to calm the chaos. But he also rubbished some of the core principles of the Revolution. A nation which had boldly brought down the monarchy had to watch as Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, with more power and pageantry than Louis XVI ever had. He also installed his relatives as royals across Europe, creating a new aristocracy. In the words of French politician and author Lionel Jospin, 'He guaranteed some principles of the Revolution and at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it.'

He also had a feared henchman in the form of Joseph Fouché, who ran a secret police network which instilled dread in the population. Napoleon’s spies were everywhere, stifling political opposition. Dozens of newspapers were suppressed or shut down. Books had to be submitted for approval to the Commission of Revision, which sounds like something straight out of George Orwell. Some would argue Hitler and Stalin followed this playbook perfectly. But here come the contradictions. Napoleon also championed education for all, founding a network of schools. He championed the rights of the Jews. In the territories conquered by Napoleon, laws which kept Jews cooped up in ghettos were abolished. 'I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France,' he once said, 'because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country.'

He also, crucially, developed the Napoleonic Code, a set of laws which replaced the messy, outdated feudal laws that had been used before. The Napoleonic Code clearly laid out civil laws and due processes, establishing a society based on merit and hard work, rather than privilege. It was rolled out far beyond France, and indisputably helped to modernise Europe. While it certainly had its flaws – women were ignored by its reforms, and were essentially regarded as the property of men – the Napoleonic Code is often brandished as the key evidence for Napoleon’s progressive credentials. In the words of historian Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great, 'the ideas that underpin our modern world… were championed by Napoleon'.

What about Napoleon’s battlefield exploits? If anything earns comparisons with Hitler, it’s Bonaparte’s apparent appetite for conquest. His forces tore down republics across Europe, and plundered works of art, much like the Nazis would later do. A rampant imperialist, Napoleon gleefully grabbed some of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, and allegedly boasted, 'the whole of Rome is in Paris.'

Napoleon has long enjoyed a stellar reputation as a field commander – his capacities as a military strategist, his ability to read a battle, the painstaking detail with which he made sure that he cold muster a larger force than his adversary or took maximum advantage of the lie of the land – these are stuff of the military legend that has built up around him. It is not without its critics, of course, especially among those who have worked intensively on the later imperial campaigns, in the Peninsula, in Russia, or in the final days of the Empire at Waterloo.

Doubts about his judgment, and allegations of rashness, have been raised in the context of some of his victories, too, most notably, perhaps, at Marengo. But overall his reputation remains largely intact, and his military campaigns have been taught in the curricula of military academies from Saint-Cyr to Sandhurst, alongside such great tacticians as Alexander the Great and Hannibal.

Historians may query his own immodest opinion that his presence on the battlefield was worth an extra forty thousand men to his cause, but it is clear that when he was not present (as he was not for most of the campaign in Spain) the French were wont to struggle. Napoleon understood the value of speed and surprise, but also of structures and loyalties. He reformed the army by introducing the corps system, and he understood military aspirations, rewarding his men with medals and honours; all of which helped ensure that he commanded exceptional levels of personal loyalty from his troops.

Yet, I do find it hard to side with the more staunch defenders of Napoleon who say his reputation as a war monger is to some extent due to British propaganda at the time. They will point out that the Napoleonic Wars, far from being Napoleon’s fault, were just a continuation of previous conflicts that arose thanks to the French Revolution. Napoleon, according to this analysis, inherited a messy situation, and his only real crime was to be very good at defeating enemies on the battlefield. I think that is really pushing things too far. I mean deciding to invade Spain and then Russia were his decisions to invade and conquer.

He was, by any measure, a genius of war. Even his nemesis the Duke of Wellington, when asked who the greatest general of his time was, replied: 'In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon.'

I will qualify all this and agree that Napoleon’s Russian campaign has been rightly held up as a fatal folly which killed so many of his men, but this blunder – epic as it was – should not be compared to Hitler’s wars of evil aggression. Most historians will agree that comparing the two men is horribly flattering to Hitler - a man fuelled by visceral, genocidal hate - and demeaning to Napoleon, who was a product of Enlightenment thinking and left a legacy that in many ways improved Europe.

Napoleon was, of course, no libertarian, and no pluralist. He would tolerate no opposition to his rule, and though it was politicians and civilians who imposed his reforms, the army was never far behind. But comparisons with twentieth-century dictators are well wide of the mark. While he insisted on obedience from those he administered, his ideology was based not on division or hatred, but on administrative efficiency and submission to the law. And the state he believed in remained stubbornly secular.

In Catholic southern Europe, of course, that was not an approach with which it was easy to acquiesce; and disorder, insurgency and partisan attacks can all be counted among the results. But these were principles on which the Emperor would not and could not give ground. If he had beliefs they were not religious or spiritual beliefs, but the secular creed of a man who never forgot that he owed both his military career and his meteoric political rise to the French Revolution, and who never quite abandoned, amidst the monarchical symbolism and the court pomp of the Empire, the republican dreams of his youth. When he claimed, somewhat ambiguously, after the coup of 18 Brumaire that `the Revolution was over’, he almost certainly meant that the principles of 1789 had at last been consummated, and that the continuous cycle of violence of the 1790s could therefore come to an end.

When the Empire was declared in 1804, the wording, again, might seem curious, the French being informed that the `Republic would henceforth be ruled by an Emperor’. Napoleon might be a dictator, but a part at least of him remained a son of the Enlightenment.

The arguments over Napoleon’s status will continue - and that in itself is a testament to the power of one of the most complex figures ever to straddle the world’s stage.

Will the fascination with Napoleon continue for another 200 years?

In France, at least, enthusiasm looks set to diminish. Napoleon and his exploits are scarcely mentioned in French schools anymore. Stéphane Guégan, curator of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which, among other First Empire artworks, houses a plaster model of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor astride a horse, has described France's fascination with him as ‘a national illness.’ He believes that the people who met him were fascinated by his charm. And today, even the most hostile to Napoleon also face this charm. So there is a difficulty to apprehend the duality of this character. As he wrote, “He was born from the revolution, he extended and finished it, and after 1804 he turns into a despot, a dictator.”

In France, Guégan aptly observes, there is a kind of nostalgia, not for dictatorship but for strong leaders. "Our age is suffering a lack of imagination and political utopia,"

Here I think Guégan is onto something. Napoleon’s stock has always risen or fallen according to the vicissitudes of world events and fortunes of France itself.

In the past, history was the study of great men and women. Today the focus of teaching is on trends, issues and movements. France in 1800 is no longer about Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte. It's about the industrial revolution. Man does not make history. History makes men. Or does it? The study of history makes a mug out of those with such simple ideological driven conceits.

For two hundred years on, the French still cannot agree on whether Napoleon was a hero or a villain as he has swung like a pendulum according to the gravitational pull of historical events and forces.

The question I keep asking of myself and also to French friends with whom I discuss such things is what kind of Napoleon does our generation need?

Thanks for your question.

#question #ask #napoleon #french #french history #history #military history #bonaparte #france #historiography #republic #historians #personal

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erinhime83 · 3 years

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Since APPARENTLY I did the designs all wrong (I won’t lie - doing my own design of Evangelia was sort of a thinly veiled attempted to get @callistochan87 to redesign her herself. >.>), I figured I’d make it my life mission this week to go through and, like, fix them. Partially because in my fuming about finding out that two of the people were talking about this behind my back, I kept giving myself ideas. >.<

I am pleasantly pleased with the design that @callistochan87 did for Evania/Evangelia, although I’m worried how much is actually influenced by my design and how much she actually decided to do on her own. *shrug* I just like the simplicity of it and how it does make her look like a goddess. I kept forgetting to add in the pieces in front of her ears, lol.

Antigonus I did fiddle with a little bit. Mostly, @callistochan87 mentioned that she thought it was funny having this super old guy traveling with a bunch of teenagers, and she wondered why I didn’t just...make someone new. Well, mostly because I didn’t want to, and mostly because when she did create someone new when I decided the Guides were supposed to be younger, it felt...wrong.

SO, I decided to age him down a little. Which I suppose sort of defeats the purpose of @callistochan87 creating another character when I wanted to do the same, but ignore that. He basically has the same backstory - he was the youngest Guide of the previous generation. He’s the heir of the empire, being the Emperor’s nephew, and now that his Guide duties are over, he’s preparing to take over the Empire. EXCEPT, the idiot new Guide managed to get himself killed, so Antigonus is temporarily taking over the duties as they try to find someone else to take over. BUT THEN GUESS WHAT? He’s about 35, so while he’s old, he’s not stupidly older than than, and is sort of more of a chaperone than anything else.

His outfit come from an old one @callistochan87 designed, and I figure it’s just, like, a traveling outfit? idk

Freyja...omg, Freyja. She caused most of my strife. Like, I honestly didn’t change THAT MUCH of her design, just sort of little piddly stuff to make it look more visually appealing, but APPARENTLY, that was still bad. I stewed and hemmed and hawed on this for quite a while, annoyed before it hit me - this is a a redesign. Shizuka sort of went back to her roots. Why couldn’t Freyja as well?

(And yes, I realize I was in the wrong, but like I said, I hadn’t changed her that much from her last design, and, well, these were done years ago so I sort of...forgot that she didn’t originally look like that. >.<)

And I figured, ya know, since I had minorly changed Freyja and she didn’t like that, I had better change Desiree, too, because I drastically changed her. I don’t care what @swankifiedcos says about this one, I am IN LOVE with her outfit. <3 Her hair, though, was inspired by a recent picture of @swankifiedcos of her hair between dye jobs where it was pink at the tips and she looked SO PRETTY. Sure, Desiree is brunette, not blond, but I like that look on her so much I wanted to recreate it somewhat, and she looks so nice!

Frejya, well, I did sort of tweek her design slightly to what @callistochan87 did, mostly giving her cold shoulder sleeves as a sort of call back to her old sleeves. I won’t lie - I did attempt to do them again and failed spectacularly. Sorry. But apparently she approves of this sleeve, so that’s...one less problem for me to deal with. XD Just so you know, I gave her hearts rather than flowers merely because I can’t draw flowers. Consider it a style thing. Like, in reality, she has flowers, but i just draw them as hearts. I am SHOCKED that I was able to make the feathers as nice as I did, though! This look makes SO MUCH more sense than the way we used to draw it. Me likely.

(Also, you might be thinking that she’s still wearing the pants. I originally indended that, with the thought that she comes from a cold kindgom, but then decided they’re actually shorts that she ended up added to her outfit for modesty sake, much like Sethos did with his shirt. :P)

I really wanted to redo Nannin’s outfit as well, but I’m sorry - I’m lazy, and her original outfit is both too detailed and too simple. So I just made her top layer a darker pink, and I like it better. Also made her a blond again with the idea that the people of Melohdia like like normal ass humans, and the Chosen have colored hair, and the Guides have unnatural colored eyes, which is how people can tell they’re Guides.

Geoffrey (I’m thinking of renaming him Geauffery, because that’s how I prenounce it in my head) over there gets a new design as well because I didn’t care for his other one. >.< Also, decided, as much as I like the name Dimitri Kaminiski, I;m going to go ahead and make him Owen again. Mostly because he’s sort of shifted more into being Owen. I was sort of going with this old look while making it look a little more medieval, and I like it. I also decided he’s not a soothsayer, but rather a magician.mage.

Which is sort of similar to Evangelia’s power, but not quite. She uses the power of miracles, whereas he uses actual magic. Its sort of like how Shizuka and Freyja’s power is similar, but Frejya’s is a little weaker. (Shizuka has mastery over all weapons, whereas Freyja just has mastery over bludgeoning people with a huge ass axe. But she has the benefit of also having magic, whereas Shizuka can just use some fire magic.)

The next design is where it get all long and involved. Basically as I was stewing about having my feelings hurt and how I was going to hide everything in my annoyance, I THINK I was briefly reminded of the last time I screwed up and within that instance a brilliant idea came to me, mostly because I needed more villains.

I remember I really like Astrid’s design, but looking back, I’m sort of confused as to why? It doesn’t look at all better than Freyja’s. >.< Anyway, the thought is simple - when the Chosen are originally yanked into Melohdia, Nuncio replaces one of them with one of his own that would be easily manipulated. Why Freyja, you ask? Plot reasons, since it does help explain the whole Nannin thing a lot better. The thing is, though, that Ariadne and Atalo sort of find out and drag Freyja in as well, except she ends up in Baldernan rather than Azibo with the rest of the Chosen.

So the Chosen are in Azibo thinking Astrid is one of them, except they don’t really vibe with her that well. They just figure it’s because they can’t like everyone, and ignore it. Astrid herself doesn’t really suspect anything. But then they travel to Baldurnan and find Freyja there, who they do vibe with very well, and they find out that Astrid is a fake.

Which would be all fine and well. Even Freyja’s willing to give the girl a chance because, hey, it’s not her fault she was falsely brought into this world with no purpose. Except Astrid is a spoiled bitch and takes it as an affront that they would even want to include Freyja at all. So she just sort of runs off and Nuncio catches up to her, and convinces her that she’s the real one, and and she goes around antagonizing the group from time to time. They think she’s in league with Atalo at first until they find out of the truth.

NEW IDEA. I actually had this very vague idea while musing around, but @callistochan87 had another idea that was similar enough that I can change things to make it work WAY better. So, the new idea is mostly that Nuncio pulls Astrid into Melohdia way before the others. The people are rather confused, certainly, but it’s not 100% unheard of one Chosen being brought over. So she’s treated like something of a god and spoiled further, and Nuncio pretty much convinces her that she’s the soul savior of Melohdia. He assigns Thor to be her Guide, although he’s just some Random Dude (because I decided that matching genders to the Chosen is sort of weird, so Nannin is a full Guide now).

BUT Ariadne and Atalo end up pulling the REAL Chosen a month or so later, which REALLY pull the people for a loop, and they realize that Astrid is a fake once they realize that Thor isn’t a real Guide and that Nannin claims Freyja. The group attempts to assimilate Astrid in with them, because they realize it’s not HER fault all this happened, but since she’s a fake Chosen AND a narcissistic bitch, they end up not viving all that well, and she ends up running away in anger and embarrassment.

Nuncio sort of blames the whole thing on Atalo somehow, since the people forgot that Ariadne is the only one who can pull true Chosen into the world, mostly to save face.

Astrid and Thor do end up joining with Atalo for a little bit, because he’s trying to be sympathetic to her as well, but their goals aren’t really the same. She does prove to be a major threat to the group because she DOES have the power of a Chosen, although they’re sort of weak.

Her real name is Katelyn Davis, and she’s pretty much the opposite of the other Chosen. She’s a complete social butterfly, the sort to think the world revolves around her. She’s not happy unless she’s around people, whereas the other Chosen are pretty much introverted and would prefer to keep to themselves.

Her Guide’s name is Thor (I keep calling him that in my head, I think because of Frejya being named after a god), and he is, in fact, a true Guide. It’s just that he’s not a very good one, nor is he a good person. He’s a bandit and delights in the misfortunes of others. The other Guides avoided him at all costs, and wasn’t sure why he was chosen to be a Guide. He goes off with Astrid after they kick him out of the group when Freyja chooses Nannin over him. (The two of them became close in the month Frejya was stuck there on her own, so of course she’d want to have her stay with her.)

The last picture was just me giving them their original hair colors just for the hell of it, and now I’m torn. >.< Because I like these as well. I mean, I like the idea of the colored hair being how you can tell they’re the Chosen, BUT I also, you know, like the original colors BECAUSE they are the original colors. >.<

#original charcters #designs #mi #evangelia #antigonus #frejya #nannin #geoffery #alden #astrid #thor

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per-ineptia-ad-astra · 4 years

Text

Star Trek Episode 1.24: This Side of Paradise

AKA Yet Another Creepy Utopia Planet

Our episode begins with the Enterprise heading in to orbit around an Earthy-looking planet named Omicron Ceti 3. Omicon Ceti is a real star, by the way—also known as Mira or Mira A, it’s a red giant and part of a binary star system with its sister Mira B. It’s not a real likely place to go looking for such a nice homey sort of planet, though, because Mira is a pulsating variable star, which means its size and brightness is constantly fluctuating, and it’s hard to evolve life when your sun keeps flickering like a neon sign in a noir movie all the time.

Uhura reports to Kirk that she’s been transmitting a contact signal every five minutes just as he ordered, but she’s only getting dead air in response. Kirk tells her to keep it up until they get into orbit, then moves on to talk to Spock. “There were one hundred fifty men, women and children in that colony,” he says. “What are the chances of survivors?”

Looks like the chances are, uh...not great. And by ‘not great’ I mean ‘nonexistent’. Spock explains that ‘Bertold rays’ are a recent enough discovery that there’s still a lot not known about them, but one thing that is for sure known is that exposure to these rays causes living animal tissue to disintegrate. Nasty. Evidently this planet is heavily exposed to these rays, because a group of colonists-- “Sandoval’s group”-- came here only three years ago and Spock says there’s no possibility they could have survived. Well why the heck would anyone build a colony in such a place? All Spock can say is “They knew there was a risk.”

Kirk questions whether they can risk sending a landing party down under such conditions, but Spock says the disintegration doesn’t start immediately, so they’ll be alright if they don’t stick around too long. The helmsman reports that they’ve successfully established orbit, and he’s found a settlement—or at least, something that was a settlement at one point. Kirk tells Spock to equip a landing party of five to accompany him down there, including a biologist and McCoy. That’s gonna be a fun mission briefing. “Yes, we're beaming down to a planet bombarded with deadly radiation, but no need to worry, crew, your tissues will probably only disintegrate a little bit."

Sometime later, the landing party—Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, a blueshirt and a goldshirt—materialize into a meadow near a dirt path and a picket fence. They’ve thoughtfully arranged themselves into a nice alternating pattern.

[ID: A shot of a sunny meadow with a dirt road, a few trees and a white picket fence in the background. Newly beamed down are six Enterprise crewmembers standing in two rows: in the front are Kirk and Spock, in the back are McCoy, a goldshirt, a blueshirt, and Sulu.]

The goldshirt, incidentally, is DeSalle, who we last saw back in The Squire of Gothos. The character was originally written for this story as Lt. Timothy Fletcher, but was changed to DeSalle after the production crew realized they’d cast an actor who had already appeared in the series. Yes, really. AGAIN. The blueshirt is Kelowitz, who showed up briefly in The Galileo Seven and Arena, and likewise started out as another character but was renamed after being cast. I don’t know how this situation managed to happen so often on TOS, but apparently it did. At least they both seem to have managed to hold onto more or less the same positions that they had the last time we saw them, a rare feat for any minor TOS crewmember.

The group walks forward towards some nearby farm buildings arranged around a dirt yard, with a horse-drawn cart sitting out in front of one of them. But there’s no horse to be seen, and no people either. They wander through the yard and over toward what looks like a paddock, but without any animals in it. Everything seems quite thoroughly deserted.

Kirk leans on the paddock fence and glumly muses, “Another dream that failed. There’s nothing sadder. It took these people a year to make the trip from Earth. They came all that way...and died.” Hold on, it took them a year? What, do they not give colony ships warp drives? Did they have to hitchhike here?

“Hardly that, sir,” someone says, and suddenly we see three men in green jumpsuits standing at the edge of the yard, looking very relaxed and also very not dead.

As the landing party all turn around to stare in shock the man in front strides forward and says, “Welcome to Omicron Ceti 3. I’m Elias Sandoval.” McCoy looks like he’s getting ready to spray the dude with holy water.

After the titles, we get a brief captain’s log to sum things up, just in case everyone forgot what happened during the commercial break:

“Captain’s Log, Stardate 3417.3. We thought our mission to Omicron Ceti 3 would be an unhappy one. We had expected to find no survivors of the agricultural colony there. Apparently, our information was incorrect.”

The colonists start happily shaking hands with the landing party—but happily as in “oh, it’s so nice to meet you” not “oh thank god you came to rescue us we’re all on the brink of death”. Sandoval says they haven’t seen anyone outside the colony since they left Earth four years ago, although they’ve been expecting someone to come by for a while. Apparently their subspace radio didn’t work right and they don’t have anyone who could “master its intricacies”. Now, I’m no expert on establishing colonies on alien planets, but ‘person who can work our only communication device’ does rather seem like a position you would want to make sure was filled before you left.

Kirk has to explain that they haven’t come to visit because of the dead radio. He does not explain why they did decide to come when they did. Spock’s comment about the colonists knowing there was a risk indicates that whether or not Bertold rays specifically were known about before the colonists left, they at least had reason to believe there was something dangerous about the planet. So why’d the Federation let them go and then wait another three years before sending anyone to check up on them? Eh, probably just another failing of twenty-third century space bureaucracy.

Sandoval’s not bothered about it, though. He tells Kirk that it doesn’t make much difference—the important thing is the party is here now and the colonists are happy to see them. Then he invites them on a tour of the settlement and casually strolls off, leaving the landing party to stand there and try to process what the hell they just witnessed.

“Pure speculation, just an educated guess...I’d say that man is alive,” McCoy says. Thanks Bones.

Spock says that his scans show that the planet is getting ray’d just as their reports indicated, so that’s not the issue. Under this intensity, the landing party could safely hang out here for a week if necessary, as per the usual Star Trek rule that you can be exposed to a deadly thing and be just fine up until the exact moment it kills you, but there’s a mighty big difference between a week and three years. Or as Kirk succinctly puts it, “These people shouldn’t be alive.”

“Is it possible they’re not?” Sulu asks. Great out of the box thinking there Sulu, love it.

Kirk takes a moment to consider that, which is fair—compared to the kind of weird shit they’ve encountered so far, the walking dead wouldn’t even stand out that much. But McCoy points out that when they shook hands with Sandoval, “His flesh was warm. He’s alive. There’s no doubt about that.” Spock fires back with a reminder that, “There’s no miracle connected with [Bertold rays], doctor, you know that. No cures, no serums, no antidotes. If a man is exposed long enough, he dies.” Okay dude, calm down, all McCoy said was “he’s alive” not “my god! Bertold rays have been fake all along! wake up sheeple!"

As Kirk points out, this whole debate is pretty pointless anyway for the moment—they’re arguing in a vacuum, and they’ll need more answers if they want to get anywhere. So they go to follow Sandoval, who leads them towards a nearby farm house, while a few colonists do various farm chores nearby. Sandoval explains that the colonists split into three groups, with forty-five people at this settlement and two more settlements elsewhere on the planet. Apparently they thought that arrangement would give each group a better chance for growth, since if some disaster struck one group the other two would probably still be alright.

“Omicron is an ideal agricultural planet,” he says. “We determined not to suffer the fate of the expeditions that went before us.” It’s rather vague what expeditions he’s referring to here, since at no other point in the episode are any previous attempts at settling Omicron Ceti 3 mentioned. But given that Sandoval specifically mentions the possibility of disease afflicting one group as a reason to split up, and Spock earlier said that Bertold rays were a recent discovery—and that the colonists knew coming to Omicron Ceti 3 was risky-- it seems possible that previous groups tried to settle the planet and, without knowing about the Bertold rays, mistook their effects for some kind of disease native to the planet. Of course that doesn’t explain why this group of colonists decided it would be a good idea to try to settle here again anyway, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few months, it’s that not everyone sees the possibility of dying to a terrible disease as a compelling reason to change their plans in any way.

As they stand in the farmhouse talking about this, a woman steps forward from another room in the house. She’s in soft focus, just in case we might forget she’s a woman, and instead of the green jumpsuit all the male colonists are wearing, she’s wearing green overalls over a lavender shirt, a combination that somehow manages to be an even worse fashion disaster than the jumpsuits themselves. She starts to say something to Sandoval, then stops in surprise as she sees the landing party. But for once the romance-o-vision isn’t for Kirk—it’s Spock that the camera zooms in on as the woman stares at him.

“Layla, come meet our guests,” Sandoval says cheerfully, oblivious to the wistfully romantic background music. He introduces her as Layla Colomi, their botanist. Layla says that she and Spock have met before, but “It’s been a long time.” Kirk gives Spock a bit of a side-eye for that, but Spock offers no details.

Well, all romantic tension aside, they do still have a mission to attend to here, as Kirk reminds Sandoval. Sandoval tells them to go ahead with any examinations or tests they want. “I think you’ll find our settlement an interesting one. Our philosophy is a simple one: that men should return to a less complicated life. We have few mechanical things here, no vehicles, no weapons. We have harmony here. Complete peace.” Oh yeah, that bodes well. Remember the last place we saw complete harmony and peace? At least that explains why everyone on this farm is using equipment straight out of Stardew Valley, which is presumably not the most advanced agricultural technology available by the twenty-third century. I’m not sure why Sandoval’s idea of a simpler lifestyle excludes vehicles, though. They’re not exactly the most recent thing on the timeline of human technological advancements.

