#first drawing is just a random mighty design i came up with

[moldybreadifoundonmyfridge]

Have some random doodles lol

#sonic.exe #sonic exe #rewrite sonic #faker sonic #exe #normalCD #hogsweep #hog/scorched #mario 85 #mario pc port #mx mario #majin sonic #i should draw hog more #first drawing is just a random mighty design i came up with

[softnightvoid]

Ok so I'm bored and I wrote a first draft for my Papa 2 as a father angst/parody fanfiction and english is not my first langage so there will never be a second draft because I cannot correct myself in a langage I'm not fluent in, so uh let's just dump that here and wait for the publics' vote. Yeah. Here you go.

TW: blood (nobody harmed in the chapter), pressure to have a child

________________________________________

How To Raise Ghost's Child

Chapter 1

When will you have an heir, Dante? Why is it that you still don't have any children at your age? You're the older one, Dante, it's time for you to produce an heir to the clergy. Your brother is too irresponsible to have a baby, but why do you still wear condoms with women? Why, who, when, Dante?

It pissed him off. As the second -well, third technically- Papa of a gigantic satanist church he had his fair of responsibilities and paperwork. All day long he would plan the next band tour, the meetings to write the songs and design goodies, the interviews for Alessandro, the taxes of all sorts. He really, really had other things to do than bend to Nihil's demands and produce a child with a random woman he wouldn't be attracted to. There was no point to that.

He forced his steps in the Ministrys’ corridors, a huge pile of important papers under his right arm, a cup of coffee in his other hand. It was quite late and he still had to send a dozen emails before calling it a day -may the Internet be alive. Most of the Siblings of Sin were already asleep in their dorms, the ghouls piled in theirs, and his brother must have been partying somewhere. Really, the weight of the church incombed to him alone and he could do a better use of his free time than changing diapers and caring for the mother of the potential child.

It was ironic of Nihil, really, to press him into having a child when he had no responsibility in the church anymore and never cared for him and Alessandro anyway except to turn them against each other. No, really, he had no use of a child and no time for it no matter what.

But… If he didn’t want to oblige Nihil… why was he feeling a growing void in his chest? What force made him stop before the childrens’ department in the stores he went to? Why had he felt his heart melt a bit -just a bit- at the sight of a baby in a carrier the other day? He had everything he needed to be functional, and yet he felt like he could have something more. Something with a deeper meaning than paperwork and coffee - and coffee was the love of his life.

I took him a very, very long walk around the Ministry until the first lights of the day, long after he had his job done, to stop his mind on a choice: he wanted a baby. And he, in fact, knew just the right person to ask that to.

*

Dante placed the last candle on the floor, on the tip of the pentagrams' branch. He rummaged his robes' pockets until he found his lighter, and set alight the meche.

He carefuly took a step back to admire his setup, paying attention not to burn his robes. The pentagram on the center of the chapel glowed warmly in the darkness, illuminating the cold stones of the floor.

It was the middle of the night, and no one would bother Dante in his private ceremony.

He rolled his long sleeves up above his elbows, grabbed the bowl of blood he left on a nearby bench and proceeded to splatter the half-coagulated liquid on the ceremonial drawing. He was quite pleased to see that no blood stained his clothes in the process; he wouldn't have to explain himself in too much extents if he were to meet someone in the early morning.

Placing the bowl back on the bench, he faced the circle of tightly written incantation and extended his arms widely. The silence of the chapel was almost painful near midnight and his own voice came as a relief:

"Oh Satan all mighty, You who gifted me with the reponsability of your Word. I give all my devotion to you, night and day, for you are the One and Only. Your Light bath me every day, and I am here before you to ask you to bath someone else with me in Your mighty light. Oh Satan all mighty, gift me a child. A child I could raise in Your name, a child I could take care of like you took care of me.

He felt a bit stupid, standing there and asking the void for a baby -Alessandro would never stop laughing at him if he witnessed that- but, he felt the force pushing him again and he finished his lithany: "Satan, please, give me a child."

He bended in respect and waited. Only the silence answered him, and the blood beating strongly in his ears. After a few minutes bended, his back began to hurt. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to stay still in the unconfortable position. Ten minutes later, no one had aswered him and his back was aching so badly he felt that maybe he would never be able to rise again. He began to loose hope. Satan was probably mocking him and telling him to get back to work.

He slowly rised, careful of his back, and rested his gaze upon the now dried blood and stained white pentagram. He felt tired. The flickering flames of the half-melted candles didn't help. He must have had a few hours only to clean his own mess, and he would definitly skip sleep. Cleaning, shower, coffee, back to another day of work trying not to feel like a complete fool.

He sighted and was about to turn around to fetch a bucket and a mop when flames suddenly bursted from the pentagram. Papa II took a step back, startled. He looked half anxiously half expectantly into the red and blue fire that consumed every bit of the dark blood.

When the fire finally went down and disappeared, it revealed an egg.

Dante suddenly felt so stupid. What was he still expecting? An actual baby? He asked Satan, and Satan mocked him. What a fool he had been.

He bent down, because he definitely didn't want anyone to find a damn egg the size of an american footballs' ball in the middle of the chapel, and softly poked the shell to check it's heat. Surprisingly, it was nicely warm and he lifted it with a little effort but no pain.

The egg loved into his arms felt… alive? It was soft, warm, it smelled good, it… had a heartbeat. It had a heartbeat! The 2nd Papa stucked his ear to the shell, trying to listen more carefully. It definitely was a slow but regular heartbeat.

He felt like crying. It was weird, it was unregular, it looked nothing like he imagined, but he asked for a baby and Satan delivered. Unblessed be He.

#I'll warn you now: I may never finish this fic #because when do you end a slice of life fic? #that's a mystery #anyway let's put some general tags below #ghost fanfiction #the band ghost #ghost b.c #papa 2 #papa secondo #secondo emeritus #ghost the band #ghost bc #ghostb.c #How To Raise Ghost's Child

[l-a-l-o-u]

ohh i haven’t done one of these in ages!! @sabertoothwalrus​ (check her out, gr8 content) tagged me in this art thing

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 8 (ish) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome work!  

1 - Korra with Raava staff

this was super fun to finally draw!! i had this idea of an AU where benders use staffs to control their element over 3 years ago (i think) and its great to finally see it beyond random doodles i did in class back then. i really want to design some other staffs too at some point!

2 - Just some gays in a field

This might be the only thing I posted this year that wasn’t fanart... I rarely get motivated to draw original stuff but I somehow finished this one. yeehaw

3 - BoTW Midna

a little before Age of Calamity came out, i started a new BoTW file and as i was replaying & thinking about the Lore, i kept thinking about the love of my life, Midna Twilight Princess..... and for like a week i was obsessed with the idea of a Midna reincarnation showing up in the sequel. my Midzel loving ass immediately shipped this dumbass teen version with Zelda, of course,

4 - My tabaxi child

I started playing D&D regularly this year!! it’s one of my favorite things about 2020!! i absolutely love this character too, druid is my favorite class so far and playing an impolite 13 year old with a bad french accent is SO funny. every other player immediately adopts them its great

5 - The background map & front page art for the Critical Role Wiki

I finished catching up to all of CR earlier this year, and since i had a tendency to zone out and miss stuff, i would look up a ton of stuff on the wiki, and i always thought it looked so bland! it was still using the default theme and i thought it deserved something nicer. so i decided i would just Do That Myself! and since then i started editing the wiki super regularly, it’s one of my main hobbies now (ranked 19th out of the wiki editors babey)

the map i can’t take full credit for, as it’s only a traced version of this map. the original wasn’t big enough to fit the wiki, so i thought, why don’t i just. ya know. trace over the entire thing by hand. that way i could also decide on the colors and font, etc (plus i love drawing lots of lil tedious details). later on i also made this graphic to put on the front page! both of these had to be WAY downsized to fit the wiki formatting but at least i can share the full size files on here

6 - “Human” Raava 

idk who remembers but I used to be OBSESSED with the AU where Raava looked like a human, and became younger as she lost power. i suddenly wanted to redraw the concept after all this time and reworked my old design a bit. twas fun

7 - The unfinished Pearl/Rose comic

in the end I only colored this single panel, but i did post the first 8 pages (which is as far as i got) of an old comic idea from over a year ago. its kinda crazy how hard it is for me to post unfinished stuff.. but in the end i’m glad i did. its very validating to read the tags on that post and see how many people got mad/sad after reading it hehehe

8 - Mighty Nein redesigns

i started this series of character sheets almost exactly one year ago! so far i only finished Jester and Beauregard (altho i need to update with her winter outfit), but i’m actually nearly done with Caleb, idk why i haven’t posted it yet... in my heart i believe that one day i’ll finish them all. but that might be 5 years from now. special shoutout to all the other CR art i made this year!! i actually got featured in the slideshow a couple times which is pretty unreal

Honorable mention -  New Nameless designs

this is the only one i posted, but i actually spent quite a bit of time this year developping a webcomic idea. i made a good amount of concept art and wrote a lot about it. it still feels way too ambitious for me to consider starting the webcomic any time soon (i want to make at least one other comic before) but the idea really grew this year!! anyway this is Nameless and her funky animal companion, they are travelling around a fantasy continent and uncovering mysterious lore

im blanking on who to tag uhhh @officialrocketjumper​, @cadetheespeon​ and @butchlinkle​

#thank u for tagging me!! #lalou yells #i rlly didnt draw that much this year but what little i did was pretty nice #im slowly starting to get my creative juices back #burnout? dont know her

[lady-divine-writes]

Quieting Demons (Rated NC17)

Summary: When Crowley gets anxious, he cleans. After the Nada-geddon, his anxiety attacks become progressively worse. Luckily, he has an angel willing to help him through it. (1340 words)

Notes: Warning for anxiety. Non-sexual Shibari.

Read on AO3.

“Crowley! Dear! I’m back!” Aziraphale walks into the flat, fumbling with keys and juggling shopping bags, taking stock of the groceries he purchased while he secures the door behind him. “Call me an old silly, but I quite enjoy grocery shopping! I wish you would have come with me but no matter, no matter …” Aziraphale chuckles to himself as he heads to the kitchen. “Your absence meant I could get everything I wanted without argument. I got eclairs, that lovely Tapenade you requested, some beautiful pears, a bottle of …”

A loud, dull thud draws Aziraphale’s attention away from his purchases, lifts his gaze towards the master bedroom. He stands quietly and listens. Another thud, a wooded object hitting the far wall, and a scrape, something heavy dragged across the marble floor. These aren’t random noises by any means. Aziraphale recognizes them.

He sighs.

It’s going to be a long night.

“Dearest?” Aziraphale leaves his shopping on the kitchen floor and heads for the bedroom. “Crowley? What’s going … on …? Oh … my … goodness …”

Aziraphale takes a step through the door, but that’s as far as he goes.

It’s as far as he can go.

Every piece of furniture Crowley has in that room is lined up against the wall, his king-sized bed blocking most of the entrance. Crowley’s bedroom is minimalist already, but he’s taken every book down from the bookcase, every knick-knack and picture frame down from their shelves, every article of clothing out of his closet. A colorful array of cleansers and disinfectants are gathered in the center of the room alongside sponges, a mop, and rubber gloves. Aziraphale breathes in through his nose and becomes overwhelmed by the sharp smell of bleach.

Crowley keeps his flat in museum-quality condition at all times - the fashionably unlived-in look since he didn’t live there until recently. But he cleans when he gets anxious.

When it’s really bad, he does it by hand.

This has happened hundreds of times over the past 6000 years, but in that time, Aziraphale only witnessed it once. Crowley said it was his way of coping. But ever since the Nope-ageddon … ever since the bookstore fire … these fits have become more and more frequent.

They never start when Aziraphale is there. He always walks in on them.

Crowley looks up from where he’s vigorously scrubbing a spot on the floor and catches sight of his angel standing in the doorway, barred from entry.

Crowley licks his lips nervously, then swallows hard. “I know what you’re going to say, angel.”

“I’m not sure you do,” Aziraphale says, waiting until Crowley hurries over and moves the bed, gives him permission to enter. “My dear boy! What in the world got into you?”

“Nothing!” Crowley says, wringing a cloth between both hands until Aziraphale thinks his fingers might break. “I … I … nothing, I … I just thought … ngh … I felt …”

“Crowley …” Aziraphale raises a hand to his demon’s cheek but lets it hover, giving Crowley the space to lean into it at his own speed.

Which he does with slumped shoulders and a defeated expression. “I can’t stop … hearing it.”

“Hearing what?”

“The screaming.”

“Screaming?” Aziraphale shakes his head in confusion. “What screaming?”

“I … I asked you for Holy Water. I knew what I was doing. I was fine with it. I … I’d come to terms with it. I needed to protect myself. I can’t say I don’t regret it. It shouldn’t have happened, but I … but they …” Crowley’s mouth clamps shut, the words struggling to sort themselves out on his tongue. There’s a name there with them. One he hasn’t spoken since he used that Holy Water.

Used it to protect himself from another demon.

Aziraphale isn’t entirely sure what bothers Crowley about the encounter. Aziraphale once suspected it was the stink of cowardice about the situation. Crowley didn’t launch himself at an attacking Ligur, battle them in hand-to-hand combat, and when all else failed, doused them with Holy Water as a last resort. He’d poured it into a bucket and balanced it above his door a la the most popular prank of five- through ten-year-olds ever created. Ligur pushed the door open, the bucket fell on their head, and voila - disintegration.

But being seen as a coward never seemed to bother Crowley too much. When it came to battles between him and Hell, running and hiding were his preferred options.

Being a hero is the fastest way to becoming dead according to him.

Crowley has yet to fully clarify his feelings on the matter to Aziraphale.

Today more than likely won’t be that day.

“It won’t go away,” Crowley continues in a trembling voice. “The screaming … won’t go away.”

“Oh, darling …”

“I heard it and I … I … I didn’t know what to do, angel! I didn’t know what to do! I waited for you to come home so I could ask you, but you took so long, and … and … I called you! But you don’t answer your phone!” The trembling of Crowley’s voice gets worse the more he goes on until it becomes difficult for Aziraphale to understand him. “I bought you that phone and I pay the bill but you never answer it, angel! You never …” A tear rolls down Crowley’s cheek … then another … then another … gathering at his jawline before falling and darkening his shirt. “I needed to talk to you and you never …!”

“I’m sorry.” Aziraphale takes a step closer, wrapping his arms around Crowley when the demon falls into his embrace. “I’ll answer it from now on. I promise. No excuses.”

Crowley nods, but Aziraphale’s reassurance isn’t comforting enough. “It’s not … it’s not clean, angel.” Crowley sniffles. “And I need it clean. I need to get rid of … the screaming …”

“I know, my dear,” Aziraphale whispers, hugging Crowley’s shaking body to keep him from coming apart. “I know. I understand. We’ll take care of it together. But first … let me take care of you. Okay?”

Crowley’s shoulders calm their shuddering. He picks his head up from his angel’s chest, watery eyes a brilliant jasper and filled to the brim with sorrow. “O-okay.”

***

Aziraphale puts his everything into the knots he ties.

His energy.

His serenity.

His strength.

His hope for their future.

But mostly, he puts his love for his demon. His boundless love and affection. It bleeds from his hands into every fiber of the rope. He doesn’t bless it, nor does he inject Grace, because either might hurt Crowley in ways Crowley wouldn’t appreciate. No, what Aziraphale puts into his knots is the same brand of love that humans give one another. Not a divine love, not infused into their souls at birth by a higher power without their consent, but a love that is learned over time - time that there’s never enough of. A love that carries pain, a love born from sacrifice. A love that knows toil and compromise, forgiveness and rejection. A love that longs to express itself in a multitude of ways - that sings and creates, that breathes and drinks and bakes. A love that blooms and grows and flowers - becomes mighty and sometimes strange, but bigger than itself in the end.

