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jq37 · 3 years

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The Report Card – Fantasy High: The Seven Ep 6

Bitches Be Shopping

What is up y’all. A little late but let’s jump in with episode six of The Seven where our girls have just received a LOT of information, Sam most of all who got put into a little vision coma that she’s just now waking up from.

She explains the vision to her friends (as she interprets it, the other Eidolons didn’t die, just became part of the natural forces of the world) and then the bear that Penny made on a whim last episode (who is Russian, named Koda, and somehow a trained circus bear) gets into a fight with Katja with their friends buffing the two to make things more interesting because these are still idiot teens, life or death situation or no. Yelle decides to be the adult and tells them to knock it off and get back on mission.

That means Katja needs to call her dad since he’s knows the guy who’s the best lead to getting to TK ( Talcidimir Tallbreeze who I’ll call Tal). She actually manages to get her dad this time who is inside a giant snake on his hell mission. Katja asks what he knows about TK and he says she’s a sorcerer but also has a spell book so maybe she’s multiclassed. Sam and Ant desperately want to know if they boned and Katja absolutely is not interested in that knowledge. Yelle decides to just ask which makes her dad a little annoyed since he’s kind of in the middle of something (literally) and that annoys Ant, Ost, and Sam who--respectively, accuse him of gaslighting Kat, cast Command on him, and cast Bane on him to aid the Command spell.

Mr. Cleaver fails the save and Ost commands him to tell Katja the truth. He admits that he did hook up with TK and he regrets it (note: it wasn’t like he cheated. It was just a casual hookup that wasn’t fulfilling it seems). Ost demands he apologize for not being there for Kat and Sam berates him for being at the top of the world and not lifting up his daughter too. For his part, Kat’s dad seems genuinely apologetic and promises to do better.

“You don’t need to be the best father, you just need to be there,” Katja says, making her dad break down crying.

Yelle, who has no daddy issues, is a bit less aggro and says that everyone makes mistakes and he can start making it up right now by helping with the Tal situation. She also gives them the tip that a cold spell will probably get them out of the snake lickety split. She is on the money with the snake tip and Mr. Cleaver gets them all invites to a masquerade ball Tal is hosting. It’s being held on the Rumbosa which is this city-sized leisure ship. Mr. Cleaver says he’ll be back as soon as he can and, in the meantime, she should take care of her friends, “even the first 2 that were terrifying to me.”

The girls give Katja the axe they took as a birthday present (it was apparently her birthday the day before which Rekha just decided and Ost/Izzy refuses to accept without a fight because she *knows* Kat’s bday) which is identified as the Axe of Sundering (it can shatter objects, people, and sometimes concepts like halving movement). The two unnamed potions Yelle found are also ID’d as a Potion of Fly and a Potion of Gaseous Form. She distributes the Heath Potions to people without heals. Ant’s new arrows bypass some resistances and let her treat whatever she hits with the first one like it’s her favored enemy.

According to their invites, the ship they need is docking in the city of Gravalvia soon (a very old city in the Baronies) so they need to figure out a plan. They have some downtime, during which:

Zelda tries to hype up the team.

Zelda tries to see if Ost is OK wrt dad stuff and Ost has a Full Breakdown after badly pretending she’s fine.

While Zelda, Ost, and Penny are being Emotional and Sam is trying to literally cool them down with her powers, Ant and Yelle keep watch and experience emotional stability as the Adults Of The Party

Anyway, after a night of rest, they head to the golden city of Gravalvia which is this very cool, very pretty city with mosaics and fountains and I assume columns. They get there and there’s a dramatic fight happening in the square which is halted when one of the fighters realizes that the country he’s fighting for doesn’t exist anymore. And now, it’s time for what we’ve all been waiting for. Shopping Montage! Let’s go girl by girl.

Katja and Ost

Kat asks for help from Ost with getting fancy for this gala since she’s never really done anything dressy before (and she had no mom to help--Kaaaat) and Ost is happy to oblige, dressing them both like “Jersey trash”. Kat, of course, still wears her Khakis underneath.

Antiope

Ant decides to get a vibe for what people here wear and picks something that will blend in but be forgettable so she can be stealthy. Classy blue dress and mask.

Penny

Penny...OK, I absolutely cannot describe what happens here in any way that will do justice to the scene. I am going to tell you what matters to the plot. You have to watch this yourself if you want to see the entire table have a collective breakdown.

While looking for a costume, Penny runs into a halfling who is a member of the Society of Shadows--Laertes. He wants to know why she hasn’t responded to their invitation yet. She says she’s really eager to join, she just wasn’t sure how to respond (and also, she’s kind of in the middle of something). He says she can join by just messaging back and then her loved ones just have to sign waivers to have their memories wiped of her and she’s good to go. Say what now? asks Penny. She didn’t realize this was like a full Men in Black situation.

He says it’s ultimately her decision and leaves.

Of course, I left out the parts where he ate a handful of Candy Heart’s remains, became violently ill, almost projectile vomited into Penny’s mouth, and she tried to kiss him despite him being a full adult. It’s A Lot, ok?

Also, we don’t find out until later but Penny picks a sexy duck costume for reasons that make more sense if you watch the scene but not *much* more sense. She also burns one of the healing potions on this dude as he is bar

Danielle

Danielle tries to get some info on the guests at the party and gets the names Lawrence LaDuc, Princess Autumn, and Duston who is the playboy cousin of Tal. She also hears some dude saying some colonize and plunder the earth BS and casts Heat Metal on him, fully mercing the dude. Ice cold.

She tries to play it off like it’s the Curse of the Forest and when that doesn’t work and people start coming for her, she wildshapes into a dragon wyrmling and starts roasting people, killing 1 and dropping 2 to zero.

Unfortunately, one of her party members is a known dragon hater and uses her new arrows to snipe her right out of the sky. Ant is horrified once she realizes what she’s done but Yelle says it’s all good. It’s NOT all good, says Ant, I STABBED YOU. You’re allowed to be mad! Yelle says she’s just really good at compartmentalizing but what Ant’s getting here is that Yelle doesn’t really believe that her feelings matter which echo the fears of her moms.

Sam

Sam uses a combination of Mantle of Inspiration, glamour magic, performance, and good old flirting to get herself some killer clothes and also start a spontaneous musical number Giselle style.

Brennan says she looks resplendent and, honestly, when does she not?

They reconvene, Zelda in a classic hoop skirt. Yelle realizes she never got a costume and just whips out a Met Gala level, autumn themed, Queen Mab-esque costume with Druidcraft which she could have done this whole time so I guess that’s why she was cool spending her shopping time getting gossip and playing Poison Ivy.

They get to the ship and the way this works, everyone has to make an entrance and the really rich people (including Tal) are on a dais up top watching everyone come in. They all have to give fake names for the night since it’s a masquerade and they have to do Performance or Persuasion checks to see how impressive they look going in.

Before they go in, they plan a little. Penny wants to look for TK. Sam wants to find Dunston. Ost wants to talk to the bouncers. Yelle wants to see if there are plants she can manipulate (there are btw) and for any exits.

A quick rundown of how these all go:

Katja aka Mere (which means both mom and horse): 16

Ant aka Midnight Huntress: 18

Penny aka Penny Duckstone: 13

Zelda aka Madame Goodparty: 2 (Poor Zelda)

Sam aka Songbird: 22 (but she takes a hit to entrance save Zelda from totally flaming out)

Ost aka Stanley Gucci: 13

And Danielle, who never hogs the spotlight and is embarrassed to admit that maybe she does want to be the center of attention for once in her life with a Natural 20, gets a 29, absolutely bringing down the house as Empress Anima. As she walks forward she feels a voice say to her, “You got this. I love the name. You wear it well.”

Tal seems very impressed by her and a lady in a rabbit mask (Coeliabranca who I’ll call Coel if she comes up more) comes down to bring her up to the top with the high rollers. As she leaves, Sam casts Fly on her, just in case and holds the Concentration.

Ost and Kat go talk to the bouncers and Kat decides to pretend to be her mom to get access to the area Yelle is. She rolls low and is told, “Hey, aren’t you already up there?” Kat is like, fuck and Ost saves her by using her charm earrings to get an entourage of guards who will let them through and do what she says. Once up there, Kat doesn’t see her mom which I can imagine she has mixed feelings about.

Sam finds Dunston who is talking about Fantasy Bitcoin and seems like a real “Step on me mommy” type you know? Like, I feel like he’s into findom. Anyway, Sam charms him and his hangers on and learns about a procedure called a Phlebectomy that involves something going into their nose and then they feel better. Sam is rightfully horrified because, as I said, she is Most Likely To Survive A Horror Movie and can sense BS when she sees is. It’s apparently all the rage with the rich people here which is, como de dice, concerning seeing as they’re surrounded by them but we’ll get to that. Sam takes advantage of Dunston’s proclivities and gets him alone, knocks him out, steals him clothes, and pretends to be him (a *very* good scene by Sephie).

Penny sees a gnome gnome boy (Lysander Higgins) shining shoes and finds out from him that there is a copper earth genasi woman here. In a very Cinderella move, she asks what shoes she was wearing. Then, she makes out with him which like, sure. At least it’s not a grown adult man this time. Before she gets her kisses in, she does tell the group what she learned.

Up with the rich people, Yelle is introduced to Tal’s friend who is into Eidolons because of the name she chose. Between the shoes and her knowledge, they confirm that it’s TK! Yelle asks what she knows about Eidolons and she says that 7 is a very powerful number.

We cut to Ant who is patrolling the room as the sun sets and she suddenly hears a little beeping. It’s coming from a small crystal that was in Preston’s shirt (which she still has on her because???). Guests start dripping goo from their noses and transforming into monsters. Ant realizes that some kind of spell is happening triggered by midnight and this beeping. Hope these costumes are battle ready cause it’s fight time baybee!

Superlatives

Danielle: Most Likely to Be on The News for Murdering Fantasy Jeff Bezos

I cannot imagine what was running through Yelle’s head when she decided that, having just rolled into a foreign country, her next move was to start using lethal force on anti-environmentalist colonizing capitalists. Like, she’s not *wrong* per se but she is wild--in all senses of the word.

Random Thoughts

Kat keeps saying yesterday was her birthday which Ost/Izzy (and the rest of the group to a less vocal degree) are simply not having because maybe her dad would forget her birthday but her girls absolutely would not.

“You’re great because you stayed,” is the other killshot Kat line to her dad.

At a certain point Sam says, “This is so unhealthy,” to I think Yelle and like, if SAM is telling you your coping mechanisms are unhealthy, get thee to therapy.

OK, so someone, presumably Anima’s spirit, talks to Yelle as she makes her grand entrance which seems like info they should get to Talura ASAP, right? Cause that’s evidence they’re not dead-dead, just changed in form. But also Anima, girl. Don’t talk to Yelle. Talk to your rampaging sister!

"That's my secret, I stay in initiative."

Just a process note, notes are taken for the next ep and I am working on getting that recap up ASAP. As a battle ep, it will be in the abbreviated style that I did for last battle ep.

In this episode, Penny rolls a Nat 1 (which she rerolls) and one of Brennan’s NPCs rolls a Nat 1. Ant rolls 2 Nat 20s, Yelle rolls 1, and Brennan says that one of his NPCs gets a 20 which sweeps him entirely into Sam’s dance number.

#dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #the seven #the seven spoilers

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the-writing-mill · 3 years

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assassin au with the "making a deal to save the other" and jangobi?

Okay, this one’s actually even a bit longer than the other one, so it’s going under a read more lol

Jango is a merc/bounty hunter/assassin guy, Obi-Wan is an information broker with an editing cover job and a “rental property” to embezzle money

These two have never met, and have no idea about each other’s identities beyond knowing their underground reputations, until Jango is hired to assassinate Obi-Wan’s little brother, Anakin

Obi-Wan is visiting Anakin for the weekend on the day of the planned assassination, and notices things are a little off, setting off all of his learned criminal world/underground alarms

(Anakin, btw, is a part time mechanic, part time engineering student. Obi-Wan has very carefully kept the boy out of his world since becoming Anakin’s official guardian after their adoptive father, Qui-Gon Jinn, died in an accident)

Obi-Wan gets paranoid enough after spending an evening with Anakin that he fakes a pillow body in the guest room and sets himself up in the living room to guard

This is somewhat fortunate for him when an apparent burglar (who moves much too professionally and dangerously) breaks in through a window near silently

Jango barely has half a second of realizing something’s up before being side tackled

The fight is pretty intense, if odd for being so quiet, since they both coincidentally don’t want Anakin to wake up (at some point Obi-Wan manages to get Jango’s ski mask off)

In the end, Obi-Wan ends up pinned under Jango, hands restrained above his head, knife against his throat, straddled

Jango grumbles sardonically about how Obi-Wan couldn’t make Jango’s job easier and just sleep through the night and call the police in the morning, tipping Obi-Wan off to the man being there for Anakin instead of him

Obi-Wan is, of course, a self-sacrificing idiot and gets Jango’s attention by wondering out loud about what a small-time mechanic going through school could have done to get a high-level assassin sent after him

(Jango’s plan, as Obi-Wan has figured out, was to stage a break in/burglary and wake Anakin up and kill him in the resulting “fight” to make it look like the burglar had killed Anakin in the heat of the moment)

With the man under him clearly having figured out too much, Jango decides he’ll have to kill him too, but first thinks it’s worth learning what gave him away

There’s a bit of back and forth until Obi-Wan is able to piece together who exactly Jango is (should his assassin name be Mythosaur? I think that would be fun and the “myth” bit can refer to his work being so subtle and Jango being such an unknown outside of his assassin rep)

Now, someone figuring out exactly who Jango is an even bigger no-no, so Jango goes right for the kill

Jango doesn’t manage to kill Obi-Wan before Obi-Wan offers a deal (didn’t think I’d take “making a deal to save the other” this way, did you?)

Jango’s pressing a blade into Obi-Wan’s neck enough to draw blood but finds himself intrigued enough to let the man talk for another few seconds (Obi-Wan really is quite the negotiator)

Obi-Wan offers free information for life, basically, and to be support for a set number of missions a year. In exchange, Jango won’t kill Anakin and will let Obi-Wan find Jango’s client and kill the client to nullify the contract (and prevent Jango’s rep from being tarnished)

It’s an utterly absurd proposal but also clearly made with knowledge of the underground, so Jango of course asks who Obi-Wan thinks he is to make that kind of offer

Jango finds himself reluctantly impressed by Obi-Wan’s identity (I have no idea what his underworld identity is, but I don’t it to be “The Negotiator”) and finds himself considering the deal, which Obi-Wan catches onto and he manages to convince Jango

(Part of the final deal includes the fact that Jango technically has two more months per his contract to carry out the hit. If Obi-Wan can’t find the client by then, Jango will kill Anakin anyways. Obi-Wan is desperately confident that he can do it, despite Jango having basically zero info beyond the contract and a clearly shell company in Hong Kong to wire the money to)

Jango gets Obi-Wan to give him a glut of information over the next few weeks, to the point of them spending a few hours in a private booth/room in a very private club so Obi-Wan can safely give it all to him. Obi-Wan is both desperate to meet expectations and tries his best; and is also very annoyed at getting pulled away from hunting down who’s trying to kill Anakin and therefore sasses Jango quite a bit.

Obi-Wan is really having trouble figuring out who wants to kill Anakin, finally giving in and starting from the other end, Anakin himself. Why would someone want to kill Anakin? Specifically why would the sort of person who can find and hire Jango want to kill Anakin? This is in some ways even harder to figure out, but Obi-Wan has many more leads and information to access

After a few weeks of this dynamic, the first change is when Jango and Obi-Wan end up complaining about a mutual acquaintance during an info drop off, which leads to more mutual bitching

Then Jango drags Obi-Wan across the country (we’re just going to assume we were in like… NYC or Chicago before) to assist him in another assassination in LA

Obi-Wan is somewhat tempted to get Jango caught, since that would be an easy way to save Anakin, but decides against it for multiple reasons (including a few that he will not yet acknowledge, including developing fondness for Jango and, even worse, the first few seeds of trust)

So instead of going to prison, Jango returns from a smooth assassination to an already half-drunk Obi-Wan, shirt very scandalously unbuttoned halfway down

The have a nice night of just drinking and relaxing and then wake up the next morning curled around each other in bed (they didn’t have sex, as the lack of certain types of soreness and their clean, still on, pants from the night before prove. But they still have the knowledge and a few sensations of sleeping together with their guards down)

When they get back, things are a little awkward, but it’s fine, they’re professionals, so they’ll keep meeting to keep up their deal. Obi-Wan keeps giving Jango any info he wants, and they keep accidentally falling back into their habits of doing things like complaining about mutual acquaintances who annoy them

Obi-Wan is also making some headway with investigating who wants to kill Anakin, finding many questionable decisions on Anakin’s part, especially regarding friends/social circle, but not anyone who would be able to hire Jango that would dislike Anakin

With about a week and a half left, and leads running out, Obi-Wan starts to freak out a little, which Jango notices, which in turn makes Jango realize that he doesn’t like Obi-Wan being stressed out and afraid and tense and looking at Jango like he’s a cat about to pounce on a wounded canary

But Jango also puts work before all else so when he has another job (coincidentally in the same city), Jango drags Obi-Wan with him, unfortunately making the mistake to literally bring Obi-Wan with him

When Jango starts cursing about the job going to hell part way through a shoot-out, Obi-Wan casually comments that it’s not even that bad, prompting a sass battle between the two of them while they’re still fighting their actual opponents where Jango realizes that Obi-Wan, as brilliant as he is, has the worst on-the-ground luck ever

In the end, they win, with a very damaged, limping vehicle that they, for handwavey reasons, need to get to some spot that the car won’t make it to as is. Thus, they have to go slide into the mechanic shop Anakin’s working the graveyard shift for

Obi-Wan really does hate, in many ways, finally having his two worlds collide, bringing Jango and the shot-out car directly to Anakin, and is almost distracted from how bad he feels about it when Jango tries to comfort him