Sandoval tells the landing party to make themselves at home, and they all head off. All except for Spock, who lingers just a few seconds more to give Layla a completely neutral look before walking away as well.

Everyone goes off to conduct their respective investigations. Sulu and Kelowitz wander through a yard over towards another farm building. Kelowitz isn’t sure what exactly they should be looking for, though. “Whatever doesn’t look right—whatever that is,” Sulu replies, climbing up to sit on a railing on the building’s porch. “When it comes to farms, I wouldn’t know what looked right or wrong if it were two feet from me.” I hope you enjoyed that line, because “didn’t grow up on a farm” is about all the backstory TOS is going to give us for Sulu until the movies.

[ID: Three screenshots showing Sulu pulling himself up to sit on the railing of an old-fashioned farmhouse as he says, "When it comes to farms, I wouldn't know what looked right or wrong if it were two feet from me." Growing up from the ground nearby are two large plants with thick brownish-purple stems and large pink flowers on top.]

Hey Sulu, what's that about two feet from you? Oh well, I'm sure it's not important.

Kelowitz opens up a nearby barn and notes that there’s no cows there—in fact, the barn isn’t even built for cows, just for storage, and indeed it only looks big enough to be useful for holding cow, singular. Having a storage barn isn’t itself that weird, although the fact that there is nothing currently stored in the storage barn is a bit strange. But also, as Sulu points out, come to think of it, they haven’t seen any animals here, native or imported. No cows, no horses, no pigs, not even a dog. Which is a bit odd for an agricultural colony. They must have had or expected to have animals at some point—otherwise what was pulling that cart?

Back in the house, Sandoval is asking Layla about Spock (once again referred to as a ‘Vulcanian’). She says that she knew Spock on Earth, six years ago. Sandoval, apparently having noticed the dreamy background music by now, asks if Layla loved Spock. She says that if she did, “it was important only to myself...Mr. Spock’s feelings were never expressed to me. It is said he has none to give.”

“Would you like him to stay with us now? To be one of us?” Sandoval asks. Layla smiles at him. “There is no choice, Elias,” she says. “He will stay.”

Elsewhere in the house, McCoy is scanning a colonist. He doesn’t look exactly happy with the tricorder result he gets, but all he says is, “That’ll be all, thank you very much,” and the colonist leaves, passing Kirk coming in. Incidentally, I can’t help but note that this room contains two paintings on the wall and what appears to be a cabinet full of china. I suppose the paintings could have been done by a colonist, but the china could surely only have been brought there. Who decided to pack fancy china on a year-long space voyage to an agricultural colony?

[ID: A shot of the interior of a farmhouse with blue walls, with a large wooden table in the middle of the room, a cabinet with china and glassware in the corner, a wooden desk with a copper tea kettle and some other kitchen items on it against the back wall, and a painting hanging on the wall showing some blurry trees. Sandoval, a middle-aged white man with short brown hair wearing a green jumpsuit, walks past the camera as he says, "Oh, captain, I've been looking for you."]

Kirk asks if McCoy’s found anything yet. McCoy replies that he’s surveyed nine men so far, ranging in age from twenty-three to fifty-nine. And they’re all in perfect condition. Not just healthy—perfect. Textbook responses across the board, from all of them. “If there are many more of them,” McCoy muses, “I can throw away my shingle.”

At that point Kirk’s communicator goes off. It’s Spock, calling in from one of the crop fields. He’s made the same observation as Sulu—there’s no life on the planet aside from the colonists and the plants. No animals, no insects. Spock doesn’t have any explanation yet, so Kirk tells him to carry on with his investigation and hangs up.

McCoy notes the absence of animals as peculiar, and Kirk says it’s especially so because the expedition records show that they did bring animals with them to raise for food. And pull their carts, presumably. But it seems none of them are still around. McCoy says he’d like to see the expedition’s medical records, a request Kirk has apparently anticipated because he’s got the floppy disc on hand with him.

Sandoval comes in and says that he’d like to take the two of them on a tour of the fields, to show off what the colony’s accomplished. McCoy says he’ll have to bow out, since he’s still working on the medical examinations. “However, if I find everyone else’s health to be as perfect as yours...”

“You’ll find no weaklings here,” Sandoval says, which uh, sure is a hell of a way to phrase that. “No weaklings! None of those miserable, pathetic sods with imperfect health! Only the strong survive! THE SLIGHTEST BLEMISH SHALL BE CAUSE FOR EXILE!”

Leaving McCoy behind, Kirk and Sandoval head out to the fields, where Sandoval gushes to Kirk about how great this place is: they’ve got moderate climate, moderate rains all year round, and the soil will grow anything they stick in it. Which is pretty miraculous, considering there’s no such thing as growing conditions that are perfect for every plant. But as we’re about to see, that’s not the only weird thing going on with their farming practices.

The conversation is interrupted by DeSalle arriving to give Kirk the biology report. Sandoval excuses himself to attend to work elsewhere, leaving Kirk and DeSalle alone to discuss the report. At first, it seems to be just as Sandoval said: they’ve got a variety of crops growing here successfully. The weird thing is that they don’t actually have very many of those crops. There’s enough to keep the colony going at the size it currently is, but barely more than that. Which tracks with what we’ve seen of the place so far: a couple of tiny fields that look more about the size for someone’s backyard garden than for a prosperous farm, tended by the occasional person idly scratching at the ground with a hoe. For a supposedly bounteous agricultural colony, that’s pretty weird. What have they been doing all this time?

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle all one color,” Kirk muses, taking a moment to stroll a few steps away so he can say this dramatically in the distance instead of actually talking to DeSalle. “No key to where the pieces fit in. Why?”

Kirk’s communicator goes off. It’s McCoy, saying Kirk had better get back over there. “Trouble?” “No, but I’d like you to see this for yourself.” Of course. No one can ever just explain something over the phone, can they.

So Kirk heads back to the house, where the thing that Kirk just absolutely has to see for himself turns out to be McCoy just telling him what he’s found out, but he definitely couldn't do that over the communicator for, uh, reasons. What he’s found out is pretty interesting, though: McCoy checked up on Sandoval’s medical records from right before the colonists had left, which said that Sandoval had had an appendectomy, and had scar tissue on his lungs from childhood pneumonia (the weakling!). Yet when McCoy scanned Sandoval himself today, the results came back just as perfect as all the other colonists’. Kirk’s first thought is instrument failure, but McCoy says no, he thought of that and tested it by scanning himself, and it recorded him just fine, down to “those two broken ribs I had once.” Which sounds like an interesting story. But Sandoval’s scan? No scar tissue, and one healthy appendix. That’s right, Sandoval’s apparently managed to regrow an entire organ. Do you think you would notice that happening? Like, would it itch?

While Kirk and McCoy try to figure that out, Spock is hanging out in a field scanning with his own tricorder, while Layla stands nearby smiling ominously at him. Spock muses that there’s “Nothing. Not even insects. Yet your plants grow, and you’ve survived exposure to Bertold rays.” Yeah, how are those plants growing without insects? Presumably the native plants have evolved some way around that, but the ones the colonists have brought from Earth would need some help. Are the colonists just manually pollinating everything? Maybe that’s why they haven’t grown very much.

Layla says this can be explained, but when asked to do so, she just says, “Later.” Spock looks annoyed and remarks, “I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question.” Hey! Cut that bullshit out. No one on this colony has directly answered a question since you got here, there’s no call to go ragging on a whole gender for it. Besides, just saying “Later,” is hardly a stunningly deft diversion, it’s not like she threw a smoke bomb down and disappeared.

“And I never understood you,” Layla says, walking over and placing a hand on his chest. “Until now. There was always a place in here where no one could come. There was only the face you allow people to see. Only one side you’d allow them to know.”

[ID: Three screenshots of Spock and Layla, a white woman with a lot of long blonde hair wearing a lilac shirt and green overalls, standing outside in a field with a large tree in the background. Layla, seen from behind, is pressing her hand to Spock's upper chest and saying, "There was always a place in here where no one could come." Spock replies "you know that's not where my heart is right".]

If Layla was hoping this little speech would prompt Spock to cry out that yes, she’s figured him out, he does love her but has never been able to show it! she’s disappointed, because he just looks uncomfortable and steps away. He tries to steer the conversation back onto the mystery of the colonists. “If I tell you how we survive,” she asks, “will you try to understand how we feel about our life here? About each other?”

That’s a pretty vague thing to make a promise about, so Spock deflects by saying that emotions are alien to him; he’s a SCIENTIST. “Someone else might believe that—your shipmates, your captain—but not me,” Layla says. Oh sure! Obviously none of the people who have lived, worked, and risked death alongside Spock can be expected to know anything about Spock. Only you are the Spock Expert, gifted with incredible insight by virtue of having a crush on him.

“Come,” she says, sauntering off through the field with her hand outstretched to him. Spock rather pointedly folds his hands behind his back instead and follows her.

Back in the house, Kirk and McCoy are struggling to have a conversation with Sandoval. Kirk tells Sandoval that he’s received orders from Starfleet Command to evacuate everyone on the colony, since, y’know, deadly rays and all that. He expects Sandoval to start making preparations. But Sandoval, calmly, casually, says, “No.” It’s not necessary, he insists—they’re in no danger.

But...but the Bertold rays. Sandoval is unmoved, pointing out that as McCoy’s own instruments show, the colonists are in perfect health and there have been no deaths. Okay, what about all those animals? What happened to them? “We’re vegetarians,” Sandoval says blithely. Which, as Kirk points out, does absolutely nothing to answer the question. Actually it raises further questions.

Sandoval remains thoroughly unbothered and thoroughly unhelpful. “Captain, you stress very unimportant matters. We will not leave,” he says, and goes back to gazing out the window, evidently considering the conversation over.

Elsewhere, Spock and Layla are still walking, and Spock is getting annoyed that Layla still hasn’t explained just what it is they’re going to see. “Its basic properties and elements are not important,” Layla says helpfully. “What is important is that it gives life, peace, love.” Oh boy.

Spock is dubious, but Layla pulls him forward, over towards another one of those large pink flowers. “I was one of the first to find them,” Layla says. “The spores.”

[ID: A gif of Spock approaching a large pinkish-purple flower and saying, "Spores?" The flower then sprays a cloud of white spores all over his face and torso while Spock recoils.]

For a moment Spock just looks startled, but then he starts clutching his head and falling onto his knees in the grass, dropping his tricorder and gasping, “No--” For the first time all episode, Layla’s absolute serenity starts to fracture slightly. Over Spock’s agonized protests, she insists that it shouldn’t hurt—it didn’t hurt any of them. But, as Spock gasps out, he’s not like them. Whoops, did the biologist forget to account for biological differences before handing out a facefull of spores? I bet you didn’t even check if he had any allergies first, did you?

Just as it’s looking like this might put actually put a crack in Layla’s blissed-out impassivity, Spock stops thrashing about and starts seeming less anguished and more confused. Layla’s concern vanishes once again, and she goes back to smiling happily while stroking his face. “Now...now you belong to all of us...and we to you. There’s no need to hide your inner face any longer. We understand.”

Spock still seems unsure, but then he takes Layla’s hand in his and smiles. Not the slight hint of a smile or sardonic quirk of the lips you’d expect to see from Spock, but a huge, broad grin from ear to ear. “I love you...I can love you,” he says, and then he kisses her.

Hoo boy.

After the break, we get a quick Captain’s Log to recap:

“Captain’s Log, supplemental. We have been ordered by Starfleet Command to evacuate the colony on Omicron 3. However, the colony leader, Elias Sandoval, has refused all cooperation and will not listen to any arguments.”

Sure enough, we see Sandoval exiting the farmhouse, followed by McCoy and an extremely frustrated Kirk. “Captain, your arguments are very valid, but do they not apply to us,” Sandoval says, as calm as ever. He tries to walk off, but Kirk grabs his arm and pulls him back.

“My orders are to remove all the colonists,” he says, “and that’s exactly what I intend to do with or without your help.”

“Without, I should think,” Sandoval says, and strolls off, leaving Kirk standing there fuming.

Sulu and Kelowitz come walking up to report that they’ve checked out everything and it all seems normal, except for the missing animals. Of course, they also both said they had no idea what to look for in the first place, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. Kirk tells them about the evacuation orders, and says he wants landing parties to start gathering the colonists and preparing them to leave. And by the way, where did Spock and DeSalle go? Sulu says they haven’t seen either one in some time, but McCoy says DeSalle was going to examine some native plants he found. Native plants, huh? I think we can guess what happened to DeSalle.

Since Spock still hasn’t reported in, Kirk gives him a call. Or tries to, at least—Spock doesn’t pick up. On the other end of the line, we see why that is: Spock's communicator is laying abandoned on the ground, while Spock himself, now dressed in the same horrible green jumpsuit as the colonists, is stretched out on the grass with Layla, watching clouds. The communicator beeps away while Spock happily describes how one of the clouds looks like a dragon. "I've never seen a dragon," Layla says. BEEP BEEP. "I have." BEEP BEEP. "On Barengarius 7." BEEP BEEP. "But I've never stopped to look at clouds before." BEEP BEEP. "Or rainbows." BEEP BEEP. "You know, I can tell you exactly why one appears in the sky, but considering its beauty has always been out of the question." BEEP BEEP.

"Not here," Layla says (beep beep), and they smile dreamily at each other before going into another makeout session. Meanwhile, Kirk is still on the line, and not getting any happier about it. Layla finally picks up the communicator and holds it up for Spock, who takes a break from kissin' to say, "Yes, what did you want?"

Naturally, this throws both Kirk and McCoy for a loop. While McCoy stands there with a "what the fuck" look on his face, Kirk takes a moment to recover and then demands, "Spock, is that you?"

"Yes, captain, what did you want?"

"Where are you?"

"...I don't believe I want to tell you."

[ID: Three shots of Kirk and McCoy standing in front of the farmhouse, Kirk holding his communicator while McCoy looks on. Kirk has a stunned expression on his face and looks around with his mouth open, trying to figure out what to say.]

Kirk plows on ahead, telling Spock that, whatever the hell he thinks he's doing, he's got orders: they're getting the colonists out, and Spock is to meet back at the settlement in ten minutes.

"No, I don't think so," Spock says casually. "You don't think so, what?" "I don't think so, sir."

Kirk has to take a moment after that one. It's rather amazing that McCoy's made it this far into the conversation without saying anything himself. Presumably he's just in shock. Eventually Kirk tells Spock to report in immediately, but by now Spock and Layla have gone back to kissing, leaving the communicator open but abandoned in the grass once more.

"That didn't sound at all like Spock, Jim," McCoy says, putting in his bid for the Enterprise’s bi-weekly Massive Understatement contest.

"No, it--I thought you said you might like him if he mellowed a little."

"I didn't say that!"

"You said that."

"Not exactly,” McCoy protests, and then somewhat grudgingly adds, “He might be in trouble.”

I'm sure McCoy did say that, or something like it, but "I hope Spock has his brain taken over by alien spores" was presumably not where he was going with it. He obviously sees this sudden change of behavior as something to be concerned about--even moreso than Kirk, who seems more irritated than anything. But then, it's only been a couple episodes since McCoy had his own run-in with an alien influence making people act a lot more mellow than usual, and he didn't enjoy that experience at all, so it's not surprising that "trouble" is his first thought here.

Kirk tells McCoy to take over the landing party detail and start getting the colonists up to the ship, and to make sure the party works in teams of two, with nobody being left alone. Meanwhile, Kirk himself takes Sulu and Kelowitz and heads off to find Spock, using the open frequency from Spock's communicator as a homing signal. They follow a dirt path out of the main settlement and soon find said communicator, laying open and abandoned in the grass just off the path. As Kirk picks it up, they hear laughter nearby, and Sulu points in astonishment further down the path, where Layla is watching Spock dangle upside-down from a tree branch like a kid on a jungle gym.

[ID: A shot of Spock and Layla among some trees at the end of a dirt path. Layla is standing on the ground and holding hands with Spock, who is hanging upside-down by his knees from a large tree branch, laughing.]

For a moment all Kirk can do is stare weakly at this weird spectacle. Then he collects himself with a stern AHEM and marches over like a principal about to deliver some very serious detention.

Meanwhile, back at the main hub of the colony, the landing party seems to have gotten well underway with preparations for departure, with several colonists and crewmen piling up luggage and equipment in the middle of a field while McCoy stands nearby overseeing everything, a job I’m sure he’s enjoying since we all know administrative work is McCoy’s favorite thing. Then DeSalle arrives, carrying a couple of the spore flowers and tells McCoy to take “a good, close look” at them, because they’re very interesting. McCoy steps forward to check them out right before the scene cuts away again, leaving us with little doubt as to what’s about to happen next.

During that little interim, Kirk and his crew have made it over to where Spock and Layla are cavorting. Spock just grins happily at Kirk, clearly not bothered one bit, even as Kirk asks if Spock’s out of his mind. He didn’t report to Kirk, he says, because...he didn’t want to.

Kirk glances back and forth between Spock and Layla, who’s standing there smiling rather smugly, and tells Layla that she’ll need to come get ready to evacuate with the rest of the colonists. Spock cheerfully says that there’s not going to be any evacuation. “But perhaps,” he adds, “we should go and get you straightened out.”

That really doesn’t bode well, but rather than ask just what Spock means by that, Kirk tells Sulu that Spock is under arrest in Sulu’s custody until they get back to the ship. Which will certainly work out well because it’s not like Spock is strong enough to chuck Sulu all the way across the field barehanded or anything. Not that Spock seems especially perturbed about being under arrest; instead he just shrugs, drops down from the tree, and says, “Very well. Come with me,” before heading off across the field, leaving else to follow in confusion. That’s how you arrest someone, right?

Of course, Spock leads them right to another group of spore flowers, which the group stops and stares at obligingly for a moment. Then the flowers explode a bunch of spores at them. Somehow, even though he’s standing right next to Sulu and Kelowitz, Kirk manages to totally avoid getting any spores up his sinuses, while the other two are immediately affected. “Yes...I see now,” Sulu says blissfully, with that trademark Very High grin that George Takei does so well. “Of course we can’t remove the colony. It’d be wrong.”

Kirk grabs him by the shoulders—Kirk’s go-to method for snapping people out of it--but when this somehow fails to bring Sulu back to his right mind, all Kirk can do is say that he doesn’t know what these plants are or how they work, but “you’re all going back to the settlement with me, and those colonists are going aboard the ship.” This stern proclamation has absolutely no effect on anyone. The whole group just stands there happily watching Kirk stomp back toward the colony. “I can see the captain is going to be difficult,” Spock remarks.

Kirk’s day isn’t about to get any better, because upon making it back to the colony he’s greeted by McCoy, who we can immediately tell is under the influence as well because his accent is absolutely out of control. It’s so thick even the subtitles pick up on it.

[ID: A screenshot of McCoy walking through a meadow with his communicator out, saying, "Sho’nuf."]

“Hiya, Jimmy boy!” McCoy very happily says to a very unhappy Kirk. “Hey, I’ve taken care of everything. Now all y’all gotta do is just relax. Doctor’s orders!” With a very resigned look, Kirk asks how many plants McCoy’s beamed up to the ship, and McCoy says it must be going on a hundred by now.

So Kirk beams up to the ship and heads right to the bridge, where he tells Uhura to put him through to Admiral Komak at Starfleet, though what he expects Komak to do about all this I don't know. But it’s too late. Uhura turns around to show that she’s smiling as happily as everyone else, and says, “Oh, I’m sorry Dave, I mean, captain. I can’t do that.” She’s short-circuited all the ship’s communications, except for ship-to-surface, since they’ll need that for a little while yet. Then she leaves, pausing in the door of the lift to tell Kirk that it’s really all for the best.

Kirk stands there seething for a moment, then stomps over to grab a plant that’s been left in Spock’s chair. He throws it across the bridge, and the camera lingers ominously on it as Kirk heads back into the lift.

Things aren’t any better on the rest of the ship. Kirk soon finds a long line of crewmembers of all different shirt colors, patiently waiting to transport down to join the colony. Out of what I can only assume is some desperate futile hope that someone will follow his orders if he just keeps trying, Kirk orders them all to go back to their stations at once. Unsurprisingly, they all ignore him. Kirk points out to one of the redshirts that this is MUTINY! but it doesn't get him very far.

[ID: A gif showing a young white man with brown hair wearing a redshirt as he says, "Yes, sir, it is." The camera then zooms in very dramatically on Kirk's stunned face.]

So...they’re all going down to join the colony? All four hundred thirty of them? Or four hundred twenty-nine, I guess, if Kirk refuses to join the fun. That’s almost ten times the amount of people the colony currently has in it. That seems like it could present a bit of a problem, because if you’ll recall DeSalle told Kirk earlier that right now the colony’s growing enough food to feed their current population, with little left over. How are they going to handle such a large and sudden influx into their population? Do they have housing for all these people? Or are they just all going to eat dirt and sleep on the ground because they’re all too high to notice anyway?

After we’ve had a commercial break to contemplate this shocking turn of events, Kirk takes some time out to give vent to his feelings in a captain’s log:

"Captain's Log, Stardate 3417.5. The pod plants have spread spores throughout the ship, carried by the ventilation system. Under their influence, my crew is deserting to join the Omicron colony, and I can't stop them. I don't know why I have not been infected, nor can I get Doctor McCoy to explain the physical, psychological aspects of the infection."

And indeed, just in case we had any doubt, we then see McCoy strolling through the field and happily telling Kirk, “I’m not interested in any physical, psychological aspects, Jim-boy. We all perfectly healthy down here.” Kirk grumbles about how much he’s been hearing about things being perfect lately. “I bet you’ve even grown your tonsils back.” “Sho’nuf!”

Kirk tries desperately to get McCoy to do something to figure these spores out—run a blood test, take a scan, type the symptoms into WebMD, something, anything—but McCoy is more interested in rambling on about mint juleps. Meanwhile, back in the farmhouse, Sandoval’s having tea with Spock while they talk about how nearly everyone’s beamed down from the ship and things are “proceeding quite well.” Kirk storms in and demands to know where McCoy’s gotten to, and Spock says he went off to make that mint julep. Which could prove quite difficult unless this tiny half-assed farm colony has somehow managed to set up a working distillery around here somewhere, but Kirk’s got bigger concerns right now than where McCoy’s going to get his bourbon.

Sandoval wants to know why Kirk won’t join them in their private, spore-sponsored paradise. Kirk asks where these spores came from, anyway, and Spock exposits that there’s no way to know—they just drifted through space until they arrived at this planet, which is perfect for them because it turns out they actually thrive on Bertold rays. The plants act as a repository for the spores until they can find a human—or half-Vulcan—body to inhabit. No explanation is forthcoming as to how Spock knows any of this.

Spock and Sandoval insist that the planet is “a true Eden” with belonging and love and no needs or wants for anyone, but Kirk is skeptical. “No wants, no needs. We weren’t meant for that. None of us. Man stagnates if he has no ambition, no desire to be more than he is.” Of all the things wrong with this situation I’m not sure “BEING TOO HAPPY IS BAD FOR YOU” is the take I would go with, but okay. Spock says that Kirk doesn’t understand, but he’ll come around...sooner or later.

Kirk, disgusted with this whole conversation, goes back to the ship. The bridge is dark, silent, and utterly empty. We get a slow pan of the blinking lights and displays of the consoles, with no one left to man them. Kirk walks over to his chair, hits the intercom, and starts calling one part of the ship after another, with no response from any of them. With nothing else left to do, he sits down in his chair and starts glumly recording a captain’s log so angsty it could be a LiveJournal entry:

"Captain's Log, Stardate 3417.7. Except for myself, all crew personnel have transported to the surface of the planet. Mutinied. Lieutenant Uhura has effectively sabotaged the communications station. I can only contact the surface of the planet. The ship...can be maintained in orbit for several months, but even with automatic controls, I cannot pilot her alone. In effect, I am marooned here. I'm beginning to realize...just how big this ship really is, how quiet. I don't know how to get my crew back, how to counteract the effect of the spores. I don't know what I can offer against...paradise."

