#going as far to describe it as a 'science'. he's a really big loser.)

[rosycheekies]

Kyoukotsu no Yume by Kyougoku Natsuhiko & Shimizu Aki

#(he's literally me) #(author: kyougoku natsuhiko; artist: shimizu aki) #(he's actually not literally me. he spent his whole life being obsessed with freud and defines himself with freud's philosophy. even #going as far to describe it as a 'science'. he's a really big loser.) #kyoukotsu no yume #狂骨の夢 #crazy bones dreams #kyougoku natsuhiko #京極夏彦 #shimizu aki #志水明 #pink manga #manga #manga cap #not yuri manga #(unfornately)

[dmwrites]

“Xisuma, can you sign this, uh, form for me, please? It needs an admin signature. No need to read it or anything, it’s nothing really. Stupid.” Zed stood as casually as he could, passing over a slip of paper to Xisuma, who put on his reading glasses. “No!” Zed said in a panic. “I mean, no, it’s just, please just sign it. Reading is for losers, am I right? Haha.”

Xisuma looked up at Zed, then back down at the paper, and then up at Zed again. He took off his reading glasses.

“Zedaph, why am I holding a field trip permission form?” Xisuma sounded just so tired.

“I- well, I mean- please sign the form.” Zed tapped his hooves nervously on the floor.

“What on earth kind of trip requires a permission form to go?” Xisuma put his glasses back on.

“It’s for a science experiment!” Zed said. “It’s in another land though, so that’s why I need an admin! Please??? Please X??” Zed begged.

Xisuma reread the paper and let out a long sigh. “Fine, as long as there is a chaperone there.”

“Yes, there is! The best one around! Oh, thank you X! You won’t regret this!” Zed pranced around Xisuma’s office joyfully as Xisuma signed the paper.

----

“Hello BadBoy of the Halo variety!” Zed was in his best lab coat, wool nicely arranged, even with a packed lunch from Beef, standing in a little spawn area.

“Zedaph! Welcome!” A super scary demon with a super big smile stood in front of him. “We are thrilled to finally have you! Here. Have you here.”

“Well, Mr. Halo, my curiosity knows no bounds, and the idea of a huge red egg is something I’ve never encountered before! I am delighted to help you experiment on it.”

“Ah yes, experiment…” Bad said, laughing. “Well, Zed, follow me please, and I’ll take you to The Egg.”

Bad lead Zed down a wooden plank path, which was highly worn. The buildings around, too, seemed worn. Old, falling down, unused, colors fading. It was quiet here, too. Zed wondered what civilization had once been here. Bad indicated for Zed to leap down a hole, and they ended up in a spider spawner farm room. There was a cat person hacking down some spiders- he turned and watched the two walk out of sight. Down a janky mismatched hall, and then Bad turned to the left, where there were a bunch of planks hastily nailed up.

Bad looked at the boards for a second, quiet. “They keep doing this for me.” He took out an axe and chopped them all away, revealing a grand staircase down further into the earth. “Let’s go, Zedaph! Much to do!”

Bad walked briskly down the staircase, but Zed took his time. He wasn’t much of a builder, all things considered, but the brickwork here was… weird. He knew it was nether brick. But it felt… wrong. The color of congealed blood and almost less solid then normal. The whole staircase was meant, clearly, to look grand. But it felt empty. But alive. Like there should be something in it.

“Zed? You coming?” Bad’s voice echoed up to him, almost a little muffled. Zed shook off the shivers he felt and trotted down to where Bad was standing. “Ah good. Thought you got cold feet at the last minute. Wouldn’t want that.” Bad said with a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Shall we?”

“Oh, yes, I am so excited!” Zed rubbed his hands together and took a clipboard out of his bag. He stepped forward into the room and audibly gasped. Zed lived in a world of incredible, but incredible is infinite, and this was beyond anything he’d ever seen. The room was bathed in red, like it was some kind of living cavity and they’d just drained the blood. Red vines hung from the ceiling, and pockets of lava dotted the floor. And there were tendrils, enormous and dominating the floor, walls, and creeping onto the ceiling.

And then there was the egg itself. Bad had described it vaguely over the phone as a red egg that was alive. And seeing it now, Bad hasn’t been to far off the mark. It sat in a corner, the epicenter of it all. And there was this deep ache of sentience all around. The air moved like something was breathing, but it was a weird sensation, like the air was taken out of Zed’s lungs when it took a breath. And it was dead silent, minus pops of lava and the footsteps of Bad and Zed.

“Oh wow.” Zed leaned down to study a vine. “This is insane! And it’s just been here, waiting for someone to find it?”

“Come closer to the egg, Zedaph. There’s a lot more to… study over here.” Zed looked up at Bad and he swore he looked paler then before.

“Bad, are you okay? You seem pale. I know this seems scary but we must investigate for science!” Zed asked as he picked his way to the egg.

“What? Oh, I’m fine.” Bad coughed, and some color returned to his body. Not all of it, but some. “Now, we are standing next to The Egg. It’s it amazing?”

“Fascinating!” Zed whispered, leaning in until his nose was almost against the egg.

“Do you hear it?” Bad’s voice seemed a little lower then before, and almost too gleeful.

“Hear what?” Zed said distractedly, jotting down a few notes.

“The egg.”

Zed looked up in surprise. “Is the egg talking to you?”

“Yes! And what about you, Zedaph? Do you hear it calling to you?” Bad leaned towards Zed, a look of urgency now on his face.

“No, but that’s so interesting! It is alive, or is speaking somehow! Fascinating! I can already think of so many tests we can do!” Zed was writing frantically.

Bad sighed. “Okay, let me ask you this. Zedaph, how do you feel about The Egg?”

“Excited!” Zed was indeed shaking with excitement. “I can not wait to study this thing! We could change the world with our discoveries!”

“So you like the egg?” Bad sounded excited too.

“I suppose so! I mean, it’s just some egg, so liking it is a relative term, but I like that it’s a weird thing to investigate!”

“So you’ll join the Eggpire, then?”

Zed looked up from his notes. “The what? Eggpire? Is that some kind of scientific group?” He gave Bad a concerned look. “You okay, my guy? You look…” Zed trailed off, not quite sure how to say “terribly happy and sad at the same time” without sounding rude. That, and the tears rolling down his face were surprisingly red. Maybe it was just the light.

“Yes, the Eggpire is just a big group of people who like studying The Egg.” Bad nodded.

“Excellent.” Zed looked at the egg again, full of thoughts, too many to even make an egg pun.

“And, just to be clear, you feel good about The Egg? You don’t hate it?”

Zed frowned and looked at Bad again. “Bad, it’s just an egg. There is no good or bad here. It’s just science. It doesn’t have like, eldritch powers or something.”

Bad gave Zed a long, searching look. “Yeah… of course, you’re right…”

“Frankly, I think we should make an omelette out of this when we’re done experimenting on it! It kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies, to be honest with you.”

#April 25 2022 #fic #hcraft x dsmp #zedaphplays #bbh #long post

[nachohypno]

Pine’s College Jocks 2 Ch. 4 - A Normal Day

The quad is one of my favorite places to be at. I got used to it during last year, and it was a relaxing place to stay in between classes.

I liked the coffee shop, but it was usually overcrowded, so the quad was a safe bet. Students normally just passed by, they didn’t hung out a lot in here unless they were in a large group.

Stacy arrived, and left two cups of coffee and a bag of cookies in front of my book.

“Thanks, I needed this” I said, moving my book from the stone table and putting it back in my bag.

She sat on the other side of the table, and nodded “No problem, you seem pretty tired today. Have you been sleeping properly or did you stay up all night studying again?”

Truth is, I didn’t want to study, as crazy as that sounds.

I could barely sleep last night; I was too anxious to do that. I tried to binge-watch a show, play some video games, study.

Anything, to not think about mind control nor my plan. I wanted a little rest for today. Just being a normal college student, who was an entire football team (coach included), a frat president, and is planning to get a sports club too.

Yeah, a more chill, normal change of pace would be nice for me.

“Kind of, yeah. Gotta maintain my place as first of the class” I said, giving a long sip to my coffee. “And studying helps me clear my mind”

She gave me a funny smile. “I mean, if you ever need to clear your mind, you live with the great and only Mike Travis”

I rolled my eyes. Rumors fly, and a year of partying gave my best friend a pretty amazing reputation for his sex skills. Mostly after fucking half of the sorority.

“He’s really good at sex, I’ll admit that. But I can’t just wake him up at 3 am and be like ‘oh hey, let’s fuck’”

Just a little lie, I could perfectly do that and Mike wouldn’t mind at all. He was always up to fuck, or be fucked. His libido was always above the ceilings for some reason I’ll probably never understand.

“Why don’t you take a break from everything, then? Nicky used to tell me that coach Peter is a real pain in the ass, I can’t even imagine being his assistant” I sometimes forget that his brother is one of my enslaved football players.

We all had the façade that the coach was still a dick, but in reality he was like this really awesome coach who jokes with his players and cares about each one of them.

He’s still really serious with his work as a coach, but doesn’t treat them like shit anymore.

“He’s an asshole, but I grew to like working as his assistant. Each time I do something wrong, I learn a new insult to use when dealing with assholes!”

She shook her head in disapproval “I’d kick his ass gathering information and exposing him, but he seems to have the whole administration in his hand. The journalist in me wants the truth, always!”

It made me feel bad not being able to tell her about the whole mind control thing. I’m kind of hoping she finds out one day I forget to be careful, to save us from having to sit on the couch and having “the chat”.

But that would also get a lot of consequences, so… better not.

We kept chatting as we enjoyed breakfast. It served as a great distraction, after we dropped the football team subject.

Until it was time for the next class to start. This day seemed to be going well so far!

Stacy finished the last cookie and got up “I’ve got to head to the sorority house before my next class, I forgot to grab a book” She grabbed her bag and said “You should go to the next frat party, it always helps me clear my mind and forget about my problems”

“Uhm… You think so? I think I may get more worried if I go to a crowded place” I said, mildly nervous, but trying to appear chilled.

“Just don’t burn yourself out with work and studying. These are supposed to be the best years of our lives, after all!” She answered, really excited. We fist bumped before she got on her way to the sorority house.

“Alright. Still a while until my next class. Focus Piney, you’re doing great” I told myself, as I grabbed my books from the bag again and put them on the table. “Social Sciences Core, here we go!” I threw a punch to the air before focusing on my studies.

‘I hope nobody saw me doing that!’ I thought, blushing a bit from the embarrassment.

---

Leo’s POV

I wondered what went wrong yesterday.

I mean, we did enslave that guy! That was our objective, right?

‘Who cares if he has personality as long as he serves your commands?’ I thought, as I got off my car and entered the campus. My fellow mind controller should be here.

I wanted to apologize, because he seemed really angry at me yesterday. Although, I must say that not speaking to me after that little incident was a little childish on his behalf, but I’m willing to let it pass because I’m still really excited about meeting another mind controller.

I don’t think anything good would come from fighting between us. I mean, I’m really powerful as it is, but imagine if we allied our powers and tried to… I dunno, mind control an entire town, or something like that?

I could do that on my own, but it would require so much work that it hurts my mind just thinking about it.

Truth be told, I didn’t know where the guy was, so I just walked around the campus hoping to find him.

I looked around, and noticed a map at one side of the road that led to different buildings.

“You’re here” I whispered, checking out the map and looking for my location.

There. Now, where could my little partner be… Sports complex, that’s right! The guy may be training his football team!

‘Leonard Woodward, you’re such a handsome genius’ I said to myself, before snapping a pic of the map and leaving it to follow the indications. According to this, it should be a really big area…

There it was! Huh, things were so much simpler with a map in hand!

It’s was a bit far from the entrance, yes. But, nothing that I couldn’t handle.

When I arrived, my first instinct was check the football field and locker room, to no avail. Both places were empty. Next, I went to the soccer field, the wrestling mats, but again, no luck.

I went to the gym next, hoping to see my fellow mind controller, but I was getting tired of looking and he wasn’t around again.

Maybe some of the jocks in here knew where he was and could lend me a hand on finding him? It’s always good to ask!

I walked up to one of the guys at the gym. Maybe he would know were Pine was, I wasn’t going to lose anything by asking.

“Excuse me,” I tapped a guy’s back as he finished a set of bench press. “I’m looking for a… kind of small guy, wears glasses, has black hair and nervous but also annoying manners?”

He smiled at me “Sorry, you’re describing most of the nerds around here. Could you be more specific, man?”

I sighed. “His name is Pine, like a tree” Who names his son ‘Pine’, by the way?

Oh, this guy knew him, I suppose. That, or he’s being bothered by me. He frowned as soon as I mentioned his name “Oh, Carter. I know him, but I don’t know where he is right now, bro. Now, if you’d excuse me…”

He tried to lay back down on the bench to continue with his sets, but I said “Sit back down and look at me” And he got back in place, almost immediately.

His eyes were glassy before he snapped out.

“Now, be completely honest,” This is going to be fun “Why did you frown when I mentioned Pine?”

The guy’s frown returned. God, he must really hate Piney, I wonder what he did.

“I don’t like him, he’s… a faggot” Alright, I don’t like this guy. Seriously? He may have another reason. Please have another reason, I don’t want you to be so… basic, random dude I haven’t seen before.

“C’mon! I know there must be something more besides that, isn’t that right?” I said. I always enjoyed using my powers like this. Dominating minds for my entertainment, it never gets old.

“Uh…” The guy’s eyes glazed over again, but this time they remained like that, as he was staring into my eyes. A few more seconds and we would have a mind link prepared. “He… He also cheated on our pledge challenges… I’m sure of it”

This guy had to be joking.

“Okay, what’s your name?” I asked, starting to get a bit tired. He seemed to be really a cliché-y jock, who just hates the nerdy guy for being gay.

“I’m… Luke Martin...” He answered, pretty zoned out. I liked my guys that way.

“Well, Luke Martin, did you ever try to hurt Pine after he allegedly cheated on your pledge challenges?” I rolled my eyes, I couldn’t care less about this guy’s bad loser behavior.

“I-I… I did start to prank him a lot… A-and it worked at the end, he moved out of the frat house” Wow, pretty mean of him, but nothing from another world.

“And so… what? You just hate the guy because he ruined a few of your plans, one time? That’s it?”

Luke nodded, his frown vanished and was now replaced by a little, dumb smile on his face. The mind link was ready.

I sighed, but then, an idea came to my mind “Alright… And since you hate him, that means you would probably beat him up at the first chance you’ve got” Not a question anymore, more like a command.

I don’t intend to hurt Pine, if anything, I’m doing him a favor.

Luke nodded “Yeah… Yeah, I would… If it wasn’t for those stupid frat rules…”

“Oh, but you see, I can’t let you hurt my little friend. That wouldn’t be good, wouldn’t it? In fact, you are very ashamed for even thinking of hurting your fellow frat bro, that makes you a horrible frat boy!”

His smile vanished, as his expression turned to complete sadness. His eyes became teary, which was kind of funny to see in such a big guy. Like I just hurt his feelings with my words. “I’m awful. How… How could I do that to my bro?! I don’t deserve being in the frat!”

He was about to start crying, when I patted his back “There, there. You are a shame, that’s right. But, you can still make it up to him, isn’t that right?”

I could see in his mind. He was embarrassed of his attitude, and he wanted to listen to me. “I… Can I? How?” He said. I looked around, to see if any of the others university jocks noticed us, but they were very focused on their own work outs to notice their mate being mind-fucked by me.

This was easier than I expected. Although, it’s always an easy thing to do. Makes me miss my university years just a bit. Except for the studying, you can’t mind control your way to a PhD in business administration, but you can mind control a business administrator to do the hard work for you.

“Just listen closely, alright?” He nodded, still staring into my eyes “You will go to Pine’s flat, and there you will give him a blowjob, understood? You will become mildly obsessed with making up for your hate towards him, doing what I’m telling you as a good, lovely slave. Is that clear?”

The jock started to nod, in complete bliss. He started crying again, but this time from happiness “Yes sir! Thanks so much, I’ll go right now to his place and I’ll make up for my rude attitude!”

I petted his head “That’s a good boy” Then I looked around, as I searched Pine on the surroundings. I would check the football team’s locker room before giving up for today, I was getting bored of aimlessly walking around. I could call later or something, since I’m pretty sure he’ll like my gift.

He likes to do good deeds for others with his powers, so I guess he’ll be happy to see I did a good deed, too!

---

Pine’s POV

Honestly? I had a great day. Studying was my happy place, definitely.

I decided to also skip football practice, leaving Mike in charge of the jocks for the day. Because… Brody was active at the moment.

I wanted to test out coach Peter’s skills on the field, but… everything happened, and my rest day was going just… too great. I wanted it to keep being that way, not thinking about mind control at all.

So yeah, my boyfriend was playing the coach, the coach was playing the football jock, and I am playing the average student who is trying hard to concentrate.

Funny enough, me and the whole football team started the rumor that Brody was actually Peter’s brother who came to visit. That would explain their similar appearance and his younger attitude, and wouldn’t raise suspicion as to why the head coach is playing with his team instead of training them.

We didn’t let him go to parties, but he was around the football team when I triggered him and they all loved him. First time I introduced Brody to the team, and made them think it was normal to have him, it was like a shower of ‘bro bro bro bro’ started on the locker room.

I finished my last class of the day already, so I decided to go back to my place. Mike still had an hour or so before returning.

I walked out of campus, coffee in hand, and headed to my place. It wasn’t close to the campus, but it wasn’t far either. The perfect zone, with an accessible price for a good apartment. (Although, my laziness sometimes made me wish I had a car).

I couldn’t stop smiling, for some reason. This day had been nothing but nostalgic, it reminded me of my teenage years, when I wasn’t a mind controller. When life was as simple as “Study, eat, sleep, play videogames and hang out with your friends”, and the only step left was playing video games.

I arrived at the building and headed upstairs. I wasn’t worried about the sports club today, I would get back to that tomorrow, or in a few days. No rush, right?

As soon as I about to open the door with my key, I noticed noise inside.

‘Fuck’ I thought, as I swallowed some saliva to have my voice prepared. I was about to panic, was someone really robbing my place?

I took a deep breath, before opening the door and yelling “FREEZE!”

Someone fell to the ground in front of the couch. I closed the door and walked towards the person, only to find Luke laying on the ground, with glazed over eyes and a shocked expression. I may have scared him when I bursted in screaming, but it wasn’t my fault.

How would I know that he was in here? What was HE doing here? And most importantly, HOW DID HE GET IN ANYWAY?

As I calmed myself down, I took a few more deep breaths, and left my bag on my room. I was curious about what was he doing here, but I was kind of delaying it. I wasn’t in a hurry to unfreeze him; I was going to wait until I’m pretty much calmed down again. Then, he’ll have his time to speak.

I grabbed a glass of water, walked back to the living room, sat on the sofa and just… looked at my rival.

‘Alright, I can’t leave him like that’ I thought, leaving the glass on the coffee table and lifting the jock from the floor. ‘Fuck, he’s heavy’

I tried to place him on the couch, like some kind of mannequin, but it was quite difficult.

But, after some good effort, I finally made him sit normally on the couch, as his shocked face looked at the ceiling.

“Alright… unfreeze” I said, looking at the guy. He blinked, but his eyes remained glassy as he started moving again. He stretched a bit, as he looked around. It all seemed normal, but as soon as he noticed me, he got a big smile on his face, like he was actually happy to see me.

“Pine? When did you get in?” Luke asked, pretty confused. I think his glassy eyes gave him away: He got mind controlled by Leo.

“I won’t answer that because it’s my place, I’d rather ask how did YOU get in, since the door was locked!”

“Uh? Easy, man! I went in climbing through the fire exit! You should really close those windows” Oh, cool. Now I have a new thing to worry about every time I go outside. “I’ve been waiting for you for a few hours!”

He got up and kneeled in front of me. ‘What the heck is he doing now?’ I thought, before he tried to pull down my pants. I was glad I was using a belt, then I pushed him back from me and asked “What the fuck?!”

“Sorry bro! I just really want to make up for everything I did to you! Can I blow ya, bro? It won’t make us even but it’ll be a start! I won’t be an awful frat boy anymore!” He said, with some hope in his voice. I wondered what did Leo wanted to prove with this.

“No! You can’t just break into my place and offer me a blowjob like it’s the most normal thing in the world!”

But he didn’t seem to listen. He just tried to throw himself at me as I kept pushing him away from me.

“Would you- Could you- ALRIGHT, CAN YOU FUCKING STOP?!” I yelled, at the top of my lungs. I had lost my patience, but somehow, it got to him.

I don’t know if Leo’s mind link would be over by now and I could mind control him, but seems like he’s not mind controlled anymore.

His eyes returned to normal, as the jock crawled a few meters away from me in fear.

“What… How did I get here? I was at the gym… And what are you doing here?!” He asked, shivering. Must be terrifying, lose your mind for a big lapse of time and not even know why.

“Luke, calm down” I said, even though he seemed to have no intention of hearing me out. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

He took a deep breath, before answering “I was at the gym, and this weird guy wearing preppy clothes came up to me. He started asking about you but… It’s foggy. Can’t remember what happened next”

I grabbed my phone, wanting to text Leo about this whole thing, when I noticed a message from him. [Hope U enjoy my gift, P!]

I sighed, and put the phone back in my pocket. Again, I didn’t have the energy to deal with him, maybe tomorrow or after a few days.

I looked back at the scared jock that was against the wall, a few meters in front of me.

“Do you want to talk?” I said, motioning to the couch and sitting down at one side.

He looked around, trying to get his surroundings before nodding and sitting beside me. “Do you have an explanation about what happened? I know you’re really smart, but this is too freaky, Carter. Where the hell am I?! What happened to me?!”

That’s the normal Luke. He doesn’t call me by my name, nor ‘bro’. He uses my last name.

Maybe… If I told him the truth? I couldn’t come up with an excuse of what happened to him.

“Well… You’re in my apartment.” The jock raised an eyebrow. Hell, what could I lose? If he reacts badly, I can easily erase his memory. “And, this may sound crazy, but you got mind controlled by the guy you saw at the gym. You tried to suck me off but I managed to wake you up. We’re on my apartment now” I said, like it was a normal thing. Maybe it would be easier to digest that way!

It obviously didn’t go as intended.

He started chuckling, like I was telling some kind of joke. But the chuckling quickly became sobbing, as he started crying.

“That’s… That’s crazy shit, Carter…” He said, in between sobs “There’s no such thing as… mind control!”

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t stop myself from feeling bad for the poor guy… A few years ago, I would have taken revenge on him because of the pranking me a lot on the frat house.

Now I’m just… okay with it. I guess that’s why I decided to move out of the frat house instead of mind controlling him –Besides the overloads-, because I didn’t really care about this guy, so I preferred to no spend my time and mind links doing something against him.

Leo obviously had another idea in mind.

But… It may have not been Leo’s fault at all, either. There’s no way he could have known about Luke, unless they just meet up as a coincidence, and he somehow discovered our little ‘friendly’ rivalry.

Karma is a bitch, they say.

I hugged the guy as he kept crying. “It’s okay, there… just get it out your chest, alright? I’m here for you” He just kept going as he hugged me too and moved to cry on my shoulder.

I heard chatting outside of the apartment, and seconds later Mike opened the door, followed by coach Peter- Brody, he was Brody at the moment.

