#and one faction set up their own message board

[hussyknee]

Not denying that the current state of discourse has taken new and distressing trends, but having been in online fandoms going on twenty years now, seeing people being like "I hate how fandoms are no longer places of fun but stress and toxicity" has me like??!!!? Bitch, fandoms have always been a few months of fun engagement and then fighting for your fucking life. Just because Web 2.0 has exacerbated some of the problems doesn't mean you get to be ahistorical about it, like an Elf yearning for the Gray Havens

#put down those rosy glasses #do y'all not remember fandom_wank #the Fall of Fictionally #the cults #the MsScribe drama #when the Supernatural fandom was tiny but so absolutely batshit we were already a cautionary tale #in competition with only Doctor Who has the wankiest fandom #one of my earliest fandoms was a Lois & Clark TNAOS message board #very tiny because the show had been over nearly ten years by that point #the place had a schism in six months #and one faction set up their own message board #the next two years was basically degenerating into wank about having fanfiction awards and trigger warnings #and half of them slowly descending into alt right politics #basically exactly the pattern every discord server falls into #this is just how humans are #i'm imagining pre-internet fandom was the same except you had to stew two weeks in between replies #and had to fire off 'AND!! ANOTHER THING-' by telegram idk #fandom #fan history #fandom history #shipping discourse #fandom wankery #knee of huss

[fantomcomics]

What's Out This Week? 10/25

Just a few days left til our Halloween Party! You coming??

Blitmap #1 (of 6) - Jack Timmer & Matias Basla

A THRILLING NEW SCI-FI SERIES SET IN A BREATHTAKING SOLARPUNK METROPOLIS! SET IN THE DIGITAL WORLD OF BLITMAP!

EACH BLIND BAGGED ISSUE COMES WITH A UNIQUE COVER VARIANT BASED ON THREE DIFFERENT DESIGNS!

Under the shadow of an ancient cataclysm, Blitnauts and Logos factions battle for power, while The Static's elusive realm entraps and corrupts all who submit to its mystifying call.

Captain Marvel #1 - Alyssa Wong, Jan Bazaldua & Stephen Segovia

HIGHEST, FURTHEST, FASTEST!

The Captain gets a permanent glow-up designed by superstar artist Jen Bartel! And that's not all that's changed. Brand-new look - brand-new creative team - and a brand-new status quo. Carol Danvers is one of the powerhouses of the Marvel Universe, a woman capable of harnessing the energy of the sun. So if you're coming for Earth? She's the first one you take off the board. Someone's figured just how to do just that. Introducing a new supporting cast and villains both beloved and dangerously fresh, Alyssa Wong and Jan Bazaldua's exhilarating series kicks off here!

Dark Spaces: Dungeon #1 - Scott Snyder & Hayden Sherman

Scott Snyder and Hayden Sherman reunite for the next installment in the critically acclaimed DarkSpaces anthology series. A family moves from the rustle and bustle of the Big Apple to upstate New York. However, their father's dream of a quiet rural life are shattered when he discovers a dungeon underneath their land filled with torture devices, weapons, and a threatening message on the wall that reads, "TELL NO ONE."Paranoia sets in rapidly as the father realizes anyone in his new hometown could be the dungeon master. Whom can he trust? And how will he keep this secret from his family while keeping them safe?

Universal Monsters: Dracula #1 (of 4) - James Tynion IV & Martin Simmonds

THE BIGGEST NAMES IN COMICS RESURRECT THE MOST ICONIC MONSTERS!

THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH creators JAMES TYNION IV (W0RLDTR33, Something is Killing the Children) and MARTIN SIMMONDS reteam to tell a new tale of the monster who started it all!

When Dr. John Seward admits a strange new patient into his asylum, the madman tells stories of a demon who has taken residence next door. But as Dr. Seward attempts to apply logic to the impossible...his surrogate daughter Lucy begins to fall under the spell of the twisted Count Dracula!

Drive Like Hell #1 - Rich Douek & Alex Cormack

Bobby Ray had it made. One last big job, then it was splitsville, set for life with his girl by his side! Then everything went wrong, and poor Dahlia took a bullet to the brain as they made their escape. Thing is, dear Dahlia didn't stay dead. Now Bobby's found himself plunged into a battle of otherworldly proportions, and if he wants to get out of dodge with his skin intact, he's gonna have to Drive Like Hell!

Edenwood #1 (of 5) - Tony S. Daniel

An eons-long series of multiverse wars between demons and witches has found Earth as its latest and final battleground. The battle pits NECRONEMA, the ever-expanding demonic land that supplanted the Midwest twenty years ago, against EDENWOOD, the witchcraft-controlled land that acts as a barrier against the war zone and the rest of the U.S.RION, a young DEMON HUNTER, is thrust into the role of hero and leader after defeating a magical demon called a GATHER, a transient demon with the power to cross any barrier or dimension.

Summoned by the WITCH WAR COUNCIL, Rion must assemble an elite team of DEMON HUNTERS tasked with annihilating a list of targets within the demon-controlled lands. The men and women he selects happen to be the most famous and revered demon hunters of all time, dating back to the 1700s.

Gone #1 - Jock

NEW SERIES DEBUT from DSTRLY by JOCK - writing and drawing a creator-owned project for the FIRST TIME!

On an impoverished and distant planet, where menial workers scratch out a living resupplying starships, the best place to be is GONE...and that's exactly where 13-year-old ABI wants to be.

Along with her street-tough friends, Abi stows away on a colossal luxury space-liner for a chance at a better life. Unbeknownst to her, some of her "friends'' are not who they seem. Abi suddenly finds herself branded a saboteur as she desperately struggles to evade the ship's deadly crew and to stay alive!

Beautifully written and drawn by JOCK - Eisner Award winning artist of SNOW ANGELS & BATMAN: ONE DARK KNIGHT - GONE is in an action-packed sci-fi adventure where a young heroine confronts betrayal, discovers her true allies, and fights against all odds discovering that nothing is farther away than...home.  

Alan Scott: Green Lantern #1 (of 6) - Tim Sheridan & Cian Tormey

A POWERFUL TALE OF ALAN SCOTT'S EARLY DAYS AS GREEN LANTERN! Alan Scott's early days as the Green Lantern are seen in a new light! The Green Lantern is the most powerful member of the JSA, beloved by all of America, but his personal life is a well-kept secret. This is a story about love, about fear, and most of all about courage to stand up to that fear. Alan Scott's past is the key to his future when the Red Lantern appears, ready to strike down the mighty Green Lantern!

Giant Robot Hellboy #1 (of 4) - Mike Mignola & Duncan Fegredo

Hellboy is kidnapped and hooked up to a massive mecha-Hellboy for a mission on a mysterious, faraway island, but the island might just put up a fight of its own. Inspired by Mignola's viral-hit pencil drawings from Mike Mignola: The Quarantine Sketchbook, GiantRobotHellboy gets his own story in this 3-part miniseries from Mignola and longtime Hellboy artist Duncan Fegredo!

Marvel Zombies: Black, White & Blood #1 - Garth Ennis, Rachael Stott, & Gabriele Dell Otto

The undead plague starts here...and you know it won't stop until everyone's in its clutches! This first of four action-packed, utterly original, gloriously gory anthology issues features Daredevil, Spider-Man, Moon Knight and many, many more Marvel heroes and villains beset by ever-growing zombie hordes! In a brutal, bloodstained world, can hope survive? Or will creeping, gnawing, shambling horror win out at last...?

The Prism #1 - Matteo De Longis (A/CA) Matteo De Longis

Noise pollution is crushing life on earth. The largest mega-corporation on the planet finances a crazy project called The P.R.I.S.M. (Purifying Recording Interplanetary Space Mission) to combat the phenomenon: sending a musical supergroup into space to record an album that will produce sounds able to push back the threat known as S.O.T.W. (Smoke on the Water) and save the planet. Where rock'n'roll excess and the survival of all life on Earth collide, there is...THE PRISM!  

Slow Burn #1 (of 5) - Ollie Masters, Pierluigi Minotti & Paul Azaceta

Fleeing a botched robbery in New York City, a junkie, her dying partner, and a dementia-ridden old man pull into a coal mining ghost town in central Pennsylvania.

Obscured by the caustic mists spewed forth by the coal-seam fire from the 1960s-still burning-Trier is the perfect place to lay low, score a fix, and take a hostage... or is it?

Hallows' Eve: The Big Night #1 - Erica Schultz, Michael Dowling & Ben Harvey

It's October 31st at E.S.U. so you know what that means: A Halloween party won't go as planned and a bunch of powerless kids will be in a lot of trouble! Hallows' Eve was once powerless and was once a victim. Now she's anything but. Her magical masks give her the ability to help - but Eve isn't a hero, is she?

Amazons Attack #1 - Josie Campbell & Vasco Georgiev

AMAZON WARRIORS FIGHT FOR A WORLD THAT'S MADE THEM OUTLAWS! After the shocking events in Wonder Woman, the Amazons are now fighting for a world that no longer wants them! Led by their fearless Queen Nubia, a ragtag group of Amazons featuring Wonder Girl and Faruka II frantically searches for answers as their existence and way of life are threatened. Will the tribes survive their new reputation? Find out in this roller coaster of a debut issue!

The First Night With The Duke GN Vol 1 - Hwang DoTol Teava & Msg

One morning, a girl wakes up and discovers she'd been transported into a romance novel as Lady Ripley, a count's daughter, and a minor character. She decides to kick back and enjoy a life of luxury in the novel's background to the fullest! But then she goes to a party and makes a huge mistake. The last thing she remembers is when she started drinking... And when she came to her senses, she was in bed with the stone-hearted main character, Duke Zeronis d'Inglid!

Full Metal Alchemist 20th Anniversary Book HC - Hiromu Arakawa

This memorial hardcover collection celebrates the legacy of one of the most beloved manga series of all time. Contains a complete collection of all the short manga from the series' run, from game tie-ins to never-before-seen tales in rare Japanese guides, plus a bonus new prose story. Also includes extensive commemorative messages from novel, film, video game, and anime staff, including the full voice cast of the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood anime. And of course, don't miss the thoughtful and goofy commentary on the reach and impact of Fullmetal Alchemist from artist Hiromu Arakawa!

Harrower TP - Justin Jordan & Brahm Revel

There's nothing to fear in the quaint town of Barlowe, New York-except, that is, for the Harrower.

The children think this boogeyman is just an urban legend, but this purveyor of puritanical vengeance is very real, and there's no escape. The Harrower seems unkillable, and spans generations, always returning...

Jessica Brink is a teenage girl, who, along with her equally skeptical friends, is in for much more than she could ever imagine on the night of a Halloween party. What gruesome secrets will she uncover as she flees the encroaching, bloody mayhem of  The Harrower, the unstoppable force that stalks her and her friends?

Jessica will learn that sometimes... THERE'S TERROR IN TRADITION.

Haruki Murakami Manga Stories HC - Haruki Murakami, Jc Deveney & PMGL

Haruki Murakami's novels, essays and short stories have sold millions of copies worldwide and been translated into dozens of languages. Now for the first time, many of Murakami's best-loved short stories are available in graphic novel form in English. Haruki Murakami Stories 1 is the first of three volumes, which will present a total of 9 short stories from Murakami's bestselling collections. With their trademark mix of realism and fantasy, centering around Murakami's characteristic themes of loss, remorse and confusion, the four stories in this volume are: "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo," "Where I'm Likely to Find It," "Birthday Girl," and "The Seventh Man."

Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy GN - Faith Erin Hicks

It should have been a night of triumph for Alix's hockey team. But when her mean-girl team captain Lindsay goes after Alix with her cruelest dig yet, Alix loses what remains of her self-control and punches Lindsay out. Before she knows it, their coach is dragging Alix off Lindsay, and her invitation to the Canada National Women's U18 Team's summer camp is on the line. Alix is shaken. She needs to learn how to control this anger, and she is sure Ezra, the popular and poised theater kid from her grade is the answer. So she asks for his help. But as they hang out and start get closer, Alix learns that there is more to Ezra than the cool front he puts on. And that maybe this friendship could become something more?

Honey Trap Shared House GN Vol 1 - Masamune Kuji & Koichi Kozuki

As a child, Hayato promised to marry his first love, Seraphy. Fifteen years later, he has become one of the world's greatest spies, all while never falling for the temptations of enemy agents. A mission to expose rival operatives turns chaotic when Hayato reunites with Seraphy, and each realizes the other is a spy. Now the pair must live together, torn between love and duty. The question is...who will break first?

Look On The Bright Side GN - Karen Schneemann & Lily Williams

The best friends from the groundbreaking Go With the Flow are back in a brand new graphic novel to face the challenges of secret crushes, big feelings, and growing up together. Your girls are back, closer than ever. But with feelings running high and hearts on the line, will their friendship get them through another year at Hazelton High?While Brit struggles with feelings for a seemingly rude boy who might have a soft side, Christine can't deny any longer that she likes Abby... as more than just a friend. The only question is, does Abby have feelings for Christine, too? Misunderstandings, betrayal, and jealousy are bound to get in the way. But hey! Look on the bright side: They're in this together. Always.

Noir Burlesque HC - Enrico Marini

A heist gone wrong forces Slick to do a job for his employer, Rex, to repay the debt he owes. But Slick is in love with Caprice, Rex's ex-call girl wife-turned-burlesque legend and Rex also has the only way for Slick to avenge his murdered father

Sugary Girls: The Art Of Eku Uekura HC - Eku Uekura

Eku Uekura has been working as a freelance illustrator since August 2020, following a stint working at a game company developing and operating new content. Uekura is a leading artist in Japanese manga and anime culture, and is active in a range of projects from creating key visuals for events, character design, illustration collaborations with companies, and more. This collection features illustrations of girls wearing colorful, adorable clothes with bright pops of color and various scrumptious-looking sweet motifs. Eku Uekura's careful attention to detail shows in the clothing designs, fanciful color schemes and depictions of cute girls that fill this collection.

Super Boba Cafe GN - Nidhi Chanani

In the fog laden hills of San Francisco sits a sleepy independent boba café. Run by Jing Li and guarded by her kitty Bao, it comfortably fades into the background. But inside the boba café, there's a secret. Jing is the keeper of the monster of San Francisco. Each day she prepares one giant boba for nine hours to feed it. When Jing's granddaughter, Aria, comes to stay with her for the summer she makes it her mission to turn the café around. Aria is quickly aided by Bao, who gives birth to eight perfect kittens. Aria spreads the news of the boba cat café on social media and overnight it is overrun with excited customers. Each day Nainai Li (Grandma Li) finds reasons to close the café but the demand only increases. When she opens, the hill monster is left hungry and small earthquakes begin to plague the city. When Aria secretly follows her Nainai to the hill monster cave she isn't sure what awaits. Will Aria be able to reason with the monster or become its new favorite meal? Or will she disturb its underground existence and cause the Big One?

The Death Ray GN - Daniel Clowes

Teen outcast Andy is an orphaned nobody with only one friend, the obnoxious-but loyal-Louie. They roam school halls and city streets, invisible to everyone but bullies and tormentors, until the glorious day when Andy takes his first puff on a cigarette. The Death-Ray employs the staples of the superhero genre-origin, costume, ray gun, sidekick, fight scene-and reconfigures them in a story that is anything but morally simplistic.

Two Graves Vol 1 TP - Genevieve Valentine, Ming Doyle & Annie Wu

Emilia and the man with the veil of smoke have set out for the ocean in a stolen truck. There's a bloody handprint on his neck. She's beginning to worry it's hers. Death stole Emilia-the first time in his very long life that he hasn't carried over the soul he was assigned to carry over. It would be romantic, except that they're being hunted. Death and the Maiden go on a road trip. Nobody gets out alive.

Undead: Finding Love In The Zombie Apocalypse GN Vol 1 - Fumi Tsuyuhisa

Which will you find in this devastated world - love or despair? Nineteen-year-old Hikaru Asahina lost everything the day the world ended. Everything, that is, except his childhood friend Ai Kosaka, who has always taken care of him. Now the two of them, along with other survivors, struggle to stay alive in a post-apocalyptic world filled with man-eating zombies.  And when Ai confesses to feeling something more for Hikaru, it changes everything. After all, the more precious someone is to you, the harder it is to lose them. In a world like theirs, is something like love even possible?

Whatcha snagging this week, Fantom Fam?