A love that seeds life and transcends death.

Mortal love. That’s what Aziraphale gives to Crowley.

The most beautiful love of all in Aziraphale’s humble opinion.

He ties Crowley up in red cotton, using a design that won’t cause his body any strain, won’t require much in the way of effort to keep him positioned. When he’s finished tying, he hoists Crowley up, lets him hang in the quiet and dark. He’ll give Crowley rest, give the anxiety a chance to drain from his body. And when Crowley has found peace again, Aziraphale will lower him down, undo the knots, and they’ll clean the flat together.

#good omens #good omens fanfiction #shibari #ineffable husbands #anthony j crowley #aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley #crowley x aziraphale

[liveinink]

So pretty much ever since we met the Bright Queen people have had different interpretations of her words and motivations. And different interpretations of the Dynasty and how it functions. Now from what I’ve seen, most people seem pretty pro-Dynasty and opposed to the Empire, but even then there are statements like, “I know the Bright Queen wants to murder everyone in the Empire, but...” And here’s the thing, I truly don’t think she does. I personally think that is a misinterpretation of her stated intentions, though very understandable. And it’s backed up by what some of the Nein seem to think of her, which doesn’t help. I’ve also seen a few people more seriously call the Bright Queen a genocidal zealot, which I feel is a wild misinterpretation personally that is not at all backed up by canon, but I can’t really tell people they’re wrong (though personally I think that specifically is). I’m not here to say that my interpretation is absolutely right and others are absolutely wrong. I’ve just had this on my mind for a while and I’m going to share my personal analysis. Essay under the cut.

First, though I have addressed this myself before, as have others, I feel it’s important to address the “slavery” issue here. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the Kryn practice slavery, and at this point if it existed the Nein would have noticed it. The only indication the Nein had that slavery was practiced in Xhorhas was in Yasha’s description of the Kryn. A description that Ashley stated on Talks was deliberately exaggerated to make Xhorhas sound worse than it is so that the Nein wouldn’t want to go there. Also, it was not entirely reliable information to begin with. Yasha said herself she had never interacted with the Kryn, she only knew stories. And as we’ve seen, there are a lot of false horror stories about the Kryn circulating the world. The Nein assumed, based on little to no evidence, that slavery was a practice and that’s how they came to their very poor decision to disguise the humans as slaves. Despite seeing humans freely living and working in Asarius, including one in the government building. And they, luckily, never actually used the word “slave” to describe the humans, so the Dynasty members they interacted with weren’t condoning slavery. They were clearly confused by the humans’ attire, but otherwise they were given no explanation of what was happening with the humans outside of them being “help” of a sort. And the pair of orcs in Asarius and Lythir’s reactions don’t speak to slavery being condoned by the Dynasty, they speak to a few individuals being jerks to humans. And on that point, the discrimination towards humans that we’ve seen in Xhorhas, which has actually been relatively rare, seems more about individual biases and general mistrust of humans due to their tensions with the Empire. It doesn’t seem like there is a lot of systemic racism in the Dynasty from what we’ve seen so far.

Now to the Bright Queen specifically. When we first met the Bright Queen, she welcomed strangers into her throne room, ready to reward them for service to her people. Obviously events spiraled, but that still says something about her. She’s willingly to hold an audience with random mercenaries at pretty much a moment’s notice just because a trusted individual said they’d been helpful and they wanted to see her. There’s a war, on top of everything she must have to regularly deal with given the relics of the Calamity scarring the land, and just the general responsibilities of running a nation. She must have more important things do to. And yet she accepted the Mighty Nein’s request to see her. Then, after being given the Beacon, she asks the Nein if they have any questions she can answer. Again, she did not have to do that personally. She did not have to be nearly as generous or forgiving towards them as she was, but that’s a point that will reemerge later.

Now, here’s where people start to have a problem. Leylas says that the Kryn will not stop attacking the Empire until they leave “an equal or more share of blood” and she tells the Nein to warn anyone they care about to leave the Empire. Now first hearing that, it’s alarming. Sounds bloodthirsty. But with everything we know about her, and the benefit of hindsight, given other statements she has made and the actions of her soldiers, I don’t think this is a bloodthirsty statement. I think it’s more to the point that, as Leylas later explained, if there can not be peace until one side can no longer retaliate, then the Dynasty needs to do enough damage to the Empire’s armies that the Empire can no longer pose a threat. That will be a lot of blood. And I think there’s also an implicit statement that the Bright Queen cannot promise there will be no collateral damage. Civilians can be injured or killed in war, and it’s not always intentional. We know the Dynasty doesn’t want to slaughter civilians because we’ve seen evidence of it: Felderwin. If I’m remembering correctly, nobody died in the attack on Felderwin, and the only people injured were guards. There was damage to the buildings, but it could have been so much worse. The Kryn could have razed the whole town if they wanted. It was small and poorly defended, and doing extra damage would not hinder their goals. But they didn’t. They went, fought the guards, found what they came for (sort of), took it, and left. Even if my memory of this event is not perfect, I do know for certain that that attack could have been so much worse. It wasn’t. Which, to me, speaks to how the Kryn operate.

Also, if the Bright Queen’s statements here were purely about revenge, then I’ll say this: I’ll let it slide. Because even if she was wrapped up in ideas of vengeance in that moment, she clearly hasn’t acted on them, and given her other statements and actions, I don’t think she truly intends to. Her people have been wronged by the Empire. If she wants a moment to fantasize about revenge, I’m inclined to let her have.

Now I will say this before moving on, the torture of Yeza is bad. Undeniably. But I don’t think it can be any example of the Kryn being evil. They’re just not perfect. You know, like people. And unfortunately, people misguidedly think it can be effective to torture other people for information. Moving on to the Bright Queen’s speech about the cycle of violence. I think a lot of people, including members of the Nein, heard what they feared/expected rather than what was actually said here. And as a side note, expectations based on Empire propaganda and general association with what the races of Xhorhas have been made out to be in fantasy of the past (and present) is a factor here. But let’s look at what was actually said:

Beau: Being of the Empire, what we can for sure tell you is that they do not take kindly to being bested or embarrassed and they will retaliate with the full force of everything they've been working towards.

BQ: If I am correct in my beliefs, this is retaliation for our retaliation.

Beau: Yes, it's a lot of retaliation.

BQ: This will continue until one side cannot retaliate and we hope with a swift enough and well-planned plot laid out with this information, perhaps we can keep them from being able to retaliate for some time.

...

Beau: We can help you break the cycle.

BQ: The cycle cannot be broken until there is nothing living. All we can do is our best to keep it slow.

Jester: Why can't the cycle be broken?

BQ: Because life is pain for many. Jealousy, strife. Some need to conquer. There will always be those that will do whatever it takes to get one over the man or woman or otherwise to their left and right.

Caduceus: Talking about yourself or the Empire right now?

BQ: I'm talking about anything that draws breath. And it is our duty to acknowledge that and try to keep those base designs at bay. But one cannot bow down when others do not show that same will of understanding or else they will lie slaughtered.

Personally, I understand, but I don’t really understand exactly how this got misconstrued, because to me it seems obvious. Leylas explains her views quite clearly, and not a single one of them is “everyone in the Empire needs to die.” No, this is an explanation of the world and “human” nature as she has observed it in the last 1200 years. First, due to her experiences with the Empire, she does not believe peace can be achieved through, well, peaceful means. She clearly doesn’t expect that the Empire will be willing to put down their arms, so the only other means of ending the war is ensuring that they cannot retaliate anymore. And note that she never says, “and once they’re weak we’re going to wipe them out,” no. The implication, as I see it, is that they want to incapacitate the army, then enjoy a time of peace for as long as they can make it last. Because Leylas so clearly explains their cultural philosophy toward violence. First, it’s inevitable as long as people live. People. Anyone. She clarifies that herself. “Anything that draws breath.” Not Empire people specifically, all people. And while in the previous conversation about the Empire she noted that propaganda may have corrupted the minds of those in the Empire, she admitted that they probably were not all lost causes. She just expressed that what they had been taught would likely make the general public hostile towards the Kryn.

Secondly, the Kryn believe that violence is bad. Simply put, but that is the simple version of what she said. It’s unavoidable, but people should try to avoid it. To “keep those base designs at bay.” But someone will always have a reason they feel is justified to incite violence. And the Kryn can’t simply not defend themselves. But they do their best to keep the cycle of violence slow. Even while having to acknowledge the desires for aggression within themselves, and trying to not give in to them. Leylas does not exclude herself or her people from this. She knows the Kryn too are imperfect people.

I remember once coming across a post that offered some very interesting analysis on the Dynasty as a society built for peace rather than war, and I wish I could remember more about it. Sadly I can’t, but there is some evidence to suggest that. I’m not going to risk stealing someone else’s ideas by writing about it here, though. What I will say, is that the Dynasty, for all people are worried about it being a rigid caste system, which I see where the worry comes from, it certainly has that potential, we haven’t actually seen that yet, so I couldn’t say for certain that’s true; the Dynasty is a meritocracy. Arguably a theocracy as well, though they demonstrably practice religious freedom. But their leaders are all selected for reward because of their proven merit and service to society. The Dynasty has numerous times proven that it rewards for service. Not the kind of loyalty that Dwendal demands, but services rendered to the people. Like the Nein closing the Abyssal rifts, and giving warning of Empire attacks. They are consistently rewarded for their good deeds towards the Dynasty. They are actually treated with great generosity, especially considering they are not technically citizens of Xhorhas. Unless the Bright Queen considers them to be at this point, but I don’t know. They certainly weren’t when they started, but they’ve been treated well since the beginning, much to their own surprise.

The Mighty Nein have actually been treated remarkably well by the Dynasty in every interaction they’ve had with them (the higher ranking members at the very least). The worst things that have happened to them are nearly being arrested for (by Lythir’s perception) attacking Kryn soldiers, and being scried on. Which let’s be honest, the scrying is invasive and not great, but also understandable. The Nein have been treated well from their first encounters with Lady Olios, to the Bright Queen, to every interaction they’ve had with Essek and everything he’s given them (yes they owe him favors but let’s be real he’s done a lot for them), right up to them panicking about being arrested for failure and instead being rewarded for what they did do and being thanked for the warning of the Laughing Hand. The Bright Queen even offered reassurance that they did their best and there was nothing more they could do with the Laughing Hand.

The Nein’s disturbance that the Bright Queen didn’t seem to take their warning about Obann, the Angel of Irons, etc. seriously I think was not totally correct. I think it was less that she didn’t take it seriously and more like “Oh, another Calamity horror is plaguing my land? Okay, adding that to the list of things to take care of, on top of preexisting Calamity horrors, war with the Empire, etc.” Also, she’s been a ruler for a long time. She probably has a pretty good poker face, and part of her role is likely appearing to be in control so her citizens can be reassured that everything will be alright.  

And to top off this analysis with a cherry (for now at least), the Bright Queen was receptive to communication with a Tal’Dorei official, trusted the Nein’s word, and called off attacks on the enemy capital so as to not inadvertently aid cultists of Tharizdun. She seems to have her priorities straight. We’ll have to wait now to see how she acts when the Nein next speak to her.

That’s as much as I think I have in me for now. In conclusion: I love drow, and I will defend the Dynasty with everything in me.

#critical role #mighty nein #the bright queen #leylas kryn #kryn dynasty #cr meta #long post

[f1chronicle]

Dear Mr. Mark Webber- Max Verstappen Doesn’t Have To Be Lewis Hamilton!

Does Max Verstappen have to be Lewis Hamilton? What a random statement, right? The way it seems, Mark Webber is popular as Aussie Grit. It’s a sobriquet he earned, never asked for. When the famous driver from Queanbeyan was an active FORMULA 1 driver, there was one thing that did set him apart from the rest, not to mention, that ability to focus on the race and just race alone.

He’d talk less and perform more on the grid. But, hey wait! Did that make Mark Webber a world champion?

Hardly.

Despite competing in the highest annals of Motor Racing for over a decade driving for no fewer than six consecutive seasons with Red Bull, the former FORMULA 1 driver didn’t exactly come agonisingly close- or did he- to a world title.

Well, unless one’s determined to count his 242 points (with Red Bull) in 2011 to that seaon’s world champion Vettel’s 256 (also with Red Bull) an incredibly close margin- but would you?

Yet, Webber- nine wins, make no mistake- has made a headline recently, one that seems to offer a glimpse at what becomes of former FORMULA 1 drivers when they are either too idle or not in the tune with reality.

Has Mark Webber caused me harm. Heck, no! He surely has better things to do in life such as exchanging pleasantries with the Australian Men’s cricket team’s coach Justin Langer about Martial Arts.

Both Aussies, it’s common knowledge, are gifted in the same incredible art where Jean Claude Van Damme has made some very retired movies (with all due respect to the great Muscles from Brussels).

But Mr. Webber when you say that a Max Verstappen and I quote you here, “Is he (Verstappen) already Lewis on Sunday? No, he is not,” what do you even mean?

This precisely leads me to a question whose time has come, if only after 250 words:

Does Max Verstappen have to be Lewis Hamilton?

If so, what’s Lewis Hamilton doing then? Imagine what good grief might two Lewis Hamilton’s cause the very grid where tackling one is hard enough? In 2020 alone, Hamilton won ten races.

Surely, you didn’t mean Max to become Lewis, but obviously, right? On the contrary, you were actually alluding to the lack of consistency shown by Max Verstappen- the youngest pole-sitter aged 17 years, 166 days- when compared to Lewis Hamilton.

Fair enough.

But ever wondered about that thing called race-craft, sir? Does that not carry the DNA of one’s psyche or that thing called mental make-up?

Truth be told, the moment I’d say “we are all different and hence our different levels of performances,” you’d either go off to sleep or slap me. Wait actually, you’d reserve that for ‘Ubermensch’ Seb (Malaysia, 2013).

Such a cliche!

But it doesn’t require one Einstein-esque grey matter to note that no FORMULA 1 driver is the same. On race day, things happen. It’s a combination of various factors- but obviously- one of which is the way a driver competes, rather to put it succinctly, “attacks!”

Your suggestion that Max Verstappen is not on the same level as Lewis Hamilton, a seven time world champion, a driver twelve years his senior isn’t bigoted but is incredibly lame.

For starters, Lewis Hamilton has no match.

The only one who came close to Lewis Hamilton is the driver whom record Stevenage’s great son recently drew level with. In Germany, they consider him Das Beste or the best, everywhere else, he’s still considered the King!

Purely on race entries, Hamilton’s beaten more drivers than Max Verstappen has probably competed online with. And trust me, I have no idea whether Lando’s done more E racing or Charles.

Truth still is, the comparison that you ended up making- albeit only when asked- reads:

Lewis Hamilton: 266 race entries, 95 wins, 98 poles, 165 podiums, Seven World Titles

Max Verstappen: 119 entries, 10 wins, 42 podiums, 0 world titles.

The above includes nothing on these driver’s personalities, that important arsenal that ultimately plays a key role in winning and losing races.

Should you wish this Motorsport fan recount it for you, this remember is someone who’s been as many times inside an F1 car as you’ve won world titles, I’d love to draw your attention to:

Hamilton– focused, aggressive but doesn’t lose his sh*t, mighty consistent, ability to mentally seize up the opponent (we’ve seen Rosberg, we are seeing how hard it is for Valtteri), aware of the advantages of the car and what his own experience brings.

Verstappen– resilient, rabid, super aggressive, consistent in quali (by your admission), aware of his talent and the fact that the machinery he’s been aligned with isn’t the same level as Mercedes.

That said, fair to remember when Lewis Hamilton entered the sport, Max Verstappen was ten.