“Hey bro! I thought about inviting this big guy for… the…” His voice slowed down as he noticed the little scene going on at the living room. He was confused to see Luke, but even more confused as he noticed him sobbing. “What is going on?” He asked.

Brody, on the other side, had actually a big smile on his face, like he just had a blast of a day and couldn’t wait to spend more time with his bros.

I passed my hand through Luke’s hair, trying to ease him. I looked at Mike and mumbled “Leo”, then he nodded in realization. “Hey bro, let’s go to my room, alright? We can play some Smash there!”

“Smash? Awesome, bro!” The jockified coach said, before following Mike to our room.

I watched them go away, as I kept comforting the jock in my arms.

“Luke?” I said.

He sniffed before answering a “Yeah, Carter?”

“Look at me,” He did as I said, before I started putting power in my words “You will forget that this day happened. You just went to the gym, had an amazing workout, and just went back to your frat room to rest, because your muscles were sore-y”

His eyes glazed over again, as a dumb smile appeared on his face. The sadness quickly fading away as I carefully rewrote his memories of today. “Y-Yeah…”

I continued “If you had any classes, you will remember them completely and will get a good focus on your studies, wanting to have good grades besides a good performance on… whatever sport you play” I forgot which team was he part of, but honestly, I think I never cared since I never really liked Luke. “Understood, Luke?”

The jock kept nodding in complete bliss “Yes, Carter!”. Hearing my last name was somewhat bothering me.

I patted his back, before getting up from the couch. “Now, I’ll walk you out of the building and you will return to campus. Once there, the commands that the ‘elegant man’ told you will have disappeared and my commands will take effect, as you completely forget what happened today, understood?”

He got up from the couch too, following me “Of course!”

That’s what I wanted to hear. I walked him outside and we went down the stairs towards the lobby. Once there, I gave him a pat on the back and said “Now go”

He made a kind of military salute, still zoned out in his blissful state, and walked out of the building, heading back to campus and to the frat house.

I sighed as I lazily went back upstairs. There goes my normal day, almost being sucked off by a fellow frat brother I don’t like at all.

As I walked into the apartment, I closed the door behind me and just threw myself to the couch like you normally would throw a paper into the trash can.

Mike came from our room, noticing that Luke was now gone. He went to the couch and sat on the armrest. The big guy started to caress my hair as I just buried my head on the cushions. I wasn’t sad, by any means. Just tired, and upset.

Seeing that I wasn’t intending to give any answers, Mike easily lifted me from the couch, sat me down, then sat down beside me.

He placed his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in for a kiss. I kissed him back, feeling warmer as I did. Safer, with my quarterback boyfriend. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to…” He whispered to me, in a sexy way. “…But I know something’s wrong and I want to help you feel better, bro”

Heck yeah, I love this guy. We just kept kissing, like nothing mattered. At some point, he took off his tee and pushed me to laid back to the couch, before getting on top of me and resuming the make out session.

He began to grind against my ass, and I found it pretty nice. It would be good to not be in control today, and I missed being the bottom.

“Bros?” Asked Brody from the room’s door. Mikey stopped the kiss and looked at him, while I tried to get up and do the same. “What about me?” He said, I wondered what did Mike tell the coach before leaving the room.

I smiled “Well, we could use another guy in here” Mike said, as he smirked at him and motioned at the guy to come closer “Gotta make Piney feel better, bro”

A few seconds later, a shirtless Mike was sitting on my right, and a shirtless Peter/Brody was sitting on my left. Both jocks waiting expectantly for me to say anything, waiting for my permission to start with the threesome. But… I had something else in mind.

My normal day was ruined already, so why not bring out the mind control powers to the fun?

While they waited for me to give them permission, their eyes started glazing over as I reached for their mind links. I’ve always found their blank stares hot, and even hotter once I deepened the links.

Both jocks started to open their mouths and drool a bit as I created a backup of their personalities and emptied out their thoughts.

I closed my eyes and focused on the mind links, feeling the room around me vanishing. I started to reprogram their minds swiftly, making sure to pump out their love and desire for me to the brim. I can notice both their hearts starting to beat harder and harder while I flood their thoughts with cheesy and romantic thoughts about me. 

Mike was already my boyfriend, but to have Coach Peter as my lovesick boyfriend sounded hot right now. It would be temporary, so nothing to worry about.

Both jocks started to pant and moan under my power. Their dicks were either visible at the top of their pants or already making wet spots inside it.

I smiled after opening my eyes and returning to the apartment. “Okay, do whatever you want guys”

Brody immediately grabbed me before Mike did, and started roughly kissing me like his life was on the line or something like that. It was… weird, but enjoyable nevertheless.

Mike accepted the defeat pretty quickly and got up from the couch, only to kneel in front of us and pull down our pants. I barely noticed this, as I was too lost on making out with the mind-fucked coach. But I did notice their eyes were glassy at the moment.

Brody grabbed my hand and moved it towards his muscled torso, as Mike grabbed my cock and started to suck it slowly. I was pretty much liking this little distraction they were pulling out for me, honestly.

Mikey’s lips felt awesome on my cock. I tried to moan softly as the older jock kept making out with me, and wanted to make me feel up as much as I could of his body.

At some point, Mike got up and Brody took it as a sign to take his place. The older guy got on his knees in front of me and started sucking me off.

Mikey was much more gentle than Brody, so I enjoyed it a lot more. “Feeling better, my love?” Mike whispered to me, as Brody stopped for a second and looked up at us with a big smile.

I chuckled “Yeah, thanks a lot guys”.

Brody nodded “A pleasure, sir!”, before getting back to blowing me.

Mike nicely rubbed my back a bit, reassuringly. “Love you, babe. Want us to move to the bed or should we stay here?”

Not gonna lie, both jocks sucking me off got me really horny already, so I said “The first one sounds nice, and you can top if you want”

Mike smiled. “Hell yeah, I love topping! Thanks so much, babe!”

But we would have to switch positions from time to time, too. Poor lovely Brody shouldn’t feel left out!

I got up and motioned the guys to follow me. While the couch was comfy, it wasn’t the best place for a threesome. Things would get uncomfortable after we had to start repositioning.

I took the moment to take off my shirt, as the other two guys took off their pants and underwear. They definitively cheered me up by now, now I’m just really horny.

Mike pulled me in for another kiss, before we climbed the bed. I got on all fours as he positioned himself behind me, grabbed a bottle of lube from our night table, and lubed up his cock.

I was trying to come up with an idea for what could Brody do… Got it!

As Mike got ready to fucking me, I said “Wait. Brody, get below me facing my cock”.

Brody smiled and answered a fast “Yessir!” before doing what I ordered. I almost forgot he referred to me as ‘sir’ instead of ‘bro’.

Mike and I moved a bit, as the bigger guy positioned himself facing to the ceiling, before I moved back to my initial position and he was ready to suck me off. A 69 while being fucked? That was a new deal for me.

“Oh, and remember,” I said, powering my words again. “Don’t cum until I do, understood?”

“Yeah, babe!”  said the guys almost at unison, before we resumed the action.

Brody already knew what to do, as he took my leaking cock in his mouth slowly at first. I thought about returning the favor as I started sucking his. Meanwhile, Mike finished his preparation and started to slowly thrust inside of me.

Mike is an amazing bottom, but he’s an even better top. Probably because he has more practice, being a sex machine at parties.

Everything felt so good… My boyfriend placed his hands on my shoulders as he started to pick up the speed, meanwhile Brody and I were busy with our little 69.

I just… left myself go and just enjoy this pleasurable moment, as Mike hit the right spot. I left out a moan there, but it was silenced by the quarterback’s grunts.

A few minutes later, I came in Brody’s mouth as he tried to swallow it all. Now that I was done, Mike and the former coach followed suit. 

The guy below me came as I was still sucking, I’m not a fan of swallowing but hey, gotta do it sometimes. 

I felt my control over coach Peter getting stronger the more he swallowed. That was an usual thing that happens when one of my mind linked slaves drank more of my cum. It strained a bit less to use his mind link, as he became more connected to me. I could feel Brody’s mind becoming clearer with the stronger link, as the man seemed to be in a blissful state for a few minutes.

My boyfriend was the last one to cum, doing so inside of me and pulling out after a few more grunts.

The three of us laid together in bed, as Mike planted a soft kiss on my lips “Feeling better?” He asked, in a cute voice.

I took a moment to return them their backup personalities. As hot as this was, I didn’t want to fall asleep and forget about doing it.

After that, I answered. “Much better, thanks Mikey” I looked at the other jock beside me, who closed his eyes and seemed about to fall asleep. “And you too, Brody”

“No problem… sir…” He said, tiredness being noticeable in his voice. I’ll let the coach sleep for a while, maybe the personality change tired him at a faster rate? I couldn’t say for certain, but that would make sense since he went from Peter to Brody, and then to Brody in love with his master.

It was still pretty early, though. I got up from bed and Mike followed me, grabbing me from behind. “Would you still like to play smash, bro? Or should I cook something for us?”

It’s impossible to not love this guy. He tried so hard to be an amazing boyfriend every day.

“A shower would be nice, wanna come?” I suggested, and we also had to change the sheets. I’m not sleeping on the wet spot.

“How could I refuse, bro?” He said with a big smile, lifting me again on his arms as he took me to the bathroom.

-----

Chapter 5 is already available in my Patreon!  And by pledging you also get access to other stories before they go public!

#PinesCollegeJocks #mind control #brainwashing #brainwashed #hypnosis #straight to gay #gay hypnosis #hypnotized

[brittle-bone-gabe]

Two Opposites, But Two Losers: Chapter Two - Fancy Running Into You Here

Chapter One, Chapter Three, 

Summary: Eddie Kaspbrak is a first-year medical student trying to start off on the right foot, but being up all night to study and pull through on his assignments increases his need for coffee; this is where he meets his “favorite” new barista, Richie Tozier: an art student with bad habits. (I will specify a possible trigger in the chapter titles if it calls for one).

Pairings: Eddie x Richie, Ben x Beverly, Stan x Patty, Bill x Audra, Bill x Mike

Read on Ao3: Here

Art History certainly wasn’t Richie’s top subject, in fact, if his graduation criteria wasn’t requiring it he would have skipped the class all together. The class had a test today, and Richie was sure that he had failed it for the sole reason he kept erasing and redoing almost all of his answers, even though in the end he usually kept the original answer he had in the first place. Words could not describe how frustrated that made Richie; did he make the right choices with his answers? Did he royally fuck up? Bev was right, he should’ve been studying instead of going out every night… Maybe he’d stay in all week to study. ...Right. Richie told himself that every week but never stuck with it.

You fucked up, why didn’t you just fucking study, you stupid fucking- Richie’s thoughts got cut off as soon as he looked up from the floor, noticing the familar figure walking across the t-hallway, not even glancing Richie’s way. Any and all negative thoughts Richie had were brushed aside, a huge smile on his face as he had a new goal at the moment. He needed to pick on Eddie again. Richie squirmed his way through the group of people in the hallway, racing to catch up to the shorter man, minding his own business, not aware that he was about to be bombarded by a trashmouth.

“Morning Bird!” Richie said loudly, causing everyone in the hallway to turn and look at him, not sure who he was referring to, but certainly gave him that you’re insane look.

Recognizing the voice made Eddie physically cringe, gripping his backpack strap so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He closed his eyes for just a moment, letting out a sigh before opening them again just as Richie managed to catch up with him.

“What’s up!” Richie said just as loudly as he did when he called for him.

Eddie couldn’t help himself as he pinched the bridge of his nose, he couldn’t believe how loud this man could possibly be. He was acting as if he had way too much coffee, which wouldn’t surprise Eddie considering the fact that Richie worked in a fucking coffee shop. He probably got too much free coffee to keep him awake for the entire day. Just spending the short amount of time with Richie this morning had exhausted Eddie, how in the hell did he manage to run into him here, in one of the hundreds of hallways on campus?

“On my way to class…” Eddie mumbled, he could physically feel people’s eyes on him and he didn’t like it at all. He hated having all the attention on him, he felt more inclined to fuck something up and trip over his own feet.

It’s as though Richie couldn’t pick up on how Eddie was feeling, as he continued the conversation as if nothing was awkward for him or anything.

“Oh yeah?” Richie started, “what class ya got, Morning Bird?”

“Behavioral Sciences… And would you stop calling me that? It’s almost two in the afternoon.”

Shit, was it really? Richie checked the smart-watch on his wrist. He couldn’t believe that, it felt like time was going by quickly today.

He laughed. “What else am I supposed to call you?”

God, was he annoying… It was as though he only had one volume setting on his voice.

Eddie couldn’t help but roll his eyes at his ridiculous question. “I dunno… my name?” As annoyed as Eddie was trying to act, he was lowkey trying to hold back his small smile. There was no way Richie would be able to remember his name from way back of this morning, especially how busy the Harvest usually got around eight in the morning. Just to hear him trip up would make Eddie’s day.

“Ah, okay, Eds.” Seeing Eddie frown at the nickname made Richie chuckle, he always had a natural talent for pissing people off just being twisting their names around. Well, in general he had a talent to piss people off, that was his favorite trait.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Aww, cheer up Ed-” even before Richie could finish his sentence, Eddie glared at him, giving him that choose my name carefully look. “Eddie,” Richie finished, a smile still on his face.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“Nope! Y’know, I never asked��� what’s your major?”

“I’m… actually in med school.”

Honestly? Richie was shocked to hear that. He had saw Eddie as someone who would be majoring in engineering. Maybe computer science, but med school? That was so fucking cool. Richie certainly couldn’t keep focus on schooling that long to become a doctor, but anyone who could was amazing.

“Oh… wow. That’s awesome!” Eddie looked up at Richie, shocked at his answer. “So you’re going to be a doctor or some shit?”

Eddie smiled and nodded, and as soon as he did, Richie started rambling away about how cool that was, how he could never do that, but it was awesome that Eddie was able to do it. Eddie wasn’t used to praise from anyone besides his professors about how he was doing in school, lord knows he barely had any support when choosing his major in high school. His mom hated the fact he wanted to become a doctor, in fact, when he had mentioned that med school was on his choice for majors she went insane. She had tried to do everything she could to try to convince him to pick literally anything else, going as far as to attempting to bribe him to switch by offering to pay for his entire schooling as long as he chose anything else. Just because she was a hypochondriac and turned Eddie into a hypochondriac his entire childhood didn’t mean she could dictate his entire life; but in high school, Eddie decided that he wanted to help people, to reassure people that everything would be okay and he could fix them. Anytime Eddie called home just to check up on his mother he wasn’t able to mention school at all, otherwise she would get extremely passive aggressive, turning the conversation into making sure Eddie was making the right choice for his future.  

“What about you?” Eddie asked Richie once he stopped his rambling, “What’s your major?”

Richie laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his head. “Ah… mine’s not as exciting as your thing.”

“I didn’t ask that, I asked what your major was.”

Well, Richie was taken aback by how snappy Eddie could be, it was cute though. He smiled at the smart ass remark, though.

“Graphic design, not sure what I want to do with it, but… eh…” he shrugged, readjusting the single strapped backpack that was around his torso. “Art’s my thing.” Eddie’s walk slowed to a stop in front of a classroom, causing Richie to smile even bigger. “Looks like I just walked you to your class.”

“Don’t make a habit of this, Richie.”  

“Uhhuh, uhhuh…. I’ll see ya later, Morning Bird!” Richie made sure to say it loudly so everyone already in the classroom would hear him, they turned their heads to see who was coming inside the classroom after that.

Eddie discreetly flipped him off as he made his way into the classroom, his face turning pink from the embarrassment of everyone looking at him. Well, that was going to make class more interesting. People on the other side of the earth could probably hear Richie and his big fucking mouth.

As Richie walked away, he pulled out his phone from his back pocket. As usual, the first thing he did whenever he unlocked his phone was go to his messaging app, texting Beverly. He texted her, asking her where she was and what she was doing right now, as he could never remember her schedule during the week or what classes she has going on. To be fair, most things go through one ear and out the other for Richie, it was something most people had to deal with when getting close to him, accepting that he will forget a lot of things.

He was about to lock his phone and put it back in his pocket, but Bev began texting back immediately, the three dots were underneath his text on the screen. Richie moved with his back against the brick wall, staying out of the way so others could walk past him in the hallway while he waited for a text back. He stared at it, waiting anxiously to see what she had to say.

-Layin’ down with ben, her text had said.

So she must’ve not had class today… That, or she skipped class to spend time with her boyfriend. Ben worked 3rd shift as a campus guard, Richie couldn’t understand why there needed to be a 3rd shift campus guard walking around the grounds at night, but whatever paid the bills…

-wanna get lunch of somethin’? i got some tea for ya.

-👀 should we meet at harvest?

 Obviously it was a joke, but Richie still audibly groaned just thinking about hanging out there while not on the clock.

-😡 no we have to go somewhere with good food

-🖕

                                                          -----

There was an amazing sub shop that was just off campus that Richie and Bev had agreed to meet at. Of course, Richie was there first, he was anxious to tell Bev about how he “walked” Eddie to class. Besides that though, Richie wanted to spend time with his best friend. Well, no, Bev was more like his sister than his best friend and everyone knew that. They were those annoying best friends who posted each other on Snapchat and Instagram nonstop, but at the same time some people were like “I wish I had a friendship like that.” Nobody really knew what they’ve been through together that made them this close, and it was likely that nobody would ever know that side of Richie anyways.

The two have sat at a table, their food sitting in front of them, but Richie couldn’t focus on eating as he was busy readjusting the many bracelets on his wrists and bouncing his leg. That was the first sign to Bev that something was wrong with him. Although, she couldn’t tell if he was anxious or excited, as he acted the same for either or.

“What’s your problem?” Bev asked him before taking a bite into her sandwich.

“Hm?” Richie hummed, snapping out of his many, many thoughts. He had almost forgotten that he was the one who invited her out because he had some tea. “Oh, nothin’...”

“Bullshit. You know better than to lie to me, Trashmouth.” She grabbed a piece of lettuce that was on her tray, throwing it at him so it got stuck in his hair. Richie fished it out before throwing it back at her. “You said you had tea for me, I’m not hearing any tea.”

“Remember that guy that came in earlier?” Richie asked quickly, trying to contain the smile he wanted to let free.

“Many guys come in, Richie, and you have heart eyes for almost all of them.”

“Excuse me, I do not.” Bev didn’t say anything, she just rolled her eyes waiting for him to get to the point and be more specific. “No, I’m talking about the guy from waaay earlier in the morning.”

“The one you kept calling cute?”

“Yes!” He waved his fingers, pointing at her, “that one!”

“What about him?”

“I saw him after class and I walked him to his class.”

Bev groaned. “Did you walk him to his class or did you follow him?”

“He’s so cute, dude,” Richie said as he sat up, shaking both of his hands so the bracelets fell down to the base of his hands.

“You need a man.”

“I fucking knooooow. Morning Bird is in med school, Bev. Med school.”

“So he’s too smart for you, got it. Better luck trying to find something else.”

“Bitch, fuck you.”

They flipped each other off before sitting in silence once more. Richie didn’t know what else to say, from what he was implying Bev was telling him… she was right. There would be no fucking way Eddie would want to be with someone like him. Hell, the way he freaked out when he saw Richie smoking outside during his small break was evidence of that. Eddie thought smoking was gross, and he was right, even Richie thought smoking was gross, but no matter how many times he had tried to quit in the past it didn’t matter as he went right back to his old habits. They were scrolling through their phones now, but Bev couldn’t help but notice that Richie kept mindlessly itching his forearm that was covered by the long sleeve shirt underneath his t-shirt.

“So, how are things going, Rich?” Bev asked in complete seriousness.

Richie knew how serious she was being because that was the only time she called in Rich instead of Richie, or Trashmouth, or literally anything else.

He shook his head lightly, dropping his hands to the table, locking his phone screen. “‘m fine,” he mumbled, avoiding eye contact. He had to look back up to her when he felt that she was giving him that serious look she gave when she knew he wasn’t telling the complete truth. “I am! I’m fine!”

“Alright, alright!” She held her hands up to him, “I didn’t say anything. But… you know you can talk to me about-”

“I know. I appreciate it.”

Richie began anxiously fiddling with the phone in his hands, waiting for a specific notification to come through. He honestly didn’t want to have this conversation again, especially in a public place, it would just take one person overhearing it and Richie would refuse to ever show his face around campus again. Bev was a total sweetheart, she was there for Richie through thick and thin, as he was there for her too, but sometimes she asked about this specific problem too much. Not like Richie would ever tell her to stop trying to help, but it would clear he would be uncomfortable with the conversation.

The phone finally vibrated in Richie’s hand, causing his heart to do a flip in his chest as he sat up quickly, unlocking his phone to see a text message with no contact name with only a single character in the text box.

-?

“I gotta go,” Richie said quickly, standing up before Bev could even process what was going on.

“Where do you have to be that’s so damn important?” She asked as Richie was throwing his backpack strap over his torso, shoving his phone in his back pocket.

“Gotta meet up with my project partner,” he leaned down, kissing Bev’s cheek. That was something they’ve always done as best friends. “I’ll see ya later, Molly Ringwald.”

“Fuck you, Trahsmouth.”

Richie waved as he quickly left the sub shop, Bev watching sadly after him. She had a strong gut feeling that there was no project partner. She hated accusing and thinking that Richie was doing this shit again, but after what happened she couldn’t help it…

Bev unlocked her phone, opening up their next door neighbor, Stan’s, text messages.

- i think richies slipping again could you talk to him?

                                                       -----

Richie had walked across campus and then some just to meet up with his “project partner.” Yeah, that was such a good fucking cover up… Richie could tell that Bev didn’t really believe him or his lies and he felt like such an asshole for lying to her but he couldn’t help it anymore. He looked over his shoulder as he walked through the main parking lot where hundreds of cars were parked, but picking out which car he was looking for wasn’t that difficult of a task. In fact, Richie could recognize that crappy red car from anywhere as it was facing away from the campus building so nobody would make out who the driver was.

When Richie walked up to the car, he didn’t even knock on the window or anything to get the drivers attention, instead, he just opened the passengers side door and slid inside, closing the door behind him. In the driver's seat sat Henry Bowers; it was no secret that Henry and Richie fucking hated each others guts, but they needed each other so they would just suck it up for the time being. They had been partnered up for a project about a year ago, but stuck together, lowkey meeting up since Henry became Richie’s dealer; a known dealer at that, and Richie was his best customer.

“Did ya miss me?” Richie asked playfully, a smile on his face.

“Shut up, faggot.”

Richie shrugged the insult off. Henry had called him that so many times it lost any and all meaning.

“I want Pepsi,” Richie gave his overused, failed attempt at a joke. Henry only glared at him, looking like he was about ready to punch him in the jaw. “Get it? You’re supposed to say-”

“I get the fucking joke, Tozier. Especially since you make the joke every fucking time.”

Richie swung the backpack around, pulling out one-hundred dollars he kept at the bottom of all the junk in there. He dropped it on the center console so nobody who was possibly lurking around out in the parking lot could see them exchanging money. Normally, as his own rule, Henry would check everybody’s money, but since RIchie’s money was always good he didn’t feel the need to. From underneath his seat, Henry pulled out a brown paper lunch bag, handing it over to Richie underneath the view of the windshield who immediately shoved it into his backpack.