Hold on hold on HOLD ON what do you MEAN the ship can be maintained in orbit for several months? Every time someone takes their hands off the controls for five seconds we get told that the orbit is decaying and they’re gonna plummet into some hapless planet within a few hours at most but now all of a sudden it’s fine to hang out up there for several months? MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

Kirk gets up to go sit at the helm, just to get a change of scenery mid-mope, and as he finishes his log/rant the camera slowly pans down to reveal the spore flower that he chucked across the bridge earlier. Which is weird because we just got a wide shot of the bridge and that flower definitely wasn’t there then.

[ID: Two shots. The first is a wide shot showing Kirk alone on the empty, darkened bridge, preparing to sit down at the helm. There is nothing in on the floor in front of the helm. The second shot is a closer shot of Kirk sitting at the helm with his chin in one hand, now with a large spore flower poking up in the front of shot.]

The flower promptly shoots Kirk in the face, and for a moment he just continues to sit there with spores in his hair and a “yeah, this might as well happen” expression. But then he slowly starts to smile, suddenly as happy as everyone else. Exactly why Kirk’s been unaffected by the spores up until now, even after hanging out for quite a while on a ship that’s supposedly been thoroughly contaminated by them, is never really explained. Maybe he's just on a lot of Zyrtec. But it seems even Kirk’s determination to not be happy can’t hold out against a point-blank spray in the face. He calls Spock to say that he finally understands now, which Spock is happy to hear. Kirk says he’ll be down just as soon as he packs up a few things, so Spock says he and Layla will wait for him at the beamdown point.

So Kirk goes off to his quarters to pack up a suitcase, the contents of which seem to mostly consist of uniform shirts. Apparently paradise for Kirk does not include one of those green jumpsuits, which, really, who can blame him. He opens a small vault by his bed and pulls out a couple of black cases, one of which he opens to reveal a medal. This seems to stir some sense of conflict because he sits down and stares at it for a long moment, but then puts it aside and heads to the transporter room, where he puts the suitcase on the platform and then prepares to set the controls.

But then Kirk hesitates, and stands there for a moment looking conflicted. Possibly he’s still having feelings about those medals, or maybe he’s having second thoughts about whether he packed enough shirts. In any case, he eventually exclaims, “No...No! I...can’t...LEAVE!” Then he punches the console for good measure.

Apparently this little emotional outburst is all it takes to cure the spores, because Kirk gasps a little, looks momentarily confused, and then seems to be back to his old self. “Emotions...violent emotions. Needs...anger,” he tells the empty room. “Captain’s log, supplemental. I think I’ve discovered the answer...but to carry out my plan entails considerable risk. Mr. Spock is much stronger than the ordinary human being.” Then he treats us to this remarkable line:

[ID: A shot of Kirk in profile at the transporter controls as he says, "Aroused, his great physical strength could kill."]

Down on the planet, Spock and Layla are still waiting at the beamdown point when Kirk calls Spock up and says he’s realized there’s some equipment on the ship that they’ll need for the colony, and he needs Spock’s help to get it all beamed down. Really, you’d think there’d be quite a lot of equipment on the Enterprise that a farming colony could make good use of, but I guess they’re really determined to stick to the whole no-technology approach. Despite this, Spock cheerfully accepts the explanation, gives Layla a quick smooch, and beams up.

But upon materializing, Spock is greeted not with a smiling Kirk ready to go move some equipment with his bro, but Kirk standing there holding some nonspecific heavy metal rod thing that he’s smacking threatening against his hand. “All right, you mutinous, disloyal, computerized half-breed,” he says, “we’ll see about you deserting my ship.”

Spock reacts to this bar-brawl-starter with nothing more than a nonplussed expression and polite correcting Kirk on his syntax. Kirk, determination unshaken, continues laying into him with a stream of insults that would have made that fucker from Balance of Terror go, “Whoa, hold on there a minute.” Undeterred by not being able to use any actual expletives, he compares Spock both to a machine and to various fairy-tale creatures, makes fun of his ears, and rounds it all off by having a go at the entire Vulcan race. He even insults Spock’s parents.

[ID: 1. A shot of Spock standing in the transporter room looking perplexed as Kirk, off-camera, says, "Whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopedia?" 2. A gif from Monty Python and the Holy Grail of John Cleese as the French knight on the battlements yelling, "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"]

Spock stands there taking it all stoically for quite a while, even as the background music gets increasingly tense. He finally starts to crack when Kirk goes after Spock’s relationship with Layla, and when Kirk keeps going despite Spock angrily telling him, “That’s enough,” Spock finally flips out big time. You know what that means, it’s time for a STAR TREK FIGHT SCENE! This one’s got it all: close-up shots of the actors intercut with long shots of very obvious stunt doubles; cardboard props getting punched; even people picking up random unidentifiable bits of starship equipment that may or may not have ever been there before to use as weapons. The only thing we’re missing is Kirk doing some kind of weird wrestling move.

[ID: Three gifs showing a fight scene between Kirk and Spock. First we see a long shot where Kirk and Spock are clearly being played by stunt doubles, as Spock punches a metal rod Kirk is holding, bending it in half. He then punches Kirk in the jaw, sending him careening into the wall. Then a close-up of Nimoy and Shatner as Spock advances on Kirk and throws a punch but misses, denting the control panel in the wall behind Kirk. Kirk dodges out of the way towards the console, and Spock throws another punch that hits the side of the console. Then back to a long view with the stunt doubles as Spock throws Kirk into the opposite wall, which Kirk careens off of, falling on his back on the floor, while Spock picks up something resembling a square metal stool or stepladder and raises it over his head. Finally, we see Nimoy and Shatner again as Kirk lays on the floor looking up at Spock, raising the thing he's carrying over his head.]

We dramatically cut to black as Spock stands poised above Kirk, raising whatever-the-hell-that-thing-is over his head threateningly. Apparently the ad break gives him enough time to cool down, though, because instead of bringing the thing down on Kirk’s skull, he hesitates.

“Had enough?” Kirk asks. “I didn’t realize what it took to get under that thick hide of yours.”

Spock slowly lowers the thing, looking a bit regretful about having to do so. Kirk says he doesn’t know what Spock’s so mad about, anyway. “It isn’t every first officer who gets to belt his captain...several times.” Dude, you just stood there and unleashed a screed of personal and racial insults at your best friend here. A “sorry” probably wouldn’t go amiss here.

“You did that to me deliberately,” Spock realizes, and then realizes that the spores are gone. “I don’t belong anymore.” Kirk explains that since the spores are “benevolent and peaceful,” violent emotions overwhelm and destroy them—that’s the answer. Which...definitely makes sense, chemically speaking. Sure.

Spock, still looking pretty glum about all this, points out that Kirk’s method might have worked out alright for curing one person, but they’ve got over five hundred infected people down there, and trying to pick a fight with all of them probably isn’t going to go so well. But no worries, Kirk’s got another plan. He wants Spock to rig up a subsonic transmitter that they can hook up to the ship’s communications system and then broadcast to all the communicators. Spock says he can do that, but hesitates as Kirk turns to leave. “Captain. Striking a fellow officer is a court martial offense,” he points out.

Kirk mulls over that one for a moment. “We-ll...if we’re both in the brig, who’s gonna build the subsonic transmitter?” he says, and Spock concedes the point. Besides, it’s a bit late to be worrying about striking fellow officers now.

[ID: A gif from The Naked Time of Kirk and Spock standing in an Enterprise conference room. Kirk slaps Spock across the face, and Spock retaliates by backhanding Kirk so hard he is thrown across the table in the center of the room and falls onto the floor on the other side.]

But what with the insults and the punching and de-sporing and everything, it seems that something has clean slipped Spock’s mind: Layla’s still down there waiting for him to come back. As she stands around the field, McCoy wanders over and asks what’s up. When she tells him that she’s been out here for some time now waiting for Spock and Kirk to come back, he gentlemanly offers to fix that for her and calls the ship. Spock picks up, and Layla asks if everything’s okay up there.

With obvious discomfort, Spock tells her that yes, he’s...quite well. Layla, oblivious to anything being wrong, asks if she can come up there, because she wants to talk to him, and besides, “I’ve never seen a starship before.” Wait a minute, never seen a starship before? You’re on a planetary colony! What, did you drive here?

Spock asks if she’s still at the beamdown point, and if McCoy’s there. Layla says yes to both, so Spock tells her to give the communicator back to McCoy, since she won’t need it to transport, and he’ll have her beamed up in a few minutes. One might think that at this point they might take this easy opportunity to also beam up McCoy and get him cured (it shouldn’t be hard, McCoy is already 85% comprised of negative emotions to begin with), so he can start investigating these spores, just in case Operation Go For the Eardrums doesn’t work. But they don’t. Kirk awkwardly asks Spock if he’s sure about talking to Layla while she’s still spore’d, but Spock just nods and heads to the transporter room.

He beams Layla up, and she happily runs over to give him a hug—they’ve been parted ever so long, after all—but when he just stands there stiffly, not reacting at all, she slowly pulls back and says, “You’re no longer with us, are you?”

Spock says it was necessary. Layla begs him to come back to the planet and belong again, but he says he can’t. She starts crying and saying she loves him. "I said that six years ago, and I can't seem to stop repeating myself. On Earth, you couldn't give anything of yourself. You couldn't even put your arms around me. We couldn't have anything together there. We couldn't have anything together anyplace else. But we're happy here. I can't lose you now, Mr. Spock, I can't." Look, if the only time the relationship you want can possibly work out is when the other person is being mind-controlled by alien spores, I think it may be time to consider whether this is really a relationship you should be pursuing in the first place.

“I have a responsibility to this ship...to that man on the bridge,” Spock gently tells her. “I am what I am, Layla. And if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else’s.”

Layla soon realizes that all this anguish has resulted in her getting de-spore’d as well, and she’s not happy about it. “And this is for my own good?” she demands angrily. Well...yes, I mean, it is, but Spock doesn’t say that. Nor does he respond when she asks, “Do you mind if I say I still love you?” but she hugs him again anyway.

[ID: Layla tearfully embraces Spock and says, "You never told me if you had another name, Mr. Spock." Spock replies, "You couldn't pronounce it."]

ROMANCE

We’re obviously supposed to read this little story arc as the tragic tale of true love destined never to be, because Spock is only able to express his feelings for Layla under the influence of the spores. He has experienced paradise, but alas, he cannot linger there, and so on. It’s never set all that well with me, though. The problem is we never really get Spock’s side of the story and so it leaves open the question of how much he actually did want this relationship in the first place. Layla said earlier that “Mr. Spock’s feelings were never expressed to me” so evidently he never outright said “I love you but I can’t be with you” or anything of that sort to her. When they’re alone in the field before Spock gets spore’d he seems stiff, standoffish, awkward, and deflects all of her overtures with what appears to be discomfort, even annoyance. He clearly has no interest in talking about whatever history they had together, even when they’re all alone. For all that Layla goes on about how she can see a side of Spock that his crewmates don’t, we see interactions with those crewmates multiple times throughout the show that prove that Spock is perfectly capable of showing people that he cares about them, even if the ways he does it are usually a bit atypical. We don’t see any of that in his initial interactions with Layla.

If we accept the premise that the spores only make people act as they would if they had no inhibitions or fears holding them back, then yes, Spock saying he loves Layla after he’s been spore’d would indicate that he did secretly love her all along. The problem is that we know the spores make people do things that they would not ordinarily want to do. You think all of those four hundred thirty people on the Enterprise secretly longed for a quiet life among the soil but all chose to instead join the space navy for some reason? Should we believe Scotty is actually deep down perfectly okay with abandoning his beloved ship to a slowly decaying orbit? I doubt that Kirk has always harbored a subconscious desire to give up exploring the final frontier to pursue a peaceful agrarian lifestyle, but he very nearly does do just that. So the question of how much a relationship with Layla is what Spock “really” wanted seems to be a bit hazy.

Mind, I’m not saying this makes Layla an evil person who deliberately drugged Spock so she could have a relationship with him or anything like that. It’s clear throughout the episode that the spores induce those who are infected by them to spread them around to anyone nearby who’s not in the spore fandom yet, so there’s no reason to believe Layla would act as she did if she wasn’t under the influence herself. I just personally find it hard to buy into the tragic romance of a star-crossed relationship when the thing crossing the stars is that one of the participants is only enthusiastic about the whole thing when they’re not fully sober. It makes me question how much of their previous relationship really was Spock having feelings for Layla but being unable to express them, versus Layla projecting a lot of feelings onto him and writing off his disinterest or discomfort as denial.

Kirk and Spock go back to working on the signal, while Layla deals with her heartbreak by disappearing into thin air for the rest of the episode. Spock says that the sound they’re going to send out is on a frequency that won’t be heard so much as felt, but apparently it will be felt quite emphatically. Kirk compares it to putting itching powder on someone. Which may seem like another silly technobabble deus ex machina, but speaking from personal experience, driving someone into a frantic frustrated fit by playing an obnoxious noise just on the edge of hearing sounds totally legit. All they need to complete the sensory overload meltdown experience is find a way to simulate some flickering florescent lights and put tags on the backs of the uniform shirts.

And indeed, as the device starts to work, we see Sulu and DeSalle working in one of the fields—for a certain value of ‘working,’ anyway, they’re kind of just digging around aimlessly—when Sulu accidentally elbows DeSalle in the back. He apologizes, but DeSalle shoves him back, and before long they’re having a full-on brawl right there in the field, which can't be good for the crops. As the device on the ship hums away, two more crewmembers start their own fight over by the farmhouse, and when a third tries to break them up he promptly gets dragged into it as well.

The effects haven’t quite reached everyone just yet, though, as we see McCoy chillaxing under a tree with some unspecified concoction. Sandoval strolls up and says that he’s been thinking about what sort of work he could assign McCoy to. When McCoy protests that he does one kind of work and that’s doctorin’, Sandoval says that he’s not a doctor anymore—they don’t need any doctors here.

This does not go over well.

[ID: A gif showing McCoy reclining against a tree in a grassy meadow, a stalk of grass in one hand and a grass of something brown with several leafy stalks in it. Sandoval is standing over him. McCoy says, "Oh, no?" and then slowly stands up, tosses his grass stalk aside, looks Sandoval in the eye and says, "Would you like to see just how fast I can put you in a hospital?"]

Undeterred, Sandoval says that he’s the leader and he’ll be assigning McCoy whatever work he wants to, but when he tries to walk away McCoy pulls him back and snarls, “You’d better make me a mechanic. Then I can treat little tin gods like you.” Sandoval throws a punch at him, but McCoy dodges and whacks Sandoval in the stomach, putting him out flat on the ground. See, I told you it wouldn’t be hard to cure McCoy. Everyone else on the Enterprise was perfectly happy to give up their careers to go do a bit of light farming, but tell McCoy he can’t be a doctor anymore and no amount of spores are going to save you.

While Sandoval is busy rolling around on the ground, McCoy stands there looking confused for a moment, then—presumably having only just now noticed that instead of a mint julep he’s actually been drinking a coke with a bunch of cilantro in it—throws his drink aside and admits that he’s not sure why he just clobbered Sandoval. But Sandoval has other concerns for the moment. With a look of dawning horror familiar to all us chronic procrastinators, he abruptly realizes that they haven’t actually been doing anything all this time. “No accomplishments, no progress. Three years wasted. We wanted to make this planet a garden...”

McCoy points out that the colonists really will have to leave—they can’t survive here without the spores handling all that radiation for them. But the dream’s not over; the colonists could be relocated to start again somewhere a bit less deadly, if that’s what they want.

“I think I’d...I think we’d like to get some work done,” Sandoval muses. “The work we set out to do.”

McCoy calls Spock and says that Sandoval wants to talk to Kirk. Spock notes to Kirk that the crew are all starting to rather sheepishly call in by now. Sandoval tells Kirk that the colonists will fully cooperate with the evacuation now, and Kirk tells him to start making the preparations. Real ones, this time.

Sometime later, everyone’s back on the bridge getting ready to head out. McCoy reports that he’s examined all the colonists and they all remain in perfect health. “A fringe benefit left over by the spores.”

One would think that this would have been quite the eventful afternoon for the medical sciences, given that they just discovered spores with such incredible healing powers that they can make people regrow organs, and McCoy just confirmed that anything healed by the spores stays healed after the spores are gone. Sure, they’ve got some side effects, but Kirk’s already discovered a simple way to get rid of the things once they’re no longer needed. Strap someone to a bed, give em a facemask full of spores, let them lay there for a while having a nice buzz while they heal their cancer or whatever, then play an irritating noise at them until they sneeze the spores back out again. Boom. Done. You’ve solved medicine. Or, y’know, we could vacate the planet and never speak of it ever again, that works too.

Notably unmentioned by anybody during this little denouement is the fate of the other two settlements on the planet that Sandoval mentioned back near the beginning of the episode. The length of the timeskip isn’t specified, so it’s possible that the crew went and collected them as well in the interim, but we never get any details as to how that little adventure went, assuming that it did happen and that the Enterprise isn’t about to get halfway to the next starbase before Kirk realizes he forgot something.

As they watch the planet diminish behind them on the viewscreen, McCoy muses that this was “the second time man’s been thrown out of paradise.” Kirk disagrees. "No, no, Bones, this time we walked out on our own. Maybe we weren't meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through--struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums."

Spock remains unimpressed by this bit of philosophizing. “Poetry, Captain. Nonregulation.” Kirk notes that they haven’t heard anything from Spock about this whole ordeal, since, y’know, that definitely seems like something Spock would want to talk about. He says he’s got little to say about Omicron Ceti 3.

[ID: A close-up of Spock on the bridge as he says, "Except that for the first time in my life...I was happy."]

oh my god someone needs therapy

On that INCREDIBLY CHEERFUL note, the Enterprise flies away and the episode ends.

It’s somewhat baffling to me that of all the quite reasonable objections available to the whole situation with the spores, the main problem that Kirk—and by extension, the episode—seems to have is that “the spores make things too EASY and mankind was meant to STRUGGLE!!!” I mean, effectively what we had going on here was people being drugged without their consent into a state that overwrote their own desires, ambitions, emotions and much of their individual personalities and replaced them with bland, happy conformity to a goal and lifestyle none of them actually chose. That seems a bit worse to me than “people weren’t working hard enough.” Kirk goes on and on about how the spores made things too easy, but what they really did was make people apathetic to whether they succeeded at anything or not. Sandoval’s horrified when he’s cured of the spores because the colonists had much different plans for their colony; far from making those plans easier, the spores made them impossible. The dreams and desires of the Enterprise crew for a life of exploration among the stars would have been forever unmet if they had permanently joined the colony, they just wouldn’t have been able to care. Kirk seems to believe that the ultimate evil of the spores is that they deprive people of ambition; to me it seems that the worse evil is that they deprive people of their individuality and their autonomy.

Then there’s the fact that while the spores make people happy and friendly, they also make them remarkably blasé about the well-being of anyone who isn’t part of their collective. They have to be—caring about whether someone else is upset or hurt would make them unhappy, after all. Spock and McCoy are completely unconcerned with the mounting distress of their best friend, and beyond peer pressuring him to get with the program and take the spores like everyone else, they don’t seem to much care if he remains the only unhappy person on the planet. The colonists seem completely unbothered by the fact that all the animals they brought with them died a rather grueling death by radiation poisoning. Everyone on the Enterprise is happy to abandon the ship and join the colony with no message left behind for Starfleet, with apparently not a thought to spare for any friends and family back home, who would only ever know that their loved ones disappeared into space never to be seen again.

Or at least, they would if things actually went according to plan, which they probably wouldn’t, because the spores also made everyone cheerfully oblivious to the idea that anything could potentially cause a problem or pose a threat to them. After all, if Kirk hadn’t had a recovery at the last minute, the Enterprise would have been left unmanned in orbit around the planet, with no way for anyone in the colony to get back onboard. Uhura also goes out of her way to make sure that they no longer have any off-planet communication. So it’s probably not going to be long before Starfleet notices that one of their prize starships has abruptly gone incommunicado, and I’m willing to bet they’d be a bit quicker on that investigation than they were about checking on a tiny backwater colony (although it is Starfleet, so who knows, really). And since they know exactly where the ship was headed on its last recorded mission, it probably won’t take them long to find it. If Starfleet sends another ship along to investigate quickly enough, they’ll find the abandoned Enterprise hanging out in orbit around the planet, and Kirk’s log clearly lays out what happened, so all the other ship has to do is figure out how to neutralize the spores and everyone’s going to get rescued from Omicron Ceti 3 pretty quickly whether they want to be or not.

If Starfleet doesn’t show up in time...Kirk says the ship can be “maintained in orbit” for several months, but then what? It can’t stay up there forever. Sooner or later, the orbit will decay and the ship’s going to crash into the planet, and if it crashes anywhere near one of the colonies, their magic healing powers are going to be put to the test. Also their magic agriculture powers--rich soil and mild weather is all well and good, but is that going to be enough to carry all those crops through the ensuing environmental effects of an impact that big? Especially since, as already mentioned, the colony has enough to feed them and that’s about it—so they really can’t afford to lose any crops for very long.

Sure, maybe the Enterprise wouldn’t crash close enough to any of the colonies to ruin them, but why take the risk? All they had to do was have a helmsman set it on a course out of orbit, then take a shuttlecraft back to the planet. Doesn’t occur to anyone, evidently. Nor do we see anyone bothering to bring any supplies or equipment from the ship to the colony, even though there’s gotta be lots of stuff up there that would be useful. All in all, it seems quite likely that Paradise would have eventually collapsed in on itself simply because the spores make people unable to pay attention to any potential threats or obstacles long enough to do anything about them.

So what’s the moral here? ‘Society can’t survive if everyone is stoned all of the time’? I mean, okay? Sure? Cool? Glad we sorted all that out.

That said, despite having ranted for the past nine hundred words about the weird moral, I’m not saying this episode is bad. As a serious point about human nature I don’t find it especially compelling—YMMV, but I just personally tend to side-eye stories that center around the idea of “wouldn’t it be awful if we all had it too easy??”--but as fifty minutes of extremely Star Trek-y silliness it’s glorious. We’ve got Spock hanging from a tree and talking about dragons while making out in the grass, McCoy going full Georgia and wandering about with something he thinks is a mint julep, Kirk stomping around in increasing agitation as he tries to get some sense out of somebody and then making emo log entries while he sits on the bridge alone...it’s great.

The original draft of this episode apparently had the romantic subplot be for Sulu, who would have been motivated to stay with Layla after having been diagnosed with a serious medical condition that was cured by the spores, kind of like the eventual plot with McCoy in For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky. D.C. Fontana rewrote the story to focus on Spock, since if you have an episode about something that causes a strong emotional reaction, throwing Spock and his ever-present internal conflict into the mix is kind of the most immediately obvious way to generate some pathos and drama. The spores originally granted those affected with them telepathic abilities, enabling them to link with everyone else who’d been spore’d and form a hivemind. There are some traces of this in the final episode with spore’d people talking about “joining us” and “being one of us” and so on, but without the telepathy part it just kind of makes it sound like they’re in a cult. Also, the cure for the spores would have been consuming alcohol, so presumably in that draft McCoy never got infected.

For the purposes of the Trek Tally I’m going to count the spores as a Space Disease, which might be broadening the umbrella of that term a bit but hey, close enough. Next time we’ll be looking for life, Jim, but not as we know it, in The Devil in the Dark.

#star trek #star trek TOS #star trek TOS season one #recap tag #star trek TOS recaps #1.24 This Side of Paradise #1.24 This Side of Paradise recap

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the-fiction-witch · 3 years

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More Bunnies!

REAL LIFE: SCANDAL COUPLE: TBS X READER RATING: ADORABLE AF

"Ladies, gentlemen, and those who have yet to make up there minds." y/n smiled sitting on her sofa Thomas' beside her with his head on his hand

"Is that a kinky boots quote?"

"Yes it is, did you finally get around to watching it" "Yes I did"

"And?"

"It's good, not as fun as rocky horror but"

"Nothing's as fun as rocky horror, you'd be good if they ever make another movie of it"

"Yeah? would I make a good rocky sweetie darling?" "No, I was thinking riff raff"

"...well fuck you too"

"Anyway, the point of the video"

"Yes, the point"

"This may be the first video where I'm doing something, and you have actually wanted to be involved, I haven't bribed you, you know what we are doing, and your still here"

"Because this is a good video" he says "That I very much wanted to be a apart off"

"Because you love them"

"I do, I don't know how anyone can't love them"

"My ex boyfriend hated them

"Yeah well I hated him to"

"You did?"

