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ask-powerwoman · 3 years

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So, Villa how did Dot find out about Ultra Woman? And why did she leave in the first place?

*This story is heavily based on the Mega Man Archie comics.

“Hey, mum?” Dot asks her creator, Doctor Villa “I thought I was your first robot. WVN-00A.”

“That’s right.” Villa responds with a smile

“Then... who’s WVN-000, ‘Lyra’...?” Villa froze, and glances to the screen that her daughter was looking at.

“See?” Dot says pointing to the name, “I was cleaning up the database when I found this. Is it an error?”

Villa sighs. “That... that isn’t an error.” She says, “Lyra was your older sister.”

Dot’s eyes light up. “Really?! Where is she? When do I get to meet her?”

“I’m sorry, Dot. But I’m afraid you’ll never get to meet Lyra.” Villa says sadly “she was my first triumph, and my greatest failure...”

“I... I don’t understand. What happened?” Dot asks.

That’s when Villa began to explain what had happened many years ago. When she was younger, more naive, and just beginning her life’s work. Back when She still counted Doctor Wily as a friend...

~~~

“That’s it Albert! She’s all done!” Villa says with a smile, lifting the goggles up onto the top of her head.

“Mmm..” Wily placed a hand to his chin, examining Villa’s newest creation. “It’s awfully... human-looking, Winter.” He says “Your military contract was for an advanced combat robot. You’ve built a... young lady.”

“And” Villa says “And my robot master line WILL be capable of advanced warfare --as well as a myriad of other advanced mental processes. I’ll get them their weapon, but this prototype, My girl, will stay with me.”

“Hmph. I’d say... you were taking your love of robotics too far, but then I’d be a hypocrite.” Wily says with a softened smile to his friend. “Let’s wake her up.”

“Right. Wake up, dear, Good morning...” the robot girl sat up on the work table, her long blonde ponytail moving over slightly as she rubs her eyes. “...Lyra!”

“...hello?” Lyra says, hesitantly, before finding herself suddenly picked up off the table and into a strong hug.

“Welcome to the world my lovely girl!” Villa says happily “I am your creator, Doctor Villa!” She allows Lyra to sit down once again. “How do you feel? The self diagnostic should’ve kicked in first thing.”

“I feel... fine?” Lyra responds “all systems report nominal.” She looks around

“I... I feel... confused. Overwhelmed. Disoriented. I know we’re in the ‘lab’ and what a ‘lab’ is but... why?”

Villa smiles with excitement “do you hear this, Albert? She’s self aware! Not five minutes online and she’s already thinking metaphysically!”

“Mm-hmm.” Wily replies scribbling notes down on a pad “Don’t mind me... just taking the measurements you’ll need for the weapon upgrades later. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Lyra blinks and looks at her hands “w...weapons?”

“Don’t worry about that now. You’re taking the first steps to bridge the gap between humanity and robotics.” Villa places a hand on Lyra’s shoulder. “You have data, but what you need now, is culture.”

Villa took Lyra out to see the city. The large buildings that seem to tower over everything, She bought Lyra a long purple scarf that she was fascinated by, She took her to the museum to see wondrous pieces of artwork, to the forest area where she got to feed real, organic birds and a deer, and finally to the symphony in the park as the moon finally began to rise.

In retrospect, Villa was too enthusiastic back then. She pushed too much of the world--of her own goals--on Lyra at once. But she seemed to be accepting it all so well...

Unfortunately, this was also when Villa received a great deal of her funding from military research. Without it, she would never have been able to construct Lyra. However, her benefactors wanted something to show for their investments, so...

Villa placed a helmet on Lyra’s head carefully as they prepare for the demonstration.

“Remember your programming. Hit-and-Run, don’t be reckless, pick your targets wisely, don’t forget to use your cover to your advantage...”

“Relax.” Lyra says with a confident smile. “I got this.”

Villa let’s out a heavy sigh as Lyra walks into the field.

“G-good afternoon, gentlemen. Today’s demonstration is of Villa Labs autonomous combat robot, model number WVN-000.” She says to the military representatives. “Today you will see how a robot can be capable of independent thought. Villa Labs hopes to bring the same capabilities to the civilian sector one day. But first, we will demonstrate the versatility my d--er.. this robot can perform in a... in a live fire exercise. Future models will allow for military operations with no... um... risk to human life.”

The demonstration began. Lyra ducked behind one of the walls as the training drones began to rapid fire.

Lyra smirks, charging her buster and dashing out from her cover, taking out several drones before reaching the next piece of wall for cover.

The shots from the drones cracked the wall on the outside, but that didn’t stop Lyra from leaping up and grabbing a hold of the wall, using the top as cover to take out more drones.

But something wasn’t right.

Lyra lands back on the ground, pushing the wall hard enough to topple it over.

Her body sparking all the while.

As exercise 2 was about to start, the sparking grew worse. Lyra felt off. It was dizzying for her.

“Doc... Doctor V-Villa? Something’s...”

Lyra tried to fire at one of the new incoming drones, but it missed.

And the drones swoop down to cut her with the propeller blades

“Lyra? LYRA?!” Villa exclaims with fear and worry “STOP THE TEST!!”

She came running over to her daughter, who now lay weak on the ground.

“Everything was going so well.” One of the military representatives says, “What happened, doctor?”

“There... seems to be an imbalance in her power generator. She’s never been put under this kind of strain...” Villa says, examining the data she was receiving from the damaged prototype.

“You didn’t test it first?”

“Of course I did!” Villa exclaims “but everything about her is unique—experimental. A robot this advanced requires a tremendous amount of power, and when the output is pushed...”

“It certainly shows promise,” says one of the military representatives, “but the power failure is a concern.”

“Yes...” adds another, “A simpler model would require less power, a simpler battle software would still be sufficient.”

“Congratulations, Doctor, you’ve won us over. We’ll clear you for further research funding, get back to us when you’ve got a smaller, simpler model.”

“Y-yes, sirs...” Doctor Villa says as she held Lyra in her arms, “thank you...”

But that wasn’t Villa’s real failure with Lyra.

Later that night, Lyra woke up in the lab, her core plugged into several machines meant to keep it stable

“Ugh... Doctor Villa?” She asks, rubbing her head, but looking around, her creator was nowhere in sight.

But she could hear an argument from another room.

“Absolutely not!”

“Listen to yourself, Winter! You’re way too attached to her. Let me do the modifications.”

“I said ‘no!’”

Lyra pulls the chords out of her core, and slowly gets up and goes to see what was going on.

“Oh, so you’ll trust me to design her arm-cannon, but you won’t trust me to modify her power core?”

“You DESIGNED it, but you didn’t INSTALL it. I did!”

“And you obviously did it wrong, hence the imbalance!”

Lyra stood still, watching her mother fight with her friend.

“You were BANNED from directly working on advanced robotics.”

“Nice of you to reopen THAT wound, Winter.” Wily huffs.

“You brought that upon yourself!” Villa retorts, “But more importantly, Lyra is MY girl, and I’ll handle her redesigns.”

“Doctor Villa...” Lyra starts, gaining the attention of the two Doctors.

“Lyra!” Villa exclaims, “I didn’t know you were already recharged.”

Villa knelt down to her level, placing her hands on her shoulders.

“Are you alright? Do you feel off-balance at all?”

“I’m fine” Lyra replies, “what’s this about redesigning me?”

Doctor Villa sighs, “your power generator is flawed.” She says, pointing to Lyra’s core. “If I don’t fix it, the imbalance will eventually destroy you. I have to redesign your core to save you.”

“And what if you bungle it,” Wily starts, “and erase all her personal programming?”

“I’m sure you’ll retain all your personality traits!” Villa says, in an attempt to reassure her daughter.

“Heh—just as you were sure her generator would work properly?”

“Enough, Albert, you’ll scare her! You’re not helping!”

“I know. You won’t let me.”

“I said ‘Enough!’”

“Fine, fine.”

“Lyra,” Villa says to her daughter, “Go hook yourself up in the lab so your power remains stable. We’ll begin work tomorrow.”

“But...”

“Now, please. This is for your own good.”

“...But” Lyra says quietly, “What about what I want?”

That night... Well, Villa can’t be certain if this was how it played out, But she had run the scenario over and over again in her head...

Lyra hid behind the wall to Villa’s room, listening as her mother talked to herself.

“I just don’t understand. It’s to save her life.” Villa says to herself as she paced back and forth in her room. “I coded the closest thing to a will of her own, but I want her to use it to make good, logical decisions.”

She sighs “..who would be logical facing their own mortality? Oh, Thomas. If you were here, you would know what to do...” Villa says, looking at an old picture of Thomas light, Wily and herself.

“Perhaps if I... it would be a lot easier if I did rewrite that rebellious streak out of her...”

Hearing that, Lyra had enough. Gripping her fist she leaves before she could hear the rest of what Villa had said to herself.

“No, no, no... what am I saying?” Villa says facepalming, “Once she’s repaired I’ll have to make it up to her in some way. And, in the long run, she’ll see it was for the greater good.”

Lyra in the meantime, was sobbing. As she packed a bag full of E-Tanks for a long and lonely trip ahead of her, she glanced at a picture of Villa and herself.

Smiling as if they had a perfect life... what lies had Villa been feeding her?...

In a moment of anger, Lyra smashed the photo on a ground.

The she walked out the door, never to come back.

~~~

“I never heard of or saw her again.” Villa says to Dot. “My pride, My arrogance, My lack of foresight... they robbed me of my first creation... My first daughter.”

“Well, then, we can go look for her!” Dot says with a smile “Me and Bounce can start looking right now!”

Villa chuckles a little. “No, Dot. Lyra’s power generator would’ve gone offline by now. It pains me to say it, but she’s gone.” She says with a sorrowful tone.

“Although there are long nights where I wonder what happened to her after she left...”

*A/N: this was a good excuse to submit a story instead of a comic. Hope you enjoyed this little story!

#megaman #ask #mega man #megaman au #ocs #story #fanfic #decided to try posting this lol

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ucos-files · 4 years

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Personnel File: Brian Lane, Detective Inspector (ret)

JACK: “Ex-DI Brian Lane, Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman.” BRIAN: “Pullman. Sussex University, accelerated entry, 1987. Bramshill, ‘92. DI, Murder Squad, ‘92-’95. DCI, Armed Robbery Squad, ‘95 - ‘98.”

Our first introduction to Brian Lane, Detective Inspector (ret) shows us three key character traits about Brian: his photographic memory, his indifferent social skills, and his obsessions, but with detective work in general. As a character, Brian most closely resembles the defective!detective trope in mystery fiction--or the brilliant but insufferable genius: he’s the Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot of the team. His nickname is “Memory” Lane because his memory is really that good. He knows the record of every officer in the Met for the last thirty years. He apparently knows every crime and criminal in the files also. He’s a computer database but better. He’s brilliant, and a brilliant detective (Jack says that he’s a “first-rate detective,” and coming from Jack, that’s the highest praise.) He works best by coming at puzzles from a different angle, by seeing patterns that no one else sees. The problem is, while he can see the most obscure patterns clearly, he can’t see the ones that are in front of his face. It shows up most in the show with Esther, his long-suffering and loving wife, but it also shows up with the rest of the UCOS team. Brian misses social cues, has difficulty with conversations and manners that other people take for granted, has a need for certain rituals and patterns of stability in his life.