Jango is, thankfully, a very good actor, and Anakin is a bit oblivious. He very easily starts clumsily probing Jango about what Obi-Wan and Jango quickly figure out Anakin thinks is a romantic relationship between them (and, to be fair, Obi-Wan has been acting strange, and spending much more time “with a friend” in the past two months or so)

At some point, Obi-Wan gets so uncomfortable with the idea that he and Jango are in a romantic relationship that he makes what is, to him and Jango, a mistake, and draws attention to the bullet holes again

Jango vaguely looks like he wants to kill Obi-Wan while Anakin casually explains it’s not that big of a deal, although he might have to find a better patch if this sort of thing keeps happening

This stops any murder plans Jango was making, and any counter plans Obi-Wan was making in favor of carefully probing Anakin to figure out when else he had fixed a bullet ridden car

Anakin reveals pretty easily that his engineering school’s dean, Sidney Palpatine (Sidney=Sid-=Sidious lol) had dropped in about two and a half months ago with a car in similar condition. As well as a few other people that Anakin describes well enough for Jango and Obi-Wan to identify as members of a local crime organization and a private army (like Blackwater/Academi), as well as mention a weird package in the trunk

This is clearly the who and why for Jango getting hired to assassinate Anakin, but they both play it cool until Anakin’s done and they can go on their way to drop off the vehicle

Cue Obi-Wan having a panic attack, which freaks Jango out quite a bit, since he’s so used to Obi-Wan being very calm and controlled and not showing vulnerability. Obi-Wan even gets outwardly angry

Cue Jango’s “oh. Oh.” moment

Jango basically drags a near catatonic Obi-Wan back to the apartment he’s been staying in and drugs him to sleep (in Jango’s mind, if Obi-Wan was too out of it to notice a drugged drink, then he clearly had no more business staying awake)

By the time Obi-Wan wakes up and starts panicking, less than yesterday (thanks to a good night’s sleep), Jango has some basic information on the legal and illegal lives of Palpatine, and a few half-formed assassination plans

Jango also has toast. Which he makes Obi-Wan eat. Obi-Wan grumps about not having been forced to eat breakfast since he was a teen. Cue a small sassy back and forth that further calms Obi-Wan down

Jango offers to kill Palpatine for free, which startles Obi-Wan because that is not how the criminal underworld works. Jango half-heartedly puts forth some logic about how Obi-Wan succeeding with their deal means that Jango gets to keep the best information broker on his side. Obi-Wan can tell that that isn’t all, and recognizes that Jango is probably being kind, but won’t outright admit it

They eventually decide on a plan where Anakin will bring Obi-Wan with him to go visit dean Palpatine who he’s friends with, and that Obi-Wan will bring some poisoned tea in a travel to mug to share. Anakin will refuse the tea, being Anakin, and Obi-Wan and Palpatine will both drink the poison. Obi-Wan will have the antidote (either disguised as something innocuous or to be taken during a bathroom break) and cure himself before there are any symptoms, leaving Palpatine to die of what will look like a natural heart attack

The plan goes awry, due to Kenobi luck, when Anakin accidentally has them barge in while Palpatine is meeting with another criminal. Cue a fight in the office, a secret passage, and more criminals to fight while Jango scrambles to get to the new location to help

Obi-Wan manages to actually word his way into delaying their defeats and deaths until Jango gets there. Jango manages to take out about half of the enemies before he gets defeated/captured as well

At this point Obi-Wan tries to make a deal again, to save Anakin and Jango. It seems to work/Palpatine seems interested, only for him to pull the rug out and basically say he’ll be either killing all three or making them wish they were dead, including some conjecture about Obi-Wan’s looks (aka sexual slavery)

Cue Jango getting incensed enough to break free again and start fighting again. He gets to Obi-Wan, frees him, and thus ensues a battle couple take down from the cheesiest of action flicks

In the end, Palpatine is the last one standing. Before either of them (or Anakin, who is beginning to get over his shock) can kill Palpatine, he runs away. Jango, Obi-Wan, and a confused Anakin give chase, stopping at the end of an alley as they realize that Palpatine has been hit by a bus

Jango and Obi-Wan drag Anakin through a convoluted path back to Obi-Wan’s apartment and confirm that, yes, Palpatine died. Jango and Obi-Wan quickly confirm that there’s nothing linking them to the crime scene (Palpatine had told his secretary that Anakin and Obi-Wan had left out the back when he realized he was going to have to kill them, giving them an alibi)

Obi-Wan and Jango tell Anakin a mostly true story and prod Anakin to decide to go back to [insert some place here] and live with some half-distant bio relatives (the Lars family), maybe finish his degree online

Cut to a few months later, Obi-Wan is reading an update text from Anakin before Jango comes into the room. Obi-Wan gives him a good luck kiss before sending Jango out to his job, reminding him that “I’ve always got your back”, Jango responds in kind, Obi-Wan accepts this/informs Jango that he knows before letting Jango drag him into another kiss

#assassin deals AU #Kenfetti #Jangoobi #Jangobi #Obijango #asks #ask meme thing #Anonymous

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darkpoisonouslove · 3 years

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Riven x Musa

Ok, so I keep seeing posts everywhere that basically badmouth S8 and after seeing ten seconds of the trailer (YIKES to the animation, what’s wrong with the industry that they are making everything anime? Powerpuff Gen Z, I’m looking at you – obs: I didn’t watch it fully yet) I can see where some of the criticism is coming from but anyways…

My favorite Winx!couple EVER has always been Musa x Riven since I was kid and first watched the show (Netflix is not helping ‘cause I ship them even there).

I remember yawning at Bloom/Sky, rolling my eyes at Stella/Brandom and making a completely incredulous expression that I could literally feel forming on my face at Helia/Flora (can anyone say ‘unrealistic’?). Timmy/Tecna are a second favorite.

And why my Winx OTP are Riven x Musa followed after Timmy x Tecna? Because it reflects real life. In real life you’re not gonna stumble into people whose real and deep relationship problems are solved in twenty four minutes (not even that considering that some episodes present the “problem” half-way through said 24 minute-episode).

The breakup between Riven and Musa in S6 (spoilers everywhere after all) was one of the most mature breakups in the history of breakups with the hope for the future (yes, I’m completely ignoring S7, sue me, the whole thing was one huge filler anyways). And, after reading a lot of opinions on both ends (defending Musa/attacking Riven and defending Riven/attacking Musa) and watching the episodes in question (reuniting through reconciling) I think I can give my own analysis.

Since Musa AND Riven (individually and as couple) are my favorite characters in Winx, I think I CAN give a fairly unbiased view (hopefully).

*clears throat*

Ok, keep in mind that I’m defending BOTH of them, because I ship them too hard not to.

Musa Being OC (sometimes being called ‘brat’): C'mon, people! Musa and Tecna are OC since S4 anyways, where are the tomboy and the nerd? With the sneakers, T-shirt and comfortable-looking clothes? Noooo, now they all need neat skirts and hot pink high heels and long, glamorous hair. Do they look good? Of course, but and I would totally be less pissed if there was ANY indication on the reason for the change. Are they just maturing? Expressing themselves differently? Crowd mentality? Tune and Stella finally broke Musa down and Tecna followed soon after? Was it just to please Riven and Timmy? ANYTHING (even the 'pleasing a boy’ would at least be A reason - a ridiculous one that would piss me off, but A reason none the less), was just a sudden impulse that took?

Sure, we can talk about “character growth” until we are blue in the face, but the matter of the fact is that there was none.

The changes we see in Musa and Tecna are basically the creators making them more like the rest of the Winx (I’m including Aisha in this too, where is the sporty girl that matched the boy’s interest in extreme sports? C'mon! Even Bloom and her Girl Next Door looks are replaced with Bratz and Clueless-level of outfits).

Is anyone really going to look me in the eye and say Stella wasn’t a shallow (if friendly and good-natured) Mean Girl? She got better, but as I re-watch the show (currently in S3, meaning almost half-way through the content), Stella still worries more about her hair than anything else even while under literal fire.

More and more, Musa, Tecna and Aisha are losing their identities and what made them, IMO, the more badass Winx.

How did the two on the left went from this…

… to this:

Yeah, yeah, Musa still sings, Tecna still technobabble and Aisha is still a Warrior Princess but Aisha was the first one to go Bloom and Stella on us with Musa and then Tecna following soon after. It’s not just their clothing style, it’s the way they carried themselves too.

Right now? The only thing keeping them apart is their BF blues (different kind of blues) and some personal interests (singing, shopping, tech, the whole drama with Domino/Sparks, etc). But that’s IT, their personalities are going down the drain!

Sorry for the long-winded text, but the reason I’m expressing my disappointment at their change is because Musa’s reaction fits it. S6 we have such an AMAZING breakup (didn’t even think that was possible, WTH, right? Amazing breakup?) only for her to be mad as hell at Riven at S8? Bad writing, that has been dragging her (and the rest of the Winx) down to becoming just one unilateral, shallow character (the Specialists are also falling into that pit, what in the world did they do Helia in S8? He sounds like Thor telling about his “brave exploits” there, yikes). And continuity what? What continuity? Do they even remember how the breakup was written?

But ok, let’s put the Audience View aside for a moment and focus only on the In-Universe terms.

S6: You’ll always be my hero.

S8: What on EARTH are you doing here.

I laughed a bit, the contrast just got to me but instead of getting mad at one or the other like most of the fandom, I laughed.

Musa followed that by saying that Riven has not maintained contact and just in that I would be beyond pissed as well and giving my support to Musa. WTH, Riven? I think that each season is more less six months to a year? Sort of? Still, zero contact for so long even after ending on amicable terms and wanting to stay friends? And he went off on his own! A text now going, “I’m not dead” would be the bare basics for Musa not to worry herself bald!

BUT then I also read comments about how this was a two-way street, why didn’t Musa call either? That’s unfortunately something that I very much doubt will ever be explained. One of those: did it or didn’t it? Musa could have called and went straight to voicemail with no signs of life from Riven or she might not have called and just expected him to call as if feminism were dead and all initiative must come from the guy (which doesn’t even fit because they parted as friends).

Since we have no info on the above, I put it on both of them. It’s not fair to say, “HE should have called!” or “Why didn’t SHE call?” because we don’t have fricking context. So the only thing we can take is: no contact.

BECAUSE I put the lack of contact on both of them, Musa’s reaction was a little too much, however, Riven shows up all smirks and leaning against a tree with his arms crossed and I would have flashbacks to S1 if it wasn’t for the animation style that made all the guys look like girls. Dude! Not the time for that kind of posture. Not saying that he should be all sheepish and rubbing his arm as if he had done something horrible (again: we don’t have context on the no contact) but a more neutral approach was warranted here. Nobody does themselves any favors with that kind of attitude no matter what how high of a horse they may be (rightly or not) riding on, if anything I would react like Musa solely on that one.

Next episode we have that Riven convinced the guys to follow the girls in some mission and Musa was angry. Again: I would be too. WTH? Yes, yes, they helped and if it wasn’t for them, the Winx would gotten seriously injured but Musa did have a point saying that this demonstrated that they had no trust in them and need their hand held, it was no sanctioned mission like on Earth after all. BUT, Riven does something that I would never expect from in S1-4: he explains, he reasons it, he puts it in all the words that he does trust Musa and co and that he only wanted to show that he’d be there for her (you know? One of the main issues in S6 that made them breakup in the first place? His inability to conciliate Specialist work with supporting his girlfriend and ultimately failing or feeling like failing in both?) and Musa still pouts, crosses her arms, and turns around. Geez. I expected that one from Stella, not Musa. I think the closest Musa has ever come to THIS was back in S2 when Jared explains that Riven was the one to recommend that he interview Musa and yada yada yada and she got mad and stomped off on the poor guy that didn’t even understand what was going on (only to immediately apologize to Jared and recognizing that it wasn’t him that she was mad at… like I said: what character growth?).

Riven then goes to show that he indeed grew when he asked for advice from Sky and Brandon (WTH, right? Can we picture that happening back in S1-3? He very grudgingly would LISTEN to UNSOLICITED advice from Nabu and Helia in S4-6). And does a very, very goofy and embarrassing show of affection. Yeah… again… I can picture Stella loving the light show with her face for IDK how many people to see but not Musa (although can we really blame the guy after the series went out of its way to make Musa all Stella-like? Clothes, attitude, the only thing missing is making Riven carry her shopping bags around and call him “Shnookums” (although the mental image is already enough for me to fall over laughing, just for the face Riven would make). Still, I have to count that one against Riven if only because (as much as the show gives only lip service to it) Musa isn’t Stella.

Riven being mind controlled (again) aside, those two are back together. And on the overall? Riven showed more growth than any other character in the show COMBINED (he is the Zuko of the show), that doesn’t go to say that he didn’t make mistakes since coming back in S8 (but that was more a guy trying to win back a girl than… betraying his friends for a pair of nice legs or… IDEK like in S1 – where, mind control or not the show itself made sure to make it clear that he had free will) or that he is now the one out of Musa’s league. I think that NOW it can actually work… if the show allows him to keep the progress, Musa is the next to see her flaws and work on them (which she showed to be able to do since S2) and put effort in the relationship. The difference between them is that Musa can actually work on herself and the relationship at the same time. That’s not me saying she is better than Riven in any way, everybody has their own pace and their own way to cope, to improve and to self-reflect.

I still root for them.

~*~

PS-IDK why, but I read posts about how Riven changed so much and posts about how all his progress disappeared and he is now back to his S1 attitude and I’m just cofused. Yeah, different of opinions and so on, but such opposite opinions on the subject of a guy whose relationship was focused on three episodes?

#winx club #winx musa #winx riven #musa x riven #rivusa #anti stella #submission

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thesummerstorms · 4 years

Text

Rev Recaps Hard Contact (Chapter 20)

Final chapter at last!

CW: Violence & blood. Decapitation.

TL;DR Recap: Darman and Etain make it back to the gunship with the injured Atin and Uthan in tow, but Etain refuses to let Zey leave without Omega. Niner lures Hokan into a trap and Hokan is decapitated. Zey offers Etain a choice, but 12 years later the framework still makes no sense.

Beginning Kal Count: 39 Ending Kal Count: 42

This post includes my favorite scene in the book, and has probably double the expected word count because of that. Long-Ass Post.

We open with a Kal Quote. I am ignoring Kal Quotes this far into the game because I am already very informed on Traviss’s opinions, but that does raise the Kal Count to 40 already.

Instead, we focus on Darman writing poetry to a gunship.

:’) Dar has similes and metaphors down at least. Some unnamed clone troopers (white-armored) and a medic come running out and dismiss Darman when he tries to tell them everything that happened to Atin because he’s already adequately marked Atin’s armor. They’ve also taken Uthan, so with, finally, nothing left for Darman to do, he turns around to watch Zey and Etain.

So Etain doesn’t ask who Zey is at all anywhere in this scene, which even with the Force telling her he’s a Jedi and logical clues telling her she’s outranked, you would think that she’d want his name. She also uses his name in her narration later without being told it on screen at any point. So that makes me think they’ve met before this, at least briefly.

On the other hand their greeting is “formal”/ “etiquette” , not Etain being relieved that fucking finally, here is an adultier-adult whom she knows and trusts, so I don’t think they know one another well.

I’m sure the formal greeting vs “scene from a nightmare” thing is meant to be pointed, but whatever, we’re moving on. Well, except, I do have to point out:

The ARC, who I am calling Maze until I have evidence he’s not, takes off his helmet, doesn’t say shit to Darman, just stares at him. I don’t know why that makes me laugh.

Valaquil departs off the gunship, Darman praises Jinart, and Dar hopes the Republic will keep their word to the gurlanin because “they deserve it”, but we’ve long passed the point where I gave a shit about the gurlanin.

Zey’s priority --> mostly tactical, get this shit show of a mission over, but does try to reassure Etain

Etain --> where are my people???

I love how Dar expects Etain to “soften” because he knows that she longs to be confirmed as having worth and value, has learned this even after a very short mission, but Etain is also deeply loyal and her priorities have shifted.

Um, Maze, buddy? You want to chill?

OH OUCH MY HEART.

We as readers know that their helmets were shut down by the EMP, but here’s Darman, assuming that he’s just lost another half a squad and that just like Geonosis, he’ll never know for certain what happened to them. The flashback is heartbreaking.

Etain’s ability to use Force-sense is so weirdly inconsistent and plot-selective in this book, but I love her already being able to tell from a distance that Omega squad is okay, even to tell where they are. This is the precursor to her being able to feel Darman “across star systems”, but on some level she’s formed some version of this bond with all of them.

And you know, no one in this book ever explains why the Republic wants Uthan so bad, but knowing from Order 66 that Palps wanted to use her for his personal goals always pisses me off.

Darman has become familiar enough with Etain and her expressions that this expression immediately sets off his “oh shit” radar, and it’s not even the first time.

The one boot on the gunship and one on the soil is actually a nice tiny bit of symbolism- caught between what the Jedi expect of her and what she’s learned under fire from Omega- if you chose to interpret it that way. And I can actually sympathize with Zey’s annoyance here because Etain, tactically, is being pretty stupid here. If Uthan dies before they can get her proper care, if they can’t get off the planet, then it’s all for nothing.

But. I wouldn’t want her to react any other way. This is exactly my favorite moment of hers. (Which is why I have the entire damn thing highlighted before anyone calls me out for that lmao.)

Listen, Zey, you know ilu, but bringing up her dead Master in a less than complimentary way was supposed to... do what exactly for your argument? He also completely ignores Darman’s attempt to keep the peace, but we just upped our Kal Count to 41 with the talk of Etain’s loyalty being a mirror.

Again, tactically pretty dumb I’m sure but oh holy hell do I love it. Especially that underlined bit in red. “Darman thought she had changed her mind, but that wasn’t Etain at all.”

Darman desperately not wanting Etain to be targeted by whatever Jedi mind powers he thinks Zey is about to use on her. Darman thinking about how Zey doesn’t know Etain at all, that Zey is taking 100% the wrong approach, but if Darman was just allowed to talk to her-

That bit in red? That and the response Zey’s about to give are two of my favorite lines in the entire book.

Zey gives in. Darman tries to get Etain to stay anyway, I think because he’s worried about the fallout of this moment landing on her, although it’s kind of too little too late for that. But Zey, as tactically expensive as this could be, as annoyed as he has been, is still proud of Etain.