#comic books #wotw #comics #comic book #comic #what's out this week? #manga

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Audrey Roget

Audrey Roget has 10 fics at Gossamer, with some different ones at AO3, fanfiction.net, and her website. You might know her from her very good fics or as part of Musea, a collective that all wrote fic and posted X-Files fic recs. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her stories here before, including Three Times Dana Scully Didn’t Go to San Diego for Christmas and The Shirt. Big thanks to Audrey for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)? A little, yes. Not so much by folks who were around in those days. I sometimes go hunting for beloved stories from the early years, both those I read and loved, and those I never got around to. I am always delighted to hear that later generations of fans have stumbled across my stuff, especially since I haven’t posted anything new in a number of years. It’s fantastic that both years-long fans and new ones are out there continuing to rec fic from all eras, and to maintain archives for fans yet-to-be born. What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it? What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general? It may sound corny, but the main thing I think of, and the thing that has ultimately been most valuable and lasting, has been the friendships. The feeling of having found a tribe – not just of TXF fans, but of other people who could be as enthusiastically engaged as I was (if not more so) with fictional stories and characters – was mind-blowing. Since I was a kid, I had often mulled over the books/movies/TV I loved and speculated internally about what happened off the page or off-screen, or created new stories for characters in my head. But, except for an elementary school phase where I and my two BFFs regularly played Charlie’s Angels, I hadn’t engaged in that kind of gleeful immersion in a fictional world with others until TXF fandom. My involvement in fandom followed pretty quickly from getting hooked on the show, so for me, it’s all one big ball of experiences. Even as my interest in/involvement in fandom has waxed and waned over the years, I’ve been lucky to remain friends with wonderful people who I originally connected with as fellow fans.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)? What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

My initial entrée to the fandom was through fanfiction. I didn’t get interested in the show until mid-season 5. Around the same time, I read an article in a zine called Might (co-founded by Dave Eggers) about this thing called fanfiction that people would write and publish online. At first I thought it was satire or a joke – the fic cited involved Wilma Flintstone and a polished sabre tooth, as I recall – but then realized this was an actual thing. So I figured that a show then at the peak of pop culture must have fanfiction, and I went looking. Early on, I scrolled atxc on a daily basis and downloaded stories. But I didn’t engage in discussions about the show on Usenet, since I only knew how to access it with my Earthlink email client, and I didn’t want to post using my real name.

Later, I set up a pseud address with Yahoo and subscribed to a couple of email fanfic/discussion lists, and stayed subscribed to those for years. There was also a period in there somewhere – of maybe only a year or so, when I think about it – when I’d often nerd out into the wee hours with other fans via IM chat groups. That was around the time the small writers’ collective Musea was founded, and we were active for several years after the show’s initial run. In the early aughts, I followed many authors to LiveJournal and eventually set up my own account and stayed involved in fandom that way, until it mostly dispersed as well. What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? In a word: Chemistry. I had casually watched a couple of episodes during the first four seasons, but I’m not a huge sci-fi/horror fan at heart, and the story lines didn’t immediately grab me. But I happened to tune into The Red and the Black in 1998, and BOOM. For the first time, the intense layers of emotion and attraction between Mulder and Scully really struck me – and then of course, upon further viewing, I realized it was unmissable, an essential element in the fabric of the show. As a wise woman once said, a switch had been flicked. Mulder and Scully’s magnetism was like nothing I’d ever seen, and though I eventually came to appreciate the storytelling, humor, production values, and other components that made the series so successful, watching those characters interact has always been what kept me coming back. Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files? I was part of a list-serv discussion group for The West Wing for a while, which was a fun melding of character and plot analysis with political discussion. Later, I got into the House, MD fandom, again mostly as a fanfic reader/writer. I was finding that other fandoms, unlike TXF, were more dispersed, the networks of people structured more loosely, if at all. There were fanfic and discussion communities on LiveJournal, and fanfiction.net was the other main hub for posting and reading, but if there was anything centralized like Gossamer, Ephemeral, or the Haven, I never found it. Within all those fan communities, as in TXF, there were partisans for various characters and pairings, and flame wars erupted over plot developments that outraged this faction or that. One main difference was that those other shows had larger, ensemble casts and more varied subplots. So on one hand, there was more opportunity to explore back stories and multiple perspectives. In House MD in particular, there were several entrenched rival shipper camps, which were about equally grounded in canon, rather than TXF’s central ship. I was less into TWW fic, but my impression was that readers were less militant about their pairing preferences than TXF or House fans. Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I was deeply fascinated by Greg House for several years. (And the love-hate chemistry between him and Lisa Cuddy was a strong draw for me.) House MD came early in a wave of TV shows centered on anti-heroes, and Hugh Laurie brought amazing complexity and thoughtfulness to the character.

Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (The Americans) are a lethal pair of antiheroes. The inherent moral conflict of a sympathetic narrative from their POVs, and the global political conflict they embody was TV catnip for me. The internal struggles at the hearts of those characters were so exquisitely written and performed, they completely fascinate me.

The West Wing felt so much like a show created specifically for me. I’m especially fond of story arcs and scenes that centered on CJ Cregg, Charlie Young, and Josh Lyman. Though I loved Martin Sheen’s human portrayal of Jed Bartlet, the fact that he was the President always made him a little untouchable in my mind. But CJ, Charlie, and Josh were basically hard-working functionaries who were ambitious and idealistic and funny and flawed, and they spoke to me. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully? Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I do continue to think about Mulder and Scully and watch episodes somewhat often. I’ll sometimes run a favorite episode as background when I want something comforting on. I read TXF fic pretty regularly, which can inspire me to go back and watch a particular episode or story arc I haven’t thought about in years. Just recently, I started listening to The X-Files Diaries podcast (@XFDPodcast, @admiralty-xfd), and that’s a fun dive into the characters, and how other fans react to and interpret episodes.

Every once in a while, a TV show or movie – and more particularly, the characters – will grab my attention and make me curious about how fanfic writers have interpreted the original material. Random example, I saw Singin’ in the Rain for the first time in a theatre a couple of years ago, and the chemistry of the three leads sent me to AO3 as soon as I got home. I also loved the first season of Mercy Street and found some well-done stories in that fandom. I usually peruse the Yuletide gifts every year and have been amazed by the sheer variety, creativity and cheekiness of the output. There are a bunch of other shows I’ve followed faithfully, and sought out fanfic – Broadchurch, The Killing, Agents of SHIELD, Elementary, The Good Wife. Although I’ve found some well-written stuff in those fandoms, I’ve rarely gotten the same charge from them as reading TXF fic. Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

syntax6 (@syntax6) – Universal Invariants/Laws of Motion. I’d also shout out to syn’s Hunter fics, too – well worth reading even for those who have never seen or particularly loved the show itself.

JET – I re-read Small Lives Awake every year around Thanksgiving time. Other annual holiday re-reads: Revely’s The Dreaming Sea and Jordan’s Through the Fire (both set at Halloween).

Amal Nahurriyeh’s Casey universe – the rare post-col fic that felt hopeful, made extra intriguing by a kick-ass original character. [Lilydale note: the series starts with Machines of Freedom and has lots of additional fics and snippets.]

Prufrock’s Love – Finding Rokovoko was genuinely terrifying and tender.

melforbes (@melforbes) – Seaglass Blue is a recent favorite, lyrical and bittersweet.

These are just a few (apologies to those that didn’t come to mind immediately). Fortunately for readers, there’s an astonishing number of authors who have written in TXF fandom whom you can depend on for a good yarn, insightful character study, and/or ingenious “fixes” where 1013 went awry.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Probably the two set in my own (former) backyard of Southern California: Enivrez-vous and Ravenous. I’d first read the Baudelaire poem that was the source of the former’s title back in university days, so I was tickled to be able to use a few lines as an epigraph. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online? It’s not out of the realm possibility. I’d meant for “Three Times Dana Scully Didn’t Go to San Diego for Christmas” to be followed up with “And One Time She Did.” In fact, the idea for that never-finished story was what inspired “Three Times” in the first place. I have a couple of scenes sketched out and – unusually for me – even know exactly how to end it. Every year, November rolls around, and I think I should finish and post it…maybe in 2021?

Where do you get ideas for stories? Sometimes it’s from my environment. “Enivrez-vous” and “Ravenous” describe places that I’m fond of, that made me want to place Mulder and Scully there. “What Not to Wear” has that element too – I set it in Memphis as a tribute to a great trip there with a sister Musean. But WNTW was also inspired by a kink challenge in a years-ago LiveJournal thread, so sometimes ideas come from fandom discussions or even other fanfics. In the House MD fandom, a fic by another writer made me want to continue the story, and the author kindly allowed an authorized sequel. What's the story behind your pen name? I wanted my pseudonym to sound like it could be a real person’s name – or at least, maybe like a romance writer’s pen name – rather than an online handle. I also wanted to use a slightly obscure fictional character, to amuse anyone in the know. I had long had a bit of an obsession with Whit Stillman’s 1990s film trilogy, which started with Metropolitan; the 3rd installment, Last Days of Disco, came out the same year I started down the TXF rabbit hole: 1998. The central heroine of Metropolitan – who is mentioned in or makes a cameo in the other two – is Audrey Rouget, a lover of Austen and, eventually, a book editor. I altered the spelling of the last name as a nod to every writer’s companion, Roget’s Thesaurus. Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions? I have a few close friends – from outside TXF fandom – who know that I’ve written fanfic. I don’t know if they know my pseud; if they do, or if they’ve ready any of the fic, they haven’t said so to me. They are fannish sorts themselves, but not really TXF fans. A smattering of other friends and family members know or could intuit that I’ve been a fangrl on some level for years. My boss, whom I’ve known for about 3 years, recently mentioned off-handedly that she was really obsessed with TXF “back in the day,” and I am DYING to know if she got involved in fandom, but don’t think I’ll ever work up the courage to ask.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now? Most of the X-Files stuff continues to be generously and steadfastly archived by Forte at The Basement Office. The House MD stories and some TXF things are at fanfiction.net; same for AO3. If ever post anything new, it will probably go to TBO and AO3. I really ought to get it all together in one place, one of these days…

(Posted by Lilydale on April 6, 2021)

#old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #audrey roget

[pegasister60]

(Copied this over from a Discord DM where I went off. I didn’t proofread this because I wanted this posted ASAP.)

AU where Purpled is the traitor.

He’s been staying out of things on purpose. He’s a neutral and even though they joked about it, he was never going to be allowed into L’Manburg.

So when the election rolls around, he does nothing. He sits in his UFO, which is equipped with a hella cool holo-map of the whole server because having a bunch of maps on the wall is lame, and watched as Tommy and Wilbur are chased out.

He doesn’t go offer them assistance. Not immediately anyways. They’ve gone deep underground and there’s only so far down his sensors can go. He’s not sure where they are, but he can see Tubbo’s still in L’Manburg. So maybe this all blows over?

It doesn’t. He snatches bits and pieces of conversations over private lines with his transmission interceptors. He hasn’t left his base in a while, it hasn’t felt safe to.

He knows no one cares about him, that he wasn’t involved in the last war, but he needs to be ready to take his stand.

And it comes. It comes with an invitation left on his front lawn.

A festival? It’s so strange to see this from Schlatt’s administration, and he doesn’t trust it.

He’s listening into private conversations and catches some alarming exchanges.

The kind that send him scrambling across the room for his sensors and changing settings to sense pulses and ticks from dormant redstone.

At first there’s nothing. But he watches diligently as L’Manburg gets wired with redstone. Enough to trigger an alarming amount of TNT.

And for a moment he just sits there.

Then he moves.

He can’t go to Dream because he’s in on it.

Ponk hasn’t answered any of his messages for a while now.

But he can find Tubbo. He can find Tubbo and they can figure this out.

He sprints along the Prime path, sees Tommy and Tubbo on a bench.

They don’t notice him. He’s good at moving quickly and quietly, it’s helped him snag so many crucial emeralds.

Now it lets him witness this moment.

Was- was Tommy in on the TNT thing? He’d heard Wilbur try convincing him, had heard loud and clear that he’d given Dream that ultimatum. Tommy’s always been a little behind on technology, his communicator’s too outdated to hear very clearly.

But, but he can see them being ride or die. He knows Tubbo’s loyal. If Tommy agreed to blow up Schlatt’s land, if he told Tubbo and wasn’t being argued with.

He takes one step back, then another.

And before the music stops, he’s gone.

—

He decides to hell with it all and RSVPs for the festival.

He’s got pearls, he’s got regen, and his UFO is packed and idling in case he needs to make a clean getaway once the bombs start going off.

He could’ve just cut up the lines of redstone. He could’ve disarmed the whole thing.

But there was no point, really. Tubbo was on board with them afterall.

He even had a code phrase to tip off Wilbur and start the “fireworks.”

There was a reason he never picked a faction or bothered to lead his own. It wasn’t that he was against conflict. Everyone knew he was known for rushing headfirst into combat.

It was just that he wanted to side with his friends. He always valued people over possessions and politics. The only real way to do that on a server so divided is neutrality. And even then his relationship gets strained with every conflict he passes up.

So that’s why he doesn’t disarm the TNT. If this is what his friends want, if they wanna blow it all sky high and give up, then so be it.

He’d head somewhere uncharted and send them the coords if they cared to join him when they were done playing villains. Until then, he’d set up his video captures so he could replay the footage later. It’s been a while since he’s seen so much TNT packed in one place. The fallout was sure to be something.

—

Then, then everything goes to shit.

Tubbo slips away, and Purpled does his best to cover for him even as he loudly announces he’s leaving.

Techno’s armed to the tusks and already downing potions.

Wilbur and Tommy are standing visible as all hell on that rooftop.

This was going to be a shitshow.

And Purpled hated being right like this.

Because the speech happens and Tubbo doesn’t say the line.

Tubbo doesn’t say the line.

And for a moment Purpled’s grip on the Ender pearl in his pocket loosens. Because what the fuck?

Then come the fistfuls of yellow powder that make him wanna pearl on stage instead.

Concrete encases his friend. Concrete keeps him trapped on Schlatt’s throne as the man outs him as a traitor.

And then things get worse.

Technoblade. Stalling. Peer pressure. Apologies.

Fireworks.

The only reason he makes it out alive is because he was already holding a pearl. He escapes with a few burns and voices screaming across the comm lines.

“YOU KILLED TUBBO-“

“WHERE’S THE BUTTON-“

“-KILL EVERYBODY”

He’s running. He’s running and running and pearling and swimming and then he’s collapsing.

There’s whining as Dogchamp and his other dog come to sniff him in concern.

He finds the strength to limp over to the wall, adrenaline draining, and shut the bottom of his UFO.

He pops the stopper on a potion of regeneration and listens to the world burn.

It burns but it doesn’t go boom.

He’s not sure which one is better.

—

The days go by, he heals. He stays sealed in his UFO.

He spies.

He listens to Wilbur’s mad rambles and his borderline soliloquies.

He watches Techno’s little blip on his map go to and from the spider spawner day in and day out.

He witnesses Schlatt and Quackity’s spats.

He watches and listens and spies.

Because that’s all he can risk doing.

He was mistaken before, about Tubbo and about most of Pogtopia.

But he’s had time to reflect while laying on the floor with his dogs. He’s had time to think while he fiddled with frequencies to try and catch bits of the outside world.

And he doesn’t know what to think.

Because it’s been forever since anyone’s come to check up on him. Some experiment in Area 51 could’ve gone horribly wrong and no one would know.

Maybe no one would care.

And he tried not to let that eat at him. He knows he’d be missed by his loving pets. By that dumb chicken on his roof that he still feeds for some reason.

He could go away from here, though. He could pack up his stuff and go back to Hypixel. Lose himself in the endless grind of breaking beds, bridging across cold voids, and appeasing dragons with little patience.

But it doesn’t feel right to leave. Not when someone might remember him. Not when his friends might still care.

Not yet.

—

Then there comes a time.

A date for all of this to end. For better or worse.

And no one bothered to tell him. He hears it the moment it’s decided and yet no one tells him about it. No one even asks if he’s still staying out of things.

And something about that keeps him from sharing who their “traitor” is.

He’s perfected his technology after getting sick of having to fiddle with it so often.

He can hear everyone’s doubts, everyone’s fears, everyone’s hopes.

And that’s when he makes his choice.

He goes to Dream. The person who invited him to settle on his land. The person who complimented and had once admired his agility and mobility.

He goes to Dream and strikes a deal.

“I know what you’re doing. I don’t think I care. Whatever happens now is going to change everything, and I want to help you see it through.”

And so he joins Manburg to give them confidence.

He follows the Badlands faction to keep tabs on them and also pocket some of Techno’s wealth.

When the tides start shifting he joins Pogtopia to give them another small victory.

And when the TNT goes off, he pearls up high and sits on the ledge to watch the fireworks.

He much prefers these to the ones they used in battle.

And when the withers spawn, he does his part to help take them down, quietly gathering up the wither stars as he goes.

And when it’s over. When the dust settles and the people of this New L’Manburg stand and survey the rubble.

He’s watching. He’s listening. He’s spying.

Even after all of this, he’s still not one of them.

Tubbo’s outgrown him. Ponk’s forgotten him.

But Dream’s employed him.

And he finishes his second base in that nice little cove. So close to where the action will start up again.

He’s got tech to work with, he’s got a ufo to bail with, and he’s got ideas to play with.

After all this time, he’s made his stand.

Quietly, unnoticed. Just like he’s been all this time.

Team Chaos gains another member.

And a season ends.

#my post #I speak #I write #purpled #mcyt purpled #traitor!Purpled #traitor au #dream smp #dream smp spoilers #minecraft youtubers #mcyt #dogchamp #unnamed Minecraft dog #long post

[anditwasntworthit]

writeblr beginnings?

Maybe. I’m sure I’ll fall off of maintaining this damned thing again - but while I am back, I figured I’d use this for something more productive. Mostly, I totally fangirl over shows and books and their ships and character dynamics. When I’m not lazy reblogging things that inspire me for my own writing projects, I’ll try to remember (and work up the courage) to post snips from them. I also have a Pinterest board for aesthetics and inspiration for my project. I currently have two projects, one long-time pet project and one on the side that I started earlier this year. My main focus right now is my pet project, The Warrior’s Second, which I’ve been working on for around 5 years. I’d written this horrible first draft with the vague idea and then scrapped to start fresh. After shelving the project for two years for plotting and planning, I’ve recently started working on it again. I have maybe 10 chapters left before I complete what I hope to be the first of three or four books, depending on how long the events of the third play out. The side project, jokingly called Crab Dip for now, was started earlier this year. It’s something that I tried to put a lot of me into. I put a lot of bits of my life, places I’ve lived, references to groups of friends I’ve once been a part of, behavior or hobbies of my own, what I believe to be my worst traits, and emphasis on roles and relationships that are very important to me. CD is currently shelved as I believe it needs the same time, love, and attention that I’ve given into plotting and planning TWS. I have a story, I have my characters, but I have a lot of work to do.

