#but then again the first one is significantly more explicable. so.

[chiropteracupola]

back from bisque again

#em's adventures in the ceramic bowl mines #unfortunately the sharpe plates did not turn out as well as I wanted and I had to paint stain into every single tiny little half-carved #crevice (of which there were far far far too many) #anyway stay tuned for me crying and screaming while I spend the next month or so making a themed 14-piece tea set #(note that I do not remotely Want to make a themed 14-piece tea set) #a friend has promised he will buy me rice wine to drink out of the three-part sake set incorporated into said tea set which is nice I guess #I know I will be weird about it but it's the thought that counts #anyway I have two ideas for my theme - the first is the feeling of a warm and inviting room in late autumn #and the second is doing only creatures and plant motifs related to the flight of the heron across every last piece of ceramic #but then again the first one is significantly more explicable. so.

[chockfullofsecrets]

Critical Role: Embarrassing and Undignified

(Read on AO3)

Rating: Gen

Summary: Caleb doesn’t smile much. It’s something he rather likes about the man, that he prefers to save his pleasure for that which is truly worth it - but there’s nothing else he can call the expression that briefly narrows those blue eyes. “Reacting like that in front of a friendly tiefling?” he says - teasing, almost, and Essek feels his stomach flip. “I am not so sure.”

Essek's time in the hot tub goes a little awry.

Wordcount: 3.3k

A/N: Fill for this anon prompt! (i’m so sorry for taking 2+ months to write this... i love Essek so much and he needs more tk content)

---

Essek is no stranger to being - unusual. He often welcomes it, really. Achieving a status such as his for the better part of a century comes with its fair share of eccentricities, his floating among them, and at this point hovering just above the rest of the Dynasty has become something of a favored routine.

And yet, it seems, the Nein have him beaten at every turn.

He had meant to take his leave directly after dinner, unsure of his place among Yasha’s solemn questions of loneliness and Beauregard’s transparent attempts to pry information from him and Jester’s threat to invoke a Zone of Truth for idle gossip -

(and the slight jealousy, he admits, if only to himself, of seeing Caleb, ambitious and focused and loved, among them - )

But. Lonely and friendless he is, as has been quite thoroughly pointed out to him through the evening, and he’s intrigued enough by the rarity of this hot tub to clamber up awkwardly onto the enclosing stone wall and dangle his feet into the water while his hosts bustle around and shuck off various pieces of clothing.

Caleb sits next to him, rolling his own pant legs crisply to the knee and lowering his feet in. “What do you think?”

He looks over - thank the Light, Caleb’s still wearing his shirt. “It’s - nice,” he says. He drags his toe through a slow stream of bubbles rising from what he assumes must be the hottest parts of the depths. “Unfamiliar, but quite impressive that you’ve constructed it on your own.”

Caleb raises an eyebrow. “The hot tub, or -” He traces a small circle with his index finger, encompassing himself and his companions. “- all of this?”

Decades of court experience well up unbidden on his tongue. “The compliment extends to you either way,” he offers smoothly.

Caleb squints at him, but before he can say anything more the rest of the Nein are joining them with pleased exclamations and a thoroughly distracting amount of splashing. Essek watches, bemused, as Jester flops in belly-first before even unbuckling the last clasp of her outergarments - she wrestles them off, finally, crumpling the dripping green cloak into a ball and flinging it away, and he winces on behalf of the fine Kryn fabric.

She looks around, eyes lighting on him, and her hands fly to her round cheeks with an excited gasp. “Essek! Your legs!”

Startled, he looks down - they seem quite normal, with his boots off and his neatly pressed trousers folded at the knee, if a little more purple than anyone else’s present. “I would prefer to keep my clothes dry, yes.”

She leans in, eyes wide. “Are they re-al?”

Light be with him - she’s hardly said anything, but he struggles not to flush under the scrutiny. “Ah, yes? Why should they not be?”

Just then, something brushes lightly over the sole of his foot - he startles, and -

His seat is well made, certainly, but not enough to stand up to the Nein’s shenanigans; as he recoils, his center of gravity shifts right off the narrow ledge and he’s tumbling backwards before he can do more than blink.

Light, if this is how he dies -

He flails for a solution - it’s been years, at least, since he’s done something so pedestrian as fall, and there are spells for this, certainly, but what he’s prepared for today is more showy fare, in case the Nein asked for a demonstration, why can’t he think -

A hand closes roughly around his bicep, then another around the opposite shoulder, and then he’s dangling from Caleb’s grip with his back nearly parallel to the floor - he reaches out too, panicked, and crumples the front of Caleb’s shirt in a death grip.

“Good reflexes,” he says, breathless. Blood pounds in his ears. Caleb stares down at him, blue eyes wide and jaw tight -

“Ooh, now kiss!” Jester hoots.

The rest of the Nein burst into laughter behind them. Caleb goes bright red and hurriedly turns away, looking over his shoulder. “One of you jokers come here and help me, please,” he chides, strained, “I am not the muscle of this group.”

The tension in Caleb’s face becomes infinitely more explicable - finally capable of rational thought, Essek flicks his fingers and casts a weight-lightening cantrip just as another strong hand latches onto his knee and bodily tows him upright. Yasha nods at him, chest completely bare, and wades back to her corner as Veth pops up from nowhere with her long ears twitching maniacally. “I’m SO sorry,” she screeches, insistent far beyond the point of sincerity. “I brushed against your feet COMPLETELY ON ACCIDENT.”

“VERY ACCIDENTAL,” Jester agrees loudly. Next to her, Fjord winces.

Veth’s voice softens, then, as she pats him gingerly on the leg. “I didn’t think you would do that - are you okay?”

“It’s all right,” he says weakly. Her ears droop in what seems to be genuine relief - it is pointless to care, perhaps, but he feels better for having reassured her.

He sucks in a solid breath for what feels like the first time in minutes and turns to Caleb to thank him. There’s still a guarding hand resting warmly against his back - and worse still, he realizes belatedly that his own hand is still fisted in the buttons of Caleb’s shirt.

He snatches it hastily away, ears burning. “Ah, my apologies. I shall pay closer attention to gravity, for the rest of the night.”

Caleb doesn’t smile much. It’s something he rather likes about the man, that he prefers to save his pleasure for that which is truly worth it - but there’s nothing else he can call the expression that briefly narrows those blue eyes. “Reacting like that in front of a friendly tiefling?” he says - teasing, almost, and Essek feels his stomach flip. “I am not so sure.”

A friendly -

Surprised, he glances over at Jester and finds her wearing a smug expression that might not be out of place on Da’leth himself, if significantly sweeter. “E-ssek,” she wheedles, wide-eyed with delight, drawing every syllable to its maximum extent. “Are your feet like, super ticklish?”

Essek blinks - ticklish? But he hasn’t - really, he can’t remember the last time he might have known. As a child, perhaps, when Verin used to tempt him into playing by tackling him straight off his feet and -

Oh. Oh, dear.

At least that particular piece of evidence is decades out of date - a poor excuse to discard it, but he’s willing to compromise in the face of Jester’s ever-sharpening grin and the traitorously pleased squirm in the pit of his own stomach. “What? No, of course not, I was merely surprised-”

“You can be surprised and ticklish,” Jester corrects, skipping forward with a splash. Essek shirks back into Caleb’s hand, millimeters from tumbling off the ledge again, and she giggles. “And I’m pret-ty sure that you’re both.”

The hot tub, for all of its excellent qualities, is unfortunately not large enough to keep her at bay for longer than that. She reaches out as he’s still deciding which direction would be the best to flee in and scoops his ankle up in a grip like steel. “Ah-” he sputters. “I - Jester, wait-”

She drags a fingernail up the arch of his foot.

It feels like one of the few times while developing a lightning-based spell that he’d electrocuted himself - but the feeling doesn’t stop, shooting up his leg and tickling at his lungs too to make them shiver, and it’s silly, and he just -

He panics, jerks back against Caleb’s hand again, and in a moment of brash stupidity the animal instinct of his brain decides that the only safe place to hide is Caleb himself. He buries his face in Caleb’s side and grabs him around the waist just in time to shriek as Jester repeats the same lazy route up and down the sole of his foot, pausing only to scratch tingling patterns into his heel. “Tickle, tickle! Aw, guys, he’s so ticklish, look at how much he’s laughing!”

The fabric of Caleb’s shirt isn’t much of a barrier to Jester’s teasing - or to his own ticklish laughter, embarrassingly high-pitched and loud in a way that makes his whole face heat with shame - but at least they can’t see him blush.

Caleb jumps a little as Essek latches onto him, but his hand stays put, stabilizing, and starts to rub gentle circles on his back as Essek dissolves into cackling at another spidering assault on his arch. “Jester, please be gentle,” he says, amused. “I am not sure that is a good idea.”

Essek’s not sure how he feels either. It’s terribly embarrassing, and undignified, and if this was happening in front of any other being in the Dynasty he would have to learn some sort of memory erasure spell, but - the Nein have never cared for his layers upon layers of decorum anyway, have they, always prying for indignation and confusion and warmth that he’s not certain he even possesses.

Caught between Jester and Caleb and a vat of hot water, with the rest of the Nein making relatively amused noises behind him, he doesn’t think he’s ever felt warmer.

Jester just laughs. “I’m barely doing anything!” she teases, shaking Essek’s leg lightly. “He’s just so sensitive - oh, Essek, is it ‘cause you never walk anywhere? Is that why your feet are so soft and tickly?”

He’s giddy, even with the sudden reprieve, giggling too hard to speak. “I - ha - I dohon’t - ehe-”

“Of course it is,” Beauregard says smugly from a distance that seems far too close, “waving all those secrets and magic over our heads and he’s hoisted on his own fuckin’ petard-”

“What’s that?” Caduceus asks. Essek vaguely remembers the term to describe some sort of bomb, but Jester chooses that moment to send her mischievous fingers exploring under his fucking toes and it tickles like absolute hell. He shrieks even louder than before, if such a thing were possible, and makes a solid attempt to burrow his way straight into Caleb’s ribcage as his entire leg jolts in involuntary protest. No amount of desperate attempts to flex or curl his foot make the sensation any more bearable - it’s like the sucking feeling of a Teleport spell, like everything inside him is unmoored and floating in a sea of mirth and the only way he can get any of it out is to scream.

His cheeks hurt and he realizes, suddenly, that he’s beaming.

Jester cackles. “Come get his other foot, Beau,” she urges, easing off to just pinch his big toe between two fingers and wiggle it. “He totally loves it, he’s not even kicking-”

“Uh-huh,” Beauregard says, and there’s another splash. “Maybe I will.”

Caleb’s still rubbing his back - he stops, briefly, and from his huddled position Essek feels that Beauregard has jostled his other side on her way past. “His feet might be worse than yours,” she murmurs. He can hear the grin in her voice. “Better hope Jes doesn’t remember and go after you next.”

“Don’t remind her,” Caleb says, strangled. It’s remarkably friendly for Beauregard, though, and Essek is once again caught up in the paradox of this little group - merciless but fiercely protective, reluctant but trusting. It’s hard to be regretful - or wistful, maybe, one of those feelings that twinges in his chest every time he thinks of the Nein nowadays - with Jester tickling her way up the back of his bare calf and cooing over the way it makes him wriggle. But his heart, a traitor to the last, manages. There are so many secrets between them still.

Beauregard seizes his other ankle, hauling it up from the water, and he realizes for one terrible moment that if they were to, say, force him out of hiding and keep tickling, he might be inclined to spill some of them. “Scoot over, Jes,” Beauregard says, and there’s a squeak that, for once in the evening, doesn’t come from him. She chuckles. “Good thing he’s not trying to tickle you back, huh?”

He expects Jester to sputter and redirect her, as he would, but she sounds entirely unconcerned at the prospect. “Oh, Beau, do you want to have a tickle fight? We totally could, after this-”

“No,” she says, not entirely drowning out the little panicked noise that Caleb makes. “Not the kind of wrestling I want to do when half of us aren’t wearing shirts, if you know what I mean-”

“Beau!” Jester shrieks, giggling. Fjord groans loudly from the other side of the hot tub, and Essek, still squirming, is very sure that he’s blushing enough for it to show on the back of his neck, under his high collar. “Who do you want to wrestle with? Is it Yasha-”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, moving on.” Beauregard interrupts hastily. There’s a popping noise that takes a second for Essek to place as her cracking her knuckles. “Hey, Essek - you think you’d trade another favor to get us to stop?”

Essek flails for something resembling a complete sentence as Jester’s fingers curl teasingly behind one of his knees. “Nngh - heh-”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She squeezes the back of his other knee, barks out a laugh as he jumps. “Jes, stop messing around, let’s get his feet.”

That makes him kick, but at this point his entire lower half is restrained - all he can do is take one last breath before fingertips are scribbling over both his soles and he’s cackling so forcefully that his laughter peaks into agonized wheezing with each fresh gulp of air. “Hhh - ha - ahahaaaa, hA -”

Caleb shifts a little, bending until one of the strands that always hang stubbornly loose from where he ties his hair back brushes the tip of Essek’s burning ear. Essek shivers. “You can tell them to stop, you know,” he murmurs.

Essek’s almost entirely sure that he’s crying into Caleb’s shirt, tears leaking from squeezed-shut eyes as Beauregard and Jester torment his feet, but Caleb seems - fond, oddly - as he starts to rub his back again. “They’re not trying to be cruel - I believe they’re just excited that you’ve. Ah. Lowered yourself to our level, perhaps.”

And what level is that, Essek wants to ask, suddenly conjuring a mental image of Caleb in the same throes of helpless laughter. But he’s barely capable of that, as he’s currently dying, so he just tightens his grip on Caleb and shakes his head. He can barely even register Jester and Beauregard’s teasing anymore - he doesn’t think he can speak right now without embarrassing himself even more if he tried.

“Fuck, alright,” Fjord says abruptly from somewhere miles away, “I think he’s actually crying now, the Dynasty is going to have our heads if we break him.”

“He wouldn’t let them, he’s our friend,” Jester trills, but she does stop tickling, ghosting a hand up over his heaving shoulders to pat him gently on the head. “His ears are really purple though, like magenta purple, I think he’s blushing.”

For some reason - perhaps because he can finally think - it strikes him, fighting through the warm and pleasantly tingling haze of being touched and gentled back into himself, that as much as the casual label of friend pleases him he cannot afford this kind of vulnerability.

“Or suffocating,” Beauregard says a moment later, dropping his foot unceremoniously back into the water. “Thelyss? You alive in there?”

And, a beat later, when he doesn’t reply - “Are you just, like, smelling Caleb now?”

“Gross,” Veth squawks. “Get him off, get him off!”

Caleb smells quite pleasant, actually, but that’s not the point - his self-awareness is slowly trickling back in as he remembers who and where he is, and what he’s done to the Nein, and now they’ve broken him and he would rather die than look any of them in the eye for the next year.

Caleb pats his back. “Come on, friend, chin up.”

And he’s right, Essek can’t afford to cling to this veneer of comfort any longer - but to his immediate and eternal shame, he whines and nuzzles further into Caleb’s ribs. Just a moment to gather his wits, maybe, and he’ll be able to Misty Step to the front door and don his mantle-

“No? Alright, then - I’ll go to work too, if I have to.”

The hand on his back lifts away and walks itself on two prodding fingers neatly up under Essek’s arm, gently wriggling into the hollow until he can’t bear to keep his arms up any longer. “Nnn, hnn! - eheh, thahat’s - enough, please-”

It’s. It’s not, is the problem - he tries to stir up anger, distaste, but there’s only fear. He would deal with this indignity again, suffer it gladly, even, just to have them speak to him kindly. It’s new, and terrifying, and he needs to think it over alone with a generous glass of wine in his tower.

He shrinks back in on himself, still snickering at the tickling under his arms, and Caleb takes the opportunity to grab him neatly by the shoulders and sit him back up - Essek catches a glimpse of his blue eyes shining with rare merriment and promptly swivels to look away from all of them. No one stops him as he rolls his pant legs down and shoves his feet into his boots, heedless of the damp. He can feel their curious gazes prickle on the back of his neck - shifting into an unconscious competence that’s carried him through many anxieties before, he’s already floating off the ground before he can remind himself otherwise. “I’m going to go now,” he says, rushed, still too terrified to turn his head. “Thank you, I -”

“Essek, wait!” Jester says, confused, and Beau scoffs, and he’s not going to think about how he can recognize their voices without even seeing them, he’s not -

Yasha’s voice, at last, breaks through the hubbub, and it’s only in deference to their conversation before dinner that he pauses to listen.

“Hey,” she says, quiet and certain enough to shake him. “You said that you’re lonely, right?”

The noise fades away. He inches down to the ground with it. “Recently, yes,” he replies, just above a whisper, fighting to keep his voice steady with the enormity of this, this feeling -

“I didn’t say so before,” she continues, perfectly calm, “but it’s a little scary, right? To not be so lonely, anymore.”

Essek says nothing - he knows, without the mantle, that they can all see the slight tremble of his shoulders.

“Go away, then,” she says confidently, and then, hastily, “oh, no, that’s not right -”

“Yasha,” Jester squeaks, horrified, and Essek, to his own surprise, laughs. More of a chuckle, really, but. That’s a relief, after all this.

He can place her roughly in the rightmost corner of the hot tub, turns just enough to catch her heterochromatic gaze in his periphery. Her mouth drops slightly open before she gathers herself. “I just, I meant -” She inhales nervously. “I used to leave all the time, to go do - things - and come back when I was ready. You can do that too, if you want, we won’t mind, as long as you come back. And the tickling - we’re all ticklish, you don’t have to feel bad about it - ah, maybe someone else should say something.”