Today, thirteen years since Lewis first unfurled ‘Hammertime’ by winning the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix, he’s found a competitor, who is, at least, trying to muster up a fight. Did Verstappen not win the final race of the year from pole, in the process of which he led every single lap?

And make no mistake Mr. Webber, this is what a certain Charles Leclerc was doing too in 2019: competing and pushing Lewis.

Fact is, if you got to beat Lewis Hamilton in his own game- and heck, he’s nearly owned FORMULA 1 by demonstrating mesmeric consistency- you’ll need not just the car but the experience and not to mention, the mind-set.

And that’s the key differentiator for me.

We are all hardwired differently which is why we respond to challenges differently.

2019 German Grand Prix, Sunday – Max Verstappen (image courtesy Red Bull Racing)

Hamilton is spurred by the innate desire to improve and get better each time he gets inside that car. It’s not that he’s not faced heat or been found wanting. But see how he reacts even when the odds go against his favour.

The 70th Anniversary Grand Prix- won by Verstappen eventually- saw Hamilton winning on three wheels. Did you see that?

That’s all it takes- not losing your composure and finding that positivity somehow. And speaking of not losing one’s cool, there’s also a certain Kimi Matias Raikkonen who kept his whilst many beside him were losing theirs at the Abu Dhabi GP 2012. You were in that race right sir?

Now Max Verstappen, on the other hand, responds differently to situations. In a seemingly Senna-esque fashion: be bold, brave and go for the chance if it’s there- Max takes his chance.

Call it age, call it irrational exuberance, but Max won’t relent. Just like he didn’t at the Turkish GP knowing well that pushing extra hard on getting past Bottas would compromise his tyres and see the outcome?

As a matter of fact, did Charles- vastly respected already- not push a bit too aggressively at Monza 2019? Who are the black and white flags waved for back when a young man beat Hamilton in his own game?

Max Verstappen or Charles Leclerc?

So my problem with drivers like you sir and no you haven’t borrowed a dime from me, in fact, I keenly await my salary for the month is this:

Why is Max Verstappen being compared to Hamilton when there’s little need?

Surely Albon’s priceless podiums in 2020 were brilliant news for a team that put its faith in a driver who isn’t considered all too great at the moment. But, who kept Red Bull in the fight?

Incidentally, who beat Valtteri Bottas driving a Red Bull when the Finn, usually hired to win, as they say (not that Raikkonen would care) was in a Mercedes?

We know how this has panned out in the past too whenever the subject of being in the same league as Lewis has arrived.

Nico- Brittany to some, world champion to many others- was the last guy to defeat the incredible Briton. But which other FORMULA 1 loose wheel nut has managed to keep his sanity in check ever since Nico packed his bags and left?

If Max is not on the same level as Hamilton- then so is every other driver who has the capability and perhaps competent machinery, if not the greatest package designed ever to overcome a Mercedes.

This year alone, there were more cars that nearly matched the RB 16- Racing Point’s RP 20 (second-hand Mercedes, shall we?), the MCL 35, and the RS 20 (or shall one say, the cause of Cyril Abiteboul’s possible upcoming tattoo)- than there are wins in your entire career.

That you don’t get it probably explains why you are making strange headlines nowadays unlike the fine stint with the FIA World Endurance Championship.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2KMAdwv via IFTTT

#Formula 1 news

[youllallriseintheink]

Into the Void

So. Chapter 1 of the bodyswap to the death AU is here. I can’t lie, this one has a lot of setup. Sorry about that. The next chapter is going to be much more exciting. It centers around Allison, and my Allison is pretty twisted.

Also, I’ve decided to do this as a sequel to Defining Memories so that the group will have a reason to know the first thing about each other. Don’t worry if you haven’t read it, though, all the information you’d need from it is made clear in chapter 1.

Chapter 2 should be out be Friday at the latest. I know that weeks is a long time to dwell on a comedy AU, but I want to finish this and can only write so fast.

---

It was 7:00 pm on a Sunday evening when Joey Drew found himself pulled straight out of his regular life and into a purple, mystic void. Strangely enough, this wasn’t the first time this had happened: about two months ago, he and twelve of his employees had been gathered into a void just like this, then allowed to leave once they had watched each others’ memories.

This was different, though. Then, well, the mystic void had seemed a little much, but Joey had been expecting some supernatural events. You could even say he’d unleashed them. Now? Joey was clueless, and his heart was like a lead hammer pounding at his chest. What had he done?

“What’s going on, Joey?” a voice asked. He turned to see that it was Henry, and the other eleven people from last time were there, too, looking confused and, in most cases, worried. Joey’s throat was so tight that wasn’t sure he could speak. “We’re just here to watch more memories, right?”

Just then, a maniacal laughter emanated from all around them, loud and high-pitched.

Oh, absolutely not! The void mocked. It was jaunty and garbled and high-pitched. I paid you my favour, and you didn’t pay me back. And you didn’t put me away properly, either. So I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: now that you all know each other a bit, we’re going to play a game. You hear?

“Joey, get us out of here!” Sammy yelled. There was fear evident in his voice. “Do it. You know how, right?”

Joey stared vacantly into the void as it laughed and laughed at them.

No one here is getting away until you entertain me. Now, here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m going to take your souls, and put em’ in random bodies. And you’ll want to keep up the performance of being whoever you’re supposed to be, because at the end of the week, you’ll all get a chance to guess each others’ identities. Anyone who can guess more identities than their identity was correctly guessed will be put back into their bodies. Anyone else, the voice giggled, DIES! I’ll give you all, hmm... about two minutes to work out the practicalities. Bye-bye!

The thirteen people got a good look at each other, perhaps so they’d recognize who they were five minutes from now. Strangely, the strongest reactions in the room seemed to be nervousness and stunned shock, most likely because the reality of such a bizarre scenario hadn’t sunk in yet.

After a while, Thomas spoke up on the practicalities of the situation. “Alright. Here’s what I propose we do,” Thomas said, trying to sound perfectly calm. He wanted nothing more than to wring Joey’s neck, but now was not the time. “Let’s all write any important information about how to handle each other’s lives on pieces of paper and leave them taped to our own lockers, or offices, or whatever it is we have. That can include any meds we have to take, how to interact with family members, details about work, whatever. Alright?”

Allison’s sobs were the only answer.

Thomas blinked, and the next thing he knew, he was still hearing those same sobs, albeit in a somewhat deeper voice, but he was in an apartment he didn’t recognize and looking at the face of Sammy Lawrence. Looking down at his own hands, he saw very thin arms coated in inky black gloves.

“Oh, Sammy, what’s wrong?” Thomas cooed in the girliest, most sympathetic tone he could muster. The game had begun.

The next day, the thirteen took to their roles. Thomas hated his new body. Susie hadn’t been kidding about not producing body heat because she was made of ink, and he was freezing cold whenever he was outside of her well-heated apartment. On the plus side, the note said that Joey Drew had her scheduled to do some bit parts for an upcoming episode because he hadn’t been able to find a replacement voice actress yet, so at very least he wouldn’t have to do her usual performances and meet-and-greets as Alice Angel. He barely knew a thing about this studio’s characters, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to sing.

Sammy didn’t mind being Allison too much. He could sing. He had a feeling that living with “Thomas” wouldn’t be such an issue, either. While he was experimenting with his new singing voice the night before, Sammy caught “Thomas” bundling up in a heavy sweater and heading out to stargaze in the crisp night air. “He” walked so delicately when he thought no one was watching, and the way he was holding “his” arms to his heart- there was no doubt about it. This was Susie rediscovering life in a human body. He even caught her feeling her pulse, unaware that she was being watched. It crushed Sammy’s heart to see, but at least he’d figured out an identity.

Allison didn’t like Sammy, and not just because of the air of snobbery she got from him, or all the contemptuous looks he gave to Tom. By his memories, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he’d had a part in Susie’s death and rebirth. Now that she had his body, well, she’d figure out a way to make things even. She knew she would. And in the meantime, there were certain ways that she planned on taking advantage of it.

Bertrum had ended up the body of the lyricist, Jack Fain. He supposed there were worse things- writing song lyrics sounded like something he could learn. He, like many of the other players, had to ask where his office was. To his dismay, he learned that he had no office: he usually worked in the sewers. Was there anyone in this company who wasn’t either incompetent, a psychological mess, disrespectful, or massively lacking in self-respect? Worse, he had no idea where to put his note, since, as Bertrum could work out ride designs at home and only ever came in occasionally to check on the Bendyland workers or meet with Joey Drew, he had no office or locker. He had to find whoever was piloting his body so he could tell them about the dinner party with the Georgian investors on Thursday evening and make sure they didn’t ruin it. Thus, Bertrum found himself working as close to Bendyland as he could without setting off anyone’s radar, hoping to catch a glimpse of himself.

On the other hand, Jack didn’t mind being Bertrum. He worried about how things were going with his husband and adoptive kids, of course, and the situation was scary in general, but at least his form put him at an advantage. This way he would have an excuse to interact with “Lacie” for as long as he needed to in order to figure out her identity, and wouldn’t need to interact with too many other participants of the game. He could focus on designing attractions that weren’t rides, since he had no mechanical knowledge, and keep his profile down for the week, and he would be just fine, he hoped.

Norman was relatively unafraid. He was Shawn- more or less a best-case scenario. Shawn’s job didn’t require much skill, and he was gregarious enough that it wouldn’t be out of character to interact with almost any of the players. Plus, from years of watching from the shadows, Norman knew almost everyone’s secrets- this was a bloody game and Norman took no joy in that, but it was his game.

Shawn was Lacie. Okay, someone he knew well and who wouldn’t interact with other players much. A fair deal. He could handle this. Thankfully, she had been outside when the transformation had occurred, so no one who knew her personally heard Shawn’s existential screams.

Lacie barely knew Norman beyond his reputation for watching people and rarely talking, but he seemed pretty easy to pretend to be. She had to ask a coworker what her job was, and almost laughed when she got the answer. Much of it was sitting high and mighty above the recording studio, which periodically contained four of the players of the game. She’d been terrified at first, but all things considered, she’d have to really screw up to lose this game.

Joey also thought he had a good deal, playing Henry. Joey knew Henry so well, and already knew wife and his children (they loved their uncle Joey). Heck, Joey had even envied Henry’s home life. And Joey knew how to draw, and how to put on a persona. It seemed like a best-case scenario! That was, until it was ten a.m. and Joey was sick to death of drawing. Henry had an ability to do repetitive work for hours that Joey quite simply lacked, and Joey found himself without an excuse to visit anyone. Often, during his first day, he would just walk somewhere where he knew other players would be, and just stand there, watching, hoping for a clue to anyone’s identity. It was a very un-Henrylike thing to do, but at least it wasn’t Joeylike, either. He was fairly certain that he wouldn’t be guessed for it.

Henry, in the meantime, was thrilled to be Joey. He’d worried himself to the point of vomiting the night before, thinking about how he’d have to contribute to the deaths of others for a chance to see his family again. But now, he was planning- working out misguided, Joeylike decisions that would test the nature of the players, starting with the music department. He was ready to do anything to secure his life, and being someone this powerful could only help.

Grant was in full-on panic the second he was out of the void, and the noise from that brought over a somewhat familiar-looking golden retriever to lick his shaking hand in concern. Grant had moved to another room and shut the door to keep the retriever out. It had startled him enough that he’d almost struck it, and he had no intention of hurting someone else’s pet. As soon as he came down from panic, he realized where he was: Wally’s home. Alright. This could be worse. All he had to do was clean the studio and pretend to be goofy and energetic. For a whole week. He hoped he could keep it up that long.

Wally wasn’t faring much better. He knew he couldn’t handle the studio’s finances, and he didn’t know anything about Grant. Since it had been so long, Wally couldn’t even seem to remember Grant’s memories. The note he’d been left didn’t help. Most of it was pretty mundane: the first two bullet points were about where he kept his medications and a list of scheduled meetings. The next one read,

Do not get help with my job. I have a reputation to maintain. At least, don’t get help with anything too simple.

Not exactly what Wally wanted to hear, but still a clear message. The next point, however, was a lot more cryptic.

Expect a visit at 10 a.m. on Monday. Have the second folder in my filing cabinet (the blue one) out. Have the door closed.

Well, it was 10 a.m., and Wally did have the folder out and the door closed. He heard someone twist the door handle. “Slide it under the door.” Came a deep, gravely, and very artificial-sounding voice.

Wally tried opening the door, but whoever was on the other side of it was holding it shut. Knowing that he needed to find at least one identity to stay alive, he pulled harder, but whoever was on the other side of it was much stronger than him.

“Don’t even think about it. I know exactly who you are, and if you open this door, I will tell the other eleven. Just slide that folder under the door, and keep the door closed for five minutes afterwards.”

Slowly, carefully, Wally obeyed. On the other side of the door, Grant picked up the folder and backed away slowly. He felt sorry for whoever he’d threatened, but these forms needed to be complete before the end of the week, and he was quite sure that Joey would kill him if they weren’t done properly. The second he was around the corner, he collapsed against the wall in relief. Hopefully this would be the most ridiculous thing he’d have to do this week.

“There you are, Wally,” a voice came.

Grant quickly hid the folder behind his back. “Thomas! Uh, hi!” Was that how Wally greeted Thomas? He hoped so.

“Uh, hi. So, your note probably said something about how I’m supposed to teach you to maintenance the ink machine.” Indeed, it had. “Well, that would be pretty useless, now wouldn’t it? Listen, I’ll promise not to try to figure out your identity if you can answer me this: do you know anything about machinery?”

Grant had worried that being caught ten feet from his office would have been a dead giveaway. Maybe “Thomas” was just that desperate. “Sorry, no,” he said.

“Okay,” “Thomas” said. “Guess I’ll just have to teach him next week. Best of luck not dying.” Susie left, making sure to walk heavily, as Thomas would have. She’d just have to make sense of Thomas’ instructions on her own. Maybe calling GENT or getting some books on machine maintenance from the library would help. One week. She had to keep the ink machine, whose pipes and various machinery extended from one end of the studio to the other, in one piece for one week, plus keep up with the pipe installations Joey had wanted. Plus find at least two identities (she wasn’t sure how long she could hide her true colours from “Allison”), and keep her own hidden so that she could survive.

This was going to be a week.

#body swap to the death au #my fanfiction #joey drew crew

[thewritewolf]

Rekindle Chapter 5 - Baking

While getting settled in to watch some movies, Marinette and Chat Noir bake some cookies for snacking.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30  31

@marichatmay

Enjoy!

Read on Ao3

“Really? That’s why your coworkers are mad at you? Seems like a really stupid thing to keep a grudge over.” Chat Noir sipped at the tea Marinette had made for him, holding the mug very carefully to avoid scratching it was his clawed gloves.

“I know, right?! So I had one bad day two years ago and they will still barely talk to me.” She sighed. “I’ve already started looking around for other internships. Even if I don’t get better pay, it’ll at least be nice not to be a social outcast.”

It had been sweet of Chat Noir to listen to her vent for the last… three hours, she realized with a wince as she glanced at her clock. When had Chat Noir become so patient? Her experience with him from Ladybug’s perspective was a hothead who rushed into things without thinking. There had been times where she had to worry more about reining in his more moody episodes than fighting the akuma of the day. Yet here he was, letting her get all her frustrations off her chest while being as supportive as ever.

“It definitely isn’t fair, purrincess. But I think I know what will cheer you up…” She tilted her head to the side as he stretched for the gift box he’d brought. Holding up the dvds, he grinned at her, “...movie night!”

“Hm… sounds good, but missing something.” She tapped her chin for added effect.

“And what’s that?”

“We’ll need snacks. Lots of them.” She caught him glancing towards the last remnants of their dinner. “Pasta is not movie food, chaton, not even delicious pasta.” He puffed his chest out at her off-handed compliment. “How does sugar cookies sound to you?”