The Warrior’s Second - Centuries after the fall of modern civilization, TWS follows two characters on their intertwined paths navigating their rise to leadership in the New Dark Ages and the rising tensions between the Ravagers of the east, and the Augustans of the West. This series comes with a map for reference, and a character guide as there is an ensemble cast and relations.

Raelin Kissinger is a long way from home. After surviving a harrowing raid by the barbaric eastern clan, Rae has spent a year in captivity, enslaved as a laborer in their southern capitol city. With her desperate escape, Rae proves that she is willing to do anything in her attempts to return home to her people, no matter if it means killing others or even herself. When she finds herself an unlikely, begrudging guide to the safety of the Free West, Rae sets on her path to glory and honor, love and betrayal, and learning of the lost history of the Kissinger family, the Bloodhairs of the North.

Jack Beaumont just wants to be. Son of the leader of one of the fastest growing villages and apprentice to the Chief of all the Free West, Jack’s grief has led him to abandon all expectations of leadership to traverse nomadically through the wilds as a ranger of the Western Guard. When an annoyingly curious, self-sacrificing bloodhair is dragged (literally) into his path claiming to have a message for their leader, Jack is forced to make his return to face the life he left behind. As he desperately stalls the journey home to avoid making the decision between leading a village and leading a nation, Jack is reminded of the importance of honor and the joys of the companionship he’d long since abandoned.

Crab Dip - Avery Quinn only wants one thing - to be alone. Daughter of a secretive man in Baltimore, sardonic and reclusive Avery has enclosed herself in a life of solitude and keeping her few friends at arm’s length. Her life as she knows it is ended when she learns the truth of her father’s ‘military career’ - and that he’s disappeared while on a job in Dubai. Avery is recruited by IRIS, a high dollar faction of elite mercenaries, under the guise of helping to locate her missing father, their founder. The search for her father proves to be elusive and dangerous as operatives begin to go missing when jobs are sabotaged by a rival faction, Aegis. Avery finds herself on a journey, becoming strong and brave, facing her demons and learning to allow herself to feel for others, and traveling to the most beautiful cities in the world on contract with a team that has one mantra: work hard, play hard.

#writeblr

[kendrixtermina]

The “Genocidal Edelgard” Shallowtake

I was not going to make a post about this because it’s most likely futile and not going to convince anyone nor do I believe in dinifying the purity police with attention, but maybe it will let some ppl know that they dont have to let themselves be shamed for liking the wrong video game character

Whatever might have been the case in the distant past when Nemesis was around, by the “present day” the Nabateans are not at all some commonly oppressed stereotyped minority - the setting is chock full of characters that fit that bill a lot better like Dedue or Cyril. Characters that are ordinary humans not magic dragons. 

And even that is more founded on general purpose xenophobia than from the specific, relatively new early modernity construct of racism. (the dedue situation probably comes the closest)

Sure, Seteth and Flays have to hide from their old enemy the Agarthans, I see how some might find that relatable etc. but most of the population isn’t aware that they exist at all. They hold high status positions, are worshipped by the local religion and Rhea all but rules the entire continent (and says so herself to Byleth in that speech about how she was just “ruling this wayward country in your stead”, “you” being Sothis) - though that is mostly Rhea’s doing of which Seteth and Flayn are relatively innocent. 

The interviews pretty much confirmed that the Nabateans constituted the local aristocracy and that many humans genuinely saw the Elites as liberators - though there was definitely also an element of ppl going around killing random Nabateans to gain superpowers, not to speak of Nemesis’ very obvious very unambiguous mass murder. Not wanting to be ruled over by foreign powers is understandable, though obviously killing them all down to the last civilian was just flat out evil - its certainly not a simple situation, we can all agtree Nemesis & the Agarthans were evil but there is no clear defined good guy. 

There are historical conflicts you could compare this to, perhaps some conflicts in Africa or the middle eastwhere different groups took turns being the ruling class after the latest war,  but it’s not at all like the modern USA or early modernity colonialism, and forcing every real or, in this case, imagined scenario inherently dependent of fantasy elements, into this one framework from the present or near past isn’t conductive to understanding at all. 

And in the present day, by the time Edelgard is alive, we are talking about three specific people that she has good reason to dislike individually. Not any sort of group at all. 

She calls Rhea a cruel beast because that’s all she’s ever seen Rhea to be. She’s the shadow tyrant who rules her world, who created the crappy world Edelgard grew up in. It’s no different Cubans thiking badly of the castros after suffering through famines - or, no need for such extreme examples really, ppl call their least favorite politicians monsters all the time. 

She’s wrong to assume that Seteth & Flayn are wholly on board with this, but on the other hand, it’s not at all a far-fetched assumption to make: They hold high positions in the church though they ostensimbly just appreared out of nowhere one day. Do you have to be an evil bigot to assume that the brother and right hand man to the tyrannical god-queen is condoning & supporting her actions?

The truth is of course that underneath her pseudo-parental facade Rhea is sort of a scared girl, very lonely, very afraid, and ashamed, in a shallow, childish way, for “breaking the rules” just because they are rules. She says she can’t trust anyone, that she feels lonely & isolated... and while no one can blame her for distrusting humans after the slaughter of her people, but the reason she can’t trust Seteth is that she’s keeping her bad deeds secret from him. He wasn’t there the whole time, he just showed up a few decades earlier. 

She sees herself only as filling out for Sothis and doesn’t quite grasp that she’s in charge, very much a follower personality bent on stasis & regularity. 

Is Edelgard obliged to try & unravel the complex psychology of the tyrant who rules her home to correctly deduce why she would deceive even her own family? By all intents and purposes, Edelgard is the one getting rid of an oppressive government that doesn’t let ordinary humans let a say at all. A government where ppl of others faiths and nationalities are typically oppressed unless they work directly for the church.

It’s like having a disdain for, say, Ivanka Trump. She holds a high position in her father’s administration despite having no obvious qualifications, she appears to be profiting & making bank from her father’s atrocities, she certainly hasn’t done anything to stop him or disavow him the way that, say, her cousin Mary did - if you suffered under Trump’s regime you’d be very justified in assuming that Invanka is probably a bad person.

Flayn only looks young (She might not if we saw her in other clothes). I mean, Kronya could badly impersonate a schoolgirl. At the very least they’ve supported the regime by refusing to question their own side and they show some however benevolent belief that it is their duty to “guide” the people. Leaving her to the Agarthans is certainly questionable, but no more so than doing it with Rhea herself, under the assumption that she’s guilty and that it’s a sacrifice that will prevent larger chaos. The agarthans had their plan long before they created Edelgard as we know her, and she couldn’t stop their plots all on her own. 

You could say that it’s callous, distasteful or a deal breaker - as the death knight is her direct subordinate & she makes a personal appearance in mask, I would argue that she definitely knew & sanctioned the kidnapping - but she’s no more callous towards Flayn than towards anybody else. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re evil, or that they deserve to die.... and Edelgard would agree with me.  She doing all this to prevent death – flipping the lever on the trolley problem so it crushes one person instead of five so to speak. She always gives her enemies the chance to surrender, unwilling allies the chance to leave, and jails enemies whenever leaving them alive wouldn‘t lead to further death… even the ones she has the most personal reason to hate, like the PM.

As servants of the church who have chosed to back her enemies, she’ll certainly kill them if she has to, but not any more than any other enemy. At no point anywhere in the story does she say anything like that they need to die on principle. Nowhere at all. Indeed there is much evidence to the contrary.

The church paints her as being completely against the religion or even wanting to set herself up as a satanic godess cause it‘s good politics & they don‘t get what she‘s doing – to an extent her own credibility & messaging is compromised by her secretive and at times unscrupulous actions, no one said she was perfect. In truth all she wants is to have the church out of politics, you know, what we have in nearly every modern country outside the vatican and saudi arabia.

You can absolutely let Flayn & Seteth go on CF and there is no word, no fuss about it anywhere. No „make sure to kill em all“ which would certainly be there if the narrative wanted to portray Edelgard that way. It requires the mediation of Byleth as someone they would talk to & not immediately assume the worst of, but, they see the church as the embodymet of all that is good & fighting its enemies as their sacred duty so of course it wouldn‘t be possible for just anyone to talk them down. It‘s framed as Flayn letting Byleth go cause they saved her life once, even if we know from behind the screen that she wasn‘t going to survive a fight to the death against the player-controlled faction.

Heck, even when it comes to Rhea, the one most guilty that Edelgard has the most reason to loathe, she‘s ultimately surprisingly gracious. She gives her the option to surrender – and this is not a lie, she discusses this with Byleth in a lecture question, and seriously ponders the possibility. Here Byleth gets a range of options like „stab her in the back“ and „keep the church under imperial control“ but you know which one nets you the support points? „Strip her of her authority so she can‘t interfere in politics“. She wasn‘t gonna mess with the religious folks & their religion at all, just make it so it‘s separate from government. Rhea could even keep being pope, if she could be satisfied without having complete supreme authority (and ripping her precious artifact out of Byleth‘s chest) – even when she puts her down she‘s not 100% without pity, telling her that „Your duty is done“ (the translators mucked this up)

Couldn‘t be any further from „lets kill them all on principle“.

What really annoys me is how ppl go and twist everything Edelgard says out of context to ascribe a motive to her that just isn’t there.

Common examples:

„If you have Flayn or Seteth fight her she‘ll say they need to die because they‘re nabateans“

Actually what she says is this: „You are a child of the godess. You must not have power over the people!“ Not getting to be privileges rulers anymore =/= being opressed. Stay out of politics =/= Diediedie. Also, this is from the VW/SS boss fight, where they have literally come to get her in her own capital.

„Linhard & Leonie don‘t tell her & hubert about Indech, probably cause he expects that she‘ll go & kill him„

What he actually says is: „Lake Teutates is a place that concerns the saints of the Church of Seiros. It may become bothersome should the two of them find out...“

„It may be bothersome“ as in, „we might get in trouble“, for doing the possibly very inadvisable thing of waltzing into what could possibly be an enemy location to satisfy personal curiosity. If it‘s something related to her agenda she might take over and Linny wouldn‘t get to investigate as he pleases – at very most you might construe it as Linny fearing that they‘ll be accused of consorting with the enemy, but „bothersome“ suggest possible annoyance not imminent murder.

The whole scene ends with Linhard telling Byleth to fill her in later. Doesn‘t sound at all like he expects her to go back with a harpoon.

„She said Claude isn‘t fit to be a ruler cause he‘s a foreigner“

What she actually says: „I understand your ideals are not so far removed from my own. But without knowledge of Fodlan‘s history, I cannot entrust its rule to you“

Now without the additional contexts that Claude won‘t get until after the fight, it might easily feel a bit like the former with the raw spots he‘d have from his backstory, but what she means is that he‘s ignorant of the Agarthan threat – which he is. Edelgard is all for making peace with Almyra and sees fostering isolationism & prejudice as one of the many faults of the church.

Once Claude basically kills Edelgard for information, he winds up having to take care of the storm she had been holding back. But to his credit, he DID „finish the job“ and get the info. But he didn‘t have it at that point.

And I don‘t mean any of this in the least bit as a diss of Claude - He is the smartest character, so there would be no plot if he got easy access to the info.  At this point, they both think they can probably do better, and more importantly, both their backstories have made them so that they won‘t let down their guard far enough to cooperate in this scenario.

That‘s also why the outcome in CF is contingent on Byleth‘s choice. - You‘d sort of have to trust that he will also act so as to minimize casualties.

Very disingenious since many players wouldn‘t necessarily trigger these dialogues.

I guess because Adrestia got a vaguely central-european aesthetic (partially; all the countries are hodgepodge mashups and there’s more than enough spanish or ancient roman vibes there) and central europe existed only for those 12 years of tyranny I guess, even though many other places have had similar BS happening, including the US that delights in making craptons of movies about their faraway victory because their governments haven’t added much of value to the planet as of late. -.- 

Faerghus (vaguely french/ russian - not at all places where nothing bad happened ever) has actually annexed some territory from their northern neighbors in the recent past, not to speak of the whole Duscur atrocity - but no one seems to go around laying that at Dimitri’s feet, because it would be nonsensical - he was a child at the time and as an individual he is super against it and champions a policy of reconcilliation if he gets to rule. after all, there wouldn’t be much of a plot if the characters inherited three perfect faultless problem free countries. 

Edelgard, too, is completely against the previous administration under Duke Aegir (which was in charge during the Bridgid war). She deposed him and is plotting to do the same with Arundel once she can politically afford to do so. For all that one can understand why she would chose the other path  (depending on how much she knows about what Edelgard’s doing and why) it makes all the sense in the world for Petra to support her on CF or if not recruited, because again, she got rid of that previous administration. 

#edelgard #edelgard von hresvelg #fe3h #fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem three houses

[zuzuslastbraincell]

For the salty ask game: 6, 10 and 16? <3

6: Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

I never used to like kataang or maiko much, but I’m good with the former and really like the latter now.

while I’m still not a big fan of the kataang (without wanting to write an essay: ember island players ruins it for me), I’ve softened on it a lot largely just from seeing the content for it on here. they’re just honestly very sweet? I don’t know if it’ll last for practical reasons, but the idea of aang & katara offering each other hope from the beginning and until the end is just lovely. 

as for maiko, I absolutely love the strength of mai & zuko’s dynamic (platonic or romantic) just from their boiling rock interactions alone. I feel like a lot of early s3 maiko very much demonstrates that they have some communication difficulties to work through together (thinking about the beach in particular here, but also the ‘are you cold?’ scene, as well as the break-up via letter interaction, that’s the big one) and in a sense mai represents part of zuko’s ‘ideal’ life as a perfect prince that he realises that he has to break from in the first half of s3, but I’ve come around to the idea that if they spent some time working through their communication issues they could really have something lovely? I do also think mai deserves a short break from the stifling culture of nobility/time to explore herself first, but after that? totally could work. like, i’m personally really attached to the gay zuko headcanon and always have been but a lot recent mutuals are maiko shippers and i’ve become very attached to maiko as well because of them (in parallel universes of course).

16: If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?

so many things....

1. less racist, more sensitive worldbuilding. crucially better south asian rep, clear south asian rep. this also means including removing the caricature of guru pathik and changing the design of combustion man (and p’li) not to include a reference to shiva. the show’s philosophies and vocabulary owes so much to south asian culture and the lack of representation in that aspect alone is shocking.

2. references to the fact that there are some air nomad survivors / descendents in hiding in various and that being a late s2 / s3 subplot. (maybe aang is still the last airbender tho? but certainly his culture won’t die with him). the culture isn’t perfectly preserved / has changed with time and enduring hardships, some things have been lost, but there are still survivors clinging on, proud. maybe it’s this community that helps with him the avatar state, not a random guru? or they could help him with his s3e1 dilemma about ‘blending in’, as many of them have discarded certain aspects of appearance in order to hide? i feel like this could add so much to aang’s arc in the latter half of the show.

3. better writing of the white lotus, with the white lotus as a international resistance org that operates in all nations, that uses old man’s pai sho club as a front. they’re introduced as opposing the dai li in ba sing se, as trying to organise resistance in secret, have ties to some local revolutionary/radical factions as they have a long standing rivalry with the dai li (& part of the reason the dai li side with azula is to crush the white lotus and resistance to their reign). iroh is not grand lotus but merely gets recruited in s2, as part of a redemption arc.

4. a subtle iroh redemption arc where iroh realises he cannot simply be passive and perhaps let the treasonous thought ”hm, maybe it would have been better if the avatar fought sozin” cross his mind - he needs to take a more active role in opposing the fire nation, and he joins the white lotus. i think he also needs to reckon quite specifically with the cost of the siege of ba sing se, he needs to make amends to those hurt from it on both sides - be confronted by fire nation defectors who left after the siege because why were their deaths less important that his son’s? as well as encounter how the siege left scars on the lower ring, in a less visible way (untrained lower ring residents formed resistance militia and generally died in huge numbers; plague and starvation greatly affected the lower ring, etc.). no iroh as a moral authority here - he’s morally grey trying to become good. also he doesn’t stick around in ba sing se, he realises the jasmine dragon, as lovely as it is, isn’t true redemption either, and at the end of the series he stays in the fire nation.

5. leading into point 3 (and 4): in s3 the gaang encounters and works with grassroots underground resistance in the fire nation. i think this is a better message than ‘oh the fire nation is a soceity ridden by class division that exploits its poorer / less privileged people and its own environment as long as it doesn’t affect the elite, and turns even its most privileged children into traumatised child soldiers and is indirectly hurt by its own colonialism and imperialistic culture, and that’s deeply sad’ - i think a better message is ‘the fire nation is a society with all those problems and you can do something about it. you can stand up. even though that’s scary.’ this resistance group is around for day of black sun (in fact they’re vital to it) and then you see a key member in boiling rock too.