Caduceus pats her shoulder. “Nah, that was pretty good.”

Essek agrees, despite his better judgment. He rolls his shoulders, forcing them loose. “No, no, that’s - helpful,” he assures, and then, taking a deep breath and praying that his cheeks have cooled, he turns to look at them all. “I am to show you my abode tomorrow, yes?”

Caleb looks extraordinarily stressed. “Ah, you don’t have to, if you would rather-”

Beau punches him in the shoulder harshly enough to make him wince. “Yes.”

“Yes, and breakfast pastries!” Jester cheers, clapping her hands together - he’ll have to talk to his staff tonight.

“Until tomorrow, then,” he says, and spares only a brief smile before casting Misty Step to take him to the door and then again to the street.

He’s not quite ready to lose all his dignity, yet.

#tickling #critical role #shadowgast #essek thelyss #jester lavorre #caleb widogast #chocfic #it's been a long monday and i needed to post this before i give in to the impulse to collapse hhh

[rickybowxn]

let’s talk about ricky bowen again

dude ep5 and ep6 has crushed me. the way that they are alluding to ricky’s mental health these two episodes is so incredibly loud in the most subtle ways. and not to mention so damn relatable. 

ricky bowen is crying for help and comfort rn and it’s so sad and incredibly heartbreaking to watch. 

episode 5 mostly set up the emotion derivative and complexity for all of ricky’s actions in episode 6 to be as angsty and as wonderful as they were so i’m just gonna be pretty straight to the point with this first half of the post. let’s take a closer look and start with episode 5:

watching this sucked. he’s growing up, and bottling up all of these feelings to be strong for his dad. i love that they establish ricky’s response to conflict and trials: as someone who wants to be there for everyone else, even though it’s pretty sad to watch. he passively states what’s going in his life but never really talks about it, throughout the next few scenes, we realise that he deals with his conflict by being there for everyone else and well... not dealing with his conflict. he literally grows up and as fucked up as it is, becomes the parent. it made my stomach twist and it was written really well. my poor baby boi.

in his next two scenes with gina, we see exactly what was established with his dad:

in the first gif, he states his conflict in passing and then flips it to gina to talk about what’s going on with her. i’ve said again and again that he’s rlly bad with explicit verbal communication and this is a great example of how he’s good at being a support system for literally everyone, but has such a hard time being kind to himself. he uses ‘it’s a whole thing’ as a fast and sure way to dismiss his issue as not worth talking about and instantly wants to make gina the focus. the writers really did well with establishing that.

this gina and ricky interaction was great. not only did it establish rina’s chemistry, it also gave us the setup to ricky’s actions in the next episode - this play is what’s keeping him afloat rn. the people, the lines, the rehearsals are effectively helping him stay grounded and not lose his mind. it’s rlly heartbreaking to see how much he’s actually hurting, especially because he explicitly doesn’t show it throughout this episode or the next.

(i plan to do a rina arc post as well, and i’ll save most of my thoughts on them for that, but while we’re here, the last two scenes we broke down really established this strong and substantial connection between the characters really well. the writers pushed past the ‘we’re both outsiders’ arc and really gave ricky and gina substance and common ground for a solid dynamic. their motives and actions are very similar, and that’s why they have such a good foundation for gina’s understanding of, and being there for ricky in ep6, as well as where-ever the writers decide to take them - i personally prefer friendship but i know that some of y’all are rina shippers and that’s also very much on the table and i’m rlly okay with either! as much as i want rini to be endgame, they have established such wonderful characters with such amazing arcs and i want all of them to be explored and the writers are doing good work with it rn).

and now let’s look at episode 6, where they drive that stake into our hearts further. this is ricky’s reaction to carlos breaking the ms. jenn news to everyone:

you can see him unwind. you can see his world fall apart bit by bit as the realisation hits. the established safe haven he has, doubling down as a distraction for everything going on in his life right now, is being torn from under his feet. it was personally one of the hardest and heartbreaking things to see this ep, it’s just constant angst with him oof. 

but then, in the most ricky bowen fashion ever, he jumps right back to wanting to fight and keep trying, he stays despite everyone else leaving (starting with nini, and i’lll mention why that’s important in just a second). he puts aside all the anxiety he has if the play (at that point, most probably bound to end) falls apart and commits to fighting for it, clinging desperately to it:

and now as for everyone leaving, the writers used it as such a good way to establish how significantly important the play is for especially ricky, carlos and gina - the three people who stayed. as a side-note, carlos’s attachment to the play is established and developed later in the episode with the string of dialogue in big red’s basement, so i’m not gonna elaborate, it was way more explicit than ricky’s arc that led to the climatic monologue(ish) he delivered towards the end of that same scene.

for nini, the play is the path to her developing her self-confidence and maturity so she embraces it to grow (and she’s slowly rediscovering herself just generally), not to run away from the rest of her life, unlike ricky and gina:

like nini, the rest of the cast uses the play as an opportunity rather than a distraction, and that’s what sets ricky and gina apart from them. this made it easier from them to walk away and wallow in the possibility of the show ending (also that look ricky gave nini walking way *my heart shattered*). ricky (and gina) is established to clearly not have that same luxury. this scene sets up ricky and gina having the play as this tether that’s keeping them at bay from things that they should be dealing with (we don’t know about gina’s issues yet and i’m very ready and excited to cry about that angst by the way), so their instinct is to stay and try and fight for the play/keep practising. 

the next scene explicates why this play means the most to ricky, and as with everything about his arc rn, it’s heart-wrenching:

he’s in complete denial of the only thing keeping him together rn falling apart. it is sad, heart-breaking and gut-wrenching. this angst is delivered with such fucking excellence by joshua bassett that i kinda wanna punch him lmao

and here’s where it hits home. gina realises the reality that they might not come back to the show and is ready to face it (instituted by her even asking the question in the first place), but ricky’s denial contrast that so heavily this scene. that denial is what establishes the play meaning the most to ricky. just by watching the scene, you can tell how he’s unravelling, trying not to let himself be overwhelmed by the possibility of it. it’s so fucking angsty ugh.

(another side note, as i said before, i’m probably gonna make another entire post about the gina/ricky arc but i had to mention this. after this exchange, her supporting him and taking his mind off of all of this by asking him to do something he loves and perform the acoustic version of ‘when there was me and you’, grounding ricky for a bit, was one of my most favourite things to watch this entire episode, even being primarily a rini shipper - they rlly sold them i can see their growing popularity as completely justified, they were hella cute this ep).

now this moment is where i felt like sobbing and reaching into the screen to hug him:

he finally opens up about it. why he’s so desperate to keep this play alive and why saving ms. jenn’s job is so incredibly important to him. and i loved that nini helped him say the words he needed to say. the look of relief when he was assured that he didn’t have to do any of this alone, just with nini finishing that sentence for him - that nini, gina, big red and everyone else was going to be there for him, and hear him out - fuck, it was beautiful!! it also encouraged him to take charge and chant ‘what team?’, he was ready to fight and everyone readying with him was so magnetic to see. it was also clearly therapeutic to him bc during, and after the final number, he looks genuinely happy, and we see him fully smiling/laughing more than the last 5eps combined. 

he finally gets a win and it may not solve all his problems, but being one of the motivating factors in saving ms. jenn’s job through his vulnerability in this scene really gives him a leg up and i loved watching it. i hope they don’t dismiss everything he still has to continue to have to deal with (making this an all problem solving cure as sometimes disney does) but that aside, i’m so glad they had subtle continuity in furthering his character’s development these last two episodes even though he wasn’t a primary focus. it was subtle, nuanced and genuinely so complex and enjoyable to watch.

#hsmtmts meta #im doing it again #this took me so much time to put into coherent thought so pls give it a read #i loved ep6 #and ep5 with ricky's arc #they rlly did him justice #ricky bowen meta #ricky bowen #hsmtmts #high school musical the musical the series #rina #rini #rickini #im 100% a rini shipper #but idm rina #but this post was ab ricky so lets leave it at that #hsmtmts spoilers #hsmtmts s1 #hsm the series #hsmtmts ep6 #user:rickybowxn #gina x ricky #ricky x gina #nini x ricky #ricky x nini #my gifs

[personalityarchive]

Mike Morton 7w6

[[28 August 2020

Originally written as a comment thread on PDB]]

I will admit that I did a double take seeing the consensus vote on Mike’s enneatype. I had thought it rather plain to see that he is a base type 7, but apparently that is not the case. Perhaps his career as a performer is what caused the mistype, but it’s still strange to imagine a type 3 Mike. (I also got a bit of a chuckle out of seeing Mike voted as chaotic good when he’s clearly a chaotic neutral character. More on that in its own thread.)

As a character with a full set of deduction targets, several costumes, and accessories, there is an abundance of information on Mike’s character that I feel is vital in discerning his true enneatype. From his deductions alone, it’s quite obvious that he cares less about personal image or professional success than he does about trying new things and having a good time. Especially the parts of the deduction tree written from Mike’s first person perspective, it’s obvious that image and career is a secondary consideration, tied more to the 7’s desire to be entertaining than from the 3’s desire to maintain a “good image”.

Mike’s second deduction target, entitled “The Secret of Juggling”, has this description line: “Throwing isn't just an interesting skill. It's what makes a juggler successful.” Now, if this was all it had to say about him, I would agree, a 3 interpretation wouldn’t be far-fetched at all. However, the deduction conclusion is what is truly significant here, as it is in fact a diary entry from Mike himself. The deduction tagline could be interpreted as a general statement on Mike’s career, or even as an opinion from Bernard himself. Meanwhile, the conclusion has this to say:

“Diary 1: Bernard said that the size and shape of the bag, as well as the type of filling, are critical. He refused my request to fill the bag with stones, stating that it was ‘hazardous’.”

We can see here that Mike is less interested in appealing to the expectations of others, and indeed, in maintaining a polished image, than Bernard is. What Mike is interested in is in fact trying out new things, even dangerous ones — his phrasing of Bernard’s response to his proposal shows that what he finds frustrating is feeling limited in his options. Mike doesn’t seem too convinced that his idea should have been rejected, and was less concerned with the practicality of it than he was in simply exploring the possibility. This is clearly far more indicative of a 7 than of a 3.

Now, based on what Bernard told Mike — namely, that he identified certain factors as “critical” to the bags used in juggling — we can infer that it is Bernard who is concerned about keeping up appearances, or doing things the “right way” (suggesting perhaps a base 1 or 3 for him). From this, we can further conclude that the tagline of this deduction target is indeed a reflection of Bernard’s thoughts rather than Mike’s.

This flows into the next deduction, “Artistic Acts”, with the description: “Creativity is what ensures that the stage performances continue to improve.” Again, this sounds like a statement from Bernard’s perspective, and perhaps offers us some insight into why Bernard treated Mike with the kind of leniency that permitted Mike’s later experimentation with acid and nitre. Since Bernard is the one in charge of the circus, he is the one concerned with constantly improving the show; because Mike’s creativity allows him to come up with new ideas (and gives him the natural charisma that propelled him into the position of audience favorite), Bernard is willing to let Mike get away with quite a bit.

Meanwhile, the conclusion for Artistic Acts gives us a summary for one of Mike’s own writings: “Notebook: The properties of Nitre and some ‘Test Records’ were recorded in detail.” The implication here is that Mike was not very concerned with how his experiments would directly benefit his performances; in fact, the notebook’s contents give a sense of unease, communicating a message in direct opposition to the deduction target summary. Not only is nitre entirely unnecessary in improving his performance as an acrobat, but Mike’s behavior seems rather secretive in nature. So, the purpose of this deduction target is to show a disconnect between the way Bernard perceived Mike and the activities that Mike was actually engaging in. Bernard saw Mike as an invaluable member of the Hullabaloo Circus, and assumed that the experiments and ideas Mike explored all went into augmenting said performances. Of course, by advancing along the deduction tree, it becomes increasingly clear that Mike’s area of interest had little to do with his professional success.

Taking a step back and analyzing the deduction targets for Mike from a more holistic standpoint, a certain pattern emerges. We can see that the first 5 deduction targets are separated from the last 5 in tone and perspective.

1) “Family: He's like a father; an ideal one.”

2) “The Secret of Juggling: Throwing isn't just an interesting skill. It's what makes a juggler successful.”

3) “Artistic Acts: Creativity is what ensures that the stage performances continue to improve.”

4) “A New Face: The circus is where people come and go. We always welcome new faces, and obviously, the beautiful ones.”

5) “ ‘Darling’: How people call each other often reflects the degree to which the relationship has developed.”

6) “Downcast: Watching a sad face can sometimes bring us some dark pleasure.”

7) “Carnival: Carnivals usually mean chaos, and chaos means opportunity.”

8) “The End: It's all over.”

9) “Encore: Audiences often say this hoping that the performer will continue performing on the stage.”

10) “Reappearance: Call their names and make them return to the stage once again.”

Laying them out side-by-side, it’s clear that the first five have summary lines that focus more on outward appearances, professional achievement, and success — all values of the 3. Key words can be picked out from each to support this conclusion: “ideal” from Family; “successful” from The Secret of Juggling; “improve” from Artistic Acts; “beautiful” from A New Face; “reflects” from “Darling”.

Meanwhile, the second half contain sentiments that are far more self-driven, or self-referential, yet less self-aware. Rather than seeking to appear a particular way in the eyes of others, there is an endogenously-generated drive based on the assessment of the appearances of those around the speaker. This way of approaching the self and others maps to the 7’s desire to forget the self through constant absorption in the external world. For the 7, there is a lack of consideration regarding professional success — real or perceived — and a greater emphasis on living in the moment. Plans for the future all funnel into goals that may not be practical or even fully fleshed-out, since stopping to examine their own thoughts and feelings can frighten the 7.

On top of this, the deduction targets undergo an overall shift in speaking style; while the first half of the deduction targets can be a bit longer, even bordering on long-winded, the second half are far more succinct but, again, less self-reflective. This displays the 7’s style of interacting with the world more than the 3, where focus can be more scattered in the search for instant gratification, although the analytical aspects of the mind center are still present.

What we see in the second set of deduction targets is the perspective of a more active, impatient person than the previous deduction summaries. There’s only one that contains a sentence with more than a single clause, and even then it’s to quickly connect two different concepts without having to go through the trouble of further explication. While indicative of a nimble mind, this cleverness manifests as an underlying impatience. Overall, the tendency in these deduction summaries is towards a more singularly outward-focused attention, with a desire to engage with the world without having to pause for self-reflection.

This pattern in turn suggests a split in the speaker for the first set of deduction target taglines versus the second set. While deductions one through four reflect Bernard’s perspective, six through ten are Mike’s. As for the fifth deduction, that’s the bridge; it’s where the speaker switches from one to the other, segueing into Mike being the deduction’s “voice” for both the summary and conclusion of each. Even more interesting, in fact, is the particular way the fifth deduction target implies an asymmetry in the perspective of the two speakers; the summary is a reflection of both Bernard and Mike’s understanding of the other, though the angle is skewed significantly when moving between the two.

While Bernard and Mike are simultaneously experiencing a shift in their relationship to one another, the directions of perceived development are not only incongruent, they’re fundamentally incompatible. The title and speaking style of this deduction further underline this imbalance; while the tone and pacing of the summary reads as Bernard’s voice, the conclusion and the name “darling” are clearly from Mike’s perspective.

The deduction conclusion is as follows: “Diary 2: I love Nitre! As long as it's mixed with water, even a hot summer's day can become refreshing! Bernard's reaction was hilarious, and he even called me ‘Dear Mr. Mike Morton’! Oh, Bernard, I want to hear it again. Next time, I'll make sure to put my cold hands down your collar.”

This casual and playful writing style is juxtaposed against the matter-of-fact — almost distant — statement on the nature of relationships in the summary, creating further dissonance within the deduction. It is implied, then, that Bernard’s opinion of his relationship to Mike has developed from one of paternal care (see the information given by the first deduction) to one of a more professional nature; Bernard is Mike’s boss, not his caretaker. Meanwhile, Mike has developed what appears to be homoerotic feelings towards Bernard, seeing the nickname “Dear Mr. Mike Morton” as a term of endearment rather than one of separation.

Referring back to the second deduction target, the subtle shift in Mike’s understanding of his and Bernard’s roles in their relationship can be further explored. While the contents of Diary 1 suggest that Mike does still see Bernard as a superior (one that he will listen to, if a bit begrudgingly), Diary 2 shows a significantly more excited response to what can be inferred to be reprimand from Bernard. Mike, it seems, has come to view Bernard and himself as interacting on equal terms, and thus, as eligible for developing a relationship outside the bounds of their previous connection. Similarly, Bernard no longer sees the power dynamic of their relationship as being defined by “guardian” and “child”; however, contrary to Mike’s interpretation, Bernard still very much sees himself as being the superior. In a sense, elevation from “child” to “employee” does put Mike on more equal footing with Bernard, but what Mike has failed to pick up on is the paradoxical increase in distance in their relationship, even as he is elevated to the status of “fellow adult”.

In these differing sets of expectations, we can see a clear conflict between a 7’s approach to relationships and that of a 1 (or a 3 with a strong connection to 1). While Bernard is concerned with the way the relationship is “supposed” to develop (e.g. the way a boss is supposed to treat an employee), the 7 is concerned with exploring possibilities and having fun. Further, the 7 is interested in relationships that are constantly changing, as a way of staving off boredom and maintaining investment in the other person. For many 7’s, the only way to preserve dedication to a single “other” is to NOT preserve some aspect of it. In other words, if he is to be limited in the individuals available for him to form attachments to, he must seek variety in the way the attachment functions.