“I’ll defer to your superior movie day expertise.” They stood at the same time, but Chat Noir hesitated. “It’s, uh… been awhile since I’ve made cookies. Like, years. So I’ll follow your lead on this one.”

“Well, it’s good for you that I practically grew up baking delicious treats.” She started pulling out all the ingredients she’d need. “Sugar cookies really aren’t that hard, so I’ll just whip up the batter myself. You can help roll them out into balls before we put them in the oven.”

Chat Noir sighed dramatically, holding aloft his chef’s hat. Even after three hours of talking, she didn’t know why he’d brought it besides being a dork. “Ah, from head chef to mere bystander. How the mighty have fallen.”

“Well since you seem so familiar with my kitchen, you can get the pan out and greased while I’m going this.”

“Yes, chef!” Despite the crisp salute, he moved leisurely and hummed a song that Marinette couldn’t quite place while he worked. She was still stirring when he was finished and watching her expectantly.

She stared pointedly at his hands. “Those gauntlets come off, Chat?”

“Yes…? Oh, right. Probably don’t want me rolling cookies in these, do you?” He chuckled to himself as he undid some latch underneath the bulky gloves and Marinette blinked as she realized that this was the first time she’d ever seen her partners bare hands.

They weren’t what she had expected, although she wasn’t aware she even had expectations of what he looked like outside the suit. Since Chat was always a wild child and full of life, she had expected maybe some scars or calluses. Maybe a tan from long days outside. Instead, they looked… soft and well manicured. No sign of rough usage or long healed injuries. The hands of someone who took their looks seriously, and stayed out of trouble. She realized she was staring and quickly looked down at what she was stirring as Chat Noir went to wash his hands.

The rest of the process was spent in companionable quiet and between the two of them all the dough was rolled and flattened in no time at all. Even with her distracted by his bare hands - she’d already been proven wrong twice about her long standing assumptions about him. What else could she have incorrectly assumed?

Once she set the pan in the oven, she asked, “So… want to play a game to pass the time?”

As expected, that got his interest. Though he tried to hide the excitement in his voice, she could see it in his eyes and by the swishing of his tail. “Sure! What did you have in mind?”

“Well, some sweetheart just got me some new sketchbooks, so I was thinking we could do kind of like a drawing charades? We draw something and the other person has to guess what it is. Every three correct answers and we’ll swap positions. Sound good?”

“Sounds purr-fect.” When she pushed the book over to him, he shook his head and pushed it back. “Host gets first turn. Even I know that rule.”

WIth the help of a random word generator, she began sketching the first object. She didn’t make it far from the symmetrical design before Chat Noir made his guess.

“Butterfly?” He grinned. “I’d rather leave work at work, if you don’t mind, Marinette.”

“Okay, fair enough. Butterfly was probably too easy a start. What about this…” She quickly jotted out an outline with four legs, whiskers, and a tail.

He snickered. “Really? Its a cat. No? What else could it - oh, a kitten.”

“Almost got you there, Chat. Can’t get too cocky. Last one before we switch.”

“Uhh, a circle. A pancake? No. Soup with sprinkles?” She looked at where he was hovering over her shoulder and raised her eyebrow. “What? It could happen. Cake with candles.” She gestured for him to continue. “...Oh! Birthday cake.”

“Good job. Now,” she passed the sketchbook and phone with the word generator to him, only now noticing how close he’d gotten, “Your turn.”

He took the offered pencil sheepishly. “Okay, just keep in mind I’m not as good at drawing as you.”

“And that’s part of the challenge for me.” She glanced at the clock. Still a while to go until the cookies were done. “Start when you’re ready.”

His first drawing was a crowd of people just barely above stick figure quality, but what tipped her off was how there was two bigger ones and a smaller one - which lead her to the correct guess of family. Next he made a long-sleeved shirt with surprisingly good detail. The two of them had gone through her fall clothing sketchbooks before. Was that where he learned to draw sweaters? The last one had been more abstract, but his little forest scene made more sense when he doodled wind and falling leaves. In hindsight, autumn should have been obvious.

“Alright, my turn again.” She hesitated for a moment before turning the page, savoring the little drawings Chat had made before starting her turn.

With only a single rectangle to go off of Chat Noir began guessing. “Box!” She added z’s coming off of it. “Tired box. Sleeping box. Bed!”

She took quick break to laugh before turning to him incredulously. “Sleeping box?!”

“I remembered the word eventually,” he grumbled. “Did I at least get it right?”

“No, but you’re close. Let’s see if this helps…” She drew another rectangle around the box and he finally got it.

“Oh! Pillow!”

She nodded and started work on her next drawing. It didn’t take long for him to figure out ‘gloves’, especially since she just copied his suit’s. Just as she reached for her phone to go for another round, she saw the time.

“Cookies should be done now, so that’s the end of the game.” She saw a brief look of disappointment on Chat Noir’s face. “Don’t worry, we can always play again some other time.”

“I’ll hold you to that. At least sugar cookies are a good reason to stop.” He took a deep breath as she took them out of the oven. “Ahhhh… delicious.”

She giggled, “You haven’t even had any!”

“Well, it’s a dupain-cheng baked good, so it goes without saying.”

“Such a flatterer.”

“I don’t hear you denying it.”

“And that’s because it’s true. Doesn’t make you any less of a flatterer for bringing it up.” She set the platter of cookies on the table. “Don’t eat all those while I’m gone. I’m going to scrounge up a bunch of pillows and blankets. Can you get ready to start the movies while I’m looking?”

“Sure.”

It took awhile for her to find where she’d stashed all of it. After all, it had been months, if not a full year since she’d needed to pull out extra pillows and blankets. Which made her stop and really think. Had it been so long since she’d had anyone stay over? She’d gotten into such an exhausting routine at work, she hadn’t even realized. By the time she came back, Chat Noir was lounging on her couch, eyes closed and hands behind his head. The television wasn’t even on, much less set up. She narrowed her eyes at him and walked towards him.

He cracked open one eye and grinned at her. “Hey, purrincess. Find everything- ack!” His sentence was cut off when she dumped everything onto him and jumped on top of it. “Hey! I was laying here!”

She coyly looked down at him, being sure to open her eyes in mock surprise. “Oh! Sorry. I must not have noticed you there.” She smiled sweetly at him. “I’m comfortable. Are you ready to watch some movies.”

“Ha ha, very funny. Get off and I’ll start them.”

She jumped off of him and while he was busy with the dvd player, Marinette unfolded the blankets and strategically placed some pillows while pulling up the table to put the cookies on. By the time he was done, she was under the blankets and holding them up for him. He slipped in after turning off the lights and their marathon began.

-------------------------

The light of the credits provided scant illumination for the room. Despite eating all the sugar cookies, the two of them were feeling drained after the long day and relaxing in front of the television. Marinette was barely able to keep her eyes open. She’d long since given up the struggle to sitting up straight and she was leaning against Chat Noir, her head was resting on his shoulder. As sleepy as she felt that she was, she knew that Chat was doing even worse, since he’d already nodded off a couple times during the last movie. She pulled herself away from Chat, only now noticing that his arm had snaked around her at some point during the last few hours. Stretching, she stood and gently nudged him.

“Chat? It’s pretty late and it doesn’t feel right to send you out when you’re this tired. You want to crash here?”

Yawning, he replied, “If that’s alright with you, yeah.”

“C’mon, I’ll show you to the guest room. Grab some of those pillows and blankets and make yourself comfortable.”

He shambled after her, only reluctantly still awake before collapsing onto the guest bed. No sooner had she closed the door than a flash of green light appeared under the door. Her heart fluttered for a moment - on the other side of the door was whoever Chat Noir actually was. She stood still for a few long heartbeats before his snoring broke her out of it.

“Goodnight, kitty,” she whispered before heading to bed herself.

#MarichatMay2019 #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Chat Noir #Marichat #ml fanfiction #my writing #Rekindle

[isa-ghost]

Fuck I don't have any good questions so please just tell me e v e r y t h i n g about their relationship. I have a mighty need for some cute brothers.

*inhALES*

This is actually super fucking long so I’m putting a read more LMAO

@septic-dr-schneep, this is actually the bunker!SD timeline as of now (I’ma date this for myself- 1/20/19) if you want to read it too. :3c

@a-septic-mind pls read this you little shit, this is the entire timeline of Shit We’ve Put Jackie And Henrik Through™ so far.

Jackie has made sure to go through anything and everything ever with Henrik since the time he came into existence. There’s very few things he hasn’t been around for and the biggest one of course was August but let’s save that part for a second–

Jackie was extremely relieved when Marvin came into the picture because he wouldn’t be lonely anymore but when Henrik came around? He bawled for hours on and off because he was so happy to have a second little brother. He was hugging Jack constantly and thanking him (Henrik was the first ego Jack made on purpose) and wouldn’t let Henrik go. xD Henrik was super overwhelmed by it of course, because existence was a completely new/very confusing thing to him and on top of this, here’s this giant ball of loud, bouncy, cuddly muscle and energy clinging to him like crazy and crying a lot. After getting used to it though, Jackie’s constant affection made it a ton less stressful to adjust to being an ego and all the trouble that came with that.

Jackie learned German for him, Henrik would draw suit designs for Jackie, and the two would talk about things all day long- mostly Jackie answering whatever questions Henrik had about their souls, their abilities, Jack, other ego-related stuff, etc. They got extremely close extremely fast and the things they’d experience in the future only made that stronger.

Unfortunately they only had roughly a month of happiness after Henrik’s creation before Anti came to be and started the war. They had to move from Ireland (Jack never got the chance to move to Brighton in this AU xD) to Axel Creek in the US and were kept in the Safehouse they live in now to be protected from Anti. As if losing Jack and getting thrown across an entire ocean into a random small town in the middle of a different country wasn’t enough, headcanons finally started growing popular enough to take effect on Henrik… Including the insane doctor ones. His “snapping” fits started up, and he just about almost killed Jackie during the first one.

After going through the initial shock of being attacked by his baby brother, Jackie got Henrik semi-under control and that’s when the two of them had their first dark experience together– Whenever Henrik would snap and go temporarily insane, Jackie would allow him to perform spontaneous surgeries on him. They kept it secret from Marvin (and in the future, from Chase), and although it’s a really twisted way for them to handle something so serious, it actually let them learn almost everything there is to know about Jackie’s body, powers, and how the two effect each other. The only things they haven’t been able to study about Jackie is how his eye-related powers work and how his negativity kryptonite works. From the time they started these snapped surgeries and onward, they grew a trust bond stronger than anything you could imagine.

Once Henrik got the hang of controlling the effects of headcanons, Jackie taught him how to fuse their souls and their fusion Life Saver was first created. LS didn’t handle Henrik’s iffy sanity well, and, well… He’s a handful for the two, but they love their fusion like a semi-murderous, problematic son. xD However, they’d just barely figured out how to control him/keep him stable mentally long enough before they needed to use him in a rescue mission- Anti was trying to take Marvin. In the end, luck wasn’t on their side and Marvin was taken as they were ripped out of their fusion (which left near-deadly damage on their souls and internals). They barely made it home alive and Chase had to rush to save them just in time.

They recovered slowly, but then Summer 2017 crawled around… The community was starting to question Henrik and whether or not he was good. The doubt in his alignment/intentions began to weaken him and he grew sickly and his powers started to fade.

He was severely deteriorated by the time KJSE happened it and there was no way he could’ve possibly fended Anti off and saved Jack at the same time. He was taken by Anti along with Jack and this shattered Jackie and Henrik’s relationship for a while.

Jackie was left to spiral into extreme guilt after it happened because even though he could feel Henrik in serious danger and knew he was weak due to lacking community faith, he didn’t bother racing to the rescue until it was far too late. Not knowing where Henrik was or if he was even alive, he assumed the worst and his mental state crumbled. He isolated himself, stopped hero work for a long time and made himself deathly ill with his negativity kryptonite. Eventually it got so bad, he’d hallucinate Henrik screaming at him for not coming to save him and all sorts of other awful things. It destroyed Jackie’s confidence and triggered his severe sensitivity to failure. Henrik’s first birthday was one of the worst days for him of all…

He spent the next six months driving himself insane with grief to the point where it was hard for Marvin, Chase, or Henrik’s former nurse Dawn to recognize him. Nothing they did helped him or got him to stop all of the habits he’d developed. Eventually he tried looking for Henrik and ended up getting captured by Anti in the process. He was missing for a few days before being found. Little did he know, the person who found him was Dawn’s daughter Isa; and she’d also saved Henrik about a week prior to saving Jackie.

After recovering from the torture Anti had subjected him to over those few days, he and Henrik finally reunited (which did not go smoothly at first because Jackie was 100% convinced Henrik hated him for not coming to his rescue). Things were okay after that… For maybe a month, sadly.

It wasn’t long before Jackie got taken again, this time with Marvin (he escaped Anti after being taken btw xD). The two were missing a long time before Jackie broke out and ran to the bunker for help to save Marvin. They got him home, but in the end, Jackie ended up getting corrupted. The duration of his corruption was an utter nightmare for him and Henrik. Just to name a few things that happened–

Jackie once ran away from the bunker to the Safehouse. Henrik tracked him down and tried to talk him out of his room. The conversation ended up turning into a really sad string of cliff-related metaphors. Said metaphors have stuck with them from this moment all the way to the present.

Henrik had to use Jackie’s trigger of needles to properly activate his power to sonic scream (Anti had given him the power, he didn’t always have it).

Jackie tried making a deal with Anti to guarantee the protection of his brothers and when Henrik found out, he actually tried to outbid him by offering better deals. In the end, they almost royally screwed up and barely go out of it alright.

During a fight after this deal debate, Jackie almost fell off a literal cliff and Henrik caught him before he fell. Sweet, sweet irony…

Henrik detoxed Jackie by faking his death after that fight (at the end of the fight, Anti took control of Jackie and made him hurt Henrik). When Jackie was dragged back to the bunker to be quarantined, Henrik revealed he wasn’t dead and then stabbed himself where Jackie had wounded him and almost bled out. This finished Jackie’s detox.

They barely got a break before Jackie was downed by Anti’s bullshit AGAIN. This time, Anti posted a video of the ONW HQ being blown up and blamed Jackie. The community lost faith in him so rapidly that he deteriorated and fell into a coma. He almost faded and returned to Jack before Chase narrowly managed to save him. Through all of this, Henrik never left his side. Despite being shut down, Jackie could hear everything Henrik was saying… It was Very Upsetting™ to hear, especially since he couldn’t reply or at least comfort Henrik.

For a very long time after waking up and recovering, Jackie refused to sleep or close his eyes at all for that matter and it’s basically been that way since. They haven’t suffered any extreme traumas since Jackie shut down (which happened in March). They just sorta have ups and downs here and there and they spend every night staying up and doing things together be it talking, working, both, or something else. Whenever they’ve had downs, they’ve vented and supported each other through it no matter how long it takes. Recently they’ve actually been the happiest they’ve been in ages. xD

But yeah, I think that’s about every huge important bunker!SuperDrug moment that’s ever happened in the bunker roleplay as of 1/20/19. XD So there ya have it.

#jacksepticeye #bunker 88720 #jackieboy man #dr schneeplestein #henrik von schneeplestein #Superdrug

[sadwizardjessi]

A warriors oc fanfic I promised @cozmo-the-mighty-chinchilla I'd write. Note: I've never read a single sentence from warriors. I only know what Cozmo has told me and what I've interoperate from random amvs she's shown me and the fanart she draws

It was a normal day for Spot Leaf. The sky was bright blue with a hint of leaf, the wheat was shining and soft to walk through as it always was. The stream near his nest or whatever wild cats stay in was crisper than ever. All was perfect on this fine afternoon.

At least until a spark of brown caught his golden cat eye because i believe it was disproven that cats only see in shades of gray.