6. no combustion man. honestly? weak writing. would much prefer zuko attempting to ‘stealthily’ track the gaang on the false premise of a ‘welcome home tour’ where he slips out under night to try and chase them down - this would mostly be alluded to in a few scenes. i also think this would get zuko to realise how much the fire nation itself has been hurt from war. i think the main early s3 plot points e.g. the beach episode still happens, as does the war meeting. i feel like zuko would need extra firepower to be a decent s3 threat - maybe he takes mai and ty lee with him? zuko ultimate lesbian ally takes bored lesbians from the palace for a knife throwing chi blocking field trip kjfshdj i’m joking. but seriously we could also have a combustion bender on board as well as a potential new character (i’m imagining someone like a younger p’li if i’m honest, same age range as zuko), as long as they have a character beyond being a scary assassin. maybe they defect early to the resistance group before the day of black sun, tell zuko they should too (but zuko doesn’t listen)? that’d be rad.

7. the existence of grassroots resistance would basically allow for the series to end with zuko being offerred the crown, but deciding to give it up / end the royal line. rather than a power vacuum, or iroh, the existance of resistance means there are clearly people (i.e. adults) who can fill that space. maybe this is a bit optimistic of me but i would just love to set up a scenario where zuko doesn’t become a boy-king of an imperialist nation and where absolute monarchy doesn’t continue, where there’s a clear shift in system. i understand the narrative power of zuko acknowledges he has inherited wealth and power that has been gained through exploitation and imperialism, and dedicating his whole life to undoing the damage his family has done, but i think he can do this without being the fire lord? in fact not being the fire lord is a good first step. zuko finds another way of doing exactly this.

8. talked about this a lot recently but better toph s3 representation & greater ties to the earth kingdom. also, i’d just appreciate a lot more flavour from the earth kingdom as a whole, and more prominent characters from there?

9. okay i’m not sure there is quite honestly space in the narrative for an azula redemption clearly on screen in as much depth as zuko’s but 1. i’d like iroh not to treat her horribly, thanks, and maybe even try to reach out to her at appropriate moments, maybe we see him (comically) say a lovely warm hello during her s2 appearances, maybe we see her play pai sho with him in s3 while he’s in prison in return for some secret info he’s not actually giving her while he’s not-so-subtly suggesting she should defy her father (but it’s too little too late, he already *chose* zuko in her eyes, and perhaps he did and is only just beginning to realise that) 2. i would like some hope and optimism at the end for azula. her breakdown is truly tragic but it feels like pain for pain’s sake in a sense - i would have loved for the finale scene with zuko & ozai replaced with a scene where someone visits azula and tells them they’ll be there for her and/or they love her. perhaps iroh, perhaps zuko (though i think that one would be more complicated obviously). i would love a post-finale scene where iroh sets up a tea shop somewhere in the fire nation where we see azula out the back, finishing up wiping down/mopping the patio, and before aang goes inside to say hi to his friends, we see them bump into each other - azula bows deeply, a clear apology, and aang accepts it. then we see azula runs off to go hang out with some friends before we follow aang inside as he encounters his own friends.

basically i’d rewrite a lot of s3. i’m dearly, dearly attached to s3, especially the second half, which has some of my favourite episodes of the entire season, but i think it’s flawed.

#drowning-in-cacophony #long post #sorry this ended up being REALLY long

[squicky-fannish-discourse]

Smoke and Ash - ShiSaku

A/N: This is part of this AU where Tsunade and Sakura in a non-mass setting make an active attempt to take out Danzo. Sakura goes undercover in ROOT. 

It’s also connected to this snippet. 

//

Shisui never really knew his grandfather. He’d heard stories of him from his father, who’d barely known him. His grandfather, he heard, disappeared one night. There was no body.

He never returned.

His grandfather’s death haunted his father till his dying day, and Shisui had never quite taken well to people in his life disappearing without a trace. Wandering. Least of all, her.

“Imagine,” Shisui remembered his father say. “Imagine standing at that door, and he’d reach down to pat your head and tell you that he’s going to teach you how to throw shuriken at the board, and the next thing you know… he’s gone.”

Shisui never really understood the feeling until he was sitting on the couch of the Hokage’s office, waiting for the Hokage to return, waiting for any any confirmation of Sakura’s whereabouts or something. A sign. Anything.

He ran his hand through his hair.

If he’d been a brasher and bolder ninja, he’d be out the door before anyone or everyone could stop him. He’d be out trying to find her.

But the sinking feeling of her potential betrayal was weighing his feet down on that couch. What was she doing with ROOT shinobi? Could she have been that woman who saved Kabuto? Whose side was she on? The Hokage said that she had answers. She asked him to wait.

He buried his face in his hands. 

She had always been such a wanderer, hadn’t she? He thought.

She was a little girl of three when he first met her. She’d leave her mother’s hand to go chase a butterfly. Through the crowds, and through the set of legs and busy carts and end up lost all the time.

He was only ten, and he was sharper.

“Hey.” He crouched. “Where are you going?”

She’d scrunch up her face.

“Butterfry,” she’d say. With a mind of her own, she’d walk past him, while he’d grab her by the collar. There was a woman missing her kid somewhere, he thought. He had to get her back home to that woman who’d be crying for her child.

“Oi!”

For most of his life, Shisui spent it in being a silent watcher over the village. Over her. Sakura, on the other hand, when she returned from her trip, was vibrant breath of energy. She couldn’t help but attract attention to herself with her caring personality. 

She was the Godaime’s second coming. She flitted in and out of the rooms of the hospital. 

She stopped being a child long ago, and she had grown to become unimpeachable. 

It took him perhaps eighteen years to realize that this was just one face of Haruno Sakura. 

The door to the Hokage office was pushed open, and it pulled him out of his thoughts.

“Shisui?” He looked up to see Sasuke. “Is it…true?”

“What do you mean?” Shisui asked carefully. Tsunade ordered him not to keep it brief with anyone—more specifically an Uchiha and Kushina’s brat—and tell them half-truths.

“Is she dead?” Sasuke asked. Sasuke eyes were wide, his sharingan was on, and he was clenching his fingers. “Please… tell me she isn’t.”

This was cruel, Shisui thought. 

“She’s not dead,” Naruto was saying. He was pacing circles on the carpet floor. “She’s not dead. Sakura-chan is too stubborn to die! Maybe… we’re just reading it all wrong. She’s…missing.”

“Where did you hear this?” he asked carefully.

Sasuke was staring at him strangely. It was calculative, and at the same time, it was blank. His blazing sharingan was the only reminder that Sasuke would break down any moment. He was trying to figure him out.

“Sasuke,” he said slowly. “Where did you hear this?”

“I—” He held out a crunched letter between his hands. “Her mother found what seems to be a suicide note… in her diary… The ANBU stormed her room for her items. They informed her she was on official business, and well, I was on patrol at the time. I—”

Shisui calmly took out the note, and he felt his blood ringing in his ears. Suicide note kept playing like a broken recorder as he read. 

“It finally comes to an end,” she said. “My five years of hard work. The trap is placed. The rat will be flushed out. Here comes the wave of retribution. If I don’t survive this, please let it be known that I lived and loved and didn’t regret. I’m ready to die in hopes that the rat will meet his executioner.”

His breath caught in his throat.

“That’s… not a suicide note,” Naruto said. 

“How do you know, Naruto?” Sasuke had a frantic edge to his barb. “You’re a fucking moron.”

“Sasuke!” Naruto snapped. “Now’s not the time for this—”

“The hell it isn’t. She’s fucking missing. There’s ANBU flying around. Kakashi’s not in his apartment—” Sasuke gripped Naruto by the shirt front. Naruto didn’t flinch. “Your optimism is not helping.”

“Optimism?” Naruto repeated. His eyes burned blue. “Optimism?” He laughed uneasily. “Why aren’t we out trying to find her? She can’t have gone far.”

“This is not a suicide note, Sasuke,” Shisui said quietly. Both of them turned to look at Shisui. He glanced back at the letter.

“Why did I do this? Because I’m duty bound to avenge honest Konoha Shinobi who gave their lives in service. But apart from that,” he continued to read through the ringing silence. “I do have some selfish intentions. He will attack the man I love.” His mouth went dry. “I am willing to die in hopes that he lives.”

“She’s not dead,” Shisui continued quietly. He lowered the letter and stared down at the floor. “She can’t be.” His voice cracked. “I won’t…fucking believe it.”

No body. She was just gone. Not her. Not her. This was some cruel twist of fate—

“When you gentlemen are done,” he heard a cool voice at the doorway. Tsunade stood there. She leaned against the door-frame. “We have news.” All three of them perked up their heads. She strode past them towards her desk.

Behind her was Kakashi—who casually strolled in after Tsunade—and he had an eerie smile on his face. Kakashi smiling would not have been so eerie, if it wasn’t covered in blood.

“Sasuke, Naruto,” he said. “I would have been expecting you. Not this soon.”

“Kakashi,” Sasuke snapped. “Now’s no time for your jokes. Where the hell were you? We’ve been trying to find you for an hour now.”

“Are you bleeding, Kakashi?” Naruto interrupted. “What the hell is happening?”

“Oh.” Kakashi brushed his thumb against his cheek. “This isn’t my blood, Naruto.”

“What happened to Sakura?”

“Calm down,” Kakashi sighed.

“Calm down?” Sasuke repeated.

“Yes,” Kakashi said. “Take a seat. We have to talk, don’t we, Hokage-sama?”

There was glint in Kakashi’s eye—one which Shisui had rarely seen. He was always a mysterious ANBU who preferred his privacy and Jiraiya’s Icha Icha novels. He was hard to read, and hard to identify. The thing is, Shisui respected Kakashi and his Hokage.

That was the only thing stopping him from lunging at them for answers to his questions.

“Let’s confirm one thing,” he said quietly. “Is she alive?”

Tsunade glanced at him.

“She’s alive, yes. She just contacted me. She’s heading towards Suna—”

Naruto rose up, but Tsunade held out a hand. He froze. “—she’s headed towards a potential ally. That was her last message to me nearly fifteen minutes ago through Katsuyu, who’s currently the only source of communication between us.”

He felt his breath ease in. “There were…” he paused. “There were so many ROOT shinobi. How did she manage to escape?”

Tsunade smirked. “Are you seriously doubting my apprentice?”

Kakashi had a crinkle in his eye. “I’m sure Shisui respects Sakura’s capabilities as does everyone else in this room, Hokage-sama. He’s sincerely however baffled—”

“Enough, Kakashi,” Tsunade snapped. “Have you not listened to anything I said? She’s just singlehandedly dismantled one of Konoha’s bloodiest factions, and she’s managed to incriminate a man who ought to have been imprisoned, but he’s consistently hidden evidence. Why do you think he left the village?” Tsunade said. “He’s compromised.”

 “And he’s going after her!” Kakashi snarled. Naruto and Sasuke glanced wordlessly between their Hokage and Kakashi. “Help us all if she’s not dead in a few days.”

Tsunade sighed. She rubbed her head.

“We have work to do. Naruto. I’ll be blunt. Sakura’s uncovered your father’s killer,” she glanced at Shisui. “And your grandfather.”

Thick silence followed. 

“And that man is Shimura Danzo, long story short,” Tsunade said. “If we’re not careful, this could actually turn into a war. So Kakashi was ordered to capture him.” 

“—and unfortunately,” Kakashi said. “I ran into some traps. He knew.” 

No one questioned Kakashi on what the traps were. 

“Again,” Kakashi said in response to Sasuke’s uneasy look. “Not my blood.” 

“Which means,” Tsunade said. “Sakura’s currently isolated. She’s running from him to allies in Suna. She says she’ll lay low. Her only point of contact is me through Katsuyu.” 

“Right,” Sasuke said. “Which means we leave soon?” Naruto glanced uneasily at Kakashi. 

“No,” Tsunade said. “People leaving in and out of the village right now are likely being trailed. Two of my ANBU reported being followed.” 

Shisui sighed. 

“Which means, Danzo knows that we’re going to aid her. His goal is her death. She knows something about him, he’s realized. Something which could very well lead to his death. No,” she said. “Wait until we—” she glanced at Kakashi “—dismantle all traps.” 

“Noted,” Kakashi said coolly. 

“And despite your strong feelings about her incompetence, please note that she’s not the same doe-eyed genin that you took under your wing—”

“Doe-eyed.” Kakashi repeated. “You’ve got to be kidding me—” 

She cut him off.

“The point is,” Tsunade snapped. “Your bloody job for the next few days—all of you—is to make sure Sakura’s blood, sweat and tears doesn’t go to hell by your rash chivalry. Danzo’s roots run deep in this bloody village, and they are lying in wait for an opportunity. He’s been here for a long time.” 

“What’s that mean?” Naruto asked.

“The village could be compromised,” Sasuke answered for him. “Internal security could be compromised.” 

//

“Kakashi,” Shisui said. “You need to listen to the Godaime. She’s right. We need you. You can’t be angry about this forever.” 

He wasn’t angry, he was just tired. He was tired of all the secrets. All the lies. 

Kakashi looked up at him slowly.

“I’m not angry at Hokage-sama,” he said. “I’m angry at myself, mostly.” There was something in his tone. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Sakura’s mission was supposed to be mine, but Minato refused to let me take it. It would be too dangerous, he said.” 

He sighed heavily again.

“So when I see her… When I see the Godaime trusting her with this, it makes me wonder if Minato-sama thought I was incompetent… what makes Sakura more resilient to the darkness of the world?” 

You attacked the man I love. 

Shisui looked away as the letters burned themselves in his mind. 

“I don’t think that’s a question of resilience.”

#Sakura Haruno #Shisui Uchiha #ShiSaku #Non-mass AU #Kakashi Hatake #Team 7 #Naruto Uzumaki #multisaku #Ficlet #Naruto #fanfiction

[f1chronicle]

The Lewis Hamilton Fallacy

With Lewis Hamilton setting a new FORMULA 1 win record, and closing in on a record-equalling seventh World Championship, the vitriol on social media has been increasing, causing many to no longer wish to participate in Facebook groups that tolerate driver-bashing and hatred.

So how did we get to this point?

There are many factors at play here such as most drivers having a big presence across social media, but a key premise is we all have a different model of the world.

How you see things is completely different to how I see things, and generally speaking, this is a good thing for society as we can all bring our different points of view to a scenario and find a way forward.

Sadly this is not the case in the comments of nearly every F1 group on Facebook, where people are adamant that their point of view is right, yours is wrong, and you’re an idiot for thinking the way you do.

Let’s take a look at some of the common arguments in F1 groups, and see if they hold water…

Driver X Is The GOAT!

The GOAT argument isn’t specific to the world of F1, just look at the NBA, where LeBron James fourth NBA title stirred great debate as to whether or not he takes the mantle from Michael Jordan.

In F1 we have Lewis Hamilton vs Michael Schumacher, 93 race wins vs 91, six championships vs seven.

So how do we work out who the GOAT is?

Well, we can’t.

And even when F1 and AWS put out their ‘Fastest Driver’ analysis it still didn’t appease people if their guy wasn’t deemed the fastest.

Different drivers, different competition, different cars, the list goes on.

What we can have though is our favourite, and our own criteria for choosing a GOAT.

Personally, I didn’t much enjoy the years where Schumacher and Ferrari dominated. However, he has the most titles so to me he is still the greatest.

Some say the best of all time is Jim Clark, some say Fangio, some say Ayrton Senna. But unless they have seen them race, how can they compare?

Because if they’re using statistics, well the numbers don’t add up.

If they’re using stories and YouTube clips, then they’re comparing some drivers highlight reels against other drivers careers.

The passing of time plays an interesting trick on the mind, where we often forget the flaws, the disappointments, and the losses, remembering only the triumphs and victories.

And that’s ok.

You can have your GOAT, I can have mine, and neither of us can (or should) try to convince others that their GOAT is wrong.

Lewis Hamilton Has The Fastest Car (Or Best Car)

This one is odd, as I’m yet to see a car that wasn’t the fastest win a race.

When Pierre Gasly won the 2020 Italian Grand Prix, on that day, his car was the fastest.

Maybe there is something in the air in Italy, as in 2008 Sebastian Vettel won in a Toro Rosso to claim his first win in F1. Funnily enough, on that day, his car was the fastest.

You wouldn’t think you’d need to explain how motorsport works, but what happens is the driver who crosses the line first, ie completes the race distance the fastest, wins. It’s that simple.

These ‘fastest car’ or ‘best car’ arguments add to the Lewis Hamilton Fallacy.

Formula 1 is a meritocracy, and as such, the best drivers usually find themselves into the cockpit of the best car.

From 2010 to 2013, it was widely acknowledged that Red Bull Racing were producing the best cars, as they powered Sebastien Vettel to four consecutive World Championships.

Today though, people are rewriting history as they claim Hamilton has ‘always’ benefitted from being in the best car.

So which one is it?

Because clearly it can’t be both.

The Good Old Days Were Better

This one is always fun, and is something that likely happens to all of us as we get older!

I’ve found myself opining that the English Premier League was better in the 90s and 2000s than it is now for example.

Often, the ‘good old days’ coincide with a time in history where our favourite teams and stars were winning. Funny about that.

Have you ever met a Ferrari fan who thinks the current era is better than the 2000-2004 period?

No, you haven’t.

However, where this one gets really interesting is when people argue that the drivers no longer drive the cars, and that everything is controlled by engineers sitting on a pit wall.

The problem with this is the Williams FW14B, built in 1992, is still considered the most technologically sophisticated car in the history of F1.

It’s 28 years old.