Bernard seems to be interested in treating Mike as a proper adult now, one who has responsibilities and ought to know the proper way of behaving. His reaction to Mike’s experimentation with explosives is one of frustration, calling him “Dear Mr. Mike Morton” as a combination middle-naming of a misbehaving child, and a more professional way of addressing another adult. So, it can be said that Bernard appears to be straddling the line between criticism for a subordinate’s “improper” behavior, and a lingering fondness for his charge.

Mike, on the other hand, seems to have simply derived great amusement from the situation, whether or not he picked up on the remaining fondness Bernard held. His excited proclamation of love for nitre and his plans to put his cold hands down Bernard’s collar read solidly as a 7’s epicurean desire for pleasure and sensual enjoyment, rather than from any influence from type 3. In fact, it’s questionable if Mike was even consciously aware that Bernard was not as amused as he by the entire affair; indeed, his spin on being scolded is exactly the sort of reaction expected of the positive outlook of the 7.

Additionally, as opposed to the 3’s efforts to maintain a good image in the eyes of others, the 7 tries to hold onto a self-image of being okay through rationalization and positive reframing. As long as they don’t have to acknowledge negativity, they can feel comfortable and happy. At the same time, the 7’s rationalization goes towards thinking of what lies ahead, escaping from the limited present to a future with boundless possibility. What we can see Mike doing in his diary entry is just that: he chooses to see Bernard’s scolding as an expression of endearment, and has already skipped forward to thinking about fun or interesting plans for “next time”. Nowhere in this diary deduction is there even a whiff of the 3’s desire to appeal to the expectations of others, or appear competent and professional.

Following this split perspective, the deduction summaries fall squarely into the realm of Mike’s internal dialogue. Deduction six, Downcast, leads with the following: “Watching a sad face can sometimes bring us some dark pleasure.” When compared to some of the earlier deductions, the contrast is jarring. While the present or implied “others” were previously referenced in terms of interaction or as a source of expectations, here they exist solely as a source of entertainment. There is an absence of people-pleasing or even the sentiment that others are tools to be used; this falls far more in line with the 7’s desire to be entertained or to be entertaining, rather than the 3’s understanding of the give and take of unspoken social contracts. 

More than that, the conclusion of deduction six gives us another glimpse into the shifting dynamic between Mike and Bernard:

“Diary 3: Bernard sent his regards to my beloved little ones. He thought the wounds on Joker's face looked more like ‘corrosions’. His suspicions really hurt me! Of course, I did lose a bottle of strong acid. Maybe I'll have to get another bottle before Bernard finds out about this ‘mismanagement’.”

While I admit to being unsure who Mike is referring to as his “beloved little ones”, the rest of this diary entry is fairly straightforward. Again, we see Mike’s bubbly and enthusiastic character, brushing off what are clearly well-founded misgivings from Bernard. Like with the scolding he received in the second deduction target, Mike — in a very characteristically 7ish way — responds with a playful attitude: “His suspicions really hurt me!” is expressed in a manner completely foreign to the 3, especially one who is experiencing a threat to their image in the eyes of someone they feel close to.

While it may be true that Mike is wounded by Bernard’s ability to suspect him of such a crime, he covers it up with humor, rather than going to the 3’s tactic of trying to prove his integrity or good character. Rather than indicating a wounded ego, Mike shows an avoidance of the negative; he distracts from a situation that could be emotionally difficult by covering it up with a joke, then quickly moving onto something else.

Now, Mike does engage in willful deceit (planning to cover up anything that may further implicate him), the ego fixation of the 3. However, the tone he takes is still one of measured amusement; his cheeky admission of incriminating evidence paired with his word choice “mismanagement” indicates an almost facetious attitude towards Bernard’s accusation, and more broadly, his concern with professionalism and image. After all, “mismanagement” is a term likely employed by Bernard in the past, as previous deduction targets indicate that he is a man who takes his work seriously. By placing this word in quotation marks, Mike expresses two things: first, that he is using someone else’s word; and second, that he himself does not hold the same values.

The following deduction, Carnival, starts with: “Carnivals usually mean chaos, and chaos means opportunity.” Again, there is a clear expression of the 7’s unstructured energy, always looking for the next exciting thing, chasing that high. While a 3 takes a more structured approach to reaching their goals and seizing opportunities, it is the 7 who sees chaos itself as being opportunity. In chaos, anything is possible, and the 7 finds this stimulating, even considering it to be an ideal situation.

Of course, when figuring out one’s enneagram, it is also important to consider the lines of connection. If the core type is uncertain, figuring out just one line can be enough to create a compelling case for one enneatype over another. The final deduction targets and the rumor about Mike, therefore, offer some vital pieces of the puzzle.

Deduction 8, “The End: It's all over.” Short, sweet, to the point, but overall somewhat disappointing. There’s not enough substance to really determine much more about Mike than we already know. But, when including the slightly lengthier conclusion, necessary context is provided. The conclusion follows thusly:

“Newspaper Clipping: The carnival killer remains a mystery. The public feels that the local police did not do a good job and has called for further investigations.”

Despite not being directly from Mike’s own diary or journal, this is still following his perspective; the framing of this information is key in our understanding of its significance. Clearly, this conclusion functions to tell the audience what sort of tragedy occurred at the circus, but also to include Mike as being a member of the public who holds this belief. This hints at the start of a 7’s disintegration into 1, where the focus goes from what is “fun” to what is “right” and “wrong”, edging into the unhealthy territory of becoming critical and punitive.

When faced with the death of his circus family, Mike, in an attempt to distract himself from the painful reality, jumps into action, hoping to escape the fears nipping at his heels. After suffering such a devastating loss, he wastes no time with mourning; he immediately goes to enacting a plan to deal with the perpetrator of the crime. We see in his next deduction, Encore, the following: “Diary 4: I scoured the city's mortuary and found everyone except the strange new couple. They were scheduled for the grand finale and couldn't sneak out.”

We see immediately another massive tone shift in the speaker, though we know that rather than crossing over from one character to another, it is Mike who is undergoing the switch in tone. In stark contrast to the chipper, playful mood of his earlier entries, this one is very matter-of-fact, very controlled. The 1’s desire to be objective and principled has overshadowed the 7’s energetic distractibility. From the rumor on his page, we know that: “Mike Morton is the most popular guy in the traveling circus ‘Hullabaloo’. After surviving the disaster, Mike Morton's only goal is to find the real killer who destroyed his home."

This solidifies the interpretation of Mike disintegrating into a 1. As a 7, his natural instinct when faced with the threat of loss is to reach for more, trying to gather close that which he feels is important to his survival and comfort. Unfortunately, this option has been denied him completely; he cannot have “more” of “nothing”, which is precisely what he has now that his entire way of life, his home, his family, has been destroyed. Faced with this harsh reality, Mike has dedicated himself to the single-minded goal of hunting down the one who dared to steal everything from him. The 7’s impatience is magnified by the 1’s resentment and anger, leading to his overpowering pursuit of a quite 1ish crusade against the wrongdoings of others.

This understanding of the text is only further supported by alternate translations of the original text, which provide additional information and insight into both the tragedy itself, and Mike’s perspective:

1) “Blonde curls, a lively spirit and clear blue eyes forever full of joy, Mike Morton was the most popular guy in Hullabaloo, the travelling circus. Hullabaloo was Mike's entire world, a world where slaughter should never have existed. Having survived from the tragedy, Mike would stop at nothing until he finds the one responsible for shattering his world.”

2) “Now desperate and having lost the only things that mattered in his life, Mike's only goal in life is to find the true murderer of those he cherished.”

In all three translations, we see the overwhelming sense of loss, devastation and panic driving him over the edge. Having found the bodies of his comrades, and having discovered what in his mind is the suspicious departure of the circus’ newest members, the last hopes of employing his instinctive response (read: avoidance) are dashed. All at once, Mike is forced to contend with problems and pain he is unaccustomed to coping with. He dips immediately into the unhealthy emotions of the 1, the 1’s feeling of being the only one who is Right and Good; he alone can know the Truth.

This reading is supplemented by the correspondence we have from Mike to a man by the name of Arthur Russell. Thanks to being included as content for both Mike and Murro’s character days, we have not one but two samples of his writing post-Hullabaloo disaster. Following on the heels of the Encore deduction target, Mike’s drastic tonal shift while writing stands in stark contrast to his earlier, livelier musings. Mike’s birthday letter is as follows:

“Dear Mr. Arthur Russell,

The investigation report you've sent last time was of great assistance to me. In regard to the animal tamer Natalie, also known as Margaretha Zelle, I wish to acquire further information on her upbringing as well as her life before the circus. Starting next week, I will be out of town for a while, and your salary will be paid in the same payment method per usual. There is no need to send in your report this time. I will pick them up at your residence.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours Truly,

Mike Morton”

We can see that he has adopted a very formal voice, adhering to proper etiquette and expressing his thoughts in an impersonal, emotionally distant way. Without knowing whose signature adorns this letter, one could easily be convinced that this was penned by Bernard. In fact, my first time reading this letter caused me a moment of confusion; surely it was a mistake, a particularly egregious error similar to the mistranslation of Priestess’ name. After all, how could Mike have been the one to write in such a clipped, formal style? Yet, here is Murro’s birthday letter:

“Dear Mr. Russell,

Due to unforeseen circumstances, your mission objective has been "eliminated" prior to the engagement of your employee.

Therefore, I regret to inform you that the remaining payment is beyond my obligation, as stated in our agreement. After all, no one could possibly uncover a fully-intact cranial remains within that pile of ashes.

I wish you well.

Your loyal customer,

Mike Morton”

There is no denying it, Mike did in fact send these letters. His playful, somewhat childish persona is just that: an act. Underneath it, he is incredibly capable and self-sufficient, and the letters seem to place a great deal of emphasis on the matter of “should” or “shouldn’t”, whether something “ought to be” or not. He must do the right thing, in the right way; he expects others to do the same. To the reader, there is a feeling that beneath the carefully controlled surface lies a mass of ugly emotions. There is anger. There is resentment. There is a gradual movement towards a breaking point. It is precisely this which led people to initially believe that Mike himself could have been the circus killer. The details are obscure, the content sinister, the controlled tone reading as hiding something — some dark secret. Murro’s birthday letter seems to imply that Mike has hired a hitman to “eliminate” somebody — likely Murro — but an incident (perhaps even one of his own making) has prematurely killed that person off.

What these letters show us is the 1’s methodical approach; they bear a striking similarity to Mike’s early deduction summaries, as though Mike were subconsciously attempting to borrow from Bernard’s more structured, 1ish mannerisms. With a professionalism and formality that is unassailable in its dignity, but with the base 7’s falsely cheerful tone and the 6 wing’s suspicious nature, Mike sends letters to this “Arthur Russell” character.

Why wing 6 rather than wing 8? Especially when given his apparent embrace of violent means? Well, despite his vengeful rage, he does display the 6 wing’s avoidance of conflict, when possible; as far back as the second deduction target, this is made clear. Mike’s reaction to Bernard denying his request was not to lash out, or argue; he simply moped about it later, when he was alone. Then, when Bernard suspected Mike of disfiguring Joker’s face, Mike’s response was again one of disappointment, not aggression.

The mere fact that Mike would say that Bernard’s accusations “really hurt” falls in direct opposition to the 8’s unwillingness to display weakness of any kind. Even in jest, exposing one’s own emotional vulnerability is not something a 7 with a strong 8 wing would be comfortable doing. On the other hand, the 6 wing is far likelier to allow this; one defense mechanism of the 6, after all, is to appear vulnerable in an attempt to elicit protective feelings from an authority figure. Further evidence is supplied by Mike’s Deduction Star 2020 quotes.

Quote: "Don't think I'll trust you so easily, you cute little thing."

Here, Mike is speaking with the playfulness of his base, 7, while communicating a 6ish difficulty in trusting others. Especially when directed at someone (or something?) “little” and “cute”, this suspicion really does play to the 6’s anxiety and doubt. Where an 8 may feel powerful and confident in the presence of something that appears defenseless, a 6 will be wary; it can’t possibly be so simple, right? Surely it’s a trap?

A 7 with an 8 wing would be more likely to find this mixture of traits endearing, perhaps even themself feeling some twinge of protectiveness. The 8, in general, tends to champion the underdog, desiring to defend that which is innocent or tender. Besides which, the 7w8 is far more blunt and forceful; if there is doubt of a person’s trustworthiness, the problem will be dealt with head-on. It is the 7w6 who will communicate a lack of trust in the lighthearted manner used in the quote; after all, the 6 wing doesn’t want to escalate the situation unless it becomes absolutely necessary.

What of this Deduction Star quote: "I won't let go of the person that destroyed Hullabaloo’.”? Does this not embody the 8’s ego fixation, vengeance? Well yes, but actually no. It’s easy to mistake his actions as being driven by this, as both the 7 and the 8 share an assertive Hornevian type. However, the 8 experiences threats as a challenge, a call to battle; the 8 will make their presence known, and the subject of their wrath will be aware that they have a target painted on their back. By contrast, the 7’s aggression is more of an entitlement, and need not manifest itself overtly all of the time. The 6 wing is what allows the 7 to readily employ the dishonest, underhanded scheming that Mike happily does.

8’s “holy idea” is truth, meaning a life-long search for truth and justice. Mike does not show any interest in such a thing until after the slaughter. His 7’s harmonic pattern of optimistic outlook is twisted into the 1’s focus of attention on what’s imperfect and must be made better. His active nature is turned toward a need to do the “right thing” in the “right way”, with the 1’s ego fixation of resentment driving his actions. But what is it that separates the 8’s vengeance from the 1’s resentment, and how does Mike display one over the other?

The 8’s need for justice calls for the righting of all wrongs, notably towards those they feel protective of, while the 1’s resentment stems from needing to do the “good work” that others won’t notice, won’t care about, or won’t make a “strong enough effort” to do. Not only did Mike not feel protective of his fellow Hullabaloo performers, but we see from the newspaper clipping that “insufficient effort” on the part of law enforcement played a significant role in Mike’s outlook. His search for the “truth” behind the killings, then, is the 1ish excuse for his own actions. His goal is “noble”, therefore, his actions are “right” or “necessary”. The final deduction, “Reappearance”, further solidifies this view.

Summary: “Call their names and make them return to the stage once again.”

Conclusion: “Invitation: Enclosed is a photo of a dark-haired woman with a name on the back - Natalie.”

We find out what he was sent that brought him to Oletus: the knowledge that Natalie is at the manor. Remember, now, that he has been investigating Natalie under the suspicion that she was involved; he had no real evidence. Still, he insists that he is after the “truth”. This falls in line with the 1’s strong sense of purpose, coupled with the need to justify their actions to themselves (and sometimes others as well). He has convinced himself that he is following logic and perhaps objective truth, when in reality, he is allowing his own judgements and unsubstantiated convictions to guide his actions.

Driving this point home is one of his dislikes being listed as “violent and rude people”. Yet, somehow, Mike seemingly hired a hitman, and may have had some involvement in Murro’s death. This is the hypocrisy of the unhealthy 1: it is evil and bad when others do it, but the 1 is exempt, since they are acting for a good cause. (On the other hand, a stronger influence from the 8 would allow for the admittance of double standards, but with justification along the lines of “law of the jungle” or “the strong devour the weak”.)

Considering all of this, Mike’s childish persona seems to be a product of a 7 base with a 6 wing; his desire to enact retribution upon the circus killer comes from the 7’s disintegration to 1, not from an 8 wing. Following the tragedy at Hullabaloo, Mike undergoes a transformation: his spirited, ludic nature turns condemnatory, moralistic, and ultimately, vindictive.

#long post #character analysis #identity v #mike morton #idv acrobat #enneagram #enneatype #ennea 7 #7w6 #idv bernard #idv murro #wildling #idv wildling #the full writeup was 15 pages long #so this is just the section about the enneagram #but without the appended skins information #which will be added in a reblog #plus the chaotic neutral essay #and the tldr

[seeds-of-the-garden]

My first ask to Seeds! Lance is Hotel Manager, Pidge is a Renowned Travel Journalist who frequents said Hotel. Lance wants her to write a feature on his Hotel, but for some reason, she refuses. Looking forward to what becomes of this idea.

This is a little off topic but imagine this as the beginning of the build up.

Checked Out:

Unspecified Research Trip 3: Week 1: Day 1

It’s a statistically beautiful day here in Varadero, Cuba.

“Varadero again?” You query. “I thought you hated humid weather and too much sun?”

Your observations are indeed correct.

However, if you take into account that the temperature fluctuates roughly 6-10 degrees between winter and summer, and there is a breeze that effectively cools the skin (or provides the illusion), you would begin to understand the appeal of returning to such a destination for research as one’s company tends to direct me.

No, you may not know what my company has me researching here. Yes I will strive to satisfy your every other curiosity regarding my current stay here.

Hotel Esquisita is unlike any other place I’ve been sent these last couple of years. I’m pleased to find you all seem to enjoy my time here as much as I do. For those of you reading my blog for the first time, let me explicate:

I have to dwell here for three months minimum each time I’m sent. This time may be a little longer as I will be leaving periodically to meet back up at the research lab in the States.

As stated before, the temperature is hardly the high end of warm. The breeze blows through my room easily as it faces the ocean. The food (when I remember to eat) is more than sufficient for quelling my hunger in the most satisfying manner. The beds are luxurious, and the couch (which I sleep on more often than not) is of significantly higher quality when compared with the other places I have travelled.