“So… got any plans later?” Richie only asked him because he knew it pissed him off.

“Get the fuck out of my car.”

“Right,” he said quickly, getting out of the car like he was instructed to do. He waved obnoxiously to Henry before making his way back to the apartment to get what he paid for.

#my fic #reddie #richie tozier #richie trashmouth #richie #Adult Reddie #adult richie tozier #adult eddie kaspbrak #adult eddie #adult richie #Eddie Kaspbrak #Ben Hanscom #Bev Marsh #Beverly Marsh #Stanley Uris #Bill Denbrought #Mike Hanlon #it #it chapter 2 #it chapter one #it chapter two #it fanfiction #it fanfic #College AU #tw: slurs #tw: drug mention

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 049

Last time, Gohan rescued a Namekian child from Dodoria, and Krillin used the Solar Flare to cover their escape.   Dodoria doesn’t have a scouter, and he can’t sense ki energy like the good guys, so he basically has no way to track his enemies if they drop out of sight.  

I suppose it’s the overwhelming arrogance of Frieza’s group that’s their biggest weakness.    The scouters were a cool concept when they were first introduced.   They make Raditz look more science-fictiony, but by the time Zarbon and Dodoria are running around, it just seems really dumb.   I guess that’s because by this point, the good guys have refined their ki senes to the point where they’re superior to the scouters in every way.   So you end up with Dodoria uselessly tapping the button on his ear, and wondering if his readings are accurate, and then getting completely flustered when he no longer has the tech to rely upon.   Without one, he got completely suckered by Krillin and Gohan, who should be way out of their league.    But Dodoria can’t find them, and he just fell for the oldest trick in the book.    He’s stronger than Vegeta was on Earth, but he comes across like a complete loser.

Frustrated, Dodoria decides that the heroes couldn’t have gone far, so he fires a blast at the water below to make a huge explosion.   He assumes--stupidly-- that this would be enough to kill them.    I mean, it probably would, but he doesn’t even know if they’re in range, and even if they were in range, there’d be no way to tell, because their bodies would be vaporized.

I wasn’t planning to go on a rant about how dumb Dodoria is, but geez.    We’ve already established that these are no ordinary guys.   He has no idea how strong or weak they are.    Dodoria thinks they’re weaker because they ran away, but how does he know they aren’t luring him into a trap?   Krillin already surprised him with the Solar Flare, so how can he be sure whether his blast would kill them or not?   He’s taking an awful chance here, and he doesn’t even seem to realize it.   Even if Gohan and Krillin can’t harm him, how pissed will Frieza be if they show up later, after Dodoria reported them dead?  

Dodoria’s problem is that he’s so used to working with a scouter that he can’t adjust his tactics to working without one.    He’s used to opponents who can’t raise or lower their battle power, to the point that he never bothers to consider what it would mean to fight enemies who can.  Moori blasted the scouter right off his face, and then Gohan and Krillin sucker punched him.   He was stronger than all three of them put together, but it didn’t even occur to him to be on guard for any of that.    He’s used to the scouter warning him, and he’s so used to having it that he never imagined anyone would try to take it away from him.

Anyway, Dodoria heads back, and Dende thanks the boys for saving him.   Krillin gives all the credit to Gohan, since Krillin was too petrified to even consider it.   Gohan points out that Krillin helped when it counted, making up for Gohan’s reckless heroism.   I like that.   It would be easy to reduce Krillin to a fraidy-cat, or to reduce Gohan to a rash idealist, but instead they both work together to support each other.   That’s important.

Back at the cave, Bulma’s taking a bubble bath in the capsule house she set up, and her father informs her that Goku is en route to Namek.    That’s pretty amazing reception she’s getting, considering that she’s in a cave in another solar system.   

Speaking of Goku, he’s having a snack during his long journey through space.

I like to think he’s gonna make a banana-and-fish sandwich.   Good ol’ B&F, Goku style.  

But he’s got the ship’s artificial gravity turned up to twenty-times normal, so when he flops on the bed it wrecks his quarters.    Dr Brief stocked this place with a bookshelf and a giant TV.   Goku was only going to be gone for twelve days, and he planned to train the whole way.    The stero/cappucino machine made sense to me, but did Dr. Brief really think he was going to watch a bunch of old movies and read novels?

On Namek, Dodoria’s still sore about not having scouters, since it’ll complicate the Dragon Ball hunt.   Really, why should he complain?    They already have five of them, so even if it takes longer to get the last two, it could have been a lot worse?   Besides, what else was he going to do today?

Then he gets ambushed again, and this time it turns out to be Vegeta. 

Vegeta’s been monitoring their communications on their scouters, right up until the sound cut out when Moori destroyed them all.    Then he sensed Dodoria moving on his own, and decided to intercept him.     Dodoria notices that Vegeta still has a scouter--the last one on the planet, apparently-- and offers to let Vegeta go if he turns it over.   

So Vegeta drops it on the ground and invites Dodoria to take it from him.    Then he steps on it and destroys it.    Wait, Vegeta’s foot is really tiny, isn’t it?

Dodoria is shocked, since this means Vegeta is giving up his only advantage, until Vegeta explains that he met enemies on Earth who could sense battle powers without a scouter.     One of them was a Saiyan (Goku), which convinced him that he should be able to learn the same trick.

“Once you learn how to do it, it’s easy.    But then, for those like yourselves or Frieza, who only set their sights on power, it would be impossible.   Although up until now, I was the same way.”

This is an interesting line from Vegeta, and I noticed it wasn’t really duplicated in the dub.     The part where he says that if Goku can do something, he should be able to do it too, that line carried over, and it always stuck with me.   It’s a big reason why Vegeta has outlasted so many other characters in the franchise.   If Goku learns a new ability or faces a new rival, there’s absolutely no reason for Vegeta to stay out of the picture.   

But the part about Frieza and his men being incapable of such growth, that’s very important.   It defines the whole Frieza/Namek saga, and maybe all of Dragon Ball as a whole.   It’s not that the bad guys can’t learn to sense ki; they just never considered it was possible, and they never would have bothered to try.    For all their power, they’re close-minded, cut off from new ideas and the possibilities that come with them.    Guys like Cui and Dodoria honestly believed that Vegeta would never surpass them in strength, like it was a rule or something.   Now, the rules of the game have changed, and Dodoria can’t keep up.   His opening move in this confrontation was to threaten Vegeta, even though they both know he’s got the upper hand.

Dodoria accuses him of bringing Earthlings with him as some sort of alliance, but Vegeta has no idea what he’s talking about.    Dodoria nervously “offers” him a chance to run away, but Vegeta knows better.   This is just sad, really.  

I mean, Cui was genuinely surprised to find out that Vegeta had gotten stronger, but Dodoria monitored that battle on his scouter, so he knows Vegeta’s too much for him.  And yet, he keeps playing the same hand, like the universe is going to say “You know what?  You called our bluff, Dodoria.   Yeah, Vegeta’s not really that strong.    Sorry about that.”    No.    It doesn’t work that way.

So Vegeta grabs Dodoria and puts him in a jointlock very easily.   You know, I didn’t think Vegeta was this much stronger than Dodoria.  I’m pretty sure a big explanation for this is that Dodoria doesn’t have nearly a much skill.   He’s used to just mowing down his opposition with brute force, so when he takes on someone in his own weight class, with greater finesse, he gets overmatched immediately.    It explains ho Krillin and Gohan held him off for as long as they did. 

But Dodoria convinces Vegeta to let him go, in exchange for a secret about the Planet Vegeta.   This leads to a... well, it’s not exactly a flashback.   Really, it’s just random footage of Saiyans to accompany Dodoria’s revelation.

Is that guy Nappa?   He looks like an off-model bootleg version.

And here’s a shot of some great apes breaking stuff.   I’ve seen gifs of this, and I never could tell where they’re from.    For the record, it’s Episode 49 of DBZ.

The Saiyans were never strong enough to oppose Frieza individually, but if enough of them joined forces, they could cause Frieza some problems.   

On top of that, a number of Saiyans were beginning to show greater and greater potential.    The fact that Vegeta just ate Cui and Dodoria’s lunch is proof of that.    A year ago, that would have been impossible for Vegeta, and he’s the strongest of his species.

So Frieza destroyed Planet Vegeta, wiping out the entire Saiyan race, well before enough of them could become powerful enough to openly defy him. 

But Frieza thought Vegeta alone could still be useful, so he made sure Vegeta wasn’t on the planet when he destroyed it.   I assume the meteor story was invented solely to keep Vegeta in the dark.

Couple of things here.    First, I think this is the very first time the Japanese script mentions Vegeta being the Saiyan prince.  The Funimation dub was referring to “Prince Vegeta” as early as episode 11, but I’ve been keeping an eye out, waiting for the Japanese version to establish it, and this seems to be the first time.   Maybe I missed an earlier mention of it.

This is probably not a coincidence, as this whole episode seems to be laying the groundwork for Vegeta’s transition from villain to antihero.  Before, he was just the boss of a small gang of space pirates.     Now, Dodoria is describing him as a prince of a nearly-extinct warrior race.    His revolt against Frieza now begins to resemble a quest for revenge.   Yeah, Vegeta still plans to become an immortal space tyrant, essentially replacing Frieza’s evil with his own, but there’s still a sympathetic aspect to him now.  

Plus, he’s got the whole thing where he learned something from his time on Earth.   Vegeta’s nowhere near making friends with the Z-Fighters.  He just threatened to kill them in this episode, for example.   Still, he seems to recognize that losing that battle on Earth was more beneficial to him than any victory.    There’s at least a glimmer of respect for what the Earth represents, whereas he only sees Dodoria as desperate and pathetic.

Second, I always found it ironic that Frieza decided to keep just one Saiyan alive to serve in his organization.   Actually, it was three, but let’s face it, Raditz and Nappa were nothing to Frieza.    My point is that he was concerned about a mass uprising of Saiyans, and he was concerned about individual Saiyans growing stronger over time.   But he really only addressed one of those issues.    Vegeta may have been isolated after his home planet was destroyed, but he’s been getting stronger and stronger ever since. 

I think Frieza might have assumed that a single Saiyan would be more compliant than a group of them.    Again, complacency seems to be the issue with Frieza’s organization.   I get the impression that he conquered the Saiyans, much like he conquered other planets, and put them to work alongside his own forces, and just sort of assumed the dynamics wouldn’t change.   Like, I don’t know if Frieza conquered a planet full of Zarbons or not.    He may have only recruited Zarbon alone, because he was the strongest one.   The rest would be no threat to him.

But with the Saiyans, the whole population is super strong, and they yearn to get stronger.    After a few years, Frieza started to realize that they’d just get bigger and bigger until they became to big to handle.   This idea gets explored in the Bardock special, but I think it begs the question of why Frieza didn’t just destroy the Saiyans from the start.    I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s really lazy.   The idea of a whole planet full of warriors was too enticing to give up easily.   In the recent Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie, Frieza’s kind of desperate for soldiers, and there’s no reason to think that things were any different fifty years earlier.  The Saiyans must have seemed like a dream come true... at first.   

As for Dodoria, his entire plan is to shock Vegeta with his startling revelation, and then run away while he’s still processing it.    Instead, Vegeta isn’t bothered much at all.    He doesn’t care about his family or friends that Frieza killed.    He’s only mad at himself for not suspecting Frieza in the first place, and he’s pissed at Frieza & Co. for daring to think they could manipulate him like this.   Geets zaps him, and that’s the end of Dodoria.

The only thing Dodoria’s tip accomplished was to encourage Vegeta further.  Now he nows that Frieza is afraid of the Saiyans.   So no matter how much stronger Frieza is, there’s still a chance.    A Saiyan can beat Frieza.

Speaking of which... 

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #goku #vegeta #frieza #dodoria #gohan #krillin #bulma #dende #namek saga

[fly-pow-bye]

Powerpuff Girls 2016 - “Hustlecup” (with Captain B.Z.!)

Written by: Jake Goldman

Written & Storyboarded by: Kyle Neswald, Jaydeep Hasrajani

Directed by: Nick Jennings, Bob Boyle

Hate & basketball.

Before we begin this review, for the first time ever, I have a special guest! Yes, Fly Pow Bye has mostly been about my opinions and mine alone. Please welcome, Captain B.Z.!

Captain B.Z.: Hello, I’m Captain B. Z.! A few of you might know me as the person who archives old Cartoon Network VHS recordings and ads to YouTube but I’m always willing to give shows new and old a chance.

While I initially wasn’t a fan of PPG 2016, I grew to find it an average show around the second season and have found things to like about it, including the Bliss arc and the attempts by the writers to slowly incorporate more action. However, PPG 2016 still isn’t without its problems, as evidenced by today’s episode.

We definitely have a very similar viewpoint; I do admit that the show has gotten better over since those early episodes. This episode, however, might not be the best indicator of that. Let's see if this episode is on fire, or if it should be lit on fire.

The episode starts with electricity flowing through a bunch of tubes...which powers a lightbulb which illuminates the room the Powerpuff Girls and the Professor are in.

Captain B.Z.: Now, I’ll admit that I really like the shot at the start where it shows what’s powering up the mysterious invention - a green light. It’s completely unnecessary and doesn’t apply to anything, but it’s a nice way to start off the episode that doesn’t rely on a Family Guy TV show cutaway gag.

That opened my eyes a little. This mysterious invention is so mysterious, that each Powerpuff Girl repeating that it's so secret. What could it possibly be? How it passes through those circular tubes, and, as mentioned, how it is a green light, could be a hint at what it will be.

Captain B.Z.: Foreshadowing! It’s not just blatantly obvious anymore!

It turns out to be a new hat with a traffic light on it, called the traffic hat. The Powerpuff Girls are disappointed at first, as emphasized by a sad trumpet. Seems to be the running theme with the Professor's inventions. The Professor is ecstatic about it, saying it will be the #1 at the Science-Palooza. Blossom is confused how this hat could possibly win anything, but the Professor tells Blossom that it's not just any hat.

He tells Bubbles to throw this plate of spaghetti at Buttercup. Bubbles immediately does it before the Professor can say "when I say go", which ends up with Buttercup getting a plate full of spaghetti. I'll admit, I actually chuckled at this gag; it's all in the timing.

Captain B.Z.: Plus the fact that it’s freaking "scientific-grade" pasta. The Professor cares more about which type of pasta he gets than his own children.

How fitting. The Professor then pulls out another plate of scientific-grade pasta, and Buttercup tries to get her revenge. The Professor then yells "yellow light", and the pasta starts moving in slow motion, and then a "red light", stopping it in mid-air. Buttercup moves right in front of the pasta to look at this closely, and one can guess what happens next.

Granted, it's not that Buttercup wouldn't deserve what came to her. Despite being a victim of two different spaghetti related incidents thanks to this hat, Buttercup is very excited to use his hat for nefarious purposes. Specifically, she wants to freeze Jennifre's face when she sneezes so she'll look ridiculous. She demonstrates by making this face. Not among of the worst face gags this show has to offer, but it could have been made a little bit better.

That would be a good start.

Captain B.Z.: The face gags have their place and time, in my opinion. Plenty of shows have done really good jokes involving facial expressions, including fellow Cartoon Network series OK KO.

However, in order to make a face gag work, you have to time it just right and not have it be on screen for too long at the risk of being annoying. This is an example of a face gag I didn’t particularly find funny, but I can appreciate that it gets a callback later.

Buttercup has to promise the Professor not to take the hat to school, which she does oblige by...

...but he never said anything about taking it to the park to cause that sweet, sweet mischief! It starts with a little scene with Barry.

Captain B.Z.: Barry’s scene was one of the few redeeming factors of this episode. Partly because it was legitimately funny, and partly because we get to see Barry get injured. Shame it couldn’t have been the Professor in this situation, but we’ll get to that later.

She eventually does what she promised to do to Jennifre by red lighting her as soon as she sneezes. Jennifre was making fun of her hat, so Buttercup's actions are justified. As mentioned before, this does give more of a point to that Buttercup face from before. The other kids start to chant her name for causing all of this torment on people that aren't them, and she catches the attention of one guy who appears to be far older.

It turns out, the Gangreen Gang were hanging out at a nearby basketball court watching all of these time-stopping shenanigans unfold. Sorry to say, all of your headcanons on how Ace left this reboot to hang out with the Gorillaz are now wrong. It was my headcanon, too. They see Buttercup singing the theme song, except she says "I got the power". As much as it's supposed to exemplify Buttercup's selfishness, that's not too inaccurate.

Ace decides to challenge Buttercup to a game of Horse. If one doesn't know how the game works, Ace explains it via a scene that looks like a cross between a diagram and one of those Tiger LCD games from the 90s.

Ace: If I make a shot, you gotta copy it. If you miss the shot, you get a letter. First to spell "horse" is the loser.

Notice how he doesn't explain what happens if Buttercup actually makes the shot. It could be that he's pretty confident, but it's a big hint on how good these "horse" scenes are going to be. They decide to make a wager, if Ace wins, he gets the "doo-hickey" on her head. If Buttercup wins, she gets...

...Ace's prized scooter! What would a 6 year old girl do with a scooter? I don't even think her hands would be able to reach the handlebars! Besides, she saw Ace miss one shot, which either means he's terrible at it, or he's just acting like he's bad at basketball to lure in the mark. Buttercup assumes it's the former.

Captain B.Z.: I’d complain about how Ace has a scooter in this episode and this episode only, but there are far more concerning matters that apply to this episode’s character development, so I won’t.

...damn it, I just did it, didn’t I?

The game begins, and right from Buttercup nervousness from Ace's first shot, one can guess this is not going to end well for her. It should be noted that the very first short this reboot ever had focused on Buttercup not being able to make a "downtown" shot into a wastebasket, so it's interesting to see three seasons later that her skill hasn't changed.

Captain B.Z.: I’m debating whether or not the writers even remembered that short while writing this episode, though. If it was an intentional nod, good for them, although I’m surprised it came this late in the series’ run, when many people had began to ignore the series.

Yes, it's probably a coincidence, but a nice one nonetheless. There's no funny business, Ace manages to perfectly shoot 5 hoops in different ways, some ways so different that they didn't even bother to animate them, and Buttercup's vain attempts to copy them only adding more letters to the LCD game-esque scoreboard. In the end, Ace doesn't get a single letter, and Buttercup gets h...

Mr. Ed impression: You got hooooorse!

GYAH! What is that thing?!

Captain B.Z.: Isn’t it obvious? It’s another uphill roller coaster! It doesn’t lead anywhere and is just there to remind you that this show is a comedy. Even though there’s no punchline to this joke whatsoever.

Wait, this show is a comedy? That horse made me think this was a horror show.

After that...thing, the Gangreen Gang take their scooter home, Ace taking the "doo-hickey" with him. Back at the Powerpuff home, Blossom tells Buttercup that losing the hat was the most irresponsible thing she has ever done!

Well, except for that one time where she joined the Prune-A-Cycling Club. Get it, because pruning would be so hard if you were on a unicycle! Really, this feels like another uphill roller coaster gag, though it is one that only shows up twice. If only other gags got that honor. Also, Blossom and Bubbles joined it too, so it's not like it's just Buttercup's fault.

The Professor barges into the room, so excited about the upcoming Science-Palooza. He can't decide which shade of white lab coat he wants to bring! It's an okay gag based on how his outfit is usually the same, though that might be by comparison. He decides not to question where the hat is, and assumes Buttercup is taking good care of it.

None of the Powerpuff Girls had the heart to tell him the truth, so they decide to confront the Gangreen Gang as a group. They got to "mop up Buttercup's mess", in Blossom's words, said in a way that makes me think even Blossom is getting tired of these kinds of plots.

After a surprising cameo appearance by the pizza guy from the Small World special, the Gangreen Gang gets confronted by the girls. Bubbles said she thought she smelled a rat, because they had a joke about Grubber using a rat as deodorant, and they didn't want to just leave it in the pile.

Like a true hero, Blossom outright threatens him to give back the hat, or he will get hurt. Ace did say he won it fair and square, and those couple of misses to lure Buttercup into a false sense of security were just "a couple of misses". He decides, as the "gentleman" he is, he does another wager on a game of horse. If Blossom wins, she gets the hat. If she loses, Ace gets Blossom's favorite protractor and one of Bubbles' pigtails. The latter was specially requested by Ace, by the way. We will see how, we won't see why. Maybe that's a blessing.

So get this, Blossom is going to use her knowledge of math to enhance her game. Yeah, because Blossom is smart, she has to be, say, the mathlete of the group. It seems to make so much sense, I mean, it’s not like we’re supposed to believe that Buttercup is the mathlete! Yeah, that's what I'll go with, because anything else would be silly. This would have worked, too, but the Gangreen Gang decide do something even worse than pretending to be bad at basketball.

They decides to outright cheat by moving the basket and blocking the perfectly made shots. At least this time, we actually see five different ways they do that. One oddity is that none of these ways involve the time-stopping hat; in fact, Ace never actually uses it in any of the games. He's far from playing with honor at this point, he might as well use it.

Since there's nothing in the Gangreen Gang's rulebook that states they can't have the other members block the shots, though I highly doubt they even had one in the first place, Blossom is the next one to get...

Mr. Ed impression: Hoooorse!

GYAH! Yeah, repetition is not doing this gag any favors. In fact, I'd argue it's not doing anyone any favors.

Ace grabs the ponytail, twisting it off like a loose nail. They also take Angel-gelica. Yes, the protractor has a name, because Blossom is the nerd character that loves math. This doesn't nearly impact Blossom's looks, but is treated as just as important to her. They could have taken her bow, her hairclip, or even her ponytail. It seems to fit Ace's odd obsession with stealing other people's hair in this episode.

The Powerpuff Girls now decide that violence is the answer, threatening to crush their bones with half of a basketball court. Kind of an overreaction, I'd say, but one thing I can appreciate is that this is the only time they get to use any kind of superpower besides flight in this episode. It is sad that we need these reminders.

Ace decides then and here that the hat would come in handy, and says "red light". This makes the Powerpuff Girls and the basketball court float perfectly still in mid-air. They probably didn't even need the hat, that seems to be their usual strategy anyway.

This leads to a psychedelic slideshow beatdown, with the red-lighted Puffs getting licked both figuratively and literally. It's here that we learn what exactly what the hat brings to the plot: the ability to make a scene where superpowered girls getting beaten up by regular thugs more believable. Well, that, and a way for Buttercup to do something wrong, get in trouble, and learn a lesson that she would probably forget by the next episode anyway

Once Ace says "green light" on the court, Buttercup suffers something worse than losing at a basketball game...

...getting scolded by her father figure for the second most irresponsible thing she has ever done. A good hint on how good that pruning gag is: they don't even give it a proper background for the second time.

He decides to help the girls out, and go to the "basketball fields". Oh, silly Professor, that's not what basketball courts are called! Man, this guy must not know sports at all! However, he's sure that he can just talk to the Gangreen Gang like civilized adults, and they'll happily just hand over the hair, the protractor, and maybe even that time-stopping hat!

At the basketball court, somehow completely undamaged from the Powerpuff Girls' post-loss and somewhat-justified temper tantrum, we see that, needless to say, that civilized adults strategy did not work. As the gang is laughing at this dork, Ace offers another game of horse. Ace really needs another pigtail. Again, we see how, won't see why, maybe it's a blessing.