Performing the cat equivalent of running, Spot Leaf made his way quickly to the offending brown, only to discover it was another cat! But oh no, not just any cat. It was his ultimate rival. SPOTTED LEAF. Because apparently when i chose the dumbest name I could think of for a warriors oc it ended up already being an established character.

“Halt!” Shouted Spot Leaf, in a loud meow because i'm assuming cats still converse through meows and body language in this series.

“Spotted Leaf, I forbid you to step any closer! For this is my clan’s territory.”

Spotted leaf tensed up, head tilting in confusion. “Who are you? And what clan? There are no clan’s out here.”

Spot Leaf hissed in anger because thats a cat thing right? “What clan- Are you kid- THIS IS MY CLAN. THE WHEAT CLAN.”

“The wheat cla- what even-”

Before the intruding Spotted Leaf could continue to insult the legendary clan, a loud meow pierced the air between them. A grey cat with green blue rainbow eyes stepped forward. Spot Leaf admired the wing design she had colored on her side because thats a thing he’s seen on many fanarts of her.

“Spotted Leaf, stop antagonizing Spot Leaf. You're a Leaf rank now, you should act like it.”

Spot Leaf sat down with his back straight. He grinned over at Spotted Leaf smugly. However he was quickly distracted by a stalk of wheat and began trying to bite at it without moving too much.

Spotted Leaf rolled his eyes but nodded, “Yes of course, Dove wing. I wasn’t thinking. Star clan have mercy on this great sin I’ve committed. If only Raven paw were here. He could give me the advice I need on how to be a good cat person thing.”

A larger calico(?) cat came bumbling out just then, sad but looking interested in the conversation. “Raven paw? I believe i'm the cat that was the boyfriend of raven paw. Why is he being discussed?”

Spot Leaf snapped back to attention at the new character. “Barley old buddy old pal! I’m not quite sure why you only have one name unlike the rest of the cats but heya how are you doing!”

Barley laughs a full cat laugh and replies, “Oh you see if you read book 42 out of 125 you’d know that I live on a farm so therefore, I am exempt from being forced to join a cat cult.”

Nodding aggressively, Spot Leaf responds, “ah, yes of course. What a fool I was to have forgotten. Would you like some wheat?”

Spotted Leaf peeks forward, looking as eager as a cat can. “I would-”

“I WASN’T OFFERING ANY TO YOU!”

He snapped backwards, ears back. “Oh okay.”

Dove Wing cleared her throat, shooting a pointed glare at Spot Leaf because she’s a mom or some shit?? And moms can do mom glares. Spot Leaf nods reluctantly and hands over some of his very precious wheat.

Before the continue the conversation much further however, a rolling sound is coming from the left. The odd group looks towards the sound only to discover Bramble Stripe rolling through the wheat to get to them.

Dove wing’s cat eyes light up in excitement, as I’m pretty sure they’re friends. Before she can greet her friend however, Bramble Stripe bleps and rolls away, a long ‘meeeooooowwww’ being heard as she disappears amongst the wheat.

With a cat sigh, Dove wing turns to Spot Leaf and smiles in the only way a cat can smile. Mischievously.

“So sorry to bother you today, Spot Leaf. We should be taking our leave and returning to our clans and farm house or whatever.”

Barley and Spotted Leaf nod behind her, meowing in agreement.

Knowing of course that this will be the last time he’ll ever see them, Spot Leaf wishes them safe travels and offers some wheat. The three decline, solidifying Spot Leaf’s decision to not tell them about the Tigers.

Days pass without incident. Spot Leaf thinks he might finally be free of his catty neighbors.

But as his life goes, that thought was shattered as two other cats are quickly found messing around in his wheat. Oh It’s Mothwing and Bumble bee? Bumble Leaf? Bumble Star? It’s one of those. He gallops over, as he is on his way to ascending from his mortal cat form. But that’s another story.

“Bumble Bitch and Mothwing! Greetings! Can I help you on this fine summer day?”

They both look up, not hearing the spaztic cat make his way over. Bumble whatever looks over at him in a creepy cat way. “I was looking for somewhere to lure dove wing- i uh i mean. To invite Dove wing to have a romantic mouse chase with me.” Mothwing rolls her eyes and sprouts moth wings, as her name says, and flies out of the conversation, as i realised i only know her name.

Spot Leaf laughs a hearty cat laugh and stares down the bumble bitch of a cat, eyes glowing with star power.

“Foolish cat mortal! You dare step into my realm of wheat!? May the tigers have mercy on your soul!”

“What?” he asks like the dumb bitch he is.

“YOU HEARD ME. SCRAM PEASANT.”

And true to the insult, Bumble cat thing takes off into the day, screeching like a cat does when wounded. Spot Leaf sighs in relief. He’s protected the pure one once more. Dove Wing. A pure and good cat.

He was about to return to his very busy day when he noticed something. He felt…. Tingly. Was he- He gasped, as cats can do that in this series, I’m sure.

He was evolving! He was- He WAS.

HE WAS SPOT STAR NOW. TIGER HEART WOULD BE SO PROUD OF HIM.

Now that he had star powers he could do anything! He could Make everyone a part of wheat clan! He could make everyone Pool status or whatever was the lower equivalent of that. He could Do conceivably anything.

He look directly at the sun until the world with that weird bright white/yellow color it does when you stare at the sun for too long. He knew what he needed to do.

Licking himself clean first, Spot Star Stood up straight and Meowed as loudly as he could, so every cat across the land could hear.

“Tis I, Spot Star. I soon will be joining Star clan in the heavens as i think that's cat heaven. As I leave, I have only one request. That all the Warrior cats become friends and stop fighting over dumb shit like wheather lavender is beter than wheat. Of course it isn’t don’t be stupid. That is all. Yeet.”

Suddenly, just as his voice disappeared, a pile of Wheat appeared at the little cat bean toes of every Warrior cat that listened. He closed his eyes, feeling himself fade from this realm. Apparently that was relevant to this story.

He wasn’t sure if his wish would be heard, but he knew, somewhere out there, there was at least one cat who found him mildly entertaining, so that was good enough for him. Raven paw was waiting for him at the cat tower. He wondered if they’d have any wheat flavored cat nip waiting for him.

THE END

#this was weirdly fun to write #Oh god what did I even write #I swear I'm an established writer #warriors cats #spotted leaf #dove wing #bramble stripe #raven paw #barley #moth wing #bumblebitch #tiger heart #I think that's it??? #lmao #Cozmo-the-mighty-chinchilla #My writing #unfortunately #spot leaf #spotleaf

[orbemnews]

NASA Sent a Secret Message to Mars. Meet the People Who Decoded It. As NASA’s Perseverance rover fell through the Martian atmosphere last week, a video camera on the spacecraft captured the breakneck deployment of its parachute, which was decorated with splotches of reddish orange and white. Those splotches were a secret message. During a news conference Monday, Allen Chen, the engineer in charge of the landing system, narrated what could be seen and learned in the slowed-down video. He added, cryptically and nonchalantly, that his team hoped to inspire others. “Sometimes we leave messages in our work for others to find for that purpose,” he said. “So we invite you all to give it a shot and show your work.” Across the Atlantic Ocean, Maxence Abela, a 23-year-old computer science student in Paris, realized what Mr. Chen was saying: The seemingly random pattern on Perseverance’s parachute contained a code. He called his father, Jerome, a software engineer at Google working in London, and the two set to solving it. “We like those kinds of little challenges,” Mr. Abela said. “We didn’t think we would be able to solve it, but we would at least try.” Collaborating via teleconference, they downloaded the video, isolated images showing the fully inflated parachute and started piecing together the bits. So did others around the world, trading insights on Twitter and forums on Reddit. “It’s just exciting that NASA is putting these little puzzles in their missions,” said Adithya Balaji, a graduate student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who independently tackled the problem. Mr. Balaji compared the parachute puzzle to a couple of science fiction movies: “Contact,” where a scientist played by Jodie Foster unravels an alien message, and “The Martian,” where Matt Damon’s character Mark Watney communicates with people back on Earth using a similar code. “I think that it’s exciting that real life can be sometimes even more exciting than the movies,” Mr. Balaji said. The person who came up with the idea for embedding a message was Ian Clark, who led development of the parachute. NASA’s previous rover, Curiosity, used the same system when it successfully landed on Mars in 2012. But a failure of a prototype parachute intended for future missions spurred engineers to improve the design. While watching video of a high-altitude test of the new parachute for Perseverance, Dr. Clark noticed that the checkerboard pattern on the canopy made it difficult to track how individual portions of the parachute unfurled and inflated. Because Perseverance would be outfitted with video cameras, Dr. Clark wanted a pattern that would be visually distinct. That, in turn, provided an opportunity “to have a little fun with it,” he said. He asked Matt Wallace, a deputy project manager for the mission, for permission. “I told them OK,” Mr. Wallace recalled. “Just make sure it was appropriate and couldn’t be misinterpreted.” The 70-foot-wide parachute consisted of 80 strips of fabric radiating outward from the center to form a hemisphere-shape canopy, and each strip consisted of four pieces. Dr. Clark thus had 320 pieces to work with. Some of his ideas would have required additional colors, but that could have threatened the parachute’s integrity if untested dyes weakened the fabric fibers. “We were unwilling to go to a cloth that was dyed in a color that we had never used before,” Mr. Wallace said. Even a pattern of just orange and white, the two colors of previous parachutes, raised potential issues. “There’s all kinds of second-guessing questions,” Dr. Clark said. “Like could having more white than orange, or vice versa, mean that the parachute was going to warm up differently and maybe that would change its behavior?” After all, mission managers would have been embarrassed if they had to explain how they lost a $2.7 billion mission because a parachute engineer had sneaked in a secret message. But Dr. Clark’s analysis showed no ill effects, and the plan went forward. Until this week, only about half a dozen people knew about it. When computer scientists see something in black and white — or, in this case, orange and white — they think of binary code, the 1s and 0s that are the language of computers. That was the first clue that the puzzle solvers pursued on Monday. For each orange section on the Perseverance parachute, Maxence Abela and his father wrote down a 1, and for each white section, they assigned a 0. That translated into a long string of 1s and 0s. They thought that perhaps the digits could be rearranged into a picture, like the message that scientists broadcast in 1974 from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico to tell distant alien civilizations of humans on Earth. “We couldn’t find anything that looked like anything,” Mr. Abela said. They tried breaking up the digits into groups of 8 — a common practice used in computer programming — but that too yielded gibberish. Then the elder Mr. Abela noticed that the digits seemed to fit in groups of 10. “Every 10 bits, there would be three zeros in a row,” Maxence Abela said. That, they decided, was not a coincidence. Still, the resulting numbers did not make sense until they realized they had read the 1s and 0s in the wrong direction, anticlockwise instead of clockwise. When they wrote down the digits in the opposite order, the 10-digit chunks of binary code translated into small numbers, which could then be assigned to letters. The number 1 corresponded to the letter A, the number 2 was B, 3 was C, 4 was D and so on. The message on the inner three rings: “DARE MIGHTY THINGS.” Mr. Abela posted on Twitter his answer at 4:36 p.m. Eastern time, about two hours after Mr. Chen had dropped his cryptic hint during the news conference. This is a credo often cited at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which built and operates Perseverance. It comes from “The Strenuous Life,” a speech by Teddy Roosevelt in 1899: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” There were still some numbers and letters in the fourth ring that neither Abela could make sense of. Those turned out to be the longitude and latitude of the NASA center: 34°11’58” N 118°10’31” W. “If you look in Google Earth, if you type in those coordinates, I think you’re about 10 feet from the door of the JPL visitor center,” Dr. Clark said. In the evening, Adam Steltzner, the chief engineer for Perseverance, posted an annotated diagram explaining the solution. The parachute was not the only fun that the builders of the Perseverance rover had. Eagle-eyed observers spotted a series of drawings that represented the five rovers NASA has sent to Mars, from the small Sojourner in 1997 to Perseverance now. A plaque that will be used to calibrate one of the rover’s main cameras includes patches of colors, but there are also whimsical drawings that include DNA, a rocket and a dinosaur. On the edge of the calibration plaque is an inscription: “Are we alone? We came here to look for signs of life, and to collect samples of Mars for study on Earth. To those who follow, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery.” Elsewhere on the rover is a piece of a Martian meteorite that landed on Earth and is now back on its original planet. That is to be used for calibration of SuperCam, an instrument that uses lasers and a camera to identify carbon-based molecules and other compounds in rocks and soil. (Before going back to Mars, the same well-traveled rock made a round-trip visit to the International Space Station.) Also on Perseverance are three small chips with the names of 10.9 million people stenciled on them, part of NASA’s efforts for the public to participate in its robotic missions. A more solemn addition was an aluminum plate that honors hardships of those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The practice of adding fun or solemn pieces to spacecraft is not new. In NASA jargon, it is called “festooning.” The two Voyager spacecraft that are now in interstellar space have discs full of images and sounds of Earth. Two earlier Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, had parts made from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015, carries some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered that world. On Perseverance, a few more surprises have yet to be revealed. “There’s some things on the front of the vehicle that we’ll have a chance to see once we deploy the robot arm,” Mr. Wallace said. He declined to say what they were or provide hints. “We’re going to let people enjoy the imagery when it comes,” he said. Source link Orbem News #decoded #Mars #Meet #message #NASA #People #secret

[zippdementia]

Part 87 Alignment May Vary: The Sea of Moving Ice

One of the biggest rules of being a good DM is letting your players take direction and control over the story. It is hard to do, sometimes, especially in D&D, where the DM is often put in the position of knowing everything the PCs are going to encounter (per a dungeon map) and in charge of directing a story that they are told by a module. It is something I have gotten better at as I’ve developed as a DM and yet this game presents a unique challenge in that it has gone on for so long and has incorporated so many story elements and plot lines that, as we draw close to a conclusion, there is an element of linearity that is being assumed (we aren’t starting any new huge unresolveable plotlines).

During this next section, which took us about six sessions to play through, and will be broken into two blog posts, I had to remind myself of that a lot and ultimately was able to let go and let the PCs steer the plot into areas I didn’t foresee at all.

Speaking of steering, this section opens with the Players traveling through a teleport in Vraath Keep to Waterdeep, and from there boarding a vessel, an Icebreaker, to take them north into the uncharted Sea of Moving Ice. This is an adventure lifted straight from Tyranny of Dragons, though changed drastically to fit our story needs. I fell in love with the idea of a dungeon embedded in an iceberg and really wanted to bring that into the campaign.

Brief note on the party’s time in Waterdeep: just to set the stage for the current political climate, while in Waterdeep the party learns that while the Alliance (a political banding together of Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate, and five lesser cities, whose seat of power is in Waterdeep) has allowed Karina to link her teleport to their city, they are not very supportive of her war effort and feel that getting involved in a war on foreign soil in the Elsir Vale is not very worth their time or attention. They feel powerful enough to repel any invasion that happens to cross the water and seek to attack the Sword Coast; they worry  that Karina’s power and influence make her a figure that people would follow and there are some that mutter that the best thing to happen would be for her and the undead to die fighting each other. 

Into the White

So why are the PCs heading into the Frozen North? What are they looking for? The set up I use for this adventure is that Karina gets a vision in a dream, a message from a dragon she once gave The Rod of Storms to, in exchange for “treasure when she needed it.” The dream tells her to go to the Sea of Moving Ice and find a particular iceberg named Oyaviggaton, which is native for “Winter’s Crown.” However, Karina cannot leave Vraath Keep right now. This vision comes 80 years or so after she initially traded for it. She did not suspect she would be in the middle of running a war when it came. Karina sends the players, in her stead, telling them that her visions showed her an iceberg, and beneath the iceberg, a library. And beneath the library, something for her, waiting... encased in a massive wall of ice.

