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m39 · 9 months

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Doom WADs’ Roulette Bonus Round: Perdition’s Gate

You know Final Doom, right? That compilation of two WADs (TNT: Evilution and Plutonia Experiment) that was published by id Software and sold for real money? People usually think that this is the only instance of WADs being commercially released?

But what if I told you... there is another.

B12: Perdition’s Gate

Main author(s): Tom Mustaine/Wraith Corporation

Release date: 1996 (day and month unknown)

Version played: Original with the ZDoom patch

Required port compatibility: Vanilla (ZDoom with the patch)

Levels: 32 (standard 30 + 2 set)

Yes, there were another two commercially sold WADs, both published by WizardWorks and created by Wraith Corporation and Tom Mustaine: Perdition’s Gate and Hell to Pay. Today, before properly kickstarting the Cacowards 2006 roster of WADs, we will focus on the former WAD that I just mentioned.

Perdition’s Gate started off as a creation of Tom and Bob Mustaine (Bob is Tom’s father). The former one called Shawn Green, asking him if this MegaWAD can be a part of the Final Doom. At first, Tom heard a positive answer, but shortly after that, he received the opposite of that. I wonder what happened? Was the floppy disk holding Final Doom too small to hold three WADs at the same time? Or maybe one of the WADs that became a part of this compilation took its place? We can only think.

So after that happened, Perdition’s Gate was offered to WizardWorks and they agreed to publish it. With help from Wraith Corporation (who were working on their own WAD called Hell to Pay), this WAD was finally released in the year 1996.

Now, folks, before I’ll start, I’ll try to review this WAD like it was typical stuff released in 1996 on the Internet (partially because it became abandonware at this point). Also, bear in mind that I played this WAD using a ZDoom patch that changes the names of the maps (this version of which I’ll use in the review), add some music and condenses the plot happening in the WAD from the text on the next level screens to some additional intermission type of ones.

So, without any further to do, let’s dive in.

The plot: After God-knows how many years of demons (that are actually aliens) attacking a shit ton of planets due to first fighting another ancient race of aliens who had teleporters (which includes a small visit to Earth in its ancient times), it is now four years after the events of the Classic Doom duology. Of course, the UAC chucklefucks hadn’t learn anything from what they did in the past and started making teleporting bullshit again. It all morphs into the typical fix shit created by the UAC type of plot.

For a MegaWAD from 1996, Perdition’s Gate looks rather good. It may not look as great as some of the WADs from 1996 that I played in the past like Dystopia 3 or All Hell is Breaking Loose for instance, but when compared to the WADs from Final Doom, I guess it looks as good as them, maybe even slightly better than those. I don’t know, I played these WADs years ago and I barely remember how they look.

The only major problem I have is how around half of the levels in the first episode don’t use the new textures. The new techbase textures look really dope in my opinion, so it really hurts when it's not used in the base portions of the maps.

The music (created by Tom Mustaine and L.A. Sieben) is also good. At least one of the tracks might be slightly too loud but overall, they are fun to listen to. My favorite ones were Pacemaker, Ruby Sutures, Pluck, ControlCV, and the one without a name that appears in Storage Areas.

Perdition’s Gate doesn’t really feel that complicated. While there are maps that have a high chance of making you stuck intensively looking for that one switch you missed (Devil’s Masterpiece being the biggest example), none of them came close to being complete moon-logic-filled bullshit. Give the WAD makers a couple of years; you’ll see what the moon logic is (Eternal Doom everybody? Herian 2?).

And while they are moments that by this point are frowned upon in Doom WADs (at least by me) like slow lifts (in like two maps), fighting in tight corridors, and pop-up monsters among other shit that was fine in the 1990s, I am somewhat forgivable of these moments since the WAD creators were still experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. And like I just said, in the 1990s, things that I mentioned were much more tolerable than today when you chronologically play WADs from the Top 100 WADs of All Time list and Cacowards rosters.

And without counting how the maps look, this WAD has some stuff that makes some of these stand out. Secondary Complex for instance has a reference to the original E1M3, with the room going dark after grabbing the key and getting ambushed by monsters.

Before exiting Central Portal, you can purify the neighboring teleporter by blowing up a bunch of Imps with teleporting barrels.

The first half of the second episode has for most of the time a gimmick of using the Overseers’ (that’s the race demons fought in the past) teleporters, where you end up on other planets to grab a key. In The Old Fortress, you even end up back on Earth, next to the same teleporter you purified four maps ago. Even the secret maps reference this gimmick, where you first end up defending a planet of living rocks before the demons focus back on you.

Later in Computer Center, you will notice a plain room where the exit is before transforming into a massive structure.

Also, the last level, Escape, is better than MAP30 from both Final Doom WADs since it’s not another Icon of Sin map (even though there are still summoning enemies in there); you just have to run to the exit in two minutes (which is enough time for this map).

Now changing the subject, if I had to describe how hard Perdition’s Gate is, I would say that it is somewhere between Evilution and Plutonia. While it does kick more ass than the former, it’s nowhere near the insanity of the latter. And despite having cheap difficulty spikes like being surrounded by hitscanners after teleporting among other things I mentioned earlier, I respect this MegaWAD for making tough maps without needlessly shoving hundreds of monsters at the screen to make it happen.

I think I experienced only one or two bugs while playing this WAD. The first one was in Last Stand, where some Hell Knights went waist-deep into the pillars they were standing on.

The second bug is related to the ZDoom patch. I feel like every second launch the new backgrounds for the map summary (along with the ending background) don’t change.

There is probably more stuff about bugs, but these are the only notable incidents that I encountered.

There is also a moment which more of a case of this WAD not aging well rather than an actual bug. It’s in Radioactive Sea, where the last area of this map visually breaks apart.

Perdition’s Gate has problems but overall, it’s just a fine WAD. It has a few highlights but I feel like most of the time it’s just an above-average WAD that got one chance for a million to earn money. I can’t be really that harsh for this WAD since it’s basically made by a father-son duo, but three are still other WADs released in 1996 that were better and more interesting than this one; not to mention that you had to pay for it.

If you want more stuff about this WAD, check Dean of Doom's review on it:

youtube

As for future reviews, after one day of a break after uploading this review, I’ll start making content related to the Cacowards 2006 roster of WADs.

I’ll see you all soon.

Bye!

#doom #doom wad #review #doom mod #doom 2 #doom 1996 #1996 #Perdition’s Gate #doom Perdition’s Gate #doom wads’ roulette #bonus round #Youtube

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jenakuns · 1 year

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Some thoughts on Relativity

So I've been observing the company of Relativity Space for a good while now. What originally got me in I think were the plumes + some cool numbers and I've stayed in since then. Main line of interest in space for new people is SpaceX, but if you are naturally a contrarian or feel some degree of dislike towards Musk, it can push elsewhere. There's a generic mindset in the community where people have a desire to feel neurodiverse so they obsess over one particular company or vehicle in space. I've seen it with Firefly, ABL, Rocket Lab, Astra, Blue Origin, ULA and Relativity among others (personally I want to be deep on Varda, but can't believe it over the competition (Delian don't let me down)). Of course launch is the most common because of their visibility + the interesting activity being condensed over a couple minutes instead of months/years*. I wouldn't count Virgin Galactic as those tend to be more stock types with a financial attachment rather than a social one.

*Capstone I know you think you're cool doing half a million flips in space and saving it, but I mean Astra once did a powerslide so you're never gunna compare.

Anyways, yes Relativity. See this would never work in any other format. Just me ranting. I couldn't make a youtube video or any reasonable discussion on a social media platform. But for you nutters on tumblr who will never read this because it's likely adjacent to your interest areas, it's just right. Maybe livestreaming, but I'm not quick witted enough for that.

So uh how do I feel about the company. It's hard to say because I'm so close and feel so removed. Is 3d printing worth it? Shit maybe idk. The whole mass increase + the massive effort it's taken to get them working in the first place just makes it seems like it was not worth the money. ABL was founded a year after Relativity and achieved launch before Relativity at a much more efficient capital burn. As is now with >1000 employees, Relativity is burning hundreds of mil and isn't making any significant revenue right now. They will need to do another capital raise in like the next year or 2. The thing I come back to is the ability to move onto brighter pastures with the printer. Terran R is what is needed to make the company work and not burn money like it was going out of style. So anything to make the move to Terran R easier is justified.

I believed large scale work on Aeon R began in ~2020, maybe a bit into 2019. So a clean sheet 1.1 MN methane GG engine being on test stand in 3 years is pretty good, although TQ-12 context*. Prometheus began in 2015 and got an engine on stand in 2022. And that's the first engine, we'll probably see >10 Aeon R doing things by years end compared to like 2 or 3 Prometheus. That was enabled by Terran 1 heritage. Will the same principle go for the rest of Terran R. The big question is inevitably the structures because that's where Relativity is doing their new thing. So how long till we see large actual real Terran R Stargate hardware. They wanted to do like 1 engine/week by June 2023. That would be like 30 engines by years end. If they manage that, then maybe a shot. Maybe Gustavo man was on the money.

*Tianque 12 is a 660kN methane GG engine that started in August 2017 and had an engine on test stand in November 2019.

I always feel like I'm moving the goal posts. 'The current product is alright, but this next one coming soon tm will be the real deal' and it's always the next one. Which I suppose is the point of iteration right, but I can't help but feel uncomfortable. Keep in mind I don't actually make these points to people, I mostly think through these arguments with myself and see where I end up. But if you can do tank structure prints on Stargate 4 sooner rather than later, first half this year, it's good. Tim Ellis has hinted that there will be reveals after the first launch. It's always weird, cuz they want like a dozen Stargate 4.0s by years end, each of which is capable of printing 4 Terran R's in a year. But then we look at hardware produced and it's feels nowhere near that.

And then we look at Rocket Lab who have the nice good mass margins with composite and the low pressure ORSC engines which will presumably be very reusable. Granted the last time a company tried the tack of we'll run ORSC methane engine but at lower pressures so we have plenty of margin on the reusable engine it didn't work out too well for them. But talent wise the industry is in a much better spot. If Rocket Lab are producing 1/2 mass tanks relative to Relativity, while not risking the entire company because they don't have crazy cash burn because of existing revenue because good company. Wouldn't that make Neutron just better/more attractive on technical level, and production rate doesn't really matter for reusable rockets. So why Oneweb go with Terran? Bigger? If Terran R isn't on pad before Neutron then Relativity have failed. Everything is set up for this dev program. Anyone with a rocket on pad right now is happy because launch is selling like hot cakes.

How will it do in this market? Maybe it's big enough. I feel like the commercial market projections are a meme and that there's going to be a bunch of satellite company failures and scalebacks that puts the launch back in place. Is Relativity able to survive the crunch. What is the schedule? Sadly it's the most irrational hater wins normally, but that indicates bankruptcy does it not. Because Relativity will not have money for like 2027.

November 2024 is the window for the Mars mission. Can they do it? No. But I wants to believe mister. But the irrationals shall have their domain. But what if... no. :(

Give me the organic prints Relativity and show me the journey was worthwhile. A dome with poor finish and features that are only necessary cuz it's being printed is not that. I want to see bones.

I like FTL soundtrack for writing these posts. Very soothing. I need to get a more diverse set though.

#Spacobs #relativity space #terran 1

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youremyonlyhope · 3 years

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Watching Hamilton

Eliza: I raise funds in DC for the Washington Monument. I speak out against slavery.

My mom: Wait, so she was against slavery?

Me: Yes.

Mom: ...AFTER letting slaves build the Monument?

Me: ...Okay yes.

#hamilton #hamilton the musical #eliza hamilton #eliza schuyler #i thought i made this post last year but i just went looking for it and apparently i didn't #so i'm making it now #it's hilarious that i listened to hamilton a billion times and saw it live and watched bootlegs for 5 years and yet #my mom pointed out that contradiction on her first watch after falling asleep halfway through #i literally was that '...ok fine!' meme when i realized what she pointed out lol #this is one of those 'we just condensed real people and 30+ years into one 2 hour musical so just don't think too hard' moments

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radiosandrecordings · 3 years

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I always feel... Weird? About TMA aus that are set at universities (not colleges please stop saying colleges-) because so much of TMA characters personalities is actually founded in their education, especially Jon and Martin.

I’ve read a fair few and they’ve mostly been enjoyable, but that’s because the author hasn’t really changed their personality in any noticeable way to match the change in setting, which is good! Because if you did adapt them, they’d be entirely different people. Aside from the fact that these are usually set when they’re written, so like 15 years after they’d actually have been to uni but I’m not as fussy about time discrepancy-

Anyway. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading S1 Jon’s personality as genuine or a front, either way we know he cares a lot about appearances and his own sense of self importance is tied to his productivity and general sense of academic-ness, fitting for someone who went to Oxford. Jon is always going to be a hard character to adapt for other settings because he goes through such a strong change as a character from one outward facing personality to another, regardless of if the latter personality had been under there the whole time. We don’t know much about him in uni, aside from it being kind of implied he was relatively straight-laced and nerdy as shown by Georgie’s infamous doubt that he could be on drugs. The adaption to a domestic university au where he and Martin have some form of meet cute is slightly easier to adapt for him than for Martin, as you could either go the extra mile and work out a way to condense his character arc into it from being an uptight prick into the softer character he is later, but it could also probably work if you just lifted his softer more casual personality into the setting and did some re-jigging.