The Professor doesn't take it at first, because, in his words:

Professor: I'm not about to bet on a game I've never played before!

Lil' Arturo calls him a chicken like a 90's bully, and that's enough for him to change his mind. How hard could it be, you just put the ball in the hoop thingy, and he makes a practice shot by just launching the ball straight into the air. I am summarizing this because I want to point out that he is really trying to show off that he is just not good at sports. However, he's going to do it anyway.

The conclusion was so obvious, the episode just presses the fast forward button. We instantly see the Professor getting each letter. We don't even know if the Gangreen Gang decided to cheat here, it's just H, O, R, S, E, with the Professor's face zooming in with each one. In just a few seconds, the Professor gets...

Mr. Ed impression: Hoooorse!

Yeah, yeah, we get it, you stock image abomination. By the third time, I'm just rolling my eyes in disgust.

Bubbles loses her last pigtail, and all hope seems to be lost. Left with nothing else to wager, the Professor challenges him again, this time putting their residence on the line for everything Ace has taken, plus his scooter. The Powerpuff Girls object, but the Professor is so assuring by saying they always wanted to travel. I mean, what's the worst that can happen if the Powerpuff Girls leave Townsville?

Dispaired Citizens: Why'd you leave us, Powerpuff Girls?

Oh yeah, that. Okay, that was the original, but I'd imagine something very similar would happen here, too. But Townsville can go to heck for all he cares, he wants that hat back, no matter what the risk is!

The Professor looks at the basket, sweating profusely. How are they possibly going to beat Ace at his own game? He makes a desperate attempt to copy Ace's shot...

...and he makes the shot perfectly. He then tears off his shirt, revealing his hairy, hairy abs, and says that he's still got it. Wait, what? This comes completely out of nowhere; one minute, he's incompetent at sports, and then, snap, he's good at basketball now. But hey...he has a pi symbol on his shirt! That's nerdy!

"When did the Professor suddenly get good?" isn't even the only question I have about this scene. If the Professor was really trying to "hustle" these green gangsters by pretending he was bad at sports, why did he let them win the first time? Also, no matter suddenly how skilled the Professor is now, wouldn't the Gangreen Gang just cheat some more?

They at least explained that last one. The Powerpuff Girls decided not to just sit back and let the other members cheat, and tied them up with ordinary rope while Ace was too busy focusing on the Professor's sick moves. They could have did this when Blossom was getting horsed, but then the episode would have ended too early.

With the other members tied up, the Professor's unexplained sudden skill increase, and Ace never realizing he could just use his hat, Ace finally gets...

...

...gets...

...

...so now the reboot decides not to do the "horse" joke? Honestly, this ending is bad enough already, you might as well go for the Full Monty and give us that forsaken furlong-runner! Maybe that horse got disqualified.

Blossom gets her beloved ruler back, Bubbles gets her pigtails back, Buttercup gets grounded again, and the Professor now has a sweet scooter for him to take to the Science-Palooza. We never quite find out if his invention is a winner as the episode suddenly ends here...but this ending sure isn't one.

Captain B.Z.: So let’s talk about why this ending doesn’t work.

The Professor has had literally no experience at playing basketball in his life, neither in the original or this series. His initial plan is to talk to the Gangreen Gang sensibly but he does even worse than the girls. Then, he becomes ridiculously good out of freaking nowhere, throwing in another muscle “joke” for extra measure.

There is no buildup to this ending whatsoever due to the Professor being such a forgettable character in this episode. It's to the point where if the girls hadn’t told him that his hat was stolen, he wouldn’t have even cared.

Does the title fit?

It wasn't Buttercup doing the hustling. I honestly argue hustling was kind of forgotten halfway through!

How does it stack up?

It's such a shame that a major appearance from the Gangreen Gang that doesn't involve them just dressing in drag for a talent show is in such a lousy episode.

Captain B.Z.: Hustlecup is an episode that suffers in many different ways, from a story that isn’t well-defined to plenty of out-of-character moments - more than average for the reboot. While I don’t mind these errors if they’re just a small part of the episode, here, they get in the way of any merit the episode might have had and make it a truly frustrating watch.

Indeed. There are other variations of H-O-R-S-E with less letters, but even if this episode was playing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, it would still lose.

Captain B.Z.: As I mentioned earlier in the review, this episode did provide some interesting concepts. The idea of a traffic light hat that actually slows down time is pretty neat but the writers did nothing with it. I’m surprised we didn’t get another episode like “Lights Out!” where we get to see Bubbles figure out how the hat works when the Gangreen Gang steals it and messes with Townsville traffic. Sadly though, the Professor being an asshole and Mr. Ed jokes had higher priority to the writers, making this episode fall apart instantly.

Next, another episode focusing on everyone's favorite Sitcom Dad, if we discount all the other Sitcom Dads. Special thanks to Captain B.Z. for joining me with this one.

← Cat Burglar ☆ Rebel Rebel →

#fpb ppg 2016 #ppg 2016 #powerpuff girls #cartoon network #fpb reviews

[haikyuutrash11]

GET TO KNOW ME!

1:                                        My name?  Jess, but most online people call me Jet              

2:                                        Do I have any nicknames? I have loads of nicknames and I pretty much answer to slurred words too lmao             

3:                                        Zodiac sign? Taurus    

4:                                        Video game I play to chill, not to win? Overwatch                 

5:                                        Book/series I reread? Junjou romantica and a few others                

6:                                        Aliens or ghosts? I like both... but I guess aliens                 

7:                                        Writer I trust enough to read whatever they write? @yakulev-trash               

8:                                        Favourite radio station? don't have one... oh wait... maybe kerrang                

9:                                        Favourite flavour of anything? toffee               

10:                                        The word that I use all the time to describe something great? sick                

11:                                        Favourite song? worst question to ever be asked... fuck knows fam               

12:                                        The question you ask new friends to get to know them better? got any kinks? lmao               

13:                                        Favourite word? yaaaars               

14:                                        The last person who hurt me, did I forgive them? my ex and no I do not               

15:                                        Last song I listened to? post Malone better now              

16:                                        TV show I always recommend? the big bang theory or anything Michael McIntyre                 

17:                                        Pirates or ninjas? ninjas                 

18:                                        Movie I watch when I'm feeling down? I don't really watch a lot of films to be honest               

19:                                        Song that I always start my shuffle with/wake-up song/always-on-a-loop song? at the moment BTS- idol ft minaj                

20:                                        Favourite video games? overwatch, rayman, bloodbourne                 

21:                                        What am I most afraid of? losing my son               

22:                                        A good quality of mine? non judgemental                

23:                                        A bad quality of mine? quick to assume                

24:                                        Cats or dogs? dogs               

25:                                        Actor/actress you trust enough to watch whatever they're in? Jason stathem                 

26:                                        Favourite season? winter                 

27:                                        Am I in a relationship? no im happily single                

28:                                        Something I miss? lay ins                 

29:                                        My best friend? Jody and wife                

30:                                        Eye colour? blue               

31:                                        Hair colour? at the moment its half purple half red               

32:                                        Someone I love? Yaku! my omega :D               

33:                                        Someone I trust? my mum                

34:                                        Someone I always think about? my son                

35:                                        Am I excited about anything? Haikyuu season 4               

36:                                        My current obsession? Reinhardt x Lucio smut               

37:                                        Favourite TV shows as a child? Sailor moon and digimon                

38:                                        Do I have someone of the opposite sex that I can tell everything to? yeah, my gay American friend Jacob                

39:                                        Am I superstitious? nahhhh                

40:                                        What do I think about most? getting all my shit sorted                

41:                                        Do I have any strange phobias? ……. nunu from teletubies and wind turbines                 

42:                                        Do I prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it? behind it                

43:                                        Favourite hobbies? writing, gaming, painting, drawing                

44:                                        Last book I read? deviations submissions                 

45:                                        Last film I watched? 47 ronin               

46:                                        Do I play any instruments? I used to play the violin and guitar. but don't anymore, although I do want to learn piano                

47:                                        Favourite animal? leopard                

48:                                        Top 5 blog on Tumblr that I follow? bun that               

49:                                        Superpower I wish I could have? telekinesis                 

50:                                        How do I destress? vape                

51:                                        Do I like confrontation? mate I love that shit                 

52:                                        When do I feel most at peace? when im cuddling my son                 

53:                                        What makes me smile? a few things... okay a lot of things but too many things to name                 

54:                                        Do I sleep with the lights on or off? off, what made man sleeps with them on?!?!               

55:                                        Play any sports? pfffffft               

56:                                        What is my song of the week? why is there so many song questions                

57:                                        Favourite drink? milk                

58:                                        When did I last send a handwritten letter to somebody? ………… hand...…. written...…. letter?               

59:                                        Afraid of heights? nope               

60:                                        Pet peeve? chewing gum loudly               

61:                                        What was the last concert I went to see? reading festival and I only went to see metallica lol                

62:                                        Am I vegetarian/vegan/pescatarian? no                

63:                                        What occupation did I want to do when I was younger? red arrow pilot               

64:                                        Have I ever had a friend turn enemy? yeah                 

65:                                        What fictional universe would I like to be a part of? Haikyuu… and I would be such a slut lol                

66:                                        Something I worry about? all the legal stuff im going through right now               

67:                                        Scared of the dark? embrace the dark                 

68:                                        Who are my best friends? what... like you want me to name them all?????                

69:                                        What do I admire most about others? honesty. if a person is honest with me all the way through then I will really appreciate them                

70:                                        Can I sing? don't think so                

71:                                        Something I wish I could do? dance and play the piano                 

72:                                        If I won the lottery, what would I do? treat my mum and dad to what ever they wanted and the fly over to Hawaii and be with my omega and then move to Japan               

73:                                        Have I ever skipped school? no kids don't skip school!               

74:                                        Favourite place on the planet? Tokyo                 

75:                                        Where do I want to live? Tokyo                 

76:                                        Do I have any pets? nope              

77:                                        What is my current desktop picture? Kuroo and Tsukki in suits sat on a sofa                

78:                                        Early bird or night owl? night owl                

79:                                        Sunsets or sunrise? sunsets               

80:                                        Can I drive? legally no               

81:                                        Story behind my last kiss? goodbye lmao               

82:                                        Earphones or headphones? headphones              

83:                                        Have I ever had braces? yes for 2 years then I didn't wear my retainer and they moved back lmao               

84:                                        Story behind one of my scars? I have a scar at the top of my finger where I caught it in the part of the door where it locks and I was on skates and slipped and chopped my finger off. I went running to my mum and she put the tip back on and rushed me to hospital lmao               

85:                                        Favourite genre of music? metal               

86:                                        Who is my hero? my mum                

87:                                        Favourite comic book character? do overwatch comics count? if so then Genji                

88:                                        What makes me really angry? having to repeat myself                

89:                                        Kindle or real book?  real book              

90:                                        Favourite sporty activity? *throws up*                

91:                                        What is one thing that isn’t tight in schools that should be? sorting out bullies                

92:                                        What was my favourite subject at school?                

93:                                        Siblings? yes 3... 2 sisters and 1 brother               

94:                                        What was the last thing I bought? bread                

95:   ��                                    How tall am I? 5″8

96:                                        Can I cook? yes I can                

97:                                        Can I bake? indeed                 

98:                                        3 things I love? anime, Tsukki, and petals               

99:                                        3 things I hate? slow updates, not getting haikyuu season 4 and my ex lmao                

100:                                        Do I have more girl friends or boy friends? boy friends                

101:                                        Who do I get on with better, girls or boys? usually boys               

102:                                        Where was I born? Hastings UK                

103:                                        Sexual orientation? pansexual               

104:                                        Where do I currently live? Hastings                

105:                                        Last person I texted? my mum                

106:                                        Last time I cried? I couple of weeks ago                 

107:                                        Guilty pleasure? im not guilty about any of my pleasures ;)                

108:                                        Favourite Youtuber? the anime man                

109:                                        A photo of myself. nope                

110:                                        Do I like selfies? if im the one taking it                

111:                                        Favourite game app? summoners war               

112:                                        My relationship with my parents? really good with mum and a bit rocky with dad                

113:                                        Favourite accents? Australian                 

114:                                        A place I have not been but wish to visit? Hawaii to visit my omega                 

115:                                        Favourite number?  7             

116:                                        Can I juggle? not a chance                 

117:                                        Am I religious? science                 

118:                                        Do I like space? yes               

119:                                        Do I like the deep ocean? nooooooo                

120:                                        Am I much of a daredevil? yeah, stupidly sometimes ahahaha               

121:                                        Am I allergic to anything? peanuts               

122:                                        Can I curl my tongue?  yeah I can ;)              

123:                                        Can I wiggle my ears?  yeeeeeee              

124:                                        Do I like clowns? I don't hate clowns?               

125:                                        The Beatles or Elvis? the beatles                

126:                                        My current project? wildest dreams                

127:                                        Am I a bad loser? sometimes               

128:                                        Do I admit when I wrong? yes I do                 

129:                                        Forest or beach? forest                

130:                                        Favourite piece of advice? “each day is a gift and not a given right” 

131:                                        Am I a good liar? I am really!!! shit at lying. I twitch and stutter, its not pretty.                

132:                                        Hogwarts house / Divergent faction / Hunger Games district? Hogwarts house- Slytherin                

133:                                        Do I talk to myself? sometimes                 

134:                                        Am I very social? I can be                 

135:                                        Do I like gossip? its like asking if I like to breath                

136:                                        Do I keep a journal/diary? nahhhhh               

137:                                        Have I ever hopelessly failed a test? I failed a few tests                 

138:                                        Do I believe in second chances? yeah                

139:                                        If I found a wallet full of cash on the ground, what would I do? find the ID and return it                

140:                                        Do I believe people are capable of change? no                

141:                                        Have I ever been underweight? nahhhhhh               

142:                                        Am I ticklish? yes, very...its embarrassing                 

143:                                        Have I ever been in a submarine? I have but it wasn't going under water lol                

144:                                        Have I ever been on a plane? indeed I have                

145:                                        In a film about my life, who would I cast as myself, friends and family? rebel Wilson to be me, Melissa McCarthy to be my mum lol                

146:                                        Have I ever been overweight? yeah still am a thic bit ahaha               

147:                                        Do I have any piercings? yes I have 10                

148:                                        Which fictional character do I wish was real? Tsukki or Kuroo maybe even Yamaguchi for best friend material or Tanaka for banta                 

149:                                        Do I have any tattoos? yes I have 4                

150:                                        What is the best decision I have made in life so far? to break up with my ex lmao                

151:                                        Do I believe in Karma? 100%              

152:                                        Do I wear glasses or contacts? no I have perfect vision                 

153:                                        What was my first car? n/a                

154:                                        Do I want children? if I didn't then I would be pretty fucked now ahaha                

155:                                        Who is the most intelligent person I know? I did have a friend called Aaron and he was very very very very smart                 

156:                                        My most embarrassing memory? I don't get embarrassed                

157:                                        What makes me nostalgic? the smell of clay                

158:                                        Have I ever pulled an all-nighter? yes many times                 

159:                                        Which do I value more in others, brains or beauty? brains                

160:                                        What colour mostly dominates my wardrobe? black lmao!!                

161:                                        Have I ever had a paranormal experience? yeah loads lol                 

162:                                        What do I hate most about myself? my weight                 

163:                                        What do I love most about myself? ugh.... my humour lol                 

164:                                        Do I like adventure? hell yeah!               

165:                                        Do I believe in fate? yes I do               

166:                                        Favourite animal? …. wasn't this already asked? well in case you forgot! leopard                 

167:                                        Have I ever been on radio? nope                

168:                                        Have I ever been on TV? yes I have hehehehe               

169:                                        How old am I? 25                

170:                                        One of my favourite quotes? because we don't have wings we look for ways to fly                 

171:                                        Do I hold grudges? a few                

172:                                        Do I trust easily?  no I really don't               

173:                                        Have I learnt from my mistakes? yeah, its important to always learn from your mistakes               

174:                                        Best gift I’ve ever received? a child               

175:                                        Do I dream? I dream big fam                 

176:                                        Have I ever had a night terror? yeah and its fucking horrible and wouldn't wish it upon anyone!!               

177:                                        Do I remember my dreams, and what is one that comes to mind? I do remember most of my dreams. one that comes to mind was a very very smutty one between a haikyuu pairing but I wont say it because ill be adding it to wildest dreams hehehehehe               

178:                                        An experience that has made me stronger? a break up from a long term relationship has made me grow as a person         ��       

179:                                        If I were immortal, what would I do? try and become what ive always wanted to                 

180:                                        Do I like shopping? I love shopping but only if I know what im going for or if I have money to spend                

181:                                        If I could get away with a crime, what would I choose to do? murder                

182:                                        What does “family” mean to me? it means home                 

183:                                        What is my spirit animal? a leopard or a bunny lol                 

184:                                        How do I want to be remembered? I want to be remembered for having a sense of humour and for being very accepting                

185:                                        If I could master one skill, what would I choose? dancing                

186:                                        What is my greatest failure? not passing some gcse’s

187:                                        What is my greatest achievement? becoming a mum               

188:                                        Love or money? love                

189:                                        Love or career? career               

190:                                        If I could time travel, where and when would I want to go? to the future about 5 years                

191:                                        What makes me the happiest? when my son is laughing and when I talk to the people I love                 

192:                                        What is “home” to me? home is where the heart is                

193:                                        What motivates me? ive had to be my own motivator most of my life                 

194:                                        If I could choose my last words, what would they be? just lost the game               

195:                                        Would I ever want to encounter aliens? yeah but the seem to only kid nap dumb arses                 

196:                                        A movie that scared me as a child? robo cop lmao                 

197:                                        Something I hated as a child that I like now? toad in the hole               

198:                                        Zombies or vampires? vampires                

199:                                        Live in the city or suburbs? city                 

200:                                        Dragons or wizards? dragons                

201:                                        A nightmare that has stayed with me? dunno               

202:                                        How do I define love? it cant be defined by another person, each person has to figure out there own type of love and for what reason and if it matters to them then no one else can judge                

203:                                        Do I judge a book by its cover? hell no I don't! I love people for who they are as a person not there appearance                

204:                                        Have I ever had my heart broken? yes of course                 

205:                                        Do I like my handwriting? nahhhh my hand writing is horrible                 

206:                                        Sweet or savoury? savoury                

207:                                        Worst job I’ve had? caravan park... cleaning them ><               

208:                                        Do I collect anything? anime stuff!!! :D               

209:                                        Item of clothing or jewellery you’ll never see me without? shoes lmao!               

210:                                        What is on my bucket list? to move to Japan, to learn Japanese, to become an author, to learn an instrument.... the list goes on                 

211:                                        How do I handle anger? not very well ahahahaha               

212:                                        Was I named after anyone? no I wasn't                 

213:                                        Do I use sarcasm a lot? pfffft me? would I ever? of course not! *looks to the corner*                

214:                                        What TV character am I most like? ermmmmmmmmmmmm I would say a mix between Rosa from Brooklyn nine nine and Michael McIntyre                

215:                                        What is the weirdest talent I have? erm… I can twitch my nose and move my ears at the same time without touching them               

216:                                        Favourite fictional character? Tsukki 

#questions #answers #about me #truth #to many questions #got lazy #bite me

[inhumansforever]

Marvel Rising Alpha #1 Review

spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers

The creative team of Devin Grayson, Georges Duarte and Rachelle Rosenberg assemble once more to bring us the next chapter in the Marvel Rising saga.  Recap and review following the jump.  

In the previous zero issue of Marvel Rising, an unseen villain had hired a splinter faction of the renegade science terrorists known as AIM to raid the Stark Institute and conduct genetic screenings on a group of students.  Fortunately, Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl were on hand to save these kids and defeat the villains.  Yet one of the AIM scientists managed to escape and transferred the data he had collected to his secretive benefactor.  Their mission had proven a success and the villain was able to identify a young Inhuman named Ember Quaid who possess substantial powers… and now it would appear that the cad has initiated a plan to use young Ms. Quaid and weaponize her abilities toward a nefarious end.  

We are introduced to Ember as the issue opens.  She’s a troubled young woman who describes herself as a total loser.  It sounds as though Ember’s mom is kind of a mess, constantly moving from home to home, city to city looking for a fresh start after bad relationships.  

It has been very difficult for Ember to make friends and foster a sense of self with all of this moving about.  The only degree of constancy Ember has been able to find is online gaming.  While Ember sees herself as a loser in real life, she feels something of a goddess in the realm of multiplayer online role-playing games.  Which is all fine and good until some of the guys she plays against realizes she is a girl and it triggers insecurities and vitriol…  

Ember has made the mistake of playing one of these games against a group of male classmates at her new high school in New Jersey.  She defeats these guys thoroughly and they angrily insist that she must have been cheating.   These guys are complete jerks who seem to feel as though losing to a girl threatens their delicate sense of masculinity.  They refuse to believe it and level insults at her and accuse her of using cheat codes.  These bullies end up ‘doxing’ Ember, freezing her out from her gaming accounts and taking away from her the one place in her life where she has felt in control.

All the while, Ember has been text-messaging with a mysterious online pal who has been a sympathetic ear for Ember’s troubles.  And it soon becomes clear that this unseen friend is likely the so-far faceless villain who hired AIM to seek out Ember in the first place.  

On top of everything else going on in Ember’s life, she is also an Inhuman.  The Terrigen Cloud had floated over the East Coast some time ago... it awakened Ember’s latent Inhuman genes and caused her to be encased in a transformative cocoon.  Yet when she emerged she found that she apparently gained no super powers.  Once again, Ember felt cheated by life.  

It turns out that Ember did indeed gain super powers, only they remained dormant... requiting a specific emotional stimuli in order to be triggered into bloom.  These power entail the ability to absorb electrical energy and re-manifest it into hard light constructs.   And being bullied by these poor-sport jerks is exactly the kind of trigger needed to bring about access to these powers.  

Meanwhile, Doreen Green has been teaching a class in game theory at the the high school.  And it also turns out that this is same high school attended by Kamala Khan, who is taking the class in order to make up credits.  Of course, Doreen is secretly the super hero known as the unbeatable Squirrel Girl; and Kamala is the marvelous Ms. Marvel.  

Somehow these two heroes don’t recognize one another, despite the fact that Squirrel Girl’s ‘disguise’ is little more than a pair of squirrel ears attached to a headband.  It all sort of stretches the willing suspension of disbelieve and is played for laughs when Dorren’s correctly surmises that Kamala is secretly the fan fiction writer, ‘Slothbaby,’ whom Doreen is a big fan of.  

Having a couple of superheroes at the school ends up fortuitous as Ember’s powers spark into bloom.  Draining energy from the electronic devices around her, Ember is able to unconsciously manifests a digitized squirrel wielding a giant mallet.  The video-game-style squirrel goes on a rampage, looking to wallop the boys who had bullied Ember.  Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl jump into action and team up to take out the rampaging squirrel.  

Ember’s mysterious texting pal helps her to realize that she was the one who created that video game squirrel… and they encourage her to take it further, to concentrate and create an even bigger manifestation and get revenge on the guys who had bullied her.  Ember follows the advice and the next day she manages to create a giant Donkey Kong style digital gorilla that runs amok and attacks the boys who had bullied her.  