It’s just one little tiny moment that says so much about Dar and about Etain and even about Zey. That little moment of pride lets me think they were better suited to Master and Padawan that maybe either of them recognized or would later accept.

Unfortunately, we now have to leave my favorite scene ever and return to Hokan’s POV. Hokan is injured and doesn’t know where Fi has gotten to, but as expected, Niner’s screaming has caught his attention.

Hokan has this weird double consciousness, this deeply rooted aversion to mercy or anything he sees as weakness or softness. It’s still a really... delicate little moment?

Listen, I know that Niner’s not wounded and this still is upsetting.

Kal Count 42.

Hokan still is vacillating between thinking of Niner as an it more than a person, and “abomination” and thinking of him as a Mandalorian man who’s been unfairly used. Again, it’s this weird moment of double think, but it works in Niner’s favor, because nobody wants to know what would have happened if Hokan hadn’t taken the time to talk to him, or had decided to use the lightsaber.

The sheer irony of Hokan avoiding the lightsaber because it was too much like what happened to Jango on Geonosis... and then Etain decapitates him... with a lightsaber.

Niner says he doesn’t like to complain, but. Also, still very fair. And a much needed laugh after that last moment.

“Probably okay” Fi.

Also This raises SO MANY questions because Mando armor is supposed to hold off Jedi if it’s beskar, but this isn’t, which means Fi spends the rest of the series hoarding and or wearing armor that isn’t beskar.

Etain is trembling, we’ll find out from her POV, because she’s still reacting to hearing Niner scream like that, and it rattles her deeply. Which again, I sympathize with, because it makes me upset.

But I mean, even if Traviss forgets it... there has to be a lot of emotion to being handed Kast Fulier’s lightsaber. He was the only one who was kind to her in the Order, at least from her point of view, she failed him, he was tortured to death with that lightsaber, and now it’s being returned to her. This is the closest she’ll ever get to closure, because as with Omega’s original brothers, there are no bodies left for burial. KT completely ignores the weight of that... but I think about it a lot.

Darman being gentle with her and praying that Fi doesn’t open his mouth makes me feel soft, though. And Niner gives her a tiny bit of the acknowledgement/respect she's wanted.

We go to her POV next:

Same, Etain. Same. Again, as she points out... Niner’s heard that before. And none of the rest of the squad who was there for it even really seems fazed?

She’s also guilty about not being Jedi enough of course, but that’s nothing new at this point. And I’m sure Fi and Niner can appreciate her not-Jedi instincts. (Or does Zey’s tacit approval mean actually her stunt with the gunship is rooted in some Jedi ideals, even if it’s tactically stupid? idk.)

Maze & Zey take turns doing the pacing, confirmed. It’s just funny because earlier Zey was annoying the shit out of Niner by pacing and breaking up the holos at the briefing.

ZEY BACKSTORY! ZEY BACKSTORY! IDGAF ABOUT KAL; WHERE’S MY ZEY BACK STORY.

Ahem.

Anyway, the conversation turns to what actually happens to Etain now. She is, after all, an orphaned Padawan in the middle of war time.

“Etain could think of nothing worse than staying on Qiilura, with its terrible memories and uncertain future... She was alone again and scared.”

Okay, so we can debate what Etain’s duty is in this scenario. As Zey says, she knows better than anyone what Qiilura is like, and that’s info Zey can’t attempt to replicate, even if he reads Omega’s reports. It wouldn’t be the same as having Etain’s first hand experience.

But that... still leaves Etain “alone”, “scared”, stuck on a planet that is “full of terrible memories” and is associated deeply with at least three months of trauma. And she’s going to accept that, because she’s being guilted with the Jedi values of non-attachment and duty to the Republic. But I don’t know that this is the healthiest way for her to finish out her training. Like. Do the Jedi not have counselors or something, Zey?

It’s just... really sad to me.

a) Note to self about the body language here again. “dug her nails into her palms”, tried to compose herself.

b) oh shut up about what’s expected of soldiers; not everything has to be comparative

c) I had a conversation with samwichwilson about this scene that’s probably still in the tags somewhere.

But the framework of this choice makes absolutely ZERO sense to me.

Like, my kingdom for the AU where Etain chooses to go with Omega squad and spends the next nine months learning to blow shit up with them. I have no idea how that would work since she’s a Padawan and still technically needs a Master’s supervision, but I would enjoy it. She would definitely be happier than she’s gonna be on Qiilura.

But... while the narrative is presenting this as serious-ish options... like, there’s no way Zey would have actually go through with that last one, right? Point about working undercover aside, if he’s offering to let one clone stay, he might as well offer all 4, and he specifically narrows it down to one of the squad, not all of Omega.

So while Etain typically seems to believe an even lower opinion of her than KT actually writes (to match her low self-esteem) I have to assume that she’s right and she’s being tested here? But Zey, what the hell were you going to do if she said yes and asked to go with Omega? Much less if, when she accidentally caves here in a moment, Darman had said yes and agreed to stay with her.

She would have failed the test, and you can’t really let them start dating under your supervision... so what are you gonna do about that?

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. As unfair as it is, the choice is not really a choice, and Etain has been guilted into remaining in this place she hates. She’ll probably even end up working with Jinart again. Bleh.

Etain seems to be taking these options as if they’re really, truly serious here, but as a reader, it’s incredibly hard to see them that way. Because again. What’s Zey gonna do if she fails the attachment test.

(Unless you want to argue that the predilection with Jedi non-attachment and rules breaking is 100% in Etain’s head here and her guilt and mental conditioning just won’t let her see that Zey is 100% truthful and kindly letting Etain go off with these people she’s become so desperate to attach herself to. But that doesn’t fit like... any canon about the Jedi Order. Or ANY of Traviss’s writing tbh.)

I mean, at least Etain knows herself pretty well here. Her brain is going “abort abort, abort” but can’t actually stop her from doing the stupid thing. She’s also trying to communicate to Dar that this isn’t her abandoning him, this is her still caring.

Listen, you can point out Dar’s lack of experience and still miss all the “child” bullshit. And honestly, his response to her saying that she’ll miss him comes off... almost a little cold. “You’ll miss me. I’m going to die in ten years, but don’t worry about me because I’m going the closest I have to home.” Maybe he’s trying to reassure her / also not to admit to someone who is now an Officer again that he’ll miss her too. It just sounds weird, even if we get the line that he was “considering it seriously.”

Or I guess what really annoys me is that in this moment that should be really personal and painful for these two characters, this just sounds... weirdly preachy?

Also...like... again Etain had to know that it wasn’t an actual option, even if the rest of the series will pretend that it was, including when she looks back at it in Triple Zero. But I’m choosing to read it more as a mark of her desperation- being so desperate and lonely, and, yes, a little trapped that her emotion overrides what she knows to be true.

💔💔💔

There’s some lines about how she’s a better Jedi Forever now because of “a soldier faith in her” but I have mixed feelings about those because they’re followed up with a bunch of bullshit about how she should learn from him because he had accepted his fate and had no self pity, and I don’t have time for ANY of that. You are allowed to feel bad when bad things happen to you, even if you are a woman or a Jedi.. Fuck off, Traviss.

Sweetheart.

Listen, you know and I know that she’ll see them again, she and Darman will fall in love, she isn’t trapped on Qiilura, a place of her nightmares, forever.

But it still feels like a real fucking downer of an ending.

Still, we have now officially made it to the end of Hard Contact. I haven’t decided if I’ll make posts for Triple Zero or if they’ll follow this format if they do. (Your thoughts/comments/feedback are welcome, as always.)

Final Kal Count was 42, which is actually impressive for a 20 chapter novel in which he DOES NOT APPEAR.

#Rev Recaps RepComm #Republic Commando #Hard Contact #RepComm #Etain Tur-Mukan #Darman Skirata #Niner Skirata #Atin Skirata #Fi Skirata #Arligan Zey #Captain Maze #I think

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devinsfm · 4 years

Text

joe keery. cis male. he/him. ／ jack devin just pulled up blasting video killed the radio star by the buggles — that song is so them ! you know, for a twenty - four year old radio show host, i’ve heard they’re really impulsive, but that they make up for it by being so captivating. if i had to choose three things to describe them, i’d probably say obscure vintage horror comics, blurry photographs of mysterious figures in the woods, and vivid descriptions of spine - chilling tales . here’s to hoping they don’t cause too much trouble ! ( sam, 23, est, she/her )

hey there, demons ! *ba tum tss* i’m sam and i never do this, but i really felt like it was time for a change, so i drew lots of inspiration from some of my favorite ocs and i love what i’ve come up with ! character info is under the cut and please feel free to message me if you would like to plot !

i. stats

𝔣𝔲𝔩𝔩 𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔢: jackson willard devin

𝔭𝔯𝔢𝔣𝔢𝔯𝔯𝔢𝔡 𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔢𝔰: jack, spooky guy, the night watchman

𝔥𝔬𝔪𝔢𝔱𝔬𝔴𝔫: salem, massachusetts

𝔡𝔞𝔱𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔟𝔦𝔯𝔱𝔥: ocotber 31st, 1995

𝔷𝔬𝔡𝔦𝔞𝔠: scorpio

𝔬𝔯𝔦𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫: demisexual

𝔬𝔠𝔠𝔲𝔭𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫: host of the graveyard shift, a radio program airing every weeknight from 12am to 5am

𝔭𝔬𝔰. 𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔦𝔱𝔰: captivating, witty, resolute.

𝔫𝔢𝔤. 𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔦𝔱𝔰: impulsive, gauche, naive.

ii. history

jackson willard “jack” devin was born on halloween day ( yes, really ) in salem massachusetts ( yes, really ). his mother stayed home with him as he was growing up while his father is a boston cop turned sheriff of the county and he’s an only child.

outside of the popular tourist spots, his hometown has a very close - knit, stuck in the 80s vibe. it’s the sort of place where everyone knows everyone for their entire lives because no one ever leaves and no one new ever moves in. phone and internet signals are nearly impossible to come by, so the local arcade and the video store still have quite a booming business in the year 2020. jack grew up in a not - so - typical small town suburban gothic environment, his dad’s income being just enough for them to get by every month.

he was an energetic kid who cycled through all sorts of interests, trying out everything from little league ( disaster ) to music lessons ( not as much of a disaster, but he wound up getting bored of it ). nothing seemed to really stick until he got his first horror comic : a vintage issue of tales from the crypt with tattered, yellowing pages. he was five years old and paid five cents for it at an elderly neighbor’s yard sale and from that moment on he was hooked. it started with the comics, but he quickly expanded his horizons to movies, books, and television in the genre of horror.

he got intro drawing and that was the only thing besides his newfound interest in horror that he could sit still for. at first he would just try to re - draw the panels in his comic books, but soon he was drawing anything and everything that caught his interest and he was getting good. he was being homeschooled by his mother at the time, but once friends and family and, well, everyone took notice of his skill, they were encouraging his parents to nurture his talent.

his parents fought about it. his dad didn’t see the value in his skill and wanted him to instead focus on academics, aspiring towards his son one day becoming a lawyer or a businessman or even following in his footsteps. jack never wanted that for himself. he was homeschooled by his mom up until then and she believed in him. it was with her blessing that he would go to a real school for the first time at the age of fourteen, starting off his freshman year at a high school that was a thirty minute train ride away in boston and catered exclusively to youth who demonstrated an exceptional talent in some area of the fine arts.

jack did well in school, but his grades probably would have been a lot better still if he didn’t start purposely acting out as his relationship with his dad got worse and worse. he started skipping classes, getting caught trespassing in cemeteries at 2am, and smoking a lot of weed.

when it came time for college, jack planned to attend art school. he swears he did. he looked a few schools on the west coast to get away from his dad for a few years yikes and planned to apply, but on the deadline date he got so high that he forgot to submit his portfolios. yes, really.

he loaded up his van ( a turquiose monstrosity he painted to look like the mystery machine ) and headed out to california anyway after telling his parents that he would be attending UCLA. of course, they quickly found it that it was a lie and his dad was furious. the two got into a huge fight over the phone and things were said. the result is that jack and his father haven’t spoken to each other ever since.

he did lots of odd jobs while he was on the road and basically lived in his van, which didn’t change right away when he decided to settle in LA, but he eventually got a job fetching coffee for the late night employees at a local radio station.

it was the typical, cliché story : the regular late night host called out of work at the last minute, there was no one else around and they were going to be on air in ten seconds. jack was thrown in front of the microphone and told to think fast !

he did, and the listeners loved him for it. whether it was his ramblings about horror movies or his thick boston accent or his reckless use of swear words on live radio, he turned out to be a massive hit. the successful night earned him a gig as an occasional substitute deejay, and with each broadcast he grew more and more popular, and about two years ago he was finally given his own program.

the graveyard shift is a radio program that airs every weeknight from 12am - 5am in the los angeles area and on apps such as iheartradio. jack hosts the show as his ( thinly veiled ) alter ego the night watchmen and discusses topics such as the paranormal, conspiracy theories, and all things horror. it’s one of the most popular programs of the time slot in the country.

it’s something that he never expected or picturing himself doing, but now he can’t imagine doing anything else. he’s become really passionate about revitalizing the field and bringing radio into the 21st century. he signed a HUGE contract with the studio when his show first started and now he’s a quite well known radio personality in the area and across the country.

iii. extras

huge stoner. high as fuck 90% of the time, and the other 10% of the time he’s probably still high, just not as fuck.

well known for his on air antics. he’ll light a joint in the middle of his radio show, he’ll prank call a friend and broadcast it to the entire city, he’ll curse in every single sentence and skate by on the after hours excuse when he’s reprimanded for it. he’s so outlandish and bizarre and like nothing that’s ever been heard on the radio before, and it just draws people in.

he often seems shy in person, but it’s more like he’s just a little socially awkward, something which also shines through in occasional non - malicious but blunt remarks and general lack of regard for what people think of him. he really just...doesn’t care.

genuinely seems to believe it’s either halloween day and / or the year 1986 at any given moment as that’s about as recent as his pop culture references get. he’s never heard of the k*rdashians, he doesn’t know what the mcu is, and the phrase yeet means absolutely nothing to him. mention any of it to him and he’ll just stare blankly bc he honestly doesn’t have a clue.

HOWEVER, he did start the area 51 meme from last summer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

still draws. especially if he has to still for a stretch of time, then he’ll take out his latest sketchbook ( he goes through a lot of them ) and start doodling. he’s still quite good, mostly in his favored comic - esque style.

BIG CHAOTIC ENERGY and ZERO IMPULSE CONTROL

a chatterbox with friends but don’t be fooled...he’s been giving his own dad the silent treatment for almost seven ( 7 ) years now. it’s his preferred method of expressing anger towards someone because he isn’t really a fan of confrontation, but he’s maybe a liiiittle bit stubborn.

most of the time he’s a really easygoing person, a good friend and very loyal to the people he cares about. well - meaning, not the best at advice but he’s more likely to try and cheer a person up anyway.

he has a pet pied ball python named the crypt keeper ( tkc for short ) who he sometimes just carries with him because he likes to just chill wrapped around jack’s hand and arm.

iv. wanted connections

maternal or paternal cousins ( their grandparents probably live in boston or new england but otherwise anything goes for this )

close friends

friends

guests on his radio show

fans / haters of his radio show

people who don’t like him / find him annoying

exes ( 1 - 2, can be on good or bad terms )

“casually dating” but it might get real complicated soon - allie james

( these are just ideas and i’m trash at coming up with stuff, so please don’t feel limited by what’s listed here. )

#excess:intro #drugs tw #i decided that i needed something new but i just ''created'' this ''new character'' instead #countdown until i mess up his name has officially begun

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howtotrainyouragents · 4 years

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Agent H’s AOS Rewatch

Season 3 Pro’s and Con’s

We’re done with the season 4 rewatch, and I’m over here still trying to process season 3. First time watching, it was my least favorite season and I nearly stopped watching the show because of it. Second time watching…it’s still probably my least favorite just by comparison, but I have infinite more respect for it. Anyway, I needed to sort out my thoughts on this, so it’s all under “keep reading” and don’t get mad at me.

Cons (because let’s get the bad stuff out of the way)

-I really dislike revenge stories, so all the revenge stuff with Hunter and Coulson and Ward and all did not sit well with me and felt even OOC.

-Speaking of, from the S2 finale through most of this season, there’s this theme of the men protecting and revenging their wounded or fridged girlfriends. It’s not super fun because this is a show where the women are clearly just as, if not more, competent than the men, but they’re not given the same opportunity to protect/revenge the men, much less given the same importance even in their own stories. I’m blanking on what MCU movies were going on around the time of this season, but I remember seeing this even in the movies. If I remember correctly there was a head of MCU who was later removed, but was apparently responsible.

-The use of Ward is muddled. I’m cool with his takeover of HYDRA, that seemed natural. But you expect it to lead to a huge standoff with SHIELD because he, their worst enemy, is now head of their worst enemy organization. Instead, he gets converted to the HYDRA religion and literally becomes a vessel. Which is fine, but the transition was really hurriedly and poorly done. This is a man who has complex views of loyalty (Garrett not HYDRA. Skye and Coulson but not SHIELD), so I’m gonna need a lot more convincing that he’d believe Gideon’s HYDRA.

-This will be on both lists: I’m disappointed about how after three seasons HYDRA is taken out so quietly and quickly.

-I don’t know where to put this, but: I didn’t actually hate the space boyfriend arc as much the second time around, but the potential overall got squandered and I dislike that.

-Rosalind’s death and possibly her whole arc was pointless. She was literally created and killed to serve Coulson’s character. Gross. And it’s a shame because it would have been really cool to use her as an actual foe-turned-friend for SHIELD throughout the season; she could have easily taken Mace’s place in S4 and that way at least would have been important for two seasons

-Okay, this is ABC’s fault not AOS’s. But like I remember how hard they advertised for Secret Warriors. Like that was the name of the arc. And. Then. They were a team FOR AN EPISODE. Imagine my disappointment. Also, there really weren’t enough Inhumans this season to suit me.

-Bobbi and Hunter leave for a failed spinoff and I will never forgive Marvel for doing that.