But it is the hotel staff that makes my stay here something to look forward to every time. They are attentive and prompt, anticipating my needs before I do. The hotel manager especially.

Last time I stayed here he provided me with this corner room (of which I am in again), showed up on his day off when he heard I was sick and brought his mom’s (he calls her Mami) farm style soup to cure what ails me. He lives at his family farm, but does stay at the hotel quite frequently, and has also fallen asleep (with my permission of course) in my room after I invited him for a movie watch party on the nights I felt especially homesick. He cannot stay awake through more than one movie no matter what. States he needs his beauty sleep, but I would not let him leave.

I will not go into further detail in the off chance he reads this blog (what is the statistical likelihood of him being into travel and bionanotechnology? That’s about as likely as Hunk double modulating the gendocams.) I will not describe how carmel his skin is or how he is so tall I need to tilt my head all the way back to look at him if we are standing in close proximity. I will not say he has eyes the same color as the ocean outside of my hotel window. I will not remind my readers about how affected I am when he takes his tie off and rolls up his dress shirt sleeves when we are playing a video game together. He is in hospitality and has been very hospitable to me.

I will return tomorrow with day two. However, a knock on the door has reminded me that the manager has offered to take me to dinner tonight off-site. A little hole-in-the-wall with live music and dancing. He said he’s going to teach me to cha-cha and tango if it’s the last thing he does. But first, he’ll show me the sunset from his favorite spot.

This is the outfit I have chosen to wear. Friends, was it a good choice? What will I look like being spun around by Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome? (Don’t tell him I said that).

****Photo***

I know this veered off wildly from the science portion of my travels, but I do believe I will have plenty to analyse with you tomorrow. My date is here. (Maybe I shouldn’t call it that?).

Nos Vemos.

#plance #seeds of the garden #seeds #prompt fill #mod fro #pidge #lance

[musiconanironingboard]

26 March 2022: Labyrinthitis, Destroyer. (Merge, 2022)

The 13th or 14th album by the British Columbian Dan Bejar-led Destroyer (depending on how you count; I count 14), high among my favorite bands of the past 25 years, is one of his most maddening, inconsistent, eccentric records since the 2004 all-MIDI Your Blues. Space and time don’t allow me to give a full explication of why I find Labyrinthitis to be so confounding, but I’ll point to a couple of Bejar quotes from a recent interview with Pitchfork: “Labyrinthitis is supposed to be really disorienting. It’s fast. And it’s incoherent . . . I don’t really get comfort from the record”; then, “I’m not sure these songs talk to each other. On paper, I think that’s supposed to be something I should be worried about, but I’m not.“

Whether or not the album is coherent or inconsistent, I’ve found it to be wildly playable. I could easily throw it on again right now. The first two songs, “It’s in Your Heart Now” and “Suffer,” are incredible tracks, the highlight of the album for me. Having heard just those two songs, I thought I was in store for another Destroyer album of sheer perfection. With third track “June,” the album reaches an early peak of strangeness; there are good songs that follow, but the album never again comes close to the majesty of those two opening tracks. I am curious to find out where this album falls in my final assessment of 2022′s releases; I’ve gone from thinking I didn’t care for it at all to thinking I need to hear it even more, and I’ve already heard it a lot. Bejar’s writing and music has changed significantly in the past eight to ten years. At one point he made oblique suggestions that he was leaving music completely. I used to say he was one of my favorite songwriters, but that was when he was doing a totally different sort of songwriting. The last few albums he’s released demonstrate other aspects of Destroyer, and are bold examples of what it can take to keep a musical project interesting and compelling over the course of two and a half decades. I will always have time for Bejar’s work.

Above are the front cover, hype sticker, and a crooked shot of the back cover. I believe those two figures on the back are members of the band. I could be wrong. Neither is Bejar.

Below are both sides of the inner sleeve. Having taken this in and looked at it under bright lights in the kitchen, I can finally see that this figure is Bejar himself. Good lord, do I need new glasses again already?

Next are both labels. There is the tiniest difference between the two; the Merge logo only appears on the second side.

Here are shots of both sides of the gorgeous vinyl. This is one of the better applications of colored vinyl that I’ve seen lately.

The reclining figure in the tree on the front cover must surely be a nod to the artwork of Bejar’s 2011 reissue of his 1997 cassette release Ideas for Songs. I can’t put my finger on what the accordion-playing figure harkens to, but I feel like I’ve seen him before as well. Here’s that cover of Ideas for Songs:

[solivar]

First Dance

Originally posted June 9, 2006

Title: First Dance Fandom: Kingdom Hearts Warnings: Rated SVL for Snark, Violence, and Larxene. Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and all characters related thereto are the product of SquareEnixDisneyBuenaPixar.  Author's Notes: Second in a series of ficlets (or, in this case, verging on actual fic) about firsts. Contains the arguable foundation elements of something vaguely resembling a plot. Set pre-Chain of Memories. I'm not entirely pleased with the conversation at the end, and so this one might get reworked some yet.

Every member of the Organization had his or her own little hobbies, the things they did to make themselves feel more real in the tattered remnants of soul, of self, left to them. Xemnas disapproved mightily of wasting time and effort, but even he had to admit that the single-minded pursuit of their goal lacked entertainment value as far as reasons to continue existing went. For a group of people lacking one of the major fundaments of humanity and possessing assorted personality disorders of an antisocial type, an alternative outside obsession or two actually improved their functionality. Axel was privately convinced that, if he ever poked his unwanted nose in Xemnas’ personal quarters, he’d find dozens of spiral-bound notebooks full of as-yet-unused names and lugubrious poetry that not even Demyx would like. Marluxia, when he wasn’t busying himself with unacted-on plots against Xemnas, was engaged in a complex flirtation with his own demise by transparently lusting after Xemnas, all he was and all he possessed. Everyone politely pretended not to notice, then went to Luxord to lay bets on how long it would take for Saix to lose his patience and murder the Lord of Castle Oblivion in some deeply horrible manner. Saix, when he wasn’t acting as lapdog in chief, tended to lurk around Oblivion’s dungeon, not infrequently in the company of Larxene, with whom he shared a certain fascination for the physical and psychic mechanics of excruciation. Instead of working it out on each other, they constructed elaborate experiments starring whatever unfortunate they could get their hands on. For that reason, the entire Organization avoided the dungeon as a matter of self-preservation. Axel was startled to discover that Xaldin did needlepoint and Lexaeus painted and both were better at it than they had any right to be. He never even hinted that he knew, principally because he valued his existence much more than they did. Demyx had the best puppy eyes in World and used them freely on Xigbar, who seemed to consider himself Demyx’ bodyguard on his semi-frequent trips outside and was shamelessly used as a pack-bearer otherwise. They’d populated the conservatory with every species of instrument known to man at least twice. Demyx found the ones he liked, admired them for a few days or weeks, and then systematically smashed them to pieces. Except the damned sitar. Axel occasionally thought Demyx the most deeply damaged of them all, but kept those thoughts to himself. Vexen and Zexion pretended to an intellectual standard higher than anything the rest of the Organization aspired to attain. Axel knew with absolute certainty that Zexion was full of it on that issue – he’d had occasion to find himself crammed under the little freak’s bed and thereafter had great difficulty taking his coolly intellectually superior act seriously. Of them all, Vexen seemed to be exactly what he was: a heartless bastard who didn’t even miss it and who lived primarily inside his own mind. He made Axel’s skin want to crawl right off, which was no mean feat. For his own part, Axel was an inveterate people-watcher, even of people who only barely qualified for the designation under the loosest possible definition of terms. Larxene, the only other member of the Organization aware of at least part of his little diversion, disapproved heartily, though not for the reasons Axel had expected. “It’s just not healthy, Axel,” Asserted the woman whose favorite author had an entire unpleasant psychological designation named after him. “At best, it’s taking that method acting thing a little too far. At worst, it’s actively masochistic. Nothing you see, nothing you experience, when you’re out there among them will make you human again. They can’t give you your heart back. It’s pointless to try! Besides, if you want to hurt that badly…” She flicked her knives out, one by one, and the lazily contemplative look on her face suggested she was thinking about pinning him to the library wall and getting started right there. Axel couldn’t help smiling – Larxene was predictable in her viciousness but occasionally amusing nonetheless, and he only resisted patting her indulgently on the head because doing so would give her unobstructed access to his ribcage. “Two thoughts for you, my charming nymphet. One: self-mutilation becomes significantly less about the self if you involve another person in it. Two: give the good Marquis a rest and some of the weirder transhumanist philosophers a read if you want some interesting insights into the spiritually transformative nature of suffering. Have you seen XIII?” Odd how her eyes could light up and her pretty mouth scowl at the same time. “What do you want with that?” “I’m bearing a message, oh my maiden of pain, or else I wouldn’t abandon your pleasing company.” He ran a fingertip over the point of one of her still-drawn knives; she licked it clean, then dismissed it. “Orders from the Superior.” Larxene rolled her eyes. “At least he’s keeping it busy. Try the History and Geography stacks – it spends a lot of time down there.” “You’re my savior, Larxene. Next book is your choice.” He blew her a kiss and flickered away in a curl of darkness, because the library was large enough that he didn’t want to search it inch by inch on foot. He hadn’t, strictly speaking, been lying. He had been summoned into the presence of the other person who knew about his pastime and was there given a single command: “Find the Key of Destiny.” What he should do when that came to pass was not explicated and so Axel decided on the most obvious conclusion: surveillance. If XIII had outlived his usefulness – doubtful, given that he’d only been with them a fortnight at most – the order would have been completely unambiguous. And, since Xemnas rarely actually gave him permission to snoop and pry and spy on another member of the Organization, he decided to squeeze as much entertainment out of it as he could. For the first several hours, he prowled the World in methodical fashion. XIII had quarters and if he’d been in them, Axel would have been enormously disappointed. He wasn’t and neither was anything else and so the hunt continued. (The room was empty, containing not even a bed or a blanket or a single cast-off piece of clothing, only palely luminescent walls and floors and the hint of shadows lurking in the corners. Axel found himself wondering where XIII slept, if he slept, if he did anything at that could be construed as weak or human.) It became apparent, eventually, that XIII was not in the World That Never Was and hadn’t been for quite some time. He sampled the essence of XIII at his Proof – cold and bright as winter dawn, sharp as the edge of broken ice, so very strong, so totally alone – and opened a Door to Castle Oblivion, where he’d been recently enough that the taste of him still hung in the air, a taunting little curl of winter-cold and steel. Axel followed XIII’s essence-trail around the Castle and noted that its whimsical kinks and contortions seemed to be defined by an effort to avoid contact with anyone else. He even managed to evade Marluxia, a feat that Axel himself had never accomplished in Castle Oblivion and which ultimately consumed an annoying amount of time when he failed at it again. By the time he extracted himself from the Graceful Assassin’s flytraplike company, the trail was fading and Axel was becoming just suspicious enough to wonder if that might have been the point. Marluxia didn’t waste any of his barely-existent affection on the Organization’s newest member, whose mere existence seemed to be a point of not inconsiderable frustration to him. Axel didn’t think him suicidal enough that he’d actively try to do XIII harm, but absolutely knew him petty enough to torment the boy whenever possible. The Lord of Castle Oblivion excelled at that sort of thing. Similarly, Larxene nursed a grudge based on XIII’s publicly displayed ability to hit her about the head with impunity and without her express permission. And while she hadn’t technically been lying, neither was she telling a truth of recent vintage. The mustier reaches of the Castle’s enormous library were lit here and there with filaments of XIII’s winter-steel essence, but all the traces were days old. Axel commended Larxene to a number of unpleasant fates as he prowled the stacks, running his gloved fingertips across dusty spines, considering what to do next. If he’d wanted XIII dead, he’d just summon his Assassins and give them their orders. “Bring him back alive” was not, unfortunately, the sort of instruction they usually got and he seriously doubted their ability to comprehend such a command given their basic vocational design. Still… Axel found a suitably unoccupied corner and extended a call into the dark and nothingness that coiled where his heart had been. It manifested a moment later, sleek and sharp and sinuous. He extended a book on the geography of the Worlds that XIII had clearly handled more than once. “Find the one that’s not me. Lead me to him.” The Assassin slithered away with the eye-disturbing speed and boneless flexibility that characterized all its kind. Axel followed closely, watching as it caught at traces too faint for anything possessed of higher-order intelligence to notice, but well within the sense-range of things that hunted primarily by instinct. Some of those traces looked to be deliberately diminished, forced to dissolve at an unnaturally accelerated rate. Which was not, Axel reflected, a trick within Larxene’s power or, for that matter, XIII’s or he’d have used it before this. Within his own, yes. And Saix, for certain, and possibly one or two others – which gave him a theoretical list of suspects should he stumble over XIII’s fading remains but also raised more questions, the most important of which remained unanswerable. Where are you, XIII, and what are you getting yourself into? Keeping one eye on the Assassin, Axel flipped open the book. It was half excruciatingly dry geography text and half travel guide, the interesting bits being written in the margins in three different hands. He hoped that Larxene never saw that, or she’d start collecting writing samples. And then fingers. XIII’s essence-impression was strongest in the water Worlds section – he’d lingered, in particular, over a full-page picture of a long moon-silvered beach, a bucolic village clinging to the bluffs in the distance, a cluster of low, wooded islands visible just off shore… The Assassin raised the most headlike of its appendages and uttered the minor-key keen that meant it’d latched onto something solid. Axel dropped the book where Larxene was sure to find it and ran as the Assassin flowed away like a coursing-hound made of silvered darkness, down a staircase he had never seen before, out into a length of corridor that he had, and through one of the doors that lead to the outside. Beyond was a courtyard, bordered on two sides by glassed-in green house walls, in which a Door had been opened. Recently. Axel opened it, too, and found himself standing at the edge of a precipice – the vantage point from which the picture he’d just been looking at must have been taken. He was looking down on almost the same view. Almost. It was late afternoon, not moonrise, though the heavy overcast gave the beach and the sea almost the same silver sheen. In the distance, the bucolic village was in the process of collapsing in fire and ruin, he could hear the screams on the salt-and-Heartless-stench laden wind. A hundred feet below, the beach was scattered with bodies – human bodies – and swarming with Heartless in breeds and numbers too great to count in a single glance. They were forming a knot around a single focal point and in the middle of it stood XIII. He’d a Keyblade in each hand, one a blaze of wintry silver radiance, the other a flicker of purple shadow, and between them he destroying Heartless by the dozen without making any visible headway against the rising tide. Literally rising – they were coming out of the surf and out of the sand and boiling down out of the surrounding bluffs and Axel could feel them becoming aware of his own presence, as well. He called his weapons, eyeballed the range, and threw. One chakram scythed through the horde forming up at XIII’s back, carving a wide arc. The other skittered points down across the ground in front of him, striking sparks from the exposed rock of the bluffs, which exploded into a white hot sheet-wall at a silent flick of will. XIII threw a narrow-eyed glare over his shoulder as Axel came to rest at his back, a weapon in each hand, and parried it with a grin of his own. “Having fun?” XIII’s pretty bow of a mouth tightened. “What are you doing here?” “It’s not polite to answer a question with a question.” Axel threw, and a couple acres of prime oceanfront real estate became abruptly uninhabitable. “I was looking for you, actually.” XIII made a noise in his throat that might have been indicative of disbelief or just rank indifference and struck for himself, his dark Keyblade punching through the wall of fire Axel had yet to release, sending a half-dozen Heartless back to where they came from, and arcing smoothly back to his hand. “Really.” “Yes. I was afraid Marluxia might have fed you to a few of his more unpleasant plants. We can’t stay here.” Axel flicked a glance up at the precipice he’d leapt down from and XIII nodded in agreement. They moved almost as one, Axel bringing his chakrams around in a wide arc, catching the flames he’d already summoned and redirecting them, clearing a length of beach to maneuver in. XIII darted past to take advantage of it. “Watch your – “ Axel swallowed what he’d been about to say, as XIII automatically checked his back swing, a little smile curling his mouth. XIII was used to fighting with someone at his back. Good to know. Also good to watch, all vicious quicksilver grace and lethal precision, with one weapon in the air and the other in his hand at all times, his face set in a tight-lipped smile, eyes wide and bright and fierce. Completely real and totally alive. Axel laughed and called down more fire. They made the bluff in two quick stages, wiping it clean of anything but themselves, though XIII did most of the hands-on work. Axel could feel his bone-weariness, though he refused to show it, standing on guard with Keyblades at the ready as he opened the Door. Axel reached out and caught him by the shoulder. “Come on. This – “ The first Door opened into a place Axel had never actually been before – high buildings and a teeming mass of people that seemed thoroughly shocked when they appeared out of thin air in front of them. XIII staggered back a few paces and Axel held on tight to his hood, opened another Door – “ – is going to take – “ Deep woods, quiet and still, the air thick with the scent of loam and fresh rain. Another Door. “ – a few minutes – “ Darkness. Dark sea breaking on a dark shore, a cold blue moon hanging low over the water, never setting, never rising further. Another Door. “ – so they can’t follow us right back.” The World That Never Was. Axel let go of XIII’s hood before he decided to object with the edge of a Keyblade and stepped back out of easy striking range. XIII spun, his face lit by the radiance of his weapons, looking very much as though he were considering the odds of landing a hit at not-so-easy striking range as a gesture of his displeasure at being dragged across three Worlds by the scruff of his neck. Axel waited and, with an audible sigh, XIII let it go, dismissing his weapons and slumping against the nearest wall. It was interesting, Axel decided, watching how much that simple act changed him, altered the substance of him, reduced him somehow. Except the glare. The glare was still there, but even that was starting to lose its edges. “So. XIII.” He smiled, and watched XIII’s glare go from semi-hostile to somewhat wary. “You can call me Axel.” “Why,” XIII asked coolly, “would I want to do that?” “Because I’m no more a number than you are.” Axel turned, flicked a glance over his shoulder. “Coming?” “Roxas.” Softly. “My name is…Roxas.” “Roxas.” Axel let his tongue caress the syllables of that name as much as it liked. “Come on. You look like you could use a few hours of not killing anything.” Wary slid away and weary crept up underneath it. Roxas pushed himself away from the wall, submitted to a hand on his elbow to guide him and, a few minutes later, to a room with a real bed in it. He was asleep in seconds, curled up with his back reflexively toward the nearest wall, looking dangerous and half-feral and far too young, particularly in his sleep. Axel kept watch and thought about what he’d learned for certain today and what he could easily surmise and what more he had to uncover and how much fun that was going to be. Damned if he didn't have to write Xemnas a thank you note.