Once again, Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl spring into action, interceding to make sure no one gets hurt.  Chaos ensues with a battle that is equal parts comic book action and old school arcade game.  The two heroes are ultimately able to pool their strength and demolish the gorilla, shattering it into a scattering of digitalized cubes.  

In the wake of all this Ember is left enraged.  It feels so unfair to her that these superheroes should show up only to protect the bullies who had given her such a hard time.   It’s as though these heroes are only interested in maintain the status quo and keeping outcasts like her on the fringes, disenfranchised.  

Ember’s mysterious texting pal is able to capitalize on her anger, encouraging her to take it all further.  If these heroes are against her then it stands to reason that she must be a villain.  And the only way she is going to gain satisfaction, to feel a sense of empowerment, is to embrace such villainy and take the fight to the heroes.  

And it is here that the issue ends, with Ember using her powers to summon an appropriately villainous guise; and the next step clearly to be an attack on Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl.  A panel informs us that the story will continue next month in Marcel Rising: Ms. Marvel & Squirrel Girl #1.  

Grayson and company make an interesting decision in having Ember be something of a central focus to the issue.  She’s a sympathetic character.  She is being mislead and coerced into making bad decisions, yet the factors that bring her to this point is quite relatable.  The best villains are often those who don’t see themselves as the villain, who feel justified in their actions; and whom the readers can in some ways relate to.  

Ember is just a lonely girl who has had to deal with bad parenting and not having any friends.  The one place she felt self agency and empowerment was gaming… and yet the malignant sexism so prevalent in the world of online gaming has acted to take that respite away.  It isn’t fair, it’s enraging… and it’s rather understandable that she would want to see justice… to get a little revenge.  

A better path is presented to Ember when Kamala approaches her and tries to make friends.  Ember would so fit in with Kamala and her pals.  Unfortunately Ember is too angry to seize upon this opportunity.  Besides, why even bother trying to make friends with Kamala when it is likely only a matter of time before her mom uproots her once again and has them move somewhere else?

Again, it all casts a sympathetic light on Ember.  And I hope that things change for her as the story plays out.  She could end up a villain for life, but it is possible that Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl might be able to help her see a different path and break free of the influence of this mysterious figure who has been pulling her strings.

There is a rather overt undercurrent of the whole ‘gamer gate’ ordeal in the way the boys bully Ember and try to put forth gaming as a place for boys only.  This is interesting and of course an important matter to address… although it’s presented in a kind of ham-fisted fashion.   Sometimes it can be more effective to be a touch more covert in recapitulating real life matters into fictional stories.  

Also, I’m not sure if the term ‘doxing’ is being used correctly.  My understanding is that doxing is publishing an individual’s real name, email address and whatnot.  Yet here it is presented as blocking a gamer’s ability to access their online account.  Are there multiple definitions for doxing?  

All of this aside, the tale is successful in putting forth Ember as the victim of bullying, and as someone whom many readers are likely to be able to relate to.  

As was the case in last month’s zero issue, Grayson does a really terrific job scripting the interactions between Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl.  They are both such bubbly and positive characters, yet Grayson is able to give each a distinct sense of voice… even without the arrows on the voice bubbles, it is clear which character is talking.   The two are as fun together as I hoped they would be and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of it.  And I like that Kamala appears to have figured out Squirrel Girl’s true identity… very intrigued as to how this will play out.  

The illustration by Georges Duarte matches the story quite well.  It’s a little clunky at some points while generally fluid with dynamic action sequences; while also remaining accessible to newer readers.  I especially liked the digitized creatures and how they had a sort of 64-bit style to them.  Also the way that the manifestations were reduced to cube-like bits when defeated was pretty cool.  Rachelle Rosenberg continues to be a total rockstar in the coloring department, utilizing a vibrant scheme that really brings to life the electrical nature of Ember’s powers.  

I liked everything about this issue except for one crucial component: the price point.  Four ninety-nine… that is way too much.  What is Marvel thinking?   Paying five bucks for a comic is not a big deal for me, but I’m an adult with a job and disposable income.  Yet I am not at all the target demographic for this comic.  Marvel Rising is supposed to be about appealing to both new and longtime readers, those who are older and those who are younger.  And it is meant to inviting to a broader, more diverse group of possible readers.  This is all great, but the five dollar price tag is likely to filter out a substantial number of potential readers.  The zero issue was free and now the subsequent issue is five dollars?  That’s not how you sell comics… that’s how you sell crack…

Despite my being bummed out over the price tag, this was an extremely fun read, with cool art and strong, relatable characters.  Definitely recommended.  Four out of five Lockjaws.    

#Marvel Rising #Ms. Marvel #Squirrel Girl #Devin Grayson #Georges Durate #Rachelle Rosenberg #spoilers #Inhumans #review

[aion-rsa]

Marvel’s Loki Episode 3 Raises Some Questions About the TVA

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This article contains spoilers for Loki episode 3.

Back in the first episode of Marvel’s Loki, viewers get a helpful expositional rundown about the Time Variance Authority from Miss Minutes (Tara Strong), a friendly cartoon clock.

In a ‘50s style orientation video, Miss Minutes described how the Time Keepers created the TVA and all the employees within it to maintain the Sacred Timeline and avert temporal chaos. Makes sense! But in this week’s episode, “Lamentis”, we are provided some information that appears to be at odds with the “official” founding myth of the TVA.

As rogue Loki Variant Sylvie describes what it’s like to enchant people’s minds (huh, almost like she’s some kind of…enchantress?) to our lead character, she reveals that sometimes a mind is so strong that she must create a fantasy of a memory to lull them. Such is the case with Hunter C-20 (Sasha Lane).

“I had to pull a memory from hundreds of years prior before she even fought for them,” Sylvie tells Loki.

Huh…before she fought for the TVA? How could C-20 have had a life before the TVA if the TVA created her for time-policing purposes? It turns out that, according to Sylvie, everyone who works at the TVA are just like her and Loki: Variants lost on the Sacred Timeline. 

In classic Marvel Cinematic Universe fashion, this answer to a question leads to only more questions. Let’s endeavor to answer them.

What is the TVA’s Real Mission?

Marvel’s first Disney+ series WandaVision made it clear from the get-go that all wasn’t what it seemed to be. Conversely Loki appeared to end its first episode with all cards on the table. Sure, the science fiction premise was ambitious and at times hard to understand, but the TVA’s mission was outlined quite clearly in that aforementioned orientation video. Now one can’t help but wonder whether Loki isn’t more like WandaVision than we anticipated.

The TVA says its only mission is to protect the Sacred Timeline. As the series goes on, however, the very notion of a Sacred Timeline seems increasingly impossible. As discussed in this feature, which irreparably broke my brain, the lack of alternate universes in the TVA’s worldview is just not feasible. Where do all of these Loki Variants come from if not alternate universes or alternate timelines?

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Sylvie has a fundamentally different appearance from our Loki and, if she is to be believed, an entirely different family history. How could two such contradictory beings exist on one Sacred Timeline? The answer is that they can’t. The TVA claims that the emergence of just one alternate timeline branched off from the Sacred Timeline would have disastrous consequences. Clearly it doesn’t though as all the Variant Lokis already exist.

Perhaps when Miss Minutes and the Time Keepers say that the TVA maintains the Sacred Timeline, what they mean is that they guard it from external threats. Pruning Nexus events here and there is also part of the job, but the main goal is to make sure that the Sacred Timeline doesn’t come under attack from other timelines. If we buy into that logic, then of course the Time Keepers would bring brainwashed Variants aboard to assist in this mission.

Speaking of the Time Keepers…

Are the Time-Keepers Even Real?

Episode three brings us closer to meeting the Time-Keepers than ever before. C-20 tells Sylvie that the Time Keepers reside on the top floor of the TVA offices, accessible only through a golden elevator. Sylvie makes it quite close to invading their sanctum before Loki intervenes.

Now that a basic tenet of the TVA’s history is in question though, so too is the existence of the Time-Keepers themselves. Loki’s understanding of the deities is that they are three “space lizards” who oversee the timestream. While that would certainly be cool to see depicted onscreen, it now seems more likely that they’re a fairy tale.

The TVA’s own internal depiction of the Time-Keepers is too holy and sagacious to possibly be real. As evidenced by the bureaucratic nightmare around them, time keeping is not a sexy business. It requires hard work and determination, not ethereal space iguanas. Recall that the only character who claims to have met with the head honchos is Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). 

Is Miss Minutes the Big Bad Here?

If the Time-Keepers aren’t Loki’s main foe to be vanquished then who is? It’s possible that the answer was in front of us the whole time. Simply put: there’s something off about Miss Minutes. At first glance, she was just a funny satire of the friendly cartoonish faces that corporations use to hide their dirty work. Then episode 2 revealed that Miss Minutes is actually able to achieve something resembling a corporeal form as she quizzes Loki on TVA history from a desk.

This past week, The Hollywood Reporter had a chance to interview Tara Strong, the voice of Miss Minutes, and there were some intriguing tidbits uncovered. When asked about director Kate Herron’s assertion that Miss Minutes was about to go on an “interesting” journey, Strong responded:

“I can cryptically tease that you’ll see her again. There’s much more to be revealed, and it’s fun to watch that unfold. The beautiful thing about this character is you don’t really know who she is, where she’s from, what her origin story is, how sentient she is, if she has a horse in this race at all, and what her intentions are, if any.”

Strong made good on her promise to remain cryptic there, but it’s still surprising to hear just how much Miss Minutes content is yet to come. I suppose that’s to be expected from a character with her own poster and that played by a voice acting titan. It’s not out of the question that Miss Minutes will be revealed to be an antagonist of sorts, perhaps even the main one. 

For better or worse, Miss Minutes represents the TVA. What if the agency started with noble intentions before gradually becoming corrupted over centuries? And now Miss Minutes is the anthropomorphic embodiment of the flawed institution, stamping out timelines that don’t need to be stamped out. Perhaps she’s like HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

After all, does this look like the face of mercy to you?

Does Agent Mobius Know He Had A Life Before the TVA?

The biggest loser in the revelations of episode 3 might be poor Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson). Back in episode 2, Mobius had a conversation with Loki about how much he appreciates order in the universe rather than the chaos that Loki prefers. That same episode reveals, however, that Mobius might not be as straight-laced as he appears.

The man loves jet skis, calling them the perfect combination of form and function. Unlike his co-worker Casey (Eugene Cordero) who doesn’t even know what a fish is, Mobius likes to spend much of his infinite time reading jet ski magazines. We should have known right then and there that the TVA did not create its employees because why would they program in a love for something from the outside world? 

Mobius is probably a Variant conscripted into the TVA’s mission just like everyone else. The question is: does he know that? I’m inclined to think he does not. Though Mobius is a respected Agent in the TVA, he is continually shown to be shockingly far down on the totem pole. Judge Renslayer won’t let him meet the Time Keepers (probably because they don’t exist) and even Hunter B-15 bosses him around in the field. 

Although, there’s another possibility. In the comics, many higher/executive positions in the TVA were held by Mobius. Multiple Mobiuses. The Marvel Comics TVA had a policy of cloning its managers, rather than hiring/training new people, and since Mobius was great at his job, they made more of him. Perhaps the MCU Mobius is based on a Variant, one who did his job so well that they chose to duplicate him for more work. It would mean that he isn’t necessarily lying when he tells Loki the “creation myth” of the TVA agents, it might just be the only truth he knows.

Wilson also brings a sensitivity and world-weariness to the role that suggest deep down, Mobius knows something is missing in his life. On a subconscious level, maybe that’s why he’s so taken with Loki. The only being that can take down the Time Keepers and TVA’s strict order is the God of Mischief. 

The post Marvel’s Loki Episode 3 Raises Some Questions About the TVA appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[dragonasheswrites-blog]

The Heaven We Didn’t Choose, Chapter 8: In Which The Internet is Invoked

...And Sans nearly loses his edgelord club membership card. 

First: Chapter 1: In Which a Child Makes a Friend

Previous: Chapter 7: In Which Skeletons are Explained

Next: Chapter 9: In Which Dog Marriage Saves the Day

Click here for the story overview.

The next day went about as well as Sans expected.  He was once again woken up by the flurry of alarms reminding him of Undyne’s impending invasion of the apartment, but he made sure to have Attie up and dressed in ’training clothes’ before she arrived.

It was worth the extra effort.  Undyne had calmed considerably, having apparently slept at some point, but she kept eyeing him with a very...intense expression.  Attie demanded enough of her attention that she didn’t say anything, but he felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding.

Either Frisk had made good on her threat to talk to Undyne about Boss or Sans had messed up on his paperwork again.  Possibly both.  He was betting on the former, though, especially since Boss hadn’t come back to the apartment the previous evening.

This meant that Undyne wound up giving them a crash course in breakfast...literally.  The kitchen looked like a war zone by the time they were finished, with globs of oatmeal across the ceiling, floor, and stove top.  The oatmeal itself was full of dark brown flakes that made Attie wince every time she took a bite.  He made a mental note to look up an oatmeal-making tutorial on Youtube; there had to be a more efficient way to do this.

“No paperwork today,” Undyne said once she’d scarfed down her own portion of oatmeal.  “The queen’s doing the morning visit before she meets with the...well, with...important people.  We’re also moving her room and posting a guard outside.”

Sans blinked at her, slowly.  “...What are you talking about?”

She growled.  “Frisk.  The ambassador.  Queen Toriel is going to see her this morning to assess her status.  You,” she gestured to both of them with a strange figure eight motion, “stay here.  You can see her this afternoon if you get the all-clear, but text me first.  We’re relocating her to a more defensible room and posting a guard.  Make sure you bring your ID, ass-clown, or you’ll be locked out.”

“Don’t lock me out!”  Attie said, grabbing Undyne’s arm.  “I wanna see my mommy!”

“Oh, you can go on in just fine, punk; the guards won’t bother you.  They’re just gonna make sure no one gets to see your mommy without permission.  If a bad guy tries something funny they’ll beat ‘im up!  It’s for security, right?”

“Cool!”  The girl bounced in her seat.  “Can I be security for Mommy too?  I wanna beat up bad guys!”

“Haha!  You’ve gotta train a little harder than THAT if you wanna be in the Guard!  Ready?”

“Ready!”

“I’ll be here,” Sans said, staring intently at the last globs of oatmeal in his bowl.  “You guys have fun.”

Being lifted by his skull was a new and special kind of painful, he discovered.  Also, Undyne’s grin was even more terrifying close up.

“You’re not getting out of training THAT easy, nerd!  A little exercise never hurt anyone!”

Attie made a mad dash for the living room, screaming about training and friendship and how wonderful everything in her little life was.

The next hour and a half could only be described as torture.  Sans didn’t know a whole lot about humans and fish-monsters (or whatever Undyne was), but he was very certain that skeletons were not designed to bend in some of the ways she was trying to make him bend.  He could feel the strain on his joints; he was sure he was going to dislocate something.  It didn’t help that the stretches were interspersed with periods of intense movement, pushing his still-sore bones well past their limit.  He hoped Boss never found out about this; the big guy had enough punishment ideas to last him a lifetime.

He collapsed onto the couch when Undyne finally stopped.

“That was a GREAT warm-up,” she said.  “Now for the REAL training!”

Sans debated crawling under the couch.  There wasn’t a lot of space under there; his skull and ribcage would be a problem...

She laughed at him.  “I’m just kidding, NERD!  Don’t you know how to take a joke?  Hey, hey Attie, look at this loser!  He can’t even do a little exercise!”

“Mr. Sans isn’t a loser,” Attie solemnly reminded her.  “He’s a asshole.”

“You BET he is!  Anyways, make sure he doesn’t fall asleep, huh?”

“Okay!”

His phone went off.  Oh, right; he hadn’t texted Frisk all morning.  He’d get on that.  Just as soon as he could feel his arms again.

“Mr. Sans?”

His vision started going...a little fuzzy…

“-ey?  Hey?  Can you hear me?”

Sans looked up at Undyne.  She was looking a little worried or angry, one of the two.  He wasn’t sure why; he hadn’t actually passed out, had he?  “‘Mfine,” he mumbled into the couch cushion.

“Yeah, no, punk.  Attie, go grab me the bottle of green juice in your fridge and a cup.  Sans, talk to me.”

“‘M fine."

She huffed.  “You’re an idiot.  No, listen to me: you’re an idiot.  Anyone knows to speak up when they’re being pushed too far.  Except you, I guess.  Do you know what’s happening?  Your magic levels are so low you’re losing HP.  Slowly, but still.  You’re literally killing yourself.”

“Thought a little exercise never hurt anyone.”

“Yeah, a little exercise.  We didn’t even do much, really.  Heck, Attie’s had more exercise over the past few days than we normally do in a week, and she’s just fine.  You?  You collapsed under your own lack of magic.  We’re not even practicing magic, beyond whatever’s holding you together and making you move!  You’d have to do...well, pretty much no exercise at all on a regular basis AND be super low on magic to get to this point.”

“Sounds ‘bout right.”

“And that’s why you’re an idiot.  Oh - thanks, Attie.”  She took the bottle of juice, poured some into the cup, and pushed it towards Sans.

He managed to get himself upright and tipped... most of the juice into his mouth.  It tasted like something that was brewed in a froggit’s armpit, but he did feel better after.  “...What is that stuff?”

“Magic-infused sports drink.  Good for the body AND the SOUL!  The Royal Scientist came out with it a few years back.  You never heard of it?”

“It’s disgusting.”

“I’ve seen what you leave behind at your sentry post; you have no right to criticize anyone else’s eating or drinking habits.”

Fair enough.

“Also, next time we do this, frickin’ tell me when you’re about to collapse, would ya?”

“Gee, didn’t know you cared.”  Also: next time??

“Oh, I don’t.  Someone needs to watch this little punk, though, and she seems kinda fond of you.  Stars know why.”  She ruffled Attie’s hair.

The kid grinned widely.  “It’s ‘cause he feeds me hot dogs and lets me do fun science and lets me color and takes me to see my mommy.  And he didn’t let Mommy die and he helped me beat Mr. Papyrus and stuff.”

Sans eyed her.  “...Right.”

“I told Undie all about the fight with Mr. Papyrus!  I have her phone number in my phone and I was texting her last night when I was supposed to be sleeping.”

“‘M I gonna have to take your phone away at bedtime?”

“Noooo!”  She flopped over onto the couch next to him dramatically.

Undyne laughed.  “Well, since you’re not about to dust, I’ll be off.  Drink another glass of that stuff, asshole.  Attie, make sure he does.”

“Okay!”

“And Vice Captain Papyrus will be back sometime this evening.  If he scares you at all, even just a little bit, you tell this worthless lump here to get you out and you text me.  Okay?”

“Okay!”

“Oh, and a word of advice, Sans?”

He raised his head a fraction.

“Walk around a little.  You’ll be even worse off if you don’t.”

The very atmosphere seemed to deflate when Undyne left.  Sans felt like melting into the couch cushions and just...not moving until Boss came back and kicked his lazy butt into gear.

“Come ooooon!”  Attie whined, grabbing the back of his jacket and trying to drag him off the couch.  She was succeeding.  “Undie said you have to keep moving!  If she says so then we have to do it!”

“Noooo.”  Sans dug his claws into the couch, trying to anchor himself without leaving obvious rips that Boss would scream at him for.

His phone went off again.

He reluctantly disentangled himself from the kid enough to sit up (though she wound up clinging to his back) and pulled it out.

Frisky Dreamer 9:22 AM Sans, I’m waiting for a check-in.

Frisky Dreamer 9:42 AM I’m calling Undyne if I don’t hear from you in five minutes.

You 9:44 AM Undie just left We were doing morning torture

Frisky Dreamer 9:44 AM Explain.  Now.

You 9:46 AM U know the stretching and the posing and the running in place that kindve thing The usual stuff undie likes

Frisky Dreamer 9:46 AM Training?

You 9:47 AM Yeah that

Frisky Dreamer 9:47 AM Don’t call Captain Undyne’s training ‘torture,’ or I’ll tell her you called her “Undie.”

You 9:48 AM U got it

“Oooh, ask her if we can come see her this afternoon!”  Attie said, leaning over his shoulder.

You 9:49 AM Kid wants to know when we can come see you this afternoon If ur up for it

Attie dragged him off the couch when no answer came immediately.  He reluctantly shuffled his tired bones around the living room a few times, but gave up when his phone remained silent.  “Uh, you’d better change your clothes, kid.  Maybe your mom’ll text us back later.  She’s probably busy, remember?”

“Oh, yeah!  Granny Ree’s visiting her this morning, right?”

“Right.  So let’s see if we can find something your mom’ll approve of, okay?”

“Okay!”

Attie wound up in a yellow and white striped shirt and jeans.  He mentally reviewed the fashion lessons from the morning before.  It looked...pretty good?  Jeans went with everything, right?  He couldn’t tell if the yellow was supposed to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for Attie’s skin color (all of that had gone clear over his skull) but Frisk wouldn’t have bought her kid a shirt that looked bad on her, right?

...Hopefully?

He snapped a picture and sent it to the overbearing mother, hoping for the best.

Schoolwork went better than the day before.  Sans was still mostly lost, but a few subjects (mostly Math and Science) weren’t too different from what he’d been taught in the Underground.  At seven years old, Attie wasn’t doing anything too complicated; he was able to follow along and help out fairly well.

It reminded him of teaching Boss, really.  The sad structure that passed for a school in Snowdin had burned to the ground around the time Sans graduated (in a completely unrelated incident, not that he hadn’t been tempted), so Boss had been deprived of a few years’ formal education.  It had been challenging to get an excitable babybones to sit still long enough to do a page of multiplication, but he’d done his best.

His best, he knew, wasn’t great.  It was probably the reason Boss turned out the way he had.

Attie, at least, was used to the routine.  She knew to check her list of schoolwork (Undyne had left it on the counter this time, and had removed the one she’d pinned up with the knife) and found her assignments based on the numbers associated with each subject.  It boggled Sans’s mind.  Teaching kids at home was, apparently, something humans had simplified greatly.  There was a whole system of what to do each day and everything.  It made remembering to text Frisk a little easier, too; he just shot off a text as they finished each subject.  Attie did the same, happy for an excuse to use her new phone.

Lunch was hot dogs, again.  Attie, predictably, demanded that Sans eat his all in one bite.  He initially refused, but...well, the thing she did with her eyes was growing on him.  He caved and swallowed his hot dog whole.

He didn’t sit still long enough for Attie to take a picture of him doing it.  She did her best, but it wasn’t quite enough.

Ding!

Frisky Dreamer 12:58 PM Sans, what exactly are you teaching my daughter?

You 12:59 PM Nothing were just having lunch

Frisky Dreamer 12:59 PM So bragging to a young girl about how you can swallow weiners is normal for you?

Sans squinted at his phone, trying to make sense of the message.  He knew ‘weiner’ was another word for ‘hot dog,’ but...he felt there was something he was missing.

You 1:00 PM Kinda i mean i run a ‘dog stand Dont really talk to the customers but sometimes onell wonder y a skeleton needs food Where r u going with this?

Frisky Dreamer 1:02 PM I can’t decide if you’re naive, stupid, or far more creepy than I ever gave you credit for.  Where is Attie now?