The problem is more so on Martin’s part. Because so much of Martin and his personality are affected by the fact that he grew up poor and caring for his mother. He couldn’t go to university because he couldn’t afford it, and had to be a carer to an ill mother. That’s influenced so much of him and his personality. His nervousness, both real and feigned are a part of this, and it just feels very odd to me to sweep this massive factor in his life under the rug under the guise of it being a cute setting because it would affect his personality vastly if he had a different home life growing up that would allow him to go. You’re also developing a lot as a person in university (both because of the situation and more generally at that age), so by the time he gets to 30 like in later canon he would probably be quite different if he had gone to uni and more importantly, had a life that had allowed him to do so. And that’s not even getting into how if you truly wanted accuracy you’d have to reverse engineer the personalities of two people who are 27 when we meet them and working at professional jobs, into 18-22 year old messes.

This isn’t really about the fanfic aus themselves. I’m more just thinking a lot about how people and their personalities, and thus characters, are shaped by their life experiences and how much we can extrapolate about a character from small details in a story, and really the butterfly affect of how changing some things changes the entire context of their character and how those factors from a human.

#My Post #The Magnus Archives #thinking thoughts. a little bit of me is petty about fanfic a little bit of me is Experiencing University and want to think about tha t #Jonathan Sims #Martin Blackwood

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corisanna · 4 years

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Over 100 Years of Generational Pandemic Trauma with a Side of WW1/Depression/WW2 Trauma and Frugality: 1917-2020

This will be more personal than I usually get on Tumblr, but for some reason, I wanna share it. I wanted to put it in words with a bit of research as a way to process it and maybe get some other stories from other people.

...

So the other day, Mom and I were talking about illness and reactions to the threat of widespread, dangerous illness while watching pandemic coverage on TV. (Yes, we talk about weird social stuff a lot. A lot.) Mom casually said she and her sister were distressed every time they got even a little bit sick and tried to hide it from my grandfather because he seemed to react to illness with anger. Huh, we said, How odd.

“Maybe he was angry at the illness, not at you?” I guessed.

“Hmmmmmmm,” Mom said doubtfully.

So we were taking a break from talking and someone on TV brought up the 1917-1918 flu pandemic.

“Oh, hey, didn’t Great-Grandpa live through that?” I idly asked.

Mom blinked and went utterly still. After a minute of staring blankly, she said, “Oh. Oh.”

“What?”

“He wasn’t angry. He was afraid,” Mom said.

“Who? Oh, Grampa?”

Mom nodded, face in an expression of epiphany.

I started thinking. It turned into diving into family history and history in general.

Okay, so. Let’s back up for some context.

...

2000s back to 1950s back to 1940s back to 1930s back to 1914: Habits from World Wars and the Great Depression

First of all: I know for a fact that my mother, born in the 1950s, was raised on Depression/WW2 Era food frugality. My grandparents lived through both and were old enough to remember them; Grandpa was around twelve on Black Tuesday and Gramma was around two years older. Grandpa and his brother were in the military during WW2.

The things Mom was raised on:

Very simple recipes, all based on salty canned/jarred food that had been cooked to Hell and back. SO MUCH SALT. SO MANY PEAS. Grampa was especially focused on canned food; he likely ate mostly canned food when deployed and on kitchen duty. Treating sugar and salt like gold. Stretching meals that had meat with potatoes and gravy. A backyard pseudo-Victory Garden Gramma and Great-Grandma canned veg from and orange trees that Grampa obsessed over keeping healthy and productive; the garden was dominated by tomatoes to be stewed even into the 1980s and the obsessive care for the orange trees had them massive and healthy when I was a kid in the early 1990s. Butter was for holidays; the rest of the year was margarine (”oleo”). Leftover grease was strained and saved. SO MUCH JELL-O and relish IN SO MANY RECIPES, possibly because it hadn’t been rationed. (You know all those weird old 1960s-1970s recipes with gelatin and odd stuff? Look at when the recipe-makers were kids.) Did you burn your food nearly to charcoal? Eat it. Food was absolutely not to be wasted.

Shoes were to be worn until mending or tape couldn’t hold them together anymore. Weird little broken things were saved in a junk drawer as possibly useful for scrap-- broken rubber bands, screws from something that had broken, old keys, bent nails-- and metal cooking pans were to be used until they started ruining food. Boxes, scrap paper, newspapers, and magazines were to be bundled up and saved.

(source)

And so on.

For other rationing information, see the “Make It Do” tag on Sarah Sundin’s blog.

But my grandparents’ frugality goes back another generation. There was no formal rationing in WW1 in the US, but there were massive propaganda campaigns to reduce consumption of certain things. People were encouraged to have “meatless” and “wheatless” days. Weird recipes for “Camouflage Cookery” appeared.

(source)

WW1 “War Gardens” were the predecessors of Victory Gardens. Canning the produce from the gardens was patriotic. And so on.

My grandparents improved bit by bit as Mom grew and Grampa made more money at better jobs and the economy recovered. One of the first things they caved on was having coffee all day every day as some kind of personal victory, but still never with cream or sugar. Mom and I keep suddenly realizing some of their habits were tied to rationing.

Generational drift has kept a lot of those odd little habits. Mom hates vegetables that aren’t salty and cooked to floppiness. Eat freezerburned food because it’s your own damned fault it got freezerburned. Wear shoes until they fall apart and unless they are flip-flops that become 100% unusable, keep the worn out pair until our next pair of shoes wear out “just in case” the new shoes get damaged. Shoelaces are saved when the shoes get trashed. Clothes get ripped beyond repair? Fight the urge to save the cloth for “something.” Recycle things to near-obsession. “Waste not want not,” but for very specific things.

I explain all this to establish that we have already identified patterns in hardship coping mechanisms within our family.

Now we have identified another.

1917-1918 Influenza Pandemic

My great grandparents-- the parents of my maternal grandfather-- were European immigrants who lived in Chicago during WW1 and the pandemic. My other grandparents likely did, too, but I have very little information about them. My GGF’s occupation would be considered non-essential in modern times, but I’m not sure about 1917-1918. I don’t know what he did during that time; though I know there is a Draft Registration Card for him, I have no proof or anecdotal evidence that he served in the military. So he was likely home with his wife and baby. During a time of fear of bringing illness home enhanced by propaganda,

real(?) news,

(source)

and gradually escalating sanitary measures imposed by the local government.

(source)

So. Terror.

Mom and I talked about him. Obsessive about handkerchief use and washing. Strict standards for cleaning. He didn’t live with Mom’s family, so she doesn’t remember much else relevant. And Great Grandmother? She focused on the food and frugality.

But their son, my grandfather? Also obsessive about handkerchief use and washing. So unreasonably obsessed with cleaning that Gramma threw up her hands and said, “Then you do it!” and Grampa, a man in the early 1950s, did it without complaint. Silverware and dishes were never to be shared or used twice and must be washed immediately after use.

He was born during a pandemic and raised by a father who had to keep his family safe during a pandemic. And a world war. And the Great Depression.

How could my great grandfather’s parenting not be affected by all that trauma?

How could my grandfather not be affected by that parenting from trauma?

How could my grandfather’s parenting not be affected by all that trauma, plus trauma from serving in WW2?

How could my mother not be affected by that parenting from trauma?

Mom said she and her sister were distressed every time they got even a little bit sick and tried to hide it from my grandfather because he seemed to react to illness with anger. Huh, we said, How odd.

“Maybe he was angry at the illness, not at you?” I guessed.

“Hmmmmmmm,” Mom said doubtfully.

“Oh, hey, didn’t Great-Grandpa live through that?” I idly asked.

Mom blinked and went utterly still. After a minute of staring blankly, she said, “Oh. Oh.”

“What?”

“He wasn’t angry. He was afraid,” Mom said.

“Who? Oh, Grampa?”

The chain was greatly loosened by my mother, who was a sheltered white girl who literally didn’t know who Martin Luther King Jr. was until everyone started talking about his assassination because my racist grandparents and their social circle controlled her access to media about the Civil Rights Movement so tightly. (The deprogramming of all their underlying racism is a completely different YIKES discussion for another day.) Grampa didn’t serve in Korea, she didn’t have any brothers to get roped into Vietnam, they were very middle class when she was old enough to notice such things, she never really wanted for anything. Just lived a very privileged white girl life.

A charmed life until her mid-30s.

And she still inherited a lot of frugal and cleanliness/sanitation compulsions from my grandparents, which she then passed down to me. Diluted twice over, but very much there. And very useful, now that we are low-income and disabled but still live in a run-down but big house capable of storing extra stuff. If one or both of us has a flare and can’t shop? We just turn to the freezer and pantry and the garage cabinet. Because always having a month’s worth of food is... just how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?

Buy extra nonperishable food when it’s cheap whenever you can afford it. It’s better to have too much than to have not enough. Mind your hygiene. Wash, wash, wash anything that gets saliva or nasal discharge on it. Wash your hands before, during, and after food prep. Wash your hands in general. Grow your own vegetables and make sure they’re nutritious ones that’ll keep. Some things Are Not To Be Shared. Anything like double-dipping is a crime against humanity. Don’t lick the stirring spoon, or wash it immediately after if you do. Correct people who don’t cover coughs and sneezes and either make them wash their hands if they used them or do not let them touch you. If you get sick or poor or disaster/war breaks supply lines, you’ll be glad to have enough food to live on for a month. Buy extra nonperishable food when it’s cheap whenever you can afford it. It’s better to--

2020 Coronavirus Pandemic: Distilled Generational Habits and Coping Mechanisms

I still have the recipes Gramma carefully saved from the Eagle Brand canned, shelf-stable sweetened condensed milk that was given to her family by local welfare workers in the 1930s.

This is why when panic buying started in early March 2020-- before people started taking the possibility of long-term shutdowns seriously-- one of the first staples I went for was shelf-stable milk. I remember being surprised that there was so much of it on the shelf. Huh.

Fresh potatoes were gone, but the canned and dry/instant potatoes were untouched. Huh. Tons of Gramma’s recipes used “potato flakes.” Don’t they know that fresh potatoes have a much shorter shelf life? Huh.

Fresh tomatoes were picked over, but the canned diced/stewed/paste/sauce were still well-stocked. Huh.

Bread and bread products like tortillas were gone. The flour was untouched. Huh. I didn’t buy any because we already make sure we have a good amount of flour on hand. Same for salt, sugar, yeast, baking soda, and baking powder. Like, we have an in-other-times-(by-which-I-mean-January)-excessive amount of salt, sugar, and baking soda. Prepackaged bread crumbs were untouched; we still had a good amount of panko at home but I got two more boxes because they were BOGO and surely people would soon realize this was good to have for a bit of shelf-stable variety.

Buy extra nonperishable food when it’s cheap whenever you can afford it, Gramma may as well have whispered to me.

I should’ve bought dried split peas to make soup with the leftover ham hock we have in the freezer. They sold out the next week with all the pasta. Which I hadn’t even considered because Mom is diabetic and controls it through diet alone. Pasta is a no-no here.

I was so busy with sorting out *vague gestures* life in general during a pandemic that I delayed going through my seed stock; I didn’t realize some of my staple veggie seeds were so old because I started my garden so late last year that I just bought seedlings. I’m guessing seedlings are gonna sell out. So I was late to go hunting for seeds online, but now they’re in the mail. My usual tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers, and winter squashes, along with things I hadn’t seriously considered before: Green/soup peas. Black-eyed peas. Carrots. Onions. I usually try to grow fun things mixed in with staples but not this year.

Remember to use sunflowers as wind and sun breaks, Grampa may as well have whispered to me. In hot and sunny places, they can make or break a garden. I learned that the hard way when I moved out west. They bring the bees, too.

Okay. I can do this. Thanks.

Conclusion

That meme of the person going “wow I wonder what it would be like to live through a major historical event-- WAIT NOT LIKE THIS NOT LIKE THIS NOOO” has me thinking even more than it usually does. This pandemic has made me acutely aware of how “macro” history’s threads are woven into the “micro” history of my family. It has made me more curious; if we’re shut in for longer, then I may actually get to poke into Mom’s side of the family more. Gaining extra context for things fascinates me-- and could be a great distraction when I’m not able to garden. I’ve already learned a lot.

I really wish I could talk to my grandparents and great grandparents about this. I can already see that I am going to have some habits permanently ingrained in me as compulsions, the same as pandemic and economic disaster did for them.