#vintage nagaina fic #khfic

[terranoctis]

find yourself

The first time I got hit in the head, it was from someone who cared about me and had been treated the same by his father. He slapped the side of my head when I answered something wrong. The strike wasn’t a punch. It truthfully barely hurt. He had been scolding me because I had answered a math question wrong. Even now, I know he hadn’t been doing it to me out of ill intent. To him, he knew I could do better and his frustration came out as that. Even now, I understand that his action was because that was how his father had taught him.

My father and my brother never once hit me with intent, so more than pain, I had felt shock at the occurrence. I met the eyes of his brother, and what I saw in return was a blank stare. It wasn’t anything strange to any of the boys at the table. Each boy had been through their own versions of that. The man went along to help someone else with their homework and I stared down at the sheet of paper with both dumb shock and a hurried need to get the math answer right.

I never told my brother about what happened that day, but I sometimes wonder what he would’ve done if I had. Would he have gotten into a fight like he was wont to do when we were younger? Or would he have told me to hold my tongue and silently exacted revenge in his own way? He was raised to be the man in our household and that has carried its own weight in his life.

Still, my brother and I were lucky. I think it often when he and I are witness to the same boys at that table and their choices now. My brother went through his own fair share of messes too, as have I, but our parents were something else in that group of adults. Maybe it was because of that, but every boy at that table loved my parents, and had so much affection for me. They were all my brothers. They were my childhood companions. They were my best friends.

They were messes, in their own rights, and it took me years to understand how well-adjusted I was in between them. It took me more years to understand that to them, my home was like a safe haven. My problems seemed very small compared to theirs. It always did. If I had problems, I’d tuck it into the corner to come back to later. Right then and there, I had to focus on their scars and their scratches. And sometimes, we’d all make each other laugh so much that we’d forget about it all. That was our childhood, and our fellowship.

It began a lifelong habit of ignoring myself to take care of others. This didn’t start with them, but was explicated by them. I can name my childhood best friend as another initiate into these habits of mine. I can name the boy I loved as the last. All I knew was that by the time I reached a point where I needed to break down, I did--and didn’t know how.

I had to start from the beginning to vocalize my griefs, my pains, and more. Writing was that outlet for me. It always has been. I learned slowly to express it more to people around me, but often, my pains are something I write about more than anything. It’s my form of therapy.

I bring this up now because I know that my choices may come out of the blue for so many. I don’t vocalize it all, and that’s the part of me that I’m still working on. Now that I’m significantly older, I’ve learned healthier boundaries on what weights I have to carry and what I should set down so that I can take care of myself. I’ve spent months trying to do everything I can, at this place, and speaking my concerns out loud. I stayed the well-adjusted center and played that role in order to keep a decently sailing ship. 

But for those same months, there’s a whisper in the back of my head. But at what cost? You cannot carry the weight of the world for someone else. I have the scars to remind me of that and it’s something that has grown in me. It’s something that everyone who has ever loved me to that extent has told me. Even the boys at the table, even the boy who looked at me like I put every star in his night sky, even the girl who wanted me at her side for the rest of her life--none of them really wanted me to be that for them. Even though they relied on me, they wanted me to be happy and to be healthy.

I’ve been doing it again, carrying the weight of someone else’s burdens. What should’ve been a temporary burden to help along someone else has been saddled as my permanent burden, and when I voice that I can’t do this, I’m being metaphorically slapped in the side of the head and ignored. I’m being asked for a different answer when I only have one at this time because the means for another answer won’t be provided. I’m being blamed for their choices, so I’m taking back my own.

I hope my choice is something that works out for the better for everyone else, though there’s a sense of bittersweet in knowing I won’t be there to receive that same treatment, if such adults come to their senses.

I love myself far too much to stay in that kind of environment. I’ve seen enough gaslighting to know better. I’m no longer a child who has to sit silent at the table, watching every other child at the table take the blows of an unreasonable parent or adult figure. I don’t have to sit in stunned silence when that same figure suddenly strikes me out of nowhere as well because my answer wasn’t the one they wanted from me. I’m no longer the sister who had to cover them with bandages and step in so the blows would go away. I’ve made my stand against it already--and the repercussions of that will have to be seen in the following months.

Right now, I have to take care of myself. My personal happiness also comes from being kind and knowing that there is kindness.

So if you’re angry, if you’re sad, if you’re upset, I’m sorry and I understand. I didn’t rush into this as an answer. I took my time to come to this answer. I truly did. It’s been an answer that has been forming for months, and two weeks ago clicked it in place for me. You don’t know how much it pains me knowing that this may inadvertently cause the blows to become harder around me--but in the same breath, I’ve been doing more than I can mentally handle for months and months to prevent that. 

I’ve been doing that even as people around me have been doing whatever they will and I’m just tired. I’ve been so angry all the time and it’s not me at all. This world is a crazy place during this time, but it doesn’t mean you have to stay in a place that exacerbates that senselessness. I hope you make the choice that fits you best, whether you choose to stay at the table or you choose to leave it. At this time, this choice is mine and suits me well.

So I’m stepping back for awhile and I’m letting the cards fall as they will. I want to be the best person I can be, and it’s no coincidence I chose my last day as that day. Remember to be kind. It means a world of difference to someone--and it means a world of difference to me that I can be in a place where I will be that kind of person. 

#personal #.chrysalis.

[quinntessentiallyglee]

Love it so much. Bonus round: what would the first plot line be for each lead? And if the last mandate was ‘get sugar and Tina together’, how would you do that?

I’m going to answer these in reverse order since that mandate would significantly affect my casting choices. That said, I’d probably use the Mentor/mentee trope to get them to spend more time together, Sugar enrolling at Tina’s college, maybe with a sorority subplot (though that feels a bit cliched even for me) but paired off somehow from the start. A real slow-burn, friends-to-lovers arc (which, yes, is also very cliched). I’m thinking it’s would probably kick off with an overconfident Sugar (is there any other kind) having her confidence and her ass (figuratively speaking) handed to her by coursework/peers over the first week, and then somehow ending up in Tina’s study group (or, this being glee, Tina’s version of the Bellas, with Tina offering to tutor Sugar to keep her grades where they need to be to stay on the team).

As to the character plots:

Quinn’s would be a combination of her relationship with Puck ending, and her coming to New York for some emotional support (because this Quinn uses her damn rail pass). I love that Quinn is at Yale, but I have to admit that I’m tempted to have her leave Yale to join NYADA (with Rachel). That said, I probably wouldn’t. From there, that would lead into Rachel and Quinn finally admitting their feelings for each other, becoming a couple, etc.

Santana and Brittany’s first arc would be combined, and probably adjusting to being a ‘grown-up’ couple and the realities of living in the ‘real world’ as independent adults. I’m not sure when the proposal happened, but if it hadn’t happened by the end of season 5, that’s where I’d start, and if it had, then I’d play out the wedding planning from episode 1.

Rachel... Since I’m stuck with season 5, I can’t retcon that whole ‘running away to LA and leaving her life long dream of Broadway behind for no explicable reason’ “plot”, so I’d probably focus on her trying to balance Broadway and NYADA and, again, the realities of being an independent grown-up (Do you sense a theme here? Because I do). I think I’d do this with a supportive(but strict) Cassandra pointing out that Rachel still needs to put in the class time, even if she’s already on stage. (In fact, that would be the first scene for Rachel, probably contrasted immediately after with Rachel getting the reverse speech when she shows up for rehearsal).

I’ll admit it, I’m not quite sure what to do with Sam. A part of me is tempted to have him get some sort of maintenance/janitorial job at one of the colleges, but I’m not sure I like the idea of him not getting a chance to be a student. On the other hand, that might be the perfect arc for Sam to take over the first season; have him do the working stiff thing during the days, and attend night classes at, well, night. Missing out on the ‘College life’ while still being close enough to it to see what he’s missing, and growing disillusioned with his life. It would also be a nice setup for the usual ‘Entitled rich kid looks down on the hardworking poor kid’ trope.  I’ll have to give this one some more thought. 

Mercedes, if she is one of the main characters, would be living the dream.., and by that, I mean working her way up the entertainment ladder by doing whatever shit gig she can find, traveling from one crappy motel room to the other as she tours around the country, all the ‘why am I doing this again’ tropes. Then playing it off as a great experience whenever she talks to the College-going gang.

Shelby, Beth, and Judy would all be recurring characters whose plots would be almost entirely tied to the main characters. At least for the first season. I could see Judy having a ‘New Love interest’ subplot, maybe Shelby too (or instead) but nothing that would be explored in any depth outside the effect it would have on their relationships with the main characters.  The same goes for any other recurring/guest staring characters (and yes, Sue and Cassandra would fall into this camp, particularly the recurring one).

#deepintuitiontellsme #ask: scenario #ooc: mun #ooc: muse

[ultraericthered]

Anime Update 18

CLANNAD - Just when we seemed to finally be getting somewhere with the revived Drama Club, Okazaki’s little drama with his old man pops up again. I know Okazaki Sr. used to be an abusive parent, but it’s really hard to even imagine that when he comes off so feeble, soft-spoken and at least trying to be considerate in giving his son his space to live his own life. This is a father I feel a young man like Okazaki should feel lucky to have, but Okazaki’s complicated feelings towards him just prove too much of a burden, to the point where he’s just moved out and is now staying with Nagisa’s family. Nagisa, of course, is a sweet cinnamon roll who anyone would be lucky to stay with, but I’m starting to worry about her based on the stuff her parents clearly haven’t been telling her. I also really like her dad - his macho attitude and Sylverster Stallone-esque voice contrasted with how openly emotional he is and how he’s good at baking makes him endearing and hilarious. The place the episode chose to end at was very peculiar. The junk doll is trying to make more of himself and wants the girl to help him. It doesn’t bode well for the future. That thing and his little army is going to break free of the Illusionary World and rampage through the main cast’s town. This could be the end of civilization as we know it! ....OK, I know it’s not going to go that direction but I do kinda find myself wishing it would!

Dragon Ball - The episode in English is titled “Roshi Surprise.” At only one point in the episode does Roshi call the food he’s offering to Launch “Roshi’s Surprise.” A totally throwaway part of the episode, yet it claims the title. This was kind of dumb - the whole Kame House subplot effected nothing. I’m just glad that on Goku, Krillin, and Bulma’s end of things, we’re finally advancing the underwater pirate treasure hunt, and that General Blue has his forces in pursuit.

Toradora - Woah. So that was how they end the Christmas arc. Not exactly a merry way to close it out. Not that there weren’t joyous moments to be found - Taiga and Ami’s surprise performance at the Christmas party was killer and that song they sang got so stuck in my head, especially after the episode replayed it for a special credits. Minori was also significantly better here, even making a nice call back to the romance-coded talks of ghosts and UFOs with Ryuji back in the beach house arc. How she turned Ryuji down so that Taiga wouldn’t lose him, without really explicating that to either of them, was not the right move, but I could understand why she’d do it. And then there’s Taiga. She was so goddamn precious here that it was almost unBEARable, and yes, Ryuji dressing up as a a Santa Bear in order to fulfill Taiga’s Christmas fantasy was in equal parts absurd and heartwarming in all the right ways. But then it’s followed by Taiga’s emotional meltdown over Ryuji and as gutwrenching as it was, it...kind of didn’t make sense to me? Why would Taiga think Ryuji would just stop being her friend or hanging out with her at all just because he’d get together with Minori? She ought to know that their relationship has grown far past the “alliance of convenience” phase. Is she just that self-conscious and can’t imagine anyone sticking with her purely because they like her? Again, I can’t help but shake the feeling that this was all conveyed better in the light novel.

Excel Saga - The second Menchi-centric episode in the series was honestly even better than the first. At first it seemed like a much different sort of misadventure for Menchi, going on the sidelines of Excel and Hyatt’s own unknown adventure which was brilliant, but it actually tied back to the previous Menchi episode by Anne Anzai having past history with Wolf and her evil uncle even being the treacherous old man who betrayed Menchi before. Anne Anzai herself has to be my favorite one-shot character in this whole insane show. Being so insanely rich and implausibly badass and emotionally open with Menchi about all things made her endearing, and that commercial she made (which apparently was plugging a real life electric company) was somehow hilarious simply because the episode played it thrice over the course of it’s run. I found myself kind of wishing she’d join up with Excel and Hyatt so they could all look after Menchi together! I also watched the following episode, which was the clip show for Pedro’s storyline thus far that ended up showing us how his, Sandora, and Nabeshin’s face-off against That Man went following Nabeshin growing Pedro his own afro in the previous episode. Spoilers: it didn’t go well. I wonder how much of the fourth wall breaking “we’re low on ideas and have just been making this shit up as it goes along” shtick is based on truth, since the continuity in this show has been a lot tighter than a show of it’s nature, as the last couple of episodes that will follow this one will display. The last thing I can say about this is that while Larissa Wolcott has definitely grown into the role of Excel by this point, the continuous downside is that whenever she says her lines, my mind is always going to think of how Jessica Calvello would’ve read that dialogue differently and made it that much funnier. Oh well.

Ace Attorney - “Turnabout Big Top” has a notorious reputation for being the worst case in the original Ace Attorney trilogy and one of the worst in the franchise’s history, so I decided to get it over with and watch all three episodes that adapted it. And I can say with utmost certainty....I actually quite liked this one. It really wasn’t that bad at all and in fact had my full investment at points, especially in how it kept me guessing as to what the catalyst was for Acro murdering the ringmaster. And since I knew this was likely because this was a compressed, pragmatic adaptation, I checked to see how widespread my view was and it’s actually not uncommon. Apparently, the case in the game goes on way longer than it needed to, the circus characters are completely insufferable with any better qualities they have to them not being stressed well enough, the trial sections (especially the cross examination of Moe the Clown) are tough to get through, nothing is really advanced with Franziska and her connection to Edgeworth, and the biggest blunder of all, the case being solved is dependent on something the player can’t even see because Acro’s sprite, like all character’s sprite, only shows his from the waist-up! It’s a horrendously done case that this anime somehow managed to make much better than it’s original version, especially due to the lack of limitations on what can be shown to the viewer. 

I will say though that as glad as I was to see Edgeworth at the end, I was a bit let down since Phoenix’s next episode preview narration had made it sound like he’d make his big return in the episode rather than just having one brief scene at the very end, and then the next episode preview on this one had Phoenix pretty much repeating himself, as though he’d just gotten ahead of himself when he promised Edgeworth’s return before! What the hell was that about?

Nadja of Tomorrow - When this episode started and the Dandelion Troupe were all “Oh, no person is truly 100% good or 100% bad” to Nadja’s outrage over Antonio, I was questioning whether or not they were going for a moral equivalency plot and was prepared to hate this one, but then I actually ended up really, really liking what the episode actually went on to do, and feel like it provided another valuable lesson for graying Nadja’s worldview. Antonio is a bad guy, no question about it and no excuses made for it. But that didn’t come from nowhere - he really did want to become rich in order to help his mother because he loved her so much but he gradually lost sight of that and tainted his own heart with his love of money. Seeing Antonio’s mother learn this truth was really tough to watch, and the part where Nadja, Kennosuke, and TJ went back to her house because they were worried about her falling to depression and needing comforting...that actually got me kinda choked up inside, I’m not gonna lie. Was also glad to see Harvey make a breakthrough on Nadja’s search for her mother, properly deducing that she must be of noble blood, but on the downside it really had nothing to do with all the episode had been beforehand, making the note it ended on seem kind of abrupt to me. But hey, at least the Black Rose is returning!