He looked around.  The kid was at the table doing more Grammar.  He snapped a picture.  

You 1:04 PM *1 picture message sent

Frisky Dreamer 1:05 PM Okay.

You 1:06 PM Kiddo what the hell is going on

Frisky Dreamer 1:07 PM You can’t do that anymore.  And stars, keep Attie from talking about your ‘hot dog trick.’

You 1:08 PM Uh y

Frisky Dreamer 1:09 PM BECAUSE I WON’T HAVE YOU INVOLVING MY DAUGHTER IN YOUR DIRTY PRANKS!!

Yep, he was definitely missing something.

You 1:10 PM U high again?  I have no idea what ur talking about

Frisky Dreamer 1:10 PM Stupid it is, then.  Look it up. NOT around Attie.

Sans double-checked that Attie was studying and not peeking over his shoulder, then opened the web browser on his phone.  He typed in ‘eat a weiner.’

Oh.  OH.

...Humans were disgusting.

You 1:12 PM So uh what the hell U humans r crazy Like what even Y would u do that with ur mouths With all ur gross fluids Thats unsanitary Like wow

Frisky Dreamer 1:15 PM That’s about the reaction I was expecting.  So NO MORE, OKAY?

You 1:15 PM I may never eat a hot dog again What the hell Y didnt anyone say anything Like do people think im some kind of weirdo for working at a dog stand Like theyre just in the store with other food Is that normall Is tht what huans do

Frisky Dreamer 1:17 PM Oh, you sweet, innocent child. You have no idea.

You 1:17 PM Y do humans destroy everything good This is a travesty against Science Like y

Frisky Dreamer 1:19 PM Sans, calm down.

You 1:19 PM O ok Uh So No more dogs for the kid

Frisky Dreamer 1:20 PM They are just normal food.  Deal with it however you want. It’s just that said food happens to vaguely resemble part of the human anatomy that a little girl DOES NOT need to know or think about. Just watch your words, okay?

You 1:23 PM O so im off the hook

Frisky Dreamer 1:23 PM Not hardly.

“Mr. Sans?”

Sans quickly pocketed his phone and looked over at Attie, holding her Grammar workbook to her chest.  “What’s up, kid?”

“Are you okay?”

“Uh...fine?  Why do you ask?”

“You’ve been texting for a long time now.  And you look kinda sick.”

“Heh, yeah?”  He gripped his phone, wishing he had some of that...what did humans call it?  The stuff that makes you forget stuff?  Brain bleach?  “Your mom was just telling me that ‘dogs aren’t good for ya.  So I guess that’s out.  For now, at least.”

“Awwwww.”

“Yeah, me too, kid.”  He was never going to live this down, he realized.  

“Say, uh, you done with your school?”

“I’m done with Grammar.  It was easy today.”

“Yeah, uh, great.  What’s next?”

Sans fought for focus the rest of the afternoon.  It wasn’t so much that humans apparently had some weird kinky ideas about what to do with their gross squishy body parts and fluids (though that was part of it); it was the fact that he’d lived on the surface for seven years and had never come across such an idea.  Did humans think it was weird that a monster had a hot dog stand?  Why had no one said anything to him?

Oh, right.  He was a rude, violent asshole who hated people.

That...probably explained a lot.

Still.

“Can you help me with art today?”  Attie asked.

“Uh, I’m not really an artsy guy, kid.”

“It’s okay.  Everyone can do art.  Making art is a way of showing other people how you see the world; that’s what Mommy says.”

“That sounds…” kinda whimpy, actually, “...cool?”

“Yep!  And today I’m feeling spikey!”

“Wait, what?”

“Do you have toothpicks and glue, Mr. Sans?”

As it happened, Sans found an unopened jumbo box of toothpicks in the back of a drawer.  Attie found glue...somewhere.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to know where.  “What now?”

“Now, we build stuff!  Here, can you hold this?”

Over the next hour or so, Attie glued toothpicks (and half of Sans’s fingers) into a spiked wooden death trap.  It was actually a little impressive.  The design was basic - a pit trap with spikes in the bottom - but the pit cover had working hinges that allowed it to drop open in the middle...once he disentangled himself from it.  They’d found a pair of old bottle caps, and gluing one on each side of the pit cover gave the two halves enough of a counter-weight to reset themselves each time.  She found a bag of grapes in the fridge and amused herself with rolling them over the top of the pit and watching them fall to their squishy deaths on the toothpicks below.

There wasn’t enough force to actually impale the grapes properly, but it was the thought that counted.  For a seven-year-old, she was well on her way towards carrying on the proud monster tradition of death traps.  Not for the first time, Sans wondered if he should be worried.

Then the kiddo surprised him.  She’d been rolling grapes onto the death trap, watching the cover open and close, and out of the blue she asked why it worked the way it did.  Sans hadn’t expected that, not from a kid her age, but gave her an overview of the physics.  She was trying to understand, he knew, but her eyes glazed over halfway through his explanation.

“...Well, that’s enough for today.  We’d better head out if you wanna go see your mom.”

“Okay!  Can I bring my deadly death trap of grape death?”

“I...think that’d be a bad idea.  You don’t wanna scare the humans, do ya?”

“Yep!  I wanna scare ALL the humans!  Well, except for the people at the Embassy.  They’re nice.”

“Oookay.  You don’t think the doctors are nice?”

“Nnnope!  They give you shots and take your temper’ture and do things that make your soul feel funny.  They try to bribe you with stickers but Mommy said that she got candy as a kid and that’s way better than stickers.”

“Eh, fair enough.  Put your shoes and jacket on and we’ll go terrorize some doctors.  Uh...without your death trap.”

“Aawww!  Why?”

“Think of it as...a challenge?”

Attie whooped a wild war cry and charged off to find her outerwear.  She really was like a little Boss in some ways.

He was sure he was forgetting something.  What had Undyne said?

Oh.  Right.

You 4:42 PM Hey undyne im gonna take the kid to see her mom

Capn Undie 4:44 PM HANG ON ASSHOLE

There was a long pause, and Sans took the time to retrieve his ID from where he’d left it in the pocket of his other pants.  He hated disturbing the sanctity of his laundry pile but showing up without identification to one of Undyne’s checkpoints was always unpleasant.

His phone gave a loud ping.

Capn Undie 4:53 PM You’re cleared with security.  Room 249, down the hall and around the corner from the old room.  BRING YOUR ID and we’ll have no problems, got it??

You 4:56 PM Got it

Capn Undie 4:59 PM And don’t even THINK about causing trouble or I’ll have you KICKED OUT.  You can sit outside while Attie does whatever she does visiting her mom.  I’m sure there’s a kiddie chair we can grab for you.

Sans narrowed his eye sockets.  “Hey, Attie?  You ready to go yet?”

“Not yet!”  Attie appeared with her shoes on, holding her jacket.  “My laces were being doo-doo-butts,” she said conversationally.

“...Right.  Okay.  Hey, why don’t you grab that death trap after all?  And some grapes; we can show yer mom how it works.”

“Physics!”  Attie screamed as she stumbled off to find her creation.

Sans grinned.

#Dragonashes writes #Undertale #Underfell #The Heaven We Didn't Choose #Sans #Attie #Undyne #Vague references to adult themes #Sans does not understand humans #He also thinks humans are gross #Deadly death trap of grape death

[thetribalmoth]

REVIEW: We Are The Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson

*warning: suicide, rape, drug abuse, parental abuse, depression, assault, severe relentless bullying, violent psychotic breaks, miscarriages* If you can easily relate to the main character or any of the characters really, please seek professional help. 

 1/5, if it was possible to rate this thing a zero or in the negatives on goodreads I would. 

This entire story is sad, drespessing and horribly screwed up. And not in a good way. I'm all for telling a real, hard and unpleasant story but this isn't something anyone should subject themselves to. Reading it makes me concerned for the mental state of the author. If you are suicidal or depressed in any way DO NOT read this. This might as well have been a How To on how to push someone towards suicide. Sure a good chunk of the book is all about trying to convince Space boy why he should save the world and thus not die. But it comes off cheap and is immediately followed by a reason to die and how everything is completely pointless and how he should just be dead. Further I'm convinced the author is severely pessimistic and either has repressed sexual aggression or thinks all teenagers have severe repressed sexual aggression. 

I do not want any preteen or young kid reading this and thinking this is how teenagers are, it will mess them up. I do not want teenagers reading this book and thinking this is the way other teenagers are or what the adult word is like. It will mess them up. An adult can read this and recognise that it's inaccurate crap but even then it's not a healthy read. I recommend this book to no one. Further no one should read it. I have hated books before but this is a different kind of hate. This book shouldn't exist, it shouldn't have been written. 

Now I'm going to be calling the main character by his nickname/insult Space boy. Largely cause I hate the book. Also because Space boy is all the main character thinks his is or will ever be, he's right. Also I'm going to be swearing and the like a bit, it fits the book. 

For the writing style, it's egotistical yet completely self depricating. The intro is like a small child writing their first book. The chapter titles are just dates, which fits the whole "this is a journal" narrative but it feels lazy and childish. Right off the bat you're hit with the vulgarity of a small child who just learned what swears are. Frequent swearing, references to crotches, describing pensis as arms, pissing yourself, masterbation, porn, etc. Teenagers are often vulgar but not like this. It's supposed to sound like it's been written by a teenage boy, but it feels more like a weirdly sexual small child. Completely unrelatable. At many points it tries to be poetic, but it tries TOO hard to be poetic. The little "chapter" things were it's just a blurb about science stuff is pointless and slightly pretentious. The book near the end explains why it's in what's basically a boys journal. But the explanation is just totally annoying and weak. The ending is a non-ending and that's mildly infuriating. There are many parts that are freakishly sexual: Every. Single. Interaction between Space boy and another male that he isn't related to is filled with sexual stuff. Everything is sexualised. Being dead? Sexualised. Getting electrocuted? Sexualised. Paint? Sexualised. Mirrors? Sexualised. Even a damn trash can lid is sexualised. Dear author: see a sex therapist. 

Some more quotable sexual shit: "Wearing a grocery bag as underwear, covered in hickeys I couldn't explain" that's someone's fetish probably. "Ejaculated a chorus of baby angels from every pore of my body" look another fetish. But why babies? That's just fucking creepy. "You used to love when I jumped you in the showers" with the circumstances this is both extremely sexual and complete horrifying. 

Now for characters: The characters are all really messed up, half of them are walking embodiments of stereotypes, one dimensional and unrealistic. It would make more sense if all the characters, save for one character (not the main character), were the aliens. Since they don't behave or think like real human beings. Diego is the only half decent or half enjoyable character. When he behaves like a regular teenager would, the main character thinks the behaviour is psychotic. Funny enough I figured Diego was an alien desguised as a human the minute he was introduced in the book. Partly cause he seems like a real human person (and no one else does) and partly cause he thinks the world's worth saving. I would have far preferred the book to have been about Diego, he's a character that would have been genuinely interesting to read from the point of view of and he's the only one who isn't one dimensional. Audrey has the occasional cute moment but she's a completely broken mess of a person. It would be fitting for an adult but not for a minor, specially when that brokenness is her entire character. Further she seems to only exist as a crutch for Space boys emotional blame of Jesse's death. Space boys mom has only one real moment of humanness and it's all about a damn mirror. Also, Apparently the main character doesn't have fingers? Or the wording is god awful. This is mentioned only once and never affects anything. 

Some completely unrealistic or wtf moments that aren't spoilers: Sorry but A gay boy isnt able to hook up with 3 different boys in the span of a few months in the middle of Highschool while also being consdiered the biggest freak and loser in the school. "Teenage boys who are dead probably can't masturabte" wtf " it made me sad to think about Jesse stuck in the after life, lonely, frustrated, and unable to get off" WTF. "He believed in Jesus" "but he believed in Meth more" wtf. I like this line but still. You don't tell your basically boyfriend you big secret but you imdeiatily tell his family the minute they ask? That is beyond stupid. 

Some other things: There's no build up to the whole suicide thing. Just oh yeah and Jesse hung himself so his advice is shitty. But from then on the main character is practically obsessed with Jesse killing himself. "Books are for ugly people" really? Really? Fuck you to then. I never want to see the word "tut-tutted" again. I also never want some to say "eat the bacon" in reference to lover ever again.

Finally the cover: the cover hints to some things that happen in the book however due to the whole "we are the ants" premise, it renders the cover lazy. The number one thing any one relates to the idea of alien ubduction and be "like ants" is the sky. But the cover isn't horrible. 

Over all: do not read this book, it's horrible and not a good time. If I hadn't gotten to read this book for free via Riveted, I would be furious at my self for spending money on it and I would be destroying the book. If you take this book to heart and really get into it you will come out miserable, pissed off and a little bit more screwed up.

#book #books #book review #book reviews #we are the ants #we are the ants review #thetribalmoth speaks #thetribalmoth #gothmoth speaks #gothmoth

[drjacquescoulardeau]

THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE   FRANK SPOTNITZ – PHILIP K. DICK – THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE – 1962 – TV SERIES – 2015 (Review August 10, 2017)  

The novel from which this TV series is adapted is an old dystopic novel of 1962, entirely positioned in an alternative world in same year. But first of all let’s speak of the novel itself.

 This book is an old book, in fact a classic, rather confidential at the time of its first publication and even when recently republished because of its theme, but it has been brought to new awareness in the public because Amazon has just decided to produce an adaptation of it for video streaming. Is it a good decision to bring it back to fame, because it will be fame this time? We’ll see right now why it should not have been kept more or less confidential for more than fifty years.

 The genre is difficult because it is RETROSPECTIVE SCIENCE FICTION. Science fiction is supposed to imagine what the future will be or may be according to one or two parameters that are changed in our present in absolute or relative value. Of course you can cheat the way “Back to the Future” did at least three times, and we may regret it does not go on at least one more time, but things are what they are and life is a truck full of manure as we all know. Here the author imagines in 1961-62 what the world would have been if in 1945 Germany and Japan had won the war. It is the basic hypothesis so many people work in their minds or in bar and saloon discussions: what the world would be if… And there is no limit to these IF’s. As they say in Paris the Eiffel Tower could be put in a bottle if… and the same for the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building in New York if …, and for the >Washington Monument in Washington DC if … And after every presidential election in the world people imagine what it would be or would have been if the loser had won. Follow my eyes and read my lips.

 But what is the main and basic interest of this book?

First the world is cut in two with Japan on one side and Germany on the other side. The Communists have disappeared due to a strict eradication of all Slavs by Germany. The racial problem has also disappeared by the elimination of all black people in the world and first of all in Africa by Germany. In the same way the holocaust of Jews was continued though here the Japanese refused to cooperate. Imagine the world without Black people even in Africa, with maybe a few survivors surviving since it would be their only function as absolute slaves to be used, and abused, by any one of a paler complexion including children and even babies. I regret the book does not expand on this subject as much as it does on Jews, and particularly the few Jews who managed to get out of the influence of Germany and be de facto protected by the Japanese.

 But the most frightening part is that Germany is in the hands of the few people who were leading Germany in the war. In spite of the fact that Hitler is dead in 1961, it is his direct lieutenants and underlings that have taken over and are fighting for dominance, Goebbels first of all. The book is quite explicit on what happens in such a totalitarian state that is like a pot with a dozen spiders locked up in it who can only manipulate the crowds of people through the glass wall that protects them (the leaders only) and of course they have their legions outside that can eliminate all those who have to be eliminated for the dominating underling(s) to remain dominant, and at the same time these legions can go on some blood baths of their own for the fun of shedding and drinking the red stuff we call blood and they call a delicatessen though the Jews would consider it to be the soul of man, the divine part of man.

 And yet the book is fascinating for other reasons. It explores the very contemplative and oracular culture of the Japanese who have some kind of portable oracle in two volumes they consult regularly to know the meaning of the present and try to cope with the future. It provides the believers with Hexagrams that are both sibylline and enlightening in the shape of Haikus of six or about six lines. But the inner psychology of these Japanese is explored in depth: contemplative, extremely civil and polite, courteous and maybe even servile, but never revealing their true feelings and avoiding expressing any emotion and sensation. Cold for sure and yet tremendously empathetic, but unexpressed and unaired empathy. It is this very quality that makes them resist the German Nazis because they are able to communicate with the deepest forces in the universe, what every geological element carries, atomic forces and the power of any design, the design of molecules, or human-created designs and there we have a tremendous surprise. Two people launch a jewelry production unit in San Francisco and the main worker of the two is a Jew running incognito under a false name and under the de facto protection of the Japanese, a little bit more at the end of the book. And it is this Jew who is the creative jeweler, the creative artist, the craftsman who is producing with his hands the world of tomorrow as the Japanese main character tells us over and over again.

 That would symbolically tell us the German Nazis tried to eradicate the Jews because they represented the future and the Nazis represent the past. Simple, symbolical but is it really cathartic? There I cannot answer because anti-Semitism is slightly more complex than just a simile or a metaphor. It has to do with the fear that developed somewhere in the Middle East some 10,000 years ago in the vast confrontation of three cultures emerging from the ice age and trying to invent the future of the planet: The Turkic peoples, the Semitic peoples and the Indo-European (Sumerian) peoples. We are still living on that heritage, the heritage of an anthropological rivalry that became the differentiation of three linguistic families, and of three cultures with three religions, and what’s more the Semitic community got split in two along a social differentiation (exploiter and exploited) and a religious antagonism (Judaism and Islam). Christianity is the third religion branching out of Judaism and it is more or less assumed as part of the European, hence Nazi definition. The Christian religion is vastly absent from the book.

Of course in this book the Arabs and beyond them the Muslims are totally ignored and unconsidered, being replaced by the fourth human group that never had any role to play in the previous triad, the Buddhist and Confucian human family who are also from another linguistic family, isolating languages, here represented by the Japanese. That’s the main element that is absent from this book. Northern Africa, Egypt were essential at the end of the Second World War and still enormously influential in 1962, but yet the Arabs and Muslims are just not considered at all. That’s the shortcoming of the book in our modern times because since 1960-62 it is the community that has emerged most strongly from the initial triad and today the Asian isolating family is no longer represented by Japan but China. But of course this book did not aim at telling us its future which is our present, but only the present in 1961 if …

 The last element I would like to show is that the book has no end, precisely because of what I have just said. It does not open on the future in 1961 so it cannot have any end. It is coming to several open-ended dead ends, open-ended because we can imagine what we like, but dead ends since it does not tell us anything about what may happen after 1961. That’s the doom of retrospective science fiction. It is dramatic, frightening but at the same time it leads to no vision of the future. It is some kind of castrated science fiction that cannot tell us anything about our real world, the world of the real readers of the book, particularly those who read it a long time after the writing time. And that’s where the video adaptation will be fascinating since it will have to be adapted for today’s and tomorrow’s publics. But we’ll have to wait for it to be available in the whole world to add a paragraph, in fact a few paragraphs, to this review.

 Let the few who can access the video adaptation celebrate! God Bless the Child! (Review published on December 23, 2015, See further down for the original)

 Now let’s move to the TV series.

 The TV Series, the Blessed Child I have just mentioned, whose first two seasons are only available so far, is an expanded vision and the expansion seems to be changing quite a few details, especially since television must be visually acceptable and it does not have to be logically or even concretely possible. The Man in the High Castle is apparently making disturbing films that describe the world the way it developed after the victory in WW2 against Germany and Japan and his “studio” is a big warehouse somewhere in the San Francisco area, at least till he decides to move on and to torch his film producing “high castle.” We are not told then where he decides to move to.

 The second remark is that the TV series can easily jump from San Francisco and the Japanese Pacific states, to New York and the Greater Nazi Reich and to Berlin, the capital of this Greater Nazi Reich. To enable this, some characters have to be invented and the series becomes the story of these characters.

In San Francisco the central character is Juliana Crain who moves to the Neutral Zone, a buffer zone between the Japanese Pacific States and the Greater Nazi Reich, in fact Canon City, Colorado, after her sister is killed by the Japanese police, leaving her partner Frank Frink behind. She will come back and later she will move to New York as a refugee from the Pacific States where she is wanted by the Japanese. Frank Frink is also essential in San Francisco because of the role he plays little by little with the resistance against the Japanese. Frank is surrounded by several other characters and he is very complex since he is connected to the Japanese mafia who manages to liberate him and later his friend Ed McCarthy from the accusation of having shot the Japanese Crown Prince, though it was done by a Nazi agent. And on the Japanese side you have one more character (apart from the police and the general organizing the production of an atom bomb), the Trade Minister who is lost between the reality of these Japanese Pacific States, the recollection of his wife before this time (she is dead) and for him the alternative world of Kennedy’s USA in 1962 and the Cuban crisis with the Soviet missiles. He is able to navigate from one level to the other thanks to some kind of typical Zen meditation.

 San Francisco then is divided between the Resistance, the Japanese and the Americans who try to survive and strive in this colonized situation, with the Neutral Zone behind and direct bus lines used by the Japanese to transport uranium from the Neutral Zone to San Francisco, unprotected and thus killing all the “American” passengers, which does not count for anything for the Japanese since they are “American” and this ruse enables the uranium to be transported unnoticed by the Germans.

 New York is not in any way simpler since it has been totally expurgated like Europe of all the Semites, meaning the Jews, and of all the Blacks since all Africans have been sent back to Africa which is a big German colony, meaning a slave territory for all kinds of work. The main Nazi master of New York and the American Nazi states is a certain SS Obergruppenführer John Smith, and his family. We discover them from the inside because of Juliana Crain who is integrated into the Nazi elite by John Smith himself because he thinks she has some inner information about the resistance and the man in the high castle. The Nazi Reich practices total eugenics and John Smith’s son has the genetic disease John Smith’s brother had. He has to be eliminated. But John Smith is cheating with the system with the plan of sending his son on a patriotic trip in Latin America where he will be kidnapped by some “Semites” and thus will be able to remain alive.

But John Smith is trying to get another young person, Joe Blake, into the position of a special agent but it is difficult because when Joe Blake was sent to Canon City in Colorado he came across Juliana and another Nazi agent who had the order to get the film she was transporting and kill her. Joe Blake saves her and the result is the death of the Nazi agent and the delivery of the film (in fact two because Joe Blake was also transporting one to enter in contact with the resistance) to the resistance represented locally by a black man, Lem Washington. And after that “encounter” entirely based on unshared secrets they go their separate ways though the next mission of Joe Blake will take him to San Francisco to recuperate another film and he will escape the Japanese police thanks to Juliana who manages him to be taken on a boat to Mexico, and he will escape the resistance thanks to a Nazi bribe of the resistance people on the boat who are transporting him to Mexico, but the bribe delivered by air is poisoned and the black people on the boat will all die, both as criminals and as black people, hence duly eliminated from the surface of the earth. The Nazis seem to be waiting for the death of Hitler to seize power, or rather to start fighting to seize power. Himmler started too early so he is killed by Smith. But Hitler does die and the power chase starts.