"We both know I hated joe, he was a dick. that lacked dick Ironically"

"He did, too much dick in the personality, not enough dick in the pants" she giggled "But anyway this video is not about dicks" "That's next week" "will you... shut the mouth. make me tea"

"No"

"Then just shut the mouth"

"The point! of this video. Is that tomorrow is a very very special day, Now I think before I really explain we need a bit of back story" she smiled "My dad owned a vintage car garage, he had been a mechanic all of his life, he learnt though just constantly going to work my his dad in a little garage up in Norfolk, But he opened the garage when he was about eighteen fixing classic cars up for people. and Everyone worked in the business, My dad met my mum because she owned a little AJS Motorbike that she constantly needed him to fix. My brothers all worked there, and of course I worked there. When we lost my mum, we kinda just... I would say floated like we survived and I very much kinda became the mother being the only girl in the family. And that is something I do say with family businesses you need and out because you work all day with your family and then go home to your family you sort of never leave the dynamic. and As we all likely know as we have told this story, Thomas started working at our garage when... I think you where like sixteen? fifteen then you started?"

"I was fifteen but imminently about to turn sixteen when I started"

"yeah"

"But... the weird thing Is we met when I stated, but we didn't really... know each other" "Yeah it was that weird like, we work at the same place we see each other a lot but we rarely talk to each other"

"I was in the office a lot I did a lot of paperwork and ordering then, and you just constantly had like your head in Morris minors and mini's"

"I think the first time we really spend any time together was when your dad was away, and your brothers where away and it literally was just me and you in the garage, I was tinkering with this little Rover, and I remember you just coming over"

"You had like oil and dirt all over your face and hands from this shitty little rover, so I went over with a little cloth and like did the-"

"The like lick the cloth wipe the dirt off my face"

"I did, and from then on just... bestest friends"

"Yeah, Best friends"

"With crushes on each other"

"I did have a crush on you at that age that's something I have admitted to." "I don't think the situation helped though, like I was one girl in a garage where you worked, at some point you where going to get a crush on me"

"Ummm, You had a crush on me too at one point?"

"I did, I think because you where like the only person who worked there who wasn't part of my family, but it never went anywhere," she shrugs "Anyhow, and then when I moved out of my parents house into my first little apartment I kinda... felt weird I moved away from my family I suddenly felt very lonely and unneeded" she explained "there was more going on at that time that I will put in a video at some point. but I wasn't great emotionally and at that time my best friend Lisa, had a pregnant bunny rabbit named lopple. Now Lisa didn't know still doesn't know how she got pregnant, she thinks the rabbit who was like nextdoor or something got out and somehow got to lopple we don't know all we know is that I was over there helping her prep so making the beds up helping where Lopple was nesting all that kind of thing, and we sat in her garden giving lopple some very soft pets and we just saw something move and saw she was giving birth." she explained "She had six rabbits in her fluffle" "Her fluffle?"

"yes thomas, its called a fluffle" "Is it?"

"Yeah, a litter of kittens, a fluffle of buns"

"That is adorable" "yes it is, but she had six, now Lopple was a very chubby black lion hair and we don't know about the dad but all these buns where black and white and the one who looked most like lopple was this little bun that had white paws and a white tail, a white nose and then just black all over and Lisa's plan was that she was going to keep the babies until they where old enough and then sell them on to other people" she explained

"That didn't happen"

"I didn't, I basically went over every single day and watched these little bunnies grow up to where they could function on there own, and I grew very attached to the one we had nicknamed socks because of her white feet and Lisa just kinda asked me if I wanted her?" she smiled "I had never had bunnies before, or really pets before but I couldn't leave her so I instantly said yes, went to a pet store that day and bought all the stuff she would need and took her home to my apartment set her little hutch up at the end of my bed, and I renamed her hen I got her home to Hopscotch" she smiled

"About... maybe a week later I came over to your apartment and Met hopscotch" "she loved you, Immediately" she laughs "I was expecting her, like when she had met other people that she would hide in her house, or she would come and burrow into my back like she still does, or maybe bite I was worried about biting, but you sat by her house she came wondering out with her little soft feet, walked right over to Thomas sniffed him jumped in his lap and feel asleep"

hopscotch ran across the wooden floor to where Thomas sat cross legged

"Hello? small rabbit"

"Hopscotch"

"Really?"

"Yes"

"okay, Hi hopscotch"

"she's thinking about it, she's giving you a sniff"

"Give me an investigate, nose pat down"

"seeing if you got any contraband, Like carrots"

"I don't have any carrots I'm sorry"

she then jumped onto his lap getting comfy in a little bunny loaf, closing her little eyes and going to sleep "Awwww you have been chosen"

"I have?"

"You have been chosen this is your life now Thomas. you are not a bunny bed"

"I am fine with this, this is life now, Hey... Hey little girl," he chooes petting her fur

"and she still loves me"

"she does, and I don't know why. it's maddening to me" she laughs "Hopscotch, come here darling" she called picking up the soft bunny who instantly walked over the sofa to Thomas' lap "You see what I mean"

"I cried the first time"

"You did, I remember you just like in tears as she slept on your leg because she was just too cute" she laughs "and then, when I got this house and moved here she came with me, and we very much became a family, like the three of us."

"I think we kinda did when we first moved next-door to each other we just basically lived together, more then we do now, we've put some .... kinda rules and boundaries in now but then we really where just basically living together" he explained

"and one day, we where shopping together and we had to go to the pet store to get food for hopscotch, and we walked in going to the rabbit section to get the food and..." she smiled picking up jellybean from the floor "This little boy was there, in a little pen of rabbits they had for sale all of them where playing and bouncing around but this little boy was just sat by the glass chillin' eating a dandelion leaf" she smiled "Now people think I squealed and had to get him but-

"I went to buy rabbit food for hopscotch and I think..."

she then showed the pet shop with the glass pen of bunnies where a little one sat playing with thomas though the glass "I think thomas' found a friend"

"look at him! He's so fluffy"

"Like you"

"He is like me! we have the same hair" He laughs

"The sign says you can pet but not pick up"

thomas happily leant in petting the bunny that instantly nuzzled into his hand

"what is happening right now? are you some sort of bunny magnet Thomas? where you a rabbit in a former life?"

"maybe"

"You are fluffy, horny and like veg. Fuck you are a rabbit"

"that makes way more sense then I like"

"Is this happening? are you going to get a bunny Thomas?"

"I might, but if I do we can't hang out as much as we'll both have animals in our houses" "Or I could just keep him at my house, him and hopscotch could be best friends?"

"Yeah? should we do it? should we get Hopscotch a brother?"

"I did" "Yeah, you pointed him out, and sat like waving at him though the glass for like ten minuets, they said you could pet them just don't like pick them up so we both gave this little boy some pets, petted his soft ears and I couldn't leave him there" she smiled "so I bought another rabbit, and came home very nervous very worried how hopscotch was going to react to him, introduced them slowly and all that so they wouldn't fight but"

"They mewed" "And rabbits rarely mew"

"They don't but the minuet jellybean got in here he started mewing, hopscotch was a little more tentative but thats because its her house and she sniffed the box he was in and you could hear them mewing at each other trying to like talk to each other though this box, and you could see them trying to give each other kisses though an air hole in the box"

"it was so fucking cute, I wish I filmed it," she says "and then we let him out and they sniffled each other and licked each other and just they where so happy together, I assumed they would sort of bond like brother and sister. Because they are both my babies but... I was dumb because of course they didn't" she laughs "We know very well from lots of videos' that hopscotch and jellybean and very in love"

"They are very in love, like if you take one just into another room without the other they'll start crying, and stomping until there allowed to be together again"

"I take them both to the vet. if one has to go, because it's way less stressful for them both to just be together" "It's weird how much... like us they are" "Ummm, but the news!"

"Yes, news"

"There is going to be... some more life in this house" she smiled "Someone, is preggo"

"Not you!"

"OHH fuck no, no, no I am not pregnant. thank the devil. but another little fluffy lady is." she smiled "we got it back from the vet last week, she's pregnant, she's going to be having a little fluffle of kits of her very own. " she smiled

"Our babies having babies" he smiles cuddling hopscotch

"Lopple has been notified about the up and coming grandchildren." she smiled "Hopscotch is on a nice preggo diet, and jellybean is in trouble. I'm sure there will be a video where we shall met the fluffle. I don't know what the plan is, I think it depends on how many she has on weather or not we keep them"

".... you are not getting rid of them, No. I will not allow it"

"Thomas' I can't afford to keep like ten rabbits"

"the money is not an issue I shall fund the bunnies"

"I lack the house space for like ten rabbits thomas" "Guess we'll have to move house then"

21 notes · View notes

spine-buster · 4 years

Text

The President Wears Prada (William Nylander) | Chapter 4

September 28th 2019

Aberdeen Bloom was letting it all out.

Siena had called, cooped up in her room in the house she rented with two other girls, taking a break from studying for torts law or shorts law or whatever type of law it was that she had to study. It was these moments – moments when Siena caught up with her younger sister – that reminded her that she was slaving through law school because Aberdeen would probably need a lawyer one day after doing something colossally stupid. She’d usually start the conversations with “You can’t tell mom and dad…” and Siena would promise not to. And, well, she’d keep that promise. Because sisters never told. They only ever told on Camden.

Aberdeen told Siena about the night with William in June – she told her about a week later, after Siena was finally settled back into her place in Ottawa. They’d talked about it for a while and had come to terms with the fact that Aberdeen would never see William again because of the whole Sweden thing and because of the fact that Toronto was a city full of a few million people. They’d accepted it and moved on.

But then, of course, William showed up in the elevator on her first day of work and the floodgates opened.

“Wait…hold on a second,” Siena held her hand up. “You’re telling me you hooked up with a Toronto Maple Leaf.”

“Yes.”

“A hockey player. That guy was a hockey player.”

“Yes,” Aberdeen stressed.

“And now…” Siena paused. “You work for the president of the team that he plays for.”

“Precisely.”

Siena let out a long, loud sign, facepalming before rubbing her temples. “I don’t know how you get yourself into these situations, Aberdeen,” she shook her head. “I honestly don’t.”

“I don’t, either.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

Aberdeen looked at her sister weird. “There’s nothing I can do about it. It says right in the employee handbook that no employee and player are allowed to hook up. I can’t tell Brendan and William can’t tell the rest of the team. That’s that.”

“Are you scared he might?”

Aberdeen considered the question. “I really don’t know. On one side, I feel like if he really wanted to tell them he would have told them already, and Brendan Shanahan would have found out through the grapevine and I would have already lost my job. Like, I wouldn’t have even gone to Newfoundland. On the other hand, I feel like the comments he’s been saying to me just make it seem like this is a game to him and he’s waiting on the most opportune moment to tell.”

“Comments?” Siena asked.

Aberdeen sighed. “I went to dinner with a bunch of them in St. John’s because Jason invited me, and he asked me who my favourite Leaf was in this really flirty way,” she explained. “Then a few days later he found me alone and told me I should have said him. Or at least have said he was fucking awesome because that’s what I said that night after we hooked up.”

Siena facepalmed again. “Oh, Aberdeen…”

“I know, Siena.”

“Does Kasha know?” she asked.

“Of course Kasha knows.”

“Kasha won’t tell a soul. She’s good like that.”

“I know. My problem here is William.”

“Listen, Aberdeen…this is a fucked up situation but it’s…I mean, technically you didn’t hook up with him when you were employee. It was months before. You had no idea who he was. That’s what my lawyer brain is telling me right now.”

“I don’t know if that matters,” Aberdeen said. “I keep getting told that this is the dream job, that if I do well with Mr. Shanahan I can have my pick of any job in any field that I want in Toronto, including writing. That’s how well connected he is. I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side at all. I have to be on my best behaviour and I have to keep doing well.”

“Then keep being on your best behaviour. Keep doing your job,” Siena encouraged. “And keep William away.”

***

September 30th, 2019

With only two days until the start of the season, Brendan had a lot of meetings with a lot of people. There were meetings with hockey ops, meetings with the head scouts, meetings with player development, meetings with analytics. It was a much busier time than just three weeks ago. A lot more coffee runs. More ordering of catered lunches. More running around like a chicken with her head cut off, like Brendan said she would. And this wasn’t even the start of the season.

Brendan wanted her to sit it in on the meeting he had now with basically the entire senior management so they could go over upcoming events and initiatives they’d put on throughout the season. Kyle Dubas would be there. Brandon Pridham and Laurence Gilman, the assistant general managers would be there. Dave Morrison, the director of player personnel would be there. Brad Lynn, the director of team operations would be there. Stephen Hare, the director of finance would be there. Steve Keogh, the director of media relations would be there. Alison Rockwell, the director of business relations would be there. Leanne Hederson, the manager of hockey operations would be there.

Aberdeen was clearly studying the employee directory.

They had a list of things to talk about, and talked through them all. Aberdeen had her notebook and tried to take notes, but she felt like she was writing a foreign language and none of this would make sense when she went to read them again. There was talk about “You Can Play Night”, about galas, about charity golf tournaments, about community outreach programs, about the alumni events, about the MLSE Launchpad initiatives…

Then they started to talk about alternate jerseys. She thought there was only home and away jerseys, but no, there was apparently a third for a special night. A “St. Pats” jersey. It was green. A definite change from the blue, but they kept going on and on about it. Do we do this? What about this? How about this? It was incredibly pedantic. She felt like she was in science class again, doodling instead of taking notes since she had no clue what was being said or what was going on.

“Do you think we should go with the same one from last season, or should we choose a new design?” Dave Morrison asked.

“It’s hard to say. If we go with last year’s design, jersey sales may stagnate or decline if we compare it on a year-by-year basis, but a new design will boost that,” Stephen Hare said.

“Well, listen. It’s the 2019-2020 season. We can go with the design from 1919-1920,” Brandon Pridhan said, pulling up the mock-ups of the jersey. Aberdeen took into account the green and white, the lettering, everything. “Or should we balk the season number and go with this one, the 1926-1927 season design?” he held up the other mock-up. It was basically the exact same design, except the colours were inverted.

They were having an extremely serious and long discussion about this? Aberdeen snorted from the corner.

Suddenly, when she looked up, every eye in the room was on her. The smile immediately dropped from her face. Brendan was looking at her. “Something funny?”

Oh shit. Oh shit. Ohfuckohfuckohfuck. “No, no…” she began, trying to cover for herself. “It’s nothing – you know – it’s just that they look exactly the same to me. I…you know, I’m still learning about all this stuff.”

“This…stuff?” Brendan asked, repeating her words. The look that he gave her – she never wanted to be looked at like that again for the rest of her life. “Oh…okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You get hired by the Maple Leafs and you sit in on this meeting with, oh I don’t know, that iPad Pro which the company paid for, and you scoff because you think we’re taking this too seriously, and you don’t care about what jerseys fans put on their back. But what you don’t know is that this hockey sweater is not just blue and white, it’s not just green and white, it’s actually a symbol,” he paused, moving from his spot at the table, walking around it. “You’re also blindly unaware of the fact that in 1919 the Toronto Arenas were about to go under, only to be saved by a group of investors who renamed the team the Toronto St. Patricks, and who later made Conn Smythe their managing partner and their eventual owner. Conn Smythe ended up changing their name in 1927 to the Toronto Maple Leafs because that maple leaf was the national symbol of Canada and, as he said, a badge of courage and a reminder of home of when he was a Canadian Army officer during World War One,” he picked the design he liked most from Brandon and pinned it onto the board, taking another from the pile. Aberdeen’s heart stopped beating. “The blue and white, he said, represented the Canadian skies and Canadian snow. The name has changed, the investors have changed, and the logo has seen design changes, but that maple leaf is a symbol that represents the identity of Toronto, the history of this city, and the pride of the country. It represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you ever made a choice that exempted you from caring about these jerseys when, in fact, this city’s identity and one of the most well-known national symbols were selected for you by the people in this room who ran this hockey club. All because of the influence of this stuff.”

He held onto a picture, holding it face up. She broke eye contact to look down at it, only to see it was the maple leaf that was currently on the jersey. The thirty-one points, meant to represent 1931 and the opening of Maple Leaf Gardens; the 17-vein detail, meant to represent when the franchise was founded in 1917; the 13 veins at the top, meant to represent the 13 Stanley Cup championships. She realized what this symbol meant to not only the people in this room, but to the city, to the fabric and identity of it, to its storied past and bright future. She realized the history behind it, the countless people who wore the sweater or jersey with pride for over a century now. She realized how wrong and careless she’d been.

When she looked back up, Brendan was staring at her. So was everyone else still seated at the board table, some of them with amused looks on their faces. “I’ll be outside if you need me,” she said, barely above a whisper because she was too embarrassed to even speak. She clutched her iPad Pro and took the picture, walking out of the room.

The second the door closed behind her, she burst out into tears. The tears streamed down her face as she escaped into the washroom, slamming the stall door behind her and locking it before breaking down in the bathroom stall. Brendan Shanahan had just embarrassed her in front of some of the hockey world’s most important people and she deserved it. She couldn’t believe she could be so fucking stupid and so dumb and callous and just such a…such an idiot. And now here she was, crying about it in a bathroom stall. She’d never be able to recover from this. Brendan would think she was an idiot until the day she died. He’d die before her and in heaven he’d still think her an idiot.

She stayed in the bathroom stall for a while, crying it all out and eventually stopping because she had no more energy to cry. She opened the stall door and looked at herself in the mirror, trying to wipe away the tears. Her eyes were red and of course, her cheeks were stained with tears, but she was thankful that she wore waterproof mascara that day. She tried to collect herself, even though she had just made a complete ass of herself. She still had a full day of work to do. She still had to make it until 5pm. Somehow.

When there was nothing more she could do to fix her appearance, she sighed and decided to head back to her desk, ready to face whatever punishment Brendan was going to give her when he got out of the meeting. There was nothing more she could say or do. She swung open the door to the washroom and stepped out into the hallway.

Although when she did, she crashed into a body. When she looked up, it was, of course, none other than William Nylander. Because her day couldn’t get any better from here. “Hey,” he said, smiling at her.

“What do you need?” she asked, not bothering to greet him.

He noticed the tone of her voice and the redness of her eyes and immediately changed his demeanour. “What’s wrong?”

She side-eyed him. As if he cared. “I just made a complete ass of myself in front of Brendan. No biggie,” she huffed.

“Did you get a coffee order wrong or something?”

Now she really side eyed him. She understood the stereotype of personal assistants, but this was not the time to start making jokes and devaluing her job. “What do you want? Why are you even in the offices?” she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I wanted to see you.”

She scoffed. “Oh, get a life, William.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t know why you feel the need to keep taunting me when we’re on the job, but it needs to stop,” she said. “Don’t you have drills to go through? Don’t you like, I don’t know, need to tape a stick?”

It was his turn to give her a look. “Hey, don’t be mad at me just because you screwed up at your job today. I came up here to see you because I wanted to see you. I’m trying to be nice.”

“Taunting me at my job isn’t being nice,” she said. “If you can’t tell, I’m not having a good day. So I’d appreciate it if you just…wouldn’t.”

“Whatever you did can’t be worse than sleeping with a Maple Leaf and then working for his boss,” William retorted.

Okay, now she was angry. She grabbed his arm and dragged him towards the small kitchen – the one she’d retreated to when she walked in on them in their underwear – and shut the door behind them so they could have a private conversation. “Listen to me,” she began, her voice as steady and as intimidating as it could be. “I know I’m not saving the world or anything, but this job means a lot to me. This isn’t a fucking game to me like it is to you. This is my life. This is my livelihood. This is my career prospects in any industry in Toronto if I do a good job here. And you, William Nylander, are not going to take that away from me.”

“I’m not trying to take that away from you,” William declared. “Don’t you think that if I didn’t want you here, I would have told the guys or told Brendan already?”

Aberdeen thought back to the conversation she’d had with her sister, where she brought up the exact same point. She shook her head. “Then stop with the comments. Stop with the ‘coming to see me’, flirting in front of your teammates, and the flirting in general.”

“I can’t do that,” he responded.

“Why not?” she demanded.

“Because I want you.”

The words hung in the air for an uncomfortable amount of time as William and Aberdeen stared at each other, his blue eyes piercing her hazel ones. Her jaw dropped at his words, and she tried to respond but she couldn’t think of anything to say. There was nothing to say. He just dropped a bombshell and she had no way to recover. He wanted her. He wanted her. He…wanted her? “W…What?”

William didn’t respond. He only smiled. He didn’t say anything else as he left those words with her, opening the door and leaving the kitchen, leaving her completely dumbfounded.

***

Later on that night, as Aberdeen was walking back to her condo after the day’s work (and not seeing Brendan again – probably for the best, since she was going to write out and rehearse her apology she’d tell him tomorrow if she didn’t get a call that she’d been fired tonight), her phone buzzed in her pocket. She assumed that it would be Kasha, wanting to know what they were going to do for dinner. But when she looked at her screen, it was an unknown number that texted her.

i promise im not going to tell anybody. im not going to tell any of the guys, or kyle, or brendan, or anyone what happened in june. that stays between us.

im not that guy. i wouldn’t do that to you.

She stopped dead in her tracks. A pedestrian behind her almost crashed into her and yelled at her to watch where she was going. She collected herself and moved off to the side so people could pass by her and she could read the texts over and over and over again. She didn’t even want to know how he got her number. She didn’t want to know what covert operation he pulled.

She gulped.

***

October 1st, 2019

Aberdeen was impatient in the backseat of the town car as she and Lou waited for Brendan to appear. Her leg was bobbing up and down and she was pretty sure she would have chipped all her nail polish off by now if it wasn’t shellac. She had written out and rehearsed her apology to him and knew exactly how she was going to deliver it. She knew she had to makes things right.

“Miss Bloom,” Lou said from the driver’s seat, looking at her through the rear-view mirror like he often did. “Nervous energy.”

“I’m sorry Lou,” she apologized, trying not to bob her leg. “I just need to say something to Mr. Shanahan.”

“Something bad?”

“How many apologies have you heard in this car?” she asked.

Lou chuckled. “Many, Miss Bloom.”

“How does he react to them?”

Lou shrugged. “Depends.”

She gulped. As if on cue, Brendan emerged from his house. Lou got out of the car to open the door for him.

“Good morning, Aberdeen,” he said, his voice cheery as he got into the backseat. He already had a stack of newspapers with him. He was acting as if nothing was wrong. “How are you this morning?”

“I’m…good,” she replied, confused. She decided she should just get right into it. “Mr. Shanahan, can I speak to you about something?”

“Brendan,” he corrected her like he always did. He was focused on the newspaper in front of him. “And yes, Aberdeen, you may.”

“Can you look at me?”

That caught his attention. He lowered the newspaper and took off his glasses, waiting for her to begin. She took a deep breath. “I want to sincerely apologize for my comments yesterday in the meeting,” she began. “It was really insensitive of me to scoff, and then to make that comment – just really callous, and I want to apologize. I don’t want you thinking that this job means nothing to me, because it does. It means the world—”

“Aberdeen,” Brendan interrupted her, holding up his hand. She stopped talking, and could tell he was thinking of what to say. “First of all, thank you for your apology,” he began. “What I said to you in that room, in front of everybody – I just wanted to make sure you know the importance of the work we do here.”

“I do. I mean – I do now.”

“Hockey in Toronto is not just hockey,” he began. “It’s a living, breathing entity in and of itself. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you will see the importance of not just my work, or the work of anybody else that was in the room that day, but of your work too. You are part of the Toronto Maple Leafs now, Aberdeen, whether you like it or not. You have a role to play here in the success of the team just like anybody else. Just because you’re an executive assistant, it doesn’t mean you don’t.”

“Yes sir,” she nodded her head.

“I know you have a steep learning curve to go through. I knew that when I hired you. You’ll go through it. And you’ll make a hell of a lot of mistakes along the way. But you’ll go through it. And you’ll come out better. With more knowledge. Understood?”

“Yes sir. Absolutely,” she nodded her head. Brendan sent her a quick smile before putting his glasses back on and focusing on the newspaper again. “So…I guess this means I’m not fired?” she asked, just for reassurance.

That actually got a laugh out of Brendan. “No, Aberdeen. I could never fire an Etobicoke girl.”

