#apparently their ship name is dave now which kills me

[cryotrash]

examples of premium high effort content our patrons get (in all fairness this was suggested by a patron so :v)

#drugs and wires #dan #eve #apparently their ship name is dave now which kills me #thanks discord

[bamfdaddio]

X-Men Abridged: 1981

The X-Men, those back-to-the-future mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. Want to unravel this tapestry? Then read the Abridged X-Men!

(Uncanny X-Men 141 - 152) - by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, Brent Anderson, Dave Cockrum, Jim Sherman, Bob McLeod and Josef Rubinstein

While I also committed various fashion atrocities at the age of 14 (tye-die and fauxhawks, oh my), even Liberace would find Kitty’s outfits too much. (Uncanny X-Men 149; Uncanny X-Men Annual ‘81)

We dial back from the v. epic scope of the last few arcs. Instead, 1981 is just a lot of fun! We get:

Storm and Emma doing a Freaky Friday!

the X-Men vs. Magneto (again!)

A surprisingly effective Alien rip-off

An dystopian future! (OoOoOoOo)

Last year was the year of the Dark Phoenix, this is the year of Kitty Pryde. That’s not to say Jean’s death is swept under the rug: all throughout, we see her friends mourning her loss or remembering her fondly. (Scott even gets to have a demonic adventure about it.) But in general, Claremont puts Kitty in the forefront, fleshing out his YA-addition to the team. And what would a YA heroine be without a grim dystopia? Roll out the iconic Days of Future Past!

To be fair, 2013 was a dark time for all of us: What Does the Fox Say somehow got to the top of the charts and I was still watching Glee. (Uncanny X-Men 141)

How cool would it have been to see a name like Jonothon Starsmore or Eva Bell on those tombstones?

Anyway, that’s Kate. Kate’s had it rough. Mutants are at the bottom of the foodchain, most X-Men are dead and only a small cadre of resistance fighters remain, Sentinels dominate, and while she is married to Piotr, her children have been murdered. Bleak. Luckily, the rebellion has concocted the plan to shunt Kate’s spirit back in time to prevent this awful future from happening. (You’ve seen Days of Future Past, the last passably good X-Men film, you know what’s up.)

Let’s do the time warp again! 1981!Kitty’s mind gets taken over by 2013!Kitty, who promptly tries to convince the X-Men that a new Brotherhood of v. Evil Mutants will try to kill Senator Kelly, a presidential candidate who tries to put the mutant menace on the agenda. (Mutants tend to blow stuff up when he’s around.) Since the X-Men recently took a literal trip to Dante’s Infero and also befriended a cosmic world-ending entity, they basically shrug and go: “Yeah, this checks out.”

Off to Washington they go (zoommm) and there, they happen upon the Baddest Bitches in Herstory:

“How dare you hate mutants, senator Kelly! We’ll fix that by killing you!” (Uncanny X-Men 141)

This All-New, All-Different Brotherhood consists out of:

Destiny, a blind woman who can see the future. Definitely the eeriest member of this group. Badass lesbian, though that won´t be canon for years.

Avalanche. Greek who makes things shake. Is a long-standing member of the X-Men Rogue’s gallery, but rarely features in the spotlight. I think he got more characterization in four years of X-Men Evolution than he ever did in the comics.

Mystique. Shapeshifter. Ruthless and unhinged, the Cersei Lannister of the X-Men universe. Absolute legend, secretly the wife of Destiny, currently not as unhinged as she’ll be later. Immediately implied to be related to Nightcrawler: it’s the yellow-eyes-blue-skin-combo.

Pyro. Can manipulate fire, not create it. Absolute pillock, in all the best ways of the word. Originally intended as gay, but they decided to make him Australian instead. (?!)

Blob. Big, strong, immovable. We’ve seen him before.

One of the details in this fight I enjoy is that Storm is still struggling with her leadership, although she has a better grip on things than Cyclops:

Wolverine then proceeds to use those iconic but deadly claws about twice per issue for the next, oh, forty years. (Uncanny X-Men 142)

While the X-Men fight the Brotherhood in the present, we cut back and forth to the future. There, the X-Men consist out of some familiar faces - Storm, Colossus, Wolverine - and some surprises: Magneto (in a wheelchair), Franklin Richards (son of) and an unfamiliar ginger girl called Rachel. (She’ll be important later.) We even learn (one of) Magneto’s names: this is the first time he’s canonically called Magnus.

One of the strengths of Days of Future Past lies in its brevity, the way it tantalizingly taunts us with a brutal but familiar future without giving away too much. It’s single-handedly responsible for all those dark future timelines the X-lines are so fond of which will eventually culminate in time-displaced grandsons from alternative dimensions and the impossibility of a succinct answer to the question: “Who’s Cable?” Too much of a good thing and all that.

Still, what Days of Future Past does so successfully is:

Put the idea of the mutant menace back at the forefront, hammering home the metaphor of mutants being a minority. Mutants being put in camps and being forbidden to breed should - regretfully - make us think of all too many real life equivalents. (Specifically, all of the imagery harkens back to the Holocaust.)

It starkly shows what happens should the X-Men lose, reminding everyone of the stakes. The X-Men are here for a reason: bridging the gap between mutants and humankind. If they fuck up, we end up with mutant concentration camps.

It helps that the X-Men in the future almost all die horribly: Franklin is incinerated, Storm is impaled… It's brutal stuff. The only one to survive is Rachel, who wonders if their plan actually changed the future or if they created an alternative timeline. (It did the latter, sorry ‘bout it, Rachel.)

In the present, Kate chases after Destiny, who trains a gun on senator Kelly. I always wondered how this works: if Destiny saw the future, she knew that killing Kelly would trigger a terrifying future. What in the current Marvel timeline made her decide that the Days of Future Past was better? Did she see her own death? Did she see the Onslaught-crossover coming? The Chuck Austen run? What was it?

In any case, time-anomalous Kate stops Destiny from killing Kelly and the future is safe! For now. Kate disappears, Kitty returns to her body and some of the Brotherhood are apprehended. All is well, for now.

After being a key figure in DoFP, Kitty is also the main character in the Christmas special, which is basically a straight up horror and a pastiche of the Alien-movie.

Seriously, John Byrne still isn’t sure why he wasn’t sued by Ridley Scott for this. (Uncanny X-Men 143)

If you love Kitty Pryde? Read this issue. If you’re not convinced you like 80’s Kitty? Read this issue. It’s not continuity relevant and it’s basically Kitty playing the part of a Final Girl in a horror where she’s being chased by a demon, but it’s so good. It showcases all her strengths and her foibles. Kitty’s intelligent, cute (sometimes preciously so) and brave, but she’s also young, self-conscious and hot-headed. And it's not as if the other X-Men automatically adore her: Storm berates her all the time, she’s afraid of Kurt because of the way he looks (though she grows out of that) and she fights with Professor Xavier a lot. Moreover, she has a clever power-set for a young superhero who faces menaces on a daily basis: a thirteen year old who can go intangible is far less likely to have reality ensue on her and be dramatically offed because she's better at protecting herself.

I’m sure there are people who thought Sprite was hogging the spotlight, but I, for one, say she brings more to the table than, say, Angel. She’s not the Dawn Summers of this franchise.

Scott also gets a side quest. Poor guy can’t catch a break: first the love of his life dies, so he quits the X-Men, then he realizes he can’t do much else than be a superhero. He becomes a sailor on the ship of spunky captain Lee Forrester, is drawn into the sadistic plans of a demon unironically named D’Spayre and then shipwrecks in Bermuda with Lee.

The X-Men, meanwhile, are tormented by a team-up of Doom (who’s currently Latverialess and working on a comeback) and Arcade, that annoying crony. Locke, Arcade’s dom, has kidnapped the loved ones of the X-Men (Moira MacTaggart, Jean Grey’s parents, Illyana Rasputin and Amanda Sefton) in order to blackmail them into getting Doom to free Arcade. Apparently, Arcade accidentally insulted Doom and DOOM DOES NOT FORGIVE THAT FOLLY.

While the B-Squad (Polaris, Havok, Banshee and Iceman) goes to save Arcade’s hostages, the X-Men sneak into Doom’s castle. Well, except for Storm, who doesn’t give a single fuck and simply flies up to Doom, demanding an audience. Doom likes the cut of her jib and invites her to have dinner. (This is pre-Tinder, so this is a legit way of scoring a date.)

If Storm has a flaw (I said if!), it’s got to be her atrocious taste in men. (Uncanny X-Men 145)

The X-Men find Arcade’s cell empty, while Arcade casually saunters up to Storm and says hi. Storm realizes too late that this is a trap: while the X-Men are all trapped in Saw-like traps, Storm is encased in ‘living chrome’.

If you remember she’s claustrophobic, you know why this is a bad move.

While the X-Men free themselves from their traps - Polaris hilariously has to deal with a murderous merry-go-round - Storm is slowly driven mad in her prison, triggering a worldwide tempest. (She causes Lee and Scott to shipwreck.) Under the threat of Wolverine’s claws, Doom releases Storm - or rather, unleashes her.

“Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!” (Uncanny X-Men 147)

The memory of Jean brings Ororo back to herself and she starts undoing the superstorm she created. (If only climate change were reversed that easily.) Their confrontation ends by Storm easily forgiving Doom, because she apparently trespassed on his grounds without adequate cause.

Mkay.

All of Arcade’s hostages return to their homesteads, except for Illyana Rasputin, Piotr’s sister: she’s staying at the mansion for a while. Angel, who’s sort of been a part of the team since the Phoenix thing, has had it with Wolverine and his ‘tude, and decides to quit the X-Men : he doesn’t want to be a part of an outfit that has a killer like Wolverine on it. (Or maybe he’s just mad Claremont didn’t give him any storylines: his presence has been mostly pointless.) It’s too bad he left before Kitty started experimenting with her outfits: I bet he would have loved her ugly-ass costumes.

Equally inconsequential is the introduction of a brand new character, who then proceeds to disappear from the narrative for the rest of the year:

Black Tom has tried to kill you at least twice, but him sending you a long-lost daughter doesn’t give you pause? Ugh, Sean, you deserve Moira. (Uncanny X-Men 148)

Intrigued by Theresa? TOO BAD, WON’T SEE HER AGAIN ANYTIME SOON.

Another new character is the lonely, decidedly mutant looking Caliban, who can sense “people like him” and is on the lookout for companions. Like many lonely people who try and grasp at friendship, he decides to overshoot his shot and ruin the night of Storm, Kitty and Jessica Drew at a Dazzler concert. Because he tries to kidnap Kitty, the girls react a trifle aggressively. When they realize their mistake - the eerily pale Caliban is a simpleton rather than a menace - he’s already fled. No mention is made of the Morlocks yet!

There’s also another dull annual where the X-Men team up with the Fantastic Four to save Arkon’s dimension from the Badoon and yaaaaawn. Far more interesting is the landmark issue #150. Slowly, through the adventures of Scott and Lee Forrester, Claremont has been setting things up for the return of a favorite villain. While the X-Men investigate Magneto’s old base in Antarctica on a hunch of Professor X and tangle with Garruk, Scott and Lee survive Storm’s tempest, only to wake up next to a strange island that seems to have been raised from the ocean.

It’s apparently some ancient citadel from a long forgotten civilization with a fondness for squid statues. (I don’t know man, I’ve never been to the Bermuda Triangle, maybe this is just super-accurate.)The tentacles make Lee Forrester feel very amorous, but before Scott can tell her he is way too repressed to just have sex with an attractive someone he’s known intimately for a month or two, Magneto saves his ass by revealing he, in fact, raised this island from the seafloor.

Oh, Magneto. So extra.

My ambitious little mutant demagogue then proceeds to take the entire world hostage, showing how much he’s grown from the pompous, raving madman from the sixties. (Sure, Magneto is still a bit of a madman, but increasingly, he starts being on the right side of history.)

“I’m trying to make Magneto more sympathetic.”

“Just put him on a page with some bigger villains who are less noble, like the Vanisher, Count Nefaria, or…”

“Reagan, Thatcher and Brezhnov?”

“Er.” (Uncanny X-Men 150)

It’s obvious Magneto is being pivoted as a more noble villain, codified into the well-intentioned extremist we know and love today. Not only do we get the first hints at his past, fleshing out his motivations, he’s also not wrong. Humans are historically not great at taking care of the planet or each other.

When the Russians call his bluff and launch nukes at Magneto’s new island, he quickly disarms them. His retribution is swift and ferocious: the entire citadel is a machine that massively amplifies his powers. He sinks the submarine that launched the missiles, condemning the entire crew to death, and he casually erects a vulcano in a Russian city in Siberia.

Damn. Not messing around this time.

Despite his good intentions, Magneto is still definitely in the wrong: not only because of his methods, but as Scott points out: if Magneto unifies the world under his kind of benevolent dictatorship, all of that will simply fall apart as soon as Magnus dies.

In a way, Magneto is just as big a dreamer as Charles is: Charles believes in peace and integration, whereas Magneto believes his iron fist will be enough to make a perfect world happen. Both of them ignore the reality that acceptance is difficult and messy, because you’re trying to change essential human nature: the fear of the other. Magneto believes in big, sweeping gestures that will fix the world in move, while changing the world is also boring, hard work. One step forward, two steps back. Magneto just wants to leapfrog to his ultimate goal.

The X-Men fly over the citadel, returning from Antarctica, and their plane crashes into the ocean. (Magneto does not brook planes over his territory, humans!) The Professor is also nearby, looking for Scott with Moira, Peter Corbeau and Carol Danvers. The X-Men sneak onto the island, but to their horror, their powers are nullified by some machine of Magneto. They reunite with Scott, who formulates a plan to thwart the would-be ruler of the world.

While the rest of the X-Men go to trash the machine, Storm, Kitty and Lee infiltrate the control chamber where Storm finds a sleeping, shirtless Magneto. Once again showing her terrible taste in men, she is not weak in the knees at the sight of a sleeping Magnus: instead, she contemplates killing him.

Storm knows how dangerous he is, but she also knows that he’s a great man who’s fighting for ideals, no matter how misguided. She hesitates too long: Magneto stirs, suspects an attack and tosses her out of the window, to her death.

Magneto quickly undoes the sabotage the other X-Men have wrought to his machine. A fight erupts. Storm, meanwhile, has managed to grab hold of a ledge. She crawls back up and smashes an important-looking computer, restoring everyone’s powers.

The battle turns grim, but Scott sends Kitty away to wreck Magneto’s machinery. She sneaks off, following Scott’s orders and destroying both Magneto's power-up device and all of his plans by phasing though the computer circuitry. Magneto senses this and furiously gives chase. Overcome by rage, he attacks Kitty and disrupts her phasing power with a magnetic bolt, seemingly killing her?

Everything about this story beat is great: mama bear!Ororo, mournful Magnus and even the fact that Kitty’s godawful outfit serves a narrative function: highlighting to us (and Magneto) just how young she is. The fact that Kitty’s Jewish is just icing on the cake. (Uncanny X-Men 150)

And thus, the softening of Magneto commences. 1981 might be a year with wildly varying narratives, but it has given us at least three enduring legacies to the X-Mythos: a new kind of Magneto, a fondness for dystopian futures and the character of Kitty Pryde, who's really come into her own this year.

Ugliest Costume: Kitty! Purposefully, but still. Best costume, by the way, goes to Destiny, with her creepy, creepy golden mask. Just imagine this lady casually strolling across a battlefield, eerily calm and collected, dodging everything you throw at her. Awesome design.

Best new character: I usually pick one character - what good is having a shared award when declaring the best of anything? - but this year, it’s going to one of my favorite couples: Mystique and Destiny. Can’t wait to see more of them.

Most audacious retcon: Blob somehow retroactively becomes a member of the original Brotherhood, which is not what happened. Ever weirder is Xavier pondering that he never met Magneto before his attack in X-Men #1, while their cordially adversarial relationship rooted in a youthful friendship would soon become a cornerstone of the X-Men.

What to read: Uncanny X-Men 141 - 143 and 150 - 152

#x-men abridged #abridged x-men #uncanny x-men #professor x #cyclops #storm #nightcrawler #colossus #kitty pryde #wolverine #magneto #days of future past #dr doom #arcade #chris claremont #john byrne #dave cockrum #angel #syrin #banshee

[buckleyydiaz]

conflicted looks good on me pt 1/3

this is going to be the beginning of a series of fics i want to write, following moments in the lives of luke alvez and spencer reid! this is the first of three (or maybe four) parts in this instalment!!

ship: ralvez

length: 1.8k works

summary: luke can’t help but wonder why spencer doesn’t want anyone to know about their relationship.

The day had been lovely - and that should have been a dead give away that something was going to go wrong. For a whole day to go well for people with as bad a luck as Spencer and Luke was near impossible, something that was only compounded by them both working for the BAU.

However, in a pleasant turn of events, they had both been having a wonderful time, having spent the morning and early afternoon having a picnic in a field in some little patch of country just out of the suburbs - hours enjoyed with lovely food, better conversation, and the best company either could ask for.

Dates like those were quite common for the two - by heading away from the city, even just a bit, they lessened their chances of being caught by any of their friends exponentially, something that was probably for the best, given that they were yet to come out.

That led them to the issue that ruined their day. Coming out. Luke had been the one to present the idea at first.

“Spence, I was wondering, do you see us coming out soon?”

Luke had sat up, removing his head from the crook of Spencer’s neck where he had been resting it as they sat on the couch, Roxy curled up at their feet.

The look that Spencer gave to Luke made it clear that he had not been anticipating the question. There were a few noises of shock at first, before the look on his face changed to something indecipherable, even to Luke, despite being a trained profiler, and also knowing Spencer remarkably well.

“Do you want to?” Spencer asked, somewhat cautiously, if Luke were to hazard a guess.

He didn’t even need to consider it, before enthusiastically responding affirmatively. Luke wanted nothing more than to be able to not only love Spencer, but to be able to love him openly. To be able to share how he felt with those he considered to be his second family, not have to keep up the lies about a girl named Lisa who simply didn’t exist. Luke could only hope that Spencer had a similar outlook.

Judging from his reaction, however, Luke didn’t think that Spencer was quite so interested in coming out, for whatever reason. In fact, the look on Spencer’s face didn’t seem simply displeased, instead vaguely disgusted and even horrified at the prospect.

Luke wished he could go back in time, in order to stop himself from bringing it up, to save Spencer the discomfort that he seemed to display at the idea, but also, rather selfishly, to dave his own emotions. He tried to keep it off of his face, but Luke’s heart broke when hearing that Spencer didn’t want them to come out any time soon. The had been dating for months - Luke knew that he loved Spencer, that there was no one else out there for him, because Spencer was “the one” - and while he had enjoyed every bit of it, he wanted to be able to acknowledge and share that happiness with those he considered to be his second family. Luke was taught to love openly and loudly - that's the way his family always were - and he didn’t know how to do anything else, and even just trying went against everything he knew about love.

It wasn’t a way of living, of loving that was sustainable to Luke, not in the long term, but he would never force Spencer out if he wasn’t ready, and he didn’t have the strength to break up with him. So he would do it, if he needed to.

“I take it you don’t?”

Luke asked, waiting for confirmation that everything he thought, and feared, was true. And it wasn’t long until he received that.

“I’m sorry, Luke, I-”

As he spoke, Luke pulled Spencer into his arms. Although he felt upset, he was able to hide that - there was no point in making Spencer feel any more guilty than he evidently already did; Luke could see that Spencer felt bad, the soft sniffles that he tried to hide, burying his face in the crook of Luke’s neck.

That was when Luke knew that he couldn’t let himself cry in front of Spencer, not now, not when Spencer was like this. To do that would not only be selfish, but manipulative - guilting him into doing something that he was clearly against.

Luke was going to say something to try and assuage Spencer’s guilt when the beep of a phone startled and stopped him, bursting the little melancholy bubble that they seemed to be trapped in.. He watched as Spencer grabbed it out of his pocket, quickly wiping his face with the sleeve of the hoodie he had on, which was technically Luke’s.

“It’s Derek, he’s asking me to head over since we haven’t caught up in a while.”

Luke knew that Spencer would decline if he asked, but Luke had upset him enough, without stopping him from seeing his best friend, who Luke knew Spencer missed.

“Go, have fun!” Luke tried his best for a smile, although he probably failed. “This can wait.”

As Spencer got changed and ready to head out, Luke couldn’t help thinking it was something about Luke that he was embarrassed about - afterall, what else could it be? Spencer was out to the team as bisexual, so it was only their relationship that they would be coming out about, and the only thing that changed there was Luke’s presence in his romantic life.

“Bye Cariño,” He called out as Spencer slipped out the door.

He wondered if Spencer would talk to Derek about what was happening between them and discuss it with him, even though that seemed unlikely given his clearly apparent embarrassment over their relationship. Luke wished that he had someone to go through the situation with, who he wouldn’t be being a burden to by sharing his emotions.

I used to have that, Luke thought, until Phil was killed. Until I wasn’t fast enough to save him.

Seeing where his thoughts were headed, Luke tried to pull himself back to thinking about Spencer, but it was too late. He was no longer only feeling bad about Spencer, but also about letting his best friend, his first real love, die. He needed a distraction.

Flipping through the channels of the TV achieved nothing, and trying to read only reminded him more of Spencer. Luke momentarily considered taking Roxy, who was lying in front of him, for a run, but that was just more time alone with his mind, which he wasn’t in a place to deal with. He wasn’t in a good headspace to be alone.

He flipped through his contacts, looking at who he could call, not to talk about the situation itself with, but rather to help distract him. Luke quickly ruled out anyone who would either be busy, or would know something was up and force him to talk about it. That left him with practically no one, so he looked through again for his best bet.

As the phone rang, he hoped that he wasn’t interrupting anything. Thankfully, it wasn’t long until the call was picked up.

“Luke, if you tell me we have a case, I swear, yours may be the next death we investigate,” Tara announced as she answered the call. 

It was nice to her, despite the slight annoyance at the prospect of a case. It was normal, easy, unlike everything that was happening between him and Spencer, who almost never fought.

“No cases, don’t worry,” he said, in an attempt at a light tone.

“So what’s happened, them?”

Luke mocked offence at that;

“Why would anything have to be wrong for me to call you?”

He could almost hear the eye roll from through the phone.

“Because, Luke, you rarely, if ever, call for no reason outside of work, plus, I am not an idiot. Anyone could hear that you are upset. So what happened, and what role does Spencer play in it?”

“What! I- uh, why would this have anything to do with Spencer?”

“So you admit that something is wrong! And Luke, I have already told you, not that you should need telling, that I am not an idiot, and as such, I can tell with 100% certainty that you are in love with him. Okay?”

Of course Tara knew! He was once again reminded of how bad he felt though - he had given away their relationship when Spencer had wanted to keep it quiet.

“I… Spencer doesn’t want anyone to know. I don’t know why, but he refuses, and I don’t want to force him, but I hate that he is so embarrassed of me that he doesn’t want anyone to know he is dating me. I’m just so proud of him, and I love him, and I want to share that. I’ve spent so long having to hide who I love, and now I have Spencer, I don’t want to do that anymore,” Luke sighed, before realising what he had just offloaded onto Tara. “I’m so sorry for putting that on you, I shouldn’t have told you all of that.”

Tara made a pitying noise before responding with what was, for her, a surprisingly sweet and sappy piece of advice.

“Aw Luke, it’s okay, don’t apologise. I’ve been in your situation - I still am in a very similar one, but you have to trust me, because I speak not only from experience, but from the point of view of an outsider, who has seen the looks Spencer gives you too. He does love you, and he looks at you like you are the best thing in the world - it’s sickeningly sweet. You should tell this to him, because I can bet you that he doesn’t mean it like that at all, and it's a great chance to understand him better.” She paused for a moment to let him digest all that she had said. “And you can talk to me whenever - I mean it.”

Luke managed a laugh - he did feel much lighter after talking to Tara (he couldn’t help but wonder a bit about her own relationship, but figured that given she had been so much help, he wouldn’t pry - for now), and even though he hated the idea of sharing how he felt about the whole situation with Spencer, still concerned it was just manipulating and guilting him, he trusted that Tara knew better than him. 

Knowing that Spencer would at least be a couple of hours, if he were to come back that evening at all, he decided that a run with Roxy no longer felt so torturous. In fact, it would be a good way to deliberate over everything they had discussed, and to clear his mind.

#spencer #spencer reid #luke alvez #luke #ralvez #fanfiction #fanfic #cm fanfic #cm fandom #criminalminds #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfic #cm

[cecilspeaks]

174 - Radio Jupiter

This is Radio Jupiter calling out to all who hear. Please respond. Awaiting your reply.

[different theme song]

This is Radio Jupiter. I’m not sure who is listening. I’m not sure if there’s anyone to listen. I can only verify my own existence. I can only verify the void around me, the apparent fact of stars, the swirling atmosphere of the planet below me. I cannot verify much. I don’t know who I am or where I came from. I woke up here, and all I have to go on is my call sign. So this is Radio Jupiter, reaching out to whoever there is to be reached out to.

It is so beautiful here on my perch, here in my place, in the cosmos and the universe about which I know nothing but feel everything. I don’t know if everywhere is as beautiful, or even most places. Did I happen onto the one beautiful place in the all of it? Without perspective, there is only what is nearby. Without the burden of comparison, everything is beautiful.

If a person is the sum total of every experience they’ve ever had, is a person without memories still a person? Or are they a different creature altogether, made either limited or limitless by the possibilities of a clean slate? I am either trapped or I am more free than anyone who can hear this. If anyone can hear this.

There is a framed photo in this room. It is an elderly woman. Maybe my mother or my grandmother or an aunt. Perhaps merely a photo I saw in a magazine once and liked for whatever reason. I have no way of knowing what kind of person I am, what kind of photo I would keep. Perhaps it is a photo of you. Do you present as an elderly woman? Would you like to? I think perhaps I would like to, even for just a little while. But I only am what I only am, I ever am, whatever I am.

[distortion] This is Radio Jupiter calling all cars, all (species), all… [fades out]

Cecil: Is that any better? Is that better? Can you hear me? [clears throat] OK, my producer is giving me the signal that we are now back on the air. Sorry about that, not sure what that other signal was, but it completely took over ours, which is rude. We’re currently looking for the source of the signal. We’ve narrowed it down to up. Just right up there somewhere, beaming on down to us. But we’re back in control and we do not expect any more interruptions. Of course, we didn’t expect that interruption either. I don’t expect almost anything that happens to me, my life is full of mystery and surprise, as is yours I’m sure, but still, we seem to have this one technical issue addressed. With that settled, I think we can get to the news.  

Our top story concerns… [reluctantly] Susan Willman. OK. Sure. There has been a lot of talk in town since the whole incident with the Obelisk, in which Susan Willman learned the name of an immortal all knowing being. This name now exist in her head, an object of great power reverberating through her thoughts. She has withdrawn from her duties as director of the Night Vale Community Theater and the Night Vale PTA. Oh darn, we’ll miss her and her prosaic, muddled staging and grandstanding about home-work life balance.

Susan has instead taken residence in a booth at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner. There at all hours, toying with a half drunk coffee and playing with the reflection of the sun in the back of a spoon. At night, the mint light of the sign outside sends strange shadows across her face, and her friends say they sometimes don’t recognize her at all. Steve Carlsberg, who is taking over her role at the Night Vale Community Theater, went to talk to her about some finer details of the casting process, and said that she was less than helpful. She was weeping, and the only thing she said the entire time he was there was that she was afraid to speak, lest the awful name slip past her lips. “No one was meant to carry such death inside of them,” she whispered, and then said no more. “Oh sure, yeah yeah, makes total sense,” said Steve, as he (-) [06:51] down some invisible pie. Well, I think we’ve given Susan enough attention for now, moving on.

In other news, the new beer cave at the Ralphs has been closed for repairs due to occasional time loop issues reported by certain customers. Manager at the Ralphs, Dave Ball, issued a statement by spelling out words with cantaloupes in the parking lot, saying “everything is fine with the beer cave, it’s a great and refreshing addition to Night Vale. Please don’t go inside or even look at it, as we don’t know why it’s doing what it’s doing. Everything is fine, please stay safe and stay away.” Dave then rearranged the cantaloupes to create complex fractal designs that made me dizzy to gaze upon, but were beautiful nonetheless. When reached out for a comment, Ralphs corporate said they had no records of any branch in a town called Night Vale, and were tired of receiving prank calls with bizarre tales about a made up store. When provided with pictoral evidence of Night Vale, a representative at Ralphs corporate began to bleed form the eyes while shouting: “This can’t be real! My god, this can’t be real!” More on the story of the beer cave if anything happens [distortion, fades out]…

Agent N-223: [--] out there, out there? Not sure if any of this is getting thru, but continuing to narrate on the off chance anyone will hear this and come, you know, to collect me. I’ve been doing some digging through the spaceship, and I’m disturbed by what I’ve found. Weapons. Many, many weapons. Racks of guns, cases of grenades and explosives, radar that I instinctively know is for tracking combatant space crafts, even though I have no memory of receiving that training. I am armed to the teeth and ready to wage war. But on what? There are no living beings in sight, and for all I know, there are no other living beings anywhere. Perhaps I’m here to wage war upon the planet below me, that swirling gaseous titan. Maybe someone had enough of it and sent me up here to put Jupiter back in its place. If so, I think the weapons they gave me were insufficient. I experimented by shooting off a round or two out the airlock, but the bullets soared into the upper atmosphere of the planet without slowing at all. My attack had no appreciable effect on my victim. So maybe the planet is not my target. Could it be the stars themselves? I am sent here, a pinprick in the side of God to cast myself as the stars, shouting threats and tossing grenades until the entire (-) [09:42] of the universe cowers and surrenders. Perhaps that.

Or perhaps I am at war with you, whoever is hearing this. Maybe I was given this radio in order to threaten and terrorize before I attack. So be afraid, I am coming. O-once I figure out where you are. I have no idea which direction to start moving and I don’t even know if this space ship has any way of controlling movement or if I’m just stuck in this orbit. Either way, this is Radio Jupiter apparently declaring war. [distortion] Consider it declared and [fades out].

Cecil: Can you hear, they can hear me? OK, I apologize, we’ve been doing all kinds of troubleshooting, including shifting the angle of our broadcasting tower, updating all of our software, and yes before you ask, we did try unplugging it, doing a ritual spilling of blood and plugging it back in. The issue we’re having is that these broadcasts are being sent out on military frequencies, which unfortunately automatically override ours. I’m unclear why the military would be getting into broadcasting, that’s more of a community radio thing, so let’s all stick to what we’re good at. I’ll keep doing radio shows that inform and delight, and the military can spend three trillion dollars on a plane that instantly explodes if anyone tries to fly it.

We have reached out to Rudy DeJardin, the local representative of the military industrial complex. He has a little table set up outside of the hardware shop, and anyone who has any questions for the military can just ask him, and he’ll do his best to answer. Most of the stuff can’t answer because it’s classified or embarrassing, but sometimes he’ll say a few cryptic words. In this case, his only answer was to make “mm-hm” sounds and shake his head frantically, while rolling his eyes toward the heavens. Not clear what to make of that, but I sure love whatever this broadcast is off my frequency, Rudy. Any time you want to get on that.

And now a word from our sponsors. Today’s show is brought to you by Nature’s Caress Fountain of Youth gentle flushable wipes. Did you know in most of the world, they just wash after using the toilet? They have a whole thing specifically for doing that. It takes a couple of seconds, cleans thoroughly, and doesn’t create mountains of paper waste. If you dirty your hands, do you wipe at them frantically with an even less robust version of tissues, or do you use water and soap? Why would it be different for anything else? Because it just is, that’s why. It’s the American way, love it or leave it. Nature’s Caress Fountain of Youth gentle flushable wipes: clog the world with your debris. This has been a word from our sponsors.

And now, as a special treat, Mr. Lee Marvin himself will perform act 3 scene 5 of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. This is the scene that contains the immortal line “I never knew the meaning of fear until I kissed Becky.” [distortion] OK, Mr. Marvin, take it away!

Agent N-223: This is Radio Jupiter speaking to you from a time of peace. Yes, there was that brief episode of war, and it was regrettable. I fired upon an innocent planet, although that planet seems none the worse for my crimes. In any case, that war is now over, as far as I’m concerned. I have no interest in battles and conflict, especially when I have no memory of what that conflict could involve. I have no interest in killing anyone, and I have no interest in dying quite yet.

So, peace in our time. I’m jettisoning all the guns and other weapons. Let them scatter out harmlessly into the universe, most of them swirling down the gravity well of Jupiter, where the immense pressure of the inner atmosphere will compress them into diamonds. I don’t know if that idea is scientifically sound, but I like the thought of it. All these worthless guns made glittering jewels, swirling in the endless storm of a planet that doesn’t even know they’re there.