And I really understand my grandfather’s difficulty controlling anger at an invisible, microscopic enemy and what it could do to your family.

The only difference? I have twenty years of therapy behind me as a tool. I hope that’s enough.

Because yeah, there is anger in my anxiety.

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heliosphoenix · 3 years

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State of the Planet: 2020 Edition.

I know what you're thinking.

"How can you even think of doing one of these for this year? After everything that happened? You can't possibly be trying to do your little feel-good writeup!"

Well...you're right. I can't. That's right, State of the Planet is cancelled.

I don't really have to explain why, do I? I have no words to describe this year and I know you don't want to hear them anyway. I understand your anger, your frustration, your sadness, everything you're feeling, I get it.

This wasn't the year you imagined and almost certainly not the one you wanted. Thanks for being there the entire way, and I'll see you next year.

Okay, I'm just kidding. I couldn't do that to you folks, I just wanted to get some more mileage out of a dead meme.

I first started this missive several years ago when I noticed that people were developing a tendency to condense the previous lap around the ol Sun into a series of terrible, horrible, no good very bad events at the expense of anything good that may have happened. I don't know why this was done, maybe as a ways to ensure that the coming year would have to be better by default.

Well...we all saw how that worked out for this year, didn't we?

As you all know I prefer to do things differently. I prefer to go out on a high note and remember all the good things that happened in the past year. If nothing else, I think it helps remind us that as much as we want to bemoan and be pessimistic about the state of our culture, society, civilization and even species, there's plenty of evidence to suggest we're not doing so bad after all.

And even thought it feels like this past year the world went out of its way to teach us some rather harsh lessons, I'm still determined to find something good that happened. So let's take a look back at some of the good things that happened in 2020:

A circumbinary planet was discovered at the TOI 1338 system.

Luxembourg became the first country to make it's public transportation free.

The Bhadla Solar Park became the largest solar park in the world.

The BepiColumbo space probe departed for Venus, en route to an arrival at Mercury in 2025.

A fast radio burst was detected from a Magnetar in the Milky Way, the first time such an event has been detected in the Galaxy.

A team of British and Kenyan scientists discovered a microbe that can block mosquitos from transmitting malaria.

A black hole was discovered in the QV Telescopii system, at 1120 light years away it is the closest known black hole to Earth.

A 425 million year old fossil of a millipede was discovered in Scotland, one of the oldest fossils ever found.

SpaceX launched their Dragon 2 spacecraft on its first crewed missions, the first astronauts to launch from US soil since 2011.

The Perseverance rover was launched to Mars and is expected to touch down in February.

The Barakah nuclear power plant in the UAE became the first operational nuclear power plant in the Arab states.

Wild polio was eradicated from the continent of Africa.

Skeletons of 31 prehistoric animals, including 200 mammoths, were found at a construction site in Mexico City, it was the largest finding of mammoth bones ever.

The 5.37 mile La Linea highway tunnel was opened in Colombia, it's the largest road tunnel in South America.

Kosovo, Serbia, Sudan and Bahrain all decided to normalize their relations with Israel.

Phosphine, a strong predictor of microbiological life, was discovered in the atmosphere of Venus.

Preserved remains of a cave bear were discovered in Siberia.

A 1634 edition of Shakespeare's final play, The Two Noble Kingsman, was discovered at the Royal Scots College's library in Spain.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed on the asteroid Bennu and collected samples for return to Earth in 2023.

The Falkland Islands were declared free of land mines.

Molecular water was detected near Clavius crater on the Moon.

An AI algorithm called AlphaFold was able to figure out the process of Protein Folding.

The UN commission on Narcotic Drugs removed cannabis from its list of dangerous drugs.

The EU committed themselves to reducing greenhouse emissions by 55% over the next decade.

A Great Conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn occurred, the closest one seen in the night sky since 1226.

Comet NEOWISE passed by the Earth and was the brightest comet in the night sky since Hale-Bopp in 1997.

Among Us became one of the most popular games in the world.

Half Life: Alyx was released, the first Half Life game in 13 years (FINALLY).

Joe Biden was elected as the 46th President of the United States.

Remember all that? Good. Because that's where I'm at.

You, dear reader, are in the future. Perhaps you're reading this in the final hours of 2020, or the first hours of 2021. Or maybe so much time has passed that both those years are now confined to the history books.

Perhaps everything I listed above is not enough to overcome all the bad things that happened this year, and that's a fair assessment. Maybe at the end of the day there's nothing that can overshadow the fact that someone in China who ate the wrong bat resulted in the entire world coming to a stop. If that's your feeling, then I understand completely.

But let the record show that those things did happen. In a year full of chaos and uncertainty and anxiety and dread, there were still moments where we could objectively punch our fists in the air and say "yes!" Even if only for a moment.

So now comes the part where I have to take all the things that we just went through and sum it up in a single word. Usually I don't think about this until the day of, but this time I've actually known for months what I was going to say:

The word is...Goodbye.

It sounds both strange and appropriate at the same time, doesn't it? As we close out this year, as well as this decade (reminder that 2021 is the real start of the next decade) we can look back and realize we've had many experiences. Both positive and negative. Hopefully they were mostly positive, even during this year.

But there is at least one experience we've all shared together, especially in times like these: saying goodbye.

I will confess to you all that I have a hard time saying goodbye. Hell, I don't even like the word. Whenever I end a conversation, I always use some variant of "see you later", since, to me at least, "goodbye" just sounds so final. Though with that said, I will also admit there's some people in this world that I had no problem saying goodbye to, and I don't mean "till we meet again", I mean "get lost." And I'd be lying if I said there weren't some people who felt the same about me, but I digress.

In the last episode of his show, Red Green delivered a monologue about saying goodbye. A monologue that I am now shamelessly ripping off for your reading pleasure. Not just because it's a way to get this done quickly, but because I think what he said is very true.

Red says that when it comes to your good friends and your family, you never really have to say goodbye. Why? Because they're always in your mind. And whenever you think about them, you're together again. I can tell you from experience that works rather well, even when it involves people that I don't want to think about. But even in that instance, where our last interaction was a negative one, I can't help but think back to all the good times we had together, and for a moment I reminisce. It's nice when it happens.

We've all heard the phrase "nothing lasts forever" and we tend to dismiss it as a cliché. But we're still constantly confronted with that reality, even if we never realize it. As Al Pacino said in Any Given Sunday; "When you get old in life, things get taken from you. That's a part of life."

We've all lost things in our lives, and I just don't mean toys that have been sold or people that we love who are no longer on this mortal coil. I'm referring to the moments in our lives where we're forced to accept that our circumstances have permanently changed, and that the way things were can no longer be the way things are. This is why you shouldn't be having kids when you're in your 70's, and no one over the age of 50 should be naked in public.

On a more personal note, this year I got that feeling once again. It's not just because I'm most likely leaving one job behind for another job, but there were things in my personal life that shifted so dramatically that I knew things could never be the same again. And seeing as how, for the most part, I liked how things were, I'd be lying if I said that this change didn't cause me some distress.

But that's all a part of growing up, isn't it? As much as I may cringe about reaching 30 years of life on this Earth, I accept it all the same. Because, if nothing else, it's a reminder that I need to keep moving forward. Is it sad that the good ol days are now just memories and dreams? You're damn right it is. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing, because even if they're not what's happening now, they still did happen. And who knows? Perhaps the days to come will be just as good, if not better. In my opinion, that's something to look forward to.

And the same is true for all of us: if we want to live a happy fulfilling life, we have to keep moving forward. We can reminisce about all the fun we've had in days gone by, but it's just as important to be ready for the days yet to come.

I think that's why New Year's is such a poignant holiday for all of us. It's a tacit acknowledgement that we have to say goodbye to the old, so we can say hello to the new.

And at the risk of making this entry so long that by the time you're finished it will be 2022, I'd like to do that now.

To all the people that have been with me since my early days, thanks so much for all that you've done. I appreciate you sticking it out with me this far and I hope you'll continue to do so for many years to come.

To all the people that I've met recently and have decided to join me on this ride, welcome aboard. We're glad you could make it and we hope you'll stay a while as well.

And finally, to all the people that are no longer here, whether they've merely left my social circle or left this mortal coil altogether, all I can say is that we've had a great run. Whatever our reasons for parting are irrelevant now and I wish you nothing but good fortune in whatever it is you decide to do. Perhaps, God willing, our paths will cross again some day. But even if they don't, I hope that every so often we'll think about each other and smile a bit.

And now I'd like to close with something different. Usually I ask you to comment below with something good that happened to you this year. You're more than welcome to do that. But if you're looking for a change of pace, may I suggest that you close out your 2020 (or open your 2021) by listening to this song from the great Ashleigh Ball and Michelle Creber (yes I know many of you are hoping to leave the Miniature Equines in the past, but I'm hoping you'll permit them one last indulgence).

https://youtu.be/XjkPH6sZM_o

This is the song that inspired me to write this missive (along with the aforementioned Red Green) and as you're listening, I want you to think about all of those you said goodbye to this past decade. Think about all the fond memories you had together and give yourself a smile as the clock strikes midnight. Even if they're not with us today, we still have all the memories of them that no one can take from us, no matter what happens to the world.

And now the time has come for me to end this missive. Let the record show that this was my final word on 2020 as well as my expressed hope for charity, kindness and goodwill to flourish throughout the world in the years to come.

So, good night unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we be friends

.And 2021 shall restore amends.

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solynaceawrites · 3 years

Text

Wires [4]: Frustration

Rating: Mature Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death Categories: F/F, F/M Fandom: Devil May Cry Relationships: Dante/Original Female Character(s), Implied Nero/Kyrie, Implied Vergil/Original Female Character(s), Implied Lady/Trish, Dante/Lirael Thorne, Dante/Lir Characters: Dante, Morrison, Nero, Original Female Character(s), Lirael Thorne, Lir Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Violence, Gore, Dark, Horror, Supernatural Elements, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Serial Killers, Angst, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut Summary: In Red Grave City, a serial killer stalks the streets. Lirael Thorne, recently transferred from Fortuna and looking for an escape from her past, winds up on his trail. Hunting him with her veteran partner, Dante Redgrave, they try to piece together the wires that bind the three of them together. In a race to catch him before he leaves more victims in his wake, the things thought buried will come to the surface, tearing lives and comfort apart.

»»————-　⚜　————-««

“Death and life are the same thing- like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. And still the palm and back are not the same . . . They can neither be separated, nor mixed.” —Ursula K. Le Guin

»»————-　⚜　————-««

Lir takes Simon Marson’s statement with a grain of salt. It’s not that she doesn’t trust him—she doesn’t trust lawyers as a whole, but nothing so far has given her a reason to believe he’d outright lie—just that she’s learned firsthand how memories get clouded and fuzzy, particularly about routines. Sure, their victim worked for him. And, yes, she probably did the exact same thing every day, going to her paid internship at her father’s office Monday through Saturday, taking Sunday off, and spending Friday night bar-hopping with her friends. Yet there’s simply too much Marson was unaware of. The questions of who her friends are, what she did when she wasn’t working, her hobbies, any potential lovers, hell even where she lived, are all ones he provided no answer to or understanding of. To him, Sophie truly existed only in the hours between 8:00 am and 6:30 pm. Which isn’t exactly unusual, but it makes her job of following those leads harder, and she ends their interview feeling more irritated than she had when she started.

Dante, too, must be frustrated, because he says nothing at all to her when he leaves the observation room to join her at their desks, merely clacking angrily on his keyboard as he types his report. Lir does the same, transcribing the interview with Marson and her notes to send to Morrison later. A stiff drink is what she needs, maybe a call to Joan for a bit of relaxation, but she settles for chewing aspirin and drinking the bitter coffee unique to precincts. By the time she’s done recounting the events of the last thirty-six hours, her fingers are stiff and the throbbing in her temples has turned into a fierce clawing that makes her eyes water, and she’s keenly aware of the fact that they’re fast closing in on the forty-eight hour mark and how much more difficult this investigation is going to be beyond it.

“You eaten?” Dante asks. Lir shakes her head, and he picks up his phone, dialing quickly. “Me neither. ‘Bout to keel over, if I’m honest. You good with pizza?”

“Sure. Whatever toppings are fine.”

He flashes her a grin before speaking into the receiver, and Lir uses the time to read back over Trish’s findings. They aren’t pretty. While there were no ligature marks, showing that Sophie was neither restrained nor strangled, there were heavy levels of Rohypnol in her blood, meaning she would have been unable to do anything at all. In fact, Trish notes that the dose probably would have been fatal, given the fact that Sophie was well over the legal limit for intoxication, clocking a BA of 0.16%, putting her at the threshold for alcohol poisoning. Did she normally drink so much? Lir runs her fingers over the paper, frowning slightly as she thinks. Joan hadn’t said much more about Sophie’s habits other than her cocktail of choice, and they hadn’t asked for a receipt, a stupid oversight that needs to be corrected. Because if that much liquor was’t common for Sophie, it means either she was drinking a lot more, which could lead them to recent stresses.