Esther is his cornerstone; Jack and the UCOS team are important supportive bricks. DO NOT TOUCH HIS DESK. Brian specifically says that he has OCD, he’s a recovering alcoholic (sober 2 years, 2 months, 8 days as of the pilot.) And it’s strongly coded although never specifically spelled out that he may be on the autism spectrum. In the pilot, he mentions both a car and grandchildren: in later episodes he doesn’t drive and has no children.

Brian is a deeply flawed but very appealing character. He is capable of deep friendship, loyalty, and generosity to the people he cares about--he can be extremely sensitive to other people’s feelings--but he can also be oblivious, selfish and a downright pain. He goes off on obsessive hobbies, and has terrible personal grooming habits. He doesn’t like wearing a suit, and likes wearing dress shoes even less. (It’s interesting to chart how “comfortable” Brian is by what he’s wearing.) He’s depressed, obsessed, and paranoid (a paranoia that can become downright delusional when he isn’t on his medication), and the crux of his personal wounds are his guilt and regret over the man he let die in his custody. There’s always been more to the story, he insists. And we desperately want to believe him. Part of his character arc over the seasons is watching him come to grips with, and grow from his mistakes. Jack’s a big part of that, but Esther, Esther is always his guiding light.

“Our customers?” He asks. Who are the Met’s “customers?” Brian, like the other two old dogs, has a biting sense of humor (see his one-liner to Gerry in the Pill Scene: “Pale blue, lozenge shape. Well, you know what that’s for. Go on, it’s not hard.”). He’s also represents the third leg of the working class background: he’s made it half-way up the Met’s pecking order, but no further. He’s an old-fashioned copper, out-dated and out of touch with policing methods, but not at all past his prime. In some ways, UCOS, with it’s stable environment and team connections makes him a better detective than he ever was with the Met.

“You mean, he did it, let’s prove he did it, then we can say we are not looking for anyone else in connection with this inquiry?” Brian does his own fair share of techno-speak, but he can speak just as clearly and simply as Jack and Gerry. He has no guff with press-speak or police jargon.

ESTHER! Dear God, loving kind Esther, has been married to Brian for at least thirty years as of the pilot. She’s his anchor. With her, he falls to pieces, and no matter how oblivious or selfish he’s being, he really deeply cares about her. He loves her, and the best signs of how he loves her is how he tries to make himself a better man because she asks him to. She’s worried about him rejoining the Force, even as a civilian. “Brian, I don’t want you doing this—for your own sake. Next time you might not just crack, you might break.” But being a detective is his life’s work -- and being in UCOS gives him a chance to figure out how he was scapegoated for Antony Kaye’s death.

Yes, he is exactly that orderly. Later on he will display his obsessive organization and memory to Sandra and Jack again: “I’ve arranged the case evidence alphabetically. I’ve also listed it with the trial notes chronologically. That way you can cross-reference it more easily.” SANDRA: “I don’t suppose you know the contents of her stomach, do you?”

BRIAN: “Fish, peas, spinach. But no potatoes, which seems odd.” The team will quickly get used to Brian knowing everything; it turns up as a plot point when he doesn’t.

Soon Brian will discover the marvelous world of computing, but not quite yet.

That is HIS coat hanger, and don’t you forget it. Brian doesn’t share easily. We learn later on that he has some good reasons for that, but for now we just think he’s a bit compulsive.

Yes, he does label his things.

Yes, Brian’s manners need some polishing. (Other fabulous one-liners in this scene: “Don’t smoke the filter, Mrs. Collard. I used to do that, now look at me.”)

Nice pocket knife, Brian. “Corns, bad. Do you get them?” “I don’t like public transport. I get people to give me a lift.” Gerry, Jack and Sandra will spend a lot of time over the next decade giving Brian and his bicycle a lift. Although Jack is about a decade older, Brian arguably has just as many health problems. It is vaguely suggested that he might be something of a hypochondriac--but it might just as easily be a side effect of the medication. Brian takes pills for sciatica, lumbago, arthritis, rheumatism in his shoulder, as well as anti-depressants. In the pilot, he’s apparently only taking one medication for depression. By the next few episodes, Brian will start taking a lot more depression medication. It suggests that he had a pretty rough and tumble career as a police officer. At the time of Kaye’s death in 1997, he was having therapy for his depression.

Like all the men on UCOS, he carries a tape recorder and knows how to use it.

GERRY: “You know Jack, is he mad?” BRIAN: “No. But I am.”

“He was black. Like you. Which automatically made things more difficult, more political. I found him face-down, having apparently choked on his own vomit. I was the arresting officer. I’d left him for less than two minutes, but no one else saw me in that time. I was being treated for depression. The Union advised me that I should submit a doctor’s report, pending the investigation. It wasn’t flattering. In fact, it basically said I was barking mad. Which gave the Met their get-out. Problem is, I think Antony Kaye was killed—and not by me. He was murdered inside that station. The Met are shielding someone, and I’m gonna prove it. Then we’ll see who’s mad, and who isn’t.” Brian’s soliloquy in this part of the pilot is heartrendingly good. (Alun Armstrong’s performance is bravo.)

GERRY: “Isn’t it all just a bit busy inside your head?”

BRIAN: “There’s probably a lot more going on than in yours”

“Nobody touches this desk. Right? I’ll know if you have. AND my God is a jealous God and He shall smite thee severely.”

Brian loves Esther. It’s a marriage with its ups and downs, but Brian loves Esther. Full stop.

“I don’t break the law. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I take my medication. And you know what? My mind’s on fire.” Brian has two loves: Esther and detection. One of those comes first.

“This DNA new forensics lark, makes our job easier, does it?” Brian, hanging a lampshade on police work in the 21st century.

THE file. Someday, we will know the truth of what happened; more importantly, Brian will, and will be at peace with himself. And the character growth of a decade will be complete. JACK: “No, no you don’t. You only think you know what happened to him.” (Jack’s right. Jack’s always right.)

BRIAN: “That’s why I left it at home.”

SANDRA: “Home?!? You brought evidence home?”

BRIAN: “How else was I gonna get it all filed?”

SANDRA: “You do realize that if they find out you did this, we’ll get crucified.”

BRIAN: “Why? Who’s going to tell them?” They do things differently at UCOS. And Sandra, aside from realizing that she’s going to have to deal with a new kind of person in Brian, also realizes that he’s right. No one on UCOS is going to betray UCOS. That’s the loyalty and trustworthiness that will let Brian learn to grow and give back.

Brian, the big eater; Brian, with his silly napkin; Brian, who loves a free lunch.

Brian, with his toast. Someday, sometime down the road, Brian will figure it all out, and be at peace. He’ll be a good husband to Esther, a good father and grandfather, and a good friend to Jack, Gerry and Sandra. This time, he’ll know the truth, and leave on his own terms.

#new tricks #new tricks bbc #brian lane #alun armstrong

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damienthepious · 4 years

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nearly late, hghgjfgh

thorns that burst from my skull in the night (chapter 5)

[ch 1] [ch 2] [ch 3] [ch 4] [ao3]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla

Characters: Lord Arum, The Keep, Sir Damien, Rilla

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Lizard Kissin’ Tuesday, Canon Compliant, Prophetic Dreams, Alternate Universe, canon typical Arum ignoring feelings, (very mild suicidal ideation or at least. canon typical arum being reckless with his own life), Canon Retelling, (sortaaaaa)

Summary: Arum has always seen glimpses of the future in his dreams. This gift is sometimes useful, but more often than not it leaves him with more questions than answers. The dreams of the flowers are particularly unhelpful.

Chapter Summary: Arum will not be attending his third duel.

Chapter Notes: sorry this is almost late. havin a weird brain time over here. hope this is anything? i love you. please love and appreciate and kiss a lizard.

The grubs that went unused are not in their container when he returns home, after the duel.

He stops listening to the Keep's gentle berating in the middle of a thought as he realizes the vanishwood box is silent, the pulsing heartbeat stopped, and when he passes his hand in front of the side it confirms his grim suspicion. He goes to undo the lid, snarls to himself when he finds it already askew, and when he opens it fully to check again it confirms what he already knows.

Gone.

They are nowhere within the Keep. They are not even within the swamp, so far as the Keep can sense. They could not possibly have gotten that far on their own since last Arum saw them, which means-

He hisses through his teeth at his own carelessness. Tired, distracted enough to leave the lid ajar- the sort of mistake a clumsy hatchling would make, and with so valuable and dangerous an experiment. Were he not so busy he would find a hole in which to bury himself.

Arum imagines the creatures clinging to his clothing, or stowing away in the traps he brought with him to the jungle outside the Citadel, slipping away into the night. The raw empathetic power of that many of the grubs could eviscerate the local life-

More importantly, if the grubs scattered that close to the Citadel, they might create something of a fuss, and Arum cannot possibly afford for his creations to be sniffed out and investigated by the humans. The Senate would never forgive their pet project being compromised in such a way.

Arum unclenches his hand, pulling his claws from the wood, and he hisses again as his shoulders sag.

No sleep, no rest, no settling his mind- he will need to return to the more human-infested parts of the Wilds, to reclaim his property. The Keep chides again, tries to discourage, and he is so tired but he cannot afford to leave this matter unsettled. The grubs are too dangerous, their implications too delicate to fall into human hands.

He closes his eyes for a moment (what's right in front of), steels himself, and summons the way back. The sprinkling of swamp dirt he left near the Citadel will still serve, for the time being.

He finds the swath of destruction, eventually, after a frustrating and lengthy search. He would have needed to come back to dismantle the rest of the traps that Sir Damien did not trigger in their duel eventually, anyway, he thinks grimly. No sense letting good tools rot without reason. But nowhere amongst his carefully laid machinations does he find the grubs. He does not find them, no trace of them, until hours later when he follows the scent of ash, until the sickly but dissipating clouds of pink in the air lead him to the remnants of battle.

So. He was not quick enough to find the grubs before they found something else.

Settled bursts of spores, he finds, and charred earth, and eventually, the hollowed, burnt-out shell of fungi, enormous and still shivering the air with residual magic, though it is no longer alive.

He had been expecting human corpses, in all honesty.

Arum inspects the burnt rot, and he finds more evidence of flame around the base. Charred grubs cluster quiet beneath what is left of the stem, dry and lifeless, but-

Arum scrapes a claw through the ash. It is still just slightly warm- he must not have missed the excitement by terribly long. He eyes the remnants, critical, his head tilting sideways.

This was not all of his grubs. They were not all destroyed. Which is far more worrying than the alternative.

It is not difficult, to track the scent of human and horse back through the jungle, to follow the clumsy, careless steps back out of the trees. By scent he surmises that the second human and the horse have departed- he will need to investigate that if he does not find the grubs here, in this quaint little structure.