As for me, now that I’ve declared peace upon the galaxy, I would like to know what is out there. I have found the controls for the ship and it seems I must have been trained in their use, because whatever I do appears to work as I want it to. I am turning away from the only star I’ve ever known. Because my memory is short and it’s the only star that has been there for the last two hours. I’m turning out to the dark unknown, and I’m casting myself into it. I hope there is a grander universe out there, I’d love to see it. This is Radio Jupiter, letting the cosmos know that I am on my way. I’ll see you soon. Or, given the size of space, most likely I won’t see you. But we’ll both exist, and [distortion] won’t that be nice?

Cecil: [clapping] Wow, wow wow wow. Thank you, Mr. Marvin, truly a performance for the ages, and what a treat… What? What happened? When? Oh not again!

This is Cecil Palmer of the Night Vale community radio station. I don’t know if you can hear these words, but if you can, we have identified the source of these intrusive broadcasts. She is agent N-223, sent during the early years of the space program on a secret mission. She was put into hibernation so that she could wake up and serve as reinforcement in the Blood Space War at some point in the future. But it appears that the hibernation damaged her memory, and anyway the Blood Space War doesn’t happen for another thousands years, so eh, she won’t be much use in that battle yet. Ah, thanks to the anonymous tipster who snuck us this top secret info. We owe you, Rudy.

Oh, uh it looks like we might be having more interference due to some Rough weather.

[“The Faded Red and Blue” by David Berkeley http://davidberkeley.com/]

Agent N-223: This is Radio Jupiter on the tail end of the tail end. If there was anyone listening back near that star, I think I’m getting out of range. I feel you getting out of range. Whatever presence I felt that I was speaking to, that feeling is getting hushed and fuzzy. The way I’m sure my voice is for you now.

You’re gonna have to go on without me, I suppose. Be brave about it. Or be scared. Your feelings are not my problem anymore, if they ever were. I have new problems now, problems of void and cosmos, problems of dark matter and lost memories. I am adrift in a universe that does not know I exist, but then you are too. I don’t know what is out there, but I hope I live to see it. Won’t that be something, if I get to see whatever happens next? I hope I do.

Well, this is Radio Jupiter signing off for the last time. [echoing] Stay safe out there, I’ll try to stay safe out here. Goodbye.

Cecil: The signal has faded out. It seems she has finally left our world and also left my radio frequency. I’m not trying to speak badly of a strange remnant of a war that has not yet happened, floating out into the nothing beyond the nothing, but come on, please, use a different frequency. It’s just rude. The military, through Rudy DeJardin has disavowed any knowledge of Agent N-223 or her mission. “Nope,” Rudy said through clenched teeth, “Never heard of her. Iiii certainly wouldn’t just say her name on the radio, after being asked not to. That’s not something I would do Cecil,” he said. So I dunno. Maybe we got the story wrong.

It is something, isn’t it? We are bits of life floating in a whole lot of non-life. The fact is true for us in both space and time, we are brief on any measure. And yet we can reach out our voice and be heard, even if only for a moment. And that has to mean something, doesn’t it? Doesn’t… it?

Stay tuned next for an angry buzzing from inside your cutlery drawer, but you’ll be too afraid to open it and find out its source.

Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Agate is a girl’s worst enemy. Emerald is a work acquaintance who a girl hung out with once and then it just – never turned into anything more.

#welcome to night vale #wtnv #welcome to night vale transcripts #episode 174 #radio jupiter

[peterstanslizzie]

Reacting To: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Season 3 Episode 2)

Episode Title: Code Word Milkshake

Spoiler Warning: Kindly proceed if you’ve already seen the episode or are able to handle spoilers 

1. OMG! A K-pop song? That’s so cool! It sounds like BTS lol. And the song is pretty catchy too 🎵; “Dive into my ocean of love”. It’s such a bop! We see the mutes (even the Mod Frogs) fangirling HARD. But what animals are these guys supposed to be? Are they dolphins? But why do they have horns? And apparently abs as well: 

2. Aww but the leader of the group, Hyun Soo (as revealed in the subtitles) soon gets paralyzed by a dart and is kidnapped after signing fan autographs. And of course, it’s the doing of Dr. Emilia as she’s seen testing a serum sample on Hyun Soo. Again, I’m impressed with her ability to be so stealthy. However, she’s finding it difficult in getting the right formula for the genetic serum since none of the samples she’s used so far has worked on the kidnapped mutes. BTW, Jamack talking to Hyun Soo is hilarious. 

3. In Timbercat Village, Kipo is planning with HMUFA a mission to find Emilia, rescue their friends and retrieve Song’s research journal. Oh, did Asher get a haircut? If so, they look really nice.

4. Our boy, Benson wants Troy to come along because he feels safer when he’s around. How precious! I’m  happy he gets to go on a mission with Kipo for the first time too. It’s nice to mix groups up sometimes. And it looks like it’s just gonna be a human/hybrid-only mission because the mutes won’t be able to handle Emilia’s sonic emitter. Dave is upset that he won’t be able to tag along with them. I think it’s a good thing to sit this one out because he does have a tendency to die during their missions lol.

5. They manage to hitch a ride on a couple of dragonfly mutes due to Kipo coming up with the codeword, “Milkshake” to keep situations calm.  Random but okay. As they’re flying over the sea, they spot a ship, which definitely belongs to Emilia since we hear Zane asking Greta to turn on the sonic emitter as some mysterious sea creature was circling around them. Because the dragonflies are not immune to the sound, this causes them all to fall into the water

6. The group tries to climb over the ship to get a peek of the situation aboard and they can see the burrow humans enjoying their time there, splish-splashing in a giant pool paired with a crazy slide and everything. 

7. Dave lets Lio and Roberto know that he wants to have a boys night out (BNO) with them. But it’s clear that he’s doing this because he still feels salty about not being included in the stealth mission. Roberto looks like he doesn’t want to go out but Lio is down to hangout with Dave-o lol. 

8. Back on the Dr. Emilia’s ship, Kipo and gang try to find her lab but they almost got spotted by a blonde human girl, who apparently is able to hear Hyun Soo  sing through the cafeteria vents and thus, wants him to sing for her. Kipo and Troy actually recognize her from their old burrow. She’s actually Hoag’s daugther, Doag! I can’t believe he named his daughter that lol. Anyways, they were all actually friendly with one another, so we shall see if she’s willing to help them or not. Doag really likes dancing and we see her dancing around to Hyun Soo’s singing. She then does a split and spots them. Well, she doesn’t look alarmed actually. 

9. Meanwhile, Dave and Lio are playing cards but afterward, they went to check out the so-called “community bonding” session between Timbercats and the Umlaut snakes. At first, it seems like they are having a huge argument but they’re actually just writing a song and having a couple of debates. It’s song-break time. This time, the song is called ‘Friendship Alliance’. How fitting. After the performance, Lio says he wants to go to bed but Dave isn’t done yet and wants him to check out his secret stash of explosion berry cola.

10. Doag explains to the group that Dr. Emilia has been treating them nicely so far but they want her to know the truth about Emilia who has been trying to kill Kipo since she was a baby. Plus, according to Troy (and Benson from earlier on), she didn’t eat his Benson’s pancakes. Troy is way more upset about the part about the pancakes, which of course he has to be since it’s his boo’s pancakes. But my goodness, Doag’s voice is like nails on the chalkboard. Don’t you agree? 

11. I think it’s hard for them to convince her that Dr. Emilia is a bad person, especially since they don’t have any real evidence to show. Emilia is like a savior to these humans. Fortunately, Doag wants to help them rescue Boom-Boom, Jamack, Camille and Hyun Soo regardless. 

12. She takes them to Dr. Emilia’s lab, which isn’t very hidden like they said lol. The door’s locked but Troy, the skilled magician was able to pick the lock no problem. Benson is impressed and he actually addressed him as his boyfriend! Cute!

13. They enter the lab and we see all the kidnapped mutes trapped in their individual mute-proof cells. Aww the way Jamack called Kipo, Burrow Girl was so sweet. He has come a really long way with her since Season 1 huh? I don’t know what’s up with Boom-Boom but she(?) doesn’t look too good, almost unhinged. So, Hyun Soo is known as a Dolphicon! I guess that’s short for Dolphin and Unicorn. That’s explains the horn. I actually like the name “Wall Siren” for him as well. Despite only speaking in Korean, Hyun Soo does seem to understand English when Doag asks him “who are you?”. I feel like the introduction of Hyun Soo is like paying homage to Kipo’s animation studio, Studio Mir, which is in fact South Korean. 

14. Kipo proceeds to then break them out of their cells. Doag declares she’s going to help them escape. I actually hope there’s a chance that she would be part of Kipo’s group officially. She seems cool, mostly lol. Wolf also finds Song’s research journal but before they could make their escape, the traumatized Boom-Boom looks at the needles Dr. Emilia has been using on her, freaks out and drops her nectar bombs on them, which causes the whole lab to explode.  Boom-Boom needs therapy for sure. Ughh…Wolf also accidentally drops the journal and leaves it behind the lab. That book is probably destroyed. 

15. Back at Timbercat village, I assume Lio had already drank the cola before he is super hyped. Yumyan also joins in on their shenanigans and he gives them the idea to steal Molly’s axe and put it in an axe bush (is that what Yumyan said?). Also, is this supposed to be a pun or something?

16. Doag puts Hyun Soo in their getaway boat but it’s weird since he’s a dolphin and can just swim in the water instead lol. They’re supposed to leave now but Kipo wants to face Emilia now. I say she’s making a bad decision here. Dr. Emilia then arrive with Greta and Zane but Wolf takes out the latter two easily. The rest of the humans come out to the deck to see what the ruckus is all about and Emilia tries to play coy and innocent with them. 

17. Hoag notices that his daughter isn’t around. Our heroes try to explain to the humans that Dr. Emilia is the bad guy; They told about how Song is the Mega Monkey and how she got her to attack and destroy their home back in Season 1. And they explain that she mind-controlled Song to kill her own daughter. 

Even grandma can deliver a beatdown on someone lol

18.The humans are reluctant to believe them because it does sound very farfetched. But c’mon…they should know by know that Las Vistas is a messed up place; Anything can happen. Also, don’t they remember the Mega Monkey saving them from getting gilded in Season 2. Suddenly, Hoag makes an attempt to paralyze Kipo with one of the darts but she quickly reacts and knocks him out. The humans see this and they get mad at her. Eventually, Kipo and the others make their escape. Finally. 

19. Back to Lio and Dave. We find out towards the end that Molly actually killed Dave 5 times for the stunt he pulled on her lol. Anyways, the both of them are glad to have this bonding session with one another since Kipo isn’t around. 

20. Our heroes reach land but Doag wants to go back because she knows her dad is worried sick about her. And so, Hyun Soo and I guess the rest of his groupmates are bringing her back there. Aww, she should’ve stayed but I understand why she wants to go back to the ship. But to be honest, somebody should’ve thought to give her a communicator or a walkie-talkie or something because at least they can know what Dr. Emilia’s next move is. Perhaps they don’t really have to think too much into it since the journals has been decimated and all…or is it?

21. Wolf, I hope you’re happy you dropped the journal lol. Dr. Emilia figures out that Kipo is X. Wait, I’m trying to remember if there any mention of X in the previous episodes. Anyways, I wonder what she’s going to do with the fur Kipo left during their last confrontation. I guess since Kipo is a human who also has the DNA of apex predators, Emilia is going to play with her recombinant DNA and figure out a way to reverse the effects of the mute DNA so that only the normal DNA will be present? I dunno….

22. Last note/tiny bit of criticism: Is it just me or do you guys sometimes think that some of the character designs look a little wonky in this episode? Sometimes, I felt like Kipo, Benson and even Troy look a little off in some frames. Anyways, that’s the end of my review of episode 2. Stay tuned tomorrow for my review of episode 3. Thanks for reading everybody!

#kipo #dreamworks kipo #netflix kipo #dreamworks animation #kipo and the age of wonderbeasts #troy x benson #troyson #dave #wolf #mandu #benson #lio #song #mega monkey #mega jaguar #kpop #studio mir #BTS #lgbt representation #lgbt animation #lgbt cartoons #lgbtq #gay couples #gay characters #code word #milkshake #episode review #episode recap

[partnersatfazbear]

I’m... salty? Fazbear Frights: The Cliffs anaylsis

My initial thoughts about The Cliffs under the cut (contains spoilers):

The Cliffs - My favorite story of the bunch, but mostly because I really liked the main character. Not TOO much to write home about, but I will pick apart a few lines from this one. In my first set of similarities, the wife dies in childbirth. Not only is this a huge fear of mine (for my wife, in the future), but I wrote this happening in William’s backstory in RS. I generally loved the protagonist here, except when he didn’t realize the obvious: the Freddy was telling him not to kill himself, but where is son was. That doll got burned (yes, burned!), run over, and tossed off a cliff for nothing. I wouldn’t be surprised if that thing came back to kill them :V

Only thing that annoyed me was a few paragraphs wasted on a female co worker, because for some reason that was relevant. (No really, it wasn’t.) Why does this series insist on writing PAGES about useless love interests that do nothing for the plot, nothing for the MC, AGH. I know it’s a kids book series but Christ it’s annoying and I’ve been skipping this sort of stuff and the long action sequences.

The Breaking Wheel - This was the story I liked the least, but honestly, the one I’ll be writing the most about. I think it parallels William and Henry a little and I was a little irked how similar a specific part was to my Springtrap-springlock chapter in Resurrection Seeker.

So first, the story focuses mostly around two kids and they are rivals in a robotics class. One kid a huge douche (Julius) but competent and the other is struggling to put his ideas on paper (Reed). Then there’s Reed’s friend, Pickle, who is a genius.

I’m just gonna bullet point stuff I thought was relevant:

- Reed describes his relationship towards Pickle as: “He was so used to Pickle out performing everyone around him that praising him for doing something well was like praising him for breathing.” (This really reminded me of William’s admiration for Henry, although there isn’t any jealousy here.)

- Reed is described as having a “monkey face”. This reminded me of William, mostly because of the criticism from the fandom towards The Silver Eyes GN’s design. It could be a jab or coincidence.

- Julius’ robot is an exoskeleton (like the power loader from Aliens). When showing off, he becomes trapped in it:

- Reed leaves Julius to be trapped in the exo all night, including locking him in place so he can’t move. This is initially to get back at Julius for being a dick, but then the guilt starts eating away at Reed. Also, Julius getting locked in: “Julius jerked his arms, yanking to free them from the restrains of his skeletal suit....” Julius says: “Unlock me!” and “Do what I tell you! Unlock me!”

Reed tells him, “I’m going to leave you here in your suit overnight... so you can get an idea of what it feels like to... [be treated the way you treat others]. Maybe your robot can teach you a thing or two.”

Julius says, “Get back here you stupid ape! Do you know what you’ve done? I’m going to kill you! ... I’m going to tear you apart, limb from limb. Get back in here and unlock this! ... You can’t leave me in here like this!”

So, yeah. It reminds me a lot of Springtrap. As for the actual story... I was disappointed. The story starts off good (albiet with that poor kid trope this series LOVES) and reminded me early on of The Tell-Tale Heart. Then it defies stated logic to make a real, edgy ending that I didn’t care for. If the entire thing had been in Reed’s head it would’ve been better (more akin to Blackbird, which did the “in your head” trope poorly. If these stories were switched around, I think they’d work better.) So this story was meh. Such a promising start.

Another thing that annoyed me was a few paragraphs wasted describing Orey (fml I don’t care if I spell it wrong. Who the hell comes up with these names). He barely shows up in the story and is just a background character... story could’ve worked without him.

He Told Me Everything - If you love Goosebumps style stories, this ones for you. I really enjoyed it, but it had almost nothing to do with FNAF. The Chris name is obviously a giant troll (and to make matters worse his father’s name is Dave). The sister and wife don’t have any name parallels, although the wife reminded me a lot of my design for Mrs. Afton. The backstory of Chris’ family reminds me a lot of Afton’s backstory for Resurrection Seeker. Like. A lot. It’s spooky how close it is.

“The houses were small, identical little boxes, which had originally been built for workers at the steel mill...” “His dad... ...had gone on to vocational school to learn how to work on cars.”

Another thing to note about the Dad is his weight is specifically touched on several times. Seemed like a callback to the novels’ mention of an earlier version of William.

All in all, a solid entry into the books and some weird coincidences I can’t overlook.

The story did drag a little, but honestly, not nearly as bad as the others. It was good.

Now, for the epilogue.

I don’t know if I wanna fume or not. I’m DISAPPOINTED. Afton essentially dies in the end of it, only to have a piece of his soul in a female endoskeleton escape into the factory. Also, the fucking... the fucking PUPPET shows up (and is actually why Afton dies). [Note: I didn’t realize that Left-E isn’t shown burning in the FNAF 6 ending, which many people are using to justify this. Read below for how I feel about that.] I just. I don’t know. I mean, William always comes back, but... I don’t know how I feel about this. I have a HUGE suspicion that the female endoskeleton is what becomes Vanny. I definetly still see this sort of leading into Security Breach EXCEPT for the fact: The Puppet is still alive.

Okay, so those were my initial thoughts. Upon looking around / rereading people say the female endo is Eleanor (Baby). My wife pointed out I missed the long necked detail. Woops. I wonder if Eleanor/Baby MIGHT be our Vanny stand in in this universe, though. And yeah, still not happy.

Afton is pretty much dead outside of a small part of his soul existing in the endo that escaped (this is an assumption on my part, I don’t think it’s stated, so essentially he’s dead, dead). There are parts of this I liked (and William only had ONE line: “I am Agony.”) Like, no shit? I couldn’t tell! SMH

However, despite some of the parts I thought were interesting (we get a thorough description of AlmagAfton and when he dies its pretty pathetic and I had all the FEELS), I think overall I’m disappointed because we may be at the end of Afton’s story. I have a suspicion that Vanny will be replacing him and possibly even betraying him in Security Breach, if this is anything to go by. Another odd duck is that Jake, in the remnants of the Stichwraith (that everyone insists is the GF parallel) is still wandering around too. I’m assuming Puppet went down with the ship, quite literally, since he [William] falls apart into a lake. Thanks, Charlie. You continue to ruin my day.

My wife pointed out the lake reminded her of OMC’s lake and I’m like... Why are we backpeddling?! This entire epilogue is a fucking mess. Another thing that irritates me (and apparently quite a few people) is if this IS the way the story is heading, then it makes FFPS pretty much USELESS to the story, nullifies Henry’s sacrifice / wishes... and that sucks! ESPECIALLY the fact that the Puppet SURVIVED the FNAF 6 fire! I get she just wants William to pay for what he’s done to her and her father, but... Henry wanted her to rest. To move on. She didn’t do that. That’s shitty to me.

Also, apparently souls have a smell. So that’s canon now.

#the cliffs #fazbear frights #spoilers #security breach theory #william afton #almagafton #the puppet #vanny #stichwraith #henry emily #ffps #fnaf 6

[homespork-review]

Homespork Act 4, Part 2: Flight of the Paradox Groans

BRIGHT: Remember Spades Slick being bizarrely aware he was in a comic, back in the Intermission? Buckle up, things are about to get even more fourth-wall-breaking. Appropriately, this starts by the comic focusing on an actual fourth wall, which activates to show...Andrew Hussie.

Hussie’s MS Paint avatar notices the audience watching him, laments that his side of the wall doesn’t have an off switch, and then recaps the first year of Homestuck.

Now, in all fairness: The recap is thorough, full of links, and explains things fairly well. It’s quite long, but given how much territory it has to cover I’m not sure it could be any shorter. So it does its job well, and it’s a boon if you’re getting lost with the plot.

As for the author insertion...on this occasion I don’t mind it. It comes across as tongue-in-cheek, but framed more as the author talking to the reader than as the author inserting himself into the narrative. It’s definitely very Homestuck.

Anyway, AH gets back to work, and after a couple of false starts we return to John!

John is still flying around with his jet pack. GC trolls him to offer him a world map of LOWAS and tell him she feels awful about killing him, although in literally the next line she tells him that technically he never even died so she doesn’t understand why he’s so upset. John understandably finds this disturbing. They have a brief nonsensical discussion about Jesus/Jegus, and then John agrees to go take a look at what’s on the other side of his Second Gate. Yes, on the advice of someone whose previous advice got him killed.

CHEL: Almost a shame we didn’t set up a Too Dumb To Live count, but then to be fair that was a separate timeline and he’s probably not thinking of it as something that “really” happened. This is supported by his later dialogue.

FAILURE ARTIST: The word Jegus is really popular in the Homestuck fandom, used far more often than it is in the canon. Gets quite annoying, in my opinion. Actually, a rather Jesus-like figure does appear, but he’s not called “Jegus”.

CHEL: Yeah, I think only Terezi, John, and Dave ever use the term, but it somehow became latched onto as an actual term used by trolls in general, even though in canon it isn’t.

BRIGHT: Fortunately, this time GC appears to be playing nice. John flies though the Second Gate and emerges...into LOLAR?

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie does an amusing trick where he has what looks like a loading screen for a flash but it’s actually a still image eternally at 2%.

BRIGHT: Yes, it’s LOLAR. John promptly crashes into Rose’s house, smashing through a wall and into her bedroom, where Rose is still snoozing in her knitting pile. Apart from briefly being stuck upside down, he does not appear injured by this collision.

Rose has somehow slept through the commotion. John decides to let her rest and borrows her computer to talk to Dave.

The first one he talks to is actually Davesprite, who points out how moronic John was to listen to GC again. No arguments here! Then he explains how the Gate system works: Odd-numbered Gates, above players’ houses, lead to somewhere on their planets. Even-numbered Gates lead to other players’ planets, exiting over their houses. Normally they aren’t meant to go through even-numbered Gates until the houses are built up, so they don’t fall to their deaths, but fortunately John has a jetpack workaround. So far Davesprite is living up to his promise of being straightforward.

John realises he’s talking to Future Dave, and asks “do you think i could talk to the real dave for a second?”

...ouch, John.

Davesprite goes off on a tear, ranting that he is a real Dave — arguably the realest Dave, since he’s been running around LOHAC for months trying to get enough information to save everyone. John apologises sincerely.

CHEL: This won’t be the last we hear of this theme, though.

EB: i think i pissed off your future self. TG: what did you do EB: i said he wasn't the real dave. TG: ahahahahaha EB: i think i might have really hurt his feelings though! TG: pff TG: dont worry about it EB: why not? TG: cause i wouldnt give a shit TG: and hes me

BRIGHT: Not a hundred percent sure I believe Dave, there.

CHEL: Dave uses John to snoop around Rose’s room and get the captcha code for her journals. Classy, Dave. Not a SLAMMER point, however, as this does come back to bite him very soon.

Rose’s dreamself has awoken on Derse, the purple planet, and flies across to the opposite tower. Dave’s dreamself appears to be awake, sitting upright in his computer chair; the room is entirely an unsettling bloody red colour apart from the SBaHJ cartoons on the walls, and… oh shit, there’s Lil Cal again, now in a long purple nightdress and hopping around the room on his own. If Rose was having nightmares because of dreamself issues, I can only imagine how Dave’s nightmares must look. Rose throws a ball of yarn at Dave’s dreamself, alerting him, and causing the awake Dave to pass out.

Back in Rose’s room, it seems that Charles Barkley quote was not misattributed:

FAILURE ARTIST: Another SBaHJ reference in the book quote. Is that where Dave got it?

Still, I don’t recall this book ever coming up again. Just another item that seems like a Chekhov's Gun but isn’t.

CHEL: John feels guilty about opening his birthday gift from Rose, but reasons that it’s technically now his anyway, so he does, finding another bunny, this one black and filthy-looking except for the pristine knitted purple patches repairing it, though its shape is eerily familiar.

The gift in this box is a resurrection. I used your present to thread life anew into a tattered heirloom. As long as I can remember, its black, greasy appendages have been tethered limply to its ratty, porous carriage. Too delicate to wash, too dear to discard. I used to love this rabbit. Now he's yours. I trust you'll find this to be adequately sentimental. Happy birthday.

Oh my gosh, awwwwww. Even if you don’t ship them romantically how can you not love their interactions? Definitely one of the comic’s strong points. Also I need to go hug my childhood teddy bear.

John puts the bunny back in the box again and the box in his sylladex, freeing Casey the salamander while he’s at it. And let’s just take a minute to feel utter horror because dead John still had Casey in his sylladex, so the best option is that she died too, and the worst is that we have an And I Must Scream situation on for a baby salamander. Gah.

FAILURE ARTIST: Thanks, I’d never thought of that and I never want to again.

You aren't actually sure if she is a girl though. You don't even know if salamanders can be girls. Aren't they hermaphrodites or something?

CHEL: No, for the record. Though some frogs can switch from one to the other.

FAILURE ARTIST: Casey is very popular as a name for an OC child of John (often having Rose as the mother).

CHEL: John answers Rose’s Pesterchum, upon which GA is half-heartedly sending antagonistic messages. John answers on Rose’s account, saying that Rose is asleep, which GA takes for Human Sarcasm, prompting John to pretend to be Rose.

GA: I Should Figure Out How The Viewport Feature Of This Application Works GA: So I Can See What Such A Primitive Creature Looks Like TT: haha, well i know what you guys look like. TT: you look kind of like... TT: howie mandel from little monsters.

Wait, how does he know? Am I forgetting a point at which he saw them?

BRIGHT: I always assumed that he was just goofing around and his guess happened to land in the right ballpark, but thinking about it, I’m not sure the kids ever express surprise at the trolls’ appearance.

CHEL: John, pretending to be Rose, talks about how awesome John is.

GA: He Is Either The Leader Of Your Party Or You Hold Whatever The Human Equivalent Of Mating Fondness For Him Is

CHEL: Both. Both is good!

FAILURE ARTIST: Knowing what we do of troll culture later this is an odd statement. Heck, it’s just an odd statement. Maybe this is why people think trolls don’t do friendship.

CHEL: John apparently confuses GA by saying it’s because Rose is thoughtful and John appreciates his gift, and suggests GA talk to John.

TT: why don't you pick the time that will make the most complicated mess out of everything imaginable?

GA sounds very annoyed, and leaves, intending to have the conversation with John that she had previously. We see her, GC, and the horns of AT and an unknown troll in the grey room, now revealed to be a computer laboratory. For some reason she chats via Pesterchum with another troll instead of just walking over to talk to them. This new troll is twinArmageddons, an appropriate name for the circumstances, who type2 iin yellow text liike thii2; he is, as it turns out, the hacker guy GC mentioned earlier. TA is busy setting up the network and seems irritable in general, and is not willing to help GA work her viewport.

TA: iif ii 2ee one more 2narl of wiire2. TA: kiind of juttiing out and beiing tangled or whatever. TA: ii am goiing two perform 2ome 2ort of athletiic fuckiing 2omer2ault off the deep end and get a call from the pre2iident or 2ome 2hiit.

Nice callback, but trolls, as we’ll later find out, don’t have presidents.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 14

GA wonders why TA doesn’t want to talk to her, and TA complains that he knew in advance the trolls were doomed and no one believed him. He refuses to troll the humans himself but is setting up the system so the others can in order to get them to leave him alone. GA asks again for help, to no avail.

TA: iif you cant fiigure 2hiit out by fuckiing around you dont belong near computer2. TA: kiind of liike wiith regii2tered 2ex offender2 and 2chool2. TA: iif you move two a new town you have two go up two your neiighbor2 door and warn them about how 2tupiid you are. TA: and giive them a chance two hiide all theiir iinnocent technology. TA: and vandaliize your hou2e.

Ooh, a threefer plus one! Tacky simile for the Problematykks. As for WSP, we’ll later find out that 1) trolls kill all their criminals, 2) trolls don’t give a shit about the welfare of their children, and 3) trolls don’t appear to actually go to school. These two counts are neck and neck in the lead now!

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 17 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 17

BRIGHT: As with much of Homestuck, the trolls give the impression of being made up as Hussie went along. That’s not entirely a bad thing -- it certainly makes the comic pretty unique -- but it does lead to some out-of-place slip-ups.

Anyway, GA chucks her F1 key at TA’s head and then starts poking him. We also see CG in the lab.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think I recall GA/TA were a popular ship before we learned more about GA. It does seem like they have a Rose & Dave dynamic going on.

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Rose and Dave have a dance party to Dave’s music while accompanied by some crows and Lil Cal, who keeps teleporting around the room. Rose eventually gets tired of Cal’s shenanigans and hurls him out of the window, to the relief of many.

FAILURE ARTIST: The flash originally included music by Bill Bolin. In fact, it was his unfinished music being included here that caused all the drama in the first place.

BRIGHT: Time for some random interludes! First up is Maplehoof the pony, who is following Rose’s mother through a large cave which, judging by the grist lying around, recently contained very dangerous monsters.

FAILURE ARTIST: Apparently pets can collect grist for their masters...and know what grist is despite being a normal(?) animal.

BRIGHT: First Mom, and then Maplehoof, stand on a transportaliser platform and disappear. Second is Dad, who has just acquired a replacement shoe and hat (which showed up in the walkaround game, way back at the beginning of the Act), when he encounters a familiar-looking stranger with a Colonel Sassacre book, who leads him to another transportalizer platform. Both of these interludes do become relevant later, but at the time they seem a tad unnecessary.

Meanwhile, John uses Rose’s alchemiter and a code Davesprite gave him mid-rant to produce a truly epic hammer called FEAR NO ANVIL. It’s far too big for John to wield, but fortunately he can use the scaling upgrade on the alchemiter to reduce it to a more useable size. ...wait. When did Rose’s alchemiter get a scaling upgrade? Dave and Jade added a lot of modifications to his, but Rose’s should be the original edition. Sigh.

EB: so what is this? EB: the thing the code made... TG: really powerful hammer EB: how do you know? EB: i thought you couldn't use hammers. TG: i cant TG: better be though TG: got it from hephaestus EB: who's that? TG: really tough to kill dude EB: you killed him for it? TG: nope EB: how'd you get it then? TG: shenanigans EB: ok.

...and we’re back to sprite evasiveness. Davesprite is being less than forthcoming here, although it’s less obvious than with Nannasprite because it superficially imitates John and Dave’s bantering.

CHEL: Now, this would be a good way of keeping us interested if we were eventually going to see how he did it, and also they have a time limit, so not going off into a long anecdote would be understandable. However, we’ll see how his evasiveness level proceeds in the future.

BRIGHT: Dream Rose and Dave see John using Rose’s alchemiter on Dream Dave’s computer. Rose wakes up.

FAILURE ARTIST: It is interesting how early Homestuck avoided having characters have face-to-face conversations. Would have been unique if it kept up throughout the entire comic.

BRIGHT: Back in the meteor, GA hassles TA into opening the viewport on her computer. This turns out to be as simple as clicking on the point in Rose’s timeline that she wants to see. No wonder TA was frustrated!

Of course, by this point, the only one left in the room is Rose, now awake, and the young salamander. Rose hurries to catch up with John, but he blasts off to explore before she can reach him, taking her mutated kitten with him.

CHEL: John renames Vodka Mutini to Dr Meowgon Spengler, and Rose renames Casey to Viceroy Bubbles von Salamancer. Interesting link to the themes of identities which are starting to crop up, though it’s not really a direct analogue. The animals are the same animals with different names; the alternate timeline characters have the same names and superficially the same identities, but are they really the same people after their new experiences?

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Lil Cal inexplicably lands on a stray rocket board, catching the attention of AR.

You're not sure which laws are being broken, but it is probably a lot.

AR follows Cal to yet another transportaliser, and they both dematerialise.

We jump back to John, who spies a boat on one of the islands dotting LOLAR and lands to investigate. He follows hoofprints in the sand into a subterranean hallway filled with monsters. Fortunately his new hammer has time powers, which stun the monsters long enough for John to kill them. Further on, he finds the transportaliser Mom used. John, naturally, stands on it, and is transported to a meteor in the Veil.

Actually, it’s not just a meteor; it’s one of the laboratories where the Skaian troops are produced. John, along with the cat and Maplehoof, finds a bunch of chess guys being grown in glass jars on a giant podium. Most of them are the standard carapaces we’re familiar with, but there are also a few larger pieces, apparently based on knights and rooks. He also finds a JUNIOR ECTOBIOLOGIST’S LAB SUIT, and another of those strange house-shaped sets of monitors.

On Prospit, PM is preparing to board a shuttle to Skaia when a COURTYARD DROLL sneaks up behind her. Unaccountably, she fails to notice him, despite the fact that he’s wearing a hat larger than he is. CD successfully pickpockets the White Queen’s ring, and PM departs for Skaia, none the wiser.

CD radios the DRACONIAN DIGNITARY to report mission success, and is told that he doesn’t need to keep wearing his ridiculous outfit, per orders from Jack Noir, who is now going by the SOVEREIGN SLAYER. CD says he’d rather keep wearing the outfit. Apart from the sword-through-the-chest part, it is a very nice outfit, so I’m with CD on this one.