Or that the killer was feeding her margaritas all night to make sure she was too weak to fight him.

“There was no phone recovered from the alley, right?” she asks. Dante gives a grunt as he hangs up the phone, and she leans back, stretching to relieve the tension in her shoulders. “We’ve got to find her friends, talk to them.”

“What about the mother?”

“Gone. Parents divorced when Sophie was . . .” Lir checks her notes. “Six. The original custody agreement was for the mom to have supervised visitation, but she went no contact when Sophie was twelve. The last Marson heard from her, she was living with her new husband in Portland.”

Dante whistles. “No contact? Think Marson was abusing her?”

“Maybe. But why would Sophie hang around, if that was the case? You watch your dad beat on your mom for six years and wind up working for him?”

He grunts and leans back, crossing his arms over his chest and staring thoughtfully at a spot just over her right shoulder. “Abuse doesn’t always make it to the kids,” he says after a moment. “Sure, maybe pops was an asshole, but he was probably smart enough to keep it behind closed doors. Or maybe there wasn’t anything goin’ on other than two people who didn’t want to be together anymore.” He pauses to take a sip of coffee. “Could have been mom, too.”

“Right.” Lir massages her temples, and the pressure there subsides enough that she no longer feels like her eyes are going to burst. A migraine is the last thing she needs right now, but that’s exactly where she’s headed if she doesn’t get some sort of rest soon. “So, we have a victim whose father knows nothing about her personal life, a killer who was smart enough to make sure we couldn’t trace her beyond the bar, and, after nearly forty hours, no real answers.”

“Sounds about right.” Dante’s grin is bitter.

“Fuck.” She drums her fingers on her desk. “Crime scene still roped off?”

“As far as I know. You plannin’ a visit?”

“Yeah. I need to get some air, and I want to take it in now that it’s quiet.” Lir grabs her coat from the back of her chair as she stands, sliding it on before leaning to open her desk and grab her gun and badge. Fastening them to her belt, she mutters, “Maybe something got missed.”

Dante gets up, stretching with a loud yawn. “Alright. I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t need—”

“I’m not babysittin’ you, Lir.” His eyes are somehow both grave and mocking, and she’s not sure which irritates her more. “There’s a killer. None of us should be goin’ out alone, especially with the statistics about who else might show up there to get their jollies.”

That gives her pause. “Right. Okay. You driving?”

He dangles his keys. Lips twitching, she turns and heads down the stairs and out to the lot, listening to the quiet thumping of Dante’s shoes as he follows her. For someone so big, he doesn’t make a lot of noise when he moves, and she wonders idly if it’s a force of habit or just how he is as she slides into the passenger seat of his car and fastens her seatbelt. Like always, he flicks on the radio and finds a classic rock station before starting the drive, and he ignores her popping two aspirin into her mouth and chewing them dry.

The ride back to the alley passes in the silence between them. Lir looks out of her window, the rain sliding along the glass turning the world outside to a muted painting of blurred shapes and bright flashes of color on an otherwise dreary background, and thinks. Sophie Marsons had gone to the bar, as was her usual weekend habit, and ordered her preferred drink. Had she gone with friends? Had they danced, and laughed, until a stranger stole into their group, with eyes only for Sophie, eyes full of murder that she might have mistaken for desire? Despite what she had said to Dante about their victim being chosen randomly, Lir has little doubt that she knew her killer. Statistics point to it, the inevitable need for the comfort brought by familiarity that a new killer needs to do his work. Statistics, the voice of her old academy instructor rasps in her mind, are statistically incorrect.

If Sophie wasn’t the first, then there’s another victim out there.

Cold, bitter rain lashes her as soon as she steps out of the car. Huffing, watching her breath condense and twist in the air, Lir pulls her hood up around her face and tucks her hands into her pockets, wishing she had a slicker even if the garish yellow color of it would make her stick out like a sore thumb. Dante joins her, grimacing as he sets a black trilby on his head, water dripping from the brim steadily. “Good thing we already got forensics,” he mutters.

“Mm.” Making a non-committal noise in her throat, she ducks under the crime scene tape and walks into the alley, where she stands and takes it in. Without pedestrian and vehicular traffic on the street, it’s unnervingly quiet; is this how it was at four in the morning? Nothing but silence as the dull oppressiveness of the city while Sophie was carved open like livestock?

Lir is moving towards the dumpster when something rustles behind it. Pausing, she stares at it, her brow pinched and her hand moving slowly to her gun, waiting. Cat, she thinks, or rat. Something digging for scraps now that humanity has gone away. But the silhouette she can just make out on the other side is too large, and, as she watches, a tanned hand grips the edge before a rain-soaked head pokes cautiously around, the eyes that she sees wide enough that the whites are like spotlights. Behind her, she hears Dante hiss, the faint splash of water as he slowly comes up beside her. Looks like he was right. Someone else had shown up, and now all that’s left to do is figure out whether or not they’re the murderer.

“Police,” Dante barks. “Don’t move!”

The man jumps to his feet and takes off, and Lir lets out a string of curses as she darts after him. They always fucking run, guilty or innocent, because seeing a cop always makes them feel like they’ve done something wrong. Bearers of bad news, thugs with guns, she’s heard it all, and she wonders how this guy thinks of the police even as she chases him down the winding alleys of a city she’s already growing to hate. “Thorne!” Dante shouts, his voice dwindling as the distance between them grows. “Goddamnit, Thorne!”

Up ahead, the black coat swirls as the man rushes through the maze. Sometimes all she has is a glimpse of fabric as he turns a corner, others, on the straight, narrow stretches, she can make out more of him, and her mind catalogues these snapshots. Slender build. Dark jeans. Heavy boots. The glint of a ring. A pair of wild eyes peering over his shoulder. Despite knowing she should draw it, Lir leaves her gun holstered. Don’t you ever, her instructor had said gravely, take that thing out unless you intend to shoot, and she’s got no desire to fire a bullet that would at best embed itself harmlessly into a wall and at worst ricochet and cause more damage.

Her hood falls back, rain plastering her hair to face and neck. In her chest, her heart is a drum, and her blood roars in her ears, equaled only by the low whistle of her breathing as she tries to control it to fight off fatigue. Keep moving, she tells her legs, don’t fucking stop until you know who he is.

At her hip, her radio crackles, only to be ignored. Right now, it is only her and her prey, locked in the chase until one of them is forced to stop. Guilty people run, sure. So do frightened ones. Which is he? Killer or morbid onlooker, dangerous or afraid?

Lir never gets the chance to find out. They burst into a side-street, the cars around them blaring horns of fear and anger at this sudden intrusion, and a hand clamps onto her shoulder and yanks her back as a truck passes through the space she’d been about to step into. By the time it and its trailer clear out, the man is gone, and a scream bubbles in her throat that she fights to swallow. She knows who grabbed her—the scent of Dante’s cologne, muted by the rain, wafts into her nose, accompanied by the spiced, salty blend of sweat and deodorant—and she allows him to lead her back to the sidewalk, where she doubles over with her hands on her thighs and struggles to slow her breathing from the harsh, jagged pants to something close to normal. At this angle, she can make out the way water has turned the leather of his shoes a dull brown. Never gonna look nice again, she thinks, and closes her eyes against the swell of nausea that comes from exertion on an empty stomach.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Dante growls, his voice rasping and hoarse from chasing her. “You ever stop to think for a damned second that we’d need backup? Or that chasing that idiot could have gotten you killed?”

The scolding makes her angry all over again. “I’m sorry,” she snaps, straightening to glare at him. “Should I have let our only lead so far go?”

“If it meant surviving? Yeah, you should’ve. Or were you hoping to wind up like Marsons?” His eyes are cold with fury, his cheeks flushed with it. “I told you, I fucking told you—”

Lir’s phone rings, cutting off whatever tirade he’d been heading towards. Scowling, she answers it. “Thorne.”

“You with Redgrave?” Morrison asks, crackling with static.

“Yeah.” Dante makes an impatient motion with his hand, and she holds up a finger in the standard request for a minute of silence.

“Get your asses over to Tellula Park. He’ll know where it is.”

There’s something so foreboding about Morrison’s tone that Lir knows the answer to her question before she even asks it. “What’s there?”

Morrison sighs. “Another body. Looks like our killer didn’t want to wait for us to catch him.”

“We’ll be there.” She hangs up, then looks at Dante, frustration and defeat welling within her to make her voice curiously flat. “There’s another victim in Tellula Park.”

Dante curses. “Our guy?”

“Morrison said it was,” she replies.

He glances around, studying the street sign at the intersection. “C’mon. Car’s about two blocks away. We’ll have to book it if we don’t want Morrison to rip us new assholes for taking our sweet time.”

Lir nods. Dante turns and starts down the sidewalk, and she follows, craving a drink and a good night’s rest and maybe a bit of company, angry to have wasted time on some idiot onlooker when the killer was busy leaving them another corpse, another family to notify, another twisted web. I didn’t know, she thinks, and that just makes her feel worse. Tunnel vision, that’s what she had fallen into, too focused on what was in front of her nose to take a second to really contemplate if a killer who took such care not to be noticed would have been so stupid as to come back to the scene of his crime in the middle of the day with cops still around.

They’re sweating and miserably damp by the time they reach the car. Dante pulls towels from the backseat for them to sit on—something her father had done, to keep water from damaging the seats—and turns on the heater to fight some of the chill. It’s only once they’re on their way to the new scene that he says anything at all. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Lir’s head snaps towards him at both the words and the sympathy within them. Not that it’s unusual for cops to know how their partner feels, but usually that takes years of working together, not days, so either he’s particularly good and reading the people around him or he’s projecting. “What?”

“The new victim,” he explains. “Wasn’t anything you could have done. We had and have nothing to go on, and you chasin’ that guy didn’t get this one killed. Or,” his mouth twitches, “do you think you’re better than every other cop on the force?”

“Of course not,” she protests hotly. “I just . . .”

Dante cracks the window and lights a cigarette that he pulls from the pack in his door. “Look,” he says, exhaling smoke, “I get it. You’re new, gotta prove yourself, and this guy is a pain in the ass. But you ain’t got any control over him, or what he does. Only thing you can do is learn, be better, so you can catch him.”

It’s spoken in the same tone he might have used to console a weeping toddler, and she bristles. “You don’t know me.”

“No, but I read your file.” He glances at her as he tosses the cigarette, still half-lit, out of the window. “You know what was top and center on the behavior section? Empathetic. You feel things, Thorne, feel ‘em deep, maybe, and that’s great for gettin’ inside the head of whoever’s doin’ this, but it means he can get inside your head, too, if you let him.”

She sinks into her seat, thinking of her dream, and gooseflesh breaks out across her arms despite the warm air blowing from the vents. “So what’s your drive, then? Fame? Promotions?”

Dante snorts. “Nah. Just don’t like bastards who hurt women, that’s all.” He pauses, then exhales slowly. “Look. I’m not gonna rat you out to Morrison. You made a decision that anyone else would’ve made. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fucking stupid decision, but . . . It stays between us. Right?”

There’s a rush of gratitude that she hates feeling. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Okay,” he agrees amicably.

#dmc #devil may cry #dmc dante #dante #dante sparda #dmc oc #lirael thorne #lir #dmc fanfic #dmc fanfiction #writing #story #myfic #wires

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let-it-raines · 4 years

Text

Catch Me If You Can (38/40)

298 days. That’s how long Killian Jones was away from a baseball field. It’s less than a year, only part of a season for him, but it might as well have lasted a decade as he alternated between physical therapy and spending an excessive amount of time sitting on his couch.

But then he came back and won the World Series.

It’s something no one saw coming, and it’s certainly not something anyone who knows about his arm would predict. Now it’s a new season with new possibilities, and anything could happen. On-field reporter Emma Swan will be there to cover it all even if she is not his biggest fan right now.

Asking her out live on-air will do that.

Rating: Mature

a/n: Thanks to @resident-of-storybrooke for being my beta, @imagnifika for the cover art, and all of you for being awesome, whether you read this story or not ❤️

AO3: Beginning | Current

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-/-

The thing about being a starting pitcher is that Killian rarely plays. It’s every five days usually, and Killian is too competitive to simply be able to sit and watch while everyone else gets to be out there on the field. If it wasn’t absolute murder on his shoulder, he’d be in Al’s office every damn day asking why he can’t be out there.

Understandably, having to watch his teammates play without being able to help has been killing him more in this past week than it did while he was out on injury, and that was actual hell.

Rob did a fantastic job that first night clinching the first game for them by making it nearly impossible for the Dodgers to get on base, and Killian, while he didn’t play his best, pitched a good enough game and had help from Eric’s three-run homerun for them to win the second. It’s simply that everything after that has been a bit of a nightmare.

They lost two incredibly close games in a row in California to tie things up, won the next one, and now they could clinch the entire Series at home in New York.