The FW14B had semi-automatic transmission, active suspension, traction control and, for a short time, anti-lock brakes.

It also had Adrian Newey in charge of aerodynamics.

In fact, Williams found the FW14B was proving so successful that when the FW15 was ready half-way through the 1992 FORMULA 1 season, it wasn’t used.

The argument (often made by people who reach their limit reversing out the driveway) that Hamilton turns up on a Sunday, plants his foot on the accelerator, and drives into the distance is disrespectful of the amount of work he puts in to keep his body and mind at peak performance, as well as the staff at Mercedes who put in countless hours perfecting the car.

Mercedes Should Get Max Verstappen, He Would Beat Hamilton

This would be a terrible idea for Mercedes, so it’s a good thing they don’t listen to public opinion on social media.

First of all, it sends a message to drivers in their development program that even if you progress through the program the seat will go to the big-name with more runs on the board.

Second, do you recall the Senna v Prost years?

Sure, Ron Dennis had two prodigious talents at his disposal, but the infighting, egos, and crashes out on course disrupted team harmony, causing factions in the garage and distrust at all levels.

Mercedes currently have the perfect set up, and it’s obviously working, as they pick up championship after championship.

As we’ve seen throughout history, having a genuine #1 and an able deputy leads to both Driver’s and Constructor’s Championships.

During the aforementioned ‘Schumacher Years’ of 2000 to 2004, he was the undisputed #1 and teammate Rubens Barrichello understood his role and performed it admirably.

Lewis Hamilton Doesn’t Have Competitive Teammates

Former Formula 1 World Champions Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button, and Nico Rosberg would probably all argue that they are competitive drivers, capable of going wheel to wheel with Hamilton.

And they would be right, because they have the race wins and championships to prove their credentials.

When Hamilton joined the grid in 2007 as a teammate to Fernando Alonso, the belief throughout the paddock was that Alonso was #1 and Hamilton would be there to learn the ropes in F1.

In reality, it didn’t work out like that.

As Hamilton performed well, taking podiums and race wins, tensions mounted, and boiled over at the 2007 Hungarian Grand Prix, where in the final qualifying session Alonso deliberately delayed Hamilton in the pits, ensuring he wouldn’t be able to get in one last run.

The pair didn’t speak for weeks after the incident.

At the end of the season, both drivers secured four race wins and 12 podiums. Clearly they were allowed to race each other, there were no team orders.

Funnily, after tensions thawed, in 2017 Alonso said “[Hamilton] was able to win with a dominant car, with a good car like 2010 or 2012, or with bad cars like 2009 and 2011. Not all the champions can say that”.

Is Alonso suggesting Hamilton hasn’t always had the best car?

Facebook commenters would disagree with the two-time World Champion…

In Jenson Button’s book ‘Life to the Limit’ Button goes into detail how competitive Hamilton was, and makes it clear that he too was there to win, not just to act as a rear-gunner for Hamilton. An interesting fact Button points out in this same book is that when Rubens Barrichello was his teammate at Honda, Barrichello had it written into his contract that they were equal drivers, he was not to be a #2…

When Hamilton moved to Mercedes for 2013, a move derided by many given Mercedes lacklustre performance in previous years, it was Nico Rosberg’s team.

There is evidence that team orders were used on at least one occasion in 2013, where at the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix Rosberg was ordered to stay behind Hamilton in the closing stages, rather than fighting for third place. Hamilton felt the call was wrong, and that Rosberg should have been allowed to race.

During the 2014 Formula 1 season tensions again boiled over for Hamilton and a teammate, as several early exchanges throughout the season threatened to compromise both drivers title aspirations.

The pair had a wheel-to-wheel battle in Bahrain, a down-to-the-wire tussle in Spain, and made contact in Belgium.

In 2016, the year Rosberg won the championship, the two came together at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix, in a move that infuriated Niki Lauda, as both drivers crashed out of the race.

The duo came together again at the 2016 Austrian Grand Prix, however both drivers could continue, with Hamilton taking the win.

Nice Rosberg went on to win the 2016 Driver’s Championship, which gives Hamilton detractors a curious dilemma.

On one hand they laugh, saying he was beaten by Nico Rosberg, yet on the other, they say he has never had to race against competitive teammates.

So, which one is it?

Lewis Hamilton Needs To Prove He Can Win With Another Team

This one always brings a smile to the face 😊

I have no problem with fans being new to F1, it’s great! The sport needs more and more fans to keep it going.

The issue is people forgetting that the sport was going before they saw it on Drive to Survive, then commenting on Facebook posts.

For the record, Lewis Hamilton won the 2008 Driver’s Championship with McLaren.

Although they had a Mercedes engine at the time, they were indeed their own team then, as they are now.

And that is a different team to Mercedes.

Hamilton has won championships with two teams.

Before the 2008 season Felipe Massa of Ferrari was the favourite to win the title, and Ferrari did indeed win the Constructor’s Championship, however, in a thrilling finish to the season Hamilton won the title by one point.

His teammate Heikki Kovalainen finished seventh.

But wait, doesn’t the best car always win the Driver’s Championship too?

Well now I don’t know what to believe.

Put Lewis Hamilton In A Williams, Let’s See How He Goes

If Hamilton was to drive for Williams, we already know how it would go – terribly.

Why?

Because it is a poor car that has suffered at the hands of bad management and a lack of finances for several seasons now.

Fernando Alonso drove a horrible McLaren from 2015 to 2017.

Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello had a terrible Honda to drive in 2007 and 2008, and not just because it had a map of the world painted on it. The aerodynamics were poor from the start, and the car just wasn’t competitive.

Does this diminish any of these drivers achievements before or after?

Does it prove their car is what won them races?

No, what it does prove is that Formula 1 is a team sport, and that it takes everyone rowing in the right direction together to deliver a package capable of competing at the front.

If Lionel Messi signed for Newcastle they still wouldn’t win the league. Likewise if Lebron James joined the Knicks, they wouldn’t win an NBA title. The teams they would join are still terrible, but having a champion on the team would improve them and make everyone life their standards over time.

Hamilton wouldn’t win in a Williams, just like Raikkonen can’t win in an Alfa and Vettel can’t get near a podium in a Ferrari this year.

However, the one thing all these drivers have in common is the ability to wring every ounce of performance out of a bad car, and Williams would expect nothing less if they had Hamilton in their race seat.

Politics Don’t Belong in Sport

As a middle-aged white man, this one makes me cringe the most.

Middle aged white men on Facebook, telling a black man what he should and shouldn’t do, how he can protest, and how he is ‘ruining’ the sport for them.

Yikes.

The purpose of a protest is to bring issues to light, to have people questioning their attitudes and beliefs.

Telling someone how they can protest against their perceived suppression is, er, suppressing them further.

You may not agree with ‘We Race As One‘, the BLM movement or drivers taking a knee before the race, but that’s the point. An issue being highlighted is an opportunity for you to question your thinking, to reflect, and possibly make changes. There is no harm in admitting that at one time you held beliefs that you now feel are wrong.

While we’re on the topic of politics in sports and how the handful of minutes it takes to show drivers supporting the ‘End Racism’ message ruining peoples enjoyment of Formula 1, what of other sports?

The ‘Old Firm’ derby is one of the biggest rivalries in sport, and it is founded on religion and politics. People are born into a side based on which side of the clearly divisive line they fall, Catholic vs Protestant, British vs Irish Scot, Conservatism vs Socialism. People have been killed on derby days, and violence in Glasgow increases any time the two clubs play.

Politics don’t belong in sport though, so they must be fighting over something else.

In 1967 Muhammed Ali refused to serve in the US Army during the Vietnam War, uttering the famous line ‘I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong…no Vietcong ever called me nigger.’ Since then he has, rightfully, been lauded as a hero for his stance.

The Vietnam War probably wasn’t political though, was it?

Even the sport of Bandy isn’t immune to politics!

Norway declined to take part in the 1957 Bandy World Championship because the Soviet Union was invited, due to the Soviet invasion of Hungary the year before. The country made a similar protest for the 1969 Bandy World Championship because of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia that year, handing over the hosting of the 1969 event to Sweden.

Indeed Formula 1 itself is no stranger to politics in sport, with the 2011 Bahrain Grand Prix cancelled due to concerns over human rights protests led by Avaaz.

You may not agree with the stance Hamilton has taken, you may not like it, but you do have to respect that in a free society he can use his platform however he sees fit – he built it.

What To Make Of The Lewis Hamilton Fallacy

Now I’m not naïve enough to think that the words on this page will make everyone stop arguing on the internet, that will never happen.

What I do hope though is that it has loosened the grip for some people, and will help them take the blinkers off.

We’re lucky enough to be living in a time where each Sunday, one of the finest Formula 1 drivers the world has ever seen jumps into his Mercedes and puts his life on the line to win trophies, and entertain us.

I’m lucky enough to have seen this level of performance twice, once with Michael Schumacher, now with Lewis Hamilton.

Should I live long enough to see Hamilton’s records beaten, I won’t waste time arguing over who is the GOAT, who had the best car, or why this bright new talent needs to jump through made up hoops to prove themselves to the folks in the bleachers.

I’ll simply be grateful to have witnessed three drivers at the absolute peak of their powers, doing what they love.

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#Formula 1 news

[hadenodom]

On Last Week’s Incident in the Capitol

It isn’t often that I write a long, detailed opinion piece, but I feel like this time in particular is a time in which it is my patriotic duty to speak up.

Sometime late in 2019, I remember coming across an op-ed by a political commentator whose name I cannot remember.  This opinion piece highlighted the growth of extreme movements within the United States - namely AntiFa and The Proud Boys and related groups on both sides of the political spectrum - and how they’d become more bold in their violence in recent years.  It then dug back into the kind of messaging that was being boosted by Russian and other foreign intelligence agencies on social media during the 2016 election - and in this piece, the author discussed something that is often overlooked:  the social media messaging portion of Russia’s efforts during that election weren’t focused on boosting a single candidate’s campaign or even with reaching on side of the political aisle.  The messages they were boosting were, across the board, pushing rhetoric to inflame and provoke the extreme elements of both sides of our political divide and to widen that gap.  The author finished the op-ed by offering his analysis that these efforts had been effective, and that our country was in the process of being torn apart by divisive and hateful rhetoric - that Americans had been turned against Americans, and that this was going to have a destructive effect on our democracy. 

I remember reading that op-ed and being skeptical.  Sure, things had reached a fever pitch in 2016, but in 2019 it seemed like everything was calming down.  The economy was doing alright, there hadn’t been as much chaos or violence in the news, and the doomsday of Americans turning on each other over political differences seemed far-fetched.  I came away thinking that the Russians’ efforts to divide us had been in vain, and that our country was past the pains of that particularly fraught period.  We would elect someone other than Trump in 2020, and our troubles would pass.

I didn’t have 2020 vision.  I didn’t forsee the economy tanking due to a virus, streets erupting in protests over racial disparities once again, AntiFa and Anarchist elements openly looting and rioting in the unrest, and then, following a chaotic election, Trump’s supporters taking to the streets and getting violent, and then eventually descending on the capitol, fully invested in a conspiracy theory that the election had been rigged.  I didn’t forsee QAnon getting an outsize following and inserting themselves into this whole storyline.  I didn’t forsee a large portion of our society swallowing an outright lie about election fraud and refusing to believe that our democratic system worked.  I didn’t forsee any of this, and I feel like I’ve awakened in the midst of a national nightmare.  

Put simply, the situation is dire.  The potential consequences are dire.  Our nation’s population has large factions that actively believe that their opponents are *Un*-American.  The diehard Trump supporters believe that Democrats do not have the best interests of the country at heart, and most Democrats (and most Independents that aren’t leaning right) believe that Trump supporters are fascists, Nazis, traitors, and bigots.  The political rhetoric coming from both the White House and from those with large media followings has stoked these tensions and gotten them to where they are today - with a little help from Russian Social Media operations way back in 2016, which seems like a distant memory now. 

Making matters worse, these factions seem to have adopted separate realities with separate sets of facts- in one reality, the election was rigged: Covid-19 was either fake or not a serious threat: there’s a cabal of pedophiles orchestrating our government, and some guy named Q is an inside guy telling us the truth when the media won’t; Trump is either not a racist, or is only as racist as their lovely grandparents and their grandparents can’t be *that* bad.   In the other reality, the election was thoroughly secured, had a verifiable paper trail, and has been investigated to death -- and Joe Biden won by a large margin; Covid had the capacity to overwhelm hospitals and cause hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths if we didn’t take the proposed measures seriously; A Pedophile ring running our government is as patently ridiculous as the day is long; And Q is an obvious bullshitter who moves the goalposts every time his predictions and ‘insights’ fall flat; and finally, that Donald Trump is demonstrably racist and bigoted. 

Working on these separate sets of facts, both of these factions have come to believe that the other is everything wrong with their country - that their opponents (including everyday working-class people who support their opponents) are not patriots, are against what America stands for, and are worth lashing out at violently in the streets. 

These factions aren’t leaving with Trump, and they proved it in the Capitol last week.  They threatened for weeks to unleash violence on the Capitol.  They posted detailed plans about how they were going to intimidate our representatives - our elected voice in Congress - with violence, well in advance.  They repeatedly used phrases on social media before the attack, and shouted these kinds of phrases during the attack:  “We will not go quietly”  - phrases that all but indicated that they weren’t done just because pesky Democracy had denied their candidate a victory.  

What, then, is our course as a country as Trump leaves office in a couple of short weeks?  How will our leaders unite us?  Personally, after much reflection, I believe our elected leaders do have a duty to attempt to unite us - or to at least refrain from provoking these tensions - but I believe the real duty is upon all of us. 

It is incumbent upon all of us to remember that our fellow Americans are not our enemies - they are our neighbors, and most of us all share the same kinds problems and burdens in life.  We all look to some political philosophy that tries to meet these challenges and address them, and seek political leaders who espouse these pet philosophies.  If someone’s going through the same struggles as you and has a different idea of how to fix those problems for his or her country, they are not your enemy.  Sure, certain things aren’t up for good-natured debate - racism, xenophobia, and bigotry can be excluded.  But we should be able to discuss our problems as a country with our neighbors, and discuss differing ideas of how to solve them, without descending into vitriol and animosity.  We should be able to understand each other.  I feel that the only way to fix that is to make the effort to reach out and talk to those we disagree with.  I have neighbors, family members, and coworkers who hold vastly different political ideologies from me, and for too long, when I hear them discussing politics, I shy away from joining the conversation, because I feel like I’d be inviting that kind of vitriol and bickering into my life.  It can be uncomfortable and awkward to arrive at that stage of a conversation, where someone things you a radical leftist or a bigot simply because you dared to offer a slightly differing opinion from theirs.  Social media amplifies this, because that’s the kind of response it has conditioned us to expect - the kind of response that would come from anonymous shitpostsers on the other side of a keyboard.  But I’ve found that when I do, in good faith, step in and have those difficult conversations - and really have a conversation, rather then try to insert my opinion over their - when I sit down and listen to my friends, family, coworkers, or neighbors tell me about their issues and what they care about politically, and I then carefully consider their ideas and offer my own - I’ve found that experience vastly rewarding.  I’ve found myself able to identify with people who I’d otherwise completely disagree with, and I’ve even found that those conversations can end with a mutual understanding and even a slight change of heart on one side or the other, or simply a mutual respect.  It turns out, we’re all (the vast majority of us) interested in seeing our country and all of its people flourish and thrive, safe and secure, and passing on a better country to the next generation of Americans. 

Therefore I’m making an effort to get out of my shell and have those awkward conversations again.  We’ve all allowed ourselves to wallow in echo chambers, neither exposing ourselves to differing opinions or exposing our opinions to others.  This pandemic, combined with social media’s tendency to be a “build-your-own-echo-chamber” kit, has amplified this in 2020.  But in 2021, let’s all resolve to have those difficult conversations and to really listen to each other.  If you do it for no other reason, do it to save our Republic from being destroyed from within. 

I’ll finish this opinion piece with a quote you may be familiar with, one that I heard repeated on the radio recently and that has resounded infinitely with my soul in recent days: 

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature”

-- Abraham Lincoln

That is from Lincoln’s inaugural address in 1861.  We, as a country, failed to listen to Lincoln then.  The Civil War occurred, and it took our country centuries to recover.  You might argue that it was necessary to eradicate the institution of slavery and that slavery, as an institution, could not have been eradicated as quickly without the civil war.  I will not disagree.  But I will disagree on the idea that a coming civil war is necessary or beneficial - if we come to that point now, History will remember us as violent and shortsighted fools who destroyed their country, the global bastion of liberty and human rights, from the inside out.

[day0one]

Donald Trump's Far-Right Extremist Army Has Turned On Him

The monster that Trump created doesn’t need him anymore.

For months, President Donald Trump’s message to his supporters was clear: The election was being stolen from him, and they needed to fight to take it back.

So on January 6, during a Trump-promoted rally to “Stop the Steal,” thousands laid siege to the US Capitol in a stunning attempt to do just that. The fallout of their failed insurrection, which resulted in five deaths, was swift: Trump was de-platformed from nearly every major social network and, on Wednesday, impeached for a historic second time.

When he emerged on camera a short while later, tail tucked between his legs, to condemn the rioters whom he himself had incited, and to call for a peaceful transfer of power to president-elect Joe Biden, his base felt betrayed.