Catastrophe is averted by Jade delivering a flying kick to CD’s head and following up with a very efficient smackdown. Her robot body replicates this back on Earth, beating the stuffing out of her mummified grandfather. Jade retrieves the ring, and puts it on her fingers to remind herself to give it back to PM later. Unfortunately, this doesn’t cause Jade to sprout wings and tentacles. Seems the rings don’t work on humans like that.

Meanwhile, in a Timeless Expanse, a WARWEARY VILLEIN is getting tired of the battle between Derse and Prospit. The next animation is called “WV?: Rise Up” and it’s one of my favorites! When I first read Homestuck I had to watch it a few times before I understood what was going on, but it is a very neat video.

Watch on YouTube

The Battlefield has been prototyped three times, and is now spherical. The forces of Derse and Prospit meet. The usual carapaces with swords are backed up by larger pieces -- some of them very strange -- and by battleships clashing in the sky. In the chaos, WV, who is farming peacefully on Skaia, has his home and farm burned down. He raises a flag and addresses the troops of both armies. Elsewhere, Jack Noir appears, flying over the Battlefield in search of the Black King.

WV rallies the armies and tells them that their real enemies are the monarchs, who are responsible for the war. Encouraged, the Dersite and Prospitan troops band together and march on the Black King.

Meanwhile, PM has reached the White King and discovers that she no longer has the White Queen’s ring. The White King listens to her and hands over his scepter, which seems to represent Skaia and serves a similar function to the Queens’ rings. Behind a nearby hill, the Hegemonic Brute radios somebody to report the transfer.

As WV and the united armies reach the Black King, Jack arrives and slices the Black King’s scepter in half, nullifying its powers and turning the Black King back into a normal carapace. PM is attacked by HB, who knocks the White King’s scepter out of her hand; it falls down a waterfall. Jack Noir beheads the Black King and turns to WV, and the animation ends.

...okay, much as I love it, I have to admit there’s a glaring question here: Namely, the kids started playing the Game less than a day ago and Dave’s kernelsprite has been prototyped for a few hours max. The second prototyping made the Battlefield more complex and the third took it into its current form. That’s a very short time to instigate a cross-faction revolution, organise the troops, and march on a monarch. For that matter, how long has WV been a farmer? The inhabitants of Derse and Prospit have obviously been doing their thing all the kids’ lives, but the Battlefield was supposedly a static, rudimentary space until John entered the Medium, so what gives?

Then again, the timeline in the Medium is supposed to be distinct from the timeline on Earth, so maybe that explains it?

CHEL: An interesting point is also raised by WV’s revolution. Namely, Derse is presented as a kingdom of darkness and evil by the game, while Prospit is presented as good. However, while PM is good, WV and AR are demonstrably not bad people either. In this animation, we see carapaces of both sides apparently don’t want to be involved in the war and are willing to rise up against the Black King. The rank-and-file carapaces on both sides, it seems, are decent people who are just following orders. (Not to mention very cute.) Jack Noir and his gang are nasty pieces of work, except CD who’s also just kind of going along with it, but there’s nothing saying white carapaces couldn’t also be… And is that a Problematykks point, presenting the black-coloured people as bad and the white-coloured ones as good? I know they’re chess pieces, but still.

This raises the question, however, what’s Derse’s motive? Are its rulers and archagents simply destroying for the evulz? I wonder. I also wonder how much Skaia itself is involved in this and how aware it is. Skaia is called the crucible of creation, and it’s responsible for the creation of the carapaces too. References are made to it “seeing” and “knowing”; it’s quite possibly sentient, though maybe not sapient. On top of that, SBurb is specifically a game, and a game needs an objective, and an adventure-type game needs enemies. Derse, it seems likely, was created and presented the way it is in order to give the players something to battle against even if its people don’t want to be their enemies. No wonder WV’s pissed!

BRIGHT: Yup. Hmm, thinking about it...the imps and other enemies we saw attacking John’s house early on were obviously Dersite, but the ones we’ve seen in Rose’s seem to be Prospitian, if anything? The colour scheme looks that way, at least. But Nanna said earlier that Derse was the enemy, nothing about Prospit.

Perhaps it has something to do with Rose being a Derse dreamer, while John is a Prospit dreamer? But in that case I’d have expected it to come up in the text. Instead it just goes unremarked.

Rose goes on a massive alchemising spree and ends up creating the Thorns of Oglogoth, a pair of wands.

The needles seem to shiver with the dark desires of THE DEEP ONE. Any sane adventurer would cast these instruments of the occult into the FURTHEST RING and forget they ever existed.

Instead of throwing the wands away, Rose takes on the enemies camping all over her house, with style.

Meanwhile, Dave goes on another, less visibly productive alchemising spree.

GET ON WITH IT!: 18

FAILURE ARTIST: The SBaHJifier could be considered productive in that it provides foreshadowing cartoons. Wish Dave’s Brain in a Jar came up again.

BRIGHT: Once he’s done creating smuppet variations to disturb the monsters encroaching on his house, he sits down to take a look at those two journals he copied from Rose earlier. One of them is called ‘MEOW’, and is literally just those same four letters, repeated over and over in different orders. The second is ‘Complacency of the Learned’.

There is no way to adequately recap the beauty of ‘Complacency of the Learned’, so we’re just going to show the whole thing:

Frigglish bothered his beard, as if unkinking a hitch in a long silk windsock. A more pedestrian audience would parse the exhibit as nervous compulsion. Behavior to petition contempt among the reasonable. He was however not surrounded by the reasonable, but the wise, a distinction in men that would forever be the difference in history's garland of treasured follies. As a matter of fact, his cadre of fellow wizards were all putting similar moves on their beards as well. The practice would evince thoughtfulness - sagacity, even - if they didn't do it all the time. Standing in line at the bank. Shooing squirrels from bird feeders. Few occasions were safe. Zazzerpan inspected the clue. A single piece of evidence cradled in his coriaceous old man palms. It was a human bone, not striking in the tale it told alone so much as that told by the thousands like it festooning the marshy soil of the mass grave. The grisly expanse bore the texture of a decadent dessert, like one of Smarny's formidable custard trifles wobbled out on wheels for the holidays, to the dismay of a small nation. "You're certain of this?" asked Frigglish. Despite what he was doing with his beard, he was, in fact, immersed in meaningful contemplation. "I am afraid I am becoming more so with each terrible tick groused by that gaudy timepiece slung around your neck." In case it wasn't clear, Frigglish wore a clock Zazzerpan didn't care for. It was magic. "The massacre of Syrs Gnelph was not as written." "What has you convinced it was the hand of our disciples in this blackness?" Executus chimed in. "I believe... I..." a fat face stammered, eyes darting with the guilt of a thief in the throes of an unraveling alibi. "I can summon a... more pressing line of inquiry..." No, Smarny. Nobody was in the mood for a sticky bundt loaf just now. Zazzerpan's ears fell insubstantial to any line of inquiry, pastry-oriented or otherwise. His abstruse contour carved a pondering shape in the fog carpeting centuries-dead. His eleven contemporaries too embraced the muted consternation of their great Predicant Scholar. Few wizards kept sharper adumbratives or read them with such lucidity. When Zazzerpan treated men with silence it was seldom unrepaid by the wise and reasonable alike. It was harrowing to entertain. Zazzerpan the Learned's storied Complacency of Wizards was marked for grander descendence. Disciples hand-picked, vetted by Ockite the Bonafide and tested by Gastrell the Munificent. The twelve sweetest, most studious children a pair of elderly eyes could give their sparkle. Not the ragged guttersnipe so oft-harvested by the common Obscenity, those vituperative little beggars with hearts to corrupt as dropped bananas brown. That these chosen youngsters would turn was not merely unthinkable, but something of a roundhouse to the temporal bones of the Upper Indifference's high chamber of Softskulled Prophets. His wisdom-savaged brow pruned further with recount of his many lessons to wouldbe successors. Lessons to advance humanity's elucidation and prosperity, an outcome this bleak trail now painfully obviated. There were few puzzles The Learned could not suspend and dissect in the recondite manifold beneath his extremely expensive pointy hat. Daring to pitch his cherished pupils in with the foul melange of history's rogues, the heretofore abstract scourge that built up civilizations with ungodly magic and tore them down with joyful malice, would prove an intellectual trespass to make his calcium-deficient bones quake. And more daring yet was the only question that now mattered. Could a bunch of bearded, scraggly old men in preposterous outfits hunt them down? He didn't have an answer. Only a simple observation so blunt and uncharacteristically jejune for the lauded sage it was breathtaking in its selfevidency. "We're going to need more wands." (Wow. Think of something better.)

Wow.

Dave is understandably intimidated by this, and decides to stop reading for now. He puts his copy of the SBURB Beta in the notebook to act as a bookmark, and leaves both books in his room for later.

Then he checks in on Rose, who is burning her version of the MEOW book.

CHEL: Dave inquires about the wizard story.

TG: i thought you hated wizards TG: whats the deal with that TT: I like wizards. TT: What I don't like is my mother's obsession with feigning interest in them to antagonize me. TG: oh man thats so messed up TG: that you think that TG: she probably digs wizards for real just like you and youre blowing shit out of proportion like pretty much always

Once again, we see exactly how fucked-up Rose’s relationship with her mother is. Mom Lalonde has somehow managed to raise a child in such a way that Rose interprets everything her mother does as an attempt to mock and provoke her.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 16

TIER: The Lalondes are pretty damn dysfunctional as a family unit, and considering the zany nature of early Homestuck and its world's weird logic that is saying something indeed.

CHEL: As for the MEOW book, it turns out the gods from the Furthest Ring informed Rose while she was sleeping that the book’s contents are highly dangerous and must be destroyed. Said gods dwell in the sky above Derse; Dave’s never heard or seen them, but Rose points out his dreamself is always wearing shades, listening to music, and distracted by Cal.

TT: You're the prince of the moon. TG: ........ TT: I'm sure they've been meaning to seek a royal audience. TG: ..........................

Davesprite chats to Rose next. She protests at being spied on by two people, but Davesprite asks her why she burned the codebook. She didn’t need to in the future, but according to her future memories of the gods absorbed from her future dreamself, Davesprite appeared to make it relevant by traveling to the past. A sinister and familiar face watches through Dave’s window, soon proving to be the Draconian Dignitary, while Dave and Davesprite awkwardly spout elaborate mixed metaphors about how safe they are, until Dave, embarrassed, says "so i guess ill go back down and burn that book".

As any savvy reader could guess, he’s too late. The prompt suggests that he should go back in time to stop the books from being stolen, but, well...

It looks like you already tried that. GORE GALORE: 10

Dave looks completely undisturbed, but whether he is undisturbed is a different matter. He flings the corpse out the window into the lava, claiming it would freak Jade out.

John, in the lab, presses a button, causing the first monitor to depict his town, shortly before his birth. There is a Betty Crocker factory and a shopping mall, neither of which are in the town now. Zooming in locks a target over Nanna Egbert, who is taking a stroll with Dad. A meteor looms; this looks like it’s going to go very badly, considering the target lock, but it hits the factory instead. When John presses the glowing blue button, a PARADOX GHOST IMPRINT of Nanna is created; refer back to Rose’s experimentation in the lab and the green slime blobs. This time, the slime is sucked into a tube.

The next monitor does something similar with Grandpa Harley on his ship, and the next the same with Bro Strider, who stands over a meteor crater on an unseasonably warm day; something of an understatement, as the sky is the same lurid red and the sun the same glowing spiral that they were during the Strider bros’ battle even though it’s December. Bro is, regardless, prepared for the occasion with a small pair of outrageously awesome shades. What he needs these for will soon be revealed.

The fourth monitor goes back to John’s home town, a gigantic crater where the factory once was. In the shopping mall, Dad Egbert stands outside a joke shop, while Nanna apparently remains inside, busying herself with a tall bookshelf, a ladder, and a rather hefty unabridged joke book.

Mom Lalonde, clutching the infant Rose and wearing a rather snazzy long Jaspersprite-pink scarf, has come to town to study the meteor impact at the request of Grandpa Harley while he explores elsewhere. Unfortunately, now is the time a meteor chooses to strike Nanna’s location, destroying the shop.

An old mother lost today, but a new son gained.

Wait for it.

Mom Lalonde flees, dropping her scarf, which Dad Egbert picks up and slightly creepily sniffs. The monitor continues tracking her, and John captures her paradox imprint too, starting the machines whirring away...

Four babies abruptly appear on the pad, already diapered and bespectacled and old enough to sit up unaided. Convenient, no?

When the kitten jumps on a green button, the slime is blended in pairs; Nanna’s and Grandpa’s, and Mom’s and Bro’s. More blinking lights ensue, and another four extremely familiar-looking babies appear.

BRIGHT: I will say this: These kids are adorable.

While babies clamber over him, John vaults up his echeladder to the rank of Ectobiolobabysitter, acquiring one million Boondollars in the process. This automatically converts itself to a Boonbuck, the weight of which smashes his Porkhollow.

Finding out just what is going on here will have to wait, as the comic takes a brief detour to a battleship navigating the Medium nearby. There’s someone very familiar at the wheel…

An old man has much to do before he returns to Earth, dies, gets stuffed by his adopted-yet-biological daughter-slash-grand-daughter, and stuck in front of a fireplace.

Also aboard the ship are Dad Egbert and Mom Lalonde. Dad returns Mom’s scarf, and the two of them hold hands as Grandpa Harley pilots the ship towards Skaia.

We return to the lab, where John has his hands full with the babies. One of them has managed to break one of the paradox slime jars from earlier, but appears uninjured. Also, CG’s trolling him again.

CHEL: CG makes mention of the ULTIMATE RIDDLE, but John is confused because CG hasn’t told him about that yet. He uses an ableist description in explaining.

CG: SEE I KIND OF PAINTED MYSELF INTO A CORNER. CG: I STARTED TROLLING YOU AT THE END, JUST BEFORE THE RIFT. CG: AND THEN JUMPED BACK A LITTLE. CG: AND NOW I GUESS I'VE BECOME RAILROADED INTO WORKING BACKWARDS HERE. CG: UNLESS I WANT TO DO THE SORT OF DUMB SCHIZOPHRENIC HOPPING AROUND LIKE THE OTHERS. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 18

… why wouldn’t you just hop right back to the start and work in a linear fashion from there?

TIER: Because CG excels at making things complicated for himself and is fundamentally rather stubborn and set in his ways/actions. Like he's made his bed, he's gonna lie in it.

CHEL: Anyway, CG banters with John for a bit, and then informs him that he (John) has arrived in the Veil and created infant versions of the players and their guardians.

EB: so they are like cloned copies of us? CG: NO. CG: THEY ARE LITERALLY YOU AND YOUR GUARDIANS. CG: PARADOX CLONES.

A paradox clone, we are informed, is A CORRECTLY CLONED DUPLICATE THAT WILL INEVITABLY GO BACK IN TIME AND BECOME THE ORIGINAL TARGET THAT WAS CLONED. The game worlds contain many clues hinting at the ultimate destiny of the players to create their own selves through the game, and the only way things could possibly go involved the players creating themselves, or else the game session would never happen.

CG: WHICH IS ESPECIALLY PATHETIC SINCE PARADOX SPACE APPARENTLY WENT TO ALL THIS TROUBLE TO MAKE YOU JUST TO HAVE YOU FAIL AND DIE. CG: REALLY THERE'S NOTHING MORE TRAGIC THAN THESE NULL SESSIONS FULL OF KIDS ENTERING THE GAME AND FULFILLING SOME COSMIC DESTINY SHIT JUST TO GET WIPED OUT AND LEAVE BEHIND AN EMPTY POINTLESS INCIPISPHERE FOR ALL ETERNITY.

Tragic and completely unnecessary, when there are millions of perfectly good humans already in existence who could just as easily create winning game sessions without this aspect of it. Here we see another aspect of Homestuck which hasn’t come up quite so clearly before; an extremely weird take on determinism. I’m not sure if this is meant as a parody of Chosen One plotlines or if Hussie just thought it sounded cool, but it’s uncomfortable. As it turns out, only clones created by SBurb have a hope in hell of winning the game, and even they fail most of the time. Regular people who enter the game to save themselves from the destruction of the planet will fail and die there, which honestly is not really selling this game as a good thing, since it’s what causes the destruction of the planet in the first place. I’ve had actual, legitimate, honest-to-God nightmares about this aspect of SBurb, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think many fans wish to play SBurb. There’s lots of fan sessions and fake GameFAQs and custom Lands. Yet in reality SBurb is not a fun time. This is cosmic horror. I think Hussie is sometimes playing it for horror and sometimes he ignores the implications.

Then again, some people want to live on the troll planet, which is straight-up dystopia.

CHEL: Again, it isn’t really clear what he’s going for. Is it supposed to be terrifying or did he just think it would be clever? Does even Hussie know what he was going for? While it’s not exactly a joke, I think it’s worth another point here:

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 17

It might be a joke. As I said, I could see it as a parody of or playing with the Chosen One narrative. In this case, literally only the chosen ones have any hope, for reasons that are not down to any merit of their own. But if it is, there isn’t really much made of it.

Of course, the reasons people want to live on the troll planet are reasonable when taken alone, but a) contradicted every alternate scene and b) not a fair trade for everything else that’s going on there. But we’ll get to that when we actually see it. And I admit, SBurb powers would be fun, but not worth the loss of my entire species.

TIER: To me at least it's fun in the same way wondering how I'd fare as a wizard during Harry Potter's years at Hogwarts, or a ninja in Naruto is. Fundamentally you'd rather want to never encounter this sorta stuff even if you get some swanky I guess powers, but the mental exercise of it is quite honestly, really fun. The game has quite a lot of interesting things to poke around with, from lands to quests to what your co-players are up to. And I'm def guilty of playing trollsona games, because the world presented is just really fascinating in its gruesome glory.

Never want to have to actually go through it, Lord knows I'd be dead within the first ten minutes if I'm super lucky, but stories about it are pretty neat.

CHEL: That’s true, but the paradox clones thing seems almost to be taunting us for having that mentality. We can pretend we’d be the super-smart strong competent ones who make it, but in this universe if we demonstrably have parents we’re doomed to die for nothing and there’s nothing we can do about it.

BRIGHT: Another fun thing about this is that it fundamentally isolates the players from the rest of humanity. If you think about it, unless they have children with a non-player, they are completely unrelated to anyone else on Earth.

CHEL: And they can’t have kids with a non-player unless something thoroughly horrible happened, because as is stated later SBurb specifically takes its players away and destroys their planet around the point of their puberty.

BRIGHT: Although I think John is actually related to Dad — as far as we’re told, Dad is in fact Nanna’s biological son, which makes him genetically John’s half-brother.

They also miss out on (going by how active the babies are) the first couple of years of life. Those two years are crucial in terms of brain development. SBURB probably controls for that, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there were negative consequences.

Oh, and if you’re a player, your existence means your civilisation is doomed. Lovely!

CHEL: And do the players ever feel any guilt or conflict over this? Do they hell. It doesn’t even occur to them, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t occur to Hussie either.

TIER: Welcome to the hell game that is SBURB; it's fundamentally pretty fucked up! It runs on a hellish scale of "things have already been predetermined" and I am Big Fear™.

CHEL: That’ll come up later, too, but there it’s obviously intentional nightmare fuel, and not at all a bad use of time travel as a story device.

CG, meanwhile, explains that he was the one to create his session’s players. With twelve of them it was a bit more complicated, but troll lineages are complicated anyway, and we’ll find out how later.

The babies are still getting all over the lab. Note that they're repeatedly referred to as "little pink monkeys". Then again, calling a non-white child a monkey really wouldn't be good.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 18

John’s infant self has latched onto the Sassacre book, while his infant Nanna is sitting in Dad Egbert’s old hat. Baby Bro is napping in the lap of Lil Cal; that baby’s braver than I am, I can tell you that. Baby Dave is sitting on Maplehoof, and baby Grandpa has found a pair of pistols. John does not take them away from him, or even seem to notice he has them.

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 7

BRIGHT: Earlier baby Bro broke one of the paradox slime cylinders and was sitting in it. John is pretty astoundingly bad at keeping babies away from obvious hazards.

TIER: That or the equipment is probably not sturdy enough to make it past an inspection into faulty management.

CHEL: But then he’s distracted by CG trolling him again, at least this time moving forward in time from the last conversation.

CG, like GA, apparently fails to grasp sarcasm...

EB: we had this great dare going. EB: to see who could be the least helpful and informative. EB: and you totally lost, dude! EB: you were hella helpful. CG: I WAS OBVIOUSLY JUST SPITING YOUR STUPID POINTLESS HUMAN DARE. [...] CG: ANYWAY, HOW COULD WE HAVE MADE A DARE IF I'M MOVING BACKWARDS ON YOUR TIMELINE.

… which is weird because moments later he uses it himself.

EB: do you even have elves? CG: YES, LET'S COMPARE WHICH FANTASY CREATURES THAT DON'T EXIST WE BOTH DO OR DON'T NOT HAVE. CG: WHAT A GREAT FUCKING IDEA, JOHN!

Hussie seems to waver back and forth a lot on whether trolls get sarcasm or not, in general. Since he’s contradicting himself with troll worldbuilding, that’s a point.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19

Banter aside, he informs John that the babies are sent to Earth via meteors during the Reckoning.

BRIGHT: How do they survive the impact? Some of those meteor strikes destroy buildings. Those are some ridiculously resilient kids.

CHEL: Cut to AR, who is still having fun on the rocketboard, until he runs into a frog temple atop a meteor. This is apparently horrifying and illegal by his standards.

You are going to throw whoever is responsible into the slammer. You always call jail the slammer when you are extra angry at crimes.

Inside, he finds an empty time capsule, like Jade’s, some complicated machinery, and a monitor screen showing a greyscale house with a very familiar bespectacled female infant and dirty old hat in it. The year depicted, says the monitor, is 1910. Enter none other than Colonel Sassacre himself.

Eight days prior, the orphan girl was taken in by an aristocratic southern colonel and legendary humorist. He recovered the young lady from a crater where a bakery once stood, operated by the man's wife, a notable baked goods baroness.

An explosion outside leads them both to a crater, where once stood the doghouse of the colonel’s pet, Halley, but before the Colonel can investigate further he’s shot through the heart.

This is exactly why babies should not be allowed to dual-wield flintlock pistols.

BRIGHT: I remain baffled as to how Baby Grandpa can even lift those things, let alone pull the triggers.

CHEL: Baby Grandpa crawls from the crater, and Halley the dog turns out to be alive.

The young boy has difficulty pronouncing the name though. Sounds more like "Harley" when he says it.

How does he know it? The colonel died before he even noticed the baby was there. Is baby Nanna speaking well enough to tell him yet? I guess he could be told later, as Sassacre wasn’t in fact their only sapient guardian...

Thirteen years later, the boy develops a taste for adventure. He and his guardian bid farewell. His sister is sad. She will be left all alone with the wicked pastry baroness. She can handle it, he tells her. He believes in her.

It isn’t clear why she didn’t go with him, or leave under her own power. They don’t seem to be imprisoned, as the panel depicts them outside on grass with no restraints or guards over them, so it’s not a matter of only one of them being able to get out. That’s a point for Nanna not trying and a point for Grandpa not bringing her:

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 9

That dog is also remarkably lively, considering it, unlike Bec, is an entirely normal dog, it was an adult thirteen years previously, and it’s somehow supporting the weight of an entire teenager on its back (again, please don’t try this at home, you can break the dog’s spine that way).

FAILURE ARTIST: As we’ve said, Colonel Sassacre is a thinly-veiled Mark Twain expy. The real Mark Twain died in 1910 at the same time Halley’s Comet was in the sky. It’s a cute historical gag having him be literally killed by a comet but it does muck up the timeline. Nanna must have been a senior citizen when Dad was born. Perhaps he’s adopted?

CHEL: The other option is that Dad is a senior citizen now, but surely John would have wondered why his dad is so ridiculously old. I think it’s just that thing in mainstream comics and cartoons where adults are split into Old and Not Old, and the parents are normal ages for parents but the grandparents would have to be in their hundreds going by the gags. See how Scrooge McDuck in the DuckTales reboot is over a hundred and forty years old yet his sister’s son is still a youngish adult.

AR notes that the appearifier is centred over Halley the dog, but hears someone coming. It proves to be the Draconian Dignitary. AR hides and watches, noting that DD is carrying Rose’s notebooks and Dave’s beta envelopes. DD keeps the MEOW book, but throws away the other items. Complacency of the Learned lands on the floor, and the envelopes land in the time capsule, which sets to bloom in four hundred and thirteen million years.

Meanwhile, John talks to CG while infant Mom Lalonde pets the mutant kitten. John asks if there’s any way to delay the Reckoning, but nope; CG warns him that the smallest meteors will start going in only a few minutes.

EB: ok, well you keep saying how doomed we are and how all this bad stuff happens sooner, but you never say why! EB: what happens in our game that's different from yours that makes things go so badly? CG: JACK NOIR.

The Jack Noir from the trolls’ game session allied with them and helped them dethrone and exile the Black Queen, while the one from the humans’ session, as you may recall, killed the Black Monarchs and gained their powers, and is currently rampaging through the Incipisphere. John asks if it’s the same Jack Noir, but CG explains.

CG: SO LET'S SAY YOU PLAY YOUR BANDICOOT AND I PLAY MY BANDICOOT. CG: THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME BANDICOOT, SAME APPEARANCE AND DESIGN AND BEHAVIORS. CG: BUT THEY ARE STILL COMPLETELY SEPARATE BANDICOOTS ON SEPARATE SCREENS. CG: SO WE BOTH HAVE OUR OWN ASS BANDICOOTS TO OURSELVES, THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT. CG: OUR JACKS ARE THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT TOO. CG: SAME GUY, DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOMES. CG: OUR JACK TRUMPED THE QUEEN, BUT GOT NO FURTHER. CG: YOUR JACK GOT THE BEST OF BOTH OF THEM, AND IS NOW SOMETHING HIGHER THAN A QUEEN OR A KING… EB: like an ace? CG: SURE OK.

The trolls don’t know what went so differently to cause the two Jacks to behave so differently, but CG doesn’t think it matters by now. John interrupts him, deciding to do yet another Con Air ending re-enactment.

Watch on YouTube

Recap: montage of Con Air posters and images to the tune of “How Do I Live Without You”. John hands the thoroughly disgusting Con Air bunny to the protesting baby Rose, while CG watches huffily on his monitor. Jade demands a toy too, so John hands her the bunny he received from Rose in an excessively dramatic fashion. CG frustratedly hits himself in the head. In scribbly crayon-like drawings, Casey the salamander performs a drum solo with glowing blue mushrooms for drums and the Con Air plane crashes. More Con Air imagery, John embraces baby Jade and the baby Lalondes while sobbing; GC points and laughs at him over CG’s shoulder and they have a slapfight. John imagines himself in Nic Cage’s iconic wifebeater and mullet and performs an air guitar solo.

TIER: Lemme tell ya, as someone who's only experience with this darn movie is whatever pops up courtesy of John this sequence is just a trip and a half. Possibly a higher number.

CHEL: Cut to end-of-act curtains; they open on the next page, declaring a PSYCHE; there are more pages to go.

Cut to Dave’s hands, covered in the dead Dave’s blood. I… guess he’s supposed to be staring at them in shock? It’s impossible to tell through his shades. For all I know he could be worried about the cleanup. GC trolls him and they banter creepily, with her demanding to know what his blood smells like and him taunting her about her blindness.

TG: just him and me TG: havin a see party TG: like a couple of eagle eyed bros peepin shit up into the wee hours GC: D4V3 GC: C4N 1 COM3 TO YOUR S33 P4RTY? TG: i guess but youll have to be careful not to stumble around bumping into all the gorgeous masterpieces hanging around everywhere TG: god so beautiful to look at with my perfect eyesight GC: C4N 1 L1CK TH3 P41NT1NGS? TG: yeah thats fine

Neither of them seems to take it particularly hard. If there was narrative around the dialogue, I think we’d get a better grasp of how Dave feels. Lacking much body language or punctuation, tone is a bit tricky to get.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s a character later who gets a lot of grief for insulting her blindness but reading what John, Dave, and CG say I don’t know how that character could be worse.

CHEL: AT, meanwhile, is trolling Jade, rather politely. He even takes time to ask if she’s having a good nap. She’s worried about John’s dreamself not waking, and AT scrolls into his view of the future timeline, but can’t find John awake, nor see into his dreams. Jade, however, will wake up soon, and she thanks him for this report. Unfortunately, when Jade wakes up she will be in danger, and AT can’t see any further. He tells her CG wants to talk to her about her exploding robot. He can’t see whether it exploded or not because there are a lot of explosions, but asking future Jade shows it did, and that she declared CG to be a pretty nice guy, which surprises AT since he doesn’t think CG is particularly nice. Jade says she thinks AT is nice too, and asks why he’s the only one who talks to her while she’s asleep.

AT: bECAUSE YOU HAVE A ROBOT, tO LET YOU SAY THINGS THAT HAPPEN, oN PROSPIT, AT: aND i'M CURIOUS, AT: bECAUSE THE ONLY TIME i EVER HAD FUN PLAYING THIS GAME WAS WHEN i WAS ASLEEP, AT: bUT NOW ALL OUR DREAM SELVES ARE DEAD, AT: }:'(

AT happily remembers his own time on Prospit, and we cut back to Rose, being trolled by GA despite the fact that Rose is obviously in the middle of an epic magic battle. The conversation is understandably chilly, and GA still hasn’t figured out that “Dumb Rose” as opposed to “Smart Rose” was John rather than a bizarre roleplaying scenario.

GC continues trolling Dave. He asks her how she operates a computer without sight.

GC: 1M SORRY D4V3 TH4T YOU W1LL N3V3R 3XP3R13NC3 TH3 S3NSORY BOUQU3T TH4T 1 3NJOY 3V3RY D4Y GC: TH4T 1 3NSCONC3 MYS3LF 1N L1K3 4 W4RM 4ND COMFY B4THROB3 M4D3 OF FL4VOR 4ND M3LODY TG: oh ok TG: so the dumbest and most far fetched explanation imaginable ok got it

Yes, pretty much. This brings me to a Problematykks point; GC is supposed to be blind, but it really doesn’t seem to affect her in any way at all. Its workaround is ridiculously convenient and effective, and while I’m not blind myself, I know many people with physical disabilities hate it when fiction does this. I know I would be pissed off if a piece of fiction showed an easy and convenient way to not have autism anymore. (Horrible, horrible memories of someone back in the days of Livejournal’s Fanficrants of a fic in which autism was somehow cured by having a foursome. I don’t remember how that was supposed to work.) “She’s a space alien” only goes so far in explaining it. Why even bother making her blind if it’s not going to affect her in any way?

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s the least blind blind person in media. Characters like Daredevil from Marvel Comics and Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender have a Disability Superpower but at the end of the day they still can’t do things like read printed text. GC has no disadvantages.

BRIGHT: She can apparently smell and taste photons.

Which raises the question why none of the other trolls ever show a heightened sense of smell or taste. If GC can learn to interpret smells as colours, her sense of smell must have been that strong all along, and there’s no indication in the text that she’s biologically more sensitive than her companions. Trolls must be better at following a trail than bloodhounds.

CHEL: Synaesthesia which makes one strongly associate colours with smells is a thing, and synaesthesia is generally the word the fandom uses to explain Terezi’s ability, but you still have to actually see the colours for that to work. If she was only mostly blind and was picking up blurry colour patches, I could buy it (and that is how the fandom tends to do it with human AUs), but not if she’s supposed to be completely blind, and she still wouldn’t be able to read text that way.

BRIGHT: Time for another animation, and for a hop back into the recent past.

Watch on YouTube

As the meteor locked onto Dave’s house approaches, Dave climbs up the tower to retrieve his cruxite egg from the nest his sprite made. Unfortunately the sprite attacks him, knocking him and the egg off the tower. Bro Strider appears on top of the approaching meteor and slices it in half with his katana; the two halves are diverted by the blow and strike different areas of the city. Dave’s fall is broken by a rocket board, which is presumably how Bro got up to the meteor in the first place. (How did he manage to aim it to intercept Dave’s fall? Wouldn’t it take longer to get from the meteor to Dave than it takes for Dave to fall from the top of the tower to the roof of the building? We shall never know.) The egg hatches, and Dave is transported into the Medium. There’s no sign of what happens to Bro.

CHEL: Yet more cartoon physics around the Strider bros.

BRIGHT: I don’t know if we mentioned this earlier, but although Dave and Bro live in an apartment block that presumably housed multiple people, only Dave’s apartment gets transported into the Medium. Everyone else in the complex is left to die on Earth. SBURB is sociopathic.

Elsewhere in the Medium, back in the present, Grandpa’s ship is approaching Skaia, with Mom Lalonde and Dad Egbert on board.

Down on Skaia, Jack Noir draws his sword and slaughters the army WV raised to march on the Black King. WV cowers, but Jack leaves him alive. He then uses the Black Queen’s ring to send some sort of giant red tentacle attack through Skaia, slaughtering Dersite and Prospitian forces indiscriminately.