-I mean…I appreciate that they give Andrew a noble death, but like…was it really necessary to have him turn and later die? Really? It gives Ming Na Wen and Blair Underwood opportunities to do extraordinary acting and they nail it, but like maybe don’t kill a guy to solve your inevitable ship? Don’t kill off your second black actor?

-The time jump in the season finale is too sudden. Like we barely get to grieve over Lincoln and they hit us with a time jump and Daisy on the run and new director in charge. Uncool.

-This was the season I started to dislike Fitzsimmons. Don’t hate me. To me there’s an undercurrent in the writing that seems to favor Fitz over Simmons. FS’s subject to the same sexism that I mentioned in the first bullet. Like the story post-Simmons’ return focuses a lot more on Fitz’s feelings than on hers. He’s the one who has to stop her from getting tortured. He’s the one who saves Will, when it makes way more sense for her to go. He’s the one they all turn to for answers, when it should be both of them combined. And Simmons just gets a little pushed aside in her own story arc, but she just goes along with it anyway.

-I had to write this last because this is the thing that hurts the season the most for me: Lincoln’s treatment. Okay, first, he’s a great character who got a major personality change between seasons. I don’t like the personality change, but I’d be okay with it if they didn’t do worse. For starters, we barely know him. His life and backstory are so vague, the guy he visits in 3x03 is just “a friend”, and like we get zero information on how they know each other. They spend the entire season having everyone in SHIELD (except Daisy) be against him, dislike him, belittle him, and mistrust him WHEN HE DESERVED NONE OF IT. Like they make it really obvious that Coulson dislikes him father-style because of his relationship with Daisy. They make him petulant and act out to prove that Mack and May are right to mistrust him when really given the fact that he was an Inhuman guide and a medical doctor and a recovered addict, he’d be a lot more under control. They make Fitzsimmons talk down to him just because no one can be smart except Fitzsimmons, when clearly he would know more about Inhuman biology and medicine in general THAN THE BIOCHEM PHD (sorry that one will always bug me). Like they make some work on him with Coulson and May, and that’s good, but overall he is not allowed to have a solid relationship with anyone but Daisy. I think the writers 1) knew he was gonna die and decided not to invest in him or his relationships. 2) were trying to get a moody bad boy in the cast, and decided to cast him as it when it didn’t really make sense. Also, while talking about Lincoln, I really wish they did some more interesting things with his powers than lightning blasts. He has electric powers!! There’s so much you can do!!

-Okay, this one is just real personal. LINCOLN IS A MEDICAL DOCTOR. Or at least a medical student or resident or fellow (I mean, he’s in the hospital doing rounds). TREAT HIM AS SUCH. HE WANTED TO HELP PEOPLE, LET HIM HELP PEOPLE. LET HIM DO THE SURGERIES AND KNOW THE STUFF ABOUT BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE. LET HIM RETURN TO HIS OLD LIFE AS A DOCTOR. You had such a good character who turned himself around from addiction, dedicated his life to saving lives, got thrown multiple curve balls, and now has to decide how will he continue to serve others. Yes, he’s a hero in the end. But all that in between time, he could have been saving lives too.

Pros (because there is good stuff, I promise)

-Someone mentioned that this is the first season to have a unified storyline throughout, and that’s so true and it’s so well done!

-There’s a good natural continuation of the HYDRA and Inhuman storylines from S1 and S2. I think we can look at AOS as two large arcs: S1-S3 is about powered people and HYDRA. S4-S7 is about bending the limits of reality with Ghost Rider, LMDs, Framework, Space, and Time Travel,. S1 was about introducing us to powered people and HYDRA, S2 was about developing the history and politics of them respectively and how they relate to SHIELD. S3 is when Inhumans get involved with SHIELD and with the world directly and the fallout from that. For HYDRA it’s when we get the history and reasoning of the group, and even if it’s a retcon, I appreciate that it introduces the background of HYDRA as a way to end this arc

-Overall, I really do appreciate how this season fills out a lot of worldbuilding. We get a complete history on HYDRA, and we get way more info on Inhumans, but we also get to see how the human world is reacting to and divided on Inhumans, which carries over into the net season

-On both lists: It’s good that they take HYDRA out so quickly and quietly. That plotline had run its course, and it was so bittersweet because they finally had defeated their biggest enemy, but now they had even bigger problems to deal with it. That scene of Coulson and May watching HYDRA fall is one of my favorites because it mirrors that S1 scene of watching HYDRA takeover, but it’s so quiet and not celebratory like it should be.

-Like I said, I hate revenge arcs, but I do appreciate how it came full circle at the end with Coulson admitting his mistake and regret in seeking revenge. That’s much more on brand with Coulson and MCU even I had to sit through a painful arc just to get to that point.

-Episode 1, Daisy’s entrance and, for that matter, Fitz’s entrance. HOT DAMN.

-One of my favorite things about AOS is the way that they mix up pairings and everyone feels like friends and family. This season did a fantastic job on that with like Fitz/Bobbi, Mack/Daisy, Hunter/May, and way more.

-I complain that there wasn’t enough Inhumans to suit me, but also I really enjoyed the ones we got. I expected them to do Inhumans with basic powers like water, fire, plants, shrinking. But AoS writers were like nah, how about a guy who melts metal?? How about Medusa eyes?? How about a guy who can predict deaths? Like they just went straight to the extremes and I respect that. And yes, we have our typical speedster and fire guy, but the sheer joy that comes from those characters makes up for the predictability of their powers.

-We get Joey and Yoyo who are the effin’ best and deserve the world. And with Lincoln and Daisy we got SECRET WARRIORS!!!!

-First time, we get introduced to Charles and Robin and manipulating time, which obviously becomes important later, so I like that they introduce it so early in the show.

-I also love the way things come full circle with Lash. I wish he didn’t die, but the reveal of his true purpose was amazing

-THE FITZSIMMONS KISS. THE FITZSIMMONS SEX SCENE. Do I really need to say more?

-THAT FITZ vs MONOLITH SCENE. That is top like five moments of the show for me, and I’m gonna need the Emmys to give Iain de Castecker his belated Best Actor award any day now.

-4722 Hours was a work of art, and Elizabeth Henstridge, I will be getting you that Best Actress Emmy one way or another.

-Brett Dalton’s acting. This rewatch served to highlight how brilliantly he developed Ward’s evilness over the course of the three seasons and then the way he flipped the switch and played a completely different character as Hydra. You can feel it in his voice and mannerisms, it’s a totally different person even if it’s still technically Ward’s body. And to top it off, that finale where he pulls of a brilliant two-minute psychotic breakdown and a kickass fight scene. Standing ovation, good sir. I miss you.

-After S2 fridged three women of color, I do appreciate how this season chooses to take out four of its white characters even if I’m sad that they had to go.

-The Star Wars references were so effin’ funny

-Spy’s Goodbye. I will never be okay about this.

#idk if should tag this #but i want it in my tags #hope no one hates me #aos #aos s3 #aos rewatch #agent aos rewatch #aos s3 rewatch #aos season 3 rewatch #agent h #agent report

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apparitionism · 5 years

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Helicobacter 16

Every single time: In everything I write that suggests these two would get hitched, the JK-played character does the “marry me” asking. Every. Single. Time. I don’t know why this makes such sense to me... I should probably think about flipping that script at some point, in some future narrative, so watch this space, I guess. (I’m sticking with you for now, Tumblr, despite your repeated attempts to drive me away.) Anyway, previously on Helicobacter (in the fifteen! parts that came before this one, which are all available to you on this very judgy social-media platform), we learned that Myka had made a significant miscalculation, Helena can think surprisingly well on her feet, and raccoons are likely to get chatty about Pop-Tarts. Of course the only sensical thing Myka could do then was propose.

Helicobacter 16

Helena managed a weak laugh. She said, “Do you and I really need to enter into yet another faux engagement?”

“No,” said Myka.

“Then—” Wait.

Myka nodded. “Now you’re getting it. And speaking of getting it: who’s got it?” She swung her free hand around, in a gesture that seemed to encompass everyone in the room.

“It? What is it? Who has what?” Helena asked.

“The ring. I know it’s in this room.”

“What?” Helena felt she was losing her purchase on the idea that words were meant to make sense. “You know a ring is in this room?”

Myka was solemn again: “I do.”

“Did you use that phrase intentionally?” Varsha asked. “If so, it’s quite funny.”

“Not as funny as the story,” Abigail said.

“What story?” Helena demanded. “Why is there always a story?”

Rick answered the latter question: “Because life isn’t a series of random collisions of atoms.” So helpful.

“It might be,” Varsha told him.

“But we couldn’t perceive it that way, even if it were,” Steve told her in turn.

“I’m having trouble perceiving it in any way,” Helena lamented.

Myka, who hadn’t released Helena’s hand, pulled on it, drawing her attention back. “Let me help you perceive it my way. It’s pretty simple: I bought a ring for you ages ago, mostly as a sort of... gesture of hope. To say ‘there’s a future in which this will be possible.’ But then I showed it to Abigail, and she said it was too risky for me to have it in my possession, because I’d run into you at some point and feel like it was burning a hole in my pocket and just drop to the one knee, regardless of where and when.” She raised “didn’t you” eyebrows at Abigail, who nodded. Myka went on, “I said that was ridiculous, but then one day I saw you down a hallway at City Hall, and I realized I was in fact about to sprint in your direction and do exactly what she’d predicted, so I literally reversed course and went right to her and handed it over. And promised I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t have it. Because even I need the occasional guardrail.”

Abigail snorted. “Occasional. Right.” To Helena, she said, “We should apply for a federal grant to fund the guardrails-against-Helena project. Anyway, I said I couldn’t hold it all the time, because then she’d know exactly where it was, which was almost as bad, given that I didn’t want to be rudely awakened in the middle of the night some night by some lovelorn lunatic who decided she just had to set phasers to nuptial. So I made her promise also not to ask you if she couldn’t pinpoint its location, and we set up a committee—at first just me and Steve, but after she read Rick in, we decided to draft him, too—to rotate possession. Myka doesn’t know the rotation or the schedule, which makes it hard for her to fight through the bureaucracy to get to it.”

“That’s a clever disincentive,” Jane remarked, causing Helena to note that she had not, in fact, exited the inside-joke snowglobe just yet.

Abigail said, “I modeled it on the demonstration-permit regs. They’re so well thought out.”

“I wrote those,” Jane told her, and when Abigail offered her a disingenuous “you don’t say,” Jane bowed her head. She might have been glowering, laughing, or praying... she offered no clarity with her next words: “My staff: the Machiavelli Players.”

Myka, seeming to resent that the spotlight kept shifting away from her, said, “Anyway, I almost did the asking on Saturday night, because it had to be in that room, too, given the committee. But I figured we were so close to getting the work thing fixed—and you’d probably be more inclined to say yes once we did—that I should wait.”

“I’m the one who’s got it now,” Rick said. “Sort of ironic. And I was supposed to hand it off to Steve today.”

Helena looked to Steve. “Behind my back,” she said, “this entire time?” and Steve had the grace to look at least a bit chagrined.

Myka said, “Not entire. It wasn’t until after I told my mom the truth that I really made up my mind.”

“But then you did?” Helena asked.

“But then I did. I’m serious. You’re looking at me like you don’t believe me, but I’m serious.”

“I’m looking at you like...” Helena tried to find words to say about what she was feeling, words that might possibly be correct. She fought through what she recognized as a Myka-esque pause, search... then surrender. “You’re right, like I don’t believe you. We’ve spent only two nights together!”

“Info that I for one didn’t need,” Rick said. “Or want.”

“This I can vote on,” Varsha agreed.

Steve said, hurriedly, “Passed by acclamation.”

Myka gave that attention-tug to Helena’s hand. “If we were fundamentalists, we’d’ve spent zero nights together.”

“We aren’t fundamentalists,” Helena said. Of that, she was reasonably certain, but what it had to do with anything...

Now Myka blinked at Helena: a slow, soft, indulgent blink. “My point is, depending on the circumstance, two is a lot.”

“World wars, for example,” Abigail offered.

“Isn’t that an argument against their spending more nights together?” Liam asked her.

“Emperors Napoleon?” Abigail tried.

“Nope, there were three of those,” Steve said, “but maybe also part of an argument against? The French probably thought the first one was one too many.”

“Waterloo,” Helena muttered, because she still had no purchase on the situation, but defeat seemed a relevant concept.

“That is a very good song,” Myka told her. “I refer you to the lyrics.”

“Mamma Mia movies!” Liam exclaimed.

“That just makes that ‘argument against’ point stronger,” Steve said, and as Liam protested that he liked them, that there should be lots more, Steve gave him a look that Helena decoded—perhaps based on the personal experience of having sent very similar aspects in Myka’s direction—as “your questionable judgment makes me question my own judgment in finding you so appealing.”

Jeannie said, “Here, I’ll try something in a different genre: one of Myka’s great-great-grandmothers was a mail-order bride. She hadn’t even met her intended before the wedding.”

“I didn’t know that. But they lived happily ever after?” Myka asked, with evident hope.

Jeannie shook her head. “Probably not. It was Colorado in the 1800s.”

Varsha clapped her hands lightly, her face a study in joy. “One or both highly likely to have died of cholera!” Her enthusiasm for that outcome was... unsurprising.

“That pile of ‘against’ points keeps getting bigger, guys,” Myka said, “so maybe leave this to me?”

“No, no, the epidemiological point is that you most likely won’t die of cholera,” Varsha said.

Myka smiled, then squinted. “That’s great, but... how is that an argument in favor of our spending more nights together? And/or living happily ever after?”

Varsha squinted back, saying, “It isn’t. It’s a necessary condition for either or both of those outcomes to occur. You’ll have to make your own argument.”

“I’m trying,” Myka said. “Give me the ring, Rick.”

Rick shook his head. “Can’t.”

“Of course you can. It’s mine. And it’s about to be hers, I hope.”

Abigail said, “We have to vote. The committee. It has to be unanimous. You read the bylaws.”

Myka closed her eyes. She breathed in slowly, then said, “You cannot be serious.”

“Isn’t that usually my line?” Helena asked—joking, but not entirely.

Myka’s grip on her hand tightened again. “I swear to god if you people don’t let me put a ring on it, I will water-gun fake blood on each and every one of you, and that will happen at a time you’ll find extremely inconvenient.”

“I move we hand it over,” Steve said.

“Seconded.” That was from Rick.

“I move we vote immediately on the motion,” Steve continued.

Rick again: “Seconded.”

“Aye,” Steve said.

“Aye,” Rick said.

Abigail said nothing.

“What are you waiting for?” Myka demanded.

“Clean clothes,” Abigail told her. “See, I’ve already been water-gunned. I kind of want to make you sweat.”

“Ill-advised,” Jeannie said.

“Why is everyone stealing my lines?” Helena complained.

Myka darted a glance at Helena, a glance of a quality suggesting that Helena’s repeated noting of line-stealing might have been either immensely alluring or extravagantly irritating—or possibly both—and said to Abigail, “I swear. To god. A ring on this, or.”

Abigail sighed. “Fine. Aye.”

“Now,” Myka told Rick.

Rick reached into his pocket, but in trying to extricate what was presumably the ring, he turned the fabric inside out. A loud clink resounded, as did an “oh jesus” from him and a giggle from Abigail, and then he had dropped to his knees and was scrabbling at the floor, and Helena genuinely expected that in a moment, all of them would be examining the linoleum in great detail, for Myka now wore the expression of someone likely to issue a strongly worded decree about what had better be found right now... but Rick quickly bounced up. “Here,” he said to Myka before he looked directly at her face. “Sorry,” he said, after he did.

She held the ring between the thumb and forefinger of her free hand and shook it at him. “You had a diamond ring loose in your trouser pocket? This diamond ring? You are a ding-dong.” Rick looked for a moment as if he might take the fool’s path and protest... but he kept his mouth closed. Myka said, “Good choice,” and she gave the ring, a simple band upon which sat a smallish yet dazzlingly clear stone, to Helena, placing it in the hand she was not holding. “There. Now do you believe me?” She paused. “And now will you say you’ll marry me?”

Helena looked down at what she held. Could a diamond be content to be affixed to a ring? Happy, even, to be there? Because this one’s shimmering clarity seemed not to bespeak mysterious depths, but rather to nestle it securely into its setting. The diamond knew its mind better than Helena knew her own... she cleared her throat. “I’ve never been proposed to before,” she said.

That made Myka not tighten her hold on Helena’s held hand, but gentle it. “That’s because it was always meant to be me.”

That had to be true. It had felt so right to be engaged to marry Myka, even as fiction... Helena said that aloud.

“Told you,” Myka said, but she was not smug. “See, you knew it even before I did.”

“I didn’t buy a ring and set up a committee.”

“That’s because I’m the planner.”

“What does that make me?” Helena asked, and she did not know what Myka’s answer would be. She didn’t know what she wanted Myka’s answer to be... other than right. But what was right? What was she in this improbable relationship?

“You mean,” Jeannie said, “what does it relegate you to.”

Myka smiled at her mother. Then she smiled at Helena. “Dreamer-in-chief,” she said with certainty. “You know, you should put that on your business card. Steve, don’t you think she’d get more work that way?”

“She’d get different work that way,” Steve said. “But isn’t the goal of all this to make sure she gets... similar work?”

With a small eyeroll, Myka said, “Fine. We’ll relegate it to the vows: ‘Do you promise to faithfully execute the office of dreamer-in-chief? To keep dreaming up the never-fountains?’”

Dreamer-in-chief. Perhaps anything Myka had said would have been the right answer, because perhaps it all was nothing more—or less?—than an inside-joke snowglobe. But why not stay in it? The fountain might not exist, but this could. Surely, after all they had been through, this could. Then there is... Helena cleared her throat again. “As noted,” she said, “I didn’t buy a ring.”

“Cheapskate-in-chief,” Myka said, and that was even more right.

“But will you marry me, too?” Helena asked. It was not what she ever would have planned to say today, but now she had said it. And she did not mean it as any push of problems into the future... no, it was a pull of problems. An invitation to them, in the present and in the future.