“So he basically just sold out the patriots who got rounded up for him,” one person wrote in a 15,000-member pro-Trump Telegram group. “Just wow.”

In online havens for MAGA extremists, including Gab, CloutHub, MeWe, Telegram, and far-right message boards such as 8kun, the tone toward Trump is shifting. HuffPost reviewed thousands of messages across these platforms and found that a growing minority of the president’s once-devout backers are now denouncing him and rejecting his recent pleas for peace. Some have called for his arrest or execution, labeling him a “traitor” and a “coward.” Alarmingly, many of those who are irate about Biden’s supposed electoral theft is still plotting to forcibly prevent him from taking office – with or without Trump’s help.

“We don’t follow you,” another Telegram user wrote, addressing Trump after the president put out his video urging calm and order. “Be quiet and get out of our way.”

It has become apparent that now – after his mass radicalization campaign of voter-fraud disinformation and conspiracy-mongering – even Trump can’t stop the dangerous delusion he’s instilled across the country or the next wave of violence it may soon bring.

Authorities are urgently warning of armed protests being planned in all 50 state capitals in the days leading up to Biden’s inauguration. Politically motivated extremists “will very likely pose the greatest domestic terrorism threats in 2021,” according to a new joint intelligence bulletin from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and US National Counterterrorism Center. The document, first obtained by Yahoo News, attributes this threat to “false narratives” that Biden’s victory “was illegitimate, or fraudulent,” and the subsequent belief that the election results “should be contested or unrecognized.”

Ahead of last week’s riots, Trump supporters openly planned their attack on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other mainstream platforms, where they shared materials including flyers titled “Operation Occupy the Capitol.” These sites have since cracked down aggressively on such behavior, causing extremists to migrate to lesser-known corners of the internet to plan their next move.

While this has hindered their ability to spread propaganda and enlist new recruits, their new social channels are subject to less scrutiny and have already exploded in reach.CloutHub, MeWe, and Telegram shot to the top of the charts of popular free apps on the App Store and Google PlayStorein the wake of the siege. Gab has also reported a massive surge in new users, with about 10,000 people signing up every hour.

In these spaces, HuffPost has observed calls to “burn down” the Capitol, launch “an armed revolt,” “pop some libtards” and “TAKE THIS COUNTRY BACK WHATEVER IT TAKES!!” Some posts are more specific:“Civil War is here. Group up locally. Take out the News stations,” one person declared. “LET’S HANG THEM ALL,” another implored. “LET’S FINISH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.”

The Boogaloo Bois, a far-right militia organizing to foment civil war, is capitalizing on the unrest to issue online a renewed call to arms. The FBI has warned specifically of potential Boogaloo violence during planned rallies at state Capitol buildings in Michigan and Minnesota on Sunday.

“There's a war coming, and cowering in your home [while] real patriots march with rifles ... will make you a traitor,” commented a member of an encrypted Boogaloo chat.

Some extremists, however, are urging each other not to attend any of the upcoming armed protests. The Proud Boys, a rabidly pro-Trump neo-fascist group that helped storm the Capitol, is cautioning its followers that such demonstrations could be “fed honeypot” events set up by authorities in order to seize attendees’ guns.

It seems that even the Proud Boys are losing faith in Trump: a Telegram channel run by the group reposted a message with Trump’s video along with the text “The Betrayal of Trumpist base by Trump himself continues.”

For four years, the president’s supporters have worshipped him like a god. His rallies have been likened to cult gatherings. Nearly half of his campaign donations came from small donors, trouncing Biden’s 39%. For most of his presidency, Trump enjoyed strong support from the Republican base, polling well above 90% with that group. But after the Capitol riots, his support is plummeting at record rates.

MAGA world has stood unwaveringly by Trump’s side through multiple allegations of sexual assault (including rape), an impeachment for abuse of power, revelations that his administration literally caged children, a historic rise in national debt, countless lies, blatant self-enrichment by him and his family members, a pandemic that has claimed close to 400,000 American lives under his leadership – nearly a fifth of all deaths worldwide – and more.

So to see his “America First” army suddenly begin to turn on him is truly remarkable. It’s happening broadly among his supporters, and even among the far-right extremist communities that have flourished online during Trump’s presidency.

Among the recent messages excoriating Trump in dedicated pro-Trump networks:“tbh I hope they hang Trump at this point”; “He deserves what’s coming to him”; “he is literally done he will die in jail”; “Seriously hoping they’ll lock him up or lynch [him]”; “Guy is the biggest cuck ever at this point”; “Can’t wait til the left locks up his bitch ass. Rot in prison.” Several people have proclaimed that at this point, Trump can only redeem himself by declaring martial law to maintain power by force.

After losing to Biden, Trump systematically attacked the allies that propped up his presidency in a desperate effort to keep his re-election fantasy alive.

He first turned his adherents against Fox News, which stoked his ire by accurately projecting Biden’s electoral victory in Arizona before a few other networks did so. Then, when some Republicans – including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell – declined to play along with his unsupported claims of mass voter fraud, Trump urged his base to turn on them. After that came Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, who refused Trump’s unconstitutional demand to reject votes in favor of Biden. (“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution,” Trump tweeted on the afternoon of January 6, provoking chants of “Hang Pence” during the riots.)

Now that Trump himself appears to finally be backing away from his “Stop the Steal” hoax, a growing faction of his supporters is through with him, too.

But after the dramatic failure of his slow-motion coup, as he counts down the days until his return to life as a private citizen, Trump presumably has more pressing concerns than maintaining his followers’ devotion. Aside from the hundreds of millions of dollars in personal debt hanging over his head, it seems increasingly likely that he could face criminal prosecution, from which he will no longer be immune. And following his latest impeachment, if the Senate convicts him, it can also vote to disqualify him from ever running for office again.

With so much at stake and no sane hope of clinging to power, it’s now in the president’s best interest for his base to avoid further violence, which could increase his chances of conviction. But the reality is that the monster Trump created doesn’t need him anymore.

“He can promise and call for peace all he likes,” one Gab user wrote. “Won’t make a blind bit of difference.”

#donald trump #politics #2020 election #extremism #capitol riot

[elmidol]

This Language We Speak (NSFW)

Three Blind Tooke Part Three Death is an Art

Read on AO3

Warnings: sex

Three Blind Tooke 

 Part Three: Death is an Art

 Chapter Forty-Seven: This Language We Speak

 The parts of ourselves we dare to love,

The compromises that we make;

Sometimes, together, we must be strong,

It’s what this pivotal death will take.

 Children were the future of the galaxy, which meant that they were to be protected. It also meant that Supreme Leader Armitage Hux would not fail to target the future generation of Force users that would openly oppose him. The children aboard the transport shuttle that Navrin piloted had been raised in a community in conflict with the ideals held by the First Order. Most were at an age where they would remember everything with a clarity, each blow dealt by Supreme Leader Hux ingrained in their memory, shaping them and turning them forever into an enemy of that redhead. Though it had split into two separate factions, the size of the First Order remained large and allowed Supreme Leader Hux to send forces your way without stretching his army thin. Having all of those children in a single vessel made for an easy target. It was immediately clear that Hux had known of the children, of the plan, and had counted on the Resistance to send aid without question.

 Essentially weaponless, the starship had not made it far before you came to believe that your life was about to come to an end...again, technically. You furrowed your brow at that unbidden thought then rearranged the features of your face. The children were already quaking in their boots. Close to half of them were human, the others varying in species enough that you learned Force sensitives had been gathering together for quite some time. Was it before or after Snoke’s death that they had arrived on the planet?

 Doesn’t matter, you thought, thumbing the control for the comm unit. The scrambler that Rose had installed wasn’t going to do much good without an ally in the immediate vicinity. What it would do was allow you to contact one of the other Resistance allies so that they could relay the message that this mission had met in failure. There would be no one coming to your rescue, no one to search for the space dust that you would become.

 The thing was, you were not yet ready to make that call. It was not stupidity that kept you from doing so. It was a tad bit of stubbornness in some respect; more than anything, it was that you had learned patience. You had learned how to make quick calculations and adapt to these sort of situations. General Leia Organa had likely selected you for this mission partly because of that acquired skillset. There was the additional factor of what you could see of Navrin’s reaction. He had not broken a sweat.

 Five ships had made their appearance. One was a small warship, the other four TIE fighters. You frowned at the small number that had been deployed. Grasped the back of the pilot’s chair and leaned forward to stare out the viewport. Behind you, the children were making noises. You had previously instructed them to knock it off, albeit with a gentle tone, when more than one had been making a comment of everyone being about to die. That sort of negativity did nothing more than stir up mass hysteria, which would be too kriffing distracting when both you and Navrin were working to find some sort of escape route that would work. The odds were not in your favor, but that did not matter.

 Navrin dodged the first barrage of fire from the TIEs, which you knew was nothing more than a mock run. You clenched your jaw, looked over your shoulder at the children to ensure they remained secured in their harnasses, and turned back to watch out the viewport. The enemy hoped to lure out your allies, anyone you would call for aid. That was a mistake some pilots made even when they had been instructed to not. Panic did the worst to one’s mind. You eyed the comm unit. Even with the scrambler, there was a chance that a message would still get intercepted.

 Things were not in your favor, but that did not mean you were hopeless. First, you decided, you wanted to try something. It would be a move from Dameron’s book, one that he would have approved of. You utilized the comm unit in a way that had not been discussed by anyone present. You requested contact with the First Order lead ship. It did not take long for the request to be approved.

 Air escaped your lungs and blood drained from your face when you saw who was in command of that warship. Captain Phasma no longer had her chrome armor. Her blonde hair was slicked back in a similar manner to how Hux had once worn his. Her face was partially concealed by a visor and mouthpiece, however it was by no means a full mask. The colors she wore were First Order colors. On her shoulder was a ysalamir. The sight of it made your stomach churn as memories pushed towards the forefront of your mind.

 Navrin did break a sweat at the sight of the woman. He hadn’t been able to use his Force abilities to sense her. The creature that was on Phasma’s shoulder further weakened the chances of this mission ending in success.

 You should have guessed that the First Order would not relinquish the ysalamir. It was an effective defense, as well as weapon, against both of its main enemies. The Resistance and the Order of Ren.

 We were never relying on the Force as a weapon for this, you said, gathering your bearings. “Phasma.” Your voice did not shake in the least. This earned a grunt of acknowledgment from the woman on the other side of the transmission. Navrin was going through his own thoughts. You could tell that he was working to formulate a plan, one that would allow you to escape. The difficult rested in making a successful hyperspace jump that was not tracked by the First Order. The success also rested in uncovering just how much the First Order knew about this mission. “You come here often?”

 Navrin flashed you a look of incredulity. He mouthed the question Are you flirting with her? This caused you to scowl at him. What the kriff sort of question was that? A legitimate one, you reasoned, now that you remembered you were using some of Dameron’s moves, his charm.

 “They should have killed you when they had the chance,” Phasma said. You took no insult. “In the end, you will be the death of him.”

 As if on cue, another ship entered the section of space to your right. A second on your left. They were fighters, these ones not requiring a nearby docking bay like the TIEs. Long range. Not Resistance, nor First Order. Navrin and you turned to look at one another again. The Order of Ren, its two ships were not moving to attack you. They acted as protector, quickly eliminating the four fighters that had previously been toying with your ship. The former Knight of Ren had whispered two names. Other Knights. You placed a hand on his shoulder.

 “Apparently death did not do you part,” Navrin said. You smirked a little at his words, at his attempt of being lighthearted in this situation with a topic that was heavy. Your marriage to Kylo Ren was complicated. Navrin, too, had a former relationship with the man as one of his Knights. “I do not know if Kylo will come after the children.”

 “We know he won’t kill them. Right now, I’ll take that. Their lives are our focus.”

 Now that the two of you were on the same page, you worked together to guesstimate the best set of coordinates to use. A change in itinerary was a necessity. If anyone grew upset over this choice, well, it was better to ask forgiveness than permission when lives were on the line. You told Navrin of a nearby planet that had served as a training ground for you in your early days with the Resistance splinter cell. Having any advantage was of the utmost importance. Kylo Ren’s Knights would pursue you. Even if they did you no physical harm, it was foolish to think that they would simply let you, in other words the children you were transporting, go.

 Your ally gave you only a moment to prepare yourself before the ship made the leap. You felt like someone had slugged you; the straps on this transport could use some improvements. Standing, you walked to each of the children in turn to check how they were doing. Most were still scared. That was no surprise. Tears. You awkwardly patted the head of more than one, at a loss for what to do or say. Life was not going to get any less complicated in a standard day. You did not want to offer false hope, but you also did not want to eliminate hope entirely.

 “I hope you kids like hiking,” Navrin said. You barked out a laugh. You liked him. His levelheadedness proved the intense training he must have undergone as a Knight of Ren. His Force abilities, whatever they were, those were not anything he could rely upon as Phasma pursued this ship. Those fragging ysalamir. “Prepare to remove the comm unit and scrambler.”

 It did not bother you that he was giving orders, nor that what he commanded of you were things that you had already planned to do. Communication between the two of you was important. You stood, instructed the children to remain in their restraints, and grabbed the weaponry that you and Navrin had stowed away. Only two of the passengers would you even consider handing a weapon to. Giving arms to children was not ideal, but neither was dying. Your gaze rested on the eldest. She was a nonhuman. They had all given their names before boarding the shuttle. Those escaped your memory right in that moment. Shaking your head, you did not pass a blaster or blade to her.

 Your fingers wormed against the connections that had locked the scrambler in place. Rose had run through this process with you multiple times to ensure you did not damage the small device. She had also instructed you how to attach it properly to the comm unit after it was removed from the ship. It did not weigh much at all. Would not hinder you during the hike, not even if you were put into a position where it became necessary to draw your weapon. Use your weapon, you corrected; you would have the blaster in your hands the entire time. Every second counted.

 Exiting hyperspace was just as jarring as breaking through the planet’s atmosphere. Teeth audibly rattled. A few of the younglings sniffled. Three began muffling sobs as their fear deepened. No one demanded nor requested that they silenced themselves. It was wise to allow the children to work through their emotions. Otherwise they would grow hysteric at a time that the enemy was in full pursuit. That would give away the position of whatever camp was set up.

 Those thoughts stirred up memories. Blaster backfiring. Shooting him to end his misery as well as to prevent your location from being fully revealed. Watching allies die on the battlefield. Cut down one by one by the red lightsaber that had always been a beacon of terror. Not firing, no opening to kill its owner, which was your mission. Give cover only when your target is down. Give cover only when the monster known as Kylo Ren, Snoke’s greatest enforcer, is not present.

 Even during the Rebellion things had been that way. Watching allies die, being a part in their deaths, ensuring there were no leaks...which sometimes meant that those sources were forever silenced.

 Children die every day in war, you thought, pain flooding through you. The entire Hosnian System. How many children? How many civilians? So many defenseless beings.

 You ran a hand back over the hilt of a blade that you had placed on a beltloop. Wracked your mind in an attempt to remember each and every one of the names of those you were guarding. Bit by bit they did come just as bit by bit the transport shuttle neared the surface of the planet. When you placed a face with the name of the nonhuman female, the Pantoran, you called to her. Aris unstrapped herself and cautiously approached; she was ready to return to her seat at a moment’s notice. This instilled a sense of relief in you as you handed her the blade. Aris made no move to unsheath it, which is something you had expected her to. Instead she gave a nod of understanding. The Pantoran made her way back to her seat without redoing the straps.

 Navrin set the ship down and cut the engine. He rose from his seat while telling the children to remain where they were for a little while longer. Both you and he worked to check the compartments that housed ration bars, electronic torches, and fluids. You grabbed up the medkit, handed it off to one of the children, a human male, who had been keeping a levelhead through everything. You distributed the supplies among the children. Both you and Navrin needed to keep yourselves available for battle.

 Before leaving the ship to venture further into nature, Navrin stripped the transport of some essentials. This would keep anyone else from finding much use while you were away. Navrin and you ensured that the children were between the two of you, those who could defend themselves more easily, such as Aris, on the outside of the group. Hiding tracks in unison with keeping the passage safe, was not a task easily accomplished with such an entourage. You found yourself not only listening to your surroundings, but looking skyward periodically at a greater frequency than you would have in other cases.

 Navrin had been placed in charge of searching for a suitable campground where he would remain with the children. When it came to hand-to-hand combat, he would be able to hold his own much more easily than you could. You would split away from them when a camp was found; you would act as an LDS to keep them safe. Should your location be given away by a missed shot, the blaster fire would alert Navrin that an enemy was in pursuit while also ensuring that said enemy came your way. You took one ration bar from the supplies. Tucked it away into a back pocket before accepting a canteen of water from one of the children. They had been instructed how to behave in a scenario like this before leaving aboard the transport shuttle. All things considered, they were doing well. Aris was taking her role as protector seriously too. She did not fidget needlessly with the weapon you had given to her.

 You doubted that she had killed anyone, however you were growing increasingly certain that the Pantoran was no stranger to a battlefield or, at the very least, death.

 One of the many supplies that had been grabbed from the ship, one thing that was slowing you down aside from the presence of children, were the blankets that would interfere with thermal scanners. That was the sort of technology the First Order would use to find you. They could then fire from the sky. Send a volley your way. Stars, they would destroy an entire planet without a care just to kill you. The Order of Ren and the First Order had a larger grasp on the galaxy than the Resistance did. They were not working together to snuff out the pockets of Resistance fighters, and yet there it was. The three way war was no less deadly. It barely took any heat off of the Resistance. And now Supreme Leader Hux was purposefully hunting Force sensitives.