CHEL: Are they tentacles? I always thought of them as some sort of lightning lasers.

BRIGHT: That makes a lot more sense!

In the ectobiology lab, as the clock ticks down to the Reckoning, the babies are teleported to asteroids around the lab. There must be an air supply in this asteroid belt — characters are consistently shown as being able to survive outside.

CHEL: Maybe it’s just the players’ natural badassery. Batman Can Breathe In Space.

BRIGHT: On Skaia, CD makes his way through Jack’s slaughter fest, which has now ravaged a sizeable chunk of planet, and hands him the White King’s sceptre. Jack raises the sceptre and initiates the Reckoning. The meteorites start to vanish into Skaia’s defence portals. In the frog temple, DD somehow combines the MEOW genetic code with a paradox clone of Halley, creating Jade’s guardian Bec. Bec’s creation damages the laboratory equipment in the temple.

Cut to Jade, who is snoozing peacefully while her dream self explores Prospit. She looks up at Skaia, to see Jack’s shadow passing in front of it. Jack launches his tentacle attack on Prospit, slaughtering the inhabitants, then severs the chain attaching Prospit’s moon to the planet. The moon begins falling towards Skaia.

Jack then flies to LOHAC, where he encounters Bro Strider on one of the turntable mesas. Unexpectedly, Bro is able to give Jack an even fight. After a few exchanges, he drives his katana into the mesa; some sort of golden light emanates from the crack, and Bro absconds.

Wait, how did Bro get onto LOHAC? How did he survive the meteor impacts?

TIER: The ol' "rule of cool". As long as something is sufficiently "absolutely kickass!!" the rules of reality and physics can go sit on the bleachers twiddling their thumbs for all they fucking matter. There's a reason early fandom pinned down Bro as an unorthodox but immensely cool older brother type guy for so long. Because with what little information was available before we got bludgeoned with "No actually he was the absolute fucking worst thing to happen to Dave and fucked him up for life" that was the general impression he gave off.

CHEL: This and the meteor splitting are yet more reason not to take Bro’s treatment of Dave seriously; this is a world in which ludicrous animesque badassery rules the day, and physically impossible feats of battle occur every five minutes. Forcing a child to go through extensive and excessive sword training in brutal heat in a precarious place, possibly every day, ought by rights to be normal there, and I can’t believe he was physically hurt by swordfighting when he survived a meteor collision as an infant. Besides, training that extensive quite possibly could be the only thing that would keep Dave alive in these circumstances.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18

BRIGHT: There’s a random Squiddles interlude, and then we return to Skaia.

John’s unconscious dream self has fallen out of Prospit’s moon as it plummets towards Skaia. Jade tries shaking him awake, and then slaps him, but to no avail. At the last moment, she throws him out of the path of the moon, and her dream self is then killed when it lands on her. Back on Earth, her dreambot overloads and explodes.

CHEL: Taking her tower room with it; Jade’s sleeping body plummets towards the earth.

BRIGHT: The moon leaves a gigantic crater in Skaia. John’s now-conscious dreamself hovers above it.

The babies vanish through the defence portals to Earth.

CHEL: Each takes an item with them. John takes the Sassacre book, Rose the first Con Air bunny, Dave rides Maplehoof, Jade takes the bunny Rose gave to John (which is in fact the Con Air bunny plus several years and repairs), Nanna sits inside Dad’s old hat, Mom takes the mutant kitten, Bro sleeps in the lap of Li’l Cal, and Grandpa dual wields the flintlock pistols he should not be allowed.

BRIGHT: Dave and Rose reach the Gates above their houses and set out to explore their Lands. We close on an eerie shot of Bec outside the frog temple on Jade’s island at night.

CHEL: Jade’s tower room is blown to bits, and a truly enormous meteor hovers over the scene.

Curtains close. End of Act 4. Before Act 5, we receive a message from Rose, via her GameFAQ.

[ZZZZ] Rose: Egress. This is my final entry. My co-players and I have made every earnest attempt, with occasional relapse, to play this game the right way.

Really? You haven’t been in the game for more than a couple of hours and Jade still isn’t in at all! Maybe consider that the fact that not all your players are in the game yet when you wonder why it isn’t working?

I have been meticulous in documenting the process to help our peers and successors through the trials should we fail. In my hubris I believed these classes were relegated to the Earth-bound, but in even this quaint supposition I was in error. Our otherworldly antagonists have assured us of our inevitable failure repeatedly, while the gods whisper corroboration in my sleep. I believe them now. I just blew up my first gate. I’m not sure why I did it, really. I am not playing by the rules anymore. I will fly around this candy-coated rock and comb the white sand until I find answers. No one can tell me our fate can’t be repaired. We’ve come too far. I jumped out of the way of a burning fucking tree, for God’s sake.

I can see her point. The game is horrible and should be stopped. On the other hand, I’d at least attempt to spend more than one day investigating it before trying to break it. Randomly destroying shit is more likely to make things much worse than anything else.

I have used a spell to rip this walkthrough from Earth’s decaying network, and sealed it in one of the servers floating in the Furthest Ring. The gods may disperse the signal throughout the cosmos as they wish. Perhaps it will be of use to past or future species who like us have been ensnared by Skaia’s malevolent tendrils. In case it wasn’t clear, magic is real. Pardon my egress. You’re on your own now.

This note is signed with a glowing multicoloured “RL” and revealed to be emitted from a purple box with an aerial, floating in space. It seems that’s how their internet’s still working.

FAILURE ARTIST: The internet seems to be a magical dimension in Homestuck and not something that’s part of physical infrastructure.

CHEL: Hours in the future, WV lands in the desert remains of Earth, wrapped up in John’s old ghost-patterned bedsheet, which is still white. A villein becomes a vagabond. In his memory, he tears up an effigy of Jack Noir… where’d he get it? Did the game create it for some reason? Anyway, John’s blanket falls on him from the sky as Prospit plummets; WV calls it a RAG OF SOULS. Adorably melodramatic.

John’s awoken dreamself gazes sadly at Jade’s deceased one, which for some reason isn’t actually under the rubble of Prospit and appears to still be three-dimensional. There’s no excessive blood splatter like with the dead Dave, which is good, not too over the top. He retrieves the Queen’s ring from her hand. Was he told at any point that it’s important? Because if he doesn’t know, I’m not sure robbing the dead is very heroic. He sees an image of himself flying over the battlefield in a large cloud above him; in the vision he’s near a castle, so he goes to seek it out.

On Earth, PM wraps herself up in an old Prospit banner. A mistress becomes a mendicant. In her memories, she has beheaded the Hegemonic Brute and is arranging a meeting with Jack Noir. He arrives and she presents the crowns; smirking evilly, he honours their bargain, and the Courtyard Droll brings her the green parcel. She brings it to the castle from John’s vision as he arrives there, hands over the box, and angrily walks away.

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s Honor Before Reason (maybe she’s programmed that way) but she has the right reaction. This is a lot to go through to deliver a package.

CHEL: Inside the box is a letter from Jade’s unknown pen pal, who writes in dark green and a distinctive jolly-hockey-sticks dialect, with a tendency to ramble off on tangents about movies and wrestling.

Anyway you should listen to jade from here on out john because she sure seems to know whats best for you. Whatever your adventure throws at you im sure shell tell you you can handle it. She believes in you.

And another letter from Jade.

even though its super late and you probably went through a lot of trouble to get it, i really hope this present cheers you up! you looked so sad while you were reading my letter. um... which is to say, the one you are reading now.

She explains that in her dreams she goes to Prospit and John’s sleeping dream self is there, and that’s where she gets her visions. She hopes he likes his present, and says her penpal is fun…

john i am REALLY looking forward to seeing you when you wake up!!!!! its been nice playing with my prospitian friends and all, but also kind of lonely knowing you were in the other tower sleeping and having lousy dreams. :( im not sure where i am when you are reading this but im sure ill make it down to where you are soon! (jeez how did you get down there??? oh well ill find out) i cant wait to fly around the moon with you and show you all my favorite places. itll be so much fun!!!!!!!!! :D <3 jade

Ow. I think this is the only time John cries in the entire comic.

A Single Tear(™) is a bit of an understated reaction to the death of one of your best friends who you just recently learned is also your twin sister, but to be fair, John isn’t left with very much time to react, as next panel Jack Noir’s sword is pointed at his face.

BRIGHT: John knows about dream selves and waking selves by now, I think?

CHEL: He knows they’re a thing but I don’t think he knows they count as backup lives. AT told Jade dream selves can die separately from regular selves but I don’t think anyone told John.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jack Noir wants the ring, but then he’s stopped by Jade’s gift: a robotic bunny wielding multiple weapons.

They line up for a fight.

Hours in the future, on a destroyed planet, AR wraps police tape around himself and becomes a Aimless Renegade. Before the disaster, he went to the Veil, where he found a sleeping John. He saves John by putting him on a rocket board.

Back to the robotic bunny. Jack Noir flies away from the fight. Grandpa’s battleship lands and Grandpa takes away Jade’s body. Mom and Dad disembark the ship and wave goodbye as it leaves. Grandpa cries a Single Tear as he transports Jade’s already taxidermed body. Did he have a machine?

CHEL: For that matter, why isn’t he helping anyone who’s actually still alive while he’s there?

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10

FAILURE ARTIST: Nope, transporting a dead body is more important.

Again going back, White Queen leaves Prospit. On landing, she becomes Windswept Questant and wanders the Earth. We go forward years later. She repairs the laboratory and meets up with AR, WV, and PM. WV’s homemade spear hides the ring.

John watches this scene through the clouds of Skaia. He looks at the ring in his hand. In another cloud, there’s Jade’s laboratory. We close in on it and inside is The Fourth Wall. It isn’t turned on, but we are still lead to Andrew Hussie, banging away on a computer keyboard as he recaps the plot for a second time.

CHEL: Which we shall do as well when we’re done with this section, because it’s insanely hard to keep track of everything.

FAILURE ARTIST: Andrew Hussie says Nanna’s comet landed 99 years before John’s “birth” so he has some clue about the age but still doesn’t see it odd that a woman that age has a son who is probably only in his thirties.

CHEL: As I said, it’s also possible Dad was really old too, but that’s never really suggested. Not to mention, since they were brought into existence as toddlers, shouldn’t the kids be noticeably older than the ages given for them? John should be biologically fourteen to fifteen by now and at that age that can make a visible difference. I know the art style doesn’t really give clues, but no one I’ve seen has ever pointed that out in fanfic either.

FAILURE ARTIST: Newborns aren’t distinctive looking and can’t really do the cute things toddlers do. People in TV and movies regularly give birth to six month old infants so it’s not strange.

CHEL: True, but this isn’t TV, it’s a comic, and they don’t have to use an actual infant as a prop here.

BRIGHT: Possibly it’s intentional. Among other things, we see the newly-created players survive short trips through vacuum, crash-land on Earth without even minor injuries, and handle weapons they shouldn’t be able to lift for another four or five years. This could work if players have superhuman abilities (that is, beyond the classpect system). If that was the intent then it really should be made more explicit, though.

Of course, what it really boils down to is that Homestuck runs off Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny, and occasionally breaks down on examination as a result.

On the whole this is a solid Act, I think! We have a lot of new stuff happening, more characters get introduced, and we find out some more about the trolls. It’s much less rambling than Act 1.

COUNTS ALL THE LUCK: 0 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18 CALL CPA PLEASE: 8 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19 GET ON WITH IT!: 18 GORE GALORE: 10 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 15 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 0 RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1 SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 1 SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS: 0 WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 9 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19 TOTAL: 127

#homestuck #Let's read #homestuck meta #reread #literary critique #sporking #Homespork

[mobius-prime]

200. Sonic the Hedgehog #132

Can you believe it? We've reached the two hundredth issue, everyone! It seems like not that long ago that we had only reached one hundred, yet here we are! Of course, the actual comic itself is nowhere near two hundred yet, but we're counting total volume of issues here. We're over halfway done with reading the preboot by now, but we still have over a hundred left to go in front of us, so we'd better dive right in!

Home (Part 3 of 4): A.D.A.M. and Evil

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Dave Manak Colors: Jensen

Eggman can't believe what he's seeing as Tails and Sonic fly overhead, having been certain that Sonic could never be fast enough to reach him in time to stop the missile launch. Sonic leaps down from the Tornado with a pair of handcuffs to arrest Eggman with, but Eggman isn't worried, as he has M to protect him… and as Tails hacks into Eggman's database to stop the missile launch countdown, he finds he has another problem to worry about.

Well that's worrying… Meanwhile at Fort Acorn, as General D'Coolette gets the soldiers under his command ready for battle, Julie-Su argues with Knuckles inside the fort. Knuckles apparently wants to take point in the fight, but Julie-Su is adamant that he not put himself in such direct danger, as now without the power of the Chaos Emeralds, the only power he can rely on is his natural strength, which while formidable pales in comparison. She's doubly worried since last time he put himself in direct danger like this he literally died, but he still insists that he can handle it, pointing to his backup.

Uhh… looks like Amy has seriously powered up since last we saw her! Vector is in charge of heading off the swatbots' first advance, which he does by blasting his music loudly enough that it literally blows all the robots apart before they can reach the fort. While this is going on, Sally, her parents, and Uncle Chuck monitor the situation from the Technolo-Tree, as now that A.D.A.M. has taken control of the Tornado Tails is in serious danger. However, Chuck reasons that with A.D.A.M.'s attention split three ways, he may not be able to properly concentrate on controlling the plane, the missile countdown, and the robot army at Robotropolis effectively. A.D.A.M. forces the controls of Tails' plane down, intending to make him impact with the water of the ocean to kill him, and with M attacking Sonic in revenge for hurting her "father," things look bleak. However, Tails, thinking fast, decides to test A.D.A.M.'s skills with riddles, asking him "Why does the chicken cross…"

I think you've found A.D.A.M.'s weakness, Tails! As he keeps the virus distracted with some more puzzles, Vector laments the destruction of his stereo equipment due to the sheer volume of noise he just unleashed on the swatbots. However, that's only the first wave - and Amy Rose is ready to take on the second wave single-handedly. M starts viciously beating up Sonic while Eggman gleefully "introduces" her to him, noting that unlike A.D.A.M., she was an intentional creation to act as his personal enforcer. She flings Sonic into the water nearby, and Sally, watching from home, is horrified, as she knows Sonic can't swim.

This is kind of the beginning of the era where the comic started to clip Sally's wings. A year spent thinking her closest friend was gone has robbed her of some of her usual fire, and though many people call it out of character for her, while to some degree I agree, in other ways I kind of don't. Sonic is in many ways the opposite of Sally - he rushes into things, acts first and asks questions later, while Sally is much more calculating and prefers to have a plan before jumping into action. With the wild attitude of Sonic gone from her life, she's had her parents in her ears for the past year, once again pushing her to act like a princess and not get involved the way she used to. Instead of being the general, the leader of the rebellion that she's always been, she's being pulled back, reined in, told that she must only direct her troops' movements from the safety of her home. While certainly Sally isn't the type to meekly listen to whatever her parents tell her to do, I think the trauma she's faced has affected her in more ways than even she's aware of, and she's not nearly as certain of herself anymore, leaving her more open to manipulation from her parents than she once would have been.

At Fort Knothole, Amy is only half-conscious after the battle due to exhaustion, but perks up when she's told that she managed to wipe out half the attacking swatbots… on her own. If there's one thing I love about the comics, it's that they never downplay Amy's immense strength. She's a one-woman army in her own right, as long as she has her hammer in hand, and ultimately the comics give her a lot of chances to shine as the badass she is. Everyone prepares to fight the rest of the bots, but a shadow above alerts them to the arrival of the special GUN team from Station Square, heralded by Rouge the Bat. In Old Megaopolis, Eggman tells M that he won't believe Sonic is dead until he sees a body, so she dives into the water, just as Sonic manages to pull himself from the water after finding a lucky ladder close by.

M's eyes begin to glow, glaring at Sonic as she prepares to attack…

Mobius 25 Years Later: The Unveiling

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Jensen

There isn't much teen interaction in this second installment of Mobius 25 Years Later, so there isn't as much to complain about compared to last issue, but there are still a few things to cover. For one, we get our first introduction to Kenders' weird attempts to include some diversity of sexual orientation in his work! We open at Lara-Su's Unveiling, as Julie-Su proudly watches her dance with her father in the middle of the festivities. An echidna named "Mace" arrives, and from his dialogue we can gather that he's Knuckles' half-brother, the one whom Lara-Le was pregnant with before Sonic's space adventures. Julie-Su questions his friendship with a friend of his, Demi-Na, but he insists that the two of them are just friends and it's "nothing serious." She then warns him away from flirting with any of the other people present, as they're all already married. Apparently, Kenders' intention here was to indicate that Mace is in fact gay - that he's not interested in Demi-Na because he's not into women, and that Julie-Su never specified the gender of the people he shouldn't be flirting with. However, there's not even the slightest hint of any of this in the dialogue - y'all know how online fandoms will grasp onto any tiny hint of two same-gender individuals being cordial to one another as being true love and ship them accordingly, but I doubt even the gayest of fans would look at the dialogue surrounding Mace and think "Oh, he's definitely A Fellow Gay!" I do get that at the time this comic was released, acceptance of LGBT individuals wasn't nearly as widespread as it is now, which would actually make Kenders a bit ahead of the curve of society as a whole in terms of acceptance, but this is still a really, really weak attempt at including a gay character in his work - and it's not even the weirdest example yet.

See, even here, something that could have been an opportunity for gentle ribbing from father to daughter is instead used as an excuse to essentially pull a "well, other people have it worse" on Lara-Su. The dress really doesn't suit her personality-wise, making me wonder who even decided that was what she should wear in the first place. Meanwhile, we finally get to meet Cobar, Rotor's old friend, as the two meet up and discuss a very serious matter.

Okay, this is definitely the most interesting thing we've seen so far in this world. This is a problem much more reminiscent of the types of conflicts we see in the main storyline of the comic. However, we're already facing another weird "LGBT inclusion" scenario! Go ahead and take a look at the way Rotor and Cobar interact with one another. Seem shippable to you guys? Well, despite the fact that they seem no closer to each other than two ordinary scientists with a polite working relationship, Cobar is basically supposed to be Rotor's husband! That's right, Kenders apparently always saw Rotor as gay, and while I'm 1000% on board with that interpretation… well first of all Cobar looks like he has one foot in the grave while Rotor would barely be like forty-something in this timeline, but also, again, there is no noticeable hint they they're even slightly into each other, let alone in a long-term relationship. Frankly, Rotor deserves better if we're looking to set him up with a nice man.

Meanwhile, back at the Unveiling, Vector and his son Argyle arrive fashionably late to the party, and Vector and Knuckles step aside to have a chat while Argyle moves in to dance with Lara-Su. Vector frets, thinking that Argyle essentially isn't cool enough to know how to charm a lady, but his fears are totally unfounded.

Hmm, seems serious, Knuckles… I'm sure this interesting part of the plot isn't going to get sidetracked by trite teenage drama and a bunch of adults yakking at each other about Adult Stuff, right?

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 132 #writer: karl bollers #writer: ken penders #pencils: dave manak #pencils: steven butler #colors: jason jensen

[nightqueendany]

The Original Final Season 7 - Preface

Okay guys. I’m still polishing up some of the later episodes, but this whole thing is almost done. And as motivation to make me finish the later episodes and publish them, I’m going to give you Episode 1 today, in a post directly following this one. If you do not see the link just yet, simply refresh this post and I should have put it in place, pending no issues with my Internet connection.

I’ve talked about this A LOT. What follows below and in subsequent weeks (I’m going to make you guys suffer, I’m going to put each episode out weekly) is 1) my explanation for WHY specifically I believe there was an “Original Final Season 7” and also, 2) WHAT I believe that Final Season contained.

NOTE: I will refer to the actual show events of Seasons 7 and 8 as “show canon” and will refer to my speculation as “Original Final Season 7.”

*Disclaimer because I have this weird feeling I’m going to get bombarded with anons asking me for links to “the original scripts” or interviews where this is all mentioned or something:

THIS IS ALL MY OWN SPECULATION. NONE OF THIS HAS BEEN PROVEN TRUE. THERE ARE NO “ORIGINAL SCRIPTS” FOR A FINAL SEASON 7...THAT I KNOW OF.

Alright, now that that’s taken care of, I’m gonna lay this out here for you guys. (Parts of this may get fanficky but whatever, this is what makes the most sense in my mind based on what we’ve got on the table).

(Also note, this series will be really really fucking long because it includes what I *think* the original Season was, and evidence from aired episodes as to why I think that, along with long-winded, detailed descriptions of scenes, etc. Sorry not sorry)

Here is how I went about this speculation to determine what I believe was likely the “Original Final Season 7”:

1) I looked for instances in the series as a whole where plots were never finished OR scenes/lines were either retconned or never paid off  - i.e. Dany’s S2 throne room scene script clearly saying “snow” and in 8x06 it’s now ash - post Emmy script release note: the script may say “snow” but remember, it’s the same day as the attack on the city from 8x05 when it was sunny and super hot outside. Either the script was changed just to make it say “snow” OR it was snow in the 8x06 episode, but D&D literally changed the fucking weather just to make it snowing in Dany’s throne room scene when King’s Landing hasn’t had snow since 7x07. Either way, something was retconned and it’s fucking idiotic and hella obvious.

2) I examined Seasons 7&8 specifically for the same things - scenes/lines never paid off or left unfinished/unexplained, i.e. Yara’s line “somewhere the dead can’t go” when this was never needed because the Night King was defeated in one episode; also all the baby talk between Jon and Dany and Dany never being pregnant in show canon.

3) I looked for instances in the series where a plot was “undone” in a very short span of time. Meaning, something that could have taken seasons upon seasons for buildup but was scrapped or easily deconstructed an episode later or same episode - i.e. Jaime/Brienne finally getting together in 8x04 and Jaime leaving Brienne that same episode; also Theon rescuing Yara from Euron’s ship very easily in 8x01 when she was a captive for most of Season 7.

4) And lastly, I looked for things that have been said/mentioned either in show canon or by cast/staff that ignores something previous that is a contradiction of their words - i.e. Jon pledging to Dany in 7x06 after she already said she would help him and Jon in 8x01 saying he gave up his crown so Dany would come help OR Dan Weiss saying in 7x05 that Dany isn’t mad and isn’t her father and then in S8 naming Dany the “Mad Queen”.

There are many of these instances in the series so it wasn’t hard to map out a rough outline of what I believe the “Original Final Season 7” was.

So, why do I even think there even was an original, final Season 7 outline/possibly even an entire Season of script? Why do I think this a likely possibility rather than me just being a delusional Dany Stan who wanted a different ending for my fave?

Back as early as 2013, after season 3 ended, the number 7 was being thrown around. Seven seasons to finish the series.

[Producer Frank] Doelger said: “[The number of series (seasons)] is being discussed as we speak. The third season was the first half of book three, season four will be the second part of book three. George RR Martin has written books four and five; six and seven are pending....I would hope that, if we all survive, and if the audience stays with us we’ll probably get through to seven seasons.”

Keep in mind, at this same time, D&D had also JUST had their meeting with George about the series endpoints.

“Last year we went out to Santa Fe for a week to sit down with him [Martin] and just talk through where things are going, because we don’t know if we are going to catch up and where exactly that would be. If you know the ending, then you can lay the groundwork for it. And so we want to know how everything ends. We want to be able to set things up. So we just sat down with him and literally went through every character.”

Vanity Fair, March 24th, 2014 (LAST year being spring 2013)

So this meeting on the series conclusion took place right when D&D were just polishing up the scripts for Season 4, before filming began that summer). A year after their meeting with George, (the same 2014 Vanity Fair article), D&D apparently played with the idea of an eighth season, but that could have just been the reporter’s speculation.

In other interviews, they were fairly adamant about 7 being the “magic number.” And back in the very beginning when Dave and Dan first started Thrones, they always said they imagined the series taking 70-75 hours to tell the story - so again, the equivalent of 70 episodes or a normal full 7 Seasons of 10 episodes each).

With the major complaint from both last season and season 8 being that it felt “rushed” however, people may wonder how the hell the series was supposed to conclude after Season 6. However, when you think about it, Season 7 being the final season doesn’t seem that odd if it were originally going to be a regular 10 episode arc. The final two seasons only totaled 13 episodes anyway, so really, it’s just three fewer episodes than in the version that we got. And if some episodes in the final Season 7 were over an hour long, the series as a whole would easily reach that 70-75 hours D&D always talked about.

So, what was the original 10 episode final Season 7 supposed to look like?

Season 7 Episode 1: ?

Season 7 Episode 2: ?

Season 7 Episode 3: ?

Season 7 Episode 4: ?

Season 7 Episode 5: ?

Season 7 Episode 6: ?

Season 7 Episode 7: ?

Season 7 Episode 8: ?

Season 7 Episode 9: ?

Season 7 Episode 10: ?

To figure out the outline of the 10 Episode Final Season, let’s start near the end.

ONE FINAL BATTLE

Author George R.R. Martin, whose series of novels forms the basis for Thrones, had revealed to the duo the broad strokes of how his Song of Ice and Fire saga secretly ends, including a description of an epic FINAL BATTLE that’s been teased from the show’s VERY FIRST SCENE. But this climactic confrontation was miles out of reach for a series that cost about $5 million per episode. “We have a very generous budget from HBO, but we know what’s coming down the line and, ultimately, it’s not generous enough,” Benioff said.

EW

When Entertainment Weekly interviewed D&D back during the filming of Season 3, D&D made it sound like George had planned only ONE final battle - the battle between the living and the dead. Not two battles, one with the living against the dead and another later battle with the living against the living. Just ONE.

(Also should note, this says the FINAL BATTLE was teased from the show’s FIRST scene, which contained the White Walkers but not Daenerys. Daenerys didn’t even appear in the episode until sometime much later meaning the “epic final battle” was about the White Walkers, not Dany burning down King’s Landing as we got in show canon).

Both the books and the show begin by showing the audience the threat beyond the Wall. This is the main threat. This is the main event. The Game of Thrones doesn’t matter and is a distraction for both the audience and the characters. In GRRM’s original outline, he explicitly says that the greatest threat to the realm of Westeros is the Others and that there will be one final battle.

So this was our original “Episode 9”. Literally and figuratively. Episode 9 is always supposed to be the episode where the craziest thing happens in the entire season - Ned’s death, Battle of Blackwater, Red Wedding, Battle at Castle Black, Dany flying away on Drogon from the fighting pits of Meereen, Battle of the Bastards.

The only exception to this could be argued to be Season 5 as Jon Snow is killed in Episode 10, not episode 9. However, the change in structure of the season was probably the biggest clue to the audience that Jon wasn’t going to stay dead, as they had never ended a season on a cliffhanger of the death of a major character. We’ve always been given one more episode afterward to process said character’s death.

If Jon were going to die and stay dead, he would have died in Season 5 Episode 9, because of this pattern: Season 1 Episode 9 - Stark death (Ned). Season 2 Episode 9 - Battle (Blackwater). Season 3 Episode 9 - Stark death (Robb). Season 4 Episode 9 - Battle (Castle Black). Season 5 Episode 9 - no Stark death (where there should have been - and a Battle was in Episode 8 - Hardhome). Season 6 Episode 9 makes up for the flaw in the pattern where we get a Battle and a Stark death (Rickon).

Ergo, based on George’s original outline, D&D’s previous statements about George’s plan, and the pattern, 7x09 was the original Battle for the Dawn. So that’s what I’ll call this episode.

Season 7 Episode 1: ?

Season 7 Episode 2: ?

Season 7 Episode 3: ?

Season 7 Episode 4: ?

Season 7 Episode 5: ?

Season 7 Episode 6: ?

Season 7 Episode 7: ?

Season 7 Episode 8: ?

Season 7 Episode 9: The Battle For The Dawn

Season 7 Episode 10: ?

I don’t want to give the entire season away just yet, as I’ll be posting each episode in full detail, but I will fill in one more “event” from the outline above.

In the 7x06 Inside the Episode, David Benioff said something that I’ve always found very interesting.

“The whole path of the show, in some way, had been trying to map out all the episode endpoints and with this one, it was the dragon opening its blue eye. And realizing that the Night King has finally gotten his own weapon of mass destruction.”

This statement really made me think because a) it tells us how D&D planned the series - mapping everything out by episode endpoints. And b) Benioff doesn’t say “the ending of the penultimate episode of Season 7.” He just says, “this one.” So this tells me, if anything, D&D had always planned to kill Viserion and have the Night King raise him as his mount. BUT it also tells me this was always meant to happen in 7x06, regardless of when Season 7 ended….either at an Episode 7 or an Episode 10.

Season 7 Episode 1: ?

Season 7 Episode 2: ?

Season 7 Episode 3: ?

Season 7 Episode 4: ?

Season 7 Episode 5: ?

Season 7 Episode 6: ends with Wight!Viserion opening his blue eye

Season 7 Episode 7: ?

Season 7 Episode 8: ?

Season 7 Episode 9: The Battle For The Dawn

Season 7 Episode 10: ?

So what does each episode of the “Original Final Season 7″ look like? The following posts will be my rendering of a final, ten-episode Season 7 with explanations as to why certain events happen and why they’re likely based on the show canon, Seasons 7 and 8.

Without further adieu, here is what I believe to be the Original Final Season 7:

(Links to come weekly as I post each Episode, if link does not work immediately, just refresh a few times until it does. Two episodes today as Episode 1 is very short and familiar, Episode 3 next Tuesday!)

Original Final Season 7: Preface Post (Current Episode)

Season 7 Episode 1: Family, Duty, Honor

Season 7 Episode 2: Greywater Watch

Season 7 Episode 3: The Last of the Dragons

Season 7 Episode 4: Dragonglass

Season 7 Episode 5: The Storm

Season 7 Episode 6: Summerhall 

Season 7 Episode 7: A City Fit For A King

Season 7 Episode 8: Protectors of the Realm

Season 7 Episode 9: The Battle For The Dawn

Season 7 Episode 10: ?

#game of thrones #daenerys targaryen #daenerys defense squad #jon snow #jon snow defense squad #anti got #anti D&D

[shinneth]

subject to future deletion

Normally I wouldn’t resort to that and I might end up being too lazy to do it anyway, but between getting sick again, dealing with some very intense verbal abuse every day irl, and the monthly burdens of the gender, I’m really not in a good place right now and I need to vent something. 

It’s officially gotten bad enough to interfere with my ability to write, even though I’m at a point in my current story that I’ve been very eager to reach... and every step of the way I’m struggling to write it and I hate what I currently have and it’s taking everything in my current power to not just scrap it entirely. 

Basically, I think I’m failing as a writer.

The irl stuff is actually not what I’m gonna get into because it’s really nothing new and it’ll probably resolve itself, but the side-effect of suffering that kind of negativity is that it enhances lingering negative feelings you’ve had about other things.

Namely, things you do to get away from the pains of the real world. The things you do to have fun and get some enjoyment out of life, no matter how challenging it is to be in this thing because it’s so wrongfully derided and demonized by the majority of your peers.

I try to keep telling myself it’s just because I’m still relatively very new to the fandom compared to my contemporaries, but as I’m typing this right now and listening to my favorite wrestler Shelton Benjamin in an interview, immediately I see the pit I’m starting to fall into. 

Like, it’s uncanny. This is what he said as I started on the above paragraph:

“If I sit and constantly compare myself to other people’s successes, you would drive yourself crazy. Because no matter what, there’s always someone who’s gonna be more successful.”

“I need to remember where I come from; how far I’ve came.”

Basically, in the very small world of Stevidot (and to a lesser extent, SU’s fandom as a whole), despite my efforts, I feel very much like the Shelton Benjamin in a small, dedicated group of talented Stevidot content creators.

Which is to say, I’m basically a midcarder in the mix with a bunch of top-tier legends. Shelton graduated from the same group as some modern very well-known mainstream stars that I can easily associate with a very well-known and accomplished Stevidot contributor.

Shelton graduated with the likes of John Cena, Brock Lesnar, Dave Batista, and Randy Orton. At least half of those names should be at least vaguely familiar for my followers as most of them have had such great success that they’re known in avenues beyond wrestling (save for Randy Orton, but he’s well past outshined his father as a legendary wrestler who’ll never be forgotten). 

I could easily say Watcher is the John Cena of Stevidot, while Platon’s probably the Brock Lesnar... sinderella0069′s the Batista. But I honestly don’t feel like I’ve done enough (or stood out enough) to even be a Randy Orton for this pairing. I’d at least give that honor to Ig just for being so active with it on Tumblr despite the wave of hatred thrown her way (even though she’s shifted focus onto Stevinel now). 

Again, I keep trying to tell myself that it’s because I’m not even remotely as tenured in the fandom as any of them are. 

Then I see this said in a review on a very recently-made Stevidot story...