“Try and stop me, beautiful cheapskate. Just try.” Myka leaned back against her inadequate pillow, looking for all the world like a spoiled princeling, sure that the world—or at least Helena—was hers for the taking. She was of course right, and Helena leaned in and kissed her, savoring it, savoring all of it, even the obvious absurdity, even the likelihood of additional, or at least eventual, catastrophe... “I haven’t changed,” she still wanted to warn, but she still also remembered Myka’s “maybe you shouldn’t have to.” This is how it feels, Charles might as well have been whispering in her ear, as the right wrecking ball knocks you over.

When the kiss ended, Myka didn’t, to Helena’s surprise, return to smiling. Instead she blinked overwet eyes. The planes of her face were ruddy. “You really do believe it,” she said. Perhaps not so spoiled after all, the princeling...

“I do,” Helena assured her.

Varsha said, “That’s funny too! Even more so, because I don’t think you said it intentionally.”

“I have to confess I find it a little hard to follow what you think is funny,” Rick told her.

Helena echoed, “Hard to follow. I have to confess that I find the turn—turns?—my life has taken a bit hard to follow.”

Myka sighed. “If we’re owning up, then I have to confess that I find myself contemplating more often than is probably healthy how adorable this cheapskate looks in a hardhat.”

“What?” Helena said, startled. “How do you know that?”

“That’s the part that’s a little hard to follow, and I’ll tell you later, but I note that you aren’t disputing your adorableness.”

“I—”

“That better end with ‘love you.’”

“It does,” Helena said. “And you knew that before I did.” She had been holding the ring in the palm of her own free hand, where Myka had placed it. Now, to substantiate her words, she loosed her right hand from Myka’s and used it to place that unassuming band onto the appropriate finger, where it fit as if, yes, it had always been intended to live there. She held her hand up, facing its back, and thus the confident stone, toward Myka. “Well? What do you say to that?”

“Everything,” Myka said, and Helena laughed and kissed her again, because of course she did say everything, anything and everything, all of it exactly what Helena needed—and a reasonable majority of the time wanted—to hear.

When this kiss ended, Helena heard a small sniffle, and she looked up to see Jeannie dabbing at her eyes. “I’m not surprised this got to me,” Jeannie said, “because witnessing my daughter so overcome is, to use an inadequate word, rare... but I didn’t know it would get to anybody else.” She looked at Jane. “I’m glad to know she works for someone with such a heart.”

Helena observed, with astonishment, that Jane was touching her own eyes with her sleeve. Jane said, “I did mention it isn’t made of stone. And with that, I’m leaving, before anyone mistakes me for a sentimental fool.”

“Too late,” Abigail informed her, with a laugh that seemed dangerously near a cackle.

Jane confirmed the danger with a raised eyebrow. “Spread that around, Ms. Machiavel, and I will show you how fast a heart can harden.” She then made an exit of a sort that should have been accompanied by a retinue.

Rick sighed. “I guess that means Myka’s cured, and we better get back to work.”

“Unless someone in this room would like to develop some sort of interesting infection,” Varsha suggested.

“I’d rather my day be boring, thanks,” Rick told her.

Varsha gave his cheek a pat that, if bestowed by anyone else, would have seemed overly aggressive. “Of course you would, wallpaper. See how soothing he is!”

Once Rick and Varsha had gone, Liam said, “I guess they’re right. There’s only so many billable hours I can give up in order to ‘visit a sick friend.’ Or visit a ‘sick’ friend. Or whatever it is we’ve been doing.”

“It’s strange but nice to have seen you in the middle of the day,” Steve said.

“Heart-melter. Maybe I won’t badger you to watch Here We Go Again tonight.”

“Waterloo... knowing my fate is to be with you,” Steve sang softly, and Helena added “Steve singing” to the list of seemingly impossible things that had happened today. He turned to her with a slightly apologetic, self-conscious smile. “If I can’t concentrate this afternoon because that’s running through my head, it’s your fault.”

“Accepted,” Helena said. “I think we can safely assume some similar words will be interfering with my thoughts.”

“Obviously, mine too,” said Myka.

“And mine,” Liam agreed. “Thanks a lot, honey. I’m supposed to be writing a closing argument. What if I accidentally put in ‘I feel like I win when I lose’?”

Steve shrugged. “Depends. How many ABBA fans are on your jury?”

“That isn’t something we commonly get around to in voir dire.”

“Then I think we’ve all learned a lesson or two today, haven’t we? About good questions to ask,” Steve said. He directed a significant look at Helena and Myka, then threw an even more significant one toward Liam. “In particular circumstances.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Liam said as they departed. “I will badger you to watch Here We Go Again. Every night for the next week. Or maybe the next year. Or decades....”

Abigail remarked, “They’re almost as cloying as the two of you, but with less drama. Is that good or bad? Anyway, I’m going to bring this back around to ‘clean clothes,’ and the fact that I’d like some, so I should—”

“They have lovely scrubs here,” Helena told her. “The color of an emergent bruise.”

Myka said, “I’ll admit I got a little overenthusiastic with the ‘blood.’ It’s a lot more fun water-gunning it than actually producing it myself. Although I did end up engaged to the most beautiful cheapskate in the world, both times...”

“It seems entirely unfair to Abigail that you were the only one in possession of a weapon,” Helena said.

Abigail nodded at Helena with enthusiasm. “So true. Unfair to you, too, that first time, even if the weapon was her gut. We’ll have to get back at her somehow—I know, a group paintball tournament! Maybe make it an annual thing. For your anniversary.”

“That is the best idea ever,” Myka said to her. Then she turned to Helena and said, as if referring to the sweetest of intimacies, “Isn’t it.”

“Paintball,” Helena said, and did the tone she took with Myka inevitably sound that same tenderness? “Do you know what Charles says to his wife, Jane, on a regular basis?”

“Unfortunately, he didn’t tell me. Do you want me to guess?”

“Actually... I’d love to hear your guess.”

“He says ‘Jane, isn’t my sister so very lucky to have found Myka, and vice versa.’”

That made Helena laugh. “Although you’ve produced a tolerable version of his voice, I don’t believe he does say that. Not regularly.”

“Well, give it time. What does he really say?”

“He says, ‘What a disaster our first meeting was.’”

“Did she really run into his car? Or was he shining me on?”

“And then he thought to return the favor,” Helena affirmed, “to make sure he had her romantic attention. He didn’t tell you that part?”

“God, no. You Wellses are weird.”

“I talked him out of it!” Helena protested.

Myka, doing princeling-against-the-pillow again, drawled, “That’s your evidence to the contrary.”

Helena said to Jeannie, “Do you know, occasionally your daughter sounds exactly like her father. Who has that irrational fear of raccoons, as I’ve so recently come to understand, so if family weirdness is genuinely on the table—”

“I do know they sound alike,” Jeannie interrupted, “but it’s nice to be reminded of it. Do you sound like your father?”

Helena smiled. “No, but I do sound very like my brother—as Myka has remarked, and which is pertinent, because Charles always follows his initial disaster comment with, ‘What a disaster I would be in the absence of that disaster.’”

“That’s sweet,” said the princeling, “but still weird.”

“My point is that I suspect I’ll be following his lead in these ritual utterances as well.”

“I don’t need clean clothes,” Abigail announced. “I need insulin. Is there a special British kind? Because you never sound like you’re made of sugar, but you are, and that makes it worse. That’s it for me.” She paused at the door, turned around, and pointed at Myka. “Pop-Tarts are one thing, but grapefruit’s another.” Then she pointed at Helena. “And raccoons are one thing, but eleven of you, nobody could take.” She swept out, and Helena suspected she would have wanted her departure accompanied by dramatic exit music.

“Grapefruit,” said Myka. “She’s said that to me before, in relation to you.”

“It has vaguely to do with koans. I’ll tell you the story some other time,” Helena said.

“Why is there always a story?” Myka said, a gentle mock.

“I’m told it has to do with atoms.”

Jeannie said, “Colliding, but not randomly. She was so excited when I finally found that book of yours.”

“I suspect she was primarily pleased to have been right. In her identification.”

“Well, she’s Myka,” Jeannie allowed. “But also... she was overcome. Like today. By you. I’m really not giving away any secret when I tell you this matters to her in an unprecedented way—but even if it were a secret, I’d tell you, because of that unprecedented mattering.”

“I’m in the room, Mom.”

Jeannie ignored Myka. She leveled a not-quite-benign gaze at Helena and said, “Treat her well. You seem like you will—I want to believe that you will—but please.”

Not precisely a talk of shovels, but near enough. “I will work hard at it,” Helena told her. “I’m very good at working hard.”

Myka leaned against Helena again. She said, “Mm. In a selfish, Emperors-Napoleon sense, I’m glad you aren’t overly good at being good.”

Not in front of your mother, Helena thought at Myka. She tried to show, by means of a severe brow-furrow directed at the very contented woman at her side, that she was thinking this instruction, but that made Myka laugh, and that in turn made Helena want to forget about who they were in front of.

“I clearly need to give you two a minute,” Jeannie said, and that was, from Helena’s perspective, an embarrassingly accurate reading of the room’s temperature. “But as I understand it, everybody’s supposed to get back to work. And you might want to remember that the idea behind this whole thing was for everybody to keep having work to get back to...” The door closed behind her.

Guilt: Helena had been so, so uncharitable in her initial assessment of Myka’s Rick-promoting mother, yet Jeannie had, now, provided them with their first instance of clean, unencumbered intimacy. She does want Myka to be happy, Helena now thought. With someone. And she genuinely seems to believe that I am that someone...

That they didn’t lunge for each other seemed, paradoxically, a good sign. A marker of this new reality.

“One minute,” Helena said. “Our first real minute.”

“Speaking of what’s real, tell me, do you really want this?” Myka asked. Helena moved her jaw in disbelief, but Myka went on, “I can take it if you don’t, but only if you tell me right now.”

Helena held her hand up again. “Here is what I’ll tell you right now: I will remove this ring for no reason other than a medical emergency?”

“That could just mean you like rings,” Myka said.

“Have you seen me wear a ring before today?”

“That could just mean you like this ring,” Myka said, but she touched the ring, began playing with Helena’s fingers.

“I have no right answer anymore.”

Myka looked up. “You do if you kiss me.”

So Helena did.

“See?” Myka said, some length of time later. “Now I’m persuaded. Want to persuade me some more? Maybe really, really fast? I think from my side of things, I can promise—”

“No,” Helena interrupted, because if Myka kept talking, the answer was going to be yes, because Helena certainly did want to persuade her some more.

A little pout, a pretty blink. “No?”

“Well, not no,” Helena conceded.

“Not no? Maybe I’m wrong, but that seems like a double negative, which I’m mostly sure works out in the math to be a positive, so—”

Helena had to interrupt again. “I mean, no, but not in perpetuity. No for the present moment.”

“You pick the worst times to be good at being good, but fine. Failing that, I don’t suppose you’d want to just go for the whole cheese plate? Fly to Vegas and get married tonight? Bellagio... fountains.... something like, there is no fountain, then there are lots of fountains, and they dance or light up or do some other—”

Helena kissed her again, and this one was sharp and quick, for it was meant both to stop her and to stop the idea, which was, for all its absurdity, ridiculously compelling: fly away and change everything yet again. She remarked, trying to lighten the idea away, “We’ve both said ‘I do,’ as Varsha found so amusing. Perhaps we’re married already.”

“In some version of the world, I bet we are.”

“I would in some version of the world marry you this minute. But I think we’d both enjoy getting to know each other just a bit better first... more importantly, however, if Charles isn’t invited to the event, he’ll riot.”

“All by himself?”

“That would be very Charles. Also, however, my parents.”

“They’ll riot?”

“Doubtful. Well, my mother might. But I would... want them here. For such an occasion. The right one.”

“If that committee hadn’t let me give you this ring, I would’ve rioted.”

“Once I became accustomed to the idea, so would I.”

Myka said, “I sprang it on you. I’m sorry.” She kissed the ring where it lived on Helena’s finger.

As severely as she could, given the kiss, Helena said, “You are in no way sorry.”

“See, you know me pretty well already. I love that I sprang it on you. I also love that you sprang it on me, reciprocally.”

“It did take me a moment.”

“Scariest moment of my life.”

“You don’t mean that,” Helena said.

“Maybe you don’t know me so well after all. What if you’d said no?”

“You never genuinely entertained that as a possibility.”

“I did though. The look on your face right at first? I don’t ever want to see that look again.” She pulled Helena to her. This kiss said Don’t frighten me.

Helena didn’t want to do that, but she did want to tell the truth. She said, “I’ll be honest: I’m not sure this will work as perfectly as I want it to. As some of our interactions have suggested it might.”

“That you want it to work perfectly is a pretty good start... plus that you think that some of our interactions have suggested it might, that doesn’t hurt. I do too, by the way. Want that. And think that.”

Trying to maintain her honesty, Helena asked, “Is it setting us up for failure? Nothing is perfect.”

“It’s all about goals. What’s failure? Aim for perfect, hit pretty damn wonderful.” And then she clearly decided to tell some truth of her own. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But nothing will if we don’t start, so let’s.”

“I’m fairly certain we have. Look at what’s on my hand.”

“I had moments when I thought about having bought this thing—this thing that was too dangerous for me to have in my possession—and I wondered who in the world I was, who I thought I was, to even consider something like that. Something like that, with someone like you.”

These insecurities... they were Helena’s fault. “Who were you?” she asked, not at all rhetorically, for she intended to give a convincing, sure answer. “Someone with the fearlessness to consider, to push for, a better future. Meanwhile all I did was feel sorry for us. That was all someone like me could do: sit and wait for someone fearless like you to change the circumstance.”

“Fearless, foolish... but no matter how foolish it was, you’re right, it’s on your hand. I like it there.” She stopped, seemed to consider whether she wanted to go on. “Hm. Did you wear a ring before?”

“No, I’ve never worn one. I did the proposing. Gave the ring.” Did Myka want the reciprocal question? Helena went ahead and asked, “Did you? Wear one?”

This occasioned a sigh. “Weirdly, no. The wedding ring was going to be his grandma’s, and we were vaguely planning to retrofit something to go with it. I didn’t press the issue—didn’t care enough to. That should’ve helped clue me in, shouldn’t it?” That was said with a wry twist of lip, not a smile.

Of course both their pasts contained unheeded clues... “I think it’s fair to say that we’ve both made some errors.”

“I think it’s fair to say that we both failed upward.”

What an exquisite thing to say in this context, about what had gone wrong in the past—so exquisite that Helena could barely stand it. She felt a rush of willingness to take Myka up on the idea of being fast, right here... but that rush was an impulse, not an imperative. Instead, Helena got up from the bed. Stepped away. Regarded the woman still in it. Her face, its lines so deft, its beauty barely contained in a too-precise space, would always raise that impulse—no, imperative—to protect.

Pale, sick Myka, in a bed such as this one. Would Helena ever cease to see that day superimposed on Myka’s face and body? And would Helena ever cease to hear, inside Myka’s voice, an echo of that day’s weakest, most distressed entreaty: Will you be here when I wake up?

Of course I will, Helena had told her, and was that when she herself had made up her mind? When you wake up, I’ll be the first thing you see. Helena hadn’t known it then, but she had already begun speaking the vows. Keeping them. “In sickness...” she now said.

“Don’t worry,” Myka told her. “I’ll inflict plenty of health on you, too. Not to mention their friends: richer, poorer, and better.”

“What about ‘worse’?”

That made Myka smile with mischief. “Now who’s the one tempting fate?”

“Destiny,” Helena corrected.

Myka kept smiling, but she also narrowed her eyes. “Hm. Now that sounds like a koan.”

“What does?”

“I asked, ‘Who’s the one tempting fate?’, and ‘Destiny,’ you said. That’s the one tempting fate.”

“But I meant—”

“So the koan is, what happens when destiny tempts fate?”

Helena said, immediately, because it was true, “Charles would say, a car wreck.”

“What would you say?”

Helena would have smiled, largely and with intent, but she was already doing that, and Myka was doing that too, and Helena suspected they both would keep on doing that. She shook her head and exhaled, a little ripple-chuckle of jubilation. “What happens when destiny tempts fate?” she echoed, and Myka nodded. “What would I say?” Myka nodded again, her smile, impossibly, even larger. Now Helena shrugged. There was only one answer, so she gave it: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

TBC (epilogically in a few scenes that would play over the closing credits...)

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Helicobacter #part 16 #AU week #how did this thing get so lengthy?#it's an example of how you can produce a work of some size and design #even when all you have at your disposal timewise #are the nonwork interstices of a truly bonkers several months #and I'll say again that I know this is a silly story #but sometimes you just need to somersault around #and imagine people saying absurd things to each other #inconsequential little absurd things #P.S. There will be one more little explanatory twisty twist at the end #because you never know how far back fate and destiny and karma set their traps #they are patient

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hcngsang · 5 years

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hello beautiful people, it’s me, kiki, coming to you with an unfinished character and messy intro ! i’m twenty one yrs old uhhh i’m from the gmt timezone and currently dying bc of school ! anyways this is jaesun, a human who despises androids or well at least the android who basically stole his life kind of jlksdfjlskdj ! he’s annoying , doesn’t rlly care much about the feelings of others and wishes he was born in the 90s or something like that....

omg also i’ve never played the game before and i checked some wikias n vid of it and it looked so cool that i went to a game store and saw it was like 20 euros !! but i couldnt buy it yet and when i looked on the site just now it was back to 65 euros ............... im so stupid :c but okay carrying on JFDSLKJFD underneath is some more info about him so please take a lookie and give a heart pls if u wanna plot !!

tw: uhhh none that are very heavy, there’s a mentioned death but nothing too graphic

CHOI JAESUN. don’t sit on my dick if you’re afraid of heights !

000. QUICK STATS.

NAME: choi jaesun

AGE: twenty three

DATE OF BIRTH: 11 march 2026

GENDER: male

NATIONALITY: japanese... right fdjskl?