He spies her through the window, first, noting the sheathed knife she has already removed, hung by the bed, and-

Hm. She looks nearly as exhausted as Arum feels.

(I'm- sorry)

Not that it matters.

(morning, little human)

She stops speaking into the little device of metal and gears in her hand after a moment or two, tucks the vial onto a shelf, and turns for the bed. As she pulls her sheets back, Arum shatters the window.

It's easy enough to slither low, to disorient, to pluck the knife away and glower at the human over his remaining, reclaimed grub as his claws clink against the vial, and he does not let himself think about the way the dreams have begun to hover again.

He has not slept properly in so very long. That fact and the unfortunate echo of Sir Damien are the only reasons he can see the dancing of petals at the edge of his vision, can hear the vague whisper of song.

She puts up an admirable struggle, but she is only one unarmed human. Unarmed and exhausted, and he eases her to the floor when he knocks her unconscious. He shakes his head, then, trying to clear it, trying to silence the noise.

So. He has his experiment safely back in hand. Now, he must discover whether she has already informed the rest of her swarm about the creature and its capabilities.

He listens to the little human’s fascinating device, listens to her chatter about her apparent "experiments" with so much enthusiasm that it is almost catching. He toys with the machine until he has a sense of how to work it, and then he sets it to what he thinks must be the most recent entry.

He chose the wrong end of the spool, however. From the sound of her enthusiasm, from context, he imagines that the entry he has found must be the first, not the last. Unlikely to be helpful, for his purposes. He brushes his thumb across the controls, a frown curling his lips, and then the human's voice on the device introduces herself.

Amaryllis.

When he hears the word, he nearly drops the device entirely. All of his hands scramble in the effort of keeping it from shattering on the floor, and two claws just barely manage to catch it by the corner. He pulls the thing to his face again. He presses the button to go back. He listens again. He listens a third time, only to be certain.

Amaryllis.

(the honeysuckle blooms first, but the amaryllis come just as wild in their time)

Her name is Amaryllis.

He throws over her entire little hut, looking for evidence of deceit, looking for proof, finding the hidden cache beneath the floorboards and scrabbling through journals (coded; though he recognizes her sketches and he understands the half-written formulae), and he finds that this little creature has quite the heretical bent, for a human. Heretical, and botanical.

(a hatchling curled safe in the soft, fragrant bell)

Well. Finally this dream provides him something useful. An herbalist interfering with his work, just at the moment her particular skills could be of the most use to him. Just when his Keep is-

(wilting song)

Ill.

He can feel it in his own body. The creeping blight has not begun to wither his own scales, not yet, but the reverberation of what ails the Keep is within him all the same. A feeling of terrifying stiffness, a vague disquiet that makes his fingers shake, and day by day it worsens.

It worsens, and a doctor has just fallen into his lap.

It is not as if he could have let her go regardless. She knows too much of his work, she cannot be allowed to relay the information to the knights, to their queen. According to her device, this human has not had time to tell anyone about his work, and she does not yet understand it. But that does not mean that the information she does have would not be far too dangerous to allow to leak, and she has seen him now, besides. No. He cannot simply let her free, now.

So. He may as well see if he can glean any use from her. No sense in wasting talent, human or otherwise, when it presents itself to him.

If the dreams help him save his Keep, he thinks, he will never again begrudge them a shattered night of sleep.

He tucks the recorder into his satchel, alongside the grub, and he reaches down-

(please, off your feet)

He pauses, blinks, shakes his head, and then lifts Amaryllis into his arms.

#elle's fanfic #oneiromancy au #the penumbra podcast #second citadel #rad bouquet #lizard kissin' tuesday #lord arum #amaryllis of exile #whatever.#it's fine.#might just have an unrelated panic attack about something other than my diminishing ability to write

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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“Are the MCU Spidey films good Spider-Man movies?”

If you mean are they good adaptations, as in good stories respecting the spirit of the character, the kind of stories that you could easily imagine happening in the comics themselves and are in line with the core values and concepts from those comics...then no absolutely not.

“Spider-Man was established as a secondary character in someone else’s story before we followed him on any adventures of his own”

And that’s fine if not for the fact that he remained subservient to that other character’s story. He was deliberately constructed in Homecoming and Far From Home to revolve around his relationship with Tony both to provide further development for Tony and fuel for his later arc in IW and Endgame but also to provide and epilogue and lasting legacy for him.

Even if Peter was the lead in his solo films he still existed within the shadow of Tony, he was still effectively to Tony what Robin was to Batman. Batman fundamentally contextualizes Robin to such a degree that everything Robin does, even subtextually, either stems from or comments upon Batman.

Even his transition into Nightwing, into being his own man and leader of the Titans did this because that was understood as him BREAKING AWAY from Batman’s shadow. But on a metatextual level he never truly can. A similar thing happened with Peter in FFH. Even if Tony was dead his legacy hung over FFH and Peter, his legacy conextualized part of the intended arc for his character in that film (as poorly handled as it was regardless).

And this...is what is unacceptable about MCU Spider-Man in terms of being an adaptation. It’s not simply that existing in Iron Man’s shadow or being contextualized by him wasn’t a factor for his character (thought that’d be justification enough to call out). It’s that Spider-Man was so particularly DESIGEND by Lee and Ditko to NOT be like that at all to NOT live in the shadow of another hero but be independent and more importantly for the driving force behind everything he does as a hero to be the death of his father which he was indirectly responsible for.

“The spider bite and death of Uncle Ben is stuff that’s in the past and has happened”

Has it though?

There is no evidence of that in the film, not even circumstantial.

I’m all for not showing it for a third time but neither Peter nor May act like they’ve recently lost a loved one or are grieving at all. We’ve seen Peter more affected by the death of Iron man than of Uncle Ben.

The only reason anyone can even float the idea that Spider-Man’s origin happened at all is that we all simply know that origin. But you still need to acknowledge in some way it happened which the MCu has absolutely never done. As far as the MCU is concerned the closest thing we have to even acknowledging Uncle Ben existed in the first place is a suitcase with presumably his initials on it.

But for all we know Peter fished that out of a dumpster. For all we know Uncle Ben might never have existed, May might be his biological aunt and Ben her deadbeat husband who ran off with someone else.

Simply saying referring to all May has been through recently isn’t enough because it implies she’s been through something serious recently, but that could be anything not necessarily a bereavement. More poignantly it doesn’t imply PETER has been through anything when that’s way more important because being sad about Ben’s death is the book of Genesis for Spider-Man. You NEED to have that pain, that grief in there somewhere.

Him saying giving the great responsibility speech isn’t enough because the film never clearly conveys that he learned this lesson from someone close to him dying. It’s just something he takes very seriously (in Civil War but apparently not much in Far From Home!) and for all we know always has.

Peter’s dialogue in Civil War DOES NOT imply Peter learnt this lesson from something that WAS his fault. It COULD mean that, but in context it COULD just be something he learned third hand.

More importantly even if we were to say the dialogue DOES spell out his origin that’s not really the point. Because Ben’s presence in the film still needs to be acknowledged. A picture, his name being uttered, a gravestone, a long look at an empty chair at the breakfast table something. But there is absolutely NOTHING besides a suitcase. And more egregiously what he represents has been wholly supplanted by Tony.

“Peter likes tech. Tony likes tech. Tony would naturally be a huge inspiration going forward”

Not really. Just because you love basketball doesn’t mean Michael Jordan is definitely going to be your inspiration. In the comics Reed Richards wasn’t Spider-Man’s idol or anything. And his desire to impress him in the comics at best didn’t manifest itself the way he wanted to suck up to Tony in the MCU.

And again, this misses the point. There are LOTS of things that would technically be organic in the MCU but it’s about finding a balance between something organic that is also respectful of the core concept and spirit of the characters. Case in point. Having T’Challa’s origin tied into Civil War is very organic and different from the comics but it doesn’t disrespect the spirit of his character because his Dad still dies and passes on the mantle of King and Black Panther to him and still provides fuel for him to live up to his father’s memory.

It’d totally organic Black Widow to be a former HYDRA operative based upon the established world building of the MCU, have the Black Widow program be something set up by the Red Skull even. It’d even make sense given the colour coding involved. But it’d be disrespectful to the spirit of Black Widow’s character as a RUSSIAN convert.

“If he wants to live up to Ben he’d want to be the best superhero he could possibly be”

Sure...but that doesn’t mean becoming an Avenger. Again, comic book Spider-Man never regarded being a big name hero as neccesarry for being a good hero or the best he could be. That’s an elitist way of looking at it.

In particular it omits the good he does for the little guy which is his driving motivation. He doesn’t do this to save the world he does this to save individual people. His ‘original sin’ as it were stemmed from an incredibly small scale individual crime.

So accepting Tony’s help when he wants to make him the next Avenger wouldn’t be in line with the SPIRIT of the character.

We could argue that logically this could happen and therefore it MUST happen but at the end of the day it was just that the writers WANTED Peter to be a fanboy and nothing more than that. They didn’t HAVE to write him that way. They could’ve had him have doubts about Tony, have his idealized visage of Tony crack as he grew to learn about the real man.

And if we’re going to use the argument that this HAS to happen and we have no choice to write it that way because logic dictates it then...why haven’t the MCu heroes resolved any number of things logically they absolutely could. Tony can’t fix global warming? Wakanda can’t? Or to switch over to DC Superman can’t end how many disasters or problems in the world?

At the end of the day logic exists within superhero stories but it is always tempered by the genre conventions and spirit of the characters.

I know this channel loves Doctor Who, who is arguably a kind of superhero anyway, so I will draw upon an example from Dr. Who. I forget who it was, possibly Russel T. Davies, but in a commentary track for an episode of Doctor Who in 2008-2009 someone said something very smart regarding a fundamental of the lore. They said that really the Doctor could fix the chameleon circuit of his TARDIS so it need not always look like a police box...but that it was ‘right’ that he didn’t. In other words logically the Doctor COULD do something and indeed it would be very beneficial but it’d go against the spirit of his character, the show and the internal mechanics of the series for them to do that.

The same applies here. If you have a Spider-Man who’s got a rich high tech superhero sugar daddy you have broken Spider-Man, he doesn’t work properly creatively speaking.

“A large part of Peter’s story in Homecomign is being told when to stay out of it”

Again this goes against the spirit of the character because hello...his whole origin is about that one time he did stay out of it and it broke his family.

For a Spider-Man story to basically repeatedly enforce the message that Spider-Man NOT acting and Spider-Man being passive is the right thing to do is to do a story which misunderstands the character fundamentally.

It gets worse when you consider his actions actively make things worse 90% of the time in that film and the message is muddled anyway as Iron Man was only in a position to stop Vulture because Spider-Man wasn’t passive.

“There are some things Peter isn’t qualified to take on”

Low rent thugs with high tech weapons is something he isn’t qualified for?

How many versions of early days Spider-Man dealt with that and worse entirely competently?

“Throughout all of this like a father figure Tony Stark is looking out for Peter”

First of all no he’s really not, he’s absent a lot of the time.