***

October 2nd 2019

The season opener was just pure insanity. There was no other way Aberdeen could rephrase it besides that – just pure insanity. Brendan had meetings, she had to coordinate this, she had to run for coffees, she had to go get notes from someone, the phone was ringing off the hook…Lou even had to take her in the town car up to Yorkville, to Prada and to Gucci and to Hermes, so she could pick up ties for him to wear once all the media came rushing in. It was a complete shit show. She barely had time to eat, drink, or even think because she was so busy trying to get everything done.

But something happened to her once she and Brendan made their way up to the media gondola to sit in the President’s private box with Kyle Dubas and Brandon Pridham: she watched the game. From start to finish, she watched the Toronto Maple Leafs dominate the Ottawa Senators 5-3 to win the game. She saw Auston Matthews score two goals – and William assist beautifully on one of them. It was textbook perfect. She saw the comradery of the boys on the bench. She saw Brendan and Kyle seem excited.

She remembered back to how excited the people of Newfoundland were at just a practice and an exhibition game. She saw how excited the crowd was tonight at the way the team played and the outcome of the game.

She began to get it.

She followed Brendan out of the gondola so they could head down to the locker room about five minutes before the game was going to end. When the team began to come in, she wondered if she should clap – her questions were answered when she saw the equipment personnel fist-bump the boys. She held out her hand to show her support. Brendan laughed.

“Wooooo! Let’s go baby!” Auston screamed as he looked directly at her, fist-bumping her with his enormously large hockey glove. In that moment, she was sure one of them was going to knock her over one day.

“Good job boys!” she yelled out as they trickled in. John was next, giving her a fist-bump and a quick nod.

Morgan saw her and screamed at her. “Wooooo!”

“Wooooo!” she mimicked, smiling from ear to ear as she fist-bumped him. She held her hand out for Andreas, for Kasperi, and for Sandin. William filtered through, and when she caught his eye, a large smile appeared on his face. “Good job boys!” she yelled out again as they fist-pumped.

As they boys filtered into the locker room and began to take off their gear, Brendan walked in, motioning for Aberdeen to follow him. She stood behind him and Kyle Dubas as they watched Mike Babcock make his post-game speech and present the team with one of the Raptors’ game used balls from their championship run. One player would get it after every game won. Auston got it tonight for scoring two goals, and he did a few tricks.

Aberdeen helped usher Mike into a separate room so he could do post-game media before they went into the locker room. She watched as a horde of reporters stuck microphones into his face and asked him questions about the game. When Brendan called her back into the locker room, he told her he was free to go.

She looked up at one of the TV monitors that was broadcasting Mike’s interview from the other room live, wanting to hear what good things he had to say before she left. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw William approach her, the bottom half of his gear still on, chucking something into the garbage. He stood beside her, looking up at the monitor too to listen in.

“Can you speak to Matthews’s goals tonight? The assist from Nylander must have looked good on your end,” one of the reporters asked.

“Yeah, the goals were good. Looked really good. The assist looked better than the one’s from last season, that’s for sure – he’s clearly been practicing,” Mike began.

Aberdeen didn’t hear anything else he had to say as she furrowed her brows. She knew that she didn’t know anything about hockey, but she thought the team played fantastic tonight. They won, for heaven’s sake. If she was a casual viewer and thought they played well, and that William’s assist on Auston’s goal looked incredible, that had to speak for something, right? A person who wasn’t even a fan being impressed? She didn’t know. But when she looked over at William, she saw a defeated look on his face. He clearly took the comments to heart, and it killed her to see his excitement die down over a stupid comment.

“Does he always give you backhanded compliments?” she asked quietly, looking at him.

William noticed her looking, and gave her one of those tight-lipped smiles as he shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t worry about it. I’m used to it.”

Aberdeen didn’t like that answer.

#william nylander #william nylander imagine #william nylander fic #william nylander fan fic #toronto maple leafs #toronto maple leafs imagine #toronto maple leafs fic #toronto maple leafs fan fic #nhl #nhl imagine #nhl fic #nhl fan fic #hockey #hockey imagine #hockey fic #hockey fan fic #the president wears prada series

183 notes · View notes

words4bloghere · 4 years

Text

The One Where Hordak Has PTSD and Entrapta Builds Them Support Animals

Okay so OBVIOUSLY it’s not like Entrapdak is a 100% healthy ship right out of the dock ok? Entrapta is neurodivergent and doesn’t really understand relationships (which, she says all the time in the show?? I don’t know why people try to make her quirky when she’s clearly ND????) and Hordak is a clone that was a bad guy for the entire show, even up till the end. Like, he saved Entrapta but as we saw with Catra, that’s not the end all, be all of redemption.

It’s a First Step.

So I think it would be a weird road to recovery because it’s not like Entrapta is totally certain where typical social boundaries are and might be okay with the way Hordak treats people and therefore has to learn herself about her own behavior because, as we’ve seen, she’s chosen to be apart of this broader social circle.

All that to say, I want to write Entrapdak as they work on their social skills and Hordak guns for actual redemption.

So I did!

Hordak woke up in a panic. The sterile scent of Prime’s hall invaded his lungs and made his head spin. Prime’s laughter still ricocheted through his skull and he grabbed the sides of his head; his breathing was ragged and rushed. Prime’s hands, the light glinting on the one digit, reached for him.

“Where are you?” Entrapta asked.

She was here. She was held here but she sounded calm, and he could not see her.

“I’m in Prime’s hall. Where are you, it is not safe here!” Hordak called out. He felt tendrils against his arms and he flailed trying to free himself.

“You’re in Dryl, with me. And it is safe.” Entrapta said.

After a flash, the memory was gone. Hordak was sitting up in his bed, the blanket slipping off of him and held up by a knee. The beast Entrapta had made for him - Devin - sat on the floor but with her forelegs on his bed. His hand was curled in the synthetic mane and her panting smelled like, lavender?

Entrapta’s paired animal - Henrietta - stood at attention beside her. Beyond being their own support animals, they were connected over a private communication chain and alerted each other when the need arose.

Like when Hordak had one of his nightmares.

“Perfuma told me that grounding is an excellent way to remove yourself from a behavioral activity that causes distress or harm.” Entrapta said cheerfully as she raised herself up on her hair to hover next to Hordak.

Feeling uneasy, he slid back away from her.

“I seemed to have misunderstood her though after I pulled out some wiring, so she sent me a kit. Should I go get it?” Entrapta asked and started to push herself off the bed.

“No!” Hordak said and grabbed her wrist. Entrapta paused and looked down at his hand. He remove it slowly, sitting more upright and letting out a slow breath.

“Would you just stay with me, please?” He asked.

Looking down at the bed, where Entrapta hovered comfortably with her legs crossed, she looked confused.

“Would this be like the sleepovers Adora, Glimmer, and Bow have?” She asked.

“What is a, sleep, over?” Hordak asked haltingly. Entrapta looked up, excited, and a fist of her hair slammed down onto what could be seen as an open palm of another limb of hair.

“This is the perfect opportunity to experiment with princess social norms!” Entrapta shouted. As she scrambled on her hair, her mask slipped down over her face.

“I’ll be right back!” Entrapta added, pulling herself up and into a large air duct, pulling Henrietta up after her.

Hordak stared open mouthed and confused as the beast Henrietta ascended placidly.

Devin hopped onto the bed with Hordak, spinning before laying down and perching her head on his knee. Stroking her mane, Hordak let out another deep breath and rested his head on the wall behind his bed.

The nightmares were worrisome. He had thought that after some time, the flashes would go away. After all, She-Ra had burned away Prime’s essence and allowed Hordak to be himself again.

But he had been Prime’s last vessel, and the neurological framework that he had used for everything meant that memory was stored with them all and was, organic.

Frowning, Hordak sat up as he heard clattering come from above him.

He had been lucky that Entrapta had invited him to live in Dryl. Not that the others were happy about it, for various reasons.

“How old is he anyway?” King Micah had asked, slamming his hands on the war room table. At once, every pair of eyes turned on him.

“I have, no age.” Hordak had responded. “I was created to exist perpetually at the physical peak of Prime’s species. I have neither aged nor grown since I emerged from the cloning tanks.”

“Yeah, but how long have you been that age?” Frosta questioned.

“I.” Hordak started but Adora held out her hand.

“We all know. Okay? But it’s not like we have to worry about anything, right?” She said gently. The other princesses looked uneasy.

“Yeah I mean, it’s Entrapta we’re talking about. I don’t think we have to worry about that.” Catra added, taking one hand from behind her head to gesture suggestively in the air.

Hordak rounded on her, snarling, but felt a weight on his leg. He had glanced down and saw Entrapta sitting with her head - and mask -lowered. So he sat, and held his rage.

The clattering stopped as pillows fell from the air duct. Devin raised her head and they both watched as Henrietta was lazily lowered on purple hair.

Entrapta followed after, various things held in tendrils while her arms were filled with bags of tiny snacks and bottles of fizzy drinks. After years of ration bars, Hordak was still unused to the sweet foods she liked to eat and was not looking forward to the stomach pains that would follow.

“And I brought your favorite!” Entrapta chirped, revealing more tendrils of hair that held a number of wrapped rectangles.

“Adora and Catra were talking about how they don’t always like the palace food, I thought you might want something you were used to.” She explained, moving back to the bed and pulling the pillows after her.

She stopped abruptly and looked like a landslide that had suddenly decided to halt in its destructive path.

“What’s wrong?” Hordak asked.

“Scorpia was talking to me about personal space and how I have to ask first.” Entrapta said softly, lowering her mask with a flip of her head. “May I join you on your bed?”

“Of, of course.” Hordak said and pushed himself over to the side of the bed. Devin hopped up, trotting to the end of the bed just as Henrietta leaped up to join her.

Still silent, Entrapta rolled onto the bed and set about placing pillows, blankets, and the pile of snacks in various positions. Hordak watched her, uneasy.

“Do you, still feel the need to wear your mask around me?” He asked.

Entrapta paused, her hair holding onto a blanket Castaspella had knitted. Tugging lightly at the threads, Entrapta looked away.

“King Micah says I’m not helping you because I’m not setting healthy boundaries. But I don’t understand what they mean about boundaries and I get a different answer depending on who I ask. I can’t draw any meaningful conclusions from their data!” She said in a rush. Now Hordak looked away, rubbing the back of his neck.

“As a, clone, all of my thoughts and actions were watched by my brothers. By, Prime.” Hordak squeezed his neck as he continued. “When I was in the Fright Zone-”

“Buthidae.” Entrapta interrupted. Hordak’s hand moved away from his neck but stayed in the air. His eyes widened, still staring at the wall.

“What?” He asked and turned to Entrapta. She looked back at him, raising her mask with her hair.

“Scorpia renamed her kingdom remember? After she invited the Horde and the Clones to live there since she didn’t exactly have any people. Although if I have a kingdom of robots and no runestone, I don’t see why she would necessarily need to have people to have it count.” Entrapta opened her bag of tiny treats and dumped them into a bowl. Hesitating, she looked up sheepishly. “Sorry, continue.”

Hordak smiled and lowered his hand.

“I’m not used to being around other people either. And I don’t know how to get better. But I’m glad I’m here with you.” He said.

Entrapta smiled and put her hand on top of his.

“I’m glad you’re here with me too, Hordak.”

As Hordak’s bedroom door slammed open, Entrapta shrieked and jumped onto Hordak, making them both topple out of bed. Popping their heads up, they saw Emily and Wrong Hordak standing excitedly in the room.

“Emily told me you’re having a sleepover and we don’t know what that is but she got a movie ready and I want to join!” He said.

Groaning, Hordak fell face first onto his bed and Devin started to nibble his hair.

#entrapdak #spop #entrapta #hordak #fanfiction #jax writes #i love this ship so much #but it gives me bella and edward vibes #like how long have you been in your twenties hordak #and is entrapta like mermistas age??#i hate vague age ranges #this fic would ultimately be about getting entrapta a runestone #i saw you purple shard in bow's dads' library #entrapta ends up having su peridot powers #and hordak becomes her metal clad grumpy boyfriend

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noshitshakespeare · 4 years

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I'm wondering if the literary James I may have been one of overthink a problem, and to rely on compromise in order to avoid war even though he believed in divine right of Kings. And, much energy was being lost in internal strife. Moreover, his Queen was from the Danish / Norwegian 'tribe'. I can see the themes in Hamlet being very 'stimulating' for them. I was wondering if you have thought about what Shakespeare AVOIDS writing given the what may have passed for Political Correctness in 1609?

Why 1609? Almost all current critical consensus points to Hamlet having been written around 1600-1601, and the Stationer’s Register records ‘A books called the Revenge of Hamlett Prince of Denmarke as yt was latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes’ on the 26th of July 1602, with the first Quarto published a year later... So even at latest it’s hard to believe it was written during James’ reign. Of course, Shakespeare may have predicted the succession of James, but that remained very much in doubt until the very end of Elizabeth’s life, so it’s a little bit of a stretch to assume that the play is fundamentally referring the James’ political ideas and beliefs. There’s too much speculation here for my liking.

I see your point about James’ interests and Anne of Denmark, but topicality is a difficult subject in Shakespeare Studies, because he’s rarely very obvious about it. And if the play is based on ur-Hamlet, or on whatever other stories Shakespeare may have consulted, the location of Denmark is one present in the sources, not an active topical choice (see this post). Yes, one might select a story based on the topicality of its location, but given that the story is already in circulation in Elizabeth’s reign and before Shakespeare takes it on, there are too many possible reasons he could have chosen this story.

What does Shakespeare avoid writing? Well, he avoids or doesn’t write about a lot of things. Some of those things maybe he just wasn’t interested in writing about, others, perhaps he felt he couldn’t, but there’s no knowing what interested him and what didn’t. Again, there’s little point in speculation. As a scholar I can only really comment on what he did write. Still, ‘Political Correctness’ in the seventeenth century could be an issue of life or death (or imprisonment and a hefty fine), so the stakes are high. I try not to ascribe too much of a personal biographical reading to the sonnets, but he does write in sonnet 66 that art is ‘tongue-tied by authority’, so presumably he knew what it meant for there to be things you couldn’t write about. And he’s good at it, because unlike many of his contemporaries, he never seems to have been involved in very serious treason or libel cases.

The question is far too broad to answer in any level of detail, but I think one way Shakespeare avoids writing about things that might get him in trouble is by not going into too much topical detail (and setting his plays abroad). He does have some topical references through which people date the plays, but not as much as a lot of his contemporaries. And in some of his plays Shakespeare does get into a little trouble, so he has to do things like rename Oldcastle Falstaff in the Henry IV plays. There’s a flattering imagined description of Essex returning from Ireland in Henry V, but it’s not present in the Quarto version, maybe because Essex was disgraced by the time that was published. Polonius is often considered to be based on William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth’s advisor... But here we start to see more how Shakespeare works, because it’s not a direct parallel, nor quite a parody. It’s more that some parts of Polonius draw on things Lord Burghley did. The same goes for Falstaff, in fact, because, whatever the name Shakespeare chose, the original Sir John Oldcastle is nothing more than a point of departure for the character Shakespeare created. Once the name is changed, it’s hard to say Falstaff is a direct parody at all. These characters are seldom 100% nasty or good, and even in instances where people say Shakespeare is flattering a particular figure it’s always ambiguous. So Banquo is presented as the ancestor of James, but while not a co-conspirator of Macbeth’s, he’s not exactly Duncan’s protector either. the Duke in Measure for Measure is widely recognised as sharing many of James’ characteristics, but the resemblance isn’t complete, and there’s no consensus on whether it’s the portrait of a wise ruler or a sinister spying tyrant who controls his people through dubious means. Shakespeare avoids making direct comments by creating ambiguous characters who are not simplistic parallels of existing people. In most cases, if a censor asks ‘is this meant to be so-and-so?’ you could easily say, ‘No, not at all, this is how different my character is’.

It always seems to me that the way Shakespeare approaches certain themes is much like how he draws on particular characters. He may write a play that could appeal to a king interested in witchcraft, but Macbeth’s witch-like figures are the weird sisters, and never explicitly referred to as witches. The queen was getting old, and the succession crisis was a serious political concern in England when he wrote Hamlet, but Shakespeare explores the question through an old story, and never completely specific to the circumstances of the time. It contains a queen whose marriage and sexual fidelity raise questions about heirs and succession, but Gertrude isn’t Elizabeth. It contains spying as a means of control, but it’s never entirely successful, and Polonius isn’t the prudent Lord Burghley. It shows a foreigner coming in at the end to take over a country left without a successor... A potential outcome of the queen’s childless reign, but brought about by the stock mass death of a revenge tragedy, not because of childlessness. All the circumstances depicted are only laterally related to the issues in England at the time and could easily be dismissed as a chance resemblance, rather than a direct comment, just as Hamlet’s complaint about ‘the law’s delay, / the insolence of office, and the spurns / That patient merit of th’unworthy takes’ (III.i.72-74) could refer to any society.

There are no doubt resonances and thoughts that happen because one lives in a particular time, but frankly, topical references in Shakespeare are not what interests me about his writing. While thinking about his writing in terms of contemporary events and references can reveal new and interesting things about them, that approach can never explain the plays completely. It’s very easy to end up reducing the plays to just another historical document, and losing what makes them so interesting and artistic.

#anon anon sir!#asks #Hamlet #long post #topicality #references #I'm not sure where I'm going with this one #not sure how to answer the question

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magic-and-moonlit-wings · 4 years

Text

Chapter 47: The Shattered King

Becoming The Mask

From October 14th to June 22nd … I thank you all so very deeply for your patience and continued support for this story! It's been wonderful to see people still reading and enjoying it over all these months. I hope to get my next chapter up in a shorter time frame. Say, three months instead of nine?

I will probably never include a poem again unless I already have one written. I got pretty deep into my own head and psyched myself out of even starting this for months, because I wanted to include the poem itself in the narrative SO MUCH but also doubted my capacity to deliver it with the oomph it was supposed to have.

And then, the longer it took for me to deliver, the more impressive I felt like I had to make it in order to compensate for the delay, which psyched me out of starting for even longer.

And at the same time I was chastising myself because (A) this is a "translation", which means I'm doing a free-form poem instead of being tied to rhyme or meter, and (B) "come on, me, people will skim and enjoy the poem to get the backstory being presented, but this is not an audience that comes here with intent to analyse and critique poetry, so just get it done."

Bold italics are trollish translated into English.

+=+

Glug was an easy troll to find. She spent a lot of time in Trollmarket's main pub, where she worked as a brewer of … glug.

Darci wasn't sure if the troll had named the drink after herself or if that was just a name that also happened to be a drink, like how a human might be named 'Sherry'.

At the Trollhunter's request to talk "somewhere a little quieter", Glug ushered the humans (and Changeling – it was still so weird to think of Jim as a Changeling) into the backroom, where she stirred a bathtub full of green liquid as Jim explained why they were there.

"We were hoping you could tell us about … the Shattered King."

Glug dropped her ladle, reaching her mossy arm into the bathtub to retrieve it. "A long story, you ask for. A great saga and a sacred one."

"We understand if it's something private to your people," said Jim. "We just … I just, need to do something, that would be a little safer if I had that information."

"We trade," said Glug easily. "I tell you of the God-King, and in return, you give me human song."

Jim thought it over – for about a second – and said, "Deal."

It was a more than generous offer. Even if each one of them had to give Glug a different one, there were thousands of 'human songs' to choose from.

Of course, Darci's mind immediately went blank when she tried to think what would be a good one …

Mary started tapping on her phone. "I've got the new Papa Skull album –"

"No." Glug must've understood cellphones a little better than most trolls, because she said, "No recordings. Performing is what gives the song its power."

There was a long, awkward pause.

"I've got this," said Toby. He patted his thighs, his stomach, shook his hips, and waved his arms in the air. "Boom. Boom. Shake the room. Say what?"

Jim covered his face with one hand. "Oh my god, seriously, Tobes?"

"Come on, Jimbo, you wanna seal this deal or not? Boom, boom, shake the room – say what?"

Jim rolled his eyes and sighed, but went along with Toby's weird, wiggly dance. The boys did a complicated clapping sequence in the middle of the routine that they must have done before, somewhere they didn't have an audience.

"Boom, boom, shake the room – say what?!"

Glug laughed and clapped her hands on her own stomach. "I like! Good song! We sit, here."

She arranged them into a circle on the floor beside the bathtub, sat down, crossed her legs, and clapped her hands twice sharply on her thighs.

"Generations ago,

In caverns that shone green and were soft with moss and rich with fish,

Two of the Wumpa Trolls made a birthstone with the brightest glow of any seen before or since.

When their whelp hatched,

Syddawn and Cheln believed they had a strong and healthy daughter,

And his parents named him."

Glug didn't actually say the name, which seemed … odd.

Was the saga going to list the Shattered King's genealogy? Lots of human stories of epic heroes had a prologue about the hero's parentage, too.

"Syddawn and Cheln presented their whelp to their family,

And their family adored him and welcomed him into their lives.

Syddawn and Cheln presented their whelp to their friends,

And their friends adored him and welcomed him into their lives."

Trolls used a few pronouns that didn't have one-to-one translations in English (or so Blinky said before learning about ey/em and xe/xir and suchlike), but Darci was pretty sure Glug kept using the one that translated as 'him'. Had Darci misunderstood the word 'daughter', then, a moment ago? Or was Glug reciting the saga in archaic vocabulary which translated differently than the trollish the humans had been learning?

"Syddawn and Cheln presented their whelp to King Alou,

Greatest wizard of the Wumpa Trolls,

And King Alou examined the whelp and said,

'This one will be greater than me one day',

And King Alou offered to take the whelp as a student and apprentice

When he was a youngling old enough to understand what he was taught.

When the whelp was fourteen,

Barely old enough to stand,

He worked his first great magic,

Reshaping his living stone to be seen as he was.

And –"

"Wait, what does that mean?" Jim interrupted. "He was a shapeshifter?"

Naturally a Changeling would pounce on that detail. All the humans leaned in as well. Glug glared at Jim for interrupting.

"And Syddawn and Cheln learned they had a strong and healthy son,

And his parents renamed him Quag."

Glug patted her knees twice and switched to English.

"Trolls not always what we seem at birth. We can re-carve our stone, with time and magic to regrow minerals in right directions, but to show himself all at once with no training … a sign of great power."

"He was transgender?" said Darci.

"… Your word for kwoon-grik?"

"… Maybe?"

"We will ask Blinky later," said Jim. "My apologies for interrupting you, Glug. Please, continue?"

Glug patted her knees twice and resumed the saga.

"Quag, son of Cheln, was apprenticed to King Alou in his fortieth year.

Quag, son of Cheln, learned well and surpassed his teacher in his two hundredth year.

Quag, son of Cheln, with the blessings of his parents and his king,

Left the caverns of his birth to seek new teachers and new magic in his two hundredth year,

Swearing an oath that he would always return to them."

Kwoon-grik. Darci pulled out her notebook and scribbled the word down, guessing at the spelling.

This was … reassuring, she supposed. It was unlikely the trolls would ever find out she was trans, but if they did she wouldn't have to explain the concept entirely from scratch.

Glug recited a fairly repetitive set of stanzas where the Shattered King – or, Quag, son of Cheln, as he was still called at this point in the saga – studied under different wizards in different troll tribes and outstripping his teachers in shorter and shorter spaces of time, and travelled to the next one. Sometimes he had to accomplish some task to convince the wizard to accept him as a student, or protect wherever he was staying from a monster or natural disaster.

"With his spell to reform his stone,

Quag, son of Cheln, became strong and dense,

And ventured to the Deep Caves of the Krubera Trolls to study from the wizard Johanna in his five hundredth year.

In this way, Quag, son of Cheln, became the first outsider to visit the Deep Caves,

Which are deeper than any troll but the Krubera can survive,

And even the Krubera cannot go deeper still.

Quag, son of Cheln, learned well and surpassed his teacher in his five hundred and seventy-fifth year.

Having visited every troll cavern and learned from all the greatest wizards,

Except for the wizards of the dreaded Ga-Huel Trolls –"

Jim twitched sharply, but didn't interrupt this time.

"Quag, son of Cheln, returned to the caverns of his birth as he swore that he would do.

Syddawn and Cheln welcomed their son home.

King Alou, still living, tested Quag's powers and named him Prince Quag,

Greatest wizard of the Wumpa Trolls.

But Prince Quag's thirst for knowledge was not quenched.

'Mother, Father, my king and first teacher,' he said,

'I have travelled to every village in our stratum.