OCCUPATION: currently unemployed

001. BACKSTORY.

he’s one half of a pair or well, he was one half of a pair. jaesun lost his twin sister to a sudden heart attack, something that to this day still doesn’t make sense to him because she was so healthy and everything good but it only shows that death doesn’t discriminate. it wasn’t until two years after her death that his mom bought someone new into their house, an android to be exact one that looked eerily similar to his dead twin.

jaesun had always been fascinated by androids and how they worked so he was very excited to witness with his two eyes what this android could do. he wasn’t bothered by the appearance in the slightest, if anything, it somehow calmed him. because it looked almost identical to his sister jisun. her death certainly affected him a lot, because she was not only his sister but also his best friend.

at first jaesun loved to have the android around, someone who was willing to do chores around the house and who would cook but when he noticed his mother paying more and more attention to the android than him he started to despise the android.

now, he was never the favorite child that much he knew when jisun was still alive. but there was something hurtful about his mother favoring a fucking android more than her only child.

so not only he felt like he was less than the android, he and his mom started to fight more with his mom blaming his lazy ass for not doing shit in the house before and after jisun’s death and with jaesun blaming her for always comparing him to his sister and taking better care of the android more than her own son.

002. PRESENT.

WELL he moved out of the house and it was very dramatic and he got into a huge fight right, said “ i don’t ever wanna see ur face ever again ! ” but probably saw his mom a week later when he entered the apartment building......... since they uhhh all live in the same building i guess

anyway yeah the experience really gave him a bad outlook on androids, especially when he was also laid off of work soon after bc they were gonna hire androids instead bc the wages were a lot cheaper ... uhhhh okay

so now he’s just breezing through life with no real purpose and spends most of his time in rapture

003. PERSONALITY.

basically, he thinks he’s better than everyone else and isn’t afraid to show it ? i wouldn’t say he’s mean mean but he’s not kind either ?? for the most part he just doesn’t know why you, a zero, is talking to him, a 10. lmao ! he’s pretty indifferent if he hurts people bc he cares about him and him only ! basically, he’s like ... confident to the point where he’s conceited, bc he knows he’s hot shit jsdflkdfj

oh yeah, so, negative traits: conceited, candid positive traits: audacious, independent

basically, my whole damn inspo was singularity and watching 20 fancams of singularity

004. EXTRAS.

jesus i spent way too much time thinking about how he looks like... ugh.. why does tae have so many gr8 looks.... okay.. well hair ? black ? i think during fake love era ??? omg im going through it.. uhhh what do i add more, oh yeah ! buys expensive black / white basic shirts because he can n he likes the way he looks like a normal non-rich person when he wears an overpriced 270k yen ( ?? is there a diff currency ) black shirt lol but also wears dress shirts and trousers and nice shoes n a tie just because he wants everyone to now that he is a god amongst all of these humans n androids

can’t really.... keep relationships and is more into casual hookups / fwbs etc so he usually yeets the fuck out when someone catches feelings for him ( or if he caught feelings for someone else omg rip.. )

Choi Jaesun is Bad at Feelings

005. WANTED PLOTS.

all of these are open for further plotting of course !!

a best friend who put up with his shit & feed his ego !! has to be... human...

childhood friends someone who prolly still has embarrassing pics of him

someone he dislikes / can’t stand

unlikely friend / polar opposites

an android that he could consider a friend maybe ?

fwbs / casual hook ups

someone who he leads on owo

bad influence on someone

anything angsty of COURSE !!!!

i will maybe make a proper connection page butdfjsodklsjf these r a few i’d have and ofc i’m open to anything else !

#refinedintro #now im just gonna work on my presentation script thats due TOMORROW but i'll ofc check back sfjsdlk;js #hes still a work in progress im sowwy #also u can ask for my discord if u wanna plot tru there !!

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johnboothus · 3 years

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11 Years of Untappd: How One App Gamified the Relentless Pursuit of Novelty

On Jan. 20, Gregory Avola announced he was stepping down as chief creative officer of Untappd, the online beer platform he helped found and then actively ran for a decade. This, Avola writes, is driven by a lifestyle change, and he will remain at Untappd’s parent company, Next Glass, as executive advisor. As when software developer Next Glass purchased Untappd in 2016, and then joined it with newer purchase Beer Advocate in 2020, this update is stirring up conversation and reflection on Untappd’s impact on beer culture.

Such reflection yields a mixed bag. In the 11 years since it launched, Untappd has facilitated a wider-reaching community in beer. It’s helped users find beers they otherwise wouldn’t, and, therefore, has helped breweries reach new customers. Some, however, feel that Untappd has fueled “ticker culture,” and that its rating system is a breeding ground for biased, baseless ratings that only favor hype beers and often hurt breweries. Beer’s relationship with Untappd might be complicated, but Untappd’s role has proven undeniably significant.

Foursquare for Beer

Avola created Untappd with Tim Mather in 2010. Perhaps surprisingly, he wasn’t all that into beer when he started working on the app.

“My main interest was in communities and building social platforms to connect people in different ways,” he tells me in a recent call. Avola and Mather used Foursquare as a model — which the press ran with — but, as Avola puts it, with more focus on what those check-ins could do. “No one cares if you’re checking in at a grocery store,” he says. “But people checking in at bars, saying what they’re drinking, that starts connecting people across the globe.”

Avola wanted to take the inherent social aspect of craft beer and grow it online. At the time, there were only BeerAdvocate and RateBeer, both representing an older generation in beer. Untappd arrived at the party hot on the heels of IPAs becoming a thing people traveled and waited in hours-long lines for, a ready and willing platform for drinkers to discover, share, swap info, and, by checking in that they were at those hype breweries drinking those hype beers, brag. In a way, and as was Avola’s intention, Untappd became a wide-scale, virtual tasting room where beer geeks could talk shop but, coming from different cities and even countries instead of different barstools, they could introduce each other to new brews. Avola says that at the time he was living in New York City and learned what Fat Tire was when Mather, living on the West Coast, checked it in.

The Next Generation of Beer Raters

Whereas BeerAdvocate’s pages were filled with long, thoughtful beer reviews, Untappd catered to a generation of beer drinkers that was always on to the next and wanting an app to keep up. This is why Untappd is credited with — or blamed for — “ticker culture.” After all, while Untappd was still in its infancy, The Alchemist was able to survive closing its brewpub after Hurricane Irene by pumping Heady Topper out of its production brewery. There’s no telling if this could have happened had Untappd been in its prime, fueling beer seekers to move on in search of a hot IPA they hadn’t already tried. Indeed, within a few years, the script had flipped. How to be a beer nerd went from having a discerning dedication to select brews to relentlessly trying every new beer released. The proof of your beer cred was in your Untappd portfolio, where millions of fellow users could marvel at the sheer breadth of hype beers you’d checked in.

“Ticker culture represents an emphasis on breadth of experience over depth,” says Alex Kidd, of Don’t Drink Beer. “The pour sizes seem to diminish, the style ratings seem to be heavily skewed as a result, and the check-ins seem to be a system of accomplishments predicated on consumption over contemplation.”

At best, it could be argued, ticker culture catalyzes beer sales by keeping drinkers motivated with the thrill of the hunt. At worst, it can be an arrow through the heart of brewers’ ability to create and diversify their offerings, since the haziest IPAs, slushiest sours, and most candy-packed pastry stouts are going to win ticks every time over a loving homage to an English mild. This can also hurt beer sales for breweries on an individual basis, if they decide to commit the cardinal sin of making the same beers and therefore lose luster in the eyes of tick-seekers.

“I don’t want to be an old crank who decries ticker culture, but I really can’t imagine what positive impact it could have on anything,” says beer writer Will Gordon. “The most obvious downside,” Gordon continues, is too many people “stumbling around juggling flights and phones in their mad dash to overrate beers that are either too sweet or too sour.”

“Ticker culture is negative, full stop,” says Gage Siegel, founder of Brooklyn’s Non Sequitur Beer Project, citing people buying cases of beer just to flip and festival-goers trying to cram in 100 different beer pours in three-hour time slots as less-than-ideal results. “Ticker culture certainly doesn’t start or end with Untappd, but I’d say they did a lot to normalize it [and] make it easier to participate in.”

An Inevitable Evolution in How Drinkers Engage With Craft Beer

The ticker-culture discussion never happens without mentioning Untappd, but it’s important to clarify: The app did not create ticker culture. It has aided what could be considered human nature in an industry exponentially exploding with new options every year. One could get bogged down in a chicken-or-egg quandary: Do breweries continuously push the envelope to meet the demand of tick-hungry Untappd users, or are tick-hungry Untappd users tripping over themselves to keep up with the constant deluge of hop innovations and wacky adjuncts? It’s a two-way street, and Untappd provides the platform for everyone to talk about it.

“Untappd serviced ticker culture, but I feel comfortable saying it would have happened anyway,” says beer and spirits journalist and author Tara Nurin. “Across any number of industries … younger generations are more peripatetic. … It’s about what’s next, what’s new, and that plays out very profoundly in beer.” Nurin has mixed feelings about the way Untappd has arguably “gamified” beer. On one hand, it’s a great push for people to try new things. On the other, it could disincentivize people revisiting brews.

“I do think the novelty effect can be harmful to breweries,” says beer writer Carla Jean Lauter. “The pressures of ‘newness’ have led to some of the proliferation of extremely similar beers (e.g., having eight IPAs on tap at once) to try to give something new, rather than to just provide the best.”

Subjective and Unqualified: How Ratings Affect Breweries

Whichever side of the fence one falls in the ticker culture debate, one specific aspect of Untappd’s rating system that helps propel it is especially murky: the subjectivity. Even the industry insiders we spoke with who generally like the app acknowledged that the ratings are far from uniformly trustworthy. Many users skip actually commenting on their beers in favor of punching a number of “caps,” from zero to five. These ratings are obviously completely personal and often offer no explanation, yet, as Siegel points out, they’re considered by beer buyers at stores and bars as well as consumers weighing their beer options. The problem is, what a “3” or a “4.5” means can vary wildly from one person to the next. There’s no agreed-upon metric.

“I’ve just never put faith in numeric ratings of beer,” Lauter says. “In Untappd’s case, there’s also the twist that many people for a long time treated the reviews as their own personal tastes. ‘If I don’t like pineapple on pizza, and I order a pineapple pizza, I give it one star just to remind myself: Yep, still don’t like that.’”

The range of expertise among Untappd’s millions of users may range from from zero to cicerone, but on average, these ratings aren’t coming from people with beer-judging criteria. In some cases, this can be great, as it levels the playing field for anyone who’s enthusiastic about beer. It can be not so great but harmless if you remember to take rankings with a grain of salt. Or, it can do a bit of damage to some breweries.

“Some people develop an over-inflated sense of self because of their amount of check-ins, and they think this makes them some sort of expert despite the fact that they have no formal beer education,” says Paulina Olivares, Sacramento Pink Boots Society chapter leader, who notes that this issue isn’t exclusive to Untappd. Olivares says she’s stopped rating beers on Untappd unless it’s a “5.”

Of course, subjectivity as a concept also isn’t something Untappd created, but for all of its positive features, the app has become such an authority, and the microphone it therefore gives to biased, careless, and/or ungrounded opinions can now in some cases actually affect whether a brewery’s beer makes it onto shelves. A beer might not get a high rating from the Untappd masses because it isn’t hazy or dank enough, even if that wasn’t the brewer’s intention, and many retail outlets take those ratings into consideration. They could therefore decide against selling what could be a perfectly great beer. And this can create pressure on breweries to stick to what lights up the ratings board on Untappd.

As Avola points out in our call, this is rating culture. It happens with everything from restaurants to dry cleaners on Yelp. And yes, it even happens to Untappd itself in the form of one-star, “this-app-sucks” reviews in app stores based on one-off experiences with little context. Avola says he understands that it’s frustrating for breweries to see their beers rated poorly, beers they put a lot of effort into. These subjective rankings, though, are a by-product of Untappd’s main goal to help people share what they’re finding and drinking. The downsides of this are something Avola says really can’t be policed, but that he hopes can be mended as Untappd continues to evolve.

A Platform for Visibility, Discovery, and Nostalgia

On the flip side of the biased ratings are some of Untappd’s key tenets. There is community on a global scale, more relevant now than ever as most beer drinking is done at home, and poised to only become more crucial as beer culture and even beer retail grow online. There is increased visibility, discovery, and access between users and breweries.

Plus, as many users report, Untappd is a helpful tool for tracking one’s own beers: It’s less about a rating for others to see, and more about actually being able to organize and remember brews you loved and brews you didn’t love. This becomes increasingly helpful as the number of options in craft beer only grows and styles bloom into sub-styles and hybrids year after year.

“I do feel like more and more people are using it just to keep track of what they’ve drank versus tracking ratings,” says beer Instagrammer Valerie Delligatti, who appreciates being able to remember what she’s sampled from breweries to (pre-pandemic) bottle shares.

This is even a helpful professional tool, as beer writers can track and sort brews they try and report on, something beer writer and “former semi-professional blackjack player” Mike Pomranz values, noting that even if it weren’t free, he’d pay Untappd for this feature. Checking in beers creates your own library to refer back to whenever needed. “When I check in beers … I am thinking about what I’ll want to know later,” Pomranz says. “So, someone asks me for a good IPA in Arizona. Well, I haven’t been there in a while, but I can filter IPAs produced in Arizona and then sort those by rating, and then read my notes and boom, I have the perfect beer ready to go.”

This also creates a sort of scrapbook for craft beer lovers. “I personally love the nostalgia of looking back and remembering where [I was] when I had a certain beer,” says craft beer drinker and wellness coach Amanda Steele. “That’s kind of my favorite thing about Untappd.”

Beyond this core tracking function, Nurin notes that by the same token as Untappd possibly deterring users from returning to beers in favor of trying new finds, it can just as easily be a conduit for users to remember beers they love. While we spoke, she scrolled through her feed and found promos poised to remind users that a beer they loved once is on sale, or a bar they forgot about is doing a great happy hour. Speak with enough users and it becomes clear: Untappd has definitely, if inadvertently, provided a stage for ticker culture and its disadvantages for breweries. But it’s also achieved its goal of creating a virtual community for beer drinkers, and it’s proven itself quite the handy tool for tracking a whole wide world of beers.

The Future of Untappd

All that remains is to see how Untappd continues to evolve, especially in this new, increasingly online chapter, and how beer culture will evolve alongside it. One safe bet is on Untappd increasing its attention to international markets: In 2020, the app saw growth in European cities where it saw declines in the U.S.

In December, Next Glass also acquired digital beer magazine and event producer Hop Culture; according to Hop Culture founder and now creative director at Next Glass Kenny Gould, we’ll be seeing further integration of Next Glass acquisitions Untappd, Hop Culture, Oznr, and Beer Advocate, playing to the unique contributions each of these has made to beer culture. “I think we’ll continue to see the development of a digital craft beer community,” Gould says, “with more content, sales, and connections happening online.”

The article 11 Years of Untappd: How One App Gamified the Relentless Pursuit of Novelty appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/untapped-impact-craft-beer/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/11-years-of-untappd-how-one-app-gamified-the-relentless-pursuit-of-novelty

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wineanddinosaur · 3 years

Text

11 Years of Untappd: How One App Gamified the Relentless Pursuit of Novelty

Foursquare for Beer

Avola created Untappd with Tim Mather in 2010. Perhaps surprisingly, he wasn’t all that into beer when he started working on the app.

The Next Generation of Beer Raters

An Inevitable Evolution in How Drinkers Engage With Craft Beer

Subjective and Unqualified: How Ratings Affect Breweries

A Platform for Visibility, Discovery, and Nostalgia

The Future of Untappd

The article 11 Years of Untappd: How One App Gamified the Relentless Pursuit of Novelty appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/untapped-impact-craft-beer/

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vorthosjay · 6 years

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GDS 3 Essay Response

In case anyone was interested, I entered the GDS. Since others seem to be posting their essays, I figured I might as well too.

If you made last night’s deadline, good luck!

1. Introduce yourself and explain why you are a good fit for this internship.

My name is Jay Annelli. I work in Emergency Management [Note, I’ve redacted more info about myself here]. As part of my job, I’m expected to deal with unexpected events at any given time and develop creative solutions to problems under severe time and financial constraints. This usually means working collaboratively in cross-cutting teams to create the best possible outcome, whether it’s a plan, a process, or the response to an event. I strongly value collaborative working environments and the pit sounds like exactly the kind of place I would thrive.

Because of my work in Emergency Management, I work well in stressful environments and roll pretty easily with sudden shifts in priorities. For instance, last year I was given five weeks to move our entire 30,000 square foot warehouse operation, a project that should have had months to plan instead had weeks. I’m used to projects being suddenly cancelled or having to re-work them from the ground up based on new directives with little time. But those same experiences have given me the skills to sell projects to senior leadership, and with government work I know how to slowly get traction for an idea while completing competing priorities.

I’ve always been a jack-of-all-trades, and thrive in positions where I have a lot of different kinds of tasks to complete. I’ve got experience in everything from legislative analysis to warehouse logistics. And I love Magic, and have turned my hobby – passion about the lore – into a paying freelance gig. The reality is I’m not going to be the best designer ever, but you don’t need great designers because you’re not working in a vacuum, you need people who can come together and make great design teams. I’m an experienced leader and manager and work well in team environments where I can complement my teammate’s skills. More so, I recognize the process through which work gets completed is often more important than the skills of the individuals performing the work. R&D has gone through some fairly major organization shake-ups lately, and it would be my hope to help continue to improve processes.

2. An evergreen mechanic is a keyword mechanic that shows up in (almost) every set. If you had to make an existing keyword mechanic evergreen, which one would you choose and why?

Storm! Because NOTHING could possibly go wrong with that idea…

In all seriousness, Dash is such a quintessentially red mechanic that I’d like to see it appear more often. There aren’t a whole lot of current mechanics that would make good evergreen mechanics, but cards like Ball Lightning and its kin were a staple of Magic for years. Red is all about short-term thinking and temporary gains, or making moves before the outcome is determined. While Impulse Draw has been a great way to try and overcome Red’s weaknesses, there’s still pretty clearly more work that can be done. Giving Red access to low cost but temporary creature spells really plays into the same flavor for red. It also gives the player a choice when combined with Red’s traditional looting. Do you cast the creature permanently at a slightly overcosted mana cost? Or do you keep it in hand and for fuel for your later game looting effects, like Cathartic Reunion?