Second of all the mere FACT that Tony Stark is Peter’s father figure at all is part and parcel of WHY these are bad Spider-Man movies.

Tony Stark being Spider-Man’s father figure is as broken as a Dick Grayson origin movie where Batman ISN’T his father figure or indeed wholly absent. You are severely MISSING THE POINT if you do that.

“If Uncle Ben were important then when Tony took away his suit he’d leave it to other people instead of getting involved himself”

That logic doesn’t follow.

To begin with the entire movie repeatedly made it clear Peter was willing to disobey Tony and get involved so him continuing to do so is consistent, it doesn’t have anything to do with Uncle Ben’s importance or lack thereof.

Secondly as stated above this is all built upon the PRESUMPTION Ben existed and Spider-Man’s origin played out in a similar way it always does but there is 0% in-movie evidence for this happening. We simply know Peter lives by a philosophy the same as the philosophy he had in other movies but we don’t know in this universe how he came to believe in that philosophy.

He certainly doesn’t seem like it was through the loss of a loved one because he doesn’t mention, reference or think about Ben in the slightest and doesn’t act as anyone who’s lost someone they loved a lot very recently, certainly not other versions of Spider-Man who went through that.

“The red and blue home made suit represents a spider-Man who does what he does not because Tony Stark got involved”

But again there is no evidence in the movies that he does what he does because of Uncle Ben because Uncle Ben isn’t even implied in-story.

More importantly this isn’t the main critique of the MCU Spider-Man. the main critique is that Tony is incredibly important and defining to this version of Peter even if he was active before Tony showed up. The entire arc of Homecoming rests upon the motivation of Peter wanting to be an Avenger.

That’s not even my interpretation either, Tom Holland SAID that himself. The villain is an evil Tony Stark who became villain because of Tony Stark and who’s goal is Tony’s stuff. Peter’s self-actualization as a character happened when he was spurred on by Tony Stark.

Tony is BAKED IN to the foundations of this version of Spider-Man in a way that’s vitally more important than Uncle Ben because everything revolves around Tony. And again it SHOULDN’T, it shouldn’t anymore than Robin should NOT revolve around his relationship with Batman.

“That isn’t Peter saying he wants to be the next Iron Man”

Not in Homecoming perhaps but that’s clearly the direction the film Pushes Peter in in FFH.

“Just because Uncle Ben existed doesn’t mean Tony will fall on deaf ears”

Again not the point, the point is Tony is more present and impactful than Ben.

Put it like this. Aunt May clearly EXISTS in the MCU...but based upon the character arc and defining features of MCU Peter is she really as if not more important than Tony?

No she’s not, you could tweak the movies to exorcise her and they wouldn’t be that different.

“It’s a representation of this kid fighting for his uncle...it represents even before he met Tony he would’ve battled a villain who is concerned with Tony Stark“

Again...the uncle that the movies do not confirm even existed.

Again...the mere FACT that Tony is so integral to the fabric of so much stuff in this version of Spider-Man like Mysterio is against the concept and spirit of Spider-Man.

And even if we ignore all of that...Spider-man only beats Mysterio when he uses Tony’s tech to build a costume like Tony did set to Tony’s soundtrack so like...is the film actually affirming Tony’s presence is irrelvent to his heroic journey?

“Do you really think the hooded suit was put in for the sake of fanservice?”

I mean...it’s far from impossible we got like 5 different number plates that acted as fanservice. Chris Evans appeared in Thor: the Dark World for fanservice. The fact we got a giant Mysterio hand was nothing but fanservice.

“That hooded Spider-man IS Uncle Ben”

...then why....isn’t...he...mentioned!

It’s for a similar reason Aunt May is nothing more than Iron Man’s friend’s new girlfriend.

“You don’t keep everything associated with someone when they die”

This is a case of writing the movie for Marvel at this point.

Yes hypothetically it’s possible that there are other possessions associated with Uncle Ben which mean more to Peter than his suitcase.

But what are they?

Do they even exist?

We don’t know because again the suitcase is the closest thing we have to proof that Uncle Ben even EXISTED in these movies.

“The Stark suit was in the suitcase that got destroyed”

How does this disprove that Tony was more important than Ben?

Because Peter was at least sad about Tony’s death and there is no confirmation Peter was sad about Ben’s death nor even that Ben existed.

“This doesn’t show a good understanding of grief”

This whole movie didn’t show a good understanding of grief!

Peter is more concerned about hooking up with MJ than grieving Tony. It’s not denial or running away it’s inconsistent writing and characterization.

“Peter wanting a holiday is believable”

Sure...but like was Tony even that close to Peter?

They shared exactly six scenes together in person.

“People expect Spider-Man to act in the movies the way he does in that meme”

Half the critics of FFH aren’t saying that and the other half...are kinda right. In character Spider-Man is wracked with pain over remembering Ben. Not because his Dad simply died or even died when he was young but that he died violently and it was HIS FAULT!

“The subject of grief is present in the MCu version of Spider-Man”

Yes...but not over Uncle Ben, over Tony.

“Both with Tony and Ben”

What scene ever clearly shows us Peter grieving Ben’s death. Because the bedroom scene in Civil War doesn’t do that, we the audience project onto that scene that he is probably talking about Ben and he’s probably sad about it but there is no evidence in the movie even implying that to be the case.

The PS4 game at least had a picture.

“It’s handled in a very, very, very subtle way”

No it’s handled in a way that omits and covers him up in order to build up Tony and avoid repetition from the older movies.

It’s not subtle because the MCU by and large is not subtle and that includes Civil War. Tony and Pepper’s break up isn’t even all that subtle in the movie.

This isn’t written to be subtle it’s written to be plausible deniability.

“Just because Ben started Spider-Man and is the essence of him doesn’t mean other people aren’t going to have some kind of influence on him”

Sure...but it should never have been Tony stark.

Because Peter Parker shouldn’t be fanboying over anyone, it goes against his core concept.

“It’s unfair to project one interpretation of grief on every Spider-Man”

Sure. Peter and Miles and Mayday and Gwen and Cindy and Anya won’t all react to grief in the same way.

But if you are doing a version of PETER PARKER and you are having him react to grief in a way that is not broadly consistent with PETER PARKER then you are not doing your job.

He’s supposed to be in spirit a version of Peter Parker and a version of Peter Parker would not react to grief by never even mentioning or thinking about Uncle Ben.

“This was never an origin story for Spider-Man”

Nor was Spider-Man 2 and yet you know...Uncle Ben and the grief over his death was till present in that.

“You can cite the Raimi movies and bring it over to the new lore”

...that...that isn’t how any of this works. The Raimi films aren’t canon to the MCU unless the MCU acknowledges them as such.

“It may be a different Peter Parker but the story is still the same”

If the story is still the same then where are Harry, Mary Jane and Norman Osborn?

Why is Spider-Man not living in the suburbs?

Why is Peer 15 instead of 18?

Even if you take that statement to mean the GIST of the story is the same it creates problems because why would Peter ever say “I’m nothing without this suit Tony” in HC when he knows he definitely isn’t because he knows he can make a difference with or without the suit because of Ben’s death proving that point.

It’s not canon to the MCU unless there is EVIDENCE proving that to be the case.

As of right now Ben might not even exist in the MCU.

More importantly the FACT THAT HE’S NOT MENTIONED is you doing Spider-Man wrong full stop.

#Spider-Man #Mysterio #Iron Man #Tony Stark #Uncle Ben #Ben Parker #Peter Parker #MCU #marvel cinematic universe #spider-man: homecoming #Spider-Man: Far From HOme

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wordsofcleo · 4 years

Text

“Enough”

***TRIGGER WARNING***

This is an old entry I wrote and never anticipated to share here on my blog. After a while, I decided to let it rip. So here it is.

PS: While I still have my struggles, I am no longer in this bad of shape. I am mentally healthier. These are, however, things from my past that I still struggle with from time to time.

Trigger Warnings: (sexual abuse, trauma, family trauma, and more)

“For a long time, I have wanted to die. It isn't the kind of suicidal urge to die that everyone thinks of. It's the heaviness you carry around every day of your life. It's the deep want to not exist anymore. It doesn't mean that there is a plan, motive, or even self harm. It means that every day, a life of not wanting to exist is present. It's miserable. It hurts to my core.

I wonder what my life would have been like if I had been paid better attention to as a child. When I was found with bite mark trails upon my arms and hands, what did my grandparents think? When I would bash my head into the walls of our home, what did they think? They got onto me for being obnoxious. They got onto me for acting out. My grandparents were good people, but what about my behaviors? Did they ever once stop to think about the pain I was expressing as early as age five? What about the Barbie dolls I shook violently, instead of playing with them like normal young girls would? Shaking them released some kind of stress within me. My family thought it was strange, and even funny. They never once put the pieces together to realize that something deeper was going on. The tantrums that I would throw that resulted in time out, and me bashing my head into the walls to discipline myself; what about that? I was just acting out in their eyes. What about all of the times I was being molested at that age by the family friend? No one put two and two together? Nope. I was just a child that was acting out for no reason. What about the times I stayed up all night long wondering why I wasn't good enough for either one of my parents? What about questioning why neither one of them were in my life? My grandparents knew they were great grandparents and provided me with everything my parents couldn't give me, so they wondered why I would be unhappy. Why? Why would Savannah be unhappy? As a final resort to be understood, I revealed my depressive poetry book to my grandmother in middle school. I realized that no one would catch on themselves, so I showed her myself. The reaction was blasphemous; it was as if something was wrong with me. I got into a doctor. I was finally diagnosed with depression at age eleven after all of those years. Someone had finally caught on, and it was all because I decided to share my poetry. I shared the feelings that harbored deeply within my heart. Only then and then only was it anyone's concern. I dyed my hair black, wore all black, and continued to self harm in ways that aren't even typical in the “self harm” book. I would deprive myself of things. Beat myself up. As an effort to be loved, I would date anyone I could in school. That led to a plethora of toxic relationships. In high school, I had a boyfriend that would beat me up with his boxing gloves. Pin me onto his bed and beat me with his gloves. He was strong, and I was not as strong as I thought I was. He degraded me. He told me I was just like my father whom had lived near him in the neighborhood for some time and gotten to know him. The last night he hit me and threw my bike in a ditch so that I couldn't ride home, I called my Youth Pastor to pick me up and take me home. I never looked back. Still, the trail of toxic relationships wouldn't end there, would they? No. At only fifteen years old, I developed an interest in my father's sister's adult boyfriend. He was thirty five years old, and I was fifteen. I thought older men were cool. Was that because I had daddy issues? You tell me. What was a fifteen year old girl doing lusting after an older man? What was an older man doing hanging out with a fifteen year old girl? He cooed me. He manipulated me. We had “therapy sessions” to talk about the hate I had towards my parents. He would soothe me and help me. Dropped out of school more than once, so I was home schooling on my own. He would “tutor” me where I needed help. That led to a sexual, consensual relationship. Too bad a fifteen year old girl can't consensually have sex with a thirty five year old man. My friends warned me that he was a pedophile and taking advantage of me. I got offended when they called it “gross” and “disturbing”. I can hear them now, “Savannah, you need to do something about this. It's not right. He's a predator.” Finally, in time, I listened. I confronted my dad's sister; my aunt, and I told her what I'd done. I admitted to her as if I was all wrong. I was a child. I took the blame for her grown, perverted boyfriend. She spit in my face and demanded I get off of the property. She told me I was a liar. Cops were called. They claimed they had to conduct an investigation in which they never even investigated. To this day, the cops in this town look at me as if I'm a piece of garbage. Over the years, enough courage was formed to leave a public review of my experience with them. They talked me down. They said it didn't happen. All they used was a polygraph test on my aunt's boyfriend. He was a pathological liar. He convinced me, and he could convince anyone. To the police of Port St. Joe, that was enough. The towel in my grandmother's home that had that man's bodily fluid on it was washed immediately by me, because I didn't want to get in trouble. There was no “physical evidence” they say. A polygraph was enough, wasn't it? Sure. They say I was uncooperative. I was “uncooperative” because I was underage and my grandmother would not allow me to take the polygraph myself. Why? I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and tachycardia at the age of fourteen. I was not yet on medication for it; that came later. Why would I be set up to fail a polygraph that monitors heart rate and sweat glands? Why did the police only use a polygraph for investigation purposes? They never once questioned any of the witnesses who firsthandedly knew of and witnessed things. They didn't care to ask; not one, and not once. The police failed me. The pervert continues to walk the streets to this day. I'm the bad guy, though, right? My friends witnessed us be together. They witnessed the intoxication I was put under after being given alcohol by the man. They witnessed the hickies on my skin. They were around him and I firsthandedly. That part didn't matter to the Port St. Joe police, did it? It didn't matter that they could retrieve text messages and phone calls either, did it? It wouldn't have mattered anyway, because the man had a way of speaking in code. He did that for a reason. Don't put anything out in the open, or else they'll catch on. Yeah. I'm sure it also didn't matter to the police that I was with this man so much privately that she had to tell him to leave me alone. When she did, the man requested that we still have our “time”, but in a public place. Does that right there not speak for itself? Again, the police didn't care. Protect the children, right? Fuck you.