I have travelled to the deepest caves of the Krubera.

I have been everywhere between.

Now I wish to explore what is above.'

Syddawn and Cheln became afraid when their son said this to them,

Because the Wumpa Caverns were among the highest of all caverns,

And they thought that above there could be only endless rock,

Unless one came through the other side and up from below,

Like how one can always go all the way around the world by travelling in one direction.

But Prince Quag knew the magic to make himself strong and dense,

So that the pressures of the Deep Caves could not harm him.

Prince Quag, with the blessings of his parents and his king,

Left the caverns of his birth to explore what is above in his five hundred and seventy-sixth year,

Swearing an oath that he would always return to them.

In this way, Prince Quag became the first troll to discover the Surface Lands."

"Whoa." Mary was the interrupter this time. Glug growled as she double-patted her knees. That was probably some kind of signal for pausing and resuming the story. "Sorry," said Mary, "just – the first? Ever? That's so cool."

"One of the first, anyway," said Jim. "I've read a little about this part. A few different trolls discovered there was a surface at around the same time, and there wasn't fast enough communication between tribes back then to determine exactly who was the first to reach it and come back. He was definitely the first of his tribe, though."

"True enough for stories," said Glug. She glared at each of her five listeners in turn and pointedly double-patted her knees again.

"Prince Quag found a land of soft stone that moved gently underfoot to leave marks,

And openness above that would not cave in for lack of support from this soft stone.

Prince Quag found a land of moss that was not moss and fungus that was not fungus,

And some fish that were not fish and other fish that were."

Dirt, and the sky, and plants and animals, as understood by a troll who had lived with solid rock underfoot and overhead all his life, and had never seen a leaf, or any animal besides cave fish and monsters.

"Prince Quag decided to make his home in this land of rich hunting,

And bring the rest of the Wumpa Trolls with him.

It is good that Prince Quag built a camp for himself to test his hunting grounds before inviting others,

Or he would have learned too late the danger of sunlight."

Glug's audience gasped. She did not scold them this time. The hairy green troll nodded and smiled, leaning in and lowering her voice.

"When sunlight touched his horn,

Prince Quag cried out and buried himself in the mud to soothe his burn.

He hid under the mud as the Surface Lands

Became brighter and hotter and louder,

And then quieter and cooler and darker again.

In the dark times Prince Quag hunted well and watched the openness above,

Thinking the light was from some great predator that hunted him ,

Waiting and fearing when it would return,

And burrowing into the mud until it was gone."

Glug leaned back, stretched her arms overhead, and went back to her normal volume.

"When Prince Quag understood that the sunlight did not seek him,

But would burn him if he touched it all the same,

Like the gornubak mushroom does not release its spores for us

But the spore cloud will raise itchiness all the same,

He taught himself to track its timing

Like those who live near a gornubak track its fruiting season.

In this way, Prince Quag became the first troll to study the Surface Lands' cycle of night and day.

Then came a time when the day was meant to begin,

But the sunlight did not come,

And water fell from the openness above,

Which did not look so open anymore.

Prince Quag tried to mimic this with his magic,

And invented weather spells to make clouds and rain.

Prince Quag learned well and found a way to overcome sunlight in his five hundred and seventy-seventh year."

That part, Darci was willing to bet money, was artistic license. No way could trolls actually control the weather. If they could, Arcadia Oaks would be a lot cloudier.

"Sheltered under his spell of clouds,

Prince Quag left the swamp that he had made his camp

And explored more of the Surface Lands.

He discovered creatures who could speak

And who had their own wizards.

Prince Quag traded knowledge of magic with the human wizards for some time.

His favourite teachers and students

Were the human who could command the magic of shadow

And the human who could command the magic of sunlight."

Jim touched his amulet. Glug nodded, but didn't elaborate on the Shattered King apparently being friends with Merlin holy shit. Even knowing trolls and magic were real, Darci still wasn't used to the idea that Merlin had been an actual guy.

"In his six hundred and fiftieth year, Prince Quag returned to the caverns of his birth as he swore that he would do.

Syddawn and Cheln welcomed their son home.

King Alou, now dead, had been succeeded by King Erskrednu,

Second-greatest wizard of the Wumpa Trolls.

Prince Quag kneeled to King Erskrednu

And said, 'I do not challenge you for your crown.

King Alou chose his successor well.

You have been here to lead the Wumpa when I have not.

But I ask that you let me lead the Wumpa to a higher stratum,

To a cavern with greater hunting and openness above instead of stone.'

King Erskrednu said, 'How can there be no stone overhead in a cavern?'

Prince Quag said, 'If there is stone above this cavern,

It is too high to be seen even in the brightest glow,

And I have not found the side walls to climb to it.'

King Erskrednu said, 'Is there hunting enough to feed us all,

And a Heartstone that our tribe may grow?'

Prince Quag said, 'There is hunting for several times our current number,

But no Heartstone that I could sense.'

King Erskrednu said, 'I will not order anyone to follow you,

But I will not stop anyone from following you,

And I will give you a piece of our Heartstone to nurture.

You are my friend and we studied together as younglings,

And I know that your magic will help it grow and keep those who go with you safe.'

Prince Quag thanked King Erskrednu and began inviting Wumpas to the Surface Lands,

But when he warned them of the sunlight they all became afraid,

No matter how good the hunting was.

So Prince Quag swore that he would cast his spell of clouds every day

And some of the Wumpa agreed to follow him.

King Erskrednu gave Prince Quag a piece of Heartstone and a crown,

And Prince Quag became King Quag,

And the Wumpa Trolls were divided into Wumpa Trolls and Quagawump Trolls

But not truly divided, for they still were nurtured by the same Heartstone."

… Oh. Quag's Wumpas. Darci got the name now. Sort of.

"King Quag led the Quagawump Trolls to the Surface Lands,

And cast his spell of clouds over the swamp that would be their home.

The Quagawump Trolls planted their Heartstone and it became the heart of the swamp,

With crystals growing from the trees closest to it.

The Quagawump Trolls built shelters and cooking pits and instruments.

The Quagawump Trolls hunted the surface creatures and sang as they feasted.

In time, new birthstones were made and hatched

Into Quagawump Trolls who would only know life in the Surface Lands.

In time, other trolls learned of the Surface Lands as well.

One night the River Trolls came to the swamp of the Quagawump Trolls.

The leader of the River Trolls begged King Quag, 'Please let us take shelter here for a time!

We have been driven from our territory by the Ga-Huel Trolls,

And do not know when or if we can return.'

King Quag said, 'This is unusual,

For the Ga-Huel most often conquer trolls and demand tributes from them rather than driving them out.'

The leader of the River Trolls said, 'The Ga-Huel have been swarming the caverns closest to the surface,

For they have discovered they love the taste of surface animals,

And want the best places to launch their hunting parties.

We cannot get past them to flee to deeper caverns.'

King Quag said, 'They would do best to find territory on the surface itself!

But stay here until they see sense,

And in the meantime contribute your water magic to our hunting and defences.'

The leader of the River Trolls agreed.

One night the Garden Trolls came to the swamp of the Quagawump Trolls.

The leader of the Garden Trolls begged King Quag, 'Please let us take shelter here for a time!

We have been driven from our territory by the Ga-Huel Trolls,

And do not know when or if we can return.'

King Quag said, 'You are not the only ones displaced,

Even though the Ga-Huel more often conquer trolls and demand tributes from them rather than driving them out.'

The leader of the Garden Trolls said, 'The Ga-Huel have been swarming the caverns closest to the surface,

For they have discovered they love the taste of surface animals,

And want the best places to launch their hunting parties.

We cannot get past them to flee to deeper caverns.'

King Quag said, 'They would do best to find territory on the surface itself!

But stay here until they see sense,

And in the meantime contribute your plant magic to our hunting and defences.'

The leader of the Garden Trolls agreed.

One night the rest of the Wumpa Trolls came to the swamp of the Quagawump Trolls.

King Erskrednu said to King Quag, 'We must ask shelter of you.

We have been driven from our territory by the Ga-Huel Trolls,

And do not know when or if we can return.'

King Quag said, 'I have heard this story several times now.

It seems the Ga-Huel no longer conquer a tribe and demand tributes from them,

But rather drive them out.'

King Erskrednu said, 'The Ga-Huel are growing ever more vicious.

They are beginning to be called the Gumm-Gumms.'

King Quag said, 'Then stay here where you are safe,

And learn weather magic from me to contribute to our defences.'

King Erskrednu agreed,

But no wizard save King Quag was strong enough to summon more than one small cloud at a time.

The swamp gave good hunting

And could shelter and feed many more trolls than it held.

For a time, everyone was safe and happy.

Every five years the River Trolls and Garden Trolls and Wumpa Trolls would send out a scout

To see if it was safe to return to their home caverns.

Those who returned said that it was not.

Those who did not return were mourned as dead.

A returning scout from the tenth scouting mission was followed by one of the Gumm-Gumm Trolls.

The Gumm-Gumm watched for days and saw the clouds that shielded the swamp from daylight,

And reported to Orlagk the Oppressor that there was a place on the surface where the Gumm-Gumm Trolls could make a base camp.

The Gumm-Gumms' first attack was driven away with great plant and water magic

Which made the swamp impassable to anyone.

The Gumm-Gumms returned with sharper swords to cut the plants

And braced themselves with charms to not fear drowning.

The Gumm-Gumms' second attack was driven away with an illusion of the sunrise

So realistic that some of them turned to stone because they believed they would.

The Gumm-Gumms returned knowing this was only a trick.

The Gumm-Gumms' third attack was driven away with sigils painted at the borders of the swamp

Which made the swamp impassable to their kind.

The Gumm-Gumms returned with their own wizards,

Who can work magic on the minds of trolls,

And their youngest and most dreaded wizard, Gunmar,

Who could pull magic from its source and into himself."

Darci scribbled a note about that as well. She would ask Jim later if that was a real thing Gunmar could do or if it was something the Quagawumps has made of for the saga, to justify how he'd been able to kill their purported greatest wizard.

"The battle filled the night.

King Quag faced Gunmar at dawn.

The Gumm-Gumm wizard seized King Quag in both hands.

Gunmar's hunger for power was a deep chasm inside him and could not be filled.

Gunmar could not absorb King Quag's power fully,

Because his birth from a rotten Heartstone had left him too corrupt to absorb wisdom and compassion

As readily as he absorbed magic.

In a fit of envy at realizing he could never be as great a leader,

Gunmar crushed King Quag's skull in one hand and his body in the other,

And became known as Gunmar the Skullcrusher.

The swamp screamed and the clouds parted

And sunlight touched the swamp for the first time in centuries.

The Wumpa Trolls and River Trolls and Garden Trolls buried themselves in the mud,

And the Gumm-Gumms fled,

Because no wizard save King Quag was strong enough to summon more than one small cloud at a time,

And Gunmar the Skullcrusher had not absorbed knowledge of King Quag's spell.

The attacks ended that day

Because the swamp was useless to the Gumm-Gumms without the clouds.

The Garden Trolls and River Trolls blamed each other for not keeping their oaths to guard the swamp

And are feuding still.

The Quagawump Trolls rebuilt their shattered king that night

And found one stone of his body still living,

Full of the magic that Gunmar the Skullcrusher had been too corrupted to absorb.

King Erskrednu said, 'Only a god can return from the dead,

But every time King Quag left the Wumpa Trolls or Quagawump Trolls,

He swore an oath to return,

And he always kept his oath.

King Quag will come back to us and he will reclaim the magic he left behind in this stone,

And in the meantime his wisdom and compassion will guide our ruler.'

King Erskrednu attached the last living stone of King Quag to his crown.

King Quag will claim this crown when he returns."

Glug double-patted her knees again and beamed at her audience.

"Returns?" said Claire.

"He gave an oath to always return to his home and family. He will come back." Her smile changed to a scowl. "The Pretend-King, Blango, wears this crown now. When the God-King returns, he will fight and defeat Blango and take his power back."

"Who's Blango?" asked Toby.

"Not part of this saga. He came to our swamps and took over. He said, 'the Shattered King is gone! I am king now!' Blango is large and strong and a good hunter, so some follow him sincerely. Others wait. Or leave." Predicting the obvious question, Glug continued, "I left before Blango came. I visited Trollmarket for trading, and loved it so much I stayed."

Jim's armour creaked sometimes when he fidgeted. Other times it didn't make nearly as much noise as metal ought to. It creaked now.

"Do you think the Quagawumps, on the whole, would be willing to let me borrow the – the last living stone of King Quag?" he asked. "According to another legend, the Trollhunter needs it in order to kill Gunmar. Which would avenge the Shattered King. And I'd give it back," he added earnestly.

Glug rocked back and forth as she considered the question.

"Maybe. Blango could want to get rid of the God-King's memory, by hiding stone with you. Or Blango could want to keep stone, to remind everyone he is king now. Those who still follow the God-King will want him avenged, but will want last piece of his magic to stay in our swamps. Toby should ask."

"Wait, what? Why me?"

Glug got up and dug out a small panel of metal that looked like it had started life as a baking sheet, with an etching of a troll on it.

"You look like him."

"He does?"

"I do?"

"You do."

It wasn't a perfect match, but Darci could see what Glug meant. Toby looked like the Shattered King in the way Jim still looked basically like himself when he transformed.

(Not Enrique didn't look much like Enrique, other than the blonde cowlick, but maybe that was a convergence thing that happened for Changelings over time? She didn't write down that question – Jim and Blinky had both said carrying pictures and written information about Changelings in Trollmarket could be dangerous.)

"… This isn't going to become an 'Anastasia' thing where I have to fake-prove I'm him for them to hear me out, will it?"

"Maybe you fight Blango." Glug shrugged.

"You're not fighting Blango," said Jim. "You'd be asking for the stone on my behalf, so if it comes down to a fight, I can swap in and fight Blango on your behalf. But hopefully he's open to negotiating."

+=+

Previous Chapter (Barbara and Jim have a dinner party with Blinky and AAARRRGGHH and Draal)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (Checking in with some original Changeling characters)

Ideas I considered for the poem but didn't end up expanding on because it had already taken so freaking long to get written:

Various adventures and misadventures from Quag's childhood, showing times and ways he used his magic before he got formal training, and giving a better idea of his and his parents' personalities and interactions, maybe exploring his extended family.

The details of Quag's apprenticeships – the names and tribes of his teachers, the kinds of spells he learned from each of them, monsters he fought, injuries and illnesses he healed (showing his adeptness at manipulating living stone).

More of Quag's adventures on the surface, namely how he met Merlin and Morgana and some other human magic-users and the adventures that they got up to together.

A subtle verse about stuff Morgana got up to which would, when her notes come up later in the story, reveal that her studies with Quag were influential in the development of Changelings.

Various trolls coming to Quag in the swamp to learn magic from him, possibly including a young Angor Rot.

Dramatic details about the battles with the Gumm-Gumms in the swamps, because it feels like trollish poetry would go into a lot of detail about battles.

A bit at the end where Merlin comes to the swamp to visit Quag, and Erskrednu tells Merlin about Quag getting killed by Gunmar, resulting in the implication that the Quagawumps believe Merlin created the Trollhunter Amulet to avenge Quag and keep other trolls from dying at Gunmar's hand, and that Merlin's studies with Quag are part of what let him create magic that would work on trolls despite being a 'human wizard' – unfortunately then it would be harder to believe the Quagawumps wouldn't just give the Killstone to the first Trollhunter who asked for it, or even approach the Trollhunter to volunteer it.

I reserve the right to say that Glug actually told the kids an 'abridged version' of the full saga if I want to expand on any of these details later, and also to take whatever I want from Wizards once that comes out and work it into Quag's backstory too.

In the original Trollhunters novel, 'Johanna' is ARRRGH!!!'s first name. I go with the idea of it being his mother's name in the show (although I also like the 'AAARRRGGHH is trans' headcanon), and on top of that I've decided Johanna is a popular Krubera name.

In the Tales of Arcadia spin-off novels and comics, the River Trolls and Garden Trolls come up a few times and are mentioned as having a long-standing feud. No one knows how it started, so I'm saying this is what the Quagawumps believe started it, regardless of whether it's true.

In the Tales of Arcadia spin-off novel The Book Of Ga-Huel, the book was not in fact written by a scholar named Ga-Huel or commissioned by someone of that name – it was written by the Dishonorable Bodus under orders of Orlagk the Oppressor, the Gumm-Gumm warlord that Gunmar later supplanted. I didn't care for most of that novel and so don't use it as canon, except for one detail: to explain the title, I've decided 'Ga-Huel' is what the Gumm-Gumms were officially named, before everyone started calling them Gumm-Gumms and they adopted that name out of pride.

#Becoming The Mask chapters #Trollhunters #Tales of Arcadia #Changeling Jim #My Fanfiction #backstory #poetry #trans representation #Darci Scott #Tobias Domzalski #Mary Wang #Claire Nuñez #Gunmar #Merlin needs to be Rule Number 3'd #There are many names for Pale Lady Morgana Argante Baba Yaga Mistress Of Shadows The Eldritch Queen #Magic #TOA novels and comics #toaWizards #maybe

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i-d0nt-even-kn0w · 4 years

Text

Thoughts on the Little Shop of Horrors Off-Broadway (2019) Cast Album

The Cast Album for the Little Shop of Horrors Off-Broadway 2019 revival recently came out, so I thought I’d throw in my two cents on it.

I’m going to write this while listening to it, but I will put a disclaimer ahead of time that so far from what I’ve heard I overall, quite honestly, don’t love it. I don’t think it’s bad, for sure! But I feel like everyone is fawning over Johnathan Groff and Christian Borle and calling it “the best lsoh yet” which I just... don’t agree with at all.

I thought I’d create this post to gather and explain my thoughts as well as create a discussion. Whether you disagree or agree with me, comment in the post; I’d love to hear what y’all think! I’m interested in hearing others opinions and their explanations as to why.

But for now, here’s a bullet pointed list of my thoughts down below:

Johnathan Groff as Seymour

I’ll be transparent and admit that I didn’t think Johnathan would be a good cast for Seymour before I even heard the album, but listening to it confirmed my suspicions. He obviously can sing the notes fantastically (he’s such a good singer ahh!!!), but he also obviously isn’t the type for Seymour. Furthermore, he doesn’t even try to act into the type that Seymour is or character sing like Seymour would. It consequently sounds like he’s playing the typical handsome male lead in a musical, which Seymour isn’t--he’s more of a loser kid type (to quote my sister) and I just don’t think Johnathan pulls it off.

I hate comparing actors, but I feel it will help to explain what I mean. I think that one of the reasons George Salazar was so good as Seymour in Pasadena Playhouse is because he fits the type and does the character singing, and it feels like how Seymour should feel: a cute, awkward loser. Not a handsome, charismatic guy barely mimicking one.

Tammy Blanchard as Audrey

I cannot say I support Audrey singing in a lower octave the way that this show chose to. Again, they butchered the character voice in the singing, and although some people find it refreshing, I find it out of place.

I usually am awful at noticing autotune, but even I could hear it in Tammy throughout the album. Not necessarily her fault, but strange some people seemed to think she needed it so much.

Her “I’m sorry, Doctor” and everything after in “Feed Me” sounded so weird and not genuine and felt like she wasn’t even trying to act?

The more I listen to her the more I just really don’t like her Audrey... I’m sorry, Tammy. She’s not a bad singer, just... odd choices for Audrey, odd singing and voice acting choices.

Her “oh my gaaawd” in “Suppertime (Reprise)” and literally everything in it wtf I can’t even try to be polite anymore I’m so sorry Tammy but what?

The worst part of this album I am so sorry, Tammy.

I’ve realized while listening to “Somewhere That’s Green (Reprise)” that maybe Audrey sounds so weird because Tammy is trying to jokingly play up “Audrey is stupid haha” with her character voice and I PRAY that isn’t the case but if it is ooooh I’ll be so mad, Tammy/whoever the director is.

Tom Alan Robbins as Mr. Mushnik

His “Mushnik & Son” is fantastic! One of my favorite songs of the album, honestly. They get the creepiness and forcefulness of it well, it’s funny, and he actually leans into the character voice unlike many of the other actors.

He doesn’t sound very old, which is what I prefer in a Mr. Mushnik, but this is just me being nit-picky lol.

Overall he’s one of my favorites from this entire album.

Christian Borle as Orin

I actually liked his “Dentist!” Not my favorite, but well done.

“Now (It’s Just the Gas)” is where it all went wrong... but that’s its own bullet point.

In all, I think Christian has the capability to be a great Orin, but the change in the musical orchestrations and the direction made him one of my least favorite Orins (but hey, at least he didn’t speak-sing every song like many Orins I’ve seen, thank GOD). I think the direction really voided Orin of any depth, and made him an JUST an unlikeable guy as opposed to an unlikeable guy who is also a comedic sadist who also can at times be genuinely friendly before you see him be a total awful person. Basically, they robbed him of complexity (and yes, Orin DOES have complexity).

His “now spit” didn’t sound like he took pleasure in it at all :(

Again, his “stupid woman, Christ what a freaking scatter-brain” and everything after it didn’t sound intimidating or even like he was trying to act at all... the slap didn’t feel intense as a result, and really killed the climax of “Feed Me”.

Kingsley Leggs as Audrey II

I have to be transparent again and say nothing will beat Michael-Leon Wooley as Audrey II in the 2003 Broadway revival, personally. He sang more into the role, which is how I myself prefer Audrey II to be played. That being said, despite Kingsley Leggs speak-singing more than I’d like, he pulls it off better than any of the many other Audrey II’s I’ve seen do it before, balancing speak-singing with his actual singing voice very well. And his actual singing voice is phenomenal! One of the better parts of the album.

His “Suppertime”? Mwah, chef kiss. Fantastic.

The Urchins

They were great, I don’t really have any criticisms for them, probably because they are roles that give the actors a lot more freedom in terms of acting and vocal choices.

Their “The Meek Shall Inherit”? Mwah, chefs kiss, their voices blend so well together. I love...........

The Orchestrations

They make them different from the usual LSOH orchestrations, most noticeably in “Now (It’s Just the Gas)”, which I will get to soon...

In general it’s not terrible, just not as good as the original in my opinion. I can tell they were going for something different, which I can respect, but it just comes out as odd when I’m listening to it. Perhaps it’s better on stage.

“Now (It’s Just the Gas)”

I have particular criticisms on this song because it’s one of my favorite songs in the show for its complexity, horror, and orchestration. This version, in the process of making it campy and different, gutted the song of it’s meaning.

They sped up Orin’s part in the music, which TOTALLY pulls away from the effective contract between his part and Seymours. Orin’s part should be slow to create the horrifying effect that he is dying slowly, begging slowly for Seymour to help him as he laughs himself to death. Seymour’s part is fast to show his frantic anxiety and fear from what will be his first murder. Instead this effect (which quite frankly is a basic part of any good LSOH) is ruined, and it ends up being a fast paced song all the way through that feels like it is just for laughs. One of the best parts of this song is how creepy and horrifying it is with the layer of comedy. This version of “Now (It’s Just the Gas)”... seems to not understand the song at all.

I personally believe Orin’s laughter should sound fearful at least a bit or at least towards the end, but it never does. It just sounds maniacal and leaning in to the comedy, which really takes away from whatever levity this number should have as Seymour’s first murder and the climax of Act I.

Christian’s Orin doesn’t sound angry (or, again, scared) when he dies. It really just feels like he leans into the joke psycho act, and this lack of character complexity or attempt to make us feel bad for a man literally laughing to death is... ugh.

Johnathan’s “Death?” at the end is much too frightened for my taste, and again creates a loss of impact in the song. The quiet fright yet calmness in which Seymour usually says “Death?” creates a sickening effect where you realize that he allowed a man to suffocate to death slowly while laughing. It’s supposed to be disgusting, not funny, not sympathetic towards Seymour (imo).

If you can’t tell, I am very passionate about this number. It’s a make or break song for me when I’m analyzing “is this a good production of Little Shop of Horrors?”

A Very Dumb Preference of Mine

More nit-picky personal preference thing, but I really prefer LSOH’s where Seymour is shorter than Audrey or at least not too tall. Johnathan is 5′11″ while Tammy is 5′6″. Again, super stupid and nit-picky, but just a personal reason this can’t be my favorite LSOH. It’s all about the subversion of stereotypical romance tropes.....

Bigger Than Hula Hoops

They renamed “Bigger Than Hula Hoops” “Da-Doo (Reprise)” in the album............... I’m being petty but that’s illegal.