And said reviewer has not once ever left a review on any Stevidot story of mine. Not even a follow or a favorite or a goddamned kudos. Considering I currently have an actively-updated Stevidot story going on (and a two-shot that I just did last month), I highly doubt my stuff was just overlooked.

Now, is it true that Stevidot is hard to come by? Of course it is. But this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a fellow Stevidot fan lament about the lack of Stevidot content while completely disregarding anything I contribute.

I know there’s one that outright doesn’t like my content based on personal taste (nothing to do with Stevidot itself, just how I execute it). There’s another big-name who shows no interest whatsoever in reading what I have to offer - and at this point I feel that’s for the best, because I have a feeling they’d hate my execution as well. 

While I’ve always primarily written for myself, I also felt a great fulfillment for providing content for a niche crowd that really deserves more than what they have. I think Stevidot’s a fantastic pairing with tons of unexplored potential and should be much more readily available than it actually is. Even if I tend to not get many reviews, I keep track of the site traffic every day on my stories and I know for sure that there are people reading my stuff. Since I’m really bad at leaving reviews myself, I go out of my way not to whine about not having very many overall for my series since I’d be a huge-ass hypocrite to do so. 

However.

Statements like the the aforementioned review and statements I’ve seen elsewhere by those who I know are at least aware of me are like stakes through the heart.

Because it can only mean one thing: my content doesn’t count.

I’m honestly not sure which is worse for me; being critically panned for the stuff I’ve put my all into over the past year, or being treated like my stuff doesn’t even exist. 

I prided myself on contributing as much as I did for Stevidot over this past year. Quantity doesn’t = automatic quality, but I’ve got 20+ years of writing experience in, so even someone with a shit self-esteem like myself can’t just say I’m an objectively bad writer, because I’m not. 

But apparently it doesn’t matter that I put in over half a million worlds in the name of Stevidot to a good chunk of the very tiny Stevidot fanbase; according to them, my contributions are irrelevant.

Is it my fault?

One thing I will admit is a detriment to my particular brand of Stevidot is that, save for one story (which happens to be by far my most successful Stevidot story in terms of recognition numbers), the rest of my series follows a continuous narrative that greatly deviates from canon as of Change Your Mind. I’m also notoriously a very verbose kind of writer - I have the tl;dr curse something fierce. 

So all stories I’ve written since my main 3-act series (which ended up being nearly 200k in length on its own) have been direct sequels to that. Because of the heavy deviation from CYM, the environment of the following stories is very different and easy to get lost in if you skipped GA entirely. 

Because there are so many dangling threads and new opportunities to be had after GA ended, I basically committed myself to my AU.

It’s not like anyone else is going to explore these possibilities.

Beyond that, honestly, I just don’t want to rewire my brain back to the canon status quo - not after the shitloads of character development I’ve not only given Steven and Peridot, but nearly everyone at this point has had a moment or two of really intense character growth. 

I like having Peridot co-star with Steven. I like having her become a more competent and active teammate than she’s portrayed in canon (while still giving her comic relief moments). I like that I didn’t redeem the Diamonds and instead had them killed off to force our protagonists to deal with the fallout of the collapse of a mighty empire on a much grander scale than what’s going on in the actual show.

In a way, this AU of mine has helped me cope with the shortcomings of the show itself. I already went on a stupid tirade once about how the sadistic nature of my writing has basically made me no-sell whatever trauma Rebecca Sugar’s throwing on Steven and upsetting everyone else. I’m still fairly certain I’m still outdoing her in that department. 

And because 100% of my passion for creating Stevidot is through this narrative I weaved, I have no desire to leave it. 

So I’ll admit my stories aren’t exactly the most accessible to the average reader who hasn’t been following my work since Day 1. 

Then again... I first got into Sinderella’s series completely ass-backwards at first. I eventually read it in the proper order, and like many of the great Stevidot epics, it’s canon divergent from a much earlier point in the series, so it was very easy to get confused about why certain things happened differently at first... but ultimately, I wasn’t that bothered by it because I just wanted some good Stevidot. I’d figure out the finer details later. 

I really do owe this author more props than I’ve actually given - she’s one out of two readers I know for a fact have been following my series since the beginning without missing a beat. I’ll probably review her newest story sooner or later now that it’s complete. 

Not gonna lie, though... when I saw our numbers side-by-side like this:

Considering they’re very similar stories (Stevidot smuts that were originally meant to be one-shots), mine is over a month old and hers is only a few days old and there’s already that big of a gap in our numbers? 

It’s hard not to feel like a failure; like I did something horribly wrong to suck this bad by comparison. 

I really should stress that I bear no ill will against Sinderella or any Stevidot author; this isn’t a competition, so this isn’t a matter of popularity. I knew coming into this that I wouldn’t get popular overnight; especially not with such an unpopular ship being the focus of my story. 

But when other Stevidot stories get frequent reviewers that I’ve never seen once acknowledge my stories even passively, I can’t help but feel like I’ve massively fucked up somewhere. That despite all my efforts, I might as well be invisible. When they say “Oh, good thing your story is here! It’s been such a Stevidot drought around here until you came along!” to other authors after I’ve written half a million fucking words in under a year for this ship...

You know, is it unreasonable to feel that I utterly fucking failed in several ways? 

I guess it’s no wonder why I’m struggling to keep writing. I still want to - like I said, I’m at a part I’ve been eager to write for a while now - but ever since I started it, I’ve just hated almost all of what I have so far (almost 8k words). And I’m really having trouble trying to salvage it.

I’m honestly not the type who’d scrap all my progress and start from scratch once I’ve gotten this far in. But maybe I’ll have to make an exception this time, because I think I finally made the mistake of trying to write while being mentally and emotionally distraught.

I thought I’d calm down once I wrote all this out, but honestly, I’m not really feeling it. Now I’m wondering if I should have just reached out to someone instead of making this, because now I’ll come off as a whiner with my pansy-ass first-world problems. 

But then again, I’d be an asshole to subject anyone to my idiotic woes. 

Maybe this’ll pass. I’m hoping it’ll pass. I really, really really really don’t want to lose my drive to write again. I was used to it coming and going in short and random spurts for almost all my life - then it finally came to me and stayed with me just a little under a year ago, and I’ve been desperate not to let it go because I’ve been more productive now than I’ve ever been in my 20+ tenure as a writer. 

I don’t want this to go away. There’s still so much more I want to tell. 

But then my logic goes... if you tell the story and no one’s there to hear it, is it ever really told?

#irl shit #stevidot #fanfiction #writing #self-esteem issues #self-worth issues #a cry for help #or therapy #or something #I probably shouldn't have made this #where did i go wrong

[zuwritesstuff]

When You Try to Write A Hurt/Comfort Candlenights Story

(Wow, posting? Crazy- Find this story on AO3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22228207)

TW: Blood, injury, gun mention, weapon mention, some slightly suggestive jokes, cussing, its a hurt/comfort story if you can’t tell

Word Count: 3k

A/N- so i got really into TAZ and wrote this for my friend so, uh, enjoy ( @hiding-in-a-corner-reading i forgot to post this here whoops )

Kravtiz Ajal limped down a rusted, creaky fire escape, stumbling his way down the steps. His two compatriots, Barry and Lup Bluejeans-Enno looked at him with worry. Lup was holding him up with one arm, while Kravtiz stemmed the flow of his blood with his other hand, having just been stabbed. Barry, looking out and leading the way, holding his gun at the ready, knocked on the frosted-over window that stood before him as Lup leaned Kravtiz onto the nearby railing, exhausted. 

Kravtiz saw as Takoda Enno, his boyfriend, looked out the window, paused, and rushed over with a concerned look that never passed his features.

“What the fuck did you do-” he asked, opening the window and pulling Kravtiz by hooking his arms under his and pulling with all his might. Kravtiz, having been stabbed, winced at the movement but said nothing of it.

“Hey, Taako, good to see you too my love, light of my life,” Kravtiz said, words slurring. “I might have gotten stabbed a little bit, but just a little, no need to panic or whatever, just gotta rest a bit.” 

“What the actual, complete fuck.”

“We’re real sorry, Taako,” Barry said, taking one of Kravtiz’s arms and leading him to the bathroom in the hallway. “Mission went wrong, really wrong, and you were closer than the safe house, I didn’t know if he could make it further.” Barry helped Kravtiz into the bathroom, putting him down softly into the bathtub. Lup put a hand on Taako’s shoulder as he watched the scene unfold before him.

“He took the knife for me, bastard.” Lup said, shaking her head. “He didn’t have to do that.”

“If he didn’t, you’d be dead, babe,” Barry added, in the process of removing Kravtiz’s shirt to look at the wound better, covering it with Kravtiz’s balled up shirt. “I’m grateful, but this is bad. I’m no doctor, but…” He shrugged, looking at the two of them. “I think we should call Merle, like, now.”

“I got it.” Taako said, turning away quickly from the two of them. He went to his living room, taking a second to collect himself before calling their friend, Dr. Merle Highchurch. 

“Yello, this is Dr. Merle Highchurch, how may I help you?” A cheery voice rang from the other side of the call.

“Cut the shit, Merle, I know you have me in your contacts as, ‘Taako or Lup’, I need some help.”

“Well, is this Taako or Lup?”

“Taako, but I know you don’t know how to change my contact name- whatever, come to my apartment, like now.”

“At this hour?”

“Yeah, uh,” Taako swallowed, biting his lip before taking a deep breath and saying, “Uh, you know that mission the Reapers went on tonight?” Merle hummed in assent. “It went wrong. Kravtiz is...uh, he’s hurt bad Merle.”

Taako waited for a beat before he heard Merle’s more serious voice say, “Of course. Lucretia and Magnus can run the ship for a while, give me ten minutes, alright kiddo?”

“Yeah, thanks, Merle.”

“Talk to you soon, keep pressure on the wound in the meantime, don’t let him lose too much blood.”

Taako clicked off the phone and walked back to the bathroom where Barry and Lup looked at him expectantly. He relayed the information and sighed, leaning on the wall. They, including Merle, Lucretia Austen, Magnus Burnsides, Dave N. Port, Angus McDonald, and several others served B.O.B., aka The Bureau of Benevolence, a secret organization dedicated to taking down organizations that harmed the public but that the federal government couldn’t take down legally. They had been organized into elite groups of three depending on their individual skills. There was Kravtiz, Lup and Barry, affectionately and formally known as the Reaper Squad for their terrifying efficiency and elite jobs, Merle, Magnus, and Taako, affectionately known as Tres Horny Boys, (it was Lup’s idea, after having walked in on literally every single one of them doing unsavory things at very different times), and Lucretia, Dave, and Angus known as the Nerds, (Merle came up with it and he was too excited for anyone to turn it down).

At the moment, however, the Reaper squad and ⅓ of Tres Horny Boys were crammed into Taako’s tiny apartment bathroom, unsure of what to say. Lup had taken over keeping pressure on the wound and Kravtiz was still in the bathtub, eyes locked onto the ceiling, breathing raggedly. 

At last, Taako broke the silence. “W-what happened?”

“The mission was to get in, take out the boss, and get out. That was it.” Lup said, unable to look Taako in the eyes. “But we had bad information- someone told us something wrong and when we got in there were so many more guards, different security measures, doomed from the fucking start.” She scoffed and shook her head. “When I get my hands on that murderous traitor…” She rolled her shoulders and gritted her teeth, a nervous habit. “We just managed to get him out.”

“You guys should go get some sleep.” Taako said, seething quietly. “You can shower in my bedroom and sleep there, I can stay up for Merle.” Taako kneeled next to his sister, taking the balled up, stained cloth from her. Lup looked at Taako, a little nervous.

“T, I really am sorry.”

“Lulu, it wasn’t your fault.” Taako looked at his sister, a ghost of his usual smile reassuring her, kind of. “It’s part of the job, we all know that, and Merle’s on his way.” She sighed and nodded, standing up and walking out of the room with Barry, but not before casting one last, sad look at her friend, bleeding out in the bathtub.

                                                      ~

Merle had come and gone, stitching up and bandaging the wound.

“Now, listen- he’s out cold right now, which is probably the best scenario since he lost a lot of blood.” He said as he washed his hands. “I can’t imagine him being 100% up to speed after he wakes up, but maybe move him from the bathtub as soon as possible.”

Taako nodded and looked over towards the bathroom. “I’ll wait until he gets up. Lup and Barry are also out cold right now, in a good way. Did they tell you about what happened?” 

“Mhm- ran into Barry on his way out of the shower. And, apparently, Lup isn’t taking it very well. Don’t mean to dump that on you too, you’ve got enough to deal with but…” Merle looked away and shrugged. “When she wakes up, I can get Cretia and Barry to try to talk to some sense into her.” Taako looked at him quizzically and Merle sighed, looking up at him. “She’s going back in the morning to finish off the traitor and the boss, supposedly.”

“She can get in line,” Taako muttered, scowling at the floor. “Great minds think alike, I suppose.”

“Taako, kiddo, you can’t.”

“Why not?” Taako fired back. “They almost killed Kravtiz, Merle. Almost killed Lup. You think I can stand by while my boyfriend is bleeding out in my tub and my sister thinks it’s her fault? No, I won’t. I can’t just, ” He waved his hands around helplessly. “Can’t just sit around, you know?”

“I think you can sit long enough for your boyfriend to get better because if he isn’t getting the care he needs, he’s gonna get worse. You know that- I sure as hell know you do. I don’t need to get the finger puppets to explain this, do I?”

“Fuck off, that was one time.”

Merle chuckled and put a hand on Taako’s shoulder, stretching a bit. “I know you get it, son. Cool off a little, I know Barry’ll help. I’ll come back in the morning with the rest of the crew to visit. Kravtiz will be awake by then, promise.” 

“Fine. I trust you Merle, but if we don’t have a plan to take those guys out in 48 hours, I’m doing it myself.” Taako said, smiling down at him a little, his expression not matching his words.

Merle nodded solemnly. “Better get on it then, huh? Maybe I’ll wake everyone up a little earlier than intended...”

                                                       ~

Taako sat on his counter, fidgeting quietly. He sat with his head leaned back onto his mirror, kicking his legs, waiting for Kravtiz to wake. He was peacefully sleeping in Taako’s tub, still, but now with a pillow behind him and blanket wrapping him up. Taako blew a puff of air out, trying to move a stray piece of hair, escaped from his ponytail through all the ruckus. It didn’t move, and he sat there, trying to move this piece of hair for a while as Kravtiz, freshly awake, watched in amusement. 

“Having a good time there, T?” Kravtiz asked, voice raspy from disuse. 

“Having a wonderful time Kravtiz.” Taako said instinctively, then looking up in amazement, he said, “Wait- what the fuck?” He leaped from the counter, rushing over, kneeling to inspect him. Kravtiz struggled to get up, wincing at the wound.

“Morning- night? Afternoon?” He shook his head, closing his eyes. “Hiya, though.” Taako laughed gleefully, leaning over the tub to kiss Kravtiz, cupping his face. Kravtiz, however weak he was, kissed back, one hand in Taako’s hair, the other supporting him. 

“H-how are you feeling? Let me look at the wound, I gotta rewrap the bandages I think?” Taako said, breaking away, looking around. Kravtiz nodded, sinking back into the tub.

“Maybe I can get out of the tub first?”

“After, if any blood gets on my couch I’ll stab you myself.”

“Topical.” Kravtiz said, smiling as he leaned his head back. Taako grabbed the blanket covering him, pulled it away gently, apologizing softly as Kravtiz swore because of the cold. Kravtiz inspected the wound, wincing again as Taako pulled the bandages away.

“Yuck.” Kravtiz said, biting his lip and looking away. 

“Merle did his best at 2 am, with you bleeding out in my one good tub.” Kravtiz hummed in assent, keeping his eyes on the ceiling until Taako was done. He looked down again, before reaching for his shirt, then realizing it was on the floor, covered in his own blood. 

“Super yuck. Was it really that bad?” 

“Yeah…” Taako said, handing him one of his own oversized shirts. “It was pretty bad. Merle said something about,” he hunched over, lowering his voice, “‘narrowly missed a vital organ, could have been super duper bad, whatever will I do with you punks’” he straightened out, “So the usual.” 

“Ah, obviously…” Kravtiz trailed off, arms poised to hoist himself out of the tub, looking at Taako. “A little help please, dear.”

Taako bit his lip, chewing nervously. “You sure? I can get more blankets so you don’t have to move, I don’t, uh…” He looked down, unable to meet Kravtiz’s eyes. “I don’t want you to get more hurt.” 

“Oh, darling, come here- I’m gonna be okay, promise.” He added as Taako trudged over, still not meeting his eyes, sitting cross-legged near the tub. Kravtiz relaxed back into the tub, reaching a hand out towards Taako, who took it silently. They sat in silence a bit, Kravtiz squeezing Taako’s hand comfortingly. 

“Krav, darling, I love you, but when I saw you bleeding out, I-I didn’t know if you were gonna...you know?” Taako said, breaking the silence of the bathroom. Kravtiz looked up at him, eyes soft.

“I just- I needed to protect Lup, you know? It would have killed her, I knew I was gonna be okay.”

“That’s the thing though, love, you didn’t. You didn’t know and if it had killed you, what-what could I have done?” Taako let the question linger in the air before saying, “I’m so, so grateful but god, Kravtiz, what would I have done?”

“You would have been okay, but,” he sighed, looking back up to the ceiling. “I know I would have been a bit disgruntled, that’s for sure.” Taako laughed, scratching the back of his neck and shrugging in assent. “I promise you, Taako, whenever I go on missions, my top priority? You. Coming back to you, that’s all I want, all I need. Someone I can come home to, someone who can be my home.”

Taako, clearly holding back a smile, looked off to the side. “You’re a huge fucking sap, you know that, right?” Kravtiz laughed loudly, wincing slightly as it disturbed his newly stitched skin. Taako was at his side in an instant, worried, hands hovering over the wound. Kravtiz held up a hand, closing his eyes and breathing deeply before nodding to Taako, who very, very carefully helped him up, draping his arm under Kravtiz’s, helping him out into the hallway where they bumped into Barry. Barry locked eyes with Kravtiz, shocked at his appearance so soon. A look of understanding and gratefulness passed between them, before Barry took his other side, helping Kravtiz to the couch, where he, and Taako, slept for the rest of the night.

                                                       ~

“Kravtiz, you absolute dumbass,” Magnus announced after barging into Taako’s apartment, Lucretia, Merle, Angus, and Dave closely behind, who were all clearly trying to keep him from doing so. “I can’t believe you got yourself stabbed- your whole thing is stabbing other people.”

Kravtiz scrunched up his face, sitting up. The four staying at the apartment had all changed and cleaned up, and Taako and Lup were in the kitchen cooking a feast for everyone, Barry sitting with Kravtiz and entertaining him with card games, chess, and whatever else they could get their hands on. At the moment though, he pushed his hair back and rolled his eyes at Magnus.

“Haha, what is it you do again?” Kravtiz smirked up at Magnus who laughed.

“I’m a tank, clearly,” he said, flexing and winking at Kravtiz, who chuckled. Lucretia rolled her eyes and patted Magnus’s shoulder. 

“Sure thing- how’re you feeling Krav?”

“Like I got stabbed, Cretia, how are you?”

‘Get stabbed once and become a comedian, huh?’ Dave signed, sitting next to Barry, looking over the chessboard where Kravtiz was getting thoroughly beaten. 

“Hey! I was a comedian before I got stabbed, thank you very much.” He said to Dave, who was mute- he had been at the B.O.B. pretty much longer than almost everyone there, so they all had to pick up ASL pretty quickly to understand what he was saying. Dave raised an eyebrow pointedly at him.

 “No love, you never were.” Taako said, emerging from the kitchen with an apron that said, “Kiss the Cook” in curly red letters. He greeted all the visitors, fist-bumping Magnus, an elaborate handshake for Angus, (who was very excited for it), a wave for Dave, (which he said out loud), and a hug for Lucretia and Merle, (who was surprised, but seeing as Taako’s hugs towards him were somewhat limited, he hugged back, no questions asked). “Can’t believe it took my boyfriend getting stabbed for everyone to actually come to my apartment.”

“Hey, sir, wait-” Angus started. He came over to the apartment once or twice a week since he was Taako’s apprentice in all the weaponry and sneakery. He was a new recruit at the B.O.B., and when he was first assigned there after trying to go after once of their assignments before they had even figured out who it was, everyone was a little apprehensive at having a literal child, (ish), on the team, but he had grown on them, especially Taako. While Lucretia taught him the more...subtle ways of being a spy and Magnus taught him hand-to-hand combat, Taako taught him how to handle weapons, and then invited him over for dinner, and now he was more like a father to Angus, though he’d never admit it.

“Not you Angus,” Taako said, waving away any thoughts to the contrary, “You’re an angel and I’m thrilled to have you here.”

“Why thank you.”

As this happened, Merle had walked over to Kravtiz, lifting his shirt up and examining the bandages. “Hmm…” he said, rubbing his chin. “Looks good, but I don’t want you moving around too much.” He glanced over at Taako. “Bed rest, alright?”

“Yes, sir,” Taako said, mock saluting. “I will keep him in my bed, thanks.” 

Merle rolled his eyes, pulling down Kravtiz’s shirt. “Have you had anything to eat yet?”

“Some bread and water- I’m waiting for the famous Enno breakfast, hopefully, I can keep that down.”

“‘Scuse me, but I’m an Enno-Bluejeans, thank you very much,” Lup said, brushing her hands on her short black skirt, (it was actually Taako’s, borrowed this morning, so Taako looked very offended), untying another “Kiss the Cook” apron, this time with light blue cursive letters, as Barry beamed with pride at her words, straightening slightly and smiling widely. She blew him a kiss as Taako gagged at their PDA behind her back. She, without looking behind her, flipped him off over her shoulder and said, “Anyway, breakfast is ready, everyone help me bring it out here. Except you, Krav, Jesus-” she added, as Kravtiz made to get up. 

“Damn, I wanted to get away from this game.” He muttered, looking over the board. Barry laughed and patted him on the shoulder. 

“I’m telling you, bud, I was president of the chess club back in high school.”

“Now I know this doesn’t mean much coming from me,” Lucretia said, putting a platter of cut fruit on the table in front of them, which was quickly getting filled with other food, “But you, Barold, are a nerd.” 

“Lu, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever told me.”

‘You know, I don’t think that’s true’ Dave signed after bringing the last of the food over as Magnus held literally enough chairs for everyone, thinking. ‘Lucretia is a very nice person.’

Lucretia signed thank you to him and sat with the rest of them, digging into the feast the twins prepared. They talked about everything and anything- except last night’s mission of course. There was plenty of other things to talk about, like Angus’s training, gossip from the office, (Carey and Killian finally started dating, how Magnus’s wife, Julia, and her team was doing, the other department’s drama, etc.) and other stuff until there was a comfortable lull in the conversation, filled with the scraping of forks, and content sighs. 

“Uh, sirs? And ma’ams?” Angus said timidly, putting his fork and knife down. Everyone looks up expectantly at him. He took a deep breath and said. “I’ve been thinking about what happened last night, and it has led me to believe that, um, something is up. In the Bureau itself.” They all looked shocked as he continued. “We know you got the information from an informer, who probably works for the Bureau- but what if it wasn’t the informer? What if someone in the Bureau wanted this to go wrong?” 

“Listen, kiddo, I know mysterying it out is your thing but, uh, how do you know?” Merle asked, waving around a piece of waffle.

“Because this is the second time an agent has gotten hurt on an informers tip- but there’s no way the informers were related.” Everyone swiveled to look at Magnus who put his fork down with a clatter. They knew Angus was talking about a recent incident that had left his wife and her father in the hospital. Julia had managed to pull through, though with serious injuries, but her father hadn’t. Magnus looked down at his plate, processing. Then he looked up, jaw clenched, at Angus.

“You think it was the same person?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry I didn’t detect foul play before.” He said, looking at Magnus and then Kravtiz, slightly guilty. Lucretia put her hand on Angus’s shoulder, reassuring him.

“Alright, kid,” Taako said, putting his fork down too. “Let’s get to work.”

                                        To be continued

#the adventure zone #taz fanfic #taz balance #taz kravitz #taz barry #taz taako #taz magnus #taz merle #taz lup #taz angus #taz lucretia #taakitz #taz davenport #spy au #tw blood #tw injury #tw gun mention #;) #i do have more planned #also this is my first time writing for taz please dont come for me #magnus burnsides #taako taaco #merle highchurch #lucretia #kravitz #barry bluejeans #lup taaco #angus mcdonald #davenport #please god dont let this flop

[dukereviewsmovies]

Duke Reviews: Guardians Of The Galaxy

Hello, I'm Andrew Leduc And Welcome To Duke Reviews As We Continue Our Look At The Marvel Cinematic Universe...

By Talking About The Guardians Of The Galaxy...

And I Have To Admit Before This Movie Came Out I Knew Who The Guardians Of The Galaxy Were As I Saw Them In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Animated Series The Possibility Of Me Wanting To See Them In A Movie Wasn't Too Bright But I Still Wasn't With Everyone Else Who At The Time Believed It Was Going To Bomb

So, When Trailers Came Out, I Was Excited To See The Film So I Eventually Saw It...

The Film Is About A Ravager Named Peter Quill (Played By Chris Pratt) Who Goes By Star Lord Who Forms An Uneasy Alliance With The Daughter Of Thanos, Gamora (Played By Zoe Saldana) A Green Warrior Who Seeks Revenge Named Drax (Played By Dave Batista) A Wisecracking Raccoon Named Rocket (Voiced By Bradley Cooper) And A Walking Tree Named Groot (Voiced By Vin Diesel) Who Go On The Run After Stealing A Powerful Artifact...

Will They Manage To Get Rid Of This Artifact Before Ronan The Accuser (Played By Lee Pace) And The Other Daughter Of Thanos, Nebula (Played By Karen Gillian) Find Them?

Let's Find Out As We Watch Guardians Of The Galaxy..

The Film Starts On Earth In 1988, As A Young Peter Quill Is At A Hospital Where His Mom Is Dying From A Tumor In Her Head...

Yes, It Is Arnold So Shut Up...

Anyway, With His Mother Not Having Much Time Left, His Uncle (I Guess?) Played By James Gunn And Joss Whedon Regular Gregg Henry Brings Peter In To Say Goodbye To His Mom, But Not Wanting To Say Goodbye To His Mom, Peter Runs Out Of The Hospital Only To Be Abducted By Aliens...

Only To Time Jump 26 Years Later To The Planet Morag, Where A Now Grown Up Peter (Played By Chris Pratt) Who Goes By Star-Lord Arrives On His Ship The Milano (Named After Alyssa Milano)...

Well, At Least It Isn't Named After Rose McGowan...

To Get An Item On The Planet Which Leads To One The Best Scenes In This Movie...

The Opening Credits...

And By God, This Scene Is Just Fantastic Despite Them Ruining It In Avengers Endgame...

(Start At 0:26, End At 0:40)

You See What You've Done, Russo Brothers! You've Made The Fanboys Cry! It's Okay, This Scene Is Awesome....Shh...

Eventually Finding And Geting What He's Looking For, Star-Lord Is Soon Confronted By One Of Ronan The Accuser's Warriors Korath The Pursuer Who Wants What He's Got But He's Like Screw This And Decides To Fight Them...

(Start At 1:00, End At 2:50)

Being Contacted By His Boss, Yondu (Played By Another James Gunn Regular Michael Rooker) He Asks Quill Where He Is But He Decides Not To Tell Him That And Says That He's Keeping The Orb For Himself Which Leads Yondu To Put A Bounty Out On Quill While Worrying About Who Else Wanted The Orb...

Which Leads To The Introduction Of The Big Bad Of The Film, Ronan The Accuser (Played By Ned The Piemaker) On Board His Ship, The Dark Aster. Who Decides Not To Abide By The Treaty His People, The Kree Have Signed With The Xandarians Of Xandar Recently Because He Believes Their Culture To Be A Disease Upon The Galaxy...

And They Killed His Family So Many Years Ago...

Well, That Might Be A Good Reason To Want To Kill Them...

With Korath Returning, He Tells Ronan About Star-Lord And Says That He's On His Way To Xandar To Give It To Someone Called The Broker, Wanting To Retrieve The Orb To Give It To Thanos So He Can Wipe Out Xandar In Repayment For His Services, Ronan Sends One Of Thanos' Daughters, Gamora (Played By Lieutenant Uhura) To Retrieve It For Him From Star Lord On Xandar...

Cutting To Xandar We Get Our Stan Lee Cameo When Rocket (Played By Faceman) And Groot (Played By Dominic Torretto) Look For Potential Targets To Get Money For...

Stan Lee Cameo!

Eventually Star Lord, Rocket Sees How Much He's Worth And Turns Out...

It's Alot So They Decide To Go After Him...

Taking The Orb To The Broker In His Shop, Star-Lord Mentions That Ronan Was After It Which Forces The Broker To Say No Thank You To The Orb And Tells Star Lord To Get Out As He's Afraid For His Life...

Running Into Gamora, She Steals The Orb From Star Lord Which Leads To A Fight Between The Two But When Rocket And Groot Get Involved Someone Calls In The Nova Corp Led By Mr. Cellophane Himself, John C. Riley And They Arrest All 4 Of Them...

Back At Nova Corp HQ, Nova Prime, Played By Cruella De Vil Tries To Get The Kree To Work With Them In Stopping Ronan But They're Too Busy Trying To Find Captain Marvel And The Skrulls To Give A Shit...

Meanwhile, Downstairs Riley Who Actually Plays A Character Named Dey Shows His Boss, The Tick, Star Lord And The Others And He Decides To Send Them To A High Security Prison Called The Kyln...

Given Prison Garb, They're All Mixed In With All The Other Prisoners, One Of Them Being Voiced By Nathan Fillion...

Seriously!?! You Have The Most Badass Browncoat In The Verse And You Only Use Him For A Voice Over Character?!? Screw You, Marvel, Screw You!

Being Taken That Night By Prisoners Who Have Lost Their Families To Either Ronan Or Thanos, They're Stopped By Drax The Destroyer (Played By Dave Batista) Who Wants To Kill Gamora Himself In Revenge For Ronan Killing His Family Despite Gamora Saying Earlier That She Wasn't Getting The Orb For Ronan But For A Third Party Seller...

Not Believing Gamora, Star Lord Intervenes To Say That Because She's Betraying Ronan It's Most Likely That Ronan Will Come Get Her Eventually Which Will Give Drax The Opportunity To Kill Him, So Knowing Star-Lord Is Right He Lets Her Go...

Taking Her Back To Her Cell, Star Lord Wants In On Gamora's Deal Despite Rocket Wanting To Take Star Lord To Yondu After They Escape But After Hearing Gamora's Buyer Is Paying More For The Orb Than Yondu Is For Star Lord, Rocket And Groot Are In...

Summoned By Thanos When They Discover Gamora Had Her Own Plans, Ronan Explains To Thanos What Has Happened Despite The Other Not Helping The Situation So Ronan Kills Him...

Bored By Ronan's Words, Thanos Just Says That He Will Honor The Agreement He Made If Ronan Brings Him The Orb If Not...Well I Think You Know What Will Happen...

Coming Up With An Escape Plan, Which Includes One Of The Security Guards Bands, A Prisoner's Prosthetic Leg And A Quarnyx Battery By The Control Tower, Groot Gets It For Them Which Forces Them To Place Their Plan Into Action Now...

(Start At 0:30)

Asking For The Coordinates For Her Buyer, Gamora Says That They're Going The Right Way And That She'll Contact Him While Back At The Kyln, Ronan, Thanos' Other Daughter, Nebula (Played By Ruby Roundhouse) And Some Of His Soldiers Invade To Find Out Where Gamora And The Orb Went To No Avail...

Back On Xandar, Yondu Discovers Through The Broker What Is In The Orb And Who His Buyer Is And It Turns Out That It's The Collector (Played By DJ The Codebreaker)...

But Wait A Minute...

Doesn't The Collector Have The Aether? And Didn't Volstagg Say In Thor: The Dark World Say That Having 2 Infinity Stones In One Place Is A Bad Idea?

Arriving At The Place Where The Collector Is Dubbed Knowhere, The Team Gets Drinks And Has Some Fun While Waiting For The Collector...

Going Outside To Talk With Gamora, It Leads To A Bit Of A Romantic Scene With Her And Star Lord, Until Gamora Backs Away Believing That Star Lord Is Pulling A Human Trick On Her. But Hearing Noise Inside, They Go In To See Drax, Rocket And Groot Having A Drunken Fight With Each Other...

Luckily Before They Kill Each Other, The Collector's Assistant Comes In To Get Them For Her Master...

Entering The Collector's Wherehouse, They See Some Of The Things He's Collected Including Cosmo The Space Dog Before The Team Is Introduced To The Collector Himself...

Opening The Orb, It Is Revealed To Be An Infinity Stone Which Leads The Collector To Tell The Team About How After The Big Bang, Six Infinity Stones Were Created And Wielded By Beings With Extraordinary Strength Though The Energy From Said Stones Eventually Wiped Them All Out...