As always, it never stops there. In 2013, I'm fifteen, and I meet an older guy named Tyler at the Adult School I'm going to. I'm going to the Adult School because I dropped out of high school, home schooling didn't work, and I need an alternative. Enough was enough. The man flirts with me and we start hanging out as friends in public places. We grow a bit closer, even though he never speaks to me much when we're together. One day he invites me into his mysterious home. He rapes me. There are guns around me, and I know if I fight back, he will kill me. Porn DVDs scattered all over the room. I know I'm his victim. When it's over, he hurries me to leave and locks the door behind him. I call 911. He's arrested, and they take me to questioning. They want me to be questioned in the same building as him. They warn me he's about to come down the hallway and will pass by me. Seriously? Why not protect me a little more? I demand they protect me. They put me into the Chief's office and close the door. That's all they could offer. How professional, right? When they question me, they ask me to define “sexual intercourse”. I've just been sexually assaulted, and they want me to define that, to a man. They choose a male to give me my questioning and statement giving after I've been raped by, you guessed it, a male. I felt the dirtiest I had for the longest time. I wanted to vomit, but nothing could come up. My body didn't feel like my own anymore. My life was useless in that moment. I was nothing more than a limp, used rag or piece of garbage. That's how I felt. Tyler admits to the sexual assault. He goes to jail, and later changes that statement for court. I refuse to go to court to look at my rapist, so I'm offered a plea deal. I take it. Before his probation is up, he sexually assaults another woman. The deal was if he broke his probation, he would go to prison. He raped a handicapped woman, broke his probation, went to jail, and got out again. Want to know what else? Just the other day, I ran into my rapist for the first time in seven years. Why is he in public? Why did he have a child with him? Why did he have a woman with him? Why was he able to shop at a public Walmart? How is he able to be around others freely? What if he is hurting the toddler child that was with him? You know he is. He's a rapist. They will rape whoever and whatever they can. They are sick bastards. How is he able to be scotch free? I'm sickened. I was failed too many times by the system. I'm pouring tears as I write this. Why has it been this way? Why isn't the system protecting children and adults; more importantly the children? I can't seem to understand.

When my questioning was over, they called my grandparents to pick me up. I was stunned when I saw my mother of all people walk through the door. My mother. Someone who had not been in my life. “They say you have to pack your things and come stay with me,” she told me in reference to my grandparents. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I rode in my mother's car, totally emotionless to my grandparent's home. It was the place that I'd been raised. The place that I had so many memories. It was all I knew. It was home. “We warned you not to hang out with that guy, Savannah. Since you don't want to listen to us, you can stay with your mother.” It didn't matter that I'd been sexually assaulted. What mattered most to them was that I had rebelled against their intuitions. I got hurt as a result. My entire world broke apart. I thought they loved me, and that I was their child. I was wrong. I packed everything I could take, and went to my mother's house. This is where my stepfather told me that I was the Devil's child, and I was rebellious. He told me I was mentally sick. He told me a lot. When I told him to shut up, he slung his glass of liquor and ice at me. Covered and perfumed with the wretched smell of alcohol, I again gathered my belongings and hit the door. All my mother could say to him was, “Stop.” It didn't work. With my bags carried on all sides of me, I walked a couple of miles more or less to my mother's mom's house. Again, someone who wasn't in my life. I explained the situation, and I hoped that she would help me. “That's just how he is,” she said, “hopefully he will get over it.” I asked her if she could help me, and there seemed to be little that she could do for me. At that point, I was burned out. I didn't care anymore. Again, I gathered my things and took the last resort that I knew; find some familiarity. I walked many miles to find a friend from elementary school. I hoped that she still lived there. They didn't expect me to show up, but they took me right in. I told them everything. They helped me. They consoled me. A couple days later, my grandmother called. She apologized and wanted to bring me home. I didn't accept the apology, but I wanted to stop living out of bags. So, I went home. It was painful and heartbreaking. I couldn't let go of what happened. At least I had the resources to try and get my life together at my grandparent's house. I tried my hardest, and kept my door locked a lot. I stayed isolated.

In the midst of all the abuse and sexual assault, I'd found my parents chatting on Facebook. I had previously picked my father up from a psychiatric hospital because he had no one else willing to pick him up. He called me, and I'd picked him up to take him to his mother's house. That day, he'd given me his Facebook information in case something happened to him, or he couldn't get to his social media. Later on, I checked it to see him and my mother had been chatting about my life. Although neither one of them had anything to do with me, they had all the time in the world to gossip and talk down on their own daughter. They talked about how I lied on everyone that had “hurt” or “assaulted” me. They claimed it was a cry for attention. They called me mental. As if it wasn't enough that they couldn't be in my life all those years based on their very own decision, they then wanted to privately degrade me. That's okay. I finally understood how they felt about me, and for no reason at all. I took screenshots, and to this day, I have them. I'm tired of people lying and claiming they never did anything. I learned to keep evidence of wrongdoing whenever and wherever I can.

When my dad's mother died a couple of years later, I showed up to the funeral. My dad was there. My aunt was there. My aunt's perverted boyfriend who took advantage of me was there. I was aware of all of that before going. I needed to pay my respects, but not only that. For some reason deep within my soul, I wanted to give my support to my father's emotions. It's hard losing people. I was there for him despite how he'd talked about me behind my back. I was there for him despite not being in my life. It wasn't about what he had done to me, but what I could do for him. Later on as I got older, that mentality changed. I no longer care.

When my dad's brother died after his mother, I showed up to the house with my husband to help clean for an estate sale. I wanted to help with no strings attached. Families suffer during loss, and it was something I could do. They knew I wanted to help, yet they had my aunt's perverted boyfriend there doing absolutely nothing but watching. When I pulled another family member to the side to bring that to the surface, it didn't matter. “I've come here to help, and you have him here. Why?” Oh, but it was no big deal. It was as if it was totally forgotten about. “Just walk around him. Ignore him,” she said. It was that day I realized that they really did not believe me at all. They didn't care. I finished helping, and that was the end of it. Many people showed me; blood and not blood, that they did not give two fucks about me. It's okay.

2016 came around. I was going to therapy. I had been doing great. For once, I was finally on top of the world. I had saved enough money to buy a camper to turn into a tiny home. It was my dream. I wanted to move out of my grandparent's home and begin my own life. I had a good job. I met my husband, Chase. He moved from Louisiana to Florida to be with me. We lived in the camper together. Eventually, he proposed. He was amazing and I loved him with all of my heart. I said yes. We sold the camper, my grandparents graciously let us move back in with them temporarily, and we worked hard. We worked hard and saved up for a home on land. I wanted to push forward and fulfill yet another dream of mine. Eventually, I married Chase and I got the home. I worked hard on it. On my off days, I put sweat into the house. It was a long process, but what made everything even longer is that my husband kept leaving me for no reason. We had a very happy relationship, but he was always so unhappy. He never had a reason for his unhappiness. He said everything was fine, and the next thing I knew, he was disappeared. It took hearing from his family that he'd made it back to Louisiana safely. Four times he left me. Three times I took him back. The emotional turmoil was never ending. Laughing, adventuring, vacationing, and doing so many other things together and then suddenly your love is gone. They're gone with no warning, and no reason. Just because they want to, they're disappeared from your life. You know they'll come back later, so you learn to forgive it. You think that maybe they're struggling internally and trying to find themselves. However, each time he left, I lost a bit of myself. After the fourth time, I had completely lost sight of myself. I had no idea who I was. I knew if he wasn't serious about staying gone the fourth time, I would have ended up with him once more in the same old painful toxicity. He insisted divorce, and divorce it was. I didn't agree on divorce until the day I visited him at work during our separation when he told me he didn't care about anything but what he could get out of a situation and smiled at me. I turned around and felt happy that I would never have to be involved with him again, but it still broke me. I knew all of the things I'd heard about him both from observers and others were true. It suddenly all made sense. I should have listened. Each time that he left me, it broke me so hard. For weeks, I could not eat. I could not sleep. I could barely breathe. Too many times, I wanted to die. I loved the man with all of my heart and soul. I'd never loved as hard as I loved him. In December 2019, it was over officially. We were divorced. And suddenly, I realized that I'd lost so much and been done wrong, and I was sick of it. I was left with a complete and utter void.

I lost my hometown to Hurricane Michael in October 2018, and my grandfather who raised me died a month later in November. As if the tragedy of natural disaster wasn't bad enough, I did not understand how to cope with losing my grandfather. For so many years of my life, we bumped heads. When he passed away, I wondered if his spirit would hold that over me. I wondered why it couldn't have been different. To this day, I wonder. To this day, I mourn. To this day, I wonder why he continued to be friends with his friend that he knew molested me as a child. The first time, it was walked in on. Soon enough, the family friend would be coming around more and more. That meant I was being molested more and more. Why did he allow him back around me? I was like a daughter to him, right? Why did he do that, then? Did he really love me? He was such a good man, but why was he that way? Why did he get offended when I brought it up while he was still alive and refuse that it happened the way it did? Does anyone really love me? Why do the people that claim to love me let bad things happen to me?