Cliff Notes: A long while ago, during the Haggemoth adventure, Karina traded the Rod of Storms away to a Bronze Dragon. It was a cool moment and at the time it let me get rid of a troublesome item and focus on the character growth that was happening with Karina. But the dragon made a promise: one day, when the time was right, it would repay her with a gift. Now that time has come! The Rod of Storms ended up coming back into the game, as well, in the hands of one of the Red Hand generals, and from there it was taken by Nysyries, and when she was killed by Harpies it.... geez, I actually don’t recall after that. I remember at some point Aldric got it and it got powered up by an elemental elder on the plane of air, and then Imoaza killed Aldric to get the Rod and then it was used to build Black Razor Alpha... I mean, this item has woven itself in and out of our story. I thank Robert Kendzie for designing it, as part of Haggemoth!

There is a mechanic in the Sea of Moving Ice adventure that determines, using simple dice rolls, how often a random encounter occurs and after how many encounters the PCs find the iceberg they are looking for. I take this table for our use, but with a twist: I come up with a bunch of new encounters and, depending on what they roll, decide to use those to build up the next part of the story. Imoaza’s player ends up getting the first encounter and it’s one I had hoped to use... three Buer Hags (from Vollo’s Guide).

Buer hags are ice Hags, and I play this encounter up, where they attack the Icebreaker while wheeling and laughing about in a storm they created. They try to lock the Icebreaker onto the side of a huge glacier and partially succeed before the party drives them off with powerful magic. But a few things come out of this encounter. First, they realize that Ruz is a changeling and they tell her something strange: “You’ve come looking for the other one, haven’t you? But you can’t have her. You can’t have our child!”

Also, during the fight, one of the Hags descends on a crewsman manning the crow’s nest and brutally devours him alive. The gory display combined with a blast of a spell from the Hags to amplify its effects overloads Milosh’s circuits and he becomes convinced that he is on a mission in his old life, chasing something infinitely important and yet completely undefinable across the fertile plains of his homeworld, Eberon. He charges out into the icy waste and disappears. After combat, Imoaza and Ruz wait for him for a while while helping to fix up the ship. But when he doesn’t return after an hour, they decide they need to go find him. What follows is definitely a side quest and was nothing I expected to happen this adventure, but it is a piece I love. All three of them become lost out in the snowy expanse of the glacier, trying to come up with ways to find their way and find each other. Like Milosh uses a scrying spell to try to find if anyone is around him. And Imoaza has a cool idea. A while back I mentioned she got a glimpse of the Weave, the magic that surrounds everything. So now she asks if she can try to find the Weave again and use it to trace Milosh’s passage. It’s such a fun idea, we run with it, and Imoaza rolls for Arcana, scoring a critical success! With this, the dice are telling the story for us: Imoaza not only taps into the Weave Sight but finds that she can see more than ever before! Around this time, Milosh casts his scrying spell, and to Imoaza it is like a siren going off in her Weave Sight. She tells Ruz and they head off towards Milosh’s location.

The crater Milosh found himself in was cut in half by a humongous Chasm. Milosh thought briefly of taking shelter there from the coming storm but almost immediately discarded the thought. Something about the chasm was uninviting. Or no, that wasn’t quite right. Uninviting means uncomfortable, the opposite of desirous. And a hole in the ground certainly fit that description. But the chasm went beyond this. Looking at it Milosh could almost see the chasm walls pulsing, like they were breathing, like he was staring down the gullet of a gigantic black beast. Milosh didn’t react without purpose to most things, yet staring into that void he shuddered involuntarily and took a step back.

The Crater does indeed hold a monster and it attacks just as Ruz and Imoaza find and reach Milosh. A mighty Remorhaz bursts free of the chasm and chases down the players, fully intending to swallow one of them to slowly digest as it returns to hibernation. Rather than fight it, Ruz casts fly on everyone and they boost out of there, Milosh firing a delayed fireball out of his gun-arm into the furnace like maw of the Remorhaz as they do... as the Remorhaz is immune to fire, it does nothing, except convince them they are making the right choice. This sets us up to run a crazy chase scene, the Remorhaz charging through the snow beneath them as they fly away, trying to not let the building storm knock them back into the awakened creature’s grasp.

They eventually lose it and make their way back to the ship, but one more thing happens before they set sail.

it looked like an abandoned battle site than a camp, Ruz could now see. She silently thanked Karina for the gift of the magical robes that seemed to keep her warm as she bent in the snow and ran a fur-gloved hand through the wreckage of bone and wood that she had found nestled into the shadow of the rock. She frowned as her hand bumped against something else, something made of leather. A bag... and inside, a journal? She picked it up. The pages had not gotten wet, thankfully, and so she teased open the frozen spine and began to read.

As they finally sail away from this glacier, the party spots an old campsite next to what looks like a fortress wall and decides to investigate. They find the remains of some kind of explorer’s party and Ruz finds a journal he does not share with the others. It belonged to a Changeling, someone who was being rescued from the Buer Hags who had stolen her. However, before the party could escape, they were found here in their final campsite and wiped out (or so Ruz can assume, for the journal ends with the words, “I can feel it in the air. My mothers are close.”)

While Ruz reads, Imoaza and Milosh examine the fortress wall. Imoaza finds strange runes all over it and before she can warn him, Milosh scales the wall and sees beyond it where a hole disappears into the earth. Imoaza’s Weave Sight shows her the runes lighting up and something awakening beyond the wall, just as Milosh hears the sobbing of babies coming from the hole and a scrabbling sound.

Terried, the three dart back to the ship and sail away. 

Ready Player Two?

The players are ambushed. It starts with Kobolds, dropping boulders on their ship as it sails down a narrow avenue formed by two glaciers that will, over the course of decades, eventually touch each other. Imoaza flies up to the glacier lip to do battle and while up there, she is attacked by something far worse, a hideous long limbed humanoid which makes a cry like a wailing child as it leaps at her. Imoaza is taken.

This scenario was set up based on their action last time, which released something, or many somethings, that have been hunting them since. But it was also a necessity from a meta game perspective, as we have a session where Imoaza’s player won’t be joining us. So this removes her from the action while keeping suspension high.

I had intended this to be a quick scene, where the PCs realize they are outnumbered and have to abandon their ship to sail away on rowboats, as the boulders from the Kobolds are sinking their boat. Ruz actually does something incredibly clever: he uses a chromatic orb of cold to freeze the holes in the ship and asks if the ship can stay afloat long enough to get them out of there. I say yes... but then I also effectively cut this out as a possibility as three of the long limbed demon-like horrors drop down on the deck and start killing crew.

The result is the scene I intended: there are some nice moments of tension as Ruz and Milosh try to fight back while also freeing their rowboats (some cool uses of Telekineses to do this) and trying to save as many of the crew as possible from the horrid beasts. At the same time, it puts the players on rails more than I like to do. My general thoughts when DMing are not to overplan and not to try to force players into a specific scenario unless the story absolutely calls for it. Those times are RARE, and even then should be made as natural and organic as possible and STILL a DM should be ready for everything to change on them in an instant. Truly good games come from those unexpected changes, those twists and turns that the DM cannot anticipate and must follow to their conclusion. In this case, having the float still be a factor would not have been a detriment to the story and would have made the players feel empowered, which has always been my goal. But I miss it in the moment, and so they escape the ship and Milosh blows it up with a delayed fireball (kinda becoming his Megabuster Signature move).

Still, despite me missing this opportunity, other things arise because of it. The PCs pick up a few survivors out of the water, including the one-eyed, hook handed Captain, and set out into a lonely night broken by a sea of stars above them. And in this moment, Ruz and Milosh share a very cool, player directed, bonding moment. Ruz casts a psychic spell so they can speak without “speaking,” and maybe because of the quiet blackness, the rocking of the boat, their exhaustion, or the incredible otherworldly view of the stars, they transcend the physical plane and end up together in another space. Hear, Milosh sees Ruz’s true Changeling form and Ruz reveals what she is. She also reveals what she read in the journal and that she believes there is another Changeling out here on the ice, somewhere. The two speak of Imoaza and refuse to believe she is gone. They speak of their purpose and realize that both of them have lost a piece of their purpose. Milosh’s entire existence was devoted to the Surveyor, or in this case the next closest thing (Carrick, possessed of a piece of the Surveyor’s soul). With him gone, he now doggedly pursues the prophecy, trying to stop it from coming to fruition. But he does so without direction and without a thought to what might come after. Ruz, on the other hand, lost her entire history, displaced from a world she knew to a near eternity spent in Chaos. Now she has returned to find her city destroyed, her homeland under siege, and she has no one left to fight for except herself. Ruz says that no matter what, she will not be a sacrifice to this new Faerun she doesn’t know. She has sacrificed enough. She wants to find a family and live again. They both agree that their goals mean seeing this war through to its end, winning it, and then having the freedom to move on. Overwhelmed by Ruz’s candor, Milosh reveals his truth to her, as well: that he was taken from another world, aeons ago... so long ago he is not even sure that world exists anymore. He was placed in this cybernetic body by the Surveyor and told to pursue the prophecy. He does not know what future he would even want for himself, now.

Their discussion is interrupted by the captain, who tells them they are coming up on the iceberg they sought.

In Tyranny of Dragons, Oyaviggaton is the primary dungeon, an iceberg home to a white dragon who is dominating the Eskimo-esque villagers who reside on its floating lair. I’ve changed this scenario a little, making the Dragon a trio of witches and adding in some story-related pieces to the dungeon, as well as changing some of its challenges to match my level 16 and 17 (Milosh) characters. But the primary outline I’ve kept the same, and that ends up leading to some unexpected ire on the part of my players. See, in the original, the natives on the island are suspicious of the outsiders and stage a fight between them and their champion warrior, Orcaheart. They say it is to be a one-on-one fight with NO MAGIC... and then they cheat during the fight (the shaman, Bonecarver, heals Orcaheart). And if caught cheating, they turn this around on the players and attack them for daring to accuse their shaman. It’s a very hostile moment and it is definitely meant to conjure up the “hostile natives in a strange land” trope that is part of many pulp fiction works of yore. And despite it being anachronistic and unintentionally racist, it does touch on a style of storytelling that is so embedded in Western culture that I can’t help but be enamored with the moment. It’s problematically familiar. 

That said, it also has a major design trap for the unwary DM. And tonite, I was that DM.

See, if the natives are under the thrall of an evil force, then the whole point is that the PCs should want to help them. Having the natives cheat and lie during what is supposed to be an honorable fight doesn’t enamor them to the PCs. In fact, it is liable to make players loathe them. This could potentially be circumvented by some really big clues as to what is going on behind the scenes or, even better, by making one of the natives a very obvious ally, who can then also explain what’s going on. The text even suggests this be Bonecarver... but that is hurt by the fact that they also make Bonecarver the one who cheats!

Had I thought about this ahead of time, I would have taken out the cheating entirely. It doesn’t add anything except more conflict, and this is already literally a head on brawl. You don’t need the extra bit. But I don’t think about it and the end result is a laughable amount of rage being directed at these already victimized natives. Milosh is the one to go up against the mighty Orcaheart and he almost wins... but the cheating means he gets knocked unconscious and when Ruz spots and points out the cheating by using magic of his own to strengthen his voice, the natives turn on him as an evil mage and knock him out, too.

Oh man, the players are pissed! They wake up inside the iceberg dungeon and, spotting three frog-like humanoids going through their belongings, immediately unleash hell upon one of them, smashing him to jelly against a wall. The others reveal they were sent by Bonecarver to help them proceed deeper into the iceberg and fight the witches. Then they hand them potions (a third is currently smashed against the wall) and flee for their lives.

The players make a pact to (a) stop the witches, and (b) burn the village to the ground.

Below the Berg

Now inside the Iceberg (and on a new session), it’s time to bring the party back together. Milosh and Ruze begin searching the dungeon and in the process come across a couple of trophy rooms: rooms where giant monsters and even an entire treasure galleon have been frozen by the power of the Bhuer Sisters. They also encounter more Kobolds, these ones carrying Imoaza, who has been frozen in a block of ice!

The players make quick work of the Kobolds (two turns) and go to work on freeing Imoaza with fire spells. When the block of ice is damaged enough, she comes back to her senses and breaks free with Blackrazor suddenly in her hand and a wild look in her eyes. Her two companions back away and try to talk sense into her. But Imoaza is seeing other people... Aldric is in front of her, accusing her of his murder and taunting her for getting trapped in a cold place... like the place he died. Imoaza reacts as she does to most opposition: disdainfully. And in her disdain, she finds her way back to the present. But Aldric’s voice will forever be taunting her, now. This is an indefinite madness, a leftover of her harrowing experience being ambushed by the Wendigo, the hideous creature with the cry like a child that captured her and brought her unconscious to the witches, who froze her for their keepsake. Aldric’s player (now playing Milosh) actually role plays this voice out when appropriate, basically bringing the voice of Aldric back into the game, even if Imoaza is the only one who can hear it.

The three, now reunited, set about exploring more of the iceberg. They find many interesting things here, which will be detailed in the next post: Still Frozen.

#dnd 5e #D&D #Dungeons & Dragons #Tyranny of Dragons #Forgotten Realms

[alexandriathegreat]

How the Dumb Design of a WWII Plane Led to the Macintosh

At first, pilots took the blame for crashes. The true cause, however, lay with the design. That lesson led us into our user-friendly age—but there's peril to come.

THE B-17 FLYING Fortress rolled off the drawing board and onto the runway in a mere 12 months, just in time to become the fearsome workhorse of the US Air Force during World War II. Its astounding toughness made pilots adore it: The B-17 could roar through angry squalls of shrapnel and bullets, emerging pockmarked but still airworthy. It was a symbol of American ingenuity, held aloft by four engines, bristling with a dozen machine guns.

Imagine being a pilot of that mighty plane. You know your primary enemy—the Germans and Japanese in your gunsights. But you have another enemy that you can’t see, and it strikes at the most baffling times. Say you’re easing in for another routine landing. You reach down to deploy your landing gear. Suddenly, you hear the scream of metal tearing into the tarmac. You’re rag-dolling around the cockpit while your plane skitters across the runway. A thought flickers across your mind about the gunners below and the other crew: "Whatever has happened to them now, it’s my fault." When your plane finally lurches to a halt, you wonder to yourself: "How on earth did my plane just crash when everything was going fine? What have I done?"

For all the triumph of America’s new planes and tanks during World War II, a silent reaper stalked the battlefield: accidental deaths and mysterious crashes that no amount of training ever seemed to fix. And it wasn’t until the end of the war that the Air Force finally resolved to figure out what had happened.

To do that, the Air Force called upon a young psychologist at the Aero Medical Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Paul Fitts was a handsome man with a soft Tennessee drawl, analytically minded but with a shiny wave of Brylcreemed hair, Elvis-like, which projected a certain suave nonconformity. Decades later, he’d become known as one of the Air Force’s great minds, the person tasked with hardest, weirdest problems—such as figuring out why people saw UFOs.

For now though, he was still trying to make his name with a newly minted PhD in experimental psychology. Having an advanced degree in psychology was still a novelty; with that novelty came a certain authority. Fitts was supposed to know how people think. But his true talent is to realize that he doesn’t.

When the thousands of reports about plane crashes landed on Fitts’s desk, he could have easily looked at them and concluded that they were all the pilot’s fault—that these fools should have never been flying at all. That conclusion would have been in keeping with the times. The original incident reports themselves would typically say “pilot error,” and for decades no more explanation was needed. This was, in fact, the cutting edge of psychology at the time. Because so many new draftees were flooding into the armed forces, psychologists had begun to devise aptitude tests that would find the perfect job for every soldier. If a plane crashed, the prevailing assumption was: That person should not have been flying the plane. Or perhaps they should have simply been better trained. It was their fault.