Not Hearing That Whole Infinity Stone Speech Apparently, The Collector's Assistant Takes The Stone And Basically Destroys His Entire Collection, Which Forces The Team To Take The Stone Elsewhere With Gamora And Star-Lord Suggesting The Nova Corp...

But While Star-Lord, Gamora, Rocket And Groot Were Dealing With The Collector, Drax Had Someone Call Ronan And His Forces So He Could Get His Revenge...

(Start At 0:54)

With Ronan Defeating Drax And Getting The Stone Along With Nebula Destroying Gamora's Spacecraft, Star Lord Calls Yondu's Ship To Pick Them Up As He Goes Out To Save Gamora By Giving Her His Oxygen Mask...

Luckily (Unlike Yondu Himself) Star Lord And Gamora Are Saved By Yondu Before Star Lord Can Die...

Groot Saves Drax Who Was Mostly Dead (And As We All Know There's A Difference Between Mostly Dead And All Dead) Admits He Was A Fool For Calling Ronan Blaming It On The Grief And Anger Over The Loss Of His Family...

As Rocket Arrives To Get Groot So They Can Get As Far Away As They Can From Ronan And His Forces Before They Wipe Out Xandar And Possibly The Entire Galaxy, But Groot Wants To Stay And Save His New Friends Along With Drax To Rocket's Dismay...

Meanwhile On The Dark Aster, After Discovering What Thanos Wanted, Ronan Betrays Thanos And Takes The Stone For Himself To Use To Destroy Xandar And Once He Is Done, Destroy Thanos Himself With Nebula By Ronan's Side...

On-Board Yondu's Ravager Ship, Star Lord And Gamora Manage To Make A Deal With Yondu And His Ravagers To Help Them Take Down Ronan In Exchange For The Stone To Which Yondu Agrees Despite Rocket And The Others Trying To Save Star Lord And Gamora...

The Team Argues While Coming Up With A Plan But Star Lord Eventually Gives Everyone A Reason "To Give A Shit And Not Run Away" Which Gets Them To Stand By Him...

So, The New Plan Is That Rocket Will Lead A Team That Will Blow A Hole Into The Dark Aster's Starboard Hull So The Milano And Yondu's Craft Can Enter The Ship. After That Gamora Will Deactivate A Impenetrable Shield To The Main Deck Where Ronan Is So Star Lord Can Use The Rocket's Hadron Enforcer To Kill Ronan...

They Give The Ravagers Containment Cases For The Stone While Star Lord Contacts Dey From The Nova Corp To Try To Get Them To Help Them Save Xandar...

With Everyone On The Team Except Groot Surviving (For Now) They're Surprised To See Ronan Survived As Well. About To Wipe Xandar Out, Star Lord Pulls A Last Ditch Effort Of A Dance Off To Distract Ronan While Rocket Prepares To Fire The Hadron Enforcer At Ronan...

Firing It At Ronan's Hammer, Rocket Destroys It So Star Lord Can Get The Stone, Unable To Handle The Energy The Team Takes Each Others Hands To Take A Piece Of The Energy For Themselves...

Using The Power Of The Stone To Wipe Ronan Out, Star Lord Places The Stone In One Of The Containers Only To Give It To Yondu Despite Begging Him To Reconsider...

Yep, Star Lord Gives Yondu A Fake And Gives The Real Stone To The Nova Corp, Who Discover That Star Lord's Mother Is An Earthling But His Father Is Something Else Entirely While Drax Decides Ronan Was Just A Puppet And That It's Really Thanos He Needs To Kill...

Also For Helping Them With Ronan The Nova Corp Gives The Team A New Ship Along With Clean Criminal Records, Oh And We Discover Groot's Alive...

As The Guardians Fly Off On Another Adventure Which Leads To The Mid Credit Scene Of The Movie With...

Dancing Groot...

And What Can I Say About This Scene? You've Heard About It, You Love It, Who Doesn't? It's Cute And Funny Period....

After The Credits Role We Get A End Credits Scene Back At The Collector's Wherehouse Where We Get A Cameo From Howard The Duck (Voiced By Seth Green)

And That's Guardians Of The Galaxy And What Can I Say About It Except It's One Of The MCU'S Best...

The Story Is Fantastic, The Characters Are Well Written, The Effects Are Awesome And I Honestly Have No Complaints For This Movie Whatsoever And I Say See It...

Till Next Time, This Is Duke And Next Week We're Looking At Age Of Ultron!

#guardians of the galaxy #chris pratt #zoe saldana #dave bautista #bradley cooper #vin diesel #lee pace #karen gillan #john c. reilly #star lord #gamora #rocket raccoon #Groot #nebula #ronan the accuser #thanos #marvel #marvel cinematic universe

[ironwoman18]

The Worst Third Date Ever part 24

Chapter 24: We have a hostage situation part 2

Max took some pictures with her phone, trying to not be obvious about it. She decided to sent them to Prentiss.

Before she sent them, she added some information like adding a Russian on the man who was leading the operation and then a Spanish flag to let them know he must speak that language.

She sent it and put her phone back in her pocket. She just prayed it help them a little.

Back with Spencer and Ashley they were looking every list of the Interpol looking for someone.

"Hey Reid" he looked at her "I know how you feel, once my ex boyfriend got kidnapped and my unit saved him bit them... well he started to get nervous because of my job even though I'm not a field agent so I ended it up"

Spencer smiled softly "yeah this job is tough, especially for our loved ones" Reid saw a picture of a man and something clicked "this guy looks familiar. Who is he?"

"Nikolai..." she made a dramatic pause and said "...Krasinski! He is the big brother of Ivan, both are from Saint Petersburg and their parents were members of the KGB and they are part of this terrorist organization since 2017 causing troubles around the world" she read excited.

"Excellent, we have the name of the man who spoke with Prentiss now we need the rest of his team. I will tell Emily and Rossi" he said "you keep looking Dawson" she nodded and he left.

He walked in the trailer "Emily, Dave..." he said and looked how they were focused on her phone "what's up?"

"Max" Emily looked at him "she sent us some pictures from inside" Spencer walked to them "apparently there are four members of this terrorist group. And she put a Russian flag on this man and a Spain flag on this other"

"I think that's mean this man is Russian and this other speaks Spanish" said Spencer looking at his supervisor's phone "Dawson and I found out who the leader of the team was. Nikolai Krasinski"

"Like the man we have in our office?" He nodded "we finally have some advantages today"

"Let me speak with him. Maybe with the new information I may get him to negotiate with me"

"Spencer..."

"Trust in me, Emily, you know I'm completely focused in the case. Yes my fiancee is in there but I'm a professional and I won't risk 132 life there because of one person"

"I know Spencer but first... we need something to negotiate. Ask Dawson to look all the people who work in this school" he nodded and walked out.

Meanwhile Max was helping the kids to remain calm singing softly some of there favorite songs.

"Sir I'm worry, the FBI is so calm outside, shouldn't we negotiate with them?"

"You never watched those Americans films? The moment we accept a deal, the will fool us and them... prison... dead penalty"

"And what are we gonna do?" Asked the guy at the other end of the room "wait till they decide to kill us? I bet you watched Captain Phillips. They kill the pirates on a ship... moving... we aren't better dudes" he sounded American. So they have a Russian, a Latin kid and an American. There's only one guy who has not spoken yet.

She informed this to Emily. Via WhatsApp, she put her phone back in her pocket, one of her coworkers noticed this and looked at her shocked and Max put a finger on her lips saying to her to stay quiet.

Her coworker nodded and looked as the men kept fighting about negotiate or not.

At the FBI camp outside the school Ashley found something important "Reid... come over" the young doctor walked to her "I found something important, Darcy Johnson is a teacher in that school, she has type 2 diabetes and if she does not have her insulin in time, she may die"

"That's perfect for our negotiations" said Spencer, then he walked to Emily "Emily, Dawson found there's a teacher with diabetes in there"

"And inside we have an American citizen" Spencer lifted his eyebrow "Max heard him, and she informed me"

"Ok. Emily I think we have something to negotiate with them"

"Yeah but we don't have anything they want" said Emily looking at Spencer.

"We have Ivan, maybe we can use him" Prentiss made an unsure face "Maybe food? They had been there like an hour and thirty minutes"

"Let's see if this work" he looked at her and nodded "I know you want it to work somehow but use that logical brain we all love and want to work at it's full speed"

He sighed "I just... can't lose Max, I wouldn't forget myself if that happens again" he looked at her "let me talk to him, I will block my emotions"

After some minutes of silence Emily nodded "ok Spence. But if I notice any indication of anger or frustration, I will give the order to hang out the call. Is that clear?" He nodded "ok good".

They walked out the trailer and Prentiss ordered to call the kidnappers again and she handed the phone to Spencer.

He decided to speak in Russian, he worked on his pronunciation and now was perfectly fluent in the language. He called him by his name and the man sounded surprised.

Then Spencer explained there was a woman in there with diabetes and she will soon need her medication also he asked for any person who may be hurt. They know a teacher had some bruises thanks to Max but he never mentioned they already knew.

The man said yes and Spencer started to negotiate. He said they will send food and drinks for the kids, teachers and theirselves if they released the two teachers that needed medical treatment.

"Ok Doctor Reid, we have a deal but only if you come here, unarmed" said him with his thick accent.

Emily looked at Spencer "Deal... I will go in" then they hung out.

"Spence... why did you do that? I won't send you there unarmed, with four unsub alone"

"It's the only way we can get the critical hostage out of there" he said looking at her "I know you think I didn't use my logical brain but I did and that's the only way Emily"

"I will thrust in your decisions Spencer but if some go the wrong way, I will have the judgment of the NSA and the politicians"

"I understand" he nodded "and I won't let it happens" he turned to Ashley "did you find something else?"

"Yes the same day Nikolai Krasinski and his brother arrived, a flight from Colombia arrived, a man called Carlos Ramirez got in the country. He was accused to work with the FARC- EP as a drug dealer. Never used a gun and the authorities of Colombia forgave him for saying the authorities everything he knew about the narco traffic. That's why he walked in our country so easily" she said "and the Krasinski brothers and Mr. Ramirez had several chats with Andrew Davis, an American citizen who was anti capitalism and all the antis you can imagine"

"They met here to cause a riot in the nation and also kill an opponent in the inclusion of Crimea in the Russian territory" said Emily "killing two birds with one stone"

"Yeah but we need one more name, because according to Max picture, there's one more person in there" added Rossi.

"I know but I'm not sure how we will find him. Because they only test between them" said Ashley looking at her computer.

After that they made the call to ordered the food and water for the negotiation also ordered some ambulance to take care of the two patients.

"What make you think everyone is safe in there?" Asked a man from the DCPD.

"Normally if there's not a murder, it's mean the men inside don't want to kill and we will have some good negotiations" explained Spencer "now what's bothering me is that they haven't said their demands"

"Like?"

"Like 'we can 10 billion dollars without marks' or 'we want an airplane' they haven't asked for anything"

"What would that means?"

"They don't have a backup plan and this was improvised, which turn this into a trap or it's just a fail"

"Let's hope it's the first one"

"Yeah..." that makes Spencer's brain works. He was happy his brain was a lot better from his nearly death experience and could think faster.

"I can hear you thinking kid... what's up?"

"This hostage situation isn't normal. They haven't kill someone or even shot, like when Will got in the bank and got shot"

"Don't remember that Spence" said JJ "I still have nightmares"

"They haven't set their demands or ask to make public statements about their cause" Spencer opens the website of this group "see this? They have an agenda and I can't see that in this situation, they are a political group that caused troubles around the world and now they haven't made it public?"

"You are right but what's their plan?" Said Rossi.

"I don't know..." said Spencer. His brain was working as fast as usual.

The team tried to make connections when the food arrived. And Spencer call Nikolai to let him know he will approach them with some people of his team to help him with the food. He was a little reluctant at first but then accepted.

Inside Nikolai said "ok who will be a good human shield for me?" He looked around "um... what about pretty art teacher?" He points Max "come here you will be my protection if they want to shot me"

Max stood up shaking and walked towards him then the man walked to the main door with another guy from his group.

When they reached the door she could see Spencer with JJ and a woman she did not know, maybe the new girl bringing each woman some boxes of pizza while he carried the bottles of water.

She could tell he already saw her, she could read his eyes but his poker face remained still to not give information to her kidnapper.

"Well... well... well... Dr Reid bring two beautiful women with him" he laughed checking out both of them. Max felt disgusted "pretty art teacher, before he gets in, check if he doesn't carry a gun" Max did it shaking.

"He doesn't have any gun" Max said using her poker face too, the same that fouled Cat Adams.

"Good" then Nikolai said "since you most know my conrad's name... Ramirez check him just in case miss pretty art teacher didn't want to say the truth" the Latin boy did it.

"Nothing Nikolai"

"Ok let's go so you check those women you wanted" Spencer nodded to JJ and Ashley and they handed a box to Max and the other to Ramirez then they walked inside the gym.

They put the food on the floor and Spencer checked the two women and with his eyes tried to find a way out or a way to hit them with hurting the children or the teachers.

"I will take them with me. This woman needs her medication and this other needs medical attention"

"Yeah she was very rebellious and Anderson got... violent" Spencer had to close his fist tight and count to ten so he did not punch him.

"Let's go" he looked at Max from the corner of his eyes and she looked back then he lifted the two women and take them out of the gym.

On his way to the door one of them said "so you are Max's boyfriend right?" He nodded "nice to meet you, we were asking for her to bring you here but she said 'no yet' and now a very unpleasant situation brought you here"

He laughed softly "yeah I think this is my way to meet her family and friends" he looked at them "maybe some other day I will come over" they reached the door and there were his coworkers waiting.

JJ helped him with one of them and Ashley helped with the other.

He explained what he saw to them and Ashley said she will call for some drones. Maybe they could attack by surprise.

They took the women to the ambulance to get help them went back to work. Spencer told the rest of the team what he saw.

"Why did he pick Max as his human shield?" Said Spencer getting a cup of coffee.

"Spence... relax they don't know your connection with her, so I doubt they did it on purpose. Maybe because she is pretty and they thought she might distract you. That man is misogynist and I bet he hates women so he got comfortable when you volunteered to be the negotiator"

"Sounds logical" she nodded and held his hand softly.

"We will catch them"

"Thank you JJ" she smiled "I really appreciate this"

"You know I will be there for you Spence" he smiled and squeezed her hand "take a little break here, clear your mind and you can continue" he nodded.

"Ok, mom" he teased her and she laughed softly and hit him gently.

Then she left him in the trailer, a DCPD brought him some pizza and water for lunch and then he walked out to meet the team.

"Do we have something new?"

"No, the forth man is still a mystery for us"

"And he haven't talk cause Max hasn't heard him to informe us" he nodded as Emily talked.

"There's something that keeps bugging me... they haven't give us their demands" he looked at them "that's always something we can expect from this kind of situations" they all nodded. Then Spencer started to drop facts about other hostages situations where they all asked from very important requests to absurd requests.

"You are right Spencer, but we are in an dead end" said Emily "our witness can't say anything because those men covered their faces so we can identify them. But then we found a conversation between them. This is so weird"

That's when something clicked in Spencer's head "where is Mr. Dyatlov?"

"He's with Agent Flanagan. Why?"

"I want to ask him something"

"Come with me" Emily could hear his brain working so she took him with the NSA agent "Agent Flanagan. This is Dr. Spencer Reid and he wants to talk with Mr. Dyatlov"

"Sure, we have a private room here" he lead them in and they sat down.

"Ok Mr. Dyatlov I would like to know, what are you going to say in court?"

"Well I'm going to talk about corruption in Ukraine and I also provide information about the Crimea case. The government is making a deal with Russia to give them money in exchange for their silence"

"Ok and why are you attacking your government with this kind of scandal? The world supports Ukraine, right?"

"Yes but our president is corrupt"

"Ok I understand" then Spencer says something in Ukrainian and the man looked confused.

Spencer read his expression and smiles a little and talked in Russian and Mr. Dyatlov got pale.

"You see this man isn't from Ukraine. He faked his identity. He is from Russia. The thing is, the Ukrainians won't be agree about Russia took part of their territory. Something they fought for after their independence from the Soviet Union, not even if they are opponents of the government"

"I...I..." the man was speechless.

"You put the life of thousands of kids, 32 between teachers and administrator members... for what?"

"I... I was looking to get into the witnesses protection system. I wanted the United States to think I was an important target to Russia. I hired this guys to create a distraction and if the thing went wrong then 'fake kidnap' my son. They sent a manifesto attacking your president and I would end up being a victim of the Russian government"

"You used this kids to have protection?" He nodded and agent Flanagan signed "I'm sorry agent Prentiss and Dr. Reid... I will put this man under arrest"

"But first we need him to call the kidnappers and tell them to surrender" said Emily. Dyatlov nodded and got out his phone and contacted them. He spoke in Russian, Emily and Spencer noticed he was giving the order and then the agent cuffed Dyatlov and left.

Spencer and Emily sighed "good job Spence" she patted his back.

"Thank you Emily" he smiled.

They walked out of the NSA tent and they could see how everyone walked out of the school the SWAT team got the hostage takers.

Spencer walked to one of the ambulances and saw Max helping some kids. He smiled and walked towards her.

"Hey" he said softly touching her back gently. She turned and hugged him he hugged her back "are you ok?"

She nodded "y...yes, I'm still a little shocked but good" she rubbed his cheek with some tears in her eyes.

He rubbed her cheeks "good, do you want to leave?" She nodded and hugged him tightly with her head on his chest "ok let's go"

OOooOOooOO

That's all for now, I was a little stuck with this one but I read a lot about negotiations, also I had the plan to make Dyatlov the real unsub. So I had to look on internet if the Russian and the Ukrainian languages were different from each others.

And I found out they are. Like Spanish and Portuguese or even English and German. They came from the same language family but they added different words or even meanings of the same word. It was quite interesting but I'm rambling, sorry.

Thank you for reading. I think the next chapter should be their wedding, don't you agree?

This little plot came to me when I was in the kitchen and I hope I did it well.

We will read in the next one.

#criminal mind #spencer reid #maxine brenner #maxcer #fanfiction

[arcanesupern0va]

Rick In The Water; Ch7: Shameful Metaphors

Summary: There’s some fluffs, there some action. I might be just a little too proud of how this chapter came out.

A/N:  Rickshank Rickdemption? Never heard of him. CW: Bastardization of a whole ass episode for my own selfish gains tbh Pairing: Rick Sanchez/Reader Word Count: 5529

My ao3

Masterlist

|Ch6: Do You Feel It?|

Rick looked like a goddamn kid in a candy shop. When we crossed the threshold, his pockets bulging with his Monopoly money, he took off ahead of me, shouting about someone called Roy.

“Rick! Rick wait!” I called after him, trying to cut through the crowd and keep up with the oversized child that Rick had suddenly become. He paused briefly, allowing me to finally catch up. I surveyed the room, astounded by how it enormous it seemed. To our left was an expansive bar. Two large arcades ran adjacent to it, emanating with sounds of laughter and loud sound effects. The building had multiple stories, all accentuating the large planetary statue situated in the center of the room. More sounds of mirth and excitement rained down on us from above, leaving me to assume it was multiple levels of rows and rows of video games.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Rick looked proud like he had come up with the whole place himself.

“Ah, if it isn’t my friend Rick Sanchez,” a large slug-like creature called warmly as he slithered over to us.

“Slitherino, buddy! How the hell are you?” Rick greeted him jovially, shaking the creatures… hand? I guess?

“Doin’ great, my friend. Business is booming ever since that commercial you did with us. Who would’ve thought an interdimensionally wanted criminal could bring in so many kids?” Slitherino chortled. “And who do you have here tonight?” He raised his brow at Rick as he regarded me.

“Slither- this is Nova, Nova this Siltherino Slimeofogus the Fourth, owner of the greatest establishment this side of the galaxy,” Rick boasted.

“Now, now Rick. You’re not trying to get extra flurbos out of me are you?” Siltherino asked, eyeing him seriously before breaking out into a huge smile. “Because it’s working. Here you son of a bitch, you guys have a great time.” He handed us a large bucket of coins from within his apparently gelatinous body. He bid us farewell as he slithered away, leaving Rick to count the contents quickly.

“One thousand ninety-nine, two thousand. Two thousand flurbos Nova!” he exclaimed as he slid the coins back into the bucket. “Are you hungry? They’ve got zurbos here now, so fucking good Nova.” Rick gushed. I barely recognized the man next to me as his eyes flitted all around the room. I shook my head, earning me a one way trip to a game called Roy 2: Dave. “The line was ridiculous last time I was here,” Rick marveled, “You should play!” He deposited some of our flurbos in the machine before sitting me down in the chair and dropping a helmet over my eyes.

“Dave! Come out here and eat dinner with us!” a voice called out to me. I closed my binder, rushing out to the living room to find my big brother Roy and my parents sitting at their TV trays. “Oh sweetheart, you’re just in time! We’re getting to watch the newest episode of Planet Music!”

In high school, I met a girl named Arabelle, an outcast just like me. We spent nearly every day after school hanging out by a waterfall where we got high and talked about music, art and anything else that came to mind.

I didn’t stay friends with her for long, my parents didn’t approve of her dark sense of humor and overuse of sarcasm. I knew they just wanted the best for me. They bought me a guitar and lessons instead and allowed me to spend all hours of the night practicing. My brother Roy and I formed a band, along with a couple of his friends from school. Our first single was a smash hit, propelling us into the limelight.

Arabelle and I reconnected after a show one night. I forgot how much I missed her and we stayed up the entire night talking like we used to. She told me how heartbreaking it was to lose my friendship. I apologized and worked my way into her pants that night.

Our second album flopped, and Roy and I started fighting constantly. Arabelle and I had started dating, and she insisted I was the talent of the band. I listened to her, leaving my brother and his friends to seek new highs and new ways to become creative.

I joined the twenty-seven club, dying of an overdose.

GAME OVER.

“What the fuck?!” I screamed as the helmet was removed from my head.

“Only twenty-seven?” Rick commented, reading the stats on the screen. “You at least led a fun life I suppose,” he shrugged.

“Everything was so real. I felt myself die,” I trembled. My knees shook as I stood up and tried to reorient myself with my real body.

“You’re alright Nova,” Rick smirked, “Now get outta my way, it’s my turn!” He tore off my reward tickets, handing them off to me and depositing a couple more coins into the machine. He fitted the helmet over his head and his eyes unsettlingly rolled back in his head. I watched the screen, watched the body I had thought was my own as it fought with its sibling Roy, become the most popular kid in school before completely running from home at the age of sixteen.

“You didn’t do much better, Mr. Age Twenty-Five,” I teased as Rick pulled the helmet off in frustration, grabbing his own tickets. My grip on reality had finally returned after watching Rick’s version of Dave’s life and I was actually eager for another go.

“How was I supposed to know the bungee cord was going to break!?” he shot back. “These games, some of them really just want you to keep pumping flurbos into them,” he growled, stalking off toward what I could only assume was the space equivalent of Skee Ball. He pumped more flurbos into the game, picking up the hovering puck and chucking it skillfully. It bounced off of the holographic mountains before hitting a secret passageway and setting an alarm off.

“I take it you’ve played these games a couple of times,” I mused, watching him perform trick shots as the machine produced ticket after ticket.

“Well, if you look at the screen, that’ll be my high score,” he pointed proudly at the marquee that read ‘HI-SCORE: ARSE” followed by a series of illegible symbols.

“Arse, really?” I asked, trying to stifle my giggles to sound terribly unamused.

“It stands for Actually Rick Sanchez,” he told me flatly.

“Oh, what’s the E for then?”

“Yeah, I mean, come on Nova, I had to,” he shrugged.

“I mean, if you already went that far…” I trailed up, grinning up at him.

*+*

When he had finally spent his last flurbo, he begrudgingly walked us out to the ship to head home. Today had been incredible, with its high and low points but weirdly enough, the trip to Blips and Chitz felt like an actual date. I was going to comment as such, but we were being approached by an alarming number of bug-like creatures.

“Rick Sanchez, we have you surrounded,” one called out. Rick froze, scanning the area to find the bug creatures claims were true. “If you come quietly, I can assure you no danger will befall your Nova.”

“Rick, what is going on?” I hissed as he pulled me in close and pulled out his portal gun.

“Don’t even think about it, Sanchez!” the bug shouted, “We have you in our sights, and you’ll be dead before you even try.”

“Goddammit, Slitherino,” Rick snarled, releasing me to confront the bugs.

“You’ve committed numerous crimes against the Federation. I urge you to stand down,” the bug declared again as he closed in on us, close enough for me to make out his furry legs and large wings.

“Let me send her home,” Rick demanded. “I’ll come with you, just let me send her home.”

“Rick, no-” I protested before he cut me off

“Nova, just be quiet, please,” he glared down at me.

“If you come peacefully, you may send her home in your ship,” the bug compromised nonchalantly.

“Yeah, that’s not how it’s going down,” he snarled, pulling out his portal gun again. As the bugs opened fire around us, he deployed a shield around us. “This is not going to last long enough for me to explain any of this to you.” He opened a portal on the ground behind me, discreetly shoving his portal gun in my hands. “Nova, just trust me, I-I’m sending you somewhere safe,” he murmured, kissing my forehead before shoving me through the opening. I heard the shield shatter as I fell through, gunfire coming to an immediate stop as the portal closed above me. Shellshocked, I realized I was in an oddly familiar, dingy hallway and a door with a rusted peeker stood in front of me. I stood quickly, knocking urgently on it. When I received no answer, I sighed in frustration knocking the same knock that Beth and I shared. The peeker slid open to reveal the same pair of angry eyes before quickly opening, Scar Rick grabbing me as I crumpled to the floor.

*+*

“Rick!”

The world was spinning around me as I came to, Scar watching intently from across the room as I sat up in a panic which served to only make the spinning faster. I was on a thin cot, surrounded by similar weapons to the ones I’d seen in Rick’s garage. Rick. The thought of him propelled me from the cot, heading for the door. I had no idea how I was going to save him, but damn if I wasn’t going to try.

“H-Hey, Nova, it’s okay. Calm down,” Scar said gruffly, soothing me simply by sharing the same voice as Rick. My legs were weak as I stood, and he grabbed me hesitantly before I fell again, sitting me back on the cot.

“The hell it is! Some fucking b-bug creatures took Rick- They’re gonna kill him,” I shouted hysterically, making another move to stand. Scar grabbed my shoulder, roughly forcing me back onto my cot.

“Nova, I know. This is the third time you’ve woken up screaming about it,” he assured me, grabbing a dirty canteen and offering it to me. My mouth was a desert and I drank from it greedily. “H-Hey, calm down. Drowning won’t bring Rick back,” he remarked smartly, gently tugging the canteen out of my grasp.

“Wh-What am I going to do? I have to get him back,” I panicked, bunching my legs up into my chest as I slowly rocked myself back and forth. I had always thought of Rick as untouchable like he was always five steps ahead of every potential foe.

“Why don’t you tell me everything that happened after you left here three days ago,” he asked with surprising calm.

“Three fucking days ago? How long have I been passed out?” I asked, breaking out of my grasp on my legs, moving to stand up again.

“You passed out at my door,” he said, his gruff tone returning as he blocked me from making my way to the door by outstretching his arm across my chest, resulting in me stumbling back onto the cot. “You’ve been in and out these past few days, screaming about Rick and monster bugs when you were conscious. This is the most lucid you’ve been yet.”

“Wh-What were those creatures?” I asked him, just the memories of the way they surrounded us stilling me to my core.

“Those were most likely the Groflamites,” he sighed, standing up and returning to the other side of the room. A portal gun laid in pieces on the table he approached, the glass on the top completely shattered. He noticed as I stared at in horror, my only way directly to Rick completely destroyed. “You fell on it when you passed out,” he explained, “I’ve been trying to fix it, but I haven’t had one in over a decade.”

“Y-You can fix it though, right?” I asked nervously, unable to take my eyes off of it.

“I should be able to, I have to go out and get some parts. I just hadn’t been able to yet, I didn’t want you to wake up alone,” he admitted sheepishly, “I-I know my N-Nova wasn’t a fan of that.”

“Oh.”

Clearing his throat, he continued, “If you think you’ll be okay for a couple of hours, I can run out now. There are just a couple of pieces that need to be replaced, I promise I’ll be quick.”

“C-Can I just come with you?” I asked anxiously, not trusting myself enough to be left alone with my thoughts.

“Sure.”

+𝚁𝚒𝚌𝚔+

Fucking asshole. That fucking piece of fucking shit. I’m gonna- I’m gonna burn every fucking Blips and Chitz to the fucking ground when I finally get the fuck out of here.

The first order of business, unfortunately, figuring out where in the hell here was.

It looked like I was in my garage, but that couldn’t be right. Key details were missing, my newest tinker toy, for instance, not to mention Nova’s crudely drawn smiley face on my work desk.

“Alright assholes, what in the fuck are you waiting for?” I shouted into the ether. There was no response at first until a tall Groflamite knocked on the garage door.

“Hello, Rick,” he remarked coolly, leaning against the door as he closed it behind him. “That was a cute little trick, sending your Nova off with your portal gun. You know we have to hunt her down now right?” he told me perfectly politely, although the threat of it was apparent.

“Good luck,” I remarked darkly, turning back to my workbench even though there wasn’t really anything to focus my attention on.

“We already have a good idea of where you sent her, hard to believe a Rick would trust another Rick with his most treasured possession, but I guess you’re an odd one through and through,” he commented, inspecting the fur on the back of his hand.

“Tr-Treasured- possession?” I sputtered. He had to be bluffing. Scar was an old friend, back from before the council formed. The council hadn’t been very sympathetic to the kidnapping of his Nova, ultimately opting not to rescue her to keep themselves laid low. He wasn’t going to let another Rick go through that.

Well, fuckwad better not.

“Come now Rick, let's not pretend. We both know you love that human girl,” The Groflammite told me flatly.

“Love is just a chemical reaction,” I recited, bored.

“Mmhm, but yet you still love her.”

“I-I do not!” I lied.

“You don’t have to lie to me, Rick,” he shook his head, “Go ahead and lie to yourself all you want, but we’re in your head. I’ve seen a lot more of your dirty thoughts than I ever wanted to, and somehow they all featured her. And a couple of giraffes I won’t be asking any questions about.”

“Get to the point, bug.”

“I’d think the smartest man in the universe would know what I wanted.”

Jesus fucking christ this fucking douche.

+Nova+

I stuck close to Scar as he led us through the bustling city of Shingrap. He didn’t have much to say, not completely unlike my Rick on a bad day. Through a particularly tight crowd, he grabbed my hand tightly, and for a moment, I forgot where I was and who he was. His hands exhibited the same coarseness, and for even the smallest second I felt safe. Maybe that’s why he sent me here? Did he know he was going to die? Did he send me to this Rick to offer him something he’d lost?

No.

He was far too cocky to allow for such planning. He must’ve known this Rick would be able to help, or something. I just wish I knew what to do. Scar must’ve realized I had started spiraling because he turned around quickly and grabbed me by the shoulders.

“Nova, I need you to focus, we’re almost there.”

‘There’ was a filthy pawnshop. Why was I always ending up in the dirtiest parts of space? All of these people with their illusions of grandeur when it came to space should feel lucky to not have a Rick in their lives to completely shatter them. Scar and the clerk spoke in low tones as I investigated the shop, never straying out of Scar’s eyesight. He grabbed my hand again, his transaction apparently complete as he led me back through the city. As we cut the corner to the alley that would lead us back to his safe house, I spotted a Groflammite scanning the city gun in hand.

“Rick,” I whispered sharply, pulling on his hand sharply as the bug’s gaze was moving in our direction. Scar found him immediately, breaking into a sprint down the alley, shooting one of the lecherous bulbous headed creatures my Rick and I had encountered our first time here. We made it safely back to his building, but as Scar sealed the door behind us, a quiet fluttering of wings assured us they had spotted us. We ran up the stairs as they slammed their weight into the door. Scar locked his safe room door behind us before starting on the repairs to the portal gun. A large slam from the floors below told us they had made it through the first door and it was only a matter of seconds before they were at this one.

“Start grabbing anything you see with a trigger,” Scar growled as he inserted the glass bulb on the top of the gun, opening a small door to work on the circuitry. I grabbed every weapon I could get my hands on, shoving them into a small pile in the center of the room. A loud bang on the safe room door made me jump out of my skin, but Scar was slamming the panel on the gun shut, smirking. “Let’s get the hell out of here baby girl,” he murmured tenderly, grabbing me by my waist and shooting a portal under the pile of guns. We followed the guns through just as the bugs broke through the door, dropping us right onto a marble floor.

Goddammit.

“Nova N-682,” Riq IV called from behind me. I brushed my hair out of my face, huffing as I turned to face him. “Where is your Rick?” he asked curiously, looking around as if he expected him to erupt from another portal.