I am truly unloved. Those who claim to love me never truly love me. People don't know love. Love is a void to everyone around me. Almost 23 years later of these feelings, and I can't take anymore. Some will never get answered, and all of them will never be brought justice. I can't stand it. I can't stand this life. Enough is enough.”

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gaming-rabbot · 7 years

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Rabbot Reviews: Night in the Woods

Painfully relatable, wonderfully colorful, delightfully charming, and exasperatingly existential.

Imagine a much tamer BoJack Horseman, with a colorful flourish and sense of nostalgia reminiscent of Hotline Miami, mixed with the millennial Scooby-Doo gang vibe of Oxenfree. Also imagine if Life is Strange felt less artificial with its blatant farce of an attempt at understanding hip kid lingo, and that Firewatch actually bothered going somewhere with its thriller esque setup and plot hooks.

That’s a jumbled mess of words, but also a perfect descriptor for the subject of this review: Night in the Woods.

Night in the Woods stars the unassuming Mae Borrowski, a 20 year old college dropout who has returned to her podunk, middle-of-nowhere, boring town, where nothing good ever happened to anybody, least of all Mae.

Upon return, she’s met with passive-aggression spiced concern from parents who honestly just want to know what their only child is going through, and friends who all either already have or are in the process of growing up and moving on in life. Thus, her return meant to ease her back into the comforts of nostalgia and something resembling normalcy only seem to cause her more anxiety and strife.

Also the crushingly slow and depressing realization that life has no meaning and nothing we do in the universe actually matters. But hey, one thing at a time, right guys?

Last call for a (mild) spoiler warning.

The very first thing to note is that Night in the Woods is a certain type of game. And if you grit your teeth and practically feel your blood boil at the very thought of this type of game, first I might suggest seeing a doctor, but second and more importantly, NitW more than likely will not change your mind about this type of game.

I am referring, of course, to the ever-fun and totally-never-controversial-topic, the walking simulator. Where things like failure states scarcely show their faces, and gameplay mostly takes a backseat to narrative.

And by backseat, this sometimes means a bus. A very long bus.

I’ve talked about it before, but nobody reads my reviews, so I’ll say it again: I personally have absolutely no qualm nor quibble with the existence of this new and befuddling genre of video game. At least, not at face value. When the only thing a game is properly offering is a narrative, then I won’t hold that against the game, so long as said narrative can deliver. Not like Firewatch or Life is Strange, where the lack of an actual game further hampers the lack of a good or wholly competent story.

Besides, variety is the spice of life, my friend, despite what certain YouTube personalities will tell you. And a diverse offering of games means a diverse offering of self-proclaimed “gamers,” which goes on to mean the industry can only grow and get better as a whole with market expansion. You know, the only good part of capitalism; more media getting produced to the point where that incredibly niche thing you always wanted to see get made, well, finally getting made.

You know the one.

More to the point, I ask that narrative heavy games deliver. And deliver Night in the Woods did, with a fairly agreeable amount of competence.

It is at this point in the review, where the review has yet to actually begin, that I’d like to announce that I had been looking forward to this game for three years, ever since I first laid eyes on the Kickstarter trailer.

(Which, by the way, this game was funded via Kickstarter, so take that extra tidbit for what you will. I know it’s a touchy subject after things like Mighty No. 9.)

After which point, however, the game experienced something like three or four release delays, which speaks to me of a dev team possibly severely underestimating how long it takes to actually make a game. Or overestimating their own capabilities? Who knows.

Part of me worries that I can’t be objective, though. The game seemed to have won my heart long before I’d ever get to see a finished product. Could I have been blinded by my bias?

No. The answer is no.

Almost entirely for those aforementioned, nigh-constant release delays. Couple that with Infinite Falls putting out not one, but two mini games set in universe, instead of, oh I don’t know, the game people paid them to make? In an ounce of fairness, I’ve come to retroactively appreciate said mini games, as they do add to the lore.

And I’m a sucker for lore.

Perhaps I’m being petty, and somehow retroactively less petty, but my bias and unconditional love and goodwill slowly faded in direct relation to every year after the originally announced release date I had to wait. And as I sat down to start, and even as I completed the game, I asked myself: was it worth the wait?

Mm. Yeah, pretty much.

Okay, I should probably slow down. Maybe give some kind of buildup before spilling the final thoughts all out like that.

One of the first things you notice about Evening in the Forest, aside from how humorously long it takes to actually see all the characters in the woods at night time, is the screen constantly saturated with lots of orange, red, and brown. The fall colors are heavily emphasized, not merely because that’s the season the story takes place in, but the colors are exaggeratedly warm, so to match the cozy comforts the protagonist, Mae (remember Mae?), is seeking to feel deep down in her guts again.

But rather than that being the case, Mae’s hometown immediately feels cold and unfamiliar, which the game emphasizes by instead starting you off on the outskirts in the dead of night mostly by yourself. And the game world is introduced with lots of dark colors, mainly blues.

It’s easy to tell that color-play was set to be a key design aesthetic early in development.

This is matched and mirrored as even the primary cast are color coded in much the same way. Mae’s parents who forgot about her first night back are both dark, ash gray; cold. Gregg gives Mae the most excited welcome back of the crew, and he’s a ruddy orange; warm. Bea is distant at first, making undercutting jabs at Mae’s character, and she’s a muted teal; cold. Finally, Angus is friendly enough, if a tad mellow, and he’s the brown bear (who’s also a bear, ha (bam, super funny, original joke)); yeah, pretty warm.

The next to overkill levels of clear-cut color-play give the game a sort of story book vibe, which is further highlighted by the simple shapes that make up the models and the cartoonish proportions all the characters have; e.g., eyes make up a third of the real estate on any given face, which can sometimes be as tall or wide as the body it’s sitting on.

The bright, saturated, vivid colors of any given background, the color coding of warm and cold characters, the toony looks; it all drives home to evoke that very same feeling of familiarity and nostalgia Mae is seeking at the start of the game. As though to remind the player of simpler, more innocent times. It’s waking up on a Saturday morning at a young age to watch cartoons, that sort of thing. It’s the charming bait that demands your attention first. And the player, much like Mae, finds the hook a lot less charming with the panged stings of being proverbially stabbed by a cold and indifferent reality.

Reality tends to set in on this game like a sack of bricks. I found myself saying “that got a little too real there for a sec” so often, I figure it may as well be on the box.

(Well. You know. If the game had a box.)

It’s around this point, after the main cast is thoroughly introduced, that the game starts to really pick up. The pacing is solid enough; I never felt complacent, like I was waiting for the next bit of plot to happen. It’s slow exactly when and where it needs to feel slow. And for the rest of the time, the game is throwing sudden Guitar Hero segments at you.

When chatting with a friend about this, he admitted he found Mae’s movement speed plodding and felt it dragged the pacing down too much. It’s not something that bothered me, but I can see where there’s a case for it.

Here’s where the more “gamey,” for lack of a better term, side of the game comes in. At various intervals, the game will introduce a brand new mini game with its own self-contained set of mechanics. There’s a lot of variety here, and for the most part, they never outstay their welcome.

The only properly recurring one is the bass-playing segment. And though it’s possible to fail these (very possible in the case of the Pumpkin Head Guy song), the game will carry on regardless. In a way, Night in the Woods does actually have failure states, but the player doesn’t lose any progress when it happens.

Then the gang finds a severed arm!

Around that part, though, the game introduces a game within the game, in the form of a game on Mae’s laptop by the name of Demontower. And what a pleasant surprise, it’s a decent all around top down slash and dash, action affair. The amount of effort that went into it is shocking, considering it could’ve easily just been a cute little one-off gag. But no, it’s a completely legitimate game, with a full tale, its own set of mechanics, and several decently challenging boss fights punctuating each randomized level.

It’s the kind of thing I’d pay maybe ten bucks for (usd), but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the value of my purchase with NitW go up a bit, considering there’s basically two games for the price of one here. Plus it might just placate one who finds dialogue heavy games dull. Who knows, but it’s a stellar addition either way.

I also adore that the developers wasted no opportunity to try and enhance their story, as they even worked symbolism relevant to the story at hand into the miniature side game on Mae’s laptop. The very first boss of any Demontower run looks remarkably like a certain muted teal gothic gator girl.

But, and here’s the kicker: this boss doesn’t do anything, and dies in one hit.

Surely it’s a reference to Bea’s semi-combative nature toward Mae at the start, and how easily that folds away when she remembers their shared history. It’s a really unnecessary metaphor they didn’t have to include, but it stuck with me that they even did. Although, in the interest of fairness, I feel I must admit it’s not exactly subtle.

In fact, it’s about as subtle as that severed arm I mentioned earlier, then stopped talking about.

I did this to draw comparison the somewhat noticeable lull between traumatic and supernatural events. Because while I said the story beats in of themselves never felt too far apart, I have to admit, again in fairness, that it seems to take a good while for the payoff of things like this. I will say though, payoff does come in due time, and NitW more or less sticks the landing well enough.

Take the backstory of Mae beating a kid’s face in with a metal bat during her little league game, for example.

To be perfectly frank, I figured the game would never have any kind of payoff for this at all. This or the actual reason why Mae came home from college. The cynic in me is alive and well, and I fully believed the writers would take the easy route and leave it all up to the imagination. But no, they actually explain it all, and explain it fairly well.

Mae has a mental thing where she rarely loses touch with reality, seeing only basic shapes where actual things and people are supposed to be. And a statue at college made up of basic shapes caused a mental relapse in her psyche, sending her spiraling into extremely self-destructive habits she couldn’t break herself out of. I’m certain there’s a proper term for this, but I’m not well read enough to know what it might be.

Effort like that put into creating a solid trunk for the rest of the story to branch off of is grand. And a relief, after dealing with games like Firewatch, where the backstory is so inconsequential, it’s picked out of a seemingly random assortment of vague synopses so as to snugly slot in any old referential dialogue between the bread of real plot.

In that regard, Dusk in the Trees fits nicely on the same shelf of Oxenfree.

Now that I think of it, both games are on that same shelf for a lot of similarities; the gaggle of young adults having complex relationships filled with strife and friction, the overt metaphor of them struggling to deal with supernatural elements where said supernature stands in for the responsible adulthood they’re on the precipice of, branching dialogue options used to explore character relations, the heavy and pervasive sense of nostalgia on the air like so many flitting dust particles in an old abandoned barn at sunset, etc.

Not that I mind having a couple eerily similar games, though. They’re a couple of the only games I’ve ever been able to relate to on such a deeply emotional and personal level. And I feel like that’s kind of the big foundation at the bottom of it all; relatability and realness to keep you grounded amidst all the severed arms, and ghost stories, and murder cults.