Existing Dash cards focused on the ability to have surprise cheap attackers, with one or two covering Enter the Battlefield effects. What I think would be interesting are abilities that punish or reward the use of Dash versus hard casting. For example, if a Dash dealt damage to its owner when it returned to its owner’s hand, or included a more powerful “at the beginning of your upkeep” ability if the player manages to hard cast it. I would argue that it could be pushed into more colors than Red and Black, as long as the abilities involved were representative of the colors.

3. If you had to remove evergreen status from a keyword mechanic that is currently evergreen, which one would you remove and why?

Defender! I’m actually surprised that defender is still around after all of these years, as it’s by far the least useful keyword ability. Now, the idea itself is fine, but with ‘unblockable’ no longer a keyword, it doesn’t make sense to me that its counterpart hasn’t been similarly de-keyworded. One of the biggest problems I see with it is that the game places all sorts of conditional “this creature can’t attack” restrictions on cards, but none of them use defender. For instance, why wouldn’t River Serpent have defender, when for all intents and purposes it has conditional Defender? Magic doesn’t keyword “can’t block”, either. Defender has gotten a little bit of “Defender tribal” in some sets, but I’m not sure there are any cases where the use of ‘Defender’ is advantageous over simply saying the creature can’t attack. There are a handful of cards that care about creatures with defender, but a switch in the wording might make them even more useful, if you concentrate on creatures who can’t attack.

Besides the templating issues I mentioned, I just don’t think the keyword is needed to accomplish the intended effect most of the time. Most of the time creatures with defender seem to just be intended to be solid blockers, and the circumstance in which someone is going to be attacking with a creature that has zero power are rare enough that I’m not sure why Kinjalli’s Caller can get away without defender but a Pride Guardian needs it. In some case, creatures with defender have evasion and there might be an issue with abilities that can actually give them power, but in those cases simply giving them the ability to block the evasion (like if Wall of Air had reach instead of flying) removes most of their attacking potential, anyway. And in those few cases where an aggressively costed creature is necessary, “This creature can’t attack” doesn’t take up much more card space than “Defender”, which usually gets its own line on the template anyway.

4. You're going to teach Magic to a stranger. What's your strategy to have the best possible outcome?

If I had an optimal environment, I would stack two decks that allowed the game play out in a mostly scripted fashion, slowly introducing concepts over the course of a game, with the game playing out in favor of the person I was teaching. I would start with the pre-game basics: explain the library and graveyard, and have us both drawn seven cards, keeping our hands revealed. I would explain the most important parts of a card: the artwork and flavor text. Wait. I want them to have the best outcome… so instead I might explain casting costs and card types. The new player’s expectation is ‘What do I do?’, so I show them the land, and how tapping the lands allows you to pay for the other cards. Ideally I’d have one-drop that the new player could cast to feel some satisfaction on their first turn. This would go back and forth, with each turn explaining a new card type.

If I’m being honest, I’m stealing this from the 7th Edition tutorial, which had you play a scripted game out against the computer while learning each part of the game. The Duels of the Planeswalkers games fulfilled a similar function, and I’m the living embodiment of that Onion joke about someone explaining the rules to a game and insisting it will be fun. So if I REALLY wanted the best possible outcome, I’d get hired by Wizards of the Coast and sketch out a plan for a contemporary update of that 7th Edition Tutorial, maybe even a short web game, which I believe also existed once, so that there’s a consistent learning environment available so people don’t have to rely on potentially not-great teachers to know the game.

5. What is Magic's greatest strength and why?

Magic’s greatest strength is its versatility. It’s amazing that there are over a half-dozen ways to play and that there’s a huge Magic fandom that’s all over the map when it comes to gameplay. The framework on which the game was build is so adaptable that I was seriously playing kitchen table magic for years before I even learned there were more formats than just casual. Most of those more competitive formats just don’t appeal to me (although I recognize their value and find them interesting). Other major competitors, like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Hearthstone, just don’t have that. Their frameworks, in some way or another, pidgeon hole them into specific playstyles. As much as Magic’s extensive rules cause me consternation, I know they’re the building block that makes everything else work. Whereas in Magic it just means an idea needs some creative problem solving to come to fruition, other games don’t have that extensive framework and thus don’t provide players with the same layers of choices.

Versatility allows choice, and choice is the key to a fun game. You want to allow enough that players can get creative. The same card can be used in entirely different ways even in the same format. It’s something that’s always fascinated me about the competitive scene. And then between formats, the card has entirely different value. I wish this answer felt like more just vomiting back things I’ve read on the Mothership for the last decade or so, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

6. What is Magic's greatest weakness and why?

Magic’s greatest weakness is its complexity. In the last answer I talked about how the rules are an extensive framework from which a lot of different games are built, but they can also be a huge barrier to entry. Complexity is a good thing, but Magic sometimes has far too much complexity for its own good. Even learning how to parse the Magic jargon is a challenge. In my career in Emergency Management, one of the major tenets of Incident Command is to avoid acronyms and jargon, because they’re hugely cultural and often feel like learning an entirely new language.

That’s not just limited to how people and players talk about the game, but how the game talks about itself. Keyword abilities are probably the most difficult. There are dozens of evergreen keywords alone, from activate to vigilance, that a new player needs to learn as a baseline before they can even start to parse deciduous mechanics, and then set-specific mechanics. Most Magic players who engage online have long forgotten what a barrier that is, which of course creates a disconnect between new and established players. And Magic players aren’t always the most patient, so when you sit a newby who still has to ask basic questions all the time, a single negative player is going to hurt their interest level.

Most of Magic’s players aren’t engaged online or at tournaments. They play at home like I used to do, and they buy packs from sets that look cool. I had no idea Kamigawa wasn’t a resounding success until I actively engaged online. To me, it was the cool plane of Samurai. When they open a pack and it has abilities with no reminder text, that’s a distraction from the game. Stopping to look something up online costs time and goodwill, which inevitable costs players.

7. What Magic mechanic most deserves a second chance (aka which had the worst first introduction compared to its potential)?

Level Up honestly has a special place in my heart, and I can’t help but feel that there’s a whole lot of space left untapped there. I think too many of the Level Up cards didn’t make each level feel important, and I think Monstrosity stole a little bit of its thunder. One of my biggest issue with it is that each level didn’t feel like a tangible benefit. I would probably change it look more like a Monstrosity variant, a place to sink larger amounts of mana to get a progressively more impressive creature. This would especially be useful as Monstrosity has some major flavor limitations. The template seemed to have been Figure of Destiny, but I don’t think any of the existing Level Up cards capture that quite in the same way as Warden of the First Tree. Warden of the First Tree could easily have a Level Up cost of {1}{w/b} and be a very similar card (although not exactly the same).

Sets like Ixalan that need some low cmc mana sinks could instead use a mechanic like Level Up. The original flavor was meant as a nod to Zendikar’s Dungeons and Dragons “Adventure World” theme, but it could easily be expanded beyond that. There seems to be design space, like with Monstrosity, to the actual ‘Leveling Up’ process. None of the current crop use one time effects upon reach certain levels, and that seems like a great way to make each level interesting for commons and uncommons with the mechanic without them all being Warden of the First Tree levels of power or complexity.

8. Of all the Magic expansions that you've played with, pick your favorite and then explain the biggest problem with it.

I would pick Return to Ravnica, although the biggest problem is the same as the original Ravnica block. With the ten guilds, the blocks tried to do too much, and failed to make all ten guild mechanics equally satisfying. There’s a lot of nostalgic love for those sets, but honestly I think the new set paradigm is going to be far better for any future Ravnica blocks. There just aren’t ten equally interesting mechanics to go around, and at least three of the guilds felt weak because of it. Return’s biggest problem is that it introduced new mechanics when it didn’t really need to, or used mechanics with limited design space to replace mechanics with equally limited space. Not every guild needs a keyword mechanic to be engaging, and in fact I would say most don’t, especially the guilds more focused on creatures, like Boros or Gruul, that could get by with some interesting effects on various cards but whose most interesting cards rarely seem to use their mechanic - or don’t need it to be a keyword mechanic.

Conservation of space is obviously going to be an issue as we start returning to planes like Ravnica a third, fourth, or even fifth time. You can’t burn through ideas at the rate that Ravnica has been if you’re going to still have something interesting for future returns. Ravnica is a lot of fun and a very satisfying place to set a product, but I think re-using other well liked mechanics rather than constantly trying to come up with new ones will by far serve design better.

9. Of all the Magic expansions that you've played with, pick your least favorite and then explain the best part about it.

Born of the Gods I would have to say is at least one of my least favorite sets, although it’s hard to say the definitive least favorite. Heroic and Inspired are two of my least favorite mechanics ever. But I really love the world of Theros and I think from a flavor standpoint, and the use of Bestow in Born of the Gods was stellar. It showed what the evolution of a mechanic in a second set should be, with cards like Eidolon of Countless Battles being particularly potent as both a creature and an aura. Most of the Bestow cards in Born of the Gods are simple designs that take advantage of the premise to create solid effects that work both as creatures and auras. The best designs don’t need to be fancy, they just need to make the most of a mechanic.

But the real reason I picked Bestow is because of Chromanticore, which to me exemplifies what makes Magic fun. Sure, there are more competitive cards out there, but for the casual player nothing captures the imagination more than a card like Chromanticore. Chromanticore is a big, splashy creature that demands you build around it. It has a soup of abilities that would make it appealing as a creature on it’s own, but the chance to cast it as an aura is incredibly tempting. Every set needs a card like Chromanticore that’s shiny for the casual crowd and may even entice a few more competitive players to build around it.

10. You have the ability to change any one thing about Magic. What do you change and why?

Mark Rosewater’s “Sorceries with Flash” instead of Instants really appeals to me, but I suppose he’s written about that so much that I would again just be regurgitating things I’ve read about the game online. So let’s expand on this in a way I’m not sure I’ve seen before, and talk about how to reorganize how things are typed. Supertypes always seem like a waste to me. Legendary Artifact Creatures or Legendary Enchantment Creatures usually mean the the sub-type (aka the good stuff, if you’re like me) can only support one type, maybe two if both are very short words. I’m not sure there’s really a good reason that can’t be represented some other way, either in a different frame (Legends are supposed to be different and special, after all) or with some other kind of symbolism on the card.

The sorceries with flash idea sounds really good on paper, but we get back into the issue of jargon, and another word new players have to learn. I would instead make Instant a subtype of Sorcery, opening up a few new avenues. You could also have ‘interrupt’ sorceries, that can only be cast in response to something. That’s an element of the game that was streamlined for good reason, but could open up some new design possibilities. I like otherwise how Enchantments are handled these days, so it’s really reworking supertypes and sorceries that I would change if I could change how types work. The legends issue has implications for tribal decks, so I think that’s what I would focus on, as it seems the most achievable.

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asoulofatlantis · 4 years

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Summery of my reactions to watching the final stuff of Ao no Kiseki

Lechter and Killika were amazing!

KEVIN! Don’t you dare die on me!

(It's really nice to finally see some scenes with music and sound btw *.*)

Pater-Mater! Oh no!

RENNE!

Pater-Mater just sacrificed himself to save Renne... this is so sad.

T-This is not even the final dungeon yet! I would have never made it to the final dungeon today if that actually is not even the final dungeon!

Honestly this police-boss-guy is shady AF

Oh no! Shizuku is crying!

Arios just gifted Lloyd with his brothers Weapons. How... makaber is this?

I love the “Lets player” XD He was talking about how Arios already admitted that he killed Guy and Lloyd in this exact moment: “It isn’t sure if he killed him.” The Lets player: “BUT HE ADMITTED TO IT!” XD

Oh... Guy was shot from behind. That... is not what Arios would have done. He is not using guns and he is very unlikely someone who would kill another person from behind. But... WHY WASN’T THAT MENTIONED BEFORE?!

Ui! A Kevin and Ries Moment. I don’t have many feelings for them... but I am a shipper at heart. Best way to win me over? Be part of a shipping! XD

I do not know why I have tears in my eyes AGAIN because of Renne. But... Pater-Mater was her family for so long. Its painful to see this farewell.

OH MY GOD! HE IS USING THAT THING LIKE A DIVING KNIGHT!

IAN! IAN? I.... I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS! This... this is... this is such a Trails-Game-Move! Someone you never would have suspected turned against you in the end... why didn’t I see that coming? Its not the first time this happens!

I love how the Lets player is pretending to be shocked and then he is like: “We are going to get a cutscene here so I stay quite...” basically telling us he played the game already ^^’ Anyway... he is a bad actor, so you can see through this.

Oh boy... KeA just turned into that Azure-Tree. I was wondering when that thing would come into play. It even showed up in Trails of Cold Steel. But I never thought KeA herself would be that thing.

(Uff...eve just watching the important scenes takes sooo much time! I have to get up at 4 in the morning tomorrow! T.T)

Uh! A pretty animated scene. I am almost sad that we don’t get then in Cold Steel anymore.

This dungeon is huge! I am so glad that I do not have to do this myself ^^’ Really, the lets player is constantly whining about how long this dungeon is.

I think Wald was used as a bad Plot-Device for Wazy...

He just said “Gute Nacht” to him. Trails Games and their German...

Oh god! A puzzle in this dungeon! I am so glad I am not playing that myself...

“God forbid we kill someone in this game!” XD I can feel this man so much. (He was talking about that Shirley will probably hunt us in Cold Steel now, since we left her alive - and look who is indeed hunting us in CS3 just one year after he played that: Shirley. I feel ya, man. I feel ya.)

This guy is amazing. He defeated Randys Uncle in less than 3 Minutes. Wow!

Now Lloyd acts like all he ever wanted was to find out what happened to his brother. Not like that that was ever mentioned in Zero or much talked about in Ao either, while we are at it...

I have to give you this info, because it is important to get the Picture. The first crime division were Dudley still works in knew that the attack that killed Arios wife and made Shizuku go blind was a terrorist-attack but kept it a secret - probably for political reasons. We also found out that Lloyds Parents and the family of Ian were killed because of such things. (In the main plot, btw, it is never mentioned what happened to either Lloyds parents or Ians family as far as I can remember and since it seems to be important for the plot, this is really a huge ass plothole here...) So of course Arios was disappointed in the police. He also needed more money for Shizukus treatment and of course he was also running away from the sorrow of the loss of his wife. He ended up working with Ian probably because he wanted revenge of some sort. Or a conclusion. Something like that. Its actually not said what his reasons were, other than joining people who wanted to do something against all the shit that Calvard and Erebonia pulled with the people of Crossbell while actually at war with each other. He also got KeA out of her place in the Sun temple and put her into the auction. Mariabell planed all that to get rid of the Mafia. She actually wanted to take custody of KeA herself but didn’t stop us when we did. Weird... Anyway... now about Guys death... Well... basically Guy found out ALL of the things that were going on behind the scenes, including the plan for the fake attack on Crossbell to gain independence (that happened years later...) and so he faced Arios who was involved in all this from the very beginning. They had a duel to death but Arios was not the one who killed Guy in the end - doesn’t make so much difference to me as he WANTED to kill him, but once again, we are in a Trails-Game here, so... whatever.

And once again Lloyd does not want to revenge his brother... tze... (I mean, granted... Guy was not killed by Arios, but once again he WANTED to kill him AND also was indirectly responsible for him being killed because the fight distracted him...)

Ian of course shot Guy. I just don’t know why Arios is defending him. But there is more to it. Guy offered Arios to keep it a secret what he knew and stay friends, was even talking about his wedding (probably a translation-mistake when Lloyd said in the first game that Guy lost his long loved woman to another man...) and so on and just when Arios was considering it... Ian shot him from behind. Arios was not happy about it. And yet... he defended Ian. I don’t fully get it actually. Why would Arios protect this man and say he himself killed Guy?

Ohhh... I think KeA saw the future and in this future her Friends got killed and she decided to work with Mariabell to protect them. Makes sense. For once.

HOLY SHIT! I was wrong. She didn’t see us get killed in the future we actually did get killed and she - with her enorme powers - changed that by more or less turning back time and in that timeline we managed to become close to Renne, Estelle and Joshua and so they joined us and thanks to that we managed to survive... WOW! KeA actually arranged that we solved Rennes problem with her family and that's how things came into fruition WTF?!

And the bad guys now want to use KeAs power to alter reality so that Crossbell is the mayor power who rules over Erebonia and Calvard. (Now if that would have happened Osborn would be screwed and his whole plan ruined! XD)

Wow... a few nice words and Ian is a good guy again? Right. Trails game...

Mariabell actually did us a favor in killing Ian ^^’

So in the end Mariabell is the Semi-final boss...

Apparently KeAs magic subconsciously leads to everyone wanting to love and care about her. So what? No big deal in my eyes. No one else but KeA herself seems to care either.

Its nice that Lloyd got some closure with his brother. Although I doesn’t deserve it ^^’ It was a touching scene tho.

Awwwww. Armes Baby KeA... ♥ (She is finally back to normal. Saved by Lloyds unconditional love and cheesy speeches XD)

Oh... she didn’t kill Ian. I can’t believe that. Even the Lets player was like: “Seriously? *sfz*” XD

I found it a bit unsatisfying that KeA just simply lost her powers and nothing else. Its... uh... boring in a way? ^^’

Anyway... I am finally done with this game. FINALLY!

Tho I have to say... it really has an amazing plot. It was not bad at all. Tho it still lacked a few things.

#Mona watches someone else play Trails of Azure

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sailorrrvenus · 5 years

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The Medium Format Experience

To shoot medium format had been a longtime dream of mine, but I have to admit I didn’t know it would be such a mindblowing experience. The 51.4-megapixel Pentax 645Z arrived on the market in 2014 and was the first camera to ever exceed 100 points in the DxOMark sensor test. For some unknown reason, the score and review weren’t published until 2017.

There is plenty of info to be found on the Internet concerning the camera specs so I won’t cover that in much detail. What is of greater interest to me and hopefully the reader is the medium format experience.

Pentax 645z with the 25mm, 28–45mm and 55mm.