Tonight.

With Rob pitching and Killian sitting on the bench.

And as much as Killian would love to get to be an active part of it all like he was during the winning game last year, he would give absolutely everything for them to win tonight so that he doesn’t have to get up on the mound tomorrow. The pressure and desire and want is so damn intense that it makes Killian’s heart ache, but he knows that this isn’t really about him. No part of him could be selfish enough to want to lose today so that he could have the possibility of the glory tomorrow.

That would be ridiculous, and he doesn’t know what the hell he’d do if he wakes up tomorrow morning with a stiff shoulder and he’s got to get out there and play.

Sighing, Killian stretches out his legs to the seat in front of him as a whisper of wind whirls through the stadium to bring in the late October chill. He fiddles with the sleeves of his sweatshirt, pulling them down to cover his wrists where chill bumps are rising, and he wishes that he had a hat on to protect himself from weather, his ears likely red from the cold. It’s only seven in the morning, most of the stadium completely empty except for the maintenance crew and a few people in the offices, but Killian knew that this would be his only time to take it all in with no one around him.

An empty stadium is nearly as magical as a packed one.

He’s spent his entire life building up to things like this. Sure, there were times when he had other goals. He wanted to be a teacher, wanted to get his degree and help others, but that was always the fallback goal. It was never the main one.

Baseball has been his life.

Lately, though, Killian’s been thinking about life outside of the game more than ever. It’s insane because he feels like he’s one of those obnoxious people who only lives and breathes baseball all the time, especially with what’s going on right now, but his mind has managed to find a way to wander elsewhere.

There are saved searches on his phone about going back to Vanderbilt to finish his degree and a sent message in his email to an advisor asking if it would be possible for him to finish in New York instead of having to take classes in person. He hasn’t told anyone that he’s thinking about it, not yet. Telling someone makes it real, and Killian’s not entirely sure that he wants it to be real quite yet. He’s a grown ass man, but change is still terrifying when he’s grown comfortable in his life.

Baseball isn’t forever, though, and while he may still work in the sport later on, he’s not going to be someone who goes throughout his entire life living out the glory days through memory.

Tonight, might be another big moment that defines his life, but the past six months have been pretty life changing as well. Hell, the past year has been.

Things are changing in ways that he wants and ways that he doesn’t, and that’s simply how it is.

“So, we woke up at the ass crack of dawn so that you could sit out here all by yourself?”

Killian twists his head to the side to see Emma standing a few seats over dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, scarf wrapped around her neck and Yankees cap on her head. He was so wrapped up in his own mind that he didn’t even hear her move toward him.

“Hey, love,” he smiles, reaching up and holding out his hand so that the cool tip of her fingers touch his as he intertwines their fingers while she settles down into the seat next to him and props her feet up on the seat in front of her. “I told you that you didn’t have to come with me.”

Sitting here reminds him of another time in San Francisco when he put his heart on his sleeve and willingly handed it over to Emma to crush before they decided that they would give the two of them a go and simply see how things worked out. If she had said no that day, he could have listened. But damn is he glad that she said yes.

Or, well, technically, he was the one saying yes.

Either way, everything in his life shifted.

“I know, but you get all moody and introspective, and I didn’t want you psyching yourself out.”

“I would not do that.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Just a little bit.” His hand flexes against hers, shifting his fingers the slightest bit so that he can get a more comfortable grip on Emma’s hands. “What have you been doing while I’ve been sitting here being introspective and psyching myself out?”

“I was taking some pictures. It’s kind of cool to see the calm before the storm, you know? And then David called me with some work stuff and to give me shit about us making out being all over Instagram, so I sat on a bench and talked to him for awhile.”

“He called you this early? Is he crazy?”

“I think David forgets that not everyone wakes up this early, and he has no qualms about waking me up. Usually I’m much meaner to him.”

“I’m surprised you’re not being mean to me.”

“The coffee we had at home really works wonders.”

Killian almost opens his mouth to say something about Emma referring to his apartment as home. But only almost. They’re both aware of the living situation, have joked about it to each other and others before, and they don’t need some kind of official discussion about things. It’ll all happen naturally, and when the time comes, they’ll talk about it. For now, things are perfect just as they are.

Life has been crazy with his injury and then Walsh and Brennan and the aftermath of them being absolute assholes. It’s gotten crazier with the World Series and how much press he’s now getting, both for the games and for his relationship with Emma, much of which is now weirdly being caught on camera. All Killian really wants is a bit of normal here.

The sun continues to rise in the sky, darkness shifting into an orange glow that will eventually turn into bright sunshine that makes it difficult to see without a pair of sunglasses perched on his nose. The grass on the field is wet with condensation, water coating the blades, and if it wasn’t freezing out there, he thinks he’d go out and sit along the edge of the back wall instead of in a stadium seat.

Bringing Emma’s hand to his lips, he presses a kiss to each of her knuckles before pulling their joined hands back down to rest on his thigh.

“I think,” he starts, not entirely sure where he’s going, “that I could stay out here forever. I don’t know…maybe I feel things too deeply compared to everyone else, but this place has always felt like home. I can’t imagine what things would be like if I’d been drafted somewhere else or if I’d never been called up at all.”

She hums next to him, and Killian looks down to see Emma’s thumb rubbing across his knuckles like she always seems to do. “What’s that thing you’re always saying? There’s no such thing as ‘what ifs.’ Not in life and not in sport. What happened, happened.”

“Doesn’t keep me from wondering.”

“It doesn’t keep anyone from wondering, twenty-nine.” Her hand squeezes his again, and Killian’s mind dares to ask once more what his life would be like had he not met Emma. It’s a question he doesn’t want an answer to. “What if my parents had kept me? What if Ruth had never decided to foster a shitty teenager with an attitude issue? What if I had never met Neal or Walsh or Ruby or anyone who has impacted my life they the way they have? What if I never met you?”

“You’d be missing out on the best sex of your life.”

Emma knocks her foot into his as he snickers at his own awful joke. “You’re full of yourself.”

He shrugs. “It happens. And I know. I’m just – my stomach has been in knots over all of this for an entire month. I’m not sure my body is going to make it ten more hours. Or hell, possibly even thirty-six. I’ve had to hype myself up for all of this, and I’m a little…fuck, Swan, I’m exhausted and excited, and I’m scared I’m going to have some kind of adrenaline crash.”

It’s Emma’s turn to bring their hands together so that she can brush her lips over his knuckles. His heart stutters at the movement.

God, he loves her. It’s actually insane how much. Truly, it shouldn’t be possible.

“For one, getting up and coming to the stadium before the sun even fully rises is not something that’s going to help with your exhaustion.”

He twists his head to look at her, and she’s got mischief in her eyes and a smirk stretched across her lips that he has to kiss away. She still tastes like coffee.

“Also,” she whispers against his lips, kissing him again, “you’re not going to crash. Not yet. I know you’re really big on not riding on what happened last year, but you’ve got to do that. You’ve been through this before, and you made it. Those butterflies in your stomach are being felt by everyone who’s involved with this team, and hanging out by yourself the entire time isn’t going to help things. Why don’t we go get breakfast together? Or maybe go back to bed?”

“How about a game of catch?”

“What?” Emma laughs as she pulls back from him with furrowed brows? “I am not playing catch with you. Are we five?”

Killian shakes his head and chuckles as he stands from the seat and begins to stretch his shoulders out, letting go of Emma’s hand and rolling his shoulders back as he laughs at himself.

“We’re twenty-eight. I know you remember your birthday last week. And come on, Swan. I play a game of really expensive catch for a living. It’s part of my job to work on my arm today, just in case, and I need a practice partner.”

“That’s what Will and Eric or August are for.”

“Yeah,” he smiles, reaching forward to tug her up only for her weight to go dead so that he can’t move her, “but they’re not here. You are.”

Emma closes her gaping mouth, and her lips move in different directions while her nose scrunches up so that little crinkles appear around her eyes under the shade of her hat. “Okay, but if there’s one misogynistic quip about me throwing like a girl, I’m breaking up with you on the spot.”

“There’s nothing wrong with throwing like a girl, Swan. It’s pretty badass. But there’s something wrong with throwing like shit.”

“I’m not going to throw like shit.” Killian starts walking over the chairs, easily maneuvering through the stands with Emma following behind him. “But I ask you to remember that while I pride myself in my fitness, it’s in things like Pilates and running or boxing. It’s not in baseball. You, meanwhile, do this for a living.”

“These sound like a hell of a lot of excuses.”

“That’s because they are.”

“There’s no excuses in baseball.”

“I thought it was crying.”

“Fuck no,” Killian scoffs. “There’s a lot of crying in baseball, and anyone who tells you something different is a liar.”

“I can’t believe you just called Tom Hanks, America’s sweetheart, a liar.”

They have to go back through the tunnels to get a bucket of balls and some gloves as well as a few towels to wipe the grass in the bullpen down since it’s wet and neither of them are wearing the right shoes for this, but they do eventually get to the point where he can lightly toss the ball back and forth between the two of them. He’s not going to pitch at full speed, not until he has Will later, but it’s soothing to simply be out here getting a little movement in. He’s been back for two weeks, practicing for four, but it’s still all brand new again to him and shaded under a light that wasn’t there before.

Emma isn’t bad at all. She’s actually rather good, a natural some might say, and he jokes with her that if sports broadcasting doesn’t work out for her, she might take up a career in this. Naturally that gets him an eye roll or two, but she keeps on throwing until the sun is high in the sky and the day has truly begun.

Killian’s ready for it.

Everything seems to pass quickly then. The entirety of the Dodgers team walks out onto the field for their scheduled practice while he and Emma are still messing around in the bullpen, somewhere between still doing a bit of practice and Killian backing Emma up against the wall to make out with her. No one sees them, though, the loud blaring of music startling the two of them away from each other, and Killian presses Emma a little further into the wall while he buries his face in her neck so that he can muffle the sound of his laughter.

He’s not entirely sure that works, especially when Emma is doing the same, but they eventually manage to grab their things and slip inside so that an entire professional team isn’t aware of the fact that he was using the early morning stadium to kiss his girlfriend.

That would certainly have been something.

There is an actual practice that Killian has to attend today, an hour of which needs to be spent with him running on the treadmill and then getting massaged by Archie to work out any knots and kinks in his shoulder and to make sure that it’s not inflamed. Killian is always terrified that he’s going to be told that his shoulder is inflamed again and that he won’t be able to play on a day where he thinks he’s going to be able to. That would completely screw up the lineup, and…No, now isn’t the time to think about that.

Killian tells Emma that he’ll see her later, that he’ll probably come bother her wherever the network has her sitting even though he’s splitting the time in the game between the dugout, the clubhouse, and the suite where his family is going to be sitting. She has to go home and get ready for the day, and even if she didn’t, he very much doubts that she’d like to stick around and watch him run.

And then they’re both off.

Let the game begin.

-/-

“Are you guys going to win today?”

Now, that’s the question of the day, isn’t it?

Killian looks down at Roland who is dressed in head to toe Yankees gear, all his dad’s of course, and there’s a nervous smile on the kid’s face. Roland is almost never nervous. He has that childlike faith in everything even with all of the tragedy in his life of having lost his mom, and he nearly always believes that things are going to work out. There’s no good or bad, just the belief that things will work out the way you want them to simply by the power of wanting them to.

If only it were that simple.

“I don’t know, lad,” Killian answers honestly as he reaches down to pick Roland up, easily putting him on his shoulders as Killian walks him down the hallways to the suite he’s staying in for the game. Roland was in the clubhouse for all of the pre-game celebrations, and the kid heard and saw things that he probably didn’t need to hear for several more years.

A decade, really. Maybe two.

Yeah, definitely two decades. There was some creative swearing.

“Why not?”

“Well, because we can’t predict the future, and the other team is really good too.”

“But I want to win.”

“Me too,” he sighs as he pushes open the doors to lead to the suites. “And everyone is going to try their best. But you know what?” “What?”

“I think if you cheer extra hard, it might help your dad out, okay? He might lose because the other team is good, but you’ve got to cheer him on no matter what.”

Roland’s ankles hit against Killian’s collarbone, and Killian pretends that the bony lad doesn’t hurt like hell when he hits him. “I can cheer really loud. Like, Grandma says that it makes her ears hurt.”

“If you’re not making Grandma’s ears hurt, you’re not cheering loud enough.”

That sentence pretty much sums up why he’s the best uncle in the world, Killian thinks. It’s basically the equivalent of giving kids a pint of ice cream right before they go back to their parents.

Killian pushes open the suite doors and ducks down underneath them so that he doesn’t knock Roland out. Everyone is situated on the couches and around the tables in front of the TV, and no one pays him any mind as he puts Roland down so that he can run to where Addy, Lucy, and Leo are. He imagines that between the four of them, they’re going to make everyone’s ears hurt from their screaming.