Whenever I watched Mae talk to her mom, I felt twinges of chills. Because I could almost swear I’d had those exact conversations with my own mother. We snark at each other in much of the same sarcastic way Mae and her mom do. I’ve even felt similar pressure Mae has about her education and how she’s going to handle the entire rest of her life.

It… hurts. It actually sort of hurts just how relatable this all is.

When walking down the main drag through Possum Springs (the ingame town), deja vu washed over me time and again. The urban decay of old businesses that never seem to last, the new franchised ones that seemingly cropped up from nowhere, the random animal people walking by who remarkably resemble random human people I’ve walked by in my own small, nothing special hometown; it all felt entirely too familiar.

It’s truly astounding how a game where the main character dreams about meeting god, and it’s not absolutely clear whether it actually happened, somehow managed to feel this real to life.

I’ve often commented on how relatability is not the end-all, be-all of good storytelling, let alone good character building. Though it does help, it’s better when the characters are this fun, charming, and sincere. And I feel like the writers really nailed that aspect, instead of relying on all the chest clutching of players like me who felt they’ve been there before.

Whatever smaller qualms I have with the story at large, I can’t deny how hard Infinite Falls got me to fall madly in love with this cast.

This game found me at I feel the perfect time in my life. It’s the angsty teen to young adult adventure I always wanted to see in a video game. This is my “that incredibly niche thing you always wanted to see get made, finally getting made.” And if you’re anything like me, then the story will resonate with you too.

Honestly, I can’t recommend this game enough. It’s not as perfect as I make it sound; there are a few grammar mistakes and a couple graphical issues. But if you can look past that, and gameplay ultimately not being the point, you’ll find a pretty solid, genuine-feeling story.

#rabbot reviews #video games #review #Night in the Woods #mild spoilers #long post

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mushtache-blog1 · 7 years

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Does anyone else realise this? This is a LONG post but it really did blow my mind

It’s true because:

The movie shows parts of Wonka’s childhood, and it shows his dad burning his Halloween candy, but having Halloween candy in the first place implies that he let Wonka go trick-or-treating, purposely dangling childhood's biggest reward in front of his face, only to destroy it right in front of him after he's put in all the work to get it. After he's built up a massive amount of hope and expectation. For a child, it's mental torture.

When Wonka asks him if he can have one just to try it, his father tells him that he has a chocolate allergy, messing with his head and telling him he will be itchy all over if he eats a single one. On the surface, lying to his child. But from a deeper standpoint, he's saying, "It's your fault that you can't have what other kids have." Then we see a pure example of neglectful and abusive parenting when Willy finally has enough and says he will run away to Switzerland to make chocolate. His father's response? "I won't be here when you come back."

This is only one scene in a long line of neglect and outright emotional abuse. It's likely that this is only the tip of the iceberg with a cold, unfeeling, manipulative monster of a father. It paints a picture of an extremely strict perfectionist who denies his son not just the basics of childhood but even the most remedial emotional connection. This not only motivates Willy Wonka to become the world's best chocolatier, it also turns him into a psychopathic killing machine with an innate distrust of adults and a burning need for revenge.

Years of jealousy and resentment eventually turn him into a child-killing machine who takes revenge on all the kids who have what he didn't. Namely, parents who will accompany them to a chocolate factory and who spoil them with candy. And, more specifically, the ones who don't appreciate it and take it for granted.

Later into the movie, Wonka see’s that he has a grey hair. Wonka is in a rush to find a replacement because he thinks he's dying. Rapidly. And it has nothing to do with a gray hair ... he has a disease. A very specific one, too.At no point during Burton's film do we see a single fruit or vegetable. As a result of his father's cruelty, Willy Wonka's interest in candy became an obsession: He went from never having candy to the point where he ate it for every meal. Wonka retreated into his factory, his own hermetically sealed world with everything he could possibly need (apart from vitamins or minerals), not knowing the horrible health issues it would create.

His symptoms include skin and nail fungal infections, which he hides with his ubiquitous purple leather gloves. Hives and rashes, which account for the wig. Chronic fatigue, which explains the cane. In both the old and newest Willy Wonka movies, he has Poor memory, lack of focus, and brain fog, but in the old one even Mr. Teavee (a geography teacher, not a doctor) asks him, "Do these flashbacks happen often?" He repeats himself without knowing he is doing it. Irritability, mood swings, anxiety, and depression, which are present throughout the film when he snaps at the children for no reason or starts to reminisce about his past. Strong sugar cravings, which is clearly the case and only compounds his illness, as the fungus feeds on sugar. And, finally, migraines, which he tries to avoid by wearing gigantic, dark shades in bright rooms and when venturing outside.

First, Wonka has no idea what's wrong with him. All he knows is that his health is waning and he is suffering from increasingly scary symptoms. Second, his aversion to anything even remotely related to his dentist father (he is still incapable of saying the word "parent") means that he can't go to see what the problem actually is. He hasn't been to a medical professional in decades (Oompa Loompa psychiatrists don't count) because he fears them. Avoidance is extremely common in abuse victims, and it's understandable that any person in the medical profession would remind him of his father and scare him.

Willy Wonka would want someone intelligent to take over his company, so why not Mike Teavee, the one so clever he cracked the code? Because he's a little devil, that's why. Wonka is not looking for a kid who is smart and savvy and questions authority. Mike Teavee is evil in Wonka's twisted mind and must be punished along with the other kids. Wonka needs an apprentice who is innocent and impressionable, so he has to make sure that Charlie Bucket, the only guiltless child chosen by his system, gets the fifth golden ticket. But how?

Taking into account the fact that Wonka bars are sold worldwide, that far more were being manufactured for the competition than ever before, and that only five of them contained the elusive golden tickets, what are the chances that one of them would turn up in the nearest shop to the factory? And, on the very day that the Wonka bar containing the final golden ticket is going to be sold, Charlie happens to find a $10 note waiting for him in the gutter right outside the shop.

During the visit to the factory, all of Charlie's competitors are eliminated (and permanently mutilated) by seemingly random accidents. But, if we look again at how each child is taken out, we find that each "accident" is anything but.

Augustus Gloop was so greedy he would eat anything sweet, but he could only get his fat body stuck in the tubes that remove chocolate from the chocolate river. The moment he falls in, Wonka is already looking for the giant pipe, which just so happens to be going straight towards him.

Violet Beauregarde, the obsessive chewer of gum, could only have been removed by one: the room that contained his experimental, not-quite-finished, three-course chewing gum. It is Wonka who starts the machine and allows Violet to try it before saying that it's not ready and that 20 Oompa Loompas had already suffered the same fate.

The spoiled Veruca Salt could no doubt have asked for anything in the factory and her daddy could have bought it, but Willy Wonka takes them to the room where sentient, dead-eyed squirrels sort through the nuts. Willy Wonka knows exactly what to say to push her over the edge: "She can't have one." Then he pretends he can't find the key to the gate so that her father can't rescue her in time.

Mike, as his name dictates, is obsessed with television, so when Wonka gives him the choice of any room in the factory, he chooses the TV room, where the Oompa Loompas are messing around with turning chocolate digital. Wonka makes no attempt to stop Mike from diving into the teleporter and is disappointed when he manages to survive the Oompa Loompas trying to kill him there.

Every time a child is eliminated, the Oompa Loompas instantly turn up and burst into eerie choreographed song and dance. In Burton's version, the Oompa Loompas are physically identical and all male. Wonka tries to explain that they come from "Loompaland," but it is obvious they are clones, created to help defend his chocolate kingdom.

But clones or not, that kind of harmony and footwork would require weeks of practice to pull off so perfectly in one take. You could easily write this observation off as just being a standard element of a musical, but the characters themselves actually address it directly. Mr. Salt notices this, saying it looks "all rather rehearsed." Mike Teavee goes even further: "Like they knew it was going to happen." They are directly telling the audience that this was all a setup. No subtlety about it.

In Burton's movie, Wonka's system is intended to destroy the other children, leaving Charlie alone as victor. But for that to happen Charlie has to witness four acts of mutilation. Charlie is exposed to the factory's inner workings to see if he can handle the extreme methods necessary to protect its myriad secrets and patent-pending inventions. At every turn Wonka checks what Charlie thinks of everything he sees. He needs to know for certain that Charlie is like himself, that he loves candy (unlike Mike Teavee) above all other things, and, more importantly, that he is OK with all of the terrifying defenses put in place to protect his secrets.

But why Charlie? What makes him so special? He seems too innocent to be a killer, right? Well, in Wonka's mind, there are a lot of similarities between them both, which would translate to, "This kid has all the building blocks in place to make him just like me." They're from the same town. They were both denied candy as children (Wonka because his dad was a maniacal dentist, Charlie because his family was dirt poor). Their fathers both work in the oral-hygiene business (Wonka's dad is "the most famous dentist in the world," whereas Charlie's dad works in a toothpaste factory).

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abutterflyobsession · 7 years

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Doctor Who AU: Part 16

prelude/one/two/three/four/five/six/seven/eight/nine/ten/eleven/twelve/thirteen/fourteen/fifteen/ao3

“What about this one?” Roland stepped over the twisted wreckage of the smashed painting and indicated another canvas that had been concealed behind the picture of the Doctor, “ring any bells? Rustle any leaves?”

“That's . . . Dawn?”

Bog figured that keeping Roland talking helped delay the creation of an evil plant army and, more importantly, any more personal suffering on Bog's part. Bog was just too tired to consider the abstract thought of a plant army attacking the world for no discernible reason except for Roland's twisted amusement.

The painting did look just like Dawn. Fluffy yellow hair and energetically cheerful face.

“Wrong!” Roland waved a rebuking finger at Bog, “This lovely young lady, full of sunshine and love, is obviously my buttercup.”

“That is obviously Dawn.”

“I'm telling you it isn't. My buttercup and her sister are identical twins, you buffoon.”

“I have met them, you know. Noticed that they aren't. Aren't identical. Not in the least.”

“You've met them as they are now. This girl of bright-eyed wonder was the lady who ended up in the Time War. Breaks your heart, doesn't it? Thinking of that poor little thing caught in all that messy fighting. Then she died.”

Roland knocked the painting off the wall and it landed face-down on the floor. He walked along the wall to the next painting, treading on the fallen canvas as he did.

“And so innocence is lost to the cruelty of the universe and the shattered remains of a once radiant youth are packed up and sent home with accolades and medals for valor. Like a purple heart with a new face thrown in as a bonus.”

The woman in the painting was nothing like Dawn—or the Doctor's supposed first face, that is. She looked to be at least in her mid-thirties, as compared to Dawn's early twenties.

Also, this woman was Indian.

“Look,” Bog said tiredly, “I've kind of lost a lot of blood so I'm not very quick on the uptake right now, but . . . what?”

“Why must I be plagued with the tiny, ignorant brains of lesser beings?” Roland implored the ceiling before turning his gaze back to Bog with a look of deliberate condescension, “When a Time Lord dies they regenerate. If you're off wandering around on a battlefield there's no way to stabilize things when your genetics get put through a blender and things can get a little off model. So, new face. New brain. Old memories. Very simple.”