CONCLUSION:

I’m sorry, but this is overall my least favorite version of LSOH (based off the cast album, of course!). Perhaps I’m biased, and perhaps people who say it’s their favorite version are biased because they are Johnathan Groff and Christian Borle stans (no shade, I am one as well). Either way, this is just my opinion, and I would again love to hear all your guys’s opinions: why you agree, diagree, etc!

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adobe-outdesign · 5 years

Text

Re-Created: Chapter 2

(Quick announcement: As you can probably gain from the title, the Studio Living/Henry Saves Everyone AU is being renamed to the Re-Created AU, as Studio Living was always a placeholder name. The new tag is #recreated AU.)

After Joey passes away, Henry finds a way to make everyone look human again, one by one, using the Ink Machine. And this story is going to have a happy ending, even if he has to write it himself.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Of course not.” Allison shuffles some papers off the table and Henry takes a seat, tossing various notes from Joey down with a thud. “Long night, huh?”

“Joey’s always been a messy note taker. It’s hard to even figure out what he’s talking about sometimes.”

A few minutes pass. Henry frowns. “You haven’t seen Boris lately, have you?”

Allison looks at him, confused. “You mean Tom?”

“No, not Tom. The actual Boris.”

“You mean the perfect one?”

“Yeah. Usually I’ve found him by this point, but we meet near the Music Department-”

“-and you haven’t gone down there yet,” she finishes for him. Henry nods.

“I’m just worried about him. It’s not safe here.”

Allison laughs slightly. “No kidding. I haven’t seen him, but I’ll keep a lookout. If he doesn’t show up soon we can always look for him ourselves.”

“Thanks.” He nods at her own stack of papers. “You find out anything interesting?”

“Kind of. It’s all just... a blur.” She picks up a letter, smiling. “I can’t believe Tom and I got married. The way the wedding’s described here - it sounds like a dream.”

“Well, maybe Tom will propose to you sometime. He clearly cares about you.”

Allison closes her eyes, mind clearly elsewhere as she rests her head against her fist. “He doesn’t seem like the type. Then again, who knows?”

She pulls herself out of her daydream. “Speaking of Tom... he told me he wants to try. The ritual, I mean.”

Henry sits up straighter, surprised. “I thought he hated me. And he seemed terrified when you...”

“He didn’t trust you, and he was worried about me. I think he only let me go through with it because he would feel guilty if it turned out it worked and he didn’t let me try.” She leans forward. “But now he knows it works, so he’s willing to give it a shot. Plus I think he feels a bit weird now that he knows what he used to look like.”

“I mean, as long as he’s okay with it. I can start getting everything together whenever he’s ready. Might take a few hours though.”

“I’ll let him know. I’m guessing he’ll want a little time to prepare anyway.”

Henry looks back down to the papers in front of him, scanning over the titles.

“FAILED ATTEMPTS” the sheet in front of him reads in Joey’s clean handwriting. The paper is an absolute mess, with entire sections scribbled out and sticky notes tacked all over it.

Henry tucks it back into the notebook. I’ll read it later, he promises himself.

“You can’t just use the one you drew last time?” Allison asks, watching Henry work. Tom pretends to read one of the many newspapers lining Joey’s apartment, but watches him eagle-eyed over the top of the paper as he works.

“Ink has to be fresh,” he mumbles, focused on his work. He runs the brush over the taped-together papers, leaving a smooth black line in its wake.

“That should do it.” He checks Joey’s notes one more time, just to be sure. “Ready when you are.”

Tom stands up from the chair he had been sitting in, putting down his newspaper. He looks at the pentagram, flexes his robotic arm, then puts his remaining hand on Allison’s shoulder. He looks at her with a concerned expression.

“Henry? Can we have a few minutes alone?” she asks, putting her hand over his.

Henry smiles grimly. “Of course.” He leaves the room, catching them pulling into an embrace as he does so.

He sits back down at the kitchen table, looking at the various items he had found of Tom. It was mostly letters from Allison mentioning him, though one had included a photo of them on their wedding day. The man in the photo was short, with an equally short beard and a hardened look to his face. Despite his gruff appearance, he was beaming at the camera, his one remaining arm wrapped around Allison’s shoulders.

“Henry?”

He jumps, startled. It hadn’t felt like it had been very long. “Ready?”

Allison nods, wringing her hands. “As ready as we’ll ever be, I guess.”

They both walk back to the living room where Tom is pacing the floor. Allison approaches and whispers something to him, pulling him into a final hug.

They pull away after a moment and Tom moves to stand in front of the pentagram, staring at Henry. Henry nods, and Tom closes his eyes, taking a deep breath before stepping into it. Within seconds his form starts to melt away, the ink dispersing like foam on the sea.

“That’s supposed to happen, right?” Allison breathes. While she had remained confident before this point, she was now clutching her arm, looking more than slightly panicked. The Machine roars to life before Henry can respond.

“Wait at the door!” he reminds her, yelling over the noise. She stops at the doorway, clutching the frame. By the time Henry catches up there’s already a figure under the spicket, moving out from under the gushing ink. He coughs violently, wiping ink away to reveal the same face Henry had been studying in the photograph earlier. Allison approaches him slowly, as if she wasn’t sure it was him.

“Tom?” she asks. She reaches out her hand, then pauses. The man coughs again.

“...Allison?” he asks in a low, gravelly voice. Allison’s face lights up in recognition and she jumps forward, pulling him into an embrace as she starts to cry in relief.

“Calm down, calm down! You’re getting ink all over yourself!” he declares, laughing. He returns the hug, pulling her into a kiss. Henry slips into the room, handing him a towel as they pull away.

“Thanks.” Tom reaches out to take it, then stops mid-gesture, staring at his newly formed arm. “I thought this would still be gone.” He flexes it experimentally.

Henry shrugs. “This is mostly about intent, and I wanted you to have it back.”

“Thanks. Not just for the arm, I mean... for everything.” Tom takes the towel, wiping the excess ink off himself.

Allison nudges him, grinning. “You’re smiling! I can’t remember the last time I saw you happy.”

Tom laughs. “Don’t get used to it.”

“I have a plan.”

Allison and Tom had taken a break from working on a broken ink maker. Tom looks at him from his spot on top of the bench and Allison leans against it, grinning at the statement. “That’s a first.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, but I’ll need your help.” Henry takes a deep breath. “I want to help everyone. I mean, as many people as I can, at least. All of this-” he gestures vaguely, “needs to end, and now we know how to do it.”

“Everyone here would try to kill you if given the chance,” Thomas reminds him. “Are you expecting to just walk up to them and ask them if they want to be human again?”

“We don’t need to approach anyone directly. We just need to explain how this works and have one of you show yourselves as proof. Anyone who wants to will show up, and-”

“-word will spread as more people change back,” Allison finishes for him.

“No offense Henry, but I don’t think the Searchers are going to be interested in having a nice little chat while they’re trying to rip our your heart.”

“I was thinking the Lost Ones, actually,” Henry muses. “Sammy’s still around, so they won’t attack us.”

“Sammy? That crazy cult leader? I don’t think that’s safe.” Allison crosses her arms, frowning as she thinks over it.

“He should still be in the Music Department right now, I think. That’s where he was during the last loop. And we don’t need to stay long - just long enough to explain what’s going on.”

Allison sighs. “I don’t like it, but I don’t think we have many other options. We can head over there tomorrow morning.”

They step off the boat and onto the pier. Henry watches as the giant hand slowly disappears back under the ink with a strange moaning sound. “What the hell is that thing?”

“There’s a hand like that in the Bendy Land development area,” Tom offers.

“But why is it alive?”

Tom shrugs.

“Let’s make this quick. I don’t like this place.” Allison rests her hand on the hilt of her sword, watching the nearby shanties suspiciously.

“Right. How do we get them to come out here?”

“We could knock on their doors.”

“That would take forever. Aren’t we trying to be quick?”

Tom brushes past them, stepping into the middle of the room. “ANYONE HERE?” he yells. The silence is quickly replaced with chatter as the Lost Ones start to emerge.

Allison shrugs. “That works.”

Henry clears his throat as the Lost Ones group around him. He had already went over his speech in his mind before, but actually giving it with a few dozen pairs of glowing eyes watching him was a different story. “Uh... hello. I’m Henry, and this is Allison and Tom. We, uh-”

“We have a way to free everyone,” Allison cuts in, glancing at Henry. He gives her a grateful nod in response. “Henry figured out how to do it using the Machine.”

An uneasy set of murmurs runs through the crowd.

“Who are they?”

“Sammy said that only Bendy can free us...”

“What if they’re lying?”

“We’re not lying. How do you think Allison and I became human again?” Tom objects, stepping forward.

“How do we know you were one of us to begin with?”

Henry freezes.

A crack in a nearby house starts oozing ink, like a wound. The ink moves upward, shaping itself into something that looked vaguely like a person wearing suspenders and holding an axe. A grinning Bendy face stares at them.

“I thought you said Sammy wouldn’t be here,” Allison hisses. Henry looks at her helplessly.

“It is... rare that we get visitors down here. But I’m afraid we’re not interested in your offer. We have already found salvation in our Savior. Isn’t that right?”

A few soft murmurs of agreement come from the crowd of Lost Ones, who quickly part to make room for Sammy as he walks over.

“The Ink Demon’s not trying to save you, Sammy. He’d kill you if you ever met him face to face.” He has to resist adding “like he did before”.

Sammy suddenly reaches forward, grabbing Henry’s chin and tilting his head up. His hand is cold. “You look familiar to me. Have we met before?” He lets go before Allison has a chance to react, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is our Lord and his wishes.”

He turns to address the crowd. “These outsiders were sent here as a test, my sheep. Our Savior is testing us, to see if we will be so easily tempted away from his will. If you follow them, you will never be saved.” A few quiet agreements rise from the crowd.

“Listen, I don’t know what your deal is, but you have proof standing right in front of you that this works,” Tom snaps. Sammy turns around, ink dripping from his frame.

“Let’s assume that that you are telling the truth and that you are not simply outsiders that this man-” he gestures to Henry -”brought with him. You say that you are freed. And yet-”

Sammy raises the axe and slashes Tom with it before anyone can respond. The mechanic swears and places a hand over the wound, which is already seeping ink.

“Tom!” Allison rushes over, kneeling by his side and moving his hand aside to look at the wound. Tom mutters something about being fine, glaring at Sammy.

“Do you see, my sheep?” Sammy turns back to the crowd, raising his arms. “These people are still made of ink, just like us! Our Lord is the only one who can truly free us from this dark prison, and Our Lord is the only one who can restore our flesh and blood... May he forgive our sins one day. Can I get an amen?”

A chorus of soft “amens” arise from the crowd. Many of the Lost Ones were watching Sammy intently, but some of them were instead staring at Henry’s group, whispering to each other, glaring. The former curiosity they had shown earlier was quickly being replaced with skepticism.

“Henry, we need to leave. Now.” Allison puts a hand on Tom’s back and guides him to his feet, his wound already bandaged with some cloth from her dress.

“Right.” Henry turns his attention back to the crowd. “We’re leaving. If any of you are interested, we’re just down the river, past the boats.” They work their way back to the docks, the Lost Ones watching them.

“Goodbye, my sheep,” Sammy mutters as they leave. “Pray that our Lord does not find out about this.”

#bendy and the ink machine #batim #thomas connor #allison pendle #sammy lawrence #henry stein #outdesign posts things #outdesign attempts to write #recreated au #didn't really expect this chapter to be so long but hey

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sovonight · 6 years

Text

i wanted to try compiling opinions on my gravity falls tea blends, if just for personal reference!

the blends i’ve made are dipper, mabel, stan, ford, the author, the mystery shack, and ford (alt). looking at it now i’m like, wow i made three separate ford blends isn’t that overkill, but y’know what it’s fine

people’s reviews:

there are customer reviews on the listings themselves, just click through to specific blends!

mabel, dipper, stan, ford, the author, the mystery shack, and ford (alt)

stan

ford (alt)

i might be missing some in posts/replies/tags on tumblr, but can’t find em rn

and here are my own reviews/opinions. i don’t do much with steeping times (3-7 minutes or whenever i finally remember i’ve been steeping tea) and sometimes i leave the tea leaves in the cup ‘till the end of time, so it’s whatever. i always add sugar though, and occasionally add milk if the tea’s strong enough for it

mabel

my original review post

my review on the listing says, “it reminds me so much of bubblegum that i almost want to rename it that [...] while i already tend to let loose leaf teas steep in the cup forever i'd actually go out of my way to recommend it for this one; it lets the fruit come through a little better. and ofc, bubblegum is nothing without sugar, so please add sugar.”

my impression since then: adding sugar is correct. also this blend originally had sprinkles, and while i still support that decision, i removed it because sprinkles leave a bit of oil (?) in the tea when they melt-- not the best look for a light tea like this

dipper

my tiny review answer

i remember this one being a nice light fruit tea, but i’m reordering it for an updated opinion! if you don’t like slightly-sour fruit teas, though, you won’t like this one. also, steep it forever, the flavor is pretty light otherwise, and personally both dipper and mabel’s blends taste better iced

update, turns out it’s even better with sugar and milk! i just never had milk on hand when i last tried it so i couldn’t confirm until now. with milk it turns into a nice, warm, vaguely fruity tea that i’m a big fan of

the mystery shack

my tiny review answer

i remember this one as a “whenever” tea that wasn’t too light or too heavy, but i’m reordering it for an updated opinion. no milk, just sugar

stan

my original review post (my impressions of dipper and ford there are obsolete, i redid those blends since that post)

my impression since then: he’s still perfect

make sure to add sugar. and optionally milk. and blow a kiss at that mug, why not

ford

i’m ordering it again to give an updated opinion! from what i remember, the lapsang souchong was a Little much for me, even after editing it down. which is like... very fitting. secretly i call this the portal ford blend, especially with an extra-smoky spoonful of tea leaves, but i cannot let myself get into eras.

i wonder what high school/college ford’s blend would be like though

ford (alt)

my review on the listing says, “Now this is the sweet Ford tea I've been looking for. I steeped it for 4-5 minutes, drank it hot with cream and sugar, then drank it iced with cream and sugar, and it's about as delicious as Ford looks.”

i’m gonna level with you, i just wanted to say the phrase “as delicious as ford looks”. like it’s true i like the tea but i also wanted specifically to say it

i drank it again today (with milk and sugar, of course) and yep, i still like it. i would’ve done the whole plain tea -> tea with sugar -> tea with sugar and milk progression taste-test, but i did that thing where i microwave a bit of milk in a mug, pour the tea leaves in, and fill the rest of the mug with hot water and let it all steep. so. pretty creamy though.

the author

my original review post (my impressions of dipper and ford there are obsolete, i redid those blends since that post)

my impression since then: while i wasn’t impressed with it initially, the more i drank of it the more i came to like it?? almost similar to how i felt abt researcher ford himself

when i brewed this in college i liked to dump the loose leaves into a mug, pour in hot water, wait ~5 min, and add in sugar and milk. i’d drink some while waiting for the shuttle, then put the rest in the fridge (i know it was still hot when i put it in the fridge and that i’m Not supposed to do that, but my fridge was basically empty in college so it’s Fine) and dash out to go to class

i’d come back from class and bam, i’ve got iced tea that’s been steeping for 4-5 hours! the flavors really settle in with the milk, the tea leaves really settle in to the bottom... perfect. drink that chilled delight up in a sweltering hot room and stay awake for the next 12 hours because i put the most coffee-ish tea into the author blend that i could find

it’s pretty much a caffeine boost, making it more like a tea that ford would drink (if for whatever reason he ran out of coffee), and less a tea that represents him

i don’t consider it an everyday tea for me because it feels a tad more dry than other teas (i attribute that to the blood orange) and that’s why i always made sure to add milk, but, drinking tea often already tends to dry me out. how do regular tea-drinking people do it

and here’s my reasoning for the teas in case you’re like “i don’t get you sovo how could these possibly fit these characters”:

dipper

passionfruit: the boy’s dedicated to solvin’ those mysteries

sour apple: dipper is sometimes a sour apple and that’s Okay

lemon grass: i can’t really explain this one except that you know how there’s that like, lemony plant stalk you’d sometimes see kids chewing in elementary school, and it’s kind of a childhood thing for me?? also it goes with the other sour tastes in this blend

blueberry: it’s in his color palette

fruit tea aspect: to match with his twin!

mabel

watermelon cooler: watermelon’s just such a fresh, pink, summery fruit! also, that mabel sweater that one time

wild strawberry: the description on the site gave off a sugary sweet dessert vibe and those are Definitely mabel vibes

spearmint: i wanted something with a brightness and glow about it-- also once in taiwan i had tea with a minty cooling effect to it and i loved that, it was perfect for hot summer weather. i’ve been searching for it forever because i remember nothing about what it looked like, just the flavor

rose petals: summer romance aesthetic

strawberry pieces: i wanted more pink, more color, and i think that’s something mabel would appreciate. also i love eating those little re-hydrated fruit pieces in tea

fruit tea aspect: to match with her twin!

stan

rooibos caramel: stan’s heart is like a block of caramel... kinda tough when you start out, but as it warms up it gets sticky sweet and tends to wanna stick to you. i heard from the reviews on the caramel teas that the rooibos version is slightly sweeter than the black tea version, and i wanted the sweetest caramel so i went with rooibos

mambo: i heard smoky, savory, succulent, and rich and slammed that “add to blend” button

lapsang souchong: oh “smoky aroma”? oh “sweet pine flavor”? oh “sometimes gets a bad rep for being brashly smoky”? come on into this blend please

ginger: it’s kinda sharp, a little dividing, and a little too much for some people

lapsang souchong & ginger: to match with his twin!

ford

assam melody: “deep, burgundy-red”? “solid, ‘friendly’”? come be a base in this blend please

pu erh hazelberry: i knew i wanted pu erh for the earthiness, i just wasn’t sure which; i went with this one because it’s the most appealing dessert-like one of the ones i looked at, and You Know ford’s got a sweet tooth

lapsang souchong: partly to match with stan on the whole smoky pine aspect, and partly because ford shaves with fire and in fact, regularly plays with fire

cocoa nibs: it kinda complements the hazelberry & he needs a touch more than stan

ginger: similar to my reason for stan’s

lapsang souchong & ginger: to match with his twin!

the author

assam melody: provides the same character base as ford’s blend

toasted mate: i hear this is the closest you can get to coffee-levels of caffeine in a tea, and i needed that bc this is researcher ford we’re talking about

blood orange: blood splatter in the journal, anyone? splish splash

cinnamon: a dash of cinnamon goes into the cure for zombies, and also into this tea

ford (alt)

earl grey bravo: it’s a black tea base so i don’t stray too far from the original blend, a dash of grey, and a classic that always gave me a “refined” kinda vibe. i never used to think much of earl grey and took some time to come around, which is in line w my experience w ford. the citrus is almost a tie to the author blend,, blood orange becoming just orange

rooibos caramel: i needed to feed my sweet tooth and i'm pretty sure ford would support this decision

gunpowder: because gunpowder, but also because it adds a hint of smokiness that provides a similar-but-different alternative to the previous lapsang souchong. toned down and a little mellowed out, if you will.

cocoa nibs: a tie to the original blend that now complements the caramel

ginger: the ginger-and-caramel is what he shares with stan now, and i love that

the mystery shack

green rooibos key west: just west of weird, amiright??? also it’s got a bunch of summer-y fruit flavors, and the shack probably gets the majority of its business in the summer

earl grey moonlight: i was thinking about stargazing on the roof of the mystery shack and the moon turning into bill's eye, and stan working on the portal in the cover of night

pu erh dante: oh “soft earthy flavor”? “woodsy tones”?? “clean, damp forest aroma, dried mushrooms, leather and earth”??? yes thank you

orange peels: one thing i super associate w the mystery shack is all that arrow-shaped signage and all those yellow-orange question marks. so... yellow-orange bits of orange peel, acting as pops of color to guide your money outta your wallet

#sovo tea

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tisfan · 6 years

Text

Hook, Line, and Sinker

Title: Hook, Line, and Sinker by @tisfan Link: AO3 Square Filled: R3 - dares/bets Ship: Bucky/Tony, Tony & Rhodey Rating: teen Major Tags: hangover, broship, rhodey is a good bro, dares/bets, blind date, sort of, pre-slash Summary: Tony woke up with a hangover and someone’s phone number. Rhodey doesn’t quite believe it. With Tony’s prize Shelby on the line... Word Count: 1,885 Created for @tonystarkbingo

A/n: This is the sequel to this February’s Candy Hearts ficlet, Pick-up lines, but the story is self-contained. A requested and tipped fic for @unreliableunseelie

Tony woke up with a head full of cotton batting, a mouth full of dragon shit, and a memory of the previous evening that was entirely lacking.

He managed to roll over, away from the very annoying beam of light -- light, hah, felt more like a brain-destroying laser -- that was flooding his room, at the expense of everything left over in his stomach rebelling. “Oh, god,” he said, and then sprinted for the bathroom.

Okay, sprint was pushing it. Ambled with purpose and direction.

Whatever he’d eaten had probably tasted better on the way down, but since Tony couldn’t remember anything after he and Rhodey hit the third bar, he couldn’t guarantee it. He was just trying to find a bar that had the right ambiance.

He wasn’t sure he’d managed it.

He bid farewell to his late night snack, flushed, rinsed his mouth, spit. Used the bathroom for its other purpose, flushed again.

Considered taking a shower.

Considered not taking a shower.

Honestly, his sadiversary was getting to be old news, and he was too old to be acting like that anymore anyway.

He wasn’t even sure he really missed Steve anymore.

Did he?

He didn’t. Tony decided that, firmly. He did not miss Steve, that wasn’t going to happen anymore.

He tried to remember if he’d decided that last year, too.

Maybe he could go for a big party, his five year sadiversary next year, and then, it could all be over, over, over.

“Or you could just stop,” Tony told his reflection.

Shower.

He could do it.

Not mourning his failed relationships any longer.

He could do that, too.

Tony emptied his pockets; he’d apparently just rolled into bed, since the only thing he was missing from his outfit were his shoes and tie. And god only knew, he might have thrown the tie out last night. He’d been known to do that sort of thing before.

“New man,” he told his reflection. “New life.”

Wallet. Keys. Phone.

Cocktail napkin.

Cocktail napkin?

There were digits on a cocktail napkin. In his pocket.

“Jarvis, call Rhodey,” he told his phone. His phone did its thing while Tony finished getting undressed. “Speaker.”

“There’s coffee already prepped for you downstairs, no you didn’t puke last night before I left,” Rhodey said as soon as he picked up. “Your car is fine, we left it at the garage, and as far as I know, there are no warrants out for your arrest.”

“Thank you for that cheerful morning report,” Tony said. He turned the shower on and shivered as the water didn’t insta-heat and the first blast was cold over his forearm and hand.

“Seems like what you’d want to know,” Rhodey said. “How’s the hangover?”

“I think it’s been worse,” Tony said, stepping into the spray. It was still not as warm as he wanted it to be, so he turned it up some while he waited, cringing all the way in the back of the shower, away from the cold.

Which was stupid, because thirty seconds later it was way too hot and he had to reach through it to turn it down. He should get on the set-my-preferences shower system that would just… chime when it was ready. Like a microwave.

Except, you know, nothing like an actual microwave, because those were dangerous, even on short term exposure.

“You were doing okay, last night,” Rhodey said. “With the drinking. But then you decided to play bertie botts every flavor ice cream last night with some ridiculous little ice cream shop that’s open twenty-four seven and what the hell man, I could not keep you from eating chocolate and jalapeno ice cream at three in the morning.”

“Well, that explains my rude awakening,” Tony said. He considered that for a moment. “Did I say it was good? I mean, it sounds kinda awful, but also intriguing.”

“I didn’t eat it,” Rhodey said. “And I don’t lick another man’s ice cream cone, that’s just wrong. Especially when it’s yours.”

“So what kind did you have?”

“Maple Bacon with Jack Daniels,” Rhodey said without a hint of shame.

“Where’s this ice cream shop again? I think I’d like to go there when I’m sober.”

“We can make that happen, Tones.”

“Great,” Tony said. He filled his luffa with shower gel and was instantly drowning in some vaguely outdoorsy scented soap. “So, tell me, did I score last night?”

“You certainly did not,” Rhodey said.

“Really? Cause I got digits here that say otherwise.”