Maybe Killian will go spend time sitting in the dugout instead of in here, but it’s a long game. He’s got time to move around as long as he does make time to study Robin’s throwing patterns against each batter.

“Hey,” he murmurs to Elsa in the kitchen area while she pops a chip into her mouth. “I don’t know that it’s good that you’re playing hooky from work and letting the girls do the same with school.”

“Shut up,” she says in between crunchy bites of food, her hand covering her mouth. “You think that joke is funny every time, but it’s not.”

“It is.” Killian dips his head down and presses a kiss to Elsa’s cheek. “But I fully approve of the skipping work thing, especially when your husband’s lazy ass took the entire week off.”

“He’s supporting his baby brother.”

“Younger, Els. Younger. I don’t need you encouraging that.”

Her bottom lip sticks out. “But it’s so fun to see your ears get all red with embarrassment.”

“Every single thing I’ve ever said about me being glad to have an older sister in you and Anna? Yeah, I’m taking all of those back.”

“You can’t.” She swipes another chip through the dip. “They’ve been said, and I keep them all in my heart right next to where Addy told me that even if she got to choose her mom, she’d still choose me.”

“Classy.”

“I know,” Elsa laughs. “Where’s your better half?”

“She’s working.” Killian pinches his brows together. “So we’re not even going to pretend that I could possibly be the better half?”

“Nope. Just like Liam isn’t the better half either. And don’t make some quip about being equals. Just let me have this. I’m already stress eating chips.” He laughs while reaching forward to drag the bowl away from Elsa so that she can’t eat anymore, but she doesn’t let him, grabbing onto it and pulling it back. “I didn’t say to stop me. World Series week is like the holidays. The calories don’t count until my jeans feel a little snug next week.”

“Ahh,” Killian sighs in understanding. “That’s likely a good thing for how many baked goods I’ve sent your way.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in the dugout?” Ariel questions as she steps up to them with her glass of water in her hand. “It’s kind of a big game.”

“It’s also kind of the top of the first inning, and I’m not playing.”

“Excuses.”

“A legitimate one. How’re you holding up, A?”

She waves him away and reaches for the pitcher of water. “I’m fine. Eric is the nervous wreck. I have enough confidence in you guys that I won’t worry until, you know, we’re losing.”

“Only worrying when we’re losing? What kind of method is that? You have to worry all the damn time.”

“That’s how you have a heart attack, and I have not suffered eating healthily and exercising so much to have a heart attack this young.”

“This is where Liam would tell you that it can happen to anyone in any age.”

“Where is Liam?” Killian questions as he looks around the suite for his brother only to have him nowhere to be seen.

“He and David are sitting in David’s regular seats because David was complaining about Mary Margaret and Leo not wanting to use them. I imagine he’ll be up here soon when he realizes how expensive food is to buy.”

“They’re such old men.”

“Says the man who was wearing a sweater while drinking a cup of tea and reading in his apartment last night instead of coming out to dinner with all of us.”

Killian sputters a bit as he narrows his eyes at Ariel. “First of all, there is nothing wrong with doing any of that. Second of all, how could you possibly know that?”

Ariel shrugs, mischief in all of her features. “Emma sent it in the group text.”

Of course she did. A man can’t even relax in his own home without being called out for it.

“Who is in this group text exactly?”

“Oh, just me, Elsa, Anna, and Belle. Don’t worry. Not everyone gets to see the embarrassing pictures of you drooling in your sleep.”

He’s going to kill Emma.

Or get his revenge. Somewhere in between those two.

There’s a loud groan from everyone watching the game, and that’s when Killian is reminded that there’s a game going on. He didn’t know that he could possibly forget, but apparently being teased about how he spends his nights will let him do that. When he sees what’s happening out on the field, though, Killian wishes that he’d been able to completely and totally forget about the game.

There are three men on base for the Dodgers, only one out, and one of their best hitters is up to bat.

Fuck.

This is not a good start.

This is a long game, but bad starts can change the momentum of absolutely everything. It gets in everyone’s head. The losing team is convinced that they’re going to lose, that they can’t come back from this, and the team that’s ahead gets all the belief in the world with their abilities.

Momentum shifts are everything, and it’s not time for the momentum to shift. Not yet.

And yet it does.

Robin throws what Killian knows is a good fastball and Rob’s specialty, but Stewart hits a sharp line drive down past third base that Arthur doesn’t get to. By the time that he does, the Dodgers already have two runs, Stewart is on second, and Ferguson is sliding into home before the ball can get there.

0-3 for the Dodgers eleven minutes in.

Shit.

Now it’s time for Ariel and everyone else to get nervous.

And it never gets better. Not really. There are times and chances and shots that have Killian grabbing onto his hair in frustration, but nothing comes of it. Nothing at all. Every single time there’s a real chance, something happens: the Dodgers have an unbelievable get, someone fumbles when the Yankees should have an easy chance at a double play, or every single person somehow forgets how to hit.

Until they don’t.

Because now it’s the bottom of the ninth, and after an absolutely incredible eighth inning, it’s now 7-9.

They’re only down by two runs.

(Two runs.)

Killian is pacing back and forth in the dugout now exhausting every bit of emotional energy he has left in him. He left the suite the moment that first inning was over, texting Emma and Liam that there’d been a change of plans and he wouldn’t be meeting up with them after all. There was no way that he was going to be anywhere other than with his team when things were going to hell.

Being two runs behind is both nothing and everything.

There have been plenty of times when they’ve come back from a deficit like this. There have been plenty more when they’ve blown a two-run lead. And yet, like fifty-five thousand people in this stadium know, this isn’t any other game. This is The Game, and they’re closing in on the golden hour of chances.

It’s win now or come back tomorrow for one last chance of glory or crushing defeat.

Best of seven means nothing when there’s the possibility of there only being one game left.

“You’re going to exhaust yourself if you don’t sit down,” Robin tells him from his seat behind him on the bench.

Will has just stepped up to home plate, his bat in hand and feet in position, and Killian can’t breathe. His lungs have stopped taking in air.

“How could you possibly be sitting down for this? Is your blood not on fire?”

“I just pitched five innings, mate. My adrenaline high is gonedown. I’m exhausted.”

The ball is launched through the air toward Will, and Killian immediately knows that he shouldn’t take a swing at it.

He does.

Strike one.

“Shit,” Killian murmurs, kicking his foot at a water cup on the ground. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”

“Funny, Fisher, I told your wife the same thing. Aren’t you supposed to be warming up?”

Killian doesn’t even have to look to know that Eric is rolling his eyes. “I’m grabbing my stuff to do just that.” There’s a warm hand on Killian’s back, and he turns to look at it just as a “ball” is called. “Take some deep breaths, man. We’ve got this.”

“Aye,” Killian sighs, “we’ve got this.”

Strike two.

“Shit.”

Ball two.

Ball three.

Foul ball.

Killian’s phone buzzes in his back pocket, and he opens it up to see Emma’s name.

Emma: They’re having to censor you on television right now.

Emma: Just thought you might want to know that. Literally every time they show the dugout, you’re cursing. Ruby is getting a kick out of it.

Killian moves to text her back, to say something witty in response, but then the wood of Will’s bat is making contact with the ball and it’s flying gone, gone, gone…

Until it’s caught in the outfield.

Out one.

“Fuck.”

They’ve still got a shot. They have to. And as much as Killian hates cheering for Arthur King and hates that he only got a monetary fine for what he said to Emma and about her, he’s exactly who Killian has to cheer for now as Arthur hits a line drive that enables him to get on first base.

That’s progress.

It’s even more progress when Eric hits a triple sending Arthur into home.

8-9.

Holy fuck.

They might do this. They just might.

Killian still can’t breathe, but this is obviously his natural state now. This is how he’s going to have to live out the rest of his life.

Emma: Okay, now I understand all of the cursing. I’m freaking out.

Killian: Me too. We make quite the pair.

Emma: The best pair. It’s all going to be okay, twenty-nine.

He smiles down at his phone, his lungs taking in a bit of air at that.

Killian: It will be. I love you.

Killian: A frankly ridiculous amount.

“Out,” the umpire yells, and Killian immediately rests his head against the dugout railing, his nails digging into the hem of his sweatshirt as sweat drips down his back even with the late October chill whipping through the stadium as the night fully comes into effect, the sun long since gone.

Out two.

“For fuck’s sake,” Al yells, throwing his hat to the ground and slapping his hand against the railing. “Why would you swing at that, Whale? You could have fucking walked, and then we’d have two men on base with one out. That changes everything.”

It’s not Whale’s fault. It’s not. He messed up, sure, but it’s a team effort. Killian doesn’t always believe that when he’s the one pitching. It’s hard to get that out of your head when you’re being yelled at by managers and fans and people online sending death threats, but it’s true. It’s not one person out there even when it feels like it.

Killian’s going to have to remind himself of that tomorrow.

No.

He can’t go there. They’re not going to play tomorrow. Booth is up to bat, and he’ll get Eric home. Then it’ll be tied up, and they’ll have their shot to close this out right here and right now.

Hope bubbles up in Killian’s chest, his throat closing up with excitement and anticipation, and that lack of breathing thing comes back again as his knuckles go white from the strength of his grip on the railing. When he looks to the right, he sees that Robin’s knuckles are just the same.

They might do this.

Roland and Addy have to be screaming their heads off up in the suite. Killian almost wants to text Elsa or Liam to see what’s happening, but his eyes are glued to the field as August swings his bat at the very first ball.

It’s a fucking foul.

Strike one.

“Come on Booth,” Will shouts out, clapping his hands together. “You’ve got it, man. Be smart about it.”

“I’m not entirely sure that’s helping, Scarlet.”

“It is, Professor Jones. I’m a great motivational speaker.”

Killian’s lips stretch into a smile, a bit of calm returning, until the ball flies from the mound again, whipping through the air and curving into the strike zone at the last minute.

August doesn’t swing.

Strike two.

The stadium absolutely erupts then, hands clapping together and feet hitting against the floor while thousands of people scream, a mix of cheers and boos for August. If anyone can handle this kind of pressure, can handle the weight of world on his shoulders and the pressure, it’s August.

Pressure is a privilege.

He’s likely not feeling too privileged right now.

And as suddenly as the noise started, it calms down. While there are still people talking and cheering and making all kinds of noise, Killian can’t focus on any of it. All he can focus on is what’s right in front of him.

One. Two. Three.

Foul.

One. Two. Three.

Foul.

Killian’s stomach flips, his entire hand going white, and Will is grabbing onto Killian’s forearm so tightly that he could break the bone there.

One.

Two.

Three.

There’s a thwack of ball against Booth’s back, and it absolutely flies into the air. It’s flying, and Killian nearly jumps out of the dugout to get a better view of where it’s going. It’s got to be a home run. It’s got to be. That’s where it’s headed, and Killian’s arms break out in gooseflesh beneath the thick material of his sweatshirt.

They’re about to win the fucking World Series for the second time in a row.

Holy shit.

But then the ball dips.

It dips, right at the line of the back fence, and the ball is caught.

The. Ball. Is. Caught.

The ball is caught, Booth is out, and the game is over.

And just like the ball, Killian’s mood dips, every high hope crashing down around him and weighing down on his shoulders while his stomach flips before everything heavily settles in its place. This isn’t how today was supposed to end. They were supposed to come back from their bad start. They were supposed to win.

They didn’t, though. They lost, and even though Killian tries to be encouraging to everyone around him as they all finish up their post-game on-field routines, in his head he knows that they’ve only got one more shot at this.

They’ve got one more shot, and a lot of it is resting in the palm of his hands. Killian has been a screw up for this team so many times before, and he doesn’t know if he can do that again.

He can’t let everyone down again.

The mood is subdued in the clubhouse as everyone strips out of their clothes, just a constant murmuring of curses and complaints. Even Al is quiet when he’d usually be fired up yelling at everyone, a combination of disbarring comments and encouragements, and that may be the most shocking part of it all.

Reporters begin to fill the room as well as agents and wives and the occasional child, and Killian sits in his locker with his head between his legs taking several deep breaths to calm himself down. His heart is beating far too quickly. It’s thumping in between his ears, and that’s not how it’s supposed to be.

It’s simply not.

“Hey.”

The voice is soft and very much Emma’s, and Killian looks up to see her softly smiling down at him, Jeff no longer trailing behind her with his camera.

The smile that stretches across his lips is forced and half-assed, and he knows that Emma can tell. She steps in between his knees so that his head rests against her stomach while her hands brush through his sweaty hair. They don’t say anything else, simply stay there together while Killian breathes in the scent of Emma’s perfume on her sweater and shivers run down his spine at her touch.

He is undeniably a fan of every part of her, but being able to simply be, to exist, with her is one of his favorites. There’s nothing quite so soothing as knowing the person you love will always be by your side no matter what happens.

They lost. They did. It’s what happened, and there’s no changing it.

Tomorrow is the last chance.

It all comes down to the last one.