 These children, you thought, wincing, and adjusted your supplies. Navrin had pointed ahead. He knew precisely where he would be setting up for the night. You nodded in acknowledgement. Directed the younglings to stay on course even as you headed off. Aris took up your former position.

 You could still hear them walking when the first ship arrived in orbit. It loomed overhead, growing closer and closer. Breaking atmosphere. The vegetation was rich on this planet, and it would cover them. You continuously told yourself this, giving reassurances that may or may not have been false. The ship was familiar, one of those that had assisted in defending the transport from Phasma. You kept checking for the second to come into view. There was no disappointment to be had. There it was.

 The distance between you and the others grew. You had selected a proper outpost, which was not much further ahead. A third ship broke atmosphere as you were adjusting yourself. You threw the blanket that you had taken with you over your body. Prepared your weapon, staring at the third ship through the scope of your blaster. Air escaped your lungs so suddenly that it felt like someone had slugged you. The third ship was also familiar. The ship that Kylo Ren had taken from you. You glowered. There was no necessity for you to wait until the cockpit was visible to know the identity of the pilot. He had his TIE Silencer, and who knew what other ships. Well...maybe Supreme Leader Hux was in possession of the Silencer. You did not know for certain. Either way, his choice to use your ship was to provoke you.

 It was difficult to tell if he was attempting to provoke you to anger, or to reach out.

 You traced the contours of your former ship. It landed between the two ships from the Knights of Ren. The pair had exited their vessels. Kylo Ren was not far behind. It was Kylo that you feared most. His ability to drag information out of you using the Force. You could only fight that off so much before he would pull the location of the children from your mind.

 One of the Knights grabbed out a pair of macrobinoculars then started to scan around their surroundings. The Supreme Leader of the Order of Ren did not wait for his knight to complete this task. Instead Kylo had already begun to walk. His feet were carrying him in your direction. You felt your stomach clench. Stared at him through your scope while remaining under the cover of the blanket. It was not going to do you any good.

 I hate the Force, you thought. A half-truth. Your hands were starting to tremble, which made the blaster shake in your grasp. You slipped your finger against the trigger. Firing would do no good. The man was too far. He was blind, but that meant nothing. He would sense it, wouldn’t he? Dameron had told you of how Jakku had gone down.

 Sweat gathered at the base of your neck. Your teeth clattered together. A swear then escaped you, and you sucked in your gut. If he could sense you so easily, did that mean that he sensed the children as well? Had it been Rey, you would have known it was due to the bond you had with her. Or the bond Kylo had with her. That made you stop breathing. Consider that Navrin and Kylo may well have some semblance of a Force bond. You maneuvered your weapon to check the locations of the two Knights of Ren. One of them, you noted, had a blaster rifle. Shooting in the Knight's direction held a higher potential of a successful hit than an attempt to harm Kylo Ren.

 Firing off a shot would alert Navrin as well as the children. Therein was the dilemma. Chewing on your bottom lip, you rested your forehead on the top of an arm. The grass beneath you had a damp smell.

 You breathed as evenly as you could in one final attempt to calm yourself. The plan that you had settled on would not have won any awards. If anything, General Organa would have chastised you for being so reckless. Luke Skywalker would have said...probably something. Who knew? Rey would not have let you go at it alone. Then again, her presence would have pleased Kylo. He still wanted her to be his second; the new Master of the Knights of Ren while he was Supreme Leader of the Order of Ren. She had been for a time. You never once forgot that, nor that together Kylo and Rey had not been a poor team.

 In an ideal galaxy, the war would end and we could all come together for peace. That temporary alliance that had existed between Kylo Ren and Rey had been significant. It had instilled in you a new sense of hope. It had helped to heal wounds you had not believed would ever heal. The alliance had allowed you to forgive Kylo Ren for some of the things he had done to you; a forgiveness that was not strictly for him. The ability to forgive those horrors, that had been for you.

 Finn would not have been pleased, you thought with a weak smile, at the actions you were taking. Rising from your cover, you worked the blanket over your body like a cloak to prevent it from being lost. Finn would have told you that you were not being wise; and you would have agreed with him, however it would not have changed your mind. The thing about Finn? He would have still come with you. Him and Rey both, the two of them backing you up just as they had the previous time you were all together against the Order of Ren.

 The weight of the blaster in your possession was far from foreign. Now that you were on a sort of battlefield, it felt like an extension of yourself. A limb that had been there, that had always been meant to be there.

 It would be foolish to believe that Kylo Ren did not wish for the Resistance’s end. He wanted Luke Skywalker, his uncle, to perish. No longer aligned with the First Order, he nevertheless upheld some of its ideology. He was actively targeting the First Order on the basis of it having a stronger arsenal. If it had been anyone else in the Resistance on this mission, they would have long since been dead or captured.

 Another foolish thing was to believe that you could defeat two of the Knights of Ren along with Kylo. It would be unwise to assume that a larger ship was not in orbit. Perhaps several.

 You paused numerous times, checked Kylo’s position in your scope. He had not stopped walking, not once. He was fast closing the distance that was between the two of you. What struck you was that you would truly be alone with him. That had not happened in...kriff, how long had it been?

 Since he had died in your arms.

 Even with the makeshift cloak, you were beginning to shiver. The adrenaline pumping through your system made your legs move more quickly. All sounds were drowned out by the pumping of your heart, your pulse in your ears so loud that for a moment you grew dizzy. The lightheadedness returned in waves. Onwards you walked. The Supreme Leader drawing closer, the Knights farther away as they made their own path. The blaster had its settings shifted over to stun although you did not remember consciously making the decision to do this. Regardless, you noticed it one of the times you glanced down. There would be no mercy should you be in a position to fire your weapon. The Knights of Ren or Kylo or maybe all three of them, they would go in for the kill.

 Such thoughts were not absent with Kylo Ren in view a mere few yards away. He was reliant upon the Force due to his injury, to having been blinded by Phasma. His blindness did not make you feel any less exposed. Kylo walked forward with purposeful strides. The lightsaber was clipped to his belt. His hand did not once touch the hilt. The man could read your mood, which was more terrifying to you than if he had simply been so confident in his abilities to deflect an attack with little effort at all.

 This would be your last chance to fire off a shot that would alert Navrin to the presence of the Knights. Although he had to know already, didn’t he? He would sense them just as they sensed him.

 Gritting your teeth together, you tossed your weapon to the ground and stopped walking. Kylo did not halt. He allowed no more than a breath’s worth of distance between your body and his. “You cannot shield them from war. No more than your parents could shield you.” He knew the truths to speak that hurt you the most. You recoiled from him, retreating several steps. His lips parted in a sigh. “Hux will not spare them. Do not fool yourself thinking that you can stash them away and end this.”

 A part of you, a rather large portion, wished that you had not disarmed yourself. Kylo Ren placed a hand on the side of your face. You surprised yourself by not flinching at his touch. The glove he wore maintained a barrier. If he touched you flesh to flesh things would be different. He leaned closer. The tip of his nose caressed yours. The whisper of your name from those lips caused your knees to give out. He surged forward, catching you, kissing you. A cruel kindness. Your hands grabbed onto his upper arms. Fingertips dug into the material of his shirt and the skin underneath. One kissed collapsed into a second. You were not pushing him away. Your mouth was submitting to his, lips parting and allowing his tongue in.

 “Others would sell them out to Hux.” Yet another painful moment of honesty. Things that you did not want to hear. Kylo was not holding his blows with you, and this dose of reality had you on your knees.The thing was, he knelt down with you. “They require proper training and protection. The Resistance has seen what Hux is capable of.”

 You were so bare, so naked. Clothes strewn around your body and him on top of you. Inside of you. You wrapped your legs around his waist, held tightly onto his shoulders, and peered put that face. Those sightless eyes were on your mouth. It took you a bit to realize that you were muttering nonsense between each thrust. He slowed his pace. The languid, lazy rolling of his hips allowing you to truly feel him inside of you. Stretching you. Kylo Ren set two fingers in your mouth, just the very tips of them, and you bit down on his glove. He would not strip himself completely, would not bare himself entirely.

 “I always lose with you,” you whispered. Above you, the man heaved a sigh. He started to withdraw. You moved faster than you had since arriving in front of him. “Wait.”

 “We exist outside of each other now.” You nodded, accepting this. Then contradicted him: sometimes...sometimes you were still Tooke. That would always be a part of you, a part of you that you were slowly accepting and coming to love for all its faults. “Is this corrosive?”

 “I won’t let you consume me.” Your mouth and his meeting. This time he did not push for you to submit. The kisses were light. Not entirely gentle, no.

 Kylo Ren began to move within you again. You buried your face in the crook of his neck. Not watching. Seeing only darkness and shadows. Feeling him, focusing on that sensation. The way your bodies worked together. The ways in which it was not a fight. This temporary, shaky alliance. This moment between husband and wife; the parts of your life that warred with one another marrying for a cause. The cause of fleeting peace. The cause of comfort despite this being a battle you had lost. A quiet declaration that he was not doing this to hurt you, that this was nothing personal.

 How was this mercy not breaking you? Could it even be called mercy?

 You shoved aside those thoughts. “Sometimes I still think of what we were versus what we could have been.” The uttered me too gripped your heart.

 He withdrew until the head of his erection skimmed your inner lips. You held your breath in anticipation. Kylo moved again, reentering you, fully sheathing himself inside of you. You felt yourself clench around him. You began to nibble on his neck after nuzzling him enough that the material he wore did not block the skin. One of his hands was one your chest. Pinching your nipple roughly, sending a sharp signal of pain that dissipated as he loosened his hold. Your stomach did a flip. You grabbed for his other hand, removed its glove. Then led the limb nearer, pressing your mouth against his wrist. You could feel his pulse under your tongue as you began to suckle it.

 “Is this the sort of galaxy you’ve been wanting?” you asked before kissing his fingertips.

 He slid two of them into your mouth and pressed down on your tongue to still it. “I cannot leave these children to Skywalker. Should Rey choose to join me again, I would trust her.” The most frustrating part was that you could not blame him, not entirely. From what he had said, what Rey had told you...Leia...Luke himself…

 “Then tell me where you’ll have them.”

 He chuckled. He grasped your right leg and hooked it over his shoulder. You threw back your head, tears of pleasure prickling at your eyes as delicious pressure began to build within you. You felt so hot. Your chest tight. You could hear him moving in and out of you, the wet sounds so obscene that they made your orgasm crash over you. Sound was distorted all around you. Kylo Ren was saying something. You did not know what. Just heard the deep sound of his voice. Then felt him cumming inside of you.

 He maneuvered you so that you were on your hands and knees. Your back against his front. His body eclipsing yours. Kylo bit at the back of your neck, albeit not in a way that caused you much pain. It sent tendrils of heat through you. Your sensitive nerves were on edge.

 “Oh…”

 Realizing what he was doing did nothing to give you the strength to say or do anything. The heel of one hand was against your pussy, his fingers smearing your cum back and forth, coating your clitoris. You jumped at the sensation.

 “If she turns, I will tell her… Or you can come.”

 “I…” He chuckled deeply. You whimpered, suddenly unsure what he had actually said. You can come or you can cum. Or was it both? His fingers sliding back and forth.

 “I am going to devour you. If you aren’t careful, you’ll enjoy it.”

 Wasn’t that what he had said to you before? Those thoughts drowned out by your second orgasm, which sapped the last of your strength. His embrace was the only thing keeping you from falling.

 “The First Order is on their way. I can sense...a void. Soon my powers will be weakened, just as before.” The children, you thought, would also be powerless. “You came to bargain with me.” A nod. “Knowing I will not give up the children.” Another nod. “What?”

 “I want you to kill Phasma.” Not that he hadn’t already been planning to. Kylo Ren hummed in thought. He turned you, helping you to find a comfortable position. You began to pull back on your clothes. “The First Order has more ships than you do. You have more ships than the Resistance does. You could easily pick us off, but you aren’t a fool. So kill Phasma. You’re taking these children from me… Phasma would kill them sooner than Hux would. If he believed he could make use of them, he would use Force sensitives. It’s Phasma who’s most dangerous.”

 “I will send the Resistance proof of her death...and the children will remain unharmed.”

 This was not a battle that you could have won. Yet you had altered your mission in some respects. Keep the children alive...but leave them with Kylo Ren. They were old enough, some of them, to have seen the actions of the First Order and Order of Ren. There was a chance they would rebel against the Supreme Leader…

 “Let me see them off.” He said your name, a warning. “I want them to live, Kylo. Please. I don’t want them to fight you… I mean… I do. But…”

 “I know.” You nodded, looking at his face and waiting. Kylo pulled a comm device out, contacting the two Knights that he had brought with him. “Disarm. Prisoners only. No deaths.” You twisted to stare in the direction that Navrin was hiding with the children. “I knew you would fight if I did not come.”

 This was a scenario that Navrin and you had briefly discussed. Should you fail to give a signal and the Knights show up, he would retaliate only. Otherwise it was a surrender. The lives of the children, that was what the pair of you had signed on to protect.

 “You trained to kill me here.” You returned your attention to him, eyes running up and down his body. “You chose this location for a reason… Oh.” He snorted. “Kill Phasma.” His lips twisted into a cruel smirk. “I will contact my ship. The children will not be harmed in this death trap. Are you ready to play the role of bait?”

 “Yes.”

#kylo ren x reader #kylo x reader #kylo ren imagine #kylo ren smut #three blind tooke #elmidolfanfic #death is an art

[kyndaris]

Stick it to the Man!

Confession time: I have always been a bit of a perfectionist. This could not be truer when I play video games. So, when I started The Outer Worlds, I had to restart my first hour twice because I was unhappy with my choices and lack of efficiency when it came to taking down the first few marauders. Just like the corporations that ruled the Halycon region with a velvet fist, I wanted to be economical in my actions while also receiving maximum reward. Or perhaps, the reason why I found my first session with the game so unsatisfying was due to the constant disruptions from my mother as she heavily sighed mere metres away as she struggled to navigate, what felt to me, as a very simple website.

Most reviews of The Outer Worlds that I’ve read paint it as a Fallout game set in space. It’s an easy way to describe much of the game mechanics, but it doesn’t encapsulate the entirety of what Obsidian has created. True, much of the advertising also highlighted the fact that this new IP was spawned from the original creators of the Fallout series. And if we’re going to stick to such comparisons, it also didn’t hurt that Fallout 76′s rough launch last year, summarily made worse by introducing premium features, served as the perfect counterpoint on how not to make a game.

As for me, I knew from the very moment that The Outer Worlds was announced that I would be picking the game up on day one. The colourful worlds and the familiar gameplay had me immediately sold. By the time I had created my character, defrosted from hibernation and crash landed near the outskirts of Edgewater, I was eager to see what I could to better the colony. I will admit, that I did this with great vigour, swiftly dethroning the capitalist overlords and ensuring that the people working the Saltuna cannery could enjoy their lives. In order to do this, I negotiated with both factions, allowing them to come to a compromise that involved Reed voluntarily stepping down and Adelaide taking command. Yet, as I reflect on my actions, it was not a very black or white choice to make. Rather than leaning on more villainous tropes, both leaders were very human. I, personally, quite liked Reed, even though I could not agree with his company policies.Whereas Adelaide was a little rough and unbending in her demands.

Things did not become any easier on Monarch, though I like to think that I chose the lesser of two evils by assisting Zora take over the Iconoclasts and subtly nudging her into an alliance with Monarch Stellar Industries. Sanjar, in particular was a man full of dreams of reform. Though they did not rock the proverbial boat as much as Graham’s more radical ideals, I hoped that they would serve as the foundation for a better relationship between employer and employee.

While The Outer Worlds was able to provide a little more critical thinking into the choices we made and breathe life into the characters, it was clear from the very start that the game was focused on spreading an anti-capitalist, anti-corporate message. That is not to say, though, that civilisation ought to descend into anarchy. As with all good things, the colony of Halycon needs balance if it wishes to survive. This was best achieved, I found with many of my party members that tempered some of my initial impressions of each faction - providing their own personal stories. Parvati, in particular, was instrumental in talking me down from swallowing Adelaide’s side of things. She made me think about the lives of the people living in the corporate town of Edgewater as well as the ensuing disaster that would happen if I routed their power away.

And when I had Nyoka and Felix in my party, the hunter was quick to point out that living without security or rules would be difficult if not downright dangerous to the freedom fighter. Chaos would not have solved the myriad of issues bogging down the colony, but the large wealth gap also meant a disparity in the quality of people’s lives. Even members of the Board chafed at the restrictions that were imposed by the unnecessary bureaucratic red tape that stopped them from taking action.

In saying that, The Outer Worlds did remain fairly tame in some of its characterisations. The first character we meet: Phineas Welles, while wanted by the Board, is a guilt-ridden man that wishes to atone for his actions. Throughout my first ten hours or so with the game, I kept hoping that he unveil himself as a secret villain - unfreezing us in order to dismantle the order of the colony. This, to my dismay, never eventuated and he proved to be the good friendly scientist fellow in most such stories, if a little paranoid.

And while the last mission of the game titled Brave New World felt like an allusion to Aldous Huxley’s novel (which I recently read this year), there were clear differences. Halycon had yet to condition their citizens into different ranks such as Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons. And while those that were rich lived in the lap of luxury, the poor were still in potential danger of disease and malnutrition. This was not so in the novel where most citizens were immunised from most diseases and only the wild savages - the last remnants of society - would fall prey.