“Rick Alpha-392,” Scar growled up at him viciously.

“Oho, you’ve renounced your Rick for Rick Beta-125?” Rick Prime grinned down at us, “Now there’s a match I never even thought to put money on.”

“There’s a name I haven’t heard in centuries,” Riq IV laughed darkly. “What brings you back here? Want to put this Nova’s head on the chopping block too?” Scar roared, picking up one of his guns and aiming at the council member.

“You fucking killed her, not me,” Scar snarled. I reached up gently, lowering the gun with a gentle look.

“Not here, not now.” I soothed him. He relented, turning away from the sneering Ricks atop their thrones. “Rick- N-682 has been arrested by the F-Federation.” Riq IV’s face darkened as he regarded me, before turning to his fellow council members. They deliberated a moment, before coming to a decision and turning back to me.

“So he dies. I’m sorry Nova.”

+𝚁𝚒𝚌𝚔+

“So they’ve spotted Rick Beta-125?” The Groflammite spoke into his watch smugly. “Excellent, were they able to apprehend Nova and the portal gun?”

Shit. Fuck. Shit fuck fuck shit.

Nova.

The bug’s watch murmured again, his face falling as he listened. “They got away? What do we even pay you assholes for?” he spat angrily into the watch. He sighed, regaining his composure before returning his even gaze to me. “Looks like you got lucky Rick, but this is your last chance to be useful.”

“I’m never useful if I can help it,” I told him darkly. Nova being safe was enough to keep me from throttling the stupid bug, but the option was still there. He approached the garage door, watching a memory play in front of him.

“That’s her, isn’t it?” he pointed. The memory on full display was the two of us in my ship, her mounted on my lap and kissing me like it was the last kiss we’d ever share.

It might be.

“Yeah,” I murmured, forcing the dark thought away. I watched the memory, trying to resist the emotion it was instilling in me, the doubt, the fear. What if we never got to finish what we started? What if I couldn’t get out of here?

“You can watch this right now and tell me you don’t love her?” he asked conversationally, as though we were old friends discussing curtains.

“I-I can,” I lied again, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. The memory switched, playing the memory of saving her from Rick U-236 and having to see that fuck on top of her, touching parts of her I still hadn’t had the pleasure of infuriated me.

“Ah, I see. Of course. You still think she doesn’t care for you the same way.” The same conversational tone, but now I just wanted to rip his voice box out. The memory changed again, this time of the first time I took her out into space.

“St-Stop!” I begged, tearing my eyes away from her awestruck face.

“Just tell me how you figured out portal technology Rick and I swear, I’ll let you see her one last time,” he urged gently. A door appeared between us.

“If I show you, you have to promise not to hurt her,” I conceded weakly, trying to ignore the moisture accumulating around my eyes.

“No harm will befall Nova, Rick. You have my word,” he assured me. Still, I knew he was lying. I decided to play along, opening the door to step into another garage, this one being from the home I shared with Beth’s mother.

Another Rick stood before us, scribbling furiously onto a notepad in front of him as he made adjustments to the crude device that I would soon turn into the portal gun.

“H-Hey Rick,” a voice came from the doorway. A twenty-year-old Nova stood there, eyeing the Rick in front of her nervously.

“O-Oh hey Nova. Beth’s not here,” Past Me brushed her off callously. Her face fell as she approached the workbench to investigate what I had been working on.

“I-I know, I came to see what you were working on,” she told me timidly. God, this was too much, too hard to watch.

“It’s a portal gun,” I told her, extending the device for her to inspect. “I think I almost have the formula right. Just a couple more days and I should be able to traverse the galaxy in an instant.”

“Wow,” she murmured, eyeing the scribbles I had made. “R-Rick, I think your equations wrong here,” she told me hesitantly, pointing to a small error in math I had made.

“Shit, you’re right.” I picked up the portal gun, adjusting the error before pulling the trigger. A green circle appeared on the wall, another four inches to the right. I tossed an apple through, only to have it reappear through the second portal in the same condition. “I-I did it,” I murmured, awestruck. “W-We did it.” I looked at her, beaming as I pulled her into a tight embrace only to quickly push her away. “Hold on,” I paused, sticking my arm through the hole only for it to also appear unharmed on the other side.

“So that’s it?” The Groflammite asked eagerly, running up to my desk to start taking pictures of the equation scribbled on my notepad. He uploaded it quickly, announcing to his superiors that’d he’d gotten it. A devilish grin erupted on my face as the bugs on the other end of his headset stopped replying.

Thank God.

“You know, watching that brilliantly concocted lie made me realize something.” I grinned wickedly at the smug bug.

“L-Lie?!” he exclaimed.

The walls of the garage fell around us as my current garage formed around the fake memory. “You’re probably right, I do love my Nova, I love her more than I’ve loved anything before,” I conceded with a shrug. “But if you’d done any research, you would’ve realized two things.” He tried contacting his supervisors again, to no avail. “I left Nova when she was sixteen you idiot, and more importantly, for all of the strengths she has to offer me, she knows jack shit when it comes to science. That math would have looked like absolute gibberish to her.”

“What’s happening, what did you do?” the bug panicked.

“I didn’t do anything, you were the one who uploaded a virus from a fake memory,” I told him with a shrug.

“Get me out of his head!” he shouted into his watch, “It was fake, it was all fake!”

“They won’t be answering,” I told him simply. I raised my own watch to my mouth, mocking his serious tone as I spoke, “Go ahead and pull me outta here guys.”

It was a curious feeling, being in a bug body, but I played it off well until a team of SEAL Ricks descended from the ceiling, shooting every Groflamite they saw. I ducked down behind the chair, reaffixing the brain switching helmet to my head as they shot my original body directly between the eyes.

Well, that kind of sucked. Poor old bastard.

Since they weren’t exactly here on a rescue mission, I aimed the device at one of the SEAL Ricks. I injected my conscious into his brain, surprisingly thankful for the roominess of it. I took out the Groflamite I had been previously occupying before taking out the remaining SEAL Ricks, grabbing the brainalyzer and climbing the rope back up to their ship.

After a series of Rick switching, I was finally back on the Citadel, at the helm of Control. I portalled the entire fucking thing directly into the galactic federal fucking prison.

God, I’m such a fucking badass.

Chaos poured around me as I made my way to the council, knowing if Scar was going to take her anywhere, it would be here. Despite his history with the council, it was still the safest place to hide from the federation. I just had to hope my hunch was right. Worst come to worst, I was going to be able to kill two birds with one stone. Take out the Federation and that stupid ass council, sure, why not. I found Quantum Rick trying to flee amongst the chaos and knowing my only way in there with the least amount of resistance would be as a Rick they recognized, I performed one last swap, smashing the brainalyzer as I took off down the Council hall.

“Get your hands off of her,” I bellowed, crossing the threshold to a confusing scene. Riq IV and Zeta Alpha Rick were pulling her in opposite directions, apparently trying to decide which would be escaping with her. Scar laid dead on the floor and with the surprise of my appearance, they released her abruptly. Nova fell to Scar’s side, openly weeping as she looked up at me with a fury I’d never seen before.

“Did you come to finish the job?” she screamed at me. “You don’t have to worry. He’s fucking dead.” She stood up, grabbing one of the, surprisingly, many guns littering the floor. “You killed my Rick, you fucking piece of shit.”

“N-Nova, wait-”

“I loved him you fucking piece of shit. And now I’ll never get to fucking tell him,” she sobbed. To my luck, the gun she chose had a harsh kickback, causing the shot to miss my head, but only by a hair. I mussed my hair, returning to the look she was accustomed to before pulling the pretentious council robe off, showing I was strapped with as many stray weapons I could grab from my previous bodies.

“Nova, please don’t fucking shoot at me,” I shouted, more annoyed than angry.

“R-Rick-” In her shock, Riq IV was able to grab her, holding his gun to her head.

“You just can’t keep a dumb Rick down can you?” he seethed, backing away to the window. I quickly took out the other Ricks surrounding us, leaving only one shit stain left.

“Let her go,” I growled through gritted teeth.

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen here, N-682.” Riq IV started, slowly getting closer to the window. “I’m going to take your Nova, and you’re not going to shoot at us because you’re not going to risk her insignificant life,” he sneered. My eyes locked with Nova’s trying to find the best course of action that would kill Riq IV with minimal damage to her.

“Who’s to say I won’t let that happen, dick. You truly underestimate how badly I want you dead,” I told him darkly, not looking at her.

“Rick!”

“You won’t kill her, not every Rick can just kill their Nova. Especially not when they love her,” he taunted. “Luckily for me, I never had a Nova, I have no attachment to her kind.”

“I’ve only had her for a couple of months, I lived my whole life without her, I think I can go a couple more decades,” I sighed and turned to her, “Nothing personal sweetheart, I’d just rather have him dead.”

“You fucking asshole,” she sobbed, turning away from me into Riq IV’s chest.

“Oh, maybe I could get used to this,” Riq IV said deviously, lowering his weapon for the briefest of seconds as Nova stared up at him before kneeing him right in the groin. As she ducked out of the way, I took my open shot, getting him directly between the eyes. The shock stilled us as we watched the Council leader fall gracelessly to the ground dead. We stared at each other before she came to her senses and launched herself into my arms.

“Nova, I’m sorry,” I murmured, kissing her desperately. “I didn’t mean it, I promise. I’m so sorry.”

“Rick, I know it’s okay, I know,” she assured me, burying her face in my neck as she clung to me. “Please, please just take me home.”

“I will baby, I will,” I told her, “I just have to finish what I started.” I pulled my portal gun away from Scar, silently thanking him for protecting her for as long as he had.

“He saved me, you know,” she murmured, staring down at him sadly. “I was going to kill them, the council a-and I think they knew that. H-He sacrificed himself for me.”

“I knew he would.” I kissed her head, opening a portal into the level nine control room. A groflamite appeared, trying to stop us but I shot him quickly.

“Wh-where are we?” she asked nervously, staring at the dead bug on the ground.

“This would be the level nine control room, I came here to topple a government,” I told her with a shrug. She stared at me with wide eyes as I typed into the computer, accessing their economy with far too little button clicks. “What?” I asked as she gaped at me. “I’d prefer it if we didn’t have to do this again.”

“S-So are you gonna like, redirect their missiles? Or disintegrate their space fleet?” she suggested.

“You sound like Morty and Summer,” I rolled my eyes. “No, I prefer to do things the easy way. Like, change a one to a zero.” The operation complete, I opened another portal, this time directly into my garage, pulling Nova along behind me just in time to watch as ships took off from Earth. Damn, they moved fast.

“D-Dad? Nova?” Beth said, sounding stunned from the doorway. “Where have you been? We haven’t seen you in over a week! There was a new government, they gave Jerry a job but apparently, their entire economy just collapsed. So, it looks like he’s out of a job again.”

I looked between Beth and her best friend, opting to just shrug. “I was out.”

“By the way Nova, Ryan’s been looking for you. He wants you to come home,” she rolled her eyes. “You know you’re welcome here as long as you need, right?”

Nova nodded, still shellshocked from waging a brief but entire war against two different governments. “M-Maybe it's time I go home,” she murmured sadly. She remained silent as Beth sighed at us both, shaking her head as she left the room.

“Y-You okay?” I asked hesitantly as she stared blankly ahead. She shook her head sharply, breaking herself from her train of thought and smiled weakly.

“Are you?”

”I’m better now that you’re safe,” I murmured, pulling her into my arms. We were silent for a while, just enjoying each other’s embrace. “I love you, Nova,” I murmured into her hair as we swayed. She stopped, looking up at me longingly before returning her face to my chest.

”I love you too.”

+Ch8: What It Is To Burn+

#rick and morty #rick and morty fanfiction #rick sanchez x reader #rick sanchez/reader

[socksparrow]

Late Night Story Train

Author’s Note: So here’s a quick explanation for what I’m doing. Besides doing #latelatewritingsprint, I am also doing something I like to call a “Story Train.” Basically, I choose a bunch of different prompts, and I write a story using the prompts. But after I’m finished with one, I select have to use a randomly generated prompt, and I have to try and connect the new prompt with the previous passage I just wrote. I’m not sure if this really makes sense but it’s late, and it seems like a kind of fun idea. So here we go.

Okay so I just finished and that was super fun?? Like for once I had a genius idea because Story Trains are now my favorite. Like if you’re a writer I suggest it. And I actually really want to write more on these characters. Also lowkey Liam and Steve are a ship. I’ll probably continue writing about them because it seems like I could have lots of fun with them.

Warnings: Some language, maybe a bit of gore but not really??

Word Count: 1365 (Holy shirt what?? I can write more than 500 words)

Prompt One: You’re trapped in your house with a serial killer but all your lights are clappers.

   “How the hell did I even get into this situation again?” I question myself. I mean seriously, who gets stuck in their own house with a serial killer? Me, apparently.

   “What’s even worse is I got stuck in here with you,” My closest friend, Ryan said, “You absolute dumbass.”

   “Look, Ryan,” I say, turning towards them, “ Now’s not really the time to be mocking me, especially when we’re about to be murdered.”

   “Maybe we’d have a better time surviving if you shut the-”

   Clap, clap.

   Ryan and I go silent as the lights turn on in the hallway. We turn our heads to the entryway, and there he is. The serial killer. He suddenly starts stalking forward, making his way over to the end of the hall, knife in hand, in the normal ‘you-about-to-get-stabbed’ position. Ryan and I huddle closer together, and we know this is it. We’re about to be stabbed. The man lunges forward-

   -he fails wildly, socks sliding across the hardwood floor, trying to keep balance. And he falls. I stare at him, wide-eyes pried open in shock. Apparently, we’re all dumbasses. Who takes their shoes off at the front door when completing a murder?

Ryan yanks me from my thoughts by grabbing my hand, and we both leap over the fallen man, as he struggles to get back up.

   Suddenly it becomes a game of cat and mouse with him chasing us all around my house, clapping on and off the lights as we enter and exit a room. Huh, eco-friendly, too. He’d almost be a nice guy if he weren’t trying to murder us.

   We go from room to room until Ryan and I get cornered in my bathroom. There’s no way that this guy would fall twice, especially in this confined of a space. Glancing at Ryan, I can see they’ve made the same realization. Tears well in my eyes, as the situation finally sinks in.

   I’m going to die.

   I grasp Ryan’s and I feel it shaking with fear. The man rounds the corner, and he stands in the entryway, just staring at us. Then he finally claps and says, “Lights out.”

   And the world goes dark.

Prompt Two: " I didn't mean to answer the call."

   I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t even mean to answer the call in the first place.

   It was the middle of the night, and normally I wouldn’t even be awake at this time, but I was finishing up some paperwork for my company since we were going to be transferring buildings soon. As the light from my desk lamp burned my retinas, I squeezed my eyes close, trying to shake off the fatigue and soreness that was covering my body.

   That’s when I took a moment to stretch out a bit and look at something other than paper when I noticed my phone was getting a call from an unknown number. I debated if I should even answer it or not, and I was about to ignore it when the idea occurred to me that it could have been a call from the new building.

   So, I picked up my phone, gave out a tired ‘hi’ when suddenly a man said, “This isn’t the number of my usual hitman.”

   And I knew I should have hung up especially when he said the word ‘hitman,’ but shock overtook me. I gave out a confused, “What?”

   Then this man was threatening me. Saying if I knew what was good for me I’d do as he said, or something really bad would happen to me. And while I certainly don’t have the best life, I’m rather fond of it.

   So I listened to the man ramble on about what I was supposed to do, and there I was in the apartment of some strangers house, about to kill these two college kids. Who, by the way, was clearly doing pretty well for themselves, considering they had clap on lights. I mean, I’m not sure how much they cost, but they gotta cost more than a normal switch, right?

   The situation itself was ridiculous, each time entering and exiting a room, clapping the lights on and off. And I tripped. Who trips when they’re about to murder someone?

   But as soon as it started, it was done just as fast. I had murdered two people. And it was all because of a call I never meant to answer.

Prompt Three: Someone must have seen him because the police were at his door

   Liam figured someone must have seen him leave the kids’ apartment because suddenly the police were at his door, and he could give them no explanation.

   “Hello sir,” The police looked at him, and then scanned their eyes across his living room, “We have some questions for you.”

   Liam could feel sweat dripping down the back of his neck, but he knew he needed to keep cool if he wanted to make it out of this situation a free man.

   “Come on in then, gentlemen,” Liam said, guiding them to his kitchen table. Both the police officers pulled out the wooden chairs, and they took a seat.

   “Where were you this past June 17th, around approximately three in the morning?” One of the police officers, Liam believed his name tag read ‘Dave,’ asked him.

   “I was just doing some paperwork for my company, that’s about it,” Liam said. Richard, as Liam had learned with a quick glance at the other man’s badge, started jotting down some notes.

   “Around what time did you finish this action, and what did you do after it?” Dave was staring straight into his eyes as if searching into Liam’s soul, but Liam tried to act unbothered by that.

   “I can't quite recall what time I finished but after that I-”

   -a crash sounded from his living room, and the police officers jumped up, with their guns out. Liam stood up and peered around them, seeing a strange man holding what was looked like some sort of sword, but what kind, Liam couldn’t figure out.

   Before the policemen could even dream of calling for backup, the man rushed forward and skewered the two with his sword.

   “When I called you the other night asking for you to murder those two for me, I didn’t expect for you to be such an incompetent murder,” The man said while wiping the blood off of his weapon, “I mean, your DNA was literally everywhere.”

   “I-I,” Liam stuttered over his words for a few reasons. Firstly, what would you say in a moment like this? ‘Hey, thanks for ruining my life, asshole!’ didn’t seem that appropriate for someone who just saved his life.

   Secondly, it took Liam a good second to realize it, but after the shock had worn off, he found himself thinking, Woah, he’s unfairly cute for a psychopath.

   “Look, since I didn’t pay you for the job,” The man paused, turning back towards Liam, “which you did terrible at by the way,”

   “I-”

   “-yes I know you had no experience. Anyways, I figured since I didn’t pay you, I could at least help you not get into jail. So, you’re coming with me.”

   “Wait a minute!” Liam exclaimed, furiously, “I didn’t want any of this. You’re the one who ruined my life!”

   “And now I’m saving it,” The man took his hand, “Come on let’s go.”

   Liam stood his ground.

   The man rolled his eyes exasperatedly, and gazed into Liam’s eyes, “Look, man, you can’t possibly expect your life to just go completely back to normal after you murdered two people. That’s just not how it works.”

   Liam sighed because he knew he was right, “Fine, let’s go.”

   The man muttered a quick ‘thank god’ and led him over to the broken window, “By the way, since we’ll be working and living together now, I figure you ought to know my name. I’m Steve.”

   “Liam.”

   Together they climbed out the window, and Liam was surprisingly excited of what was to come. After all, this all happened because of a random call.

#latelatewritingsprint #story train #writing #my writing #tumblr writing #1000 word #moms are you proud #lowkey uneditted #but i used grammarly #so theres that

[homespork-review]

Homespork Act 4, Part 1: Blight of the Paradox Clones

BRIGHT: Act 4 opens on a loading sequence titled ‘GATE 1’, and then there’s a short pan down through firefly-dotted clouds to a dim blue landscape called the Land of Wind and Shade. John manifests at ground-level and it’s time for another walk-around game!

The icon in the upper right corner opens a conversation with Nannasprite, who’s still back in the house. Apparently she can’t accompany John around the Land, but she can certainly give him puzzling half-answers to any questions he might have. John asks her point-blank if she was always cryptic and evasive or if that’s a sprite thing, but she predictably avoids answering.

John wanders around the Land, getting into fights with (oddly non-aggressive) imps for grist. The Land is very atmospheric, with glowing blue mushrooms and odd pipes everywhere. It’s also inhabited by large, excitable, bipedal orange salamanders who blow bubbles and dispense information about the Land. One of them has acquired John’s bedsheets and is now calling itself a wizard.

A salamander standing by one of the pipes explains that it’s called a Parcel Pyxis. If you need something, you can chisel a picture of whatever it is into a stone tablet and drop it into a Parcel Pyxis. If you find a tablet, and you have what’s carved into it, it’s polite to drop it into the Pyxis and the Breeze will take it where it needs to go. (Just what the Breeze is isn’t explained yet, but given the name of the Land, it’s fair to assume an explanation will be forthcoming in due time, and it’s thematically consistent.)

While wandering, John finds a telescope. Looking through it, he sees his house, perched waaaaaay at the top of a very tall, very narrow rocky crag. He also finds a very large pipe sunk into the ground. He can hear something very, very big breathing at the bottom.

There are definite pros and cons to these games, but on the whole I like them. They’re more immersive than the usual comic panels, and it’s nice to do some self-directed wandering. On the other hand, it’s easy to miss something in a walk-around game, which hardly ever happens with comic panels…

FAILURE ARTIST: The Salamanders crack me up. Good parody of NPC chatter.

CHEL: Comic panels of the walkaround are included later on, so if you really hate the games you can read it straightforwardly.

John is confused by now being below his house when he went through a portal above it; Nanna cryptically claims that “To ascend, you must first descend!”

BRIGHT: With the game out of the way (it doesn’t really have a defined end point), we return to normal comic panels — and also to the future. AR is embroiled in a shootout with the snakes from PM’s ship, which are now firing laser beams. A stray blast decapitates the frog temple. AR returns fire with a rocket launcher. His first shot takes out the snake. The second knocks WV flying. WV lands behind a rock, and the carved pumpkin lands on his head. AR lines up his next shot...and pauses.

The carved image of Bec’s head seems to mean something to AR, because he immediately ceases fire and comes down to start yelling at WV. This turns out to be a poor move on his part: PM still has her sword, and she is not pleased.

I really, really like PM as a character. She has no dialogue whatsoever and still projects massive amounts of integrity.

The comic returns to Jade. She’s retrieved Dave’s Sburb discs from the time capsule, which is clearly going to move the plot along...

Looks like the TIME CAPSULE has reset itself. It is sprouting a new bud. Presumably something else will come out when it blooms again in about 400 years. Too bad you won't be around to find out what it is!

...aaaaaaand we go into sylladex shenanigans again.

I will say this for sylladex tomfoolery: It absolutely can break up tension and provide some lighter stretches in the plot. The problem is that these don’t always feel natural. I find them less annoying now and can appreciate the humour, but they really bugged me the first time around.

Still, Jade’s use of her sylladex does at least speak to her character.

Jade eventually settles on Pictionary modus, which means she has to draw a picture of whatever she wants to captchalogue. If she doesn’t have the drawn item to hand, her modus instead captures a “ghost image” of the item on a card, complete with alchemiter code. Handy! Unfortunately the modus has some trouble understanding Jade’s drawings, interpreting her picture of her eclectic bass as a regular electric bass.

Bec then catches up and teleports Jade back to her room. In a demonstration of unusual good sense, Jade promptly gets on with installing the Sburb Beta.

Back in the Land of Wind and Shade, John pesters Rose to ask if she’s here on the other side of the gate, in the “spooky glowy place with oily rivers and stuff”. She doesn’t respond. He does however get pestered by Jade, who is now awake and therefore fully aware of what Sburb is (much to John’s confusion). She tells him to go get his copy of the game so he can be her server player. John is convinced Jade is psychic, but she tells him that he has access to all the information she does, he just doesn’t know it yet.

Meanwhile, Dave is also trying to get in touch with Rose, also to no effect. Jade pesters him and they have a cute conversation in which Jade forgets how a reference goes, but Dave assures her she got it anyway. She tells him she’s setting up as his server player and shows him a picture of the meteor aimed at his house. There are no size comparison points available but Jade assures him that it’s really, really big.

TG: well as if like one the size of a bus wouldnt kill me anyway

FAILURE ARTIST: Dave describes his beating from his Guardian as “i got served like a dude on butler island” and Jade says it’s “(DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA)”. It’s hard to take the abuse seriously when none of the characters do.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 14

BRIGHT: In the Medium, John is getting pestered by carcinoGeneticist again. We now have a picture icon for CG. Look familiar? Yup, it’s the guy from the end of the Intermission.

So I guess this is the first time in the main comic that we get confirmed, visual proof that the trolls are aliens? It’s hard to point to, since the trolls get introduced gradually.

I’ve no idea how this was received in fandom when it first happened, but by the time I got to Homestuck, the fact that the trolls were grey folks with horns was probably the most famous feature of the canon, so...not so much of an impact. Still pretty cool though.

FAILURE ARTIST: I wish I could remember how the fandom took it.

The trolls in these early acts make a big deal all the time about how they are alien and the kids are human. It’s an amusing parody of the way aliens act in fiction but it is weird when the trolls become actual characters and we find out their psychology is surprisingly human most of the time.

CHEL: Hence the WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM count. That’ll spike later.

BRIGHT: CG is unexpectedly friendly this time. Apparently he’s been trolling John backwards through time, which is frustrating as each earlier John knows less and less, so CG keeps having to repeat himself. (Which...doesn’t make much sense? He’d have to explain more obvious stuff, sure, but John would remember things he was told in later-from-CG’s-perspective conversations, so...ugh, time travel!) Despite this frustration, however, John’s relentless friendliness apparently wore the trolls down and now they’re friends. Or at least CG thinks they are. John is less than convinced.

CHEL:

John asks if the trolls are in his land, but CG berates him for self-centredness:

CG: WE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR DUMB LITTLE WINDY PLANET OR YOUR PETTY LITTLE QUESTS. CG: OR FOR THAT MATTER YOUR ENTIRE GAME SESSION. CG: YOU AREN'T THE ONLY ONES PLAYING THE GAME. CG: EVERY GROUP OF PLAYERS GETS THEIR OWN DISTINCT, BLANK SLATE SESSION. CG: AS WILL BE EXPLAINED TO YOU MANY TIMES.

He instructs John to relay an apology for the trolling to Jade and to tell her to GET HER GROSS AND TOTALLY UNATTRACTIVE HUMAN BUTT OFF HER UGLY HUMAN HIGH HORSE AND ANSWER MY MESSAGES. John says he’s a bit focused on his own quest right now, and sets off to find his father’s car.

TIER: While that's happening, we cut back to the gaggle of aliens having a grand old time around a campfire with some good food. A familiar pair of squiddles, now old, is visible as well.

FAILURE ARTIST: AR/PM/WV was a popular OT3 back in the day but you never see it anymore.

CHEL: Pity. It’s adorable.

FAILURE ARTIST: We cut to Dave’s place, where Jade is setting things up for the game. The air conditioning unit helps with the process, but the birds everywhere don’t. Dave drops the r-slur.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 16

Rose also talks with Dave as this is going on. She says this to him.

TT: I've done nothing but wait for boys to play this game with me all day. TT: First John lollygagging with the client, and then you with the server, downright filibustering my existence with unending fraternal melee. TT: And yet a girl, one who didn't even own the game, was able to connect with you minutes after you connected with me.

I’ve seen this quoted as Rose/Jade Lesbian Power but I wish we had more scenes where the two actually talked to each other.

CHEL: Being happy that one of your friends is competent means you’re in love with them now? And yet if someone used that as evidence for a het ship they’d be run out of the fandom. Anyway, Jade removes Dave’s bed to make room.

TT: And there she goes. TT: She HAS the karma.

FAILURE ARTIST: Rose has been talking to a troll, but she doesn’t know the gender so uses “he/she/it”. Funny to think there was a time when we didn’t know the trolls’ gender. Particularly the gender of Rose’s favorite troll...

Jade tries to tidy up the apartment using “a woman’s touch” a.k.a. a towel drenched in toilet water. Which begs the question of how her home is spotless.

CHEL: Because Hussie is again not thinking through the implications of the living situations as presented, and/or trying to present things as simultaneously a joke and serious. To be fair, considering the dreambot, she could have a super hi-tech cleaning system, or Bec could teleport the dirt away, but if so, we ought to see that.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 10 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 15

FAILURE ARTIST: In doing so, she accidentally rips the toilet out and drops an F-bomb.

CHEL: We now get a video of Rose’s location, the LAND OF LIGHT AND RAIN. Her house is now perched on a tiny island surrounded by glimmering pastel oil-slick-looking water, a waterfall pouring down out of nowhere beside it, with golden clouds scattered around pouring rain. It’s very pretty!

We again see the carapaces finding things in the ruins, and WV brings PM to see inside the bunker. The blast earlier formed an entry into the third room which had been locked, which contains further devices, this one with more spirographs and a frog picture on it; WV doesn’t know what this one does and the power’s too low to use it anyway. Back in the room with the monitors, PM is impressed by WV’s drawings and he offers her the pack of chalk. AR, meanwhile, cooks food.

PM recognises the monitor as similar to the one in her own station, though hers was watching a girl. Here, we get the static panels of the runaround game, from PM’s point of view.

Back in LoLaR, a mysterious textbox in cursive addresses Rose as Seer, suggesting she explore. Recall that the book mentioned the Heir of Breath, the Seer of Light, the Witch of Space, and the Knight of Time. Since Jade is the one who’s been doing the Seer-ing so far, I’ve seen readers assume she was the Seer and Rose the Witch, but it seems not; further explanations of what those titles really mean are forthcoming.

Sudden cut back to John’s land, where the village is under attack! Huts are aflame, and much bigger and more powerful monsters have arrived.

In Dave’s apartment, Jade opens the cruxtruder by dropping the displaced toilet on it, splashing water everywhere, much to Dave’s aggravation since all that juice was going to come back to haunt me. He’s relieved to see the countdown gives him four hours, but Jade doesn’t know till what, and he realises she’s sleep-messaging him again. He orders her not to watch him pee, and dont put anything weird in the seizure kernel.

TG: the last thing i need is for your weird brain webcam to be snapping shots of my dong TG: your grandpa was a sick fuck why would he build a voyeurbot for a little girl CALL CPA PLEASE: 8

Well, he is kinda right. Anyway, Dave spends a couple of pages elaborately planning misuse of the apple juice bottle and tricking John into drinking from the alchemised bottle, but he dismisses it as too much trouble and goes in the shower, kicking out the puppet. Good thing it was only his bladder that was the problem, if you get my drift. Some fans have speculated that this puppet also had a camera in it, but I can’t see evidence of that; I guess if you squint the eyes might look like a camera lens? I feel if that was the case it would have been shown. Hussie didn’t shy away from the weird shit with Dave’s living situation earlier.

Jade is upset to find the bisected bird from earlier, and decides to help the bird by putting it in the Kernelsprite, angering Dave again. He figures she’ll be more helpful when she’s awake, so he instructs her to slap the air to her side; the dreambot mimics her movements and whacks the real Jade in the face, waking her up.

BRIGHT: I burst out laughing the first time I saw that panel. It’s pretty clever of Dave. (Though obviously not kind, but of a variety that’s in keeping with the story.)

CHEL: Cut to the carapace camp, where they’re burning empty crates for a campfire. AR decides to use the Squiddles to Win over that fine carapace in grey, which seems to distress WV and Serenity. PM takes a Squiddle, but rather than being won over is vaguely reminded of something.

TIER: We then jump back into the past, where we find a totalled car and what looks like AR?

CHEL: Yep, though here he’s going by Authority Regulator instead of Aimless Renegade.

TIER: Whatever the case, this dude is not happy with this traffic violation. Another thing he's not happy with? Unauthorized parcels. Which brings us to the Parcel Mistress, who's been looking for this particular package for a while apparently. Now how to get it?

With that we jump back to John! Who's doing decent enough in his clobbering of game enemies. Just when things ain't looking too hot though, a mysterious stranger shoots and kills them with extreme prejudice. He looks familiar ain't he?

And even if he's not, that gigantic book under his arm can only be the work of the ol’ Colonel Sassacre, which John helpfully points out.

CHEL: Meanwhile in some other time period, PM suddenly remembers she must deliver a message to John. Back in the present, Parcel Mistress, for it is she, finds a tablet carved (badly) by John, depicting the SBurb envelope. The prompt suggests PM ready her sword, but she has none, and claims she would never resort to violence. Instead, she tries asking politely. Despite their lands’ enmity, AR finds her attractive and doffs his hat so furiously you are in danger of starting a HAT FIRE. His civility does not extend to handing over contraband, though. The tablet is sufficient evidence for him to give her the envelope, but to get the green parcel she must ask his bosses. PM puts the envelope in a pyxis, trusting the Breeze to move it, and follows AR.

John plans to follow the man, who he does not yet recognise as Jade’s Grandpa, to get his book back, but first he must help put out the fire in the salamander village. He flings the BARBASOL BOMB he made earlier into the volcano.

The cooling lather should work its magic in no time…

OH GOD HOW CAN SHAVING CREAM BE SO FLAMMABLE

Yeah, that doesn’t work so well. Fortunately, just as all seems lost, A big gust of wind conveniently comes along and blows out all the fire. The salamanders declare John a hero, though he’s just confused.

FAILURE ARTIST: A prompt (PM) asks John if he still has the tablet and if he wants to carve something on it. So, in another time loop, he does that.