SSSS Gridman - Since I decided to not continue with G Gundam until next year starts, I watched two episodes of Gridman that puts me officially halfway through the series. I actually find it a shame that this was only a 12 Episode Anime while Darling In The Franxx from earlier that year got more episodes where it could’ve afforded to go for less - the Code Lyoko-esque setup that the first five episodes used could’ve carried a bit more of the series, so it’s jarring to reach a huge turning point in only episode 6. But man, what a turning point: - I feel really bad for poor, hapless Anti - this is the Kaiju that temporarily killed Gridman in episode 3, yet after that nothing has been going his way, he’s always getting his ass handed to him when he rampages into battle, and Akane always treats him like shit. It’s at the point where it’s actually comical, especially when he showed up at school and chased Yuta around. Given how episode 7 ended for him, I’m certain this is the end of his time as an antagonist. - Speaking of humanoid Kaiju, the random, nameless Kaiju girl who took Yuta on that tour of outside the city and explained what the real deal behind the series’ setting and the Kaiju attacks just cracked me up. Something about her voice and how she said many of her lines was hilarious. We’d better see her again before the show is over. - Akane Shinjo. Geezus Christ, Akane Shinjo. I just adore this character. This fees like a character who, if I were to just read up on her and heard her described to me, I would find an interesting concept but wouldn’t really appreciate her beyond that surface level concept until actually seeing her for myself ‘cause her quirky, blase, dispassionate yet also passionate, uniquely twisted has-no-fucks-to-give douchey yet very complex and nuanced characterization needs to be seen to be believed. Her endearing interest in Kaiju and her chipper, often teasing friendliness with the people close to her contrasted to her antisocial, isolated recluse lifestyle and callous disregard for the lives of those who’ve gotten on her bad side is just fantastic and has made her a consistent delight to watch. The fact that she’s basically God over this data-made simulated city raises the stakes in how the Gridman Alliance can possibly deal with her and get her to stop her attacks, so I’m very eager to see where this goes. - Best joke in episode 6 was Akane, when talking Kaiju shows with Sho, going “they shouldn’t make episodes without Kaiju in them - that’s what people tune in to see!”, which kind of threw shade at that very episode, which had no Kaiju attacks and no Gridman action. - Lastly, FUCK Alexis Kerib. Finally seeing him outside of the computer screen gave me the willies, and not only did he manipulate Anti into collaborating with him on an attack that Akane hadn’t even been told about or permitted, but him electing to “punish” Anti for what he got him to do in the first place...by brutally assaulting the guy and taking out one of his eyes? That was just horrific! This creep really is the Ghetsis Harmonia Gropius of Studio Trigger villains - his seemingly friendly, gentlemanly personality and polite way of talking conceals a truly hideous soul and a sinister mind as he continues to manipulate and exploit a very autistic-coded character into serving his purposes, whatever those purposes might be. Fuck that guy. 

#Anime Update

[getoffthesoapbox]

[SnB:VS] EP4 - Of Baka Demons and Blushing Dragons

Not as much room for speculation on the plot front in this episode, given it was mainly a set up for the future. Still, there were some interesting developments on the relationship fronts and one revelation that will likely have significant reverberations further down the line in the series.

On Nina & Azazel - An Unintentional Love Story

I was quite surprised and pleased by the significant amount of time this episode devoted to Azazel’s and Nina’s relationship. There’s quite a bit to unpack in the two scenes they have together, so I’ll be dividing this section up into two parts in order to dig into it all, with a bit of a wrap up section at the end for any remaining points. 

Reliance and Trust

The first significant scene between Nina and Azazel in episode 4 heavily involves the evolution of trust between the two of them. This trust between them seems for the most part instinctive on both of their parts; it’s neither earned nor requested before it’s given by both of them toward each other. This alignment of core respect for each other is one of the essential foundations of their bond.

On Azazel’s side, he entrusts Nina with two things: Mugaro and the demons. This is a demon who has been surviving on his own for who knows how long, who has been fighting for his people without accepting help from anyone--even Mugaro must stand down. Yet, here he is, first entrusting Mugaro’s safety to Nina, and then burdening her with the request to protect the demons should he fail. It’s incredible how much faith he has in the abilities of a woman he barely knows. He was so impressed by her power in the first episode that he wants to lay his entire world at her feet. For a demon as proud as Azazel, this must have been no easy admission, yet he accepts her superior strength without even a twinge of envy. Something about her must really call to him. (Interestingly, Azazel doesn’t change his opinion of Nina after he learns she’s a half-human. Signs he’s already starting to reevaluate his estimation of humans perhaps?)

For her part, Nina’s just as drawn to Azazel for no explicable reason. She instinctively goes racing after him to save him from himself the moment Kaisar even hints he’s in danger. She looks out for Mugaro for him. She gets in his way when he’s about to make his suicidal charge. And, far more significantly, she reveals the secret of her transformation to him. This is huge. We learn later that her transformation nearly destroyed her village and all she loves. It’s a dangerous weapon that, in the wrong hands, will have traumatic consequences. Yet she offers it to Azazel without a second thought, and for him she’ll become a monster. 

More important than this instinctive trust between the two of them is that that trust is earned and reciprocated. Azazel doesn’t run off and blabber to every demon in the world about her power. Nina doesn’t abandon Azazel--she finishes what he started and takes down Charioce’s men. They have formed a team with the mutual bonds of trust and reliance, and that’s going to be a potent advantage in the upcoming war. 

The Unintentional Love Confessions Continue

The running gag of this show seems to be Azazel’s completely innocent unintentional love confessions. The boy needs to learn the ways of the romantic world quick or poor Nina’s going to be very confused.

Joking aside, a major facet of Nina’s and Azazel’s relationship is suggested a bit in their first scene this episode, but really fleshed out in their second scene. I’ll discuss both in this section because they’re thematically similar.

Azazel and Nina are both innocent in the ways of romance, which I find fascinating in light of Azazel being a demon who arguably is much older than Nina. Azazel’s a complete dork who clearly has never had a relationship before (or at the very least doesn’t understand much about relationships), and Nina of course is a young woman who has some serious hangups about young men. When Azazel interacts with Nina, he’s always completely 100% innocent, as if he doesn’t even notice the potential romantic context of any one particular interaction. Nina, being hyper aware of handsome men, takes everything out of context or misreads the situation. This is both comedy gold and a way to make Azazel stand out against Charioce, who will most likely seduce Nina with calculating purpose and intent. 

Proof of Azazel’s innocent intent:

Back in episode 2, Azazel tells Nina that it’s no good if it’s not her, which can be misunderstood as a love confession. Episode 4 makes it clear (if anyone wasn’t before) that Azazel meant his “accidental” confession in the most literal way possible--he needs Nina’s dragon’s help, not that Nina’s the only one for him. 

When Nina orders him to hug her in episode 4, he gets all bashful and flustered and makes a big hairy deal about it. (It’s just a hug, lovey.) A demonic seducer shouldn’t be getting worked up over something that platonic, lol.

When Nina’s putting herself and her ability to control her dragon form down in the second scene from episode 4, Azazel immediately rushes to reassure her in the most awkward way possible. He says to her, “If you can’t control yourself, let me embrace you and turn you into a dragon!” The word he uses in Japanese actually means both just simply “to hug” (in the platonic way) and “to have sex”. We know Azazel meant the former because he has no clue why Nina goes racing out of the room, and when Rita scolds him (she calls him a pervert demon, which implies she thinks he’s seducing Nina like a cad), he genuinely seems perplexed by her implications, because he never put the romantic meaning into his words. 

My theory for why Azazel’s saying all this unintentionally romantic crap is two-fold. The surface level is of course that the unintentional confessions are funny for the audience and cause Nina to get all worked up. But the true reason for the unintentional confessions is because Azazel, being a romantic innocent, actually has developing feelings for Nina and those feelings are bubbling up from his subconscious in the way he talks to/interacts with her.

The problem with Azazel is that he’s so myopically focused on his mission and goal that he doesn’t have any time for self-reflection or to figure out what he himself is looking for. What does Azazel want for himself? Who knows, because Azazel doesn’t have the time to think about it. Every cell in his body, every moment of his day is devoted to his cause. 

In light of the trust and reliance bonding being so strong with this couple, I suspect part of the reason why the creators are giving Azazel these unintentional love confessions is that by the end of the story they will be real because they’ll be his true feelings. (This will likely contrast with Charioce’s “false” love confessions, but it remains to be seen how they’ll handle Charioce.) In order for Azazel to “win” the love game, his words must be true. And by the end of the story, they will be in retrospect, even if he didn’t mean them in their romantic connotation when he initially said them.

But we can already see evidence that Azazel is beginning to fall for Nina not only from his unintentional confessions and erotically charged phrases, but also from the way he interacts with her. 

In the earlier scene between them in episode 4, Nina yanks his arm to stop his suicidal march back into the fray with Charioce. The two of them topple down the small hill. Nina grabs onto Azazel’s neck for support. Azazel did not have to do anything; he could have let her get hurt--and as a true demon, really should have let her take the brunt of the fall.

Instead, we see his arms coming around her, securing her, and he makes sure she’s on top when they finally land. This is all completely instinctive on his part, none of it is conscious. 

Similarly, when he hugs her shortly afterward, his hug is very much an unnecessary embrace. His arms are tight and secure around her, and his head is resting between her neck and shoulder, an entirely unnecessary position. It’s pretty darn intimate for an emergency dragon-transforming hug, and it causes him to get blasted by her transformation to the point where he can’t even move. There’s clearly a physical component to his attraction to her that perhaps is still in his subconscious and only arises on an instinctive level. But demons are instinctive creatures, so it works.

The following scene between them reveals other aspects of his growing fondness for her. He’s incredibly gentle with her when he talks to her, and he begins by acknowledging that she saved him. It’s not yet a “thank you,” but baby steps with this guy. More importantly, he is kind and considerate to her--he listens to her without interrupting her and he does what he can to be supportive, encouraging, and reassuring. It’s just that he’s a baka demon and has a lot to learn on the relationship front, so it doesn’t all come across as smoothly as it might have from say, Kaisar or Favaro. He also looks at her as tenderly as he looks at Mugaro, but unfortunately she misses out on it since she’s too self-conscious. 

For her part, Nina launches into a back story monologue to cover up how self-conscious she is. This yet again reinforces her bond of trust with Azazel, which he makes good on by keeping her secret. He might be willing to use her, but he’s not going to rat her out. Nina’s willingness to talk to Azazel about her past demonstrates what a burden this has been for her to carry alone, and it also shows her developing comfort level with Azazel, despite being unable to look him in the face yet. 

Some of the humor in the second scene comes from Nina and Azazel both myopically focusing on things the other one doesn’t care about. Azazel only cares about Nina’s transformation and how it can help his people; he doesn’t see her very real embarrassment about her situation. Nina on the other hand is so focused on her embarrassment about “how” she transforms that she gets frustrated with Azazel for his nonchalance about it. It’s also funny that she doesn’t want Azazel to think he’s the only one who makes her heart race (which he isn’t, but he is the only one who’s turned her dragon mode so far). Azazel asking Nina to give him a break with her requests for him to hug her also cracked me up too (guess he can only take getting blasted apart once every episode lol). 

Despite the continued misunderstandings, they are beginning to connect with and understand each other. This is a good place to start with a developing romance, though I suspect it’s going to take some unexpected twists and turns once Charioce really enters the picture. 

Where It All Goes From Here

So where do we go from here? This episode revealed a few new avenues for future development which I think might be quite fun:

The creators are very specifically not allowing Azazel to call Nina by name, though he must know it by now. This is one of my favorite Japanese tropes, so I’d say it’s safe to expect Azazel saying “Nina” for the first time to be a major dokidoki development. ;) (Likely causing a dragon transformation, haha.)

Nina is able to look at Azazel’s face when she first wakes up, but only after she realizes who he is does she begin blushing. This implies that she’s perfectly capable of looking at young men’s faces, but she’s bashful and self-conscious. Once she learns to overcome her self-consciousness, she’ll be able to look anyone in the face without going dragon mode. This is likely part of her future journey, and probably will occur naturally over the course of the show as it will take more and more “extreme” romantic situations to make her blush. The story’s called “Virgin Soul” for a reason, lol.

I don’t think controlling Nina is going to work out the way Azazel’s thinking. He’s clearly thinking he’ll unleash her in specific, controlled encounters. However, I do think he will, perhaps unintentionally (per usual), help her learn to control both her transformation process and her dragon mode itself. I’m also hoping we get one of those lovely scenes where her dragon goes out of control and he’s the only one who can chill her dragon out long enough to get her to revert to human form. ;)

Phew, AzaNin took up most of the post. I’m exhausted here. ;D

On Nina’s Dragon Mode - The Loneliness of Chaos

Nina’s transformation was supposed to appear powerful, but something about the whole scenario from beginning to end struck me as deeply lonely. Nina’s transformation isolates her from all she cares about and is incredibly destructive. It also leaves her vulnerable to abuse if she doesn’t have anyone watching out for her. The fact that they chose to end her transformation by showing her vulnerable and huddled on her side, it just emphasized how isolated she is. 

We learn that she remembers nothing from her transformations. This explains why she doesn’t connect Charioce with her turbaned crush. But despite not having conscious control of herself in dragon mode, she clearly still does retain her loyalties to the people she loves. She hesitates to attack Kaisar, which implies recognition on a subconscious level. This is an interesting development, and may have devastating implications once she actually falls for Charioce.

Nina is confirmed to be more powerful than Azazel. She easily breaks out of Charioce’s mages’ energy containment field whereas Azazel was crushed by it. She decimates Charioce’s forces. Azazel acknowledges that she has the power of a small Bahamut. Whether her entire dragon clan has the same power or not remains to be seen.

Also, we have it confirmed now that Azazel has seen her naked, lol. It was implied before, but now it’s confirmed. Take that, Charioce. ;D

On Nina & Charioce - Much Ado About Dragons

Not much happens on the Nina and Charioce front this episode. However, we do get some implications as to who is going to be present for the “final showdown” with Charioce. I suspect we’re going to have a critically injured Azazel with Nina defending him against Charioce. When this’ll happen, who knows. 

Anyway, Charioce gets a front row view of Nina’s dragon in action, and he is entranced by her power. Not in the astounded, mesmerized way Azazel was in episode 2′s flashback, but in a calculating manner. He’s computing what he can do with this dragon once he captures it. This man is a hunter through and through, and he likes a good challenge.

The other development we get is that Nina has a low opinion of Charioce for what he’s doing with the demons. It’ll be interesting to see how this squares once she falls for him. It also shows Nina can be judgmental in the right circumstances, so she doesn’t just accept everyone and everything at face value without ever changing her opinions as she gets more information. Quite encouraging. 

So far they’re not giving Charioce any redeemable qualities other than “eye candy”. He’s going to have a long road to walk if he’s going to be a heroic character later on, lol. 

On Mugaro - Jeanne’s Little Secret

The zinger near the end of the episode was a big one. Charioce wanders down into the dungeons to confront a woman familiar to anyone who watched the original series--our beloved saint, Jeanne d’Arc. 

Before this episode aired, @starsandthunderstorms predicted Mugaro would be Jeanne’s actual child while we were chatting, which I didn’t believe because Michael hadn’t...well...done anything with Jeanne in the original series, lol. I thought Mugaro would just be some reincarnation of Michael. But sure enough, Mugaro is Jeanne’s kid, and I’ll just accept it as an immaculate conception. =P (Though really guys, Gabriel would be a better choice for that and it was Mary who had the immaculate conception, goodness.)

Regardless, it’s now confirmed that Mugaro is Jeanne’s child, whether spiritually or biologically. More importantly, she’s the one who hid him among the demon slaves--that is going to come back to bite her. I’m not sure how forgiving Mugaro is going to be; we already know he can be resentful (he resents Azazel leaving him behind this episode and clearly has abandonment issues). I’d enjoy it if this gave Mugaro and Jeanne a bit of conflict, but since he’s angelic, we may not get that.

More importantly! Goodness! Charioce! What are you doing! There’s more chemistry between Charioce and Jeanne than Charioce and Nina at this point! He clearly respects the hell out of her, even though he’s trying to break her. Like, he taunts her but...his taunts are almost concerned lol? His expressions with her too! Far more gentle/contemplative than he’s shown to anyone else in the show. He’s also...kind when he tries to convince her to join forces with him. I’m quite flabbergasted with him!

And all the weird, unintentionally erotic things he says to her! She’s not giving him “the answer he wants” while his eyes are closed! Goodness! He even acknowledges she beat him when it comes to Mugaro. 

When she glares at him, he actually flinches. What is this! And although he threatens Mugaro, the fact that he still tries to offer her an olive branch to see him again is quite interesting. 

It just makes me think Charioce has been aiming for Jeanne and is a possessive, jealous, semi-yandere type of guy who can’t accept that Jeanne would rather have an angel’s child than his lol. (Blast it, this is the type of villainous crush I love. I’d much rather have this than CharNin. Jeanne is the kind of woman men should be falling all over themselves for.)

Jeanne clearly hates Charioce’s guts, which is even better. New ship sealed. XD (Please forgive me; I usually love one-sided villain-to-heroine ships, so long as they stay one-sided lol.)

*ahem* Moving on...

Miscellany - Wrapping Up Loose Ends

Just a few random thoughts that didn’t really fit in any of my main sections:

Azazel’s personal growth still has a long way to go. I’m not sure how I feel about his declaration to take back the pride the demons lost. I think he hasn’t learned his lesson yet--pride goes before the fall. =P (He needs to read him some Milton.)

It’s interesting that Azazel has a half-human/half-angel and a half-human/half-dragon at his side. He now has a complete circle of all the races helping him out. He better start realizing demons aren’t the end all be all of life soon, with all the love he’s getting.

Mugaro and Nina both are lonely without Azazel. Nina doesn’t say as much, but her question to Mugaro implies she misses Azazel too. Mugaro’s little pout is so cute. He clearly adores Azazel and doesn’t like missing out on time with him. 

I think Mugaro’s actually trying to help connect Azazel and Nina, lol. The little shipper was hard at work this episode too. =)

Kaisar’s loyalties are going to get seriously tested soon--Charioce is already onto him. I’m really looking forward to this (and to his reunion with Favaroooooo.)

My goodness, I didn’t expect this episode review to take this long! (Are these getting longer? I have no idea.) For those of you who sat through this whole thing, I offer you my humble thanks. For those of you who waited for me to finish this, thank you for your patience, and I’m sorry I couldn’t get it out sooner. I actually wrote two versions of this post; my head was such a jumbled mess about the best way to approach it.