“That is a fake number, that guy totally did not give you his real number, you were being a total drunken asshole, flirting with some bar-bum. Like the worst lines ever. I wouldn’t date you with those lines.”

“Rhodey, you’ve known me since I was fifteen. I’m pretty sure if you were going to date me, you’d have said something about it by now. Fake number, huh?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I don’t even remember the ice cream, much less flirting,” Tony said.

“Oh, well… too bad. You two totally played tonsil hockey for a while,” Rhodey said.

“I thought you said it was a fake number,” Tony said. He rubbed shampoo into his hair. “So, if we were necking, that seems to counter the theory that it’s fake.”

“It was a pity kiss,” Rhodey said.

“Nobody gives pity kisses,” Tony scoffed. “And even if they did, no one would pity kiss me. I mean, I’m… good looking. Mostly.” He rinsed his hair, let the shower water run down his head for a while. Maybe he could drown in the shower, that might cure the hangover. Of course, it would mean drowning, and that just sounded uncomfortable. Not to mention, the whole being naked and dead thing. Would he even care about his image if he was dead, or would he be too dead to care?

Tony shook his head, which was a mistake.

“Don’t even try that false modesty bullshit, Tony,” Rhodey said. “You know you’re the thing. Mr. Thing, Mr. Third most Eligible.”

“Yeah, I never liked that shit, brings the gold diggers out in full force. One of these days, I’d like someone to like me for… you know. Me.”

“Yeah, Tones, what’s not to like about you?”

“I hear that sarcasm,” Tony said. “And you’re hurting me here, sourpatch. I am hurt. Like, there might be actual tears and everything.”

“Look,” Rhodey said, “you and that guy, you were on the same page last night, but I’m telling you, you were reading totally different books.”

“I’m gonna call him,” Tony said.

Rhodey scoffed. “No, you’re not.”

“I am.” He wasn’t.

“I bet you it’s a false number.”

“Bet you it isn’t.”

“Oh, it’s on, Tones,” Rhodey said. “A hundred dollars says it’s a fake.”

“Five hundred,” Tony said, “verses --” he paused, trying to think of something Rhodey actually wanted that Tony might feel bad about giving him. There wasn’t much; usually Rhodey wouldn’t let Tony give him gifts, not like expensive, real ones, at any rate. And Pepper kept boycotting his idea of buying Rhode Island and renaming it. She said it wasn’t a good tax write off. Spoilsport.

“The Shelby.”

“Wo-- my car?”

“Tony, you have like seventy cars. But I like that one.”

“Deal. I’ll take my winnings in cash, no trade value,” Tony said. “Jarvis, end call.”

Tony got out of the shower and toweled off. Less vigorously than normal because see previously mentioned: hung over. Got his bathrobe and made his way to the kitchen. Punched the button on his coffee machine.

Considered the cocktail napkin and his phone.

Drank his coffee.

Dialed the number.

“Mmmphs?” a voice said, a male voice, even, so Tony figured he might be getting somewhere. “If this isn’t an insanely good looking guy, I’m hanging up.”

“Well, you’re in luck today,” Tony said.

“Do I know you?” the voice wondered. “Because really, I don’t think I made friends with people who were cheerful at… ug… it’s not even nine in the morning, what kind of masochist are you, it’s Saturday.”

Already, a man after my own heart. “Um, this is probably going to sound weird, but uh… did you give your number to anyone last night?”

There was a very long pause and Tony might have thought that the person hung up, except he could hear breathing.

“Yessss,” the man said, tentatively. “If you’re a friend of Sammie’s though, and this is a joke, you let that half-assed--”

“Not a joke--” Tony protested. “I found a cocktail napkin in my pocket, and I was wondering…” Wondering what, actually. If he was the guy from last night, if they’d had a good time, if it was a nice kiss, what’s your name, what do you look like… “would you like to have an ice cream with me. Today?”

“Wha---?” The guy asked. “Are you seriously asking me on an ice cream date after a ten minute conversation in a bar?”

“Why not?” Might as well roll with it, now that he’d gotten started. “Just, no strings or anything, no nothing. Just ice cream and a little get to know you. What, coffee dates are lame, everyone does coffee dates. I drink so much coffee that it’s like having a date at the corner water cooler.”

“Yeah, okay,” the guy said. “Ice cream date. Sure, why not?”

“Okay, so… four o’clock? Um… I’ll, um, text you the address? And… I might have had beer goggles on last night, so, text me back a picture? Just to make sure, because I’m pretty sure the conversation was with an angel, or a model or something.” Tony didn’t actually remember the guy at all, but a little flattery. And he’d win his bet… right? He could part with the car if the picture was scary. Hell, even if the picture wasn’t scary, he owed the guy for letting him know what Rhodey wanted for his next present.

“Sure,” the guy said. “I’ll… uh, see you at four, then.”

“Yep!”

Fortunately, typing in maple bacon jack daniels ice cream in his search engine got him the address for the ice cream shop. He texted his date -- who… had a name. And it was probably a boy’s name, too, except Tony didn’t know it. Fuck.

Then he texted Rhodey: Got a date. Four o’clock. Ice cream shop. Cash only!

A few seconds later, he texted again. Or, if he happened to tell me his name last night and you remember it, I’ll forgive you for betting against me.

New Text From Rhodey: Bucky Barnes.

Tony stared at the screen for a long moment. Then. You’re forgiven for thinking it was a fake number because I’m not sure that’s a real name.

New text from unknown number: Selfie from the gym a few weeks ago.

Attached was a picture of a guy wearing a baseball hat and workout clothes, scowling fiercely and pulling up his shirt to reveal ridiculously sculpted abs.

Tony stared.

“You’d think I’d remember him,” he said wistfully.

Texted back See you at Four.

New text from unknown number: looking forward to it. My first ice cream date since high school.

Tony texted Rhodey again, attaching the picture.

Cash. Only. I lied. You are totally not forgiven.

#tonystarkbingo2018 #tonystarkbingo #dares and bets #tony & rhodey broship #preslash #winteriron

54 notes · View notes

some-flyleaves · 6 years

Photo

Take a wannabe-happy-go-lucky-adventure-kid, give ‘em a black-and-white worldview and several very legitimate reasons to doubt they fall on the nice side of that worldview, a sprinkle of immortality shenanigans, and you might get something like this.

If I did a complete character writeup we’d be here for uhhh -checks watch- three months, probably. Maybe more. But since I’ve already posted spoiler drawings and an anticlimactic reveal, here are some notes and spoilerific scribbles ft. local protagonist Serena “wild child” Johnson.

To copy-paste from the Flynn writeup:

If you have no idea what [The Firebird Effect] is, the short version is that it’s a Pokemon XY-based “nuzlocke” comic that ran strongly 2016-2017, petered out, and has been sorta-kinda canceled. I don’t intend to pick it back up in its current state, but I would like to publicize as much as I had planned as possible. Someday. Eventually. Because why not.

A TFE plot summary is long overdue, but these doodles pretty much cover Serena’s major character beats and then some. Although some specifics are skimmed, the points of note actually cover a good amount of the plot, so without further ado:

As of the comic’s “last” page Serena is still very much in her “everything is fine” mindset, but something is not right. After a catastrophic incident involving the collapse of a mine, Serena’s got a mortal debt to pay.

I kept this vague in hopes of setting up a mystery, but in retrospect this was probably a mistake. This is where I’d link a certain Finding Nemo video but I can’t find it for the life of me; in short, though, one of the writers/directors/Important People talked about earlier drafts of the movie where the opening scene, where Marlin loses Coral and all but one of their eggs, wasn’t the opening scene, and this key backstory event was teased throughout the plot until its eventual flashback reveal. I was going for something like this with TFE and the mine incident, but--

The scene ended up being key to help viewers empathize with Marlin right off the bat. Without it, they spent the movie thinking Marlin was a stuck-up grump, and by the time his past finally got revealed, they didn’t care.

Now, I personally think making a character interesting is WAY better than making them ~sympathetic~, but here’s the catch: this big backstory event is vital to understanding the character’s motivations. Without it, viewers didn’t get why Marlin was being so overprotective. And I got a taste of this with some reception to TFE, where people weren’t connecting the dots:

As it turns out, the incident was no mistake, and Serena didn’t get away with it unnoticed as she thought. When one of her pokemon dies in battle, which should definitely not happen under any circumstances, her first thought is that fate finally caught up. However, this would mean admitting she did something terrible, and by extension she’s a terrible person, neither of which she’s willing to do.

(7/2/2017, based on this beauty)

When trying to put everything behind her via giving up battle doesn’t work, Serena instead decides to figure out exactly why Idir died. Though she believes everything happens for a reason, if she can find some other cause for his demise that isn’t “I’m awful and other people have to suffer for it,” that’d be swell.

Hence why, upon learning about Zygarde, she connects the dots: defender of the environment --> she kinda wrecked the environment --> therefore this is totally the legendary snake’s fault.

It’s... flimsy, at best, and Serena knows it, but she moves ahead anyway because again the alternative is terrible. Of course, things have a way of catching up regardless. Her team repeatedly questions her avoidance of battle, and she finds no help from Sycamore’s other pupils. In neither case is she willing to divulge a single detail of the mine incident, leading to frustration for everyone \o/ There are nicer moments, of course, but the overall takeaway is that Serena’s on her own with this.

Skipping several early events, shortly before the meeting with Flynn, Serena agrees to let the team challenge Cyllage Gym but has a nightmare about everything collapsing mid-battle. Immediately after waking (long before the pokemon do) she cancels the challenge. Obviously the team is thrilled, especially Alec. As they question the change of heart, enter Fletcher, a fletchling/fletchinder Serena befriended shortly after moving to Vaniville. Paying no mind to the team, he warns her that the “orange suit people” from around the mine are up ahead on Route 10.

The team, baffled, demands explanation. Serena finally discloses part of the mine incident story, specifically why she felt the need to sneak out in the first place--essentially, late night loneliness, and wanting to do something interesting before setting out as a trainer. (Her narration sugarcoats her frustration but the drawings say otherwise.) Fletcher found her in the middle of the woods, apparently lost, and suggested they explore a mysterious mine nearby; he recently noticed people smuggling weird minerals from it and wants to check it out. Serena trails off when describing what happened in the mine, however, saying only that they “got caught, but escaped” and offering no further details.

The team is still dissatisfied. Kojo is most sympathetic but admits this explains nothing. Frustrated, Serena recalls them all and treks ahead. Previous discoveries have led her to connect Zygarde & other ancient shenanigans to the Fleur Foundation*, and while she’s not certain they were involved in the mine, it seems likely. They are, again, a better explanation than comeuppance.

*As noted in Flynn’s bio, Team Flare got a major overhaul in TFE, including a rename to the Fleur Foundation. They’re essentially a criminal rehabilitation & public charity program. Although I used “Flare” in Flynn’s bio because the rename only came after his character was scrapped, I’ll be using “Fleur Foundation” or FF here since the draft summarized is much more recent. Apologies for any confusion.

Cue the meeting with an overenthusiastic FF* recruit, Flynn, which ends with Serena being pulled aside by a figure in a trenchcoat--not a familiar face, but she recognizes the voice as the helpful stranger from Glittering Cave. (Again, note that I’m skipping a lot here. The gist of that was that Serena really hates caves, but trenchcoat person knew their way around.)

The figure introduces herself as Malva of the Elite Four, who while famous is known better as a reporter who just so happens to have high ties to the League. She has her suspicions of the Fleur Foundation as well, but the League isn’t listening, so she’s conducting her own investigation. This is the second time now Serena has crossed her radar, and Serena is more than happy to have someone finally hear her out. She admits Zygarde was a silly lead, but it’s clearly led to something bigger. Malva agrees, much to Serena’s delight, and they agree to keep in touch.

(3/7/2018. Yes, the figure with one arm is Malva, and no, I wasn’t concerned about sticking to her canon design whatsoever.)

Of course, that would be too happy to keep up for long. At the Tower of Mastery, the team pleads with Serena to give them a chance to show their stuff, as they’ve assumed her reluctance to battle means they’re failing her somehow. This ends spectacularly; in the heat of the moment, Alec stabs Calem’s charizard in the throat, killing her instantly. Calem lashes out at Serena, blaming her for setting this up on purpose in some stupid attempt to get him on her side, and runs off before he can break down further.

The narrative follows him and other characters for a bit, and returns to Serena & team only in brief, choppy snippets: first Alec is sent out against Shalour Gym, then Kojo faces the same at Coumarine. Both obliterate the competition without much issue, though they haven’t been released since the Tower of Mastery and are unable to reach Serena.

She finally faces the team some unspecified time later (within the week? the timeline gets fuzzy around here), at which point she despondently demonstrates how useless the Mega Ring is and overall seems out of it. Kojo tries to snap her out of it, but he evolved in Coumarine and overestimates his strength; he ends up intimidating her more than anything.

At some point Serena notices a news blip on half of Lumiose’s power being dead and the Fleur Foundation taking workers at the local Power Plant hostage. Malva is delivering the report. The team tries to get her attention again; she recalls them immediately.

(4/17/2017)

Shortly after the above, Calem meets up with Serena and demands they talk. She’s still despondent as he states they should team up on the “why can pokemon die” quest. Calem emphasizes he’s not doing it for her, because his team won’t stop bugging him about it and he’s not sorry for how he dismissed her in the first place. (It’s more of a self-consolation than anything.) He concludes by asking Serena what she knows. She retorts with... some uncharacteristically scathing thing that I forget, probably something along the lines of “oh, sure, now you care,” and leaves saying that she owes him nothing.

AND SO we reach one of my favorite parts of the show, aka Serena Tries to Diffuse a Situation and Makes Shit Worse (Specifically for Herself). Her encounter with Flynn sets the stage, and has already been covered in his bio so I won’t repeat it here: in short, he reveals the Fleur Foundation’s true motives (or at least what they should be), that he knows that she set off the mine collapse on purpose, and he asks that she join him and fellow outcasts in the Foundation as part of an alliance to find out what’s really going on. Serena does not take any of this well and sics her team on him.

When the pokemon notice that Flynn can’t fight back, they find Serena trying to find a way into the Power Plant. She’s still not smiling and has even less patience for their questions, answering only what she’s trying to do: “The right thing, for once.” The team run with it, assuming that it’s a rescue mission, but once inside Serena sends Blythe (the furfrou) to find the hostages and keeps Alec & Kojo close. She uses them to intimidate and corner two Foundation admins, who swear they were just finishing up and will surrender as promised as soon as she lets them go; Serena won’t buy it.

At this point, Alec and Kojo are clearly hesitant, but still on guard. Meanwhile, one admin tries to play the “if you think we’re so bad look at yourself” card, but Serena brushes it off--she knows. This seems to be a cue for Alec and Kojo to attack, but neither do. Blythe suddenly reenters and announces they kept their promise; the hostages are free. The admins take advantage of the distraction and send a pokemon out to attack, then flee; the attack is aimed at Serena, but Kojo takes the hit. Then he glitches out of existence right before their very eyes!

There’s no time to mourn; police are entering. Serena books it, leaving Alec and Blythe to answer the authorities. She eventually reaches an abandoned subway station, where she gets a xtransciever call from her very concerned mother; before Grace can get to “I love you” Serena throws it a mirror, breaking both. (I have definitely drawn this moment before but can’t find anything right now. Mentioning it anyway for future context if/when I do.)

At this point Malva catches up, and upon seeing her Serena passes out from exhaustion. When she wakes up, Malva offers her trenchcoat and a bite to eat. With her coat off, Malva’s scar by her stump is visible; Serena asks about it and is treated to some Backstory(TM) involving a territorial talonflame (now Malva’s closest companion, Scree) and Malva being determined to finish what she starts. She mentions she probably shouldn’t have survived the raptor’s attack, but by some miracle did anyway.

Malva then asks what Serena plans to do next. Serena has a meltdown, confessing she doesn’t know and never really did. Her team’s gone, clearing her conscience isn’t an option, no one cares, and much as she doesn’t like hurting people she can’t seem to stop. Before she can get too far, Malva smacks some sense into her kindly tells her to shut the hell up, insisting that destruction is in human nature and Serena ought to embrace that. She can own her impulses. Serena, still stunned from the hit, doesn’t respond, which cues this motivational monologue:

(8/11/2017; pardon the weird pixelation on the second image, rewrote the dialogue because the original was late night chickenscratch but tfw wrong layer.)

After ^this and some other less dramatic words, Serena finally gets up. After some fussing, the details of which I forget, she decides the answer is to go climb atop the Power Plant and tell everyone to go fuck themselves.

(4/24/2017)

I really wish I didn’t forget what the details of this speech were exactly, or how she gets away with talking so long without authorial interception. (Granted, the latter part might just be me not caring on a first go and figuring I’d work it out later.) Of note is that the doodle above of this scene, the one where she has the glowy orange eyes, is titled “i suck you suck we all suck.” From what I do remember it boiled down to, well, that--Serena goes on some spiel calling people out (not by name but phrasing & panel images make it clear who she’s addressing) on their hypocrisy, herself included, and generally making a giant scene on live national television. Eventually she gets pulled down somehow--again, details are fuzzy, and this might’ve involved a psychic pull from Alec.

Regardless, Serena somehow avoids getting taken into custody for long, largely thanks to Malva pulling the strings--and from here I have about a billion different ways the story continued. I don’t remember exactly which one I was going with as of the “latest” draft, but more details of note:

That sweater’s an outfit mainstay from the Power Plant on. Apparently Serena also got a hold of Malva’s old white trenchcoat somewhere along the line, though I never clarified when and might’ve taken this point out entirely. Maybe after their post-Power Plant meeting? some other subsequent encounter? I kinda just doodled it because ~color symbolism~ and also It Looks Cool.

At some point between the aforementioned rant and... whatever’s next, Serena cuts her hair. The scene isn’t onscreen but the trim is also here to stay until further notice. (Fun fact: Serena hates having short hair; she thinks it makes her look like a boy, and ends up kinda feeling like one too.)

In some earlier drafts Alec and Blythe stuck around for a bit, only for Serena to give them the option of leaving and Alec took it without much deliberation. This got at least half scrapped in favor of Alec immediately joining the dude from the Power Plant, whether Flynn or the merged character. Blythe’s status was less certain, but he eventually ended up leaving as well, eventually regrouping with Alec and “crew” (Calem, Shauna, their teams, and Flynn & Ren/merged character).

Oh yeah, and he might’ve bit Serena on the way out, as an instinctive “you look threatening to me and I do not like that” response. Doge regretted this but left anyway.

The focus shifts to aforementioned crew for a while, partly to figure out what they’d be up to and partly because I kinda... didn’t know what Serena was doing.

I could best sum this part of the story up as a big discombobulated mess; eventually I worked out an endpoint but never quite cleared up how the pieces aligned to get there. As far as Serena’s concerned, she’s taken Malva’s words to heart; having thoroughly set every bridge ablaze, she decides she an at least finish what she started with regards to the Fleur investigation, then fuck off for good.

Also, for total clarification’s sake: The “mine incident” involved Serena and Fletcher following a trail of the aforementioned shining rocks deeper into the mine, assuming they were alone. (Said rocks SHOULD have been apparent in the opening, but confession: they didn’t become A Thing until later into development. Ah well.) Of course they weren’t; a few workers were finishing up for the night, and two quickly cornered the intruders. Panicked, Serena ordered Fletcher to attack; his flame missed the workers but shot further down the mine, which caught something on fire and triggered the collapse. Serena and Fletcher escaped unscathed; no one else was so lucky.

(8/18/2017; honestly I was just fucking around with the symmetry tool, but by sheer coincidence this is similar to the ASL symbol for butterfly and I can totally lie about it being intentional all along roll with that.)

We must briefly interrupt this tragic tale of angst and woe for BACKSTORY/WORLDBUILDING, which would have been more gracefully revealed through actual plot development but I never got around to figuring that out.

Turns out the Foundation does have a secret subgroup: after founder Lysandre Goodman (yes, that is his real last name) was forced to face his mortality via heart attack, he started an initiative to recreate the ancient device from AZ’s legend--though often remembered as a weapon of mass destruction, its first use was to grant immortal life. Those involved in said initiative, known as Project X, were Lysandre‘s trusted companions, people who he trusted to help him make the world more beautiful to eternity and beyond.

And then things started going very, very wrong. It started with a few minor technical issues, both in acquiring the mysterious mineral said to be shards of Xerneas’ life-giving antlers and recreation of the immortality machine itself. Then that damn girl blew up the mine out of absolutely nowhere; Lysandre achieved retribution through a slight tweak in code connected to her trainer card, which he didn’t expect to bite him in the ass until she kept showing up at the Foundation’s other mishaps. Clearly, someone is ruining Project X from within. By the endgame, Lysandre has committed suicide; in some drafts Serena was treated to this firsthand by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Also, remember that guy from the opening? who crawls out of the mine all zombie-like before hitting his head and apparently dying? Surprise, he isn’t dead! Gabriel Brandt, doctor and lead scientist for Project X, has a story of his own that, along with the Foundation, warrants its own infodump--but of most importance is that he tested a “beta” elixir on himself years ago, and long after the camera on his passed-out body switched away, he rose again.

In some drafts Gabe meets Serena and fills in several of these backstory holes shortly after the discovery of Lysandre’s suicide, with Gabe being present at the scene to pick up some remaining elixirs. He was never fully onboard with the “let’s make people immortal” gig, and Serena essentially tags along as he returns to the XLab to finish what he started. Later drafts tried to give Serena more agency by taking Gabe out of the equation entirely--still alive, dubiously, but dragged away by wild pokemon instead (which his very much alive brother is treated to via archived fsecurity ootage)--but this still left holes and I don’t think I ever filled them proper.

Basically, at this point Serena has an objective (finish what she started, kinda) but no clear plan to accomplish that. Instead the camera jumps around and backstory is dumped and it’s a mess.

Oh, and one more thing: where did Lysandre get the whole immortality idea from in the first place? Joke suggestion from Malva. She really didn’t think it would go this far.

But A N Y W A Y, you’re probably not here for writerly self-flagellation though if you are please ask, I have a lot to self-critique, so let’s skip to the good parts--aka Serena Blows Up Everything: Upscaled Edition.

(7/1/2017)

You might have guessed that this is going nowhere good. You’d be right! :D Several Fleur-related revelations later, Serena and the remaining characters’ paths converge at the “XLab,” located just northeast of Geosenge. (Or at least that’s the default location; I’ve toyed with it being deeper in the mine below Vaniville, coming full circle and all, but didn’t get far.) Yet again details are fuzzy, but of utmost importance:

Fletcher, by now a talonflame, is present. He’s integrated nicely among his wild peers by now, and he certainly doesn’t recognize this short-haired intruder. Congratulations, you have now equipped one (1) big fucking injury!

Being the XLab, there’s at least some experimental potions nearby. When Serena comes to she gets to have some fun confrontations with former “friends,” and upon realizing where she is and somehow figuring that Malva’s also in the building, she advises them to get out ASAP. She apologizes, for everything really, and leaves them behind to travel deeper into the Lab. An emergency shutdown may or may not be triggered at some point here; Serena pays it no mind.

And so we finally arrive at Serena and Malva, alone, with a big rebuilt device between them. Malva, standing high at the controls, is trying to set the system to destruct mode, and looks down on Serena both literally and figuratively. Frankly she doesn’t want the kid getting more involved in this mess than she already is; sure, the original plan was for Serena to destroy things so Malva didn’t have to get her own hands dirty, but after the mishap at the Power Plant and especially seeing Serena now, Malva’s done. It’s just... sad.

Serena only smiles. She holds out a lighter or torch or Alec’s stabby wand or SOME other source of fire, again an important detail I didn’t get around to figuring out, and the following exchange occurs:

S: You wanna see something sad? M: Do you have the guts?

Serena takes a moment, looking at the reflective side of the device and its decidedly very exposed and, if the mine was anything to go by, highly flammable fuel source. One final exchange--

S: I’m sorry. M: Don’t be.

--and everything flashes white.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE.

...Yeah, I had to split this monster of a “““summary”““ into two parts, because tumblr was starting to break the formatting. Joy!

#''I'm just going to cover the character beats'' -ends up dumping a majority of the plot-#I mean protagonist development/overall story should go hand in hand but WELP #closest thing y'all're gonna get to a summary for now and I gotta say It Is A Lot ;V #The Firebird Effect #for lack of a doodle tag #there are images throughout this time though I swear

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