But as Fitts pored over the Air Force’s crash data, he realized that if “accident prone” pilots really were the cause, there would be randomness in what went wrong in the cockpit. These kinds of people would get hung on anything they operated. It was in their nature to take risks, to let their minds wander while landing a plane. But Fitts didn’t see noise; he saw a pattern. And when he went to talk to the people involved about what actually happened, they told of how confused and terrified they’d been, how little they understood in the seconds when death seemed certain.

The examples slid back and forth on a scale of tragedy to tragicomic: pilots who slammed their planes into the ground after misreading a dial; pilots who fell from the sky never knowing which direction was up; the pilots of B-17s who came in for smooth landings and yet somehow never deployed their landing gear. And others still, who got trapped in a maze of absurdity, like the one who, having jumped into a brand-new plane during a bombing raid by the Japanese, found the instruments completely rearranged. Sweaty with stress, unable to think of anything else to do, he simply ran the plane up and down the runway until the attack ended.

Fitts' data showed that during one 22-month period of the war, the Air Force reported an astounding 457 crashes just like the one in which our imaginary pilot hit the runway thinking everything was fine. But the culprit was maddeningly obvious for anyone with the patience to look. Fitts' colleague Alfonse Chapanis did the looking. When he started investigating the airplanes themselves, talking to people about them, sitting in the cockpits, he also didn’t see evidence of poor training. He saw, instead, the impossibility of flying these planes at all. Instead of “pilot error,” he saw what he called, for the first time, “designer error.”

The reason why all those pilots were crashing when their B-17s were easing into a landing was that the flaps and landing gear controls looked exactly the same. The pilots were simply reaching for the landing gear, thinking they were ready to land. And instead, they were pulling the wing flaps, slowing their descent, and driving their planes into the ground with the landing gear still tucked in. Chapanis came up with an ingenious solution: He created a system of distinctively shaped knobs and levers that made it easy to distinguish all the controls of the plane merely by feel, so that there’s no chance of confusion even if you’re flying in the dark.

By law, that ingenious bit of design—known as shape coding—still governs landing gear and wing flaps in every airplane today. And the underlying idea is all around you: It’s why the buttons on your videogame controller are differently shaped, with subtle texture differences so you can tell which is which. It’s why the dials and knobs in your car are all slightly different, depending on what they do. And it’s the reason your virtual buttons on your smartphone adhere to a pattern language.

But Chapanis and Fitts were proposing something deeper than a solution for airplane crashes. Faced with the prospect of soldiers losing their lives to poorly designed machinery, they invented a new paradigm for viewing human behavior. That paradigm lies behind the user-friendly world that we live in every day. They realized that it was absurd to train people to operate a machine and assume they would act perfectly under perfect conditions.

Instead, designing better machines meant figuring how people acted without thinking, in the fog of everyday life, which might never be perfect. You couldn’t assume humans to be perfectly rational sponges for training. You had to take them as they were: distracted, confused, irrational under duress. Only by imagining them at their most limited could you design machines that wouldn’t fail them.

This new paradigm took root slowly at first. But by 1984—four decades after Chapanis and Fitts conducted their first studies—Apple was touting a computer for the rest of us in one of its first print ads for the Macintosh: "On a particularly bright day in Cupertino, California, some particularly bright engineers had a particularly bright idea: Since computers are so smart, wouldn’t it make sense to teach computers about people, instead of teaching people about computers? So it was that those very engineers worked long days and nights and a few legal holidays, teaching silicon chips all about people. How they make mistakes and change their minds. How they refer to file folders and save old phone numbers. How they labor for their livelihoods, and doodle in their spare time." (Emphasis mine.) And that easy-to-digest language molded the smartphones and seamless technology we live with today.

Along the long and winding path to a user-friendly world, Fitts and Chapanis laid the most important brick. They realized that as much as humans might learn, they would always be prone to err—and they inevitably brought presuppositions about how things should work to everything they used. This wasn’t something you could teach of existence. In some sense, our limitations and preconceptions are what it means to be human—and only by understanding those presumptions could you design a better world.

Today, this paradigm shift has produced trillions in economic value. We now presume that apps that reorder the entire economy should require no instruction manual at all; some of the most advanced computers ever made now come with only cursory instructions that say little more than "turn it on." This is one of the great achievements of the last century of technological progress, with a place right alongside GPS, Arpanet, and the personal computer itself.

It's also an achievement that remains unappreciated because we assume this is the way things should be. But with the assumption that even new technologies need absolutely no explaining comes a dark side: When new gadgets make assumptions about how we behave, they force unseen choices upon us. They don’t merely defer to our desires. They shape them.

[the-desolated-quill]

Victory Of The Daleks - Doctor Who blog (Matt Smith And The Amazing Technicolor Pepper Pots)

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

When did Mark Gatiss lose his bollocks? Back when he worked as part of the dark comedy quartet the League of Gentlemen, he wrote some truly great stuff. Even his first Who story, The Unquiet Dead, was pretty good, although he was somewhat hindered because he was having to write for children as well as adults and so had to dampen his dark material down a bit. But since then his work has slipped further and further downhill. The Idiot’s Lantern was rubbish. The less said about his work on the god awful Sherlock, the better. Now we’ve got Victory Of The Daleks.

The Doctor and Amy arrive in WW2 to meet up with Winston Churchill, who has a new secret weapon that could help turn the tide of the war in Britain’s favour. But these so called Ironsides may have a more sinister goal in mind...

First let’s quickly talk about the WW2 setting. Not exactly original, I know, considering we’ve already explored it in The Empty Child two parter, but to be fair that story was told more from the perspective of the civilians. We haven’t seen the soldiers and higher up’s perspective yet, so there could still be some gold in this mine yet. Pity they don’t bother digging for it.

Yes this is WW2, but it’s the stereotypical WW2. Pilots and generals shouting ‘tally-ho’ in OTT Received Pronunciation British accents. People saluting the Union flag while composer Murray Gold gives himself a patriotic boner with his constant fanfares crashing and banging in the background of every scene. Even Winston Churchill (who is portrayed exceptionally well by Ian McNeice) is little more than a caricature (did he have to smoke a cigar in every scene?). There’s no effort to really explore the grim reality of fighting in a war like this. There is an effort to get us to form an emotional connection with that woman whose boyfriend gets shot down whilst flying over the Channel, but it just felt a bit half-arsed. This is a romanticised version of war. Heroic men and women doing their bit for Queen and country, and back home in time for tea. Compared to the likes of, say, Genesis Of The Daleks where they don’t shy away from the morbid and tragic misery of battle, Victory Of The Daleks feels a bit pathetic by comparison.

While I’m not too fond of the romanticised WW2 setting, and this episode in general, I must confess I do love the first 15 minutes. The Daleks feel right at home here, which is not surprising considering that they’re supposed to be an allegory for the Nazis. And a shiny gold star has to go Matt Smith’s performance. His frustration toward Churchill and his pure rage toward the Daleks, culminating in him hitting one of them repeatedly with an oversized wrench, was incredibly powerful. After centuries of fighting these pepper pots, the Doctor has just about had enough of this shit, and Smith conveys that perfectly. He’s no slouch at the comedy neither. I love how he uses a Jammy Dodger to trick the Daleks into standing down. That feels so utterly Doctorly.

Ideally Victory Of The Daleks should have been a two part story, I feel. The first 15 minutes has some legitimately good ideas, but they’re not given the time to fully develop. Gatiss is clearly taking a lot of inspiration from the Patrick Troughton era story The Power Of The Daleks, with the Daleks operating from a position of weakness and tricking a bunch of humans into thinking they’re harmless (they even substitute the line ‘I am your servant’ with ‘I am your soldier’). But the reason why The Power Of The Daleks works so well is because it takes its time. We really get to know the characters and get drawn into their deception, making the final reveal that much more tragic and horrifying. It would have been really nice if the first 15 minutes could have been extended to a full episode. That way we could have explored Churchill’s desperation to win the war a bit more, we would get a chance to properly get to know Professor Bracewell, the supposed creator of the ‘Ironsides’, and perhaps draw out the mystery as to whether or not Bracewell is being genuine or not, with the reveal that he’s actually a robot making a great cliffhanger ending. It would also give us a chance to see just how cunning the Daleks are. That’s the reason why they’ve endured for so long after all. They’re not mindless killing machines. They’re scheming, malevolent killing machines, which The Power Of The Daleks managed to demonstrate so effectively.

So having rushed through quite possibly the most interesting part of the story, the Doctor takes the TARDIS to the Dalek spaceship. And this is where things go horribly wrong.

What are the Daleks most famous for? Killing. Russell T Davies understood that, hence why we got Dalek and The Parting Of The Ways. Two stories that demonstrated how merciless and unstoppable the Daleks were (before they were reduced to toothless stand up comedians during the David Tennant era). What are the Daleks not doing in this episode? Killing.

That’s really my main problem with Victory Of The Daleks. Outside of the Jammy Dodger scene, it feels like the majority of this episode consists of nothing but the Doctor and the Daleks just talking each other’s ears off, and nothing they have to say to each other is particularly interesting. As it goes on, you realise that the purpose of this story is not to entertain us, but rather to establish a new status quo for the Daleks. A new and improved Paradigm of Daleks that were no longer constantly fighting for survival. From this episode onward, they would be back in full force and would come in a variety of colours.

Yeah. You all knew this was coming. I’m sure you’re all excited to know what I thought of the Mighty Morphin Dalek Rangers. Take a random guess what I thought.

Seriously, whoever came up with this design, I hope they got sacked. They look fucking hideous. It’s not just the awful colour scheme. It’s everything. The plastic look. The over-sized midsection. The weird eyeball on a stalk. Their MASSIVE arses (which is apparently supposed to hold a secondary weapon that we will never get to see). And they’re so ridiculously tall to the point where the white Dalek Supreme’s domed head was inches from hitting a light fixture on the ceiling. The new design is just laughably bad. Even with a khaki paint job, the older Daleks look a squillion times better and I’m relieved that in the series to come, the BBC would eventually come to their senses and slowly phase out these new Daleks and subtly return to the old ones. So we’ll never know what was the mysterious purpose behind the yellow ‘Eternal’ Daleks. Never mind. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been very interesting.

But how did this new Paradigm come about? Well the Daleks have got their hands on this Progenitor thing that can create all these shiny new Daleks, except the Progenitor doesn’t recognise these Daleks as pure (oh the irony). They’re going to need a character reference. How about their greatest enemy? But they can’t just ask him obviously. They’ll have to lure him there and trick him into giving a reference. So how do they do that? Do they start attacking the Earth and killing people, knowing it will draw the Doctor’s attention eventually? Oh no. That’s far too sensible. Instead they invent a robot to pretend to invent them, even going to the trouble of implanting human memories and feelings into him, before becoming war machines for Winston Churchill. Then Churchill will call the Doctor because... despite coming across as obedient servants, they’re still suspicious enough to warrant calling a Time Lord for advice? Wait... so they want to look like allies, but their whole plan hinges on not looking like allies.

That makes no sodding sense.

So having been bored senseless with the Doctor and the Daleks’ constant monologuing about what they’re going to do to each other like kids in a school playground arguing over whose dad could beat up whose, the Daleks then reveal their trump card. Bracewell is actually a bomb. But don’t worry. Amy can solve that by making him horny. Um... I mean... reminding him of his humanity.

Putting aside the whole disarming a bomb through the power of love crap, since when did the Doctor turn into Mr. Spock? The same thing happened in The Beast Below where Amy figures out the solution using her humany goodness as though the Doctor is completely out of touch with human emotion. But we know that’s not the case. He’s alien, but he’s not that alien. Also Amy’s reaction to the Daleks escaping annoyed me. Yes they saved the Earth, but a bunch of multi-coloured space Nazis are now free to rain death and destruction across time and space. This is not what I call a win. Mind you, the Doctor annoyed me too at that point. He feels so powerless when the Daleks escape. If only he had a time machine. That way he could go back in time and stop the Daleks before they escape.

...

Oh wait. He does have a time machine. WHY DON’T YOU JUST GO BACK IN TIME AND STOP THE DALEKS BEFORE THEY ESCAPE?

So that was Victory Of The Daleks. It had some potential in the first 15 minutes, but it all turned to shit the moment the plot reared its ugly head. Better luck next time.

#victory of the daleks #mark gatiss #doctor who #eleventh doctor #matt smith #amy pond #karen gillan #daleks #steven moffat #bbc #review #spoilers

[misfitsandmutants]

Nula Nebula; Description?

Describe Your OC (I saw this, wanted to do it, it’s a meme...enjoy)

1: their voice: Because she’s both male and female, Her voice will fluctuate. She actually has a mature hollow sounding voice naturally, but will use a more ‘feminine’ and higher tone when around others she doesn’t trust. 

2: their smile: Nula ranges from a sharp toothed grin that will make a grown man pee himself, to a soft genuine smile where the the only teeth showing are her bottom canines. Kind of like Orc tusks.

3: their greatest achievement: (Hasn’t happened yet) but her greatest achievement will be when she finally kills her ex-fiance. 

4: their insecurities: Believe it or not, as much as she flaunts around and whispers sweet nothings about how she’ll pound the shit out of you, she’s actually very insecure about her penis. Nula most days anyway, sees her self as woman. And some days (her good days) she sees herself as both a man and a woman. Days that she’s proud of her junk. But most days she wishes she didn’t have it. 

5: their shortcomings: She’s yet to kill her ex fiance, and she’s yet to move on from him fully.

6: how they deal with grief: It quickly turns into rage. Either at the one who killed her loved one, or at her dead loved on in general. Other types of grief it turns into a few days of silence and sad eyes from this mighty beast. 

7: how they like to dress: On a normal day, Brown slacks, white button down, and with her hair half up. Otherwise she wearsa lot of mint greens, and dusty rose colored shirts and with black stretch pants. No shoes or socks, her claws are too sharp for those. 

8: what they like to eat: People. That’s pretty simple. Other than that she really likes fresh vegetables and sweets. 

9: their theme: Nula’s theme is some where in between, Soccer mom, Deadly 1920′s gangster/assassin, psychopathic serial killer, and jazz club vixen. It’s really hard to peg her in just one category. 

10: their fashion sense: Business casual, or casual all in general. 

11: their family life: Mother and father dead, 3 brother’s and one sister. (Expecting twins in one au) 

12: their romantic life: Open to all. Every one and any one. 

13: their embarrassing memory from years ago: She’s not usually embarrassed by something. If she is, she blocks it from her memory. 

14: how they react to burning their tongue on food: “MOTHER FUCKING FUCKING FUCKS” 

15: how they react to a brainfreeze: “Helllp meeee...”

16: their dreams: To become a mother one day and raise her babies better than her father did her. 

17: their ambitions: After finding ot she came from a near extinct clan of demons on her mother’s side, her goal is to kind of continue on their teachings and skills. 

18: how they sleep: When with a lover, normally on her side curled next to them. When alone? On the edge of the bed almost falling off. Funny fact is, when she’s drunk...you could put her in her bed and tuck her in, she will somehow wander away from her bed and sleep in some odd position on something she shouldn’t. Her brother once found her on top of her washing machine. 

19: their reaction to betrayal: Cold shoulder with a side of crazy eyes...if it’s really bad, you may as well have a will in your hands. 

20: their reaction to a mystery love letter: Smirky. Sultry eyes looking around for who did it. If it’s really good though, she’ll stop in her tracks and look all blushy and confused. 

21: how they react to pain: Physical pain is a kink for her. Emotional pain makes her want to kill something...It’s a vicious cycle. 

22: what they're like on two hours of sleep: She actually doesn’t sleep a whole lot. She could be functional on 4 hours of sleep. She’s basically nocturnal. 