“Of course it is.”

“This broken little soul comes home to the loving embrace of her family. The family who had wanted to tuck her safely away with her sister, but instead she ran off to play soldier and got herself killed. There were reconciliations, hugs, all manner of touching emotional slop. Even her darling, dearest husband had come home. And like she was a changed woman, he was a changed man.”

“I'm hoping I pass out soon, honestly.”

“The war was ended, the lovely lady goes spinning off into the universe with reckless abandon, burning through face,” Roland knocked down the painting, “after face,” he knocked down the next one, “after face.”

He made his way around the room, knocking the paintings off the wall one by one until they were all laying on the floor.

“Trying to make a fresh start. To shake off the past, the fickle lady that she is. Me, I prefer to maintain a standard,” Roland gestured to his face, “the highest of standards. Everything she ever wanted me to be and yet she still discards me. For you, of all primitive creatures!”

“I'd say you lost me but I wasn't really following to start with. I met the woman like five minutes ago and I'm not exactly enamored of the consequences so far.”

“Fixed point in time,” Roland went on, punctuating his narrative with dramatic hand gestures, “Boy meets girl. Girl tells boy about his roots and he ends up doing glorious things for his plant peers. Boy and girl fall in love, get married, have 2.5 kids. Well, maybe not the last part, but you get the point. It's a tale as old as time and it's a disgusting cliché.”

“To be honest, I'm not exactly keen on the Doctor. So let me go and you can get back to your obsessive stalking without having to worry about me.”

“Please,” Roland pressed his hand to his chest, “I've worked myself to the bone to prevent you two meeting. It's tied into her sister's release somehow so I arranged for plenty of danger to come my sweetheart's way. A few daleks here, a cyberman army or two there. I knew she's get herself out just fine, clever little thing, but it convinced her it just wasn't safe to wake up her dear baby sister. But she ended up doing it anyway and—ugh! You make your entrance.”

“I really don't want to be hearing about your relationship problems. Have you ever considered that the lady just isn't interested in you anymore?”

Roland stared at Bog with total incomprehension.

“No,” Roland laughed away the idea, “No, before you came along it used to be her and me, rocketing around the universe, playing our game. She might have amused herself with you little mayflies, playing at friendship and humanity, but all of them passed. I was still the most important one in her life, her one, real companion throughout all of the universe and all of history. But then this glorified potted plant comes along and for some reason her head is completely turned.”

“Look, I haven't even known her a whole day and I would hardly imagine her head as capable of being turned by anything less than than blunt force trauma.”

“Yes, because you haven't gotten to that part yet!”

“Right.”

“It happened, but then I made sure it didn't happen! I made sure that your happy, fluffy little meeting never happened. Then time went all to pieces and kept trying to shove you two together some other way. She knows, my buttercup knows that something isn't right and she's been trying to get to the bottom of it, but I've kept her distracted. Yet somehow you end up meeting. But I'll fix it. I'll change it.”

“I'm totally up for going home and losing her phone number.”

Something pinged softly.

“Hm, results are in.”

A console rose up in the center of the room. It was a sleek thing, a far cry from the patchwork console in the Doctor's TARDIS. This one was white with reflective silver trimming. Bog wondered if that was so Roland could catch glimpses of his own face while he worked.

“How frustrating,” Roland said after a brief study of a screen's readout, “I'm still having trouble cracking the code.”

“You tried your best. Guess it's time to call it a day.”

“It would seem that there is not only a genetic lock on it. It's recognized you as admin and has decided that only your genetic code and your mental profile can unlock it. Hm, dear, dear, I was so hoping I could kill you now.”

“Too bad.”

“I'm sure I can make it work.”

“Lovely.

The Doctor frowned at the readout from the vortex manipulator.

“Why were you skipping around 1960s America for a week?”

“I thought we were working on a plan to save Bog,” Dawn sighed, “not prying into my activities.”

“I was checking the charge.”

“It was an accidental excursion. We got back as soon as we could.”

“What were you doing all that time?” the Doctor asked suspiciously.

“Oh, this and that. Caught some concerts. Partied with some celebrities. Tried to process that my sister is eight hundred years older than I thought.”

The Doctor dropped the vortex manipulator and crossed the room to rummage in a dented tool box. This conveniently placed her so that she was facing away from Dawn.

“I'm not mad. Well, I'm not boiling in a red-hot fury of indignant rage anymore. I'm still not happy with you, but I've calmed down enough to listen to whatever you have to say. And to hear the story of . . . what happened to mom and dad.”

Oh, little rising star, Dawn's sister had said, I tried. You have to believe I tried. But I couldn't save them.

Then the cloister bells had tolled and the discussion was shelved.

Dawn had run out of the TARDIS, shoving the words out of her head, refusing to accept them. She had fixed a smile on her face and ran like mad toward the next adventure. And she had kept running, headlong into the 1960s, right until the third day of their involuntary stay there when it all became too much to hold inside and she spilled the whole story out to Sunny.

He had been teaching her to climb trees at a park. Not an important park that showed up in the history books. Just a park somewhere with ducks swimming in a pond. A few of the ducks were actually an alien species, but Dawn figured they were close enough not to make much of a difference.

“I figured out pretty quick that I was better at climbing and acrobatic stuff because I was small,” Sunny was telling her, “I've got a good center of gravity. The advantage of being short is that my legs aren't so long that I get tangled up in my own feet. I was in all these gymnastic classes when I was a kid and my mom was always talking about how I'd end up going to the Olympics but that was just her bragging it up to her friends. I've always thought of it more as a survival skill than anything else.”

Sunny had climbed up the tree so fast and so easily that Dawn couldn't see how he had done it, so she made him come down and do it twice more. Then she tried to copy his moves and slammed her head into a branch.

“Usually it's my sister who ends up needing medical attention,” Dawn grumbled once they were finally in the tree, sheltered among the thick growth of spring leaves.

“Heh, every family has one of those. My mom likes to say that my brother Josh broke three arms.”

“I'm assuming he didn't actually have three arms?”

“Nope. He broke his left, his right, then his left again. One time by falling like three feet into soft sand.”

“When we were ten my sister broke her leg when she tripped in the middle of an empty room with a perfectly level floor. Even she wasn't sure how she did it, but she insisted for years that it had been invisible aliens and we both researched every kind of race and species with invisibility and camouflage abilities and got so interested that when we went to the academy we coauthored a paper on the subject. I wanted to call it something like “Exposing the Hidden Enemies” but my sister said no one would get the joke since most of the races we discussed in the paper were rather shy and not at all violent.”

“But they did break her leg. That's pretty vicious.”

“That was my exact argument! It nearly swayed her, too.”

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“Just the two of us. You have six brothers, right? That sounds . . . crowded.”

“Totally. The family joke is that there was no space for me to grow, all my older brothers had filled it already. They're all taller than I am. I got used to being randomly picked up by my brothers just because they thought it was cool that they could.”

“What about your parents?”

“Both taller than I am. I'll forever be their 'little boy,'” Sunny wiggled his fingers to make air quotes, “Mom's a welder and dad runs a little Cajun catering business. Mom used to be a backup dancer for a whole lot of different bands, but after she had my oldest brother she decided welding was steadier work. I get all my moves from her. We all do. You should see us at family reunions, we have a whole hip hop routine.”

“That sounds . . . amazing . . .”

That was when Dawn had started crying and told Sunny that her parents were gone, that they had been dead and dust for centuries and she hadn't even known until that day. Just a little while before she had been looking forward to seeing them again and telling them all about her adventures rattling around in an obsolete TARDIS.

For a little while she cried and hated her sister for lying.

Now, back in the TARDIS, watching the stiff set of her sister's shoulders, Dawn was ready to hear the story.

“After we save Bog, like the foliage in distress that he is, you have to tell me what you've been doing. Eight hundred years, that's a lot of adventures. Or misadventures. No wonder this TARDIS is such a wreck. Have you even been doing maintenance on it or do you just wait until something explodes and sets the room on fire?”

“You'll want to leave,” the Doctor said without turning around, “Once you know everything you'll want to leave.”

“You don't--”

“You think I'm still the same inside. Still your happy, kind sister. But there's nothing left of her but some old photographs.”

“Well, we'll see.”

“I am super uncomfortable listening to this,” Sunny called from the other side of the console room.

“Why did you bring your date back here?” the Doctor grumbled, “didn't you do enough kissing on your little excursion? What are you keeping him around for?”

“I might want to kiss him again,” Dawn grinned.

“Doesn't that get tedious?”

“Nah, Sunny is a good kisser.”

“I am going to die,” Sunny groaned, “I hope that I die.”

Bog had fallen into a haze of exhaustion, too uncomfortable to sleep, but too tired to stay awake. He watched in a detached way as some sort of electronic device was assembled, cables snaking between it and him. Roland's voice rose and fell in smug tones but Bog couldn't wake himself up enough to listen.

A hitch in Roland's smooth voice sparked a tiny bit of interest in Bog, but not enough for him to try and force his eyes full open.

“You really need to moisturize more often. Winter is murder on the skin,” a familiar voice said close to Bog's ear, the breath of their words touching his face. A bottle was put to his lips and water poured into his dry mouth. He almost choked before he remembered how to swallow.

“Took you long enough,” He said when the bottle was empty and his eyes focused enough to let him see the Doctor's face floating in front of him like a dream, “I can feel myself getting uglier by the second.”

“You're looking good, marsh man. The calvary is here.”

“Finally!” Roland's voice rang out, “I thought you were never going to show up, sugar! Now, before you go fiddling with any of those cables please be aware they're jacked into his nervous system and if you pull them out he'll flat line immediately.”

“What is this? What have you done?”

Bog felt the Doctor's fingers touching where the cables had been attached to his arm, driven in through the hardening bark of his skin. The sonic screwdriver whistled and glowed, but she needn't have bothered, Roland was eager to share the details of his project.

“I've turned him into an interface for his precious primrose. He's hooked up to my computers and I've got full access. The AI program is functioning, he template for the army has been complete and growth is beginning outside. Within the hour I'll have an army big enough to take this city. Within a day . . .? Probably enough to take the country.”

“Turn it off!”

“Sure thing, darlin'. Here's the switch.”

A small white box with a red button on it was tossed into the Doctor's hand.

“Just, before you press that you should probably know something: I've worked it out so that if you turn off my program you turn off your chia pet.”

“Explain.” the doctor grated out the order, button clutched in her hand.

“It's simply, dearest, really. If you want to stop my army then you have to turn off the program. But if you stop the program you hit the kill switch on the plant as well. You can either stop my army or save him. You can't do both. Now, think it over, but don't take too long. But I'm sure you'll decide quickly. We both know how good you are at making hard decisions.”

The smile he gave was vicious.

#strange magic #spread the lofe #butterfly bog #potionless #strange magic doctor who au #doctor who au #my writing fanfic #I'm too tired to do a better job I'm sorry

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tannerahonesti95 · 4 years

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How To Become A Reiki Master Incredible Cool Tips

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