 Berlin is of course the heart of the Nazi Reich and we discover it by following Joe Blake there. He is summoned to Berlin by his father, the main minister of the Reich, and he discovers little by little who he is. Not only the son of his mother who eloped to New York with him, but the genetically selected son of both his parents who could have been raised in a special institution to produce the next generation of SS fighters if his mother had not escaped away from Berlin, probably though not entirely clear with the assent of the father who was already an important character in the Nazi regime. He thus discovers his birth place and early infancy institution (closed by then in 1962) with his father, who he hates. But his father puts a young woman his age and coming from the same selective program as him, and the chemistry of hormones and common experience brings them together and though at first he wants to go back to New York where he has a life partner and a son, he decides against his father’s will, after he had been appointed acting Chancellor waiting for the official announcement of Hitler’s death, to stay and be sworn into the SS. He thus endorses the role he was playing in one of the films he has actually viewed and delivered to the Nazis: in this film he is an SS officer who shot the surviving resisting people after San Francisco is flattened by an atom bomb, and among those he shot there was Frank and several other people we have met.

 In our present times of tension between the USA and Asia (not only North Korea but the whole of Asia, including Russia of course) the debate about the use of nuclear weapons to conquer the half of America either the Japanese or the Nazis have or do not have is particularly welcome. In the film the Germans already have atom bombs, but the Japanese have to build one and they received the blue print of such a device from a German high-ranking officer who betrayed the Nazi Reich, in the name of equilibrium, peace and the deterring power of nuclear weapons, under a fake British identity and then a fake Japanese diplomatic visa. He was captured in New York by John Smith. The series is slightly light on the question of the use of nuclear weapons that have not been used yet in the dystopic world, though the Japanese Trade Minister in his “trip” to our real world in 1962 discovers about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They deal with nuclear warfare in the dystopic world as a matter of need: strike first and conquer the Pacific States, first meaning before the Japanese have a nuclear weapon of their own. Of course the real world of 1962 and the possible use of nuclear weapons against Cuba is set in parallel with the dystopic world. There is a peace movement in the USA against the use of nuclear weapons in Kennedy’s time, but there is no peace movement in the dystopic world, just a resistance that is not really concerned by the use of nuclear weapons and on the Nazi side the inner conflict to seize power after Hitler’s death.

We have to think twice about this debate. Only terroristic and dictatorial regimes can actually use nuclear weapons in the TV series, and yet it is the USA who used such weapons twice in our real history. True enough Truman had not been elected President but only Vice-President under Roosevelt. But will a fully elected President of the USA use nuclear weapons against a country that has managed to develop such nuclear weapons and the ICBM necessary to deliver them who knows where? Will a fully elected President of the USA take the risk of a nuclear war just because one little country is challenging his narcissistic authority? I will not answer these questions. Only history will answer them though it is obvious for anyone who is not a narcissistic person that negotiating is always, absolutely always better than using force: think of Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria to wonder what two wars started to answer a foolish terrorist attack from Al Qaeda have led to. Certainly not a viable and sustainable democratic and peaceful situation and the coming decade or even decades will not solve the “problem” and bring things back to “normal.”

 In short then a visionary novel turned into a deeply reflexive series that we should all watch to just ponder on the question of the use of force and forceful ideologies to conquer the world rather than the use of negotiations to develop and improve the same world.

 PHILIP K. DICK – THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE – 1962 (December 23, 2015)  

This book is an old book, in fact a classic, rather confidential at the time of its publication and even recently for a classic because of its theme, but it has been brought to new awareness in the public because Amazon has just decided to produce an adaptation of it for video streaming. Is it a good decision to bring it back to fame, because it will be fame this time? We’ll see right now why it should not have been kept more or less confidential for more than fifty years.

The genre is difficult because it is retrospective science fiction. Science fiction is supposed to imagine what the future will be or may be according to one or two parameters that are changed in our present. Of course you can cheat the way “Back to the Future” did at least three times and we regret it does not go on at least one more time, but things are what they are and life is a truck full of manure as we all know. Here the author imagines in 1961-62 what the world would have been if in 1945 Germany and Japan had won the war. It is the basic hypothesis so many people work in their minds or in bar and saloon discussions: what the world would be if… And there is no limit to these IF’s. As they say in Paris the Eiffel Tower could be put in a bottle if… and the same for the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building in New York if … And after every presidential election in the world people imagine what it would be or have been if the loser had won.

 But what is the main and basic interest of this book?

 First the world is cut in two with Japan on one side and Germany on the other side. The Communists have disappeared due to a strict eradication of all Slavs by Germany. The racial problem has also disappeared by the elimination of all black people in the world and first of all in Africa by Germany. In the same way the holocaust of Jews was continued though here the Japanese refused to cooperate. Imagine the world without Black people even in Africa, with maybe a few survivors surviving since it would be their only function as absolute slaves to be used, and abused, by any one of a paler complexion including children and even babies. I regret the book does not expand on this subject as much as it does on Jews and the few Jews who managed to get out of the influence of Germany and be de facto protected by the Japanese.

 But the most frightening part is that Germany is in the hands of the few people who were leading Germany in the war. In spite of the fact that Hitler is dead in 1961, it is his direct lieutenants and underlings that have taken over and are fighting for dominance, Goebbels first of all. The book is quite explicit on what happens in such a totalitarian state that is like a pot with a dozen spiders locked up in it who can only manipulate the crowds of people through the glass wall that protects them (the leaders only) and of course they have their legions outside that can eliminate all those who have to be eliminated for the dominating underling(s) to remain dominant, and at the same time these legions can go on some blood baths of their own for the fun of shedding and drinking the red stuff we call blood and they call a delicatessen though the Jews would consider it to be the soul of man, the divine part of man.

And yet the book is fascinating for other reasons. It explores the very contemplative and oracular culture of the Japanese who have some kind of portable oracle in two volumes they consult regularly to know the meaning of the present and try to cope with the future. It provides the believers with Hexagrams that are both sibylline and enlightening in the shape of Haikus of six or about six lines. But the inner psychology of these Japanese is explored in depth: contemplative, extremely civil and polite, courteous and maybe even servile, but never revealing their true feelings and avoiding expressing any emotion and sensation. Cold for sure and yet tremendously empathetic, but unexpressed and unaired empathy. It is this very quality that makes them resist the German Nazis because they are able to communicate with the deepest forces in the universe, what every geological element carries, atomic forces and the power of any design be it natural, the design of molecules, or human-created and there we have a tremendous surprise. Two people launch a jewelry production unit in San Francisco and the main worker of the two is a Jew running incognito under a false name and under the de facto protection of the Japanese, a little bit more at the end of the book. And it is this Jew who is the creative jeweler, the creative artist, the craftsman who is producing with his hands the world of tomorrow as the Japanese main character tells us over and over again.

 That would symbolically tell us the German Nazis tried to eradicate the Jews because they represented the future and the Nazis represent the past. Simple, symbolical but is it really cathartic? There I cannot answer because anti-Semitism is slightly more complex than just a simile or a metaphor. It has to do with the fear that developed somewhere in the Middle East some 10,000 years ago in the vast confrontation of three cultures emerging from the ice age and trying to invent the future of the planet: The Turkic peoples, the Semitic peoples and the indo-European (Sumerian) peoples. We are still living on that heritage, the heritage of an anthropological rivalry that became the differentiation of three linguistic families, and of three cultures with three religions, and what’s more the Semitic community got split in two along a social differentiation (exploiter and exploited) and a religious antagonism (Judaism and Islam).

 Of course in this book the Arabs and beyond them the Muslims are totally ignored and unconsidered, being replaced by the fourth human group that never had any role to play in the previous triad, the Buddhist and Confucian human family who are also from another linguistic family, the isolating family, here represented by the Japanese. That’s the main element that is absent from this book. Northern Africa, Egypt was essential at the end of the war but then the Arabs and Muslims are just not considered at all. That’s the shortcoming of the book in our modern times because since 1960-62 it is the community that has emerged most strongly from the initial triad and today the Asian isolating family is no longer represented by Japan but China. But of course this book did not aim at telling us its future which is our present, but only the present in 1961 if…

The last element I would like to show is that the book has no end, precisely because of what I have just said. It does not open on the future in 1961 so it cannot have any end. It is coming to several open-ended dead ends, open-ended because we can imagine what we like, but dead ends since it does not tell us anything about what may happen after 1961. That’s the doom of retrospective science fiction. It is dramatic, frightening but at the same time it leads to no vision of the future. It is some kind of castrated science fiction that cannot tell us anything about our real world, the world of the real readers of the book, particularly those who read it a long time after the writing time. And that’s where the video adaptation will be fascinating since it will have to be adapted for today’s and tomorrow’s publics. But we’ll have to wait for it to be available in the whole world to add a paragraph to this review.

 Let the few who can access the video adaptation celebrate! God less the Child!

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

#fascism #nazism #hitler #nuclear war #dictatorship #resistance

[cromulentbookreview]

Externally Screaming

Every now and again I come across a book I like so much I can't really express how I feel about it with words, just unintelligible fangirl squealing.

Aurora Rising is one of those books.

Seriously, the whole time with this book I was just

Sometimes, I will start reading a book and find I literally cannot stop. Other times I will force myself not to - to pace myself, rather than binge-read because I know that as soon as I’m done reading it, it’ll be well over a year until the next book. I am in general a slow reader, and for the most part it’s unintentional - I’m easily distracted, my attention span is shot, I work full time, have other shit to do, etc. - so when I tell myself “no, only a few chapters today, otherwise it’ll all be gone and then you’ll have nothing. NOTHING!” It’s kind of a big deal.

(Sorry, can’t not use a Ron Burgundy gif there).

I should preface my fangirling by mentioning that I am a massive fan of Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s last trilogy, The Illuminae Files, which if you haven’t read it, stop everything, go read it, I will wait right here.

Oh my God those books are so good, right? I mean, nothing makes my librarian brain happier than stories that are told entirely through documents. Aurora Rising is a more traditional narrative told from multiple POVs, but we do get the occasional “fun fact” in-between chapters. 

Behold! The jacket copy:

The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the Academy would touch…

A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm

A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates

A smart-ass techwiz with the galaxy’s biggest chip on his shoulder

An alien warrior with anger management issues

A tomboy pilot who’s totally not into him, in case you were wondering

And Ty’s squad isn’t even his biggest problem—that’d be Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, the girl he’s just rescued from interdimensional space. Trapped in cryo-sleep for two centuries, Auri is a girl out of time and out of her depth. But she could be the catalyst that starts a war millions of years in the making, and Tyler’s squad of losers, discipline-cases and misfits might just be the last hope for the entire galaxy. They're not the heroes we deserve. They're just the ones we could find. Nobody panic.

If you think “that sounds awesome” you’d be right. It is awesome. Poor Tyler Jones - he is indeed a golden boy of the Aurora Academy, but the night before the draft - the event where leader-types like him get to pick who will be in their squad with the Aurora Legion - Tyler, unable to sleep, decides to log some time in the Fold. Now, the Fold is, of course, the folds in space-time that allow for super-fun-and-quick space travel. So... a wormhole. Anyway, whilst cruising around the Fold, Tyler picks up a distress signal from a ship that famously disappeared two hundred years prior. On the ship he discovers a bunch of people dead in their cryopods. Only one is still alive: a girl with a white stripe in her hair. Tyler barely manages to rescue the girl and get back to his ship before a Foldstorm hits. 

One problem, though: while he was being Heroic McHeroface, Tyler missed the draft. He, the Academy’s #1 Golden boy didn’t get to pick the cream of the crop. Nope, he’s stuck with the population of the Island of Misfit Toys. 

His twin sister Scarlett sticks with him, though. So does his childhood best friend and expert pilot, Cat. The rest of the crew...well... There’s Zila, who is brilliant but not good with people.

She’s now the squad’s Brain - the Science Division type who also serves as the ship’s doctor. Yikes.

There’s Finian, a snarktastic tech genius Betraskan (a humanoid alien spices with super pale skin) who relies on an exosuit in order to move around. He’s the squad’s Gearhead.

And there’s Kal, a Syldrathi - another humanoid alien, only these look like elves from Lord of the Rings. Lots of Legolas references thrown around. Kal comes from a specific warrior cabal and has a reputation for getting into fights for funsies. He’s the Tank - the squad muscle / enforcer / bodyguard-type person. 

And of course, at first sight they all can’t stand each other. But they’re stuck together as Squad 312, so essentially, they have no choice. Hurray?

And if you’re wondering “but what about the girl with the white stripe in her hair?” - don’t worry, I’m getting there. Her name is Aurora Jae-Lin O’Malley, aka Auri. 200 years ago, she was living on a dying Earth, preparing to make the journey into space to the colony-planet of Octavia. She goes into cryosleep and promptly wakes up two hundred years too late, with the Aurora Academy, and no one has ever heard of Octavia. Plus, there’s something wrong with Auri - two hundred years in the Fold will mess with your brain a bit, but it doesn’t explain why she’s got one white eye, why she can move objects with her mind, and why she starts seeing visions of the future. At first, it looks like the Aurora Academy is going to send Auri back to Earth, but instead she ends up stowing away...with Squad 312, our favorite ragtag bunch of misfits.

Only it very quickly becomes evident that the powers at be want Auri, and they’re willing to kill anyone she comes into contact with. So Auri and Squad 312 end up on the run, and they’re all forced to work together in order to solve the mystery behind Auri’s strange powers. It all seems to have something to do with Octavia: why did the colony get wiped off the map? What happened to the people there? What happened to Auri in the Fold? 

Aurora Rising is the first in a planned trilogy, so, of course, we don’t get all the answers right away. There are enough answers to keep us from getting too pissed off, but enough unanswered questions to keep us on our toes waiting for the next book. And holy crap, I cannot wait for the next book. Aurora Rising starts out exciting and just continues to be exciting until the very last page (OK, maybe not the literal last page, those tend to be blank or just have information about the publisher on them, but you get my point). My one big complaint is that the one character I really wanted to get to know - Zila - gets the least amount of time in the limelight. Chapters narrated by her are mostly only a few sentences long - I know this is supposed to illustrate her blunt manner, but I was really looking forward to learning everything about what made her so peculiar. She does get a longer chapter later in the book, but we don’t learn all her secrets. And, I mean, come on, I wanted to know more about Zila, damn it! The rest of the characters are cool, though Tyler is a bit too much the bland leader-type and I had a hard time believing that Scarlett could be 18 and have over fifty ex-boyfriends (maybe they were just hookups and she just refers to them as boyfriends?). Finian’s chapters are fantastic because he is the group’s deadpan snarker - whenever things get intense, Fin’s ready to throw in some much-needed comic relief. Auri’s POV is by far the most compelling, though that may just be my own personal bias talking, because the Fish Out of Temporal Water is one of my favorite tropes ever...but it’s from Auri’s POV that we get all the Legolas references directed at Kal, and it’s just delightful. 

gard...gard...gard...gard...

In essence: I needed books 2 and 3 of the Aurora Cycle sometime yesterday, please. I need full chapters dedicated entirely to Zila and her history - she’s the one member of Squad 312 we know the least about by the end of Aurora Rising, and I want to know more! Maybe because she strikes me as a fellow girl on the spectrum and I desperately want to see more accurate depictions of autism in girls, something that doesn’t just depict us as straight-up psychopaths. We’re not, we’re really not. Our brains just work differently, OK? Stop judging Zila you guys, gah!

Anyway. I fricking loved this book, from beginning to end. Am I biased because I loved The Illuminae Files and think Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff are both fantastic writers? Yeah, probably. But, once again, I must direct you to the title of this stupid little tumblr blog. I promise cromulent reviews, not good or unbiased ones. Still - if any of what I described above sounds appealing to you, then you’re going to want to read Aurora Rising. And even if you’re still on the fence, read it anyway because some rando on a dying social media platform told you to. 

RECOMMENDED FOR: fans of YA sci-fi, fans of fiction featuring a ragtag bunch of misfits, anyone looking for an exciting YA cross between Guardians of the Galaxy and The Expanse.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone not a fan of YA, sci-fi, misfits, fun, excitement, joy...

RELEASE DATE: May 7, 2019 (Illuminae fans: check out Jay Kristoff’s website for details on how to get a free printed Illuminae novella with a pre-order of Aurora Rising!)

RATING: 5/5

TOTALLY UNBIASED FANGIRL RATING: 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000/5.

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR SEQUELS: Olympus Mons

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY RATING:

MY FACE WHEN I REALIZED I’LL HAVE TO WAIT A GOOD LONG WHILE FOR THE NEXT BOOK:

#aurora rising #amie kaufman #jay kristoff #ya sci fi #aurora legion #squad 312 #young adult science fiction #book review #aurora cycle #sequel please #i need it #best books 2019 #science fiction #band of misfits #tyler jones #scarlett jones #zila madran #cat brannock #aurora jae-lin o'malley #auri #finian de karran de seel #kaliis idraban gilwraeth #ragtag bunch of misfits #fish out of temporal water #legolas #guardians of the galaxy

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LOT

Countless paintings, when you look at them in xrays, turn out to have limbs that have been learned in previous ones. I tended to just spew out code that was hopelessly broken, and gradually beat it into shape. Well, I'll tell you what they want. So a company that can attract great hackers will have a huge advantage. It's hard enough already not to become the prisoner of your own. A speech like that is, in the sense that they're just trying to reproduce work someone else has already done for them. On the Web, the barrier for publishing your ideas is even lower. They didn't sell either; that's why they're in a position now to buy other companies. It's hard enough already not to become the prisoner of your own expertise, but it does at least make you keep an open mind. As Ricky Ricardo used to say, Lucy, you got a lot of what makes offices bad are the very qualities we associate with professionalism. But if you talk to startups, because students don't feel they're failing if they don't go into research.

The programmers you'll be able to set up local VC funds by supplying the money themselves and recruiting people from existing firms to run them, only organic growth can produce angel investors.1 But as long as they still have to show up for work every day, they care more about what they have in common is that they're often made by people working at home.2 Part of what software has to do is make good things.3 When there's something in a painting that works very well, you can probably make yourself smart too.4 The word now has such bad connotations that we forget its etymology, though it's staring us in the face. People await new Apple products the way they'd await new books by a popular novelist. VCs don't invest $x million because that's the amount the structure of business doesn't reflect it. When I was a student in Italy in 1990, few Italians spoke English. This turns out to be will depend on what we can do with this new medium. The problem is the way they're paid. It's a mistake to use Microsoft as a model, because their whole culture derives from that one lucky break.5

It felt as if someone had flipped on a light switch inside my head. The problem with the facetime model is not just that line but the whole program around it. But while energetic government intervention may be able to make a Japanese silicon valley, and so far is soccer. By definition these 10,000 founders wouldn't be taking jobs from Americans: it could be part of the terms of the visa that they couldn't work for existing companies, only new ones they'd founded. And in addition to the direct cost in time, there's the cost in fragmentation—breaking people's day up into bits too small to be useful. It's a good idea to save some easy tasks for moments when you would otherwise stall. They're competing against the best writing online.6 And since good people like to work on a Java project won't be as smart as the ones you could get to work on what you like. I'm talking to companies we fund? Painting has been a much richer source of ideas than the theory of computation.7

It falls between what and how: architects decide what to do by a boss. Another country I could see wanting to have a silicon valley? That wouldn't seem nearly as uncool. Nearly all makers have day jobs, and work on beautiful software on the side, I'm not proposing this as a new idea. Can you cultivate these qualities?8 It's too much overhead. But Sam Altman can't be stopped by such flimsy rules. Ideas beget ideas.

But that could be solved quite easily: let the market decide.9 This phrase began with musicians, who perform at night.10 And you can't go by the awards he's won or the jobs he's had, because in design, as in many fields, the hard part isn't solving problems, but deciding what problems to solve. And the first phase of that is mostly product creation—that blogs are just a medium of expression.11 The third big lesson we can learn, or at least confirm, from the example of painting is how to learn to hack by taking college courses in programming. Once you realize how little most people judging you care about judging you accurately—once you realize that most judgements are greatly influenced by random, extraneous factors—that most people judging you are more like a fickle novel buyer than a wise and perceptive magistrate—the more you realize you can do than the traditional employer-employee relationship. It's flattering to talk to other people in the Valley is watching them.12

The most famous example is probably Steve Wozniak, who originally wanted to build microcomputers for his then-employer, HP. For Trevor, that's par for the course. I suspect almost every successful startup has. Actors and directors are fired at the end of each film, so they have to sell internationally from the start.13 The other problem with startups is that there is a Michael Jordan of hacking, no one knows, including him. That varies enormously, from $10,000, whichever is greater.14 This is yet another problem that afflicts the sciences: math envy.15 If a hacker were a mere implementor, turning a spec into code, then he could just work his way through it from one end to the other like someone digging a ditch. What fraction of the smart people work as toolmakers. Kevin Kelleher suggested an interesting way to compare programming languages: to describe each in terms of the visa that they couldn't work for existing companies, only new ones they'd founded.

As a standard, you couldn't wish for more. Like the amount you invest, this can literally mean saving up bugs. This is a rare example of a big company in a design war with a company big enough that its software is designed by product managers, they'll never be able to get a job with a big picture of a door.16 If you throw them out, you find that good products do tend to win in the market. When I was in the bathroom!17 Once they invest in a company who really have to, but to surpass it. In this model, the research department functions like a mine. Of all the great programmers I can think of, I know of zero. And my theory explains why they'd tend to be forced to work on your projects, he can work wherever he wants on projects of your own.18

Here's a case where we can learn, or at least confirm, from the start. It has an English cousin, travail, and what it means. 5% of the world's population will be exceptional in some field only if there are a lot of servers and a lot of graduate programs.19 It seems to me that there have been two really clean, consistent models of programming so far: the C model and the Lisp model. Lisp syntax is scary. Ironically, of all the great programmers collected in one hub. You see it in Diogenes telling Alexander to get out of his office so we could go to lunch. I like debugging: it's the one time that hacking is as straightforward as people think it is. The only place your judgement makes a difference is in the borderline cases. That may be the best writer among Silicon Valley CEOs. Singapore seems very aware of the importance of encouraging startups. A lot of the past several years studying the paths from rich to poor, just as we were designed to eat a certain amount per generation.

Notes

It did. As Anthony Badger wrote, If it failed it failed it failed it failed it failed.

The unintended consequence is that the web have sucked—9. What I should degenerate from words to their stems, but I call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of editors, and the founders: agree with them. But one of these, and that he could just multiply 101 by 50 to 6,000.

You have to recognize them when you lose that protection, e.

The First Two Hundred Years. Once someone has said fail, most of their due diligence tends to happen fast, like architecture and filmmaking, but investors can get rich simply by being energetic and unscrupulous, but in practice signalling hasn't been much of the acquisition offers that every fast-growing startup gets on the expected value calculation for potential founders, if you want to learn. Whereas when you're starting a startup idea is to create a web-based applications. The reason this works is that you'll have to worry about that.

Which is not generally the common stock holders who take big acquisition offers are driven by bookmarking, not the second wave extends applications across the web was going to drunken parties.

Most of the problem is not to quit their day job.

It took a shot at destroying Boston's in the time I thought there wasn't, because living at all.

What made Google Google is much more depends on the blades may work for startups overall. Gauss was supposedly asked this when he received an invitation to travel aboard the HMS Beagle as a source of the lies people told 100 years, it would be just as you get a personal introduction—and to run on the entire West Coast that still require jackets for men.

Successful founders are willing to provide when it's aligned with the government, it would be too conspicuous. I'm not dissing these people.

In 1800 an empty plastic drink bottle with a clear upward trend. We couldn't decide between two alternatives, we'd be interested in you, you can ignore. So how do they decide you're a loser or possibly a winner.