The 645Z body is larger than a regular DSLR, but it doesn’t feel heavy (3.4lbs/1.5kg). It actually feels surprisingly light in my hands, and with the 25mm or 28–45mm mounted it balances very well, and that includes mounted on my Sirui w-2204 with a K-20 ball-head.

As a landscape photographer, my chief concerns in regards to a camera are dynamic range, details, sharpness, colors, noise, and ease of use.

To make a long story short, when I the first time began pushing the 645Z files I almost couldn’t believe my own eyes. The dynamic range is nothing short of breathtaking. Truth be told this absolutely doesn’t feel like a four-year-old camera — on the contrary.

Romsdalen, Norway, July 2018. Pentax 645Z, Pentax 28–45mm

Romsdalen, Norway, offers breathtaking scenery with mountains, steep mountainsides, valleys and waterfalls in almost every direction. The perfect location to test the capabilities of the camera. The following is a very high contrast scene with strong light radiating from behind and over the mountain ridge. I shot a panorama consisting of three verticals exposed for the highlights. This is after stitching in Lightroom and the shadows are more or less pitch black since I do the stitching before any adjustments. For panoramas, I use the Sirui LE-60 leveling base.

After a few minutes of adjusting sliders in Lightroom the scene has completely changed character (the image is not finished and will be further edited in Photoshop when time permits):

Pentax 28–45mm, Nisi polarizer to add contrast to the sky

The Pentax 645Z is absolutely outstanding when it comes to picking up shadows with almost zero noise added and no weird magenta color casts in the deepest shadows. It also does a very good job at recovering highlights which at first sight may look blown out.

One thing I noticed immediately I began scrutinizing my first batch of raws was the stunning amount of detail the camera captured. It must have been challenging for the Pentax developers and engineers to produce lenses which match the camera’s capabilities. However, Pentax has a long history of producing very good glass. Both the 25mm and the 28–45mm are super sharp. I have of yet not tested the 55mm. The 25mm is unfortunately discontinued, but new and used copies are still in circulation. Weighing in at 3.24lbs (1.47kg), the 28–45mm is quite a heavy lens, whereas the 25mm and 55mm are considerably lighter.

My first evening with the 645Z— Pentax 25mm

To have a zoom lens in addition to the two primes is something I consider a great advantage in terms of added flexibility when being out in the field. I am not very fond of long treks which probably has something to do with my impatient and restless nature. In other words, carrying that extra weight of the 28–45mm isn’t a big issue for me.

It is also noteworthy that the 28–45mm is 82mm and thus takes regular filters. The 25mm has this clever in-lense polarizer solution, and the Nisi 150mm filter holder for the Tokina 16–28mm fits the lens. The camera sensor has a crop factor of 0.79x so that for instance 25mm equals 19.5mm full frame.

This is upstream Isterdalen in Romsdalen. The famous Trollstigen is ahead of us. There is no need for an L-bracket on the 645Z. I have mounted two Sirui plates on either side of the camera something which makes shooting verticals a breeze. Clever of Ricoh/Pentax to implement two mounting holes — one for each orientation.

Pentax 28–45mm. A thinking mountain? ;)

Who needs more detail than this:

Very close crop from image above

The Pentax K-1 and Pentax K-1 Mark ii have spoiled me with great, pleasing and vibrant colors. Not surprisingly perhaps does the Pentax Medium format flagship excel also in this field. It doesn’t take much in for instance Lightroom to bring out colors and color contrast.

‘Bispen’ is one of several characteristic peaks in Isterdalen:

Pentax 28–45mm

Sunsets in the southern parts of Norway can be very intense and beautiful during summer. This is from my home turf around 60 km north of Oslo, and I am very pleased with how the 645Z renders the warm tones.

Pentax 28–45mm. Panorama from three horizontals.

Both lenses produce very pleasing sunstars. I may be wrong but I believe this image is a once in a lifetime experience. The sun rose in such a way that it sailed between two mountain peaks before it was obscured by the mountain to the right. The sighting only lasted a couple minutes, and the sun took on an intense and beautiful color which cast a warm glow across the scene.

Pentax 28–45mm

For my second outing with the 645Z, I headed to Rjukandefossen, Hemsedal, Norway. I was a tad unhappy that I had to move over to this side of the waterfall in order to capture the setting sun because that meant walking across a suspiciously looking suspension bridge about which I had my doubts would carry my 210lbs+ (95kg+) camera gear. Working out with weights and doing landscape photography isn’t perhaps the best combination.

Pentax 25mm — the scene is actually shot at f/32

The transition to the 4:3 format has gone surprisingly smooth. I find the format increasingly pleasing, and it opens up new possibilities compositional wise. The format has also challenged me to think outside the box something which isn’t exactly one of my strong sides. In addition to the aforementioned, I also notice that I am far more inclined to shoot panoramas with the 645Z than what is the case with my other cameras.

Menus are easy to navigate and it doesn’t take long before one knows where to find the various settings — everything is very intuitive. A dedicated button on the camera body itself makes it very simple to shoot bracketed if so desired. The “Info” button option on the back of the camera provides a convenient short-cut to the often most used settings. The ability to have a histogram in Live-View is very handy notably when shooting long exposures. A dedicated mirror lock-up switch is also found on the camera body. I have a tendency of forgetting that it exists but as of yet none of my shots have been ruined by shutter shock or vibrations.

Rjukandefossen, Norway. Oct 2018. Pentax 645Z, Pentax 25mm. EC National Geographic

I have had no computer issues with the relatively large files the 645Z produces. My i7 laptop has effortlessly stitched and edited a seven frame pano scene. Even my i5 travel laptop has without great problems stitched three frame panoramas.

The Pentax 645Z is a value for money camera, and Ricoh/Pentax has thus made medium format available to a huge group of photographers who otherwise couldn’t have afforded a medium format system. In true Pentax spirit, the system is of course thoroughly weather-sealed.

Romsdalen, Norway. Two in the night. Pano from three horizontals. Pentax 25mm. EC National Geographic

The camera with three lenses and the Nisi 100 mm filter system neatly fit into a Lowepro Whistler BP 450 AW.

We will end this review with a four frame panorama of the more or less famous cabin scene — cabin to which I have developed a love/hate relationship. Admittedly, during my first years with a camera I shot this location “to death”. I have received some criticism for this. Rightly so, I would add.

Pentax 28–45mm. A white background doesn’t favor images like this, unfortunately.

The criticism has had the effect on me of pushing me out of my comfort zone, so it is all positive. This is a scene which has offered me much fun and provided me with many great memories. Anyway, we are in this instance dealing with yet another extreme high contrast scene. The sun had just set behind the hill so the light bleeding into the sky was very strong. No filters were used to balance the light since I wanted to give the 645Z a really tough challenge.

Well, the camera was up for the challenge.

About the author: Ole Henrik Skjelstad is a landscape photographer and math teacher from Norway. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of Skjelstad’s work on his Flickr, 500px, and Instagram. This article was also published here.

source https://petapixel.com/2019/01/29/the-medium-format-experience/

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thesummerstorms · 4 years

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Rev Recaps Hard Contact (Chapter 13)

CW: mentions of past attempted sexual assault & dealing with the attacker, mind influence/control

TL:DR Recap: Darman and Etain are finally reunited with the rest of Omega. Unfortunately, Guta-Nay is also there. Etain and the squad develop a plan, but it involves sending Guta-Nay to his death.

Beginning Kal Count: 24 Ending Kal Count: 25

We open with what’s honestly one of my favorite exchanges between Niner and Fi, and I can’t resist screenshotting it right off the bat:

“Hey, Sarge, I’m being positive.”

“Are you on drugs?”

Fi noticing that Niner is on edge and offering to swap and Niner being too stubborn to do it,even though he specifically hates doing that exact job.

They’re still dragging Guta-Nay around with the, which unfortunately means this chapter is whenI have to start dealing with him. But even as Niner tries to press him for more info, Guta-Nay is too stupid to give it. Even when Niner plays charades to get his point across.

Atin sens up a remote to scout ahead of them, and they accidentally end up spying on Darman, who aims a gun at the remote but luckily refrains from shooting it.

I legitimately can’t tell you why I love that scene. I just do. Anyway, within five minutes they finally, finally rendezvous with Darman and Etain. Etain is having a hard time adjusting to actually seeing Niner, Fi, and Atin, even though intellectually she already knew that Darman was clone. Fi makes a joke about Guta-Nay smelling bad. Etain asks for Omega’s names. Someone was about to introduce themselves as a CC (clone commander) rather than an RC (Republic Commando) again, but she cuts them off.

Darman was the first one to break the rule with Jusik, but he’s been embarrassed every time it comes up, and it clearly now embarrasses him to break the taboo around his squad, even if Etain’s been calling him by his name for a while. Social conditioning is intense. However, this time Fi and Niner introduce themselves as well, where as I think last time it was just Atin.

... unfortunately, I now have to deal with Guta-Nay.

Again, Etain’s meant to be Jedi, yes, but 1000% percent not blaming her for the reaction. I just /love/ how seeing Guta-Nay, who she explicitly calls a rapist and who attempted to attack her, gets to be the trigger for her to be ashamed of her emotions, restrained by one of the male characters (even if it is Dar and he doesn’t know the context) and Niner’s comment about Guta-Nay being useful sends her immediately into a self worth spiral as she ... is she supposed to be comparing herself to Guta-Nay here? Or is this just a reaction because the two emotional triggers are intertwined from this whole experience, or..?

Anyway, isn’t it great? /sarcasm

(Hat tip to Dar for being bold enough to grab a Jedi’s arm while they have their lightsaber ignited, I guess, though.)

Can I... can I just mention that on one hand, I can make a Watsonian interpretation for why Etain’s reaction to being told the person who tried to rape her might have useful information might be for her brain to jump to waiting for Darman to tell her how much he despises her... but on the other hand, I don’t care and I hate Traviss intensely for setting this scene up this way?

But, in what’s going to be pretty typical Etain fashion from this point in the series on, that sense of worthlessness drives her pretty much immediately to action. She asks Niner what information they need, and then sits Guta Nay down across from her, and waits until they’ve both calmed down. And then she immediately sets to using Force-persuasion to convince Guta-Nay to talk. This time, unlike when he was chasing her, she doesn’t struggle with it at all.

side note, there is a kind of sweet moment with Atin and Darman that I like, but it’s weirdly placed- breaks up the rest of the moment from Etain’s pov:

Then we switch to Niner’s pov, probably because Etain is busy with the Weequay and no one actually wants to hear him talk, least of all me as a reader, and also KT needs an opportunity for Omega to be doubtful of Etain.

Niner hates scruffy rig. Darman actually does clean his deecee when nervous; it isn’t just a weird innuendo that someone had to point out to me. Darman pulls out the holomaps that Etain... stole? I just realized I have no idea where she got them. But she’s been guarding them this whole time. He proceeds to praise her, unprompted, but Niner has already been told by Jinart that Etain is useless, so he’s skeptical.

Kal Count of 25. Dar just kind of regrets opening his mouth, I think, and wishes his brother would back off. But he does want to try to defend Etain, even if he’s had his own doubts before this point. So first he tries the standard defense, then when Niner isn’t content with that, he does his best. But Niner is freaked out by Jedi Mind Influence, not reassured like Darman was in the escape scene. I’m not really sure what to even make about “human females” and the fact that KT really needs to drive home that, after being behind enemy lines for three months, Etain has no sex appeal.

There’s also that word “emaciated” again.

Finally, Etain finishes her interrogation. She briefly mistakes Niner for Dar, but immediately corrects herself by saying “Of course, you’re Niner.” She reports on what little she can and offers to try to summon Jinart with the Force.

This is actually a scene that will be recounted again- apparently Darman will tell Kal about it at some point between leaving Qiilura and seeing Etain again in Triple Zero. Skipping a bit ahead, but:

Listen, the thought up Darman telling Kal all about the Jedi he absolutely Doesn’t Have a Crush On, maybe enthusiastically, maybe shyly, should make me smile, except given how Kal will treat their relationship in that book and the things he’ll accuse Etain of, it just makes me sad.

Anyway, I’m digressing. This is clearly a big moment for Niner, and he’s surprised that Etain can tell that Atin has been hurt in particular. I don’t entirely get why Traviss goes back and forth on what motivations/emotions Etain can sense to what strength (say like... her not being able to feel Darman’s grief for Theta squad versus immediately feeling Atin’s grief for his TWO former squads plus the Vau abuse we technically don’t know about till next book.) But I’m always going to rule in favor of her being stronger at Force sense because it’s really her signature Force ability, and Traviss has a bad habit of lowering her ability levels out of nowhere so she can be yelled at.

Niner explains what happened to Atin, and Etain expresses sympathy, and promises to see if there’s a way she can help. She specifically mentions Force encouragement, which makes me a little uncomfortable and which she decides by the next novel never to use again without permission. But Niner, despite his worry a few paragraphs ago, is favorably impressed.

We timeskip and go back to Etain’s point of view then. The commandos notice someone approaching, but it’s only Jinart.

Niner is the member of Omega who gets picked on for being straightlaced, but ngl, I relate to him a lot in this book.

Jinart lets them know that while Hokan is trying to bluff them into thinking Uthan is in the villa, she’s actually back in the facility, which makes me wonder what the point of all those Hokan POV scenes were. They start trying to brainstorm how to get into the facility, which has no extra exits or conspicuous vents because it’s meant to secure a bioweapon, and realize that they’ll still have to deal with the droids in the villa anyway, as close as they are.

So they decide to try and smuggle in a bomb to take out the villa droids pre-preemptively because Hokan has already (for reason I still don’t understand) filled the basement there with explosives, In order to make it worth while, they want Hokan to think they’ve really fallen for his trick and are headed for the villa only, and thus to put most of the droids there.

A) Shut up,Jinart, you don’t get to be bitter.

B) Etain is already falling into that pragmatism thing. And I don’t think she’s wrong here. But she’s going to have more trouble actually doing it than she thinks.

And then it’s finally time to find out the origin of the gurlanin. Jinart reveals that Qiilura is her homeworld and that the settlers have destroyed her habitat without knowing the gurlanin were there, so she wants all of them, but especially the Trade Federation. Etain says she’ll make sure the Republic follows through, and Jinart threatens- “make sure you do” because the gurlanin are good at being everywhere. It’s foreshadowing for the next three books, of course, which all involve plot points with the gurlanin, as much as I wish I could be rid of them.

So they set about convincing Guta-Nay that there’s another squad and they intend to all attack the villa, except he’s so stupid they barely need to act. We get this really, really, really terrible line from Etain’s point of view:

Listen, this is where I’m drawing a line with this whole thing, Traviss. Because making the rapist who attempted to harm your main character from a race “so stupid that they can barely communicate functionally with humans and are all prone to drinking and criminality” wasn’t bad enough, we now get “the rapist is a monstrous child who isn’t able to control himself or understand that other people have feelings” which is the most bullshit thing in a series FULL of bullshit. No. Fuck that.

On the other hand, we do get one of my top five favorite scenes in the whole book, one of the few moments where Atin and Etain get to have a friendship, and something I really, really, really wish had been built on in later books.

Atin: Making my explosives neatly is WORTH the possibility of getting shot in the ass.

Atin walks her through all the squad’s tech, first letting her hold his deecee and look through the scope, then when she asks letting her try on his helmet and talking her through the HUD. He’s skeptical the whole time, but also, it takes some trust and patience to talk the commander who you are dubious knows her stuff through all of your personal kit. But Atin is the tech guy, and this is his wheelhouse and he shows her that patience. He also talks to her about the (perceived, not necessarily accurate) differences between ARCs, commandos, and troopers as he understands it.

I’m still not comfortable with the Force aspect of this, but it’s walked back in the next book. Atin fumbing the wire and pretending to focus hard because he’s embarrassed. And Etain is very touchy feely- I lose track of how many times in this series she grabs or pats or reaches for someone’s arm or hugs them or kisses them on the cheek.

Then we get to the part that’s actually my favorite:

It’s just... really nice? Seeing Etain get a little bit of respect and a little bit of friendship and feeling it in return? I will never be over the fact that it’s thrown away after this book. In fact, I can’t remember if she and Atin ever speak to each other again.

Eventually they finish up and Etain alternates between trying to sleep and trying to see if Guta-Nay has left yet. A couple of watches change. Fi attempts to feed her and is turned down. And Etain realizes she’s going to have to make Guta-Nay run, directly use Force persuasion to make him want to go back to Hokan, when he’s trusting the Republic to keep its word and not kill him.

It’s a good thing the chapter ends here, because honestly there’s gonna be so much bullshit to unpack in the next chapter, and I’m too tired for that.

#Republic Commando #Rev Recaps RepComm #Etain Tur-Mukan #Niner Skirata #Atin Skirata #Darman Skirata #Fi Skirata #Hard Contact #RepComm

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pauldeckerus · 5 years

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The Medium Format Experience

Pentax 645z with the 25mm, 28–45mm and 55mm.

As a landscape photographer, my chief concerns in regards to a camera are dynamic range, details, sharpness, colors, noise, and ease of use.

Romsdalen, Norway, July 2018. Pentax 645Z, Pentax 28–45mm

After a few minutes of adjusting sliders in Lightroom the scene has completely changed character (the image is not finished and will be further edited in Photoshop when time permits):

Pentax 28–45mm, Nisi polarizer to add contrast to the sky

My first evening with the 645Z— Pentax 25mm

Pentax 28–45mm. A thinking mountain? ;)

Who needs more detail than this:

Very close crop from image above

‘Bispen’ is one of several characteristic peaks in Isterdalen:

Pentax 28–45mm

Pentax 28–45mm. Panorama from three horizontals.

Pentax 28–45mm

Pentax 25mm — the scene is actually shot at f/32

Rjukandefossen, Norway. Oct 2018. Pentax 645Z, Pentax 25mm. EC National Geographic

Romsdalen, Norway. Two in the night. Pano from three horizontals. Pentax 25mm. EC National Geographic

The camera with three lenses and the Nisi 100 mm filter system neatly fit into a Lowepro Whistler BP 450 AW.

Pentax 28–45mm. A white background doesn’t favor images like this, unfortunately.

Well, the camera was up for the challenge.

from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2019/01/29/the-medium-format-experience/

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