-/-

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#catch me if you can #cs fic #cs ff #cs fanfic #captain swan ff #captain swan fic #captain swan fanfic #captain swan

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wot-in-the · 3 years

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thinking back to 2020 was very hard. feels like it lasted 10 years. still, good media is good media, and the below are my favorites of what i saw/read/played last year, in no particular order:

nier: automata // it’s refreshing to see a video game really embrace its video gamey-ness – this story could only ever be told in this medium. haunting plot, complex characters, incredible soundtrack, combat as smooth as butter. but what will stick with me longest is the eerie, palpable sense of sadness that pervades every nook and cranny of its setting. and the voice acting?? it’s rare that voice acting makes me feel things, but in some parts it was so good i forgot i was playing a game.

fruits basket s2 // s1 set up most of the cast, introduced their surface level traits, and started digging into their pasts. in s2, the horror stories introduced in one-off s1 episodes are revealed to be deeper and more intertwined. the magical realism premise is, more than ever, an allegory for generational abuse, and this series does that without sacrificing hopefulness. i’m happy that this adaptation turned me back to a manga i really loved. it's every bit as good, if not better, revisiting it in my 30s. i’ve heard s3 may be condensed, which is a shame (it’s the best, most intricate part of the manga), but anime adaptations rarely do a good manga justice.

dark // the writers of this show did something really ambitious. with a story spanning multiple decades, many actors playing aged up or aged down versions of the characters (and HOLY CRAP the casting is incredible in that regard), a plot web so thick you need to take notes, and a sustained super-serious tone, things could go horribly wrong. but they didn't. they keep you deeply engaged even if some of the characters rub you the wrong way - which is done purposefully. doesn't hurt that it's beautiful to look at and listen to.

natsume yuujinchou/natsume’s book of friends // takashi natsume, the purest boy who ever lived, can see spirits. this has made him an outcast his whole life. we follow him as he begins to form bonds with humans and spirits alike and learns the joys and heartbreaks of making real connections. this is a slow, supernatural slice-of-life story about the transience of our everyday meaningful encounters. it’s so simple and so beautifully executed. almost every episode perfectly nails the heartwarmth/heartbreak ratio.

the king of elfland’s daughter by lord dunsany // i appreciate modern fantasy, but sometimes i want a fairy tale. and fairy tales aren't written like this today. this one is about... let's see. time? magic? the loss of innocence? beauty? love? all of the above and more. this one's 100% about the atmosphere and the prose used to describe it, and sometimes that's what i'm in the mood for. i read it early last year and can't remember the finer details of the plot, but can vividly recall the images it conjured in my mind.

final fantasy vii: remake // this was one of the biggest surprises of the last several years for me. i whined about not wanting a remake, especially one split in parts. but they took everything i actually loved from the original, expanded on it, sprinkled in just the right amount of details from the compilation, made some clever gameplay decisions, and fleshed out the characters so much that i was shocked. still shocked. i can't believe how much i was moved by it and how much fun i had with the gameplay. been thinking about this one since the first day i played it.

stranger 2/secret forest 2 // if s1 introduced us to larger than life heroes, villains, and stakes, s2 takes a step back and asks harder questions. we know our two leads (tbh? worth watching both seasons just for them) are good people who will stand up for what's right. but what happens when doing that is difficult, dangerous, and full of consequences? it was a treat being able to revisit hwang si-mok and han yeo-jin, especially as it was yeo-jin’s turn to have the more prominent character arc. it doesn't need another season, but i hope it gets one!

the legend of zelda: breath of the wild // this game's world is masterfully created. there's just enough plot to ground you, but the point is exploration. it’s your boy link and this huge physics sand box full of decaying ruins and rolling fields and waterfalls and like, snow capped mountains and rivers of lava and expansive desert. the vast quiet landscapes hammer home how this is a post-apocalyptic world. this is an after-the-end story, and your wanderings slowly rehabilitate hyrule and make you stronger. this more than lived up to the hype.

honorable mentions: piranesi by susanna clarke, honey & clover by chica umino, gravity rush, hunt for the wilderpeople, keep your hands off eizouken, the ancient magus' bride: those awaiting a star, medicine walk by richard wagamese

(i pretty much abandoned film last year. will make a point to watch more in 2021.)

#nier automata #fruits basket #dark #natsume yuujinchou #the king of elfland's daughter #final fantasy vii #secret forest #botw

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shinygoku · 3 years

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Thunderbirds (2004)

A review by me, CutCat! This is 8-ish pages long!

Spoiler for the end of the film warning: Alan is in International Rescue. What a twist!

Totally Turbulent

Soooo, Tbirds ‘04 is one of those Infamous Adaptations, at least among those who enjoyed Thunderbirds (’65) and of more recent times, Thunderbirds are Go (’15). It’s one of those Bad Live Action Adaptations to a near sacred property, making it dubious contemporaries with Dragon Ball [Evolution], Avatar [The Last Airbender] and suchlike.

But wait, is it really That Bad?? Why is it as divisive as it is? What caused the film to be the way it is, and quite unpopular at that?

First I’m gonna make a long story very short by saying that a Live Action Thunderbirds movie was on and off production for many years, and that the script we ended up with is apparently better than another one that was pitched... but there are reports of cooler scripts further back that never made it, for various reasons. It’s almost a story of it’s own right but I’m only going by 2nd hand information at best, so I’d rather just link them at the end for Additional Reading if y’all felt so inclined.

With that out of the way, we have the Takes from the Andersons to look at. Sylvia had a very favourable reception to it:

"I felt that I'd been on a wonderful Thunderbirds adventure. You, the fans, will I'm sure, appreciate the sensitive adaptation and I'm personally thrilled that the production team have paid us the great compliment of bringing to life our original concept for the big screen. If we had made it ourselves (and we have had over 30 years to do it!) we could not have improved on this new version. It is a great tribute to the original creative team who inspired the movie all those years ago. It was a personal thrill for me to see my characters come to life on the big screen."

Whereas Gerry had a considerably blunter response at the opposite end of the scale:

"the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life."

As for me, a mere fan of predominantly the TAG series with limited but fond memories of the 90’s TOS reruns, I’d been inclined to ignore it and write it off as a DBE or TLA lost cause. But the combined effect of me deciding to check out unpopular media for myself, namely Dragon Ball GT and the live action Super Mario Bros. movie, and thoroughly enjoying both; and the other effect of TAG finishing but my fixation reawakening with the need to consume More, I dived deeper into the fan base than I had dared to before, in which I found more reasons to watch it and make up my own mind fairly.

Find out what I thought, and a review of the movie itself, below the Cut! ✂

Stormy Story

Ok, enough teasing, I see good things in the movie but not enough for it to be a secret masterpiece, not by a long shot.

1/3 Stars from Me. That’s Poor. (Compare with 2/3 being Good, and 3/3 being Excellent)

My main beef is unfortunately kinda the crux of the whole story, so while there were aspects I really liked, it had permanently set the bar low, and other issues were not helping matters. I’ll go into the problems after I sum up the plot.

[sitcom harp music]

14 Year Old Alan Tracy is stuck in a stuffy school with only his nerd friend to confide in. Something’s eating him up, and it’s jealousy over how his family are International Rescue, the secret rescue workers whole pilot the Thunderbirds, impossibly cool craft with capabilities vastly exceeding standard technology. Even when he’s allowed out of school and back to the Island, his envy and barely repressed resentment over not being a member himself causes him to go off and sulk and to try taking Thunderbird 1, the hypersonic jet plane, for a joyride.

His father and the leader of International Rescue, Jeff Tracy chews Alan out for almost compromising the need for the organisation to remain secret, lest their advanced technology falling into the wrong hands. Alas, said wrong hands are already working against IR: The Hood, a diabolical, cold blooded criminal with psychic powers and a grudge against Jeff. After successfully tracking the location of Tracy Island, he launches a missile towards Thunderbird 5, the Space Station where IR monitor potential disasters to prevent as much damage as possible, manned by John Tracy.

With TB5 crippled and John injured, Jeff and his other three older sons all scramble to the disaster zone via Thunderbird 3, the Rocket Ship. But with Tracy Island largely unmanned, The Hood moves in and aims to use the Thunderbirds to rob bank vaults while simultaneously smearing International Rescue’s good name. As the only Tracy brother left on Earth, it’s up to Alan and his 2 friends, Fermat and Tin-Tin, to foil the Hood and save his family, proving himself worthy in the process. He is also assisted by IR’s London Agent, Lady Penelope, and her driver/butler/lockpicker, Parker.

...

Ok, so that’s a summary you may read on the back of a DVD box, maybe it’s a bit long but whatever. Do you see what’s wrong with the story? The massive rift in the formula that should be within a template set by the hugely popular TV Series?

Critical Crux

For me, the main issue with the movie is that the Tracy family are thrown under a bus, or perhaps it’s more like being locked in a closet, in order for Alan to rise up and be The Hero. A show that was about each of them having different roles and personalities to the others, and the movie sees the best way to adapt the premise is to reduce 3 of them to cardboard cutouts who aren’t allowed to do or say anything meaningful, with the exception to this getting the dubious honour of getting a missile and exploding space station to the face.

I can’t clearly express how much this pisses me off! It’s downright insulting and baffling as well. They had pre established characters right there for the taking but go NO! Let’s make OCs to fill this newly created void instead and make the main Message of the film Friendship Teamwork.

Why does every child-skewed media hafta have the Friendship message? It’s a good one, sure, but nothing said in this film about it was fresh or original. Y’know what I see far, far less? Not just in Kid Flavoured Media, but all sorts? The importance of Brotherly Bonds between actual brothers!! I don’t subscribe to the massively misunderstood message version of ‘Blood is thicker than water’, but a story with the siblings actually pushed and stressed and coming out stronger at the end would have ruled!!

[For what it’s worth, the actual saying is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”, i.e. the bonds you choose to forge are more important than happening to be born to certain people. This correct message is still compatible with literal siblings though!]

The other, somewhat lesser Large Issue with the movie is simply that we don’t see much in the way of Rescues with the titular Thunderbirds. We only get the tail end of the Oil Rig in Act 1, and then the ‘Birds are used predominantly to get to London and save 1 Monorail Car with TB4.

Watsonian Woes & Doylist Dilemma

When looking at Media, there’s 2 main angles to consider; Doylist and Watsonian. Doylist is the “real life / meta” angle, the structure of the story or interests of the author being in the plot, that kinda thing. Watsonian is the reason given within the story.

All stories have Watsonian and Doylist reasonings, the trick is to blend them in and not use a weedy Watsonian reason for something stupid happening.

Why bring this up? Because it’s still part of the Huge Problem I have with the film; the Doylist reason for all of IR being incapacitated so easily is so Alan can shine without fighting for focus in a large group. I don’t like it, but let’s go along with it for now.

Believe it or not, but I can accept that a Movie format isn’t going to be the same as an ongoing series. There’s way less time and you gotta hit certain beats. Ideally you also condense the essence of the show into the film while being more than just a long episode. They didn’t hit this note in my opinion...

But other than ‘It has to happen for he story to work’, there’s no damn reason for all the Non-Alan Tracys to be cooped up in the crippled TB5! They put all their eggs into one basket when a considerably more sensible choice woulda been to have a small crew, and the others remain on base. Because even without factoring in a worst case scenario where another missile hits them while in space, killing them all, which totally could have happened for all they know, there’s also the part about them being International Rescue! They gotta be ready to respond to other disasters should those develop. TB1, 2 and 4 were still available for use!

If I was Jeff making the boneheaded decision, I would have taken a second to think about it and have 1 of the Bros come up in 3 with me. Seeing to John shouldn’t be something 4 people are needed for, it would just get more crowded and the oxygen would be used way faster! Considering they all come close to asphyxiating, 2 less people would mean things weren’t so damn close to the wire! (Granted, the movie also has them falling into Earth’s atmosphere and burning up as a hazard, but the whole crew being there doesn’t affect that.)

Jeff! You’re the patriarch and supposedly most experienced dude in the whole movie! Why didja run into that trap with both eyes open? Stressful situation, sure, but in the Rescue Business you need to be able to listen to the cold, clinical angle. You’re risking more of your sons’ lives making such a rash judgement!!

Character Conundrums

This is the part of the review where I begin to really emphasise the differences between TOS and this movie. I’ll hold off TAG for now in the interest of fairness.

The movie is a mixed bag when it comes to the individuals within it. Some have been refreshing updates to stuffy 60′s tropes, but several draw the short straw, feeling even stiffer than their marionette precursors.

Alan - Hoo, boy. The plot follows Alan.... for the third time if you’re factoring in the Supermarionation movies, which was quite the baffling choice as Puppet!Alan is quite the obnoxious jerk. But whatever, new movie, new canon, new Alan. While the Alan of the 60′s was a bizarrely whiny brat of a character considering he was supposed to at least be in his early 20′s this Alan at least makes more sense to be annoying. But yes, he starts off as a sullen jerk with unclearly defined jealousy towards his own brothers and seemingly a lack of grasping the stakes behind International Rescue, viewing being one of the crew as a Cool Job rather than a gruelling, life-risking ordeal. Over the course of the movie (mostly Act 3) he becomes less of a berk and a better team player, even going as far as to save the Hood personally.