All that being said, thank you for taking the time to read my posts, and here’s to a new episode this week! <3

#shingeki no bahamut #shingeki no bahamut virgin soul #rage of bahamut #azanin #azanina #charnne #snbvs

[moviegroovies]

alright so it’s taken longer than i thought, but after watching bill & ted’s again, i think i’m finally ready to write that back to the future post i promised. 

so the thing about back to the future was that i... didn’t like it that much. remember my first lost boy’s post, when i talked about the importance of making characters that really stick with the audience? the problem with back to the future, for me, was that they just, uh, didn’t. maybe the pop culture osmosis surrounding the movie made it so that i already kind of knew what to expect from marty mcfly and doc brown, but ultimately i just didn’t find them that compelling (marty less than doc brown, in this case). i’m not really going to get into that; it may just be my personal taste, and the fact that the first michael j. fox movie i ever saw was bright lights, big city, and now i can’t picture him as anything else. 

i’m also not really going to get into a lot of plot stuff. everybody who’s ever commented on back to the future has already talked about how weirdly incestuous the plot is, and i’ve got nothing to add to that other than “ick.” i will say that, between the way that marty’s dad was peeping on his future wife though her bedroom window with binoculars and the way that his mom groped him at the dinner table, they’re both kind of freaks, and are perfect for each other (apparently). 

really, the one part of the movie that i DO want to talk about is the time travel.

see, this is where they lost me. time travel and temporal mechanics in general are some of my favorite things to explore in media, so i was fairly excited to see how they used it, going into this. after all, it’s pretty much The time travel movie in western pop culture, right? 

i don’t know what i expected. obviously the average moviegoer in 1985 wasn’t going to back to the future to enjoy a completely sound deconstruction of temporal mechanics, and at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter. it’s a fun movie, even if it’s not exactly tailored to my personal taste. i’m not actually upset about this... but, since i do run this blog, and since i’m perfectly okay with using it as a platform to vent out stupid frustrations that i alone have, anyway, i mean, why not?

basically, the trouble with the time travel in back to the future, for me, stems from the fact that they flip-flop between the idea that You Can Change The Past and the idea that You Have Already Changed The Past. personally, i enjoy the latter, on principle, in my time travel stories. You Have Already Changed The Past is the foundation for stable time loops and a bunch of other fun theoretical shenanigans, and it takes some of the high stress out of these types of stories--if you’re living in the world already affected by whatever you did in the past, you don’t have to worry so much about destroying your own future when you go back. bill and ted’s uses this (one example being with the keys that ted’s father lost--even before ted had the idea to go back and steal them, they were already missing, so he lived in the world where they would eventually be stolen even before they were), and there were hints of it in back to the future; what comes to mind is marty’s mother commenting on liking marty as a name after hearing it from, well, her future son (the implication being that she’ll later remember him when she’s naming her child, thus making marty named after himself all along), marty giving the future mayor the idea to become the mayor because that’s what he is in marty’s present, and the somewhat unfortunate implication that chuck barry got his style by mimicking what he heard of marty mcfly, mimicking chuck barry’s style as he remembered it. doc brown wearing the bulletproof vest underneath his lab coat because he read marty’s note could be the fourth, and most important, example of this. these were the better parts of the time travel in the movie, and if the whole thing relied on this logic, i think i would have liked the movie better. 

if the whole thing relied on that logic, though, the plot as a whole wouldn’t work, which is why the rest of it goes with You Can Change The Past. In these types of stories, simply enough, every action you take in the past can have an effect on the future you’ll live in, so you have to be careful. just one little thing can make it so you’ll never be born, and marty found this out the hard way when he accidentally co-opted his parents’ meet cute by trying to save his dad’s life. this type of story isn’t all that bad in and of itself, even though it’s not the more fun type of time travel in my opinion, but the execution underwhelmed me. in the end, marty’s interference changes the way his parents get together and teaches his father to be assertive, which, in the future, makes it so that marty’s family is much better off than they were before, and biff becomes subservient to the man he used to bully, and whom he continued to bully into their adulthood in the original timeline. other than that, though, nothing else seems to have changed significantly--marty is still dating the same girl in his present once he gets back, for instance--and marty slips back into his life as usual... right up until the sequel bait. 

so which is it? i might be overthinking this (i mean, i definitely am), but i wish they had been clear one way or another. the plot makes it pretty clear that marty did have the ability to completely screw up the timeline up to the point of taking himself out of existence, but the more i think about it, the more i can remember instances in the movie mostly explicable through You Have Already Changed The Past. for instance, i remember a post that talked about how fun it is that doc brown is marty’s best friend, with just like, absolutely no explanation for that one, but i would argue that there was an explanation in the movie: doc brown sought out marty years after that experience because he remembered marty from his visit back. 

i really don’t want to be one of those assholes who goes on long rants about like “lazy writing” or “obvious plot holes” latent in things like these that were never meant to be examined that closely. i completely understand that back to the future used time travel as a vehicle for the story, and the story was not supposed to be a deep exploration of the implications of time travel, and i can’t argue against the spot in the public consciousness that it earned itself. at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if they mixed the mechanics of time travel, even if i do feel like that made them break their own rules. when no rules are really set up, you can do whatever the fuck you want. it’s fiction. 

but still, come on. you either always went back before or you never did. get it together, marty.

...in the end, all i’m saying is that bill and ted’s temporal mechanics are much more satisfying and sound, so if you want a REAL time travel movie, you should check that out. until next time, party on, dudes!

#back to the future #text post #time travel #marty mcfly #doc brown #you might think i'm joking about the bill & ted thing #but i'm absolutely not #they have a bunch of sound time loops #and like yes obviously grabbing the historical figures and all that is a bit of a stretch but like #tbh i think the space time continuum is stronger than back to the future gave it credit for #in the end it's going to keep to the established script as much as possible #but since things like 'socrates was snatched out of time and brought back' probably wouldn't make it into history books anyway #therefore not changing the present in bill & ted's timeline #they could conceivably have always gone back #and so they did! #but the stuff they do with loops in their present like with the keys and all? absolute genius. i love them.

[operawindow9-blog]

Review: In Dancing Queen, Alyssa Edwards steps aside for Justin Johnson

Dancing Queen star Alyssa Edwards with her dance students Atlee, Ainsley, and Tina. (Photo by Jake Giles Netter/Netflix)

by Andy Dehnart 3 Oct. 2018 | 8:45 am

Alyssa Edwards is in Netflix’s documentary series Dancing Queen, but she is not the star.

That would be Justin Dwayne Lee Johnson, the owner and operator of Beyond Belief Dance Company in Mesquite, Texas, who performs as Alyssa, including on two seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Alyssa is certainly part of the story, but mostly appears in studio interviews. Dancing Queen cuts—leaps, really, from one side of a mirror to the other—into Alyssa’s reactions, judgement of Justin (“Justin: shut the hell up”), or stories from her childhood.

It’s a wonderfully weird way of including the drag side of his life. Alyssa’s commentary doesn’t always make complete sense—Justin is by far the more coherent of the two—but the time with Alyssa is a delight to watch, as is the entire series, which gently lowers us into Justin’s life and tells us his life story at the same time.

Dancing Queen is biopic by way of reality series, lots of background and history explicated during present-day moments.

For a show starring Alyssa Edwards, it’s significantly more subdued and quieter than you might expect, even though Alyssa and Justin’s personalities are sometimes indistinguishable.

Alyssa Edwards on her new series Dancing Queen (Photo by Netflix)

The eight-episode series, which is on Netflix Friday, is produced by Drag Race’s production company, World of Wonder, and was originally developed as a slightly different series for WOW’s digital streaming platforms.

It generally follows Justin’s life out of drag: at work and with friends. As the series opens, he’s returned from a world tour, and is auditioning students to form a team so he can “conquer this country one competition at a time.”

Dancing Queen waits until halfway through the second episode before including Justin actually teaching dance. His intensity is a surprise, even having seen him teach choreography on Drag Race, but he has a clear philosophy.

That usually comes through in exposition, and too often, Dancing Queen tells when it could show. (And the showing needs some help: The camera work sometimes captures beautiful images, but it’s oddly sloppy in other scenes, zooming in and out as it bounces up and down.)

Some exposition makes sense: Dance, Justin says, “was my way of expressing who I was as a little boy,” so he “created this place” to give other kids that same opportunity.

“They’re products of me,” Justin says of these young dancers, but the first two episodes don’t give us a chance to see much of that—to see him teaching, or inspiring.

“You allowed me to be who I am, from the inside out,” one student says. Who has she become? What did he do? The show moves on.

While the young dancers and their mothers are prominent—more prominent than Justin at the start of the first episode, even—and one mother calls herself a “dance mom,” they aren’t auditioning for Dance Moms. Phew!

The kids have voices, in person and in interviews, and are perhaps on their way to being more well-developed characters in addition being more well-developed dancers. The conflict, when it arises, is conversation, not reality show clashes.

He tells one parent who’s disappointed and lashing out, “Just let her cry and be upset, and then say, ‘We’re going to try again,’ because that’s the game of life.” He tells the kid, “It’s going to happen a lot of times.”

Throughout it all, Justin is holding himself and the kids to a high standard, which is connected to his desire to lift them and him above where they are.

Why he does that is what Dancing Queen is digging into, scene by scene, with a combination of anecdotes (he kept $80,000 in cash in his closet with wigs), moments from his life (a bland date, hanging out with friends), and collectable Alyssa Edwards aphorisms (“Is the juice worth the squeeze?”).

Alyssa Edwards may be famous, but Dancing Queen makes the case for why Justin is a star.

Source: https://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/2018/10/dancing-queen-netflix-review/

[themusicenthusiast]

Thursday, December 6th, 2018 – Colter Wall Shares Some Songs of the Plains and Other Tales, Maintains an Intimate, Singer-songwriter Vibe at His Largest Dallas Show Yet

It turned out to be a dreary day in North Texas, the occasional shower and near constant drizzle leading one to want to minimize their time outside. Because of that, the Granada Theater acted as an ideal respite from the gloomy weather, especially for anyone who wanted to see one of country music’s rising stars. Colter Wall is a fascinating figure in the world of country music, given that the genre has largely shied away from its roots, mainstream country artists being pop acts as much as anything. Yet the twenty-three-year-old man from Saskatchewan, Canada is a country purist, one that identifies with the old guard more than anything and has developed a sound to match. And while that may have fallen out of favor with the mainstream crowd, Wall has, rather quickly, won over a throng of loyal supporters through the intricately crafted stories that he tells and the relentless touring he has done to support his albums. His visit to Dallas on this Thursday night was in support of the nearly two-month-old Songs of the Plains (out via Young Mary's Record Co./Thirty Tigers), a near sold-out crowd welcoming him back to North Texas, eager to hear some new music along with experiencing their favorites of Wall’s once more. Presented by Spune, the event boasted a mostly Texas-based lineup thanks to Joshua Ray Walker and Vincent Neil Emerson acting as the supporting acts. The latter has been on tour with Wall and performed as a trio, and while the listeners enjoyed Emerson and company well enough, it was Walker who set things on fire and had people raving. A rising talent within the D-FW music scene, the singer-songwriter acted as if he had something to prove as he made quick work of ten songs. Spectators were shocked to discover he hailed from right in their own backyard; and it was impressive to see a man that practically nobody there was familiar with, armed only with a guitar and his voice, command the crowd in the way that he did. It was evident the songs meant something, many striking an emotional chord, the melancholy tones that pervaded throughout the majority of them making one just want to break down and cry, even if there was no real explicable reason for it. They just had that touch, that emotional weight that allowed them to connect with people; a hallmark of a talented musician. They weren’t the only Texas artists to be seen this night. As the screen concealing the stage was raised, fanfare filling the room to welcome Wall out, concertgoers were instead addressed by Paul Cauthen. The Austin-based musician piled on the praise as he spoke of his good friend Colter Wall, promising everyone an excellent evening before the man of the hour finally emerged. “My name is Colter. I appreciate you guys coming out…” His greeting was followed by an explanation of his first song, his “favorite kind of song”, a traditional one, and one that was a cowboy song no less.

The first few cuts were all him and his acoustic guitar, evoking a singer-songwriter vibe, one that was conducive of storytelling. The chattering that had been ongoing during the previous two acts ceased. The rare clank of a beer bottle being thrown into the waste bin was the only noise that punctuated the music and even that was done carefully as the near one thousand patrons gave Wall their absolute attention. His rendition of “Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie” was stunning. Mournful and teeming with emotions he made it feel like something he had penned, giving credence to the notion that Wall is an old soul; his booming voice and heavy drawl creeping out as he assumed the identity of the character he was singing about, leaving the nonchalant demeanor of his own persona that he had displayed well behind. He shared some anecdotes for the two originals that proceeded that opener, speaking of how “John Beyers (Camaro Song)” came together, noting that it was about two guys who drove around in matching Camaro’s who had their differences and ultimately took it out on one another’s car. (It was an early highlight of the set.) He then earned some laughs upon mentioning the idea for “The Trains Are Gone” came to him after reading a book, quipping, “If you can believe that,” regarding the reading part. That segment seemed to have been carefully curated -- even if those tracks were recorded as bare-bones numbers. Live you could experience the full scope of what they were going after, such as mortality in the case of “The Trains Are Gone”, and just how powerful they were. All by himself Wall had proved himself to be a force to be reckoned with, one capable of captivating a sea of spectators, and that was sure to only be bolstered by the addition of his band. From a drummer and bassist to a pedal steel guitarist who dabbled on a dobro as well as a backing vocalist/harmonica player, he welcomed his band mates to the stage as they proceeded to raise a more of a ruckus. The autobiographical “Thirteen Silver Dollars” did just that as the quintet dove right in to the lead track from Wall’s self-titled release. They livened it up immensely, to the point that the tune about an unexpected run-in with law felt like a party anthem, something that felt as if it were indicative of how the remainder of the set would play it. To an extent that was true, though the rest of this 74-minute long set was much more nuanced than that, the primary focus not being on invigorating the listeners so much as it was immersing them in the stories that were being shared and making them feel authentic enough that everyone could believe they had lived it. The attendees were all the more enamored with that approach as it better showcased Wall’s natural abilities. While comprised largely of original material, the setlist was fleshed out by more than half a dozen covers. It was a surprising move, considering most artists keep covers to a minimum, if they’re even included at all. In most instances I would say that was excess, but in Wall’s case that actually worked. Be them old traditional songs or ones from respected singer-songwriters, they all fit well within Wall’s wheelhouse and were spread out; “Big Ball's in Cowtown” being one of the country music staples that received a subtle makeover from Wall and had several people dancing along. Yet at other times, even with the bolder sound the full band brought, patrons remained still, utterly transfixed by the character driven songs like “Thinkin' on a Woman”. The reflective nature of it was heightened significantly as Wall placed everyone in the passenger seat of that big-rig with its driver as he assesses his failures. That was what made this night so special: the remarkable vividness of the tales that unfolded. Wall injected a certain amount of character into them that made them transcend a standard song, instead standing out as a compelling story that was artfully guided by his strikingly smooth and rich voice that echoes back to a bygone era. His rendition of Wilf Carter’s “Calgary Round-Up” was another incredible example of that as he embodied the persona of a cowboy out on a cattle drive; while the haunting murder balled that is “Kate McCannon” found Wall channeling his inner Johnny Cash more so than any other number this night, cheers erupting from the crowd as soon as they recognized the gentle chords that got the song underway. With about a third of the set yet to go Wall and company continued to make quick work of things, mixing in some covers of revered Texas musicians with his remaining originals, even pairing things back momentarily where he was accompanied only by the pedal steel guitarist for “Wild Dogs”, which was nothing short of breathtaking. Throughout the night a handful of fans were adamant about hearing one particular song, routinely shouting its title, hoping that might accelerate things. To wrap it all up Wall and his band mates finally got to “Sleeping on the Blacktop”, much to the audience’s delight. Fans frequently sung along to various track this night, though that was just about the lone one where nearly everyone seemed to chime in, the fans taking it a step further and even stamping their foot along to the percussion. It was one of those classic concert moments where for the time being everyone was unified. No one needed any sort of direction, that was just something they all felt compelled to do in that moment, and it was amazing to witness. That was a rousing way to conclude the show, though no one was ready for that to be the end. All of that stomping and hollering had subsided only moments before it again filled the Granada, this time as a way to demand an encore. “ENCORE! ENCORE!” went the simply chanting that steadily grew louder until Wall and his fellow musicians reemerged, happy to oblige the request. There would be a lone encore, and it was possibly the most crucial song of the night. Wall was deep in the heart of Ray Wylie Hubbard country – the institution of the Texas music scene even having graced the stage of the Granada numerous times over the years – so to do one of his songs was a sink or swim moment. It was a resounding success, at least based on the way the spectators enthusiastically sang along with the refrain of “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother”. The boisterous sing-along moment encapsulated the joyous spirit that was felt at every turn during this performance, summing up the overall fun atmosphere that had been cultivated (even during the more poignant numbers); the slightly updated spin Wall put on the song, changing “hippies” to “hipsters”, earning some hearty laughs. There was no better room in Dallas to have hosted Wall. The acoustics are topnotch and highlighted the natural talent he was overflowing with as he made this whole endeavor appear effortless. Despite the sizable room it felt more like club show. I dare say that out of the sixty plus concerts I’ve caught at the Granada that none have had quite the intimate feel that this one did. The way Wall initiated it was instrumental in that as he offered everyone a glimpse of himself not just as a musician but a person thanks to the dialogue he engaged in, providing some insight on his songs and those that resonated with and shaped him. He worked to develop that rapport with everyone and it persisted throughout the night, that same charm punctuating several songs even after he transitioned from solo artist to frontman. It felt like he was baring his soul to each individual in attendance, and that connection made him absolutely riveting. This was the first time that I had the privilege of seeing Colter Wall, and what you hear is precisely what you get. Even though he has drawn inspiration from some more recent influences Wall has forged a sound that evokes such a sense of nostalgia that it almost sounds too good to be true. His mighty set of pipes accented by a heavy drawl demand one’s attention; and none of that is aided by any “studio magic”. It’s all raw talent that grips you when listening to Wall’s recorded works and is downright arresting when experiencing it live. He is, indeed, a purist. There were no sorts of frills involved, nor were they needed. The music carried the show – as it should; Wall’s gritty yet refined talent shining through at every moment, the emphasis constantly on his impeccable storytelling. Clearly, there are still people who care for and prefer music with substance and meaning over something that’s catchy. Colter Wall is living proof of that, at least based on the strong turnout of avid supporters that he had this night. He champions those merits that used to be prerequisite for any act to make a significant impact in the music industry; his work ethic also reflecting those ideals, given that the road is more or less a second home to him. A genuine musician who still has his whole life to invest into his career there’s no doubt that Wall will continue to raise his profile, and in time, he may well come to be as revered as the greatest of the greats of the country and folk genres. He more than possesses the potential. Colter Wall’s current tour will run through December 14th when it concludes at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, CA. He’ll return to the road in mid-January, that leg kicking off on the 17th in Portland, OR at McMenamins Crystal Ballroom. Some of the other dates include a performance at The Showbox in Seattle, WA (January 20th); the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma, CA (January 26th); and the Scoot Inn in Austin, TX (February 7th). A European tour is also slated for March 2019. A complete list of Wall’s upcoming tour dates can be found HERE. And if you haven’t yet purchased Songs of the Plains be sure to check it out in iTUNES or GOOGLE PLAY. Set List: Solo 1) “Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie” (Traditional; cover) 2) “John Beyers (Camaro Song)” 3) “The Trains Are Gone” 4) “Night Herding Song” (Traditional; cover) Full Band 5) “Thirteen Silver Dollars” 6) “Saskatchewan in 1881” 7) “Big Ball's in Cowtown” (Hoyle Nix cover) 8) “Thinkin' on a Woman” 9) 10) “You Look to Yours” 11) “Calgary Round-Up” (Wilf Carter cover) 12) “Motorcycle” 13) 14) “Kate McCannon” 15) “I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train” (Billy Joe Shaver cover) 16) “Wild Dogs” 17) “Plain to See Plainsman” 18) “White Freight Liner Blues” (Townes Van Zandt cover) 19) “Burn Another Honky Tonk Down” (Wayne Kemp cover) 20) “Sleeping on the Blacktop” Encore 21) “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother” (Ray Wylie Hubbard cover)