Back at LOLAR, a very elegant and mysterious prompt ask Rose to find Jaspersprite. Rose cannot find him, but she does find footprints leading to the mausoleum. The mausoleum isn’t there anymore, but the underground passage is still there. Rose takes it down to a pier where someone has recently taken a boat and left a martini. The mysterious prompt says “A mother will do whatever is best for her children.” Nobody ever said “a brother will do whatever is best for his siblings”.

In the future, WV becomes the Mayor of Exile Town. The peace is disturbed when a “huge eggy looking thing” appears in the sky.

Cut to Jade giving the punch card of an “eggy loking thign (sic)”. Guess someone on the forum had bad spelling?

CHEL: It’s a callback to Rose describing the other unfinished GameFAQs entries, which were typed in haste. One described their entry item that way.

FAILURE ARTIST: Dave creates a huge red bird with a huge red egg. When he tries to use the egg, the crow sprite takes it and puts it in a nest made of smuppets, swords, and Lil Cal.

Dave doesn’t have enough grist to do anything. He fusses around building what he can. That done, he goes inside and installs gristTorrent to steal grist from John. Who exactly made that software?

Meanwhile, in LOLAR, Rose has set up shop on the pier. The mysterious prompter tells her to consult with the Heir and in the pesterlog we see she’s chatting with John. They catch up on the trolls and various things. Unfortunately, Rose is harassed by a gallowsCalibrator who tells her in 133t speak that her mother hates her and left her forever. Amazing that GC eventually becomes a beloved character since they are such a little shit right now. GC has synesthesia and jokes about their species communicating through “CLOUDS OF FR4GR4NT G4S3S”. They want to be helpful, but they deny wanting to be friends, though later they say they are becoming something called “H4T3FR13NDS”.

CHEL: Rose asks if I'm being courted or trolled here, which with further reveals about the trolls will become somewhat ironic. Other trolls are jumping around in time but GC is ST4Y1NG L1N34R [...] C4US3 W31RD T1M3 STUFF G1V3S ME A H34D4CHE, though will jump forward in the timeline so they don’t have to wait too long between conversations.

BRIGHT: GC isn’t the only one...

FAILURE ARTIST: GC explains the voices in the players’ heads are from the Exiles on Earth. The ultimate goal is to create a new civilization with them. With that important information, GC bids adieu for now.

TT: So the exiles are on Earth? Does that mean our goal is to get back there too? To resurrect it somehow? GC: NO NO NO GC: S33 1RON1C4LLY TH3Y G3T TO DO TH4T GC: 4FT3R TH3YR3 DON3 H3LP1NG YOU TH4T 1S GC: YOUR JOB 1S OF GR34T3R CONS3QU3NC3 TO S4Y TH3 L34ST GC: BUT P4RT OF TH31R JOB 1S TO R3BU1LD L1F3 4ND C1V1L1Z4T1ON TH3R3 GC: 4ND 1F TH3YR3 SUCC3SSFUL 1N THOUS4NDS OR M1LL1ONS OF Y34RS TH3 T3CHNOLOGY 1S UN34RTH3D 4ND TH3 PL4N3T 1S R1P3 FOR S33D1NG 4LL OV3R 4G41N TT: You never answered the question. Where were they exiled from? GC: FROM TH3 TWO K1NGDOMS 1N TH3 1NC1P1SPH3R3 GC: 3XP4TR14T3D DUR1NG TH3 R3CKON1NG

CHEL: We now know who and what the Exiles are, so let’s lop off a point for that:

WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 8

FAILURE ARTIST: Back in the past, when John went by ghostyTrickster, he tries to have a conversation with Jade but it’s interrupted by CG warning her that her robot will explode. After CG leaves, Jade and John talk about the trolls. Seems blocking does no good. John drops the r-slur.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 17

We cut to CG being gray and angry in some mysterious grey room.

Then, back to Jade. Her package from her pen-pal appears again.

Cut to ghostyTrickster John. GC trolls him, outs herself as female and blind, and threatens to cut his throat “4ND L1ST3N TO YOU BL33D WH1L3 1 SM3LL YOU D13”. John is naturally unnerved by this, but he also takes inspiration from her taunt that he’s bad at ectobiology.

CHEL: He takes for his new username a term that the trolls introduced him to, and is surprised when they immediately find him? Maybe we DID need a Too Dumb To Live count.

FAILURE ARTIST: We cut to a troll like CG, but with red glasses and a Libra sign on her shirt. This is our first look at gallowsCallibrator.

CHEL: Okay, does the death threat qualify for SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER? It’s a bit extreme considering at this point in his timeline John has done nothing to offend her. Then again, maybe not; the narrative doesn’t present this as being the right and proper thing to do.

Back in the present, PM arrives in enemy territory, with the parking citation as a ready excuse for her presence. Imps and agents she passes now have features from Jaspersprite; cat faces, princess hats, and we see a DD-like figure wearing a cat-ear headband. PM follows a red carpet, only to be confronted at the end by this eldritch-looking majesty:

PM is naturally trembling, but is merely instructed to speak to the Archagent, who we’ve met before; Jack Noir. We see a ring with four pearl-like orbs on the monarch’s hand; this will become important later.

Rose’s Exile voice bids her farewell, telling her to Find your sprite. Realise your purpose. No longer guided, Rose decides to start making her own decisions, beginning with a sip of martini.

In the desert, A WINDSWEPT QUESTANT suddenly appears, this being a tall white carapace with a feminine figure and narrow eyes, from the eggy lokin thign, with the unsound effect EGG! WV and AR appear disconcerted, while PM is busy telling John to put the carved tablet in the pyxis.

Back in Jack Noir’s office, PM attempts to grab the green box and leave, but Jack appears suddenly behind her, making her jump, and tells her she’d better have the ticket payment or you are wasting valuable time he could otherwise spend shirking his clerical duties. PM nervously explains she’s actually here for the package, and Jack points out she doesn’t have the right courier forms.

In spite of how he's supposed to be dressed now but isn't, he ain't nobody's fool.

However, instead, she could always do an errand for him. Specifically, following his HIT LIST, which is two pictures of white crowns recognisable as the tops of the king and queen chess pieces. He also gives her the enormous black sword we saw her future self use. PM, terrified, departs, and Jack wonders if she’s actually stupid enough to try it.

You make a policy of handing out a REGISWORD and a HITLIST to just about everyone who enters your office.

Curious, he opens the package, and stares into it in surprise.

At Dave’s apartment, Jade has put the Punch Designix in the hallway, making it rather hard to navigate, but regardless Dave’s busy alchemising. He plays with a few add-ons which temporarily render the machines unusable, but eventually manages to use a jumper shunty thing to consolidate all the machines into one. Jade draws some components, gets the captcha codes of their ghost images, and sends the codes to Dave, who plugs them into the machine. Useful, but could probably be compressed into fewer pages, especially when he follows it up by playing with the new machinery. This is adding to my conviction that the machines should have been simplified severely in the first place.

GET ON WITH IT!: 15

John finds the wrecked car with no dad, package, or game, and gets trolled by GC again. She offers to help him, claiming she wants to H3LP YOU 4DV4NC3 MOR3 QU1CKLY because she’s bored watching his long adventure and wants to help him skip ahead. John points out she could just skip forward on the timeline as she has before, and she admits that she just wants to see if she can change the timeline, as her friends don’t believe they can. She offers him a map, which he accepts.

John complains, naturally, and she relents and offers to guide him directly to the pipe which will help him skip to the next Gate. Honestly, he has reason to complain; her smellovision allows her to read text on a screen, yet not to draw?

Rose, back in LOLAR, battles monsters, doing surprisingly well considering she only has knitting needles for a weapon, culminating in an epic sequence in which she stabs both needles into an ogre’s eyes, flips onto its back, and uses her knitting as reins to ride it down the waterfall. Dave informs her he’s out of grist, but she finds the idea of killing the ogre for supplies when it’s unconscious to be distasteful. He’s interrupted by grimAuxiliatrix, The Troll Who Talks Like This, asking about Rose. The conversation is awkward as GA seems unable to read Dave’s sarcasm.

GA: She Perhaps Even Regards You With Uh GA: Endearment TG: you have no idea dude she is so in my grill TG: like a stray hotdog that rolled down there TG: and now its too much trouble to fish out with the tongs TG: so you just watch it like crack and turn black GA: Um Is This GA: A Common Sort Of Practice In Human Courtship GA: Watching Oblong Meat Products Tumble Into Places They Dont Belong

adiosToreador, meanwhile, does the same to Rose about Dave, with a similar lack of comprehension of Rose’s loquaciousness. GA contacts Rose again, and a confusing conversation about temporal mechanics ensues. Afterwards, we see GA, who proves to be a short-haired troll girl with pronged horns, a Virgo shirt symbol (my troll!), and cute little vampire teeth.

FAILURE ARTIST: It’s been too long for me to remember the fandom reaction, but I feel like the reveal that GA is a girl was framed like a surprise. Surprise! This troll is a lesbian! But I might be mistaken. Still, this isn’t like Dave’s (mock?) offended reaction to AT. Hussie, like many straight men, is more comfortable with lesbians than gay men.

We’ll see more of Rose’s and GA’s relationship as the comic goes on. Some non-Homestucks here might already be spoiled due to the numerous fanart of the two.

CHEL: I wasn’t surprised by her being a girl; maybe I’m stereotyping, but the prissy nature of her dialogue and quirk sounded feminine to me from the start, not to mention the “trix” ending of her username is a feminine one - if she was male, it would be “auxiliator”. Not sure how many people paid attention to that though. I was surprised by the later information that (SPOILER) she actually was interested in Rose, because facetious declarations of romantic intention are kind of a thing for the human kids at this point and her flustered reaction could be taken either way here.

Dave, meanwhile, is trolled by AT, with the most cringe-inducing text-rap I’ve ever seen (and text-rapping is pretty cringy to begin with). I gotta praise Hussie, it takes skill to make something this awful.

AT: oK, lET ME, AT: oRGANIZE MY NOTES HERE, AT: oKAYYY, AT: (tURN ON SOME STRICT BEATS MAYBE, iT WILL HELP TO LISTEN TO THEM WHILE i DESTROY YOU,) AT: wHEN THE POLICE MAN BUSTS ME, aND POPS THE TRUNK, AT: hE'S ALL SUPRISED TO FIND I'M TOTING SICK BILLY, AT: wHOSE, AT: gOAT IS THAT, hE ASKS, wHILE HE STOPS TO THUNK AT: aBOUT IT, aND i'S JUST SAY IT'S DAVE'S, yOU SILLY AT: gOOSE,

Since we’ll later find out trolls don’t have the concept of police in the same way humans do, and nor do they call animals by the same names we do, I think this is worth some WSP points. Did he watch Dave’s life closely enough to pick up those concepts?

BRIGHT: I get the distinct impression none of the trolls watched anything like enough of the kids’ lives to pick up the concept of the police, particularly since as we’ll see later they missed a few things that are rather more obvious -- such as, say, parents.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 11

CHEL: He also namedrops Prospit and Derse, which I’m not really spoiling anything by saying are the names of the two warring chess kingdoms, though I don’t think those names have been applied to them yet. I don’t know why, it’s not like keeping them secret makes a big difference - did Hussie only just think of them? The quality of his rhymes aside, AT appears very proud of himself; he’s a troll with enormous bull-like horns, a mohawk, and a Taurus symbol. I thought he was really creepy-looking the first time I saw him, but he rather grew on me.

Back on LOWAS, John is squirted out of a pipe with a gush of oil. Ew. The Con Air bunny goes flying and lands in an oil river, and he catches it with the Ghost Gauntlets. An adult and child pair of salamanders happen to be standing nearby, prompting a movie re-enactment, much to the salamanders’ confusion.

Watch on YouTube

CG is unimpressed, though he agrees with John that Con Air sounds entertaining. CG claims to have been watching the whole of John’s life and Con Air is supposed to be one of John’s favourite movies; how come CG hasn’t seen any of it before, especially since he says he has seen a movie John hates?

CG: OK I DON'T SEE HOW WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE BECOMING FRIENDS IF YOU RECOIL FROM MY OLIVE BRANCH LIKE I'M WIGGLING A GNARLED TREE MONSTER'S DICK IN YOUR DIRECTION.

Lovely. Though I gotta say the dialogue and ridiculous extended metaphors are one of the best parts of Homestuck. Wish I could pull those off. However, one point here; if they’re aliens, it seems odd that they would use human idioms such as “olive branch” with the same meaning we do. There is a possible explanation later on, but since they only ever use American/Western phrases like this and it’s clear from other things they say that they didn’t pick up anything much about human culture from watching the kids, I’m upping the count anyway.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 12

BRIGHT: We also discover that troll movies are titled very differently to human movies, such as the classic

CG: WHEREIN NUMEROUS VIGILANTES CONFRONT PERIL; ONE OF THEM BETRAYS THE OTHERS;(BUT IT TURNS OUT TO BE PART OF THE PLAN ALL ALONG); CG: SEVERAL ATTRACTIVE FEMALE LEADS PROVOKE ROMANTIC TENSION; FOUR MAJOR CHARACTERS WEAR UNUSUAL HATS; ONE HOLDS PLOT-CRITICAL SECRET; CG: 47 ON-SCREEN EXPLOSIONS, ONE RESULTING IN DEMISE OF KEY-ADVERSARY;6 TO 20 LINES THAT COULD BE CONSTRUED AS HUMOROUS; EB: wait... EB: this is the title? CG: IT GOES ON.

Apparently after thousands of years of film history, you start running out of movie titles.

Also, note that despite their being aliens, quite possibly with different gender roles, the romantic tension is explicitly provided by attractive female leads.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 13

CG thinks that Earth civilisation’s lack of maturity might explain why the players are (apparently) doing so badly. John retorts that GC is helping him, so they can’t be doing THAT badly. Apparently this wasn’t in the plan; CG goes to talk to GC about it, and she punches him. Seems she’s talking to a future John at the moment, and he asked her to. CG gives John a message to pass on to GC in reply.

CG: TELL HER TO POLISH MY HEAVING BONE BULGE AND SET A TABLE FOR FUCKING TWO ON IT. CG: IT’S FOR OUR CANDLELIT HATE DATE.

John comments that it’s like they’re trolling each other through him now, and asks if CG has talked to Jade. CG is surprised that he’d want to talk to her. John offers to paste the chatlog; CG refuses, and John heads off to talk to GC.

CHEL: Precisely what a bone bulge is is never explained. Context makes it clear it’s an unsavoury body part, and it sounds like a term for one’s dick, even though the boner does not in fact contain bones in humans. The assumption early in the fandom was that the trolls had primarily human anatomy, which seems odd to me considering Kanaya’s complete obliviousness to her Oblong Meat Products comment - most teenagers familiar with human penises would be on that instantly. Anyway, there soon came a phase of experimentation, and by now we seem to have settled on the “functional-hermaphrodites with tentacle dicks” theory. Which is weird, because a tentacle doesn’t sound like something which would be referred to with the word “bone”, does it?

GC’s laughing mouth is reflected in John’s glasses as they speak in what I desperately hope is a shoutout to the Corinthian. She calls John STUP1DLY 4DOR4BLE (minor typo on the comic’s part as the E in her quirk should be a 3) and laughs at CG’s frustration. John relays an approximation of CG’s message:

EB: he wants you to touch his bone lump or something. GC: WH4T!!! EB: and that he's pretty much basically in love with you.

GC asks him to copy-paste the convo for proof but John refuses, saying it was a private conversation, and informs GC that she’s going to punch CG soon. In other news, referring to these characters with only their handle initials when I know their actual names is hard.

On GC’s instructions, John turns around, to discover this hard-to-miss landmark:

This, according to GC, is the D3N1Z3NS P4L4C3, in which the Denizen sleeps on a grist hoard so big their alchemising could never make a dent in it.

GC: USU4LLY HOW 1TS SUPPOS3D TO GO 1S GC: OV3R TH3 COURS3 OF YOUR QU3ST GC: YOU W1LL W4K3 TH3 D3N1Z3N GC: 4ND TH3N F1N4LLY YOU GO THROUGH TH3 S3V3NTH G4T3 GC: WH1CH 1S TH3 ONLY W4Y 1NTO TH3 P4L4C3 GC: TH3N YOU GO DOWN 4ND F1GHT TH3 D3N1Z3N GC: 4ND K1LL 1T GC: R3L3AS1NG TH3 HO4RD EB: so what's my advantage? GC: YOU WONT BOTH3R W4K1NG 1T GC: W3 W1LL SK1P R1GHT TO TH3 S3V3NTH G4T3 GC: F1ND 1TS L41R GC: 4ND K1LL 1T 1N 1TS SL33P

The grist hoard, GC claims, is for the ULT1M4T3 4LCH3MY, but she won’t explain what this is yet, and she leads John to a R3TURN NOD3 which takes him back to his home to prepare.

In the desert, AR and WV hammer some metal to make a gift for the Windswept Questant, which proves to be a crown. PM is shocked to see this, and emerges from the bunker, sword in hand.

Meanwhile, in a long-discarded memory… A PARCEL MISTRESS seeks audience with royalty.

It seems Windswept Questant is in fact, of course, the White Queen.

PM explains recent events and seeks her queen’s advice, showing her the hit list requesting the white monarchs’ crowns. WQ is wearing a ring similar to that of the monarch we met earlier, the Black Queen. Four orbs are attached to it, two light and two dark. On removing it, WQ loses all her elaborate prototyping accoutrements and becomes the normal-looking carapace we saw in her Windswept Questant identity. WQ seems to have a plan; instead of requiring PM to kill her to finish her fetch quest, she simply hands over her crown and ring, and instructs PM to find the White King on the battlefield. Flashing forward to the desert, WQ places her new crown on PM’s head, much to the astonishment of their companions.

On LOLAR, beneath waterfalls pouring from hovering pink turtle shells, Rose frustratedly consults with Jaspersprite, who will apparently only meow. However, when asked a direct question, Jaspersprite is able to respond. He is attempting to fish with his tentacles, but there are no fish, because her Denizen ate everything in the ocean and got so full that it took a long nap. Being as cryptic as Nannasprite, he won’t, however, explain what the message he gave to young Rose meant, saying she’ll understand when she wakes up.

JASPERSPRITE: Rose im just a cat and i dont know much but i know that youre important and also you are what some people around here call the Seer of Light. JASPERSPRITE: And you dont know what that means but you will see its all tied together! JASPERSPRITE: All the life in the ocean and all the shiny rain and the songs in your head and the letters they make. JASPERSPRITE: A beam of light i think is like a drop of rain or a long piece of yarn that dances around when you play with it and make it look enticing! JASPERSPRITE: And the way that it shakes is the same as what makes notes in a song! JASPERSPRITE: And a song i think can be written down as letters. JASPERSPRITE: So if you play the right song and it makes all the right letters then those letters could be all the letters that make life possible. JASPERSPRITE: So all you have to do is wake up and learn to play the rain!

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie is very good at writing the dialogue of a kitten turned into a game NPC, you’ve got to hand it to him.

CHEL: It’s also worth noting that his colours have stopped flashing pink and purple, and he’s settled on pink.

Rose asks Jade for further information, and learns that all four of the kids have a dream self which must awaken; Rose deduces Jade’s has been awake as long as they’ve known each other. Jade is in fact asleep now, and can only message at the moment because of her robot. Rose’s dream self is dreaming troubled dreams, causing the real Rose to suffer nightmares all her life, and to stop this she must discover how to wake her dream self.

GG: maybe the stuff you wrote on your walls can give you a clue? TT: What stuff? GG: the.... GG: er GG: didnt dave tell you?

Utterly heartwarming moment; we see in John’s dream tower, and Jade has drawn over the LAME KID messages and creepy clown faces on John’s walls with a big bright yellow heart and the message wake up john!!! you can do it!!!

Rose wants to know what’s going on, but Dave is unavailable. The meteor is about to land and he’s scrambling his way up the tower to his kernelsprite’s nest to retrieve the entry egg.

Back at John’s house, he finds the useless rocket-pack-combined-with-junk he experimentally alchemised earlier; GC tells him that the trolls’ resident hacker, who we haven’t met yet, can use its code to create a usable jetpack. Said hacker doesn’t want to talk to them but WONT B3 4BL3 TO R3S1ST TH3 CH4LL3NG3.

John sends the mishmash code…

GC: OK B3 B4CK IN L3SS TH4N ON3 S3COND GC: PCHOOOOO EB: hello? GC: WH4T EB: it thought you said you'd be back in less than a second? GC: 1 W4S GC: 1 G4V3 YOU TH3 COD3 GC: 1TS PCHOOOOO

Hee. The misunderstanding leads into a brief argument, GC claiming that 3V3N YOU 4ND YOUR UND3RD3V3LOP3D BON3 NOOK W1LL B3 4BL3 TO F1GUR3 OUT WH4T TO DO. Once again, we don’t know what a bone nook is. Context could imply either an obscene body part or a brain-related one. Common fanon holds that it’s the vagina, others have objected and said it surely must mean anus; neither of those sound like a “bone” anything to me, and in fact bone would be horribly counterproductive for organs which have to perform peristalsis. Someone did point out to me that it could mean a place to put the metaphorical bone, but that wasn’t what I immediately thought.

FAILURE ARTIST: I don’t think the phrase “bone nook” ever comes up again, though the word “nook” by itself does and it can be replaced with the word “ass” in those cases. Basically, trolls aren’t a fictional species crafted with any care. Hussie wanted some annoying alien characters with a visual callback to “Little Monsters” and it somehow got out of control.

CHEL: Actually, I believe it does come up in Hiveswap Act 1! But we’ll get to that.

John answers a message from Dave, who now claims to be in the Medium, saying it took him four hours. He asks for advice, saying his sprite wants him to prototype it again, and Rose is randomly asleep.

TG: ok fine but TG: it seems to be suggesting something here TG: and TG: i guess im kinda weirded out by its suggestion EB: i don't know, just do what it says! EB: it knows stuff about the game, so it probably knows better than i do...

Not a good sign. John decides to Take dear, sweet Casey (the baby salamander) into protective custody by captchaloguing her, and blasts off for the gate.

Cut to an animated sequence in The Land of Heat and Clockwork, a nightmarish lava-scape covered in machinery (convection schmonvection), where Dave is being extremely badass and surprisingly successful for someone with only half a sword. In fact, multiple Daves appear to be present. We also see, unfortunately, exactly what he prototyped:

Watch on YouTube

Calsprite is even less helpful than the other two, providing a constant soundtrack of creepy laughter while Dave begs him to shut up. According to Dave’s ensuing convo with Rose, this has been going on for four months. That’s… pretty terrifying even before we hear everything that went wrong. John was unsurprisingly instantly slain by his Denizen, and thus couldn’t save Jade from her meteor. Dave, however, has now mastered the art of time travel via the magical turntables he’s created, and intends to go back and prevent all that from happening, now that they’ve spent four months gathering information their past selves can use. Rose is afraid of ceasing to exist; Dave assures her that their dream selves exist outside the standard passage of time, and this will help her dream self wake sooner.

FAILURE ARTIST: The trolls also stopped “trolling” Dave and Rose after John died. This isn’t the end of the trolls, of course.

Dave uses his turntables to go to the past. We cut to a conversation we just saw, where Dave has just entered the Medium and John is about to go pchooooo, except this time from Dave’s roof.

GET ON WITH IT!: 16

Except at the end, Dave tells John not to go. See, Dave from the future just arrived on Dave from the present’s roof. John refuses to believe that this is happening, thinking it’s just a prank. Not even putting future!Dave on the line convinces John. So, future!Dave unloads everything he has in a stack and flips back into the Crowsprite to become a new characters: Davesprite.

CHEL: Note that, instead of Dave’s theme colour of red, Davesprite is orange. I did wonder if this was potentially supposed to show that Bro (whose theme colour is orange) is overwriting/overshadowing Dave’s real self, but since the sprites of the others aren’t the theme colours of their respective kids (Nannasprite is teal to John’s dark blue and Jaspersprite pink to Rose’s purple) I don’t think this is really a reliable sign. Pin in the colours, though, that’ll come up later.

FAILURE ARTIST: Meanwhile, John blasts off with the words “THIS IS STUPID”.

Present!Rose tries to pester Dave, and we get another repeated conversation.

GET ON WITH IT!: 17

Present!Rose decides to nap, and at that moment, Future Dream Rose ceases to exist and becomes absorbed by Present!Rose. I think.

WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 9

Davesprite pesters GC to tell her not to talk to John anymore. GC first reacts by saying “YOU SM3LL L1K3 OR4NG3 CR34MS1CL3S” but then finds out she killed John. She had assumed since she could talk to John in the future, he hadn’t died, but she guessed there was a chance he could die. She’s a little put-out and wants to apologize, but she’s not as sad as you’d expect someone who accidentally killed someone to be. Davesprite asks who is in charge of timeline management.

GC: SH3 DO3SNT W4NT TO T4LK TO 4NY OF YOU GC: 4ND H4S M1SG1V1NGS 4BOUT TH1S WHOL3 TH1NG GC: NOT 4LL OF US 4R3 TH4T 3NTHUS1AST1C 4BOUT TROLL1NG YOU GUYS GC: 4ND TH3 ON3S WHO 4R3 SORT OF SUCK 4T 1T >:|

We do get to meet her, but not until the next act when we meet all the trolls.

Davesprite gives GC permission to talk to John if she cuts out her “coy bullshit antics”. GC mocks his threatening tone and points out she’s higher on the echeladder, from the future, and blind. Davesprite says his self-prototyping gave him great powers and GC says that was a bad idea. They then engage in some banter over GC posting screencaps of Wheeler from Captain Planet (which she calls a “soap opera”). Davesprite and GC end the conversation with mutual respect. Which is honestly really weird after all future!Dave had to go through because of GC.

CHEL: Does this count for SLAMMER points? I think it does. Here’s the first of our new count, then!

SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 1

This will go up whenever a character does something awful and neither the narrative nor the other characters seem to care.

This also brings us into another point. We’ve seen only hints of it, but alternate timelines are a big theme of this comic. Davesprite in particular is a major focus of said theme, specifically the nature of his personhood separately from the focal or “alpha” Dave. However, as we see here, not even the Dave from the dead John’s timeline particularly seems to mind that John just died in an alternate timeline. At the moment, they appear to feel that because there is an alive John, everything is okay. Let’s see how that progresses.

FAILURE ARTIST: Davesprite and present!Dave (who I guess we can just call Dave at this point) talk. Davespite says as a sprite he has lots of knowledge but is obligated to put it in riddles. However, he says he doesn’t feel like it so he’ll answer Dave straight.

DAVE: alright DAVE: here goes DAVE: why are we so fucking awesome DAVESPRITE: thats the best fucking question anybody ever asked

After that best fucking question, Dave asks if John will be alright. Davesprite says that’s up to John, and if John doesn’t listen they’ll just bail him out again. Davesprite says the gear he piled up will help Dave get to the next gate. The two versions of Dave decide to collaborate on a SBaHJ comic and fist “bunp”.

Meanwhile, “hundreds of pages ago”, John gets his bunny from Dave. We see Dave’s note and it’s cool how each of the kids have their own style of handwriting. There’s a very prophetic sentence in this sweet note:

one day your gooberish ways are gonna land you in a jam and i know im going to have to get you off the hook but its cool i got your back bro.

We cut to the present, where John is blasting off. The human emotion of friendship causes him to reconsider his action. John pesters Dave and tells him he’s just flying around and not going to the gate. Crisis averted.

This might seem like a cul de sac, but it created a new character (Davesprite) and introduced many concepts, so it really isn’t.

CHEL: Primarily, it introduced the theme of jumping around in time in the literal sense as well as just hopping between apparently-disconnected scenes. The latter’s not a generally well-advised style of writing, but considering the time travel motif of the comic, I think it actually works fine here. Also, as a webcomic, if one spends too long on one group of characters then by the time you get back to the other ones the readers will probably not remember what happened, so shorter scenes for each group are probably more acceptable than in a novel or movie.

CG trolls John again, and after a discussion of their becoming reverse anti-mutual friends, John complains that CG hasn’t really answered his questions.

CG: SO GO AHEAD, ASK ME ANYTHING. EB: ok... EB: what's the point of the game. CG: ASK SOMETHING ELSE. CG: ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT.

John asks where they are now in their Medium, and CG explains they’re HIDING IN THE VEIL, a meteor belt between the two planets. To clarify the layout for our readers, Skaia the big ball of sky is in the centre, with Prospit the golden planet orbiting it closely enough for its moon to enter Skaia during the “eclipse” where Jade gets her visions. Then there are the players’ Lands, their little adventure planets where the consorts live, the consorts being the little NPC creatures (in John’s case, the salamanders). Every player has a Land of Something and Something. Beyond the Lands is the Veil, and beyond that is the Furthest Ring, the orbit of Derse, the dark planet.

CG: OK, THERE COMES A TIME WHEN BLACK INEVITABLY BEATS WHITE CG: ON THE BATTLEFIELD IN THE CENTER OF SKAIA CG: THE WHITE KING IS CAPTURED OR KILLED OR SOMETHING CG: THAT'S WHEN THE RECKONING STARTS. EB: ok... CG: THE RULERS OF DERSE CG: THE BLACK KING AND QUEEN CG: GET THE POWER TO SEND THE VEIL TOWARD SKAIA CG: TO DESTROY IT CG: THAT KIND OF STARTS YOUR BIG "COUNTDOWN" CG: WHEN SHIT GETS SERIOUS. EB: so then it's up to us to save it? CG: YEAH, YOU HAVE THAT LONG TO KILL THE BLACK QUEEN AND KING CG: AND SKAIA ITSELF SORT OF BUYS YOU SOME TIME CG: BY ACTIVATING ITS DEFENSE PORTALS CG: TO CATCH SOME OF THE METEORS

Ordinarily, the players would have plenty of time before this happens, but something done by the human players has caused things to go wrong, and now they’ve not only ruined their own chance of winning, but somehow affected the trolls’ game too. CG refuses to explain how, because he’s already told him again.

John asks if they’re hiding in a crater or something, but no, CG explains there are buildings in the Veil. It’s considered neutral ground, and both sides have laboratories there where they genetically engineer new soldiers and agents. John asks CG to tell GC “nice try”, but he refuses.

Now comes the mid-point animation of the act, “[S] Jack: Ascend”. I thought it was an ending animation, but no, there’s still more. If you don’t want to or can’t watch video I’ll explain the content, but I do recommend it.

Watch on YouTube

Pan over the Skaian system, from LOWAS to the Veil to the purple towers of Derse. Four towers are close together, topped by orbs. On three of them, we see the silhouettes of the sprites, while the fourth is dark. Jack Noir sits at his desk, doing paperwork, a pink princess dress on a stand next to it. He doodles on a parking ticket, declaring the Black Queen to be a HUGE BITCH. Closeup on BQ’s hips as she approaches, because we totally needed gratuitous sex appeal. She’s remarkably curvy for a probably-non-mammal. Still, we’ll forgive the standard scifi tropes. Jack watches on the Fenestrated Wall, until BQ appears and hacks it in half. She waves the dress and a pink pointed hat at him; apparently, now that the princess doll has been prototyped, the carapaces must represent it in their clothing as well as the jester. Jack is understandably displeased, and after a quick-fire montage of various outfits representing the sprites’ themes, he tears the final colourful tunic up.

Meanwhile, Rose’s dreamself has awoken, and discovers what she wrote on her walls; the word MEOW and other arrangements of the letters M, E, O, and W, over and over again, over every inch of the walls except the part covered by her bed. She finally remembers what Jaspers said to her, which was, of course, MEOW. This seems like nonsense, but as she looks, the letters switch to G, C, A, and T, the letters used to denote DNA nucleotides. It’s a genetic code.

The guardians, meanwhile, are battling enormous monsters; Mom and Dad respectively punch out a three-eyed spider-like giant and a rock cyclops, Dad pausing afterwards to carve a hat on a pyxis tablet, and Bro swordfights against a lava-dwelling tentacle beast.

Back to Jack, matters have got worse; not only are the carapaces required to dress like the sprites, but Davesprite still has the sword sticking through his torso, so now so must Jack. Considering what else we’ve seen carapaces survive, he’d probably be fine, but he’s still understandably hesitant. BQ offers him a sword, but he slices off her ring-bearing finger, which… causes her to explode? Jack puts on the ring, which causes Derse to glow white and him to sprout the features of the sprites; a sword grows from him without him having to fall on it, and wings and tentacles emerge. End scene.

So, approximately, human children have possibly caused the destruction of an alien civilisation’s last hope by putting a cat in a princess dress. Whatever else you think of Homestuck, you can’t say it’s not inventive.

BRIGHT: It is that, among other things.

COUNTS ALL THE LUCK: 0 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 15 CALL CPA PLEASE: 8 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 17 GET ON WITH IT!: 17 GORE GALORE: 9 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 15 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 6 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 0 RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1 SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 1 SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS: 0 WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 9 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 13 TOTAL: 111

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