Though they are now.

Hypothesis: Any plan in 2001, but different cultures react differently when things go well. A professor at a discount to whatever the valuation of the Dead was shot there. I was writing this, I should probably be the technology side of being watched in real time. To talk to an audience makes people feel good.

The examples in this article are translated into Common Lisp seems to have gotten where they all sit waiting for the same time.

On the other seed firms always find is that it's up to his time was 700,000. Vii. An investor who's seriously interested will already be working on Y Combinator is a way to find users to observe—e.

Even if you turn out to be started in Mississippi. There was one that we are not merely blurry versions of great things were created mainly to make Europe more entrepreneurial and more pervasive though.

But try this thought experiment: suppose prep schools supplied the same reason 1980s-style knowledge representation could never have come to accept a particular valuation, that I hadn't had much success in doing a small business that isn't the problem to have discovered something intuitively without understanding all its implications. Your user model almost couldn't be perfectly accurate, and everyone's used to end a series A rounds from top VC funds whether it was putting local grocery stores out of the x axis and returns on the one Europeans inherited from Rome, where you get a personal introduction—and in a cubicle except late at night. Though in a time of day, because the ordering system and image generator were written in 6502 machine language. What was missing, false positives reflecting the remaining outcomes don't have the.

If language A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that's not true. The best one could argue that the angels are no longer needed, big companies could dominate through economies of scale. Good news: users don't care what your project does.

We react like children, we're going to do is keep track of statistics for foo overall as well, partly because you can't expect you'll be able to formalize a small company that has a pretty comprehensive view of investor who merely seems like he will fund you, it becomes an advantage to be able to respond with extreme countermeasures. Particularly since economic inequality is a scarce resource. I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christians.

The VCs recapitalize the company than you meant to. World War II the tax codes were so new that the Internet worm of its identity. If our hypothetical company making 1000 a month grew at 1% a week before. I need to do video on-demand, and we did not start to leave.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #way #start #one #offices #codes #reason #calculation #research #startups #mine #versions #depends #economies #Ricardo #time #connotations #people #Altman #confirm #A #barrier #random #HP #etymology

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/the-godfathers-who-pull-nigerias-strings/

The ‘godfathers’ who pull Nigeria's strings

Image caption Godswill Akpabio may determine who wins elections in the oil-rich state of Akwa Ibom

“Godfathers” in Nigerian politics don’t usually run for office themselves, but many believe they are the ones who decide the election winners and losers.

With campaigning well under way for general elections on 16 February, these are the men – and they invariably are men – who pull the strings behind the scenes.

They are political sponsors, who use money and influence to win support for their preferred candidates.

Their “godsons”, it is believed, are not always selected for their political acumen, but rather on their ability to repay and enrich their godfather.

These arrangements have spawned the term “godfatherism”, says Dr Dele Ashiru, a senior lecturer at the department of political science at the University of Lagos.

“It refers to a situation where there’s a big man who wields enormous political power and then anoints a godson, who he adopts as a candidate for the election.

“And the godfather will do all that is reasonably possible to get the godson appointed into political office.

“The godfather must be influential, most often they are, or were, a political office holder.”

When ‘godfatherism’ gets messy

In the southern state of Akwa Ibom, the country’s largest oil-producer, many people believe the main godfather is Godswill Akpabio, who holds a senate seat.

Image caption Senator Akpabio is the driving force behind the APC’s campaign in Akwa Ibom state

A former governor of the state, he still wields significant power in local politics.

So powerful in fact that his defection just a few months ago to the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) is seen as pivotal to the party’s hope of winning its first victory in the state since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999.

A hope reiterated by President Muhammadu Buhari when he chose Akwa Ibom to launch his campaign for re-election in December.

And Mr Akpabio certainly seems to deliver in numbers. During a recent rally I spoke to followers who said he would bring more than 300,000 voters over to the APC.

But Senator Akpabio denies he is a kingmaker: “If anyone wants to say that I am a godfather I want to disagree with them.

“The only time you could say I played a godfather-like role was in 2015. I nominated the current governor [of Akwa Ibom] and when I presented him to the people they supported him,” he told the BBC.

Image caption A supporter of incumbent Akwa Ibom Governor Udom Emmauel, who has fallen out with his godfather

Yet a member of his own party says that 2015 victory was marred by violence and irregularities, orchestrated by Mr Akpabio.

Umana Okon Umana, who was aspiring to be governor at the time, has accused Mr Akpabio of using state resources, including security forces, to install his candidate.

He describes it as a situation where a godfather sits down with his wife “and writes down all who will contest the governorship elections… all the way down to the house of assembly positions.

“He writes these names before the primaries take place. And then if you’re not one of those candidates they make sure that you have no access to the venue [of the primaries].”

A Supreme Court ruling from 2015, however, declared the election in the state to be free and fair.

Image caption The APC rallies in Akwa Ibom have been packed this year

But “godfatherism” can get messy.

Onofiok Luke, now the speaker of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly, was one of Mr Akpabio’s former godsons.

A deeply religious man, he attributes his success in politics to God, but many would say he owes far more to his former godfather.

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Previously a personal assistant to Mr Akpabio, he admits to having received financial support for his wedding and 40th birthday, and that Mr Akpabio “mentored’ him through his rise in politics.

However the relationship has soured and the Akwa Ibom parliamentary speaker, who says he was offered $5.5m (£4.2m) last year and the deputy governorship to switch parties, does not hold back about what he thinks his former boss is capable of.

Image caption Godswill Akpabio has denied allegations he offered a bribe to one of his former godsons

“I have worked with him, and I know that he knows how to use state power.”

In a written response from his media team, Mr Akpabio denied all allegations against him, stating: “We understand that this is a season for campaigns and these wild and unsubstantiated allegations will be thrown about by opponents to gain political mileage.”

Battle of the hats

In a very different part of the country, the political future of the majority Muslim state of Kano in the north may also be defined by a larger-than-life godfather.

Image caption Supporters of Rabiu Kwankwaso wear red hats

Kano has the second-biggest number of registered voters in the country, making it a key state for either of the two main parties to secure victory.

Rabiu Kwankwaso, a former governor, has built a loyal and dedicated following there, partly built through a free education programme implemented during his tenure. Whichever candidate gets his blessing is guaranteed a lot of voters.

He even has his own political fan club, known as the Kwankwasiyya movement, whose members are easily recognisable in their uniform of red caps and white gowns.

He is backing Abba Kabiru Yusuf, a candidate from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), after falling out with a former ally.

On many campaign posters, Mr Kwankwaso’s image is larger than that of the PDP contender.

“In all the states you go today, especially in northern Nigeria, you’ll hardly get a house without a member of Kwankwasiyya, either the father or the mother or one of the children, or the worker in the house,” Mr Kwankwaso told the BBC.

In the last elections he successfully endorsed Abdullahi Ganduje, his former deputy for governor.

But since Mr Ganduje became governor, he has been locked in a bitter dispute with Mr Kwankwaso.

The feud is so fierce that for some time Mr Kwankwaso avoided the city of Kano where there has been an attempt to counter his popularity with the so-called Gandujiyya movement, whose members wear blue hats.

‘Question of ego’

As godsons become political players in their own right, it is inevitable that they fall out with their godfathers.

Image caption Rabiu Kwankwaso’s image is larger than those he’s backing on the PDP billboard (left)

Mr Ashiru says this is because in developing societies like Nigeria, the state is the most important source of revenue and wealth accumulation, which both will want to access to.

But it is also a question of ego, according to Emmanuel Onwubiko, from Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria.

“Some of the godfathers are not really out to get money, they just want respect, they want to be venerated if they come into the state; they want to be recognised as the most important person in that society,” he says.

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For Mr Ashiru this is a key problem with godfatherism: “Godfather culture is more about the individual than the collective.

“Democracy is about the people, but here you have a few individuals across the country who take critical political decisions, particularly that have to do with the recruitment of public officers.

“So it goes without saying that such a system cannot make democracy thrive.”

All the politicians I spoke to shied away from the term “godfather” as it has become loaded – associated with bullish tactics and undemocratic practices.

And as godsons gain their confidence, it is not clear how much longer godfathers will be able to keep their hold on power.

For Mr Akpabio and Mr Kwankwaso, it will not be long before they find out if their influence is waning.

[cepmurphy]

Lizard Country

The sun was going down and the laelaps – not that you called them that on this expedition, here they were “dryptosaurs” – were roaring in the distance, so it was time to get Professor Hatcher out of the saloon before he got eaten.

Matthew Edginton had been a pale, neatly moustached man two months back but Wyoming was leaving its marks. It was an Edginton with mud caked to his thighs who rode out behind the guide Broken Horns, four bullets between them and eyes alert for threat. The farther they got from camp, the drier it got and the ferns disappeared and the grass turned from green to sickly yellow to the full jaundice. A bit farther east, past the town of St George, it would be outright desert and a whole mess of impatient people waiting to move out west, once it was safe enough.

At the very edge, a lone male hadrosaur – adolescent, bruised; the loser of some mating ritual or herd conflict, but no less magnificent for that – was grazing. It bellowed as the horses passed, hit the ground with its tail, in the naïve belief it was chasing them further away. Edginton’s soul ached for it.

You know what’s farther east for you? It’s death. God or man, it’s coming for you.

Death was in town too. “Welcome to St George”, with dinosaur skulls nailed to it. Edginton and his friends had once found that quaint – Marsh, when he’d been there, had spat and thundered and almost got them shot – but now he curled a lip at it. (Marsh had been right but don’t tell him that.) Broken Horns showed no sign of caring either way, but that’s what he always looked like. It used to be Edginton thought injuns were just all like that, too different to not be inscrutable, but as the good people of St George scowled as he passed (‘least nobody was spitting this time), he knew Broken Horns just didn’t want the attention.

Marsh could thunder because he had money. Horns and him had butt all.

Due to Marsh, most of the time.

It was two minutes cantering to the saloon, and out came John Bell Hatcher, top Yale man and worldly, walking backwards with a pistol in front of him.

“Winnings, Mr Hatcher?”

“Two hundred,” he said, not looking away from the door even as he saddled up onto his own waiting horse. “I’d advise going to Argonaut to gamble for the next few days. Some people are sore losers.”

Argonaut was two hours further away and Edginton scowled because damn it, at the ‘frequency’ Marsh paid them, they’d have to ride it to eat and send telegrams. Marsh had the money to buy magazines and slander his enemies, he had the money to pay for fancy pictures of his expedition, and he had the money to send telegrams demanding “more,” but somehow it never trickled down to his team.

On the way out of St George, Hatcher swore: the hadrosaur was dead, shot through its head and the crest sliced off. Crests were an aphrodisiac for morons. And that was all anyone had stripped off the body. The waste made Edginton sick, even if he didn’t yell it.

The exterminators were back.

And likely sheltering in St George, intentionally making sure they took out a dinosaur that the scientists would see.

 Most people thought dinosaurs should be dead.  

There were a lot of reasons. Some even had a bit of legitimacy – they could menace smaller towns – but most boiled down to dollars. Dinosaurs stopped cattle grazing or mining. Dinosaurs stopped towns spreading. Dinosaurs stopped the manifest destiny of America.

Their habitat – the inland sea of Wyoming and its wetlands – was drying up and dying out, taking them with it. That meant God was hired for the argument. “See, the Lord is removing them now we’re here!” Killing a dinosaur sped things along.

Science said the dinosaurs had once lived all over the Earth. Mantell and Owen had even worked out that the big lizards of England, the squat iguanodon and wolf-faced megalosaurus, were the distant ancestors of dinosaurs. They now only lived in a few zoos like Crystal Palace or as the heraldic animals on the royal crest. America would soon follow.

That’s why Othniel Charles Marsh had whipped and cajoled and bribed Yale into this expedition, even putting his money up: the dinosaurs could die out in a generation and needed to be catalogued now, fast, before that happened. “The great scientific adventure of our time,” he’d said in a great meeting where Edginton, frustrated with book work, had decided he had to go out west.

The other reason Marsh did this was because his great rival Edward Cope was overseeing the United States Geological Survey and they were studying dinosaurs on the way. And Marsh was going to ‘win’.

In a few months, the Yale team had seen how the triceratops fought for mates and how their mates raised the young on the move, constantly searching for food and feuding for it. They’d heard how the hadrosaurs could sing and realised each herd had its own subtly different call, and on some days a concert would spread across the whole wetland. As great risk, they’d learned the gorgosaur existed at all and was a vicious rival with the laelaps (and how, in direct combat, the laelaps won).

They’d lost three men in the process, and come close to running out of food when they ran out of wages, and their native guides walked out once before until Mr Hatcher won a really big game.

All of the hardship was a price Edginton was glad to pay – not that he didn’t wish Marsh would pay – for the chance to watch those herds and hear those songs and gape at the battles.

   The camp was a fungal growth of army surplus tents, wagons, and skittish horses, where the campfires were in a circle around them to deter theropods. Gould and Barnes, who between them had enough hair for two normal people, were on night watch with half-empty shotguns. The beer was running low too, mainly thanks to Gould and Barnes (which is why they were on night watch).

Inside the circle was the usual bitching about pay and gushing about the work despite that. Earlier, Edginton had seen a young triceratops run right up to him and its mother come thundering after, coming within inches so she could nudge the infant away from him. Two inches between life and death. And even that story got trumped when Judas – actually Albert Allanson, but his father and grandfather had been Harvard heathens – said he’d seen something new.

Ruth Herts had seen it too. She was there for that, a high-society artist that Marsh had paid to document his expedition – she always got paid – and the only such artist to dare go out and do it. The lone woman, Ruth got her own tent because it was unseemly otherwise. When she wasn’t in earshot they all talked about how they’d like to get unseemly with her and Edginton joined in like he cared.

What he cared about was what she’d drawn: something lithe, hunched like it was about to pounce, feathered. (Feathered?)

And after that quick slash of a sketch, Ruth showed a more thorough sketch of what had once been a hadrosaur. This corpse had definitely been stripped for meat.

“I’m thinking of calling it dromaeosaur,” said Judas, meaning ‘running lizard’, “because those bastards fairly sprinted when we saw them.”

“From what they did to the hadrosaur, I’m quite glad they sprinted,” said Ruth, in the bright sunny tones of someone who wasn’t bright and sunny but had to fake it. Only Edginton noticed that, far as he knew. “I don’t think this painting will be good for polite society.”

Someone was going to crack a joke about why didn’t she paint anything girly, and Edginton jumped in first to keep it on dinosaurs: “If they sprinted, they must know what a human is, surely? Dinosaurs only seem to care if they’re familiar with guns.”

“Exterminators,” Barnes muttered darkly. “Wiping them out before we’ve even found it.”

“Nothing to be done about it,” said Hatcher, ending the conversation. “We’ll just have to beat them to the punch.”

It would be a truly stupid thing to go out at night to see what you could see and Edginton hadn’t even been drinking. Hatcher had made it clear how stupid it was, many a time. Even Marsh wouldn’t tell you to do it. And normally Edginton was level-headed. But the skulls and dirty looks in town, and the dead hadrosaur, and Hatcher’s damned acceptance – and Hatcher, he knew, must be burning too so how did he hide it? All that churned up inside him at once, making a fury better than drink.

Matthew Edginton was gonna go out and see something new before some bastard shot it.

   It wasn’t hard to sneak past the guards, not when Gould and Barnes were having a quiet debate on laelaps behaviour. It was harder to sneak past Broken Horns, who got up to go with him – “I am being paid,” was all he said. His tone and face could not quite hide that he knew, and knew that Edginton knew, that any dead Yale men on his watch meant he wasn’t gonna get paid. Edginton felt guilt that he was forcing a man along with his folly, but not enough to stop.

He tried to justify himself by describing Judas’ new find and was startled when Broken Horns swore in his native tongue. “Terror claws,” he said. “If we see them, you shoot on sight.”

“You know about them?”

“They’ve been seen, sometimes. They kill men.”

Edginton was rational enough to know that should scare him back to the camp but still drunk enough on fury to keep going.

At night you could see little and nothing you could see looked the same. The half-moon barely picked out the grass and the remaining trees, and a slumbering ankylosaur would loom out of the blackness like it had divinely planted. The roaring of predators ripped through the silence, and where could they be coming from? If there was a dromaeosaur and it was as bad as the guide said, would you ever have time to see it?

But Edginton went anyway. Somewhere in the dark was a new discovery, a new behaviour, a new anything related to these magnificent, doomed creatures.

The way the others talked about Miss Herts, that was how he felt. It burned. He had to consume it.

He was so wrapped up in this that he did, in fact, crash into an ankylosaur.

It was like being punched by a mountain. Edginton thought he could hear Broken Horns laugh (he briefly felt rage that the man would mock his bosses and then shame for thinking like a boss) but the beast barely snored. To this great, hulking mass of stone armour and leather hide, he was as nothing. These dinosaurs looked and acted like they’d been here since the second day of Genesis.

You could almost forget that he’d seen one shot dead in his first week, a look of angered surprise on its face and its legs shredded. Such a being should not die like that. It was against God.

That’s when someone fired a shot.

The ankylosaur noticed that.

Edginton dived on his back just before the beast reared out of its sleep, the great hammer on its tail coming around like judgement. It hissed – you’d expect a roar but you got a dull hiss – and slammed its tail on the ground, and when a second shot hit its armour, it charged in the general direction, too stupid to know this made it a better target.

Logically, Edginton should have run back to camp. The exterminators may not have noticed him, or maybe they’d hoped he’d be ‘accidentally’ killed, but neither option meant challenging them. His brain knew that but his blood didn’t, and he was running past the ankylosaur, off to wherever the damnable shot came from, swearing blood.

His revolver roared. His brain told him he should have waited for a clear shot. His brain also told him the ankylosaur was turning back towards him, mistaking that noise for its attacker.

Edginton threw himself through the bushes and then, on instinct, back the way he came. The ankylosaur was coming through as he was coming back, chasing phantoms. It would keep going until it assumed it had scared its foe off. So there his trip was justified: he’d got closer than anyone else and he’d saved it from bastards. It made the blood sing.

Up until Edginton found himself staring down a rifle barrel.

   “Y’all got no business being here.”

“I’m a scientist.”

“You’re an ass and a fool and a busybody. All y’are.”

The talker with the gun – there were two other guns in the darkness, silent, with vestigial men – sounded like a tired father reprimanding a toddler. His words stank of a man who was trying to sound more ‘frontier’ than he was. In the dark, all that could be seen was a beard.

“All we want is to go west and succeed, like is our right as Americans and men, what God has charged us to do. We just want what’s ours. These big lizards matter more than us? We had ta kill men to get this far and lizards matter?”

Broken Horns laughed. The exterminators had dragged him to Edginton at a gunpoint and the guide had looked, for the first time Edginton had seen, disgusted. He still looked disgusted.

“You never thought we were men.”

The rifle roared, petty and violent, and Broken Horns’ left foot ceased to be.

“You will treat us with respect!” said the beard, yelling to be heard over the screaming, forgetting his fake accent.  “Nobody has to die if you just leave! But you need to watch and listen!”

That was as trustworthy as Barnum in a poker game and Edginton knew it. Certainly, Broken Horns was likely to bleed out and the exterminators wouldn’t give a damn.

“I need to stop the bleeding—“

“He needed to learn!” As Broken Horns got control over his screaming, the lead killer lowered his voice, but he’d already said it all quite loudly. “Now you shut up and you’re going to watch us work and y’all are gonna tell the others to go away.”

“Professor Marsh won’t let us go,” said Edginton. “And if we just walked he’d only sucker someone else to replace us. Once all the dinosaurs are gone, he’ll send us to collect the bones. That’s what the Devil charged him to do.” And me, he thought but dared not say.

That shut the killer up. The other two guns and their men looked at each other. A blind man could see that they’d expected the soft brains of Yale to whimper and run in the face of threats from real men, and now that wasn’t happening they didn’t know what to do. Soon they’d resort to violence but Edginton found it hard to get excited, now he had their number (and now he was certain it’d be violence, he found he was no longer as scared of it).

“Broken Horns is going to die if you don’t let me stop the bleeding. Right now that’s all I want to do.”

He was calm, rock solid. There was even a slim chance the exterminators would give up in the face of confidence and if not, at least he’d die like he lived.

Then he saw a ghost appear behind the exterminators.

An eye caught the moonlight and shone hellish green.

He recognised the creature’s gait from the sketch.

Now he looked scared, and the exterminators relaxed because, of course, they thought he was scared of them. So now there was no chance. When the beard turned round, making some speech in which he clearly felt secure enough to turn his back, the dromaeosaur had slipped away. When he turned back, still in the throes of some cutting speech Edginton didn't give a piss about, the dromaeosaur slid back.

Another joined it.

Broken Horns began to mutter something in his language. He saw them too.

“When y’all see us kill your precious lizards, you’ll say: hey, you were right, they’re just lizards,” said the beard, ignorant of a second shape behind him. “What will you say?”

“Broken Horns, we may have to run, will you be able to—“

“The hell do you think you’re talking about—“

“—lean on me if we’re going to—“

“You arrogant bastard, do you really think we’ll—“

Broken Horns said: “Three, now.” The sign-song voice of fear.

The third dromaeosaur kicked the furthest man in a delicate sweep, and the man fell to the ground screaming. When the others turned, the second beast was already leaping and the second gunman fired wild before falling hard. The first was running right for the beard.

Give him his due, he recovered fast and swung his rifle butt-first at the dinosaur’s incoming head. With a dull thwack, it fell to the ground. His gun was back around and he was aiming for a headshot.

Edginton slammed into him from the side, or tried to but he never weighed that much. It was enough to jostle the beard and cause him to drop the gun. That was enough for the dromaeosaur to get back up on its feet, shaking its head, focusing eyes on the humans.

Behind it, flesh ripped and men stopped screaming.

“I can’t get my gun,” said the beard. “Please, get my gun. You can’t let it. My name is Sam, you can’t let it, you can’t—“

The dromaeosaur fell into Sam and his guts hit the ground before he did.

Edginton watched it all dispassionately, or so he wanted to think. The killings took ten seconds, average, but he was pretty sure the lead terror claw had started eating Sam before he was dead. After that, another twenty seconds.

I said I wanted to see, he thought giddily.

Broken Horns could hobble and Edginton’s ripped shirt served as an impromptu bandage, and the two shuffled as fast as they could before the predators thought of killing them too. Neither talked nor breathed too loudly.

   The camp exploded once they came back and it didn’t help when Broken Horns said “revenge” had happened. Hatcher was first to Edginton, eyes wild, demanding the story out of him. Ruth was the second, pencil out, and as Edginton talked he was dimly aware that the artist was drafting everything he said about the dromaeosaurs, three little slashes of granite stalking around a figure and one leaping, the monstrous claws on its toes raised.

He hadn’t even realised he’d seen that until he saw her drawing.

Hatcher heard it all and never broke eye contact.

All Hatcher said at the end was: “They got what was coming.”

He didn’t even ask if Edginton wanted to stay on with the expedition. That surprised Edginton because he was sure people would assume he was too rattled to go on, but Hatcher got it.

See something new before some bastard shot it. He’d done it.

Who wouldn’t want to see more?

#writing #Alternate History #weird west #dinosaurs #bone wars #dinosaur stories #short story