[talkingsquidphd]

Review: Clifford D. Simak, “Time and Again”

For almost a decade, my father and I have been playing this game where he recommends me an amazing piece of pulpy retro sf and then, caught in the rush of work and the vicissitudes of life, it takes me about two years to read it because I only seem to “have time” during holidays and breaks. The first was The Space Merchants (1953), a brilliant, biting novel co-written by the inimitable duo of Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth which was brutally satirizing 1950s advertising and consumer culture way before Mad Men made it cool. Issued mid-high school, I managed to squeeze it in between my senior year AP exams and the start of my post-graduation summer job. The second was Gateway (1977), also penned by Pohl, whose dual story threads tracked a dangerous Russian roulette-like space exploration program and the psychotherapy sessions of a traumatized former explorer. With an original loan date in the summer just before I left for my junior year study abroad, fate eventually intervened and put it on the syllabus to a class I was taking… in my first semester of graduate school. The latest was Clifford D. Simak’s Time and Again (1951), which, after the customary two years gathering dust beside my books for work, I finally managed to finish when a bomb cyclone and ensuing polar vortex shut down life in the Northeast US as we know it.

To the untrained (read: ungenerous) eye, Time and Again is a typical 50s sf yarn with a mystery premise like something out of Jonathan Creek. Twenty years ago, burly white male protagonist du jour Asher Sutton was sent to recon a mysterious planet. In the present, with no warning or explanation, Sutton’s ship returns to Earth, battered beyond repair but still somehow flying. Based on calculations by the boys in the lab, there’s no scientifically explicable way Sutton could have survived the destruction of the ship and the trip back to Earth. So how, asks the dust jacket, is he back, seemingly alive and well? It’s the kind of question entirely typical of sf at this time – how did our intrepid Campbell-esque engineer hero MacGyver his way out of certain death using only his wits and good old science? It, in turn, begs the kind of answer you’d have to animatedly diagram on a napkin while babbling about mirrors and ricochet effects and tricks of the light.

And yet Time and Again almost immediately undercuts this mystery when it admits the answer practically on the first page: Sutton didn’t survive. He died, and a mystical force – a secondary being tagging along in his consciousness that Sutton nicknames “Johnny” – is responsible for bringing him back from the dead. Thrust suddenly into a world where inexplicable Powers That Be can do everything from read and influence the thoughts of others to reverse death and travel through time, Sutton find himself an engineer in a world where science and deductive reasoning counts for very little anymore. In fact, every time Sutton thinks he’s figured something out and acts decisively based on that logic, he’s smacked mockingly in the face by the unreality of his situation. Bouncing from incorrect supposition to incorrect supposition, trying to piece together a complex time-travel paradox in between being drugged, knocked out, beaten up, shot, and even killed a few times, Sutton is an early sf protagonist deeply disenfranchised and wholly at the mercy of the plot.

This, believe it or not, feeds into the central focus of the novel, which is destiny. In Time and Again’s 74th century, capital-m Mankind is very much on the back foot and trying to get back on the front foot by following a twisted version of manifest destiny and colonizing the whole universe. But with so few actual Men left and so many stars yet to conquer, Man has no choice but to create “androids” (not robots, deceptively, but clones) to artificially swell his numbers and provide better universe coverage. Treated like second-class citizens, the beleaguered androids are now making a subtle bid for abolition and legitimacy. What does all this have to do with Sutton, you ask? From his trip to the mysterious planet, Sutton draws a profound epiphany about destiny – that every living thing has a destiny and striking a balance between accepting and questioning one’s destiny is the true route to happiness. Returning to Earth, Sutton plans to write the self-help book to end all self-help books espousing this philosophy of destiny. From clues and individuals sent back in time from the future, Sutton realizes his book has become the ultimate hit – it’s started a war between a faction of android rights activists holding it up as a doctrine of equality and a cadre of Men dead-set on annotating the hell out of it in a Revised edition that reaffirms manly Men’s supremacy. In the middle of it all is Sutton, who in the present day is forced to dodge deadly assassins and seriously pushy book agents alike despite the fact he hasn’t even written the book yet.

Like the twist answer to the dust jacket question, this dilemma of the future war and the book’s effect on it has a sort of swerve ending that I love. Without giving away too much, I’d say Time and Again above all preaches the long game – evolution, not revolution. While the lot of androids is pretty bleak in the novel’s present, Sutton’s doctrine of destiny for all living things – both born and created – promises to significantly influence the thought of the universe in favor of equality and understanding. But, as controversial and dangerous as the book seems to its enemies and naysayers, that’s all it is – a sizeable drop and ensuing ripples in a steadily gathering pool of sentiment which will one day overflow its container. And while this kind of slow progress towards a distant goal of understanding can be frustrating and disheartening in its slowness, Time and Again at least offers the comforting inevitability that the arc of the universe bends towards justice, which is relatively refreshing compared to the “we’re all doomed and that’s all she wrote” noble pessimism of so much contemporary sf.

Aside from the unexpected flouting of Occam’s Razor in the book’s initial mystery, the novel’s most left-field aspect is its deep reverence for untampered nature, glimpsed on Sutton’s visits to the distant past of his ancestors living in scenic Bridgeport, Wisconsin. Having grown up on an Earth so relentlessly manicured it’s like something out of Marvell’s mower poems, Sutton joins in with the mower in mourning the fact that everything about the planet, from the landscape to the weather, seems rustic and hardy but is in fact precisely controlled, and not one thing on the planet is for industry rather than pleasure. Disagreeing with Man’s addiction to pleasure and ease of life as much as their perverse doctrine of manifest destiny, Sutton appreciates the pastoral pleasures of farm life and hard work, waxing poetic about them for paragraphs at a time:

There were times when the work, not only for its sedative effect but for its very self, became a thing of interest and of satisfaction. The straight line of new-set fence posts became a minor triumph when one glanced back along their length. The harvest field, with its dust upon one’s hoes and its smell of sun on golden straw and the clacking of a binder as it went its rounds, became a full-breasted symbolism of plenty and contentment. And there were moments when the pink blush of apple blossoms shining through the silver rain of spring became a wild and pagan paean of the resurrection of the earth from the frosts of winter. For six days a man would labor and not have time to think; on the seventh day he rested and braced himself for the loneliness and the thoughts of desperation that idleness would bring. (226-227)

Time and Again has of course got some problems, especially problems reminiscent of its distant ancestors – for example, a Blade-Runner-esque female character who initially seems powerful, well-informed, and key to the plot, but whose role, after infodumping all her expertise onto the male protagonist, devolves into merely pining for him. And for a novel which hangs its central premise on a text preaching the equality and oneness of all things, Asher Sutton playing human savior to the novel’s disenfranchised Other seems a contradictory misstep at important moments. Only the fact that Sutton, himself now something more/less/Other than human, is bumbling and utterly clueless, being dragged along by fate, manipulated by a vast network of spies, and punished whenever he thinks he’s got things figured out, keeps him from devolving into the self-righteous figure who thinks he knows the lot of the suffering better than those suffering themselves. As a result, Time and Again comes off as a subversive, self-deprecating, oddball 1950s pulp constantly toeing the line between having big brilliant ideas and overreaching.

#fiction #reviews #clifford d simak #pulp #sf #time and again

[top5internetsourcesuniversi-blog]

The Abortion Debate

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( fit to pro livenesstime physicians.com) military personnel creationnesss behavior begins as we atomic number 18 subject to adapt, reproduce, organi zed, perk up competency etc. Does this real define that we are able to shut a room take a life that has neer displayed these actions only if go a way. numerous people volition agree that during both miscarriage and p everyplacety-stricken charitable cosmosness is killed. They similarly displace to decoctk that when does life begin or is cool offbirth respectable miscarriage. fit to pro-choice ne devilrk tender-hearted life begins as a mollycoddle / fetus begins to roost on its sport got without the makes co-occurrence (Pro-choice network).\nIn the earth today laws flip been straight in umpteen states that in that location is a set metre for a wo custody to abort her electric s applyr or fetus. Women muckle unless have miscarriage between octette to twelve weeks of m differentliness. This tax return to the question when are we considered compassionate organisms viewpoints regarding this burn vary wildly, but after illumination of wherefor e one should be considered gentle from the moment of intention. fit in to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word is to begin with derived from Latin, considering the act of bearing young, manifestation (Webster Dictionary). It is a verge that describes an unborn child, norm tout ensembley use from two months after conception to birth. However kind-hearted life force non come out to be true at the fourth dimension; a benevolent has to have a conscious to be a merciful the fetus wishing to have a soul, reciprocally define as the ghostly essence of human being.\nIn friendship today stillbirth is viewed as the kill of vindicated or intentionally violent final examinatione lives. Which society has the say to outlaw spontaneous stillbirth be actor it harms innocent human beings? But unconstipated after concession those points, some still do non favor more than stringent stillbirth laws because they think that they dont really work there would still be similarly umteen spontaneous miscarriages. Abortion is outlined as a landmarkination of a gestation alternatively of its prevention, abortions are condole withful separately. \nThe statistics on abortion as listed on the Center for ailment Controls website show the demographics that the highest percentages of women who dupe abortions are Caucasians, unmarried, and inwardly the age puke of 20 24. The plosive speech sound of most standard abortions is within the stolon-year octonary weeks of gestation, which correlates to the highest employ method involving curettage. (Center for disorder Control)\nAbortion is non alship screwal the way to go if things in your life does not go well. at that place are various paths that kick the bucket down to being and irresponsible overprotect and one way you raft do this is by having the infant and giving the child up for adoption. Abortions behind lead to umpteen an(prenominal) a(prenominal) problems with your he alth and problems in relationships family of friends. According to the surgical incision of Health abortion send word cause receiveliness run a risks of your nigh child, pelvic infection, and melodic line clots in the uterus, unsounded bleeding and some more. Abortion is specify as a termination of a pregnancy sort of of its prevention. The percent of women who produce abortions are not married and most the ages of 20 24. The current of most authoritative abortions is within the first eight weeks of gestation, which correlates to the highest utilise method involving curettage. (Center for unsoundness Control)\nThe opposite ship canal that doctors approach abortion in different techniques. During the first eight weeks of ontogenesis, abortion methods such as suction aspiration ignore be performed where a nihility subway system working 29 quantifys stronger than a household vacuum removes the embryo. some other method used during this time frame admits dila tion and curettage where the neck opening is dilated, and a sagaciously knife crying at the ashes of the child until all the remains have been scrapped out.\nAll abortion that take place every day comes with short term and long term effect. The leading causes of abortion related motherly deaths within a week of the operating theater are hemorrhage, infection, embolism, anesthesia, and undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies. legal abortion is cipher as the ordinal leading cause of maternal death in the pass water to labourher States. Other come-at-able side effects of receiving an abortion include a risk that the cleaning char charr could fix infertile or have miscarriages in later pregnancies. Another risk is the development of an mad stop k instantaneouslyn as Post abortion syndrome where many potential reminders of the abortion can trigger a depressive response in the person. This serious precondition is then used in support of pro-life activists react against aborti on. \nIn the imprint of many pro-choice supporters, pregnancy itself can be too traumatic for a charr. When putting pregnancy in perspective, for nine months, a cleaning woman is subjected to both horny and somatogenetic pain, which can have personal, pecuniary and social effects on the womans life the most common reason of why women may guide abortion is because of finical impoverishments.\nIn many cases in our world today we care very apace to judge people. alliance fails to take into account that the women may have never cute to take this road in abortion but now face the feature that she has to. Many cases of pregnancy have being lead stand to lack of love, neglect, attack, and scotch issues and etc. Issues of thwart have to be aware. The womans choice regarding an abdicable pregnancy that was force-ably bought on her that by chance may be taken in to account, abortions due to rape or incest, where carrying the child to term would cause even more horny misu se to a woman who has already been injured. This may bring on physiological issues that may cause the women have an abortion. Society will argue that something that is uncalled-for will bring happiness. (Planned Parenthood)\nWhen bringing forwards the subject of abortion we often transmit the males out of question. When having a baby it takes two. When receiving an abortion it also may take two. Many people mark off abortion as a womans issue, however, though it may not affect men in the akin physical sense, it can have emotional consequences for them as well. According to the (American life league) date the wife terminates her pregnancy the husband is uneffective to do the uniform if he does not take the child, or arguably more significantly, he is unable(p) to stop the abortion if he does want the child. This again relates to the rights of the woman and if she should be able to have the final say over her own consistency. When armed combat to pass abortion restriction s, a ordinarily used competition is that it goes against religion and the point of if it is the right or wrong thin to doing Gods eyes.\nReligious implications have helped fuel the scrap over this super charged issue. The religious issue over abortion is so difficult to resolution because of the varied personality of religion .While sects of Catholics are by out-of-the-way(prenominal) the majority, about 76.69% of the U.S. populations. Catholics pass that having an abortion is immoral, a form of murder, and not allowed. This fact, however, does not taut that Catholic women never undergo an abortion. According to Guttermacher 27.4% of U.S. abortions in 2002 tranquil data that 42.8% of Catholic women, 7.6% of Protestant women and 22.2% of other religions. \nMany religions have found ways to justify abortions as permissible. According to (Jewish belief .com) the termination of a pregnancy is not seen as wrong, as long as it is performed to protect the mothers wellbeing, whe ther that is her physical or emotional health. During the trial of many abortions we see that the mother takes into account that importance of herself but not her and the fetus as a substantial Other religions guess that in renascence of the soul such as Buddhism and Hinduism that potently teach and inspire the sacredness of life by allowing abortion. \nReligious groups also use the view of the soul to oblige their argument. If the soul determines that a fetus is a person that would bastardly that it is a human being at the moment of conception, and does not leave the body until the time of infixed death. In the Catholic Church abortion in the head of social encyclicals, outset with Pope social lion XIIIs in the garner of Rerum Novarum. He believed that toilet that abortion is an admonitory and singular socio-ethical problem, merit central concern in Catholic social teachings this was viewed in the churches eye as social injustice. \nThis lofty would entail that al l forms of human life deserve the kindred respect and should enrapture the same rights end-to-end every percentage point of development. The fact that innocent children without a component does not get the chance to explicate themselves does not mean that people in our society have the right to take a life? Or is it a human being yet because you need the most important thing of being a human being which is the power to breathe on your own without go mothers support. If you want to get a liberal essay, order it on our website: Looking for a place to buy a cheap paper online? Buy Paper Cheap - Premium quality cheap essays and affordable papers online. Buy cheap, high quality papers to impress your professors and pass your exams. Do it online right now! '