Jeff - One of the stronger characters in the movie, even with this poor choice I’ve gone on about already, haha. You get the real impression the job means the world to him, but still secondary to his sons. An update and improvement to the sometimes stodgy and holier-than-thou character from the 60′s, plus his proactive role makes him way less of a backseat driver.

Lady Penelope - Best character and a splendid update to the 60′s Socialite. This Penny is always a delight to see, although her ability to change clothes offscreen sometimes pushes plausibility, haha. She and Jeff also have very natural and endearing chemistry, so for this iteration at least, I’m up for shipping them, something I can’t say for TOS.

Parker - Remarkably true to the beloved puppet version and another highlight. His interplay with Penelope is some of the best dialogue in the whole movie, and was written by Richard Curtis in an uncredited role, or so I’ve read.

The Hood - A shockingly sadistic and cold blooded so-and-so. His Psychic powers have been given a huge boost, and the depths of his spite generates all the tense scenes the movie has to offer. His performance may be the best in the whole film, simultaneously over the top while also completely deadly.

Tin-Tin - Y’know, Tin-Tin is a funny character, in how she’s very different in all versions. I enjoy her in TOS, but her potential as an engineering assistant, mathematician and member of IR are quickly discarded to make her a secretary, which is further demoted to bringing coffee. Ahh, The Sixties! One of her other defining features was the sometimes bickering sexual tension with Alan. Movie!Tin-Tin is still the implied love interest [and the same age] with him, but she’s also an Action Girl extraordinaire, with abilities bordering on metahuman. She can trek through the jungle without slowing down, she can dive underwater for prolonged sequences, and has a variation of her Evil Uncle’s Psychic capabilities, but used for good. Notably, the Kayo of TAG takes significantly more from this Tin-Tin to the original, sadly sans Telekinesis.

Fermat - The only OC I’m gonna dignify with a section here lol. He’s basically mini-Brains, complete with the way he t-ta-tal- -distinctive speech patterns. But yeah, as the hypersmart and nerdy pal, I feel that his role is pretty superfluous, though his performance in the movie got me to soften up, he’s a good kid. Just one who, like, is part of the deal breaking issue I have with the whole film. In a way I think he’d have made a better lead than Alan lmao

Brains - Not much to say here, he’s also a dude in distress for a majority of his screentime. Seems to be older than his TOS self and a bit less subservient to Jeff, but also a father ....or Fermat is his clone. They never make that clear. He’s hit on by the Hood’s Female Scientist and it’s played for comedy, more on that later.

John - In TOS, his role was infamously minimal, as Gerry Anderson took such a strong disliking to the John puppet and the TB5 model that he exiled both into space with a few token shots per episode. So in comparison, this movie is far kinder to John! He has a nice, genuine chat with Jeff, without any mission to initiate said videocall. The movie is also quite mean to John in how he gets bombed by the Hood, his space station in tatters, his arm hurt and then near suffocation with Jeff and most of his brothers. Ahh, the conundrum of being John.

Scott, Virgil and Gordon - No, they don’t even get their own paragraphs in my review. Their lack of presence and importance in the movie is my giant gripe (have you noticed yet?) and it got to the extent that I feel they could have been combined into one character to save casting money. They get maybe 5 lines each, if that. I literally can’t tell Scott and Virgil apart (I know they have name tags on their uniforms, but in most scenes I couldn’t even read that) other than knowing 1 of them is taller. Which that one is, is a mystery.

The only one with a slightly distinctive appearance and air is Gordon, which is another can of worms because he seems to be the designated Doubtful Jerk Brother and that drives me mad!! In TOS he wasn’t as main a character as Scott, Virgil or Alan, but he was still a defined person with his own abilities. And his personality was as a slightly mouthy but the most lighthearted character! Why didn’t they carry that over?!

And yeah, Scott and Virgil are pretty much the Main Two of the brothers in TOS, so their roles being reduced to 1 token act during the oil rig rescue each [Gordon didn’t even get that!] is all the more mind boggling.

Hood’s Minions - Can’t be assed to write their names out, I refer to them as Heavy Dude and Science Woman. Heavy Dude is the Heavy, and his character consists of Dumb and somewhat Sadistic Muscle. Science Woman is first objectified (we see her ass first. Yes, really.) but then it’s ‘revealed’ that as she has Austin Powers level teeth, she’s uuuuuglyyyyy and her otherwise genuine attraction towards Brains is played for laughs with this angle. And that’s still female on male sexual harassment, which doesn’t fly with me. Eeeesh. Bad writing! She does Science Things for Hood.

The Rest - Kyrano and his wife are in this. Wife is Original but basically Grandma’s role, though she doesn’t even get a single word to say. Rip. Also the Hood has a few more generic mooks from somewhere, but seemingly only for part of the movie. Kyrano didn’t do much in the show except get bullied by the Hood and little has changed.

Tone Trouble

I feel like the movie has a bit of an issue with balancing a consistent Tone. Again, let’s look back at TOS. It was a Family Show, designed to not just appeal to little kids, but to also keep their parent and other adult amused. Maybe some of it was also the result of the times, but striking to me is that they allowed the characters to get pretty hurt, complete with red paint being applied to look like realistic blood. Some of the criminals, including the Hood himself, would be very vicious, how he treats Brains in Desperate Intruder comes to mind. There was even firefights resulting in death, like the memorable climax of Operation Crash-Dive, where Gordon has to shoot a saboteur in the back, into the open sea below the compromised plane. He then proceeds to hold the cut wires together with his bare hands. Don’t try this at home, kids!

So while I can understand some of that being removed from the Movie (and TAG), there’s still the irritating going down to a perceived kid’s level for the majority of the film, which is probably also a large reason for the massive structural change. But then, there’s shockingly dark implications here and there, and the haunting sight of the crew trapped on TB5 floating lifelessly in the dark, asphyxiating. But then, again, we have goofy choreographed fight scenes with juvenile stock cartoon sounds. And then, we have Hood force choking Alan?! It has been mostly consistent until Act 3, then the tone goes up and down more than the flying machines.

Revamped Rockets

I’m mostly talking about the main craft here, though I know the Pod vehicles got modified too, I’m not sufficiently a TOS Pod Buff to go over them.

TB1 - Looks real nice! Maintains and even enhances the sleekness, and the idea of a glass cockpit is much better than having 1 tiny window and a dinky TV screen to see by. Oddly dark inside the cockpit considering how much glass there is, though. Probably my fav of the Movie Fleet.

TB2 - Oof. Looks bad, man. Like, really ugly. What have they done to the glorious design that was the Original Big Green? The unofficial mascot from her importance and unorthodox style? They turned her into a stubby, too glossy, chunky bar of green soap. The thick ass legs are a good idea but it sure ain’t enough. Also, she carries 3 smaller pods insteada 1 big one.

TB3 - Like TB1, pretty much the same design but streamlined a little. Docks with 5 sidewise instead of like pen going into its lid.

TB4 - I’m mixed. I like the idea of giving her a glass canopy and extendable arms, but the movie’s version is so boxy she looks more like a small yellow Greenhouse with the rear half of the old Four, haha. The arms also look a little stiff, can they bend? Now, if there was a sleek, glass hulled, variable armed, demolition charges-loaded Four, that would be my favourite possible version ;3 Four is my fav craft in TOS and TAG, for what it’s worth.

TB5 - I say it’s quite a visual improvement over TOS and the odds and ends jumbled look that had, though I do appreciate a bit of Chunkiness. This one really needs to have better defence too, TOS 5 may’ve been able to tank that missile lmao

FAB1 - I know that she would have been a Rolls Royce in the film, but BMW said no, so that’s not a point against the movie. And failing the classic image, it’s cute that it’s a Ford Thunderbird, though I’d have preferred one with those 50′s/60′s stylish fins personally lol. Her ability to fly is new here unless you count the Dream Sequence in Are Go (’66) and the water mode was also seen in that before this, and she gets the job done, though we don’t get to see as many gadgets and gizmos in the course of the film.

Unlikely Uniforms

I really don’t understand these. Why are they off white with minimal accent colours? What was wrong with the blueness of their suits and the broad stripe of a secondary colour? I sure ain’t saying the 60’s costumes were practical or even that fashionable, but they were very distinctive and striking!

Not only that, but for some strange unexplained reason, their uniforms all correspond not to their own speciality, but to which craft they’re currently piloting. Even if they’re all in the same Bird...! So like, four out of five are wearing identical looking red accented suits while locked in TB5. I already find the elder brothers to be the Similar Squad, and their microscopic name tags don’t help!

Why don’t they wear their own coloured uniforms all the time? Then ya don’t need the name tag at all! And the silly implication from the way there’s apparently a whole set of Craft Specific uniforms is that there’s piles of clothes that ain’t getting used in all of them, like the tiny TB4 probably having 6 whole sets on board at the end of the film.

Between that, no blue and the outfits looking like Generic Sports Wear, the only nice thing to say is the THUNDERBIRDS down the sleeve is a cool touch. Which should really say International Rescue or IR...

Mingled Misc.

Yeah, The conflation of Thunderbirds and International Rescue is a tad irritating but it’s actually something I can overlook. It’s not a dealbreaker and it makes sense the Dumbass Public would misunderstand and call them the wrong thing.

Jeff refuses Alan early access into IR and cites “No shortcuts”. Then at the end he echoes this when he is making Alan an official member, saying he did it with no shortcuts. The whole faffing scenario was a giant shortcut!!! Fuck training and being a suitable age, am I right?!

Amazingly I didn’t cover this already, but when Alan shortcuts his way onto the team he’s made pilot of ... TB4. That’s why he’s in yellow accents in the pic. Gordon is seemingly the main pilot of TB3 instead, but the movie doesn’t deign to make that clear. While I appreciate that the 14 year old with no Astronaut training isn’t put in charge of 3 instantly, I resent the careless removal of characterisation. Obviously movie Gordon never served with WASP or won the gold medal in swimming or had a massive hydrofoil crash to nearly kill him but ggggghgggaaahhhhhhhhh

Also what’s with the implication that Four is the Babby’s First Machine? She’s a highly specialised craft that would require different training to flying or Space shit! How dare you?! The most charitable link is that Alan stood around in 4 as Tin-Tin did most of the work herself, but I guess it coulda as some level of experience.

Ford Sponsorship - Gets a bit much! It’s one thing for all the cars to be Ford, but them seemingly owning the News is like an unpleasant look into a world where corporations run everything.... hahahaahaaaaaa........

Marvellous Music

Something the movie really excells at is the tunes! The remix of the Thunderbirds March is good in it’s own right and very welcome, and the new music is all solid. Special mention to Busted’s outro song for slapping so hard even people who hate the movie leave warm youtube comments about the song. I have a habit of listening to it set to TAG footage myself, haha

Sincere Summation

Look, I’ve come off negative in this, but I honestly have a lot of respect for a lot of the parts of this picture. Hood, Penelope, Parker and Jeff are fantastic, the physical models and sets have a lot of care and loving detail poured in, the music is all bangers and other little nods and homages to the show shine brightly. The director got a lot of good work in and I hold him no ill will.

I think the problem is in the Writing and probably Studio Mandates, I’m not 100% sure, but things often get snaggy when the studio you’re working under gets bought out by a bigger company partway through. Again, I’ll refer to the info I’ve seen instead of trying to relay it in my own words.

And they made a real bad call snubbing Gerry as a Creative Consultant. Some of his venom towards the film may be from that, as well as his alleged preference to Team America: World Police as a theatrical homage. And I’ve seen that before and wouldn’t really say that’s true to the spirit of Thunderbirds, but yeah...

I’d be interested in any future Thunderbirds Movies, if that’s ever on the cards again. I’d probably be even more up for continuation of the TAG series, or newer new Captain Scarlet with International Rescue involved. Either way, I want new footage of the Birds taking off again, be it puppet, people, CGI, or something new~

Extra Reading

https://securityhazard.net/2017/05/19/thunderbirds-2004/ Full movie review, warm reception. Contains photos of set pieces and costumes.

http://groovyfokker.blogspot.com/2013/02/thunderbirds-arent-go-unfilmed-versions.html Insight into some of the past issues developing a Movie, but gets some basic information wrong (Since when is Gordon the youngest and TB3 orange??)

Thanks if ya’ve been reading the whole thing! <3

#Thunderbirds 2004 #Thunderbirds #Thunderbirds TOS #Thunderbirds Movie #Movie Review #can't really tag it with TAG because I deliberately kept that minimal lol #I care so much about Tbirds so I had much to say #I hope the links don't mess up it appearing in the tags :v

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