Still, The Outer Worlds and Huxley’s novel were able to paint a bleak picture of consumerism gone wrong. Of the meek being oppressed or, in the actual novel, being conditioned to accept their lot in life.

The Outer Worlds while pushing some boundaries and providing some much needed social commentary also plays it a little safe with its depiction of the colony. Despite being set in the twenty-third century, many of the things that the people of Halycon are enduring are reminiscent of our own lives on Earth. And while I couldn’t romance my crew members, I still thought it oddly precious that I could cheer so many of the other characters on, particularly Parvati, in their own lives. Vicar Max and his quest for answers. Ellie and her rigid belief to not trust anyone. SAM with its desire to cleanse the world with acid. Nyoka accepting the death of her friends and looking forward to the future instead of dwelling in the past. And Parvati’s love for Captain Junlei of the Groundbreaker.

I very much enjoyed the time I spent with The Outer Worlds (after the first rocky hour or two). But what gave it so much life and energy were the characters and friends I made (as well as helped) along the way. It was touching to see everyone pulling together to aid in my prison break of Doctor Phineas Welles and should Obsidian ever make a sequel, I, for one, would gladly dive right back in.

For now, though, I wish any and all readers a Merry Christmas/ Happy Holidays.

#the outer worlds #video games

[novelconcepts]

My ideal Star Wars movie, as decided yesterday while crawling toward five o’clock at work:

I’ll be casting a huge handful of my faves. I’m sure they’ll all be very on board just as soon as they’ve heard my pitch. It’s going to be a gorgeous adventure.

So we’ve got Our Heroes: a stars-in-her-eyes Jedi history buff, played by the glorious Tessa Thompson, and her childhood best friend—mouthy and jaded and utterly uninterested in hokey religions Gina Rodriguez. They’ve never been off-planet, though Gina spends most of her time inspecting star charts for The Inevitable Day when she’s finally able to kick the giant-cow-alien herding lifestyle for a world of Wonder and Glory. Tessa is on board for the adventure of a lifetime, just so long as she’s allowed to visit all the places Jedi once roamed (old temples, battlegrounds, Places Luke Skywalker Once Sneezed—the whole drill).

Everything changes when the fire nation attacks when Tessa’s brother (played by Michael B. Jordan)—who has recently gone off-world for the first time to join the Honor Guard of the Galaxy (the new-age rebel faction)—gets a missive out requesting aid. They’ve been trapped! They need a calvary! Their home planet was the only one within messaging range! Who cares, details, all you need is a spark, etc.

Tessa easily convinces Gina it’s time to go, with one small problem—we lack a ship! Every first Star Wars needs a good cantina sequence, so off we go to find the one and only bar on this Planet of Chill Shepherds, where we will meet our fabulous crew of Space Pirates, starring:

Lupine Nyong’o as the charming Force-sensitive captain, because I am personally insulted they put her in a Star Wars movie and didn’t let us see her face

Kristen Stewart as the James Dean fighter pilot, because let’s be honest, Kristen Stewart isn’t playing enough characters that let her wear leather jackets, drop one-liners, and flirt with ladies

Ellen Page as the scrappy weapons specialist with the softest of squishy hearts, who has been low-key in love with Kristen since they picked her out of a bar brawl on a planet far far away (but as they’re Too Close, would never admit it)

Off we go on a glorious rescue mission (act 1) culminating in coming Face to Face with the resident Big Bad of the new Empire-figure—Emma Thompson, who is granted the most luxurious cloak she could possibly desire and full rights to her own makeup (does she want to be aristocratic? Darth Maul scary? wear a Chewbacca mask? Emma Thompson gets what Emma Thompson wants). She is, at all times, flanked by her Left Hand (a terrifyingly speedy lightsaber master played by Anna Kendrick, because my life is incomplete without Anna Kendrick getting solid fight scenes for no reason at all) and her Right Hand (Keira Knightley, an expert tactician who has been nursing Secret Second Thoughts about this whole ruling the galaxy situation for a hot minute now).

A brief battle ensues, with Tessa narrowly escaping a Harrowing Attack thanks to the Force (she will be VERY excited about this later, which will annoy Gina to no end, and delight the shit out of Lupita). They manage to reach the Honor Guard team, which currently consists of Michael (insert adorable sibling reunion here), Gemma Chan, and Jamie Chung. Madcap spaceship escape takes place, and everyone rejoices until—drumroll—Nyong’o discovers A STOWAWAY in the form of Knightley.

Important features for the rest of the series:

Keira has a Zuko-esque Road to Redemption arc, which is far more palatable as A) they do not give her an easy time of it, and B) she hasn’t actually murdered anyone or been jazzed about helping Emma all this time (“Keira! I am your MOTHER!” can come at the end of film 1 or in film 2, depending on highest emotional heartstring likelihood—perhaps not a surprise so much as Pure Rage on Emma’s part)

After an appropriate amount of groveling/distrust/helping save their lives, she sloooowly breaks down Tessa’s barriers. A love story for the ages, because there’s no, like…rampant manipulation and abuse.

Gina finds herself falling for Badass Captain Lupita, because who wouldn’t, but also UGH SHE’S INTO THIS FORCE SHIT HAVEN’T I ALREADY SUFFERED ENOUGH

Ellen and Kristen slow-burn full of longing looks and pangs of jealousy as Kristen is learning not to flirt with everyone who crosses her path. Bonus points for a Steamy Patch-Up sequence after Ellen is injured saving all their asses somehow (probably in film 2).

We all end up back on Shepherd planet for a brief refuel, including a pleasant dinner with Gina’s uncle (Lin Manuel Miranda) and his husband (Manny Jacinto)—until UH OH the Baddies are setting off our Invisible Alien-Cow-Keeping Fence Alarms, you have to all go NOW (there’s a lovely underground tunnel for just such an escape because….black-market cow feed reasons)

A terribly brief, but utterly delightful sequence in which Anna Kendrick With The Loosest Hold On Her Temper Imaginable contends with Lin and Manny’s neighbor, Chris Evans, going out of his way to be sweet as pie and as distracting as humanly possible. If any other straight white boys exist in this trilogy, I have not yet cast them, but I suspect they will largely get to be aliens and droids, because…it’s their turn.

Thandie Newton as the Head of the Honor Guard, because god-dammit, she did not get enough screen-time in Solo.

Many many badass battles, one of the Most Hardcore of which is Ellen Page v. Anna Kendrick (Smol v. Smol, lightsaber duel—have not decided who wins or at what point, but this is likely what triggers the Steamy Patch-Up scene.

Much work left to do on fleshing out, and a whole host of casting to determine (I love a good callback, so we may perchance see Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, and Daisy Ridley back for a cameo; also would love to get Mahershala Ali in as perhaps Thandie’s own Right-Hand badass), but I think we have a really promising start to a film series that would infuriate those who believe Women Ruined Star Wars, and garner a stupid amount of money from everyone else. I’ll be sure to keep the world posted on Disney’s incoming offer.

#star wars #fancast #i sometimes just really like to play a game called How Gay and Lovely Can I Make This #i think i really won here

[funeralfeastanon]

I would like to expand the Durarara and Baccano ask game to the rest of the questions :D

Can do, anon. ;)

Ask game is here. Questions 1, 3, 7 and 17 have already been answered here. Spoiler warning as usual.

2 - My favourite aspect of the story.

This goes for both Durarara!! and Baccano!: I appreciate the complete lack of a “main character.” Instead we have all these intertwining stories of multiple people who are each their own “main character” and are often not fully aware of how important they or everyone else are in the grand scheme of things. To spice things up, the characters have varied personalities, moral codes, motives and goals that clash with each other. It’s chaos and I love it.

The anime adaptation of Baccano! does it better in my opinion though, since it decides to have several loosely connected arcs, all with their own ensemble cast and taking place in different years, take place all at once and somehow makes it work as a coherent whole.

4 - My favourite male character.

Izaya Orihara from Durarara!! and Claire Stanfield from Baccano!, for fairly similiar reasons. Namely, they are both crazy bastards having way too much fun doing what they do best - manipulating the various people and factions in Ikebukuro for kicks and brutally murdering two groups of train hijackers respectively.

Their roles in their respective stories are interesting too, where Izaya is the closest thing Durarara!! has to a main villain/mastermind (for awhile) but Claire is a “hero” protecting his train.

5 - My favourite female character.

Celty Sturluson from Durarara!! and Rachel from Baccano!.

I was intrigued by the Headless Rider from the beginning, but what I didn’t expect was for her to be one of the few fairly sane, well adjusted and genuinely heroic people in Ikebukuro. When an immortal fae who literally lost her own head looks normal in comparison, you know your city district is a madhouse.

As for Rachel, she is also one of the more normal people in the story, as a resourceful informant who just wants to hitch a ride and stay out of trouble, but damn, does she have nerves of titanium, calmly coming to the hostages’ rescue while unarmed. It also takes a special kind of person to befriend Claire Stanfield.

6 - My favourite villain.

Uh. I already used Izaya, so I guess I’ll give some love to Mikado Ryuugamine and his slow descent into darkness. Who would’ve though the supposedly normal highschooler would set someone on fire one day?

For Baccano!, the award goes to Ladd Russo, yet another complete lunatic enjoying himself way too much.

8 - A character I think needs more love.

Hm, well I already gave some love to Rachel, so… Eve Genoard. It takes guts for a little girl to try to shoot a mafioso for killing her brother. Yeah, her brother was a terrible person and she didn’t end up shooting the guy herself, but still.

For Durarara!!, Tom Tanaka deserves recognition for being one of the other sane people in Ikebukuro and a fantastic friend to Shizuo.

9 - What I ship.

I ship the canon Baccano! pairings mostly. However, I’m a Durarara!! multishipper, though not really invested in any of them, so these are the things I lowkey ship: Celty/Shinra, Shinra/Izaya, Izaya/Shizuo, Izaya/Namie, Shizuo/Vorona, Masaomi/Mikado/Anri and Erika/Walker.

10 - My favourite canon relationships (romantic, familial, platonic, antagonistic, etc).

Celty and Shinra are the healthiest couple in Durarara!! and considering Shinra is a mad scientist in love with a headless woman since childhood, that’s saying something!

My other favourite relationships all involve Shizuo Heiwajima, ha ha. He really does try his best to be a good brother to Kasuka even if his temper and Kasuka’s emotionlessness get in the way, his friendship with Celty is adorable and his deep hatred of Izaya and general simple-mindedness leaving him immune to his mindgames, driving Izaya up a wall in turn, is very entertaining.

Baccano! has the iconic couple in Isaac and Miria, who are so attached at the hip that it’s impossible to think about them seperately and who share one big heart and one tiny braincell. Of the others, I like Firo and Maiza’s almost father-son relationship, the weird friendship Rachel has with Claire and Claire and Ladd trying to out-crazy eachother never gets old.

11 - My favourite group/faction.

I love the concept of the Dollars in Durarara!!, as a gang made up of (mostly) anonymous people from all over Ikebukuro ready to act on requests given via cellphone messages in a surprisingly coordinated manner, they have the potential to be very dangerous. Hopefully its more morally upstanding members can stop Mikado from doing anything too bad.

As for Baccano!, I love Jaccuzi and his friendly neighbourhood gangsters, they might have tried to rob a train but dammit, they will protect it from the other really bad hijakers.

12 - Most iconic scene.

Durarara!!: Shizuo hurling a vending machine at Izaya.

Baccano!: Isaac and Miria trying to steal a museum by stealing its door, while posing for the security cameras in mummy disguises. That or the scene where Firo’s finger gets cut off only to immediately regenerate.

13 - My favourite scene.

Durarara!!: I think I mentioned it already, but the scene where Mikado reveals himself as the leader of the Dollars and the faceless gray masses bloom in colour as members.

Baccano!: it’s a very unimportant scene in the grand scheme of things, but Firo taking down several men without dropping his hat never fails to make me smile.

14 - My favourite story arc (for serialised works) or favourite act (for self-contained works).

I’m having difficulty dividing Durarara!! into distinct arcs but overall I enjoyed the events shown in the first season the most. Regarding Baccano!, my favourite is the Flying Pussyfoot/Trainjacking segment. I mean, you have a violent cult trying to get their leader out of prison, a group of psychos looking for a massacre, a street gang and a pair of incompetent loony thieves all independently deciding to target the same train. Which happens to have an assassin, an informant and several immortals on board. Watch the fireworks!

15 - My favourite plot twist.

Durarara!!: I already used “Mikado is the Dollars leader” for favourite scene, so I guess “Masaomi is the Yellow Scarves leader” comes in here.

Baccano!: the Rail Tracer being revealed as the random and supposedly killed conductor who is actually Claire Stanfield the assassin. The execution was perfect.

16 - What I’d like to or would have liked to see happen.

Oh man, I really need to catch up on both series, especially Baccano! since I didn’t read past what was already covered in the anime. So, no answer for this one because for all I know what I want to happen already happened lol.

#the funeral ramblings #asks #ask games #durarara #baccano #anime #thanks for playing (again?) anon!

[dreamsatdusk]

Chapter 12 Reread

Discussion welcome if you are so inclined!

If you don't want to see these reread posts showing up, blacklist this tag: Dreams reads Ninefox Gambit

There's a lot going on in this one.  Vahenz half figures it all out. Jedao shows a shift from using Cheris as a tool in his plan, to trying to truly enroll her in it.

Shuos infiltrators = good ones - can fake Kel imprinted body language.

So apparently where fledge-null happens calendrical zone-wise, the state might have chinks.  Presumably because formation instinct is an exotic.

'But she could not help but comfort herself with the idea that her people would come for her if she was brave enough, if she endured enough, if she proved herself worthy of the Kel name.'

Chilling.  Formation instinct is SO creepy.  And so sad.

The fox general. I love it.

Something else that is sad is that the Fortress is trying to use voting to get a measure of what everyone thinks about courses of action, but we learn their heresy is backed by the Hafn who perpetuate their own horrors; they are no antidote to the hexarchate.

You know what's fantastic?  Vahenz figures it out:  what Jedao's up to.  In this message to Zai, she lays out something we come to learn has a lot of touch-points with the truth.  His work with the Kel was basically a self-assigned deep cover mission.  He was setting things up for a long time, that ultimately culminated in Hellspin (though not because the massacre was the actual point).  She realizes that the Nirai can't figure out what made him go crazy because he isn't crazy.  Though there I'd argue that he's not crazy in the way almost everyone means when they refer to him being crazy.  He's gained immortality to execute whatever his plan is.

She just doesn't know WHY.  And I think that at least part of that can be laid at the feet of the fact that Vahenz isn't that far afield from the hexarchate in a way.  She's an agent of the Hafn and we see pretty quickly in Raven Stratagem that they may have different tech, but they may not be less brutal than the hexarchate.  Once things break down in the Fortress, Vahenz assassinates Zai immediately.  It's the pragmatic thing for her.  The idea of Jedao doing what he did, for the reasons he did...Vahenz is smart, but I don't think she's on that wavelength at all.

Note about Hellspin:  so in addition to the threshold winnowers and all that, Vahenz adds on 'ambushes, computer systems going haywire, contradictory orders, weapons failing' to what occurred.

Slates.

'Even so, she knew that she didn't understand numbers, that a number over a million was a series of scratched lines and curves.'

The above line serves two purposes I think: it's not just about Cheris struggling to grasp what the Hellspin massacre meant, but the subtext here to me is that she's already thought numerous points - but in passing, not deeply - about other atrocities, ones committed at the behest of the hexarchate.  The small silver box, dealing death to worlds.  The Kel, ordered in to die again and again, in awful ways.  More and more of that, in service to maintaining the calendar.  It just is how it is though and the numbers don't break through.  Now, she's thinking about it.

It also strikes me that the horrors she reads about happening to the Lanterners (and likely heptarchate soldiers) are akin to what we see going on on the Fortress of Scattered Needles as the 'siege' continues.  Because it's really not that different.  And she's beginning to realize that.

"They had tried using children and invalids as shields before, and they had learned from the second battle that that wouldn't deter me."

...except Cheris later finds out that it did.  He tried to get around attacking him, but his commanding officer wouldn't go for it and to rebel would have trashed his bigger plan.

Chapter is good for more info about the Lanterners in general.

During Jedao's lifetime, the factions were still quarreling over Doctrine and which faction's tech would be kept functional under the decided calendar.  

Jedao learning about people by way of ordinary games like gambling, board games, and dueling.

Jedao's been manipulating Cheris in service to his overarching plan, but in this chapter we see him to try to get her to think about it: why did he do what he did.  The usual theories that are trotted about it don't fundamentally make sense if you look closer.  He wants her to think about that.  And she also is thinking about the deaths of the Lanterners, starting to think around the edges about how they're not just 'heretics', not just 'the enemy', but people, people who suffered.

"I would have liked to be an instructor, I even put in the request, but they wanted me in the field."

Ouch:(  But in a way, he's gotten to be one in Ninefox Gambit:  he's trying to teach Cheris, in more than just strategy.

'Unexpectedly, he said, "A million people dead four centuries before you were born, and you care about them.  It speaks well of you, even if it doesn't speak well of me."'

#Machineries of Empire #Machineries of Empire Meta #Ninefox Gambit #Dreams reads Ninefox Gambit #Shuos Jedao #Jedao #This one was big on the feels for me