23: how they act when they're sick: “I’M DYING...I HAVE THE PLAGUE...THIS IS THE END” 

24: what motivates them: Her drive to kill her ex-fiance (and her babies) 

25: why you enjoy them: Prepare for a long answer...Nula is perhaps one of my first characters that has completely gone of of my comfort zone. From her character details, to her design and even her colors. She’s not typically the type of character I would write or draw about. She goes from supernatural to science fiction in a few seconds. She’s complicated from a few aspects. She has a dramatic past, she’s a fun personality to play with, and best of all...she can go from a profound oc with lots of beautiful imagery and details, to a fuck around oc where i can make up random weird things she’d say to make me laugh. she’s actually one that I am very proud of. 

#Nula description #Nula is cool #Nula info

[ladlewritings]

Pathfinder

I mentioned this story some while ago, it was unfinished at the time. Since then I completed the first draft, rewrote it, had a couple of other people read it, left it in a virtual draw somewhere at the back of my computer for about two years, then did a final copy edit and decided that now was as good a time as any to put it up for your reading gratification/disappointment.

Let me know what you think?

It had been three long years since the first astrophysicist’s alarm had sounded. In that time every resource available had been drawn upon to build mighty ships capable of carrying sufficient technical and scientific citizens, animals, plants and knowledge away from the Earth to seek somewhere to settle and terraform as a replacement home. Perhaps one which would be far enough from any asteroid belts to minimise the risk of a similarly catastrophic meteor strike to the one which currently threatened the end of existence on this planet.

Hank still wasn’t entirely sure why he’d been selected as a “Chosen One”. A geologist by profession, his main interest was in palaeontology – Precambrian for preference. It was a bit of a niche field of study, and for some reason it had removed him from his comfortable laboratory and his sedimentary rocks and placed him here amongst the intelligentsia and those with recognised special technical abilities.

There were some up-sides, of course. For one thing when the town-sized meteorite Delendis actually struck destroying an estimated 95% of life on Earth, he would no longer be there to suffer the resulting climate swings, which were estimated to last 30,000 years, and the accompanying environmental upheaval. There was also the fact that he would be heading off into the infinite blackness of Space – it was what every child dreamed of and many adults aspired to, but he wasn’t so sure it was as exciting in actuality, when the crew was 2,000 strong and he personally wouldn’t have anything to do with pressing the buttons that changed course, accelerated or slowed down “Pathfinder”, as the craft had been unimaginatively designated following a six month long world-wide brainstorm.

Another advantage that he hadn’t originally foreseen was that the average age of people picked for the mission was 23. Hank was slap bang in the middle of this demographic and couldn’t help but notice that a good percentage of the other passengers were quite attractive. He wasn’t sure that anyone in the planning consortium had thought about this, the sexual tension that these circumstances were creating would be created under these circumstances; a couple of thousand frustrated scientists, engineers and, for the most part, geeks, who weren’t generally used to hanging out with the opposite gender, let alone being stuffed into a flying box with them – even if the box itself was about the size of a large tower block, albeit one designed by someone who had spent too much alone time in a darkened room without air conditioning.

Still, Hank had always been more comfortable around the fairer sex than a lot of his contemporaries and optimistically hoped this might give him a bit of an advantage when it came to finding something to do on those long, or in fact constant nights!

The overcrowded living conditions were also leading to tensions of other sorts. On more than one occasion Hank had entered a room to be greeted with angry silences from the engineers and aerospace technicians who were attempting to get the machine ship-shape, before the planned take off in less than six days’ time.

Just now though, this was none of his concern. Hunger had visited early tonight, so he headed to the eating quarters at around seven o’clock, instead of his habitual nine. He’d always tended towards a nocturnal lifestyle and the habit had persisted, even after leaving university.

What a difference a couple of hours made! There were people from wall to wall and conversations bounced off the ceiling, almost deafening in their intensity. Hank squeezed in at the food bar and grabbed some salad and something vaguely resembling meat, then looked around for a seat, which seemed to be in short supply. He had to jostle through the crowds of bespectacled people to wedge himself unceremoniously between a thin, drawn looking guy and a woman with a long scar across her cheek, both of whom appeared uncomfortable at his incursion.

He started eating, slowly becoming aware of the conversation taking place next to him. The scar-faced woman was trying to speak quietly to a muscular man across the table, but the volume of people and conversation made this difficult. What they were talking about sounded like it should have been more confidential. Apparently, ‘One of the rocketists,’ this being slang for the actual rocket scientists, ‘was telling the flight planner that he didn’t think the materials they were using were man enough to take the strain. He said that they were better before we went all biodegradable! Apparently a thousand years ago we’d have been using carbon fibre and metal, instead of all this Plastech and Polymet garbage. It wouldn’t be so bad if we hadn’t returned all the non-recyclables into the earth, let alone the fact that it seems to have upset the tectonic stability of the planet.’ cleverly managing to argue for and against environmental sustainability at the same time.

The talker’s confidante leaned back in his chair and placed his long, sturdy hands behind his shiny head. ‘Last I heard they were worried about the lateral stabilisers. My guess would be that we’ll get into space and start spinning like a Ferris wheel. On the bright side, at least we might improve the Grav-Lock mechanisms in the process and be able to stand up without floating away.’

Hank had heard many such conversations in the two weeks since his relocation to Pathfinder, most of them were one sided put-downs of another worker’s or divisions’ attempts to fix things and keep to schedule. But the volume of complaints had been steadily increasing over the last week and everyone was getting close to breaking point.

He finished his meal and left the table, shoving his tray through the hole beside the doorway which took the dirty dishes to who knew where, to be cleaned and redeployed. As he walked out of the room he almost bumped into Maggie. ‘Hi Hank.’ She had a way of talking which twanged at his baser instincts, but he didn’t know if it was the tone of voice or the fact she managed to make a flight-suit look like a fashionable ensemble for a night on the town. It certainly didn’t help him think.

‘Hey, Maggie. How’s it going? Have they fixed that air conditioner in your room yet?’ His eyes attempted to find somewhere innocent to rest his gaze but had to give up and settled on her face.

‘No luck! On the bright side, it makes bedtime interesting when you don’t know if you’ll need to wear a fur coat or a negligée until you step into your bedroom.’ She accompanied Hank as he walked down the corridor, ‘what’s happening in the world of prehistoric beasties?’

Hank vaguely studied the back of his hand as he thought about an answer, ‘To be honest, I think the only reason I’m on this trip is to pad the numbers and give the botanists someone to ridicule.’

Maggie put her hand on Hank’s shoulder, sending a shiver down his spine, ‘I can’t imagine anyone laughing at you. I tell you what, do you want to come back to my room for a drink?’

Hank was momentarily taken aback but managed to gather his senses and form a reasoned response, rather than blurting out “really?” Which was the first thing that came to mind. ‘Yeah, I don’t seem to have a lot on until we make planetfall, which should be in about fifteen thousand years’ time.’

Maggie led the way as Hank tailed her, wondering which of the 439 decks her quarters would be on and whether she would have time to realise her offer had been a mistake before they got there. But it was only a couple of levels up and, before he knew it, he was standing in a strangely perfumed room, while Maggie went to find “something more comfortable” to wear – which in Hank’s estimation was always a bit of a misnomer.

He visually investigated the room, although there was no reason for this as pretty much every berth on the ship was identical. His eyes soon alighted on the display stretched across part of the wall opposite the bed. The screens had their own power supply and turned on as soon as you entered the room, or at least they were meant to… more often than not though you came in to find it merrily announcing current mission stats and a likely launch date to no one at all, or it’d turn itself on at three o’clock in the morning just after you’d got to sleep because of some badly timed ventilation testing in the laboratory down the corridor.

There was currently a news story playing which showed the projected date – roughly three weeks away – for the impact of Delendis into Earth. Hank stalked over to the monitor and popped out the fuse holder at the bottom left corner, the screen showed an agonised pattern of random noise before it lost its picture and became just another section of the plain matt white wall.

The sound of the door to the bathroom sliding open reminded him where he was. ‘Sorry, I might have disabled your monitor.’ Hank turned around to see what Maggie’s idea of “something more comfortable” was. She appeared to have gone for the less is more approach, the diaphanous material hung in just the right way to make Hank’s major intellectual functions temporarily abandon him for a better viewpoint, he realised his mouth was hanging open and snapped it shut, nearly severing his tongue in the process.

Maggie stood by the bed, ‘Are you planning on using that for something?’ She pointed towards his hand. Hank looked down, as if seeing the fuse and his hand for the first time. He reached back and placed it gently on the desk without removing his eyes from the sinuously seductive prospect in front of him.

Hank massaged his forehead to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating then walked towards Maggie while loosening his flight-suit. Probably not the attire he would have chosen for such circumstances, but with a choice limited to that or nothing, it was probably preferable.

The two stood in front of each other, Maggie patiently waiting, Hank struggling with the unforgiving fastenings that held the suit in place. When he had finally removed the top, he looked into her piercing and intelligent green eyes, which looked back at him with dividends. He glanced down, then up again and started to think of a polite way to suggest they might be more comfortable on the bed, ‘Well I don’t know about you but…’

Suddenly the lights went off, Maggie gasped, ‘Hey, how did you do that?’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ Hank replied, ‘probably just another power cut.’ As he finished saying this a red light started flashing in the corner of the room. It was the sort of light that suggests to the observer that its presence is not a sign of forthcoming gaiety. ‘What on Earth is that for?’

Maggie motioned towards the small piece of electronics laying on the desk, ‘It might be a good idea to plug that back in.’ Hank almost managed to pull off a casual walk over to the screen, trying not to look as worried as he felt.

After a couple of abortive attempts, the fuse slid back into its housing and the screen crackled back into life, a calm voice droned out of it “… please prepare yourself. An error has occurred. Await further instructions.” The screen showed a live shot of the Pathfinder in its entirety, lit up from below, with the night sky framing the uneven crenelated upper surface of the ship.

Her smooth face creased, ‘How can we prepare ourselves if we don’t know what’s going on?’

Hank shrugged, then moved his head closer to the screen and squinted at the ultra-high definition picture, ‘Hey, come take a look,’ he continued to inspect the night sky as he felt Maggie’s body press into his back, this close contact should have set his teeth on edge, but his mind was too busy trying to make sense of what he was looking at, ‘Is that what I think it is?’

Maggie’s eyes flashed back and forth with the small moving objects on the screen, ‘Comets? Lots of comets! You don’t think that’s why the alarm’s going off, do you?’

Hank thoughtfully scratched his chin, ‘I’m not sure but I think it might be a good idea if we go to bed,’ Maggie gave him a look which suggested that wasn’t the suggestion she was expecting, ‘for our safety,’ he added, completely failing to sound as authoritative as he was aiming for.

Maggie’s frown turned into a grin, ‘I was at those safety briefings too. They mould to your body contours when the ship’s taking off.’ Her eyes widened when she realised what Hank was suggesting.

The screen blustered back into life, flashing red and white out of time with the light in the corner of the room. “Attention. The estimated time for the impact of Delendis has been adjusted. Impact will take place at twenty-one hundred hours tonight.”

Hank and Maggie both glanced at the clock next to the screen. It read 20:23. Hank looked at Maggie with his lip curling in consternation, he was about to tell her he would go back to his room and leave her to prepare when the voice inexorably continued. “Please find your nearest launch berth and assume positions for take-off immediately. This is not a drill. Launch sequence will commence in T-minus two minutes.”

Maggie launched herself towards the bed and flicked the launch mode switch, Hank looked uncertain as to what he should do until she said, ‘What are you waiting for, get on.’ He assumed the correct position, on his side as the plaque above the bed instructed, trying to lay facing her, in as professional a manner as he could while she was wearing something which left so little to the imagination. Why he thought this necessary, when five minutes before he had been assuredly stripping off in front of her, was not something he cared to think about as he settled back feeling the odd clamminess of the biomech mattress subside wherever his skin pressed into it.

Maggie moved her head into a more comfortable position, which meant they couldn’t help but stare into each other’s eyes, ‘I didn’t even think the ship was ready yet.’

Hank reached out for her hand and squeezed it in as reassuring a manner as he could muster, in lieu of actually finding something to say which might make her feel better. The screen on the wall showed decreasing numbers, while the computer-generated voice droned through a 120 second countdown, which seemed to take forever. Eventually the last five digits elapsed then, nothing happened. Hank glanced awkwardly towards the screen, which showed 00:00. ‘Looks like you could be right…’

An ear-splitting creak thundered through the ship, followed by the sound a planet sized central heating system would make getting ready for winter. Finally, a noise like a concert hall full of radios picking up the static from the start of the Universe signalled the first Grav-Lock Impulsion engine firing, it was shortly followed by many more. The initial feeling of heaviness passed through Hank’s body and he wondered if it would get worse, just as the ship juddered off the ground with a crunch and pushed him against the padded mattress so hard that he couldn’t even turn to look towards the window.

Maggie’s hand pressed down on his, but he didn’t know if this was voluntary or because of the acceleration, he hoped it was the former. The speed of the ship seemed to constrict Hank’s lungs, it was almost unbearable and lasted, as close as he could estimate, for at least as long as the countdown to take-off had. Although there was no reduction in the ongoing acceleration of the ship there was suddenly a lurch which left Hank and Maggie floating five centimetres above the bed. Maggie huskily reminded him, ‘Don’t move yet,’ as another static crackle and an almost gentle descent back to the welcoming surface indicated that the internal Grav-Lock systems were now on-line.

‘Come on, I have to see’ she said, as she sprung off the bed towards the small semi-spherical window. She looked out, her jaw dropping at the sight of the Earth dropping vertiginously away behind them.

Hank squeezed his way in next to her and saw the inspiring sight of the planet – on which every single thing in recorded history had ever happened – drifting serenely into the starry night sky. Not far away from the big blue/green ball of everything they had ever known, a city sized rock outlined by red fire was drawing towards the planet, leaving a stream of particulate residue in its wake and preceded by many smaller meteors and meteoroids which were clustering round the larger carbonaceous motherlode.

‘Well, that’s it then. We’re off.’ The situation was affecting Hank in psychological crevices he didn’t even know he possessed, ‘No more sunny days and walks in the park, no more birds singing in the trees, no more waterfalls, no more lazy days hammering at rocks in the middle of nowhere. I’ll miss it.’

Maggie looked askance at him, ‘Don’t be so melodramatic. Get a grip on yourself, this is exciting!’

Hank shook his head and dragged himself out of the introspection. ‘The worst thing is that it’s the big ones that go first,’ Maggie gave him a quizzical glance, ‘in mass extinctions, which is what this is likely to be. It’s the megafauna and flora that go first. The Permian-Triassic extinction took out 90% of all life on Earth. Funnily enough we’re probably about the biggest thing that might survive through the radiation, re-entry firestorms, dust and debris fallout, earthquakes, hurricanes, acid rains… You get the idea!’

‘So, wouldn’t be much fun then. Makes you glad to be the most intelligent creature on the planet, or off it, in fact.’ She turned and kissed him. ‘Well, we seem to have a little free time, shall we find something useful to do with ourselves while everyone else is still panicking?’ She moved back to the bed and slid on seductively, patting the empty spot next to her, ‘Come on, before it gets cold.’

Hank stared at the retreating planet for a while longer, before turning and taking in the full glory of Maggie’s curvaceous body. ‘Ah, why not?’ He pounced across the space and landed next to her, ‘I guess we have a duty to propagate the species. After all, apart from the livestock and specimens down on the zoological decks, we Troodons are going to be the only dinosaurs that live on after Delendis wipes out all life as we know it.’

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-5f3670248d063', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy settings', } } }); }); from WordPress https://ladlewritings.wordpress.com/2020/08/14/pathfinder/

#Fiction #Dan Ladle #Hank #Maggie #Pathfinder #Sci-Fi #Science Fiction #Space #Writing